The BBC reports that three sisters aged twelve, fourteen and sixteen have each given birth within ten months of each other. The sisters are called Natasha, Jade and Jemma. Their children are called T-Jay, Amani and Lita. They rely on state benefits to look after the children, but sold their story to the Sun and featured in a BBC3 documentary. I don't know the meaning of life, but I'm not convinced that this is it.
It's fairly well known that later in life, Elvis developed a bit of an obsession with espionage and criminal investigation. This included some dalliances with the CIA and was pandered to by Richard Nixon.
In the early seventies the King even visited FBI headquarters, where he reported on the corrupting influences of the Beatles and Jane Fonda among others (did he forget his pre-GI days?) as this memo from the time records.
The Guardian among others reports that Tottenham will have the chance to compete in the UEFA cup next year because they finished so high in the fair-play league this season, despite only finishing mid-table in the real competition. Not that they won the fair-play title either: they still finished second to Arsenal who, despite their reputation, are the fairest team of all for the second year in a row (indeed, I think, for the third time in the last five seasons).
So victory for Arsenal in tomorrow's F.A. Cup final would unquestionably be a proverbial victory for football.
Notwithstanding Arsenal's sportsmanship, you must remember that financially they remain an underdog. For while Everton can rightly claim to have had a fantastic season, their gate receipts (which do count for a significant proportion of income) are on a par with Arsenal's. Newcastle -- who finished thirteenth or fourteenth -- have a higher salary bill. Middlesborough have a similar amount of transfer spending. Spurs' coffers are swelled by public listing (then emaciated through mismanagement).
Compare this with Manchester United whose sportsmanship I leave anyone who's watched them play to judge. And let us not pity them financially. Not only have they benefited from public listing and privileged deals with television companies who owned stakes in their plc stocks, but the scare stories of their independent support groups in the face of Glazer's take-over tend to omit some rather salient points:
Uzbekitstan is a place I've wanted to visit for some time; I'm intrigued by its sparsely populated intersteces on the Silk Road, the stitching together of East and West. Recent reports have suggested that Uzbekitstan may be off the tourist trail for some time however.
The country's despotic President Islam Karimov, elected via a system where only those parties who support him can stand, has benefited from the support of the West by claiming to suppress Islamic fundamentalism and in no small measure because oil supplies from Siberia need to cross his territory. He succeeds in masking recent assaults on his own people by controlling all media within Uzbekitstan.
Ring any bells?
This is not the only parallel to which I'd like to allude. Newsweek recently published a story claiming interrogation at Guantanemo Bay routinely involved desecration of the Koran and that they could substantiate that fact. Following riots in Afghanistan where about fifteen people were killed and under pressure from the U.S. government, Newsweek apologised but did not retract the story. Donald Rumsfeld -- of all people -- savaged the magazine saying that they should get their facts right before taking actions that would result in the deaths of innocents. I kid you not. WMD anyone?
My point is that this is exactly what would have happended in the latter days of a Soviet regime. A story the government did not approve of may have leaked, but you could be sure that pressure would be brought to bear on the relevant source and it would have been swept under the carpet. The U.S. claims to fight for freedom across the world, but is nonetheless willing to control its own media with the same rigour as the Uzbeks.
On Thursday night's edition of the BBC's Question Time, Harriet Harman (whose role in the Cabinet now eludes me and I'm too lazy to look up) advocated banning youths in certain areas from wearing hoodies on the basis that this intimidated people. This should be coupled with Community Support Officers regularly questioning groups wearing the offending articles.
Leaving aside Harman's complete inability to think about why people feel intimidated or the root causes of youth crime, her comments illustrate just how morally corrupt this government has become. For New Labour it is acceptable for police to stop people on the basis of how they look and the introduction of ID cards will justify reasons to do so; although "feral youths" as Boris Johnson calls them won't carry ID cards, just ASBOs.
This moral corruption of civil liberties is in stark evidence in other ministers too. Leaving aside David Blunkett -- who is even more barking than his dog and no less obedient to the Blairite cause -- let us take the secretary of state for Wales and now Northern Ireland. Peter Hain was in his youth an ardent opponent of apartheid, leading protests against the South African rugby tour to the UK in the 60s. Now he votes in favour of curtailing rights of protest and the basic civil liberties that allowed him to bring the plight of the South African majority to the attention of the British public and launch his own political career.
We have seen with New Labour just how much power corrupts. Having pledged free education, a reformed electoral system, a commitment to public transport and the environment, to protect the National Health Service, here is a government that has reneged on its commitment to us in favour of support from lobbyists in the food (Nestlé, McDonald's), petrochemical (BP, Unilever), financial (Phoenix), educational (Atkins), transport (Jarvis) sectors, including a core group of other sponsors looking for favours. We have been disenfranchised by their slide into self-interest.
But if we know that power corrupts, is the only solution not letting anyone have it? Is the only way to achieve independence through anarchy?
Researchers at the University of Birmingham have shown how ecstasy and other amphetamines can prevent the spread of cancer, according to BBC news. If I'd known this before, speed may have become a drug of choice. Maybe my oncologist will prescribe some kind of dopamene / ecstasy hybrid, which would make the daily grind of work a touch more interesting.
What's it like waiting in an oncology clinic? Many of you will find out. Today was an interesting one. 3½ hours of waiting because prints from some of my scans went awol. And I knew it wouldn't be good, so there was a lingering sense of doom.
This wasn't helped by having to sit next to some fuckwit with "worry" beads -- those Greek wooden beads on a string that men play with between their fingers -- who was rattling said device very slowly and in perpetuity... His selfish success in attempting to relieve his own concerns succeeded in pissing off everyone else, but somehow made the impending appointment less intolerable. It was a relief to get away from him into the conversation about the hole my oncologist wants surgeons to drill into my jugular.
It wasn't that bad I suppose. I knew I'd have spread at some point and it appears on the face of it that this is possibly the least bad metastatic disease might be. So I now have to wait up to six weeks while they debate whether it's feasible to conduct a biopsy on some lymph nodes that are half a centimetre across and then they'll probably stick me on some inteferon therapy.
So more waiting then, but at least that twat with the beads isn't there.
Having found the scout hut down the back alley indicated on a map with West where North should have been, I cast my vote this morning. Even though this is one of the most racist seats in London, the BNP candidate chooses not to live here, the only candidate to stand from outside the constituency. Or perhaps he was forced out by sheer weight of immigrant chavs.
Of course I know that few people care about my vote. Only my sitting MP has bothered to canvas or leaflet me; he sent me a personalised letter. So why don't politicians care about my vote even though I should be a target, having voted differently to last time? Because our electoral system is a pile of pants and in no way conducive to constructive policy making. Or to put it in Greek, myopic and parochial politics lead to a hegemony based on apathy more than democracy based on ideology.
Let me explain it this way: in each election, the major parties can expect a minimum share of the vote (unless their campaign is particularly badly run). The Tories and new Labour can expect 30% of the vote each and the Lib Dems about 15%, with another 5% spread around various other parties, notably in the non-English countries. That leaves 20% potential swing voters.
Labour has a majority of 160, which is approximately a quarter of all seats. So the only swing voters who really count are 20% of the voters in a quarter of all seats, or 5% of the electorate. Of this five per cent, only about a third are required to swing a marginal seat, so if you can capture these people, you can win the election.
But who are these people? If you ask Experian, the credit-checking company, they can profile them for you. People who live in small towns in Dorset, Hampshire and the west Midlands on fair incomes in their forties with a little debt; this is the information on us they sold to the main parties. If you fit into this bracket you're far more likely to have been visited by your candidate than anyone else. You're also more likely to have been selected for a focus group which the parties rely on to formulate their policies. This means that your concerns as a middle-aged middle Englander which will be resolutely focussed on short-term local issues, will count for a lot more than if you're in a different demographic.
This blinkered approach which focusses on politicians' ambitions to get into government rather than promoting policies which would be less easy to sell but potentially more beneficial discourages turn-out and leads to the feeling of resignation that people express where it doesn't matter who gets in, it'll all be the same; or, it doesn't matter who I vote for, the same party will win.
The fact that we have a right to vote is something that we should not take for granted but should continue to exercise that right. Similarly we should not blind ourselves to the fact that our vote is somewhat diminished in such a tarnished political structure.
I thought I'd draw your attention, which may otherwise have slipped off elsewhere, to a new mummy that has been unearthed in Saqqara, where you'll find the earliest "step" pyramids in Egypt. Egyptologists are claiming that this is the most beautiful mummy ever unearthed:
More information about the mummy and its unearthing can be found from Reuters.
Having previously complained about my PDA it's taken me just over five months to find the device I'm really after. Unfortunately the T-mobile MDA iv doesn't look like it'll come out for another three months at least. But it has everything! Word, Excel, Wi-Fi browsing, quad-band phone, lots of way to enter text... it's even 3G! What a pity it's a Microsoft OS. But we all need to make compromises.
