Here at Syntagma Towers we groaned at the news that Edward Kennedy is to get an honorary Knighthood at the request of Gordon Brown, a long term friend of the Massachusetts Senator.

The fate of Mary Jo Kopechne, left to drown at Chappaquiddick Island by the younger brother of JFK, destroyed Ted Kennedy’s presidential hopes for ever.

The incident was made worse by Kennedy’s failure to alert police and rescue services for 24 hours or more. Did Brown not remember this shameful incident while planning to devalue British chivalric orders?

I suppose if you’re prepared to debauch the nation’s currency, and find room for Stalinist Eric Hobsbawm in the Companionship of Honour, you’re beyond doing the right thing.

Of Knighthoods, Shakespeare got it right:

When first this order was ordain’d, my Lords,
Knights … were of noble birth,
Valiant and virtuous, full of haughty courage …
He then that is not furnish’d in this sort
Doth but usurp the sacred name of Knight,
Profaning this most honourable order.

Quite.

It’s official. Labour will lose the next election.

At least that was the strong impression given by Peter Mandelson on the Andrew Marr programme this morning.

Discussing the problems of the Royal Mail and his unpopular efforts to privatize 30 percent of it, Mandelson said that Labour had tried to do this a number of times before, without success.

Then the crucial admission: “This is the last throw of the dice for this government.”

Slip of the tongue? Freudian whatsit? Silky way of subtly distancing himself from the coming defeat by predicting it, while sticking it on Gordon Brown?

Or do we overrate the Machiavellian powers of this man for whom “the last throw of the dice” might be equally appropriate?

After criticizing the government’s handling of the financial crisis many times on this site, I’ve received a few indignant communications asking “What would you do then?”

Here’s what I wrote on January 23:

“Of the £650bn [public sector] pot, an emergency £150bn cut would be relatively easy, if painful for some. Overpaid operatives in the sector could be offered the choice between a 25 percent pay cut or redundancy. This would rebuild the public finances and make room for tax cuts. Brown built his empire, let him now dismantle it for this country’s sake.”

Paul Johnson wrote this week of the 20 percent pay cuts across public services during the 1930s depression (Spectator).

Now hundreds of thousands of workers in the private sector have quietly agreed to pay cuts already. Many more have been laid off altogether or put onto shorter working weeks. Why then should the public sector be immune this time round?

The answer is twofold: Brown is afraid of public sector strikes, and is averse to clipping his “client state” for electoral purposes.

Politics is the art of the possible, but I believe that most people in the public sector should realize they can’t be set above the rest forever.

David Cameron and George Osborne will face a wall of ideology, propped up by buttresses of self-interest, when they come to power. It’s vital, though, they don’t shirk the dismantling of Brown’s folly.

We now know that Gordon Brown has sunk an extra £219 billion a year in real terms into his personal vanity project, the equivalent of the massive pyramids built by dodgy Pharaohs in ancient Egypt.

Lopping £150 billion off that is not beyond the wit of determined Conservatives.

On Thursday, Prince Charles is to claim we have 100 months to save the planet from “irreversible climate change”. A strange assertion in the circumstances.

Man’s contribution to natural global warming is unknown and, in my view, probably greatly overstated by the anti-capitalist activists who push the argument to ridiculous levels.

However, consider what they might say if the present economic crash had not happened, and countries around the world had voluntarily reduced their greenhouse gases by the same amount as the drop caused by the current world depression.

Wouldn’t they be ecstatic with delight and self-praise? Imagine the articles in The Guardian claiming the moral high ground. I don’t think the phrase: “100 months to save the world” would be uttered by anyone. Why spoil a great story.

Furthermore, has any of the followers of James Lovelock considered that a prolonged world depression might be the handiwork of Gaia — the supposed self-regulatory mechanism of the planet itself?

If Gaia exists, it’s precisely what you would expect, is it not?

According to the theory, Mankind is an irrelevance in all this.

A few months ago I succumbed to the Twitter craze, mainly to find out about “microblogging” — messages limited to 140 characters, or less.

For illustration, the paragraph above is 138 characters.

I don’t use the account very much (twitter.com/Syntagma), and I haven’t delved into it beyond spraying out a few tart comments from time to time.

However, there’s a vast hinterland behind Twitter, comprising hundreds of applications that allow you to aggregate, sort, search and personalize the modest, low wordage utterances of the Twitocracy. Some Twitizens even believe it’s the way news will be distributed in future.

How does Twitter make money? It doesn’t. Google has denied it will buy it, which must put the kibosh on the service pretty soon.

Who else will snap it up in the current climate? Rupert Murdoch, the Barclay Brothers? Few takers, I think.

It’s more than likely that a new class system will emerge, with toffs who read newspapers, and twits who tweet like birds.

The fate of an earlier Canadian Conservative Government is casting the gloomiest of shades over Labour MPs. In 1993 it was reduced from power to two seats in the Canadian House of Commons.

The Canadian meltdown has no equivalent in British politics, although the Tories have been in the doldrums for 12 years and sometimes it must have felt like that.

Now it’s Labour’s turn to ruminate their fate and sink into political bipolar disorder. Could it happen here?

The Canadian House of Commons has 308 members, the British House, 646. Two seats in Ottawa would translate into 4.19 at Westminster.

Is it possible that Labour could fall into single figures at the next election? Unlikely, but a double-figure result should not be ruled out.

With Gordon in charge, the campaign will be clunky. Whatever advantage a sitting government gets from being in power will be cancelled out by his dire performance.

His closest colleagues will be more interested in positioning themselves to take over the leadership than saving his neck. The mood of the public will be explosive and there could be rioting on the streets.

David Cameron, on the other hand, will undoubtedly run a smooth and impressive campaign, with all his senior people onboard for a return to power.

The LibDems and other parties will be severely squeezed. UKIP Tories will want to be on the winning side, while the BNP will take votes from Labour.

It’s hard to see how a Conservative landslide can be avoided. But a Canadian-style meltdown is not the British way.

If it were, who, we might ask, would be Labour’s 0.19? There are plenty of candidates for that role.

John Evans

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I would never stream my Twitterings on any normal website, but I thought you might appreciate a small selection of them here:

Why does Twitter ask, “What are you doing?” above the write box? Why not “What are you thinking?” Better still, “Why are you doing that?”

Blackberry 9000 on horizon. Just ordered Curve. Should I cancel and wait?

UK Gov on 23pc in new poll. Conservatives on 49pc. The next election is all over.

Moneyizor. The failing eurozone: http://www.moneyizor.com/2008/05/09/the-failing-eurozone/

I was disappointed with Yanik Silver’s book “Moonlighting on the Internet”. Sooo Web 1.0 Minus. Old hat Plus.

Considering buying “Problogger The Book”, but have I read it all on the site? Can anyone convince me it’s a good investment?

Twittergram sounds like a good service in embryo. See Dave Winer. Let’s hope it surfaces soon.

It’s nearly 1pm and I haven’t started my 3-hour working day. Wandering around book shops and buying an Aussie hat absorbed my morning.

Just bought Herman Hesse’s “Narcissus and Goldmund”. It’s the only one I haven’t read. Also John Buchan’s “Sick Heart River”.

Switched Syntagma to full feed. Resisted long and hard but the tide is irresistible.

Steve Rubel thinks that Renaissance Man is doomed because of the internet. The thing is, RM only uses the i/n sparingly. He reads many books.

New Mayor of London has appointed Bill Bratton to clean up London as he did NYC under Giuliani. Great Move. Congrats Boris.

My problem is I find it hard to work when the sun is shining. This is why I never moved to California.

And lots more, folks. Roll up at http://twitter.com/Syntagma. 140 characters of …

Please finish the sentence yourself.

I’ve been on Twitter for a few weeks now, so I should give some sort of account of it, especially as I said I would.

I have remained very wary about “following” too many people — with good cause. So far I’ve only added 24, but already when I logon in the morning there are pages and pages of back messages, mainly by a handful of scribes who tell me what they had for breakfast, how many cups of coffee they imbibed yesterday, and then list all the meetings they’ve got throughout the day, before embarking on a marathon to ‘n’ fro with obscure individuals with names like Plodoff, CrankyAss and LowFalutin’ (I made those up to avoid embarrassing real people).

I’ve taken to skimming deftly through those Tweetaramas now, allowing around 5 seconds per page.

The most valuable facility is the “Replies” folder which holds all messages aimed directly at you (@Syntagma) which are very much fewer than the general river of Tweets. I could easily get by with a few Tweets a day, plus references to the Replies cache.

However, I’ve also enabled my cellphone/mobile to receive mobile Tweets. I’ve no idea what they are, but suspect they are “direct messages” which are sent as texts. I seem to have a limit of 250. Maybe after that they will charge my account. Who knows? I’ll be sure to turn it off when they do.

I do have some rather prestigious “Web 2.0″ people following me. Check the list. Some of them are quite interesting in a Web 2.0 sort of way. So far no Web 3.0 followers — maybe they’re too busy semanticizing about the future.

The real problem with Twitter, as with all social networks, is its addictive qualities. It’s so easy to drown in the stuff. If you work for a living online, as I do, it’s vital to rein in your expressive tendencies. Tweets pay no bills (pun not intended).

Indeed, Tweeting will undermine your ability to post content on your sites as it can drain away your creative juices before you’ve even begun the day’s work. Faced with a long, detailed piece to write, the ease of a <140 character post spoils you for the harder task. Better to Twitter in 5-minute spurts two or three times a day.

If, as many do, you attempt to document your entire day as it passes, you are a gonna. As in "gone with the birds" -- no pun intended.

I'll stick with it for now, highlighting the occasional post, like this one -- using tinyurl.com to reduce the character count of the link -- and see where it takes me. As the numbers of my followers mount, I see dimly the name of Alfred Hitchcock materializing in my mind's eye.

I’ve just joined Twitter — for technical reasons, I hasten to add.

A pair of lovebirds twittering

The technical reason is that I discovered that the username “Syntagma” had not been taken, so I secured it in perpetuity — or as long as any social network lasts, whichever is the shorter.

I’ve sprayed my entire Gmail address book with invites, so you may get one. Since it’s still over 300 addresses long, even after drastic pruning, I’m awaiting the results with some trepidation.

So far, I have one tweet on my sheet, a brilliant piece of literature about what I’ve been doing today. Please don’t all rush at once to view it or you may bring the server down.

If anyone wants to follow or be followed, just send a tweet to Syntagma. I’m sure the system will handle all the techie stuff. I still haven’t found my way around it all yet.

I will, naturally, produce a comprehensive analysis of the service soon. In under 140 characters, of course.

You know, maybe that’s where they’re going wrong.

There’s quite a bit of chatter around about comments being separated from blog posts by various network services. Somehow this is said to diminish blogs as a folkish artform. Does that matter?

The 21st-century internet is the stuff of Quantum Mechanics. Everything is possible without limit, whatever we may think about the outcome. The Web is a vast array of small atoms, not large planets. Its laws are closer to magic than physics and can be said to exist only within the context of human thought.

Leaving that inevitability aside because we can’t influence it, I believe we should be more worried about small concerns in small cases.

A couple of months ago there was an explosion of comments on Twitter about the way an interview was conducted with a founder of Facebook by a hapless BusinessWeek reporter, who was deemed not to have done a great job. To read some A-list bloggers, you’d think Jesus had been crucified all over again.

The poor woman concerned must have felt the stigmata piercing her extremities.

As I commented on one blog, “If this is what passes for REALLY BIG NEWS on Twitter, God help us all.”

It’s the old, old story of mass hysteria breaking out on what seems to be the big question of the moment. If you don’t get involved, you’re somehow not quite alive. Even people not in the interview audience were screaming blue murder — apparently.

Now, I’m not going to have another go at Twitter. I actually admire Evan Williams and his business ethos. He deserves to succeed and he has many supporters.

I just wish the “wisdom of the crowd” was not being compressed into a few self-appointed Black Holes around various insignificant 1960s-style “happenings”.

We need the crowd to defeat tyrants, not to tyrannize ordinary folk just doing their jobs, no matter how awkwardly.

Here ends the sermon on no particular mount.