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.