Outrage D'Jour

...and this time it's a lu-lu.

The head of a probation service that was blamed for failing properly to monitor a drug addict who killed a policeman while out of prison on licence said yesterday that he took full responsibility for its errors.

You just know there's a BUT coming, right ?

But David Hancock, the chief officer of Nottinghamshire Probation Area, said he would not be disciplining any of the staff involved and would not be resigning

So, their incompetence led to an unnecessary death, but hey ? That's hardly a serious matter - action's only required where someone's told the one about Elton John going through Customs.

Then again, as ever, it turns out that everyone else is to blame:

He blamed the failures that allowed David Parfitt to be free when he killed Pc Ged Walker on his staff's heavy workload.

Jarvis should use that next time there's a rail crash. After all, it seems to work for all the beardy-wasters in our public non-services.

It gets worse:

[The Inquiry] ruled that Parfitt should have been returned to prison long before the incident which resulted in Pc Walker's death. In the weeks following his release in September 2002, Parfitt regularly breached his licence conditions by failing 10 drugs tests and missing a number of appointments.

His probation officer failed to report him or recommend that his licence be revoked because she was unaware of what she was meant to do.

So, in what sense is the stupid slag not completely incompetent. Her complete inability to do the job for which she's paid led to the loss of an innocent life - what would be serious misconduct ? And what's with this anonymity anyway ? If cops who tell naughty jokes can be torn apart by media witch hunters, we surely deserve to know just who this disgusting waste of skin is, who draws a salary paid for by our taxes.

[Hancock] said Parfitt's original probation officer had been adequately briefed on national guidelines to deal with his drug testing programme, but she had "failed to absorb" the finer detail of the requirements.

Maybe people who get busted for running over pedestrians could try that ? 'I'm sorry, but I failed to absorb the finer details of which colour means "stop" and which means "go" ' Nope, sorry, you've got to be a scum-sucking, Marxist, piece of filth, public sector slimeball before you can kill with impunity.

[Mr Hancock]refused to say why feeling ill after taking heroin was deemed an acceptable excuse not to turn up for a drugs test, or why the officer was allowed for so long to apply her own criteria as to what constituted a breach of licence.

'I'm sorry, I couldn't attend my drugs test because I was too stoned. ' It'd be a great joke, if the punchline didn't feature a dead cop. But, still - you expect him to answer questions ? To be accountable ? What do you think he is ? Some kind of public servant ? And a vote of thanks too to our MPs, too busy dragging in the CEOs of private companies, to serve as patsies for their carefully contrived soundbite-a-thons, to make time to find out why some semi-literate, soap-dodging sixties reject, who uses money extorted out of security guards and bar maids to fund a lifestyle far in excess of his talents, feels he can tell the Great British Public to shove it when they ask how he discharges the duties for which he is paid.

What that squeak from TINO land ? Something like 'they're not all that bad'. Puuleaze - do you see any of the supposedly professional majority disowning this scumbag ? Or calling for the bitch in question to be named and shamed ? Nope - they're perfectly happy to have these people represent them, so it seems like they must be pretty representative.

Still, we now have another barometer of Liberal humbug - the people who claim that massive incompetence leading to the loss of innocent life is a private matter for the Libocracy are the self-same ones who babble about corporate manslaughter charges and billion pound lawsuits when it's the private sector under fire.

As ever, it's different for Liberals.

How Dhimmi Is Britain ?

Enough that our loony Islamofascists are too howling-mad even for the Egyptians.

Talking of the C of E

Canada's Iconoclast knows what's happening in the Mother Country:


(London)-In his homily yesterday during a memorial service for Palestinian suicide bombers, the Right Reverend Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, denounced Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ" as being "overtly pro-Christian."

"This film is going to have a devastating effect on Anglicanism worldwide," said Reverend Williams. "Impressionable persons may be unduly influenced and actually begin attending church. And it would be a great tragedy if the Church had to divert its precious resources away from protesting against capitalism and democracy and use them instead for religious purposes." The Archbishop became angry at this point and interjected," I didn't enter the ministry to promote the so-called Gospel of someone who allegedly lived 2000 years ago. I became a priest in order to empower gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals, heathens and persons with a fondness for sheep!"

Don't Mention The.....

The Telegraph is all-a-flutter.

Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, launched a trenchant attack on Islamic culture last night, saying it was authoritarian, inflexible and under-achieving.

Welcome to the PC bizzarro world, where telling the truth counts as a trenchant attack. But the Telegraph has bought a six-pack of Kool Aid:

In a speech that will upset sensitive relations between the faiths, he denounced moderate Muslims for failing unequivocally to condemn the "evil" of suicide bombers.

Yes, the 'evil' of suicide bombing. Instinct tells me that sniffer dogs couldn't find a case of the media referring to the 'evil' of racism.

Dr Carey said that moderate Muslims must "resist strongly" the taking over of Islam by radical activists "and to express strongly, on behalf of the many millions of their co-religionists, their abhorrence of violence done in the name of Allah".

I wouldn't be holding your breath, Doc.

They Deserve It

Why oh why do extremist right wing thugs continue to ridicule the Clown Payment Service Crown Prosecution Service ? Must be some kind of irrational prejudice.

TINO Party Time

NRO's Corner reports that TINOs have got a whole new minority group to coddle - now it's "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit and Transgender." - it's something to do with Native American homosexuality apparently.

See how smoothly I move past the possibilities for totem pole jokes ?

Works For Me

Hey - has something been happening in the Middle East ?

Allah has all your splatted spiritual leader needs, while giving a link to this interesting analysis:

There is every expectation that the killing today of Ahmed Yassin, head of the Hamas terrorist organization, may lead for the various terrorist organizations to make a maximum effort to carry out a "reprisal" attack or attacks. With the killing of Yassin, Israel's decision makers find themselves in the curious situation that the marginal cost of killing more terrorist leaders in the coming days, at least in terms of terrorist response, is zero - and probably negative as the killing of additional terrorist leaders could disrupt terror operations.

Special Delivery for Mr Arafat - free ticket to see the virgins.

Meanwhile, one of his commentors brings up a quote which sums up my views perfectly:

"Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy . . . while I must not touch a hair of [the] wily agitator who induces him []?"

Which means Honest Abe would never fit in at the Beeb.

The Great Patriot

The always excellent Country Store gives a pointer to a site which gives the full story on Kerry's pro-communist peace activities in the early 70s.

Outrage D'Jour

The ratchet gets turned another notch.

A 25-year-old man is beginning an eight year sentence after he was found guilty of the manslaughter of a 38-year-old man who had tried to rob him.
Carl Lindsay from Walkden, Greater Manchester, stabbed Stephen Swindells after he and three accomplices arrived at Lindsay's home armed with a gun.

Mr Swindells died later after he was found discovered collapsed in an alley.

His three accomplices were found guilty of robbery and firearms offences and sentenced to fourteen years.

Well, OK, instinct tells me that Mr Lindsay may not be a model citizen but, strewth, if four maniacs with a gun trying to storm your house isn't cause for self-defence, what exactly is ? Would the guy have been allowed to defend himself if he'd let himself take a round ? And what's with the 'robbery' thing anyway - with four of them and a gun, I think we're entitled to suspect they had a little more on their mind than simple robbery. But no - he's not on the slab, so he must be guilty. But why's crime going up again ?

Special Ed

Biased BBC writer Ed has a whole new blog of his own. It's all good, but check out this for the best demolition of the blogsphere's BBCoids latest attempt at fermenting faux outrage.

Spain: Not An Iraq Thing

Not since Patsy Murray lauded Bin laden's efforts at building daycare centres in Taliban-controlled Kabul has there been such a case of Leftoids demonstrating complete failure to understand what Islamofascists really want as the effusions which followed the Madrid bombings. Apparently, the Islamoloons were like little pussy cats right up until the West evicted the bloke they hated anyway because he wasn't a real Muslim. Or something.

Prof Bunyip provides a reality infusion over here

Liberals Busted, Spit & Snarl

It's an interesting philosophical question: why are college Republicans in the US so much more lively than their British equivalents ? Who knows ? Still, there's nothing here to match events like this. I'd add a big What-He-Said to JH's comments, together with the addendum that the hatred and bile directed at these kids gives the lie to Liberal claims to be the voice of sweet reason. Check out their site for more on this story - and feel a strange, guilty sense of relief over the fact that the US has its TINOs too.

Sock Puppet Speaks!

So, Sir John Stevens speaks out in favour of greater European cooperation against terrorism, thereby refuting claims that he's a political hack who speaks in mindless Liberal platitudes. All very good I'm sure, but it ain't going to happen. We've had 3000 die in a single day, and mass slaughter in an island paradise without Europe stirring. The same sloth, selfishness and wilful blindness that meant it took a bomb in Europe to wake people up will ensure that any such cooperation that does occur is pure window-dressing.

That would be true under any circumstances - but now we have the specific problem of a nominal EU member whose government was elected precisely because it could appease the terrorists by an electorate that will throw it out should a single bomb explode in Madrid. Anyone think the Spaniards will be looking under any stones or rattling any teacups ? They've already refused any help from the world's premier law enforcement organisation in their investigation of the train bombings. No doubt they'll get someone without the help of the Feds, but I can't be the only one to think it'll be an Abdrool Pa'tzay rather than any one Al-Quada would miss.

Bad as it is, Spain is just an extreme case of what afflicts most of Europe. Look at the treatment of Israel for proof of that. Resistance is out, appeasement is in. Talking of the technicalities of shared intelligence and the like is a mere displacement activty to distract from the moral sickness that hangs over everything Europe does or does not do. Sir John Stevens himself, the PC PC, is a symptom of this disease. Until we are prepared to call evil evil, all else is commentary.

Enormous Super-Villan Detected

They may have missed Shipman right up till he started forging wills with a crayon, but the NHS has managed to clamp down on his successor in the supercrime stakes.

I feel safer already.

Nowt To Do With Me, Mate

Who says the Left is too whiny to take harsh measures in the War on Terror ? They may coddle terrorists, but Blunkett's always ready to shoot the messenger.

If It Was Anyone Else...

So, young people being persuaded to part with thousands of pounds by bogus promises of long-term benefits - isn't the Financial Services Authority supposed to be clamping down on this sort of thing ?

What You Won't See On The BBC

Aren't digital cameras great ?

Hey, I'm only going all fast show for a reason. Digital cameras + net access allows people to view the side of the Left that the Beeb and its fellow travellers never get round to. Take this weekend's pro-Islamofascist peace demonstrations - starry-eyed idealists turning out to fight for a better world, right ? Try these examples reported by John Hawkins. Or how about this fine collection of loons, as pointed out by Tim Blair.

Bunker Mentality

About Wednesday night's BBC2 program 'If...things don't get any better' dealing with gated communities, I have only one question: does the Beeb have any sense of shame ? Surely the fact that you can predict the talking points in one of their programs before it's even aired should set a few of them thinking that they may be just a little bias after all. Needless to say, B-BBC was spot on with its predictions. The whole thing was a showcase for the Beeb's soft-left prejudices: tax-gougers are idealists, inequality is always bad, no improvement in public services without higher taxes…well, you know the drill.

It was interesting to note the ever-enlightened Beeb's dependence on crude stereotypes: thick security guard, two-faced bimbo sales manager, idle-rich property developer (most multi-millionaires spend all day riding, swimming and reading the paper, really). The Beeb may as well have made them wear prosthetic horns and carry pitchforks. Needless to say, the only characters that weren't from the Dept of Lefty Caricatures were the PM and a single mother from the nearby council estate.

As ever, the Beeb's tried to wiggle round the requirement for balance by setting the baseline far to the left, as though a claim that crime can have a devastating effect on the victim and Will Hutton stating that Britain was becoming plagued with 'spatial eugenics' were both equally mainstream views. Normally, the effect is to present moonbattery as normal yet this time it had the opposite effect: hearing the L3 babble on about their views just made they sound loonier than ever.

A poverty pimp proclaimed that we needed to expand the welfare state as she was dealing with third-generation unemployment claimants. Hey - call it an off the wall thought, but that suggests to me that welfare isn't working. The same rocket scientist complained that people on welfare were increasingly being 'coerced' to accept jobs or training - she worried that people would lose their self-esteem from being forced to work. This is how screwed up the Liberal worldview is - they complain that not being dependant on the state disempowers people.

An ethnic poverty pest complained that people had an unrealistic fear of crime. At which point DumbJon wondered about the likely reaction to someone claiming that ethnic minorities had an unrealistic fear of racism. No sooner had the thought formed in my head than the race-hustler in question followed up by claiming the media was making people unrealistically afraid of black men, even though they were the group most likely to be victims of violence. Given that they are most likely to be victims of violence perpetrated by other black males, this was kind of like the bloke convicted of killing his parents who asked for the court's mercy because he was an orphan. More to the point, it undercuts his whole argument: apparently, crime isn't an invention of racist, tabloid hacks. If the hoods were jailed, Blacks would benefit too. Quelle surprise!

Talking of crime brings me onto the fact that, save for one oblique reference, Mr Brownstone was AWOL. Talking about inner-city crime without talking about drugs is insane. Ditto the absence of gangs. What criminals were featured were mostly juveniles indulging in non-violent offences. You would have been hard pushed to guess from this program that crimes of violence are soaring. Given that one of the programs main talking points was that gated communities pander to paranoia, this was just plain dishonest.

In fact, the whole presentation of gated communities was biased in the extreme. The community featured was designed like a palace, as though such communities were filled with bloated plutocrats lighting fat cigars with £50 notes. That such a place may appeal to a pair of teachers trying to raise their children in safety is apparently beyond the compass of the BBC. In a truly Freudian slip, the voice-over described these communities as excluding 'locals', as though the people who actually live there don't count as local. Even the BBC must have felt that arguing that people don't have right of access to places they don't own was kind of weak, so - in a truly contrived twist - the property developer fences off part of the public highway. Opposing gated communities because you think the owners might go on to block roads is like opposing trade unions because you think they'll threaten workers who refuse to join. It's possible - but hardly inevitable. In fact, in this context it was a clear red herring.

There was an irony there, of course. Many of the BBC's big names aren't in the market for such communities - they've already shot off to the country. The Beeb was criticising the measures people take to survive in an environment which its own staff wouldn't touch with a barge pole. But that hides the bigger irony - the Beeb criticised gated communities because they allow people to seal themselves off from the outside world, so that they interact only with each other in a self-sustaining bubble of shared prejudices and paranoias. Someone should buy the Beeb a mirror.

Chronic Conservatism

Laban Tall reports on the latest attempt to cast Conservatism as a pathological condition.

More Nuance Required

Maybe they should ask why the militants hate them so much ?

Honest Leftie Sighted

Our Civilised Neighbours

Ah yes - the Continent. Such a much more civilised model for Britian than John AshKKKroft's America where no dissent goes uncrushed. Check out here and here to see how the EU deals with an awkward journo.

It IS A Political Matter

Don't think the TINOs will be talking about this any time soon.

As ever, note how people who whine about lacking the resources to teach basic literacy can write a blank cheque when there's some there's lefty indocducation to be funded. Needless to say, if the allocation of scarce resources isn't a topic for politics , what is?

But still, that's not it. What tees me off about it all is this: the sheer humbuggery of the homo-hustlers. These people constantly try to pass themselves off as the modern equivalent of Jews in Nazi Germany, and your failure to drink the Kool Aid means you're just like Hitler. Hang on a minute - who's intruding on who's lifestyle here ? Gay Rights activists claim they're trying to 'get the government out the bedroom' - yet they claim the right to turn hijack publicly-funded schools and indoctrinate young children into their lifestyle (hey, is it just me but does the Liberal obsession with indoctrinating the young imply a certain lack of confidence in their arguments ?)

Who's persecuting who here ? Liberals claim the right to extort money from hard-working families then use it to indoctrinate their kids. But they're the ones being oppressed. This is the bizzarro world TINO logic leads to. A group of people want to use the power of the state to intrude upon what was previously in the domain of the family, but TINOs say it's their fundamental human right. What would be a political matter for the TINOs ?

As for the activists - meet us half-way here. We won't demand the right to dictate what goes in the Manchester Village, you leave us to raise our kids the way we want. Until then, at least stop trying to claim that us disputing your right to impose your lifestyle on our kids means that we're oppressing you.

The Earth Spins Backwards

We must be approaching the End of Days. The Left has found a publically-funded lawsuit that's too absurd even for them to support. Can it be that the Left has found a sense of fiscal responsibility and a determination to crack down on fatuous lawsuits ? Or maybe there's something about the plaintiffs they don't like ?

Revisiting History's Greatest Monster

TINO's at it again. Daring fellow that he is, he quotes an attack on Joe McCarthy, thus raising the question of why he bothered ? McCarthy's beastliness is proverbial in modern pop culture. The chattering classes may suck at policy but they're unbeatable at shredding reputations. Tailgunner Joe is one of that select group of people who the nuance-junkies are prepared to call evil. Given their record of accuracy, it's worth checking out just what it is they have against McCarthy.

The quote does do a pretty good job of summarising the case against McCarthy: he, almost randomly, chose to give a speech making bogus charges about communist infiltration of the US government then - surprised by the positive reaction - he decided to keep the bandwagon rolling by making more and more outrageous charges until he finally self-destructed.

The above account is not totally untrue: McCarthy did indeed give a speech. But all the rest is bunk. Let's start at the beginning: the choice of subject for McCarthy's Wheeling speech was anything but random. It came just two weeks after the Hiss affair had reached its dénouement. Alger Hiss was the very model of an establishment insider - for example, he was an advisor at Yalta and helped in the formation of the UN - also, a well-respected Washington figure and a Soviet spy. When he was fingered as an enemy agent Truman tried to have his accuser prosecuted for perjury. When that failed the way was clear for action to be taken against Hiss. The statute of limitations prevented Hiss being prosecuted for espionage, but he was successfully prosecuted for perjury (in that he'd denied he was a Soviet spy) a fortnight before McCarthy's speech. What's more, Secretary of State Dean Acheson had responded to the conviction of a key player in the Democrat administration by proclaiming he would not turn his back on Hiss - as though he thought Hiss was being unfairly persecuted for the his purely personal habit of committing treason. Given this background, it would have been more surprising if McCarthy had not spoken out about this issue.

What McCarthy claimed in that speech was that there were 57 Communist Party members working in the State Dept. There was no suggestion all, or any, of them were necessarily spies - McCarthy was simply making the point that they were not the obvious choice of people to handle classified documents. Liberal reaction to this speech was practically textbook - they tried to charge McCarthy with perjury by claiming he'd said there were 205 communists in the State Dept. Actually, the figure of 205 security risks comes from a 1946 admission by a previous Democrat Secretary of State. Nevertheless, it is instructive to note that when McCarthy pointed out a serious breech in security in the State Dept, one previously admitted by its own head, the Liberal's reaction was to quibble about the numbers - Aha! He said 205 not 57, or possibly 163 or 98 or….Whatever he really said - and the perjury attempt failed utterly - security in the State Dept was clearly a train wreck and the Liberals reaction was to run exactly the kind of fine tooth comb over McCarthy's public pronouncements that they never applied to trivialities like national security.

This set the pattern for the rest of the McCarthy years. McCarthy would reveal a horrendous breech of security and the Left would claim he was drunk/insane/a Nazi. To note that McCarthy never revealed a single Soviet agent is not only untrue, but it misses the point: McCarthy wasn't about tracking down known spies, he wanted to ensure that when a security risk was identified they were removed from their job. Friedman acknowledges that McCarthy had the support of 'J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon and the Hearst newspaper chain ' So, a politician, some newspapers and, oh yes, the man in charge of tracing down Soviet spies. But, still, Joe was making it all up.

Friedman cites McCarthy's attack on the US Army's comatose security apparatus as the overreach that finally caused disaster. Hardly - consider the case of Annie Lee Moses, card-carrying Communist employed in the Pentagon's Code Room. McCarthy was not necessarily being paranoid in suggesting this was probably not the best role for her. Similarly, not only did the notorious Rosenberg spy ring rely on sources inside the Army, but McCarthy was able to identify other specific risks still working for the Army. In short, there was nothing hypothetical about the thought of communists working for the US Army.

Of course, the Left does like to float the myth that the Army-McCarthy hearings were about such weighty matters as Soviet infiltration simply because telling the truth about the central issue of these hearings may leave them looking a little weird. McCarthy, the Right-Wing Monster, employed a remarkably diverse staff (had anyone back then thought in those terms). A key staffer, Roy Cohn, had a crush on a young male staffer who was conscripted into the US Army under murky circumstances. Cohn is alleged to have put pressure on the Army to go easy on his unrequited love. As McCarthy himself said: 'Is my committee being charged with pressuring the Army to give David Schine a fur-lined cap ?' Indeed they were. McCarthy had exposed a communist in the Pentagon Code Room, so the Left retaliated by investigating manipulation of the military hat supply system. Who was smearing whom again ?

The story of Joe McCarthy is the textbook example of how the Left argues. McCarthy raised serious points about infiltration of the US government by agents of a communist dictatorship. The Left claimed he smelled and was ugly.

But what of McCarthy's allegedly right-wing critics ? Their major talking point is that McCarthy somehow brought Anti-Communism into disrepute. They were just about ready to do something about communist infiltration of the US government when along comes Joe and screws it all up with his amateurism. Hey - the revolution was in 1917, McCarthy's speech was in 1950 - thirty-three years ought to be enough time for anyone to get organised. Maybe, just maybe, 'responsible anti-communism' was a euphemism for doing nothing. And who exactly regarded McCarthy as discredited anyway ? At the time McCarthy was a hero to millions of ordinary Americans. It was the establishment that hated McCarthy for harassing his betters. If McCarthy's reputation has subsequently sunk, then that is the result of half a century of propaganda which the Liberal media has pumped out unopposed (or perhaps I should say 'responsibly opposed' ?). McCarthy didn't bring anti-communism into disrepute, rather the Left demonised McCarthy to try and distract from their own failings, helped immensely by the tacit consent of a Right which hated McCarthy for its own reasons.

Friedman's own indictment of McCarthy points to the inadequacies of the Republican establishment. Friedman notes that 'McCarthy's charges seemed to explain why the United States had just "lost" China and the outbreak of the Korean War seemed to make subversives in government a more urgent issue. '.. A quarter of humanity and one of the world's great civilisations had fallen under the swathe of barbarians - in what sense was this not a disaster ? Yet, Friedman's answer is to put quotation marks around 'lost'. That is the essence of how TINOs argue, the sneering, sarcastic tone as they try to imply that it may look like they're totally incompetent but, if you were enlightened like what they is, you'd recognise that condemning a billion people to communist tyranny is actually a strategic victory.

Does any of this still matter ? First principles say yes, the Left still relies on the politics of personal destruction, and there's still a large group of soi-dissant Conservatives who can be relied upon to pull their skirt over their heads every time they meet a real Conservative. But there's more to it than that. You want to know what the Cold War would have been like without that thug McCarthy ? Like the War on Terror is now. Once more we find ourselves engaged in a brutal conflict with a totalitarian philosophy and once more the chattering classes are outraged at any suggestion of actual conflict. Some people are surprised by the lackadaisical approach of the political establishment to the war, hey - we're the country of Kim Philby. Lackadaisical is what they do.

In the US McCarthy cut through all this. McCarthy was a brawler, a dirty fighter, yes - even a thug. America was at war with one of the most hideous regimes in history and we are invited to be appalled at one of the guys trying to defend America ? People who seem to regard the USSR as mildly eccentric compose screeds detailing just how rotten McCarthy was. So it's not the brutality that appalled them - was there something else they didn't like about McCarthy ?

Ironically, Friedman himself puts his finger on the real reason why Tailgunner Joe drives TINOs to distraction when he slyly notes that McCarthy had the support of the Hearst newspaper group. 'Had the support of the newspapers' is how TINOs say someone had massive public support, allowing them to discount the public as deluded fools who've been mislead by malicious wordsmiths. Well, McCarthy did have huge public support. When Dean Acheson claimed treason was no reason for him to snub Alger Hiss, America's TINOs thought he was being a perfect gentlemen, the public thought he was being a disgrace. McCarthy was the representative for everyone who was appalled at Acheson's arrogant belief that a Harvard education alibied treason. He was the conduit by which the American people took on the corrupt, incestuous establishment which thought of national security as a dreadful bore.

Needless to say, both Liberals and TINOs don't really like the public. What McCarthyism really meant was that these people could no longer run politics as a private members club, now the US public was roused and wanting to know what their alleged betters were doing to the country. For that, the political establishment would never forgive McCarthy.

Now history is repeating itself. Again civilisation is under attack, and again the establishment is - to say the least - asleep at the wheel (how else to explain events like this ?). The Great and Good alternate between hysterical predictions of imminent attack and coma. We have a chaotic immigration system, space cadet judiciary, a law enforcement community torn apart by PC and Armed Services bleeding dry. Not that the chattering classes claim to be sanguine about it all, but they don't want to deal with in that way. They probably worry about bringing respectable anti-terrorism into disrepute. Same ol', same ol'. We can let the chattering classes stumble on in the same old way or we can get to grips with these babbling wasters. We should be enraged. Our nation is under attack and our political establishment has renounced its responsibility for national defence. We are perfectly justified in victimising those who persistently fail in their duty to this country. In short, we need our Joe McCarthy.

Random Linkage

Down in the comments to my Dennis McShane post, Gawain points out that Denny's flash of sanity may just be a passing phase. Check out this to see industrial strength BS being deployed by a master. And then check out this post on the same site and recall that, as ever, the PC drones can say what they want, the designated victim classes know how bad things are.

Meanwhile, back in the UK, one of the Englishman's correspondants sums up my feelings exactly on Liberal reaction to the fall of Spain.

Is it serious ? Hey, if even one of the funniest guys on the web makes a straight post, then things are going badly. Allah shreds the argument that the election result was anything other than Munich at the ballot box (to quote this guy). But, Allah being Allah, he also includes a link to this - video gaming black humour at its finest.

As ever, the Party has the answer: the Commissar issues new maps for the comrades to use.

Meanwhile, LT reports on a mystery up Glasgow way. A car load of skinheads abduct an Pakistani who subsequently turns up stabbed to death and the police claim it's too early to say if there's a racial motive.

Just kidding.

Actually, Trev, Mike, Imran and the rest of the race-hustling bums won't be coming out to play: it was a white guy who got murdered by a car load of Pakistanis. The local MP warns that 'right-wing extremists may attempt to cause trouble in the wake of the killing.' Let's get this right - some Asians murder a white guy and that proves the dangers of right-wing extremism ?

And these people claim to be baffled by the BNP's appeal to voters ?

It's Funny Because It's True

John Ray points out this useful summary of democrat beliefs.

Can We Call Them Traitors Now ?

Seems like Samizdata was being too nice to the L3. The 'Spain asked for it' meme is well and truly up and running, and may even have cost the Spanish government the election. Apparently, having a foreign policy which some bunch of Islamofascist lunatics disagree with means you deserve mass slaughter. We should base our foreign policy on what Al-Q wants or they'll kill hundreds of people, but it's the US which is arrogant and imperialistic.

But what's this all about anyway ? The Left wants us to know that Islamofascits nutjobs are 100% behind them ? Behind them ? They're even meshing their bombing strategy with the needs of Lefty electioneering. Has the Left got any sense of shame left ? The Left/Islamic axis was always somewhat bizarre, but now we have people who think women shouldn't be let of the house alone acting as explosive spin doctors for the Left, and the Liberals are lapping it up. Maybe that can be the Lib Dems election slogan: 'Proud holder of the Bin Laden Seal of Approval'.

There's a certain obvious contrast here. The L3 can't stop babbling about confronting the BNP. Should we be building bridges with Nick Griffin and friends ? Are they just frustrated reformers ? Should we ask why they hate us ? Hardly - the Left is all for clamping down on those loons. What's more the L3 media establishment is constantly on Defcon One for any sign of Conservatives encouraging the rise of fascism, hence the insane obsession with code words - the argument that when a Conservative is talking about (say) literacy rates in school, he actually means 'Zieg Heil! Our Aryan superwarriors will soon rule the world!'.

Well, here are the Islamofascists, and the Left won't have a word said against them. Even mass murder merely provokes the L3 into fresh America-hating (with a side-order of anti-Semitism) - and nothing as subtle as code words, neither. It's fair to ask if the L3 have crossed the line. When those committed to destroying civilisation arrange their bombings to tilt elections in the L3's favour, we're entitled to ask whether these people can be trusted with power. More to the point, what of the interplay between Liberal rhetoric and terrorism. It's no exaggeration to say that Britain's 'Surrender Now!' faction have, from the first, gloried in predicting mass slaughter in Britain. It's true to say that the basis of their whole strategy is to wait for a Madrid-type attack then shout 'told you so'. In short, these people have both made it quite clear that - should they gain power - they will grovel before the Islamofascists and based their election strategy on waiting for a massive attack. Could they have done any more to encourage the slaughter of their fellow citizens ?

The Left Eating Itself

Europe Minister Denis Macshane has launched a fierce attack on former French president Valery Giscard D'Estaing, calling his vision for Europe "Napoleonic".
He pointed to an article by the man who drew up the draft European constitution saying Europe could not really respond to the Madrid bombings because it had no single president.

Mr Macshane said the comments were "old ideas from an old man about an old vision of Europe".

The War

Mark Steyn is bang-on as ever:

Likewise, if you take a "war on terror" seriously, then a vile act by one group necessarily taints another. Say I'm right, say that the 3/11 massacre was committed by Islamists. And say that six months down the ride ETA commit one of their more modestly scaled atrocities. It's no longer possible to draw a distinction, any more than it would be if the Real IRA committed some small-scale demolition of an Ulster pub. Once you join the club, your precise status within it is irrelevant: we know you for what you are. That's why one cannot distinguish between al-Qa'eda and Hamas, as so many European nuance-fetishists try to do.

Still, some folks aren't listening. The Mirror keeps its eye on the Bush-hating prize.

Somewhat Ironic

Let's face it: a Beeb campaign with the slogan 'have your say' is always going to be heavy on the humbug but this latest one is a lu-lu. In case you've missed it, the basic concept is this: the campaign features what BBCoids think of as ordinary people while in the background their innermost thoughts are spelled out, for example a burger van owner looks witheringly at a bloke carefully examining his burger, while on the grill the food spells out 'it won't kill you, mate'. Tag-line: 'Radio Five, have your say'.

Anyway, the final segment of one of these trailers features cops at some kind of serious incident. One looks about fifteen and is dressed in a uniform that seems too large for him, while the other looks like a real cop (i.e. older, larger, more authoritative). The baby plod is playing out blue & white incident tape on which the words 'round here coppers need guns' on it. The 'real cop' sees this and shakes his head disparagingly. The Beeb wants us to know that only scared kids would think there's a role for firearms in policing, real coppers can rely on their… what, exactly ? As ever, the Beeb is better at sneering at the opposition than actually advancing any ideas of its own.

Still, think this one over. Even in a campaign supposedly designed to push the idea that Radio Five is where us ugly proles can 'have our say' the Beeb can't allow any idea that doesn't fit with its smug, preachy Liberal agenda to be presented without immediately disparaging it. I wonder if there's anyone at the Beeb who can see the irony in that ?

Minority Report

At risk of being in a minority of one amongst Right Wing Death Beast bloggers, I feel that some form of reform of the court system is both inevitable and desirable. Doubtless a system that's lasted eight hundred years must have something going for it, but it's already history. The courts are already thoroughly politicised. Look at how the courts deal with asylum seekers: they aren't interpreting law, they're performing the legal equivalent of a sit-down protest. Similarly, recall what happened when Parliament passed a law mandating prison for a second burglary conviction and made the mistake of including an exemption for exceptional cases. In the first two years of operation, every case was found to be exceptional. Never mind the constitution, these people are rendering GBH to the English language.

Judges like to babble about folks like Tony Martin taking the law into their own hands, well the biggest offenders these days are the judges themselves. These people have adopted a doctrine of judicial supremacy, whereby the law of the land, as passed by the representatives of the people, is metaphorically speaking, marked 'For Information Only'. The very same people now engaged in taking out onions when discussing our eight hundred year old constitution are the ones who shredded it by trying to impose a judicial dictatorship. The Yin of judges legislating from the bench would always call forth the Yang of Parliament exerting its control of the judicial process. No one is politicising the courts, they are already there by dint of the judge's own actions. Let's not have any bewigged fools trying to convince us that when the courts ignore the law of the land, it's democracy in action, but when our elected representatives reform how a certain group of public servants get their jobs, then we're on the road to Auschwitz.

Caveat time: yes, Nu Lab's attempts at constitutional reform are a rare mix of stupidity and malice, but that doesn't mean we should call the whole thing off. On the contrary, in many areas the courts are far to the left of Labour - if the Conservatives wish to bring in real reform in areas such as crime, family policy or asylum, then they're going to have to break the power of the courts. Let there be no mistake, not since Charles I has Parliament faced such open defiance of its authority. May I be the first to suggest a similar solution ?

More practically, there is much that can be done. For an example of one area that desperatly needs reform look at judicial appointments, the current system worked well back in the days when there was a shared set of assumptions amongst judges, MPs and the wider public. Now, in an era where far-out fanatics like Brenda Hale can become high-ranking Law Lords, it's obvious that judicial appointments are in the hands of an unrepresentative clique of activist nuts. We can't turn easily turn the clock back, so let's go the other way: open out the process, have judges appear before select committees, let Parliament vote on them. Some will say this would lead to even worse politicisation. I'd say two things: that is not possible, and public scrutiny will act as a brake on the appointment of dyed in the wool nuts. Nothing would worsen Blair's heart condition more than having to listen Brenda Hale appear on national TV talking about how she sees the role of the family.

That's the more general point, of course. No matter how nutty Nu Lab gets, they always have to keep at the back of their mind the fact that sooner or later the folks watching at home will have the chance to turf them out. Au contrair, the judiciary has been allowed to go bandit precisely because they've been freed of both public scrutiny and accountability.

Maybe, after Year 10 of the Howard government, we can restore the old system, but that's what needs to be done: a work of restoration, not conservation. The old ways are gone and nothing will reduce the chances of bringing them back like Conservatives refusing to acknowledge the damage that years of activist judges have done to our court system.

Prof Bunyip Speaks Out For A Much-Abused Minority.

Cause & Effect

The Telegraph reports this like its some kind of surprise. Hey - who had a better chance to observe the essential moral bankruptcy and narcissism of the Sixties trash than those who were 'raised' by them ?

Where We're At In Education:

So Fat Charlie claims:

“Overall, the system is quite unreliable if you are a pupil or a parent,” Mr Clarke told a conference in London organised by the General Teaching Council for England. “It’s not quite hit and miss, but it’s almost hit and miss whether your classroom teacher is working rigorously and systematically to improve the classroom experience for every child.”

Too true say the nation's parents.


Mr Clarke said teachers deserved “a small pat on the back” for raising overall standards. But there remained a gap of 22 percentage points in the proportion of high-quality lessons that pupils received in the best and the worst subjects.

There were “quite strikingly different” levels of improvement. History teaching had improved by 21 percentage points, compared with only 8 in design and technology.

So, he's got the figures to prove it. Has this well-argued revelation of poor performance amongst the teaching profession spurred them on to close that gap ?

Like, really.

Teachers’ unions were dismayed by the Education Secretary’s remarks. Chris Keates, of the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers, said: “These are a departure from the positive messages about teaching quality which had recently become a welcome hallmark of ministerial speeches.

“The Secretary of State claims the system is unreliable if you are a pupil or parent. It is equally unreliable for teachers who wrestle with inequitable access to high quality professional development and variable standards of resources and support.”


Whine, whine, whine. Just because we're screwing up doesn't mean you should criticise us. Anyway, the dog ate my resources. Same ol', same ol'. Doubtless with the same ol' results next year. Is it any wonder education is collapsing when the supposed professionals are incapable of assuming responsibility for anything ? Self-dramtising victimhood holds such an iron grip over our nation's schools that it's a wonder they can find any time for teaching. Enough, already. Bring in vouchers and let the kids escape to Destiny High, leaving Joe Whiner and his mates to sink further into apathetic self-coddling.

Blog Mob

Quick, mark up the brushwood 10%! Maybe I'm being too cynical, but I'm a real Conservative so mass action scares me. Even the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert could have turned nasty if enough people had become convinced the Jews invented HIV. When I hear the news that bloggers are being urged to Unite Against Fascism, my spider senses start to tingle. PC sums up one reason why it's a terrible idea - the BNP being the party for people who believe the mainstream parties are abusing their triopoly to shaft the common man, it's hardly likely to be a convincing argument against the BNP if all three supposedly competing parties get together to shaft the BNP.

But there's more to it than that. Laban Tall hits a good few nails on the head. To make explicit his point: the BNPs rise isn't a result of the extremist ideals becoming mainstream, it's a result of mainstream ideals becoming extremist. We hear about a bloke being prosecuted for preaching against homosexuality, then we hear about some Mullah claiming Allah orders Muslims to kill the infidel, with nary the ghost of the hint of a charge. When did 'equal under law' get to be a Fascist concept ?

It's ironic that a twenty-four carat example of what's wrong with our politics has been all over the news this very same week. Does anyone believe that, if five honkeys had been busted at an Aryan Nation training camp in West Virginia, the Liberals would hail them as virtual heroes on their return ? Hey, you want fascists ? Al-Q will fulfil all your fascist needs and them some. They make Hitler look like Germaine Greer. But 'Unite Against Al-Q' is still on the drawing board. The Tipton Taliban and friends are an extreme example of a very nasty trend in the British Muslim community, yet Liberals not only donwannatalk'boutit, you're a Nazi for mentioning it.

Then again, there's a whole bunch of thugs the L3 get along just fine with. Where's the outrage over incidents like this ? Or the IRA ? Or organised crime ? Nada. So it's not the violence. Then there's Jonah Goldberg's challenge to the Liberals: apart from the racism, what is it you don't like about the Nazis ? Come to think of it, given the attitudes to Jews and the support for Mugabe prevalent in those circles it seems like racism is no big with the Left right now. So, there's a certain artificial quality to the L3 outrage about the BNP. Then again, who said the BNP was rising ? Sure they may get a few councillors but it ain't Nuremberg yet. LT rightly points out that the Liberals have already made off with many of our rights, under cover of fighting extremists. Is it overly cynical to wonder if they'll be making another trip to the well during this latest campaign ? And would they be so committed if they didn't think they could stretch the campaign against a particular bunch of idiots into a more general smear against anyone to the right of Tony Blair ? [incidentally, could the BNP's success in part be due to Liberals using the same language to condemn them as they use on people who want to cut the Arts Council budget ? Maybe people will take charges of fascism more seriously once the L3 stop using 'fascist' as their favorite epithet].

Similarly, Liberals have already succeeded in removing from the political arena much that it is arguably perfectly legitimate to discuss. So, the L3 response to the disenchantment of the public with politicians who will not address the issues they're concerned about, is to rope off a whole new bunch of issues from public debate. That doesn't sound like a winning strategy to me.

Here's where it's at: British Muslims are going abroad to learn how to use anthrax and the Liberals are worried about Whites voting the wrong way. When does it not get to be the grey meat's fault ? And if you are a pinkey person, living in the same town as the Tipton Taliban and their charming fellow travellers, how likely are you to heed the calls from your supposed betters (who live nowhere near you) to take the High Road and not vote for the British Nutcase Party ?

Where The Racists Are

Ha! Fool! What he really should have done was be learnin'de ebonics and talkin' bout them bitches and hoes.

The BBC: an equal opportunity employer provided you stay on the plantation 'stead of forcing your way into the house and talking about white man's stuff.

What's Really Wrong With TINOs

TINO is showing his deficiencies again. True, the sneering is there, with a hint of libel but…isn't a rebuttal supposed to, as it were, rebut the original point ? The one-sentence attempt is certainly snippy but it has the distinct disadvantage of being content-free. Then again, TINOs are, by definition, not actually into actual arguments, coherency, or workable philosophies.

There's a story about a famous poet who was approached by an earnest young man who told him 'I want to be a poet', to which the great man replied "I can well understand you wanting to write poetry, but I don't know what you mean by 'being a poet' ". That is exactly the thing with the TINO brigade. Individuals such as Francis Maude, Michael Heseltine and John Bercow spend so long slagging off mainstream Conservatism, to say nothing of Conservatives, that you find yourself wondering what part of Conservatism these people do believe in. Answer: they're Conservatives, but they don't do any actual Conservatism. To them, politics is not about ideals, objectives or vision. Politics is, in essence, one huge cocktail party where the enlightened swap polite chat over the canapés while the great unwashed roam around outside doing whatever proles do all day (no doubt, including 'business' whatever that might be). They might not have any firm ideas about politics, but they sure have definite ideas about their own importance.

Needless to say, the fundamental snobbery and elitism of these people means they get by just ducky with Nu Lab. Indeed, if only Labour would rid itself of oiks like Skinner and Kilfoyle and just admit that sometimes the servants do need a damn good thrashing, the TINOs would jump ship ASAP. Equally, they hate Lady T, The Gipper and Dubya for exactly the opposite reasons. None of these three spent any time with the Cocktail Kings. Not only that, they went the other way: appealing to the common rabble, firing up Joe Public and unleashing the full power of the ordinary, honest, patriotic citizen. Instead of making polite chat, they made history. And the TINOs never forgave them.

Of course, there is certain demographic out there to which this kind of pretentious babbling appeals. Which brings us nicely back to Plastic Gangster. He sees himself there, chatting with Mike and Francis, swapping sub-Wildesque one-liners and expanding on his faux Den Beste babblings on strategy. He don't need actual arguments, he's enlightened. Stop arguing with him, scum.

Well, enough already. This is the Internet and everyone's invited. Hey - if I'm offending anybody, just drop me a line and I'll turn it up. This is my site and that means real Conservatism. But you can be sure that reading this site there's one thing you will never be asked to do, and that thing is this: trust me. I write for my own reasons, but, in so far as I'm arrogant enough to think my random tapings have any effect on you, I'd be delighted to change a few minds, I'd hope to open a few, I'll settle for raising a smile and if all else fails, I'll take mild annoyance. That means I want to argue my points, try and convince you by laying out my case, not relying on smug asides, sneering or the bludgeoning thuggery of the 'of course we all agree…' school of rhetoric. Of course, I admit this does give me an unfair advantage. After all, you do need some actual ideals before you can argue for them.

Weird Stuff

I can't decide if this is a good or bad.

So, the guy's got some practical experience, is that really a bad thing in a lecturer ?

Meanwhile, the Creator of Worlds report on some Olympic standrd weirdness. Real 'if you read nothing else today' stuff. Just have something available to mop up the blood running out your nose from your bleeding synapses.

Could Try Harder

Not one of the least strange things about Gordon Brown is his attitude to business. Gordy appears genuinely to believe that business is a seething cess-pit of criminals, frauds and degenerates. Hence, the creation of such bodies as the Competition Commission and the strengthening of Trading Standards groups. The CC, and the supporting legislation, is designed around the idea that cackling, top-hatted capitalists are constantly plotting to rig the market, while other consumer legislation is based on the idea that Vauxhall would sell exploding cars if they thought they could get away with it. Yet, when we consider one of our most important industries, completely the opposite attitudes prevail. Its key players are encouraged to carve up the market, successful suppliers deliberately operate under capacity while anything except the grossest violations of standards provokes only a mild rebuke. Maybe Labour don't really give a toss about education after all ?

Given that I bang on about school vouchers every chance I get, you think I'd be pleased with the latest announcement from the Zombie Party, but no. I mean, blah, blah, blah, step in the right direction and other such clichés, but (as ever) too little mint, too much hole.

As far as kids switching from state to private schools goes, then, yes, this scheme should help. Many kids who were previously stuck in Stayte Skools will now have the chance to escape into the private sector. Which is nice. But it still doesn't help those children whose families can't even stump up the top-ups required - who will tend to be those in the areas with the worst schools. Equally, the fact remains that parents are already paying for their children's schooling - after all, that was the justification for the tax hikes Labour brought in. Rescuing the maximum number of kids from the Marxist buffoons in the public sector is a good, short-term measure (unlike the Left, we should not countenance destroying children's education for some kind of hand-wavey concept of the public good ) but, for the foreseeable future, most British children will be educated in the state sector.

Here's where the idea breaks down. Vouchers would help parents switch to the private sector, but state schools don't cost anything anyway. So, does the scheme mean that schools will receive a bonus equivalent to the cost of the voucher for every extra pupil taken on ? Does that apply to all pupils or just those from out of area ? (in which case, how to counter the incentive for the Head of Southside High to fill the ranks with pupils from North Rd Comp ?). Will schools which load up with voucher pupils have their budgets protected from retaliation by the LEA ? Certainly, plenty of schools could double their capacity and still be oversubscribed - will they be able to borrow to fund expansion ? Und so weiter.

Of course, there is a reason for this caginess. The Conservatives don't want to emphasise to the staff of Awful St Comp that if these proposals go through, they're in serious trouble. Still, there are problems with the current low-key approach. Labour will not need any cattle prodding to try and depict it as purely a middle-class tax break (which, in terms of private education, it clearly is). Plenty of parents are deeply concerned about their children's education yet can't see themselves going private with anything less than a 100% subsidy. To them, it will seem like abandonment.

Howard should state three things clearly: education exists for the benefit of the pupils and no one else, St Fabulo's School can expand to the size of Jupiter, just as long as the demand is there and (this is vital) any attempts to rig the market in education will be treated just like the heads of Tesco and Asda meeting to discuss the prices they pay to farmers - like a serious offence. We're paying through the nose for this, so its about time we had some service.

Beware The Tea Police!

Tsk, Eurosceptics. Fancy them claiming that the EU would intrude unnecessarily on even the smallest areas of British life. As if.

Waste - Here ?

Ok, so it's right to be sceptical when a political party claims it can give everyone free Cornettos without tax rises simply by cutting waste. But, c'mon, given the size and nature of the NHS, this sort of thing is bound to happen ten times a day.

About Those Railways

So, anyway, five people screw up leading to the death of an innocent citizen and don't even face disciplinary action. No wonder the railways are so dangerous. Expect the Guardian to call for Corporate Manslaughter charges ASAP.

Oops - turns out they were social workers who screwed up. That's alright then. Being completely incompetent is no cause for firing in caring, sharing modern Britain.

Socially Confused

Liberal's intrinsic idiocy is normally merely annoying. Claiming Bush=Hitler is so retarded that there's a tendancy to give them a pass. Yet, if we're supposed to believe that Ann Winterton jokes lead to people torching their local take-away, then we should take note when absolute pond scum start sounding like a Guardian editorial. We can't blame the offence on the Guardian, but we sure can raise the question of whether these people make this sort of thing far more likely by creating the climate where this sort of thing is seen as acceptable.

His Majesty also have something to say about these poor, misguided yoofs.

Double Or Quits

If I seem like I'm hostile to the alleged modernisers that's purely because I am. Take this post by Free Democrat. Speaking personally, I dislike dear ol' Jacob already. No one has the right to a seat, but still, FD seems to be demonstrating that most original of moderniser original sins: having his Gateaux and eating it. FD sez diversity is a Good Thing, but not in the sense that the Party should pursue it. As I keep saying when writing about science: you can't claim to be a disinterested observer while stating that only a Nazi would choose Option B. What's more FD cites the imbalance between girlies and boys on the Tory benches. Hey, FD, the truth is even worse - look at the imbalance between lad & lasses in the vital UK political blog sector. Seems to me that La Femme ain't really into discussing farm subsidies (which is hardly a criticism of them). So, FD wants to correct the imbalance despite apparent evidence that it arises quite naturally - which surely then means some form of action is required to produce a 50/50 split.

Still, 'tis a mere apperitif for what's coming next. In the comments to that post Plastic 'don’t call me TINO' Gangster goes dumpster diving behind the Dept of Washed Up Socialist Cliches. TINO sneers that Jacob Brat is merely 'something in the City', opining that some of the people there are 'dozy as a whelk, albeit a whelk with the right surname'. Yep, that's the City: 11 AM start, cocktail hour 1-3, home by 4. There may have been a time when the City was dominated by well-connected dullards but, like much else, it had an encounter with a blonde typhoon (who, incidentally, never needed affirmative action) and since at least 1987 all the funs gone out of it. Of course, TINO must know this but, as ever, there's a deeper game being played. What all this slagging of one of our few successful industries is all about is an attempt to distract from an interesting coincidence. Entitlement Boy has a successful career in the City (and how many people think that makes him a loser ?) but TINO claims that alone doesn't qualify him for parliament. Except when discussing Margo 'TBA' James her career as a pharmo-flack is constantly cited as the perfect qualification for a seat in the House. To moi, a Gold Star is a Gold Star and a career is a career, so who's discriminating, again ?. At least the City provides a useful product, liquidity. PR ? Mr Chairman, could we have some more photos of you with the giant syringe ?

Then, again, this is business as usual for the modernisers. TBA's ascent is a Good Thing because lesbians are underrepresented in Parliament, saith the modernos. Well, yes indeed, lesbians are, but homosexuals as a group are massively over-represented. We can speculate why this is a natural state of affairs, but the modernistas have a question to answer. White, male, homosexuals are the most over-represented group in Parliament. The modernisers want to take action to run down the numbers of the first two groups but why not the last ? After all, homosexuality is at least a better predictor of beliefs than race, for certain. Yet, the modernisers are perfectly happy with the Conservative Party being a fetching shade of lavender. What's going on ?

So, the Hell with it. Modernisers claim the selection process is biased. Well, only one way to be sure. Anoymise the initial paper sift stage of the application process. Issue a standard set of questions and mark sheets to the local associations. Invite journalists along to observe, make the interviewers notes available on the web. Would that lower the respect of the public for the political process ? Such a thing is not possible. Would it make for uncomfortable moments for the Party ? Too right! But, not as bad as it'll be for Labour, forced to either reveal the Neanderthal nature of their local parties or let the public speculate over what they've got to hide. At last, we'll have an answer as to why you can find turbans anywhere in British life, except the Conservative benches. No quotas, no smoke-filled rooms, just a good, honest selection process. That'll make them happy, right ? I mean, it's not like this whole modernisation thing is a cheap excuse for them to pack the Party with their own people, right? Let's hear it for transparency!

Message From The Neighbours

The thing with the whole parallel universes deal is that occasionally we get interference from nearby existences. Take this report from the notorious Mohammed Atta lawsuit and remember it next time you hear that Bush knew.

Self-Awareness

The Clinton Years in one quote:

Huddled with top aide George Stephanopoulos, Clinton briefly considered and then dismissed a CIA report that Aristide is a manic depressive. "You know," Clinton said, "you can make too much of normalcy."

The Magic Of Government

Completely screw up your job, get more money and power:

Every local authority in England will be required to appoint a director of children's services in a bid to improve child welfare under legislation due to be unveiled by the government.

The children's minister, Margaret Hodge, will today launch the long-awaited children's bill, which is intended to improve the coordination of child protection and prevent tragedies, such as the murder of child abuse victim Victoria Climbié.

After all, the existing system works so well. Needless to say, these measures are nothing to do with saving the lives of kids. To do that, Maggie H would have to put her boot up the backside of Labour's core demographic social worker scum personnel. No, what it's realy about is giving the Beardy trash more excuses to terrorise members of the enemy class:

An "information hub" will be set up in 150 local authorities to record details of all the children in the area. Each child will have an electronic file - including their name, address, date of birth, school and GP - that states whether they are known to social services, education welfare, police, or youth offending teams.

To quote Samizdata on this issue: All Your Children Belong To Us

5500 Out Of 5500

So, there you have it. The government has finally completed its review of the nations speed cameras and discovered that not a single one has been wrongly sited. Quelle surprise!

Really, with such success at choosing sites you have to question why every other government activity is a total trainwreck. Maybe the camera blokes could help out with the NHS ?

More, Please!

I've mentioned before that I think we need a Conservative critique of science. Conservatives are prepared to raise purely ethical objections to much of modern science (which in many people's minds means no objection at all) but Conservatives have been far too reticent about dealing with the science itself. Tom Bethell, in The American Spectator, provides a perfect example of exactly what's needed with his sceptical take on the hype surrounding modern genetics.

For years, the hype surrounding genetic engineering and gene therapy knew no bounds. With the Human Genome Project -- publicized at the height of the dot com mania -- things went from bad to worse. The genome was "decoded," then fully decoded. Then a final draft was decoded one more time, fully and finally. That was last spring. And still they didn't know how many genes we have. Twenty thousand? Forty thousand? About as many as roundworms, some guessed.

Something was wrong. But there had been a coronation, and now there was no going back. The genome was the marvel of our age. Knowing the nucleotide sequence of the DNA would allow us to decipher the mysteries of life. Now we could repair the misprints and defects that had brought us disease and misery. Sooner or later, death itself would be overcome.

There was no adversary press. The liberals who had brought us social engineering were not going to dispute the claims of human engineering. The breakthroughs, endlessly touted, constituted the new progressive vision. For the first time in years, it became possible for liberals to believe in progress again. So the journalists formed themselves into a cheering squad. The libertarians were especially enthusiastic.

Exactly!

The American Spectator is always worth a look. Here, Todd Anderson points out the basic insanity underlying much yoof culture, with a simultaneous obssession with the evils of government coexisting with a desire for a whole bunch more of it.

My friend, like the Super Furries, is no doctrinaire socialist. Still, the evidence suggests that the rock 'n' roll youth culture recognizes the problem (the big bad government) yet refuses to do anything about it. Weirder still is that rock, with its inherent anti-authoritarianism, would inspire audience and bands alike to say "The government's screwing us!" and also, "Let's make it bigger!"

Three Great Quotes

"They must be really incompetent if they keep needing all this extra training'

DumbJoanne doesn't quite get the point of In-Service training for teachers.

"Frankly, the less martyrs there are the more important each martyr is. It’s like the effect supply and demand has on prices.

More martyrs means cheaper martyrs and that’s got to be good for everyone."

The England Project fails to understand why killing terrorists makes them more dangerous.



'"On Tuesday Home Secretary David Blunkett said it could be renamed the Public Prosecution Service, to help people feel it is on their side."

That's a relief. For a minute there I was worried that the Queen was out to get me.'

Paul is left on the kerb by Nu Lab's rebranding exercise.

Double-Header

Could there be anything more likely to make Liberals turn the seethotron up to 11 than Ann Coulter commenting on that film ?

IN THE DOZENS and dozens of panic-stricken articles the New York Times has run on Mel Gibson's movie, "The Passion of the Christ," the unavoidable conclusion is that liberals haven't the vaguest idea what Christianity is. The Times may have loopy ideas about a lot of things, but at least when they write about gay bathhouses and abortion clinics, you get the sense they know what they're talking about.

But Christianity just doesn't ring a bell. The religion that has transformed Western civilization for two millennia is a blank slate for liberals. Their closest reference point is "conservative Christians," meaning people you're not supposed to hire. And these are the people who carp about George Bush's alleged lack of "intellectual curiosity."

Modernise This!

Here I am, metaphorically mining Mt Outrage, having my bile duct transplanted to my mouth, taking the poison pen letter into the twenty-first century and do I get decent hatemail ? Nada. To add insult to injury, the only time someone launches a decent screed at me, it's about stuff I didn't say. What's wrong with you people ? If you can't find something offensive here, where the Hell can you ? Is this some kind of Lefty thing, an inner need to make stuff up even when the truth is far nastier ?

What's brought all this on is this: I'm the subject of a whiny screed by TINO Tony about …. Well, what is the only subject TINOs ever talk about ? Revolutionising the Conservative Party ? Hey, try revolutionising your philosophy to cover something other than Gay Rights first. I mean, I've got the strangest feeling that two electoral wipe-outs in succession reflect something other than just public discontent with Conservative views on legalising gay sex in public toilets. But no, you can't tell them, and if you do you get this:

If it's simply the case that DumbJon reckons that the Tory party should not select poofs, queens, nancy boys, dykes, shit-drivers, tuppence-lickers, tugboats, frigid lezzers, friends of Dorothy and others of that ilk as candidates on principle he should just say so and not dress it up as outrage against an alleged system of identity politics gone berserk.

So, who's being the weasel here ? TINO rolls out the Mark 1 Mod 0 caricature of a Social Conservative then tries to argue that the fact I (or indeed anyone else) doesn't fit this stupid caricature means that we're hypocrites. This is just an updated version of 'Have you stopped bearing your wife yet ?'. It's worth at this point mentioning what brought on this hissy fit - my scepticism about James, the famous lesbian Tory. TINO points out that James, a lesbian, can't be making a career as a professional lesbian because she said she didn't want to talk about it. Ahem - people who don't want to talk about things, don't talk about them. James(lesbian), on the other hand, talked at great length about her sexuality, and equally importantly, about nothing else. As an aspiring politician, far less a MILLIONAIRE PR GURU, James, famous right-wing lesbian, knows how to spin a story. If she was depicted as the Tory's token lesbian, there is no doubt that that is what she wished to be. Supposed attempts to deflect this line of questioning sound just like plausible deniability to me. What the Hell else did she think the press was going to write about ?

As a public service I would now like to point out how candidates who really don't want to talk about it can avoid this kind of press coverage:

Fantasy Press Conference:

Reporter: Are you gay ?

Candidate: Yes

Let's see them get 500 words out of that. Or how about a deflection ?

Reporter: Are you gay ?

Candidate: Yes, but I still have to pay £2000 a year more under Labour than the Conservatives….

Or how about… well, you get the point. There's no reason why anyone skilled enough to survive in politics should allow themselves to get pinned down talking about their personal life unless that's all they've got

That's the thing, of course. Behind the hysterical shrieking from TINO, there is a whole bunch of…… nada. TINO shrieks and sneers at those who question the lesbian James's God-given right to a seat in the House but he's running on empty when it comes to saying anything positive about James, who is a lesbian. What exactly did she do to impress him that much ? Even TINO can't be that impressed with a candidate who rode upon a tidal wave of publicity without mentioning policy once. She's not a token says TINO - but he never gets round to telling us what she is. What are her qualifications ? What does she believe ? Where does she stand on school vouchers ? Hey, she's lesbian, but she doesn't like to talk about it.

But what does she like to talk about ?

So, who are the hatemongers here ? TINO tries to libel me as a knuckle-dragging ape but that's just par for the course for the modernisers. These people have never hidden their belief that those of us who don't think of traditional morality as some kind of amusing holdover, like hand pumps on the village green, are barely human. We’re animals, see ? Not part of the beautiful future that will come about when people unlearn everything 4000 years of civilisation tells us about how societies run and just go for it. These people sure can hate well, but - sans Gay Rights - what is the point ? Why do they bother ?

That's the thing here. James is actually the perfect pin-up girl for the modernisers. Just like them, she's looking to build a reputation based on supposed radicalism without actually stating anything of any lasting value whatsoever. She's perfect, a candidate who doesn't like to talk about the only thing she talks about for a faction whose only central ideal is hatred of those people who have actual ideals.

I have seen the future and it is nothing at all.

The Vital Rapist Demographic

The Liberals have a new victim group to coddle. People are actually being deprived of their rights just because they are pond scum. Needless to say, the High Priests of Nuttiness are just outraged by the whole thing, while Nu Lab and Michael Howard's Not Very Conservative Party also have representatives queing up for their dose of Kool Aid.

Peter C and Mel P both have something to say about this. Peter is exactly right to note:

It should go without saying that there is not a single problem facing Britain today that would be solved if Ian Huntley and his fellow inmates were given the vote. All it would achieve would be to give a political elite already frighteningly partial towards the criminal a further, very self-interested, reason for so being. If that's what you want, vote Liberal Democrat. If they have any sense, that's what the criminals will be doing.

Similarly, Mel P correctly diagnoses this as another symptom of the move away from morality and towards Therapy Nation, where there's no such thing as evil only a pathological reaction to an unjust society, or whatever the Hell is the L3 Excuse D'jour.

Still, with all that I think there's one more thing that needs to be said, namely this: crime is not a part of civilisation, or a corollary to it, it is a complete renunciation of it. To talk of the rights of the criminal, far less to insist that he should be granted privledges of citizenry, such as voting, is to obscure this point. These people have resigned from society, they have no use for their fellow citizens except as prey, yet Liberals want to cast scumbaggery as a lifestyle option, crime as inevitable and the predators as a misunderstood minority.

Look at the new name for the Prison Service: the 'National Offender Management Service'. It's the perfect distillation of what's wrong with Liberal policy on crime. The prissy reluctance to call criminals criminals is one thing, but what of that phrase 'management service' ? What a perfect insight into what passes for the Liberal mindset: 'We can't defeat crime, we can only live with it and reach some kind of Munich-type compromise with the vermin'. So saith the Liberals these past forty years, citing the utter failure of their policies to even slow down the explosion in crime rates as somehow proving that nothing can be done. Well, y'know, there's ever such a funny thing been happening over in the US these past few years. Take this for an example, flagged up by John Hawking.

LOS ANGELES — It's been 10 years since California enacted the "three strikes" law, mandating sentences of 25 years to life for repeat serious or violent offenders. But some say it's time for the no-exceptions enforcement to be loosened.

Since the three-strike policy became law, the state's crime rate has dropped almost 50 percent, despite a one-third increase in population. Critics say the law casts too wide of a net, sweeping up thousands of petty criminals and shoplifters and putting them away for decades.

The only lesson to be learned from the collaspe of law & order is the utter uselessness of Liberals at dealing with crime. That's the irony here - Liberals rant about paedophiles not being given the vote but its the public at large who have been disenfranchised. The justice system is a self-perpetuating freakshow, propagating a philosophy based on a mishmash of New Age garbage, Sub-Marxist drivel, junk science, elitist blather and, above all else, a contempt for traditional morality.

Anyone remember the last time the L3 complained about excessively harsh sentances given to racists, tax evaders or Jefferey Archer ? Try never. Liberals have no principled objection to harsh measures. But, if you're a homicidal child molester, you can expect whole swathes of L3 cadre to take out onions on your behalf. Of course, Liberals want to give the vote to felons. they don't think 90% of them are really criminals in the first place. They're sort of over-exuberant social pioneers.

The whole Votes for Felons scenario has at least this redeeming feature: it tells the public what the L3 really believe about crime. These people truly believe there are no grounds to discriminate against Ian Huntley - to them, he's just a normal citizen. Now the public can see at last why the War on Crime is being so comprehensively lost.

The Beeb Keeps Battering On

I mentioned before the BBC's pathetic attempts to cast the housing market as some vast capitalist conspiracy. They're at it again today. They quote from a City firm which claims 'a combination of speculative buy-to-let investment and lenders stretching income multiples have combined to drive the market even higher. ' See - it's all speculators and the lenders. Right.

Even the Beeb feels the need for a bit of plausible deniability so they include this later on from the Halifax (which should know since it's Britain's biggest mortgage bank): 'According to the Halifax, the house market is being propped up by a strong labour market, low rates and a shortage of new homes being built [my empahasis]. ' That's the conspiracy right there. The supply is being restricted so prices rise. This isn't Oliver Kamm terrority, it's common sense. If the Beeb was really worried about soaring prices then it might investigate just why building has lagged so far behind demand. But that would mean the BBC coming into potential conflict with ecoloons and local bureaucrats - the very people Auntie regards as its natural constituency. Far easier to stay in a never-never land of evil lenders forcing people to pay over the odds.

Punk In The Gallery

So Labour's latest big idea to control our soaring crime rate turns out to be rebranding the Criminal's Protection Service Crown Prosectuion Service. Quick - open the window and you may just hear the screams of terror from the nation's scumbags

Yeah, I know, a real Conservative would be outraged by this blatant attempt to write the Queen out of yet another part of the constitution, but it's all so.... pathetic. I mean, puuuuleaze, Nu Lab, swept into power on a landslide, ruled unchallenged for seven years, and they still think sticking two fingers up to Her Maj counts as radicalism. It's just the political equivalent of the Turner Prize, an attempt to disguise utter lack of talent by grandstanding radical dude posturing. Listen to Blunkett explain the change:

On Tuesday Home Secretary David Blunkett said it could be renamed the Public Prosecution Service, to help people feel it is on their side.

Is this not a man in the grip of complete cognitive surrender ? There's plenty wrong with law enforcement in this country and a lot of the blame lies with CPS, but Blunkett's worried about whether people feel that it's on their side. Pathetic. Is this really the promised Blair revolution ?

What's Really Wrong With Identity Politics

So the Conservative Party has selected its first 'woman with sensible shoes' candidate. 'scuse me if I appear underwhelmed, but this is practically a case study in everything that's wrong with modern politics. James, so the doctrine goes, will be able to represent lesbians in Parliament in ways that A N Other candidate could not. Even taken on its own terms this is stupid. Given that there are no Lesbian-Only constituencies (though Nu Lab is probably working on it), no matter where James is elected, she - according to the self-same doctrine - won't be able to represent the vast majority of her constituents. Needless to say, Liberals insist that this door only swings one way.

Moving on from the general absurdity, we come to a more specific stupidity. James, it turns out, is a millionaire businesswoman thanks to her previous career as a PR flack. In other words, by virtue of her particular shagology preferences James is supposed to be better able to represent female games teachers than, say, a former geography teacher with a wife and three kids. Like, totally.

Of course, you could believe, as I do, that at least with self-made millionaire candidates you're getting people who are good at something. Equally, you could buy into the Pollard doctrine that MPs are meant to be a superior breed of people to the common herd. But, neither of these things are what James is arguing. Au contrair, James wants us to believe that she, millionaire ex-flack, can reach out to the big-shoed fraternity in ways that no one else can.

No doubt there are lesbian loons who buy into the whole identity politics thing but, how can one put this ? They ain't going to vote Conservative anyway. If Michael Howard wants to appeal to female police officers, then he'd do better to do something about our Not-Resident-On-This-Planet judges than trying to persuade Clare Balding to stand as a Conservative candidate.

That's what's really objectionable about this whole thing - who is Margot James ? What does she believe ? We don't know. The Conservative Party's rush to find transgendered, Asian paraplegics to stand merely emphasises the hollowing out of the Conservative Party. Ideals ? Who needs them ? Potential MPs are selected according to whether they fit the Party's marketing strategy, the business of actually having any aptitude for the job is soooo last century.

What's He Trying To Say ?

The Englishman seems to be suggesting a certain contradiction in the Health Nazi's latest talking points. Actually, this and this both contain a perfectly consistant message, and that message is 'We're all gonna die and only Big Government can save us'.

Same as every other week.