Prodicus

SPQO: Senatus Populusque Olissipponis in Argentorato imperant

2012-01-23T14:33:00.001Z

Norm and a vast, likeminded throng including yerumble servant rather fancy the idea of the UK inviting the imperialists of the ECHR to go fuck themselves because we're a free country and, fed up to the back teeth with their ~~SPQR~~ SPQO games, intend to remain so and to decide for ourselves which murdering, raping and pillaging bastards may and may not reside among us at our expense, threatening our women and children the while.

Lipsmacking prospect, I grant you.

Small problem, Norm. Illegal.

A sine qua non of European Union membership is membership of the Council of Europe which means subscription to the European Convention on Human Rights and therefore submission to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Senatus Populusque Olissiponis in Argentorato imperant.

To tell the ECHR to FOAD would provoke the pronouncement of anathemas upon the United Kingdom by not just the other 46 righteous and utterly saintly members of the Council of Europe but by our 'colleagues' in the European Union who would return the compliment with knobs on.

A fate worse than death, right?

The CE and the EU, with their respective supreme justiciars the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights, are not in fact co-terminous although an innocent fact-seeker visiting the website of the Council of Europe might not spot that. The EU logo devices, gold stars, royal blue house colour, etc., are all over it. Rum, eh?

Every picture

2012-01-18T16:30:00.002Z

So, points out of 10 as a potential PM? Anyone?

'You and whose army?'

2012-01-17T21:00:00.001Z

Adam Boulton to Ed Miliband:

'You and whose army? If you haven't got an army you're not much of a general, are you?''

Says it all, dunnit?

Via Guido.

POEWAS. I despise the thick lefty bugger but even I felt sorry for him. Nah, scrub that. His choice.

The portcullis stays. It's there for a reason.

2012-01-17T13:51:00.002Z

There is a wailing noise being emitted by an ignorant minion of the undignified dwarf who insists on perching upon the Chair of the Speaker of the House of Commons.

The minion opines that the portcullis symbol of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is offensive and should be abolished, being an anachronistic sign of exclusion in this age of inclusivity.

Damn right.

Leaving aside the fact that too many utter bastards are 'included' in this nation and its affairs, to the extent that said bastards are no longer merely included but increasingly deferred to and thereby stealthily gaining ascendancy over the native citizenry, we may reflect on the original defensive purpose of the portcullis and in particular its abiding and important meaning in the Parliamentary context.

The portcullis is there to remind prince and pauper, native and alien, that the Parliament of the British people may not be entered, attacked or suborned by any person or persons whatsoever.

It symbolises the determination of the people of the United Kingdom to guard their Parliament, with force if necessary, against all threats from whomsoever — including seditious fifth-columnist public servants who would do better to keep their modish opinions to themselves and their fucking mouths shut.

iAye

2012-01-11T14:33:00.001Z

After a re-education process which turned out to be rather more arduous than Apple would have you believe, I have learned to speak Mac AND got my iMac, iPad and iPhone all playing nicely with each other. I update one of them and the Apple Fairies update all the others.

Yeah, OK. All in all, pretty impressive. I am trying not to sound too grudging.

No, I wouldn't go back to PC. I am keeping my old laptop, though... just in case. We-ell... y'know.

The pub landlord in office

2012-01-05T15:52:00.002Z

The 'Conservative' Mayor of Saffron Walden

The Mayor of Saffron Walden is a local publican, a member of the Conservative Party who, according to an interview (not online) in this week's Saffron Walden Weekly News, believes in, erm, nationalisation. (Some mistake, surely?) He wants to re-nationalise 'the utilities' (by which people normally mean gas, electricity, water supply and possibly the telecoms system) and the railways.

He also declares that he hates the banks which his Party Leader is busting a gut to preserve from the envious and determined predations of Paris and Frankfurt and rightly so because, inter alia, they

create 10% of the nation's wealth
pay 11% of the total UK tax bill: £54billion or about half the cost of the NHS
directly employ a million people — 4 per cent of the national workforce.

Mister Mayor's If I Ruled The World dream is — wait, you'll love this — a not-for-profit bank. A 'people's bank'. He kids you not, it would seem.

Apparently Mayor ('I'm a Tory, me') Treadwell also hates insurance companies, which

pay nearly 7% of all UK corporation tax: £10billion+ or about what the Home Office costs
directly employ close to 300,000 people in the UK

Maybe someone could ask Mister ('No, honest, I really am a Tory') Mayor to hazard a guess at how many of his electors commute daily, in not-even-standing-room carriages, from his hour-by-train-from-the-City town, to jobs in the finance houses of London — or indeed how many of them work in the town's many banks and insurance offices. Or how many thousands more of his electors are anxious for Britain's banks and insurers to survive and prosper, not least because their pensions, not to mention their (life) savings, are locked up in them.

Let's hope for the Mayor's sake that he doesn't need to go into any of his local bank branches during his year in office. It would be just awful if one of those pesky bank-employee voters were to recognise him. I mean, embarrassing or what?

The Mayor loves his holidays in Majorca, he tells us, although maybe this year he is planning a simple camping holiday — outside St Paul's, maybe? Lovely. He could enjoy jolly chats with like-minded souls (admittedly less fragrant and nattily-suited than himself) who would no doubt overlook his being a leading member of the Conservative Party (/facepalm/) and a capitalist landlord to boot, and rush joyfully to share their frugal collations with a man who so clearly identifies with at least some of their lefty, Flat-Earther nostrums.

The Conservative Mayor tells the townspeople that his hero is the wannabe Nemesis of his own party, Nigel Farage. Well, maybe some of Mister Mayor's ideas are straight out of the Gordon Brown Big Red Book of Stupid but he is not alone among Tories in admiring Farage, though it's a bit rich for a Conservative Councillor — nay, a Conservative Mayor in office — to say it out loud in black and white, even if half the townsfolk would agree. As they would. I mean, it's just not the thing, is it?

I dunno. His Tory colleagues in Saffron Walden must be chewing the carpet at what their Mayor has done for their next campaign with this stinker of an interview. The next Council meeting should be hilarious, though. And the letters from the usual suspects in next week's paper will be worth reading. Chortle.

Maybe UKIP could give Mayor Treadwell a berth when his year in chains is up? Or even the hard-line nationalisers of the Saffron Walden Labour Party? (Stop laughing. It does exist, I tell you.)

Yvette Cooper's first priority as Labour leader

2012-01-05T14:19:00.000Z

MacGeek Q

2011-12-23T13:30:00.000Z

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.

2011-12-21T23:18:00.001Z

Tim'll fix it for Ed

2011-12-21T21:54:00.000Z

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

2011-12-20T09:29:00.000Z

"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

2011-12-18T12:08:00.001Z

All wind and... Marxist hatred

2011-12-18T09:46:00.001Z

“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

2011-12-17T14:25:00.001Z

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!

2011-12-16T10:52:00.000Z

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

2011-12-15T11:28:00.000Z

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

2011-12-14T13:17:00.001Z

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.

2011-12-14T13:02:00.004Z

Pic: Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images

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

Caption competition

2011-12-14T12:35:00.001Z

What is Cameron thinking?

The Mail can't find its arse using both hands

2011-12-14T12:07:00.002Z

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?

2011-12-14T11:53:00.001Z

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

2011-12-12T23:07:00.000Z

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.

2011-12-12T16:52:00.003Z

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

2011-12-11T11:41:00.001Z

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

2011-12-10T16:04:00.001Z

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

2011-12-10T11:48:00.001Z

Via @AwkwardEdMoment

Kinda familiar...

2011-12-10T09:27:00.001Z

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

Remind me - how does the story end?

Turned out nice again, eh, Monsieur?

2011-12-10T09:13:00.001Z

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

2011-12-09T20:04:00.001Z

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

2011-12-09T19:54:00.001Z

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

/facepalm

The €64,000 question

2011-12-09T19:37:00.001Z

"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

2011-12-09T18:28:00.001Z

What's that smell?

2011-12-03T15:14:00.001Z

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.

Have to say, it makes one feel really rather proud

2011-11-30T17:15:00.001Z

"Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reminded his naval commanders and the world that of all perfidious nations, Britain was the worst." The Times - via @ChristianJMay

*preen*

God Save the Queen.

This.

2011-11-29T08:22:00.001Z

*

And this.

Life...

2011-11-29T08:12:00.001Z

... continues to drive blogging to the margin.

NSWBRASAP.

And I am still watching you, you bastards.

False sense of security...

2011-10-22T09:48:00.000+01:00

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

Quel dommage.

2011-10-19T09:34:00.000+01:00

So unions and charities will be hit (£) by a clampdown on lobbyists? Well, whodathort it?

One can only hope that the consequences of any such new regime, if it ever comes about which I doubt, will mean that bully-unions and fake charities will get less taxpayers' money. Genuine charities will always attract support from millions like me who want to help thy neighbour but object to organised fakery on the public teat.

As for the unions, don't (as they say) get me started. Their political arm is the Labour Party, right? OK, the Eds can do the politicking while the Brothers get out of their Whitehall-bound limos, take a bus back to where the workers are and do what their members pay their subs for - negotiate better working conditions for them. If they want to lobby the gummint, let them stand for Parliament.

All of which is not to say that I am against lobbying by outsiders in principle. It will happen, whatever you call it. People are entitled, in a democracy, to put their views and concerns to ministers, and to band together to do so, appointing a spokesman who is entitled to be paid for his labour on their behalf. To repeat, whatever you call it, it will happen. To assume, as one's default position, that lobbying is ipso facto corrupt is mad.

It is the abuse of the right to lobby which needs examination. Let's hope Dave gets it right. I am not hopeful.

In answer to James's (irony-fail?) question a day or two back, no, I am not now and never have been a political lobbyist and the prospects of my ever being one in the future are nil. I would go further: mwahahahaha…

Bubble gummint

2011-10-17T18:04:00.001+01:00

Here's an idea.

Let ministers, politicians and mandarins talk to each other and NOT to outsiders.

Let's actually make it illegal for government ministers and their senior civil servants to have conversations with ANY third parties who might corrupt them, including those purporting to offer (well, they would, wouldn't they?) expert opinions, specialist or technical information, or hands-on arcane know-how. And definitely no suspicious foreigners and no foreign trips to meet 'em.

Let's stop all those bleeding-heart outfits sneaking around Whitehall and party conferences, plucking at politicians' sleeves with hard-luck stories about people who are dying of neglect, starvation or poverty. Lobbyists, see?

Ban think-tankers from talking to politicians. They're just lobbyists for their own worldview, dammit. Likewise commercial organisations, eliminating risk of cash-for access. No unions - and no bastard lobbyists for them, either, whispering in ministers' ears.

That'll keep the buggers pure and guarantee that we get the impartial, evidence-based government (and foreign policy) which we all want, pure and unprejudiced except by the personal opinions of the ministers and mandarins - oh, and backbenchers.

That'll show 'em.

It's bound to work.

Whatever

2011-10-16T12:50:00.001+01:00

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

Whaddya mean, MORE assertive?

2011-10-13T20:07:00.001+01:00

"Without more assertive patients, the (NHS) producer interest will continue to dominate the consumer interest." - David Hughes, Telegraph

More assertive? Assertive, even? Eh? With notices displayed prominently in every NHS ward and corridor warning of dire consequences for 'aggression towards NHS staff'?

Which weak, sick patient, bullied in the night (no witnesses) by a vicious, two-faced, Unison-badged nurse as my 80-year old aunt was, or which visiting family member observing, as I did, uncaring neglect bordering on torture of their parent, would - even if they could - unhesitatingly *dare* to 'assert' their right or that of their relative to decent nursing, to be treated courteously and humanely, knowing that they risk being accused of 'aggression' by hospital staff and a 'health union', which would probably make their situation even worse?

The system protects its own.

Be very afraid.

Sent from my iPad

NEET!

2011-10-12T09:19:00.000+01:00

"Earlier this year, it was also revealed Britain has become the ‘Neet’ capital of Western Europe, having more young people out of work or education than even Romania.<\p>

"Only four of the 27 European Union nations have more poorly educated and unskilled young people. In just five years, 12 EU countries have overhauled Britain and now have fewer youngsters without qualifications."

http://goo.gl/Vt2r7

Well done, Labour Party education policy commissars, NUT, NASUWT, ATL - and let us not overlook the NUS which serves its future-NEET members so well. Take a bow, Comrades. The culmination of the Project is in sight!

Just a few more years, just a couple more shoves, and we shall have NO employable adults to create the wealth we need to run our hospitals, banks, manufacturers and social services. I mean, who will pay your pensions and rents?

At that point you can take to the streets in a professional way and show the amateurs of the July 2011 riots how violent revolution is done by serious people who know how to do it.

But who will treat your heroic wounded when you have made sure that no-one can read, write or calculate your drug dosage?

Sent from my iPad

Jesus was an economic realist

2011-10-11T08:44:00.001+01:00

Politics Home tweets that Vince Cable told Sky News, 'We clearly do take enormously seriously the commitment, **which is legally binding**, to eradicate child poverty'.

Compare Jesus Christ: 'The poor you will have with you always.'

Oh, and 'Love your neighbour.' Not, 'Give money to your rulers who will save you the bother.'

The *actual* Saviour of the World, as opposed to the Fabian fantasist, Gordon Brown, who only thought he was, did not believe in fairies.

Gordon 'Saviour' Brown, Son of the manse, made 'the elimination of child poverty' a legal obligation on government.

Mwahahaha.

Tip for you, Gordon. Chuck out the economics books which you so bloody obviously cannot understand. Dust off your old dad's Bible. You might learn something.

Sent from my iPhone

Coming and going

2011-10-09T21:45:00.000+01:00

Blogging here and elsewhere will be sporadic at best until late November. Travelling. And taking a forced break from the keyboard. Which will be nice, I hope. In case of withdrawal symptoms, I'm taking the iPhone.

Behave yourself while I'm away, and keep your eyes on those bastards who think they control us.

KTHXBAI.

Sent from my iPad

Miss, Miss! Excuse me, Miss!

2011-10-05T16:49:00.000+01:00

"But the NASUWT general secretary Chris Keates attacked his education policy as being motivated by "ideological fervour".

She said the coalition government's education plans were "driven more by the desire to create a free market and lining the pockets of business than ensuring that all children have the highest standards of education."
Source: Mail. (Problem embedding link... effing Blogger on iPad...)

'Ideological fervour' is no part of her unions's antipathy to Gove's plans, naturally.

So, Miss Keates, if academies and free schools give children a better education than your preferred school-model, would you, as a professional educator, care to explain your educational reasons for objecting to them, and tell us why you think it matters a tuppeny fuck who, if anyone, makes money by doing your job better than you do, to our relief as parents and society at large, and most especially to the great benefit of our children?

Excuse me? Chap here with a question.

2011-10-03T22:53:00.000+01:00

"English political history has been described as a 1,000 years of our gaining the power to insist that the State ask us nicely for our tax money, ask for it every year, tell us where it goes and give us an opportunity to say “No”.

Quite why we should have to give that up just so that Germany doesn’t invade France again I’m not sure.

Perhaps you could explain why keeping a bureaucracy accountable would increase the risk of war?"

Tim Worstall.

Do we support diversity in education policy?

2011-10-03T12:11:00.000+01:00

The question is put in the Salisbury Review by Oxford postgraduate Vernon Rogers, to which he answers:

'Yes, we support the greatest possible diversity of marks given to students.'

Now there's a thought.

Sent from my iPhone

An expert writes

2011-10-03T09:30:00.001+01:00

A madwoman called Orzala Ashraf Nemat has written a report on the situation of women in Afghanistan for fake charity Oxfam. She was interviewed on the Today programme at 06:52 this morning. (Invisible link to the report at Oxfam's site.)

'Orzala'... spookily similar to 'Orla'... probably no relation, though.

Like Orla, Orzala speaks assertively and with authority, in her case that of Britain's best-known, best-funded, most Righteous, possibly most economically illiterate, Robin-Hood-tax-advocating, warble gloaming suction-pump for the surreptitious appropriation of your money and its transmission to... 'experts' like Orzala.

Among the gems which Orzala gave us this morning:

Women in the UK and the USA do not have equality with men (so save your breath and stop bleating about women under Islam especially in Afghanistan where things are really improving!)

Sharia law gives women more rights than any other religion 'that I know about' (so hush your damn mouth about Islam oppressing women)

One wonders what Oxfam looks for when picking its report-writing experts. Sorry - I lied. One knows precisely what Oxfam looks for.

Though Humphrys snorted audibly, there wasn't time to for him to ask whether Orzala had ever heard of those famous martyrs to sexual oppression, Margaret Thatcher, Condi Rice and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

There was no time to mention that, unlike Sharia, neither British nor American law brings charges of sexual crimes carrying the death penalty against girls from the age of nine on the grounds that 1,500 years ago a desert preacher had sexual intercourse with his nine-year-old wife and therefore all nine year old girls are sexually adult, responsible and capable of corrupting male adults for which they may be held legally culpable and killed.

There was no time to point out that the UK and USA have no laws which would arraign and convict a 16-year old girl who has been repeatedly raped on a charge of immorality on the word of a single male accuser, possibly her 'dishonoured' father or brother whose word, naturally, they being male, outweighs defence statements from two female witnesses because they are women.

There was no time to point out to Orzala that no American judge would sentence such a woman to be killed by being buried up to her shoulders in a park in Bumble Bee, AZ, so that her pious American (male) neighbours would not be inconvenienced by her running off while, supervised by the judge, they are trying in to smash her skull with rocks in the name of Jesus - Hallelujah, brothers!

There was no time to mention that no British judge would sentence her to be hanged from a crane specially erected in the market place of Chipping Norton so that, supervised by the judge, its pious English townsmen (sic) could cheer and cry Alleluia! as they watch her hauled into the air by chains around her neck, writhing and choking as her face turns black and her eyes bulge from their sockets, praise the Lord!

There also wasn't time to mention that it was English and American Christians, notably Anglicans and Quakers, who fought successfully for the abolition of slavery which is (nothing to do with Islam, obviously) rife in Islamic countries, the slave-owners mostly being pious Muslims and the slaves mostly kuffar.

There was no time to mention that it was mostly not Muslims, funnily enough, but Christians, notably Methodists and Catholics, who fought for and are still demanding the enfranchisement of all adults including women, a right withheld from women by men in most Islamic societies and in particular in Islam's holiest city.

Still, we have a nice report from Oxfam, written by an expert carefully chosen because she knows all you need to know about important wimmin stuff and freedom and all that.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

2011-10-02T11:16:00.001+01:00

Cor...

2011-10-02T11:09:00.002+01:00

... blimey.

Chuka is not an MP. He is a concept. A lifestyle choice. Most new MPs enter Parliament determined to make their name. When Chuka first strode through Westminster Hall he had already been identified as “One of Ten People Who Could Change The World”. One colleague ungraciously remarked that he’d do better to concentrate on changing Streatham.

[...]

Chuka set himself the modest goal of constructing a new global economic programme. Though a new MP for only eight weeks, he published an “alternative budget” in an open letter to George Osborne, secured election to the prestigious treasury select committee and was appointed Ed Miliband’s PPS. He certainly attracted attention; not all of it flattering. “He’s always there, floating around as part of Ed’s entourage”, said one hack, “God knows what he does, but I suppose he does it elegantly”.

POEWAS

2011-10-02T10:58:00.000+01:00

Further to this, John Rentoul:

Journalists can therefore safely ignore the [Labour] party until about 2014.

When Tony Blair's Ambassador to All The Earthlings, a leftie like Dan Hodges and a swivel-eyed wingnut like your humble servant all think you're fucked, you probably are.

POEWAS*.

_________

* 'Poor old Ed - what a shame' - the updated version of POGWAS.

O rly?

2011-10-01T18:46:00.002+01:00

David Cameron “I don't suppose anyone gets up in the morning thinking 'I wish the state were smaller.' ” Fraser Nelson.

Funny old game, politics.

The Politics of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition and how they is done - Part 2

2011-10-01T18:32:00.001+01:00

You spend years fucking everything up and telling voters that they're stupid or wicked or both.
You call an election.
You're thrown out because after years of fucking everything up everybody can see that you're stupid or wicked or both.
You spend five years explaining that you would make a super government.
Every time you say this, everybody jeers and puts their fingers in their ears.
The other lot run the country.

Moral? Shut the fuck up. Nobody wants to hear from you. The great thing about the gaps between elections is that we get a nice long rest from listening to the horrible bastards we threw out. Actually, we'd like to string you up but there are laws about that. Be grateful, and be quiet. You had your turn and now someone else has got the Talking Stick.

No, Ed, you can't have it back.

Nobody loves you. Not even the Guardian. No, they don't. They just hate the Tories. It's not the same thing.

Take a break, Ed, Get your strength up so that you're ready when Yvette parks her tanks on your lawn in about, oh, nine months from now.

Phew, wotta scorcher!

2011-09-30T16:47:00.000+01:00

The Politics of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition and how they is done.

2011-09-30T14:27:00.005+01:00

With apologies to Patrick Barlow and the National Theatre. (Of Brent.)
_____________________________________________

Do not start by having a philosophy of, say, what constitutes good government. You do not need policies by which to apply principles what you have not got. Politics ain't about that sort of hifalutin' rubbish which the common people are too thick to understand anyway. It is about going on The Telly and saying stuff what will give the Question Time audience the horn.

If you have time later you should try to memorise some Sayings Of Famous Philosophers because otherwise when you meet people from Newsnight and the papers in the conference bar they will be rude and call you A Salesman. No, not you, Ed. Don't you worry, son. You are definitely not a salesman.

Dan Hodges, funnily enough, is not a Liberal Democrat although he writes like one (see below) and might make a fine job of carrying Simon Hughes's bags. No, Dan is a summa cum laude graduate in Blairistics from the University of Blair and a Westminster insider (not an outsider like Ed). He tells all.

You begin by deciding where you want to position yourself politically. You then develop a policy framework to support that positioning. And finally you construct a philosophical and intellectual narrative to define your programme as you sell it to the electorate.

Well, fancy that!

2011-09-30T12:10:00.000+01:00

Something profound has changed. Germans have begun to sense that the preservation of their own democracy and rule of law is in conflict with demands from Europe. They must choose one or the other.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Who governs us, Mr Cameron?

2011-09-30T11:15:00.004+01:00

A showdown with the EU may come sooner than we expect. The European Commission has today threatened to sue David Cameron’s government unless it starts letting EU citizens come here to claim benefits. Fraser Nelson

Mr Cameron, you must roar Britain's defiance at the EU over this, or the consequences for both you and the country will be dire.

These new proposals pose a fundamental challenge to the UK's social contract. They could mean the British taxpayer paying out over £2 billion extra a year in benefits to people who have no connection to our country and who have never paid in a penny in tax. This threatens to break the vital link which should exist between taxpayers and their own Government. Iain Duncan Smith

As Prime Minister of Britain you cannot accept instructions from a foreign power as to who may enter our home in order to force us to house, clothe, feed and support them and all their dependents for their lifetime, as the European Commission orders us to do.

NO. No, Mr Cameron.

If you accept this assertion of imperial power over our Parliament you will be telling the British people that our constitutional democracy, our Parliament - and our Prime Minister - are meaningless, worthless, abolished, nothing more than 'heritage' baubles in a new and alienating national reality.

Be in no doubt that unless you defy Brussels over this, Mr Cameron, the British people will withdraw your mandate to govern, if that indeed is what you are now doing. Do not assume that you can escape the danger of this new challenge. You cannot, and we will not forgive you if you betray us over this.

The rule of law in Britain will be a thing of the past, for rule by law means government by consent. The British people have never consented and will never bow to dictatorship by foreigners, regardless of any treaty which your predecessor of bitter memory signed against our known will. But you know this, Mr Cameron, which is why you fear to give us a referendum on Europe. But perhaps there is another way which you may find more acceptable.

Mr Cameron, when I say you must roar Britain's defiance at the European Commission, I mean you must roar. On our behalf, as our Prime Minister. The whole country has to hear you loud and clear, whether you and you coalition friends find it politically convenient or not.

Hitherto, only about four per cent of voters count 'the EU' as important when voting at a GE. This Commission ruling, brazenly rubbing our noses in our subservience to an unelected, foreign, de facto and de jure dictatorship on (courageous choice, Commissioner: immigration, and welfare immigration at that) a matter of over-riding importance to an already-angry British electorate, will wake up the other 96 per cent.

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

If you act shrewdly now, Mr Cameron, you can win massive electoral support and effect a political paradigm shift.

It's time to play hardball, Mr Cameron. Tell the Commission that the United Kingdom refuses to comply with its instructions and invite them to do their worst. Tell them this: there are some lines a Prime Minister of the United Kingdom may not cross because the people will not permit it.

Obviously, it will be a deal-breaker for your Liberal Democrat coalition partners. The priority of their loyalty to the European Union over any loyalty which they may feel to our country (your favourite phrase, I think?) will be on plain view and put beyond all doubt. They may take the suicide option and tear up the Coalition Agreement, which would suit the Conservative Party very well, but I suspect they will prefer being in government to sticking to their principles. (Principles? LibDems?) They may cling to their Cabinet chairs and defy you openly in which case you will be free to declare this matter a deal-breaker for a British Prime Minister. The Liberal Democrats, looking at your record of... conciliation will think you are bluffing. With the people behind you, roaring their defiance of European Union imperialism, you can call Mr Clegg's and Mr Huhne's bluff. You can call a snap election. You can ask the people, "Who governs us?"

If you do this, posing this question, millions of working class Labour voters will vote Tory. It is not unprecedented and it matters not a jot what the Labour Party leadership says. What remains of the Liberal Democrat vote will evaporate. UKIP and the libertarians will back you.

Call an election, Mr Cameron. Win a landslide victory of historic proportions. Free yourself of the Liberal Democrat homunculus and castrate the Labour Party. Be a Conservative Prime Minister in a Conservative government of a sovereign United Kingdom.

With an unprecedented democratic mandate you can renegotiate Britain's relationship with the European Union to Britain's advantage on terms acceptable to the sovereign British people.

Of course, I am assuming that you want to achieve all these things. Do you, Mr Cameron?

Europe:

2011-09-29T19:58:00.001+01:00

A dyspeptic, demographically dwindling, Islam-raddled lumpen mass of welfare addicts.

... where...

... migrant workers, after twelve weeks of evading police, would enjoy the same benefits as permanent workers; that artists would, for 70 years, receive a share in the resale profits on sales of their work; that, if a small enterprise laid off one of six workers, all six must reapply for work.

And the remedy?

The leaders of Britain, Germany, France, and Italy, however unlikely they may be, should put the hopeless and dangerously misguided European Commission in trusteeship; put Giscard d’Estaing’s cynical monstrosity of a constitution to the shredder; send the dirigiste apparat that regulates everything down to the supermarket display of bananas and the size of condoms, packing; stop propping up defaulting countries and support the lending banks instead; and let all member states keep the common market and cede only as much jurisdiction as they wish.

Conrad Black.

Yes. Yes.

Sent from my iPad

About that "long hard look", Harriet

2011-09-29T15:59:00.000+01:00

Harman, my emphasis:

"Not everything we did in government turned out right. And people need to know [give me fucking strength] that over the past year we’ve taken a hard look at what we did and we’ve learnt lessons. But it’s time now to move on."

Didn't 'turn out right', huh?

'Best intentions' though, Hat? Just... the results weren't quite, y'know...? It would all have been wonderful if hadn't been for 'shit happens'? The policies themselves were fine, yes? Your abolition of civil liberties? Your wars? The Lisbon treaty? Your 'unannounced' unlimited immigration? Your buying-off the can't-be-arsed-trainee-looter class whom you paid to do fuck-all all day, out of the almost-half of the hard-earned wages of the workers that you grabbed before they even saw their wage packets? Your colossal economic arrogance and your boss's vanity-fantasy, assiduously fed by that nasty bastard you're married to, leading to your lethal fuck-up of financial service regulation? Your insane spending? Your 100 tax-hikes-by-stealth? Your sacrifice of education, and thereby our children, on the altar of your anti-human 'equality before justice' dogma? Your preference for public-payroll taxsuckers over their taxpayer victims? Your policy of systematically lying about all the above? Those policies which just sorta didn't turn out right?

Is that it? Nil points.

Learnt lessons? I am so terribly happy for you. It will make you a better person. Funnily enough, I learned a lot myself in the Labour years. But enough about me. Is there anything, you know, specific that you learned that you'd care to share with the poor bloody voters? Apart from the not-turning-out-right thing, obviously. Anything at all? (I've asked Liam Byrne and several other sacked Labour ministers the same question but answer came there none.)

Nothing? No? Nil points.

Time to move on, is it, dear? Hm... what does that remind... ah, yes.

Time to move on, my arse. If you and your comrades think the voters are going to let you draw a line (© T Blair) under your years of haughty, malignant malfeasance and all the damage your inherently evil Gramscian-Marcusian Fabian Labour party has done to real, living, suffering people - AGAIN - so that you can escape years of ordure being piled upon you, think again. As the saying goes, shit happens, and it's going to happen to you.

Have a nice day.

To be fair to Ed Miliband... ...

2011-09-29T13:15:00.000+01:00

... not something I ever expected to type but there you go...the media were never going to give him a chance.

Almost to a hack, the media have been insulting Ed Miliband ceaselessly (one sympathises but I mean to say...) since the moment he stuck that knife in his brother's back - and there's the reason, right there.

The ladees and gennlemen of the press believed that Mister Tony had changed the Labour Party once and for all when he dragged it into the real world from its Marxism Today comfort zone. They bought his 'social demcracy' and 'mixed economy' riffs. He abolished Clause IV, FFS! Bob Crow was the last remnant of the Morbid Tendency...

When Blair was defenestrated and Brown strung up by the people (I can dream, can't I?) the media expected the Blairite David to become leader of the New Labour Party. Head and shoulders... foregone conclusion...

OMG! It's the wrong brother! WTF?

Yes, in an undreamt-of reversal of an ancient tale, young Abel killed his elder brother, Cain. How appropriate for our exciting new post-religious society!

Some of the more arcane, Manichean interpretations of the Cain and Abel story have it that the name 'Cain' means 'son of evil', even going so far as to give the Serpent, the Devil, as Cain's father, rather than Adam. That would make the elder brother, Cain, inherently evil and less than human...

If, as in modern Labourology, Tony Blair is the Devil Incarnate, why would the faithful want the son of the Father of New Labour Lies as leader? No, time for an Old Labour Man, a Socialist. Ed Miliband. The younger brother. Abel. And so it came to pass.

So once again the Labour Party is toasting the good old days of freedom, unelectability and seemingly permanent opposition, back when the Marxoid prophets Foot, Kinnock ('I've got my party back!'), Benn and Meacher held sway and the Guardian was a newspaper. What a relief, what a delight, freely to be able to boo the 'Tory' (ultimate insult, otherwise meaningless) bastard who three times received from the British people a mandate to govern in the name of the, erm, Labour party. 'What? Oh. who cares? That was then. Werl, it kept the Tories out.'

Blair is now the Devil, to be scorned and reviled, and the Blairite elder Miliband was his son: Cain.

The Miliband fratricide is exactly what the party faithful wanted in its Old Labour guts, even though they dared not say it out loud in the presence of the electorate, so the Union Brotherhoods, keepers of the Flame and not beholden to the bloody voters, got Ed elected. What a relief!

Now Ed, the young Abel, has freed them from all prospect of having to take responsibility or even to think and talk like political adults. They are free to revert to behaving like political teenage boys, admiring each other's Che posters, wearing shit T-shirts which they think are cool, playing loud music chosen because everyone hates it, watching porn and having wanking contests when Mum's safely out of the house, blowing the dope-smoke out the window and talking the kind of testosterone-driven crap about fighting that only Labour cadres and hormonal, acne-plagued teenage boys think has any connection with reality.

And the voters? Hah. The Labour Party can afford to wank on for a while yet, scorning the judgement of the very few swing voters who might be watching them. It'll be years before what the voters think actually matters. Three years? Eight? Thirteen? What the hell. Let's have some good old socialist, class war fun. Fuck the Tories, it's your round, ged 'em in. Cheers.

So, whodathortit? Abel killing Cain? Nobody expected that. No wonder the media pundits are angry. They knew it could never happen. But it did.

"I mean, Ed Miliband? How dare he? Who does he think he is? We'll show him. Him and his party." Well, all except the usual suspects. And the Staggers and the Guardian, obviously.

Questions, questions - part 2

2011-09-29T10:33:00.001+01:00

Questions, Questions (part 1) is here.

Q. Why is Islam so intransigent over Israel and the Palestinians?
A. How can it not be?

I came across a blog by a Muslim Arab (there are still some other kinds of Arab) who does not hate Israel.

"I am speaking my conscience. I respect [the Jews'] right to live in peace in their tiny homeland, Israel. I understand how that could be puzzling and unbelievable to many Arabs, to love both Jews and Arabs."

This writer covers some of the answers, answers, to my questions, questions. This is an extract from her apologia to her fellow Arabs. For the sake of the ignorant arse who occasionally visits this blog, apologia does not mean apology.

It is worth reading the whole thing.

"Under Islamic law, non-Muslim countries are never equal to Muslim countries and actually their sovereignty as a non-Muslim nation must always be challenged by Islamic jihad.

"Islamic law codified jihad as a permanent war with non-Muslims to establish the religion. Muslims thus have to use Taquiyya, lies, to legitimize their aggression on Israel and the West. That is why Muslim countries can never abandon the constant hate propaganda, lies and misinformation about Israel and the West. If that ends, their jihad ends.

"The UN must be constantly bombarded by complaints from Arab countries against Israel. The Arab street must be constantly bombarded with ridiculous accusations and Zionist conspiracies.

"Lately on Syrian TV a Syrian intellectual accused Israel of stealing human organs in Haiti while they were helping them after the earthquake. This is not something new; it started in the 7th century, when the prophet Mohammed accused the Jews of treason to justify killing and expelling them and taking over their wealth. To explain this away, he stated that Jews are worthy of this treatment since they are the descendants of apes and pigs and enemies of Allah. Muslims still use the same dynamic and the world still falls for it every time.

"The Arab mind was trained to never venture outside of the box of Islamic superiority, and that prevented us from treating the rest of humanity as equals.

[...]

"I often get mail from secular Muslims who ask me: I can understand that you chose to leave Islam, but how can you support the Jews? I get mail like this because, in the Muslim mindset, loving, accepting and feeling good about Jews or Christians and thinking of them as equals, is unthinkable and an act of treason to Islam itself and even worse. It is as though the whole religion of Islam is dedicated to hating and killing Jews.

"After centuries of this kind of education, the Muslim world produced a dysfunctional society, unable to relate to the rest of the world. While wanting to convince the world they are a religion of peace, do not be afraid of Islam, they are still hell-bent on conquering the world for Islam. That is Islam’s dilemma today.

"What I, and a few others, are trying to do is to bring the truth to both Muslims and non-Muslims to finally face this sick game. We want to encourage Arabs to look at Jews and others as human beings and not as enemies to conquer. What kind of God will tell his followers to kill more than half of humanity if they don’t submit to Islam?

"The Muslim world today is a disaster waiting to happen. Ahmadinejad, who is not an Arab, wants to continue the Islamic jihad against Jews by destroying Israel. I have news to especially the Left in Europe and America: Islamic jihad will not end with Israel; you will be next.

"Dear Gaza resident, yes, I cannot blame the Jewish people, or the government of Israel, for what you call the ‘misery’ of the Palestinians. I can only blame Arab and Islamic culture which used and abused you and which you allowed. I believe that this is an Arab self-inflicted crisis that has nothing to do with Israel.

"Arab education has never told us the truth about the Israeli people and the story from their side and what Jerusalem means to them. We were told that Jerusalem was a Muslim city simply because Mohammed dreamt one night that he went to the farthest mosque but he never mentioned Jerusalem. The Koran never mentioned Jerusalem, which is mentioned hundreds of times in the Bible as the heart and soul of the Jewish people. !

"We as Muslims never respected other religions holy cites and always claimed them to Islam; even Spain and India are being claimed as Muslim land. It was the tradition of Muslim conquerors to convert churches and temples to mosques and that is exactly what happened to the Jewish Temple Mount when 100 years after the prophet Mohammed died, Muslim conquerors built the mosque right on top of it. Just imagine if Jews or Christians had built a temple on top of the Kaaba in Mecca. This is how Islam has treated the Jews.

"It is time for Muslims to seek redemption and forgiveness and to extend the hand of reconciliation and peace to the Jewish people."

The write is a brave woman, especially given that this is the sort of opposition people like her can expect - if they're lucky.

Would you buy a 1974 election manifesto from this man?

2011-09-27T21:31:00.001+01:00

Just asking.

Ballsonomics

2011-09-26T17:57:00.000+01:00

This says it all. Excellent journalism.

Further comment is unnecessary. I thank you.

What rhymes with 'anchor'?

2011-09-26T13:20:00.000+01:00

"Labour's shadow cabinet needs to acknowledge that it doesn't understand business, has almost no direct and relevant experience and, accordingly distrusts and is distrusted by business.

This needs correcting. If this is done we might see the emergence of more serious pro-growth policies than some of the inept and inconsequential nonsense that previously masqueraded as business policy."

Lord Myners, Gordon Brown's banker friend, via Paul Waugh.

Oho, what's this, what's this?

"We set up the Financial Services Authority.... That was a big mistake. We did not understand just how entangled things were.

We did not understand how risk was spread across the system, we did not understand the entanglements of different institutions and we did not understand, even though we talked about it, just how global things were.

So we created a monitoring system which looked at individual institutions. That was the big mistake."

Thus Gordon Brown, saviour of the ~~world~~ world banking system.

Anyone remember watching Brown in the Commons and struttting about the world's financial meetings during the banking crisis? Yes, me too.

Anyone remember him ever admitting an error while he was in office? Nor do I.

Arse.

Vain arse.

Criminally arrogant arse.

Arse.

Feel-gooders and their playthings

2011-09-23T18:17:00.000+01:00

"Modern-day activists need humanitarian crises in order to feel alive, purposeful, possessed of historic, Nazi-battling momentum. They live off ‘humanitarian crises’, like moral parasites on a hippopotamus’s arse, and thus it is in their interests always to exaggerate the extent of such crises. After all, the bigger the crisis, the bigger the thrill they get from tweeting about it."

O'Neill. Again.

A wicked old witch

2011-09-23T12:49:00.003+01:00

"It is characteristic of all committee discussions and decisions that every member has a vivid recollection of them, and that every member's recollection of them differs violently from every other member's recollection; consequently we accept the convention that the official decisions are those and only those which have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials; from which it emerges with elegant inevitability, that any decision which has been officially reached would have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, and any decisions which is not recorded in the minutes by the officials has not been officially reached, even if one or more members believe they can recollect it; so in this particular case, if the decision would have been officially reached, it would have been recorded in the minutes by the officials and it isn't so it wasn't."

As Sir Humphrey said of government minutes, so the honest historian will say of the wider historical record. So Goebbels said of the zeitgeist and the national myth.

British contemporary history, the most egregious example being that of the 1980s, is 'minuted' and thus mediated to the overwhelming majority through the BBC's NUT-approved Guardianista prism. No alternative worldview is allowed oxygen, save to encourage the hurling of rotten fruit (comedy is the most effective ballista) and the occasional execution of a heretic or two in an auto da fé.

One can hardly be surprised at the increasingly, uniformly unbalanced and naive political opinions of the young when their political 'information' comes from a single, powerful and powerfully supported monopoly.

Liberty of thought and choice are sine qua non for a healthy polis and a free people. The de facto monopoly of the BBC over the contemporaneous account, the popular memory of news and public affairs, and consequently the collective myth, must be abolished.

Auntie loves children

Auntie Beeb is no longer the cuddly national treasure whom we are lucky to have, bless her. She has aged, badly, into a warty, wizened, wicked old witch who cackles horribly effective imprecations at any who so much as raise an eyebrow at her dangerous practices.

She has great power now, acquired over decades of receiving unwonted tributes from rulers, both craven and cynical, who rob the poor to buy her golden cauldrons and expensive potions with which to make her poisons.

'A nice juicy apple, my dear? Or perhaps a little gingerbread?'

With her evil spells she paralyses, kills and eats her enemies, cursing those who try to heal the wounds she inflicts. Defy Auntie if you dare.

The wicked witch is poisoning our wells. She must be surrounded, smoked out and smashed.

But of course, like all tyrants, the witch has powerful friends...

Questions, questions

2011-09-21T16:10:00.002+01:00

So the Gentile asks, 'Why does a Jew always answer a question with a question?' The Jew replies, 'Why not? Isn't it a reasonable thing to do?'

Yes, it is, in Christianity as in its elder brother, Judaism. But not in Islam.

HT Cranmer

Q. Why is Islam so intransigent over Israel and the Palestinians?
A. How can it not be?

The reasons for Islam's intransigence are ancient and cultural. Israel is merely Islam's fracas du jour. The reasons pre-date Islam, and have remained constant throughout history up to and beyond the fall of the last Islamic (the Ottoman) Empire in the first world war, out of which collapse the Jewish state was born.

But first, a little theology to focus on the abiding philosophical, as opposed to cultural, chasm and antipathy between the Islamic worldview and that of Judaism-Christianity.

In their self-consciousness, self-descriptions and creeds, the three strands of Christianity, which is to say the Protestant, 'Roman' Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches all deploy the word 'catholic', in its strict meaning of 'universal'. This is because they share the common theological proposition that the offer made by Jesus Christ was and is universal: offered freely to all people who are free to reject it. This is because Jesus himself compelled no-one. A young man asked him how to attain eternal salvation and, not liking Jesus's answer, walked away, but Jesus did not call him back or condemn him, but, sadly, just watched him go. (Matt 19:22)

Such freedom is the opposite of Islam.

The Christian offering is based on the concept of a free divine will which ordains that human persons similarly have free will and reason. In his free will, Man is made in the image of God.

This proposition is an outrage to Islam.

One is free to accept or reject the Judaeo-Christian account of reality because this freedom is inherent in the nature of God as understood in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. This ancient and absolutely fundamental characteristic of Judaic tradition continues through the development of Judaism's daughter, Christian theology in the scholarly tradition of argument, debate, dispute.

Such questioning is anathema in Islam.

(Yes, all right, I know, Christians rarely live up to their creeds and ideals - but that believers can be faithless and unworthy does not alter the validity of their belief. As it happens, Christians believe that Jesus came to save sinners from themselves and it's just as well, isn't it? We can be a really horrible lot whom only God could love. Let us move on.)

I had a philosophy teacher who defined philosophical enquiry as 'a process of taking one careful step after another - backwards'. He meant that the proper response to any proposition is the question, 'But what do you mean by...?' Let us go back to the essence of the terms we shall use and agree upon them, and only then can we go forward together to any profit to either of us.

Going forward together is anathema to Islam.

The Hellenisation of Hebrew scholarship resulted in a happy merger of Greek dialectical metaphysical scholarship with the unique Jewish understanding of monotheism which, philosophically, is the most reasonable and subtle of all theist positions. It was from this happy marriage that, over millennia, the Christian theological twins of rational enquiry and liberty to choose developed, and continue and will continue to develop, in the very nature of the basic proposition.

Enquiry and liberty are forbidden in Islam which demands their opposite: submission.

The concept of free will is the single most important philosophical foundation underlying both Judaism and Christianity. It led Europe and the West to Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, political emancipation, the abolition of slavery and universal education. It is ab initio inimical to the fundamental tenet of Islam. The very word Islam means 'submission'. It admits of no free will and therefore no questioning, no discussion.

This is the opposite of Judaeo-Christianity.

In Mohammed's earliest reflections on what might be the links between Man and God, musing (as we see in the Qur'an) on the traditions of Judaism and Christianity, he said, 'There is no compulsion in religion'. At this point, he was just beginning, an insignificant tribal thinker in a brutal, patriarchal, polytheistic wilderness.

Gradually, his monotheistic insights (gleaned, as we know from his writings, from Judaeo-Christian thought) gained currency among and offered a prospect of political unity and strength to the bellicose tribes of the region. Mohammed and his prominent followers were instructed, they believed, by Allah. This conviction strengthened their arm, enabling them to conquer surrounding tribes very rapidly by the normative, that is to say, murderous methods of that place, culture and time.

Thus Mohammed's new religion was enforced over a vast area as violence and terror ensured submission to the new religion of submission by any who challenged either his teaching or the authority of his warlords who, as it happens, gained political power and wealth even as they spread the word. Thus Islam, a unified and militarised movement, quickly abandoned Mohammed's initially indulgent 'Judaeo-Christian' position of 'no compulsion', in favour of the more effective 'preaching by the sword'. Mohammed became a general, soldiering in the name of Allah.

Like all successful conquerors, Mohammed and his commanders recognised the limits of what was militarily, economically and politically practical. They found it convenient to permit disarmed non-submitters to co-exist on condition that their infidelity was invisible to worshippers of Allah (on penalty of death) and on payment of the taxes due to Allah's followers from second class citizens.

From its very beginnings, the Islamic proposition has been naked of all pretence to reason or the concept of free will, in its world-view. It stands on Mohammed's twin doctrines that Allah is, in his essential nature, so other that he is not bound by any human category, including rationality, and that the worshippers of Allah, those who submit to his inscrutable will, are not to be challenged, ever, for any reason, for to defy Allah's followers is to defy Allah himself, meriting death and eternal damnation.

Lucifer challenged God and by so doing became the Father of Evil, the Great Satan. Anyone who challenges the rulers of the worshippers of Allah is Satan against whom all the believers must make war until the end of time, which will come when the last infidel submits or is destroyed by the worshippers of Allah, in Allah's name.

To repeat: in the Islamic religion there is no reason, because Allah, being utterly other, is not bound by reason, a purely human category, and simply must be obeyed - submitted-to, without question. Ditto his prophet against whom no human authority can stand.

Allah may order, through his prophet and other spokesmen, mass murder, Jew-murder, self-immolation and various other practices which to the Judaeo-Christian mind seem unreasonable or even evil, which is oxymoronic because Allah is definitively good and merciful. (Goodness and mercy, unlike reason, are not merely human concepts. You may not question this mystery.) Even if both those things are true, Allah must be obeyed because defiance of the will of Allah is forbidden.

Allah is permitted, in Mohammed's theology, to be entirely capricious. His will is beyond question. If he is capricious, and of course no-one is permitted even to ask whether he is, there is nothing humans can or may do but they must submit to his will as mediated by his prophets, muftis, imams, caliphs, emirs and ayatollahs.

The interesting question is how the self-immolaters and infidel-killers receive Allah's orders. Obviously through the prophets, muftis, imams, caliphs, emirs and ayatollahs, but who says they are right? They do. Which takes us back to the question of authority in the society in which Islam, with its characteristic, essential intransigence, arose.

The Islamic concept of authority descends undiluted from the social culture of Mohammed's life and experience in the desert of the 7th century. The entire Islamic edifice is embedded in the social system of a desert-nomad, warlord patriarchy in which servants, slaves, women and children are owned, controlled, instructed and punished by armed men licensed by patriarchs whose will, in turn, is enforced by violence. Pre-Islamic tribal/political culture informs Islamic thought and leadership.

Might is right. I have a big stick, and you will submit.

Admittedly Islam was a bit of an improvement, in the 7th century, on the brutality it displaced, giving some limited but undreamed-of rights to women, for instance, but only under conditions of general servitude... to men.

Jewish and Christian social mores were once similar, but both Jews and Christians, in their understanding of the human person and optimal societies, have moved cosmic distances from that mindset over centuries during which Islamic teaching has expressly and deliberately ossified the social rules and structures with which its prophet rules that it is co-terminous, for ever.

Islam's leaders taught from the beginning, leaving aside that momentary hesitation on Mohammed's part, that the Muslim worldview is the only one sanctioned by their god and that they are divinely instructed to kill or conquer any who defy that view. Defiant infidels are ipso facto Satan, waging war on Allah. For young, naive, inexperienced hearers of authoritarian Muslim leaders, Islamist jihad and Jew-hatred are no-brainers, not susceptible to reasoned questioning which anyway is forbidden by Allah. And so it goes on from generation to generation: the way, the truth and the death.

By its very nature, there is no place in such a system, where only might is right, for either reason or discussion, let alone reformation in the Christian sense. Reformation would mean radical transformation of a centuries old societal dispensation which holds that its social habits and its theology are one and the same, mandated by a god who defines them as immutable and to be enforced without change whatever the cost in human suffering and death of self or enemy.

In Islam time stands still, and humanity with it. And for Man to require 'justice' of Allah is blasphemy.

Christianity and Judaism both permit - no, recommend, their own development, in discussion, exploration in harmony with the observable fact of the forward progress over time of human thought and knowledge: aggiornamento, in worshipful dialogue with a Creator who has demonstrated by intervention in history that he is intimately engaged with and in reasoned dialogue with humanity.

This is the opposite of Islam.

Christianity goes further down this road than Judaism, with the belief that the creator actually went so far as to become human in order to demonstrate corporeally his immanence.

In Islam, the notion of divine immanence is blasphemy.

Is there hope of an Islamic Reformation, some time in the future? It seems improbable since Islam admits no development in religious thought. Islam does admit the development of non-theological thought. It supports the acquisition of material/scientific information but draws the line at accepting the consequences of that learning for the understanding of the human condition in the context of the transcendent.

How can there be a Reformation without reason? Islam proclaims that its divinity by his very nature has no connection whatsoever with reason. No wonder its leaders will not permit the translation of its scriptures, which, as Judaeo-Christianity knows, and one surmises that Mohammed well understood when he banned it, opens the sanctuary door to reasonable questions by non-scholars, questions which may lead to the overthrow of demagoguery and dictators. This is the religion of a fearful people.

Pope Benedict XVI's plea, in a talk to his scholar-peers in Regensburg, for a rapprochement between Christianity and Islam based on reason and mutual freedom to question in fraternal conversation, met with world-wide violence from Muslim mobs whipped up by teachers who lied to them about the Pope's words and his pacific intentions. And of course with howls of support for their lies from their useful idiots among the hard left and militant secularists, to whom reasonable Christianity is a far greater philosophical and ethical challenge than unreasonable Islam which they embrace on the basis that their enemy's enemy is their friend. They forget that first they came for the Jews...

So, back to the present conundrum. Palestine, Israel, two states? How? Islam admits the possibility only of one Jew-free (and of course, gay-free) Islamic state.

As the video at the top of this rather long post shows, it is bootless for Israel to offer anything but total submission, which of course means Jewish mass suicide. Islam will never allow Muslims to accept any offer from 'the Jews'. Only submission will do.

Historically, the Jews, like the Arabs, are a group of Semitic desert tribes, so, sort-of cousins, and consequently despised as only relatives can be despised. The pesky Jew-cousins have always denied the Arab-Muslim cousins' order to submit.

They would never, will never submit, never surrender their independence of soul, their adherence to reason or the freedom to question and think for themselves which has put them among the leading scholars in every discipline in every time and place. Therefore these stiff-necked infidel Jews and their freedom-loving infidel allies are The Great Satan and must be destroyed. QED.

Which is about as reasonable as this chap:

The defiance by Jews of violence which will not reason, and their proclamation of liberty of thought and will as the fundamental human attribute and the basis of human fulfillment, are why this blog stands with Israel.

The besieged Jews of Israel are civilisation's vanguard. Their enemies are the enemies of humane thought and liberty.

The Jews and especially the Israelis are defending the light of reason against the darkness of un-reason.

Israel is besieged by forces of of violent oppression which have survived since the dark ages by the deployment of lethal force by people who believe that their god - who is categorically unlike the God of the Jews and Christians - orders them to conquer and destroy in his name.

First they came for the Jews...

___________________________________________

The subject of this post being the religion of peace and its chosen enemies, a few rules regarding comments are needed - for the first time. O tempora...

Unreasonable comments, whether accusing the writer of 'Islamophobia' or attributing all the world's ills to belief in 'sky-fairies', will not be welcomed, for obvious reasons (see discussion of 'reason', above).
Ditto wailing about the 3000+ -years old accounts of tribal gods and desert warfare in the oldest parts of the Hebrew Bible. That was then, this is now.
Ditto that Islam preserved the Greek scholarly oeuvre. No, the Byzantines (Eastern Roman Empire/Greek Christians) did.
Ditto complaints about 'the Crusades' for which there was, at the time, reasonable justification: defence against Islamic attack. (Were you there? What would you have done, without your 20th century head on your shoulders and your Enlightenment books?)
Simple abuse will be deleted. If any, that is.
My blog. My rules.

You'd need a heart of stone...

2011-09-20T12:17:00.001+01:00

... not to laugh as the Guardianistas boomerang themselves senseless. Well, I say senseless, as though that were a new thing in Guardianistas, but you get the picture.

As it happens, I’m utterly opposed to the Met’s moves against the Guardian, which are profoundly illiberal, and I hope the Guardian refuses to name its source rather than repeating the Sarah Tisdall debacle of the 1980s. But I am also opposed to the Guardian’s moral rehabilitation of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (one of New Labour’s most authoritarian pieces of legislation) and its insistence that the police use this intolerant, intrusive law to invade the offices of tabloid newspapers and feel the collars of tabloid hacks. The Met’s extension of its investigations to encompass the Guardian isn’t a case of the goodies turning on their fellow goodies – it’s the ugly end result of having foolishly invited the police in the first place to harry and hector and fix the media. Who issued that invitation? The “goodies”. Brendan O'Neill

Memo to Mayor Boris

2011-09-19T16:09:00.002+01:00

Rotterdam isn't the world's loveliest city (it was bombed flat in World War 2 and badly rebuilt), and I've known better halls than the De Doelen there. BUT…it provides plenty of space to sit down before a concert (unlike the Albert Hall), and in foyers blissfully uncluttered by people running small businesses, dealing in drugs, begging for money, or practising rap routines to the accompaniment of ghetto-blasters as happens in the shabby bazaar that is now the South Bank Centre.

What's more, De Doelen Hall provides its audience with free tea and coffee, not only during the interval but after the show – encouraging concert-goers to stay, and meet, and talk about the music they've just heard. How civilised the Dutch can be, compared to us.

Michael White (no relation)

The Balls around Ed Miliband's ankles

2011-09-19T13:13:00.003+01:00

Dan Hodges at the New Statesman writes that Ed Miliband should sack Ed Balls. He also suggests that Balls should distance himself from the policies of Gordon Brown.

So, let's see... the Hodges recipe for Labour's return to office is based on the theory that if my auntie had balls she'd be my uncle. Well, OK. Whatever gets you through the day, old son, but we grown-ups really do have to get back to Planet Earth, now.

Ed Balls distancing himself from the policies of Gordon Brown? It simply cannot happen. Equally improbable is the idea of Miliband sacking Balls. Although, after what he did to his brother, it shouldn't be ruled out entirely.

The economic governance of Britain throughout the entire Blair-Brown era (including but not only the opaque speeches and the brazen de haut en bas lies) was all Balls.

Balls was the master and Brown his pupil. Brown has admitted openly (but only after the electorate threw him out for making the most almighty Balls-up of our economy) that he is an historian and not an economist. Fancy that! By contrast, Balls was a professional economist before entering politics which he did at Brown's insistence. A very bad economist, obviously, but an economist nevertheless, and the highly political, Labour-tribalist, non-economist Brown needed him badly. Balls devised the economic instruments by which Brown would, so he thought, achieve his socialist political objectives.

It was Balls who match-made the Brown-Prudence marriage, and once the lady had been deflowered, insisted on a quickie divorce, with all the dreadful consequences which the Labour hierarchy now admits but only through gritted teeth and only in dimly-lit, smoke-free Party rooms, when they think no outsiders are watching.

Whatever opprobrium the present Labour leadership would like to lay on the widely-hated but conveniently absent Brown, the scapegoat for their years of supine complicity in his ruinous policies, belongs equally to Balls. As indeed it does to Ed Miliband, who for many years worked hand in hand with Balls in the Treasury to enforce Balls doctrine in the name of Brown.

Balls and Miliband are conjoined twins and the country knows it. As long as either or both of them remains in a leadership position, the Labour party will be despised as an incompetent, fantasist shambles not to be allowed near sharp objects like economies.

You picked the wrong brother, Labour, and along with him, the Balls around his ankles. You need to ditch both the Eds as soon as convenient. You know it, but you daren't admit it. Not even to your sorry-arsed selves.

Nurse!

2011-09-18T21:52:00.005+01:00

Vince is out of bed again.

He's wandering around Birmingham, dressing gown flapping, gurning into the faces of startled business owners and mumbling, 'What do you think this is, a fucking free country?'

Every few minutes, he shouts at passing buses, 'Rich fuckers! You! Gimme yer money, yer capitalist bastards!'

When last seen, he was gripping the arm of an elderly man in a tweed suit and shouting, 'Don't you know who I am, you fucking Tory, you?'

I leaned my back up against an oak

2011-09-18T21:32:00.002+01:00

The green Conservative tree has gone from this blog's sidebar, replaced by this one.

I leaned my back up against an oak
Thinking that he was a trusty tree
But first he bended, then he broke
And so did my false love to me. source

You'll remember Dave's hug-a-huskie, see-me-I'm-Modern phase, when he replaced the Tory torch with a nice tree. Well, a pretty sketch of a tree, anyway. But a tree. Solid things, trees. Very British. Constable country. Heart of Oak. That sort of thing. I like trees. A lot.

So I went along with it.

Dave's watermelonish ecowankery grated, but once a Tory, always a Tory (stay with me, here). I've been a Conservative since I was in the sixth form, a hell of a long time. I remember Mac, just about. I hit political puberty when Wilson defeated Douglas-Home. I saw Heath and Thatcher come and go. The desperation of the après-Major near-death experience nearly overwhelmed me but here I still was when it became clear that Cameron was the best hope of getting Labour out of office (always an overriding consideration) and installing a Conservative government.

I knew the task ahead was Sisyphean. I knew that extraordinary positions would have to be adopted and accepted. That there would have to be compromise. That it would be a painful, rough ride.

But I went along with it.

I went along with it because I trusted that the core of Conservative values would remain uncompromised. I believed Cameron when he spoke at the 2009 conference which I attended, of promoting commerce and industry to create wealth in order to help the helpless. I believed him when he said he would stand up for marriage and the traditional family. After all, even bloody Toynbee (surely?) can see the overwhelmingly convincing evidence of its utility for the greatest good of the greatest number of individuals and therefore of the societies they live in.

So I went along with it.

I believed Cameron when he said he would defend this country's liberties, culture and integrity, and to that end would put a stop to Labour's deliberate, malign policy of unlimited immigration (engineered by stealth and against the known wishes of the vast majority in this country) by which vast numbers of defiant and barely English-speaking trouble-makers, from cultures incompatible with ours, can arrive at our ports and immediately receive benefits for which the natives have to work a lifetime while quietly plotting to destroy our heritage and, oh, yes - kill us. I believed him when he said he would ensure that foreign murderers and rapists would be deported. I believed him when he said he would reign back rule by unelected foreign dictators with an agenda wholly inimical to the interests of this country.

So I went along with it.

It almost worked. Against overwhelming odds, the Conservative party almost won the election. Cameron brought us back from near oblivion and into government.

Coalition was unavoidable. But for true Conservatives, having our party shackled to the ever-venal, self-interested, Brussels-contaminated, socialist-lite, petty-dictators of the Illiberal Undemocrats has proved painful beyond measure. The rage in Conservative conversations, out of earshot of Portcullis House and Notting Hill, is unprintable. Not that the Party leadership gives a flying fuck about that.

Allowing that there are among them one (perhaps two) men (sic) of integrity and authentically Liberal character, the LibDem members of this coalition government are, like their party as a whole, a fractious, puffed up, self-righteous bunch of cynical hypocrites whose Liberal and Socialist wings can barely conceal their internecine snarling long enough to remember to call the Conservatives 'the enemy'. Yes, even Dave's friend Nick. This article nails the Liberal Democrats for what they are.

(By the way, how courageous of you, Deputy Prime Minister, to make a head-on attack on the terrifically popular Daily Mail, with its highly political readership, just because it is the bête-noir of the currently LibDem-supporting Guardian-Brigstocke tendency.)

Clegg even talks of the Tories as his "enemies". Talk about smug.

But who is surprised? This is the party whose official, documented election campaign policy is 'Say what the audience wants to hear'. Never truer than when addressing the leftwing mass of the party at the annual jamboree. All together now, follow the bouncing ball: 'Tories are ruthless bastards!'

Cameron sought to bind ~~his enemies~~ the LibDems to him for five years, to give him long enough in government to undo the worst of Brown's near-terminal damage (little did he know...) He thought that meant giving them real power: more power than in the wildest dreams which Clegg, Cable and Huhne dared dream. More than that unlovely gang asked for. So generous, Dave, so generous. Clegg and his historically unpopular, near-lunatic party were given power beyond their weight or their worth.

Now, every day we get a LibDem announcement about how virtuous they are and what bastards the majority Conservatives are. How every good thing coming out of Whitehall is from the LibDem manifesto. How the Conservatives, with vastly more electoral support than they and vastly greater numbers of MPs, are being prevented from showing 'their true colours' by the nice LibDems.

Such fucking, lying hubris. Who the fuck do they think they are?

Just look at the numbers. At the council elections in May they lost 700 seats and posted their worst result for 25 years. In their pursuit of their Holy Grail of voting reform, they lost by a margin of 2:1. Their poll ratings are in single figures, less than half the support they secured at the general election. Nick Clegg scores 12 per cent on the question of who would make the best PM.

In another poll, 63 per cent of people say they don't know what the Lib Dems stand for. At the last election, despite a brief bout of Cleggmania driven by the novelty of TV debates between the leaders, they actually lost seats. And to put all this in a historical context, they have not won a general election since the end of World War I.

Don't they get it? After decades of boring the country rigid, they are, truly, deeply, madly unpopular. They couldn't win an election if they were running against Colonel Gaddafi and Osama Bin Laden - and they never will.

The Liberal Democrats are abusing their position - daily, gleefully, mendaciously (it means they're liars). It is tasteless, undignified and an insult to the electorate.

They prattle on about what a great job they are doing in government, about the sacrifices they are making, and, most of all, how they are civilising the Conservative barbarians making up the vast bulk of the coalition.

This is armour-plated, ocean-going self-righteousness of awesome proportions. After 200 years on the ballot paper in one guise or another and after being the dominant political party of the 19th Century, they seem completely untroubled by the fact that only one person in ten now thinks they are fit to run the country.

And now, Cameron is Clegg's prisoner, and he is exhibiting all the signs of Stockholm Syndrome. His 'friendship' with Clegg is preventing him from being a Conservative and from governing as a Conservative, albeit in coalition.

Worse, Cameron refuses to acknowledge, in any practical sense, Britain's increasingly vocal anger at government by ~~Clegg's lodestone~~ an unelected foreign dictatorship, the real-world cash-cost of which is finally coming home to even the thickest British citizen. You know, that bloke who can't even spell 'E-U'.

These are two astronomical political failures as well as failures of government.

Cameron might as well not be a Conservative at all. He looks quite happy, for all the world like an Orange Booker, perfectly comfortable, for pragmatic purposes, to share a bed with the life-long socialist enemies of my party like Huhne and Cable, both of whom are actually damaging this country - Huhne to a catastrophic degree.

Is Cameron happy with this? Seriously? Does he think the Conservative Party at large is happy with this, or the millions who voted Conservative?

Or is the realpolitik of his position such that he must say nothing, and allow this appalling state of affairs to continue, letting the Liberal Democrats shrewdly and assiduously build their bona fides with the BBC and enough voters ('We are a party of government again! Look at our record!') that, at the next general election, they will be in contention for enough swing votes to split the anti-Labour vote?

By sleeping with my enemy, Cameron is doing almost all that is necessary to hand this country back to Gordon Brown's two most teeth-clenchingly loyal fixers, his accessories before during and after the fact of his ruination of the country's social fabric and economy, Ed Miliband and Ed Balls.

For that is what I can see coming at me from the other end of this long dark political tunnel. In the dark days ahead the electorate will vent its anger with the coalition government. If David Cameron does not change course, his successor in Number Ten will be Miliband. The Weird One. All he has to do is... nothing.

So, yes, my heart remains Conservative. But is my party with me? Are you, Mr Cameron? Daily I ask myself how much longer I can remain a member of the Cameroon Conservative Party.

And yet... God help us if Labour get back into government. That fear is the only thing keeping me on side. To leave the Tories now would give me huge, bitter satisfaction - and enliven this blog no end. But I can't. No, not because of you, Mr Cameron. Because of Ed Miliband and Ed Balls. A lipsmacking Up Yours, Dave, would turn to ashes in my mouth the moment I saw the Weird One on the news.

It's autumn. The winds are starting to blow. That lovely Conservative tree is no longer green, no longer strong enough to lean on. The nights are drawing in. It's getting cold.

So, not just me, then

2011-09-18T13:41:00.000+01:00

The Nobel* Prize-winning economist Martin Feldstein argued that the creation of a single European currency, far from encouraging peace and harmony, would increase tension and conflict between nation states, and with other global powers.

- Norman Lamont

* Rendered by the Telegraph writer as 'Noble'. I blame the teachers.

New gods

2011-09-17T14:39:00.000+01:00

Congratulations to the top right wing, conservative and libertarian bloggers of 2010-11. Keep sticking it to the socialists, the Righteous and the enemies of freedom. I read you with delight.

For the first time in five years, this blog has not made it into Iain Dale's (rather shrunken) pantheon.

Am I shedding bitter tears? Er, hardly. I have always written this blog for my own satisfaction; eavesdroppers welcome. Bring a bottle and don't stamp out fags on the carpet.

Two things appear to have changed. Possibly three.

First, the right wing 'sphere is now vastly bigger, more widely read and more politically influential than when I started this little blog. My pathetic peepings are drowned out by booming throngs of better bloggers than I, more diligent scribes of similar political and philosophical bent. Hooray. Let a thousand flowers bloom.

Second, some would say, my fire's gone out. Well, no, not exactly. My days of making sparks on the keyboard several times daily are over, yes, but - trust me - this is a sign of mental health, not mental fatigue. The anger remains, even as we struggle on, up to our necks in the noisome ashes of the malign, treacherous and incompetent Blair-Brown governments, but it is effectively expressed for me by the rhetoric of a growing number of better bloggers than your humble servant. Uneasy lies the head, eh, Dave? Jolly good. The night has a thousand eyes. And growing.

The third, and it would not have occurred to me had I not seen acid cries of 'Referee!' on Twitter, is that the good people at Total Politics have cocked up. Unlikely, I feel, and anyway such allegations stink of sour grapes. The referee's ruling is final.

To those who voted for me this year and in the past, thank you. I'll continue to tap out a few obiter dicta which may amuse my loyal reader and even the odd passer-by.

The Fall of Rome

2011-09-17T13:42:00.004+01:00

The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.

Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.

Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.

Caesar's double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.

Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.

Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.

- W H Auden (1947)

With thanks to Dan Hannan for the awful reminder of an awful reminder.

Yeah, but... who, exactly, Mister Knacker?

2011-09-15T17:45:00.004+01:00

Source.

Fawkes has a reward up. I wonder how long it'll be... closing time tonight?

Schadenfreude. Suddenly, not so much fun.

2011-09-14T23:56:00.000+01:00

The Polish Prime Minister is murmuring, apparently, about 'war within ten years' if the Eurozone.collapse should lead to the break-up of the EU.

Those of us who, right from the start, feared and warned that the Euro was an impossibly insane scheme which would inevitably end in tears - or worse - are not enjoying the increased likelihood being proved right.

Shut up. I'm reading.

2011-09-14T15:45:00.001+01:00

I make a point of spurning the Booker shortlist. Too many of the usual suspects, dreadful people with inflated opinions of their own opinions, make a point of reading all of them and then boring everyone by repeating exactly what they said last year: They are all wonderful. Any of them would make a worthy winner.'

No, they wouldn't. Even most of the winners are unworthy winners chosen by friends of the author or his publisher.

Backscratching, incestuous luvvie garbage.

They can't hear you, Nige.

2011-09-14T14:31:00.000+01:00

Judenrein

2011-09-14T14:12:00.003+01:00

First they came for the Jews...

The Day of the Jackals, starring Perry Mason and Pontius Pilate

2011-09-14T13:25:00.003+01:00

The Murdoch hunt is a smokescreen. Thanks to the Independent, we get another glimpse of the throng of whited sepulchres huddling together in the murk.

Newspapers and magazines also used the agency to illicitly obtain thousands of private telephone numbers, often including the details held by telephone companies under the category "Friends and Family". In total, the Whittamore files reference 17,489 orders from media organisations.

Some 1,028 are in the so-called "blue book", which was essentially dedicated to News International.

The "red book" contained 6,774 jobs, most on behalf of Trinity Mirror titles.

The "green book", which includes work from Associated Newspapers titles, Express Newspapers and some celebrity magazines, has 2,227 references.

And the "yellow book", which is miscellaneous, has 7,460 orders.

Of all these hacks, then, those employed by Murdoch's titles ~~committed fewer child-murders~~ engaged in fewer illicit practices than their competitors.

Thus the Murdoch-hunting party can be seen in context for what it is: a pack of hyenas turning on one of their own, hoping that the scent of its blood will draw in a pack of jackals to distract the bigger beasts, while they, having gorged on its lifeblood, slink back to their lairs.

The unfortunate impression that Tom Watson MP's Perry Mason turn is entirely politically motivated can now only be altered if he mounts an equally ferocious attack on Murdoch's competitors, perhaps starting with the slavishly Labour-supporting Mirror to demonstrate his impartiality as a tribune of the people. After all, Mr Watson is an honourable man.

Wash his hands as ostentatiously as he might, ~~Pontius Pilate~~ the Information Commissioner will have even more difficulty than Mr Watson in neutralising the stink accompanying his every word in this matter. He protests his well-meaning impotence, as the lead investigator on the Motorman enquiry tells the Indy that his team was

forbidden from interviewing journalists who were paying for criminal records checks, vehicle registration searches, and other illegal practices.

Forbidden? By whom and why?

In a signed witness statement given to The Independent, Motorman's original lead investigator, a retired police inspector with 30 years' experience, accuses the authorities of serious failings, and of being too "frightened" to question journalists.

"I feel the investigation should have been conducted a lot more vigorously, a lot more thoroughly and it may have revealed a lot more information," he said. "I was disappointed and somewhat disillusioned with the senior management ..."

Frightened? By whom and why?

The High Court has ruled that journalists are generally protected by freedom of information legislation except where national security concerns may override that protection. Does this ruling prevent journalists from being investigated for suspected crimes? Infringement of the Computer Misuse Act (amended) and corruption or encouraging the corruption of public officials including police officers are crimes.

I ask again, 'What stopped you from pursuing and prosecuting journalists on the Mirror, the Mail and the Express, Mr ~~Pilate~~ Information Commissioner?'

In memoriam

2011-09-11T00:30:00.000+01:00

Hopey-changey (NSFW version)

2011-09-09T22:29:00.001+01:00

As advocated by an official of the Obama-supporting ILWU (dockworkers' union).

Enjoy.

Via

Hey, Ed.

2011-09-09T09:02:00.001+01:00

Education news

2011-09-08T12:21:00.002+01:00

Consternation within the student union at the LSE, where bright sparks raise cash and prompt a lively discussion on academic elitism. All via a carrier bag bearing the logo "More intelligent than you since 1895!". Complaints aplenty. "This is, in some ways, worse than awarding Saif Gaddafi a PhD," says one web protester. "Maybe Cambridge should have one saying 'More intelligent than you since 1284'," suggests another. "Then Oxford could come out with one saying 'More intelligent than you between 1100 and 1283'."

How much easier it is for Professor Niall Ferguson. He just smiles that smile and we get the message. - Hugh Muir

Well, as my grandfather used to say, 'Some's got it, and some ain't.' Ferguson's got it. Yeeeeharrrr!

MORE INTELLIGENT THAN YOU

Bugrit, let's elect everybody

2011-09-08T11:43:00.001+01:00

"Universities are run by unaccountable, unelected managers..." said Michael Chessum, an NUS executive member and co-founder of the National Campaign against Fees and Cuts. - Indy

HT Guido.

STF up, madam

2011-09-08T09:38:00.000+01:00

Sue Freeth, of the Royal British Legion, warned that after a decade of war the public was “coming close to the end of its willingness to contribute to people from this campaign”.

Did the Queen know David Miliband was trashing 500 years of Crown treaties?

2011-09-07T21:47:00.000+01:00

In a barbaric and near-criminal act, David Miliband ordered the closure of the Foreign Office library, containing the records of 500 years of Britain’s overseas entanglements, including the original copies of all our treaties. This institution was described by Gladstone’s foreign secretary, Lord Granville, as “the pivot on which the whole machinery of the Office turned”. Recently, I inspected its empty shelves, their contents having been dispersed, some turning up on eBay: it was both too sad for words, and a piquant symbol of New Labour’s neglect of the lessons of history. - Telegraph

I didn't know. Now I do. And I am FUCKING angry. By what fucking right...

That is my history, my heritage, Miliband, you arrogant, incompetent, embarrassment of an utter, utter fucking bastard fit only for the seditious, destructive Labour Party and no other. You are not even good enough for the Liberal Democrats.

And I still haven't forgotten this buttock-clenchingly shaming outrage by your staff when you were at the FCO.

Give me strength.

And all this was happening while this negligent, treacherous bastard's ridiculous brother and his criminally arrogant right hand man, Balls, were determinedly running the country's economy deep into the ground, with their not-so-novel socialist policy of piss-it-up-the-wall-because-we-can, with its scorched-earth culmination in near catastrophic national economic and financial liabilities which will work themselves out only over a generation or two, in bankruptcies, unemployment, worthless and destroyed life-savings and pensions, distress, poverty and suicides.

And even as their own comrades are beginning to realise that they have to accept responsibility for the damage they wrought, the guilty men are refusing to look the truth in the eye but instead, plotting their comeback.

Gentlemen, you are pissing in the fucking wind.

Labour should never be allowed to govern again., Ever. Ever.

Blogalot

2011-09-07T21:13:00.001+01:00

There are days when I want to and days, weeks sometimes, when I really really don't. Really.

Today was a blogalot day. Sorry if I have taken up too much of your time (assuming, of course, that...) but sometimes one just has to get it off one's wossname.

Anyway, in the words of the immortal Nicholas Parsons, aye thenk yew.

And not a revelation in sight

2011-09-07T21:11:00.001+01:00

Earlier, an irritating comment at the Graun prompted me to tweet thusly:

Proper opera critics do not use the word revelatory.

Look.

The Grimeborn Festival still takes place in the Arcola Theatre, but that has now relocated, and is very close to the new Dalston Junction overground station. I’d have liked to see several things there, but in the event only got to one, Barefoot Opera’s version of Handel’s Alcina. Barefoot’s programme is discouraging. It reads in part: ‘We research ways to use voices and bodies with minimal instrumentation, tell a story as an ensemble, and are working towards the formation of a cooperative company with an integrated and distinctive artistic vocabulary.’ Did they employ consultants, or can everybody write this kind of gunk now?

In the event, Alcina was in large part enjoyable and moving. The Grimeborn rule seems to be that operas should last about an hour, which seems a first-rate start. Handel’s do tend to last more than three, so obviously we only heard extracts from his cornucopian score. Further, it was reorchestrated, if that’s quite the word, for clarinet and accordion — or, rather, Acts I and II were, since the musical ‘re-imaginer’, Peter Foggitt, hasn’t yet got funding for Act III. Actually, Alcina is, for plot and emotional purposes, over by the end of Act II, so that isn’t dramatically as grave as it might sound.

True to the management-speak brief, the company entered discalced, and indulged in a good deal of movement (I use the word technically, of course). One of them piped up with the background to the opera’s plot, and periodically, but randomly, translated bits of the text for us — for one of the strangest aspects of this exercise in accessibility is that it was performed in Italian. The characters, in a weird variety of costumes, intertwined and swayed and lay on the floor, but more importantly they almost all sang Handel’s glorious music, fragmented and disjointed as it was, beautifully, and in the case of Alcina herself, taken by Penelope Randall-Davis, extremely movingly. Her whole portrayal, of an ageing temptress trying to hold on to her seductive power, stirred beyond what one might have imagined possible in that context — and thereby partially validated the context. She had promising material to deal with, since the Ruggiero of Krysia Mansfield also performed exquisitely. Not all the seven singers were on that level, but thanks to the sensitive accompaniment, and despite a moderate amount of transient trendiness, I felt my visit to the Arcola was richly rewarded.

Now that's a proper opera critic. Tells you what was done dramatically, musically, artistically, by whom and where, honestly and in clear and elegant language, enabling the readers to paint their own mental pictures and regret or rejoice at having missed it, according to taste.

Lovely stuff.

Indeed, indeed.

2011-09-07T17:29:00.000+01:00

Piss-up, brewery, etc.

2011-09-07T16:37:00.000+01:00

This is funny. No, really. It's put-the-keyboard-away-first funny. Give yourself a treat.

And they honestly believe they can run the fucking country.

Yep. Guilty.

2011-09-07T16:11:00.001+01:00

It was Balls and Miliband who led much of the high spending in the mid-2000s.

We can't possibly go to the electorate in 2015 led by the very people who contributed a great deal to the fiscal mess we are in, unless we have convincing, wide-ranging and realistic plans to show that we are repentant for our mistakes and serious on the economy. - Luke Bozier at Labour List

I'm very much looking forward to seeing the two Eds, clad in sackcloth and with ashes on their heads, prostrating themselves in the Palace of Westminster, beating their breasts and wailing their repentance, as Labour's opening move in the 2015 election campaign.

Who said that?

2011-09-07T13:02:00.000+01:00

The Telegraph's Alexis Dormany is suspicious of people like your humble servant who are anonymous on the web, behind noms de plume. Very... unsettling.

He is torn between castigating megacorps for wanting to know everything about their customers and damning the web-facility for saddos to build whole fantasy IDs and lives online, potentially (at least, arguably) damaging themselves and others.

He seems to disenfranchise perfectly innocent citizens who wish to contribute to public conversation while preserving their privacy.

On balance, he thinks online IDs should be transparent.

I think he wants you to know exactly who I am. Well, he is entitled to his opinion, and he makes one or two good points, but on balance, my response is Fuck off, Mr Dormany. If Mr D gets his way, you will never hear from me again and you will never know who I was. Am.

What's the value of free speech if you don't know who's talking?

No. No.

First, distinguish between legitimate privacy and suspicious secrecy.

Second, listen carefully to what is said. Read carefully what is written. Never mind who said or wrote it. Does it have value in itself?

I do not have a monopoly of truth. My opponent may have something to say from which I would wish to learn. It makes no difference that I cannot see his face.

If too much attention is paid to the speaker (which is easy) it may be that too little time is left to examine his speech (which may be difficult). If a writer is too celebrated, the brilliance of his celebrity may cast his writing into shadow.

We know nothing of Socrates but what Plato remembers him saying. We know nothing of Plato but what he wrote.

Our age is cursed by superficiality.

___________

I posted a shorter and more polite version of this at the Telegraph. Something similar may appear at Orphans of Liberty.

Charitable thought for Today

2011-09-07T12:22:00.000+01:00

There was a debate about child care costs on the Today programme this morning.

Yes, I know, but please don't sigh like that. It breaks my heart.

One of the protagonists blamed The Cuts and accused his interlocutor of arguing from ideology. He said the point was to lift millions of little chiiildren out of truly appalling poverty by making both parents in a two parent family go out to work and leave the kids with minders, after the sweet old-fashioned Soviet model of society. No, he did not actually say that.

His interlocutor disagreed with his analysis and proposed an alternative.

As a service to my reader who hasn't the time to listen to the whole dreary thing, thumbnail sketches of the protagonists and their propositions:

Justin Forsyth*, a smiling, caring, non-ideological sort of chap who works for a chiiiildren's charity. He is Against The Cuts, obviously, because they have put up the cost of childcare and driven millions of hardworking families into unspeakable, ten-to-a-shoe-box, bread-n-dripping-three-times-a-day-if-they're-lucky poverty. The government must provide the solution in the shape of higher benefits. Reverse The Cuts. Oh, and 'the government should provide a living wage'. Then both parents can work which is great because it's good for the chiiildren - even this ConDem government says so. Er, not quite, Justin, but we'll park that one for now. A great Ken Loach fan, he is not at all ~~socialist~~ dogmatic.Just, y'know, lovely. Just the sort of chap we'd all want to leave our kids with.

Sheila Lawlor runs a right-wing think-tank, FFS. She is an ideological bitch who says that if both parents going to work and leaving the children with minders brings the family no net gain after childcare costs, why not let one parent stay home to look after the children? Evidence shows that one-to-one, full-time parenting in of pre-schoolers optimises child development. The State can help hardworking families by reducing taxes to allow parents to choose freely (what?!?!) between working to pay for childcare and looking after their own children. Bloody wingnut.

* Justin Forsyth is a super-successful, lifelong socialist ~~taxsucker~~ quangocrat. Decade in Downing Street; Blair's Spad on poverty and climate change (fancy that!); Director of StratComms for Mr Tony and then, through thick and, er, thick, for the famous 'caring sociopath', Gordon Brown.

** Fake charity. Save the Children grant income, figures from STC's 2009-10 financial report

£21 million from individual donors
£160 million from governments
£15 million from corporations, trusts, etc. (Gates, Comic Relief et al)

including

£39 million from taxpayers' pockets and public debt via the British government
£121 million of public money from other national governments and intergovernmental bodies including the UN and others to which British taxpayers contribute

The sadness of a Conservative Party activist

2011-09-06T21:50:00.001+01:00

Why sad? Three clues...

1.
2.
3.

Seems reasonable to me

2011-09-06T14:58:00.002+01:00

If someone is going to claim problem X exists and the solution to problem X is solution Y then that person bears the burden of proof. Not the person making the claim that they are not convinced X is even a problem.

From a comment on a rather Worstallian blog post, by an economist, on the economics of climate change.

Well worth reading.

UPDATE

Here's a real beaut, in another comment.

Phil: When the carbon levels reach 450 ppm humans will have trouble breathing.

Really. It took me about 40 seconds to find this:

"In an indoor air test (in our laboratory) the detector found that the CO2 level was about 600ppm which is typical of indoor air and is an acceptable and safe level." I guess they just don't make indoors like they used to...

Note when the breathing trouble starts: "Above 2%, carbon dioxide may cause a feeling of heaviness in the chest and/or more frequent and deeper respirations." That's over 20,000 ppm.

I guess Phil doesn't see much of a difference between 450 and 20,000... Phil, don't go shopping.

I wonder if Phil works at UEA...

One more heave

2011-09-03T14:24:00.000+01:00

David Cameron, urged on by Matthew d'Ancona and the sainted Parrish among others, believes it's not being modern enough that robbed him of a Parliamentary majority. 'More modernisation and we'll crack it next time.'

No doubt that sounds plausible to comfortably off chaps (and the extremely comfortably off Theresa May), people whose home beat lies within the parish boundaries of Westminster Palace, Mayfair/Notting Hill, rural Berks/Oxon and the leafier parts of North London where the Ham & High is required reading.

One more heave, then.

The Cameroons tell each other that it's enough to frown and growl occasionally as they drop just enough of the olde tyme religion into their speeches and interviews to keep the old guard contributing to party coffers and, much more importantly, turning out in their poor-bloody-infantry boots at election time before being told to bugger off to the backwoods and keep quiet till next time.

Apart from that, it's onward and upwards to liberté (well... y'know...) egalité and fraternité. Well, maybe that sounds a bit foreign, a bit unmodern, but you get the picture.

The Cameroons are assiduous in enforcing Newspeak and Correct Thinking. Openly to remark on how Broken Britain got broken, i.e., mostly by now-uncontrollable immigration from societies so different from ours as to be unassimilable; on gross non-white racism; on the near-monopoly in violent crime, street robbery and looting by certain ethnic/national groups which is obvious to people who live in the middle of it, is to provoke the clutching of fingers to genteel (as well as socialist) throats, shrieks for the smelling salts and, when the horror has receded a bit, the pronunciation on all channels of anathemas.

Defence of England's traditional Judaeo-Christian culture (with or without its specifically religious content) is infra dig. Attacks on the churches in the name of modernity and egalité are de rigeur among cynically ambitious or besieged Tory MPs.

Government ministers 'have let it be known' that in a 'free vote' on an abortion amendment, they can be assumed to vote in an Modern way acceptable to Pravda. The MP moving the amendment is labelled 'mad' at the dinner parties of the Righteous although all she asks is that those with a vested (i.e. financial) interest do not have an absolute monopoly, courtesy of the state, on the provision to their captive and vulnerable customers of 'impartial' advice about the choices available to them. The abortionists proclaim that that only they, who are paid only when they perform an abortion, could possibly be impartial; everyone else, obviously, has an axe of some sort (probably religious, argh) to grind. This, despite Ms Dorries saying quite clearly,

"No organisation which is paid for carrying out abortions and no organisation that thinks it's appropriate to bring God into a counselling session with a vulnerable woman, should be allowed anywhere near the counselling room."

Seems kind of reasonable to me, but then I am neither a Grayling-Dawkins-ist nor a cynical back-bencher seeking preferment under a wannabe-re-elected, cynical Prime Minister. (Tin hat on and awaiting vitriol from Those Who Know They Are Right And I Am Wrong in the comments, if any.)

This revealing display of power-before-principle by Conservative government ministers is merely the most recent, egregious example of the absolute commitment by the Cameroonian hierarchy to whatever they think will get them a majority next time, rather than to a principle like liberty of conscience, or liberty generally, come to that. So easy to proclaim even when it counts for nothing.

There's no-one of principle on the right of politics whom the Cameroons won't cheerfully upset, including their own paying and hardworking members and supporters, in order to demonstrate how fucking modern they are. There is no conservative tradition they won't trash, no religious faith (except one, obviously) which they won't at least pretend to insult as long as it's safe to do so. No, not actually in front of the Pope with millions of traditionalists and Christians watching you on live TV. Don't be silly. One must be... subtle.

It is increasingly clear that the Cameroons' only imperative is power. Nothing else matters. The polite word is 'pragmatic'. Meaning, not 'adaptable to circumstances and realpolitik' so much as 'pay any price to get and keep power'.

The present game-plan is to win over voters who receive most of their information via the BBC. That means not provoking, more than is unavoidable, the disfavour of the Guardian, the house magazine of the BBC. That in turns means being, in fact if not in word, pro abortion-industry, unlimited immigration and 'street' 'culture', and agin fuddyduddyists like the Christian churches, the National Trust and the CPRE. It means paying lipservice to ideas like a bonfire of the quangos, while leaving the Gramscian nobility in control of, e.g., the fake-Charity Commission.

Of course, the wise politician is circumspect and the BBC now so powerful that one can well understand a Conservative Prime Minister's hesitation before challenging its worldview in a live radio interview. Cameron himself did it yesterday on the Today programme (surprisingly, mildly, and if you blinked you missed it), betraying his Conservative roots for a split second. That very fact made headlines everywhere. How dare he? 'Back to the Nasty Party!'

If only. I am all in favour of keeping the Labour Party out of power for ever, and at almost any price. But even I draw the line somewhere.

And I happen to think Dave's got it wrong. He is too far to the left, too much in thrall to Macmillan when times call for something much more rough and radical, enough to upset the Guardianistas once and for all, before we reach the point of no return, assuming of course that... .

Anything can happen. The public is turning to the right here as in other countries across Europe. If the Cameroons deem it necessary, so will they, and the conservative, striving, ignored and angry C1s and C2s will carry them on their shoulders into government again.

The important thing, you see, is not 'Conservatism'. It is not principle. It is power. And Dave will do whatever it takes. For as long as he wants to, anyway. He's young for a PM. The fate of the country won't concern him for many more years. He will bugger off and do something else, leaving us to survive as best we can in whatever mess he leaves behind him when his star has waned.

Yes, I can see David Cameron's lips moving

2011-09-02T10:55:00.001+01:00

But he still doesn't seem to be saying anything. I'll wait a bit longer, but...

Sent from my iPad
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Back

2011-09-01T19:55:00.001+01:00

Sorry about that.

The guilty gremlin has been found and shot. As far as I could make out, his dying words were, 'Polly sent me... (gurgle)...'