The Greatest Moment In The History Of British Conservatism

What could be more conservative than a bunch of millionaires urging everyone else to give their money away?

Some of the old aristocracy might have been tools, but at least we didn't have to put up with Dukes complaining that the kitchen maids were too tight-fisted.

Best Victimhood Wars Story Evah?

Heh.

Quote of the Day

I’m not such a sceptic that I think the severity of our current winter weather disproves the global warming hypothesis, but it doesn’t exactly add to the credibility of the warmist lobby. The standard response to this is to point out that colder winters are compatible with the theory (see George Monbiot’s article entitled “The snow outside it what global warming looks like”). But that suggests something else, namely, that the theory isn’t wrong, but meaningless. If I recall my Karl Popper correctly, one of the conditions that a meaningful scientific theory has to satisfy is that it should be falsifiable. If heavier-than-average snowfall doesn’t constitute disproof of the theory, then it’s hard to imagine what would – and that, in turn, suggests the theory is meaningless.

Indeed.

It's a point that's often missed. There's no need to get down in the weeds and start discussing the finer points of satellite data or statistical techniques. Simply from first principles, global warming fails the basic test of a scientific theory - it doesn't make any predictions.

Put it this way, if E = M x (C Squared) and C is a constant, then we can predict exactly how much energy will be produced by a given mass. If it was ever observed that a different amount of energy was produced, then the theory would be DOA. That's because it's real science. Meanwhile, global warming theory is more like claiming that E is kind of related to M, but who can tell, and give us your wallet anyway or the Earth will fall into the Sun.

It's That Time Again

Yes, indeed: here we are again at that time of year when a loveable guy in red and white comes into your house with his big sack and steals all your prezzies.

But enough about Scouser Claus, onto the real meaning of Christmas: yes, it's Sweary Elf Day.

Penguin Slashes Cop

Wait... no, my mistake, turns it was a 'man'. Must have used one of these long-range knives so no one got a good look at him, either that or..... it's another attack by the infamous Men of No Appearance gang.

(H/T to anonymous in the comments)

It's The 'Not Flying At All' Squad

Hmmmmm..... 'Asians' you say? Best start making door to door enquiries down Chinatown.

But check out the date of the attack versus the day details were released. Must have had a broken photocopier, right?

Quote of the Day

John Nolte sums up what's wrong with not just one film, but with modern Hollywood in general:

For those of you who haven’t seen “The English Patient,” just imagine what Satan would’ve done with “Casablanca.”

And Talking Of Our Useless Elite...

How useless is the MSM? Well, consider that they keep pushing the line that Ken Clarke is a loveable man of the people when you only have to listen to him for five minutes to realise he's a fascist dolt:

But you have to explain to the sensible public that you can’t give an absolute guarantee.

And there you have it: if you disagree with Fat Ken you're stoopid!

Hey, I don't think it's the right that uses simplistic arguments, and that's without considering the obvious: whether we're talking secure mental hospital or a prison, you really can guarantee a lot less reoffending than if you give them six months aromatherapy and set them loose with directions to the hardware store.

Our Elite Aren't

Now that the Cenotaph sleaze has been identified as Charlie 'Comfortably Scum' Gilmore, we can at least dispose of one myth about the university system. No, the problem is not just folks at Fulchester Uni doing degrees in surfing. In so far as Gilmore is an Oxbridge student, he's supposedly as good as it gets.

And yes, in so far as Oxbridge is apparently struggling with the difficult question of whether or not to even suspend him (from college, not from a tree), I think we can ditch the whole 'tiny minority' defence too. In fact, I'm about ready to start a sweepstake on who'll be the first member of the cult to claim that people only criticise Charlie because they're too stoopid to appreciate the subtle nuances of his position.

All of which is by way of saying that I'm starting to think the credit crunch isn't Britain's biggest problem.

Turns out Whiskey has been thinking along the same lines, albeit in a US context:

The Ivy League and "meritocratic" elites are resented because they've failed...

Outside of Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton, both of whom left festering problems of Islamic terror, to crop up with later Presidents, nearly every President since Eisenhower has been nothing but an abject failure. Amiable dunces, lecturing and preening moralizers, devious compilers of enemies lists, or all three in the case of Obama. Jeff Zucker, Harvard University, ran NBC into the ground. The Sulzberger family has made the NYT a national joke, destroying shareholder value not seen since the AOL-Time-Warner deal.

Ordinary people have given about fifty years to the elites, and have nothing to show for it but a ruined economy, cheap Chinese electronic junk, declining real wages since the 1970's, mass immigration turning them into sudden (and discriminated against) minorities in their own country, and the prospect of even more of the same. Meanwhile, the elites have put up a "No Ordinary Whites Allowed" sign in the means to entry into the elites: the Ivies and near Ivies.

A good comment by Novaseeker too:

This blind spot may be what causes the left to dig its grave, politically. They simply do not *understand* the real source of rightist populism (instead labeling it as being based on fear, which it isn't ... it's based on resentment at some Ivy-League jackass telling them what to do, as if he is better than they are -- because he *isn't*, he just has a degree

Actually, it cuts both ways. It isn't only that people don't respect a guy just because he has an Ivy League/Oxbridge degree, it's that these guys don't bring anything else to the table, and don't think they should even have to: they're super smart, what more do you need? Pay no attention to the wrecked nation behind the curtain.

That's the bottom line: from the Romans claiming no man is fit to command who cannot command himself, to the Victorian obsession with inculcating 'Officer-Like Qualities' into their schoolboys, to be elite was a matter of duty as much as privilege. Now? Not so much.

Consider Oxbridge's previous favourite baby seal. The most disturbing thing is these guys aren't asking for special treatment, so much as assuming it is the natural way of the world. Even the worst scumbag of a Victorian squire wouldn't go into print to defend his right to shoot at peasants without consequences.

The idea that privilege and rank is supposed to, at the least, confer a duty not to act out like a spoilt brat rather than a right to do so without consequences has apparently gone the way of the powdered wig.

Actually, I take it all back: Charlie is a hero after all. He's the giant turkey in the mine, telling us just how worthless is our alleged elite.

Riots, Then & Now

Two thoughts about Student Grant's little tantrums:

i/ It might be my memory, but back when it was footy fans wrecking town centres, I don't ever recall any of our piously egalitarian MSM lefties carefully explaining how the vast majority of footy fans were beautiful little flowers who just wanted to see a game. Meanwhile, right now the screens are full of people explaining that Julian Fortesque D'Tool was at the riot but not with the riot.

ii/ If the riots are a distraction from the Vast Majority of Peace-Loving Muslims Protestors, what is it that the protestors think we're being distracted from? What is their actual point?

Ah yes: they think everyone else should give them money. To the extent that the riots hide the sheer beggary of their position, it is surely to their advantage.

Hey, the union thugs may have used the same tactics to try and bring down the government in the Eighties, but at least those guys had actual jobs.

Miss Of No Appearance

Sounds like another Eskimo to me.

Ken Clarke Was Not Available For Comment

Rehab is science, dammit!

Man of No Affiliation

Guy who tortured cute puppy - really - turns out to have a name beginning with M that isn't Mike, Mark or Mikhail.

In related news, even the Mail can't bring itself to report what's really going on. All of which sums up why dogs are better than MSM journalists - at least dogs only lick their own genitals.

Zero Tolerance for.... Whatever!

It's not just libertarians who've been drawing heavily on the world's humbug reserves post-Wikileaks. Consider the position of the mainstream left: they're outraged that their new hero is being investigated for sexual assault on nothing more than the testimony of a couple of alleged victims?

And?

Hey, this is one more than PC Plod normally needs to start an investigation. Plenty of men have been bought to trial on less evidence and with far less tin-foil related reasons to suspect the credibility of the witnesses. Indeed, the left has spent years chipping away at the rights of the defence to raise issues like this in rape cases.

If the accussed in this case was an accountant from Leeds, the left would be busy right about now explaining how women don't lie about rape.

Knee-Jerk Scepticism Is Gullibility Standing On Its Head

Item number 1017 in why I don't take libertarians seriously: the way they claim the state is rubbish at everything, except when their goofy conspiracy theories requires the state to be a finely-oiled machine. Consider Exhibit A.

Hey, it's possible the little rat is being set up, but in so far as we're talking about a twisted loser terrorist groupie with delusions of granduar who's suddenly been propelled to global celebrity, I'm thinking a vast worldwide conspiracy might not be the only explanation for him getting named as a sexual predator (of course, the whole belching zillions of secrets thing also argues against the idea that the CIA are secretly controlling the world).

Still, in so far as libertarian's new pin-up is a guy who's aligned himself with some of the most virulently anti-freedom elements on the planet, at least we need hear no more about the compromised, and compromising, nature of democracy.

Fat Slobby Monster Threatens Civilisation

I'm with Snafu - cutting back on the cutbacks is bad news.

My problem isn't just the narrow question of whether or not we can afford to have half the country on the government payroll. The problem's bigger than that. It's the tacit acceptance of the world view that sees elephantine government as a normal part of our national life.

Even if we had an eccentric trillionaire underwriting our fiscal insanity, this kind of thing would still a ludicrous example of governmental overreach.

Professional Econut Is A Nasty Creep Shocka!

No, not Al Gore, the Canadian one.

Who says ecolunacy is just nostalgia for the days of serfdom?

I Love It When A Plan Comes Together

Hey, now aren't you glad we bailed out our loveable Irish friends?

Hospitals & Schools & Sneering

As far as this goes, I'm with the folks at Big Hollywood. Who wants to see a formerly great women struggling with age and decline? I prefer to remember her as she was at the height of her powers, in 'Kramer Vs Kramer' and 'Sophie's Choice'.

Joking aside, all the obvious points about the left's lack of class apply, plus extra points for gutlessness. I mean, really? This is what they call challenging work: beating up an elderly woman? What's next? A lacerating attack on the Corn Laws?

There's one more thing though. We keep getting told that the evil right doesn't want people to pay their fair share of taxes, but the self-same people have no trouble raiding the public purse to make petty political points. Will no one think of the children?

Cristina Odone: Still Worthless

Say what you like about Crissy, but she does perfectly exemplify every prejudices of the chattering classes. Take this article:

[Americans] are stuck in a Profumo Scandal/Burgess and Maclean era, where gays are blackmailed by the Soviets into betraying their country. During the McCarthy witch-hunt, the “Lavender Scare” was a campaign to identify and prosecute gay politicians: homosexuals and Commies were often conflated, both perceived as subversive and immoral sub-cultures.

See what I mean?

Using such a tired cliché would be bad enough, but with the Cold War now long won and files opened up on both sides of the Iron Curtain, we now know there were quite a lot of witches out there. McCarthy was substantively correct: US security really was utterly dysfunctional. Even mainstream leftists have given up talking about supposed 'red scares' in favour of 'four point six SEVEN actually' style quibbling.

More to the point though, Odone is not merely resurrecting a decades-old smear, she trying to turn history round 180. If McCarthy really was dead set on gay bashing he should probably have started with his own Chief of Staff, Roy Cohn. As it was, leftists had no qualms about gay baiting Cohn, McCarthy and the rest of his staff, culminating in the bizarre Army-McCarthy hearing where the Senator was accused of allowing his office to be used to pressure the US Army to give special treatment to a former staffer who been conscripted (clearly, a US Senator being questioned over whether or not a private soldier 'often' rode in the cab of trucks doesn't rise to the level of witch hunting).

Odone's position isn't just wrong, it's the opposite of truth. There's no actual point here except that everyone the chattering classes don't approve of is a knuckle-dragger. Hence, her claim to detect some kind of super secret conspiracy behind the Tea Parties. Nope, she doesn't have any actual evidence, but you know what those people are like....

As such, it's business as usual for the MSM. Odone's rubbishy article boils down to simple class hatred. McCarthy and the Tea Partiers were/are ignorant hicks rudely interrupting the proper business of government. Meanwhile, anyone who doesn't support her fellow Metropolitan luvvie, and odious weasel, Alan Duncan, must be some kind of nasty old bigot.

They may as well just stop pretending there's any logic there and just start issuing lists of who's hot and who's not.

Tiny Minority Alert!

Surely the real question about this is where are West Midlands Police when we need them?

Best Blowback Story Evah!

Hey, you'd think someone would do something about this PC garbage, wouldn't you?

Heh.

If not hoist by his own petard, Cameron has at least been hoist by a petard that he had assured us was a perfectly lovely petard that none but right-wing extremists could possibly object to.

After all, this is the central issue of the whole PC thing. True, these guys will never see eye-to-eye with Cameron but do these comments rise to the level of actual criminality?

Clearly, the only answer is to suspend The Dave for six months while a Board of Inquiry looks at this case.

Joking aside, this guy has a point, or rather two aspects of the same point. Cameron's apparent belief that his job is Comedian-in-Chief and that all his jokes boil down to sneering at people who aren't him speak to the same issue. Sure, The Dave keeps all but telling us he was born to rule, and how everyone who opposes him is a therefore clearly some kind of freak, but as George Bush Snr would say 'where's the vision thing'? How does he see his role as PM? What's he trying to achieve? Nada. He's much happier telling us how everyone else sucks than explaining just why we should trust him in power.

Church of Liberalism Rocked By Murderous Priest Scandal

And talking of elite articles of faith that never actually stand up to scrutiny, loveable scallywag Learco Chindamo is back in the pen. What are the odds, hey?

Probaly quite a bit better than any of those sneery creeps who defend the rehab industry ever retracting all those editorials denouncing anyone who questioned the whole farce as some kind of tabloid-poisoned peasant driven mad by a combination of cheap lager and daytime TV.

Yes, and they can stow all that 'the dog ate my resources' garbage too. This case, just like Jon Venables, was another flagship case, with guaranteed public scrutiny. If Chindamo had gone on to win the Nobel prize or a VC, we'd never had heard the end of it. Instead, it turns out that rehab works perfectly, except in every case we ever hear about.

Again, I repeat, in so far as elite opinion demands faith in something which keeps failing every time we look at it, in what sense is this the smart position to take?

Quote of the Day

Janet Daly gets it mostly right:

George Osborne – who was once a proud Eurosceptic himself – has rounded on the sceptic tendency within his own party. “I told you so,” he says sulkily, “is not an economic policy.”

Well, no but it’s a start. It is, in the present crisis, a necessary precondition for any realistic economic policy: we need some brutal honesty here about the staggering mendacity and utter stupidity of those who concocted this conspiracy against the peoples of Europe, this folie de grandeur which appeared to be based on ideological wishful thinking and economic illiteracy. Those of us who were pilloried and ridiculed by the political establishment of the day and its camp followers at the BBC are demanding apologies, not because we enjoy the sight of people on their knees (well, maybe we do in this case) but because we want definitive proof that the lessons have been learnt.

The thing is, if the Certified Super Geniuses keep screwing up, in what sense are they actually, y'know, smart?

The fabulousness of the Euro wasn't some side issue these guys occasionally referred to in passing. Until five minutes ago you couldn't shut these guys up about the single currency. More to the point, the whole Euro thing was a litmus test: there were the smart people who supported the Euro and then there were the knuckle-dragging morons too thick to get it.

Anyone who claimed the Emperor was 100% deficient in the drapery department was told in no uncertain terms that he was, in fact, clad in a very finely-woven cloth. Now it turns out that there really was no there there, we're still morons for being crude enough to point it out. Win , lose or draw, it turns out these people are better than us.

Shocka! Professional Charistocrats Are Lefty Kool Aid Drinkers

Seriously? Is anyone shocked by this?

The only real surprise is that there are still people on the right prepared to treat these people as anything other than the leftist kooks they indisputably are.

How It All Went Wrong

Great post by Norman Tebbit explaining how even he once drank the EU Kool Aid. It really hits on what underlines much of modern politics, and not just in an EU context either:

To a large extent we had more in common with each other across the bonds of nationality than with our fellow nationals at home. I became a member of a tribe which cut across my national tribal links.

The flip side works as well. The idea that goofy projects like the EU are the product of elite super geniuses naturally leads to the corollary that those who oppose them are clearly dirty peasants and morons.

The whole point about our governing class is that it often seems as though they regard themselves as citizens of the Republic of Elite, while their fellow countrymen outside the tranzi elite are a bunch of wacky foreigners.

On the plus side, at least back in the day, his colleagues really were an elite, at least in the sense that they did a difficult and demanding job.

Now? Not so much:

The problem I see now is that our new political class has little experience of life outside Westminster except in their homes in France and Spain, and no feeling for the mass of British people, so they are easy meat for the internatonalist dream which is reinforced by the doctrines of political correctness and the self interest of the international bureaucratic elite.

Their supposed qualifications to rule are based on a tautology. Our governing elite is elite because they're members of the governing elite. That's their only qualification. If Cameron wasn't a politician, what would he be? What skills does he bring to the table that have any application outside the context of an utterly dysfunctional political culture?

Ditto, any of them.

To the point: Cameron doesn't just support Big Government, Big Government supports him. He is a product of the system and every bit as dependent on Big Government for his career as any loser bureaucrat in the Office of the Hat Czar.

BBC Issues New Rules On Openess

Accurately reporting stuff BBC staffers have said in a public forum is unfair.

Reporting private comments made by a police officer at a crime scene is just good journalism.

If only the officer concerned had spent a wodge of taxpayers cash producing a whole report documenting her concerns, the BBC would bent over backwards to keep it secret - right?

Molesters of No Appearance

Down in the comments to this post, an anonymous commentor points out another entry for the 'Zero Tolerance for Violence Against Liberalism' files.

Hey, it's a win:win for the left. The femiloons get to push their absurd meme that all men are predators while avoiding the existence of a certain demographic that really do think women from outside their demographic really are asking for it.

Yes, indeed: who can these guys be who have issues with women, and particularly drunk ones? We may never know.

13th Thargoidian Battle Phalanx Sued Over Abductions

So..... just checking my MSM scorecard here: seems like the fact some of the future guests of Club Gitmo once passed through Britain makes them British, but passing through a terrorist training camp doesn't mean they're terrorists.

Ditto, these guys might have the same ideology as terrorists, behave just like terrorists, associate with terrorists and go where terrorists go, but they're only suspected terrorists. Meanwhile, their own hardly disinterested testimony is enough to establish as undeniable truth that they've been tortured. Ah-huh!

Hey, if nothing else, I guess that means we've got to go easy on people who claim they've been abducted by aliens. After all, there's every bit as much supporting evidence for their testimony as for these jihadist atrocity stories. Plus, at least the abductees aren't part of organisation that trains its members to make bogus abduction claims and they don't think mass murder is a perfectly reasonable way to get your point across, so they're probably more reliable witnesses too. Then again, given recent history, I'd say there was plenty of evidence that the aliens aren't so much walking amongst us, as sitting on the bench in the Supreme Court.

CCHQ Wrecked In Riot: They're Going To Need A Bigger Hug

Enough with the sympathy for the Tory Party: windows smashed, arson, threats to kill, and cops standing round letting it happen? Pfft!! What happened yesterday was just a scaled-up version of what's happened to thousands of families who've fallen foul of local hoods, and all The Dave has offered them is a load of garbage about reaching out to the thug community.

UKIP Members, Catholics, Gun Owners Rampage Through London

After yesterday's NUS-sponsored riot, I understand at least one person at the BBC briefly considered writing the words 'left-wing extremism' but he was tracked down and fired before any long-term damage could be caused.

The only surprise is that anyone's surprised. Hey, leftists condemn the extremists rhetoric of Glenn Beck while hanging out with guys who support armed literary criticism.Meanwhile, actual Labour MPs fantasise about Marxist dictatorship.

The riot isn't an aberration - this is who they are.

Quote of the Day

Kyle Smith notes a certain contradiction in the arguments for public broadcasting:

Please let’s not make the argument that it’s government’s job to identify and provide “high culture” in the name of improving all of us. Haven’t we all learned that there are many cultures, all equally vibrant and valid? NPR is as monolithic in its taste as a 1950s Social Studies class

You First, Libertarians

Shorter Worstall: you can't make the New Libertarian Order without breaking a few eggs.

See, I told you - this is who libertarians are.

It speaks for itself, except for one more thing: how come all the people who talk about the necessity of Martyrdom Operations are still not dead?

Hey, don't be 'Timmy All-Talk', get down to Parliament Square now with a petrol can and a set of matches, otherwise the Infidels Statists will have won!

In so far as the usual suspects will doubtless try and cite yesterday's kicking as proof that Obama is just damn too smart for those stoopid Americans, it's worth having a look at this post over at the WSJ:

Yet Hartman's remark about Obama's "academic background" is revealing. Professors imagine Obama is one of them because he shares their attitudes: their politically correct opinions, their condescending view of ordinary Americans, their belief in their own authority as an intellectual elite. He is the ideal product of the homogeneous world of contemporary academia. In his importance, they see a reflection of their self-importance.

Kloppenberg's thesis reminds us of another elaborate attempt at explaining Obama: Dinesh D'Souza's "The Roots of Obama's Rage." D'Souza, like Kloppenberg, imputes to Obama a coherent philosophy, in D'Souza's case "anticolonialism." It is a needlessly elaborate explanation for an unremarkable set of facts.

Occam's razor suggests that Obama is a mere conformist--someone who absorbed every left-wing platitude he encountered in college and never seems to have seriously questioned any of them. Kloppenberg characterizes Obama as a skeptic, not a true believer. We're not sure he has an active enough mind to be either one.

All of which sounds strangely familiar.

The British MSM has slaughtered thousands of innocent trees to try and prove that our own Messiah is a Certified Super Genius, yet what does the term 'Cameronism' actually evoke? Endless triangulation, bleeding into outright capitulation, for sure. Epic narcissism plus entitlement? Of course. But actual ideas? Nada.

British Army To Come Under French Command

Small boat owners advised to keep fuel tanks topped up and charts of English Channel to hand.

Because It's Brain Food

Obvious, really.

Rainbow Utopia Cancelled

Like most people I imagine, I'm fascinated by Canadian municipal elections.

But not really.

Still, recent events in Toronto provide a certain grim amusement. Don't be shocked, but almost as soon as Toronto managed the oxymoronic achievement of going 'minority majority' they turfed out the groovy liberal and elected a squaresville conservative.

The ever-excellent Kathy Shaidle explains it all to shell-shocked libs.

You brought them over here, not me. You supposedly need them to drive the cabs I don't take, and be the nannies I don't need and the housekeepers I can't afford, and run the restaurants only you get to eat in and run the shops you're too lazy or prissy to own yourselves...

.... they're just patiently waiting for the day that your spoiled, lazy children -- assuming you have children at all -- are working for their disciplined, accomplished offspring.

The day "corporate" pulls its sponsorship of Pride Month, and dumps its expensive, exquisitely useless "environmentally friendly" policies overboard, and quietly stops hiring spindly, neurotic, overeducated white women (who take way too much time off dragging their kids to endless appointments -- if they have children, that is.)

And there will be nothing you can do about it.

They're "minorities." You gave them all kinds of special rights. No one is allowed to criticize them. "It's their culture," remember?

This was all your idea, guys. Not mine.

Decline of Civilisation In One Line

Thinking about it, my main problem with the FU Budget was its essentially fraudulent nature. The Comprehensive Spending Review turned out to be not very comprehensive after all. While the guy in the street got hammered, the CSR tacitly accepted every absurd premise Nu Lab had ever advanced to justify their vision of elephantine government as a natural feature of modern life.

Our enormous, fat slob of a government didn't just happen. It's the product of a demented view of what government is meant to do. For proof of just how warped, consider this snapshot of modern British life.

Welsford now plans to sue the hospital claiming that the therapist abused him, reports The Sun.

It's a Russian doll full of wrongness!

First, there's the obvious point: here's a guy who has chosen to wage war on civilised society in the most extreme way possible, yet thanks to the influence of Cherie and pals, it's now accepted that he can still claim all the benefits of citizenship without taking on anything approaching the ghost of the shadow of hint of the corresponding responsibilities (like 'no raping').

Then there's the question of absurd lawsuits in general. Families need to pay through the nose for tuition fees, but guys like this are getting Legal Aid to claim people having sex with them is, like, totally, the same as torture even where they consented anyway....

Yep, personal responsibility is dead too.

There's the wider issues. We're spending money on therapy for dangerous perverts? Has that ever worked? Putting planes on an aircraft carrier is an unaffordable indulgence but paying charlatans to perform junk science rituals for the benefit of savages? That's just savvy financial judgement.

Then there's probably one of the most common themes in much of our civilisational death spiral: the fact this skank could make the beast with two backs with barbarians, safe in the knowledge that if she did get knocked up then Big Daddy Government would step in and throw money at her own worthless self. And that goes double when Mummy's Little Thuglet starts following in his father's footsteps, and the whole clown circus of the Welfare-Education Axis of Snivel swings into action to enable the little rat to be all that he can be.

Cameron's looting of the productive would be bad enough at the best of times but alongside his refusal to take on any of this brand of lunacy, can the Tories at least stop claiming there's no alternative to soaking the workers?

Two Further Thoughts About The 'FU Budget'

i/ It's an interesting philosophical question which is the more annoying: the money wasted on foreign aid or on the money wasted on climate change.

On the one hand, people really have died of malaria, on the other, no matter how much money we give Al Gore he's unlikely to spend any of it on nukes or terrorism.

ii/If foreign aid is meant to support people making a real difference in the Third World, shouldn't it go to the Army? Don't they do more to improve life in Afghanistan in a single month than any number of Toyota driving charistocrats manage in the rest of the world?

The FU Budget

It's just a pity the smoking ban prevented Osborne ramming the point home and finishing off the budget statement by lighting a big cigar with a £50 note.

Really, what else did anyone expect? This is who they are. Hence a budget where the guy in the street gets El Shafto while billions are thrown away on the obsessions of the decadent rich.

The only real question is to what extent this arises because these guys are simply out of touch with how real people live (like Osborne)as opposed to actual contempt for the uppity strivers (Cameron).

140 And Out

Reading this story reminded me of this.

Obviously, this guy's writing in a US context, and I'm not sure that these people are as sympathetic a pair of characters as he thinks they are, but the wider point is certainly true:

TV has given us the illusion that anarchy is people rioting in the streets, smashing car windows and looting every store in sight. But there’s also the polite, quiet, far deadlier anarchy of the core citizenry—the upright citizenry—throwing in the towel and deciding it’s just not worth it anymore.

There Is No Immigration Debate

What He Said, plus....

How come this never applies to ecolunacy? If the economic benefits of open borders are supposed to trump a few teething problems, like July 7, how come we can't apply the same logic to environmental regulation? Islam has killed more Britons than climate change, and think how much richer we'd be once we applied this new economic growth uber alles rule to handling nuclear waste and PCBs?

Then again, who says there's an immigration debate anyway? Sure, some immigrants contribute to the economy, for example bankers from the US, engineers from China and brain surgeons from Madras but, curiously enough, no one opposes these guys stopping by in the first place. Who are the prejudiced ones here? It's the left that wants to lump all immigrants together, whether they're talented scientists or violent lunatics.

It's not immigration we're opposed to, it's open borders - and that goes triple when it's teamed with the idea any immigrant only needs to touch base in the UK to qualify for a free ride.

Liberals try and frame this as a debate about immigration simply because open borders has been such an obvious train wreck that whining about The Raycism is all they have left.

Quote of the Day

Greg Gutfeld nails it:

Think about it: if the average Joe expresses anxiety over Islamic fundamentalism, they’re called Islamophobes. But if an editor removes a comic in which Mohammed isn’t even present, that’s not honest to Allah Islamophobia?

Look, the media can’t have it both ways. They cannot criticize the public for concerns over Islam and then pull this stunt over a fear they may get stabbed in front of a Starbucks. If their governing principle in the newsroom is fear, then they should admit it and get the hell off our backs for feeling pretty much the same way.

And the flip side works too: enough with the articles about the dangers of right-wing extremism when it's blindingly obvious that if the right really was as crazed as the MSM says, they'd be in full sensitivity overdrive.

This One Could Run & Run

Via the comments at Guido's, it looks like McRuin's new masterpiece isn't going down too well, at least to judge by the tags.

About That 'Token' Thing...

It says a lot about the bogus nature of the left's committment to egalitariasm that they're trying to position Eric Pickles as Two Jags Redux.

Yes, Eric's a northerner - just like Ieuan Prescott always pretended to be - but there's one crucial difference. Prezza spent billions to achieve nothing, meanwhile Marxist berks really are getting their walking papers under Pickles. Hence the left's sudden need to quibble over trivia. Maybe Pickles isn't dismantling the People's Republic of Quango as fast or as easily as planned, but destroying it he surely is.

Come to think of it, let's flip this around. Prezza was there to provide cover for Princess Tony and McRuin, and whatever you think about these two, they were serious individuals with actual agendas. Stupid ones, but real all the same. Meanwhile, The Dave gave a speech and appeared in a few photo ops.

Are we sure he isn't just a token southerner?

Splattergate: Who's Paying For All These Lawyers Anyway?

Looks like the Jihad version of the Splattergate video has been fatwad.

Ditto, the Downfall parody has been taken outside and shot.

And all this on top of the 10:10 campaigns desperate efforts to stop anyone seeing the original video.

In summary then, to stop anyone getting the idea they're a bunch of liberal fascists, the 10:10 campaign is using legal muscle to suppress legitimate debate about their campaign.

With Certified Super Geniuses like that running their campaign, I'm thinking 'Big Oil' isn't their biggest problem.

But let's check the scorecard here: if you don't think school kids being executed is a scream, you're a humourless square. Meanwhile, they're setting m'learned friends on anyone who parodies their crappy video.

All of which raises a question: even assuming lefty snuff movies are a perfectly legitimate use of public money, what public policy objective is being served by using taxpayer's money to try and stop taxpayers discussing how their money's being spent?

UPDATE:

Heh.

The Cameroonatics New Plan: More Dave!

Indeed.

Hey, the World's Smartest Man is baffled about what's happening in the world's lone superpower, and that's a good thing?

If nothing else, if Ayatollah Khameron was able to get within a country mile of figuring out the appeal of the Tea Parties, maybe his acolytes would come up with plans that were less stupid than this.

Never mind that Dave's Drones are possibly the people in Britain least qualified to lecture anyone about winning elections, how do you get from the Tories, for some unaccountable reason, being seen as a party of the rich, to the answer being more Dave?

Wasn't the whole point of Daveness that the Party was returning to its roots as a gentleman's party, purged of dumpy, lower middle class bigots?

Yes, indeed: the filthy proles were purged and charmers like this were parachuted into constituencies, yet it now turns out that shoe-horning the products of absurd privilege into safe seats has not exactly killed the idea that the Tory Party favours the rich.

OTOH, who exactly decided 'right-wing' was a synonym for rich anyway? It's more like the opposite. It's easy for people like Cameron to claim we all need to hug a hoodie - he'll never have to live next to one. Ditto, school choice: with £30 million in the bank The Dave's got no end of choice. It's the folks who live in crappy postcodes and can't afford to go anywhere else who are screwed. Und so weiter....

The Nu Tory Party hasn't just ignored issues like this, in many cases it's lined up with the left in denouncing anyone who mentions them as really huge bigots (and don't even mention the magic of 'Open Borders').

The Marie Antoinette Party sneers at real social problems and the people who mention them, yet somehow the public think they're out of touch? Are we sure it's Sarah Palin who's the moron?

Splattergate: First Parody Sighted

Fast work: I make it two days from the econuts going live with their murderous fantasies to the first parody emerging.

And no, Godwin doesn't apply where people really are laughing along about exterminating their opponents.

So, for those of you keeping score at home, that means some guys on the net have come up with a rebuttal video before our nation's Certified Conservatives have managed so much as a mild rebuttal of a mostly taxpayer funded body producing leftist snuff movies (guess that deficit isn't so bad after all).

Here's the definitive example of liberal tourettes and Cast Iron Dave's savvy political operators are all out of the office. Meanwhile, the base is having fun tearing the left apart. All of which is by way of saying, absent the snobbery, what exactly are Professional Conservatives contributing to the debate? If bar maids and janitors being taxed to indulge liberal Pol Pot fantasises doesn't strike any of these people as an outrage, in what sense are they conservative?

All the energy right now is with the grass roots - contra The Dave, it's not the conservative base that's the albatross round the neck of conservatism.

UPDATE

Don't be shocked, but it turns out the film makers were not crazed lone gunmen after all - EU Ref reminds us just how closely this all tracks with long-established Warmenist strategy.

Meanwhile, the inevitable connection made here (via Samizdata comments).

Oops - guess not on that last one.

Hey, nothing say sticking it to The Man like using fatuous legal manoeuvres to close down fair criticism.

Top Gear > Liberalism

Back to a central theme of this blog: conservatives conceding the intellectual high ground to liberals even where it's the left's position that's stupid and bigoted.

Consider this latest example.

Yes, indeed: no longer blindly enforcing arbitrary limits does not, in fact, cause the streets to look like a Mad Max movie. Who'd have thunk it?

Just about everyone in the country actually. The liberal media cast critics of their goofy auto jihad as crazed boy racers, but now it turns out that it was Professor Smugentool and pals that were full of it after all.

Just what definition of intelligence are we using here?

Tea Parties Land Crucial Endorsment

The Dave doesn't dig the Tea Parties.

Well, that just about wraps it up for Sarah Palin then. If there's one thing The Dave knows about, it's drifting aimlessly.

The great thing about the Tea Parties is that they not only expose the snobbery of Professional Conservatives, they also expose the gaping hole at the heart of 'Respectable Conservatiosm'.

Even if The Dave's desire to throw cultural issues under the bus made political sense, it's also impossible. In reality culture war issues are at the heart of where we are today. Take the deficit. If nothing else, surrender in the culture war means accepting one hundred million diversity officers on the public payroll as a permanent feature of British life.

Long-term, you can't shrink the welfare state while remaining neutral between lifestyles that produce independence and those that reliably produce disaster. The distinction between culture war and economic policy is merely a matter of degree.

The Clue Is In The Question

On today's theme of liberal thuggery, another Beeboid has got caught waving his balance at the crowd.

Like I keep saying, for an impartial broadcaster, it's funny how every time one of their staff goes feral, they always go feral in the self-same way.

As ever though, nothing destroys the left's arguments like listening to actual leftists. This kind of ranty lunacy is exactly why people want to send their kids to a free school - so they can be taught by actual teachers, instead of this guy's freaky fellow travellers.

If It Wasn't For Projection, Liberals Wouldn't Know What To Say About Conservative

Faux Ordinary Joe and actual Marxist John Crudas manages to slime the EDL and Tea Partiers both at once because of The Extremism.

Except here's the thing: it's never folks on the right who get caught planning stuff like this.

Then again, the left doesn't just coddle Islamic lunatics. They have their own brand nutters too.

That's how we ended up with people who are literally Tolerance Nazis: diversity freaks fantasising about eliminating whole swathes of the population, but presumably not in an extreme way.

Labour In Crisis

You have to question how Labour will do without David Miliband - it's not like they going to be able to easily find themselves another upper middle class North London Oxbridge graduate.

The Rehab Industry: Like Astrology, But Without The Science

Now that the Pope has headed home and hipsters don't have to pretend to care about sex offences any more, normal service has been resumed.

Either I'm Psychic....

...or liberals are really predictable.

The usual suspects have just discovered they've been under-reporting the numbers of homeless people, and just in time for Christmas too!

Who'd have thunk it?

Special Ed Elected: The Beatings Will Continue Until The Poll Numbers Improve

After shiving his own brother, I guess it was a natural evolution for Special Ed to take it to the next level and use his conference speech to throw himself under the bus. Either that, or it must have been some other Ed Miliband who wrote their election manifesto last time out.

Mind you, there was a certain Blairesque degree of brass neck to hearing Ed announce there was a new generation at the helm, even while the same old lunkheads sat there on the front row in full view of the media.

The bottom line is that Ed could have ridden in on a unicorn dragging Lord Lucan behind him and it still wouldn't have distracted from the fact he only has two basic speeches: the one where he's vacuous, and the one where he's repulsive.

Today's speech was the perfect example of Group A: Ed is in favour of loving homes, aspiration and long walks on the beach. On the other hand, at least he's not afraid to come out and denounce Hitler.

It's actually quite a coincidence, since the first thing I thought of when I heard he was a contender was the old story about the guy hiking through the Amazon in 1953.

This bloke comes across a house hidden deep in the middle of the jungle and as he gets closer he hears Wagner blasting through the windows. Suddenly, he sees him! Adolf Hitler, alive and well, and living in Brazil.

Hitler explains how he escaped from Germany to South America, and how he's now planning to return to power and once more raise Germany from the ashes to seize its rightful place as the true ruler of the entire world, and what's more, this time things will be different: now, there will be no more 'Mister Nice Guy'!

Yes, indeed, stripped of the soft-focus, Hallmark blather, what is Milibonker's basic platform other than that the reason Labour MPs in England are an endangered species is because, gosh darn it, they just haven't been crazy enough.

BBC Ignored By Yoof, Asks 'Is It Time To Reform Our Kids'?

Now here's a revealing insight into what these guys are on about: last Sunday in the 11 AM slot, Radio 2's Michael Ball was chatting to his first guest, an alleged media expert, and both admitted to being baffled by how many young people had turned out to see the Pope.

As a frank admission that the BBC had been blind sided by a cultural trend, that would be one thing, but instead these guys were just shocked! that da kidz had turned out to see an old establishment squarro like the Pope instead of adopting the groovy, rebellious position taken by our plucky, upstart, £3.5 billion pa State broadcaster.

It's a mystery all right....and likely to remain so as long as Beeboids keep interviewing fellow media luvvies all day. Hey, Beeboids, for a free clue, try this from a, now sadly off-line, review of the movie '300' by Big Hollywood's John Nolte:

After forty years of liberal rule in Hollywood it is nihilism that’s old-fashioned. It is moral relativism that is tired. It is political correctness, the always-noble people of color, the always-evil white guy, and the metrosexual that is clichéd. A film with a clear divide between good and evil is something new. A film that celebrates patriotism, heroism, sacrifice, freedom, and honor is something revolutionary. In 1955 300 would be old-fashioned. In 2007 it makes a counter-culture statement as strong as Easy Rider in its day.

The Raoul Moat of Chelsea

Old and Busted: Barrister Mark Saunders was murdered by a police death squad for no reason at all.

The New Hotness: OK, maybe he was a violent drunk with a loaded weapon, but cops still suck

See, it's true - the rich are different. If this case had happened on a sink estate in Liverpool or Glasgow, he'd be 'Mark, who'? If only Raoul Moat had some blue blood, the press would be covering his musical choices too. 

Admittedly, there is a certain entertainment to be had in listening to the full range of chav scum clichés being trotted out by a bunch of pampered Metropolitan snobs, but screechy entitlement isn't attractive in any accent More to the point, after months of industrial-scale sliming by Saunder's charming family, we now find out that the Five-oh tried all but witch craft to avoid one of DI Drake's 'fatal outcomes'.

Then again, the rich might be different, but cop haters are all the same. They've got a new line of attack: they might not be able to actually prove the cops did anything wrong, but they should be allowed to slime individual officers anyway.

Actually, it's even better than that:

It's a cliche, but it is true: justice needs to be done and it needs to be seen to be done

Hello? We're having a whole inquest right here. We know exactly what everyone of the cops was doing during the siege.

It's precisely because the cop-hating freaks have come up empty that they now need to resort to trying to find out if Officer Brown is into the gay BDSM scene, Officer Smith has a cousin in jail or Officer Anderson's ex-wife thinks he's an absolute scumbag.

So for those of you keeping score at home: revealing the identities of convicted paedophiles in a given area leads to mob rule, but revealing the identities of police officers is a vital pillar of democracy.

Meanwhile, does this work both ways? In the spirit of openness, shouldn't activist weenies like Graef be forced to account for themselves? I don't have any solid 'evidence' that this guy has sex with farmyard animals, but I think his failure to account for his every waking minute over the last twenty years speaks for itself, right?

As it happens, it's a vital feature of not just British law, but all civilised jurisdictions, that you can only be charged with a specific crime, at a specific time. You can't be charged with being the type of dubious character who probably commits some kind of crime or other. To the point, Roger 'chicken shagger' Graef's sleazy suggestion that justice requires the personal lives of private citizens to be torn apart isn't just absurd, it's entirely lawless. The police officers concerned were either acting lawfully in this particular incident, or they were not, and no amount of shady sex games in their past will change that.

Still, I'm getting the hen humper's not really a guy for those tricky 'guilty/innocent' distinctions. In fact, I'm kind of seeing a theme running through his whole article:

These officers need to be held accountable - by name

Hey, isn't it strange how it's always the right-on libs who are ready to throw the whole 'due process' thing overboard when they want to victimise someone?

No, not really. Liberals are scum. What was I thinking?

Anyway, back to Rogering the livestock Graef:

The Government proposes to expand the use of restorative justice, in which offenders and victims meet to discuss the impact of the crime far beyond the rules of court....

In the case of this inquest, they should meet the friends and family of Mark Saunders and explain to them what they did and why they behaved as they did - and, most of all, hear first- hand the impact their actions have had.

Do you see what he did there? Not only have the officers concerned not been so much as charged with any offences, the repulsive Saunders clan are only victims in so far as one of their number suffered from the delusion that their power and privilege extended so far as to allow him to aim a loaded weapon at a police officer without consequences.

All of which means this is bunk:

Lawyers have always worried about such meetings, arguing that the police might feel obliged to apologise - and thereby open themselves up to litigation.

But I believe there should be qualified apologies, in which legal liability is set aside.

Apologise for what exactly? Exercising their common law right as citizens to use reasonable force to protect themselves? That's all they did - no magic police powers required. If a maniac points a loaded shotgun at you, you're quite within your rights to shoot them with your pistol - or, at least you could if you had a pistol, but somehow I don't see the left using this case to push 'concealed carry'.

Still and all, our friend from the hen house does a fine job of summing up the fraudulent nature of all the left's talk of justice. Their definition of justice is simply a vision of the courts as another venue to pursue class enemies. If the courts can't perform, then mob rule and smears will do just  fine.

Like Rosa Parks, But With Child Rape

It's not just Fat Hari who's turned the Humbugomatic up to 11. Gaystapo founder member and all-round loon Peter Tatchell is leading the charge about supposed paedo-appeaser Pope Benny, except.... what's this?

Peter Tatchell...contributed a chapter to the now notorious, out of print book [The Betrayal of Youth: Radical Perspectives on Childhood Sexuality, Intergenrational Sex, and the Social Oppression of Young People.]. His statement in the text that "not all sex involving children is unwanted, abusive and harmful"

In fact, the full quote is even worse:

[Tatchell] gave an example of a New Guinea tribe where ‘all young boys have sex with older warriors as part of their initiation into manhood’ and allegedly grow up to be ‘happy, well-adjusted husbands and fathers’.

And he concluded: ‘The positive nature of some child-adult sexual relationships is not confined to non-Western cultures. Several of my friends – gay and straight, male and female – had sex with adults from the ages of nine to 13. None feel they were abused. All say it was their conscious choice and gave them great joy.

‘While it may be impossible to condone paedophilia, it is time society acknowledged the truth that not all sex involving children is unwanted, abusive and harmful.’

By the way, that was in 1997, but apparently being on record talking warmly about child molestation is no bar to becoming the leader of the gay movement. Watch out for those Catholics though!

Come to think, in so far as Weird Pete has campaigned to drop the age of consent to 14 and is known for committing illegal acts to protest what he claims are unjust laws, shouldn't he be supporting the paedo priests? Weren't they too, in their own way, protesting against unjust laws that criminalise their attempts to bring 'great joy' to young boys? And is anyone in the MSM ever going to ask him about this?

Revisiting The 'Despised Minority'...

If nothing else, the Pope's visit at least means we've now got liberals on record denouncing paedophiles.

Only Catholic ones though, the far higher rates of abuse by their fellow liberals in the care or education systems are just yawnerooney. It's all because of The Hypocrisy apparently.

Huh?

Isn't that kind of saying that, being liberals, you'd expect teachers and social workers to be filthy perverts?

Still, let's not let the generalised humbuggery of the left detract from the more specific humbuggery of individual liberals. Take Fatty Hari: he claims to be enraged by Catholic paedophilia, but can't get through the title of his piece without giving the game away.

Yep, those are his charges: the Pope supports child abuse and he says mean things about gays.

Hmmmm... not to give aid and comfort to the enemy, but someone should tell Fatty: if you're accusing someone of not taking child abuse seriously enough, you probably want to try not comparing child rape to voicing opposition to the gay agenda.

On the plus side, of course, at least the Pope never wrote this.

About That 'Panzer Pope' Thing...

Mark isn't impressed by the Left's attacks on the Pope's supposed Nazi past.

It's even worse than that! Thanks to Nick in the comments to this post, for pointing out the dubious history of the left's majority shareholder, Spectre No 1 a.k.a George Soros.

Yes, Soros's own position was indisputably worse even than Ratzinger's, but on the flip side, he both profited personally and remains unrepentant about doing so. Besides, under the left's new Pope Rules, it looks like anything short of ritual suicide counts as collaboration anyway.

Independence Day!

Who's have thunk it? 'Non-partisan human rights organisation' Human Rights Watch has just been caught taking a bung from Spectre No 1 himself.

Yep, that guy.

Say, Why Does This Sound Familiar?

Further support for my theory that no, the Daily Mail is not a right-wing paper.

Leaving aside the Mail's shameless regurgitation of revisionist garbage, does this mean the Huns were bombed too much, or not nearly enough?

More importantly though, are the squareheads Rafophobic? After all, reading through the latest edition of the PC rules, it seems like we'd be quite within our rights to build a 15-storey Museum of British Aviation Achievement right in the centre of Dresden.

Dave Drone Driven Mad By Strain of Defending The Indefensible

[Cameron] intends to do more to outline his own political philosophy, which is best described as a realistic radicalism of the centre.

Huh?

Seriously, what does that even mean?

Actually, it does mean something: it means even dyed in the wool fan boys can't cobble together a defence of the Dave without descending into madness. Ditto, Anderson's claim that one of the least qualified PM's in history is 'reinforced by experience'. What experience? His sole experience outside politics is as a senior flack for a media firm. In other words, he took a break from smoozing politicians and journalists to spend some time smoozing journalists and politicians. He's a renaissance man!

True, Cameron does have no fear of power, in much the same way George Best had no fear of booze, but what's it all for? When even his fans admit that Cameronism means accepting public spending moving ever skywards, what's it all about? Bled dry by the NHS, or bled dry by the NHS plc, who really cares?

Ditto, what kind of conservatism is it which refers to the ' false antithesis between the individual and society'? If conservatism doesn't mean defending the individual against the collective, then what is it actually about?

For that matter, what form of conservatism is it where 'ethical questions' are simply a pretext for the extension of state power?

So maybe we should give him that: Anderson actually does a pretty good job of pointing out the basic absurdity of Cameronism: if fiscal conservatives, libertarian conservatives and social conservatives are all thrown under the bus, what exactly is left?

So Why Did He Hire Him Then?

Over at ATW, David Vance has the best line on the whole William Vague thing.

Personally, I was sceptical about the whole gay thing, until I saw how the usual suspects have railed round him. It says a lot about where the Tory Party is at right now that Dave's Drones are shocked - shocked! - that the guy who harried Prezza and Jackie Smith is now hunting down Tory crooks. What kind of game is that Guido guy playing anyway?

Inevitably, the winner of 'Best in Show' was the Reverend Dale, with his trademark mix of passive-aggressive bitchiness and humbug. He concludes one post with the following phrase:

I said on Radio 4's PM that there was part of me tonight that is ashamed to call myself a political blogger this evening, and I meant it. That may sound a bit holier than thou, but it is how I feel.

I hope Mr Fawkes can look himself in the mirror tonight. Because I sure as hell couldn't.

Holy Sickbag, Batman!

But what's this? In his other post, he moves seamlessly from whining about 'lies, smears and innuendo' to this:

Guido Fawkes is not a homophobe, but the way he is writing about this allows those who think he is homophobic to confirm their own prejudices.

Uh...OK. And at this point, I'd just like to note that while I have no, actual, 'proof' that Iain Dale dresses up as Wonder Woman and molests farm animals, I can see how some people could think that he might, IYKWIMAITYD.

More to the point, wasn't the Reverend Dale one of the leading lights in the cyber lynch mob that targeted Philip Lardner? Ah yes: let's hear it again:

Sometimes, you just hold your head in your hands and think 'how on earth did people like this get through the candidate selection procedure?'....

[David Cameron] called Lardner to account and I hope any Conservative does the same if they encounter people in the Government who hold similar... views. They should be chucked out of Parliament for good - not just suspended.

Hey, I'm sure glad the Rev doesn't go in for 'petty and spiteful vilification', but let's check the scorecard on this: comments made by a Tory candidate speaking in a personal capacity in defence of religious liberty demand burning at the stake. Meanwhile, a senior politician appears to be using taxpayer's money to provide a full employment service for marginally-qualified youths, but investigating that is a gross intrusion on his privacy? Really?

But let's not let the individual humbuggery of the Reverend Dale distract from the collective humbuggery of the Nu Tories in general. At risk of stating the obvious, this case exposes the utter fraud of all this talk about 'diversity'. Nothing could lead to less diversity than entry-level government posts being handed out like baubles to well-connected young men and women. Indeed, it's to prevent this that the government has objective hiring standards in the first place.

But it's even bigger than that. What is blindingly obvious from this case is that Hague is the perfect example of what Mark Steyn called 'the Emirs of Incumbistan', using the Treasury as his own personal piggy bank to provide non-jobs for cronies.

Hey, let's accept the Hague's defence at face value: he still hired a marginally-qualified youth to do a non-job on the taxpayer's dime. Hague may, or may not, have got laid, but the rest of us surely got screwed.

Needs A Gay Dude

Other than that, this movie looks a dead cert for an Oscar.

Liberals: Given Up Even Trying To Make Sense

Julie passes on this gem from the Guardian:

Impassioned responses to Beck's event, Dr Laura Schlessinger's recent N-word gaffe and offensive remarks about female supreme court justices are justified and necessary. But they must occur in the context of an unrelenting commitment both to change the institutions that provide platforms for such regrettable incidents, and to move away from soundbites towards a sustained discussion of racism and sexism in all its complexity.

A-huh! So we need to move towards a sustained discussion by silencing anybody who disagrees with the left.

Still, it's a perfect example of Liberal Turettes, the strange syndrome where leftists suddenly blurt out the truth about what they really believe. Whenever sane people hear liberal arguments advanced, they're naturally appalled, hence why the left's only hope of winning the debate is to silence the opposition before hand.

Politicians Telling Us Who They Are

So now we know: our elected representatives are a foul-mouthed collection of thugs. All of which means....

No, wait: Mr Liberal would like to point out it's just a tiny minority who don't represent the vast majority of peace-loving MPs. Really? If these people are just an unrepresentative fringe, why are their colleagues so reluctant to discipline, or even name, them? These guys are public servants, using their working hours to scream abuse at near-minimum wage public servants in a public building. If ever there was a right to know, this is it. Seems like the average MP is plenty comfortable with thuggery, after all.

But there's something deeper going on here. This all supports Canadian writer Kathy Shaidle's theory that PC is Class War by other means. For years, we've had to put up with finger-wagging lectures from our self-appointed betters about insensitive language - even in the most absurd of contexts. PC witch hunts have wrecked careers and wasted billions of pounds, but now members in good standing of the chattering classes are on the hook, it turns out that screaming real abuse and actual threats at people is perfectly fine.

Who'd have thunk it?

You May Not Be Interested In Culture War, But Culture War Is Interested In You

True enough, this is appalling, but it'd still take a heart of stone not to laugh.

Hey, wasn't the whole point of Nu Toryism that they'd turned their back on those dullsville suburban Daily Mail.... oops, Daily Heil (geddit?) readers and their incessant whining about 'PC gone mad', just cause in new, improved Britain, you can get a gun shoved under your nose and a night in the cells on the unsubstantiated word of a race-hustling nogoodnik?

At best, Cameronism was a strategy of evasion, kicking the can down the road on any contentious issues. At worst, these people were positively sneering about anyone who suggested that the whole apparatus of political correctness was inherently totalitarian.

Now suddenly the Dear Leader has fallen foul of PC - though without being arrested as yet - and....? What's happening to the Tories now is just the super-sized version of what millions of ordinary citizens have had to deal with for years.

Shock New Report: Britain Sux!!!!!!

On the plus side, I think we can now safely say beyond a shadow of doubt that liberals hate Britain. What other interpretation is there for the reverence with which the BBC reports on this load of old pony?

Anti-British psychopaths led by a member of a foreign cult blew up British citizens, and this proves Britain sucks? Even from first principles, that'd be a stretch, but the logic on show makes 'I wouldn't start from here' sound like genius:

Al Hutchinson's report, published on Tuesday, found that by acquiescing to a deal between the government and the Catholic Church to move Fr Chesney to a parish in the Irish Republic, the Royal Ulster Constabulary was guilty of a "collusive act".

He said this had compromised the investigation and the decision "failed those who were murdered, injured or bereaved" in the bombing.

Hey, think how the bombers feel: they missed out on the chance to become Ministers of the Crown like Machine Gun McGuinness and pals.

Seriously, let's check the scorecard here: police follow the lead of the elected government in 1972 and go easy on Father O'Semtex = Bad Pigs! Headcases holding public office right now = hooray for the peace process!

Apparently, there's appeasement and there's appeasement!

Meanwhile, liberals supported the IRA all the while it was murdering civilians, but now it's all moot, they claim what they actually meant was 'let justice be done though the heavens fall'.

For further evidence of humbuggery, consider the BBC's description of Sinn Fein as 'the political party closely identified with the IRA'. That's how the BBC describes them right now. In 1972 the police were under political pressure and dealing with a background of sectarian lunacy, what's the BBC's excuse?

Indeed, if there're any parallels between 1972 and modern life, they lie mainly with the BBC's determination to duck the tough questions.

All of which leads to the wider issue: for years the left in general, and the BBC in particular, depicted Ulster Unionists as crazed bigots with some wacky, irrational fear of Irish Catholicism. Now we know the truth: the Catholic Church in Ireland was exactly what the Unionists said it was. True, the bowler hat thing is kind of weird, and the Pope probably isn't the Anti-Christ after all, but objecting to being ruled by people who think True Christianity means murder and ethnic cleansing, well, that used to be what the Left claimed to stand for.

But that was in the old days, before the Left was born again and liberals learned to accept the joy of hating Britain into their lives.

More on the Ground Zero Victory Mosque

This is exactly right:

It would never even occur to me, or any decent person, to erect a Museum of American Achievements in Aviation in Hiroshima.

This is not a joke -- I am not saying a museum celebrating the bomb. I am saying a museum that does exactly as I said -- notes American achievements in aviation. Not the Enola Gay, but the Wright Brothers, etc.

The museum I am talking about, hypothetically, would not be baiting, nor celebratory of the bomb, in the least. It would just be a museum of American advancements in aviation.

But of course no sentient being could possibly fail to see how Japanese would take it as a direct provocation, and a nasty reminder of the bomb that fell on Hiroshima 6 August 1945.

And if I were so stupid, tasteless, and Asperger's-afflicted to have suggested such a museum in the first place, if Japanese then told me "That brings up horrifying memories," I wouldn't then arrogantly double-down and begin explaining to them how intolerant they're being, how irrational they're being, how unfair to my enthusiasm for American airpower they're being.

All of which set me think about respected documentary maker and marathon runner Michael Moore.

Hey, wasn't fatty hailed as a hero after slamming Charlton Heston for holding a supposedly triumphalist NRA rally in Colorado soon after Columbine? Why, yes, and never mind that state law required the NRA to hold an annual meeting and that the whole 'rally' thing was kind of.... Mooresque.

BBC Reveals How Wimminz Won The War

BBC Breakfast (motto: 'have some stupid on your cornflakes') has just run a feature on the 'hidden' story of the Battle of Britain. Brace yourselves: it turns out that it wasn't just about fighters, there was a whole radar and reporting network too!

Apparently, 'hidden' in Beebland means you actually have to open the book, not just look at the nice picture of the Spitfire on the cover. Seriously, who is this guy, the one who knew all about the relative turning circle of the Hurricane vs the 109, but didn't know the fighters were being guided by radio rather than, say, using sniffer dogs tied to the fuselage?

Needless to say, the only thing 'hidden' in the report - and barely at that - was the BBC's agenda. See, the thing is that most of the radar operators, and plotters, were members of the non-reversing community. That was the whole point of it all: women played a role in the battle too - just like every history of the battle makes clear.

This is the other thing about the BBC's crappy reporting. Not only is the bias bad in and off itself, it also blinds them to actual points. It is genuinely interesting to hear from a - still lifey - 100 year old veteran plotter, and there is a serious point here about how the real difference wasn't Britain's technically meh radar, so much as that it integrated with a purpose-designed home defence system. But no: chicks fought too, that's all you need to know.

Projection, Much?

Well said, Sir! Plus who's the Uncle Tom anyway? An MP who's risen to be a minister while still eating loads of pies, or a journalist who lives in Richmond, but gets paid to go into London and appear on TV, dressed in a Magpies shirt, while drinking a bottle of dog and talking about gan dan the toon?

Anyway, what does it say about the BBC that when they need a Northerner, they hire the Al Jolson of Surrey? Nothing we didn't already know!

If It Wasn't For Sneer Quotes, Some People Would Have No Way To Communicate

Heh. Timing is everything. A drive-by commentor on this post was mega, double, enraged by my criticism of libertarians: why, didn't I know, libertarians were totally super critical of liberal pandering to thugs? Then, wouldcha'believe it, Samizdata commented, apparently approvingly, on Alex Massie's Allahawful pay-no-attention-to-the-jihadist-behind-the-curtain article.

About Massie's article no more need be said than to repeat my original point: when exactly did we decide that putting sneer quotes round words counts as an actual argument? Equally though, I'm wondering whether those of us on the right might not have been suckered in to arguing over the minutiae with professional hair splitters like Massie when the honking great elephant in the room is THEY WANT TO BUILD A MOSQUE AT GROUND ZERO!!!!

I'm thinking that the whole 'wanting to build a mosque at site of a brutal Islamic terror attack' pretty much kills the 'moderate' thing stone dead. Still, for anyone still struggling with the whole concept, gay Chicago democrats explain it better than most of Britain's Certified Rightists.

Geeks: This Is Why We Don't Trust You (2)

Just as with MP's expenses, I'm still waiting for the slip of the keyboard that inadvertently gives a much lower figure than expected.

Geeks: This Is Why We Don't Trust You (1)

The New Scientist has denounced Coaltion education policy, more specifically....

No, guess.

You'll never get it, it's.....

This.

Of course, you do have to have a certain grudging respect for their adaptability. Leftists have moved smoothly from denouncing the National Curriculum for stifling their creativity, maaaaaan to complaining about a new Dark Age just as soon as the Tories came out against it.

Guess that means Mrs T was right all along, hey geeks?

Meanwhile, in so far as the charge is that absent a gun to their head, most teachers will go with any old crap, doesn't that suggest the geeks should be taking it up with their fellow leftists rather the government?

Naomi Campbell: The Only Black Liberals Ever Wanted To Jail

I have only three questions:

1/ How did the hell did we get in a situation where a freak show collection of unelected tranzi tossers could demand freeborn British citizens abase themselves before their crappy tribunals?

2/ Are celebs going to be more or less likely to take part in charidee events in future knowing that if they do, they risk being hauled before a kangaroo court years after the fact?

3/ If Charles Taylor really is that bad, what does it say about St Nelson of Mandela that he invited him to stop by?

.....

Thena again, maybe Naomi got off lightly getting a few rocks - I hear Nelly and his pals usually go with the whole necklace.

Da Moreonz Wuz Rite

On the plus side, I guess we now know why the Legal-Welfare complex was so anxious to stop anyone reporting on the case of John Venables, the completely rehabilitated murderer now back in jail.

Yes, indeed: Venables has gone down for nonceitude, and plenty of would-be emperors are facing a charge of indecent exposure.

Hell, even after Venables got picked up and the story of his drug-fuelled odyssey of violence started to leak out, our betters were busily explaining how, while they found these allegations 'troubling', one should resist the temptation to be seduced by the partial and subjective reporting of the so-called 'tabloids' into somehow questioning the carefully-calibrated process of...

GUILTY!

The results are in, and it turns out that the tabloid-reading, coupon-clipping, Ford-driving, Tesco-shopping, chip eating, TV watching, semi-owned-on-a-mortgage-dwelling scum were right. 100%, take it the bank, straight in the x-ring, bang on. Our self-appointed betters? Not so much.

All of which raises a philosophical question: if all the alleged super-geniuses were wrong, in what sense are they actually smart? Isn't superior cerebral functioning meant to prevent you talking rubbish?

Then again, there was always an essential tautology in their arguments: if you believed in the rehab industry, you were clearly super-smart, because only super-smart people could understand why the rehab industry was worth supporting.

Ah huh!

Now, in a carefully-controlled experiment, Certified Liberal Big Brains were given a metaphorical, and indeed literal, blank cheque to rehabilitate a loveable scallywag, and it all went a bit Pete Tong. Then they lied about it for years on end, claiming Brer John was both being closely monitored and under tight parole conditions - neither of which can possibly be true in the light of his ability to indulge in a consequence-free, coked-up brawlathon.

Indeed, the readiness of liberals to proclaim their faith in rehab, even absent any actual scientific basis, confirms what we always knew: liberalism really is a Godless cult.

All of which throws new light on liberal criticism of real religion. Transmutation might sound a little strange, but it's no sillier than maintaining that a convicted killer who gets out of his face on drugs and brawls his way round the one city he's banned from, is actually a pillar of the community. More to the point though, I guess it wraps it up for the whole 'paedo priests' thing.

The charge against the Catholic Church is that instead of punishing pervert priests they preferred to send them to therapy, then move them to a different parish where they could strike again. Sound familiar?

Of course, there is one obvious difference: in one case therapy was based on a load of superstitious nonsense, in the other it was based on Christianity. Then there's the other thing: at least the Church didn't announce that any pervert priests it moved where obviously completely cured and anyone who said otherwise was clearly some kind of subhuman monkey.

And let's not forget the other unlovely member of the hipster's pantomime cow. Yes, indeed: libertarians claim people should hire their own air force, crack should be available over the counter and the Royal Mail is part of a conspiracy to get people used to state employees intruding on their property. Meanwhile, state employees bleed the tax payer dry to provide bogus therapies, release dangerous lunatics out onto the streets, then lie about it for years?

Nope, nothing of interest there.

Consistent libertarians might claim it says something about the untrustworthy nature of state employees operating behind closed doors, but that would means rubbing ideological shoulders with the proles. Nope, if it came to a choice between opposition to statism and class loyalty to their fellow elitists, that was never going to be a tough one for libertarians.

The bottom line is that this is issue is the perfect microcosm of the divide in modern politics. For years the right - the real right - has allowed liberals to cast this as a debate between the unenlightened rabble and the sofiticayted elite. We were assured that the ability to put sneer quotes around words like 'evil' was, in and of itself, a brilliant argument. Meanwhile, to suggest that some things really were beyond the pale was evidence of near-retardation.

The point is not just that the right was right - these days, that pretty much goes without saying - it's that the left wasn't just wrong, their whole claim to intellectual supremacy was based on pseudo-scientific drivel and outright fraud. Liberalism is Scientology without Tom Cruise.

Battle of Britain Memorial Flight Welcomes Newest Member

Atheists: Still Desperatly Seeking Relevance

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.........

I'd put it all down to Daddy issues, except for the amusing bit at the end. Yes, indeed, there's nowt so behind the times as the avant garde.

This Is Being A Poodle

Like I keep saying, The Dave will always find new ways to nauseate.

At least when the usual suspects accused Tony Blair of being a poodle, it was over actual policy. Blair, like Bush, believed there was no possibility of long-term security as long as the Middle East was allowed to remain a cesspit, hence his support for invading Iraq.

Meanwhile, a car load of Senators demand the Head of Her Majesty's Government presents himself like a schoolboy going to the headmaster's office and he folds like a row of tents. Odds of M. Sarkozy or Frau Merkel turning up for a meeting with the MPs for Cornwall? More or less than the chances of the whole county breaking off Devon and drifting to Spain?

That's what hacks me off so much about this guy. It's not just that individual policies are insane, it's that his whole worldview is a train wreck. What does it say about him that he can't see something fundamentally wrong with the idea of a British PM submitting to an inquisition by hack politicians from a foreign land?

Today's Deep Thought

If liberals treated criminals like they treat conservatives, and vice versa, the country would be a lot better off.

And Talking Of The BBC...

Haven't they done well to get a whole series called 'How To Beat Tough Times' completed and on air in such a short time considering that three months ago they were predicting a massive upturn any minute?

Next up: the BBC discovers homelessness

As I Was Saying...

Now Lord Taylor has been charged, surely that apology from the BBC can only be a matter of time?

About That 'Tone' Thing...

Following on from the post below, one of the stupidest excuses for liberal thuggery is that, gosh darn it, they're all in favour of robust political debate, but they just prefer a civilised tone.

Kathy Shaidle drives a stake right through the heart of that idiocy here:

Finally, having run out of counter-"facts", sarcastic liberal now objects to your "tone."

You ask if one recites pi to the 50,000th decimal place without error, but does so in a Mickey Mouse voice, if that renders said recitation inaccurate.

Triumph Of The Shrill

As I understand the basics of the John Gaunt case, he compared a member of our ruling class to a Nazi, then got forced out of his job by a state body.

So no Nazi overtones there at all then.

Personally, I think we dodged a bullet. If calling them Nazis means they use the power of the state to hound you out of your job, think what they do when you call them perverts?

But what are the odds, hey? We've had eight years of BushChimpler slurs but with the Obamamessiah in the White House and Useless Dave in No 10, liberals are suddenly against harsh language. Can't we all just get along?

Well, no, actually. Consider the actual casus belli here: Councillor Heinrich's bonkers idea of keeping kids in care just to make some anti-smoking point. This isn't even a case of either/or. In contrast to the theoretical risks of passive smoking, the lousy outcomes for kids in care are a fact. Kids are having their lives blighted just because some spooky wierdos don't dig fags. This is the type of thing that's supposed to enrage decent people.

Still, now we have the High Court's verdict that's it's unreasonable to call Michael Stark 'ignorant', we have to.... well, actually this is the Blogosphere, so we can say what we mean, unlike the fearless MSM, which has fearlessly grovelled to the thugs at OFCOM. We can say that Councillor Michael Stark is a vicious little rat and a bully, a fascist dolt who's readiness to resort to thuggery is a testament to the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of his ideas. In so far as he supports using some of the most vulnerable people in society as sock puppets in his stupid crusade, he is a sicko, little deviant who's unfit to be trusted with the keys to the stationary cupboard, far less the fate of young children. 'Ignorant' is unfair only in so far as it suggest his problem is stupidity rather than depravity. On the contrary, his determination to choke off the public debate speaks to a man under no illustrations about the utter failure of his twisted ideology in the marketplace of ideas.

In fact, the only people worse than Herr Stark are the MSM drones who cravenly accept the right of agents of the state to do all but burst through the studio doors shouting 'Satire Squad! Step away from the mike!'..... all the while lamenting that their crappy, dull, government-approved stations are failing.

Once you have High Court Judges picking through commentary and deciding what's lawful and what's 'undirected abuse', the whole 'free speech' thing is DOA. You can't have worthwhile political commentary if everyone's looking over their shoulder for Big Government to suddenly leap out and announce that no one expects the OFCOM Inquisition (but, since we're on the subject of undirected abuse, what was the actual point of Jerry Springer: The Opera)?

Actually, all this is still giving liberals too much credit. This is an exercise in simple thuggery, and some of them aren't even trying to hide it: check it out.

Yes, indeed: state harassment of right-wing commentators is a good thing because it restricts right-wing commentary. A-huh!

All of which proves that, as usual, I am right: liberalism can only succeed by force or fraud.