“But this time it was Hetherington, a printing worker, who led the frontal attack (on the demands for freedom of the press). His ‘Poor Man’s Guardian‘ carried the emblem of a hand-press, the motto Knowledge is Power, and the heading ‘Published contrary to “Law” to try the power of “‘Might” against “Right”.

And as an example of the seditious power of satire, a power the ‘might’ of the government, the industrialists and landowners tried to crush, here’s a sample of some of the work of William Hone:

“Our Lord, who art in the Treasury, whatsoever be thy name, thy power be prolonged, thy will be done throughout the empire, as it is in each session. Give us our usual slops, and forgive us our occassional absences on divisions; as we promise not to forgive those that divide against thee. Turn us not out of our places; but keep us in the House of Commons, the land of Pensions and Plenty; and deliver us from the People. Amen.

New Labour spin doctors; eat your hearts out.

Interesting project. But as interesting is the fact that the Guardian has become a talking newspaper. It’s now a multi-media publisher rather than a print one. This changes the definition of what a ‘newspaper’ actually is; and presumably puts the Guardian into competition with other online and multi-media producers…including more directly with television.

It remains to be seen how all of this will pan out; but the existing models of newspaper, radio and television are almost certainly redundant.

The first part of which was written in 1604; that’s over 400 years ago. Which begs the first question of how much of what is captured on electronic media will be still available in 40 years, let alone a possible 400 years. And what would be the point of most of it?

At least Cervantes wrote great literature which is definitely worth preserving. And it is uplifting to realise that despite the constant stupidity of great swathes of humanity, usually organised into ruling classes and governments and coalesced around ideologies such as ‘capitalism’ and ‘neo-liberalism’ that works of art do survive.  Unlike Quixote’s own library…

“That same night the housekeeper set light to all the books in the yard and all those in the whole house as well, and burnt them. Some that were burned deserved to be treasured up among the eternal archives, but fate and the laziness of the inquisitor forbade it. And so in them was fulfilled the saying that the saint sometimes pays for the sinner”.

This was taken about a month ago. Someone dressed up as a box of chocolates, the free newspaper and the street cleaner complaining (quite rightly in my opinion) of all the extra work involved in removing literally hundreds of thousands of these free papers every day.

The thing I most loathe about Blair is his hypocrisy. The man’s in the Labour party but ideologically he’s a Tory and a Republican, intellectually he’s a neo-con and his character and personality lead him to be friends with all sorts dubious money grabbing thugs (like Berlusconi, Bush and Murdoch). He may be in the Labour Party but he really isn’t anything to do with Labour.

As I read somewhere the other day, if you’re pet is small and gold and lives in a bowl of water, you can call it Fido, but it’s probably not a dog.