All that Jeremiah Wright said was that politicians say what they need to in order to get elected, whereas preachers say what their flocks either need to hear, or need other people to hear, or both. Who could argue with that as a factual observation?
This blog has never been too enthusiastic about Barack Obama. It just recognises that Hillary Clinton is even worse. After this carry on, might not John McCain be slightly better after all?
Wednesday, 30 April 2008
Tory Gains In The North
If the Tories make gains in the North (as everyone expects that they will), then, as last year, that will be anything but a triumph for David Cameron.
It will prove that there are votes to be had here, but only by people well-known in their localities to be about as unlike David Cameron as it is possible to be, and to dislike David Cameron about as much as it is possible to do.
What do people in Notting Hill imagine that Tory Councillors in the North are like? Ed Vaizey?
No, they are not.
It will prove that there are votes to be had here, but only by people well-known in their localities to be about as unlike David Cameron as it is possible to be, and to dislike David Cameron about as much as it is possible to do.
What do people in Notting Hill imagine that Tory Councillors in the North are like? Ed Vaizey?
No, they are not.
The Trial of Tariq Aziz
Tariq Aziz might or might not be a very nice man, but he is an indication of how far Christians could rise before Bush and Blair destroyed the secular regime in Iraq. And now Bush is planning to do the same thing in Syria, where the Christian minority is even larger and to which huge numbers of Iraqi Christians have fled.
Meanwhile, Ann Clwyd has the effrontery to show her face in public. This war criminal invented the story, massively popularised by the warmongering media (though not to any effect on public opinion, which remained ninety per cent anti-war) that Saddam Hussein was feeding people into a giant paper-shredder. Totally and utterly false.
Still neither a DBE nor a red box, eh, Ann? How you must wish that you had opposed the war now?
Meanwhile, Ann Clwyd has the effrontery to show her face in public. This war criminal invented the story, massively popularised by the warmongering media (though not to any effect on public opinion, which remained ninety per cent anti-war) that Saddam Hussein was feeding people into a giant paper-shredder. Totally and utterly false.
Still neither a DBE nor a red box, eh, Ann? How you must wish that you had opposed the war now?
Another War Against The Serbs, Another War Against The Britons
The ridiculous Marko Attila Hoare (a long-term cheerleader for Franjo Tudjman, the Holocaust-denying, and 1930s Fascist re-creating, dictator of Croatia) wants to destroy the Republika Srpska in order to remind the Serbs who is in charge.
As The Exile writes:
The notion that a sizeable chunk of this planet is not post-modern and metrosexualist is something that lies beyond their powers of comprehension. Until reality comes along and bites a chunk out of them. Which is what is happening in Iraq, right at this moment.
And which could happen in Britain, too. Large chunks of Britain are "not post-modern and metrosexualist", either.
The firmly pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war constituency includes those who care profoundly about partnership with Russia, opposition to Turkish accession to the EU, resistance to Islamist secession from Serbia and Cyprus, and care for the Christian communities in the Middle East (which admits of absolutely no attack against Syria).
It includes those who value the ties between Britain and the other Commonwealth Realms symbolised and effected by the Crown, a very significant point of unity between Afro-Caribbeans and the white working class. And it includes the heirs of Sobieski and Solidarnosc.
We also offer a voice to those (slightly more detached from our base as a group, though not in individual cases) whose commitment to freedom and democracy in Latin America is equally a commitment to the sovereignty of each Latin American country and to its pursuit of social justice as a sovereign state. We offer a voice to those whose commitment to freedom and democracy throughout the whole of China is precisely that, recognising that China is indivisible from Taiwan to Tibet.
We offer a voice to those who refuse to be relegated by globalisation and its multiculturalism to Untouchability or low-caste status. And we offer a voice to those who refuse to define their Jewishness in terms of uncritical support for the Likud State (with its official Sharia courts for certain ethnic minorities), including those who reject as a blasphemous presumption the purely human initiative of the creation of a Jewish State prior to the purely divine initiative of the sending of the Messiah.
Among many, many others.
This is a PR election with an extremely low expected turnout. Getting out these constituencies to vote could make a significant difference in several parts of the country. And that is what we are going to do.
As for Marko Attila Hoare and his ilk, what are they going to do? Heaven forbid that those who control British foreign policy, to the point of waging wars all over the place, might submit to the judgement of the mere electorate.
As The Exile writes:
The notion that a sizeable chunk of this planet is not post-modern and metrosexualist is something that lies beyond their powers of comprehension. Until reality comes along and bites a chunk out of them. Which is what is happening in Iraq, right at this moment.
And which could happen in Britain, too. Large chunks of Britain are "not post-modern and metrosexualist", either.
The firmly pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war constituency includes those who care profoundly about partnership with Russia, opposition to Turkish accession to the EU, resistance to Islamist secession from Serbia and Cyprus, and care for the Christian communities in the Middle East (which admits of absolutely no attack against Syria).
It includes those who value the ties between Britain and the other Commonwealth Realms symbolised and effected by the Crown, a very significant point of unity between Afro-Caribbeans and the white working class. And it includes the heirs of Sobieski and Solidarnosc.
We also offer a voice to those (slightly more detached from our base as a group, though not in individual cases) whose commitment to freedom and democracy in Latin America is equally a commitment to the sovereignty of each Latin American country and to its pursuit of social justice as a sovereign state. We offer a voice to those whose commitment to freedom and democracy throughout the whole of China is precisely that, recognising that China is indivisible from Taiwan to Tibet.
We offer a voice to those who refuse to be relegated by globalisation and its multiculturalism to Untouchability or low-caste status. And we offer a voice to those who refuse to define their Jewishness in terms of uncritical support for the Likud State (with its official Sharia courts for certain ethnic minorities), including those who reject as a blasphemous presumption the purely human initiative of the creation of a Jewish State prior to the purely divine initiative of the sending of the Messiah.
Among many, many others.
This is a PR election with an extremely low expected turnout. Getting out these constituencies to vote could make a significant difference in several parts of the country. And that is what we are going to do.
As for Marko Attila Hoare and his ilk, what are they going to do? Heaven forbid that those who control British foreign policy, to the point of waging wars all over the place, might submit to the judgement of the mere electorate.
Sense and Sentience
Woman's Hour featured a discussion about whether the preborn child feels pain. Just how hard does anyone have to work to believe that this is not the case? The suggestion is mind-boggling.
I can think of nothing more misogynistic than the view that the preborn child is simultaneously insentient and a part of the woman's body. Is it the whole of a woman's body that is insentient, or only the parts most directly connected with reproduction?
However, some things are equally misogynistic, notably the idea of fertility as a medicable condition, requiring powerful drugs or even surgical interventions to prevent a woman's body from doing exactly what it does naturally, is basically and ultimately the idea that femaleness itself is such a condition, a sort of XX Syndrome.
The war against fertility is, and has always been, the war against the working class, the war against the poor at home and abroad, the war against the electoral base of the Left, the war against the social provisions for which the Left exists, and, above all, the war against women.
Everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone, should read my friend Ann Farmer's Prophets and Priests: The Hidden Face of the Birth Control Movement (London: The Saint Austin Press, 2002; ISBN 1 901157 62 8).
I can think of nothing more misogynistic than the view that the preborn child is simultaneously insentient and a part of the woman's body. Is it the whole of a woman's body that is insentient, or only the parts most directly connected with reproduction?
However, some things are equally misogynistic, notably the idea of fertility as a medicable condition, requiring powerful drugs or even surgical interventions to prevent a woman's body from doing exactly what it does naturally, is basically and ultimately the idea that femaleness itself is such a condition, a sort of XX Syndrome.
The war against fertility is, and has always been, the war against the working class, the war against the poor at home and abroad, the war against the electoral base of the Left, the war against the social provisions for which the Left exists, and, above all, the war against women.
Everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone, should read my friend Ann Farmer's Prophets and Priests: The Hidden Face of the Birth Control Movement (London: The Saint Austin Press, 2002; ISBN 1 901157 62 8).
Supermarket Sweep
It is time to make the supermarkets invest in agriculture and small business (investment to be determined in close consultation with the National Farmers’ Union and the Federation of Small Businesses) by means of a windfall tax, to be followed if necessary by a permanently higher flat rate of corporation tax, with, in either case, strict regulation to ensure that the costs of this are not passed on to suppliers, workers, consumers, communities or the environment.
The Real Islamic Threat
Andrew Ibrahim doesn't look very Pakistani to me. He looks decidedly White British. For so he is. And why not?
For there is, of course, an Islamic threat to Europe. But it is the threat that people disgusted with the complete collapse of all moral standards in the personal, social and economic spheres, and left helpless by the closely connected, almost total loss of collective cultural memory, will convert to Islam in droves. The first signs of this are already upon us, closely resembling the early stages of the past Islamisation of various other parts of the world.
We should be worrying about that, the real Islamic threat: we should be restoring our personal, social and economic moral standards by rediscovering our collective cultural memory. Unless, that is, we want rich men to be allowed to have four wives (and to make a point of it, as a status symbol), we want women to go around shrouded and flapping about like giant bats, we want to cut off thieves' hands, and so on.
Look at the mosques full of disaffected young men in Afro-Caribbean areas, and at the flourishing Student Islamic Societies full of white, middle-class, deep-thinking, and often female seekers after something more than our own dominant decadence and hedonism.
And who can blame them? Grinding poverty, chronic ill health with nothing really done about it even though our society could easily afford to do something, collapsing educational standards, war after war after war, further money to be wasted on obscene nuclear weapons, drugs, drunkenness (I'm no teetotaller, but that's not the same thing at all), sexual promiscuity, pornography in newsagents (they're made to have it by the distributors), a nation of gambling addicts, and on, and on, and on. All these things (and many, many more) are obviously connected.
So there will be an Islamic Europe probably by 2100, and certainly by 2150, unless we turn away from our own social and economic irresponsibility, which we can only do by rediscovering the things that we had to give up in order to turn that way in the first place. Otherwise, more and more disaffected youths and deep-thinking young (often female) intellectuals will turn to Islam.
In comparable ways did many another country begin to be Islamised. Who'd have thought that present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and much of Northern India could have beeen Islamised? Who'd have thought that much of black Africa could have been Islamised (very much an ongoing process)? Who'd have thought that Central Asia and much of western China could have been Islamised? Who'd even have thought that much of the Levant could have been Islamised? No one, once upon a time. But how did it happen? And how quickly?
Imagine if only the White British Muslim population (already well over sixty thousand) grew by an improbably small fifty per cent every ten years: by 2100, there would be over a million of them. Now imagine that it grew by a possibly over-large, but nevertheless much more realistic, one hundred per cent every ten years: by 2100, there would be nearly 23 million of them.
The truth is somewhere in the middle, but much closer to the latter figure than to the former given both the rapidly rising rate of conversions, and the birth rate to converts (including the all but legalised practice of polygamy: the benefit system now pays out specifically for polygamous partners). Yet that's just the White British section of British Muslims, a small minority of the total.
And then consider that the "mainstream" birth rate has now been well below replacement level for two generations, with no sign that this trend is ever going to be reversed. Comparable patterns are observable, and indeed well-documented, right across Europe. Who needs to blow up airports? Eurabia, and Amerabia (well on the way), here we come!
We can stop it. But will we?
All Muslims are missionaries, in the way that all Christians are supposed to be missionaries. And the former are proving very effective missionaries in Britain and Europe at present. They expect some White Britons and their equivalents elsewhere to convert, and that is indeed happening with some rapidity.
But mostly, like everyone else, they just expect those population groups to all but die out during the twenty-first century, leaving few people except Muslims in Western Europe, all without anyone's having needed to be either converted or killed. That, too, is well under way.
Criticising or mocking Islam would already be illegal if Hilary Armstrong hadn't mistakenly sent Tony Blair home that night. Ten years ago, would you have believed that? Or that well over sixty thousand Muslims (and rising rapidly) would be classified as White British?
Consider that rate of growth by conversion, as well as Muslims' much higher birth rate than (currently) mainstream Western Europeans', including the widespread semi-clandestine practice of polygamy. How many do you think that there will be in another ten years? Or twenty? Or thirty? Or forty? But such is in keeping with the global history of Islam.
And consider the Danish cartoon row. Did you know that there were Muslims in Denmark? There was never a Danish Empire, so where did they come from? Yet they are there, and they are certainly making their presence felt, as Muslims are throughout North-West Eurabia. Get used to it.
Or do something about it.
For there is, of course, an Islamic threat to Europe. But it is the threat that people disgusted with the complete collapse of all moral standards in the personal, social and economic spheres, and left helpless by the closely connected, almost total loss of collective cultural memory, will convert to Islam in droves. The first signs of this are already upon us, closely resembling the early stages of the past Islamisation of various other parts of the world.
We should be worrying about that, the real Islamic threat: we should be restoring our personal, social and economic moral standards by rediscovering our collective cultural memory. Unless, that is, we want rich men to be allowed to have four wives (and to make a point of it, as a status symbol), we want women to go around shrouded and flapping about like giant bats, we want to cut off thieves' hands, and so on.
Look at the mosques full of disaffected young men in Afro-Caribbean areas, and at the flourishing Student Islamic Societies full of white, middle-class, deep-thinking, and often female seekers after something more than our own dominant decadence and hedonism.
And who can blame them? Grinding poverty, chronic ill health with nothing really done about it even though our society could easily afford to do something, collapsing educational standards, war after war after war, further money to be wasted on obscene nuclear weapons, drugs, drunkenness (I'm no teetotaller, but that's not the same thing at all), sexual promiscuity, pornography in newsagents (they're made to have it by the distributors), a nation of gambling addicts, and on, and on, and on. All these things (and many, many more) are obviously connected.
So there will be an Islamic Europe probably by 2100, and certainly by 2150, unless we turn away from our own social and economic irresponsibility, which we can only do by rediscovering the things that we had to give up in order to turn that way in the first place. Otherwise, more and more disaffected youths and deep-thinking young (often female) intellectuals will turn to Islam.
In comparable ways did many another country begin to be Islamised. Who'd have thought that present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and much of Northern India could have beeen Islamised? Who'd have thought that much of black Africa could have been Islamised (very much an ongoing process)? Who'd have thought that Central Asia and much of western China could have been Islamised? Who'd even have thought that much of the Levant could have been Islamised? No one, once upon a time. But how did it happen? And how quickly?
Imagine if only the White British Muslim population (already well over sixty thousand) grew by an improbably small fifty per cent every ten years: by 2100, there would be over a million of them. Now imagine that it grew by a possibly over-large, but nevertheless much more realistic, one hundred per cent every ten years: by 2100, there would be nearly 23 million of them.
The truth is somewhere in the middle, but much closer to the latter figure than to the former given both the rapidly rising rate of conversions, and the birth rate to converts (including the all but legalised practice of polygamy: the benefit system now pays out specifically for polygamous partners). Yet that's just the White British section of British Muslims, a small minority of the total.
And then consider that the "mainstream" birth rate has now been well below replacement level for two generations, with no sign that this trend is ever going to be reversed. Comparable patterns are observable, and indeed well-documented, right across Europe. Who needs to blow up airports? Eurabia, and Amerabia (well on the way), here we come!
We can stop it. But will we?
All Muslims are missionaries, in the way that all Christians are supposed to be missionaries. And the former are proving very effective missionaries in Britain and Europe at present. They expect some White Britons and their equivalents elsewhere to convert, and that is indeed happening with some rapidity.
But mostly, like everyone else, they just expect those population groups to all but die out during the twenty-first century, leaving few people except Muslims in Western Europe, all without anyone's having needed to be either converted or killed. That, too, is well under way.
Criticising or mocking Islam would already be illegal if Hilary Armstrong hadn't mistakenly sent Tony Blair home that night. Ten years ago, would you have believed that? Or that well over sixty thousand Muslims (and rising rapidly) would be classified as White British?
Consider that rate of growth by conversion, as well as Muslims' much higher birth rate than (currently) mainstream Western Europeans', including the widespread semi-clandestine practice of polygamy. How many do you think that there will be in another ten years? Or twenty? Or thirty? Or forty? But such is in keeping with the global history of Islam.
And consider the Danish cartoon row. Did you know that there were Muslims in Denmark? There was never a Danish Empire, so where did they come from? Yet they are there, and they are certainly making their presence felt, as Muslims are throughout North-West Eurabia. Get used to it.
Or do something about it.
One Seventh Of English Primary School Children Cannot Speak English
And there are record numbers at private schools.
Further comment would be superluous.
Further comment would be superluous.
Our Civil Burden
So that's that, then. The Burden sisters, elderly spinsters who share a house and are demanding the same inheritance rights as civil partners, cannot have them through the courts. The onus is now on Parliament, which means on each and every one of us.
The failure of the original legislation to provide for a civil partnership (which already does not need to be consummated) between unmarried close relatives proves, as if proof were needed, that the point of that measure was to privilege homosexuality on the specious basis that it is an identity comparable to ethnicity or class, or even to sex (which is written into every cell of the body).
That legislation must be amended immediately to allow unmarried relatives, whether of the same or of opposite sexes, to register their partnerships.
The failure of the original legislation to provide for a civil partnership (which already does not need to be consummated) between unmarried close relatives proves, as if proof were needed, that the point of that measure was to privilege homosexuality on the specious basis that it is an identity comparable to ethnicity or class, or even to sex (which is written into every cell of the body).
That legislation must be amended immediately to allow unmarried relatives, whether of the same or of opposite sexes, to register their partnerships.
Prince William In Afghanistan
A serving Army officer has been to Afghanistan. I am shocked and appalled.
And so should you be. Bring them home, or they should simply bring themselves home, thus causing our rancid Political Class to collapse. Now that really would be doing their duty in the defence of the Realm.
And so should you be. Bring them home, or they should simply bring themselves home, thus causing our rancid Political Class to collapse. Now that really would be doing their duty in the defence of the Realm.
She Must Have Known
Feminists do women no favours by suggesting that women such as the wife of the Austrian who kept his daughter in a cellar did not know what was going on. Just how stupid do they think that all women except themselves are?
A Touch Of Class?
A piece on Jeremy Vine about classes of train. Why on earth do we have different classes of train? Or, indeed, of stamp?
Harmeron?
I have pointed out before how closely the achingly high-born George Osborne and Harriet Harman resemble each other. But David Cameron's cousin is Ferdinand Mount, whose mother's brother was Lord Longford, Harman's uncle. Are Cameron and Harman by any chance related? I think we should be told.
Tuesday, 29 April 2008
From Polyclinics To Privatisation
I don't always agree with George Monbiot, but he's spot on with this.
Monbiot asks:
"Did any of us ask for this? Are there crowds on the streets demanding the privatisation of the NHS? Even the Tories have come out against it: David Cameron's speech last week placed them to the left of Labour. Why, after the 60-odd quarters of consecutive growth that Gordon Brown keeps boasting about, can he not maintain a public service founded in the midst of poverty and rationing? What mysterious hold on policy do the corporations possess, that they can persuade this government to wreck Labour's finest achievement and damage its chances of re-election?"
Money, George.
Money.
Monbiot asks:
"Did any of us ask for this? Are there crowds on the streets demanding the privatisation of the NHS? Even the Tories have come out against it: David Cameron's speech last week placed them to the left of Labour. Why, after the 60-odd quarters of consecutive growth that Gordon Brown keeps boasting about, can he not maintain a public service founded in the midst of poverty and rationing? What mysterious hold on policy do the corporations possess, that they can persuade this government to wreck Labour's finest achievement and damage its chances of re-election?"
Money, George.
Money.
One To Watch Out For
Oliver Kamm has, not for the first time, been allowing up defamatory comments about me. So I have corrected a few, and then added:
I could go on, but we don't all have trust funds like you Euston Manifesto/Henry Jackson society types.
Why am I not surprised to learn that those who lied this country into the Iraq War, and who have therefore murdered a million people (yes, Kamm, that means you, as well as the rest of your filthy kind on here), are engaged in this sort of behaviour? Mind you, I am a bit disturbed at your encyclopaedic knowledge of my blog.
Nor am I surprised, of course, to see scorn with which you genocidal vermin regard any attempt to give a proper political voice to, say, the white working class (the people whom you REALLY hate, possibly even more than you hate Arabs and Slavs - you'd give the white working class even more horrific deaths than that), or those who value ties with the Commonwealth through the monarchy, or people whose country is the United Kingdom and who want to keep it that way, or farmers, or fishermen, or those who quaintly believe that there should be a more than nominally pro-worker and social democratic party in this country, or opponents of everlasting war against countries chosen almost at random, or ... well, pretty much anyone really, apart from yourselves with your three Jackson/Euston parties out of three.
Oh, and I really don't understand how Wikipedia works. I'm very surprised to see it defended here, of all places.
I wouldn't dream of linking to him, but do keep an eye out in order to see if he publishes it.
I could go on, but we don't all have trust funds like you Euston Manifesto/Henry Jackson society types.
Why am I not surprised to learn that those who lied this country into the Iraq War, and who have therefore murdered a million people (yes, Kamm, that means you, as well as the rest of your filthy kind on here), are engaged in this sort of behaviour? Mind you, I am a bit disturbed at your encyclopaedic knowledge of my blog.
Nor am I surprised, of course, to see scorn with which you genocidal vermin regard any attempt to give a proper political voice to, say, the white working class (the people whom you REALLY hate, possibly even more than you hate Arabs and Slavs - you'd give the white working class even more horrific deaths than that), or those who value ties with the Commonwealth through the monarchy, or people whose country is the United Kingdom and who want to keep it that way, or farmers, or fishermen, or those who quaintly believe that there should be a more than nominally pro-worker and social democratic party in this country, or opponents of everlasting war against countries chosen almost at random, or ... well, pretty much anyone really, apart from yourselves with your three Jackson/Euston parties out of three.
Oh, and I really don't understand how Wikipedia works. I'm very surprised to see it defended here, of all places.
I wouldn't dream of linking to him, but do keep an eye out in order to see if he publishes it.
So, Where Are You?
Are you pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war? Are you an economically social democratic, morally and socially conservative British and Commonwealth patriot? I am. I will be contesting the 2009 elections to the European Parliament, and I seek colleagues to do likewise. We need two in each region in Great Britain and, because of the different electoral system, one in Northern Ireland.
Regular readers of this blog will of course know this already. I have never read even any of this project's most abusive critics (who daily try and post comments here) deny that if we got onto the ballot paper, then we'd get in at the election. That is what they hate. It's getting onto the ballot paper that's the tricky bit. We need deposits, but I already have people offering to pay part of those if we can find the candidates, and there will be plenty more such offers once the ball is rolling. But we need candidates. Not "good idea, keep up the fight", but "yes, I'll do it".
In Scotland, Northern Ireland, the North, the Midlands and London, our constituency is obviously vast. And, for example, Anglican and Nonconformist laypeople and parochial clergy are often staunchly pro-life and pro-family, while farm subsidies are in fact an expression of social democracy, and the ninety per cent public opposition to the Iraq War must by definition have included the majority of Tories. So our constituency is no smaller, if currently less organised, in the South outside London.
In addition, there are six hundred thousand staunch Unionists in Scotland, there are three times as many again with grave doubts about the present direction, there are the culturally neglected entirely English-speaking areas of the Far North, there are the English-speaking and increasingly marginalised eighty per cent of the Welsh, there are the Catholic Unionists in Northern Ireland (probably half of all Catholics there), there are those supporters of Catholic schools and Catholic morality in Northern Ireland who cannot now vote for either Nationalist party, there is the strongly social-democratic Protestant working class there, there are the Gibraltarians (who define their very passionate Britishness specifically both in terms of traditional morality and in terms of social democracy), there are the fishermen, and there are numerous others besides.
All in all, a seat in each region is well within our grasp. Especially since this election will be conducted by Proportional Representation, and the extremely low turnout will favour those who organise locally in order to get out the vote. A Strasbourg breakthrough in 2009 would set us up for a Westminster breakthrough in 2010, when we would only need to be the first past the post in any given constituency, again on an extremely low turnout.
So, where are our candidates? For campaigning and fund-raising purposes, I need to know by the end of May 2008. Email only, please – davidaslindsay@hotmail.com
Regular readers of this blog will of course know this already. I have never read even any of this project's most abusive critics (who daily try and post comments here) deny that if we got onto the ballot paper, then we'd get in at the election. That is what they hate. It's getting onto the ballot paper that's the tricky bit. We need deposits, but I already have people offering to pay part of those if we can find the candidates, and there will be plenty more such offers once the ball is rolling. But we need candidates. Not "good idea, keep up the fight", but "yes, I'll do it".
In Scotland, Northern Ireland, the North, the Midlands and London, our constituency is obviously vast. And, for example, Anglican and Nonconformist laypeople and parochial clergy are often staunchly pro-life and pro-family, while farm subsidies are in fact an expression of social democracy, and the ninety per cent public opposition to the Iraq War must by definition have included the majority of Tories. So our constituency is no smaller, if currently less organised, in the South outside London.
In addition, there are six hundred thousand staunch Unionists in Scotland, there are three times as many again with grave doubts about the present direction, there are the culturally neglected entirely English-speaking areas of the Far North, there are the English-speaking and increasingly marginalised eighty per cent of the Welsh, there are the Catholic Unionists in Northern Ireland (probably half of all Catholics there), there are those supporters of Catholic schools and Catholic morality in Northern Ireland who cannot now vote for either Nationalist party, there is the strongly social-democratic Protestant working class there, there are the Gibraltarians (who define their very passionate Britishness specifically both in terms of traditional morality and in terms of social democracy), there are the fishermen, and there are numerous others besides.
All in all, a seat in each region is well within our grasp. Especially since this election will be conducted by Proportional Representation, and the extremely low turnout will favour those who organise locally in order to get out the vote. A Strasbourg breakthrough in 2009 would set us up for a Westminster breakthrough in 2010, when we would only need to be the first past the post in any given constituency, again on an extremely low turnout.
So, where are our candidates? For campaigning and fund-raising purposes, I need to know by the end of May 2008. Email only, please – davidaslindsay@hotmail.com
Pressing
There are 10 candidates for Mayor of London, but even someone I know who teaches Politics to Sixth Formers (not in London) thought that there were only three. We are only allowed to know about those three. "The others are not going to win", apparently. Well, no, not with zero coverage they're not. We have had whole editions of Newsnight and Question Time given over to those three candidates alone. Is that even legal?
"Others" was how the BBC was still classifying UKIP during its results programme for the last European Elections, even after it had taken more actual votes than the Lib Dems and won 12 seats from nowhere. Whereas the time before that, poor old Auntie had relentlessly plugged the Pro-Euro Conservatives and been left utterly baffled by their failure to win even one seat.
"Others" was how the BBC was still classifying UKIP during its results programme for the last European Elections, even after it had taken more actual votes than the Lib Dems and won 12 seats from nowhere. Whereas the time before that, poor old Auntie had relentlessly plugged the Pro-Euro Conservatives and been left utterly baffled by their failure to win even one seat.
Syria
We must learn the lesson of Iraq.
We have a greater strategic interest in shoring up the current secular regime in Syria, which might be nasty but is no threat to us, than in removing it, in which event it would be replaced with a regime which was at least as nasty and did pose a threat to us.
Those are the options. There is no Third Way. An Islamist state with a Mediterranean coastline, anyone? Mind you, there's already Turkey.
Syria is bad, but there are worse, including in the Middle East, where, bizarrely and disgracefully, we are particularly fond of them - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates...
We have a greater strategic interest in shoring up the current secular regime in Syria, which might be nasty but is no threat to us, than in removing it, in which event it would be replaced with a regime which was at least as nasty and did pose a threat to us.
Those are the options. There is no Third Way. An Islamist state with a Mediterranean coastline, anyone? Mind you, there's already Turkey.
Syria is bad, but there are worse, including in the Middle East, where, bizarrely and disgracefully, we are particularly fond of them - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates...
David Cameron On Today
John Humphrys, please note, asked Cameron about the prospect of Bullingdon Club members as all three of Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mayor of London this Friday. Clearly, as far as the Beeb is concerned, the Heir To Blair is already Prime Minister.
But the Bullingdon Club is Cameron's big problem just waiting to happen. There are two years between now and the Election. Plenty of time for a long-suffering Oxfordshire publican to tell them where the can stick their money, he'll see them in court. And then the dominoes really will start to fall.
It really does seem to matter that Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson are members of an organisation which exists (complete with membership lists, officers, uniform the lot) specifically in order to become drunk and disorderly before committing criminal damage and assault. Imagine if a group of boys aged 18 to 21 on a council estate set up something like that. They'd all be sent to prison, and rightly so.
But the Bullingdon Club is Cameron's big problem just waiting to happen. There are two years between now and the Election. Plenty of time for a long-suffering Oxfordshire publican to tell them where the can stick their money, he'll see them in court. And then the dominoes really will start to fall.
It really does seem to matter that Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson are members of an organisation which exists (complete with membership lists, officers, uniform the lot) specifically in order to become drunk and disorderly before committing criminal damage and assault. Imagine if a group of boys aged 18 to 21 on a council estate set up something like that. They'd all be sent to prison, and rightly so.
Kate Hoey To "Advise" Boris Johnson
You're all looking forward to a Tory administration in London, then, with no one from the other parties hanging about, and especially no card-carrying members of the Labour Party?
You don't learn.
Perhaps you will if Cameron ever repeats this on a national scale, with Andrew Adonis as Education Secretary, Tony Blair attending Cabinet, and all Blair's old flames (Byers, Milburn, Reid, Mandelson, Campbell) burning away in "advisory" positions.
Vote for Cameron, and that is what you are voting for.
You don't learn.
Perhaps you will if Cameron ever repeats this on a national scale, with Andrew Adonis as Education Secretary, Tony Blair attending Cabinet, and all Blair's old flames (Byers, Milburn, Reid, Mandelson, Campbell) burning away in "advisory" positions.
Vote for Cameron, and that is what you are voting for.
Happy Holidays
Yes, we need more public holidays. But is there anywhere else on earth where they celebrate the mere fact that the banks are on holiday? How pointless is that? And just why is either 26th December (though not in Scotland) or 2nd January (in Scotland but nowhere else) a public holiday at all? Not “How did it come about?”, but “Why is it the case now?”
Seventy-two per cent of Britons called themselves Christians at the last census, and no more than about one per cent is Eastern Orthodox. So the first source of holidays should be from the Western liturgical calendar as acceptable both to Protestant and to Catholic sentiment. Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Ascension Day (forcing the Catholic Bishops’ Conference to restore it to its Biblical day as kept by the Holy Father) and the real Whit Monday (Whitsuntide, not Wilsontide) would do.
Then there are Saint George’s Day, Saint Andrew’s Day, Saint David’s Day, Saint Patrick’s Day, Commonwealth Day, and the Queen’s Official Birthday (if only in celebration of the simple existence of so quintessentially British a thing), all of which should be public holidays throughout the United Kingdom.
Giving eleven, an odd number in more than one sense. It would seem a bit churlish to abolish Wilsontide while retaining Heathmas on 1st January, but that would nevertheless be the obvious way of giving an average of one per month, with twelve throughout the year. Still very modest compared to what even subsistence farmers and their labourers managed to survive throughout the thousand years before the Reformation.
And good luck to anyone still claiming to be a Tory while objecting to the keeping of Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Ascension Day, Whit Monday, Saint George’s Day, Saint Andrew’s Day, Saint David’s Day, Saint Patrick’s Day, Commonwealth Day, or the Queen’s Official Birthday. Or, indeed, Heathmas.
Seventy-two per cent of Britons called themselves Christians at the last census, and no more than about one per cent is Eastern Orthodox. So the first source of holidays should be from the Western liturgical calendar as acceptable both to Protestant and to Catholic sentiment. Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Ascension Day (forcing the Catholic Bishops’ Conference to restore it to its Biblical day as kept by the Holy Father) and the real Whit Monday (Whitsuntide, not Wilsontide) would do.
Then there are Saint George’s Day, Saint Andrew’s Day, Saint David’s Day, Saint Patrick’s Day, Commonwealth Day, and the Queen’s Official Birthday (if only in celebration of the simple existence of so quintessentially British a thing), all of which should be public holidays throughout the United Kingdom.
Giving eleven, an odd number in more than one sense. It would seem a bit churlish to abolish Wilsontide while retaining Heathmas on 1st January, but that would nevertheless be the obvious way of giving an average of one per month, with twelve throughout the year. Still very modest compared to what even subsistence farmers and their labourers managed to survive throughout the thousand years before the Reformation.
And good luck to anyone still claiming to be a Tory while objecting to the keeping of Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Ascension Day, Whit Monday, Saint George’s Day, Saint Andrew’s Day, Saint David’s Day, Saint Patrick’s Day, Commonwealth Day, or the Queen’s Official Birthday. Or, indeed, Heathmas.
Dump The Dope
Gordon Brown's support for reclassifying cannabis as a Class B drug is obviously welcome, although Class A is in fact the appropriate status for this extremely dangerous substance, accompanied by a general crackdown on the possession of drugs, including a mandatory sentence of three months for a second offence, six months for a third offence, one year for a fourth offence, and so forth.
What a contrast with the record of David Cameron, who signed the Select Committee report that led to the downgrading of cannabis in the first place, unlike his Tory colleague on that Committee, Angela Watkinson.
The restoration of cannabis to Class B will be a humiliation for Tony Blair, but that does not matter, because Blair's party has already made him go. It will also be a humiliation for David Cameron. So, will Cameron's party make him go, too? If not, why not?
What a contrast with the record of David Cameron, who signed the Select Committee report that led to the downgrading of cannabis in the first place, unlike his Tory colleague on that Committee, Angela Watkinson.
The restoration of cannabis to Class B will be a humiliation for Tony Blair, but that does not matter, because Blair's party has already made him go. It will also be a humiliation for David Cameron. So, will Cameron's party make him go, too? If not, why not?
Monday, 28 April 2008
Electoral Fraud, And What To Do About It
What is being said about postal voting is true, of course. But a bigger electoral fraud is being perpetrated in London, which still contains ten times as many quango members as Borough Councillors, Assembly Members and the Mayor put together.
And the biggest electoral fraud of all is the First Past The Post electoral system.
Instead, let the country be divided into one hundred constituencies, with as near as possible to equally sized electorates, and with their boundaries straddling the United Kingdom’s internal borders wherever possible. Each constituency would elect six MPs, with each voter voting for one candidate by means of an X, and with the six highest-scoring candidates declared elected at the end. The deposit would be replaced with a requirement of nomination by five per cent of registered voters, also applicable to other elections. And the House of Commons would have a fixed term of four years.
Meanwhile, let there be a new and powerful second chamber, the Senate, taking over the existing powers of the House of Lords, and also exercising the same revising powers in relation to devolved bodies. The Senate would have an absolute veto over any Bill passed by the House of Commons (or any devolved body) without a vote, including any EU legislation passed by negative resolution of the House of Commons. And the Senate would have the power to require a referendum on any Bill already designated as constitutional for the purposes of the procedures of the House of Commons.
Each of the ninety-nine areas having a Lord Lieutenant would elect six Senators (who would have to have been registered voters there throughout the previous five years), with each voter voting for one candidate by means of an X, and with the six highest-scoring candidates declared elected at the end. The whole country would elect a further six Crossbenchers by the same means. The Senate would have a fixed term of six years, and Senators would have the same remuneration and expenses as MPs.
Let there be this.
Let each MP and each Senator should have an annual tax-free allowance transferable to the political party or other campaigning organisation of his or her choice, conditional upon matching funding by resolution of a membership organisation. The name of that organisation would appear on the ballot paper in brackets after the party or other designation. There would be a ban on all other party funding, and on all party spending per year above 2400 times that allowance.
Let there be a system of party caucuses, and also of other caucuses, such as that of Independents, or that of more than one party banded together for the purpose. Caucuses to be made up of MPs and Senators. No MP or Senator could be a member of more than one caucus simultaneously. Each caucus including one sixth or more of the House of Commons would be entitled to a number of Ministers at each level proportionate to its numerical strength (among qualifying caucuses) in the House of Commons. The caucus would elect annually its nominees for office at each level, with each member entitled to vote for up to one third of the requisite number.
Let the Prime Minister (though still formally appointed by the monarch) be elected by the caucus having the most members in the House of Commons, or, where two or more caucuses have equally the largest number of MPs, by the caucus whose members in the House of Commons received the highest number of votes at the preceding General Election. Portfolios would be allocated by the Prime Minister (always a member of the House of Commons, and limited to two terms as Prime Minister) to those thus elected. No caucus would have more than one Minister in any one Department. Any sufficiently large caucus which refused to participate would be replaced with the next largest in terms of numerical strength in the House of Commons, or votes cast in the preceding General Election, as above.
In each House separately, let every caucus elect a number of members to each Select Committee proportionate to its strength in that House. Select Committee Chairmen would be elected by secret ballot of the whole House. Select Committees to have power to propose amendments to legislation, and to introduce legislation of their own, within their respective policy areas.
And let the situation be restored whereby any Bill is lost if it runs out of time in either House at the end of a parliamentary session.
And the biggest electoral fraud of all is the First Past The Post electoral system.
Instead, let the country be divided into one hundred constituencies, with as near as possible to equally sized electorates, and with their boundaries straddling the United Kingdom’s internal borders wherever possible. Each constituency would elect six MPs, with each voter voting for one candidate by means of an X, and with the six highest-scoring candidates declared elected at the end. The deposit would be replaced with a requirement of nomination by five per cent of registered voters, also applicable to other elections. And the House of Commons would have a fixed term of four years.
Meanwhile, let there be a new and powerful second chamber, the Senate, taking over the existing powers of the House of Lords, and also exercising the same revising powers in relation to devolved bodies. The Senate would have an absolute veto over any Bill passed by the House of Commons (or any devolved body) without a vote, including any EU legislation passed by negative resolution of the House of Commons. And the Senate would have the power to require a referendum on any Bill already designated as constitutional for the purposes of the procedures of the House of Commons.
Each of the ninety-nine areas having a Lord Lieutenant would elect six Senators (who would have to have been registered voters there throughout the previous five years), with each voter voting for one candidate by means of an X, and with the six highest-scoring candidates declared elected at the end. The whole country would elect a further six Crossbenchers by the same means. The Senate would have a fixed term of six years, and Senators would have the same remuneration and expenses as MPs.
Let there be this.
Let each MP and each Senator should have an annual tax-free allowance transferable to the political party or other campaigning organisation of his or her choice, conditional upon matching funding by resolution of a membership organisation. The name of that organisation would appear on the ballot paper in brackets after the party or other designation. There would be a ban on all other party funding, and on all party spending per year above 2400 times that allowance.
Let there be a system of party caucuses, and also of other caucuses, such as that of Independents, or that of more than one party banded together for the purpose. Caucuses to be made up of MPs and Senators. No MP or Senator could be a member of more than one caucus simultaneously. Each caucus including one sixth or more of the House of Commons would be entitled to a number of Ministers at each level proportionate to its numerical strength (among qualifying caucuses) in the House of Commons. The caucus would elect annually its nominees for office at each level, with each member entitled to vote for up to one third of the requisite number.
Let the Prime Minister (though still formally appointed by the monarch) be elected by the caucus having the most members in the House of Commons, or, where two or more caucuses have equally the largest number of MPs, by the caucus whose members in the House of Commons received the highest number of votes at the preceding General Election. Portfolios would be allocated by the Prime Minister (always a member of the House of Commons, and limited to two terms as Prime Minister) to those thus elected. No caucus would have more than one Minister in any one Department. Any sufficiently large caucus which refused to participate would be replaced with the next largest in terms of numerical strength in the House of Commons, or votes cast in the preceding General Election, as above.
In each House separately, let every caucus elect a number of members to each Select Committee proportionate to its strength in that House. Select Committee Chairmen would be elected by secret ballot of the whole House. Select Committees to have power to propose amendments to legislation, and to introduce legislation of their own, within their respective policy areas.
And let the situation be restored whereby any Bill is lost if it runs out of time in either House at the end of a parliamentary session.
Who Will Take The Lead?
It is unlikely, but there might just be Leadership Elections coming up in all three parties, after Labour does badly on Thursday, after the Lib Dems do even worse (although that won't get much coverage), and after the Tories' poll lead is exposed as a lie by their failure to win the Crewe and Nantwich by-election.
Should even one of these happen, then it would present the opportunity to change (and once one of them did this, then they would all have to) the way in which both Leaders are chosen and most MPs are effectively chosen.
In the course of each Parliament, each party should submit a shortlist of the two candidates nominated by the most branches (including those of affiliated organisations where applicable) to a binding ballot of the whole electorate at constituency level for the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate, and at national level for the Leader.
All the ballots for Prospective Parliamentary Candidate should be held on the same day, and all the ballots for Leader should be held on the same day. Each of these ballots should be held at public expense at the request of five per cent or more of registered voters in the constituency or the country, as appropriate.
Each candidate in each of these ballots should have a tax-free campaigning allowance out of public funds, conditional upon matching funding by resolution of a membership organisation. The name of that organisation should appear on the ballot paper after that of the candidate. There should be a ban on all other campaign funding, and on all campaign spending above twice that allowance.
Likewise, in the course of each Parliament, each party should submit to a binding ballot of the whole electorate the ten policies proposed by the most branches (including those of affiliated organisations where applicable), with voters entitled to vote for up to two, and with the highest-scoring seven guaranteed inclusion in the next General Election Manifesto. All of those ballots should be held on the same day, and each of them should be held at public expense at the request of five per cent or more of registered voters in the country.
The official campaign for each policy should have a tax-free campaign allowance, conditional upon matching funding by resolution of a membership organisation. The name of that organisation should appear on the ballot paper after that of the policy. And there should be a ban on all other campaign funding, and on all campaign spending above twice that allowance.
So, who will take the lead?
Should even one of these happen, then it would present the opportunity to change (and once one of them did this, then they would all have to) the way in which both Leaders are chosen and most MPs are effectively chosen.
In the course of each Parliament, each party should submit a shortlist of the two candidates nominated by the most branches (including those of affiliated organisations where applicable) to a binding ballot of the whole electorate at constituency level for the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate, and at national level for the Leader.
All the ballots for Prospective Parliamentary Candidate should be held on the same day, and all the ballots for Leader should be held on the same day. Each of these ballots should be held at public expense at the request of five per cent or more of registered voters in the constituency or the country, as appropriate.
Each candidate in each of these ballots should have a tax-free campaigning allowance out of public funds, conditional upon matching funding by resolution of a membership organisation. The name of that organisation should appear on the ballot paper after that of the candidate. There should be a ban on all other campaign funding, and on all campaign spending above twice that allowance.
Likewise, in the course of each Parliament, each party should submit to a binding ballot of the whole electorate the ten policies proposed by the most branches (including those of affiliated organisations where applicable), with voters entitled to vote for up to two, and with the highest-scoring seven guaranteed inclusion in the next General Election Manifesto. All of those ballots should be held on the same day, and each of them should be held at public expense at the request of five per cent or more of registered voters in the country.
The official campaign for each policy should have a tax-free campaign allowance, conditional upon matching funding by resolution of a membership organisation. The name of that organisation should appear on the ballot paper after that of the policy. And there should be a ban on all other campaign funding, and on all campaign spending above twice that allowance.
So, who will take the lead?
Welsh Independents
Look out for big gains for Independents in Wales on Thursday. These are often people who have left Labour since it went into coalition with Plaid Cymru, set about privatising everything in sight, widened the gap between rich and poor, cut public sector pay in real terms, waged war against countries chosen at random, and doubled the income tax of the lowest paid workers in order to pay for it. And they are going to give Labour a proper kicking. If that can happen in parts of South Wales, in particular, then it can happen anywhere.
Sunday, 27 April 2008
The Polls That Count
If the News of the World’s poll is right, then the Tories should win the Crewe and Nantwich by-election. If they don’t, then it isn’t.
Taliban Attack Themselves
When we like them, they are called “tribal elders”. But we don’t, exactly the same individuals are called “the Taliban”. The present Afghan government is busily banning music, Bollywood films and imported Indian soap operas from the television, despite their huge viewing figures. Not like the Taliban, then?
Mind you, look at the Saudi, Kuwaiti and UAE allies of Hillary Clinton (a woman, for pity’s sake) and George Waterboarding Bush against a country with more women than men at university, and with the most acclaimed cinema in the world today. Compared to them, there is plenty that is positively benign about what is still, for now, Afghanistan’s Taliban Lite.
Mind you, look at the Saudi, Kuwaiti and UAE allies of Hillary Clinton (a woman, for pity’s sake) and George Waterboarding Bush against a country with more women than men at university, and with the most acclaimed cinema in the world today. Compared to them, there is plenty that is positively benign about what is still, for now, Afghanistan’s Taliban Lite.
Johnson's London, Cameron's Britain
Of course Ken Livingstone would give a job to Boris Johnson. And to Brian Paddick, I’m sure. The compliment is fulsomely returned in all directions. Those backing Johnson should perhaps be forced to endure what they have asked for, as a miniature rehearsal of what a Cameron Government would be like, a dry run for Andrew Adonis as Education Secretary and Tony Blair attending Cabinet.
And whoever wins this election will have proved nothing except that they can win an election conducted by a system used neither for Westminster, nor for Strasbourg, nor for local councils, and that with an electorate including a sizeable number of people who cannot vote in parliamentary elections. In Johnson’s case, a victory would also prove that a Tory could win if backed by the BNP. But that is all.
And whoever wins this election will have proved nothing except that they can win an election conducted by a system used neither for Westminster, nor for Strasbourg, nor for local councils, and that with an electorate including a sizeable number of people who cannot vote in parliamentary elections. In Johnson’s case, a victory would also prove that a Tory could win if backed by the BNP. But that is all.
"The Coping Classes"
This, by Catherine Bennett, is a splendid dissection of the whining self-pity of our times. These people should try having their income tax doubled in order to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Red Queen
Quoted in The Observer, Phillip Benwell (whom I know very slightly) of the Australian Monarchist Association indicates that he would rather see the cost of a republic referendum (it’s one of those “we’ll make you keep doing it until you give the right answer” ones, like Scottish independence, or a united Ireland, or anything to do with the EU), or indeed of a republic itself, spent on healthcare and education.
Quite. In Britain and Australia alike, which matters more? Healthcare and education? Or giving a late-middle-aged, upper-middle-class white man with extensive political connections the opportunity to bask in his own vanity? If the latter, then how can you possibly claim to be in any sense on the Left?
Because that it is what the President of either Britain or Australia would always, always be: a late-middle-aged, upper-middle-class white man with extensive political connections. No one could ever actually become President without the support of one of the major parties, nor even get onto the ballot without the nominations of a certain number of MPs, which would amount to the same thing. And at least in Britain they would simply alternate the position by means of a gentlemen’s agreement.
God Save The Queen.
Quite. In Britain and Australia alike, which matters more? Healthcare and education? Or giving a late-middle-aged, upper-middle-class white man with extensive political connections the opportunity to bask in his own vanity? If the latter, then how can you possibly claim to be in any sense on the Left?
Because that it is what the President of either Britain or Australia would always, always be: a late-middle-aged, upper-middle-class white man with extensive political connections. No one could ever actually become President without the support of one of the major parties, nor even get onto the ballot without the nominations of a certain number of MPs, which would amount to the same thing. And at least in Britain they would simply alternate the position by means of a gentlemen’s agreement.
God Save The Queen.
Saturday, 26 April 2008
A Throwback To Kickbacks
Is Gordon Brown either a good enough politician or a good enough man to be attacked by Michael Levy? Such an attack is high praise indeed. Levy would now be in prison if either the Police or the Crown Prosecution Service could have been bothered to do their jobs properly.
His re-emergence is a most timely reminder of just how ghastly the Blair years were, and the Blair restoration under Cameron would be: an age of eye-wateringly undistinguished figures such as Peter Mandelson, Alastair Campbell, Jonathan Powell, Carole Caplin, and of course this big-haired, stacked-shod dispenser of funny money, a lost occasional character from Footballers’ Wives.
His re-emergence is a most timely reminder of just how ghastly the Blair years were, and the Blair restoration under Cameron would be: an age of eye-wateringly undistinguished figures such as Peter Mandelson, Alastair Campbell, Jonathan Powell, Carole Caplin, and of course this big-haired, stacked-shod dispenser of funny money, a lost occasional character from Footballers’ Wives.
The Home Front
I join the people of Windsor in warmly welcoming back the Coldstream Guards from Afghanistan. All our forces in Afghanistan and Iraq should bring themselves home, marching triumphantly through the cheering, flag-waving crowds as, without a shot’s needing to be fired, the moral force of their action brought down our vile, decadent, bankrupt Political Class.
Britain Is Not A World City
There is nowhere else in Britain like London. There is nowhere else on earth like London apart from New York, a very important point in the debate on non-domiciles, many of whom have nowhere else to go in order to enjoy the specific lifestyle that they want, since they would never be let into the United States.
So winning the position of Mayor of London proves nothing at all about a party’s chances of being elected in the country at large.
What is more, all EU citizens resident in this country can vote in local elections, whereas only British and Irish citizens can vote in parliamentary ones. This country’s resident non-British, non-Irish EU citizens are largely, if not predominantly, in London, again making the mayoral election incomparable, not only to any election outside London, but also to any parliamentary election even there.
And the fact that the three main candidates are Ken Livingstone, Boris Johnson and Brian Paddick proves that this is essentially a non-job. None of those three could be elected to Lanchester Parish Council.
So winning the position of Mayor of London proves nothing at all about a party’s chances of being elected in the country at large.
What is more, all EU citizens resident in this country can vote in local elections, whereas only British and Irish citizens can vote in parliamentary ones. This country’s resident non-British, non-Irish EU citizens are largely, if not predominantly, in London, again making the mayoral election incomparable, not only to any election outside London, but also to any parliamentary election even there.
And the fact that the three main candidates are Ken Livingstone, Boris Johnson and Brian Paddick proves that this is essentially a non-job. None of those three could be elected to Lanchester Parish Council.
Hillary In Hock
Hillary Clinton has pledged to nuke Iran if it threatens Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates, which first alone has given the Clintons eighteen million dollars and counting. Yet these are the countries that are holding the West to ransom.
Where nuclear matters are concerned, our response to them should be our own civil nuclear power programme, not providing them with a shield of nuclear weapons against a country which not only has none of its own, but has no cause or desire to attack Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates. Clinton is despicably putting into people’s heads the idea that Iran might wish to do such a thing, on absolutely no basis whatever.
Americans, if Clinton is the nominee, then please vote for McCain.
And for ourselves, as Taki writes, “Europe must wake up and vote out of office any appeasers of violent Islam and violent Likud.” At least in this European country, we now can.
Where nuclear matters are concerned, our response to them should be our own civil nuclear power programme, not providing them with a shield of nuclear weapons against a country which not only has none of its own, but has no cause or desire to attack Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates. Clinton is despicably putting into people’s heads the idea that Iran might wish to do such a thing, on absolutely no basis whatever.
Americans, if Clinton is the nominee, then please vote for McCain.
And for ourselves, as Taki writes, “Europe must wake up and vote out of office any appeasers of violent Islam and violent Likud.” At least in this European country, we now can.
The Dalai Show
What is China going to discuss with the Dalai Lama? How he wants a large part of China to secede to feudalism and theocracy, and for that purpose to be cleared, on specifically ethnic grounds, of the bulk of its population?
Those in Britain who support freedom and democracy for the whole of China, as such - expect to be contacted in the next week about making your votes count. Likewise those (to whom, Happy Easter) who care most about friendship with Russia, about opposing Islamist separatism in Serbia and Cyprus, about looking after the Christians in the Middle East, and about keeping Turkey out of the EU. Among many, many others.
Those in Britain who support freedom and democracy for the whole of China, as such - expect to be contacted in the next week about making your votes count. Likewise those (to whom, Happy Easter) who care most about friendship with Russia, about opposing Islamist separatism in Serbia and Cyprus, about looking after the Christians in the Middle East, and about keeping Turkey out of the EU. Among many, many others.
Porkies
We are told that Turkey is basically a Western country, welcome in NATO and to be welcomed into the EU. Its ruling AKP is led, we are assured, by "former Islamists", and is "Muslim Democrat" in the way that some European parties are Christian Democrat.
But in fact, as was reported on Crossing Continents this morning, the AKP government is going to enormous and vicious legal lengths to kill off the pork industry in Turkey.
The AKP is affiliated to the European People's Party. As are the Tories.
But in fact, as was reported on Crossing Continents this morning, the AKP government is going to enormous and vicious legal lengths to kill off the pork industry in Turkey.
The AKP is affiliated to the European People's Party. As are the Tories.
Rory Bremner Has It Right
He hasn't even bothered to learn a new voice for David Cameron. He just uses his old Peter Mandelson one. Quite.
ITV's new hit-and-miss satirical animation programme Headcases has taken the part that Spitting Image gave to Margaret Thatcher and given it to Heather Mills. What a sign of the times.
ITV's new hit-and-miss satirical animation programme Headcases has taken the part that Spitting Image gave to Margaret Thatcher and given it to Heather Mills. What a sign of the times.
Rail Rip-Offs: Yet More To Come
The Times reports that:
Passengers will lose out from a decision by train companies to stop giving refunds for tickets bought in advance and to double the fee for changes to journey times.
The move is part of what the companies are calling a simplification of rail fares into three main types, which they claim will be easier to understand. More than a million leaflets will be distributed at stations from today explaining the changes but they fail to mention that many passengers will be worse off under the new national refunds policy.
Given that the railways were only ever "privatised" on the understanding that their profits would be guaranteed by public subsidy, their shareholders have already been more than compensated enough for renationalisation to take place without further compensation.
The railways could then form the core of a national network of public transport, free at the point of use, including the re-opening of bus route and (where possible) rail line closures going back to the 1950s.
Or do we only ever have the money for wars and to rescue banks, both permanent commitments, whatever anyone might say to the contrary?
Passengers will lose out from a decision by train companies to stop giving refunds for tickets bought in advance and to double the fee for changes to journey times.
The move is part of what the companies are calling a simplification of rail fares into three main types, which they claim will be easier to understand. More than a million leaflets will be distributed at stations from today explaining the changes but they fail to mention that many passengers will be worse off under the new national refunds policy.
Given that the railways were only ever "privatised" on the understanding that their profits would be guaranteed by public subsidy, their shareholders have already been more than compensated enough for renationalisation to take place without further compensation.
The railways could then form the core of a national network of public transport, free at the point of use, including the re-opening of bus route and (where possible) rail line closures going back to the 1950s.
Or do we only ever have the money for wars and to rescue banks, both permanent commitments, whatever anyone might say to the contrary?
Friday, 25 April 2008
The British People’s Alliance
The British People’s Alliance is a pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war party of economically social democratic, morally and socially conservative British and Commonwealth patriots.
We will be contesting every region at the 2009 European Elections, and we fully expect to contest every seat at the 2010 General Election. The former will be conducted according to a form of proportional representation, while at the latter we need only be the first past the post in any given constituency, both on very low turnouts, favouring those who organise locally to get out their votes.
Members must sign up as one or more of pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker, anti-war, an economic social democrat, a moral and social conservative, and a British and Commonwealth patriot. Each requires payment of one seventh of the membership fee, giving one vote in the party’s affairs. Candidates or officers above local level must subscribe on all seven counts.
We seek 14 membership organisations as partners: two pro-life, two pro-family, two pro-worker, two anti-war, two economically social democratic, two morally and socially conservative, and two of British and Commonwealth patriots. We hope that they will reflect their respective constituencies’ internal diversity.
In return for seven per cent of total permissible electoral expenses, each partner will maintain a list of approved candidates for Westminster, Strasbourg, Holyrood, Cardiff and Stormont. Local parties will only select candidates who are on one or more of those lists.
Eventually, we intend that each local party’s shortlist of two for Westminster, Strasbourg, Holyrood, Cardiff or Stormont will be put to a binding ballot of all registered voters in the constituency, while the whole party’s shortlist of two for Leader will be put to a binding ballot of all registered voters in the United Kingdom.
Potential members, candidates, partners and local organisers should contact (email only) info@britishpeoplesalliance.org.uk
We will be contesting every region at the 2009 European Elections, and we fully expect to contest every seat at the 2010 General Election. The former will be conducted according to a form of proportional representation, while at the latter we need only be the first past the post in any given constituency, both on very low turnouts, favouring those who organise locally to get out their votes.
Members must sign up as one or more of pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker, anti-war, an economic social democrat, a moral and social conservative, and a British and Commonwealth patriot. Each requires payment of one seventh of the membership fee, giving one vote in the party’s affairs. Candidates or officers above local level must subscribe on all seven counts.
We seek 14 membership organisations as partners: two pro-life, two pro-family, two pro-worker, two anti-war, two economically social democratic, two morally and socially conservative, and two of British and Commonwealth patriots. We hope that they will reflect their respective constituencies’ internal diversity.
In return for seven per cent of total permissible electoral expenses, each partner will maintain a list of approved candidates for Westminster, Strasbourg, Holyrood, Cardiff and Stormont. Local parties will only select candidates who are on one or more of those lists.
Eventually, we intend that each local party’s shortlist of two for Westminster, Strasbourg, Holyrood, Cardiff or Stormont will be put to a binding ballot of all registered voters in the constituency, while the whole party’s shortlist of two for Leader will be put to a binding ballot of all registered voters in the United Kingdom.
Potential members, candidates, partners and local organisers should contact (email only) info@britishpeoplesalliance.org.uk
Zimbabwe
The Movement for Democratic Change and all other concerned Zimbabweans should issue an appeal to all their fellow-subjects of "Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of Zimbabwe and of her other Realms and Territories", to aid them in overthrowing the usurpatious tyrant, Robert Mugabe. Is it conceivable that we would not then go to their aid? Furthermore, each of the tribal groups in Zimbabwe should proclaim Her Majesty its Paramount Chief in those same terms.
Her Majesty wouldn't have to do anything. That's the point: this would come from within Zimbabwe, and would place moral and political obligations on governments and people in 16 sovereign states (only four of them predominantly, and none entirely, white), and in numerous other territories besides, not only in these islands, but also in the Americas and in the Pacific.
So not only would this rescue the basket case of Africa and make it once more the bread basket, but it would also constitute a formal tie between Africa and her diaspora in the Caribbean. God Save The African Queen!
Her Majesty wouldn't have to do anything. That's the point: this would come from within Zimbabwe, and would place moral and political obligations on governments and people in 16 sovereign states (only four of them predominantly, and none entirely, white), and in numerous other territories besides, not only in these islands, but also in the Americas and in the Pacific.
So not only would this rescue the basket case of Africa and make it once more the bread basket, but it would also constitute a formal tie between Africa and her diaspora in the Caribbean. God Save The African Queen!
Syria
Is there any country in the Middle East that the War Party does not believe has nuclear weapons? Oh yes, of course there is. The one that really does have them.
On and on Israelis and their yes men go about how backward Israel's neighbours are. Yet they allegedly have nuclear weapons facilities all over the place.
Everyone laughed at the cack-handed attempts engineer a war against Iran. But a war against somewhere has to have been launched too early for President Obama (or President McCain, no warmonger he, I suspect) to be able to prevent it.
So it looks like it's going to be Syria that does the honours, despite its large Christian population (much swelled by refugees from Iraq, on which and on much else see Robin Harris), its British-educated President, the fact that even Tony Blair used to quite like it, and the inescapable reality that secular authoritarian regimes in the Middle East are better bulwarks against Islamic fundamentalism than are arrangements such as we might prefer closer to home.
As Harris writes:
"The oppressive Syrian regime, which continues to make trouble in Lebanon, has, like Jordan, provided safe haven for hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Christians. Indeed, secular authoritarian regimes may in such countries be preferable to weak, more open governments that allow Islamic extremists to flourish."
Has the War Party learned anything from Iraq? No, of course not.
And just how anti-British does a country have to be before the War Party stops doing its bidding? Compared to hanging teenage British conscripts with barbed wire and photographing it, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson seem almost anglophile. Though not quite.
On and on Israelis and their yes men go about how backward Israel's neighbours are. Yet they allegedly have nuclear weapons facilities all over the place.
Everyone laughed at the cack-handed attempts engineer a war against Iran. But a war against somewhere has to have been launched too early for President Obama (or President McCain, no warmonger he, I suspect) to be able to prevent it.
So it looks like it's going to be Syria that does the honours, despite its large Christian population (much swelled by refugees from Iraq, on which and on much else see Robin Harris), its British-educated President, the fact that even Tony Blair used to quite like it, and the inescapable reality that secular authoritarian regimes in the Middle East are better bulwarks against Islamic fundamentalism than are arrangements such as we might prefer closer to home.
As Harris writes:
"The oppressive Syrian regime, which continues to make trouble in Lebanon, has, like Jordan, provided safe haven for hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Christians. Indeed, secular authoritarian regimes may in such countries be preferable to weak, more open governments that allow Islamic extremists to flourish."
Has the War Party learned anything from Iraq? No, of course not.
And just how anti-British does a country have to be before the War Party stops doing its bidding? Compared to hanging teenage British conscripts with barbed wire and photographing it, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson seem almost anglophile. Though not quite.
Blair's 18-Point Lead
Of course, that would be absurd. Wouldn't it?
David Cameron (or David Miliband) offers not merely a return to Blairism, but the return of Blair himself as some sort of eminence grise. And with Blair come Mandelson, Milburn, Byers, Campbell, Levy, Adonis...
David Cameron (or David Miliband) offers not merely a return to Blairism, but the return of Blair himself as some sort of eminence grise. And with Blair come Mandelson, Milburn, Byers, Campbell, Levy, Adonis...
Trotskyism On The Vine
What is it with Jeremy Vine and the Scottish Socialist Party, the Trotskyist one-man band that decided to become a no-man band by expelling the one man, and which was duly ejected from Holyrood? Someone from this outfit appears on the air roughly once every fortnight.
Still, the rise Trotskyism in Scotland and London, especially, is an untold story of our times. Who would have thought that, overtly and without entryism, such parties could make any progress at all? Yet, in recent years, they have done just that.
Still, the rise Trotskyism in Scotland and London, especially, is an untold story of our times. Who would have thought that, overtly and without entryism, such parties could make any progress at all? Yet, in recent years, they have done just that.
Thursday, 24 April 2008
From Russia With Love
John Laughland writes:
I visited Moscow last week, my second visit to the Russian capital in seven months, and it is always an overwhelming experience. Moscow is a Moloch of a city, an unimaginably vast metropolis where everything is on a far greater scale than anywhere else in Europe. The buildings are massive, most streets have three lanes in each direction, the crowds are stupendous. The metro, which is famously the best in the world, transports teeming millions of people hither and thither; the escalators are constantly full as people flood up and down, and the trains are full even though they come every minute with the absolute regularity of a Swiss clock.
The sense of anarchy is increased by the city’s appalling traffic jams. Although the metro is so good, Muscovites take to their cars in their hundreds of thousands. Perhaps they regard it as a status symbol to drive rather than to use public transport. The distances are so large in Moscow that one can spend what seems like hours bowling along huge boulevards in what appears to be the centre of town; more frequently, however, one spends real hours sitting motionless as cars crawl, bumper to bumper, from one red light to the next.
The traffic jams are a symbol of the vibrancy of Russian life today, with all the good and bad which that implies. The economic dynamism of Russia displays the same good and bad sides. But the difference in prosperity between Moscow in 1988, when I first visited it, and now, could hardly be greater. Most of the cars in the traffic jams are 4x4s and the city (at least the centre) is replete with expensive shops and expensive hotels. With their nation’s characteristic proclivity for extremes, the Russians have gone from paupers to princes without seeming to pass through any intermediate stage: Russian immigrants in Western Europe are not, like Poles, cleaners and builders but instead multi-millionaires. In Russia itself, the middle class is burgeoning – against, at least in the urban centres – and you now seem to find more Russian tourists in fashionable beach resorts around the world than Germans. Any talk of political dictatorship in such conditions of vast economic expansion is simply ridiculous.
Russia, like England, is a European country which typically does not consider itself to be part of Europe. Russians use the word “Europe” to mean somewhere else. Of course Moscow is a European city. Indeed, it is racially homogenous, the few former Soviet citizens one sees from Central Asia or the Caucasus, and the numerous Chinese immigrants, representing a mere drop in the Slavic ocean. But, like Russia itself, Moscow is incommensurable with Europe. As you walk the streets of the capital, you somehow feel the presence of Russia’s still vast Asiatic empire beyond the city limits, for the country still stretches to the Pacific in spite of the severe territorial losses suffered by Russians when the Soviet Union was dismantled.
Size is Russia’s dilemma. Many philosophers – especially Nikolai Berdyaev – have commented on the impact which vast geographical space has on the Russian soul, some saying that it makes the country inevitably autocratic. Others have commented on the fact that, while size appears to imply strength, Russia’s huge spaces can often also be a source of weakness. British ships could famously reach the Crimea during the Crimean War more quickly than Russian troops could, marching there by foot since there were no railways. The country has vast borders which it is impossible to police and difficult to defend.
Russia’s size has also, however, represented a defensive strength. In the depths of the birch forests, Russian life – eternal Russia – continues much as before, in spite of the tumultuous changes inflicted on the country by two centuries of rapid economic and political change. That life, depicted in the Tretyakov Gallery’s countless portraits of the upper classes in their dachas, seems to remain essentially unchanged in a way that cannot be said of rural life in England or France. Russia is also one of the few countries in Europe where ordinary people retain a basic religious faith. No doubt it has degenerated largely into peasant superstition (as it has to some extent in Italy) but the fact is that you are far more likely to see a Russian person cross himself in a moment of worry than a German, a Briton or even a Spaniard.
Whatever the truth, Russia’s size certainly does mean that she cannot be easily integrated into any European system. She reached the height of her geopolitical presence during the Cold War, when she was one half of a bipolar world. Now, Russia is a little more like Canada than the United States, but she is still far too large to be an ordinary European state. Her size frightens people and makes it difficult for the rest of Europe to treat her as an ordinary country.
Russia, indeed, can never be an ordinary country. She will always be a world unto herself. That is why Europe and the West must work hard to develop a respectful attitude towards her. In the past, Western hostility towards Russia has translated into enmity towards “Tsarism”, “imperialism” and Communism: these are ultimately all ways of projecting one’s own evils onto the feared “other”. The division of Europe between East and West dates from the foundation of Constantinople and the division of the Roman Empire into East and West in the early 4th century A.D., Russia now being the principle inheritor of Byzantium. Such a long division is not going to be overcome easily. But it can come only when the two halves of Europe, Russia and the West, behave towards each other as two co-equal legatees of the same undivided Christian civilisation.
Russia's neocon enemies are old Marxists from back in the day, notably the Harry's Place website, which is the latest manifestation of Straight Left, the most unerringly pro-Soviet faction within the old Communist Party of Great Britain and among its nominally Labour fellow-travellers. That is why they oppose the present Russian Government: they support the only viable alternative, namely the totally unreconstructed Communist Party of the Russian Federation.
They have no concept of Russia as, in common with all the Slavs (not least including the Serbs), the bulwark, against Islamic and other threats, of the civilisation defined by the Biblical-Classical synthesis; on the contrary, they define themselves precisely by their opposition to that synthesis, which is the West.
I visited Moscow last week, my second visit to the Russian capital in seven months, and it is always an overwhelming experience. Moscow is a Moloch of a city, an unimaginably vast metropolis where everything is on a far greater scale than anywhere else in Europe. The buildings are massive, most streets have three lanes in each direction, the crowds are stupendous. The metro, which is famously the best in the world, transports teeming millions of people hither and thither; the escalators are constantly full as people flood up and down, and the trains are full even though they come every minute with the absolute regularity of a Swiss clock.
The sense of anarchy is increased by the city’s appalling traffic jams. Although the metro is so good, Muscovites take to their cars in their hundreds of thousands. Perhaps they regard it as a status symbol to drive rather than to use public transport. The distances are so large in Moscow that one can spend what seems like hours bowling along huge boulevards in what appears to be the centre of town; more frequently, however, one spends real hours sitting motionless as cars crawl, bumper to bumper, from one red light to the next.
The traffic jams are a symbol of the vibrancy of Russian life today, with all the good and bad which that implies. The economic dynamism of Russia displays the same good and bad sides. But the difference in prosperity between Moscow in 1988, when I first visited it, and now, could hardly be greater. Most of the cars in the traffic jams are 4x4s and the city (at least the centre) is replete with expensive shops and expensive hotels. With their nation’s characteristic proclivity for extremes, the Russians have gone from paupers to princes without seeming to pass through any intermediate stage: Russian immigrants in Western Europe are not, like Poles, cleaners and builders but instead multi-millionaires. In Russia itself, the middle class is burgeoning – against, at least in the urban centres – and you now seem to find more Russian tourists in fashionable beach resorts around the world than Germans. Any talk of political dictatorship in such conditions of vast economic expansion is simply ridiculous.
Russia, like England, is a European country which typically does not consider itself to be part of Europe. Russians use the word “Europe” to mean somewhere else. Of course Moscow is a European city. Indeed, it is racially homogenous, the few former Soviet citizens one sees from Central Asia or the Caucasus, and the numerous Chinese immigrants, representing a mere drop in the Slavic ocean. But, like Russia itself, Moscow is incommensurable with Europe. As you walk the streets of the capital, you somehow feel the presence of Russia’s still vast Asiatic empire beyond the city limits, for the country still stretches to the Pacific in spite of the severe territorial losses suffered by Russians when the Soviet Union was dismantled.
Size is Russia’s dilemma. Many philosophers – especially Nikolai Berdyaev – have commented on the impact which vast geographical space has on the Russian soul, some saying that it makes the country inevitably autocratic. Others have commented on the fact that, while size appears to imply strength, Russia’s huge spaces can often also be a source of weakness. British ships could famously reach the Crimea during the Crimean War more quickly than Russian troops could, marching there by foot since there were no railways. The country has vast borders which it is impossible to police and difficult to defend.
Russia’s size has also, however, represented a defensive strength. In the depths of the birch forests, Russian life – eternal Russia – continues much as before, in spite of the tumultuous changes inflicted on the country by two centuries of rapid economic and political change. That life, depicted in the Tretyakov Gallery’s countless portraits of the upper classes in their dachas, seems to remain essentially unchanged in a way that cannot be said of rural life in England or France. Russia is also one of the few countries in Europe where ordinary people retain a basic religious faith. No doubt it has degenerated largely into peasant superstition (as it has to some extent in Italy) but the fact is that you are far more likely to see a Russian person cross himself in a moment of worry than a German, a Briton or even a Spaniard.
Whatever the truth, Russia’s size certainly does mean that she cannot be easily integrated into any European system. She reached the height of her geopolitical presence during the Cold War, when she was one half of a bipolar world. Now, Russia is a little more like Canada than the United States, but she is still far too large to be an ordinary European state. Her size frightens people and makes it difficult for the rest of Europe to treat her as an ordinary country.
Russia, indeed, can never be an ordinary country. She will always be a world unto herself. That is why Europe and the West must work hard to develop a respectful attitude towards her. In the past, Western hostility towards Russia has translated into enmity towards “Tsarism”, “imperialism” and Communism: these are ultimately all ways of projecting one’s own evils onto the feared “other”. The division of Europe between East and West dates from the foundation of Constantinople and the division of the Roman Empire into East and West in the early 4th century A.D., Russia now being the principle inheritor of Byzantium. Such a long division is not going to be overcome easily. But it can come only when the two halves of Europe, Russia and the West, behave towards each other as two co-equal legatees of the same undivided Christian civilisation.
Russia's neocon enemies are old Marxists from back in the day, notably the Harry's Place website, which is the latest manifestation of Straight Left, the most unerringly pro-Soviet faction within the old Communist Party of Great Britain and among its nominally Labour fellow-travellers. That is why they oppose the present Russian Government: they support the only viable alternative, namely the totally unreconstructed Communist Party of the Russian Federation.
They have no concept of Russia as, in common with all the Slavs (not least including the Serbs), the bulwark, against Islamic and other threats, of the civilisation defined by the Biblical-Classical synthesis; on the contrary, they define themselves precisely by their opposition to that synthesis, which is the West.
How Badly Is Labour Going To Do?
Their own predictions are so dire that whatever really happens cannot possibly live up (or down) to them. And it seems that they don't need press officers when they have the right-wing press itself.
Mayor of London
Blah, blah, blah. Nobody outside London cares tuppence. This is in no sense a national story. Has Ken Livinstone had an impact on national politics in the last eight years? The outcome of this election will affect absolutely nothing except itself.
Still, don't bet against Brown doing to the London Mayorality what Thatcher did to the GLC if Boris Johnson wins.
Still, don't bet against Brown doing to the London Mayorality what Thatcher did to the GLC if Boris Johnson wins.
Control
Why am I not surprised that certain people who try and post comments here are in favour of aborting, contracepting and sterilising the Left's electoral base out of existence, and of making it either actually or apparently necessary to import a new working class which understands no English except commands, knows little or nothing about workers' rights in this country, can be moved around at will, and can be deported if it steps out of line?
Read my friend Ann Farmer's Prophets and Priests: The Hidden Face of the Birth Control Movement (London: The Saint Austin Press, 2002; ISBN 1 901157 62 8). Don't come back until you have.
Read my friend Ann Farmer's Prophets and Priests: The Hidden Face of the Birth Control Movement (London: The Saint Austin Press, 2002; ISBN 1 901157 62 8). Don't come back until you have.
A Fair Exchange
A fascinating exchange this evening with a very senior Labour figure whose path and mine crossed a few years ago (my old political associates in this neck of the woods would be very surprised indeed), but from whom I have hardly heard since. I was told to feel free to blog what was said, provided that I in no way identified my interlocutor. So here goes.
The staggering level of abuse to which I am subjected is, I am told, because I appeal to the wrong “tribes” (the word used), beginning with the Political Class’s two archest of archenemies, the white working class and those who have been proved right over Iraq. Other such tribes are rural people, Catholics, Evangelicals, Unionists, and the North and the West Country (whence have come every rebellion against hegemony in English history).
Furthermore, I dare to speak for and to certain tribes – anti-war conservatives, Labour Eurosceptics, Catholic Unionists, (Old) Labour-minded Ulster Protestants, the rural Left, the English-speaking Welsh – which do not officially exist at all, even though they do in fact exist in enormous numbers. Indeed, they positively predominate: most conservatives are anti-war, most Labour supporters have at least grave doubts about the EU, probably half of Catholics in Northern Ireland are in favour of the Union in principle, well over half of Ulster Protestants are Old Labour really, there are rather more farm labourers than squires, and eighty per cent of the Welsh speak English. But you mustn’t say these things. You just mustn’t. Well, I do. And I will.
Over-promoted people read this blog (very often the comments as well as my own material, I have to say) and my posts elsewhere, and they realise that they themselves have never heard of, say, the early Labour activists who saw off anti-monarchism, or those who opposed attempts to abort and contracept the Left’s electoral base out of existence, or Gaitskell’s opposition to European federalism, or the Catholic Labour MPs against abortion and easier divorce, or the Methodist Labour MPs against deregulated drinking and gambling, or the Labour MPs who opposed devolution because it would be ruinous for the North of England, or the Labour activists who opposed devolution because it would be ruinous for the “peripheral” parts of Scotland and Wales. They have to face the fact that these were the people who delivered jobs, education, health care, housing, workers’ rights and so forth, while the sectarian Marxist Left whence they themselves came actually opposed every such measure.
And the one thing that our lords and masters fear most is the re-emergence of a pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war party of economically social democratic, morally and socially conservative British and Commonwealth patriots. They can cope with Communists and Trotskyists. They know from personal experience that nobody is ever going to vote for such outfits. But they could not cope with that, for which huge numbers of people would vote, just as they always used to before that option was withdrawn from them without their consent.
Well, so long as you subscribe to that formula – “a pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war party of economically social democratic, morally and socially conservative British and Commonwealth patriots” – then you will be welcome in the British People’s Alliance. Nothing else will be required of you ideologically. (Whether we fight the European Elections under that banner, or we get ourselves in and then set it up, remains to be seen, although of course it will have to be decided very soon.)
Whereas the Political Class wants a breakthrough for the BNP. Numerous Westminster Villagers will be speeding that along in the polling booths of London next week, making sure that the BNP gets the GLA list seat for which it was in any case well on course. And they regard with unalloyed glee the prospect of at least eight BNP MEPs next year. It would secure First Past The Post for at least a generation. It would be the excuse for all manner of repressive measures aimed mostly at the white working class, and therefore likely to receive little or no media coverage. It would confirm all their own prejudices, and enable them to denounce “pandering” to actual or potential BNP voters. And they won’t have anybody messing it up.
Yes, a fascinating exchange this evening with a very senior Labour figure.
The staggering level of abuse to which I am subjected is, I am told, because I appeal to the wrong “tribes” (the word used), beginning with the Political Class’s two archest of archenemies, the white working class and those who have been proved right over Iraq. Other such tribes are rural people, Catholics, Evangelicals, Unionists, and the North and the West Country (whence have come every rebellion against hegemony in English history).
Furthermore, I dare to speak for and to certain tribes – anti-war conservatives, Labour Eurosceptics, Catholic Unionists, (Old) Labour-minded Ulster Protestants, the rural Left, the English-speaking Welsh – which do not officially exist at all, even though they do in fact exist in enormous numbers. Indeed, they positively predominate: most conservatives are anti-war, most Labour supporters have at least grave doubts about the EU, probably half of Catholics in Northern Ireland are in favour of the Union in principle, well over half of Ulster Protestants are Old Labour really, there are rather more farm labourers than squires, and eighty per cent of the Welsh speak English. But you mustn’t say these things. You just mustn’t. Well, I do. And I will.
Over-promoted people read this blog (very often the comments as well as my own material, I have to say) and my posts elsewhere, and they realise that they themselves have never heard of, say, the early Labour activists who saw off anti-monarchism, or those who opposed attempts to abort and contracept the Left’s electoral base out of existence, or Gaitskell’s opposition to European federalism, or the Catholic Labour MPs against abortion and easier divorce, or the Methodist Labour MPs against deregulated drinking and gambling, or the Labour MPs who opposed devolution because it would be ruinous for the North of England, or the Labour activists who opposed devolution because it would be ruinous for the “peripheral” parts of Scotland and Wales. They have to face the fact that these were the people who delivered jobs, education, health care, housing, workers’ rights and so forth, while the sectarian Marxist Left whence they themselves came actually opposed every such measure.
And the one thing that our lords and masters fear most is the re-emergence of a pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war party of economically social democratic, morally and socially conservative British and Commonwealth patriots. They can cope with Communists and Trotskyists. They know from personal experience that nobody is ever going to vote for such outfits. But they could not cope with that, for which huge numbers of people would vote, just as they always used to before that option was withdrawn from them without their consent.
Well, so long as you subscribe to that formula – “a pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war party of economically social democratic, morally and socially conservative British and Commonwealth patriots” – then you will be welcome in the British People’s Alliance. Nothing else will be required of you ideologically. (Whether we fight the European Elections under that banner, or we get ourselves in and then set it up, remains to be seen, although of course it will have to be decided very soon.)
Whereas the Political Class wants a breakthrough for the BNP. Numerous Westminster Villagers will be speeding that along in the polling booths of London next week, making sure that the BNP gets the GLA list seat for which it was in any case well on course. And they regard with unalloyed glee the prospect of at least eight BNP MEPs next year. It would secure First Past The Post for at least a generation. It would be the excuse for all manner of repressive measures aimed mostly at the white working class, and therefore likely to receive little or no media coverage. It would confirm all their own prejudices, and enable them to denounce “pandering” to actual or potential BNP voters. And they won’t have anybody messing it up.
Yes, a fascinating exchange this evening with a very senior Labour figure.
Spot The Story
David Cameron has effectively offered the position of Education Secretary to a Labour peer who was Schools Minister under Tony Blair. He has done this publicly, in the Daily Telegraph on Monday. He has not been rebuffed. But if you hear or read about this anywhere, then do please let me know.
Taxing
In all the fuss about the 10p tax rate, no one seems to have mentioned a crucial factor. These things are decided by people with little or no concept of a period between one’s children’s leaving home and one’s own retirement. No one they know had children much before the age of 30, and no one they know is or will be working much after the age of 55. Their last child’s departure and the end of working their life will coincide almost exactly. The idea of a 15 or 20 year gap between these two events, as is entirely normal among people previously paying 10p tax, is completely lost on them.
Meanwhile, isn’t it funny how the money can always be found for wars, or to rescue banks, but not to help the working poor, or indeed any other type of poor? And remember when it was unconscionable folly to give the young the same minimum wage entitlement as everybody else? Right up until Tuesday, in fact.
The whole thing has given the BBC a hardly needed opportunity to emphasise how much better Tony Blair was, with Nick Robinson passing on the bitter carping of Blair’s inner circle as if it were a matter of earth-shattering importance. Blair is turning into what Thatcher was in the Nineties. Except, of course, that Thatcher quite liked her party in the country, and it loved her in return. The Labour Party never really liked Blair all that much, he has always hated it with a venom not consistent with sanity, and what little of it remains after his tenure now fulsomely returns the compliment. Still, he’ll always have the BBC.
Meanwhile, isn’t it funny how the money can always be found for wars, or to rescue banks, but not to help the working poor, or indeed any other type of poor? And remember when it was unconscionable folly to give the young the same minimum wage entitlement as everybody else? Right up until Tuesday, in fact.
The whole thing has given the BBC a hardly needed opportunity to emphasise how much better Tony Blair was, with Nick Robinson passing on the bitter carping of Blair’s inner circle as if it were a matter of earth-shattering importance. Blair is turning into what Thatcher was in the Nineties. Except, of course, that Thatcher quite liked her party in the country, and it loved her in return. The Labour Party never really liked Blair all that much, he has always hated it with a venom not consistent with sanity, and what little of it remains after his tenure now fulsomely returns the compliment. Still, he’ll always have the BBC.
No Kidding
Four times on Newsnight, Yvette Cooper referred to “families with kids”. I can’t see what goats have to do with it.
This person purports to be the Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
This person purports to be the Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
Over The Brush
How, exactly, are unmarried couples to be given the same rights as married couples? More to the point, why need they be? They already have a perfectly simple way of acquiring those rights. It is called getting married. Under any scheme, they would always have to sign something and have it witnessed. So I’m sorry, but I don’t understand.
Wednesday, 23 April 2008
Happy Saint George's Day
Like Saint Andrew's Day, Saint David's Day and Saint Patrick's Day, today ought to be a public holiday throughout the United Kingdom.
God Save The Queen!
God Save The Queen!
The Strasbourg Challenge
To those listed on the website of the Euston Manifesto: Norman Geras, Damian Counsell, Alan Johnson, Shalom Lappin, Jane Ashworth, Dave Bennett, Brian Brivati, Adrian Cohen, Nick Cohen, Anthony Cox, Neil Denny, Paul Evans, Paul Gamble, Eve Garrard, Harry Hatchet, David Hirsh, Dan Johnson, Gary Kent, Jon Pike, Simon Pottinger, Andrew Regan, Alexandra Simonon, Richard Sanderson, “David T”, Philip Spencer, Jeffrey Alexander, Paul Anderson, Joe Bailey, Ophelia Benson, Paul Berman, Pamela Bone, Robert Borsley, Michael Brennan, Chris Brown, Julie Burchill, Mitchell Cohen, Marc Cooper, Thomas Cushman, Heather Deegan, Jon Fasman, Luke Foley, Raimond Gaita, Marko Attila Hoare, Quintin Hoare, Anthony Julius, Oliver Kamm, Sunder Katwala, Jeffrey Ketland, Matthew Kramer, Mary Kreutzer, John Lloyd, Denis MacShane MP, Kanan Makiya, John Mann MP, Jim Nolan, Will Parbury, Greg Pope MP, Thomas Schmidinger, Milton Shain, Hillel Steiner, Gisela Stuart MP, George Szirtes, Michael Walzer, Bert Ward, Morton Weinfeld, Jeff Weintraub, Francis Wheen and Sami Zubaida.
And to those listed on the website of The Henry Jackson Society: Rt. Hon. Michael Ancram QC MP, Gerard Baker, Paul Beaver, Prof. Paul Bew, Prof. Vernon Bogdanor, Nicholas Boles, Chris Bryant MP, Damian Collins MP, Colonel Tim Collins, Prof. Paul Cornish, Sir Richard Dearlove OBE, Major-General John Drewienkiewicz, Mark Etherington, Sir Philip Goodhart, Michael Gove MP, Jonny Gray, Robert Halfon, Fabian Hamilton MP, Oliver Kamm, Jackie Lawrence, Prof. Andrew Lever, Dr. Denis MacShane MP, Fionnuala Jay O'Boyle MBE, Stephen Pollard, Greg Pope MP, Lord Powell of Bayswater, Andrew Roberts, David Ruffley MP, Dr. Jamie Shea, Dr. Irwin Stelzer, Gisela Stuart MP, Rt. Hon. Lord Trimble, Edward Vaizey MP, David Willetts MP, Prof. Alan Lee Williams OBE, Brendan Simms, Alan Mendoza, James M. Rogers, Gideon A. Mailer and Matthew Jamison.
If we can (and we will) find a pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war candidate to contest each region at next year's European Elections, thereby giving a voice to economically social democratic, morally and socially conservative British and Commonwealth patriots, then I dare you to put up an Independent candidate in each region on the Euston/Jackson ticket. And wherever we stand a candidate who actually lives in the region in question, then I dare you to do the same.
Go on.
I dare you.
And to those listed on the website of The Henry Jackson Society: Rt. Hon. Michael Ancram QC MP, Gerard Baker, Paul Beaver, Prof. Paul Bew, Prof. Vernon Bogdanor, Nicholas Boles, Chris Bryant MP, Damian Collins MP, Colonel Tim Collins, Prof. Paul Cornish, Sir Richard Dearlove OBE, Major-General John Drewienkiewicz, Mark Etherington, Sir Philip Goodhart, Michael Gove MP, Jonny Gray, Robert Halfon, Fabian Hamilton MP, Oliver Kamm, Jackie Lawrence, Prof. Andrew Lever, Dr. Denis MacShane MP, Fionnuala Jay O'Boyle MBE, Stephen Pollard, Greg Pope MP, Lord Powell of Bayswater, Andrew Roberts, David Ruffley MP, Dr. Jamie Shea, Dr. Irwin Stelzer, Gisela Stuart MP, Rt. Hon. Lord Trimble, Edward Vaizey MP, David Willetts MP, Prof. Alan Lee Williams OBE, Brendan Simms, Alan Mendoza, James M. Rogers, Gideon A. Mailer and Matthew Jamison.
If we can (and we will) find a pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war candidate to contest each region at next year's European Elections, thereby giving a voice to economically social democratic, morally and socially conservative British and Commonwealth patriots, then I dare you to put up an Independent candidate in each region on the Euston/Jackson ticket. And wherever we stand a candidate who actually lives in the region in question, then I dare you to do the same.
Go on.
I dare you.
U-Turn If You Want To
But "Parliament in action" is the correct way to describe it. Or how would you prefer the Executive to relate to the House of Commons?
The gall of David Cameron at PMQs! He heaped praise on Gwyneth Dunwoody for holding successive governments to account, but then heaped scorn on Gordon Brown for allowing and enabling his government to be held to account by MPs.
The gall of David Cameron at PMQs! He heaped praise on Gwyneth Dunwoody for holding successive governments to account, but then heaped scorn on Gordon Brown for allowing and enabling his government to be held to account by MPs.
Truly The Heir To Blair
At least Peter Hitchens noticed the political story of the year:
This amazing story, a proper political scoop, was stuffed on a left-hand inside page of the 'Daily Telegraph' on Monday, when it ought to have been on the front in letters of fire. David Cameron has publicly wooed several Blairites, including a serving minister. He is clearly hoping to win their defections. I don't recall any party leader ever having acted so brazenly before, and I think the episode goes straight to the heart of modern British politics - the torch of Blairism being passed, over Gordon Brown's head, directly from the grinning one to his designated successor.
The main target for this grotesque love-bombing is Andrew 'Lord' Adonis, an education minister at the heart of the failed Blair strategy for schools, based on Stalinist centralisation, exhortation and pep-talks plus gimmicks and the usual fiddled statistics. Presumably the Tory Education spokesman, Michael Gove (who used to be quite sensible before he was sucked into the Cameroon vortex) approves of his leader's action and shares 'Lord' Adonis's views. Too bad if he doesn't, for Mr Cameron has now declared "I think there is one good education minister and that's Lord Adonis." So Mr Gove will jolly well have to think that too, or face the risk of being sacked by mobile phone.
Mr Cameron went on: "He (Adonis) is being steadily ruined by Ed Balls. I think Lord Adonis has been a force for good in education policy". It really is a bit unfair to blame Mr Balls, who arrived about five minutes ago, for ten whole years of educational fraud and failure - whereas Young Adonis has been loitering at the scene of the crime since 2005, and had been whispering in Anthony Blair's ear from 1998 onwards. During all that time, New Labour has pursued a destructively egalitarian education policy, furiously hostile to the one thing that could save state education - selection by ability.
Baron Adonis is one of Labour's large pull-up-the-ladder-behind-you tendency, having himself gone from a Camden council flat to a boarding school (which now charges £21,000 a year) on a state scholarship. This sort of thing was stamped out in one of the first actions of the Blair government - abolishing the assisted places scheme, something they got on with, with unusual efficiency and briskness, the moment they had the power to do so. Just think. If only his hero Anthony Blair had got into government a few years earlier, and Andrew Adonis had been born a few years later, Andrew Adonis would never have got his scholarship, and we'd probably never have heard of him.
But we have, and I wonder if we're going to hear more. Last summer, during a BBC Question Time in Aldershot, I had an interesting exchange with Boris Johnson, in which I suggested that the Tories were seeking Blairite defectors. Look it up (I think it's still on the web) and see what happened. See, above all, which name Boris Johnson came up with all by himself, after repeatedly and unsuccessfully demanding that I produce one. There was no come-back at the time from anyone.
Some think that the Tory mess over grammar schools last year was caused by a premature attempt to lure Andrew Adonis into his third political party in 20 years.
(I know, I can talk, but then I'm not a minister and nobody could accuse me of rambling round the centre ground, where, if you keep in a tight circle, you can easily belong to three different parties without once changing your opinions, much like the poor people of Sub-Carpathian Ukraine, who lived in several different countries in 60 years without once moving house.)
This attempt happened roughly when the then Tory education spokesman, David Willetts declared his love for the Adonis project of city academies, a point he rubbed in by formally, officially and finally declaring that the Tories would never save or restore the grammar schools. But at that stage, the Brown honeymoon was still on, to the enormous frustration of all those who had assumed there would be an immediate surge of horror at the departure of Mr Blair. Not all of those who thought and hoped this were Tories, or even political journalists anxious to cash in on the lunches they have been buying Tory frontbenchers for the past five years. Some quite senior Labour people at Mr Blair's last conference in Manchester had made it plain in private conversation that they rather hoped Mr Cameron would beat Mr Brown.
Now, after the media frenzy directed at Mr Brown (bought and swallowed by an amazing number of people) it seems quite possible to me that the Tory to New Labour defections of the Blair years will be mirrored by ones in the opposite direction. Mr Cameron clearly thinks so. And it isn't just Andrew Adonis (who has some experience of changing parties if he wishes to do it again, having been a Liberal Democrat councillor in Oxford for three years before 1991).
As the Telegraph 'interview' with Mr Cameron says: "Alan Milburn, the former Health Secretary, is also praised for making some "very sensible" comments on reforming public services."
Mr Cameron adds that the intellectual arguments used by Stephen Byers - another Blair minister - Mr Milburn and others for introducing more choice and private sector involvement in public services are being addressed by the Conservatives."
This 'interview' contains very little text explaining where it took place, or what questions were asked. But I don't get the impression that Mr Cameron was caught off his guard, or will be embarrassed that this message has gone out. He may even be quite pleased that it has been put on an inside page, where it will be spotted by those it is meant for, but where only a few of his tribal voters will see that he is signalling frantically over their heads to the Left he really loves.
For that is the real point here. Mr Cameron really does view himself as the continuation of Blair by other means, just as John Major was the precursor of Blairism. This blog is no enthusiast for Margaret Thatcher, but it is clear that neither Stephen Byers, nor Alan Milburn, nor Andrew Adonis, could have defected to a Tory Party led by Mrs Thatcher.
This was mainly for reasons of economic policy, as it happens, though Tory policies on such subjects as the sexual revolution were also, at that time, passively objectionable to left-liberals. I say passively because the Tories never actually did anything much to pursue those policies, but they at least pretended to hold them.
But since then there has been a colossal revolution in the Tory Party. It was engineered first by the Howard putsch (which elevated the pursuit of the 'centre ground' over any sort of principle or politics, as shown in the Howard Flight sacking) and then by the carefully-orchestrated creation of David Cameron. And it has shifted the Tories firmly and irreversibly into the left-liberal establishment. This explains the (otherwise inexplicable) fair treatment they now get from the BBC, and the genuine possibility of significant New Labour (and perhaps Liberal Democrat) defections in the near future.
No serious social, moral, political or economic conservative could wish for the success of such a strategy. If it does well at the next election (let alone wins it, which I still think highly unlikely), conservative principle will be almost completely squeezed out of parliament for the foreseeable future. And yet so many people think that the big political story at the moment is how Gordon Brown was upstaged by the Pope in New York, is in 'meltdown', scowls too much, isn't as twinkly as T.Blair, etc etc etc etc etc etc. Heaven help us, politics as soap opera. Do we get the leadership and the policies we deserve? Increasingly, I think so.
This amazing story, a proper political scoop, was stuffed on a left-hand inside page of the 'Daily Telegraph' on Monday, when it ought to have been on the front in letters of fire. David Cameron has publicly wooed several Blairites, including a serving minister. He is clearly hoping to win their defections. I don't recall any party leader ever having acted so brazenly before, and I think the episode goes straight to the heart of modern British politics - the torch of Blairism being passed, over Gordon Brown's head, directly from the grinning one to his designated successor.
The main target for this grotesque love-bombing is Andrew 'Lord' Adonis, an education minister at the heart of the failed Blair strategy for schools, based on Stalinist centralisation, exhortation and pep-talks plus gimmicks and the usual fiddled statistics. Presumably the Tory Education spokesman, Michael Gove (who used to be quite sensible before he was sucked into the Cameroon vortex) approves of his leader's action and shares 'Lord' Adonis's views. Too bad if he doesn't, for Mr Cameron has now declared "I think there is one good education minister and that's Lord Adonis." So Mr Gove will jolly well have to think that too, or face the risk of being sacked by mobile phone.
Mr Cameron went on: "He (Adonis) is being steadily ruined by Ed Balls. I think Lord Adonis has been a force for good in education policy". It really is a bit unfair to blame Mr Balls, who arrived about five minutes ago, for ten whole years of educational fraud and failure - whereas Young Adonis has been loitering at the scene of the crime since 2005, and had been whispering in Anthony Blair's ear from 1998 onwards. During all that time, New Labour has pursued a destructively egalitarian education policy, furiously hostile to the one thing that could save state education - selection by ability.
Baron Adonis is one of Labour's large pull-up-the-ladder-behind-you tendency, having himself gone from a Camden council flat to a boarding school (which now charges £21,000 a year) on a state scholarship. This sort of thing was stamped out in one of the first actions of the Blair government - abolishing the assisted places scheme, something they got on with, with unusual efficiency and briskness, the moment they had the power to do so. Just think. If only his hero Anthony Blair had got into government a few years earlier, and Andrew Adonis had been born a few years later, Andrew Adonis would never have got his scholarship, and we'd probably never have heard of him.
But we have, and I wonder if we're going to hear more. Last summer, during a BBC Question Time in Aldershot, I had an interesting exchange with Boris Johnson, in which I suggested that the Tories were seeking Blairite defectors. Look it up (I think it's still on the web) and see what happened. See, above all, which name Boris Johnson came up with all by himself, after repeatedly and unsuccessfully demanding that I produce one. There was no come-back at the time from anyone.
Some think that the Tory mess over grammar schools last year was caused by a premature attempt to lure Andrew Adonis into his third political party in 20 years.
(I know, I can talk, but then I'm not a minister and nobody could accuse me of rambling round the centre ground, where, if you keep in a tight circle, you can easily belong to three different parties without once changing your opinions, much like the poor people of Sub-Carpathian Ukraine, who lived in several different countries in 60 years without once moving house.)
This attempt happened roughly when the then Tory education spokesman, David Willetts declared his love for the Adonis project of city academies, a point he rubbed in by formally, officially and finally declaring that the Tories would never save or restore the grammar schools. But at that stage, the Brown honeymoon was still on, to the enormous frustration of all those who had assumed there would be an immediate surge of horror at the departure of Mr Blair. Not all of those who thought and hoped this were Tories, or even political journalists anxious to cash in on the lunches they have been buying Tory frontbenchers for the past five years. Some quite senior Labour people at Mr Blair's last conference in Manchester had made it plain in private conversation that they rather hoped Mr Cameron would beat Mr Brown.
Now, after the media frenzy directed at Mr Brown (bought and swallowed by an amazing number of people) it seems quite possible to me that the Tory to New Labour defections of the Blair years will be mirrored by ones in the opposite direction. Mr Cameron clearly thinks so. And it isn't just Andrew Adonis (who has some experience of changing parties if he wishes to do it again, having been a Liberal Democrat councillor in Oxford for three years before 1991).
As the Telegraph 'interview' with Mr Cameron says: "Alan Milburn, the former Health Secretary, is also praised for making some "very sensible" comments on reforming public services."
Mr Cameron adds that the intellectual arguments used by Stephen Byers - another Blair minister - Mr Milburn and others for introducing more choice and private sector involvement in public services are being addressed by the Conservatives."
This 'interview' contains very little text explaining where it took place, or what questions were asked. But I don't get the impression that Mr Cameron was caught off his guard, or will be embarrassed that this message has gone out. He may even be quite pleased that it has been put on an inside page, where it will be spotted by those it is meant for, but where only a few of his tribal voters will see that he is signalling frantically over their heads to the Left he really loves.
For that is the real point here. Mr Cameron really does view himself as the continuation of Blair by other means, just as John Major was the precursor of Blairism. This blog is no enthusiast for Margaret Thatcher, but it is clear that neither Stephen Byers, nor Alan Milburn, nor Andrew Adonis, could have defected to a Tory Party led by Mrs Thatcher.
This was mainly for reasons of economic policy, as it happens, though Tory policies on such subjects as the sexual revolution were also, at that time, passively objectionable to left-liberals. I say passively because the Tories never actually did anything much to pursue those policies, but they at least pretended to hold them.
But since then there has been a colossal revolution in the Tory Party. It was engineered first by the Howard putsch (which elevated the pursuit of the 'centre ground' over any sort of principle or politics, as shown in the Howard Flight sacking) and then by the carefully-orchestrated creation of David Cameron. And it has shifted the Tories firmly and irreversibly into the left-liberal establishment. This explains the (otherwise inexplicable) fair treatment they now get from the BBC, and the genuine possibility of significant New Labour (and perhaps Liberal Democrat) defections in the near future.
No serious social, moral, political or economic conservative could wish for the success of such a strategy. If it does well at the next election (let alone wins it, which I still think highly unlikely), conservative principle will be almost completely squeezed out of parliament for the foreseeable future. And yet so many people think that the big political story at the moment is how Gordon Brown was upstaged by the Pope in New York, is in 'meltdown', scowls too much, isn't as twinkly as T.Blair, etc etc etc etc etc etc. Heaven help us, politics as soap opera. Do we get the leadership and the policies we deserve? Increasingly, I think so.
Brown Doesn't Understand His Own Bill
Thanks to Red Maria for this:
Six Labour MPs have written to Gordon Brown, taking issue with his March open letter on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.
The letter from MPs Jim Dobbin, Geraldine Smith, Claire Curtis Thomas, Joe Benton, David Drew and the Rt Hon Tom Clarke, which will also be sent to all Labour MPs, takes issue with the Prime Minister’s scientific understanding of the Bill, and calls for a free vote to be extended to all areas of the Bill involving new ethical issues.
The letter points out that the Bill allows for the mixing of animal and human gametes to create true half -half hybrid embryos and note that in his evidence to the Joint Committee on 6th June 2007, the chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson said “it was felt…there was no clear scientific benefit; there was no clear scientific argument as to why you would want to do it, and, secondly, a feeling that this would be a step too far as far as the public are concerned.”
The MPs note that the Bill would not in limit the creation of “saviour” siblings to the treatment of ‘rare genetic conditions,’ but would enable their creation for any unspecified “serious” condition.
They also criticize the granting of HFEA licenses to scientists at Newcastle and London universities to create hybrid embryos before parliament has considered the HFE Bill and notes that the licenses may not even have been legal under the 1990 Act.
“An unelected body must not be allowed to usurp the place of Parliament, and attempts by Newcastle to create ‘facts on the ground’ ahead of the debate, through releasing a highly premature report of embryos that only survive ‘up to three days,’ no embryonic stem cells, and where the work has not been fully validated and is not even ready to start writing up for peer review, must be ignored,” the letter says.
Six Labour MPs have written to Gordon Brown, taking issue with his March open letter on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.
The letter from MPs Jim Dobbin, Geraldine Smith, Claire Curtis Thomas, Joe Benton, David Drew and the Rt Hon Tom Clarke, which will also be sent to all Labour MPs, takes issue with the Prime Minister’s scientific understanding of the Bill, and calls for a free vote to be extended to all areas of the Bill involving new ethical issues.
The letter points out that the Bill allows for the mixing of animal and human gametes to create true half -half hybrid embryos and note that in his evidence to the Joint Committee on 6th June 2007, the chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson said “it was felt…there was no clear scientific benefit; there was no clear scientific argument as to why you would want to do it, and, secondly, a feeling that this would be a step too far as far as the public are concerned.”
The MPs note that the Bill would not in limit the creation of “saviour” siblings to the treatment of ‘rare genetic conditions,’ but would enable their creation for any unspecified “serious” condition.
They also criticize the granting of HFEA licenses to scientists at Newcastle and London universities to create hybrid embryos before parliament has considered the HFE Bill and notes that the licenses may not even have been legal under the 1990 Act.
“An unelected body must not be allowed to usurp the place of Parliament, and attempts by Newcastle to create ‘facts on the ground’ ahead of the debate, through releasing a highly premature report of embryos that only survive ‘up to three days,’ no embryonic stem cells, and where the work has not been fully validated and is not even ready to start writing up for peer review, must be ignored,” the letter says.
Still The Blair Broadcasting Corporation
Today's Daily Politics featured alleged vox pops on a London street, saying how much they missed Tony Blair, the most hated Prime Minister in living memory and the worst Prime Minister ever. These people were in fact behind-the-scenes staff on The Daily Politics. I guarantee it.
Meanwhile, time was when the BBC would have banged on and on for at least a week about a Tory MP's defection to UKIP. But now that such a thing has actually happened, there is silence. Nothing must detract or distract from The Heir To Blair.
Meanwhile, time was when the BBC would have banged on and on for at least a week about a Tory MP's defection to UKIP. But now that such a thing has actually happened, there is silence. Nothing must detract or distract from The Heir To Blair.
Pondering Obama And Race
I really do doubt that any white person one of whose parents was an immigrant whose first language was not English, and who thus has close family ties to some of the protagonists in a feud for control of a European country, could become a potential President of the United States.
Do The Democrats Deserve The Black Vote Ever Again?
Not if the superdelegates look at what is now the mathematical impossibility of Hillary Clinton's being nominated without their support and duly give it, thereby declaring once and for all that even a dark-skinned mixed-race person, with only marital ties to African-American culture, has to yield to a WASP who was nothing but a high society hostess when he was a State Senator.
Hillary The Hawk
As Neil Clark puts it:
"Clinton’s statement is not only bellicose, it’s also extremely deceitful. Iran can’t launch a nuclear strike against Israel for the simple reason that it doesn’t possess nuclear weapons. Nor, as the Joint Intelligence Report concluded, does it have a nuclear weapons programme. Would Iran launch a conventional attack? To do so would be suicidal, knowing that Israel possesses nuclear weapons. The only scenario one could imagine an Iranian attack on Israel occurring is in retaliation to an Israeli pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear energy facilities, as leading Israeli politicians have already threatened. And if this sequence of events did happen, then Hillary Clinton believes it would be right for the US to "obliterate" Iran."
See also this, by Richard Silverstein.
"Clinton’s statement is not only bellicose, it’s also extremely deceitful. Iran can’t launch a nuclear strike against Israel for the simple reason that it doesn’t possess nuclear weapons. Nor, as the Joint Intelligence Report concluded, does it have a nuclear weapons programme. Would Iran launch a conventional attack? To do so would be suicidal, knowing that Israel possesses nuclear weapons. The only scenario one could imagine an Iranian attack on Israel occurring is in retaliation to an Israeli pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear energy facilities, as leading Israeli politicians have already threatened. And if this sequence of events did happen, then Hillary Clinton believes it would be right for the US to "obliterate" Iran."
See also this, by Richard Silverstein.
MTV
Mick Hall has an excellent post, of which this gives a flavour:
British Television has gone back to the days of “gor blimy gov, thank you very kindly.” When working class people are portrayed on our screens, they are increasingly being played by middle class actors as either stupid chavs, layabouts, criminals, incompetent half wits or victims of their own class, in much the same way as black people used to be portrayed. There are a number of programmmes that epitomize the wretchedness and class prejudice that is so prevalent in the media today. Al Murray's Happy Hour stands out as the worst of many, yet actors musicians and journalists line up to appear on this infantile programme, oblivious that by doing so they are party to insulting a large section of the community they live amongst.
The ‘Landlord’ in the 'Happy Hour' is portrayed as a crude working-class bigot and is played by middle-class actor and ‘comedian’ Alastair "Al" Murray, the son of Lt.-Col. Ingram Bernard Hay Murray and his wife Juliet Anne Thackeray Ritchie, through whom he is a great-great-great-great-grandson of William Makepeace Thackeray, his grandfather was UK diplomat Sir Ralph Murray. Al Murray attended Bedford Public School and is a graduate of Oxford University. Yet on screen he masquerades as a half witted sexist lout who speaks with an estuary English accent, the likes of which has never been heard any where between Dagenham and Southend. What makes me puke is comics and actors like Murray when out of character portray themselves as 'right on' people who show respect to all, yet in their work they seem to believe they have a right to insult ordinary decent people for no better reason than these people are working-class.
Except of course that "the son of Lt.-Col. Ingram Bernard Hay Murray and his wife Juliet Anne Thackeray Ritchie", himself an old boy of Bedford and Oxford, is not in fact "middle-class" at all. His background is a very long way indeed from the £22,000 per annum that is the median wage for full-time work, the actual middle.
British Television has gone back to the days of “gor blimy gov, thank you very kindly.” When working class people are portrayed on our screens, they are increasingly being played by middle class actors as either stupid chavs, layabouts, criminals, incompetent half wits or victims of their own class, in much the same way as black people used to be portrayed. There are a number of programmmes that epitomize the wretchedness and class prejudice that is so prevalent in the media today. Al Murray's Happy Hour stands out as the worst of many, yet actors musicians and journalists line up to appear on this infantile programme, oblivious that by doing so they are party to insulting a large section of the community they live amongst.
The ‘Landlord’ in the 'Happy Hour' is portrayed as a crude working-class bigot and is played by middle-class actor and ‘comedian’ Alastair "Al" Murray, the son of Lt.-Col. Ingram Bernard Hay Murray and his wife Juliet Anne Thackeray Ritchie, through whom he is a great-great-great-great-grandson of William Makepeace Thackeray, his grandfather was UK diplomat Sir Ralph Murray. Al Murray attended Bedford Public School and is a graduate of Oxford University. Yet on screen he masquerades as a half witted sexist lout who speaks with an estuary English accent, the likes of which has never been heard any where between Dagenham and Southend. What makes me puke is comics and actors like Murray when out of character portray themselves as 'right on' people who show respect to all, yet in their work they seem to believe they have a right to insult ordinary decent people for no better reason than these people are working-class.
Except of course that "the son of Lt.-Col. Ingram Bernard Hay Murray and his wife Juliet Anne Thackeray Ritchie", himself an old boy of Bedford and Oxford, is not in fact "middle-class" at all. His background is a very long way indeed from the £22,000 per annum that is the median wage for full-time work, the actual middle.
Tuesday, 22 April 2008
Bob Spink: UKIP's First MP
Just as UKIP falls apart. Still, it is worth noting, in the midst of the media Cameron lovefest, that three MPs elected as Tories in 2005 no longer have the whip, and two of those have now joined other parties. There are still two more years to go before the next General Election.
Half of UKIP's votes at the last European Elections - its high water mark - must have come from Labour supporters, or Lib Dems in, especially, the West Country.
Add together the Tory and UKIP figures in London, the West Country, any of the three Northern regions, or either of the Midland regions, and you get a ridiculously high figure. But add half of UKIP's figure to the Lib Dem one in the West Country or the Labour one anywhere else, and it makes perfect sense.
So there's no point in the Tories courting UKIP voters as UKIP falls apart. Half of them were never Tories anyway.
Meanwhile, those Labour supporters who gave their votes to UKIP at the last European Elections will have somewhere to go at the next ones. And then at the General Election a year later. Not even the Electoral Commission would dare refuse to register a party set up by 12 sitting MEPs. Watch this space...
Half of UKIP's votes at the last European Elections - its high water mark - must have come from Labour supporters, or Lib Dems in, especially, the West Country.
Add together the Tory and UKIP figures in London, the West Country, any of the three Northern regions, or either of the Midland regions, and you get a ridiculously high figure. But add half of UKIP's figure to the Lib Dem one in the West Country or the Labour one anywhere else, and it makes perfect sense.
So there's no point in the Tories courting UKIP voters as UKIP falls apart. Half of them were never Tories anyway.
Meanwhile, those Labour supporters who gave their votes to UKIP at the last European Elections will have somewhere to go at the next ones. And then at the General Election a year later. Not even the Electoral Commission would dare refuse to register a party set up by 12 sitting MEPs. Watch this space...
Jimmy Carter Is Simply Facing Reality
Jimmy Carter is simply facing reality, because he is simply doing what the Israelis themselves have done. Within Israel's pre-1967 borders, the most popular name for new baby boys is now Muhammad. There is now a Russian-language television station for the ever-growing number of devourers of pork products, many of whom insist on taking their Israeli soldiers’ oaths on the New Testament alone (emphatically not a Russian Orthodox position, but there we are), and some of whom have been found to be distributing anti-Semitic literature in Russian, up to and including the members of an Israeli neo-Nazi gang.
These Russians are the beneficiaries of the Law of Return, not least because Israeli Jews, other than ultra-Orthodox who are either fully anti-Zionist or at least deeply unhappy about the State of Israel that exists, exhibit that unmistakable societal death wish which is a birth rate well below replacement level (and still falling).
Israel should seize this opportunity, not only to present her non-Jewish Arabs (more than half of Israeli Jews being Arabs) as the best-off in the Middle East, but to make them enjoy, and make the world know that they enjoy, the same standard of living as the rest of her citizenry.
But put together the little Muhammads, the sausage-munching Russian Christians, the non-Jewish Arab birth rate, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish birth rate, the contrastingly low and declining birth rate among other Israeli Jews, and the fact that Israel’s international credibility now requires that she deliver on her much-vaunted claim that her Gentile citizens are equal.
All in all, in 50 or even 30 years time, we will all marvel that there was ever an attempt to re-create some romanticised version of Wilhelmine or Weimar Germany in the Levant, and the magazines that come with the Saturday or Sunday newspapers will occasionally feature articles about the tiny outposts of those aged souls still trying to live the dream.
But, my Zionist interlocutors, the dream is over. Give it up. After all, which would you rather have? Full re-integration into the linguistically and culturally Arab Levant of Christians, Muslims, Jews and Druze, with its de facto capital at Damascus? Or a statelet dominated demographically and politically by Russian Nazis, the statelet busily being created by the continuing application of the Law of Return? Those are the only two options available. In which would Jews be safer?
These Russians are the beneficiaries of the Law of Return, not least because Israeli Jews, other than ultra-Orthodox who are either fully anti-Zionist or at least deeply unhappy about the State of Israel that exists, exhibit that unmistakable societal death wish which is a birth rate well below replacement level (and still falling).
Israel should seize this opportunity, not only to present her non-Jewish Arabs (more than half of Israeli Jews being Arabs) as the best-off in the Middle East, but to make them enjoy, and make the world know that they enjoy, the same standard of living as the rest of her citizenry.
But put together the little Muhammads, the sausage-munching Russian Christians, the non-Jewish Arab birth rate, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish birth rate, the contrastingly low and declining birth rate among other Israeli Jews, and the fact that Israel’s international credibility now requires that she deliver on her much-vaunted claim that her Gentile citizens are equal.
All in all, in 50 or even 30 years time, we will all marvel that there was ever an attempt to re-create some romanticised version of Wilhelmine or Weimar Germany in the Levant, and the magazines that come with the Saturday or Sunday newspapers will occasionally feature articles about the tiny outposts of those aged souls still trying to live the dream.
But, my Zionist interlocutors, the dream is over. Give it up. After all, which would you rather have? Full re-integration into the linguistically and culturally Arab Levant of Christians, Muslims, Jews and Druze, with its de facto capital at Damascus? Or a statelet dominated demographically and politically by Russian Nazis, the statelet busily being created by the continuing application of the Law of Return? Those are the only two options available. In which would Jews be safer?
Loyalty Beyond
Kevan Jones MP popped up on Newsnight to defend Gordon Brown over the 10p tax fiasco. Whatever else one might say about Kevan Jones, he is certainly not without gifts. He has devoted his entire adult life to Labour and the GMB. He signed the "Blair Must Go" gizzajob letter.
And for what? Lib Dems and Tories have been preferred to him. People who have never stood for election, or even exhibited any political tendencies in the ordinary sense, have been wafted into the parliamentary process and straight into government. And poor Kevan is not so much as a PPS or an Assistant Whip.
One example among so very, very many.
And for what? Lib Dems and Tories have been preferred to him. People who have never stood for election, or even exhibited any political tendencies in the ordinary sense, have been wafted into the parliamentary process and straight into government. And poor Kevan is not so much as a PPS or an Assistant Whip.
One example among so very, very many.
Paraguay
May we now hope for a pro-life and pro-family, as well as a pro-worker and anti-war, government? After all, ask most of the Western Catholic sympathisers with Liberation Theology and that, rather than Gramscian Marxism, is the answer they would give. Is the President-Elect of Paraguay not as pro-life and pro-family as he is pro-worker and anti-war? If not, then he should have made that clear a very long time ago.
Monday, 21 April 2008
Charles Clarke Blah Blah Blah
Why does anyone persist in treating the old Blairite ultras, several of whom are unlikely to contest a 2010 Election and none of whom will ever again be a Minister, as if they mattered in the least? They simply don't.
No, Of Course Kate Hoey Isn't Backing Boris Johnson
She's far too conservative socially and constitutionally to become a Tory these days, just as John Bercow is far too left-wing economically to join New Labour.
Sunday, 20 April 2008
Crewe & Nantwich
Labour North is having kittens over this by-election, pulling people out of local election campaigning as far away as here in County Durham and actually moving them to Cheshire for the next month or more.
They seem to be believing their own propaganda, otherwise known as the opinion polls. If the polls are right, then the Tories should win Crewe & Nantwich.
If they don't, then the polls are wrong, Cameron really isn't all that popular after all, the Tory electoral threat doesn't really exist, and there is therefore no remaining point to the Labour Party.
We shall see.
They seem to be believing their own propaganda, otherwise known as the opinion polls. If the polls are right, then the Tories should win Crewe & Nantwich.
If they don't, then the polls are wrong, Cameron really isn't all that popular after all, the Tory electoral threat doesn't really exist, and there is therefore no remaining point to the Labour Party.
We shall see.
All Things Brown
Peter Hitchens doesn't yet seem to have blogged his column for this week, but it is excellent on house prices, on snob yobs, and, especially, on why the media is after Gordon Brown only because they favour Cameron as the New Blair.
And I cannot praise too highly this article by Hitchens. As he concludes:
Survey the 20th Century and you see Britain repeatedly fighting Germany, at colossal expense. No one can doubt the valour and sacrifice involved. But at the end of it all, Germany dominates Europe behind the smokescreen of the EU; our Empire and our rule of the seas have gone, we struggle with all the problems of a great civilisation in decline, and our special friend, the USA, has smilingly supplanted us for ever. But we won the war.
Didn't we?
And I cannot praise too highly this article by Hitchens. As he concludes:
Survey the 20th Century and you see Britain repeatedly fighting Germany, at colossal expense. No one can doubt the valour and sacrifice involved. But at the end of it all, Germany dominates Europe behind the smokescreen of the EU; our Empire and our rule of the seas have gone, we struggle with all the problems of a great civilisation in decline, and our special friend, the USA, has smilingly supplanted us for ever. But we won the war.
Didn't we?
The Tories In The North
If they make gains, then, as last year, that will be anything but a triumph for David Cameron. It will prove that there are votes to be had here, but only by people well-known in their localities to be about as unlike David Cameron as it is possible to be, and to dislike David Cameron about as much as it is possible to do. What do people in Notting Hill imagine that Tory Councillors in the North are like? George Osborne? No, they are not.
Queen of the South
Is it "inevitable" that Australia become a republic on the death of the present Queen?
Well, it is certainly inevitable that, if Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the Commonwealth Realms in the West Indies do become republics, then the argument that the monarchy in Britain embodies ties shared by millions of families here will no longer apply.
What matters more, in any of our countries? Those ties? Or strictly elite preferences for Chianitishire or Cape Cod?
If any country might be on the brink of cutting those ties unless male primogeniture be abolished, or the Act of Settlement repealed, then that is a good enough reason for such abolition or repeal. But nothing else is.
Well, it is certainly inevitable that, if Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the Commonwealth Realms in the West Indies do become republics, then the argument that the monarchy in Britain embodies ties shared by millions of families here will no longer apply.
What matters more, in any of our countries? Those ties? Or strictly elite preferences for Chianitishire or Cape Cod?
If any country might be on the brink of cutting those ties unless male primogeniture be abolished, or the Act of Settlement repealed, then that is a good enough reason for such abolition or repeal. But nothing else is.
Viva El Papa?
Should the Pope have spoken in Spanish at the Yankee Stadium?
Far from Hispanics' being the great hope of American Catholicism, Latin America has never been a very Catholic place, with slight if any Mass-going majorities, huge numbers of the unbaptised, rampant syncretism and surviving paganism, and a very heavy dependence on (historically European, these days usually North American) missionary priests.
Wishing for the United States to remain an English-speaking country is fully compatible with Catholicism. Indeed, those who are most vocal in that cause are themselves traditional Catholics.
Far from Hispanics' being the great hope of American Catholicism, Latin America has never been a very Catholic place, with slight if any Mass-going majorities, huge numbers of the unbaptised, rampant syncretism and surviving paganism, and a very heavy dependence on (historically European, these days usually North American) missionary priests.
Wishing for the United States to remain an English-speaking country is fully compatible with Catholicism. Indeed, those who are most vocal in that cause are themselves traditional Catholics.
What Really Happened
Catholic priests abused very young children, didn't they? They coerced them, didn't they?
Er, no, actually. Catholic priests are significantly less likely than the population at large to do that. Almost without exception, the acts that have brought scandal on the Church were with teenage boys, illegal (rightly, I might add) on age grounds alone. Such acts are incited and defended by the likes of Peter Tatchell, and are glorified on things like Queer As Folk and Clapham Junction.
Quite a number were only illegal in the American states in question because (rightly, I might add) the age of consent there is 18. As good as none would have been illegal in, say, Spain or the Netherlands, more fools the Spanish and the Dutch.
Well might Catholic priests be prosecuted for this sort of thing, but they are practically the only people who ever would be.
And I can't for the life of me see what celibacy has to do with it. Men whose main or only sexual interest is in teenage boys are never going to get married, anyway. Become television writers or producers, yes. Become political activists oddly beyond criticism, yes. But become husbands? Hardly!
Er, no, actually. Catholic priests are significantly less likely than the population at large to do that. Almost without exception, the acts that have brought scandal on the Church were with teenage boys, illegal (rightly, I might add) on age grounds alone. Such acts are incited and defended by the likes of Peter Tatchell, and are glorified on things like Queer As Folk and Clapham Junction.
Quite a number were only illegal in the American states in question because (rightly, I might add) the age of consent there is 18. As good as none would have been illegal in, say, Spain or the Netherlands, more fools the Spanish and the Dutch.
Well might Catholic priests be prosecuted for this sort of thing, but they are practically the only people who ever would be.
And I can't for the life of me see what celibacy has to do with it. Men whose main or only sexual interest is in teenage boys are never going to get married, anyway. Become television writers or producers, yes. Become political activists oddly beyond criticism, yes. But become husbands? Hardly!
Unhappy Holidays
Easter has been very early in the past and the schools have still had the two weeks' holiday at the right time. Be warned: they are planning to do to Easter what they did to Whit. Most people still think that Wilsontide is in fact Whitsuntide. If a four-day long weekend were established instead of Easter at some fixed point in the spring, then most people would think that it really was Easter. But it wouldn't be. And then what? Christmas?
Lost In The Post
In Middlesbrough this week, I was astonished (well, I say that...) to discover that the town centre now contains no Post Office. Not one. Any other comparably sized places in the same position? I'm sure that there must be. Rather a lot, in fact.
Saturday, 19 April 2008
Saint Dorothy of New York
A superb piece by Stuart Reid on Dorothy Day. As he writes:
"What could be more apt than to canonise a woman who stood both for the Church's teaching on abortion (absurdly seen as a Right-wing position) and its concern for social justice (absurdly seen as a Left-wing position)?"
Ora pro nobis.
"What could be more apt than to canonise a woman who stood both for the Church's teaching on abortion (absurdly seen as a Right-wing position) and its concern for social justice (absurdly seen as a Left-wing position)?"
Ora pro nobis.
And Peter Tatchell Belongs In It
Is this a joke?
Alas not. Peter Tatchell, who is treated as a perfectly serious and respectable figure even though he campaigns to lower the age of consent to 14 (and thus, I might add, to make legal almost every act that has brought scandal on the Catholic Church), really does believe that the taxpayers of London, and of the country as a whole, should be made to pay for a "lesbian and gay world football championship" and a "lesbian and gay museum".
Any suggestions as to exhibits? We'll start, of course, with Peter Tatchell.
Alas not. Peter Tatchell, who is treated as a perfectly serious and respectable figure even though he campaigns to lower the age of consent to 14 (and thus, I might add, to make legal almost every act that has brought scandal on the Catholic Church), really does believe that the taxpayers of London, and of the country as a whole, should be made to pay for a "lesbian and gay world football championship" and a "lesbian and gay museum".
Any suggestions as to exhibits? We'll start, of course, with Peter Tatchell.
Looking Good
Lord Desi, the lunatic Labour peer and "distinguished economist" (the standard code for anyone who believes that a modest income is a moral fault which disqualifies one from health care, education or anything else) thinks, if that is the word, that Gordon Brown was put on earth to make Tony Blair look good.
That is, of course, also the position of the Tories, Blairolaters to the point of insanity, who even gave him a standing ovation on the floor of the House of Commons.
So, whom was Tony Blair put on earth to make look good? And what about Lord Desi?
That is, of course, also the position of the Tories, Blairolaters to the point of insanity, who even gave him a standing ovation on the floor of the House of Commons.
So, whom was Tony Blair put on earth to make look good? And what about Lord Desi?
Friday, 18 April 2008
RIP Gwyneth Dunwoody
She fought the Trots and was rewarded with exclusion from office once they had declared themselves "New Labour" and taken over.
It was her father who said that Labour owed "more to Methodism than to Marx". If you still want a party like that, then you now need to look elsewhere.
It was her father who said that Labour owed "more to Methodism than to Marx". If you still want a party like that, then you now need to look elsewhere.
Forty Years On
This article of mine appears in The Brussels Journal:
Forty years ago, Enoch Powell delivered his Rivers of Blood speech. Powell knew and loved the Indian sub-continent, where he observed that all politics was communal. One party was Hindu, one Muslim, one Sikh, one Untouchable, and so forth. As a result – and this is the crucial point – people who lost elections or other votes did not accept the result and get on with things. They rioted, or worse. Sometimes a very great deal worse.
Powell believed that mass immigration from the former British India would import this communal style of politics, and everything that went with it. But he was wrong. Wasn’t he?
Late last month, 300 Labour members in Derby defected to the Tories on an Indian communal basis. The only surprise in any of this is that those in question would want to join the Tories. They had just welcomed a Tower Hamlets Councillor who found the local Respect operation too Trotskyist rather than, as he preferred, Islamist. And they are affiliated to the European People's Party, as is Turkey’s ruling AKP, the leaders of which are in no sense “former Islamists” and would not have been elected if they were.
Apart from that, this sort of thing is entirely predictable, and set to become increasingly common. The Tories’ vehicles toured Ealing Southall proclaiming in various South Asian languages that Muslim, Hindu and Sikh festivals were to be made public holidays by the Tories. Then that party's "Quality of Life Commission" (don't laugh, it's real) published a report advocating that "local communities" be given the power to designate three public holidays in their respective localities.
In other words, the Tories are going to go around Asian areas at the next Election making this same promise all over again, adjusted according to how Muslim, Hindu or Sikh the particular constituency, ward or addressee happens to be.
After this, what else are these unspecified "local communities" going to decide? Who are they, exactly? I think we all know that they are the great and the good of the local mosque, mandir or gurdwara. Getting to decide this, and then a whole lot more, is to be their price for getting out the vote, sometimes consisting of nothing more than reminding their mates to fill in postal ballot papers the right way on behalf of their entire households.
These situations will easily perpetuate themselves, since people will move - not just from around the country, but from around the world - to live in Cameron’s little Caliphates, Hindutvas and Khalistans.
I can only exclaim: “Enoch Powell, thou shouldst be living at this hour!”
David Lindsay is a visibly mixed-race English-speaking Christian and social-democrat
So I am.
Forty years ago, Enoch Powell delivered his Rivers of Blood speech. Powell knew and loved the Indian sub-continent, where he observed that all politics was communal. One party was Hindu, one Muslim, one Sikh, one Untouchable, and so forth. As a result – and this is the crucial point – people who lost elections or other votes did not accept the result and get on with things. They rioted, or worse. Sometimes a very great deal worse.
Powell believed that mass immigration from the former British India would import this communal style of politics, and everything that went with it. But he was wrong. Wasn’t he?
Late last month, 300 Labour members in Derby defected to the Tories on an Indian communal basis. The only surprise in any of this is that those in question would want to join the Tories. They had just welcomed a Tower Hamlets Councillor who found the local Respect operation too Trotskyist rather than, as he preferred, Islamist. And they are affiliated to the European People's Party, as is Turkey’s ruling AKP, the leaders of which are in no sense “former Islamists” and would not have been elected if they were.
Apart from that, this sort of thing is entirely predictable, and set to become increasingly common. The Tories’ vehicles toured Ealing Southall proclaiming in various South Asian languages that Muslim, Hindu and Sikh festivals were to be made public holidays by the Tories. Then that party's "Quality of Life Commission" (don't laugh, it's real) published a report advocating that "local communities" be given the power to designate three public holidays in their respective localities.
In other words, the Tories are going to go around Asian areas at the next Election making this same promise all over again, adjusted according to how Muslim, Hindu or Sikh the particular constituency, ward or addressee happens to be.
After this, what else are these unspecified "local communities" going to decide? Who are they, exactly? I think we all know that they are the great and the good of the local mosque, mandir or gurdwara. Getting to decide this, and then a whole lot more, is to be their price for getting out the vote, sometimes consisting of nothing more than reminding their mates to fill in postal ballot papers the right way on behalf of their entire households.
These situations will easily perpetuate themselves, since people will move - not just from around the country, but from around the world - to live in Cameron’s little Caliphates, Hindutvas and Khalistans.
I can only exclaim: “Enoch Powell, thou shouldst be living at this hour!”
David Lindsay is a visibly mixed-race English-speaking Christian and social-democrat
So I am.
Serbia To Hold Local Elections In Serbia
According to The New York Times:
Serbia said that it would extend its May 11 parliamentary and municipal elections to 16 Kosovo municipalities, including the capital, Pristina. The plan defies a United Nations warning against such a vote and ignores Kosovo’s declaration of independence. In the past, the United Nations has allowed Kosovo Serbs to vote in Serbia’s parliamentary and presidential elections, but local elections are seen as undermining international authorities because they deal directly with Kosovo’s internal municipal arrangements. There was no immediate comment from United Nations officials.
Well, of course.
Serbia said that it would extend its May 11 parliamentary and municipal elections to 16 Kosovo municipalities, including the capital, Pristina. The plan defies a United Nations warning against such a vote and ignores Kosovo’s declaration of independence. In the past, the United Nations has allowed Kosovo Serbs to vote in Serbia’s parliamentary and presidential elections, but local elections are seen as undermining international authorities because they deal directly with Kosovo’s internal municipal arrangements. There was no immediate comment from United Nations officials.
Well, of course.
Liddle Britain
This, by Rod Liddle in The Spectator, is superb.
Liddle writes:
I do consider myself a patriot. But when I examine precisely what it is to which I feel allegiance, I find that it is that bleak and discredited notion, the nation state: Great Britain. It is Britain, not England, with which I feel a shared identity and, try as I might, I cannot separate the southern province from the rest simply because we say ‘now’ instead of ‘noo’ or ‘noy’. Great Britain is — or was — one of those grand ideas I mentioned earlier, a geographically distinct entity consisting of various tribes held together through a shared ideology, loyalty and — as the Celts among you are quietly pointing out — a modicum of coercion, from time to time. It seemed to work — and in our collective unconscious as a nation, our ‘race’ memory, each part is indivisible from the whole. Forget language; English was dragged screaming a short distance from its Germanic roots only five centuries ago; even now, if you visit those low-slung Friesian islands, curling upwards from the north of Holland into Scandinavia, and you ask a local to speak his own language slowly, you will understand almost everything he has to say.
He goes on:
Let us see, in time, how relations between the east and west of Scotland progress once full independence is achieved; in England between the north and south, or between London and the rest. We have an endless propensity to loathe one another for our usually imagined differences, anything we can get our hands on to differentiate ourselves from other people.
And he concludes:
As for Englishness, consider it an act of benevolent patriotism to let it remain for ever undefined.
Shame about the New Statesman.
Liddle writes:
I do consider myself a patriot. But when I examine precisely what it is to which I feel allegiance, I find that it is that bleak and discredited notion, the nation state: Great Britain. It is Britain, not England, with which I feel a shared identity and, try as I might, I cannot separate the southern province from the rest simply because we say ‘now’ instead of ‘noo’ or ‘noy’. Great Britain is — or was — one of those grand ideas I mentioned earlier, a geographically distinct entity consisting of various tribes held together through a shared ideology, loyalty and — as the Celts among you are quietly pointing out — a modicum of coercion, from time to time. It seemed to work — and in our collective unconscious as a nation, our ‘race’ memory, each part is indivisible from the whole. Forget language; English was dragged screaming a short distance from its Germanic roots only five centuries ago; even now, if you visit those low-slung Friesian islands, curling upwards from the north of Holland into Scandinavia, and you ask a local to speak his own language slowly, you will understand almost everything he has to say.
He goes on:
Let us see, in time, how relations between the east and west of Scotland progress once full independence is achieved; in England between the north and south, or between London and the rest. We have an endless propensity to loathe one another for our usually imagined differences, anything we can get our hands on to differentiate ourselves from other people.
And he concludes:
As for Englishness, consider it an act of benevolent patriotism to let it remain for ever undefined.
Shame about the New Statesman.
London Olympic Workers Must Be Unionised
Copy of Unite London construction workers' resolution to go to Amicus UNITE Conference.
Conference calls for:
1) A union organising campaign at the site with a dedicated team of full-time organisers and a long term plan. The plan should maximise lay involvement including construction stewards and activists, construction branches and the Regional Council. We want a campaign that is as high profile as the TGWU section's cleaners' organising drive.
2) The aim is 100% membership with a full complement of accredited stewards and union facilities, direct employment of all workers, British and non-British, under the terms of the appropriate national agreements
3) A campaign to ensure that the ODA/LOCOG implements Ken Livingstone's pledge of 'all contractors working on Olympics 2012 must use directly employed labour.' This should be a requirement statement in all signed contracts. We also demand that all contractors be specifically prohibited from using blacklists to prevent union activists working on the site.
This motion is from UNITE London Construction Branch, and we urge support from other construction branches.
Conference calls for:
1) A union organising campaign at the site with a dedicated team of full-time organisers and a long term plan. The plan should maximise lay involvement including construction stewards and activists, construction branches and the Regional Council. We want a campaign that is as high profile as the TGWU section's cleaners' organising drive.
2) The aim is 100% membership with a full complement of accredited stewards and union facilities, direct employment of all workers, British and non-British, under the terms of the appropriate national agreements
3) A campaign to ensure that the ODA/LOCOG implements Ken Livingstone's pledge of 'all contractors working on Olympics 2012 must use directly employed labour.' This should be a requirement statement in all signed contracts. We also demand that all contractors be specifically prohibited from using blacklists to prevent union activists working on the site.
This motion is from UNITE London Construction Branch, and we urge support from other construction branches.
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