Dixon At The Beeb

For a snapshot of where the Beeb is today, look no further than this article by Roger Mosey, the so-called head of BBC "television" news. Proof positive that even in an article supposedly trying to rebut charges of bias, the Beeb's brass can't manage to string a thousand words together without exhibiting their most infuriating tendencies. Hey - they can't even get past the title without resorting to one of their favourite tricks, the fatuous strawman. The headline assures us that 'The BBC was no cheerleader for war' - like, really ?

Mosey gives an almost textbook example of what's wrong with the Beeb today. Even in an article supposedly reaching out to the critics, Mosey can't help but patronisingly comment about wacky websites, which 'froth about BBC bias'. He perfectly exemplifies the Beeb's characteristic attitude of smug superiority - Auntie smiling patronisingly while the youngsters have their wacky little tantrums. That the critics may - just once or twice - have a point is beyond his comprehension. Instead, Auntie wants us to know that she's above it all, while all her critics are partisan hacks:

Take this example:

An American general appears on Newsnight and expresses the view that the next stage of the Iraq conflict will be a street-by-street battle for control of Baghdad - and he mutters the word "Stalingrad". My hunch is that most counting operations would define the general as pro-war because the assumption is that senior members of armed services are keen on bombing and the like.

In reality, the same interview could be cited by our friends at the Daily Telegraph as being another instance of the whingeing leftie BBC inciting gloom on the home front.

Leaving aside the fact that, again while supposedly eschewing bias, Mozza can't help but take a swing at those nasty righties at the Telegraph, all this really proves is how much fact-yoga is required to 'prove' a pro-war bias at the Beeb. You can show an excess of pro-war comment, but only if you ignore what the commentators actually say. Isn't it the right which is supposed to be prejudiced ? Who knows ? But we do know that Cherie Blair is a lawyer and so was Ann Coulter so, to adopt Mosey's dingbat idea, they're natural allies.

More to the point though, Mosey's point itself is symptomatic of a Lefty worldview. Look, he says, some folks claimed we were too pro-war. Well, yes, but they probably think Al-Jizzum was to too pro-war. I, myself, am really rather fat. That would still be true even if I was sitting next to Michael Moore. The fact I am gravitationally-challenged is a fact - you can be as post-modern as you want, but I really should cut down on the pies. Ditto with the Beeb. That the Beeb is forced to mine the outer limits of Greater Moonbatia to dig up critics of its 'pro-war' coverage speaks for itself. More to the point, there is such a thing as a matter of opinion, but there either was or there wasn't a massacre at Jenin. There either were or weren't US tanks at Baghdad Airport at the precise time the Beeb was reporting that they'd been stopped cold. And, since Mozza raises the point, there either was or wasn't months of brutal street fighting to capture Baghdad. To maintain that all these events are somehow open to various interpretations is itself symptomatic of years of Kool Aid abuse.

That's what's so infuriating about the Beeb. They take out onions for non-existent massacres or heavily-armed wedding parties then when they get caught it's back to Mosey and his fellow hacks rolling their eyes as though expecting the BBC to report truthfully was somehow evidence of nerdy, trainspotterish tendencies.

That's why even when Mosey should be on his best behaviour, he can't resist dealing off the bottom of the pack. We're told to ignore evidence of pro-EU bias since these studies are often commissioned by eurosceptics yet Mosey cites a study by Cardiff which showed the BBC was well-regarded without mentioning that it was commissioned by...the BBC. Similarly, Mosey comments jeeringly about eurosceptics noting 'another wicked pro-Euro interview for the next "official" expose of BBC bias'. Clearly, those counting up interviews to show a pro-war bias are sober researchers, but those using the self-same technique to show pro-EU bias are nuts. Ditto, it's hard to take seriously the sarcastic reference to an 'official' report, whatever that might be, from an employee of the organisation which proclaimed that evidence of misconduct by a handful of boneheads at a north-west training centre was proof-positive that the Filth were practically the same as the KKK.

Talking of the Bill, it is enlightening to consider the differences between these two arms of public service. After all, the Beeb has no hesitation jumping on the bandwagon when the Police were accused of institutional racism. Let's see how the Beeb stacks up under the self-same metrics. Take the question of recruitment. As it happens the Beeb has been anxious to recruit more blacks, hence it advertises in The Voice, the self-proclaimed 'black newspaper'. Yet, look where the rest of their recruitment advertising goes. After all, if they advertise in a black newspaper to hire blacks, who are they trying to attract with the other 90% of their advertising that goes in The Guardian ?

How would the Beeb report on a Chief Constable who'd made a jeering reference to 'our friends in the black community' ? Or who referred to websites carrying stories of Police racism as 'wacky' and 'frothing' ? Does anyone think they cover it as evidence of his witty and amusing nature ? Or would it be further evidence of system-wide prejudice ?

If having a percentage representation of ethnic minorities in the Police lower than in the general population is evidence of racism, what can we say about the Beeb's hiring practices ? In the last two general elections the Conservative Party went into meltdown, which is to say it only got 30% of the vote - or, to put it another way, if you picked three names at random out of the phone book, you'd probably find at least one person who voted Conservative. Does anyone think you could do the same with the Beeb's staff roster ?

Let's kill one strawman right now. No one is claiming that there is any kind of conscious conspiracy at the Beeb. Then again, MacPherson had the most awful difficulty saying what he felt was specifically wrong with the Police. The term 'institutional racism' was (appropriatly) something of a cop-out, meant to convey that the Police as a body provided a worse level of service to blacks rather than whites. The Beeb thought that verdict was simply wonderful, so how about putting its own house in order ? After all, that's what sets the Beeb apart from other public services. A pacifist may not agree with the country having an Army, a Libertarian may hate the NHS while a sane person would despise the Arts Council, but at least the Royal Artillery hasn't shelled CND's HQ. Only the BBC has the arrogance to tell a huge chunk of the people it supposedly serves (and who've already paid for that service) that not only does it have no interest in meeting their needs but that it is positively hostile to them.

That brings us back to Mosey. The reason he's so plain obnoxious even in an article supposedly refuting charges of bias is simply because he has no conception of it not being the funniest thing in the world to sneer at Britain's biggest selling broadsheet or the majority of the population who oppose adopting the Euro. How can he ? He has no experience of either. That's what's wrong with the Beeb, not that they sit around thinking 'hey, how can we spin this to make Dubya look like a fascist moron ?' but that they never consider that POTUS could be anything else. The BBC resembles nothing so much as a cult, barricaded in its compound on the banks of the Thames, it's members working each other in ever-greater frenzies, sure that they, and they alone, have the truth, while all those people on the outside are the crazy ones. That, at least, gives us some grounds for hope: if Dubya wins again, there's always the chance of a mass suicide.

Polluting The Social Environment

Our future PM points out the joke that life sentences have become. He's dead right and that's without considering the cases that should attract the life sentence but don't because the Courts have let it drop to manslaughter to evade the mandatory sentence.

What I want to know is whatever happened to the Precautionary Principle ? Liberals used to go weak at the knees at the idea that no form of progress could be allowed without absolute proof that it was harmless. Yet, take the comments on PC's post. The L3 are queuing up to proclaim that all we need to do with murderers is pop up the bonnet, tighten up a few screws and WD40 their moral sense, and they'll be practically indistinguishable from St Francis of Assisi.

I mean, it's not like the science here is exactly foolproof. Au contraire, most of the evidence in favour of rehabilitation has been produced by folks who've dedicated their careers to proving it works. It's great that they're committed to their job, but it doesn't make them the best choice to audit the results of these programs. The flip side of that is that no member of the rehabilitation industry is prepared to go as far as to provide any form of guarantee of their product. And why would they ? Take the case of Roy Whiting - jailed for the abduction of a young girl, he was released early then subsequently abducted and murdered Sarah Payne. What definition of 'dangerous' were the Parole Board using ? Who knows ? But try to imagine the reaction if Sarah Payne had been killed by an accidental release of toxic chemicals from a nearby factory. The self-same folks singing 'That's Life' right about now, would have led lynch mobs to the factory gates.

Then again, there has always been an underlying humbuggery to how the L3 have dealt with paedophilia. Liberals claim to be disgusted by people, usually religious folk, who claim to be able to turn homosexuals, presumably by showing them pictures of Sir Elton, Mandelson and Barrymore and asking 'do you really want to be associated with these people ?'. Yet, the people who claim it's unnatural to try and turn a gay man straight, also claim paedophiles can be persuaded to lose their attraction to children. So, which is it ? Is sexuality hard-wired or is it malleable ?

Of course, sex offenders are only a minority of murderers, but they are a group who definitely do suffer from a mental condition, yet even here rehabilitation is frequently a fiasco. As for the rest, well, to quote P J O'Rourke, drugs are the answer, if the question is 'how can I get rich without working' ? When well-known Jamaican cultural ambassadors, the Yardies, used to boast that in Britain 'The Law don't hang, the cops don't bang, look 'em up, not lang', it's hard to believe their criminality arose from anything other than a rational assessment of risk and reward. How exactly is drawing angry faces and smiley faces in group therapy supposed to persuade them not to do a job which brings them huge amounts of money, sex and power ?

Of course, the L3 do recognise that not everyone can be rehabilitated. Take Jeffery Archer for an example. Or, more seriously, the assailants in the Stephen Lawrence case or the Brixton Bomber. No one's claiming they just need a stiff talking to. Liberals use the word 'rehabilitate' as code for dealing with crimes they don't really think are that serious. Paedophiles are really just sexual pioneers, Yardies are oppressed by The Man, while even slashing up the Mrs is really just a case of taking healthy self-expression too far.

That's why Liberals are uneasy about the death penalty. The idea of the ultimate sanction for the ultimate crime is a no-no for people who think everything is a shade of grey. These are people incapable of judging any issue divorced from the need to, in their favourite phrase, send the right message. That's the chicken and egg nature of the Liberal fascination with rehabilitation. The L3 have to believe that murder is sort of like catching a cold otherwise they'd have to face the true nature of those they seek to defend. That's why scumbag rights bodies far outnumber those dealing with the victims of crime. That's why Liberals fetishise the idea of objectivity: they claim we can't get drawn into the details of the crime, we've got to stay clear headed. We're talking about murderers, but the Left doesn't want us to talk about the actual murders. Who'd study Shakespeare without reading the plays ? We should know what they did, we should know what the victim went through, their terror, their agony.

It's an arresting thought that the people who babble on about Feeling Your Pain and The Children are the ones who don't want us to feel the pain of actual, murdered children. Stay detatched, stay objective, says the Left. The only way to be civilised is not to feel rage when the innocent are slaughtered, to cast a jaundiced eye over murdered families and the agony of those left behind. Well, screw that. No one would be detached from the murder of their child, and so to proclaim your indifference to the murder of strangers is to announce that other people do not matter to you. As long as you're OK, even the foulest crimes are merely an intellectual diversion. This is the secret at the heart of the L3 approach to crime: it rests on utter selfishness.

Run That By Me Again....

So, the fact the media are capable of reporting on misconduct where the round-ball game is concerned, means we shouldn't criticise them for sitting on stories of near-riots in other sports...

Meanwhile, that tiny minority keeps on keeping on: Lance Armstrong was voted third most hated sports personality in France. Of course, this plus Schumacher getting first could imply a certain bitter, loser quality to the French, but hey - it's just a tiny minority that wins these polls.

Dhimmis D'Jour

A brave team effort from the nation's publishers, ever anxious to stand up for the right to kneel down, is only eclipsed by the news that the Holy Big Issue seller will be spending a day next year helping the RoP celebrate one of its holiest days.

Meanwhile, Will Cummings has really ruined his chances of ever winning the prestigious Golden Waistcoat, yet again he totally fails to understand that all that talk of mass slaughter, world domination and the like is really just a metaphor for helping sick bunny rabbits get well again:

Jenny sees in the revulsion for Islam displayed by the British National Party an echo of the anti-Semitism to which hideous German publications like Der Sturmer gave vent. Though why she has to ransack back numbers of hoary Fascist tradesheets when almost every mainstream Muslim paper in the world today is full of loathsome anti-Jewish rants and images isn't clear.

"In the miserable event" of "an al-Qaeda attack in Britain", she wrote last week - which repeated warnings from our Government have termed inevitable - "there is little doubt in my mind that assaults on peaceful, law-abiding British Muslims would increase".

Well, it's good to know that, as the rest of us hug our bottles of Evian in the irradiated ruins, mourning thousands of dead, Jenny will be lying awake at night worrying that someone might drop a dog poo through the letterbox of her local balti house. Such outrages, she warns, will be "fanned by an increasingly hysterical rhetoric - already in place - that encourages non-Muslim Britons to see each and every Muslim citizen as a threat". Whose rhetoric is that exactly?

Message From Losers@Nowhere.Eu

I said it before, but why should anyone believe the TINOs when they claim to be electable yet keep losing elections ? Who knows ? But two more dinosaurs have re-emerged to remind the Conservatives that if they keep applying the leeches they'll soon be cured.

Concrete Proof Of Sleaze

 
C'mon this is kind of funny, even if somewhat inevitable.

Going Down...

 

Having long ago hit rock bottom, TINO has apparently called in a blasting crew and pneumatic drill. The man who writes screeds criticising Tailgunner Joe and Tony Martin for being too harsh on scum thinks nothing of posting an article fantasying about a 78 year old man suffering horrendous injuries.

As if to prove that without moral equivalence the Left could barely argue, TINO never actually says what it is about the Reverend Ian Paisley MP that means he deserves to suffer terrible injuries, instead he merely tags it onto the end of an article welcoming the demise of an IRA Godfathers. We're supposed to take it as read that they're both as bad as each other.

You probably remember the Rev Paisley being linked to hundreds of murders, or his rhetoric calling for the Protestants to annex the Republic, ethnically cleanse the Catholic population and establish a Marxist people's republic ? You don't ? That's possibly because neither the ends sought nor the means used by these two men were within a country mile of each other. TINO may as well fantasise about George Best being badly burned in a car accident since, hey - he's from Ulster too.

Joesph Cahill was an evil fanatic. If the Rev Paisley was fanatical about anything it was stopping low-life like Cahill. For that reason, the Rev Paisley has become a hate figure for a certain breed of babbler, just as surely as Joe McCarthy's inability to accept card-carrying Communists working in the code room of the Pentagon assured him of a place in the Lefty's Hall of Bogeymen. Why does the Left do this ? Who knows ? But I think James Lileks got close to at least one aspect of it:

But in the end the kerfuffle always comes down to the Clever Kids who cannot seem to process any emotion other than Bemused Ironic Distance from anyone who feels strongly about anything; when they arrive on the scene to survey the damage, their main contribution is to roll their eyes at how artlessly the dead bodies are arranged, no? You get the sense that it’s not the fact that people have erroneous positions that bothers the Clever Kids, it’s the fact that they have positions at all. The best position is no position, because then everyone’s so amusing, and really, that’s what it’s all about: standing above the fray and laughing at the people who take things so seriously. Because nothing is serious, except for certain things, and if you step out of line on those issues then you’re super-evil and you get the extra snarky scorn-sauce poured on your unflattering AP photos, and we’ll lie about you too, but hey! We lie about everyone, for fun. Eventually. Maybe. Whatever. Who cares. Do you like these shoes? They’re hot. But they pinch. Where’s the waiter?

The Egalitarian Left

 

Here's the Guardian's Jeremy Seabrook on the effects of deindustrialisation on the North: 'Many of those unable to escape poor white communities have seen their status decline from working class to underclass in one generation.'
 
And lest you think I'm quoting out of context, here's how he ends the article: 'These occur in a quite different arena from the repression of women and gays, and are located among the injuries of excess that we have come to regard as normal; and that includes the impoverishment visited upon millions of people who thought they were working class, and woke up one day to discover that they were only white trash after all. '
 
So, there you have - your income drops below a set amount and you automatically become a skank. Conservatives are often caricatured as being obsessed with filthy lucre, yet who on the right would make such an obnoxious statement ? Still, he can be forgiven for making such an ludicrous assertion - after all, factor out the bank balance and all the other attributes of the Underclass - drug abuse, incompetent parenting, sleazy personal lives and the like - are perfectly replicated in Guardian reading circles.

Mind you, they're even harsher over the water. In an NYT article which really should be titled 'How I found success and happiness through abortion', Barbara Ehrenreich gives us an insight into the true nature of Liberal egalitarianism, noting that 'I was a dollar-a-word freelancer and my husband a warehouse worker, so it was all we could do to support the existing children at a grubby lower-middle-class level.'

Cops, nurses, fire officers - grubby scum all.
 

No, We Know Scum Just Fine

 

Pre-seasons, hey ? Doncha'luv 'em ? Nope - me neither. Plus we had a minor riot at yesterday's game. Coins, seats and even a few bottles thrown. The bloke in front of me starts babbling about how terrible it all was, so I told him: 'Hey, granddad, I bet you don't know what a Libero is, what the highest ground in England is, or the only club in Britain with a J in it's name - so STFU already!!'

No, no, not really. I made the story up to make a point about what I think is absurd about this guy's complaints about my criticism of the rabble at the Tour de France. He claims that I, and the folks at Little Green Footballs, should all STFU until we know about the intricacies of biking. Say what ? We might not be so hot on biking, but we can spot scum when we see them. He can talk all he wants about the exact number of Basques who gave the finger to Lance Armstrong, but what of the two confirmed cases of spitting ? Or the fact that even The Tour's General Manager stated that he was feared violence (incidentally, since the head honcho is a Jean Marie Leblanc, he makes an unlikely frog hating fanatic). Or how about the vile campaign waged against Armstrong by the French press, even to the point of them breaking into his room to try and find (ie plant) evidence of drug abuse ? Just how big does a group have to be to lose 'tiny minority' status anyway ?

Of course, the author could conceivably just be on a 70s nostalgia deal, thinking back to a time before all this touchy-feely family friendly garbage in sport. I'm a real Conservative so I think he should have the right to do so, but - to return to the point I made in my original post - can he and his fellow travellers at least stop moralising about the Beautiful Game at the slightest provocation ?
  

War On Some Terror Latest

 
Liberals have found a type of pot they don't like - Scott B has further proof that the L3 have passed through the Satire Event Horizon. It's bad when people commit crimes and get away with it, but when they announce in advance that they're going to, and still get away with it, then the rule of law is in serious trouble. So how come Blunkett never goes after these freaks ? Stupid question.

Our Sophisticated Neighbors

Seems like you can't open the paper without seeing some freak's scribblings about how much more cultured they are abroad (ie Old Europe) compared to our own horrible, boozed up selves. That goes triple for any event involving football. So it's interesting to see how the intellectual ones behave when they look to be going down at a sporting event - nearly as interesting as the news blackout on this story in Britain. The media are  probably tied up on 'Americans are fat' stories.

Crackdown Crackup

Hey - it's an odd numbered month, must be time for a crackdown on crime. Yep - here it is, and as well thought out as ever. Blair's come out against the Sixties consensus. Next week Bin Laden will come out against anti-Semitism. Who exactly passed the Human Rights Act anyway ? Oops. Whatever the pols say, it's business as usual for the scum-coddling classes.

Ben Franklin famously claimed that 'they who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security'. Blair's policies are the living embodiment of this rule, albeit without even the compensation of temporary security.

Still, even without the contribution of our loony PM, there is a giant elephant on the table that no one will address as far as crime is concerned. The question simply is this: what is the objective of law enforcement ?

Doubtless some of my fellow Conservatives will at this point be shaking their heads, thinking I've gone over to the academic never-never land where a cigar is never a cigar. Isn't it obvious ? Actually, no - one of the consequences of the Right's awful performance in the Culture Wars is that we have allowed much that was for generations thought to be self-evident to be redefined by Liberals in their own image.

Indeed, this desire to remake society is the dominant feature of modern Liberalism. Whether conscious of it or not, all modern Liberals are followers of Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci's theories have been expertly dissected by Sean Gabb here and here, but for now let's just say that Tony the G believed that institutions in society exert a kind of sociological gravitational pull, with public opinion being moulded by those who dominate the media, the law, education and the like whichever way they so choose. You will immediately recognise two main consequences of this world view are an obsession with victimhood ('cause we're all just pawns in the game, man) and a moral Get-Out-Of-Jail Free Card, since - hey ? - it's all about power, so if - to choose an example completely at random - a doctor chooses to smear a badly-injured 94 year old woman as a racist, well, who cares ? Morality is just conspiracy anyway.

Traditionally, we've always regarded the law as the codification of common morality. Cynics say that the role of the Police is to pick up the pieces - meaning that the realties of police manning and deployment mean they'll only arrive after the incident is over. But there's also another way in which that is true - in a healthy society the law is a backstop. Social pressures act to discourage law-breaking far more than the Police do.

The Gramscian worldview turns that on its head: the law is there to enforce whatever paradigm those in power seek to impose on the public. The law dictates morality not reflects it. Equally, the public can have no role in the legal process since they are the passive recipients of the law.
It is in this light that we should consider the familiar whine following at least half of the more outrageous Police screw-ups: namely, that they can't have a police officer on every street corner. Until very recently that's exactly what they did have. Every citizen had a common interest in upholding the law and the main distinguishing point between police and other citizens was the fact the former was paid. It is the Police who forced the public out of law enforcement and, having proclaimed that they, and they alone, will uphold the law it is hardly unreasonable to expect that they should do so.

But, worse than the simple fact that the Police can't impose law and order unilaterally, the Gramscian approach strikes at the very idea of civil order. If the law reflects not the common morality but the interests of the elite how can it command the respect or loyalty of the public ? Equally, the Yang to that Yin is that the Gramscians, being temporally at least, stuck with the old laws on the books, seek to debase the very concept of criminality. What was once understood to be someone who'd struck at society, thereby renouncing the privileges of membership, is now being rebranded as a form of alternative lifestyle. The self-same people who have insist on six public inquires before allowing a phone mast to be built nevertheless claim a 'right to privacy' for paedophiles and thugs. The idea that being a convicted pervert should impact negatively on someone's lifestyle has gone the way of the dodo.

The Left often tries to claim that its support for therapy and pool tables reflects a genuine belief that cable TV in each cell makes reoffending less likely. So where are the Beardy-Weirdies demanding we seek out the root cause of City fraud, tax evasion or people scrawling 'Pakis Owt' on the window of the Madras Star ? Nope - when Liberals propose giving free holidays to thugs it's simply because it does not serve their agenda to jail them.

For the perfect example of these trends, check out Nu Labs approach to rape. Labour continually tries to define down rape to the point where being in possession of a Y chromosome is grounds for arrest, yet look what happens when a no-argument, balaclava and combat knife rapist gets convicted: he'd be unlucky to miss more than one World Cup, while his time in jail will mainly be spent with other perverts in group therapy listing to some pencil-necked dweeb tell them they don't love themselves enough. Contradictory ? Hardly - as ever, the demands of political strategy drive the administration of justice. the cultural Marxists have always sought to spin rape into some kind of justification for their ranting denunciations of those white males, who are clearly guilty of everything in the entire world. On the other hand, it is an article of faith amongst the Left that failure to immediately act on any impulse at all, especially a sexual one, leads to the psychological equivalent of gangrene. Against this background, rapists are just taking the concept to its logical conclusions even while Liberals proclaim rape to be a secular version of original sin, forever casting a shadow over the male of the species.

This kind of politicised drivel runs through the whole Gramscian approach to crime. That's why we have the old standby of homeowners being attacked by gangs of thugs, then finding themselves charged. That's because homeowners are members of that rotten, old bourgeoisie. Any excuse to hammer them. Similarly, there's the obsession with either stretching existing laws to absurd lengths (see speeding for further details) or conjuring up whole new ones. Either way, the idea is to use the law as a stick to beat non-Kool Aid drinkers.

To remake a society it is first necessary to destroy the existing order. Metaphorically speaking, Gramscians are using criminals to wage a proxy war against our civilisation. Being an upstanding member of the community means being an oppressor, while slashing up an OAP makes you a Robin Hood for the twenty-first century. What's more, they create this chaos and then claim that we have to sign over a whole new tranche of civil rights to the government so it can cure problems it caused in the first place. Either way up, Joe Public gets the slam.

The Conservative Party is still stuck in its death spiral, ever concerned that someone might call it the nasty party. It says something about how awful the right has been in the Culture Wars that suggesting we deal harshly with sexual predators, muggers and killers get you classed as 'nasty'. I mean, I think we can live with that, but no - Conservative frontbenchers go pale at the prospect of being called names by the Guardian. Well, we can laugh all we want at Blair's lunacy, but until someone in the Conservative Party finds a pair we're stuck with it.

Blame America

 
Scott B reports further evidence for my theory that the Golden Age of satire is over since the Left has now decisively gone past the point where any humorous exaggeration would not be overtaken by events by the end of the week. Take yesterday's intro to the Jeremy Vine Show for further proof of that.

Jegsy opens by talking about Iraq: "MPs debate Iraq intelligence. The PM says he didn't lie. Should he at least say sorry ?". So far, so L3, except - without so much as a pause for breath - he goes into the next item "misery for the people of Darfur and the world stands by". Gosh! This bloke's a tough marker. Toppling a murderous regime in an Islamic country is bad, but not toppling a murderous regime in an Islamic country is also bad. What do these people want ? The foreign policy equivalent of Schrodinger's cat ?

OK, when he meant 'the world' he could have been pointing to the absence of any bold foreign policy initiatives from Belgium, but instinct tells me the real villain of the people is Uncle Sam. When Arab Muslims slaughter black Muslims in a central African hell-hole then the blame clearly lies in Washington. Or at least it does if you're a member of the vast, sulky mass of eldery 14 year olds that make up modern Euroleft.

A Liberal Speaks!

 
Nothing does for the L3 quite like letting them express their inner thoughts. The Creator of Worlds passes on a snapshot of where modern Liberalism is today. 
 

Excommunication Squad Required

 
Ah yes - science, the disinterested pursuit of truth. Doubtless the scientific community is even now ordering up the bouquets and garlands for the team of researchers who've just demonstrated that global warming is not in fact the result of over enthusiastic BBQ enthusiasts, car drivers or any other of the usual scapegoats. Or perhaps not, to judge by the fact that even the researchers themselves are frantically hedging away. They don't want a horse's head left in the lab.
 
Nevertheless, shockingly, it appears that planetary temperature is affected by the activity of a gigantic fusion reactor in the near vicinity. Hard to believe, I know, but there you have it. DumbJane won't light one fag too many and plunge the Earth into Hell after all. That'll be a relief for her. Of course now anthrogenic global warming is being shown to be a myth, can we expect the whiny ecotools to help themselves to a nice, hot cup of STFU ? Ah well, even if they move onto the next Apocalyspse D'Jour, we can now burn them at the stake with a clear conscience.
 

Now That's A Conservative Politician

Lord Tebbit yesterday described Michael Howard's leadership as "colourless" and warned Tory "deadweights" to expect a third general election defeat....
 
Mr Howard "needs to be braver, bolder in what he is saying". Turning to Mr Letwin, Lord Tebbit lauded his "logic and competence", but these virtues "do not grab the guy driving the Ford Mondeo or whatever it is they drive nowadays".

John Kerry: Man Of Principle

Well, he is compared to certain other people:
 

MICHAEL HOWARD today raises the political stakes over Iraq by saying that he would not have backed the government in last year’s eve-of-war Commons vote had he known then that British intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s weapons was flawed...

Howard, in an interview with The Sunday Times, says the crucial government motion that authorised military action should not have referred to Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles” posing “a threat to international peace and security”.

 
Which doesn't even make sense on its own terms. Whatever the situation with WMD, Iraq really did have long-range missiles (far longer than was permitted) and they were hardly to be used as a high-speed alternative to air mail.
 
At least Kezza was funnier when he claimed that he voted for it before he voted against. Howard on the other hand....
 

Although Howard qualifies his remarks by saying he is still in favour of the war and would have voted for a different motion authorising military action, a decision by the Tories not to back the government’s motion would effectively have meant British involvement in the war would have been blocked.

 
He was in favour of the war, but he would have voted against.... m'kay. What a conniving rat. He knows Iraqs turned the corner, so he'll take some of the reflected glory for that, but he also wants the benefit of being seen to be opposed to liberating Iraq in the first place. But don't ask why people don't trust the Tories.
 
Still, there's one more outrage hidden in the text:
 

Meanwhile, senior MI6 officers expressed deep concerns about the misuse of their intelligence by Downing Street and three spies even boycotted all work on Iraq because they believed the war was wrong.

 
Well, isn't that special ? So, they told a democratically elected government to shove it and what happened ? I mean, could police officers refuse to enforce the dipstick laws coming out of the Home Office ? Hardly - so why haven't these lowlife been fired ?
 
 
 
 

Ready For Nothing

 

War ? What war ?

Emergency services said they will review how they reacted to a simulated chemical attack in the West Midlands.

The mock terror alert at Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre saw 400 volunteer "casualties" being dealt with by police, fire and ambulance crews.

But it took the crews nearly three hours to set up "decontamination" units to deal with those casualties 

 
So, after nearly three years of war, home defense is still a shambles. Of course, there's a limit to how well prepared anyone can be for this kind of attack, but this is a disgrace. Yes, exercises should be hard - ruthless, even - but there is no evidence that this was any kind of Kobayashi Maru type situation. The emergency services appear to have failed to deal even with a Mark 1 Mod 0 type scenario - so who's going to be fired ? If cops can be given the old heave ho for telling naughty jokes then total incompetence ought to be a sacking offence. The fact that it isn't shows exactly how utterly the government has failed to adopt to the demands of war. 

Trouble At The Dept Of Victimhood

 
The sisters are scratching each others eyes out. Staggeringly enough, it turns out that well motivated and successful professionals resent having their reputation dragged through the mud by treasure-hunting slags. If the Conservative Party had any brains at all they'd recognise the chance to spring a huge demographic from Labour's Big Kitchen... oh, wait, I see the flaw in that plan.
 
Meanwhile, in further proof that we're approaching the End of Days, a lawyer tells the truth:
 

Ronnie Fox, senior partner at the employment law firm Fox Williams said: “What we say whenever a woman comes to us with a grievance is, ‘Was there an element of sexual discrimination? Why not just throw it in so we can claim more money.’ ”

 
Doubtless, there will be a huge demonstartion of fellow lawyers outside his office tomorrow, protesting that he's bnringing the profession into disrepute.

Won't there ?
 

Let The Whining Begin!

 
Well, OK, this is a great idea on its own merits, but think of the service its doing to the country by enraging all those Liberals until their little heads pop open.