Dadblog

Fantastic. Someone’s just pointed out that I’m the number one result for a Google search on i hate the daily mail. I’d like to thank the Academy and anyone who knows me.

I must admit to mixed feelings about today’s final eviction from squatters from St Agnes Place. Cities need diversity to thrive, and St Agnes Place was definitely diverse. We need more of these places to ensure that London continues to be the most vibrant, exciting capital in the world.

But that is very much a theoretical, middle-class lefty point of view. The practical point of view, sadly, is this: St Agnes Place was a dump. I cycle through it every morning and evening. It’s a horrible place to be and, on summer evenings when young men loll on their car bonnets and play enormously loud, bass-heavy music, it’s a bloody intimidating place too. I’m sure the place had lots of lovely people living in it, but my experience was that the people who congregated there, residents or no, were boorish, anti-social bullies.

I’ll mourn the loss of the idea of St Agnes Place. But I won’t mourn the loss of the reality.

Following my earlier post about the relative demonisation of Israel and China comes the news that Paul McCartney is boycotting China, including refusing to play at or promote the 2008 Olympics. Has Sir Paul finally seen the amoral awfulness of the Chinese government, which assassinates, crushes and slowly strangles the freedom of its citizens? Well, kind of. Actually, he’s upset at their treatment of cats and dogs. His views on their treatment of human beings aren’t recorded.

But at least he’s saying something. And anyone who can get the Chinese authorities to make a statement like this is at least contributing to the necessary portrayal of the Chinese government as a bunch of arrogant fascists:

A spokesman for the Chinese Ambassador in London told the BBC: “Though cats and dogs are not endangered, we do not encourage the ill treatment of cats and dogs.

“But, anyway, the fur trade mostly feeds markets in the US and Europe. This fur is not consumed in China. So the Americans and Europeans should accept the blame.

“We have no plans to clamp down on this internally that I am aware of - it is for the US and Europeans to take their own action. They should boycott fur as a fashion material.

“I do not agree with Mr McCartney and his wife’s point of view - a boycott of Chinese goods and the Olympics is simply not justifiable.”

So, all your fault then. I hope you’re satisfied with yourselves.

As a Man Utd fan (and yes, I do live in the South, thanks very much), I yield to no man in my mourning of the genius that was George Best. Although I was just a bit too young to appreciate him (the year I started being aware of supporting Man Utd like all the other menfolk in my family was the year Utd were relegated and George was very much on his way down), I subscribe to the myth of El Beatle with no compunction whatsoever.

But please. Enough of the montages already! So far this weekend I reckon I’ve seen at least six, soundtracked with a selection of poignant as hell Sixties songs (worst offender: Simon and Garfunkel’s Bookends). I’ve seen the same shots - George coming down the stairs in tie-dye t-shirt, George pouring champagne down a cascade of glasses, George opening a bar - time and time again. It must have been like Christmas for VTR researchers this weekend.

Remember George, yes. But don’t turn his life into the closing credits of a Cameron Crowe film, please.

And that’s two Cameron Crowe references in successive posts. Enough already.

Quote of the weekend: Wayne Rooney, on being asked if he thought he might be as great as Best: “Well, from what I’ve seen, he was a decent player.” Ah, the voice of youth. And frankly the healthiest thing I heard on the subject all weekend.

Ever wondered how the Shining would play out as a tale of family redemption? Find out here. Genius. Now all we need is for Cameron Crowe to adapt The Stand as a coming-of-age drama, and we’re there.

normblog posts about an Economist Intelligence Unit report on the comparative status of democracy in the Middle East, and links to the BBC report on it. As normblog points out, the BBC’s report focusses on how three of the “most volatile” territories in the region - Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories and Iraq - have made it into the top five. Nowhere is it pointed out that Israel tops the list by a country mile.

Reading this I was reminded of a conversation over a dinner party some months ago, when someone said they never bought fruit from Israel. I said this was interesting, and wondered about their attitude to goods from China. Apparently they had no problem with China. At which point the red wine kicked in and I started to ask, somewhat querulously, why it was that Israel, a country which offers free speech, the rule of law, and a democracy, where people who support the Palestinian cause are able to write, speak and promote their views, is somehow worse than China, which executes more people every year than the rest of the world combined and which has reset the moral compass of the planet so much that we can trade with them with complete equanimity.

There was no answer. Not because of the perspicacity of my views. Purely because it was embarrassing how I had singularly failed to get it. I mean, it’s Israel, innit? And they’re horrible, aren’t they? Shan’t be buying their oranges this Christmas.

The tagline for this blog is “look and learn, son”, and as I normally put stuff up here which has the educational value of a salami, I thought I’d like to something edifying: a graduation speech given by a chap called Paul Graham. It’s inspiring, sensible stuff, filtered by a geek sensibility: vision tempered by experience. Here’s a sample:

In the graduation-speech approach, you decide where you want to be
in twenty years, and then ask: what should I do now to get there?

I propose instead that you don’t commit to anything in the future, but just look at the options available now, and choose those that will give you the most promising range of options afterward.

It’s not so important what you work on, so long as you’re not wasting
your time. Work on things that interest you and increase your
options, and worry later about which you’ll take.

Suppose you’re a college freshman deciding whether to major in math
or economics. Well, math will give you more options: you can go into
almost any field from math. If you major in math it will be easy
to get into grad school in economics, but if you major in economics
it will be hard to get into grad school in math.

Flying a glider is a good metaphor here. Because a glider doesn’t
have an engine, you can’t fly into the wind without losing a lot
of altitude. If you let yourself get far downwind of good places
to land, your options narrow uncomfortably. As a rule you want to
stay upwind. So I propose that as a replacement for “don’t give
up on your dreams.” Stay upwind.

Today was a hard day for the Brixton police force. After 12 soft months of closing crack houses and dodging gangland bullets, they faced a far more determined, resourceful foe. The enemy gathered in Volvos and Saabs in the vicinity of the Ritzy cinema. It donned its Boden parkas and Fat Face sweatshirts, placed its Timberland-clad feet on the means streets of Effra Road, and with barely a glance to left or right, the enemy moved towards its target.

The white middle classes were in town.

For this was Sunday. The first Sunday after the release of the new Harry Potter movie. The morning had been spent taking brunch and arranging meeting points. Some met in boho cafes, others shared fruit salad and pancakes in the comforting surroundings of Poggenpohl kitchens. They marshalled their Jacks and Joshuas, their Maisies and Mias, and made their annual Sunday afternoon journey to worship at the Altar of Potter.

The Ritzy, long their middle-class oasis on a Friday or Saturday night, creaked under the strain of accommodating them in the daylight hours. They snarled politely at the box office staff, they pushed against each other in the rush to secure the best seats, muttering to each other that seats should have been numbered. They argued with their spouses about which seats to secure, in an unconscious echo of the race with the Germans to secure the best Cote d’Azur sunbed which was played out the previous summer. And then, once ensconced, they tutted at the bobbing heads in front of them and shared their chocolates and popcorn with their precocious offspring.

And outside, the poor people of Brixton hid inside their flats and their houses, calming their anxious children with the soothing mantra: “It’s OK, darling. They’ll be gone soon. Back to Dulwich and Herne Hill. They’ll be gone soon. It won’t last much longer.”

In this week’s Wired, there’s a piece about video headstones:

Installed at your grave site - or in your mausoleum or columbarium - the 7-inch solar-powered LCD lets mourners relive your personal highs and dotcom lows. They just flip open the weatherproof cover and touch a button to start your slide show or movie.

Which is odd, because a couple of weeks ago in the BBC comedy drama Love Soup, there was a scene in which the female protagonist was trying to mourn her mother in a graveyard, but was interrupted by - a video headstone. So where did the Love Soup writer get his idea from? And isn’t it interesting that the reaction to the video headstone in the British drama was one of horrified befuddlement at the sheer wrongness of the idea?

Good, successful countries need to be defined by something. Otherwise they’re just banging on about themselves. If you say “I love my country” and you’re, say, Peruvian, what are you saying? What does that mean? Does it carry the same weight as saying “I love America (because it’s democratic, because it gave a home to entire generations of dispossessed)” or “I love Sweden (because it stands for humane tolerance and a certain social view of the world)”.

Saying “I love Britain” means, I think, valuing a certain tradition of personal liberty in the face of national institutions, not least the law and the police. Britain, after all, gave habeas corpus to the world. So the fact that Blair lost the vote on 90-day detentions is to be celebrated in this way: that it doesn’t remove a fundamental reason for loving the country I was born into. The alternative would have been, as a colleague of mine put it today, “a law that I would genuinely have been ashamed of as a Briton.”

I say this as a fairly committed Blairite. And I would add that a lawyer (as Blair is) arguing that this law is necessary “because the police asked for it” shows a bizarre lack of respect for the notion of habeas corpus and, indeed, for the whole constitutional framework (such as it is) of modern Britain.