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 ?

It'll Never Catch On

For a snapshot of where we are in the culture wars, consider the off the wall scheme recently proposed to improve British schools.

Aromatherapy in the classroom is hard science, but firing the incompetent is some wacky, off the wall scheme.

Outrage D'Jour

Who says libs are fired by a kneee-jerk hatred of any form of manly endeavour ? Oh right - everyone.

So much for 'supporting the troops, but not the war'. Can't we even get an admission that World War II was worth fighting ?

The Gold Standard Of Liberal Elitism

Spookily enough, I thought of the same scene - just in case MH's link is still U/S, the same bit is over here.

Fortunately, thanks to another classic, we have an answer:

I have a solution. It’s time to institute Disintegration Chambers in our major America cities.

If you recall that episode of Star Trek – and I would be rather stunned if you did not – there were two warring planets that had long ago decided against waging physical war, and started to wage a virtual one. Computers fought the war, and if your planet’s computer somehow let the other guy’s virtual cobalt bomb in, it would calculate the death toll. Those people who lived in the area hit by the virtual bomb would walk into a Disintegration Chamber and poof! Very tidy, and the infrastructure was left standing. Kirk, naturally, put a stop to it by wrecking the mainframes and snarling “now you have a real war on your hands, Chancellor.” Supposedly the planets would be so frightened by the prospect of ruptured sewer lines they would immediately sue for peace. They never did go back to that system. I would have liked to have seen if the planets stopped warring, or got together and started invading others, or just blew each other up six times over. But that was Kirk: he got the ball rolling, and that was his job.

Anyway. Here’s the deal. We decide what constitutes torture, and identify it as the following: insufficient air conditioning, excess air conditioning, sleep deprivation, being chained to the floor, and other forms of psychological stress. The United States is free to use these techniques against hardened terrorists. Those who disagree with the techniques sign a register that records their complaints. When the terrorist finally spills the details of a forthcoming attack, on, say, Chicago, the people who signed the register and live in Chicago are required to report to the Disintegration Chamber. Very simple. Everyone’s happy.

Sounds good to me. Should sound good to the left as well - after all, they keep telling us that torture doesn't work. Of course, the alternative is that these techniques really do save lives, in which case these people are calling for the sacrifice of innocent lives for no better reason than snooty prejudice and posturing. Hey, at least the World War I generals never sent the troops over the top to 'send the right message'.

Victimhood Comes To Those Who Wait

If this trend continues, there's only going to be one guy in Britain who it won't be a hate crime to punch - and it could be me.

It's not even as if this'll change anything:

Sentencing guidelines dictate that a victim's vulnerability should be taken into account when a judge is deciding on a sentence. The new guidelines set out how the CPS will bring cases against suspects, and how victims will be supported.

Well, quite. It's all blathersgate.

Still, there is some evidence of a common thread connecting many cases of abuse of the elderly, and I for one am sure the left will be doing all they can to clamp down on these cases.

Of course, if libs really are worried about people targeting the elderly, they might want to look closer to home.

More Evidence Of Islam/Vogon Alliance

Yep, the poetry is bad, but a job in a shop air side at Heathrow ? That's just.... priceless.

UPDATE:

Hotair.com picks up on something that passed me by first time round - this great moment in British jurisprudence:

Judge Peter Beaumont told Malik she was an ‘enigma’ and granted her bail which amounted a house arrest.

Yes, indeed. Who knows what motivates here ?

Outrage D'Jour

Doubtless, all those folks in the civil liberties lobby will be taking this case up anytime now, right ?

I'm thinking we can safely say PC has gone pretty much out of control when laying a wreath counts as a controversial gesture.

Still, you can't blame the Prison Service for refusing to fund the wreath themselves - not when they've got sound investments like this to support.

University: Not What It Used To Be

From over here, via Ace.

It's Just Their Our Culture

Of all the liberal excuses for bad behaviour, probably the stupidest is the idea schools shouldn't discipline black kids because, hey, acting like a thug is a sign of black authenticity. That's why it's always great to compare garbage like this with stories like this. Apparently, they need more 'more black involvement in the running of schools' in Africa too.

Hey, You Know What We Need More Of In Britain ?

As I understand the left's position on Islam and democracy, it's that Iraq is not ready for democratic government, and so we should have left it in the hands of the nice Mr Hussein. On the other hand, Musharraf must be made to hold elections by next Tuesday.

At risk of stating the obvious, Musharraf hasn't gassed huge numbers of people, invaded neighbouring countries or fired rockets at Israel - plus he beats up lawyers. If 'stability' is your thing, Musharraf should be your guy, but now the left are in touch with their inner neo-con, and justice must be done, though the heavens fall.

There's a nice summary of just how screwed up Pakistan is over here. Still, no matter how nutty the locals in Peshawar are, they're beaten by the folks in the open borders lobby, busily insisting that the whole 'culture' thing is just a myth dreamed up by Nazi bigots like us.

What Is It With Liberals And Cats ?

First we had Humphrey, the Downing Street cat that, like, got a job on a cruise ship or something just as soon as the Wicked Witch moved in. Now, we get this story about America's Worst President. Note too the firm grasp on the technical details of firearm employment: he tried to sting it by shooting it with a shotgun ? What does he use to get mildew off the bathroom ceiling ? A flamethrower ?

Who Even Does That ?

Today's stupid attempt at victimhood: new legislation to outlaw inciting hatred against the disabled.

Huh ?

At least when the pink wedge were ploughing this furrow - if you'll pardon the phrase - it was a fairly obvious attempt to intimidate the religious. What's with all this ? Is there some group of people out there spending their time calling for the shooting of guide dogs and the like ? Seriously - I'd hate to think there's a whole new way to annoy liberals that I'm missing out on.

There's a too perfect for satire summation of the liberal mindset coming up though:

Damon Rose, editor of the BBC's Ouch website, said he had seen increasing stories about disabled people being bullied.

"There is something about the happy slapping culture which hasn't helped disabled people. Disabled people are 'interesting' targets in that way," he said.

"There doesn't seem to be a concept of hate crime against disabled people.

Ok, first up, we have a BBC report quoting a BBC staffer, so I guess we can dispense with the debate over whether or not the BBC is too incestuous. Ditto, in so far as we have a BBC staff member speaking out in support of oppressive curbs on freedom of speech, I guess that wraps up the whole 'impartiality' thing as well - but at least he's balanced by comments from... well, actually two other members of the grievance industry, both supporting this law as well.

But consider the fundamentally absurd logic on show. The argument is that thugs engaging in random street violence like to target the disabled for the sheer novelty, therefore the answer is to give attacks on the disabled a special status. Yep, that's liberalism all right: don't condemn the thugs, instead try and spin random criminality into generalised victimhood.

Of course, what it's really about isn't preventing as yet undetected cults from declaring a jihad on the deaf. Nope, it's about chilling debate, as even one of the hobblin' hustelers himself admits:

And David Congdon, head of campaigns and policy at Mencap, said it was important to try to "change the culture, to ensure people value each other equally".

So it's not about the huge number of people in wheelchairs being thrown off cliffs, after all. Instead it's about closing down the debate, so we won't be allowed to ask, for example, whether or not a guy so delusional he can't be held responsible for acts of hideous violence should be out on the streets in the first place. After all, asking that would be 'hateful'.

Any Chance We Can Import Some Decent Politicians ?

As with much else involving David Cameron, what's so repulsive about the defenestration of Nigel Hastilow is not so much the specifics of the case - bad though they are - so much as what it reveals about just how completely the Nu Tories have bought into the liberal agenda.

Consider that Mr Hastilow's thought crime was to say that mass immigration has changed Britain dramatically. Not only is this what we on the right call a 'fact', it's also something liberals themselves would say, albeit in their case it would be by way of explaining how dowdy old Britain was sparked into life by all those vibrant immigrants. In other words, the left's 'hate speech' dog won't hunt.

Nope, it wasn't anything Mr Hastilow said, it was the saying anything. So now we now: even to mention immigration is a thought crime. There is literally nothing a right-winger can say about immigration that doesn't count as 'racist' - and this from a party that still calls itself 'Conservative'.

Multiculturalism

I've changed my mind: we can learn a lot from Pakistani culture. At least there's one guy there who's doing the job British politicians just won't do.

Police have used tear gas and batons to break up demonstrations by Pakistani lawyers against the country's state of emergency.

Lawyers said many colleagues were arrested as protests were dispersed in Lahore, Karachi and Rawalpindi.

It's The Special Olympics Of Victimhood

Hmmmmm......

What a dilemma for libs. On the one hand, the chance to bag one of the last serious Churches, on the other, the opportunity to slime England. Looking at the background doesn't make it any easier either. There's murderous theocrats waging war to enslave free nations - see, the libs were right about those 'Catholics' after all - but there's also England standing alone as an outpost of freedom in a Europe enslaved by unelected degenerates. Catholicism or Euroscepticism ? Which do libs hate more ?

Actually, I'm guessing the whole 'fighting against murderous religious nutcases' thing will finally push libs into the Vatican's corner. Besides, the Royal Navy used fire ships - just think of all that CO2.

Good Catch

A commentator over at ATW makes a good point about this story. Apparently, a woman's 'right to choose' is a very flexible concept.

Liberals Celebrate Victory Over Liberalism

Liberals are all-a-flutter after the latest victory in the war on terror - yep, they've managed to nail the filth for health & safety violations supposedly committed during the Martyrdom of St Jean Charles de Fraudia. After a two year witch hunt, they've finally managed to bag the police on charges of having a noisy control room and the like. That's how much libs hate the pigs: no noisy radios.

Hmmm....are they sure that's such a good thing ? Don't we risk perpetuating the 'cycle of violence' ? What about the vast majority of peaceful police officers ? Maybe we should hold off on using the word 'police' in favour of a 'non-emotive lexicon' instead ?

You know, if liberals were as enraged by terrorists as they are by the people who fight them, they might have some credibility when they talk about counter-terrorism. Liberals keep insisting they're super-opposed to terrorism, it's just they think the best way to fight it is by doing the complete opposite to what any rational person would do.

Conservatives should try that. We should announce that we totally buy into anthropogenic global warming, it's just that we think tax breaks for buying 4x4s is the way to fight it.

Meanwhile, in so far as even mainstream liberals flirt with 7/7 trutherism, their position at the moment appears to be that the security forces in July 2005 were both too paranoid about terrorism and too relaxed, alternately ignoring evidence of incoming attacks, and shooting perfectly innocent fraudsters.

Right now, the left is trying to push the line that the Met's conviction means that PC Plod is a moron and so the police need to be remade into the Nu Police, with the top brass replaced by PC PCs, politically sound mangagers ready to ram reform down the throats of the Neanderthal truncheon-monkeys. The trouble is, as some of us pointed out at the time, they've already done that, to the point where this operation was run entirely by libs, not only in terms of the top brass, but even the actual commander, the howlingly deranged Oxbridge liberal Cressida Dick (meanwhile, I'm guessing two years wouldn't be enough time to find a liberal media outlet breathing a word of criticism of this loony hag).

Not only was the operation run by liberals, it was run on liberal lines. Consider how a distant command element was inserted into the mix with the surveillance and firearms teams yet failed to actually provide any clear direction. Hmmmm.... I think I've heard that somewhere before. Ah yes, every operation these people have ever been involved in.

Of course, it's not totally surprising that HQ wasn't able to exercise much control, bearing in mind that the responsible commander's previous job had been with the 'Diversity Directorate' (aka the Thought Police). The overlap between the naughty word squad and counter-terrorism is not obvious, but again this is a natural outgrowth of liberal doctrine. These people have always believed in the idea of an elite which can apply its superior intellect in any context. Ditto, the corollary to that, the firm belief that policing, much like plumbing, brain surgery, and just about every other form of technical skill, is merely a bogus mystique dreamed up by dirty fingernailed wasters to avoid being held accountable.

But no, apparently, the real problem is that when faced with any unprecedented threat, and an enemy that could - as events on 21/7 had shown - apparently strike at will, the filth didn't rigidly stick to their own (failed) procedures. Hmmmm.... it wasn't that long ago that the self-same people were complaining about people sticking too rigidly to the book. If libs are now going to demand rigid adherence to written procedures, then we should get used to a lot more of this.

Doubtless, had PC Plod nailed a real baddy, we'd be hearing about the maverick brilliance of dear ol' Cressida. That's what really sticks in the throat, the left's determination to have their cake and eat it. Or - to return to something I mentioned above - to drink the truther kool aid when the security forces don't think outside the box, while reserving the right to pore over every line when things go the other way. Whatever the specifics, the answer is always the same: more liberalism.

The Rotty Returns

Back, and making an interesting point about the Dhimmi St Primary outrage. The real problem with it all is the tacit acceptance of the deranged world view of Islam.

Sign Of The Times

Somewhere in New Hampshire, Mark Steyn is reading this and saying 'See, I told you'.

Interesting

Laban points out an interesting article in the Guardian. It's all worth reading, but this seems like a major concession:

The other extreme is that of Nick Griffin and the BNP who yearn for an England that never existed, where a homogeneous population was at ease with itself, each person content with their place in society and while class differences existed the concept of race and nation bound everyone together. A bit like John Major with his old maids bicycling to early morning communion and all of the railway companies in their prewar livery, er, yeh, ok.

For years the left has been trying to tell us that everyone in the BNP - without exception - is a slavering Nazi lunatic. Now we have at least one liberal tacitly admitting that actually a lot of these folks may have perfectly understandable - even respectable - motivations.

Today's Dhimmitude-In-Education Story

Remember, none of this stuff actually happens, it's all a right-wing myth.

Sally Bloomer, head of Rufford primary school in Lye, West Midlands, insisted: “I have not heard of any complaints.

“It’s all part of a diversity project to promote multi-culturalism.

Philosophical question: is it still multi-culturalism if it's always the same culture again and again ?

Setting The Terms Of The Debate

I was tempted to write a 'See, I Told You' post about the Mohammed Kendeh case, but Ross beat me to it. Besides, predicting sleazy behaviour from libs isn't such a stretch. Still, the question I posed at the time remains unanswered: if you believe that murdering people (or indeed being a serial sexual predator) is no reason to deny anyone the right to stay in Britain, in what sense do you not support open borders ?

See, this is where I think the right has made a mistake. We've allowed liberals to claim the debate is about 'immigration'. Really ? Are crowds of people protesting outside Old Trafford chanting 'Hey, hey, save your millions, don't buy any more Brazilians' ? Is all the talk down the Dog & Duck about how foreign PhDs are pouring into Britain and taking all the research jobs ? Hmmmm.... maybe 'immigration' isn't the thing after all.

Nope, the issue is open borders. The left thinks Britain should be like Hyde Park, with everyone in the world permitted to come and go as they please. The right thinks we should, as a minimum, stop the mad axeman opening a Birmingham office (and being given a free house to help him do it). That's what the debate is about, not any mythical rightists hanging around outside the Infirmary with placards reading 'English Surgeons For English Tumours'.