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Stalinist Santa?

Tis now the season to be jolly, so I have posted something festive over at The Sharpener: Would you let this man into your home?
It concerns the politics of Father Christmas, who by my analysis is a dangerous Stalinist. If you think he is of a different political hue, then please do visit The Sharpener and set me straight.

Update

Now reproduced in full, below.

There’s a crude and simple way to distinguish, should you care to, your right from your left. Waistlines.

I’ve been reading Paul’s polemic, which states that Left-wingers are fatter than Right-wingers. It occurs to me that Father Christmas is a well-known fat bastard, famous for (among other things) scoffing mince-pies and slurping sherry that is not his own, at fire-places up and down this land. He would definitely be a ‘Lefty’ by Paul’s criteria.
This hypothesis is certainly backed up by other facts too. He wears red tunic, long time favourite colour of the revolutionary left. And of course he is interested in the systemised redistribution of presents, in apparent disregard of market forces.
Don’t let that beard and Norwegian charm fool you. This guy is no hippie. He is a dangerous authoritarian. If you do not conform to his insidious conception of ‘nice’ you risk being classified ‘naughty’ and denied basic presents. Everyone is kept under surveillance, parents are turned into informants on their own children and Santa catalogues the good deeds and the bad. What is more, he can only deliver his presents if he keeps a comprehensive computerised database of names and chimney locations. It is only a matter of time before this information is shared with the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny, and before you know it a cheeky request on a Christmas list from five years ago could see you lose all profits from your tooth harvest.
Its not as if the system fosters any kind of equality anyway. We all know that although Santa’s ‘presents for all populism might appear to treat each case on its merits, but when the service is applied on the ground we find evidence of blatant institutional racism. It is a well-known fact that Father Christmas is less likely to visit children from Muslim, Hindu and Sikh families. Yes yes, we’ve all heard the excuse about a lack of available chimneys, but I notice that Santa will gladly slip in through the French windows for middle-class atheist families. He is also happy to pocket the filthy shill from Coca-cola Company for corporate sponsorship, but do you see the elves getting a pay-rise? No, the fat bastard Father Christmas is a Lefty in name only.
Time was when young people would have cared about the questionable ethics of their largest benefactor. But not this generation. Oh no. The ‘me’ generation too busy talking about X-boxes and X-factor to even consider whether Santa’s seal-skin boots were bought Fair Trade or not. They see the presents dangled in front of their eyes, and once again they fall for his patter. They will let him into their bedrooms, and there is nothing the parents can do about it. Only when Santa has sledged off into the night sky will the parents be called to sort out the misery in his wake. Once again, the cumbersome, centralised, present giving system will not have supplied batteries for the presents, and decent, hard-working parents will be called in to pick-up the tab.

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Today in the media…

A full schedule for a lot of people today, it seems.
Sunny Hundal of Pickled Politics is going to begin a media blitz today, with an article in the Guardian and some radio appearances, promoting his New Generation Network.
Edinburgh blogger Devil’s Kitchen is making an appearance on 18 Doughty Street today too.
Finally, the BBC Asian Network Report will be airing a documentary Sex, Lies, and Culture, co-produced by the BBC and myself for Fifty Nine:

Are young Asians taking unnecessary risks with their sexual health? Brook Advisory Services, the national sexual health charity, are calling for further investigation into worrying information about Asians visiting their Birmingham clinic. They found higher proportions of Asians were likely to have unprotected sex, and to request emergency contraception, pregnancy testing and referrals for an abortion. They were also less likely to be tested for sexually transmitted infections. The Birmingham clinic saw aImost 4, 500 Asians under 25 years old last year, fewer than other ethnic groups. In Sex, Lies and Culture Anita Rani investigates whether the strict attitudes of older Asians has created a generation which isn’t informed about safe sex.

There should be some media coverage of those issues on the BBC 6 o’clock News, and also in The Times.
More soon…

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The Impact of Blogs

There has been a spate of articles in recent months about the impact of blogging. I wrote a short article for October’s Writing Magazine, tackling the subject from the point of view of the aspiring writer. It was fun to try and condense all I have learnt into just a thousand words. I guess seasoned bloggers will find very little here that they don’t already know, but I hope it provided some thinking points for those who have yet to venture online.
Call it blogging or ‘citizen journalism,’ online self-publishing is becoming an unavoidable part of human discourse. High-profile bloggers are invited to comment on radio programmes, while broadsheet newspapers run a daily round-up of the ‘blogosphere’. Top American blogs (such as Instapundit and Boing-Boing) receive thousands of hits every day. Every political campaign has an associated blog, and MPs are using the medium to re-engage with their constituents. In March, the Guardian inaugurated www.CommentIsFree.com, a ‘super-blog’ with contributions from the paper’s regular columnists.
Clearly, blogs are something that writers must engage with. The Internet is changing the nature of writing – especially journalistic writing. Aspiring and established journalists should seek to understand the implications of this 21st Century medium… even if they have no intention of writing anything online themselves.
Continue reading “The Impact of Blogs”

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War and Peace at T'Sharpener

Its been a little while since I engaged with the Iraq War debate. A short piece from me at The Sharpener resurrects the perennial argument of whether it was right to invade when we did:

As people come out with expressions of regret that they supported the war, they rarely do so with reference to those who do not regret protesting against it. I wonder if there are any hawks out there who now think that some of the protesters had a point? Reading people’s analyses of their own decisions on the matter, it is as if there was no opposition to the war but a bunch of shrill communists who took a stroll through Hyde Park.

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The LIP Magazine Round-up

The latest issue of our magazine, The LIP, was published in August.
From the editorial:

The LIP bucks the trend of expecting young contributors to offer their work for free in order to get a ‘foot in the door’. At the LIP, we hold the door open…

I admit I’m not sure just how old Young Master Worstall actually is… but the theme of the issue was ‘Media’, and who better to discuss the blog-hype than the editor of 2005: Blogged?
Other hightlights include interviews with Times War correspondent Anthony LLoyd; columnist Giles Coren (“I won’t write anything for less than a thousand quid”); maverick publisher Pete Ayrton; Al Jazeera’s Head of International and Media relations, Satnam Matharu; and a fascinating insight into the BNP mentality, courtesy of a chat with their press officer, Dr Phil Edwards (not the same as the homononynous author of Actually Existing). You can read the full articles by buying a copy online. We would appreciate your support and feedback.
Although only excerpts are available for the latest issue, we have full archive of the previous six issues online. Throughout, we have asked what it means to live in a smaller, more globalised world, and what (if anything) multiculturalism actually means. For the Dalai Lama, it is as much a project of stressing similarities between peoples, as it is about celebrating diversity. Ziauddin Sardar takes a more militant approach, and sees multiculturalism as a force to “transform and subvert the power of western civilisation.” For Roger Scruton the concept is “a toxic product of postmodernism that dissolves the ties that bind society together”. Nigerian novelist Helen Oyeyemi, thinks multiculturalism is “a big old fallacy.” While Paul Boateng MP agrees that it is “a word that people interpret to suit their own ideological purpose,” he nevertheless still values “the reality of a multi-racial society – vibrant and exciting, [and] enriched by cultural diversity.”
So far, author Hanif Kureishi’s definition of multiculturalism is my favourite. He says “multiculturalism is the idea that one might be changed by other ideas”. It is a movement based on the dialogic exchange of ideas, even traditions, based on “the idea that purity is incestuous”.