Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Thursday

Alex Massie

The Caledonian Campaign Next Year

In a risky break from blogging orthodoxy, I'm actually attending a political event today (and tomorrow!) and have travelled north to Perth for the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party's annual conference. Next year's election - assuming we have to wait until then - will be a strange one in Scotland since, for the first time, the electorate will have two parties against which to cast protest votes. That is, voters may choose to vote against either Labour or the SNP. Or both. Add the complexities of a four-party system in a first-past-the-post election and the picture rapidly becomes somewhat murky. That the Caledonian campaign is something of a sideshow that will not be where the battle is won and lost does not, however, mean that it's irrelevent to the national picture.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

When is Victory Really Defeat? In the Drug War, Silly.

There was a crazy puff piece for the Endless War on Drugs on the BBC News tonight in which the reporter, Mark Easton, was handed a story by the Serious Organised Crime Agency full of dramatic pictres and supposedly encouraging figures. Coincidentally, this appeared the day before Soca releases its annual report and at a time when the government is said to be keen on overhauling the agency. Fancy that. According to the BBC, however, the international cocaine industry is "in retreat" and prices are rising while the purity of cocaine bought on the street has "plumeted". Well, perhaps. But the weakness of the pound is the most likely explanation for the increase in wholesale prices (up to, apparently, £45,000 a kilo) even if Soca also claim that prices are rising in other countries.

Alex Massie

New GOP Argument: Torturing People is Sign of Stength

Is this the oddest argument in favour of torture yet? Karl Rove says that failing to torture prisoners only encourages al-Qaeda. Taking, for example, the memoranda about the enhanced interrogation techniques and making them public has been a value to our enemy. It has served, frankly, I think, as a recruiting tool. They can now take these memoranda and go to prospective, you know, recruits and say, This is the worst that the enemy, the United States, would ever do to you, and they’ve even forsworn these things. We can help you, prepare you to deal with these things, but even the enemy is so weak they’re not going to use these techniques on you.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

A Nation of Numismatists

Well, sort of. There's a serious shortage of coins in Argentina at the moment, possibly because they're worth more, as commodities prices rise, when they're melted down and resold. Or it may have a different explanation. It's a mystery! Anyway... The coin scarcity has created a strange predicament: Merchants regularly refuse to sell their goods or services if it means they’ll have to give coins back as change. For small transactions, they’d rather lose the revenue than spare the change. Black markets have reportedly cropped up for the resale of coins at more than 7 percent above their face value.

Alex Massie

Parliament of Chancers

Like Bagehot I think this one of most entertaining - and revealing - reactions to the revelations of the Great Expenses Swindle of 2009: The latest batch of expenses details revealed by the Telegraph included the fact that Peterborough MP Stewart Jackson had made a claim of £304.10 for the upkeep of a swimming pool. In response he said: "The pool came with the house and I needed to know how to run it. Once I was shown that one time, there were no more claims. I take care of the pool myself. I believe this represents 'value for money' for the taxpayer." Priceless, if you know what I mean.

Alex Massie

Expenses Backlash Extra! Guilty Party Named!

The problem with being a newspaper columnist is that you have to keep finding new stuff to say. New is more important than better, you understand. So when everyone is outraged (and, hell, justifiably so for once!) by the spectacle of MPs' outrageous abuse of the spirit, and often the letter, of their expense arrangements then, sure as eggs is eggs, you know some columnist is going to take the contrary view and argue that it's all a lot of fuss over not very much. David Aaronovitch has nobly decided that this is his role this week, inviting us to cool our passions and admire his sagacity as he scolds the public for daring to be angry. Remarkably, Aaronovitch concludes that the public, not parliamentarians, are the guilty ones. If only the little people wouldn't get so upset, you see.

Alex Massie

Geert Wilders is Still a Bigot and Still No Kind of Hero

Way back in February I suggested that Geert Wilders should have been allowed to show his wee film Fitna in Britain and that it was a mistake to deny him entry to the United Kingdom. But I also suggested that he was no sort of champion of freedom or free speech or any liberal sense of decency. Not to put too fine a point on it, I argued, he's a boor and a bigot. Many commenters took issue with this and that, for sure, is their prerogative. I rather think, however, that Mr Wilders is helping make my case for me. Here is his Ten Point Plan To Save The West: 1. Stop cultural relativism. We need an article in our constitutions that lays down that we have a Jewish-Christian and humanism culture. 2. Stop pretending that Islam is a religion. Islam is a totalitarian ideology.

Monday

Alex Massie

A Parliament of Thieves

Like any sensible person I've been thoroughly amused and appalled by the scandal of MPs expenses. Appalled because the extent of MPs' avarice is sufficient to shock even an iron-souled cynic; amused because watching MPs try to justify their gluttonous appetite for taxpayer-funded freebies affords a certain pleasure that one might consider vindictive if only it weren't so entirely merited. This isn't a tragedy, it's a stinking farce. The dreary pretense - duly repeated by every sticky-fingered parliamentarian - that it is all ok because "no rules were broken" could hardly be more priceless. Nor could it do more to underline the essential fact that these people are fools who in turn treat the public as though they are fools themselves.

Saturday

Alex Massie

Townes van Zandt: Saturday Morning Country

First we had Dolly Parton and then last week we featured Emmylou Harris singing Pancho & Lefty so this Saturday it makes sense to put Townes van Zandt in the spotlight. This video comes from towards the end of his life by which time his voice was even more ragged than it ever was. Then again, it's not the voice that matters so much as the songwriting and the haunting, elegiac, melancholy that makes Townes van Zandt one of the great American songwriters of the past 50 years. In any genre. Here he is then, performing the classic Tecumseh Valley.

Friday

Alex Massie

Life Imitates The Wire (Again)

You'll recall that this is what Carver did when he was trying to persuade the hoppers to move to Hamsterdam: Two Baltimore detectives have been suspended as authorities explore allegations that they drove a teenage boy to Patapsco Valley State Park in Ellicott City on Monday night and left him there, officials said. Anthony Guglielmi, a city police spokesman, said nine-year veteran Milton G. Smith III and six-year veteran Tyrone S. Francis, who are assigned to the department's Violent Crimes Impact Division, have been assigned to administrative duties, as is customary when officers are under investigation. Thanks to Maryland-native JT for the tip.

Alex Massie

Monarchies vs Republics and the Importance of Cynicism

Christopher Caldwell's* diary in the latest edition of the print magazine is good fun and I look forward to reading his new book. This part was especially entertaining: For many years, the ingenuity of the British press in exploiting the Brown-Blair rivalry story amazed me. What a gift the papers had for conveying that, this time, it was really about to blow. It was good to see last week that this old journalistic warhorse can still be saddled up, with the help of Hazel Blears’s remarks about the Prime Minister’s ‘lamentable’ failure to communicate. To an American audience, Blears’s insistence that she was 100 per cent behind the prime minister would have sounded wholly credible.

Alex Massie

The Unbearable But Continuing Ghastliness of Dick Cheney

Dick Cheney is quite a piece of work. I confess that back in 2000 I thought Bush did well in choosing Cheney to be his Vice-President. After all, the neophyte President-to-be could use some sage advice from a Washington veteran. And, yes, I enjoyed seeing Cheney cuff Joe Lieberman during their Vice-Presidential debate. That sanctimonious prig from Connecticut deserved it. But there are limits and it is remarkable that much of the conservative movement thinks it wise to seek advice from a man who left office with an approval rating of 13%. Still, these things are what they are. But that's little excuse for Cheney's brazen, chutzpah-crammed performance on a North Dakota radio show today.

Alex Massie

Irish Army Told They May Only Play Tiddlywinks

I'm not* one to mock the Irish armed forces and there's no gainsaying the fact that Irish troops have done their bit in various peacekeeping operations around the world. But (you guessed there'd be a "but", right?) it's hard impossible not to be amused by the fact that Irish troops preparing for deployment to Chad have been told they cannot play football soccer on the dusty playing fields of Chad: Defence Minister Willie O’Dea said the decision was made for health and safety reasons. "The reality in Chad is that the ground is extremely hard. Some of the sports are played out on open ground and when people fall, it tends to have a much greater impact on their bodies than falling in a field in Ireland, where the ground is not nearly as hard," he told the Dáil.

Thursday

Alex Massie

How Cameron can turn “Tory cuts” to his advantage…

An interesting exchange between Danny Finkelstein and Andrew Cooper, director of Populus in which Mr Cooper addresses public attitudes towards cuts in public spending: In principle, then, there seems to be an acceptance of the need for (inevitability of) some spending cuts.  But three quarters of voters think that some areas of spending should be protected from cuts – with the NHS and schools most prominently mentioned. Focus groups constantly find a deep-seated conviction that great amounts of public spending are wasted – but when pressed people don’t know what exactly these are (and they are, archetypally, other people’s areas of spending rather than one’s own). Aye, that seems about right.

Alex Massie

Towards a Republican Recovery

Reihan Salam offers some tough love to the GOP: In a Pew survey conducted shortly after the 2008 election, an impressive 38 percent of the electorate identified themselves as conservatives, far more than the 21 percent who called themselves liberals. Yet 51 percent of those self-described conservatives favored repealing some of the Bush tax cuts. And 24 percent of them wanted to repeal all of them. Not surprisingly, a larger share of liberals and moderates felt the same way. Note that the official GOP position has been that the Bush tax cuts should be made permanent. To put it plainly, the official Republican position—forcefully advanced by conservative media luminaries—reflects the views of just under half of the most conservative bloc of the country.

Alex Massie

Graeme Swann Takes the New Ball

Shamefully, I've not kept a sufficiently close eye on the cricket today. It's early May and it doesn't feel right for there to be a test match on so soon. Anyway, reader TS writes "Do you realize that England have just given Graeme Swann the new ball?  In a test match at Lords, no less!  In May!  If this doesn't merit an "O tempora O mores" post, I'm not sure what does." Patrick Kidd and the chaps at Cricinfo seem equally perplexed. Actually, I quite like the move and not just because giving Swann a couple of overs with the new ball is refreshingly unorthodox. There's method behind the idea too, however. Yes, it's May and yes conditions are good for seam and swing, but the key to the decision, I would hazard, is Chris Gayle.

Alex Massie

Visca Barca!

Jim Henley had a great post a while back naming names and shaming those people who blog too much. As Jim rightly put it, these days you need to be a professional blog reader just to keep up. On the other hand, there are those people who don't blog nearly enough. My friend Kerry Howley is one. Blimpish is another. And so is James Hamilton, whose More than Mind Games has been in a kind of extended winter break for some time. Happily, however, there are signs of the green shoots of bloggy recovery. Happily James is back to remind us how grateful we should be that Barcelona did the entire continent a favour by knocking Chelsea out of the Champions League last night: And Chelsea were robbed. There’s no doubt that the tie was theirs on balance.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

The Royal Navy vs the SNP

Alex Salmond may argue that Scotland is "two thirds" of the way towards independence (though even if Salmond is correct that doesn't mean independence is necessarily imminent) but the Royal Navy doesn't seem to agree. In fact, the MoD must consider independence unlikely, otherwise why* would it be basing all of Britain's submarines at the Faslane naval base on the Clyde? According to the latest plans, the Trafalgar class of subs will move from Devonport to Faslane by 2017 and the new Astute class submarines will also be based in Scotland. The SNP's defence policy, of course, is a mess. The party is vehemently opposed to nuclear weapons and considers it outrageous (for reasons that remain mysterious) that the Vanguard class of nuclear submarines are currently based at Faslane.

Alex Massie

Poverty: Grim but Authentic!

There is, as you might expect, some good stuff in Christopher Caldwell's Weekly Standard piece on the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger. But it also contains some strange thinking, albeit of a kind that is often found when foreigners consider the Irish. Thus: This [prosperity and immigration] is all very exciting for the Irish, but there is nothing particularly Irish about it. Irish identity has often been--explicitly and officially--a matter of protecting citizens from both the temptations of modernity and the vicissitudes of prosperity... De Valera's Irish Republic was organized around the idea that money doesn't matter that much.

Alex Massie

Smoking To Recovery

Good and bad news from China: A Chinese county has rescinded a rule urging its government workers to smoke more in order to boost tax income. The authorities in Gong'an county had told civil servants and teachers to smoke 230,000 packs of the locally-made Hubei brand each year. Those who did not smoke enough or used brands from other provinces or overseas faced being fined or even fired. The Good news is that the Chinese recognise the contribution smokers make to the public finances; the Bad news is that they seem to be encouraging a rather stern form of protectionism. Still, you can't have everything - though it's a sad day when you can argue that the Chinese have a more sensible attitude towards sweet Lady Nicotine than we do...