Atrocity Story Goes Bad

The Telegraph is shocked - shocked! - to find out that bank underwriters are taking customer's outgoings into account when calculating how much they can borrow. This would never have happended when that nice Scottish guy was PM.

Unfortunately, even the Telegraph commentors aren't daft enough to fall for this. Read and enjoy the smell of jorno flambé.

Because Liberals Say So

Surely the real question here is why it's barbaric and stupid to believe a therapist can stop a man being attracted to other men, but also barbaric and stupid to believe that a therapist cannot stop a man being attracted to children?

Tungsten Carbide Drills

I can't be the only one who read about the Yazzmonster's heartrending article on the horrors of life as a jounrno-luvvie and instantly thought of this.

But Does Sarah Palin Understand The Offside Rule?

The results are in for the contest to find the stupidest comments about the Andy Gray affair and - shockingly - it's been a clean sweep for the Daily Mail.

Heading up the 'Amateur' category is a thought-provoking article by Kelly Smith - the thought being 'who the hell is Kelly Smith'? The answer apparently is someone who played girl-football or, as she modestly puts it, 'one of the best players in the world'.

Heh. Think that one over. She's one of the best players in the world, providing you exclude the hundreds of millions of better players who are the wrong sex. Her entire claim to fame is that she can compete successfully when men aren't allowed to compete at all, but she's complaining that men aren't welcoming enough to chicks who want to invade the men's game? Hello? I make that Self-awareness 0 Irony 5.

Still, in a sad echo of her sporting career, Kelly's lunacy is completely outshone by a male professional. Yep, proving once again you can take the man out the Guardian, but can't stop him being a huge mangina, Martin Samuels offers this:

This is Karren Brady's point about women being defined solely by gender in football. Nobody would link all male referees in the same way. If Gray held a dim view of Mike Riley, for instance, he would not have presumed the same of Mike Dean, purely because he was also a man called Mike.

Huh? I liked these guys better when they just called everyone Hitler. As it is, this analogy doesn't even make sense on its own terms.

There's no policy to rush anyone called 'Mike' straight up the ladder, we're not being constantly asked to subsidise a whole parallel world of Mike-only leagues, Mike Development Officers and the like, and you can criticise 'Wall Street II' without Michael Portillo demanding you be fired and Michael Buble writing a protest song.

Other than that, it's a perfect fit.

Fat Martin's point is just a more slippery version of the one from Kelly the Fantasist. Women officials will start with a three goal lead, but we all have to congratulate them on scoring a hatrick.

But that's not the best of it. No, as befits a true professional, Mart manages to leave Kelly in the dust and reach whole new heights of humbuggery. Yes, indeed: the Sexist-Finder General just happens to be the same guy who uses bogus quotes to try and smear a real woman of achievement as a bimbo.

Lord Taylor Convicted, BBC Still At Large

And we're still waiting for that apology.

Gravitas

Stop refusing to take her seriously you sexist pigs!

That Ferry Has Already Sailed Jenny........

Via Julie, we find out that leftists in Liverpool are playing the Scouse nationalism card.

Hey, it's like they've never heard of Luciana Berger. Who she? The beyond Cameronesque rich kid who was parachuted into a Liverpool constituency despite not knowing much of anything about the place she supposedly represents - although, on the plus side, her defence that you can't ask a girl a football question at least means Andy Gray's got one supporter in the house.

In fact, she hadn't even been elected before she started giving the finger to the Scouse trash - and folks like Jenny sucked it up and said 'please sir, can I have some more'?

Pretty much the defining feature of a proud and self-confident peoples is that they don't accept being treated as latter-day rotten boroughs by rich families in the capital. In so far as Jenny and pals have no issues with this, they're in no position to lecture anyone else about pride.

....

Oh, and by the way, here's a question for Jenny and the rest of her 'proud Scouser' friends: if the Army was full of people from Hampstead and Dibden Purlieu, would the Guardian still be as keen on its 'All War Crimes, All The Time' coverage?

Sarah Palin: Referee

Hey, just think of those liberal heads exploding!

As I understand it, abortion is a purely personal matter, but taping the private conversations of two guys is perfectly fine. I guess Andy Coulson is in the clear then, after all. On the plus side, maybe if we can convince liberals that Osama Bin Laden works for Sky Sports, they'll let us tap Jihadist communications.

If nothing else though, these two guys have done a bang up job of exposing the humbuggery of the whole Grrrrl Power movement. Up until two minutes ago Karen Brady was the Boadicea of Business. Now suddenly she's a victim.

Then there's the twelve year old referee herself. She got a decision right - see, she is a heroine after all. Also, the Titanic reached its first port of call on schedule.

Call me harsh, but I'm wondering what the reaction would be if we were talking about a 25 year old Premiership official called, say, Julian D'Arcy Cameron, or Rupert Clegg? The same folks defending Referee Barbie would be going ape. Meanwhile, in so far as dad and his lad going to a Premiership match now sets dad back the best part of a hundred pound, can the FA at least start issuing a list of which matches will be referred by greenhorn lesbian Eskimos and which by actual officials?

Daily Mash>Telegraph Blogger

Telegraph blogger James Kirkup makes a good point - and by 'good' I mean 'moronic' - when he points out that it would not be fair to say to say the same things about Christians that people say about Muslims.

Yes, indeed. And 'Jaws' would have been a lot sillier if it had featured a penguin instead of a great white shark. Words have actual meanings.

Hell, even a satire site does better than this. In fact, they make a point many have missed:

Tom Logan, professor of complicated issues at Reading University, said: "Baroness Warsi may say these are cultural rather than religious values and these countries are behaving in a way that is not truly muslim. But they say they are and it's reasonable to assume they know as much about Islam as she does.

Hey, maybe we should try claiming we are Islamophobic, but only that other Islam, the one with all the murders.

"When someone says 'it's okay, they're not very muslim' they're not saying 'it's okay, they'll have a sneaky glass of cider' they're saying 'it's okay, they're not very supportive of imprisoning women who have been raped'.

"A lot of people have a problem with rape victims being jailed, particularly on religious grounds. That doesn't make you a Nazi. It actually makes you the opposite of a Nazi."

When Islam claims that it goes dark at night becuase the Sun goes into a muddy puddle at the end of the world, that's either right or wrong. Let's spin it round: why don't people like Kirkup try applying the same scepticism to the Religion of Muddy Pools that they do to Christianity?

Hotel California York

You can check out, but you can never leave...

Seriously, though: three murderers on the staff at a single hotel? Who knew CSI was so true to life?

I'm not sure about their new slogan though: 'Dead and Breakfast'

How about 'the only hotel with 24 hour doom service'?

'Neckbreak Hotel'?

I'm guessing that when you go to reception, they don't give you a room key, they give you a toe tag.

Still, York Travelodge has performed one useful social function, beside providing a one-stop shop for homicides: they've neatly exposed everything feminists have ever said as a lie. Companies are biased against women, violence against women isn't taken seriously enough and feminism only means they want equality?

Strangely enough, that isn't the 'Crossbow Cannibal' behind the bar.

Nope, there's no male equivalent to this 'sob sister' carrying of water for murderous trash. This isn't just the notorious 'pussy pass' in action. This is full-on misandry. Men have been murdered, but anyone who thinks being a homicidal loon would tend to make someone unsuitable for a job in the hospitality industry, is a little whiner who should just 'man up'.

Then there's the other thing: this also exposes the truly demented nature of modern liberalism. They don't just want to release savages on the streets, they want to prevent anyone calling them what they are. The left treats a prison sentence as an all-purpose act of absolution. The felons have accepted the state into their lives and been reborn again as upright citizens (until next time).

In so far as the left's position is to all intents and purposes the same as they allege the Cathloic Church applied to paedophile priests, who can now seriously doubt that liberalism is a religion?

Quote of the Day

And talking of the worthless rich, here's Big Hollywood's John Nolte on the cliche that just won't die:

Without the patronizing mantra of “quiet desperation,” what does the left have? Nothing. Only the realization that their own conformity and inability to feel and express joy is their own fault and not someone else’s. Specifically not the fault of an American way of life that for two hundred years has disproved and laughed in the face of the left’s arrogant belief in their own superiority.

The Rich Are Different

Curiously, despite the conviction of Fireman Ed aka The Other Rich Marxist Twerp Called Ed, the MSM has not spent the day reminding us about every time a Labour MP referred to 'fighting fire with fire'.

Of course, this case is difficult for the usual suspects for other reasons. They've spent years telling us poverty causes crime, but now it turns out that it's poor little rich kids who are the biggest victims of all. How else to explain the court's desperate bending over backwards to avoid the obvious?

[Judge Geoffrey Rivlin QC] also praised the teenager's mother for encouraging him to give himself up to police after he was pictured by media organisations during the rioting.

Yes, indeed: after having his picture plastered over every newstand in the country for five days, she encouraged him to turn himself in, as opposed to disappearing into Sherwood Forest and living off nuts and berries, presumably.

A vote of thanks also to his class mates, teachers and fellow residents of the Dibden Purlieu millionaire's sink estate, all of who were perfectly happy to spend five days not reporting that they had a thug in their midst. We're just lucky Dibden Purlieu isn't in Liverpool, otherwise Richard Littlejohn would get his next 15 columns out of this case.

Not that I want to inject a class war theme into this - I'll leave that to the judge:

The judge said: "It is deeply regrettable, indeed a shocking thing, for a court to have sentence a young man such as you to a substantial term of custody.

It's shocking to sentence a violent thug to custody? Isn't that kind of the point of the whole 'courts' thing? And no, it's not a substantial term by any kind of historic or global standard.

The judge also said he took into account the defendant's age, his guilty plea at the earliest opportunity and the fact that he had no previous convictions.

Yes, he pleaded guilty after his crime was shown live on national TV.

I'm more sympathetic to the age thing though. After all, there's plenty of 18 year olds so juvenile and irresponsible, they're still busy playing in the sand pit.

I guess we need to update that scorecard again: abortion without parental notification is fine for 12 year olds, but 18 is too young to be held responsible for their actions? Best stop them doing anything dangerous like drinking, driving or voting then, right? Or, at least, just the ones who don't realise that throwing things off a tall building 'potentially endangered people' (although the fact this guy was hoping to go to Uni in the first place does kind of suggest that funding isn't the biggest problem in Academia right now).

And if that's not enough, there's this:

Before sentencing, the judge retired for 15 minutes and Woollard, who has 10 GCSEs, was given a chance to speak to his relatives.

They probably do the same in Newcastle Crown Court, right? Right after they've heard the guilty party explain that he wasn't aiming a bottle at someone's head, he was aiming it with their head.

All of which is by way of saying enough about the Underclass already. Not that we don't have a barrel load of chav scum, but the fish rots from the head. As long as folks like the repulsive Woolard clan, people who've had every advantage in life, are prepared to try and cheat justice, and the courts are prepared to let them, why should anyone else respect the law?

Jack Straw Shoots Congresswoman

See, this is exactly why you need to keep your scorecard up to date: jovial Jack Straw suggests there may be a problem with the 'Pakistani community' and their attitudes to girls who are not-so-Pakistani but even that exercise in euphemism can't stop the left howling and whining (which at least provides us with a nice contrast to their deafening silence every time one of these cases gets uncovered).

Meanwhile, a Democrat Congresswoman gets shot and it's all Sarah Palin's fault.

So there you have it: Sarah Palin's harsh rhetoric (meaning: she wants to win elections) drives people to murder, but the Koran's constant references to the degenerate nature of the Infidel? Just a little over-exuberance by Allah.

Of course, there is the fact that while Sarah's never shot anyone, while Mohammed.....

Cops Gone Wild, Civil Liberties Freaks Gone To Sleep

Like the lady says, it's a good job she wasn't a bloke.

Let's check the scorecard here: the police are trying to blackmail a legitimate news organisation, while whining about 'unfair, naive and irresponsible reporting', meanwhile they're sending out letters accusing innocent citizens of kerb crawling.

This is the perfect example of the moral bankruptcy of both the human rights industry and Cameronism.

It should hardly need to be stated - except it passed most libertarians by - that if the Philosopher Kings on the bench can create absurd new rights at a stroke, they can just as easily sweep aside real ones. This is how we ended up with a country infested with lawyers, but where the police can still demand this:

It informed the car’s owner that her Volvo estate had been sighted by officers and added that officers needed to speak to her as soon as possible to ‘confirm that you have not committed any offences.’

...At which point the ghost of Matthew Hopkins has just slapped himself atop the head shouting 'why didn't I think of that'?

And then there's The Dave....

Hey, we were told that Culture War was passé, so ten minutes ago, squaresville. The Dave would ascend the throne and the lion would lie down the lamb, and with one bound Jack would be free.

Oops.

The Dave is in Number Ten, but staggeringly enough, it turns out the loonies have not in fact folded their tents and retired to Tuscany. Nope, leftist fanatics are still using public services to impose their own crazy agenda, after all. Guess we do need to fight the culture war after all.

Quote of the Day

A long one, since the hipsters need to have things spelled out to them:

We’ve been told for years that suicide bombers who blow themselves up in civilian areas in Israel are “freedom fighters struggling against Israeli occupation.” Does that mean that this Muslim blew himself up to protest against the Swedish occupation of Stockholm?

Sweden has no colonial history, at least not outside of northern Europe. It is a self-appointed champion of Third World countries and has virtually surrendered its third-largest city to immigrant mobs and substantial chunks of other cities, too. Swedish authorities are using the most extreme methods imaginable to suppress any dissent among the native people, who are being ethnically cleansed from their own land. The authorities always side with immigrants against the natives in the case of conflict. Muslims in Sweden can harass the natives as much as they want to and have access to all kinds of welfare goodies and a much higher standard of living than they would have in their own countries. In short, they have no imaginable, rational reason to complain, yet they still blow themselves up.

In Sweden, all the traditional excuses employed by Multiculturalists and Leftists throughout the Western world, fail. This leaves just one possible explanation, the only one never mentioned in Western mainstream media: That Muslims and their culture are fundamentally incompatible with our values and societies.

The Elite In Retreat

Can't say I'm as worried as this guy by the whole nudge thing, and not becuase I don't agree that it is plenty Orwellian. Try this quote for nudge in a nutshell:

By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness

Kablooey!

True, on paper, a state pouring resources into attempted mind control is a terrifying prospect, but in reality..... Charlie Gilmour!

Seriously, check out one of the flagship ideas: musical steps. Run to the hills everybody!

Of course, none of this is to minimise the danger, but it's not all bad news. After 13 years of frontal attack, these people are now admitting that they can't win in the marketplace of ideas and have to lie about what they believe. It's just further proof that liberalism can only ever advance by force or fraud.

Beeboid Baffled: Govt Refuses To Investigate Fantasy Screw-Ups

Liberals claim to be outraged! at the bank bailouts, but it always seems to be the ones that got away that really hack them off.

Take Beeboid Robert Preston and his attempts to explain how RBS's implosion means Barclays's management should be up for a public flogging.

Yep, you haven't missed something, his argument really is that stupid: if Barclays hadn't dropped out of the bidding for ABN, they might have paid too much for it, and that might have run down their cash reserves, if they hadn't been offering mainly shares instead of cash.

Nevertheless, in a stunning rebuttal to all that talk of 'liberal fascism', Preston still thinks a private business should be called to account for doing what it didn't actually do in the first place:

However the FSA has neither the time nor the powers to extract the relevant testimony from Barclays. So we won't get it.

But how about that Balen Report anyway? Any chance of extracting testimony about that? Especially since, unlike Barclays, the BBC really does take billions of pounds of public money.

Note too how the multiple layers of fact checking managed to leave out the bit about Barclays offering shares instead of cash in his first post - and note the typically classless way Preston acknowledges the libel, doubtless after a call from m'learned friends:

PS. Barclays (no surprise here) is keen for me to point out that the value of its offer for ABN was significantly lower than that made by the RBS consortium. And Barclays was mainly offering shares, rather than precious cash. So its board behaved less recklessly than RBS's.

But Barclays does not dispute that it should probably say a little prayer of thanks more-or-less every waking minute that it did not end up as the owner of ABN.

So, his report was perfectly accurate, except for the factual bits. It's the unique way they're funded, y'know....

Trembling in the Shadow of Hampstead

And talking of spending money on rubbish, there's a nice summation of Cameron's utter failure to follow through on any cuts here.

It's inevitable though, I suppose, keep spinning long enough and all you'll end up with is a whole bunch of U-turns.

Re: this specific case, you have to admire the brass neck of the left. These people have spent years telling that the whole 'civilisation' thing is a eurocentric concept and who are we to say that the moon landing is necessarily more of an achievement than the Aztec nose flute? The government takes the IV out of the publishing industry's backside and suddenly it turns out these people have no problem defining the difference between civilisation and barbarism after all. Honour killing they're not sure about, but turning the free money tap off? That's just like the Holocaust (but not bad enough for them to pay for it themselves).

There's the other aspect to all this too. Philip Pullman? Never mind the humbuggery implicit in a best selling author with a Hollywood movie behind him demanding that janitors and bar maids be taxed to pay for his industry to produce more garbage, here's a guy who's a fully signed up Dawkette. He hates the idea that Christian taxpayers can send their kids to a state school that reflects their beliefs, but taxpayers on the hook to support his exercises in adolescent smugitude? Who could possibly object to that?

Personally, I'd Go For 'Stop Spending Like A Drunken Sailor With A Day To Live'

Another reason not to elect rich people: they have no idea how money works.

Osbourne claims the only alternative to the VAT rise was to raise income tax or NI. Really? Mind you, that's still better than Red Ed's position that raising VAT takes money out of the economy but so does cutting public spending. Apparently, public spending is paid for by the Tax Fairy.

If Only The Men of No Appearance Liked Poetry....

Given that we now know just about everything about the increasingly less suspicious suspect in the Joanne Yates case, even down to his taste in literature, at least that's pretty much killed off the excuse that the law forces the MSM to produce crime reports stripped of any mention of actual criminals.

Hey, if it's legal to have Professor Louis D'Crus on to talk about how the suspect's taste in fine wine makes him just like Harold Shipman, I think the MSM can stretch to mentioning a few details about a guy who guns down a cop in front of twenty witnesses.