Disqus - Latest Comments for gift_of_the_fab

Re: Pint of Brown's Lukewarm, Barperson!

Fabienne — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 15:42:16 -0000

Best get your requests in for this bar shy student before I am priced out of the market. Cheers!

Re: Pint of Brown's Lukewarm, Barperson!

Fabienne — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:56:38 -0000

I wonder how long it will be before condoms are taxed.

One of Gordon's taxes moves I did agree with was his VAT cut on contraceptives [see here]. Can't say than I am more than a few pence up on that deal yet, but a move in the right direction all the same. A less generous friend of mine summed up the move at the time as, "One big prick giving a tax cut to thousands of small pricks". Not a bad summary of some other tax cuts are politicians make actually.

Re: Pint of Brown's Lukewarm, Barperson!

Fabienne — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:50:25 -0000

Nice list. Some harsh ones in there [bitter lemon? ouch].

John Prescott - Punch

Egg Nog followed by a weak punch maybe.

No Babysham for Tony Blair then? Or perhaps some illegal Hoonshine - may lead to blindness....

Re: Pint of Brown's Lukewarm, Barperson!

Fabienne — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:37:47 -0000

Alco-tourism is something we are already quite specialised in, so some cross-border Frosty Jack smuggling should be no problem.

Re: Twittercide

Fabienne — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:45:22 -0000

The lowly states of politwitter evidenced that according to Twitter Grader, there is not one political twitter stream in the top 50 for the UK.

Re: I Am Feeling Recessional

Fabienne — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 15:18:18 -0000

Thanks Ex-Apprentice.

A point made in the Spectator yesterday was that there is little point in asking Brown to apologise for exactly the reason you suggest: Brown will not apologise as he does not think he has anything to apologise for. I just think that in continual pursuing this line in the media, on blogs and from opposition parties, it starts to look like whining. Rather than apologise for something as vague and far reaching as the credit-crunch, better to establish a narrative based on the specifics of his failures and articulate an alternative to his economic policies to remedy the situation.

Re: User Generated Banner

Fabienne — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:55:54 -0000

HTML not my strong point. Where would it go on the Blogger template if I wanted to do a kind of universal banner?

Re: Singled Out

Fabienne — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:00:41 -0000

"Inherent in that agreement is the fact that there is a social and cultural stigma attached to singles (as well as the price tag).

You are not wrong there Fuzz. Although being single has a veneer of glamour about it, it also attracts alot of misplaced and negative stereotypes. I wrote this blog on Multiply that touched on the subject and in which I said in reference to a friend of mine.

What struck me was how much he defined his happiness, or current lack of it I should say, by whether he could find some perfect girlfriend, in some perfect sun-drenched setting, undoubtedly with some perfect soundtrack playing? I found myself thinking, just what is wrong with being on single anyway? Nothing really, although my Israeli friend with whom I started this entire rambling episode always seemed to suggest that I was somehow deficient for wanting to 'play the field', looking at me deep, sad eyes, as I updated her on latest gossip.

Re: Singled Out

Fabienne — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:29:04 -0000

"Under this new plan, would people still be permitted to marry if they wished? In traditional fashion (church wedding, say) or in a sky diving wedding (saw that on the Discovery channel)? And more importantly, would these marriages still be recognized as they currently are? I mean, it's one thing to add civil unions and another to eliminate marriage altogether."

I do not think Allen's proposal would affect anything in terms of how people want to celebrate their wedding. We have this here now anyway, in that some people will just go to the registry office and not bother with a church ceremony at all, whilst others will want to do the full white wedding; I don't believe that Allen is suggesting there would be any restrictions on the types of ceremonies people want to have, more that the legal benefits one gets due to marriage should be open to a wider group of people.

I am not sure what this would mean for divorce or say if a childless widowed mother wanted a civil union with her son/daughter, but their child were already married. I would think you could only have one civil union/marriage at a time and there would need to be some kind of consideration given to how they are dissolved [I want to divorce you Dad!].

Re: I Am Feeling Recessional

Fabienne — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:07:38 -0000

"Even people who haven't been touched by the economic problems are fearful and counting their pennies, stocking up on ramen noodles in case they, too, lose their jobs, homes, etc."

Yeah, there is a kind of negative re-enforcement going on with the news being so relentlessly bleak. Kind of reminds me of what I have heard referred to in the past as 'disaster porn' [see my blog here.] This article here from Frank Furedi on the government funding to cope with the mental health problems due to the recession suggests that such actions condition people to act in a certain way, such that a 'mental health crisis' becomes, to a certain extent, a self-fulfilling prophesy.

"The institutionalisation of ‘recession therapy’ is based on the assumption that the economic crisis will lead to an epidemic of depression and stress, which could cause long-term mental health problems for millions of people. I can predict, with utmost certainty, that the principal achievement of this plan will be to disease people’s natural responses to economic insecurity, and to normalise the idea that people facing hard times can become mentally ill. This will potentially transform people’s experience of economic and social insecurity into a massive public health problem. "

Brendan O'Neill in the article I linked says the following in his concluding paragraph.

What all of these recession predictions have in common is a view of the public as an amorphous mass that will be pushed, prodded, twisted and reshaped – for the worse – by the economic downturn. Any view of us as resourceful, tough individuals, who together with our friends, families and social networks can get through the economic downturn in one piece, has given way to fears that we will become dog-like haters of foreigners and women with chicken-blocked arteries to boot.

I think that's right. It is patronising and makes people feel more passive and powerless about their situation, not to mention that it, as O'Neill points out, reflects a subconcious fear of the 'masses', which in turn is shorthand for white working class males.

Re: E-mail Requirement for Non-Disqus Users

Fabienne — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:35:37 -0000

Hmmm. Well I can't pretend I don't find that slightly suspect.

Blogger's native commenting and ID don't require and form of identification, so it is disappointing it cannot be changed, but I guess I will shut up about it if it can't. :-/

Re: E-mail Requirement for Non-Disqus Users

Fabienne — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:22:05 -0000

I understand that and that you may also use an e-mail address as a way of blocking someone, although in truth, I would imagine you are more likely to use IP.

No way that requirement can be made optional then? As stated above, I think it might actually put people off commenting, which when you only get small number of comments like on my blog is not good. Obviously, those people I know well I will try to convince to sign up to Disqus, even if they do not implement on their blog.

Re: E-mail Requirement for Non-Disqus Users

Fabienne — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:10:49 -0000

Hi Giannii.

Is it really required though? If so, why? People who are suspicious of it will either not comment or put in some me@anywhere.com type e-mail address. Why cannot it be made an optional field if you as admin don't want people visiting your blog to have to put an e-mail address in every time?

Previously when I was just using the clunky Blogger comments, they allowed completely anonymous posting if I wanted to permit it, I don't understand why Disqus cannot not replicate that functionality; unless you need the e-mail addresses for some reason.... ;)

Re: Singled Out

Fabienne — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:15:46 -0000

Re: Where's The Party?

Fabienne — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 14:26:36 -0000

I never think that smaller parties should be scared to enter the political fray on the basis of being accused of being spoiler parties for the larger parties, but they are always inevitably going to get the criticism. Larger parties should take the threat seriously, as if these smaller parties do carve out a niche, then it surely indicative that they are tapping into something that the mainstream parties are missing.

Voter ambivalence is an issue, although as I indicated in my post, the European and local elections are more natural hunting grounds for Independent candidates; the area of the country I come from as a local council split largely between local independents and Conservatives. The difficulty for the Jury Group is that those independents we do have normally come to prominence campaigning on local issues and it is much easier to carry a local council ward on the strength of personality and a policy about not closing the local hospital say, than it is to carry a seat in a general election.

In recent times we have had a history of small parties coming through strongly in local and European elections [UKIP, BNP, Respect, Veritas, Referendum Party, Greens etc], often running on quite narrow platforms, but attempts to broaden out their appeal on the national stage, where it is much easier to for the mainstream parties to 'out campaign' smaller parties, have so far been doomed to failure.

The Jury Group is going to have a secondary problem for a General Election of not even having a cohesive set of policies to sell to the public, and really is some broad agenda of more transparent politics going to resonate enough for people to vote for them. I would say not.

The Party's Over is an interesting read, but really is an exercise of intellectual theoretical masturbation. Whilst I agree with much of Sutherland's critique of the damaging retardation of our politics by the ways that political parties operate, I cannot see how we would ever transition from democracy via the ballot box to some form of parliament of semi-randomly selected citizens scrutinising policies in the same way that a jury in a criminal case scrutinises the facts of the case and comes to a decision.

Re: Where's The Party?

Fabienne — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 11:14:14 -0000

Thanks for dropping by Morus. I am a bit pushed for time at the moment between this blog and uni work to give consideration to writing elsewhere. If you are still looking closer to Easter I would be more than happy to be considered if you can let me know what kind of material you are looking for.

Fuzi's point, although made in jest, does raise an issue for your selection process in how you define what an 'extremist' position is. Out and out racism [or any other similar 'ism'] is what I imagine you are talking about here? How can you vet applicants to avoid embarrassing revelations of such views in the past?

Re: Where's The Party?

Fabienne — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 23:19:03 -0000

Just as an addendum, I think the X Factor comparison in The Times article (here) is rather unfortunate; it already gives a sense of some tacky publicity stunt don't you think?