The Coffee House Wall – 18th/24th March

Posted on March 18, 2013

This is the Coffee House Wall for this week. I won’t say that it is your chance to communicate with us, as we are all in this together. It is, nevertheless, the Conservative Blog post that has no particular theme, and where everything is on topic. Let’s just remember that we want to avoid ad hominem attacks on others. We don’t want to engage with trolls. We want to moderate our language ourselves as responsible and mature adults, choosing to use fruity language only where it is necessary. This is our opportunity to show what the Spectator Coffee House Wall could have been like.

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313 thoughts on “The Coffee House Wall – 18th/24th March”

  1. It’s such a pity that fine upstanding people like the parents of Milly Dowler and Madeleine McCann should find themselves lashed up alongside a bunch of pusillanimous, self-serving, failed celebrities like Hugh Grant, Steve Coogan and now, I hear, Hugh Bonneville, and others in the ‘hacked off’ campaign.

  2. Herbert Thornton 17th, – 22:57

    Or am I reading too much into it?

    Nope. The Tiddly-winks have always been very good at sending coded messages…the problem is when the intended recipients are too thick to understand what is being said.

    A very perceptive posting, methinks. 🙂

  3. O (o), isn’t it also reasonable to conclude that North Korea does little without the direct instructions of China? I’d be happy to imagine that North Korea is used as a proxy by China and is an instrument of both destabilisation in the region as well as a means of trying to gain international credit for keeping North Korea under some sort of control. The truth is that the lights go out in North Korea and the people really starve to death in a short period of time without the constant support of China.

  4. Peter from Maidstone 18th, – 10:08

    Could be, and probably was in the past, but with what I’ve been reading lately ‘China’ (I know that’s a rather vague generalisation) is getting pretty p*ssed off with North Korea’s posturing like a drama queen. Like a younger sibling who no longer wishes to heed big brother and mistakenly believes it has the knowledge, understanding and maturity to deal with the outside world on its own terms. Keeping a neighbour nation’s people alive doesn’t necessarily mean they still support the regime..rather they’re scrabbling to maintain influence. In fact I believe they’re an embarrassment to China. AND NK still repeatedly manages to blag aid from the US by its recurrent posturing and threats.

  5. Just click on Melanie’s page on the blog roll to read the clearest explanation of the latest development in the Leveson fiasco. All parties involved skittled with one deft bowling ball.

  7. oops! posted on wrong week…

    This EU Cyprus asset grab,according to the DT, is being labelled a tax so as to circumvent, yet again, it’s own ‘rules’ regarding deposit guarantees. The DT estimates we are on he hook for around £170m to compensate servicemen and woman with accounts over there. A Dutch EU finance minister describes the move as ‘just’. ‘Just’ about legal or ‘just’ about theft, or ‘just’ another trampling over thousands of blameless folks’ rights he doesn’t say.
    Private finance heads are looking closely at this, as well they might. ‘Exceptional’ or ‘one off’ money moves in the EU tend to become the norm soon enough.

  8. On Radio 4 news a few minutes ago, some MP (never heard of her) complaining of how her phone was stolen from her car and info from it somehow wound up with a Murdoch paper. Clear evidence that press regulation is needed to make it illegal to break into cars.

  9. These are great days to bury bad news!

    What with the ‘now you see them, now you won’t’ Cameron Miliband Clegg press freedom restrictions and the EU’s new monetary theft policies, these are fine days indeed for politicians to hit the populace of Europe with fresh political controls.
    Possibly the greatest threat of all to Europe’s ‘freedoms’ – they don’t really have any, and nor will we shortly, is being slipped through almost unnoticed in Brussels.

    Socialist MEPs are trying to ban their political opponents from even being allowed to stand candidates in future European Parliamentary elections. This is on top of their greedy totalitarian efforts to deny funding to pan-European Alliances set up to nationalists – a move which, if successful, would mean that the Socialist block would get even more money.

    The Socialist Group (which includes all Britain’s Labour MEPs) made its move to deny voters the right to choose at a special meeting of the parliament’s Constitutional Affairs Committee (AFCO) last Thursday. They presented a series of totally undemocratic amendments to the Giannakou Report on the future of European-level political parties and foundations.

    http://nationalistmedianetwork.tumblr.com/

  10. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100023466/daylight-robbery-in-cyprus-will-come-to-haunt-emu/

    Daylight robbery in Cyprus will come to haunt EMU

    “The EU creditor states have at a single stroke violated the principle that insured EU bank deposits of up $100,000 will be guaranteed come what may, and in doing so they have more or less thrown Portugal under a bus.
    They appear poised to seize large sums from Russian banks – €1.3bn from state-owned VTB alone, and therefore from the Kremlin – prompting the condign riposte from Vladimir Putin that the action is “unfair, unprofessional and dangerous.””

    So, Putin doesn’t like what is happening in Cyprus? He was edging towards oil/gas right in the area:
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/debt-crisis-live/9936737/Cyprus-bailout-live.html
    14.02 “Gazprom, the largest extractor of natural gas in the world and the largest Russian company, could restructure Cyprus’s debt to prevent it having to get a bailout. The interest could have something to do with the the recent discovery of gas deposits near the island which amount to more gas than Cyprus could use in over a century, and which it hopes to begin exporting by 2018, potentially meeting a major part of the EU’s annual demand.”

    It will haunt all of Europe and even further afield.

  11. Noa 13:53:
    I see one of the MEPs in on this is one Andrew Duff (libdem), who has been behind moves to effectively to ban national referendums on EU matters. “my”mep, as it happens – not that I voted for him.

  16. It’s such a pity that fine upstanding people like the parents of Milly Dowler and Madeleine McCann should find themselves lashed up alongside a bunch of pusillanimous, self-serving, failed celebrities like Hugh Grant, Steve Coogan and now, I hear, Hugh Bonneville, and others in the ‘hacked off’ campaign.

    ———————————————
    Sorry if I sound harsh, but I do not think the McCanns were such fine, upstanding parents. Do good parents leave infants and babies alone without a baby sitter, in a foreign country, as they drink and dine night after night? If they had been supermarket shelf fillers, social services would have placed the children in care. Surely two doctors have sufficient salary to pay for a child minder. I always believed it was a criminal offence to leave a child under seven years of age without a minder. I am aghast that Leveson is gnawing away at the vestiges of freedom and democracy still left here. Surely our laws concerning libel and slander should suffice, and we need not have regulations fobbed upon us which resemble the old Kremlin.

  17. AWK – You’re being unduly, and unfairly, harsh.

    First, that was the first night they had left Madeleine alone. She and the twins was usually taken to the nursery, but she was cranky with the nurse/caregiver and refused to settle, and then refused to settle when they picked her up and took her to their room. So, on this one occasion, they decided just to leave them in their own beds in their room so she would go to sleep. The McCanns could see the hotel from the restaurant, which was just outside the hotel premises and this probably gave them a false sense of security.

    They will have cursed themselves a million or more times. That was the first time they had left the children alone … which would indicate that someone had been stalking them and waiting for an opportunity to snatch their daughter.

  18. Hello again, coffee house wall ! Where have you been?

    I expect it was only a system malfunction, and not a conspiracy, darn it!

  19. Anne Wotana Kaye – 16:13 ‘Madeleine McCann’
    Verity – 16:55 ‘AWK – You’re being unduly, and unfairly, harsh’

    I have thought for sometime that, in this case being discussed, it was easier for a family cocooned in the NHS community, where trust was normal, creches were on tap, where the parents were at the top of the pecking order, to forget that the world is a dangerous place. And being on holiday only makes it easier to do this; holidays are supposed to be happy times where things go well.

    For what ever the reason, they (and Madeleine) have paid the price too many times over for me to make any judgement. It is just so heart breaking, and just being left in limbo makes even more so.

  20. Verity
    March 18th, 2013 – 16:55
    Well Verity, I beg to differ on this one. It’s a terrible tragedy and of course the parents must be distraught, but one should never leave children of that age alone, and I maintain that if working class parents had done this, the children would have been placed in care.

  21. I always knew they would finish free speech off for good, but I thought it would be in 2015 with the new Labour (LibLab) government.

    I am just appalled.

  22. Anne Wotana Kaye March 18th, 2013 – 19:19

    Hello Anne I agree with you entirely, right from the very start I have felt that the McCann couple were in the wrong, in my opinion they were then and still are guilty of flagrant neglect and it is my opinion that much of what they have said and done since that sad day only confirms that deep down the also believe this.

    We took holidays with our three children from when they were tiny babies and throughout that time they were almost always with us, on the odd occasion where we might dine without them it was always at an hotel where we were staying and having our dinner and where we had paid a member of staff usually a chamber maid to baby sit, even then we would take it in turn to visit their room every half hour.

  23. Andrea March 18th, 2013 – 19:30
    “I always knew they would finish free speech off for good, but I thought it would be in 2015 with the new Labour (LibLab) government.

    I am just appalled.”

    Fear not, I suspect many newspapers will follow the Spectator’s lead and refuse to have anything to do with this complete pile of poo.

  25. Peter, you are quite right.

    I am very worried about you and all who post here.

    This blog must (if it has not already) switch to using servers outside the UK.

    All the people in the UK here will be posting under threat of state bullying themselves or state bullying on the host.

    Today’s significance for anti-free speech cannot be underestimated. Its ramifications are enormous.

    Anyone can now complain about anything, with a threat of a fine of up to a million pounds on the free speaker.

    This is why the US’s founding fathers wrote free speech into the Constitution.

    Free speech in the UK died today.

    From here on in, it’s you think what John Humphrys wants you to think (oh, and they’ll even force you to pay for the privilege of that).

  26. In the spirit of Alexander Boot’s philosophy of things will have to get worse before they get better (I am such a believer in that concept), Douglas Carswell (I hate to speak well of a Tory) wrote a blog piece today

    http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2954/press_regulation_car_crash

    which hints at how all this will end.

    There are bound to be people (like Peter of Maidstone) being harrassed by the state, with ‘I am Spartacus’ protests from the likes of blog host supporters re-posting or re-tweeting home truths.

    Many blogs will just operate outside the UK and expose this thought fascism for what it is.

    We will read the official news in the newspapers and watch it on telly (much as we do now) and then just do what the Chinese do now, go online, outside the radar of the Whitehall media politburo and just read the truth on foreign-hosted blogs.

    It’s out there now.

    The internet has unleashed the truth.

    How is that all going to look?

    It’s going to expose our spiteful establishment even more for what spiteful, nasty, mind-controlling brats they are.

  27. David Ossitt
    March 18th, 2013 – 19:43
    David, of course it’s so sad, beyond sad, a nightmare that never ends. That’s why, like you did, my husband and I never left out child unattended. We employed baby minders and srill popped back to check all was well.

  29. RobertC
    March 18th, 2013 – 19:18
    Robert, as I have said before, of course this is a terrible tragedy and something that must haunt the family day and night. But, and this is a big but, the top layer of the NHS has a lot of arrogant, out of his case, with touch with reality staff, who think they know it all and live in an atmosphere of privilege. They think they are immune from the dangers around us, and unfortunately this tragedy is the result of just such hubris. Naturally this vile government is using this case, together with others to silence free speech. The laws against libel could have been used against newspapers that were considered to be lying or causing unfair damage, but with the assistance of Levison, Cameron and his cronies are altering the very structure of British democracy.

  31. I was watching a terrible BBC TV show the other day fronted by Charlie Brooker all about how TV and the Press were propaganda to make us fearful of crime and so on ‘How TV Ruined Yor Life’ episode 1.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00y4csg/How_TV_Ruined_Your_Life_Fear/

    Hold on, I thought, what are you then, Charlie Chum?

    Far from being a maverick, you represent the mainstream Leftie BBC view that we fear crime too much.

    It goes hand in hand with that other great shibboleth of the Left: that we fear immigration too much.

    Brooker is a flagship Leftie commentator, the darling of The Guardian, the BBC and Channel 4. None of whom can get enough of his polemic.

    It is he and his ilk who have the upper hand.

    I think this sort of brainwashing has a huge part to play in cases like the McCanns.

    Nobody should be complacent about crime. And not the sort of crime that affected the McCanns.

    I will go on.

    I have simply lost track of how many Afro-Caribbean internet daters have conned imbecilic Brits out of their life savings:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/news/article-2294553/Lonely-hearts-targeted-tricked-fortunes-cruel-sweetheart-scam.html

    All of this comes from white guilt and being told 24 hours a day they are prejudiced and are guilty for slavery. As a result, they try to compensate with a bit of DIY multi-culti.

    Whooomph! There go the life savings. And Alan Rusbridger won’t mend your broken heart now.

    You’re dating someone called Mike Mbekeu?

    Indeed.

    I learnt today thay a lot of Western banks are scaling down their Sharia finance ambitions (despite the Tories announcing last week they can’t wait to sell us all down the river to the next arab they can find and Ponce Charles in tow with his lessons in arabic so he can read The Koran).

    Banks are greedy. So why scale down?

    Guess what. Sharia accounting in foreign countries isn’t like accounting in Western countries. The accountant often speak with forked – one might say taqqya – tongue.

    Western bank got stung.

    Boo hoo.

    And then we get the imbeciles who lose all their money investing in ’emerging markets’.

    Look at the phrase: ’emerging markets’. Like they’re just an extension of the West.

    My foot.

    Yet people are conditioned into thinking they’re going into like-for-like in places such as China, where 99% of businesses run two sets of books. One for themselves and then the offical set of books.

    And then they get fleeced.

    It’s this ‘like-for-like’ mentality, conditioned by people like Brooker that destroys people through naivety.

    People are naturally programmed to develop fears, to form communities that take years to form trusted bonds.

    The LibLabCon media line today is: don’t worry about that. Trust multi-culti instead. Globalism’s here.

    You know, that crummy concept that has no grounding in history or human nature?

    Yeah, that’s the one.

    And look where it’s left us: a nation of brain dead imbeciles logging on to meet Africans who want to love us and our life savings.

  32. Charlie Brooker’s brainwashing half hour reminded me of BBC2’s The Power of Nightmares.

    Before the Left ran the argument that ‘we have inflamed Islam’, they tried instead with the other canard: ‘they’re just trying to make you fearful of non-existent terrorism’.

    And then 7/7 happened and they never repeated that episode of The Power of Nightmares (although they did give the propagandist who made it lots more licence fee money) and then they all went off to manufacture instead the new phoney line about how we had inflamed Islam.

  33. AWK 18th, – 20:45

    “of course this is a terrible tragedy and something that must haunt the family day and night. But, and this is a big but, the top layer of the NHS has a lot of arrogant, out of touch with reality staff”

    Doesn’t alter the fact that it was the behaviour of the press which was beyond acceptable limits, and without which the ‘Hacked off’ campaign, with its self-seeking ‘D’ list slebs would never have gained the oxygen of publicity.

  34. From the ‘DT’: “Alex Salmond considers Westminster press regulator for Scotland”

    As at 16:11: If Alex Salmond likes it it must be BA-AD!

  35. Ostrich (occasionally)
    March 18th, 2013 – 21:37
    Of course the behaviour of the press was cheap and horrible. But still no excuse to muzzle free speech. The response should hitting the guilty media where it hurts most – their pockets. There is excellent legislation against libel, and it can inflict a real punishment.

  36. Ostrich, I agree the Press treated the McCanns abominally, but the support some members of the public are giving to Hacked Off is just naive people cutting off their own noses to spite their own faces.

    They truly have been Chicken-Lickened into giving up their very own freedom of speech.

    People must do what I hope they do already – boycott newspapers. Or at least not buy them. Just read the trash for free on the net.

    With less small blogs around thanks to these new laws the papers may now start charging for online content (sorry, propaganda).

    By the way, the one I will never forget was Christopher Jefferies.

    He minced down his garden path with a gait that wouldn’t looked out of place on John Inman in Are You Being Served and got the the end of the path where a Sky TV goon shoved a microphone in his face about a heterosexual sex crime.

    It was screamingly obvious that even with the evidence in front of their faces, the Press had got it worng.

    It was topped off a day or two later in the Mail or the Mirror, I forget which, still smearing Jefferies and one local told the reporter: Him? What? With a woman? No.

    I nearly wet myself laughing at that press interview. It was on the front page that day. Presumably editor who wanted the story on the front page no matter what was prepared to keep that quote in the story (it appeared on the inside of the paper on the turnover), no matter how foolish it made the paper look.

    Him? With a woman?

    Priceless.

  37. Andrea 21:19 – Whoa! Great post! I love the whiff of gunpowder! That was a rant to be proud of!

  38. AWK 18th, – 21:52

    “There is excellent legislation against libel, and it can inflict a real punishment.”

    Ah, well, now there’s a thing…
    Not good enough, otherwise it wouldn’t now be in the process of reform to stop this country’s laws being used to muzzle free speech in published material.
    It seems it took the threat by labour to tag a press regulation clause onto the bill sorting out the libel laws before the Conservatives realised just what could be done to screw up their legislative programme. If labour had done that Cameron’d’ve dropped that bill, then the b*stards’d’ve tagged it on to another bill; that’d’ve been dropped, until eventually the whole shebang would’ve ground to a halt. Seems politics is no longer about policies…at all.

  40. Marx on Monday. How could you not?

    “…By the time Chris Huhne gets out of prison he’ll know how to hot wire a Land Rover and bake up a gram of crack cocaine. How will Farage feel then, when the former cabinet minister ends up running a combined brothel and crack den? Will he still think UKIP’s policy on crime is such a good idea?”

    http://bogpaper.com/2013/03/18/marx-on-monday-chris-huhne/

  41. Ostrich (occasionally)
    March 18th, 2013 – 23:11
    Seems politics is no longer about policies…at all.
    =================================
    Was it ever? 🙂

  43. While the press are showing a more or less united front right now in defending press freedom, some kind of regulation will probably be welcomed by the big circulation nationals, in the same way that big corporations are more amenable to burdensome regulations than small firms – it raises the entry costs and keeps newcomers out.

    If websites – and therefore blogs – come within its scope.. well that really will be muzzling free speech.

    I sometimes wonder if there’s some socio-psychological experiment being tried on the people of Britain, to see how much they’ll put up with without protesting.

    Hugh Grant and his hacked off pals have stolen the genuine outrage of the Dowlers and the McCanns to make a bogus claim for the moral high ground – what a shame so many of our gullible public fall for it

  44. The current state of libel law is a mess, on the one hand encouraging libel tourism – a rich man’s game – while leaving the less well-off out in the cold. “Punitive” – for which, read “lucrative” – damages are awarded to people who don’t need the money, while ordinary people are hard pressed to clear their name.
    Still, if you’re libeled, however trivially, by your local paper you could be on to a modest earner – they’ve probably got libel insurance, with the terms tilted in favour of settling out of court rather than defending themselves.

  45. Andrea
    March 18th, 2013 – 21:19
    Let’s not forget the British women who “marry”men from Pakistan and who wake up one day to find that their children have been spirited off to the sub-continent! I will never understand those women. Women who form attachments to African or Caribbean men at least have the excuse of (supposedly, I’m no expert!) enhanced physical characteristics!

  46. Cyprus

    It may be nothing to the point, but the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, for reasons of bank customers’ security of course, arranged for the overseas ATM cash withdrawal capability for Hong Kong ATM cards (including debit cards and credit cards) to be pre-set as “deactivated” with effect from March 1, 2013, i.e. no withdrawals. For those who were not watching (and, to be fair, notice was given in October 2012) and who were not in Hong Kong, this came as something of a surprise and involved much scrambling around.

    Just a fire drill, perhaps.

    By the way, I see from the comment 7 hours ago from the date of this post at the other place on M.E. Synon’s articles of 18th March on Cyprus that Boudicca_Icenii is to run as a UKIP candidate in May (as is Mr. Creosote). Bloggers are getting active – Peter…?

  47. Malfleur – Boudicca’s going to run? Wow! I have long admired her clarity of thought and her ability to make a strong point with few words. She posts over on The Telegraph. She will be a dynamite candidate. I cannot think of anyone on the current political scene who could best her. What an assett in Parliament she would be!

  48. Well, if she insists on that spelling, there’s still room for the proper version: Boadicea. Verity – could it be you?

  50. Noa on March 18th, 2013 – 23:43 ‘Target2′[
    Afraid so!

    It is the arrangement that, within the high level banking system in the Eurozone, money does not cross national frontiers. Credits and debits are made to the national figure. It’s a bit like everyone have a credit card. If I buy off you and you buy off me, and then, if it was the same amount we could say ‘quits’! Unfortunately, it all works OK until we find that the amounts are, continually, not the same. Because there is no regular settlement, the change from having money to owing money cannot be detected well enough!
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9055142/Bundesbank-sinks-deeper-into-debt-saving-Europe.html
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9215232/German-tempers-boil-over-back-door-euro-rescues.html

  51. Anne Wotana Kaye March 18th – 20:45 – ‘top layer of the NHS’
    So you think arrogance contributed! That is why I don’t want to put the boot in. I leave judgement because the consequences have already delivered the sentence.

    There are several times when I have been carried along by the crowd, knowing something was wrong, yet not having the time to work out why.

    Voting to stay in the EEC has been one of my biggest regrets. Yet, even now, I think that in my self judgement I am forgetting how behind the Continent we were at that time. (I didn’t know at the time what a traitor Heath was and that MPs had given up the fight! And if we had stayed out, it may have ended up even worse!)

    On the few times we did leave the children, with patrols etc, like you, we still worried, but we have never been in the top layer of the NHS, (we weren’t made of the right material) and we were never in the position of being on holiday with several friends, some with children and some not.

    However, do I think that supporting the pressure group does put them in the same category as Hugh Grant!

  52. What does amuse (and worry) me is that while the masses think the mansion tax is a good idea, they think that the Cyprus bank robbery is not.

    There is very little difference; in both cases, it is stealing. The difference is that many have money in the bank but few a mansion. So much for the law being neutral!

  54. RobertC

    All tax is theft. End of story. Dress it up how you like – you voted for a party that has taxation as part of its manifesto – whatever. It is still YOUR money and another person is helping themselves to it to spend in a way you might not have chosen yourself. They’ve even re-jigged the rules so that they get their hands on ‘their’ share of the money before you do.

    F**k ’em – taxation is theft, plain and simple.

  55. Clear Memories – 09:44 ‘All tax is theft.’

    This does take it to another level. As taxes have increased, they have gone from being a contribution towards external security, internal security and a ensuring a stable currency, to none of these, but a great deal else instead!

    Last night, a woman (ex-IMF?) on Newsnight, said that when you go on finance/ banking training courses they spend the first half hour saying, “Don’t take away deposits”. She said it more than once and, although she was a Greek/Cypriot, you could tell that she was gob smacked that such a basic ‘rule’ was broken, because no one appeared to realise what it meant to Spain, Greece, Italy etc … or Cyprus (again).

  56. This cabbie is a little pissed off I think; sounds like The Wall on a wet day in March. His rather blunt message seems to contain a few grains of truth, if maybe a little overstated; but you will need to turn down the volume a tad:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YDXtHsz2q6Q#!

    His rant seems to have crossed the Atlantic, too (probably without the aid of the microphone), as Gerard has featured it on American Digest. Wonderful things, these intertubes. Listen up, Georgie Boy and make sure you don’t get in his cab on the way to the Bullingdon Club. Let’s make it go viral, folks. Should liven up the budget speech.

  57. RobertC
    March 19th, 2013 – 08:29
    “Voting to stay in the EEC has been one of my biggest regrets”

    And mine too. My only excuse is that at the time, I thought I was voting for a Common Market, not a Federal Europe. With the knowledge I now have, my vote would have been against. But the only referendum we were given was in 1975, a ridiculously long time ago.

    When a referendum gives the “desired” answer, no more are forthcoming. However, when the referendum delivers an answer unfavourable to the government, a repeat referendum is ALWAYS a certainty, until the “right” decision is forthcoming.

    Regarding the McCann parents, whatever they did or didn’t do on the night in question, they are suffering a lifelong punishment, that of never knowing what happened to their child. No-one should have to suffer what they must be going through, and I would never criticise their actions that night. To err is human….

  58. I’m in the V & A for a while between meetings. It’s been refreshing to spend a lot of time looking at each of the exhibits in the early Christian collection. They belong to a different age in so many ways.

  60. Lesley C.

    “No-one should have to suffer what they must be going through, and I would never criticise their actions that night. To err is human….”

    Lesley nobody doubts their suffering and I am sure that we can all have deep and abiding sympathy with their great loss, but that does not change the facts.

    Lesley here we have two highly educated people who behaved stupidly in leaving a child and two infants unattended, had they been less well off and less educated and from some northern council estate then there is a very high probability that there infants would have been taken into care and that they would have been prosecuted for child neglect.

  61. The Boot sums up the Cyprus blag with a coruscating piece replete with insight into Russian and German history. Just click on his site on the sidebar and once again receive the gift that goes on giving. Obviously there is more to this latest Euraid than meets the eye and one time commie apparatchik Frau Merkel is up to her fanny in the finagling.

  62. Frank P above … “. Listen up, Georgie Boy and make sure you don’t get in his cab on the way to the Bullingdon Club.” Tee hee.

  63. David O: “had they been less well off and less educated and from some northern council estate then there is a very high probability that there infants would have been taken into care and that they would have been prosecuted for child neglect.”

    Tell that to Baby P.

  64. Frank P (19 March 16:20)

    Thanks for the mention of Boot – his take on the Cyprus business is fascinatingly plausible.

    Just one suggestion though – for people unacquainted with Boot, it makes it easier to locate his blog via Google if he’s referred to as Alexander Boot, and even easier if reference is to ‘Alexander Boot blog’.

  65. It’s quite something when you notice how young the policemen are. My husband, however, remarked that it says something when an elected Pope is younger than yourself. 🙂

  66. Herbert Thornton (17.06)

    Better still – just click on his site listed on our blog roll – and I use my diminutive moniker for him affectionately and descriptively rather than pejoratively, if that is what you are being sniffy about.

    Andy Car Park opened a door into a treasure trove of wit and wisdom when he gave us the heads up on yon Alex.

  67. PfM 19th, – 15:58

    “It’s been refreshing to spend a lot of time looking at each of the exhibits in the early Christian collection. They belong to a different age in so many ways.”

    And in those days, plebs like us (well, me, anyway; I can’t justify applying the term to any of your august contributors) would never have had a chance to look at ’em, except from a great distance, down a long nave.

  68. Frank P –

    The most startling thing in Boot’s blog seems, to me, to be his hint that
    the Cyprus events involve a secret deal between Putin and Merkel for the
    establishment of of a Russian naval base on Cyprus. However, he does not have
    much to say about Russia’s potential part (via Gazprom) in the exploitation of
    oil & gas reserves round the island.

    The combination of a Russian naval base and Russian exploitation of
    oil and gas fields round Cyprus would have, I should think, very great
    significance. What effects would that produce in the Middle East?

    For a start, both Egypt and Turkey assert claims over the oil and gas
    fields that conflict with the claims of Cyprus. Could that turn into a serious
    new conflict between Islamic countries and Russia? In particular, what would
    be the reaction of the various varieties of Islamic extremists in the Middle
    East? Would we see terrorist attacks on the Russian oil installations or naval facilities?

    And how would all that affect Israel?

  69. Frank P (19 March – 18:00)

    I didn’t for an instant imagine that you were using ‘The Boot’ pejoratively, nor was I trying to be sniffy.

    It was simply that I didn’t have his site bookmarked, and Googling ‘Boot’ didn’t work until (after a few minutes) I remembered that he uses the first name “Alexander’.

    I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.

  70. I haven’t really kept up with all the manouevrings that eventually led to the press regulation vote, but there was talk last week of 20 Tory ‘rebels’ who were threatening to back Milliboy’s amendment.

    Does anyone know who the 20 were? I haven’t been able to dig it out.

  71. Noa (19 March ) 16:08 –

    Your link to The Ghost of the West Yet to Come is a timely reminder that the belief that there really is no such thing as private property established itself in the Liberal (and indeed in most) minds in Canada over 30 years ago. That was when Prime Minister Trudeau refused to include, in his so-called Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the right to own property.

    Since then, every suggestion that the Right to own Property should be added to Canada’s Constitution has been timidly ignored by Canadian politicians of all parties.

    Even our Charter-declared right to freedom of opinion and expression has recently been hollowed out by Canada’s Supreme Court to the point where it now has only a limited meaning.

    The Liberal mind pretends to give, but in Orwellian perversion it only takes away.

  72. Thank you muchly for the Boot link Frank P. I was intrigued by the reference to Russian bombs being used during the Battle Of Britain and a little light research on whether Hitler merely got his blow in first in 1941, led me to this splendid 49 minute link. General Suvarov (any relation to the great 18th century general one wonders?) a self confessed spy.

    If you are in any doubt before watching as to whether it was Hitler, or Stalin, who was the more evil, evil barsteward, you won’t be by the end.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Clv-c6QdBs

    Don’t you think that, in a certain light, the Milibands look like Comrade Stalin? The Boys from Brest Litovsk? Just draw in the mustaches.
    Track record so far, steady progress. Just wait till we sign an accord with Comrade Putin.

  73. A wonderful post from the DT on Mohamed O’bore’s blog today worth pasting here for people who will appreciate it:

    anders

    Today 07:50 AM

    The black humour of all these squawking posts from journalists is that free speech died long ago, when the Race Relations Act was passed.

    Since then we have seen an ever-strengthening totalitarian regime in which sanctions ranging from deprivation of livelihood to imprisonment were brought to bear against dissidents.

    Not only did you journalists not utter a word of complaint about this sinister system of thought control, you eagerly connived and participated in it.

    When system challengers were imprisoned, you would barely even report it. You applied without quibble the NUJ’s guidelines on race reporting that call for systematic censorship of all news pertaining to the legions of third-world immigrants colonising this country, depriving the British people of the information required to evaluate the effects of government policy.

    And the irony of Islam fanboy Peter Oborne, who continually demands the suppression of any critique of Islam, talking about the importance of free speech is rich beyond words.

    First they came for the racists. I said nothing because I was not a racist.

    Then they came for the Islamophobes. I said nothing because I was not an Islamophobe.

    Then they came for the homophobes. I said nothing because I was not a homophobe.

    Then they came for the journalists. And there was no one left to speak for me.

    http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100207784/thats-it-im-resigning-from-the-nuj/#disqus_thread

  74. Herbert Thornton March 19th, 2013 – 18:59
    Hello Herbert.
    Your point is well made about the non-right to private property.
    I have wondered previously about the innate authoritarianism of PM Trudeau but never given it either serious research or consideration. And I speculate now, to be corrected as necessary.
    Being of French origin one assumes that his inclination would be more to the Continental than the Common Law system. And being a subject of the Queen, (how much does that grate? one wonders,) rather than a citizen of a properly democratic republic like the United States, rather than French version, which was almost identical to their absolute monarchy, but with a succession of vulgar and very common little men in high heels in charge, instead of Kings in high heels.
    Excuse the meandering! I’ll come to the point. In the properly constituted republic the power flows from the people to the legislature, is delegated to the executive and guarded by the judiciary.
    In the monarchical tradition, yes, sadly even the British one, power ultimately resides in the Monarch and is delegated from him. so by its nature any delegation is only temporary and may be rescinded at will.
    We are all therefore, an Act of Parliament away from slavery. But Trudeau seemed more comfortable with that than most.

  75. Andrea

    “…And the irony of Islam fanboy Peter Oborne, who continually demands the suppression of any critique of Islam, talking about the importance of free speech is rich beyond words…”

    Indeed it is. I’ve always been impressed that the man can produce such a veritable mountain of manure, albeit from which the odd curly kale sprouts, (Guilty Men) and yet end up sitting on top of his own dung heap.
    A
    nd I have no doubt he will do again.

  76. Possibly but not entirely true. The processions of crosses etc with clergy in vestments would have been impressive for all. I was in Constantinople for the enthronement of Patriarch Mesrob and it was like stepping back into the last days of the empire, and that was an experience the whole congregation shared.

  77. In fact I was in an ancient Church on Saturday and the remnants of wall paintings, the colourful rood screen and crucifix, the painted ceiling and the processional crosses and the altar piece with all the vestments would have made it a very bright and culturally rich experience for all attending.

  78. I’m sorry, but the new Pope just conjures up images of Frankie Howerd.

    ” No, look, no, Pope Francis… no POPE Francis madam. It’s not an invitation. He is infallible, in-fall-ible. What, no, missus, there’s no ointment for it. What. No. Don’t mock the afflicted. Mmmm… well. please yourself.”

  79. Nurse, Nurse!

    It’s very quiet in here. Has Doctor proscribed Olanzapine for all the others?

  80. Pope Francis I?

    Well, as I was the recipient of six flogging filled years from the SJ, learned something, and never had to dodge out of a dodgy close encounter with one, I feel affection and respect. iits a pleasure

  82. cont’d
    But he can sod off completely on the Falklands; infallible on matters spiritual, but definitely not temporal.
    And I don’t need Warsi to interpret his views for me. Has she paid the taxpayer back for her family visit back home yet?

  83. “The chancellor once again emphasised that the negotiations are to be conducted only with the troika (the European Union, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund),” said Merkel’s spokesman as the Cypriot Finance minister flies to Moscow for talks.

    And Fcuk You too Comrade Merkel! It would seem that the descendants of Archimedes have found another fulcrum to use in moving great weights and resisting invaders.

    DEMOS- looks like its coming home as the Russians come to a holiday port near you.

  84. Herbert Thornton – 18:17 ‘secret deals’
    Cyprus must look something like a Russian holiday camp now. I had thought of it as becoming a Russian aircraft carrier in the Med, but with the British Forces leaving, it could easily turn into a Russian island, permanently. All that oil/gas equipment would need guarding by their own people.

    I wonder whether the other European countries see this as a ‘good thing’, with the British leaving, and whether it will be similar to Africa welcoming the Chinese.

  85. Tory social engineering:
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9941492/David-Camerons-slur-on-stay-at-home-mothers.html

    “In a briefing document accidentally released on the Treasury’s website, officials said that families with one stay-at-home parent were less deserving of state help than families where both parents worked.”
    …
    Marie Peacock, from Mothers at Home Matter, said: “Those mothers [at home] are working hard and they want to get on. Hard-working families are not just families with two earners. David Cameron is alienating mothers across Britain. We have been inundated with calls from stay-at-home mums who are puzzled and confused by what Mr Cameron is saying.
    The announcement of the scheme comes amid growing anger at the Conservatives’ failure to honour their flagship manifesto pledge to introduce tax breaks for married couples.
    It is understood that the Government decided not to go ahead with tax breaks because ministers felt it would have distracted from the Coalition’s central message of cutting the deficit. The Government has in recent days watered down its language on marriage tax breaks.
    In previous answers to parliamentary questions on the issue, ministers have always said the Government’s commitment to “recognise marriage through the tax and benefit system remains firm”.”

    So, stay-at-home mums are puzzled and confused by what Mr Cameron is saying?

    I don’t think it matters who or where you are, does it? Confusion reigns!

  86. RobertC

    “Cyprus must look something like a Russian holiday camp now. I had thought of it as becoming a Russian aircraft carrier in the Med, but with the British Forces leaving, it could easily turn into a Russian island, permanently. All that oil/gas equipment would need guarding by their own people.”

    What is tragic is that we, as a nation have become so enfeebled, politically, intellectually, financially, morally and commercially, that we cannot see and take the once in a lifetime opportunity to secure our gas and oil reserves by taking over the Cypriot debt as the Russians may do.

  87. Re Cyprus. Why don’t they cut the crap and Putin and Merkel hunker down and get a deal sorted. The Triumfailures can sit back and wait for their decision.

  88. If the Newspaper Editors want to see the back of Press Regulation/Strangulation, the answer is in their own hands.

    Just warn the party leaders that, until the next election, the Dead Tree Press will campaign for UKIP, for the abolition of the TV licencing fee and the dismantling of their tame mouthpiece, the BBC.

    That should do it.

    And as for internet Blogs, just use offshore servers like Guido does. I suspect there are more anti-EU posters/bloggers outside the UK than in it anyway.

  89. Peter from Maidstone
    March 19th @21:12

    Glad to see that you have the city’s name right…

  90. Apropos the Cyprus fiasco, I rather enjoyed a reader’s comment in the Daily Mail: – here’s a shortened version of it –

    “Far better terms from Russia than from the EU? Not a tough decision to make…..
    What the western bankers didn’t count on in their ongoing plan of bleeding the world dry was eastern bankers showing up and cleaning house.”

  92. Noa 22:28 – Thanks for the nice little reminder about “baroness” Warsi and her taxpayer funded visit to her family in Pakistan. And I don’t expect she travelled by EasyJet.

    Clear Memories 00:52 – Agreed. Promising to scrap TV licensing fee should be priority for the Tories, and that it is not, in this day and age where the world is bursting with TV news and entertainment on the internet demonstrates how out of touch the Conservatives are. There is no reason for anyone to be forced, through lack of choice, to watch the BBC any more.

  93. A small point Verity, but nobody is ‘forced’ to watch the BBC under any circumstances. But the whole UK population is forced to pay for it and then suffer because of the lies it tells and the distortions if perpetuates.

    Can you imagine the reaction if the BBC made a series showing what Labour and the unions did in the early and late 70’s, with newsreel of the rubbish piled high in the streets and the pickets preventing patients entering Hospitals for treatment and all the other inhuman, selfish acts they foisted on the population?

    Then highlighted Labour’s current dependance on the trade unions.

    Then transmitted it in the weeks leading up to the next election without allowing any comment except from Labour’s opponents.

    No, me neither. But they, effectively, do the opposite day in, day out without any fear of being held to account, politically or financially.

  94. Clear Memories, being based off-shore is not guarantee at all of not coming within the remit of these new regulations (when they appear). Government spokesmen have already said that the regulators might well wish to encompass within there remit all websites which have a UK audience. The issue then becomes whether or not the UK state can get hold of the people or organisation running any site. If it is some poor guy in a house in the UK then they could do all manner of things – as we have seen with Robinson – certainly including freezing all bank accounts pending an ‘enquiry’.

    Offshoring is a first step, but it will not be enough if the state is determined to silence dissenting voices.

  95. PoM

    It didn’t work with Peter Wright …..

    until every government on the planet is prepared to forgo the truth and lie about free speech, I think offshore will remain safe.

  96. Noa – 00:29 ‘What is tragic is …’
    … we can’t secure our own (shale) gas and oil reserves and manage our own debt!

  97. PoM (again)

    Guido Fawkes has posted the following. I rather think he’s right. Of course, they will try to bully the weak and potentially malleable. But, lets face it, none of them like bad publicity and no Government – Labour, Tory or Dickhead – will risk being compared with Iran, China or sundry middle-eastern dictators.

    “AFTER Parliament voted to regulate the Press on Monday, curious journalists asked Downing Street how this new Royal Charter would affect the internet. Who would be regulated?

    Only news websites will be regulated, they were told by the Prime Minister’s spokesman.

    What, they asked, about the Guido Fawkes political blog?

    “No” came the answer, that would not be regulated.

    Down the road elsewhere in Whitehall Maria Miller, the minister responsible for the media, was briefing that my Guido Fawkes blog would fall foul of the new regulations because it reports news and gossip.

    Do these bumbling buffoons really know what they are doing?

    It doesn’t seem like the Government have thought through the regulation.
    Maria Miller was asked in Parliament if Hello! magazine would be regulated — the out-of-touch minister admitted she had not even heard of the top-selling celebrity photo-magazine.

    That this is all a bit of a shambles is hardly surprising.

    After all, the deal to end 318 years of Press freedom was cobbled together at 2am by David Cameron’s fixer Oliver Letwin in Ed Miliband’s office with Hugh Grant’s motley crew of anti-Press campaigners on hand with takeaway pizzas helping out with the drafting.

    It was rushed through Parliament the next day with some 500 MPs happily supporting a chance to get revenge on the papers for exposing and bringing to an end their expenses fiddling.

    The truth is the world wide web is not going to be regulated by our out-of-touch politicians. My business is run out of Ireland and the blog is hosted on a web server in California.

    Which means that unless the Royal Navy plan to send a warship to enforce the Royal Charter by pointing its guns at the web servers off Long Beach, there is no chance of this scheme working.

    Max Mosley, the shameless Formula 1 tycoon who has campaigned against the Press and for privacy laws that would have stopped his orgy with hookers from being exposed, told a Select Committee of MPs yesterday they could “cut the wires” to the internet for foreign-hosted websites like mine.

    That is what the Chinese, Saudi and Iranian regimes do. Is that really the route Britain should go down? Keeping the voters in the dark about the private lives of politicians — with privacy regulations for example — does not make voters better able to judge the merits of the people who want to rule over us.

    Voters need to know if, for example, a politician has a drink problem.
    Politicians have always been wary of a free Press watching and reporting on their murky doings.

    They have, over the centuries, tried to keep journalists out of Parliament, ban them altogether, licence them, jail some occasionally and now regulate them.
    I write about politicians every day and do not think it is at all healthy to be regulated by a statute passed by the very same people who are often criticised harshly on my blog.

    That is why we won’t, as a matter of principle, submit to these proposed regulations whatever the penalty risks.

    The editors of two weekly news magazines, Private Eye and The Spectator, have both said they won’t be going along with the charter either.

    Readers want a robust free Press that makes amends when it makes mistakes.
    Trust does have to be rebuilt after the phone hacking scandals of the past.
    Newspapers have a big decision to make. If they go along with this scheme they need to design a system that gives redress to those deserving it yet doesn’t open the gates to a deluge of complaints from politically motivated campaigners.

    Or they could just say “no”, publish and be damned.”

    And, if I might add, you only need a proxify programme and you can post or receive anything from anywhere. I used a proxify in the Middle East and you can download anything blocked by the State systems. And post out, as I did both to this site and others.

  98. In the Telegraph.
    Background:
    Jerome Cahuzac, a former plastic surgeon who rose to prominence as the Socialist Party’s toughest budget-watcher, has led efforts to crack down on tax evasion and fraud

    News item:
    Jérôme Cahuzac, France’s budget minister, has resigned after being placed under formal investigation for tax fraud and money laundering.

    Mediapart alleged that Mr Cahuzac closed the account just days before becoming president of the National Assembly finance committee. He then “discreetly” paid a trip to Geneva to shift the undisclosed sums to “another tax haven in Asia”, it claimed, citing “sources informed of the operation

    Posts:
    * Irony knows no limits.

    * All I can say is we need more bail outs to stop this corruption and more laws. Regards barroso

    * Shock,horror French Government ministers are as rotten and corrupt as ours c’est la vie.

    * Just as well politicians don’t want control over the media. Oh….

    Sums it up really

  99. Clear Memories – 09:51 ‘Maria Miller had not even heard of the top-selling celebrity photo-magazine [Hello! magazine]’

    Please stop hiding away important bits of information in long posts.

    What I want to know, nay demand, what does she read?

  101. The Telegraph have an article suggesting that “Cyprus should do what Iceland did, and just confiscate the Russian money”.

    It’s worth some thoughts on it. After all, in the past, Russia has defaulted on the West.

  102. I think Guido is completely wrong on this. It requires a simple regulation to be created which says that those functionally responsible for the content of a website who reside in the UK are liable for the content of the website wherever it is based in the world if it is accessible by UK residents.

    There is nothing to stop such a regulation being passed by the new Charter. It has carte blanche to regulate comment however it chooses.

  103. RobertC 20th, – 10:27

    May I suggest a small amendment?

    “What I want to know, nay demand; does she read?”

  104. PoM

    Sorry Mate, I think you’re wrong. You can chase down corporations but individuals are a lot harder. And if they move offshore ie out of the UK as millions have, its not just hard, its impossible.

    And, as I say, the technology exists to hide the entities from questing eyes. If it becomes necessary, then the technology will become both more complex to break and, perhaps contradictory, easier to use.

  105. Sorrym CM, I think you are wrong. It is actually very difficult to run an interactive website that is trying to make a difference without leaving traces. By the very nature of things it becomes necessary to interact with people. Individuals are not very hard to track down if you are a state. On this website for instance, it would be possible for a state to determine who has posted every comment if it really wanted to.

    And if the site became so underground that it was virtually invisible to the state then it would be very difficult to become a major source of news and opinion,

  106. “All Roads Lead to Cyprus”

    Daniel Greenfield (click on Sultan Knight on the blog roll) expands the Cypriot banking crisis into the international dimension, both current and historical. Detailed and perceptive.
    You will not be disappointed.

  107. Sorry ‘Sultan Knish’ of course, my tablet spell checker interceded without being asked!

  108. Georgie Boy’s testes need to drop. “This government will not let you get away with it” is not convincing when delivered by someone with the timbre of voice of an eleven year old schoolboy.

    Unless the Tory party reintroduces grown-ups into the top tier of their party it is doomed!

  110. This is something ekse that drives me crazy — thank you, the illiterate Peter Tatchell, who started the usage:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2296107/Why-councils-ask-youre-transgender-wheelie-bins.html

    There is no such thing as “transgender”. You cannot alter your DNA to suit yourself. Even “sex change” is pushing it. People who have operations and take pills to resemble the opposite sex are still, and always will be, the sex they were born.

    If I’m not wrong, “transgender” was coined by Peter Thatchell to make homosexuality sound like a medical condition. In one sense, of course, it is. Actually, homosexuality occurs, rarely, but it occurs, in animals, too. So it is a natural, not a medical, condition. And all the chopping and slicing and dicing and taking hormone pills in the world cannot change a person’s DNA.

  112. Frank P 20th, – 13:36

    Indeed. Although I thought a lot had to do with the horde of ravening wolves (not civilised humans, anyway) sitting opposite. If he’s screwed this one up they’ll have him by the throat, and he knows it. I felt there was fear in his voice.

  113. Fraser Nelson on Speccy says this was a nothing budget and i am inclined to agree. I dont think it is Osbournes gift to generate growth -he simpley does not have the tools to do that by fiddling with taxes.
    What the government has to do is to cut red tape and regulation, so businesses can get on with making wealth, not filling in loads of silly forms. I suspect some of that can come from HMRC, but I suspect a lot comes from Vince cables dept. And he wont cut red tape cos he is a big state man.

  114. Frank Sutton (14.20)

    Yes; the Slog piece underlines Alex Boot’s perspicacity and prescience. Or perhaps it is an indication of his real (and active) function on the blogosphere? 🙂

  115. Herbert Thornton: Speaking of repressive legislation, is it true that police in Canada can now demand one’s e-mail address? Whether that is under caution or during a casual questioning, i.e. when pulled over for a driving check, I’m unclear, but a worrying development nonetheless if true. The Leveson Bill concerns me in that it seems that if I happen to call someone with deep pockets, or with a ‘no win, no fee’ solicitor at his beck and call, a blithering idiot or worse on one of the blogs, I could be pursued for damages. Given some of the ludicrous judgments handed down by the frequently preposterous judiciary recently I would imagine that umpteen thousands are about to change hands!

  116. Ostrich (occasionally) 14:27)

    You may be right; fear does cause the cojones to contract back up whence they came; but I doubt he would attain basso profundo if they won the next election by a landslide! Then again I read yesterday that his generation has a problem with sperm count across the board.
    Something to do with female contraceptive pills in the drinking water, apparently. Notta lotta machismo evident these days (except among the sisters, that is, butch is now bootifil, our wimmin insist.

  118. Yippeee! Child Trust Funds can now be converted to Junior ISAs. The boy George done good!

    And if that’s the worst thing I have to worry about….. 😉

  119. Frank P 20th, – 15:43

    “his generation has a problem with sperm count across the board.”

    Musta come on recently…he doesn’t seem to have had a problem with firing blanks in the past.

  121. An excellent blog that I have been reading for around two years, and haven’t posted about before, is Gates of Vienna. http://gatesofvienna.net/

    The Gates of Vienna, you will recall, is where the Crusaders finally stopped the advance of islam into Europe in 1529. A subject of much concern for us today, given that today, they are well past the Gates of Vienna and are lying in the next hospital bed, or sit next to your child in school, or have raped or mugged someone you’ve read about.

    It’s well written and he attracts some good comments.

  122. Verity
    March 20th, 2013 – 20:13
    Hi Verity, I wish somehow you could sort Prince Charles out. As you probably know, he is learning Arabic so that he can read the Koran. He is, together with his toothy old nag in Saudi Arabia. On the “Moral Maze” tonight they are speaking about the execution of several youngsters, for tobbery without violence. There is a shortage of men who chop off heads, the punishment called for, so they went before a firing squad. The panel are blabbeting about whether Charles should be there, despite the friendship that exists with the two royal Houses. Imagine if Israel beheaded or shot terrorists who kill little babies? The world would be up in arms, but what goes on in the arab countries is just accepted. Why don’t the bleeding hearts here in Britain who weep for the human rights of mad muslims, weep too for the youth who died before the firing squad in Saudi? I wept when I saw the brave young girl who was shot by the Taliban because she wanted to be in school. A wonderful girl, who despite plates in her head and aids for her hearing is making great progress at her studies here in England. Perhaps with youngsters like her there is hope for this world. I wish her well.

  123. The following link is from a meat trade journal, reporting the tragic finding of pork dna in halal sausages by Westminster Council.

    Something called Andrew Christie of Westminster City Council’s tri-borough director of children’s ‘services’ says ‘”We are very concerned by the discovery that a contractor has fallen short of the high standards we demand. We also understand and regret the upset that may have been caused to parents and children alike. We are contacting schools, parents and faith group leaders”

    The school? St Mary’s Bryanston Square, a CHURCH OF ENGLAND school in west London.

    I would like to think that some parents on learning about this would object to the insistence of halal products being served to non-mu$lims. Or insist that seperate food is served if only on the grounds of, say, animal cruelty issues.

    http://www.bpex.org.uk/downloads/302842/302630/Pork%20DNA%20in%20Halal%20Sausages.pdf

  124. P from M – I responded to AWK’s post of 20:36. It has now disappeared. This has happened two or three times todoy. I blog, press send, it appears on the page … and the next time I check to see if there are any new entries, my post has disappeared.

    My response to AWK appeared briefly on the page and then disappeared, as have two or three others today.

  125. Just as odd …. I hit bold for P from M’s name, in the post above and the first sentence. It has changed to italic.

  126. Well, my posts of a few minutes ago are still up.

    From Sultan Knish today, “The left is not interested in gay marriage because it believes in marriage, but because it believes in destroying all existing social institutions. A Republican Party that fails to grasp that has no clue where it is or what it’s fighting. It might as well be sent blindfolded into the ring with Muhammad Ali. And that is indeed what has been largely going on. The Republican Party has capitalized on populist backlashes to the left’s culture war without really understanding them or believing in them.

    Does this excedllent analysis emind you of a party closer to home?

  128. No, P from M. I posted a response to AWK’s post of 20:36. I think there was one before that that disappeared, too. Not sure. But I posted a reply to AWK’s post of 20:36.

  129. Alexander Boot in his interesting piece on Cyprus writes “The question is why the ECB and IMF, which is to say Germany, made this raid a precondition for the bailout of Cyprus? ”

    I think that the sentence would have been more accurate if is had read “…which is to say Germany and the United States…”.

    See for instance:

    “…Putin has faced down the International Monetary Fund, which by the way is located in Washington, DC, and is in fact Washington itself. So in the sense of a Cold War, you have Washington vs Moscow, and Moscow won this round.”

    http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2013/3/20_Sinclair_-_The_Next_Danger_After_Putin_Crushes_IMF_In_Cyprus.html

    Mr. Boot’s interesting article reminds us of many facts that we would do well to remember; but for him to write his article from a perspective that does not think it necessary to mention the USA at least once is, well, idiosyncratic.

    Incidentally, a Syrian friend of mine takes the view that if – he would say “when – the Russians are finally expelled from their remaining naval base in North Africa (oh alright, the Middle East), Tartuz, they will never be allowed to return to the area and Syria will show itself pro-western. I don’t know if he is right about this and if Moscow turns Cyprus into its fiefdom, I wouldn’t want to bet on it – especially with the US presently broke, corrupt and headless.

    Holiday in Malta, anyone?

  133. The Cyprus crisis – in it’s own way – reminds me of the current discussions among astrophysicists about the possible catastrophe of an extra big asteroid colliding with the earth. Apparently one astrophysicist, when asked what people should do if a really big one was detected on a course to collide with us in a matter of days, replied with one word – “pray”.

    I suspect that advice holds equally good with respect to Cyprus. However on a slightly (but only slightly) less serious note I couldn’t help feeling amused when I saw the picture that accompanies this article – doesn’t it illustrate rather well the Chinese adage that a picture is worth a thousand words? –

    http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2013/3/20_Sinclair_-_The_Next_Danger_After_Putin_Crushes_IMF_In_Cyprus.html

  134. It must be very frustrating for any Cypriots out there who are fans of democracy. All their laws are made somewhere else and their banks accounts are subject to the whims of faceless people a thousand miles away.

  135. Nothing at the other place yet on the Cyprus outrage, unless I missed it. Perhaps Mr. Nelson thinks the whingers are all nothing but football hooligans…

  136. Is this the same IMF that is solving the Cypriot Banks Robbery?

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financial-crime/9942794/French-police-raid-IMF-chief-Christine-Lagardes-flat-in-Bernard-Tapie-probe.html
    French police raid IMF chief Christine Lagarde’s flat in Bernard Tapie probe

    “French authorities have searched the Paris flat of IMF chief Christine Lagarde as part of an investigation into her handling of a 2008 compensation payment to a businessman supporter of ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, her lawyer said.”

  137. Do any of you think that our ‘leaders’ in the Cabinet, the Shadow Cabinet, the NHS and Care Services, the EU, the IMF, our QUANGO’s, the CoE, the alarmist climate scientists, and, in fact, most other public organisations are completely disconnected with the people they should be representing?

    For example, the IMF might not care much for people, I do accept that, but they don’t appear to care for anything, not even money, their own standing, superficial integrity, not even logic!

    They are all triple chumps (ignorant, arrogant and incompetent), and then you think, “But I thought that last week”?

    “Ah, yes!”, you think, “but that was LAST week”.

    “This week!”, you say, “This week, I don’t just think it, I know it to be true! Yes, I really do”

    And then the next day, you repeat the process!

  138. Just look at the photograph of George Osborne in a blonde ‘Mrs Thatcher’ wig, in the “Daily Mail”. He seems to have found his true vocation, and is far more feminine than IMF chief Christine Lagarde
    .
    Osborne’s delight at Thatcher makeover: Chancellor ‘nearly choked on his marmite’ when he saw image of himself as Iron Lady

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2296659/BUDGET-2013-Osbornes-delight-Thatcher-makeover-Chancellor-nearly-choked-marmite-saw-image-Iron-Lady.html#ixzz2OAfDs6AV
    Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

  139. RobertC 10.47

    Well ranted Sir!
    You are of course Right. They don’t care for anybody or anything.
    But they don’t have to. They have achieved nirvana.
    That is, they have unlimited direct access to the public purse, which results in turn in an unending flow of cash for whatever it is they want to do with it.

  140. As a former police officer it gives me no pleasure whatsoever to point out the following, to those who still blame the press for the McCanns and Dowlers.

    Let us get real. The press made their statements on the McCanns because the Portugese Police TOLD them that they were suspects, how else did they get the information on the McCanns vehicle being searched by a dog trained in sensing if dead bodies had been in that place.

    Then never forget that the News of the World had INFORMED the Surrey Police (Truly the most incompetent force in the UK) of the fact that Millies mobile phone had been tampered with.

    Then the fact released this week that Scotland Yard have withheld evidence against, unnamed top people, involved in serious sexual assaults on children. WITHHELD evidence from police officers investigating the crimes.

    The press have been stupid BUT what the few journalists charged have done is commit criminal offences and they are being dealt with.

    I pray that most newspapers follow the excellent lead of the Spectator and its editor Fraser Nelson in saying NO. (I find it rather a pity that the bravery shown by Mr Nelson was not shown by publishing his promised article on Neather)

  141. Noa – 11:17 ‘Well ranted Sir!’
    Thank you. At least I know that I am not ‘alone’ !

  142. The Daily Telegraph: “Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister who chairs meetings of eurozone ministers, warned that Cyprus poses a “systemic risk” to Europe’s economy and banking sector, meaning a bank meltdown there could plunge other European countries into a new crisis.
    “In the present situation I think there is definitely a systemic risk and I think the unrest of the last couple of days has proven this, unfortunately,” he said.
    He told Cyprus that it would have to carry out a raid on Russian bank depositors to pay off €6 billion in debts and insisted that new loans from Russia would not solve the Cyprus debt problem, only add to it.”

    In what way is this loan different from the ECB loans that have gone before.

    Even more intriguing is, In what way are the loans that have gone before different from this one?

  146. A heart-warming taxi tale from New York (a rarity these days), courtesy American Digest (on our blog roll): to counteract the London cabbie rant link I posted yesterday. Take your tissues with you.

  147. Just watched TNAC’s induction: hope you enjoyed the bongo-bongo gig, Peter.
    Perhaps they’ll all retire for a spliff in the vestry after the show, a la Lennon, McCartney et al., after their Buck House reception? Eat your heart out, Tommy a’ Beckett!

  148. I tried to go to the link to American Digest, Frank P, and what came up on the screen was: FORBIDDEN. You do not have permission to access. What’s American Digest linked to? The CIA?

  149. Merkel wants Cyprus to change its banking systemhttp://www.dw.de/popups/mediaplayer/contentId_16686943_mediaId_16686712

    Oh dear!

    Not even in her party manifesto for her last (German) election!

  150. I had some rather unusual dreams last night. They included things like this –

    HEADLINE NEWS

    Gordon Brown and respected Economists say saving money is immoral – “People who have money must be forced to spend it.”

    Judges rule all prison sentences violate Human Rights – direct immediate release of all prisoners and closure of all prisons.

    Prince Charles and Archbishop of Centerbury say Muslims to be given exclusive use of St Paul’s on Fridays.

    Cameron puts all newspapers under management and control of BBC – promises that they will continue to publish all shades of opinion.

    Van Rompuy says Nigel Farange and UKIP to blame for fiscal crisis in Cyprus and are inciting Cyprus to leave the EU – directs European police to arrest Farange and instructs British Cabinet to dissolve UKIP.

  151. Frank P, I watched a bit of the induction. I saw some clergy friends there among the bishops, including one I had lunch with yesterday. But the bongo drumming did seem rather pagan and unnecessary. It seemed to be the sort of introduction of strangeness just for the sake of it.

  152. Herbert Thornton 17:25 – Chilling. If I had not seen the word “dream”, I would have believed it. None of your “dream” was too far-fetched.

  154. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100208468/for-crying-out-loud-archbishop-do-we-have-to-drag-the-nhs-into-everything/

    I have just posted this under the article about the AoC mentioning the NHS in his address, as I thought the posters here needed some Good News that this attrition has been with us for a long time; otherwise why would it have been included:

    Note particularly verse 10, but it does sound like common sense to me and I only quote from The Bible because it it is so fitting:

    2 Thessalonians 3 vs 6-15:

    06 In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers and sisters, to keep away from every believer who is idle and disruptive and does not live according to the teaching you received from us.
    07 For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you,
    08 nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you.
    09 We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to offer ourselves as a model for you to imitate.
    10 For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.”
    11 We hear that some among you are idle and disruptive. They are not busy; they are busybodies.
    12 Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the food they eat.
    13 And as for you, brothers and sisters, never tire of doing what is good.
    14 Take special note of anyone who does not obey our instruction in this letter. Do not associate with them, in order that they may feel ashamed.
    15 Yet do not regard them as an enemy, but warn them as you would a fellow believer.

  155. ‘Potential truth’ – an interesting concept! Personally I have enough problems discerning existing ‘truth’ – this new dimension will prove even more difficult, perhaps?

  156. Peter (17:37)

    Adds a bit of colour to the proceedings, no doubt. I suppose we should be grateful that no missionaries were boiled after the shin-dig. As far as we know, anyway. Perhaps your friend will put our minds at rest in that regard.

  157. My friends are not Anglican, at least those I mentioned as being present at the event. I hope that Archbishop Welby will be fairly evangelical and conservative. We must see. Evangelicalism in the UK is not what it was, and too many supposedly Evangelical leaders are starting to give way before the shibboleth of ‘gay marriage’.

  158. RobertC

    The King James version is better: loses all its poetry in modern lingo. One of the reasons Christianity is losing its way, IMHO. Modernists have corrupted the allegorical message; the reportage doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

  159. I’m not sure Christianity is losing its way Frank. I belong to a community that has a 2000 year continuity and has not deviated from the message. You are being persuaded by the condition of a modern heterodox variant that long ago lost its way.

  162. Peter from Maidstone and Frank P. –

    Alterations in the language of older versions of the Bible using the excuse of making it more comprehensible makes me suspect that it is too often intended to twist its meaning into something quite different in order to accommodate fashionable modern attitudes.

    Worse yet, even the original words are treated as meaning something quite different.

    For example the exhortation that is condensed into the expression “turn the other cheek” is, in effect, treated by many churchmen as meaning – “Now that you’ve buggered me from the left side, please bugger me from the right as well.”

  165. Peter from Maidstone
    March 21st, 2013 – 17:37

    Frank P, I watched a bit of the induction. I saw some clergy friends there among the bishops, including one I had lunch with yesterday. But the bongo drumming did seem rather pagan and unnecessary. It seemed to be the sort of introduction of strangeness just for the sake of it.
    ================================
    Seems the bongos were there for multiculturalism. At least they didn’t have muslims prostrating themselves in front of Prince Charles.

  167. Frank Sutton (21 March 21:07)

    For most of the population I think they must be very unusual.

    Among Wallpeople, maybe not?

  169. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/naturalresources/article3719554.ece

    “Britain has only two days’ worth of gas left in reserve as the country braces itself for another spell of wintry weather that will force up energy bills.
    Stocks of gas have been drained in recent weeks as households have turned up the heating because of the unseasonably cold weather, pushing demand to 20 per cent higher than normal. Last night storage facilities were only 10 per cent full, compared with 49 per cent this time last year”

    We knew about this nearly two weeks ago and, guess what, the weather has stayed cold!

    Although we might pull through without power cuts, I expect that the power companies will be balancing fuel to eke out what we have left and end up using more expensive fuel, like oil for electricity generation, with the extra expense passed on to customers.

  170. Frank P on March 21st – 18:36 ‘The King James version is better’
    For those used to speaking in the seventeenth century vernacular, it might be better, but for someone who had to have Tom Sawyer translated for them at school (I think I was only eleven at the time!), it would have been a step too far to use in teaching children! It would be like teaching them in a foreign language. We used The Good News Bible, because that was what was available, and it was recognised at the time that it was more suitable for them; better half a glass than none at all!
    The real problem is that all recent hard copy updates have been spoilt by accommodating minority interests and have changed the meaning of many passages. There are several versions being developed, online, using the ‘open source’ style, that are trying to ‘fill the gap in the market’. Even the New King James has it critics!

  173. Robert C:

    What needed translating in Tom Sawyer? I first read it at abt age 11, and it (along with Huck Finn) has a remained a much re-read favourite ever since. The exotic thing about the tale, to me, is the freedom which was, seemingly, allowed to children in those times.

  174. All you need to know about why the EU is f****d:

    “The EU continues to flounder around as Cyprus, a country whose GDP accounts for just 0.2% of the Europe’s economy, has proven the truth behind all of the “solutions” thrown around by the ECB and EU politicians: that they really don’t have a clue how to fix the problem plaguing Europe.

    Why is this?

    Because at the end of the day, there is really only one solution to this whole mess: DEFAULT… both by the banks and by EU nations as a whole.

    What happened to Wall Street in 2008? Banks that were over leveraged (meaning they borrowed far more money than they actually had on hand) went bust because the assets they bought with the borrowed money fell in value to the point that it erased the actual money they had on hand.

    Think of it this way, if you borrow $30 for every $1 you actually own, and you invest that $30 in various assets, you only need those assets to fall 3% (0.03 * 30 = 0.9) before you’ve wiped out almost all of your actual money (the $1 you owned and which you borrowed the $30 against).

    This is what took down Lehman. And it’s what is taking down Europe today. The entire European banking system is leveraged at 26 to 1. Lehman was 30 to 1, Europe as a whole is only slightly below that,

    And where did they invest the $26 in borrowed money?

    EU sovereign bonds… (as well as garbage mortgages in the various EU housing bubbles).

    When you are leveraged at $26 to 1, you only need the assets you’ve invested in to fall 4% before you are totally bankrupt. This 4% drop in asset prices has already happened across Europe, the only reason that we haven’t seen a systemic collapse there is because Mario Draghi, the head of the ECB, said he’d buy unlimited amounts of EU bonds.

    Note, Draghi said he would buy these bonds, he hasn’t actually bought anything since he said this.

    So why did Draghi’s statement matter?

    Because the primary assets owned by EU banks are EU sovereign bonds. And if EU bonds keep falling, it results in the dreaded 4% drop in asset prices that would wipe out all the EU banks’ capital.

    So Draghi stepped in last summer, promised to buy EU bonds, EU bonds went up, and EU banks could breathe a sigh of relief… for a while.

    But anyone with a modicum of common sense can look at this situation and say, “but wait, nothing was actually fixed, all that happened was Draghi promised something and the markets reacted.”

    PRECISELY. And that is what Cyprus just proved: that the ENTIRE EU “fix” was a huge lie. Nothing changed. Nothing was fixed. The banks are still leveraged at 26 to 1 and sitting on loads of garbage debts. And the EU countries are all still totally bankrupt.”

    H/T Graham Summers
    20 March 2013

  177. Malfleur @ 1.07.

    A nicely distilled bit of economics that. Anyrthing Draghi has or hasn’t done was yet another can kicking exercise that fooled enough so-called Masters of the Universe, and electorates to buy breathing space until they discover a magic money tree. they’ve not managed it yet.

    I wonder if anyone’s written the book which combines the 2 greatest disasters of modern times.

    1) Postive racial affirmation forces US banks to lend mortgage money to insolvent blacks by way of threats to their license to operate. Banks invent financial instruments to offload this onto everyone else on the planet and extends their use – they looked upon their work on Saw that it was Good.

    2) Meanwhile in the Soviet Union Lite an unfunded entitlement culture and institutionalised anti-democratic culture sapproaches its zenith.

    Stir well and serve.

    R5Live this morning had an interview with the acme of the modern politician, the one and only Simon Hughes. He was gassing on about a ‘new’ (oh my aching sides!) LibDump approach on immigration. It was extremely encouraging. More of the same utterly unconvincing evasive tripe which only goes to propel the ‘anyone but the top 3 party’ into prominence. A bubble politician, one of the biggest tracks of lying slime, one of the most persistent stains in our politicial underwear, who, thankfully, just doesn’t get it.

  179. René Décartes walks into a bar.

    ‘Allow, Mr. Décartes, nice to see you this evening. What’ll it be, then?

    Décartes draws himself up to his full height.

    The usual then? Or would you like a nice glass of Cabernet Sauvignon?

    Décartes opens his mouth and booms, “I think…not.”

    And, in an instant, disappears.

  180. The ever-dry Simon Darby made me laugh out loud this morning (your time)

    “Just seen the BBC news covering the enthronement of the new Archbishop of Canterbury. Thought the African drum troop dancing down the cathedral was a bold break from tradition. However, the live homosexual sex show in front of the altar might have been a little too futuristic.”

  181. http://cambriandissenters.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/hugh-grants-divine-right-to-privacy-is.html

    “Hugh Grant’s Divine Right To Privacy Is A Big Blow For Press Freedom”

    I thought Hugh’s complaint was that the Press had told everybody when he’d had a big blow? Seems he wants everybody to know when another of his crap movies is coming out but not that he was caught with his cock buried deep in some black whore’s throat in the back of his car.

    Similarly, Max Moseley wants everybody to know all about his boring racing cars, but then gets upset when his personal proclivities vis a vis ladies dressed as german guards are exposed (although, frankly, I’m nor sure which is the most boring – F1 or Max’s games)

    But the one I’m most disappointed with is Clarkson. Why donate Jeremy? You taught all the other celebs how to deal with Fleet Street when you smacked Morgan a good ‘un. If a few more celebs rearranged the reptiles teeth, there’d be no need for this poxy piece of ill-considered legislation.

  182. To RobertC

    PSALM 121 – KING JAMES BIBLE
    I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,
    from whence cometh my help.
    My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.
    He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.
    Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
    The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand.
    The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.
    The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.
    The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

    PSALM 121 – MODERN
    I lift up my eyes to the hills.
    From where does my help come?
    My help comes from the LORD,
    who made heaven and earth.
    He will not let your foot be moved;
    he who keeps you will not slumber.
    Behold, he who keeps Israel
    will neither slumber nor sleep.
    The LORD is your keeper;
    the LORD is your shade on your right hand.
    The sun shall not strike you by day,
    nor the moon by night.
    The LORD will keep you from all evil;
    he will keep your life.
    The LORD will keep
    your going out and your coming in
    from this time forth and forevermore.

    As the examiners say; compare and contrast. Just the rolling, sonorous phrases of the King James version; “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills”, compared with “I lift up my eyes to the hills” – no comparison there, the sheer beauty and majesty of the KJB is incomparable.

  183. Without diminishing the value of the Good News version in some circumstances, it certainly does lose much in the translation…

    I look to the mountains;
    where will my help come from?
    My help will come from the LORD,
    who made heaven and earth.
    He will not let you fall;
    your protector is always awake.
    The protector of Israel never dozes or sleeps.
    The LORD will guard you;
    he is by your side to protect you.
    The sun will not hurt you during the day,
    nor the moon during the night.
    The LORD will protect you from all danger;
    he will keep you safe.
    He will protect you as you come and go
    now and forever.
    (Psalms 121:1-8)

  184. Peter from Maidstone
    March 22nd, 2013 – 11:44
    ” it certainly does lose much in the translation…”

    Peter, you can say that again! “Losing much” is an understatement.

  186. Malfleur 01:21

    That was a very interesting article, thank you. The level of leveraging is difficult to grasp.

    My only criticism of the article is a vague feeling that the author is blaming some nameless bogeyman: “banksters”, “IMF” etc.
    Is there really some covert group who is in charge of this postulated Ponzi or is that my paranoia? I have often tried to figure out, is there a single group that benefits from this apocalyptic debt that the West finds itself in?
    Is the “political class”, whatever that means, clever enough to have devised, then implemented this complex scam?
    I note your previous comments on Qatar but suspect they’re too recently on the scene to have been an influence.

    To answer your question: je crois qu’il nous faut acheter un fusil d’assaute

  187. Verity
    March 22nd, 2013 – 13:26

    Oooh, goody! They’re blowing up each other now!

    ==============================
    My thoughts exactly! Of course it is tragic children being killed, but do the naive souls in Britain collecting for aid to Syria really believe the cash will be used to help the children? Even the BBC admitted yesterday that moslem terrorists based in Britain go to Syria for training and planning further attacks here.

  188. AWK – Yes, it is sickening that children are being killed. Children are also killed in Britain, and I think we should get our own house clean before we busy ourselves in Syria.

    The Japanese extraction of something or other from ice 500 – or perhaps it’s 5,000 – metres is promising. The sooner we can get rid of our dependence on Middle Eastern oil, the sooner we can leave them to their own devices and settle their ancient and modern grudges among themselves.

    One thing we could do is prosecute parents who have their daughters’ clitoris snipped off so she will never be tempted by a pair of humourous eyes and run off, wrecking the deal the parents had made with the parents of some boy. This nauseating assault on children is practised in order to keep money within the families. Why are they never prosecuted? We are OKaying horrendous cruelty to girls because we don’t want to offend mohammadan sand fleas. If a British parent paid an unlicensed indiviual to perform an operation on a little girl, they would be prosecuted stat.

    The sons of the prophet (soi-disant) are above the law.

  190. There is a theory, supported by medical opinion, that mo’ was an epileptic, and, when suffering a seizure, babbled incoherently. The locals thought he must be getting messages from some other world and prophesying the future of the earth as they knew it. A scribe took down the incoherent mutterings and translated it into what he thought mohammad probably said.

    That’s the theory, anyway.

  191. Now there is serious violence in Burma between Muslims and Budhists. The Budhists (according to the BBC) initiated it and have even destroyed mosques. Nanny BBC seems more concerned than when the Budhist statues were smashed by the primitive Muslims.

  192. AWK “according to the BBC, the Buddhists initiated it”.

    Right. We all know how warlike the Buddhists are. That Dalai Lama should be arrested. (I met him, by the way.)

  193. Verity
    March 22nd, 2013 – 16:55
    Be careful, Verity, be very careful. Your ironic words will now be used literally by the BBC and others of their ilk to condemn Buddhists, and especially the Dalai Lama.

  194. Eeeeks! You are right, AWK! How ironic that we are becoming as frightened as speaking our minds, or being ironic, as the East Germans of the Sixties and Seventies, but fearing not the government … but the BBC …

  196. Just a tiny little moan, I am fed up with companies on the www who ask for a password and then when you enter one refuse it on the grounds that it is not long enough or that it should be made up of both numbers and letters.

    I usually end up bastardising my chosen pass word by adding a single number at the front and another at the end, this usually works but I am always angry that the password that I have chosen (after all it is for me to use and remember) is questioned by a bloody machine.

  197. Frank Sutton – 00:50 ‘Tom Sawyer: What needed translating?’

    The words! The book was either Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn. I was used to reading non-fiction, mostly Science (Physics / Chemistry / Geology / Astronomy) in English, and it was just foreign: it does not compute.
    I can’t remember the problem in any detail, but I think I found it harder than Shakespeare, and later on, Chaucer, because with those we went at a slower pace to start with, focusing on the translation, and then went on discuss the meaning.

    I have worked with people from many countries, usually speaking English, but the worst was a man from Portugal. His accent, when speaking English, was so beautiful, it would lull me into a trance, so I invariably had to ask him to repeat what he said. At this point I had to pinch myself not to fall asleep!

  198. Verity – 15:57 ‘Children are also killed in Britain’
    Very true! And slavery is thriving here as well, TODAY! And from where it originates is classified!

  199. Malfleur – 01:07 ‘the EU is Donald (Ducked)’
    Perhaps the main objective was to stop Cyprus being a large offshore financial centre, supported by Germany, for wealthy Russians, and their laundry.

    An unnamed source says: “As recently as in January, Cypriot banks offered 4.5% for a 1-year deposit while other peripheral countries, including Italy and Spain, offered about 2.5%, and Germany 0.9%,” points out a note from UniCredit, adding that depositors putting their money in Cypriot banks would have made around €23,000 more since 2008 than those depositing in Germany.

    The problem is not why the EU, sorry, I meant the Germans, did it, but why didn’t they think of the unintended consequences!

  200. Redneck @ 15:15

    Not so easy in England as in the USA – but Peter from Maidstone found a source of helpful transportation last year…

    By the way, I read recently that by law every Swiss citizen is under an obligation to keep one at home…

  201. Hexhamgeezer @ 08:07

    1) Also nicely distilled!

    2) I don’t know enough about Russia. Could you elaborate a bit on the “unfunded entitlement culture”?

    And perhaps a new 3) – a make-work Chinese economy that keeps the plates in the air by building unpopulated cities.

    By the way, on the tiddlywinks question discussed earlier this week, the other possibility was that it was a warning to China’s own military. It has been suggested in the last two three years that the junior officers are gung-ho in the style of their Japanese equivalents in the 1930s and slipping out of civilian control. A timely word to them that war can be a nasty business and would not necessarily develop to China’s advantage would not have been out of place.

  202. RobertC @ 19:08

    The Germans have been particularly adept at exposing themselves to the nastier side of the law of unintended consequences in their regrettable 140 odd year history.

  204. Verity@March 22nd, 2013 – 15:57

    You are dead right to highlight the genital mutilation of girls by muslims, but let us not forget the ritual mutilation of boys by Jews.
    Yes I know circumcision has medical applications, but not for all male babies.
    These barbaric practices should be outlawed ASAP.

  205. David Ossitt@March 22nd, 2013 – 19:00

    not half as annoying as those ‘turing letters’ where you have to read some undecipherable script and type the letters into a box. Grrrrrr.

  206. Alexsandr

    Why are you linking the two? They seem quite clearly distingushable to me.

  207. Malfleur – If you are referring to Alexandr’s post of 20:21, I agree. Some people seem to conflate the two deliberately, in order to lessen the criminal horror of what is done to little girls …. so they will never have sexual thoughts or attraction to a man, and thus will never run off and wreck the two sets of parents’ financial arrangements.

    The wonderful (Muslim) woman, who was being sent by her family from Somalia to marry a muslim in Canada when she was a young woman. She had had her clitoris chopped off when she was five, to ensure that outsie sexual attraction would never put a spanner in the works of her family’s financial arrangement with another family. Anyway, being of sound mind, she abandoned the flight in Amsterdam and begged for asylum. Which she was granted. She repaid her adoptive country by working hard and eventually standing as an MP, winning a seat in the Dutch Parliament.

    But as she gained prominence (speaking against appeasement of islam), she came to the attention of the muzzies. They murdered her friend and colleague, with whom she was working on a movie about islam called “Submission”. She got word that she was next.

    She then lived for a couple of years in a flat with a treadmill, because she couldn’t go out for walks. She travelled to and from Parliament each day in a police car.

    Eventually, she moved to the US and met a man she wanted to marry, and they got married. She is working in a think tank in NY, and continues her crusade against the nightmarish mutiliation of little girls.

    http://www.bookerrising.net/2013/03/britain-ayaan-hirsi-ali-continues-her.html

  208. I have just read the Wikipedia account of the 1794 Treason Trials. It gave me a very creepy feeling indeed.

    Towards the end of the Wikipedia version there is a paragraph headed ‘Aftermath’ –

    “Although all of the defendants of the Treason Trials had been acquitted*, the administration and the loyalists assumed they were guilty. Secretary at War William Windham referred to the radicals as “acquitted felon[s]” and William Pitt and the Attorney-General called them “morally guilty”. There was widespread agreement that they had gotten off because the treason statute was outdated. When, in October 1795, crowds threw refuse at the king and insulted him, demanding a cessation of the war with France and lower bread prices, the Parliament immediately passed the “gagging acts” (the Seditious Meetings Act and the Treasonable Practices Act, also known as the “Two Acts”).

    Under these new laws, it was almost impossible to have a public meeting and speech at such meetings was severely curtailed. British radicalism encountered a severe set-back during these years and it was not until a generation later that any real reform could be enacted. The trials, although they were not government victories, served the purpose for which they were intended — all of these men, except Thelwall, withdrew from active radical politics as did many others fearful of governmental retribution. Few took their place.”

    The Wikipedia account makes me feel very uneasy about the situation today. The present policies, behavour and attitudes of Parliament, the BBC and and the Establishment very much resemble the policies and behaviour and attitudes of the administration and the loyalists during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

    Not just members and supporters of the BNP, the EDL and UKIP – but even newspapers, magazines, we Wallpeople and ordinary people in general who – like John Frost – happen to make an unguarded comment in their local pub that comes to the attention of the police have good reason to feel much apprehension.

    *This seems to be mistaken – John Frost was found guilty.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1794_Treason_Trials

  209. Ooops! I was referring above to Aayan Hirsi Ali! Sorry!

    And her friend with whom she was working on the movie “Submission” was, of course, Theo van Gogh, a descendant of the artist.

    Sorry, I bashed out the post in a big hurry. Google her to read more of this very interesting woman.

  210. Malfleur (22 March – 20:32)

    I wonder why you consider that the two procedures are quite distinguishable? To my mind that overlooks the main objection to them – that they are both effected without the mature consent of the girl or boy concerned.

  211. Herbert Thornton … “they are both effected without the mature consent of the girl or boy concerned.” Apples and oranges.

    Circumcision – which I don’t approve of in this day and age, it now being so easy enough to keep the entire body scrupulously – you cannot compare the two operations. The idea of the muzzies is to remove the possibility of all sexual feelings – not for elf n safety reasons (which have, anyway, long been resolved) but slice the little girl so that as an adult woman she will never be tempted to stray by a pair of flirtatious eyes or a man with a good line in chat. Circumcised men can still lead normal sex lives, and have a desire to do so. Girls who have had their clitoris sliced off grow up devoid of interest in sex. What the muzzies do to little girls is far more grave than circumcision.

  213. Verity (22 March 21:35)

    Verity – I don’t dispute that the two “operations” are physically different, as of course are apples and oranges.

    But on the question of whether there is mature consent by the person operated on what difference is there? Why would a boy’s consent be an apple and a girl’s consent be an orange?

  214. PfM @ 11.44

    Regarding the ‘Good News’ version to the KJV here’s another somewhat lacking in ‘esprit de vie’

    From Ecclesiastes 1.7 KJV

    “All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again”

    GNV

    “Every river flows into the sea, but the sea is not yet full. The water returns to where the rivers began, and starts all over again”

  215. Hexhamgeezer – 22:12 ‘‘Good News and KJV’
    I am sure there are many examples where the seventeenth century vernacular is beautiful and meaningful, even to a seven year old, but teaching children with a simpler version does NOT mean that they have to stay with that.
    The Good News Bible was written for children and those with English as a second language. I used it for the well known pieces such as the major Prophets and St Luke’s Gospel where the content was the most important aspect. I think I even said that it was in ‘easier’ English than the one in the church, which is what happens with most children’s books anyway.

    The real problem is that there are so many versions now that have had their meaning altered due to PC influence. There are web sites that manage to criticise every version that exists and where reading some versions will send to to Hell quicker than not believing in global warming!

  216. Hexhamgeezer 22nd, – 22:12

    “unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again”

    Funny how languages develop…I wouldn’t dare disagree with the scholars who translated the AV and who, using contemporary English, put such effort into avoiding possible misinterpretation of it but…’way back in the 20th century, I was taught that “from whence” was a tautology.

  218. Despite “from whence” not following the conventional or correct form, if you read the two sentences aloud the one that uses “from whence” has – I think – a much better rhythm.

    Like much of that Bible version, it’s written in a form of poetry: it adds beauty to the language.

  220. Verity (23 March 01:43) –

    “Ugly, not mellifluous? Chacun à son goût, de gustandibus etc..

    While I’m at it, I see that you also wrote (22 Mar 22 21:35) – “Circumcised men can still lead normal sex lives, and have a desire to do so.” Well, only up to a point, Lord Copper.

    Consider the effect of the removal of part of someone’s tongue. It will not stop the loser from feeling hunger. But it will deprive the loser of many of the sensations of taste.

    It’s the same with circumcision. It doesn’t prevent men from wanting or finding some satisfaction from sex – but it must of necessity both change and dull men’s experience of it.

  222. On the excellent Gates of Vienna blog, scroll down, past the islamisation of Norway, to … http://gatesofvienna.net and scroll down to Liberty in Great Britain, In fact the whole blog is vivid and horrifying. The blogger predicts that within 30 years, white Europeans will be strangers in their own lands, due to the dhimmitude of so many. This will lead to native British and other nationalities being minorities, with islamics dominant. Gates of Vienna has been one of my favourite blogs for four or five years. This issue of Gates of Vienna also contains an announcement of a new party in Britain that I don’t believe any of us have read about: Liberty GB. The man heading it up says that by around 2030, many Europeans will be the minority in their own countries.

    The Left is engineering the death of democracy in Europe. They intend to enable the muzzies to breed Caucasians out of power and, eventually, out of existence. And Left, as delusional and self-regarding as ever, expect the muzzies to thank them and elevate them to positions of power.

    Do go the link and scroll down because it is a vivid illustration of what is happening and that the people’s in Britain and Europe are not allowed to talk about. The only people who can get away with hate speech are the islamics.

  223. I don’t have a problem with many of the modern language editions, except for the fact that so many seems to mean that there is some other agenda going on. I use the NKJV for lections, but when studying I start with the KJV and look at others afterwards. I am not a version Nazi, but I do think that liturgical use requires a more poetic and cultured version.

  224. Here is a good piece, from a Lefty:

    Why we on the Left made an epic mistake on immigration
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2297776/SATURDAY-ESSAY-Why-Left-epic-mistake-immigration.html

    I like these quotes:
    ‘Parallel lives’ have been allowed to grow up in some places. Too often, the demands of minority leaders have been for a separate slice of power and resources, rather than for the means to create a common life.

    The fact is that the whole post-war process of immigration has been badly managed or, rather, not managed at all.

    There has been a huge gap between our ruling elite’s views and those of ordinary people on the street. This was brought home to me when dining at an Oxford college and the eminent person next to me, a very senior civil servant, said: ‘When I was at the Treasury, I argued for the most open door possible to immigration [because] I saw it as my job to maximise global welfare not national welfare.’
    I was even more surprised when the notion was endorsed by another guest, one of the most powerful television executives in the country. He, too, felt global welfare was paramount and that he had a greater obligation to someone in Burundi than to someone in Birmingham.

    It is worth reading the whole article because it states the obvious, yet it has been written by a self confessed Lefty. We need to rejoice!

  225. Verity and Herbert

    Well, I did add in my comment that it must have been contemporary usage.

    Just like the dozens of usages in US English that we look upon as sloppy, until we learn that they were our 17th century usages too. English as spoken in India, Singapore and the Philippines (and, I’m sure, many other places I’ve never been) uses expressions that died out in the UK a century ago, as well as constructions developed from their own languages. This language of ours, which we celebrate as a boon to world communication and understanding, will, in the next couple of centuries, become the next Tower of Babel.

  226. Watching poor old Justin Welby bashing his crozier against the door my immediate thought was, “Can’t somebody give him an RPG?”

  228. I thought Verity raised this nonsense that “from whence” contained a redundancy last year. and was batted back down. I know from whence cometh my help on the point. On the other hand,I think I must be a “version Nazi” as Peter elegantly puts it. I had occasion to see something produced in 1982 purporting to be a Bible when I attended a Sunday morning service at the local Anglican (or episcopal or something) church here, not to mention a hymnal which seems to have replaced Hymns Ancient and Modern. For me, all this new stuff since 1960 is the language of the Godless – but what do I know of such things since my older brother sent me The Passionate Sceptic by Bertrand Russell when I was at school and 18. There was one short prayer in the old language embedded in the service the other week, perhaps by some oversight, and when it was invoked it was as if the skies opened and the sun shone down on us poor mortals for few seconds.

  229. “From whence” – isn’t it a spondee by the way, where it gets its classical force?

  230. David Ossitt
    March 22nd, 2013 – 19:00

    YouTube is trying to get me to give up my nom de web (which has a digit added as there seems to be another Malfleur in circulation) and in favour of my real name which it has somehow collected from Google. It blocks the screen with its importuning every time I open the YT site – it is very much up the noseworthy. “Get a better name on YouTube” it says – some noive!

  232. Ostrich (occasionally)
    March 23rd, 2013 – 10:20

    Watching poor old Justin Welby bashing his crozier against the door my immediate thought was, “Can’t somebody give him an RPG?”
    =============================
    My immediate thought was of Wittenburg!

  233. OK, everyone. I went to the Oxford English Dictionary, which informs me that “from whence” is “formal or archaix”. There you are. Last word.

  234. Frank P – There’s been a general election in the US? There was nothing on the news about it coming up, or who his opponents were. Are you sure??

    My best friend is in the United States and is a committed Obama-hater at teh same strength as us, andhe has never mentionied an election. Also, there has been nothing in the British press …

    Please explain yourrself, sir!

  235. Re “whence”, I do think that “from whence” is stronger and thus more effective. I am pleased to find that I it is legitimate andf considered “stronger and more formal” than “whence” and will adopt “from hence” henceforth.

    Frank P … are you sure there has been an election in the US?

  236. I apologise for the bad typing above. The sun is glaring through the window and reflecting off the screen and the typing is barely detectable. And I even have a towel ove the window, and it still doesn’t shut it all out …

  237. “The bunch of a-Holes” was a given, Verity, once the O choice was made – on both occasions.

    And FFS get some decent blinds (as many have recommended previously); repetitive reminders of excessive sunshine elsewhere are not presently welcome here on these benighted and frozen North Atlantic islands in so-called ‘Spring’ – up to our ankles in the white crystals of global warming. It’s bad manners.

    Your current predicament conjures up a vision of Miss Havisham having difficulty with her abacus in Victorian midsummer as the early shafts of dawn pierce through a hole in a dusty broken window pane and induce temporary blindness as she tallies up her household accounts.

    “Estella” … close the curtains, the sun is glinting on my counting beads, how do you expect me to keep abreast of your inheritance ‘midst these distractions? Lazy girl!”

  240. Malfleur – 11:04 ‘Lefty DM article’
    I had commented on this earlier (no offence!), but had put it a positive light! 🙂

    One must look on the bright side of life at regular intervals, and today was The Day!

    The parable of the Prodigal Son can be used to guide us on how this DM article should be viewed. I would expect some of the meaning to be conveyed, no matter which version of The Bible is used.

    As you say, there are countless examples from which to choose!

    Here is another example of someone realising that the current liberal socialist view of The World is unsustainable; ironic, wouldn’t you say?

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9949819/Being-White-in-Philly-America-agonises-over-race-and-free-speech-after-article-sparks-furore.html

    Just to re-quote from my earlier post:
    ‘Parallel lives’ have been allowed to grow up in some places. Too often, the demands of minority leaders have been for a separate slice of power and resources, rather than for the means to create a common life.

    One can add that there are also sheep that will avoid power but still expect resources. For them it is 2 Thessalonians 3 vs 6-15, the passage that has generated much discussion this week.

  241. I am off to the Middle East for most of next week. I’ll start the new wall off and be online when I can find wireless.

    My main concern after personal safety is the heat as I don’t do hot very well.

  242. I just remember, from those BBC Home Service dramas on Saturday nights in the fifties, judges donning the black cap and passing sentence on the guilty murderer, “The sentence of this court is that you be taken from this place to the place whence you came, and thence to a place of lawful execution…”

  243. PfM 23rd, – 15:05

    “I don’t do hot very well.”

    It’s only March…you’ll be OK!

  245. PS – I apologise if my comment was insensitive. I would give anything for grey skies and heavy cloud cover.

    Frank P – Muchisimas gracias!

    The answer to Britain’s immigration suicide note is, mass repatriation. Anyone not having a bank account with more than — let’s say — Pounds50,000 in it should go. Adios. Farewell. Auf Wiedersehn. Even if you have to use electric cattle prods on them to get them on the cattle boats they will be returning on, go they must.

    I thnk I read the other day that Norway is now over 50% scuzzy muzzies.

  246. Mark Steyn revisits the Iraq wars and reminds the naysayers and re-writers of history of the positives; what might have been, had not the Stalinist Saddam been toppled from his perch and his increasingly megalomaniac aspirations:

    “The less unwon war” …

    http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/iraq-500890-war-america.html

    A timely reminder, particularly in the face of diminishing US will and Iran’s burgeoning bellicosity. And the ludicrous near-consensus among pundits, including even those who I thought had more common sense, that we should have left Mesopotamia in the thrall of Saddam and his beastly borgata.

  247. PfM 23rd, – 15:12

    “Its forecast to be 30 degrees where I am going.”

    30°C? Luvverly!

  248. Frank, I know lots of Iraqis. They wouldn’t want Saddam back but they don’t want the chaos their country has descended into either. There was always an alternative and it is reasonable to believe both that Saddam should have been removed and the country should not have been left without any structures whatsoever.

  249. PfM 23rd, – 15:48

    “it is reasonable to believe both that Saddam should have been removed.”

    At worst, the b*gger would have eventually died of old age, or being toppled (as would Hitler). I suppose what has to be weighed up is the damage the tyrant will cause during his remaining span vs the damage a ‘liberator’ must inevitably do in removing him. (never mind that the post invasion administration was the most embarrassingly incompetent that could ever have been envisaged.)

  251. Peter

    “They wouldn’t want Saddam back but they don’t want the chaos their country has descended into either.”

    Tough shit! Then they shouldn’t have allowed him to oppress them in the first place; when the citizens of any country submit to their own tyrants – who then proceed not only to oppress and kill them, but also get voracious extra-territorial appetites, they shouldn’t be resentful when extra-territorial powers step in and cause chaos on their muck-heaps in order to remove the external threat. The fact that America and its allies are not necessarily benign and efficient occupiers is neither here nor there. What imperialist power ever was? The Iraqis were quite prepared to accept the expenditure of US and UK blood and treasure during the ‘liberation’. No such thing as a free crunch.

    I think Steyn sums up the situation both eloquently and elegantly in his piece and I concur with it entirely.

    And let’s remember: if we don’t fight tyrants on their manors, we’ll have to fight them on ours. That should be obvious from the way we’re drifting into dhimmitude. The Mullahs of Iran and their front-man, the dwarf dickhead dictator and the ‘moderate’ Persian citizens should take note of Iraq’s ‘chaos’ and wonder whether or not they want ‘summa thet!’

    It should be done before the retaliatory powers of Islamic jihad are as lethal as those of the West. If that is allowed to develop, the ensuing ‘chaos’ will engulf not only the griping Iraqis but the rest of us as well. The comprehensiveness and speed of global interface in this day and age precludes isolationism. We either display strength and the willingness to apply it, or we disappear into historical oblivion. It won’t make much difference to me, as in a comparatively short period of time my personal historical oblivion will occur. But for the blinking of an eye that my footprints will remain on the sands of time, I want my motto to remain imprinted in them. “There are only two types of human: the fuckers and the fucked! Take your pick”. The emasculation of the West is imminent. Just take a look at the faces and demeanour of our so called ‘leaders’.

  252. I wonder how the tropical plants we were told to plant due to the global warming and lack of rain In the future are doing. ???

  256. Indeed by Frank’s logic, we are an oppressed people, and certainly the Western governments have extra-territorial ambitions which have led them to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. Since we will not do anything about our increasingly totalitarian governments it is entirely legitimate for foreign (Muslim) powers to come here and do something about it. This is what they think and are doing. Just the same logic. If British people get killed, they could equally say, ‘tough shit!’.

  257. Peter from Maidstone
    March 23rd, 2013 – 17:23
    Yes, Peter. Too many educated, well brought up, law abiding people were slaughtered. Nobody in the world cared a damn about them. Shiploads of Jews trying to escape were denied entry to Cuba and returned to be exterminated in Germany. Today, Israel is hated by many because it won’t be (in Frank Ps words, the fucked). This is a tough world, and only those who will not let themselves be dominated survive to live another day. I have read Frank P’s blogs for many years, before this site was born, and I know he is a proud and patriotic Englishman, and in no way advocates allowing the primitive moslems, or indeed any other foreign power to invade Britain. Yes, the Jews in Germany should have risen and done whatever possible to damage Hitler’s regime, and yes, here in Britain we should arise and demand an end to this traitorish coalition.

  258. Malfleur (23 March 11:30)

    Your suggesting that “From whence” – is a spondee reminded me of a (very short) explanation of the presence of dactyls and spondees in poetry given to us by our English master at the Lancaster Royal Grammar School. It all made good sense to me at the time, but now unfortunately all I can remember was that they had something to do with poetry rhythm. So I looked them up on the Internet, and tried to analyse the lines in terms of its explanation of dactyls & spondees, but I failed.

    I wonder if the rhythm of “unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again” can be demonstrated in the form of Morse code, thus –

    “dah de de dah, de dah de dah de dah, dad de, de de dah de dah”

    I’ve tried to turn that into dactyls and spondees but I can’t. Can you?

  259. Anne, you miss my point. It is not about whether Frank advocates Muslims invading us. It is that his logic supports Muslims doing so, and if we object then it is ‘tough shit’. That is what he has said about those killed and suffering in Iraq.

  260. ‘traitorish’ – I seem to have coined a word. Should have written coalition of traitors.

  261. Malfleur@March 22nd, 2013 – 20:32

    Let me make it quite clear
    I think genital mutilation of infants of either sex is abhorrent. I can see no justification in cutting children of either sex for ritual purposes. The infants have no choice in this so it is abuse.

    I find the stories of mutilated girls quite horrifying. But fail to understand why mutilating boys is considered OK

  262. Peter from Maidstone@March 23rd, 2013 – 15:05

    better the heat than the damp cold that is chilling my bones here in the midlands.

    where is spring?

  263. Peter from Maidstone
    Peter, I think we have both read Frank P’s comments differently. The best thing would be if Frank would kindly spell his hypothesis out in simple terms. I say, simple, because the cold has spread up from my frozen feet and numbed my brain!
    🙂

  264. Peter

    I’m not here to produce ‘appetizing’ pap. Nothing I wrote in that last post is ‘illogical’. We didn’t invade Saddam until he became a predator and put us and our allies in danger both through invasion and threats. We waited far too long imnsho to whack him. Stormin’ Norman should have followed through first time around; it was always obvious to me that there would have to be a rematch. Countries with tyrants as leaders should know that it may lead to discomfort if they let these bastards emerge. Far too many ‘citizens’ merely seek to join them in their oppression – or just jump on the bandwagon. All such bandwagons should lead to the chaos of hell. Rather them than us. Which was my point, as you well know. Preaching love and turning the other cheek leads to submission, which is what we are headed for.

    Your Jewish analogy doesn’t stand up at all. The diaspora was a way of survival; look where that got them? But now they have decided its time to make a stand on what they rightly consider to be their own patch. And I applaud them for it; support hem vociferously.

    We are propping up for too many tyrants in Africa and elsewhere under the guise of charity; for which our own corrupt politicans (tyrants in the making at worst if we give ’em half a chance, traitors at best) take kick-backs.

    Blair may well be a self-serving wanker; but the mistake he made was to proffer daft excuses to justify invading Iraq; Saddam had to go and that was always the aim as anybody with two brain cells know from day one. Bush jr. was on his way to take out Saddam anyway, Blair knew it and didn’t want to miss the party.

    The US should have withdrawn after the coup, realigned its nukes and issued the caveat, “Any more nonsense from you lot and next time we’ll soften you up from 30,000 feet and if that doesn’t do the trick, Baghdad first with one our big fizzers then, if necessary, Mecca second and Tehran as a finale. The ‘just war’ in Afghanistan was the real mistake. Wasting yet more blood and treasure in those God-forsaken mountains was insanity, given history’s pages on that warring shit-heap. Nation building is wanted at home where charity begins.

    Indigestible maybe. Illogical? My arse!

  265. Anne, the way I read it, my friends who are from Iraq and have friends and family in Iraq deserve to be killed and maimed and raped and robbed because it’s their fault they had a dictator and so it is ‘tough shit’.

    No one asks for pap. But that isn’t a very human attitude at all. The conservative roots of Britain, built on Christianity, always value human lives and do not treat them as expendable, just because they are not British.

  266. alexsandr (23 March – 17:57) –

    Very well put. Those rituals are both grossly barbaric and child abuse.

  267. Christianity may well have humane tenets, but it doesn’t cut the mustard when the tyrants aren’t Christian. Where were the Christian Germans, when Hitler was strutting his stuff? It took atheists, agnostics, yea … and some Christians … who were not prepared to turn the other cheek, aided and abetted by millions of commies, to beat him. Talk softly if you wish, but carry a big stick and be prepared to use it. My heart cannot bleed for the whole human race. My family and my country are paramount. Your friends should understand that and make sure they don’t let bastards like Saddam rise again.

  268. Peter from Maidstone
    March 23rd, 2013 – 19:04
    Peter I’ve thought long and hard, and it’s like between a rock and a hard place. Sorry to use such a over used expression, but it fits by feelings. Frank P’s posting of 19:30 sums up my feelings. Until men, and women of goodwill arise and refuse to allow tyrants to dominate then tragedy will always result. That’s why I rant here, I can see what can so easily happen here with the mainly passive citizens, who compose of the decent, educated sector allowing corrupt politicians to sell us down the river. I really hope I am wrong.

  269. AWK 17:46 — A very moving post, AWK. I agree with you.

    Alexandr 17:57 – The Jews, I believe, cut off a boy’s foreskin. Not his sexual organ. The muzzies cut off the girl’s cliotoris, so she will never enjoy sex and thus will never stray from her husband THUS BUGGERING UP THE FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS HER PARENTS HAVE MADE WITH HIS FAMILY. It is not for, as you seem to believe “ritual puroposes!”. It is not a ritual. It’s to conserve a deal they’ve done with some male baby’s parents. It’s done by some old crone on the kitchen table. Get your facts right.

    The government is too cowardly to prosecute those ordering the mutilation of their daughters to preserve a business deal.

  270. I see Fraser Nelson, at the other place, is refusing to sign the government’s new royal charter.

  271. Verity 23rd, – 19:55

    “I see Fraser Nelson, at the other place, is refusing to sign the government’s new royal charter.”

    Man’s got more balls than we gave him credit for. (if I may end a sentence with a preposition!)

  272. Verity (23 March 19:46)

    It is entirely understandable that you feel so strongly about the disgracedful economic motivations behind the cruel genital mutilation of girls in Muslim communities. But genital mutilation of both girls and boys also exists among many primitive tribes, where it is a customary ritual. The question of whether it is done for economic reasons, or as a ritual seems to me to be somewhat of a side issue (though it does serve the useful purpose of showing where it most commonly happens in Britain).

    The really fundamental and shameful aspect of the matter is that genital mutilation, whatever the reason, and no matter who inflicts it, and whether it is inflicted on girls or on boys, is a barbaric abomination, forced on its victims.

    I entirely agree with you that our own western society is so morally weak & timid (and I would add, ignorant) that it tolerates and even condones these barbarities even when committed in our midst.

  274. I think it is reasonable to assume that Fraser will do nothing without the instruction of his bosses and is happy to say nothing on various topics without the same instructions.

  275. Alex Salmond has announced a Scottish independence referendum date:September 18. As a matter of interest, could the UK (excluding Scotland)have a referendum asking whether we actually want Scotland to remain in the UK? Would it be legally possible?

  276. Back to the proposed censorship saga.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2297958/Drug-dealers-ebay-selling-ecstasy-HEROIN-doubles-sales-1MILLION-month–police-powerless-ban-it.html

    If they can do nothing about this, how long do you think it will take the internet to develop systems that permit free speech to continue without governments having the ability to interfere?

    By-the-by, I quite like this idea. My opposition to the drugs trade has always been based upon its societal impact due to the crime it engenders. If the less intelligent (and you have to be stupid to mess with this stuff) seek to potentially remove themselves from the gene pool – good.

    Personally, I’ve always advocated mixing all Customs seizures with Strychnine and allowing them on their way.

  277. I am pushed for time,so briefly:

    Alexandr and Herbert Thornton
    I have just one word: adenoids

    Robert C
    Apologies, I was distracted by foreskins and from whence. I especially liked “Meanwhile, parts of white working-class Britain have been left feeling neither valued nor useful, believing that they have been displaced by newcomers not only in the job market but also in the national story itself”.

    Frank P and Peter from Maidstone
    And yet despite his ‘cut the crap’ position on Iraq and acting in a timely manner to oppose the threat of tyranny, Frank P wasn’t prepared (assuming health permitting) to drive 30 minutes to find out if Tommy Robinson was a fit leader of the English Defence League because years before the EDL was founded Robinson had punched a plainclothes cop who intervened in a an argument with his wife and pn the anniversary of 9/11 last year had visited New York for a day to speak to a counter-Jihad group on a friend’s passport…

    Frank P
    On Verity’s heat and blinds – very funny! Sometimes I love you – really!

    Herbert Thrornton
    Spondees and terror dactyls. I’ll get back to you…

  278. Malfleur (23 March 23:25)

    I’m again at a loss – is “Adenoids” your way of saying “Balls”? And to extrapolate – are you also (without saying so outright) delicately indicating that you see nothing wrong with the circumcision of baby boys?

  280. Malfleur,

    Your infatuation with Paul Harris is touching, but why do you insist on trying to seduce me into a menage a trois?

    Football hooliganism diverted a great deal of police time and resources away from serious crime fighting in the late 70s and 80s. Gangs looking for a rumble on the terraces or for confrontation with the police on the streets just for the sheer hell of it are a menace. I’m not in the least convinced by the patina of ‘politics’ that some of these yobs have adopted, as police have cracked down on the football gangs. Same old shit. Hooliganism is what it is. If you consider that to be the spearhead of resistance to jihad, good luck with that!

  283. Today there was a report on a Canadian Internet news site (CTV News) that a second Canadian body found at the site of the recent terrorist attack on an oil facility in Mali has just been identified – as one of the terrorists.

    At the end of the report, there was a notice inviting people to “Be the first to
    comment”.

    Nobody had commented, so I did.

    I didn’t keep a copy of what I wrote, but it was something like this –

    “”Be the first to comment”? Why should anybody want to do that?

    After the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision about Hate Speech and our so- called Right of Freedom of Speech, Canadians are now afraid to write what they think. They are afraid that they may be hauled before a Human Rights Commission and fined and even bankrupted or sent to prison for spreading “hate speech”.”

    Guess what? About 15 minutes later when I clicked on the news site again, not only were no comments to be seen – but the invitation to comment had disappeared.

    Is England going the same way?

  284. Frank P
    March 23rd, 2013 – 17:06
    I have this ghastly feeling that your piece above will in all seriousness apply to us in about ten or fifteen years!

  286. Archie Ponsonby (03:10)

    Maybe even earlier than that; we’re no longer drifting into dhimmitude, we’re in free fall! Which is why I’m less interested in the plight of Peter’s Iraqi pals than in the incipient submission of our own country and its culture. It is to be hoped that Nigel Farage’s message gathers momentum; whether he can garner the sort of support that could lead to at least formulation of a coalition with the right wing rump of the Tory Party remains to be seen. I fear that the current bunch of Berks that have usurped the government would rather move even farther left to avoid such a convergence.

  288. I would have thought y’all would have been snowed in by gigantic snowdrifts and passing the time blogging madly. Instead, it’s been around two hours since Frank P posted. I something exciting happening that’s keeping y’all glued to the box?

    If so, what?

  289. Verity

    Climate is what we expect – weather is what we get. The snow has gone hereabouts, blown away by the a very chilly eastern blast, though. Sun shining presently – on my Nexus tablet too, but it increases the brightness automatically, so no problem. Very clever, these tiddly-winks! So I don’t even have to adjust the blinds.

  290. …TV banging on about Berezovsky; suicide suggested. He ran out of money – and friends, as a result. Conspiracy theories abound, of course. Who knows? He had a good run, considering .

  291. Waiting for the skinny from A Boot. He’ll clue us in, surely. Probably knows him.

  294. Peter from Maidstone
    Peter have a good flight, and find your friends well and in fine spirits. Be safe, be well and looking foeward to hearing about your journey. G-d bless.

  295. Anne

    … Looking foeward … Indeed so. One of them Freudian slips?

    Malfleur

    I can barely wait. Meanwhile, I shall hang on to my foreskin.

  296. Frank P
    March 24th, 2013 – 17:37

    Oh dear, like Verity I cannot blame the sunshine. Must be snow flakes in my eyes!

  297. Perhaps, in the coming week, we can have less circumlocution & imprecision combined with more circumspection and forethought and – especially – more complete coverage?

  300. I do like those little pocket sized bags made of foreskin.

    Give them a bit of a rub and they turn into holdalls.

  301. Frank P (24 March 19:30)

    I’m glad to see that you haven’t said that they were suicised. Hamgeezer’s effort on the other hand is a stretch of the imagination.

  307. Herbert T – Well, I liked the bit about ther robbers being shot dead, but I would have preferred it if the home owner had shot them. I like everything to be nicely balanced. It was terribly ineptly written, though and I’m still not clear on the details. However, this sentence caught my attention: ” His wife had called him home after seeing someone with a gun outside their window.

    ” His wife had called him home after seeing someone with a gun outside their window.” Well, she would, wouldn’t she? I’m still not clear from the writing whether the robbers turned the guns on themselves … extremely unlikely in Texas … or someone else shot them. If so, he would have had to be a good shot to get the two of them and should be lauded.

    Noa … “Why is Europe – invariably the first to cast a stone at Israel – so craven when it comes to confronting Hezbollah …”. I think you’ve answered your own question.

  308. I’m sorry about the repetitions above. The type kept jerking about on the screen … don’t know what happened.

  309. Noa

    (24 March 22:28) – Agreed, but I’m curious to first see what Malfleur really thinks.

    (24 March 21:25) – To even think about this problem has now become even more depressing. In Britain, (as in Canada) there are subtle new constraints on free speech. These lead to the likelihood that the expression of any opinion unfavourable to Islam will constitute a Hate Crime. Terrifying as that is, few people have grasped it or seem to care. Those who do care are increasingly going to fear the sound of a policeman knocking on their door.

  310. Verity (25 March 00:10) –

    I’m guessing, but if everybody agrees with the sheriff’s office that the pair shot themselves, that means that no further public money need be wasted on inquiring into the incident. Sounds sensible to me.

  311. Herbert Thornton 00:31 –How foolish of me! Of course! Everyone concurs that the two died by their own hands. File closed! What a fine sheriff’s office they have!

  312. Well, loathe as I am to say it, this week’s Speccie’s lead story, is headlined, “At last! A tango-dancing Pope!”

    That’s the liveliest headline they’ve had for years. It must have been Fraser’s day off when they came up with it.

  313. Sultan Knish … our blogroll, top right … has two excellent short (two- or three-paragraph) comments at the top of the page to close out the week.

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