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Friday 12 December 2008

"An African Solution to an African Problem." Coming to a British city soon?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00g1vdq


Louis Theroux travels to Johannesburg, where the residents find themselves increasingly besieged by crime. Despairing of the capability of the police and the courts to protect them, many have turned to an industry of private security, offering protection for a price. Are the sometimes brutal methods of these private police really a solution or just another part of the problem?

The first stop for Louis is a meeting with William Mayangoni, the local co-ordinator for a security firm known as Mapogo. Based on the outskirts of Diepsloot, one of the squatter camps that ring Johannesburg, William investigates thefts for his mainly white clients. When he catches a suspect, he gives them 'medicine': the alleged offender is beaten with a leather whip known as a sjambok.

Although his clients seem to support what they see as 'an African solution to an African problem', William's methods alienate the people of Diepsloot. Finally, their patience snaps dramatically, and William has to call out the real police in order to protect himself from the vicious threat of the mob.

In the centre of Johannesburg, a security company called Bad Boyz work in an area called Hillbrow, notorious for its high crime rate. Louis meets company director Hendrik De Klerk who explains that much of their activity involves reclaiming and securing buildings that have been taken over, or hijacked, by criminal gangs who illegally take rent from tenants. Louis watches dramatic evictions unfold, in which the police and security companies are not afraid to use force to kick out the protesting residents.


There is something deeply irritating about Louis Theroux. His pursed lips, his concern for the caught criminals appears mere lip service. I must play the role of a liberal, he seems to be thinking, and pretend to be shocked that real bullets are being used, not rubber bullets.

He asks questions such of caught and beaten criminals:

"Is he frightened and hurt?"

"Should we call an ambulance?"

"May I see his wounds?"

"Is it too brutal?"

He did get a sensible answer: "It is good for the community. He won't do that again, ever."

Louis tries to answer the question of "whether private police are the solution or part of the problem".

No, Louis. The solution is to bring back the death penalty which the liberal establishment saw fit to abolish in 1995, in their infinite wisdom. (Did our Louis mention that, in his infinite journalistic impartiality? Did he hell!!)

Louis' show made one see why apartheid was once seen as a solution. One just simply wanted to separate oneself from that horror and have nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with people like that.

I will just list a number of the more memorable pieces of information I gathered:

When they start swarming, watch out!

The concept of the "mob" and the "community" are used interchangeably. The law-makers and law-breakers are indistinguishable, caught up in an apparently unbreakable cycle of violence.

Methods of punishment were burning with petrol, stones, bricks and the sjambok, amongst other things. William of Mapogo Security, (who seemed a gentle smiling likable giant) had the mob (or was it the community?) turning on him, wanting to burn him after he had broken a thief's leg with a golf club. While Louis was asking him if it was really necessary to break that man's leg, the conversation went along these lines:

William:
What would you do?

Louis:
I would call the police.

William:
The police are failing, they do nothing, they don't come. If they do come and take him away, after making a donation to the police, he will be meeting you tomorrow over there.

Louis:
I would build higher fences.

William:
They will climb them and still get in, and meet you later, over there. So what do you do?

To which Louis had no answer.

People are killed "like chickens".

"There is no solution. We must solve it ourselves."

The private policeman was openly on friendly terms with the Nigerian drugdealer, who called him "boss". Nigerian drugdealers and dealers in stolen goods are "human beings too", said the private cop. He doesn't give me trouble, in a way he keeps order and I am not paid to take people like him off the streets. If he were taken off the streets, he would be replaced almost immediately.

The most chilling encounter was the exchange Louis after he shook hands with a criminal and his partner in crime, who killed a traffic policeman for his gun, had been inside for 10 years and had just got out. No remorse was expressed.

"I will die for the job. I like crime. I never go to school so what can I do?"

That was certainly a very healthy attitude of accepting one's lot in life and making the best of things. His implicit acknowledgment that good education would have saved him from a life of crime suggests there is something of the philosopher about him. In any case, his question as to what he is to do now, with no job prospects and without an education, apart from continuing his life of crime, is unanswerable.

Philosophy is after all the asking of the unanswerable question.

His brother, also a criminal, was sought by a policeman who behaved "like a soldier". Apparently, the policeman killed both his parents in order to capture his brother. This could explain his rather jaundiced view of policemen.

He then gave us a few helpful tips on the art of extortion.

"You have a baby. I want your money. I put baby in microwave. I turn it on. You give me money."

"You have a wife. I put knife to her throat. I cut a little bit so you can see blood. I ask if you want me to finish the job. You will give me. No other way".

Louis must be thanked for putting the case for the death penalty so cogently and subtly. He is a liberal, you see, and not allowed to ask for such things as the condign punishment for criminals without risking losing his job or his girlfriend.

In the meantime, we wait for more African problems of to arrive on these shores, and continue the liberal British tradition of wringing our hands and pissing in the wind.

Thursday 11 December 2008

The Boy Jesus at the Temple - The Stepfather's Version

Luke 2:41-52 (New International Version)

The Boy Jesus at the Temple

41Every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover. 42When he was twelve years old, they went up to the Feast, according to the custom. 43After the Feast was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. 44Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. 45When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. 46After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, "Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you."

49"Why were you searching for me?" he asked. "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?"

50But they did not understand what he was saying to them.

51Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. 52And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.






SCENE:
Mary and Joseph come upon Jesus after three days' of inconvenience and anxiety thinking they had lost their son.

MARY [to Jesus]:
Jesus Christ! We've been looking everywhere for you! What the hell on earth did you think you were doing? Where have you been?? Dad and I have been worried sick!!!"

JESUS [to Mary]:
Which dad do you mean, Ma? Do you mean your husband, or do you mean my real dad?

[looks skywards with a significant expression]

Anyway, I knew you would come back for me. My real dad says I am Son of God and when I grow up I will be a prophet. One of the very useful things you can do if you are prophet is predict the future and I predicted you would come back for me. Anyway, don't you know I had to be in my father's house?"

JOSEPH:
What the bloody hell do you mean? Stop talking utter rot. This [he gestured] is not my house!

JESUS:
I didn't mean you. I meant my real dad.

[Jesus looks up at the sky and back at Joseph defiantly.]

You're not my real dad. [turning to Mary] Is he, mum?

JOSEPH:
What???!!!!

[to Mary] So, you've told him about your "virgin" pregnancy, have you? Well, you could have given me some notice about that so I would at least have known I would no longer have parental authority over that, that little bastard. [He spits out the last word and glares angrily at mother and child.]

MARY:
Oh, Joseph. Please don't say that!

JOSEPH:
Yes, Mary. I knew I was a fool to marry you when everyone had said you had been putting yourself about. Jesus, you are superior supercilious little shit. Every time you go on about your other dad like this again, I will put you in your place and remind you about another interpretation that could be made about your origins. DO. YOU. UNDERSTAND, Son of Mary? [putting his face very close to Jesus']

JESUS:
Er, yes, dad. [sheepishly]

JOSEPH:
And remember, Jesus, m'boy, it ain't easy being prophet. People hate a know-it-all, preaching at them to be cleaner, neater, more giving and forgiving and telling them that nothing they do will ever be good enough. The rich especially hate being told that their chances of getting into heaven are virtually nil. No one likes a Communist Revolutionary and people like them and you are going to be make a lot of enemies who will wish you ill.

Now, Jesus, tell me the worst sort of punishment you can think of if the Roman soldiers want to punish the worst sort of people to cause them the most pain. Can you think of it, you little know-it-all?

JESUS:
Er, crucifixion?

JOSEPH:
Crucifixion, what, Jesus?

JESUS:
Crucifixion, er, dad ...

JOSEPH:
That's better, my son, and don't you forget that, or it will be the death of you.

CHAV nativity play

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3688456/Chav-nativity-which-has-Jesus-turning-water-into-lager-angers-parents.html


This is the full text of the play, understood to have been downloaded from the internet, that pupils were given to read:

Pupil One: Do you hear what we 'erd, right, there's this bird called Mary, yeah? She's a virgin.

Pupil two: Wossat then? A train?

Pupil three: She's not married or nuffink. But she's got this boyfriend Joe, innit? He does joinery an' that. May lives with him in a crib down Nazaref. Well anyways, one day right Mary meets this bloke Gabriel right.

Pupil two: Gabriel? What sorta name's that den?

Pupil one: Dunno, sounds Chavvy to me.

Pupil two: Innit! Bruv.

Pupil three: She's like 'Ooo ya looking at?' Gabriel just goes 'You got one up the duff, you have.' Mary's totally gobsmacked.

Pupil two: Innit?

Pupil one: She gives it to him large 'Stop dissin' me yeah? I ain't no Kappa-slapper. I never bin wiv no one!'

Pupil two: Yeah right! Bet she was a right goer.

Pupil three: Well, see the thing is she hadn't bin wiv no-one. Honest! So Mary goes and sees her cousing Liz, who's six months gone herself. Liz is largin' it. She's filled with spirits, Bacardi breezers an' that. She's like 'Orright, Mary. I can feel me bay-bee in me tummy and I reckon I'm well blessed.

Pupil two: Think of all the extra benefits an' that that they are gonna get. Mary goes 'Yeah, s'pose you're right.

Pupil one: Mary an' Joe ain't got no money so they have to ponce a donkey an' go dahn Beflehem on that. They get to this pub an' Mary wants to stop, yeah?

Pupil two: No surprised, I'd wanna pint an all.

Pupil one: Nah, to have her bay-bee an' that.

Pupil two: What, have the kid in the pub? That's outers, people in the pub having a quiet pint then in comes this bird screaming and hollering 'n stuff. Put me off me drink that would!

Pupil three: Shut up will ya! See the fing is there ain't no room at the inn, innit? So Mary an' Joe break an' enter into this garridge, only it's filled wiv animals. Cahs an' sheep an' that.

Pupil two: On that's gross, near turned my guts that as!

Pupil three: Well then, these free geezers turn up, looking proper bling wiv crowns on their 'eads. They're like 'Respect, baby-bee Jesus,' an' say they're wise men from the East End.

Pupil two: What Minty and the Mitchell brothers?

Pupil one: On shut up! Joe goes: 'If you're so wise, wotchoo doin' wiv this Frankenstein an' myrrh? Why dincha just bring gold, Adidas, and Burberry?'

Pupil two: On yeah, that's proper stuff to give to a kid.

Pupil three: Well. Then blow me, some Welsh bloke's turn up wiv a sheep, well it's all about to kick off when Gabriel turns up again an' sex he's got another message from this Lord geezer.

Pupil two: Shoulda used his mobile, he sounds a proper nutter.

Pupil three: Shut it! Anyways he's like 'The police is comin an' they're killin' all the baby-bees. You better nash off to Egypt.

Pupil one: Joe goes 'You must be monged if you think I'm goin' down Egypt on a minging donkey.'

Pupil two: Wouldn't get me on no minging donkey. Went on one at Margate in the summer, it proper stunk.

Pupil one: Will you give it a rest? Gabriel sez 'Suit yerself, pal. But it's your look out if you stay.' So they go down Egypt till they've stopped killin' the first-born an' it's safe an' that. Then Joe and Mary and Jesus go back to Nazaref, an' Jesus turns water into Stella.

Pupil two: Wicked! Wherdya hear about all this den?

Pupil one: Dunno, can't remember.

Pupil two: Well what yous getting for Christmas this year?

Pupil three: Dunno, perhaps a bita bling. I don't see wat all the fuss is about Christmas, it's just an excuse to get stuffed and fall asleep in front of the telly innit?

Pupil two: Yeah bruv. Innit?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1093148/A-chavvy-Christmas-Mary-Joe-turn-burglars-schools-Nativity-study.html

how to stop the run on sterling - reject "hair of the dog" economic policy

In view of the run on sterling and Germany's criticisms of UK and US "hair of the dog" economic policy, I have this morning sent some well-meant advice to the Chancellor's advisers at HM Treasury.

The recipients are:

Catherine Macleod (Special Adviser)
Sam White (Special Adviser)
Andrew Maugham (Council of Economic Advisers)
David Pinto-Duschinsky (Council of Economic Advisers)
Geoffrey Spence (Council of Economic Advisers)

Subject: "hair of the dog" economic policies cannot reverse run on sterling

... but sensible economic policies will!

A sensible economic policy would consist of

(1) cutting taxes AND

(2) cutting spending

For all the usual reasons, the government will NOT be exercising Option 2. The Tories hardly dare say it themselves. Cut public spending? Why, that is like proposing that we all start eating babies!

However, were you to exercise Option 2, the run on sterling would stop and might even reverse, without any adjustment to interest rates.

Try it and see!


But Brown, Darlng and Mandelson will not dare, for they worship at the shrine of the Welfare State and I am asking them to slay their sacred cow.

Perhaps their advisers are braver than they are.

The Royal Variety Performance 2008 - how to make it more entertaining

Someone on the Today Programme http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/default.stm said she wanted to scrap the mind-numbingly dull Royal Variety Show, so dull that the Queen herself can only bear it once every 24 months and has been known to make jokes about its interminability. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are standing in her for this year.



I would like to make the following suggestion:



ANNOUNCE THAT ANY MEMBER OF THE ROYAL FAMILY FORCED TO ATTEND THIS OCCASION WILL BE ALLOWED TO SCORE EACH OF THE PERFORMANCES AND GIVE MARKS OUT OF 10.



That would create a sensation and make people watch. Long-suffering members of the Royal Family would enjoy themselves more for being able to their feelings through low and even minus scores, and also be able to press - at any point in the performance - the "Thank you very much. That will be all. Don't call us, we'll call you" button.

The performers will be allowed to finish their act without knowing till afterwards when it was and at what point in the performance the royal "stop" button was pressed.

Viewers at home would however know exactly when, and perhaps be given their own stop buttons to press on their remote control. Those who pressed theirs the same time as any member of the Royal audience gets a prize.

This slight tweaking would add enormously to the joy and gaiety of the nation and significantly increase viewing figures, in my opinion.

Thursday 4 December 2008

What I actually did

I had an interesting moral dilemma yesterday. Hurrying to a friend who wanted me at a certain place at a certain time on a cold icy day with dangerously slippery pavements, I found I had nearly fallen over twice before I descended a footbridge and encountered a mother struggling to carry a pushchair up the stairs.

I remarked that the streets were lethally slippery and that I had nearly fallen over a few times. I added that I would take the long way round if I were her, just because the steps coming up were already very slippery.

She brightened up at my chattiness and asked if I would do her the favour of helping her with the pushchair.

The long and short of it was that I declined, saying that

(a) the stairs were very dangerous and slippery and I did not want to fall over myself

(b) I was already late for an appointment

(c) I really did recommend that she took the long way round even if it took more time

I did not say that I would never forgive myself if I assisted her in something I had already warned her against and injured myself in the process. Having an idea of the kind of temptation that Providence would find irresistible, I felt falling down the steps and breaking my crown or being the one tumbling after would be an outcome not at all unlikely.

It was only a day later that I realised that I should have helped her down the stairs again with the pushchair so that she would have been in a better position of following my advice of taking the longer way round.

Instead, I hurried on leaving her to struggle alone, falsely reassured that I had at least given her sensible advice and done all I could as a good citizen. A better citizen would have seen to it that she received the assistance and encouragement she needed to follow my advice.

What is one to do?

A discussion at dinner tonight raised the subject of how posh people used to talk using the generic pronoun "one" as in -


One would think the airlines would have to close down.
One would think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
The young comedian was awful; one felt embarrassed for him.
If one fails, then one must try harder next time.

I suggested that "one" was more nuanced than commonly thought, in that "one" used by posh people had more the sense that "people like one of us".

What is one to do? - What are people like one of us to do in a situation like this?

Common people don't use it because there is no such assumption of common standards of behaviour and morality.


You would think the airlines would have to close down.
You would think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
The young comedian was awful; you felt embarrassed for him.
If you fail, then you must try harder next time.


do not after all quite have the same ring of subscribing to common standards of perception and morality, and have the subtext of taking the reader or hearer (the "you") into, er, one's confidence and appealing to others' standards of perception and morality.

In our age of moral relativism, it is only to be expected that one now rarely hears this generic pronoun being used.

Thursday 27 November 2008

"Princess Bubble" - a fairy story for those too old to be still single and looking

The end of Western civilisation really cannot be that far off!

Instead of addressing the problem of family breakdown in society and the abdication of parental responsibility and moral authority in every sphere of public life, one of my occasional readers and commentators has recommended Princess Bubble, written by two unmarried and retired trolley-dollies. It is a story for women who have ended up single and need a happy ending as they contemplate growing old alone.

The blurb:

With wisdom gleaned from their careers as single, globe-trotting flight
attendants, first-time authors Susan Johnston and Kimberly Webb have crafted
a modern-day book that celebrates singleness. A contemporary fairy tale for
all ages, Princess Bubble was written to reduce the overwhelming sense of
failure, self-doubt, and despair that some single women face. Knowing how
low self-esteem and depression plague many single females, we wanted to
spread the message that happily ever after can occur even before Prince
Charming arrives. . . or even if he never does, said Webb. We're definitely
not anti-Prince, said Johnston (whose college nickname was Bubbles).

We're not anti-family or anti-marriage, if anything we're anti-Damsel
in Distress. Our message the single life can also be a fairy tale. The End!
Princess Bubble stars a princess who is confused by the traditional fairy
tale messages that say she must find her prince before she can live happily
ever after. Princess Bubble dons her thinking crown to research traditional
fairy tales, interviews married girlfriends, and even takes counsel from her
mother, who advises her to sign up at FindYourPrince.com. With a little help
from her fairy godmother (this is still a fairy tale after all), Ms. Bubble
discovers that living happily ever after is not about finding a prince. True
happiness, the book reveals, is found by loving God, being kind to others,
and being comfortable with who you are already! We've had countless women
all over the nation tell us they wish there had been a book like this when
they were young, said Johnston. This is a story women can truly believe in
and feel comfortable sharing with their children.



You are strongly advised to think again if you have a daughter and want grandchildren in wedlock.

It is actually quite quite wicked to tell young girls to repeat the mistakes of the women who did not get round to getting married and are now facing the prospect of growing old alone, husbandless and childless, with only the prospect of having a cat or a dog to share their roof or bed.

Unmarried and divorced mothers will buy it for themselves and read it to their daughters to validate their life choices and cause their daughters to perpetuate their mistakes, but married mothers ought to know better.

Those married mothers who would give their daughters this rubbish are -

(a) unfit mothers and/or

(b) hate their daughters and/or

(c) don't want grandchildren and/or

(d) hate their husbands and men in general and want their daughters to share this view and/or

(e) unhappily married

Is there much difference between giving your daughter PRINCESS BUBBLE and telling her to always make a point of accepting sweets from strangers and getting into their cars when invited to do so?

If you


  • love your daughter
  • love the father of your daughter
  • have the good fortune to be glad you married your husband
  • in any way enjoyed the family life that your parents provided

then you will not be buying to book for either yourself of your daughter.

Instead, you would be condemning it in the strongest possible terms at every available opportunity.

My advice for women who want children to see to it that they have an eligible man capable of being induced to marry them and father their children by the time they are 25, remains the most practical.

Wednesday 26 November 2008

The role of parental advice in the avoidance of spinsterhood and illegitimate grandchildren

I know too many single women who never intended to be single but have found themselves, for one reason or another, without a man and unable to become a wife and mother.

A cartoon of a career woman saying: "Eeek! I forgot to have children!" is telling, funny and sad.

Yet, when one tries to address this issue, one is accused of giving ignorant "mumsy" advice, ie the advice that all women should make a point of finding a decent man who might be induced to marry them by the time they are 25.

No doubt if I had given this advice to these now single women in their late 30s when they were in their 20s they would all have told me to mind my own business!

I doubt if the mothers of these women would have given any such advice anyway. Most mothers have, to my knowledge, not been giving their daughters advice of any sort for several decades.

Why is that, I wonder?

Is it because they think all the rules have changed and that their advice would be considered old-fashioned, irrelevant and be ignored?

I think I can see why. Just pointing out that the existence and ticking of biological clocks, despite feminism and the advances of medical science, and the consequences thereof, has been found to be so incredibly offensive that an angry single woman in her late 30s has called me "vile", "narrow", "ignorant".

She asked: "Do you want me and all the other numerous women in my/similar position to kaibosh a man into having a child?"

Why, yes, of course! That is what women have been doing since the Fall of Man. Some of us do with greater subtlety than others. The ones who do it best are the ones who let the man think that the idea was all theirs. Sooner or later, our husbands will turn and say that we have changed, and that we tricked them into marriage and that they were fools to marry the shrews, nags and termagants we subsequently became, but that is their misfortune.

Anyway, it doesn't matter how you do it as long as it is done.

Parenthood is a life-changing and attitude-transforming experience, for with it comes the responsibility of being responsible for another person's life. This is so if you take it seriously, as an investment and as a distillation of all that you might have learnt that could be worth passing on.

It is NOT, as I have been trying to point out, about treating our children as pets, or giving them unconditional love.

What is it about parents these days that most do no such thing and do not even see it as their role to guide their children away from heartache and regret by some act of commission or omission?

How strange it is that moral authority is something the modern parent no longer sees as his or her role. Of course you cannot force anyone to listen to you if they do not wish to, but it is odd that no one even goes so far as to put themselves in a position to be able to say later: "I told you so". There is no need of course to go so far as to tell them that you told them so, but the option should be available.

It is the least we can do to discharge our duty to those we care about, by telling them so, even if they will not listen, when the situation remains capable of being remedied.

Monday 24 November 2008

More babies being born with Down's syndrome

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/children_shealth/3506668/More-babies-being-born-with-Downs-syndrome.html

This curious phenomenon suggests the following of British society:-

  1. Increasing numbers of couples view the having children as similar to having pets. (We expect nothing of our pets except their ability to be obedient, grateful, forever dependent and never leave us. Pets, you see, have no use except to gratify the ego of the pet-owner and to stave off feelings of loneliness and uselessness that we all might have from time to time.)
  2. These parents expect very little from their children, because they appear to have the luxury of being able to treat their children as pets.
  3. The waste and purposelessness of such an unrewarding venture - that of bringing up a child who will never achieve full independence and who will always be a source of worry, particularly if they do not predecease their parents - is not being questioned enough by parents, because of the cushion of a welfare state.
  4. More mothers are having children later and later.
  5. The greater willingness of parents now prepared to bring up children with Down's Syndrome is indicative of the unwisdom of indiscriminate compassion that now pervades British society. This may be due to the fact that we now live in a society that is morbidly over-feminised.
  6. A society that unquestioningly encourages the unproductive at the expense of the productive in the name of compassion will find itself burdened with the unproductive and unable to compete with societies unburdened by such policies.
  7. Insanity is but fundamental error compounded by persistent irrationality.
  8. Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.

"It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre.”

Sunday 23 November 2008

Who said this? Part IV

"Night and day, through the months and years, a babel of voices dins unintelligible moral denunciations into the heads of ordinary English men and women, for whom they bear not the slightest relationship to any of the facts of their daily existence ... Some time there has to be an end to this. Some time - why not now? - the citizen will put his faith again in the great simplicities and will confound the merchants of mumbo jumbo."

Who said this? Part III

  1. "The little men who talk about uniting Britain, the white race, Europe or whatever you prefer, cannot even unite themselves. Any talk of a common fight against a common enemy is treated by them as a sinister plot to undermine their own precious private identities."
  2. The Right "... is an incohesive mass of jealously squabbling tin-pot Caesars, more concerned with the pursuance of private vendettas than with the aim of ultimate national salvation."
  3. "Persuasion rather than suppression must be the usual practice. If we are not to have a dictatorship, what we certainly do need is a governing party that can gain ascendancy in British politics of sufficient dimensions, and for a sufficient period of time to attend to the vital tasks uninterrupted until they have become part of the permanent pattern of British life."
  4. "... British genius and British strength have been paralysed by a poverty of leadership, by archaic political institutions and by naive and flabby political philosophies ... the weakness of Britain today is the product of an intelligentsia which during living memory has been hypnotised by the madness of liberalism and internationalism."
  5. " ... changes call not merely for a new type of political party but entirely new types of men to take over the nation's destinies ... Given the character, image and psychology of Conservative and Labour Parties, such a prospect seems remote. Long standing class divisions, however irrational, do not appear as if they can be reconciled by the traditional followers of one attaching themselves to the other. Such a reconciliation could only be achieved by a synthesis of both elements in a new political movement which by tradition was identified neither with one class nor the other ... This then is the object ... a new party of the character that can capture a majority following form both sides of the present political spectrum so as to be able to obtain a long and assured term of power necessary to its tasks."
  6. "In recent years the issues of ... immigration and several spheres of permissive law-making, notably capital punishment and abortion, have provided glaring examples of government by consensus of a liberal minority and without the remotest mandate from the population as a whole. It is a complete mockery of the term 'democratic' to permit government to be carried on in this way. "
  7. "A complete moral regeneration of the national life" must be made on the organs of public opinion. "Press and television, as well as schools and universities, have become the breeding grounds of all those ideas that are systematically rotting the nation from within ... There is almost no attempt to instil into youth the basic principles of patriotism."
  8. The welfare state "thwarts every effort to get Britain moving into the 20th century ... Let social security be commensurate with the useful effort that the worker contributes to the prosperity of the nation. Let those who prefer the life of slothful ease suffer for it by hardship, shortage and insecurity until they decide to mend their ways."
  9. "We have got to get ourselves to producing, as we used to do, young men who are tough and hard. Not only young men with the knowledge and crafts to survive in the modern world, but the physical stamina, the character and the will, to survive."
  10. "The day that our followers lose their ability to hate will be the day that they lose their power and their will to achieve anything worthwhile at all."

Who said this? Part II

"A new party can never become effective as a mass movement before crisis comes. Until then, a new movement can only be a power house for new ideas."

Who said this? Part I

  1. "There are still things worth fighting against."
  2. "It is better to be narrow-minded than to have no mind, to hold limited and rigid principles than none at all. That is the danger which faces so many people today - to have no considered opinions on any subject, to put up with what is wasteful and harmful with the excuse that 'there is good in everything'."
  3. "For generations we English have been the least ceremonious of nations. That was because we enjoyed complete self-confidence in our order. We preserved, behind our easy-going and eccentric ways, a basic decorum. It is time we awoke to the danger of finding ourselves a people of slatterns and louts."
  4. "This is not the age reformation but of defence, when every man of goodwill should devote all his powers to preserving the few good things remaining to us from our grandfathers."
  5. "How will this absurd little jumble of antagonising forces, of negro rhythm and psychoanalysis, of mechanical invention and decaying industry, of infinitely expanding means of communication and an infinitely receding substance of the communicable, of liberty and inertia, how will this ever cool and crystallise out? How shall our own age look in the fancy dress parties and charity pageants of 2030?"
  6. "In time to come it is likely that we and our children will look back with increasing curiosity to the free and fecund life of Victorian England ... The railings which adorned the homes of all classes were symbols of independence and privacy valued in an age which valued liberty above equality."
  7. "Most of the world's troubles seem to come from people who are too busy. If only politicians and scientists were lazier, how much happier we should all be."
  8. "I believe in government; that men cannot live together without rules but that these should be kept at the bare minimum of safety; that there is no form of government ordained from God as being better than any other; that the anarchic elements in society are so strong that it is a whole-time task to keep the peace."
  9. "Barbarism is never finally defeated; given propitious circumstances, men and women who seem quite orderly will commit every conceivable atrocity. The danger does not come merely from habitual hooligans; we are all potential recruits for anarchy. "
  10. "I was not brought up to regard the evasion of the police as the prime aim of education, nor has my subsequent observation of the world give me any reason to think that either the wickedest men or even the worst citizens are to be found in prison. The real enemies of society are sitting snug behind typewriters and microphones pursuing their work of destruction amid popular applause."
  11. "War is an absolute loss, but it admits of degrees; it is very bad to fight, but it is worse to lose."
  12. "In a war, it is notorious, opponents soon forget the cause of their quarrel, continue the fight for the sake of fighting and in the process assume a resemblance to what they abhorred."
  13. "There is a species of person called a 'Modern Churchman' who draws the fully salary of a benificed clergyman and need not commit himself to any religious belief."
  14. "The splendid thing about Education is that everyone wants it and, like influenza, you can give it away without losing any of it yourself."
  15. "Unsystematic discipline varying with the mood of the household makes a far better training for life than the wisest code of rules. It is very bewildering for the old-fashioned child, brought up to a system of rigid justice and reasoned recompense, to find himself plunged into a world where things are less logically operated. The modern mother will see just as much of her children as she finds amusing and they will thus learn the excellent principle that they must make themselves agreeable if they want attention."
  16. "The more influential and intelligent young schoolmasters came [back from the Great War] with their own faith sadly shaken in those very standards they had fought to preserve. The returned with a jolly tolerance of everything that seemed 'modern'. Every effort was made to encourage the children at the public schools to 'think for themselves'. When they should have been whipped and taught Greek paradigms, they were arguing about birth control and nationalisation. Their crude little opinions were treated with respect. It is hardly surprising that they were Bolshevik at 18 and born at 20."
  17. "To know and love one another human being is the root of all wisdom."
  18. "Certain trades and classes seek personal publicity; not so respectable writers, for their entire vocation is one of self-expression and it seems obvious to them that if they cannot make themselves understood in years of laborious writing, they will not succeed in a few minutes of conversation. So when we see interviewers advancing, we fly."
  19. "A writer must face the choice of becoming an artist or a prophet. He can shut himself up at his desk and selfishly seek pleasure in perfecting his own skill or he can pace about, directing dooms and exhortations on the topics of the day. The recluse at the desk has a chance of giving abiding pleasure to others; the publicist has none at all."
  20. "Humility is not a virtue propitious to the artist. It is often pride, emulation, avarice, malice - all odious qualities - which drive a man to complete, elaborate, refine, destroy, renew his work until he has made something that gratifies his pride and envy and greed. And in doing so he enriches the world more than the generous and the good, though he may lose his own soul in the process. That is the paradox of artistic achievement."
  21. "Literature is the right use of language irrespective of the subject or reason of the utterance. A political speech may and sometimes is, literature; a sonnet to the moon may be , and often is, trash."
  22. "The necessary elements of style are lucidity, elegance and individuality; these three qualities combine to form a preservative which ensures the nearest approximation to permanence in the fugitive world of letters."
  23. "Most men and women of genius have entertained preposterous opinions."

Thursday 20 November 2008

MORI breakdown of BNP membership

From what I can remember from what Michael Crick said in Newsnight last night, the BNP are 80% men and tend to be lower middle class or skilled working class ex-Labour voters.

My little idea of selling this to white lower-middle class single women as a good place to go to be outnumbered by brave white men skilled in some trade, of their own race to marry (as the middle classes used to do with the Young Conservatives) was dismissed by a member, who said:



Single women never join the BNP to meet men because they see them
as boring, skinhead and poverty-stricken.



Tsk, tsk. Racist and poverty-stricken. That is indeed an image problem and a half!

Talking about the lower-middle class brings to mind Gilbert & Sullivan's HMS Pinafore. It is probably a little too fanciful to imagine them singing, before their meetings, instead of Jerusalem,

Never Mind the Why and Wherefore, which goes:



Captain.
Never mind the why and wherefore,
Love can level ranks, and therefore,
Though his lordship's station's mighty,
Though stupendous be his brain,
Though her tastes are mean and flighty
And her fortune poor and plain,


Captain & Sir Joseph.
Ring the merry bells on board-ship,
Rend the air with warbling wild,

For the union of his/my lordship
With a humble captain's child!


Captain.
For a humble captain's daughter —


Josephine.
For a gallant captain's daughter —


Sir Joseph.
And a lord who rules the water —


Josephine. (aside)
And a tar who ploughs the water!

All.
Let the air with joy be laden,
Rend with songs the air above,
For the union of a maiden
With the man who owns her love!

Sir Joseph.
Never mind the why and wherefore,
Love can level ranks, and therefore,
Though your nautical relation (alluding to Capt.)
In my set could scarcely pass,

Though you occupy a station
In the
lower middle class —

Captain & Sir Joseph.
Ring the merry bells on board-ship,
Rend the air with warbling wild,
For the union of his/my lordship
With a humble captain's child!


Captain.
For a humble captain's daughter


Josephine.
For a gallant captain's daughter —

Sir Joseph.
And a lord who rules the water —


Josephine. (aside)
And a tar who ploughs the water!


All.
Let the air with joy be laden,
Rend with songs the air above,
For the union of a maiden
With the man who owns her love!

Josephine.
Never mind the why and wherefore,
Love can level ranks, and therefore
I admit the jurisdiction;
Ably have you played your part;
You have carried firm conviction
To my hesitating heart.

Captain & Sir Joseph.
Ring the merry bells on board-ship,
Rend the air with warbling wild,
For the union of his/my lordship
With a humble captain's child!


Captain.
For a humble captain's daughter —

Josephine.
For a gallant captain's daughter —

Sir Joseph.
And a lord who rules the water

Josephine. (aside)
And a tar who ploughs the water!

Josephine. (aloud)
Let the air with joy be laden.

Captain & Sir Joseph.
Ring the merry bells on board-ship,

Josephine.
For the union of a maiden —

Captain & Sir Joseph.
For her union with his lordship.

All.
Rend with songs the air above,
For the man who owns her love!
Rend with songs the air above,
For the man who owns her love!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIiQpQgka1A&feature=related

(You may wish to fast forward to 2:17 where the song actually begins.)

I don't suppose the lower middle classes these days would get the joke. Most of them, I imagine, will not even have heard of Gilbert & Sullivan.

Wednesday 19 November 2008

The Exercise of Due Diligence with Prostitutes

The following are ostensibly the questions we are asked to consider.

http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?forumID=5677&edition=1&ttl=20081119101730

Should it be a crime to pay for sex? The British government wants to make it illegal to pay for sex with prostitutes who are controlled by pimps or have been trafficked to the UK. Will this move protect vulnerable women? Men who pay for sex could be publicly identified and even charged with rape, if they knowingly have sex with a woman forced into prostitution. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said it would 'be a good thing' if the measures deterred men from visiting prostitutes. Sex workers have criticised the proposal, saying they could be at greater risk if they have to work alone or in remote neighbourhoods.

Should the sex-trade be subject to tougher laws? Or would decriminalisation be a better move? How should governments prevent trafficking?

The 1Party legal advice to seekers and purchasers of sexual services is this:

Apart from going equipped with the wherewithal for safe sex, he should also bring along a form to be filled in by the provider to protect him from criminal proceedings:

DECLARATION

I, [name of prostitute], a provider of sexual services, do hereby declare to [name of client] a purchaser of my sexual services, that I have not been forced into prostitution.


Sorted!

Vote: Should an officious and puritanical woman who indulges in empty gesture politics be allowed to remain Home Secretary?

www.1party4all.co.uk/Home/Account/TopicForm.aspx?topicsId=118

BNP membership list published online

At the time of writing, I was unable to access the BNP website which I imagine has crashed due to overwhelming interest.

This debacle demonstrates why it is absolutely necessary that the BNP lift their colour bar and take a more Le Pennian view of nationalism.

I would have thought any BNP member who is not a rabid racist would see that this is the only political solution to the problem of continuing harassment and victimisation by the media, employers, unions etc.

Below are some reasons why they might not agree with me:

1) Members are too frightened to say that even if that is what they think.

2) Members are mostly unreconstructed racists and don't even want to say non-whites can join as full members, even as they know they will stay away in droves. (The NF do not have a colour bar, though of course they do not need to, with their policies of compulsory but "humane" repatriation!)

3) Members and leadership are mostly too ignorant and stubborn to see this.

4) Members and leadership are too fearful of change to take constructive well-timed action to ride this crest of publicity to a good place.

5) For some (probably racist) reason, the BNP believe that only white people know what is in the British National Interest, forgetting that it was a class of white Labour and Tory politicians who first let all the foreigners in! They also forget that the people who are most horrible to them are people of their own race.

Most thoughtful non-whites instinctively understand why the white urban proletariat would want to join the BNP in our PC world.

Two Muslims who understand:

Baroness Warsi
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-484825/Some-BNP-voters-legitimate-views-immigration-says-Tory-peer.html

Ali Miraj
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/2008/07/ali-miraj-its-p.html

Tuesday 11 November 2008

Aristotle on Criticism

"Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing and being nothing."

The purpose of education

John Alexander Smith:


"Nothing you learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest
possible use to you in later life - save only this: that if you work hard and
intelligently, you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot. And
that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole purpose of education."


It therefore seems that I am actually more educated than all the MPs who voted to send British troops to to join the Americans in Iraq, ie Gordon Brown, Boris Johnson, David Davis, David Cameron et al.

For the full list, visit

http://www.holdthemtoaccount.com/who-voted-for-the-war/

It is also clear that Barack Obama is more educated than Hillary Clinton and John Carey.

It is a national tragedy that I am not in charge.

Another "tragedy" in Haringey

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article5130406.ece

I will now state my position on Baby P who once lived in the now London Borough of Haringey, whose mother allowed him to be tortured to death by her partner and lodger. I rejoice at the fact that a life that was about to blossom into another feral youth has been extinguished by her and the lowlife who lived with her.

Where is the "tragedy" the media are hysterically claiming has taken place?

I would even argue that parents should have the absolute right of life or death over their children. It is no skin off my nose that some parents should kill their own children. It would reduce the competition for resources where our own children are concerned, would it not?

Parents who would do such terrible things to their own children have what I would term "bad blood". Why therefore help them perpetuate their bad blood and bad genes at taxpayers' expense? Let them dispose of the toxic fruit of their own loins in their own nasty way.

If only all mothers of the next generation of violent and murderous criminals would do the same!

Friday 7 November 2008

Clifford Chance outsourcing to India

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2006/oct/28/india.internationalnews

This puzzles me since there appears to be a veritable over-supply of lawyers in this country.

If British home-grown lawyers are currently too costly, surely they can be persuaded to accept less pay for the privilege of working for Clifford Chance?

If they accept less then the government should lower taxes.

If taxes are lowered then public services will have to be reduced.

However, such a reduction will create a gap in the market that private enterprise could fill.

That would in eventually kick start the economy, would it not?

Makes sense to me!

Thursday 30 October 2008

Our Island Story by H E Marshall

It seems that Britain has been ruled by foreigners as long ago as the Romans. Then came the Angles who persecuted the Ancient Britons so much that they became the Welsh and the Cornish.

The Angles were in turn invaded and exploited by the Danes who stayed. This larger group of foreigners who then bethought themselves indigenous were in turn invaded and exploited by the Normans. Then came a Dutch monarch and subsequently German ones who reign to this day.

Remaining part of the EU merely continues this very established British tradition of being ruled by foreigners.

It would be un-British not to be!

The BBC - Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross

There was a once time when I admired Jonathan Ross, and found him entertaining, but I was young, foolish and usually stoned.

When he asked David Cameron if he masturbated thinking of Margaret Thatcher, Cameron could have been the darling of even my heart if he had punched out his lights in the same masterful way that John Prescott floored that egg-thrower.

Russell Brand has so far only excited feelings of maniacal murderousness that I did not know I could feel for a complete stranger. I believe I could even enjoy personally beheading him, so much instinctive loathing do I feel for his voice, choice of words and hair.

If he were being burnt at the stake on my village green , I would drag my grandchildren along to witness the sight, pointing and jeering as his revolting lacquered hair crackles after catching fire ....

At least he jumped before he was pushed.

Monday 20 October 2008

How the financial markets work

Once upon a time in a place overrun with monkeys, a man appeared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each. The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them.The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to diminish, they became harder to catch, so the villagers stopped their effort.

The man then announced that he would now pay $20 for each one. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. But soon the supply diminished even further and they were ever harder to catch, so people started going back to their farms and forgot about monkey catching.

The man increased his price to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so sparse that it was an effort to even see a monkey, much less catch one.The man now announced that he would buy monkeys for $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on his behalf.

While the man was away the assistant told the villagers. 'Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has bought. I will sell them to you at $35 each and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.'The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys. They never saw the man nor his assistant again and once again there were monkeys everywhere.

Now you have a better understanding of how the stock market works.

Saturday 18 October 2008

World Communism?

If nationalisation is socialism, is financial socialism World Communism?

Is Marx smiling upon us now?

Thursday 25 September 2008

Nick Griffin roots for Obama - truth stranger than fiction?

By SARA NELSON
Published: 24 Sep 2008

BNP leader Nick Griffin cuts an unlikely figure as a Barack Obama fan – but that did not stop him wearing a hat supporting the presidential hopeful.

The controversial politician was convicted of incitement to racial hatred in 1998 for denying the Holocaust but has repeatedly insisted the BNP is not a racist group.
The far right party is opposed to non-white immigration and all for returning Britain to a white nation.

But as this snap shows, it looks like Griffin is not averse to seeing a black man become the next American president.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/the_real_american_idol/article1729367.ece

Wednesday 24 September 2008

Anti-cervical cancer drug shunned by schools, parents and girls

A CATHOLIC school has become the first in the country to block a project to vaccinate girls against cervical cancer.Governors of St Monica's High School in
Bury - who have previously criticised the jab for `encouraging sexual promiscuity' - have decided they don't want pupils vaccinated on school grounds.The government plans to give injections to girls aged 12 and 13 to protect them against the sexually- transmitted papilloma virus, linked to cervical cancer. Experts believe the programme, which consists of three injections over six months, will eventually save hundreds of lives a year.

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1068563_school_blocks_cervical_cancer_jabs


Goodness knows where the government is finding the money for this anti-cervical cancer vaccination that no one wants in our Credit Crunchy time.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-561827/Anti-cancer-jab-shunned-One-girls-refuses-vaccine-guard-cervical-virus.html

Perhaps someone in the NHS has "done a deal" with the pharmaceutical company that manufactures this drug?

That it is moral hazard would be the parent's first fear. If this jab is supposed to give immunity from the sexually-transmitted kind of cervical cancer it is meant to prevent, then it would give British schoolgirls - known throughout the world for their promiscuity and unplanned pregnancy - one less reason to keep their knickers on.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-299691/Teen-pregnancy-soars.html

To deal with the problem, a government study brightly suggests that schoolchildren should be shown the pleasures oral sex, ie schoolgirls should give schoolboys blowjobs when sex is expected, to avoid unwanted teenage pregnancy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/may/09/society.schools

This sounds remarkably like a society that is about to lose all its marbles in pursuit of sexual gratification.

Why is the single-minded pursuit of sexual gratification to the exclusion of everything else a Bad Thing?

For those of us who have not had lessons about the Birds and the Bees, I will explain briefly.

Having it off whenever, wherever with whoever, leads to unplanned pregnancy.

Unplanned pregnancy leads to illegitimacy and there is already a lot of it about.


In 1993, just over a third – 34.5 per cent – of all births in Britain occurred outside of wedlock, already high by European standards. When Murray looked at the British underclass in 1989, he made a conservative estimate that by 1999, on a linear trend, more than 40 per cent of births would be to single women.

He was right. According to the latest figures from the ONS, by 2004, this had
grown to 42 per cent (the equivalent US figure was 35 per cent). This is an
exceptional rise. It is likely on this trend that the majority of all babies produced in Britain in a decade will be born to single or unmarried mothers. They already are in Wales, and in a host of other places you care to name across Britain: in Sunderland, Newcastle, Manchester, Nottingham, Dundee, Glasgow, Stoke, Norwich, Plymouth, Weymouth and Belfast. In Hartlepool, Blackpool, Liverpool and Lincoln, the illegitimacy rates are already over 60 per cent. Figures also confirm that pregnancy is no longer seen as a trigger for marriage. In 1992, 27,200 girls aged 15-19 were married and by 2003, this had more than halved to just 11,700; this at a time when the birth rate amongst single women under twenty remained stable at roughly 25 per 1,000. A similar pattern has occurred in older age groups. The result is that more babies are being born outside of marriage, and more children are growing up without a stable parental relationship.


Why is bastardy a Bad Thing?


The evidence has long shown us that teenage pregnancy and illegitimacy is encouraged by welfare, and absent fathers and single mothers damage children’s emotional and psychological development, often permanently. Dozens of social science and economic research papers have been published in the US since the 1970s proving these points, including one of the most influential, by Mikhail Bernstam of the Hoover Institution at Stanford in 1988, that showed that childbearing by young unmarried women increased by 6 percent in response to a 10 percent increase in monthly welfare benefits; among blacks, the increase could be as high as 10 percent (Mikhail S. Bernstam, “Malthus and Evolution of the Welfare State: An Essay on the Second Invisible Hand, Parts I and II”, Hoover Institution,1988).

While there have been some studies that argue the causality is unclear or there is no net impact overall, there has never been a paper which proves that welfare actually promotes marriage and the maintenance of stable families, nor any that show that children benefit from being born into broken homes. The consensus is that out-of-wedlock birth and growing up in a single-parent family means the child tends to experience retarded cognitive development; lower educational achievement; lower job attainment; increased behaviour and emotional problems; lower impulse control; and retarded social development.

Unsurprisingly, such children are far more likely to engage in early sexual activity; have children out of wedlock; be on welfare as adults; and engage in criminal activity.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/article_assets/articledir_1/652/The_Underclass_and_Crime%20final.pdf

How typical that the state should be paying good money to encourage precisely the very activity that will make teenage pregnancy more likely.

What sort of message does this free anti-cervical cancer vaccine give British schoolgirls?

Let me venture to put it together in way even a sink-school educated British schoolgirl can understand:

  1. No need to worry about getting sexually-transmitted cervical cancer after your jab.
  2. It is OK to have unprotected sex when you have the jab.
  3. It is OK to have sex as soon as you have the jab.

Do we really need to encourage them to have more sex??

Is this the sort of message we want to give to the mothers of the next generation of illegitimate children?

Visit www.divorcereform.org/crime.html for horrifying statistics on the crime rate amongst the illegitimate and the singly-parented.

Brown's Conference Speech

In the middle of an unfolding financial meltdown already compared to the 1929 Wall Street crash, our PM proposes the following:

  1. From next year, about 250,000 people with cancer will receive the free prescriptions - which could save them hundreds of pounds a year. Free prescriptions would be extended to cover patients will all serious illnesses in “the long term”. The change is estimated to cost £20 million over the next year, rising to £300 million a year over the long-term as more conditions are covered. The current prescription charge in England is £7.10 per item and often cancer patients are taking several drugs at once.
  2. free universal health check-ups for anyone aged over 40
  3. to help elderly people requiring nursing care to remain in their homes
  4. free nursery school places to all two-year olds
  5. Older children who fall behind at school will also be entitled to personalised “catch-up tuition”.
  6. a commitment to introduce new legislation to legally compel the Government to cut carbon dioxide emissions and child poverty as they have pledged to do. (Mr Brown said greenhouse gas emissions will now fall by 80 per cent, rather than 60 per cent, by 2050. Woo-hoo! Hooray! Yipee!)
  7. a new independent commissioner to represent the rights of victims of crime
  8. plans to offer free internet access to poorer families

Got this far?

Where is he going to find the money?

Does he think we are stupid? Or worse, is he stupid?

Nick "Tax Cut" Clegg still has my vote.

I wonder what Cowardly Cameron will say at the Brum Con-Con this weekend. Will he witter on about Compassionate Conservatism and sharing the proceeds of the Credit Crunch to cheers and standing ovations from the attending CaMoronians?

Do bears defecate in woods?

Tuesday 23 September 2008

Homespun wisdom on the Credit Crunch?

Much of the Credit Crunch seems analogous to the time when I fell over in the street.

Losing my balance while walking down the street, I was determined to stop myself from falling over. I struggled desperately to regain it, zigging and zagging, straining and flailing, nearly bumping into other pedestrians in my efforts to stay upright. In the end I still fell over anyway and ripped the knee of my new jeans.

My humiliation would have been less spectacular and rather shortened had I just accepted the inevitable.

Could this analogy be useful to central bankers thinking it is still a good idea to throw good money after bad?





Senator Jim Bunning, Republican:

"This massive bailout is not the solution, it is financial socialism, and it is un-American."

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, called the market turmoil “an economic Pearl Harbor."

Monday 22 September 2008

The British National Sport of Whingeing

I have been taken to ask by for suggesting that workmen and women whinge, and suspected of misogyny, illiberalism and goodness knows what else. Perhaps I should just have said that all poms whinge and are known in Australasia as "whingeing Poms". This is undeniable, thankfully.

"Australia is where you go when you’ve made a mess of everything. That’s why the 1.3m Brits who live there are known as whingeing Poms. Because they’re all failures.

Another popular destination is Spain, which is home these days to 761,000 Brits. Are they all brain surgeons? Inventors? Did Sir Christopher Cockerell invent the hovercraft and then move to Puerto Banus? No. Spain is where you go when you’ve sold your taxi."

For the rest of Jeremy Clarkson's piece on why it is pointless even to leave the country (expat existence is not all it's cracked out to be, apparently), go to:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/jeremy_clarkson/article2326687.ece

"Repeal ALL anti-discrimination legislation and end this race for Greater Victimhood!" or "Why I am thinking of voting Lib-Dem"

Gad, all these race discrimination actions brought by disgruntled Asian officers who didn't get their promotion!

One wonders if the police have time to catch any criminals, their time at work being mostly taken up by fretting about being racially discriminated against or being racially discriminatory towards one another.

Perhaps the reason why Ali Dezai didn't get his promotion despite getting top marks for all his exams was because his employers knew he would be a trouble-maker.

This was of course proven prescient in the light of his subsequent actions.

Perhaps the Met have every reason not to hire anyone who is not IC1, because of their higher statistical probability of suing for racial discrimination, which is disruptive to the workplace as well as socially-divisive.

It is very rare for anyone IC1 to sue for race discrimination. Sex discrimination, yes, but virtually all who sue employers claiming discrimination are women and wogs (if such a playful alliteration is still allowed). Is this (and the fact that they have a tendency to get pregnant even when unmarried, and use their sick children as an excuse to skive off work) not a compelling reason not to hire these groups of people?

Why, I might be hunted down and shot by the PC police just for suggesting this, but I will say it anyway.

I have no doubt that British society would be more cohesive and less litigious if all anti-discrimination legislation were repealed.

In its old Tyndalite days, the BNP were unashamed about their desire to repeal all anti-discrimination legislation. Now they seem to have pulled back from this, perhaps because they see the potential of claiming Greater Victimhood than the non-1C1s after decades of oppression suffered by them from the PC-liberal elite.

It is a great shame really, if British nationalism merely identifies itself with this modern manifestation of the slave mentality, that of Victimhood and Blaming Others - a womannish and proletarian trait.

I had once thought those who supported the BNP - however much they blamed the wrong people for their ills - had the courage of their convictions to brave being treated as social pariahs in the service of a nationalist ideal. This ideal was something to do with a peasant and instinctive antipathy towards PC liberalism and the concomitant desire to introduce more traditional policies favouring the family, as well as the condign punishment of criminals, or so I had thought.

Now, however, it does appear that all is lost. British nationalism is represented by an all-white cry for Greater Victimhood. If they have nothing more constructive to offer the electorate other than Greater Grievance, Greater Victimhood and the bribing of non-whites to go home at £50K per person, then they will fail in even these dubious objectives.

If this once-great country should be run by anyone, it should be by The Great and The Good, confident of their Greatness and Goodness.

Were it to be run by the ones who wish to represent The Least and the Worst, proud of the smallness of their minds and their tendency to vice and illegitimacy, what sort of standard would it set for the rest of the nation? Or indeed a loose federation of England, Scotland and Wales? (The BNP favour divisive devolution and an English Parliament, don't you know.)

At least the Lib-Dems (or should they now be called the Libertarian-Democrats?) are saying something populist that is also sensible. Nick Clegg should be congratulated for this bold repositioning of his party by offering us the option of lower taxes, unlike the contemptible and cowardly Conservatives.

Were he to dare go further on this Libertarian theme and propose the repeal of all anti-discrimination legislation, and take the UK out of the EU, he would have more than my vote. Let us hope he is power-hungry enough to take this risk.

For any Lib-Dems reading this, may I point out that there is nothing inherently anti-Liberal or undemocratic about repealing laws that favour litigious employees who should never have been hired.

Thursday 18 September 2008

Why Political Correctness is Evil

In an online interview with FrontPage magazine, Dalrymple (whose writings can be found at http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/authors.php?author=Theodore) explained:


In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When
people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious
lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they
lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies* is to
co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's
standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of
emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political
correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.

* for example,

Saturday 13 September 2008

Sarah Palin and Barack Obama - two more reasons why America is doomed

McCain has chosen as his running mate a woman unable to pass on the traditional values that the Republican Party stands for, which I assume to include marriage. Sarah Palin's daughter is expecting and unmarried, yet this is somehow brushed aside as an irrelevance, even by Obama.

It's OK, Obama, to lay into Palin even though your mother was a much-divorced woman. It is the ones who don't even bother getting married before having babies who should be pelted with rotten vegetables and fruit.

Or perhaps it is those who still think it is OK to have a child outside wedlock who deserve the pillory and stocks, like you Obama?

Why is marriage desirable in the context of bringing up children?

If you are a Darwinian, you would understand.

When we have sex, it is for the pleasure of it. Babies are not an erotic goal - in fact the very opposite.

The male has to compete to win the hand of the female most likely to be a good mother and wife, ie the one most beautiful, sexy, clever, kind and fertile that he can hope to win.

It falls to the female to select the male most capable of protecting and providing and assume the role of being the prize of the male most worthy winner. To give of herself cheaply and too freely is to negate the role that is naturally hers. When enough females forget this important duty, the result is decline and disaster for the society they inhabit.

Women are prizes to be won by men. Whores are those who would give themselves to the highest bidder. The more astute reader will have noticed that there is not that much difference between being a whore and how a woman who desires marriage might behave - she would accept the most advantageous terms on offer.

Marriage is but prostitution approved by law but burdened with more onerous terms for both parties.

Prostitution is a series of short-term transactions while a marriage is a long-term relationship only capable of being achieved by a couple who have a minimum of mutual-respect and affection.

It is therefore those females who give of their favours too freely or cheaply and then give birth to children outside wedlock who are the ones who bring about eventual societal collapse, when enough generations have been economically, genetically and intellectually impoverished.

To be a "slut" is therefore for more harmful to society than to be a "whore".

Unplanned pregnancy and casual sex, ie the worship of Sexual Freedom, and the welfare state which protects these sluts from the consequences of failing to play by the rules of partner and natural selection, in the light of the above thesis, is therefore the main cause of Western decline.

Some blame foreigners, some blame the Jews, others the Muslims, but I blame the misuse of our sex organs as a thinking organ and the apathy of men in the face of totalitarian feminism, as well as those who refuse to condemn the perpetuation of illegitimacy as immoral and wicked - people such as Sarah Palin and her supporters and Obama, who thought he would sit on the fence in case it offended the rank and file of illegitimates supporting him.

"Why America is doomed" or "When we break our own rules"

Quote from R E McMaster, a commodities and currency trader - http://www.remcmaster.com/:

... with the US financial system “broke”, to quote former Fed Head Paul
Volcker, we should expect more chaos, with the very high risk of either more
severe recessions and/or higher inflations (maybe both simultaneously) in more
violent whipsaws. …What I also ponder is unfavorable climate resulting in poor
global food production (Russia coming back online agriculturally to the
contrary, a huge boost). Lack of food is a great historical reason for war. And
what concerns me most is the real and present danger of war by 2012-2017, with
Iran and Pakistan boiling, plus terrorists increasing their technological
capabilities. All it would take is one low yield back pack nuclear device being
exploded once in one city somewhere in the world, and the world as we know it
would change, black swan style, over night. And Machiavellian style, governments
have historically used war as distractions from the economic distress they have
often created. …Americans might have a reality check. The USA has become a
secular humanistic socialist empire, far removed from the mindset and philosophy of their freedom-loving, tax hating Founding Fathers.

In fact, if you read the writings of the US Constitutional Founding Fathers, that kind of thinking today would land them on the Homeland Security terrorist watch list. (The US Founding Fathers saw themselves as freedom fighters, but the British saw them as terrorists. Point of view matters. Wonder how the Taliban views things? …It is next to impossible to defeat militarily a masculine-based culture on their own home ground where people are willing to fight and die for what they believe in, unless genocide is the chosen military option. The Russians knew and exercised this military option in Afghanistan. And Russia today is looking for payback for the humiliation it suffered when the USSR fell.) …

I find it useful to look at organizations impersonally. As author M. Scott Peck wrote, bureaucrats, wherever you find them, of whatever stripe, are “people of the lie.” They are like the nameless, faceless, plastic, white storm troopers commanded by Darth Vader in the movie, Star Wars. Bureaucracies have ever been the greatest collective manifestation of human evil. And the older the bureaucracy, the more vertical layers it has, the richer it is, the more people it employs, the more widely dispersed its tentacles are internationally and geographically, the more corrupt, inhumane, immoral, self-interested, perpetuating and evil it becomes – any bureaucracy. Bureaucracies are the antithesis of freedom. They tell people what to do, when to do it, how to do it, for how much and keeps them dependent, childlike, slave-like in the bureaucratic collective. So the more bureaucratic the organizational structure, the more layers, the more slave-like (as opposed to free individual, horizontal, covenantal and contractual arrangements).

Singapore and Switzerland enjoy the most civil of civil governments.
Singapore’s government, on a tiny island, is like the local government of most
US cities. And as long as you do what used to be considered the normal, decent
and right thing in Singapore, you have freedom there. Jimmy Rogers has relocated
to Singapore. And Switzerland, although increasingly corrupted by US pressure,
well, the Germans, Italians and French who comprise the bulk of Switzerland have
such different languages, cultures and outlooks on things, and a modest
underlying distrust for each other along with a modicum of dislike, that a loose
knit Swiss federation government, where power lies in local cantons, serves
their purposes just fine. Oh yes, the Swiss so favored the US Constitution at
the time that they basically adopted it and still pretty much apply it the way the US Founding Fathers intended, not the way it has been effectively discarded by the US empire today.

Female of the Species by Joanna Murray-Smith

A review of it can be found at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/07/17/btfemale117.xml

of this funny, sharp, relevant and wise satire on feminism as an ideology.

Echoing the life voyages of the likes of Germaine Greer and Fay Weldon, the stages of feminist thought can be summarised as follows:

Women must free themselves from the yoke of man-made restrictions - Phase 1

Women must become like men to free themselves, ie have careers and sexual freedom, earn money, and no longer be in the home - Phase 2

Women should therefore abandon their traditional path of fulfilment and empowerment, ie marriage and motherhood - Phase 3

Women must acknowledge their failure to become happier after abandoning marriage and motherhood, or acknowledge that marriage, motherhood and career is the privilege of that rare being, the highly motivated and talented time-manageress - Phase 4

Women should re-embrace their traditional roles and once again become happy and fulfilled feminine beings -Phase 5

Men, those who are protectors and providers, should be treated with respect and tenderness because they too are vulnerable creatures saddled with the additional burden of not being allowed to show their vulnerability - Phase 6

The feminist and post-feminist journey is analogous to going right round the earth and finding the very thing you sought, in your own backyard. It was nevertheless a journey that had to be made.

The moral to be extracted from all this?

Pleasing oneself is an exercise that always remains tantalisingly unfinished.

Therefore pleasing others and fulfilling the roles that we naturally find ourselves in is the path most likely to lead to lasting happiness.

The love of others obtained through the sacrifice of our selfish pleasures is a greater measure of our worth than our ability to continue enjoying selfish pleasures.

Duty, though dull, is therefore in our long-term self-interest and most likely to result in self-fulfilment and long-term happiness - a happy paradox!

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

A synopsis of the plot of the film I saw may be found at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_in_the_Striped_Pyjamas

- another exploitative Holocaust potboiler.

It seems to be some sort of Nazi morality tale. The morals I have managed to discern are as follows:

  1. You shouldn't exterminate people, even if you regard them as subhuman vermin.
  2. If you must do this sort of thing, you shouldn't bring your children along to your place of work if you happen to be Kommandant of a death camp (David Thewlis).
  3. If you are an Aryan child about to befriend a Jewish child, do not on any account dress up as an inmate of the camp and dig your way into it to help him find his missing father, or you will end up being exterminated with the Jews.
  4. If you are a Jewish child, on no account allow your well-meaning Aryan friend to dig into your death camp in his desire to help you find your father, thus causing him to lose his life, thus confirming the Nazi view that the Jews are a treacherous people on whom compassion is wasted.

The dialogue between the two boys is mawkish and utterly unconvincing.

David Thewlis was all right I suppose, but David Hayman, who played the Jewish doctor forced to be waiter, gardener and kitchen help in a Nazi household did manage to move me to tears. If it were not a complete work of fiction, written by a children's writer, there might have been some point to it. That it is being touted as a work suitable for children is astonishing, for it could be said to fan the flames of anti-Semitism. (See 4th moral.) This emotionally exploitative story is as morally empty as it is fictitious and improbable.

Thursday 11 September 2008

Malaysian Chinese citizens described as "squatters" by indigenous Malay politician

Rising Racial Tension in Malaysia

http://asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1426&Itemid=31

Adverse possession - a legal concept that can turn a squatter into an owner - should be borne in mind by the maker of that statement that the Malaysian Chinese citizen is but a mere squatter in Malaysia.

It is unfortunate that such petulant statements have been made, but resentment of the more economically canny Chinese by the laid-back Malay has echoes in Britain today, where the white indigenous working classes feel they have the bread taken out of their mouths by foreign workers prepared to work harder for less.

The truth is that Malaysia is now swamped by other immigrants - from Indonesia and Bangladesh - and most Malaysian employers declare their preference for foreign labour, because the locals are lazy, do sickies, are full of excuses and don't know the meaning of hard work ...

In truth even the Malays are not as indigenous as the genuine aborigines of Malaysia, ie the Dayaks, Kadazans, Negritos, and have in their turn exploited and sidelined the previous occupiers.

A comment has been made by a Malay that the Chinese are the Jews of Asia and just as unpopular.

The truth is no one likes the class swot. The desire and temptation to tear up his books and smash his glasses is never far away.

Let us hope that Anwar, smeared as a sodomite by the ruling party, who has nevertheless managed the feat of keeping together a coalition of

(a) liberal Malays keen to give up their race privileges because they find their protected status unedifying and unnecessary,

(b) an Islamic Party that says it does not really want an Islamic state and

(c) non-Muslim non-Malays of liberal-socialistic bent,

will keep the racial lid from boiling over, perhaps by gently pointing out to the offended Chinese the existence of squatters' rights.

Saturday 9 August 2008

The punishment for apostasy is not death!

http://poobalan.com/blog/borninmalaysia/2008/05/08/convert-allowed-to-renounce-islam/



contains an interesting case which shows the liberality that Islam is capable of.



A Chinese woman converts to Islam in order to marry her Iranian husband. She never practised Islam and, when her husband left her, she asked to be allowed to return to Buddhism on the grounds that she never practised Islam even when she was officially a Muslim, citing her diet which still contained pork and the continuation of her pagan worship to a number of Chinese deities as evidence that she never really was a Muslim.



This was allowed and the Islamic authority that was supposed to have overseen her conversion and subsequent practice blamed for their failure to do so.

Thursday 7 August 2008

A Theocracy that Worships Reason?

This blog is fast becoming a scrapbook of my intellectual development, such as it is.



Karen Armstrong stated in one of her books about Islam that it is perfectly possible to be both an atheist and a Muslim.



After all, substitute "Allah" for Truth, Reality, Fate and the Future and you will find it infinitely easier to say you believe that such a God is a mental shorthand for Truth, Reality, Fate and the Future and also a lot easier to say than "Jesus Christ is Son of God".



Reason is after all such an abstract and cold concept. An omnipotent God who is perfectly moral, who could be our "invisible magic friend" is bursting with heart-warming possibilities.



It is not for nothing that therapists suggest lonely maladjusted children with no friends create an imaginary friend to give them a sense of empowerment. Man has therefore created God, Pygmalion-like, for precisely the same purpose.



The following short essay may be of interest to those who wonder why an atheist such as I am is finding Islam so ripe with secular possibilities.



Religion is but an ideology and non-religious ideologies, such as fascism, liberalism, democracy, communism, socialism, nationalism etc too have their own power to seduce many into committing horrific acts of violence, murder and war. A holy book which keeps telling you to use your reason seems to me to be, well, perfectly reasonable.

I therefore suspect that cultural chauvinism, xenophobia, racism and anti-semitism combine to add up to Islamophobia. (Before someone asks, I do know that some of them are indeed out to get us, and I can see why too.)

The Role of Human Intellect in Islam by M. F. Zein


The principal cause of human suffering is shown -in the Qur'an- to be due to blind imitation of absurd beliefs and customs of one's erring predecessors, with disregard of all evidence of truth supplied by both reason and divine guidance:

‘For, behold, they found their forebears on a wrong way, and now, they make haste to follow in their footsteps! (Qur'an 37/69-70) (29).


On the significance of our human life the Qur'an states:

‘And nothing is the life of this world but a play and a passing delight; and the life in the hereafter is by far the better for all who are conscious of God. Will you not, then, use your reason? (Qur’an 6/32).


On the message of the Qur'an:

‘We have bestowed upon you -O Men- from on high a divine writ in which is a message for you -containing all you ought to keep in mind- will you not, then, use your reason? (Qur’an 21/10).

On worshipping other than God:

‘Fie upon you and upon all that you worship instead of God! Will you not, then, use your reason? (Qur'an 21/67).


Urging people to contemplate on the miracle of life:


"And He who grants life and deals death; and to Him is due the alteration of night and day. Will you not, then, use your reason? (Qur'an 23/80).


The Qur'an urges man's intellect to ponder on the miracle or re-creation:

‘But- know that God gives life to the earth after it has
been lifeless! We have indeed made our messages clear unto you, so that you might use your reason. (Qur'an 57/17).

Telling the Prophet that he could not be held responsible for the kind of man who chooses to follow his own whims and desires:

‘Hast thou ever considered -the kind of man- who takes for his god his own desires? Could thou then -O Prophet- be responsible for him? Or dost thou think that most of them listen -to thy message- and use their reason? Nay, they
are but like cattle-nay, they are even less conscious of the right way! (Qur'an 25/43-44).


Urging man to use reason before he is overcome by old age and
possible senility, the Qur'an states:

‘But -let them always remember that- if We lengthen a human being's days, We also cause him to decline in his powers -when
he grows old-, will they not, then, use their reason -before it is late? (Qur'an 36/68).

Thus people are advised not to postpone the exercise of moral
choice, given that one's lifetime is limited with not much time left at one's disposal. Humans are superior creatures inasmuch as they have been endowed with the faculty of discernment, and a wide measure of free will, but are soon liable to decline in old age.

As a result of Islam's appeal to the intellect and reason, the Islamic civilization flourished with the beginning of the seventh century. Within less than one and half centuries of the Prophet's death, Islamic civilization reached peaks unknown to the world of that time. Unlike Christian Europe of the time, intellectualism in the Islamic world was a highly admired
quality and was encouraged in places where Islam spread. In addition, Islam restored religious tolerance in those parts of the world long under repression by the Western Church.

In comparison, Rome fell to the barbarians a few decades after the Roman Empire decreed Christianity as the sole religion
permitted for practice by individuals.

Only very recently, Bishop John Shelby Spong wrote: 'We are that silent majority of believers who find it increasingly difficult to remain members of the Church and still be thinking people'.

In other words, Westerners became -and could become- intellectuals only when they rid themselves of Church hegemony and repression. This state of affairs explains to a large extent the fact that Western civilization was able
to flourish only after the Reformation. To this end, human progress and civilized society in the West is now fully equated with secularism.

In sharp contrast Islam has an inherent secular aspect so often repeated in the Qur'an where the spiritual can never be separated from the mundane. Urging humanity to:

"Seek by means of what God has granted thee, the good of the life to come, without forgetting thy own -rightful share in this world." (Qur'an 28/77)

According to the Qur'an, every Muslim intellectual can be a theologian and every theologian must be an intellectual. Muslim peoples fell into decadence when they abandoned the intellectual, secular aspect of Islam and maintained only dogmatic practice of religion merely fulfilling outward worship while becoming oblivious to Islam's secular ramifications.


Possession is nine points of the law from 1:34:00

1:34:00  I chime in. 1:37:00  The narrow and wide interpretation of racism 1:40:00  It is racist to say black people are good at sport and d...