Random Acts Of Papistry

Ah, what trials a new Church must undergo when faced with the world's snares!

On the very day of the United Kingdom's annual state-sponsored orgy of anti-Catholic bigotry, it is gratifying to see that the Italians, hopefully loudly and with arms flailing in gestures of hopeless braggadocio, have told the EU to get stuffitissimo as far as its direction to take the crucifix out of schools is concerned. Quite why a group of technocrats who would soil themselves at the thought of the harm that being accused of anti-Semitism would do to their careers should take it upon themselves to ban the crucifix from a public space where it seems to be wanted is beyond me; if they wish the 'European flag' to be worshipped, they should quickly realise that there is much chance of that happening in one of the Union's most Catholic countries as there is of its people worshipping washers or Polo mints.

Over the course of the next few days, the British media will carry many stories of children having been killed and maimed at anti-Catholic bonfires. The irony in this situation is inescapable; year in, year out, the celebration of a violent Catholic plot's defeat results in far more death, injury and violence being done to people, often to the most innocent and vulnerable of all, than that plot was ever able to inflict. When will we learn?

Wongaplonk

Delighted to see Simon Mann, Equatorial Guinea's very own Abdelbaset al-Megrahi (every country should have one), escaping the consequences of his own avarice. Hopefully the wonga plotting plonker will squeal to the rozzers like the good and loyal little milk monitor that he's been trained to be all his life, and that thereafter his fellows will be taken to the housemaster's study for a sound thrashing.

The British class system, which teaches those at its top that the rest of humanity and all its works exist for no purpose other than to enrich them - you gotta love it.

The National Banco Deluxe Royal Lloyds Of Halifax

While you might not agree with the law and consider the lawmaker to be illegitimate, the news that the British banking system, a network which should properly be operating under the name 'The National Banco Deluxe Royal Lloyds of Halifax', is in the process of being compelled to do something according to what somebody, somewhere perceives to be the law, rather than according to some airy-fairy ideology about light touch regulation, is good news. We could do with some more.

Let's hear it for golden shares empowering ministers to summarily dissolve any bank that fails to provide any pensioner with a penny less of interest on their savings than what is due to them, and to have the power to do this without compensation. After all, they're not normal businesses, so there's no reason why their share capitals should be organised normally.

Let's hear it for a significant strengthening of the UK's weak and unsatisfactory laws on the disqualification of company directors. Let's hear it for mandatory 10 year jail sentences, and both mandatory tagging and mandatory disqualification for life, for every director of every bank that fails in the future. After all, they're not normal businesses, so there's no reason why their directors should be accountable only under normal criminal laws.

Let's hear it for mandatory unionisation at every major bank, with shop stewards being able to close down trading with a text message saying 'Everybody out!' After all, they're not normal businesses, so there's no reason why they should enjoy the proclaimed benefits of a flexible labour market.

Finally, let's hear at least one prominent public figure proclaim that the banking system is founded on the sin of usury, that it's inherently disgusting and wrong and, like all sin, does nothing but pollute the characters of those who engage in it. After all, they're not normal businesses; so there's absolutely no reason why they should be afforded respectability.

Tory Charlatanry

The degree of contempt that these individuals appear to have for the British people seems boundless.

While regretting the idea that politics must exist among fallen humans, I, for one, am not one of those who consciously condemn political U-Turns out of hand as being evidence of a universal lack of good faith among politicians (there are no doubt thousands of examples of me doing just that in the public domain, but that's how I feel this morning). Entering politics is not unlike pursuing a vocation in public sanitation; it's a dirty job, but someone has to do it or the place would quickly become uninhabitable.

In the UK, far too many agencies hold unaccountable power, which they wield with an unbending, almost Satanic, arrogance. Journalists such as John Humphrys and Jeremy Paxman, people who have never been elected to anything of consequence, seem to feel that their positions afford them the right to barrack the peoples' elected representatives so insolently that it now must be asked whether such 'fearless questioning' has done more to undermine trust in politicians than any scandal (when you're in control of the 'off' switch on your interviewee's mic, dictate for how long they can be heard and hold the ultimate power of deciding what part of their words the public will actually hear, it doesn't seem so fearless after all). Commentary along the lines that 'they're all on the take' is nothing but the verbal flatulence of the saloon-bar, almost always rooted in deep historical ignorance.

Yet if the Tories were to U-Turn on holding a referendum on Lisbon, the degree of torque it would generate would not undermine trust in mere politicians, but trust in politics itself. One would hate to live in a country where everything is political, as the Soviet Union was; by the same token, one would hate to live in a country where nothing is political. In this regard, one can do little better than quote an anonymous commenter at Laban Tall's, giving those who bray for a reduction in the size of government some necessary food for thought - "Its... instructive to note all those white middle class vocal libertarians jostling in the queues at Heathrow for the next flight to Sierra Leone or Somalia, given that the state has ceased to exist in those places." Indeed. Government does have its uses after all.

However, if we must have politics then they must be consistent. The only consistency shown by successive British governments in policy regarding the European Union has been that the people cannot be trusted. This was going to be different. Now it's the same old same old. This is worse for the people than knowing that their MP built a duck house and charged it to the public purse. That can at least be excused as being the result of something on a long list of usual suspects, headed up by arrogance and greed. But a U-Turn such as that believed to be under consideration by David Cameron would be worse than inexcusable; it would be inexplicable. The marzipan that's been spread across this very bitter tart is that if the Czechs ratify, it'll be law anyway. That's guff. That's like saying that it's better to try to negotiate with a Great White Shark with his teeth in your legs to ensure that he doesn't eat your arms, rather than not to have gone shark-fishing in a dinghy in the first place. Either Parliament is sovereign in this realm, or it is not. Either the laws of the United Kingdom are paramount, or they are not. If they are not, one can understand just why some people become resentful of paying taxes when what they are paying for is a charade of democracy in which the participants are actively hoping that as many as possible of those upon whom they depend for their own and their families' livelihoods don't bother coming out to vote, preferring to watch 'Montel' or the racing from Newmarket instead.

If this is what David Cameron (where are his books, his articles, his vision?) thinks of us, I am at least grateful to him for reminding me why my vote for the Conservatives remains under indefinite suspension.

Going Back To The Days Of Nero

First we had The Dawk dawking about The Blessed Sacrament being a cannibal feast, now we've got the cosmically frivolous Marina Hyde writing that "...you're saying that by some magic the communion wafer actually becomes the flesh of a man who died 2,000 years ago, a man who – and I don't want to put words into your mouth here – we might categorise as an imaginary friend who can hear the things you're thinking in your head? And when you've done that, do you mind going over the birth control stuff?"

I wouldn't go so far as describing this lady's employment as a serious journalist being a reflection on how far standards in the media have dropped (although others would; would love to know how long that sentence is going to stay on the page); although perhaps it's equally uncharitable, one does have some sympathy for folks named after vehicle storage spaces. I mean, would you ever call your wean 'Garage' or 'Hangar'? No, of course not; to do so would be absurd, almost beyond belief.

Both The Dawk and The Boatyard seem to love describing Catholicism in language appropriate to the days of Nero; what neither of these two Clevers actually get is that while they think they are attacking the institution called 'The Catholic Church' (Boo! Hiss! Papishes! Jesuits! Red hats under the beds!), what they do when they attack its most sacred practices is attack its adherents' faith.

Given that many Christians were not intimidated into abandoning their faith even when Nero was ordering that wild animals would feast upon their living flesh, or that lighted pitch be smeared upon their crucified bodies so that they could provide some much-needed streetlighting (one way of keeping down the utility bills, I suppose), it is highly unlikely that many believers will be swayed by the jabberings of Dawkins & Hyde, and all the other folks who've drunk the Kool-Aid and think we're here because the sky fell in one day.

It should never be doubted that God has a sense of humour; but as much as they might not care to admit it, atheists like Ms. Hyde might even be doing His work for Him - by letting the rest of us in on the joke.

The Imposition Of Capitalism

Janet Daley is completely incorrect when she writes that capitalism cannot be imposed from above. If were incapable of being imposed from above, the phrase 'The Washington Consensus' would not now be spat out in many parts of the world like a curse.

How did that one work again? Yeah, you'll only get international aid if you denude yourselves of the means of paying it back. Wonderful.

Chinese Terrorism

Is this sort of terrorism ever condemned by the Chinese government?

And if not, wouldn't it be nice if it were?

The Purging Of Nutt

Unlike some others, I tend to be sceptical of Alan Johnson.

For the former General Secretary of the Communication Workers' Union to join not just any government but a Labour government committed to enforcing a flexible labour market, and then to compound that error by remaining largely mute when one is being imposed on those he used to lead, could make one question what his career as a trade unionist was actually devoted to achieving; a better deal for his members, or the foreman's job.

Yet he was absolutely correct to purge David Nutt. Nutt seems to be achieving a kind of martyrdom which gives a whole new meaning to the expression 'getting stoned', when what he seemed to be doing was interfering in policy-making. That was never part of the deal - advisers advise, the people, through their politicians, decide; or at least that certainly used to be the case.

If Nutt is suggesting technocracy, we would live in a world where everybody had an iPhone and nobody would know how to fix a leaking toilet. Technocracies tend to be hellish, a fact which Nutt, having now left government to spend more time with his Bunsen burners, will now be able to reflect on at his leisure.

There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch...

Or breakfast, or dinner, if you're a British soldier, it would seem. This particular piece of blue-sky thinking might be straight from outside the box - but making the chaps who are trying to stop the Taliban from eating our lunch buy their own is a bit mean-spirited.

I suppose it's just another footsoldier in that legion of anecdotes about how badly you start to think, and how even more badly you start to behave, when you give more consideration to the purity of economic theory than to the needs of human beings.

Hat tip Martin Meenagh.

The Tedious Repetition Of Old Canards: Part I

Some anecdotes are so good, they can't be repeated too often.

The journalist turned MP Martin Bell has one about Mikhail Kalashnikov stating that he would preferred to have invented the lawnmower rather than his eponymous rifle that, if memory serves, he repeats it in each of his books 'Through Gates of Fire', and 'The Truth that Sticks'.

Mr. Bell is greatly attached to the works of G. K. Chesterton; 'The Truth that Sticks', in particular the opening section, is peppered with Chesterton quotes, and in his book 'An Accidental MP', he recounts that he even quoted from GKC's poem 'The Secret People' on the night of his election as MP for Tatton; again, if memory serves, he quoted precisely the same lines ('Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget, For we are the people of England, that never has spoken yet') on his most recent appearance on 'Question Time'.

Mr. Bell's books display a humanity, an admirably Chestertonian common sense and, one senses, a great deal of personal charm that seems absent in many journalists of later vintage; although hoping for any improvement in the quality of modern mainstream journalism might be the folly of hoping for the triumph of hope over experience, one lives in hope. Mr. Bell is a model most modern journalists could do worse than to emulate. When he repeats his anecdotes, it's because they help reinforce the point he is trying to make. Sadly, the fact that one has recently seen the canard that both Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc were anti-Semites repeated on more than one occasion would seem to indicate that some journalists believe anecdotes are there to be used not to illustrate their argument's point, but its pointlessness.

Nailing Chesterton to the wall as an anti-Semite is a work of literary criticism worthy of a pedant. Let's see (ho, hum); there's this bit in 'The Everlasting Man' -

"It is true, in this sense, that the world owes God to the Jews. It owes that truth to much that is blamed on the Jews, possibly to much that is blameable in the Jews."

Anyone trying to pin anti-Semitism on GKC in consequence of this passage clearly cannot differentiate between the meanings of the words 'on' and 'in'; and their opponents can accordingly disengage themselves from the argument with a meaty 'Over and Out'. Such a lack of comprehension skills indicates a lack of common sense for which one could only recommend, well, a hearty dose of Chesterton. Next!

Ah, yes - the serious one; Chesterton promoted the blood libel, founded on this passage in, again, 'The Everlasting Man', perhaps the only one of Chesterton's works his slanderers have read; presumably like old wives thumbing through dictionaries in the hope of finding swearwords -

"This inverted imagination produces things of which it is better not to speak. Some of them indeed might almost be named without being known; for they are of that extreme evil which seems innocent to the innocent. They are too inhuman even to be indecent. But without dwelling much longer in these dark corners, it may be noted as not irrelevant here that certain anti-human antagonisms seem to recur in this tradition of black magic. There may be suspected as running through it everywhere, for instance, a mystical hatred of the idea of childhood. People would understand better the popular fury against the witches, if they remembered that the malice most commonly attributed to them was preventing the birth of children. The Hebrew prophets were perpetually protesting against the Hebrew race relapsing into an idolatry that involved such a war upon children; and it is probable enough that this abominable apostasy from the God of Israel has occasionally appeared in Israel since, in the form of what is called ritual murder; not of course by any representative of the religion of Judaism, but by individual and irresponsible diabolists who did happen to be Jews. This sense that the forces of evil especially threaten childhood is found again in the enormous popularity of the Child Martyr of the Middle Ages. Chaucer did but give another version of a very national English legend, when he conceived the wickedest of all possible witches as the dark alien woman watching behind her high lattice and hearing, like the babble of a brook down the stony street, the singing of little St. Hugh. "

Unless one is the kind of extreme cynic who would believe that the 20th Century's greatest advocate of common sense wrote this sentence alone and no other he ever wrote throughout his long and incredibly prolific career with his tongue wedged in his cheek, and compounded this lapse by being so sloppy that he failed to punctuate the words 'not of course by' as 'not, of course, by', the phrase 'not of course by any representative of the religion of Judaism' would seem to indicate a searing lack of animus towards Jews qua Jews and Judaism in general. What Chesterton was interested was the truth, or rather The Truth; helping people get towards it was his life's work, and false accusations of an anti-Semitism never did deter him.

It is hard to credit that Gilbert Chesterton remains so hated by Christianity's opponents that they continue to slander his memory over 70 years after his death. These slanders might arise from ignorance; but my own belief is that they arise from what Belloc described as 'hatred of the Faith', because they know what Chesterton stands for, a message that is precisely the opposite of theirs. He was a partisan of hope, they are partisans of despair. He will speak to people for as long as he is read; so I guess slandering him is a good way of discouraging his potential readership from making the effort. What they don't realise about the guy is that he was so cool that if he were alive today, he'd be on every outlet from Fareed Zakaria to Kerrang! Gilbert rocks - the jury is dismissed.

I have things to do today, but will be revisiting accusations of antisemitism against Belloc in early course. And if you don't believe that, you'll believe Chesterton was a fascist sympathiser.

'The Vision Of Judgment'

'He first sank to the bottom - like his works,
But soon rose to the surface - like himself;
For all corrupted things are buoy'd, like corks,
By their own rottenness, light as an elf,
Or wisp that flits o'er a morass: he lurks,
It may be, still, like dull books on a shelf,
In his own den, to scrawl some 'Life' or 'Vision',
As Welborn says - "the devil turned precisian" -

Byron.

Hooray For The House Of Lords!

Their Lordships have, pro loco et tempore, euthanised the form of medical murder known as 'assisted suicide' for England and Wales. The right-to-be-put-to-death brigade will, of course, come back for another bite of the cherry (it might even be time to open a book at William Hill's on which of them suggests using the Parliament Act to push it through; if anyone does, stick a fiver each way on Polly Toynbee and Joan Bakewell for me), but it is good to see that for the time being at least, their Lordships have recognised that a possessor's right to the continuation of his own life is a greater good than his legatees' right to his possessions.

Sadly, we in Scotland do not have a revising chamber; so we'll just have to see whether its leaders consider it to be all guid Scots' duty to lie down and take the needle in the arm for no higher purpose than due regard for economy. While that would be inexcusable, that would at least be understandable; but passing it to satisfy the demands of a peroxided old barbarian's ravenous ego would be incomprehensible.

Talking Bellocs

Apologies for the title, but it's the best I could come up with when confronted with The Dawk's most recent outburst against Catholicism.

According to The Dawk, The Blessed Sacrament is a 'cannibal feast'; a line of thinking that could have come straight from the time of Nero. Yet he outdoes himself with his idea that the Church's conception of priesthood as including 'the nastier idea that possession of testicles is an essential qualification to perform the rite'; you know, the whole 'cannibal feast' thang.

It's not very broadminded of me, I know, but literature which involves one chap discussing other chaps' gonads is usually a non-starter in my book, and accordingly that was as far as I got. In following a career as an evolutionary biologist, The Dawk has devoted himself to the principle that we have only reached the stage we're at because about 65million years ago, the sky fell in one day. It is not known whether this event happened on a Saturday night, thus blindsiding groups of large lizards fighting over the remote because they couldn't agree whether to watch 'Strictly Come Prancing' (although her tiny forearms were a bit of a barrier to free expression, Dad liked the hotty diplodocus from 'Dead Enders' doing the samba) or 'The T-Rex Factor'. On the other hand, it could have been the most interesting thing to have happened at teatime on a Tuesday afternoon ever since, oh, Grandpa decided to become a land-dweller.

Some men who are frightened of things falling on their heads usually wear hard hats to cushion the blow. Some of these men are also renowned for their harrassment of innocent passers-by. In terms of his career as an advocacy of atheism, that's the point The Dawk has reached. Assuming that the sky did fall in, it has never been proven to have had anything to do with us; and while one might feel some sympathy for the lizards who never got to see the episodes of 'Walking With Amoeba' that they'd recorded in anticipation of the rainy season, that's as far as it goes.

Where Does 'The Daily Telegraph' Stand On Democracy?

Reading this, I find it quite hard to tell.

Where Does 'The Times' Stand On Democracy?

Reading this, I find it quite hard to tell.

Down's Massacre

Given that the enforced abortion 90% of black, South Asian or Jewish children would rightly be considered to be genocide, it is hard to see how the voluntary abortion of 90% of Down's Syndrome children can be described as anything else.

This is the house that social liberalism has built - destroying the safest and most comfortable environment that a person will ever live in and turning it into a charnel house either because the wean will never be able to hack it at Suzuki violin lessons, or because mothers are under subtle, or not so subtle, cultural pressure to expect the infant that pops out to look like a cast member from 'Home and Away'; or because they're under subtle, or not so subtle, official pressure not to bring another unproductive long-term benefit claimant into the world. O 'Land of Hope and Glory', ye could yet beg to sink into the sea; Gomorrah might have easier time of it than you do on that day...

Where Thatcherite Self-Help Can Lead

The always interesting and thought-provoking John Harris has pulled out a fantastic quote from Conservative property guru and TV estate agent, the Hon. Kirstie Allsopp - "Communities have to save themselves" .

Indeed. In some parts of the UK, people believe they can do this by voting for the BNP; an act which Allsopp's fellow Conservatives seem to consider to be just about as rude and uncivic as asking why they feel their communities have to be saved in the first place. In most cases, this has absolutely nothing to do with race, but is instead a reaction to the Conservative destruction of industrial communities perpetrated just as lightly and enthusiastically as the consumption of some novelty between the soup and the fish.

The Fear Of Britain's Diminishing Influence

Why should Britain be afraid of becoming a small and uninfluential little country?

Most of the people in it probably don't give a f-f-fig for our lost superpower status - but the Establishment seems petrified of it. What might cause this terror is the thought of losing its capacity to make foreign wars in order to divert scrutiny awat from its domestic misdeeds and maladministration; and becoming a small and uninfluential country means that more scrutiny would be devoted to it - which is just not in the rulebook.

Lord Stern Is Apparently A 'Climate Chief'

Does this mean he tells it what to do?

If I wished to be the chief of anything, it would be the chief of making all the bloody economists just shut their mouths for five minutes a day; just five minutes. The silence would be deafening, thus improving our collective mental health, the economy would improve as if by magic and we would all lead very much happier and more productive lives.

Ending The Culture Of A Job For Life

It is gratifying to see that the Tory MP son, of, er, a Tory MP wishes to end Whitehall's 'jobs for life' culture.

Very well. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander; so when can we expect to see Francis Maude (MP 1983-1992, 1997-date) and Kenneth 'Fatty' Clarke (MP 1970 - date) being dumped out of Parliament through term limits? Oh I forgot, that's impossible; Parliament has to attract the best people.

Scottish Lawyers, The Nineteenth Century's Last Throwbacks

Not often one gets one of those rage attacks where one wishes to rip the laptop in two, Hulk-like, and smash the remnants against the wall; but seeing that members of Scotland's legal professions are going to participate in a debate entitled 'This house believes that trainees are there to be exploited' is enough to trigger one.

Oh, I'm sure that it will be full of dry Edinburgh legal humour, all daft wee gurns, rictus half-smiles and arch put-downs, and jokes about how many groats a printer cartridge refill costs; but even if the motion's proposers don't really believe it, it seems like an incredibly stupid suggestion to put in the public domain in the first place. Do some of these people inhabit the same planet as the rest of us? Have people like Joseph Chamberlain, Lord Shaftesbury and Charles Dickens made no impact on their lives?

Tories For Theft

George Osborne has suggested that banks pay their bonusses in shares rather than cash. This is entirely wrong.

There are no grounds, have never been any grounds, which can justify the payment of executive compensation in shares. In our absurd system which gives rights to those who have bought shares, things which can never be seen or touched, the common voting share is a symbol of ownership; if Mrs. Fidget up the street owns a hundred RBS, her hundred RBS are a hundred RBS that nobody else owns - they are her property, giving her certain rights to engage in discussions about how RBS is run, and to vote on its direction.

If Henk van der Bankbreaker gets hired as CEO and receives half his compensation in shares, he doesn't just get compensated; he also gets the same voting rights as Mrs Fidget and all the other owners as well. His possession of these rights dilutes the level of authority which the other owners are able to exercise over the company's affairs; in political terms, this is labelled a coup d' etat. In terms of rights of ownership, it's theft of their company by stealth.

Now, the Conservative Party might be in favour of such coups (I cannot recall whether it was GM Young or GM Trevelyan who remarked upon the Tories' desire to play Richard II to everyone elses' Wat Tyler, always in favour of the big boys); but to suggest that diluting the value of property rights should be the answer to a problem you don't have a clue how to fix does rather make a mockery of trumpeting the virtues of shareholder democracy. It's like saying a Tory vote is worth 100 votes for every other party combined.

It is also interesting to note that Osborne's suggestion seems to be founded on the belief that bonusses must always be payable, regardless of whether or not they are earned. It seems that it is now settled practice that bankers be able to pay themselves like pigs at a trough; the only question this seems to raise is with whose property. For the conservative, however, this is strangely gratifying; it is always good to know that some strongholds of tradition continue to stand against modernity's assaults.

Enough Already

The fact that the Lockerbie bomber has abandoned his appeal, never the action of an innocent man (it would be interesting to know whether the organs of the British state would ever have been as willing to show as much compassion to a truly innocent man such as Giuseppe Conlon as they did to Abdelbaset al-Megrahi), should convince even his most overheated and unreasonable supporters of his guilt; and our legal system is at even more risk of descending into engineered ridicule when the Monday morning quarterbacking of shrinks, presumably possessing little or no training in the Scottish law of evidence, is deemed noteworthy.

Moloch, Evergreen

If British children are considered to be 'undesirable' because of the likelihood that they will contribute to carbon emissions, thus enraging the green movement's false gods and the foodies whose jetsetting to Cambodia would seem to give them Sasquatch-sized carbon footprints, it will not be long before someone in the British Establishment publicly demands either their forced abortion, or the forced sterilisation of their potential parents. Instead of being furtively sacrificed to one set of false and lying gods on the sterile altars to reason known as operating tables (one would hope that at least one abortion clinic would have the intellectual honesty to decorate their altar with icons of dirty raincoats and wire coathangers, in order to appease the false and lying gods' demand that the ritual's participants believe that it's all for the mother's good), they will instead be sacrificed to another group of false and lying gods; angry demons apparently incapable of being appeased by offerings of sacramental Fairtrade vegan yoghurt and low-energy lightbulbs, presented by bearded priests adorned in vestments of lambswool cardigans and sandals, their ankles adorned with holy bicycle clips.

Why do the British hate children so?

Griffin On 'Question Time'

Nick Griffin cuts a stumbling, unprepossessing figure on television; it is hard to believe that he thinks the British people would, if left to their own devices, ever consider having a corpulent, inarticulate, middle-aged one-eyed man as their Prime Minister.

The BBC's pre-broadcast report on the broadcast on the '10 O'Clock News' was scandalous. It showed a clip of Griffin saying 'I cannot explain' why he had changed his views on the Holocaust without, if memory serves, also including his explanation that this was on account of his fear of the European Arrest Warrant. Although his mention of the possible role of the EAW in British public life might have been as inaccurate and misleading as his fellow panellists claimed, his citation of it should have been included; it indicated a rationale for his actions which the '10 O' Clock News' did not seem to consider worth reporting.

The only person to use foul language was a Conservative peerette, the only people using political violence were the antifa rioters who attempted to storm the studios, and the only person subjected to racial abuse was Griffin himself, when it was suggested that he remove himself to the all-white environment of Antarctica. Quite what Antarctica has done to deserve Griffin is anyone's guess.

Jack Straw's mention of the Indian soldiers buried beside members of the East Lancs. in France was touching, but would have been more meaningful had it been uttered by a member of a government which has not done everything in its power to prevent the Gurkhas from settling in the UK. If having Nepalese soldiers in your war graves is considered to be a good thing, one fails to see how having them as your next-door neighbours could in any way considered to be bad.

Similarly, Straw's outright refusal to answer the very straightforward question put to him about immigration was arrogant and offputting; not the actions of a man who could be considered to be speaking in good faith.

Chris Huhne was both as bland and as opportunistic as one would expect a Liberal Democrat to be, while Baroness Warsi was almost as far out of her depth as Griffin was himself; a state of affairs which, given the appalling mediocrity of all her 'Question Time' appearances, can now perhaps be considered to be a constant. As for the playwright Bonnie Greer, can anyone recall the titles of any of her plays?

This was not political theatre, but a macabre exercise in demonstrating not only how incredibly mediocre the BNP's leader seems to be, but also in throwing light on the evils of the entire British political system. 'Deep Space Nine' would have been infinitely preferable viewing; it might be fantasy, but at least the good guys win. Do we have any good guys left?

Back Tomorrow

Blogger had an outage during writing time; so reflections upon Nick Griffin's appearance on 'Question Time' will have to wait.

An Army Of Flexible Strikebreakers

One is not surprised to read reports alleging that attempts to reach a negotiated settlement to the postal dispute may have been sabotaged.

The Establishment wants the Royal Mail to be broken; and the best way to do this is to break its employees. It is ironic that a Labour government should collude in strikebreaking, because that's what the hiring of the 30,000 additional employees actually is. It's not a seasonal employment push; unless they have to go through six week long health and safety inductions, it's far too early in the year for such numbers to be necessary to assist with Christmas postal deliveries. It's strikebreaking, plain and simple, a betrayal of everything the Labour movement has ever stood for, and a disgrace of which Gordon Brown should be ashamed.

Maybe that's one of the reasons why our leaders seem so keen on having a 'flexible labour market'; under such conditions, scabbing and strikebreaking don't really carry quite the same stigmas that they used to.

Same Time Next Three Million Years

The Darwinists' dogmatic desire to prove that we are naught but gorillas with oversized brain cavities seems to have taken a bit of a knock. Oh dear, chaps; back to the drawing board, or, in your case, mapping some genomes. The hunt goes on; for these guys, there's always another little quarry just outside Frankfurt which might contain a piece of shale which might contain something that looks like a chimpanzee's toenail which might, on a sunny day and with a following wind, provide irrefutable proof of...The Missing Link! Woo Hoo! Those Christians will really get get one in the eye whose genetic characteristics they share with the bonobo monkey that day! Cheeta rules...OK!

Not quite. Once, it was poor wee Lucy. She proved to be a bummer. Next! Now, it's the Frankfurt lemur which has proved to have more in common with, er, lemurs than with us. Next! Biological reductionism might be comic, but it's the coarse, unpleasant comedy that used to be found on a Friday night at the Glasgow Empire; its critics are a tough crowd to please. Next!

It might be considered bad manners to suggest that that old silverback Sir David Attenborough be suspended from natural history broadcasting for having presented an untruth, in the sense of saying something which he believed to be true when it wasn't, to the public as a fact. When a news journalist does this, it's irresponsible and they run a high and heavy risk of losing their job; when a science journalist does it, it's...what? A surfeit of enthusiasm? A desire to have what you've believed all your life proved correct in the full glare of publicity before you die? The Christian should be aware that unless they happen to be lucky enough to be alive at the time of the Resurrection, the point in history when even the most urbane and sophisticated of the godless might wear expressions like, well, gorillas caught in the headlights, they are never going to have that intellectual satisfaction. The Darwinist and the biological reductionist, always seeking to justify their own behaviour by citing the 'law of the jungle', have no such faith to fall back on; and so the hunt goes on, that hunt which they cannot accept might never find its prey. Instead of reading about faith in a book, they would prefer to dig it out of a quarry. They are certainly free to reject Christianity if they so wish; by doing so while continuing to enjoy its fruits, they make a sight just as ridiculous as a man who orders the froth without the beer. Personally, I find their religious fanaticism quite alarming.

Next!

Recantations

"Martin Kelly, I should perhaps explain to the few readers who are following this that, while you are always welcome to post here, your contributions are not valued. I've known what they're worth since you assiduously posted comments to various blogs, including this one, calling for the Iraqi interpreters to be barred entry to this country and left to sectarian murder gangs. Your response to the inevitable criticism was not dignified, and I'm afraid that the comment you've just posted, about a depiction of dictatorship as crass and ignorant (though not as literate) as anything Anna Louise Strong might have come up, falls in the same category. "

Oliver Kamm.

"Your case is very strong. Let them in. I concede. I'm sick of being labelled a war criminal."

The blogger - just for the sake of the historical record.

Would I have written now what I did then? Who knows, and I'd prefer not to think about it. My original position was wrong, and I do sometimes say some quite moronic things.

Privatising The Weather

While the privatisation of the Student Loans Company would be only marginally more wicked and evil than the creation of the Student Loans Company in the first place, the suggestion that The Met Office should be included in The Great British Closing Down Sale of 2009 is absolutely absurd.

The Met Office has never existed in anything but public form. The fact that all of us have some kind of stake in the weather, whether we be farmers, ship owners, airline passengers or buyers of umbrellas, should indicate that it's not really the kind of thing that should, or even can, be run for profit. While all the Tamsins and Jontys in the mainstream anti-globalisation movement will no doubt be delighted at the growth in such folk activities as dousing, and sales of weathercocks will bo through the roof, the idea of the weather forecast becoming pay-per-view is somehow unappealing.

The idea of corporate logos appearing on weather charts is downright dangerous. Will all the lines indicating the presence of isobars be sponsored by manufacturers of knicker elastic? And while everyone will be fighting for the premium advertising space on ridges of high pressure, will forecasts of storms be omitted because nobody wants their brand associated with misery and destruction?

All in all, it's a bust of an idea. Better to leave it as it is, rather than having pilots having to stick their fingers out the window to check which way the wind's blowing because their discount airline has ripped out all the radar equipment on account of them being unable to afford the weather subscription, or millions of housewives using their tumble dryers on the hottest days of the year because nobody will sponsor the storm reports.

Apologies For Light Posting

I've been completely knackered for two days.

The Crime Of Saying What You Think

Tim Worstall, always a good egg even if one sometimes slightly hardboiled, really says what has to be said about the brouhaha concerning Jan Moir's perhaps untimely column on the death of Stephen Gately.

But the totaligayrian blackshorts are on the warpath, and, no matter what they tell you, dissent is not an option. As Mark Shea would put it - You*Must*Approve.

Czechmate

European Union pressure on the Czech Republic to sign the Lisbon Treaty in no way differs from the Third Reich's aggression towards Czechoslovakia in 1938; Czech independendence is being screwed over all over again as a result of the British Establishment's willingness to placate Continental powers; and its betrayal of the Czechs is just as odious as it was 70 years ago.

Discuss.

Why Political Parties Might Be Keen On Reducing The Number Of MP's

Reducing the number of MP's while retaining the whipping system would ensure that each MP gets more time to be disciplined; thus reducing the possibility of backbench revolts. It would be the death of the Parliamentary awkward squad, and our democracy would be poorer for it.

The Golden Share

Reports that Lloyds Bank is seeking another five billion pounds of taxpayer funds do not appear to bode well for the prospects of economic recovery.

It would appear that the banking bailouts have answered a question which has no doubt baffled many generations of puzzled borrowers as they sit outside freshly foreclosed dwellings; who does the bank manager go to for a loan? The answer should be clear - unlike the Lottery and its promise that 'It Could Be You', when a bank fails and runs cap in hand to the Treasury, They Know It's You.

The banks were, of course, 'too big to fail'; - a statement which although it's the kind of thing one might expect to hear in a Channel Five documentary on the subject of giantism, is also one which, in a world paid for with fiat money apparently whistled up by bankers out of nowhere, might just possibly be true. Except that the bailouts have shown us that it's not true, and very probably hasn't ever been true. If the taxpayer is the lender of last resort, the one the banks go to when they're in trouble, then the currency in which they pay the tax becomes convertible against the assets of the taxpayers just as surely as it was when you could exchange a one pound note for a volume of gold of equivalent value. It is one of those ironies of history that crop up from time to time that the perennial gales of creative destruction have blown us back to the days when money actually had some real value, and not merely the religious faith that we might be prepared to place in its value. Given the extent of the Inland Revenue's collection powers, it might also have turned the pound sterling into the assignat; but whoda thunk it?

There are a number of steps that could be being taken to ensure that such crises do not happen again once the banks are sent out from underneath our warm and comforting aprons in order to brave the cold, unfriendly world. The first is that the government should be appointing suitably interested independent non-executive directors to the boards of all taxpayer-funded banks in order to ensure that business is conducted to the highest levels of probity and responsibility. If they were minded to accept the appointments, I could suggest Dennis Canavan for the Royal Bank of Scotland, and Arthur Scargill for Lloyds.

Yet as interesting as such appointments might be, the only real way in which the British taxpayer will be able to protect their interests will be by retaining a golden share in supported banks after they return to the market; one which will enable them to close down failing banks immediately, and to sack the boards at will. If banks are not like normal businesses and cannot be allowed to fail, there is absolutely no reason why their share capitals should be structured like those of normal businesses capable of failing any day of the week. The moral hazard to the British public involved in not retaining golden shares and not removing the banks from shareholder democracy, thereby allowing Tarquin, Justin and Freddie to cock it up all over again, is too great. The banks are in public ownership - and it would be good for the souls of those who run them to be reminded that they are custodians.