Vox Polis

I think the first thing to say would clearly be that there are three unpleasant, ignorant, culturally myopic young English girls in the Big Brother House who have made comments that are unacceptable and quite deplorable in any normal social setting. No one is trying to justify or excuse them. But equally is it right that they are so easily and quickly labelled as racist? Given the potential explosiveness of this charge, it is important to analyse this claim. Channel 4 has suggested instead that the dispute and comments made reflect cultural differences and ignorance. I think one needs to distinguish between the cause of the dispute and its ensuing salvoes. This allows the question of racism to be addressed. A second question is whether any of this ugly episode should have been broadcast at all.
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I’ve just installed a small upgrade of WordPress from 2.0.6 to 2.0.7. Please let me know if you spot anything strange going on.

Looks like the “post-partisan” Arnie has been watching himself in Hercules again reading up on his ancient Greek history. In his annual state of the state address, Arnie said that California is the “modern equivalent of the ancient city-states of Athens and Sparta. California has the ideas of Athens and the power of Sparta”.

California has Athens’ ideas of democracy that, we can see, have led to the election of a populist ex-action actor who often struggles to articulate a coherent sentence and probably just like the city state of Athens has seen the sentencing and execution of innocent men (remember Socrates?).

It also has Sparta’s strength, which came through its corrupt military and complete subjugation of it’s citizens in a totalitarian state. Well California may not be quite there on this one, but Arnie clearly has his sights on it. He even referred to California as a “nation-state”. You’ll clearly need an army to achieve that one Arnie. I am so glad he can’t run for President.

Not feeling fearful enough of your fellow man? Worried you’re losing touch with the world from inside your terrorism-proof bunker? Well the Ministry of Love MI5 have a helpful new service just for you. All you have to do is sign up on the MI5 website and a helpful spook will email you whenever the UKs threat level changes.

All very comforting. Having said that, our protectors don’t have a great track record when it comes to predicting terrorism. The threat level was lowered prior to the July 7th attacks and John Reid’s warning that a terror attack was “highly likely” over the Christmas period came to nothing more than a fireworks display. So, if the warnings are so frequently wrong why bother in the first place? Because as a hawkish home secretary or a budget minded spy you can’t lose. Say the threat level’s low and there is an attack, well that proves how sneaky the terrorists have become and justifies a budget increase for security. Get the threat level too high and have no attacks - you’ve proven what a good job you’ve done and (guess what) justified a budget increase for security to keep us even more safe. The thing to take away from this, in my opinion, is that (not unlike terrorists) threat levels are best ignored. Stay watchful citizens.

Now that they’re finished doing their annual shift for Santa the Vox Polis elves have got time to do some maintenance work. The usual upgrade related warnings (moderate chance of rains of toads, threat level orange) apply.

The Civil Service is planning strike action over poor pay, redundancies and plans to ship them all out of London to the regions. Most voters have little sympathy for civil servants, who are perceived as benefiting from rock solid job security and generous pensions; certainly these strikes will do little to change that attitude. But the Government is clearly scared. Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, took the unprecedented move of sending a letter to all staff urging them not to strike. An interesting move considering that it is unlikely to change people’s minds and it actually helps feed the story. In fact I’d be more likely to strike if my boss told me not to.

After our successful predictions last year, here are 7 things to look out for in 2007.

1. Saddam Hussein’s zombie will make an appearance in the French General Election and beat Sarkozy.
2. Lembit Opik will use the Lib Dem repeal appeal to make bigamy legal and subsequently marry both Cheeky Girls.
3. Cliff Richard will summon God to extend copyright term to a 1000 years.
4. Tony will reveal the identity of his “big, clunking fist” to be his old mate Silvio Berlusconi.
5. NASA will discover life on Mars in a manned expedition, the debate over whether the life was intelligently designed or evolved will split America in two.
6. There will be free and fair elections in Iraq.
7. The police’s ancient law investigation unit will stop looking into the loans for honours scandal
   and instead focus on the widespread consumption of mince pies on Christmas Day.

We’re off to spend last year’s winnings from William Hill on getting ourselves an honour from Tony. Have a happy new year.