Barrister
Sam Marlowe is scathing about Shilpa’s new show:
Given the anguish and humiliation that Shilpa Shetty suffered in the Celebrity Big Brother house this year, the British public are probably prepared to forgive her almost anything. Even so, she is pushing her luck with this shoddy piece of opportunism.
She should have taken my advice and gone for a six-part drama.
One interesting quirk of the new Liberal Conspiracy site (at least, for me) is the comments policy.
We believe in free speech but not your right to abuse our space.
In the past few years, I have scrolled through countless online debates about the nature of free-speech versus reasoned debate. I have read innumberable criticisms of Blogistan as a place of visceral name-calling. I think the policy arrived at reads like a conclusion, or at least, a summing up, of all those online debates. To one who is new to online discourse, it might seem surprising. But I am sure that those who have been part of the blog hive mind for a while, would have found themselves nodding, knowingly. Its unapologetic, and pre-emptive tone seems to be very much “of” its time, and the Internet.
I have heard it twice in seven days. Twice, at two very interesting events, run by two very respectable think-tanks: Its those dreaded Daily Mail readers who are to blame.
In both cases, that journal was being used as a convenient short-hand – to signify something right-wing, reactionary, and irrational. The implication is that there are all these subscribers out there who are somehow intractable. A block of voters who can be persuaded of nothing.
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The Fifth of November is well known for its conspiracies, and another one is hatched today. LiberalConspiracy.org is a place for the progressive left in Britain to gather and debate. It seeks to be a hub where politicians, interest groups, think tanks, writers and bloggers can co-ordinate their campaigns and ideas. There is much to be done.
I am part of the founding cabal of bloggers, and in future some of my posts here will be cross-posted at the Liberal Conspiracy site.
Tory candidate Nigel Hastilow has resigned in a ‘Rivers of Blood’ row. His choice of words in his Express and Star article is noteworthy:
“When you ask most people in the Black Country what the single biggest problem facing the country is, most say immigration,” he wrote. “Many insist: ‘Enoch Powell was right.’
My emphasis. Notice the way in which he attributes rather unpleasant views to other people. Hastilow then goes onto say: “He was right. It has changed dramatically”
No doubt his supporters will claim that he is not actually endorsing Enoch Powell’s views. That he is merely reporting other people endorsing such views. No doubt that his supporters will claim that it is true that Britain has changed dramatically. What’s he done wrong!?
The answer is that he is guilty of a double slieght-of-pen. First, by presenting the arguments of “many” other people, he is citing them approvingly and endorsing them. Its a trick of prose employed precisely to give himself cover, when he raises Powell’s spectre. He does not question the legitimacy of those views, nor make the distinction clear.
Second: The phrase “changed dramatically” When Powell sent out his warning, he saw it in purely negative terms. So “changed dramatically” is incomplete? For the better or worse, Nigel? Or about the same, Nigel? Or just dramatically different, Nigel? (why are all Tory candidates called Nigel?) Either Hastilow is also endorsing Powell’s fear that Britain is dramatically worse because of immigration… Or he is employing a meaningless truism. If the former, then he should rightly be ashamed of himself. If the latter, then he is being disingenuous.
It is an irritating turn of events I wish would never have happened. Hastilow’s dexterity with words, which surely come so easy to former newspaper editor, allow him to conjour up a shield of righteousness. You can bet he is not contrite, and that he will, in time, cite his forced withdrawl of his candidacy as an example of the Politically Correct elite knee-jerking him out the door.
But it is no such thing.
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