Continuity and change

... it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker--may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday.

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Richard Dawkins coined the phrase "the discontinuous mind" in the context of evolution, but it applies more generally than that. Species aren't neat and defined stages between which evolution carries creatures. It's more that whenever we look at an animal, we see them in the lightning flash. All life is in a process of change; we see a snapshot of a process. This is clear when ring species are considered:

The best-known case is herring gull versus lesser black-backed gull. In Britain these are clearly distinct species, quite different in colour. Anybody can tell them apart. But if you follow the population of herring gulls westward round the North Pole to North America, then via Alaska across Siberia and back to Europe again, you will notice a curious fact. The 'herring gulls' gradually become less and less like herring gulls and more and more like lesser black-backed gulls until it turns out that our European lesser black-backed gulls actually are the other end of a ring that started out as herring gulls. At every stage around the ring, the birds are sufficiently similar to their neighbours to interbreed with them. Until, that is, the ends of the continuum are reached, in Europe. At this point the herring gull and the lesser black-backed gull never interbreed, although they are linked by a continuous series of interbreeding colleagues all the way round the world. The only thing that is special about ring species like these gulls is that the intermediates are still alive.

This is more than an insight into evolution. It's a deep insight into the nature of the universe. One of the biggest problems science has had is the shifting of perspective from that of a single human lifespan, when species, continents, solar systems and the stars that seem fixed need instead to be seen in a longer timescale as a glimpse, as in the flash of a camera, of a process of change and movement.

This is surely one of the problems that the debate about climate change faces, but in this context it is overlaid with irony. NASA Administrator James Giffin made this point recently:

To assume that [global warming] is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change. First of all, I don't think it's within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown. And second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings.

James Hansen, also of NASA and perhaps the world's senior alarmist, tries to paint this differently:

“Civilization developed,” Hansen writes, “during a period of unusual climate stability, the Holocene, now lmost 12,000 years in duration. That period is about to end.”

In this argument, Hansen tries to suggest that although the climate is a changing process, it hasn't been changing significantly for some twelve millennia, but now it is. Is it?



This really isn't clear from the evidence. Modelling - some modelling - suggests it is the case, and this deserves attention. But in all this there must at least be the suspicion that Hansen, in his attempt to argue that we've seen a 12,000 year stabilisation of the climate, is suffering from a version of the discontinuous mind. He has been associated with alarmism for a long time - more than three decades, and the alarmism hasn't been consistent except in its basis in an idea that any sign of trend in either direction - colder or warmer - is a calamity.

And this is, ultimately, an anti-scientific idea. It's the scream of the hind brain: "I was born into a static universe and now it's changing!"

PCSO frolics

There's a lot of comment this morning about the two Police Community Support Officers who stood and watched as a ten year old boy drowned because they hadn't been trained for rescuing drowning children.

I'm not surprised; the words "community" and "support" in the job title give the game away. It's like the word "democratic" in country names. The "democratic" bit of Germany before unification was the communist dictatorship, North Korea has the word Democratic in its full name, and so on. If a country name says it is democratic, it isn't. If a job title says the person will offer support, they won't. "Carers" let the nonagenarian mother of one of my friends sit in her own waste for hours at a time because they weren't trained to lift her tiny, bird-light body, and didn't want to risk hurting their backs.

The combination of unctuous job descriptions and titles, together with health and safety fascism, occupational health assessments, and excessive training for simple tasks is so poisonous that it will turn ordinary human beings into monsters who can stand and watch children drown without trying to help.

But we knew that already. This is just today's example. Let me tell you something you might not know.

CIB2 is one of the complaints investigation units of the Metropolitan Police. Their headquarters in Vauxhall, which I've had cause to visit a couple of times, at their invitation, are famous for having bugging devices in the lifts and corridors, so that when Mr Nice is being all sympathetic as he shows you out, after Mr Nasty has been horrible to you in the interview room, and you blurt out something you hadn't intended to say, it can be captured for posterity.

CIB2 deal with serious police corruption. Or at least, that's what they're supposed to do. But a source in the Met, who will remain unidentified, told me recently that investigations of Police Community Support Officers had so flooded this department that they can't take on any new investigations of corrupt coppers.

The problems with PCSOs, who have been recruited disproportionately from minority groups, boil down to two things: conspiracy to pervert the course of justice (on behalf of other members of their minority group) and active crime, mainly drug dealing and extortion.

And that's the second unsurprising thing you've read in this post.

Day three...

... of not smoking. I've tried to give up before, but always after cutting down first. This time, it's a dead stop from thirty a day. I cannot believe how hard day one was. It was so impressively difficult it almost became easy - like having something tangible to fight. Day two less difficult. Today, I woke up with the taste of smoke and ashtrays in my mouth, as though I'd had been puffing all evening. Odd.

Ruth asked whether I was feeling irritable. "Of course I'm not bloody irritable," I shouted, slamming the door.

I don't want to go through this again. Better stick to it.

What's good for the goose

Free speech is a bit of an issue right now. I've been glad to support a left wing blogger and a conspiracy theorist whose blogs have been forced offline by an Uzbeck billionaire, although I disagree with a lot of the things they have written in the past. They have an absolute right to free speech. Agreement isn't the point.

Or is it? There's a campaign to stop David Irving speaking to the BNP in Coventry this evening. These people have as much right to free speech as Tim Ireland and Craig Murray.

Bloggers who have supported this attempt at offline censorship should be ashamed of themselves.

UPDATE: Banning speech (and burning books, for that matter) is generally the province of the unholy trinity of national socialism, international socialism and clerical fascism. It's strange to see it being advocated by the right. Here's what it normally looks like.

UPDATE: Dizzy is arguing that he supported the anti-BNP protest to register disapproval of the BNP without supporting the aims of its organisers, which were to prevent the BNP/Irving meeting. That seems a bit tortuous to me, but I'm pulling it onto the front page here so it is plain he disavows the banning of speech. Read the comments of this post and the one on his blog if you're interested in the occasionally profane detail.

More on blog censorship

When I typed this I omitted to say that the piece that sparked it all off can still be read here. I've read it, and am now aware of all sorts of allegations I wouldn't have know if a certain billionaire's lawyers hadn't come the raw prawn with a blogger.

This has been mentioned on the following sites:

Wonkos world, Chicken Yoghurt, Curious Hamster, Pickled Politics, Harry’s Place, Tim Worstall, Dizzy, Iain Dale, Ten Percent, Blairwatch, Davide Simonetti, Earthquake Cove, Turbulent Cleric (who suggests dropping a line to the FA about Mr Usmanov), Mike Power, Jailhouse Lawyer, Suesam, Devil’s Kitchen, The Cartoonist, Falco, Casualty Monitor, Forever Expat, Arseblog, Drink-soaked Trots, Pitch Invasion, Wonko’s World, Roll A Monkey, Caroline Hunt, Westminster Wisdom, Chris K, Anorak, Mediawatchwatch, Norfolk Blogger, Chris Paul, Indymedia (with a list of Craig Murray’s articles that are currently unavailable), Obsolete, Tom Watson, Cynical Chatter, Reactionary Snob, Mr Eugenides, Matthew Sinclair, The Select Society, Liberal England, Davblog, Peter Gasston Pitch Perfect, Adelaide Green Porridge Cafe, Lunartalks, Tygerland, The Crossed Pond, Our Kingdom, Big Daddy Merk, Daily Mail Watch, Graeme’s, Random Thoughts, Nosemonkey, Matt Wardman, Politics in the Zeros, Love and Garbage, The Huntsman, Conservative Party Reptile, Ellee Seymour, Sabretache, Not A Sheep, Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, The People’s Republic Of Newport, Life, the Universe & Everything, Arsenal Transfer Rumour Mill, The Green Ribbon, Blood & Treasure, The Last Ditch, Areopagitica, Football in Finland, An Englishman’s Castle, Eursoc, The Back Four, Rebellion Suck!, Ministry of Truth, ModernityBlog, Beau Bo D’Or, Scots and Independent, The Splund, Bill Cameron, Podnosh, Dodgeblogium, Moving Target, Serious Golmal


And that list comes from cynical chatter from the underworld.

Media landmarks

Two significant developments yesterday. A French court ordered France 2 to hand over unedited footage of the Mohamed Al Dura incident. Briefly, and follow that link for full information, the image of a Palestinian boy being killed by Israeli troops that flashed around the world in 2000 were, it has been alleged, faked and the TV station knew that full well as it circulated the images.

Libel action followed these allegations and it has been during the hearing of an appeal that the court made this order. France 2 has tried everything possible to keep this footage concealed. If the allegations are proved to be correct, the resulting scandal would eclipse all the fauxtography and rigged phone-in scandals so far.

The second significant development? That last link was to PajamasMedia, not one of the old school mainstream agencies or outlets. Pajamas, an organisation formed by bloggers and of bloggers, hence the ironic name, with some venture capital backing, has actually done the in-court reporting for this story.

How significant that will be remains to be seen, but I predict that when we look back ten years from now, this might be what looks like the moment the wind began to change.

Ordinary evil

I've become accustomed, somehow, to most photographs from concentration camps. Mainly taken of victims after liberation, they form part of our contemporary iconography of evil.

Images in the newly released album of pictures of Auschwitz guards at play, lounging in deck chairs, laughing as they eat blueberries on a day of mass slaughter, lighting candles on a Christmas tree, are more profoundly disturbing, I think. They leave nowhere to hide from the truth we have managed to conceal for half a century beneath the rhetoric of good and evil: these were not monsters, they were ordinary men and women.

Some cultures can make monsters out of ordinary people. A glance at contemporary Iranian or Saudi society shows we still have such cultures in the world. Men who would otherwise simply be fathers, husbands and sons join together to torture people to death in stonings.

We cannot let these cultures take root here, and we must work with reformers elsewhere to eradicate them from the globe.

The Auschwitz images can be viewed here.

Climate alarmism continues

For crying out loud, what is wrong with these people? Still the press releases come:

Scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center said today that the extent of Arctic sea ice appears to have reached its minimum for 2007 on Sept. 16, shattering all previous lows since satellite record-keeping began nearly 30 years ago.
[...]
Scientists blame the declining Arctic sea ice on rising concentrations of greenhouse gases that have elevated temperatures from 2 degrees F to 7 degrees F across the arctic and strong natural variability in Arctic sea ice, said the researchers.

Some facts:

1. These satellite records began during a temperature minimum and show the result of a warming that could be perfectly natural.

2. The present warming is, according to records that predate the 1970s, not unusual and not greater than that measured during the 1930s when no satellite images were being produced.

3. Sea ice in Antarctica is at a record maximum.

For references, see here and here.

Scientists at the University of Colorado can start wearing those half coconut headphones and shouting into their bamboo microphones. They have let themselves become cargo cult scientists. Shame on them.

Friday

Busy until later, so not much posting today. A couple of updates, though.

Bloggerheads et al will be reappearing soon, I'm glad to say. Very good summary of law and possible action at Ministry of Truth.

BLINK's editor Lester Holloway and I exchanged a few emails yesterday over this. I'm giving him until the end of today to respond to something, then will post about it.

Blog censorship

A group of blogs have been closed down by a service provider or hosting business (it's not yet clear which), after legal threats on behalf of Uzbekh billionaire Alisher Usmanov who, apparently, is trying to buy Arsenal soccer club. That's a game with a funny round ball, I'm told.

The websites include bloggerheads and Craig Murray's blog, as well as that of Boris Johnson. Tim Ireland's bloggerheads is a sometimes abrasive left wing blog, and Murray can be something of a conspiracy nut. Taking lefties and conspiracy theorists off the web is a sinister development. Who would we mock and quarrel with? How would our adrenal glands receive that stimulation so necessary to a healthy mind and body?

I operate a web hosting business and have offered to host these sites, and as I buy my bandwidth wholesale and my racks straight from the data centre, there's no upstream ISP to pull the plug. I've no idea whether they'll take me up on the offer, but a bit of solidarity is called for. We can't have people silenced by bullying billionaires, now can we?

More from Harry's Place, Iain Dale and Chicken Yoghurt.

This is, incidentally, a sign of the times and an indicator of the future. If any liability for hosted content can in law attach to upstream providers including hosting businesses, then on receipt of the first lawyer's letter they'll tend to pull the plug, rather than spend time and money examining the merits of the case. That seems to be what has happened in this case. It's like suing a bookshop, rather than writer or publisher, for libel. Very bad development.

UPDATE: The plug was pulled by FastHosts, apparently. Anyone hosting with them at the moment might like to reflect on this.

Gmail probs

Hmmm... Lots of problems at Gmail today. Intermittent breaches of service. This won't help their promotion of web services, though these are still the future of computer software.

We're all going to die... I'm just not sure why yet

Some people seem to be prone to millennialism. They are sure we're all doomed, but the details of why need to be located in the most convenient available theory.

It seems that NASA's climate alarmist in chief, James Hansen, might be one such person. Strident in the field of Global Warming Alarmism, he was predicting 22 foot sea level rises just last week.

Washington resident John Lockwood was doing some research at the Library of Congress recently when he came across a 1971 piece in the Washington Post. The Washington Times explains further:

"U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming," blares the headline of the July 9, 1971, article, which cautions readers that the world "could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age, a leading atmospheric scientist predicts."

The scientist was S.I. Rasool, a colleague of Mr. Hansen's at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The article goes on to say that Mr. Rasool came to his chilling conclusions by resorting in part to a new computer program developed by Mr. Hansen that studied clouds above Venus.

Iraqi Refugees

Human Rights First is campaigning on behalf of Iraqis who have helped the American forces. They tell me, by email:

In a recent memo, U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said the United States must act more quickly to help desperate Iraqi refugees find safety – "Iraqis who have put themselves and their families at risk by working with us."

Fortunately, there is a bipartisan amendment in the Senate that will help bring some of these Iraqis—and other vulnerable Iraqi refugees—to safety in the United States.

A vote is imminent – and we expect it to be incredibly close. To ensure it passes, we need YOUR HELP today. Your emails will be counted.

We are not yet at the point of a Parliamentary vote in Britain - which is a disgrace. But there will be a meeting held in Parliament on October 9th. Dan Hardie has the details.

Please make sure your MP knows about this and press him to attend.

Open letter to the editor of BLINK

UPDATE: BLINK's editor Lester Holloway and I exchanged a few emails yesterday over this. I'm giving him until the end of today to respond to something, then will post about it.

---

I just sent this email to Lester Holloway, the editor of this racist internet magazine:

Dear Mr Holloway,

Last March you promised me a right of reply to a piece published on your website.

This promise was made after I telephoned your office, as described here.

I now claim that right of reply, in the light of one of your recent campaigns. I will keep it brief, and would be grateful if you publish it in full and with the same degree of prominence as the piece that covered your rally.

I am reproducing this mail in its entirety on my blog.

Copy is under this text.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Risdon.


On March 30th 2006, BLINK published a piece written by Shirin Aguiar-Holloway titled "A sea of white faces". Unable even to get the name of the event she was reporting correct, referring to it as the "Freedom March" instead of the "March for Free Expression", Ms Holloway wrote: "The 200-odd protesters who gathered in Trafalgar Square on Saturday were nearly all white.

Just about the only non-white face was an Iranian man who carried a placard with the Danish cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban."

That this was untrue is beside the point. Judging the merits of an event or an argument on the grounds of race alone is as straightforward an example of racism as it is possible to find. Dr Martin Luther King dreamed of a day when people would be judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. BLINK does not seem to share that dream. It might indeed have been possible to criticise the characters of those involved in the Free Expression rally, but you made no attempt to do so. You did, however, give uncritical space to mention of a counter protest and quoted the spokesman of this event, Ismaeel-Haneef Hijazi, in uncritical terms.

Mr Hijazi has just refused to endorse this statement, during a discussion on my blog at the following address:

http://freebornjohn.blogspot.com/2007/09/mainstream-islam.html

"any tradition that can today accept slavery under any circumstances, that accepts the rape of slave women, however that might be phrased, and advocates or accepts sex with under age girls - which is always rape - is abhorrent."

In other words, your devotion to anti-white racism has made you side with a man who will not condemn slavery, the rape of slave women and the rape of girls as young as nine years of age. Yet you were unable to endorse the following statement of principle that underlay the Free Expression rally:

"The strength and survival of free society and the advance of human knowledge depend on the free exchange of ideas. All ideas are capable of giving offence, and some of the most powerful ideas in human history, such as those of Galileo and Darwin, have given profound religious offence in their time. The free exchange of ideas depends on freedom of expression and this includes the right to criticise and mock. We assert and uphold the right of freedom of expression and call on our elected representatives to do the same. We abhor the fact that people throughout the world live under mortal threat simply for expressing ideas and we call on our elected representatives to protect them from attack and not to give comfort to the forces of intolerance that besiege them."

Your devotion to perpetuating racial division, and your commitment to anti-white bias regardless of any other circumstances, disqualify you utterly from making pronouncements on the alleged racism of any other person.

That includes Boris Johnson who, whatever he may or may not have said in the past, has never campaigned for racial division, nor displayed complete and unrelenting racism, in the way that your organisation does.

Burning salt water - expanded

When I posted here about the experiment in which a radio beam split salt water in into immediately combustible components, I did so without comment. Laban just suggested that this process would consume more energy than it produced, and of course he's right. That isn't the point, though.

Firstly, it's apparently a new process. Like electrolysis, it breaks down the bonds in water molecules but unlike electrolysis it requires neither anode nor cathode immersed in said water. So we've learned something, and that's always good. But new things can lead to interesting places, and this is the second and more important aspect of this.

Here's a thought experiment. Cars have been converted to run on hydrogen - existing engines can be converted but it's a bit of a faff. However, how about swapping corrodible pipes for synthetic ones and running salt water from a tank to the cylinder head, replacing the carburettor or injection system with a radio transmitter.

Yes, the ultimate power source would be the nuclear power station that generated the electricity that got stored in the batteries in the car and powered the radio transmitter. But that's cool - I'd be happy to own a nuclear powered car. And the fact that this technology might be capable of converting all existing vehicles to clean, green nuclear power is exciting, even for a climate sceptic/realist like myself.

Iraqi lifeline meeting - MP to attend

James Paice, MP, has expressed his intention, despite other commitments, to come to the meeting in Parliament on October 9th, when help for Iraqis who have been of service to our troops will be discussed.

What is your MP doing?

Mainstream Islam

In the comments to this post, below, Ismaeel from the Muslim Action Committee said the following:

The closing of the doors of ijtihad was a recognition of the ulema of the day that the process of developing METHODOLOGIES to discover ISLAMIC RULINGS on any given subject had been completed and all the four METHODOLOGIES would now be used to derive rulings from the texts on LEGAL issues.

So, Islamic Law was fixed in the twelfth century and has been perfect ever since. This is absolutely mainstream for unreformed Muslims, which is to say the overwhelming majority of Muslims, including those in Europe, Australasia and the Americas. Here's an example (from America) of the sort of revolting conclusion this can lead to:

Finally, in late Spring of 2005, the day came which turned out to be the last day I ever went to this fiqh class. I happened to meet one of the other students shortly before class, and I asked him how he thought we should respond to the need for revision, especially considering that our textbook was based on a work more than six hundred years old. The other student replied, there was not much need to revise the traditional thought, but maybe only add something in those places where the traditional scholars were silent. No need at all to change anything substantial. I asked him about slavery and sex with slaves, and he suggested I ask the shaikh. And so I did.

And so it came as it had to come. When the class reached the five minute break, I asked the Shaikh, whether it was permitted for a male master to sleep with slave women against their will. He immediately said yes, and he added this was agreed upon by all four Sunni schools - Shafi'i, Hanafi, Maliki and Hanbali. I asked to clarify, so if there was a slave market today, I could go and buy a fourteen year old girl just in order to sleep with her? He said yes, and he added, not only was it permitted, it was also common practice among early Muslims. Ali Ibn Abi Talib, the shaikh said, had children from his slaves. The class was shocked, especially the female students. One female student asked, what if the slave woman did not want to? The sheikh affirmed that this was not relevant. Another female student asked, whether this was still applicable today? The shaikh did not address this question - he did not seem to understand what the student meant by "applicable" - but he added that when agreements against slavery came up the Muslim countries "were the first ones to sign". The shaikh said sex slavery was perfectly according to the Qur'an. I later checked with a more reform-oriented scholar who assured me that the Qur'an does not permit this kind of abuse of human beings.

Now let me be absolutely clear that this was more than just the words of a crazy fiqh teacher. What our shaikh told us is perfectly in line with the consensus of more than thousand years of Islamic scholarship. Let me spell it out:

It is permitted (halal) according to all traditional schools (madhabs) to have sexual intercourse with slave girls of the age of nine years or above against their will and without marrying them. And when I say according to the traditional schools, I mean it was consensus among the scholars of all classic schools of Islamic law be it Sunni or Shia. It is all over the classic sources of Islamic law where this issue is elaborated to great detail.

Now what the past scholars said is one thing, how modern Muslim scholars deal with it is another. Unfortunately, the question is rarely asked, because most Muslims are unaware of the problems, but if it is asked, traditionally oriented scholars fail to condemn sex slavery. Even some of the most influential contemporary scholars are defending and justifying sex slavery

And just to show I'm not being unfair against Ismaeel by associating him with this sort of thing, here he is, on the old March for Free Expression website, in the comments:

In many cultures women are intellectually, emotionally and physically mature by this age [9] to be married and have sex. Please stop trying to impose your liberal values and laws on everyone.

And:

If you go to some arab countries even now amongst the bedouin and also in sub-sahara africa, girls of nine are physically, mentally and emotionally ready for marriage.

The Prophet (PBUH) first got married to a woman who was twice divorced, Lady Khadija, may Allah be pleased with her, he was 25 and she was 40, he didn't remarry again until after she had died some 25 years later. Lady Aisha, may Allah be pleased with her was the only virgin girl he married after that.

Aisha was seven years old when Mohammed married her, and nine when he "consumated" their marriage. It's perfectly true that sexual relations with children were not unusual in the distant past, but sex between a fifty year old man and a nine year old girl must be considered to be rape today, in any country under any circumstances.

For about a decade, from the mid 1970s to the mid 1980s, a campaigning group that eventually became known as the Paedophile Information Exchange tried to legitimise the idea of sexual relations between adults and children. It failed, unsurprisingly, and in large part as a result of a media led public outcry. Eventually, legal action in 1984 led to ther conviction of several members and the flight of the group's leader.

Any tradition that advocates slavery, the rape of slaves and the rape of under age girls in "marriage" is abhorrent, and the fact that it is a religious tradition is irrelevant. Why is there no outcry against these revolting teachings from Islamic law?

Buy Swedish

Via Tim Worstall, this is a very good suggestion:

About one hundred Swedish companies have been threatened on Islamist websites in the last few days. Jihadist websites call for Muslims to boycott companies like IKEA, H&M, Ericsson and Electrolux, and in several cases to attack them. This is evil times two. They attack people who have nothing to do with what they are fighting against, and they do it because they want to put pressure on the Swedish government to stop artists like Lars Vilks from mocking religion.

So buy Swedish. It worked when there was a Muslim boycott of Danish produce - the year of the boycott, Danish exports actually rose.

UPDATE: Furrowed Brow points out in the comments that Absolut vodka is Swedish. 8-)

Paying for online content

Via The Monkey Tennis Centre, I see that Times Select, the subscription based online service from the New York Times is no more. Dean Barnett commented:

If there was an online magazine or newspaper that had James Lileks, Mark Steyn, Bill Kristol, Andrew Ferguson, John Podhoretz, Bill Simmons, Terry Teachout and Michael Yon contributing daily, I’d pay for it. A lot of other people would, too. The Times’ big failure wasn’t in thinking they could sell on-line opinion. Their failure was in thinking they could sell crappy and unoriginal on-line opinion.

Meanwhile in the UK, Devil's Kitchen may have made his last appearance on 18 Doughty Street:

On related note, your humble Devil was on 18DS the other week, in yet another fucking tedious programme; believe me, it is as exactly boring to participate in as it is to watch.

I am sick to death of being on programmes where everyone is in agreement: it's about as stimulating as being in an A Level class taken by a state school teacher.

Now, at his best DK can have the same sort of stimulating effect as a defibrillator. When, from time to time, Doughty Street has condescended to make their programmes accessible to Linux*, I've watched bits of their programmes. Shock Jocks they ain't. Making DK get bored was a really silly use of a resource.

There's still room for good, paid-for online content. But it has to be good. So far, not much available is worth paying for. But that's the fault of the producers, and not the technology. Why is it so dull? Let's see now:

the spiked piece was rejected on the grounds that it was offensive and made me sound crazy. The first line was, "Here's a sentence rarely used to open newspaper columns: why don't the vast majority of people just blow their own heads off?" and it continued in a similar vein throughout. I thought it was life-affirming, in a nihilistic, cackling-into-the-abyss kind of way, but there you go. Perhaps I'm ill. Doubtless it would've provoked complaints.

So the piece about spiders was printed instead. It also appeared on the Guardian's Comment is free site, where readers can leave comments, for free, like it says on the tin. And the very first comment read: "Come on. A boring piece of fluff about spiders? Where's the passion and intensity? Sort it out." You can't win.

Ironically, I first came to the attention of the "mass media" because I wrote a website jam-packed with "passion and intensity" - alongside bad language, grotesque mental imagery, and extreme scatological humour. Today, as part of the "mass media", those final three are the three tools I'm not allowed to employ, because the "mass" sadly encompasses "the humourless". None the less, there isn't a week that goes by when I don't try to sneak all three elements in, because they make me giggle. These excesses get cut before making it to print. My words go through a filter that's out of my control. I don't even get to write my own headings, you know. Oh, the humanity. It's like Stalinist Russia round here. Boo hoo, woe is me, etc.

No paper wants to gratuitously offend the reader. Pity, because gratuitous offence, when performed with aplomb, is the funniest thing in the world. There's more unpretentious joie de vivre in a single issue of vintage-era Viz than most artists or singers manage in a lifetime. I'd like nothing better than to fill the rest of this page with an unnecessarily florid description of something utterly disgusting happening to a well-known public figure - an 850-word fantasy in which, say, David Miliband unexpectedly develops extreme and explosive diarrhoea while entertaining a group of foreign dignitaries in a pod on the London Eye on the hottest day of the year, to take just one example. But I can't, because a tiny handful of you would complain.

* Months ago, I had a brief email correspondence with a developer from the Doughty Street site. He said they weren't using Flash video, like Google and YouTube, because of the expense.

Earlier this year, I built a flash based "media player" for a racing driver's website, including a web based control panel for uploads and management. Project time: three working days. Project cost, including client software for (adequate) video editing and file meta markup and conversion, and training for the client: £2,500. It works with any computer, just like YouTube.

Camarooned

A new opinion poll shows that David Cameron is the least popular of the major party leaders:

Until now, Mr Cameron has been seen as an asset for the Tories, and is often rated as more popular than his party, particularly among the all-important swing voters in the political centre ground.

But the new survey found that just 37 per cent of all voters now say they are satisfied with the way he is doing his job, against 45 per cent who are dissatisfied - a net satisfaction rating of minus-eight.

Despite the questions which have been raised over his future as Lib Dem leader, Sir Menzies had a narrow advantage over Mr Cameron. He has a net rating of minus-five.

(emphasis added) I think the willingness of some Tories to enter Brown's "big tent", and of Margaret Thatcher to pose for photographs with him, is evidence of a plot by traditional Tories to undermine Cameron, preparatory to bringing him down. The inertia of a large party like the Conservatives is unlikely to allow this to come to fruition before another election defeat, though. This means there hasn't been a better time for a new, mainstream, small government, low tax, EU sceptic, free market party to emerge without the baggage that UKIP, unfortunately, carries.

If it were credible in terms of finance and leadership, it could hoover up a lot of defectors from UKIP and the Tories, and gain immediate Parliamentary representation. But I can't see it happening. The conservative nature of Conservatives makes any change on this scale difficult to imagine.

Their Unionist instincts have prevented them seeking the further devolution that would enable them to gain power in their stronghold of England, and allowed Labour to use selective devolution, immigration, selective development and uneven constituency sizes to consolidate an undemocratic grip on power. Similarly, their conservatism is preventing them from capitalising on this moment.

And so their own natures may, in the end, condemn them to extinction.