MacGeek Q

Anyone recommend any safe freeware for MAC OS (10) to remove drm from m4p files? For my personal back-up use, obviously.

Class. Sheer class.

Tim'll fix it for Ed

Ed Millie's new Grand Vizier is a sometime diplomat and resident of Nigeria and Morocco who has worked for both †Rowan and †Vincent as well as for Mister Tony. The Wrong Brother appointed him CoS on the advice of Bad Al Campbell, apparently.

There's a thread running through that little lot, if you look. If you can be arsed.

The new Vizier once speech-wrote that Sharia law in the UK is inevitable. Nice. Comforting to know that Ed has such a sound fellah on his side. If not on ours.

Speaking as a swivel-eyed rightwing Tory, I couldn't be more pleased. What? Oh - that Ed is Labour's Dear Leader. Et cetera. 

The world's favourite airline - and why

"The Berlaymont is the Death Star." 

The utterly brilliant Michael O'Leary. 

• 'Ryanair is the world's favourite airline. British Airways now isn't even the UK's favourite airline.'
• 'There is a ban on low-cost flights for EU Commission employees which you think is fine because the taxpayer is picking up the bill.'
• 'Our 3-point customer service: a cheap flight, an on-time flight, and we won't lose your baggage. Oh - and no fuel surcharges - EVER. We WON'T give you free drinks or frequent flyer points to get your fat backside on our seats again at your employer's expense.'

RIP Václav Havel

All wind and... Marxist hatred

“Wind turbines are of purely symbolic significance, since they cannot produce power at the crucial times, will always depend on other and more immediate sources and are there largely in order to destroy the landscape... 

... and to show to the middle classes that the future lies, as Lenin said, in ‘electrification and the soviets’. They are a blow struck against the love of home by people who hate it.”

Roger Scruton quoted by Bryan Appleyard in the Sunday Times (£).

I really must keep up

BBC Radio 3 just announced the content of its programme of Christmas Music From Across Europe for 2011

.including music from Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions

Must have been masterminded by those nice clergy (CoE and RC) at Royal Holloway College.

Well, they say you learn something new every day. Today it's that the Jewish and Islamic traditions have music which praises, and celebrates the birth of, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, the Divine Son of God, Jesus Christ Our Lord. That is despite Jewish theology saying that Jesus is not the Messiah, just a nice Jewish boy, and Muslim scholars saying that Christians are completely out of order calling Him the son of God because He isn't because Allah can have no son and to say otherwise is blasphemous polytheism.

Details, details! Fuggedaboutit. The point is, this post-modern 'diverty-n-inclusiveness' thing is really working! And, do you know, if it weren't for the BBC, I should never have known.

Hark! Can't you hear the herald angels singing for joy at Christ's birth how jolly nice we all are to each other these days? We'll, some us of. Some people obviously still need to work on the niceness thing.

Apparently the Muslim contribution to this pan-European musical celebration of the birth of the Son of God is to be an Arabic dance, insha'Allah. Aw. Sweet. The Jewish item will be a housewarming song. Soooo Christmassy! Mazeltov!

So, when will we be having a programme of Eid al Fitr Music From Across Europe including... oh, I dunno... Food, Glorious Food? (Nothing religiously controversial, you understand.) And Chanukah Music From Across Europe including, what? Roll out the barrel, maybe. 

Lovely.

Referee!

About Labour's dire position in the polls in recent days... a nameless Labour spokesman/woman/person/joker told the Independent:

'People have put the bar in the wrong place about where we should be.'

Aw.

Poor bloody Germany, Chapter 94

So Gisela Stuart MP agrees with Prodicus. I always said she was bright. Pity she's a Labour MP, but nobody's perfect. 

The euro crisis is economically bad for us all, but in the long run worse for Germany. Hostile reactions in Greece and Italy are unlikely to go away. If Germany is seen as responsible for removing democratically elected governments and replacing them with bureaucrats, imposing economic disciplines that won’t work in the long run, then it will be demonised again.  

The 17-state eurozone won’t work even if every country in it behaves like the Germans. They can’t all export their way out of trouble and German pockets aren’t deep enough to make the year-on-year transfers that would be necessary. The peripheral countries will take the pain and, rightly or wrongly, Germany will be blamed. Times (£) 

But she also says this:

What the British also forget is that the entire European project is, and has always been, about the relationship between France and Germany (though it wasn’t the EU that ensured peace, it was Nato). Whatever happens, Germany will always ultimately side with France. This was as true for Helmut Kohl during the 1990s as it was for Angela Merkel last week, and this is a problem for Britain.

And while she's right on the main point, I think she puts far too much trust in France.

Rock star Dave

Hugo Rifkind (£)

Wednesday:  We are speaking with Cameron. 

“YOU MUST OBEY,” we say. “OUR WRATH IS TO BE FEARED.”  

It is not impossible that we are in a slightly bad mood. One of us fears our hot wife fancies us less since we became 50 per cent middle-aged German lady, and may shack up with a passing rock star.  

“No can do,” says Cameron. “Sorry.”

So, let me get this right... half of the Merkozy thinks Dave is a rock star? What? Oh. OK. As you were.

Good grief.

Pic: Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images

Le Petit wears a bloody great necklace. Who knew? Accounts for a lot.

Caption competition

 What is Cameron thinking?

The Mail can't find its arse using both hands

Instead of abusing Mr Cameron, shouldn’t the europhiles be turning their attack on Germany – which remains the only country with the clout to save the euro, but still refuses to act?

Save the...?

/facepalm/

How long before we have a second Versailles Treaty?

Simon Jenkins: 

The EU refusing Britain's request for a regulatory optout last week – no different from the long indulgence of France's farmers – was a distraction. The summit was supposed to restructure the euro to avert "disorderly collapse", and it failed.

It failed for two reasons.

First, because the summit was not called to restructure the Euro but to gain time and postpone catastrophe by giving the impression of planning to restructure the Euro.

Meanwhile, the pressure builds out at sea, as the tsunami continues to gather strength.

Europe's leaders have no idea what to do, frankly, and neither has anyone else, apart from unbundling the Euro, and there are too many egos invested in it for that to even be on the table. That is what is wrecking Europe's and the world's economy.

They and their predecessors who cobbled together their beloved Euro made (a) a complete hash of it and (b) a rod to beat the backs of, initially, the PIGS and eventually and by accident - oops - the Euro's efficiently-functioning economies, chiefly Europe's primary funder, Germany. Which in due course will be required to 'adopt the position', walk the perp walk and fork over a monstrous fine. (But not until the French presidential election is over.)

Last Thursday we saw a bunch of fantasists desperately hoping to placate the implacable: the realists of the markets whom even President Sarkozy and the mad diehard Marxists of the European Parliament cannot wish out of existence.

Second, the summit failed because there was no possibility of success because that requires Germany voluntarily to destroy its own democratic constitution and hand over to unsociable functionnaires its people's hard earned money and taxes (which someone else will set) for ever. Hell will freeze over before the German people will allow any of that. They will not stand for the grand theft of their savings and permanently high taxes levied by foreigners in order to support undisciplined Euro-peripheral nations.  The Bundesbank and Bundesverfassungsgericht have already said as much and they are more powerful, severally and together, than Merkel's coalition or any other government of Germany.

The desperate, out-of-their depth politicians dining together in Brussels last week hoped to generate sufficient smoke and twinkle a sufficient number of mirrors to con the unconnable markets into believing in fairies by postponing reality until such time as they could bring to birth a new 27-nation Treaty Of Ever-Closer Union. Because that would make everything shiny and new and, er, economically viable.

That 'Treaty' really is one for the fairies. If it is ever drafted, the peoples of Europe's historic nations will reject it, assuming, of course, that their masters tell them the truth which can by no means be assumed.

"Europe's nations should be guided towards the super-state without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation."

Thus Jean Monnet, French Founder of the European Movement, at the League of Nations. 30 April 1952.

*** 

"The people must be led slowly and unconsciously into their abandonment of their traditional economic defences..."

Thus Peter Thorneycroft, British Conservative Party Chairman 1975-1981. Chairman of 'Design For Europe' Committee, 1947.

But if the people do know what is being done to them by Europe's political class, they will take to the streets and throw them down. Any national government proposing to abolish its people's right to choose who governs them, forcing them to have unelected, permanently un-sackable, foreign governors, thus abolishing democracy once and for all because of its inherently inconvenient untidiness, will reap an uncontrollable whirlwind.

Speaking of More Equal Pigs (MEPs) the most grotesque among them are debasing themselves by howling in rage at the mere suggestion that they consider the nakedness of the faux-emperor at whose trough they fatten themselves, warmly insulated from the world in privileged luxury of which the Greeks, whom they have made destitute by their arrogance and deceit, can no longer even dream.

But if - IF - the floundering poseurs around last Thursday's Brussels dinner table, abetted by the More Equal Pigs of the EU 'Parliament', should cobble together some new Treaty, it...

... will now be a German-led [Jenkins means a German government-led] "unequal treaty" which will impose a battery of budgetary and fiscal disciplines on Greece, Italy, Spain and possibly France, in the hope of calming markets. This in turn means decisions over budgets, taxes, benefits and transfers taken away from elected national parliaments and put in the hands of ministerial councils and Brussels commissioners. Such decisions would carry no local legitimacy and risk being unenforceable.

Jenkins again:

Already governments in Ireland, Portugal, Greece and Italy that sought outside help and austerity in return have been toppled by their electorates. Under the new "treaty" such disciplines will be doubled and trebled, and blamed on one country, Germany. 

It must be likely that electorates will refuse to submit. Bond markets will seize up, public spending collapse, unemployment and emigration soar and streets descend into chaos. It has already happened in Greece.

Pro-treaty Europeans may regard such alarmism as "swivel-eyed". But such passions in European history should never be taken lightly.

So, when either the Geman or the other peoples of Europe refuse such a prospect,  and France finally turns on Germany seeking retribution - it will not be called that - and offers to 'defend' those small nations whom it will accuse an 'overmighty, inflexible* Germany' of damaging for its own wicked ends... 

And then there will be a Treaty. Signed at Versailles? But will that be before or after the war?

Poor bloody Germany. Poor bloody Europe.

With any luck, I'll be dead before it happens.


Unpick the bloody Euro, you criminally insane bastards, before you and your naive, ahistorical, antidemocratic fantasies drag us all to perdition.

QOTD

Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab): 

❝At what stage of the negotiations did the Prime Minister realise that France and Germany would do their best for us not to sign? As this is a period of Christmas cheer, can he give us an undiplomatic reply?❞

F.U.

Thus Worstall, master of pith. (My emphasis.)

Britain simply should not be in the same political organisation as France. 

For our bedrock political and legal belief is that the rules are more important than political will. 

We’ve spent much of a millenium, including several rather bloody wars and revolutions, enforcing this point on those who would rule us. 

We call it “the rule of law” and if you want to impose upon us a system where the law does not rule then you can fuck right off. 

We might just give you a bloody nose like we did James II, allow you to weep in alcoholic exile like Charles III, IV and so on or cut off your head like Charles I. 

But we will get you to fuck off.

One muses, à propos...

The F.U. proposed by Merkozy (cf. Élysée Treaty) is merely a relaunch of the existing Stability and Growth Pact but this time with the teeth and claws necessary to force compliance by weak economies like Greece, the mañana nations coerced or conned into the Euro by Franco-Germany.

If F.U. goes through (a helluva big if, of course) it will be fascinating to watch foreign soldiers (French? German?) using fire-hoses (?) (bullets?) on the streets of Athens in order to persuade protesting Greek partisans to do the Brussels-writ will of their masters: the Élysée Treaty countries.

For, you see, France firmly believes in the rule of law - for its vassals and its enemies. Not for La Patrie. France was the first country insouciantly to ignore, for its own domestic political convenience, the laws of the current Stability and Growth Pact to which it had signed up, and persuaded other nations to do likewise, with the usual communautaire flourish.

No-one had (or has) the balls, or the means, to force France back into line.

But it'll be different next time, of course. For the Greeks, anyway.

Oh, I almost forgot. Welcome to the EU, Croatia.

BBC Training Manual, Chapter 94: Political Research

Plagiarise, plagiarise. Let no other bugger's work evade your eyes. (Apologies to T Lehrer.)

 

"Well, chaps? How are we playing this one? Only - Humphrys will slap me good and hard (ooh Matron!) if I take the wrong line. You know what he's like."

Hey, Davis. Ask Santa to put a copy of the Boy's Own Little Black Book of MPs' Phone Numbers in your Christmas, um, stocking. 

Do your fucking job, you arse. We pay you enough.

Et pouf! A fine French farce

A fine analysis from commenter 'leahyd' over at the 'Graph: 

This French attempt to pickpocket other countries to prop up its banks is a turkey, and it won't survive past Christmas. 

Let state some facts here - no Treaty was signed on Friday, the only agreement was to discuss it - and note the timeline of the last 36 hours 

1. Announcement: '26 nations reached agreement.' 

2. Announcement: 'Next we will meet again to discuss what we actually agreed.'

3. Announcement: 'We hope to do this, and have everyone sign it, whatever it is, by March.'

4. The three main leading French banks have their credit status downgraded due to their reckless lending to just about every bankrupt country in the EU.

5. Several leaders issue clarifications that in fact all they have said is that they will discuss the 'agreement' (when they know what it is) with their National Parliaments. 

6. An example of the confusion on what the 'agreement' currently consists of, is little Malta announcing that two of the very items the UK opposed to - Tobin Tax and harmonised Corporation Tax, were dropped from the 'agreement' the very day that the UKs request for the same was denied.

7. Having sidestepped a legally binding Veto, and then sensing that democracy might unfortunately derail the 'agreement', France and Germany start claiming that it must not require unanimous agreement to have... er... the 'agreement', just in case democratically elected Parliaments, or gasp... the People of some nations, say 'NO'. They seem to realise that their forced Regime Change in Greece to avoid a Referendum won't work 23 further times... 

8. They now begin to look at whether or not the 'agreement' is in fact legal; and the advice from the EU lawyers is that is not. The unelected President of the EU tells everyone not to worry about such 'technicalities', as 'there will have to be a broad interpretation' of what were previously touted legally binding contracts.

It's a French farce. 

Mai oui. Naturellement. 

Weak, weak, weak

Via @AwkwardEdMoment  

Kinda familiar...

Funny story. Tiny, aggressive Frenchman with massive ambition, miscalculates, overreaches himself...

Remind me - how does the story end?

Turned out nice again, eh, Monsieur?

Soon there could be a four or five-speed Europe, with countries graded according to their indebtedness and ability to repay. France will not be in the top tier, for all the Sarkozy-Merkel hugs.

Linky

Deep joy

 First this.

And now this.

Bloody good for Cameron.

What's that noise? Ah, it's the sound of that treacherous misbegotten bastard Heath turning in his grave. Simply delightful.

Caption FAIL

In a national newspaper, produced in, er, London.

/facepalm

The €64,000 question

"Even if passed, it is highly questionable whether, if passed, a "really binding" version of the Stability Pact would be desirable or politically possible. Could the EU really overturn the election result in a member state which voted to borrow more, and break the rules?"

Neil O'Brien

Well? Well? McShane? Anyone?

Body language: spot the leader

What's that smell?

Ah, yes. Hypocrisy.

The left-wingGuardian newspaper mounted its high horse in condemnation of Rupert Murdoch's empire, implying that journalists of leftist convictions would never stoop so low. As someone whose e-mails have been stolen and published by the Guardian, I found this less than convincing. 

Scruton.