´óÏó´«Ã½

About the last post - some people don't know when they are well off. I thought the days of accusing everyone of white, and middle class, had gone out with analogue television! What exactly is wrong with being middle aged either? It may simply reflect the fact that the older generation outnumbers the younger ones in this country. Not good to be young these days. I am glad I am middle-aged!

Newsnight simply reflects what goes on everywhere else, and I don't find it any more white, middle aged,and middle class than anything else. Stop throwing toys out of the pram, and, talk about something serious.

Your quote is great - at last we can stop revering "famous" people who seem to think that we have to listen to respect their opinions any more than anyone else. In my day (!) it was the famous people who turned down knighthoods or peerages, like Wedgewood Benn, or, refused oscars like Marlon Brando who got our respect. Not these overpaid celebrities who do everything they can to hobnob with the establishment, like Bono or Bryan Ferry. Why should Bob Geldorf or Mick Jagger get knighthoods - what have they done that hasn't been done by anyone else. Maybe taken alot of illegal substances and not been busted for it. I can admire that cheek! Clooney is so right as history teaches us some of our most interesting people were never rich and famous in their time. Andy Warhol did quite rightly predict the celebrity culture but not just how shallow it was going to turn out to be.

Many of us have come to rely on Newsnight for a sensible and balanced debate of the important issues of the day. ( Notwithstanding its subservient obeisance to Mr. Alastair Campbell )
The need to apologise however for the joke of the day, speaks more eloquently about our cuture than many of the items that the program may brodcast dealing with the current obsession with political correctness.
The joke neither funny,new or fit for a ten year old was noteworthy only because it shows how we have taken sensitivity to PC.to the Nth.degree

Syrian Mystery - what mystery?

Think Radio Active!

As Barrie Singleton said, can you PLEASE stop interviewing John Bolton whenever you have a US foreign policy related issue? He is a caricatural rent-a-quoter, and while you can be sure it'll make good copy (and have people like me yelling at the TV), he is a cynical has-been. Shove him in the dustbin of history, asap, please.

And while you're at it, how about answering these questions:

A) How many times have you had Bolton on this year?
B) How often is he on compared to other potential invitees?
C) Do you pay him?
D) How much?

Dear Mr Welton, we can't all be as exotic as you. I notice that you list your astrological sign as Steinbock, which suggests you are an excellent climber whose habitat is the rocky region along the snowline above alpine forests of the European Alps, where you occupy steep, rough terrain at elevations of 6,500–15,000 feet. Also that you are strictly herbivorous and survive on a diet of grass, moss, flowers, leaves and twigs, which sounds very healthy, I must say. Unless you're just kidding about being a Steinbock, and are actually white, male and middle class.

I have to echo the previous thoughts about John Bolton. He's allowed to call for the bombing of this country and regime change in another, without being asked to substantiate his extreme views.

Despite Bolton being part of the lie machine that led to the Iraq invasion, he's given airtime by the ´óÏó´«Ã½ to spout more propaganda on a regular basis.

Oh my God, please ´óÏó´«Ã½ do not have that Neocon - John Boulton on again, he is an idiot, who loves to pedal his middle eastern hatred and love of his beloved Israel no matter what. Effectively Israel can blow the hell out of where they like, and not answerable to anyone. Lee Harvey Oswald, where are you now when your country needs you. ´óÏó´«Ã½ please don't have him back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Please get rid of John Bolton and get rid of the silly jokes.

At the end of this evening's item on Walkers Crisps and CO2, did I really hear Paul Mason say:

" the carbon dioxide that me and my team emitted " ?

How can such a basic grammatical error be made by ´óÏó´«Ã½ Newsnight in a scripted, recorded programme.

He should, of course, have said " that my team and I emitted ".

What happened to "education, education, education" ?

Oh dear, this 'how big is your carbon footprint?' seems to be getting obsessive at the ´óÏó´«Ã½. I'm getting heartily sick of hearing about it now, and so is almost everyone I know. As for the closet vegetarian who was trying to blame global warming on the dairy industry and make us all eat dried pulses, was he a yoghurt-knitter, a tree-hugger or just another anti-everything nut?

Packet of Crisps.

So how much carbon did the potato plant take out of the atmosphere to grow?????

In the name of God, PLEASE let's give global warming and carbon footprints a rest for a while. Tonight we saw Walkers Crisps cashing on on free publicity just by producing some gushing carbon something or other tosh for the open neck sandal brigade to wallow in. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE drop it, at least for a short while.

Dear Newsnight

If you wish to continue to torture your viewers with one of the most hateful guests I have seen on your programme could I insist that you challenge him to explain –every time he is on –why he felt unable to fight for his country in Vietnam on the grounds that he believed the war to be lost?

Based on this logic what would he say to any US soldier who felt the same about Iraq, could they come home or not be posted there in the first place?

If not why not? After all this is what Mr Bolton chose to do when faced with the same situation.

PS Are the papers available under the Freedom of Information Act that cover his military service?

Bob

Published: Thursday, April 28, 2005
(More News articles)
Bolton's conservative ideology has roots in Yale experience

“Though Bolton supported the Vietnam War, he declined to enter combat duty, instead enlisting in the National Guard and attending law school after his 1970 graduation. "I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy," Bolton wrote of his decision in the 25th reunion book. "I considered the war in Vietnam already lost."

I smell a rat.

Action that involves a country launching military equipment over a country and destroying facilities within that country would be perceived as an act of war if subjected on American soil. Maybe the reason George Bush declined Vladimir Putin's offer of a missile defence system in Azerbaijan was because it would have been more vulnerable from a pre-emptive attack by Israel. Surely the 20th century proved that excessive military armament is an ineffective means of achieving peace with prosperity. The cold war was peace with poverty. Maybe the real achievement for the 21st century should be a peace with prospects. Israel is a nation with special priviliges not available to other countries in the Middle East. A neighbour in poverty is a dangerous nation that becomes a spiteful enemy. Did the second world war not prove this ? The persecuted become the persecutors, hunted become the hunters. History should not be allowed to repeat itself, that would be tragic. The future should not ignore the lessons learnt from history. Be progressive and evolve a preserving politic that preserves peace, not a national self-preservation that attacks in precaution and presumption. Peace out to poverty, peace in to prosperity.

Please oh please can we have more John Bolton, he's always good for a laugh and a reminder that anybody, and i mean anybody, can reach high office and still be a certifiable fruitcake...

Shella at 3: i agree with the white middle class and middle aged post you picked up on; well said.

the cookie ducker:white, 42yrs, married, 5 chidren, dog, working class, and an avid reader of the Daily Mail...Well, no ones perfect.

Bolton when asked about the three different explanations for the Israeli bombing of Syria said "Are we really that good?" whilst smiling. Well, yes John you were really that good when you managed to create a casus beli with Iraq, but as you're on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ we'll let this slide.

Then Bolton goes on to mention North Koreans in Syria at least twice and is not asked to explain the evidence for this.

If you are going to give Bolton an opportunity to pass his black propaganda through the airwaves, at least challenge the man properly in return.

A comment on the OECD report (and the Leitch Report, and the ETS report 'The Perfect Storm' back in Feb) - 'Human capital' (cognitive ability) is born not taught. It is largely genetic and inherited (and directed/selected) not learned. If we open the EU to 20 million more migrants from Africa and Asia we are likely to make our current skills dearth even worse are we not?

Note, this has nothing to do with race or colour per se, it's just a
matter of unskilled economic migration (and the distribution of
cognitive ability in group sustained by gene barriers). We won't get
European or any other countries' high skilled people in large numbers as in Africa and S Asia, they don't have enough to spare, their mean IQs
are markedly lower, and they need their own intelligentsia (as do other EU states).

On ´óÏó´«Ã½ News yesterday Brown was shown comparing the 4m graduates each year from China, and India (pop. 1.3, 1.1 billion) to our UK 400,000 graduates (UK pop 61 million). So does that mean we are producing 2x as many graduates? (a case of 'more is less' if ever there was one - We have shifted the entry requirements to the left of the distribution to inflate the numbers in HE, China not only has a higher mean national IQ (~108, to our 100) so if it is producing 4m graduates, from 13 million high school kids, it means they are taking about 1/3 of the cohort, which makes sense given the higher national IQ).

Surely Brown knows that the annual UK school cohort is only 600,000 and about half of that get the requisite 5 x A-Cs to go on to A level (nearly all of which go to 'college' these days? This is now just degrading the quality of HE.

What this government is doing is therefore counter(repro)ductive
(dysgenic too) in that the more girls it sends into HE and the
workplace, the less children they will produce (they delay parenthood,
the more 'successful', the smaller the number of progeny (the brighter
and more ambitious they are the harder it is to cope with a family too), and the more our future generations will be skewed to the right (bulge at the left) in the distribution of cognitive ability as a consequence.

This has been going on foremost of the last century. That is why we are
dumbing down (and have rising crime etc).

This dearth of births will lead to more immigration, and so the sad
demographically destructive cycle will continue. All because these
'environmentalist Marxists' (most teachers unwittingly alas) don't even consider the implications of cognitive ability being largely genetic (environmental impacts just seem to reduce cognitive ability through 'injury'). Most teachers and lecturers have a naive view of what
'learning' is. It is not the filling of buckets but the direction of searchlights (to use an old Popperian image). We can't make silk purses out of sows' ears.

Surely this is now *obvious*? Surely it is also obvious therefore why
pouring money into education, education, education not only fails to produce results (cf. HeadStart, SureStart, Aiming High, SEAL etc), but actively makes matters worse as I have set out many times now?

And...please don't say 'I don't believe that'... as that may just be a statement of ignorance of the empirical facts, unpalatable though they may be. Years of playing with PacMan and its more modern incarnation is just the shaping of operant behaviours by the environment (we can make pigeons look like they are clever this way too!). This may well generalise to result in improvements in non verbal IQ test scores (like the RPM or subtests of the CAT) but this just hides what is going on in genotypic 'g'. This is, I suggest why there is a paradox. Behaviour is deteriorating, but our tests are missing the dysgenic effect through changes we have made to our environment.

There is wisdom to the old divergence of role of the sexes. Two of the oldest religions (Islam and Orthodox Judaism) know this and still abide by it, yet we vilify Islam for its 'sexism'.

If that's not evidence of our decline in national cognitive ability, I don't know what is. Such people are arguing against biological fitness.

Having a larger and larger number of 'low skilled' people in an ever more Service Sector driven, debt ridden economy should wake people up to what is going on. Sadly, I reckon it won't.

On last night's programme Gavin Esler was breathtakingly naive in a particular question to John Bolton. Mr Bolton understandably found the question unbelievable and responded in an forceful but measured way. As he said, the question was foolish but not only did it make Mr Esler look foolish but also the ´óÏó´«Ã½ who he represented.

Regarding Carbon Labels - Another fad? Labelling it wont make a person change their habit will it?

I'm getting a bit sick of hearing the latest buzz (carbon footprint), while at the same time hearing nothing of the more worrying disaster that we're not addressing. I'm speaking of the Nitrogen cycle and the run away effect it is having. Carbon dioxide seems to have been singled out, and though it is important to reduce our production of it, nitrogen in it's many forms is even more in need of awareness. It's like the politicians and media have chosen a subject that can be addressed, while the difficult one's are left out of the way. No need to scare anybody when there's very little will to actually do anything is there. Dangerous.

I like John Bolton, as someone above put it, always good for a laugh. Those who splutter into their Muesli, at his outrageous statements, need to lighten up a bit instead of adopting the PC anti-American view of those who are surprised that there are people like him about.
What he said was true even if many, including me, might be amazed at his audacity.
Why should Israel tell anyone what they are going to do? In fact they haven't so we are no where near of knowing what they bombed. (You would have thought that Amercan satellite technology could find out?) We might not like it but, as usual, we like to stick our noses into other's business then complain when it gets bloodied like in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I am getting tired of the intolerence shown to those who may have extreme comments or views that are not in keeping with the PC correct view of the day. i.e Israel bad, Palestine/Syrian "freedom fighters" good
Such views, such as Bolton's just add to the debate and surely we can make our own mind up on who is telling the truth or view we hold as one with which we agrre. Otherwise Newsnight may as well have only those people on who are anti-American/Israeli and pro Palestinian/Arab.
Extreme views? I am prepared to make my own mind up but give me both sides no matter how extreme, even if it is "good for a laugh" or "no laughing matter" which probably the latter view is true!!
I can't wait for the next John Bolton outburst, best TV for months-jaw dropping!!!

A clue, about 4 mins in:

/radio4/today/ram/today4_wood_20070919.ram

The encouragement of low-skilled immigration and dysgenic fertility and differential fertility (the latter paradoxically through 'education, education, education' which progressively markedly reduces the numbers
with higher cognitive ability at the top end of the ability distribution
over several later generation whilst proportionately inflating the numbers -2 SDs in the lower part of the distribution) means that there are more opportunities for "hyperbolicallyDiscountingRus inc" to sell houses (and other financial vehicles) to people who can't afford them, (usually at enticingly low interest rates knowing full well from the statistics that they will not understand the maths and default). Then as property appreciates through increased demand through a) increased immigration of low skilled and b) their higher birth rates, write off the loans against tax and repossess.

It's a vicious, cynical game, and regulation is now minimal. Drive up
demand for houses, sell them on 'the never never' (to be repaid) and repossess when the houses are even more expensive.

The next time Newsnight features a suited, well educated, 'reformed'
Islamic terrorist (no doubt writing a book), just ask him what he's doing to help his debt ridden people, and ask what struggle really means (over 99% of London's population growth over the next few decades is projected to be in BME groups).

It should go without saying that violent 'terrorism' is criminal behaviour and intolerable, but jihad is something else, it basically means struggle against injustice, and one of the injustices which Islam proscribes (as does Judaism between its own) is usury.

This seems to be all about in-group vs out-group competition if one looks at it dispassionately. It is also painfully reminiscent of the struggle which we saw in the 1920s, i.e. the struggle between communism and capitalism. Is radical Islam just a popular front for this old cold war?

Talking of the JB Muppet Show where is the condemnation by our Foreign Secretary? Milliband still hasn't said he doesn't believe in 'axis of evil, war on terror' and the other jedi mind tricks of the neocon phrase book?

Reflecting on how the media deals with news ie picks a topic does it to death drops it picks another topic does it to death etc I'm going to set up a 24 hour news channel and its opening credits will be called the 'The Headless Chicken Dance'.

we need a public service newspaper...

Regarding Neil Welton's post: the reason why working-class people don't present on Newsnight is because such people, by definition, work in factories, on building sites, etc. I see that he is white himself, so he must suffer from self-loathing if he thinks white people are hideous (not to mention being 'racist' against himself). Hopefully the ´óÏó´«Ã½ puts on the best people for the job and does not pander to that fatuous notion 'positive discrimination'.

Back to the crisps report - I too noted that the calculations did not include how much CO2 was used up by the potatoes while growing - surely this is significant?

Yes, Gavin Esler's interview of John Bolton was pretty weak [see #25,#19&co]; JB's reactions came across as all the stronger for Gavin's utter inability to adapt his questions. But no, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ probably doesn't back neo-con right-wing views... Weren't there others who said it was too liberal? Could it be both?!? Fancy that!

At least some of the US departments/agencies probably have a rough idea of what's going on... However, shouldn't the real question be why the Syrians are so coy about what really happened?

Please can you tell me how the CO2 indicator on Walkers crisps packet, tells us nothing, as stated on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ TV news this am.
If to get a bag of crisps full of fat, salt and E.no's weighing 34.5g that is suspose to be bad for you, it cost the earth 75g of CO2 to produce where's the justification for them making the crisps at all?
or am I just a bit thick and got it all wrong?