Quality | 2009.08.12
Hugh Muir's Diary
They are angry. Angry as hell. You would never guess that they\'re winning
The Tory heartlands are buzzing with anticipation as the opinion polls point to a Cameron government, but the news is not all good. There had been a certain detachment among activists up until now. However, with the winning post at last in sight, things have got rather scratchy. An ill-tempered debate on the supporters\' website, ConservativeHome , shows a barely restrained contempt for Dave\'s plan to modernise the party by ensuring equality on candidate shortlists. "CCHQ must not be allowed to get away with this," says one agitated supporter. "I hope that there will be a large-scale revolt. The top echelons of today\'s Tory party are becoming control freaks. What are they afraid of?" "Pathetic isn\'t it," snorts another. "Ukip must be laughing their pants off. 50% of the final list must be female. 10% must be gay. 10% must be from ethnic background. 10% from disability background. 10% must have beards. 10% must have an \'r\' in the month they were born." For all that, some of them back Dave. "Foxy females? Now there\'s a thought," proclaims a loyalist. "Why do MPs have to be so damn ugly? Let\'s discriminate in favour of some good-looking people for a change! Haha."
Yes, it\'s scratchy. A heated ConservativeHome debate on Boris\'s City Hall equalities agenda (such as it is) elicits this, from one angry commenter on the site: "You silly bitch. You obviously don\'t know many men. If you did, then you\'d know that there are many of us who also do a full day\'s work, and then come home to keep a family going. And the saintly women of this world seem to have a monopoly on caring and intelligence and empathy and all the other \'good\' traits of humankind. But you know what, arsehole, you don\'t and you never have. Men are inherently better than women, and white men are at the apex. The sad thing is that you have browbeaten several generations of men into believing they are guilty of something quite undefined, and they have spent the past decades trying to make amends. You and your womankind, and the socialists and the Muslims of this world make me sick." Dear reader, this is what Dave is up against.
Mounting fear on the eve of the Campaign for Real Ale\'s Great British Beer Festival , which starts at Earls Court today. The beers are fine, as is the ambience, but the event is plagued by misunderstanding. "We spend more time in the first week of August combating beardism in the media than any other during the year," says an anxious Keith Flett of the Beard Liberation Front. "A frequently used stereotypical picture used to illustrate stories about the beer festival consists of one or two very large men with beards holding a half full pint glass, but such images at the festival itself are in practice rare. There are excellent beards at Earls Court of course but the idea is to celebrate the diversity of beers, ciders and perries." Arrgh, they are banging on about diversity again. Don\'t tell the angry Tories.
We riled the army last week by claiming that it has nothing to compare with the Afghan model village commissioned for training purposes by the US marines. Oh yes we do, said the MoD. We have STANTA in Norfolk. It "replicates as closely as possible the situations, sights and smells which troops could face on operations". They "hear the call to prayer from the mosque, practise their patrolling skills in a network of high-walled, claustrophobic alleyways and face a bustling Afghan bazaar, all designed to test and develop the soldiers tactics, drills and procedures". The guns, they jam, helicopters arrive late. All true to life. Completely authentic.
Finally, amid more allegations about MPs\' expenses and claims by Eric Pickles that another 30 Tories may yet stand down before the next election, an observation from eagle-eyed passer-by Alan Dyson. "I\'ve noticed a lot of work going on at the house which James Purnell claims as his main home lately: new central heating and such," says Alan. "Perhaps he\'s going to live in it." Well Alan, he is a backbencher now. And as we see, a man of many talents.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/aug/04/hugh-muir-diary
Instagram is adding automatic in-app text translation - The Verge views: 1524
Here’s a ‘Brand-New’ Massive Multilingual Dataset for Machine Translation views: 1517