Magnum Carta

I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop but it's giving me a full-on frisson, a Looking at Naked Smiling Tom Selleck in 1983 frisson.

I don't want to speak too soon, but it totally looks like a British politician has actually done something that wasn't the political equivalent of a Stupid Pet Trick. Is it possible? That someone from their right-wing party is uncorrupted enough to make a big, career-destroying stink to defend habeas corpus because he believes it's worth defending? He has certainly forced the issue of 42-day detentions without charge in Britain to the national and international consciousness in a big way, which, if I assume his motives are good, is what his motives were - and if his motives weren't good I can't imagine what they were.

Really? Has an actual political ideologue managed to sprout his way out of the soulless mechanistic dehumanizing political latrine that has been British national politics ever since I can remember (1997 - before that I only cared about ponies and The Cure)? And he's rightwing? And why did the Labour Party time this vote so close to the anniversary of the Magna Carta anyways? That was so fucking stupid or cynical that it's reason enough in itself to vote for any other party. And how long can that country's media keep printing Labour press releases instead of doing some actual political coverage?

Well. If a British politician has actually taken a principled stand on civil liberties, no matter what party he's from, it makes my week, which so far has been good. And I can share some of the reasons it has been good on a public forum:

1. Mistress La Spliffe 1, Belgacom -46. After threats and public mockery and yelling and carrying on over a month, they've struck our fraudulent charges and knocked €46 off our normal bill to make up for being the biggest assholes in the world. Of course, while I won the battle I won't feel I've won the war until either I leave the country or Belgacom does, which as the national provider, 53% owned by the state, it will only do by going bankrupt, or by seeing the state disintegrate. But guess what! Both will probably happen soon.

2. Speaking of the fragile Belgian state, as of this week I am an official resident of it. This is a process which has taken, as you may have noticed, well over a year. Three trips to the commune, one to the police station, a kazillion forms filled out - and all this for someone who is an official citizen of the European Union, giving me under law the right to establish my residency here with a minimum of bother. Funny more than anything, because neither employers nor landlords give a good goddamn once they saw my passport. I only needed it to open a high-interest savings account.

3. I saw a German dentist this week. She spent one of our appointments gouging at a tooth that my last dentist had fucked up. That made me very, very nervous for the next appointment, at which she told me that my teeth are in terrific shape. Dentists have said that to me before, but never a German dentist, so I'd never taken it to heart. But now I'm as flattered as the only girl with cocaine at a male model party.