The West Wing

Perhaps the most intelligent and best written television programme ever written.

What gets me, more than the writing, the depth of the characters and the stunning acting, especially Martin Sheen, is the feeling it leaves you with. What would the world be like if there was a liberal Democrat as President, a hugely intelligent person who made decisions based on sound reasoning, with knowledge of history, religion, philosophy, and a sense of wanting to do the right thing, all this supported by staff that have the same ideals?

Russell Brand

I am not entirely sure how this guy has gotten so far so quickly in the last couple of years, given how he just isn’t funny. However, he has come up with one absolute gem.

Quoted from Wikipedia: “On February 23, 2006, [Russell Brand] hosted the 2006 NME Awards show. Upon reaching the stage to receive his award, Bob Geldof began his speech with ‘Russell Brand… what a c*nt.’ which later prompted Brand to strike back with: “Really it’s no surprise he’s such an expert on famine; after all, he’s been dining out on “I Don’t Like Mondays” for 30 years”.

Does Nader want the Republicans to win?

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/24/nader.politics/index.html

Ralph Nader must know he doesn’t have a hope in hell of winning. Why draw potential Democrat voters away, much like in 2000? I suppose it says a lot about the people who do vote for him instead of the Democrats.

McCain must be laughing at his luck.

Democrat choice for 2008

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7230301.stm

While it’s a huge step forward for the Democrats to put forward a woman and a black candidate to run for President, is it wise to have both at the same time? One would hope that the Democrats have a great chance of getting the White House after eight years of Bush, and appealing to huge numbers of voters who are looking for real change (whatever that means), who may not have otherwise registered to vote or be swing voters.

It remains to be seen how galvanised is the conservative element though, who “don’t want a woman or a nigger running our country”, as one right wing website has on it’s front page? The only thing worse than another Republican President would be a Republican who beats either Obama or Clinton on the basis that Americans don’t want either an afro-caribbean or a woman as President.

Do people get more right wing the older they get?

Not so long ago, when presented with the political spectrum on a questionnaire, I put myself down as “very liberal”. I believe in the welfare state, and high taxes for high earners to pay for it. I am against capital punishment, nuclear weapons and military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am for foreign aid and military intervention for peacekeeping or “forcing peace”. I am hugely opposed to ID cards, stop and search, biometric data being kept on passports, CCTV. I am for gay rights, religious rights, freedom of speech and expression, essentially every component of the Human Rights Act. I am for free migration and immigration.

Well, sort of. Everything typed above came out pretty much automatically, without really thinking what my position is. It sounds like where I thought I have always been, but on second thought, it isn’t quite that easy. Is there a shift to the right as a person gets older?

I believe in the welfare state, but believe that high earners already pay huge amounts of tax, and we should be thankful for that, rather than calling them names for just being successful. I am for capital punishment, not for it’s role as a deterrent, which is speculative at best, but as a way of not wasting resources on those who don’t deserve to live.  I am for nuclear weapons if it acts as a deterrent to other states, despite the double standard. I am against military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan unless it directly makes the West a safer place to be, which it hasn’t so far. I am for military involvement in Iran if only to string up their president with those same KKK leaders he invited over last year in his “Holocaust Conference”. I believe that global warming is accelerated by man and that we have the ability to stop it, but still drive a 3.2L straight 6 without a second thought.

That is pretty scary, as some of those views put me at the right of the mainstream spectrum. Can those views still be held whilst still wanting small government that stays well out my life? Or, are notions of “left” and “right” so prescriptive that they really cannot be applied to any normal person?

Or, I am essentially a hypocrite.

What drink would you like with your burger, sir?

What do you say to someone when he tells you that, in a nutshell, you have no value to the industry you have worked in for the last six years, and have previously trained for in for another six?

That was the upshot of a meeting I had the other day. “You have to be realistic”,  “You have done really well but you are not going to be shortlisted for the next step up”.

Your tax money at work here. Over £250,000 spent on training, followed by six hard years of service, and there are no jobs for me or about 10,000 others.

Whoever you vote for at the next election, you can be pretty sure that it won’t make a blind bit of difference. Short term goals, no forward thinking.

Democracy in Pakistan?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7253280.stm

In a third world country were the concept of democracy isn’t really something that has affected many of the population, despite it’s intermittent presence since the country came into being, the elections today pose a number of interesting questions.

What is better for the nation: a democratically elected president that is likely to be as corrupt as he has allegedly been in the past, or a former military dictator who has actually effected some positive change to the country, but has jailed opposition party members and high court judges who oppose him, along with shutting down the free press and ISPs?

I guess we’ll find out.