Let's Get Political, Political The Maltese blogging scene gets very political from time to time and its fave topic appears to be how to rid poor old Malta of its MLPN Scylla and Charybdis. This is sometimes presented as doing Politics Differently or doing New Politics. As I see it, its real value lies in the fact that a bunch of young, well-read geezers are showing that political discourse can be engaging, analytical and free of tifoseria-style knee-jerk reactions and allegiances based on expected personal gain . Whether Jacques and Mark and Immanuel and Antonio agree on the way forward is not really the point. What I enjoy about this development is that an interesting exchange of ideas (and ,why not, ideals) is gaining ground in the open, challenging the status quo and more importantly, not allowing the usual suspects to entirely hog the scene. This last observation may be a bit of an illusion but I'd like to think it's not.

I may also be deluded into leading myself to believe that if this exchange of ideas gathers momentum, we may end up with a richer form of discourse than is presently the case. Maybe not a political revolution but certainly a welcome evolution.

Compulsory reading for anyone interested in this Modern Politics Course is Rohan Candappa's The Curious Incident of the WMD in Iraq. Here are two passage from it to whet your appetite:

1)This is an Analogy that Alistair thought of:

Elections are a bit like The World Cup. But a World Cup in which the England team gets picked by someone who in the years between World Cup tournaments isn't actually interested in football, and doesn't go to matches, or even watch it on TV, but just because they know the music for Match Of The Day they think they know what they're talking about.


2)But changing the name of an Institution Steeped in As Much History as the Labour Party was not a Decision We Took Lightly. Here are some of the names we thought about:

Improved Labour
Labour Plus
Laboure
Labour Moderne
Labour!
Totally Labour
Everything You Wanted From Labour But Were Afraid to Ask
We're Labour, Are You?
The People's Labour
Your Labour
Your Labour Because You're Labour
Labour And You
It's a Labour Thing
Labour, Labour, Labour!
Consignia
I Can't Believe We're Not Tories

But in the end we chose New Labour.   ¶ 4:42 AM