Rise of the Technocracy

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Here Comes PRESIDENT BLAIR.

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A National Disgrace

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There are no words.

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Here come the Brownshirts...

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The Last Word on the Civil List

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A Dig at Economic Globalisation

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Nothing to do?

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Bercow already living down to expectations...

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Tomorrow Belongs to Me!

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How to Keep MPs Honest:

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Poppycock indeed.

Yes, I sometimes get caught up in Big Brother despite myself. What of it?

I present a (rather indelicate) repudiation of the politically correct dogmas and double standards of the day courtesy of this Wolverine impersonator:

For the record, the petty and vindictive Mr Sree Dasari (the subject of the above discussion) was evicted from the house over a public school Toryboy who lives pretty much in a castle (not necessarily the most popular demographic at this time with the viewing public) with 84% of the vote.

A Green Goblin of My Very Own!

My friend and adversary over at New Right thinks our diamtrically opposing views with regard to the EU are starting to give rise to something of a comic book rivalry.




...Naaaaah.

Fascism and the EU

Recently my cohort in the Univeristy of Stirling Conservative and Unionist Society has been promoting one Monsieur Jacques Delors, repeating the waffle proclaiming the former Commission president's "greatest legacy to fascism and hatred to be fraternity, unity and Europe", later making the further claim that he is personally inspired by the insipid Frenchman's propagation of the idea that the best way to undermine fascism is "ever greater fraternity". (Ein Volk, ein Union...)

Being the Heath to my Hannan, I suspect these declarations are devised in part simply to noise me up (my associate knows I follow his blog), but the relationship between the centrist supranationalism underpinning the European Union and the old-fashioned corporate fascism the europhiliacs would have us believe they oppose is still worth examining. What began as a short rebuttal of the claim that fascists are in any way opposed to the establishment of a United States of Europe (I think the idea is that by persuading people fascists are opposed to their project they will lend it some measure of credibility?) has thus transformed into the cursory overview of the subject I now present:

Seperated at birth?

The evidence does not indicate that one-time Labour minister Sir Oswald Mosley, the leading light of British fascism admired by Michael Foot, was at all likely to have spluttered with rage come 1972. Quite the opposite, in fact. He and his British Union of Fascists veterans in the Union Movement were at the time established as being among the earliest and most enthusiastic of the integrationists, being the originators of the 'Europe a Nation' doctrine and the driving force behind the National Party of Europe which had succeeded the European Social Movement and its contemporaries in the early 1960s.

Nor was Mosley's blueprint for a united Europe particularly at odds with that of Monnet and his disciples. Again, it was quite in many respects quite the opposite. Today's European Union, with its established monetary eurozone and economic single market, protected by common tariffs and propped up by supranational subsidy, operating under the auspices of a common commerical policy and a Social Chapter which (among other things) limits the number of hours people can work, is getting "ever closer" to becoming a realisation of Mosley's vision of Europe as an "insulated self-contained area freed from the world cost system" without the need to export and governed by a "wage-price mechanism".

His torchbearers on oswaldmosley.com (heading: "Oswald Mosley—Briton, Fascist, European") explain this policy as follows:

"This was a policy for the deliberate raising of wages and salaries in the primary industries and the multiplying services in order to create an adequate market ... The large self-contained area [United Europe] was needed to provide a really big market for the immense potential of the automation age. ... [T]here could be a planned shortening of hours, a three- or four-day week in work-sharing schemes, creating many jobs for the unemployed. Or there could be both higher wages and shorter hours. ... [W]ith greater volume of output balanced by higher wages and shorter hours, the whole expansion taking place within an insulated continental system, Mosley foresaw greater possibilities still. Governments operating his wage-price mechanism could then draw workers to any industry or service short of manpower. ... If more food was required, raise the farmer's reward, to take on more labor or to buy better agricultural machines."

Emphasis mine. All seems rather familiar, does it not? The territory of the Euopean Union itself, with its common tariffs and lack of internal border controls, the minimum working week of the Social Chapter, shades of the Free Movement of Workers ("We will not direct men to do what is necessary in the common interest, but we will pay them to do it so effectively that, in fact, they will do it"), the obscene agricultural and set-aside subsidies of the CAP... All are present in some form.

And Mosley's proposed framework for the introduction of his policy was thoroughly Delorsian, as we can see from these extracts of the National Party of Europe's 1962 Venice Conference European Declaration:

"Europe shall have a common government for purposes of foreign policy, defence, economic policy, finance and scientific development. [G]overnment shall have full authority to act during its period of office in order to meet the fast moving events of the new age of science and to carry out the will of the people as expressed by their majority vote."

Under Delors and his ilk, most of this has already happened. We have seen a Common Foreign and Security Policy established and the creation of the post of EU Foreign Minister High Representative for the implement the same, have been living for years under a regime of total EU regulatory and trading policy control and qualified majority voting, and most recently witnessed the creation of the European Banking Authority, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority, the European Securities and Markets Authority and European Systemic Risks Councils.

National parliaments retain their 'competences' (or 'sovereignty') in much the same areas as proposed by the fascists:

"[N]ational parliaments in each member country of Europe a Nation shall have full power over all social and cultural problems, subject only to the overriding power of European Government in finance and its other defined spheres, in particular the duty of economic leadership."

My emphasis, again. And that's 'full power' which, to clarify, would be just as circumscribed by a European Government's "duty of economic leadership" as it currently is by the European Commision (described in stark terms by ex-president Romano Prodi as a European Government, "like it or not") having the ability to bring in social legislation through the back door through the supranational courts and the exercise of its exclusive power over all matters relating to single market 'harmonisation' (as when health and safety regulation were used to overturn Great Britain's Social Chapter opt-outs).

"[T]he economic leadership of government shall be exercised by means of the wage-price mechanism, first to secure similar conditions of fair competition in similar industries by payment of the same wages, salaries, pensions and fair profits as science increases the means of production for an assured market, thus securing continual equilibrium between production and consumption, eliminating slump and unemployment and progressively raising the standard of life. Capital and credit shall be made available to the underdeveloped regions of Europe from the surplus at present expatriated from our continent."

Emphasis, etc. Once again, attempts at fettering internal competition (the real European Union is actually much stricter and more direct than Mosley's deisgn in this instance), bellicose proclamations of an autarkic, perfectly regulated utopia free of boom and bust, structural and regional devlopment funds (to dupe Britons into thinking they're actually getting some money out of the EU at home and to line the pockets of kleptocrats and organised crime abroad)... The Europes of Monnet and Mosley match up almost exactly, yet again.

To conclude, I'd say that it appears Jacques 'Up Yours' Delors—not for the first time—was talking rubbish. His supranational conception of European 'fraternity' the antitode to fascism? Pull the other one, Monsieur, it's got bells on. As for my Clarkeite friend, well, given the information, perhaps he will reconsider his instinctual opposition to a certain clapped out, unloved old doctrine...?

Latest Quackery from the Apologists' Lounge

First came across this little gem of a story in the Metro on my way to an interview this morning: "A mother claims her son should not be given an ASBO because he has ODD. Nadine West, 38, said Sonny Grainger suffers from Oppositional Defiant Disorder, meaning whatever anyone in authority tells him to do, he does the opposite."

Now, I confess I have my doubts (horror of horrors) even when it comes to 'ADHD', but there is no way I can accept that what in our halcyon days we called "not doing as you're told" (by parents, teachers or even the police in Master Grainger's case) or, in rather more indelicate terms, "being a little shit", is now a bona fide medical condition.

Here's the more realistic assessment of neighbourhood constable Trevor Needham: "I honestly believed it was only a matter of time before he would have killed someone. ... The boy does know the difference between right and wrong and this ASBO is a last-ditch attempt to change his behaviour."

This seems a not overly pessimistic assessment; This is Hull and East Riding reports the young thug "has terrified and abused elderly people, subjected them to violence, smashed windows and broken fences. He has stolen cars and motorbikes, committed many arson attacks and often throws bottles, eggs, stones and sticks at people."

The ASBO was however broken within two hours, taken rather irritatingly by West in The Sun as proof that "He doesn't need an ASBO, he needs medical intervention."

She is correct, I suppose in saying that he doesn't need an ASBO. What he needs is some kind of meaningful sanction for his flagrant and actually quite serious criminality, ideally in the form of a damn good thrashing, borstal (at least some sort of approved/reformatory schooling) or a damn good thrasing in borstal. This is too much to hope for, of course, and probably officially makes me some kind of bloodthrirsty psychotic as long as the moronic architechts of 'ODD' hold the clipboards, so instead how about just the custodial sentence mandated by law for any one of the smörgåsbord of offences on offer?

West is approaching the problems posed by her son's "one-boy wave of terror" from a fundamentally different angle than Constable Needham. For her and her son, it's all about their 'needs'. What course of action will help them? Constable Needham, meanwhile, appreciates that it is the job of the criminal justice system to preserve the Queen's Peace and protect perfectly innocent, decent, law-abiding people from Sonny Grainger's campaigns of intimidation and violence. An ASBO followed by a worthless tagging order is far from the best way of achieving this, but you have to work with the tools you're given, I suppose.

Oh, and one final note: an instant cure (as suggested by my father) for a magical illness which renders sufferers incapable of doing anything other than the exact opposite of what authority figures tell them would be some good old-fashioned reverse psychology. Simply tell Master Grainger not to treat his elders and fellows with respect, do his homework or obey the law and you'll have a model citizen right on time for a rousing chorus of Amazing Grace.

Or, alternatively, nothing will change because there was never anything medically wrong with a 'patient' who was just eager to go along with any bogus diagnosis which would unburden him of responsibility for his awful conduct.

Are we really surprised, at this point?

Depressingly, I can't quite muster the surprise to be properly outraged at this stunt by the National Library of Scotland's management, which falls firmly (with perfect justification) under the "You Couldn't Make It Up!" tabloid rubric.

SNP MSP Christine Grahame is of course quite right to protest the library's management warning that 'nationalistic displays' (Alexandra Miller, director of customer services: "I am very disappointed to see that [staff] continue to have inappropriate material bedecking their workstation. This includes several saltires and a lion rampant, and the personalisation of a chair with red tartan.") could "intimidate non-Scottish colleagues". When you can't have a Scottish national display in the national Scottish library because they are deemed potentially "sexist or racist", well...

But then it was only a matter of time before we saw something like this. Our fellow Britons south of the Cheviots would be familiar with the scene. Take for example the prison guards sporting St George's Cross tie pins in support of a cancer charity ordered to remove them for fear Muslim convicts might associate the symbol with the Crusades (no mention of the potential to offend of the crescent and star, though); the fifth columnist director of the 'Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding' explaining that "Muslim or Arab prisoners could take umbrage if staff wore a red cross badge. It's also got associations with the far-right. Prison officers should be seen to be neutral" (his definition of 'neutral' apparently requires public servants to strike a balance between patriotism and Vichyism), adding helpfully that England should find a new flag and a patron saint "not associated with our bloody past and one we can all identify with." (Mohammed Atta, perhaps?)

Or we could take the black Commonwealth immigrant and binman Matt Carter, who was told he could not wear a St George's Cross bandana to pin back his dreadlocks because the symbol could be considered "offensive or racist". He now wears a bandana sporting a skull and crossbones, a symbol which terrified generations of people and which represented robbery, rape, murder and treachery but is less of a problem than a national symbol on show in its own country.

The dear old Union Jack hasn't fared much better. Near the start of June about a hundred police constables at Heathrow—70% of them ex-servicemen with in many cases children having followed their lead into the military—were ordered not to wear small square inch Union Jack tie pins bought from the 'Help for Heroes' charity because, again, they could be "offensive".

"Nobody has put out orders to remove rainbow symbols that gay and lesbian officers wear", complained one constable. "Why discriminate against us?"

Why indeed. The powers that be have given some indications in the past that they have little time for the soldiers they are so keen to send off to their deaths on wholly unnecesarry military adventures, I suppose, as when a former Gurkha who gave twenty-eight years service was banned from flying his regiment's flag from his Nepalese restaurant 'The Gurkha' (but the European Union's colours would be fine), or more recently when demolition contractor Dave Dingvean was banned from flying the British Army flag at his house to 'support the troops' because councillors said it did "not benefit from any sort of consent under the Town and Country Planning Regulations 2007." (or any sort of discretionary toleration either, it would seem) Mr Dingvean has taken to flying the flag of oppressive, theocratic autocracy Saudi Arabia (which is perfectly acceptable under the aforementioned rules) in protest.

Despite the furore surrounding all these events, however, hot on the heels of the Heathrow tie pins fiasco came another snub, with Glaswegian councillors banning organisers of the city's first Armed Forces Day celebrations (that military angle again) on the 27th of June from flying the Union Jack because it was "provocative" (and this on the 65th anniversary of D-Day, too). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the SNP kept quiet about this unsavoury incident.

"In Great Britain, they came first for the English flag, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t English;

And then they came for the veterans, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a veteran;

And then they came for the Union Jack, And I didn’t speak up because I was a seperatist;
And then... they came for the Saltire... And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

"I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs." "I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking..."

Shock and alarm today over the escalating disturbances in Iran following Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's shameful rigging of the vote/stunning landslide victory in Saturday's presidential elections. The BBC and much of the press, in what seems to be part of a more general attempt at promotion of the 'McChange' brand, chose to talk up the defeated (or not) candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, as some sort of Persian Obama prior to the election; popular with young people, a moderate Messiah who would extend the olive branch to the West, bring a reforming, liberal zeal to his office, and so on and so forth.

In fact, Mousavi seems to have been a fairly Establishment figure, serving as editor-in-chief of the Islamic Republic Party's official propaganda newspaper during the revolution and as a sitting member on the sinister Supreme Cultural Revolution Council, which infamously dealt a potentially mortal blow to net neutrality in the country in 2003 when it took control of government content-filtering, censoring all of the following: "[T]he dissemination of blasphemous items; ... insulting Islam and Islamic sanctities; opposing the constitution and publishing any item that might undermine the independence and the territorial integrity of the country; insulting the Leader [Ayatollah Khamenei] and the sources of emulation [leading clerics]; ... [distorting] the values of the Islamic revolution and the principles of the political thought of Imam Khomeini; undermining national unity and solidarity; creating pessimism and hopelessness among the people regarding the legitimacy and effectiveness of the [Islamic] system; providing publicity for illegal groups and political parties; ... propagating prostitution and forbidden acts; publishing pictures and photographs that are contrary to public morality; ... providing publicity for smoking cigarettes and the taking of narcotics; ... making false accusations against any of the officials or ordinary members of the society; insulting individuals or organizations; and creating any unidentified radio or television network and program without the supervision of the Voice and Vision Organization [radio and television]."

The Supreme Cultural Revolution Council's other Orwellian duties include achieving the "Purification of scientific and cultural establishments" through the extirpation of "materialistic ideas" and "manifestations of Western influence", and arranging for the "Development of universities, schools and cultural and art center [sic] in accordance with the righteous Islamic culture, expansion and ever more strengthening of these centers for training of dedicated experts, Islamic scholars [and] bright and nationalist thinkers". The lion's share of their activities seems to consist of banning books, stamping out student dissent and purging Iranian academia of its less pliable members. Dr Göbbels would be proud.

Some details of these credentials might be disputed; defensive pundits have claimed Mousavi has been about as diligent as a member of a House of Commons select committee (hat-tip: EU Referendum) in his participation in the SCRC's clandestine extra-legal legislating sessions—recently, anyway—and is therefore exempt from affiliation with its affairs, somehow. But then, nothing that has happened or will happen as a result of this pantomime of an election really matters, so any discussion of his credentials is moot, isn't it?

The pathetic figure who puts himself forward for the post of Iranian 'president' knows he can never be anything resembling a head of state. That role is fulfilled in Iran by the Supreme Leader: Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appointed for life by an 'Assembly of Experts' composed of Islamic scholars. From the very beginning our would-be president's candidacy must be approved by the Council of Guardians, a religio-technocratic establishment composed of six clerics—appointed by the Supreme Leader—and six jurists—appointed by the head of the judiciary. (The holder of said post is appointed by, you guessed it: the Supreme Leader.) If at any stage in the vetting process the Guardians deem our man 'inappropriate' for the post, that's it; Game Over.

If permitted to proceed to participation in the obscene farce of an Iranian presidential election he may prance and preen and parade himself to his heart's content, facing down other hand-picked stooges at the hustings. He can even reasonably assume a willfully gullible foreign press and an easily stimulated public will treat with him as though his doings were of some import. Alas, even if elected this is the high water mark of his influence. As president he remains merely the same grandstanding cipher; a figurehead with no more political clout than the Japanese Emperor. From the shadows, the Supreme Leader and his Council continue to wield practically autocratic power, assured in their positions by the arms of the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution; a religio-political Schutzstaffel at the heart of the Iranian military which as it happens can count Ahmadinejad among its alumni.

Such is Iran's 'democratic process', and we degrade ourselves when we dignify it with comment.

Obama: Dar al-Islam laid foundations of Enlightenment, Renaissance...

“As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam—at places like Al-Azhar University—that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing.”

Hmmm. Some people—people who are professors of mathematical physics—beg to differ.

65 Years

Lest We Forget

A 'Franco-American' Affair?

Her Majesty the Queen is the only living Head of State to have served, in uniform, during the Second World War; as Number 230873 Second Subaltern (eventually Junior Commander) Elizabeth Windsor, Women's Auxilary Territorial Service.

Nicholas Sarkozy, meanwhile, is a small and devious man of Hungarian paternity (Hungary was an Axis power, if you recall) elected to the office of French president on a phoney law-and-order ticket. Desirous of a little good publicity to shore up an ailing public image—and having drained succubus-like all possible decent PR from his hot wife—he is desperate for that shining new panacea of the doomed hack politician, the Obama photo-op. As luck would have it, the mini-Messiah will be in France on June 6th to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the legendary D-Day landings, but traditionally so too would be the Queen, who in any near-sane world upstages a duplicitous runt like 'Sarko' every time.

The solution? Don't invite the Queen! Because, really, the D-Day landings have always been a "primarily Franco-American" affair anyway, according to Sarko's mothpieces. Never mind the fact that British-Canadian forces—soldiers of the Crown—quite outnumbered Uncle Sam's contribution. Never mind the thoroughly negligible contribution of French soldiers to the proceedings, or their somewhat chequered record prior to Overlord of fighting the Allies tooth and nail in Syria, in Madagascar, in equitorial and northern Africa etc. Or for that matter the tens of thousands of Frenchmen who volunteered for service in Hitler's SS; actively recruited by such men as calculating liar François Mitterrand, who would go on to become, like Sarkozy, President of France, and who signed the Maastricht Treaty on European Union in 1992.

Pull the other one, Monsieur President. Operation Neptune was no more a Franco-Amerian affair than was Barbarossa.

"Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable..."

You will have noticed I have remained fairly tight-lipped on the subject of the blatant theft so many MPs have been caught indulging in by the Telegraph of late. Partly this is because I think Stephen Fry had a bit of a point when he described the rank hypocrisy of the journalists in the commentariat casting the stones. ("I've never met a more venal and disgusting crowd of people when it comes to expenses and allowances.") This sort of tu quoque is never enough by itself, of course, and the main reason I've avoided the subject is simply irritation at reporters' willfull blindness when it comes to the (far worse) excesses of the infinitely more crooked trough-pigs squealing delightedly in the EU sty. But this most recent BBC Question Time has forced me to break my vow of silence, and I would urge anyone to watch it so they might see why.

There is a lot to dislike about the sight of the representatives of the three big parties seemingly closing ranks, all twisting together like a nest of vipers—Beckett's countenance was particularly snake-like—under interrogation by an exceedingly (and I must admit pleasingly) hostile audience. No true democrat enjoys the spectacle of people versus parliament. The two are supposed to be the same. The worst offender had to be crotchety old ex-Liberal Trivial Socialist Democrats Dimocrats Eurocrats leader Ming the Merciless.

A great many lying thieves have claimed their tight-fisted, scrounging expense claims for bathplugs and bags of sweeties (I personally find these transgressions more offensive than the moat-cleaning and the home-flipping) were perfectly acceptable because they were "within the rules". (the question of whether or not they were still wrong apparently being an arcane matter of mere outdated 'morality' and therefore irrelevant) Even this defence is questionable; Dimbleby pointed out that that what exactly the so-called Green Book on allowances has to say:

"Expenditure when you claim to be reimbursed for it should be wholly, exclusively, and necessarily incurred for the performance of your parliamentary duties. Members should avoid purchases which could be seen as extravagant or luxurious, and they should avoid getting any improper financial benefit."

"MPs ought to ask themselves: 'How comfortable do I feel with the knowledge that my claim will be available to the public?'"

Clearly Her Majesty's once-independent Constabulary should be feeling a few collars, but the once-honourable Members who now serve as their political commissars obvioulsy disagree. But it took Sir Walter Menzies Campbell to finally give voice to their misplaced sense of indignation publically. He accepted responsibility for everything he had done, of course, absolutely positively, he didn't shrink from it for a moment, but really, when you think about it, it was the fees office's fault for approving his claims and giving "not sufficiently strict" advice. Reminded of the 'advice' given in the Green Book, he cracked and angrily blurted: "Well, they were guidelines! They were guidelines, they were guidelines, they were guidelines!" Attempts to hide himself and his parliamentary colleagues behind the corpses of slain British servicemen (the old "Shouldn't we be talking about this instead?" angle) went down almost equally poorly with the audience, as you can imagine.

The Pirate Code is more what you'd call 'guidelines' than actual rules, Miss Turner!

Parliament as it currently sits has lost all moral authority to govern. It's 1653 again and Oliver Cromwell is in the House of Commons, denouncing the "sordid prostitutes" who have "defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves" by "immoral principles and wicked practices".

The best outcome possible, one which would demonstrate to all the world the superiority of our ancient constitution and guarantee the place of our monarchy at the heart of it for decades to come, would be for Her Majesty the Queen to exercise her reserve powers, dissolve parliament, and give her people the chance to elect new representatives with a new mandate, free from the taint of corruption. (I confess I thought myself very clever when this thought occured to me, but apparently over six hundred people over on the BBC's 'Have Your Say' page had it first—proof of its popular appeal)

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage

Time to face the facts, gentlemen. Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you who were deputed by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves become the greatest grievance. In the name of God, just go.

Cornered!

There has been a new twist in the story of our New Labour government's desperate, dishonourable efforts to deny Gurkha veterans the same rights of settlement in Great Britain as Commonwealth ex-servicemen. (Are you an unskilled Italian workman? A Slovakian convict? Step forward! Loyal soldier of the Crown? No room at this inn, buddy.) Immigration minister Philip 'just following orders' Woolas was cornered by the charming Joanna Lumley on his way to a typically dissembling interview at the BBC's Westminster offices. Mr Woolarse's initial attempts to flee the scene were quickly foiled and his subsequent sub-par efforts to placate Mrs Lumley with a few smug platitudes in an anteroom were unsuccesful, so he found himself forced into a rather embarassing public conference on the stairs with the Gurkha Justice Campaign. (Do sign up.) It went something like this:

Whoops! Wrong video. Try this one:

"Yes, miss. Sorry, miss. Three bags full, miss."

Of course the reason she had to catch this monkey in the proverbial net was that the initial 'guarantees' given to her by the organ grinder in Number 10 almost immediately proved less than honest. Whether or not these ones are any better remains to be seen.

Klaus Holds the Bridge

"Curse on him!" quoth false Sextus;

"Will not the villain drown?

But for this stay, ere close of day

We should have sacked the town!"

From out of the wreck of a crumbling government the European Constitution Lisbon Treaty drags itself grimly and inexorably onwards in the Czech Republic, having survived a craven vote on ratification in the Senate.

The redoubtable President Václav Klaus is now all that stands in its way, but there is some doubt as to whether or not he has the constitutional right to go so far as to actually drive the stake into its heart. Nevertheless, it is clear he will not give in without a fight:

I have to start expressing my disappointment with some of the Senators who by agreeing with the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty – after an unprecedented political and media, domestic and foreign pressure – renounced the views they had publicly held until recently, and together with them also their political and civic integrity. They thus turned their back on the long-term interests of the Czech Republic and put the short-term interests of the current political representation and their own above them.

This is a very sad evidence of yet another failure of an important part of our political elites which we know all too well from other crucial moments of our history. Our politicians have always found similar cowardly excuses: We are small and weak, we do not mean anything in the European context, we must follow suit, even though we do not agree. This is something I reject. We either regained our sovereignty after November 1989, and together with it also the responsibility for the fate of our country, or it was all a tragic mistake. What happened today is an important wake-up call, coming in the timely moment of the twentieth anniversary of the fall of communism.

I will wait to see if a group of senators, as some of them announced, asks the Constitutional Court for yet another examination of the compatibility of the Lisbon Treaty with the Czech Constitution. If this happens, I will not be considering my decision to ratify the Lisbon Treaty before the Constitutional Court makes its decision.

My views on this matter are known and clear. I can’t afford being resolutely against at one moment, and then easily change my mind just because it is beginning to fit my personal political or career objectives.

We are not in a hurry. Right now, the Lisbon Treaty is dead, because it was rejected in a referendum in one of the member states. My deciding about the ratification of this Treaty is therefore not the issue of the day.

Václav Klaus, Prague Castle, 6.5.2009

Little Englanders Europeans?

An edited version of this post was published by IndependenceHome.

Ardent europhiliac and former Trivial Democrats leader Jeremy 'Paddy' Pantsdown was in the Scottish version of the Metro today giving a 60 Second Interview. Asked "Will the British public ever be enthusiastic about Europe?" His Lordship replied thus:

"We now have a US with changed priorities, a very aggressive Russia, a rising China, a shift of economic power to the East. We do not realise, we Europeans, that the right response to this much more dangerous world is to deepen our institutions, especially in defence and foreign affairs. We are bloody fools. And that applies to Britain as well."

As if we didn't know who he was referring to. And, just in case he thought you hadn't quite grasped he was playing into the politics of fear (and defeatism), he elaborates:

"Up until now, fear was always one of the strongest political arguments played by the opponents: fear of Brussels. Fear now shifts to our side of the argument and we suddenly realise Europe as a refuge is a very important concept."

Who are the doomsaying isolationists now? Why, none other than the inhabitants of Vichy Britain.

UK Libertarian Party Shirt Campaign

The recently-off-the-starting-block UK Libertarian Party (which my rudimentary fact-checking suggests is something to do with the guys over at The Devil's Kitchen) has picked up Old Holborn's 'Send Gordon your shirt' campaign.

Details here. Great stuff!

Thank You

Abdul

We've drunk the boys who rushed the hills,

The men who stormed the beach,

The sappers and the A.S.C.,

We've had a toast for each;

And the guns and stretcher-bearers

But, before the bowl is cool,

There's one chap I'd like to mention,

He's a fellow called ABDUL.

We haven't seen him much of late

Unless it be his hat,

Bobbing down behind a loophole

And we mostly blaze at that;

But we hear him wheezing there at nights,

Patrolling through the dark,

With his signals-hoots and chirrups

Like an early morning lark.

We've heard the twigs a-crackling,

As we crouched upon our knees,

And his big, black shape went smashing,

Like a rhino, through the trees.

We've seen him flung in, rank on rank,

Across the morning sky;

And we've had some pretty shooting,

And - he knows the way to die.

Yes, we've seen him dying there in front

Our own boys died there, too-

With his poor dark eyes a-rolling,

Staring at the hopeless blue;

With his poor maimed arms a-stretching

To the God we both can name

And it fairly tore our hearts out;

But it's in the beastly game.

So though your name be black as ink

For murder and rapine,

Carried out in happy concert

With your Christians from the Rhine,

We will judge you, Mr Abdul,

By the test by which we can-

That with all your breath, in life, in death,

You've played the gentleman.

Charles Edwin Woodrow Bean

Crazy Hugo!

First in the world and still the best?

My family is having some experience of the NHS's bumbling lack of urgency in dealing with its patients at present, and I just so happened to stumble across some interesting statistics in the comments section of Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan's blog:

• 1948: NHS employs 350,000 staff and provides 480,000 'beds'

• 2002: NHS now employs 882,000 staff; number of beds has decreased to 186,000

• 2008 (around September): NHS staffing levels have skyrocketed to 1,368,200 while the number of available beds now just 160,000

To be fair, no citations were provided, and even my thoroughly jaded credulity is strained by this—further research warranted?

That Hannan Speech in Full

I've been subscribed to Dan 'the Man' Hannan's YouTube channel since reading The Plan (co-written by Douglas Carswell MP) and it's good to see he's finally getting his five minutes. (I dare not hope for more!)

So, in full, here's the speech to the European Parliament by a backbench Conservative MEP traducing Gordon Clown which became an overnight internet phenomenon:

...And, for completeness' sake, the neglected (sadly) speech made by Independence MEP Nigel Farage just prior to Mr Hannan's, which is in many ways equally damaging:

Bravo, gents!

But really, what's a little blackmail between friends?

According to Independence MEP Nigel Farage the EU President has agreed to pay in part the thinly-veiled ransom demand of Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany for some €160 billion to €190 billion. Speaking on behalf of a a bloc of Eastern European states, who had agreed the plan at a clandestine meeting held prior to the European summit at the beginning of this month, Uncle Ferenc warned that if this 'request' for aid was not met a financial Iron Curtain could descend on this happy Union, and five million of his fellows would end up out of a job. The implication—that this (to quote The Times) ravening horde would make its way westward—was crystal clear. So another cap feather for Free Movement of Workers, then.

It is not, of course, the first such threat levelled at this Kingdom by its 'partners' (and who can blame the poor Eurozone hopefuls forced to labour under a latter-day ERM in the current recession, really?) but one is reminded in this case in particular of a poem by a certain unfashionable old jingoist:

It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,

To call upon a neighbour and to say:—

“We invaded you last night—we are quite prepared to fight,

Unless you pay us cash to go away.”

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,

And the people who ask it explain

That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld

And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,

To puff and look important and to say:—

“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.

We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;

But we’ve proved it again and again,

That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld

You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,

For fear they should succumb and go astray,

So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,

You will find it better policy to say:—

“We never pay anyone Dane-geld,

No matter how trifling the cost,

For the end of that game is oppression and shame,

And the nation that plays it is lost!”

Mutterings from Traitors' Gate

In an interview with New Labour's in-house magazine The New Statesman washed-up parliamentary relic Mickey Heseltine has gone on record to confirm that, as with Heath, his europhilia was brought on by a projection of his failings onto the Great British people: "One of my reasons for wanting to associate myself with the euro was that I think the Germans have been much more effective economic managers than us. [For the past sixty years] I’ve seen the value of the pound consistently decline, as we’ve failed to manage the British economy effectively. Under all parties.”

Essentially, this is the story of a very conceited man, convinced of his fitness for the highest office in government but quietly rankled by the knowledge that he didn't have the first clue how to run a country. Clearly, if the Great Hezza could not grasp the economic nettle then it was impossible any of his peers could, and thus logic dictated that it would be best for all concerned if we simply palmed off the trickier business of statecraft onto those nice, efficient foreign types.

It makes all the more outrageous his anti-democratic statement in 2000, again on the subject of adopting the euro in defiance of popular sentiment, that he had "never believed that grassroots support is the best arbiter of what is right and what is wrong. Talking to me about grassroots opinion is the negation of political leadership."

That particular manifesto for dictatorship earned him the following rebuke from the late, great George MacDonald Fraser, OBE:

The arrogance of this, coming from a failed politician whose judgement one would not have trusted to buy a jar of marmalade, was almost stupefying. He actually saw himself as a leader, fit to take decisions, in defiance of the public will if necessary.

…

Now, this kind of haughty pretension may have been well enough in the days of Burke and the Pitts, when there was genuine force to the argument that the country was best governed by an educated elite, trained and fit to take the many-headed's decisions for them. Many MPs then looked on public service as something to which they were devoted by tradition; they could also, with some justice, consider themselves the intellectual as well as the social superiors of their constituents and the unenfranchised masses. Those days are long dead. No one in his right mind would suggest that today's MPs are superior in intellect, morality, education or judgement, to the people they represent; many of them are plainly inferior on all four counts.

And it is an unspoken realisation of that very inferiority that has convinced inadequates like Heseltine of the need to abrogate their every responsibility. Hear, hear, Mr Fraser!

"Here's three grand—and let that be a lesson to you!"

I was sympathetic when I first started reading this story on Scots Law News. The old 'lions led by donkeys' routine, I thought. Our thin blue line, with improper equipment, stentorian before a barrage of missiles and Glaswegian fecal matter, forced to labour under some manner of idiotic 'no arrest' (read as 'waive the law') policy. Granted, our police constables (I don't know why the American term 'officers' has come into such common currency) cannot technically be barred from arresting law-breakers by their superiors. Their powers are not delegated to them by their station, they derive it from the law itself. However, you can be pretty certain that in practical terms where there is an organised operation with a 'no arrest' policy in force the will of 'management' will prevail.

So I could see at first why former wPC Tracey Ormsbey, or any of her colleagues, could feel entitlement to some redress—but then I read the rest of the article.

Ms Ormsby claimed for damages resulting form her injury, as well as claiming for damages caused by a subsequent psychological injury. She argued she was suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and agoraphobia – as a result of her experience facing the protestors.

Oh, it is at this point I should perhaps point out that Miss Ormsby, supposedly rendered a virtual recluse following the incident, was merely struck in the chest with a pineapple, and came to no real harm. Moreover, the evidence does not seem to suggest this 'traumatic' event actually turned her into the "fearful and fragile person described in some of the medical reports"; the judge noted in particular the "robust, combative and feisty performance in cross-examination" which he could not reconcile with her own accounts. Reports of her taking out a gym membership, going on a number of raucous holidays and securing a new boyfriend after ending things with the married man she had previoulsy been carrying on with (to whom she had said "Ker-ching!" after being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and whom she allegedly tried to blackmail into perjury by threatening to send his wife certain photographs) didn't do much to shore up the image of her life as a shy, retiring violet either.

The Scotsman seemed well pleased with the final verdict though, the judge proclaiming grandly that "We must not become a society bent on litigation." Her claim for £1.5 million was indeed rejected, and an award given of "just" £3,000. Well, £3,000 might be a lot less than £1.5 million, but it's a pretty good deal in exchange for being hit by a piece of fruit. Not exactly the death knell for "You Couldn't Make It Up!" lawsuits it's been reported as in some circles. Arguably it's quite the opposite, but rather than inflict a rambling diatribe on you personally, I will instead transcribe for you a section from the conclusion of the late (and missed) George MacDonald Fraser's memoirs, which seem to me to be eerily relevant:

The story of the Colonel and Wee Wullie in the Jap prison camp, as I was told it, is as follows:

Some big metal files went missing, and the Jap commander went berserk. The Colonel, who knew nothing about the files, was interrogated, and limped for the rest of his life. "They set about me with a crowbar at first, and then by the grace of God they changed it for a pick handle." They might have beaten him to death, who knows, but then Wee Wullie came forward and said he'd taken the files. He hadn't, so of course he couldn't tell the Japs where they were, but they stopped hammering the Colonel and turned their attention to the regimental hard man, and when they had finished they decided to make an example of him in a most unpleasant, most Japanese way.

They got a bundle of files like the missing ones, great two-foot iron bars, and made Wullie stand on the parade ground holding them up before him. It was about 100 degrees in the shade, but carrying that cruel weight it must have been torture, without water or shade or even the relief of movement. What sanction or threat the Japs used to make him do it, I never learned; my informant (not the Colonel, who had been in no fit state to know what was happening_ said threats could have been useless anyway; Wee Wullue took it as a challenge, himself against the Japs.

So he stood in the sun. He stood all day, holding the files, swaying a little now and then, the sweat streaming down his face beneath the balmoral bonnet which was his only shield. The Japanese sentry who had been set to guard him actually passed out in the awful heat, but Wullie went on standing.

Night came, and his comrades in the huts could barely see the huge figure in the dark, but when day broke he was still on his feet. When the sun came up and turned the parade into a furnace, he seemed to waver a little, and they wondered if he was still conscious. He opened his eyes, but didn't speak, just stood with the files before him, elbows in his sides.

Just after noon, when he had been standing for more than twenty-four hours, the Jap commandant, who had been watching from his veranda, marched up to him and barked at him to fall out. Wullie stood for a few seconds, as though gathering himself, and then, plainly struggling to keep his balance bent down and laid the files on the ground. Then he straightened up, very slowly squared his enormous shoulders, threw the commandant a salute, took one careful step forward and then another, until he was quick marching, none too steadily, but marching until he reached a hut, and there he fell full length on a cot and lay like one dead. "I swear to God he couldn't see, or hear hardly, or know what the hell was happening, but he wasn't going to fall down in front of the Japs. We had to pour a drink into him, and his mouth was all cracked and swollen and black, and we wondered if he would go west, but next morning he was up and about again."

...

Why do I say it's a good note to end on? Because it's a fine story about a fine man, but also because, as I've said already, it enables me to make the comparison between then and now. I am not complaining or criticising, because I've no right to; I am not sounding off (says he, who makes Schopenhauer sound like Tommy Cooper), I am simply looking here, upon this picture, and on this, and feeling sorry for today. And I'm aware that I'm repeating myself, but it's worth saying once more: when I read of policemen being given hundreds of thousands of pounds because they were doing what policemen used to do as a matter of course, or firemen being counselled and compensated after a disaster which would once have been regarded as an unpleasant day's work, and people being "traumatised" by hardship or harrowing experience which their grandparents would have taken in their stride, and children being taught the "grieving process" of weeping and laying flowers... well, while I know Wee Wullie would be the last man on earth to imagine himself being used to read a lesson or point a moral, I can't help but thinking of him and what, in every sense of the word, he stood for.

Amen to that.

Good News, My Scotch Comrades!

Do not let the recent news of spiralling crime statistics in England and Wales dishearten you! For I can reveal that crime in Scotland too has fallen to a 25-year low! And tractor production is up 200%!

Hail to the Chief!

Truly, we live in a People's Utopia of unlocked doors, where 'neath rainbow skies our children laugh with gumdrop smiles betwixt flowery meadows and chocolate rivers. Much better than the nasty old 'Great' Britain of the '50s which our courageous cultural revolutionaries have torn up by the roots. If the statistics and the personal accounts of countless people who lived through the period seem to suggest it was not infinitely more crime-ridden than our Brave New World then that's just because crimes weren't recorded properly, and people weren't paying proper attention, I guess. And anyone who says otherwise goes straight to the Gulag!

Exposing the Kleptocrats—Such Impertinence!

An excellent Austrian exposé of all the little piggies getting their snouts in the trough.

Sadly, it appears Irish-American MEP Kathy Sinnott, a staunch opponent of the European Constitution Lisbon Treaty, is caught in the crossfire.

I was going to say that it's no wonder, watching this, that the Commission hasn't been able to get the Court of Auditors to sign off the EU's fraudulent accounts for some fourteen years now, but these withdrawals would actually be some of the few expenses that could be filed as 'legitimately' accounted for.

I don't think further comment on that is really necessary.

Operation Fortitude: Iranian Edition

The Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution (or 'Islamic Revolutionary Guard' in Western parlance) scored a bit of a public relations own goal a few days ago when it published a crudely photoshopped image of a missile test on its website which attempted to multiply the Iranian arsenal:


Many have expressed disappointment with the naffness of the forgery, which looks like a pretty basic cut, paste and recolour job. If you're going to be so blatant, why not go the whole hog?

If the Grand Ayatollah and his bungling PR men were hoping their little added extra would dial up the intimidation factor for the whole, vainglorious exercise just a touch more, it seems their efforts failed. Within twenty-four hours of the story breaking some impudent soul had mocked-up their own image, rich in perspective-inducing realpolitik:

"I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood." ~Forty Years On

Forty years ago today Brigadier the Right Honourable Professor John Enoch Powell (one can tell from the myriad prefixes that this was a man who led a busy life) made his so-called 'Rivers of Blood' speech on immigration. There is a lot this blogger could say on the subject, but it seems more appropriate to simply reproduce the thing here in full and leave readers to draw their own conclusions.

The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to do so, it encounters obstacles which are deeply rooted in human nature.

One is that by the very order of things such evils are not demonstrable until they have occurred: at each stage in their onset there is room for doubt and for dispute whether they be real or imaginary. By the same token, they attract little attention in comparison with current troubles, which are both indisputable and pressing: whence the besetting temptation of all politics to concern itself with the immediate present at the expense of the future. Above all, people are disposed to mistake predicting troubles for causing troubles and even for desiring troubles: "If only," they love to think, "if only people wouldn't talk about it, it probably wouldn't happen."

Perhaps this habit goes back to the primitive belief that the word and the thing, the name and the object, are identical. At all events, the discussion of future grave but, with effort now, avoidable evils is the most unpopular and at the same time the most necessary occupation for the politician. Those who knowingly shirk it deserve, and not infrequently receive, the curses of those who come after.

A week or two ago I fell into conversation with a constituent, a middle-aged, quite ordinary working man employed in one of our nationalised industries. After a sentence or two about the weather, he suddenly said: "If I had the money to go, I wouldn't stay in this country." I made some deprecatory reply to the effect that even this government wouldn't last for ever; but he took no notice, and continued: "I have three children, all of them been through grammar school and two of them married now, with family. I shan't be satisfied till I have seen them all settled overseas. In this country in fifteen or twenty years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man."

I can already hear the chorus of execration. How dare I say such a horrible thing? How dare I stir up trouble and inflame feelings by repeating such a conversation? The answer is that I do not have the right not to do so. Here is a decent, ordinary fellow Englishman, who in broad daylight in my own town says to me, his Member of Parliament, that his country will not be worth living in for his children. I simply do not have the right to shrug my shoulders and think about something else. What he is saying, thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking - not throughout Great Britain, perhaps, but in the areas that are already undergoing the total transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of English history.

In fifteen or twenty years, on present trends, there will be in this country three and a half million Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants. That is not my figure. That is the official figure given to Parliament by the spokesman of the Registrar General's Office. There is no comparable official figure for the year 2000, but it must be in the region of five to seven million, approximately one-tenth of the whole population, and approaching that of Greater London. Of course, it will not be evenly distributed from Margate to Aberystwyth and from Penzance to Aberdeen. Whole areas, towns and parts of towns across England will be occupied by sections of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population. As time goes on, the proportion of this total who are immigrant descendants, those born in England, who arrived here by exactly the same route as the rest of us, will rapidly increase. Already by 1985 the native-born would constitute the majority. It is this fact which creates the extreme urgency of action now, of just that kind of action which is hardest for politicians to take, action where the difficulties lie in the present but the evils to be prevented or minimised lie several parliaments ahead.

The natural and rational first question with a nation confronted by such a prospect is to ask: "How can its dimensions he reduced?" Granted it be not wholly preventable, can it be limited, bearing in mind that numbers are of the essence: the significance and consequences of an alien element introduced into a country or population are profoundly different according to whether that element is 1% or 10%. The answers to the simple and rational question are equally simple and rational: by stopping, or virtually stopping, further inflow, and by promoting the maximum outflow. Both answers are part of the official policy of the Conservative Party.

It almost passes belief that at this moment twenty or thirty additional immigrant children are arriving from overseas in Wolverhampton alone every week - and that means fifteen or twenty additional families a decade or two hence. Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependants, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant-descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. So insane are we that we actually permit unmarried persons to immigrate for the purpose of founding a family with spouses and fiances whom they have never seen. Let no one suppose that the flow of dependants will automatically tail off. On the contrary, even at the present admission rate of only 5,000 a year by voucher, there is sufficient for a further 25,000 dependants per annum ad infinitum, without taking into account the huge reservoir of existing relations in this country – and I am making no allowance at all for fraudulent entry. In these circumstances nothing will suffice but that the total inflow for settlement should be reduced at once to negligible proportions, and that the necessary legislative and administrative measures be taken without delay.

I turn to re-emigration. If all immigration ended tomorrow, the rate of growth of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population would be substantially reduced, but the prospective size of this element in the population would still leave the basic character of the national danger unaffected. This can only be tackled while a considerable proportion of the total still comprises persons who entered this country during the last ten years or so. Hence the urgency of implementing now the second element of the Conservative Party's policy: the encouragement of re-emigration.

Nobody can make an estimate of the numbers which, with generous assistance, would choose either to return to their countries of origin or to go to other countries anxious to receive the manpower and the skills they represent. Nobody knows, because no such policy has yet been attempted. I can only say that, even at present, immigrants in my own constituency from time to time come to me, asking if I can find them assistance to return home. If such a policy were adopted and pursued with the determination which the gravity of the alternative justifies, the resultant outflow could appreciably alter the prospects.

The third element of the Conservative Party's policy is that all who are in this country as citizens should be equal before the law and that there shall be no discrimination or difference made between them by public authority. As Mr Heath has put it we will have no "first-class citizens" and "second-class citizens ". This does not mean that the immigrant and his descendent should be elevated into a privileged or special class or that the citizen should be denied his right to discriminate in the management of his own affairs between one fellow-citizen and another or that he should be subjected to imposition as to his reasons and motive for behaving in one lawful manner rather than another.

There could be no grosser misconception of the realities than is entertained by those who vociferously demand legislation as they call it "against discrimination", whether they be leader writers of the same kidney and sometimes on the same news papers which year after year in the 1930s tried to blind this country to the rising peril which confronted it, or archbishops who live in palaces, faring delicately with the bedclothes pulled right up over their heads. They have got it exactly and diametrically wrong. The discrimination and the deprivation, the sense of alarm and of resentment, lies
not with the immigrant population but with those among whom they have come and are still coming. This is why to enact legislation of the kind before Parliament at this moment is to risk throwing a match on to gunpowder. The kindest thing that can be said about those who propose and support it is that they know not what they do.

Nothing is more misleading than comparison between the Commonwealth immigrant in Britain and the American negro. The negro population of the United States, which was already in existence before the United States became a nation, started literally as slaves and were later given the franchise and other rights of citizenship, to the exercise of which they have only gradually and still incompletely come. The Commonwealth immigrant came to Britain as a full citizen, to a country which knew no discrimination between one citizen and another, and he entered instantly into the possession of the rights of every citizen, from the vote to free treatment under the National Health Service. Whatever drawbacks attended the immigrants arose not from the law or from public policy or from administration, but from those personal circumstances and accidents which cause, and always will cause, the fortunes and experience of one man to be different from another's.

But while, to the immigrant, entry to this country was admission to privileges and opportunities eagerly sought, the impact upon the existing population was very different. For reasons which they could not comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country. Theyfound their wives unable to obtain hospital beds in childbirth, their children unable to obtain school places, their homes and neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition, their plans and prospects for the future defeated; at work they found that employers hesitated to apply to the immigrant worker the standards of discipline and competence required of the native-born worker; they began to hear, as time went by, more and more voices which told them that they were now the unwanted. They now learn that a one-way privilege is to be established by Act of Parliament; a law which cannot, and is not intended to, operate to protect them or redress their grievances is to be enacted to give the stranger, the disgruntled and the agent provocateur the power to pillory them for their private actions.

In the hundreds upon hundreds of letters I received when I last spoke on this subject two or three months ago, there was one striking feature which was largely new and which I find ominous. All Members of Parliament are used to the typical anonymous correspondent; but what surprised and alarmed me was the high proportion of ordinary, decent, sensible people, writing a rational and often well-educated letter, who believed that they had to omit their address because it was dangerous to have committed themselves to paper to a Member of Parliament agreeing with the views I had expressed, and that they would risk penalties or reprisals if they were known to have done so. The sense of being a persecuted minority which is growing among ordinary English people in the areas of the country which are affected is something that those without direct experience can hardly imagine. I am going to allow just one of those hundreds of people to speak for me:

"Eight years ago in a respectable street in Wolverhampton a house was sold to a negro. Now only one white (a woman old-age pensioner) lives there. This is her story. She lost her husband and both her sons in the war. So she turned her seven-roomed house, her only asset, into a boarding house. She worked hard and did well, paid off her mortgage and began to put something by for her old age. Then the immigrants moved in. With growing fear, she saw one house after another taken over. The quiet street became a place of noise and confusion Regretfully, her white tenants moved out.

"The day after the last one left, she was awakened at 7am by two negroes who wanted to use her phone to contact their employer. When she refused, as she would have refused any stranger at such an hour, she was abused and feared she would have been attacked but for the chain on her door. Immigrant families have tried to rent rooms in her house, but she always refused. Her little store of money went, and after paying rates, she has less than two per week. She went to apply for a rate reduction and was seen by a young girl, who on hearing she had a seven-roomed house, suggested she should let part of it. When she said the only people she could get were negroes, the girl said, "Racial prejudice won't get you anywhere in this country." So she went home.

"The telephone is her lifeline. Her family pay the bill, and help her out as best they can. Immigrants have offered to buy her house – at a price which the prospective landlord would be able to recover from his tenants in weeks, or at most a few months. She is becoming afraid to go out. Windows are broken. She finds excreta pushed through her letter box. When she goes to the shops, she is followed by children, charming, wide-grinning piccaninnies. They cannot speak English, but one word they know. 'Racialist', they chant. When the new Race Relations Bill is passed, this woman is convinced she will go to prison. And is she so wrong? I begin to wonder"

The other dangerous delusion from which those who are wilfully or otherwise blind to realities suffer, is summed up in the word "integration". To be integrated into a population means to become for all practical purposes indistinguishable from its other members. Now, at all times, where there are marked physical differences, especially of colour, integration is difficult though, over a period, not impossible. There are among the Commonwealth immigrants who have come to live here in the last fifteen years many thousands whose wish and purpose is to be integrated and whose every thought and endeavour is bent in that direction. But to imagine that such a thing enters the heads of a great and growing majority of immigrants and their descendants is a ludicrous misconception, and a dangerous one.

We are on the verge here of a change. Hitherto it has been force of circumstance and of background which has rendered the very idea of integration inaccessible to the greater part of the immigrant population - that they never conceived or intended such a thing, and that their numbers and physical concentration meant the pressures towards integration which normally bear upon any small minority did not operate. Now we are seeing the growth of positive forces acting against integration, of vested interests in the preservation and sharpening of racial and religious differences, with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population. The cloud no bigger than a man's hand, that can so rapidly overcast the sky, has been visible recently in Wolverhampton and has shown signs of spreading quickly. The words I am about to use, verbatim as they appeared in the local press on 17 February, are not mine, but those of a Labour Member of Parliament who is a minister in the present government:

"The Sikh communities' campaign to maintain customs inappropriate in Britain is much to be regretted. Working in Britain, particularly in the public services, they should be prepared to accept the terms and conditions of their employment. To claim special communal rights (or should they say rites?) leads to a dangerous fragmentation within society. This communalism is a canker; whether practised by one colour or another it is to be strongly condemned." All credit to John Stonehouse for having had the insight to perceive that, and the courage to say it.

For these dangerous and divisive elements the legislation proposed in the Race Relations Bill is the very pabulum they need to flourish. Here is the means of showing that the immigrant communities can organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood".

That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century. Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.

Fitna

I was holidaying on the islands of the Guanches when Geert Wilders's much anticipated/dreaded film was finally published, so I had the mater download and save it for me, having guessed correctly that it might not be up for long before the fatwas did their demoralising work. Here it is, for your viewing pleasure:

If you ask me, a fairly tame take on how undeniably unpleasant passages in the Qur'an can be used to justify terrorist atrocities. Yes, yes, the same sort of thing can be done with the Gospel, as I'm thoroughly tired of hearing, but such fallacious tu quoque arguments, while good at diverting people's attention, do not exactly let the Qu'ran off the hook—especially not in the minds of people who are not even Christian. (You will find many people are totally unable/unwilling to come to grips with the idea that the presence of Isaiah 13:16 or whatever in the Bible does not actually make violence in the Qu'ran less bad. You might expect that this gambit would only be employed as long as the assumption that you are Christian holds; a declaration of atheism does not however appear to diminish their belief in the argument's worth one jot. They are the same sort of people you find advancing the argument that the crimes of Stalin's irreligious regime invalidate Richard Dawkins's more general critique of religious violence, and there is no reasoning with them.)

There is no so-called 'hate speech', (well, not of the Islamophobic variety) in fact Fitna offers almost no commentary whatsoever. It simply showcases violent surahs, the bloodthirsty pronouncements of various hateful demogogues who use them for their inspiration and the resulting consequences for we in the West. From this we are expected to draw our own conclusions. Obviously the film is structured in such a way as to point you in the direction of Wilders's own particular conclusions, but it's hardly Jud Süss.

Whether or not this all leads to the same barbaric, cravenly appeased lawlessness as 'Cartoongate' remains to be seen...

No Room for Dissent in EU 'Parliament'

On the 12th of December a number of Eurosceptic (or rather, EUsceptic) MEPs staged a protest within the chamber of the European Parliament against the signing of the Lisbon Treaty; that is, the European Constitution reconstituted using "different terminology, without changing the legal substance." (German Chancellor Angela Merkel) Rejected in national referendums in the Netherlands and France, its reconstitution had been so contrived that five other member states's governments including Great Britain's would not have to deliver on their manifesto promises to hold public votes on its adoption, on the technicality that the constitution was now instead a 'reform treaty'.

The aftermath of the protest—termed a 'manifestation' by participants—saw much lofty indignation and calls for censure (and censorship) from the usual suspects, with the president of the Toy Parliament (credit to EUReferendum for that moniker) ultimately requesting federalist MEPs grant him the power to deny certain statutory rights to their colleagues at his discretion (i.e. arbitrarily), in the process tearing up their own rule books.

Witness Conservative MEP Dan Hannan being physically menaced after criticising the move, with a fellow "parliamentarian" rising from his seat and moving across the floor to shout in his face that he "can't say that!":

He (Mr Hannan, not his political commissar) was indeed subsequently expelled from the EPP-ED group for his temerity.

“They must be worse than blind who cannot see with what undeviating regularity of system, in this case and in all cases, they pursue their scheme for the destruction of every independent power,” wrote Edmund Burke of another continental tyranny. “Their will is the law, not only at home, but as to the concerns of every nation. They have swept aside the very constitutions under which legislatures acted and the laws were made.”

Those Hilarious Leaked Police e-mails in Full

I spent my childhood in a little flat directly opposite the Leith Police station (playing Sonic the Hedgehog, mostly) so this story has a certain personal resonance.

Dear Sir/Madam/Automated telephone answering service

Having spent the past twenty minutes waiting for someone at Leith police station to pick up a telephone I have decided to abandon the idea and try emailing you instead. Perhaps you would be so kind as to pass this massage on to your colleagues in Leith by means of smoke signal, carrier pigeon or ouija board.

As I'm writing this email there are eleven failed medical experiments (I think you call them "youths") in West Cromwell Street which is just off Commercial Street in Leith. Six of them seem happy enough to play a game which involves kicking a football against an iron gate with the force of a meteorite. This causes an earth shattering CLANG! which rings throughout the entire building. This game is now in its third week and as I am unsure how the scoring system works, I have no idea if it will end any time soon.

The remaining five walking abortions are happily rummaging through several bags of rubbish and items of furniture that someone has so thoughtfully dumped beside the wheelie bins. One of them has found a saw and is setting about a discarded chair like a beaver on speed. I fear that it's only a matter of time before they turn their limited attention to the bottle of calor gas that is lying on its side between the two bins. If they could be relied on to only blow their own arms and legs off then I would happily leave them to it. I would even go so far as to lend them the matches. Unfortunately they are far more likely to blow up half the street with them and I've just finished decorating the kitchen.

What I suggest is this. After replying to this email with worthless assurances that the matter is being looked into and will be dealt with, why not leave it until the one night of the year (probably bath night) when there are no mutants around then drive up the street in a panda car before doing a three point turn and disappearing again. This will of course serve no other purpose than to remind us what policemen actually look like.

I trust that when I take a clawhammer to the skull of one of these throwbacks you'll do me the same courtesy of giving me a four month head start before coming to arrest me.

I remain sir, your obedient servant

C****** T*****

Dear Mr. C****** T*****,

I have read your email and understand your frustration at the problems caused by youths playing in the area and the problems you have encountered in trying to contact the police.

As the Community Beat Officer for your street I would like to extend an offer of discussing the matter fully with you.

Should you wish to discuss the matter, please provide contact details (address / telephone number) and when may be suitable.

Regards

PC XXXXXXXXXX, Community Beat Officer

Dear PC XXXXXXXXXXX,

First of all I would like to thank you for the speedy response to my original email. 16 hours and 38 minutes must be a personal record for Leith Police station and rest assured that I will forward these details to Norris McWhirter for inclusion in his next book.

Secondly I was delighted to hear that our street has its own community beat officer. May I be the first to congratulate you on your covert skills? In the five or so years I have lived in West Cromwell Street, I have never seen you. Do you hide up a tree or have you gone deep undercover and infiltrated the gang itself? Are you the one with the acne and the moustache on his forehead or the one with a chin like a wash hand basin? It's surely only a matter of time before you are headhunted by MI5.

While I realise there may be far more serious crimes taking place in Leith such as smoking in a public place or being Muslim without due care and attention, is it too much to ask for a policeman to explain (using words of no more than two syllables at a time) to these twats that they might want to play their strange football game elsewhere? The pitch behind the Citadel or the one at DK's are both within spitting distance as is the bottom of the Albert Dock.

Should you wish to discuss these matters further you should feel free to contact me on xxxx xxxxxx. If after 25 minutes I have still failed to answer, I'll buy you a large one in the Compass Bar.

Regards

C****** T*****

P.S If you think that this is sarcasm, you're lucky you don't work for the public cleansing department.

It's a crying shame that the poor man (who gave me rather a good laugh) reportedly now fears for his family's safety as a result of this venting of the spleen going public.