1, mle292 has a prediction for how the Veep debates will go and I think she's dead on. And while I am on Palin: are there really vast swathes of American women shallow enough to vote for McCain because they hope he might die and then we can have a female pres, despite the fact that Palin stands against everything any rational woman could want? Because the only people I seem to see suggesting this are male bloggers, and, of course, McCain himself in selecting her.

2, How likely are you to be a terrorist? cabalamat2 has the poster with the checklist. I have to say that I'm disappointed to miss out on one of the criteria by having a contract mobile, but the others I am bang to rights, especially being vague about where I am going when I travel. Of course, because I'm a white atheist (rather than being a muslim, or brown) it doesn't matter. Cos, you know, Timothy McVeigh was a brown muslim...

3, Anybody feeling incredibly generous and rich? Cos, you know, can never have TOO much scenery for Shrubby's train set, and this would be perfect....

4, In blogging drama news: the storm has moved on to someone else's teacup today. Big hugs for Charlotte, because it's never pretty when you get in the way of boys willy-waving at each other. All you ever get in that situation is a faceful of rank cock.

I got a notification this morning. It said "Iain Dale has added you as a friend on Facebook". It seems I cannot escape. I don't read his blog, having looked at it a few times I don't want to read his blog, devoid of substance and full of opinions I despise as it is (and that's without even going into some of the pure poison in the comments threads); and although people keep assuring me he's a lovely bloke in real life, I'm not sure I want to be added to what I am sure he sees as his personal fan club.

The thing is, I don't know if this is just part of my habit of self sabotage. Maybe having That Tory Blogger as a "friend" would be useful in some way. But I know that if I added him, I'd end up reading at least some of his stuff, getting annoyed, getting into wangst and flamewars... I don't want to turn into another Tim Ireland, or even another Sunny (no offence, Sunny mate). And I certainly don't want to contribute to the "Iain Dale is the centre of the blogosphere" trope, when 1, I don't believe that he is and 2, the whole POINT of the blogosphere IMHO is that it's completely decentralised and doesn't have leaders.

(I just got a horrible image in my head of Iain Dale as Granny Weatherwax - the most respected of the leaders they din't have and all that - and yet he's far more of a Mrs Earwig IMHO... My essential Oggishness doesn't react well to Earwigs)

Maybe I am overanalysing. Facebook isn't that important, anyway...

Anyway, my trademark indecisiveness means I am devolving decision-making to you, dear f-list.

Poll #1250633 Iain Dale
This poll is closed.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None, participants: 8

How should I respond to being added on Facebook by That Tory Blogger?

ETA: I've added him on limited profile, and gone back through the import feed of my blog and tagged him in all the entries I can find mentioning him. Most of them are not complimentary.

We shall see if anything comes of that.

I wasn't going to talk about this at all, but since it's gone this far... Apparently, Jo Anglezarke has deleted her blog. Since I am partly to blame for this, I am going to give my side of the sorry tale. Make of it what you will.

It came to my attention that Jo had taken against me when I saw a discussion between her and Mark Valladares in a public thread on LDV. Apparently Jo was upset with Mark because he voted for me in Iain Dale's beauty contest. I spent quite some time afterwards trying to be nice to her in a vain attempt to not have the Lib Dem blogosphere soured by needless drama. I apologised for voting for "the other Jo" in Dale's blog awards (even though Jo Christie Smith is utterly awesome, and wrote my favourite Lib Dem blog post EVER). I read her blog a few times, picked up her memes a few times, and walked on a lot of eggshells. I got it all thrown back in my face with extra bile, and decided a few weeks ago that if she wanted to be like that, that was fine, and I would just ignore her. Since then I have been parodied in a pretty meanspirited way on her blog (which I wouldn't have known about had a person (who shall remain nameless so he doesn't get dragged into this as well) not pointed me at it) and accused of "cyber bullying", "bullying by exclusion" and "having a secret blog which exists only to be mean to Jo", dramatically unfriended on FaceBook and seen a lot of people I like very much get caught in the crossfire.

Now, I HAVE been ignoring her, but I haven't been singling her out for ignoring. I generally ignore a lot of the Lib Dem blogosphere - Linda Jack and Irfan Ahmed because their writing style bugs me; Nich Starling because the way he looks at things bugs me; and vast swathes of it because I just don't have the time to read about the minutiae of someone else's life. I have (so far) muted thirteen blogs on Lib Dem Blogs, and I have no doubt that number will only increase. If someone bugs me, I stop reading their blog. Sometimes that decision to ignore gets fairly quickly reversed (step forward James Graham) sometimes it doesn't.

I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that there are huge numbers of Lib Dem bloggers who don't read my blog because they don't like me, or my writing style, or both. I know I can be sweary, and that my style is acerbic, and that not everybody wants to read my views on Doctor Who. That is fine. I am under no illusions that I am the best thing ever, and am doing this because I enjoy it, not for any nefarious purpose. We all have different tastes, and we all want to read different stuff, and that's the beauty of blogging: there's something for everyone in it, and room for us all to play without treading on anyone else's toes. If you don't want to read my blog? That's cool. You don't have to. I don't think there exists such a thing as a must read blog, and if there did, I know for a damn straight fact I would not put mine in that category.

Similarly, I do have a friends only-personal blog. I have had it since 2004, before I knew Jo Anglezarke even existed, and it's so secret that I link to it from my profile page here on The Yorksher Gob, and in EVERY SINGLE POST I MAKE if you click on my username. I did make a post on there saying something along the lines of this other Lib Dem blogger has taken against me, my instinct is to ignore her and say nothing, what do you guys think?, to which the response was generally yup, you should ignore her. I have no qualms about having had a private conversation with my friends, although perhaps I should have anonymised the links...

Anyway, that's what happened as far as I can tell. If you think I have been cruel or unjust you're quite welcome to stop reading my blog, or leave vitriolic comments if you like. I'm a big girl, I can take it.

I'm not going to pretend that I like Jo, or that I will read her blog if she undeletes it. I can't be bothered dealing with her. I've never been one for walking on eggshells, and it wouldn't work anyway, and frankly, I have more important things to worry about than other people's egos and how easily they bruise. But I know a lot of other people do like her, and do read her blog. Jo: if you're reading this, I'd like you to know that what you do with your blog is your business, but the internet is quite big enough for the both of us, and Duncan is missing you. Why don't you undelete yourself, and we can both ignore each other, but at least people will stop worrying about you and everything will be a bit less dramatic?

Happy Birthday sideshow_meg!

For those of you who have already read my previous post and therefore won't see the edit: I have turned off comment screening completely. I figure the benefits of the amusement of letting you guys loose on trolls outweigh the downside of having illiterate bollocks on my blog. And I do strongly believe in the old Voltaire, so bring it on, little anonymice!

Those of you who have a, class and b, digital radio will want to tune into BBC7 at eight tonight. A missive from the Weaververse comes that there is

a three-hour celebration of Andy Hamilton's career on BBC7. It includes the Pirates episode of THE MILLION POUND RADIO SHOW, two episodes of OLD HARRY'S GAME, some REVOLTING PEOPLE, and TREVOR'S WORLD OF SPORT.

The interesting bits, I think, are those between the archive shows, including Andy's exposition of the mythos behind the character of Satan.

Doubtless this will be of interest to both ginasketch and innerbrat.

Also of interest to those two, and many others, may be this multiple guess choice quiz about modern sexism (most of the stats referenced are from 2007. It's very very scary reading. There are debates about the veracity of the 77% (73% in the UK) wage disparity claim, but even if that is exaggerated, or even completely untrue, it doesn't throw into dispute any of the other worrying statistics.

* sigh *

Also, as of this month, Gordon has doubled my income tax. Bastard. Still, if anyone still believes that the Labour party supports the working person, this should help sink that canard.

... chatted up by the guy with the blue beard AGAIN. He was wearing a black leather kilt. He told me earnestly how he doesn't believe in underwear. I told him that it exists whether he believes in it or not.

... witness to a three car pile up right outside the front door of the pub.

... phoning 999

... having a very large brandy, and providing similarly large brandies for others

... glad that nobody died, and none of the regulars was injured, even though poor Peter's car was totalled (it was parked, and he had just got out of it. Poor bugger didn't even get a pint)

... phoning Mat to complain about his lack of availability for hugs when I have suffered traumatic evening.

... persuaded by Mat to join the bloody Lib Dems. Expect much complaining about this when I am in a less delicate mood.

I merely ask because our entire house just shook, windows rattling, bed shaking, everything...

Mat went and looked out the window and David (neighbour across the street and a few doors down) was just coming out of his front door and they felt it over there too.

I really hope it /was/ an Earthquake. The other option is too awful to contemplate.

ETA: apparently the epicentre was in Lincolnshire and it was a 4.7. That's pretty bloody big for us.

D has linked to a map in the comments, also.

So, The Times are paying good money to a troll¹. The column itself doesn't upset me too much, because it's so obviously 1, factually inaccurate² and 2, stemming from bitterness. What upsets me is the number of pricks in the comments who are saying that British women "want to be men" while American women "know their place". Well I do apologise for my fellow countrywomen for wanting equality! Obviously you'd be far better off in the US where women don't want equality at all!

Is it me, or is that insulting to both British AND American women?

Sadly, I read that before I went to bed last night, so I woke up this morning with the remains of the feminist rage bubbling under. This may have contributed to the Oh shit, I've nodded off and woken up in the middle of Woman's Hour feeling I got when they started discussing the objectification of women on the Today programme. It was an interesting and lively discussion, and if I hadn't been half asleep I might have remembered more of it. I know that I'm kind of ambivalent on the issue. On the one hand, women who opt for careers as glamour models and lap dancers are, in a sense, not being exploited so much as exploiting the sort of people who are daft/desperate enough to pay for that sort of thing³. On the other hand, there are the wider social implications that as long as women are just objects to look at and wank over, they are not people in the same sense that men are; and that's what leads to me being shocked that they're discussing it on the Today programme and not Woman's Hour.

If even I am socially conditioned to think of the issue of objectification of women as being something that belongs on a specifically woman's programme and not on the general morning news, then we still have a long way to go before equality, I think.

Ah well, three and a half hours till we find out who is going to try (and fail) to fill Vince's shoes. I'm still in the group of expecting Clegg but hoping for Huhne. If Clegg wins, I'm fully expecting a Ming Moment when he first gets to his hind feet in the House. He'll be barracked mercilessly, and it will visibly hurt him and make him fluff his lines. And then he'll be forever in Vince's shadow, and the party will suffer for it. I think this is slightly less likely (although still possible) as an outcome if Huhne wins.

---

¹ Thanks to puddingcat for pointing the article out

² Americans have been top of the WHO obesity league for AGES

³ It never ceases to amaze me how much some people are prepared to spend on porn etc. Not sad, desperate, lonely people who have no lovers, but people who have a happy and healthy sex life. It's one of those little things that I'll never understand, I don't think.

Vince played an absolute blinder at PMQs today. I'm going to take the unusual step of C&Ping from the Hansard report:

Dr. Vincent Cable (Twickenham) (LD): When the Prime Minister tucks into his Brussels sprouts on his one day off at Christmas, which of the various disasters of the last six months will haunt him most: his indecision over the election, his inaction over Northern Rock, or the gross incompetence of the loss of 25 million people’s personal data?

The Prime Minister: It is nice to have the hon. Gentleman here, and I thank him for his appearances over the last few weeks. Given the history of the Liberal party, it may not be long before he is back in that place again, representing his party. As for the issues of the last few months, we have made long-term decisions on energy, the environment, transport, infrastructure, planning, skills and the economy, and that is what governing is all about.

Dr. Cable: Given the Prime Minister’s own position, he might not be wise to speculate about leadership elections. Is not the real disaster, for which he has personal responsibility, the continuing tragedy in Iraq? When he was in Basra this week, was he told that at least 40 women have been executed for personal immorality? Is that why 173 British troops have died—transferring power from the fascist regime of Saddam Hussein to the terror of the fascist militia who run the streets of Basra?

The Prime Minister: *blusters and talks utter bollocks*

Now, the first question is wounding enough, but clearly scripted to wound. It's the off the cuff remark at the start of the second question that is the killer blow. Such wit, such élan, such finesse! What a man. What a Yorkshireman. Soon to be replaced by either a waffling posh boy with puppy-dog eyes or the Lib Dem version of John Major. It's enough to make you weep.

Still, what a performance for his final PMQs as acting leader. Mr Cable, I salute you. And I look forward to your appearance on This Week tomorrow with unbridled excitement.

Nick Clegg came out on top of tonight's bout on Newsnight by quite a margin. I think Chris is now too wary of looking nasty to really put the boot in, which is a shame, whereas Clegg has clearly learnt from previous encounters and was putting the boot in like Billy-o. Also, when asked for a one word answer, Clegg gave one. Huhne didn't. This might seem like it's just Chris using those patented sharp elbows of his, but it really pisses me (and other interested bystanders) off when politicians don't follow simple requests.

Interestingly, Nick practically quoted Alix Mortimer verbatim on the subject of people/systems. A lot of this leadership campaign has been led by bloggers (both potential party leaders having had meetings with the "top" ones). Which does kind of lead me to worry about bloggers being used as a kind of ad hoc focus group, when really, they represent nobody's views but their own. I will certainly be interested to see the results of the ballot. My own view remains the same: Huhne should win, Clegg will.

* covert snuggles for poor soon-to-be-demoted Vince *

On a lighter note: Whoever did the graphic manipulation for the NewsNight website is clearly a Huhnista: look how much sexier a body they gave him!

The Lib Dem leadership thing has gone rather pearshaped, hasn't it? The "Calamity Clegg" incident on the politics show yesterday (that I briefly referred to as it happened) has blown up into something much bigger than it should have done, by the fault of both candidates and a gleeful media egging them both on.

Huhne should not have said that he hadn't seen the document and then proceeded to use the contents of it to attack Clegg anyway: this shows him to be less than honest at a time when most of us are fed up to the back teeth of lying politicians. However, Clegg's behaviour has been worse, or at least, far less befitting of a potential party leader. As it happened, he sat on the sofa with a kicked puppy expression on his face, and now he has lodged a formal complaint. WTF? OK, so Huhne's camp used a disparaging term to describe him. That wasn't nice. Has this guy ever even seen PMQs? It's a bearpit at the best of times; if and when he stands up for the first time as leader of the Lib Dems he is going to face a barrage of jeers from pretty much everyone in the building. If one word from Huhne causes him to get all tearful and then go running to the Whip's office, how the monkey knackers is he going to cope with day-to-day business in the House of Commons?

My opinion on the matter has been solidified. Neither of them are going to be a great Lib Dem leader. Vince Cable would be better by far than either Clegg or Huhne. However, given the choice that the party has? Huhne might not be nice but he is the practical option. Nice does not last long in British politics, no matter how much we might wish it would. Clegg can't take the verbal, and he can't think on his feet, and "permission for lip to wobble, sir?" is the response of a foot soldier, not a general. Not impressed at all.

So, it’s been a while since I posted, and the more that’s changed, the more has stayed the same. India and Pakistan are squaring up to each other again (which is going to be fun for those of us who live in and around Bradford). Iraq and Afghanistan are in an even more parlous state than they were last time I wrote. Israel and Lebanon are at it again as well; and in more prosaic news, I got kicked off metaquotes for a minor rule infringement (Oh! The drama!). But rather than chanting "we’re all going to die in a nuclear war! We’re all going to die in a nuclear war! And I can’t even metaquote people about it!" I find myself seeking the silver lining. Or possibly burying my head in the sand. I shall leave it to you to decide.

One thing which is increasing my happiness quotient is that the ID card issue which I was so worried about because of its far reaching consequences looks like being quietly shelved until after the next election, by which point we will have a new prime minister whichever party wins and (hopefully) it will get permanently kicked to the kerb.

Then there’s the tantalising possibility that the cash for peerages row is going to keep on bubbling up until it engulfs our dear Prime Minister. There’s talk that he might be arrested, since two government ministers have been "helping the police with their enquiries" already, and I’ll be most amused if he gets hoist by his own petard for the ridiculous increase in power he has given the police. After his recent comments on the judiciary, is there anyone willing to bet they WON’T throw the book at him, should the case get to court? Just the merest possibility of this happening gives me GLEE!! feelings…

In less earth-shattering areas, I have become very active in Doctor Who fandom since season two/twenty-eight started, mainly to complain, like the old git that I am, about how much better the show was in Colin Baker’s day, and how Doctor Number Ten’s scripts are atrocious. I was extremely amused this morning to read (in an ancient copy of Doctor Who Magazine) somebody saying almost exactly the same things about Colin Baker with regard to the Tom Baker era.

But possibly the most exciting news of all, as far as I’m concerned, is that I shall be receiving my new motorcycle next week. We all have our little routes of escape from terrible reality, don’t we? Sometimes I like to listen to the radio in the dark, for example, or to go on a long run with the dog somewhere deserted. But the best method of escape is to climb aboard my bike and go somewhere completely random. The countryside near to where I live is so beautiful, and the moorland roads are quiet enough to appreciate it without getting stuck in frustrating traffic. There’s such a sense of freedom to motorcycling, which I never get in a car, and I’ve been like a child in the week before Christmas all week.

All of which goes to prove something which I have long suspected.

Human beings can’t live in a constant state of fear. We just can’t. The government keeps on trying to ramp up our fear levels so that they can strip away our civil liberties; there’s a constant threat that the whole world will be engulfed in a terrible war, and our leaders keep trying to use petrol as a fire extinguisher; the media is full of increasingly hysterical stories of death and destruction… And for the most part we all ignore it. We get on with our daily lives, perhaps with a sad shake of the head, or a blog comment.

I’m undecided as to whether or not this is a good thing.

On the one hand, it just goes to show human adaptability. No matter how horrible situations might get, no matter how terrible the outside world becomes, we intentionally get tunnel vision and concentrate harder and harder on the little things to protect ourselves from the horror of the big picture. We complain about the storylines on Eastenders because it’s a comforting, normal thing to do when the world is going to hell in a handbasket; and the cynic in me says that it’s the reason why Eastenders was invented. It IS comforting to think that however bad things get there will still be some semblance of normal life going on.

On the other hand, the activist in me wants to scream at the indolence. If all those of us who think that things are WRONG were to rise up and right the wrongs then the world would be a better place, or certainly a more interesting place. But there’s a little weasel voice at the back of my head saying that maybe that’s what the warmongers think they are doing – rising up and overthrowing evil. And of course, I’m far too indolent myself to do anything other than complain in my blog about the indolence of others.

So, if the situation in the middle east does explode in the next few days, or if India and Pakistan DO start hitting the nuclear button at each other, what will my likely response be? Sadly, I’m not deep enough for it to be “oh the humanity!” or a more original equivalent thereof. I can practically guarantee that if something catastrophic happens in the next few days, my response will involve “…and I didn’t even get to ride my Triumph!”

Hurrah for the indomitable human spirit.