Rich People Are Stupid

Just in case you've ever wondered what happens when people with more money than sense meet ecoloons, here's the answer.

Children Abused After Ninjas Screw Up

Oops - did I say 'ninjas' ? I meant 'social workers':

Actually, I'm one of those people who think MbP is the era's 'demonic possession' - but without the hard science to back it up. Still, in so far as the children really were poisoned, you'd think this family might merit a little scrutiny.

Again, as ever, I emphasise the key point: social workers aren't just being criticised for bad judgement:

The report by the Bristol Safeguarding Children Board said that child protection procedures were ignored and no safeguards were in place to prevent harm coming to the youngsters.

In other words, by their own criteria these people were blindingly incompetent. That's what happens when child protection takes second place behind sticking it to The Man.

Abortion: The Final Answer

There's been a lot of talk recently about changing the law on abortion, for example reducing the limit down to 22 weeks or even 20 weeks. Few topics are more controversial, but fortunately I've come up with a brilliant plan to end the debate once and for all.

Forget all this talk of time limits, medical necessity and the like, I have the answer right here: we simply pass a law asserting that all women have the right to 'reasonable termination'.

Is that brilliant or what ? Obviously, we'll need a legal framework to decide what's reasonable. I'm figuring it should work something like this: as soon as the woman in question is in the recovery room, two cops should start interrogating her while she's still under the influence.

Next up, the cops should arrest her and hold her for 72 hours, while their colleagues start searching her house and questioning friends, acquaintances and bitter co-workers. Chief constables will always find the money for this, especially the ones who've given speeches warning of the dangers of a 'Chinese style' culture of infanticide.

Once they've dug up enough dirt, the police will carry out a series of interviews in which the suspect is asked questions like 'I notice you have "Silence of the Lambs" on DVD, do you like films with killing in them ?'. Or maybe 'I've heard you used to hang out with a couple of feminists, I bet you girls had a few laughs talking about how you'd like to abort a kid, right ?'.

After the 72 hours are up, the police can let the suspect go on bail, and pass the file on to an independent prosecutor. Obviously, the prosecutor's ultimate boss will have also given speeches warning of the dangers of a 'culture of death', but that doesn't mean the decision won't be made based purely on the facts of the case. In fact, there's a good chance that after a few months, they might even let the suspect know she's been cleared.

Then again, some of these cases will go all the way. In fact, some of these women will have to be held on remand, just to make sure they don't have any more abortions. Still, they'll all get their day in court... eventually. Like, maybe, fourteen or so months later. The jury might clear them, in which case no harm done. They might even get costs awarded. Legal costs, of course. Nothing for stress, time off work or anything like that though, that'd be stupid. As long as some of them get cleared eventually, no one can say we're anti-abortion, right ?

See, it's a brilliant idea! I came up with it while I was reading this comment thread over here.

What Was In The Judge's Cake ?

Say what you like about this case, but few people are better qualified than judges to talk about toxic fruitcakes. Come to think of it, adding rat poison to a cake mix might just be the perfect metaphor for what liberalism has done to the legal system.

At risk of stating the obvious, the legal reasoning on show is a train wreck, not least because the defence of provocation only applies in homicide cases. Equally, no matter how badly and how often Little Miss Cyanide was beaten, she herself admitted that she was motivated by a desire to punish her husband for his affair (and, besides, no one 'just snaps' and bakes a cake).

Still, it gets more bonkers:

Judge Jamie Tabor....

Judge Jamie ? Gravitas! I'm guessing Judge Roz and Judge Mikey will be following on later.

Anyway:

Judge Jamie Tabor said he was being lenient as Yvonne Godwin had been in an abusive relationship.

"In my judgment (this) meant you weren't seeing things straight at all.

Given that the poisoning was, as even the offender admitted, not motivated by the abuse, it's worth asking just how wide-ranging this licence to poison is ? What if this former NHS cook had pulled a Shipman in her old job ? Wouldn't the novel 'not seeing things straight' defence apply here too ? If not, why not ?

But that's not the best of it. Here's 'Jamie' again:

You've been a mother to several children. You've worked hard in several places of employment.

I take it all back! She's a heroine!

Hell, if having several kids and plenty of ex-employers means you can poison your husband... well, let's just say I guess we won't be seeing Brad Pitt round here any time soon.

Now, for the cherry on the top, 'Jamie's' final comment:

You are not a criminal in any shape or form.

Well, except for the poisoning thing, of course.

The husband might be a wife beater, but what did the English language do to deserve this pounding ? She's been convicted of poisoning someone, she's a criminal. Words have actual meanings.

This is why the culture war matters. Liberals aren't just intent on introducing wacky laws and ludicrous interpretations of existing ones, they want to undermine the whole basis of English law. Once you have judges denying people convicted of offences are criminals, the law - as an objective body of work - has ceased to exist in any meaningful sense. There's no underlying principle at work, it's all about how liberals feel.

Three Great Reviews

They throw themselves on grenades so you don't have to:

The SAU reviews a book of Gordon Broon speeches (really!). Sample quote: 'Close your eyes and picture an overall-clad Gordon Brown driving a forklift truck into your hallway and removing your assets. Now there's no need for you to read this book'.

Hot Air does the remake of the Andromeda Strain. Sample quote: 'Maybe we could send a message back that said, “HEY! WE’LL STOP VENT MINING WHEN YOU QUIT PLAYING WITH KILLER ORGANISMS! LOVE, GRANDMA AND GRANDPA”'.

FInally, AICN reviews the SATC Movie in their own, inimitable - and filthy - style. Sample Quote: 'Imagine, if you will, a Rob Schneider movie, a Ben Stiller movie and an Adam Sandler movie teaming up and slipping Rohypnol to the BRATZ movie, pulling a train on her sorry, barely legal ass, then leaving the unfortunate spawn of that unholy union in the LA sun for 40 years until it rotted and leathered to the point that it was attractive only to gay men and other women. That’s the Sex and the City movie.'

Obamamessiah Latest

In so far as we've about eight years now of the MSM ramming hilarious - not really - Bushisms down our throats, you'd think Obama's verbal diarrhoea would be worth the odd comment.

Just this week we've had the uncle in the Red Army....

Then there's the dead rising screw up.

Note that second one. Unlike Bushisms, which prove Dubya is barely coherent, but not much else, Obama's gaffes frequently suggest a more profound ignorance of basic facts. Which may be why he comes out with loopy policies like this.

More Fun With The Talibin

The council wants to increase fixed penalties from £50 to £110 for those who put bins out early, fail to recycle, overfill wheelie bins or put the wrong rubbish in the wrong containers.

They are asking each household to nominate one person as responsible so it will be easier for them to prosecute without having to prove who put out the offending bins.

The council is also considering interviewing suspected bin offenders under caution in procedures similar to the way police question criminals.

The draft letter, which has been seen by opposition councilors, also asks how many people live at each address, whether they have any medical conditions and if their families use disposable nappies.

So, nothing objectionable there then. Just consider what it says about modern Britain that someone can use the phrase 'suspected bin offenders' outside the field of comedy.

Apparently, householders aren't part of the solution, not part of the problem. Ditto, don't expect the civil libertards to rouse themselves. The only way Liberty and the rest of the freaks would ever take an interest is if terrorists are hiding in the bin. Until then, Mi Bin, Su Bin.

And now the punch-line:

Officials from the Conservative-run council hope the information sent back by families will make it easier to prosecute or impose fixed penalties.

Yep, it's Dave's Happy, Fun Party that's doing all this.

Tories: this is why we question your party's bona fides.

The BBC: Dhimmi 4 Ever

For evidence of just how long the BBC has been in the tank for the multi-cult, consider this letter sent to Mark Steyn:

Being unable to sleep after reading your book, I remembered that when I was a "Boy Producer" with the BBC in the 1980s and spent a year or so in BBC Birmingham, I was first introduced to LDS: "Liberal Denial Syndrome".

A small unit had been set up in the BBC to investigate the large number of Muslim women who had died in "accidental" kitchen fires. The suspicion was that their husbands, tiring of their spouses, had murdered them and torched their bodies. The grieving widowers would then scoot off to Pakistan and Bangla Desh and get themselves a fresh woman - but more importantly - a large dowry as well. Suddenly the unit was shut down and the project canceled. No one could explain it - but the rumor suggested that they had struck paydirt - too "sensitive" to expose. It's no accident that Pebble Mill (the BBC's old Birmingham HQ) was also the home of the "Asian Unit".

This Is Why They Call It 'Mugged By Reality'

These people are just scum. Just nasty, horrible people getting fired up with drink and drugs and not realising what they're doing to people's lives.

Some of us have been saying that for years.

Outrage D'Jour: Liberal Patriotism Edition

While libs ostentatiously hand-wring over whether or not arresting Mack the Knife will antagonise the yoof, some yutes don't qualify for the libs' special sensitivity program.

I guess this was offence under the 2006 Flag Offences (England) Act. Oops - I've just checked and, no matter how much they might want to, libs haven't yet succeeded in outlawing the English flag. Like I've said before, if the sight of some guy flying a flag sends you into a rage, it might not be the guy with the flag who's racist. That's goes double if it's a Chilean flag and you're in Santiago.

Urban Renewal

Now, here's a scheme we can all get behind.

Question D'Jour

My answer: not in this lifetime.

Khyra Ishaq: Real Victims Found

Apparently, social workers keep screwing up and killing the innocent because there's too much accountability in social work. Clearly, if only we allow them to screw up without consequences, they'll stop screwing up.

How come this never works in other contexts ? How about we can't clamp down on tax evasion, lest the pressure drive people to evade their taxes ? But no: it's only where the unhinged left are involved that the solution involves doing the exact opposite to what any sane person would do.

This is what's really annoying about their endless mantra. Lessons are never learned, because it's always everyone else's fault. Even when a young girl has died in the most hideous of circumstances, it just proves people are too tough on social workers. Whatever the situation, their response is the same: squealing hysterical self-justification and claims of victimhood - and we trust these people to find dysfunctional families ?

New Labour Policy: No Llamas

How crazy was Labour's campaign in Crewe ? This crazy!

Imprisoned In The Sense Of 'Not Really'

Note the sleazy sleight of hand here. They claim to have suffered psychiatric damage as a result of imprisonment even though they were free to leave at any time. The only thing they couldn't do was enter Britain proper - they were free to go anywhere abroad.

This is how terrible their imprisonment was - almost as bad as living anywhere else in the world.

(H/T to the insanely productive DWE)

Quote Of The Day

Ed doesn't dig the literary scene:

And what is post-modern twee? It is the denial of anything outside the acutely vulnerable selfish obsessions of post-modern western sensibility, the historically one-eyed, geo-politically ignorant, fey yet avaricious closed circle of sheepshearers we call our educated literary classes.

New Frontiers In Femiloon Victimhood

While their colleagues were busily employing a time-honoured misogynistic slur against a genuinely high-achieving woman, the BBC's femiloon contingent were tied up inventing a whole new victim group.

Yep, the patriarchy is discriminating against female celebutards. But hang on: isn't the whole celeb thing kind of, well, girly anyway ? It's not like Frank Lampard's on the list.

True, the Rat Milker is there, and she does indeed has an almost supernatural ability to remind men why their divorce was worth every penny - hell, she even reminds me of my ex-wife, and I've never been married - but it turns out the rabid sow is the Rosa Park of celebutards:

Her emotional stances on press intrusion and the specifics of her divorce battle, not to mention her defiant drenching of McCartney's lawyer, facilitates her categorisation as the traditional hysteric, with the resultant labelling of Mills as an attention seeker encountering established cultural prejudice concerning 'unfeminine' behaviour.

Or it could be she's a rabid sow.

Incidentally, that quote was from "Aberdeen University academic [and clearly Category 5 mangina - DJ] Alan Dodd". So if you're wondering why petrol is so expensive, it's because of the money the government's raking off to employ people to write papers on Heather Mills.

There is a serious point here:

In another abstract for the upcoming conference, Salford University's Kirsty Fairclough writes: "Celebrities including Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Rumer Willis, Mischa Barton and Kerry Katona are routinely condemned for their perceived excessive lifestyles in terms of their disregard for the apparent rules of femininity through extreme diets or weight gain, drug abuse, supposed lack of fashion sense/style, and an 'unfeminine' need for fame and attention.

Perceived excesses ? Plus when did being a smackhead get to be a gender thing ? Do these women really get worse publicity than, say, Pete Docherty ?

Call it a hunch, but the rise of girl gangs and the like might just have something to do with a liberal establishment that not only refuses to criticise dysfunctional lunacy, but even goes as far as to cast the lunatics in question as avatars of female empowerment.

Yep, I Think We All Saw This One Coming

Don't be shocked, but the new BBC drama about Lady Thatcher includes a stupid smear. Specifically, it casts the young Lady Thatcher as a slut trying to sleep her way to the top, featuring a scene in.....

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Sorry, dropped off there. Doubtless, the Jules and Rozes at the BBC think this constitutes radical program making. It isn't - it's just pathetic.

Yep, Lady Thatcher might have beaten the left senseless all through the 1980s but they'll get their revenge now, by making a nasty program about her. That'll teach her. Apart from anything else, a woman trying to seduce Ted Heath ? Was she on the rebound from Liberace ?

I guess the BBC prefers to lavish praise on women who've succeeded on their own merits.

Why Social Workers Suck

They can't diagnose dysfunction because the liberal concept of the family is so screwed up in the first place.

Exhibit A (Key line: 'The Glasgow-born doctor argued that insanity was a perfectly understandable reaction to the madness of society and famously linked psychosis to bad parenting - while fathering ten children with four women.')

Exhibit B (Key line: 'From the age of 13, I spent days at a time alone while my mother retreated to her writing studio - some 100 miles away. I was left with money to buy my own meals and lived on a diet of fast food.')

We shouldn't let liberals keep cats.

Rainbow World Postponed Again!

I blame the legacy of colonialism!