Hippies Found To Be Right!

Or perhaps not, the Biotechnology industry is vapourware central, still recent research suggest that flowers may beat bombs after all.

Groovy!

Draw Your Own Conclusions

Jackie reports that the Independant and the Morning Star both had the same headline today. Wonder what the Indie would say if the Daily Mail and the BNP News shared a headline ?

Not To Be Used As Advertised

Jacki D draws attention to what's likely to be the slithering filth's next talking point: You can't trust a Law Lord to judge these things. Ian Murray points out the basic insanity in this argument.

I'd add a hearty 'WHS' while pointing out a further insanity here. One of the distinguishing features of the L3 agenda has been support for judicial activism. So now they argue that judges can't be trusted to do their own job, but they can be trusted to do Parliament's job by legislating from the bench.

How much weed do you have to smoke before that makes sense ?

Why I Hate The BBC

Thanks to Scott Burgess for bringing to light an incident which summerises better than Shakesphere could what's wrong with the BBC.

Need any more proof be sought that the inhabitants of the BBC bubble regard facts and people from outside as mere props and patsies, brought in to add a degree of credibility to the BBC's transmission of a predetermined message ?

No, I'd rather not do that. Let's talk about [Defence Secretary] Geoff Hoon, which is what I asked you to talk about.

I don't have a lot of time for politicians - we haven't had a genuinely well-intentioned man in Parliament since Guy Fawkes - but doesn't it sum up perfectly the sheer arrogance of the BBC that a complete non-entity like Nick 'Who ?' Clark genuinely believes he can order about a former defence minister and member of the House of Lords like some Victorian aristocrat dealing with a village idiot.

Say what you like about Monkey Man, but weasels like Clark would never take that approach with John Prescott.

History v. 1.0

So, anyway, now journalists have abandoned actual journalism in favour of full-time spinning, who's going to write the first draft of history ? May I suggest bloggers ? Here's Nicholas on the day the BBC got run over by a truck.

One thing that does hit me from that report is how fast the BBC reverted back to type after the initial shock. Natural arrogance may have played a part, but I suspect a far larger one was played by Howard's disgusting decision to side with the BBC. Had the Conservatives gone for the throat, they could've turned a retreat into a rout. They did not. Never again can Consrvative MPs complain of BBC bias. They had the chance to tear its heart out and drink its blood, yet they threw it all away for the chance to jeer at Princess Tony. No doubt updated versions of history wil judge them.

Paranoia Refuted

So, anyway, you remember how those Right Wing Extremists claimed that once the Government claimed the right to outlaw offensive speech, then sooner or later speaking against the Government would be an offense ? Well, it's so not true!

We Should Sue!

Tony is innocent, after all. It's amazing to think there are actually things about which Blair has been honest. Sort of the stopped clock hypothesis really. Still, Blair being in the clear has thrown into sharp relief the utter collapse of a once great British institution.

This has been a truly terrible day for the Conservative Party. Even before publication of Hutton, Michael Howard's strategy was looking distinctly strange. Howard seemed to argue that, even though the Conservatives supported the war they had their fingers crossed (or something). Apart from the fact that this makes the Conservative Party sound really stupid, it makes no political sense. The anti-war groups were 90% made up of… well, people like Glenda Jackson. Howard can tattoo 'BUSH=HITLER' on his forehead but there ain't no way these loons are going to vote Conservative. Similarly, Peter Hitchens style Conservatives aren't going to vote Lib Dem under any circumstances.

Howard's position would only make political sense if there was any hope of finding proof that Blair had, in fact, carried out a huge deception to lure Britain into war with a middle eastern Shangri-La. If this were the case, it would now be game over but even pre-Hutton this was hardly likely. Leaving aside the fact the PM is slicker than a vaselined rattlesnake, not only did SIS genuinely believe that Saddam had WMD so did the US, the French, the Russians and most of Saddam's army. Yet, we were supposed to believe that Blair had taken part in a complex deception relating solely to a tangential issue (how quickly the WMD could be brought into action). The only suggestion more absurd than that is the idea that the Conservatives would have lined up with the Saddamites and the Hate America crowd, if only they hadn't been bamboozled by Tony's spin.

Howard's position was so blatantly opportunistic and cynical that it achieved the almost impossible: it made Blair look principled. All of which would've been bad enough yet Howard not only managed to make himself and his party look stupid, he threw away a once a generation chance to damage one of the key institutions of the Liberal establishment.

What was refreshing about Hutton's criticism of the BBC was not so much the content (old news in the blogsphere) but the source and setting in which it occurred. The Beeb has always maintained that the mere fact a person criticises the BBC proves he's too unenlightened to have a worthwhile opinion anyway. Well, here's a Law Lord slapping them senseless: what flavour of moron is Hutton, exactly ?

The BBC has long traded on its reputation for objectivity to allow it to slander Conservatives. Just when we were getting ready to enjoy the Beeb catching a full load of consequences, up pops Howard to stand shoulder to shoulder with the self-same people who are normally employed trying to convince the public that he eats babies. Absolutely brilliant.

Here is one of the biggest, yet least recognised, schisms in British politics: that between the Conservative Party and actual Conservatives. The Conservative Party is seemingly incapable of taking the long view about anything: everything is dominated by purely tactical and cynical calculations which themselves are thrown out by the Party's inability to comprehend the existance of intelligent life outside the Westminister Village. So, of course the Party chose to push the line that Blair is a conniving fraud (who did they think didn't know that ?). Thanks to the Conservative Party, Hutton looks like being next weeks chip paper yet it could all have been so different.

With the possible exception of the weather and 'The Sky At Night', a pervasive Liberal bias creeps into everything the BBC does. What percentage of their dramas feature sinister factory owners who put profit before the safety of their workers ? Is the BBC even capable of making a comedy series which doesn't rely on at least one stereotyped Conservative character to be the butt of jokes ? In fact, when's the last time the BBC featured a Conservative character (in any program) who wasn't there merely for the main (hipper, smarter, better looking) characters to react against ? The Conservative Party could have shredded for ever the BBC's reputation for objectivity and let the BBC be recognised for the snarling, partisan, activist's employment agency it undoubtedly is. This wouldn't necessarily mean privatising it, but that's where the logic would inevitably led once the public started to think of the BBC as a way to transfer public money to overgrown student politicos. But that would've taken actual vision, and there ain't none of that in the cesspit that is the modern Conservative Party.

By choosing to base their entire strategy on the political equivalent of arguing over angels and pinheads the Conservative Party emphasised how utterly bereft they are of any long-term strategy. We have one of the worst governments in our nation's history and all the Tories can do is the political equivalent of pulling faces and mooning. Can't they at least change the name of the party ? They're giving us real Conservatives a bad name.

Self-Defence: An Imperial View

Of all the things that tee me off, one of the biggest is the whole 'Crime Prevention' scam: fit a lock to your windows so burglars can't break in - yeah, like that'll work, unless the housebreaker in question has mastered rock technology - Doh!. Naaah - it's just a way for our rigor mortised law enforcement community to try and shift the blame onto the victim: 'Well, ma'am, we might have stripped you of both the right and the means to defend yourself on the implied promise that we would defend you then utterly failed actually to do so BUT you didn't seal yourself in a concrete tomb, so you were asking to get raped anyway'. Enough already, if the state claims it'll protect us, then it should. If it can't (If ?) then it should shut the hell up and let us protect our familes.

Anyway, the point of that rant is this: His Majesty, Emperor Misha I, shreds Canadian government advice dealing with this very subject.

L3 And Denial

Laban Tall's got the dirty details about how the educrats are using the teaching of the history of the Holocaust to indoctrinate kids with Liberal drivel. Needless to say that all the usual objections to this sort of thing apply double here. There's the obvious point that money extorted from security guards and checkout girls in the name of education is being used to fund political thought control. There's the arrogance of the educrats, believing in their divine right to extort money from a large section of the population while using it to libel those self-same people. There's the humbuggery of the teaching unions, constantly claiming that they lack the time or resources to teach basic literacy yet ever ready to find time and money for Tory baiting. There's the sheer moral cowardice of the Left, having comprehensively lost the argument in the adult world they now resort to trying to brainwash youngsters. There's the inherent thuggery in someone in an position of power abusing that position to libel those under him (and their families), knowing those he targets have no 'right of reply' by virtue of the uneven power relationship. There's the…. Well, let's just say there's plenty wrong with it all.

But that ain't it.

What's really sickening about it is this: they're demagoging the holocaust. Here's one of the great crimes of history and the L3 are using it to bash Conservatives. Suddenly, one of the results here makes a lot more sense. Our nation's alleged deep thinkers were shocked to find that scepticism about the Holocaust was most marked not only amongst the very old but also the young - how can this be, they said, when the Holocaust is taught as part of the National Curriculum ? Well, here's your answer: if the Tories are as bad as Hitler, then Hitler was only as bad as the Conservatives and Auschwitz was a sort of hard-line alternative to Care in the Community that got out of hand.

Trying to link Dr Mengle to Conservatives cutting the budget for the Arts Council isn't just juvenile stupidity. The Holocaust stands out in history as a great crime - to claim that Conservative policy is 'like something out of Nazi Germany' is to whitewash the full evil of what it was the Nazis did. In short, it is to indulge in a form of Holocaust denial.

Greased Weasel Escapes!

With one bound Tony was free. He got away today, he'll get away tomorrow. There won't be any great breakthrough and the chances are that Blair will jump long before he's anywhere near being pushed. Still, with all that, this is perhaps the worst of all possible worlds for Blair.

For a start, while Blair has quelled the rebels this time, rebellion is apt to become a habit. Blair has, once again, resorted to the diva gambit - threatening to take his ball home if the vote goes against him - but this only works a certain number of times (and, indeed, only partially worked this time).In this case the rebels have succeeded in getting significant concessions - which will hardly deter them from trying again later.

About those concessions: the tuition fees idea was never well thought out but the bill as passed is a legislative monstrosity. Students will be charged huge fees, since they'll make a shed-load of cash later, except they won't pay the fees if their parents are poor. Like, why? Surely if mere graduation results in being swept away by a tidal wave of filthy lucre then it hardly matters who your parents are ? The main result of these concessions is that the lower middle class will take it in the shorts again. If you haven't worked since Lady T was at the helm, then the Government will throw money at you. Similarly, if you're filthy rich then who cares ? Nice of the government to knock out some of Orlando and Olivia's competition. In short, smackheads and lawyers are in clover, cops and nurses are going to get the hammer. Again.

This isn't Labour's Poll Tax - the point about the poll tax is that everyone paid it, while tuition fees impact worst on those who actually work for a living. Neither the partners at Scumbag, Weasel and Slime nor their clients really give a rat's backside. If tuition fees are a replay of anything, then it's the collapse of the housing market in the early nineties. Then, people felt betrayed by a Conservative Government that had encouraged house ownership yet (so Liberals claimed) had let buyers sink into negative equity. Note that it was the perception, rather than the reality (and how exactly was the Conservative Party responsible for the market doing what markets do anyway ?) that did for John Major. There's no such ambiguity here: Blair talked about education, education, education and served. up debt, debt, debt. He's betrayed the aspirations of the very people whose support put him in No 10 in the first place.

They won't like it.

Random Thoughts.....

Say what you like about them but, in some things, the French are resilient. Hardly have they overcome the disappointment of their old friend Saddam's Really Bad Year than they find a whole new bunch of thugs to suck up to.

Why is this not terrorism ? Never mind wider issues, here we have a group of people who want to do something entirely legal being prevented from doing so by the fear of attack by - ahem - 'militants' as the Beeb would have it. Is there no one amongst the 650 or so castratos in our Parliament who can see that this is a massive defeat for democracy ? Thugs who try to push their agenda through violence are terrorists, it's that simple. But find an MP willing to push for a full-throttle econut stamp-o-thon ? Nada.

Everyone in the known universe has already commented upon this. Yes, it's a disgrace, but it illustrates a more general problem with the BBC. Here's the Beeb, it's allowed to extort money from janitors because it supposedly provides a vital public service ('educate, entertain, inform') yet it's spending money (arguably) to leave the public less well-informed. After all, by dominating Hutton coverage it seeks to prevent people going elsewhere so that they get the Party line rather than an independent view.

This is it - there may be good reasons for the licence fee, but supporting Greg Dyke's attempts to spin his way out of trouble isn't one of them. The BBC's own actions have confirmed that, far from being an objective news organisation, it seeks to grind it's own axe. Why should we persist with it when it has so clearly turned it's back on its rightful role in favour of partisan activism ?

Finally, let the Tinfoilfest begin: Mel P flags up this letter in the Guardian. I blame the French, myself.

Random Linkage

So, like, these Chechens are just fighting for self-determination, right ? Sort of like East Timor ?

Oops.

Now, what was that the L3 were saying about 'Convert or die' being an invention of those horrid Right-Wing Extremists ?

Maybe those loons at lgf have a point ? Turns out there are plenty of things Chuckie K finds it easier to condem than merely expressing homicidal Judenhess. And to ram the point home, nearly one in five Brits wants to keep No 10 Judenfrei.

Clearly, it is time for the BBC to run another series of programs warning about the threat from Islamophobia.

Maybe Europe is just in a death spiral ? Check here to see what you have to do to follow in the footsteps of Churchill, Niels Bohr and Sir Lawrence Olivier.

Still, at least technolgy is helping to make our lives easier. Now, you can stock up on fashionable Bush hatred without having to risk possible brian damage reading the Guardian. Yes, it's the Bush Conspiracy Generator. It's like having your own Mikey Moore, but less smelly and closer to reality, obviously.

The Talented Mr Howard

PC debunks the Liberal smear that Conservatism is simply a knee-jerk reaction to change. I'd say 'what he said' with the addendum that if you want real reactionaries these days you'd do better on the left side of the political spectrum. The NHS ? Law Enforcement ? Stayte Skools ? All rubbish, but suggesting to Liberals that meaningful reform is needed is like telling the Inquisition that the Pope's a smart guy but, hey, he's not infallible.

The flip-side of that is the way Liberals have busted our patent on nostalgia. Liberals often like to caricature Conservatives as being obsessed with the Fifties as some kind of Golden Age but, to listen to a Liberal, Britain in 1978 was the Garden of Eden. Every house had a money tree (which would at least explain the inflation figures), there were so many jobs people would've been able to have two each except you only needed to work five hours a week to live like a Lord and besides, there was no crime anyway so the Police had plenty of time to moonlight.

No, enough already. Lady T was elected precisely because Britain was slithering down the U-bend and she was seen as the only person who could stop it. Likewise, there's no better model for how today's Conservative Party can turn things round than to learn the lesson from the talented Mr Howard - the one who lives down under.

John Howard has built his success from throwing Liberal sacred cows on the barbie. His latest crusade is one that's directly relevant to Britain: he's taking on Australia's educrats. The honest Mr Blair approves, while Oz blogger Prof Bunyip sums exactly why Howard combines good policy with good politics on this issue.

Soon, in the approach to the coming election, it will be the education writers' turn to demand that readers abandon reality, and do so with the same determination that prevails in Fairfax and ABC news rooms. The voters won't pick up the cue, of course, because they know all about the schools Howard wants to change. Their kids go to them. But the Hilmerites' tin ear won't catch the buzz of genuine discontent and the papers will be full of scare stories that none but the writers and those quoted take seriously. In fact, inevitably, every slanted assault citing yet another outraged educational theorist will further confirm the increasingly widespread suspicion that the taxpayers' dollar buys bulk orders of careerist gibberish, rather than good grades for junior.

Hoonatic

At the moment Geoff Hoon seems to be employing a strange version of the insanity defence - a sort of stupidity defence. The MoD may be a trainwreck but, says Hoon, what can he do about it ? He only runs the place. There is plenty wrong with this picture but the first thing to be said is that Hoon's argument for not being sacked is, basically, that he had no idea his Ministry had collapsed into chaos - which is not normally taken as a reason for further employment.

That's the thing though. No one suggests Hoon has committed any criminal offence. We're not suggesting he be deprived of his liberty, we suggest he be deprived of a job he lacks any aptitude whatsoever for. Yet, to listen to his Liberal defenders, you'd think sacking Hoon merely for being useless would be the moral equivalent of execution without trial.

Yes, there are serious problems at the MoD - and most of them are attributable simply to Parliament's financial anorexia: the obsessive belief that no matter how thin the 'Thin Red Line' gets, there's always more fat to be cut. No, a Conservative victory would not result in the money spigot being turned on. Yes, even Conservative pin-ups Churchill and Thatcher made some truly awful decisions when dealing with defence issues. But the charge against Hoon is not concerned with matters of policy or simple shortage of resources. The charge is that he has completely mismanaged what the Ministry does have.

Fatty Nick Soames reports that the MoD has managed to lose 200 000 sets of body armour. How do you lose 200 000 of anything ? Meanwhile, Gormless Geoff defence is to claim there were sufficient sets 'in theatre' - a meaningless statement if ever there was one. Similarly, the Hutton enquiry revealed a man seemingly unaware of what even his closest officials are doing. The Government is not short of meaningless non-jobs, window-dressing and pantomime initiatives, but the Ministry of Defence is none of these things. It deals, quite literally, with matters of life and death. If, as Hoon's supporters maintain, he has done nothing that lead to unnecessary deaths then it is also true that he has done nothing to avoid them either. By his own testimony, Hoon is not only a waste of space, but his continued employment prevents a more vigorous and focused individual from taking up the duties which he has consistently failed to discharge.

That's one of the defining marks of this Government. They've tried to turn the Constitution on it's head. Traditionally, politicians have been answerable to Parliament for the actions of their Departments. By such means the political neutrality of the civil service is balanced with the need for accountability. Under Nu Lab though, the civil service has been politicised while Ministers have stood at the Dispatch Box and shrugged their shoulders, claiming 'Nowt to do with me, mate'. Is it any wonder that one of the characteristics of this Government has been officiadom constantly intruding into the lives of the citizenry while neglecting the very activities they were set up to deal with in the first place ?

It is entirely central to our idea of democratic government that ministers should not be able to evade responsibility by a kind of reversed Nuremberg defence - 'they weren't following orders'. Of course - and here we enter tinfoil territory - it may be quite deliberate. Just as Nu Lab outsourced the manufacture of controversial law to the Courts via inkblot legislation such as the Human Rights Act, allowing politically-motivated civil servants to run riot allows Nu Lab to push its agenda while maintaining plausible deniability. Which makes it all the more important that the Conservative Party keeps hammering away at ministers such as Hoon who have presided over disaster. It is their fault, they are responsible for the actions of their ministry and to maintain anything else is to try and chip away at the very ideals of our democracy.

Steyn On (Over)Regulation

Drake's Drum points out another great column from Mark Steyn:

It was after getting a "furious" call from Mr Phillips that the BBC's deputy director-general yanked Kilroy off the air. The CRE's complaint is now being studied by Scotland Yard's "Racial and Violent Crimes Task Force".

It's good to know that a Kilroy column qualifies as a "Violent Crime". It may explain why, when confronted with the corpse of 83-year-old Colonel Robert Workman in a Hertfordshire village, Her Majesty's Constabulary spent three hours at the crime scene without spotting that the Colonel had a bullet in him.

It was only when the undertakers arrived and picked up the body that the wound was noticed, by which time the flatfoots had blundered all over the joint obliterating clues. If only Col Workman had been found clutching the Sunday Express, PC Plod might have said: "Kilroy, eh? Looks like a case for the Violent Crimes Task Force, sir."

Presstitution Latest

The Creator of Worlds is still having trouble with Café Press over his offensive teddy bear. But some people get along just fine with CP: check out this round-up here. Add in this happy bunch of ROPers and tell me Café Press are not the Dhimmiest Dhimmis in Dhimmiville.

Done It Again

… wrote an entry slagging off the scientific community. I'm aware that I may seem to spend an inordinate amount of time slagging Big Science, but hey, they deserve it. Take the whole Atkins fiasco. Eight days a week the scienceistas are clogging up the air waves talking about the dangers of obesity, well, here's a diet which seems to work even on apparently hopeless case fatty bloaters. You'd think scientists would be carefully examining it to see how if there are any lessons to be learned but the problem is that the underlying doctrine of the Atkins diet is at 90' to the existing weight-loss paradigm. So - in an example of the disinterested pursuit of truth for which they are justifiably famous - instead of checking for lessons to learn, the scienceistas are desperately grasping for someway, anyway, to discredit it. Which is why they're redlining the smug meter over the latest shot in the Food Wars.

Yet what has sent the scienceistas into ecstasy ? Simply this: the research has shown that Atkins followers lose weight because their appetite is reduced - possibly, the researchers suggest, by a mysterious protein in their diet. True, the scientists haven't yet isolated the protein, or even explained why it doesn't get digested when taken orally (as protein normally is, otherwise diabetics would be able to swallow their insulin). But Dr Atkins has been nailed. The heretic has been zapped. Another victory for the Kool Aid drinkers.

Except…..

The first person to predict the suppressive effect of the Atkins diet on the appetite was….. Dr Robert Atkins. And he didn't need no wacky Protein X, neither. While science's Inner Party never misses a chance to point out unnatural the Atkins diet is, the normal British diet is hardly what Ug and chums ate. On the contrary, our diet is loaded with highly refined simple carbohydrates. Atkins claimed that when somebody eats a typical modern meal these carbohydrates are digested ultra-fast causing blood sugar to zoom up. This in turn causes insulin levels to rocket as well. This hormone causes sugar to be cleared from the blood and stored as fat - meaning that, soon after a meal, blood sugar crashes, resulting in lethargy and a craving for more food (so the cycle starts again). With the Atkins diet this shouldn't happen since the foods are designed to release energy slowly - hence no cravings and no bingeing. This idea is central to Atkins - for example, he devotes one of the early chapters to talking about the role of insulin.

Who knows how - or even if - Atkins works, but one thing is certain: interpreting research showing Atkins users eat less as somehow being a rebuttal of the Atkin's doctrine is - ahem - counterintuitive to say the least. These results are entirely compatible with Atkins. Yet these reports are not without value: the spin put on them provides a perfect example of science's descent into a branch of politics.

Sympathy For The Devil

Tempting though it is to concentrate on piling up the brushwood and shopping for a stake in the case of Prof Meadow, aka Mr Munchhausen, the destroyer of thousands of families, we should never forget that he should never have been in a position to cause such mayhem in the first place.

A vote of no-thanks is due to our legal system. Normally a baseball bat is required to prevent lawyers and judges babbling about transparency, accountability, defendant's rights and such. Yet when the plaintiffs are their fellow feeders at the trough of socialist social engineering, social workers, they jettison most of the principles of British law to produce a system that had more in common with the Inquisition than anything recognisable as the product of a modern, democratic state.

But what of Meadow's colleagues ? Big Science has stubbornly continued to hoover up taxpayer's money while screeching that they don' need no steenkin' oversight. Science is self-correcting, see ? Yet thousands of innocent families have been destroyed and the scientific community not only managed not to rock the boat, they refrained from so much as shifting their buttocks.

There are plenty of complex, cutting edge issues in science: this wasn't one of them. Meadow claimed that the probability of a mother losing two babies to cot death was the same as the probability that two randomly selected babies would die from cot death. It don't matter where you stand on Nature Vs Nurture, this is garbage. Two babies with the same parents, growing up in the same environment are anything but randomly selected. An A-Level biology student could spot that, but science's alleged great & good claim to have been channelling Stevie Wonder. That, in and off itself should raise serious questions about the future of self-regulation but, when compared to the near lynching of Andrew Wakefield, the contrast is compelling. Think how many families would have been saved if only Meadw had spoken out against MMR.

Above all else though, we should tip our hat to the child protection industry. A lone lunatics like Meadow would never have been able to cause the damage he did without the unstinting support of the beardy-weirdeys. Just as in Cleveland, Orkney, Pembrokeshire and so many other places, it was the ability of social workers to dive onto the dippiest theory or the junkiest of junk science and ride it like a ten pound whore that turned a mere act of isolated idiotude into a social disaster. Whenever we hear talk of social work, we should remember these names and say to ourselves: this is what these people are all about.

Taking Their Ball Home

Remind me again, who are the fascists exactly ? The Electoral Reform Society has decided that this whole 'election' thing is a bit of a drag, after all. The morons keep voting the wrong way so the ERS wants to play the voting system like a violin to ensure the right sort of people get in.

Needless to say, we're supposed to turn a blind eye to this sort of blatant manipulation of our democratic system because there's a Right-Wing Extremist bogeyman out there somewhere. Even from first principles the argument is garbage, relying as it does on the type of logic people used to assure us in 1997 that by today Marconi would be bigger than BP and M & S combined. Oops - turns out blind extrapolation doesn't work after all. Once you consider that the whole allure of the BNP is that they're hate figures to the self-satisfied political establishment then you realise nothing would sink them faster than actually getting elected and revealing to the world that what they're really an alternative to is evolution. Having them talk publicly about what they believe does not increase respect for them and besides, it's hard to be all radical and rebellious while you're chairman of the municipal drains committee [although the triopoly are doing their best to help them out by refusing to cooperate with them, thereby ensuring they get all the benefits of power with none of the responsibility].

Note too that while the ERS warns about the dangers of the BNP, they have a bad case of laringytis when talking about Sinn Fein in government, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, Islamist groups, the far left or animal rights nuts. Maybe it isn't the violence they object to after all.

Here's the irony though: the BNP's appeal is to those voters who feel they've been left on the kerb by the professional parties. Their success is a symptom of a problem in British democracy, not a cause of it. People think of politicians as Eighteenth century aristocrats reborn: smug, elitist, amoral, corrupt, depraved and utterly untustworthy. Yet, here's the ERS answer: keep changing the mode of election until they find a way to keep the mainstream deadbeats in office until the Sun burns out. And they wonder why people don't trust the political establishment ?

Kilroy Wasn't Here

So anyway, RKS gets slammed for shouting fire in the crowded theatre of British racial politics by helping to propagate untruths and unflattering stereotypes, right ?

So what is Trevor 'Weasel' Phillips going to say about this:

Sir Ridley Scott, the Oscar-nominated director, was savaged by senior British academics last night over his forthcoming film which they say "distorts" the history of the Crusades to portray Arabs in a favourable light...

...Prof Riley-Smith, who is Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge University, said the plot was "complete and utter nonsense". He said that it relied on the romanticised view of the Crusades propagated by Sir Walter Scott in his book The Talisman, published in 1825 and now discredited by academics.

"It sounds absolute balls. It's rubbish. It's not historically accurate at all. They refer to The Talisman, which depicts the Muslims as sophisticated and civilised, and the Crusaders are all brutes and barbarians. It has nothing to do with reality."...


[Dr Jonathan Philips] said: "The Templars as 'baddies' is only sustainable from the Muslim perspective, and 'baddies' is the wrong way to show it anyway. They are the biggest threat to the Muslims and many end up being killed because their sworn vocation is to defend the Holy Land."

So Christians are depicted as sadistic maniacs, slaughtering peace-loving Muslims indiscriminatly, then getting stuffed by heroic Muslim warriors. Not that that could ever incite anyone from a notoriously peaceful part of the world like the Middle East.

It gets worse:

Dr Philips said that by venerating Saladin, who was largely ignored by Arab history until he was reinvented by romantic historians in the 19th century, Sir Ridley was following both Saddam Hussein and Hafez Assad, the former Syrian dictator. Both leaders commissioned huge portraits and statues of Saladin, who was actually a Kurd, to bolster Arab Muslim pride.

So, not only are Christians depicted as psychotic killers but the Islamofascist's favorite pin-up gets a full Lewinsky.

Ten to one that instead of a police investuigation, Ridley-Scott becomes the toast of the enlightened class for being so 'daring'.

Bin Laden can almost be forgiven his illusions about western decadence.

A Random Thought

Doesn't it sum up perfectly Nu Labour's preference for the illusion of progress over real achievement that at the same time they've launched a massively-expensive and carefully choreographed Olympic bid, we now find that British soldiers engaged in evicting a evil dictator from power were unnecessarily placed in harm's way by penny-pinching and a chimp's tea party level of organisation ?

Dhimmis D'Jour

The Creator of Worlds is having trouble with Cafe Press. They've zapped his account because they claim the merchandise is offensive. Click here to see the kind of in-your-face offensitude he was selling, then check here and here for two (amongst many other) examples of what the Cafe Presstitutes consider A-OK.

The Penny Drops

I wasn't going to blog today, but this article sums up perfectly what I've always felt about the NSPCC and their sinister fellow travelers in the supposed child protection industry.

AN NSPCC advertising campaign is poisoning relationships between parents and their children and undermining family life, academics have said.....


....Vanessa Pupavac, lecturer in politics at Nottingham University, said that she was concerned about the NSPCC's approach to children's rights. It does not empower children. It empowers professionals against parents and guardians to speak on their behalf, she added.

Exactly, for these people the 'needs of the children' are merely a flag of convience under which they can push forward with their agenda of underming families in favour of a vast, obtruse bureaucracy that will help turn out indoctrinated drones ready to play their part in socialism's brave new world.

Talking A Great Fight

Our Home Secretary, hey ? What a lad!

But Mr Blunkett, in a remarkably frank admission, said his first thought on hearing about the 57-year-old's death was to celebrate.

"You wake up and you receive a phone call - Shipman's topped himself.

"You have just got to think for a minute: is it too early to open a bottle?

But, oops... the actual policy never quite matches the rhectoric:

Jails are being "overrun" by people convicted for motoring crimes and "quite petty" offences, the UK prisons chief has said.

Martin Narey, head of the newly created National Offender Management Service, said courts needed to realise the value of community penalties.

Motoring offences ? Would he by any chance be referring to the fact the Courts no longer treat driving while stoned or running over people as trivial matters ?

Not Just Britain

Universities: hotbeds of honest and open debate. Also home to large herds of unicorns. Still, at least other countries also have Unis overrun with L3. Check this out and see what counts as offensive imagery in Oz.

Kill'em All

Two heart-warming tales from our loveable social workers. First this:

Thousands of parents who had children taken away from them on the evidence of the controversial paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow will not have them returned.

Ministers are to review as many as 5,000 civil cases of families affected over the past 15 years by Prof Meadow's now-discredited theory of Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy. This accused mothers of harming their children to draw attention to themselves.

Many mothers say that they have been vindicated in their insistence that they were wrongly accused and now want their children back. However, Margaret Hodge, the minister for children, has ruled out any widespread return.

Incidentally, that story contains a perfect summary of how these vermin work:

A mother whose eight-year-old child was taken from her seven years ago after social workers suspected that she was suffering from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy said: "Something has to be done by the Government. It is vindictive. They suspect you of this thing and it gets out of hand and you can't stop them."

The woman, who is 50, cannot be named for legal reasons. She added: "What gets me is it was enough for them just to suspect me of Munchausen's to take my daughter away. If I protest or dispute the evidence they say I'm lying and that proves I've got Munchausen's because lying is one of the symptoms. That's how it works."

Exactly. To borrow a line from His Majesticness, they really should be called Child Abduction Services. Funny how Liberals want to regulate sweetshops into the ground, yet when it comes to scum like this lockjaw sets in. No transparency, no review, no accountability, no consequences. To paraphrase Mel Brooks - it's good to be the King, but being a social worker is much the same.

What's that ? You say it's all Meadow's fault. No doubt he's a nasty piece of work, but how many social workers were prepared to say that this was all BS ? How many were prepared to speak up for families and how many drank the Kool Aid ? My guess: not one had the moral courage to say that abducting kids based on nothing more than a theory advocated by a single doctor was despicable.

But don't think social workers are limited to one type of upscrew. Check out this:

A number of agencies, including police and social services, have been criticised in an investigation into the murder of two brothers by their father.

The boys, Brad and Brett, were killed by Steven Wilson in his car at Hilltop Golf Course in 2002.
Members of Sandwell Area Child Protection Committee claim the organisations involved with the family before the tragedy, failed to spot that the brothers were "at likely risk of significant harm."

You'll never guess what, but there's no social workers to blame in this case either:

The report stressed that no one was being blamed for failing to prevent the boys' deaths but said communication was poor between the agencies.

And another great line about how these pig molesting vermin go about their business:

Darren Cooper, the cabinet member for social inclusion and health on Sandwell Council, said lessons had been learnt. …"It is a confidential report but at the end of the day it's important the public have the confidence in these agencies."

Lessons learned again. Same as always. Dead kids, and these zombie pond scum blathering on about lessons. Two lives destroyed because the bearded filth screwed up again. But don't actually blame anyone.

At this point it is traditional for the snivelling rat weasels to whine that they're damned if they do, damned if they don't.

I say BS.

It's not just that social workers make so many lousy decisions, it's the reason why. In virtually every case the actual facts have taken a back seat to ideology. In the twisted 'Blue Velvet' world of the social worker normality is the enemy. To these people, traditional family life is inherently abusive and the middle class are hypocritical scum - so it stands to reason that their role is not to detect abusers, it is to cobble together enough evidence to allow them to abduct the kids. That's why when a happily-married couple of middle class churchgoers take their child into A & E with a cut head they get the third degree from fanatics anxious to 'prove' abuse. They want to prove that everyone who's made a success of their life is secretly evil, so they can feel better about being a bunch of sicko losers. Equally, when a case comes up where a divorced bum threatens his kids they couldn't give a toss. There's no chance to strike at their class enemies, no message to be sent. It's just some loser killing his kids. How dull.

For vermin like social workers Prof Meadow was manna from heaven. Now, social workers wouldn't have to even go through the chore of making up evidence, and if the victims objected it proves they're guilty.

But this desperate mass production of bogus charges to destroy innocent families has a downside. It leaves very little time to deal with actual abuse, so you get the odd murder. Obviously, these pond scum need more resources so they can continue to harass the innocent while occasionally looking in on actual criminals.

2D Terrorist Sympathiser

So St Pancake of Semtex grabs this years Fiskie. Personally, I was hoping for the BBC, but that's just parochial of me. The Flatpack Nazi is still a good choice - plus we get the beautiful sound of Liberal's turning the BS meter up to 11.

What's that I hear ? 'Not nice to make fun of dead people'. That's OK, I don't count terrorist enabling scum as people. Here we have a major terrorist collaborator whose work involves making it easier for fanatics to blow up restaurants full of civilians [where was the Left's moralising then ?]. Suddenly, she is dead. She can no longer help people turn a birthday party into a blood bath. It is objectively less likely that an Israeli civilian will see her one year-old son blown to pieces in front of her. What does qualify as A Good Thing in your world ?

Next up on the Talking Pointogram, 'She was naïve, but not evil'. Right, I'm sure that'll be a great comfort to those who lost loved ones to attacks she helped cover. I can certainly believe that you get a warped idea of what's happening over there relying on the mainstream media, but ISM don't exactly hide there sympathies, what with comments about supporting the Palestinian's right to armed struggle and the like. Even in the unlikely event of Rachel Corrie deciding to join up with these lunatics without doing the little stuff, like checking out their aims and philosophy, she could hardly have remained ignorant for very long. Not with the parade of bombers through their offices, the frequency with which ISM protests happen to coincide with sniper attacks or the choice of targets for protection [terrorist hideouts only need apply].

Was that a weasel coughing or is it another Talking Point ? Ah yes, 'she was fighting for peace'. Y'know, it's funny, but the Left often complains about its dissent being crushed yet Little Green Footballs is constantly criticised by the self-same people because it lets them speak for themselves. And the picture of Corrie in full Islamist regalia, burning a US flag certainly speaks for the peace-loving nature of this scumsucking bomb whore.

Ah yes, last through the door (but no less valuable for that), it's the Therapy Nation defence. Corrie may have been a willing accessory to murder but you have to admire her courage. No, you have to be nauseated by her hypocrisy. The Israelis have been taking out terrorist structures for years, and ISM has been protesting at most of them yet, strangely, the death toll amongst terrorist groupie scum is….actually, Corrie is it. That was her bravery. She cynically portrayed the Israelis as Zionazis while knowing that they, recognising the codes of the very civilisation she sought to destroy, would not harm her. Her martyrdom, such as it was, was merely inevitable result of putting people and heavy machinery too close together. If getting run over by heavy equipment is glorious then the construction game must be the most heroic of them all, because it happens about ten times a year on British building sites.

Let's stop with the nice. Corrie wanted to play the part of a freedom fighter, a pretend rebel, and the innocents murdered by her fellow travellers were just extras in the great stage show of 'Rachel Corrie: Radical'. She was a typical pampered brat who wanted to stick it to a civilisation which had enraged her by failing to pander to her dreams of unearned wealth and undeserved glory. So she went to the Middle East to help kill Israelis.

She was a utterly corrupt individual with no redeeming features and the world is a better, safer and cleaner place for not having her in it. But, with all that we shouldn't just condemn her. No, we should laugh at her as well. The Corries of this world hate one thing more than any other: their complete insignificance. They screech, they shout and, yes, occasionally they help maniacs to blow up pizza shops, but what do they do ? What positive contribution do they make to life ? Nada. At the age of five they jump up and down on the couch shouting 'look at me!', at the age of twenty-five they do much the same, but with Semtex. It's one long whinge, one long set of special pleading, a narcissist's whine that they're being treated as though they were ordinary people. This is the banality of evil: people aiding terrorists to kill large numbers of people simply so they can posture as rebels. What an utterly pathetic bunch of tossers - trainspotters working with sociopaths. Here's the truth about Corrie: she was an ineffectual loser. Now she's dead she's still a loser and so are her family for trying to pass her off as some kind of martyr.

Organisations like ISM feed off the bratty rage of over privileged twenty-something juveniles. They give them the bogus glamour of following in the footsteps of Che, Fidel and Ho. The way to beat them is to deflate their fantasising. It's our patriotic duty to make fun of them every time they try and tell us that the death of Corrie has any greater significance than a reminder that building sites are dangerous, and on that note, I'll leave you with this:

Why didn't Rachel Corrie go to the party ?

She wanted to, but she was feeling a little flat after playing too much squash.

Some Thought On Genes Vs Culture

Peter C has been writing about sociobiology. Moderate centralist that I am, I have to say that I hate sociobiology - if only because it's roots are in evolutionary biology, which often seems to be more a game than a discipline. Why are Scots red-haired ? Simple, it's so when they were out hunting in groups they could see each other easily against the green background. Is that a real theory ? No, I just made it up - just like half of evolutionary biology appears to be.

Besides, telling the Liberals that humans are naturally Conservative will only encourage them. Even today, Liberals are so in love with rebel posturing they act as though being a Lefty in Academia is like being in the resistance in occupied Norway. Tell them they're rebelling against nature and they'll develop an even greater 'Neo' complex. What's more the Left has always tried to prove Conservatism is a pathological condition, so telling them Conservatism has a genetic basis will just be used to confirm that we're an evolutionary dead end.

Anyway, as Dawkins would say, it's all about memes not genes. Biology can do what it does, but it's funny how there's more variation in the dress sense of successful civilisations than in how they define marriage. That's why so many Social Liberals are Multicultis - you'd claim all cultures are equally valid if all the ones closest to your ideal are also those that are the biggest trainwrecks.

'The Selfish Gene' is mostly an attack on 'Group Selection' - the idea that evolution works at the level of the species. This holds that, for example, bird alarm calls have evolved despite endangering the caller because they make it more likely that fellow members of his species will survive. Dawkins shows that this can not hold - evolution works at the level of the gene not the species. In fact, Dawkins hypothesises that genes may even act in ways that are harmful to their host, providing it helps them spread. As an example of this, Dawkins suggests a reason for the prevalence of Down's syndrome in older mothers. Down's syndrome occurs where the child inherites both, instead of one, copy of chromosome 21 from the mother. Dawkins hypothesises that, in older mothers, the chromosome that should be left behind says (metaphorically) 'screw this, this is my last chance to copy myself' and jumps aboard. Needless to say, all the usual caveats about evolutionary biology can be applied to this theory, but it does illustrate the long reach of the selfish gene model.

What all of this means is that altruism makes no sense biologically. Bird alarm calls have evolved because it's so advantageous to the caller to manipulate his fellows that it's worth the risk of calling, and so on. This is where genes and memes diverge.

We know humans can be altruistic - there's evidence everywhere from blood donors at the village hall to life donors at the Somme. In fact, it may be argued that cultures are subject to a kind of group selection. Can it be a pure coincidence that the world's only superpower has as its motto 'From many, one' ? Or that the US Army places such a premium on its troops that soldiers will take extreme risks merely to recover the bodies of fallen comrades ? Equally, far be it from me in these post-Kilroy days to say that the Arab world is anything less than an Earthly paradise, but it's interesting to note the Arab proverb 'My brother and me against my cousin, my cousin and me against the world'. Maybe the short duration of Gulf War II wasn't just a weapons thing after all.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that the book Social Conservatives should be reading is 'Starship Troopers' not the 'The Selfish Gene'. History tells us which forms of society, with which moral codes, are liable to flourish and which will fail. Liberalism's obsession with revolution, Year Zeros and the like is an attempt to remake the world into somewhere where two plus two can equal five provided you re-educate enough people - or shoot them. In fact, history provides us with at least one fundamental law: same old horses, same old glue. In contrast, for all the accusations that Social Conservatism has had thrown at it, it has this unique advantage: it works.

BBC Nik-ed

So anyway, having failed to convince anyone that it's racist to claim Saudi is less democratic than, say, Sweden, the L3 have chosen a whole new reason for firing Robert Kilroy-Silk (incidentally, wasn't it one of the L3s main jibes about Princess Tony's Iraq campaign that he kept changing his reasons for the invasion as events unfolded ? Obviously a whole different thing).

The excuse d'jour is that by speaking out on a controversial issue RKS has impaired his ability to act as an impartial host dealing with such highly-political issues as "I Married A Horse", "Help, My Husband's A Vampire" and "Where Do We Dig Up These Freaks ?". Leaving aside the question of who it is who thinks it's a controversial claim that the Arab world goes through ballot papers like the Vatican goes through condoms, this marks quite a change in BBC policy.

Take the case of Nik Gowing for an example. Here's a guy who really is a BBC employee (remember RKS has his own production company which sells his show to the BBC). Plus he's really is working on the factual, rather than the freak-show, side of the biz. So you might think that if Captain Sunbed opining about Arab culture in a Sunday paper bars him from moderating debates on transvestite OAPs then the BBC would take a view about one of their employees who claims that Israel and the US routinely murder 'difficult' journalists. After all, RKS was writing as himself - but, if you check the blurb at the bottom of the article, Nik Gowing is identified as a employee of BBC World and that is a serious matter. Disclaimer or no disclaimer, Gowing is a BBC journalist writing about journalism. His job gives him, and his accusations, a cachet he would not have if he was identified as Nik Gowing, ordinary citizen. Equally, the flipside of that is that by allowing him to use their brand image to promote these views the BBC is implicitly supporting them. Yet there's a deafening silence from the soi-dissant guardian's of objectivity - such as the Guardian, for example.

So there you have it: pointing out that Syria is no Silicon Valley means you're too extreme for 'Mum, I'm A Cannibal' but claiming publicly that the US and Israel hunt down journalists is a perfectly normal thing for an objective BBC journalist to do.

No bias there!

Beards: Are They For You ?

So anyway, this guy lists ways to tell if you're a Liberal (via this guy), so I thought why do anything original when you can steal someone else's idea ? So here it is: 15 ways to tell if you really need to shell out on razors.

You know you're a Liberal if:

1. You don't think people can be trusted with guns, unless they're in the IRA



2. You believe soldiers in combat, doctors in A & E depts and householders defending themselves at 3.15AM should all be subject to legal action after the fact, but Judges should never be criticised because their job is too complex for ordinary citizens to understand



3. You think it's racist to point out the shortage of Arab democracies, but calling Americans obese, gun-crazed morons is cutting-edge political comment



4. You think giving kids a good education requires that they be taught about felching, rimming and golden showers, but religion has no place in schools



5. You think GM crops are dangerous, but crack isn't



6. You think mobile phones melt brain tissue, but paedophiles are an invention of the media



7. You believe we should be constantly alert to the risk of neo-nazi conspiracies arising to take over the world, but there's no such thing as Islamofascism



8. You think factory owners are bloated, capitalist pigs, but lawyers are altruistic guardians of the public



9. You complain loudly that Big Business is pumping chemicals into the environment just to boost profits, while you're snorting a line of coke.



10. You complain that Dubya was selected not elected, but Lord Chief Justice Woolf and his fellow travellers legislating from the bench is democracy in action



11. You complain about Islamophobia in the media, but you don't mind that whenever you see a Priest in a TV drama you know he'll turn out to be shagging a parishioner



12. You define a diverse workplace as one with a diversity of everything except opinions



13. You really think that a cop who tells an un-PC joke should be fired but a High Court judge in the Family Division who goes on record as hating marriage is entitled to her opinion



14. You believe every family needs a social worker, but fathers are an optional extra



15. You think that when a US President opposes a dictator with a pathological hatred of Jews, a record of invading his neighbours and gassing people plus a stupid moustache, then it means that the Yank is just like Hitler

MMR Enema

I've said this before but, like him or hate him, few people today give better insight into what the scientific community really thinks than this guy. One of his latest posts summarises so perfectly the party line on MMR that it shows exactly why those of us who are more sceptical feel the way we do.

Whenever the scientific collective talks about MMR van loads of cake are had and eaten. On the one hand scientists want to establish themselves as a secular priesthood, disinterested seekers after truth, sole and final authority on how things are, while at the same time they employ all the techniques of political trench warfare. A fine mist of humbug hangs over most scientist's output on MMR, and Anthony's article is no exception - try this for a compare and contrast:

Murch was followed immediately by Wakefield. Taking a cue from the Michael Meacher school of conspiracy theories he personally attacked the motivation of his former colleague “His laboratory is under threat. He has failed to gain due promotion. He has been strongly advised to withdraw from scientific publications that involve any mention of my name or association with MMR and bowel disease.” and suggested government suppression of important safety data, a claim for which he has no evidence and that has been denied. Dr Murch has also clearly stated again that he was under no such threats.

This is the scientist as priest, high-mindedly disdaining personal abuse. Except immediately following is this:

Wakefield has a lot invested in the MMR controversy. He is a regular speaker in the US at autism and anti-vaccine group conferences. You can even buy videos and audiotapes on the internet. His message is delivered persuasively, yet his focus is on “injustice” and “conspiracy” rather than scientific facts. In his world corporations and bureaucracies are never able to give the truth. Relishing the role of a United Kingdom MMR-matyr, he has even argued at anti-vaccine meetings that suffering the infection that vaccines prevent gives benefits.

Seventy-six words ago that was called a personal attack, but a lot can happen in a paragraph. But, don't let the obvious humbuggery of this obscure the deeper humbug. Murch was originally a comrade of Wakefield, now six years later he has not only repented his heresy but he has carried out the scientific equivalent of a Hail Mary, penning a letter fit for a man with a Kool Aid IV. A lot can happen in six years, but it's worth noting that British science, riddled as it is with log rolling, influence peddling, sweetheart deals, magic circles and numerous other toxic practices, is hardly famous for transparency and unswerving commitment to the public interest. Whether or not Murch has been pressured to recant is unknown, but given the structure of British science, there is no reason to believe it couldn't happen.

Anthony wants us to discount Wakefield on the grounds that he's been corrupted by the prospect of filthy lucre from speaking at conferences and selling his speeches on the net, well here's British science where difficult people can get quietly squashed without so much as a formal charge (Wakefield himself is a good example of this). But this has no effect on the quality of the research. The public are entitled to ask for a little less sleaze before letting the scienceistas take us to see any puppies.

After all, let's not beat around the bush here. What the scienceistas are talking about is censorship. In fact, more than that: Anthony is presumably OK with the Beeb publicising Murch's hit piece, just not with giving Wakefield a right of reply. In short, the aim is to turn the BBC into a propaganda channel, spewing forth the party line 24-7.

Only scienceistas could seek to allay public suspicions about conspiracy and cover up by demanding their opponents be banned from the airwaves. But aside from the tactical objections, the principle itself is despicable. Anthony's call for censorship, just like that of Trevor Phillips, is based on the idea of the Little People who can't be trusted with the facts. At least Anthony cites some evidence for this, but even then it is revealingly bad evidence. Anthony reports that a survey by Cardiff University School of Journalism claims that 'less than a quarter of those interviewed were aware that the scientific evidence favoured supporters of the vaccine.' Does that mean that 75% thought the evidence favoured the rebels ? Simple logic says not necessarily. Besides, the MMR debate only really affects a tight demographic, new parents, so it hardly matters that, say, a 66 year old lesbian is ill-informed - there's no reason for her not to be. This is all good politics, but it's a bit much for these people to indulge in this sort of thing then cast themselves as disinterested seekers after truth. More to the point, what about the credibility of the whole exercise ? The debate revolves around how much trust the public can have in research produced by British academics, and so to prove their case these people cite research produced by British academics. Not all their credibility problems can be blamed on the media.

When looked at more generally, the suggestion that the media have some kind of social duty to spin for Big Science becomes even less convincing. Terrorism 101 says that the terrorist seeks to change public opinion by acts of extreme violence. Equally, investors know that once a crash has started the reason why is soon forgotten as stocks continue to plunge simply because stocks are plunging in a dive out of all proportion to the original causes. How much greater then is the need for censorship to ensure that the media does not act as terrorist enablers. Equally, economic stability requires that the media refrain from reporting any news that may lead to irrational panics in the market. Yet, we do not have such controls in either case. On the contrary, we recognise that efforts to control terrorism can too easily shade into totalitarianism while suppressing information liable to affect stock prices just ensures that when the correction comes, it'll be all the more dramatic. You can make your own analogies with the current state of British science but, hearing Anthony rage about Murch being questioned about his views as though he had a responsibility to back up his statements brings home just how badly needed this kind of public scrutiny is.

What's really objectionable though is the way the Scientific Collective pre-emptively waves the bloody shirt of kids killed in a future measles epidemic. True, unvaccinated kids are vulnerable, but the rebels aren't anti-vaccination, they're anti-MMR. The parents concerned would quite happily give their kids the single jab, except the government has been busily squashing every clinic which makes them available - let alone allowing the NHS to deploy them. True, there may be perfectly good reasons why MMR may be better than single jabs, but single jabs are surely better than nothing. This is one time when the best is the enemy of the good, yet the scienceistas appear to have tacitly agreed with the government to create a false impression that it's MMR or nothing. It ain't, it never was and even now a crash single jab program may prevent thousands of casualties.

A responsible scientific community would devote some of the time they spend ranting about anti-MMR campaigners to pressuring the government to reverse course on single jabs. This they have not done. On the contrary, reading much of the output of science's Inner Party it is hard not to suspect that are at least ambiguous about measles sweeping through the nation's children. It is all too easily to believe that many scientists regard a future outbreak as a perfect chance to shout 'told you so' and use the subsequent public angst to push their own agenda. Paranoid ? Totally, but the scientific collective's behaviour throughout the MMR debate has been almost a textbook example of how not to inspire confidence.

Throughout this debate, the scienceistas' main argument has boiled down to 'Trust me, I'm a Professor'. We expect a little more these days yet, whenever pressed, the scienceistas turn into a spitting, snarling, slandering mass of geriatric adolescents screeching 'Who are you to question scientists, you oik ?'.

Us ? We're just the folks who pay for it. Anthony asks why a body like the BBC should receive public funding when it doesn't serve the public interest - may I suggest the BBC may not be the only case of this in modern Britain ?

True Confessions

So an insider confirms that speed cameras are being used as money spinners rather than road safety measures. Big surprise - but there is a interesting revelation in there:

The reason, he said, was that forces had been given income targets by the Government that forced them to concentrate on making money out of cameras, instead of using them to slow traffic.....


"Forces were only allowed to join the 'cash for cameras' scheme if they signed up to increasing massively the numbers of tickets issued. It was not about road safety."

So rather than it being the actions of rogue cops, or even rogue constabularies, the Great Speed Shakedown has been deliberate policy by the government. This deserves to be known more widely.

Another Reason to Hate Hopolophobes

As if one were needed. All week they've been whining about Sky Marshals because......Guuuuuuuns. I mean, that's the last thing you'd want when five nutjobs are hijacking your plane for a one-way trip to the Millenium Stadium. You'd be sitting there thinking 'Gosh, I sure hope there isn't an ex-SAS guy on-board with a Glock, otherwise it'll get really dangerous.'

While all this has been going on, the Government has taken a blowtorch to the constitution. War is war, but these powers go so far, and with so few restraints, as to strike at the heart of our civil rights.

Take, for example, the ability of the Government to (effectively) pass laws without reference to Parliament. That could be a vital power in an emergency, but there is no requirement for them to gain Parliamentary approval at the first opportunity. Similarly, the Government will be able to confiscate property. Will owners be compensated ? Will they have the right to retroactively challenge the order in the Courts post-emergency ? What do you think ?There isn't even a sunset clause.

The act is virtually a textbook example of bad law. But our supposed watchdogs in the media plus our nation's soi-dissant Liberals are too busy panicking about the Government depriving hijackers of the Right to Crash Aircraft. And a vote of thanks too, to our supposedly Big Government hating Conservative Party, yet again providing proof of how optimisic it is to title them Her Majesty's Opposition.

Maybe people would be more worried if we told them how many Government employees have Guuuuuuuuuuuuuuns.

Nu Labour and Crime

If you wanted two stories which summed up Nu Labour's approach to crime, you couldn't do better than these two.

First, another great day for gun control.

Meanwhile, the Filth are experimenting with a special form of pre-emptive policing, namely busting people who haven't actually committed a crime. So Mr Plod has been issuing bogus tickets. No doubt the people concerned will be charged with fraud and bought to trial, right ?

Not in our lifetime.

Danger! Socialist Medicine At Work

Just in case you're part of the 0.0000002% who still believe the Lib Dems are anything other than elitist trash, here's a heartwarming tale of an MP standing up for a much-opressed minority: convicted killers.

And that ain't even the best of it:

A doctor convicted of the manslaughter of a patient should be allowed to keep his job at a Tyneside hospital, says a leading Liberal Democrat MP.

The NHS: it's the envy of the world I tell you.

Say what you like about the private sector, but at least killing customers is frowned upon. But not in la-la land apparently.

Still, if you think that's wierd, try this example of logic from the dishonourable member.

"It is likely that he will be a better doctor, having learned the lessons from this tragic case.

The lesson presumably being 'burn the patient notes before the cops arrive'. By this logic Harold Shipman should be up for a Nobel Prize.


"It is no part of justice that an otherwise good doctor, who is no danger to patients, be forced out of the profession on the basis of the conviction alone. That would be double jeopardy."

Yeah, that'd be like a salesman who gets busted for drink-driving losing his job - what is this Nazi Germany ?

You'd think a lawmaker would actually know something about, y'know, the actual law.

This is how seriously the Lib Dems take their role in the House, that they put forward for public office a man who can't even understand one of the simplest concepts in English law.

This is how deeply-felt Lib Dem moralising about Iraq, Gitmo or Afghanistan is. They don't see why a little thing like killing an innocent man should be held against a guy.

This is how committed Lib Dems are to the NHS. They'll blather on endlessly about top-quality care, but when an issue comes up LIKE DEAD PATIENTS, they couldn't give a toss.

Scumbags every one of them. The whole party needs serious treatment. How long is it till Shipman gets parole ?

Liberal Deathmatch

As every truly progressive person knows, our nation's education system is the very model of success. Equally true to say that the Howard League for Penal Reform is a truly enlightened group of people who are in no way moonbats. So it's a real surprise to read this:

The director of a national charity says she would not send her children to some schools in Leeds because they are "war zones"....

"I would not send my child to some of the schools in Leeds, I think they are dangerous."

It's a Battle of the Beards!

Random Linkage

Predictably, the EU letter bombs have led to certain persons turning the humbug generator up to 11. The Englishman is right on it, here and here, but for the full effect read Peter Cutherbetson's list of the twenty worst lefties of 2003 and see just how new this aversion to bombs is amongst the L3s.

Laban Tall has an interesting post about the tendancy of Guardianista to skedaddle when faced with the consequences of their actions. The only thing I'd add to it is that that may be the point of the exercise.

Remember the News of the World's expose of how the Government was secretly inserting paedophiles into estates across the country ? When the backlash came few Liberals were prepared to argue that allowing perverts to infiltrate into estates packed with kids was a Good Thing. Nope, the L3 instead jeered at the protestors. We were invited to sneer at their ignorance, their poverty, their ugliness.... This is the heart of the Liberal approach to crime.

Liberal coddling of scum is a way of ramming home the point that they're so rich and powerful the world could go to Hell and it wouldn't affect them none. Liberals see ordinary people on the Hell's End estate protesting the placement of a known killer in their midst and their instinct is to sneer. Nevermind that the mere hint of the erection of a mobile phone mast in their vicinty brings out the 4x4 brigade like a rocket, that's different. Protesting crime is such a plebian thing to do, if the protestors were anyone important they'd be able to move to somewhere where it don't happen.

About That 'Allies' Thing

Pakistan faced embarrassment yesterday with the publication of a sales brochure from its top-secret nuclear facility, apparently hawking technology and components to would-be nuclear powers.

So that's Pakistan, harbouring Al-Q and now flogging nukes around the world. Taking into account the behaviour of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, it's raises an interesting philosophical question - just what do you have to do not to be classed as an ally.

More European Sophistication

Seems like you can't turn on the TV today without seeing some Metropolitan sniveller babbling about how much more civilised the Europeons are compared with us simplisme savages.

It'd be interesting to see what particular brand of whitewash these maroons would use to deal with this latest example of Germanic civilisation, as reported by the Englishman.

For the first time in almost seven years 12-year-old Corinna Kutzner and her younger sister Nicola spent Christmas at home. The two girls were torn away from their family not because their parents abused them or did not love them but because they were simply deemed too “stupid” to care for them.

No, that isn't a misprint.

Mind you, at least social workers have found the one topic they are uniquely qualified to comment on.

The social worker had arrived at Annette Kutzner’s request. Finding it difficult to cope with two children and a sick father-in-law who had to be washed and shaved each morning, a friend had suggested the social services might be able to help.

On the other hand, if they expected help from social workers, they must be idiots.

"When the social worker came she found us a strange bunch and took an instant dislike to us,” says Ingo Kutzner, the girls’ father, who works on a chicken farm in the village. “She was only in her late twenties, was single and had never had kids of her own.”

Tssk.... who needs actual knowledge, she's a Liberal, that means her personal prejudices are every bit as valid as the so-called 'experience', 'facts' and other Phallocentric concepts.

But we're not done with the barbarism:

After being away for a week five-year-old Corinna made it clear that the “holiday” was over and it was time to go home, according to official reports. Nicola was depressed and cried herself to sleep each night. But not content to separate the children from their parents, social workers also decided to separate the sisters.

After a year in the children’s home they were put into different foster families. “A degeneration in their IQ is already pre-programmed into them and their only chance is to acquire new parents. It is best this is done separately because otherwise the older sister would dominate and stifle her younger sister’s development,” read a report justifying the decision.

A terrible, terrible case, but the point needs to be rammed home: if you support the EU, this is what you support. This is the European civilisation you want British families to be subjected to.

Feel free to argue for surrendering Britain to these people - we'll feel free to point out what it is you're arguing for.

Kim Du Toit On Outsourcing

Actually the title does most of the heavy lifting here. Very thought provoking article dealing with how actual, real people can survive outsourcing. No pointy-headed theory here, KdT has both feet firmly on the hard stuff.

My father was a civil engineer who had started off life as a boilermaker, and he always cautioned me to find a job which used your brain rather than your hands.

In retrospect, it was the worst possible advice he could have given.

As the bald guy said, you may like it, you may not, but read the whole thing.

The Beeb And The Bill

Plenty of good coverage of Stephen Pound's sleazy response to the R4 listener's poll out there in the blogsphere. Free Democrat has been on it since day one, while there's also a good post from Laban Tall.

To me, leaving aside questions of self-defence and the relationship between the citizen and the state, a really intriguing question is raised by these revelations on Laban Tall's site:

The programme's producers - and Mr Pound, convinced the organ donation law would win, had already arranged a debate between Evan 'Dr Death' Harris and a former Tory health minister, which had to be hastily rebilled on the website as 'the listeners' law for 'opt-out' organ donation came second - but a possible proposal nonetheless?'. And Mr Pound had actually already had preliminary discussions with Heath Secretary John Reid about the donor law.

First thing that needs to be said is that this proposed law has hardly come out of the blue. On the contrary, as early as 1999 then-Health Secretary Frank Dobson was talking about organs being a 'national resource', so it's plain dishonest for Pound, Reid or any other lefty creep to talk as though they'd just thought it up while in the bath one day. Similarly, as recent events have made clear, the law Pound really wanted to pass was the Nationalisation Of Organs Act 2004. The poll was of interest to him only in so far as it provided an excuse for him to push this atrocity through.

More than that though, what of the ever-neutral BBC's role in all this ? Not only setting up the poll in the first place, but setting up a debate to showcase the organ grab law immediately afterwards - even before the votes were in (and when the Great British Public kicked them in the nads, still pushing it as a 'potential proposal'). Seem like the Beeb might be trying to push us in a certain direction ? So here's the question: did the BBC conspire with Nu Labour to try and push through a controversial law ?

Evil Right-Winger Detected

Remember how the BBC likes to claim opponents of the EU are crazed, ignorant, xenophobic, right-wing extremists ? Well, guess who's just come out and said the Government should end the "creeping intrusion of Brussels into national life" ?

Try Giselle Stuart, Labour MP, representative to the EU's constitutional convention and Munich born and bred. Her charge sheet against the EU holds no surprises for those of who were always eurosceptic, but the source of these complaints is refreshing, and not only because it's fun to visualise the Beeb's staff desperately grasping at any straw to smear her.

Giselle Stuart never quite follows her complaints to their logical conclusion. She is after all a socialist and so, as a disciple of big government, she questions this particular implementation rather than the central concept of the EU. Stuart is still too much in love with the chimera of 'democratic socialism' to see that any european union would inevitably become the EU. Nevertheless, Stuart's breaking of ranks hints at a profound movement in the political biosphere. The Left is finally waking up to the fact that the EU is not merely a political issue. To discuss the EU in terms of its effect on inflation, unemployment or the environment is to debate the merits of Mussolini with respect to train times. As with Iraq, we are seeing the first hints of the rebirth of a species previously thought to be extinct: the decent left.

Capitalist Parasites

So, anyway, the chattering classes have been whining recently that the Consumer Credit Act is too weak. It allows the lower orders to borrow money, and all right-thinking liberals know that the proles can't be trusted with the same rights as people with real jobs, like aromatherapists, human rights lawyers and journalists.

Funnily enough, I've been sceptical of that argument, but it's recently been revealed how one group of scumbags are exploiting the weak regulatory environment to bleed the British public dry. How long must we wait until St Tony of Blair will act to protect us from these evil scum ?

Even More Greatest Briton

Could our admiration for Sir Winston go any higher ? Actually, yes. Turns out Hitler, Hirohito and Baldy weren't the only satanic forces the Greatest Britain battled.

Danger! Low Flying Robbers

Tim Blair busts the Guardian. The voice of the bearded classes has been turning the whinometer up to 11 with a report subtly titled "US soldiers ransack Sunni mosque". The Al-Guardian tries to tug at our heartstrings with lines like 'Surrounded by upturned chairs and an abandoned turban, Sabah Al-Kaisey surveyed his ransacked office yesterday. ' But what turned the good ol' boys into such thugs ?

The troops who raided the Ibn Taymiyah mosque, used by Baghdad's Sunnis, appear to have been looking for weapons used by Iraq's resistance.

Appear to have been looking for weapons ? Even the Al-Guardian admits the troops captured a couple of AK-47s, hand grenades and an anti-aircraft missile. To parahrase Yoda, 'Found some weapons you have' - even without pointing out that other sources suggest a far larger take.

But don't go thinking there's anything nefarious about using a mosque as an armoury, as the Mosque's iman points out "They were there to protect ourselves". Presumably protection from the famous flying felons of Fallujah.

Still, at least the Guardian is coming round to the idea of self-defence. If only Tony Martin has used a SAM, the beardy-wierdies would've been right behind him.

College Profs Denounce Western Culture, Move to Caves

It's Iowahawk again!

Cambridge, MA - Two years ago this month, Alan Lowenstein, associate professor of philosophy at Harvard University, came to a fateful conclusion. "I suddenly realized that the oppression of western technology extended to my own life," he explained. "That's when I got rid of my computer, threw away my Brooks Brothers suits, changed my name to Grok and moved into a cave."

A passionate critic of Euro-American "linear thought," Grok is one of a growing number of college professors around the nation who have relocated to caves, mud huts and makeshift sweat lodges to demonstrate their disdain for western culture and technology. For Grok, 44, the move to a cave was a natural step in his intellectual progression.


Read the whole thing.

Class War, Anyone ?

So tuition fees are morally wrong, but not if they're used as an excuse to put the boot into Lord Snooty.

I told you hate was Nu Lab's main motivating force.

The Divine Herdsman Speaks!

So Princess Tony promises us another six years of him explaining the difference between an aspiration, an aim, a target and an objective.

Then again, how would we get by without this level of management genius ?

Pounding Headache

Few sights are better than a pol having his stunt blow up in his face. Stevie's poll is done and dusted and the Great British Public have slapped him with a wet fish labelled 'give us the right to self-defence back'. Of course, the Bill's got no chance of becoming law but it will be provide useful service as a barometer of what the elite really think.

For proof of that, check out this comment from 'leading criminal barrister John Cooper':

The law as it stands at the moment, despite its critics, is functioning.

Presumably he commutes to work from his home galaxy.

If you are in your house and you are attacked by someone or threatened by someone, you can use proportionate force.

How can you break into someone's house at 3 AM and not be threatening them ? And proportionate to what anyway ? The need to defend loved ones against professional criminals, or the need to push the agenda of some twisted moral equivalence-advocating wannabe social engineers who think the concept of 'guilt' is some Victorian hangover ? Given that this guy can claim the law is fine as is, it doesn't inspire confidence in the lawocrats ability to judge reality accurately.

We do not live in the wild west. This legislation that is proposed effectively may well turn us into that.

Ah yes, the wild west. What would liberals do without that bogeyman ? Wonder what liberals would say if every medical malpractice case provoked conservatives to talk about witch doctors, bongo drums and the like ? Would they ignore it or would they claim we were all racist bigots for continually harking back to historically inaccurate stereotypes of Africans ?

Crude appeals to prejudice aside, the point is absurd. The proposed legislation covers people defending their homes, that's all. Time was when 'anarchy' meant fighting in the streets, now our bewigged betters define anarchy as people staying home protecting their loved ones. Could there be a better example of the warped moral values that now dominate our legal system ?

No doubt some lawyers genuinely believe that a young women, raped and tortured for hours before being killed, is morally superior to a woman standing over a rapist's body with no injury worse than slight wrist strain from carving his windpipe out. For the rest, however, the motivation is far more cynical. Hence, the reliance on scare tactics rather than dealing with the actual question of home defence - they'd rather we didn't investigate their position too closely.

All through history self-defence has been a right. Only in modern Britain has it become a privilege. They, the elite, will tell us when we can defend our families. We can't done anything ourselves, except stay dumb, dependant and finally dead.

Self-defence is a perfect barometer of where people stand on the rights of the individual Vs the state. If you believe that the state is entitled to tell a citizen that he can't defend himself in his own home, then you'll pretty much swallow anything Big Government brings you, just the way liberals like their victims. If you don't, then you've made a vital mental step. You've already accepted that there are some rights the state can't take away from the citizen, call them God-given, inalienable, whatever, but they simply exist - they are not conferred on you by a benevolent government, and just because a particular group of deviants has managed to get a majority in Parliament or the Judiciary, they can't take them away from you. In short, you've already become a bit of a right-wing extremist.

Clue Convoy Reaches Vatican

His Majesticness reports that the Dept of the Obvious has opened an office in Vatican City:

Too many Islamic countries treat their Christian minorities as second-class citizens and bar them from building churches while Western states let their Muslims build mosques freely, according to a senior Vatican official.

But don't worry - the dhimmi habit is a tough one to break:

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, who recently retired as the Vatican's foreign minister, told the French Catholic daily La Croix Wednesday that Christianity and Islam faced "an enormous task" of learning to live together in mutual tolerance.

Who can forget Father O'Brian blowing himself up in Finsbury Park mosque ?