A Case So Shocking We Had To Lie About It

The BBC has found its Rosa Parks for the new century. Some imams stormed off a flight in the US after they were subjected to the horror of a security check just because they…. Well, actually the BBC would rather you didn’t ask why exactly they’d attracted suspicion. Rottypup gives us a brief rundown of what the BBC would rather you didn’t know, and reminds us of the BBC’s previous form in this area.

There’s more as well. All of which is by way of saying that the BBC’s case doesn’t even make sense on its own terms. Liberals claim to be opposed to ‘ethnic profiling’ – or, as I call it, ‘people who follow the same ideology as 95% of the world’s terrorists profiling’ - not because they’re a bunch of snivelling dhimmis, nope, it’s because they genuinely believe that other profiling indicators work far better. Well, here we are. Six passengers with more red flags than the Kop at Anfield, but Liberals are still whining.

Sounds to me like it’s not the Right that’s obsessing about ethnicity. If this case had involved six priests, the Left would be citing it evermore to prove that ethnic profiling doesn’t work. In contrast, it worked fine in this case. Nasty ol’ ethnic profiling and the type of profiling the Left claims to like both pointed to the same six guys, at which point they stormed off. It would be nice to know exactly why they objected so strongly to being checked over by security, but it looks like the MSM won’t be asking them anytime soon. I’m guessing this is the one case where the Left won’t claim that if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.

It turns out that profiling is like just about everything else in the war on terror. Liberals claim to be in favour of security screening in principle, but whenever they’re confronted with it in the real world, it’s never quite right. Maybe that’s the answer for the BBC ? Conservatives should claim we’re fully in favour of the idea of a licence fee, but we’re to opposed to the actual specifics of the whole ‘fee’ for a ‘licence’ concept ?

Liberals In Hell

Teachers squaring off against lawyers ? What's a Lib to do ? Produce reams and reams of action plans, strategies and other displacement activities, of course.

Funnily enough, none of these great ideas address the central problem, namely the imbalance that exists built into the legal system whereby m'learned friends can coin it in from a successful case but if it all goes horribly wrong ? Well, who cares ? At least you have to pay a pound to enter the lottery.

Buggy Whip Manufactuers Call For New Curbs On Horseless Carriages

I’m not really qualified for this one. It really takes someone like DK to deal with this (and indeed he has). Still, I got to say, in so far as this speech encapsulates the moral and intellectual death spiral of the MSM, it is the best argument yet why blogs are needed.

Press Complaints Commission director Tim Toulmin said he opposed government regulation of the internet, saying it should a place "in which views bloom".

But unless there was a voluntary code of conduct there would be no form of redress for people angered at content, and there would be no excuse to later claim that the ‘voluntary option has failed’ and bring in restrictive laws.

Actually, I added that last bit myself.

Anyway, where are these country vicars unfairly vilified by blogs ? Just how many ‘innocent civilians’ have been victims of blogging ? 25 ? 10 ? 5? Fortunately, we already have laws in place to protect people who’ve been unfairly defamed and, yes, they apply whether or not that’s done in print, on the net or written in a snow drift. Let’s compare the number of successful libel cases against the MSM versus those against blogs, hmmmmm ?

Some might point out that defamation cases take years, and shed-loads of cash, to come to court. Well, OK, but it’s not like the MSM hasn’t benefited from that for years. It only became a problem when bloggers came on the scene.

Newspapers have a built-in advantage not available to Joe Public, hence the old lines about not arguing with people who buy newsprint by the barrel load. Doubtless, Whiny Tim would claim the Press Complaints Commission offers members of the public some protection – but does it really ? Members of the public wronged by the MSM have to submit a complaint to an MSM body,which will spend several months considering it before either dismissing totally or giving the newspaper in question a slap on the wrist

In contrast, everyone’s equal in the blogosphere. Even if the supposed injured parties – which no one can find – don’t blog themselves, and don’t know how comment boxes work, for every cat blogger, there’s a dog blogger ready to argue the toss. It’s a true market for opinion, with lies torn apart faster, and far more brutally, by fellow bloggers than the pencil-sucking insiders at the PCC have ever managed with the MSM.

But, of course, Whiny Tim isn’t really on about actual, provable defamation at all. He’s talking about people who are merely ‘angered by content’. Lest the point need driving home, look where he was speaking:

He spoke during a session on free speech at a London race conference.

…before retiring next door to the Annual Conference of Jewish Pig Farmers. This isn’t about Sussex scoutmasters being unfairly labelled paedophiles, it’s the MSM and the race hustlers prepping the ground for another witch hunt over ‘hate speech’. But that’s alright, because as Whiny Tim points out:

Mr Toulmin described the phrases "free speech" and "free press" as relative terms because views expressed on the internet are still governed by laws such as libel and data protection.

So, we need new laws because the net is too anarchic, but we shouldn’t worry about them because we already have laws covering the net. I’m glad we got that sorted.

It’d be tempting to ask Whiny Tim just how he thinks a law should be drafted to prevent people being ‘angered’, but that’s sort of the point. The category of ‘stuff that makes people angry' is so broad that almost anything's covered. Except, of course, that it’ll turn out like the Public Order Act which apparently bans handing out leaflets, but not calling for beheadings. But don’t expect the MSM to complain about all this. Just remember, it's the blogosphere that's untrustyworthy!

Enlightening The Ordinaries

James Lileks is actually writing about US senator John Edwards, but the points he makes are more widly applicable. The best line is this one:

...being lectured by the scion of a millionaire trial lawyer is a little like scolding classmates for drinking Tang instead of having Alfred hand-squeeze a dozen Valencias.

Remind you of anyone ?

Life, Liberty And The Fundemental Human Right To Blow Stuff Up

Yep. Someday soon we’re going to find out that Shami Chakrabarti is being secretly employed by the Home Office. I actually think the Times is being too nice to her. She certainly pushes a crypto-anarchic view of civil liberties, but only when dealing with fellow Leftists.

Certainly, there’s been nothing equivalent to the ACLU’s famous defence of the right of the KKK Nazis to march. Au contrair, while Shami keeps a stock of onions ready for use whenever the rights of Islamofascists are impinged upon, she’s perfectly OK with restrictions on areas such as free speech, press freedom and self-defence.

Back to the main point though, namely the absolutely toxic effect of these wackos on the case for liberty. Lest anyone bring it up, Ben Franklin warned about giving up essential freedoms for temporary security. The defining characteristic of the civil liberties loons has been their belief that even the loopiest commandments handed down by judicial activists should be defended as though they were Magna Carta. The thing is though, if Judge Moonbats’ rantings have the same status as our ancient rights, then those rights have the status of wacky rulings from bewigged activists, and that makes it easier for the real authoritarians to say ‘the hell with it, let’s start again’.

UPDATE:

In the comments, Rop points out that even some on the Left are becoming disenchanted with Liberty's humbuggery.

So Which Is It ?

Talking of Cameron, just about the only thing the Cameroonatics have taken a position on is their belief that the whole straight/gay thing is irrelevant. Even mentioning the issue is enough to have the Nu Tories channelling their inner Ayatollah and issuing the low-fatwas. But what’s with Greg Barker then ?

Right now, Tory High Command is spinning that ol’ Greg is a victim of those pesky homophobes. Except take away the whole gay thing and what are you left with ? A guy marries a woman, then decides he’d rather have sex with someone else and does a runner. Classy!

OK, if you think the fact a bloke lacks integrity in his personal life is irrelevant to his professional life, then this won’t bother you, but if you do, then it should. To put it another way, the Cameroonatics demand that we ignore Barker’s homosexuality, but we shouldn’t think badly of him for cheating on his wife ‘cause, hey, he’s gay.

Y’know, a guy could easily think Opus Dave just say whatever’s most convenient at the time.

First Class Ticket To Irrelevance

British Airways have finally backed down in the Great Cross Row Of 2006. I’m guessing that they decided that if even the Church of England thought it was safe to come out against them, they must really be in trouble.

Not to say that I don’t understand why companies are reluctant to have staff advertise their adherence to various worldviews, but in so far as BA is perfectly OK with their staff wearing Islamic regalia, Christians would be justified in feeling a little victimised (although, obviously, nervous travellers could be forgiven for worrying about the combination of Christians and air travel, what with the Jesus freaks flying into buildings so often).

In case you’re still wondering, BA’s excuse for allowing Islamopaths to parade round dressed as Bin Laden, while freaking over a cross the size of a 5p coin, is simply that crosses can be concealed while hijacker suits can’t. As excuses go, this makes ‘the dog ate my homework’ sound positively inspired. Doubtless, the Kool Aid drinkers are even now penning long essays to explain why this issue is very complex.

There are a couple of important points here. The first is that BA have been forced to back down by a genuine grass roots campaign. True, Labour pols soon jumped aboard the bandwagon, but – to put it mildly- these are the type of people who are not normally enraged by this sort of thing. Ditto, the MSM. Nope, it was a genuine sense of outrage amongst the public that forced BA to back down. We’d never have found out about the case in the first place without the resolution of Nadia Eweida herself (oh, and by the way Libs, taking on a massive multi-national that pays your mortgage is a hell of a lot closer to real courage than using an Arts Council grant to paint pictures of Bush as Hitler). Then there are the people who rallied to her cause. Folks like these guys and many others. No wimpy calls for government action there, nope, people simply decided that BA was not the type of company they wanted to deal with. So much for ‘political disengagement’ – the public are interested in politics, it's politicians they don't like.

That’s point two. While Nu Lab pols were taking mighty leaps onto the band wagon, you-know-who was conspicuous by his absence. Hey, wasn’t the whole excuse for Cameron his alleged political genius ? Here’s an easy score, but instead he’s stayed hiding in the closet, presumably so as to avoid alienating the ‘pro-discriminating against Christians’ demographic. See, we keep getting told that Cameron comes out with Liberal lunacy as a short-term political measure, but then when we get cases like this where BA’s behaviour is too outrageous even for Nu Lab, Cameron is still AWOL. It’s not the politics – Cameron really does see nothing wrong in discriminating against Christians. Yet Tories or no Tories, the Right won the argument. That’s the thing, the Tories aren’t just gutless, they’re also irrelevant.

Who’ve Have Thunk It ?

The BBC(!) has an interesting article on one of the first examples of Liberal social policy:

Q Camp was a utopian experiment which tried to get troubled boys to operate a self-governing community in the middle of the countryside...

Staff and boys lived in the most primitive conditions, in ramshackle wooden huts without windows or sanitation. A Probation Service inspector described the camp as "dirty and dismal" in one report. She said the sleeping huts filled her with "horror" and the beds "looked grimy".

Work was shared, but the youngsters weren't compelled to lift a finger. A camp council of staff and boys imposed what little discipline there was. There was also a school but attendance was voluntary and the school hut was set on fire on several occasions.

It was Mr Barron's belief that the young boys should not be told what to do. Smashed windows remained unfixed and obscenities were left daubed on walls because he believed it was better to leave the jobs until the boys responsible agreed to do them. They rarely did.

But the sting is in the tail:

So was it a failure? The Q Camp probably only got away with it for so long because in the middle of a war, and a manpower shortage, the authorities were glad to find anyone prepared to take on difficult children.

But in its determination to move away from the authoritarian model of the approved schools, it anticipated many of the ideas on residential childcare that became common in later decades.

Many of those involved went on to become senior and influential in their field.

As if we ever doubted it.

It takes more than complete failure to derail Loony Left ideas. That’s why we get reports like this from modern Britain:

A much stricter behaviour code was introduced that bought radical changes, says Mrs Edwards, whose educational background centres on inclusions and special needs.

"It's very much about back to basics and zero tolerance, bringing back rules and clear boundaries, rewards and consequences that are consistently carried out," she says.

Really ? Having structure and standards improves a school ?

Seriously, whatever will the Left think of next ? Does anyone who isn’t a) an educrat, or b) David Cameron ever not think that maintenance of good order was a basic requirement for successful education ?

Patrician Snob Embraces Patrician Snob Shocker!

You have to see the funny side of Call Me Dave’s embrace of Toynbeeism. Well, not so much the Tories gobbling down another slug of Kool Aid so much as the reaction from the libertarian wing of the Right. They’re shocked – shocked! – that Call Me Dave could stick two fingers up to a huge group of Conservatives.

Ahem!

Short of personally delivering a sack of horse manure, David Cameron could hardly have done more to express his contempt for social conservatives. I wonder how many of the people who yammered on about ‘theocons’ are amongst those libertarians now professing disgust at Cameron’s latest attempt to purge rightists?

Don’t Mention The….

The BBC carries an article on the unusual success of Iceland. The trouble for the BBC is that Iceland’s success comes from pretty much doing the exact opposite of everything the BBC has ever believed:

In the late 1980s, it was a highly-regulated country and its prosperity depended on the fishing industry. Reforms in the 1990s resulted in the deregulation of the economy and banks, opening up the financial markets and allowing the sector to expand rapidly. Its economy is now dominated by services.

"In the mid-90s Iceland still had a relatively raw economy," says Neil Prothero, economist with the Economist Intelligence Unit. "The reforms allowed the financial sector to expand rapidly, this has encouraged a strong entrepreneurial spirit in the country."

Ah yes. So, deregulation helps the economy prosper.

Because it is remote from the rest of Europe, Icelanders are encouraged to look outside their own country.

Or, to put it another way, there’s no need to be ‘at the heart of Europe’ (in any sense) to prosper in international trade.

But that’s not the biggest thing:

It is part of a strong Icelandic national identity to feel you are a match for the rest of the world, despite the size of the nation…

Because you feel you are far away you make an extra effort to take part in the rest of the world, but you maintain a strong sense of home," says Ms Birgisdottir. "There is always an umbilical cord to Iceland. We are proud of who we are….

There is a strong nationalist movement in Iceland but it not denounced like other movements in other countries.

Call it what you want. National pride. A sense of community. Unapologetic partriotism. Whatever, but it the one thing that enrages Leftists more than any other. In Britain we have the have the cultural cringe, open borders and the inevitable product, balkanisation, all cheered on by the BBC. So now Auntie penning paeans of praise to a country that’s rejected exactly the kind of multi-culti nonsense that the BBC treats as holy writ. Anyone know what ‘chutzpah’ is in Icelandic ?

Pondscum Wars II

We’re saved! Once again fulfilling it’s remit to provide a collective response to issues too big for individual countries to handle, the EU has locked onto the vital issue of….video games. Yes, indeed. The European Commissioner for 'Justice, Freedom and Security' (motto: ‘pick any two’) Franco Frattini has decided urgent action must be taken to suppress ‘obscene’ video games (for the children, natch). And what constitutes an obscene video game ? Well, as far as I can tell, the definition reads something like ‘anything Franco doesn’t like’

Doncha’ just luv it ? It’s another example of how the ‘baby boomers’ have not only become their parents, they’ve actually turned out far worse. Granddad is right: back in the day they did have standards – as in objective measures of whether or not something was obscene. Now we’ve got flatulent Eurotrash lounging round their publicly-funded offices trying to use the law to crush anything which doesn’t meet with their approval.

Liberals often posture as defenders of artistic freedom in the face of ruthless capitalism, well, now we have the worst of both worlds: the artistic freedom of a multi-billion pound industry being crushed for no better reason than that a degenerate exemplar of our new aristocracy has taken against the industry. Somehow, I see him losing a lot of votes over this…but wait: he doesn’t need to bother with the whole ‘votes’ thing. In common with the rest of The EU pond scum, he doesn’t need to bother with actual voters. Instead, he’ll continue to use his position to try and push through repressive legislation insulated from any kind of accountability at all. Now, that’s obscene.

The Kool Aid Ain't Working Anymore

Uh oh...looks like the MSM's wall of noise just ain't cutting it anymore. They can yammer all they want about a Religion of Peace, but the truth is getting out.

Who Could Argue With A Record Like That ?

Providing the latest evidence of the political classes' determination to rebrand themselves as a sub-branch of the media, Princess Tony has announced the government will be employing 'super nannies' to help problem families. Yep, the billion of pounds we already spend each year on medicalising bad behaviour has been a fiasco, but this time they've got it right.

Well, OK, Libs - if the state does such a five-star job of raising kids, let's see what happens to those who've had the most exposure to the state's theories on child rearing. Look at what happens to kids in care, and say 'what the government did for them, it can do for eveyone's kids'.

OK, You Win, Libs (Part II)

You know how we keep getting told that the Tory A-lister aren’t a bunch of hopelessly unqualified victimhood hustlers, nope, they’re whizkid bizness people ? Personally, I’ve never been sure of exactly why flacking for Big Pharma (to choose an example completely at random) necessarily qualifies you to send the country to war, but OK, I give up. Yes, Liberals, I admit it, you can always spot a good politician because they’re good at business.

OK, You Win, Libs (Part I)

The Libs want to redefine paedophilia – but don’t call them soft on perverts. Dyfed-Powys chief Terry Grange claims the law is a ‘grey area’. In so far as the law outlaws sex with under-16s, it’s hard to see how much simpler it could be, but I guess he’s using the phrase in the Liberal sense of ‘grey area’ i.e. ‘perfectly clear, but we wish it wasn’t’.

Still, it’s not totally idiotic. There really is a different pathology between those who seek sex with children, and those who seek to prey on teenagers. That’s not enough to justify buying into the Libs’ latest PC drivel except for one thing. If we’re not allowed to call those who prey on adolescent boys ‘paedophiles’, then that robs the Left of their main charge against the then-Cardinal Ratzenburger. After all, the ‘paedo Priests’ almost exclusively targeted teenage boys, so I guess the Liberal’s charge must be that the Catholic Church was not zealous enough in rooting out gay priests, right ?

Of course, all this leads on to a further speculation. If a network of predatory homosexuals operating in the Catholic Church for decades suggests the Church is corrupt, what does it say for gay culture ? Motes and beams, fatty!

That Teach ‘Em

It’s bad enough hearing Liberals pretend to applaud the teenagers who chased down a predator when you just know that in any less clear cut case they’d be busily whining about vigilantism, but let’s just consider what the final result was of these brave lads tracking down a potentially armed, and certainly dangerous, scumbag.

Ah yes. Just under six years. What kind of 'life' are we talking here ? Dog years ? It’s never a good sign when the judge feels the need to put in a plea in mitigation. Hey, these folks are notorious for pulling laws out of thin air, but now the system demands he give a savage a slap on the wrist, suddenly he’s Captain Jobsworth ? Hell, the judicary may as well go the whole way and just mail the lads a turd in a bag.

A vote of thanks too for the femiloons. This is what I was on about before. Here we have a code one: WARNING! WARNING! Predator identified! But no: they’re too busy trying to broaden the definition of the offence so they can charge the lads as accessories (‘after all, they’re male, so was the attacker. That can’t be a coincidence’)

But who let’s these guidelines go through in the first place ? I say again: ’checks and balances’ is supposed to work both ways. In so far as you could pick fifty names out of the phone book and not find five who believe this is the right sentence, Parliament has failed utterly to represent the views of the public here. It’s the yin to the yang of MPs who want to regulate everything in the whole world – here’s a job they should be doing, but they’ve let the courts go bananas. They were probably busy passing the Toothbrush Regulatory Act 2006.

Sir Elton Comes Out

Sir Elton’s been babbling again. He wants religion banned.

To be sure, Sir Elton employs the traditional insane qualifier. He’s not against ‘religion’ so much as ‘organised religion’. Hey, as Ann Coulter would say, there’re loads of religions with thousands of sects. If none of them float your boat, it’s probably not the form of organisation that’s the problem.

Nope, away with these stupid euphemisms. We know these people hate Christianity, all Fat Reg has done is come out and say so in public. Naturally, Sir Elton’s call to abolish religious freedom has provoked a firestorm of criticism from moderate gays, human rights activists and the Tories. And when I say ‘firestorm’ I mean a complete lack of condemnation, although I do understand twenty Bishops have demanded he be arrested for incitement.

Not really.

As ever, the door only swings one way. You have one guy handing out leaflets out side a Pink Wedge rally and he gets busted for causing ‘fear, alarm and distress’ to the thousands of attendees - which doesn’t exactly undermine the gay stereotype.

Still, this does show into sharp relief the harassment of the Glasgow firefighters. Liberal managers wanted to use public servants to endorse the rantings of a group of people opposed to freedom of conscience, and the guys who refused to take part are the bigots ? Hello ?

See, this is what I was saying. This isn’t some touchy-feely debate about ‘tolerance’ and the like. Sir Elton is, well, Sir Elton, filthy rich A-list celeb knight of the realm. What else does he want ? No, there’s plenty of tolerance there but what these guys want is something quite different.

The Pink Wedge isn’t pushing some uncontentious call for mutual respect. They are completely opposed to both the specifics of religion and traditional morality, and the more general idea of freedom of conscience. If they had their way, Britain would be a very different country, but we’re not allowed to discuss what they believe. Instead, they get to denounce Britain, while calling their critics 'bigots'. In every sense, they are the perfect pin-up boys for modern Liberalism

Official: No Alligators In Sewers

Good news ladies: you can now drink 26 Bacardi and cokes free from the worry that you might be exposed to some kind of mind-altering substance. There’s no evidence of vast phalanxes of perverts stalking women, ruffies in hand. It turns out that most of the women who think they’ve been exposed to date-rape drugs have actually just been blitzed out of their minds. We’re still waiting on the official word on whether too long on the sunbed can fry your internal organs.

You know, you could keep a whole blog going just covering cases of Leftists breathlessly reporting stuff their granny could have told them. Let's sum up today's lesson: don’t get too wasted with strange men around, otherwise bad things could happen. But no. We live in the era of femilunacy, whence any suggestion that young ladies would be best advised not to smoke immediately after dousing themselves in petrol is exactly the same as Chinese foot binding. It was bad enough when the femiloons were encouraging any female in a management position to model herself on Nero, but at least that didn’t lead them to go home with Jack the Ripper.

In so far as ‘ladette’ culture is just another case of the femiloons taking all the flaws of male culture and exaggerating them to the point of absurdity, it would just be business as usual, without the Phantom Pharmo-Pervs. These shadowy figures are the perfect bogeymen for femiloons. Grandma only wanted you to avoid leaving with any strange men, but now the femiloons warn you that a moment’s inattention and you could be turned into a mindless sex slave. Best to play it safe and avoid all men, hey ?

Ruth Hall, of Women Against Rape, doubtless formed to counter the lies of Women For Rape, has branded the report ‘unhelpful’. I’ll say. The idea of a nation of date rape drug drink spikers, fits perfectly into the femiloon’s paradigm of unending sex war, as exemplified by the supposed billions of unreported rapes every week. Of course, if you were wanting to do something off the wall like, oh I don’t know, prevent women being raped, it would be useful to get the message out to them that becoming a victim doesn’t require sinister pharmo-pervs with exotic pills, simply drinking to excess can render a woman vulnerable.

Then again, who’s to say the femiloons are really against rape anyway ? Not only is it a nice wedge issue for them, but the unhinged rantings about all men being rapists just emphasises their comparative lack of outrage over the demographic that more than any other is responsible for rape, namely rapists.

Sentences for rape, in common with every other crime, have plunged. But where are the femiloons ? Sure, they’ll describe just about every disappointment a women could face as ‘practically the same as rape’ and they call for rape trials to pick up a few tips from the Witchfinder General (‘if the axe bounces off, he’s guilty’), but when it comes to actual, no arguments, predators ? Nope, nothing to see here, move along. Rape’s kind of bad, but apparently not bad enough for the femiloons to break ranks with the rest of the Leftards. That’s why the same people who’ll denounce our supposed epidemic of rapes are happy to see predators let off with less time than Jeffrey Archer served. That’s why they endorse absurd ‘rehabilitation’ schemes carried out by well-paid, beardy-weirdy psychobabblers. That’s why they oppose notification laws that will warn people when a known predator moves into their area. If you want to see people opposed to rape, don’t bother with the ugly boilers trying to define it down to the point where even the Pope could be convicted, check out the Right. We want to make sure that when we nail them, they stay nailed.

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Proof: Kirsty Wark Causes Global Warming

Kind of obvious, but wouldn't you like to see the figures for the BBC ?