Loudribs Curmudgeonry Corner Tardy Response To The Question Time Shitstorm Special

Cheers to James W Bell for the original.

Good morning Lemmings and holy crap, you are actually reading the second post in the space of a week. Trust me, I have better things to do (my kill kill/death ratio in Team Fortress 2 is not going populate itself) but something’s really got my hackles up this week, hackled enough to prompt a response. I’m talking about the Question Time shitstorm. It’s been nearly a week now, but this seems to have really got under everyones skin, generating tremendous amounts of heat and preciously little light. Somehow, I think we’ve missed the point.

OK, first things first, a small confession. I’m a complete Question Time geek. Seriously, it’s my equivalent of sport and Thursday is a hallowed day in the House of Ribs. I’ve toyed with the idea of producing a post-match report every week and posting up but have yet to do so because a) I’m usually too drunk on the night (I like booze with my bile) to make anything coherent out of it and thus too hungover the next day and b) I think I will have crossed some sort of nerdy Rubicon from which there is no going back. Anyhoo, I love it. When I watch it there’s a weird mental commentary that goes on in my head (“Prescott lunges at Widecome, lands a glancing blow on her cheek, but leaves himself exposed….And Widdecombe’s in there, pummeling that gut!”) and naturally, having Griffin on was going to lend it a whole new element of visceral eye scratching to it. And so it turned out to be, but not as I expected.

Given the extensive lead up to events, I had plenty of time to ponder who my dream line up would be. It looked like this:

Labour: There should be no debate in this matter as Cruddas was clearly the man for the job. A grassroots man of the people with impeccable left wing credentials, a sharp mind and extensive experience of combating the BNP on his own doorstep, he’s the real deal. Tony Benn came a close second for his slightly offbeat gravitas and the fact that he actually did fly planes in the war. Take that, Spitfire purloining Nazi’s!

Conservatives: New boys need not apply. This is the sort of thing that one of the old monsters should be well suited to, Heseltine perhaps, but in the end I plumped for David Davis. His ‘I’ve killed before so don’t fuck with me’ manner combined with his alarming (to Conservative Central Office) tendency to speak his own mind would have made for a killer combo.

Lib Dems: A clear win for Shirley Williams on this front as she’s got that whole righteous anger/eminent wisdom thing going and isn’t averse to telling people off. Ashdown did cross my mind (for reasons similar to my Davis punt), but then I realised that he had, at one point, been a de-facto dictator. That took the wind out of his sails a little.

The Non-Party One: This was the hardest one as there was so much choice about. I toyed with Lenny Henry as saying anything remotely nasty about race around him would look like a fat kid punching a baby and National Treasure status would give him a leeway the others don’t have (even if he isn’t funny any more). However, George Galloway won out in the end on pure value-for-money terms. His to-do at that Congressional Hearing is still one of my favourite bits of TV and the opportunity to hear Griffin being called a toady/lickspittle/poppinjay/brigand was too good to turn down. The Specials or a reanimated Joe Strummer were turned down for reasons of practicality.

That was what I wanted. This is what I got:

Labour: Jack Cocking Straw? Really? I mean, I don’t debate the fact that he’s a crafty (to the point of underhand) and canny (to the point of war criminal bastard) operator but his credibility is shot to pieces and he has a nasty habit of defensive wriggling. Not appealing.

Conservatives: They made an interesting choice in Baroness Warsi. On the one hand, she’s not afraid to get stuck in, is a poster girl for successful cultural assimilation and is quite quick on her feet. The downside is she overextends herself. Time and time again on Question Time I’ve seen her land a skillfull jab and then suddenly turn into some sort of Ruth Badger on PCP, relentlessly piling in until she’s dangerously off-kilter and then crashes and burns. Could have been worse though. It could have been Boris.

Lib Dems: Chris Hulne is a steady politician. And that’s the problem, he just reeks of generic, career, politician. He never says anything too rash, never overplays his hand and is ideal for the ’steady pair of hands’ role. But for the fight of a lifetime? Nope.

The Non Party One: I was kind of pleased to see Bonnie Greer in. She’s got an air of confidence and authority that play well and is free from political constraints to say whatever she damn well pleases. However, there is a down side: She can get a little tangential and lose her focus, chasing after dead points. Not a bad choice though.

Oh great... it finally happened... I'm crossing the Nerdy Rubicon.

So what happened? Weirdness, that’s what. It was always going to be a highly charged event but there was blood in the air that night. Griffin did awesomely well in proving himself to be an utter shit and the audience did a stand up job at making it clear that his brand of crap is not going to fly. For the other panelists, it was open season with low hanging fruit positively cluttering up the place. The man was (rightly) damned, pilloried and exposed as the fuckface that he is and by the end, it looked like the forces of progress and reason had triumphed over the vile standard bearers of hatred. Yes, Jack Straw practised some of his trademark chicanery, Warsi briefly got stuck out on a limb and Bonnie Greer got totally sidetracked with genetics, but all in all it was a case of mission accomplished. Personally, I thought it was a riot. Far right twat gets pwnd by more palatable people and Britain once again displays its famed tolerance? What’s not to like? At least that’s how it appeared at the time.

The morning after, amid the usual post QTime hangover I started thinking about it a bit more. One thing in particular was grating at me, the immigration question. As soon as the question was uttered, you could see all the party panelists have an ‘Oh Fuck’ moment and they immediately turned to point the finger at each other. A minor scuffle ensued, a few cheap blows were traded and then things rapidly moved on. But the funny thing was that crowd also hushed themselves. Suddenly, the elephant lumbered into the room. From a personal point of view, I haven’t got a problem with immigration. I think it makes this country richer in many ways but I have to concede that it does make a lot of people very angry for various reasons (some valid, some not) and for a smaller proportion, it is the most important political issue to them. Yet the politicians couldn’t bear to look it, just in case that somehow validated it and made it real. Unfortunately, it is real.

While this episode may seem like a minor crack in the facade, briefly glimpsed from the corner of an eye, it belies something deeper and something that all the post QTime fuss has not yet addressed. The BNP got a million votes from regular people. In that pool, there will be a certain proportion racist, hateful nutters who are repulsive to everything this country stands for, but the rest of them are probably aren’t your regular skinhead thugs. So who are they? Stand by for me to sound slightly sanctimonious.   My job means I spend a lot of time in poor, white areas of a large city in the north. My bread and butter is woe and anguish, so naturally, these places tend to get a lot of my time. The weird thing is that before I did these sort of jobs, these places might as well not have existed. They were bus stops that you don’t get off at, a place of ‘others’ and of potential danger. It inhabitants could usually be summed up as chavs or scallies and to all intents and purposes I had no reason to give them the time of day. However, now I have to (the early days were fucking scary) and over time, I’ve had to revise the way I look at them. Something that struck me early on was that everyone in these places looked like they had had the life sucked out of them. Physically, people were either too thin or too fat, their skin pasty and their habits destructive. But it was deeper. In none of these places was there any sense of hope or a vision of how things could be. Basically, ‘life’ was something that happened to them, not something they had a say in. Various do-gooders like myself would occasionally pass through their lives, promise the earth and deliver very little while the state’s carrot and stick approach would usually want the responsibility up front and the reward on the never-never. Watching the news in one of these households would usually end up with a weary round of “I’d like to see them live off sixty quid a week” and “they’re all same”-ing while the adbreaks would taunt them stuff they could have, if only they weren’t them (although sometimes, by means of dodgy credit or DLA back payments, 40” LCD’s would magically appear). To them, the world outside the estate was as unreal and ethereal as their world had been to me, the only difference being that in their eyes my world was intent of fucking over there’s.

These people were largely invisible because no-one really represented them. The left had pretty much collapsed with Labour morphing from the party of the people to the party of whatever keeps the fun times going and nothing came along to fill its place. As a result, this clutch of people effectively wrote themselves out of the game. They did this by not voting. Now they were really in the shit because no one could see any benefit in fighting their corner. The battle for power became about Middle England and the underclass were left to fester, an angry boil tucked out of sight but getting bigger with every passing day. Unfortunately, someone is offering these people a vision now and in their eyes, it’s a far better prospect than the helping of Shit Pie they’ve got right now. That someone is the BNP.

In the eyes of the rest of the world, the BNP seem to stand for one thing and one thing alone: Racism. Whilst I wouldn’t argue for a second that they are anything other than a bunch of biggoted fucktards who appall me, that’s only half the picture. The part we don’t talk about is the vision that they are selling which is far broader. They are offering these angry, pissed off people something that no-one else does: Pride and a perceived righting of perceived wrongs. To some of them, the BNP are people who do have an idea of what it’s like to live in a shitty estate, they are people who will stand up for their interests, will not cave in to Big Money and they are people who can conceivably make life better for them, even if that means swallowing a hearty dose of race hate. After all, what has immigration ever given them? From their point of view, it’s made a housing system that was already buckling completely collapse and made those elusive career prospects even scanter (and in some cases, there is an element of crude racism). The benefits that we reap from it simple aren’t visible in their world and if someone was going to frame the debate in terms of ‘Us or Them’, then they’re going to plump for ‘Us’.

Don’t get me wrong, I in no way condone anything that BNP stand for and don’t think for a second that these areas are exclusively made up from the downtrodden and repressed masses of toiling salts of the earth. The truth is that there are some real shits who don’t take responsibility for anything, harbour some sickening views and generally weaken their communities. But the same can be said for any walk of life. That’s humanity. However, what I do caution against is turning this into a one dimensional conflict where if you’re with the BNP, you’re a racist and that’s the end of the argument. It achieves little than to confirm our own prejudices and mask the wider argument. An interesting parallel is Germany in the 20’s and 30’s. Looking back after the event, it is easy to equate pretty much everything the Nazi’s did to their racial policy and thus conclude that the German people were simply a nation of closet racists just waiting for the opportunity to unleash their hatred upon Europe. But it’s not that simple. Many of Germany’s people either did not share the Nazi’s opinion on the Jews or simply didn’t feel very strongly about it. What they did feel, and oh so keenly, was that their nation had been broken, humiliated and given the beat down by a world that was exacting revenge. That was the fuel that allowed the Nazi’s in and although the aspects of racial hatred were often explicit among the hardcore supporters, it simply wasn’t the big issue for the many and the ghastly policies that eventually emerged developed at a slow but relentless pace. It was a trade off the people may not have been comfortable with, but the pro’s outweighed the cons. A graphic illustration of how this operates in our time is that I’ve met Asians who are considering voting for the BNP. While this fact is by turns mind boggling and stomach turning, it warrants further examination. The said people I’ve met have also lived in grotty areas, have very few prospects and feel that no-one stands up for them. They and their families have lived in Britain long enough for them to consider themselves ‘British’ and like their white counterparts, see immigration as a further threat to the tenuous existence that cling on to. When you try and point out that the BNP has an extensive history of hatred towards Asians and explicitly bans them from membership, there doesn’t seem to be any resonance. It’s about the trade off. These guys might believe some pretty horrific stuff, but at least they also have some of my interests at heart. And that’s the problem.

I’m guessing that some of the stuff I’ve written might make a few people very angry and I want to make it clear that have a lot of sympathy for the argument that racists shouldn’t be given the time of day. It’s easy for me, being white and never having been the victim of direct racism to spout off about ‘grey areas’ and I’m sure it would be very different if I had grown up with the NF at my school gates, singling me out for no better reason than the colour of my skin. Nor do I want to be misunderstood as believing that racism isn’t a problem in this country. It is and I encounter it far too often in my work to write it off as anything other than a serious and ugly blight on our society.  However, I think it’s of the utmost importance that we avoid this argument become polaraised into a battle over one issue and one issue alone. If we do that, we risk taking our eye off the ball to the issues that actually count for the people who are considering voting for the BNP, fail to do anything about them and then let in an abhorrent party by the back door. Again, Germany springs to mind where the debate in the 30’s became about Communists vs. Fascists. The middle ground simply ceased to exist as mainstream parties failed to recognize that the battle wasn’t just about a very select few specific beliefs. What I believe Question Time demonstrated was that the mainstream parties are on notice: There is an army of people who you have forgotten. They are angry, hurt and at the point where they will consider actions that we feel to be the unreasonable. They may not have voted in the past, but that’s because they felt there was no-one to vote for. Now they do. Cater for these people now or face genuine and widespread support for the diabolical on your doorstep. You have been warned.

Oh great! I ended all depressing again! It ain’t easy being me.

Loudribs Curmudgeonry Corner Belated Post-Conference Season Catharsis

Morning Lemmings and welcome once again to the agonizing grind that is my Curmudgeonry Corner. Now that we’ve managed to make it through the hell that is conference season, I thought it might be opportune to look back and heave a collective “WTF?!” at the frankly confusing events that occurred during those three weeks. But first, a brief wander down memory lane.

Many years ago, I was a fresh faced A-level student who uncool enough to take Politics and Government as one of my subjects. Part of our studies revolved around political theory and ideology, something that I thought would probably be quite interesting at the time. As it turned out, our lecturer managed to extract any semblance of relevance or meaning from it and managed to convert what should have been an inspirational eye-opener into the dried out husk of a reverse engineered exam. However, I did learn stuff…and things for that matter. One of the greatest bits of stuff (or perhaps a thing) was Hans Slomp’s Projection Of The European Political Spectrum, handily displayed below.

Many thanks to wikipedia user Mcduarte200 for making the original Public Domain.

It’s basically a graphic crib sheet that you figure out where certain people were on the political spectrum. For example, Old Labour were usually pretty progressive in both social and economic matters so we could plonk them squarely in the top left segment, just about where social democracy sits. The Tories, on the other hand, were pretty much conservative on both fronts so they got to sit in the bottom right pane while the Lib Dems, being all things to all men had the joy of hovering around the middle. Looking at it, there was a nice sort of symmetry to it…the little X’s for all the major parties were pretty evenly spaced , formed a nice straight line if you connected them and stayed away from the dangerous corners of communism and fascism. To me, that looked like a pretty good recipe for a healthy democracy, a fair spread with something for everyone but nothing for real lunatics. And like all things great, I bloody well took it for granted. Fast forward 10 years and a very different picture emerges, a picture that this conference season threw into sharp relief, but more on that later. So without further ado, let’s delve into the maw of the beast and pray to god that we somehow manage to clamber back out.

In the Used To Be Red Corner…..New Labour:

I feel a bit sorry for Gordon Brown these days. No matter what he does, it is always spun in terms of ‘the fight of his political life’ or ‘the speech of a lifetime’. I’m sure that if he makes a cup of tea in the morning some hot headed apparatchik will burst into the kitchen to yell “Gordon, for God’s sake man! This is your cup of tea of a lifetime! DON’T FUCK IT UP!”. And so the scene was set for yet another ‘[insert activity here] of a lifetime’. Where I start to lose sympathy for Gordon Brown is the way he always just manages to scrape through but never has the guts to try something that veers too far from the script. The performance is usually muddled, lacklustre and a hodge-potch of ‘whatever looks good this season’, thrown together in the hope that this scattergun approach might spray enough political buckshot over a wide enough arc to at least clip someone and leave them with a nasty scratch. What he doesn’t do is radical departures or bold thrusts into the unknown and that’s pretty much what we got from the conference.

Let’s look at the economic side of things first, because this is where Brown has the greatest leeway for calling bullshit on the Tory’s. It’s no great secret that pretty much every economist worth their salts (so minus the crazy free market fundamentalists) are frankly appalled at the Conservatives latest take on money matters. Their plan basically amounts to paying back everything we owe in record time and a middle finger to public services. It’s a seductive argument, if you’re into the business of relating the macro-economic behemoth to a simple household budget, but also an argument that is made of bricks of pure stupid. If Brown had any sense/gumption he would have trashed the Tory’s plan in the crudest terms and then proudly declared that he would continue spending with wild abandon until it became clear that the world as we know it was in no danger of imploding. Instead, he did what New Labour usually does and fudged it by basically saying “Yeah, we won’t cut back that much and we will pay back a little”. The very act of doing that is bloody stupid because it credits the Troy plan with a modicum of sense, rather than shitload of crazy that it actually is. As a result, the Tory’s now have the initiative and are dictating the terms of the economic argument. Nice one Gordy, way to miss an open goal. As for the bankers, Gordy tried to sound well ‘ard, but ended up sounding just a bit bland. Again, this is another fumbled ball as he could well have got away with a policy aimed at tarring and feathering errant bankers. The public would have happily obliged, feasted riotously on the pound of flesh that they have (justifiably) hankered after so long and then  gone to the polls with a song in their heart and blood round their chops. Alas, it was not to be.

So how about social policy, surely he’ll fare better here? Well, yes and no. As is obligatory at New Labour Conferences, he did The Big List. “We got X-million benefit claimants into crappy temporary agency jobs, X-million families in poverty into the arms of Cash Converter, blah blah blah”. OK, I sound a little churlish now, but that’s the nature of the beast. Labour has done some good things, to which I doff my cap, but I’m a fickle voter and I don’t want to hear about what you’ve done. I want to hear about what you’ll do. On that front, he got into even more of a pickle with an epic exercise in hedge betting. For the left, there were the back down on compulsory ID cards, the commitment to foreign aid, abolition of means testing for elderly care and the protection of school spending. All well and good, except that some of these things will really wind up the right of the party and the overly powerful Middle England crowd. To remedy this problem, some of the other announcements pandered to that end of the spectrum (tighter booze controls, gulags hostels for single mums and benefit cuts for parents of ASBO kids who don’t fall into line) but also had the effect of then pissing off the left.  In the end, you get the political equivalent of Modest Mouse’s “Good News For People Who Like Bad News”, an album that is half solid gold, half turgid shit. The same applied to electoral reform. The bold move would be to realise that the chances of winning the next election are pretty much slim to nil and to go out with a scorched earth policy by allowing a referendum for PR (thus restoring a modicum of sanity to a lunatic political system and denying the Tory’s any future landslides). Again, he went for the triangulation approach and opted for a referendum on AV if they win the election. Given that AV is widely regarded as worse than first-past-the-post and that their current chances of winning look like a turd in the rain, this was nothing more than a fop to shut up the awkward squad. Which pretty much sums up the Labour Conference.

Maybe I’m doing to harsh here. For a party that’s been in power for as long as New Labour have, it’s pretty hard to learn new tricks. While their future prospects look grim and changes are needed, a wholesale deviation from the blueprint is a tricky thing to pull off (remember, for every Sgt. Pepper there’s a St. Anger). However, I can’t help but think that what we got here was the worst of both worlds, a wrong headed attempt to fuse together the incompatible (much like my partners brain wave to try All Bran with orange juice instead of milk. Trust me, it didn’t end well).

Final Verdict: File under ‘L’ for ‘Lacklustre’

In The Probably Still Blue Corner: The Conservatives

This was the scary one. If, like me, the sum of all your fears boils down to the Tories back in power then this was the conference to watch. After all, the pressure was on and it was apparent that they couldn’t carry on by just making vague statements and praying people will vote them in on account of not being Labour. This was the time when they had to look a bunch of people who could govern rather than just criticise. From my point of view, it got off to a belting start with Ireland giving a resounding ‘Yes’ to the Lisbon Treaty. “Thank God!” I thought, “Europe is here to plunge the Tory’s back to the Dark Ages and spare us all 4 years of Bullingdonocracy!”. David Cameron tried his best to defend the indefensible by resolutely refusing to answer any question about what happens if the Czechs also ratify the treaty but was soon outflanked by Boris who took it upon himself to make numerous harebrained and impossible proposals in the opposite direction, all good times in my book. As it stands, we’re yet to hear a definitive answer on the question of  “will you really tell the entirety of Europe to get bent and thus undo decades delicate diplomacy” question. It could yet prove to be their undoing.

However, the glory of a foes folly was short lived and the conference began to take a very scary turn with George Osborne’s speech. As you may well have guessed by now, I have little love for the boys in blue, but I reserve a special ring of hell for Osborne. To me, he is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with British politics. His perma-sneer, that look of a raging cokehead (speculation, of course), the old school tie elitism and his complete disconnection from reality as we know it all combine to make me shudder whenever I see him. The only thing in his favour is that he is very bad at disguising these character flaws and usually comes across as Head Smarmy Bastard, something that tends not to endear him to voters. So imagine my horror when he gets on the stage and somehow manages to conceal these usually all too obvious traits under a veil of bullshit. Somehow, I guess with the aid of superglue between gums and lips, he managed not to sneer and present himself as vaguely credible. I say vaguely, because the content was all over the show but in the world we live, presentation pwns content to the power of ten. So what of this content?  Well, how about the (oft repeated) “We’re all in this together” line? Excuse me? From a party that has both a base and a front bench full of multi-millionaires? A little fatuous don’t you think? Then came the “We have become the party of the NHS” swizz. Now don’t get me wrong, I have no love for New Labour’s meddling with NHS and having spent three years as a front line clinician during the height of their reforms, I can tell you that they were wrong headed, ill-conceived and destined to failure. That fact, however, does make the Tory’s (who have said or done nothing to indicate otherwise) any better on that front. And the bankers? Osborne apparently “reserves the right” to get hot under the collar about it so I wouldn’t hold your breath for that pound of flesh you so desperately crave. Finally, there was the “age of austerity” business, designed (I suspect) to conjure up wholesome images of 50’s nuclear families settling down to a hearty meal of rationed spam before darning their socks and counting their blessings. Personally, I see all this as a softening up manoeuvre for another bout of ‘for your own good’ Thatcherism, clad in the clothing of ‘compassionate conservatism’. The thing that bothers me is that he may have got away with it.

Worse was to come as Call Me Dave performed a similar trick. Credit where credit’s due, he has worked some sort of miracle in decontaminating the Tory brand, from the point of view of perception at least. In his speech, this boiled down to a masterclass in political cross dressing. On the one hand, he paid lip service to the old touchstones of conservatism: Labour are too statist, love taxes too much and want to monitor how many times you go to the toilet each. It was  your basic ‘down with Big Government’ call to arms’. So far, so Tory. However, the surprising bit was his sudden new found social responsibility: It will be the Conservatives who save the poor (who stand to do sooooo well out of their inheritance tax reforms) and heal the sick, who will stitch our fragmented society back together and go back to the good old Blighty of cricket and young boys in short shorts and knee high socks. All those people we used to call slackers and scroungers are now the downtrodden we will  lift out of poverty with our benign and paternal endeavours. While I can’t disagree with such a mobile intention, I have grave reservations about whether they really mean it. For a start, the funding for all these plans is fanciful. The general plan is that services will be cut, waste will be dealt with ruthlessly, taxes won’t go up and then spontaneously a recovery will appear and we’ll all be made up, free to pursue our now poverty free lives without the state getting all up in our faces. The trouble is that the economics just don’t stack up. The service cuts will hit the poor the hardest, the ‘savings’ probably won’t materialise and the cuts themselves only cover a tiny fraction of the money we owe. Again, I see this as pretty much the same old Thatcherism, just this time garnished with New Labour platitudes. In short, it’s a fantasy, but one he sold very well. Colour me worried.

In other news, the party as a whole were under strict orders not to look like a bunch of multi-millionaires, yahooing their way to power and Bono made a video appearance. Just when I thought I couldn’t  hate Bono any more.

Verdict: File under ‘F’ for ‘Frightening’.

In the WTF?! Corner, The Lib Dems.

*sigh* Ok, I’m going to be brief here because I found this to be a heart breaking experience. On the face of it, the Lib Dems should have making a shitload of hay for the last 5 years, but are still scoring around the 20% mark. Part of that is not their fault and is to do with our demented political system. However, a lot of it is to do with the fact that they are simply not coherent. They’ve got some great political real estate in the shape of Vince Cable (who would look great in a shop keepers jacket a la Ronnie Barker in Open All Hours) and Shirley Williams (Sarah Tether and Norman Baker put in some good work as well), but it is squandered because a) the party as a whole have no idea what they’re doing and b) they’re leader is as memorable as whoever came 7^th in The X-Factor last year. Take for example Cable’s proposal to tax homes worth over a million. I’m on board with this and there’s an appetite for it out there. Not only that, but it would put clear water between the Lib Dems and the other parties. However, once it received a savaging in the right wing press the party simply fell apart on the issue and ended up looking a bunch of startled cattle. And that’s the problem: they don’t seem to have the ideological gumption to find a cohesive position on anything. Sense would dictate that now is the time for them to move left as there is no competition and plenty of demand, but they simply don’t have the stones. And that’s tragic.

Srsly Vince, it's a good look. You carry it well.

Moving onto the next problem, WHY THE FUCK DID YOU ELECT CLEGG? His speech was the political equivalent or weak lemon drink in a plastic beaker. Seriously, whenever he’s on TV I seem to suffer some sort of absence, only to come round five minutes later wondering what just happened. The speech itself was crap. Every time he claimed he could be PM (which was many, but I simply don’t have the will to look it up), something inside of me died. He wants to out Cameron Cameron and out Blair Blair but just ends up coming across as a creature with all the substance of a set of net curtains. Seriously, have a coup. You guys are quite good at that now so why not do us all a favour and send him quietly into the night.

Final Verdict: File under ‘F’ for ‘Futile’

So that was the conference season, but there’s another point here. Go back to the marvellously named Slomp Projection and have a crack at plotting where the parties stand now. In fact, don’t bother, I’ve done it for you.

O hai! I fuxed ur politcal spectrum!

As you can see, it is by turns mind boggling and depressing. The left has completely caved and what we are left is an amphorous mass, slowly cannibalising each other and offering voters a choice of basically nothing. Over the last 12 years, politics in this country has gradually turned from a real battle between competing versions of reality to a pissing match in which the distinction between parties is measured only in tone and the issue of substance is but an afterthought. The more frightening aspect is that leaves the door open for real nutters like the BNP. With such massive gaping holes in the graph, the people left in the desolate sections have no choice but to gravitate to the extremes, much to the detriment of all. Politics should be about offering people a hopeful narrative and the promise of something better. I fear that in this country we have lost that fire and now simply treat politics as an exercise in management, a mundane necessity that whirs away in the background while life trundles on. And that cannot be a good thing.

Loudribs Curmudgeonry Current Affairs Corner

1st Battalion, Internetz Regiment, yeah?

Another day, another turgid outpouring of near random anger. Today, ladies and gents, it is the lucky old war in Afghanistan that gets to have a bunch of my bile slowly dribbled all over it. To be fair, that’s the least of their problems but being one never to miss an opportunity to make a bad situation worse, I feel obliged to get stuck in with a good old surge of nay-saying.

Alright, let’s get this show on the road. By their very nature, wars are messy affairs that often blur the lines between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and consequently need mythologising the fuck out of if they are going to go anywhere. Sometimes the myths work really well and we all get to pat each other on the back in the name of a ‘good’ war while thousands die untimely deaths as a result of stuff they had absolutely no control over. Fig. 1 in ‘The Good War Fun Book’ is WWII for the following reasons:

A) We really didn’t start that one. Further to that, the guy who did start it seemed to really enjoy being Global Dickhead #1.

B) We won…it’s really hard to have a ‘good war’ without winning.

C) By the time we did win, we had uncovered some of the most unholy bullshit ever perpetrated which lends a whole load of credibility to the ‘good war’ claim.

D) Our armed forces appeared to be composed of wholesome stereotypes (like the Cock-er-ny Tommies whistling ‘Knees-Up Muvver Brahhhn’ and “Gawd blessing” ‘er Majesty as they march off to certain death or the unflappable, pipe-chomping chaps from the home counties who quaintly understate everything before unleashing several tonnes of high explosives over a civilian area).

E) You can legitimately claim that the war fell into the category of ‘Battle for Existence’. I mean Hitler wasn’t really pissing about, was he?

Of course, if you scratch the surface a little, then things aren’t quite that simple. The bombing of Dresden doesn’t fit in quite so well with the glorious narrative we grew up with and to think it was only the bad guys who committed war crimes is plain old wishful thinking. However, those are the things that history tends to gloss over and our enduring memory is of how we bailed Jonny Europe out of a tight spot and thus gave the Daily Mail an Unlimited Ammo cheat code for the next 60 years of bitching about foreigners. So there’s World War 2. File it under ‘G’ for ‘Good’.

At the other end of the spectrum is your ‘Bad War’ and although many start out in popular perception as ‘Good Wars’, it usually isn’t too long before they’re quickly shunted over to the ‘Bad’ pile and then consigned to fester on history’s naughty step. The First Opium War is a great example (and one of many outstandingly ‘Bad’ British wars) for the following reasons.

A)    We really did start that one. The Chinese were happily minding their own business when the British took it upon themselves to sell shitloads of opium to the Chinese people. When the Chinese government understandable took umbrage to this turn of events, we killed over 22’000 of them and nicked Hong Kong. Yoink!

B)    OK, we didn’t lose that one (in fact, we won pretty convincingly) but      it was a case of the school bully beating seven bells out of the fat and slow kid who isn’t allowed to do PE because his mum won’t let him.

C)    We didn’t exactly act too sorry about it all, even though it was pretty clear that we had been utter cads. The Chinese didn’t get Hong Kong back for another 150 years.

D)    Although the soldiers were still generally stereotypically wholesome, the government that sent them to war certainly didn’t end up looking too rosy and the war divided the nation.

E)    There’s absolutely no fucking way you play the old ‘Battle for Existence’ card with this baby. Seriously, a war to ensure the future of our narcotic distribution infrastructure and the profits that go with it? Pull the other one.

So clearly, this ends up as a ‘Bad War’. And herein lies one of the many problems with Afghanistan: No one has been able to file it properly. Some want it in the Good pile, some in the Bad, but no one has been able to convince enough people that it’s one or the other. Being creatures who like to deal in certainties, this puts us in an uncomfortable position, like fancying a BNP member or harbouring a taste for human flesh. Although I’ve been quite firmly at the Bad end of the spectrum, it’s fair to say that it’s never been a crystal clear position and part of that is down to the fact that we’ve never been able to get a handle as to what this war is all about.

When the war kicked off in 2001, the rationale seemed pretty clear. The alleged mastermind of 9-11 was being sheltered by the government of Afghanistan and I think it’s fair to say that although quite a few of us had some misgivings, opinion in general was that America needed its pound of flesh and if that meant a bunch of Afghan civilians getting caught in the crossfire, then so be it (or as the sublime ‘Get Your War On’ put it, “You can’t make a freedom omelette without breaking a few human rights eggs”). Britain, wedded as ever to the ‘Special Relationship’ (shorthand for “We don’t have an independent foreign policy”) signed up without argument and I think it’s safe to say that most people felt comfortable in putting into the Good War bracket.  And there it would have stayed, if only Bin Laden had been good enough to be easily captured, the Taliban capitulated without a fight and a vibrant democracy spontaneously bloomed in a nation with very little history of central government.

What actually transpired was a somewhat different kettle of fish. Bin Laden (the cad) managed to evade the most powerful military on earth while the Taliban went to ground and started a bloody insurgency that lasts to this day. Not only that, but it started to become clear that the original pretext wasn’t quite as plausible as it seemed. For starters, people started to point out that the vast majority of those involved with 9-11 were Saudi’s and perhaps we were barking up the wrong tree. No one doubted that Bin Laden was a de-facto war criminal, but did that really justify the tearing apart of a nation that was only really implicated by association (not mention the fact that he probably wasn’t in Afghanistan at all and more likely over the border in Pakistan)? Also, Rumsfeld’s brand of warmongering (which can be described as ‘on the cheap’) was running out of road as it became clear that you need more than a couple of divisions to build a nation from scratch. And just to top it all off, NATO as a whole was also looking decidedly unimpressed with the way things were shaping up. From their point of view, this should have been a quick smash-and-grab with everyone home in time for tea and cake. While the ‘smashing’ component went terrifyingly well, the ‘grab’ aspect was found to be somewhat more elusive. From this angle, the Good War hypothesis was starting to look shaky. Luckily, a distraction was at hand in the shape of the Iraq War (which, I’m pretty sure, will forever be in the Bad War pile) and as we all ohhhhh-ed and ahhhhhhh-ed at the fireworks of Shock and Awe, Afghanistan proceeded to slip inexorably down the news agenda and festered away like an angry sore.

By 2006, the grim realization that this democracy lark wasn’t doing what it said on the on the tin began to set in and the war entered a new phase. Concerned that large tracts of the south effectively belonged to the Taliban and their copious cash crops of opium, NATO decided that more troops were needed with the hotspots of Helmand and Kandahar falling under the purview of the UK and Canadian forces respectively. Cue John Reed’s now infamous ‘without a shot being fired’ speech (OK, so he might not have really that but the last I heard, British forces had got through 12 million rounds) and much talk of hearts and minds. However, the reality turned out to be far more grizzle. The Taliban, far from being a rag-tag militia, turned out to be Central Asia’s Society of Double Hard Bastards who flat out refused to play war by western rules (i.e. standing about in the open, waiting to be airstruck the fuck out of). Recruitment was hardly a problem for them either, what with NATO’s fondness for bombing wedding parties and the Afghan’s government excellence in the field of corruption. Furthermore, attempts to cut off their cash supply by torching opium fields simply made the problem even worse by driving otherwise sympathetic civilians into the arms of the Taliban. Three years on and things are worse. ‘Victory’ is as far off as it is ever has been, but the level of killing has accelerated. What was once a conflict on the fringe, playing second fiddle to the spectacle in Iraq is now in voters living room every night, a relentless drip-drip of tragedy that shows no sign of abating. The narrative is in serious trouble as well. The ‘avenging 9-11’ line no longer has any purchase and anyone with half a brain can see that the ‘fighting them there, not here’ argument is of the purest bullshit. As a result, governments have had to fall back on ‘nation-building’ and ‘counter-narcotics’ arguments to try and shore up the ebbing support for the war, but the line doesn’t match the reality of elections where no-one votes and heroin that’s as available as it’s ever been. The grim reality is that we’re now in a similar position to that of the Vietnam War in ‘69. Everybody knows the reasoning is bollocks and destined to failure, but somehow we can’t admit that to ourselves andend up throwing away lives to save face on the world stage. But that can’t go on for ever. At some point, something has to give and we will withdraw. The government know that. They just can’t let that happen on their watch. In short, it’s a clusterfuck. A giant clusterfuck that’s heading firmly to the ‘Bad’ pile.

OK, well done: That’s the history bit over and done with (sort of). Now to the serious business of bile and its venting. As a nation, it seems that we have absolutely no concept of what war is. Look out your window right now. Is there a war on? Do you feel like part of a ‘war-effort’? Do you wake up in the morning terrified by what the news will bring today? I’m guessing that you don’t because unless you happen to know someone deployed in Afghanistan, you have nothing to fear. This is in stark contrast to the people in Afghanistan who really do know what fear is. It’s a night letter from the Taliban or a raid by NATO troops. It’s the sound of a jet plane, unloading death as it passes, all of this paid for by you. For all the talk of ’smart weapons’ and ‘precision strikes’, the currency of war is still the same as it ever was. It’s dead kids. It’s grieving mothers. It’s lives destroyed and burning homes. You don’t see too much of that on the breakfast news.

On top of this is our perverse attitude towards the military. We seem to have this grotesque duality in our dealings with them where we laud their bravery and heroics (bizarrely illustrated by the macabre and, I suspect, media engineered circus that is Wooton-Basset), yet we (and New Labour) treat them like civil servants whose role is to do our governments bidding just so long as they promise not to get killed. Well I’ve got news for you. War doesn’t work like that. Take the helicopter shitstorm for instance. Men and women are being killed in Afghanistan because the Taliban mine the roads. Some would say (myself included) that that is what happens when you invade a sovereign nation, but that is by-the-by. In response, the media (encouraged by the Conservatives) whips up a sweaty fuss about choppers and vehicles designed, it seems, to batter the prime minister and score some cheap points. ‘Outrage’ ensues and the 6 o’Clock News is littered with vox pops of red faced shoppers, deploring the governments decision to send our boys to war without the right kit while generals are conjured up to confirm that they want more of this or that (which is, of course, their job….do you seriously think that if you asked a general “Hey there Big Hat, want some more shit hot toys to blow the crap out of stuff with?” he’s going to say ‘”No, that’s quite alright, old chap. Plenty to be getting on with and all that.”?). The fundamental point missing in all this is a tolerance for the grim fact that if you send people to war, a lot of them are not going to come back. You can rock up in god damn 100 ft Japanese robot battle suits that shoot lasers out of it’s adamantium maw, but give it enough time and someone will figure out how to blow them up. Instead of engaging with this reality and thinking about just why the fuck it is we’re there in the first place, we hide ourselves in blame games, angrily jabbing at the screen with pointed fingers whilst denying that we, as a nation, are in a hell of our own making. We need to start making like the Canadians and set a date for withdrawal.

OK. I feel better now. I’m filing this sorry page of history under a resounding ‘B’ for ‘Bad’. If you fancy reading some hefty tomes on this sort of thing, I wholeheartedly recommend Robert Fisk’s The Great War For Civilisation, Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Towers, Richard A. Clarke’s Against All Enemies and Seymour Hersch’s Chain of Command. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to killing some dusky looking fellows on Call Of Duty 4. Hypocrite? Moi?

The Sorrowful Lament of Loudribs Recession

Stoopid giant golden bull... thinks it's soooooo clever....

Hello Lemmings. Ok, so after a brief foray into the world of madmen of yore I’m afraid it’s back to the tiresome business of griping about the present. Despite the target rich environment that abounds right now, I’m going to try and keep this focused by venting some bile on a topic that’s very close to my heart….The Great Economic Apocalypse Fuckery Of 2008/9. I’m very attached to this event in a deeply emotional way as I’m a doom monger by disposition and the boom years didn’t sit well with me. This is partly down to me being a perennial underachiever. Despite fast approaching 30, being academically well qualified and having worked many ‘responsible’/‘worthy’ jobs, I still earn below the national average wage, ride the bus and rent my dwelling. I’m also highly phobic about debt and not really one to go for in extravagant materialism which seemed to put me at odds with the rest of the world during the good times. In fact, the years 2003 to 2007 seemed to me to be nothing but an extended exercise in excuse making. Visits to parents would always involve veiled references to ‘the property ladder’ and ‘career forwarding’ followed by much not so veiled hand wringing on my part about “the time not being right” and much “wait and see”-ing. I couldn’t even find refuge in my trusted friend television thanks to a rash of Allsops, Beanies and assorted ‘lifestyle’ types, all berating me to do exactly the opposite of what my gut wanted and clambering aboard their grubby bandwagon. In short, I don’t get on with unrestrained economic growth.

To be fair, I’m not alone in this department. Many of peers felt equally shafted by what was supposed to be our halcyon days and with good reason. We had grown up with nothing but Thatcherism and the associated messages that a) generating wealth is what you are here for and if you don’t, you are next to useless b) the state was not going to help you if you fucked things up and c) if you were from a single parent family then you were obviously a wrong ‘un (I had to stick that one in because it is something I will never be able to forgive the Tory’s for).  Along with these more punitive points was the assumption that you could be whatever you wanted, just so long as you worked bloody hard and didn’t mind trampling on the toes of those less fortunate. When Labour got into power, the tone changed (much more “Chillax guys, we’re way more mellow and groovy than those Tory squares”) but the fundamental assumption was still basically the same: You can do/be anything your heart desires providing you put in the hours. A noble endeavour, surely? Well, on the face of it, maybe. In reality, not a cat in hells chance. Most of my friends (like myself) had done what we thought was expected of us. We went to 2^nd tier uni’s, paid for the privilege and then fell into a labour market that was singularly unprepared for a glut of graduates with high expectations and identikit qualifications. Most of my friends ended up either in minimum wage retail jobs (counting on ill gotten bonuses to get them through), call centres, or in my case, the voluntary sector earning pennies. A few managed to carve a reasonable niche out in IT, but for most of us it a headlong rush into anything that would pay. For some it was even more of a painful experience as they had taken the ‘you can be anything you want ‘ message to heart. When it turned out that they couldn’t, they ended up blaming themselves and became trapped in a cycle of self loathing and nixed ambitions. Yet something else was also afoot. As the economy recovered from the dot-com bubble and then gradual morphed into a steroid-addled growth addict another message began to permeate the ether. The old convention that if you wanted something, you worked for it started to fade and in its place came the assumption that you could have what you wanted, no matter whether you could afford it now or not. Credit would provide you with the means to live beyond the physics of reality and as a society, we embraced it with wild abandon. We maxed out, balanced transferred and then maxed out again. Those who had a home pushed it even further and began to treat what should have been a dwelling as a veritable money making machine that had the ability to turn fuck all into a meal ticket. It was a one-way bet. Or so we thought. (I should point out at this point that I’m not entirely blind to the benefits of this period. At least we could get work, which is more than I can say for the poor bastards graduating right now).

As is my nature, I spent a fair few of these years chuntering and muttering about the unsustainability of it all, but I admit that towards 2006 a certain fatigue was setting in. Maybe the alchemists had turned based metal into gold and here was stupid old me, clinging on to a quaint set of values while the world laughed and took out another unsecured loan to pay for its next boob job.  Luckily, I had company as 2007 saw the release of three very timely books: Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson’s ‘Fantasy Island’, Oliver James’ ‘Affluenza’ and Naomi Klein’s ‘The Shock Doctrine’. While these three books all touched on different aspects of impending doom, they all bolstered my hunch that something had to give. I didn’t have to wait long as September ushered in the run on Northern Rock and the start of a golden period for good old misanthropic me: My Recession.

Part of me feels slightly ashamed to think back on the pleasure I derived from watching the queues outside the fast sinking Rock, but the other part of me was having a whale of a time. This was it! Finally, the fog that cloaked the mountain of bullshit we had accumulated was lifting and it was clear as day that all sorts of chickens were coming home to roost. The phony war endured for a few months with some writing the demise off the Rock as an anomaly, but to me this was stone cold proof that the system as we knew it had run out of road and we would be left with no option but to find a fairer way of running our lives.  Further confirmation came in February ’08 when the government finally accepted what had been quite obvious for some time and took the Rock into national ownership. That was a particularly sweet moment for me, watching New Labour flail around wildly, desperately trying to escape the inevitable as their decade long game plan unraveled before the very eyes. It was like watching a man trying to eat his own face.  For someone who had just spent three years working in the NHS and was appalled by the destructive and wrongheaded drive to impose free market anarchy on the most sacred and valued of our institutions, it felt as if some form of cosmic justice was beginning to impose itself.

But this was merely the beginning. As the months progressed the airwaves began to fill with competing versions of reality. Voices that had long been silenced as out of touch pessimists with an axe to grind start gaining traction (Will Hutton being a notable example) while the claims of vested interests became even more outlandish and disconnected. The evening news would parade the housing ‘industry experts’ who were still madly clinging to the idea that this was a flash in the pan and it would be business as usual just as soon this blip worked itself out. It didn’t and by March ’08 Bear Stearns joined the list of casualties. Yet still, this was not enough to slap some rationality into the situation and policy makers carried on parroting the ‘Keep calm and carry on’ message. It wasn’t until September and the seismic collapse of Lehman Bros that the people who mattered finally came to accept that this was it. This was the day that everything they knew turned out to be wrong. It was music to my ears.

Looking back now, it’s hard to appreciate just how monumental the implosion was that followed Lehman Bros demise. Post event mutterings mention phrases like ‘martial law’ being banded about in Washington’s corridors of power and even Alan Greenspan, godfather of this unholy mess and figurehead of the bogus boom economics was forced to concede that he had “found a flaw” in the system he helped create. Not to put too fine a point on it, what we accept as reality came within inches of disappearing in those weeks. And that’s when my problems started. You see, for me, this was the point when there was a window to actually do something creative with this mess, a chance to remodel the world to a new and more just blueprint. But we didn’t. There were certainly some prominent voices offering wise counsel at the time (St. Vince of Cable being one) but the big ideas were nowhere to be seen. As a default lefty, I was appalled. I understood that when things seem pretty good for everyone, it’s neigh on impossible to argue for anything different, but at that point in time, you’d have to be completely off your mash not to see that things were about as far from ‘good’ as is possible. There was no lack of discussion. I remember at the time that it seemed like The New Statesman had been invigorated with fresh purpose, but the resulting mélange of ideas lacked the clarity and structure to amount to more than rehashing of old touchstones and worn slogans. The left, presented with the opportunity of a lifetime, fumbled the ball and missed out on what should have been its finest hour. I realize that I’m just as much to blame as anyone else. I certainly didn’t have a solution and if you tried to pin me down to “what would you do then?” then I’d be hard pressed to present anything better than a return to the post-war settlement and a resurrection of Keynesian economics. That’s not enough to stop me being angry though.

After the big fireworks of the crash, the world has now found itself in weird, unsure place. All the main political parties had to offer was token support for “beefing up regulatory frameworks” and “getting tough on the bonus culture” (to which end they’ve done pretty much fuck all) whilst tacitly implying that what we really need is to wind the clock back to 2006. We didn’t even get our pound of flesh. For a brief period, it looked like the bankers, knocked from their pedestal would finally have to face a public they had so thoroughly screwed over. The mumbled ‘apologies’ at the select committee was as far as we got though as fortune favoured the crooked and gifted them with the MP’s expenses freakshow (possibly the most effective distraction I have ever witnessed in my life). As a result, we are still at the mercy of criminals whose self interest bought us all to the brink and a policy framework that amounts to stoking another bubble, just so we all feel better. I guess I shouldn’t be too pessimistic as it’s foolish for me to think that you can conceive a whole new way of conducting politics in just a few months, but right now, I’ve got to say that I don’t have much hope.

So where does this leave us all? Well, for one thing, it’s certainly made advertising all the more weird. Watching those NatWest ads where jobsworth staff of one of the biggest failed banks (now in public ownership) lecture customers about financial security made me wonder if I was experiencing an acid flashback and it’s even worse on the other side of the Atlantic. I went to New York in May and watched an advert where GM claimed to be “Redefining the Ownership Experience” just as it announced that it was closing the vast majority of its dealerships. Jesus wept. Mind you, if that’s 30 seconds of airtime that’s not being used to broadcast one of those fucking Confused.com atrocities, then I guess I can’t complain too much. On a more personal level, not much has changed. I work in mental health and right now, the misery business (in an underfunded/undervalued sort of way…naturally) is booming. However, we all know that as soon as the Tories get in we’re on the thinnest of ice and P45’s will follow in Cameron’s wake. I guess there have been a few positives as well. People seem less bothered about the stuff they ‘should’ own and at least we’ve got something to blame if we do fail. In that sense, the recession is like a nationwide sicknote (”Sorry I didn’t hand in my homework…the prevailing macro-economic weather ate it.”) and failure isn’t so painful when you’re not completely culpable. But the next few years are going to be hard. Very hard. Now that the clatter and din of impending doom has past, the banality of everyday woes is now the focal point. More people are going to lose their jobs, homes and self respect. As a nation, we will have to reassess our place in the world and will very likely have to eat some supersized helpings of humble pie in the near future. Part of me thinks “about time” and that maybe it will stop us tear-assing around the world stage, picking fights where we shouldn’t, but it also begs the question of who will fill the vacuum left by the west. To be honest, I’m not overly thrilled with the prospective candidates.

So there we have it, The Sorrowful Lament Of My Recession. I guess it serves me right for enjoying the woe of others so much, but I must say I’m bitterly disappointed. Still, at least The Property Ladder’s (of ‘Property Snakes and Ladders’ as it has been so aptly renamed) is a damn sight more interesting now.

Loudribs History Corner Special Part 3: This Time It’s War

It's a holiday in Mongolia, it's tough kid but it's life...

….and we’re back….again. Sorry for the delay in posting this third and final part, but I had to move house. It was a saga, an ordeal, a trial no less and I now vow never to move again. I shall die, right here, where I’m sitting now, tormented by the memories of what I am about impart. That’s right. It’s time. Time for some crazy.

We left the Baron last time happily ensconces in his own playground of madness (Dauria), joyfully torturing all those unlucky enough to be near him and generally making one of histories most horrific episodes all the more appalling. However, things weren’t quite as rosy as they seemed. The Red Army was finally getting its shit together and by 1920, they were starting to hammer the Whites in Siberia. While his comrades-in-arms (in the loosest possible sense) soon found themselves staring down the wrong end of righteous vengeance, the Baron began to develop other plans. Plans that would raise the bar in the batshit stakes a fair few notches.

The unwitting subjects in this unholy project were the inhabitants of Mongolia, a large but backwards country, sandwiched unenviably between China and Russia. Just looking at the map, it’s pretty easy to see why Mongolia falls into the category of histories Shit Out Of Luck countries, much akin to the likes of Poland and Belgium. Over the years, its two large and belligerent neighbours had generally interfered, meddled and invaded from time-to-time while poor old Mongolia appeared to be tottering around the world stage with a massive geopolitical ‘KICK ME’ sign taped to its back. While it had somehow managed to gain a few years of independence, by 1920 the Chinese were demanding it hand over its dinner money and sent troops in to restore their authority. Ungern, sensing that things were going sideways in Siberia resolved that not only would it be great fun to put a stop to these shenanigans, it would also serve as a launch pad for his wider goals of, you know, restoring monarchs to the throne left, right and centre whilst simultaneously ensuring that the working classes were bloody well put in their place. Oh, and I think he also penciled in wiping out as many Jews as he could…..just for a good measure. With this in mind, he gathered 2500 men and set off to conquer Mongolia….as one does.

Ungern, at this point, was looking pretty damn fruity.  Observers at the time reported that he had a “disconcerting habit of skipping into battle” (tra-la-la!) and had taken to wearing some suitably ‘ethnic’ garb (robes that resembled “a yellow dressing gown” apparently). Like all good warmongers, the Baron went to the trouble of consulting a fortune teller before marching off to war and was delighted to hear that October the 26^th, 1920, was “an auspicious” day to attack the capital, Urga. Armed with this precious knowledge and an unshakable faith in the rantings of charlatans he promptly started his attack but then, rather disappointingly, got lost. 5 days later he tried again, but this time got a thorough thrashing from the Chinese garrison and was forced to retreat to a place in the middle of wtf-istan called Zam Kuren. Unable to overthrow the Chinese and wary of return to a fast imploding Siberia, Ungern was left with no choice but to spend the winter with his army in the frozen wastes of Outer Mongolia.

Generally speaking, armies work best when they are paid, fed and have some sort of purpose. During the winter of 1920/21, they had precisely none of these things and were forced to live a feral existence in one of the world’s least hospitable areas. Luckily, the Barons despotic skill set was ideally suited to the task in hand and he lost no time in instigating a regime of such brutal and bizarre punishments that his men would rather freeze/starve/atrophy to death than take a chance at legging it. His own unique brand of discipline at this particular junction warrants further attention. His first move was to get rid of useless mouths so he had his Medical Bastard In General kill anyone who looked a bit too sick. If ever there was incentive to turn up to work if you were feeling a bit peaky, this was it. He also made sure that he, personally, was seen to be putting in the hours. To this end, he would walk around the camp, looking for people he didn’t like the look of and then lash them with bamboo canes. 100 Lashes was classed as ‘mild’. One guy, who had sense enough to desert, but not sense enough to ensure he didn’t get caught was lashed 50 times daily for 10 days. He was then sent to hospital so he could recover enough for more lashing. This went for 20 months until he finally went insane. Just in case that wasn’t brutal enough for you, he had some further incomprehensible punishments up his sleeve. Top of the list was ‘tree-sitting’. This involved getting the poor sod in question to stand at the top of a tree for a whole night. If they fell (which I’m guessing was quite likely) and hurt themselves, they would be shot for being useless. If they were lucky, that would be the end of it, but as past form suggests, it probably wasn’t and for those who were deemed not have presented their pound of flesh, there were further tree-based horrors, chiefly amongst them execution by tree. I bet that’s got you thinking “how the hell do you execute someone with a tree? Throw it at their heads? Roll a tree trunk over them?” Close, but no cigar. In what seems to be a precursor to the cartoon violence of Tom And Jerry the Baron would have his men bend back a tree, bind the victim to it and then let it go, tearing the unfortunate  limb-from-limb. If I was him, I’d sue the fuck out of Tex Avery for unpaid future royalties. Oh, and he was very fond of “execution by fire”.

I mentioned last time that the Baron had, at this point, cleaned up his act a little and had quit drinking (but had taken up opium instead…just in case you were getting worried). Much like modern day reformed-smoker Nazis who zealously persecute their former comrades with theatrical splutterings and sanctimonious lectures, Ungern decided to take the moral high ground and reserve some extra special punishment for anyone found to be drunk in his army. Those unlucky enough to get busted were stripped naked and left on frozen rivers for a few nights with only raw meat to eat. Even a turning up to work with a hangover was enough to land you a whole load of bizarro bullshit. A bunch of officers who did just this were forced to stand to attention all night whilst continuously reciting their names and ranks. With a hangover. Cold blooded. Yet despite all these elaborate and frankly ridiculous punishments, the Baron still reserved the fondest place in his heart for good, honest, flogging. He loved it and marveled that “a man can still walk when the flesh and bone are separated”. It’s good to be passionate about what you do.

As you can imagine, being in Ungern’s Army in the winter of 1920 totally sucked. Yet somehow, the army actually grew during this time and eventually numbered around 5000. Part of this was down to some quirks in Mongolian and Buddhist culture. As I mentioned earlier, Buddhism in Mongolia’s neck of the woods at this time was much more warlike and bloodthirsty than we tend to think of it these days. Along with a fair smattering of gore-soaked deities, there were also legends of a great warrior who would come from the north and restore Mongolia to its rightful place as the ruler of fucking everything. The Baron, being a) from the north, b) a double hard bastard and c) already pally with the Mongolians after his year of pissing about there  neatly fitted this bill and soon Mongolians were referring to him as a ‘god of war’. The Baron, for his part, wholeheartedly bought into this and his already fractured mind was given an additional helping of delusional lunacy. He was a GOD OF WAR, OK?! Heartened by this talk of cosmic grandeur and a decent sized army, the Baron (after consulting fortune tellers, of course) marched on Urga in New Year, 1921. After a messy battle with the Chinese, the city fell and Ungern restored the Bogd Khan (the Mongolian monarch, of sorts) to the throne. The remaining Chinese fled (only to be hunted down by the Baron’s cavalry) while 3 days of looting and untold mayhem ensued. To tie things up nicely, Ungern finished it off with a pogrom and then declared everything to be mellow and groovy. The Bogd Kahn (a man with an impressive clutch of vices by all accounts) was no fool and realized that without Ungen, he was nothing. Anxious to keep him onside, he declared the Baron “Outstanding Prosperous State Hero”, issued a bunch of currency (that was redeemable in livestock) in his name and then let him get on with the job of being de-facto dictator of Mongolia.

Given past form, it’s fair to say that the Barons style of governance was hardly going to be sedate. True to form he kicked off with a series of Bolshevik witch hunts (in which pretty much everyone was a Bolshevik) while his army set about the systematic looting of everything. All those appalling methods that the Baron had perfected in Dauria and out in the frozen wastes were now conducted at a national level and Mongolia soon became a close approximation of hell-on-earth. Naturally, some Mongolians were horrified by this and before long revolutionaries started to form an army and establish bases. Not that the Baron gave a hoot. He had bigger fish to fry in the shape of invading China, restoring the Qing Dynasty and then saving the rest of the world in the name of all that is regal and godly. There was a problem though. Invading China isn’t something you just knock together over a few beers at the weekend. It’s a bloody big place and you need a bloody big army. However, what with all the institutionalized flogging/looting/terror, the Mongolians were fast falling out of love with this savior from the north and decided they wouldn’t play ball. Further to this, the Baron was delivered a cosmic slap in the chops when his fortune teller told him that he only had 130 days to live. The Baron was shocked by this. There was so much more killing to do! So little time! However, it’s fair to say that he wasn’t particularly the emo type and reacted to the news by saying this:

“Goodbye for all time! I shall die a horrible death, but the world

has never seen such a terror and such a sea of blood as it shall see

now!”

I doubt that those within earshot were filled with hope for the future.

Freshly motivated by his freshly stamped ‘Use By’ date, the Baron began to rethink things. Even he still had a tentative enough grasp of reality to realize that the bets were now off on the whole China deal. However, he was mad enough to think that he might be able to re-invade Russia, restore Prince Michael (who had now been dead for 2 years) to the throne and thus save the world. Spurred on by his rapidly diminishing days, the Baron gathered what was left of his army and headed north. It didn’t start well. As soon as he was across the border, the Red Army caught up with and gave him a thrashing… twice. Now forced to head back to Mongolia with the Reds on his tail, he was horrified to find the Mongolians siding with the commies. Ingrates!

And so we enter the final stretch of this sorry tale. Ungern, now looking a right state (he had lost most of his clothes so would stride about bare chested and covered in talismans) found himself and his dwindling army in a snake infested swamp (although he promptly banned his men from killing snakes because he thought it was ‘bad luck’) while rebellion fermented in the ranks. Always one to try and nip this sort of thing in the bud, Ungern gathered what men he could and looked for some of his own officers to kill. When he couldn’t find any, he then turned north into Russia and attacked some Reds who were garrisoned in a monastery. While he managed to win this battle (and flog some monks) he was left with 500 men and dwindling options. Never one to let reality intrude on his schemes, the Baron declared that they were all off to Tibet (which was hundreds of miles away and on the other side of the Himalayas). For his men, this was the final straw. They’d been flogged, treed, burnt, and generally tormented so hard that they figured nothing the Baron could be do was any worse than things already were. As a consequence, most of them deserted while a group of officers hatched a plot to kill him.

Considering there was always someone wanting to kill him, the Baron thought he was on top of this. In an effort to discourage others from getting any uppity ideas, he made a Colonel sit in a tree all night, but it was too late. The die was cast. That night, a group of officers tried to ambush the Baron in his tent, but he somehow got the drop on them and legged it into the night. Unperturbed, the officers seized command, executed a couple of loyalists and then began the long march to Manchuria where they hoped there might be someone around who they hadn’t yet pissed off. The Baron, now thoroughly irked, chased them down and confronted them in what was to become one of the more surreal scenes from his already demented life. Totally outnumbered and with a bunch of guns pointing at him, Ungern began to berate his former men and hurl abuse at them. The conspirators, despite having an awesome amount of firepower pointed at the Barons head, completely froze, terrified by this rambling psychopath. The stand off continued some while (with the Baron going completely off his mash the entire time) until someone finally came to their sense and pulled the trigger. What followed was a hail of bullets that would surely kill anyone stuck in the middle. Yet somehow, the Baron escaped, weaving through the fusillade and even finding enough time to turn around and shout “Bastards!” before disappearing into the night. Alone and quite, quite mad, the Baron ran into a group of Mongolian troops who quickly betrayed him and handed him over to the Russians. Finally the game was up.

Considering the mayhem he had instigated, Ungern was quite the catch for the Reds who promptly shipped him off to Novonikolavsk for a rousing show trial. The Baron, now certain of his fate, took every opportunity to ramble about “Hanging, shooting, flogging” and even took the time to ask why an office smelt “strongly of garlic? Why do you employ so many Jews?” The trial itself was pretty much your standard totalitarian affair and the Baron happily played his part by nonchalantly ‘fessing up to pretty much everything (“do you often beat people?” he was asked, “Not enough” he replied), expressing zero remorse, blaming the Jews and advocating the crushing of the working classes. Given that this was a communist court, his line of defense probably wasn’t the wisest and unsurprisingly, sympathy for him was thin on the ground. He was found guilty and shot in secret.

So there you have it. One, big, fat, steaming pile of infernal, apocalyptic horror. If this whole affair tickled your fancy, then definitely check out James Palmer’s ‘The Bloody White Baron’ from which this was largely cribbed. It’s fully great. Oh, and just in case your wondering, the people of both Mongolia and Russia went on to live blissful existences in lands of milk and honey. YA RLY. That’s it from me and the Baron for now. Hopefully I’ll be back in a week or two with some cynical mutterings about this or that so watch this space.

Blow dry my hair and stick me on a ’singlespeed’.

Bicycle messenger culture and the equipment messengers use is hip right now, a growing legion of people are becoming involved in cycling not via the exploits of traditional racers like Chris Hoy or Lance Armstrong but through a growing fashion in the fixed and singlespeed bikes used by messengers and the ‘diy’ alleycat races that they organise and are involved in. ‘Fixies’ are like the NoFX of the cycling world, there’s nothing inherently wrong with them but they’re a little too popular for most people’s liking, you would hope some people who discovered fixed gear bikes would then embrace cycling culture as a whole but I’m sure there is a large proportion who don’t

Anyhow to help all you uncool people like me survive in the jungle of ‘urban’ cycling here’s my dummies guide to fixies.

‘Braking’ the law.
The general principle of a fixed gear on a bike is that when you pedal the rear wheel turns and when you stop pedaling it doesn’t i.e. there is no ability to ‘freewheel’. This means that in theory you have no need for brakes as you can stop by not pedaling. In practice this is harder than it sounds and the debate rages as to whether you should equip a fixed gear with brakes. Many just fit a front brake which also helpfully gives you a way of stopping if you chain breaks or your real wheel skids.

In fact with no front brake the only means of braking is by pushing back against the motion of the rear wheel thereby skidding to a stop, this is known as a skid stop and there are even competitions to see how far you can maintain this skid as demonstrated by the Leeds Fixed Gear guys.

The highway code is ambiguous as normal stating “You must ensure your brakes are efficient” leaving it pretty much down to preference as to whether you ‘rub stoppers’ or not. Personally I would even if you don’t use them most of the time and you definitely should if you have a ‘freewheel’ because the “Foot on wheel” method is far from ‘efficient’!

Drop bars not bombs.
More hotly debated than brake vs no brake is the choice of handlebars you choose for your metal steed. Your basic options are flat bars (which may be ‘riser’ bars) or drop bars and variations on these forms. Those who build up fixies in the vision of pristine track bikes often favour drop bars for that authentic Italian or Japanese look. The other end of the spectrum are bikes modeled on the urban warrior bikes of messengers with incredibly narrow flat ‘riser’ bars.

As an aside I spent ages looking for a good shot of some riser bars before resorting to this shot of Greg from Chillerton looking particularly hip and ever so slightly camp.

Although this topic divides many the various pros and cons of what bar set up to have can be distilled into two main arguments. Drop bars give you more hand positions to choose from and therefore also more body positions to adopt, which can be useful if your ride is anything but short. Flat bars enable you to have a more upright position which is useful in traffic and can at times be more comfortable (or at least feel more natural). When it comes to bar width, anything that is narrower than shoulder width although often cited as useful to enable you to pass through small gaps will actually limit how well you can ride by restricting your chest and therefore your full ability to breath.

Simple huh? Well I should mention ‘bullhorns’ the bastard son of both flat and drop bars. The origin of this shape is attributed to people ‘flipping’ their drop bars and then removing the bottom of the drops, however they have developed over the years into an almost entirely unique bar shape in their own right.

The only time ‘flip flops’ are cool.
So I’ve defined what a fixed bike is, however many see these going in hand with ’singlespeed’ bikes. Singlespeed bikes are basically single ‘geared’ they have a freewheel but no derailleurs or mechanism of altering the gearing in which you ride. The benefits of this and fixed bikes is that they are relatively easy to set up and low maintenance as there are no gears to index, clean, lubricate and break. The drawback is that you may not have the appropriate gearing for the terrain you are cycling, either your gearing is too high and you will struggle to climb a hill or too low and you end up pedaling frantically down a slope.

The solution to this problem? The ‘flip-flop’ hub! There are two types of flip-flop hub those that are fixed/fixed or those that are fixed/free. The difference here is that the fixed/fixed hub has two sets of threads on each side one for the cog and one for the lockring, the fixed/free only has one set of threads on the ‘freewheel’ side. This is because as you pedal with a ‘freewheel’ the force tightens the freewheel unit onto the threads of the hub, however with a fixed cog if there were no lockring in theory if you pedaled backwards you could unscrew the cog on the thread. With the aid of the flip flop hub we can have a choice of gears either a low gear to climb with and a high one to descend or alternatively we could power up the hill with our efficient fixed gear and then flip the wheel before we leisurely freewheel down again.

Pedal to the metal.
There is probably a lot more I could write about especially as I haven’t even touched upon frame choices but before this turns into an essay I’ll bid you adieu and ride off into the sunset. Some of you may think I’m a pompous old bore so if you want some real rofl humor on the subject of bikes head over to http://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com/ for your daily dose of hipster baiting and bike salmon tales. FYI my fixed/singlespeed project is still in the garage and progressing slowly but should see the light of day before the end of the year fingers crossed…keep it pumped and ride safe!

Loudribs Curmudgeonry Corner History Special Part 2 : The Revenge

Baron Roman Nickolai Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg.: Selflessly providing history with a whole crapload of wtf?!

And we’re back….OK, in case you missed the last post a quick recap on the all-encompassing madness that is Baron Roman Nickolai Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg.

Born to an aristocratic German/Estonian family in 1886 –> Proves himself to be a first class shit of a school kid–> Joins army –> Spends time in army boozing, flogging and fighting his colleagues in Siberia –> Colleagues in Siberia lose patients –> Transfers to reserves and bums around Mongolia –> Gets super-stoked for WWI and spends the next three years killing anything that moves or stays still too long –> WWI ends, Russian Civil War starts.

Now, the Russian Civil War is one of those conflicts that doesn’t get a great deal of attention, mainly for the following reasons:

1. It was utterly, utterly bonkers.
2. The likes of us really didn’t come out of it looking too good.
3. Like most things Russian, it was supendously vast in scope and brutality.
4. The names involved are often long and largely impossible to pronounce.

In a nut shell, the origins can be traced back to 1905 when the seams of the old Russian Empire started to unravel. p With Russia being poor, backward and ungovernably large, people started to notice that a) their lives were largely rubbish, b) the lives of privileged were pretty damn great, thank you very much and c) there were some fairly volatile ideas kicking about such as Marxism. At some point, all of this had to spill over and in 1905 it did. Joe Public (or Joseph Publeski….context is important) decided to take matters into his own collective hands. Peasant revolts, mutinies and strikes became the order of the day and even Ungerns family found some of their mansions reduced to charred ruins. The Russian monarchy began to take notice and did what Russian leaders tend to do best: Repress the fuck out of these jumped up rabble rousers. They also instituted a parliament of sorts, but this was mainly window dressing and largely a distraction from the far more invigorating job of putting large chunks of the population to the sword. This early stab at a revolution was duly crushed and life soon started to return to normal. However, brutalising your own people does have the nasty side effect of really pissing them off and while all the really impressive stuff (such as bread riots….they always sound really fun, like a big pillow fight, but with bread) might have calmed down a little, the revolution was merely postponed and carried on simmering away in the background.

The Romanov’s (like most monarchies) didn’t seem that bothered about all this and were soon back to their old ways of alienating the population whilst swanning around and getting involved in World Wars. The main problem here was that Russia wasn’t very good at this world war business and soon found the Germans and co to be really rather good it (a recurring theme). Despite some early successes, it all started to go horribly wrong at the battle of Tannenberg in 1914 and from then on it was pretty much downhill all the way. The Germans happily nommed up plenty of territory, the Russian military fell apart like a turd in the rain and the lot of your average Russian (already a pretty ropey deal) became further complicated by even more food shortages and millions of Germans bullets flying in their direction. By 1917, the jig was up. The tsar belatedly tried to placate the masses by setting up a Provisional Government, but they weren’t falling for that again. By October, the Bolshevics had seized the reigns of power and so began the Russian Civil War.

I realise that there hasn’t been much Ungern in all this yet, but fear not…our raging ball of lunacy is waiting in the wings, ready to crazy the crap out of this situation, but first you’ll just have to sit through a little more history. When the revolution kicked off, Russia appeared to split into two factions, known today as the ‘Reds’ (the Revolutionaries) and the ‘Whites’ (the monarchists). In actual fact there were hundreds of different factions, each with their own agenda but for now lets just go with the Red and White thing. The Reds had control of the major metropolitan areas like Moscow and Petrograd and were keen to destroy the Whites as soon as possible so that they could get on with the rather daunting task of remodelling Russia to their own designs. The Whites on the other hand were a more disparate bunch who could only really agree on one thing: They hated Commies. Despite not being the most organised bunch, they did control the vast expanses of Siberia and had a few sympathetic friends overseas (Britain and America being two of them). Naturally, Ungern was a White and not just your average “I’m not so sure about these Red chaps and wouldn’t it be nice to see the tsar back on the throne” type White. He was more your sort of “I WAS BORN TO KILL ANYONE WHO DOESN’T ENTIRELY AGREE WITH MY SOMEWHAT UNHINGED OUTLOOK OF THE WORLD” type White. You can see where this is going.

As I mentioned in the last post, Ungern’s worldview could be pretty much boiled down to the following: “Monarchies are great. Great great great. Monarchy monarchy monarchy. ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME!?”. To him, WWI had been nothing more than a jolly wheeze. It was monarchies doing what they do best: Having a good scrap, tearing the world asunder and then getting back to their good old stock-in-trade of being obscenely rich and powerful. It didn’t matter if you were a Catholic King or a Muslim Sultan (but God forbid if you were a Jew. That really wouldn’t be cricket). So far as he was concerned it was all good red faced boyish caperings and afterwards they’d all shake hands and then go hunting peasants. Lovely. The Civil War, on the other hand, was an entirely different beast and one that threatened the existence of everything the Baron held dear. These Commies weren’t just messing about with politics, they were messing about with the god-given order of things. Was he going to stand for this? Was he hell!

Now riled to the n-th degree, Ungern made his way to Siberia and met up with another notable nutter of the era, a Cossack by the name of Colonel Semenov. A brilliant (and also brilliantly corrupt) commander fighting on the White side, Semenov had carved himself out a little niche in Siberia and happily welcomed Ungern on board. There was plenty of killing to be done and Ungern had the look of a chap who might quite tasty in that department. Together, they established a base in a region called Dauria and put together a plan to get this whole revolution deal reversed. As I mentioned last time, Ungern had some pretty way-out-there spiritual beliefs and at last he found himself in a totally lawless neck of the woods where he could do pretty much whatever he wanted. What he really wanted to do was to get a bunch of hard as nails super soldiers, reconquer Russia and then kill everyone who wasn’t Ungerns kind of guy. But in order to properly fulfill his dreams of hell on earth, Ungerns first needed to establish himself and raise an army. Before he could even do this, Semenov asked him to go and disarm a Russian garrison across the border in Manchuria that had mutinied. Sounds like a good opportunity to display your trademark brand of insane scariness, no? Yes! With a single Cossack assistant, Ungern marched into the town and told the commander there were more troops on the way and that he should give up his weapons. In what was to prove an understandable yet costly error, the commander simply laughed at him. Ungern then punched him in the belly, told him he was going nowhere and then disarmed the garrison himself (that’s several hundred troops in case you were wondering). That’s how fucking scary this guy was.

Luckily for Ungern, scary was a positive asset in his quest to build an army. At this point in time, Russia was awash with all sorts of people, drifting about the place and getting drafted into whatever army (and there were a few) that happened not to be killing them at the time or threatening to kill them if they didn’t join. As a result, Ungern built up a fair few men and could now spend his time putting down mutinies (he really did love to put down a good mutiny), ‘requisitioning’ stuff (stealing) and just to spice things up a bit, he’d get onto trains, find someone who looked suspicious (which, in the Baron’s eyes, covered pretty much everyone) and then beat them up on the platform. Ahhh…the personal touch. He also got a chance to take some of his more genocidal ideas for a spin as well. Civil wars tend to be more brutal than regular wars and the Russian Civil War was no exception. After a years worth of fighting, both sides had given up taking prisoners which then created another problem: What do you do with the guys you do catch? Luckily, Ungern was happy to turn Dauria into a mass execution/torture centre to cater for this very need. Oh, and he also quit the drink. And started smoking Opium instead. And hanging out in fields covered with the bones of his victims to, you know, just chill out. Nice guy.

Generally speaking, these were good times for Ungern. He slowly built his army up, mainly out of Buriats and Mongolians. He had a soft spot for these guys as a) the Buriats were the only people who’d hang out with him during his earlier years in Siberia, b) he’d gotten quite the taste for Mongolians after bumming around there for a year and c) they were hard bastards. He’d also become quite enamoured with Central Asian culture. We often think of Buddhism to be all touchy-feely Richard Gere type navel gazing but this isn’t entirely the case. In fact, Buddhism has plenty of blood thirsty deities, fables of mass carnage and legends of divine warlords. Furthermore, Ungern saw Asia to be much ‘purer’ than the west. By ‘pure’ he meant that their populations seemed to know their place (which, generally speaking, would be somewhere underneath his iron fist, seconds away from being smashed to oblivion) and weren’t riddled with uppity ideas such as democracy and other assorted flounce. The rest of his army (which he fetchingly called the Asian Division of Cavalry) were mostly either desperate, crazy or unlucky Russians who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, a few Chinese, and some Tibetans (to name but a few). Together, they spent the early part of the civil war having a gay old time repressing, robbing supply trains (even if they happened to belong to the Whites who’s side they were technically on) and being harshly disciplined by their Nutter-In-Chief. They even had the odd opportunity to fuck about with the armoured trains that gave the Russian Civil War its distinctly Mad Max tinge. All good fun, but sadly not the sort of fun that lasts. Change was afoot.

By 1920 the Reds had started to get their shit together and fighting back in the far east. Semenov and the other White commanders soon found themselves feeling the squeeze and before long, they were on the back foot. I’m sure by now, you’ve picked up the feeling that Ungern wasn’t the ‘back foot’ kind of guy and that hanging out with people who get beaten by Goddamn Pinkos wasn’t going to get you very far in life. Writing off Siberia as a bad job he gathered his army and headed for Mongolia. Now an independent warlord in his own right with precisely nobody to attempt to keep him in check, he started to hatch possibly his most disproportionately ridiculous plan. It went a bit like this:

1. Take over Mongolia.
2. Install a monarch of my choosing who will do exactly what I say.
3. Restore the Qing Dynasty in China.
4. Take over pretty much the rest of the world. Simples!

Taken at face value, these are clearly the ramblings of a madman and have absolutely  no basis in reality, right? Right? Oh god, he wouldn’t would he? Well, you’re just going to have to wait and see. I realise that I said I’d get this done in two posts, but the brutal truth is that there just isn’t enough space to do justice to the epic levels of lunacy that the Baron was going to unleash. Seriously, the shit that he’s just about to go tear-assing into is so horrifically inexplicable in its WTF?!ness that even the act of me writting it down could result in my face melting off like that guy in Raiders Of The Lost Ark. I’m even thinking about asking WordPress to clad their servers in adamantium and holy water so that terror doesn’t escape from the internetz and rip the space/time continum asunder. That being the case, stick about for the next (and hopefully final) instalment of a tale that goes from ‘worse’ to, erh, ‘worser’. See you next time and don’t forget to bring your nerves of steel.

Loudribs Curmudgeonry Corner History Special! Pt 1

Baron Ungern von Sternberg...A poster boy for blood drenched space cadets everywhere...

You know one thing I hate about being me (other than not being able to reliably pull off a Dragon Punch despite 17 years of practice)? It’s that most of the things that really fire me up are things I hate. War? Check. The Daily Mail? Check. Circus skills? Check check check. Can it be right to take so much pleasure from the act of hating stuff so damn hard? Anyhoo, the circle of hell that I reserve for the bizarre dichotomy of paramount hatred yet total fascination is dictators and related historical nutters. Seriously, since I was kid pretty much all my reading has been geared towards Histories Greatest Shitheads, their associated wrongs and how the hell we ever let them get to positions of power. So imagine my surprise and weird mix of seething anger/boundless joy when I stumbled across this guy: Baron Roman Nickolai Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg.

Right from the get go, this guy is ticking boxes left right and centre. His name is appropriately weird, right up there with the likes of ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier, Saparmurat Niyazov (who will definitely get a post of his own at some point) and Slobodan Milošević. A solid start. Every dictator needs some form of childhood ostracisation in order to truly live up to their potential and a bat shit crazy name ensures the best possible start in life (although you can tell the really hardcore ones are those who change their name to something even battier….Stalin/Pol Pot, I’m looking at you guys). Next in line is his appearance. Does he look mental? Bet your sweet ass he does! Check out those eyes…someone’s been skewing his X-Axis and that is a sure fire sign that this guy is just full to the brim with atrocious awesome. But names and looks alone don’t cut it. I want to see some deeds. Devious deeds, hopefully of the blood drenched variety. Can you help out here, Baron Roman Nickolai Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg? You bet he can!

Like the bulk of the uber-brutal genocidal maniacs, the Barons early years are marked by fully fledged losserdom. Despite coming from an aristocratic family, he made fine work of being expelled from numerous distinguished institutions and finally ended up in the army (after transferring from the navy, a time that was characterised by disobedience and drunkenness….recurring themes throughout his life) and was sent to the notorious shit-hole-of-a-posting that is Siberia. Given that the best entertainment on offer at the arse end of the Russian Empire amount to little more than massively extended rounds of ‘Spot The Tree’ and ‘Huddle For Warmth’, Ungern managed to pass his time doing what he did best: Drinking, disobeying orders and fighting with fellow officers. Good times. Obviously, this sort of thing didn’t really endear him to his peers so he spent most of his knocking about with native Mongols and Buryats. So far, so meh. But wait, what’s this? The Baron starts describing his religious outlook as ‘Military Buddhism’? Now this I gotta hear! Basically, the Baron’s worldview panned out something like this:

Monarchism – Yay!

Hoi Poloi – Boo!

God – Awesome! Not even bothered about which God it is!

War – Super Awesome!

Wimmin – The what now?

Pinko-Commies – Sub Prime

Jews – Dangerously sub-prime

Meshing together all these weird beliefs with a hint of Eastern Mysticism and lashings of fanatical devotion – Fuck yeah!

It’s this sort of crazy that really sorts your common garden psychopath from your top-flight pro-athlete maniac and the Baron really pushed the boat out on this front. Unfortunately, when you start to reach this level of insanity, people start to notice and what with all the boozing/flogging/duelling and all that, he soon found himself being shunted from one bottom-of-the-barrel posting to the next. Finally, he got the message, asked to be transferred to the reserves and spent a year or so buggering about in Mongolia (as you do).

The story could well have ended here with Ungern as an oddball who simply fades into obscurity but as luck would have it, indescribable carnage was just round the corner in the shape of World War 1. Most sane folk tend to try and avoid war. It has a nasty habit of killing and WWI was about to crank up the horror a fair few notches. Not Ungern. To him, this was Christmas, Birthday and a pogrom all folded up into one marvellously horrific ball and without a moments hesitation he blagged himself back into active service. Unsurprisingly, he turned out to be a natural, happily descending into the swelling tide of carnage and even going to the pains of continuing to fight on horseback, despite the epic number of machine guns pointed at him. Whilst no-one debated the fact that he was a stone cold solid super soldier, it does seem that his fellow officers were just a tinsee bit wary of him. Accordingly, he was promoted very slowly, despite numerous awards for bravery and you get the feeling that pretty much everyone in the Russian Army (apart from those who served under him….they apparently loved him and his Terminator-esque skill set and tolerance for his men getting absolutely blinding drunk…more on that later) would do absolutely everything in their goddamn power not to be stuck in a room with him. Not that he gave a shit, no sireee. He had way to much killing to do, although he did find the time to send back his coat, riddled with bullet holes and blood stains to his family (nothing says ‘I’m fine’ like blood-drenched apparel). Another measure of just how chuffing good he was at this war business was by taking a look at the regiment he served in. Now, the Russian Army have never really been known for their touchy-feely attitude towards human resources, but Ungern got an even shittier end of the stick by being assigned to a regiment that was notorious for getting an absolute hammering where ever it went. So bad was their luck that the casualty rate in that particular unit was 200%. That’s right, 200%. That means that not only pretty much everyone who signed up at the start of the war ended up coming to a sticky end, but also the guys who replaced them. Nice.

Unfortunately for Ungern, all good things have to come to an end and Russia’s involvement with the war came to an abrupt halt with the Revolution (even though I’m quite sure that he would have single handedly carried on fighting the German Army if given half a chance). Luckily, this new turn of events meant that Ungern had a whole new war to dick around with (the Russian Civil War) and could now turn his attention to slaughtering Commies, Jews and anyone who wasn’t entirely on board with his own trademark brand of absurdity. This is when the story starts getting really loopy. Seriously, all that craziness above? Just the tip of the lunatic iceberg. From here on in we’re talking conspicuous madness practiced with heroic dedication and an unerring eye for detail. Sadly for you guys, you’re just going to have to hang on until I’ve finished the rest of James Palmers “The Bloody White Baron” (from which I’ve cribbed most of these chosty factoids). If you’re into history with a wild streak of insanity, I can’t recommend it highly enough. If you’re not, then this conversation is over. OVER!

Also, Barontastic info can be found from these interweb pixel pushers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Ungern_von_Sternberg http://militaryhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/themadbaronofmongolia http://newdawnmagazine.com.au/Article/The_Bloody_Baron_von_Ungern-Sternberg.html

Or you can be a real man and JFGI. See y’all in a week or so with the rest of this sorry tale.

Loudribs Curmudgeonry Corner

Have you ever tried pshopping prescotts head onto a member of Weezer? Trust me, it's a nightmare.

Morning Lemmings,

Benny’s asked me to contribute something ‘opinionated’ to his blog and being over-awed (and somewhat frightened) by his towering physique (I once saw him bench press a black hole) I am left with no option but to comply. Unfortunately, that means I have to actually write something and considering my default position is ‘Curmudgeon’, it seems that there will always be a corner of this blog that is forever bitter, twisted and uncomprehending of a world beset with frivolity. So, without further ado, BRING ON THE BITTER. Yay.

Electiongeddon…

OK, so there’s at least a year until the next election, but already an impending sense of doom is settling in comfortably amongst my other myriad fears that jostle daily for my attention. I’m no stranger to election fear and I usually embrace it like a warm blanket, but this year there is something truly menacing lurking in the wood shed….the prospect of a Tory landslide. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no fan of the Labour Party these days. Being a dyed in the wool lefty, the last 12 years have been like a break up that just won’t fucking end. I was fully stoked in 1997, glory days that they were, but the lustre soon started to fade as soon as it became apparent that New Labour was nothing more than some sort of Thatcherite Trojan Horse that slowly, but very surely, trashed everything the Labour party stood for. It’s a lot like being a Weezer fan. 1997 was like the release of the Blue Album. Solid tunes, a sense of belonging and much cap doffing to sacred cows (increased public spending = the opening riff to My Name is Jonas, minimum wage = references to ‘12 sided die’ In The Garage). A heady brew indeed and one that it was impossible not love. My name was down, I bought the T-Shirt, the good times were rolling. Then came Pinkerton. To many, this was the seminal album, but for me there was something slightly sinister about it….just like New Labour circa 1999-2001. On the one hand, there were standout tracks that nodded towards a new direction while staying loyal to it’s roots (peace moves in Northern Ireland = The Good Life, equality legislation = El Scorchio), but on the other there were the ones that made me feel just a tiny bit uncomfortable (Mandelson = Rivers somewhat disturbing rantings on Tired of Sex, Blair’s questionable intervention in Kosovo = the entirely questionable Butterfly). On the whole though, I was willing to forgive. The bulk of it seemed pretty good and despite the niggling doubts, I was happy to stick with the bandwagon. Having said that, I seem to recall voting Lib Dem in 2001. That’s probably less to do with Labour and more to do with my absurd rule of never voting for an incumbent. I still do it, but don’t know why.

2001 and 2003 equate in my mind to the Green Album/Maladroit era (I realise that this metaphor is becoming increasingly untenable but I haven’t got a plan B, so you’re just going to have to lump it). Neither are truly bad albums. By the same token, neither are truly great albums either and listening back now, you can’t help but kick yourself for keeping the faith so unquestioningly when the warning signs were there. Same goes for Labour. 2001 to 2003 weren’t awful years, but the signs were there that the wheels were coming off. I had very, very grave doubts about the intervention in Afghanistan , but the shock of 9-11 did much to put those fears to the background. Similarly, I was becoming increasingly concerned about the role of big business (think PFI) and the NHS reforms that looked great on paper but actually turned out to be brutal and counter productive. There were a few solid singles in there…Mo Mowlam did a great Hash Pipe while Robin Cook made a hearty stab at Keep Fishin’, but were they really enough to sustain something that was looking increasingly wobbly and tired? Evidently not.

So roll on 2003 and Labours Make Believe moment. While the release of Make Believe result in a critical pounding and Iraq result in the death of maybe millions, they both equate to heartbreak for me. They represent the point when you wake up, drenched in sweat, reeling from the knowledge that you’ve been had. It didn’t get any better either. Iraq and Afghanistan continued, cruelly consuming lives and treasure while the ghosts of Labours Thatcherite policies returned to haunt us in the shape of the credit crunch (which very much equates to when I saw Weezer in 2006. It broke my heart). Labour may have a new frontman now, but it’s too late. They smack of a tired tribute band, begging for gigs in C-list Japanese venues. But you know what the worst thing is? The craw that sticks in my throat? The alternative. The Tories (playing Keane to new Labour’s Weezer) are now on the banks of the Vistula, bearing inexorably down on Berlin. Barring a miracle (or an Alan Johnson led coup if he would just grow a pair), they’ll be at the doors of the Reichstag Bunker before you can say ‘Razorlight’. The Lib Dems are talking the talk, but they’re stuck at the 18% mark and simply have too much catching up to do (they’re like one of those technically great bands who never make it to the mass market….think Cable…the band, not Vince). Best case scenario’s a hung parliament and those odds are looking increasingly thin. Labour, for all their promise, turned out to be shits. These guys don’t even bother to pretend.

So there you have it. It’s one big clusterfuck and we all get to have a bite. Brilliant. Fuck Blair, fuck Brown, fuck Rivers, fuck Cameron and most of all, fuck Keane.

To do list

Everybody loves lists right and what better place to share the Spreadable Headcheese ‘to do’ list than on the blog. Hey if it’s good enough for Open Pandora, it’s good enough for me.

Write About me section.
Invite other people to contribute.
Invite more people to contribute!
Write or collate information about the authors.
Set up RSS feed in sidebar
Bug Ben to finish custom blog header graphic.
Spam, sorry ‘advertise’ this little corner of the net.
Set up links section.

Simple.