The Memory Hole

Some fresh thinking on constitutional reform (from the 17th Century):

“If the very existence of arbitrary powers take away freedom, because they take away consent to power, then the first thing you have to do is to abolish abritrary powers, which have not been consented to at least by the represented will, at least by election.

“So the monarchy has to go straight away. The House of Lords has to go straight away. All ministerial discretion with respect to statute has to go, straight away. Furthermore your most fundamental rights must be enshrined beyond the powers even of the sovereign and elected legislature. So there must be a written constitution as well. So there you have four features of a constitutional revolution, which were proposed at the time of the regicide and the establishment of the English Republic, none of which four features have we yet managed to establish.”

On beauty:

“Who does the beauty industry benefit, other than the beauty industry? It sells products that don’t really work to people who don’t really need them at prices they can’t really afford - and it does this by making them hate the present and fear the future.”

And some handy tips for aspiring bloggers:

“Your blog can get you fired, remember. If you are going to have a Bebo or Hi5 page that is accessible to the public, then the best bet is apparently to project the image of a smiley, outgoing, success-driven, active, sporting, party-hard, go-getting sort of narcissistic dimwit: a miniature celebrity, with friends apparently growing out of every crevice. Employers love that shit.”

Nice promotional video from the US-based media reform campaign group Free Press:

In the words of Robert McChesney:

“The real issue is, why do we create and subsidize media systems built around profit-maximization and advertising in the manner that we do? I am reminded of the Chinese student dissidents in the late 1980s, when they protested the meetings of Chinese government leaders with elected heads-of-state. “Who elected you?” they would chant. That is the question to be asked about the WGNs and AT&Ts in our world: “who elected you?””

Out of the mouths of babes and British Colonels (hat-tip):

“We have exactly the same problem [as Israel] ourselves when, for example, we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, and of course we have to use aerial weapons like artillery and white phosphorus, and we do use those weapons, even in areas that do have a certain amount of civilian population.”

Richard Kemp, speaking on Radio 4’s The World Tonight, is “an army veteran of 30 years who commanded British forces in Afghanistan in 2003”, and “was a senior adviser to the Government on military issues”, according to the programme. The practice he’s describing – the use of indiscriminate conventional and chemical weapons in civilian areas – is, of course, a major war crime.

An insight, courtesy of the lovely people at pro-aviation lobby group Flying Matters, into a vital outsourced arm of the modern news factory:

“Michelle di Leo denied the suggestion Flying Matters had offered funding. “We did not offer the All Party Parliamentary Aviation Group money. We offered to help them with their secretarial work, not set their agenda. Our role is to get attention for issues. Yes we generated headlines. That's what PR people do. They place stories.

“The Flying Matters papers claim that the group’s lobbying of politicians, civil servants and the media persuaded MPs and ministers to adopt the industry line on airport expansion, despite environmental concerns. It adds: “A combination of media coverage and private briefings by Flying matters helped ensure the Conservatives backed away from Quality of Life recommendations on a [green] air tax. And The DfT [and] the secretary of state [are] adopting Flying Matters lines in public comment.” ...

“The group also claims that it has “generated” sympathetic headlines about the need to expand airports and avoid green taxes in the Sun, the Sunday Times, and the Evening Standard. It also claims to have placed stories in the Times and Independent. “FM-led stories [have been] placed and hundreds of FM comments and mentions [have been made] in articles”, says the document.”

If generating headlines and placing stories is what PR people do these days, what, we may be moved to wonder, do journalists actually do? Edit and arrange PR people’s copy? Actually, more often than not the answer is yes.

Do read the Guardian’s report on this in full, incidentally - it attests to a shocking level of endemic corruption in our political system and media (if more evidence of this phenomenon were needed). Delightfully, some kindly soul has also dropped a copy of Flying Matters’ report into Greenpeace’s inbox - it’s now available here. Have a gander.

UPDATE: Now this – from Elliott Morley, “a minister in the environment department Defra from 2003 to 2006” – is rather interesting an’ all ...

“Britain’s efforts to cut carbon emissions have been hampered by government infighting and a reluctance to stand up to industry, according to the UK’s former climate change minister.

“... Policies to cut carbon and help the environment were dismissed inside Whitehall as “idealistic and not giving enough attention to the pragmatic needs of industry”, he said.

“... Crucial changes to building standards to make homes more energy efficient were delayed because of industry lobbying, he said.

““It came down to this argument about the costs to industry, which is what the energy people thought was their priority,” Morley said. “Defra would sometimes be presented as a department that was too idealistic and not giving enough attention to the pragmatic needs of industry.”

“... “Why on earth are we still building hospitals without combined heat and power? The answer is the tendering process and the private finance initiative.””

As ever, business as good as runs the country – and runs the rest of us into the ground.