Gimme Shelter

Sometimes the times can be expressed succinctly by a rock song. In the case of April, 2009 I have elected to take the thought provoking lyrics of Neil Hannon, in his vivid, if obvious enuncication of the inevitable. Greatest respect to the man:

Here comes the floodRivers of mud, babyHere comes the quakeEvacuate while you still canHere comes the fireOur funeral pyre, babyHere comes the floodHere comes the blood bath Here comes the flyFifty foot high, babyHere comes the warMore blood and goreThan you can standHere comes the raceFrom outer space, babyIts all overWere all gonna dieIf the good lord intended me to live in l.a., hed have given me a machine gun. still, here I am, just another little worried citizen of this modern-day pompeii waiting for the melt-down, the shWn, the great american close-down. when that fault-line that runs right through societys fabric finally snaps and the whole damn thing starts unravelling. why watch the sports channel, when youWatch cnn? ladies and gentlemen, the greatest race in history, the race to end all races, in fact the race to end history. in lane onethe san andreas fault. in lane twoglobal recession. in tel nino. in fourchemical war. lane fiveinter-racial conflict. lane sixauto immune deficiency syndrome. on your marks. get set. wait for it ..... go!Here comes the floodRivers of blood, babyHere comes the bombIt won t be longtil were all goneHere comes the sunRun baby run, babyIf you believe all that you readYoull know the end is nighWere all gonna die!

So.... Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The 'Social Contract' by Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a brilliant model of goverance, if there ever was one. The picture of sovereignty has clearly had a huge influence on G. Agamben in his huge works on Political governance and political rights: 'concerning the subject'. His ideas on 'equality' are brilliantly romantic, but I like what he is saying, that a state of equals is the only one worth having. It is a good to enshrine rights in a codified, republican constitution to articulate the extent of their reach, that is, reducing the dispute over their interpretation and the extent of political sovereignty. I am in favour of a codified Bill of Rights in the UK, if not for anything else than to deplete ambiguity over the authority of the Human Rights Act and its applicability in day to day living.