Janus Revisited

It is sometimes difficult to know how to treat nationalists; I'm sure they're all very nice people, but their extremely middle-class prejudices are of the type that give being middle-class a bad name.

I recently bit the bullet of trying to engage with Scottish nationalist thought processes and read a book by the Scottish nationalist intellectual Tom Nairn entitled 'Janus Revisited'. Alas, the bullet was a rusty musketball, too long exposed on the field of Culloden. The kindest thing that one could say about it is that, to deploy a put-down once used by a prospective employer, the author has 'a few good lines'; if you can find them amidst the dense undergrowth of 'metempsychoses' and (my particular favourite) the almost Rumsfeldian 'particular particularities' - I kid you not.

And unless I've grossly misread him, and apologise in advance if I have, he admits to having been a Poll Tax Rebel; I was not, indeed paid the Community Charge while at university, and this experience has led me to believe that those who proclaim, indeed seem quite proud, that they are scofflaws aren't really worth an iota of respect.

Being a Unionist I am of course too stupid and coarse to understand such thought processes; but what Nairn seems to think about Scottish nationalism isn't in the least clear. As far as one could understand what it was he was actually saying, it seemed to be a sort of tartan-tinted version of 'Open Society', Karl Popper repackaged on a shortbread tin. And, er, that's it. But should Scotland ever become independent on such lines, there's one thing you can be absolutely sure of - the dinner parties will be fantastic.

Ireland's Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill..

has passed the Senead.

This bill permits a court to treat as fact the uncorroborated opinion evidence of a member of An Garda Siochana that an accused person is a member of a criminal gang. Let's see how that one plays in Strasbourg.

Show Me The Money!

For all of The Tartanissimo's sound and fury, and for all the in-yer-face whelping of his lapdogs, if you pay a portion of a bill which is also partly paid by non-Parliamentarians such as Corin Redgrave, it's hard to see how it could be a parliamentary expense, and accordingly you shouldn't really have put it on your expenses.

One of his followers, Sandra White MSP, seems to have either a bee in her bonnet or a bug up her backside about the amount of cricket shown on television in Scotland. She, and all other adherents of his rather seedy little personality cult, might soon have to acquaint themselves with the meaning of the word 'Owzat!'

The Use Of Water Cannon In Northern Ireland

Is this new? I don't ever remember hearing reports of that particular tool of oppression being used before. After all, water cannon always used to be associated with oppressive regimes; and we're a free people - right?

Also a bit sad to see that the baton rounds haven't been decommissioned. Och well, plus ca change...

Afghanistan

Out now. No more young British people dead. Neither the place nor the people are worth the effort.

Second thoughts, posted later in the day - I regretted writing this the moment I posted it. The Afghan people are Children of God just as much as I am. Their culture is most certainly worthless; but not the people themselves. This post did not meet the standards I try to set for myself, and I apologise to all readers. But what I have written, I have written.

The Relationship Between Scotland And Ireland

Having just returned from a week in County Cork, it is interesting to note that just about every policy advanced by any Scottish Executive of whatever hue in respect of curbing smoking, from banning it in enclosed spaces to keeping cigarettes off display in shops, seems to have originated in the Republic of Ireland.

This leads the author to three conclusions.

Firstly, that the deeply authoritarian nature of Irish political culture has not been mitigated by the Republic's integration into the wider world.

Secondly, that the Scottish Parliament is full of deadheads incapable of creative thought; we have to do it because the Irish are doing it.

Thirdly, that both Scottish and Irish nationalists are just like every other nationalist grouping that has ever existed anywhere in the world - they love the nation and hate the people.

Since July 1 2009, tobacconists in the Republic of Ireland have been compelled to keep their wares off display. They still keep them behind the counter but now store them in orange coloured contraptions which are supposed to work like cold drinks vending machines, a code being entered and your box of 20 Whatever You Likes dropping down to be furtively handed over.

In one shop I was in, the thing was already broken; but I'm sure their manufacturers have made an enormous profit.

Caritas In Veritate

There's a lot of reading in it, for sure, and to be honest from some of the synopses I've read I'm not sure I like what I see.

For example, Paragraph 57 reads "In order not to produce a dangerous universal power of a tyrannical nature, the governance of globalization must be marked by subsidiarity, articulated into several layers and involving different levels that can work together. Globalization certainly requires authority, insofar as it poses the problem of a global common good that needs to be pursued. This authority, however, must be organized in a subsidiary and stratified way, if it is not to infringe upon freedom and if it is to yield effective results in practice."

This statement does not acknowledge that no electorate has ever been asked whether they wish their government to pursue a globalist economic policy, the Global North having had globalisation imposed upon them by elites, the South by a World Bank and an IMF in thrall to The Washington Consensus; and accordingly it does not and indeed cannot address the fundamental question of whether globalisation, whatever it actually is, can be considered to be legitimate.

Globalisation is a policy, not a process, a statement I'll probably die with on my lips. Subsidiarity is well and good; but addressing why subsidiarity is now required when we have never been asked whether we agree with this policy would have been better.

Of course, these and other issues may be addressed in the rest of the encyclical. We'll see.

Still Here...

Keep reading.

Kudos To Peter Hitchens

David Laws might be a perfectly nice man in private, but the image he projects to the public is of a man so ambitious that he would not only stab you in the back to get what he wants, he would also stab you in the front - and twist.

It was therefore gratifying to see Peter Hitchens take both Laws and Iain Duncan-Smith to task on last night's 'Question Time' for their attempts to paint British Rail as a stain on the national history; a bad thing from a time of troubles, best never to be spoken of and quickly forgotten. If fairness is the criterion by which argument is judged, then it's fair to say it wasn't a fair fight; Laws's head seemed to move downward and to the left like a miniature action figure in need of a new battery, while poor old Duncan-Smith aimlessly lowed dogmae like an old bull let out to pasture, as purposeless as a Borg cut off from The Collective.

What Hitchens did not really get the time to say is that the reason the railways were privatised was the hatred of the people who run Britain, to all intents and purposes the same people for whom Britain is run, towards the idea that the British might ever be attached to anything in which they have a collective stake; and that if British Rail failed, it was not in spite of it being a product of British history, but precisely because it was a product of British history.

If our politicians knew any British history, they would have known that already.

Nationalise The SupermarKKKets

"One of the leading Manchester radicals, Archibald Pringle, who later wrote a history of the (Anti Corn Law) League, stated flatly that the manufacturers of Manchester, when they first opposed the corn law of 1815, 'took the untenable and unpopular ground that it was necessary to have cheap bread in order to reduce the English rate of wages to the continental level; and so long as they persisted in this blunder, the cause of free trade made but little progress'' -

Asa Briggs, 'Victorian Cities', page 122.

Cheap bread is still the name of the game - by any means necessary.

A Challenge To The 'Civilised'

All those wonderfully 'civilised' savages who believe infanticide to be a Good Thing, presumably because they thought it would spice up sex lives doomed to remain non-existent, should view the selection of images contained here. If they're hard enough.

I mean, really hard enough.

No mangled heads, nothing recognisable as limbs torn asunder - but still a consequence of their civilising mission. Hat tip Mark Shea.

Question of the day - if Scottish politics is a pantomime, Lord Steel of Aikwood is its Widow Twanky. Discuss.

Apologies For Silence

Things are a bit chaotic at the moment.

Hopefully they'll have calmed down in a couple of weeks. Or maybe not.

16th March 1998

In 1998, an MP named Gill asked the following Parliamentary question of Tony Blair, then Prime Minister -

"To ask the Prime Minister which members of his Government have attended meetings of the Bilderberg Group. "

On 16th March 1998, Blair issued a 'holding answer' - 'None'.

This answer is not compatible with the first paragraph of the Parliamentary Commissioner Standards' memorandum to be found here, which reads in full as follows -

"Mrs Lynn Riley, of Chepstow, Monmouthshire, wrote on 28 February 1997 to a Member of the House, alleging that Mr Kenneth Clarke MP had failed to register `the free trip and accommodation he received from the Bilderberg Group ... unlike Tony Blair who attended the same meeting'. She enclosed a letter from Mr Clarke dated 6 September 1995 in which he states that `my recollection is that I paid for my flight but that I was accommodated while I was there'. The Member passed the correspondence on to me."

If Mr. Blair registered 'the free trip and accommodation he received from the Bilderberg Group', why did he deny some years later that he had ever attended any of its meetings?

Standing Against Kenneth Clarke

Does any reader know whether Kenneth Clarke plans to stand again at the next General Election?

And whether there would be any impediment against a resident of Glasgow standing for a seat in Nottinghamshire?

If the answer to the first question is 'yes' and the second 'no', and even although it would be against my better judgment, quixotic at best, foolish and expensive at worst, I would be inclined to stand against him, if only to even try to make him explain his attendance at meetings of the Bilderberg Group to his electorate.

It is time that those who receive wages from the public explain why they hold unreported meetings in secret with business leaders, from which the voice of labour is excluded. We are not a plutocracy. We are not going to become one. Capital is only part of the economy; labour must now be heard.

Christine Grahame MSP

While perhaps an ungallant sentiment, Kipling's epithet 'jelly-bellied flag-flapper' springs to mind.

The Comparative Value Of Victims Of Police Brutality Perpetrated In The Interests Of The State

While Neda's death was undoubtedly tragic, one wonders whether the death of Ian Tomlinson produced as much comment in Iran as hers has in the United Kingdom.

The AIPAC Treason Case Has Been Dropped...

so Justin Raimondo reports. Source here.

Anyone see anything about this in the British press, or on the BBC?

The European Revolution (Or How A Group Of Idiots Who Dreamed Of A Universal State Will Find Themselves With Egg On Their Faces)

So, we're going to have a European superstate, the culmination of a five decade long revolution by stealth led by our elites - the muppets.

It's going to be just another off the shelf universal state, of a kind which has failed time and time and time again. They don't get this. It can't last, which means it won't last. Its doom is sealed the moment it either elects or pronounces a President. Many things now fall into place.

The sincerity of a man's conversion to Catholicism should never be questioned - but one just can't help but wonder whether Tony Blair's might just have been motivated, ever so slightly, by the thought of how all those Catholic voters in southern Europe might react to the prospect of a Protestant president.

It seems to be in the nature of European revolutions to de-christianise. The Star-Spangled Napkin which is the European Union's flag is quite literally emblematic of this tendency; thank God Chesterton didn't live to see it, because he'd have immediately recognised the circle of stars as just another of those wheels which symbolise Asian religions, always going round and round in circles, never going anywhere.

Unmandated pan-Europeanism is just that - unmandated, which makes it a dead duck, a dodo, a Norwegian Blue. Instead of realising that they needed goodwill, the revolutionaries have done everything they could to spurn goodwill. This means it will fail. All revolutions are driven by intellectuals - yet this is the first which the intellectuals have pulled off on their own, without the necessity of thugs doing their bidding in the streets. Subtly, they have turned the police into a 'shirt movement', presided over the expansion of police powers and assaulted civil liberties instead. Various means, same ends, different uniforms, common purpose.

Yet turning the agents of the state into their own mob has always had the capacity to backfire on them spectacularly. When the end comes, it will be without a shot fired, and not a bone broken. The identikit muppets who have thought all of this up and who think themselves so clever and superior will be betrayed by their own incompetence, and their sublime project will go down like a house of cards.

The Hounding Of Pat Buchanan

Looks like moves are afoot to get Pat off the airwaves.

If the toytown totalitarians fail through the medium of the message boards, the next step will be to have him declared either mad or senile.

Well, that's what Brezhnev would have done. It's their way or no way at all.

British Hypocrisy

The British government's concern over the fairness of the recent Iranian election almost begs for the Islamic Republic to call for the 2007 elections to the Scottish Parliament to be re-run.

Is there no way in which the British government is not the servant of globalist policy?

A Small Piece Of Good News

Here.

How many more?

A Golden Oldie

"If she rolls over, she'll smother him" - Raymond Chandler, 'The Big Sleep'.

If the quality of his acceptance speech was anything to go by, a reasonable man might have grounds to believe that John Bercow's election as Speaker was an outbreak of mass irony; constitutional performance art.

Those readers of a cast of mind morbid enough to try to get to grips with Mr. Bercow's thought processes can try a long article of mine that's now almost as old as he is. Can't guarantee that all the links still work, but it's a better class of timewaster.

And yes, the John Bercow who was elected Speaker yesterday would seem to be the very same John Bercow who, on July 4 2000, asked this question of Tony Blair -

"To ask the Prime Minister which Ministers attended the session of the Bilderberg Conference in Sintra entitled, How Durable is the Current Rosy Complexion of European Politics; and what (a) written and (b) oral report of the Bilderberg Conference was submitted to him. [128134]".

Asking questions about Bilderberg in the House of Commons? Is the man a conspiracy theorist?

Barack Obama, Superhero!

Here.

Murdoch And The Mullahs

Compare and contrast.

Probably being risky at the best of times, one wonders whether being a blogger in Iran hasn't recently become a bit more risky than it used to be.

Just like blogging in Britain.

Power likes to speak - whether it's wearing a beard and turban or a ten thousand dollar suit, it does not like being things being spoken of that are not on its agenda. Peas out the same pod, these guys.

Not A Minute On The Day, Not A Penny Off The Pay

The wildcat sacking of 900 staff at the Lindsey oil refinery shows that the neoliberal counter-revolution is in full swing.

There will no doubt be many among the Counter-Revolution's Bought Priesthood who will say that this is a Good Thing - those who have built careers by fostering hatred of organised labour. They will be delighted that this has happened at Lindsey, the place where their Counter-Revolution was faced down earlier this year. There is nothing that the powerful, any particular group of the powerful, hate more avidly and fear more deeply than the organisation of those who would stand in their way.

That was the motivation behind the crushing of the Warsaw Ghetto, the crushing of the Prague Spring and the crushing of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations. The UK has seen the same crushing, albeit in a very British, for which read half-assed, pantywaisted, fair trade, and crush-lite, kind of way - the crushing of union power under Margaret Thatcher.

One wishes Baroness Thatcher a speedy recovery from her recent injury - yet one does not wish to see her absolved by history for a rule characterised by her party's active desire to separate citizen from citizen. A close relative recently attended the dinner held in Glasgow to celebrate the 30th anniversary of her accession to power. Their description of it was evocative of a scene in a movie in which members of a former ruling party, long out of power and still unpopular, got together to chew the fat and have a knees-up.

The movie? 'The Boys from Brazil'.

The Thatcher government was not forward-looking, but incredibly regressive. In her excellent book 'A Very British Strike', concerning the General Strike of 1926, Anne Perkins quotes from a book written by an Establishment shithead called Sir Philip Gibbs in 1923. Gibbs's case was that the spirit of national unity fostered by the Great War had all been well and good, but times had moved on, and it was time to get back to business; as Gibbs put it -

'Back to cheap labour. Back to discipline'.

Those who make such remarks of course believe that they discipline, they are not disciplined; and in the same way as the apparently quite bloodthirsty Winston Churchill would have been keen to inflict violence on anyone he perceived to be threatening his constituency's interests, there would have been those in the Conservative leadership c. 1984 who would not have been happy until striking miners had been shown receiving the coup de grace in the back of the head on The Nine O' Clock News.

If people are free, they are free to organise in groups. Any attempt to restrict what the rights of groups can do is an assault on fundamental freedoms. The union reforms passed by Thatcher, and unchanged by Tony Blair, were such assaults on fundamental freedoms- pure Friedmanism, economic liberty (a term which should by now be synonymous with pillage) deemed to be of vastly greater importance than political liberty.

On Question Time last night, it was stated that British Airways has asked staff to work without wages for a month. Staff who might be affected should remember the General Strike's slogan - 'Not a minute on the day, not a penny off the pay'. Having been treated as little more than liabilities and costs for so long, they should have little reason to co-operate with any plan that now treats them as assets.

And if BA seeks to solve the problem by ditching refuseniks in the hope that Poland's still got an unemployment problem, I wouldn't bank on it staying in business for long. Do such companies actually think they have a right to stay in business? It's a tough world out there, don't you know...

Benedict Brogan

This gentleman's observations on call-centre workers could lead a disinterested reader to believe that he might just be yet another arrogant ass, desperately in need of a strong dose of humility.

I can feel the avian in the ascendant extending as I write...

L' Affaire Nightjack

The outing of the blogger Nightjack seems to me to have nothing to do with the ethical standards to which public sector workers should be held, and everything to do with the mainstream media being petrified of the competition. It was an act of spite, nothing more, nothing less; an attempt to ensure that the revolution will not be blogged.

A Stunning Lack Of Creativity

The report that a tax of 50 pence per month on fixed telephone lines has been proposed in order to fund universal broadband access has done nothing but further fuel my suspicion that whatever it funds will become a public good that will later be sold into private hands.

The lack of creativity behind this proposal is quite tedious. You can almost read the playbook from half a mile away.

There have recently been reports that proposals are afoot to allow the ITV network to carry teleshopping through the night. Again, this stale, grey outcome reeks of a lack of creativity - not amongst those who watch television, or those capable of being involved in the production of television output, but amongst the groups that those who control television would prefer to have access to it. It says much for two decades of encouraging young people to pursue studies in film and television that the only thing on ITV at some times of the day will be adverts. That particular scholastic adventure really worked out well. Whether it be competitive dominoes or the lives of the saints, ITV could show any number of programs at any time of the day or night and have the viewers packing them in, but they won't do that.

Not that the BBC's much better. When the farming programme that used to be broadcast at lunchtimes on Sunday is now the 7.00 pm anchor of the Sunday evening schedule, then the panic felt by those who schedule programs at the lack of creativity is almost palpable.

The same lack of creativity motivates the news that the Conservatives would not oppose Tony Blair's appointment, or even election, to the presidency of Europe. It would be uncharitable to describe Mr. Blair as a shopsoiled item of teleshopping tat, particularly when the observation would apply more directly to his reputation than to the man himself. Hoewever, that he might have the temerity to even consider putting himself forward for the job is sadly not outwith the bounds of credibility; that unmandated pan-Europeanism would become even more of a laughing stock as a result doesn't seem to enter their minds at all.

Dominant minorities are notorious for their lack of creativity; one of the reasons they don't get to dominate for long.

The Lapsed Catholic

Those Catholics who describe themselves as being 'lapsed' are always in need of sympathy; the condition sounds uncomfortable, vaguely orthopaedic, like the sort of affliction that could be cured by an insole.

Or a corset.

There are others who seem to view Holy Church as being little more than a voluntary association, in their minds reducing their absence from it to the same moral level as refusing to renew their membership of the bowling club in Yetts o' Pitmuckle. This is not to be in any way derogatory about fine bodies like the Yetts o' Pitmuckle Bowling Club - although from what little experience I have of them, I can only remark that their proscriptions seem vastly harsher, and their liturgies infinitely more complicated, than those of the Catholic Church.

There are those lapsed Catholics who struggle to reconcile themselves to the idea of God. It would be an interesting study to see how much these Catholics spend on haircare products in comparison to those who are in communion - one vaguely suspects that the reason they feel themselves unable to believe is that they don't like the idea of someone, or something, else competing for space in front of the mirror. Such devotion to the cult of Alberto Balsam will sadly only be rewarded in one place - perhaps, as the saying goes, because you're worth it.

Such 'lapsed' Catholics would do well to remember that the only thing that happens when you take off a corset is the advance of middle age spread.

There are those who have not fallen but eagerly thrown themselves into the traps offered by reason. Given its adherents' absolute refusal to countenance anything that cannot be justified by reason, reason can only be said to be the most grossly unreasonable dogma around. If the reasonable man persists in the dangerous error of reasonableness for too long, he finds himself being so reasonable that he never says anything but slogans other people have thought up - or studying economics.

Readers of a certain vintage might recall a Tom & Jerry cartoon in which Tom seeks to trap Jerry with a clockwork she-mouse modelled on Mae West. The plot inevitably goes awry, Tom swallows the clockwork she-mouse and the cartoon ends with him hiccuping and saying 'Come up and see me sometime!' Reading any and all comment upon economic affairs now tends to invoke this image - 'We don't need less globalisation, we need more of it! (Hiccup! Come up and see me sometime!) 'Britain must join the Euro!' (Hiccup! Come up and see me sometime!) 'The Scottish Parliament must have tax raising powers!' (Hiccup! Come up and see me sometime!).

Close analysis reveals that this is indeed the correct level at which most economic comment should be parsed; and that Tom & Jerry, now apparently suppressed from British terrestrial television, will outlast The Pie in the Sky Fairy is a bet upon which one might almost be tempted to put money.

Reason is of God, but not God Himself - a very difficult idea for the reasonable to get their heads around.

If all this sounds harsh, then consider this - a Catholic can no more lapse than a kettle can change the purpose for which it has been designed. Kettles do not make toast, nor do they have any place in a car engine. They serve one purpose only. Telling a kettle to go and dig a ditch will not miraculously empower it to do so.

The lapsed Catholic knows that they are in error - yet they also know that God is Love and will forgive them if they approach him with a humble spirit and a contrite heart. Nah, too much like hard work. Got a few ends of bowls to play. Got to do my hair. Got to think up new and ever more creative ways of making other peoples' lives difficult.

Having been 'lapsed' myself, there was never any excuse for not being in proper communion with the Church except egotism. Many other self-described 'lapsed' need the benefit of that truth - that there is no excuse for the path they've chosen, which leads only in one direction.

Get over yourselves, and do what you have to do. Because you're worth it.

Yet Another Enclosure

The Prime Minister's assertion that broadband access is seen by many as being 'as indispensable (sic) as electricity, gas and water' is, of course, drivel; he is duly ripped a new one in the comments.

There is only one reason why the British government would get involved in anything to do with the Internet at all; to ensure that the function could and would be privatised later, to thrust more common goods into private hands for far less tahn they are worth.

All very British, don't you know...

Some Thoughts On Mahmoud Ahmedinejad

I can't take him seriously.

He looks like The Fonz.

Netanyahu's Palestine

As Montesquieu remarked, Prussia was not a country with an army, but an army with a country.

If a Palestinian state were not to have an army - must not have an army - could it be called a country at all?

British Freedom

I am currently finishing up Naomi Klein's 'The Shock Doctrine', a book to which I am now attached for intellectual as well as sentimental reasons.

Ms. Klein's case, that there now exists what she labels a 'disaster capitalism complex' which seeks elite gain from human misery, and indeed at times seeks to inflict misery for no purpose other than to provide the elite with opportunities for gain, is so compelling that I suspect she's right.

It serves its function as polemic very well - you get angry reading it. It is quite clear that those who run the world at this point have not the slightest shred of compassion for those they consider to be inferior to themselves; I no longer find it difficult to imagine that unless there is a very significant change in attitudes over the next 20 years, within my lifetime the British state will reach the Nirvana to which the British elites have always lurched, the complete and violent enslavement of the people, the rich being able to kill the poor in plain sight and without fear of penalty.

This is the freedom many of the British elite craves; to take an open razor to their neighbour's throat in good conscience, preferably from behind and when he's on his knees, and in full confidence of their superiority.

The English language as spoken in the United Kingdom oozes hatred. The terms 'chav', 'ned' and 'underclass' are merely re-workings of the language that the elites used to describe organised labour in the 1920's; if nothing else, calling your opponents 'scum' and 'vermin' was more honest.

Freedom is what they say it is, not what you might like it to be. Freedom is for them, not for you.

The Coming Policy Agenda

Keep an eye out for calls for the reform, for which read either privatisation or outright abolition, of the British welfare state.

Friedmanism may be as dead as Friedman himself - but it will not go quietly into the night. After decades of inflicting economic violence on entire sectors of British society, whether it will become physically violent when challenged remains to be seen. To Friedman, the word 'freedom' only meant that businessmen should be able to act like gods. The poor, the sick and the weak had no place in the vision.

Consumption

Just as humans are not 'resources' to be used and discarded, neither are they 'consumers'.

The ideology of consumerism is just that; an ideology as fallible as all others, habitually telling simple people the lie that it has the answers to all their problems. It is not without reason that, when turned into an acronym, the well-known marketing slogan 'Buy One, Get One Free' becomes an extremely rude word.

Things are nice - but they're just things. When we lose our concept of the special relationship that exists between God and man, ruthlessly pushing ourselves to the front of the queue to get what we want, it's a very short step to thinking of other human beings as entities to be consumed. That's why the word 'foetus' features so strongly in all discussion of abortion; the wilful refusal of abortionists to declare the truth that they all privately acknowledge (even if it's only to themselves), that they are engaged in the wilful destruction of human life, means that the victim has to be depersonalised, turned into a thing - stuff.

The act of medical murder known as 'assisted suicide' has introduced into the West the Aztec theology that human sacrifice is good because the victim consents to it; death as consumption experience. As godless and Satanic as that is, its track is certain - regardless of the lofty statements of the deathmongers amongst the Great and Good (a profound misnomer, given that many of the people who are described in these terms are cheap and bad), it will be deployed on unwilling victims. It is at that point that we cease to become Caesar's subjects, but his prisoners; each of us a little Jugurtha or Vercingetorix awaiting ritual strangulation in the bowels of the Mamertine prison.

The tide will turn, of course: I just hope I live long enough to see it, because when it happens it will put the collapse of the Berlin Wall into the shade. A world without God cannot exist; and Our Lord's conquest of death means not just that He is our guarantor, but that Christianity is just about the best kind of gold card you can ever hope to hold - provided you follow the terms and conditions, you will gain everlasting life. And that's not 'too good to be true'.