Thursday, February 12, 2009

Frozen Washing on the Curate's Line

The Martyrdom of St Yazza :

"tell me you aren't ashamed at what our country has become when a middle aged muslim woman of Asian descent can be treated like this. She was questioned at length by plain clothes police officers who never once told her who they were or why she was being questioned."
I listened to the video, most of which was a moan about how "I love this country but ...", then we got to the facts. She was taking an internal flight, there was a mix-up and her tickets weren't kosher for the flight she was trying to board, so she was taken aside and asked a few questions. No abuse, no threats, no shouting.

I had a similar interview leaving Heathrow for NY on Pan-Am, a year after Lockerbie. I'm presuming the Libyan visa in my passport was the catalyst. They were perfectly polite, I answered their (reasonable) questions and away I went.

This really is a tsumami in some Earl Grey - and Iain Dale, what's all this about "we should be ashamed" ? Are you arguing that middle-aged, middle class Muslim women should be exempt from the (tedious but probably necessary) airline security checks the rest of us go through ?

I love Yazza like I love Melanie Phillips, but both can on occasions see "oppression" when it's not there.

There's enough of the real thing about without nonsense like this.

What a strange way to spin a story.

The UK’s official statistician weighed into the debate about foreign workers yesterday by highlighting the growing numbers of immigrants getting jobs while the British workforce declines.

On the day that figures showed the number of people unemployed at a 12-year high, the Office for National Statistics chose to reveal that the number of foreign workers increased by 175,000 to 2.4 million last year while the number of British workers fell by 234,000 to 27 million.

Karen Dunnell, the National Statistician, sought to focus public attention on the contrasting fortunes of foreign and British workers as the country slipped into recession. Her intervention came as construction workers took part in wildcat strikes at power stations in Nottinghamshire and Kent, angry about jobs going to foreigners.

I see. The figures aren't the important thing, it's that they were released. Que ? I think FWIW that it's 'deeply unhelpful' to characterise telling the truth as a move in some political game. Obviously that's the way

LORD TRUSCOTT, one of four peers named in the “lords for hire” scandal, has taken at least £70,000 in allowances for overnight accommodation in London while staying at his home in the capital.

Truscott, 49, now receives £28,000-a-year tax free by telling House of Lords’ authorities that his main residence is a modest flat in Bath, Somerset.

He uses the allowance to maintain a £700,000 flat he owns in Mayfair, central London, with his Russian wife, Svetlana. He bought the property in Bath months after becoming eligible to claim the allowance.

Lord Paul of Marylebone, the billionaire steel magnate and Labour donor who is nondomiciled, is one of a number of other peers who take advantage of the perk.


The deafening silence on the issue at PMQs yesterday seems to be confirmation that they're all at it.

THE financier who has been appointed to protect taxpayers’ money in Britain’s bailed-out banks is a former trustee of a secretive Liechtenstein bank accused of facilitating massive tax evasion.

Glen Moreno, who chairs the powerful body that oversees the government’s £37 billion shareholding in the banks, was paid hundreds of thousands of pounds during a nine-year association with Liechtenstein Global Trust (LGT), a private bank based in the tax haven.

The disclosures are an embarrassment for Gordon Brown, who last week criticised offshore tax havens and called for international action to stamp out tax evasion.

What with James Crosby, Gordon seems to be an expert at hiring foxes as poultry management consultants. But it's this that really bothers me :

The SNP has demanded an inquiry after it emerged that a record of everyone who voted in last year's contest in Glenrothes has gone missing.

All of the major parties, including Labour on election night itself, had predicted that the Nationalists would win the seat, which borders Gordon's Brown's constituency.

Instead Lindsay Roy, Labour's candidate, swept to victory and dealt a stunning blow to Alex Salmond, the First Minister and SNP leader, who had confidently predicted victory.

The result was a huge fillip to the Prime Minister, who broke with convention and risked his political credibility by joining the campaign trail with his wife, Sarah.

Thus far UK electoral fraud has been confined to Ulster Republicans and other minority communities with a tradition of same, although I wouldn't put it past some well-meaning liberal types to lose a few boxes of BNP votes and think they were protecting democracy - after all, we've all been taught what happened in Germany. The worst the Labour leadership (as opposed to their local party machines) have done is to turn a blind eye. This would be different, and a very worrrying sign for our democracy. I hope and pray that Mr Cock-up is responsible here - but it's not good that we can even entertain the idea of Scottish Labour taking the Mugabe route to electoral success. Not so long ago it would have been unthinkable. It isn't now.


Oh, forgot to say. Remember the liberal myth of Superbowl violence, which inspired our PC police into campaigns against World Cup Domestic Violence ?

Meet the rugby equivalent - Six Nations Domestic Violence 2008. And Rugby World Cup 2007.

Police are launching patrols in the south Wales valleys during the Rugby World Cup to allow them to respond quickly to domestic violence.
Reality trumps satire yet again.

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

The whole sporting event = domestic violence myth is a tricky one to work out.

Why did US feminists decide that the Superbowl led to domestic violence in the first place? Was it just outrage at the thought of men enjoying themselves without shame?

I've just been googling to see the origins of the myth and came across this article:

"Just three days before the 1993 Super Bowl game, a news conference was called in Pasadena. There Sheila Kuehl, an attorney for the California Women's Law Center, stepped to the podium to report some shocking news: according to a study by Old Dominion University, emergency room admissions of women rose by 40% following football games won by the Washington Redskins.

Media representatives got the warning that Super Bowl Sunday is "the biggest day of the year for violence against women." Soon a media advisory went out warning women, "Don't remain at home with him during the game."


The story was debunked as a hoax within a couple of days but once the myth is out there is proves quite hard to kill off.

Anonymous said...

Laban,

'I love Yazza'. Come on, this is the woman who wants white men, and women, and children, to become a 'lost species'.

Richard

Anonymous said...

Richard,

I was about to say the same. What exactly is to love about her?

I'm reminded of the time Laban said he 'usually admires' the work of Joseph Harker.

Hoolahan

Anonymous said...

I love Yazza too, and I'll love all the more when she drags her hypocritical arse back to Uganda.

Which she never will of course.

Matt Oliver said...

"Thus far UK electoral fraud has been confined to Ulster Republicans and other minority communities..."

I hate to shock you but all political parties have been found guilty of voting fraud in places as diverse from Guildford and Havant to Bradford, Slough and Birmingham.

I urge you all to go to www.votingfraud.org.uk for more info.

Matthew Oliver
Project Officer - Purity of Elections
Unlock Democracy

www.unlockdemocracy.org.uk

ba ba said...

When i was watching them count the votes, there was this long haired hippy type (To be fair, at the time thats what i looked like too) that was consistently putting 9 votes in our piles and calling it 10. I told the candidate who put a stop to it.

Harry J said...

'Love Yazza?' Really? Please explain Laban.

Laban said...

Yazza, I am utterly convinced, will end up writing for the Daily Mail. Like many Muslims, she's a social conservative.

That doesn't mean to say that she shouldn't be beaten when she misbehaves, in line with the teaching of her religion. I just chastise her verbally ...

She can't hate white middle class males that much, she married one. It's just that "racism" has earned her a decent crust thus far ... the poor girl has to make a living somehow, and it's the only thing she knows how to get money from. She's only IMHO an anti-white bigot because that's where the (white) money is.

I actually think she's quite a talented writer - and would recommend her autobiography.

Harry J said...

'She's only IMHO an anti-white bigot because that's where the (white) money is'.

Well that's ok then. As long as she's only doing it for the money. Sorry Laban, I have to strongly disagree with you on this one.

Anonymous said...

The social conservatism of non-whites is one of those comforting but ultimately suicidal myths clung to by conservatives here and in the US.

In elections where there is a swing to the right, all groups other than whites vote disproportionately Labour (or Democrat) rather than Tory (or Republican). Literally all, as far as I can tell, whether the most assimilated Jews or the most recent African immigrants.

When there is a swing to the left - even more so.

The stats are out there, going back decades. Any attempt to further conservatism relying on non-white groups is doomed to complete failure.

Their social conservatism extends only as far as being anti-abortion, anti sex education and anti gay marriage and little else.

Anonymous said...

And another thing...

If one looks at sites like Biased-BBC here or LGF from the US one sees a very anti-Labour, anti-Democrat line. One of the features of these sites is their support for Israel and attacks on what they see as anti-semitism.

Support for Israel is seen as a mark of the left generally and is therefore regarded as anti-semitism. (This all ignores the fact that support for Israel by the UK & US remains the same, quite regardless of who is in power)

Yet there is a demographic in the US & UK who always vote Democrat and Labour, if they can vote left and apparently against Israel's interests why are all these conservative gentiles so obsessed with supporting Israel themselves. Its lunacy.

Imagine if Ireland were at war with Britain and US Republicans argued that only they could defend plucky Ireland, that the Dems were 'soft' on Britain. Yet all this conducted against a background of 80% of Irish ex-pats voting Democrat.

If they (Irish ex-pats) didnt care, according to their political affiliation, then why should anyone else?

My point here is the conservative support of Israel and hatred for anti-semitism is completely unmoored from any reciprocal support for conservatism, or British & American nationalism from Jews. Sure you can dig up counter examples but I'm talking about the broad mass here.

That seems the absurd endpoint of conservatives love of socially conservative non-whites.

Martin said...

Laban,

Sporting fixtures = domestic violence is not a myth.

In 1998, I was instructed to obtain an interdict by a woman whose partner had gubbed her for talking during the Scotland -v- Brazil game in the World Cup - and the sheriff who awarded it concurred that it was the first domestic violence interdict to be awarded during that campaign.

Anonymous said...

Earlier tonight I saw a Jersalem Post link highlighting the fact that 78% of Jews in the US voted for Obama.

Lets dwell on that some more!

78%

I'll wager the figures would be similar for British Jews voting Labour.

Yet the poor darlings over at Biased-BBC are still fussing over And more appropriately the seeming anti-Israel bias of the BBC. And in turn the level of support Israel will get from Obama (clue boys & girls; it will be 100%).

Get real.

If 78% of US Jews voted for the 'wrong' party then you British, non-Jewish , 'conservatives' really shouldn't be giving it another thought.

Edwin Greenwood said...

This will be the same Yazza that was caught out travelling without a ticket on a train somewhere Oop North a few years ago. She spent the next few months whingeing about the racism of railway officials.

Anonymous said...

"I'll wager the figures would be similar for British Jews voting Labour."

Nope:

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0501/uk.jews.asp

Anonymous said...

Just to clarify, from Ross's link:

Barry Kosmin, director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in London, said there are two ways to look at the roughly 50-50 split among Jews.

That's a bit vague though, can we advance from that "roughly" to a reliable statistic?

Further down is this:

But given that the Jewish community is overwhelmingly middle and upper class, it could be considered disproportionately Labor. Jews are generally "to the left of people of the same socioeconomic group," the University of Essex's Crewe said.

There is always the problem in these debates about who is Jewish. Some people claim its merely a religion, others that its an ethnic identity. Of course its a bit of both but nailing that down in surveys, polls etc is difficult.

Anonymous said...

Anon 11.31am- 'There is always the problem in these debates about who is Jewish. Some people claim its merely a religion, others that its an ethnic identity. Of course its a bit of both but nailing that down in surveys, polls etc is difficult'.
Just to prove your point Nick Cohen (who is only as Jewish as the great George Cohen, apparently)has an article now in the JC ( also posted at Harry's Place) ruminating on this very point. Jewish angst (as Woody Allen certainly knows) is a seam that (seemingly?) goes on being mined indefinitely.
Enjoy the slopes!

Anonymous said...

Most pointless self-abasement for domestic violence has to be this. The poor lassie who was murdered was killed by two men from her own country of origin. All the locals seem to have liked her, and been horrified. There was no conceivable way her killing was their fault. They were nice to her family, and raised money to help them and still they seem to be expected to feel guilty.

Anonymous said...

Laban,
The Yazzmonster has written for the Daily Mail but I not think she will become a regular columnist because she obviously has a deep dislike of most things British.

Richard

Anonymous said...

"tell me you aren't ashamed at what our country has become'

She thinks she is one of us!!!


Richard