At Least Astrologers Don't Have A Body Count

It's another great day for the Rehab Industry:

A serial rapist who tied his girlfriend's housemate to a bed before killing her and dismembering her body was today sentenced to serve at least 37 years in prison...

The court heard how Sharp was allowed back on to the streets after multiple convictions for sex crimes stretching back 30 years, despite telling parole officers he fantasised about raping and killing women.

Oh, what does he know? He's probably just another tabloid-reading goon who didn't even go to Oxbridge.

Seriously though, if even the predator himself admitting to planning his next crime doesn't ring any alarm bells, this does kind of blow the whole 'carefully monitored'  thing out of the water. If nothing else, I think we need a benchmark here, we need to be told just what would have made Dr Julian Rubbish and his pals act.

Naaah. Just kidding. Nothing would have made these guys sound the alarm. It's the fundamental calculus of the Rehab Industry. They claim to be 100% successful and when an inconvenient body or two turn up, they go the class war route and try to claim all their critics are lager-poisoned Jeremy Kyle viewers who just don't appreciate the subtle genius required to consistently free maniacs to strike again.

There is no better measure of how utterly liberalism has triumphed over socialism than that such a frank appeal to snobbery is considered a winning argument for the left.

A vote of thanks too for the feminists. They're outraged that anyone would suggest that getting wasted then walking through the city alone at 2:00 AM isn't such a great move, but the courts setting perverts loose to strike again?

Cat got you tongue, ladies?

Truly, they are the Stepford Wives of the left.

Chickens, Roost

Open Borders: how that's working out for you, m'lud?

The jury reached deadlock after sending the judge three separate notes containing 10 questions which suggested they were “struggling” with the most “basic concept” of trial by jury.

They included a question about whether they could reach a verdict based on something which was not presented in court, and whether the defendant’s “religious conviction” to follow her wedding vows of obeying her then husband, Chris Huhne, would be reason enough to acquit her of committing a crime with him.

Mr Justice Sweeney said he had “never come across” anything like the jury’s response in nearly 30 years of working in criminal courts.

Gosh, it's almost like the proper functioning of an advanced democracy requires that the citizenry hold a common set of assumptions about how society works.... kind of like how those fascists on the right always said it did.

It's Like 'Cash In The Attic' Meets '1984'

I want to say something suitably acidic about Vince Cable's plan to tax elderly widows for the price of their wedding rings, but it's just too evil to do it justice, so instead here's a strangely apporpiate clip.

Compare & Contrast: New Dave Order Edition

Mentioning that the National Socialist German Workers Party was, in fact, just a little socialist? Fired!

Praising a terrorist? Carry on!
 

Of course there are differences. One of them was talking about a mad man who ranted about how God commanded him to crush the aliens polluting his sacred land, while the other was talking about Hitler.

Still, the comparison is compelling. As ever though we should not let the obvious foulness of the Cameroonian position blind us to the more profound foulness of it all. When exactly did conservatives start talking fondly of 'conviction politicians'? When did that get to be a good thing?

The whole point about conservatism is scepticism about government in general and politicians with big ideas in particular. When actual conservatives cite the guy ranting about how Ulster Protestants are alien transplants who deserve no rights, they mean it as an example of why politicians can't be trusted.

It Never Ends

So why do people call them 'Continuity New Labour' anyway?

The Coalition’s advisors on school food said head teachers should prevent pupils bringing their own lunches into school – and ban them from visiting fast food outlets – amid continuing fears over the state of children’s diets.

Nice, huh? The state can't say whether two parents are better than one, but it can tell you what your kids are allowed to eat. And then there's this:

It was claimed that the move would effectively force parents to pay for school dinners – allowing staff to spend more money upgrading kitchens and generating healthy canteen food.

Who said 'stealth tax'? Mind you, the whole idea of forcing people who don't want state-approved meals to pay for them anyway seems vaguely familiar somehow....

Speaking to The Sunday Times, Mr Dimbleby, son of the broadcaster David Dimbleby, said schools should consider banning packed lunches and requiring pupils to remain on site over lunch to drive up investment in school catering services.

Suddenly it all becomes clear. May as well just go the whole hog and call it a 'Food Licence Fee'. It's an interesting philosophical question though: which side of the debate has betrayed their roots most blatantly? The British left for allowing itself to be dominated by absurdly privledged rich brat snoborexics ranting at the 'scrubbers' (Copyright: J Oliver)? Or the right for even contemplating a national policy on lunch?

Funnily enough though, while the supposed threat of the 'obesity epidemic' is serious enough to justify these people stealing your money and your liberty, it never justifies doing anything that would inconvenience the teachoids.

Of Pigs And Proms

My thoughts exactly.

Like I said in the comments, we've been this way before. Less than a decade ago, we were told that anyone who thought civil partnerships would be the camel's nose for gay marriage was clearly a tin-foil hatted Jesus Freak. Now it turns out that not supporting gay marriage is a sign you're a tin-foil hat wearing Jesus Freak. Either way, they hate you, they really hate you.

Mind you, the old Endowment Flogger does have a point. Whichever side of the conservative movement you're on, the traditionalist wing or the minimalist government wing, once you accept that marriage is whatever the government says it is this week, what can't it do?

All of which reminds me of the guy who visits a farm and sees a pig with a bunch of medals hanging round its neck and a wooden leg. He asks the farmer what's going on and the farmer tells him about all the times the pig has saved the lives of members of his family, like pulling the farmer out of slurry pits, protecting his young daughter from wild dogs and waking them up when the house catches fire. The guy says 'well, OK, that explains the medals, but what about the wooden leg'? The farmer replies 'hey, a pig like that, you're not going to eat him all at once are you'?

Message to social conservatives: you are that pig and establishment conservatives are the farmer.

On the plus side, at least social conservatism's perfect record is intact: fifty years without ever having won one.

All of which means it's time to revisit the old advice about doing the same thing and expecting different outcomes. Is there a better way? Yes, actually. There's a - possibly apocryphal - story about a US lesbian who sued her Mid-West High School to win the right to take her girlfriend to the Prom and not have to abide by the dress code. She won, of course, and on the day in question the two of them strode boldly into the Prom, doubtless dressed in matching boiler suits, followed by a pack of journos anxious to document how they 'rubbed the right's nose in diversity'.Except...

Something wasn't quite right. Band playing? Check! Decorations up? Check! Any noses to rub in diversity? Errr.... not so much.

In fact, their fellow students were all across town at a 'Not The Prom', having a whale of a time and blatantly keeping their noses unrubbed. That's the key point here. The State could demand the right for these two jerks to attend something called 'The Prom' but it couldn't breath life into it. Instead, these two were left as Queens of the Empty Room, proud holders of the right to walk round an empty gym. They'd have stuck it to The Man, if only the The Man had stuck around.

That's the secret right there. Gay marriage might be a tactical win for the forces of chaos, but it's also a sign of their strategic weakness. We've had a half a century of the Gaystapo on the rampage but in cultural terms, they're batting 0 out of 10. They're firmly mired in parody and pastiche unable to create a single lasting cultural institution of their own. Hence the desire to hijack other peoples.

So now the government has decided that gay marriage is legal. Well, just that then. It's time for the Churches to leave the Prom. They need to refuse to perform legal marriages. If - for some insane reason - Christians want to follow up their Church wedding by inviting the state to get involved in their lives they can turn up at State Registry Office 2473 some wet Wednesday when they're both off work and fill the papers out. Other than that, the Hell with it.

Nothing will let the air out of the gay marriage movement like that moment when these tools are all performing fellatio on each other on the steps of State Registry Office 2473 (take that, daddeo) and a young Christian couple in jeans ignore them as they pass by on the way to get their Offical Government Stamp of Marital Approval.

Think of it as their Marily Manson moment.

The Root of the Problem

Crivens! The Five-oh are complaining that complaints against the police are recorded even when they're self-evidently absurd.

Hmmmmmm....... you could almost say 'the process is the punishment'.

Now why does that sound familiar? JulieM dismantles this garbage, but the thing that intrigues me is this bit from Gadget's post:

Sir Robert Peel wanted us not to pander to public opinion, but to remain impartial and apply the law.

Well, yeah... maybe, but probably not. Still, if you want to go down that road, there's this too:

Above all else, an effective authority figure knows trust and accountability are paramount. Hence, Peel's most often quoted principle: The police are the public and the public are the police.

Not exactly consistent with the Gadgeteers idea of the Police arresting all and sundry at the drop of a hat while insisting that no complaints be recorded against them unless accompanied by DNA evidence and CCTV footage.....

 ... And never mind all the Gadgeteers babbling on about 'civvies', like they've just spent the morning clearing out a pair of 88s dug in on Hill 239, instead of dealing with chavs texting death threats to each other.