US Iraq troops debate - irresistible force meets an immovable object

In the US, things are shaping up for a real ding-dong over Iraq troop levels.

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid (pictured) have wasted no time. In their first day in office as leaders of the US Congress, they have written to George Bush warning him that sending more troops to Iraq would stretch the US military to breaking point with no strategic gain.

It looks as though there is going to be an almighty spat over this.

Ignoring close neighbours - while talking to friends miles away

This may be ill-informed guesswork but I'll take a stab anyway. A hundred years ago, people in Britain knew most people in their village or town. They spoke to their neighbours on a daily basis, over the garden gate, down the road. People had a community around them with whom they communicated daily.

Nowadays, this neighbouring community has been replaced.

Many people do not even know the name of their neighbours. They hardly know or speak to anyone as they walk around their daily business.

However, they do have a set of friends with whom they communicate daily. Those friends may be hundreds, or thousands of miles away. But they are close via text, email, mobile phone. (Look at the "Burbling readers" pictures on the right and down a bit. It is a little community of which I am part. The community members are spread all over the UK and as far afield as Florida, USA.)

It is very strange how this replacement has taken place. In the old days we would talk to people we met in the street. Now we ignore them while we talk to some unseen friend hundreds of miles away on our mobile.

A Parisian web site called Peuplade has set out to redress the balance, so that Parisians communicate more with close neighbours - through the internet.

Simone Clarke, the BNP's ballet dancer - fair game!

It's funny how little posts I do, which I think no-one will be interested in, suddenly take on a life of their own once Google gets its hands on them.

Admitting the virtually subterranean level of traffic volumes to this site, one of the most popular postings I have done, strangely enough, was a Tribute to Paul Walters, Terry Wogan's late producer. There was no end of people putting his name into Google and I seemed to come up in hits 1-10.

Ditto Simone Clarke. One's humble site has been set on fire (bearing in mind this compares to a slight spark from a damp Vesta match on Iain Dale or Stephen Tall's sites) by people shoving "Simone Clarke" or "Simone Clarke BNP" into Google. I have had comments from Norway, Denmark and Holland about it, including a couple of hostile ones.

It seems that Ms Clarke may be a bit of a winner for the BNP, although it pains me to say that. But democracy wins if news of her membership leads to a good discussion of the BNP's ludicrous policies. In fact, my view is, and always has been, that the BNP is, above all, ridiculous. I find it difficult to picture Nick Griffin without a clown's red nose on his face. Yes, they have their undertones, but I think laughter is the best approach, where they are concerned.

Just take their immigration policy. If Simone Clark is, as a Dutch commenter put it, "worried about what's happening in her country" (which also happens to be the country of legal immigrants, who have a right to be here) then I am extremely surprised that she wants to spend good taxpayers money, which could be spent on schools, hospitals and more bobbies on the beat, on the economically futile, totally stupid and logically questionable practice of paying money to "immigrants" to return to their "land of ethnic origin", a policy that is probably highly unlikely to achieve what it sets out to achieve, anyway. It is "pie in the sky" politics.

I didn't expect such a runner when I wrote that original blog posting on Clarke.

Simone Clarke has every right to be a member of the BNP. But everyone has a right to discuss her membership of that party. If you join a political party, whichever one it is, I think it is naive to expect that membership to remain private information if you are in the public eye, as Ms Clarke is. Blabbing to the Mail on Sunday makes her fair game. I didn't comment until she did that interview.

Pictured above - the official BNP "pie in the sky"

The urgent need for discussion of OCTOPUSH

Let's talk about Octopush. We are very good at it. Look at the photo - it's exciting. Or let's dicuss Morris dancing. Or Tiddly Winks. Or three-dimensional chess. Or Euchre - an excellent game of which some of the finest practioners can be found on these shores.

Anything but the game with sticks and a ball.

Fellow Lift breakdown occupants from Hell

I have often thought of the three worst people I would want to be stuck in a broken-down lift with.

My worst three would be:

1. Jeffrey Archer
2. Edwina Currie
3. Sebastian Coe

If I was stuck in a lift with all three, I think I would emerge from the lift with inter-cranial bleeding due to banging my head up against the wall of the lift.

Any thoughts on these or others?

Iain Dale

I wanted to attract his attention through Newsgator or Technorati, or whatever he uses to track mentions of his name, so his photo would appear on my recent visitors board. Little things please little minds. It might not work, but it is worth a shot.

Well, I could have done a "Iain Dale gets his knickers in a twist again" posting but it wasn't really justified.

Bush gets himself caught in the mangle

Well that's a polite way of putting it. He's in a cleft stick situation, is another way of putting it.

He's sent 3,000 US troops to their death in Iraq. So to justify all that bloodshed he has to (he thinks) keep sending in more troops. One more heave.

He's got nothing to lose. He won't get shot. He isn't standing for election again.

Unfortunately it won't work.

So he will just get the USA stuck deeper and deeper in the mire.