Monday, May 13
Peter Hain, Minister for Europe:
"Muslim immigrants can be very isolationist in their own behaviour and their own customs. That, in the end, is going to create real difficulties and is likely to be ripe for exploitation by extremists, whether it is followers of bin Laden on the one hand or racists on the other. It just takes two to integrate, and we need to work with the Muslim community."
That of course, could be said to count both ways. In any case, I really see why leading a quiet life with your own customs mean you're ripe for a takeover by crazoids. Still, not, content with slamming the Muslims, Hain, presumably because he realised that he may have gone too far, decided to cover his tracks by letting rip into the Tories. Apparently a councillor has published a paper suggesting that the races can differ in their intellectual levels:
"I think Iain Duncan Smith should expel him from the party, and anybody like him, because there are many in the Conservative ranks who clearly are racists and proud to be so."
Well, what an anti-intellectual this Mr. Hain is. Let's not argue with the guy, or even prove him wrong, let's just expell him. Meanwhile, Hain himself can slag people off just because they don't conform to his narrow vision of what constitutes a Brit. But why shouldn't people be isolationist? What's it to him? Of course, if people are breaking the law then throw the book at them, but if they don't conform why should he care? How many lesbians does he ever get to party with? But then freedom of association is a term of abuse in the New Labour lexicon, and anyone who doesn't join in is the enemy. Yet the Times dares to defend the charlatan:
"Peter Hain’s history as a fearless campaigner against apartheid and a founder member of the Anti-Nazi League makes him a particularly suitable person to address such difficult issues, as it is not credible to suggest that he is animated by prejudice".
Why not? Oh sorry, I forgot, liberals don't have prejudices, do they?
UPDATE: Of course, it's no coincidence that Hain is drawing attention to himself in this way. David 'Swampy' Blunkett did it a few weeks back when he was under seige for his feeble performance as Home Secretary, and Hain's demented plan to turn Gibraltar over to the Spanish is reportedly disintegrating. When things go wrong for the Neo-socialists they go and talk about something not within their remit, just to distract the press from the real story. Which makes Hain even more of a cynic than already envisaged.
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"Muslim immigrants can be very isolationist in their own behaviour and their own customs. That, in the end, is going to create real difficulties and is likely to be ripe for exploitation by extremists, whether it is followers of bin Laden on the one hand or racists on the other. It just takes two to integrate, and we need to work with the Muslim community."
That of course, could be said to count both ways. In any case, I really see why leading a quiet life with your own customs mean you're ripe for a takeover by crazoids. Still, not, content with slamming the Muslims, Hain, presumably because he realised that he may have gone too far, decided to cover his tracks by letting rip into the Tories. Apparently a councillor has published a paper suggesting that the races can differ in their intellectual levels:
"I think Iain Duncan Smith should expel him from the party, and anybody like him, because there are many in the Conservative ranks who clearly are racists and proud to be so."
Well, what an anti-intellectual this Mr. Hain is. Let's not argue with the guy, or even prove him wrong, let's just expell him. Meanwhile, Hain himself can slag people off just because they don't conform to his narrow vision of what constitutes a Brit. But why shouldn't people be isolationist? What's it to him? Of course, if people are breaking the law then throw the book at them, but if they don't conform why should he care? How many lesbians does he ever get to party with? But then freedom of association is a term of abuse in the New Labour lexicon, and anyone who doesn't join in is the enemy. Yet the Times dares to defend the charlatan:
"Peter Hain’s history as a fearless campaigner against apartheid and a founder member of the Anti-Nazi League makes him a particularly suitable person to address such difficult issues, as it is not credible to suggest that he is animated by prejudice".
Why not? Oh sorry, I forgot, liberals don't have prejudices, do they?
UPDATE: Of course, it's no coincidence that Hain is drawing attention to himself in this way. David 'Swampy' Blunkett did it a few weeks back when he was under seige for his feeble performance as Home Secretary, and Hain's demented plan to turn Gibraltar over to the Spanish is reportedly disintegrating. When things go wrong for the Neo-socialists they go and talk about something not within their remit, just to distract the press from the real story. Which makes Hain even more of a cynic than already envisaged.
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John Reid, the Labour Minister in charge of Northern Ireland, yesterday discussed the news that his party received a hundred grand from a noted porn baron:
"We have acted with complete propriety, We have acted with integrity. We have been transparent. If you are asking if we are going to sit in moral judgment, in political judgment, on those who wish to contribute to the Labour party, then the answer to that is no."
New Labour at its finest. Even the Guardian finds this all a bit rum:
"Whatever happened to Tony Blair's call for Labour to be cleaner than clean, purer than pure? Is this all now forgotten?"
Forgotten? When was it ever?
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"We have acted with complete propriety, We have acted with integrity. We have been transparent. If you are asking if we are going to sit in moral judgment, in political judgment, on those who wish to contribute to the Labour party, then the answer to that is no."
New Labour at its finest. Even the Guardian finds this all a bit rum:
"Whatever happened to Tony Blair's call for Labour to be cleaner than clean, purer than pure? Is this all now forgotten?"
Forgotten? When was it ever?
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Tony Blair, yesterday:
"We agreed entirely on the need for democratic people of all persuasions to stand together in solidarity against extremist policies of whatever kind. Those policies offer no real security, no real hope, no real answers to the problems people face and we reject them entirely."
Exactly! Vote Tory.
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"We agreed entirely on the need for democratic people of all persuasions to stand together in solidarity against extremist policies of whatever kind. Those policies offer no real security, no real hope, no real answers to the problems people face and we reject them entirely."
Exactly! Vote Tory.
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George Trefgarne in the Telegraph:
"WITH some people, just the sight of them is enough to make you purple-faced with rage. It is getting to that stage with Stephen Byers. Just to hear and see him again over the weekend was enough to have me reaching for the television remote control in a desperate attempt to switch him off. I am sure I was not alone".
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"WITH some people, just the sight of them is enough to make you purple-faced with rage. It is getting to that stage with Stephen Byers. Just to hear and see him again over the weekend was enough to have me reaching for the television remote control in a desperate attempt to switch him off. I am sure I was not alone".
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Voice of the Mirror:
"You have to hand it to Stephen Byers. He has raised smug complacency to the level of an art form".
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"You have to hand it to Stephen Byers. He has raised smug complacency to the level of an art form".
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Saturday, May 11
Now a word on the mousehunter. I would have written this earlier but my internet connection has been playing up. He came yesterday, within the prescribed time and lay down six poisoning devices. For those of you who worried that the deaths might be instantaneous - Fear Ye Not - it takes three to ten days from biting the poison to biting the dust, and apparently it is very painful. Fascinating fact: Did you know your average mouse lays 80 droppings a day? No. Neither do I. If and when the first corpses start appearing, be sure, you will be first to know.
Right. Enjoy your weekend.
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Right. Enjoy your weekend.
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Also in the Telegraph, Tom Utley spanks the monkey. Writing about the new Primate of Hartlepool, he says "Mr Drummond should stop making po-faced statements about public services in Hartlepool. He should get straight back into his monkey outfit and get on with the serious business of scattering bananas and simulating sex with Mr Mandelson in public. That was the job that he was elected to do". Precisely. He was elected as the monkey, he should govern as the monkey.
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The Telegraph has the first plausible insight into exactly why Byers stays in his job. It's because he was instrumental in Blair's leadership challenge, according to Tam Dalyell, Labour MP. Incidentally there was a rail crash in England yesterday, and Patrick Crozier has the gen on that, and points out how the beleaguered one is using it to try and resurrect his career. The guy has no shame.
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Friday, May 10
Speed cameras may cause death. Does anything beat the good old Law of Unintended Consequences? I imagine Patrick Crozier may have something to say about this. If not, well he's always worth a read anyway.
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The Guardian is all in a tizz.
"Health crisis looms as life expectancy soars" the headline booms.
"Western governments are drastically underestimating how long their citizens are likely to live, an oversight which threatens to put strains on the health, welfare and pensions systems of the developed world far more serious than previously envisaged, scientists warn today".
Man was not made for the Sabbath, but he was apparently made for state-controlled health care, welfare, and pensions. Trust the socialists to find this a cause for worry, not joy. Miserable fuckwits.
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"Health crisis looms as life expectancy soars" the headline booms.
"Western governments are drastically underestimating how long their citizens are likely to live, an oversight which threatens to put strains on the health, welfare and pensions systems of the developed world far more serious than previously envisaged, scientists warn today".
Man was not made for the Sabbath, but he was apparently made for state-controlled health care, welfare, and pensions. Trust the socialists to find this a cause for worry, not joy. Miserable fuckwits.
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Robin Cook today:
"There is no suggestion here, whatsoever, that Stephen Byers either misled the House or knowingly misled the House and indeed, why should he?"
Indeed. Why ever would anybody lie?
"I was with many people yesterday who believe entirely that Stephen Byers has been completely open and has been truthful".
You ought to get out more.
"The reception that he got on our benches within the House of Commons demonstrates that complete faith in him".
Or, perhaps, that the Labour Party are a gang of unprincipled shysters who will always, when push comes to shove, stick up for one of their own.
"There is absolutely no dissent over this, partly because we know Stephen Byers's is doing a very good job and he is trying to clear up the enormous mess he inherited from the botched privatisation of the rail industry and that is what really matters to the constituents".
So, because Byers is doing such a wonderful job, allegedly, nobody minds if he's a liar or not? I see.
"There has not been the slightest suggestion of any sleaze whatsoever attached to Stephen Byers - he is not lying."
Yes, and neither are you. Sad to see the Cookie-monster get dragged into this. Don't get me wrong - I've alwasy held the man in the highest contempt - but I always had a suspicion that he, as a former Eurosceptic, would be the one New Labourite to break ranks when the fabled Euro referendum is called. My thinking being that on the day it is announces surely one of them will resign from the cabinet and announce that he will be joining the No camp, thus positioning himself as the alternative to Tony when the whole thing collapses around them. I thought it might be Cook, but that career-opening seems to have long since dissolved. Perhaps it will be Byers.
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"There is no suggestion here, whatsoever, that Stephen Byers either misled the House or knowingly misled the House and indeed, why should he?"
Indeed. Why ever would anybody lie?
"I was with many people yesterday who believe entirely that Stephen Byers has been completely open and has been truthful".
You ought to get out more.
"The reception that he got on our benches within the House of Commons demonstrates that complete faith in him".
Or, perhaps, that the Labour Party are a gang of unprincipled shysters who will always, when push comes to shove, stick up for one of their own.
"There is absolutely no dissent over this, partly because we know Stephen Byers's is doing a very good job and he is trying to clear up the enormous mess he inherited from the botched privatisation of the rail industry and that is what really matters to the constituents".
So, because Byers is doing such a wonderful job, allegedly, nobody minds if he's a liar or not? I see.
"There has not been the slightest suggestion of any sleaze whatsoever attached to Stephen Byers - he is not lying."
Yes, and neither are you. Sad to see the Cookie-monster get dragged into this. Don't get me wrong - I've alwasy held the man in the highest contempt - but I always had a suspicion that he, as a former Eurosceptic, would be the one New Labourite to break ranks when the fabled Euro referendum is called. My thinking being that on the day it is announces surely one of them will resign from the cabinet and announce that he will be joining the No camp, thus positioning himself as the alternative to Tony when the whole thing collapses around them. I thought it might be Cook, but that career-opening seems to have long since dissolved. Perhaps it will be Byers.
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Simon Carr:
"When Mr Byers isn't lying outright he deals in an interpretative freestyle that would amaze the most implacable deconstructionist. He can torture the text, even his text, to make it say what he wants it to".
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"When Mr Byers isn't lying outright he deals in an interpretative freestyle that would amaze the most implacable deconstructionist. He can torture the text, even his text, to make it say what he wants it to".
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The warped individual who writes the Guardian leader has his own unique take. He thinks Byers can't have been lying because
"Mr Byers had so little to gain from telling a deliberate lie which would inevitably be exposed in due course".
Ha! Where do these guys live? Clearly in the rarified, always-calculating world of the Guardian, there's no point in lying unless you can get away with it. Actually, down in the real world, it ain't like that. Nonetheless, our nameless writer concludes
"if there is one lesson to be drawn from the saga it is that nothing like that should happen again.
Perhaps these words are more than just a pious hope".
No, they're not, they're a moronic one. If Byers didn't lie, why shouldn't it all happen again? Which it will, being as lying is no longer a moral problem for Byers, he's done it so often now, and got away with it so often, that he's abandoned it as part of his moral landscape. It's just something he does.
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"Mr Byers had so little to gain from telling a deliberate lie which would inevitably be exposed in due course".
Ha! Where do these guys live? Clearly in the rarified, always-calculating world of the Guardian, there's no point in lying unless you can get away with it. Actually, down in the real world, it ain't like that. Nonetheless, our nameless writer concludes
"if there is one lesson to be drawn from the saga it is that nothing like that should happen again.
Perhaps these words are more than just a pious hope".
No, they're not, they're a moronic one. If Byers didn't lie, why shouldn't it all happen again? Which it will, being as lying is no longer a moral problem for Byers, he's done it so often now, and got away with it so often, that he's abandoned it as part of his moral landscape. It's just something he does.
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If you can bring yourself to do so, here is the complete text of the latest lies emanating from Mr. Byers. The best analysis of the whole tawdry episode is here at the Telegraph. With Sixsmith saying that Byers has broken a legal agreement, made three days earlier, this one is by no means over. Really. As its leader points out, the one who comes out of the worst is Blair. It seems to me that Byers would probably quite happily have gone some time ago if only Tony didn't want him to stay. That Prime Minister of ours is such a sleazeball.
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Voice of the Mirror:
"He lied about her dismissal. To cover up for her being in the wrong, he insisted that press chief Martin Sixsmith had resigned, too.
But he had not. Even his own department admits that.
Yet Mr Byers continues to pretend that the lie was not a lie. That he has done nothing wrong. That he can carry on happily.
It just isn't so. And the result is that Mr Byers is doing exactly what the Daily Mirror warned him not to do all that time ago - damage the Government and Labour".
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"He lied about her dismissal. To cover up for her being in the wrong, he insisted that press chief Martin Sixsmith had resigned, too.
But he had not. Even his own department admits that.
Yet Mr Byers continues to pretend that the lie was not a lie. That he has done nothing wrong. That he can carry on happily.
It just isn't so. And the result is that Mr Byers is doing exactly what the Daily Mirror warned him not to do all that time ago - damage the Government and Labour".
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This'll worry Blair more than Byers: Mick Jagger, Vic Reeves, Rik Mayall and Harry Enfield all hate the Euro, and have made a video to say so. At least, after twenty years, alternative comedy proves it has the right to exist.
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Trevor Kavanagh:
"IN the Alice in Wonderland world inhabited by Stephen Byers, black is white, the sky is pink and pigs really do fly".
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"IN the Alice in Wonderland world inhabited by Stephen Byers, black is white, the sky is pink and pigs really do fly".
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Richard Littlejohn disses Inheritance Tax, the break-up of the UK into EU-inspired regions, and the monstrous cacaphony that is Bohemian Rhapsody. He's right on all three.
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Thursday, May 9
Good God. The deputy editor-in-chief of the Independent thinks the NHS is a disaster and only one thing can save it: tax rebates for those opting out. Well it's a start, and a welcome rebuke for Peter Oborne who, also in the Spectator, thinks that politics in the UK is over, and that Labour have cornered the market in issues. Oh, no they ain't. It's hardly begun. Mind you, Kelvin MacKenzie isn't too impressed with the Tories, only this time it's because IDS is too left wing. You can't please everyone.
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And for all our UK readers, on Monday at 10.p.m. BBC2 begin a repeat showing of the Day Today, starring the mighty Chris Morris. Then, at 10.30 Channel 4 will be showing the notorious Brass Eye child-molestation special, starring once again, the mighty Chris Morris. It won awards, so all those sour-faced bores who say you that there is nothing remotely funny about paedophilia clearly don't know what they're talking about. Not having seen it I'm guessing, but I'm told it was a real rib-tickler.
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I haven't mentioned it lately but tomorrow the state-sanctioned rodenticidal maniacs will be let through the door, calmly to despatch all our mice to mouse heaven. They're currenly enjoying their last twenty-four hours of freedom. I won't miss them.
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Here is quite a good article, the best I've read, indeed the only one I think, defending the argument that Pim Fortyun was in the Far Right, and that libertarian/Conservative arguments are wide of the mark. It does of course depend on what you mean by 'racism' I guess.
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Donald Macintyre, the Independent's chief political writer, proves he's got his eye on the ball again, announcing that "a credible case can be made that the chronic attacks that have dogged and weakened Byers since the beginning of last October have something of the vendetta about them". Well done! Of course there's a vendetta against him. He's a liar, he's said so, he's about to tell the House of Commons, again, that he lied in a statement which itself was an apology for a lie. No doubt he'll lie again this afternoon. Stephen Byers is a liar. No 'alleged' about it. Of course, there's a vendetta about him, thicko. The title of his last statement to the house was "The Resignation of Martin Sixsmith". Unfortunately, Martin Sixsmith hadn't resigned. The guy's a liar, and there's nothing he can do about it. It's not often you can write this sort of stuff and get away with it. Has Macintyre ever met any journalists? Just like me, they're having a ball, and when the great beleaguered one does finally pack his bags we'll miss him. I intend to take the afternoon off to watch the whole damn thing.
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Wednesday, May 8
"This is the most clear example, I think, in human history of a man being caught out lying - the clearest possible example of someone deliberately misleading the House".
Tim Collins, Shadow Cabinet Office minister, discussing our hero.
"I'm afraid if the prime minister hangs on to this particular disgraceful wretch it will be the prime minister's reputation too which will be sullied.
"It is pretty strong stuff and you can detect the passion in my voice. It is because democracy in this country rests on the principle that Parliament is told the truth by ministers.
"If ministers actually are allowed to get away deliberately with misleading the House, we will have suffered a huge blow to the respect in which our democracy is held, both here and abroad."
No doubt this is all a bit too absolutist for the editor of the Guardian.
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Tim Collins, Shadow Cabinet Office minister, discussing our hero.
"I'm afraid if the prime minister hangs on to this particular disgraceful wretch it will be the prime minister's reputation too which will be sullied.
"It is pretty strong stuff and you can detect the passion in my voice. It is because democracy in this country rests on the principle that Parliament is told the truth by ministers.
"If ministers actually are allowed to get away deliberately with misleading the House, we will have suffered a huge blow to the respect in which our democracy is held, both here and abroad."
No doubt this is all a bit too absolutist for the editor of the Guardian.
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If you want a look at the baloney that passes for thinking that goes on in the Euroweenie mind, this leader in the Guardian is a classic, a superb monument to the arrogance of 'liberal' confusion. You might have hoped that any article that namechecks Plato, Pim Fortuyn and Clint Eastwood couldn't be all bad, but you'd be wrong. The theme appears to be that life is a mystery, and there are no easy solutions. The enemy appears to be "absolutism". We seeks solutions, yet these solutions are mere delusions that will, as sure as eggs is eggs, be wiped away by the next generation.
"If a quest for answers is humankind's fundamental preoccupation, its fate is to be perplexed by yet more questions. Put another way, this quest is a bid to discern meaning by establishing universal truths and absolute principles. Every generation is bound to make this journey; none reaches its destination".
Two mistakes already - it assumes that looking for truth is a communal act. And is assumes it will never be found. That of course, in itself, is an assertion of truth. How could the writer know this?
"Even if one nation, political system, theology, culture or lone individual believes it has found the way, its solutions, creeds and conclusions are challenged, tested, and not infrequently discarded by its successors. Yet such is the puzzlement that envelops the human condition that this quest for absolutes is never-ending. It informs the thinking of philosophers from Plato to Rousseau and Paine. It inspires such well-intentioned documents as the universal declaration of human rights".
Well-intentioned? So the Guardian is sceptical about human rights, is it? Now that is a first.
"Absolutism was the temptation, and the undoing, of kings, popes and emperors and of the French and Russian revolutionaries".
You could also say it was the making of them. Anyway, this is garbage. Kings and revolutionaries don't lose wars because they're absolutists, they lose them because they don't have as many guns and soldiers as their enemies. And as for Popes - well they are absolutists, that's the point.
"The empirical ideologues of the Bush administration now proclaim absolutely the universal rightness of American values; the new absolutism is their "war on terror", portrayed as a pivotal, global battle between good and evil eclipsing all other moral considerations and admitting of no argument. By seeking to impose final, definitive answers to eternal questions, adherents of the absolutist tendency guarantee their own ultimate confounding".
A superbly dishonest sleight of hand. What the hell has Dubya got to do with any of this? Moreover, not only is this complete hypocrisy, it's a distortion. This condemnation of Bush is absolutist. And I really do look forward, without holding my breath, to a condemnation of the European Court, the Human Rights Act, indeed any moral statement ever made on the same grounds. All Bush is doing is saying - you do this, then we'll do this. He's open to all sorts of argument. Unlike the cretin who wrote this bilge.
"Yet still they try. Enlightenment does not lie this way."
No? Says who?
"In individual terms, Monday's killing of the Dutch far-right politician, Pim Fortuyn, was a quintessentially absolutist act. Murder brooks no argument; it is, by definition, final. "Taking a man's life is a terrible thing," says Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven. "You take away everything he has, and everything he'll ever have." Yet perhaps the murderer really believed that by killing Fortuyn, he could kill his ideas, too. This outrage may in fact have the opposite effect, by spreading a martyr's contagion. And this, indeed, is a potent theme, in the Netherlands, in France and across a continent haunted by the spectre of a new fascism. Fortuyn's more menacing kindred spirits thrive by offering crude, simply deceptive answers to complex issues."
Trust the Guardian, where complexity is king.
"Immigration? Ban it. Crime? We know who to blame. Identity crisis? Let's keep our country to ourselves! And while we're at it, sack the elitist politicians and Brussels bureaucrats and cut taxes." It is a popular, populist refrain; but in its fiction of absolute solutions, it is as old and tyrannical as it is ubiquitous and superficial. Enlightenment does not lie this way".
Right. So where does it lie?
"When the Arab nation fails to condemn suicide bombings and opens the spigot of a bilious anti-semitism, it suspends reason and besmirches the cause of Palestine".
No it doesn't. If you don't condemn suicide bombings it's either because you don't know about them, or because you approve of them. It's got nothing to do with the suspension of reason. And as for Palestine, only a leader writer for the Guardian could imagine that that is a cause close to all Arab hearts.
"But when Israel's prime minister trades tanks for talks, wreaks havoc in a place like Jenin, and argues that only repression and more repression can provide true security, he, too, pretends at answers he does not possess and flirts with despotism. When George Bush, contemplating the September 11 product of another lethal brand of fundamentalism, responds with a violent, unyielding absolutism of his own, he moves closer to betraying, not fortifying, America's values".
So now self-defence, fighting wars, are absolutist phenomena, are they? But the condemnation of same isn't? And I really was not aware that the founding fathers were a gang of pacifist Buddhists. But, hey, this is the Guardian!
"Before US columnists shower contempt upon an "infected" Europe where intolerance makes life unsafe for Jews, they should pause and gaze inwards".
Oh yes? So how many Jews are being murdered in the US these days?
"No nation, no political party and no individual is immune to seductively absolutist panaceas, to illiberal, prejudicial claims to know the answers, to the belief that it alone is right".
Ah - we're all guilty, nobody's perfect, nobody knows anything, so why defend anything? That is not what I call a foreign policy. It's a recipe for suicide.
"But self-knowledge is more valuable".
Yes, and who's got that, then?
"It is a surer guide to absolution in a world of imponderables. This way lies enlightenment".
And that's it! That is the end of this article. What is this wretched enlightenment anyway? So there you are, dancing in a disco, a bomb goes off. O fool, don't run away. Stick around, watch the flames engulf you. Ponder enlightenment.
If this is enlightenment, give me American absolutism any day of the week.
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"If a quest for answers is humankind's fundamental preoccupation, its fate is to be perplexed by yet more questions. Put another way, this quest is a bid to discern meaning by establishing universal truths and absolute principles. Every generation is bound to make this journey; none reaches its destination".
Two mistakes already - it assumes that looking for truth is a communal act. And is assumes it will never be found. That of course, in itself, is an assertion of truth. How could the writer know this?
"Even if one nation, political system, theology, culture or lone individual believes it has found the way, its solutions, creeds and conclusions are challenged, tested, and not infrequently discarded by its successors. Yet such is the puzzlement that envelops the human condition that this quest for absolutes is never-ending. It informs the thinking of philosophers from Plato to Rousseau and Paine. It inspires such well-intentioned documents as the universal declaration of human rights".
Well-intentioned? So the Guardian is sceptical about human rights, is it? Now that is a first.
"Absolutism was the temptation, and the undoing, of kings, popes and emperors and of the French and Russian revolutionaries".
You could also say it was the making of them. Anyway, this is garbage. Kings and revolutionaries don't lose wars because they're absolutists, they lose them because they don't have as many guns and soldiers as their enemies. And as for Popes - well they are absolutists, that's the point.
"The empirical ideologues of the Bush administration now proclaim absolutely the universal rightness of American values; the new absolutism is their "war on terror", portrayed as a pivotal, global battle between good and evil eclipsing all other moral considerations and admitting of no argument. By seeking to impose final, definitive answers to eternal questions, adherents of the absolutist tendency guarantee their own ultimate confounding".
A superbly dishonest sleight of hand. What the hell has Dubya got to do with any of this? Moreover, not only is this complete hypocrisy, it's a distortion. This condemnation of Bush is absolutist. And I really do look forward, without holding my breath, to a condemnation of the European Court, the Human Rights Act, indeed any moral statement ever made on the same grounds. All Bush is doing is saying - you do this, then we'll do this. He's open to all sorts of argument. Unlike the cretin who wrote this bilge.
"Yet still they try. Enlightenment does not lie this way."
No? Says who?
"In individual terms, Monday's killing of the Dutch far-right politician, Pim Fortuyn, was a quintessentially absolutist act. Murder brooks no argument; it is, by definition, final. "Taking a man's life is a terrible thing," says Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven. "You take away everything he has, and everything he'll ever have." Yet perhaps the murderer really believed that by killing Fortuyn, he could kill his ideas, too. This outrage may in fact have the opposite effect, by spreading a martyr's contagion. And this, indeed, is a potent theme, in the Netherlands, in France and across a continent haunted by the spectre of a new fascism. Fortuyn's more menacing kindred spirits thrive by offering crude, simply deceptive answers to complex issues."
Trust the Guardian, where complexity is king.
"Immigration? Ban it. Crime? We know who to blame. Identity crisis? Let's keep our country to ourselves! And while we're at it, sack the elitist politicians and Brussels bureaucrats and cut taxes." It is a popular, populist refrain; but in its fiction of absolute solutions, it is as old and tyrannical as it is ubiquitous and superficial. Enlightenment does not lie this way".
Right. So where does it lie?
"When the Arab nation fails to condemn suicide bombings and opens the spigot of a bilious anti-semitism, it suspends reason and besmirches the cause of Palestine".
No it doesn't. If you don't condemn suicide bombings it's either because you don't know about them, or because you approve of them. It's got nothing to do with the suspension of reason. And as for Palestine, only a leader writer for the Guardian could imagine that that is a cause close to all Arab hearts.
"But when Israel's prime minister trades tanks for talks, wreaks havoc in a place like Jenin, and argues that only repression and more repression can provide true security, he, too, pretends at answers he does not possess and flirts with despotism. When George Bush, contemplating the September 11 product of another lethal brand of fundamentalism, responds with a violent, unyielding absolutism of his own, he moves closer to betraying, not fortifying, America's values".
So now self-defence, fighting wars, are absolutist phenomena, are they? But the condemnation of same isn't? And I really was not aware that the founding fathers were a gang of pacifist Buddhists. But, hey, this is the Guardian!
"Before US columnists shower contempt upon an "infected" Europe where intolerance makes life unsafe for Jews, they should pause and gaze inwards".
Oh yes? So how many Jews are being murdered in the US these days?
"No nation, no political party and no individual is immune to seductively absolutist panaceas, to illiberal, prejudicial claims to know the answers, to the belief that it alone is right".
Ah - we're all guilty, nobody's perfect, nobody knows anything, so why defend anything? That is not what I call a foreign policy. It's a recipe for suicide.
"But self-knowledge is more valuable".
Yes, and who's got that, then?
"It is a surer guide to absolution in a world of imponderables. This way lies enlightenment".
And that's it! That is the end of this article. What is this wretched enlightenment anyway? So there you are, dancing in a disco, a bomb goes off. O fool, don't run away. Stick around, watch the flames engulf you. Ponder enlightenment.
If this is enlightenment, give me American absolutism any day of the week.
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Janet Daley tears into the social worker conspiracy in the UK. It's curious, but aside from the much lamented Teresa Gorman, I can't think of a single British politician who has ever claimed that the welfare state is not only a mistake, but fundamentally immoral, and a cause of more problems than it solves. In spite of the Thatcher revolution the UK is still essentially a socialist regime and when a Mr. Fortuyn comes along here, as will no doubt eventually happen, the liberalists simply won't know what has hit them.
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Here's an article about how the former monkey. who is the new mayor of Hartlepool ( Its Primate, perhaps ), is going about his job. It doesn't sound easy.
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Tuesday, May 7
By the way folks, I can secretly, and exclusively, reveal that the UK's Minister for Europe Peter Hain has been busy composing a letter to the Times detailing how, in the light of the murder of Pim Fortuyn, the EU must deal with future political assassins. It reads as follows:
Sir, the assassination of Pim Fortuyn is not only worrying for Holland, it is also a deep concern for Europe. Certainly his policies were repellent, but killing people is no way to solve a dispute, and democrats across Europe must work together to ensure that murder and assassination do not succeed. There must be no place for murderers in the new Europe.
Mainstream politicians must take these issues seriously if people are not to be seduced by the murderers. This Government does. But national governments cannot tackle these issues alone. I want Europe to take five steps to fight the extremists.
First, Europe must become the world’s biggest job-creation factory. The EU’s economic reform programme aims to create full employment across Europe by 2010. By creating more jobs, that will keep any would-be killers busy.
Secondly, Europe must expand middle-eastwards as soon as possible. Uniting Europe with Asia is the best way of fighting the forces that seek to divide us. The PLO, Syria, Iraq, and anybody else who wants to, really, must be welcomed forthwith.
Thirdly, as the turnout in the last European Parliament elections showed, apathy is a serious problem for the EU. We need to bridge the gap between Europe and the citizen. Making sure he doesn't want to kill anyone is a crucial first step.
Fourthly, fighting criminals, and especially murderers, must be a higher EU priority. We’ve made progress, such as creating Euro-Kill. But we must do more. Europe must become the toughest anti-assassination body in the world.
Fifthly, as David Blunkett and Jack Straw have proposed, we need a common European anti-assassination policy.
The European Union rose out of the ashes of a world where mass murder was allowed to flourish. It has a historic duty to play its part in preventing it from flourishing again. We promise to kill all assassins, NOW!
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Sir, the assassination of Pim Fortuyn is not only worrying for Holland, it is also a deep concern for Europe. Certainly his policies were repellent, but killing people is no way to solve a dispute, and democrats across Europe must work together to ensure that murder and assassination do not succeed. There must be no place for murderers in the new Europe.
Mainstream politicians must take these issues seriously if people are not to be seduced by the murderers. This Government does. But national governments cannot tackle these issues alone. I want Europe to take five steps to fight the extremists.
First, Europe must become the world’s biggest job-creation factory. The EU’s economic reform programme aims to create full employment across Europe by 2010. By creating more jobs, that will keep any would-be killers busy.
Secondly, Europe must expand middle-eastwards as soon as possible. Uniting Europe with Asia is the best way of fighting the forces that seek to divide us. The PLO, Syria, Iraq, and anybody else who wants to, really, must be welcomed forthwith.
Thirdly, as the turnout in the last European Parliament elections showed, apathy is a serious problem for the EU. We need to bridge the gap between Europe and the citizen. Making sure he doesn't want to kill anyone is a crucial first step.
Fourthly, fighting criminals, and especially murderers, must be a higher EU priority. We’ve made progress, such as creating Euro-Kill. But we must do more. Europe must become the toughest anti-assassination body in the world.
Fifthly, as David Blunkett and Jack Straw have proposed, we need a common European anti-assassination policy.
The European Union rose out of the ashes of a world where mass murder was allowed to flourish. It has a historic duty to play its part in preventing it from flourishing again. We promise to kill all assassins, NOW!
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"We are a strange, strange people and we are getting stranger".
Yes, it's David Aaronovitch doing his 'I'm a liberal and very relaxed about sex but today's teenagers are having far too much of it' spiel. He writes this one every six weeks or so and it doesn't get any more convincing. He blames the television for hyping it all up. You've got to admire the guy, he's happy to write two articles a week sounding off about all and sundry to a grateful nation, yet when it comes to having any authority in his own home he's a bit redundant. Talking of the little Aaronovitch munchkins he muses:
"If any of mine ever make it to ITV prime time half-cut and boasting on camera of how many "lads" they've slept with, then I'm going after the executive producer with a baseball bat".
Why not blame yourself instead? You moral imbecile.
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Yes, it's David Aaronovitch doing his 'I'm a liberal and very relaxed about sex but today's teenagers are having far too much of it' spiel. He writes this one every six weeks or so and it doesn't get any more convincing. He blames the television for hyping it all up. You've got to admire the guy, he's happy to write two articles a week sounding off about all and sundry to a grateful nation, yet when it comes to having any authority in his own home he's a bit redundant. Talking of the little Aaronovitch munchkins he muses:
"If any of mine ever make it to ITV prime time half-cut and boasting on camera of how many "lads" they've slept with, then I'm going after the executive producer with a baseball bat".
Why not blame yourself instead? You moral imbecile.
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Yet the Brits keep deluding themselves that this racism stuff is something only foreigners do. There is an irony there. Take a look at this. Yet another attempt to lower education standards, this time, supposedly on a 'black integration' ticket. Of course, they'll say it's all about 'fairness' and isn't about setting quotas, but that's just mealy-mouthed bull. If they believe in quotas, why don't they just say so? How can one government get it so wrong half the time, yet get it so right the other half?
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I suppose like most of you, I was appalled to learn of the death of Pim Fortuyn. I think he'd only come into my radar a couple of weeks ago, and I thought: well he seems a bit different. And now, he's been murdered. But that's the trouble with slapheads - they're divisive. In the UK, think of Kinnock, Hague, Iain Duncan Smith. They bring out strong feelings in people. Mussolini in Italy as well. The guys behind Dr. Who knew this too. Davros, Lynx. And why else have both Thatcher and Blair proved so popular? Why, in spite of all his personal failings, might Portillo have proved a credible Tory leader? I know we're all supposed to rise above this sort of stuff, and think it's all about issues, but well there is a lesson here. I reckon if Fortuyn had worn a wig he'd still be with us. Poor bastard.
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Monday, May 6
Well there I was on Friday, making a crack that Peter Hain would welcome the PLO into the EU. Little did I know that it had already started.
“What is happening here isn’t the fault of the Europeans,” said Dani Naveh, Minister for Parliamentary Affairs in the Israeli Cabinet. “But it is the way the Palestinians have decided to use EU money — for terror. There are hundreds of terrorists who get their monthly salaries from the Palestinian Authority and, indirectly, from the European Union.”
You're wrong, pal. If governments decide to take public money and give it away to foreigners, it is entirely its responsibility how that money gets spent. Why the hell are we in the EU, anyway?
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“What is happening here isn’t the fault of the Europeans,” said Dani Naveh, Minister for Parliamentary Affairs in the Israeli Cabinet. “But it is the way the Palestinians have decided to use EU money — for terror. There are hundreds of terrorists who get their monthly salaries from the Palestinian Authority and, indirectly, from the European Union.”
You're wrong, pal. If governments decide to take public money and give it away to foreigners, it is entirely its responsibility how that money gets spent. Why the hell are we in the EU, anyway?
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Madeleine Bunting in the Wanker.
"It is the failure of free-market capitalism to generate any collective identity - except the spurious substitute of consuming brands - that provides Le Pen with so many of his foot soldiers".
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"It is the failure of free-market capitalism to generate any collective identity - except the spurious substitute of consuming brands - that provides Le Pen with so many of his foot soldiers".
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Simon Hoggart in the Wanker:
"As part of its continuing attempt to make politics relevant to young people, the BBC now has a current affairs programme in development. Its working title, which may well be used when it's finally transmitted, is News Is My Bitch".
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"As part of its continuing attempt to make politics relevant to young people, the BBC now has a current affairs programme in development. Its working title, which may well be used when it's finally transmitted, is News Is My Bitch".
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Friday, May 3
Still, some things never change. Today the Independent calls for the resignation of Stephen Byers. Apparently he lied to their transport editor.
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Well, far from kicking Tony Blair's ass yesterday in the local elections, the great British public decided to lick it like it was a freshly-minted billiard ball. Amazing. The Independent can pretend all it like that this is significant, and that if the same trend were reflected at the next election then Labour would only have a majority of 20. Big deal. It won't. A 2 point drop is zilch.
Ye gods, the euroweenies all worry about the extremists winning in France on Sunday. Well, the extremists have already won over here. They won in 1997, they won in 2001 and they'll probably carry forever and ever. Consider this. At the weekend I was chatting to a left-wing friend of mine ( well, you have got to know what the enemy is thinking ) and I said that I was waiting for some columnist or other to claim that the rise of Le Pen would prove the case for stronger European ties. He laughed. Being the cynic that I am, I had high hopes that Will Hutton would deliver in the Wanker the next day. Well he did, but it was only in his final paragraph and it wasn't backed by anything he had already said. You could tell the poor sap didn't mean it. But there's always Hugo Young, and he gets two stabs a week at writing garbage. Surely he wouldn't let us down. Alas no. Even Hugo thought this would stretch the gullibility of even his most loyal reader. Yet, today, somebody did indeed give it a go. In the Times, in their letter column, step forward, none other than Peter Hain, the Minister for Europe. People voted for this imbecile!
"Sir, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s success (letters, April 23, 24, 26 and 30) is not only worrying for France, it is also a deep concern for Europe. His policies are repellent".
Yes. I'm with you so far.
"Democrats across Europe must work together to ensure that racism and hatred do not succeed. There must be no place for nasty nationalism in the new Europe".
Hum. That bit about 'working together' is a bit of a worry...
"The extreme Right’s cynical exploitation of crime, immigration and unemployment is crucial to its success".
Likewise the extreme left's exploitation of same...
"High levels of apathy also contribute".
How does apathy contribute to racism?
"Mainstream politicians must take these issues seriously if people are not to be seduced by the extremists. This Government does. But national governments cannot tackle these issues alone".
Why not?
"I want Europe to take five steps to fight the extremists".
Okay, here we go:
"First, Europe must become the world’s biggest job-creation factory. The EU’s economic reform programme aims to create full employment across Europe by 2010".
Well it can aim all it like but only a fool or Mr. Hain believes it'll happen.
"Secondly, Europe must expand eastwards as soon as possible. Reuniting Europe is the best way of fighting the forces that seek to divide it".
Well by the year 2010, according to this document, and presumably if Hain has his way, the EU will have welcomed Malta, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Turkey, Slovenia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania into its warm, loving embrace. This is not going to solve unemployment. Believe me. Honest. And the only forces - aside from Bin Laden - who seek to divide it live within it. No doubt Hain would welcome Afghanistan and the PLO into Europe given half a chance.
"Thirdly, as the turnout in the last European Parliament elections showed, apathy is a serious problem for the EU. We need to bridge the gap between Europe and the citizen".
Call that a step? That's an aim, you cretin! How are you going to bridge that gap? That's the point.
"Fourthly, fighting crime must be a higher EU priority. We’ve made progress, such as creating Europol. But we must do more. Europe must become the toughest crime-fighting body in the world".
Why does that prospect fill me with dread, I wonder?
"Fifthly, as David Blunkett and Jack Straw have proposed, we need a common European asylum policy".
Why? Common doesn't mean better, it means, the same. So effectively, he believes he and his government with its massive majority just isn't up to the job. He concludes, messianically:
"The European Union rose out of the ashes of a world where extreme nationalism was allowed to flourish. It has a historic duty to play its part in preventing it from flourishing again".
Right. To detroy nationalism we must invent internationalism. The man is mad, and he is the Minister for Europe.
Enjoy your weekend.
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Ye gods, the euroweenies all worry about the extremists winning in France on Sunday. Well, the extremists have already won over here. They won in 1997, they won in 2001 and they'll probably carry forever and ever. Consider this. At the weekend I was chatting to a left-wing friend of mine ( well, you have got to know what the enemy is thinking ) and I said that I was waiting for some columnist or other to claim that the rise of Le Pen would prove the case for stronger European ties. He laughed. Being the cynic that I am, I had high hopes that Will Hutton would deliver in the Wanker the next day. Well he did, but it was only in his final paragraph and it wasn't backed by anything he had already said. You could tell the poor sap didn't mean it. But there's always Hugo Young, and he gets two stabs a week at writing garbage. Surely he wouldn't let us down. Alas no. Even Hugo thought this would stretch the gullibility of even his most loyal reader. Yet, today, somebody did indeed give it a go. In the Times, in their letter column, step forward, none other than Peter Hain, the Minister for Europe. People voted for this imbecile!
"Sir, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s success (letters, April 23, 24, 26 and 30) is not only worrying for France, it is also a deep concern for Europe. His policies are repellent".
Yes. I'm with you so far.
"Democrats across Europe must work together to ensure that racism and hatred do not succeed. There must be no place for nasty nationalism in the new Europe".
Hum. That bit about 'working together' is a bit of a worry...
"The extreme Right’s cynical exploitation of crime, immigration and unemployment is crucial to its success".
Likewise the extreme left's exploitation of same...
"High levels of apathy also contribute".
How does apathy contribute to racism?
"Mainstream politicians must take these issues seriously if people are not to be seduced by the extremists. This Government does. But national governments cannot tackle these issues alone".
Why not?
"I want Europe to take five steps to fight the extremists".
Okay, here we go:
"First, Europe must become the world’s biggest job-creation factory. The EU’s economic reform programme aims to create full employment across Europe by 2010".
Well it can aim all it like but only a fool or Mr. Hain believes it'll happen.
"Secondly, Europe must expand eastwards as soon as possible. Reuniting Europe is the best way of fighting the forces that seek to divide it".
Well by the year 2010, according to this document, and presumably if Hain has his way, the EU will have welcomed Malta, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Turkey, Slovenia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania into its warm, loving embrace. This is not going to solve unemployment. Believe me. Honest. And the only forces - aside from Bin Laden - who seek to divide it live within it. No doubt Hain would welcome Afghanistan and the PLO into Europe given half a chance.
"Thirdly, as the turnout in the last European Parliament elections showed, apathy is a serious problem for the EU. We need to bridge the gap between Europe and the citizen".
Call that a step? That's an aim, you cretin! How are you going to bridge that gap? That's the point.
"Fourthly, fighting crime must be a higher EU priority. We’ve made progress, such as creating Europol. But we must do more. Europe must become the toughest crime-fighting body in the world".
Why does that prospect fill me with dread, I wonder?
"Fifthly, as David Blunkett and Jack Straw have proposed, we need a common European asylum policy".
Why? Common doesn't mean better, it means, the same. So effectively, he believes he and his government with its massive majority just isn't up to the job. He concludes, messianically:
"The European Union rose out of the ashes of a world where extreme nationalism was allowed to flourish. It has a historic duty to play its part in preventing it from flourishing again".
Right. To detroy nationalism we must invent internationalism. The man is mad, and he is the Minister for Europe.
Enjoy your weekend.
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Thursday, May 2
Well, I've done it. Have you? I strode off in the early afternoon sunshine, arrived at the 'community centre', to be greeted by five human beings, not a blue rosette among them. I did, however, get invited to join the Labour Party, which is not something that happens very often. I then went inside, made my crosses, and left, feeling all pleased with myself. Who did I vote for? That is a secret between me and the ballot box. Right, now it's your turn. Go on, kick Tony's ass.
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Incidentally, there was an interview with Blair in yesterday's Mirror which I only got around to reading it today. It's the fifth anniverary today in fact when Major went off to the cricket. Yesterday was merely the anniversary of the vote.
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Boris Johnson claims credit for Blair's mad scheme to dock child benefit from the parents of unruly children. What next? Pensions to go for unfit oldsters? Smokers and fat people to be charged for healthcare? It seems to me if you're going to have a welfare state the only justification for it is that it is for everyone, no questions asked. When suddenly strings get attached, and the largesse becomes conditional on certain government-prescribed behaviour, then we really are halfway on the road to totalitarianism, instead of a third of the way, as we are now. Tories, eh?
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Here's a journalist who's gone along to the synagogue that got desecrated at the weekend to see what happened.
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Now if only he could be persuaded to marry Princess Emily. With his interest in architecture, and her interest in solving street crime, I think European Civilisation might yet have a chance.
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Wednesday, May 1
I'm back. Unarrested in everything except my mental development. Some time tonight I will get my three thousandth visitor, which clocks in at about a thousand a week. Natalie Solent gets more than that a day, Matt Welch gets three times that a day, and Glenn Reynolds gets more than that every half hour. Am I jealous? Never. They can keep their populist rhetoric and opinions to themselves. Who knows what riff-raff drop in at their spots. Me, I am happy with my small but devoted following, and wouldn't want it any other way. I hope you are too.
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Anyway, I'm off outside. In former ages, being as it's May Day I'd be going Morris dancing, followed by the ritual deflowering of a virgin. However, I can't dance, and finding a virgin in the UK these days is like to trying to find a mouse in our kitchen. Difficult if not impossible. So instead, I shall walk over to Liverpool Street dressed in a suit to confront the anti-globos with my wellworn placard saying "IT'S NOT THAT SIMPLE". If you don't hear from me for a while I've either been beaten up or arrested. Wish me luck.
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Tuesday, April 30
Here's a lighter, I think, story from the Standard illustrating the absurdity of being in the BNP. It's a bit like Romeo and Juliet, really.
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Here's a commendably forthright leader from The Evening Standard about a synagogue that got attacked in Finsbury Park on Sunday. Curiously, I saw no reference to it in any other paper.
UPDATE: I just saw the paper version of the Independent which ran it as it main story, picture of swastikas and everything. However, going to their website, I type in 'synagogue' and get nothing, which just goes to show that you can make mistakes judging a paper by its website. Also, there is no reference to a big story about mice. There's been a 14% rise in London over the past year. Yeah, and they all live in our kitchen.
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UPDATE: I just saw the paper version of the Independent which ran it as it main story, picture of swastikas and everything. However, going to their website, I type in 'synagogue' and get nothing, which just goes to show that you can make mistakes judging a paper by its website. Also, there is no reference to a big story about mice. There's been a 14% rise in London over the past year. Yeah, and they all live in our kitchen.
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The Sun also has two leaders - one on Prodi, the other on a recently-born pair of conjoined twins. What I particularly like about the latter ( the former I agree with, surprise, surprise ) is that no conclusion is drawn. Now, if this had been a liberal paper... like the Independent, for example, which, with the body still warm, decides to cash in on a recent case of quasi-euthanasia with another of its fatuous leaders. Firstly it is claimed that
"there is the straightforward moral principle that we should be allowed to live our lives as we would wish, as long as we have control of our faculties and do no harm to others".
I'll be quoting that back to them in future, believe me. And what is the conclusion?
"All this points to the need for a new law to regulate euthanasia and lay down safeguards. In the Netherlands, for example, the law allows for euthanasia provided that the decision has been approved by two doctors and an independent panel".
Ah yes, the twisted logic of the 'liberal'. In order to be free we need more laws.
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"there is the straightforward moral principle that we should be allowed to live our lives as we would wish, as long as we have control of our faculties and do no harm to others".
I'll be quoting that back to them in future, believe me. And what is the conclusion?
"All this points to the need for a new law to regulate euthanasia and lay down safeguards. In the Netherlands, for example, the law allows for euthanasia provided that the decision has been approved by two doctors and an independent panel".
Ah yes, the twisted logic of the 'liberal'. In order to be free we need more laws.
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Sunday, April 28
For those who harbour any illusions that we Brits might be any good at anything. And I mean anything, check out this splendid site. Beacon for the world, indeed.
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You've got to pity the poor reader of the Paedophile. One day it's Deborah Orr, the next it's Bruce Anderson. What the hell do they make of this one?
"Feral children are mostly the offspring of single mothers on state benefit. In future, therefore, such mothers should be required to sign a contract with the state, to come into force when the children are three".
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"Feral children are mostly the offspring of single mothers on state benefit. In future, therefore, such mothers should be required to sign a contract with the state, to come into force when the children are three".
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Just had an exchange of emails with a close family member. I said the mouse was still a pain in the ass. He said take it out, and use a hamster. It took me a while to get it.
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Meanwhile at the Paedophile on Sunday, Steve Richards flips his lid:
"We get excited by The Premiership, Big Brother, Pop Idol and the funeral of the Queen Mother. These are the fantasy worlds that are both escapist and participatory. They seem to matter overwhelmingly although they do not really matter at all. Why bother voting for an anonymous, mediocre councillor when you can vote for Will in Pop Idol? Why attend a public meeting to hear a cabinet minister when you can pay your respects feet away from the coffin of the Queen Mother?"
From this Frog in your Pocket nonsense he concludes that voting must be made compulsory. As usual he has got all this completely wrong. I followed the Big Brother programmes with an almost religious fervour but I never voted once, simply because the only candidate I felt particularly strongly about was ejected without the opportunity to do so. The rest were all pretty much alike. This was not viewer apathy. But I tell you, if Nasty "She's got more hidden agendas than a Pandora's Box" Nick had been up against it, you bet I'd have been on the blower, voting against whichever dastard was daring to knock him off his perch. Likewise, I watched the deciding Pop Idol programme, and concluded that Will was the better singer. I still didn't think it worth voting on, though. If people are forced to vote ( as though the jails aren't full enough already ) you won't get a more engaged public, you'll get a more annoyed one. Consequently, you'd get more maverick, 'anti-political' candidates, not fewer, which is not what Richards wants. After all, like me and Big Brother, people can be interested in something without wanting to vote, and if they don't feel that the result of a vote really matters then they won't vote. You get big policy disagreements between the parties then more votes will be cast. But Richards doesn't see the logic of the examples he gives, simply because he's too busy being snooty about the voters.
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"We get excited by The Premiership, Big Brother, Pop Idol and the funeral of the Queen Mother. These are the fantasy worlds that are both escapist and participatory. They seem to matter overwhelmingly although they do not really matter at all. Why bother voting for an anonymous, mediocre councillor when you can vote for Will in Pop Idol? Why attend a public meeting to hear a cabinet minister when you can pay your respects feet away from the coffin of the Queen Mother?"
From this Frog in your Pocket nonsense he concludes that voting must be made compulsory. As usual he has got all this completely wrong. I followed the Big Brother programmes with an almost religious fervour but I never voted once, simply because the only candidate I felt particularly strongly about was ejected without the opportunity to do so. The rest were all pretty much alike. This was not viewer apathy. But I tell you, if Nasty "She's got more hidden agendas than a Pandora's Box" Nick had been up against it, you bet I'd have been on the blower, voting against whichever dastard was daring to knock him off his perch. Likewise, I watched the deciding Pop Idol programme, and concluded that Will was the better singer. I still didn't think it worth voting on, though. If people are forced to vote ( as though the jails aren't full enough already ) you won't get a more engaged public, you'll get a more annoyed one. Consequently, you'd get more maverick, 'anti-political' candidates, not fewer, which is not what Richards wants. After all, like me and Big Brother, people can be interested in something without wanting to vote, and if they don't feel that the result of a vote really matters then they won't vote. You get big policy disagreements between the parties then more votes will be cast. But Richards doesn't see the logic of the examples he gives, simply because he's too busy being snooty about the voters.
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Not a good day for Will Hutton and the Sunday Wanker. He manages no less than two moronic articles all in the same day. One is a paralysingly indignant extract from his new book, and the other contains this conclusion about Le Pen:
"Some Eurosceptic writers last week blamed the EU for the resurgence of the extreme Right. They could not be more wrong. The EU's ambition to break with history is our defence against that fascist menace".
So only the Eu can stop people who don't want to be run by the EU. I guess that kind of makes sense.
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"Some Eurosceptic writers last week blamed the EU for the resurgence of the extreme Right. They could not be more wrong. The EU's ambition to break with history is our defence against that fascist menace".
So only the Eu can stop people who don't want to be run by the EU. I guess that kind of makes sense.
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Here's a guy who thinks Le Pen can win, on the grounds that the French Left is deeply split, and that they won't all turn to Chirac.
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Saturday, April 27
AC Grayling in the Wanker:
"As simplifications go, the following contain some truth. Rightwingers are in politics to protect their own interests, leftwingers are in politics out of concern for others."
Discuss.
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"As simplifications go, the following contain some truth. Rightwingers are in politics to protect their own interests, leftwingers are in politics out of concern for others."
Discuss.
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Friday, April 26
A Monsieur Pierre Bowman, doubtless a nom de plume, writes back regarding Le Pen:
"I'm in agreement. However...Had he watered down the fascism he would have just been Tony Blair five years ago except slightly more genuine".
Wow! I'm not sure even I'd go that far.
"I wonder if the majority of the French *have* all been running about wondering why they didn't go and vote for Chirac or Jospin or are just sitting about in cafes, smoking and shrugging their shoulders in a typical French style. After all it seems to be now be a choice between a crook or a madman".
Indeed. Just because a few French kids like to go rioting doesn't mean they're all up to it. And, so far as I understand it, the main reason Chirac's hanging on in power is because he gets Presidential immunity from prosecution for any crimes committed by said Prez. Apparently they're are loads. Considering that, plus the fact that the Left there are so divided, it's hardly surprising Le Pen proves so popular.
"I can't help but draw comparisons to our last election (obviously without the hardline race issue being prevalent) where we had a choice between a slaphead boring goon and a sleazy, grinning moron. I also don't think that the BNP have the intelligence to downplay their anti-immigrant stuff. If those morons ever grew half a brain-cell they'd be dangerous".
True enough on the last point, though I do take exception to the description of future blogger William Hague as boring. I rather liked him. However viz the BNP, I think the way things work politically is that rather than them developing brain cells, what would happen would be that they would, in my scenario, suddenly find themselves infiltrated by disaffected Tories and anti-EU old Labour types, UKIP and former Referendum partyists, not to mention a few grinning young careerists who would be eyeing the main chance. No doubt there would be a bit of a row in the party about Old BNP versus New BNP, but they'd be so thrilled at their sudden rise in the polls that they'd get over it. Alternatively, perhaps the Tories would just split straight down the middle. Anyway, so long as IDS calls the shots, neither's not going to happen.
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"I'm in agreement. However...Had he watered down the fascism he would have just been Tony Blair five years ago except slightly more genuine".
Wow! I'm not sure even I'd go that far.
"I wonder if the majority of the French *have* all been running about wondering why they didn't go and vote for Chirac or Jospin or are just sitting about in cafes, smoking and shrugging their shoulders in a typical French style. After all it seems to be now be a choice between a crook or a madman".
Indeed. Just because a few French kids like to go rioting doesn't mean they're all up to it. And, so far as I understand it, the main reason Chirac's hanging on in power is because he gets Presidential immunity from prosecution for any crimes committed by said Prez. Apparently they're are loads. Considering that, plus the fact that the Left there are so divided, it's hardly surprising Le Pen proves so popular.
"I can't help but draw comparisons to our last election (obviously without the hardline race issue being prevalent) where we had a choice between a slaphead boring goon and a sleazy, grinning moron. I also don't think that the BNP have the intelligence to downplay their anti-immigrant stuff. If those morons ever grew half a brain-cell they'd be dangerous".
True enough on the last point, though I do take exception to the description of future blogger William Hague as boring. I rather liked him. However viz the BNP, I think the way things work politically is that rather than them developing brain cells, what would happen would be that they would, in my scenario, suddenly find themselves infiltrated by disaffected Tories and anti-EU old Labour types, UKIP and former Referendum partyists, not to mention a few grinning young careerists who would be eyeing the main chance. No doubt there would be a bit of a row in the party about Old BNP versus New BNP, but they'd be so thrilled at their sudden rise in the polls that they'd get over it. Alternatively, perhaps the Tories would just split straight down the middle. Anyway, so long as IDS calls the shots, neither's not going to happen.
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Also at the Wanker they've given over the whole of their G2 section to a 'celebration' of the five years Tony's been in power. Five years? Seems like forever. There's a lot of stuff there, hardly any of it worth reading, but the best piece is a psycho-political profile from William Hague. Did the great man really write this stuff? If so, he has a future. I wonder if williamhague.blogspot.com has yet been taken.
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"Mr Blunkett is too pleased with himself. He likes the sound of his own voice too much. He is a headline chaser and a publicity junkie, whose political style is displaying increasing signs of vanity and solipsism. And, like most egotists, he lacks capacity for self-criticism. He is not as clever as he thinks he is".
Guess who? The Guardian!
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Guess who? The Guardian!
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Incidentally, for those like me who found yesterday's profile of Le Pen in the Spectator a little short of detail, here's a longer and more revealing profile, written in 1997, published in the New Yorker. Again, he comes across as a romanticising fantasist who seems to get his greatest kick from provoking his enemies, but it also depicts his vicious streak, and has quite a lot more on his policies, and his successor. As Simon Jenkins points out in today's Times:
"He is against Paris, big government, bureaucracy, the European Union and the corruption and arrogance of Gaullist and Socialist parties alike. I imagine that many French supported him in spite of his racism, not because of it".
which I think is right on the money. I imagine that if he ditched the anti-immigration stuff he'd be ten points more popular. After all, supposing the Tories had a pro-EU leader, like Ken Clarke say, and that he was backed by the majority of MPs and Tory voters ( both currently unlikely ), where would the BNP be then? A lot more popular, I believe. They'd be downplaying their anti-immigrant stuff, buying some suits, growing their hair, and going on an on about how mainstream politicians are out of touch, and the corruption of Europe, just like Le Pen. It's the EU, as always, that's the clincher.
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"He is against Paris, big government, bureaucracy, the European Union and the corruption and arrogance of Gaullist and Socialist parties alike. I imagine that many French supported him in spite of his racism, not because of it".
which I think is right on the money. I imagine that if he ditched the anti-immigration stuff he'd be ten points more popular. After all, supposing the Tories had a pro-EU leader, like Ken Clarke say, and that he was backed by the majority of MPs and Tory voters ( both currently unlikely ), where would the BNP be then? A lot more popular, I believe. They'd be downplaying their anti-immigrant stuff, buying some suits, growing their hair, and going on an on about how mainstream politicians are out of touch, and the corruption of Europe, just like Le Pen. It's the EU, as always, that's the clincher.
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Mouse update: No overnight captures. Still their days are numbered, as two weeks today they shall be writhing in agony, poisoned by heartless government officials. Hawkgirl suggest I phone up NASA, who, according to this story, are preparing to send some of our furry friends into space in order to procreate. That's a little too close to home as far as I'm concerned. I'm afraid it will all end up like Aliens. And they'll probably end up with legal rights, with Johnnie Cochran and others defending them as we whip out our pistols.
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Fabulous stuff from Richard Littlejohn on the Damilola trial. He manages to savage the Guardian, Blair, the police, the CPS and 'the storm-troopers of the race industry' all in one go. He also gives credence to the widely-ridiculed defence that it was an accident all along.
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Thursday, April 25
I knew this would happen. He actually sounds all right.
"I have spent seven years of my life at sea; I have sailed the oceans and stared at an infinitesimal part of the billions and billions of stars in the heavens. My beliefs are simple ones. I believe in the nation and the family. Together with the nation, the family is the crucible for what little possibilities there are for human happiness. Society must have certain fundamental values or else there can be no personal development. I see all this in constant decline".
Read it yourself, and see what you think.
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"I have spent seven years of my life at sea; I have sailed the oceans and stared at an infinitesimal part of the billions and billions of stars in the heavens. My beliefs are simple ones. I believe in the nation and the family. Together with the nation, the family is the crucible for what little possibilities there are for human happiness. Society must have certain fundamental values or else there can be no personal development. I see all this in constant decline".
Read it yourself, and see what you think.
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I scored ten by the way, which makes me a thoroughly good egg. If you answered 'don't know' to all I reckon that makes you either ignorant or Oskar Schindler. Between 0 and 4 you're obviously a Communist; 5 and 8 you're probably a bleeding heart liberal ( in which case, what are you doing here? ) Anything over 14 and you're sipping cocktails in Paraguay when you really ought to have been flayed alive at Nuremberg. 18, and you must have been in the Vichy Government. Somebody ring up the Wiesenthal Centre now!
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It's the great Are you a Fascist quiz? How many of these do you agree with?
The French Revolution: "A bloody calamity for the French people. This revolution spawned two dreadful bastards: Nazism and communism."
Socialism: "Today's socialist parties are bourgeois parties whose stance is the same as the declared stance of the centrist parties in the past. If that's the case, then why not socialism? Still, I am not a socialist."
The church: "I don't visit it often enough. That's what my late mother would certainly think."
Racism: "I am not a racist. I do not understand the theory of the superiority of the races at all, but there is a difference between the races. Black is not white and white is not Japanese. That doesn't mean one race or another should be idealised."
Xenophobia: "I am not a xenophobe. I am a Francophile."
French culture: "I believe in it. I think that France fulfils a unique cultural role in the world and that the French language greatly enriches world culture."
The death penalty: "I am in favour."
The Muslim veil: "It protects us from ugly women."
Auschwitz: "A concentration camp that symbolises the persecution of the Jews."
The gas chambers: "A method of extermination that also became a symbol of that persecution."
Israel: "An extraordinary challenge in the world history of a people that is trying to reconquer its homeland."
Colonialism: "It had a positive influence on the development of the populations that were subject to its authority. Of course, one could argue at length about whether these populations are really happier in jeans and tennis shoes than running barefoot in the wild. I have no answer to that."
Zinedine Zidane (the French soccer star, who is a Muslim of Algerian background): "A charming young man, a great player. Personally, I like him."
Anne Sinclair (the Jewish television star who sued Le Pen for calling her "a juicy kosher butcher" and won): "My personal nemesis [He laughs]. I never understood why she was persecuting me. I think she got me mixed up with someone else [more laughter]. She always thought that I was the one using wordplay to make a joke at her expense. But it wasn't me, it was someone else."
Jorg Haider: "A brilliant opportunist who used his talents to appropriate Austrian nationalism and thereby gained a big political achievement, without deriving any direct benefit from it."
Collaborators with Hitler: "France was an occupied country. There were two kinds of collaborators: those who were forced by the Nazis to collaborate and those who viewed Hitler as the realisation of anti-communist socialism. The latter were almost all leftists, by the way."
Joan of Arc: "My favorite statesman."
Thatcher: "I admire her very much. 'A real man', like Golda Meir."
Le Pen in the Guardian. What he says to the Spectator we shall see shortly.
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The French Revolution: "A bloody calamity for the French people. This revolution spawned two dreadful bastards: Nazism and communism."
Socialism: "Today's socialist parties are bourgeois parties whose stance is the same as the declared stance of the centrist parties in the past. If that's the case, then why not socialism? Still, I am not a socialist."
The church: "I don't visit it often enough. That's what my late mother would certainly think."
Racism: "I am not a racist. I do not understand the theory of the superiority of the races at all, but there is a difference between the races. Black is not white and white is not Japanese. That doesn't mean one race or another should be idealised."
Xenophobia: "I am not a xenophobe. I am a Francophile."
French culture: "I believe in it. I think that France fulfils a unique cultural role in the world and that the French language greatly enriches world culture."
The death penalty: "I am in favour."
The Muslim veil: "It protects us from ugly women."
Auschwitz: "A concentration camp that symbolises the persecution of the Jews."
The gas chambers: "A method of extermination that also became a symbol of that persecution."
Israel: "An extraordinary challenge in the world history of a people that is trying to reconquer its homeland."
Colonialism: "It had a positive influence on the development of the populations that were subject to its authority. Of course, one could argue at length about whether these populations are really happier in jeans and tennis shoes than running barefoot in the wild. I have no answer to that."
Zinedine Zidane (the French soccer star, who is a Muslim of Algerian background): "A charming young man, a great player. Personally, I like him."
Anne Sinclair (the Jewish television star who sued Le Pen for calling her "a juicy kosher butcher" and won): "My personal nemesis [He laughs]. I never understood why she was persecuting me. I think she got me mixed up with someone else [more laughter]. She always thought that I was the one using wordplay to make a joke at her expense. But it wasn't me, it was someone else."
Jorg Haider: "A brilliant opportunist who used his talents to appropriate Austrian nationalism and thereby gained a big political achievement, without deriving any direct benefit from it."
Collaborators with Hitler: "France was an occupied country. There were two kinds of collaborators: those who were forced by the Nazis to collaborate and those who viewed Hitler as the realisation of anti-communist socialism. The latter were almost all leftists, by the way."
Joan of Arc: "My favorite statesman."
Thatcher: "I admire her very much. 'A real man', like Golda Meir."
Le Pen in the Guardian. What he says to the Spectator we shall see shortly.
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Charles Kennedy, March 14, 2001:
"I do not believe that William Hague is a racist. But by his use of emotive language over the issue of asylum and immigration, and now by his claim that Britain is becoming a 'foreign land', William is playing on some people's fears and pandering to some people's prejudices.
"William Hague is not racist - but by choosing his language so carelessly he shows himself to be soft on racism and soft on the causes of racism."
We all look forward to a similarly forthright denunciation of David 'Swampy' Blunkett.
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"I do not believe that William Hague is a racist. But by his use of emotive language over the issue of asylum and immigration, and now by his claim that Britain is becoming a 'foreign land', William is playing on some people's fears and pandering to some people's prejudices.
"William Hague is not racist - but by choosing his language so carelessly he shows himself to be soft on racism and soft on the causes of racism."
We all look forward to a similarly forthright denunciation of David 'Swampy' Blunkett.
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Something to look forward to - the Spectator will be running an interview with mulitracial garlic-eater, Jean Marie Le Pen. They usually go on-line at about two o'clock UK time, so expect some instant analysis at about 2 minutes past. Opinions, we gott'em.
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However, Donald Macintyre runs her a close second. When these guys fawn, do they fawn:
"Gordon Brown has never walked taller. A Mori poll for Monday's Financial Times shows the Chancellor's net satisfaction rating at 29 per cent – compared to minus eight per cent for the Prime Minister. Yesterday, in post-Budget sessions before the Parliamentary Labour Party and before the Treasury Select committee, Mr Brown was, as expected, at his masterly best. The poll rating was made flesh. He has also never looked more invincible as the candidate to succeed Tony Blair. There were those who treated this as a discovery after a Budget that deservedly enthused backbenchers, who were crying out for evidence that this was a Labour, not just New Labour, Government. But Mr Brown's claim to the glittering prize has always been much more anchored and less susceptible to fashion than that of the rather rapidly rotating cast of perceived rivals over the last five years.
The embarrassment inflicted yesterday by David Blunkett's injudicious use of the term "swamped" to describe the impact of asylum-seekers serves as a poignant illustration of just that. It maybe that this was a slip of the tongue by Mr Blunkett. But Mr Brown doesn't make slips like that. The strategic ability, his centrality in the formation of what he now rarely calls New Labour, and the sheer range and depth of his restless intellectual curiosity hardly need to be rehearsed".
Restless intellectual curiosity?! The guy's a clod-hopping bore. If the UK has to have a Scottish prize-winning leftist cretin running the roost, I'd rather have Tommy Sheridan. At least we could always have a good laugh.
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"Gordon Brown has never walked taller. A Mori poll for Monday's Financial Times shows the Chancellor's net satisfaction rating at 29 per cent – compared to minus eight per cent for the Prime Minister. Yesterday, in post-Budget sessions before the Parliamentary Labour Party and before the Treasury Select committee, Mr Brown was, as expected, at his masterly best. The poll rating was made flesh. He has also never looked more invincible as the candidate to succeed Tony Blair. There were those who treated this as a discovery after a Budget that deservedly enthused backbenchers, who were crying out for evidence that this was a Labour, not just New Labour, Government. But Mr Brown's claim to the glittering prize has always been much more anchored and less susceptible to fashion than that of the rather rapidly rotating cast of perceived rivals over the last five years.
The embarrassment inflicted yesterday by David Blunkett's injudicious use of the term "swamped" to describe the impact of asylum-seekers serves as a poignant illustration of just that. It maybe that this was a slip of the tongue by Mr Blunkett. But Mr Brown doesn't make slips like that. The strategic ability, his centrality in the formation of what he now rarely calls New Labour, and the sheer range and depth of his restless intellectual curiosity hardly need to be rehearsed".
Restless intellectual curiosity?! The guy's a clod-hopping bore. If the UK has to have a Scottish prize-winning leftist cretin running the roost, I'd rather have Tommy Sheridan. At least we could always have a good laugh.
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Natasha Walter makes a good stab for the much-feted Leftist Cretin of the Day Award over at the daily Paedophile. She is discussing Mo Mowlem's autoboigraphy, and feels disillusioned:
"People always tended to think the best of Mo Mowlam. We wanted to see her as someone who lived on an entirely different plane from the usual run of politicians. Her straight talking and her laughter seemed to mark her out as the kind of person who could rise above the grim machinations of party politics. However, in Mowlam's memoirs, which are currently being serialised, she is revealed as – yes, brace yourself for the shock – only a politician after all...
Imagine.
"We journalists are the ones who are always castigated for being cynical, but how can we be anything else when even our most admired politicians are so cynical themselves?
This sense of terrible, corrosive cynicism will be the most resonant impact of this book. After all, this isn't the memoir of any old political hack or any old ex-minister. This is the memoir of Saint Mo, the one honest gal in politics, the mother figure who could bring peace to Northern Ireland and the darling not so much of the press but of the public. She was the one person in the New Labour hierarchy whom ordinary people seemed to hold in real affection.
I guess that means I'm not ordinary. I couldn't stand the slaphead.
"Mo Mowlam doesn't come out of her own autobiography very well. On the other hand, on the showing of the passages that we have seen so far, the Government comes out of it even worse. It's easy for political journalists to dismiss the impact that this memoir may have on people's perception of the government, since the revelations that Mowlam retails are really no revelations at all. It is common knowledge, after all, that, say, Blair and Brown don't get on and that secret briefings go on against unpopular ministers.
But when the accusations come from this particular person they take on a whole different flavour. If she details a government in which minister briefs against minister, in which policy takes third place to personality and gossip, then it is a thousand times more damaging in the eyes of many outsiders than if the same characteristics were described by an Andrew Rawnsley or a Geoffrey Robinson".
So that's her beef. Mowlem has told the world that the government is full of embittered backstabbers, and Walter doesn't like it. Imagine, a politician telling the truth. What kind of journalist is Walter, anyway? One who thinks painting the government in a good light is more important than telling it like it is, apparently. So much for the intrepid, fearless, investigative hack. In any case, Mowlem was a lousy politician and Blair should have got rid of her ages before he finally did. David Trimble wouldn't even speak to her for a year. So what exactly was it about Mowlem that Walter ever liked? Her straight-talking? I don't think so.
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"People always tended to think the best of Mo Mowlam. We wanted to see her as someone who lived on an entirely different plane from the usual run of politicians. Her straight talking and her laughter seemed to mark her out as the kind of person who could rise above the grim machinations of party politics. However, in Mowlam's memoirs, which are currently being serialised, she is revealed as – yes, brace yourself for the shock – only a politician after all...
Imagine.
"We journalists are the ones who are always castigated for being cynical, but how can we be anything else when even our most admired politicians are so cynical themselves?
This sense of terrible, corrosive cynicism will be the most resonant impact of this book. After all, this isn't the memoir of any old political hack or any old ex-minister. This is the memoir of Saint Mo, the one honest gal in politics, the mother figure who could bring peace to Northern Ireland and the darling not so much of the press but of the public. She was the one person in the New Labour hierarchy whom ordinary people seemed to hold in real affection.
I guess that means I'm not ordinary. I couldn't stand the slaphead.
"Mo Mowlam doesn't come out of her own autobiography very well. On the other hand, on the showing of the passages that we have seen so far, the Government comes out of it even worse. It's easy for political journalists to dismiss the impact that this memoir may have on people's perception of the government, since the revelations that Mowlam retails are really no revelations at all. It is common knowledge, after all, that, say, Blair and Brown don't get on and that secret briefings go on against unpopular ministers.
But when the accusations come from this particular person they take on a whole different flavour. If she details a government in which minister briefs against minister, in which policy takes third place to personality and gossip, then it is a thousand times more damaging in the eyes of many outsiders than if the same characteristics were described by an Andrew Rawnsley or a Geoffrey Robinson".
So that's her beef. Mowlem has told the world that the government is full of embittered backstabbers, and Walter doesn't like it. Imagine, a politician telling the truth. What kind of journalist is Walter, anyway? One who thinks painting the government in a good light is more important than telling it like it is, apparently. So much for the intrepid, fearless, investigative hack. In any case, Mowlem was a lousy politician and Blair should have got rid of her ages before he finally did. David Trimble wouldn't even speak to her for a year. So what exactly was it about Mowlem that Walter ever liked? Her straight-talking? I don't think so.
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Mind you, if you think socialism is bad enough in England, see what it's like in Scotland. Magnus Linklater has got his sporran all in a twist.
"The parallels with Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front are striking. Yet this is Britain not France, and the challenge comes not from the extreme Right, but the extreme Left.
The party in question is the Scottish Socialist Party, led by Tommy Sheridan, a tanned, good-looking, sharply dressed demagogue, who has achieved some remarkable results at the polls, and won election three years ago to the Scottish Parliament as an independent member, on the strength of a set of principles which horrify and embarrass the Labour Party".
and what does the guy want?
"He would like to open the door to all immigrants and asylum-seekers, raise the minimum wage to £7 an hour and the state pension to £150 a week. Widespread nationalisation of public services would be paid for by heavy tax rises for the wealthy and for industry, whose pips would undoubtedly be made to squeak. Capitalism would be abolished, as would the monarchy and the House of Lords, to be replaced with “a system based on social need and environmental protection rather than private profit and economic destruction”".
It'll never catch on. No, not even in Scotland.
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"The parallels with Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front are striking. Yet this is Britain not France, and the challenge comes not from the extreme Right, but the extreme Left.
The party in question is the Scottish Socialist Party, led by Tommy Sheridan, a tanned, good-looking, sharply dressed demagogue, who has achieved some remarkable results at the polls, and won election three years ago to the Scottish Parliament as an independent member, on the strength of a set of principles which horrify and embarrass the Labour Party".
and what does the guy want?
"He would like to open the door to all immigrants and asylum-seekers, raise the minimum wage to £7 an hour and the state pension to £150 a week. Widespread nationalisation of public services would be paid for by heavy tax rises for the wealthy and for industry, whose pips would undoubtedly be made to squeak. Capitalism would be abolished, as would the monarchy and the House of Lords, to be replaced with “a system based on social need and environmental protection rather than private profit and economic destruction”".
It'll never catch on. No, not even in Scotland.
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News from the Mousepad - both Hawkgirl and Diane E. express astonishment that vermin extermination in the UK is a state-sanctioned act. Seriously, it is. Of course, rather like getting private healthcare in this country, you can get it, but it's a lot more expensive. Here I've got a two and half week waiting list, by which time they will no doubt have spread like... mice, and I will have caught the bubonic plague. ( Or is that only from rats? ) Diane thinks I ought to tell the council we've been invaded by bears, just to get them onto the case. Not in east London, I think. Call me complacent, but here on the fifth floor I think we're more likely to find Osama Bin Laden raiding the fridge than either a brown bear or a grizzly. Not that I wouldn't be amused, but I can't see the wife, or indeed, anyone of our less tolerant neighbours being so indulgent. They're quite big, aren't they? In any case, we haven't had bears in Britain for a good few centuries. It's not fair, really. Americans get all the fun animals - bears, buffalo, crocodiles, whereas we have to settle for mice and rabbits. Also, I got an email from Sandy Pedersen, who suggested I try peanut butter. However, if I leave it too long, it will attract ants. Funnily, enough that's what I tried last night. No mice. However, now I've got ants to worry about now. Doh!
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In case there are any sceptics out there who don't believe the Independent is written by leftist cretins, here is the whole of William Hague's 'foreign land' speech. Go on, show me the racism.
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Wednesday, April 24
And there are plenty of leftist cretins over at the Indy, whose leader today calls for the "resignation of all 12 US cardinals present in Rome so that the world can see that humility remains the cardinal virtue of the prelate and not just the attribute of the decent ordinary priest".
Yes, well, by a strange coincidence the Public Interest today also calls for the "resignation of all 12 ( or however many there ) leader writers from the Independent, just so the world can see that they're not all leftist cretins. Go back to stacking supermarket shelves, that's where you belong". Consider this:
"Mainstream politicians who use the rhetoric of nationalism all too often legitimise the arguments used by the extreme right. William Hague's language about Britain becoming a "foreign land" and "bogus" asylum-seekers may have been one reason why the BNP won so many votes in places such as Oldham in the general election last year".
I knew that someone would sooner or later try and use Le Pen as a stick to beat up the Tories, and well if it isn't the Guardian it's got to be the Indy. Take note from Mr. Freedland, you leftist cretin, worry about words like bogus and you're going to miss the big picture. Likewise you can go on pretending that Hague was being racist when he referred to a foreign land but he was talking about the EU, you dissembling fuckwit. And I really don't see why a big party supposedly making a populist point is going to encourage the voters to vote for somebody else, and not that party. There's got to be a word for these goons. If the Guardian is the Daily Wanker, what is the Independent? The daily Paedophile?
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Yes, well, by a strange coincidence the Public Interest today also calls for the "resignation of all 12 ( or however many there ) leader writers from the Independent, just so the world can see that they're not all leftist cretins. Go back to stacking supermarket shelves, that's where you belong". Consider this:
"Mainstream politicians who use the rhetoric of nationalism all too often legitimise the arguments used by the extreme right. William Hague's language about Britain becoming a "foreign land" and "bogus" asylum-seekers may have been one reason why the BNP won so many votes in places such as Oldham in the general election last year".
I knew that someone would sooner or later try and use Le Pen as a stick to beat up the Tories, and well if it isn't the Guardian it's got to be the Indy. Take note from Mr. Freedland, you leftist cretin, worry about words like bogus and you're going to miss the big picture. Likewise you can go on pretending that Hague was being racist when he referred to a foreign land but he was talking about the EU, you dissembling fuckwit. And I really don't see why a big party supposedly making a populist point is going to encourage the voters to vote for somebody else, and not that party. There's got to be a word for these goons. If the Guardian is the Daily Wanker, what is the Independent? The daily Paedophile?
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There's a lot of soul-searching going on at the Wanker these days, on account of the popularity of M. Le Pen. Jonathan Freedland blames the left.
"Until now they have been too quick to close down any discussion of race, fearful that even uttering the word will let loose the demons of hate".
Jean-Michel Helvig likewise takes a similar line, wondering:
"who are these leftist cretins, many of them our friends with whom we will, inevitably, make things up eventually?"
If he bothered to find out who writes the paper's leader column then he'd know. Far from blaming the left, they affect to believe that it's only the left who know what to do:
"Britain is not different from France because the British are better people. It is different because, for nearly 40 years, we have had political institutions such as the Commission for Racial Equality, a legal framework embodying successive race relations acts, and an increasingly open culture which, imperfectly and inconsistently, have combined to try to deal with multiracial issues on the basis of a commitment to equality and tolerance".
Well that's bleeding typical. We aren't better people, but our institutions are. By having more government, more state control we have become 'increasingly open'. By that logic we ought round up all the racists and stick'em in death camps. How's that for increasing our openness?
"It is not easy to defend a system when there is so much still to do and in which so much that is done should be done better. But it is not accidental that Britain has not produced a Le Pen. Like Lionel Jospin's government in France, Tony Blair's government in Britain has a good record of promoting liberal, multi-cultural values. It is ensuring that all 43,000 public bodies in Britain publish racial equality plans by next month. But, unlike the Jospin government, the Blair government has never been one to let the extreme right run away with issues such as crime and immigration. The two approaches are complementary. The proof is that we live in a society where there is more tolerance and less racism than a generation ago".
Ah, yes. The more rules, the better we become. And they call themselves liberals.
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"Until now they have been too quick to close down any discussion of race, fearful that even uttering the word will let loose the demons of hate".
Jean-Michel Helvig likewise takes a similar line, wondering:
"who are these leftist cretins, many of them our friends with whom we will, inevitably, make things up eventually?"
If he bothered to find out who writes the paper's leader column then he'd know. Far from blaming the left, they affect to believe that it's only the left who know what to do:
"Britain is not different from France because the British are better people. It is different because, for nearly 40 years, we have had political institutions such as the Commission for Racial Equality, a legal framework embodying successive race relations acts, and an increasingly open culture which, imperfectly and inconsistently, have combined to try to deal with multiracial issues on the basis of a commitment to equality and tolerance".
Well that's bleeding typical. We aren't better people, but our institutions are. By having more government, more state control we have become 'increasingly open'. By that logic we ought round up all the racists and stick'em in death camps. How's that for increasing our openness?
"It is not easy to defend a system when there is so much still to do and in which so much that is done should be done better. But it is not accidental that Britain has not produced a Le Pen. Like Lionel Jospin's government in France, Tony Blair's government in Britain has a good record of promoting liberal, multi-cultural values. It is ensuring that all 43,000 public bodies in Britain publish racial equality plans by next month. But, unlike the Jospin government, the Blair government has never been one to let the extreme right run away with issues such as crime and immigration. The two approaches are complementary. The proof is that we live in a society where there is more tolerance and less racism than a generation ago".
Ah, yes. The more rules, the better we become. And they call themselves liberals.
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Simon Carr, the Indy's best writer, discusses the beleaguered one:
"Word has it the Tories feel a wind in their sails. It's not true. They can't even nail the Transport Secretary to the latest burial-of-bad-news story. This paper had a memo leaked from the train companies' board meeting insisting that fare rises be kept as far from the media as possible.
Mr Byers told the MP not, "to believe everything he reads in the paper. If he can produce any memo, I'd be delighted to see it. I don't believe it exists".
But if Barrie Clement, our transport editor, stapled the memo to the minister's forehead he still would deny its existence".
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"Word has it the Tories feel a wind in their sails. It's not true. They can't even nail the Transport Secretary to the latest burial-of-bad-news story. This paper had a memo leaked from the train companies' board meeting insisting that fare rises be kept as far from the media as possible.
Mr Byers told the MP not, "to believe everything he reads in the paper. If he can produce any memo, I'd be delighted to see it. I don't believe it exists".
But if Barrie Clement, our transport editor, stapled the memo to the minister's forehead he still would deny its existence".
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Called the council, and they're sending the Man, armed with traps, poison and heavy artillery. Not till May 10th, though between 12 and 4. Can we hang on that long?
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There have been some overnight developments, though no captures. Diane E. wants the PETA to arrest me for rodenticide, which is a bit rich considering she advises me to get a cat ( what's it for, to play with? ), and we haven't killed any of them yet, David B. also has a world-weary take on her 'get a cat' philosophy
Having tried cats previously to get rid of mice this is the way it works . . .
1. Introduce cat to mouse infested area.
2. Cat proceeds to wash itself furiously and sleeps.
3. Cat proceeds to sleep while mouse population grows.
4. Cat washes itself.
5. Mouse population rises.
6. Cat provides hours of entertainment . . . while sleeping.
7. Cat moves out and adopts new owners who buy expensive cat food.
If you get a big mean cat who rampantly destroys the mice with the perfection of John Rambo, once the mice are gone you are stuck with a mean fucking cat whose sole aim in life is to be vicious. Vicious to you, the missus or your furniture.
and Hawkgirl lambasts me for my temporary name change ( For about 15 hours we were Give Mice A Chance ):
"Give mice a chance? A chance to do what? Reproduce exponentially? Introduce you to the plague? Cover your kitchen and living space with their bacteria-infested spittle? I'll give mice a chance. A chance to eat hot death. As far as I'm concerned, until the beady-eyed bastards learn to be self-sufficient like those mice in The Secret of NIMH, they're a fair hunt on my turf".
I've had more email on this than I ever get on Stephen Byers, Tom Paulin, and Deborah Orr. And page visits - I had as many yesterday as I did the day I got Instapundited. Maybe that name change was a good idea, after all. Anyway, I'm off to phone the council. More anon.
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Having tried cats previously to get rid of mice this is the way it works . . .
1. Introduce cat to mouse infested area.
2. Cat proceeds to wash itself furiously and sleeps.
3. Cat proceeds to sleep while mouse population grows.
4. Cat washes itself.
5. Mouse population rises.
6. Cat provides hours of entertainment . . . while sleeping.
7. Cat moves out and adopts new owners who buy expensive cat food.
If you get a big mean cat who rampantly destroys the mice with the perfection of John Rambo, once the mice are gone you are stuck with a mean fucking cat whose sole aim in life is to be vicious. Vicious to you, the missus or your furniture.
and Hawkgirl lambasts me for my temporary name change ( For about 15 hours we were Give Mice A Chance ):
"Give mice a chance? A chance to do what? Reproduce exponentially? Introduce you to the plague? Cover your kitchen and living space with their bacteria-infested spittle? I'll give mice a chance. A chance to eat hot death. As far as I'm concerned, until the beady-eyed bastards learn to be self-sufficient like those mice in The Secret of NIMH, they're a fair hunt on my turf".
I've had more email on this than I ever get on Stephen Byers, Tom Paulin, and Deborah Orr. And page visits - I had as many yesterday as I did the day I got Instapundited. Maybe that name change was a good idea, after all. Anyway, I'm off to phone the council. More anon.
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Tuesday, April 23
There is of course a third option, viz the rodent, which I unaccountably overlooked, suggested by ( who else? ) Hawkgirl:
The vigilante solution:
ROCKET LAUNCHER.
Fear not the bothersome, gaping holes in the side of your home, or the lingering smells. After all, summer is on the way.
Think about it.
I will, and the more I do, the more I realise what a klutz I've been. There was the answer, staring me in the space. Simple, beautiful, classic. How come I missed it?
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The vigilante solution:
ROCKET LAUNCHER.
Fear not the bothersome, gaping holes in the side of your home, or the lingering smells. After all, summer is on the way.
Think about it.
I will, and the more I do, the more I realise what a klutz I've been. There was the answer, staring me in the space. Simple, beautiful, classic. How come I missed it?
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There appear to be two schools of thought on the mouse problem.
1) I think you'd better get the council in about your mice. When there is one there is a freakin army. I expect that all your neighbours on the top floors are all having similar problems - they'll be in the roof.
Don't mean to sound like a panic merchant but i'd ring the bastards. suggested by an Englishman ( David B.), no doubt conditioned by a lifetime of socialism. If you want something done get the Government to do it.
2) Get a moggie. I did. It, or rather, he, works. Get a big mean one. suggested by an American woman ( Diane E. ) no doubt conditioned by a lifetime of the can-do spirit. Get the Government off my case!
Naturally, being a born Englishman with Americophile cravings, I tend to the latter, whilst pathetically thinking that 1) might have a point. Only we really would need a sabre-toothed tiger, I think, given the size of the wretched cheese-eater. What to do?
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1) I think you'd better get the council in about your mice. When there is one there is a freakin army. I expect that all your neighbours on the top floors are all having similar problems - they'll be in the roof.
Don't mean to sound like a panic merchant but i'd ring the bastards. suggested by an Englishman ( David B.), no doubt conditioned by a lifetime of socialism. If you want something done get the Government to do it.
2) Get a moggie. I did. It, or rather, he, works. Get a big mean one. suggested by an American woman ( Diane E. ) no doubt conditioned by a lifetime of the can-do spirit. Get the Government off my case!
Naturally, being a born Englishman with Americophile cravings, I tend to the latter, whilst pathetically thinking that 1) might have a point. Only we really would need a sabre-toothed tiger, I think, given the size of the wretched cheese-eater. What to do?
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More contributions to the Dude franchise from Hawkgirl:
Don't you forget about the potential for porn film titles:
"Dude, Where's My Lube Job?"
And another porn title reflecting the current crisis in the Catholic church, and in exceptionally poor taste:
"Dude, Where's My Cardinal?"
Or horror films:
"Dude, Where's My Carcass?"
And this is just awful. Guided tours through Wales:
"Dude, Where's My Cardiff?"
Okay, okay. It's getting painfully bad now. I'll quit. I promise.
Let's hope so - that last one really is scraping the bottom of the barrel. Anyway, for the American market they'd presumably have to retitle it "Dude, Where's my Cartographer?"
Sorry, this is getting ridiculous.
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Don't you forget about the potential for porn film titles:
"Dude, Where's My Lube Job?"
And another porn title reflecting the current crisis in the Catholic church, and in exceptionally poor taste:
"Dude, Where's My Cardinal?"
Or horror films:
"Dude, Where's My Carcass?"
And this is just awful. Guided tours through Wales:
"Dude, Where's My Cardiff?"
Okay, okay. It's getting painfully bad now. I'll quit. I promise.
Let's hope so - that last one really is scraping the bottom of the barrel. Anyway, for the American market they'd presumably have to retitle it "Dude, Where's my Cartographer?"
Sorry, this is getting ridiculous.
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The Telegraph:
"IN France, they have Jean-Marie Le Pen. In Oxford, they have Tom Paulin".
No doubt Le Pen is already consulting his lawyers for this outrageous slur. Still, try as I might, tempted as I am to believe that the French are all a bunch of closet-Nazis, the numbers really don't add up. He barely scraped 17%, many of whom weren't voting for him and were voting against the others. Indeed, many of those voting for him were only voting for some of his policies. For example, he wants to pull out of the EU and was the only notable candidate wanting to do so. So what's so damn surprising about all this, then? As the Telegraph elsewhere points out:
"As more powers are transferred to Brussels, voters begin to sense that they are losing control of their futures. Sick of the ideological consensus of their governing parties, despairing of being listened to, they are driven to support politicians opposed to the entire system".
Or, as Simon Carr puts it more comically:
"Listening to Home Office questions and catching a bit of Patricia Hewitt's party piece on Enterprise and Emetics, it occurred to me why people vote for Jean-Marie Le Pen. It's the language these ignorant, arrogant, clapped-out, over-promoted, jargon-jabbering, morally incompetent, intellectually fetid, Paul-paying, Peter-robbing hucksters use as they administer the biggest budget in the British economy".
I reckon there is something in that. To prove the point, and the way the liberal classes are way out of touch, read John Lichfield over at the Independent, who wonders:
"where is the modern France in all this? Where is the France of Zinedine Zidane and the valiant, multi-racial, triumphant French football team? Where is the young, open, Europe-embracing country that readily accepted the Euro and that has one of the fastest-growing economies and highest birth-rates in the European Union?"
Disappearing up his jacksie, I imagine. Or perhaps, voting for Le Pen. But that's a bit too complicated for the poor man. The trouble with the Indy types is that they've been slandering the Brits as racists for so long they've forgotten that they do that sort of thing much better across the Channel. Not just France, but Germany, Italy, Austria. But I said all this yesterday, and no doubt I'll say it all again tomorrow. One of the many reasons I am anti-EU is precisely because of all the Communists and Nazis and so on who dominate the politics over there. They've got unstable governments, unstable economies and lousy track records. What exactly do we have to gain by throwing in our lot with those goons? A leader in the Indy crystallises this:
"Mr Le Pen's 17 per cent showing cannot be called a massive swing to fascism. Far from it. It marked only a marginal gain on his results in the previous election. But the almost obscenely low vote for Lionel Jospin or President Jacques Chirac did represent a massive blow to the politics of the centre. That is the first and most important lesson for politicians elsewhere. If extremism is not to flourish, it is no good "trusting" to the good sense of voters, as Tony Blair's spokesman rather feebly declared yesterday. The politicians of the centre are going to have to fight for the votes".
Fair enough so far, but I don't get this bit:
"The next two weeks will at least see the chance for politics to regain its democratic pride in France as Mr Le Pen and his National Front are forced to debate issues every night on the television. A man who fought an election on a programme of forbidding the building of new mosques, deporting immigrants with relations back home, criminalising abortion and introducing national tariffs on imports surely could not withstand the full heat of national exposure too long".
That's assuming 1, that he talks about these things. I doubt it, I think he'll talk about the EU and about Chirac's 'financial irregularities', and 2, that the French wouldn't like what it heard about these issues. There are some French people who will approve of these policies, like it or not. You can bet that if the BNP hit 17% at next month's council elections in the UK the Independent would not be nearly as magnanimous.
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"IN France, they have Jean-Marie Le Pen. In Oxford, they have Tom Paulin".
No doubt Le Pen is already consulting his lawyers for this outrageous slur. Still, try as I might, tempted as I am to believe that the French are all a bunch of closet-Nazis, the numbers really don't add up. He barely scraped 17%, many of whom weren't voting for him and were voting against the others. Indeed, many of those voting for him were only voting for some of his policies. For example, he wants to pull out of the EU and was the only notable candidate wanting to do so. So what's so damn surprising about all this, then? As the Telegraph elsewhere points out:
"As more powers are transferred to Brussels, voters begin to sense that they are losing control of their futures. Sick of the ideological consensus of their governing parties, despairing of being listened to, they are driven to support politicians opposed to the entire system".
Or, as Simon Carr puts it more comically:
"Listening to Home Office questions and catching a bit of Patricia Hewitt's party piece on Enterprise and Emetics, it occurred to me why people vote for Jean-Marie Le Pen. It's the language these ignorant, arrogant, clapped-out, over-promoted, jargon-jabbering, morally incompetent, intellectually fetid, Paul-paying, Peter-robbing hucksters use as they administer the biggest budget in the British economy".
I reckon there is something in that. To prove the point, and the way the liberal classes are way out of touch, read John Lichfield over at the Independent, who wonders:
"where is the modern France in all this? Where is the France of Zinedine Zidane and the valiant, multi-racial, triumphant French football team? Where is the young, open, Europe-embracing country that readily accepted the Euro and that has one of the fastest-growing economies and highest birth-rates in the European Union?"
Disappearing up his jacksie, I imagine. Or perhaps, voting for Le Pen. But that's a bit too complicated for the poor man. The trouble with the Indy types is that they've been slandering the Brits as racists for so long they've forgotten that they do that sort of thing much better across the Channel. Not just France, but Germany, Italy, Austria. But I said all this yesterday, and no doubt I'll say it all again tomorrow. One of the many reasons I am anti-EU is precisely because of all the Communists and Nazis and so on who dominate the politics over there. They've got unstable governments, unstable economies and lousy track records. What exactly do we have to gain by throwing in our lot with those goons? A leader in the Indy crystallises this:
"Mr Le Pen's 17 per cent showing cannot be called a massive swing to fascism. Far from it. It marked only a marginal gain on his results in the previous election. But the almost obscenely low vote for Lionel Jospin or President Jacques Chirac did represent a massive blow to the politics of the centre. That is the first and most important lesson for politicians elsewhere. If extremism is not to flourish, it is no good "trusting" to the good sense of voters, as Tony Blair's spokesman rather feebly declared yesterday. The politicians of the centre are going to have to fight for the votes".
Fair enough so far, but I don't get this bit:
"The next two weeks will at least see the chance for politics to regain its democratic pride in France as Mr Le Pen and his National Front are forced to debate issues every night on the television. A man who fought an election on a programme of forbidding the building of new mosques, deporting immigrants with relations back home, criminalising abortion and introducing national tariffs on imports surely could not withstand the full heat of national exposure too long".
That's assuming 1, that he talks about these things. I doubt it, I think he'll talk about the EU and about Chirac's 'financial irregularities', and 2, that the French wouldn't like what it heard about these issues. There are some French people who will approve of these policies, like it or not. You can bet that if the BNP hit 17% at next month's council elections in the UK the Independent would not be nearly as magnanimous.
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Another pesky rodent proving difficult to get rid of is Stephen Byers who, according to the Sun, is up to his old tricks. You can't keep a bad man down.
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Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the kitchen... Remember that scene in Jaws, when Brodie and the gang are celebrating the capture of the shark, and then along comes Matt Hooper to say that the shark is too small, and that the real killer is still out there? That's how I felt yesterday, wandering into the kitchen at nine o'clock, hungry for change, social justice, and, more importantly, food. For there, running along the side, was a mouse. And not just any old mouse, but a real, dyed-in-the-wool, ubermouse. This wasn't Gordon, this was superGordon. We set the traps but he didn't bite. Doh!
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Monday, April 22
Madeleine Bunting in the Wanker:
"Across Europe, a major battle is developing over work. How hard do you
need to work? What kind of job security can you expect? How you organise
the workplace, the kind of workforce you develop, the impact of those
decisions on social capital (the care of children, the vibrancy of
communities, the wellbeing of the population) - these are the threads of a
debate that has gathered strength across Europe. They will have a
significant impact on the next round of the French presidential elections
and the German elections in the autumn, and they were dramatically
demonstrated in Italy's general strike last week".
Well no, love, I reckon, it'll be your race thing. Clearly Ms Bunting shares the delusion, held also by Blair and his pals, that our friends across the water are a sophisticated lot, carefully downing the finest wines whilst discussing the merits of Eric Rohmer versus Louis Malle. This after all, must be a significant factor in their craving to merge currencies with the blighters. How wrong could they be? Even Chris Bertram who runs Junius, the only British liberal weblog worth visiting, got this one wrong. He does however make one canny prediction:
"with France in such turmoil the chances of Blair winning a referendum on the euro just became 0".
And as the Telegraph are only too happy to point out in a leader:
"France, remember, led the EU in demanding sanctions against Austria
when Jorg Haider, like M Le Pen yesterday, came second in an
election".
Yes, well if Le Pen wins I'll be only too happy to boycott their wine, porn and football. If Yasmin Alibhai-Brown can refuse to eat Jaffa cakes in protest against the Israelis, then the rest of us must follow suit. What I think is the most interesting aspect of all of this though, is the tone of righteous indignation posed by the caring classes. How dare the people vote any way other than 'our' way seemed to be the tone emanating from the BBC Today programme. No doubt they'd have said the same had William Hague won the last UK election. Having said that Le Pen clearly is a nasty piece of work, but the liberalists do tend to cry wolf a bit. The name-calling of all their opponents as racist, extremist, and xenophobic does create a law of diminishing returns, you know.
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"Across Europe, a major battle is developing over work. How hard do you
need to work? What kind of job security can you expect? How you organise
the workplace, the kind of workforce you develop, the impact of those
decisions on social capital (the care of children, the vibrancy of
communities, the wellbeing of the population) - these are the threads of a
debate that has gathered strength across Europe. They will have a
significant impact on the next round of the French presidential elections
and the German elections in the autumn, and they were dramatically
demonstrated in Italy's general strike last week".
Well no, love, I reckon, it'll be your race thing. Clearly Ms Bunting shares the delusion, held also by Blair and his pals, that our friends across the water are a sophisticated lot, carefully downing the finest wines whilst discussing the merits of Eric Rohmer versus Louis Malle. This after all, must be a significant factor in their craving to merge currencies with the blighters. How wrong could they be? Even Chris Bertram who runs Junius, the only British liberal weblog worth visiting, got this one wrong. He does however make one canny prediction:
"with France in such turmoil the chances of Blair winning a referendum on the euro just became 0".
And as the Telegraph are only too happy to point out in a leader:
"France, remember, led the EU in demanding sanctions against Austria
when Jorg Haider, like M Le Pen yesterday, came second in an
election".
Yes, well if Le Pen wins I'll be only too happy to boycott their wine, porn and football. If Yasmin Alibhai-Brown can refuse to eat Jaffa cakes in protest against the Israelis, then the rest of us must follow suit. What I think is the most interesting aspect of all of this though, is the tone of righteous indignation posed by the caring classes. How dare the people vote any way other than 'our' way seemed to be the tone emanating from the BBC Today programme. No doubt they'd have said the same had William Hague won the last UK election. Having said that Le Pen clearly is a nasty piece of work, but the liberalists do tend to cry wolf a bit. The name-calling of all their opponents as racist, extremist, and xenophobic does create a law of diminishing returns, you know.
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Sunday, April 21
One more - I caught the Jonathan Ross TV show last night, and he had noted impressionist Alastair McGowan on. He did very accurate impersonations of numerous people but only one fell flat, though it was spot on. Yes, his Tom Paulin went down like a lead balloon, because, as the host remarked, 'only fifteen people in the audience watch Late Review'. So, remember, folks, all those wankers and poncy twits don't add up to a hill of beans in the scheme of things. If all it takes is one broken crisp to trap a mouse, it isn't going to take much more to trap a liberal. Get to work!
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This one seems unlikely but we can live in hope. The sooner we get it out of the way the longer we can have a lame duck government. Then IDS and his honey-voiced sister can take control, hopefully with a whopping landslide. We'll need it to undo so much of the damage.
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The BBC does run with this story. I was out of the country when the Brass Eye programme ran, but I still want it to win, if only to annoy those dubious characters at the NSPCC.
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Just in case you though Friday's news about the IRA was a 'misunderstanding' here is confirmation that those guys mean business. If you want to know my feeling on the matter you can check out Hawkgirl, who has a sounder grasp on matters British than most of the British Press do. Let alone the BBC news website. Couldn't find the story anywhere.
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Awoke this morning to find Gordon Brown, our lovely mouse, caught in his trap, lured there by the irresistible temptation of a broken up crisp. I favoured an immediate, though painless, execution. The wife's more peaceable nature prevailed, however, as it usually does, and I had to rush down the stairs with a towel over his head, there to be released into the park outside. Tiny creature Gordon was too. The traps remain, however, in case he wasn't operating alone, and that in fact there is a massive network of fellow rodents. They won't survive the brutal English summer that's for sure.
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Saturday, April 20
A sad tale from Letter from Gotham, with the news that Diane E has hung up her blogging boots. Or rather she isn't going to do as much, and is to concentrate on the violin. Well good for you, Diane. Sometimes I wish I could quit too. But so long as it's fun.... The best thing about doing all this is realising how easy it is. Goons like Deborah Orr can write three columns a week, but what's the big deal? Writing stuff is easy, and that's why the big media don't like us ( insofar as they've heard of us ). We've latched on to their little secret and it scares them. Regarding Fisk - don't worry. Even I, an avid newspaperphile, had never heard of the cretin a year ago. It's only since I started reading the blogs that I learned these people exist. Consequently think we give them far too much credit. I can't be alone in regarding these columnists as mere mayflies. You read one, if you like him/her you go back to them; if you don't that's it, and you never bother with them again. I recall reading a column by Debs a couple of years back, but only because it was on a particular subject I was interested in, and getting quite incensed. I prepared a long letter to the editor, then didn't bother to send it. After all, they'd have got loads, only published a couple and that would have been that. This way, I can get it all off my chest. But remember, The Independent is easily the UK's worst-selling broadsheet, and I doubt that one in fifty of its readers would regularly read Robert Fisk. They take a look at the headline, and think, do I really need another thinkpiece about the Afgoons? Before I started blogging, I would read about half of Mark Steyn's output, a third of Boris Johnson, a fifth of Matthew Parris, and about one in ten of Simon Jenkins. I'd barely ever read Richard Littlejohn, even though I like him. Just like ours, their opinions barely matter.
And don't be so down about Israel. The hostility to Israel is really just proxy-hostility to the USA, which in itself is proxy-hosility to 'Western Civilisation', which in itself is a proxy-hostility to the overdog. I watched the news on BBC TV yesterday about Jenin and thought that, for all the indignation, all they were looking for was a story. Underdog having a tough time of it versus overdog. That is the subtext of virtually every story they showed, from Israel to football. It's how the news is. Maybe it's different in the US, but over here, for all their Euroblathering I just can't see Israel being abandoned, simply because we're next. The towelheads ain't gonna stop. So hang on in there, Diane.
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And don't be so down about Israel. The hostility to Israel is really just proxy-hostility to the USA, which in itself is proxy-hosility to 'Western Civilisation', which in itself is a proxy-hostility to the overdog. I watched the news on BBC TV yesterday about Jenin and thought that, for all the indignation, all they were looking for was a story. Underdog having a tough time of it versus overdog. That is the subtext of virtually every story they showed, from Israel to football. It's how the news is. Maybe it's different in the US, but over here, for all their Euroblathering I just can't see Israel being abandoned, simply because we're next. The towelheads ain't gonna stop. So hang on in there, Diane.
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GOOD GOLLY MISS MOLLY. IDS sister in rock and roll shocker. Yes, back in the Seventies, the sister of our future PM was a pop star in Europe. Why Is Everyone So Mad? is a tune we need to hear.
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At last, a column by Howard Jacobson worth reading. It's about poncy twit, AN Wilson, Wanker Tom Paulin, and the anti-Israelis. The Telegraph also as a leader on Paulin, as well as that Saudi weirdo from yesterday. Paulin, incidentally, was still broadcasting on the BBC last night. Now there's a surprise.
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Ben Elton:
"I use banks. We all do. I just wouldn't do an ad for one. It's a question of where you draw your own personal line".
So it's good enough for him but not the masses. So that's were he draws his own personal line, is it?
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"I use banks. We all do. I just wouldn't do an ad for one. It's a question of where you draw your own personal line".
So it's good enough for him but not the masses. So that's were he draws his own personal line, is it?
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Hawkgirl adds some, uncharacteristically for her, sarcastic suggestions to the raging debate. How about "Dude, Where's My Brain", which would be followed up by "Dude, It's Right There, Next To TheBong", and could conclude with "Dude, Where's My Royalty Check".
Well, we can all be cynical, and I myself never saw the film myself, but I did see the French original, directed by the great Jean Luc Godard, Garcon, ou est l'auto? with Alain Delon and Catherine Deneuve, set in Paris in May 1968? Ah, les evenements! I myself think we're onto something here, and this is a franchise that can run and run. After all, Dude, where's my carburettor? is just begging to be made. And, in about fifty years when our intrepid team are all stuck in an old people's home, things can always end with the lyrical and plaintive, Dude, where's my Cardigan?
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Well, we can all be cynical, and I myself never saw the film myself, but I did see the French original, directed by the great Jean Luc Godard, Garcon, ou est l'auto? with Alain Delon and Catherine Deneuve, set in Paris in May 1968? Ah, les evenements! I myself think we're onto something here, and this is a franchise that can run and run. After all, Dude, where's my carburettor? is just begging to be made. And, in about fifty years when our intrepid team are all stuck in an old people's home, things can always end with the lyrical and plaintive, Dude, where's my Cardigan?
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Friday, April 19
Now if you were going to make a sequel to Dude, Where's My Car? what would you call it?
Dude, Where's My Other Car?
Dude, Where's My Car, part 2?
Dude 2: the Search Continues
Dude, Now That We Found My Car, Where's My Bicycle?
Answers here. ( You'll never get it ).
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Dude, Where's My Other Car?
Dude, Where's My Car, part 2?
Dude 2: the Search Continues
Dude, Now That We Found My Car, Where's My Bicycle?
Answers here. ( You'll never get it ).
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Well done the EU! Standing up for underdogs everywhere. This is just the sort of brilliant idea to get a thriving, creative economy going. As reader David Bowman points out:
"Whilst I appreciate his sentiment any law that comes from Europe should be tied up and shot at by all concerned. How many more weird laughable stories will we have to read about on the BBC News website before someone realises that the United States of Great Britain and America is a good idea after all?"
The whole thing's a real mess. That this should actually come to court... I fear now only one person can save us. Princess Emily.
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"Whilst I appreciate his sentiment any law that comes from Europe should be tied up and shot at by all concerned. How many more weird laughable stories will we have to read about on the BBC News website before someone realises that the United States of Great Britain and America is a good idea after all?"
The whole thing's a real mess. That this should actually come to court... I fear now only one person can save us. Princess Emily.
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Trust the readers of the Wanker to be accessories to such lies and deception. Is this really representative of their total readership? Or wouldn't their more truth-friendly readers not bother to write in?
"Where is your sympathy and understanding?" one of them croaks. And where's your arse and your elbow?
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"Where is your sympathy and understanding?" one of them croaks. And where's your arse and your elbow?
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And here's another public body that needs abolishing. I quote the Times:
"THEATRES face an imposition of quotas for black and Asian actors after a damning report by the Arts Council found “institutional racism” in the industry.
If more ethnic actors, who currently represent a tiny proportion of theatrical staff, are not recruited in the next year, the Arts Council may set “non-negotiable targets”.
Since when has the Arts Council had the power to act like the Gestapo? And when will these 'liberals' realises that to say that there are too few blacks/women/gays working in such an such an industry is as racist/sexist/homophobic as to say there are too many? Abolish it now!
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"THEATRES face an imposition of quotas for black and Asian actors after a damning report by the Arts Council found “institutional racism” in the industry.
If more ethnic actors, who currently represent a tiny proportion of theatrical staff, are not recruited in the next year, the Arts Council may set “non-negotiable targets”.
Since when has the Arts Council had the power to act like the Gestapo? And when will these 'liberals' realises that to say that there are too few blacks/women/gays working in such an such an industry is as racist/sexist/homophobic as to say there are too many? Abolish it now!
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Simon Jenkins in the Times:
"The National Health Service now faces triumph or disaster. The odds are on disaster. So as not to “waste” its £40 billion of extra government money, the NHS is to endure yet another round of inspection, monitoring and audit...."
he continues
"I recently met a young man who had embarked on a career as one of Mr Brown’s bean-counters. He worked for a health authority on targets and performance monitoring. I asked him if he sincerely thought that his daily cannonade of reports, forms, checks and feedbacks led to a better or worse health service, whether in the short term or the long. He was sincere and serious and he thought some time before replying. His answer was “worse”. He felt that he was impeding doctors and nurses from reaching their own priority decisions and defending them to patients: they could pass the buck to the system. This not only wasted time but also stripped them of the normal responsibility of a professional practitioner. They were freed of risk".
Yet Deborah Orr waxes lyrical on the wretched institution. Writing three articles in three successive days has clearly done her head in.
"I'm totally out of synch with the middle England mindset", she reveals. Let's hope so.
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"The National Health Service now faces triumph or disaster. The odds are on disaster. So as not to “waste” its £40 billion of extra government money, the NHS is to endure yet another round of inspection, monitoring and audit...."
he continues
"I recently met a young man who had embarked on a career as one of Mr Brown’s bean-counters. He worked for a health authority on targets and performance monitoring. I asked him if he sincerely thought that his daily cannonade of reports, forms, checks and feedbacks led to a better or worse health service, whether in the short term or the long. He was sincere and serious and he thought some time before replying. His answer was “worse”. He felt that he was impeding doctors and nurses from reaching their own priority decisions and defending them to patients: they could pass the buck to the system. This not only wasted time but also stripped them of the normal responsibility of a professional practitioner. They were freed of risk".
Yet Deborah Orr waxes lyrical on the wretched institution. Writing three articles in three successive days has clearly done her head in.
"I'm totally out of synch with the middle England mindset", she reveals. Let's hope so.
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Thursday, April 18
Spectator's up with some good letters about Israel. Melanie Phillips continues the theme. Also, there's a good hatchet-job on Arundhati Roy, the gamine Indian novelist, by Amrit Dhillon. And a long article claiming that Blair and Brown really are starting to hate each other. Sorry to be short but I've got to go and buy a mouse-trap. See you tomorrow.
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If, however, you want to know what it's like to work in the NHS, read this speech by Theodore Dalrymple. ( thanks to Peter Willman for the link ).
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DON'T BLAME ME I VOTED CONSERVATIVE.
Yesterday was not a good day. Gordon Brown delivers his budget, and our kitchen gets invaded by mice. Or at least one of the damn critters, scurrying under the cooker. Mind you it could have been worse. We could have been invaded by Gordon Brown, and a mouse could have delivered his budget. Yet a mouse might have done a better job. As the Telegraph reports, there's been an effective 3 p rise in income tax, most of which is going to go on that great Moloch, the NHS. This, on day when the London crimes figures have hit the roof. The Times reports, that over one year
Street crime, including muggings, rose by 38 per cent; rapes rose by 14 per cent; murders rose from 171 to 190; burglaries rose by more than 5 per cent; and car crime by 4.8 per cent.
Detection rates fell from 15 per cent to 14 per cent. The clear-up rate for car crime was 4.5 per cent and only 8 per cent for street crime.
Crime figures for 2001-02 show that street crime, which includes personal robberies and snatches, rose to 69,987 offences recorded by police. In 2000-01, there were 50,607 muggings".
I guess we'll need all those doctors now. It isn't just me who isn't convinced. Boris Johnson points out:
"Labour has raised taxes enormously since it came to
power: a grand total of £100 billion, which is nearly £2,000 for
every man, woman and child in the country.
Unless my ears were deceiving me, he intends to increase general
government spending from £390 billion to £470 billion over the next
four years, and this increment will somehow be derived from a £6.1
billion increase in taxation. There is something there that doesn't
quite add up, isn't there?"
Too right. The whole farrago is a disaster waiting to happen. It doesn't kick in four another year anyway, and there is little chance they will be able to sort any of this stuff out:
"After umpteen NHS reforms, there are now more hospital administrators than there
are beds. There are more people on waiting lists than there were
when Labour came to power in 1997. We are now driven to the crazy
expedient of sending NHS patients to France and Germany, because
they face unconscionable delays in this country.
How can Gordon Brown seriously call the health service the "envy of
the world" - or whatever fatuous phrase he used - when people are
flying to South Africa for cataract operations? There are now more
people than ever before who are driven to using their own resources
to pay for medicine in their old age. That is not because Labour has
encouraged people to insure themselves privately, and thereby
alleviate some of the burden on the state; far from it. One of
Labour's first and most spiteful acts was to remove the tax breaks
for private health care for the elderly, with the result that
200,000 people gave up their policies. People are going private in
despair at the NHS, and there should be no shame in pointing that
out".
Of course the Wanker has an unique take on things. It has no less than two leaders on the subject. The first fatuous one announces:
"The first, and most important, response to yesterday's Budget was unalloyed celebration.... This is a Budget that combines cleverness with compassion".
There's a bit more detail further down the page:
"So what is on offer: 200 new hospitals, better integrated care, GPs
delivering an increasingly wide range of services including disease
prevention. Where once there were 18-month waits there would be a two-week
maximum - for both outpatients and inpatients. New national standards,
which already apply to cancer and coronary care, would be extended to
other diseases. The NHS estate - one third pre-1948, one-tenth 19th
century - would be transformed. Do the Tories really want to oppose this
package?"
I certainly hope so. Hugo Young chips in:
"The Budget asks a deep question about the character of the British people. What do they really care about? What sort of society do they believe in?"
Well Hugo, matey, I can only speak for myself. I don't believe in increasing health spending by 7.1% a year for five years. Imagine all the prisons, policeman, and trident missiles we could get for that. How many teenagers really needed to have their tattoos removed, lesbians to have abortions, and footballers to have their feet put in plaster, anyway? The whole thing is a waste of money, buddy boy, and pretending there is going to be dancing in the streets and that we'll all go to Heaven on a wave of 'compassion' won't solve anything. I know you take it as read that everything important in our lives has to be undertaken by the Government, while we, the drones can only be trusted with decisions such as what colour we paint the walls, and whether to holiday either in Blackpool or Benidorm, but socialism didn't work in Russia, North Korea or China, and it isn't going to work here. There are other points of view, you know. Like Alice Miles at the Times, who doesn't like what she sees.
"The vision Mr Wanless paints is of a truly world-class health service, with maximum waits of two weeks, 75 per cent single-bed rooms, equipment replaced every eight years and a £42 billion building programme to deliver 205 new hospitals over the next two decades. Mr Brown
had better get his hard hat on and start digging. There is absolutely no way all this will happen".
And even the Indy is sceptical. You know things are bad when those guys are on the case:
"This is certainly a vital moment for the NHS. If it does not show
impressive results for the vast increase in resources, it could be
the end. Yet Mr Brown has approached his task by closing down debate
and taking the wrong course of simply pouring more public money into
a centralised, unresponsive service".
The Sun also feels betrayed:
"This is a Budget which smacks of red-blooded Socialism and redistribution of wealth.
That’s not what this country voted for".
Meanwhile, over in la-la land, Debs has her own take on things:
"I know it's weird, but I always find the Budget to be a terribly emotional experience. Since he has been Chancellor, Gordon Brown has produced budgets that have made me feel elated, and budgets that have inspired my absolute fury. This one, though, made me feel oddly desolate. At times, in fact, it brought me close to tears".
Weird? You said it, babe.
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Yesterday was not a good day. Gordon Brown delivers his budget, and our kitchen gets invaded by mice. Or at least one of the damn critters, scurrying under the cooker. Mind you it could have been worse. We could have been invaded by Gordon Brown, and a mouse could have delivered his budget. Yet a mouse might have done a better job. As the Telegraph reports, there's been an effective 3 p rise in income tax, most of which is going to go on that great Moloch, the NHS. This, on day when the London crimes figures have hit the roof. The Times reports, that over one year
Street crime, including muggings, rose by 38 per cent; rapes rose by 14 per cent; murders rose from 171 to 190; burglaries rose by more than 5 per cent; and car crime by 4.8 per cent.
Detection rates fell from 15 per cent to 14 per cent. The clear-up rate for car crime was 4.5 per cent and only 8 per cent for street crime.
Crime figures for 2001-02 show that street crime, which includes personal robberies and snatches, rose to 69,987 offences recorded by police. In 2000-01, there were 50,607 muggings".
I guess we'll need all those doctors now. It isn't just me who isn't convinced. Boris Johnson points out:
"Labour has raised taxes enormously since it came to
power: a grand total of £100 billion, which is nearly £2,000 for
every man, woman and child in the country.
Unless my ears were deceiving me, he intends to increase general
government spending from £390 billion to £470 billion over the next
four years, and this increment will somehow be derived from a £6.1
billion increase in taxation. There is something there that doesn't
quite add up, isn't there?"
Too right. The whole farrago is a disaster waiting to happen. It doesn't kick in four another year anyway, and there is little chance they will be able to sort any of this stuff out:
"After umpteen NHS reforms, there are now more hospital administrators than there
are beds. There are more people on waiting lists than there were
when Labour came to power in 1997. We are now driven to the crazy
expedient of sending NHS patients to France and Germany, because
they face unconscionable delays in this country.
How can Gordon Brown seriously call the health service the "envy of
the world" - or whatever fatuous phrase he used - when people are
flying to South Africa for cataract operations? There are now more
people than ever before who are driven to using their own resources
to pay for medicine in their old age. That is not because Labour has
encouraged people to insure themselves privately, and thereby
alleviate some of the burden on the state; far from it. One of
Labour's first and most spiteful acts was to remove the tax breaks
for private health care for the elderly, with the result that
200,000 people gave up their policies. People are going private in
despair at the NHS, and there should be no shame in pointing that
out".
Of course the Wanker has an unique take on things. It has no less than two leaders on the subject. The first fatuous one announces:
"The first, and most important, response to yesterday's Budget was unalloyed celebration.... This is a Budget that combines cleverness with compassion".
There's a bit more detail further down the page:
"So what is on offer: 200 new hospitals, better integrated care, GPs
delivering an increasingly wide range of services including disease
prevention. Where once there were 18-month waits there would be a two-week
maximum - for both outpatients and inpatients. New national standards,
which already apply to cancer and coronary care, would be extended to
other diseases. The NHS estate - one third pre-1948, one-tenth 19th
century - would be transformed. Do the Tories really want to oppose this
package?"
I certainly hope so. Hugo Young chips in:
"The Budget asks a deep question about the character of the British people. What do they really care about? What sort of society do they believe in?"
Well Hugo, matey, I can only speak for myself. I don't believe in increasing health spending by 7.1% a year for five years. Imagine all the prisons, policeman, and trident missiles we could get for that. How many teenagers really needed to have their tattoos removed, lesbians to have abortions, and footballers to have their feet put in plaster, anyway? The whole thing is a waste of money, buddy boy, and pretending there is going to be dancing in the streets and that we'll all go to Heaven on a wave of 'compassion' won't solve anything. I know you take it as read that everything important in our lives has to be undertaken by the Government, while we, the drones can only be trusted with decisions such as what colour we paint the walls, and whether to holiday either in Blackpool or Benidorm, but socialism didn't work in Russia, North Korea or China, and it isn't going to work here. There are other points of view, you know. Like Alice Miles at the Times, who doesn't like what she sees.
"The vision Mr Wanless paints is of a truly world-class health service, with maximum waits of two weeks, 75 per cent single-bed rooms, equipment replaced every eight years and a £42 billion building programme to deliver 205 new hospitals over the next two decades. Mr Brown
had better get his hard hat on and start digging. There is absolutely no way all this will happen".
And even the Indy is sceptical. You know things are bad when those guys are on the case:
"This is certainly a vital moment for the NHS. If it does not show
impressive results for the vast increase in resources, it could be
the end. Yet Mr Brown has approached his task by closing down debate
and taking the wrong course of simply pouring more public money into
a centralised, unresponsive service".
The Sun also feels betrayed:
"This is a Budget which smacks of red-blooded Socialism and redistribution of wealth.
That’s not what this country voted for".
Meanwhile, over in la-la land, Debs has her own take on things:
"I know it's weird, but I always find the Budget to be a terribly emotional experience. Since he has been Chancellor, Gordon Brown has produced budgets that have made me feel elated, and budgets that have inspired my absolute fury. This one, though, made me feel oddly desolate. At times, in fact, it brought me close to tears".
Weird? You said it, babe.
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Wednesday, April 17
Still, for embittered class warriors everywhere, there is always Paul Foot. Discussing today's budget and our prudent chancellor he begins:
"Gordon Brown's proud boast is that he has lifted the poor out of poverty. But when is he going to lift the rich out of obscenity?"
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"Gordon Brown's proud boast is that he has lifted the poor out of poverty. But when is he going to lift the rich out of obscenity?"
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Rather a good day at the Wanker. Richard Reeves points out that economics isn't everything in politics. Hardly an exceptionable argument, but unusual to hear it here where everything seems to be political. Also, there is a defence, of sorts, of Israel from Jonathan Freedland. And Rod Liddle says:
"There is a theory, loosely based on Freud, that the left's demonisation of capitalists was simply a displaced anti-semitism".
Is there? But guess who he's psychoanalysing? Yes, it's Tom Paulin!
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"There is a theory, loosely based on Freud, that the left's demonisation of capitalists was simply a displaced anti-semitism".
Is there? But guess who he's psychoanalysing? Yes, it's Tom Paulin!
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Tuesday, April 16
The relaunched Daily Mirror is unnaccountably proud of itself:
"THE Mirror has a long, glorious and proud past that stretches back for almost a century", it claims.
"We have brought in a team of brilliant new writers to bring an even greater depth and substance to our pages.
John Pilger, the legendary campaigning journalist, is back. Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian has come to the Mirror, as have Matthew Norman from the Evening Standard and Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair".
We can't say we haven't been warned.
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"THE Mirror has a long, glorious and proud past that stretches back for almost a century", it claims.
"We have brought in a team of brilliant new writers to bring an even greater depth and substance to our pages.
John Pilger, the legendary campaigning journalist, is back. Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian has come to the Mirror, as have Matthew Norman from the Evening Standard and Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair".
We can't say we haven't been warned.
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The Sun, presumably as a spoiling tactic for the relaunched Mirror, advises Prince Charles to marry Camilla. I'm not sure, and reckon he ought to check out Hawkgirl first. It could be like Ferdinand and Isabella all over again and then we could all become the United States of Great Britain and America. I don't suppose Chris Patten would like it, though.
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Richard Littlejohn:
"What’s in a name? Plenty in my experience. Show me a Chereece or a Kyleene and I’ll show you a slapper".
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"What’s in a name? Plenty in my experience. Show me a Chereece or a Kyleene and I’ll show you a slapper".
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Sorry, I don't think I can do any more posting today, though I haven't yet taken a look at the tabloids, including the Mirror, which has apparently had a print remake, and readopted its original title, the Daily Mirror. I was going to post some stuff about how every one of the broadsheets has an article suggesting that private money has a place in UK healthcare. Now if you'd said this ten years ago,they'd have called you, and they did me, a Nazi. But that's the Blairites for you. When you do stuff you are scum, when they do stuff it shows how much they care. Marvellous. But then, even more shocking, was this, from the Independent. I didn't see it reported anywhere else, so maybe the prized only go to writers from that august journal. Who's going to win it next year? Deborah Orr? I don't usually quote other stories in full, but I want to see it in print again, just to make sure. It is beyond satire.
"Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Independent columnist, has won the George Orwell Prize for a journalist judged to have made political writing into an art.
Ms Alibhai-Brown, who writes extensively on a range of issues – but notably Asian affairs – received the award at a ceremony in London last night, where Rupert Cornwell, The Independent's Washington correspondent, was also commended. Peter Hennessy, the history professor and a member of the judges' panel, said: "We had a very rich field this year, several of whom dealt with the word and the world in a fashion that we think would have satisfied Orwell the critic, Orwell the stylist and, sometimes, Orwell the polemicist. Yasmin's columns on politics and justice, and Islam and society, brought light where there was heat in a sustained and often truly brave fashion."
Cornwell was recognised for his reporting on the attacks of 11 September. Professor Hennessy said: "Rupert Cornwell brought width, depth, analysis and a clean, clear writing style to the events of 11 September and its aftermath in both his reportage and features."
The judging panel was chaired by Sir Bernard Crick, Orwell's biographer.
Ms Alibhai-Brown has previously been shortlisted for the George Orwell Prize. Previous winners from The Independent include Robert Fisk, the Middle East correspondent, David McKittrick, the Ireland correspondent, and the columnist David Aaronovitch.
Simon Kelner, the editor in chief of The Independent, said: "We are delighted to have won this award, which underlines our commitment to political journalism. Yasmin's unique and perceptive columns are in the best traditions of the George Orwell prize."
George Orwell? Unique? Perceptive? Sorry. I need a lie down. I am going outside and may be gone a long time.
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"Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Independent columnist, has won the George Orwell Prize for a journalist judged to have made political writing into an art.
Ms Alibhai-Brown, who writes extensively on a range of issues – but notably Asian affairs – received the award at a ceremony in London last night, where Rupert Cornwell, The Independent's Washington correspondent, was also commended. Peter Hennessy, the history professor and a member of the judges' panel, said: "We had a very rich field this year, several of whom dealt with the word and the world in a fashion that we think would have satisfied Orwell the critic, Orwell the stylist and, sometimes, Orwell the polemicist. Yasmin's columns on politics and justice, and Islam and society, brought light where there was heat in a sustained and often truly brave fashion."
Cornwell was recognised for his reporting on the attacks of 11 September. Professor Hennessy said: "Rupert Cornwell brought width, depth, analysis and a clean, clear writing style to the events of 11 September and its aftermath in both his reportage and features."
The judging panel was chaired by Sir Bernard Crick, Orwell's biographer.
Ms Alibhai-Brown has previously been shortlisted for the George Orwell Prize. Previous winners from The Independent include Robert Fisk, the Middle East correspondent, David McKittrick, the Ireland correspondent, and the columnist David Aaronovitch.
Simon Kelner, the editor in chief of The Independent, said: "We are delighted to have won this award, which underlines our commitment to political journalism. Yasmin's unique and perceptive columns are in the best traditions of the George Orwell prize."
George Orwell? Unique? Perceptive? Sorry. I need a lie down. I am going outside and may be gone a long time.
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I'm starting to feel a bit like those elderly Germans you see in the documentaries. You know, the 75 year olds who were conscripted in the forties, and who all had their chance of shooting Adolf Hitler. I hope my cowardice will not come back to haunt me. Anyway, still reeling from the ramifications of my close encounter with that embittered bogtrotter, Tom Paulin, I had another meeting with the rich and powerful. Yes, last night, in Great Portland Street, I was strolling up the pavement when who did I bump into, but Caroline! Yes, Caggy, blonde Brummie bombshell, sax player, the dulcet-toned songsmith from the original Big Brother. She's not as tall in real life ( to remind yourself of her, see these pics ). Then, still in a trance, I dashed into the nearest pub - well I was going there anyway - and got chatting to a former political correspondent who had packed it all in recently. I casually asked him if he'd ever met the fearless war correspondent, Robert Fisk. His eyes lit up. Yes, he had, only once, back in Kabul in 1980. He had to help him send a piece to the Times, which Fisk was then working for ( maybe he didn't know how to operate a fax machine or something ) and the story was full of derring-do, about how a soviet general had given Fisk a machine gun and ordered him to shoot any rebels when they came round the corner. My colleague said he found the story, as with all Fisky's tales slightly incredible, and said the man had a fantastic knack of having remarkable adventures which could never be either falsified or verified, being as there were never any witnesses. So maybe the I was beaten up by angry Afgoons story was just Fisky falling off his bicycle. To be fair, and this site is nothing but fair, he did say no one had ever caught the great man in a lie, and that he was a pretty keen and zealous reporter, but that nonetheless, and albeit it was the only one meeting, but he did think that, summing it all up, after careful consideration, that Fisky was, and I quote, 'nuts'.
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Monday, April 15
A new twist on the Ecclestone affair from the Times. New Labour will clearly do pretty much anything for money.
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For those worried that our magnificent rulers might end up lying in the gutter with a few copies of the Big Issue for sale here's a story to put your mind at rest. It does help explain why Stephen Byers hangs on so tightly.
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Barbara Amiel has a good round-up of the ludicrously biased reporting on Israel in the UK media. A good example of which is this deranged piece of nonsense by my old favourite Yasmin Alibhai-Brown over at the Indy. Her opening sentence sets the tone:
"First let me say the following as clearly and loudly as I can: I have fought against anti-Semitism all my life, against friends, colleagues, lovers, anyone who expressed anti-Jewish sentiments. I remember one night in 1974 when I stood for four hours under a lamp-post in north Oxford recovering from a screaming row with my ex-husband after he accused me of being excessively emotional about the Holocaust".
Yes, well I'm with her ex-husband. Yasmin would no doubt have been excessively emotional about who left the top off the toothpaste. That's why he divorced you, cretin.
"My nine-year-old daughter was taken to see The Merchant of Venice in the week when all her friends were flooding to Harry Potter because we feel she needs to understand anti-Semitism as it arises around the world once again".
We? I can't believe your ex-husband would have agreed to that one. Depriving kids of Harry Potter really is cruelty.
"I refused to support the UN conference against racism in Durban because I feared it would give licence to people to abuse Jews and it did".
Yeah, okay, you've made your point. You love the Jews, right, but you think Israel's being a little bit aggressive lately. How original.
"And as I observe the unsheathed hatred of Jews among many Muslims here and around the world, I feel shame and rage".
This of course is a crock of shit. I was born a Catholic, but I don't feel shame and rage at paedophile Catholic priests. I didn't do it, so it's not my fault. Why shame, woman?
"I condemn the acts of suicide bombers whose own hopelessness makes them target Israelis in cafés, at weddings, in street markets, bursting open the bodies of the young and the old and themselves; and by each act blowing away peace and progress. Israel – as it was originally created – has an absolute right to exist and to flourish, without fear".
Yeah, okay, you've made your point. You love the Jews, right, but you think Israel's being a little bit aggressive lately. How original.
"But"
ah, at last. Yasmin's big but.
"Israel has absolutely no right to do what it wants, to use such overpowering weaponry against mostly unarmed people (we will never ever know how many are being killed in the current deluge) and justify that by referring to the horrendous history which led to the creation of the Jewish homeland. In fact I would suggest that Ariel Sharon should be tried for crimes against humanity in Sabra and Shatila, and Jenin and other occupied areas and be damned too for so debasing the profoundly important legacy of the Holocaust, which was meant to stop forever nations turning themselves into ethnic killing machines".
You get the picture. But then you already did, didn't you? No mention of why Israel might be acting like it. It's all about the suffering towelheads, isn't it? Interesting courtcase coming up anyway. Not only has she suggested the rather bland prosecution case - crimes against humanity- but she's already found him guilty of something for which she hasn't suggested he be prosecuted - 'debasing the profoundly important legacy of the Holocaust'. Not much chance of a fair trial, then is there? Anyway, she twitters away, at one point quoting an unnamed UK writer. Who is he? Go on, name him, I want to know. Her solution though is the best. Trade sanctions.
"I have already started looking at labels and putting back anything made in Israel".
Yes, and I stopped buying the Independent years ago.
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"First let me say the following as clearly and loudly as I can: I have fought against anti-Semitism all my life, against friends, colleagues, lovers, anyone who expressed anti-Jewish sentiments. I remember one night in 1974 when I stood for four hours under a lamp-post in north Oxford recovering from a screaming row with my ex-husband after he accused me of being excessively emotional about the Holocaust".
Yes, well I'm with her ex-husband. Yasmin would no doubt have been excessively emotional about who left the top off the toothpaste. That's why he divorced you, cretin.
"My nine-year-old daughter was taken to see The Merchant of Venice in the week when all her friends were flooding to Harry Potter because we feel she needs to understand anti-Semitism as it arises around the world once again".
We? I can't believe your ex-husband would have agreed to that one. Depriving kids of Harry Potter really is cruelty.
"I refused to support the UN conference against racism in Durban because I feared it would give licence to people to abuse Jews and it did".
Yeah, okay, you've made your point. You love the Jews, right, but you think Israel's being a little bit aggressive lately. How original.
"And as I observe the unsheathed hatred of Jews among many Muslims here and around the world, I feel shame and rage".
This of course is a crock of shit. I was born a Catholic, but I don't feel shame and rage at paedophile Catholic priests. I didn't do it, so it's not my fault. Why shame, woman?
"I condemn the acts of suicide bombers whose own hopelessness makes them target Israelis in cafés, at weddings, in street markets, bursting open the bodies of the young and the old and themselves; and by each act blowing away peace and progress. Israel – as it was originally created – has an absolute right to exist and to flourish, without fear".
Yeah, okay, you've made your point. You love the Jews, right, but you think Israel's being a little bit aggressive lately. How original.
"But"
ah, at last. Yasmin's big but.
"Israel has absolutely no right to do what it wants, to use such overpowering weaponry against mostly unarmed people (we will never ever know how many are being killed in the current deluge) and justify that by referring to the horrendous history which led to the creation of the Jewish homeland. In fact I would suggest that Ariel Sharon should be tried for crimes against humanity in Sabra and Shatila, and Jenin and other occupied areas and be damned too for so debasing the profoundly important legacy of the Holocaust, which was meant to stop forever nations turning themselves into ethnic killing machines".
You get the picture. But then you already did, didn't you? No mention of why Israel might be acting like it. It's all about the suffering towelheads, isn't it? Interesting courtcase coming up anyway. Not only has she suggested the rather bland prosecution case - crimes against humanity- but she's already found him guilty of something for which she hasn't suggested he be prosecuted - 'debasing the profoundly important legacy of the Holocaust'. Not much chance of a fair trial, then is there? Anyway, she twitters away, at one point quoting an unnamed UK writer. Who is he? Go on, name him, I want to know. Her solution though is the best. Trade sanctions.
"I have already started looking at labels and putting back anything made in Israel".
Yes, and I stopped buying the Independent years ago.
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Sunday, April 14
Lynn Barber has a long interview with Christopher Hitchens in the Observer. It's a bit too lavish with the praise but it does disclose the long mugged-by-reality procedure going on in the poor soul's mind. He says about his conservative brother Peter,
'Politically, the differences are trivial, but I have a bigger difference between myself and anyone who believes in any religion than I do on any other subject. I don't trust anyone who believes in religion. So we don't agree.'
Well if he really thinks the political differences are trivial then he really is on the road to recovery. Likewise the fact that he was quite content to have fallen out with numerous 'liberals' over his claim that long-time pal Sidney Blumenthal was a perjuror suggests he's almost half way there. A man prepared to put truth before friendship. I like it. Now we just have to get him reading Eve-tushnet and the journey will have ended.
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'Politically, the differences are trivial, but I have a bigger difference between myself and anyone who believes in any religion than I do on any other subject. I don't trust anyone who believes in religion. So we don't agree.'
Well if he really thinks the political differences are trivial then he really is on the road to recovery. Likewise the fact that he was quite content to have fallen out with numerous 'liberals' over his claim that long-time pal Sidney Blumenthal was a perjuror suggests he's almost half way there. A man prepared to put truth before friendship. I like it. Now we just have to get him reading Eve-tushnet and the journey will have ended.
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I've been giving further thoughts to the noted poet, critic and all round wanker Tom Paulin, prompted by reports today that he might in fact be prosecuted for his murderous fantasies. Two, maybe three years ago I was in a cinema in Leicester Square, having been given a free ticket to see the dreadful Spielberg movie Amistad. There, a couple of rows ahead of me, stood the great Irish poet himself, looking tall and sulky, armed with a Styrofoam cup of coffee. Next to him was the fatter-than-he-looks-on-TV Mark Lawson, similarly attired. They don't dress that badly when they're on the box, I assure you. If only I'd known he was going to be there then I could have stuck a few sticks of dynamite in my pocket and blown us all to shreds. Of course the world would then have been deprived of this wonderful weblog, but hey, we British Imperialists have to make that kind of utilitarian calculation all the time. I never did find out if they liked the movie as I had long since abandoned that programme. It used to appear late on Thurday night clashing directly with Question Time, and has never been the same since Alison Pearson and Tony Parsons have made way for a rogues gallery of socialists, feminists and token race fetishists. I can't think of a single right-winger ever being asked his opinion on the programme, and it does get a bit tedious listening to these goons mouthing off about how every work of art, from Spielberg to the Spice Girls has to be viewed through the prism of patriarchy, white society and all the rest of it. Yes, but is it actually any good?
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