Mixed reaction to Stonehenge transport system decision

The government decision not to do much at all about the traffic near Stonehenge after ten years of consultations has brought a mixed response from politicians and campaign groups:

The Liberal Democrat culture spokesman, Dan Rogerson, said the decision "puts a UNESCO World Heritage site at risk of damage from the ever-increasing volume of traffic".
The Conservative shadow transport secretary, Theresa Villiers, said: "Why has this government taken 10 years, only to come back to square one?
"This is one of the most notorious traffic bottlenecks in the country - it impacts on great swathes of the south-west, who will feel betrayed by this announcement today."
However, the Save Stonehenge campaign welcomed the decision, saying a "massive roadbuilding project was always the wrong solution in such a sensitive landscape".
"No one with any sense wanted a tunnel, a flyover, a dual carriageway, and two whacking great interchanges here," spokesman Chris Woodford added. "It's just not acceptable to build 1950s-style motorways in places like this any more."
Tony Richardson, the south-west director of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said: "It is a great shame that it is not going ahead, but a huge relief that the government has rejected overground alternatives that would dissect the site.
"The tunnel was the most environmentally sensitive option. We hope that changes to planning law do not make an overground road easier to push through in future."
David Holmes, the chairman of the RAC Foundation, said the organisation was "extremely disappointed that the government has condemned Stonehenge to further environmental damage due to their failure to act".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/dec/06/pollution.homeaffairs

From Stalin to Mr Bean

Lib-Dem Vince Cable hit the headlines yesterday and today. No it wasn't for something particularly good he did, or bad, he just got in the funniest and most memorable comment in the parliamentary questions time yesterday.

As the Sun reported today in its top news story: “From Stalin to Mr Bean.” Gordon Brown grinned, but this jibe from Lib-Dem Vince Cable must have hurt. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/sun_says/article244723.ece

Cable's opportunist jibe had all the ingredients to propel himself onto the news, and give himself some good publicity: comedy, history and cultural relevance.

Let's hope Mr Bean turns into a Mr Churchill soon!

No conspiracy, no interest

The current Labour fiasco reminded me of what Robert Harris, who was working as a journalist for BBC’s Newsnight programme during the Falklands War, concluded on the media coverage:

‘The episodes which caused the most disquiet, and which have been described in this book, were not necessarily unique to the Falklands crisis. The instinctive secrecy of the military and the Civil Service; the prostitution and hysteria of sections of the press; the lies, the misinformation, the manipulation of public opinion by the authorities; the political intimidation of broadcasters; the ready connivance of the media at their own distortion…all these occur as much in peace time Britain as in war.’[1]

Yes, I used to believe all those conspiracies, which are founded on the belief that our leaders are all some kind of James Bond (or Bond villains), and everything is worked out so cleverly and efficiently that only a mastermind conspiracy breaker (that's you/them) can get to the truth.

But most nations' histories are full of foolhardy and shambolic decisions by their leaders, with countries' futures and the lives of their citizens and soldiers threatened on a leaders' whim. The Iraq war at the moment is one of them, with Blair and Bush having little knowledge about the region or populations before the war, and apparently no plan for the place after the military conflict.

But the war has made me less inclined to believe conspiracy theories, because if ever there was a conspiracy the UK/US needed to implement, it was to plant some weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. That would have settled the reason for war argument, apart from the conspiracy theorists of course, who would of course have had a case.

But when it didn't happen, did the conspiracy theorists hold their hands up and say they expected a conspiracy. I didn't hear them. And do those who still think the US bombed themselves on 9/11, or let the Israelis do it, really believe that a country that doesn't even plant a few WMD's in Iraq will destroy its own landmark building and kill thousands of its citizens?

[1] R. Harris., Gotcha! : the media the government and the Falklands crisis (London : Faber, 1983), p. 151.

What price democracy? US elections turning nasty

As the American political bandwagon hits South Carolina, Tim Reid in today's Times writes that 'This state’s primary race has already become the sleaziest leg of the 2008 presidential campaign.'

And this isn't the first time its happened, as Reid explains, back in 2000 there was a similar attack on a candidate: 'After losing badly to Mr McCain in New Hampshire, the Bush team knew – as one operative says – that they had to “chop him up” in South Carolina. Flyers appeared saying that Mr McCain had fathered an illegitimate child with a black woman (he and his wife have an adopted Bangladeshi girl). A whispering campaign was started claiming that his five years as a Vietnamese prisoner of war had made him mentally unstable. His wife was a drug addict, people were told in anonymous telephone calls. Mr Bush and his former chief strategist, Karl Rove – another Atwater protégé – always denied any involvement. But Mr McCain’s campaign never recovered.'

This time in South Carolina it has been 'claimed that Hillary Clinton was having a lesbian affair with Huma Abedin, her beautiful aide' (I wish...to see the photos), and 'Flyers appeared on cars accusing Barack Obama (a Christian) of being a Muslim extremist.'

I've heard SC has a nice side too, so please don't judge it by the actions above.

Brown x Green = Grey

So the government has given the thumbs-up to a new runway at Heathrow. Coming about a year after it raised airport tax to apparently lower the number of flights it sends a contradictory message, unless its decoded as one of getting more taxes for the government coffers...so they can build their new nuclear power plants!

George Monbiot recently commented on the government's framing and blurring of environmentalism in the Guardian: 'The law the British government passed a fortnight ago - by 2010, 5% of our road transport fuel must come from crops - will, it claims, save between 700,000 and 800,000 tonnes of carbon a year. It derives this figure by framing the question carefully. If you count only the immediate carbon costs of planting and processing biofuels, they appear to reduce greenhouse gases. When you look at the total impacts, you find they cause more warming than petroleum.' http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2205761,00.html

Ruddslide deposes Howard in Australian election

A victory for Labor's Kevin Rudd has removed Australian leader John Howard after eleven years in office, with the media terming it a 'ruddslide'. Rudd won the vote with promises of signing up for the Kyoto treaty, and withdrawing combat troops from Iraq.

Paul Ham in the Sunday Times wrote that 'His victory was largely attributed to his ability to convince Australians that he is an economic conservative who will rein in public spending, unlike his profligate Labor predecessors. He persuaded the electorate that he would continue rather than undo Howard’s economic achievements: Little distinguishes Rudd from Howard in terms of economic management, and quoted Peter Hartcher, political editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, as considering that “Kevin Rudd is basically John Howard without the nasty bits.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2937099.ece

Entman on framing

According to Robert Entman, who set out to clarify frame theory, framing ‘essentially involves selection and salience. To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described’. Echoing Goffman’s original definition of framing, Entman argues that culture is the stock of commonly invoked frames, and communicators make conscious or unconscious framing judgements, guided by their belief system, and that the decisions are then manifested in the text by the presence or absence of keywords, phrases, stereotyped images, sources and sentences that provide thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgements; Entman also considers that what is omitted from the news is as important as what is included.[1]
[1] R. Entman; Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm, in Journal of Communication, Volume 43 (4), Winter, 1993, pp. 51-8, p. 52.