Is this for real? Do people really think the BBC is a sinister left-wing organisation? (via)
Goes without saying:
After all, without the BBC, there’d be no Doctor Who.
BBC+Guardian=Danger?
Reply
Category Archives: akatsuki: whatrot
Pesky pre-primary pussyfooting
Any semi-regular reader (that’s you, you and you over there who reads the food posts) can guess on which arm of the political spectrum I lie. (Or quadrant, if left and right are too simple for you.) So you must have been rather pleased that I haven’t been inundating these pages1 with posts about the current drive to select the US presidential candidates who will be duking it out in the final contest this November. It’s not that I’m not interested. It’s just that, as a foreigner, I can’t vote. But I can tell you who I would have voted for last Tuesday if I could have. Or would have wanted to vote for if s|he existed.
Quite simply, I would have voted for someone who is/was opposed to invading Iraq, has plans for getting Iraq back to civility, is pro-Social Security, can keep an open mind on stem cell research, supports choice in schools, leans towards fair trade, is pro-labour (the workers, not the UK party), is pro-choice, pro-gay partnership/marriage, anti-death penalty, will bring in gun-control legislation, will act on environmental concerns, fix the crazy US health care system, and isn’t a complete nutjob.
According to one of the very many presidential selection tools out there2, such a candidate DOES NOT EXIST. Hmm, funny that. If this were the UK, quite a few possibilities would have flagged up on all issues except that most important qualifier of not being a nutjob. But, of the US contenders, Dennis Kuchinich came up tops, followed closely by Barack Obama, then Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. No need to even ask where any of the Republican candidates came in. If akatsukira ran the world, those guys would be given a small island in the middle of nowhere3 and told to just get on with it.
So, now you know. Wish you hadn’t started reading, eh?
1 Quite unlike the blog diarrhoea I subjected you to in 2005 then.
2 Ones that compare policy and not hair styles.
3 Kiribati, anyone?
Here’s another thing to complain about, S’poreans
Singapore: a clean, tropical island state that has strongly discouraged1 public performances of the fairly innocuous Complaints Choir (the original Birmingham version, in the home country of the bright sparks who thought it up-Helsinki and elsewhere in the world). (via the ever on-the-ball Elia Diodati)
Copied and pasted from the choir’s website, an explanation of the brouha from the choir’s point of view:
ATTENTION! UPDATE: “All public performances of the Complaints Choir of Singapore have been cancelled. The Singaporean authorities did not want to issue a permission for public performances if foreign choir members wouldn’t leave the choir. The choir has few members who are permanently living in Singapore but who are not Citizens. The Malaysian born choir conductor and the artists Tellervo Kalleinen & Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen weren´t given a permission to perform either.
The choir decided that they did not want to perform under these circumstances and hence all public performances were cancelled.
Complaints Choir is a project, where people are invited to complain about anything they want to and sing the complaints out with fellow complainers. The individual complaints are transformed into a cheerful choir song within a workshop process, which unites participants coming from different backgrounds.
The humorous complaints choir performances have been popular all over the world. This is the first time the Complaints Choir project created negative attention due to the reactions of authorities.
The lyrics contain mostly daily irritations like “People put on fake accents to sound posh” and “My neighbour sings KTV all night”. In the chorus the choir sings: “What’s wrong with Singapore, loosing always makes me feel so sore, cause if you are not the best then you are just one of the rest. Oh my, oh Singapore, what exactly are we voting for. What’s not expressively permitted is prohibited”. The relation between daily complaints and political ones were in average the same than in other countries where the project has been realised. The authorities did not come to follow the rehearsals before making their decision.
It was a strong provocation for us to hear that the authorities wanted the Non-Singaporean choir members to be excluded from the choir performances. This would have spoilt the project’s intention to create a strong sense of community, a community that is based on shared complaints about life in Singapore here and now.
We are disappointed that our prejudices against Singapore have been affirmed. We find it irritating that foreigners – people that built this city, nurse Singaporean kids and bring in their knowledge – are not allowed to complain.” – Tellervo + Oliver Kalleinen
I honestly can’t think of a country where the inhabitants complain more than Singaporeans. It’s part of our cultural identity. Even if the government was the most benevolent in the world (which they would have you believe), Singaporeans would still find something to complain about. Amongst the physical complaints the Complaints Choir lists are the humidity (geawd the humidity hits you hard when you land), the population density (everyone is stacked over someone else, even when you’re dead) and the lack of natural resources. Cultural complaints include the kiasu and kiasi mentality (it follows you out of the country; i should know). There are maybe one or two sly comments about the governing body, but nothing scandalous and a common complaint the world over.
According to the choir, the government’s main complaint2 is the inclusion of non-Singaporeans in the choir. While the choir could well choose to perform with a cast of only Singaporeans by birth, but that would be, um what’s an un-sue-able word, overly nationalist? Ah, these meddlesome foreigners – teaching innocent Singaporeans how to complain, making them dissatisfied with their lot, encouraging them to find their voice (wot they already have, albeit only when they’re sure the room isn’t bugged).
Some even-keeled local response3.
1 I want to say banned here. It has been all-but-banned, but technically, they’ve just made it impossible to get a performing licence without the choir losing its conductor and some of its performers.
2 fully intended sans apology.
3 It’s appropriate how the link has been auto/deliberately truncated to “complaints-choi”, “choi” being a dialect (Hokkien? Cantonese?) word exclaimed when you want to negate the possibility of something happening. Kinda like “touch wood”.
Update: For fear of the lyrics and the youtube video disappearing into the ether as sometimes happens, copied and pasted below.
THE COMPLAINTS CHOIR SINGAPORE LYRICS
We get fined for almost everything
Drivers won’t ‘give chance’ when you want to ‘change lane’
The indoors are cold, the outdoors are hot;
And the humid air, it wrecks my hair
Those answering machines always make you hold
Only to hang up on youWhen a pregnant lady gets on the train
Everyone pretends to be asleep
I’m stuck with my parents till I’m 35
Cause I can’t apply for HDB
We don’t recycle any plastic bags
But we purify our pee*chorus:
What’s wrong with Singapore?
Losing always makes me feel so sore
Cause if you’re not the best
Then you’re just one of the restMy oh my Singapore
What exactly are we voting for?
What’s not expressly permitted
is prohibited“Ooh”
When I’m hungry at the food court, I see
People ‘chope’ seats with their tissue paper
To the aunty staying upstairs:
Your laundry’s dripping on my bed sheets
Please don’t squat on the toilet seats
And don’t clip your nails on MRTStray cats get into noisy affairs
At night my neighbor makes weird animal sounds
People put on fake accents to sound posh
And queue up 3 hours for donuts
Will I ever live till eighty five
to collect my CPF?*chorus
Singaporeans too kiasu! (so scared to lose)
Singaporeans too kiasi! (so scared o die)
Singaporeans too kiabor!(scared of their wives)
Maybe we’re just too stressed out! (even the kids)“Ooh”
Old National Library was replaced by an ugly tunnel
Singaporean men can’t take independent women
People blow their nose into the swimming pool
And fall asleep on my shoulder in the trainSingapore’s national bird is the crane (the one with yellow steel girders)
Real estate agents’ leaflets clogging up my mailbox (en bloc, en bloc; en bloc, en bloc)
Why can’t we be buried when we die?
No one wants to climb Bukit Timah with me*chorus
“Ooh”
There are not enough public holidays
My neighbor sings KTV all night
Wedding dinners never start on time
My hair is always cut shorter than I want
Channel 5 commercials are way too long
Why do men turn bad?*At first it was to speak more mandarin
Then it was to speak proper English
What’s wrong with my powderful Singlish?People sit down during rock concerts
We have to pay for tap water at restaurants
ERP gantries are everywhere
But I can still see traffic jams on the road
All the bus stops have tilted benches to keep you off balance*chorus
Nail SOCPA before it nails you
Just a quickie while I grapple with iMovie to make yet another dire home video and struggle with the RAW files off the beast.
In the run-up to the public consultation on the authoritarian SOCPA laws, various liberal-leaning folk like Curious Hamster and Tim Ireland have been discussing looseness of such laws and the potential for abuse of power in interpreting said laws. As a generally liberal-leaning person, it’s a given that I agree. Furthermore, having lived in an authoritarian state, I urge you to think about what would happen if the no-demo area was extended further. You would soon end up in a situation not unlike Singapore, where even Critical Mass rides require prior police permission, and even then may have caveats (via). Even worse, it breeds an entire generation that dare not raise its head too far above the parapet1. Chilling, no? Best do something about it then.
1 Something like that Japanese proverb: “The nail that sticks its head up is the one that gets hit.“
Trumptown
The Trumptown saga continues.
What bothers me the most about the whole affair is the speed with which the Scottish government involved itself. The “call in” happened just a bit too fast to be due process. Surely some pressure was placed on them.
Having been in the US for a couple of years now, I think I can safely accuse the Americans of the bad practice of wanting everything done yesterday. Everything has to happen as fast as possible. Delays are always the fault of someone else slowing the process down. If the job is not done at superhuman speed, then someone must be deliberately sabotaging the process so the competitors can get ahead. Corners can be cut willy nilly to get the job done fast. And that’s in academia – historically one of the slowest fields. Imagine the speed of things in the heady world of property development. The Trump team will probably be a prime example of doing whatever it takes to close the deal asap. That’s not a surprise.
What is surprising is that the Scottish government feels the need to circumvent the usual appeals process and deal with the rejected plan so soon. It is surprising that they feel the need to accommodate the Trump team to the extent of not following procedure. The council must have rejected the property plan for good reasons. While I’ve not had a chance to find out what those are yet, if I were the Scottish government, I’d look into that first and ignore outside lobbying until they’ve had some impartial advice. In particular, the hurrying by the Trump team should not be heeded; Donald Trump’s spokesperson was quoted as saying:
“These attacks are more than misguided; they are malicious, inaccurate and potentially destructive and they threaten to once again endanger a £1 billion project which has the overwhelming backing of the North-east of Scotland.”
A cynic would read between the lines and translate their statement as a threat: “If you keep interfering with our deal, we’re taking it off the table and screw you silly Scots for not wanting our easy money.”
I say: ignore them. We expect our politicians to make their decisions:
“steadily, sensibly, never too quickly, never too slowly”
In the Ca(f)Ca – Wendy A.
Holyrood’s Donorgate has been superseded by the Trumptown affair . But that shouldn’t stop us from enjoying this montage tri(al)bute to Labour’s buck-stopper at Holyrood. (via Tartan Hero)
Just wait till I get out my inkjet
As a researcher, albeit of a different speciality, if I put out crap that hung on a tenuous piece of evidence, I’d be jobless. Granted, I have a modicum of control over my experimental settings. But if the result is not what I predicted or does not fit my hypothesis, I don’t go searching for ways to make it fit. That would be unethical.
Again, like most of the recent political hoohahs, what is most scandalous about the Policy Exchange receipt affair isn’t the bigotry, poor research or jumping to conclusions; it’s the possibility that some of the evidence was artificial. Storm in a teacup1? We’ll have to wait and see.
I would like to link to Policy Exchange’s comments about the Newsnight program, but there are no permalinks to their press releases dated 12th and 13th of December. Newsnight, on the other hand, has these for our reading pleasure.
1 You have to admit, such scandals make more interesting watching.
Le Roi s’Ennuié. Vive le Roi.
The reigning monarch has abdicated. Long live the new monarch.
Lib Dem spat/row/silliness
As much as I dislike slander in modern-day politics, sometimes I think reactions to name-calling can get even worse than the original infraction. Take the case of the recent nastiness involving Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne. It was not nice of the Huhne camp to coin the “Calamity” nickname. Perhaps more than not nice; irresponsible, even, to say something like that publicly about your fellow man, let alone your party-mate. Stupid too; it can further split an already disparate party. But the Clegg camp also had a choice to turn a deaf ear. Instead of bringing attention to the silly name-calling, they could have taken the better, unseen, unheard higher ground of ignoring something so petty and childish. By lodging the complaint, they helped it along to newsworthiness, and also helped to bring their own party into disgrace.
I don’t care which of these gentleman become the next Lib Dem leader. I just want the party to hurry up and become that third force of political power they’ve been struggling to live up to these last few years.
Asexuality
I’d like to state for the record that Singaporeans reproduce asexually or via IVF. Sex is not condoned in the island republic, even on their aircraft, and should not be undertaken by anybody. Furthermore, sex between two same-sex individuals could cause the economy to collapse.
This is not a laughing matter.
