Couple Seek Employment : Husband Will Do Most Things For Money, Wife Will Do Anything For Power

From the BBC :

"They hope that over time their relationship can be restored, but, given the current circumstances, they have agreed a period of separation."

In other news, a statement from the Tonbridge security raiders :

"They hope that over time their relationship with the banknotes can be restored, but, given the current circumstances, they have agreed a period of lying low and saying nothing"

Mark Oaten's hands are a damn sight cleaner than that woman's.

Links (More of ... )

Let's get Gardjola and the Mid-Atlantic Blog on board, as well. I'll get there in the end ... any more reciprocal links that I ain't put up yet ?

I like the Gardjola post on moderate Muslims, which should be read alongside the Douglas Murray piece (and which I can't work out how to link to). There's definitely a contradiction between the views, to put it mildly. Can it be resolved ?

Read This

Douglas Murray at the SAU.

"Once again, albeit in very different circumstances, the West faces a threat to its way of life. Once again it is a threat which the peoples of Europe, in their estimable desire for peace, would rather was not there. And because of that wish, vast swathes of Europe have decided it is not there. Busily they preoccupy themselves with changing the subject and ignoring the elephant in the living room.

In their efforts to avoid war, Europeans are once again choosing dishonour. They refuse to cut back their welfare budgets or significantly increase their defence spending, and they still refuse to enforce the measures required to cease or reverse the disastrous effects of mass immigration."

It's uncompromising, but true.

"On the battlefield this enemy is defeated every time. There has not yet been one military confrontation with this enemy which has been anything less than a rout of that enemy. But just because Al-Qaeda and their sympathisers perform badly in battle, does not mean they cannot win the war. It does not mean that they cannot win the battle of ideas, winning total victory by the side door without having to waste all that money on bullets, missiles and whatever type of IED is "hot" in Afghanistan this season. If you doubt this, then just think back on the so-called "defeats" which we are meant to have suffered since 9/11. Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, 100,000 civilians alleged to be dead by a fanciful survey courtesy of The Lancet magazine. What did our enemy do to win these victories? Absolutely nothing. It all came from within."

"Note how Islam is progressing in the West. It is not gaining the concessions and the victories it is by attracting people to its belief-system. It is gaining concessions from the weak-willed, badly educated and ignorant men and women who currently hold intellectual sway over Europe – people who would rather die than appear politically incorrect, and would rather sacrifice their society than be absolutist in defence of it."

Or as Dennis MacShane puts it: “My generation of Labour MPs don’t want to indulge in anything that smacks of Muslim typecasting or hostility. And as we tried very hard not to be like Norman Tebbit or the more ugly tabloids, it’s fair to say we failed to work out an adequate political response to Islamist politics in the UK.”

Scary

Working long hours, hence dashed-off, poorly-researched posts. Getting home 7.30-8ish, when the choice is between the unbearable Front Row on R4 or more football on R5 - so listening again to Radio Wales, which has a different music genre 7-8 each night. Last night was the blues - in which I discovered that John Mayall will be 73 this year.

Scary. When I was at school, the older kids were still into that zone where blues and jazz met - Ray Charles, Etta James, Aretha. We fourteen year olds found that too dull - we were into blues. John Mayall, Fleetwood Mac edition 1, Savoy Brown, Chicken Shack. Blues - the authentic voice of surly white suburban youth.



What's that ? Black people played it, too ? We discovered Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, BB, John Lee, Elmore James. There was a real live bluesman living in Huddersfield - Champion Jack Dupree. But like the kids who fifteen years later were buying UB40 rather than Dennis Brown, we liked the recycled. Mayall featured wonderful new guitarists like Peter Green and Eric Clapton - chck out 'Stormy Monday a 'So Many Roads' on this - and he never stood still, changing his line-ups from one tour, one record, to the next. I've still got about 11 of his LPs.

His son's a trouper too - I used to go to Gaz's Rockin Blues when I lived in London in the 80s and it's still going.

Where was I ? Old men forget ... ah yes. The radio played a wonderful dub mix of blues sounding strangely ancient and modern. Turned out a couple of people called Tangle Eye took Alan Lomax's field recordings from the 1940s/50s and remixed them. You can buy the result at Amazon. Good stuff.

Massive Support For Welsh Assembly

The BBC can have no 'official' view on devolution, although its culture means in practice support for devolution for everyone except the English (who will be forced into 'regions', funded by the UK (i.e not English) Parliament).

So naturally the opening of the new Welsh Assembly White Elephant is a Good Thing. What Wales needs is more politicians.

So good that the BBC erected large screens in Caernarvon town centre for the cheering throngs to witness this happy event - and on Dydd Dewi Sant as well !

As Caernarfon Online reports, there was plenty of room to watch. Great pictures.



The BBCs commenters point out that protesters in Cardiff outnumbered well-wishers - and this from Barry Field of Nairn seems apposite.

"At least the Welsh only "wasted" £67m if it is seen as wasted. We, the Scots, wasted £450m on our "dome" and, as it is a high maintenance building, the figure will rise very rapidly if the truth is ever let out of the bag."

High Maintenance ? The Scottish Parliament ?

"Engineers are to carry out a detailed examination of the oak beam that broke free from the ceiling of the Scottish Parliament building. MSPs had to evacuate the debating chamber on Thursday after the 12ft-long beam slipped out its mountings.

The inspection will involve the Health and Safety Executive, the construction manager, the structural engineer and the contractor who built the chamber.

It is not clear when it will be safe for MSPs to return to the chamber."

Children Need Fresh Fruit, Not Fathers

The BBC Today programme trumpets the call by Dame 'Suzi' Leather, newly appointed head of state-funded quango The School Food Trust (which the BBC describe as 'an independent body') for the banning of chocolate, crisps and fizzy drinks from vending machines, and the promotion of fruit and veg.

All very proper too. Pity Ms Leather doesn't include fathers in the list of things a child needs. More on this here, too.

The biography here shows a classic Seventies-educated Nu Lab quangocrat, teeth firmly clenched round the nipple of Mother State. I wonder if she has children - and I'm betting no.

UPDATE - wrong and wrong again - Ms Leather, whose name seems to have aroused an unhealthy degree of excitement in certain lewd commenters of the baser sort, has not only a small tribe of children, but a husband to boot - an academic in the Politics department of Exeter University.

The contracted first name Suzi, a sure Seventies giveaway ? More here.

Contraception, Contraception, Contraception

This is why schools with the name 'Community' are best avoided.

"Apause, or Added Power and Understanding Through Sexual Education, will offer the morning-after pill, condoms and testing for sexually transmitted infections"

The scheme is sad, the acronym sadder.

Freed Early

You could run an entire blog on 'freed early' stories, even though the BBC search engine doesn't pick half of them up. These stories are just from the last day.

The well-known ones :

"Hanson had been let out of jail only a few months earlier, having been released halfway through a 12-year sentence for attempted murder.
An official risk assessment had calculated his chances of re-offending were 91% yet his case was managed at the lowest risk level.

White was out on bail at the time of the robbery awaiting a court appearance for heroin and cocaine charges, for which he was later sentenced to three years.

He had also tested positive for cocaine, cannabis and morphine in the month before Mr Monckton's killing and had a series of convictions for drug offences."

And lesser-known ones :

"Just days after being released from prison, Mark Turner, 26, of no fixed abode, used a knife and bottle to kill Luke Rees-Pulley. He caused 80 separate injuries the fatal one being a stab wound to the neck.

He has a string of convictions for violence committed when drunk or on drugs, including possession of an offensive weapon, assaulting a police constable and affray.

An anonymous friend of Mr Rees-Pulley, who attended the hearing, said the judicial system had let his friend down.

He said: "Hearing the catalogue of the defendant's previous offences, many of which were assaults on the police and paramedics, and incarcerations he had already served, it was clear the judicial system had already failed Luke and his family even before today's hearing."


"The court heard that Lynch committed the crime two months after he was freed early from a seven-and-a-half year sentence for robbery and serious assault in 2000."

Linda Smith

Another left-wing BBC comic, but I liked her downbeat, deadpan wit, even down to the flat, Sarf Landon tones. When smacking at the usual lefty targets she managed to strike a human, empathetic note - something that Jeremy Hardy, Mark Steel and co. always avoided.

48. From the generation which didn't have kids. No one will inherit her humour or intelligence.

From the generation that was taught the hymns and prayers, but didn't pass them on. President of the British Humanist Association, a non-believer in God or an afterlife.

Well, as Stevenson said, she "knows the long and short on it now".



UPDATE - We are all sinners - I'm terribly tempted to go to the New Humanist comments and add words to the effect that Satan has ordered a couple of tons of extra Coalite and a carbon-fibre reinforced toasting fork, but that I will be praying for her soul. You know, just to cheer them up.

I will resist the temptation, and pray for her tonight.


Tributes at Assistant and Normblog.

Spot The Difference

Between the BBC report and the Thames Valley Police report of a distressing crime.

The crime is depressing - the liberal self-censorship even more so.

Yazza - "Rich Businessmen for Bin Laden ?"

I do love Yazza (who now has a richly-deserved, full, three-item page in the Indie - today featuring a fetching photograph of the late Queen of Hearts), but she does walk a fine line. I understand what she's saying alright, but does she appreciate how it comes across ?

"This week, I have been at three events where the majority of people in the audience were educated, sharp Muslims, some exceedingly rich and good friends with key politicians and Prince Charles. Guantanamo Bay and Iraq are topics that now madden even these establishmentarians.

One gentleman took my elbow, shuffled me to a discreet corner and whispered 'I have been here for 40 years, dined with royalty. Today, if I was young, I would go straight to Bin Laden. Mr Blair is a war criminal. Don't put my name down, but tell him we detest him'".

Yazza is making a point about how we need to change our foreign policy and how many people it's upsetting. Seemingly unconsciously, she's also saying that unless we do, people who have been here for years, who have grown wealthy and lead a lifestyle more privileged than any most Brits have known - that those people will support those who would like to kill us by the thousands, the tens of thousands, if possible by the millions. Which is all of a piece with the motif running like a bass and cello theme under so many news reports and op-ed articles.

"They're lovely, peaceful people. And if you upset them, they'll riot. Or worse."


Blair has no intention of doing anything about the chain migration which, along with natural fecundity and a severe shortage of lesbian feminists, will have tripled the Muslim population of places like Bradford in thirty years.


The liberal elite's attitude to Islam reminds me of Churchill's comment about Prince Paul of Serbia, whose nation had deeply offended Hitler by the (anti-German) coup of early 1941, but who feared to provoke Germany by mobilising their armed forces.

Prince Paul's attitude, Churchill wrote, "is that of an unfortunate man in a cage with a tiger - hoping not to provoke him, while steadily dinner time approaches".

Cartoon Inflation

One minute the cartoons are worse than the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks.

George Al Ahweh : This incident is worse than the 11 September attacks in the US and the 7/7 incidents in London. Therefore, today it is the right of Muslims to express their anger and to defend their right and faith.

Imran Khan, hours later : “I don’t think the message has got through that for us it’s far more painful than perhaps even the Holocaust for the Jews. Any caricature or any ridicule or any humiliation of the holy prophet is far more painful for the Muslims.”

Drinking From Home seems to be right on the button at present - a must read.

It's Out !

Baroness Kennedy's report - "People Like Me Have Been In Power For 40 Years - What's Wrong With Democracy ?" - is now available.

In the words of the psychiatrist at Fawlty Towers - "there's enough material here for a whole conference !"

Alas reality trumps satire again.

Baby Baby Baby

There's a 'creative tension' between last weekend's 'baby shortage' headlines and this week's 'gender pay gap' stories. They don't seem to have grasped yet that you can have pay "equality" (i.e. equality of outcome) - if you don't bother with reproduction. You can have one 'equal' generation. Just one.

To sone extent, that's what we've seen. The birthrate has fallen (helped by 6m abortions). The very-poor (state-funded underclass) can have lots of babies, so can the wealthy. It's not just Ms Career - it's Mr and Mrs Average Income who aren't sprogging. The ordinary Brit. We see a squeeze on mid-20s motherhood caused by two relatively recent phenomenona - the overhang of student debt and the fact that you're competing for houses with dual-income families.

Were there no immigration the population would be falling - not a bad thing in this overcrowded island. You'd see a growing underclass - and a growing 'superclass' of the privately educated children of the rich. Not good for social cohesion - but that's EXACTLY what we're seeing with the Native Brits. The number of fee-paying school places has increased enormously since comprehensives went.

So far, so not good. Chuck immigration into the mix. No baby problem there. Indeed, after the 7/7 bombings, commentators worried about the low levels of 'workforce participation' by women from the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities. In one sense, it shows that said commentators haven't got a clue. They're right that it's an indication that the community aren't bought into 21st century Brit culture. They're wrong about women not working. These women ARE working, of course. They're raising kids.

Strange

Last year's Wales game at Murrayfield was like a home match for the invading Welsh - courtesy of the SRU. The pre-match entertainment not only featured the pipes and drums, but a male voice choir, who took over for the 15 minutes before the teams came out. So we all sang that beautiful hymn 'Delilah'.

Great fun, but I'd have preferred the pipes. I like to be in Scotland when I'm in Scotland - give me the cliches please (excepting the neds and the junkies). No wonder the Scots were massacred.

What a contrast with the England game. The pitch appeared to be in the possession of a couple of schiltrons left over from Haildon Hill, and England ran on in the gloom between flaming torches held by wild, plaid-clad figures.

Ir certainly didn't do them any good. Perhaps England supporters next year should dress as longbowmen.