Bold Attenpt To Improve Local Government Fails

Hey, at least we'd finally have one who didn't take more backhanders than Andy Murray.

Actually, my favourite bit is the line about the police seizing the mannequin. Yes, indeed: I think we all feel much safer knowing there's one less plastic representation of the human form out there on our streets.

Quote of the Day

Ed West sums it up brilliantly:

When wealthy, globe-trotting liberals espouse the cause of universalism they often describe it in terms of air travel and airports, a world of vibrant, diverse, cross-cultural pollination. Which is great, for the few wealthy enough to use business class. For the rest of us society has become exactly like an airport – endless security checks, CCTV, government snooping, armed police and all-powerful officials who will arrest you for an inappropriate remark.

The Supreme Leader Is Dead!

I can't be the only one whose noticed a change in tone in the communiques from the bunker these last couple of weeks. His Magnificance Sultan David I has been replaced by Downtrodden Dave, the poor guy who just can't get a break.

Here's an early example.

Yep, Dave would've gotten away it if it wasn't for those meddling conservatives.

Actually, the whole thing is virtually self-refuting. How else to describe a lecture on electability from a Cameroon? And that's without mentioning that the Tea Party folks actually won their elections.

Hipsters: Still Reliably Disgusting

Shorter O'Neill: Admire the sophistication of my refusal to condemn even outright insanity.

Like night following day, any outbreak of sadistic lunacy will be followed by the MSM's hipster contingent paying generous tribute to their own courage in refusing to condemn the killer. Free clue: it's only courageous if everyone else in the chattering class bubble isn't saying the exact same thing. For an MSM opinion writer to denounce the man on the Clapham omnibus as an unsophisticated brute is about as brave as George Galloway's warm up man denoucing Israel.

Hey, 'devil child' may lack nuance, but at least it also lacks any pretence to bogus insight. Meanwhile, O'Neall wants Dangerous Dan to get 'help and education'. Like what? 'Not Murdering People 101'? A quick course of aromatherapy? Colonic irrigation?

Hey, at least give us a hint here hipsters!

But no: their point is an essentially fradulent one. They want to contrast their own support for Therapy Nation versus the supposedly punative nature of the mob, but what's so sophiticated about their position? The science behind the rehab industry is about as reliable as a UEA climate model. O'Neall even cites the Bulger killers himself - the rehab industries' own flagship case, where despite a blank cheque and a policy of turning a blind eye to a string of offences, 50% of them still ended up back in jail anyway.

Hey, can you imagine how bad the figures are on the cases they don't want to talk about?

This is another case where conservatives have let liberals set the terms of the debate. It's not imprisonment versus rehab, it's the certainty of public protection versus pseudo-scientific garbage. Supporting the clowns and charlatans in the rehab industry is no more an intellectual position than believing your horoscope, and at least Jonathan Cainer doesn't want to set the Mad Axeman loose.

More Butt$ex May Not Be The Answer

After last week's events, I just have one question: how many £250,000 dinners did it take for Shell to persuade the Tories to start this whole panic-buying thing?

Meanwhile, Francis Maude is the latest Tory to find out that you can go to bed with the left, but they won't respect you in the morning. The MSM would pretend to respect Maude as long as he was prepared to throw real conservatives under the bus, but as soon as he was no longer of use to them, he went from a courageous moderniser to Tim Nice-But-Dim's senile uncle.

All of which raises an obvious point: Maude and pals defended their purges as the unfortunate price the Tory Party had to pay for electoral credibility (and that was how the Tories got their 200 seat majority). Now it's Frankie who's exposed as a Toxic Toff the logic of the modernisers surely demands that he be given the 'no place in the modern conservative party' treatment. But, apparently, this is one triangulation too far. They do have to have some principles, and if the Conservative Party stands for anything at all, it stands for the right of privileged prats to behave like idiots without consequences.