Sinead Keller reports:

Manchester has the dubious honour of being Britain’s fattest city, according to a survey yesterday by a fitness magazine.
…..
How the cities ranked, with their fat score and, in brackets, last year’s ranking.

1 Manchester (6) 154
2 Stoke-on-Trent (3) 147
3= Liverpool (4) 146
3= Swansea (6) 146
5 Leicester (12) 137
6 Glasgow (1) 133
7= Edinburgh (2) 132
7= Wolverhampton (5) 132
9 Belfast (8) 131
10 Nottingham (11) 130
11 Bradford (16) 119
12 Birmingham (8) 117
13 Sheffield (14) 116
14 Plymouth (12) 115
15 Derby (10) 114
16 Newcastle (17) 114
17 Coventry (15) 111
18 Bristol (17) 106
19 Cardiff (19) 101
20 Leeds (20) 99
21 Southampton (20) 89
22 London (22) 55

Manchester seems to have exchanged places with Glasgow over the last year. I’m pleading innocent. And why does London keep people thinner? Is it all that time spent waiting on the Northern Line with nothing to eat?

Why Germaine won’t live in Australia:

For the vast majority, life in Australia is neither urban nor rural but suburban. The reality is not Uluru or the Sydney Opera House but endless, ever-expanding replications of Ramsay Street that spread out as rapidly as oil stains on water, further and further from the tiny central business districts of the state capitals.
…..
If your ambition is to live on Ramsay Street, where nobody has ever been heard to discuss a book or a movie, let alone an international event, then Australia may be the place for you.
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I was 12 years old when I decided that I had to get out of Australia if my life was to begin. I had been bored ever since I could remember. I was ungainly and I was bored by sport, which in Australia is a sure sign that you’re a bad person.
…..
The real reason I won’t live in Australia, even when Britain has no further use for my services, is that I love the country too much. The pain of watching its relentless dilapidation by people too relaxed to give a damn is more than I can bear.

There’s more of the same, be assured.

By a triumph of investigative blogging, I am now able to provide some perspective on that last story – immediately below – with this:

The search has started for two high-profile media figures to replace Greg Dyke as BBC director-general and Gavyn Davies as chairman after their resignations over the Hutton report.

BBC News Online goes on to name some possible candidates, not including you know who.

As he said – wow!

Update at 3.20 PM, January 31: The link under ‘wow’ has now gone dead. Yesterday it led one to a news item, to all appearances on the BBC’s own site, announcing Alistair Campbell as the new director-general of the Corporation.

Findings of the latest MSNBC Reuters Zogby poll:

WASHINGTON – As the Democratic presidential contenders struggle for victories in seven states that hold primaries and caucuses next Tuesday, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry holds substantial leads in the two states that have the largest number of delegates at stake, Missouri and Arizona, according to a new MSNBC/Reuters Zogby tracking poll released Friday morning.

With a total of 269 delegates to be selected Tuesday, Arizona and Missouri have a combined 129.

In Missouri, Kerry garners the support of 45 percent of likely primary voters, while his next-closest rival, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, has only 11 percent, according to the Zogby survey.

In Arizona, Kerry has taken a commanding lead with 38 percent, followed by retired Gen. Wesley Clark with 17 percent and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean with 12 percent.

In South Carolina, according to the poll, Kerry and Edwards are neck and neck, and in Oklahoma Clark is leading.

There is a thoughtful discussion by Michael Walzer, in the latest issue of Dissent, on Just and Unjust Occupations:

[W]e need criteria for jus post bellum that are distinct from (though not wholly independent of) those that we use to judge the war and its conduct. We have to be able to argue about aftermaths as if this were a new argument – because, though it often isn’t, it might be. The Iraq War is a case in point: the American debate about whether to fight doesn’t seem particularly relevant to the debate about the occupation: how long to stay, how much to spend, when to begin the transfer of power – and, finally, who should answer these questions. The positions we took before the war don’t determine the positions we take, or should take, on the occupation. Some people who opposed the war demand that we immediately “bring the troops home.” But others argue, rightly, it seems to me, that having fought the war, we are now responsible for the well-being of the Iraqi people; we have to provide the resources – soldiers and dollars – necessary to guarantee their security and begin the political and economic reconstruction of their country. Still others argue that the aftermath of the war has to be managed by international agencies like the UN Security Council – with contributions from many countries that were not part of the war at all. And then the leaders of those countries ask, Why are we responsible for its costs?

Read the rest for Walzer’s particular judgements about the present occupation of Iraq. He concludes:

So the justice of the occupation is up to the citizens of the United States. These are the tests that the Bush administration has to meet, and that we should insist on: first, the administration must be prepared to spend the money necessary for reconstruction; second, it must be committed to debaathification and to the equal protection of Iraq’s different ethnic and religious groups; third, it must be prepared to cede power to a legitimate and genuinely independent Iraqi government – which could even, if the bidding went that way, give its oil contracts to European rather than American companies.

(Hat tip: SdeW.)

Ken MacLeod was born in Stornoway, Scotland, in 1954. He’s been married to his wife Carol since 1981. They have two grown-up children, Sharon and Michael. After graduating with a BSc (Honours) in Zoology at the University of Glasgow, he did research at Brunel University, eventually gaining an MPhil. He worked in IT in London and Edinburgh. Since 1997 he has been a full-time SF writer. He has written eight novels, two novellas and several short stories and articles. Ken lives in West Lothian. He blogs at The Early Days of a Better Nation.

Why do you blog? > Because writing on Usenet newsgroups began to feel like writing on water.

What would be your main blogging advice to a novice blogger? > Get out more: write about things other than things online, and I don’t mean your cats, OK?

What are your favourite blogs? > Making Light, Charlie’s Diary, Whiskey Bar.

Who are your intellectual heroes? > Spinoza, Hume, Darwin, Marx.

What are you reading at the moment? > The Year of Our War, by Steph Swainton: a ‘New Weird’ fantasy.

Who are your cultural heroes? > Phil Ochs, Leonard Cohen, Warren Zevon, Karen Matheson, Shirley Manson and Edwin Morgan.

What is the best novel you’ve ever read? > I don’t know if it counts as a novel, but: Njal’s Saga.

What is your favourite poem? > The one that has most moved me recently has been Hugh MacDiarmid’s ‘Island Funeral’. Edwin Morgan’s ‘The Coin’ can reliably make my neck hairs prickle.

What is your favourite movie? > Blade Runner.

What is your favourite song? > This varies according to the mental soundtrack of the book I’m writing. For the latest one, it was ‘Mo Ghile Mear’ on the Chieftains’ album ‘The Long Black Veil’.

Can you name a major moral, political or intellectual issue on which you’ve ever changed your mind? > The economic calculation argument, several times.

Who are your political heroes? > Cromwell, Lincoln and Lenin.

What is your favourite piece of political wisdom? > In practical politics: ‘Put not your trust in princes.’ In political theory: Spinoza’s argument that the law works ‘…not by reasons, but by threats.’

If you could effect one major policy change in the governing of your country, what would it be? > Get the troops out of Iraq.

What do you consider to be the main threat to the future peace and security of the world? > The US drive for world hegemony.

What would be your most important piece of advice about life? > Life is not a rehearsal.

Do you think you could ever be married to, or in a long-term relationship with, someone with radically different political views from your own? > Yes.

What is your favourite proverb? > ‘Procrastination is the thief of time.’

If you were to relive your life to this point, is there anything you’d do differently? > Fight harder for my most mistaken positions, and thereby learn better sooner.

What would your ideal holiday be? > Days of sun, swimming, beer and books, with a few strenuous and interesting excursions.

What do you like doing in your spare time? > Reading, with a CD, a small whisky and a cigarette.

What talent would you most like to have? > To think faster.

What would be your ideal choice of alternative profession or job? > Palaeontologist.

Who is your favourite comedian or humorist? > Rich Hall.

If you could have any three guests, past or present, to dinner who would they be? > David Hume, Tommy Jackson and Tom Paulin.

What animal would you most like to be? > A cat.

[Previous profiles: Ophelia Benson (Nov 7); Chris Bertram (Sep 26); Alan Brain (Oct 10); Chris Brooke (Jan 2); Francois Brutsch (Dec 5); Anne Cunningham (Jan 23); Jackie D (Oct 17); Brad DeLong (Jan 16); Harry Hatchet (Oct 24); Saddam Hussein (Nov 14); Jeff Jarvis (Dec 26); Oliver Kamm (Nov 21); Sheila O’Malley (Dec 19); Glenn Reynolds (Jan 9); Natalie Solent (Nov 28); Roger L. Simon (Oct 31); Michael J. Totten (Oct 3); Brian Weatherson (Dec 12). The normblog profile is a weekly Friday morning feature.]

I can’t even bring myself to link to it. But it’s everywhere. Anyone interested enough will find it for themselves. Start you know where, on you know which pages.

1. Had Hutton been more critical of the government and less critical of the BBC, you can be sure that the status of his enquiry, and not merely the content of his findings, would have been invoked in support of calling down who knows what degree of punitive or remedial action against Blair, Hoon and whoever else. But he wasn’t, and so that status for the whitewash-criers is neither here nor there. It’s all ‘narrow terms of reference’, ‘he’s only one person, and human’, and so forth. The norms of procedural justice within a liberal democracy? Forget about it.

2. Of course, people are entitled to question the findings of judicial bodies, but the questioning would be easier to respect in this case if it wasn’t so blunderingly self-assured and lacking in any sense of its own partiality and its own blindspots.

3. Item (a) in support of that last assertion is the claim that Hutton’s terms of reference were too narrow – Gilligan, ‘sexing up’, the 45-minute claim, etc. OK, so how should the terms of reference be broadened? Just in this respect: no WMD have been found, that was the prospectus on which the Iraq war was sold, so we need an enquiry to look into that whole question. And that’s it. Why no other questions? Given that what Hutton was looking into concerned an aspect of the government’s relationship to the BBC, why not also broaden things out in the other direction? Not only to cover the government’s overall record with respect to the war but to cover the BBC’s as well? After all, the Beeb itself complains it was under attack from Alistair Campbell for having an anti-war agenda, a perception (Campbell’s) that is shared by many. A wider enquiry, therefore, to take in that issue? Nope, not a peep (that I’ve come across) about this.

4. And most of the whitewash stuff is being produced by whom? Why, by journalists for liberal, anti-war media. Have you read even one of these who has acknowledged that there might be a problem with substituting his or her perception of the issues for Lord Hutton’s over a matter on which they have at least two strong reasons for being partisan towards one side and against the other? I haven’t. This relates, though, to a war which they vehemently opposed; and to findings against a media organization to which they are well-disposed and in favour of a government to which they aren’t well-disposed. It’s a bit of a caricature, but not too much of one, to suggest that this is like me coming before a judicial tribunal of some sort, and in which my own conduct is under scrutiny, and saying ‘The hell with judge and tribunal. I can decide.’

5. Item (b) in support of 2 above is this. Suppose it turns out there is not even a single particle of a WMD in Iraq, nor was there one in the run-up to the war. That would be, indeed, a significant matter and in need of explanation. No question about it. But adverting to that – the need for an enquiry with wider terms of reference – in the context of Hutton’s findings (as Jeremy Paxman repeatedly did last night on Newsnight) is, in a key way, refusing to face up to one main thrust of those findings: that Blair and his government did not lie or wilfully deceive the public. They spoke from the available intelligence (and intelligence, moreover, pretty much in common with that of other countries). If there are and were no Iraqi WMD, then that will have been a massive intelligence failure, and it will need to be accounted for. But this is something different from the flagrant dishonesty of a government towards its own electorate. And those now waving their hands towards the need for an enquiry with wider terms of reference are being nicely vague about the difference.

6. Further to 3. Lord Hutton was highly critical of the BBC’s procedures with regard to Andrew Gilligan’s reporting. Virtually everyone, so far as I can see, even amongst the whitewash-criers, is willing to allow that at least some of that criticism was merited: the Beeb was at fault. Any percentage in asking why it might have made a mistake like this in the particular matter that was under dispute? Concern for the independence of the Corporation from government bullying? OK. It’s possible that this was a motive. Any other possibilities swim into view? No? Well, I think there are some, and so do a lot of other people, not all of us enemies of the BBC or of independent public broadcasting.

7. Aggravated times. Some willingness to accept and respect the recognized procedures for resolving disputes is one of the things we have that keep us talking to each other.

Thorne had tried, once, to tell him. To explain that real country music was fuck all to do with lost dogs and rhinestones… Thorne had tried to convey to Holland the beauty of George Jones’s voice, the wickedness in Merle Haggard’s and the awesome rumble of Cash, the dark daddy of them all. A few pints in, he was telling anybody who would listen that Hank Williams was a tortured genius who was undoubtedly the Kurt Cobain of his day and he may even have begun to sing ‘Your Cheating Heart’ around closing time. He couldn’t recall every detail, but he did remember that Holland’s eyes had begun to glaze over long before then…

From Lazybones, by Mark Billingham.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of Westminster and the Chief Rabbi have written to the Times as follows:

Sir, Since its inception 60 years ago during the darkest days of the Second World War, the Council of Christians and Jews (CCJ) has continued to confront the evil of anti-Semitism with a message of healing and mutual respect between our communities.
…..
Today… anti-Semitism is resurfacing as a phenomenon in many parts of the world. Incitement to hatred and actual violence against Jewish people has increased.

Britain has been less affected than many other countries but has certainly not been immune. We recognise that many in the Jewish community feel vulnerable and afraid.

As presidents of CCJ, we agree that anti-Semitism is abhorrent. It is an attempt to dehumanise a part of humanity by making it a scapegoat for shared ills. We pledge ourselves once more to combat all forms of racism, prejudice and xenophobia.

We recognise that the suffering of the Jewish people is a stain on the history of Europe and our total rejection of anti-Semitism, amid evidence of its resurgence, is a signal that we will not permit it to stain our continent’s future as it has its past. Criticism of government policy in Israel, as elsewhere, is a legitimate part of democratic debate. However, such criticism should never be inspired by antiSemitic attitudes, extend to a denial of Israel’s right to exist, or serve as justification for attacks against Jewish people around the world. Achieving peace, justice and reconciliation in the Holy Land would help to make it harder for anti-Semitism to flourish.
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Yours faithfully,

Rowan Cantuar, Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Jonathan Sacks,
The Council of Christians and Jews