with open hands

For the first time in a squillion years, we at the Godhaven Ink collective have published something new, as in an actual paper thing. Even then, it's not wholly new, mind. But still.

It's With Open Hands, a little pamphlet of beginners tips on open relationships. I first got a copy in 1999, shortly after publishing a pamphlet called Sexyouality: Challenging The Culture of Monogamy. Where my pamphlet was a collection of writings from a variety of authors, and mostly concerned with the principle and philosophy of polyamory, With Open Hands was one person's work, and very much a practical piece.

The author started a relationship with a woman who felt that it was fine for him to have multiple lovers, but she didn't want to do that herself. Then she met a guy called Chuck and things got complicated. She asked her first lover to help her to avoid some of the mistakes he'd made, so he wrote her a letter. After talking with some friends, it was expanded into the With Open Hands zine.

I loved its straightforwardness, its compassion, its calming and steadying feeling. I've been meaning to do a reprint of it for yonks, but was delayed by knowing that my copy was too shoddy a photocopy and I'd need to retype the whole text. I finally got round to it though, and as I did it I found myself adding quite a bit of new text of my own. Certain points wanted expanding on, or there were perspectives and angles not covered.

Given that the original publishers had, like Godhaven Ink, actively encouraged people to copy and reproduce and generally use it as they wanted, I didn't feel it was too cheeky. So, it's a collaboration between an English bloke and an American, even though they did their bits in different countries at different times and never met up to do it. Just like Ebony And Ivory.

As with all Godhaven Ink publications, it's printed on recycled paper and it's dirt cheap.

More info here.

the end is almost upon us

I've already talked of how and why Chris De Burgh is manoeuvring himself into position to be part of a unified world government as a way to ease the global takeover by shapeshifting lizards.

One element of his plan involves putting himself in the elite, so he not only gets an official position with the UN but now he also claims royal lineage, saying he's a direct descendant of Robert the Bruce and King David II of Scotland, Crusader Richard the Lionheart, and - perhaps most tellingly - William the Conqueror.

You know how I revealed the answer to the previously inexplicable move by Jim Bliss to Dublin, that it was to get some javelin practice in alongside De Burgh's daughter to be part of the lizard stormtrooper batallions?

Bliss recently revealed he was studying at Trinity College and illustrated it with a picture from Google Earth - reminding us that he and his lizard masters are watching over our every move.

Let's see, who else is at Trinity at the moment? 'His son Hubie, 19, is in his second year at Trinity College, Dublin'.

Bliss' rabid defence of De Burgh in many of my previous truth-seeking revelatory posts is explained. De Burgh is the lizards' minion, and Bliss is even lower than that, the minion of a minion, a diseased and snivelling wart-nosed louse feeding on the scrotum of a demon.

I've previously revealed how De Burgh's plan to unify the world under lizards requires the healing of great rifts in humanity; to that end he was the only international artist to play at the German reunification celebrations, and he's also off to Iran this summer. Well, obviously, there's more.

Like De Burgh's ancestor Richard the Lionheart, let's turn our attention to the Middle East. The Lebanese civil war is so deeply ingrained into our cultural memory that I still hear people describe somewhere dangerous or smashed up as being 'like Beirut'.

A reporter in Lebanon tells us 'the Lebanese civil war, in which 150,000 lives were lost, is the root cause of de Burgh's popularity.'

More than that, he was 'the first Western act to play here after the civil war'. Sounding familiar isn't it? The pattern, the plan, they become so clear now.

He's just released a duet with Lebanese singer Tina Yamout. 'She says she is still "shocked and in awe" to be working with de Burgh.'

'Shock and awe'? As in the tactics used to subjugate Iraq so it could become part of the American empire as the world unifies?

He proclaims peace in Germany and Iran and Lebanon, yet is proud of his imperialist castle and his descending from Crusaders. The knowledge is in the family, so clearly is the will to use it. No wonder the lizards chose him.

It's all so clear to those who will see. Yet everyone else, too scared to face the truth, scurries on with their heads in the sand. If it were possible to scurry while one's head was buried. It isn't, yet that is precisely the sort of twisted worldview that De Burgh and his reptilian masters have us living in.

We know that there may be only days left.

how many celebrities are famous?

Ages back I talked about slimy fucker Debi Jones (shopping channel presenter and the Conservatives prospective parliamentary candidate for Sefton Central), and marvelled at the way her website is titled 'Debi Jones TV Presenter Celebrity Official Website'; she self-defines as a celebrity.

There's something so smug about someone doing that, and also something bizarre in wanting to be recognised not for what made you famous but merely for the fact of being famous. It suggests that all forms of celebrity are somehow equal, that Martine McCutcheon and Douglas Hurd are in the same sort of role.

A solitary person self-defining as celebrity is one thing. It's altogether different to have an organisation called - I shit you not - The Celebrities Guild of Great Britain.

You just know Ernie Wise initiated the whole thing, don't you?

It was set up in 1977 and raises funds for people with disabilities. Their tagline, on every page of the website, is 'helping the handicapped'. They don't seem to have updated that since 1977 either. Why not have 'Patting the Cripples' instead?

My favourite bit of the site is the Gallery. Ten pictures and even with those and the names I can only recognise five. Some are too easy - a newsreader is sort of cheating, we've all seen them thousands of times even though they've never done anything themselves and we can't say anything about them as people. Frank Carson's kind of cheating as well, not being from Great Britain himself. Still, they make up for it with Bob Holness, the man who blew the mighty sax on Baker Street. Probably.

Weirdly, it wasn't actually Ernie Wise but someone called Ella Glazer who set the guild up. Surely to set up a celebrities guild you'd need to be, I dunno, a celebrity? Try finding out what she's done apart from the Guild. There's an IMDB page for someone of that name. Its single entry is a 'thanks' credit in a movie.

Then again, the standard of celebrity doesn't seem to be that high. Today sees them doing a celebrity golf tournament. Among superstars like Bobby Davro and Lance Percival are some bafflingly obscure names, and some vague bell-ringers. Like Jill Dando before she was killed, you might know the name but you can't picture them.

Using only your existing knowledge and without recourse to Google, how many of these celebrity golfers can you not only recognise the name but say what they're famous for and clearly put a face to in your mind?

Clive Allen,
Luther Blissett,
Ian Botham,
Martin Bicknell,
Tony Cottee,
Bob Champion,
Phil Daniels,
Bobby Davro,
Graham Dene,
Mike Denness,
John Embury,
Derek Fowlds,
Theo Foley,
Trevor Harris,
Stewart Houston,
Roy Holder,
Cliff Jones,
Derek Martin,
Frank McLintock,
Nicholas Parsons,
Lance Percival,
Robert Powell,
Ian Rush,
Steve Rider,
Alan Smith,
Willie Thorne,
Claire Tomlinson,
Jimmy White,
Rory Underwood,
Roger Uttley,
Ray Wilkins,
John Virgo.

I score only seven out of 32.

donnie darko snacks

I remember the Disney attempt to cash in on the late 70s space movies, The Black Hole.

Agog at the fluttering acres of money that Star Wars had made on merchandising, they wanted something like that for themselves. There were Black Hole models, Black Hole pencil cases, even Black Hole black soap.

The movie bombed and Woolworth's 'Everything reduced to 20p' bin was brimming for several months after.

Somehow, I think I've stumbled on some remaindered Donnie Darko merchandise.

Does anyone on this planet have the faintest fucking clue what is going on with this packet of poppadoms?



I understand having a cherubic youngster appearing to be eating one, but why the fuck is he being menaced by giant sinister disfigured rabbit?

don't forget who the tories are

As many people have done, on Thursday Zoe Williams tore into Boris Johnson. She attacks his deep-set racism, his homophobia, his snobbery.

But what she and others miss is that these qualities aren't something that make him unusual. They make him a classic Tory.

The Conservative party exists today, as it always has done, as the party of wealth and privilege. He, like his party's leader, is an old Etonian pro-hunting toff.

From Mugabe to the Orange Order, anywhere power is entrenched it is seriously abused. People are sick of the smugness and betrayal it has inevitably bred in the Labour party. They are sick of them as the party who lied to take us to war in Iraq. The despise them for the bizarre trickle-up economic theory of abolishing the 10p income tax, a clear and unambiguous attack on the poor.

But fuck me, is anyone saying the Tories wouldn't have gone to war? That they wouldn't have shifted taxes from the rich to the poor? They're the people who supported the war and opposed the minimum wage!

They're the party who gave us the poll tax and - in the form of the miners strike - ran a paramilitary campaign to demolish effective trade unionism, the collective bargaining that won a living wage and fair working conditions for those of us not born into riches.

All of these were also clear, unambiguous attacks on the poor but on a scale far greater than anything Blair and Brown have contemplated.

In their last time in office the Conservatives took big essential industries in public hands, things too important to be run just for profit - electricity, gas, telecommunications, water, railways - and sold them off at a pittance, making a fortune for the City institutions who bought shares. A straight transfer of vast wealth from the people to the obscenely rich few.

Whilst Labour have continued privatisation more stealthily (do it by components rather than a whole industry so we don't notice, call it Private Finance Initiative), it's clearly nothing the Tories wouldn't have done too. Voting Conservative as an anti-Labour protest is like cutting your legs off to stop your toes itching.

Boris Johnson was a leader writer for the Daily Telegraph from 1987, as it cheered on all those privatisations, the poll tax and the outrageous attack on liberty known as the 1994 Criminal Justice Bill.

Johnson, like the other three of the top four Mayoral candidates, has come out against the third runway at Heathrow. But can we be so sure he'll stick to it? It's hard to imagine Ken Livingstone being automatically impressed by someone just because they run a large corporation like BAA or because they are part of a profitable industry. It's hard to imagine Johnson - or any classic Tory - not being cowed. (But especially Johnson, who appears to be a climate denier).

The Conservatives remain the party of privilege. They are still directed and run by millionaire bankers. Their actual policy, as opposed to their touchy-feely PR spin and slogans, still shows it.

If you think your interests are the same as those of millionaire bankers, then they're the party for you. If not, then they're not.

animal instincts, gut reaction

George Monbiot is not just a seriously important journalist, but the best political journalist I've ever read (and I say that as someone who keeps George Orwell's Collected Essays Letters and Journalism by the bed).

The sheer range of subjects he tackles, his ability to fathom obscure and technical reports, his daring to tell the truth irrespective of who it upsets (he was attacking biofuels at a time when many greens were fervently in favour, and it lost him friends), his inability to be intimidated by power, and his consistent wit make for utterly compelling reading.

Given the praise he's had - prizes dished out by Mandela and stuff - he should have a head as big as Birkenhead. Instead, he continues to really listen and think, to move away from the circles of mainstream political machinery the better to attack them, and as a result he's stopped winning awards. And he doesn't care.

So it comes as a surprise when his rigorous approach and integrity fail him. He's just written a piece about the way increased consumption of animal products is exacerbating world hunger.

Basically, we're feeding a serious proportion of our food to animals who shit out most of the nutriment. We then eat the high-input low-output animals. So even though we're growing more food than ever, people are starving.

As the animal products are more profitable than the basic grains and pulses, the market is happy to see the poor starve.

Joachim von Braun, head of the International Food Policy Research Institute, said that the current rapid increase in world food prices is roughly 20% caused by the impact of climate change, about 30% by the impact of biofuels, and about 50% by increased affluence leading to more consumption of animal products.

Of course, those proportions are likely to shift as climate change will get a lot worse in the years to come, and biofuels - despite it now being clear that they're an environmental disaster as well as a humanitarian one - continue to grow. We're burning food while people starve.

But it's equally crazy to turn edible food to shit for no good reason, which is what the meat and dairy industries do. Even grass-fed animals get their winter feed from foodstuffs that could be fed to humans. In a two pronged attack, we exacerbate climate change by first chopping down the forests to grow soya for cows, who give it a second punch by turning that soya into shit and climate-assaulting methane.

The obvious thing is for us to eat less animal products. Monbiot concurs.

A vegan Britain could make a massive contribution to global food stocks.

and then immediately backtracks with

But I cannot advocate a diet I am incapable of following. I tried it for about 18 months, lost two stone, went as white as bone and felt that I was losing my mind. I know a few healthy-looking vegans and I admire them immensely. But after almost every talk I give, I am pestered by swarms of vegans demanding that I adopt their lifestyle. I cannot help noticing that in most cases their skin has turned a fascinating pearl grey.

Oh look, here's the emaciated and fascinatingly pearl grey Carl Lewis zooming through the air as he wins the Olympic gold medal for the long jump in 1992.



At the same Olympics he got another gold medal for his running. A man capable of running 100 metres in under ten seconds and 200 metres in under twenty, one wonders how his vegan diet impaired his performance. Monbiot's year of veganism was dogged by his seemingly inevitable ill-health. How was yours, Carl?

my best year of track competition was the first year I ate a vegan diet

I went to see Prince last year. He's fifty, but with the energy, the verve, the effervescent pizzazz of someone less than half his age. Vegan with it.

I don't doubt Brother George's account of the impacts of a vegan diet on himself. But his implication that this is what most vegans are like is just bollocks. It's a cheapshot that is frankly unworthy of him. It's as daft as saying veganism will make us all into Carl Lewis, or that vegetarianism is bad because Hitler was one.

Certainly, there are some unhealthy vegans. But in the same way, you could report on someone grossly obese and say that's what anyone who eats meat is inevitably like.

Monbiot was clearly eating a poor vegan diet, and was seemingly anaemic. It's easily overcome though. A diet with plenty of fresh greens supplies huge amounts of iron and vitamin C (which helps you absorb the iron).

Can that be done all year round though without importing stuff? Just ask someone like, ooh, George Monbiot. A week before he published the vegan article, he published one that said

There are at least 20 kinds of vegetables and salads (mostly oriental varieties) that you can grow through the British winter. You should be able to eat fresh greens every day of the year.

Many people find that if they suddenly take something out of their diet their health suffers, usually because they're eating the same old stuff but with something missing. Carl Lewis was smart enough to look into the nutritional aspect before he changed.

But even if you don't do that first, it doesn't take much work to find balanced, tasty, easy food that's vegan. You're a couple of clicks away from hundreds of sites that can help you, and there are at least as many books too.

Veggies and vegans tend to eat a lot better than omnivores; as they have to really think about their food, they become better cooks and eat a greater variety of ingredients.

I've been vegan for most of my life. In the 1980s it was a bit more work, but these days there is absolutely no truth in the 'it's too much effort to be vegan and healthy' thing. It's a lazy cop-out by those who haven't got the self-discipline to obey their conscience.

That said, any reduction in the amount of animal produce you consume is positive. There's this common idea that people have to be absolutist, as if it's a religion and any sinful behaviour will see them damned. But someone who is basically vegan but eats animal stuff once or twice a week is clearly having less of a detrimental effect than someone who is an ongoing omnivore because they don't feel they could be unwaveringly veggie.

The sneering idea that 'oh, you had some milk chocolate so you're not really vegan' gets bandied around, as if it undoes all the good you do by not eating animals the rest of the time. I note that it tends to come from people who eat meat, essentially as a desperate attempt to gag their own conscience.

By the same token, we could ridicule anyone advocating a reduction in carbon emissions if they ever use any fossil fuels, and tell ourselves that therefore it's OK for us all to drive SUVs and have patio heaters.

As Robin Fishwick observes, the only way not to be a hypocrite is to be an amoral twat

we have a social climate where it is impossible to embrace any moral position without fear of being branded as 'loony' if you cling doggedly to the position, or 'hypocritical' if you fall short of it. The result is that we are left with a cynics jamboree and a tendency towards moral paralysis.

In a perfect world, moral paralysis would not be a problem, but a perfect world it is not, and as soon as you so much as express concern the snipers are out. It is much safer to abdicate all moral responsibility than step into the danger zone - and the danger zone is huge. If you fall short of the ideal you espouse, you are a hypocrite.

It follows, therefore, that in order never to be a hypocrite, it is safest not to espouse any ideals you may have any difficulty living up to - result; said cynicism and moral paralysis.

Better to be a hypocrite than a bastard. If you don't fall short of your own standards once in a while then you probably haven't set them high enough.

It's common for people who are kicking a habit to have a relapse, and if people want to indulge as they shift their habits, if that's what makes it work for them in the longer term, fine. Most ex-meaties I know who give in to temptation are repulsed by the heavy dense unfoodlike feeling of meat in their gut, and it helps them leave it behind.

It is very clear that the consumption of animal products has a severe climate impact. As with the other reasons for abstaining from animal products - compassion for the animals, personal health, concern at the amount of land used and its impact on wild land going under the plough, or straightforward cheapness - it makes more sense to be vegan than vegetarian. And in our lands of plenty, it's not difficult. As George Monbiot's lame attempt shows, there really is no good reason.

evening standard are lying scum: official

During last Summer's Camp for Climate Action at Heathrow, London daily paper the Evening Standard ran two stories about how campers were planning to storm the airport, plant hoax bombs, and probably eat live babies on the way.

Expecting it to be just a load of hippies in a field, they were shocked when a complaint was logged by the Camp with the Press Complaints Commission.

With the brilliant legal response to BAA's attempted injunction the climate movement had already shown it wasn't going to take slurs and lies, that it could readily give as good as it got.

The Campers tenaciously followed through with their complaint. The PCC finally ruled on it recently. They upheld it in the strongest terms, finding that the Standard's stories were a 'serious breach' of the code of standards regarding accuracy, calling the allegations 'materially misleading'.

The Standard were obliged to report this, but they were canny enough to wait until the day the PCC's judgement on the Madeleine McCann thing came out. That ensured that every media correspondent in the land was looking the other way.

Worse, the Evening Standard published the ruling under the headline 'PCC ruling on Heathrow protest by the Camp for Climate Action'.

This in itself is a breach of the PCC's code concerning accuracy of reporting. The ruling was not on the Heathrow camp, but on the Standard's coverage. There is nothing in the headline indicating anything to do with the one newspaper's coverage, let alone the independent finding that the Standard are a bunch of lying scumpigs and sewer rats (I may be paraphrasing slightly).

The full story of the fabrication is extraordinary reading.

During the course of the complaint the Standard changed its story a number of times. My favourite detail concerns the claim that 'two man teams' had been seen checking out the security fence around the airport. It was, from the outset, obviously nonsense, as the fence was a kilometre from the camp.

But the more they tried to explain it, the more ludicrous the Standard made their claim look.

They said the journalist had seen two people he recognised from the camp whilst going to a nearby petrol station. Except that the only petrol station was separated from the fence by a dual carriageway and a line of buildings, way too far from the fence to let anyone be recognisable.

The two people were, depending on which version the Standard told, standing next to the fence, or one was scaling it while another kept watch, or both were scaling it.

If they'd seen any of this, why didn't they take any photos? 'Because it was pitch black' said the Standard. Yet it was supposedly light enough for the journalist to see from four lanes of traffic and a car park away.

And, of course, two people does not constitute 'two man teams' in the plural. But if they use the plural it gives clear connotations of strategy and thus defames the camp.

The back and forth between the two sides and the PCC is online here, with the main submission - including pictures of the fence from the petrol station showing what a load of arse the Standard were talking - in this pdf.

Having been given such a pasting by the Camp we can expect the Standard to honourably admit its fabrication and report more responsibly in future. That, or feel slighted and bear an ongoing grudge that sees them make up a load of bollocky old lies about climate activists but be careful not to name the people they're lying about. The word 'anarchists' is a nice scary catch-all that evades libel.

Expect more when the Camp for Climate Action returns to the London area this summer.

glastonbury: sack the designer

Glastonbury tickets didn't sell out in a a day this year.

Press musings have suggested it's due to the mud (always mentioned in articles by people who've never fucking been).

Other theories are that it's lost its young audience because of the ticket-buying facilities favouring those with high speed internet connections and it's only the middle aged people going now. Or announcing Jay-Z as the headliner put off the middle aged people and only the young people are coming.

That twat of an NME editor weighed in, proving he's never been beyond the Babylonian parts of the festival by saying 'the coverage is so comprehensive that people can watch the festival at home on telly'. Munting around Lost Vagueness ripped to the tits on all kinds at 4am, at home on the telly? Yeah right.

Others posit the far more plausible point that there are loads more festivals now and their tickets went on sale earlier.

Still, there could be other factors helping the downturn. Who the hell can have been encouraged by this advert in The Guardian? It strikes me as a ruse to discourage punters and so ease the squeeze on the tickets. What other reason could there be?



What designer said 'I know, a radiating pyramid' and had a colleague look rapt and encouraging instead of slamming their face into the desk?

That quote; who believes in the literal Holy Grail or an actual individual historical figure of King Arthur? From that small band, who believes in them both? From them, what proportion think they're both buried at Glastonbury? It's just a random jumble of new-age gobbledegook from someone you've never heard of.

Beyond that, it clearly refers to Glastonbury the place, whereas the festival's a few miles down the road, closer to Shepton Mallet. Mind you, if they can confuse Glastonbury with Jerusalem then their sense of geography is fucked already.

But really though, consider how many people have had how much of an astonishing time at Glastonbury down the years. If you can't find a decent quote about Glastonbury Festival then you just haven't looked. Nobody could have done an advert this shit unless they were trying to.

di leo da liar

Kickass anti-aviation activists Plane Stupid uncovered an infiltrator at their meetings. Having fed him false information and watched airport security personnel respond and the Evening Standard report it, they knew he was a mole.

They found his true identity - Toby Kendall, favourite film Top Gun - and his employer, a company called C2i International. They are a firm who specialise in, among other things, industrial counter-espionage, and work for the aerospace industry.

According to today's Guardian, airport operator BAA has been approached by C2i.

However, now that the incompetent spy - described by Plane Stupid as 'more Austin Powers than James Bond' - has had his cover blown, nobody will claim him, not even his (probably now ex-) employer.

C2i has also stated Kendall was operating on his own and his infiltration of Plane Stupid was not sanctioned.

Yeah right, he was just doing it for a laugh, solo work for the hell of it, nobody paying him.

The Guardian's list of arms-lengthers quotes Michelle Di Leo, director of aviation lobby group Flying Matters, saying infiltrating anti-aviation groups under false names is 'not the sort of thing we would do'.

But as the Independent reported last November, Airport Watch received an email from someone called Bella Ragazza, claiming to live in Italy and asking to be put on its email list.

The name is clearly fake, as it means simply 'beautiful girl' in Italian, the language of Ms Di Leo’s family.

The mystery was easily solved, though. It came from a Hotmail account, and the person had signed up for their MSN Passport under their real name. The 'From' field of the email was "Michelle Di Leo".

keep politics out of sport

The actions against the olympic torch in London and Paris were superb. This grand PR exercise for the Chinese government is blowing up in their faces.

And it's far from over. Who the hell thought San Francisco, with its long tradition of dissent for equality, was a good place to take the torch? The protests have started before the torch has arrived.



However, it's not the highly laudable actions that caught my interest but the response to them. Time and again, they have been described as 'violent'. The word 'violence' is pejorative, yet extremely ill-defined. Indeed, a protest gets called 'violent' by its opponents - and often journalists too - when it does anything other than go where the police tell it to and stand silent and motionless. Even then it can still be 'intimidating'.

But anyway, at the olympic thing that recurrent twist of thinking paled next to its sibling, the old 'keep politics out of sport' idea, as vociferously advocated by the crowd of pro-Chinese demonstrators in London.

If they believe in keeping politics out of sport, then that has to mean keeping politicians out of sport. So presumably they object to the Chinese ambassador carrying the torch, and also to it being taken to 10 Downing Street.

Beyond that, surely it means the olympic teams shouldn't be divided into teams based on the political entity of the nation state. And certainly, the Jewish athletes who boycotted the Nazi olympics of 1936 should have been compelled to take part.

In fact, yes, let's separate politics and sport - that would mean Tessa Jowell gets sacked and the billions of taxpayers pounds we're planning to blow on the 2012 games could be spent on something socially beneficial instead.

And those people in East London could have their allotments back



Alternatively, we could get politics and sport separated by insisting that Brown, Jowell and co all resign their political posts and enter in, say, the synchronised swimming event. They couldn't be worse at that than they are at their present jobs.

As if she wanted to cosy up to the sort of mindset that makes political statements like 'keep politics out of sport', Jowell embarked on her own doublethink excursion.

Olympics minister Tessa Jowell played down suggestions the games had been tainted by the response to the protests. "This has not been damaging to London. It is always important for perception not to overtake fact," she said.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no damage-ometer rigged up to London. There is no objective way to tell if it has been damaged. All thoughts expressed on the matter are, therefore, a matter of perception.

Jowell is either too philosophically challenged to use the language of thought, or else she's cleverly trying to undermine her own credibility so she gets sacked before she's tarnished by further olympics twaddle.

Either way, it looks like she's heading for the brightly coloured rubber cap, the fixed grin and the waterproof make-up.


Tessa Jowell after this morning's training session

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UPDATE 11 APRIL

In yesterday's Guardian Marina Hyde wrote a piece that has her characteristic insight and wit, also zoning in on Jowell's utter fucking incompetence

From the moment she spent that hour on a sofa with Ken Livingstone, and came up with a 2012 budget estimate of £2.3bn - since quadrupled - Jowell has displayed a preternatural inability to forecast anything within a hundred miles of accuracy. The mere fact of her making a prediction suggests its being proved wrong is a formality.

Two years ago, she declared of the 2012 aquatic centre: "We pledged that the centre would cost £75m and that is precisely what it will do." On Tuesday, figures released by the Olympic authorities confirmed the cost has already risen to £242m. The velodrome cost is now double what she said it would be.

Technically, there should be a point at which these chronic displays of incompetence are regarded as grounds for her removal from the post. But just as no escalation in the Games' costs has since appeared to be the magic number that triggers a rethink, so no display of that world-class lack of foresight seems sufficient to raise serious questions about her future.