RosieBell

Pedal on Parliament - We're Everyone

Saturday it rained hard all day. That wasn't encouraging for those of us who were going to Pedal on Parliament.   However Sunday was windless, and only a haar to shut out the son.  In this spring of constant freezing winds and even snow, the weather passed as balmy. 

Last year's Pedal on Parliament was the first.  The organisers expected a few hundreds.  3,000 showed up.  This year we were 4,000 strong.  It was very satisfying to wait in Middle Meadow Walk and see the snake tail of the procession extend right along the Meadows.  All sorts of cyclists waited, from finger thin lycrists to a woman who looked like George Orwell's spinster cycling to morning service, from trick cyclists to wobbling kiddies. 

I don't think our actual ride had such a dramatic effect as last year, when a mass of cyclists took over the Royal Mile, essentially owning the streets for once.  For reasons of traffic flow we were marshalled in batches.  The sense of numbers being united for a cause, which is part of a demonstration, was there when we were waiting for the ride to begin but lost when we cycled in dribs and drabs.

We got more of the mass feeling at the gathering in front of Holyrood Palace.

The rally began with David Brennan, the instigator of the first Pedal on Parliament, laying out the theme of making cycling ordinary:-

We aren’t ‘cyclists’, we’re everyone – from the mum taking her children to nursery to the road cyclist doing 100k at the weekend. But we’re also the kids in the back of the car looking wistfully out of the window because their parents can’t risk them riding to school, the people who drive to the gym to ride on stationary bikes because the roads are too fast and busy. There’s a real hunger out there for conditions where everyone can ride, from 8 to 80 and we’re calling on the Scottish government to make the investment to make that a reality.

Cycling is a single issue campaign, which means that the responses of the crowd are unlike those at a left-wing demo.  At the rally the police got a round of applause because they were on bicycles and had stopped the traffic for us.  The media got a cheer because they are mostly on our side.  The Saturday Glasgow Herald had run this editorial, which could have been a campaigner's press release:-

Cycling should be a simple idea whose time has come. It is a cheap and available activity that has been shown to have positive effects on longevity, health and well-being. It is a convivial activity and a great morale booster. It is easily incorporated into daily life, especially in summer. It can be enjoyed at any level from a toddler on a pink trike to the Lycra-clad fanatic putting 100k under his wheels each weekend. If enough of us swap four wheels for two, cycling could make a significant contribution to tackling climate change as well as relieving congestion and improving air quality. Yet for generations cycling has been in decline. Transport policy has focused on cars and lorries and the way we travel has made us less healthy. Cyclists have become regarded as a rather eccentric minority, often viewed with outright hostility by motorists. Most Scots now consider cycling too risky, with some justification. (Another cyclist died on Thursday after a collision with a pick-up truck south of Inverness.)

To return cycling to levels that can contribute to healthier living and the shift to a low carbon economy, without a rise in road deaths and injuries, major changes in public policy will be required. As transport is devolved, the Scottish Government must take the lead on this issue.

The SNP administration talks about safer cycling and has a target of 10% of all journeys being taken by bike by 2020 but its rhetoric has not been matched by action.

Around £25 per head per year needs to be spent to achieve that goal. The actual spend is less than £3. Only a concerted campaign, supported by opposition parties at Holyrood, prevented cuts to the budget for active travel (cycling and walking) last year.

The Green politician got the warmest reception but a Tory councillor could be applauded when he pointed to Boris Johnson and his London cycling schemes and Andrew Mitchell, who cyclists don't see as a snob supposed calling the police plebs, but as another cyclist being discriminated against. 

The Times has been campaigning for safe cycling ever since one of their journalists was killed cycling, and gave us a front page picture on Monday. 

Sally Hinchcliffe, one of the organisers of Pedal on Parliament, wrote in The Guardian:-

None of us had ever organised a demonstration of this scale in our lives, half of us had never even met each other until the day before the first demo, and we were astounded when somehow – through a mixture of determination, tweeting, mass flyering, blogging and countless emails – we managed to assemble 3,000 cyclists on the Meadows in Edinburgh to lobby Scotland's politicians for more investment and better conditions for cyclists of all kinds.

We were delighted to be joined not only by the "lycra brigade" but by hundreds of families, with several kids even completing the ride on balance bikes. The day was both moving and joyful, a carnival of cycling and a serious attempt to show the politicians that investing in cycling wasn't just something for existing cyclists, but for everyone.

Fast forward a few months, and essentially nothing had changed – for all the warm words from our politicians about how we were "pushing on an open door". While the walking and cycling budget had at least stopped declining, it was nowhere near the level that was needed to see real growth in cycling across Scotland.

We were invited to meet the minister for transport, Keith Brown, but although he listened, it didn't translate into any real action. He recently told the BBC that modernising Scotland's transport meant building more motorways, and they've managed to find the money for a programme of road building while cycling has to wait to see if it gets a few crumbs out of "Barnett consequentials" (windfall money from the Westminster budget).

While Westminster's all party cycling group's recent Get Britain Cycling report laid out a realistic roadmap of how mass cycling could be achieved, Scotland is stuck with the Cycling Action Plan for Scotland, a document that is neither a plan nor provides much in the way of any action. Though Scotland's health, pollution and carbon emission reduction policies rely on achieving a growth in bike use, it doesn't seem to have any real idea of how to achieve it, other than yet another campaign urging road users to be nice to each other. Once again, Scotland was getting left behind.

With no leadership coming from the top, we knew we were going to have to supply the political will ourselves. Following the lead of the Dutch and the Danish who took to the streets repeatedly in the 1970s to get their cycle paths, we started planning the next mass demonstration. This time our message was explicit: "we are everyone".

Outside the Council Buildings on the Royal Mile

The message has got out that cycling is a good thing, not just a pursuit for eccentrics or sports maniacs in lycra.  Now we want the money and the transport policies to follow the message.

Andrew Mitchell - Cycling Martyr

The nub of the Andrew Mitchell affair is that he is a cyclist.  He was told by the police that he was not allowed to cycle where cars and other wheeled traffic could  but would have to take the pedestrian route.  His anger was justified, and reminiscent of Virginia Woolf's anger because as a lady she was not allowed to walk on the grass in a Cambridge college  (see A Room of One's Own).  As I steamed with Virginia Woolf as she stormed away from the college, so I mentally swore at the policeman along with Andrew Mitchell.

Andrew Mitchell denied he used the word "pleb" but wouldn't enlarge on what he did say.  My theory is that he call the policeman "fucking petrolhead."  The police are petrolheads after all.  Their image of themselves at their most heroic are the car door slamming Sweeney or siren-blasting car chasers in every second Hollywood film. 

Andrew Mitchell - cycling martyr

In our car-and-driver dominated culture that would be a worse insult and far more politically dangerous than "pleb". Class insults are bad, race insults worse, but topping them all is outraging the sense of entitlement the internal combusters have. The only successful street, or rather road politics that occur, are blockades by lorry drivers against rising petrol prices. The government caves in at once, though it will ignore millions marching against a war in Iraq.  The rage that you most often see expressed in this country is road rage by the thwarted motorist, whose sense that he must have total, quick and easy access to every part of the country is as absolute as Charles I's to his divine right to rule.  The internal combusters are the great majority and cities are built and the countryside paved around their needs and desires. Foreign police i.e. grovelling to the repulsive Saudi Arabian government is a direct result of their requirements for oil. 

This of course has not been made explicit.  The tabloids have projected the affair as our heroic police being abused by an arrogant toff,  They won't make explicit to their readers that they are truckling to their pleasure at the thought of a cyclist forced to go pedestrian any more than they tell them that their fascination in three in a bed romps, dressed up as righteous morality and public interest, is simple prurience. The Labour party were happy to follow the populist line and take a chance to poke the Tories, but in fact Labour are bigger petrol eaters than the Tories who at least have  David Cameron and Boris Johnson on bikes.  (Ed Miliband  and Ken Livingstone are taxi and limousine men). They know who fills their petrol tank.

Follow the money?  No - follow the oil traces on the tarmac. 

Andrew Mitchell - the cycling martyr who fought back.  RE-INSTATE HIM AS TORY CHIEF WHIP NOW!

Can't Not Mention the Olympics

I really enjoyed the Olympics opening ceremony.  Some people have been saying the music was Danny Boyle's music collection, which is okay by me, as his is about the same as mine. (I would take the piss out of Chariots of Fire but be respectful to Elgar and end with a rousing Pink Floyd). Some complained about the rustic scenes giving way to smoking chimneys was far too lefty (if anything it's Tory Romanticism). 

Its history was the Industrial Revolution and All That, skipping imperialism - which seems fine for a showcase pageant.  The big part of Britain's view of itself, World War II, with its library of iconic images - St Paul's above a burning London, air-raid sirens, Chamberlain's umbrella, Spitfires - could not be done when celeerating a time when the nations are competing with games, not guns. Churchill turned up for the closing ceremony, but only to quote Shakespeare - no fighting on the beaches.

My favourite part was when the winged cyclists emerged.  In the heaven that I go to the cyclists will be winged, the geekier ones explaining to each other how they find realigning the feathers and using carbon instead of titanium struts makes for a better flight.  This marvellous, surreal spectacle was set against the Beatles song I love best, Come Together.  One thing though - the Arctic Monkeys were singing it slightly off key - or so it sounded. (Here - 3 hours 5 minutes in).

Compared to:-

 

At the end of the ceremony, after the seven young athletes had been handed the torches and lit that elegant cauldron I found myself quite moved - against all expectation, as I had groaned when London got the Olympics. I regard Olympics time as a fortnight of no news except for who got bronze in the shot-put.  Other Olympics haters I know have said the same, and we've even planned to catch something at the Commonwealth games when they come to Glasgow. One of the pleasures was the accidental beauty of the athletes - the beauty of youth, supreme fitness and dedication.

Also at the end of the opening ceremony, I thought:-

One plus - there was no Morris dancing;
One minus - there was no Ray Davies doing Waterloo Sunset - how could they possibly leave that out?

Both these omissions were fixed in the closing ceremony. 

Ray Davies performed but looked as if he felt his age.  I saw him a few years ago and he was in good trim, jumping up and down on the stage. 

Morris dancing - even if done ironically - is the silliest dancing on earth.  Maori Hakas, Scottish ceilidh dancing, Bollywood - all have their points.  But there's nothing to be said for Morris dancing, except that it looks ridiculous.

Just when you thought it was safe to get back into the water

What a horrible night Thursday was.  I had vaguely expected to hear of another humiliation for George Galloway on the electoral trail, and with that, and Press TV being shut down I thought he would disappear from sight and hearing.  But he comes screaming back.  I have  to give him a grudging salute for his strength and indefatigability.  He certainly wrecked my sleep.

Socialist Unity were crowing over his triumph.   I made a couple of comments on the victory evening:-

"How utterly wretched.  Shameless pandering to religious prejudices wins an election in mainland Britain. I suppose if there had been an appropriate seat up for grabs in Belfast he could have pushed the Catholic buttons - gone on about being anti-abortion, say. 

And even more wretchedly, a bunch of activists and politicos who regard themselves as progressive cheer him on."

"That little hint that his opponent wasn’t a good Muslim because he had had a drink in the past – how would he have managed a similar ploy if he had been chasing a Catholic vote? Once, in stricter times, he could have suggested:-

My opponent has eaten meat on Friday;
My opponent has used a condom; or
My opponent has considered divorce

but Catholics are far more liberal these days.

What would be a clever hint to make about your opponent’s impurity of religion in order to chase Catholic votes rather than Muslim ones?

After all, if politics are going to be conducted through communalism, we should start thinking of the tactical advantage of comparative religious observance. That Ed Miliband guy’s an atheist, isn’t he?"

Those comments were deleted of course.

I was disgusted at the religious communalism that ran through this election.  I thought that was what the Yanks did, out-godding each other as they chase the Presidency.

But Galloway -  all praise to Allah at his victory and that he's on a mission from God, and those that don't vote for him will go to hell.   Saying of his rival,

"When I hear Imran Hussein say, you should vote for him because he's a Pakistani, because he is a quote, unquote "Muslim" I don't know whether to laugh or cry. On the question of Islam, God knows who is a Muslim or who is not. . . Everybody knows he's never out of the pub. 

Rather missing the chance of saying, "Let's drop religion from this election.  It shouldn't matter."

Politics as expression of religious tribalism is poison whether in Glasgow or Cairo. I added Bradford to the list of B's that Christopher Hitchens spoke of when asked about the peace-making aspect of religion:-

“I was to imagine myself in a strange city as the evening was coming on. Toward me I was to imagine that I saw a large group of men approaching. Now-would I feel safer, or less safe, if I was to learn that they were just coming from a prayer meeting? […] Just to stay within the letter ‘B,’ I have actually had that experience in Belfast, Beirut, Bombay, Belgrade, Bethlehem, and Baghdad. In each case I can say absolutely, and can give my reasons, why I would feel immediately threatened if I thought that the group of men approaching me in the dusk were coming from a religious observance.”

Galloway is coy about whether he has converted or will convert to Islam.  A couple of theories:-

1.    If he converts and then after losing Bradford West he needs a seat where he can play communalist Catholic politics e.g. Belfast or the west of Scotland, he would have to be received into Catholicism again.  That might just make him look opportunistic and inconsistent.

2.  If he converts and then unconverts, it could make it inconvenient for him in some countries he will no doubt be visiting eg Iran where apostasy is illegal. 

Since my initial outrage I have read some analysis - that West Bradford is a peculiar seat; that the politics there were corrupt and clan-driven; that Labour has played communalist politics there for years themselves and this was now biting them in the bum ; that the voters are kicking all the main parties, as they often do in by-elections; that only a rock-star politician like Galloway could have pulled it off.  So it is unlikely to be the trend towards communalist politics that I feared.  You can only be communalist in constituencies which will accept it.

 I am though pissed off with the Bradfordian for electing him.  Galloway's over-blown rhetoric turns my stomach but a lot of them, especially the young ones, lapped it up.  Bradford spring! for Chrissake.  Who does he think he is?  Answers own question - a kind of cross between Saladin on a white horse with a train of Saracens fighting the Crusaders and Lenin leading the masses.   He really does see himself as a man of destiny, with God on his side. 

When he says things like " From the Punjab to Palestine, from Bagdhad to Bradford, everyone will sit up and take notice  for by the Grace of God . . .I have a strong voice." he believes in his own fantasies and gets his followers to believe in it as well.   

 

By the way, note in this video that when addressing people in Bradford he doesn't adopt a cod Yorkshire accent, though when addressing Arabs for some reason he puts on a weird Arab accent eg in this one where he extols Assad and Syria's democracy and human rights record. 

Well, he's got MP written after his name now, which will make him a more acceptable courtier to whatever particularly bloody, repressive despot whose hand he wants to kiss.  Saddam is gone, Assad, the man who upholds the dignity of  Arabs and Muslims*, will no doubt be gone soon.  There's Ahmadinejad and sadly there will  be some ugly Islamist regime established in at least one of the countries that have gone through the Arab Spring.  He'll be at its leader's court, discussing "Zionism" and saluting this new lion with many Your Excellencies and that serious, respectful look and understanding nods. 

Update:-

The newspapers are gleeful that Galloway tweeted "Shattered but happy after the Blackburn triumph.

Well, he is a rock star after all.  There are times when the lead singer greets the crowd "Hullo Liverpool," when  in Manchester, and "Hullo Madrid," when in Lisbon.   (I know this has happened but "rock star" "wrong city" "hullo" isn't turning me up actual instances of this).

Being Galloway, he couldn't just say, sorry, stupid mistake.  No, someone has to have hacked into his twitter account.  I can't do the technology but it seems that is unlikely.   But being Galloway he has to lie about it.  No doubt it was an American and Zionist propaganda plot against him.

(*If you can bear it, read Amnesty's report on what  Assad's security forces visit do to the regime's opponents)

Royal Coup de Grace

Broadcasting in Britain is controlled by the royal family - and they will force any television channel that criticises them to close down, Press TV revealed today.

Ofcom has revoked Press TV's licence, claiming that Press TV had not paid the £100,000 fine that had been demanded after it had broken regulations by broadcasting a "forced" confession from a journalist, and also for being controlled from Teheran rather than London. [more here]

Press TV's scoop:-

Ofcom is said to have close ties to Britain's royal family. And the cables released by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks show that Press TV's programs on the royal wedding, which many in the country described as extravagant, angered the royal family.

The CEO of Press TV, Mohammad Sarafaz, is not daunted:-

Sarafraz stressed that Ofcom's bid to revoke Press TV's license will not prevent the channel from broadcasting the truth about the British Royal regime.

“It is futile to attempt to conceal the truth from the people of Britain, and those that want to hear our alternative voice will find a way despite your efforts,” he said.

In these internet streaming days, Mr Sarafaz is no doubt right. Those who are looking for the alternative voice on eg the "Holocaust", will not be thwarted. The fair-minded analysis of the brilliant literary stylist, George Galloway, will still be available. Lauren Booth will still speak her truths to power about Zionist control of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign. and their persecution of the popular intellectual, Gilad Atzmon.

Hireling lackey of the British government and Welsh corgi poodle John Humphrys "covered" the story of Press TV on the BBC's Today programme this morning (second item from the end). He interviewed Yvonne Ridley, an employee. So afraid was he of any more revelations about the British royal family's stranglehold on broadcasting in Britain he did not once ask her to enlarge on this exclusive story of Press TV's.

Ms Ridley announced that Press TV could not pay the fine as there are sanctions on Iran's banks. As for her salary, barrels of unrefined oil are collected by her, Mr Galloway and Ms Booth at London's docklands where they hawk them in the street.

All right minded people should demand further investigation into the Royal family's death grip on the media of this country.

We know that Prince Charles is in the habit of interfering in political affairs - normally on matters of architecture, the environment and quack medicine. However, if he has been leaning on media outlets who question paying for Royal extravaganzas, that is the end of The Guardian, the New Statesman and letter writers to The Times.

Here's something that Carol Ann Duffy, the poet laureate should address:-

Listen matey,
To keep your job,
Act like mater
And shut your gob

Note from Ofcom:- Guards, take her away. (Clang of dropping portcullis).

Too much information

As everyone is saying, there was far too much news this year.   Arab and North African uprisings, News International downfall, dictators and currencies collapsing - the media was a sound surround of important and exciting news.

This picture handily combines two news items into one (29th April and 1st May):-

More of two for the price of one:-

Listen, it wasn't my idea to join the Euro

I predict riots if we close News of the World

To all you news consumers and news makers out there, Happy New Year.

Let it rest

Did we need all that 10th anniversary coverage of 9/11?   Every time the radio interviewed yet another fireman or American Muslim, I switched it off.  So my radio has been ultra-switched off in the last few days.   It was of course reasonable for the bereaved to have some sort of ceremony but the rest of us were forced to take part, willing or not. 

I don't want to take this particular tone:-

Neglected here is that it was a stroke of evil genius for Channel 5 to run Celebrity Big Brother against assorted 9/11 tenth anniversary tellyfilla. Crap celebrity event telly wins against pseudo-concerned wanky-woo.

No, I can't be as cynically callous as that.  But still. . .

I can get tearful on Remembrance Sunday when I listen to the ceremony at the Cenotaph, and Neville Chamberlain's constipated tones repeating that "I hev to tell you now that no such undertaking hez been received and consequently this country is at war with Germany" always make me solemn.  But 9/11?  Serious of course, an outrage for New York, a dreadful blow for those who lost family members.  But why should I mourn this more than any other large death count from an attack on a country that isn't mine?  

I found  however that there are Americans who did not want to join in an enforced collective grief.

Here's Slate's Agony Aunt Dear Prudence:-

Q. Husband Doesn't Feel Sad About 9/11: I have been married for 2-plus years to a man who is wonderful in many ways. However, with all the 9/11 hoopla lately, it's been on my mind a lot and I asked him yesterday if he was thinking about it. He told me that he doesn't allow himself to feel bad about what happened because that doesn't help anything and it would be disrespectful to those who lost their lives that day and in the war since. I don't get his logic and am left wondering if this is normal, or should I be concerned? It bothers me that he doesn't feel what most everyone else feels when they think/talk about 9/11.

A: It sounds as if your husband does feel profound sadness about all the lives lost. But his decision to push the thoughts out of his mind—a luxury that family members don't have, of course—is a perfectly normal one that I'm sure many people made. You asked your husband a question about his emotional life, and he answered you honestly and openly. His answer is reasonable and he's entitled to his own reaction and is not required to feel what you think "everyone else" does.

The assumed feelings of "everyone else" enables the media to fill up their spaces with reminiscences and repeat broadcasts.  Dissenters are regarded as hard-hearted or unpatriotic.  

Q. Overkill: I was a member of the military who lost colleagues and friends on Sept. 11. This anniversary seemed to me like media hype, picking a scab rather than allowing it to heal. Did I mourn? Yes. But can we put this in context, finally, and move ahead? Surely there is more to our nation than the events of this one day.

A: Thanks for this perspective. To the letter writer worried about her husband, I'm hearing from many people who had reactions just like his.

I'm glad that Americans - sane, nice ones - feel like this as well.  

Update

According to this smarty-pants I haven't missed much by my minimal involvement with the 9/11 commemorations. 

I tried insofar as possible to avoid all the 9/11 X ballyhoo, for a couple of reasons. First of all, with due respect to the very good writers who have tackled the subject, I have not read a blessed thing this month that has illuminated 9/11 -- as history, as event, as a social or political phenomenon or anything else that would make such an account worth reading.

I doubt if the USA will go on much longer commemorating this terrorist attack.  To be commemorated an event in history must be a turning point in the nation's ultimate fate eg a great defeat like the Battle of Kosovo for the Serbians or Culloden for the Highlanders or a step on the road to victory like D Day of Bannockburn.  World War II, the American civil war - and revolutions that really did change the society go on receiving some kind of public acknowledgement.  They have a beginning (war declared, independence declared) and an ending (war won, independence won).   

A terrorist attack is a side-show in the overall history of a nation.  Even if it is a step, as in the case of Northern Ireland, towards a power shift it's not something the perpetrators are proud of, and the victims can't keep on proclaiming their victimhood.  Of course the bereaved will commemorate the event that changed their lives but the nation should leave it alone.   As the man above said, it's picking a scab instead of letting it heal.  

Quiet for a while

I have been shifting flats and lost broadband for a while, so things have been quiet here.  

As far as the Breivik massacre goes, I was glad that I was distant from the blogosphere at a time of instant political point scoring, without a decent interval of silence and of not rushing to judgement.  I know little about Norway but I do know what it is like in a country with a small population when something like that happens.  The people of Scotland were deeply upset after the Dunblane massacre.   Friends of mine could not bear to speak about it or look at that school photo of the children with their bright faces and their nice-looking teacher.

Brooksgate, Hackgate or however they'll gate it

Alex Massie is usually a genial chap, but he got his razor out today:-

An exclusive look at a strategy memo prepared for Rebekah Brooks this afternoon:

.....


You were only doing your job and your job was giving the punters what they wanted. (Yeah, we're going to have to drop the it's "inconceivable" that you knew stuff; everyone can conceive that you did. Tough break but there you have it.)

No, if you sinned it was because you loved the readers  - the Great sodding British public - not wisely but too well. They're a prurient, censorious, malignant bunch of bastards and we gave 'em a paper to match. If they've got a problem with that they should look to their own consciences first. Never mind the motes, look at the beams matey.

Read it all.

Good and bad hoaxes

I love a good hoax.  A hoax is a scam and a con job, but not the sort when a low-life flogs off expensive energy deals to pensioners.  Although some hoaxes have made money, that should not be what a hoax is designed for. Its object should be to make the pretentious and pompous look stupid, to expose the vanity of those in high places.   The Emperor's New Clothes is a satisfying story, but there would be little point to The Peasant's New Clothes. Hoaxees are gulled for believing what they want to believe, usually something flattering.   A hoax is cruel but its victims are not pathetic innocents.  You see them as being humiliated as they deserve.   Also, a good hoax confirms the prejudices of the on-lookers.  They have always known that the hoaxee had it coming to them for their superior airs and crackpot ideas. 

Some hoaxes:-

The Sokal Affair.  Alan Sokal submitted a paper called "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", to the cultural studies journal Social Text.  The journal in all seriousness published this paper which among other things stated that "quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct".  The dupes were a bunch of post-modernist pseuds and academics.  They looked like posturing idiots and those who had suspected post-modernism was a shack of jargon were full of glee to see this eyesore get trashed.

The Hitler Diaries. This was more of a forgery for gain than pure mischief, but the egg faced and out of pocket were Rupert Murdoch, the editors of The Times, The Sunday Times, Newsweek and the German magazine Stern, and the journalist who "discovered" the diaries, the Nazi-obsessive Gerd Heidemann.  The Deputy Editor of the Sunday Times said later: " When such a scoop is offered, you don't really want to hear anything that would cast doubt on its veracity."   Those of us who regard Rupert Murdoch as being a disgrace to truth and decency were justified by the greedy old despot saying about the affair "After all, we are in the entertainment business.” As a bonus, potential readers, the sort who are creepily fascinated about anything to do with Nazism, were cock-teased as well. 

The poems of Ern Malley. A hoax by a couple of Australian litterateurs on the editors of an avant-garde poetry magazine.  They concocted an unknown poet called Ern Malley and sent in his poems, which they had written deliberately badly.   The poetry magazine ran a special issue celebrating this new important voice in poetry.  The victims in this case were those who are overly impressed by literature that is obscure and difficult.

(Kingsley Amis wrote a story on a similar theme called Dear Illusion, about a poet who knowingly writes inept poetry that is lauded by the critics.)  

The Dreadnought Hoax.   Virginia Woolf and her Bloomsbury mates pretended to be Abyssinian royalty and were entertained by the Royal Navy on HMS Dreadnought.  I don't think it was that amusing, because I suppose the Navy officers had no choice but to be civil to foreign guests, but the fact that Virginia Woolf did this blacked up, bearded and in drag makes it stand out among hoaxes.  The Navy chaps gave the instigator, a poet and constant prankster called Horace de Vere Cole,  a token smack with a cane afterwards to satisfy their honour.

Virginia Woolf is at the far left

These days our armed forces have dwindled in size and power so a hoax on them would be silly childishness, whereas a successful hoax on, say, the Daily Mail or Simon Cowell, would delight a chunk of the British public.

The Conquest Letter.  I can't find a link for this but Kingsley Amis recounts it in his Memoirs. 

Robert Conquest, another poet and prankster and a distinguished Sovietologist, sent a letter to Philip Larkin marked HMG and stating that Larkin's collection of  pornography was to be investigated by officialdom.  Larkin dashed off to his solicitor's office and spent the whole day hiding there.  He later billed Conquest for the solicitor's time.   This event didn't spoil their friendship.   Conquest is a prolific writer and has been married four times.  He must have a lot of excess energy.

Philip Larkin wrote (bad) pornography himself, so there seems to be some justice in this hoax. 

My sister L. This was not a pure hoax, more of a wind up but L took a snapshot to school of a heart-throb pop-star, sitting right up close and smiling at her.  In fact, she had got a picture from a magazine, pinned it up on the garage wall and photographed that.  It did look very convincing for those who hadn't seen her other snaps, where she was inclined to cut off people's heads, or catch them as blurs in the corner.  This was funny and harmless.  If she had gone to school and said, for instance, that our mother had cancer, that would have been more in line with the Muchausen syndrome school of hoaxing, that is, unhealthily seeking attention.

Myself.  Once as art critic for a kind of Time Out magazine I did a piece of deliberate pretentious nonsense about an exhibition I'd seen - no-one spotted it but then I think no-one read it.   The magazine's editors thought they should cover exhibitions and as everyone else had snaffled the music side they gave that spot to me.  I should say I was, and am, fairly indifferent to painting and sculpture.  Those who like them should enjoy the Van Meergen hoax.  He faked a Vermeer which met an art critic's theory that Vermeer had been influenced by Italian painting.  Van Meegeren was happy with this result which confirmed what he had come to think about the Dutch art establishment and then found he could sell a phony Vermeer for a fortune so carried on faking.

The televisual hoaxer Ali G.  I can't stand the unfunny little arse and when he interviewed people who were very polite to him no matter how stupid and crass his questions, I was on their side.  I think the real dupes of his hoax were the idiots who found him entertaining.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion - all right, drop the jokey tone.  The fact that this fraud is taken seriously still as a view of how the world works makes me howl.

So - a good hoax fulfils a victim's wishful thinking.  It's easy to see why Hamas loves the Protocols, why the Sokal hoaxees believed a real proper physicist endorsed their views about science and why the Australian avant-garde grabbed hold of their very own Dylan Thomas.  

The Gay Girl in Damascus is not a classic hoax since it was not created to show up the main dupes, the well-meaning progressives who sympathise with Syrian protesters.  The hoaxer Tom MacMaster is pleased with himself for adopting a persona that was so convincing it fooled his readers, but there's no sense that he's laughing at them for setting up and signing petitions demanding Amina's release from a Syrian jail.   MacMaster's  idea of wit is sarcastic jeering (common among activists).  One thing he does say is that his false blog exposed the "liberal Orientalism" of the west. 

Heresy Corner interprets :-

The clue to what he was playing at lies in the phrase "liberal Orientalism". It's not clear what liberal orientalism he thought he was exposing - perhaps it was the concern some (but not all) western liberals display for the plight of gay people and women in repressive Islamic societies. A perception which, of course, made "Amina" such a brave and representative heroine. It's even possible that he was deliberately creating a character who would prove irresistible to Western liberals, someone around whom they could unite - as indeed, for a time, they did.

MacMaster's own brand of liberal Orientalism, however, seems to have been of a different order - the celebration of an idealised Islamic society characterised above all by tolerance, pluralism and freedom. A picture entirely at odds with the burkhas and beheadings image perpetuated by that other sort of "orientalism" that sees Islam as irredeemably backward and savage. [The whole article is worth reading].

The "liberal orientalism" motive looks like an afterthought.  What the Gay Girl resembles is another literary counterfeit, the poems of Ossian.   A writer who cannot advance his works by their own merits passes them off as having been written by a more romantic figure.  MacMaster used the  beautiful lesbian rebel Amina, James MacPherson a druidlike bard called Ossian.  Both met the taste of their times. Amina's protest, authenticity and identity politics are much admired in modern culture. Macpherson's eighteenth century had developed a new interest in an ancient and native literature.  In Scotland this was "heightened by post-1745 nostalgic romanticisation of all things relating to the Highlands," (the progenitor of today's tourist industry).  Many contemporary Scots passionately wanted to believe in Scotland's antique literary heritage.   

Ossian receiving the Ghosts of the French Heroes

The Gay Girl is a writer's hoax - of wanting to be taken seriously as a writer, because MacMaster does believe that his own work is of high quality that just needs a publishing break.  He also has strong sympathies with the Syrian uprising and so he coupled a writer's vanity with the unscrupulousness of a politico who feels justified in lying and forgery for a good cause.   

Samuel Johnson was famously sceptical about the Ossian poems which he called "an imposture" and what he said about  MacPherson goes for MacMaster, going by this interview:-

stubborn audacity is the last refuge of guilt.