The Dog That Didn't Bark

So these guys admit that their reporting is subject to high velocity censorship, and we already know that CNN likewise has a fine record of appeasement while AP has also tippexed for Allah, so what about Al-Beeb ? These guys seem able to travel round bandit country without a care in the world. Equally, while almost every other news organisation has alluded to pressure being put on them by Islamofascists, the Beeboids haven’t so much as hinted at anything out of the ordinary.

Hey – here’s a news organisation which can’t present the weather forecast without a long eulogy on how the licence fee allows them to provide a better class of isobar. Now, it turns out that large numbers of commercial organisations are being pressured to spin the news, but the BBC is maintaining a news blackout. Why might that be ?

UPDATE

In a similar vein, check this out - are we supposed to believe that none of this applies to the BBC ?

Kenneth Williams On British Education

Watching 1964’s Carry On Cleo, I had a revelation. Here’s the Carry On movies, the epitome of lowest common denominator humour, yet the movie itself is packed with gags alluding to ancient Rome, Latin and Shakespeare. After forty two years of continuous educational improvement, can anyone really imagine a script aimed at the same demographic these days containing jokes like that ?

What The Law Means

Back in the comments to this post, Stuart reminds me that whatever the letter of the law says, the State is not averse to putting the innocent through the mill anyway. Here’s another good example. Truth to tell, I’m not sure what the answer is to this sort of thing, but at least let’s call it what it is: political activism under cover of legal chicanery.

Right now, every attempt at reform of the legal system provokes Liberals to wax lyrical about the importance of judicial independence. The trouble is, it’s hard to see exactly how a politicised legal system would behave any differently.

See, this is how Liberals argue – or, more precisely, how they don’t. Liberals don’t like to talk about actual issues, instead they try and set the terms of debate so as to cast their opponents as deranged, or evil, or stupid, or…well, anything other than have to talk about their own insane ideology. That’s how we ended up with a situation where people who oppose the law being twisted to allow the persecution of the innocent are accused of wanting to politicise the law.

This is the central humbuggery of the soi dissant Tory modernisers’ position. They claim that the Tories can both indulge in touchy-feely consensus politics and bring through meaningful reform. There’s nothing touchy-feely about months of legal harassment of a guy who has committed no offence. Equally, the minute the Tories act to try and stop this kind of thing, the Liberals will crank up the outrageometer to 11. Why not ? They rather like the idea of harassing political opponents. Bottom line – there’s no middle ground here. If people are prepared to use the legal system to harass people who disagree with them politically, then there’s no ‘consensus’ to be had. You can take them on, or you can turn a blind eye. The real question is this: are the Tory modernisers stupid enough to believe they can somehow find a ‘Third Way’ or do they just think we’re stupid enough to believe they can ? Either way, why exactly would we want to trust them with power ?

Quote Of The Year

The perfect response to the neo-prohibitionists:

I disagree with Prof Gilmore, drinking on a hangover is not a slippery slope at
all; it's more of a dizzy helter skelter of fun.
bob, London

Question D'Jour

Devil's Kitchen hosts an excellent takedown of the BBC's supposed revelations about the Greatest Crime Ever. Just reading it though, two things comes to mind.

Firstly, aren't the Libs trying to have their cake and eat it ? The official L3 narrative says that the case could have been solved in approximatly 5 minutes, except racists police officers couldn't be bothered to investigate the murder of a black guy. Now, suddenly they're claiming it was corruption that prevented a conviction. So which is it ? Or is the answer just 'whatever smear works best' ?

The other thing though is this: about the only charge the Left have ever managed to make stick on former DS Davidson is the heinous crime of insensiivity. He was a roughty-tufty thief taker in the Taggart mode, lacking the sensitive touchy-feely skills of the modern Metrocopper. Hello ? Anyone want to speculate on the likely reaction to a report which blamed a Jamaican copper for spending too long chilling out and chatting up women ? Is it ironic or just stupid that the a central part of the race hustlers' indictment of the Filth relies on an implicit appeal to the caricature of Scots as aggresive, borderline psychopaths ?

CSI: LSD

Further cementing the Daily Mail’s reputation as the house journal of the VRWC, the paper has a huge article today entitled ‘Why I believe David Kelly's death may have been murder, by MP’.

Quick quiz: can you guess which party the MP in question belongs to ? Yes, it’s Norman Baker from the Treason Party. Hey - if the case for Liberalism is so compelling, how come the Leftards keep needing to bolster it by inventing insane conspiracy theories ?

Actually, I sort of agree this time - maybe it is a huge conspiracy by the VRWC, albeit one aimed at making Liberals’ heads explode as they try to explain how the Mail is a fascist rag, but it’s also bravely defying the government to print the truth about the War on Terror. Just wait until they see who else is trying on tinfoil highlights.

You may be wondering what actual evidence Norman Baker has - which is to say you might be wondering if you’re new to the wacky world of Liberal conspiracy theories. Experienced observers of the tinfoil sombrero crowd will already have guessed that Half-Baker is just ‘raising questions’.

And would those questions be based on trivial inconsistencies in witness statements and pseudo-scientific blather ? Why, yes, they would. We’re told that Kelly couldn’t have thrown a seven because he appeared ‘happy’ the day before. Hey – that’s a red flag right there. When a guy under huge pressure suddenly starts smiling that can often mean he’s decided to ‘take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them’ – either that or he’s found someone else to blame.

Ditto, another killer – ahem! – fact is that the COD was a fairly unusual type of knife wound. Why would Dr Kelly use such a plain odd method to top himself ? Well, coming back at you, Libs. Why would the security services use this method as opposed to, say, heart attack, cerebral haemorrhage or exotic toxin ?

For that matter, what was the motive ? Aren’t you supposed to silence leakers before they leak ? More to the point, Dr Kelly’s actual statements were so anodyne that Gilligan had to Beeb them up. That was the central finding of the Hutton report. Ah yes – Hutton. The closest we've ever got to any of Baker's theories having to stand up in court, and the result was a wipeout, so naturally that proves Hutton was either a dupe or a co-conspirator.

Apparently, there is one judge that we’re allowed to criticise. Judges stamp their feet when we criticise them for letting dangerous predators back on the street, but all but labelling a judge a member of the VRWC is apparently OK. Not that we shouldn’t take the moral posturing of the judiciary seriously, or anything.

You know, there’s one thing that strikes me about this situation. On the one side of the war we have the security services and on the other Al-Quaida, Iran, Syria and the rest of the beauties. It says a lot that a Lib Dem MP’s first instincts on deciding that Kelly was murdered is to blame our side. Here it is: the Liberal worldview in sharp relief. September 11, July 7, Bali and much else, but Liberals still think the threat is from VRWC operatives in the security services.


Well, OK, fair’s fair. If Baker is allowed to slander the security services on no evidence whatsoever, I call payback. Here’s my theory. After Gilligan had falsely portrayed WMD expert Kelly as a moonbat, he was approached by a senior member of a notorious anti-British group of terrorist supporters anxious to recruit his expertise for their evil schemes. But Kelly was not only a scientist but also an experienced civil servant and he was able to see through their cover story and realise they were secretly planning to release a deadly virus in a British city. As a patriot, Kelly realised it was his duty to inform his contacts in the security services of his suspicions.

Kelly was on his way to a rendezvous to an old SIS contact when he was ambushed and killed by a member of the terrorist group. And who could approach an experienced and alert man and kill him so quickly ? Only someone he would instinctively trust, like a senior public servant, fellow scientist or…oh, maybe an MP ?

Of course, after the murder it would make sense for the assassin to insert himself in the investigation. If he was really smart he would act as a agent provocateur, deflecting suspicion or even trying to discredit the whole investigation by conjuring up insane theories.

Not that I’m naming names. I’m just throwing theories out there. Raising questions, if you like. Hey – don't be like that. My theory is every bit as credible and well-sourced as Bakers’.

Stopped Clock Hypothesis Proven

Ben Elton has said in print interviews recently that he
doesn't see himself as naturally amusing.

There's Never A Viet Nam Analogy Round When You Need One

In one respect at least, Viet Nam was the first post-modern war. True, LBJ wasn’t the first head of state to try and micromanage individual units, but he was the first to base the selection of locations of air strikes on purely political criteria. Targets were not selected according to any objective criteria of military value. In modern terms, targets were hit or not hit depending on whether or not a strike was judged to ‘send the right message’.

Needless to say, the lesson Liberals have learned from the success of LBJ’s micromanaged bombing campaigns is that air power doesn’t work. Of course. To Liberals, all war is just a form of extreme demonstrating. This is why Liberal opinions are so utterly worthless on the Middle East. No doubt some support Hezbullah through genuine anti-Semitism, but I’m sure far more support these scumbags because they simply can’t comprehend that Hezbullah mean what they say: ‘yeah, Achmed, kill the Jews, man, but what do you really want ?’ Ditto, Liberals can’t comprehend why Israel is cranky about two of its soldiers being abducted. Au contraire, Liberals probably think the kidnappings were a stylish flourish, like ending a message with an exclamation mark instead of a full stop.

The wind changed suddenly and 90% of Liberals have become stuck into a pose of ostentatious ironic detachment. They can’t understand that some people really do think genocide is a perfectly reasonable policy objective, or that other people don’t believe that letting their fellow countrymen be tortured to death is the sign of a mature approach to foreign policy. They can’t believe that people really believe things.

Right now, Liberals are out there pushing the line that Israel has made its gesture, so now it’s time to stop the bombing and start cutting a deal with Hezbullah. But what’s there to talk about ? It’s not as if the Islamopaths exactly bury the lede. Here’s ex-head of Hezbullah Hussein Massawi:

We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to
eliminate you’,

What do the Libs want the Israelis to talk about ? Precise method of execution ? ‘Stop the War’ and the rest of the freaks weren’t marching when the war meant continuous bombardment of Israel plus border raids. It’s only after Hezbullah started taking a pounding that Liberals decided violence wasn’t a legitimate form of political expression.

Things are going badly for Hezbullah. They’ve suddenly found out that the art of war isn’t just the ability to generate violence, but the ability to keep on doing so. Back when they were setting the pace against a mostly passive Israel, they could pretend to be an Army. Now the Israelis are pounding away at them, they’re starting to look like a gang of Islamopaths (hey – do you think their supply problems are anything to do with Israel’s completely unjustified slaughter of Lebanese infrastructure, as mentioned by Al-Beeb 87 000 times a day ?) Meanwhile, the rest of the Arab world has suddenly remembered it has a dentist’s appointment, while the Lebanese have already kicked one of Hezbullah’s sponsors out of town.

The Israelis have two options. They can go full throttle and tear the heart out of Hezbullahland – thereby freeing Lebanon, securing their northern border permanently and hammering another nail into Baathist Syria’s coffin, or they can take the advice of people who are, at least, apathetic about their survival, and stop the offensive in return for some paper concessions (a UN buffer force – like the one they’ve got, but really useful this time). Hmmm… stop air strikes in return for some negotiations about negotiations, now where have I heard that before ? Somewhere in Asia, I think. Probably some obscure war no one talks about anymore...

Friendly Fire: Not Always A Bad Thing

You Mean They Don't Wear Special Hats ?

Who says the Israeli strikes aren't having any effect ? Al-Beeb looks to be preparing the ground for withdrawl. They've suddenly started admitting that, actually, the figures for Lebanese 'civilian casualties' may be kind of rubbish. D'you think, Wellington ?

Yes, the BBC has suddenly realised that Hezbullah don't actually wear uniforms and it's in their interest to pass off their casaulties as innocent civilians. Just how did they get these casaulty figures anyway ?

Ace BBC Reporter: Hello Mr Peasant, I'm an inquisitive infidel come to your
village to check whether the Israeli airstrikes are killing the heavily-armed
thugs who run your village, or whether they are brutal war crimes against
innocent civilians. Oh, by the way, I have no way of verifying your testimony,
so be honest!

What could possibly go wrong ?

There's a wider point here. This is how the BBC operates. They give 'flood the zone' coverage to outrageous claims ('Israel is carpet bombing Lebanon') then once the meme is firmly established in the public mind, they pull back. Even money says that in ten days Beeboids will be citing the report in question as proof of their balanced coverage.

Equal Opportunity Shelling ?

And Now For The Rest Of The Story

In case you missed the approximatly 275 000 mentions of it on the BBC, the usual suspects held a vigil the other day to remember the victims of July 7.

Just kidding!

No, it was for St Jean, patron saint of forgery. Needless to say, all the clowns were present and correct, including four cousins of St Jean who turned up to tell us that de feelthy English are the piigs, shortly before disappearing off to Heathrow (as if!). Forest Gate Kitten Mohammed Abdul Kahar was there too, just like at the July 7 memorial. No, wait - I mean, just like he wasn't.

The star of the show however was Asad Rehman, described as a 'family spokesman and Justice4Jean campaign organiser'. Really ? Isn't that kind of selling his talents short ? After all, aren't we talking about Asad Rehman, the Galloway henchman ? The former Amnesia Intentional activist ? One of the the founders of 'Stop the West Fighting Back War' and a chair of a cop hating 'communidee group' ? Oh yeah - and a hardline Islamist who comes out with distinctly ambiguous lines like 'There are many different types of resistance taking place' ?

I gues not, after all the BBC would have told us, right? Surely they wouldn't be complicit in an astroturfing operation, helping to depict as a grass roots operation by concerned citizens, a campaign run by cop-hating, terrorist supporting scum ? Surely not ?

Feel The Love!

Another example of how the Right is poisoning debate.

Call Me Polly

This is great:

On one side you have people, like Polly Toynbee on The Guardian, who think that the restoration of community lies in expanding the size and scope of government. And then there are those on the other side, like Simon Heffer on the Telegraph, who think that only a small state can deliver healthy communities.

"Where Polly thinks we Tories go too far, Simon thinks we don't go far enough. The fact is, they're both wrong. Indeed, it's odd how similar their views are, both in analysis and in effect," Mr Cameron said.

Yep, just like pyromaniacs and firemen are just the same because neither can get past the whole ‘fire’ thing. Who couldn’t you pair up with the kind of chop logic ?

This sort of thing would be forgivable with a fourteen year old, but from a guy who aspires to be PM, it’s terrifying. And that’s before we consider the logical train wreck that is his reasoning. Get this:

Instead of expanding the supply of state services, as the old Left wanted, Mr Cameron believed they should strive to expand the supply of social services - services provided by society itself.

Rather than cutting the supply of state services, as the old Right wanted, they should strive to cut the demand for them by reducing the numbers of people in need.

Dang! He’s broken the code. Lady Thatcher privatised BT because she wanted to stop people phoning each other (maybe she should have focused on cutting demand for phones ?). It would be interesting to hear if Call Me Dave can actually name a single service the Right thinks should be cut. Back on Earth, the debate is surely about who provides it, not whether it needs to be provided.

Sure, there are some Samizloonies babbling on about private armies and the like, but mainstream Conservative criticism of, say, the NHS focuses on the fact it does a lousy job rather than from a belief that we’ll all be better once health care is once again handled by the wise woman of the village. Or to put it another way, far from wanting to cut the supply of health care, Conservatives actually want more and better – they just don’t think a monolithic organization is the way to provide it.

Similarly, there are some services Conservatives want to expand. You can’t mention too often how Blair obsession with the Europeanisation of our armed services has led to the Army being bled dry, to the point where lives have been lost through the government’s refusal to supply the right vehicles. And where has Cameron been on this issue ? AWOL.

It’s ironic that Cameron mentions Polly Pot. Claiming that the Right wants to cut services is the type of loopy canard she specializes in. The quality of thought is the same as well. If the Tories want to cut demand for services, why do they need to expand the supply ? Ditto, Cameron’s embrace of the charge that Conservative social activists are really just pining for a mythical Golden Age.

But let’s not let the superficial stupidities of Cameron’s position blind us to the deeper idiocy. Never mind issues such as perverse incentives, moral hazard and the like, consider the chutzpah required for Cameron to accuse anyone else of obsessing about government rather than dealing the issue of society as a whole. Hello ? We talking about the same person here ? The Marshal Petain of the culture war ?

Some will excuse Cameron’s absurd argument as a sort of inverted dog whistling. Cameron gets to appeal to Lefties by bravely denouncing non-existent right-wing extremists. But that misses the point. Cameron starts from the position of having conceded all the main points anyway.


About the only thing the puffy faced reptile is known is throwing Conservative values under the bus. Look at Bluewater Shopping Centre. They have a simply policy: if you dress like a thug, you can’t come in. This is a perfect example of how wider society can deal with social disorder. I’m guessing that for some of the low-life, it’s the first time they’ve ever been told ‘No!’Instinctively, the management of Bluewater understand that people who insist on their right to dress in ‘gangsta’ regalia are hardly an asset anyway. This isn’t just true for shopping centres, yet Call Me Dave goes the other way. Cameron thinks that the fact these yobs parade round in gang paraphernalia is proof positive that they’re oppressed. Their very contempt for the rules of civilised society is proof, in and off itself, that they are victims and deserving recipients of government largesse. The bottom line is that Cameron has bought into the exact same Liberal lunacy that created these social pathologies in the first place.

Yesterday's Stupid Meme

Watching Friday's news, I've finally worked out what's going on. Israel killing civilians in Lebanon proves they're all Zionazis. Hezbullah killing civilians in Israel proves Israel's operation has failed, otherwise they'd have stopped the rockets being launched. What media bias ?

Yes, They Are Deranged (Part II)

Not to say that Maureen Lipman's ultra-luvvey ramblings on pet pooches and party dresses aren't worthy of scorn, but it is amazing how quickly the Guardianistas manage to bring her ethnicity into it. Not that they're anti-Semitic or anything.

(A wave of the hypodermic to Ross F)

Yes, They Are Deranged (Part I)

Watching the news at 6:00 on Al-Beeb, and a perfect reminder of why I don't bother normally. The correspondant is reporting from Beiruit, he's blaming Israel becuase the filthy Jews bombed a Hezbollah arms dump even though it was right next to civilian housing. Really - Israel's fault.

Let The Crazy Flood Out

Jim McDonnell has unveiled a potential leadership challenge when Blair steps down. Me, I’m all for it. It’s a useful reminder to the public that whatever superficial changes Blair has brought about, the main body of the Left is still howling mad.

There’s the usual stuff. Jimbo wants private education banned, lest the rich use up all the good teaching so kids in state schools have to study rubbish like TV or ecobabble. No, wait, that’s what they teach already. Anyway, it hardly matters that the schools don't teach anything, since Jimbo wants to nationalise the pharmaceutical and medical research sectors, so it looks like we won’t need any scientists anyway. Besides with 50% of energy coming from renewable resources, it’s not like we’ll have the power to run a factory anyway. Und so weiter...

But that’s not the best of it. McDonnell is an overt supporter of the IRA – and, more to the point, no one on the Left appears to think this is a problem. It’s a while since anyone on the Left even pretended to care about treason, but having a supporter of the mass murder of British civilians as one of their role models sums up better than Churchill could the moral cess pit modern Liberalism has fallen into.

Text From The 7th Century

See, it's a modern, secular state after all. Let's let them in the EU.

But Who Would Be A Bomber ?

It’s always a good rule of thumb that when Liberals are enraged, but won’t go into details, they’re up to no good. Consider the case of St Jean the Martyr.

Liberals are indignant that the police officers who shot St Jean won’t be prosecuted. Actually, to listen to Liberal rhetoric, you could think this is the case that finally gets them to rethink their opposition to capital punishment. Yes, indeed, Liberals are worried that the CPS is letting the guilty go free. If humbuggery was explosive, the BBC would be a smoking crater right about now.

Hearing Liberals moralise always has a certain comedy value – kind of like an anti-drugs message from Kate Moss – but when the side of the spectrum that normally needs sedation to stop banging on about the letter of the law suddenly starts rooting its arguments firmly in the abstract, then you know they’re on dodgy ground.

The police officers who shot St Jean the Fraudster Martyr were exercising their common law right to self-defence using reasonable force. They were briefed that the target was a fanatical human bomb, just like eight previous attackers that month, so they used the force appropriate to deal with the perceived threat.

Bottom line: forget all these dark hints about secret policies and the like. It’s the same right that applies to every citizen. If Mr FM was helping protect civilsation from the fox menace when a deranged animal rights nut with a dynamite waistcoat charged him, he would be well within his rights to shoot the hippy – although subsequent stuffing and mounting may prove legally problematic. The only unusual feature of the Menzies case was that the cops actually chose to go in harm’s way by closing to short range on a man loaded with explosive (or so they thought). This is not normally the type of conduct that draws criticism.

Hence why Liberals rely on either absurd moralising of the ‘shooting people is bad’ sort, or they resort to dippy conspiracy theories. As it happens, there are questions to be asked about an operation which fell apart so easily and (worse) so irretrievably. The only trouble is that the Left won’t ask. Why might that be ?

Needless to say, missing from all that Liberal blather was any actual suggestions as to what the police should be doing. Just as long as the police are required to trail a terrorist around right up until his finger is poised over the trigger, they’ll be required to render split-second judgements, with the inevitable corollary of more Stockwells.

On the other hand, Liberals don’t want the police to act any earlier – at least to judge by their reaction to the raid on the Forest Gate Kittens. Known Islamoloons, with a sheet load of previous, a firearm somewhere round plus a wodge of unaccounted for cash, but hey – that’s hardly grounds for suspicion.

So, I guess Liberals prefered policy is to wait until the police have absolute proof a primed bomb is on the premises, then strike before the terrorists can arm it, so the police can stroll leisurely through the house without having to make any hasty decisions. Call it the Goldilocks’ strategy: not too early and not too late. What could possibly go wrong ?

Well, actually, we know exactly what could go wrong. We had a perfect demonstration on July 7. Of course, things were a little different after that. While Liberals are busily strip-mining the statute books to find some way – any way – to screw the police, they’re a little more generous to members of the peaceful death cult. Liberals weren’t even sure we could call them ‘bombers’. Maybe they were just extreme demonstrators ? Besides, they were driven to it by the system, man (apparently, the system also made them record final messages claiming that it was the teachings of a well-known paedophile that made them do it). That’s the other thing, of course, as fervent as Liberals are that the shooting of St Jean proves that the police are collectively guilty, they were equally sure that there were no wider lessons to be learned from the tendency of members of a certain death cult to spontaneously explode. We faced a tsunami of flatulent articles on the completely mysterious question of what could have motivated the killers.

That the final question right there. How come it’s always the Brazilian St Jean ? How come it’s self-evidently absurd that there could be a suicide bomber from Sao Paulo ? Are Liberals trying to claim that we can somehow, to coin a phrase, ‘profile’ terrorists ?

Since at least September 11 Liberals have been insisting that terrorists could be just anyone, 80 year old Jamaicans, Chinese schoolgirls, Welsh paraplegics… there was just no way to tell (and Liberal’s legal ninjas were ready to swoop on anyone who said otherwise). If Liberals insist on this Goldilocks’ policing, then the least they can do is stop hobbling the intelligence effort by insisting that no one admit that the threat is unlikely to come from militant Mormons.

Coulter Was Right

Actually, you could run a whole blog dedicated just to reporting on events proving Chairman Ann right, but for today, let’s just consider the story of how she decided to write ‘Slander’. Ann claims to have been inspired by the sight of Der Schtick on TV defending himself by calling his critics ‘right-wing’. Ann asked the question: just how had US political culture got so warped that calling people right-wing constituted an actual argument ?

Actually, there’s another interesting question right there. How come the US got Slick Willy, while we’ve got…. Prezza ? Still, whatever he lacks in style, Fatso has managed a truly Clintoneque-level of whining about the Right. Indeed, you might say he performs a valuable public service. Truly, Prezza is the perfect metric for the moral degeneracy of the modern Left. It’s all about the politics with them.

Prescott used his office staff as a personal harem

His critics are all Tories

There's good evidence that women who slept with Prescott were rewarded with
jobs or grants.

It’s the Right-wing press

Prescott denied discussing the siting of a casino with Anschutz even while his own department was pressuring councils pushing rival sites to withdraw their bids.

Conservatives!

And so on…. You know, there was a time when being a serial sexual predator who indulged in dubious activites with billionaire businessmen was the type of thing to raise the Left’s hackles. Not any more though. That’s one more question, of course. Why do so many Conservatives still concede the moral high ground to these people ?

Sir Robin Cameron

The spin coming from Opus Dave is that the EPP flip-flop is a complete non-event of interest only to political obsessives. Maybe so, but that’s kind of the point. When the current bunch of loonies are finally evicted from No 10, Call Me Dave will face a whole bunch of problems in the NHS, education, law enforcement and much else. Whatever changes between now and then, if he hopes to make any progress, he’s going to become embroiled in a whole series of dog fights. So what we have here is a guy who’s supposed to take on, say, the teaching unions but bottles it even when dealing with an issue that everyone agrees is completely obscure. Not very convincing.

Fit For Purpose

It’s always depressing to see a young man fall into bad company, take Steve blogging over at the Sharpener. He detects the signs of humbuggery in the silence of Eurosceptics over the way the US is effectively trying to impose it’s own accounting standards on British businesses. Basically, his question is how come the Right is so enraged by the EU imposing its standards on Britain but not the US doing the same ?

There are at least three differences that come straight to mind. The first is that no matter how small the slither of justification for US involvement, at least there is some rationale for it. On the other hand, the EU micromanages events even when there’s not the slightest justification for it to intervene. Somehow, Europe managed to survive the long, dark era when people could sell each other apples by the pound.

Secondly, at least these US laws are there to deal with real crime. The EU wants to either conjure up bogus crimes, such as xenophobia, or to stretch the definition of existing crimes to the point of absurdity, such as the claim that criticism of the EU should be treated as blasphemy. In so far as these laws plus the EU arrest warrant mean that Europeans will have only as much freedom of speech as is allowed in the most restrictive jurisdiction, it’s a bit more serious than wacky accounting laws.

Finally, there’s the fact there’s no obvious sequel to the US action. The laws are stupid, but at least Congress hasn’t claimed they’re the first of many. Meanwhile, the EU proudly proclaims at every opportunity the need for ‘ever closer union’. However bad things are now, they can surely get worse. The US position can be considered on its merits, but with the EU everything is just a stepping stone.

That’s not it though. If there’s any dogs that haven’t barked, it is surely in the pro-EU camp. There’s something plain weird in hearing Euronuts charge the US with using its economic power to bully countries into compliance with its laws. Isn’t this exactly the type of situation the EU should exist for ?

Forget all those weirdly Soviet attempts at trying to create a common European culture out of whole cloth, here it is, the perfect justification for the whole cesspit: European countries must stand together or be subject to the whims of larger economies. But no. It’s all quiet on the Western front. No one’s calling for Europe to stand together on this. Why not ? Contempt for Britain ? Stupidity ? Or just that when all’s said and done, and propaganda to the contrary, the EU was always more about controlling the people of Europe, rather than any more enlightened vision ?

UPDATE

Since it came up, it was no less a person than the EU's own advocate general who claimed criticsm of the EU should be treated as blasphemy. The Europan Court of Justice generously dropped that claim, even while restricting freedom of speech dramtically.

The Vegetable Guy Gets It

Crunch Time

Judges keep yammering on about how their right to set paedophiles free is the very cornerstone of our democracy, so it's probably lucky for them that they finally have a case where they can truly demonstrate the importance of an independent judicary. Hmmm.... sink a Labour government or come out the closet as absolute hacks. Whatever the result, we should win.

If nothing else, it will be interesting to see if he keeps his passport when he's charged. 'Flight risk' is all too literal a term for a bloke who's done all but issue the change of address cards (and on a side note, Melanie the Great, Fatty Pollard and the like would have a lot more standing to complain about British anti-Semitism if Israel hadn't offered safe haven to seemingly every Jewish fugitive in British history - even Maxwell got all but a state funeral).

Dhimmis D'Jour

The BBC has a whole article up called 'Mumbai blasts: Who are the suspects?' without once mentioning either the I-word or the M-word. I guess they're still looking for a way to link it to India's role in Iraq. Personally, I blame their attemps to ram Bollywood movies and chicken madras down our throats.

Meanwhile, more evidence of Liberals using tales of plucky endurance in the face of terror to deflect the debate from the need to zap the tangos.

Enablers Of Thug Nation

Lest people accuse Call Me Dave of living in an ivory tower, for his big speech on crime he invited people who have actually played criminals in a movie. It could have been worse though – ‘Kidulthood’ writer Noel Clarke also starred in Dr Who, so we could have been exhorted to hug a Dalek.

Hey – not to go off at a tangent here, but if Cameron wants to explore root causes, might I suggest that one big one might be movies which depict violent, drug-sodden, sex obsessed savages as super cool, iconoclastic rebels ? Hey, if people want to produce this semi-literate garbage that’s their own problem, but why exactly public money should be used to propagandise social dysfunction beats me.

For all Cameron’s supposed modernity, his speech was just the same old 60s blather. Cameron is shocked – shocked! – that Joe Public could think badly of people who dress like thugs. Just wait until he finds out that people who wear dog collars are often called ‘Reverend’. I’m not sure that I see a huge distinction between being a thug and merely modelling your lifestyle on thugs, but that’s by the by. There was something far worse underlying this speech than the merely stupid idea that the public aren’t entitled to draw their own conclusions about someone who chooses to dress in scumbag chic.

Cameron’s speech was a perfect example of one of – perhaps the – pathology affecting modern Britain. Yes, the realisation that if you want to be taken seriously, you can’t stroll round in flip-flops, shorts and a footy shirt is a traumatic moment in everyone’s life. It’s also part of that weird and wonderful process known as growing the hell up, but for forty years Liberals have been waging war on the very concept of maturity.

The Left’s obsession with ‘yoof’ culture is the idiot half-brother of their multicultural monomania, with all the same pathologies. Kids are ike any other recent arrivals in this culture, they need to be encouraged to assimilate, but - as ever - Liberals do there best to keep them dysfunctional, dependent and in their ghettos. Who are we to say that dressing as a thug is ‘wrong’ ? Aren’t kids who behave obnoxiously just expressing their culture ? Why should employers disciminate against people with 84 facial piercings ? Yada, yada, yada.

What it’s about is what it’s always about: civilisational self-confidence. Multiculturalism is bad enough, but when it comes to the young, we actually spend billions per year on the whole freak show of education, social workers and other members of the salaried unemployed, yet their whole approach can be summed by the phrase ‘yeah, whatever’. They’ve given up even trying to civilise the kids and become active enablers of social dysfunction.

That’s the other irony, of course. The most high profile opposition to hoodies hasn’t come from anybody in government, far less our bloated ‘yoof’ sector. It’s come from Bluewater shopping centre, which famously banned hoodies. Consider their position: no access with a hoodie. It’s that simple, they’ve defined a standard and they’re keeping to it, irrespective of the girly whining from yoof workers and other members of the Enemy Within. So private business is doing the job the State has renounced – it’s enough to make you a Conservative.

Just Practicing

The only positive thing that can be said about this story is that at least they were prepared to cite possession of a Koran as a risk factor. You mean the threat isn't coming from crazed Hari Krishna ? Apart from that crumb of comfort, as a commentator at lgf asks, is it now OK to carry a Glock on a plane provided you're not carrying any actual bullets with it ?

Judge Warns Of Dangers Of Own Policy

So is Judge Denis Clark still worried that a culture of witness intimidation is pushing Merseyside towards anarchy ? Apparently not, since judicious use of an onion is enough to avoid a jail term for ABH and witness intimidation in his court. Must be that Liberal nuance again.

(a tip of the wig to Dave in the comments)

Question D'Jour

If the July 7 bombings had absolutely nothing whasoever, no way Mister, to do with mainstream Islam, why was the supposedly mainstream Islam Expo held on that date ?

They'll Need A New Cliche

Was it Sam Goldwyn who supposedly said ‘I'm sick and tired of these old cliches, get me some new cliches’ ? Whatever, but Liberals have spent so much time ranting about the Daily Mail that they don’t appear to have noticed that when it comes to the war, it’s now all but Moonbat Central. Even so, today’s print edition headline was a minor classic.

The Daily Mail chose to report this story under the headline ‘Driven To Kill By His Gulf War Past’. To be sure the sub header phrased it as a question ‘Did memories make ex-soldier snap and murder family of four ?’, but all in all that must be the most sympathetic headline the Mail has ever given to a quadruple murder suspect.

What it’s all about – of course – is creating yet another victim of Chimpy McHitlerBurton ‘War’ ‘on’ ‘Terror’. It’s only when you read past the opening lines that the embarrassing truth appears. Psycho Boy was a veteran of the 1991 Gulf War – henceforth to be known as The One Liberals Pretended To Support.

In fact, in so far as the suspect’s decline appears to have been precipitated by his 1992 redundancy from the Army, you may as well blame it on Liberals taking a chainsaw to the defence budget as much as anything that happened in the sandy bit of the world. Don’t expect to see them take up that line any time soon.

Still, I can’t help feeling that not content with reminding us approximately 64 000x that the suspect is a GULF WAR VETERAN, the Mail is trying to push another line as well. Just seems like there’s some kind of subliminal message in this article.

Hey, does anyone know if the Fusiliers were involved in any friendly fire incidents ? Possibly involving Yanks ? I guess the Mail’s right – you are much safer without some idiots from Kansas zipping around randomly dropping bombs. What could possibly go wrong ?

Does anyone doubt that if the Paras had been overrun the Mail would be bitterly denouncing the Sceptics for refusing to provide fire support for ‘our boys’ ? No air support: Yanks are scum. Air support: Yanks are scum.

Liberals have been complaining bitterly about the Mail for years. Now, the Mail's unique reporting style is being deployed in support of the Left's 'Surrender now!' policy and suddenly Liberals are silent. So which is it Libs ? Do you have an actual, principled objection to the Mail’s tactics, or do you just object to the particular positions it uses them to push ?

It's Not Tactical

No, the Metro-Cons really are as mad as hatters. Consider Francis Maude’s claim that Lady Thatcher made his brother catch AIDS.

No, seriously.

Frankie’s theory goes something like this: Lady Thatcher made gays feel excluded so that drove them to have rampant, promiscuous sex. Using the same logic, I conclude that Blair must really hate Premiership footballers.

Never mind anything else, just think what a train wreck Maude’s view of Conservatism must be, if he seriously thinks that governments should, or even can, dictate how socially acceptable particular sexual practices are (and didn’t Liberals used to want to get the governments out of our bedrooms) ?

See, this is the difference between Left and Right. When Conservatives claim government policies are leading to unnecessary deaths, the theory of causation goes something like: mad axeman released from prison early, kills someone. With Liberals, there always seems to be a bit missing: Lady Thatcher opposes the gay agenda, gays indulge in rampant promiscuity. Huh ? Did they miss step two out ?

Since Frank brings the subject up, if any side of the political spectrum helped to spread AIDS in the 1980s, it was the Left. It was their insistence that everyone was at risk equally, that meant resources went into distributing condoms to OAPS and school children instead of the folks actually at risk. The media was primed to report on an imminent epidemic even while an actual epidemic was devastating gays.

The inevitable corollary to hyping the threat to 68 year old widows was the downplaying of the threat to promiscuous homosexuals. The Left might not have wanted to single them out, but HIV didn’t mind at all. Liberals were so terrified about stirring up anti-gay feeling they forget to let gays know that a deadly virus was sweeping through their ranks. Plenty of homosexuals died hideously, but on the plus side, at least they weren’t made to feel uncomfortable.

See, we’re back to what I was on about above. The Right says that PC (as no one called it back then) meant resources were wasted and dangers downplayed. You may agree, you may not, but at least it's an actual argument. The Left says AIDS spread because Lady Thatcher opposed kids being taught about fisting. That’s not an argument, that’s just slander. This is the central humbuggery of the whole thing. Metro-Cons claim to be outraged at the harsh rhetoric of the Right, even while accusing real Conservatives of helping to spread a deadly disease.

The truth is Metro-Cons gave up making sense years ago. The only coherent theme in their rhetoric is that they really, really hate actual Conservatives. It’s not a posture or a pose – this isn’t some carefully worked out plan to appeal to the ‘Conservatives spread diseases’ demographic. There are no votes in insane conspiracy theories, they simply hate the Right and will use any slander to abuse them. These are the people hoping Conservatives will keep voting for them.

Minority Reports

OK, just to get this straight in my own mind:

1/ Muslims make up 5% of the population, therefore the rest of us have a responsiblility to recognise them as an important and integral part of our nation, and this should be reflected in government policy in terms of providing them with such benefits as state-funded religious schools, community centres and the like.

2/ Polls consistently show that around 10-20% of British Muslims openly support terrorism, which proves that the extremeists are a tiny minority.

Is that it ?

The Teletubby Approach To War

Was it just me or did other people suffer an almost overwhelming urge to scream obscenities at the TV on Friday ? Wayne Rooney may have acted like a retard against Portugal, but at least there was a reassuring authenticity about his reaction, as compared with a culture where mass slaughter of fellow countrymen is treated like an opportunity for Therapy Nation posturing.

Of course, I’m a Conservative, so mass emotion always worries me, but there was something genuinely icky about the whole July 7 commemoration. Representatives of an insane ideology attacked our country and slaughtered our citizens, and Liberals think the correct response is to hold a big national group hug. We’re just lucky they didn’t let Esther Rantzen out on day release.

Liberals aren’t even subtle with their attempts at rebranding – look how many references there were to the 'tragedy' of July 7. Hey, the Titanic was a tragedy, July 7 was war. But Liberals have to lie about July 7 as that was the day everything they ever believed about the War on Terror was exposed as garbage. Hell, Liberals were even sceptical about the fact there was a war. Lord Hoffman became a Liberal pin-up by claiming there was no real threat from terrorism – this statement, by the way, made in a judgement striking down anti-terrorism legislation.

Liberal desperation to rebrand the mass slaughter of British citizens as a tragedy, a calamity or a series of unfortunate incidents is the nice side of their strategy. The flip side is the Left’s crazed attempts to prove that it’s all one big conspiracy. That’s why every now and then we get otherwise inexplicable news items like this one. No, Liberals, the security services weren’t involved in a secret plot to let the bombings happen. Also, Elvis is still dead.

It’s a perfect barometer of the Left’s worldview that they’ll bend over backwards not to admit the truth about the bombers, but they’ll believe almost anything about the guys trying to stop them. Britain has now had eleven known suicide bombers, of varying degrees of competence, all of whom have been members of a certain peaceful religion. Liberals think this is just a wacky coincidence. Meanwhile, we have precisely no evidence of any form of conspiracy, whether involving the security services or anybody else, to let the bombers strike, but Liberals think that just proves we need to investigate further.

Indeed, in the perfect fusion of the Liberals’ two pronged approach to July 7, they are obsessing about the need for a public enquiry into the bombings, citing the need both for ‘closure’ and their own insane conspiracy theories. Hey, why not ? Even if the enquiry exposes their conspiracy theories as complete drivel, they can always claim the chairman was nobbled (also known as the ‘Hutton manoeuvre’). So we either need to 'move on' or take a fine toothcomb to every file at MI-5. Whatever, just pay no attention to the bearded paedo-prophet behind the curtain.

Still, you have to admire their chutzpah really. Liberals claiming to be enraged that someone else wasn’t taking the threat seriously. If failing to take all necessary measures to prevent the attacks is a sacking offence, why aren’t Liberals demanding Hoffman resign ? For the sake of the Left’s insane argument, let’s pretend that the Right was blind to the threat. OK Liberals, the balls in your court, what should we do to stop the next attack (and no, that doesn’t include ‘surrender’) ?

[crickets]

Exactly. July 7 was the culmination of years of Liberal policy: Londonistan, dhimmitude, activist judges and a whole heap of other chickens came home to roost that day. That’s why Liberals must lie about what really happened. It’s either that, or admit that their philosophy was utterly exposed by the events of the day.

That’s the thing. Ultimately, it’s not that Liberals simply had bad policies in the run-up to July 7, it’s that having had their polices so totally exposed, all their efforts have gone into trying to obscure that fact. Say what you like about Railtrack's safety record, but at least they didn’t spend their time whining that ‘crash’ was a loaded word. Liberals might not entirely approve of terrorists, but if it’s a choice between terrorism or giving ground in the culture war, hey, what’s a little Semtex between friends ?

Two Links

See that title - no burying the lede around here.

Yes, this is the worst - but most potentially amusing - idea ever. Hope they show it live (if that's the right word).

Meanwhile, Tottenham Lad catches the BBC spinning for Britain's worst ever racist killer (you'll never guess why).

Agreeing With Steve

Actually, a double agreement. Yes, I think he’s right here that the argument that we can somehow contrive a way to let immigrants in without letting them draw down on the welfare state is ludicrous. I don’t think it was a closely guarded secret that Poles have kids.

More to the point, I also think he’s right about the cultural angle. It all very well for economists to concoct models in which atomised, cosmopolitan individuals skip round the globe, each carefully maximising his economic advantage, but life ain’t like that. Mogadishu is not Madras and it isn’t Melbourne either. Supposed justifications for immigration that treat people as spare parts slotting in and out of each country are absurd. Frankly, as long as their models rely on this absurd premise, economists have ruled themselves out of having any sensible contribution to make to the debate.

Disagreeing With Steve

Steve can’t see the problem with the way councils enforce traffic laws. To me, it seems like how you think about this issue depends on how you see the law itself. Liberals have always seen it as the way the powerful enforce their will on the powerless. Of course they’ve got no problem with councils shaking down people with insane gotchas.

Conservatives see the law as the codification of the common morality. The law is more than whatever is expedient for the State at the time. Yes, there’s a case for parking control and the like, but the way these regulations are enforced is a disgrace. I remember riding through a town where a Sunday morning Easter service was being held for the local Scouts and the like. Naturally there were a whole bunch of families attending, so equally naturally there were a pair of traffic wardens patrolling the area. Hang on a mo’ – what’s with that ? Yes, there was a lot of traffic for 10 AM on a Sunday, but the roads were resolutely unblocked and the such traffic as there was, was flowing freely. Bottom line – the wardens were there because they thought they could pick up some easy kills, not because there was any sense that the town was hovering on the edge of gridlock.

Equally, consider that 20% of tickets issued are found to be bogus. Since the whole system is so heavily weighted towards discouraging people to appeal, the true figure might be closer to 40%. I’m not sure we’d accept either figure with any other type of offence, but the real question is what is the difference between these people trying to shakedown motorists with bogus tickets and Jack Scammer at Phraud UK Ltd submitting bogus invoices to companies ? Oh right – Jack doesn't work for the government.

It’s not just that the government turns a blind eye to actual criminality, it’s that even when councils aren’t breaking the law, they are behaving in ways no private business could. A central facet of modern Liberalism, as exemplified by everything from the tons of anti-discrimination legislation to the EU Unfair Contract Terms directive, has been that private companies (or even individuals) can’t expect contracts to enforced if they are judged unreasonable. Yet now we have the State pulling in the cash with a series of ‘Gotchas’. Need to go the doctors but we’ve put double yellows everywhere nearby ? Who cares ? Give us £60!

If HMG is going to conduct itself like an old-time double glazing company, it can’t hardly complain if it gets treated the same way, but that’s a problem for all of us. Implicit in the whole concept of ‘policing by consent’ is the idea that social order can only be maintained with the support of the public. If the State now sees law enforcement as a branch of HM Revenue and Customs, endlessly shaking down Joe Public with unfair, or just plain bogus, charges, then that support is lost.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we may have to consider the possibility that Nu Lab is sacrificing long-term social stability in pursuit of a short-term tax rake-off. You could have knocked me down with a feather

What Was That About The US Targeting Reporters ?

Hey, at last, a verified case of media trash being shot at, but the MSM thinks it's no big thing. Now, isn't that strange ?

And Think Of Their Contribution To Space Travel

Which Bit Exactly ?

A Tory MP gets caught telling the truth so naturally HQ unleashes its inner Sir Robin:

Sir Nick blames multi-culturalism for the terrorist threat facing the
country and says that "agitating so-called Muslim community leaders" who
criticise the police "should be ashamed of themselves and held to
account".

He also adds: "The Australian Government has spelt out bluntly what it
expects of its ethnic minority communities and we in the UK should do the same.

"They should stop politicising dress, such as wearing the hijab and burkha,
they should learn English, they should not return to their homelands to get a
spouse, cease forced marriages and accept once and for all that the United
Kingdom is not, and never will be, an Islamic state.

The Conservative Party Central Office has distanced itself from the
comments, releasing a statement saying: "These are Sir Nick’s personal
views"…

All of which does raise the question, exactly what is it that Sir Nick said that they disagree with ? Does the Party actually think, say, forced marriage is a really good idea ? I think we should be told.

Frank Gardner: Help Me, I'm A Moron!

While we're still waiting for Frank Gardner to grasp what it says about the RoP that a badly-injured man needs to state he's a Muslim to obtain aid from members of the peace-loving religion, he's decided to give us his views on whether Britain is any safer now than a year ago - and with a track record like his, who wouldn't listen to him ? Funnily enough, he leaves out one of the biggest factors in the War on Terror, namely the outright distortions of the MSM. Of course - much like his Islamic mates - that does hit a little close to home, what with paragraphs like this in his report:

These feelings have only been exacerbated by the bungled police raid this summer at Forest Gate in East London, in which a young man was shot in error and a suspected bomb factory turned out to be an ordinary, law-abiding household.

Ordinary and law-abiding ? Let's review the evidence here. Big brother has convictions for armed robbery (gun never accounted for) and goes to demonstrations calling for the murder of cartoonists, Big Sis issues insane denunciations of the Filth, there's £38 000 in money hidden in the cellar and one of the suspects has nine previous convictions. If this family qualifies as 'ordinary and law-abiding', who doesn't ? The Manson Family ?

The next paragraph is a lu-lu as well:

Events like that, and the indignation felt by many Muslims over the publication in Europe earlier this year of cartoons defaming the Prophet Muhammad, have undermined much of the government's efforts to build better relations with Muslim communities.

I guess that would be the Prophet Mohammed, as opposed to the Lord Jesus Christ - good luck finding that form of words at the Beeb. But anyway - what's with the 'defamation' ? That was never claimed at the time. The protests were about the 'depiction' of Murdering Mo. These people believe that simply drawing the Paedo Prophet is enough to justify decapitation. Trying to claim the cartoons were defamatory is just another way of trying to hide the craziness of the true Islamopath.

So that's two outright lies in two paragraphs, both in support of the people who shot him. To paraphrase the old joke about the Judge who got mugged, shoot him again!

Classic Fisking

Via DfH, here's a classic fisking of Al-Beeb's absurd 7/7 whitewashing in the comments at Biased BBC.

Framing The Debate

The debate about the government’s open borders policy has flared up again, as well it should. Still, I think we make a mistake when we allow the open borders lobby to claim the debate is about immigration. Really ? Do folks who think there should be a least a few differences between a country and a hotel really want to blow up the arrivals hall at Heathrow ? Do they want to seal the borders tight shut, never to open again ? Or is it actually just some types of immigration they don’t support ?

Call it a shot in the dark, but I’m thinking we may be able to draw some meaningful distinctions between a doctor from Madras and a gang leader from Somalia. On the other hand, not only do the open borders lobby claim we either can’t draw these distinctions, or even that we shouldn’t, we now have a system that seem designed to positively encourage lunatics to immigrate. Consider, for example, how the whole ‘asylum’ scam is based on a ‘fear of persecution’ no matter how, or why, the scumbag in question may be being ‘persecuted’. So if you’re facing the rope back home just for blowing up a few infidels, you’re in.

Hey, it’s possible to call this insane without necessarily wanting to prevent Arsenal from buying the next Pele. See, this is the debate – not about immigration, about the type of immigration. This is a vital point and it needs to be rammed home as often as possible.

Edukayshun Latest

Can you believe it ? Some people have accused me of having a downer on our hard-working teaching profession. Seriously though, that’s not quite it. If education was just another government boondoggle, who would care ? It’s the fact it is a serious and important business that makes me so enraged by the dominance of complete moonbats.

Still, you have to have some sympathy for individual teachers, hanging on like Charlton Heston in ‘The Omega Man’. Imagine having to deal with this sort of thing. Let’s leave aside the insanity of Liberals once again being baffled that immigrants from Atlantis spend a lot of time swimming. We’ll even pass by the Head’s insane defence (‘we’re a violent hellhole, but so’s everywhere else’). Just consider the genius which brougt about this situation

The girl, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, said: “There used to
be about seven members of the Thug Fam gang who went to the London Academy. Now
there are only two. The other five are in prison. Most of the students are
petrified of the gang — they carry weapons, usually knives, and are very
intimidating.”

Hello ? A gang’s making life hell for the kids, but they still have known members attending the place ? What do you have to do to get expelled these days ?

Wasszat, Mr Liberal ? You’re saying that giving these scumbags the old heave ho’ won’t help much ? Well, yep, it won’t, but it will help a little, yet they still won’t give them the boot. It’s that thing again: civilisation self-confidence. Even Liberalism’s ever-bulging Big Bag of Excuses can’t convert these hoods into some kind of freedom fighters. Savages is what they are.

See, this is why people like me are enraged at the teaching profession. If education means anything at all, it means inculcating the next generation with civilised values, but what’s going on now is the complete opposite. Liberals educrats' sole contribution these days is to provide scumbags with the vocabulary of victimhood, acting as enablers and excuses even out of outright savagery. Hey, we’ve got a school were even being a sadistic thug is no big thing. Just how would the country be worse off if that place was closed ?