I was in the pub when we got the news about Purnell, and had already had a cider or two. Proceeded to get roaringly drunk with some gorgeous redheaded goths and indulge in pleasant fantasies involving Purnell never ever coming back.This morning I've got a headache and the distinct impression of having been beaten up with a giant smelly flannel and I'm just not sure that this means very much. Apart from wee Jamie getting a shoo-into the pathetic disintegration of this government. Thanks Jamie. Of course, yours is already being talked about as 'the biggest knifing yet'. Could that be because the former Home Secretary has a pair of tits, I wonder?
Oww, god. My head. No, seriously, this is why I don't drink anymore. I lose both my sense of perspective and my dinner. I'm going to work behind a huge pair of sunglasses. If anyone has any cheerier perspectives on this whole debacle, please do share them.
He won't be back if we stop him.
ReplyDeleteStamp him into the ground.
Why the 'depression' tag?
ReplyDeleteBecause I'm deeply depressed by the anti-political state of politics this week, and can't find it in myself to be hopeful right now. The hope will be back. Right now it's missing.
ReplyDeleteAlso, because I'm quite depressed in general, for no particular reason apart from being a mental case, and this may well be skewing my perspective. I mean, for all I know a glorious revolution could be happening in whitehall right now and I'm just too gloomy to come to the party, eh?
Penny - everyone knew Blears and Smith were in trouble over expenses and allowances and/or in trouble with Brown, so their departures were only unexpected in the timing (as in 'I resign!'/'You're sacked!'). No-one saw Purnell's exit coming, nor the fact that he - unlike Blears or Smith - actually stated Brown should go.
ReplyDeleteHurrah! Fantastic :D Him & Hutton and Jacqui & Blears. The Labour government already looks a good deal more appealing, I have to say. They're setting themselves up for leader, of course, but Johnson & the Milipedes are having none of it. Most likely these back-stabbers have doomed themselves.
ReplyDeletecan we get a response on Obama's speech in Cairo, on the part about women rights :P . . . Plz plz Penny ...
ReplyDeleteWhat do you make of Yvette Cooper then?
ReplyDeletePenny, yay, did they kiss you?
ReplyDeleteMindUnpacker, he was walking a very fine line in his speech already, I think it is unlikely to amount to more than giving women equal chances in US-backed education schemes.
When I went to Egypt last summer in two weeks of being there I do not recall seeing a single native female, let alone getting to talk to one. Males did not seem keen to talk on the subject of "where are all the females?" but I gathered that they were not allowed to wander in the streets... or hold jobs as males do. At the same time I got offers to buy any non-married female relatives and friends off me. As commodities.
I don't know how much of that stems from a purely cultural base and has no founding in the Egyptian legal system, but the environment did seem very repressive towards women.
In a place like that it will take a long time for women to become accepted as not property, let alone equals, and radical proposals will just be met with a flat rejection and hostility.
Best commentary I've heard on the whole sorry affair was Tony Benn on Radio 5 this morning... which in some ways doesn't show mich progress within the Labour Movement when the old guard still know what's up.
ReplyDeleteVery dissapointing to see we lost councils such as Lancashire and Derbyshire, and even more so that the former now has a BNP councillor too.
He's looking suspisciously Gene Hunt in this picture.
ReplyDeleteIs that "Hunt" spelled with a "C"?
ReplyDeleteDo you mind Joker, there are ladies present.
ReplyDelete@ Anon001 .. you remind me of writers of the Great Empire, who used to go where the colonial army is planning to go, or had alrady gone, and observe whatever they want, and make the stories the like and imagine as they wish to legetimise the "enlightening mission" of their Empire ..
ReplyDeleteI am not saying that you are an trying to do the same, but you are certainly a product of this kind of thought ..
I have been to Egypt, and you couldn't have said what you said unless you have never been to Egypt (and I will try to think that this is the case), or if you have been only to few nighbourhoods where the case as described .. However, in both cases you can't just say "I haven't seen any native famle in Egypt", cause it is a rediculous overgeneralisation of minority communities in Egypt that can be realised by anyone who has been to Cairo for more than 10 minutes ... go to Egypt again and have another local, and talk to real people rather than pimps in the street ...
MindUnpacker, heh, so I do. "Their cities are very old, indicating a decaying culture. They are decadent people, interested only in the pursuit of dubious pleasures (dubious part is very important, it means nothing, but scares people). They have no well defined sense of morality."
ReplyDeleteI went to Sharm el-Sheikh, mainly to see the reefs, not to see the culture, and certainly not to seek out local females, so I can only tell about what I saw, and most of that was fish.
However, upon my arrival I noticed that all the employees at the airport were male. All the employees at the hotel I was staying in were male. All the employees in other hotels that people I was diving with were male. Apart from one diving instructor from St. Petersberg the diving boat crew were all male. In town all restaraunt employees were male. All the shop keepers, street cleaners were male. There was a lot of millitary presence around, with armed guards standing along the beach, on the rooftops. They were all male. The bus drivers, policemen... you get the idea. It could well be that Sharm el-Sheikh is not typical of Egypt, it now being a mostly artificial tourist town, but I really did not see any females that were not clearly tourists.
I have not been to Cairo since I was 7 or so, and so do not remember it very well. I do remember it being insanely hot, climbing the pyramids, and wondering how the hell the bus I was in was managing to fit in those tiny streets.
SHUT IT!
ReplyDeleteWindow-dressing says she...?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/gallery/2009/may/10/fashion-caroline-flint?picture=346969477
I hadn't realised Gordon had ordered her into this...
Don't be depressed Penny, BNP managed 3 county council wins.
ReplyDeleteDespite all the nasty things the media said about them.
So it pays to persist see. Just keep on with your message-like BNP
3 seats = too many.
ReplyDeleteTwo former gay porn stars (sorry, "art movie" stars) and a convicted mugger?
ReplyDeleteanon001 ... you said it yourself "artifically touristy city" .. that's Sharm al-Sheikh .. it's not even a site for Egyptian tourism ... I would be even surpried if you saw any Egyptian at all .. in all cases, I don't understand the tendancy to say: "I went to Egypt, and I saw that women are opressed there" ... these utterances have dark history, and you might not want to use them ...
ReplyDelete'These utterances have dark history, and you might not want to use them..."
ReplyDeleteWeasel words. Say something concrete or say nothing.
what i want to say, and i was trying to say it moderatley is that Colonial power has used this rhetoric to say that Egypt, Africa or whatever are backward, and we should civilise them, and started fucking up populations all over the world in the name of civilising them ... it was very similar to anon001 "I have been there, and I saw them oppressing women. they are really horrible" ... that is the dark history
ReplyDeleteMindUnpacker, you are correct. That rhetoric has been used as a justification to "civilise" other cultures, and it was not my intention to make such an implication. Cultural changes happen over many years, can not happen overnight, and can certainly not be forced upon people. I admit my experience in Egypt may not be typical of the country, having only walked around a very small outlying part of it, and so extrapolating my small sample size to the entire country is unjustified.
ReplyDelete