New job.
Thankfully, I've landed myself a nine-to-five. Got a job with the probation services which is located reasonably close to my home. The only snag is that initially the role is temporary, although I'm told it's ongoing and likely to be a few months at least. Still, I'm not about to jack my pub job in straight away without any guarantees and so my hours will be more like nine-to-midnight for a while. Obviously, I hope to keep blogging but it might prove difficult.
At last.
Finally found a dentist who will accept new patients. I've been in quite a lot of pain the last few days. I know I need a couple of fillings, but I think there may be some wisdom tooth trouble as well, even though I seem to remember them coming through years ago. Scouring the Streatham area proved fruitless, so I went for a hike all the way through Tooting and near Balham, and still nobody would accept new patients. Is it the time of year?
When I came across the surgery that have booked me in for next week I couldn't believe they were just 5 minutes down the road from my house. Only £15 for the check up too, the private one further down said 50.
Betablog
Fucking unbelievable. I switched to Betablog, after reading all about it and the many benefits promised by Blogger. They neglected to mention that once I had switched, I would no longer be able to post a comment on any non-beta blogs. Thanks for telling me, you bastards! Apparently, that "feature" is "coming soon". What a load of bullshit.
Livingstone, part 7.
Joan Smith, the
Independent on Sunday:
"Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouts, had a theory about young men going through a period he called the "rutting season". He meant this in relation to sex, but I find the image of males locking horns with other males coming to mind with increasing frequency in relation to the Mayor of London. Though he is no longer in the first flush of youth, shall we say, Ken Livingstone is about as open to civilised debate as a rutting stag; last year, a Jewish reporter from the Evening Standard who annoyed him found himself compared to a concentration camp guard. Then it was the turn of the Reuben brothers, a pair of Jewish property developers who were told by Livingstone to "go back to Iran and try their luck with the Ayatollahs". Now with much stamping, crashing, and breaking of branches, Livingstone has burst from the undergrowth to savage Trevor Phillips, chair of the Commission for Racial Equality. Phillips's offence? He has questioned the meaning of multiculturalism, challenging the notion that the Notting Hill Carnival is a triumph of this much-discussed phenomenon. Speaking on BBC radio last week, Livingstone claimed Phillips has become so right wing "that I expect soon he'll be joining the BNP". Actually, Phillips's point was that the carnival is a one-0ff, a great party that doesn't represent the everyday culture of most of London's communities. This seems to me uncontroversial, as well as raising an important question: what is multiculturalism? These days, everybody is so busy taking positions - right wing columnists blame it for everything from mass immigration to terrorism, while the hard left denounces anyone who questions it as racist or fascist - that it's hard to know what the word means. Phillips's pronouncements on the subject are robust - earlier this year he suggested that Muslims who want to live under Islamic law (sharia) should leave the country - but more coherent than anything the Mayor of London has come up with. Livingstone's take on mulitculturalism certainly isn't mine. It's a form of relativism that allows him to park his values when they're inconvenient and embrace religious extremists with repellent views on women and homosexuals. Living in a society that has abolished the death penalty, Livingstone welcomes to London a cleric whose website discusses whether death is the appropriate penalty for gay men, and appears at public events with an academic who refuses to call for a ban on the hideous practice of lapidation. Of course, multiculturalism is about respecting difference, but it isn't about recognising no boundaries. I am very happy to live in a heterogenous society where we don't all have the same skin colour, wear the same clothes, eat the same food, follow the same religion or vote for the same political party. Underlying all that, however, there has to be a common set of vaues, which we recognise through respect for the rule of law. Most Roman Catholics, for instance, oppose abortion but accept that it's legal in the UK and, unlike in the US, they do not attack doctors who perform terminations or blow up abortion clinics. In fact, the biggest threat to multiculturalism does not come from organisations such as the BNP but politicians such as Livingstone who refuse to have this debate, seeking to close it down with accusations of racism and Islamophobia. The UK is a diverse society, but it won't remain so if millions of ordinary people feel they're not allowed to criticsie the minority who hate gay people, treat women as second class citizens and support political or religious violence."Couldn't have said it better, apart from perhaps pointing out that while Phillips may have been "robust" suggesting Muslims who desire the rule of Sharia law should leave the country, he was also right.
EcoDave to the rescue!
David Cameron is right to question why environmental concern has always been attributed to the Left, as though Tory voters couldn't care less about green belts and ozone layers. Realistically, the idea is absurd. It's much easier to imagine Middle England's middle class, middle aged mum caring a great deal about the trees in her garden than it is her less affluent inner-city counterpart who hasn't a garden to speak of.
That's not to say those without financial comfort are incapable of caring for our environment. The orange recycling sacks that seem to step out from my road's gateways on a Friday morning like soldiers up for inspection testify otherwise.
But certainly there can be no case for assuming centre-right voters are somehow less inclined to think green than Labour Lambeth's residents.
Cameron calls for a cross-party effort towards achieving ambitious goals in the drive towards a more environmentally friendly Britain. And if he wasn't making such impressive political gains with this environmentally aware approach, he might even deserve applause for attemtping to detach the issue from politics altogether.
