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‘I never realised
How happy you made me, oh Mandy
Well, you came and you gave without takin’
But I sent you away, oh Mandy
well, you kissed me and stopped me from shakin’
and I need you today. Oh, Mandy!’ The prime mentalist, the subprime minister, has made his last reshuffle. Astounding. I hold no brief for Labour, but this is almost sad. The United Kingdom is now led by the only man in public life more evidently mad, more clearly demented, than ‘Miss Andi’ Sullivan. Remarkable. Tags: appalled & incredulous: follies exposed, current events, england my england
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I regret to say that, so long as the American election is in play, I shall be making a filter. I shall call it, ‘Sane’. Many Leftists and one or two persons of the Right will perforce be filtered out by it. I hope not to miss too many interesting fannish posts, but it is a price I shall gladly pay to avoid the contemptible balls I am seeing posted far too often just now. I confess myself disgusted. In the case of those who are on the Centre and Right, I am also disappointed. (I am long past – and have been for several decades – being disappointed in the Left, as I have long since given over expecting common human decency from far too great a swathe of that quarter.) No doubt there will be barracking, sledging, and defriending in consequence. So be it. Life is too short to deal with this puerile rubbish. Tags: appalled & incredulous: follies exposed, boring self-indulgence, current events
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Well. After a – shall we say Glorious – week, by and large, we return to earth with a thump. Firstly, of course, God rest Aleksandr Isayevich. Years after the tyrants have been all but forgotten, Solzhenitsyn’s name shall be remembered. So also will be the delicacy and purity of line that was the hallmark of Pauline Baynes, who beat Fragonard and Poussin hollow in that respect. May her soul, and Solzhenitsyn’s, and the souls of all the faithful departed, be at rest with God. Then, naturally, there’s the infighting, the collapse of the prince (by common consent fit to rule – had he never ruled), the rise of the young challenger to displace him, the systemic shock of the coming revolution in affairs…. Of course, one hears that Labour are also facing something of the sort, but I am speaking just now of England cricket. And then there’s this: http://blamebrampton.livejournal.com/37685.html – in which an overseas reader suggested to our own blamebrampton that a story of hers would have been better still had she stopped in the midst of the action for a nice expository essay on what, precisely, the Thames Barrier is. Oh, my paws and whiskers. If this is to be the standard to which we are to be held, we shall be forced to resort to Pterrian, Pratchettic footnotes. In that wise, I give a sample from my own work, annotated for the benefit of the overseas reader: Tags: appalled & incredulous: follies exposed, cricket, current events, humour
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I find myself, very much to my own surprise, encountering the user ‘legionseagle’ on an all too regular basis, and she is forever calling me a fascist, a eugenicist, a BNP supporter, a Jew-hater (which would make things rather tense when the family as a whole gather ’round, were it true, which of course it is not), and so interminably on. This must cease. Astoundingly, the user ‘legionseagle’ is, apparently, the writer formerly known as AJ Hall, whom we so many of us enjoyed reading, and had admired as a writer, and with whom, before 11 December 2006, I had never had an unpleasant encounter (such that she had no reason to assume the worst possible interpretation of any remarks I might make). Reputable people, whom I trust absolutely, confirm that she is a real person, not a troll, and is who she says she is, namely, a solicitor of some twenty years’s standing and possessed of a First in Law (Oxon). This makes the situation still more incomprehensible. The charitable explanation is some derangement; the less charitable is that she is a quite reckless liar. I admit the two states are not mutually exclusive. In any event, I have become, apparently, the ‘necessary enemy’ in her mind, the Great Satan, the Emmanuel Goldstein of her Two Minutes Hate. It is one thing to nurse a grievance, even when both clarification and apology have been offered; it is another to refuse to wean the grievance even when it’s now a strapping lad looking forward to the sixth form. Because her lies and defamatory, deliberate misrepresentations have occurred in the journals of my friends and in open communities as well as in my journal and in her own, I had until the last round of this vileness chosen to exercise forbearance (not, as a rule, one of my virtues), simply in order to leave my friends out of this. Her most recent spate of venom has finally tipped the balance. I cannot continue to refrain from defending myself, lest her malice outstrip the truth. What were my options? It were ridiculous to resort to litigation: the idea of two pseudonymous internet personæ joining legal battle over statements that might arguably be actionable if only the parties weren’t two pseudonymous internet personæ, is silly. I rejected that notion upon its first suggestion. So also did I reject the idea of filing an LJ Abuse Report: although the material being posted is abusive and defamatory, I am opposed as a matter of principle to the LJ Abuse System, as well as doubtful of its practical effectiveness. Upon the sage advice of wiser and cooler heads, I have therefore resorted to setting forth the facts in this post, for the benefit of the community; and shall simply post a link to this entry whenever her viciousness recurs where I can see it. In effect, it is a lengthier form of what ‘legionseagle’ will, surely, recognize as the reply in Arkell v. Pressdram. ( The mendacity of the person formerly known as AJ Hall )Tags: appalled & incredulous: follies exposed, critical analysis
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In the early part of December 2006, I wrote an essay that blew up in, well, everyone’s faces. Many who read it, misapprehended parts of it, and many were offended by it: this implicates my ability as a writer, and is my fault, as having failed to communicate my meaning. It stands also as an object lesson in the folly of trying to combine breeziness and ‘popular’ writing with the use of terms with a specific and perhaps peculiar academic meaning (particularly as regards terms having a special meaning in academic discourse referencing anthropology, sociology, economic history, PPE, and All That): which is also my fault. However, there are a few – one at least that I am certain of – who have refused any clarification or explanation; have chosen and persisted in choosing, with no prior provocation, to take the worst of any possible interpretations of my words, my motives, and my character; and have chosen instead to nurse a grievance that ought really to be weaned by now. This is not my fault. Unfortunately, at least one of those who have chosen to remain offended (as one apparently does) has not been content merely to be disobliging (that is to say, twice calling me, in the immediate comments, a fascist, equating me to a camp guard at Auschwitz, and suggesting that one of my grandfathers must have been a Mosleyite). Rather, this person (for it is she) has now repeatedly made such assertions as that I have ‘publicly stated in the past that there is a genetic component in whether one is, or is not fit to take part in Government and that this can be assessed by the occupation of one’s father or grandfather’ and am ‘someone who has a firm belief in eugenics as only basis on which one may be allowed to take part in Government’ (wherefore this person is thus ‘delighted but very surprised that [I] am not in fact anti-Semitic’); and, most recently, this person has asserted that I am ‘someone who publicly stated that Group A was eugenically inferior to Group B, if i) Group A happened to include a substantial majority of the Jewish populations of Manchester, Leeds and Bradford; ii) also included practically all the Gujerati [sic] and Bangledeshi [sic] populations of Lancashire; and iii) one of the determining characteristics of Group B was its adherence to the tenets of the Church of England’ and that I have made statements that ‘included all the Jews in Manchester in a group he considers eugenically inferior to his group (all members of the C of E) and objecting is clearly the act of a blood traitor’. This cannot be permitted to pass unchallenged. These assertions are false; and the maker knows or should in the exercise of reason know that they are false. The first time such statements were made, in a friend’s journal, in reply to a locked post, I was unwilling to drag my friend into this. When these were thereafter advanced in a community, I chose again the path of forbearance. These false statements have now been made again, and again, entirely publicly. This cannot be tolerated. I therefore repost and clarify my original remarks, and leave this tawdry situation to the judgement of the reasonable and fair-minded members of the community. The original essay, with the comments, is here, for comparison: http://wemyss.livejournal.com/60592.html. *************************************
***********
Here endeth the revised essay. Have at it – politely and with due collegiality. Tags: appalled & incredulous: follies exposed, critical analysis, essays
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I am very sorry indeed to tell you, as I must, that things here-’round are quite likely to be rather nasty and unpleasant for a few days. Some of the posts I shall be making shall be, unfortunately, contentious, or are likely to be rendered so by others and taken so by some. This is, unfortunately, unavoidable. It has never been necessary to seek my permission to ‘friend’ or to cease ‘friending’ me. I encourage anyone to do either, as his or her own wants, conscience, or convenience may dictate. Similarly, so long as I am correctly quoted and not wilfully misrepresented, it has never been, is not, and shall never be necessary to seek permission to quote me, anywhere, at any time, with the exception of the perhaps two friends-locked posts I have made in my time here. When I publish something to the world, it’s fair game (an emphasis upon fairness should be clearly understood, here). Accordingly, any community of which I am a part, like any user on whose friendslist I appear, must, and I encourage them to do, make their own choices as to whether or not it is in their interests to continue the association. There will be no recrimination from me should the impending unpleasantness suggest that it is not thus in their best interests to do. Again, I regret that there will be an uncommon, and by me unrelished, likelihood of controversy here this weekend, but my forbearance is at an end, and my duty to myself dictates that I begin to push back against a concerted campaign of malicious and mendacious vilification. I do not undertake this lightly, or willingly; I have sought advice of wise and cool heads who have supported or in some way suggested this course of action. But the present situation is intolerable, and it is past time that I ceased letting it go on, even in the interest of courtesy to others. I again apologise in advance to any innocent bystanders who are splashed by any of the vitriol that is sure to be thrown in my direction. Tags: appalled & incredulous: follies exposed, boring self-indulgence
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Finis Britanniæ. Jobbery. Corruption. Dishonesty. Lying to Parliament. Lying to the electors. Questionable loyalty to the Crown. A parcel of rogues. There’s simply nothing left to say: the entirety of the vocabulary of imprecation does not suffice for this Government, for the soi-disant Liberal Democrats, and for all their vicious and contemptible doings and their masters in Brussels. It’s a black day. Tags: appalled & incredulous: follies exposed, current events, england my england
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(Astoundingly, what follows is a commentary that I had completed – and failed to post – some days ago, and has nothing to do with the present discontents.) There’s an old jest in which a chap says, ‘Oh, I’m an even-tempered fellow: I remain angry’; and there’s the stage Irishman’s claim that, ‘I never lost my temper but once, when I was a lad: lost it and never found it again’, of course. Yet the peculiarly rebarbative nature of certain recent disputes on two communities I sometimes browse – disputes I can only assure you will not be tolerated at britpickery – has been unsettling, even to me. I see that it is as true of the Internet as it is of parochial church politics and academic politics: the disputes are so savage because the stakes are so paltry. I quite realise I am the last person to set up as a moral arbiter here (mind, you’ve no idea how many remarks I force myself not to pass), but my own failings of temperament do not of themselves make me incompetent to suggest that we all of us make an effort (call it a Lenten discipline if that makes you attend the better to it) to maintain some sense of proportion, humour, and a willingness not to assume the worst of – and place the worst possible interpretation upon the motives and meanings of – one’s opponents. I do not believe that a good debate is anything other than a ‘contact sport’; yet even on the pitch, there are rules, and there is, or wants to be and once was, an ideal of sportsmanship that, along with the common law, the English language, and the herbaceous border, is perhaps Britain’s great legacy to the rest of the world. Let’s all of us strive for that, shall we?
Tags: appalled & incredulous: follies exposed, boring self-indulgence, critical analysis, current events
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It’s nae the morn fer baitin’ th’ auld man, d’ye ken? No’ after the nicht, and that Burns Nicht. Ah’m hearin’ that the weans hae been quarrelling whilst feyther’s been awa’ wi’ his haggis an’ his whusky (an’ his whusky, an’ his whusky….)? Weeell noo, hark to yer auld feyther Wemyss: it’s aye best ye bairns compose yer ain quarrels. Gin auld feyther Wemyss maun examine causes an’ dispose o’ matters, whaur debate hae turnit tae carbin’, roukin’, an’ ane threapin’ tae th’ ither, certies ye’ll no’ care fer the upshot. There’s aye a wa’ o’ seein’ wha’s tae blame an’ wha began it, and gin Ah maun meddle, ane or th’ ither or th’ baith o’ the disputants’ll lose mah guid opinion, an’ ye’ll no want that, ken this well. Tak’ yer wird again, or be tuk ower th’ coals by auld feyther Wemyss: knickety knack, which haund will ye tak’? Tags: appalled & incredulous: follies exposed
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This has been brought to my attention. It comes from http://community.livejournal.com/lj_2008/2303.html. (Faux-Russian lack of definite article in quoted material is being verbatim, comrades!) In all seriousness, this should cool your marrow a trifle (unless of course you were having cold shape for pudding in any event). - LiveJournal Advisory Board will be a group of informed thought leaders from the global online community, who will advise the management and board of directors of LiveJournal in the development of the LiveJournal platform;
- The LiveJournal Advisory Board will publish and update on a regular basis a clear a set [sic] of aims and values. This will address such vital community issues as privacy, security, taste and decency. It will also provide a forum to consider any relevant legal, political or religious concerns. It will also focus on access issues including usability, technology, interoperability, open source, social graph, and more. The LJ Advisory Board will also take responsibility for overseeing all ongoing charitable work;
- LiveJournal Advisory Board will be available to provide guidance to the management and the board of directors to address new issues and controversies as they arise; on occasion the management will ask the LiveJournal Advisory Board formally to vet specific decisions;
- LiveJournal Advisory Board will, in equal measure, represent the users, offering them a voice, a sounding board and a forum for addressing not only the users’ role in LiveJournal, but also LiveJournal’s role in the online world;
- LiveJournal Advisory Board will take responsibility for overseeing all ongoing charitable work, which the existing LiveJournal management supports.
Well, let’s just give that a good fisking, shall we.
No Walmart-clad Paladinettes of Purity, no Old Boys from the Lubyanka: no one on earth, Left, Right, or Centre, Nonconformist or Islamist, Russian, Yank, or Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, is going to tell me what I may or may not write, in a paid-for permanent account, on any purported grounds of taste, decency, political propriety, or religious sensitivity. Unless and until I am properly found in breach of actual law, they and their nomenklatura, I mean LiveJournal Advisory Board, can sod bloody well off, ta ever so. Nor are they going to vet my work – least of all whilst, hilariously, ‘in equal measure representing me as a user’, mind you: foxes guarding your Buff Orpingtons simply aren’t in it. So what, actually, does all this mean? I have translated the post for us – and to get poor little nolan_ash’s knickers in a still more baroque twist. - LiveJournal Advisory Board will be a group of cronies, who will advise the management and board of directors of LiveJournal in keeping in with the oligarchy, the FSB, the Old Kremlin Hacks, and Vladimir Vladimirovich;
- The LiveJournal Advisory Board will publish and update on a regular basis a clear a set [sic] of Party regulations. This will address such vital community issues as policing thought. It will also provide a forum to consider any relevant dissident activity and samizdat. It will also focus on access issues including usability, technology, interoperability, open source, social graph, and more. The LJ Advisory Board will also take responsibility for overseeing all ongoing propaganda work;
- LiveJournal Advisory Board will be available to rubberstamp decisions on issues and controversies as they arise; on occasion the management will ask the LiveJournal Advisory Board formally to put a fig leaf on specific decisions, as the Party Congresses and Central Committee did in the good old days;
- LiveJournal Advisory Board will, in equal measure, pretend to represent the users, offering them the illusion of a voice, a sounding board and a forum for addressing not only the users’ role in LiveJournal, but also LiveJournal’s SUP-directed activities;
- LiveJournal Advisory Board will take responsibility for staging Stalinist propaganda.
There, I think that’s rather closer to the facts. And just remember, it’s called LJ ‘news’ – izvestia – for a reason: ‘there’s no truth in The News (Izvestia), and there’s no news in The Truth (Pravda)’, as they used to say. Tags: appalled & incredulous: follies exposed, critical analysis, current events, suputin
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Well. There goes LJ. You will by now have seen that, whilst the innocent slept (or listened for the Shipping Forecast and obsessively monitored flood warnings and bulletins from the Environment Agency and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency), 6A announced the sale of LJ to that oh-so-unremarkable, common or garden ‘international media company’, SUP. Yawns all ’round, what? Well, no.
So this is what it has come to. Six Apart have effectively sold LJ to Vladimir Putin* and his puppets. Even as you slept, your paid accounts may have helped fund the disappearance or murder of a dissident, or another transfer of nuclear weapons technology to Teheran (surely you do not imagine that there is any distinction in practise between private and privy, State, funds in Messrs Putin’s and the Oligarchs’s re-branded Soviet despotism). And LJ imagines that I am concerned with the mythical feelings of a fictional anthropomorphised goat? _________________________ * Oh. And those of you who’ve spent the past year with the vapours, certain that every change at LJ was made to appease American Nonconformists of the social right? I trust that you feel appropriately silly now that the FSB are reading your mail. Tags: appalled & incredulous: follies exposed, current events, suputin
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And Guidobaldo, when he made That grammar school of courtesies Where wit and beauty learned their trade Upon Urbino’s windy hill, Had sent no runners to and fro That he might learn the shepherds’ will.
Thus Mr Yeats on the subject of national arts funding. What neither Mr Yeats nor those who have inevitably quoted him in the last two decades’s worth of argument over state funding for the arts never mention, is, those noble and puissant princes Ercole, Guidobaldo, and Cosimo paid for the bleeding Mantegnas and Giottos out of their own purses.
I think it’s time we talked some facts, and perhaps some sense, about the late tempest in the Teasmade.
Six Apart Ltd is a Delaware corporation domiciled in California. Its agent for service of process as recorded with the State of California is Tod Harmon, 548 4th Street, San Francisco, California 94107 USA. That may be useful information for those who decline to flee and choose rather to remain and fight. Tags: appalled & incredulous: follies exposed, current events
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