Nucking futter

The Norwegian bloke. That is all.

Oh - but watch the left have a group-orgasm anyway, after a fluffing-up by Charles Moore who used to be a Conservative but seems to have turned into a bleeding heart anti-capitalist.

Sigh.

I am leaving the country for a bit, hoping the madness soon subsides.

TTFN.

Sent from my iPhone

Euro-cuckoo-land

13. We agree that reliance on external credits ratings in the EU regulatory framework should be reduced, and look forward to the Commission proposals in this respect.

Oh, yes, I'm sure we all look forward to those.

And we little taxpayer and wealth-creator people down here on what we call Planet Earth are all chuffed to bits that, up there on Planet Eurocuckoo, the continent's political elite, with their big projects, big egos, big salaries, big cars and, let us not forget, big courthouses, big prisons and big guns with which to compel us to do their will*, have agreed among themselves to snap their fingers insouciantly at what those who earn their living in the shark-infested waters of international finance, and who know from experience the pain suffered by a Fotherington-Thomas (euphemism) who fails to distinguish between an arse and an elbow, call 'fucking reality'. It's a technical term.

* Some mistake, surely?

After Dave's Hackgate statement...

UPDATE:
That was at 1:04. It's got better since.

POEWAS.

The Today studio, the morning after

An almost tangible atmosphere of anticlimax seemed to permeate this morning's Today programme (BBC Radio 4). The news bulletins told us next to nothing about yesterday's proceedings in the committee rooms of Parliament. It was almost as though all the Today team knew about  was what they'd seen on the Sky News headlines.

You may think that this was because the Murdochs had cleverly said nothing beyond what they had determined to say and that, in consequence, the Today editors had decided that there was nothing to report that suited their agenda except, of course, that Rupert Murdoch is senile. I could not possibly comment. Well, yes, I could, actually, but you knew that.

Today's focus was mostly on the alleged frailty of Rupert and James's verbosity, with a brief look-in for 'a  pie-chucker' who, although named, was not described as the soi-disant anarchist-exhibitionist founder of UK Uncut.

The 08:10 interview ('unmissable in the Westminster village') was with Trevor Kavanagh, the veteran  political columnist at News Corp. It will have given no comfort to our elected representatives or to the BBC but will have caused gasping, rib-holding hilarity in the nation's board rooms newsrooms. In matter-of-fact tones, he explained that Rupert Murdoch's enemies would be most unwise to mistake the old boy's taciturnity for senility because it's a familiar tactic to anyone who knows him, being the life-long mannerism of a brilliant man whose razor sharp brain is undiminished at the age of 80. 'Beware those long pauses,' cautioned Kavanagh, 'because that's when he's thinking most clearly and planning his responses extremely carefully. He's still in total command of a vast world-wide business with 200 newspapers including a small loss-making newspaper business in this country of which the NOTW is about 1 per cent. Everything he said yesterday would seem perfectly reasonable to anyone who understands business.' None of this made the slightest impression on the interviewer, young Sarah Montague.

Nor did it cut any ice with the omniscient Robert 'I can Reveal' Peston when he was wheeled on to say that the old man's on his way out (hence the share price rise: shareholder relief) because his obvious senility has doomed him in the eyes of most shareholders. We'll see.

Nor did it percolate into the predictable turn of veteran Guardianista 'wit', Simon Hoggart, who repeated all the jokes made yesterday on Twitter by Mirror hacks and 15 year old UK Uncutters. Hoggart's lifelong anti-Murdochery  is so familiar that I was delivering his jokes faster than he was. Shame, really. I worry that even his mates at the BBC will think poor old Simon's past it.

Kavanagh kept a straight face as he patiently gave young Sarah a short lesson on how the world works outside the BBC, specifically the world of international business and in particular proper media organisations. He explained that the Murdochs' responses yesterday struck him as unremarkable and entirely reasonable, and would have seemed so to anyone who knows about the real world, as opposed to, for example, most of the unworldly, inexperienced and ignorant MPs on the committee. Those are my adjectives, by the way; Kavanagh didn't actually say those words out loud.

Young Sara is, apparently, a trained journalist, yet, when she challenged Kavanagh to say whether he had asked properly searching questions of the people below him at the Sun newspaper, she seemed nonplussed when he replied, the raising of his left eyebrow as audible as his sigh, 'There is no-one below me. I am an Associate Editor.'

Young Sara, the experienced journalist, seemed surprised to learn that being  'Associate Editor', a familiar  honorific in all print media, does not involve either executive responsibility or the management of staff but she persisted with her stupid question using different words. Kavanagh patiently replied that he does not even work in the Sun's offices but files his copy from home. Real journalist 1 - BBC 'journalist' 0.

Young Sara went for revenge on her captive Murdoch employee, challenging Kavanagh to agree with those who say that this whole furore is got up by Murdoch's enemies. Kavanagh (yawning, now, I thought) said that Murdoch's commercial competitors were perfectly entitled to go for him but how strange it was that Britain's publicly funded national broadcaster has concentrated its enormous news and current affairs resources almost exclusively on this matter for four full weeks while all but ignoring the world currency system now teetering on the edge of collapse, and the probability that millions  are about to die in the north African famine, not to mention the €400 billion bill* about to arrive on people's doorsteps to shore up the Euro. Young Sara lost patience at this point, cutting Kavanagh off by talking over him. It wasn't going well and one can imagine what she was hearing in her headphones.

____________


*Later, La Flanders came on for about 90 seconds to inform us that European citizens are angry because the €400 billion 'Save The Euro'  invoice should really be delivered to the banksters instead of to their  national governments and therefore to them. Someone should introduce the BBC's economic editor to Worstall so that he can explain to her how, just as all public money ultimately comes out of the pockets of the little people (Flanders does seem finally to have grasped that) so do the taxes and penalties paid by wicked banksters. Maybe Peston could have a quiet word at the water cooler.

Splort

As the unusual Labour leader continued to insist that News International was invented by the Conservative Party so they could kill you, insiders stressed he was either subconsciously blocking traumatic memories or that he genuinely believes he is getting away with this.

Bet you can't guess.

Movin' out

In the year 2010, according to the World Bank:

What does a high rate of emigration say about all these countries? I said ALL these countries.

The UK has an increasing population. So who are all these people who are moving out? Predominantly to Oz and the USA, incidentally.

h/t Samizdata

Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who's the biggest hypocrite of all?

I nicked this from Guido.  The IOU's in the post, mate.

But because the Mirror is on the Left, we hear not a fucking word from the get-Murdoch mob about their own rag's level of offence being EIGHT TIMES that of News Corp. Worse than the Mail and Murdoch put together. 

I'm going to type that again.

• THE LEFTWING MIRROR GROUP HAS COMMITTED EIGHT TIMES MORE OFFENCES THAN THE MURDOCH PRESS. 

• THE MIRROR IS A WORSE OFFENDER THAN THE NOTW, THE MAIL AND THE SUN PUT TOGETHER 

The tribunes of the people, in Parliament and the fourth estate, honourable men and women every one of them riddled with fucking integrity, are outraged, OUTRAGED I tell you, about criminal activity perped by the rightwing Murdoch press. And now we wait for them to turn their fire on the worst criminals of all.

Hello? Can you hear me, Lord Prescott, Mr Bryant, Mr Brown, Mr Vaz? Once more because I think you may have missed it..

• THE LEFTWING MIRROR GROUP HAS COMMITTED EIGHT TIMES MORE OFFENCES THAN THE RIGHTWING MURDOCH PRESS

• AND MORE THAN THE DAILY MAIL AND THE WHOLE OF NEWS CORP PUT TOGETHER.

No doubt, even as I type, our elected representatives are commanding the proprietors of Trinity Mirror to appear before their Committees and bollocking Inspector Knacker for not prosecuting with the utmost vigour Trinity Mirror's outrageous level of criminal activity about which full information has been IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN for years.

At the BBC, Peston, Wark et al are ordering camp beds and intravenous (fair trade) coffee equipment and sharpening their Mac-ing digits for (at least) a week's wall-to-wall coverage of the Mirror's crimes, their OB crews even now being despatched to the Mirror's offices and the directors' homes. 

We'll see a 240pt headline on the front page of the shocked and heartbroken Guardian on Monday:

MIRROR EVEN WORSE THAN MURDOCH.  

The stalwarts of the stand-up comedy industry, jaded from their tedious, same-old-same-old lefty anti-Murdoch and anti-Mail wanking, are suddenly reinvigorated. They are scribbling furiously, between waves of multiple orgasms (yes, the blokes, too) to produce mountains of... oh, please, that's disgusting... refreshing anti-Mirror material. Hey, look!

MIRROR WORSE THAN NOTW, SUN AND MAIL TOGETHER. 

Loadsa larfs there, eh, fellahs? Couple of years of earnings, at least. Trebles all round!

This should be fun. Restore a bit of balance.

Fair point

'If the people of Somerset can make brie, the people of Lyon should be able to make tea. The town is almost named after a tea-room, after all.'

James May, Telegraph. No link because I am on the bloody iPad and it takes too long so find it yourself if you can be arsed.

Imperialism v. the people

European integration was conceived in one-dimensional terms, as a process of ever-increasing unity under a centralized structure of command. Each increase in central power was to be matched by a diminution of national power. Every summit, every directive, and every click of the ratchet has since carried within itself this specific equation.

The political process in Europe has therefore acquired a direction. It is not a direction that the people of Europe have chosen, and every time they are given the right to vote on it they reject it -- hence everything is done to ensure that they never have the chance to vote on it.

The process is moving always toward centralization, top-down control, dictatorship by unelected bureaucrats and judges, cancellation of laws passed by elected parliaments, constitutional treaties framed without any input whatsoever from the people -- in short, the process is moving always toward imperial government. And only one thing stands opposed to this result, and that is the national sentiments of the European people.

For this very reason national sentiments have been demonized. Speak up for Jeanne d'Arc and le pays réel, for the "sceptred isle" and St George, for Lemmenkäinen's gloomy forests and the "true Finns" who roam in them, and you will be called a fascist, a racist, and an extremist.

There is a liturgy of denunciation here that is repeated all across Europe by a ruling elite that trembles in the face of ordinary loyalties. But the fact is that national sentiment is, for most ordinary Europeans, the only motive that will justify sacrifice in the public cause.

Thank God for Scruton. Read the rest, do.

Cry freedom and, er... oh.

If there is one word-in-context in the whole of the blogosphere which never fails to make me laugh out loud, it's the Liberal in Liberal Conspiracy. I mean, do you really think they really think they are really, you know, liberal? Really?

I think they should be stopped. Liberal Conspiracy is a handful of people with a particular political viewpoint, pushing their own agenda and trying to influence opinion. Why are people so worried about limiting that? 

Oh look, a woman at Liberal Conspiracy agrees with me. Kinda.

If a rich man can buy a newspaper to push his own agenda do you not think he will? why are people so worried about limiting that? 

She really needs to ask? Seriously? Yes, she does.

Would the same apply, in her self-righteous lefty fantasy world, to a not-rich chap, let's call him Chap A, starting to publish stuff (let's call it, oh, a 'newspaper') which lots of people like to read and want to pay him for? Would she stop him writing what he thinks about how other people ought to think, whenever he wants to write it? Like pretty much every writer throughout the ages and like, erm, she does herself?

My, my. The world's full of conundrums.

Or is her bile reserved for another bod, let's call him Chap B, who, just like Chap A, wants to publish ideas, but who doesn't need to bother with starting his own newspaper because Chap A already did it?

Yes, it is.

And yet the only difference between Chap A and Chap B is that Chap B has more money than Chap A, which fact alone must, ipso facto, cause the tribunes of the people to limit Chap B's freedom, making  him a second-class citizen. Simply because he's got more money than someone else. Meanwhile on another part of the planet, the Tribunes have set up an Equality Commission to... no, wait... there may be a flaw there...

So, if her Tribunes, in a moment of madness, allowed Chap A and Chap B to do as they wished with their private property, Chap A selling his newspaper to Chap B, would They - the Tribunes - reserve to Themselves the power to tell Chap B he could only publish what They permitted and when?

Which they never did with Chap A because he didn't have the sort of money which fired up their wrath. And of course, he was careful only to publish ideas acceptable to the Tribunes of the People.

But how could I say such a thing? The lady is a doughty defender of free speech - for everyone except people with money. But I digress. Actually, I don't. This is the whole fucking point, written en clair for the benefit of my extremely fucking stupid, hate-filled and delusional lefty reader who calls himself a freedom fighter but wants to control the press, you, me and - let's not beat about the bush - the entire sodding planet.

So, would they tell rich Chap B what he could publish and when? Why, yes, they would.

No-one’s suggesting the journalists should be restricted, [ oh, that's all right then ] just the power of a corrupt handful to influence opinion

Define 'corrupt'. How about someone for whom 50,000 people around the world, you know, work, as opposed to following her own career.

But those wanting things to stay the same are simply enforcing a bias that on the whole suits them. If you doubt me, imagine the bias was in Labour’s favour and tell me Conservatives would not be spitting with white fury, totally convinced that the system was unfair.

Gotta love that 'imagine'. Doesn't get out much, does she? I suspect too much time spent in dingy Labour Party Committee rooms but one can't be sure, and Labour may be too, you know, bourgeois/establishment. After all...

As for those who claim Newsnight or Ch4News are “leftie” just confirms everything I said even more. Our press is so right wing, even a balanced programme offends

Define 'balanced'. Ah shit, no, forget it.

There's a phrase... wait... it'll come to me. Oh, yes.


h/t Tim Worstall

Ah, happy days!

With a tip of the hat to Mr E.

'A newspaper editor... '

'... made merely “anxious” by the idea of state licensing of the press might want to ask himself if he is in the right profession.'

Or indeed the right country.

What Brendan O'Neill said.

Quiz: Who is this?

The triumphalism shines through his hubristic remarks... as a result of his courageous stance, the world has changed forever, he gloats.

Ha! Wrong. Son of. 

Linky

Politicos, be careful what you wish for

Murdoch has nothing to lose... and all the files. 

He's obviously unwell. Nothing trivial, I hope.

I really am quite concerned about Gordon and, from the expressions on the faces of his erstwhile lobby fodder, I am not alone.

Jack Straw (Lab, Blackburn) and Sir Menzies Campbell (Lib Dem, NE Fife) watched with sorrow etched on their faces. Ed Miliband looked pretty sick.

One can only hope that after yesterday's dreadfully embarrassing episode of incontinence and memory loss, following so soon on the ludicrous lies of the previous day, the Crown would be receiving his application for the Chiltern Hundreds any day now but, after years of monitoring Brown's delusional state and fantastical megalomania, I fear not.

His grasp of reality now being so catastrophically impaired, he clearly believes that, as a former Prime Minister, he has an absolute right to be heard uninterrupted by the House of Commons whenever The Voices tell him to rail at Life, The Universe and Everything. Because, you see, and he has the evidence, Mr Speaker, and no, he will not give way, because you have to understand that nothing was his fault, he never put a foot wrong, all the ills of the world are the fault of people like him over there - yes, HIM, Mr Speaker - and his so-called 'party' of merciless capitalist bastard grinders of the faces of hardworking families and his friends in the capitalist media except my friend Piers no wait he's just the same as the rest of them they're all the bloody same they're in it for the money not like me and they hate me for my virtue and because they know I know their little game and then there's the fucking civil service who thwarted me at every turn whenever I came up with another of my masterplans oh jesus I could have done so much more if only you stupid bastards had understood my genius but you'll all regret it you'll regret it I promise you how dare you sack me in favour of that moral-compass-less Tory aristo you ungrateful bastards up against the wall you bourgeois capitalist fucker Cameron oh god why did Scotland never introduce the guillotine in the dear departed days of the Auld Alliance I'll see you burn in hell Cameron you you you TORY you and get away from MY FUCKING DESPATCH BOX MISTER take your hands off me who the fuck are you in your pansy fucking tights don't you know who I am I mean who I was let me go let me go I say Sarah Sarah where's Sarah I want my mother...

... the rest was silence.

If only.

Target acquired

Not that it will save him but I'd advise little Bercow to get himself some shots after all yesterday's frantic slurping-up of the bodily fluids dribbling from Gordon Brown's every orifice.

In the process of pleasuring the madman who, for party-spite, set him on the Speaker's Chair, he repeatedly insulted the House by ruling that the former Prime Minister be permitted to abuse Honourable Members' courtesy in the most egregious fashion, embarrassing himself and causing heads to shake on the green benches and up in the press gallery. Bercow raged at Honourable Members for no proper reason but simply because he could, shamelessly abusing his office as he paid his dues from the kneeling position proper to the supplicant.

The Tory Chief Whip stared in amazement at a Speaker almost steaming with boiling bile.

As well some swift medication, Speaker Heep might consider some parliamentary body armour. It will avail him nothing, of course, but may keep him warm in the draughty, dangerous corridors of power in which he now struts and preens. After yesterday, his gaping self-inflicted wounds must surely relieve the Honourable snipers closing in on him of the necessity to exercise their trigger fingers. Mind you, hunting can be such fun. Tally-ho!

*****

Update from the Telegraph:

Bloody disgraceful.

QOTD

"A masterclass in mistakes from Gordon Brown"

- @MarkKleinman

Sent from my iPad

What a complete and utter arse.

That is all.

£1,440,000

The sum allegedly offered by an 'energy company' to a farmer (just one farmer) if he would install four of these ugly bird-choppers on his land:

That is more than a million of your money and mine, extracted on pain of legal sanction from our after-tax earnings by rapacious, opportunist corporations to hand over to landowners, under laws put in place by watermelons in the ruling elites. 

And why not? That's free trade for you. Oh, wait... no, it isn't. It's a rigged market, in which unelected and unsackable oligarchs line each others' pockets and those of the already-rich by taking money from the poor who have to choose between heating and eating. Yes, you, Huhne and colleagues, you amoral, self-serving, internationalist, socialist fuckers.

This week, electricity prices in Britain were raised by 16 per cent. And we know why. 'Green' taxes.

Hang them. Hang them all.

UPDATE

A solution is at hand.

Information gaps

Until now I'd thought 'Gordon is a moron' was merely a statement of fact. Yesterday, I learned that it is also a popular song. Most amusing.

You will gather that we live a sheltered life here in Castle Prodicus. Apart from teh interwebs, we mostly rely on the NoTW, the Sun and Sky News to keep us abreast but it seems Times they are a-changin'.

We may soon be Left with only the BBC and the Guardian to tell us what's afoot. The Independent-of-fact, at the time of writing still lingering on its deathbed, will be gone, unmourned. The FT is no good, being only concerned with money. Our only hope is the re-conversion of the Telegraph from Labour-ish-in-kind-of-Tory-clothing back to good old right-wing Conservatism. We are not holding our collective breath.

But, seriously, we shall have to get out more. The thought of being reduced to the condition of slaves, living in Fabian darkness, allowed only 'Information' approved by the Rusbridger Authority, Sunder-ed from fact and constantly Hari-ed to Think Like a Polly, is intolerable.

There is an upside, though. The Righteous infodroids would force-feed us popular and multi-ethnic culcher so we'd know all the pop songs, innit.

QOTD and other stuff

When Wikileaks uses underhand methods, "heroism". When the NoTW does it, "scum of the earth'.

Brendan O'Neill.

Apart from that, I'm getting really bored with Hackergate now. The only bright spot today was the blinding dazzle from Gordon Brown's brass neck, given that he went to the Wade-Brooks wedding AFTER he knew her firm had blagged his child's medical records. And he did fuck all about it. His moral compass did not work with cash for peerages either, I recall. Corrupt, cynical bastard.

Most of this hackery-blaggery (common to all newspapers) was known by Brown when he was PM. And he and his Labour 'government' did fuck all about it. Brown has no shame. Now he really is the scum of the earth.

And, erm, how did the Guardian get a recording of the alleged blagging of Brown's solicitors? I merely ask.

Can't see the problem, myself.

It's not about breaking up the public services. It is - or should be - about breaking up the egregious, megalith, self-serving, monopoly suppliers of public services in order to deliver improved services to the public.

Quis custodiet...

@BBCMichaelCrick tweets:

Brown statement on him and Sunday Times around 5pm, I'm now told, on floor of Commons, preceded by details on Guardian website around 4.30

'Preceded by'.

Hm.

Brown Bastard and Guardian still cosy, and fuck the people and Parliament. Again.

And then there's this from @wallaceme:

Interesting - Indie reports Brown was hacked, Indie story disappears then @BBCMichaelCrick calls them "Guardian revelations"...

So what have we here, then? Brown, Guardian, BBC's (sic) Crick... all working together.

Nice.

Hacking out the hacking hacks

Murdoch employees now know that the big man will close down a business and sack them all if their behaviour compromises his business interests by damaging his brand in the eyes of the customers whether readers, advertisers or business partners. That should sharpen the ethics of the hacks in other Murdoch news outlets.

So we see once again that the Market rules OK, or at least more effectively if more brutally than either the genteel Press Complaints Council or indeed Inspector Knacker himself who, amusingly, is helping his own colleagues with their enquiries.

Given that they're all* at it, as in the cold light of this morning was cited by all journos as an example of the bleedin' obvious , one wonders how long the top bananas of the other papers will be able to maintain their prim thin-lipped silence, like so many outraged maiden Wodehouse aunts. And how soon other naughty boys (it's nearly always the boys) will have to come out with their hands up. Oh, good day, Mr Baldwin. Didn't see you lurking there. Shouldn't you be getting back to the party in Mr Ed's office?

That is assuming that this isn't just all just a nine day's wonder with normal service being resumed ad soon as possible. I mean, just what exactly are the chances of a reform of the world's second oldest profession, seriously? In my lifetime.

-----------------

* except the Guardian and the Indy, obviously, which only employ canonised saints.

Sent from my iPhone

World Domination League: 'It's just a blip, not a trend, you pay now please.'

The planet has not warmed for thirteen years.

Even the Climategate perps say it's embarrassing that they can't explain it. More grant money will solve that little difficulty, chaps. It's on its way. Don't fret. 

Anyway, the tax-everyone-more-and-let's-get-back-to-the-stone-age lot must be winning the War Of Mother Gaia's Temperature and someone, somewhere must be cutting their carbon emissions, although it sure ain't the Prodicus household. There is even a bloke down the pub who thinks they may have overdone it, what with three fucking cold winters across the planet and sea level the same as it's been since records began. 

(Someone call the president of the Maldives and tell him we're turning the money tap off any time now.) 

Yes, folks, the Little Green Men, your masters and your betters, are now worrying about a forthcoming Little Ice Age. Well, it was overdue by centuries anyway on the basis of the planet's normal oscillatory climate pattern but that cut no ice (geddit?) with the Little Green Men who were entirely focused on getting their hands into your pockets to fund their World Domination League reducing your carbon footprint and brainwashing your children into becoming their spies and foot soldiers. and slowing down the catastrophic global warming rate.

And now the sodding planet has gone and done something else. Something that everybody but themselves, even their predecessors, had been predicting for, oh, a century or two. It's getting colder, apparently.*

Why is that? Because Project Greenmonger worked? We're emitting less carbon? Er, not according to the Little Green Men.

No, they say that it's because of increased carbon emissions. (Read it again. Oh, yes.) It's the emissions from China's gazillion new coal-fired power stations. They are blotting out the sun.

OMG noes! Waaa! We're all gonna freeeeeeze to death! Control those carbon emissions! The fucking Chinese are boiling Gaia! I mean, er... no, wait... the fucking Chinese are blocking out the fucking sun! Aieee...! Just... just... you know... CARBON LIMITS NOW! CARBON TAX NOW!

Hey, boys. Here's an idea. Invade China. Go on - you show 'em. Bastards.

* But it's only a blip. First we're going to freeze and then we're going to boil as advertised earlier, so no complacency, peasants. It's the carbon. Your carbon - your fault. The Greenmongers are always right and you are always wrong. Regardless of the question, the science is settled, so shut up and pay up. Ker-ching!

Right's right, all right?

A single woman living on benefit courtesy of the taxpayer has delivered a baby who was conceived through IVF paid for by taxpayers.

I wish the baby well. I wish its mother either paid employment or a substantial surprise legacy from a long-forgotten distant relative so that she may relieve me of the compulsion to pay for her fertility treatment, should she wish for more children, her maintenance and that of her child - or children.

I wonder whether Christina Odone and I are the only people who think this is an illegitimate use of the taxpayers' money.

I wonder, too, whether, whether a publicly-funded medical authority in the United Kingdom would lightly refuse a similar request from a woman with no visible means of supporting herself. Or would they grant it on the grounds of non-judgmental 'inclusiveness' and 'diversity', fearing perhaps that, if refused, she would approach one of m'learned friends who would take her case to the High Court.

I wonder, too, whether that court would have declared that state-funded IVF (and of course the consequent ongoing cost-burden on the woman's fellow-citizens, or at least on those paying tax) is intrinsic to the 'right to family life' guaranteed, like so many abuses of the enraged, disenfranchised and disregarded upright citizen, by the Human Rights Act and the European Convention to which it binds the UK.

I wonder, too, whether Harriet Harman QC would have anything to say on this matter. Or Helena Kennedy QC. Oh, never mind.

Boot'full, moi luvly

Really boot'ful.

h/t Guido.

TFTD for whining Leftie nostalgia-mongering Utopians

... that point about high wage manufacturing jobs. There aren't any, for manufacturing is now a low wage occupation, so it's pointless to talk about trying to bring them back...

Tim Worstall (again)


Sent from my iPad 

Wickedness plain and simple

QOTD

This bleating about homelessness is bringing out the Tebbit in me

@JohnRentoul 

Had to happen.

Independent Guardians of Truth

Guido logged another bunch of lies by Johann Hari last night. No, wait… this is good… it was in 2009 that blogger Dick Puddlecote spotted the Left’s suddenly-older-looking (former) enfant terrible openly being called a liar in, oo look, the comment section (no longer available) of his own ‘article’ by, oo look, the chap whose work Hero Hari was ‘describing’.

Gotcha. Called a liar by a bloke with the evidence to prove it. And Hari's over-stuffed column of twaddle is still up there under the proud banner of the ‘Independent’ ‘newspaper’.

Hari and his editors would have the Indy's paying customers believe that the dishonest and stunningly stupid bastard was actually providing… wossname, you know… facts, Independently reported. Well, yeah, kinda, but not in a good way. Obviously the Indy’s editors aren’t worried about truth or they might bother to check up on plain-speech accusations on their own pages such as, ‘You are lying, sir, and here is the proof’. But why would they? After all, the commenters are nobodies. They are not professional journalists whose word one trusts without question.

But did Hari himself never lose sleep worrying that he could be proven to be a serial liar? Publicly, any day, and in the blink of an eye? He may have, in the beginning, but he got away with it time and again, both hoodwinking and supported by some of the biggest names in journalism. And he is of the Left and the comrades look after their own. Until now, Johann.

La Contessa Toscana’s chief complaint about bloggers is that they are amateurs and not to be trusted because they are under no compulsion whatsoever to be responsible and fear no penalties. Magnificently remunerated professionals like herself, though, riddled with integrity and worth every penny, are trained from birth to check their facts and fear the sanction of The Stab In The Back should they ever mislead their readers. They are supervised by editors, themselves trained from birth to check their facts, who in turn hire teams of seasoned fact-checkers who have been trained from birth…

Well, except at the Independent, as we now know. And the Guardian, obviously.

All this integrity, relentless fact-checking and of course the nobility of Lady Toynbee and her MSM colleagues makes it worth the peasants’ while to fork out their hard-earned for the honour of reading their truth-filled deathless prose, the likes of which no mere blogger could ever… zzz...

Look around you, Pol. See, Johann? Zulus. Thousands of them.

Fact-checking bloggers

And they're all looking to the Left! 

So, Google+ then...

'Nerding out.' 'Join this Hangout.' What? 

Good idea ruined by their urge to turn the whole world into puerile California frat brats.

Hey, Google, look out of your window. There are grown-ups out here.

Just fuck off, would you? Thank you very much.

Meanwhile, in the Land of the Free...

"He also agreed to remain under 24-hour home confinement while wearing an ankle monitor and providing a security team and an armed guard at the entrance and exit of the building where he was living. The conditions are costing Mr. Strauss-Kahn $250,000 a month." - NYT

A quarter of a million bongos a month? A month? To enforce your own house arrest? How is this not 'cruel and unusual punishment'?

DSK may be a repellent and odious nest-feathering marxoid internationalist apparatchik and more than a little more equal than us little piggies down here in reality-land but, I mean, really.

Sent from my iPad 

UPDATE: Strong whiff of Eau d'Égouts in the Noo Yawk shark community.