A leader’s conference speech is always a tricky moment to pull off and though it wasn’t revolutionary, I think the scenes that the news organisations played over and over again will reconnect with many who thought Labour had abandoned them – that is much of the moderate left who had decamped to the Liberal Democrats as a non-toxic alternative (now regretting it). And big brother David just couldn’t keep his emotions in check. A Labour leader needed to lance the Iraq boil and denounce a war that was launched on false pretences and cost hundreds of thousands of lives – by some legitimate processes, a million – and all those who criticise the Lib Dems for forming an alliance with the Tories at the glint of ministerial office, are blood-stained-hypocrites if they voted for the war to keep their cabinet jobs (that’s you, Jack Straw). Launching an illegal, disastrous war on the flimsiest of evidence is far worse than going into coalition with the Conservatives. Robin Cook, were he alive, could lambaste the Lib Dems, so can the uncontaminated Ed Miliband, not those who are unrepentant about their actions. There’s Nick Clegg, facing a Sword of David-Camocles above his head, with George Osborne making snipping noises; what does David Miliband do, but make the headlines for himself, with terse words towards Harriet Harman for applauding Ed declaiming Gulf war II as "wrong."
I also liked Ed bearing down on New Labour becoming establishment and “prisoners of old certainties,” such as the market is always right and more efficient, an ideology that could have been gleaned from a GSCE economic textbook, than any high-minded financially-minded think-tank or university. The market is sometimes right and not always more efficient – many Public-Private Partnerships are colossal wastes of money with the worst of both worlds, not the best, co-opting the rapaciousness of the private sector with the foibles and bureaucracy of the public sector.
Even with a conference bounce, the Lib Dems had better be worried. AV needs to go through so they can wave it at their critics and say that this is something 13 years of Labour government failed to achieve.

So the Miliband clan have finally been split - into a winner and a loser. Ed goes on - triumphant. Hi brother David knows that, barring an electoral catastrophe, he will never be Labour leader, never be prime minister. It reminds myself of the Godfather Part II where Michael Corleone's feckless eldest surviving sibling complains bitterly "You're my f**king kid brother!" when Michael is the Don, the head of the family.
Michael as Don Corleone shows maturity with a heart of stone, Ed Miliband greatly emotes but his desire to weaken and destroy the Liberal Democrats shows he has some way to travel before he understands that coalition politics has changed the Westminster landscape and that any meaningful electoral reform needs third parties to offer perspective to the main two. Ed, for his part, probably guessed that if David failed, the party or the country would not be in the mood for Miliband Mk II for a considerable time, if ever again. He had to grasp this opportunity now for it might never come around a second time.
As a person, I find he is less of an automaton like his older brother and let us hope that he is 'own man', not a pawn of the unions who have many uncompromising hard-leftist leaders. But give him his due, he's sounded the death knell for New Labour which was more interested in - and better at - winning power than exercising it in the name of social democracy and he's repudiated the Iraq invasion, cleaning some of that stain from the Labour 'brand'. Whatever happens from here on in, at last we have an opposition who can coherently oppose the government and give those in power pause to think.

If the badge fits

Watching Barack Obama leave the United Nations building in New York after delivering his speech, I noticed a little sparkle reflecting off the bright glare of the cheesy grin. It was a lapel button and not just any lapel button but a United States flag one.
The President's predecessor was a famed wearer of one and many Tea Party advocates love their little pricks, but Obama has always been more ambivalent towards this adornment. In the early stages of his presidential campaign he was scornful of it and rightly so, but when the Republicans got a bounce following their convention, he took it up until the election was in the bag, reckoning that even if it gave him one per cent or even half a per cent extra support from patriotic lunkheads it might well be worth it. He unceremoniously ditched the clasp when riding high in his honeymoon period, but during the pitched battle to pass comprehensive medical reform, he adopted it again. Once the law was passed, the badge once more fell into abeyance. Yet as the mid-term elections look worrying for the Democrats, the sentimental mantle has popped up for a third time as Obama campaigns and deigns to wear it unabashed. One per cent or even half a per cent may be the difference in Senator Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader, winning or losing his home state of Nevada.
Obama's intellectual argument that this little strip of metal symbolises nothing as to a person's true intent is cogent, for one could be a traitor and still wear it in order to deceive, but in a land where wild lies cannot be dismissed as fantasy but have to be vehemently rebutted each and every single time, intellectual honesty is a political commodity worth very little, as Senator John McCain has found out in his primary round for re-election. It is a sad reflection of modern American politics.

The Liberal tendency

The Liberal Democrats have had their party conference and despite grumbles the party is holding together (because if it didn’t electoral oblivion would be even more obvious than some say it already is). I think it is right that the Lib Dems are in coalition with the Conservatives as Labour simply wasn’t prepared to give any ground on its proposals if in alliance with the Lib Dems, not even on electoral reform which was in the Labour party’s manifesto! The Labour high command just wasn’t prepared for two- or multi-party politics, let alone that the numbers would have made a highly unwieldy collation.
If the Lib Dems aren’t to be wiped out at the next election (hopefully 2015), the least that can happen is that Alternative Vote (AV) is passed into law with a successful referendum. The details are hazy to myself, so who knows how ordinary people view it – is it AV, AV+ (Lord Jenkins’ formulation that offers a mixture of proportionality as well as keeping the local candidates in constituencies) or something else.
Reactionary opponents fulminate on how the Lib Dems can ‘dictate’ such terms to the coalition given their number of MPs went down since 2005. Their blinkered approach shows why they are anachronistic in the 21st century – there may be fewer Lib Dem MPs, but their share of the vote since 2005 went up (from 22% in 2005 to 23%). To have fewer MPs when more people vote for you is Kafkaesque in the extreme.
Their second argument is the first-past-the-post system produces strong government because a single party is in charge. This is just one step up from the People’s Democracies of the former Communist Eastern Europe. They provided firm rule and were single party states. The major political difference between us and them is that we – occasionally – rotate what sole party is in power. Although many foes of electoral reform are right-wing, they may actually be closet communists.
Frankly though, these people are a joke or (or prefer corruption as it favours their party) and should be exposed as such.

Talking of rotten systems, the USA is like Britain writ large, with the consequences even more detrimental. The democratic tradition and engagement is fine and upstanding, one of the best in the world, but they are let down by out-of-date institutions. An arrangement designed for 3 million people living across 13 states in 1783 is now applied to 300 million across 50 states. With the passing years, it is less and less able to support this increase. Now an American’s usual response is: what business is it of yours how we elect people (with possibly a ‘you’re a European’ thrown in). But the USA bestrides the world – its military, economic and cultural power extends into every cranny of almost every country. That makes it our business. To coin a phrase, Bhutan it ain’t.
When a system malfunctions more than a BP oil rig, it is especially grievous when the centre has collapsed like a BP oil rig. Okay, it was notorious left-winger Noam Chomsky who made the claim that the Republicans are migrating ever further right (Lincoln turns in his graves) and the Democrats are indistinguishable from moderate Republicans (Eisenhower-types), but it rings true. Justin Rose mooted that it was the swing of the pendulum – the left had their moment in the 1960s and now the right are back with a vengeance (in more ways than one). Yet it is dangerous as it exists in a broken organisational morass and people are desperate when economic stagnation seems to be turning permanent. Barack Obama has been labelled the most-partisan president in living memory (oh, like the last president was a model of bi-partisan probity without referring to 9/11), but he has dealt with a wounded Republican party that is the most obstreperous and obstructing probably in US congressional history. It may make sense in holding itself together but it is ‘political terrorism’ according to the Washington Post, hardly a liberal organ most of the time. The filibuster rule was brought in to stop majoritarian tyranny over the minority, which makes sense when there are only two main parties but it is being abused in nearly every instance. Take the vote on repealing ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ to allow gay Americans to serve their country without being forced out of the military because their sexuality has somehow been revealed. It was an Obama pledge and he can point out that Republicans have scuppered it, as they did with the climate change bill, but it still leaves it unfulfilled, despite Lady Gaga entering the fray (although given her extravagance and lifestyle, her advocacy may have retrenched the conservative opposition in Congress). If the electoral method was re-evaluated to bring it into the 21st century, maybe two main parties would not dominate, Americans might get more of what they want and a filibuster rule would not be needed. But any such progressive attempt will be shot down by vested interests who believe one more push, just one last push, will secure them power without need for reform. It is sad that Labour thought the same after the 2010 election and again in voting against the bill that contained the AV referendum. Both the USA and Britain deserve better from the political opposition.

Lying or stupid - pressured either way

Now, Ijaz Butt, Pakistani cricket's boss claims that he had no proof of any wrongdoing by England's players and that he was merely passing on information he had heard from bookies. He said on Radio Five Live (an interview I have just been made aware of): "I have never said this. If you listen to the full tape of the NDTV interview, the bookies are saying this. I am not saying this."
Okay. Contrast that with "There is loud and clear talk in bookie circles that some English players have taken enormous amounts of money to lose the match [the third ODI]. No wonder there was such a collapse... Did you ask the other people who made allegations against our players whether they had any proof? What did they say? We have thought about this properly and we have positive proofs here before us just like they say they have also."
Hmm.
Contradicting yourself doesn't look too smart. I read though that he is a political appointee (not something that bodes well in itself), so it might be that he is a puppet swinging in the wind at the whim of higher-up masters, which still means he is a liar with no right to make slurs against English players without evidence. If politicians are ordering Butt to lash out, it is a worry for the whole world, not just the cicketing one. Resentful countries, even if their misery is of their own making, are often the biggest trouble-makers on a wider stage. Humility sometimes can be the hardest action.

It’s just not cricket ( tell it to Pakistan's cricket boss)

The Pakistan national cricket team have been disgraceful hosts. Unable to play in their own country because it is convulsed by terrorism, England threw Pakistan a lifeline, as well as hoping to energise many British people of Pakistani descent to follow cricket.
But far from being gracious and grateful, it seems (though the allegations are yet to be proven concretely) that the representatives of Pakistan have engaged in cheating – against England, fans and the game. With more allegations following of further collusion in underhand gambling by other players who were not suspended for the one day tour, the reaction by Ijaz Butt, the head of Pakistani cricket, is not contrition but to throw muck all around, accusing English players of bringing the game into ignominy. Clarifying his comments, the eejit Butt said it was just what he had heard among bookies (and what was he doing in their company?) and was not his own opinion but that he stood by everything he had said. This is the equivalent of inviting a family over for a party, but there is some evidence that members of the family are involved in something illegal; you raise it with the father and his response is not to collar the supposedly guilty party and offer his apologies – instead he spits in your wife’s face
Unless Butt produces evidence of England wrong-doing or submits a humble apology, England should cancel what remains of the one-day series for having such an unsubstantiated stain on their character. Talking of corruption among Pakistani players, a scandal just as large is how an improper person like Butt got into the position he is in. People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
In the film Dr Strangelove, a mad American air force general launches – on his own initiative – a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. The reason is because he is impotent. He deduces that it is not the workings of his own body at fault, rather the international communist conspiracy that is to blame. For Butt, it is a western conspiracy that is laying Pakistani cricket low, not the alleged actions of the national team’s dressing room. However, unless the rule of law and fair play is followed, all of cricket is rendered impotent.

Disposable

The Expendables, Sly Stallone’s hoary, old-timers’ action pic, derives its title from the intellectual ‘high-point’ of Rambo: First Blood Part II, where the eponymous hero explains to his Vietnamese aide that he is expendable and what that means. And, it could be said, that this latest outing by the Italian Stallion takes its title a tad too literal. It’s trash but it’s good trash.
Stallone assembles a formidable array of meatheads from the 1980s and 90s, with the notable exceptions of Jean-Claude van Damme, Steven Seagal and Kurt Russell, with Jason Statham thrown in as he looks older with his shaven head. There is an English baddie henchman but Statham is the counterpoint and it is an admirable touch that the chief villains is American – Eric Roberts, brother to Julia and sometime Master timelord to Paul McGann’s Doctor. It would have been easy to have a foreign evil supreme for the US multiplex audience to vicariously enjoy the eventual demise. Still, a remark by Stallone’s character summing up the soldier baddies as brutal ‘monkeys’ (with the directed acting of these army extras complicit) sails close to the wind given their Latino ethnicity from the fictional island of Vilena – which, in all honesty, should have a tilde over the ‘n’, hence Vileña.
Time is given over to introspection for this type of movie. Much of it revolves around the hard life of a mercenary – Dolph Lungren’s drug abuse, Statham’s fragmentary love life, Mickey Rourke’s despair. The heart bleeds. Other parts are beyond parody (though this film could have done with a whole hunk of irony) such as the ludicrously camp generalissimo or Robert’s rogue CIA man commenting “painting – this is where it starts,” as if being creative automatically leads one to a path of rebellion.
Given the Gubernator’s cameo, it was appropriate that the ending is a combo of Commando and Rambo 3, with hundreds of soldiers to be extravagantly dispatched, since they clearly have no families and deserve their fate through their brutality. They have it easy compared to the principal baddie henchmen and Roberts who all suffer horrific deaths. The action is cartoonish, without veering overly into the sickening bone-crushing that made Watchmen nearly unwatchable and certainly headache-inducing.
The Expendables is fine as far as it goes in its limited way but it could have been so much more. Self-awareness must go beyond the fact that they are fast approaching pensionable age and having on the cast an actor with the name of Charisma Carpenter (who is most welcome in her token role nonetheless). Of this potential, a glimpse is given in the unlikely quips during the fight scene of Lundgren and Jet Li or Li demanding he gets paid more because he is shorter and therefore has to work harder (an aspect of the movie Altaa appreciated). It could have done with more of the laconic humour of Commando or Snakes on a Plane. It was disappointing that Bruce Willis wasn’t given the opportunity during to his brief appearance to say “Yippee-kay-yay mo-fo” (to put it mildly) or at least a post-modern take on that. Little things like that for the action buff to revel in. As a result, it is a little flat. Enjoyable for one viewing but essentially this is The Disposables.