Tales from the Bitface

Who’d have thought Tony Wilson would have been so sensible? Just watching the election results on BBC1, and Anthony H was interviewed in a Manchester bar, saying, Stick with what you believe in … Blair made a terrible mistake in Iraq, and probably even he realises it now … we’ll get a bloody nose, but we’ll still be breathing. All downright good sense from where I’m sitting.

Which reminds me, I must see Twenty-Four Hour Party People.

In my last post I mentioned my uninjured right leg, but I realise that most people reading won’t know about my injury. A couple of weeks ago, on a Saturday morning, I fell down from a raised area in our back garden. I landed with pretty much all my (not insigificant) weight on my left leg. and twisted my knee quite badly. The consultant thinks I’ve busted my anterior cruciate ligament, but I’m still waiting for an appointment for an MRI scan to confirm the diagnosis.

So I’m hobbling around with a crutch and a knee brace, mostly annoyed with myself, because if I’d stepped more carefully, or been wearing different shoes, it probably wouldn’t have happened. The offending, extra-slippery trainers have been cast out into the recycling bin where there will be weeping, gnashing of teeth, and, hopefully, recycling. But it’ll be a long time, I fear, until I’m cycling again.

Back on politics, who are these people who, apparently, want Britain to leave the European Union? What kind of madness is that? I mean, aside from the probable contribution of the EU and its predecessors to keeping peace in Europe for the last fifty years, and the advantages I listed here; aside from all that: who the hell do they think we’d trade with?

They’ve just announced that UKIP have won a council seat in Hull. Mental. Ooh, the BNP have lost a seat in Burnley. Good.

I’m writing this on my Psion (surprisingly hard to find a decent link for that nowadays) while sitting watching the TV. Said Psion broke down the other day. I sent it to POS in Streatham to get fixed.. It came back today, and it has turned green (from being black before). There was no explanation, but I assume that what they’ve done is, rather than repair my one, they’ve transplanted the guts of it into a reconditioned body. It’s quite fetching, really.

I like the mood of the discussion on election-night programs: it’s serious, of course, but there’s a lightness. You get a bit of banter between the presenters and the guests. Of course, it was a lot bleaker during the dark-blue days of the eighties and early- to mid-nineties…

I don’t understand why there’s so much fuss over the postal ballots this time: we had them for the last two elections here in Hackney (first London Mayoral and local council). This time it’s back to proper polling booths, though. I much prefer it that way. How to increase turnout: let polling go on for, say, three days, and/or make polling day a national public holiday, as someone was suggesting in The Guardian the other day.

It is my custom (or has been at the last two general elections, at least) to broadcast, shortly before an election, to those I know, my thoughts and advice on the forthcoming event.  Should the mood take you, you can look back at what I wrote in 1997 and 2001.  Back then I did it by emailing a load of people.  Nowadays we have blogs.

This time, though, I haven’t managed to get my thoughts out in advance.  Then again, it’s not a general election.

I’ve voted Labour at every election since I’ve been able to vote.  Oh, I think I might have thrown one of my transferrable votes to the Greens in the London Mayoral and Assembly ones last time, but basically its been Labour all the way.¹

This time, though, I wasn’t sure.

You know the reasons, I’m sure: Iraq; ID cards; err, that’s enough, really.  Did I still wan’t to support the part that I hadn’t been entirely happy with since it got the “New” tag?

But what are the alternatives?  The Greens, I’ve been thinking recently, are too luddite for me.  Obviously we shouldn’t pollute the environment, and we should do all we can to reduce energy use and carbon emissions; but I fear the Greens are largely anti-technology, and worse, are bordering on the being the type who put animal rights above human rights, which I can’t countenance.  Note that I have no hard evidence to hand for either of those concerns, but I could probably find some with a little research.  if not, and I do them a disservice, well, I’m sure they’ll live.

I thought about the Lib Dems, who are clearly the most pro-Europe of the parties.  I’m sure they’d be fine in many ways.  But in London, for example, they don’t want to increase the size of the Congestion Charge zone.  I think it should cover the whole city.  Or at least come out as far as Hackney.  Anyway, despite my Labour concerns, I was always going to vote for Ken for Mayor again.

I would cut off my uninjured right leg before voting Tory, of course (hey let’s see who says they would scrap the Congestion Charge: Tories, BNP, UKIP; hmmm, is there a common theme there?)  And none of the smaller independents really seem to have it.

Last night I decided. and today I went out and voted.  Labour, in all available boxes.  Because the London Mayor, and Assembly and MEPs aren’t Tony Blair or David Blunkett.  And when it comes to the next general election I’ll probably conclude that Brian Sedgemore, my MP, isn’t them either, and vote for him.

If you haven’t been to your friendly local polling station or postbox today, get on out there.  Remember: all those D-Day heroes that were on the telly recently died so that you could.

I wish Ken MacLeod had comments enabled.  His Midnight Fathers piece is just genius, and something we should all try to live by.

In my OU course we’re studying Rousseau at the moment.  So at tonight’s tutorial the tutor asked us to, in groups of three or four, discuss our ideal society.

As the good SF-fanarchist that I am, I suggested Iain Banks‘s Culture as a model.  Not by name, and I didn’t mention spaceships or Minds — we don’t want to raise too many demons at once. I suggsted to the others in my group that a perfect society could only be achieved in a post-scarcity environment, with unlimited resources freely available to all.  This led logically to the absence of money and government.

Admittedly I had no mechanism by which this could be achieved, but it was fun to discuss for ten minutes or so.  My group (none of whom I know, really) were surprisingly receptive, though the woman who had been taking notes somewhat misrepresented the points we had discussed when we reported back to the class.
It was disappointing how tame the rest of the ideas were; and what was really surprising — no: shocking — was that one of the other groups suggested increased patriotism as one of the points they wanted.

That’s one of the things they wanted in their ideal society.

More patriotism. Really.

I kind of wish I’d been (and I’m kind of glad I wasn’t) in that group.

I have a bunch of partly- or nearly-finished peices sitting in a folder on my Psion.  I’ve decided to post them more or less as they are, in the interest of clearing the decks.  In some sense I think their presence is psychologically wieighing me down.  In the interest of not boring people I’ll be putting them behind cut links, so you can easily ignore them if you wish..

Intersections in realtime

On Friday I made it out to the pub for ‘s birthday drinks, which was reason enough for pleasure and excitement in itself; but it had the added attraction of introducing me to a number of SF lumminaries and LiveJournal friends for the first time.

As well as and who of course I knew already, there were ; Claire and Mark of Croydon fandom; , whom I actually know a little from way back (The Chester Connection); and a couple of others whose LJ names, if any, I didn’t get, and whose real names I have now sadly forgotten. Sorry about that.

Then after a bit turned up, and we discovered a common interest in Psion PDAs. Still later arrived with friend whom I assume was

And lastly a Simon, who I assume is , but I didn’t get a chance to speak to him.

I don’t know why I didn’t post that one.  Probably too boring.

I just spent half an hour searching IBM’s documentation to remind myself of how to do emphasis in UIM (User Interface Manager) panels.  Never again.  The doc is here.

Oh, and emphasis is :HPn.text:EHPn., where n is an integer from 0 to 9.

Obviously.

Additional keywords to help frustrated searchers: panel group help.

The Plaid Adder — of these parts — has written “Anger Management“, a great piece about Richard Clarke and the other Republican whistleblowers over at Democratic Underground.  She discusses the possibility that emotions — specifically anger — can be valid, even useful in political discourse.  Which made me think of the Clash line above, which just asked to be a title.