Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear

I don't know which is worse:

• The story itself
• The fact that MI5 has lowered recruitment and training standards
• The possibility that they seem unable to penetrate the Somali community in the UK without causing it offence and having it turn against the security services
• The hatred spewed by the readers comments underneath the article, i.e. Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, etc
• The fact that there are people (hiding under false names) writing such comments (virtually all of it Class A bollocks) - come on, get a life

Oh, and then there's that story about the BNP website getting lots of clicks. No idea regarding the methodology behind the numbers. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets a DDoS attack sooner or later. But we live in uncertain times (think back to the late 40s to mid 80s in case you have a short memory) and with the economy heading South (albeit a little slower than before), our elected officials being shown to be on the take, xenophobia is going to stick around for a while.

I better get my flares and dance like its the 1970s again.

Padel, Walcott: inevitable

Being engrossed in other projects, I had missed the story behind the appointment of Oxford University's Professor of Poetry.

It appears that Padel smeared Walcott, forcing his withdrawal. Padel has been flexible with the truth, according to reports in the Telegraph and Independent.

Her antics are better suited to party politics, or perhaps more appropriately, to the Soviet Writers' Union. Perhaps she thought it was appropriate conduct?

I doubt it though.

OK, so Walcott was alleged to have done some stuff - but was it relevant to the post he was being considered for?

Were Byron & Shelley such great blokes? Do we think about them or their poetry?

Based on talent and track record in poetry, Walcott should have got the post (he's a Nobel Laureate). Padel's poetry (in my subjective opinion) is quite lame. What she lacks in raw talent, she has made up for in marketing herself - there's nothing wrong with this. She has admirers as well as detractors. That's fine too.

But she's not a fraction of the poet that Walcott is.

And this should be about poetry, and not about a Woman vs. a Man (and I hope its not viewed through the prism of Woman vs. Black Man), or the past - let's face it, it wasn't as if he was Dr. Mengele or Eichmann. It's also noted that Walcott did not engage with smears of his own against Padel.

Her recent appointment was a triumph of ambition over talent. But as the presence of the latest reports indicate, she has managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Whether she stays in the post or not, the calls for her to step down have demolished her reputation. For now. She'll come back, rebranded, in time.

But this reader comment on the Independent website made me piss myself:

The one satisfying thing about the sordid Oxford poetry election is its demonstration (symbolic in this case) of live by the sword, die by the sword. Ruth Padel has for many (many, many) years rather tediously promoted herself by taking pains to cultivate the image of a boldly, bohemianly sexy woman, both in her life and poetry. (Those who find this perplexing, having seen photographs, must remember her milieu. A great beauty in the academic world, as the wonderful writer Alice Thomas Ellis put it, is someone who in the real world would be lucky to be the runner-up to Miss Llandudno.)

New Directions...