Honourable exceptions
Quite, and quite. I can only add that with the honourable exception of Camden Council, nobody has taken away my bins for weeks. It's a disgrace. I'm really suffering here - with the honourable exception of egg and chips, I didn't have any breakfast either. In fact, with the honourable exception of those people whose job it is to do something, and the only conceivable people who might have done it, hardly anything gets done around here. "With the honourable exception". Learn it and use it. It's an excellent way of maintaining a point of view that has been proved wrong fewer than three times.
Couldn't agree more. The way those groups of activists go around doing stuff is just awful. Anyone would think that they were mandated by their hundreds of thousands of members and supporters to protest on their behalf. It's shocking I tell you.
ReplyDeleteIt's an odd allegation for Nick to make. By his own estimation, Lefties have embraced any old reactionary who can be depicted as an opponent of America. But how can this be said of Mubarak's Egypt? His regime is a stout US ally.
ReplyDeleteApart from lectures on nonergodicity and the merits of American Bud, what have the Welsh ever done for us?
ReplyDeleteI want to thank you for pointing me to the Matthew Turner blog, which can best be described as a version of this blog but with about 500 times as many posts.
ReplyDeleteyou're quite welcome. Although I think his blog has been around for longer than mine, so it would be fairer to describe D^2D as a version of Matthew's blog with about 0.002 times as many posts.
ReplyDeleteMy comment seems to have disappeared, so apologies if this appears twice.
ReplyDeleteI love compliments. Thank you.
I don't think it's fair to say Dan does too few posts without remembering his other gigs - over at Comment is Free, as Bruschetta Boy on Aaaronovitch Watch, and most importantly - I hope I am not revealing anything I shouldn't here - under the pseudoynm "Oliver Kamm" on the website of that name and in The Times.
Apparently my site is a few months older than this one, though we've both been going for almost 5 years (and I think the word 'wasted' is itching to go in that sentence before years).
Decision making by committee is an ineffective process that generates muddled thinking, with limited accountability and, indeed, 'any fool can make a committee'.
ReplyDeleteWith the honorable exception of the UN Security Council. This we trust to make reasoned judgements about whether to intervene in global conflict......with the honorable exception of Rwanda, where the lack of a dictionary stymied suggestions that it was the UN's job to stop the mass murder of 500,000 people.
it's a shame that New Blogger only allows me to use the "laboured satire" tag for my own posts rather than adding it to anonymous comments. (btw, anonymous, you are now on warning - make a point or get a name, one or the other).
ReplyDeleteHow laboured can a new blogger be? Jesus, I only made the point once before.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't have re-made the point, if you'd actually responded to the initial question. You loathe committees and think they make lousy decisions, yet you want the decision to intervene in a conlict left up to the UN Securuty Council, essentially a committee. Go figure. Do committees make better decisions as you up the ante?
Well I reject the premis that I loathe committees or think they make bad decisions. The specific citation you make to my negativism post was about the proliferation of pointless new committees; it was specifically about committees that don't take decisions and don't achieve anything.
ReplyDeleteI've noted the problem of committee groupthink once in the past of this blog, which does exist, but I've also written about Condorcet voting and sensible committee decision processes. In general I think the UN does a very good job in difficult circumstances.
Now are you going to defend your assertion that a) the reason that the UN did not carry out a military intervention in Rwanda had anything to do with the legal definitions of the Genocide Convention and b) that there is some specific plan that would have stopped the massacres in Rwanda but was not carried out? Both assertions look pretty wrong to me, and I don't in general like people who try to use mass murders as cheap debating points.
I've not read your blog ad infintum, so I can't comment on historic posts, but, of late,you have given every impression of being someone with little faith in decision making by committee.
ReplyDeleteAs I understand it, the lack of a clear definition as to what constituted genocide, at the very least, lead to prevarication and delay on the part of the UN. I've read a fair bit more than Fergal Keane's book on the massacres and this is a consistent viewpoint across the piece. The presence of significant UN troop numbers with a mandate to intervene, rather than sit and watch, would have surely saved 1000s of lives, no?
Is it not beyond the bounds of credulity that the UN Security Council, the world's policeman, has no 'plan' whatsoever for intervening in genocidal situtions?
I think what gauls people in Rwanda(I've lived there and have spoken to people first hand) is their perceived subtext of the UN's inaction. Sure, there may not have been a plan, but the tardy, piecemeal UN response has left a bitter taste in people's mouths.
The cheap shot tag I can live with but it's rich coming from you, the supercilious crusader for logical consistency.
Tom, you're just flapping your fucking gums here. Do you not find it a little bit embarrassing that your silly little "gotcha" about committees has misfired so badly? If I'm allowed to randomly shoot my gob off about you on the basis of nothing better than "I get the impression", don't expect to stay long out of jail.
ReplyDeleteThe presence of significant UN troop numbers with a mandate to intervene, rather than sit and watch, would have surely saved 1000s of lives, no?
I am a supercilious crusader for logical soundness as well as consistency, and the scheme "surely X, therefore X" is not sound, although consistent.
I've lived there and have spoken to people first hand
currently calling "bullshit" on: Tom. Even if your claim is true (which I don't necessarily believe; you're just some random person on the Internet as far as I'm concerned), it does not advance your argument at all. I have never expressed any specific view on the Rwandan genocides at all, still less in any post remotely connected to this one. Even if you were a surivivor of Rwandan massacres yourself, it would still have been in extremely poor taste to bring the fact up simply in order to make a silly point about committees on my blog.
"I am a supercilious crusader for logical soundness as well as consistency, and the scheme "surely X, therefore X" is not sound, although consistent."
ReplyDeleteThe fact that it wasn't even "mabye X, therefore X" is what really pisses people off.
"I have never expressed any specific view on the Rwandan genocides at all"
Fair point, but you think "the UN does a difficult job in tough circumstances" and would hypothtically back UN action if they were called upon to intervene by I sovreign government. I beg to differ about the competence of the UN and cited Rwanda as an example of where the UN failed to act in a big way, not as a cheap shot. The membership is skewed and there is too much room for fudge and inaction, especially when the interests of the big boys aren't at stake.
You yourself are "against committees that don't take decisions", but you think the UN does a good job? This, in the context of Rwanda and Dafur specifically, just doesn't make sense to me.
"currently calling "bullshit" on: Tom."
Entirely your call.
I don't get the Oliver Kamm joke.
ReplyDelete