…then there’s even more in death.

With civil liberties here and in the US under increasing threat from the so-called ‘War on Terror’, its sad to note that playwright Arthur Miller, author of ‘The Cruicible’ - itself an allegory of the witch-hunts of the McCarthy era - has passed away.

and my own humble addition to the campaign…

Come on, you know it makes sense

Mentioned this briefly in the last entry, but today saw the Lib Dems launch their plan to ‘protect our civil liberties’…

… which turns out to be about much use as a chocolate teapot.

Dumping the rhetoric, the real meat of the Lib Dems policy is tucked away in its Note for Editors, which read:

Notes to Editors - Protecting Britain’s Civil Liberties

We believe that securing civil liberties requires continuous scrutiny. yeah, I can buy that

Britain has no written constitution. What, you’ve noticed?

We have no binding Bill of Rights that protects our people from the actions of an irrational government. No shit Sherlock!

It is longstanding Liberal Democrat policy to enshrine the rights of the British people and the responsibilities of Government in a written constitution against which all new legislation should be measured. The constitution should also set out the powers of Parliament, Ministers, Judges, the Head of State and the national assemblies. Yeah, that bit’s good

As part of this constitutional settlement, the Liberal Democrats would:

1. Abolish the Royal Prerogative. We need a proper framework for Ministers so that their actions are subject to full parliamentary scrutiny.

2. Ensure all Bills are accompanied by a Privacy Impact Assessment that measures proposals against the effects on the right of the individual to privacy.

3. Make it easier for the public to see the legal advice given to Ministers by amending the Freedom of Information Act.

4. End the politicisation of the Civil Service with a robust Civil Service Act.

5. Strengthen Parliament’s ability to scrutinise legislation.

WTF? After all that, your big plan for protecting civil liberties turns out to be nothing more than a bit of tinkering with Parliamentary procedure… what a complete and utter let down.

See, it’s not difficult when you think about it, is it?

Ok, so Chuck is gonna make an ‘honest HRH’ of Camilla at last. SFW.

Of course, knowing that Alistair Campbell is back on the scene the first thing to do is check out the politics section at the Beeb to find out exactly what Tony’s been dumping under the smoke screen of media sycophancy that invariably accompanies the announcement of a wedding in ‘the firm’, all in the hope we wouldn’t notice what he’s been up to.

Well, for starters, there’s the Identity Cards legislation passing its third reading in the Commons and the little matter of the forced repatriation of unaccompanied asylum seeking children and the bill for a referendum on the EU constitution as well.

Mind you, lets not be totally negative - its not all about letting those little things which might prove a tad unpopular slip out mostly unnoticed…

…there’s also the little matters of timing things to the piss on the opposition’s chips as much as possible.

So, as a matter of pure coincidence, ‘Chuck luvs Camilla - offical’ also happened to coincide with the launch of the first installment of the Tory election manifesto and the Lib Dems five point plan to protect our civil liberties.

Well Alistair, we have been a busy boy today…

Mark Romanek is one of those directors who’s name you’ve most likely never heard of but who’s work is going to instantly familar.

He also happens to be the director of at least three of my favorite music videos of all time including one which is probably the single greatest and most moving works of art ever produced in the field.

Check out his music videos section - you’ll need Apple’s Quicktime player and the downloads are big, average 25-30Mb - but trust me you won’t be disappointed.

Personal highlights on there are the wonderfully quirky video for the Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ ‘Don’t Stop’ and Nine Inch Nails’ arthouse S&M classic ‘Closer’ - be warned this the uncut, uncensored version and distinctly ‘parental advisory’ in content.

But if you only watch one video, then make it the video to Johnny Cash’s achingly beautiful version of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” and keep the kleenex close by. It is, to my mind, the best music video ever made, beautiful in its simplicity, moving and sometimes painful to watch, a testimony to the dignity that comes with age - utterly compelling and a fitting epitaph - it being Cash’s last single - to the career of one of the greatest musicians of all time.

We’ve known for a while that Bob Geldof was to be given an award for his outstanding contribution to music at last might’s Brits, although deep down I think we all realise the award has less to do with his musical career than the British music industries desire for a bit of reflected glory of giving out a ‘gong’ to a latter day ’saint’ on the twenty-fifth anniversary of its annual jolly junket.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got a lot of time for Bob. The passion and gusto with which he goes about things is at once refreshing and undeniably admirable but as musician he had the misfortune to emerge from what was probably the last great generation of British musicians/songwriters and his work in that field doesn’t really stand up to that of a number of his contemporaries who you’d have to see as rather more deserving of the award he picked up last night.

It probably is a pity that the whole Band Aid/Live Aid thing has totally overshadowed what he did achieve in his real ‘day job’. The Boomtown Rats were a good little band who knocked out a couple of decent albums in their time and if their biggest hit - ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ - was eventually surpassed by Pearl Jam’s altogether more visceral ‘Jeremy’ as a commentary on schoolyard atrocity, it at least still stands up on its own a great song.

As a musician, though, you have to see Bob as really standing in the shadow of his peers - the punk/new wave era gave us The Clash, Elvis Costello, Paul Weller and the incomparable Ian Dury, all of whom a really that bit more deserving of recognition as musicians/songwriters that Bob, himself.

The defining characteristic of the Brits over last couple of years, for me, is not who they choose to recognise with an award, but those they choose to omit, something which really does apply this year. Sorry Bob, I’m sure you had a great time, but if anyone really did deserve that award this year then it was the late, great, John Peel.

It used to be said that the Church of England was just the Conservative Party at prayer, although reading Robert Jackson’s stated reasons for crossing the floor you’d be forgiven for thinking that ‘New Labour’ was little more than the political wing of the Anglican Church.

Jackson may well be sincere in the beliefs that led him into the New Labour fold but that doesn’t stop me feeling slightly queasy about his name-checking everything from Methodism to the Book of Common Prayer in his article. On the whole it reads more like an application for a verger’s position and St. Albion than an overview of his political beliefs.

Students of history will no doubt find a delicious irony or two in his article. He comments on the influence of ‘Catholic - Anglican and Roman - social thinking’ on the Labour Party, forgeting that the Act of Settlement still prohibits Roman Catholics from ascending to the British Throne, or the PM’s job for that matter. However the real curio in this article is that in espousing the virtues of ‘New Labour’ and trying, through thinly veiled allusions to the ‘New Jerusalem’ of Kier Hardie, to wrap himself in the cloth of the Labour movement, he comes across as nothing more or less than an good old fashioned, died in the wool ‘one nation Tory’.

I wonder if that’s what Tony really meant by ‘unremittingly’ New Labour?

Sailing seems to me to be one of those activities that’s better done than watched, which is why I’m finding it difficult to raise anything in the way of enthusiam at Ellen McArthur’s record breaking solo round the world voyage.

On a basic level I can appreciate her achievement. 71 days at sea, on your own and with little sleep would tend to reduce most people to the state of sticking pencils up their nose and saying ‘wibble’ - undies on head, optional - it’s just that as a mere viewer the whole business seems a hell of long way from being as ‘gripping’ as the media would try to have you believe.

As a televisual experience, 10 weeks of grainy satellite feeds starring a sleep-deprived truncated prop-forward in waterproofs is not my idea of rivetting stuff, especially when the dialogue seemed to consist mostly of ‘I’m feeling really tired’. I suppose I should be grateful we didn’t get on to ‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with S…’.

Still, if anyone is desperate to relieve the whole thing, the dear old Beeb have helpfully provided an animated guide which is at least shorter than the real thing, if no less tedious.

Today is Chinese New Year and the start of the Year of the Rooster which apparently means that this year:

“Politics will adhere to hard-line policies. The diplomatic scene will be dominated by philosophical orators who rave a lot about nothing. Governments will be found flexing their muscles at each other, but just for show. There may be no real confrontations. It is just that everyone will be too occupied with himself to hear or care what the other person is saying.”

Just your average General Election year, then…

So Alistair Campbell’s back in the New Labour fold after an absence of 18 months and seemingly as gaff prone as he was before his resignation as Tony’s communications director during the course of the Hutton enquiry.

Campbell is apparently the ‘mastermind’ behind Labour’s recent ‘flying pigs’ and ’sort of like Fagan/Shylock if you look at in the right light’ posters which inadvertantly caused offence to the Jewish comnunity as well as that great bastion of social enlightenment ‘The Sun’.

Cambell, as ever, put up his usual robust defence to criticism of the posters from BBC’s Newsnight in an e-mail to TWBA, the ad agency responsibile for the designs, to make suggestions on the possible content of a statement to the Beeb before adding the postscript ‘Now f**k off and cover something important you twats’ - only problem being he managed to e-mail his comments to the Beeb rather than TWBA. D’oh!

Of course the Tories are above such things, with party co-Chairman Liam Fox commenting that Campbell’s return had seen the adoption of new “sinister and underhand tactics” - convenient forgeting about his own party having hired Lynton Crosby to fill the same role for them.

All very pots and kettles, eh…