Universal Tribulation

One of my hobby-horses (see here, here, here, and here) is the apparent belief among our rulers that allowing mass immigration, from countries where corruption is endemic and a State job is an opportunity for self-enrichment, will have no effect on the culture of the UK.

That was always unlikely - and even more unlikely with a relatively generous welfare state and a default assumption of honesty in claimants. True in 1948 but not true now. The benefits system is open to looting on a grand scale, especially by those with access to forged ID - which means not many Brits but an awful lot of Londoners.

Another hobby-horse is that the law-abiding are penalised for the sins of the lawless. Some hapless electrician with a Stanley knife in his pocket is pulled in because of youths being stabbed on London streets, children can no longer (as I did in youth on a classmate's farm) use an air-rifle unsupervised, I can't buy sodium chlorate weedkiller any more because someone might use it to blow things up.

Which brings me, by a roundabout route, to Ian Duncan Smith's Universal Credit, slated for implementation next year, and replacing Child Tax Credit, Working Families Tax Credit (which people with an income of over 50K could get - thank you Gordon Brown for this last-ditch attempt to encourage welfare dependency) and a number of other benefits.

"When implemented, Universal Credit will drastically affect the low-paid self-employed as well as anyone who makes a tax loss. It is proposed that Universal Credits, like the current Working Tax Credits, will be "limited to those who exceed the 'floor of assumed income'" based on the National Minimum Wage."

What this means is that a host of small businesses - often the "single mum selling her handmade stationery" type, which might make no profit or small profits, will be assumed for benefit purposes to be doing a 40 hour week for £6 an hour - whether they are or not. If you recall, the number of self-employed has mushroomed during this recession .

“A rise in self-employment may, in itself, be a good thing, however previous analysis from the CIPD found that the recent rise was less a sign of a resurgent enterprise culture, and more evidence of a growing army of part-time ‘odd jobbers’ desperate to avoid unemployment.”

Alas, come next summer this is going to go into reverse as large numbers of self-employed close their business down and sign on again. So why is this entrepreneur-friendly (well, wealthy entrepreneurs, anyway) administration stamping on what could be the next Laura Ashley or Party Planners ?

"I think it will cut out a lot of fraud, i am a housing benefit processor and the amount of self employed taxi drivers working 40 hours a week and declare £50 a week earnings is beyond a joke, however i do feel for the genuine people who are struggling, who will be hit by this i think it is unfair. if your not earning this money then your claim should not be based on this amount."

My HMRC spies (aka the DWP website) are quite open about it. Reducing fraud, along with "making work pay" (but not low paid self employed work) is what it's all about. The good guys (and gals) are suffering for the sins of the bad guys.

"Universal Credit will make it much easier to catch fraudsters as it will calculate benefit levels using real-time information linked to the PAYE system. By picking up financial irregularities, such as earnings whilst claiming unemployment benefits, it will remove the main opportunities for fraud and error in the system."

Well, it might, if there weren't 83 million National Insurance numbers in the UK for a working population of 30-million odd. Fraudsters are very resourceful people.

So while I have small sympathy for this self-employed, low income person :

"I am a seriously talented artist but no-one wants to buy art at the moment"

You can't but feel for this couple :

"I am employed 25 hours i have asked my boss to increase my hours but there are no available hours?? we have 2 children under 16,
when my husband lost his job 4yrs ago down to the company going into liquidation etc,etc, he was forced into claiming benefits because after months of looking for work nothing was available, he signed on for jsa but didnt receive any money because of what i earn…. a job was going at a local bus firm term time only, which he applied and got and is still currently there… NOW this is the confusing bit…….. my husband is classed as Self-employed ?? He works for the local company and gets a weekly wage… BUT because the company dont deduct tax and insurance from this wage he is classed as Sub-Contracred-Self employed ... because his work is Term-time this means he only works for approximatly 38 weeks of the year, thus leaving our household with only my income for the other 14 weeks, we do rely on tax credit as a safety net during these 14 weeks, we have both and still are looking for more full-time work but its easier said than done and with 2 small dependant it is difficult….. so how is universal credits going to help my situation if we dont meet there criteria???"

I think the answer is - "it isn't going to help" - and that's a great pity.

HMRC's Most Wanted

I posted a few years ago (and more on the same theme here) :

We're importing people from a fair few countries where corruption is endemic without any attempt at integration. We're simultaneously beating ourselves up that, say, 39% of the population of Trumpton are from minority x, yet only 2% of the local magistrates are. I don't know what magic the soil of the UK possesses, but our rulers are apparently convinced that the moment you set foot on it all the 'bad' practices of the old country fall off you, leaving only the good bits - you know, the ones that enrich us.

Absent such magical soil, I'd expect that as more magistrates/tax officials/police whatever are appointed from (unintegrated) minority x, so levels of corruption/violence/whatever will depart from those we've experienced in the last 150 years, and move closer to those in country x.

The Telegraph have published HMRC's Most Wanted - the chaps - and they are nearly all chaps - with the biggest unpaid tax bills who've not gone to jail (though note the absence of Vodafone, Google etc) :

Hussain Asad Chohan, 44, believed to be in Dubai. He was convicted at Birmingham Crown Court in his absence and sentenced to 11 years for his part in fraud worth around £200 million, which included importing 2.25 tonnes of tobacco worth £750,000 in duty. Chohan has also been served with a £33 million confiscation order.

Nasser Ahmed, 40, believed to be in Pakistan or Dubai, was convicted at Bristol Crown Court in 2005 for his role in VAT fraud worth around £156 million. He fled before verdicts were given, and was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison in his absence.

Zafar Baidar Chisthi, 33, thought to be in Pakistan, was found guilty at Kingston Crown Court for his part in VAT fraud worth around £150 million. He was sentenced to 11 years for conspiracy to defraud the public purse and one year for perverting the course of justice.

Darsim Abdullah, 42, believed to be in Iraq, was convicted at Guildford Crown Court for being part of a money laundering gang that processed £1 million to £4 million per month. Eleven other members of the gang were convicted or pleaded guilty, but he ran away before sentencing.

Leigang Liang, 38, believed to be in the UK, was convicted at Lewes Crown Court for illegally importing tobacco from China. He was sentenced in his absence to seven years. The estimated cost to the taxpayer of the scam was £2.6 million.

Olutayo Owolabi, 40, believed to be in the UK, was convicted in January 2010 for 27 charges linked to tax credits and money laundering, and sentenced in his absence to nine months in jail. The estimated cost to the taxpayer was £1 million.

Wayne Joseph Hardy, 49, now believed to be in South Africa, was convicted at Ipswich Crown Court for manufacturing tobacco products and not paying duty. He was given three-year sentence in October 2011. The estimated cost to the taxpayer was £1.9 million.

Adam Umerji - aka Shafiq Patel, 34, thought to be in Dubai, was jailed at Liverpool Crown Court for 12 years for VAT fraud and money laundering. The cost to the taxpayer was around £64 million.

Gordon Arthur, 60, believed to be in the United States, suspected of illegally importing cigarettes and alcohol and failing to pay around £15 million in duty. He fled in 2000 and a warrant was issued for his arrest at Maidstone Crown Court in 2002.

Emma Elizabeth Tazey, 38, also believed to be in the United States, is wanted in connection with the same allegations.

John Nugent, 53, thought to be in the United States, was accused of putting in fraudulent claims for duty and VAT worth more than £22 million. A warrant for his arrest was issued at Manchester Crown Court.

Malcolm McGregor McGowan, 60, believed to be in Spain, was found guilty at Sheffield Crown Court in December 2011 of illegally importing cigarettes worth around £16 million into the UK, and was sentenced to four years.

Timur Mehmet, 39, believed to be in Cyprus, is wanted over a £25 million VAT fraud. He was found guilty in absence and sentenced to eight years at Northampton Crown Court.

Vladimir Jeriomin, 34, thought to be in Russia or Lithuania, was part of a gang that made false claims for tax repayments. The estimated cost to the taxpayer was £4.8 million. A warrant was issued for his arrest at Liverpool Crown Court.

Cesare Selvini, 52, thought to be in Switzerland, is wanted for smuggling platinum bars worth around £600,000. A warrant was issued for his arrest at Dover Magistrates' Court in 2005.

Dimitri Gaskov, 27, thought to be in Estonia, allegedly smuggled three million cigarettes into the UK using desktop computers. He fled before trial and an arrest warrant was issued at Ipswich Crown Court.

Mohamed Sami Kaak, 45, thought to be in Tunisia, is wanted for smuggling millions of cigarettes into the UK between March 2005 and September 2006 and evading around £822,000 in duty. He was convicted in his absence at Isleworth Crown Court and jailed for four years.

Rory Martin McGann, 43, believed to be in Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland, is wanted for alleged VAT fraud worth more than £902,000. He was arrested in November 2008 but later fled.

Yehuda Cohen, 35, thought to be in Israel, is wanted over VAT fraud worth around £800,000. He was arrested at Heathrow Airport in March 2011 but later fled while on bail.

Sahil Jain, 30, believed to be in the UK, was arrested over alleged VAT fraud worth around £328,000 but failed to appear at the Old Bailey and a warrant was issued for his arrest on June 8. 

It takes an awful lot of minimum-wage cleaners and retail staff to compensate for these guys - in fact, given that a minimum wage earner in London or with a family will be taking more in housing and other benefits than they're paying in tax, no number will compensate. It'll take an awful lot of deputy managers and management accountants, put it that way.

R.I.P. Richard Mannington Bowes

When Richard Mannington Bowes was born in 1943, the ethnic minority population of Britain was a few thousand people.

When he was eight years old, in 1951, Churchill's cabinet debated immigration into the UK.

David Maxwell-Fyfe, the home secretary, reported that the total of "coloured people" in Britain had risen from 7,000 before the second world war to 40,000 at the time of writing, with 3,666 of those unemployed, and 1,870 on national assistance, or benefits.

It's almost impossible for anyone growing up today to imagine what a peaceful and orderly (and staid) place post-war Britain was. The American anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer, in his 1955 "Exploring English Character", compared the post-war English with their early Victorian forebears of 120 years previously* :

"One of the most lawless populations in the world has turned into one of the most law-abiding; ...a fiercely and ruthlessly acquisitive society has turned into a mildly distributive society; general corruption in government has been replaced by an extraordinarily high level of honesty... in public life today the English are certainly among the most peaceful, gentle, courteous and orderly populations that the civilized world has ever seen. ... you hardly ever see a fight in a bar (a not uncommon spectacle in most of the rest of Europe or in the U.S.A.)... football crowds are as orderly as church meetings.."

If you had told Mr Mannington-Bowes' parents that, sixty years later, their child would be beaten to death, in Ealing, by a mob of strangers bent on looting and arson, they would have thought you were mad.

They'd have thought you were mad if you predicted that he'd be fined in the local magistrates court - "for confronting youths for urinating outside his home".

This was England. The law was on the side of the law-abiding, and people were killed in riots in far-away countries, not here.

UPDATE - I would be interested to see a report of his trial and conviction, and who the magistrate was. I trust it wasn't this one. I don't want to come over all Polly Toynbee, and the people who beat him to death ARE savages, but the wholesale criminality (mixed with plenty of assaults just for the fun of it) is a product of an assault on the principles of criminal justice that's been going on for fifty years. Fifty years of mass immigration may arguably have been a necessary condition for his murder, but certainly not a sufficient one - and as I've said many a time and oft, there are plenty of native youth who'll beat a man to death for being a good citizen.

As I argued here and here, something in the water of post-Cultural Revolution UK seems to turn the children and grandchildren of previously law-abiding people into bad boys and girls. What could it be ? This Polly Toynbee column - or a read of the Magistrate's blog - may hold an answer.

* to be fair, the peacefulness of the English puzzled him greatly, John Bull being traditionally a pugnacious sort of chap, always ready to scrap when offended by a foreigner of any description.

"Two white people wearing seatbelts — you've got to be cops"

"I have been away for four years, living as an ethnic minority in a monocultural part of the world, amassing a host of stories to tell to disbelieving friends.

On the whole, I am glad to return. I shan't miss some locals' assumptions that, being a white woman, if I was outside after dark, as I occasionally was, usually to walk the few metres between my house and the church, I must be a prostitute eager to give them a blow job. I shan't miss the abuse my priest husband received: the daubing of "Dirty white dogs" in red paint on the church door, the barrage of stones thrown at him by children shouting "Satan". He was called a "f***ing white bastard" more than once, though, notably, never when in a cassock. I will also not miss the way our garden acted as the local rubbish dump, with items ranging from duvets and TV sets, to rats (dead or twitching) glued to cardboard strips, a popular local method of vermin control to stem the large numbers of them which scuttled between the rubbish piled in gardens and on pavements."

What Third World hellhole can this be? Haiti?

I'm not sure, but I think it's either Small Heath or Sparkbrook.

(via)

Ngrams

Google Ngram Viewer allows you to count the relative occurrence of a word or phrase in the Google Books library for a given year of publication.

From 1820 to 2000, 'coloured people', 'colored people', 'black people', 'aboriginal' for all books published in English. You can see the great rise in 'black' and beginning of the decline in 'colo(u)red' (previously the polite usage for what we now call black) in the late 1960s, coterminous with the post-Civil Rights rhetoric of Black Consciousness and Black Power.












But if you do the same only for books published in the UK, you'll see that 'black' only took off in the 1980s, a good twenty years after the States. That poor officer whose use of the word 'coloured' was held up by the Lawrence Enquiry as evidence of police racism wasn't terribly far behind the publishing curve.

Dream Wedding

I know it's wrong to find this funny. But we are all sinners. And when all's said and done, there's nothing like exposure to different cultures to broaden the outlook, is there ?

Asking the couple and other ‘officials’ to raise their hands as is customary for Muslim prayers, the ‘celebrant’ begins his marriage vows.

‘Fornication has been legalised according to Article six, 1.11 of the Penal Code,' he chants in a tone favoured by religious scholars. ‘That is, frequent fornication by homosexuals. Most fornication is by males,’ he continues.

‘You are swine. The children that you bear from this marriage will all be bastard swine,’ he says to his guests.

‘Your marriage is not a valid one. You are not the kind of people who can have a valid marriage. One of you is an infidel. The other, too, is an infidel – and we have reason to believe – an atheist, who does not even believe in an infidel religion.’

The hapless couple remain oblivious as the ‘celebrant’, surrounded by 10 to 15 employees, calls for the marriage to be enshrined in Islamic law, followed by further personal insults against the couple...

The groom, who is watering the new coconut tree which they have just planted, is totally unaware of the manner in which his wife and her breasts are being discussed by the group of Maldivian men ‘officiating’ at the renewal of their wedding vows...

In a statement the resort expressed its ‘deep concern and regret’ over the incident. Set on its own exclusive island in the Indian Ocean, the Maldive resort is a popular destination for couples intending to renew their marriage vows.

A stay at the Vilu Reef beach and Spa costs from $1335 per person and it is advertised as a place where couples can ‘celebrate and capture the special moments of your life and mark a milestone in your amazing journey together or wish to rejoice another year of life’.

UPDATE - you've got to admit the guy is a brilliant improviser - or has had a lot of practice. I can see a small sideline for Dhivehi-speakers in the 'Check Your Wedding Video To Ensure You're Not Being Insulted' market.

Asking the couple and other ‘officials’ to raise their hands as is customary for Muslim prayers, the ‘celebrant’ begins his marriage vows...


“Research has shown that men have a higher sex drive than women,” he says. “According to Article 8 to 6 of the Penal Code, converting to Islam, or circumcision, is not desirable under any circumstances.

“Germs of anger and hatred will breed and drip from the tips of your penises,” he says...

The ‘celebrant’ mixes the two letters to make the word ‘balhu’, the full version of which, as used by the ‘celebrant’, is ‘nagoo balhu’. The literal translation of the term is ‘crooked tail’, believed to refer to a pig’s tail, and is considered to be one of the worst insults in the Dhivehi language.

“You are swine according to the Constitution,” he declares, solemnly.

He then asks the couple to stand up and hold hands. The ‘officials’, too, stand up and place their hands on the couples’. They form a séance-like circle and the ‘celebrant’ begins chanting.

“Aleelaan, baleelaan…”, he begins. What he is chanting is not a verse from the Qur’an, or marriage vows in Dhivehi, but are the words of a popular Dhivehi children’s game.

Words of the game, too, are changed to say “black swine” instead of what is contained in the original.

“Before buggering a chicken, check if the hole is clean. That is because the people of the countries that you are from are familiar with the taste of the ****holes of chicken,” he chants, still with hands held over the couples’.

“Do not treat with kindness people against whom violence is being committed. Commit more violence against victims of violence. You are not people who have been sent to this world to commit violence.”

He then returns to the matter of staff salaries, which he continues to chant in the same tone as he had done the insults. “Do not complain too much about salaries, or matters regarding salaries. That is against the Penal Code. This is not something I am saying for your benefit – it is a law that we have made.”

He begins to chant loudly about “black swine”, stringing insult after insult and delivering it in the same rather ominous tone that Maldivian religious figures choose to deliver their sermons in.

“You fornicate and make a lot of children. You drink and you eat pork. Most of the children that you have are marked with spots and blemishes… these children that you have are bastards,” he continues solemnly.

Someone else is heard at this point to tell the ‘celebrant’ to “say a little bit more, and then quit.”

The concluding chant is delivered in a gentler, softer voice: “Keep fornicating frequently, and keep spreading hatred among people. The children you will have from this marriage will all be bastard swine.”

UPDATE2 : the comments on the story. A lot are critical of the resort's owner (including his allegedly innovative love life), and more than a few suggest that such 'ceremonies' are not uncommon :

xxxxxx on Wed, 27th Oct 2010 12:02 AM

Pause the video at 4:50 and you can see that the owner of Vilu Reef Mr Sun Travel Ahmed Siyam Mohamed MP is in the video, personally witnessing this rip off of unsuspecting clients.

xxxxxx on Wed, 27th Oct 2010 12:16 AM

Pause the video at 4:47 and play it till 4:52. You can clearly see the owner Mr. Sun Travel Siyam personally witnessing this callous rip off.


maldivesresortworkers on Wed, 27th Oct 2010 1:32 PM

For God’s sake what’s wrong with so many ppl who rant as if Armageddon has arrived? It has not happened and nor has Vilu Reef paid us (maldivesresortworkers) to buy our loyalty. The fact of the matter is that these weddings are not new things in resorts. Nor are these make-me-feel-good marriage valid for purposes like inheritance or are legally binding. Nor are these religious ceremonies or civil ceremonies or any such sanctified rituals. These are just parts of the entertainment process in resorts. Even when guest do not renew their vows again in the resorts, many guests bring wedding gowns to take pictures of themselves in those dresses. This is not a new thing for tourism.

Nor is smiling broadly at guests and uttering gibberish a new phenomenon. Guests and staff indulge in fun like this every day. What counts is the service, the sincerity and the friendliness of the staff to the guests. Good guest service is not about being cold, unapproachable, reverent, officious and snobbish. Guests would much appreciate staff who would make fun and make their stay enjoyable than those who stand in awe and revered stance like zombies and are political correct.

Throughout this marriage in question, the staff were able to keep their cool which is an achievement. Not everybody can say all those ‘things’ while smiling at the guest and suppressing the urge to burst out laughing. Even if the couple secretly were aware of a smattering of dhivehi they would have burst out laughing and would not forget their fun moment in Maldives.
The problem with the majority of us is we do not see the positive side of this.

I must say this doesn't seem very positive for the Maldives tourist industry. While I appreciate the information, I can see that the (presumably Maldivian) site hosting the story may well, and not unreasonably, come under pressure to remove it.

Target Culture

When you set service targets and reward managers for hitting those targets, you create an incentive to fiddle the stats.

In some areas - say call centre response times, where x% of calls must be answered within y seconds, it's difficult (though not impossible- you can just drop a call to pick up another one, or you can be more innovative) to fiddle the stats unless you've got a bent IT guy.

In other settings you can be more creative. The NHS is renowned for its achievements in this area.

So, you think the staff and managers might be bending the stats ? Why not bring in an outside firm to test the systems anonymously? That's what Royal Mail did.

People sometimes say there's no initiative and invention in middle management at a large corporation. I wouldn't say that myself.

The unnamed source told Postcomm that several Royal Mail staff had found a way of cheating the supposedly independent system of checking mail delivery times, which was carried out by an external market research company... By intercepting the "test" letters, postal workers were able to hijack the performance assessment by making sure they were prioritised and delivered bang on time, giving an artificially high figure for the number of letters and parcels arriving on time.

Managers would note down the name and address on the envelopes, and in some cases illegally open the mail to find addresses of other volunteer panellists. The addresses would then be entered into computer spreadsheets, listed by postcode area. In sorting and delivery offices, panellists were known as “key customers” and given top priority to ensure their post was delivered in time, to hit the performance targets. In some cases individual pillar boxes were also earmarked to make sure they were emptied as late as possible, to ensure the panellists did not miss the last post.

In the Motherwell delivery office a notice pinned to the wall told staff to bring any mail addressed to two particular people to the attention of the delivery manager's office. One of the addressees was a panellist. Postal workers also learnt to look out for "suspicious" mail. In some cases postmen realised they were delivering "test" mail when they delivered driving licences to people who did not have cars.

Postcomm found that Royal Mail delivery office managers were “accustomed to looking for (test mail) and showing other colleagues how to identify items of test mail”. In some cases, managers photocopied panellists’ mail and sent the copies to other managers. One manager from Scotland is even thought to have travelled to Manchester to brief his colleagues on how they could get involved in the scam.

I imagine the fact that the monitoring was by outsiders also stimulated group cohesion and company loyalty (sort of) in the Royal Mail chaps - and I bet they were chaps. It could almost become a game, outwitting them.


Just shows what can happen when you get the incentives right ;-)


No steering group needing reports and minutes, no sponsoring senior director, no project plans and milestones, no internal auditing, no box-ticking to show how actions are aligned with the latest version of the corporate culture - just spontaneous, organic co-operation at all levels and the required outcomes are achieved. Almost like the Marxist vision of how industry would run itself in an ideal Socialist society. Fantastic.

A Few Sledges Fron The Curate's Porch

Riots in Calabria :

The rioting began after Thursday's shooting, in which two men - one from Nigeria, the other from Togo - were lightly injured. The foreigners angrily blamed that shooting on racism, and groups of protesters stoned police, attacked residents and smashed shop windows and cars. Friday, angry migrants, mostly from African nations, some armed with metal bars or wooden sticks, scuffled with police and residents in the streets of Rosarno. Other residents were holed up in their homes, state radio reported, and schools and shops were shuttered.

Christians murdered in Egypt :

Thousands of Coptic Christians clashed with police in southern Egypt on Thursday during a funeral procession for seven people shot dead as they left a Christmas service hours earlier. The protesters pelted cars with stones and set fire to ambulances in the town of Nag Hamadi, 40 miles from the ancient ruins of Luxor. The riots were sparked by a drive-by shooting. Three men sprayed automatic gunfire into a crowd leaving a midnight Mass to mark the Coptic Christmas.

Christians attacked by Muslims in Malaysia :

There have been more attacks on churches in Malaysia, in a growing dispute over the use of the word Allah by non-Muslims. The police say petrol bombs were thrown at a church and a convent school in the northern state of Perak, and at a church on the island of Sarawak. Another church in the south of the country was daubed with black paint. The attacks come days after four churches near the capital, Kuala Lumpur, were hit by petrol bombs. Religious tensions in Malaysia have increased since a court ruled last month that a Roman Catholic newspaper could use the word Allah in its Malay-language edition to describe the Christian God.

The Lancashire town with an 8,000 population - and plans for a 5,000 pupil Islamic boarding school.

On the banks of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, the old cotton mill stands as a gigantic ghost-like relic of England’s industrial past. It seems unthinkable that this immense sprawl, a key source of employment for a century and a half, should have been idle for three years.

But an ambitious project to give the cluster of buildings a new lease of life, converting them into a boarding school for up to 5,000 Muslim girls, has bitterly divided the local community.

The eager support of parents of prospective pupils is rivalled by a deep hostility that has been shown in responses ranging from anxious questions in parliament to extreme right-wing allegations of plots to “Islamify” Britain.

Another extreme right-winger, former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, adds fuel to the flames of hatred :

We have had to wait decades for this moment, but it has finally happened. A leading British clergyman has said something sensible about immigration.

Lord Carey of Clifton, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, this week signed a declaration by the Cross Party Group on Balanced Migration calling for an urgent tightening of borders to stop the British population reaching 70 million by 2029. He also gave an interview yesterday in which he called for a tougher Church. "We Christians are very often so soft that we allow other people to walk over us, and we are not as tough in what we want, in expressing our beliefs, because we do not want to upset other people," he said.

Adn two damn stupid articles in the New Statesman, which moderates its comments but can't afford to have anyone doing it over the weekend.

Jon Cruddas :

Labour, like the wider social-democratic tradition, has been unable to build a counterculture that can offer an alternative ethics of living and working. As a result, it has colluded in distinguishing morally between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor.

It has ? You could have fooled me, mate.

History has shown us that economic crises generate middle-class panics about a "dangerous" underclass and its racial and sexual transgressions. In the 1980s, the new right embarked on a project to theorise an underclass in Britain. It drew on the work of the American political scientist Charles Murray, whose research had revived eugenicist debates about race and intelligence. Murray was invited to Britain by the Sunday Times in 1989 and his ideas were taken up by Digby Anderson's Social Affairs Unit. The American academic Lawrence Mead was also influential in reviving the belief that poverty was about behaviour and dependency, rather than economics and justice. The problem was not environment, but individual failing. The work of the new right laid the foundations for New Labour's welfare reforms.

Moral panic ! Moral panic ! It's just like the Garotting Panic of 1862 !

(Laban's Charles Murray posts here.)

The government calculated that it could triangulate the Conservatives and subject the underclass to punitive measures without alienating Labour's core supporters. Its refrain of "hard-working families" attempted to codify this division. But the so-called underclass is not a class apart as the new right and the social investigators of the 19th century tried to prove. It is an imagined body of people - chavs, hoodies, junkies - projected on to single mothers, the sick and parts of the working class impoverished by the impact of recession and unemployment.

Against stupidity the gods themselves battle in vain, what ?

And something even more weird by one Francis Beckett. Who he, you may ask ? Oh. Not an encouraging upbringing for anyone, really. Poor little rich kid.

His basic thesis - that the baby-boomer generation messed up big time - is one that few would dispute. Even the Magistrate is on board.

Magistrate :

I am one of the lucky-sod generation, born just after the war. I have had to cope with economic ups-and-downs, but I went to a grammar school, thanks to the 1944 Education Act, and thence to a university that was flush with funds, and at which I received £360 per annum grant. There were no tuition fees to pay, and a handsome room with full board cost me £6 per week. In the student bar beer was (in new-fangled money) 9p per pint.

Beckett :

The idea that one might have to pay for education, at any level, seemed to us primitive and backward-looking. In the Thirties, my grandmother used to save pennies in a tin in her kitchen, fearfully guarding against the day when one of her children might require medical attention. In the week that the National Health Service was inaugurated in 1948, GPs' surgeries were overwhelmed with patients whose painful and often life-threatening conditions had never been treated or even shown to a doctor. When we baby boomers were ill, we expected, as a right, the best treatment available. Paying for it never occurred to us.

There was full employment, and the slums were torn down and replaced with council housing, built to Aneurin Bevan's high standard. And what did we do with this extraordinary inheritance that had eluded our ancestors, and that an earlier generation had worked and fought to give us?

We trashed it.

It's in the 'why did we trash it' bit that he seems to lose touch with reality. Indeed I can't actually understand what, if anything, he's trying to say. We did indeed 'use up' the manifold blessings showered upon us - but how, exactly ? He almost seems to be suggesting that if only the Sixties had gone on for ever ...

Religion, royalty, government: nothing was sacrosanct in the Sixties, and everything could be questioned. But we used up the time when nothing was sacred. The age of deference seemed to be over, yet the baby boomers, who now run things, have seen how useful deference in for the governing class and are bringing it back as fast as they can.

How about - 'we trashed the existing culture and didn't replace it' - save with the dreadful secular liberal nostrums with which our rulers attempt to put back the ruins of the house, so carefully built - no, not so much built as grown organically on the bedrock of patriotism and Christianity, over generations, so easily destroyed in one.

It's Political Correctness Con Rad

"The N-word of the Narcissus"

(not a bad book actually - I have an unbowdlerised copy at home. And I note from the Wikipedia entry that the title's been bowdlerised for 100+ years. It was first published in the States as 'The Children of the Sea')

Conservatives .... a liberal view

Mad ?

Or evil ?

Enfants de la Patrie (again) ?

I've written about this sort of thing before. Now even the Indie is noticing :

"No," he said. "I'm not watching the match. I never watch France play football. The team disgusts me because they are not really French."

What did he mean, I asked (although I knew exactly what he meant). My neighbour mumbled something about not liking the team because they didn't sing the Marseillaise before matches (something that has not been true for more than a decade). What he really meant was that there were too many non-white faces in the line-up (seven out of 11). I pointed out that every single France player in the now infamous main de Dieu World Cup qualifying team was born in France and mostly in Greater Paris. He looked embarrassed, made a "so what" hand gesture and walked away.

That same night thousands of young people from the poorer suburbs of Greater Paris poured on to the Champs Elysées to celebrate the fact that their country had qualified for the World Cup finals in South Africa next summer. These were French kids, born in France, but they were not celebrating France's morally-challenged victory over Ireland. They were celebrating – boisterously, and at times violently – Algeria's victory over Egypt in Algiers.

Guardian :

As the evening went on, more than 12,000 Algerians poured on to the Champs Elysées, which was closed to traffic as youngsters danced on the roofs of cars, chanting "One, two, three, Vive l'Algérie", and throwing fireworks into the dank November night. "I can't believe it," I was told by Samia, a 20-year-old student. "I've never seen anything like it. It's not just about football. It has to be about something else."

About midnight it became clearer what that something else might be. Armed police had by now gathered around the Arc de Triomphe, trying to break up the crowds. They were met with taunts, stones and fireworks. The party soon degenerated into a riot and the cries of "Vive l'Algérie" were replaced by the familiar battle cry of "Nique la police" (**** the police). The police responded with teargas and baton charges.

There were 60 arrests, and similar scenes in Lyon and Marseille. The violence carried on and by Friday morning the police reported that more than 200 cars had been burnt in the suburbs of Paris.

You have to remember that the same night France had cheated their way past Ireland to qualify. Yet the centre of Paris belonged to (violent) young French citizens who identified as Algerian.

Couldn't happen here, of course :

"You can cry now miserable Egyptians! We proudly defeated and humiliated you and we have now qualified for the worl cup 2010 in South Africa. You are the most hated people in the Arab world! Worse than jews."

Mr Indie - a chap called John Lichfield - seems to have been mugged by reality :

I have lived in France for almost 13 years. I adore France and I adore the French. I have to admit, however, that I have found the events of recent days – Sarko's crusade, Henry's handball, my neighbour's comments, the celebrations by French-born Algeria fans and the brutal response of the CRS – rather unsettling.

Eleven years ago, I was one of those who wrote admiringly of the Brown-White-Black France which won the World Cup. I, and many others, suggested that their victory might soften race relations in France; that other brown and black French kids might be encouraged to feel French; that white French kids would grow up with brown and black French heroes.

Since then, we have learned better.

Guardian ditto :

The sourness surrounding the Algerian victory seemed such a long way away from the famous "rainbow" French team of 1998 that beat Brazil in a glorious World Cup final at the Stade de France... This moment was hailed as the beginning of a new era in French cultural life. Eleven years later, that moment seems to belong to a very distant past. Indeed, the divisions in French society seemed to have hardened since then.

Laban doesn't think the lessons to be drawn are any different from last time :

So what, you may say. Why should we care about what happens in a far-away country of which we know little ?

Because their problems are ours. There's a terrible symmetry between the children and grandchildren of immigrants to France, much more radicalised, violent and discontented than their grandparents, and those to the UK.

Inflating Our Way Out Of Debt

It has become apparent to commentators like Liam Halligan that the Great Deflation Scare of 2009 is, in his words :

"... largely a myth – an alibi for wildly expansionary fiscal and monetary policy concocted by Western governments and their media lackeys.

After all, where is deflation? Data released last week put annual US core inflation at no less than 4pc. So why is the Fed doing this, following the Bank of England's lead? Because the real solution – forcing banks to face the music, while rescheduling massive private and public debts – is too politically frightening for our so-called leaders to contemplate.

A decision has been made, but not announced: we'll inflate away our debts instead"

Media lackeys ? That's a bit strong. Anyone in mind, Liam ? Robert Peston's been waving the spectre of deflation for some time - as has the entire BBC news output.

I invite readers to study the evolution of Tuesday's lead BBC news story, from "Deflation risk as prices to fall" all the way through to "Surprise hike in consumer prices". Bloggers like CityUnslicker and Alice Cook were far more on the ball than the mainstream media.

It turns out that the only component of inflation to fall is mortgage costs - completely under the control of HMG/BoE. Everything else is going up. The only deflation is caused by the Government - and then they've used the spectre, aided by their "media lackeys", to start up the printing presses. Peston's December comment that "The US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England regard the great threat right now as deflation" remarkably ignores the parallel appreciation of the dollar and depreciation of the pound. In David Bowie's immortal words "This is not America".

To be fair, the inflation's caused by HMG too. The weakness of the UK economy, the government's massive and increasing deficit as tax receipts collapse, the fact that they spent in the good times and have nowt left for the bad, not to mention the announcement that the presses would roll - these have devalued the pound by some 28% since last summer. It's this that is driving inflation, given that we import a lot more than we export.

We're actually 1.2% above the BoEs official (albeit fiddled) inflation target of CPI at 2% - so they should be raising interest rates. I wonder why we're not ? And RPI stood at 0% in 1960 - did we start up the presses then ?

Bloggers like Matt T suggest I'm in danger of succumbing to conspiracy theories. I always try to use Occcam's Razor when presented with such a thing. For example, the UK cultural collapse can be explained quite neatly without bringing in any Zionist plotters or master-plan of Antonio Gramsci's.

But printing cash makes logical sense (from Labour's perspective). They won't/can't stop spending - I'm sure Polly Toynbee would argue that the State is needed more than ever in these hard times. Just like Mugabe's soldiers, the key client groups need paying. Tax receipts will continue to fall. The pound will really take a hit, and HMG won't be able to borrow, if they run an even greater deficit, as even Mervyn King has warned. Where else will they get the money from ? I really can't see anywhere.

I was expecting the FT to fall to maybe 2500 this year - but since then it's risen from about 3400 to nearly 4000 as Brown and Obama print away. Whether this is a bear rally and prices will resume the downward trend is yet to be seen - but there can be little doubt that all this newly-created dosh will in the long term cause asset prices to rise again, and my pension to be devalued, as the bubbles are reflated. It's all a question of timing. When will inflation kick in ?

(a shorter version of this was posted yesterday at Biased BBC)

"basic Labour values"

Not long ago NuLab MP Tom Harris wrote a surprising post - surprising because I agreed with pretty much all of it (I do think bringing up children is itself a career - or a vocation - but then I'm a Sayyid Qutb disciple on some things. Everybody who can should get an education - it's a good in itself).

Teenage girls shouldn’t be having underage sex. Why? Because it’s wrong.

Teenage girls shouldn’t choose to have babies as an alternative to getting an education and a career. Why? Because it’s wrong.

Parents shouldn’t teach their children that a lifetime on benefits is attractive or even acceptable. Why? Because it’s wrong.

(Please assume all the usual caveats: some people have no choice but to claim benefits, lots of single parents do a great job, etc.)

Being accused of agreeing with the Daily Mail’s agenda is not the worst thing my critics can say about me. Being accused of accepting the current appalling state of affairs, of pretending that the concepts of right and wrong are meaningless - that is far worse than being accused of pandering to the right.

And, of course, it is a complete load of ******** to suggest that the ordinary working class people of Glasgow South and in hundreds of other constituencies throughout the country don’t agree with me. The most vociferous critics of the dependancy culture and of deliberate worklessness have always been those who live in the same communities, those who resent paying their taxes to help other people waste their lives.

Lancastrian Labour councillor Paul Cotterill wants him thrown out of the Labour Party - "on (the) basis that he is an objectionable fool and is out of keeping with basic Labour values, as evidenced by this post".






(The whiring sound you can hear is the late Ernest Bevin, rotating at 5,700 rpm)

"A writer is always selling someone out"

Joan Didion's words of forty years ago : How true they are.


(and forty years on Joan is still at it; here's a review of the book she wrote after a year of family tragedy)

A Few Chunks Of Rock Salt In The Curate's Lane

A hint of fear as Labour minister Stephen Timms gets religion :

Mr Timms referred to the problems in the world economy, the conflict in the Middle East and more immediate problems such as last weekend’s stabbing of Stephen Lewis when leaving a church hall party in his own constituency in East London.

Mr Timms said: “It would be easy to lapse in the face of challenges of that magnitude into cynicism or even despair – to conclude that nothing can be done by politicians effectively to resolve these enormous challenges.

“But it is the calling of politicians to figure out how to tackle them, to identify solutions and to work to implement them.”

He said the religious groups of Britain were crucial to this process and singled out the Muslim community for particular praise. “Muslims in Britain have helped faith gain a new voice and a new confidence,” he said.

Thyere's no doubt about the new voice and new confidence. What I'm not sure about is from whence cometh this voice's strength. Is it the cohesion which put so many hundreds of thousands on the streets, to denounce wars in Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza, that has earned the respect of New Labour ? Or is it a series of riots, four suicide bombings and a large number of wannabes ? What think you ? What are our rulers more likely to take notice of ?

"How many divisions has the Pope ?" Stalin famously asked. Our rulers take a view on the likely number of Christian suicide bombers and act accordingly :

A Christian nurse from Weston-super-Mare has been suspended for offering to pray for a patient's recovery. Community nurse Caroline Petrie, 45, says she asked an elderly woman patient during a home visit if she wanted her to say a prayer for her.

The patient complained to the health trust about Mrs Petrie who follows the Baptist faith. She was suspended, without pay, on 17 December and will find out the outcome of her disciplinary meeting next week.

I digress. This report positively reeks of fear :

Twenty five per cent of the 430 population of Long Lartin top security jail in Worcestershire are now Muslim, according to an inspection report by Dame Anne Owers, the chief inspector of prisons.

Prisoners told Dame Anne during her inspection that offenders at the jail are converting to Islam because they want the protection of belonging to a big Muslim group. One inmate quoted in the report said:”Yes, there is a gang culture here which is becoming an issue. A lot of people are becoming Muslim just because it a bigger group."

Another inmate warned that all violence in the jail was gang related and that Long Lartin was in danger of turning into an American-style prison. He said: "If you are not in a gang, you’re in trouble. People are converting to Islam for protection.”

Not something you'd say about Christianity these days, is it ? There have been stories of gang culture in places like Belmarsh, Whitemoor and Frankland - wasn't someone killed in one of those jails ?

The number of Muslim prisoners in jails doubled in the eleven years to 2007 to reach 8,864 - 11 per cent of the total prison population. Muslim prisoners make up one third of the population of Whitemoor, 15 per cent of Full Sutton top security prison in Yorkshire and 20 per cent of Belmarsh jail.

In today’s report, Dame Anne said the jail’s security department was monitoriting the difficulties of gang activity, potential extremism and radicalisation of inmates in a balanced way. She said staff had been left to balance as best they could the need to engage with and ensure proper treatment for Muslim prisoners and the need to monitor and prevent radicalisation.

“There needs to be a national strategy to equip staff better to engage and support Muslim prisoners,” she said. There is no multi-faith room at the jail and this has resulted in Friday prayers being held in three separate locations.

A survey found that the proportion of prisoners who believed their faith was respected had fallen significantly and only 48 per cent of Muslim respondents said they were respected by staff, compared with a 67 per cent response from non Muslims.

“Given the sensitivities surrounding Muslim prisoners, including the perceived risk of radicalisation, staff required training and advice on how to engage Muslim prisoners better,” the inspection report said.

Our rulers are afraid that unless they are nice to Muslim inmates, when they come out some will set off bombs. But be fair. They're afraid of the other prisoners, too.

A growing number of prisoners serving long sentences who have “nothing to lose” is a threat to the control and stability of the jail system, the prisons watchdog warns.

Dame Anne Owers, the chief inspector of prisons, also said that there was a growing use of force to control the most pressurised jails in England and Wales. She highlighted a rise in the number of prison disturbances and increasingly fractious jails as warning signs of the strain being faced in the overcrowded prison system.

One in seven of the 82,000 prisoners in England and Wales is now serving an indefinite sentence for public protection or a life term, the inspector’s annual report reveals.

Dame Anne said that the disturbances in jails have been contained so far but she identified “real risks” of a loss of control in the future. She said that too many of the most volatile prisons, including top security jails holding an increasingly challenging mix of very serious offenders and those establishments holding young men, had not been judged safe in inspections.

Well, think about it. 900-odd homicides p.a. in England and Wales - even with some three-years-for-torturing-someone-to-death sentences you'll be adding maybe five hundred killers each year for ten years or so each, although they're also being released at the other end. Murder is still a crime with a relatively high clear-up rate. One in seven is about 12,000 bad boys of which maybe half will be killers and the other half rapists, failed killers and perhaps combinations of the two. Of course in the days of the death penalty you'd have a lower murder count and fewer murderers in the cells.

Dame Anne said that the prison system was having to cope with more prisoners serving longer sentences, more gang activities on the wings and concerns about drugs. “There have always been groups engaged in criminal endeavours both inside and outside prisons. There is some evidence of more organisation,” she said. She added: “The presence of drugs is also a key factor because that can create an economy in prison and create bullying.”

It was once pretty hard to get drugs into jail - in the days when you spoke to your beloved through a wire grille. Now you can sit her on your lap, put your tongue in her mouth and hand where you like - in a crowded visiting room with maybe half a dozen guards on high chairs watching over a room with forty or fifty people in it. I get the impression there's more stuff coming in via the staff, too. After all, a stoned jail is a quiescent jail - they hope. The balance of power in prisons has been shifting from jailer to inmate for forty years.

The number of Muslim prisoners may be rising, but so is the number of Muslims :

The Muslim population in Britain has grown by more than 500,000 to 2.4 million in just four years, according to official research collated for The Times.

The population multiplied 10 times faster than the rest of society, the research by the Office for National Statistics reveals. In the same period the number of Christians in the country fell by more than 2 million.

Experts said that the increase was attributable to immigration, a higher birthrate and conversions to Islam during the period of 2004-2008, when the data was gathered. They said that it also suggested a growing willingness among believers to describe themselves as Muslims because the western reaction to war and terrorism had strengthened their sense of identity.

Muslim leaders have welcomed the growing population of their communities ...

There are more than 42.6 million Christians in Britain, according to the Office for National Statistics, whose figures were obtained through the quarterly Labour Force Survey of around 53,000 homes. But while the biggest Christian population is among over-70s bracket, for Muslims it is the under-4s ...

Ceri Peach, Professor of Social Geography at Manchester University, said that the rapid growth of the Muslim population posed challenges for society. “The groups with the strongest belief in the family and cohesion are those such as the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. They have got extremely strong family values but it goes together with the sort of honour society and other kinds of attributes which people object to,” he said. “So you are dealing with a pretty complex situation.”

Hmm. That's what I'd call the weak version of the theory. But he's right that Muslims have many admirable values which hold together and strengthen their society. The operative word being 'their'.

They're not destroying our society, though. We did that when we implemented the brave new vision of the Sixties, which has made modern Britain so different from the Britain of fifty years back. Islam is merely expanding into the moral vacuum left by the decline of Christianity, the cultural vacuum left by the decline of Britishness, and the demographic vacuum left by the Pill and feminism.

Here are the figures. Have a nice day.

The total number of Muslims in Great Britain:

2004: 1,870,000

2005: 2,017,000

2006: 2,142,000

2007: 2,327,000

2008: 2,422,000

Source: Labour Force Survey

"to gain votes by a despicable method"

Another politician is in the dock - not for fraud, incompetence, dishonesty or one of the many other possibilities, but for saying the wrong things about the wrong people :

Last Wednesday another European politician living under police protection following Muslim death threats, was convicted by a court in Austria to a suspended jail sentence of three months and a fine of 24,000 euros.

Susanna Winter, a member of the Austrian Parliament, came to the court room in Graz under heavy police protection to defend herself against allegations of “inciting racial hatred and degradation of religious symbols and religious agitation.” In January 2008, Mrs. Winter, a member of the Austrian Freedom Party FPÖ, said that the prophet Muhammad was “a child molester” because he married a six-year-old girl. She also said Muhammad was “a warlord” who had written the Koran during “epileptic fits.” The politician added that Islam is “a totalitarian system of domination that should be cast back to its birthplace on the other side of the Mediterranean.” She also warned for “a Muslim immigration tsunami,” saying that “in 20 or 30 years, half the population of Austria will be Muslim” if the present immigration policies continue.

Following these remarks, Muslim extremists threatened to kill Mrs. Winter, who was subsequently placed under police protection. “I do not feel guilty of racial incitement,” Mrs. Winter told the court. The judge, however, disagreed. He told the elected member of parliament: “You have only one goal: to gain votes by a despicable method, by appealing to xenophobic feelings.” The judge also argued that it is impossible to write during epileptic fits.

Now, as regular readers will be aware, I'm not totally in tune with Ms Winters. I'm not temperamentally averse to living under a theocracy where the head of state is, under God, also the head of the state religion. A light-touch theocracy, where divorce and adultery are frowned on (and career-wreckers), outraging public decency in the theatre, cinema, newspaper or television attracts severe and immediate sanction, the differences between the sexes are acknowleged, blasphemy or profaning the holy day are punished, where abortion and attempted suicide are illegal. After all, I lived under just such a theocracy until the late 60s. The Queen is still officially head of the Church of England, it's just that the Church seems to have dropped Christianity.

Trouble is I'm not sure the only theocracy currently on offer is a terribly light-touch one. And I think that's what Ms Winter's worried about, too.

Airheads

When whoever-it-is says "To give up plastic" I presume she's talking about surgery.



Have they no sense of shame - or at least of irony ? But these people apparently take themselves seriously. I hope they don't expect us to ...




(I don't see much 'cult-like service' here, though. I see a lot of posers. If I knew who any of them were I'd boycott their films that I don't watch anyway. I'll make a start by deleting the kids Chilli Peppers mp3s. Or maybe I should put them on a file-sharing website)



Andrew Breitbart wields the scalpel :

This video illustrates that the current celebrity class are not citizens but serfs. They need a leader to put their minds in the right place to do the right thing. They are not heroic individualists seeking to extend America’s promise but conformists who chose to sit out and complain during the tough years in order to ensure their guy got in the next go-around ...

They never spoke up against the movies that demonized our military.

They never made movies to counter the libel.

They took the easy route. And blamed Bush for everything.

Moore’s nauseating video — which, like Steven Soderbergh’s “Oceans” franchise, grants a pristine look into the modern celebrity’s sense of self-importance — is not a sign of desire to serve the country under Obama. Watch, by March this pledge like New Year’s resolutions will fall by the wayside. It is a sign that the Democrat is in the White House now. It is a sign that they get to sleep again in the Lincoln Bedroom.

Twenty years ago AIDS was the number one cause for the Hollywood left. Remember the trendy red ribbons at all the self-aggrandizing awards shows? Hollywood has moved on (dot org) to better blame-your-fellow-American causes. But President Bush didn’t. And aside from Bob Geldof and Bono, they ignore this president’s demonstrable goodness ...

Remember this video: It is a instructive relic of the era of celebrity decadence and boutique anti-Republican activism under President Bush. It is a sickening display that they want fast and easy absolution for having comported themselves like ill-behaved children for eight difficult and war-torn years.

Good luck, President Obama. The rest of you can go to hell.

And Iowahawk (who else ?) the rapier :

Totally-wasted-on-heroin guy from the Red Hot Chili Peppers: I... uhhh.... ihhh... ahhhh... monkey funky like da junky...

Jason Bateman: I plehhhhdge... to fondle this microphone in a whimsically provocative manner.

Mr. Haney from Green Acres: To never give anyone the finger when I'm driving again. I will instead moon them, with my frightening elderly haunches.

'Greg and Darma' chick with scary feral baby: To save water, by never bathing my child.

Underwear model: I pledge.

I think it's that Spunky Winkerbean chick, the one who had a boob reduction: I pledge.

Brain-fried Chili Peppers guy: To caaaare? For? America's elderly?

Pockmarked guy in Urban Outfitters T-shirt: To make sure America's senior citizens have access to free healthcare and iPods and ringtone downloads.

Spunky Winkerbean: So that our next generation's USB memories will not be forgotten.

Eva Longoria: Now I'm pledging here on the other side of the frame!

Absolutely no clue who this is, whatsoever: To bring awareness to mental disease, like I am doing right now.

Weirdly bloated lips chick: To advance research into stem cells, collagen, and Botox.

Huh? Maybe I'm just getting too old but this is another guy who simply isn't ringing a bell: To spread the awareness of autism -- by becoming autistic.

He said "Jehovah" !

(Hastily edited after a correspondent informed me that council firewalls were classifying the post as 'hate speech' !)

I was hoping to ignore the Prince Harry brouhaha, but as it was the main story on BBC news yesterday, occupied most of John Pienaar's 2 hr R5 'politics' programme and was the phone-in topic on R5 this morning ... a few points :

a) this was another Murdoch press-sourced story. The Dirty Digger, now a Dirty Yank, has never got over his lack of honours and social acceptance for his services to soft porn and the general coarsening (parental advisory) of British life over the last 30 years. His papers are as a result republican. If Prince Philip really had the power that Al Fayed thinks he has, Murdoch would long ago have been at the bottom of Sydney Harbour in a concrete overcoat.

b) '****' is about as racist as 'Brit'. It's a nickname, a diminutive. A year or so back my daughter and I were looking at a globe, and I was showing her all those fascinating countries northwest of Tibet and west of China.

"All the countries round there end in -stan, because that means country in Persian, which is what their languages are based on. There's Uzbekistan, the country of the Uzbeks, where the Uzbeks live, Turkmenistan, where the Turkmen live, Kirghistan, where the Kirghiz live, Kazakhstan, where the Kazakhs live, Tajikistan, where the Tajiks live, Afghanistan, where the Afghans live - and Pakistan, where the Pakistanis live !"

It's true that, unlike the preceding countries, Pakistan isn't named for one ethnic group but (by this guy) for many geographical regions (Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, Turkharistan, Afghanistan, BaluchistaN) - but I bet the BBC don't know that - I'm sure I didn't.

"It means the land of the Paks- the spiritually pure and clean. It symbolizes the religious beliefs and ethnical stocks of our people; and it stands for all the territorial constituents of our original Fatherland. It has no other origin and no other meaning; and it does not admit of any other interpretation"

c) why's it considered to be racist, then ? Because white people use it. Given that any nicknames /diminutives for ethnic minorities will at some time be used by some bad white chap in an assault - and at that point will be used to classify the assault as a hate crime (aren't ALL assaults hate crimes ?), it therefore follows that white people who do not wish to be considered racist can have no nicknames or diminutives for people of another race. Not allowed.

Indeed, it's best if they allow others to tell them what the acceptable form of words is. Remember that the use of 'coloured', fifty years ago considered more genteel and polite than 'black', was presented at the Lawrence tribunal as evidence pointing towards an officer's racism. The poor chap just hadn't kept up. Didn't read the Guardian or New Society.

So - no nicknames, no diminutives, no spontaneous descriptive creation - all things the Brits are rather partial to. Instead, use the words you're told to - and when they change, you change your language.

This only applies to whites addressing non-whites or possibly Jews. A google of "Welsh Windbag" produces 4,000 references, nearly all to Neil Kinnock - but nobody is likely to be prosecuted for incitement to racial hatred. Laban calls Charles Kennedy the Great Chieftain of the Pudding Race - an obviously disparaging reference to his ethnic origins (as well as his resemblance to a pudding that's been well laced with Glenlivet) yet the post survives. No, it's a non-white - or at least non-British thing.

It works inversely too. Kanye West can rap about the n-word as much as he likes, but the BBC don't mind. The killers of Christopher Yates can shout "We have killed the white man. That will teach an Englishman to interfere in P*** business" but the judge doesn't call them racist.

d) I forget which linguist, probably all of them, said that you can control thought by controlling language, and make some ideas literally unthinkable for lack of words. Let's just ask the question - what are the equivalent words, nicknames, diminutives that an Asian or Afro-Caribbean would use to describe whites ? Gora ? Cracker ? I don't know, the BBC and Guardian certainly won't tell us. Anyone out there know ? As we've seen, they don't in themselves have to be insulting. What are the magical words which make an attack a racist one ? The ones that the courts and BBC will present as indubitable proof of anti-white racism ?

You see. The words (officially) do not exist. It's easy to 'prove' a racist element to an assault or murder by whites. Evidence that any one of a few words was used is sufficient. The prosecutor seeking to prove a racist asaault ON a white person has no such handy shortcut (btw, I'd be interested to know what Christopher Yates killers actually said - and in what language). No wonder non-white racism has such a low profile - there are no words to describe it or identify it, so how can it exist ?

As I've said before, I'm extremely uneasy about the whole hate crimes concept. But given where we are, I'd like some racial equality when it comes to the definition of such. Give me.

Those Christian Pharmacists Are At It Again

There was a young lady from Ealing :

A musician was left feeling “humiliated and disgusted” after being refused the morning after pill twice.

Tiffany Berton, a 28-year-old singer songwriter went to two different Boots stores in Ealing to get the pill as a extra precaution.

But both times she was refused the contraceptive, which costs £25 to buy over the counter, on moral and religious grounds.

She said: “I went to the Boots store next to Ealing Broadway station, but was told they did not stock it on religious grounds and was sent to the other Boots shop in Ealing Broadway.

“When I got there I was made to fill out a form, then the assistant showed it to the pharmacist, before coming back and telling me I could not have the pill.

“It made me feel like I was being judged and branded an amoral woman, even though I was being responsible.

Miss Berton, who lives in South Ealing Road, continued: “I was furious, but also humiliated and disgusted.

“I'm on low income and on housing benefits, and now is not the right time for me to bring a child into the world.

“Yet the way these people were acting it was as if they were saying your either single and celibate or married.”

She said she now intends to mount a campaign to stop pharmacists being able to refuse treatments on religious and moral grounds.

I expect it's those Christians again, with their idiotic ideas about celibacy and marriage. Honestly, it's getting as bad as America.

Some muddy boots from the curate's hall

OK, so we've known for ages that France's youth of North African heritage aren't integrating tebbily well.

More straws in the wind :

They are born in France and called Louis, Laurent or Marie but they want to become Abdel, Said or Rachida. Such requests from immigrants’ children for name changes are mounting in the French courts and worrying a state that lays store on melding a single national culture.

In a sign of a new assertiveness, children with families from Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco are reversing the old custom in which immigrants from the old colonies gave French names to their children.

Driven by a feeling that they do not belong to their Gallic Christian names, the applicants are meeting resistance from judges who are reluctant to endorse what they see as a rejection of France.

Under France’s strict administrative laws, an official change of first name requires court consent. Until 1992 parents could only register their babies with names from an approved list.

“The way I look is out of sync with my name,” said Jacques, 25, who wants to adopt a name from his parents’ native Algeria. He rejected the standard view that a French name overcomes the persisting reluctance of French employers to recruit nonwhite minorities.

“There is a double-take when I send a job application and then turn up for the interview. They hesitate, as if the person they have summoned could not be me,” he said.

There is abundant evidence that, despite antidiscrimination laws, French employers discriminate against job-seekers with foreign names. Nadine, who is in her forties, failed to convince a Paris court to let her go back to Zoubida, the name she had before naturalisation. “I want to return to my roots,” she told Judge Anne-Marie Lemarinier, according to Le Monde newspaper.

“My name change makes me feel guilt towards my family.” The judge replied: “Madame, I can understand that you want to identify with your community but the law does not have to bend to people’s moods.”

Frédéric Grilli, a Melun lawyer who acts for applicants, said that there was a connection between the desire to claim Maghebrin (North African) identity and France’s three-year-old ban against girls wearing Muslim headscarves in state schools.

Dominique Sopo, president of SOS Racism, a campaign group, said that France’s policy of integration was failing. “It rejects, stigmatises and consigns to the ghetto. This incites a retreat into community identity,” he told The Times.

“There is an enormous gap between political speeches on integration and the reality. But who can believe that changing a name can change something? It is sad to have got to that point.”

Another immigration scam. Damn clever these Chinese. You'd think such clever people could just read up to pass the 'citizenship tests', but no :

A criminal gang used elaborate James Bond-style spy gear to help Chinese immigrants cheat on citizenship tests. Two men have been jailed after using hi-tech hidden cameras, transmitters and surveillance gadgets to tell candidates sitting the exams the right answers. The Life in the UK test is the last step towards earning citizenship and those who pass are then entitled to apply for a British passport.

But there are fears unsuitable candidates may have earned the right to settle here thanks to a highly sophisticated scam to cheat the questions. Participants, who did not understand English, went in to a test centre in Wimbledon library, south west London, armed with a hidden shirt buttonhole camera, microphone and earpiece.

In a scam akin to a scene in a James Bond movie, two fraudsters sat outside in BMW car packed with hi-tech equipment and a laptop and directed them to tick the right answers via the secret link. When police first came across the pair they thought they were running a cashpoint fraud, skimming the cards of unsuspecting users. But it emerged they were helping Chinese nationals undertake the multiple choice immigration tests in the nearby building. Police fear the gang were earning thousands of pounds and a sophisticated network that could be spread across the UK.

In the Life in the UK test, applicants are asked a series of multiple choice questions about day to day life and traditions in the country. It is supposed to allow them to demonstrate they have a basic command of English and knowledge of the country they are hoping to settle in. But it has been open to abuse. Last year four men were quizzed over claims of a nationwide scam at a centre in South Yorkshire to help immigrants achieve British citizenship status.

In the latest case, Sergeant Dominic Washington, of Merton Borough police, said those behind the elaborate scam made thousands of pounds profit. He said: "When we first arrived at the scene it was very confusing as to what exactly was going on. However, working with colleagues from across the borough and the Met we believe that we have uncovered an established criminal enterprise that may be in operation in other parts of the country. We will now be educating colleagues about this type of crime, and hopefully its raised profile and extra vigilance from police will deter others from getting involved."

Steven Lee, 36, and Rong Yang, 28, of Redhill, Surrey, were jailed for eight months at Kingston Crown court earlier this week after they were found guilty of facilitating a breach of immigration law. Two Chinese men who took the test, Ka Hung Pang, 52, of Horsham, and En Zhuang, 38, of Deptford High Street, were sentenced to 180 hours community work for deception.

Remember the new phenomenon (strangely prevalent in certain towns) of 'cash for crash" fraudsters ? The guys who brake sharply in front of you, supply witnesses to the accident, and who all turn out to have been injured in the bump ?

It looks as if a toxic mix of cash-for-crashers and ambulance-chasing persoanl injury solicitors (those "if you've been involved in an accident - and it wasn't your fault - call us" adverts in local radio and Classic FM), plus the happy fact that whiplash injuries are self-reported, is spurring a boom in personal injury claims for whiplash.

Over 430,000 people claimed for whiplash in 2007, up by a quarter in the last five years. These claims cost nearly £2 billion a year in compensation.

Treating whiplash injuries now costs the NHS approximately £8 million a year in consultation fees.

The UK is the whiplash capital of Europe: 75% of motor personal injury claims are for whiplash, compared to an average of 40% throughout the rest of Europe.

Many drivers and passengers are at risk: 75% of drivers are unaware how head restraints should be correctly positioned.

They have to say that last bit. After all, some of these claims might even be kosher. The ABI report (pdf) reflects this ambivalence - outrage at the ripoff tempered by the knowledge that you can't start calling all the punters crooks. There's lots of stuff in it about getting the headrest set up properly. But the key bits are :

"Over 432,000 people make a whiplash claim every year – equivalent to one in every 140 people in the UK. This is six times more than the total number of people who make workplace injury claims every year. And the problem is getting worse – the number of people with cause to make a whiplash claim has increased by 25% over the last five years, so it is no surprise that whiplash now leads to nearly £2bn per year in compensation payments – accounting for 20% of the typical car insurance premium."

That means my family's stumping up about £200 pa in whiplash claims. Admittedly our premiums are high because our eldest is a driver.

At the same time that whiplash claims are rising, the Government’s road casualty statistics suggest that our roads are getting safer ... We must also consider why, though, we seem to have such a greater tendency to get whiplash than the rest of Europe. Do we really have weaker necks? Part of the answer must lie in our failing personal injury compensation system and our no-questions-asked approach to whiplash ... it is important that it is not always assumed that everyone in a car collision is likely to get whiplash, and that GPs take this into account in their more rigorous approach to handing out sick notes.

Translation - "these ******** are ripping us off - or more precisely, ripping the non-claiming motorist off - after all, we just raise the premiums. The personal injury firms and the 'injured' are conning us - and the GPs are turning a blind eye"

This increase in whiplash claims contrasts with the Government’s road casualty statistics, which indicate that the number of ‘slight’ injuries from road traffic collisions is falling ... Whiplash claims form a much higher proportion of personal injury claims in the UK than elsewhere in the EU.

Translation - "therefore it's likely that most of the claims are fraudulent"

"The diagnosis of whiplash injuries is dependant on self-reported symptoms .."

Translation - "So if you say your neck hurts you'll get the money ... the solicitors are coaching the claimants - not that they need much encouragement .."

The current level of legal costs is completely disproportionate. For every £1 paid by insurers in personal injury compensation, an additional 88p is paid to claimant representatives in motor claims under £5000. The majority of whiplash claims fall in this bracket;

It (the current system - LT) encourages the practice of solicitors paying for details of those involved in road collisions. Once the solicitor has paid a ‘referral’ fee to organisations that collect such information, the solicitor has a vested interest in ensuring a claim materialises.

Translation - "Like a large number of claimants, the solicitors are crooks who are in it for the money. They're making nearly as much as the claimants"

Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB) estimates that those detected fraudulent claims based on ‘staged’ accidents represent 5% of whiplash claims, costing the insurance industry between £75 - £110 million per annum.

So the 'cash-for-crash' industry is a £100 million pa industry. And we're paying them through our premiums.

In addition there are opportunistic fraudulent claims, which are less easily detected and therefore difficult to measure.

If whiplash is diagnosed on self-reported symptoms, once word gets round you're dependent on the general level of honesty in a society. Oh dear.