Ever read someone else's Nikah contract?

An interesting thing happened on the internet recently.

Its not the Online Nikah in the Maniac Muslim sense of the term.

Nor was it so technocratic as some ummahtocrats laid out in the UK last year.

Its actually quite educative just to read.

Doctor youre in trouble

Let's hear it for Dr Freddie Patel, who said the late Ian Tomlinson died from a heart attack and lent power of expertise to the Met Police excuse machine. A second post mortem reveals he died from internal bleeding. Which makes the uniformed shuor who assaulted him even more heavily culpable.

What a great man, his parents must be real proud. I mean their sonny jim was in the press, he's a doctor you know, and in officialdom at that. yaar.

Freddie, no not Mercury.

Sisters and brothers, comrades and freinds. For too long have we squeezed value out of the Uncle Tom metaphor, either because we think we are black and/or because we can't bring ourselves to utter the word 'baniya' (not that anybody would get the historical significance).

I propose that from this day the Doctor Freddie construct be used for those who ingratiate themselves with power, particularly of the shadda variety, so as to defile their names and 'talent'.

Political Futures for Britain

Priyamvada Gopal's piece on the recent past student actions in solidarity with Gaza got me thinking about the future of politics in the UK, post-New Labour fizzleout. What ideas and movement will their be in the moral ecology of these shores after a decade or so of Tory rule and the inevitable and long called-for re-equilibration of the UK's global significance?

The ideas that i want to see become commonsense arise from failings with respect to the way we interact with the rest of creation, capital, history and imperialism.

Lets not eat up and poison the planet.
Let's make a break from our colonialist pasts and presents.

Party politics here is a rather dull and lifeless affair, so perhaps ruminating on the potential reform processes within the defeated Labour Party is a waste of time. Maybe one of the causes of both voter apathy and radicalisation is the sheer boringness of the political field these days? Maybe the government should employ itself to encourage a more moderate boringness.

What would be interesting would be the death of the (2) established political parties and a freeing up of the space for interesting characters, traditions and visions to coalesce. Of course the Jackie Smith in you might suggest that I am doing the BNP's bidding for them, but I disagree. A pragmatic manager could do worse than the following political formation and distribution of labour, Tory councillers at the bottom, Social MPs and Green or Lib Dem Euro MPs.

Lamo Labour on European elections.

One thing that really annoys me about political parties during election times is how they try to cover up their lameness by fear-mongering. Take Harriet Harman's 'stop the BNP' pronouncement. With European elections coming up normal people might struggle to find reasons for voting labour, and an anti rascism platform might seem enough for election to positions at a scale that is hard to imagine.

This drowns out the space for the smaller parties. UK voters would be better placed to populate the European Parliament with Greens and Libdems. They represent the future and we should not drag our feet over getting there.

It is a classic line, "dont vote for what you believe, vote for us, else you are rascist and/or you'll get the Tory party."

Voting for unsuccesful parties is an essential part of transformational politics.

How Crap are the Police?

They have cast a rather large Arsehole Footprint over the past days. This footprint, much more immediately consequential that anything associated with carbon, has been helped by a Home Minister enfooled by porn, an exploitative Tory Mayor and a Prime Minister who has 'had his go' and should leave before he lets the Torys in.

It is hard for an institution to earn trust and reputation. Behaiving badly and doing PR isnt going to work. Here is their latest report sheet.

• Incarcerating thousands of civilian protesters for several hours and going ape on the Climate Camp during the G20 meeting that empowered the Inept Malevolent Fantasists by a trillion and was frankly a sideshow for President O-bomber.
• Causing the death of an innocent bystanding non-protester through general callousness and specific cruelty, then lying heaps about it.
• Flashing confidential anti-terror intelligence details at the Tory press outside Downing street then hurrying up a bunch of arrests on 'pakistani students' up north.

My default expectation is that the arrests will turn out to be BS as usual. Muhammad Adil, a Liverpool MBA student was captured in the raids, then released had some interesting things to say. The UK exploits its ex colonial master status to pretend to educate folks from the commonwealth. The British Council misleads thousands of young people all over the world every year. This Paki, bless, is going home.

"This has totally changed what I have learned about this country and my
time here...They are clearly identifying Muslim students. It's a big insult …
The first thing I will do is leave this country as soon as possible. The police
officer said your country [Pakistan] is not secure but I still prefer to
live there. I love my country."