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John Howell looks very much like Mr Crick are they related do we know ?
Thanks Pantsman

On Zimbabwe I really don't think this is a five minute media spectacle. Almost the entire world is now focused on this crisis. The economy there just isn't going anywhere. If the sanctions really start to bite - on Mugabe and his stores of hard currency - then people in his cadre are going to start weighing up their options. They can't exit without the money. South Africa are going to be taking the brunt of the side effects and their loyalty is not going to last.

Mugabe is making speeches that seem to be directed to nobody. I think it is true that he always has an extra place at the dinner table for the ghost of one of his previous rivals from the 80's. He's not going to have to become much more eccentric before his own people turn on him.

Will he retire or be retired?

HALF A PERCENT OF CHUTZPAH?

"Tonight, as we examine Labour's financial position, one of Labour's chief fundraisers - Lord Levy - has said the Labour Party needs seriously to consider getting rid of its leader."

Ah, but Lord Levy was Mr Blair's fund-raiser was he not? Didn't Sir Ronald Cohen bankroll Mr Brown's leadership bid? As Mr Blair and Mr Brown didn't get on it's hardly surprising that Lord Levy now thinks New Labour needs a new leader. Who might he have in mind? Could it be Mr Miliband by any chance?

I guess Newsnight could ask Jon Mendelssohn or David Abrahams or perhaps someone else in the know once the CPS has made its mind up what to do about the file its just recieved?

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..Wholesaler Tim Down has 5,000 tasty kiwi fruit he can neither sell nor give away.

The market trader has been banned by EU chiefs from shifting the batch because regulations state they are 1MM too small....

given the massive food price increases is this not a crime against humanity that it is illegal to even give them away?

I don't think Newsnight should be giving a platform to Lord Levy. I skimmed his book
at Edinburgh Airport recently before I put
it back on the shelf of the bookshop and
was appalled to read his comments on
the late Professor Henry Drucker - who
warned his old friend Gordon Brown to
have no truck with Levy and blind trusts.

I also remember having to explain to the Palestinians in Gaza that Levy was not a
UK Government Minister when news of his
involvement in the campaign to re-elect Ehud Barak was splashed by The Sunday
Times and reprinted by the Israeli press
at a critical point in the Peace process.

My advice to them was to ignore Levy and his distractions: and deal with Robin Cook and Tony Blair directly, not loose cannons.

INIQUITY LEGISLATION?

It surprises me is that so few appreciate the iniquity of our so-called equality legislation which technically affords a privileged white (endogamous and possibly nepotistic) minority group the same size as our British Chinese minority (0.5%), protection from scrutiny essentially via distraction (i.e by focusing our attention on larger DISadvantaged groups.

Subsitute British Chinese, and everyone would soon be asking questions about iniquity and the 'Chinese mafia' (especially if ~10% of the House of Lords were British Chinese).

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Is there a greater human being alive today than Nelson Mandela? I doubt it. I suspect that the more attention that is paid to Nelson Mandela in the media, the greater the humiliation and disgrace felt by Robert Mugabwe will be. However, I disagree with the Editorial in today's Economist which calls for Mugabwe to be "snuffed out" - maybe Newsnight should call the Editor of this influential global current affairs weekly and ask them to explain themselves?

The NFU has suggested that chicken is an essential part of a balanced diet and could (should?) be eaten every day. I haven't eaten chicken in 18 years (as a direct result of intensive farming procedures) and I'm as fit as a fiddle. Nonsense I say.

Good for Hugh Fernley Eat-it-all!
I buy ALL my shopping from Tesco - I buy on-line so it's delivered as I'm disabled. This means I only eat chicken products IF AND ONLY IF I'm positive it's free range! I will only eat lamb and pork - if and only if it's responsibly reared. It is a priveledge to eat meat, and so personally I feel that the animal/bird has given it's best for ME so I should do my bit by respecting its life. Good for Jamie and Hugh - they push these supermarkets to make them give us - the consumer what we REALLY want - and NOT what the supermarkets THINK we want. If you have the money to eat meat then you must bear the responsibility of having and keeping priciples. Thank you to these pioneers of what we the consumers actually WANT!
Tinyartist. (Incidentally - I rarely eat supermarket chicken - it tastes awful!)

Glad to see Newsnight finally talking about the chicken out campaign. I was at the AGM today, and never mind a minor victory, to get 10% of money-obsessed tesco shareholders with no visible conscience or sense of moral obligation to vote for this is a massive victory.

As Hugh has been saying today, Somerfield sell RSPCA approved chicken for 10p more per kilo than Tesco's standard chicken- less than 20p more for an average chicken. So Tesco are saying that they can't absorb some or all of this price increase into their massive takings? And would 20p on the price of a chicken- which can feed 5 people, 4 p per person, be that bad?

Tesco is a massively successful business. They should be proud that they have built such a huge global business from a small humble store, and their success is undoubtedly good for the country in many ways. However Tesco has not got a serious Corporate Social Responsibility agenda, and they will never sacrifice profits in the pursuance in something that is right... god forbid!

Terry Leahy today put the burden of responsibility for this issue largely with the govt, and he informed us all that actually it is nothing to do with Tesco how their chickens are raised... right...

So, this big, rich, powerful corporation won't do anything to improve the welfare of the millions of chickens it sells every year. It is therefore now time that the govt get involved. Enough trying to get the big businesses to take ethical stances themselves- they are ultimately far too selfish to do so, and the govt must now force them to implement higher welfare standards, because as long as they don't see it as a profit improving venture, they definitely will not do it.

CHAMELEONS

We split hairs and have short memories.

How many times has it been remarked that New Labour and the New Conservatives share essentially the same agenda, namely the erosion of Big Government aka statism (which they attack elsewhere in the world so it surreptitiously becomes unthinkable to a brainwashed/dysgenic electorate).

Those with deep pockets may no longer care to back New Labour and its war of attrition on Public Sector services (via its reforming tomes of legislation and reviews), but they can just as easily support the New Conservatives, who will carry on essentially down the same line of less government, less regulation. After all, Thatcher started this anarchism, and those with money to spend want a return, after all, they're not philanthropists. More immigration, more births in the disadvantaged groups, and more education for the brighter folk (so there's a lower birth rate there) spells more consumers ready to part with their money.

As always, 'follow the money'.

MENTIONED ON 'ANY QUESTIONS' NOT DISPATCHES

I think they were looking for outstanding politicians. VACLAV HAVEL was put forward; he of the quote: 'living within the lie'. How appropriate that Jaded Jean is 'ex sin bin' (almost ex cathedra!) on this thread. Might it be that Newsnight is daring to allow the unsayable (prettily wrapped JJ) to be just a little bit said? Is it possible they are stepping out of the lie, like Havel's greengrocer?
Poignant to hear Lord Goldsmith (!) declare Mugabe bad and evil. I suppose that would be because he is dishonest and caused a lot of death.
By the end of the show it seemed apparent that while freedom-fighter-killers can rise to be great champions of democracy, leaders who arise from that democracy just revert to callow usurpation. Don'tcha just love paradox?

@5

Some get up in the morning to go to work and measure fruit and veg to ensure it complies with European directives and they tell their friends and relatives this is what they do for a living...with a straight face. I for one, grimace with despair when i hear stories about the nonsense that we get from our Euro law makers and weights and measure fascists but i am confident that there will come a time when the madness from eurobrussels will collectively be hanging from the rope with me pulling at its feet to hasten its demise, its my pet project to see it dead....but first and foremost, i , like the Irish; will tell the European machine to "get the feck away!"...if i ever get the chance that is.

Just watched last night's newsnight on iplayer. I must say, the studio discussion was a bit short, and the report far too long. It is frustrating when programmes go and follow one person and ask them what their views are- in the end it is only one person.

Anyway, I am glad newsnight talked about this, and I hope you will again, because I am very sure this campaign will continue.

Brilliant Emily on the interrogation of HFW last night, she managed to cover most of the points I raised in my earlier bounced blog. At least some well paid TV celebrities apparently care more about the welfare people than animals.

brossen99, do you not think it is possible to care about human and animal suffering, and for solutions to both to be compatible?

FOOD-FOOD:

It is sad that a chicken is going at TESCO for only 2 Pounds [british]...

I care about animals, but I'm afraid that people always come first in my book. Coming from an agricultural background with long experience with poultry I find HFW's augments about welfare typical of university boffin nonsense. If broiler chickens were not content they would not grow fast and probably all soon die, likewise battery hens would not lay. All they need is to be warm, dry and have a full belly, which many humans even in this country can't achieve.

Perhaps part of HFW's agenda is to turf out many small British farmers from their land so that more rich people can play at " River Cottage " and the pretence of a greener lifestyle.

Of course people come first. But if we are going to eat meat, what argument is there for not giving it a pain free life.

'If broiler chickens were not content they would not grow fast and probably all soon die'

5% of them do die, and a significant proportion have limb problems which often stops them from being able to move for the last days of their life. They don't grow fast because they are content, they grow fast because scientists have bred them to grow to full size in 39 days, and they are kept in light for 23 hours a day so they just eat continuously.

That last part is just ludicrous, if you had ever met or talked to Hugh, you would no that this is not a self-interested campaign at all.

t

I'd be pretty surprised if British Chinese suddenly constituted 10pc of the HoL, but mainly, I think, because it would be such a sudden change in the make-up of that institution.

I mean to say that, in the absence of a historically integrated British Chinese community (present in the UK from, say, around 1066 and undergoing periodic repression and pogroms until they experienced emancipation, essentially alongside the Catholics) and in the absence of equalities legislation to make the HoL representative of the demography of the UK it would be pretty inexplicable, yes.

Of course, another community *with* that history might be somewhat more explicable, mightn't it?

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DrKF77 (#23) Possibly (but probably not). In iniquitous battles for hegemony it can be extremely hard to say ;-)

/blogs/newsnight/2007/09/wednesday_19_september_2007.html

Barrie (14)

PARADOX

I do so hope you are right. I was beginning to have serious doubts about the NN blog. Things seemed to be going the way of CIF. With luck the powers that be have retained their integrity and JJ will be allowed to put forward what are plainly unassailable facts for us all to consider. Some unpalatable, but still facts nonetheless and thus deserving of seeing the light of day.

I am looking forward to reading posts 24, 25 and 26.

That's always been the problem with 'hegemony' and 'false consciousness' though, eh JadedJean? It's so elastic, amorphous and humpty-dumptyish a concept (not to mention an intellectual precursor to any number of pathetic contemporary conspiracy theories) that refutation is dialectically built in to its very argument...

I almost feel nostalgic.

Oh, and I'd be interested in posts 24, 25 and 26 - it certainly wasn't me that referred them upstairs...

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Re #3.
Just catching up with this blog, but must say how crucial JJ's point was to understanding the level to which our political parties have become the play-things of rich individuals. Also, respect is due for all those refered posts-they're obviously full of truths that somebody doesn't want you to inform us of. Thank you.

grumpy-jon,

don't forget the all important subtext in post #3...

K

Re #34. Thanx Doctor. For sure. Only don't say it, right, for fear of referral? Have you had a chance to see today's 'Prospects' thread?

grumpy-jon,

it would appear so - and the same fate awaits anyone who wishes to cast a 'searchlight' on that subtext, or so I am told...

Still, she seems to enjoy the abstruse 'baiting, even if the mods think it may occasonally be beyond the pale.

Maybe the mods are asleep on the job with regards to today's Prospects?

K

Re #36. The Good Doctor.
They must be sunning themselves. What a horrid thought. They've had their day IMO. They cling to the last shreds of PC to try to suppress the debate they daren't have, but increasingly that is failing to keep people quiet. They're reduced to their media black out (ever heard of the net chaps?) and electoral fraud; and everyday thousands more turn to 'us'. And the more crookery the establishment are driven to, the greater the flood. Keep Fighting. Come on us.

That's what frightens me most.