We'll see.

Today is either one of the most important days in British and Irish history or just another day of the usual bullshit. The annoying thing is that there's no way of telling which.

I particularly like this detail:

This will take effect from 4pm this afternoon.

Why? Planning a last couple of shootings in the next hour-and-a-half, Gerry?

Moral inequivalence.

There's more of this bollocks in the papers over here than I can find on the Web. The BBC gives a reasonable summary of the gist of the complaints, but fails to capture the more extreme histrionics. Just read their report and imagine the same thing but with more self-indulgent whinging from some quarters and more spittle-flecked shouting from others.

Firstly, Blair has said what any fule no:

Al-Qaeda terrorism is not on the same par as the IRA, Prime Minister Tony Blair has suggested.

He said IRA political demands or their previous atrocities could not be directly compared to fundamentalists who carried out the 9/11 US attacks.

It was invidious to make comparisons because "terrorism is wrong", he said.

"I don't think you can compare the political demands of republicanism with the political demands of this terrorist ideology we're facing now."

And, predictably enough, Ulster's Unionists have taken the opportunity — they never miss one, you know — to make themselves look bloody stupid:

Ulster Unionist Party leader Sir Reg Empey said he had warned Mr Blair against "creating double standards between terrorists".

"There is no point in using the numbers killed to distinguish between terror groups as the prime minister seems to be implying," he said.

"However, if Mr Blair wants to use a crude stratification process in order to establish a hierarchy of terror, he will find that the number of those murdered and maimed in Northern Ireland is greater."

DUP MP Sammy Wilson said Mr Blair's comments were an "insult to every victim of terrorism".

"Whether a terrorist sets out to murder one person or 100 people, they are a terrorist and no difference should be drawn," he said.

Reg Empey is one of Northern Ireland's most respected politicians, but he's clearly incapable of even the most basic reasoning. Does he really mean to say that the IRA have killed and maimed more people than Al Qaeda? No, I think he means to compare just the London bombings with the IRA's entire campaign, which is unreasonable and stupid. Does anyone fall for this stuff? At least when Westminster's politicians lie, they do it well. Our lot are such bloody amateurs.

On the one big issue of Unionism, Unionists are right. And they've been losing the political battle these many years because they insist on making themselves look wrong. They really only have one policy: the IRA are evil and should be resisted at all costs. This policy is correct, but it has become such a dogma that it is carried into the realms of insanity. For Unionist politicians, not only are the IRA evil, but they are the ultimate evil, not to be out-evilled by any other. And, when you make ideas that stupid the bedrock of your thinking, you're going to have all sorts of stupid thoughts. Like, for instance, the idea that we mustn't just fight the IRA and their sympathisers, but must also fight people who dare to suggest that the IRA might be slightly less bad than some other things, such as massive tidal waves, the Holocaust, or the victory of Satan over all the peoples of the Earth.

Look. Pointing out that Mao was much worse than Hitler does not imply that Hitler was actually quite a nice chap and that perhaps we shouldn't have bothered fighting him after all.

The IRA — who, let us not forget, are all bastard scum — killed people as a means to an end. Whatever one may think of the rights and wrongs of that end, it was always possible to stop the IRA killing people by giving the Six Counties to Eire. It would have been wrong to do so for a large number of reasons, but it was still possible. Not so with Al Qaeda: for them, killing infidels is the end itself. They're not killing us to get concessions; they're killing us because we're us. In the words of one Hamas leader:

We don't attack you to get you to give us something. We attack you to kill you.

The point that the DUP and UUP fail to understand is that the difference between Al Qaeda and the IRA isn't how many people they succeed in killing; it's how many they want to kill. In Al Qaeda's case, that number runs into billions. And yes, of course that makes them worse than the bloody IRA. Obviously.

New gadget joy.

I've just got me a Nokia 9500 and have to say that any talk of how fantastic it is must necessarily be understatement. It is utterly, utterly superb. People keep telling me it's a bit big for a phone. I respond that it's very small for a laptop. It has a QWERTY keyboard, it has wi-fi, it's surprisingly good with spreadsheets (not that I'm ever going to use that function, but it's kind of good to know in some indefinable and possibly sad way), I can type documents on it, it's got a video camera, it's got 80 meg of memory plus an MMC, its clock function tells me when sunrise and sunset are in my hometown, and its web-browser, despite being on a mere phone, really is a proper web-browser.

I can blog from it and can view the blog on it. This is the future, I tell you.

More news of this tour.

The Squander Pilots tour of Scotland has got bigger in two ways, as if you're interested. Firstly, it's got geographically bigger: we're now playing Dunfermline on the 4th of November, as I'm sure the residents of Dunfermline will be thrilled right through to their socks to hear. Secondly, it's got musically bigger, because our friend John from Kasino has agreed to play bass with us, and Ronnie, who used to play bass with us, has agreed to sing vocals on Given, which is nice. Given is one of our most popular songs, but it is a duet, so we have rarely been able to perform it since Colin the singing bassist left the band somewhat acrimoniously.

By the way, turns out the Edinburgh gig is at Caledonian Backpackers, wherever that is. Strange name for a venue, but I ain't arguing. I'd offer this new-found knowledge as evidence that I'm not quite so disorganised after all, except that I have no idea under what roof the Dunfermline gig's going to be.

Squander-watchers, if there are such things, may be interested to know that John is now Squander Six. No, possibly not all that interested.

Cheers.

Punctuation.

Radio One's detestable Newsbeat (and oh, how that name makes me cringe) has something against breathing, in that they don't let their newsreaders do any. A brief pause for breath might cause listeners to get bored and touch that dial, so not only is every item announced in their own distinctively weird sing-song overemphatic style, but there is never any gap between items — not even a change in tone to indicate a change of subject. After years of listening, I had thought I'd got used to it, but this still startled me:

Rape investigation starts after school trip claims that an injection can cure obesity.

 

A fatal error.

Of course, making fatal errors isn't half as bad when they're fatal to someone else.

I stand by what I said here:

As long as [the police] insist that they are absolutely the only people allowed to act against criminals and to defend the public, they take on the responsibility of doing the job perfectly — not just very well, but perfectly.

That's hardly apposite, though: ordinary members of the public have a role to play in fighting terrorism, and that role probably doesn't involve getting into gun-fights with terrorists. This is one area where the police and security forces are right to insist that they hold a monopoly. (Though I can't help but wonder: what if a member of the public pulled a gun on the Tube and shot a real suicide-bomber in the head, preventing detonation and saving lives? How would the police's attitude towards their own killing of an innocent man compare with a non-police killing of a terrorist?)

They seem to have the right attitude here: they are ready and willing to shoot suicide bombers dead rather than letting them succeed. I for one am glad to hear it. It's a pity that the first time they act on this new policy turns out to be the wrong time, but I hope that, in time, they will kill the right men. Jean Charles de Menezes acted very stupidly indeed, and it is a great shame — and surely not his fault — that he did so in a situation in which stupidity can kill.

There is one thing, however, that the police have done badly wrong here. Why the hell wasn't the new policy announced? Had there been bulletins on the news last Thursday, announcing that the Met were going to shoot anyone who refused to co-operate, would Mr de Menezes have run from the police on Friday? And, if he had, how much sympathy would we have for him? Would the Brazilian diplomatic corps be giving the British Government quite such a hard time?

The Met's new policy towards terrorists is the right policy, but it should not have been unleashed on an unsuspecting public. I am sure there will be further changes in policy over the coming months. From now on, the police had damned well better start warning us.

I was wrong and I was right.

If this was Al Qaeda, then credit where credit is due: two attacks in two weeks implies that they have more manpower and explosives in London than I might have thought, the bastards. But, if reports so far are correct, then JB was uncannily accurate in his assessment of their abilities:

Al Qaeda are almost as crap at terrorism as the UVF — the Loyalist terrorists who always seemed to go into a Catholic betting shop & open fire, only for the guns to jam.

According to one Ivan McCracken, who was on the train and spoke to a first-hand witness,

a man was carrying a rucksack and the rucksack suddenly exploded. It was a minor explosion but enough to blow open the rucksack.

The man then made an exclamation as if something had gone wrong.

Feh.


Update:

This is odd. It looks like none of the bombs even contained any explosives, but, if the report I quoted above is accurate, it also looks like at least one of the bombers expected a huge explosion and was surprised by his own non-suicide. Let's hope they can keep up this level of comical ineptitude. Or alternatively, let's hope MI6 can keep up a brilliant line in selling fake explosives.

My opinion of Amnesty International just keeps getting lower.

Philippe Gosselin, a Peace Corps volunteer and definitely not some sort of rabid right-wing human-rights-disdaining type, reports from Senegal:

The law used to persecute gays, Article 219, was put in place by the French during colonial times, and it still exists in all of their former African colonies, though somehow not in Burkina. It's actively enforced in Senegal. Z gave me the example of two of his friends who were arrested on trumped up charges of public sex while they were sitting together in a park that had a reputation of being a cruising spot. The possible punishment is between 1 month and 2 years in prison, and they were both condemned to 2 years. They weren't even allowed to speak in their own defense at the tribunal. Z told me that nobody bothers to refute the judgements because the society's attitude is, "They're gays, they deserve it." Z's organization also helps its members who are AIDS patients find people who will agree to treat them, because they're often refused treatment at local hospitals or clinics. Even organizations like Amnesty International have offered nothing but sympathy for these injustices, claiming that if they help the gay community it would sully their relations with the government would harm their capacity for addressing other abuses.

It's like some weird perversion of O'Sullivan's Law.

One of them things.

Rob has "kindly" tagged me with this music questionnaire thingy. Ach, why not?

Total volume of music files on my computer:
Now, there's a question. I haven't really got into the whole MP3 thing as such. I have a handful of MP3s on my Mac, maybe twenty of them, mainly things that can't be obtained in any other format, but, generally, give me a CD any day: they're superior in all sorts of ways. That being said, I am a musician, and I use the Mac to record and produce records, so the hard drive isn't remotely large enough to hold all my music files. To give you a rough idea, one five-minute-long song, when it's made up of sixteen or so stereo AIFF files plus various digital effects and twenty or thirty bounced tracks and a bunch of alternate takes, can take up about 3 gig. So, even though I'm not into MP3s at all, I still have about 40 gig of music files.

Last CD I bought:
It think it was Athlete's new album. It's not particularly good or particularly bad. Vic bought Jem's Finally Woken a couple of weeks ago, and it's fantastic. Since what's mine is hers, I'll claim that one.

Song Playing Right Now:
Nothing on in the physical world, but Jem's Just A Ride's on in my head, which is the way I usually listen to music these days.

Five Songs (or Albums) I listen to a lot or that move me:
There's nothing I listen to a lot any more. Here are some that move me in one way or another.
Together Alone by Crowded House: a great album; the title track is the only song ever that can consistently make my spine tingle.
Distant Dreams by Karen Ramirez. I certainly don't listen to this very much, having bloody lost it, which is very annoying, 'cause it's superb.
What Sound by Lamb: the best album so far by arguably the world's greatest electronics-based band.
Lost Songs: Volume One by No-Man: even by the standards of my favourite band ever, still one hell of a collection of music.
And Come From Heaven by Alpha: a staggeringly good album, different to everything else out there. Alpha produce lush, atmospheric, laid-back, semi-easy-listening-style jazz songs with orchestral arrangements that, frankly, should make the likes of Craig Armstrong and Adrian Utley just give up. Their singers are excellent, especially Helen White, whose voice, I don't mind telling you, does things to me. And, if you're a pretentious muso like me who likes the occasional bit of advanced theory in your listening, Alpha are quite astoundingly clever. Stick this album on and people just stop and listen and relax. We had it playing at our wedding. It's beautiful. Shame about the second album, really.

Tag three others:
Must I? Oh, very well, then.
Gary, as usual, of course.
Ray, who doesn't have a blog but can answer in the comments here.
And Johan.

Touring the world.

As some of you may have noticed, I'm in a band, me. We're called Squander Pilots and have achieved critical acclaim and zero fame. Such is the way of things.

Anyway, we've done nothing for ages and ages, what with my being on the wrong side of the Irish Sea for rehearsals to be at all practical, but we're going to do something this October: we're going to tour. Not the world, though. That was a lie. Just Scotland, so far.

Thursday 20th October:
    The 13th Note, Glasgow.
We've played this venue more times than I can count, and I've got a maths degree. It's great, in it's charmingly decrepit way. One of our gigs here had to be called off mid-song when water started pouring through the ceiling onto Alun's head. You've never seen so much electronic equipment turned off so quickly. And we hosted the Departure Lounge club night here for most of 2003. It'll be great to be back.

Saturday 22nd October:
    Somewhere in Edinburgh.
Oh, I'm so organised. I have no more precise idea of where this gig will be than "in Edinburgh". Great. But an actual proper venue is involved, and I'll remember which one any day now. Those nice folk at Baby Tiger are organising it.

Sunday 23rd October:
    The Tunnels, Aberdeen.
See how I know the name of the venue? Impressed? This is rock'n'roll, I tell you. We've never played Aberdeen before, so that's nice. I hear they're all quite mad up there. It's the cold. Frosts their brains.

While this may look like a perfect opportunity for you to turn up and harangue me for my views on stuff, I have to inform you that I shall only be entering into political discussions with people who buy our album. And you can't say fairer than that.

Meanwhile, we're trying to expand this thing a bit. If you've got a venue and would like it added to our tour, get in touch.

Sorry, what was that? Oh, what do we sound like? Why, like this.

Oo, I'm dead excited. Haven't gigged since February '04. Or rehearsed. Oh, bugger, yeah; need to do some of that, now, don't we?

And so to bed.

Cheers.