Tuesday 2 December 2008

Beige, but with a hint of Brown ...

So Calman has reported - and very boring it was. The Commission to Repaint Devolution has recommended exactly what it was told to recommend by the Westminster machine - except for one line on page 120 "It has become clear throughout the first part of our investigation that devolution cannot be made to work properly. We have, therefore, changed the direction of our efforts in order to map out the best route to independence."

A bit strange that this is the only bit hand-written, but there you go.

This committee, the equivalent of a do-nothing machine but with less dynamism, strikes me as the close cousin of television as a babysitter. It doesn't matter what it says so long as the picture keeps changing.

It's like having an anarchist federation - a bureaucracy unsuited to its intent with a cacophony of unrelated but arrogant self-interests and a stunning misunderstanding of the meaning of the words in its title. Except the anarchists have better T-shirts.

I do like the fact that there's an anarchists' magazine called Organise though ...

5 comments:

BSH said...

Surely an Anarchists magazine should be titled 'Disorganize'

Calum Cashley said...

You would have thought so, wouldn't you, but there it sits on the website of the Anarchist Federation http://www.afed.org.uk/
as Organise.

The blog on the site is wonderful - including an anarchist-communist perspective on present day Russia.

Up you could not make it.

Anonymous said...

I once browsed through an anarchist bookshop in Edinburgh, killing time before making my way out to Murrayfield for the game - this was back in the days when Murrayfield had only one stand, and the army recruiting slogan was 'Join the Professionals'.

Leafing through an anarchist mag I came to the centrefold, a very well-endowed young lady sitting naked in an open-top Merc sportscar and toting a machine gun. The caption was 'Join the Amateurs'. Almost did.

Calum Cashley said...

Well, the Mercedez is an attractive marque...

Anonymous said...

actually, a federation of anarchists is exactly the correct form of collective association.

There have been some great Scottish anarchists - Ethel Macdonald, John Caldwell, Guy Aldred (OK he was born in London but he spent more years in Glasgow than anywhere else... Hamilton QC was an admirer apparently).

The thing is that the genuine anarchists are more likely to be found at a coffee morning than the barricades. Kropotkin, howerver, would probably approve!