Blairites For Rape

http://blairitesforlindsay.blogspot.com no longer works (I know not the problem), but that doesn't stop dear old Greatest Hits of the Nineties from replying here, most recently to my post on the proposed "Red Velvet" establishment.

I am not at all surprised to see which is the Blairite side, of course: the side of the "free" market in goods and services, which must by definition include prostitution and pornography, as well as alcohol, drugs, gambling, and everything else.

Molly Jowell, wife of an "associate" and herself responsible for bringing (at public expense) the cream of "Las Vegas casino operators" to Britain to consider the opportunities that she intends to open up for them here, must be very proud of you, BFL.

Yes, the Blair Cabinet really does contain a working pointwoman for both the Italian and the American Mafia. And its strongest, shrillest supporters at local level support "lap-dancing". But then, how could they not?

Chosen at random?

Three 17-year-old boys were interviewed about their lives as Sixth Formers on this morning's Woman's Hour, much as teenagers also turn up as interviewees or even writers on the Guardian from time to time. Are they chosen at random? I have written to the Guardian in the past to ask this, but my letters on the subject have never been published...

Twelve Good (Wo)men And True

If I were sued by a "lap-dancing club" proprietor for saying that, morally even if not legally, his business was a brothel, his staff were prostitutes, his customers were prostititutes' clients, and he was a pimp, then would you find in his favour, or in mine?

Long live juries!

I'm part of the Union, till the day I die

The United Kingdom is my country, and no one has the right to take it away from me.

Real Labourites did not struggle so hard and for so long to secure power only to hand it over to people beyond our control. Or rather, what little of it was left after Heath’s Treaty of Rome (opposed by Labour), Thatcher’s Single European Act (opposed by Labour) and Major’s Maastricht Treaty (opposed by far more Labour than Conservative MPs).

Likewise, we see the United Kingdom as the means of bringing the conservative benefits of Socialism (see Trident, below) to as many people as possible. This simply would not be an economic option for an independent Scotland, an independent Wales, or a “United Ireland”, each inherently more selfish, either than the United Kingdom as presently constituted, or than any rump left behind by the secession of any part of the Union. And the European Union is simply too large for Socialism.

Furthermore, the Commonwealth is the extension of the Union’s inherent generosity of spirit. It has been scandalously under-used for decades, not least because, with the Union from which it is inseparable, the Commonwealth is one of the strongest monarchist arguments (see Long To Reign Over Us, below).

Whatever next?

After reading the Observer Magazine special on India, I really do have to ask, has The Observer been taken over by the BJP and the RSS, with their "Mumbai", their "Kolkata", their "Bengalaru", and so forth? The first of these is rejected out of hand both by Bombay's Stock Exchange and by its High Court, and rightly so. I know that the partisans of Scottish separatism and of supremacism on the part of speakers of Welsh, Catalan and Basque (not the position of most such speakers) now get away with presenting themselves as left-wing, more is the pity. But Hindutva? Whatever next? Seriously, what?

House of Lords reform

This time it really is going to happen, whether we like it or not: the last hereditaries have to be gone before Blair leaves the Commons, former PMs retiring therefrom having traditionally been given earldoms...

So we need to make the best of it, as we certainly could do. The proposal currently doing the rounds, for 15-year non-renewable terms and for regional party lists, is clearly unacceptable on any conceivable level. Therefore, we need to have a broadly-based alternative proposal, and I am writing to float a few ideas accordingly.

First, there would be 150 Elected Senators, with six-year terms and paid in exactly the same way as MPs. Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and each of the nine English regions (but with their borders redrawn so as to reflect historic county boundaries, and so as not to conform to any map in Brussels) would each elect, by means of two ballot papers per elector, six Senators who were members of political parties and four who were not. Each elector would vote for one candidate by means of an X, with the requisite number declared elected at the end.

In the same way, five party and five Crossbench Senators would be elected by each of two areas: Scotland, Northern Ireland, the North East, the North West, Yorkshire, and the East Midlands; and Wales, the West Midlands, the South West, the South East, London, and East Anglia. And four party and six Crossbench Senators would be elected by the whole country.

Frankly, if we could not get at least one of our people elected as a Crossbencher in each region, in each area, and nationally, then we simply would not be trying. Likewise, fourth, fifth or sixth party seats would be ours for the taking, whereas I have worked out that the BNP would stand no chance.

Anyone completing four terms (24 years) as an Elected Senator would thus become a Life Senator, with the right to name one other Life Senator. Life Senators would receive only expenses of the kind currently paid to Peers, and no salaries.

But in the meantime, secondly, there would be one-off elections of the first 75 Life Senators: three party and two Crossbench by Councillors (above Parish or Town level) in each of the 12 regions; two party and two Crossbench by such Councillors and by their MPs in each of the two areas; two party and three Crossbench by the House of Commons; and one party and one Crossbench by the Elected Senators. In the first three cases, the voting system as above would be employed; in the last, the Single Transferable Vote. Each Life Senator would then have the right to name one more, giving 150 Life Senators in all.

And thirdly, the powerhouses of the Senate would be its Caucuses and its Committees. The Elected Senators from each region, those from each area, and those elected nationally would each form a Category A Caucus: 15 in all, with Life Senators welcome to join up to one of them. Furthermore, any 10 Elected Senators would be free to form a Category B Caucus: up to 15 in all, with Life Senators likewise welcome to join up to one of them. Again, if our Crossbenchers, especially, could not manage the latter, then they simply would not be trying.

Each Caucus, in either Category, would elect one member to each Committee (of which there would be one per department), and the Chairmen of the Caucuses and of the Committees would comprise the Standing Committee of the Senate, responsible for all business matters, and rotationally charing both that Committee and the Senate itself, with the casting vote in the event of a tie.

No Bill could be put to Second Reading without having been approved by the relevant Committee, by seven of the Category A Caucuses, and by one fewer than half of the Category B Caucuses; and no Bill could be put to Third Reading without having been approved by the relevant Committee, by eight of the Category A Caucuses, and by one more than half of the Category B Caucuses. Any consequent dispute with the House of Commons would be resolved by a Joint Session, chaired by the Speaker of the House of Commons, a House which would have a permanently fixed membership of 500, i.e., one per 0.2% of the electorate.

If 15-year non-renewable terms and regional party lists go through, then nothing that we really want ever will again. And time is now of the essence.

Turkey

No, I'm not entering into the Christmas spirit just yet. Rather, I have been taking note of how the Pope is being received in Turkey, an indication of what we always knew anyway. Were it not for the constant threat of an American-backed military coup, Turkey would already be a fully-fledged Islamic republic: polygamy, shrouded women, limb amputations, the lot.

"Red Velvet"

The following letter, relating to an application to license a "lap-dancing club" (brothel) in Consett, was not printed in the Consett and Stanley Advertiser, but I have also submitted a formal objection to Derwentside District Council in much the same terms:

"The claims of the "Red Velvet" applicant, Sonny Gill, would be laughable if they were not so tragic and so wicked. If "this is not prostitution", then what, exactly, is it? It is making money out of sexual stimulation, and that deliberately apart from any meaningful relationship. So, morally even if not legally, it is prostitution. Morally, even if not legally, the women involved are prostitutes. Morally, even if not legally, the men paying them are prostitutes' clients. And morally, even if not legally, Mr Gill is a pimp. As would be Derwentside District Council (i.e., each and every one of us) if it accepted a fee (on all our behalfs) for licensing what morally, even if not legally, would be a brothel. Well, I for one am not prepared to be turned into a pimp.

Anyway, where do these women come from, and where do they go? The "sex industry" is seamless, as even Mr Gill must surely acknowledge. Who cares if this "is happening in towns and cities all over the country"? So are all sorts of evil things. And if "the protection of children from harm, the prevention of public nuisance, the protection of public safety, and the prevention of crime and disorder" are not matters calling for "a moral judgement", then what exactly are they, and what exactly is?

Is the Council prepared to turn every citizen of Derwentside, including every Councillor, into a pimp? Is it prepared to take payment of behalf of the whole community in order to turn Consett into a licensed centre of human trafficking and sexual violence? Does it envisage nothing better for our young women than employment of this kind (the amount of money earned being entirely beside the point)? Does it consider these things to be in accordance with "the protection of children from harm, the prevention of public nuisance, the protection of public safety, and the prevention of crime and disorder"?

We shall all find out when it decides on this application, a decision expected on 12th December. I shall be there if at all possible, and I encourage anyone else who can do so to attend as well."

Trident

The Labour Movement was founded to conserve such good things as national self-government (the only basis for international co-operation, and including the United Kingdom as greater than the sum of its parts), local variation, historical consciousness, family life, agriculture, manufacturing, small business, close-knit communities, law and order, civil liberties, academic standards, all forms of art, and mass political participation within a constitutional framework. All of these were and are corroded to nought by free market capitalism, both in itself, and because it drives despairing millions into equally corrosive Jacobinism, Marxism, anarchism or Fascism.

Marx himself saw Britain, with Germany, as one of the two countries most likely to have a revolution such as he predicted and advocated; it was thanks to Labour that no such disaster ever befell this country, as the sectarian Left's hatred of Labour demonstrates. We are proud to be the objects of such hatred: they hate us because they hate the Welfare State, and the strong statutory and other protection of workers, consumers, communities and the environment, the former paid for by progressive taxation, the whole underwritten by full employment, and all these things delivered by the partnership between a strong Parliament and strong local government. In a word, they hate Socialism.

However, in recent years, much of Labour's central apparatus has been hijacked by people with sectarian Left backgrounds, who have only changed their Marxism's ending so that the bourgeoisie (and thus the most bourgeois of countries, which is not Britain) wins. These people remain Marxist in their dialectical materialism; Leninist in their vanguard elitism, in their "democratic centralism", and in their use of various religious and other interests as "Useful Idiots"; Trotskyist in their entryism, and in their belief in the permanent revolution; and yet also Stalinist in their desire to create the dictatorship of the victorious class in a superstate, from which to export it (including by force of arms) while vanguard elites around the world owe allegiance to that superstate rather than to their own countries.

Contrary to their origins, and to the wishes of almost all of their members and supporters, all three parties have largely been turned, by means of such neo-Trotskyist entryism, into vanguard elites of this Marxist-Leninist (specifically bourgeois-triumphalist) kind. Thus has been largely overturned Labour's spectacular achievement in preventing a Marxist takeover of Britain.

That overturning, and thus the new Marxist hegemony itself, would become complete if another nuclear weapons programme were to be commissioned in succession to Trident. Trident was at least useless only in its own ostensibly defensive terms, whereas any new programme would be useless in any terms whatever, in addition to the fact that nuclear weapons (like radiological, chemical and biological weapons) are morally repugnant simply in themselves. They offer not the slightest defence against a range of loosely-knit, if at all connected, terrorist organisations pursuing a range of loosely-knit, if at all connected, aims in relation to a range of countries while actually governing no state. Where would any such organisation keep nuclear weapons in the first place?

Furthermore, the possession of nuclear weapons, in addition to offending against Islamic (and much other) theological opinion, serves to convey to terrorists and their supporters that Britain wishes to "play with the big boys", thereby contributing to making Britain a target for the terrorist activity against which such weapons are defensively useless. It is high time for Britain to grow up.

Britain's permanent seat on the UN Security Council could not be taken away without British consent, and so does not depend in any way on her possession of nuclear weapons; on the contrary, the world needs and deserves a non-nuclear permanent member of that Council.

Most European countries do not have nuclear weapons, and nor does Canada, Australia or New Zealand. Are these therefore in greater danger? On the contrary, the London bombings of 7th July 2005 were attacks on a country with nuclear weapons, while the attacks of 11th September 2001 were against a country with by far the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. The only "nuclear power" in the Middle East is Israel; is Israel the most secure state in the Middle East?

A new nuclear weapons programme could only be commissioned on grounds purely ideological in the most irrational and doctrinaire sense of the word, and the ideology in question would be an utterly uncritical Marxism. For a Labour Government to do such a thing would be the Labour Movement's greatest ever failure, and the greatest threat to everything for which it has ever fought with phenomenal success of benefit to the entire world.

Nor would any such programme represent or effect national pride or independence, but rather the wholesale subjugation of Britain's defence capability to a foreign power (however friendly) precisely in the service of that Marxist ideology. That power maintains at least no less friendly relations with numerous other countries, of which almost none have nuclear weapons. Diverting enormous sums of money towards public services, and towards the relief of poverty at home and abroad, precisely by reasserting control over our own defence capability, would represent a most significant step towards One Nation politics, with an equal emphasis on the One and on the Nation.

Therefore, the next Labour Leader and Prime Minister must be a person who has specifically, publicly and unambiguously ruled out any such programme, or at least specifically, publicly and unambiguously guaranteed that no such programme will be commissioned without the support of a division of the House of Commons, including a free vote of all Labour MPs, with the majority both of the whole House and of Labour MPs voting in favour. Otherwise, the Labour Party will have ceased to exist, and in its place there will be nothing but a Marxist sect, compelling all of us Labour people to act accordingly.

Scandal After Scandal

With the news that the Labour Party is now reduced to deducting public money at source from Councillors’ allowances, one has to wonder how many of the few remaining members of any political party are in receipt of such allowances, and whether or not they would stay if they lost that entitlement.

So Labour really had better get its Leadership Election out of the way before its expected massive losses in the spring, or there might well so few people left to vote in the former that things will look even worse than they were going to look anyway: a national writing large of the scandal in most constituencies, where at best a handful of aged activists, and as often as not two or three people in an office in London, simply appoint the MP for a super-safe seat.

Aren't yokels hilarious?

Aren’t yokels hilarious? Saunders and French Productions have already proved this with The Vicar of Dibley, and are now repeating the triumph with Jam and Jerusalem. Isn’t that right? And aren’t they more than fit to plunder the canon of The Kinks for their new theme tune?

Tragedy averted, but farce played out

Why was Michael Stone at large in the first place? Because he had been released under the Good Friday Agreement, also the cause of the farce that he disrupted.

The poor we have always with us

Of course poverty is relative as well as absolute. That was what Jesus meant when He said that "the poor ye have always with you". He certainly didn’t say that we were to do nothing about it, as so much Christian work for the poor bears out. This side of the eschaton, there will always be people whose plight spurs us on to ever-greater improvements, both to their spiritual and material benefit and to ours.

Have They Got News For Ian Hislop?

On Have I Got News For You?, Ian Hislop merrily laughed along as the guest presenter denounced the "extremists" who opposed the ban on a British Airways employee’s wearing of the cross, and suggested that BA flights would be safer without them. Will this be kept in mind when Hislop next tries his hand at the upper-class English hobby of being an ecclesiastical hanger on? If not, why not?

Christian Unions

With universities and Students’ Unions trying to ban Christian Unions, I am reminded of my own student days. Then, it was taken as axiomatic, even among Catholics but especially among middle-of-the-road or High Anglicans, that the Christian Union was a wicked, vicious cult of theologically illiterate fundamentalist lunatics because ... they didn’t believe in sex before marriage! Through Chaplains’ positions, those who held this Anglican liberal line were of course, and uniquely, maintained at public expense and as full members of the University staff, although how many of them would otherwise have been so appointed is altogether another question.

What a happy coincidence!

"The panellists don’t know the questions in advance," David Dimbleby regularly assures us on Question Time. This week, there was a question about child abuse and a question about Polly Toynbee. And on the panel were Esther Rantzen and Polly Toynbee. What a happy coincidence!

So what would REAL Democrats be like, then?

Interviewing Sidney Blumenthal on HARDTalk, Andrew Neil bemoaned at some length that so many Democrats recently elected to Congress were "socially conservative, anti big government, anti big business, and isolationist," and was joined by Blumenthal in denouncing the protectionist reaction to what they both clearly regarded as the welcome and deserved destruction of manufacturing in the Midwest. So, what exactly do these two think that what they would regard as proper Democrats should stand for, if not for these eminently sensible positions? And why?

There is a world elsewhere, you know

The biggest story of the week was undoubtedly Russian-based, so BBC News 24’s Dateline London devoted the entire programme to … the Middle East! There is a world elsewhere, you know.

So, farewell then, Milton Friedman

Thanks to Milton Friedman, whom the world has been praising to the heights now that he has died, we have gone, barely within one generation, from a situation in which a single manual wage could provide a high degree of comfort for the wage-earner, the homemaker and several children, to one in which anything like such a manner of life is beyond the reach even of a childless couple with two professional salaries.

Friedman at least realised (even if only implicitly) that inflation in 1970s Britain was no fault of the unions, since they, after all, had no control over the money supply. But then, Thatcher's campaign against the unions, and thus against the industries that most sustained them, had nothing to do with economics: it was political, but for some reason she felt that it could not be debated politically, and so had to be given a veneer of economic "inevitability" (a Marxist concept anyway). Which says a great deal, really.

There cannot have a "free" market in goods and services generally but not in alcohol, drugs, gambling, prostitution or pornography. Nor can can there be such a market and any to hope to conserve, say, national sovereignty, or agriculture, or manufacturing, or small business, or family life, or local variation, or mass political participation with a constitutional framework, or...

So, can someone please explain to me what was conservative about Friedman, or indeed about Thatcher? It strikes me as the very last adjective properly applicable to either of them.

The age of consent

Of course a teenage boy who has sex with a teenage girl is not a paedophile, although he has always been a criminal for doing a lot less than that (even if he were the younger party), whereas an equalisation in that law a couple of years ago caused all hell to break loose among the strange sect that has a monopoly on social policy, and almost on comment, in this country. That equalisation still seems to have passed by all contributors to the latest debate. The same people who otherwise insist that teenage girls must be treated as grown women and teenage boys as small children (if their existence is acknowledged at all) simply presuppose that this arrangement should be reversed in this one area alone. Why?

But then, why do we base this debate on a premise that we all know to be false, namely that sexual intercourse, as most people would understand the term, is normal in the early teens? Everyone knows that nowhere near fifty per cent of 14-year-olds engages is such behaviour, yet everyone speaks as if that were, if anything, a conservative estimate.

If the law in this area should reflect how people actually behave (a debatable point, but if it should), and certainly if it is to protect the most vulnerable, then it should be changed to criminalise any sexual activity with any person under 18 years of age who is more than three years younger than oneself, with a maximum sentence of imprisonment for twice the number of years difference in age, or of life imprisonment where that difference is five years or more.

How The Left Found God And Won

Excellent stuff from Neil Clark. It always baffles me when people over here mock George Bush for saying that his favourite philosopher is Jesus Christ, since that is exactly what the founders of all three of our own political traditions would have said.

All hung together

The voters don't like hung Parliaments (why would they?), but their real dislike is now for the political parties themselves. Quite consciously, they are preparing to vote (including, where appropriate, not vote) for a hung Parliament specifically in order to kill off the parties that they now so virulently despise.

They are perfectly capable of doing this: after all, they wanted a reduced Labour majority last time, so they successfully brought about exactly that at the ballot box. Britain has the most sophisticated electorate in the world, even capable (as at Bromley & Chislehurst) of using a by-election to protest against the Opposition rather than to protest against the Government. Where else in the world does that happen?

Given that, do not mistake abstention for apathy: it might be the very reverse, as it was in many cases last time, and as it certainly will be in very many cases indeed next time.

The situation in which we now find ourselves simply is not like anything that has gone before: voter turnout in free-fall, next to no party members, the parties bordering on bankruptcy, their central organisations functioning as a single body (and that funded by an illegal slush fund), the outgoing Prime Minister awaiting arrest while desperate for the other party to win and beat his own successor, and so on. Nothing like this has ever happened before, certainly not simultaneously across the board as at present.

Many people assume that, in particular, the Conservative and Labour Parties will somehow always exist, just because they always will, they always will, they always will.

But they won't. We are living in their final generation, as even their most seasoned and active remaining members on the ground freely state face-to-face or in private correspondence. And even they don't seem to be weeping much, it must be said.

However, someone (other than the BNP, the Trots and the Islamists, that is) will still have to contest elections in 10 years' time. Among other things, this is an opportunity to re-create a party conscious and worthy of its roots in the unions and the co-operatives, in Fabianism and Christian Socialism; a party which combines, and which understands the connections among, the hugely popular legacy of Keynes and Beveridge, sane social conservatism, and patriotism in all directions.

People would want this who still vote Labour only because they feel that they owe it to the fallen of two World Wars to turn out and vote for "someone". People would want this who long even only to be part of the first category, but who simply cannot bring themselves to vote for what Labour has become. And people would even want this, once confronted with it, to whom, for whatever tribal reasons, it would simply never occur to vote for the Labour Party as such.

Mid-term hopes and fears

The neocons, true to their Leninist (specifically, Trotskyist) roots, are using the white Evangelicals, a section of the Catholics, and certain factions within the old "mainline" churches (Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopalian, &c) as "Useful Idiots". The "Idiots" seem to be wising up, though. In particular, they seem to have noticed that there has been absolutely no change whatever in the krytocratically imposed law of abortion on demand up to and including partial birth, the Roe v Wade ruling having overturned by judicial fiat the laws of all 50 states.

The fact is that, should there ever be any such change, then the Evangelicals and the Catholics would declare "Mission Accomplished" and go home to the Democratic Party, whence they came in the 1970s. The neocons have been trying to recruit new "Useful Idiots" through the worthy, but wildly improbable, Marriage Amendment, presumably with a view to taking over the Democratic Party through the black churches on that false prospectus, just as they took over the Republican Party through many of the white churches on the false prospectus of restricting abortion.

But are the Democrats ahead of them? When newly-elected Democrats are described as "right-wing" or "conservative", then what does this actually mean? Fiscally hard-line, and hawkish on foreign policy? Or, like the once-and-future Labour Party (if not necessarily called that in future) in Britain, morally and socially conservative while (indeed, precisely by being) keen to alleviate the harshness of capitalism in order to preserve constitutionality and public order?

The former I fear, but the latter I hope.

Long to reign over us

Following the annual round of stories and blog entries complaining about having to sing the words "Long to reign over us" in the National Anthem, Liberals and liberals take note: The Queen is Head of State of 16 sovereign Commonwealth Realms (and of the Cook Islands, a state in free association with New Zealand), each of which retains this arrangement entirely of its own volition and may change it at any time. They have all now kept up this link with each other (not just with Britain, but with each other, including in relation to the others on Britain's part) long beyond the age of decolonisation.

Only four of them have white majority populations, as do only two of the remaining British Overseas Territories, any of which may become independent whenever it pleases, but all of whose people explicitly choose to be British.

Furthermore, the Great Council of Chiefs of Fiji (which now elects the President) continues to acknowledge The Queen as Paramount Chief (with precedence ahead of the President), even though Fiji formally became a republic after two military coups in 1987. Indeed, The Queen still features on the Fijian currency and stamps, and did so even while the then-new Republic of Fiji was expelled from the Commonwealth immediately after the coups. As one might expect, the Chiefs themselves are from the Melanesian half of the population (the other half is of Indian descent).

Compare and contrast all of this with the whiter-than-white EU, or indeed with the whiter-than-white Atlantic Alliance.

If anything, and especially with the Diamond Jubilee now on the horizon, we should be looking for bodies comparable to the Great Council of Chiefs in other Commonwealth or ex-Commonwealth republics, and especially in Zimbabwe, as well as in former Commonwealth Realms, including Bangladesh by virtue of Pakistan, and Namibia by virtue of South Africa. These bodies should be encouraged to acknowledge The Queen as Paramount Chief or in some comparable capacity, not least in return for direct charitable aid without reference to any republican government, together with the necessary protection care of the private security sector.

The incredible disappearing investigation

Will Tony Blair's arrest in the course of the cash-for-peerages investigation be the media's cue to stop mentioning this story at all? And how would that differ from their current approach to it? He could be doing his job from a prison cell, and still only those inside the Golden Circle would be allowed to know.

Quite so, Colonel Collins

On This Week, Colonel Tim Collins (neocon would-be abolisher of the RAF, and hot tip to head a CIA-backed junta in the event of Brown's or Cameron's stepping out of line while in Number 10) described it as "incoherent" for a country to have a nuclear "deterrent" but not capital punishment. Quite so, Colonel Collins. Quite so...

No "Son and Heir" There

Thursday afternoon saw me at a very good conference, also attended by several luminaries of the Dear Leader's Sedgefield Constituency Labour Party, including the Chairman of that august body, who was telling everyone within earshot to vote for John McDonnell for Labour Leader, and bemoaning McDonnell's failure to arrange a campaign meeting in Ferryhill. Everyone there from that CLP (although they weren't there in that capacity) was adamant that they never saw Tony Blair at all; and they were all having absolutely none of the persistent rumour of "Euan Blair, the Son and Heir". On the contrary, they were implaccable in their insistence on a local candidate, specifically citing their last 23 years' experience of a London MP as their reason for that insistence.

Questions for Question Time

Lady Meyer, "Social and Political Activist", was on this week's Question Time, and had little or nothing to say. Beyond being married to Sir Christopher Meyer (also on it not long ago, but you can understand that), who the hell is she? And how is picking people off David Dimbleby's dinner party circuit any different from just picking them out of the telephone directory for wherever the programme happens to be that week? At least the latter approach would produce a broader range of views, but from people with vastly more typical experiences, and at far less expense.

Evil Vanquished (for now, at least)

Derwentside District Labour has successfully chosen a panel of candidates without reference either to David Hodgson or to Kevan Jones. Rejoice! And rejoice even more if Neil Fleming turns out not to be on it: I'll let you know.

All pretence at my "auto-exclusion" has been discontinued, but there has still been no apology for insulting, defaming and seeking to defraud me.

Yet I had always thought that County Durham was a stronghold of "centrist" Labour...

Doing a bit of research on a computer in a public library, I find that Durham county Council has blocked access to The Spingbok Club's website, and logged my having tried to visit this London-based voice of those still hankering after the Boer Republic and the Rhodesian Treason. However, I find that it is perfectly simple to access the website of The Stalin Society, a London-based voice of those still hankering after the Soviet Union, and indeed claiming that only one million people died in the gulags, half of them due to the privations of the War.

Yet I had always thought that County Durham was a stronghold of "centrist" Labour...

Ah, the wonders of living in a one-party state!

Neither Ali Miraj nor any other Cameron A-lister need really worry. At least one of them is unable to explain when, how or why she ever left the Labour Party (which she only ever joined because of Tony Blair), leading one to assume that she has not in fact done so at all, a matter which the Labour Party's Senior Constitutional Officer (Eric Wilson -- Eric_Wilson@labour.org.uk) refuses point blank to investigate. There are no doubt many more in the same position. Are they all, perhaps?

Labour members or not, the A-listers are all members of the Blameronite Party (formerly the Blairtilloite Party). That organisation has its own source of funds, namely the criminal sale of peerages out of Tony Blair's office, whence its Publicity Department is also briefing furiously in favour of a Cameron victory over Gordon Brown as, to no one's surprise, Blair's preferred outcome to the next General Election, an outcome for which Blair will undoubtedly vote in the privacy of the polling booth.

So Mr Miraj and the rest of the Blameronite A-list can sleep easy. If Conservative Associations will not take them, then loyalist Labour MPs for safe seats will be found to announce their retirements, in return for peerages, far too late for the normal selection procedures, thus enabling the National Executive Committee to impose absolutely anyone it pleases. And guess who they will be.

Ah, the wonders of living in a one-party state!

Remind me again which country this is?

Sentencing some Walter Mitty to forty years that he certainly would not have been given if he had actually carried out the acts that he was "planning" on behalf of "al-Qaeda" (no connection among the many groups in question has ever been established), Mr Justice Butterfield called him a great threat to "the whole nation of the US and the UK". Note that singular form, and note which set of initials comes first.

And then came this evening's 10 O'Clock News and Newsnight. The former devoted its first 12 minutes to the wholly predictable, and universally predicted, American mid-term results, and to the subsequent, but no more than partially and indirectly consequent (and, again, widely trailed), sacking of Donald Rumsfeld. Then came a mere two minutes on the police questioning of the entire Cabinet as at the time of the last General Election (bar one, of course), but half-way into that Nick Robinson was talking about America. Coverage of this huge British political story was thus all of one minute long.

As for Newsnight, although it had a very good piece on anti-white racial violence, it devoted its first 53 (FIFTY-THREE!) minutes to the American story, plus 10 minutes to the Palestinian mosque siege, but, again, only two to the real story of the day, of the week, of the year, of the decade in Britain.

Remind me again which country this is?

Betrayal To The Death

Why the fuss over Tony Blair and the death penalty pronounced against Saddam Hussein? Blair has already betrayed our opposition to torture, and in principle to indefinite detention without charge on the mere say-so of a Police Constable. So why not to capital punishment as well?

A Sign Of The Times

Freelance that I am, on Thursday I shall be attending an event for Councillors organised by a voluntary body. It is to begin with lunch at 1pm, and is expected to be over by 3:30. In other words, it simply presupposes that Councillors do not work. No one has questioned this presupposition. A sign of the times, I feel.

Eric Wilson: Incompetent Bully

The following was sent to Eric Wilson on Saturday, but he has not even replied, and it seems to confirm that the Labour Party is hopelessly incompetent from top to bottom, with no part of it having the first clue what any other part is doing, and with absolutely no idea how to deal with anyone who stands up to its bullying:

Dear Mr Wilson,

Following on from the Derwentside DLP notice, the notice of a "Young Labour Halloween Party" (just how old does one have to be in order to be spared these things?), and Gordon Bown's message about climate change, the appended [a message from Stephen Hughes MEP] is the fourth members' communication that I have received since my "auto-exclusion" on no identifiable ground except the threat of a parliamentary candidate anywhere who held my views, and of such a candidate here in this constituency with his base in Derwentside, both of which threats you, and those at whose behest you operate, clearly take with the utmost seriousness.

The DLP, Young Labour, the National Party and the Regional Party are thus unanimous that no such exclusion has taken place, and I therefore demand both your confirmation to that effect and an unconditional apology for insulting, defaming and attempting to defraud me; that apology must be on your own part personally, on the part of the Membership Department, and on the part of Hilary Armstrong MP (at whose command, or at the very least on whose behalf, this whole situation has undoubtedly arisen).

Furthermore, I demand a written reprimand, copied here of course, of the Secretary of Lanchester Branch Labour Party, Neil Fleming (FlemingN@parliament.uk), for failing to notify me of this month's Branch meeting, and for repeating on the agenda for that meeting your insult and defamation of me.

I expect these things by 5pm on Monday 6th November, and let us make that the end of this matter.

However, since it is now beyond dispute that I am a Labour Party member in good standing, I repeat my calls for investigation, both of the party within the Party being maintained at local level in opposition to the Labour Leadership on Derwentside District Council (see the post We Name The Guilty Persons on http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.com), and of the party within the Party being maintained at national level (see several other posts on http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.com, among many other places rather grander than my blog).

Very many thanks.

Yours fraternally,

David

Still The President (of Britain, that is)

How charming to see dear old Michael Heseltine on Question Time, illustrating what a very important person he still is. And he is: for 16 years and counting, no one has become Prime Minister without being endorsed by Hezza, the profoundly divisive "consensus-builder", the man whose pre-publicity and post-publicity have always wildly exceeded his actual achievements, the European Commission's point man in Britain, and now the power behind the throne of David Cameron (Tony Blair's chosen successor, which is why Blair won't answer the question and Cameron shouldn't ask it).

"Auto-exclusion"

I have now received my fourth Labour Party members' communication since my inexplicable "auto-exclusion", which has clearly not happened at all in actual fact. An apology from Eric Wilson (Eric_Wilson@labour.org.uk) is very much in order, on his own behalf personally, on behalf of the Membership Department, and on behalf of Hilary Armstrong MP (hilary@hilaryarmstrong.com); my email address, for Cc-ing purposes, is davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. I have been insulted and defamed, and there has been an attempt to defraud me.

The Companies Bill

There is much bemoaning of the Companies Bill, and specifically of its imposition on directors of a statutory duty to have regard to the interests of suppliers, customers, employees, the community and the environment, in addition to the interests of shareholders.

But this new duty is only necessary because of the ridiculous farming out of great swathes of government activity to private companies, which are thus issued with licences to print public money from such risk-free "investments", there being no risk whatever that school food might one day never need to provided, or that the bins might one day never need to be emptied, nor that the central government which either funds directly, or else underwrites, such provison might ever go bust.

Have efficiency and accountability been increased now that, for example, the caretaker of a village primary school is now longer formally answerable to the Head Teacher, or the workmen repairing the roads at the County Council Taxpayers' expense are no longer answerable in any way to the County Councillor?

This ludicrous approach has now been pursued by governments of both parties for a quarter of a century, with no sign that it is ever going to end so that common sense can be restored. And it has indeed had been many disastrous consequences for suppliers, customers (broadly defined), employees, the community and the environment.

But now there is almost nothing left to contract out except the very front line of public services such as education, health care, policing, and fire and rescue. Public opinion is much more sensitive about these things, and what has gone on routinely up to now in many others will not be tolerated here. Hence the need for this clause.

At Warwick, why did the unions not simply demand that this entire demented process be halted and reversed, to unconfined rejoicing from suppliers, "customers", employees, the civic-minded and the environmentally responsible in all classes and in all parts of Britain?

What Goes Around...

The following excellent letter appears in this morning's Guardian:

You suggest (Leaders, October 31) Serbian foolishness in not giving up Kosovo. To Serbs, Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia, legitimised by the London agreement of 1916 and by UN security council resolution 1244 of 2001. Kosovo is also the historical, religious and emotional heartland of Serbia. The change from a Serb to an Albanian majority does not change its historical, legal and political status.

Serbia's claim to Kosovo is no different from Russia's claim to Chechnya, China's to Xinjiang, India's to Kashmir, Thailand's to Panni Marathiwad and Philippines to Mindanao - all Muslim majority provinces in non-Muslim majority states where violence for independence has taken place for decades. The Serb majority of the Krajina region in Croatia broke away and declared independence. They were not recognised. The Krajina Serbs have all been driven out of Croatia in the largest ethnic cleansing of the Yugoslav wars. Republika Srpska has been denied independence from Bosnia.

As long as the independence of these provinces are denied, Kosovo has no special right to independence either. Serbia must not be treated differently.

Professor George Thomas
Marquette University, Wisconsin, USA

It never ceases to amaze me that the necons, so many of whom are Jewish (as is Madeleine Albright), backed not only Franjo Tudjman of Croatia when he recreated the full panoply of 1930s Fascism right there in Central Europe, but even the Wahhabist and erstwhile SS recruitment seargent Alija Izetbegovic, and even the Kosovo Liberation Army. The KLA insisted on wearing balck shirts in deference to their fathers and grandfathers who had fought for Hitler, and funded themselves by smuggling heroin into Western Europe. From which country do you suppose that that heroin had come, oh neocons?

Douglas Murray: Who He?

Douglas Murray has just been on The Moral Maze again. He also had an article in the Guardian a few days ago. Who is he? He has published a book, Neoconservatism: Why We Need It, which would disgrace a mediocre Sixth Former, and presumably only found its way into print because he is so posh. Apparently, before that, he had published a biography of Lord Alfred Douglas; but, based on allegedly a more mature offering, I certainly shan't be wasting my time tracking it down. Where do the producers of The Moral Maze find these people? I think we should be told.

Here's to next year, then

RESULTS OF THE 2006-07 ELECTION FOR FABIAN EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Elected

Ed Balls 403
John Denham 396
Denis MacShane 388
Alf Dubs 386
Stephen Twigg 373
Meg Russell 356
Austin Mitchell 337
*Suresh Pushpananthan 312
Anne Campbell 309
Fiona MacTaggart 309
Mari Williams 284
Sadiq Khan 282
Seema Malhotra 282
*Jessica Asato 276
Greg Rosen 274



Not Elected

Kevin Bonavia 243
Prema Gurunathan 243
Sally Prentice 240
Greg Power 214
Richard Olszewski 128
Ashton McGregor 127
Scott Lomax 123
David Lindsay 119
Douglas Machiridza 110
Frederick Pitt 101
Glen Reynolds 91

The * indicates a succesful candidate who was under 31, as a certain number of them have to be.
Very many thanks to the other 118 people who voted for me on my first attempt. But I am astonished that the poll-topping candidate, a well-known Government Minister, managed only 403 votes. Are there really now that few members of Labour's ideas factory? If so, then it really would not be very hard at all for pretty much anyone to recruit 500 new members and simply take over the Executive.

So I'll certainly be standing again next year...

But what about the rest of the family?

Some weeks ago, I was delighted to receive the following from Philip Benwell of The Australian Monarchist League, and I am very sorry that I am unable to attend:

A Cordial Invitation is extended to attend The Launch of 'The Association of the Commonwealth Realms', the purpose of which will be to work to bring closer together the English Speaking Realms and to defend The Crown of the United Kingdom.

On Wednesday 1 November 2006

Commencing at 7 pm

by courtesy of The Rt. Hon. The Lord Stoddart of Swindon

NO CHARGE

Numbers limited

RSVP: monarchy@westnet.com.au

The purpose of The Association of the Commonwealth Realms is to work to bring together the 'Old Commonwealth' of former Dominions which were settled and peopled by the British and which have continued to exist with British Law and British Justice under The Crown whilst those in the mother country itself are fast being denied their birthright.

The Association will be ardently pro-Crown and aggressively anti-European Union.

However, what of the other 12 Realms which were not primarily settled by the British, but which freely "continue to exist within British Law and British Justice under the Crown", which are also English-speaking, and which, particulary in the West Indies, are not only often "more British than the British", but are now a very great deal more so than can now be said of Canada, Australia or New Zealand? They, too, are part of the family, of Her Majesty's indivisible British People throughout the world, the whole point of which (for this is a key monarchist argument) is that it is not defined by ethnicity, but by allegiance to the Crown.

Nevertheless, this Association is an admirable step in the right direction, and it is good to see that it is being sponsored by a Real Labour (expelled) Peer.

Don't call them "so-called"

The death of P W Botha has led the BBC, true to form, to claim that he made his name as a Minister by clearing District Six, home of the "so-called coloureds" (you can pretty much hear the small c as they say it). There is absolutely nothing either small c or "so-called" about the Coloureds, "of mixed European and non-European descent and speaking English or Afrikaans as the mother-tongue". That mixed means really mixed, and mixed a very long time ago: a distinct people with a distinct culture (and, please note, including half of all native speakers of Afrikaans). As they themseleves would tell the BBC or anyone else, they are "Coloured with a capital C".