In the wink of an eye, a preposterous little man called John Bercow, who should be deeply grateful that neither Beachcomber nor Peter Simple is around to lampoon his ridiculous posturing, has gone from total obscurity - outside his little corner of the Westminster Village - to bossing the Prime Minister around in public.
Ye-es...
Speaker Selwyn Lloyd. Speaker Weatherill. Speaker Bercow.
Prime Minister Palmerston. Prime Minister Churchill. Prime Minister Brown.
Yes, little Bercow's time is now.
In the miasma of Brave New World euphoria following the defeat of European fascism, the members and fellow travellers of the Communist Party across the continent were ordered to leave the Party and join more electable parties, and continue their work under cover.
The near-destruction of European society (except in Britain) was a godsend for Marxists. Here was a tabula rasa! Lenin's dream! They grasped the opportunity with both hands and to this day they have not loosened their grip.
In the east, Stalin had already established his dictatorship of fear and loathing. Western Europe posed more problems, not being a unified state, but there was another way, achievable in the longer term.
A number of socialist monsters were brought to birth in the ashes of Europe. One was the EU. Its founding nations were all on their knees emotionally, culturally, economically. They needed each other, and they needed peace. They bound each other into a union to supply, by their common efforts, their salvation, and their peoples welcomed the peace of mind it brought. Those who would govern it would always and in every circumstance be ‘anti-fascists’, that is, from the Left. Job done. Or at least, given a flying start.
All the opposition there has ever been within the EU to the onward march of the The Project, has come from the Right. Why would that be, I wonder?
Britain was a different case. Victor, not vanquished, the people very bloodied but quite unbowed. The people of Britain would have no truck with The Project for the moment. Why would they want to bind themselves to a union of the nations they had fought and defeated, at terrible cost? No, a different strategy would be required.
The people would have to be taught, slowly, that they need to be part of The Project. But that would also have to come later. The means to that end would be the destruction of the old education system which had engendered independent, un-Socialist thinking and the training of a governing class which could rule three quarters of the planet. And that class, conservative in every sense, must itself be destroyed and the soil from which it arose dug over with salt.
The ruling class is the enemy. The proletariat must be taught this, but subtly, slowly. It shall be done by the excision of the group memory of genuinely high standards, by the deriding of all cultural pursuits beloved of the educated classes, and by the structuring of the ‘educational’ process so that all shall attain certain defined ‘heights’ (actually unbelievably low levels) of state-defined ‘achievement’. Then all shall say ‘I am as qualified as you are. I am entitled to what you have. You are in my way, toff.’
The private schools (and, it goes without saying, the church schools which will be vilified and undermined in ways designed to fit their special nature) will, in due course, be prohibited by one means or another.
Thus all will be taught only what the state prescribes. They will know nothing else. They will believe nothing else. Their horizons and desires will be defined by the state in compliance with Socialist dogma which will be called ‘progressive politics to benefit the many, not the few’. Thus we will determine their behaviour and hence their compliance with the state’s requirements in all respects.
Malign as the EU has become, the most insidious post-war development in Europe has been the British Labour Party's education strategy since Gramsci's commissars donned sheep’s clothing and took control of schools and colleges including most but not all university departments.
Over decades, they have determinedly ignored, defied, undermined or otherwise wrecked the philosophies, objectives and proposed strategies of successive governments who, susceptible to dismissal by a dissatisfied electorate, have tried to hold them back from their worst excesses.
They have trampled on, twisted and subverted the public’s desire for education for children and young adults, and have indoctrinated with Socialist philosophy all those not fortunate enough to have parents who could afford to buy a liberal education outside the State’s monopoly system. Parents and institutions who would not conform have been raged at and vilified.
What everyone except themselves saw as education, They damned as the oppression of the proletariat by the ruling class who needed slaves for their capitalist machine, whose product was comfort for 'the few' and sod the rest.
Over time, the evil machinery of the ‘progressive forces’ has, as intended, produced a lumpenproletariat: millions of functionally illiterate, politically and culturally blinded oiks who have been taught to have supreme confidence in their own worth and to feel enormous pride in their pathetic, puny 'achievements' as measured by contemptibly easy ‘tests’ and which are risible compared with those of schoolchildren in comparable countries and non-state education.
Pupils… the very word is outlawed as redolent of the middle class and their private schools… pupils leave school and are admitted to university unable – having been neither required nor taught – to speak or write their own language.
They have been told that their own culture is not for the likes of them, that the culture of almost any other society is superior and must be learned and appreciated. All shall have drums, but violins are for the hated capitalist class.
Thus culture is divided into ‘street’ and ‘high’. 'Street culture', with its roots in the drug-destroyed slums of Kingston, Jamaica, and Chicago South Side, is approved, while ‘high culture' is made mysterious and inaccessible to the proles who have no idea what goes on behind its walls. It is made affordable to a privileged few who are, of course, maligned and threatened because, by maintaining high standards in instrumental musicianship, formal singing, dance, theatre and the traditional plastic arts, they are working against the State’s policy of ‘inclusivity’ by which approval is granted only to what is simple enough to be practised by all.
Socialism has ensured that high culture has become the preserve of an elite who are condemned as ‘the few’, the enemy of ‘the many’.
Schoolchildren (and undergraduates) are taught that British history is a nasty tale of undiluted wickedness. History is the Levellers, Cromwell, Victorian hypocrisy, colonialism, racism, capitalism, the slave trade, the Holocaust, Hitler. School history is a highly political story of oppression by the British ruling class, in different times and places, and of societies being liberated or reformed by a few good people: ‘progressive’ thinkers, leaders of the historically inevitable march towards Utopia in which all shall have… equality in everything. They have been taught to be ashamed of their nationality and its history. The approved posture is the cringe.
Never having been stretched intellectually, lest they fail at something, they are unable to think. So they do not think about anything much, beyond short term gratification of their needs and wishes, and about the appearance and liaisons of the approved, half-clothed, plebeian heroes whose images flood the pages of cheap magazines, and about how to emulate them, which they are taught to do in their school music and drama classes where Chekhov is a funny foreign word, Amy is an icon of musical achievement and Fame is the Aim.
They know all about their ‘rights’ having been fully briefed by the commissars (and by their parents who themselves were trained by the commissars’ predecessors) but are disinclined to think about or choose who governs them and how, because ‘politics is nothing to do with me’ and ‘they’re all the same, innit,’ and ‘nah, I don’ vote’.
And so, unsurprisingly, millions of unemployables are maintained in a half-depressed, idle and obese condition, at the State's expense, while the work they could and should be doing has to be undertaken by imported foreign workers or exported to other countries to be done by other foreign workers who can read, write, speak - and work - and who are getting rich at our expense. (And yes, I do know the argument that that immigrant labour and exported manufacture make us better off. Materially.)
All the while, our kindly government facilitates the provision of plenty of bread and circuses for the increasing millions of anaesthetised non-workers. The bakers and circus clowns are invited to Government soirees…
But there is hope.
The incoming Conservative government, notably in the person of the excellent Mr Gove, offers deliverance from the cultural desert which is Labour ‘education’ with its holding pens for children in which none may have prizes unless all have prizes and none shall be educated lest they get above themselves – and above others.
The long nightmare may soon be over, please God. Children’s education will once more be for the sake of the children and the actual good of society rather than merely a step towards the accomplishment of the failed, Socialist, twin-fantasies of Everyman as Loser and Everyman as Vassal.
We shall be permitted once more to envisage the possibility of education for its true and traditional purpose which is, by giving them all that we have learned, by handing on to them the treasures of our civilisation, and by teaching them to think, to bring the best out of individuals so that they will be able to flourish more than we have, to make the most of their potential and live full and happy lives and do good in the society they inherit from us and which they will, in their own turn, hand to their children.
Once again, one can hope that children will be taught to speak clearly and to write intelligibly so that they will be able to describe themselves to themselves and to each other; to understand, through language, their identity and their history; to tell each other stories of who they are, where they came from and where they are going.
We may, yet again, produce accomplished people including many who are fit to lead in many walks of life.
Do I sound a little old-fashioned to you? Good.
Education is the greatest of the goods which government must enable and safeguard, after the essentials of safety, shelter and food.
The Labour Party and its trade union proprietors are violently against education. They regard schooling as a social engineering process and no more, which is precisely why Labour 'education’ fails as education. They have replaced education with a process of shaping the minds of children and young adults to think like socialists and accept government diktats.
That's it. That is the whole agenda.
Language is debased as deliberate policy in order to promote ‘equality’ and ‘inclusivity’: an exotic (lit.) patois is ‘as good as’ received pronunciation or grammatically correct and syntactically transparent English.
Labour bastards. In Government, in Opposition, in institutions of higher education, in universities, in schools. Bastards, all. Fuck them.
They have deprived millions of our people, our children and grandchildren, of the greatest riches they could possibly have: the ability to think and explore thought; their intellectual and cultural inheritance; the possibility of self-respect and the deserved respect of others; the possibility of ambition achieved, of contentment.
Through their calculated destruction of education they have removed from generations of the British people the wherewithal to make a better life for themselves and for others. They have imposed their misbegotten ‘equality’ as the primary objective of every single collective and personal endeavour and our society is declining as a result.
THAT was the only historically inevitable attribute of their fantasy which is no more than that: a Utopian fantasy.
Socialists, in the Labour Party, in the education 'trade unions', in the universities and teacher training establishments, in government education departments, have destroyed what Hitler could not destroy: Britain's consciousness and memory of itself.
Now, the Socialist EU governs us, and we neither know nor care.
Utter, utter bastards. Fuck them. And, oh dear God, especially the fucking NUT.
It seems that James Purnell, when asked why he is of the Left and not the Right, answers, ‘Because I am a Utopian'.
Oh, fuck me. Do they still believe all that crap? Yes sir, they certainly do.
And here we have another one, another public school Labourista who, like the damnable, damnable Crosland, wants to kick away the ladder in order to impose Utopia's fantasy Equality for All on the children of our benighted land.
So, just another power-seeking (oh, yes) Socialist bastard, then.
Hey, James, you patronising git. Want a basic physics lesson? OK, here - hold these two wires…
Dear Mr Osborne,
Stop saying 'gonna’. ‘We're gonna do so-and-so.'
It makes you sound like an uneducated Labour oik. One might almost think you had been to a state ‘school’.
Stop it.
One of the reasons you are likely soon to be in government, Mr Osborne, and Labour out of it is that too many of their overpromoted, semi-literate ministers (Smith, Flint, Prescott…) both are and sound like oiks who, grotesquely, see their horribly inadequate selves as role models for children. They make every effort to be Down With The Kids in the hope that The Kids will like and emulate them.
When Government ministers speak like playground oiks, one should enquire as to their purpose in doing so.
Please do not emulate these malign Labour bastards in anything. They have nothing to teach you but the sort of bad behaviour which will ensure tears before bed time.
Yours etc.,
Prodicus of Ceos.
Every little helps when one lives with a really determined cat. This one, for instance. I mean, look at the face. This bastard could be related to the feline members of the Prodicus household. Gives you some idea of what I am up against, doesn't it?
These two words more or less describe the domestic arrangements of your humble servant, for the present. Hence the lack of blogging. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, here is a summary of the official Prodicusian position in the matter of British military helipcopters. Unadulterated genius, as usual.
Or maybe for treason.
If the following is true, then Brown and Balls are conspiring in the ruination of the British economy for Party political advantage and in contravention of their Ministerial Oaths.
A recent study by two eminent US economic historians shows that if you date the start of the current recession to April 2008 and that of the Great Depression to June 2009, then this recession, thus far, fully matches the early part of the Great Depression.From here.
Industrial output has fallen by the same amount.
Our stock market has actually declined by a far larger amount (taking into account the recent rise) than the corresponding period in the Great Depression.
The authors sum it up starkly: "...we are tracking or doing even worse than the Great Depression...This is [so far] a Depression-sized event".
However, the good news is, because of what we have learned since the Great Depression, I believe we can avert such a disaster again.
Problem is, this government is showing little willingness to implement the lessons we have learned, as their implementation could, in its view, jeopardise a Labour election victory.
So Gordon Brown is being considered for the EU Presidency now that Blair no longer finds favour with our Masters.
Thus would tradition be maintained and the corrupt ethos of the Masters of the European Union be preserved: First, protect and reward the compliant national politicians.
So another over-promoted, incompetent, failed but compliant European Socialist leader would take the now customary escape route from the wrath of electors whose lives he ruined and whose faith he betrayed, into the happily democracy-free comfort of an EU sinecure and a future of being addressed as 'Excellency' in poverty-stricken third world countries desperate for hand-outs.
Yes, it would be the perfect culmination to Gordon Brown's socialist-internationalist career, don't you agree? There could be no more comfortable environment for the Great Ruiner than the softly-carpeted government corridors of the vast, statist, protectionist, all-encompassing, socialism-driven superstate in which his personal politics are the standard by which all politics are evaluated, and to which he has so loyally passed Britain's sovereignty in the teeth of the will of his own nation, to the satisfaction of the people who actually govern us.
Such an outcome would bring to a successful conclusion the present mission of the EU's High Representative in London whose brief, let us remember, is to ease Brown out of Downing Street at the earliest possible moment, replacing him with an electable Labour Prime Minister.
Thus would be preserved what is left of the credibility of the pro-EU Labour Party and its chances maximised of having a fourth term in government in the United Kingdom.
While this outcome cannot be guaranteed, every effort will be made as long as any hope remains, because our masters would prefer not to have to grapple, at this final stage of the gestation of the European Constitution, with unfortunate complications such as the election to government in Britain of a rebellious Conservative Party who might hold a UK referendum on ratification of Lisbon before Ireland and Germany ratify. Every device - every device - will be deployed to prevent that happening.
The Czech Republic? The Czech Republic does not matter. Their 'government' has been informed of this by Mr Cohn-Bendit. It is on the record.
Blair? Well, no, that was never going to happen. He was never really a Socialist, you see. Blair was a clever man who looked at the pathetic, defeated, demoralised wreckage of the British Labour Party and saw that he could use it to achieve fame, power and riches. He was very successful but not, how you say? Not communautaire, like Gordon.
Old Holborn is on the warpath, having found, through Gates of Vienna, that the BBC is still up to its old linguistic sleight of hand, lauding Islam as a veritable fount of 'human rights' and denigrating Christianity as nothing worth thinking about really, apart from its being the cause of slavery and oppression. Or something..
Although the BBC has a reputation for bias, dishonesty and the promotion of cretinous infantile ideologies designed to destroy civilised society, they appear to have surpassed themselves in their attitude to Christianity and Islam on their GCSE Bitesize revision website which is so fantastically biased, so hatefully anti-Christian and so perversely pro-Islamic that when one considers it is aimed at the unformed minds of young school children it must surely be tantamount to child abuse.
The BBC religious studies page, which can be found here has various sub-divisions, but for the purpose of this article I am going to concentrate on Prejudice & Discrimination and again, for the sake of this essay I will ignore Judaism, Hinduism and Sikhism, and centre only on the attitudes of Christianity and Islam.
For those readers who do not wish to read this article in its entirety, then the four links in the paragraph above will take you to all the relevant pages, but be sure to do the Christian test as well as the Islam test at the end of each revision section. A word of caution however; if you suffer from high blood pressure or have a dicky ticker I would advise you to steer well clear.
Well, the BBC's got plenty of form in that regard.
The BBC has long stated as though it were fact: ‘The Koran was revealed...'
This contrasts starkly with the longstanding BBC position on Christianity: 'Christians believe that... Thus the BBC makes no comparable statement about the Christian 'revelation' being fact.
There is a lot more stuff about various kinds of wickedness in connection with Christianity, and lots of lovely warm stuff about justice and fairness in connection with Islam.
But, by its choice of linguistic terms the BBC makes -- and broadcasts -- a value judgement of its own: that the basic tenet of Islam is true and historically verifiable in contrast with the inferior value of the equivalent basic tenet of Christianity which is not described as ‘fact’.
This is conveying an impression by omission - an old trick and a first year undergraduate deploying it in an essay would be asked to say whether it was sloppiness or intellectual dishonesty.
The wholly rationalist position of the BBC treats fact as superior to mere unverifiable, subjective belief. It therefore follows, from its choice of language, that the BBC holds Islam to be superior to Christianity. Islam is, in the BBC’s terms, both literally true and (as it is described here) full of good things as against Christianity which is merely unverifiable opinion and (as described here) full of bad things.
In short, ‘Islamic belief is based in fact, and good’ and ‘Christianity is based in nothing more than opinion, and bad’.
Has anyone noted, by the way, that the newly appointed head of religious broadcasting is a Muslim? Not that this fact can possibly have any bearing of course. No Christian head of BBC religious broadcasting would be allowed to claim factual superiority for his own religion over Islam, so naturally no Muslim head of BBC religious broadcasting may be allowed to claim superiority for his faith over Christianity. Right? And how many times have we heard the DG say, recently, 'The BBC has no opinions'?
But the BBC does have corporate opinions, and we are paying for the promulgation of these opinions which the BBC is forbidden by its Charter to hold.
This habitual opposition of Islam to Christianity (an opposition proposed and persisted-in by the BBC, let us be clear) is pernicious. It is, however, but all of a piece and hardly less pernicious than the BBC's pushing its many other corporate opinions: on right wing opinion (bad) as opposed to left wing opinion ('centre'/'balanced'/good), climate science scepticism (bad), free market politics (bad), privatisation (bad), elite education (bad) except in sport (multicultural and non-academic, therefore good) and the teaching of our history and native culture (bad, bad, bad).
Oh, the BBC has opinions, all right. And licence to promulgate them at your expense and to the exclusion of all opposing opinions using the most advanced and powerful communications methods ever developed.
As Randall says, they don't realise that it's bias. It's visceral. They cannot conceive of anything outside their group think being acceptable.
Most BBC employees live in multicultural city centres, overwhelmingly London, where half the population is not native English and probably comes from the developing world of which vast swathes are Muslim. They live in neighbourhoods where Islam is highly visible - and intends to be. The Christian majority is simply a native component of the wider environment and, having no peculiar costume or manners (because native) is largely invisible by comparison.
The BBC accepts wholeheartedly all the leftist dogmas on inclusivity. Indeed, it spends a lot of money training all its staff to think as Labour tells them to think.
Add to that their fear of more Islamist violence in the city where they live, if 'the religion of peace' is criticised in any way, and it's really not hard to see why the BBC promotes Islam as factual (which Muslims believe and insist upon) and superior to our native (spit) religion which most BBC employees have been taught to despise as the founding doctrine of hated imperialist oppressors in all parts of the world and at all times and especially in Britain, is it?
It really isn't.
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. I think...
Good to see that the Upper House's Crap Detector is in fine working order.
Up yours, Gordon. And get your filthy, corrupt, partisan Labour hands off our British Constitution, you vain, meddling, ignorant little man.
You're lying to the people again, Prescott, you fat tosser.
The East Coast Line has not been re-nationalised, may never be re-nationalised and even if should be, would pass rapidly through Mandy's revolving door and back into the private sector before even st-st-stuttery G-G-Gordon could say N-N-N-Nife, Mister Squeaker.
It's over, Prescott, and your latest fantasy - that it isn't - is an embarrassment even to the few in your Party who remain capable of living on Planet Earth and exercising the little grey cells of which you were blessed with fewer than normal.
Your day is done. Your pathetic, failed, Marxist Clause Four ideology is dead, you gross, greedy, abusive sexual predator. Dead and buried. Get over it.
Oh, and why aren't you in jail for your disgusting and illegal bullying workplace practices? Did you give Harriet one when she was a slip of a gel and you were younger and slimmer yourself? Is that one of the 'bodies' everyone says you know about, you know, the ones that kept you in office long after any normal organisation would have fired you for gross misconduct and indecency? And if not, why not? Because a nice toff gel like that has better taste? Is that it? I merely ask.
Prescott, you are an unappetising arse of the first water. And a fucking hypocrite with your family's nice little PRIVATE SECTOR property empire and consultancy business. And the two lavatory seats. One for each lardy cheek?
I paid out of my limited income to keep you and your family in gracious luxury so that you could trough and sluice ad nauseam (sic) and roger the secretaries while leaning on antique Whitehall wainscoting or lying on priceless palace carpets.
Just when I thought I was free of you, there's your horrible cocky face thrust into the lens of a camera yet again, distorted to even greater ugliness than before and drooling your usual fact-free class war drivel for all the world like anyone gave a toss about you or the Party formerly known as Labour, and provoking me to throw something heavier and harder than a fucking egg at your fat fucking head.
Piss off into the wilderness, will you, you treacherous troughing socialist bastard, and give us a chance to forget you ever existed? You are a living insult to the people of Hull (thousands of whom are deeply and personally ashamed of you, by the way) and to the rest of Britain.
OK, you got away with it. For years. Be satisfied with that and go. Get out of my face.
Bastard.
Mr Obama is planting little ACORNS all over his private woodland which is inhabited by some frightening creatures.
Oh, wait... it is not his private woodland, is it? It is the United States of America, the land of Jefferson, Franklin and Washington.
Weep, America, weep, for what you have done to your heritage (shortly to be made illegal) by electing this fraud to your country's highest office.
And shame on the Republican Party for making it possible.
Goodbye, Mrs Palin. Now will some serious and patriotic Republican politicians kindly step forward before it's too late?
Go on, just this once.
Question: Does this man look like a thuggish lying bastard to you?
Picture from here.
(With thanks to Barking Spider.)
Thus Oborne:
Go to it, Dave.Sixty-five years ago, heroic Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg made his claim to go down as a glorious name in German history when he led the failed 1944 assassination plot against Hitler.
Today, his third son, Count Franz Ludwig von Stauffenberg, is leading the German resistance against the Lisbon Treaty — and in the past week won a vital victory.
He secured a sensational ruling from the German constitutional court that the powers of the Berlin parliament must be significantly strengthened before Germany signs on the dotted line of the document which will create a centralised EU superpower.
This landmark decision has massive implications not just for Germany, but also for Britain.
This is because there will now be a long delay in the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty which could well string out the process until after the British general election.
This has fascinating ramifications.
David Cameron has bravely pledged a European referendum if the Treaty has not been ratified and he becomes Prime Minister.
It now looks possible that his first major drama as Tory PM would be to lead the ‘No’ camp in a referendum on the Treaty.
Of course, this might embarrass Cameron because the Tories risk a major split, with pro-Europe Ken Clarke taking up an opposing position.
But my guess is that Cameron will win a ‘No’ vote and achieve a massive victory in the war against euro-federalism.
Red Rag (I will not link to it) is on Mrs Dale's list of new blogs.
It's exactly as advertised: mendacity and bitterness driven by the tiresome and counter-productive class-hatred reflex and let's not spoil a good Labour rant with grown-up politics.
It seems the blogger(s) at Red Rag received his/her/their/its 'education' at the hands of the Labour 'government' with the usual disastrous results: taste and discrimination at the level of the least appetising of Jeremy Kyle's exhibits and a facility with English to match.
Are these bloggers 'government' advisers, do you suppose? To the Department of Balls, perhaps? Just imagine having such people in control of, say, the education of young minds. Oh, wait...
Reading such bile is all the evidence one needs to conclude that his/her/their/its 'comrades' are unfit for public office and must never, ever be allowed to govern again.
Mind you, I bet Gordon -- sorry, Balls -- tsk, no, Draper -- no, McBride -- oh, what the... the whole nasty Brown Bunker crew loves it. They do a nice line in hatred, if not in government.
Thinks... 'deniability'...
No, wait. Sorry. My mistake. That Guardian headline reads Ed Balls calls for crackdown on parents lying.
Of course. Still, easy mistake to make, innit?
If there have been 12,000 cases of swine flu worldwide since Wednesday, and given that in this country we have had 7,447 in three months, how is the UK, all on its little own, expecting 100,000 cases a day?
Where's the graph? Where is the reasoning?
The vetting panel for the House of Lords took the unusual step of writing to Downing Street and warning of the dangers of awarding Michael Martin a peerage. The argument has been that after his much-criticised handling of the expenses scandal and his subsequent resignation, he could damage the reputation of the Upper House.
Seventy two percent of voters, even after being reminded that every outgoing Speaker has been made a Lord, say they do not think Michael Martin should have been awarded his peerage.
There is a terrific amount of hot air about at the moment.
Some of it is blasting us, heat-wave or no heat-wave, from the general direction of the Bunker, specifically out of the mouth of the customarily mendacious Mr ‘Take That Post Down Immediately’ Balls.
But Balls is not alone.
The rise in air-temperature is not helped by people like political jokemeister Quentin Letts and the very reverend and very irreverent Tam Dalyell complaining (Today, this morning) about Conservative politicians lowering the tone.
There is much earnest hand wringing about ‘reducing Parliamentary debate to personal invective’, what with the leader of the Opposition pointing out that the Prime Minister’s dogged claims and continually-morphing verbal statements to the House contradict both his own government’s written statements and cruelly self-evident fact.
Poor Mr Letts is getting bored. The continued blood-letting does not offer grist to his professionally witty mill. Perhaps his editor is complaining that his own copy is beginning to lack freshness. Perhaps Mr Letts finds Mr Cameron’s hammering away about the Prime Minister’s dishonesty and unfitness for office insufficiently comic to his own urgent and important purpose.
In 1986, Mr Dalyell famously and with deliberate purpose called the then Prime Minister a liar. But that was all right, you see, because, in his view, she was. Perhaps he can in no circumstances be persuaded by any evidence whatsoever that the Leader of his own Party could possibly deserve the very charge which he levelled with a clear conscience at the then Leader of the other Party?
And now ghostly old lags who never heard any MPs in their day so much as mutter the words, ‘lying bastard’ in the bars of the House of Commons, are emanating from the wainscoting to wail, gnarled hands all a-quiver, that they are shocked, SHOCKED, at the unfortunate turn recently taken in our public political discourse.
Even the estimable Morus is wondering whether Cameron’s persistence in demanding that the Prime Minister correct himself might not prove electorally counterproductive…
But then, one can so easily understand that the priorities of a desperate tabloid sketch-writer and a superannuated Labour grandee might not coincide precisely with those of an electorate concerned to have honesty in government as a sine qua non. As for Morus, bless him, he is just a betting tipster and not trying to influence events. At all.
But yes, one can quite see that they would deem it proper that the first concern of the Leader of the Opposition and candidate Prime Minister be to provide Mr Letts with comic copy, and his next to assure an insufferably patronising former Labour MP, whose most recent claim to our attention (despite his personal wealth) was his application for £8,000 of our money with which to purchase some rather excellent bespoke bookcases in which he wished to house his priceless collection of books, that he is indeed more righteous than any other politician of any party whether living or dead and that therefore he alone may be forgiven for calling a sitting Prime Minister a (brace yourself) ‘liar’when he or she is, er, lying...
Tam Dalyell, earlier today
One can see it, but I beg to differ.
When the Prime Minister of the day is demonstrably and beyond any dispute lying, that is, deliberately and repeatedly telling blatant untruths, and on the basis of those untruths directly causing grave harm to the nation, it is the overriding duty of the Leader of the Opposition to say so using whatever Parliamentary terms are available to him. If this bores witty Mr Letts, tough shit, and likewise if it offends the hypocritical nose of the unlamented Mr Dalyell.
When the electors can see for themselves that the Prime Minister is lying in his teeth and that his ministers are lying, too, and when, as has been made appallingly clear, the liar’s closest friends in government include immoral, egregious thugs of the sort one could not previously have imagined being allowed to pollute the air of polite society let alone being brought into government and who plot to dive to hitherto unplumbed depths of nastiness in order to make mad the wives of their enemies on their masters’ behalf on the customary basis (of course) of deniability, one may be forgiven for telling the Prime Minister, his colleagues and their contemptible associates, when they complain about ‘gutter politics’, to look in the mirror before they fuck off and die.
I am getting angry, now.
The horrible fucking bastard (copyright Stanislav aka Ishmael) who rules over us pro tem talks of 'British literature'.
Give me strength. He really, really hates, the English, doesn't he? That is not a question.
It's English Literature, you horrible fucking bastard. It's to do with the language. (The clue's in the word 'English'.) You know, that thing you find so challenging when you have to stand on your hind legs and, you know, talk.
And he is half-educated, too, Doctor Brown, PhD in Scottish Socialism And Not Economics.
For the full SP on this topic, ladies and gennelmen, I refer you to the immortal Stan.
My two local papers report:
An annual health check of Uttlesford (District, Essex) has revealed that people are living longer, eating better and achieving more compared to other areas of the country.The number of reported crimes per 1,000 population hereabouts is the lowest in the county and falling steadily, and the county consistently has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.
The average life expectancy is about 80 for men and 82 for women – almost two years higher than the national average for both.
The District Council collected 99.2 of the business tax it was owed against the national average of 97.8 per cent, and 98.3 per cent of the (low) Council tax it is owed against the national average of 97 per cent.
Key points:
Yep. That's what the Bunker put up on the web. Honest, not invent (copyright Stanislav).
The very wonderful and ever-diligent Dizzy, heroic inspector of Labour's small print and favourite to win the Fraser Nelson Anorak of the Year Award, found those little gems in the first version of Gordon's National Plan (as it has been known around Whitehall for months until that title was banned as too 'Stalinist' -- honest, not invent.... sorry, Stan, can't help it, now) inspiring re-launch paper, Repairing the Damage, or something.
Dizzy stashed a PDF of the original, full cock-up document for our delectation and delight. Of course it's been removed from the Dear Leader's site now and replaced with something he wouldn't be ashamed to show Nurse.
"I have dropped Post Office privatisation.
"Now, stick with us until the election (yes, yes, of course I'm working on getting him out) and there is half a chance we can come up with some sort of Plan B between now and May that will satisfy my friends in Brussels.
"Stick with me, and Labour might still win the election. Well, all right - hung Parliament.
"Look, how many times? I'm trying. The Postman's intensive training is going... fairly well.
"On the other hand, if you abandon ship, or perhaps remove a few crucial planks, it will be hello Dave, goodbye Post Office.
Your move, Derek."
Outed here.
He hardly 'knew' Damian but he knows the wife. All right, not quite wife, but same difference.
The 'lady' sounds almost as charming and disingenuous as her other half.
Another not-an-actual-lie to Goeballs's account.
Over at CoffeeHouse, we learn that Ed Balls is throwing his toys out of his pram.
He has had a go at Fraser Nelson who is not, we now see, one to keep quiet about a major victory. Well, what else would you call it when the Cabinet Minister closest to the Prime Minister phones to object to your scoring a direct hit on him?
Do read it all. It is beyond delicious.
Fraser revealed all and asked for readers' comments. Here's mine.
______________________--
Friendly word to the wise, Ed, old boy.
Don't be a bigger arse than you have to be. Try not to get caught in public with your shorts around your ankles which is what your little outburst today amounts to. It shatters one's dignity which, in your position, may be all you have left.
Yelling at an industrious media-blogger makes you look like a thuggish twerp. It alienates other journalists just when you are running short of friends in that quarter. If you really can’t help yourself, try to remember that although the Speccie’s readership is dominated by Tory anoraks, your target may have other readers, such as the C2D types who lap up Fraser Nelson’s thoughts over at the News of the Screws on whose votes you may have to depend for a few votes.
As to the substance of the thing, you might want to think about picking a fight with a bloke whose figures are all public domain and verifiable when the gist of his point is that your own figures are not quite… well, d’you see what you did there?
Oh, and I lied about 'friendly'.
... that quote...
“We don’t care if the commentators or the economists turn against us,” said one minister. “This is all about shoring up the base in the northern heart-lands, which we lost in the European elections. We don’t want or need them to understand the nuance of the argument. We just want them to hate the Tories again.”
... is from here.
And now, a dedication, in honour of my Irish grandfather, long dead, and may God rest his cantankerous old soul.
_____________________
A Limerick radio station is running a competition: words not in the dictionary but which would make sense in a sentence.
DJ to caller: Hullo, there. What’s your name?
Caller: Hi there, me name’s Sean.
DJ: Well now, Sean, what’s your word?
Caller: Me word’s G O A N, pronounced ‘go-an’.
DJ: Hey - Sean, a great start. Goan is not in the dictionary. Now let’s hear you put it in a sentence.
Caller: ‘Goan fuck yerself.’
The DJ hung up on Sean and took some other calls. Later…
DJ: Hullo there. Tell us your name, caller.
Caller: Hullo. Me name’s Mick.
DJ: Tell us your word, Mick.
Caller: S M E E, pronounced ‘smee’.
DJ: Nope, cannot find that one, Mick. For the big prize, then, put it in a sentence for us, will you?
Caller: ‘Smee again and yers can goan fuck yerself.'
Balls has a new one, to add to debt, deficit, deceit and... oh, come on. You can think of a few more, I'm sure.
'Deft.'
He slips it into every presentation, every interview. It's how he describes Labour's management of the economy since 1997 and into the future that they haven't got. He means his management of the economy, of course, since he has been the economically literate eminence grise to the economically illiterate Brown, and he intends to be around after the last echo of Brown's obsequies have died away.
'Deft.'
It's his own personal little dividing line, distinguishing himself ('deft') from the Camerosborne, his two-headed Nemesis. He sneers at the Camerosborne as a clumsy, ignorant, pseudo-educated, soft, two-headed, ToryBullyBoy who could not possibly comprehend macroeconomics as well as he does (stop laughing) and who anyway must be permanently barred even from candidacy for high office (the cheek of those Etonian bastards!) on the grounds that it is a Toff.
In a sense, of course, Balls is right. There is no-one to rival him, save his Gordonian keeper, in the class-war-driven ruination of a thriving Western national economy. To find anything remotely similar one has to dig up the corpses of the old monoblocs of the Soviet union and its analogues.
I cannot offhand recall any politician in British history, save his Gordonian guardian, to rival our never-gonna-be-Chancellor in the infliction of pain on the many, not the few.
At 07:50 this morning, the lying hound was lying about growth in the British economy, having mentioned, kinda sotto voce, that his promise of continued growth in spending under Labour after the election (will you please stop laughing?) will be made possible by growth. And then - whoops! At 10:00 the ONS announced that growth had fallen yet again, way past Gordon's Ball's Darling's Labour's most pessimistic Budget estimates, and is accelerating downwards.
Deceitful? Yes. Determined? Yes. Dogged? Yes. Dangerous? Yes.
But deft? Er, no.
If the grass looks greener on the socialist side of the fence it's because they have a better class of bullshit.
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