Planet of the Conspiracy Nuts

Say what you like about Russell T Davis, but at least his latest effusions are thought-provoking, even if the thought is 'hey, I never knew his stuff was ghost-written by a drunk, homeless guy'.

Second thought: how come whenever ones of the staff at the ever-unbiased BBC goes feral, they all go feral in the self-same way? They never suddenly announce that Cast Iron Dave should slash housing benefit and use the savings to bolster the RAF, or that we should have our own Second Amendment. No, it's always some guy who think the right is, like, totally evil.

Where's the diversity?

On the plus side, at least he is unusually candid about how he reached his diagnosis: he thinks the right is too harsh on media luvvies. Yep, these people are all about the hospitals & schools & long lunches at chintzy restaurants. He probably thinks the right are selfish too, all poncing round Barnsley with their coal-mining friends.

But that's not it. Liberals have always been leeches. No, the real question is this: in so far as the head honcho has now outed himself as an off-the-scale loon, are you still a tin-foil hatted kook if you complain about liberal bias in his shows?

PC And The Shrunken Mandate

NNW isn't too impressed by the left's response - or lack thereof - to Weinergate.

Indeed, it's not just Weiner that's been left exposed. It's hard not to notice that the left's conception of freedom looks a little... shrunken? Flaccid? Inadequate?

Libs think anyone who has issues with the Honourable Member's Honourable Member appearing in in-boxes across America is, like, a total square but if he had used a felt tip to write 'Islam Sucks' on his junk beforehand, they'd have demanded the death sentence.

Of course, we've been here before. Hell, after years spent defending Clinton, Weiner flashing his majority to all and sundry probably seems refreshingly normal to them.

Liberals are proverbial for turning into Bernard Manning once one of their guys falls foul of PC, but the corollary is often missed. Professional conservatives endlessly jibber-jabber about the need to ditch the embarrassing bumpkins in the base, get with the PC program and reach out to all those groovy youngsters who were just waiting to vote conservative, but were put off by the lack of tackle twittering. But how does that work exactly?

In so far as leftists in both the US and Britain ditch their PC principles faster than a speeding e-mail once one of their guys is in the frame, why even pretend it's anything other than a stick to beat conservatives with? Criticising Cherie Blair's sleazy dealing is The Sexism, but John Prescott can use his private office like a harem, and that's 'just John' as Tony helpfully explained. Why even bother to play in a rigged game?

Professor Dawkins Was Not Available For Comment

Uber geek Paul Nurse has decided that the real problem with British science is that the public won't just shut up and take it all on faith.

Curiously enough, FoI requests and all, they still manage to bang in plenty of requests for taxpayers' money and press releases announcing that school vouchers cause cancer.

On the plus side, at least his complaints about 'FoI Aggression' have neatly laid to rest the myth that scientists are a bunch of whiny wimps. Maybe we need some research into why people don't trust geeks? After all, what could possibly be wrong with this:

Nurse said that scientists were not blameless. At the University of East Anglia, they were too defensive in their responses to freedom of information requests over climate change, but their experience was one among many that highlighted a need for better training for scientists in the most appropriate way to respond to information requests.

Curiously though, it takes a commenter called randstead to point out the problem with that little theory:

One small but not important point , Phil Jones planned to avoid FOI requests , BEFORE he got a single one...

Now lets talk numbers UEA received just six FOI requests between January 2005 when the act was introduced, and January 2009, while in 2009 it received 97 FOI requests 59 from people asking or information on contracts between the UEA and the foreign met offices they said were preventing publication of the data, remember CRU's claims on this front mostly fall apart once investigated.
These number are tiny in real terms , while its only from FOI requests that we learned that the research papers reviewed in the investigation of CRU where not selected by the RS as claimed but by UEA , that the head of the one review never actual did any interviews , that for one review there is no accurate record of what question where asked nor what the answers are...

Another commenter, conflation, includes the full text of one e-mail:

Phil Jones wrote: Mike, I presume congratulations are in order - so congrats etc ! Just sent loads of station data to Scott. Make sure he documents everything better this time ! And don’t leave stuff lying around on ftp sites - you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days? - our does ! The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it.We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. Tom Wigley has sent me a worried email when he heard about it - thought people could ask him for his model code. He has retired officially from UEA so he can hide behind that. IPR should be relevant here, but I can see me getting into an argument with someone at UEA who’ll say we must adhere to it !

In other words, geek face card Paul Nurse writes an article calling for people to take scientist's public pronouncements on faith, while utterly misrepresenting his opponents in the self-same article.

That's Clue Number Two right there. For all the talk of diversity, there's apparently no one around to tell Nurse that his point is absurd. Scientists are disinterested seekers after truth, but it just so happens that their personnel rosters are exactly the same as you get if they were enforcing an ideological blacklist.

All of which is the real message of Climategate. What's wrong with British science isn't just that there's a lot of corruption, it's that corruption has become the new normal, with supposed thought leaders like Nurse on hand to denounce anyone who doesn't accept senior scientists threatening to delete inconvenient data as a perfectly normal practice.

Up, Down... Who Cares? Just Give Us Your Money!

Yes, indeed: the new Big Bad is Global Cooling which, being the opposite of Global Warming, obviously means that we need the opposite policies, so say hello to tax cuts, rolling back red tape and all pigs to the trough capitalism....right?

Richard Dawkins' New Book: 'Hey, This God Thing Is Pretty Neat, After All'

In so far as the Archbishop of Canterbury's attack on the Ayatollah Khameron has succeeded in making The Dave look good, it counts as a miracle all on its own.

Not everyone can make Lord Snooty look statesmanlike, but having a too crazy for the Guardian leftist whose organisation is Britain's largest landowner wax lyrical about poverty and democratic mandates certainly qualifies.

On the plus side, we now know what the Pope was doing over here last year: sneaking into Lambeth Palace with a false moustache on to convince Archbishop Weirdo that the way back for the Anglican Church was to go over das edgen like a fruitenloopengaggle.

It's that German humour again.

Either that, or the Archbishop really thinks people turn to religion to answer the central mysteries of human existence, like whether or not giving greater autonomy to low-level business units will lead to a more responsive health service.

Apparently, when Jesus said blessed are the peacemakers, he was actually referring to fully paid-up members of the National Union of Pacifistic Trades. On the other hand, at least the Archbishop accepts that the Ten Commandments are still valid, even if he thinks they're not exactly set in stone.

Still, there's a certain irony here. The Archbishop is trying to curry favour with the left by adopting their idiotic worldview wholesale, and never mind that the people he's trying to pander to just plain don't like Christianity in the first place. He ought not to be criticising Cameron, he ought to be learning from his example. The Dave was a heroic reformer just as long as he was sliming the right, but as soon as circumstances forced him to threaten the supply of £40K pa non-jobs, that Strange New Respect disappeared faster than you can say 'worse than Fatcha'!

So it always is: you can get into bed with liberals, but they won't respect you in the morning.

On the Other Hand...

On the plus side, in so far as the Sharon Shoesmith case featured the Supreme Court attacking Ed Balls from the left, I think that pretty much closes out the debate on our independent judiciary.

Not that there isn't a certain rough justice in seeing Balls get the shaft. After all, not only does his government introduce all this nonsense, they also presided over the infiltration of the public services by freaks like Shoesmith in the first place. On the other, other hand, the Nu Tories have predictably jumped on this case like a vampire jumping on a sun bed. As ever, there's no one there who can see that this is an example of Labour's stealthiest, and most destructive, tax.

All across the country, there are Sharon Shoesmiths: lazy, arrogant, entitled idiots, free to cause organisational chaos in the sure and certain knowledge that the worst they'll face is double secret probation.

Never mind cutting taxes, or streamlining government departments. Being able to fire deadbeats again would revive the economy overnight.

She's Not Erin Brockovch, She's The Plant Owner

There is no better barometer of how utterly liberalism has hollowed out the British left than that so many soi-dissant socialists have chosen to elect Sharon Shoesmith as Baby Seal D'Jour.

These people claim to be the modern avatars of the poor but proud union members who took on and beat ruthless pit owners. Now they're rallying around someone who got paid more than a cabinet minister but still presided over a department in such a state of chaos that a young child could be tortured to death with no one noticing.

Add in Shoesmith's sneering one-liners like 'I don't do blame', and what we have here is the perfect pin-up girl for the unaccountable elitists who dominate the modern left. If the EdMilliband Unit wants to work out why the Earthlings don't trust Labour, he may want to think about not allowing his party to offer aid and sanctuary to smug, overpaid trash like this.

Red On Red

Now do you believe me?

Like I keep saying, Ken Clarke is the John Prescot of the Tory Party. Just like the other fat fraud, we keep getting told that Clarke is in touch with the man in the street, but the only evidence for this is endless columns by media luvvies claiming that Clarke's boorishness is proof of authenticity. Appointing this tool as the voice of the conservative base is just a roundabout way of stereotyping grass roots conservatives, just as Lord Two Jags was a Northern Uncle Tom.

Of course, that's not to say the left aren't full of it too. They're enraged becuase someone tried to excuse evil by coming out with a load of blabber about nuance? And? Did he infringe on their patents or something?

Liberals have spent years finger-wagging about the crudity of the common herd, and their goofy ideas about good and evil. Now they're trying to convince us that they just can't bear to see a felon go free?

Hell, liberals even have a long history of taking out onions for sex offenders, providing the victims are under the age of majority. For proof of this, consider how none of them have found anything exceptional in Clarke's claim that statutory rape is no big thing, if the victim consents.

So the guy running the justice system doesn't understand the concept of 'age of consent' and no one on the left thinks that's a problem? Of course.

For that matter, what's with the femiloons complaining about trivialising rape? These people claim that everything in the whole world is just like being raped. What is the whole date rape thing if not an attempt to expand the definition of rape to the point of absurdity? Meanwhile, the central feature of Clark's plan is to give actual, genuine rapists a cut in their sentences, and feminists have nothing to say about it.

And then there's this....

On Wednesday, Browne, a 45-year-old mother of two who was attacked in 2003 by a serial sex offender freed from prison early, broke down in tears as she confronted Kenneth Clarke....

She's a liberal heroine!

It is significant that her voice cracked with emotion on BBC Five Live, not when she recounted the assault she endured, but when she described her fight to bring her attacker to justice, which, she says, won't be over until Sierra Leone-born Mohammed Kendeh, currently in prison for yet another crime, is finally deported. Kendeh, who attacked her in a park as she trained for the London Marathon, has thus far avoided deportation by claiming a right to a family life under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act – a defence that Browne says is an insult to his many victims, who may never recover.

She's a raycist!

Plus, you'll never guess what....

"My attacker had previously sexually assaulted six other women in the same park, and escaped a custodial sentence. He was in prison for burglary but because he was released after four months of his 13-month sentence, he was free to attack me."

Liberals complaining about the justice system being soft on predators is like Ken Clarke calling people fat.

Reminder: Feminism Is A Parasitic Ideology

As analogies go, I'm thinking waving £50 notes in front of a homeless guy's face is more like it, still it is interesting to see even a social conservative like Laban taking a hard line on this.

Behold the power of the Dark Side!

Heh. But there's a serious point here: in so far as mainstream social conservatism turns a blind eye to the rise of feminism, it has condemned itself to ever-increasing irrelevance. Indeed, in so far as socio-cons' white knighting instincts lead them to defend even the most deranged behaviour by the New Grrrl Order, there is often little to choose between them and feminists when push comes to shove.

All of this matters because for all the blather about empowerment, the defining feature of feminism is its parasitic nature. Even these stupid marches are proof of that:

The SlutWalk London website states more should be done to protect victims.

Never mind the logic fail - surely the point of protection is that they won't be victimised in the first place - who's going to provide this protection? Since the marchers claim to be marching on behalf of the whole female species, it mus be some other sex they're expecting to sort all this out.

In other words, these misandric loonies claim that the very people they denounce should do everything possible to protect them, even as they themselves disavow any responsibility for their own survival. Or to put it another way, they want men to continue to act on their traditional feelings of chivalry, while they demonstrate their contempt for the same traditions.

Hey, the KKK might have had some wacky ideas, but even they didn't expect their victims to string themselves up.

Authorities Do Not Yet Have A Motive Clue

Interesting Philosophical Question: do these people come out with this brand of garbage because they're stupid enough to believe it, or just because they think we are?

'Shut Up!' He Explained, 'Up Yours!' They Replied

Talking of the evil Daily Mail reading masses, how about that referendum, huh? Who knew that arranging for a column of Metropolitan luvvies to demand the public vote their way wouldn't work?

That was the honking great crack that ran through the whole 'Yes' campaign. They talked about fairer votes and fixing democracy even as they ran one of the most avowedly elitist campaigns in history. The more they claimed that voting 'Yes' was the choice of the A-listers, the more they reminded people just how detached these people were from their own lives.

Libertarianism: Supporting The Human Right To Leave Horses' Heads In People's Beds

I find that blogs with 'Liberty' in the title are generally awful - so NNW had the field to himself after all.

Still, NNW scores a bulls eye on the essential humbuggery of libertarianism: for folks who profess to be all about the freedom, they aren't half certain about what views will and won't be permitted in the New Libertarian Order.

Ditto, with the other elephant in the room. Consider what we're talking about: the supposed right of a small group of fanatics to issue threats to wreck an event supported by millions of their fellow citizens. Where's the liberty in allowing lunatics to impose themselves on other people?

Knee-jerk scepticism of authority is just gullibility standing on it's head. Instead of blindly accepting violence from the state, it's blindly accepting it becuase it's not from the state. Ditto, there's no point libertarians trotting out that dreadful old cliché 'pre-crime' then seamlessly shifting into talk of 'slippery slopes'. Perhaps we ought to start calling 'slippery slope' arguments 'pre-tyranny'?

But there's something more to it than all that. Consider this charming comment:

I hold that liberty has a higher purpose and is an awful lot messier than simply making the world safe, fluffy and Disneyfied for readers of the Daily Mail.

It is double minded to claim decency when dissenters are rounded up and locked away, although it is easier to rationalise when they are demonised as loons or closet Marxists.

Uh huh. Looks like it won't just be certain opinions that aren't allowed in the New Libertarian Order. Mind you, considering the Daily Mail is Britain's best selling newspaper, I'm guessing there's going to have to be a whole lot of liberating going on before Utopia arrives.

Alarmist? Consider the implications of that comment: violent lunatics are merely 'dissenters' meanwhile opponents of extremist thuggery want a world that's fluffy and Disneyfied. In other words, not only is violence a valid means of political action, but those who oppose violence are, by definition, contemptible and weak.

This belief in violence not only as a means to an end but as purifying force, sweeping away the bourgeois conventions of a society that is both corrupt and corrupting is an avowedly fascist idea, all the more so when combined with contempt for the Daily Mail reading masses. At least Marxists put it more poetically when they talk of a 'Democracy of the Committed' but the end result is the same: a totalitarian vision of a world reborn in violence and blood-shed.

All of which leads to the dirty little secret that really gets under libertarian skins. These loons wanted a revolution, instead they got briefly detained by the police. This isn't a story about heroism and repression, it's a story about a bunch of juvenile prats being prevented from acting out by agents of the state using a minimum of force and with the support of the vast majority of the Great British Public. And libertarians think this is a winning issue for them? Some day soon we're going to find out that the libertarian movement is being secretly run out of the Home Office.

Best Comment So Far On Bin Laden's Death Scene

Over at NRO:

Wow, Obama really does hate rich people! Bin Laden moves up from a cave to a mansion and Barack wacks him.

Hey, we're just lucky the Yanks found him before we did, otherwise there's no telling how much money Dave would have given him.

God Save The Queen's Head

Yep, it's a tricky dilemma all right. Speaking as a real conservative, and therefore someone who even in his resting state generates as much patriotism as 1.6 million David Camerons, I was tempted to watch the Royal Wedding, but then I remembered I'm not gay.

Besides, it has the same flaw as every other wedding: no matter how much you slice and dice it, you're still seeing a man descend into the bowels of Hell itself.

On the other hand, not watching sounds republican, which is a form of liberalism, and therefore may lead to being the kind of snivelling little weenie who's spent the last two weeks telling all and sundry how you're totally not going to watch the wedding, 'cause that's the kind of rebel tiger you are.

Yes, indeed: they're prepared to risk being seized by the Royalty Squad and arrested under the Compulsory Watching Act of 2011.

Spare us. Recent events have confirmed it is - literally - braver to sing karaoke than be a republican right now.

So what to do? There's only one answer find a place where it's on but there's no need to actually watch it. And on a sunny public holiday too. It's tough, but on the other hand if I drink Bombardier, I reckon I can get up to 2.6 million Camerons.

Two Great Post on the Kung Fu Kristalnacht

First up, Woman on a Raft summarises the precise legal basis for the police's action - or, more specifically, the complete absence of any basis.

So, a citizen was deprived of his liberty without the ghost of the shadow of the memory of a legal basis, and dear old Shami and the rest of the usual suspects on the left have either suddenly remembered an urgent dental appointment or they're actually telling us that he must have done something, otherwise he wouldn't have been arrested.

Still, if nothing else, here's a great line from Jim Treacher:

Oh, we see how it is, England. A black man can’t have a hit song?

Greatest Leader Ever (And This Time We Mean It)

OK, I'll grant that it's kind of tough to find anything useful to say about The Dave, but this is kind of desperate.

Yes, indeed: The Dave has had a personality transplant and now he's turned out to be exactly the guy the MSM told us he was in the first place. I take it this is also by way of admitting that all their reporting back then was garbage, right? Now he's turned over a new leaf and everything will will be different from hereon in.... and just in time for the elections coming up in two weeks too! What are the odds, hey?

Karaoke Squad! Drop the Mike and Come Out With Your Hands Up

Police cutbacks: are they always a bad thing?

This is the important caveat that has to borne in mind when the police claim that electing Chief Constables would allow extreme extremists to be elected. There's always been a logical flaw in the idea of an extremist winning an election, but now they're just ramming home the point that for the police, the mainstream apparently flows through Hampstead.

Try this:

A Hampshire police spokesman last night said.... ‘If a victim believes that an alleged crime is racially aggravated, the police will treat it seriously. Investigations into this incident are continuing.’

First up: that's alleged victim, Comrade Officer. Second, in this era of 'me resources fell down the stairs, guv' policing, actual, real 'that'll need stitches' crimes are ignored all the time. They have chosen to pursue cases of malicious singing just as they have chosen not to pursue real crimes. Public servants who waste public money on fringe lunacy being subject to criticism is how it's meant to work. It's a feature not a bug.

On the plus side, that guy's just lucky it wasn't 'Rock the Kasbah'.

Left Goes Full Retard

Oops - looks like they forgot to dial down the crazy.

Never mind anything else, is Mr Llewellyn really the best person to be demanding people have proper 'Anglo-Saxon' names?

I guess we're just lucky it isn't anyone from UKIP appointing himself 'Non-Anglo Name Finder General' - otherwise we'd never hear the end of it. Which is kind of the point.

I'm a real conservative - unlike some David Camerons I could mention - so I all for free speech. What I object to is these guys being able to let their freak flag fly, then whip off the balaclava, put a suit on and have the MSM present them as disinterested seekers after truth and justice.

'Shut Up', Nick Clegg Explained.

Great though it always is to see Simon 'Straight Choice' Hughes coming out - as it were - for honest debate in politics, I'm thinking the Lib Dems latest meltdown might just point to a certain lack of self-awareness.

As I understand it, they're generously allowing folks to discuss AV, but only providing they discuss it in a way Lib Dems approve of.

Yep, they're all about The Democracy these guys. Not only is their position absurd from first principles, it's also a perfect metaphor for what's wrong with AV. We can discuss politics, but only providing we discuss it in approved ways, and we can vote, but only providing we have a voting system that guarantees the Lib Dems win seats no matter how many £9,000 fees they forget to mention before the last time they faced election.

Modern Life In A Nutshell

This story has everything!

The only thing I'm wondering is how they're going to find a white guy to blame it all on.