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Deus ex Machina
Jun 8, 2009


Britain is in an intractable bind.

The Prime Minister won't do the decent thing and resign. His party won't bring him down, because there's no way to excuse a second unelected PM in a single parliamentary term. The General Election that Brown's fall would precipitate could only speed Labour's inevitable massacre at the ballot box. There is no apparent answer to this desperate problem.

I can think of one, though. There is one man who could replace Brown without necessitating an election. He's the guy we elected in the first place, so how could anyone object? I bet he would quite enjoy putting it up Gordon too.

OK, you might say that it would take a pretty dire set of circumstances to bring Blair back. I completely agree with you. Only maybe having a leering sociopath with autistic tendencies draining the hope and reputation of a nation might just possibly constitute those circumstances.

Blair has his faults, but some of the more profound ones might have been resolved by world changes. I rather suspect that Tone would suck up to any God-bothering US President, even if they weren't actually engaging in Holy War. Being an Obama puppet probably wouldn't be so bad. And anyway, couldn't we do with a centre-right politician who's not yet wedded to a xenophobic foreign policy?

(No replies)

Public Apology
May 20, 2009


I would like to apologise to the British nation for my shameful dereliction of my public service responsibilities.

Almost thirty years has passed since I facetiously claimed for a three-month supply of bananas on my company expenses. I did so after an unpopular senior manager criticised a colleague for eating a banana on a customer’s premises, an action he deemed “completely unprofessional”. Rather than waiting for my misdemeanour to come out in the Daily Telegraph, I have decided to confess that those bananas never existed. To be honest, it would have been quite difficult to procure approximately two hundred pounds sterling worth of bananas in winter in northern Finland during the early 1980s. The receipt I offered actually related to the payment of a fine for a minor traffic offence. It was an unforgiveable accounting error, and I have not attempted to carry out a handbrake turn in a bus station anywhere in the world since that time.

I realise that my actions were rather pathetic in comparison to those of my betters, and that my fate at the hands of society will be accordingly shameful. While Members of Parliament might reasonably demand to be prominently lynched, perhaps using the lamp-posts on Westminster Bridge, I expect nothing better than being strung upside-down from a speed camera gantry on one of the more free-flowing sections of the M25. The fat that spits from my immolated remains will not be fit to grease the axles of the tumbrels that carry MPs to their glorious pyre. I do not expect the Metropolitan Police Force to show the slightest interest in my fate, quite unlike the attention they will lavish on the parliamentarians they are assigned to protect, when they herd them by the dozen into the House of Commons tea-room and mow them down with automatic weapons.

Since I am in a mood of contrition, I admit that I made a major error of judgement when I studied at an Oxford college with anglo-catholic leanings, and yet somehow failed to see the light and join New Labour. This in spite of the fact that those few who still call me a friend unfailingly point out my resemblance to John Prescott. I confess moreover that I have exposed neighbours as having worked in the financial sector, thereby recklessly inviting significant loss of life through widespread acts of arson and riot. I must face up to my implication in the daily execution of a dozen bankers on the steps outside the ruins of the Mansion House, even though this measure is generally held to have been effective in lessening the attrition of this mercilessly persecuted group.

It is my sincere hope that Britain will gradually be rehabilitated into the world community. Although life expectancy in this country isn’t quite what it was before the Revolution, I feel confident that there are Britons alive today who will witness the restoration of habeas corpus and international air travel, and who may even live to see us re-admitted to the Eurovision Song Contest.

(6 replies, Latest reply: May 22, 2009)

Hillsborough
Apr 15, 2009


I met a guy today and expected him to rib me mercilessly. He's a mad-keen Forest fan, a rare species who don't have much to shout about these days, but two days ago his ten-man team held out for a goalless draw at Bramall Lane. I guessed he would have plenty to say about the ruins of the Blades' automatic promotion hopes.

Not a word of it. He wasn't exactly subdued, but he was very formal and reserved, not at all like a guy who I've known for years. Before I put my foot in it, the penny dropped. He'd probably been in Sheffield on another weekend 20 years ago.

As we parted, it was my friend who brought it up. He'd been there, and yet not there, he said. He was at the other end. He left, as the authorities requested, soon after the game was called off. He kept well out of the way, and went home on the coach in silence. He never saw any of the horror close up. The only people he knows who shared the experience shared it at the same distance. It's been a detached and haunting memory for him ever since.

I know people who were far closer. An off-shift policeman whose mates were right among it. A doctor who was called into the casualty department of the Northern General. I've met guys who survived the crush. None of them made me any more pensive than this respectful man without a real story to tell.

I'm glad he reminded me. I've got into the habit of thinking, perhaps not wholly wrongly, that good came out of the tragedy. But today we should all remember those poor people who lost their lives.

(3 replies, Latest reply: Apr 30, 2009)

Echoes of the Iron Lady
Apr 1, 2009


Our Marketing Manager is a young tyro. A pretty decent bloke actually, albeit one with the annoying habit of having more hours in his day than I have. Today he found some relics in a storeroom. It's well known that I like relics, so I got first peek.

One is enclosed in a rather swish faux leather brief in Oxford blue, and the contents are a two-page typewritten memorandum of understanding. Among the signatures on the document is that of Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister. It's dated October 1981, and it records the Sicartsa plate mill contract. That project was a bit of a scandal in its day:
http://www.threegorgesprobe.org/pro...iousDebts/OdiousDebts/chapter8.html
but it saved a lot of people's jobs in Davy, the precursor business of my present employer. I would probably have been out of a job myself if it wasn't for Margaret, though I knew little of what was going on at the time. I was making a mess of the Finnish steel industry at the time.

They never built the mill in Mexico, incidentally. It was delivered to the customer, but most of it was never taken out of its packing cases. Fifteen years later it was finally built, and operates to this day, at Dongkuk Steel in South Korea.

Strange world, innit? I've half-convinced myself that the latest reason for Orgreave unacceptability is that the BBC feels obliged to be super-deferent to the half-dead. And here's fate conspiring to remind me that I owe the dreadful old bat something myself.

(No replies)

Stretching
Jan 24, 2009


Now that it's started, I think this might be the right place for some personal feelings about The Stretcher.

Credit to Rich for the impetus and the balance. It isn't the way I'd have thought of doing it, and I guess GB would say the same. It's a good and equitable way though.

That said, Rich is wrong when he pictures himself as the fulcrum of a see-saw, with his fellow judges at opposite ends. Writing isn't one dimensional, for a start. And people are rarely poles of a spectrum because heads aren't fixed that way, not even mine.

Being a Stretcher judge is a privilege, and all privileges come with responsibilities attached. Subjectivity is no good here, and partiality even less so. I decided to score with a system, and I'll explain it soon. I don't think I'll be giving away clues by doing so, because individual winners aren't the point of The Stretcher. If there is to be a winning outcome, it will be a full set of competitors, (plus everyone who dips in as reader, supporter or occasional contributor) all knowing they're better for it, all learning something and all feeling fulfilled.

One round in, and the standard is fantastic. The level of interest too, is higher than wildest expectations. I'm a little bit circumspect about riling dmitri (mainly because he didn't get what I meant), but he's got the temperament and he's certainly got the writing ability to punch me back. I'm a little more worried about us collectively crushing mini. Please stay with it mini, because the critics are learning too.

The cliché about everyone being a winner already is true though, and the trick is to have everyone believe it. Entering this was a brave thing to do. A commitment to stretch, moreover, really means a promise to raise your own bar, and to try things that make you feel uncomfortable. The limits and the achievements are personal and the competition is relative. For the majority of people in this thing, there’s one genre or other that's going to be an out-of-comfort-zone stretch. Then again, there are a few who write adequately (or indeed better than that) in pretty well any style, and do it without having to try too hard. It's the judges' job to sting those people should they be tempted to coast.

More important, every single participant has provided great Entries to h2g2 already. I've picked out one by each entrant as their personal benchmark. So I'm looking at fourteen pieces, each in its own way as good as anything you'll read in the Guide. When this is over, and if anyone's interested, I'll consider telling you which of your past achievements I started out measuring you against. (Merry Anne is probably bemused by this. She's measured against who I think she might be, and if she's somebody else who struggles to live up, then serves her right for being anonymous).

'Started out' measuring, because the Stretcher fully realised will replace every one of those fourteen brilliant Entries with a better one, and in some cases it'll do it several times over. The first set of offerings have seen a couple of benchmarks matched, though none are yet decisively bettered. A couple of efforts fall well short too, it has to be said.

That's the mark that The Stretcher sets for everyone then: to achieve new standards better than your own past ones, and to keep doing it across a broad front of different writing challenges.

Simple, innit? Well maybe not. I was chuffed when Rich asked me to judge, but I’ve realised I’m a bit relieved too, now that I’ve had time to think about it. I'm not as brave as you lot. I'm not at all sure I'd have dared put myself where the Fourteen have.

Respect. And to every one of you I really mean that. You're the Best of Hootoo, and the Best of Hootoo is pretty damn good.

(11 replies, Latest reply: Feb 6, 2009)