There's gratitude for you

A spokesman for non-President Blair thanked Jonah for his widely scorned intervention. 'Tony stands ready to go anywhere, any time, to do the same for him. Gordon only has to pick up the phone. Actually he doesn't even have to do that.'

Will Gordon Brown publicly dissociate himself from this man?

In the House of Commons today, Tony McNulty, MP insulted the electorate as follows:

Mr McNulty’s demeanour was that of a loutish 12-year-old who is convinced he has unfairly been singled out for criticism and reckons that to give any sign of contrition would mark him out as a wimp. [...]

I regret that I did not recognise that a more formal arrangement woud have been wise and preferable so as to avoid the risk of an appearance of benefit, and I apologise for that.”

How generous of Mr McNulty to apologise for the risk of an appearance of benefit. But it appears that this unfortunate individual has been the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice, with the rules being rewritten in order to catch a man who had behaved exactly as the authorities assured him he had the right to behave:

“I fully accept that this investigation has been an opportunity to shine further light on both the advice given and the rules as they pertained at the time, and that the commissioner has every right to redefine such advice and apply it retrospectively.”

Poor Mr McNulty failed in his innocence to see that providing a house for his parents at public expense might leave him open to criticism: “I should have had much more concern for how these rules were perceived by the public, rather than just following them.”

But let us not dwell any longer on this unfortunate affair, for as Mr McNulty said, it is “time to move on”, after which the insolent fellow left the House with a smile on his face.

Source.

I am lost for words. I trust the Prime Minister will not be so afflicted.

MPs are to blame if the law is an ass

Mike Smithson writes:

An MP's primary job is to scrutinise legislation.

Remember that, whenever a fuckwit local authority jobsworth crosses the line between public service and an assault on your liberty, privacy or property.

Remember where the blame really lies.

The following is from a letter in one of our local papers:

Most MPs now think it normal that they are scorned and sidelined in Parliament so it’s no wonder they spend so much time scuttling about their constituencies like half-baked social workers, gathering up great ‘case-loads’ with which to try and justify their pay and privileges instead of putting their energies into what Members of Parliament should do: speaking for their electors, holding the government to account, defending their constituents’ rights by defying the over-mighty on their behalf… all that ‘Parliamentary democracy’ stuff. In Parliament.

Quote of the day

Picking a fight with the army to save a measly £20m is like mugging Vera Lynn for a 10p piece.

Matthew Norman.

Retreat from democracy

We moved from anarchy towards democracy slowly, from rule by tribal elites to petty princedoms and thence to monarchy but with real power in the hands of an elite. Then to a form of proto-democracy under Cromwell which soon became near-dictatorship so we moved on again, to constitutional monarchy. Now again we have nominal monarchy with power in the hands of an elite... foreign barons and tribal chiefs...

The elite is about to appoint a President. No, wait - that is new. Hang on... no it's not. Stalin. Mao...

Note for American readers: democracy is abolished in Europe this week. 450 million people are about to be given a president whom they have not elected and who was recently thrown out of government by his own people and who cannot be dismissed by the will of the 450 million. This is being done by an unelected elite who have grabbed the levers of power and control the lives of the 450 million.

Two questions.

1. What would your Founding Fathers say?

2. How do you think this will end?

Big Oil versus Big Snake Oil

At CiF, Julian Little is advocating rational thought about GM food science.

This will not please the Groan’s core readership of lefties and moonbats. They will coagulate to raise a terrible keening, distraught that the Temple of Doomwatch has been profaned by this lickspittle of Big Agro, the horrible offspring of the coupling of Big Oil with Big Pharma.

This capitalist trinity is in a fight to the finish with the Doomwatch religion whose missionary and fund-raising organisation is Big Snake Oil.

The earliest Doomwatch missionaries, the sandal-sporting 1968 Brigade, have all now been canonised by the High Priests, L Ron Al Gore and the terrifying Stern Doctor who brazenly corrupt public discourse by every possible means in the name of Big Snake Oil.

Big Snake Oil favours persuasion as practised by Beloved Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, Uncle Joe Stalin and the psychologists of the Stasi who between them controlled hundreds of millions of adults by indoctrinating their children. They fed them frightening lies to turn them against their equally fearful parents. By controlling the minds of the young and the vulnerable you alter the behaviour of societies. You start small, with light switches and wheelie bins, comedy penguins and cuddly polar bears...

Where Stasi tactics would be counter-productive, Big Snake Oil uses the wolf-in-sheep's clothing tool kit perfected by American televangelists, a surprising number of whom are uneducated fuckwits who amass vast fortunes by selling snake oil to the even more stupid in a kind of spiritual protection racket. They often end up in jail. But then they lack the necessary friends in high places, for the most part.

'Wanna feel better about yourself by doing good? We can help you with that. Just sign here. Yes, there - in the corner of the cheque. Thank you. Right, now you see that guy over there? He's one of the bad guys. Just go over there and badmouth him. Trust me - he deserves it. And you'll feel a whole lot better. Believe me'

Big Snake Oil has no hesitation in harnessing the energies of fuckwits who are looking for the main chance to lead its regiments of useful idiots.

Whether smooth or brutal in its methods, Big Snake Oil can bank on the collaboration of its comrades in left-wing politics. Why would the Left not support Big Snake Oil? Apart from the warm comfort and sheer convenience of 'my enemy's enemy is my friend', so reminiscent of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, they share a Foundational Myth, a sense of Mission and an Ultimate Objective.

The foundational myth is that they have The Truth. The names of uncounted madmen and evil organisations sharing this delusion fill volumes of the encyclopaedias.

Their common mission is to suppress freedom in diverse times and places. The names of dictators sharing this ambition across the centuries fill...

Their shared objective is Control. The names of megalomaniacs nursing this dream across the centuries fill...

Big Snake Oil's most successful strategy is the skewing of the public conversation. It persuades Left governments to publish its propaganda to the citizenry, above all children, convincing the majority that dissenters should be shunned.

Left governments support Big Snake Oil with all the means at their disposal. They employ the Stern Doctor who, like L Ron Gore, has a personal interest in the success of Big Snake Oil. Cheered on by their acolytes in the quangocracy, Left governments base policy on Big Snake Oil's 'reports' and advice.

Left governments support Big Snake Oil by using taxpayers' money to pervert 'the scientific consensus' through the provision of grants to cooperative scientists and denial of funds to and discrediting scientists who refuse to base their work on the false and selective data approved by Big Snake Oil's own 'scientists' - like L Ron Gore... who is not a scientist at all. This reminds one of Soviet attitudes to psychiatry.

The Left and its fellow-travellers in Big Snake Oil can only gain and retain control by controlling Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Agro which together are the very epitome of the wealth-creating, wealth-sharing capitalism which, alone of all mankind's activities, has done the most to raise the poor from their desperation and set them free.

Capitalism is a fancy word for the freedom of exchange which is the condition and outcome of the liberation and flourishing of humankind.

Big Snake Oil and the Left agree that capitalism must be stopped at all costs for it prevents their taking control.

Capitalism is embraced by free individuals all over the world:

Capitalism's GM seeds are enabling subsistence farmers to raise disease-free crops, liberating their families from fear of famine for the first time in history, making them independent of bullying-through-handout by totalitarian governments (usually socialists) and NGO quangocrats.

Capitalism's oil means mobility: the ability to live where you will, to travel the world and see how other societies organise themselves as opposed to accepting how your totalitarian government organises you - thereby enriching its nomenklatura, the people who tell you, in your dirt-scratching, starvation, which 'truths' they want you to believe.

Capitalism's medicines release people from the sickness, pain, premature death and bereavement to which the mediaevalist-millennialist preachers of Big Snake Oil and Socialism would condemn us.

With capitalism comes the freedom to feed your family, improve your health, create wealth, claim your freedom and defy the oppressor. With capitalism comes freedom of thought.

It is intolerable.

Socialism will give us the perfect society when Big Snake Oil's prophesies come to pass.

Meanwhile, slaughter your cow and chew any maize you can find, and huddle together for warmth in your grass hut. Oh - they lied about the hut. It will not exist because without the fertiliser produced by the cow there won't be any fucking grass, just forest which They will forbid you to chop down for firewood against the freezing of the planet in the next Ice Age (the Earth is cooling, by the way) but why bring facts into a good horror story?

Don't make the mistake of thinking Big Snake Oil and its friend Big Brother are talking about science, for fuck's sake.

This is is a cult. Like Scientology. A cult in which Big Snake Oil and Socialism march together. No wonder moonbats, Righteous and fuckwittery all worship at the same temple. They need each other for comfort and to swell the chant of 'Enemy of Truth! Enemy of the People!' at any who oppose them.

Like Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Little Boots, they will all pass away. There are more of us, determined upon freedom, than there are of those who would control us

I'm going to get one of these

Sign the petition to President Klaus, please

Stand Firm President Klaus

Meanwhile, back at CoffeeHouse, Daniel Korski is telling us that everything is OK, that one can be both pro-British and pro-EU because the EU is a union of nation states.

Sigh.

My response:

Lisbon unifies all the 'nation states' in matters of justice and home affairs.

This is completely unacceptable and is the reason Brown's signature was ultra vires, illegitimate and treacherous (the last because he did it in the teeth of national opposition).

Lisbon by its very essence nullifies your (and all other) pro-EU arguments by destroying the very essence of the nation state.

Europe will be one state the moment Klaus signs up.

It will end in tears, like Yugoslavia, and for the same reasons.

If it's Lisbon or BOO, then it will have to be BOO.

Too much caffeine for me today, I fear.

That Global Kiddie-Scaring ad campaign

Had a reply from the ASA. They ask that their letter not be published prematurely. Therefore I am happy to make it available immediately.

Oi! That man! Stop scratching and...

... read this.

Stop that fucking crying in the rear rank. Don't you know there's a bloody war on?

Be careful what you pray for

More of me elsewhere. Guess where. Correct.

__________________________________

Multicultural chaos... economic chaos... any kind of chaos as long as it's chaos.

Read Lenin or any of the old marxoid masters. Chaos, aka ungovernability, is the longed-for precondition of the Revolution. Longed-for by brave revolutionaries but actually not so much by Mrs Dierdre Dutt-Pauker (the Hampstead Thinker, © Peter Simple) and her wussie comrades who huddle together for mutual encouragement in The Flask. They have no absolutely intention of wearing a cor-du-roy flat 'at (other than ironically) and they intend to be long dead before the Red Revolution comes.

That's why they prefer the Gramsci approach. Best of both worlds, d'you see? The glow of doing their bit for the Movement and getting the ‘king bourgeois (taxpayers) to fund their own downfall, and preserving their own comforts and advantages, like kids at private schools because state schools good enough for Socialists will only come about when they have built Socialism. And mortgages, because frankly darling, who could tolerate a Muscovite tenement circa 1918? Meanwhile, the dis-education of the underclass is one more step along the Great Highway to Utopia. 'Education, education, education' may not mean what Tony Blair thought it meant.

The Oxfam-dressed Hampstead Drinkers and the Harmanesque Mili-nobility of London’s beautiful Nash Terraces may, of course, get a surprise. The Revolution-out-of-Chaos may come sooner than they think. If so, it won't be a Red revolution.

We do have something in common, though. I also hope to be long dead before the shooting starts.

I love Libertarians

I am hooked on Coffee again. Here's wot I rote over there earlier.

________________________

I fear it's no good appealing to Fraser Nelson on immigration. (I am a huge fan of his on economics in general with one or two caveats of which this is one.)

Like many of the current Spectator team he is more Libertarian than Conservative and I would guess (and he may even have written) that like true Libertarians he believes in unlimited immigration. Worldwide. As if.

I wonder what advice we shall be hearing over the coming years from such comfortably-off Libertarians, free to live wherever and however they choose, perhaps in a Nash terrace like David Miliband, unlike the BNP's followers, on how government should approach Britain's present-time, real-world (as opposed to future or theoretical) social tensions and the resulting problems of 'governability' which their unpragmatic, purist policies would throw up, and of which we see the beginnings now, although of course in the present case caused by totalitarian Socialists among Labour Party's strategists - internationalist nation-despisers to a man/woman. Just like true Libertarians.

The Libertarian riposte of 'But we would not start from here' is fine for academic theorising but useless in developing government policy for keeping the peace in the here and now.

I love Libertarians. They make good drinking companions and they're honest. They keep us Conservatives sharp, focused, on the straight and narrow. But they are far too pure for government and so must be kept in their place, in the box marked 'Ginger Group'.

I can't believe I just read this

'Blair... would really help to put Europe on the map.'

Just thought I'd share that thought with you. I refrain from further comment, but that doesn't mean you have to hold back.

No, I won't tell you that I got it from... oh, all right - here.

'Traitorsgate': Memo to Mr Neather

A comment from me earlier, at CoffeeHouse:

Nice try, Mr Neather, but retractions and clarifications never overshadow the original statement. As far as Labour's electoral position is concerned, the facts revealed in your first article will have done them fatal damage.

Labour went ahead with their immigration policy fully aware of what we might call the collateral damage they were doing to British society, quite distracted by their glee at creating 'insuperable' problems for their political opponents. How very Brownian.

They sacrificed the long-term peacefulness and social cohesion of England's cities on the altar of their political dogma. In doing so they betrayed the nation at large and their own core vote in particular.

All the clarifications in the world will not wipe 'Traitorsgate' from the political memory of Labour’s one-time core constituency. You're finished.

Weep for the Czechs

“Twenty years after the restoration of our democracy and sovereignty, we are once again dealing with the question whether we should — this time voluntarily, based on our free will — give up the position of a sovereign state and hand over decision-making on our own matters to European institutions that are outside of the democratic control of our citizens.”

And this week's prize coconut goes to...

Tim Worstall:

So Pret a Manger’s sushi is in fact frozen.

But then, so is all sushi right across the EU:

Pret points out that under European Union rules, fish served raw has to be frozen first to kill off any parasites.

No doubt someone will be along soon enough to explain why this law is essential to stop Germany invading France. Again.

Scorched earth indeed

Malanchthon on ConHome:

[...]

... the worst recession since the 1920s; unemployment that will rise above four million unless something dramatic happens; public finances of the order of a banana republic; public spending on the scale of a soviet republic; the major industry of the economy (finance) crippled to the point of nationalisation; households burdened by ruinous debt; a war we absolutely must win but show little signs of doing so amidst widespread voter disillusionment with its value; a society ravaged by nihilism, sloth, adultery, divorce, irresponsibility, selfishness, promise-breaking and faithlessness on a truly epic scale; a political establishment that has no faith in itself or in the value of its ideals; an incoherent patchwork of overlapping legislatures in a constitution savaged beyond recognition; tension with our friends and partners in the European Union on the point of breaking out into open hostility...

[...]

As unemployment rises above three million next year, and (barring something extraordinary) above four million over the following winter, the Conservative Party will be blamed. People will say that it's the spending cuts and the public sector redundancies that are the cause. There will be unprecedented social tensions associated with there being so, so many unemployed. Given the very low trust there is in politicians and the general scale of nihilism and social decay, the situation could become volatile - in an extreme case, in specific regions, even quasi-revolutionary (of the order of quasi-revolutionary union activities in the early 1970s, but probably not, on this occasion, at the instigation of unions). I have no idea how the Conservatives intend to deal with that - and, I think, neither does anyone in the Party.

[...]

Good luck, David.

The Voice

Am I the only one who hears Big Brother in Gordon Brown's sepulchral podcast voice? Kind of threatening and avuncular - not in a good way - at the same time.

Whatever he actually says, what I hear is

I Know Where You Live.

The BBC keeps playing clips of these podcasts on the news. I do wish they wouldn't. I don't know what the Voice-From-The-Vault does for the average floating voter but it scares the hell out of me.

Still, at least he's twigged that the horrible gurning-to-camera thing was a FAIL.

Pass the parcel

Post Office strike talks on Monday, then, apparently at the behest of Labour's owners, Unite.

My Man With His Ear To The Keyhole overheard this:

'We need to lose this parcel as fast as possible. We do not need the Winter of Sodding Discontent the Daily Mail is praying for.

'We have to damp the fire down until after the election.

'Privatisation is going to happen, comrades. You know it and I know it. The EU has spoken. But why should This Great Movement Of Ours take the shit for it in our last few months in existence power?

'The Kit-Kat Gambit means we can leave it for the fucking Tories. What? Oh - it means 'take a break', Gordon. It's a biscuit thing.

'Anyway, the moment Hush Puppy walks into your old office, Mandy (love the blue suede shoes, by the way) we whip out the petrol cans and welcome him with a nice roaring fire.

'Be patient, Billy. You'll have your finest hour soon enough and with the added bonus of personally slapping away Cameron's bloody victory smirk.'

.

Now there's a novelty.

Something in the Guardian which both Devil's Kitchen and Old Holborn will appreciate.

Our Hell correspsondent writes:

Over at the Kitchen, your humble correspondent commented thusly:

________________________________________

thefrollickingmole said: 'how evil an act is it to govern in order to actively cause a crisis (so you can "fix" them of course).'

And not even new. It’s in Chapter One of the oldest Communist Party training manuals from, I dunno, about 1919, I think. Read this from an ex-hard line Communist cadre. Gloss over his religious faith if you like, but learn from the horse's mouth how the Comrades think and operate. They have never changed.

I paraphrase: 'Make yourself indispensable. Find an old lady with a grievance and do your best to fix it. A leaking roof, anything. No grievance? Create one. Cut a hole in her roof. Just don't get caught. Get the council in and have a blazing row with them in front of her. Make sure they fix her roof. You’ll get the credit and she’ll be forever grateful. Then on to the next grievance. Do the same. Become the local fixer, the Friend. Later, when you seek control, they will support you. When you are opposed, they will defend you. Never forget that grievance is your toolkit, your path to power and control.'

Look at the Bolsheviks promising to redress the grievances of the starving Russian infantry of which they then took control, turning it into the Red Army. Hitler did the same, of course. He knew his Communist handbooks backwards, being a Socialist. The only bit of International Socialism he didn't like was the ‘Inter’ bit so he just knocked it off. He didn't change much else. Added a few refinements of his own, like gulags. Or was that the Soviets?

Lenin was the man. He went straight for the big time: ‘To hell with old ladies' leaky roofs. Let's have a full-on fucking civil war.' No, let's be fair to the man. He didn’t say 'fucking'. Lenin was a middle class gentleman. Think of Hilary Benn but with brains and real ambition.

Speaking of civil war, old Vladimir Ilyich would have mightily approved of Labour's immigration wheeze. I just thank God I won’t be here if (when?) the grandchildren have to fight the second English Civil War.

But hey - well done the Socialists. Ruthless, power-grabbing bastards. Always were, always will be. Democracy? Sod that – the voters are just cannon-fodder. And Socialists are incompetent, too. Every Socialist government Britain has ever had – every single bloody one – has left the economy in ruins. Not on Gordon's scale, I admit.

But hang on… was it incompetence? Or traditional Marxoid planning? Gordon is an historian of Socialism, after all. No, not an economist - that's just a front, and not much of one at that.

‘The economy may be in trouble but recovery is just around the corner … any time now… please don’t throw us out… we’re fixing the crisis… the other lot would make it worse… we are your Friends...’

Familiar?

Still, never mind, eh? Vote Labour.

One own goal after another for cynical Socialist stupidity

I remain convinced that nobody’s comforting prejudices will have been altered by QT. Quite the reverse in fact.

There will be a greater swing away from Labour and to the BNP following yesterday's Telegraph revelations about cynical racial engineering by the Labour Party. It does not surprise close observers of the more determined socialist-ideology elements of the Labour Party; the only surprise is the admission** and reports of it in the press.

In general terms if not specifics, the whole country has known about Labour’s immigration strategy for years and discussed it in samizdat and in the corners of working men's clubs where BNP campaigners joined the discussion and stood their round. Comment in more refined circles, though, was totally suppressed. Witch-finders were despatched and quangos created whenever a slightly heightened level of murmuring caused concern.

Shame on Labour’s ruthless anti-democratic cynics and on those too cowardly to expose and oppose them.

I agree that politics and the media did themselves no favours by ganging up on Mr Griffin before an audience of millions. This was a drawing-room version of the un-cerebral hysteria which has seen him elected to the European Parliament. They handed him an emotional advantage which may or may not translate into votes: a few, undoubtedly, but I would think fewer than he will harvest from the latest revelations about the Labour party’s immigration politics.

All in all, the sophisticates have turned out to be about as smart as some of Mr Griffin’s most intellectually challenged disciples.

Further, the BBC clearly has a case to answer under the general heading of political impartiality if Mr Griffin complains that the programme was re-engineered into a form of kangaroo court especially for his benefit. I find it hard to account for such cosmic stupidity in all those bright young things who became BBC managers after years spent going on courses on aspiration and motivation. No, wait… on second thoughts, it’s not hard at all…

The bear-baiting tactic will have brought a smile to the lips of the usual suspects but all they have is a Pyrrhic victory. As a political strategy it only illustrates the poverty of public debate underpinning our collapsing politics.

_________________________________

** I was about to say that it will be fun watching the Labour Party trying to appeal to the ref after their spectacular own goal but the BBC is going to be in a flat spin following the Griffin affair so their political inquisitors (e.g. Crick) and the Labour journals (New Statesman, Guardian) are unlikely to have time to challenge the Labour Party (as if) in the matter.

I suppose any discussion will be confined to the blogs which will no doubt receive skip-loads of the usual un-cerebral hard left brown stuff, in full conformity with what everyone now knows to be official Labour Party policy: manipulation in attack and suppression in defence. The old Soviet prophets would be so proud.

'Dynamite!' Yeah, yeah, we knew ages ago. Next.

'Knew what?'

Oh - this.

Sigh.

Everybody knew. The Left, the Right, the Middle. Everyone.

The Left said 'Right on!' The Right said 'How dare they, the treacherous bastards!' The Middle said, 'Meh, it's bleedin' obvious but what can you do?'

It was only the arrogant bastards in the Labour hierarchy who thought the electorate at large stupid enough not to see what they were up to. Oh - and have been up to since Wilson was in Number Ten. Some of us have long memories.

Oh, look. Here comes that Nick Griffin. Whaddya mean, 'what's he doing here?'

Tsk.

Here's an idea

No bear-pit atmosphere. No chatterati chairman. Just Nick Griffin sitting at a table with a couple of civilised, courteous, political laser-brains. One left, the other right. For a couple of hours. At prime time.

Anyone remember Enoch Powell debating on TV years ago with Richard Crossman and both of them gently telling the very young chairman, Dimbleby J, who kept interrupting the grown-ups, that they could manage very nicely thank you if only he would keep quiet?

So, any takers?

More on Griffin

(I break my golden rule to reply at length to a comment on an earlier post.)

________________________

I would think most people came away from Question Time with their prejudices intact.

Griffin's fans would have seen the plain-speaking man of the people harried by the same professional politicians and ‘foreigners’ who have conspired together to alienate them.

His enemies will have seen what I saw: a bitter, alienated man, more or less incoherent in the face of sustained but civilised hostility, one more used to dealing with a mob such as can be arranged at short notice by the ironically named Unite Against Fascism.

Griffin’s views resonate with at least a million people in England. He believes he is capable of leading them and he probably is because despite his shambolic TV turn he is smarter than almost all of them. There will always be a man like Griffin ready and able to lead the angry and alienated who cannot cope with the inevitabilities of the world as it is and who have no voice.

His own will have loved him last night and he will have gained a few more sympathisers. I am not the first to say he could not lose with a seat at the QT table but it is necessary for all our sakes that he be there. Evil does its best work in the shadows. The way to ensure that this angry man’s day is as short as possible is to turn the spotlight on him. Let the sunshine in.

Politicians are blamed for ignoring and thereby alienating – and delivering – Griffin’s constituency. They have to accept the obloquy although they would be on the receiving end of it whatever they did or did not do. Oh, they should have done this (limited Immigration) and they should have done that (refrained from lying to the electors) but it would have made no difference.

For all societies in all times and places have aggrieved groups and they always have their Griffins. The reasons for the grievances will differ between those times and places but the anger is the same.

There will always arise a man with a penetrating gaze to articulate the rage, identify the longed-for scapegoat and offer the relief of simplicity. He will be a hero. Knowing that his constituency is swimming against the tide of history, he will tell them the opposite. He will promise to empower them and they, the oppressed, the ignored, they will simply turn back the tide – if only they will follow him.

He… they… will force the deluded majority to understand that they are on a road to disaster. That he and his followers have The Truth although the majority’s leaders will try and lie to refute it for their selfish ends. He is not your enemy. Those others are. He is your friend. He hears you. He smiles.

We have heard it all before. We know that the road down which Griffin would lead us always ends at Auschwitz and Belsen. We wish we could wish him out of existence. The UAF think that if they shout loudly enough he will cease to exist but they also believe that every time you say fairies don’t exist, a fairy dies.

We know that it is essential for the survival of civilisation that Griffin’s inevitable glory is as temporary as possible. His influence must be destroyed, preferably without doing his work for him in the process - not a lesson UAF has ever learned, nor do they want to learn it.

How?

A National Socialist ‘reich’ (for want of a better word) depends for its survival on the enforcement of secrecy in an atmosphere of fear among neighbours. There is only one way to counter such a tendency from its earliest stages: total transparency. Sunlight as disinfectant.

It is essential to get the Griffins on to our TV screens. Some of them, like Oswald Mosley, would do very well in front of a camera and smarter, harder debaters than last night’s panel would be required for them. Others, like Griffin, lack the communications skills suitable for television so that last night, in the face of determined opposition, he, victim representing victims, struggled to express the inchoate anger of the alienated for whom he believes he speaks – as do a million others.

Today, Griffin will be basking in triumphant self-pity and the congratulations of his gorillas. His inbox will be flooded with messages of love. But the moment will pass.

Politicians may rue the fact that they did not pre-empt the rise of the BNP years ago. Yes, they could and should have learned from history. No, they should not have treated the great unwashed among the electorate with such contempt. Yes, we now have acute national problems of identity and loyalty and tremendous local economic pressure caused by Labour’s open door to unlimited immigration, with the bulk of the newly arrived strangers coming en masse to streets where the contemptible great unwashed are trapped in poverty. Yes, these problems stoke Griffin’s boilers.

Alienation? Anger? Racism? Of course.

There is no simple answer to the mob rage of the alienated who, like the poor, are always with us.

The grossest crime of which politicians, in their softly-carpeted, sound-proofed ivory towers, should be accused (in this context) is pretending that the facts of human nature are not as they are. That will have to change. Contrary to the dream of Socialism, politicians will all – all – have to accept that mankind is not perfectible. Economic ease does not render all men nice. Original sin is true.

There will always be Griffins. They have to be pre-empted as far as possible, by truth and transparency which are also, as it happens, the solution to the world’s Griffin problems.

After QT, most people are getting on with their lives, glad that they and their friends and neighbours are not filled with hate like Mr Griffin and his henchmen. But soon the politicians will come canvassing and then the people will say, ‘These evil BNP people. They are taking advantage of opportunities which your party has created, Mr Candidate. What are you going to do to take the rug out from under them?’

So the politicians have work to do, to clear up the heap of trouble of their own making, atop of which stands Mr Griffin, waving to his supporters and quite possibly praying for real martyrdom instead of the martyrdom-lite of television.

In the greater scheme of things, Mr Griffin is not destined to be even a minor major figure on the political scene. He is no Oswald Mosley. Whatever happened to that Fabian-turned-Fascist?

Mr Griffin will be loved for a while by the minority who are like him or for whom, he tells them, he will speak against their ‘oppressors’. But their numbers are self-limiting. Mr Griffin has about as much chance of taking the levers of power as I have of an awayday to Pluto.

Do not expect anyone to change their mind having seen the face of Fascism on The Telly. Most people will be repelled. A small minority will be attracted.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

A Day in the Life

I read the news today oh, boy, About a lucky man who made the grade And though the news was rather sad Well, I just had to laugh...

BBC:

There's no disguising how grim these figures are. Almost every City analyst expected there to be positive growth in the third quarter. Instead it was negative.

That means the recession in the UK is the longest since modern records began in the 1950s.

Germany, France and Japan have all come out of recession technically and the UK hasn't. The decline has continued.

And the markets didn't really like the look of that. The foreign exchange markets have been selling the pound.

There's every indication that it's going to be a long hard slog for quite some time to come as the British economy tries to turn itself round.

Will no-one rid us of this dangerous egomaniac?

"Britain is better placed than any other economy to face the slowdown in the world economy."

OK, I watched. And?

Well, I was wrong about Griffin being clever, Tutu or no Tutu. What an arse. Given a platform to die for, an audience of trillions and every opportunity to make his case, he turned out to be a political incompetent and - in short - a complete twat.

The whole thing failed to live up to its billing. To be honest, I wanted blood. Actual, metaphorical... not fussy. Just blood. That was what all the advertising offered me and that was my price for breaking my habit (I usually don't - it's unbearable) and watching it.

What did I get? Well, certainly not blood. Bah.

Sayeeda Warsi is rather sweet though. And smart. And subtle. I stand corrected, there. But I am happy to report that Bonnie Greer is still emetic, Jack Straw still an unpleasant hypocrite and Huhne still oh-so-punchable, so I end the evening with most of my comforting prejudices intact.

Think I'll give QT a miss next week, as usual.

.

So, to watch or not to watch?

Put up the freak-show’s viewing figures, risk flattering the freak?

Ignore it, in the hopeless hope that millions of others will do the same and make it a damp squib? No, that's not going to happen.

Ignore it and

(a) miss the odious freak getting squished and making an arse of himself

or

(b) forego the guilty pleasure of watching the odious clever freak (don’t mistake Cambridge graduate Griffin for an idiot) embarrass the eminently dislikeable Straw, the oh-so-punchable Huhne, the emetic Bonny Greer and the sadly overestimated Lady Warsi.

Decisions, decisions.

Yes, Prime Minister

Gordon Brown is muttering about giving MPs (not ministers) a pay rise of £3k p.a. at a time when the electorate would happily string 'em all up for helping themselves to more than they are entitled to. Way to go, Gordon...

Now why would he do that, when public sector workers are about to be asked for pay restraint (yes, by Labour) just six months before an election which he is as good as certain to lose and which will terminate his political career, assuming his colleagues and backbenchers decide to maintain him in office until then?

Here's what Prime Minister Jim Hacker had to say in this evening's episode:

Nurses and teachers can't vote against me until the next election. Backbenchers can vote against me at ten o'clock tonight.

Ah, yes.

Comment of the day

Over at PB, the Reverend Smithson posts this poll of GE voting intention IN ENGLAND :

To which Morris Dancer (at comment 13) writes:

All your constituencies are belong to Cameron. Not even Ceiling Cat could save you now.

A man after my own heart. Except for the Morris dancing bit.

Bully Balls needs a new alarm clock

Balls claims that the row over the appointment of his placewoman as Children's Commissioner is all because Gove stood up in the Commons on Monday afternoon and described her as 'the establishment choice'.

He must have slept through Barry Sheerman's attack on him - over the Commissioner appointment - during the Today programme on Monday morning which gave Gove his cue.

These tyrants mean well. Their totalitarianism is for your own good.

I posted this on Dan Hannan's blog. It may not be up yet.

________________________________________

We are granting our unelected (sic) government (sic) a dangerous degree of power through the Lisbon Treaty. They have extracted from the free peoples of Europe, with the help (why?) of our own elected representatives, carte blanche to rule us as they decide without further consultation or permission. We will henceforth be unheard by our de facto rulers. National parliaments will enact what the Lisbon-empowered elite dictates. We are told that this elite is benevolent and nothing at all like the nomenklatura of the USSR. Let us assume for the sake of argument that (and hope and pray that in actuality) this is true - but let also acknowledge that their vast powers could at some future time empower the malevolent, exactly as happened in the USSR and the Weimar Germany in which Adolf Hitler came to power by using legitimate democratic processes. The millions of unsuspecting little people who put Hitler and Stalin in power did so willingly and paid with lives under oppression, famine, exile, cruelty, war and death inflicted mostly by officials and bureaucrats of whom, doubtless, many ‘meant well’. But it couldn’t happen here, to us, could it? No? Look at the contempt with which a dissenter is treated in the corridors of power, the outline of which Daniel Hannan provides here. Remember how Daniel Cohn-Bendit MEP shouted in President Klaus's face, in his own seat of government, that his opinion was contemptible in the eyes of the rulers of Europe and was to be disregarded. Now imagine yourself, without even the slight protection of elected high office in your own country - just a citizen - being treated this way by the officials of the new European state of which Mr Cohn-Bendit is among the nomenklatura - the benevolent Mr Cohn-Bendit who, leaning back on one arm, secure and comfortable in his political superiority, openly laughs contemptuously at MEPs who, sharing Mr Hannan's opinions, speak on behalf of their electors in the 'European Parliament'. Imagine yourself on the receiving end of Mr Cohn-Bendit's contempt and that of people less 'benevolent' than this odious totalitarian bully whose personal political journey since the 1960s tells an appalling story of seeking totalitarian power disguised as an earnest genial ‘green’ imploring us all to come over to the side of the angels. Unless you are the President or a citizen of a small, dissident country trying to face down the tyranny of the Cohn-Bendit faction. Remember that the Lisbon Treaty empowers the EU elite to amend enforceable law against your will and against the will of those you elect in your own nation to protect you from tyranny. Tell yourself that everything will be all right because the elite are decent people who mean well. That this is all for our good.

Please consider signing these petitions against the ratification of Lisbon

Here and here. And please read Daniel Hannan's post about these eleventh hour attempts to halt the march of the enemies of the European nations and the suppressors of democracy across the whole European continent.

This man wants watching. Seriously.

David Tredinnick MP.

Government funding for 'medical astrology'?

Excuse me?

Just how much more mind-rape do these villainous, delusional bastards think I can take from them before I go completely ape-shit and start throwing things?

Help prosecute Jacqui Smith

Ms Smith is a teacher. How would you explain this in an ethics lesson:

'I've been caught cheating on my expense claims. If I say sorry I don"t have to repay £100,000 to the public and I can just retire with a £500,000 pension pot from the taxpayer.' Source

Go on. Give him a tenner. You know you want to.

Simples.

Hogg and Harman* suggest that it is unfair to apply new rules retrospectively. Legg hasn't created any 'new' rule. He has set out how the existing rules should have been applied. The House of Lords do this all the time.

I think MPs should be allowed to appeal but must provide a detailed written explanation, to the House and the public, of why each expense was “wholly, exclusively and necessarily ... for the purpose of performing their parliamentary duties". It would be fantastic reading.

From Times commenter K DH to Dominic Lawson @ October 18, 2009 9:48 AM BST

___________________

Both QCs, as is Sir Thos. Legg.

Give me confrontational politics every time

Confrontation is the essence of healthy political debate and a whole lot better than the alternative: party bosses stitching everything up between them for their own political advantage: to keep themselves high on the hog and the electorate in their place.

All professions are conspiracies against the laity – GBS, The Doctor’s Dilemma

And none more so than politics, where an unemployable seeker of lucrative sinecures, unburdened by principle or conscience,

... may seek to conceal himself among men of principle dedicated to the common weal. (The masculine embraces the feminine. Quite often, actually, in political circles.)

p>

If he's nothing else (and he is nothing else) Nick Clegg, the sometime Deep Green, temporarily Blue (he denies it) ski instructor, journo for five minutes and ever afterwards dedicated tranzi first class, is certainly a pro among international take-anyone's-shilling politicians. The archetype of LibDemmery, in fact.

LibDems are notorious for saying whatever they think they ought to say to please each ad hoc audience and to hell with having said the opposite to a different audience, probably in the adjacent constituency, yesterday.

As long as they see a chance of getting their grubby hands on a little piece of whatever power is going... Westminster, EU, change the voting system to get it, whatever... the LibDems are in favour of it. The principle-free political party.

Apparently vanilla, portraying themselves as the Quakers (sorry, Friends) of British politics, nice to everyone (of course), pro-motherhood, pro-apple pie and 'A vote for us is a vote against Horrid People', the LibDems are in fact, as anyone will tell you who has come up against them in election campaigns, the most unscrupulous, dishonest, calculating, lying, vicious, character-assassin, shape-shifter hypocrites on the modern British political landscape.

Which is why Clegg's latest crap is so very predictable.

Complain to the Advertising Standards Authority

About this.

Here's the complaint form. Here's what I wrote to the ASA.

This advertisement is designed to prejudice an impressionable young audience against dispassionate discussion of scientific fact and is therefore inimical to education.

It is gratuitously alarming. It deliberately targets children who are likely to be frightened.

It presents as established fact a distorted view of heavily disputed scientific information.

It amounts to propaganda for a particular political point of view.

Please do not use precisely this form of words or the ASA is likely to discount your complaint (and mine) as part of a co-ordinated write-in campaign - although personally I see nothing wrong with organising against an outrage.

Sign this petition, please - and post to your blog

The mighty Steve Green asks for help with his petition.

He wants to stop our children being frightened with lies like this.

Please sign the petition.

If you tweet, please RT http://twitter.com/Daily_Ref

I'lll see you in court, Legg! Er...

... maybe.

Then again, maybe not, according to this chap. He thinks it's all ill-advised sabre-rattling.

Maybe Carter-Ruck will advise the Hon and Rt Hon Ladies and Gents to do as I suggested. Pay up and shut up.

Political betting

A piece on CoffeeHouse with which I entirely agree, about the intellectual depth and importance of the CamerOsborne offering.

I have though for some time now that, if the British people have the imagination to understand and elect him, Cameron may prove to be as historically important in the evolving politics of the United Kingdom as Pitt or Peel.

I would put a large bet on it but by the time the heirs of that nice Mr Hill decide to pay me out I shall be too dead to pick up my winnings.

Phoney polyphony

English people returning home from a visit Down Under often find themselves unable to shake off one of their souvenirs: the rising interrogative tone at the end of a sentence.

It's a jolly good laugh for their friends at first, until they decide that it's an irritating poncey affectation. It isn't. It happens to most people and the more musical one’s ear the more rapidly one’s speech changes colour to match those of one’s aural surroundings.

After a period of re-settlement among their fellow-countrymen, usually about three weeks, the victim loses his faux-Ocker under the same attrition affect, this time of his native speech-music.

I say ‘his', the masculine not embracing the feminine, but in fact one notices this adoption of an exotic inflection more often among women. Perhaps it is because females have developed to a superior degree the literally vital ability to interpret the purely tonal signals of pre-lingual infants. Hence, too, women's discovery of the therapeutic affect on stressed babies of singing to them. Most men would not think of that.

There are other 'musical' habits of speech which are even more annoying and even more infectious than sounding like an Australian when in fact one comes from Steeple Bumpstead.

One of our neighbours, a woman with a normal alto voice, has the annoying habit of raising her voice three octaves on the sung-not-spoken word 'bye'. Or 'bye-bye'. Or even, gawdelpus, 'byee'. She seems to be infecting every female with whom she comes into contact with her annoying mannerism.

She is a sociable woman with a lot of female friends who call upon her in a continuous convivial stream when her husband is at work. One glimpses how Jane Austen’s social circles might have operated.

The arrival rituals are of the common or garden variety. The departure rituals, though, are frankly bizarre.

They involve a high-pitched fugue on the word ‘Bye!’

Proceedings commence with a simple high-soprano ‘Bye!’ from the party of the first part followed by (in the same tessitura if not at precisely the same pitch) a single ‘Bye!’ in response. Then the party of the first part offers a ‘Bye-bye!’ which is echoed by the party of the second part but with – and here is where the trouble starts – her first ‘Bye-’ overlapping with the second ‘-bye!’ from the party of the first part. At this point, one is hoping that the duet will end with a second ‘bye!’ from the party of the first part, but no.

Not to be outdone and keen to have the final word, the party of the second part, having anticipated the reprise of the party of the first part which we have just heard, instantly ripostes with her own second da capo ‘Bye-bye!’ of which her first syllable overlaps with the second ‘bye!’ from her opponent. The party of the first part returns fire with a da capo single ‘Bye!’ of her own.

We have now heard the last of the double bye-byes. From here on, the battle escalates rapidly, the weapon of each contender being the single, determined ‘Bye!’ but – and this is critical – each utterance commencing just before the last ‘Bye!’ from the opponent has died away. And thus we continue until the slam of the car door brings the curtain down on the whole Baroque performance.

I have counted as many as twelve contributions from each competitor, all with operatic projection, lacking only innate musicality and a little voice-coaching.

I leave to your imagination the cacophony the neighbourhood must endure when there are three or more women departing after one of her coffee-mornings.

Reincarnation

I thought he was dead but today Ali Bongo was sworn in as the President of Gabon!

And that's magic!

The lawyer is an ass

In the matter of superinjunctions, Trafigura, Carter-Ruck, etc., I posted a comment over at the Wardman Wire. It awaits moderation. Here it is:

Would you care to consider whether, in granting an injunction which it is clear in advance will have implications for the reporting of Parliament, the judge ought urgently and as a matter of course to notify* the Parliamentary authorities and specifically the Speaker who is, after all, a legal officer in a particular sense, whose own ruling in the matter of public reporting would be germane to the very effectiveness of the injunction.

Mr Speaker ought, surely, to have all the information he needs in order to protect both the citizen legitimately needing the protection of the court and the right of the Commons to examine related matters whether in camera (it does happen) or otherwise.

It is Mr Speaker’s job to prevent mischief making by malevolent or axe-grinding individual MPs, as you suggest. In certain circumstances, as you obviously also envisage, he will need all the help he can get, including notice from the courts of any oncoming trains.

_____________

*Notify, not consult qua consult. That would bring into uncomfortable proximity the legislature and the judiciary.

The author over at TWW makes the point obliquely, and it has been made elsewhere, that those involved in the application for injunction may not have anticipated that it would have implications for the relationship between Parliament and people. In my view, they should have thought about it. These are the world's smartest legal brains with vast collective experience.

Am I losing my grip?

Nothing has made me angry today.

Oh - wait... news coming through...

Seems Carter-Ruck have a death wish. They taken it upon themselves to instruct the Speaker of the House of Commons as to what he may and may not permit the elected representatives of the people to discuss in the High Court of Parliament. Ye-es... good luck with that, Mr Fuck.

Well, that's all right then. For a moment there I thought it was me.

High Court Gives Mr Justice Eady a Good Kicking

Nick Cohen is having trouble keeping a straight face. I am not even trying.

And another

Another pundit catches up with Prodicus. They all do, in time.

Thus Steltzer:

Consider, for example, generosity of spirit. In his speech, Cameron remarked that Labour's mistakes were "done with the best intentions", and, "Let's be clear: not everything Labour did was wrong". Can anyone imagine Gordon Brown making a similar concession to his opponents, either within or outside his party? This is not merely a matter of style. It determines whether a prime minister will be able to restore civility to arguments over which policies best serve the nation.