In Godwin we trust

Who do you think you are kidding Mr Farage?

Put at its simplest, Godwin`s Law postulates that whenever any protagonist in a discussion, debate or argument offers a comparison juxtaposing current events with the German Third Reich, Nazi oppression or fascism in general then all credibility disappears and any argument is automatically lost. The law was formulated in 1990 by a bloke, unsurprisingly, called Mike Godwin who was, and is, a lawyer and an author. His intention was entirely laudable in that his “law” allows for an elegant disengagement of drunken keyboard warriors who inevitably compare anything they disagree with to fascism. More importantly, Godwin`s Law is there to counter internet bores who seem happy to compare, say, traffic wardens to storm troopers and in doing so trivialise the full horror of the holocaust.

Interestingly, this bit of social media fun has been enthusiastically embraced and modified by the political classes for their own purposes. At any sly reference to marching on Poland, bierkellers, bunkers, blitzkrieg or Nuremberg rallies, Godwin`s Law is evoked to silence any awkward criticism. A recent disturbing example of this failsafe escape clause was beautifully demonstrated by the Department of Work and Pensions in their reaction to the so-called Spartacus Report. The People`s Review of the Work Capability Assessment, to give its formal title, is an independent analysis of the impact that “Welfare Reforms” will have on people with disabilities and severe illness. The DWP are scared stiff of the report because it contains impeccable research, actual data, hard facts and conclusions so damning that ministers have refused to engage with the authors or discuss the ongoing carnage with the Spartacus campaign.

Instead, Iain Duncan Smith continues to make up stories to justify his blind ideology and continues with expenses claims of £39 for a single breakfast. The DWP will not discuss individual cases such as the grandmother who took her own life for the sake of £20 per week bedroom tax yet happily leak the names and addresses of those found guilty of benefit fraud. Clearly a minister of the crown who charges the tax payer £39 for his breakfast does not want to hear that benefit fraud totals £1.2billion, his departments` errors cost £2.2billion and unclaimed benefit amounts to £16billion. Let`s not talk about tax evasion and let`s not allow the shirkers and the scroungers to spoil a hearty breakfast.

Last words

Image via anorak.co.uk

The poignant and rather touching tribute to the late Baroness Thatcher in this week`s Walsall Advertiser from, of all people, Councillor Pete Smith reminds me of my own encounter with the former Prime Minister.

The circumstances that led to me driving towards St James`s Park (the one in London, not the one on Tyneside) at six thirty on a spring morning in 1988 are too complex to describe in detail. Suffice to say that it involved a friend who worked for a television news company, a Ford Fiesta that refused to start, my reliable if battered Mini and a government photo opportunity. I pulled over at the end of The Mall near Admiralty Arch to let her out and find her camera crew then went on to find somewhere to park. By the time I joined her at the Horse Guards end of the park, a host of photographers and camera crews stood around looking bored and opening flasks of coffee. That was about to change.

From the direction of Whitehall, a group of six or seven young men in expensive suits approached and they seemed pleased at the number of cameras that had turned up so early in the morning. Presently, however, these “special advisors” detected a problem. Looking at a clipboard and the Rolex, one chinless wonder turned to another and said:
“Where`s the rubbish? Where`s the bloody rubbish? It was booked for seven. Find it Nigel, find it now.”
Nigel started looking in the bushes much to the amusement of the waiting photographers. Then, striding across the grass came the colossal figure of Nicholas Ridley, the then Secretary of State for the Environment. It could be that he was suffering from some illness or that he might not be a morning person, but given the ungodly hour, the minister appeared to be drunk. Surveying the scene, he lit a cigarette and turned the air blue with some very unparliamentary language. Spad panic ensued and two ran off in the direction of Great George Street and the others started screwing up papers from their clipboards and throwing them on the ground. The press, now openly guffawing, joined in by screwing up their briefing notes and throwing them at the Spads. Ridley contributed by flicking his cigarette end at the laughing snappers and sparking up another fag.

Elephant

Image via number10.gov.uk

”Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith and where there is despair, may we bring hope.”

Any attempt at ignoring the funeral taking place today at St Paul`s goes beyond turning a blind eye to the pachyderm in the parlour and will probably have the same effect as a whole herd of spooked elephants rampaging through the downstairs loo. Respect, it seems, is mandatory. The interment will be wall-to-wall; the cremation will not be televised.

Any death, regardless of the quality, controversies, successes or failures of the life, is a pertinent reminder of mortality, ambition and the weakness of the human condition. Once, only two things were certain; death and taxes. Now, we can bet our bottom dollar that re-written history will be the inevitable third penny placed on our cold lips to compliment the pennies on our unseeing eyes. The passing of a frail, bewildered 87 year old woman can never be a cause for celebration and those that rejoice at her death are guilty of the same hatred that they assign to her. However, those that adored her are now celebrating her demise with a cynical and disturbingly political feeding frenzy on the still warm corpse. This atavistic tendency has resulted in the current government denouncing any criticism of her life as disrespectful, in extremely bad taste and even mindlessly bigoted. Instead, the blessed Margaret is to be canonised with a state funeral in all but name and her name will be revered as the greatest ever Englishwoman who served her nation without the need of the unnecessary appendages of Winston Churchill.

There can be no doubt that Margaret Hilda Thatcher, nee Roberts, was a formidable political force of nature and was certainly a catalyst for societal change in the United Kingdom, Europe and the rest of the world. If that change was for the better, it remains, to say the least, contentious given the wounds that her death has reopened. Her eulogists state that she allowed the less well off to own their own homes and standing alone defeated communism in Eastern Europe. She trounced the bullying trade unions and was

Happy birthday Kim Il-sung

Image via the Democratic People`s Republic of Korea

There is no evidence to suggest that Bessie Smith was complicit in placing nuclear missiles on Cuba and there are no recordings of Nikita Khrushchev singing a salacious version of You Got the Right Key, But the Wrong Keyhole in a Tennessee jazz club. If, however, horoscopes are to be believed and who can possibly doubt the exact science of astrology, then the fates of the Empress of the Blues and the cold war Soviet leader were guided by the same planetary influence as both came into the world on April 15 1894.

Other notables born on this day include Leonardo da Vinci in 1482, Henry James in 1843, Jeffrey Archer and Benjamin Zephaniah. Samuel Johnson published A Dictionary of the English Language in 1755 and the very first McDonald`s opened in Des Plaines, Illinois exactly 200 years later.

10

Image via caerleon.net

Okay, I know that there is plenty of stuff to get angry about but could I please, please, please ask broadcasters, journalists, politicians and social media types to please check the definition of the word “decimate” before using it.

Decimation was a strategy used in ancient Roman legions to discipline mutinous, unruly or cowardly soldiers and it is thought that the practice originated in the wars between the last King of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus and the Volsci Tribe that inhabited the area around modern day Velletri in Lazio. Later on, Crassus used decimation during the Third Servile War against Spartacus. The process is disarmingly simple; if any cohort is suspected of being disloyal, weak or lacking the ability to comply, they are divided into groups of ten. Lots are drawn and the one in ten is then beaten to death with clubs and stones by the other nine. Another more merciful variation was to stand an entire legion on the edge of a cliff and push every tenth man off. The practice ended when it became known that, unsurprisingly, decimation was bad for morale.

Decimation, however, continued throughout history with the imposition of taxes and tithes of a tenth of produce or income and the tactic of executing one in ten civilians for any act of war time resistance. From the Latin, “decimate” means a reduction by one tenth and not destruction, annihilation, obliteration, abolition or something that we do not like very much. So, for those saying that social care, the NHS, education, defence, transport, public utilities, trade unions, human rights, the legal system, social security and society itself have all been “decimated”, you are wrong. It is far worse than one tenth; it is the whole bloody lot. This distinction is, of course, totally pedantic and utterly futile but in a febrile atmosphere when the word “scrounger” is applied to a fellow human being dying of cancer and “entrepreneur” is the nomenclature of choice for a brazen criminal, semantics become important.

Just yesterday, the BBC ran a story suggesting that the World Snooker Tour would be decimated by halving the number of players participating. It`s the little things that betray trust and sets the agenda for blatant propaganda.

So please, don`t say “decimate”; say devastation instead.