The Hunt For Molly Campbell

The feelings of oppression and despair that Molly Campbell was feeling as a result of being forced to live in Stornoway are just shining out of her face - aren't they?

Whilst the news that Mohammed Sarwar MP 'hopes to track her down using his contacts in Pakistan' conjures up an image of the balding, overweight Sarwar pounding the mean streets of Lahore in deep cover like a Kipling character, one sincerely hopes that his efforts are informed more by a genuine concern to reunite Molly with her mother rather than with whatever electoral implications he might face in Glasgow Central.

After all, Glasgow's in the Central Belt and Stornoway's in the Western Isles - and Sarwar's own constituents are hardly getting his full attention while he's off playing The Great Game back in the 'hood.

You have to love the big fella, though. Despite living in Sotland for the past 34 years, only Mo Sarwar could come out with a comment like this -

"After talking to Molly I'll be able to let you know that she left the country happily and that she was not forced to leave. "

Some of us call that putting the cart before the horse.

However, Sarwar is at least doing something; and for that he deserves the limited benefit of whatever doubt is doing the rounds.

Sadly, neither doubt nor consideration should be afforded to the thoughts of Bashir Maan; and after his performance yesterday, he should never again be considered a credible figure nor have a role to play in Scottish public life.

He is quoted in today's 'Times' as saying,

"Mr Maan, the president of the National Association of British Pakistanis, defended Molly’s father, Sajad Ahmed Rana, over allegations of abduction and forced marriage after Ms Campbell’s appeal on television for her daughter’s safe return. He presented a different version of the events in which Molly vanished on Friday outside her school on Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides, and was taken by her father and oldest sister to Pakistan.

Mr Maan claimed that far from being tricked or coerced into flying to Lahore, Molly, also known as Misbah Iram Ahmed Rana, had begged her father to take her with him. He claimed that she no longer wanted to live with her mother in Tong, a council estate outside Stornoway, where they moved nine months ago. She allegedly told her father that she wanted to be with him and her siblings in Pakistan, where she had lived for three years until her Scottish mother was given residence...

Last year the father and children, who had all moved to Pakistan in 2002, returned to Britain for the wedding of Omar, the oldest son. While they were in Britain, Ms Campbell successfully appealed to the courts for the two youngest children to live with her, Mr Maan said.

He said: “The father went to see Molly a few months ago and she started crying and wanted to go with him. He told her that he couldn’t because he would be breaking the law. He left her there but told her he was trying to get access through the courts, and said the family would come regularly to see her. But on Thursday Molly’s sister and father went to see her and she was clinging to them saying , ‘Please don’t leave me here.’ ”

Mr Maan said that Molly had phoned the police, her mother and her teacher to say that she had left willingly. However, others said that Molly had not been in touch with her father, and believed that he had been planning to force her into a marriage. "

The Daily Telegraph offers a slightly less complete analysis.

The facts of this situation seem to be clear.

A court order has been made at the instance of Louise Campbell, perhaps after the representations of Sajad Ahmed Rana have been heard. It states the law of the land, and directs with which of them their daughter Molly Campbell, also known as Misbah Iram Ahmed Rana, is to live. Molly is a minor child, and although her preference might carry some weight with the court, and even although she might be deemed fit to make her own representations, the court must decide with which if her parents she should live on the basis of what is in her own best interests.

The court has spoken; for the moment, the law is clear.

Sajad Ahmed Rana has deliberately broken the court order - and Bashir Maan seeks to either justify or explain his actions.

Thanks but no thanks, Mr. Maan.

In the same camp as Maan is Osama Saeed, who's been quoted in today's 'Scottish Daily Express' as likening Rana's actions to those of the Fathers4Justice campaign; not the greatest case you could ever make for 'fathers' rights', nor the best mitigation you could offer for a scofflaw like Sajad Ahmed Rana.

Camilla Cavendish points out some horrifying statistics on the abduction to Pakistan of children resident in Britain, of whom no doubt some, like Molly, will have been the subject of court orders. That such orders are breached so easily speaks of a culture of contempt for British law within some elements of the South Asian community.

If such a culture exists it has to be smashed. It is uncivic and contrary to the rule of law which guarantees our freedoms.

So it's time to throw down the gauntlet to some prominent Scots-South Asians, and ask them some difficult questions.

What is Robina Qureshi doing to find Molly?

What is Ashraf Anjum doing to find her?

And what is Bashir Ahmed doing?

And where is the usually vocal human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar? Is there no effort he could make to reunite this mother and her daughter, removed from the United Kingdom in direct contravention of the laws which, as an officer of the court, he is bound to uphold? Has Molly's right to enjoy the protection of a court order made in her best interests not been breached? Is the right of all citizens to have their laws obeyed not to be observed?

Folks, at least Sarwar's doing something - what are you doing?

Foreign Criminal Of The Day - Chop Chop!

It is not often that a victim of crime manages to be imprisoned for their retaliation.

But Fidhel Mekki managed it.

The Soul Of Fidel Castro

My father, a Christian gentleman, is rather more generous to El Comandante than I am inclined to be.

The Wages And Productivity Conundrum

The actual data recorded by Steven Greenhouse and David Leonhardt in their recent 'New York Times' piece, entitled 'Real Wages Fail To Match A Rise In Productivity', will certainly be familiar to readers of Stephen Roach - however, reaction to it has been quite interesting.

Russell Roberts makes a not unworthwhile point in relation to the authors' failure to record the impact of benefits; however, the table he has produced from the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not really do much to reinforce his case - and David Leonhardt takes him to task in his 'Comments'.

Dean Baker notes the effect of depreciation.

The most interesting analysis has come from Tim Worstall.

Tim wrote,

"...productivity has been rising strongly, wages have not been. This sad state of affairs will continue while productivity grows faster than GDP. It explains all of the observed facts, without recourse to some conspiracy theory about screwing the workers, or the rich keeping it all for themselves."

Page 2 of Greenhouse and Leonhardt's piece records that,

"In 2004, the top 1 percent of earners — a group that includes many chief executives — received 11.2 percent of all wage income, up from 8.7 percent a decade earlier and less than 6 percent three decades ago, according to Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, economists who analyzed the tax data."

That's not a conspiracy theory - that's an indictment.

However, Tim's thesis perhaps contains the root of the answer to the question of why this phenomenon has come about. Putting ideological prejudice to one side, it would appear to me that this gross disparity between productivity and wages was not only inevitable, but actually should have been quite forseeable to any who cared to look for the evidence. It would seem to have been there for many years.

At the same time as value was being sought in manufacturing and some services through the use of offshoring, so too was outsourcing having an impact upon the market. The commodification of functions such as customer services or payroll created markets for these functions - and in order to win more business outsourcers had to produce more, while the more outsourcers there were in the market automatically lowered the price payable for their service. It doesn't take a great leap to assume that steadily lowering prices prices may have percolated down into wage stagnation for those actually doing the work.

At the same time, the way in which workers were paid was changing. Oxymoronically, contracting exploded. IT workers who might previously have been on payroll became self-employed, requiring them to find their own work. The presence of more contractors might have lowered the market rate. Every job I have had for the last three years has included an element of almost unattainable bonus. You have to work harder to make it. If the role of benefits in enhancing wages should be considered, so too should whether a drift towards the payment of bonus in lieu of salary has diminished it.

The effects of the revolutionary changes brought about by offshoring, the Internet and mass immigration notwithstanding, a disparity between productivity and wages would seem to be the natural consequence of the atomisation of the classical corporate structure that's been ongoing since the 1980's. Perhaps the very much more rapid pace of recent change has accelerated the process, bringing forward a day that was eventually bound to come.

Perhaps it's just another 'global imbalance' of the kind that might be corrected by, say, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

However, when the difference between how hard people work and how little they are rewarded for it is so stark, perhaps there is some truth in some words I wrote two years ago - that productivity gains while humanity loses.

Alice Thomson On The Welfare State

Alice Thomson, according to 'Private Eye' one of David Cameron's 'Notting Hill Set', correctly points out the role played by the welfare state in encouraging immigration, but spoils it with an almost vicious attack on her fellow citizens -

"...we should blame the Britons who prefer to sit at home in front of their wide-screen televisions, rather than going out to do these jobs. The British welfare system gives them that choice. There are about eight million "economically inactive" Britons of working age. Of these, only about one million are registered as unemployed. Another 2.5 million are now on incapacity benefit, and even ministers admit that many are malingerers."

That sort of comment could only come from someone for whom the welfare state is largely an abstraction, who hasn't seen the real human harm it does in their face or had to deal with its consequences.

During the 1990's, between 30% and 40% of the Vale of Leven's population was on some form of benefit. Within that population were some whose only complaints were idleness or poverty of spirit, for sure; but such a high proportion speaks of something else - deep, deep poverty engendered by the 'creative destruction' of mainstay industries, and the effect of aimless liberal morality on a people who, a generation before, were amongst some of the most industrious, skilful and productive in the world.

The people of whom Thomson complains from the security of her eerie are as much the welfare state's victims as its beneficiaries; and while it's perfectly proper to critique the welfare state, it is uncivic and grossly unfair to so casually sledge those whose spirits it has broken, or who lack the drive and intelligence necessary to become broadsheet columnists.

Fair Treatment of Foreign Suspects...

does not include them being permitted to return to their countries of origin while awaiting trial.

Det Con Carl Wooff...

is investigating a very nasty incident involving dogs...

Legia Inverness

The news that Highland Council is posting 'bilingual' job adverts in English and Polish comes at the same time that Inverness Caledonian Thistle has announced that it's looking to attract a Polish support.

However, two things about this report jump off the page.

Firstly, I have never been asked whether I support my taxes being used to support English/Polish bilingualism. That the English language skills of some Polish migrants are so defective that public sector jobs require to be advertised in Polish rather gives the lie to some commonly held Polish conceits about their own skills and capabilities.

Sercondly, when Donald John and Hamish Og thought up the 'bilingual' wheeze, did they forget their Gaelic completely?

After all, Scots Gaelic is one of the very few languages which treats a pejorative as a proper noun.

That pejorative is 'Sassenach'.

Thought For The Day

"Just as there are Americans who are not arrogant, warmongering hypocrites, there are surely plenty of people in the Middle East who are enlightened and reasonable. Unfortunately, none of those people seem to be in charge. If Gandhi reincarnated in the Middle East tomorrow, they would have to hold a lottery to see who beheaded him first."

Scott Adams, the creator of the 21st Century's middle class Everyman.

Foreign Criminal Of The Day - The Matronly Madam

Although her love for her children cannot be doubted, having admitted keeping a brothel Thanapan Kaewruang should not really have used her obligation to maintain them as mitigation.

The Rumpelstiltskin Of The Right

Lawrence Auster's ill-thought-out and ad hominem attack on Steve Sailer is on a par with the sort of garbage I used to churn out.

Unlike Auster, Steve is a gracious and civilised human being. At least that's been my limited experience of the bloke.

Unlike Auster, Steve attempts to address more than one issue. At the moment, Lawrence Auster's journalism can largely be summed up in three words - Islam is bad; not an insight but a statement of the obvious. For someone allegedly concerned for the survival of the American nation, as far as I can see Auster writes remarkably little about the dynamic economic processes acting and being acted upon it.

Auster is increasingly beginning to resemble a kind of Rumpelstiltskin of the Right, stamping his foot through the floor in his frustration at being thwarted. Nobody, not even Patrick J. Buchanan, is up to his standards. In his imagination, nobody else's political and cultural perceptions come close to sharing the depth and quality of his own.

Auster's is a blog written from a psychological laager, rich with the perfume of burned bridges - an angry love letter to himself of the kind familiar to public figures everywhere.

Usually written in green ink.

The Rising Wages Fallacy

Where Russell Roberts sees hope, Dean Baker doesn't.

The End Of History (For Sure)

Someone thinks Attlee was a greater Prime Minister than Churchill.

Hack Heaven (Or 'We Are All South Asian Muslims Now')

According to the 'Daily Telegraph', 'The New Republic' now considers Britain to be the 'biggest security threat to US', when the reality is that it's some Muslim British passport-holders, mainly but not exclusively of South Asian extraction, who should be viewed as the problem.

One shouldn't be surprised at the application of such a broad brush by 'The New Republic'. In the wake of the worst terrorist attack in history, a direct assault on his homeland, the first response of Martin Peretz, its proprietor, was to declare to his fellow Americans that they were 'all Israelis now'. He was wrong then, and his magazine is wrong about British citizens now.

The decision as to who should or should not be allowed to enter their country, their home, is of course one of the most profound rights of any sovereign nation of citizens; but if the American authorities wish to treat all British citizens as presenting the same level of threat, then, sadly, I have no interest in travelling to that great land.

The Difference Between A Colonist, An Expatriate And A Migrant...

is explained in the comments section here.

Cheesed Off With Blogger

I recently had cause to defend 'Blogger' on a post of Tim Worstall's; but this evening it has chewed up two days worth of work for the second time in less than a week, causing me to have to restore my archives again.

This has cost me tens of hours worth of work. I will also have to re-organise my links again, taking up more time in a task I cannot face performing at the moment.

This is not good for a Tourette Syndrome sufferer's nerves. I have been absent from work for a week with extremely violent physical symptoms, have spent much of that time having to wrap myself round my chair instead of sitting in it and really don't need this hassle.

Much as I am grateful for the ability to use the service free of charge, and although I am totally unable to create such a thing as 'Blogger' myself, I do hope the boys in California won't mind if I tell them that as a heavy and very loyal user of the service, I think it's gone downhill markedly in recent weeks; to the extent that a package which previously was very quick and simple to use has now become time-consuming, frustrating and complicated.

Sorry guys, but the upgrade's not working.

Blessinggate

According to the BBC, it seems that Artur Boruc's caution was for 'inciting an Old Firm crowd' and 'gesticulating at the Rangers support' rather than blessing himself.

The Crown Office has indicated that 'it would it would not take action against individuals for "acts of religious observance".

Although I'm not actually sure whether or not gesticulating at Rangers supporters is a crime under the law of Scotland by and of itself (I suppose it's all a matter of fact and degree), presumably the Crown Office's statement means that the wretched Patrick Harvie MSP is not going to get Archbishop Conti's scalp.

Good.

TotaliGayrianism

According to the BBC,

"Four firefighters are due before a disciplinary hearing over their refusal to hand out leaflets at a gay pride march in Glasgow....Some of the men were opposed to attending the event on religious grounds while others did not think it was part of their core duties. However, gay rights campaigners argue that firefighters are public servants who cannot be seen to discriminate."

The distribution of literature at a political event can in no way be reasonably construed as forming part of a firefighter's normal duties. These disciplinary proceedings are de minimis and the whole affair should never have proceeded to this stage. Strathclyde Fire Brigade should be ashamed of itself.

If you're a Roman Catholic in the West of Scotland, it's understood that you're fair game - even the United Kingdom's Communities and Local Government Secretary has expressed surprise at the caution offered to Artur Boruc.

But the anti-religious gay aggression of heterophobes like Patrick Harvie MSP, who would have a Catholic archbishop prosecuted for teaching Catholic doctrine, is totalitarian is character, if no other reason than that it would prohibit freedom of both conscience and expression.

If the lads don't want to be thought of as being nothing more than a bunch of narrow-minded bigots with no interest in individual liberty, they should be more wary of flying the pink flag.

Lambs To The Slaughter

Why does anyone go to Turkey anymore? Are two weeks of sunshine really worth dying for?

From One Conspiracy Theorist To Another

As much as I am a great fan of Paul Craig Roberts', I have to say I think that, by questioning the assassination of John F. Kennedy, he does nothing but give ammunition to his critics and foes; and he should see this, if he hasn't seen it already.

'The Siamese Twins, Illegal Immigration and Abortion'

Rosemary Righter's otherwise economistic paean of Polepraise contains a reminder that the 'population of Britain is increasing at the fastest rate for 40 years'; and the imminent 40th anniversary of the Abortion Act of 1967 brought this old 'Washington Dispatch' article back to mind.

Politics is not a series of compartments but a dynamic. Nothing ever really gets finally resolved and nobody really ever ends up better off, for each solution always ends up presenting its own problems.

Hablo Wolof, Porfavor?

"The government is treating illegal immigration as an administrative process. It is only worried about doling out papers, whether to legalise the immigrants, deport them or send them to other regions..."

Although the reader could be forgiven for thinking that that paragraph referred to Brtish immigration policy, it was actually referring to the Spanish.

Stalinist Glaswegian Ex-Drunks...

get the rough end of Tim Worstall's pen.

Well, I wouldn't argue about the Stalinist ex-drunks part.

The $700 Billion Haircut

Stephen Roach reports that, "According to Federal Reserve estimates, mortgage equity withdrawal exceeded $700 billion (annualized) in the first half of 2006 -- more than enough to provide an “extra” stimulus to consumer demand as well as to provide a substitute for income-based saving. "

As Roach points out, "a post-housing bubble shakeout could entail a haircut of at least two percentage points off the overall US GDP growth rate -- 1.5 percentage points via the construction effect and another 0.5 percentage point from the wealth effect" ; and that "the bursting of another major asset bubble is likely to be a very big deal."

James Hamilton has the numbers on just how fast it's deflating.

I guess someone should tell Larry Kudlow.

'You should be grateful that you're neither'...

is as close as I can get to an exact recollection of the comment I placed on Tyler Cowen's post, 'If I were a Muslim, would I be a Shiite or a Sunni?'. It was the first comment.

Oddly, it's not there anymore....it was short, and there was no swearing or anything like that in it...and of course one has not had sight of whatever other comments might have been posted.

But a little further weight is given to my suspicions about Cowen's strain of libertarianism.

Libertarians like him are economic totalitarians for whom free speech, unlike free trade, has its limits.

Foreign Criminal Of The Day, Part I - A Highly Industrious Pole

During the course of an almost laughably bad piece on immigration in 'The Crown Road South Gazette', Iain Macwhirter, the Paul Krugman of Scotland's eneuretic left, writes that,

"Scotland has long had a substantial and highly industrious Polish community."

Indeed it has. And at one point it included Stanislaw Myskza.

Foreign Criminals Of The Day, Part II - Old Yeller

US serviceman Dustin Yandell had a novel approach to settling matrimonial disputes.

He slit the throat of his wife's dog.

Foreign Criminals Of The Day, Part III - Sad Indeed

The conviction of Dr. Benjamin Deodhar for indecently assaulting three female patients led Judge Simon Lawler to remark that "It is sad indeed to see a man such as you in a criminal dock."

Although it's not half as sad as 'The Daily Telegraph's half-hearted admission that he's an Indian.

'Asian Apartheid'

George Alagiah, the BBC newscaster who's written an excoriating critique of multiculturalism entitled 'A Home from Home', is interviewed in today's 'Sunday Times'.
The interview records that,
"Alagiah says what third worlders despised about British colonists was their refusal to “learn our languages, eat our food or wear our clothes”. Now he accuses some of those colonising Britain of displaying precisely the same insensitivity".
Jasper Gerard's use of the word 'colonising' might have been accidental, but its use in that context and Alagiah's analysis are both absolutely accurate. As I remarked on a post of Dennis' yesterday,
"The idea that assimilation is not voluntary but necessary is what's been lost. On the South Side of Glasgow we have dozens of old guys dressed for the Northwest Frontier, whose English is limited to the words 'pounds' and 'pence'. It's ridiculous. "
It's not just ridiculous, it's actually offensive.
The old men wandering the streets in what look like their pyjamas have quite clearly never made the slightest effort to integrate themselves. They have never been forced to - accordingly, they have never forced themselves to.
More likely than not you'll only ever see a kilt on a Scotsman at a wedding - the rest of the time, trousers do nicely. If Scotland's national dress is only seen in Scotland on particular occasions, then why do some in Scotland insist on wearing the dress of other societies at all times?
Ignorance? Colonial arrogance? Apathy? Twenty years ago, a Bradford headmaster named Ray Honeyford lost his job for, inter alia, daring to suggest that Muslim girls be taught how to swim, and that it wasn't a great idea for South Asian kids to be taken out of school for months at a time to go/be sent to Pakistan. The Conservative government of the day did nothing for him, as was their wont - its new leader is less interested in maintaining the fabric of British society than in making his obsequies to Nelson Mandela.
Now, the evidence that Honeyford was right is inescapable - yet although hands will be wrung from now till Doomsday, no leader is willing to be blunt and tell some Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims that, in the interests of preserving social harmony, they must stop behaving like colonists.
As Alagiah knows very well, being British requires to be worked at; and a trip to Marks & Spencer would help a few folk start moving in the right direction.
Besides, pyjamas are for bedtime, not for the street.

Bernanke Comes Right Out And Admits It

Ben Bernanke is reported to have said that,

'Further progress in global economic integration should not be taken for granted'; and that 'Geopolitical concerns, including international tensions and the risks of terrorism, already constrain the pace of worldwide economic integration and may do so even more in the future".

But he also reassured the assorted 'central bankers and business leaders' attending a 'Fed retreat' in Jackson Hole that,

'The effort is well worth making, as the potential benefits of increased global economic integration are large indeed...The challenge for policymakers is to ensure that the benefits of global economic integration are sufficiently widely shared. Building a consensus may be far from easy, at both the national and the global levels.'

That's as clear an admission that globalisation is a policy and not a process as one could ever hope for. To the elites being addressed by Bernanke, the fact it's never been voted for is entirely irrelevant; after all, Tony Blair prefers to address the minions of Rupert Murdoch rather than Parliament (Hat tip Brian Barder).

The economists can't even agree on the economics. Writing in yesterday's 'Times', James Harding referred to 'the outsourcing time-bomb'. Harding's analogy is not at all inexact - globalisation is a bomb, a bomb that annihilates our childrens' futures; and the bombers are those like Bernanke who foolishly think that exporting every economic activity to where it can be performed at its lowest cost makes us all richer.

But Bernanke's darn tootin' right about 'a consensus being far from easy'. He and his fellow globalists could find that the nation state will die slightly harder than they might imagine.

Or like.

I Do (But You Don't)

According to RTE, Ireland's new immigration bill may prevent illegals and asylum seekers "from getting married as a basis for becoming an Irish resident".

The Seven Brides for Seven Brothers Gang must be grateful that they set up shop in Croydon.

Russia Still Has A Long Way To Go...

a very long way indeed.

When their country and their leader are being demonised unnecessarily, it ill behooves Russians to behave like demons.

Foreign Rapists In Northern Ireland

After the arrest of the Petraitus brothers comes another report from the Six Counties where "Detectives want to hear from a man, said to be over 6ft tall with a broken English accent", in relation to a rape.

Immigration's fantastic, isn't it?

Oops, He's Done It Again

It seems that my fellow Glaswegian Niall Ferguson, the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and self-described 'fully paid-up member of the neo-imperialist gang', has slipped back into his old ways.

Not his habit of trashing Scotland.

Nor his absurd posturing beside tanks.

Nor his floating of canards.

Nope, it's his morbid speculation on whose going to cop it next.

And his conclusion that an atrocity of the kind alleged to have recently been foiled will eventually take place seems rooted more in his own imagination than in reality.

The Ambler On The Future Of Conservatism

Kevin Michael Grace writes,

"...the question isn't whether "conservatives" can "work with" "free-marketeers," "capitalists," "libertarians" and other such tribunes of pitiless ideology. The question is how those that believe in God and human dignity can extricate themselves from the "conservative movement." Failing that, I would suggest we abandon politics as a mug's game and learn to cultivate our own gardens."

Absolutely, Kevin.

The Blogger's Nightmare

For a terrible hour, I thought I had lost my archives.

But they're still there.

The thought of losing 1,692 entries over nearly eight months is pretty horrible.

Blessed Are The Goalkeepers...

for they shall be cautioned...

For some folks, the Reformation clearly ain't over...

The Brothers Petraitus

Hmm, wonder where these boys come from?

The Skirmish Of Civilisations

The Daily Telegraph reports today on a poll which indicated that 53pc of Brits consider Islam to be 'a threat to the West'.

There is a significant flaw in the piece.

It states that,

"The findings were revealed as Ruth Kelly, the Communities Secretary, conceded that the multi-culturalist approach encouraged by the Left for two decades had probably been a mistake and could have contributed to the alienation that many young Muslims said they felt and experienced."

Multiculturalism has been encouraged by the right as much as the left - the left actively, the right passively by failing to oppose it from the outset. Also, multiculturalism began in earnest with the Race Relations Act of 1967. It did not spring fully formed from the head of Polly Toynbee.

However, the YouGov study shows some interesting flip-flops in the public's opinion of the religion of peace;

"The proportion of those who believe that "a large proportion of British Muslims feel no sense of loyalty to this country and are prepared to condone or even carry out acts of terrorism" has nearly doubled from 10 per cent a year ago to 18 per cent now.
The number who believe that "practically all British Muslims are peaceful, law-abiding citizens who deplore terrorist acts as much as any- one else" has fallen from 23 per cent in July last year to 16 per cent. However, there remains strong opposition to the security profiling of airline passengers based on their ethnicity or religion...

Most strikingly, there has been a substantial increase over the past five years in the numbers who appear to subscribe to a belief in a clash of civilisations. When YouGov asked in 2001 whether people felt threatened by Islam, as distinct from fundamentalist Islamists, only 32 per cent said they did. That figure has risen to 53 per cent.
Five years ago, a majority of two to one thought that Islam posed no threat, or only a negligible one, to democracy. Now, by a similar ratio, people think it is a serious threat."

It's amazing just what effect 52 corpses on London's public transport network had on perceptions.

Talk of a 'clash of civilisations' in the context of the United Kingdom is a load of nonsense. The UK is 85-90% non-Islamic - if Muslims make up as much as 5% of the population I'd be surprised.

In the face of such numbers, Muslims struggling here have two options - assimilate (and preferably convert to Christianity) or get out. The particularly Muslim combination of whining, veiled threats and outright violence is clearly starting to wear thin on John Bull's nerves.

What we do not have is a 'clash of civilisations', but a skirmish between a Western civilisation and an uncivilised other. The only actual 'clash of civilisations' taking place is between those non-Muslim Brits who see Islam for what it is, just another form of totalitarianism to be opposed, and the eneuretic Left which dominates the commanding heights of government, all mainstream political parties and the media - for the moment, anyway.

Totalitarianism such as Islam's demands ideology; and ideologies, all ideologies, have a limited shelf-life. Islam's got to be top dog - that's its ideology. However, the impending anniversary of Hurricane Katrina should remind us that the collapsed levees of Lake Pontchartrain were to all intents and purposes 'Neoconservatism's Berlin Wall'; where the ideology that demanded global projection of national power was shown to be unable to project national power nationally.

As a working ideology it was finished, washed away with the mud of the Mississippi.

All ideologies talk of new ways, new orders, how everything will be great under the new system; but they never, ever deliver. They all do damage, hurt people, help the ideologues have great sex and get rich and then they vanish into either obscurity or unimportance.

Islam in the United Kingdom, or anywhere else with a predominantly non-Muslim population, is not going to be any different.

The old mills of Bradford which attracted that South Asian labour whose progeny now prefer the shout of 'Allahu Akbar!' to 'God save the Queen!' are now no more. Their place in history is gone, and no matter how vocal, Islam in the United Kingdom is going to go the same way. Its demise is going to come from non-Muslim opposition, although Muslims will inevitably have a role to play in killing it.

I don't buy the demographic argument. Those who complain that the western birth rate is too low forget that this too may be subject to change - there could be a marked revival in the next five or ten years. Our current Georgian licentiousness could soon be replaced by a new Victorian propriety, a perfectly forseeable outcome of one too many series of 'Big Brother'. History is not a constant - but it does have trends which mirror the foibles of human nature.

For example, people can have enough of being conflicted - and the path of recent history shows that those who would impose or maintain totalitarianism on European peoples' aware of democratic pluralism's benefits will end up as history's losers. Those British Muslims who abandon the Islamic way and reconcile themselves to our way of life are like those who stood on the original Berlin Wall, or who hailed Vaclav Havel as the hero of the Velvet Revolution. They are grasping, gasping for freedom, not material or democratic freedom but spiritual and psychological freedom, and we should do everything we can to help them.

Until Islam is defeated, other British fools may try to blow themselves up for the 72 virgins. They might even kill others in the process. But there will be no Lech Walesas, no Jan Palachs amongst them. And there won't be a Caliphate, and they'll just be dead Muslim losers.

And the Conservative Party will still, even then, be nowhere to be seen.

The Flying Imam On The Terror Plot

The repellent Teutonomuslim Sahib Mustaqim Bleher holds forth thus -

"I can predict already that nobody will be charged with possession of any of the ingredients to produce liquid explosives, just like the Ricin of past scares was never found nor the alleged bomb making factories consuming large amounts of fertiliser (by the way, what happened to bird flu, that other threat to keep us worried and run to the government for protection?). To produce liquid explosive requires sophistication, hours of patience and ambient temperatures well below freezing. "

Does he know something we don't?

Thought For The Day

From Jeremy Seabrook in 'The Guardian' -

"It should also be remembered, however, that the self-immolation of others is sometimes not unappealing to those who would not dream of imitating them."

Indeed, the thought of Islamic radicals blowing themselves up is not at all unappealing.

Just as long as they don't do it in built-up areas or near large population centres.

If they want to go off into the hills to blow themselves up, I'm not going to stop them.

Lawrence Auster's Envy Of Pat Buchanan (Cont)...

On August 8 I noted that Lawrence Auster's envy of Pat Buchanan seemed to have gone to his head.

This morning, as well as sniping at alleged inconsistencies in Buchanan's 'State of Emergency', Auster also can't stop himself from linking to an old post criticising 'The American Conservative'.

In that post Auster notes that he's seen 'many shockingly dishonest and vile things in the magazine known as The American Conservative'.

Auster is an occasional contributor to Front Page Magazine, once even penning an anti-Buchanan screed for that publication entitled 'Buchanan's White Whale'.

Purportedly an analysis of a review written by Buchanan of Richard Perle and David Frum's 'An End to Evil' (now at number 368, 815 on Amazon) that was entitled 'No End to War', Auster riddled it with errors and ideological assumptions - the Madrid train bombings did not cause mass appeasement to break out amongst the Spanish, as Auster suggests, but were instead a revulsion against the liar Jose Maria Aznar's attempt to blame ETA before the dust had settled, and the conviction of Lawrence Franklin has pretty well validated Buchanan's observation that 'a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interests'.

However, Front Page Magazine and its former organ 'Moonbat Central' are themselves no innocents when it comes printing shockingly dishonest and vile things - particularly Steven Plaut's cackhanded and easilty refuted claim that Justin Raimondo had asserted that Israel was responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Centre.

Now that was a lie easily proven to be a lie, a lie for which Front Page Magazine has never apologised nor which it has ever sought to retract.

Perhaps when reflecting on Buchanan's 'foibles' (the principle one of which, as far as I can see, is concern for the well-being of his fellow Americans), Auster might care to reflect on his own.

The green-eyed monster still looks ugly when wrapped in the red, white and blue.

Someone should get Larry a talk show, a book deal or a regular paying print gig. Maybe then his mood will improve.

Links

A few more links on the roll -

Musings of a Reactionary Snob is the blog of a 52 year old advocate and, er, reactionary snob, written from Edinburgh.

Logical Meme is a good blog - a bit neo, but with excellent taste in women.

And two old 'Washington Dispatch' hands are added to the list - Frosty Wooldridge, 'The Bicycling Paul Revere', and the always insightful Bob Parks.

Readers unfamiliar with Bob's work will soon realise that he is probably the angriest man on the Web.

Foreign Criminal Of The Day - A Student Of What?

Although the BBC was spared the embarrassment of reporting the nationalities of Marcin Legowski, Dominik Knoblauch, Cezary Krasnolopski and Janusz Rucinski due to their jury's failure to reach a verdict, unfortunately it wasn't so lucky when it came to Christian Enoh.

Enoh, a Nigerian 'student' in Aberdeen, raped a woman two weeks after having been bailed on a charge of sexual assault.

His counsel told the court that "what occurred may well have been the result of cultural differences"; a cute aphorism for rape.

But his defence against deportation is already being mounted, with the news that he's going to be a daddy.

Ain't that nice...

Thomas Sowell on British Crime

The great Thomas Sowell on crime in Britain:

Within living memory, Britain was one of the most law-abiding nations on the face of the earth. When Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew visited London right after World War II, he was so impressed with the honesty of the British and their respect for law and order that he returned home determined to make Singapore the same way.

Today it is Singapore that is one of the most law-abiding nations in the world while Britain's crime rate has risen to the point where, for the first time, it now exceeds the crime rate in the United States.

What happened in the intervening years was the rise of the British left's dogmas about crime to complete domination of the country's legal system and its political and media elites.

Today, a burglar caught in the act by the police in Britain is almost certain to get a warning. If he has previous burglary convictions, he may get a sterner warning. But he is unlikely to face anything so draconian as being put behind bars.

Burglary has been described as a "minor" offense by leaders of both the Conservative and Labor parties in Britain. Rare cases where burglars are put in prison are criticized by the media.

The left's ideology on crime, including their disdain for property crimes, has spread across the political spectrum to all who wish to be considered up to date. That ideology is essentially the same on both sides of the Atlantic but in Britain it has achieved far greater unchallenged dominance.

(Hat tip:Logical Meme.)

Honoured

It seems I've made Pat Buchanan's blogroll.

I don't really know what to say...

'On His Blindness'

(A golden oldie from John Milton, on the doubts of the disabled concerning their ability to find a role for themselves)

"WHEN I consider how my light is spent
E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide,
Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, least he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd,
I fondly ask; But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts, who best

Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite"

Sir Andrew Green Is Wrong

The chairman of MigrationWatch writes in the 'Daily Telegraph' that 'EU immigration is not the problem'.

Wrong. Non-EU immigration presents long-term cultural problems. EU immigration has caused displacement problems in the here and now.

All immigration should be halted for at least 20 years. Private citizens require to manage with the resources available to them - businesses and governments should be required to do likewise.

'UK 'must tackle extremism threat'

The simplest ways to stop extremism would be stop Muslim immigration and expel Muslim agitators.
Nobody in power cleaves to Dutch Reagan's wise words any more-
"There are no easy answers' but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right. "

What Dutch thought morally right was opposing totalitarian Communism; so why should opposing totalitarian Islam, wherever it is found, be of a different moral character?
What was not morally right was invading the country of Iraq on the basis of a lie, no matter how sincerely it was told.

What was also not morally right was failing to recognise that the reaction of many Muslims to Western values has been to abandon Islam. If Islam were not a religion in decline, why do semi-literate imams with Primary Three educations (if that) require to be imported from the more godforsaken Pakistani wildernesses? It's because the young Muslims aren't going forward to the religious life - a crisis in vocations not dissimilar to the one afflicting the Catholic Church.

Only the attractions of Islam's doctrinal misogyny keep many young Muslims in the faith.
What would be morally right would be the active propagation of Christianity amongst Muslims resident in the UK; a crusade, if you will. Islam as now practiced is uncivilised, utterly alien to the conduct of a civilised western life; the province of savages. The best way for Muslims to be saved from themselves (and for us to be saved from them in the process) would be evangelisation.

Evangelisation is a process which it is perfectly ethical to conduct by either fair means or foul.

And when the alternative is Muslim only flights, there might be a market for it.

'Price of food and drink will soar, experts predict'

Maybe the supermarkets putting so many farmers and small traders out of business wasn't such a great idea after all.

Foreign Criminal Of The Day - It Did Not Take 40 Whacks...

for Wadanalegeder Chandrasekera to kill her husband.

Zorro And The Zetas

Whilst defending Pat Buchanan yesterday, I inadvertently wrote the following,

"...one would have thought the Mexican culture and heritage that your friend celebrates was actually more Spanish than Chicano in character.
After all, would Zorro have been celebrated in 'narcocorridos'? Or joined the Zetas?"

Could the revival of Mexican culture lie in a renaissance of its Spanish, European heritage?

The Immigration Lobby Strikes back

The Times, the respectable face of News Corporation, has spoken - "immigration is working."

Writing in the same newspaper, Magnus Linklater, an elitist so elite that his housefire made the news, thunders that, "Immigration has, by and large, been of enormous benefit to Britain. It has helped to transform our economy, enrich our cultural life, support our public services and improve our image abroad", continuing that "the suggestion that Romanians and Bulgarians will do little more than import crime and sexual disease — it is the grossest of slurs. "

Linklater is clearly unaware of the hazards involved in trading on eBay or in using a cash machine, the cases of Narcis Danila, Dominic Mailat and Florin Ursu and the scale of fraud committed or attempted by Romanians in Canada, Ireland, Spain, Malta or Finland.

But concern for the rule of law must remain the preserve of the little folks who wind up having Cornel Tirnaveanu living beside them.

And for the avoidance of doubt, having been subjected to vicious and foul abuse by a Romanian presumably granted the right to reside in my country has in no way coloured my perception of that great nation's citizens.

Former Labour MP David Lock is advising those NHS Trusts represented by his law firm to continue treating illegal immigrants who might not be eligible for treatment, apparently because the rules are unclear.

Hopefully those who are receiving what might turn out to be largesse are putting away a little money from their intended remittances in order to cover the cost of their treatment.

Even though he's now vacated his post as Director-General of the Confederation of Confederation of British Industry (the body to which Tony Blair made his first speech on immigration), Digby Jones, who once remarked that "There will not be any work in Britain for unskilled people . . . within one scholastic generation" and that globalisation is 'in our DNA', continues to tout the canards that 'we are a nation of immigrants' (despite its having been thoroughly debunked) and that 'Britain is wealthier because of immigration' (again, one which has already been thoroughly debunked (.pdf), whilst displaying a profound contempt for those of his fellow citizens who are nothing more than the victims of the economic car wreck of recent British history, comparing them to immigrants thus -

"Play by these rules and this fair-minded country will welcome you. Come here, work hard, help create wealth - and show us up for what we are becoming: lazy, poorly skilled and complacent, often using "immigration is a bad thing" as an excuse for our own inadequacies."

But at least he makes the business case well.

Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah of the Institute for Public Policy Research, the body which produced the thoroughly defective immigration document 'Paying Their Way (.pdf)', has produced a polemic against those of his fellow leftists wavering in their lockstep support for immigration, writing that, "(now) more than ever we need to remember that immigration can help build a more progressive, prosperous and cosmopolitan society"; forgetting that most of us don't mind our society being cosmopolitan for just as long as it continues to function.

And that's the problem.

The Scottish Executive's Fresh Talent Initiative has been already been proven to aid the displacement of Scots in favour of Kazakhs; and yet the SE has described the news that 32,000 Eastern Europeans have arrived in Scotland since 2004 as 'interesting' and that "(they) obviously complement what Fresh Talent is about, and Fresh Talent is about skilled, motivated, hard-working people" .

Murdo Fraser, the deputy leader of the Scottish Conservatives, gave his reaction to the news thus -

"Scottish Conservative Deputy Leader Murdo Fraser said immigration gave Scotland greater cultural diversity and provided both skilled an unskilled labour".

But then again, we already knew that the Scottish Conservatives are dismal.

Although the Daily Telegraph has the honesty to report that British citizenship has been handed out like sweeties, David Rennie suggest a novel approach to border control, writing that,

"Every politician huffing and puffing about whether we British should, or should not, "close our borders" to eastern European workers is either wasting their breath or wilfully misleading voters. Once Bulgaria and Romania are in the EU - which will happen either next January, or, at the latest, a year later - Britain simply will not be allowed to prevent their nationals from entering the country."

One had always thought that the vernacular for that particular approach was 'Surrender'.

Sky News, to all intents and purposes another News Corporation vehicle, reports from Peterborough on how migrants are 'blending into society'.

Less than fortuitously, however, it records the case of Olga from Latvia.

Olga came three years ago 'to learn better English'; and one would have thought that after three years, if she hadn't learned it and returned home by now there wouldn't really be much point in pursuing further study.

What a wonderfully rosy picture of growing wealth and communal happiness that such immigrationists present - one far removed from its sordid, desperate and sometimes tragic reality.

He died with £0.26 in his pocket, following a dream that turned out to be a lie.

The American Call Centre Conundrum

Alex Singleton of The Globalisation Institute has linked to this story concerning the growth of the US call centre sector.

Taking the report at face value, I've ventured four reasons for this in a comment currently under moderation.

Firstly, that the US is creating call centre jobs faster than they can be offshored. Not in the comment, but perhaps relevant, is that this could be directly related to the speed of American de-industrialisation, as happened in Xanadu Falls.

Secondly, there aren't enough suitably qualified Indians to perform the volume of call centre work they're required to undertake.

Thirdly, those Indians doing the job aren't good enough.

Fourthly, that this may perhaps be evidence of jobs returning to the US after a consumer backlash against offshoring.

It's an interesting phenomenon. Maybe the globalists' saffron-tinted glasses weren't giving them the true picture after all.

A. I. N. O. (Australian In Name Only)

From (sigh) the BBC -

"An Australian man has been sentenced to 20 years in jail for plotting bombing attacks in Sydney.

Faheem Khalid Lodhi, a Pakistan-born architect, was convicted in June of planning various attacks on the city's power grid and military installations.

He was found guilty of three charges relating to terrorism, and faced a maximum sentence of life in jail. "

Pity they closed down Norfolk Island.

Are You Being Served?

Taking a break from its usual beat of reporting the protests of Arab doctors and the plight of South African nurses, UK Immigration News describes as 'good news for immigrants' the government's 'preliminary data collected on service standards in processing applications'.

It goes on to add that, "(the) data does not rate satisfaction or success rates for immigrants".

Pardon? Does this imply that immigrants feel British citizens must reach a minimum service level when processing their settlement requests?

Could such a statement be published in India?

Foreign Criminal Of The Day - Another Meaning Of Martyrdom

Abdullah el-Faisal (Trevor Forest), the Islamatalitarian imprisoned in 2003 for soliciting murder, may soon be getting the old one way ticket to Kingston Town.

Yes indeed, my brother, Babylon is harsh...

Hat tip - Adam Lawson.

The Mothers Of The Nation

"In a striking finding, women of all ages appear to be particularly hostile to the number of foreigners settling in the UK — with many deeply sceptical that it is benefiting Britain. "

Other results from a MORI poll for the 'Sunday Times ' include that 14% think immigration generally good for the UK, 28% think it generally bad, 63% want tougher immigration controls and 11% wanting a complete halt.

As might be imagined, I'm with the 11%.

HT - Adam Lawson.

The Sayings Of Tony McNulty

The BBC has reported Home Office minister for police and security Tony McNulty as saying that "(about) 600,000 people have come to work in the UK from eight nations which joined the European Union in 2004", that "the figure would be nearer 600,000 if self-employed workers - such as builders - were included", and that "the migrants were helping the UK economy, but the figures will fuel fears about strains on public services. "

That's the same Tony McNulty who in May 2005 was reported by the BBC as saying that "(an) estimated 176,000 workers from new EU member states have come to the UK since the union expanded", but that "there was little evidence that the new workers had a widespread impact on jobs or wages"; in direct contradiction of the opinion offered by the Governor of the Bank of England.

Thank goodness that Tony Blair took my advice.

Economic Thought For The Day, Part I

"...those who said we should import and borrow as much as possible while prices of imports and interest rates were low were implicitly assuming the adjustment costs of reallocating resources across sectors were also low. Time will tell if they were right. "

Menzie Chinn.

Let us hope that the god of soft landings is feeling clement.

Economic Thought For The Day, Part II

"American economists are yet to face up to the fact that offshoring high productivity, high value-added jobs that pay well and replacing them with waitresses and bartenders is a knife in the heart of the US economy. Charles W. McMillion of MBG Information Services reports that compensation is falling behind price rises and that the US economy has been kept afloat by consumers overspending their disposable incomes by drawing down their accumulated assets and going deeper into debt...

Considering the loss of good jobs, the high debt burden, and the dependence on imports, it is unclear what will enable America to pull herself out of the next recession.
Perhaps growing ranks of the unemployed will become cannon fodder for Bush’s wars in the Middle East."

Paul Craig Roberts.

Economic Thought For The Day, Part III

"Of course, those folks who didn't learn anything from the equity mania, and who will turn out to have gotten themselves trapped in the housing mania, really have only themselves to blame. As I have been warning for at least a couple of years now, all of this was going to be wonderful until it wasn't. That moment in time is upon us."

Bill Fleckenstein.

Hat tip Dennis.

Where Is Our Buchanan?

In a factually incomplete review of his new book 'In State of Emergency', The Daily Telegraph today describes Pat Buchanan as a 'right wing firebrand'.

Such a casual dismissal of a man who's been an aide to three presidents, a three time candidate for President and possibly the most influential conservative intellectual of the last half century in a crowded field (Buckley and Kirk talked the talk, but it was Buchanan who walked the walk) does not really do him justice.

His thinking has not been without its mistakes, his career without its errors - as a self-taught economist, Pat's serial confusion of 'free trade' with 'globalisation' has undermined his core message that at all times American jobs, American works and American citizens must come first. It's also a shame that his TV appearances lack the punch that he can put into print.

But these are minor quibbles. My personal preference is to disavow ideology, but if pressed on whose banner I would prefer to stand underneath I would describe myself as a Buchananite.

It might seem quixotic to so admire a man for whom one can never vote, but consider this - if you're a Tory hick like me, and you've spent years trying to reconcile the benefits of 'creative destruction' with the desolation and harm caused by the industrial scale loss of industrial jobs, and can't understand why we're all so much richer when local adult male life expectancy is lower than in the Gaza Strip, then Buchanan's 'Death of Manufacturing' gives you the answers.

It deserves to be treated as one of conservatism's core documents, for, as I wrote in 'An Open Letter to Nicola Sturgeon', it is of 'as much relevance to our affairs and to the former steel and iron works of Lanarkshire as to the collapsing steel industry in West Virginia. What Buchanan has to say about the importance of manufacturing is of universal application'.

Give me a Pat Buchanan who'll dare to talk of putting the British people and the British national interest first. God Knows, when the electoral alternative is the elitist lightweight Eloi David Cameron, a British Buchanan would have their work cut out.

1666...

was, of course, the year of The Great Fire of London.

This post is also the 1,666th on this blog since its inception on January 13 2006.

I hope my regular readers will excuse me for seeming a little more crapulous than usual, but I have a relatively major doctor's appointment tomorrow in connection with my condition (The Devil's Kitchen has posted his thoughts on the downside of allowing those with genetic disorders to live), and after a weekend of pretty frantic activity I'm exhausted, and a little down - the polygamists have already been on the receiving end (for the avoidance of doubt polygamy has no place in either Christian worship or the leading of a Christian life and its promotion serves no purpose other than allowing dirty old men more in need of castration than salvation to have legal sex with as many wee lassies as they can, paedophilia as prayer, a blasphemy against Him of the same length and width and depth as the Rapture heresy).

Before I started writing it, the notion that my largely accidental status as a middle-class heterosexual British-born white man had thrust me amongst the most hated enemies of my country's elites had begun to form only dimly; but the material one has encountered during its compilation has solidified that notion into a belief. I have done them no harm, yet they hate my very existence. They care for nothing except who will serve them, and are happier in the company of subversives and rich foreign trash than in that of their own countrymen.

If the United Kingdom were to collapse overnight, I would not mourn its passing if the likes of the Snows and Rees-Moggs were to go down with it. They will always be on top through nothing more than the good fortunes of their births, so to Hell with them all.

Burn, baby, burn.

(Update, August 24 2006 - to some extent I regret writing this post, a salutary example of why one should not write when not up to par - but what I have written, I have written)

Migration And Income Redistribution

On what basis does a civil servant such as Owen Barder, whose crust has come and will come again from money taken from me by duress, feel so self-confident about his own position that he should link to demands that the incomes of others be redistributed?

In the real world, this is called 'biting the hand that feeds you'.

And it manages to be both rude and tedious simultaneously.

Passing Out...

literally...

Hattersley On Scotland And The Scots

The Fat Man asks, "Why cannot the Scots appreciate Scotland as much as I do, relax, lie back and enjoy it?"

Because we've been lying back and thinking of Scotland since 1707.

And the only country of which I'm a citizen is the United Kingdom.

The Redfinger File...

just seems to grow and grow...

'Foreign prisoner numbers soaring'

Man, I love the smell of validation in the morning...

Light Posting Over The Weekend...

is due the presence of venerable visitors.

Foriegn Criminal Of The Day, Part 1 - The First Jamaican

So-called 'hairdresser' Timoka Pusey has been sentenced to two years imprisonment for being concerned in the supply of crack and heroin worth £75,000.

Foreign Criminals Of The Day, Part II: The Second Jamaican

Yardie and twice deported illegal immigrant Rohan Chung has been sentenced to serve 40 years for triple murder.

'Human Directionals'...

Glasgow style...

The Daily Telegraph Discovers Borjas...

at last.

Gonzomuslims

Over the last couple of days (and after the lapse in good taste I suffered in my first comment), I've been commenting on this thread on 'The Flying Imam', the blog of the Teotonomuslim Sahib Mustaqim Bleher.

Bleher's rationale for daubing a swastika on to an Israeli flag was,

"As for symbolism, leaving aside the common racist nature of the Nazi state and the Zionist congress resulting in the little talked about transfer agreement at the time - pictures and caricatures are powerful message bearers, but you have to use symbols people know and understand. The Roman fasces would not make much of a statement."

Indeed.

Commentor 'GP' offers a novel interpretation for the decline of Premiership soccer -

" Tottenhamhotspur (sic), Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United and now Aston Villa, have all succumbed to the control of the Zionists, the latter because he like Boss of supermarket chain Morrisons, were English men, without knowledge of their enemy, thus media power, which ran through the clubs fan base, enabled them to appear out of touch.Manchester United at least demonstrated against this power, but rumour has it that, Rothschild is behind it, as with every thing else."

Gonzomuslims, gonzocons; two sides of the same demented coin.

Today's Immigration Truth...

comes from The Daily Telegraph.

Reporting on the same unemployment figures which both the BBC and the Office for National Statistics distorted yesterday, Edmund Conway and Mahmoud Shukri report,

"Despite the rise in the ranks of the jobless, the total number of people in employment has been kept high at 74.6 per cent, due to a steady influx of immigrants from eastern Europe.
Michael Saunders, the chief UK economist at Citigroup, said that as well as revealing the biggest rise in unemployment "since the grim days of 1992-93", the ONS figures shone a light on this increase in immigration.
"In our view, it is unlikely that the inflow of migrant labour will slow significantly any time soon, unless regulatory barriers are imposed. "We might eventually reach a limit when everyone who is willing to leave eastern Europe has done so." A record number of pensioners have also been forced back into work in an effort to earn more money for retirement."

This is a classic example of why the United Kingdom is failing.

It is because those who have the power to compel refuse to tell the truth.

Poles Apart

Jane Kelly has posted an interesting article on the Social Affairs Unit's blog concerning the poverty of manners exhibited by Polish migrants.

But we knew of this phenomenon already.

Hat tip Laban Tall.

My Offer To Debate...

Councillor Bob Piper, after he described my beliefs as 'madcap', has thus far been met with stony silence.

There's a surprise.

'A Lack Of Resources'

is the reason which has been given by the Home Office for failing to enforce laws against illegal working.

Oddly, this was the same excuse it trooped out for its failure to prevent the 7/7 attacks.

And for its failure to properly police Internet crime.

And for the difficulties it faced introducing Acceptable Behaviour Contracts.

It's wearing a little thin, don't you think?

Foreign Criminal Of The Day - Some Like It Hot...

What gives with Thais wanting to burn stuff?

Firstly, Sakchai Makao did £40,000 worth of fire damage when in his cups.

Now Nataya Lee has been convicted of conspiring to assault Robin Blair, having also planned to burn down one of his properties.

Today's Immigration Lie...

comes from the Office of National Statistics.

Its most recent report on the anomaly of rising unemployment occurring at a time when the number of vacancies is also rising makes absolutely no mention of this being at all connected to the possibility of native worker displacement.

The state broadcaster gilds the lie further, writing that,

"The number of people in employment rose by 42,000 over the past three months, while job vacancies rose by 7,600.
Over the past year, the labour force - encompassing those in work and looking for work - has expanded by 483,000.
The increase is due to growth in the working age population, pensioners returning to work and a decline in the number of people incapacitated by long-term illness. "

And the presence of half a million Poles in the labour market has absolutely nothing at all to do with it.

Shadow Boxing

The Journal Of The Law Society of Scotland's account of the trials of Morteza Fafschi, entitled 'Asylum seeker wins round in deportation fight', might lead one to think that the gaining of asylum is the outcome of some kind of contest.

The historic right of asylum's credibility and dignity contracted its fatal illness the moment that mass transit enabled hundreds of thousands of potential economic migrants to come to our shores unimpeded.

But it died the moment the lawyers got their hands on it.

Dennis On Dating

"If you whip out your bottle of Grey Goose vodka, and your date says she'll have hers with o.j., might as well switch to the Safeway brand."

There speaks great wisdom.

'Call to destroy evidence in Sheridan court case was circulated from his e-mail'

A golden oldie concerning the life and times of Ernst Stavro Redfinger.

Hypermobility

Simon Jenkins is absolutely correct.

Make the world big again, and may gap years, mass migration and lost luggage be damned.

A Nagging Question

Both the BBC and the Journal of the Law Society of Scotland have reported that a complaint has been lodged by Lord Turnbull against Graeme Henderson, the junior counsel whom Redfinger sacked before conducting his own case (it might have been his background in the protest movement, but at that point his perception of proceedings seemed less than perfect, asking the judge for 'time to prepare his defence'; it was his case).

The rationale for both Henderson's dismissal and the complaint is a question put by him to the witness Anne Colvin, that she had served a sentence of 18 months' imprisonment for credit card fraud - an accusation she denied.

It may be that, in the midst of an extremely high profile litigation, Henderson suffered a Daffy Duck moment, jumping up and down, whooping and saying the first thing that came into his head.

On the other hand, as I remarked upon the production of Gail Sheridan's work rosters, "this case was in preparation for at least 18 months before the first witness was sworn. Sheridan came to court with both senior and junior counsel, although he famously dispensed with their services."

I find it hard to believe that an experienced counsel like Henderson would have asked that question without having some reasonable idea as to the answer he was going to get.

So how did such a potentially damaging worm enter the apple?

It will be very interesting to hear the answer. After all, a man's professional reputation is at stake.