Blood & Treasure

weasel explains whistle

Hilarious: a weasel attempts to explain what a dog whistle really should have sounded like:

Several of the striking workers brandished placards: "In the words of Gordon Brown. British jobs for British workers." Mr Brown made the "jobs pledge" shortly after he became prime minister in his speech to the 2007 Labour conference.

Then, Mr Brown said the government would be "drawing on the talents of all to create British jobs for British workers". Supporters said the remarks emphasised the need to ensure the long-term unemployed had the skills necessary to find work…

...A spokesman said EU laws worked both ways, allowing British workers to work across the EU, but stressed ministers would be meeting construction industry representatives to ensure they were doing all they could to support the economy. Asked about the "British jobs for British workers slogan", he said:

"I do not see a reason for regret in that the action we have taken has meant that we are now putting in place measures to ensure that British workers can have access to the vacancies that exist in the system."

Obviously, people with normal English comprehension skills took the message rather differently. As it happens, I think this was probably more to do with Brown’s weirdly solipsistic obsession with Britishness at the time. He was, for a very long time, unable to keep references to it out of anything he said: that is until the current economic crisis struck, and he rediscovered the world.

There’s also an attempt to blame the EU for the wrong thing. This is nothing to do with the free movement of labour according to single market rules, but on legal interpretation of these designed to allow companies to hire gang labour for low prices in domestic markets to enable them to tender more cheaply in markets where wages are better. So:

 But worse has been a series of court rulings that have further deregulated labour markets. In 2003 the Finnish ferry company Viking Line reflagged its vessel and employed an Estonian crew, cutting its wage costs by 60%. Its actions were upheld by the European court of justice. In 2004 a Latvian company, Laval, sent workers to building sites in Sweden. The Swedish construction union asked the company to agree to the existing collective agreement within the building sector. It refused, operating instead under the Latvian agreement - including lower pay that undercut the Swedish workers' wages. Again, the court ruled in the company's favour. Workers' conditions and pay need only comply with the laws of the company's home country.

It’s a series of rulings very much in line with New Labour’s consistent approach to the whole single market idea. Here’s one from the archives.

"Something must be done urgently to increase the job creating potential of the European Union's economies. A new focus on creating lasting jobs is needed. We need to increase the flexibility of Europe's work force, look at how to combine an efficient welfare state with a dynamic job creating economy and remove the bureaucratic barriers keeping people from jobs.

Barriers, like, for instance, ther obligation to consider local staff for jobs at the agreed rates where the job is to be carried out. That’s Gordon Brown back in June 97, by the way.

on the oatcake trail

The food of the gods has an origin story:

I’ve just been in north Staffordshire on the trail of the local oatcake (you can view my audio slideshow here and read more about my trip here), one of those regional specialities which are hugely popular but only within tightly defined boundaries. You won't find many outlets south of Stoke-on-Trent or north of Rudyard Lake, where Kipling's parents did their courting. The poet doesn't mention oatcakes in his verse but the north Staffordshire sort are reckoned to come from India, where soldiers from the county regiment served at the same time as he was having the boyhood adventures described in Kim. The troops took to chapatis much as the rest of have since Asian restaurants and takeaways brought them to the UK.

Well the local BNP won’t like that so all to the good. Personally, I think it more likely the local squaddies went to India and found the locals eating oatcakes: what oatcakes and roti have in common is that unlike most pancakes they’re meant to have savoury fillings. This backstory sounds a bit more convincing:

Steve Povey reckons that it actually has its origins in the Staffordshire moorlands where isolated farmers would eat oatcakes when they were cut off by bad weather and couldn't reach the shops to get bread. He revealed: "I have been handed a very old recipe from Ecton in the Manifold Valley where farmers would make their oatcakes from milk and oats. There is a Derbyshire version of the oatcake which is much thicker and stodgier. The recipe seems to have been adapted as it spread.

There’s a googlemap spread of oatcake shops here. You can also get them in various supermarkets, including the Tesco outlet in Prestwich. Come to think of it, a googlemap of national supermarket availability would be a useful chart of Stokies in exile.

carrying in his pocket

Someone tell crazy Mel: the president is now the Marxisant dupe of the vast Buddho-fascist conspiracy:

In an intriguing footnote to the inauguration last week of President Barack Obama, Buddhist web-sites have been buzzing with the story that as he was being sworn in, Obama was carrying in his pocket a khata, or ceremonial scarf, that had come from the Dalai Lama.

Aaaah. Sweet. It doesn’t matter. It will never be confirmed. But they’ll always believe it.

paleo-constructivist logrolling

No-one seems to have used the word bluk to indicate plugging a blogging friends book, so allow me to start. My friend Cheryl is the proud author of the chapter on proliferation in the new compilation Threats in the Age of Obama, along with a whole bunch of security bloggers.

If you’d like to get into the same line of business but are hampered by the fact that the contents of your head are simply a ragbag of puerile notions, don’t despair. Simply go to the Grand Strategic Vision Name Generator, polish them up to a high gloss and become a real geopolitician in your own bathtub. I favour post-Globalist Worldism, but who doesn’t?

freedom and corsetry

There’s a lot about Tom Paine going around since Obama quoted his words to the Continental army during the inauguration speech. Peter Linebaugh, for instance:

Though a revolutionary opposing kingship, one-man rule, the puppet-show of sovereignty, the war-making essential to monarchy, he was also opposed to capital punishment and in refusing in France to vote for the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. He was cast into prison and escaped the guillotine himself only by an amazing accident – the doors of those to be guillotined were chalked the night before, but Paine’s cell door was not yet closed but swung open against the wall and in the dim light it was chalked on the wrong side so that when closed at last it displayed the unchalked side when the executioners came in the morning.

Now The Eastern Daily Press chimes in:

His words helped influence revolutions on both sides of the Atlantic and were quoted in Barack Obama's presidential inauguration speech last week.

But it was the handiwork of one of Norfolk's most famous sons that was celebrated at the weekend as an 18th century underwear day was staged in his honour.

Dozens of people gathered in Diss to commemorate the staymaking career of the young Thomas Paine, who spent a year of his life making corsets in the town before going on to make a big difference in the American War of Independence and the French Revolution.

via. Yes indeed: a big difference. But he’ll always be remembered in some parts for services to British nethergarments.

the man who filled pages

I never read anything by John Updike and I don’t think I’ve ever known anybody who has. Nonetheless he not only had the talent to cause people who wrote about authors to write about him but also the capacity to be written about in a neutral-to-pleasant way, a way that didn’t make you wonder at the time why you weren’t reading about somebody else or books by somebody you might actually want to read. The things that were written about him never made me want to read him because they said things like this:

…his literary home was the American suburb, the great new territory of mid-century fiction.

Anyway, that was from his obituary, which I just read. via.

chairman, your kungfu is strong

Marking the death of martial arts pulp author Liang Yusheng, Danwei reprints an article from Southern Metropolis Daily on the genesis of Hong Kong wuxia novels:

There was the new Commercial Daily, you see, and they saw the readers the New Evening Post was getting by running Liang's wuxia fiction, so they asked if he could write for them. We had to agree to that, because we had to support the Commercial Daily, you know. We had launched it as a leftist paper to take over from Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po, which had been involved in a lawsuit with the Hong Kong government that accused Ta Kung Pao, Wen Wei Po, and New Evening Post of instigating social unrest. The three papers could potentially have been shut down, so we immediately began plans for another paper, the Commercial Daily. But when we had it about ready, the lawsuit ended with the other papers not getting shut down. So the Commercial Daily carried on, but we decided to turn it into a more neutral paper to attract more readers. The content would be more plebian and not so leftist. Since wuxia attracted readers, we naturally let Liang write for them. But we had to have it too, so we immediately found Louis Cha, who was quite happy to do it.

It’s like the old story that half the former Daily Worker’s readership bought it for the racing tips.

shuffling towards the door

Londonstani at Abu M comments on Gaza, Muslim opinion in Britain and related matters:

In the short term, the unsaid fear seems to be that the government might be pushed into pulling out of Afghanistan, for example, because that's what newly politicised Muslims in Britain want. Now, it maybe true that is indeed what British Muslims want in a knee-jerk sort of fashion. But it in reality, despite the newly squeaking voice, British Muslims have little of the cash, organisation and contacts that translate into real political clout. The F1 racing lobby has much more influence. It's much more likely that the British government uses British Muslims as a fig leaf to do something they would really like to do anyway (like pull out of Afghanistan).

To the extent that Muslim opinion favours withdrawal it reflects British opinion generally. The question for the government is how to get out without seeming to be defeated. The preferred option generally seems to lie in blaming Europe for not contributing enough troops and failing to use them effectively. Meanwhile, it’s become fashionable in the US to blame Britain for not committing enough troops and for failing to use them. And there are now rumours that the US wants to replace Karzai with a former Khad operative, which tends to remind me of how Najibullah surprised everyone for hanging around so long after the Soviets left: at any rate, long enough for world attention to be somewhere else.

First it’s necessary to have a surge of some kind, not least to cover political withdrawal with military victory. The US is supposedly committing 30,000 troops and has asked the UK for 4000 more, which apparently we don’t have. That means leaning on Europe; but Europe isn’t invested enough in Afghanistan in the first place to make a show of force necessary to cover withdrawal. Outcome? I don’t know, but longer term this doesn’t look great for NATO.

epic IP theft

The Black-Voda-Pod, also known as the Voda-Pod-Berry, encapsulates the dreams and realities of China's average mobile phone user: It is a fake BlackBerry device, sporting a fake Vodafone logo, and running a fake iPhone operating system, including a fake Opera web browser. And it works too.

Shanzhai!

And see also: Harry Potter and the giant funnel.

you're special, you are

The prime minister last night won one of the most hotly contested diplomatic races of the year when he became the first European leader to speak to Barack Obama since the president's inauguration on Tuesday.

The Anglo-American special relationship was marked in a 15-minute telephone call, described as friendly and constructive, in which Gordon Brown and Obama discussed the economy, the Middle East, Zimbabwe and life in the White House.

This kind of thing always makes me think of those women who sell their used knickers online, or rather perhaps of the men who buy them. In fact if I was Obama I would have had myself rubbed down with a towel after doing something sweaty, cut it into pieces and had it sent to various national leaders. Then they could put it in an alcove and worship it. Now that’s a special relationship.

…Brown accepts that Britain comes some way down the list of world leaders to be called. The new occupant of the White House is scrupulously following the diplomatic book on the prized first phone calls. Obama followed convention yesterday by making sure that one of his early calls was to Stephen Harper, prime minister of Canada. He also spoke to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

The president's first overseas calls earlier in the week were to Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, and Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister.

So: from “what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” all the way down to “who the fuck are you again?” There’s protocol for you.