Say, Does Anyone Know Who George Best Played For ?

Also evil and cynical is my strange feeling of respect for the Leeds and Liverpool fans who broke wind at the canonisation of George Best.

Not that I don’t have a lot of respect for George Best. Two of my hobbies are football and heavy drinking, so naturally I respect a man who was master of both, but there’s something more going on here. Now, I’m not so worried by the slight (OK, huge) degree of whitewashing going on here. He had his genius, he had his darkness – each should stand on their own merits. Ditto, while I suspect that much of the coverage is nothing more than the product of the widespread delusion amongst persons of a certain age that everything that happened in the Sixties is a source of endless fascination to everybody in the world, it doesn’t really worry me. In fact, I’m even willing to overlook the sheer humbuggery of all these folks shocked – shocked! – at the behaviour of the fans. Hey, where were they when alleged authors were clambering over The Don’s corpse to publish books claiming Revie was a Nazi space cannibal ? How about when BoJo made his Hillsborough comments ? Hmmmm ? So what’s different this time ?

Ah yes, that’s the thing.

George Best was a Manchester United legend in every sense of the word, and the rebranding of the self-destruction of a turps-nudging wife-beater into this century’s equivalent of the death of Lord Nelson is utterly predictable. The BestFest is not some content-neutral tribute to a great sportsman, so much as continuous 24/7 propaganda on behalf of what is certainly the sleaziest corporation in British sport, and possibly in Britain itself.

That’s why I have that sneaking respect for those fans – in an era when our fearless media have done all but turned themselves into unpaid PR agents for a massive multinational, they didn’t allow themselves to be mau-maued into swallowing whole this chocolate box coverage of a thuggish mega-corporation. Was it harsh, cruel, barbaric or adjective-of-choice for them to do what they did ? Sure, but the people least qualified to criticise them are the spineless errand boys enablers in the media, ever anxious to take any opportunity to whitewash a despicable collection of amoral scumbags as some kind of loveable representation of the best in our national game.

That Nagging Feeling

Evil & cynical that I am, I couldn’t rid myself of a nagging feeling when I saw the initial reaction to the murder of a police officer in Bradford. It was certainly a terrible crime, but was it really a ‘shock’ ? Surely that word should be reserved for incidents that don’t happen with depressing regularity ? Consider, for example, the slaying of Nottingham jeweller Marion Bates.

Is there anyone in Britain who hasn’t noticed that gun crime is going through the roof ? Yet, as a corporate body – if hardly on the individual level - the Police have been prepared to join the Left in a few choruses of ‘Everything’s Coming Up Roses’. Now it’s a police officer rather than just a prole who’s been shot, suddenly these people are shouting ‘hey look, there’s an heavily-armed elephant on that table!’

That feeling has just got stronger and stronger as the week has worn on, culminating in the Police’s version of The Dance Of The Seven Veils over the identity of the suspects. I don’t think we need Sherlock Holmes to work out why. It’s all very well for police management to take out onions when discussing this case, but how seriously can you take them when it turns out they’re compromising an investigation to bury inconvenient facts ?

"Shut Up!", He Explained.

Something I’ve been meaning to write about for ages – the latest skirmish in the MMR fiasco. As I hope I’ve made clear in my previous writings, I’m both agnostic and apathetic about the actual specifics. Then again, the actual details hardly seem to matter anymore in a debate that has increasingly become regarded as the Stalingrad of the science wars.

Consider, for example, this response to an article by Melanie Phillips. Stripped of the scientist's trademark horrible wiring style, all this argument boils down to is that if you don’t spend your working day crouched over a hot microfuge, you’re not qualified to have any opinion on scientific issues. Call it the chickendork argument.

Hey -anyone know what the scientific term for ‘chutzpah’ is ? These people have hijacked the ‘chickenhawk’ argument, even while they themselves can hardly go a day without criticising the military. How come the public aren’t qualified to talk about science, but a bunch of geeky lab rats are just the people to talk to about the tactics used to winkle out enemy snipers ?

No doubt these people would justify themselves by talking about the importance of civilian oversight of the military and the like, and they’d be right, but where’s the sauce for this goose ? How come science doesn’t need such oversight ?

Of course, some will see something almost Randian in the attitude of the scientific community. Lest we forget, not only do these people gobble up around £7 billion pa of taxpayer’s cash, they’re vigorous supporters of interventionist government in every other sphere of British life – look at the average edition of New Scientist for proof of that. These people don’t mind Big Government; they just think it should be out there giving everyone else a hard time.

That’s the bottom line here. The question is not whether scientists conspired to cover up evidence of a dangerous vaccine – almost certainly not - it’s how they would have done things differently if they had. The MMR debate threw a harsh light on what the scientific community really thinks about the public, democracy and the like. What was exposed was an dysfunctional sub-culture virulently opposed to principles like accountability, transparency and responsibility (but keep sending the cash anyway).

The Great Experiment Continues.....

First Friday without having to start building up at stockpile at 10:45. But let's be careful out there - there are still dangers lurking for the unsuspecting drinker.

Racists ? I Got Your Racists Right Here!

Hard to believe, but I’m often accused of being too harsh on the L3. Can’t we all just get along ?

Well, no, not if the evidence of the Christopher Yates case is any guide. The L3 have given a masterclass in avoiding the elephant on the table. As I said before, they’ve been prepared to junk twenty years of Liberalism if that’s what it takes. Now – predictably – the judge has outed himself as yet another activist in robes, claiming that ‘evidence did not show the attack was racially motivated’. After all, they’d already ‘attacked people of all races, white, black and Asian’. A-huh.

Really, there’s so many thing wrong with that reasoning, it ain’t true. First of all, there’s the not inconsiderable point that assault!=murder. Other people may have been attacked in passing, but Mr Yates was the victim of a sustained assault that could only have led to his death. Besides what proportion of BNP thugs only assault non-whites ? Are these people really claiming that providing Mr Knuckledragger has the forethought to slap round a white guy beforehand, he can’t be found guilty of a racially-aggravated crime ? Anyway, what’s with this ‘Asian’ thing – here, more than ever, there’s a world of difference between an assault on a Sikh and an assault on a fellow Muslim.

Lest it be thought that this is a mere arid question of political posturing, even the judge admitted that had he found them guilty of a racially-aggravated assault, they’d have been looking at twice the sentence (ie 30 years – also known as ‘what they should have got anyway’). Wassdat ? I hear a squeaking in the corner. Mr Guardian Reader would like to point out that he thought Conservatives were opposed to the whole idea of ‘racially-aggravated’ crime. Well, yeah, we are opposed - exactly because of cases like this. Can anyone – anyone –seriously believe that if the races had been reversed Liberals, both on and off the bench, would be engaging in this frantic splitting of hairs to prove that the case wasn’t racial ?

What we have is exactly what the Right predicted: different classes of victim. We have an aggravating factor that only applies to ethnic victims – whites need not apply. The L3 like to yammer about ‘institutional racism’ and the like, well, here we have a situation where one ethnic group gets much higher sentences than any other group for the same type of offence. No need to call in the Witchfinder Generals of the CRE to find discrimination here.

But that isn’t even the half of it. Possibly suspecting that the public won’t swallow that Mr Yates was murdered because the assailants had, say, a phobia about people wearing glasses, the L3 have moved onto a back-up argument. The reason these three sociopaths murdered an innocent man was because they were...too darn white.

Yep – the killers had been seduced by nasty old Western culture. Needless to say, the L3 are also anxious to remind us that they eschewed their parent’s religion, lest we get any funny ideas about violence and the RoP.

Liberals have spent years arguing that only whites can be racists. Now we have a racist murder of a white man by Asians, it turns out that it’s still the white man’s fault. Our culture has corrupted these pure Muslims. So not only does this case apparently not call for any of these ‘you culpas’ Liberals are famous for when some natives murder an ethnic, but it turns out to be an argument in support of the worldview of Osama Bin Laden.

And there you have it: when natives commit racially-motivated murders it proves the British are evil, when natives are victims of racially-motivated murders it proves the British are evil. Or to put it another way, even when faced with completely opposite sets of circumstances, the L3 comes to the same conclusion about the evilness of a particular race. To borrow an Eminem-style line from the DSD: 'Will The Real Racists, Please Stand Up, Please Stand Up'

These People Are Literally Insane

Not entirely contradicting the belief that modern Liberalism has degenrated into little more than an obsessive search for victims, they’ve now located a whole new frontier for grievance – it’s...no, even I can’t make it sound any sillier than they do: ‘Homophobic bullying in primary schools is not being tackled effectively, according to a Sunderland academic.’

You can’t satirise that stuff. Honestly, it makes you feel nostalgic for the days when the only people talking about the sexuality of seven year olds were behind bars.

Outrage D'Jour

Snafu reports on a case of judicial blind eye. Funny thing is that I recall something about...ah yes, here it is: 'The definition of a 'racist incident' now adopted by all forces is 'any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person'.

Like, hello ? Yes, Mr Guardian Reader, how hilarious it is of you to point out that the victim hasn't actually said anything about it being a racial attack. Let me state that last bit again 'any other person'. In this case you could change that to 'just about any person you randomly stopped in the street' and this would still qualify as a racist killing, but suddenly Liberals have gone the other way. Now, it appears, anything short of the killers writing a book called 'We Killed A Guy Because He Was White' means Liberals will take that as an excuse to claim their motivation is some dark secret. Meanwhile, the rest of us can chalk up another great day for 'it depends....' law enforcement.

It's Just Like Christmas Eve

Levelling Down 101

In a cunning attempt to quash rumours that they exists in a parallel universe to the rest of us, the educrats have announced that parents often help their children with their GCSE coursework. While we await further reports on the religious leanings of the Pope and the sanitary arrangements of bears, the educrats have decided that what the situtaion really requires is more guidelines, thereby utterly refuting another Nu Lab stereotype. Apparently, parents will read these notes then decide to let Junior sink if that's what Mr Blair wants, and order will be restored.

Really, if you were a recently-arrived alien from another planet, you'd be able to draw up a better model of human behavior than this. Yes parents help their kids out - that's what parents do. Besides, it's not like the kids are going to learn anything any other way. Not with the schools being obsessed with stuff like this.

I mean, look at that opening line: 'Schools should incorporate racial equality into mainstream lessons to achieve an effective race relations policy, inspectors say.' A-huh. You can imagine how that works - 'Ok class, can anyone tell me which metal salts are always soluble, and why native Britons are evil ?' C'mon. If even the most apolitical teachoids aren't allowed to cover how mirrors work without inserting little PC sermons then it's no wonder parents don't respect the system.

Our education system is a trainwreck. Children from succesful familes can draw on their support to succeed in spite of that, while those from dysfunctional backgrounds are basically screwed. Nu Lab's concern about coursework just turns out to be same ol', same ol' socialism: 'we can't help, but we can screw up your neighbours' life as well'.

The Liberals Who Cried Wolf

They were warned. Laban has found a BNP blogger. But what are the Libs going to call him ? After all, they already call everyone to the right of Tony Blair a 'Nazi', so what's left ? Double-Nazi ? No-Kidding-Nazi ? Look-I-Know-We-Were-Lying-Before-But-This-One-Really-Is-A Nazi ?

Liberals Sink Own Boat

Further proof for the hypothesis that there is no one the Left will not defend if it'll harm Britain. Yep, they're going all misty-eyed over badly treated Nazi war criminals. Scott points out that to believe this story - and the Guardian appears to - means conceding that torture must be effective after all. There go half the Left's talking points. Equally, wasn't WWII the Left's inspiration for all their little homilies about how we could win wars without losing our humanity ? Now it turns out that our traditional British values of bending over and taking it like a man are nothing of the sort. Contary to the Liberal narrative, allied captors did not carefully don gloves before handling copies of 'Mein Kampf'. Our ancestors were quite capable of judging when the rules should apply and when not, yet somehow our humanity remained intact after all.

MSM Strike Again

Nobody panic - the Iranians may have elected a loon as President but hey ? He's a powerless figurehead, doncha'know ?

What Cameron Really Offers The Tories

Conservative leadership contender David Cameron has said the party needs to
change its "look, feel and identity".

He told the BBC's Newsnight he did not "rule out" changing its name,
but did not want a mere "rebranding exercise".

The Trouble With Libertarianism

Late to the party again.I’ve just realised what disturbed me about last week’s BritBlog round up. Worstall links approvingly to critics of ‘Harry’s Place’ and their support for the 90 day anti-terrorist legislation. No surprise there, but later on he links, again apparently approvingly, to a bunch of Leftists encouraging people to report Sun editrix Rebekah Wade to the PCC. Huh ?

Yes, yes, yes: I know the difference between private action and state action. No one is talking about censorship, but how exactly does this sort of thing mesh with a supposed belief in liberty ? Of course, the PCC is pretty toothless but the principle is important. Here we have a group of people attempting to use mass action to hijack a regulatory body in order to punish the editor of a paper who publishes stuff they don’t like. Their cause is not obviously one compatible with a belief in liberty.

Indeed, this is the central flaw in Libertarianism. At the national level, the State is certainly the greatest threat to liberty, but on the micro-scale it doesn’t matter much if you’re afraid to express your opinions because you fear arrest by the Secret Police or you’re afraid because of the prospect of being beaten to death by the local union godfather. Not only are Libertarians virtually silent about these second category of threats, in so far as they oppose virtually all attempts to tackle them (since these would require increasing the power of the State), they make it easier for the thugs to run riot. This tendency has reached its zenith with the Libertarians generally pathetic performance in the War on Terror.

The thing with life is that, for most people, the threat from the non-governmental type of thug is far more acute than that from supposed Statist conspiracies. When government acts to restrain private sector lunatics, is it reducing freedom or increasing it ? Yes, the Left has spent years claiming they’re not a bunch of totalitarian thugs, they’re just giving people ‘freedom from choice’, but everything is balance. Terrorists have killed large numbers of our citizens and Libertarians have responded by warning of the danger of the State. Libertarianism as a philosophy will only deserve respect once it’s proponents admit that sometimes it isn’t about The Man.

The Left Gets Tough (No Terrorists Involved)

Thinking of that last post reminds me that Liberals, as a rule, get ever so angry when their commitment to, say, fighting terrorism or protecting kids from paedophiles is called into question. Every time the question comes up Libs play the civilisation card, the one where they claim Conservatives are a bunch of vengeance-crazed savages while they are interested in the wider questions of justice. Thing is though, when it comes to topics Libs really do care about, suddenly all bets are off. The Briffa points out the latest effusion from the Toyntard. Yowser! Are these the people who were upset about paedophiles being hounded out of their homes ? Suddenly driving people to suicide and throwing young families out onto the street is fine by Pol. Also, men should be made to pay higher taxes than women because they’re more likely to commit crimes – but we’re supposed to pretend that it’s just a coincidence that all the July 7 bombers worshipped the moon god. Maybe that’s how we can get the Left on board with the WoT: ‘just think of all the men who got off paying child support by getting killed in bombings.’

Timmy! Timmy! Timmy!

The dangerously subversive one passes on the latest lunacy from well-known Liberal activist and judge Timothy ‘Timmy!’ Workman. He’s apparently troubled by the prospect of a jihadi being extradited to the US. I mean, he’s OK with the idea that a visitor to this country can be seized for no better reason than that a ragbag of the usual suspects have decided he’s committed some unspecified offence under vaguely-defined pseudo-laws, but when it comes to the government of an allied nation requesting the extradition of a man for committing acts which are illegal under both our and their laws, why that’s just going too far.

Of course, it’s not like Workman doesn’t have a track record in dhimmitude, all but abasing himself because Britain, gosh darn it, doesn’t follow the Islamic calendar [searches to locate cases of Workman apologising to Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Zorostans, Wiccans, Satanists, Animists and Pagans for not respecting their holy days have so far proven negative]. Then again, Timmy is a full-spectrum Liberal – maybe it's not the dhimmi factor, so much as the general Gramsican delight in helping out just about anyone who'll stick it to the basic standards of civilisation.

BBC Reports: Conservatives Shocked By Gang Rape

Just something to consider next time you hear the MSM talking about all those extremists on the Internet. A vote of thanks too for our friends in the femiloon community. I guess celebrating gang rape is a mere cultural quirk compared to real horrors such as a gentleman who prefers blondes.

At least now we're seeing the true nature of the BBC. There is literally no one these people will not carry water for if it'll serve the Left's agenda. That's the common thread that's run through all the BBC - in fact, all the MSM - coverage of these riots. Look at this report for one:

One of France's leading TV news executives has admitted censoring his coverage of the riots in the country for fear of encouraging support for far-right politicians.

Anyone think there's any more significant difference between the Franch media and the British one than the fact ours are better liars ? Even then, they can't help but let the insanity leak out every time they open their mouth. Here one of our jounalistic betters talking about the French censorship at an industry conference:

Deborah Turness, editor of ITV news, seemed to hit home by asking the LCI editor about levels of diversity among the staff in his newsroom and whether he was "doing the government's work" by withholding coverage to discourage further violence from alienated minorities.

Free clue for the MSM: if you're trying to disavow charges of Liberal bias, try to sound less like student activists. Or, at least, try to make sense. Is censorship alright if you have a diverse newsroom ? Would censorship be OK if it wasn't helpful to the government ? What proof do these people have that the rioters are, in fact, an 'alienated minority', rather than Jihadis ? And what does it say about their committment to diversity that not one of them even thinks to ask these questions ?

But at least some folks in the industry are getting it:

Chris Cramer, managing director of CNN, pointed out: "We are not the gatekeepers anymore. If we don't report it someone else will"

Or, as a native English speaker may put it, 'we'd lie if we thought we could get away with it.' So much for jounalistic ethics.

The thing with the French riots is this: not only is it a perfect example of just how far the media will go to push the Liberal agenda, it's also a great example of just how weak these people actually are. After a fortnight of round-the-clock defamation, the MSM would have us believe that Nicolas Sarkozy's career is over. True, but only in the sense of 'not at all'.

Turns out that the man on the Caen omnibus doesn't take kindly to 'alienated youths' going on the rampage. Who'd have thunk it ? Yep - just about everybody who doesn't spend their time worrying that they might inadvertantly help defend civilisation against the Jihad. At least King Canute knew he couldn't really stop the tide coming in - the MSM finds itself asking themselves a version of the old hippy saying: what if you held a lynching and no one came ?

Sarkozy took on the whole of the MSM and now he's going to PM. Need I say there might be a lesson here for folks closer to home ?

Pah! I Spit Upon Your Puny Atrocity Story

Laban reports the latest outrage from the white-coated ones. That's pretty bad, but for real medical horror try this. We should never forget that the 'death of deference' wasn't murder so much as an assisted suicide.

US Vs EU

Just about every Liberal blogger who's ever existed has at one point made the same stunning point: most Conservatives like the US even while opposing the EU so they must be hypocrites because they don’t conform to the Left’s own stupid stereotype of Little Englanders ranting about bleedin’ foreigners

Apparently, the nuanced ones can’t handle the idea that British Conservatives may hold different views on these two entities by virtue of their differing natures. If you want to know how different, consider the contrasting uses of surveillance technology. Liberals have regular tantrums about the way US technology allows them to spy on other countries (see here for an example). The EU is above all that. They’ll still build the surveillance network, but they use it to monitor the real enemy: their own citizens.

It's Alive, It's Alive.....Oh, Maybe Not

Did I sleep through the bit where the BBC's charter was changed to allow it to spend public money on blatant activism ? There's no other word to describe its saturation coverage of the topic of gay footballers. The man on the Clapham omnibus does not spend his days agonising about the sexuality of Fulchester's No 10 - it's a completely articifical scandal cooked up in the BBC's PC laboratory. After last Thursdays 'Gay Day', they're back again, with another publically-funded innuendo fest. I guess licence payers will have to wait a bit longer to find out the number of openly Conservative people employed at the BBC.