On Radio Four on Saturday morning, I finally heard someone admit that the war against fertility was in fact a war against the electoral base of the Left. It always has been: read my friend Ann Farmer’s superb Prophets and Priests: The Hidden Face of The Birth Control Movement (London: The Saint Austin Press, 2002, ISBN 1 901157 62 8).
However, the speaker seemed genuinely astonished that, in the example she cited, Republicans' having far more babies than Democrats was securing a permanent Republican majority in the United States. What did she expect?
Monday, 13 August 2007
Wednesday, 8 August 2007
My Heart Bleeds
The Northern Echo reports that Andrew Spence has resigned from the BNP following a drunken punch-up with one of its functionaries. Oh well, then, the BNP is instead just going to have to honour its previous written undertaking to put up either Nick Griffin or Mark Collet here in North-West Durham next time if I stand, but not to bother with this seat otherwise.
The Sound Of Pennies Dropping?
In today's Daily Telegraph, Simon Heffer rightly discourses at some length about how the preservation and betterment of the countryside cannot be done by the "free" market, while Ann Winterton MP rightly calls on British supermarkets to insist on British, not Brazilian, beef.
Lady Winterton, like her knighted husband and Honourable Friend, comes as no surprise. But is even Heffer turning out to be a conservative after all? In that case, of course, he cannot be a "free" marketeer.
A country's sovereignty, liberty, democracy and identity are all eroded at least as much by that country's heavy reliance on imported goods, rather than on a domestic manufacturing base, as by any other factor. The same is true if a country is heavily dependent on imports in order to feed her people, instead of maintaining a thriving agricultural sector, itself characteristically a bastion of strong family ties, and therefore also of strong community spirit; and the same is true if much of a country's agriculture, industry or commerce is owned or controlled by persons who are either not her citizens or not resident within her borders for tax purposes.
Our country's sovereignty, liberty, democracy and identity have been, and are still being, so eroded. We must all be determined to expose, to halt, and to reverse that erosion.
Are you with us, Simon Heffer?
Lady Winterton, like her knighted husband and Honourable Friend, comes as no surprise. But is even Heffer turning out to be a conservative after all? In that case, of course, he cannot be a "free" marketeer.
A country's sovereignty, liberty, democracy and identity are all eroded at least as much by that country's heavy reliance on imported goods, rather than on a domestic manufacturing base, as by any other factor. The same is true if a country is heavily dependent on imports in order to feed her people, instead of maintaining a thriving agricultural sector, itself characteristically a bastion of strong family ties, and therefore also of strong community spirit; and the same is true if much of a country's agriculture, industry or commerce is owned or controlled by persons who are either not her citizens or not resident within her borders for tax purposes.
Our country's sovereignty, liberty, democracy and identity have been, and are still being, so eroded. We must all be determined to expose, to halt, and to reverse that erosion.
Are you with us, Simon Heffer?
Public Sector Pensions
That these, and public sector pay generally, are subject to income tax will of course come as news to those whingeing about them, since they, not least in the absurdly misnamed "UK Taxpayers' Alliance" are too rich to have to pay income tax, and know nothing at all about how it works.
Tuesday, 7 August 2007
UKIP Saved
UKIP is saved, so the Lib Dems are saved, despite their much bigger, much dodgier donor. The Lib Dems are, after all, part of the junta; more so now than ever, in fact, with Ministers in all but name.
No wonder the Creepy Electoral Commission is put out. It was told to kill off UKIP, it dutifully constructed a thoroughly passable case for doing so, and then it turned up to find that someone higher up had worked out the consequences and changed the script.
Still, UKIP will carry on killing itself off anyway, without any need for outside help. As will the Lib Dems.
No wonder the Creepy Electoral Commission is put out. It was told to kill off UKIP, it dutifully constructed a thoroughly passable case for doing so, and then it turned up to find that someone higher up had worked out the consequences and changed the script.
Still, UKIP will carry on killing itself off anyway, without any need for outside help. As will the Lib Dems.
Kosher In Tehran
Jonathan Cook's excellent article on Iran's Jews.
As Cook writes:
"There is an interesting problem with selling the "Iran as Nazi Germany" line. If Ahmadinejad really is Hitler, ready to commit genocide against Israel's Jews as soon as he can get his hands on a nuclear weapon, why are some 25,000 Jews living peacefully in Iran and more than reluctant to leave, despite repeated enticements from Israel and American Jews?"
Neil Clark remarks:
"Jonathan's observations remind me of the war lobby's ludicrous attempts to portray President Milosevic's rump Yugoslavia as the 'new Nazi Germany' in the 1990s. The weak point in the argument- aside from the fact that Yugoslavia was a thriving multi-party democracy led by a life-long anti-fascist whose parents were Partisans, was that thousands of non-Serb refugees from the wars in Bosnia and Croatia headed to guess where...? Yup, Milosevic's rump Yugoslavia. I might be wrong, but I can't recall any Jews emigrating to Nazi Germany in the 1940s, can you?"
Quite.
As Cook writes:
"There is an interesting problem with selling the "Iran as Nazi Germany" line. If Ahmadinejad really is Hitler, ready to commit genocide against Israel's Jews as soon as he can get his hands on a nuclear weapon, why are some 25,000 Jews living peacefully in Iran and more than reluctant to leave, despite repeated enticements from Israel and American Jews?"
Neil Clark remarks:
"Jonathan's observations remind me of the war lobby's ludicrous attempts to portray President Milosevic's rump Yugoslavia as the 'new Nazi Germany' in the 1990s. The weak point in the argument- aside from the fact that Yugoslavia was a thriving multi-party democracy led by a life-long anti-fascist whose parents were Partisans, was that thousands of non-Serb refugees from the wars in Bosnia and Croatia headed to guess where...? Yup, Milosevic's rump Yugoslavia. I might be wrong, but I can't recall any Jews emigrating to Nazi Germany in the 1940s, can you?"
Quite.
An English Parliament?
Someone called Mark Field, who is apparently a Tory MP and so can't have anything else to do these days, has excited sections of the blogosphere by calling for an English Parliament. The Tories' cack-handed attempts to play the "English" card become more hilarious almost by the day. Nobody cares. Perhaps they should. But they don't. The Tories predicted (and the SNP was also largely relying upon) a torrent of English hostility to Brown as Prime Minister. Where is it?
At the end of the day, the English know, like and respect the Scottish doctors or bank managers whom Brown so resembles. Cameron, by contrast, is a posh Scot: English public school, Oxbridge, married into the English baronetage, Southern English seat, sense of entitlement to be Prime Minister instead of some state school and Scottish university son of the manse from the old Fife coal belt.
That intra-Scottish class conflict is the key to understanding why he and Brown detest each other quite so much. And I think we all know which side of that conflict is more agreeable to most of the English.
Good grief, imagine who would stand for an English Parliament (and yes, I am aware that I might well be eating my words if it were ever actually to be set up), or who would turn out to vote for such a thing! The latter would be very few in number, but that would only make them all the more dangerous. And the former would be "elected" from party lists. NOOOOO!
Support for independence itself in Scotland is now at pre-Braveheart levels, though continuing to decline; that is why the SNP is not even attempting to hold a referendum on independence, following an election specifically on the Union which returned vastly more Unionist than separatist MSPs, with the Unionists taking nearly seventy per cent of the vote.
Meanwhile, Plaid Cymru doesn't know what it thinks, and isn't worth thinking about.
So let's get on with rebuilding our country, Britain, with a strong Parliament and strong local government able to tell an over-mighty executive where to go, an over-mighty judiciary where to go, Brussels where to go, and Washington where to go.
A key part of this would be for the Parliament of the United Kingdom to avail itself of its undoubted right to legislate in matters where the devolved bodies may also legislate, there being no doubt whatever that the former would prevail over the latter wherever the two conflicted (which is why there is, in fact, no West Lothian Question).
After all, one does rather suspect that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have certain views on, say, health, or education, or transport in their own constituencies. And now they have the chance to give legislative effect to those views.
The Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly could carry on enacting subordinate legislation if they so chose, but after a while people would start questioning what on earth they were for. And after a few years of that, they could just quietly be wound up.
At the end of the day, the English know, like and respect the Scottish doctors or bank managers whom Brown so resembles. Cameron, by contrast, is a posh Scot: English public school, Oxbridge, married into the English baronetage, Southern English seat, sense of entitlement to be Prime Minister instead of some state school and Scottish university son of the manse from the old Fife coal belt.
That intra-Scottish class conflict is the key to understanding why he and Brown detest each other quite so much. And I think we all know which side of that conflict is more agreeable to most of the English.
Good grief, imagine who would stand for an English Parliament (and yes, I am aware that I might well be eating my words if it were ever actually to be set up), or who would turn out to vote for such a thing! The latter would be very few in number, but that would only make them all the more dangerous. And the former would be "elected" from party lists. NOOOOO!
Support for independence itself in Scotland is now at pre-Braveheart levels, though continuing to decline; that is why the SNP is not even attempting to hold a referendum on independence, following an election specifically on the Union which returned vastly more Unionist than separatist MSPs, with the Unionists taking nearly seventy per cent of the vote.
Meanwhile, Plaid Cymru doesn't know what it thinks, and isn't worth thinking about.
So let's get on with rebuilding our country, Britain, with a strong Parliament and strong local government able to tell an over-mighty executive where to go, an over-mighty judiciary where to go, Brussels where to go, and Washington where to go.
A key part of this would be for the Parliament of the United Kingdom to avail itself of its undoubted right to legislate in matters where the devolved bodies may also legislate, there being no doubt whatever that the former would prevail over the latter wherever the two conflicted (which is why there is, in fact, no West Lothian Question).
After all, one does rather suspect that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have certain views on, say, health, or education, or transport in their own constituencies. And now they have the chance to give legislative effect to those views.
The Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly could carry on enacting subordinate legislation if they so chose, but after a while people would start questioning what on earth they were for. And after a few years of that, they could just quietly be wound up.
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