Background noise level - by Richard... Monday, November 21, 2011

Background noise level - by Richard... Monday, November 21, 2011

One sometimes wonders whether, if certain politicians pronounced that the moon was made of blue cheese, some newspapers would print it – the news being not the fact but that the statement has been made.

Into that category falls the latest extruded verbal material from Michael Heseltine, who told the BBCon Sunday that the UK will eventually join the euro.

Actually, it is so typical of the BBC to give its favourite child house room to make such an absurd statement. It is all very well the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schauble, making a similar suggestion earlier this week – predicting that the pound is doomed.

But Heseltine will know that, in order to join, there will have to be a referendum and the chances of it delivering a "yes" vote are nil.

This sort of nonsense, though, serves our propagandists and masters well. It acts as a lighting conductor to channel comment and discussion, diverting it away harmlessly, where more focused and intelligent comment might do political damage.

The ease with which people let themselves be distracted is unfortunate, but then the chattering of the crowd rarely has any more significance than the than the distant hum of motorway traffic on a busy working day. It is just part of the background noise level.

The message thus conveyed is limited and unsubtle and only has any real significance if it stops. That is the case on the rare occasion when one wakes to traffic silence – it tells one there is something amiss.

The only trouble is that this is about all the good the BBC is for. It has neither the wit nor the intelligence to deliver a subtle message, and its people are too ignorant and wrapped in their own bubbles to offer anything of value, which means we end up with noise pollution of the Heseltine variety.

But then, as long as we can hear the distant background drone, it does offer some slight reassurance that the system is still running. But what a dreadful cost for such a slight service.

Taking the piss out of wind - by Richard... Sunday, November 20, 2011

Should we care that Prince Phillip has declared wind farms "useless", as retailed by the Sunday Telegraph and now the Daily Mail? Does it make any difference?

Certainly, at one level, it doesn't matter at all – it is just huge fun, especially with Dad stuffing Charlie Boy and his enthusiasm for all things green.

But in other ways it does matter a great deal. It is one of those "writing on the wall" moments, where the Duke articulates that which is believed by the majority of people.

And while that will have no immediate effect, it makes it that much more difficult for politicians to pursue their green obsessions, and for campaigners to claim popular support. The Duke will have given aid and comfort to those who oppose them, branding as he has done people who back them as believing in a "fairy tale".

Such things matter is this class-ridden society, where the Royal Family is still a powerful part of the establishment. Taking the piss out of windmills now has royal approval. Things will never be the same again.

But in general, the Duke is part of a broader trend. Booker writes today in his column of the conclusion of a new IPCC report, which states that, over the next few decades, "climate change signals are expected to be relatively small compared to natural climate variability".

In plain English, Booker himself concludes, that means the great scare story is over. And, indeed it is it. Pronouncements by the IPCC and fellow warmists which even recently gained maximum headlines now barely ripple the surface of the media, editors long since having decided that public interest has evaporated.

And it is that, more than anything, which does for the scare. For a scare to exert is effect, people must actually be scared. When the subject is greeted with indifference, the discussion confined to a limited number of specialist blogs and journals, it has nowhere to go.

But there is another factor. Only a few years ago, the European Union was still in an expansionist phase, and saw in global warming a topic which could help it promote its political ends. But with the EU itself now going through an existential crisis, it has neither time nor energy to devote to the scare, and has lost such an amount of authority that its support is not the asset it once was.

With the campaign thus weakened, it then really does matter that the Royal piss-taker should now strike. The wind movement is weaker now than it was yesterday and, in months to come, will be even weaker. There are still fortunes being wasted, but there is now possibly an end in sight.

Brains in the posterior position - by Richard...

When you think about it, it is a pretty bizarre idea, interviewing one of your employees and putting the result on the front page of the product which you insist – with decreasing conviction – on calling a newspaper. But then, when it comes to Boris Johnson, pretty bizarre rules seem to apply all right, including a belief in some quarters that this man is a serious politician with anything intelligent to offer.

By no measure, though, should anyone take seriously any article or statement – as with this one - which complains that a plan will "wreck democracy in EU". The concepts of democracy and the EU are so far apart that any idea of juxtaposing them is totally off the wall. Anyone who seeks to link them simply is not worth listening to.

Frankly, that applies in general to anything produced by Boris, including his latest nostrums for solving the eurozone crisis, which fail to recognise that the "colleagues" are reacting to the crisis politically, and are therefore not in the least minded to listen to a man who has a long history of shallow thought, and an appeal to the masses which is, frankly puzzling.

Here we have a nation that took Churchill to its heart (albeit getting rid of him in 1945), but which them embraces a man who, even on a good day, would struggle to qualify as a lightweight fool.

Part of the reason, of course, is to do with the essential triviality of the media, and its insistence on reducing serious issues to soap opera status. For the ineffably lightweight political journalists of today, the ineffably lightweight Boris Johnson is the perfect foil.

But there is also underlying this the lamentable failure within the political classes, but also the mindless Failygraph reader to think past the extruded verbal material (EVM) and think about what the man is actually saying.

For how many years have we all be complaining about the lack of democracy in the EU, to the extent that it is an anti-democratic organisation, on then to have this buffoon make his ludicrous comment about democracy? And the response, rather than universal scorn, has a goodly proportion of the readership braying "right on Boris!" or words to that effect.

One can only observe that, when in a political culture that embraces this refined stupidity, those that indulge in it get everything they deserve. The big, and almost insoluble problem, however, is that the rest of us do not deserve to have our politics dictated by those with their brains in the posterior position.

A Booker trio - by Richard...

Three stories from Booker this week, two in one tranche and another instalment of "stolen children" which gets its own separate slot.

For obvious reasons, I have had less to do with the making of these stories than normal, although Booker usually runs his own show on the "stolen children". Even though I fully support him in his endeavours, it isn't really my bag.

This week's tale, though, is a good one, harping back last month when the plods banged up a 14-year-old girl for "assaulting" four of their number, after they tried to take her into "protective custody" for the crime of being found at home with her mum.

Arresting the victim of police violence is a classic plod ploy, but in this case four plods against a 14-year-old looked a bit excessive even to the CPS and we learn that they have now abandoned the case.

The girl's lawyers are now considering bringing a case against the police and, as so often before, Booker raises the question as to why the plods seem so willing to intervene mob-handed to seize children on behalf of social workers, when too often there seems not the slightest call for such aggressive behaviour.

There must be a sensible answer to that, but it is one which has so far eluded us.

A question Booker does not ask, in respect of his global warming story, is why anyone still listens to or watches the BBC on this issue – or another other, for that matter. Instead, he goes into rather more detail than I would have cared to on quite how biased the Corporation is when dealing with the subject.

This, Booker goes into even more detail in a forthcoming pamphlet which, although in ursine excretory behaviour territory, does provide useful background on the Beeb status.

This then gives way to a classic Booker "red tape folly" story, with the added poignancy of being an EU tale, just at a time when The Boy is implausibly describing himself as a Euro "sceptic", making reference in his Guildhall to "pointless interference, rules and regulations" from Brussels.

Personally, I think Cameron should be prosecuted under the Trades Description Act, for passing himself off as a eurosceptic, although I guess we could just change the vocabulary. We could call ourselves "outers" and be done with it. That leaves Cameron looking fatuous, as he does here, in other sad tale of pointless interference that makes a lie of any pretence he might have to dealing with the burden of EU regulation.

Three vintage tales then … no answers, unfortunately, but I think we know those already.