What? You don’t know who Jiminy Cricket is? Shame on you!
Jiminy Cricket was the voluble arthropod who insisted on speaking truth to the lying and famously long nosed puppet on a string. Pinocchio’s enforced conscience, whether he liked it or not. No matter how hard Pinocchio tries to silence Jiminy Cricket, eventually ‘killing’ him, the Cricket continues to chirp up even as a ghost who haunts him.
We could make a connection between Guido Fawkes’ Order-Order blog and our own long nosed politicians – but there is a more fascinating and topical example abroad.
The convoluted Italian political scene is currently mesmerised by another Cricket. Beppe Grillo. Grillo being Italian for Cricket.
Beppe Grillo is a comedian (some would no doubt argue that Guido is too!) who joined forced with an Internet savvy accountant to form a blog which morphed into the Five Star Movement or Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S). He did so because Silvio Berlusconi had virtual control of all of Italy’s media outlets. There was no outlet for criticism of Berlusconi’s rule. That blog was to become the seventh most popular in the world, thousands logged on every day to listen to Grillo’s merciless but always witty denunciation of Italian politicians, and snippets of scandal that could not be read anywhere else. One post alone attracted an incredible 10,000 comments.
Eventually, inevitably, commentators began to meet up in the real world, and a grassroots political party (M5S) was born. One that refused to play the political game.
M5S is currently on form to get more votes than any other single Italian party. They are unlikely to form an overall government because they refuse to engage in the shady deals and coalitions so popular in Italian politics – but they will be a force to be reckoned with.
There is a fascinating PhD thesis HERE by Maria Elisabetta Lanzone tracing the entire history of the rise from satirical blogger to political force of Beppe Grillo, which I have been glued to since the early hours of this morning. The correlation between the reasons for his anarchic blog and eventual political success and the descent into parody of Italian politics are so closely tied to the identical situation in Britain and the rise of Guido Fawkes blog that it is required reading for students of politics.
‘Honesty will be fashionable again’ tweeted Grillo after the latest election results. What do you think the outcome would have been had Guido, ‘the only man to enter parliament with honest intentions’ stood for election in Eastleigh in a few days time? He wouldn’t have had to bully supporters to get out and campaign for him. Now there’s a thought to send a chill down the spine of the Lib-Dems – and the Tories.
I wonder why he didn’t?
Ms Raccoon lives in the Monbazillac area of South West France, renowned for its fine wines and gourmet food, so she frequently finds better things to do than sit in front of a computer all morning. She is liable to take off traveling at a moment's notice. Consequently this blog only gets updated these days when it is raining - and it doesn't rain very often round here...
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‘the only man to enter parliament with honest intentions’
That reads like marketing spin. Be wary of any politician who shouts about his own honesty, which is not to say he could be any worse than that arch-greaseball, Silvio Berlusconi.
You have no idea who Guido Fawkes was, do you?
He was a religious fanatic intent on mass murder, who wanted to impose theocratic rule on England. Not sure why he should be seen as a role model …
As Oliver Cromwell might have said, “I resemble that remark!”
But of course, he was a Puritan, i.e., a home-grown terrorist, not RC and being incited by the Pope, allegedly. And the BIG difference is that Oliver Cromwell succeeded.
Ah, silly me. I should have quoted ‘Honesty will be fashionable again’ instead, which is what that Grillo chap actually said.
Bloody brilliant movement that shows it really can work! We DESPERATELY need an effective Beppe Grillo here in Spain god help us all with the absolutely appalling political scenario we have all round…
Without currency control there is no politician alive who can do much about their competitiveness. Nobody will vote for what’s necessary, so no politician will offer it.
The majority – 70% – of respondents want to stick with the euro.
http://business.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/10/survey-20-of-spaniards-want-to-leave-euro/
“I wonder why he didn’t?”
Why don’t you ask him?
I guess because of the Old Holborn experience.
Is Bepe advocating leaving the Euro currency? If he isn’t, then he’s just rubbing his legs together to keep warm. Follow the money.
Yes. End to the euro is one of his few actual commitments.
Now all he has to do is stand and deliver…….
Is it a club you would like to be a member of?
Anna,
After his appearance before Leveson, I told Guido that he is effectively the Court Jester, the one person allowed to speak truth to power, to be witty and cleverly destructive, to the king.
Alan Douglas
Of course, the Court Jester’s real function was to let the King know how sycophantic the courtiers were being by taking the piss outta them, too; not necessarily that the King was too stupid to see it for himself, mind, but seeing the Court Jester imitate them with the King there, and seeing the King laugh, tended to let the courtiers know that the King was on to them, and they had better be much more subtle about it.
Mutatis mutandis 21st Century, Guido is as much a scourge of the reporting class as well as the political class. And as an old soldier used to say, “They don’t like it up them!”
Would he meet many voters on the campaign trail from the snug to the bar?
Grillo was certainly ahead of the pack in attacking corrupt politicians, but his views on corrupt bankers and IMF/ EU are also amazing.
Here are two videos from 1998 before bankster bashing became fashionable:
http://www.scoinsandbullion.com/blog/501-who-is-beppe-grillo-next-italian-president.html
One way of looking at Mr Grillo is as trenchant and necessary critic of Italy’s current, woeful situation. He is particularly incisive with respect to Italy’s political parties: grotesquely over-funded by the taxpayer; seemingly incapable of generational rejuvenation, and corrupt in many areas and at many levels. Seen in this light, Mr Grillo is a man who has supplied a democratic, and so far, peaceful outlet for the frustration of millions of Italians who feel themselves to have been betrayed by a bankrupt political system.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2013/02/beppe-grillo
Yet while his criticisms are often accurate, Mr Grillo’s remedies are either non-existent, simplistic or utopian. The programme of his movement contains nothing on foreign policy, for example, and precious little on how it would get Italy out of its dire economic straits.
“movement contains nothing on foreign policy, for example, and precious little on how it would get Italy out of its dire economic straits.”…….That is a feature not a bug, imagine a party willing to avoid mistakes like Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, foreign aid and willing to step back from quantitive easing and too-big-to-fail bank bailouts. I believe it would be very successful. Government needs to be pared back to a few essential but much reduced ministries, you used to manage an empire with a government the size of one minor ministry, back when people did things instead of endlessly talking about them. (a la camoron)
Grillo effectively turned the election into a referendum on Italian membership of the EU, and won. Monti was dictatorially imposed on Italy by un-elected Brusselocrats and has now been shown the big finger. Watch as this spreads to Greece, Spain and Portugal. Judging by some French radio editorial comment today France is particularly concerned given that Italy was a founder member of the EC now EU. Could it all collapse thanks to a cricket?
This raises an important point. To what extent can a principled, decent party or person actually survive and govern in the “Machiavellian” world of politics? Rather curiously, just last night I discovered this interesting (for me) documentary in which the teachings of Machiavelli as penned in his book “The Prince” are discussed by various politicians, back in the mid 90′s I would guess.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6FLy4NJGLo&list=HL1361883404
There is a lovely turn from the late Ian Richardson, reprising I assume his marvellous performnace in the original “House of Cards” and performing select passages from the book
It is a pity that it turns into a bit of an anti Tory/Thatcher rant, because of course the most Machiavellian politicians of all would be Blair and Mandelson. However, the rather bleak conclusion that it reaches I suppose is that the nature of politics IS Machiavallian.
Interesting
There is also the argument that in order to be successful at managing an entire country of cats (never mind a herd) politicians and princes need to be machiavellian. The Prince is an interesting and instructive read for what it says about populances as much as about how to manage the tricky so and so’s.
In the same way that closer attention to Paul Staines (‘Guido’) reveals a less than admirable character, I think Grillo himself could do with some closer scrutiny.
http://shirazsocialist.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/italian-election-grillo-is-no-joke/
One slight difference between Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes) and many politicians is that Staines doesn’t cover up his ‘interesting’ past. Neither does he show any inclination to weedle his way into the Westminster Village power set, either political or journalistic. He just pokes politics with a stick, stirs it around a bit, and sees what floats to the surface.
I don’t think ‘Guido’ always gets it right, but he does seem to have an uncanny knack of exposing the dodgy end of politics to public scrutiny, and for that alone he deserves much credit.
But surely if you *expose* everything, then some of what you *expose* is bound to turn out to be true in the end. At the moment many people seem to be saying that David Icke was right all along. I’m willing to bet Ickey would garner a populist following if he were to hit the electoral trail.
It would never be possible to expose everything in a political establishment the size of Westminster. It’s a bit like weeding the borders of a large garden; a never-ending task, but a necessary one if the flowers are to flourish.
I suspect the majority of the population would work out Icke for what he is quite quickly. He’d garner a following, for sure, but not a large one.
Hmm…. the weed-killer being used just now seems to be a very selective one……… Red flowers seem to be strangely impervious.
My point being of course that current affairs bloggers are only as good as the gossip they are sent.
Do the media feed them and then feed off them – leaving their own hands apparently clean?
We know that politicians and lobbyist journalists have always been entwined.
Guido does seem to source a lot of his stories from the less-powerful but still informed of the Westminster village – his ‘co-conspirators’ as he calls them. He is also critical of the cosy closeness between politicians and the lobby, and of the burgeoning lobbying industry. He first reached prominence by breaking the Damien McBride affair, and hardly seeks to make friends amongst the Labour higher echelons.
He ain’t perfect, but he is doing a good job. How much longer he does so, we’ll have to wait and see.
I think Staines’ record as an apologist for RENAMO – AKA Southern Africa’s answer to the Khmer Rouge – would ideally make him as palatable to decent opinion as a dog turd in a swimming pool.
But that’s just me.
Our current political establishment is full of former members of University Marxist societies, former members of the communist party, possibly some ex-far right extremists for all I know. At least Guido makes no secret of his contempt for the lot of them, and won’t be joining them. For one thing, he openly says he isn’t cut out for politics, for another thing he holds an Irish passport, which probably bars him from Westminster.
Just because we have ex-far leftists in parliament doesn’t mean we should tolerate someone from the far-right taking pot-shots at them. They are both two cheeks of the same arse.
Ah – so you’re saying that left-leaning opinions are acceptable, but right-leaning ones are not?
RENAMO were the good guys. They would kill the flip flops from Zanu and Frelimo during the bush wars…
Interestingly, though no-one’s brought it up to my knowledge, the question of whether some comedian has ever vied for political office and won?
And the answer is, Yes; Al Franken, US Senator from Minnesota, is a former performer/writer for Saturday Night Live, the long-running satirical show of American television. He’s also as Leftie as they come, but hey, whaddaya want, egg in your beer? His current crusade is to rid political campaigns of corporate donations by saying that the corporation form of doing business, being a creation of the State, is thereby not entitled to the same rights as a natural human being, i.e., the right not to have its “life, liberty and property” deprived without due process of law, nor is it entitled to equal protection under the law, nor does it have privileges and immunities anyone is bound to respect. Of course, corporations run themselves, and natural human beings are not involved, eh, Frankenweenie?
Actually, the Italian for cricket is cricket http://www.crickitalia.org/HomeEnglish.htm . A C Milan began as a cricket and football club.
XX They are unlikely to form an overall government because they refuse to engage in the shady deals and coalitions so popular in Italian politicsXX
Ahemmm! Not just Italy. ANY country wghich is run by the imbecilic “P.R” system.
Germany has not had a proper GOVERNMENT since Adenauer!
They have all been a melting pot of any shite idea that happened to get JUST enough seats to secure one of the “Big Two” could stay claiming benefits…. Parliamentary benefits, that is, by forming a coagulation.
Germany has not had a proper government since 1918.
Personally I prefer the ones they’ve had since 1945 nevertheless, and I imagine the Germans prefer them even more than I do………….
I meant one party with a ruling majority. But then, you are probably right.
A shred of sympathy for politicians, Anna! Every man who agonised over his second response to “Does this dress make my bum look big?” experienced diplomat’s dilemma. And let us at least acknowledge that most politicians will honour a bribe insofar as it does not conflict with their own interests.
So that Merion Jones chappie, he’s a cricket too, right?
Then how does one tell the good crickets from the bad ones? Because sometimes we have no way of really telling. Or do we all just egg on those we think we like best?
Forget the content (well not really coz its always interesting) —just read this blog for Ms Racoon’s witty command of the English language .
David Milliband equals Man Flue .
The feckless residuum equals the horse meat eating classes,
Grillo equals Jiminy Cricket.
Much more besides just the best of the most recent
Off topic but is this the new makeover for Anna Raccoon.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2285183/Pookah-dog-gets-panda-makeover-animal-stylist-owner-says-loving-new-look.html
I wonder why he didn’t?
The simple answer is that Grillo has built a nationwide following of such a scale that his has been among the ten most read blogs in the world and he has earned tens of millions of pounds through his books and performances while Guido is notorious among the small number of politicos, hacks, eccentrics and geeks who follow politics on the ‘net. If you want a British Bepe, though, look elsewhere. Grillo is a skilled rhetorician with a convincing “man of the people” background while Guido, for all his undoubted talents as a sleuth and publicist, was out-argued by Michael White on national television and posts photos of himself puffing cigars on balconies in the financial district.
Whilst Paul Staines (aka Guido) does a fairly reasonable job of highlighting the hypocrisy of the political elite, it’s worth noting that he is only interested in money! Most of his site is about trying to generate money for himself. If he entered politics, then 1) he wouldn’t have so much time to run his business interests from his site, and 2) would have to declare his income in the register to avoid conflicts of interest and I suspect there are a few things he would want to keep hidden (to avoid everyone realizing he’s just as hypocritical as the people he writes about).
Jumping Jiminy Cricket, Batman! It’s Mrs Riddler, and she’s drunk
I must take issue with your last sentence – neither Lib-Dems nor Tories have shown any evidence yet of having spines.
I would much prefer to see “The Filthy Engineer” or “Max Farquar” elected to Parliament. I think they would both be faster at cutting through the smokescreens.
O/T, but very sad news:
http://markneary1dotcom1.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/love-belief-punctured-balls/
The bastards grind you down eventually, don’t they? :/
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