You gotta love Frank

I could blog about North Korea and the seemingly successful six-party talks. However, since DPRK's willingness to negotiate doesn't come as a surprise to me, I'd rather highlight Francis Fukuyama's recent article on identity and migration, published in Prospect Magazine.
I like Frank. He's one of those rare thinkers who are ready to admit that they've been mistaken in their previous (and politically highly influential) writings.
I, for one, liked ' The end of history? ' (1989). The original essay, but even more so the book, carried an ideology which had it's faults, but was still one of the most intellectually stimulating cases for post-cold war liberalism I've ever read. I am nevertheless delighted by the fact that Frank's snapped out of the U.S neo-liberal wet dream of the Nineties and has re-evaluated his own ideas. Intellectual maturity is the ability to admit that you were wrong. Not many people have managed such self-criticism.
I'm not always with Frank, but he's got something right. In the above article he dwelves into the importance of belonging.

Has anyone else noticed just how many companies there are advertising through their own 'blogs' in Blogger nowadays? It takes the fun out of bloghopping.
Now that I find myself complaining about corporations and companies, I'd also like to log my protest against the infiltration of film production companies and media corporations into YouTube. Some of my absolute favourite clips are no longer available due to pressure from aforementioned companies. Instead, NBC puts out far too cute clips as plugs for, say, Conan O'Brien. I don't officially embrace any breaches of copyright laws, but since you're interfering, at least put some of the more radical stuff out there.

Getting politically involved in Newcastle. Or not.

When I moved to Newcastle about 7 months ago I thought it would be interesting to get involved in local party politics. Not that I would have joined any singular party because a) I'm most probably not eligible due to already belonging to a party back in Finland, and b) I don't really feel like having to defend the policies of any British party. Rather, my intention was to get a closer look at grassroots politics here. In the light that political parties rely so much on volunteers and local activists, it seems odd that my (and as the autumn wore on, increasingly healf-hearted) attempts to get in contact with local politicians and party people failed quite as badly as they did.
I started with the Tories because I had fairly recently published an article on David Cameron and I wanted to see what, if anything, was going to change in the party on grassroot level. I started by giving them a phone call. And then another. It was summer, so I forgive them for not answering, but it would have been nice to get a call back once they returned from southern France. I continued by searching for the local party association on the web. All I ever found was a loop to the main Conservatives page. I left my contact details in the wish of becoming a volunteer in my local area. So far no-one has contacted me.
This was months ago, and I have since discovered that the local Tories have an email address. I will email them soon. The point is, I shouldn't have to try so hard!

My second brush with local politics took place when we had an environmental wake-up call in the flat and decided to start recycling. Our environmental concerns arose mainly from the ridiculous amounts of newspapers, wine bottles and beer cans we got through every week. These are the most commonly recycled materials, so we thought the City of Newcastle might have had a handy scheme for collection from us who live in the centre of the city. There are plenty of recycling centres around town, but without a car it would have been highly inconvenient, time consuming and hard work to transport several rubbish bags of the aforementioned materials by Metro to where ever. So we tried to contact our local councillor, one Mr. Nick Forbes (Lab) through the Newcastle City Council to see, if he could advise us on our problem. They have a lovely web page where you can leave your message and/or question to your councillor, and even tick a box whether you want your councillor to reply. Naturally I left a query on the Labour policies on recycling for us living in the centre of the city, and I naturally requested a reply from Mr. Forbes. I never heard back from him.

My third attempt was to get in touch with the Liberal Democrats of Westgate, our local area in Newcastle. I emailed their generic (but local) address explaining my interest in learning more about local LibDem policies, and asked them to send me any material they might have detailing their local activities. I made it clear that really wanted to get involved and I was optimistic that I would finally get a local political contact.
I have good experiences of Liberal Democrat grassroot activity. When living in Cardiff not a fortnight went by without a newsletter from our local councillor, Cathy Pearcy (LibDem). I was impressed by the work both she and her team put into informing us on what they were up to. I respect such transparency, and I assumed the LibDems in general would be more approachable than the two bigger parties.
I sent the email about 2 months ago, and although I knew that they would be busy over the Christmas period (like the Tories over the summer season), I still expected a reply of some kind, or a leaflet sent to me in the post at the least. No-one has so far gotten in touch with me.

I have vowed to make a few more attempts soon. The other week David Cameron made some noises about concentrating on the North of England to revive some interest in the Tories up here, and my flatmate encouraged me to contact someone in actual headquarters to give them a piece of my mind. I might well do that, if I can be bothered.
Honestly, if anyone local from the aforementioned parties reads this, please leave a comment.