What Does He Know...

The pain of childbirth may have benefits on which women who opt for painkilling epidurals miss out, a senior male midwife has said.

Dr Denis Walsh, associate professor in midwifery at Nottingham University, said pain was a "rite of passage" which often helped regulate childbirth.

He said it helped strengthen a mother's bond with her baby, and prepared her for the responsibility of motherhood.

Key words in this passage? He said.

Sing Their Souls Back Home

Fifteen British soldiers have been killed over the past 10 days, the highest losses to enemy action since UK troops were first sent to Afghanistan in 2001; 184 have now lost their lives there, more than the total killed in Iraq.



Oh Lord, it's hard don't you know
To be living in days like these
Terror and war do nothing
But shatter families
So let's reach out with all our hearts
For our soldiers overseas
Come on and sing their souls back home

Billy Bragg

Upadate:

Three 18-year-olds among British troops killed on Afghan mission's bloodiest day - Guardian.

You're never too young to die for a noble course...

Self-indulgent Post

Bless me, Father, for I have not blogged. It has been two weeks since my last post.

I have not been blogging lately because of:

The heat and the sun, the glorious moon and other distractions - such as music and dvds. Good times do not inspire. I know it’s the worst excuse in the world: to blame it on the sunshine, moonlight, good times or indeed the boogie - but I’m prepared to put my credibility to the test, in memoriam to the King of Rock: the stuff from Blackpool, can’t beat it! Better than that shitty, southern Brighton stuff. (I know, Michael Jackson is the king of pop, but the gag doesn’t really work with a cream soda reference.)

But in brilliant sunshine, there shall be no blogging, so proclaim the internet gods. Also, I know nothing of the plight of the Uighur people, or indeed who will prevail in Iran. I know as much as to pronounce that the Iranian people are brave fuckers - braver than I.

I haven’t blogged because I don’t have an original thought in my head – I suppose that entitles me to a guest post spot at Harry’s Place then.

I haven’t blogged because of family: kids live in the real world, despite the array of 21st century gizmos. I haven’t blogged because my partner wants me all to herself – lucky girl!

I haven’t blogged because of work, because of late running trains, because I’m watching Celebrity Masterchef and that fucking, great natural history programme where they chop up elephants and whales.

I haven’t blogged because I’ve been watching:

The Wave
Defiance
The Class
La Zona
I.O.U.S.A

I should review...

I haven’t blogged because of John Craven, because of craven desires, and my desire to be free - free at last: Thank God! I’m free at last – from the frippery and triviality of the internet - and my fascination with Sarah Palin’s syntax, her lack of punctuation and her unique grasp of grammar.

I haven’t blogged because I’m lazy, can’t be arsed, because I’m yearning for a foreign clime.

Listening: A Woman A Man Walked By - PJ Harvey

Great opening track to a great album. Polly Jean just seems to get better and better. Great shifts in tone throughout, a wonderful development, and accompaniment, to the equally brilliant White Chalk.

Solidarity

Deal between unions and contractors means all those made redundant or fired will get their jobs back.

Watching: Anvil! The Story of Anvil

Hate the music, hate the hair, hate the clothes. But quite possibly the funniest first half hour I've encountered on film for many years. Filled with more Spinal Tap moments than This Is Spinal Tap - and indeed consciously nodding throughout to that particular film - Anvil is a poignant film about ageing rockers and their unfulfilled dreams. In one scene, while over in England (Dover) to record their 13th Album, the director sneakily takes the members of the band to Stonehenge. And did I see the producer switch the volume up to 11 at one point?

Definitely worth a watch. I don't want to spoil the ending, so I'll say no more than: Anvil rocks!

A Victory For Common Sense and The Daily Mail

Victory! Romanians forced to flee their homes in Belfast following racist attacks.

Twenty-five Romanians who were the victims of racist intimidation in Belfast left Northern Ireland today, with 75 others due to leave later this week.

The Stormont social development minister, Margaret Ritchie, confirmed earlier today that 100 of a group of 114 who had been targeted in racist attacks wanted to return to Romania.

Well done, Richard Littlejohn and your ilk:

Fast-tracking the Tarmacing community on the NHS "One of the many emails I received yesterday was from a loyal Daily Mail reader incensed at the news that the NHS has decided to give priority to gipsies in hospitals and GP surgeries..."

"Had he been a gipsy, he would have been ushered to the top of the list.

Now, I can understand that this policy may have arisen from the most noble of intentions. If someone with a sick child is passing through town, they shouldn't be refused treatment simply because they don't have a fixed address.

But this has nothing to do with the milk of human kindness and owes everything to the venomous bile of the 'diversity' industry, which takes sadistic pleasure in persecuting the taxpaying majority.

Under the new edict, gipsies will be allocated a full 20 minutes with a doctor and allowed to bring their extended family into the waiting room.

The average length of a normal appointment, always assuming you can get one, is between five and ten minutes.

A Department of Health statement said it was 'fast-tracking' what it calls ' members of the mobile community' because they have difficulty accessing services.

The 'mobile community'? That's a new one on me. Is it because they all have top-of-the-range mobile phones?"

As far back as I can remember, the 'mainstream' right-wing in this country have always been the essence and original source for flippant and casual racism; then, when there is the inevitable violent backlash, they wring their hands and blame the 'left' and political correctness for being well...so damn well accommodating in the first place and breeding resentment within indigenous communities and not forgetting the sexual revolution of the 1960s, with all that permissiveness and drug taking, and for allowing spongers and scroungers to come over here in the first place to join all our own indigenously reared British scroungers. (British tax payers' money - for British scroungers!)

They're not wrong, though, are they:

"The perception of people on benefits as "scroungers" is as deep-rooted as ever, while there is broad public tolerance of the wealthy even in a recession, research has found."

It was found that one scrounger in particular, let us call him Charles, receives up to a £3 million pounds a year:

"Taxpayers funded the work of the Prince of Wales to the tune of £3m last year - an annual rise of almost a quarter, according to Clarence House accounts."

Doff your caps peasants!

I gotta get myself out of this fucked up hole!

A Thing of Beauty is a Joy For Ever:

Titan crossing Saturn's rings from the perspective of the recent Cassini-Huygens mission (with Enceladus, an active moon, peaking onto the crescent).

Via: Through The Scary Door

Share Out The Work...

Hundreds of workers were gathering outside the Lindsay oil refinery in Lincolnshire this morning as an industrial dispute over the sacking of 900 construction workers threatened to spread to sites across the country.

Sympathy action seems to be spreading to other oil and power installations across the country too:

The initial dismissal of 51 workers at the Lindsey oil refinery has sparked sympathy strikes at other oil and power installations in Yorkshire, Cheshire, South Wales, Hull and Nottinghamshire. Reports of unofficial strikes and protests came from Drax, in Yorkshire, Britain’s largest coal-fired power generator, from Fiddlers Ferry, a power station at Widnes, Cheshire, and the Ratcliffe power station in Nottinghamshire.

Ineluctable Modality of the Visible...

Photographs taken Summer 2008

The Griffin's Stare

Quote of the week:

"You just look and you just know." Nick Griffin (Above wearing a fetching off the shoulder egg) when asked how one would know when one is faced with an indigenous British ethnic - deriving from the class of indigenous caucasian. Or, in short-hand, a white member of the British Nazi Party.

Can you spot, from the picture below, which of the following England football players from Wednesday night's match would get beyond the Griffin's stare, and be accepted into the ranks of BNP members?

Reading: A Brief History of Neoliberalism

I came across this quote while reading David Harvey's book, A Brief History of Neoliberalism:

"To allow the market mechanism to be the sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment, indeed, even of the amount and use of purchasing power, would result in the demolition of society. For the alleged commodity ‘labour power’ cannot be shoved about, used indiscriminately, or even left unused, without affecting also the bearer of this peculiar commodity. In disposing of a man’s labour power the system would, incidentally, dispose of the physical, psychological, and moral entity ‘man’ attached to that tag. Robbed of the protective covering of cultural institutions, human beings would perish from the effects of social exposure; they would die as the victims of acute social dislocation through vice, perversion, crime and starvation. Nature would be reduced to its elements, neighbourhoods and landscapes defiled, rivers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw materials destroyed. Finally, the market administration of purchasing power would periodically liquidate business enterprise, for shortages, and surfeits of money would prove as disastrous to business as floods and droughts in primitive society."

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (1944).

We apppear to be living through a drought of 'fictitious capital' at the moment. No matter how much the banks are flooded with capital, no matter how much quantitative easing is plunged into the system, credit is still not flowing.

Furthermore, reading Harvey's book over the past couple of months, it can be viewed as a warning, if not a prophesy, of the economic turbulence we are currently encountering. Written in 2005, he is spot on about the current recession:

"Saner voices within the capitalist class, having listened carefully to the warnings of the likes of Paul Volcker that there is a high probability of a serious financial crisis in the next five years, may prevail. But it will mean rolling back some of the privileges and power that have been accumulating in the upper echelons of the capitalist class. Previous phases of capitalist history - one thinks of 1873 or the 1920s - when a similarly stark choice arose, do not auger well."

Indeed the bailout of the financial institutions in London and Wall Steet, with the aid of tax payers' money, shows that the capitalist class have merely expropriated workers' hard-earned cash to subside their profligacy and losses.