Big oil

'Moral authority'? Obama?

What? Oh, you mean with your target voters back home lefty fruitcakes, BBCgraun, rent seekers and know-nothings? Ah, OK. Snag is, Dave, with that nauseating arslikhan you just lost the last of yours. Insofar as, etc., etc.

Oh, BTW, did the, um, international law situation in re. the Falkland Islands come up, at all? What with your NBF being a Harvard lawyer an' all?

No? Ah - no time.

 

Yes, of course. Quite understand. 

Nothing ironic to see here - move along

Dear Dave and Harriet,

Re. quotas for women in candidate lists, boards of directors, etc., I wonder whether you have fully taken into account the important views of women members of the university of Oxford:

'A union member told student paper Cherwell: "It is disappointing to see female members of committee campaigning on the back of gender at all...  

"The suggestion that anyone should be voted in on such a basis is deeply offensive to both male and female voters and is also very damaging to the perception of the women associated with the Union.'

Regards,

Prodicus

QOTD

"The EU is the world centre for mass unemployment"

Above all, control the language: Chapter 94

Charles Crawford has turned his fire on the Left's attack on 'elitist, bourgeois' teaching of grammar. His bull's-eye of the day is Michael Rosen. There is no better target than that smilingly seditious (he would take it as a compliment) bastard.

I have added my pen'orth to Crawford's blog, more or less thuswise:

Michael Rosen? 

Would that be the ageing grammar school boy, Oxford-educated Socialist Worker polemicist and Respect Party candidate? 

The comrade of the Israel-hating apologist for Islamist mass murder and friend of Saddam Hussein, Gorgeous George Galloway? 

The Radio3/Radio4 pundit? 

The ‘Children’s Laureate’ so warmly welcomed into the rapidly dwindling number of LEA 'schools', that is, schools controlled by the SWP/NUT/NASUWT?  

Would that be the Michael Rosen who tramps the permanent-revolution road, albeit staggering under the weight of all those ‘hero of the culture war’ garlands hung about him by his academic comrades and fellow toilers in his lifelong work of commandeering the teaching of language in order to redefine it — the sine qua non of their mission to dismantle and conform all education (from primary school to university) to their Marxist-Leninist and occasionally Trotskyist agenda, so as to ensure that their cadres, apparatchiks and useful idiots crowd out opposing opinions from public discourse and form public opinion by controlling both the language of and admission to all public debate, thereby establishing their political thought as both ‘popular’ and normative in societal attitudes and public policy?  

That ‘language expert’ Michael Rosen?

Dictionary Corner: liberal

I am a traditional English liberal (N.B. lower case) and I therefore vote Conservative in order to keep out the Liberals.

Well, indeed. You may well ask.

All right, for the avoidance of doubt and for the confusion benefit of any visiting Americans:

The word liberal, in British politics, has the opposite meaning to its usage in the USA where of course it means socialist, as in Uncle Sam Knows Best so shaddup with your liberty crap and hand over your money, then get back in your box and await my orders. Nancy Pelosi is a leading American liberal.

Some British socialists call themselves Liberals. This is quite different from British liberal although similar to the American liberal.

British conservatives are liberals who would disagree with American liberals, who in Britain would be called Liberals but never liberals.

In Britain, liberal means one who defends individual liberty against Big Brother. This is not to be confused with Liberal which denotes a socialist who has reached voting age without having developed the nads required to accept either the appellation socialist or the responsibilities of principled government (and is happiest in opposition except for the short-term use of flunkeys, the red carpets, etc.) and has therefore opted for unprincipled populist vacillation according to short-term electoral expediency.

In summary, a British liberal cannot be a Liberal because he is a conservative and a British Liberal cannot be a liberal because he is not a conservative.

In Britain, whenever you hear a liberal call a Liberal 'a liberal', you can be sure it is meant ironically. Unless the speaker is David Cameron.

Clear?

Jolly good.

Actually, this is only half the story... 



(Footnote: most of the above would be disputed by most British Liberals although probably not much by most British liberals.)

You will have to excuse me - I cannot think of a title for this blogpost

via Delingpole

Roll of Honour

From Wikipedia:

Central Foundation Boys' School, London, was a boys' grammar school, run by the Central Foundation Schools of London, known as the Central Foundation Boys' Grammar School. In the 1960s it had around 500 boys with a three-form entry. It started to become a comprehensive to became a comprehensive in September 1980 gradually, year-by-year.

In 2003, Diane Abbott, a local MP, was offered a place for her son, but she turned it down to send her son to City of London School.

Some notable alumni - the grammar school years:

• Montague Arnold, Chairman from 1971-81 of BPC Publishing, and Chief Executive from 1982-4 of the Property Services Agency
• Sir Ernest Benn CBE, publisher and writer, uncle of Tony Benn
• Selig Brodetsky, Professor and Emeritus Professor of Applied Mathematics from 1924-48 at the University of Leeds, Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Royal Aeronautical Society and the Institute of Physics. Past President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews
• Jacob Bronowski, mathematician, biologist and historian and Director from 1950-9 of the Coal Research Establishment. Author of The Ascent of Man and writer & presenter of the BBC documentary series of the same name
• Stanley Chapple, conductor
• Prof Aubrey Diamond, Professor of Law from 1987-99 at University of Notre Dame, and President from 1988-90 of the British Insurance Law Association
• John Forrest, pioneer of preventative dentistry, and President of the British Society of Periodontology and British Endodontic Society
• Anthony Grabiner, Baron Grabiner, barrister, Deputy High Court Judge, member of the Bank Of England Financial Services Law Committee (2002-05)
• Prof Max Hamilton, first President of the British Association Of Psychopharmacology, inventor of the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression, and former President of the British Psychological Society
• Dr Nyman Levin, Director from 1959-65 of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment
• James Loring CBE, Director from 1967-80 of the Spastics Society, and President from 1978-84 of the International Cerebral Palsy Society. Author of 'Teaching The Cerebral Palsied Child' (1965)
• Prof Ashley Montagu, Professor of Anthropology from 1949-55 at Rutgers University
• Sir Gilbert Morgan OBE, former Mason Professor of Chemistry at the University of Birmingham
• David Peacock, Professor of Chemistry from 1922-40 at the University of Rangoon (now the University of Yangon, Burma) and chemical adviser from 1942-5 to RAF Bomber Command
• Daniel Pedoe, mathematician
• Woolf Phillips, orchestra leader
• Prof Norman Rydon, Professor of Chemistry from 1957-77 at the University of Exeter
• Leonard Sainer, businessman who helped to set up Sears plc
• Richard Seifert, architect who designed Centre Point, Tower 42 and King's Reach Tower
• Prof Alan Stuart, Professor of Statistics from 1966-82 at the LSE
• Brig George Webb, commanded the 1st Royal Tank Regiment from 1942-5
• Dennis Wesil CBE DSO, in charge of developing the UK's postal code system

All notable alumni - the comprehensive years:

• Barney Clark, actor
• Danny Foster, member of pop group Hear'say
• John Halls, footballer
• Charlie G. Hawkins, actor
• Lee Hurst, comedian and TV presenter
• Martin Kemp, musician, Spandau Ballet, actor 
• Karim Kerbouche, ice hockey player
• Trevor Nelson, DJ
• Reggie Yates, TV presenter and radio DJ

Roger shatters his personal best

Consider, then, the dispute over gender and gender equality. Liberals do not deny that there are two biologically fixed kinds of human being—the male and the female; but they deny that there are two culturally fixed kinds of person—the masculine and the feminine. For the liberal, the division of roles, rights, and duties that conservatives defend is neither decreed by nature nor endorsed by the moral law. 

The response of conservatives should be to defend this division of roles, rights, and duties for what it is—the foundation of the most important personal relation that we have, which is the relation that binds a man and a woman in marriage. 

I don't think I have ever written a sentence more politically incorrect than that one. Nevertheless, as Galileo was wise enough not to say, if you don't like it, that's your problem.

Scruton in the American Spectator.

Memo to Fraser Nelson: When are you going to get the great man back for our Spectator?

ITMA

Sorry, Ma'am. Couldn't resist. 

Justice?

How can a woman who phones around her friends to organise, for the following day, a mob-assault on a minor; who buys knives for the purpose of the assault; who takes a leading part in the chase and subsequent lethal attack on her chosen victim whom she kicks in the head as he lies dying on the ground from the stab wounds inflicted by her gang using her specially purchased weapons, not be guilty of both conspiracy to inflict grievous bodily harm and of cold blooded murder?

How can such a series of criminal actions by an adult deemed fit for trial be classified as mere manslaughter?
I merely ask.

CORRECTION: Guilty of conspiracy to commit GBH.

UPDATE: Jury unable to agree on murder.