As the UK Conservative Party leadership contest resumes following the candidates' two-week holiday break, it's good to see that it's already turning nasty. The run-off between the final two candidates, Iain Duncan Smith and Kenneth Clarke, always seemed to offer plenty of scope for entertaining public rows. After all, although they're both members of the same party, the two candidates have dramatically differing views.

In the dark blue corner is the ex-military man, Mr Duncan Smith - friend of Margaret Thatcher, firmly in favour of 'family values' and fiercely opposed to greater ties between Britain and the European Union. In the pale blue corner with the ashtray attached is Mr Clarke, the former Health Secretary and unrepentant smoker: pro-Europe and keen to see the Conservatives move towards the political centre. The contest between them has barely begun, but they're already arguing over what the format for the forthcoming hustings should be.

Some years ago, there was a Labour Party leadership contest so bitterly divisive that one of the party's MPs, Austin Mitchell, was moved to comment: 'Come on in, the blood's lovely!' For those of us who don't much care for the Conservatives, there seems to be every reason to believe that the Duncan Smith v. Clarke contest will be just as lively. Whoever emerges victorious will surely only do so after taking a serious verbal battering from one faction of the party or the other, and the new leader's coronation seems sure to be accompanied by the sight of many Tories tearing up their membership cards.

To some of Duncan Smith's hardcore supporters, Clarke is a traitor who wants to sell the soul of Britain to foreign bureaucrats. To many of Clarke's backers, Duncan Smith is an extremist with little appeal to the general public, who would be likely to lead the Conservatives to their third consecutive landslide general election defeat - an analysis with which I tend to agree. With the bluff, likeable, popular Clarke at the helm, I reckon that the Tories might be able to mount a serious challenge to New Labour over the next few years. With Duncan Smith in charge, they'd be likely to stay in the political wilderness.

Nevertheless, I hope that Clarke wins, for two reasons. Firstly, it's bad for democracy when the main opposition party is unelectable. Secondly, I fear that, were Duncan Smith to achieve greater prominence, he might revive an element in British politics that has been dormant for some time: the religious right.

Duncan Smith has argued on a Christian Conservative website that more aid for the poor should be distributed by religious groups, rather than by the state. Interviewed on the Conservative Christian Fellowship site, he commented that religious groups were often
'... actually resented by those determined to pursue a politically correct agenda... I am determined that they should play a much greater role in the welfare society.'

On the same website, Duncan Smith was asked whether Britain's political parties had failed to address the 'hopelessness' in the poorest communities in the country. He replied:
'The state can provide funds, but it cannot provide hope. This is an example of where directing more aid through voluntary organisations, including faith-based ones, can improve results.'

So here we have a potential head of government who doesn't believe that a government can do anything to provide underprivileged people with hope for the future. He'd like religious unbelievers such as myself to have to beg for assistance from organisations based around beliefs we do not share, should we find ourselves hitting hard times. Would we, perhaps, be required to pray for a job before we signed on for our welfare payments?

I do not doubt that there are religious charities that do a great deal of good in the world. It's just that all too often, their help comes with strings attached that are meant to lead the recipients towards sharing the beliefs of those giving the aid. I'd prefer to get my benefit cheque without an invitation to a prayer meeting enclosed, thank you kindly.

To American readers, all of this may sound rather familiar. It isn't an original idea by Mr Duncan Smith. It's a concept imported wholesale from the United States, where it's strongly endorsed by President Bush. That's why one of his first acts as President was to cut federal funding for any overseas charity organisations that provided abortions, and steer more money instead towards 'faith-based' organisations.

Until recently, Duncan Smith was largely unknown to the general public, and the British religious right appeared to consist entirely of Ann Widdecombe¹. If Duncan Smith becomes Tory leader, religious Conservatives may start to look like a serious force.

I'd rather take my chances with cuddly Ken.

We're all used to seeing those ads for films that prominently display quotes from enthusiastic reviews which the film has received from critics. However, a strange tale has emerged this week that casts a disturbing new light on that form of advertising.

In America, Sony promoted several of its films, including 'A Knight's Tale' and 'The Animal', with glowing quotes from 'film critic' David Manning. However, following an investigation by state officials in Oregon, they have been obliged to sign a pact promising not to do so again, on pain of a $25,000 fine for violating consumer protection laws.

You see, there was just one problem with the quotes from David Manning. He doesn't actually exist, and the 'quotes' were invented by marketing executives. Since that awkward fact emerged, Sony, 20th Century Fox, Artisan Entertainment and Universal Pictures have admitted to using actors or company employees in TV commercials supposedly featuring praise for their films from the paying public.

Frankly, I'm surprised that Sony went to so much trouble in the 'David Manning' case. There is, after all, a time-honoured method of fabricating positive quotes about movies, which is simply to take tiny extracts from reviews out of context. In this way, 'It was a wonderful relief when this tedious, over-hyped piece of garbage finally came to an end' can be 'edited' to 'Wonderful'.

There is an intriguing twist to this tale. Two cinemagoers have filed lawsuits against Sony, saying that they were deceived into paying to see bad films. Now if that is ever deemed to be illegal, the movie industry is really going to be in trouble.

I have never been happy about the ban on foreign languages here at h2g2, and so I was delighted to hear that the numerous German speakers on the site will shortly be able to converse here in that language. This is because of a volunteer translator scheme currently being set up by Peta, our Community Editor, so that German postings can be monitored.

I was so pleased when I heard about this that I rushed off to the Babel Fish automatic translation site so that I could say 'well done' to Peta in German. Unfortunately, after I posted the results, a German speaker gently broke it to me that I'd inadvertently congratulated Peta on building the kind of well that water comes out of. Which just goes to show that you shouldn't necessarily believe everything that a fish tells you.

However, it seems to me that there is already one non-English language creeping into some corners of h2g2, and to me it is less welcome than the German postings will be. That language is text message-speak. Or should I say 'TXT MSG SPK'?

I send text messages myself, and of course I abbreviate words when I do so. There, it makes sense because of the laborious process of building up a message character by character on the telephone keypad, and the limits on the number of characters you can send at once. But on a website like this, text message-speak just looks ugly and lazy.

I suppose that I'm showing my age by admitting to being bothered by something like this; but I can't help it. I love the English language. It's a beautiful, expressive, subtle means of communication, and seeing it unnecessarily reduced to crude clusters of capitalised consonants depresses me.

So if you're looking forward to posting in German, good luck to you. But if you were planning on posting in text message-speak, PLS DNT. THNK U.

Much of the writing that appears in some newspapers is so formulaic that it seems as if it could have been written by machines. Well, soon, it actually might be.

Two scientists from North Carolina State University, Charles Callaway and James Lester, have developed a 'writing' program called Author. It has already demonstrated its ability to generate new versions of traditional children's fairy stories by changing details about the characters and the plots.

Now, speaking to the American Association of Artificial Intelligence, Callaway and Lester have claimed that the program could be linked to other systems, already in use, that can extract information from text. In this way, they say, Author could scan news wires or documents to extract the gist of a story, and then turn it into instant 'copy'.

One possible problem that has been pointed out is that Author is unable to tell fact from fiction. However, this would hardly matter if it were employed on a downmarket tabloid. Author's tendency to turn its raw material into grammatically correct sentences might be a problem for a tabloid, but perhaps Callaway and Lester will be able to come up with a new version of Author called Sleazy Hack.

The possibilities seem endless. Only one thing is certain: it'll never happen here error - redo from start. The program Ormondroyd has performed an illegal action and will be closed down.

Ormondroyd

16.08.01. Front Page

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