Con Dem gov? Same old, same old

M. Cameron and M. Clegg's love-in was most moving and affecting. We watched the complete press conference coverage as part of an hour on the UK election I curated for Madame Beezer yesterday evening.

I have not seen M. Clegg speak at any length before, and he is most able and inspiring. Madame Beezer accused him of being a mumbler, but he was clear enough to me. He does say "you know" a lot in unscripted speech, a verbal tic that is irritating if pronounced. This is occasionally shortened to yeena and then abruptedly swallowed, presumably because some political coach has advised him not to say "you know," and he tries consciously to suppress it, not always succeeding. It is perhaps an irony that his accent, if this is possible, sounds posher than Cameron's.

As after M. Obama's inauguration, one left with an impression of intelligence, ability, and good intentions, even if these are mired in false ideology and bankrupt culture. My mood after watching them was better than before I started, which is pretty rare praise I assure you.

Whether the first coalition government of the UK for sixty-five years can endure is still an open question. Their differences on many issues, and particularly on electoral reform and Europe, could not be greater. M. Clegg does indeed hold an axe over M. Cameron's continuation in office, but it is an axe he can only wield once. The announcement that their package of electoral reforms will include introducing fixed term parliaments is in fact a concession that secures M. Cameron's position rather more than it does M.Clegg's, though he has played a very good hand in the negotiations since the election. One undoubted effect of coalition government is that formal decision-making returns to the place it properly belongs in the UK system: in its Thursday morning cabinet meetings. This should be an advance on the sofa slackness of recent years.

Both men were full of the need to govern with "fairness" in the "national interest", each man repeating the phrase at least twice, as though that were some uncontentious catechism. I prefer the term the "public interest." Although on an island it is easy to make the fundamental error that the two concepts are contiguous, they are not. In an age of atmosphere change and peak oil, perpetuating the error will doubtless have grave consequences.

It will be interesting to see what the new administration makes of the results of the Chilcot inquiry. M. Clegg's party will hopefully ensure that no part remains buried. Whether we shall have legal opinion thereafter advising that the prosecution of the key players would be in the public interest is another question. The political class naturally reject this option with horror. Peaceful transition between successive administrations (rather than bloody coups) IS the hallmark of democratic government. Threatening to jail your opponents if you win the election has an understandable chilling effect on the political discourse. The world finds that sleeping dogs must be left to lie.

But we do not, of course, have to accept their lies. The point of prosecution is above all to state society's disapproval of the crime, not necessarily to punish any individual involved.

Well, we shall see. I wish Mssrs Cameron and Clegg bon appetit! as they consume their miel de noces and await further developments with interest.

In praise of... M. Dennis Skinner MP (with an eye to his successor upon retirement)

If there is ever a wikipedia page more entertaining than this one do let me know. M. Skinner's catalogue of parliamentary heckles down the years are most amusin' and affectin'. He is like a trusty family retainer, charged with the supply of shafts of wit on state occasions, Black Rod's very own poet laureate. It is sad that one day he will have to retire, but nevertheless the rest of us must give some thought to his eventual successor. I saw no reason why this online Guardian article should be so down on the estimable M. Brand as a contender for replacement "Beast".

a few things I've discovered about myself

Occasionally people who knew me from before ask me, by email for example, "Who is Julius Beezer?" I could point them to an earlier somewhat cryptic post but I generally don't bother. I thought it would be amusing, if rather up my own arse, to look for those emails I sent, and publish the edited highlights here see if any pattern emerges.

In fact there were only two emails.

[For T. ]

Julius Beezer is my nom de plume online. He writes a blog in English and one in French, which may be already one too many.

He is a grumpy old man who has retired from London society to better
direct his ire at the many failings of his former culture :-) He has a
special green ink hotline to the Guardian's comments pages.


Actually, I'm really not at all grumpy. It would be a lie to say anything else. I'm much less grumpy as a French person; though it would be socially acceptable for me to be grumpy, it doesn't really work for me, and I don't enjoy it. Better to eschew grumpiness and guard your sense of humour.

[For A.]

Someone has been telling tales about Julius Beezer though: I did hear tell of a retired French provincial lecturer determined to spend his retirement studying and eventually enlightening British culture (which he naturally detests). In order to achieve his ultimate goal, he maintains a blog in English as a cultural and linguistic exercise in his adopted tongue. His grammar is almost always impeccable, though his posts suffer from occasional literals during rapid editing. I hope he is slightly stiff and uncomfortable in his new intellectual posture, and attempts to submerge any possible offence in a politeness that can be icy, but is most often warm.

He can't be both, for this would be to depart into the realm of fiction, deprecated not least by 17th century puritans. Putain! It's a problem. For now anyway it's all as true as wot I can make it, artistic exceptions and deviations aside.

Through a Lentz darkly

Some underling has told poor old Jim Lentz (of sticky accelerator fame) he is going to have to explain it all to the intertubes.

The process chosen for this God-like dialogue with the screen-dwelling inhabitants of the third planet out from an undistinguished star somewhere in a not much more interesting spiral galaxy is a Digg survey.

I must confess, I generally can't be arsed with all the tedious repetitions involved in gaming such systems manually, and sending some bot off to do my evil bidding is a) beyond my competence; and b) hardly sporting.

But nonetheless, it did strike me as a potentially democratic methodology, and I did have a naughty little giggle of glee at the thought of M. Lentz being forced to answer such questions as:

"Do you own a samurai sword? or "Where can I get corporate hair?" or even "Should I be concerned about the accelerator on my Toyota bicycle?"

It's cruel to mock the disabled. Interpret the tears rolling down my cheeks as you will. If you're still reading this in a gaping hole of idleness, "Have there been any problems with Toyota bicycles?" is my pick for the question that will have maximum comedy value if included in {accent_en_us} the top ten questions Lentz MUST answer Monday 2pm PST.{/accent_en_us}

My contribution to the Chilcot inquiry

world scientific literature roars free online

A couple of months ago I tweeted "It is high time the world scientific literature was made freely available to anyone who cares to read it" and linked to Peter Suber's updated overview of Open Access--just as he stepped back after nearly a decade of titan effort on the issue.

Like most anonymous cowards on the internet, my initial pronouncement was based on irrational prejudice rather than any extensive research. Although Suber's site alone has an immense richness of links, I decided to use "web 2.0" social networking tools as I updated myself on the effort, fully ten years since I had last looked at the subject.

The problem updating yourself in these circumstances is what you don't know you don't know. To use a search engine--I'm still a fan of Google, though it increasingly pops up links to toll-access papers and in-copyright book material that are not immediately accessible--would be to limit myself to terms that may be outdated or already well-travelled.

So, using Twitter, RSS feeds linked to Google reader, and Delicious, I followed my nose for a couple of months, and built a rich information environment that finally led to this.

Finding, with these tools, the online personae of researchers, librarians, and journalists who have shared their own journey through the literature online, I have a congenial, idiosyncratic, ragged plethora of sources I can view in my browser, that is wider and more immediate than any process I can imagine in a traditional dead-tree library.

Back to school for M. Beezer too

The London Vegetable Garden: Back from Holiday!