End Of Year Link Dump (Part II)

Even more stuff I forgot to post back when it was still relevant:

Tough On Crime: Apparently, the 'public interest' is one of those phrases that only liberals truly understand.

Usual Suspects Enraged As Government Fails To Cover Up July 7 Evidence: OK, this is pretty stupid, but tell me the Truthers wouldn't have gone ape if this stuff hadn't been released.

Crippled Woman Refuses To Embrace The Victimhood: Pity she's Chinese

Shocka! Legal Immigrants Not Down With The Open Borders Lobby: It's a privilege not a right!

Cheaper, Better and Private: On the other hand, I'll bet they can't offer the kind of moral guidance of this next bunch of guys....

Liberal Morality: They made me commit fraud!

The Right Was Right: Oh look... even the left is forced to admit that a 'right-wing myth' is true. Not that you'd know it from this BBC report. Then again, it's also missing something beginning with 'I'...

Further Proof The Jesus Freaks Are Retarded: The Dawk just burst into tears!

Stupid Hippies Still Stupid: Can't we protect the children from liberals ?

Too Perfect Metaphor: Modern Europe In A No-Nuts Shell

Fat Fraud Also Greedy: Saving the Earth one dollar at a time.

Emotionally Overwrought Blogger Will See You In 2008: But probably not too early.

End Of Year Link Dump (Part I)

All the things I should have posted on at the time, but didn't:

I Thought Liberals Didn't Believe In Victim-Impact Statements ?: A liberal activist explains how she knows that there's no need to tighten up anti-terror laws because she was on one of the trains on July 7. What's that phrase ? Absolute Moral Absurdity ?

File This Under 'Taking The War Seriously': Iranians studying advanced nuclear physics ? What could possibly go wrong ?

Testing Reveals British Education Is Rubbish, Liberals Solution ? Less Testing

A Victim Group We Can All Aspire To Join

Murderous Communist Savage Seeks Sanctuary In The Obvious Place

And They Didn't Even Need Help From Al Gore: Yep, the UNtrustworthy ones finally admit they lied about AIDS.

English Language Beaten To Death: I'm no fan of libertarians myself, but even they deserve better than having every passing authoritarian bone head try and pass themselves off as one of them.

The Hitch Pwns Rasuputin!

Well, Someone's Taking The War Seriously: Buddhists to complain of Profiling

TV Star Outed Inned (?): Iain Dale writes angry post denouncing US conservatives

Left Eating Itself Again: Sickeningly PC show not PC enough

World's Greatest Broadcaster Caught Lying Again: Forget hot button political and cultural issues - they can't even report science straight.

'Tired' Blogger Calls Temporary Halt To Link Dumpage: But let's leave on a high - here's Tammy Bruce slapping round the femiloons for their third-degree Islamopandering

Easyjet To The Rescue!

As I understand the left's current position - and I admit I haven't checked for a couple of hours - removing Saddam wasn't worth plunging Iraq into chaos and the consequent loss of life. On the other hand, Musharraf should be forced out though the heavens fall.

Saddam invading neighbouring countries was a social faux pas to be sure, but at least he never did anything as serious as Musharraf who... well, what exactly ? By the standards of the region, let alone Pakistan itself, what is Musharraf supposed to have done ?

Maybe Musharraf isn't really representative of the proverbial man in the street, but in Pakistan that might be no bad thing:

It is the new way of warfare to proclaim that our quarrel is never with the heroic, struggling people of fill-in-the-blank country. No, we, of course, fight only the regime that oppresses them and frustrates their unquestionable desire for freedom and equality.

Pakistan just won’t cooperate with this noble narrative.

Whether we get round to admitting it or not, in Pakistan, our quarrel is with the people. Their struggle, literally, is jihad. For them, freedom would mean institutionalizing the tyranny of Islamic fundamentalism. They are the same people who, only a few weeks ago, tried to kill Benazir Bhutto on what was to be her triumphant return to prominence — the symbol, however dubious, of democracy’s promise. They are the same people who managed to kill her today. Today, no surfeit of Western media depicting angry lawyers railing about Musharraf — as if he were the problem — can camouflage that fact.

On the other hand, I may have an answer. Yes, Pakistan is full of lunatics, but the open borders lobby has spent years telling us that a few hours in a metal tube, eating bad food, can turn anyone - terrorists, pushers or perverts - into model British citizens, so that's the answer. Free flights for everyone - they can go see Everest and by the time they land, they'll be ready to forsake jihad and get careers in Islamabad City Council's newly opened Lesbian Outreach Centre, won't they ?

The BBC: Pravda For The New Age

Just like the Central Committees' favourite organ, the chief amusement in reading the BBC is seeing just how hard they have to twist and turn to avoid the truth. Take this latest report, on the political hot button issue of..... vitamin D in pregnancy:

Pregnant or breastfeeding women have been urged to boost their vitamin D intake amid warnings that cases of rickets in children are increasing.

Rickets ? Isn't that something out of Dickens ? But wait... there is one explanation. Just don't expect the BBC to come straight out and tell us what it is.

Some minority ethnic groups in the UK, including Asians, are particularly at risk, says the Department of Health.

Any particular groups ?

Dark-skinned people do not absorb as much sunlight through the skin and may also wear clothing that limits exposure to the sun for cultural reasons.

Yep, that's as close as we get to an admission that, aside from all the other unpleasant aspects of Islamic doctrine, the requirement for women to travel everywhere under a tarpaulin is now leading to children being born malformed.

I guess even the BBC is struggling to find a way to put a positive spin on an ideology that produces malformed kids, hence the sudden lurch into vague talk of 'cultural reasons'.

Quote D'Jour

Bryan at Hot Air on just how far the UN has to go to find somebody who can be trusted with kids:

The UN has to resort to fiction to bolster its image because a book about the UN doing any good would by definition have to be a work of fiction.

In Their Case, They're Probably Right

Tim Blair with the latest dispatch from the British left. They might have a point though. Islamofascists have been brought up as members of a death cult - what's the left's excuse ?

Liberals' Other Solution For Education: More Dancing!

Of course, the other problem with central planning in education, aside from insulting the producers from the disciplines of the market, is that it allows schools to be distracted from their central mission by the demands of political posturing. Again, referring to the story linked below, check this out:

The twinning method initially involves the good school bringing in senior teachers to "saturate" the other and impose order.

Behaviour, discipline and uniform are among the first areas to be tackled, alongside lesson planning and homework in what author Robert Hill describes as this saturation phase.

Behaviour, discipline and uniform are key areas ? Who knew ? Oh yeah... that's right: everyone outside the fever swamps of the education establishment. For forty years they've been yammering about individuality, self-expression and all the other excuses for letting schools turn into cess pits, so they can't hardly expect any credit now for belatedly realising that us fascists were right all along.

More to the point, these people are unstoppable. No sooner do they reluctantly let go one idiotic idea than they're off again, exploring whole, new vistas of stupidity. Consider this, for example.

I guess we'll have to wait another twenty years before the libs denounce the feminisation of education.

Is That 'Teamwork' Like Mugging Is 'Sharing Resources' ?

Liberals claim to have found a way to turn round failing schools, the only problem is that it requires increased effort from staff at successful schools.

Nope - that isn't a mistake. Liberal's latest variation on bussing is to force staff from successful schools to work in Titanic High. It's great that the left finally acknowledges that the success of a school may, in some small way, be influenced by the skills of the staff, and it's amazing that they'll even concede that some teachers are hopeless, after all, but they still won't follow their logic through to its conclusion.

There is another, more direct, way we could give kids in awful schools the chance to benefit from being taught by teachers in successful schools. To put it another way, how much of a minefield would eating out be if the government suddenly decided that no restaurant could ever go to the wall ? But no, liberals think competition allows us to buy excellent Thai, Indian and Italian food all within the same postcode, but education requires the type of high kwality state planning that gave us the Millennium Dome.

Compulsory Christmas Post

Yep, tonight's the night when some guy dressed in red and white comes into your home with a huge sack - and steals all your prezzies. So watch out for the Robbing Scouser.

Meanwhile, it looks like foul-mouthed videos are this season's must have. OK, I'll get with the program:



Hey, I'm just getting into the Christmas spirit. Remember, every mince pie is like a bayonet in the Paedo Prophet's heart.

Amnesty Amnesia

FR has the full breakdown on the government's stealth amnesty. Liberals defend all this by claiming that it's the only way the immigration system can cope - you know, sort of like how the Fire Service would be much more efficient if they just let things burn down.

I'd almost let the liberals have this, if only we could have the same system for tax. If you ever got done for tax evasion, you have the right to seventy-four legally aided appeals, before panels made up of hard-core libertarians, plus Ken Dodd would be head of the Customs and Revenue Service. If you ever did finally lose, the panel would let you off anyway, lest you suffer exceptional hardship from having to pay out the tax. Then every two years or so, we'd claim that the tax system was breaking under the strain, so we need to write off all the debts.

Hearing liberals claim that the immigration system is in chaos is like hearing Robert Maxwell claim there's too much bureaucracy involved in running a pension scheme. For that matter, why amnesty ? For the sake of argument, why not go the other way ? Wouldn't deporting everyone also clear the backlog ?

The truth is that we don't even need the government to deport illegals. Over in Arizona they're experiencing the phenomenon of 'self-deportation'. Key passage:

Under the employer sanctions law, businesses found to have knowingly hired illegal workers will be subject to sanctions from probation to a 10-day suspension of their business licenses. A second violation would bring permanent revocation of the license.

No cooperation from the open borders lobbying immigration service required.

The Right Was Right

It says something about the toxic effects of liberalism on society that a branch of the civil service can flat-out refuse to execute government policy with nary a ripple in the political pond.

Hey, the chattering classes keep yammering about the assault on traditional British liberties (few of which date back past 1997), but now the principle of democratic accountability has been taken outside and shot, no one cares ?

Still, this case does illustrate one thing. Can anyone seriously deny that the immigration authorities have been captured by the open borders lobby ?

Honest Liberals Found

Well, you can't accuse them of burying the lede.

Several immigration centres across England and Scotland have been blockaded by human rights activists.

The No Borders Network were campaigning against the use of dawn raids.

Ooops - kind of forget their talking points with that name. I thought liberal standard operating procedure was to claim they support border security but they think the criteria need to change to allow open access by certain, specific groups such as, say, carbon-based lifeforms.

The New 'ROP' ?

All time best ever euphemism ? I think so - this one could run and run.

Liberals: Still A Bunch Of Faggots

See, this is what's mystifying me: we're supposed to be living through the Golden Age of liberalism, with just a few isolated like wingnuts like me still refusing to bolt down the kool aid. So how come every time liberals are exposed to public scrutiny they fold like a tent ?

I make it less than 24 hours between the revelation that the BBC was censoring 'Fairytale of New York' and the humiliating climbdown. Even Cameron does better than that.

Our impartial state broadcaster has been exposed as completely out of touch with public opinion. Again. Hey, if the BBC was merely retarded, rather than say, a cesspit full of deranged moonbats, shouldn't they tilt too far to the right every now and again ? Nope, it's always the same mistake again and again.

Also exposed: Peter Tatchell. Really, I could never understand why some folks on the right gave this guy any credit in the first place. His spat with Mugabe was driven by his own desire to push an agenda rather than any more general moral viewpoint. Just as long as Mugabe was merely murdering people, that was fine. It was only when Mugabe came out - as it were - against the gay agenda that Tatchell found a set of morals.

Now we know that the gay rights movement are a bunch of fascistic creeps after all - you know, kind of like some of us always said they were. For the record, it was undeniably brave of Dirk Bogarde to star in 'Victim' at a time when homosexuality was illegal, but at least no one wanted to jail him merely for raising the issue.

Liberal Morality: Standing Up For What's Right As Soon As It's Moot

It's great that the BBC is prepared to expose a former hero of the left as a brutal Stalinist thug, but who was hiding that from the left ? Some of us pointed that out at the time. Meanwhile, the BBC was busy calling us fascists.

It's not as if we have to wait for secret files to be opened - there was the odd one or two clues out there[1]. Nope - let's not have any leftists telling us that this is some kind of bolt from the blue. If leftists really want to convince us that Scargill doesn't speak for them, how about insisting on proper action against those people implicated in destroying documents to hobble the investigation into this murder ?

[1] Also note that the killers got off - the 1980s weren't quite the Golden Age of conservatism that they're often depicted as.

Old Left Vs New Left

The difference between socialists and liberals ? Right here.

Not to say that seeing a union getting le shaft is necessarily a bad thing, but it does demonstrate just how, when corporate interests clash with those of labour, Liberals throw the working man under the bus faster than blinking.

Return Of The Grassroots ?

With the inevitable arrival of state funding allowing the cartel parties to stop even pretending to respond to public opinion in any but the lowest, swing-voter coddling way, things aren't looking good for democracy.

Fortunately, as Tim Worstall suggests, there may be new outlets for political activism developing. Personally, I think he overrates the power of blogging alone, but certainly, taken together with other trends, I think we may well see a revival of *genuine* grass roots activism. Look at how the Taxpayers Alliance has managed to help drive the debate on tax, in the teeth of opposition from even the Tories.

Also, Lawns Are Full Of Worms And Insects Too

On the subject of the cartel parties and their shakedown of the taxpayer, James G has had an interesting exchange with his local MP on that very subject, plus an interesting analogy:

Once again, politics can learn a bit from business. A grand marketing plan may be able to convince people to change the brand of fertilizer they buy, temporarily, but at the end of the day, the consumer is still buying sh**. Essentially what's happening (if I may extend the analogy further) is that the parties are now fighting over market share among the dwindling 60 per cent of people who do garden. How about the growing number of people who don't?

Actually, I think we're well into the 'Agent Orange' stage of politics now.

Doesn't 'Satire' Require An Actual Point ?

Cedric detects a certain inconsistency in the way the BBC handles charges of religious insensitivity. He's right, of course, plus consider the difference between these two cases. This hatred of man's best friend is one of the most conspicuously insane parts of Islamic ideology, on the other hand, the Bible doesn't really spend much time talking about adult incontinence. There's no satirical point to putting Jesus in a nappy it's simply been crude and offensive for its own sake. Meanwhile, joking about Islam's bonkers hatred of dogs is beyond the pale.

Big Business Made Me Do It

Further support for my theory that at least 50% of liberalism is just contriving excuses for bad behaviour. Hey, his wife's in therapy, so it's not like they aren't suffering too, right ?

Moderates!

The MSM's whole 'Religion of Peace' meme requires that liberals constantly conjure up bogus 'root causes' to explain away every example of Islamic lunacy.

OK, libs, you win: terrorism is all down to crazed Islamophobes such as G W Bush, Charles Martel and Theo Van Gough. Now, how exactly do you explain this case ? Did she, by any chance, provoke him ?

I guess until the left can find a way to blame this particular victim, we're going to be stuck with this kind of garbage. All of which just leaves one mystery: if the killing isn't Islamic in nature, how come all those professional 'moderate Muslims' can't bring themselves to issue a full-throated condemnation of it ?

Sounds Familiar.....

The specific context might be different, but I'm thinking a few British conservatives might feel a chill of recognition when they read this post:

Not that what one blogger thinks matters that much, but if Huckabee gets the nomination, I'm voting Democratic. It's not just an idle threat; I just won't vote for him and in fact won't even vote third party or stay home. I'll vote for the Democratic candidate, even Hillary. I won't be a party to selling out everything the party is supposed to stand for to a liberal ideology. If we're going to have eight years of liberal rule, I'd rather the Democratic Party be governing, so at least they can take the blame.

And, quite frankly, Hillary is to the right of Huckabee on most issues, if only because she's politically afraid to do the kind of crap Huckabee does and dream of doing at night. She couldn't afford to be as soft as Iran as Huckabee would.

How Much Is Too Much ?

Astonishingly enough, it turns out that giving terrorists a hard time can save lives.

I know - I was shocked too, but there you have it. Liberals keep jabbering about how not giving terrorists their weetabix until the milks all soaked in and they've gone all soggy, will inflict terminal damage on our national karma, start us down the slippery slope to human sacrifice and lead to us being cold shouldered by such moral arbiters as the UN. On the other hand, all we on the right can manage is the whole 'preventing mass slaughter' thing.

Well, OK, then libs - just how many casualties are these people prepared to accept before they'll let interrogators make intimidating hand gestures at terrorists ? 100 ? 1000 ? More ? Just how many body bags need to be filled before the left shuts the hell up ?

Now Can We Stop Calling Them 'European' ?

Remember, if we don't let them into the EU they might go nuts.

Internal Exile

Forced expulsion of natives from their land ? Is it cruel multinationals in the Amazon, or just liberals in the UK ? Guess.

The Left's Bold New Policy: Surrender

Anyone remember that war liberals were so keen to fight they couldn't abide the thought of distracting ourselves by invading Iraq ? Well, a funny thing happened on the way to Kabul....

When Samurai Swords Are Banned, Only Ninjas Will Have Samurai Swords

The Gun Three Whirled lobby have made their descent into self-parody official:

Imitation Samurai swords are to be banned after a spate of attacks in the UK, say ministers.

Not just attacks, a spate of them. Run to the hills everybody!

Home Office minister Vernon Coaker said there was a clear danger to the public posed by easily-available swords.

How about the easy availability of scumbags ? Any plans to change that ?

Calls for a ban came after a number of high-profile incidents in which cheap Samurai-style swords had been used as a weapon.

Yes, down the Dog & Duck they talk of little else.

The Home Office estimates there have been some 80 attacks in recent years involving Samurai-style blades, leading to at least five deaths.

But wait.... Jovial Jack Straw was just telling us that the fact only 110 of the early release prisoners were found to reoffend means the program is just ducky. So which is it ? Is 80 enough to be an imminent threat, or is 110 nothing to worry about ?

Needless to say, the people's party comes through again:

Vernon Coaker said: "In the wrong hands, samurai swords are dangerous weapons - there have been a number of high profile, serious incidents involving samurai swords in England and Wales in recent years.

"It is therefore crucial that we take this action to tackle the menace of violent crime.

"We recognise it is the cheap, easily available samurai swords which are being used in crime and not the genuine, more expensive samurai swords which are of interest to collectors and martial arts enthusiasts."

So pretendey samurai swords are banned, but actual katanas, cutlasses, epees, claymores, sabres, broadswords and scimitars will presumably remain legal, pending any more mysterious calls to ban them.

See, I bet you feel safer already.

UPDATE:

Down in the comments, 'Anonymous' points out that this spate of Katana Krimes isn't yet serious enough for the government to take serious action against the actual criminals

Cameron: Now With Added Demagoguery

I've said it before, and doubtless I'll say it again, but the defining feature of Cameron is not just that he is consistently appalling, but that he always manages to be appalling in a different way.

We've had already Cameron sliming social conservatives and shafting libertarians, now meet David Cameron: economic populist. Yep, all we need to do is get those nasty banks to stop charging so much and everything will be fine. Hmmmm.....turns out it's not just mortgages going up. Doubtless, Cameron will be asking farmers to drop their prices too, m'kay ?

Even for someone like me, who thinks economics is just astrology for the aspergers demographic, there is a certain obvious problem with trying to strongarm businesses into selling their products at below cost. Folks are coming to the end of their current deals and facing their monthly costs rising ? Well, yes, that would be the whole 'end of deal' thing. If your bank won't offer you a completive new deal then it's time to move on. Britain isn't short of financial institutions. That's not to say that coming off a 4.75% fix won't sting, but there are options out there to minimise the pain - or at least they will be unless some idiot politician forces banks to loan out money at a loss.

Of course, there really are nutters out there who think the banks all get together to keep the price of money artificially high - much as both Marx and Hitler did - but you'd think even the Cameroonatics had too much class to pander to this lunacy.

Aside from anything else, there really is an epic amount of humbug here. Cameron wants improved data sharing to prevent vulnerable people getting into debt. Fine, but wasn't it people like him who've spent years babbling about 'social exclusion' ? Which is it ? Are bankers fascist pigs who only want to deal with zillionaires, or are they fascists pigs seducing poor, dumb bumpkins into debt (and, by the way, doesn't this desperation to make even marginal loans imply that the market is already kind of cut throat) ?

Ditto, one reason why folks might lose their homes are the restrictions on the level of income support for mortgage payments in the event of redundancy - as brought in in 1995 by Mr Cameron's own party. Hey, maybe you think people should self-insure, but that hardly meshes well with the idea of Cameron forcing everyone in the country to take a stepped-rate product.

But that's not even the biggest part of it. No matter how rates have shot up, mortgage costs are still dwarfed by something rather closer to home for Cameron and friends. Never mind the mythical secret cabal of bankers sneakily keeping prices up just so they can get filthy rich, you really can't switch to a cheaper government. Ditto, when it comes to excess, I'm not sure any bank can match the government, with its hordes of five-a-day coordinators, recycling czars and sundry other bottom inspectors. How come Cameron isn't calling for council tax increases to be staggered ?

Yes, hold the e-mails Cameroonies, I'm aware that this might all just be fan service, Cameron indulging into a bout of sub-Clintonian feeling-of-pain, but that just emphasises his unfitness for government. Whatever specific policies Cameron does, or does not, push through will count for naught just as long as the wider culture is contaminated by the kind of toxic anti-free market canards that Cameron is flirting with here. How on earth can anyone reconcile calling for more personal responsibility with pushing deranged conspiracy theories about banking cabals ripping off the ordinary guy in the street ?

The BBC: Not Anti-War, Just On The Other Side

Apparently, the BBC finds the traditional definition of 'British' to be kind of restrictive. Well, either that, or they're lying to try and drum up support for some of the guests at Club Gitmo. Could be either, right ?

Hey, to some of us the fact these scumbags were granted sanctuary in Britain, but still pitched in with the Jihad, is an aggravating factor, not a mitigating one. Still, in so far as the BBC is taking out onions over folks who merely passed through Britain on the way to the Jihad, we're entitled to ask why actual Britons, who were helping our allies and are now being held in conditions somewhat worse than Club Gitmo don't get the soft-focus treatment.

This isn't moral equivalence. The BBC's coverage of the Jihadist lunatics is actually more sympathetic than the coverage of the British blokes. What does that say about where modern liberalism is at ?

Quote of the Century

I make it nearly a week since the Pink Wedge decided to exercise their fundamental human right to stop anyone listening to music they disapproved of, and the Cameroonie bloggers are still nowhere to be found. On the other hand, Cameroonie Blogger-in-Chief Iain Dale has written a nice article in the Telegraph calling for smaller government. Huh ?

All of which reminds me of a great quote I had pointed out to me by a usually reliable source. Here's Iain Dale on his two favourite topics:

I rarely comment on gay issues. I am in now way a gay rights campaigner.

Well, that's half-true. He'd be far less annoying if he was a gay rights campaigner. Ditto, 'gay Tory' would be fine too, but what really annoys are the constant attempts to position himself as some kind of Guardian of True Conservatism.

The man's a shill. His conservatism turns out to be an endlessly malleable ideology which nevertheless always ends up with him taking exactly the same stance as the gay rights movement. Of course he can reconcile demands for small government with support for raids by the Special Music Division. That's not inconsistency - quite the opposite in fact - it just isn't conservative.

Outrage D'ZZZZZZZZ

Totally shocking news, everybody! The BBC is planning to produce a version of the Nativity with Mary and Joseph as asylum seekers. They're so cutting edge - at least they are if you mean in the sense of doing something that's been before by every talentless left-wing hack on the planet.

There's nothing that induces deja vu like the avant garde. That's the bit that really grates actually. It's not just that, yet again, the BBC is using public money to make childishly predictable agitprop, or the contempt for Christians on show - it's both of these things put together.

The BBC isn't producing this blasphemous garbage to make any kind of point. This production has nothing to say about religion or faith or man's place in the world. The heartfelt religious beliefs of a significant chunk of the population are being used merely as a coat hook for the BBC to hang a load of drearily predictable Guardianista trash.

This is liberalism all over. Liberals have nothing worthwhile to say about faith, or patriotism, or morality or a whole bunch of other things because liberalism is a small, mean, runt of an ideology and liberals are perpetual adolescents, unable to offer anything more profound that sneery eye-rolling.

Happy Families!

Considering how often liberals denounce traditional values, they don't half like to keep it in the family. There's another one here:

In 1974, T Dan Smith, the leader of Newcastle City Council, and Durham County Council chief Andy Cunningham - father of former Labour minister Jack, now Lord, Cunningham - were jailed.

Admittedly, that kind of background could be a mixed blessing, but there's still something distinctly wacky about a form of socialism where every second person is somebody's son and heir. Isn't the whole point of socialism that running the country shouldn't be a family business ?

UPDATE:

Late to the party as ever - The BBC Pioneers have already covered a whole bus load of liberal's who believe charity begins at home.

Outrage D'Jour

Clearly, another right-wing provocateur.

How Come They Get So Angry When We Point This Out ?

Faced with a tidal wave of corruption allegations, the BBC has decided that the obvious answer is to soak the licence payer for £1 000 000. Apparently, their staff need training to teach them not to lie. A-huh.

As ever, what really grates is that up until five minutes ago, claiming BBC staffers had integrity issues was proof positive you were an unhinged right-winger. Now it turns out that the right was right after all, but the new integrity-enhanced BBC is still resolutely refusing to even acknowledge its critics, far less acknowledge that they called the shot and the pocket. I'm guess they need more training.

New Zealand, Same Old Rubbish

Apart from anything else, you know how bad women are with maps.

Victimhood Match Result: Gays 1 Blacks 0

Well now, here's a turn up for the book. Of course it is Brighton, so I guess home advantage was a factor.

Fortunately, the Music Police will still allow bars to play jovial ditties about killing cops, raping women and getting filthy rich dealing crack. I'm unsure what the situation is as regards depicting the rape of lesbians, but I'm sure our fabulous friends will be along to tell us soon.

You couldn't have a better example of both the narcissistic and the totalitarian nature of the gay right movement. Free clue: when you're endorsing the same policy as these guys, it's probably time to think again. Mind you, I'm sure all those supposedly conservative gay Tories are even now busily penning articles denouncing this move, right ?

Who's To Say ?

The BBC's latest outrage is getting a lot of coverage in the blogosphere - and deservedly so. I've only got two things to say.

First up, can we at least have a break from the BBC yammering on about the dangers of extremists ? Here's an organisation which rarely allows genuinely right-wing voices on the air, and then only with interviewers acting like they picked up their technique from Gene Hunt, but now we find out they've teamed up with folks who, whatever else they are, are hardly middle of the road centralists. I'm not expecting any Beeboids to describe Nick Griffin as a 'Celtic comedian' any time soon, let alone make a program featuring loveable jack-the-lad BNP members white-water rafting.

Note too, this wasn't just a case of the BBC being caught out by an unfortunate coincidence. Nope, the program concerned was specifically designed to rubbish the idea of Islamic extremism. Or, to put it another way, the BBC wasn't just wrong, it was full-on 180 degrees wrong.

In so far as we're endlessly reminded about Lady Thatcher appointing Jeffrey Archer to the strategically vital after-dinner speaking and raffles job of party vice-chairman, it's tempting to speculate just what the BBC would have said were a right-wing body to be caught in bed with fascists. Doubtless, even now the BBC top brass are hard at work penning an apology for the anti-Jihasists slimed by the original program.

Then there's the question of the BBC's refusal to pass their information onto the police. Apparently, running programs slimeing the British right is one thing, but taking sides between the police and terrorists would be a huge breach of impartiality. After all, who's to say that 'bombing' is necessarily 'bad' ?

In so far as the BBC is now officially neutral between the forces of chaos and the forces of order, maybe it's time to revisit the enormously important distinction between the BBC's enlightened output and the commercial dross on the other channels. Never mind questioning the value of a national broadcaster that sticks two fingers up to the nation's values, there's something deeper than that here.

If post-modernism doesn't allow us to say whether or not blowing up buses is a good or bad thing, I'm pretty sure that defining the difference between ephemeral rubbish like 'Pop Idol' and scholarly works like 'Fame Academy' is a lost cause. So how about it Beeboids ? Is commercial TV necessarily worse than mass murder ?

Besides, who are we to say that 'buying' a 'TV licence' is better than 'not' buying one ?

New Evidence For 'Liberalism = Disaster' Hypothesis

Don't be shocked, but it looks like anyone who can get free of the state education system is doing so.

Yes, I was shocked too. Here's a profession where liberalism runs rampant and yet somehow it's collapsed into chaos. Say, is anyone else seeing a pattern here ?

On the plus side, there are signs that some folks in the industry are finally geting to grips with their problems.

No, just kidding!

John Trickett, the Labour MP for Hemsworth, said Mr Blair had "failed in his objective".

"What we need to do now is set firm targets to achieve the equivalent funding for private and state schools."

Yes, clearly, more funding is the answer:

Total education spending in England was £29bn in 1997 and is £60bn this year. Of the £74.4bn total promised for 2010, £10.2bn is capital spending.

Spending per pupil, which was £2,500 in 1997, would from now to 2010 rise by a further 10% in real terms to £6,600, Mr Brown said.

Hence why standards have improved so much over the last ten years.

Then there's this:

Mick Brookes, of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: "We have to consider what parents are buying when they opt for the independent sector.

"They are buying smaller class sizes and quite often enhanced resources. Some parents are buying the fact that their children are not going to be quite as pressured by the tables, targets and tests regime in the state sector.

Yes, they've fled the high-achieving culture of the public sector for the chilled-out vibe of the private sector. Also, you can run a car on water, providing you boil it first.

Besides, it turns out that if you're reluctant to have Junior sitting next to the keynoter speaker of Crackfest 2020, you're a Nazi:

In parts of inner London the figures are even more stark, fuelling fears of an emerging educational "apartheid" in the biggest cities.

As frequently where liberals are involved, the clue is in their own charge. When exactly did it become illegitimate for people not to want their kids to be forced to rub shoulders with the deranged or the depraved ? But no: liberals think education should be like the draft, and the middle classes are trying to cheat the system to get their kids a staff job instead of sending them to the Somme like they're supposed to. The best rebuttal to that lunacy comes from the Telegraph article's comment thread:

I agree with David Welch:

"It`s high time those attending private schools paid for the damage that the creaming-off does to the state system. And the subsequent social divisions."

He's absolutely right to remind us that there's only a certain amount of good education to go round and the private schools are hogging it all. It's time this good-education pie (of eternally fixed size) was shared out more evenly.

I remember when I was a teacher that if another teacher said they'd done a really good lesson we had to make sure this was compensated for by a poor lesson given by someone else in case the pie was put under undue strain and we were all covered in half-digested erudition.
Posted by novelPhenomena on November 10, 2007 12:57 PM

Multi-Millionaire Calls For Welfare Handout

Showing his usual vice-like grasp of conservative principles, David Cameron has called for a massive welfare program for Britain's neglected underclass, namely politicians. This being a Cameron speech, not only are the ideas stupid, the arguments are moronic too.

Consider Cameron's central point: the Tories can't shake down enough money from the grass roots to stay in business. Well, if so, that's a feature not a bug. About the only consistent theme of the Cameron wing of the Tories has been contempt for the base. Now, after years of being defamed as bigots'n'bumpkins, the grass roots have uprooted themselves, so Cameron thinks everybody else should be made to pay to keep his freak show of smug elitists in orbit.

Meanwhile, in the home of the spectacular campaign, voters are limited to maximum individual contributions of $2300, yet the sky has not fallen in. On the contrary, the reliance on small contributions has encouraged the American right to build up a genuine grass roots infrastructure. Here's one reason why the American right has been so much more successful in waging the culture war than the British equivalent.

There's another advantage to all this: by definition, the reliance on grass roots means the alleged professionals have a lot less scope to push their own agenda in the teeth of opposition from the base - see here, for the perfect example.

Needless to say, the Cameroonatics would place this sort of thing very definitely in the 'bug' column. The Cameron Party doesn't do ordinary people, and these latest proposals are just the latest iteration of their attempts to pull up the drawbridges and seal themselves off in the Westminister Village, never again to have to deal with anything as loathsome as actual voters.

The Cameron Effect

Another sound piece of judgement by the Smartest Man Evah!

Snivelling Liberal Weasel: 'Don't Call Me A Snivelling Liberal Weasel'

Hankies out everybody! Author Philip Pullman is just heartbroken at all those accusations of being anti-Christian. Actually, I think he has a point. He certainly has been unfairly criticised. There's this guy who claims Pullman wants to 'undermine the basis of Christian belief'. Not only that, he's even been accused of writing books about killing God.

This is a fairly fundamental difference between left and right. Folks on the right are enraged by liberals constantly citing things they didn't actually say, but liberals think they should have, while leftists think it's just outrageous that people on the right quote them accurately.

On second thoughts, I guess Pullman's right after all - once these Jesus Freaks start responding to unhinged liberal criticism, why, there's no telling what these nuts will do next.

Brought To You By The Letters F And U

Liberalism: now with added self-parody.

Wrong Type Of Dhimmitude

Laban and Ross are both having fun with liberal dipstick Kes Gray. Well, why not ?

This is what I keep saying: liberal multiculturalism doesn't actually require any knowledge of other cultures. Cringing dhimmi Gray just assumed that Islamofascists were kind of like Hampstead liberals (but with slightly better dress sense).

Lord Haw-Haw and Kim Philby were both seduced by totalitarian ideologies, but modern liberals don't even have that excuse - they instinctively side with barbaric savages. The default position of the liberal is treason.

Steyn D'Jour

The example may be American, but it's Britain where this pathology has become endemic:

Over on the Democratic side, meanwhile, they've got a woman, a black, a Hispanic, a preening metrosexual with an angled nape – and they all think exactly the same. They remind me of "The Johnny Mathis Christmas Album," which Columbia used to re-release every year in a different sleeve: same old songs, new cover. When your ideas are identical, there's not a lot to argue about except biography.

Global Warming Atrocity File

I can't remember if I've posted this link before or not. It's worth a second post anyway - it's the definitive list of everything caused by gerbil worming, so if you've ever wanted to know how too heavy a foot on the accelerator pedal leads to killer spiders invading Scotland, now's your chance.

This Is Real Reporting

On the subject of MSM non-reporting, consider what they are covering instead. Regular readers will know I liked Helen Brown's exposure of the MSM's Amy Winehouse pile-on. The thing is though that I've totally changed my mind. As a careful analysis of the Daily Mail's recent output shows, there is no truth in the rumours that the MSM believes in kicking a girl when she's down:

23 Nov 2007 Amy Winehouse's heartbreak as husband Blake faces Christmas in jail

24 Nov 2007: Is Amy Winehouse snorting a 'mystery substance' while performing live on stage?

24 Nov 2007: Thank God my son's in jail, says Amy Winehouse's mother-in-law

25 Nov 2007 : Red alert: Amy Winehouse's scarlet nose hints that recent troubles are taking their toll

25 Nov 2007 Help at last? Amy Winehouse on the verge of checking into rehab

26 Nov 2007: [story from 25 Nov 2007 still in same position]

27 Nov 2007: Troubled Amy cancels rest of her tour: 'I can't perform without my Blake'

28 Nov 2007: 'I can't perform without my Blake': Amy 'back in rehab' after cancelling tour

Who's writing this garbage ? Mark Chapman ?

Apart from being a classic case for S-linking (as in 'no point linking to a load of s***'), I've got to say that the whole distinction between highly-trained journalists and the rumour-mongering maroons in the blogopshere - I'm not really seeing it.

UPDATE:

These people are shameless. Here's the latest:

30 Nov 2007: Amy forgets about rehab and goes furniture shopping instead

Uh...who mentioned rehab anyway ? Meanwhile, you have to go to Guido's place to see the letter from the head of the Labour Party in the People's Republic of Caledonia to a guy she'd never heard of. So remind me again, which one is the gossip monger and which are the certified journopersons ?

More MSM Non-Reporting

Another brilliant dispatch from Michael Yon, this time with British troops engaged in heavy fighting in Basra. What heavy fighting ? Ah yes: stuff the MSM didn't get round to reporting.

To return to a point I made earlier, for all that the MSM likes to wax pompous about how they produce original reporting - unlike mere bloggers - a lone, self-supported, US blogger has managed to produce more, and better, coverage of the British Army in Basra than the whole of the British MSM.

It's not as if these events lack news value. Not only is there the intrinsic drama, there's the deeper questions. Where are the RAF's Apaches ? Is Iran supplying IEDs ? And what's with all those jams ? But no: the MSM were not only not covering these events, in so far as they claim to be covering Basra, but don't, their coverage has been positively misleading, suggesting that things are far more peaceful than they are.

The bottom line is this: actual reporting has become a lost art in the MSM. Doubtless, some will say that's just the public getting what the public wants, but what of our multi-billion pound national broadcaster ? Couldn't they fit a report or two in amongst the half-hourly Gitmo update.

Steyn Quote D'Jour

Britain’s metal crime is a poignant image of social disintegration: The very infrastructure of society – the manhole covers, the pipes, the cables on the transportation system, the fittings of the courthouse – is being cannibalized and melted down. When there’s no longer a sufficiently strong moral consensus and when the state actively disapproves of a self-reliant citizenry, what’s left is the law. And law detached from any other social pillars is not enough, and never can be.

Equally, if your whole ethos is that a country is kind of like a really big hotel, how can you complain when the guests start nicking the towels ?

Haven't I Heard That Somewhere Before ?

Following my recently announced policy of laughing at the 'Teddy Teacher', I had to smile at this factoid:

A British teacher who faces 40 lashes after naming a teddy bear Mohammed has been charged with insulting religion, showing contempt for religious belief, and inciting hatred.

Yep, there's now no difference in rhetoric between the Islamofascist nut bunnies in Khartoum and the British left.

Outrage D'Jour

Who says liberals hate Christmas ? See, I told you the neo-prohibitionists were on the rise.

Given how the police enforce laws on speeding, I'm guessing skanky nite spots are safe forever, while the police hang round the Red Lion booking accountants who've dropped their mobile phone.

Mind you, I've never got the whole thing about objecting to people being drunk. It's not like it's some obscure side-effect of drinking. How about police hanging round swimming pools to arrest any swimmers found to be wet ?

And Now For The Rest Of The News....

Thanks to JulieM for tipping me to news of the latest festivities in France. Much appreciated - especially since at the time the MSM was reporting these events at the bottom of page 27 - or cyber equivalent thereof.

Things have spun sufficiently out of control now that the MSM can't not give these events a degree of prominence - hence the switch to Plan B, aka Operation Snowstorm. The MSM is putting forward a blizzard of lefty buzzwords, like 'alienation', 'poverty' and 'deprivation', thus proving the one irrefutable advantage of being a liberal: the short hours. After the 2005 intifada leftists urged appeasement. Now that's worked as well as it always does, the left has come up with a new policy: appeasement.

Hmmm.... isn't the definition of madness doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results ?

Sudan Dose Of Reality

Include me out of the Gillian Gibbons pity party. Yes, being jailed for teddy bear nomenclature related crimes seems harsh, but it's more than flesh and blood should have to take seeing libs act as though this they've never heard of such a thing. Islamolunacy in Sudan ? Who was hiding that from the left ?

If nothing else, this counts as a nice warm-up for a run at a Darwin Award, but you just know Gibbons will turn out to be one of these tranzi freaks whose whole philosophy of life is based on John Lennon lyrics. Now suddenly - following a cast iron pattern that's nevertheless manages to evade every liberal - it turns out the right was right: Islam is not just not just another 'faith tradition' after all. On the one hand, you have the West, crucifixes in urine and all. On the other, there's Islam with teddy bear related floggings. Choose one.

Again, we're back with this week's theme: liberal multiculturalism only works providing you don't let yourself get bogged down in actually knowing anything about other cultures.

Bashing The Bishop

Laban says all that need be said about the Al-Archbishops latest outrage. I just take it as further proof for of my theory that it's liberals, not conservatives, that are the insular side of the spectrum. The Dyfed Dhimmi just knows that the US should be the world's least - not most - generous nation, just like he knows that gays in Iran are as free as in the UK, but just in a different way.

After all, this guy has previous - Allah sums it up here.

Quote Of The Day

Jeremy Clarkson notes a certain double-dipping amongst liberals:

So we must forgive Germany for invading Poland. But I must beat myself to death every night because my great-great-great-grandad moved some chap from a hellhole in Ghana to Barbados.

Our Noble Allies

Aside from all the other reasons why the European Rapid Reaction Force/European Army/Corps D'Elefant Blanc is a terrible idea, there's the fact that Britain pooling defence assets with old Europe is like Arsenal sharing players with Accrington Stanley. The traffic's all going to be one way. For proof of that consider recent events in Afghanistan.

Don't miss too the folks in the comments claiming that Afghanistan - the war the left was so anxious to fight they didn't want to risk being distracted by going to Baghdad - should now be abandoned as an irrelevancy. Further proof that the war liberals want to fight is always the one we're not talking about at any particular time.

More High Kwality Science

Call me cynical, but I just wasn't that surprised by the latest rash of government data security atrocity stories. Sure, their systems are a trainwreck, but then isn't their everything ?

There's plenty of reasons behind the government's ability to scupper even the most trivial activities, but one of the biggest must be the central problem of government acting as both player and referee. That's how we end up shambles like this:

Millions of pounds of charity donations and taxpayers' money have been wasted on worthless cancer studies, the BBC has learned.

File On 4 has discovered thousands of studies have been invalidated.

It found some scientists have failed to carry out simple and inexpensive checks to ensure they are working with the right forms of human tumour cells.

In other words they think they're examining apples when it's actually oranges. You can see how that would be a problem. Or at least you'd think it would be a problem, but not for the government apparently.

But the Medical Research Council, the major source of public funds for such research in the UK which provides £70m of grants annually for cancer studies, is reluctant to enforce authentication.

Dr Rob Buckle of the MRC told the BBC: "As soon as you start talking about regulation we have to ensure that it is proportionate and does not inhibit research."

How come that never applies in any other context ? Isn't a £100 000 skin cancer study that's actually studying breast cancer cells at least as serious as the need to protect the public from excessive musicianship ? It's not even as if cell line contamination isn't a known issue:

Because of their avid adaptation to growth in tissue culture plates, HeLa cells are sometimes difficult to control. For example, they have proven to be a persistent laboratory "weed" and they can contaminate other cell cultures in the same laboratory, interfering with biological research. The degree of HeLa cell contamination among other cell types is unknown, because few researchers test the identity or purity of already-established cell lines. It has been demonstrated that a substantial fraction of in vitro cell lines - approximately 10%, maybe 20%, are actually HeLa cells, due to the fact that the original cells in the cell culture have been overwhelmed by a rapidly growing population derived from HeLa contaminant cells.

So in other words huge amounts of research is either useless or actively misleading, but no one in the scientific community wants to rock the boat and the government's boldly opted to keep the taps open, rather than risk a spat with the nerd community - but you can trust these guys on climate change!

I'll See Your Polly, And Raise You A Patty

Ross points out that libs still manage to regard Sweden as a lefty Nirvana despite the country being at pretty much 180' to mainstream liberalism in several important respects. This is true, but it still doesn't beat the left's craziest multi-culti moment. Here's Senator Patty Murray talking soon after Sep 11:

[Bin Laden has been] out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful.

Yep, Osama was busy building day care facilities for all those women juggling a career and raising kids under the Taliban.

Somehow, 'ignorance' doesn't quite cover it. Liberal multi-culturalism doesn't actually stretch to knowing anything about other cultures. For libs, the rest of the world serves merely as a useful 'Other' to be compared favourably to Britain. That's why libs see no tension between praising both ultra-libertine Holland and repressive hell holes like Pakistan. Coherency isn't their thing - they hate Britain that's all you need to know.

The Mob Wuz Right

P J O'Rourke once claimed that the best way to tell what a government department did was to watch it when it was doing nothing. In the same spirit I'd say that if you want to see the true nature of the MSM, avoid the obvious battlegrounds of politics and culture war and instead check out the reporting on issues such as showbiz and sport.

Which brings me onto last night's disgrace.

Actually, I'd disagree with the assertion that England went out of Euro 2008 last night. Yesterday was just the final act, there were already enough warning signs to make the impending disaster obvious to anyone - except the MSM.

Even as the final collapse approached, the newspapers were still giving over acres of newsprint to snooty 'professional journalists' sneering at the ignorant yahoos who couldn't appreciate the true skill of the Steve. Well, why not ? The McClaren Era was almost entirely a product of the MSM.

At any time during the McClaren years you could have randomly dialled 100 phone numbers and not got through to anyone who thought he was the man for the job. Not since Graham Taylor has a man commanded so little support coming into the job - and so conspicuously failed to rise to the challenge once in office. It was the MSM which lobbied for him to get the job, and the MSM that sustained him in office with their refusal to present opposition to McClaren as anything other than the mindless rantings of lunatics. Well, now we know, final score is in: knuckle-dragging scum 1, arrogant yuppie-scum elitist MSM trash 0.

The Only Thing I Want To Know

How come they never lose the tax records ?

It's A Great Idea, But It'll Never Catch On

Up in the People's Republic of Caledonia, they're trialling a wacky new educational experiment: teaching Scottish history. These people are crazy!

Meanwhile, down in the green and pleasant land, we're stuck with slavery, slavery and more slavery. All of which is by way of saying that liberals can reconcile themselves to the idea of common culture and national narratives, but only when it serves to undermine something they hate even more, like British unity.

Crunch Time

Great quote here from David Henshaw. Who he ? MD of the company that produced 'Undercover Mosque'

Context? No one from the West Midlands Police, the CPS or Green Lane Mosque has yet given us the correct context for the notion that women are born deficient, that homosexuals should be thrown off a mountain or that young girls who refuse to wear the hijab should be hit.

Well, quite.

Still, no matter how well Henshaw writes, there's a honking great elephant on the table he has to keeping tangoing around. How did we get to the point where it's considered racist to report that someone said what they did, in fact, say ? Well, funny you should ask that Mr Mediadude, 'cause I'm pretty sure it was folks like you endlessly yammering about the racism of the natives that played a large part in all that. If you yourself have played a part in the creation of pretendey racist bogeymen in the first place, then you kind of lose a lot of sympathy

Yep, it's always great to see a mainstream player decouple himself from the kool aid, but sooner or later these folks are going to have to acknowledge the ever-growing chasm between modern liberalism and the fundamentals of western civilisation. Riding two horses can be a neat trick - but only in the circus.

As I Was Saying...

On the subject of liberals enabling social pathology:

Primary schools may need to consult local mosques and involve families in their efforts to get all children in England swimming, inspectors have said.

So you're out of luck if you'd rather Junior didn't get the lowdown on putt bunching, but headteachers have to abase themselves before the local representatives of the seventh century to try and get them to consent to swimming lessons. See ? It makes perfect sense!

Where's David Cameron When You Need Him ?

I'm probably more relaxed about this than most of the right - it's the left's double-dipping that annoys me. We told - correctly - that these women are at risk of being honour killed, but the self-same people insist we're not allowed to draw any conclusions about the ideology which gives rise to honour killing. Yes, women who break with the demands of this ideology face being brutally slaughtered, but that's no reason to get snippy about Islam.

Rush D'Jour

Finally, from the Chicago Tribune, there's a new study that claims feminists make better mates. We did this story, a variation of this story. Feminists like feminist men. Of course, what we had to point out here is that feminist men are the ones that need batteries.

Liberalism: Not A Mental Illness In Any Way, Shape Or Form

Of course, when you spend as much time with lawyers as she has, any other form of life must seem like a step up, but I'm thinking Heather Mills is on a loser here.

Google Will Put Him On Double Secret Probation

The questionable one with the perfect bumper sticker.

Immigration

How it's supposed to work:

A WOMAN has been told to lose weight if she wants to emigrate with her husband.

Rowan Trezise, 33, has been left at home desperately trying to slim while hubby Richie starts a new job in New Zealand.

Officials at first said BOTH were too fat — and refused them visas because they could be a BURDEN to the New Zealand health service.

How it works round here:

An illegal immigrant has demanded to be flown home after saying he was fed up with British people - because they are "rude and unfriendly".

Speaking today, Mokhtar Tabet, 30 - who has been given a home, food and free travel around London - claims his local council has breached his human rights by moving him to a place he does not like.

How Not To Defend Abortion (Part II)

If libs are going to try and convince us that they really don't like abortion and only support it as a desperate last resort, they might want to try not going completely feral when dealing with abortion opponents.

Take the left's latest attack on Tory MP Nadine Dorries. She's been a marked woman since she came out against the liberal consensus on abortion but even so the left has excelled itself in recent days.

Some leftist turd has grievance mined the Facebook entries of Dorries' daughters and, finding nothing sufficiently - or even slightly - damaging, has decided to quote a hip young black dude's comments using the dreaded 'n-word' as though they came from one of the daughters herself, thereby implying that she's a RACIST.

Actually, the fact the same word can be the worst word evah! or just hip slang depending on the race of the user should give most people pause for thought, but I can't imagine that would be a problem for any leftists.

Incidentally, you will note that the lefty bottom feeder in question is one of the very same self-appointed blogpolice who keep whining about the need for civility on the net - civility being defined as 'no conservatives allowed'.

Still, back to the main point. Check the time line here: Dorries comes out against abortion while-U-wait and the Left smears her daughter as a Nazi. Huh ?

Don't bother trying to follow their logic - there isn't any. There's no point there other than to inflict pain and distress on their opponents, even if they have to target family members to do it. Smearing their opponents children is SOP for liberals these days - their arguments are that good.

No wonder the left is obsessed with the need to close down right-wing speech. With debating skills like that on show, they're not really equipped for the battle of ideas.

While We're On The Subject.....

Apparently, the BBC can't even report human interest stories without gilding the lily. True, this is hardly a big story, but then that's kind of the point. When BBC staffers are faking the 'miracle baby' reports, then corruption has become endemic at the BBC.

The 'You've Been Framed' Approach To Reporting

I'll admit that I feared this would turn out to be this month's 'leave Britney alone' moment but writer Helen Brown makes some good points, the best being what - in retrospect anyway - is the most obvious: namely, who on earth was expecting Britain's most persistently self-destructive diva to turn up sober anyway ?

Of course, in the great scheme of things, pop culture is neither here nor there, still there's a deeper issue here. The article offers us an insight into modern journalism. Consider that the main charge HB levels is that her fellow journalists spent the minimum amount of time on site and were only interested in gotcha! incidents - no matter how isolated and unrepresentative of the general picture they were. Hmmmm.... now I put it like that, it seems somehow familiar.

I guess we're lucky the journalists actually went to the gig, rather than staying lodged in the bar of the Birmingham Holiday Inn and sending out Iraqi stringers.

There's something else too. Consider that journalists keep on yammering about how they - unlike mere bloggers - carry out original reporting. Really ? Here's a member of the MSM confirming what we always suspected: most MSM reporting consists of deciding what line to take, then turning up just long enough to cherry-pick a couple of anecdotes to support that position. Hey, at least bloggers are honest about what we do.

Reactionary != Conservative

There's a certain joy to be had in laughing at leftists who are just enraged that the BBC won't pay them money any more. Their sense of entitlement says it all about the BBC's supposed impartiality. It's splendid that the BBC appears to be cutting down on its old habit of presenting full-on partisans like the Yazzmonster as disinterested expert commentators, but the dead giveaway is that no leftist can write about the BBC's supposed tilt to the right without mentioning the words 'Jeremy Clarkson'.

Not to give aid and comfort to the enemy, but libs, here's a free clue for you: if you're going to argue that the BBC is being swamped by right-wingers, you might want to not all name the same guy again and again. It makes this right-wing invasion look distinctly undermanned.

Then there's the other thing. Sure there's a natural tendency to rally round a guy who so frequently sends the left into spasms of rage, but how representative is Clarkson of the right ? The deranged anti-Americanism isn't an aberration, it's all a part of Clarkson's shtick as a rhetorical bomb thrower. Not to say that it isn't tempting to adopt that approach when faced with the latest lunacy from, say, the econuts, but there's more to conservatism than that.

Liberals would love to portray the entire right as a bunch of fat blokes sitting on bar stools and ranting about 'elfen safety' - it helps to obscure the fact that all the actual ideas are coming from the right. Ask the average lib about reforming the NHS or the educayshun system and what do you get ? Nada. Nope, no need for reform at all, everything is just wonderful, we just need more of the same.

Ditto, no 'angry of Tunbridge Wells' fulminating about the Sixties ever dredged the depths of nostalgia like a lib recalling the golden age pre-Thatcher. Yes, indeed: these are the only people on the planet who think the problem with the education system is that it's too heavily-influenced by the right.

Yes, folks like Clarkson play an important role in breaking through the MSM's wall of noise and reminding folks that, no, not everyone believes in Gerbil Worming, but the left would love to cast the debate as one between the populist rabble rousers on the right and the sober intellectuals on the left.

The Clarkson phenomenon is a symptom of just how little real right-wing commentary makes it on screen. It's great that he's there to mock the obvious idiocies of the left, but we also need people there to make the intellectual case for conservatism too.

Astroturf

The Major government might have been notorious for jobs for the boys, but at least they were real jobs. Nu Labour appear to have taken it a stage further, appointing their mates to non-jobs which seem mainly to involve being paid government money to lobby the government.

How does that work then ? Isn't that the political equivalent of trying to give up smoking by hiding your cigarettes ? Oh wait, I'll just see if they're on top of the cupboard....

Yep, you have to give them that: they've found the only way to make liberalism more annoying: make people pay for potemkin lobbying groups to create a pretendey groundswell of opinion in favour of even more liberalism. In so far as we keep getting reminded that Lady Thatcher appointed Archer to be deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, let the record show she never gave him a huge wodge of other people's cash to try and prove that the public was crying out for the poll tax.

Sanctuary

Just as a public service announcement, note that now even the Yanks are laughing at scummy Sunny's safe space for socialist suckweasels.

Even More Hate Speech

Rick isn't impressed by the disabled hate crime scam, while over here FT finds another commonly victimised group in need of special protection.

Coulter!

On Pakistan this week - also known as the left's new front in the WoT:

Media darling Bhutto returned to Pakistan after fleeing the country following her conviction for corruption as prime minister. Her conviction was later overturned by the corrupt Pakistani Supreme Court, leaving me to ponder, which is worse: being convicted of corruption in a Pakistani court or being exonerated of corruption in a Pakistani court? She was again convicted in a Swiss court of money laundering.

The media adore Bhutto because she went to Harvard and Oxford, which I consider two more strikes against her. A degree from Harvard is prima facie evidence that she's on the side of the terrorists. I note that Bhutto demonstrates her own deep commitment to democracy by giving herself the title "chairperson for life" of the Pakistan Peoples Party.

Atlas Shrugs

Who'd have thunk it ?

Building contractors are refusing to put in bids for venues at the Olympic Park because the projects carry too much risk and too little profit, The Times has learnt....

The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) had expected thousands of companies to show interest in contracts. But the construction industry is thriving and the biggest companies are concerned about the risks to their reputations and the bureaucracy involved. They have been put off by prominent troubled projects such as the Wembley and Cardiff stadiums, which were built well over budget at the contractors’ expense.

Arsonists Call For Cut In CO2 Emissions

The Guardian is having fun with the British public's appalling grasp of geography. Huh ?

Somebody remind me: what side of the spectrum was it that claimed we shouldn't be teaching the 'kids' actual facts, nope, instead the syllabus should be full of ecolunacy, Third World victimhood and sundry other examples of tomfoolery ?

Even faced with evidence of the damage caused, the Guardian can't step away from the kool aid. The self-same article includes - apparently approvingly - this quote from the chief executive of the Geographical Association:

Geography helps us make sense of the world and face vital issues such as climate change, energy, food production, the 'war on terror', water and poverty. It also touches all our lives every day, from businesses to schools, government to hospitals.

Yep, the 'facing vital issues' thing is covered, it's the whole 'learning stuff' thing that's gone AWOL.

Asking The Questions British Journalists Just Won't Ask

Snafu asks the question d'jour.

Dangerous Sexual Predator Outed

In the comments to this post, Ross points out what happens if you google 'rape' plus 'David Cameron'. Hmmm..... normally, I'd just ignore that kind of site, but since the Ayatollah Dave's whole proposition is based on the idea that the mere existence of an accusation of rape is practically proof of guilt all on its own, well, you know, 'do the math', as the Yanks would say.

There's Some Kind Of Pattern There

What did I say about The Dave's sense of timing ? One day after his surrender to the femiloons, we get this.

A woman who made eight separate false claims of rape or sexual assault has been spared jail.

Gemma Gregory, 28, accused seven different men over a six-year period.

Former boyfriends were subjected to police questioning and DNA testing to clear their names.
Her fantasy stories also wasted huge amounts of police time.

On the plus side, I guess we have an answer to the age old question: seven to arrest innocent bystanders, one to find out the light bulb's not actually broken in the first place. Oops no: here's how that eight investigation went:

Her latest offence was in May when she rang police to say she had been raped at her home. She stuck to her story in a video interview three days later despite being warned she would be prosecuted if it was another lie.

A 34-year-old man was interviewed by police and for the next five months Gregory regularly contacted officers to ask how the case was progressing.

Five months!

Hmmmm.... is tracking down real offenders helped or hindered by forcing PC Plod to handle this garbage ? That's a toughey - well, it is for Dave anyweay.

All of which is by way of saying that, in so far as Dave's proposition rests on the twin pillars of femiloon paranoia, namely the beliefs that 'women don't lie' and that PC Plod is deliberately letting the guilty go free, it does tend to founder in the face of evidence that the police will try and close even the most self-evidently hopeless cases. Meanwhile, the rest of us can try and think of other contexts where the left wants the police to continue to harass suspects even though there's no actual evidence.

Outrage D'Jour

Remember, none of this stuff actually happens:

The review also found that a specially-equipped car, staffed by a traffic officer and a senior detective, was diverted to catching drivers who were not wearing their seatbelts rather than tracking known criminals....

"One officer told us that he was actually investigating a paedophile ring which he considered to be still active, but at that time the force were under considerable pressure to reduce crime in a particular area, such as burglary.

If he'd arrested the paedophiles it would still have only been one tick in the box, and therefore no more importance was attached to that than investigating burglaries."

Just a hunch, but if Cameron wants more scumbags off the streets, he might want to let cops actually track them down instead of insisting they hand out traffic tickets.

Drugs Are Bad, M'Kay ?

In one of those coincidences to which the Ayatollah Khameron seems particularly vulnerable, his blatant pandering to the femiloons - see below - occurred on the day further evidence arrived that mass medicating thousands of young boys may not be such a good idea, after all.

Yep - I was shocked as well. Apparently, powerful psychoactive drugs aren't all they're cracked up to be (though you could see how that could pass Cameron by).

At risk of ramming the point home, note that while the femiloons are reliant on anecdotal evidence and dubious surverys to prove that the system is biased against wimmin, init, the massive employment of psychoactive compounds on supposedly dysfunctional boys is what we men call a 'fact'. No junk science required to show that boys are enormously more likely to be diagnosed with a condition requiring drugs, nor that the supposed symptoms of these conditions seem mightily like those of masculinity itself.

Hey, femiloons, let's cut a deal: we'll accept you people are the victimeyest victims in the whole world just as soon as we have thousands of young girls are prescribed powerful drugs to cure them of playing with dolls and talking about fashion.

Cameron Pander D'Jour

The thing with David Cameron is that just like Tolstoy's unhappy families, he's reliably appalling but always in a different way. Take his latest campaign.

England and Wales have the lowest rape conviction rates of any of the leading European countries, David Cameron will disclose as he outlines a series of proposals to tighten the laws on sex crimes.

Yep, it took some doing, but Call Me Dave might just have found a stupid argument against rape. For the sake of Cameron's insane argument, what should the benchmark be ? Should we aim for the European average ? That sounds kind of low - why not aim for the top of the table ? For that matter, let's put some real distance between us and our Euroweenie neighbours: 50% convictions by next June.

Well, why not ? But wait.... I've just remembered. I'm a real conservative, and so I only deal with people as individuals, not as avatars of social groups. Or, to put it another way, maybe Dave could spell out exactly who he thinks should have been convicted, but wasn't. If its as bad the femiloons say, he should have no trouble coming up with twenty-five names, right ?

England and Wales have the lowest rape conviction rates of any of the leading European countries, David Cameron will disclose as he outlines a series of proposals to tighten the laws on sex crimes.

A study commissioned by the Conservatives found that just 5.7 per cent of reported cases result in successful convictions.

Ditto.

The average jail sentence given to convicted rapists has fallen to less than seven years.

Professor Hans Bronstein, author of 'The Stopped Clock Hypothesis' just e-mailed to say 'See, I told you!'

Yes, reducing the number of rapists on the street would indeed lower the number of rapes. In fact, I have a plan drawn up to do just that. I call it 'Operation Twenty-Five' - how about it Bullingdon Boy ?

This is proof positive that the femiloons are a wholly-owned subsidiary of the left. Here we have a proven method of protecting women by ensuring that identified rapists are taken off the streets, but the Hillarys think its a yawner. Not that they're a bunch of man-hating kooks, but they're campaigning to class everything as rape, even while real rapists get to laugh at the system.

In fact, it's worse than that. Since the seven years is an average figure for the sentence given, it includes serial offenders. First timers probably get less - even before the magic of parole is taken into account.

Of course, this moment of insight is just a fluke. Cameron effortlessly manages to steer back into the fever swamps of femiloonacy:

The Tory leader proposes tightening Britain's rape laws and ensuring that children are taught "no means no" as part of the school curriculum.

Yep, that's what's wrong with our schools: not enough anti-male bigotry.

....The Conservative leader will also unveil plans to influence children after a recent Amnesty International study found that one in four young people thinks it is acceptable for a boy to "expect to have sex with a girl" if she has been "very flirtatious".

Folks, I can't tell you what a warm feeling it gives me to see a Conservative Party leader quote approvingly from a study by Amnesia Intentional. Still, nice to see the 'non-partisan human group' so openly carrying water for the left's lunatic fringe. Is the enabling terrorism business a little slow at the moment, or what (and would it be OK with those guys if the boy just put a bomb under her car) ?

He will say: "Studies have shown that as many as one in two young men believes there are some circumstances when it's OK to force a woman to have sex.

Which studies ? When ? Where ?

Not that I'm sceptical about the existence of certain communities where rape is a way of life, but in so far as snivelling liberals would rather have bamboo pushed under their fingernails than mention that, I guess they must mean the general population.

Seriously, folks: is there anyone out who has even one friend or acquaintance who thinks rape is kind of OK ? According to Cameron - well, actually according to the Hillarys he's pandering to today - 15 million people in the UK think rape is just ducky, and no one who isn't a lemon-sucking bowser has noticed ?

Of course it all works out, but only if you define rape so loosely that there's almost nothing which doesn't count. Ditto, for the supposedly huge numbers of 'unreported' rapes. Here's a free clue: if it takes an interview with some DM wearing harridan weeks after the fact to find out a crime has been committed, it may not be a real crime.

But all the above is just prologue. If chutzpah was tachyons, Cameron's next statement would leave a hole in the Universe:

To my mind, this is an example of moral collapse.

If someone on the right said this, the Cameroonatics would have worked themselves into a collective fit of sneering right about now. And no, it isn't a road to Damascus conversion neither.

We need widespread cultural change, and addressing this moral failure represents a real challenge to British society.

We've had the cultural change. Back in the day we didn't had an epidemic of criminality, then a whole bunch of folks not unlike Dave's supa-sofisticayted clique decided we need to get hip to the beat. Now we live in a cess pit.

Someone like IDS - or Laban for that matter - can talk about cultural voids and moral failures, but in so far as just about the only thing Cameron is known for is sneering at traditional morality and social conservatives, he's not the man best placed to level these charges. It's sweet that Cameron doesn't approve of sexual assault, but a grabbag of north London prejudices does not a morality make. It's noticeable that even here Cameron can't bring himself to make a moral case about why rape is wrong. Then again, if 15 million potential voters genuinely thought rape was kind of OK, Cameron would surely have put Mike Tyson on the A-List.

For proof of the moral quagmire of Cameronism, consider this next statement:

The past decade or so has seen the growing sexualisation of our society, where sex is aimed at an ever younger audience and it's cool to treat women like sex objects.

Again, this is straight out of the femiloons playbook. They want to spin the actions of degenerate savages into some kind of broadcast condemnation of men in general. Well, no. Rape is the fault of rapists. Hunt them down and eliminate them: no more rapes. This shouldn't be news to a soi-dissant conservative.

But as to the point itself, again I say: huh ? Weren't social conservatives meant to be a bunch of squares who wanted to keep women in the kitchen ? I'm really having a hard time blaming Ann Widdicombe for the sexualisation of women. Besides, isn't this all part of the modern Britian we should be at ease with ?

There's more too:

Mr Cameron will also highlight the importance of rape crisis centres - whose number has fallen from 68 in 1984 to 45 today.

Well, OK, that sounds bad, but maybe it's just the natural progression from the pioneer days, to the more professional set up of the modern era. Or maybe not. I don't know, and I bet Cameron doesn't either, but it hardly argues for his decentralising tendencies that he can come out with this stuff.

Again, we're back with the same problem. It's splendid that Cameron does not approve of rape but, with the exception of some fan service for the Hillarys, he can contribute nothing to the debate. I'm thinking one of the key drivers of 'moral failure' might be a would be PM whose own morality appears to be a Frankensteinian collection of right on talking points. Cameroonian morality appears to consist of claiming we should chill out and accept stuff he likes, while opposing stuff he doesn't. If that's the standard, who isn't moral ?