Sorry to make my first post for a couple of weeks a meme. I was much busier than I expected last week, and with a grand prix this week my blogging activities were focussed on vee8. I’ll still be busy this week but Steven Hill has tagged me in a meme and these are quick posts to do so I may as well do it.

I have to say where I was when each of these events happened.

Princess Diana’s death - 31 August 1997

I was in bed. I first heard about it when my brother came into my room wanting to play the PlayStation but ended up watching the television a bit instead. At first I thought it must have been the Queen Mother who had died, and when I found out it was only Princess Diana I struggled to see what the fuss was about. Never liked her.

Margaret Thatcher’s resignation - 22 November 1990

No recollection whatsoever. I did know of a time when Thatcher was Prime Minister, and I of course remember John Major being in charge. But I remember nothing of the transition.

Attack on the twin towers - 11 September 2001

I remember this very clearly. I was at school in my German Writing class. The first time I realised something was up was when the lesson hadn’t started after we had been sitting there for ten or fifteen minutes. Our teacher was constantly moving between the classroom and the staff room. I didn’t mind because German Writing was my least favourite subject at that time.

Eventually our teacher wheeled the television through and said, “I’m going to show you this because it’s very important and there will be a lot of consequences” (or words to that effect). I was a bit peeved that he chose ITN over the BBC, but never mind. One of my strongest memories is the fact that one certain person in our class particularly struggled to grasp what was happening. In retrospect, I suppose he was right to be so sceptical of the idea that people would be mad enough to delibrately crash planes into buildings.

Of course, we did not get any learning done in that class. Of course, not everyone’s teachers wheeled the television through like ours did. I suppose most teachers will have been completely oblivious. It was the major talking point among my classmates after school, but people from other classes thought we were tacking the mickey.

It was also strange going home, and I got the feeling that I could kind of tell who knew what was happening and who didn’t. I remember seeing a few people driving cars who obviously looked like they were listening to what was happening on the radio. When I got home my parents were both in the living room watching the television (my dad had the day off for some reason that I can’t remember). I carried on watching it for around two hours.

England’s World Cup Semi Final v Germany in - 4 July 1990

I have no recollection of this match in particular, but I was aware of Italia 90. I liked the mascot, ‘Ciao’! I also took in the design of the graphics used during the matches — an early example of my interest in television presentation.

President Kennedy’s Assassination - 22 November 1963

I was 23 years away from being born.

I now I need to decide who to tag:

• Onebrow
• Jack Deighton
• MatGB
• Colin Campbell
• Mr Eugenides

Oh dear. SNP MSP Christopher Harvie has found himself in a spot of bother for comments he has made about Lockerbie and the Scottish yoof.

On getting to Lockerbie, I discovered that the place is a dump - it was Tescotown. It should really have a certain attraction of a rather sombre kind as a place where something terrible happened; there are, after all, places on the western front and that sort of thing that have such an attraction for families who have lost people there.

There are a few things about this paragraph that are a bit off for me. I might be completely right to say that Lockerbie is a dump. I have never been, but frankly it wouldn’t surprise me. There are plenty of dumps around the place, and Lockerbie isn’t exactly known for its beautiful beaches or rolling hills.

Jeff is right when he says that if Lockerbie is a dump, Christopher Harvie should be able to say so. It should not be exempt from analysis because of the fact that it is the scene of the country’s worst terrorist atrocity.

But here is the thing. Christopher Harvie seems to be saying that Lockerbie should be positioning itself as a potential tourist attraction to help rake in the money from fans of disasters. As Mushkush implies, the idea leaves a slightly sour taste in the mouth.

Following that he turns his guns on the much maligned youth of the country. They cannot get a second of peace from the establishment’s whining about the yoof.

They are a demographic that literally cannot win. If they spend too long indoors playing their Xboxes they are criticised for not getting enough exercise and causing an “OBESITY EPIDEMIC“.

If they do the opposite and dare to go outside to get some fresh air and happen to commit the heinous crime of wearing warm clothing they get called names like “hoodie” and “yob”. And everyone points at them and says, “Why are you standing on the street corner? It is so intimidating.” As though just standing around is intimidating.

If they are not on the corner but are standing in the vicinity of a shop some ridiculous person comes along and installs a discriminatory device that is deliberately designed to cause youths pain. And people wonder why today’s young people are disaffected.

Anyway, Mr Harvie has added himself to the long list of poshy snooty types criticising yoof fashions. You know, fair enough on that front. Some people do wear horrendous clothing. But why is he attacking Tom Hunter for it? I thought the SNP were meant to be aligning themselves as a pro-business party. But Christopher Harvie’s comments are about as anti-business as it gets.

It must also be said that the most immense fortune that has been made in Scotland in the past few years - that of Tom Hunter - has arisen from selling people what must be the ugliest clothes worn by anyone on the entire continent.

Tom Hunter is one of Scotland’s most successful businessmen. If Mr Harvie’s theory is true, then Mr Hunter has done the country’s people a great service–selling people clothes that they want. He spotted a gap in the market. It is what great businessmen do best. It should be celebrated. But Christopher Harvie just looks down his nose at it.

There are also echoes of this anti-business sentiment with his dismissal of Lockerbie as “Tescotown”. It is the most successful business in Britain, which makes it the butt of ill thought out jibes like this. What does it even mean to be a Tescotown anyway? My town has a Tesco as well–does that mean I should just go and top myself now?

Anyway, back to fashion. What clothing would Christopher Harvie prefer people to wear? Knickerbockers. Goodness me. Apparently his personal preference is for plus fours. And look at that awful check jacket. Holyrood Watcher rightly takes him to task.

For me, this whole issue highlights a problem with the electoral system currently in use for Scottish Parliament elections.

Christopher Harvie was the SNP’s candidate where I live in Kirkcaldy. During the campaign he began to get a bit of a reputation as a “mad professor” among some locals. From today’s comments it looks as though he earned that reputation.

Even Brian Taylor has used slightly colourful language on his blog to call Mr Harvie ‘The Nutty Professor‘. And according to Kezia Dugdale, “Rumour has it the SNP were waiting for an episode like this but were surprised it has taken so long.” In addition to Christine Grahame, it looks like the SNP has its second major loose cannon.

Prior to Mr Harvie’s campaign, I was considering voting for the SNP as an anti-Labour tactical vote (not that it would have done much good anyway). But I did not want to vote for Christopher Harvie. He lost in Kirkcaldy. Yet, today he is an MSP. He got in through the back door on the list vote.

No-one voted for him to win his seat. People only voted for the SNP as a party–or Alex Salmond For First Minister, as they were known on the ballot papers. What a shock those voters will have got, thinking they were voting for Alex Salmond and instead getting Christopher Harvie!

The problem with the list system is that it gives voters the minimum amount of power possible. Voters have no control over the candidates. Positions on the are determined internally within the parties. This makes the MSPs accountable not to the voters, but to internal party structures. This allows too many poor candidates become MSPs and fills the Parliament with lackeys. The Scottish Parliament needs a heavy dose of Single Transferable Vote to weed out these people.

One last thing. I really don’t get this quote from Jackie Baillie on Christopher Harvie’s comments.

“He represents a supposedly pro-European party but displays the worst kind of euro-phobia.”

He singled out Scotland’s youths for criticism, and said they were the worst in Europe! How this is supposed to be a display of Euro-phobia beats me.

Unfortunately, this does not tie in with my theory about the inadequate list MSPs. I have to conclude that Dumbarton is one of Scotland’s many Labour rotten boroughs.

Last week I looked into my sole. That is not a misspelling. I am not that deep, even though I like to pretend that I am. No, instead I carried out my annual inspection the sole of my shoe.

I thought my annual thought: “Hmm, looks like I need to get some new shoes.” So I took my annual trip to the shoe shop (ahem, TK Maxx) to try and find something that I would be prepared to actually wear for the next twelve months.

This did not all happen at once in one smooth sequence of events as it probably should have done. You see, I am a serial procrastinator. I just decided to go to TK Maxx one day after I finished work last week. Luckily, a really nice pair of shoes caught my eyes immediately.

There was a flaw of course — I couldn’t try them on because I was wearing holey socks. This style might be pursued by the great and the good, but not everyone can pull it off. Exposing my big toe would not only be embarrassing for me, but it would also probably cause more public alarm than that wet dreaming terrorist who only succeeded in setting his own arse on fire.

So I went home to change my socks to something more decent. But just to make sure about the price of the shoes (because I really wouldn’t know what a decent price is, and you can never tell with TK Maxx, which is surely the only shop in the world with the cojones to describe £80 as a “discount price” for an anorak), I decided to ask my mother.

£30 for a pair of shoes is, apparently, quite good. Seemingly Clarks would charge £40 for a decent pair of shoes. “Great,” I thought. “That pair of shoes is not only really nice, but it is also cheap.” So off I went with a spring in my step to buy the shoes.

I came home only to be berated by the very mother who told me I was getting a good buy!

“Oh, they are nice,” she said at first. Unfortunately this was followed with, “But they are canvas.” At this moment a question mark appeared above my head, à la the security guards in Metal Gear Solid.

Apparently, £30 is a bloody rip off for shoes made out of canvas. Moreover, it means that my shoes are probably not waterproof, which makes them useless judging by recent weather conditions. As if all of that wasn’t enough, they will also wear out my socks more quickly as well.

I might have been able to cope with that in certain circumstances. Alas, that job at the World Bank was filled on Sunday. I put holey socks in my CV and everything; I ought to have been a shoe-in. They didn’t even send a rejection letter.

Bobbie Johnson has found out why he is often asked questions at airports. But it seems as though Garry had better watch out aswell. Oo-er.

I can’t be arsed getting angry. But whilst terrorism is boring, civil liberties aren’t. So I’m just going to link to a lot of people who have got angry today. I did stick these on the linklog, but there were far too many good posts today so I thought I’d make a proper post to list them in.

• Bloggerheads (UK) - They’ll never take our freedaaaarrrgh!
• Europhobia: Oh, come on…
• Holyrood Chronicles: He postponed his holidays because of the crisis in Lebanon…
• Kitty Killer: Now is the time for salt, and pinching — What the media reported in the past during similar “security” “scares”
• Cage of Monkeys Weblog | Archived Entry | BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID
• Coffee and PC: Abject terror — Is there ANYBODY who’s actually worried about terrorists rather than the government?
• Liberal England: John Reid: The cloven hoof pops out
  

  So [according to John Reid] the problems we face are the existence of politicians who disagree with the government, an independent judiciary and a free press. In short, the central institutions of a liberal democracy…

  This sounds so like a marxist patronising a liberal: Yes, elections and a free press and all that were imporant in their day, but time has moved on. It used to be poverty and the crisis of world capitalism that demanded we give up our freedoms. Today it is global terrorism.

  Whatever the supposed enemy, the conclusion is the same: Socialists hate freedom.

• Not Little England: Threats, attacks, terror and freedom

And some related light relief.

• whoopdedoo.net: A lot of people are having very dull flights today
• Chase me ladies, I’m in the cavalry: BRITISH AIRWAYS ARE A LEGITIMATE TARGET
• Boing Boing: Liquids on a Plane - aviation rules and Samuel Jackson
• 

Image via Fridgemagnet, which appears to be down… (Update: Don’t worry, it’s still on his LiveJournal.)

All-in-all then, it seems as though the goverment has cried “wolf” too many times now. Instead of being scared of terrorists, everybody’s just pissed off that they can’t take their laptop with them on a flight.

Update: Tim Ireland asks:

If there’s a real risk that multiple terrorists are carrying disguised explosives, why respond in a way that results in crowding, uncertainty and chaos at the target airport when one small explosion in such circumstances could (via placement and/or panic) cause loss of life that would be unacceptable (if not ‘unprecedented’)?