Manhattan discovers Utah

The New York Times has a piece on southern Utah, specifically the Escalante area. The writer takes a few risks to bring back an account of the fearsome Peek-a-Boo slot canyon:

I had lost sight of the first stone cairns almost immediately, as I stumbled down to the dry river wash at the bottom of the ravine. (“Water is scarce,” the printout helpfully noted.) After a few false leads, I made it to Peek-a-Boo Canyon, whose hard-to-spot entrance was surrounded by what looked like a shallow pool: I took a step in and sank straight up to my thighs in thick mud. As the sun continued to climb in the sky, I wished for my own Ute guide — or at least a GPS tracking system.

Hugging the canyon wall for shade, I pressed on heroically and found Spooky Canyon, named for its otherworldly atmosphere. It was only an 18-inch-wide crack in the rock, but to me it yawned like the gateway to Shangri-La.

As I squeezed inside, the air was immediately cool and fragrant. The sky appeared to be an electric blue sliver far above, and the reflected light made the golden sandstone seem to glow from within. I remained utterly still, in a lizardlike state, knowing that I couldn’t hide in there forever.

Finally, I drank the last of my water and staggered across the rock like a sun-struck character out of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” I was parched, scratched, encrusted with mud — but triumphant.

Well, the esteemed proprietor of Anatreptic.com, Mick Stockinger, and I and my brother-in-law strolled down to Peek-a-Boo Canyon and Spooky Gulch a while ago. It's great but we missed the dramatics. It really is tempting to scoff at the Manhattan pantywaist, but the truth is that the difference between a stroll in the park and a scary adventure is very little. A wrong turn, a twisted ankle, disorientation, demoralisation, dark - and that's just Central Park let alone the wildest part of the contiguous USA.

Another difference tho is experience. There's a discreet gap between hiking and mountaineering apart from technique. Mountaineering is much tougher physically and calls for judgement under stress as well as a likelihood of spending nights in a bivouac. So on a trek, however tough, a mountaineer tends to be confident that he has something in hand. That can lead to comic mistakes of course. "Hey I thought you brought the compass."

There's an obvious political moral here, but I'll let that lie.

Scoops and scalps: the MSM gets shivved

Janet Daley, Brown apologist and Daily Telegraph columnist with a grudge, attempts to belittle Guido Fawkes:

In the US, the power of the political blog was transformed when Matt Drudge made Monica Lewinsky the most famous intern in White House history, and nearly brought about the impeachment of a president, by publishing his sensational story on the Drudge Report. Why did Mr Staines not follow his example? Perhaps he would like to tell us.

He replies in the third comment:

Perhaps I will eventually. Not to the Telegraph though. Your paper has behaved reprehensibly. To breach a confidence, reveal a source, tip off Downing Street and break a signed non-disclosure agreement is hardly honourable. The bitterness you and Pierce demonstrate is manifest to all your readers.

Claiming today that the Telegraph discovered that Draper lunched at Chequers days after setting up the Red Rag site without attributing that "scoop" to me two days earlier is revealing.

You have one of the weakest political teams around. The paper has lost its way and is reduced to taking scraps from my blog for its front page, day after day.

I trust this is all a big deal in Utah. It seems positively Jacobean to me. Delicious.

A milestone

Further to 'Scoops and scalps' below, Daniel Hannan well expresses how the smeargate scandal here in the UK has crystallized the plight of the elite media:

A blog has just done something that I thought no one could do: elicited an apology (or as close as we'll ever get to an apology) from Gordon Brown. Indeed, according to The Guardian, the McBride-Draper scandal might cost Labour the next election. If so, Guido Fawkes would have succeeded where his baleful namesake failed 404 years ago: he would have brought down a government. Even if you think the Guardian story is a bit de trop, the idea that one man with a laptop could do so much damage would, until very recently, have seemed risible.

Yet, even now, a number of print and broadcast journalists dismiss, disdain and depreciate internet-based news. Read the Guardian's own Michael White responding to the way my attack on Gordon Brown spread online. Read Peter Wilby's reedy complaint that the internet "lacks quality control". It is difficult not to sympathise with journalists of their generation. They can see local newspapers dropping all around them, and know that some nationals will soon follow. Every newsdesk is shedding staff, and journalists' are having to work longer hours for lower salaries. The Whites and Wilbies perceive, even if they do not properly understand, that amateurs are driving out professionals. It makes them frightened and bilious.

What irks them most of all is that bloggers refuse to apply Leftist filters. Until very recently, few people could watch a politician's speech or read his statement in full. They relied, instead, on the Whites and Wilbies to select, précis and interpret stories for them. Now, the masses can make up their own minds without bien-pensant intellectuals telling them what to think.

Scoops and scalps: a postcard from London

The lead story here has been the resignation of a key aide to Gordon Brown. The aide has been outed concocting a sex and drugs and mental health smear campaign against the Conservative leadership and their wives. So far, so sordid, but the big point is that this is a terrific scoop and scalp for blogger, Guido Fawkes, who obtained the smoking gun emails and skilfully played the quiet Easter news cycle to maximum effect. (Guy Fawkes, by the way, tried to blow up the House of Lords and King James I in 1605 as part of a Roman Catholic plot. His effigy is burnt every November the 5th on Bonfire Night).

The story is rife with British comic detail and vendettas all around, not least the envy and treachery of Guido Fawkes' MSM competitors, up to and including a pre-emptive betrayal of Guido's scoop by the supposedly conservative Daily Telegraph. An irony is that anyone can open a blog on the Telegraph site and Guido Fawkes himself has done just that - to embarrassing effect, writing:

Telegraph Has Behaved Terribly Over Smeargate

Sunday, April 12, 2009, 01:38 PM GMT [General]

There are a lot of bitter, jealous journalists at the Telegraph and you have behaved shamefully over the McBride story. You even tipped off Downing Street in advance as to exactly what I was up to. It reflects on you a lot more than it does on me.
You revealed sources, broke a confidence, breached a signed non-disclosure agreement and behaved like patsys for McBride.

You still failed to spoil the story. Your political team is about as weak as it gets, that is why you sucked up to Downing Street.
The Telegraph was once run by gentlemen for gentlemen. This would never have happened under Deedes or Charles Moore.
Do your worst.

This is manna from heaven for the Tories. No one thinks Gordon Brown was involved,*** but he certainly turns a blind eye (he actually does have a blind eye) to the poisonous shenanigans of his entourage as long as there's political advantage. For many years the Brownian poison has been directed at rivals on his own side. This is a different game with different rules. Gordon Brown has never been elected by any non-politician outside his constituency of Fife in Scotland, since he famously bottled out of calling a General Election soon after he took over from Tony Blair. He lacks legitimacy, moreover he's accident prone. He flourished alongside Blair, whom he was constantly plotting to unseat, but since moving to centre stage has had a run of ferocious bad luck which he attracts like a mountain massif attracts its own weather.

So politics in both London and Washington would be tragic were it not so funny. Look on the bright side. Things change.


***Update: uh-oh.

Update 2: Today is Guy Fawkes' birthday, 13th April 1570. This all brings back happy memories when my brothers and I would take a stuffed guy in a wheelbarrow from house to house calling 'penny for the guy'. The pennies were spent on fireworks. 

Three chords and the truth

That's Harlan Howard's description of country music. Clint Black plays in this clip from the farewell episode of The Larry Sanders Show. I love that show. It's all on YouTube and when I'm alone I watch it on my laptop in bed. Start this clip at 3:40. For afficionados the incidental action during the song is just exquisite:

Go with the glow - photo notes from around Shad Thames

Shad Thames is a small neighbourhood by the south side of Tower Bridge in London. This post is parochial, but it gives me the chance to publicise my photography.

These notes are illustrated in this gallery

In Shad Thames the sloping balconies stack up at mad angles to sensational effect. Still, it's not trivial to make a decent image. The light is typically unyielding, either overcast and undifferentiated or high contrast such that the dynamic range from the dark, narrow canyon to the bright,white top of Butlers Wharf exceeds what a camera can handle without High Dynamic Range techniques which look surreal. Go with the glow; shoot backlit effects with light seeping round the metal balconies. This is effective while the morning sun casts long shadows of the balconies onto the side walls of the canyon, first one wall then the other. In between the sun shines straight down the canyon, floodlighting the balconies and some of the street furniture. There's often a cluster of Biffa bins at the Curlew Street corner at that time. They're incandescent in the sun. When a trashtruck moves up the street, it slots in nicely beneath the stacked up balconies. Don't forget the brightly coloured jackets of the parking wardens.

Tower Bridge is a visual cliché, dramatic skies notwithstanding. Stepping down onto the shingle by the river at low tide helps. The scaffolding on the bridge while it's being cleaned gives new possibilities. Moving towards Rotherhithe yields busy images which appeal to me. Or buy an upper floor flat for a million quid for a less usual viewpoint. Interesting boats pass through the raised road often enough - timetable here.

Birds are good round here; swans, grebes, coots, ducks, gulls, geese, even a Harris hawk to amaze the pigeons. Cormorants may look black, but they're black and white and irridescent when you get a good view and they have strange heads. They often present themselves perched on a highly textured beam or a yellow buoy, drying their wings like laundry on a line since they lack oil on their feathers. You can catch them juxtaposed with City Hall or the bridge or a police launch or some other artefact which they sneer at or harangue. Pigeons are more handsome than you might think - bright eyes, handsome feathers, fluffed up for sex or bathing or both. It helps their interesting personalities that they are the next stage up from humans on the re-incarnation ladder; like us, but less litter.

More London estate has a reputation for harrassing photographers shooting the world-famous icons around, but I think it's unfair to call the security staff 'Morons' just because it sounds apt. Some of them, often African, are perfectly polite and smiley. Others, unfortunately, start citing laws they know nothing about and which don't apply and that makes it harder to kowtow to what amounts to a breach of the peace when they try to obstruct innocent photography. One might simply snap one of these surly actors if they refuse to get out of the frame; instead of the standard Tower Bridge shot, Tower Bridge + surly security guard.

'Hell is other people' may apply now that Shad Thames is so busy. You can aim high or crop out specks of lumpen humanity from the bottom of the frame. It often works to include the odd person for scale or clothing or as an objet trouvé. My shot of The Navigator in Hays Galleria was enhanced by the intrusion of a tourist who looked like the model for the nasally endowed sculpture. A winter shot of the anchor by The Cantina was enhanced by a bloke giving scale alongside. A few seconds later a man in a top hat came striding through the snow and gave me a striking image looking back to the bridge.

Reflections are a treat around the More estate. It can be a puzzle finding just the right spot to optimise a multiple image of City Hall. That's when I look most like a terrorist casing the joint. Don't forget that rain begets reflections. La Strada has fascinating reflections of City Hall and the bridge combined with the restaurant's signage and the big red lampshades inside.

Again here's a link to a gallery of mine which shows several of these points.I've posted smallish files for faster download, so the images have a slightly stressed quality rather than the more 'liquid' surface I prefer.

G20 protests in London

It's 1am in London and I can hear a police helicopter hovering around Tower Bridge to monitor any G20 malarkey. The protests so far are trivial, incentivised and amplified 100x by the media; a couple of broken windows in a bank and some City-workers mocking the protesters by waving banknotes from windows. If there were proportionate coverage, there'd be almost no aggro. There's symbiosis between the statists who want to use the Credit Crunch as a vehicle to get them to socialism and the pot-pourri of useful idiots who provide the media images. It's laughable close-up and sinister as part of the bigger project to subordinate liberty to corporatists.
The view from above:

A lion sandwich

You have run out of our money - the sequel

Real politics:


Engrossing stuff, but Hannan misreads Obama's effect on America's brand. The multi-racial President as talisman stuff is fluff. Putin, Khameini, Chavez don't make decisions on that. Obama's brand is weakness and inexperience. There's real doubt whether he's Presidential timber at all. Hannan's right that the Obama victory is forcing the GOP to re-think the fundamentals - boy, do they need to - and the amazing thing is that Hannan, despite being ignored by the BBC and the rest, now has an influence on that. Isn't the internet wonderful?

Bonus track - "Please defect":

AIG, I quit!

This is a letter sent on Tuesday by Jake DeSantis, an executive vp of AIG’s financial products unit, to Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of AIG. While quitting AIG Mr DeSantis delineates the disgrace of Liddy, who wants to perform a civic duty in winding down AIG, but simply lacks courage to stand against the political storm from Congress and the Attorney Generals of New York and Connecticut. Congress passed an unconstitutional, confiscatory, retrospective law against the AIG employees, convenient scapegoats lest popular rage turn against the criminals in Congress. The Attorney Generals threatened to publish the home details of AIG employees who kept what they had earned - which everyone understands is blackmail.

I am proud of everything I have done for the commodity and equity divisions of A.I.G.-F.P. I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped the public outrage.

After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself.

I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to A.I.G. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.

Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Charlie Rangel, Nancy Pelosi, Andrew Cuomo and the rest are scum. The US President, who preens as Lincoln's successor, could have protected citizens against mob rule. He serenaded the mob instead. Liddy could have stood up for those he well knew were morally and legally in the right, but he'll have to live with his weakness. I hope when I am tested, I do the right thing. Honour does not move sideways like a crab.

You have run out of our money

This morning the UK gilt auction failed. That means there weren't enough bids to cover the amount the government wants to borrow. Actually the situation in America is worse since we'll get a centre-right government within 2 years, but the malign dunces who run your government will be in power for at least 4, maybe 6, 8, 12 years longer what with Acorn and the growth of the state-dependent electorate. The UK has better democratic accountability for its Chief Executive. Our press are not lapdogs and Gordon Brown has to hear the charges against him face to face in public. Imagine Barack Obama in this video instead of Gordon Brown:


Daniel Hannan is a journalist and blogger as well as a Member of the European Parliament. This is a strange world; the same Daniel Hannan who stripped the PM's flesh off his bones and pecked his eyes out in the clip above, this same avenging carrion crow, won't disown Obama yet for the weakest, drippiest reasons:

So, have I changed my mind? Well, I won't deny that Obama has done plenty of irritating things, ranging from the idiotic stimulus package to the way he dissed the Prime Minister (yes, I know the man's a clot, Mr President, but he's our clot; and, tired as you may have been, I suspect the Royal Marines in their Forward Operating Bases in Helmand, fighting a war that few of your allies will touch, are pretty drowsy too).

On the other hand, the US remains more popular than it has been for years, and Obama's own approval ratings, though fallen, are well above the vote he received in November.

This is a question of psychology rather than politics. It shows the power of the moralistic fallacy, the conceit that what ought to be, is. Many ultra-bright people and many ultra-dim people want Obama to be who they think he should be and it will be a bereavement as well as a defeat to admit that they were too in love with their idea of Obama to see the bleeding obvious.

Update: Daniel Hannan's reaction to the reaction to his speech to Gordon Brown.