The Fall Of The Sparrow

I used to cross metaphorical swords with this chap some eleven years back, and noted his subsequent rise in the criminal-charitable complex.

While we disagreed vehemently, he was (for a pro-criminal lefty) mostly civil in debate.

I'm sorry to see that he seems to be in trouble for the same kind of thing that got him into trouble a dozen years ago. I guess he'd just say that society was to blame.

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.

Lancet - New Figures Shock Horror

In the most shocking shock issue since the last one, Lancet editor Richard Horton fearlessly exposes the price that British children are paying for George W Bush's War For Oil.

• Horton and series editor Richard Turner reveal that child maltreatment in the UK has risen by over 6,000% since the start of the Iraq War, with over 950,000 preventable deaths. A child conceived in England and Wales has about a one in four chance of being killed before its first birthday.
  
• Aussie social worker Dorothy A Scott recounts the hidden threat that landmines pose to school sports.
  
• Top paediatrician Carole Jenny calls for more support for top paediatricians - especially those making outrageous allegations against innocent parents.
  
• More top paediatricians call for support for top paediatricians - and for smacking to be made illegal in non-Muslim countries.
• Ruth Gilbert, Cathy Spatz Widom, Kevin Browne, David Fergusson, Elspeth Webb and Staffan Janson reveal that despite the 'surge', car-bombs are now the biggest contributor to death and injury in English primary school children from low-income families.
• Ruth Gilbert, Alison Kemp, June Thoburn, Peter Sidebotham, Lorraine Radford, Danya Glaser and Harriet L MacMillan call for troops to be withdrawn and Tony Blair to be charged with war crimes.
• Harriet L MacMillan, C Nadine Wathen, Jane Barlow, David M Fergusson, John M Leventha and Heather N Taussig on 'Israel and Internet Grooming - who profits ?'.
• Richard Reading, Susan Bissell, Jeffrey Goldhagen, Judith Harwin, Judith Masson, Sian Moynihan, Nigel Parton, Marta Santos Pais, June Thoburn and Elspeth Webb
  suggest a program for action - "Parents, leave those kids alone (with TV and the internet) !"
  

In a major development, the heads of all UK children's charities said in response that more money should be given to children's charities. Social work heads thoughout the UK have welcomed the report, saying that it underlined the need for more resources to be devoted to social services.

Ed Balls Launches Charitable Scheme ...

To send used furniture (bought by the taxpayer) from the schools and council offices of Pendle and Burnley ...

... to the 'home village' in Gujrat, Pakistan of a Pendle Labour councillor !




(via Lib Dem councillor Irfan Ahmed)

Child Poverty ?

You may have noticed lately the publicity of the Campaign To End Child Poverty, a coalition of tax-payer funded organisations conducting a political campaign aimed at getting taxpayers to stump up more cash to relieve said evil. One of the greatest achievements of the UK "left", if I can dignify it with that term, is that they've managed to get the taxpayer to pay for so much of their political work over the years.

As child poverty is measured on a relative basis (beware - most of the wikipedia stuff on the subject is pretty poor), you could abolish it tomorrow by reducing the incomes of those earning more. No child starves in the UK, or goes to school with cardboard in their shoes, unless the parents are just plain bad. Absolute poverty is pretty much non-existent - probably 80% of the world's population would consider UK 'poverty' to be unimaginable luxury.

80% of the population of Mirpur or Bangladesh would also consider it a pretty good deal. I invite you to take a look at child poverty by constituency or the BBC map of same.

Do we se a pattern here ? Ladywood, Bethnal Green, Bradford ?

I wrote a while back :

You can also use the bottom graph - male/female employment ratios for working age people - as an approximate proxy for childrearing. Pakistani/Bangladeshi women of working age are characterised as 'economically inactive' i.e. they're raising kids, not trying for that Senior Co-Ordinator role. What did Sayyid Qutb say again ?

"(if) she prefers ... using her ability for material productivity rather than the training of human beings, because material production is considered to be more important, more valuable and more honourable than the development of human character, then such a civilisation is ‘backward’ from the human point of view ..."

A combination of low wages and high numbers of children, as any father of four can tell you, means relative poverty compared to those in low-child, two-earner families. The statistical spearhead of the child poverty campaign are the large numbers of Muslim parents who consider the development of human character more important than material production. And I mean parents in the plural. Most of the native children in poverty will be the children of single mothers.


Another thing. These children are not culturally poor. They know who they are (not to mention who they're not) and where they come from, what's right and what's wrong. They're taught from an early age the great texts of their religion - in classical Arabic at that. Compared to their relatives in Sylhet they're physically rich - compared to their fellow poverty sufferers in the smack-ridden disaster zones of the Valleys or the estates of Ayrshire they're culturally rich too.

Cui Bono ?

The newspaper world and his wife publicised the Centre For Crime and Justice Studies' report on Middle-Class Crime, whose thesis was presented as follows :

Daily Mirror : THE MORAL MAJORITY IS A MYTH - 6 in 10 middle class are cheats

Guardian : Meet criminals who cost UK £14bn: the middle class

Independent : Criminal nation: Two-thirds break law regularly

BBC : Law-abiding majority 'is a myth'

Now the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies is a pro-offender, anti-prison political lobby group. You'd expect the above to be bigging it up. After all, the point of the "survey" is twofold :

i) to blame an increasingly dishonest society on 'the encroachment of market values into areas traditionally viewed as held in trust for the community – such as health services or education' - in other words, blame school league tables and NHS reforms

ii) to emphasise that "the middle classes are the real criminals" - an argument which will be deployed to help keep thieves and violent offenders out of jail. It can't be long before the argument turns up on CiF.

I know it's a good headline, but, like the Times and Telegraph, the Mail has been suckered.

Are YOU part of the great middle class crime wave ?

UPDATE : Expat Yank - The real crime is against trees

Comic Relief II

No conflict of interest here :

Ellen Gee Foundation

A British social policy and research body dedicated to:

• researching the experiences of lesbians and gay men in relation to a range of social policy issues;

• highlighting where discrimination and disadvantage occur;

• identifying gaps in knowledge and provision;

• promoting a social policy agenda that addresses these needs.

Established by a group of lesbians and gay men with experience of working on these issues as service providers, researchers and funders, with aims to address the lack of information available to policy makers, mainstream service providers and funders about the needs of lesbians and gay men.

Among their aims :

facilitate access to statutory and non-statutory providers of funding and related assistance;

And among their founders :

Gilly Green (Founding Chair): UK Grants Manager at Comic Relief.

UPDATE - if this (the Diana Memorial Fund's announcement of a £3K grant for a launch conference) is correct the Ellen Gee Foundation was at the time actually BASED c/o Comic Relief.

Comic Relief

I see that Guido is raising money for good causes.

My second current research project is funded by Comic Relief, co-ordinated by Rainbow Ripples and supported by Leeds Involvement Project. This research is focussing on the nature, and people’s experiences, of service provision for Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Disabled people in Leeds.