The UK Left Are The Lapdogs Of The Capitalist Elite

The entire post-68 British "left" are paper tigers, running dogs of capitalism. No one's profits are threatened by the SWP or the modern Labour Party.


If they were really a threat to capitalism, they'd be harassed by the State, find it hard to get bank accounts, have vexatious legal actions against them. Laws would be changed to make it harder for them to operate.

Their public sector members would be dismissed. Wealthy individuals would fund groups solely devoted to giving them a hard time - up to and including physical assault.

Members on their way to demonstrations would be 'preventatively' arrested, held until the demo was over, then released.

Now does left-wing politics attract that kind of reaction? Why not, if it's such a threat? In the past left activists were imprisoned, transported, harassed and worse.

To be fair, you do get the occasional building worker who's blacklisted for the hideous offence of putting his fellow-worker's safety before the target date or budget. But you don't find many building workers posting at Dave Osler's or Crooked Timber. The "left" isn't building workers these days - it's college lecturers and students - or even finance types like Chris Dillow or Daniel Davies.


 "It shrouded oft our martyred dead". Not many martyrs these days, to put it mildly.

 
Instead, the UK left is so cosy in the elite's warm embrace that the majority of their activists come from the public sector, and a disproportionate number from the higher education sector. If they're so dangerous to our rulers, why aren't they all worried about being fired? I don't think Professor Callinicos loses too much sleep on that account.


"The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class"

 The post-68 Left social agenda has almost completely triumphed in the UK - witness Cameron joining Hope Not Hate and campaigning for gay marriage.

At the same time the Left economic agenda has been so utterly defeated that terms and conditions for the average worker are being driven down remorselessly - even as total remuneration for the top few percent accelerates into the distance.

Haven't any of these educated lefties wondered why this might be? So much success in one sphere, so little in another?

Why, it's almost as if there's an inverse relationship between the two!

Guardian Cognitive Dissonance Alert

Why it is wrong to make these people leave their illegally-occupied homes.

Why it is right to make these people leave their legally-occupied homes.

A Fly On The Wall ....

... passed me the transcript of a conversation between an unnamed UK media consultant and spin-doctor, and an internationally famous financier who's not been getting too good a press lately. I cannot vouch for its authenticity, but make it available, for what it's worth, in the public interest :

"Sir, what can I do to salvage my reputation with the liberal classes ? A bit of fun - I swear she consented - and the Guardian have published 348 articles attacking me! Even after charges are dropped they're still at it, with innuendo about class justice and the rich getting the pleasure while the poor get the blame.

It's getting my wife down - and it's doing my reputation as a Socialist no good either. Some people just don't understand the concept of 'from each according to her abilities, to one according to his needs!'"

"It's 351 articles, actually - another three this morning. Now I can help you - but you may not like what I'm going to suggest."

"Please speak - I will be forever in your debt"

"Unlikely, even with my fees. You want to continue your amours, your peccadillos, your ... er ... bunga-bunga - with whoever takes your fancy and whenever ?"

"Mais oui !"

"Even when the object of your desires is ... shall we say ... a little backward in her response to ... your ardent advances ?"

"We understand each other, m'sieu"

"And you want the Guardian to look steadfastly in the other direction and write nothing, perhaps with the occasional piece accusing your critics of being motivated by racism ?"

"As you say in your country, m'sieu - that will do nicely"

"If you can follow my advice you will never be troubled by the Guardian again. You will be able to do what you like, to whom you like, and they will write nothing. But the course I suggest involves, for you, great personal sacrifice."

"What is it, man - for pity's sake tell me what I should do !"

"You must change your name to something like Youssiff Ibrahim, and move to Greater Manchester"

"Mon Dieu !"

Who's "we", Paleface ?

Henry Porter in the Guardian :

'We will wear the great shame of these riots for a very long time. A great shock has been delivered to England's sense of identity blah blah blah wibble ...'

It was interesting to see how quickly the BBC responded to Alex Salmond's taunting and changed the "UK Riots" heading into "English Riots".

I'm not sure the BBC will want to take that laudable principle of localisation too far, though - are you ?






I just get a feeling from today's Guardian and BBC that it's back to normal as far as our rulers are concerned.They're all going to try and understand a little more and condemn a little less, having used up about five years worth of condemnation over the last week. Business As Usual ? We shall see.



UPDATE - a comment :

I am a teacher of English and taught in England for 15 years before emigrating to Australia in 1987.

In 2000, 2006 and 2009, I returned to the U.K. and did Supply Teaching at five secondary schools, two in London, three in towns a few miles outside.

All five had many moments redolent of 'Lord Of The Flies' , but the saddest and most revealing experience occurred at a school in Essex in 2000, as I'd taught at that school for 8 years when I still lived in England, leaving there in 1983. Thus I had not set foot in that school for 17 years and, amazingly, two teachers were still there. Both, so sadly, and independently of each other, while over-joyed to see me, said don't let what you see spoil your happy and positive memories of the school.

I'm not being alarmist - it hadn't just declined, it had plummeted.

I still vividly remember voicing my first concern with a Deputy as when we approached the entrance, which I'd so many times gone through, it was now necessary to enter a code in order to get in. When I said that was worrying, the Deputy disagreed, saying you couldn't have parents just being allowed to enter the school and assault staff. I looked sharply at him when he said this but he didn't notice. It is so obviously nothing more than a short-term, band-aid solution that clearly reveals far more worrying, serious, disturbing and underlying issues, concerns and realities that long-term just simply have to be addressed.

To be honest here, while looking at the scenes with incredulity, especially those from Tottenham and Enfield because these areas are where I was born, raised and still stay in when over over there, I just could not separate what was happening with what I'd experienced and witnessed in those five schools.

In a way, as unbelievable as it all seemed, none were that surprising.

Beautiful

Theresa May, 15 September 2010 :

"We can cut police budget without risking violent unrest"

UPDATE - Laban, back in December, on our "Justice" Secretary, Ken Clarke - a man conspicuously absent at present :

He's been given a job to do - to cut the cost of the Prison Service and the criminal justice system - and by God he's going to do it. That's what makes him the reliable chap that he is, and such a useful man to have in Government. A lesser - or shall we say less useful - man might have argued the toss, pointed out that defending the lives, property and liberty of the citizens is the primary duty of any state, reminded Cameron of the association (however undeserved, if we look at the 1980s) in the public mind of the Conservative Party with a robust attitude to crime and criminals, dug in his toes and defended his budget. Not Ken. It doesn't matter that

a) the costs will be transferred from the State to individuals - in the form of burglaries and assaults for many, rape, bodily harm and homicides for the unfortunate, insurance premiums for householders, quality of life for everyone.

b) these costs will in total be much greater than the amount saved.

c) they will fall most heavily upon the poor and vulnerable. I doubt Ken will be troubled by too much anti-social behaviour in whichever expensive village his mansion is located.

This Just In From The BBC

In a series of incidents last night, a drawing room was severely damaged.

Our reporter at the scene :

"Well, I can tell you this morning that this drawing room has been almost totally destroyed. The china cabinet has been destroyed and its contents smashed, all the furniture looks as if it's been sat on by something heavy - even the doors are smashed off their hinges. Witnesses have spoken of scenes of mindless violence. It almost looks as if some large animal had been in here wrecking everything ..." (noises of trumpeting and cries of 'it's coming!') ... "I'm afraid I have to go now because the situation looks dangerous."

The End Times Are Upon Us

The Church of England faces being wiped out as a significant national force without an "urgent" campaign to recruit more believers, a report warns. In the last 40 years the number of adult churchgoers has fallen by half while the number of children regularly worshipping in public declined by 80 per cent, the study says.

The Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham, the Rt Rev Paul Butler, will present findings to the Church's national assembly, the General Synod, in York on Saturday. Synod members will be urged to vote for a new national drive to recruit more members.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has acknowledged that the Church must devote more energy to increasing the number of regular worshippers over the next five years.

In other news :

"Church of England report calls for affirmative action on race"

"Affirmative action" = the practice formerly known as "racial discrimination".

"The Church of England is to give the go-ahead for the appointment of openly homosexual bishops."

It's one of those strange historical oddities, like Britain being invaded and conquered every thousand years, that the Church of England was born of the adulterous desires of one prince, and on its sick bed condoned the adultery of another.

But the (IMHO terminal) sickness of the Church of England is no cause for rejoicing. It was great once, a noble Church of a kind that we should not dare to raise our voice against. It is fallen, and its cure is beyond us; but I would that it lived, in the hope that it may find one.


UPDATE - the great and good Rev. Peter Mullen :

"Frankly, much of the Church has been mad for decades."

Invincible Ignorance

Polly Toynbee on "chavs" :

"Wrapped inside this little word is the quintessence of Britain's great social fracture. Over the last 30 years the public monstering of a huge slice of the population by luckier, better-paid people has become commonplace. This is language from the Edwardian era of unbridled snobbery. When safely reproduced in Downton Abbey, as the lady sneering at the scullery maid or the landowner bullying his workers, we are encouraged to look back smugly as if these shocking class differences were long gone. The form and style may have changed – but the reality of extreme inequality and self-confident class contempt is back...

Chav is used to mix together anyone of low status the speaker wishes to despise - and that includes the entire working class - on matters of taste as well as morals. Just go to the dreadful ChavTowns site and see how the two are elided."

Polly is so far off the truth you wonder if her ignorance is deliberate. She hears some posh person (in this case a Lib Dem politico tweeting unwisely) using the term and conjures up a conspiracy to demonise an entire working class.

The contributors to ChavTowns are overwhelmingly themselves working class people (and by the spelling and grammar, people who have been failed by our comprehensive system).

Working class people detest the chav/underclass far more than middle or upper-middle class people do, because they live among them and are exposed to their behaviour on a daily basis. That's why the contributions to ChavTowns are so bitter, angry and heartfelt.

Savour The Diversity

Well, we know now where some of the hippy boomers and alternative types went. I bet they've got more than a few Type 2 girls.

The irony is that a Green council in Brighton actually does bring a bit of diversity, in the real sense rather than the 'not white' sense, to UK politics. I, for one, welcome Brighton's new Green overladies, and am very glad I'm not bringing up children there.

Victims Of No Appearance - Perps Of No Motive

There’s a trial ongoing of one Delroy Grant, allegedly the ‘Night Stalker’, accused of 18 break-ins and assorted sexual and other assaults on elderly people in South London / Surrey between 1992 and 2009. Police have been looking for the attacker for years - as I recall they'd narrowed down suspects to one area of the Caribbean.

The prosecution admit to being completely puzzled about the attacker's motives - a puzzlement shared by the entire media.

Jonathan Laidlaw QC said the defendant attacked both men and women living across south London. All were vulnerable, single pensioners, mostly in their 80s and living on their own. “What it was that motivated him to carry out sexual offences on the very elderly and what sort of gratification he could possibly have achieved is obviously difficult, if not impossible, to understand”

Now I’m not asking anyone to comment on the actual case or break the sub judice rules, but I am interested in what’s recorded as having actually happened.

Apart from being “men and women living across south London, vulnerable, single pensioners, mostly in their 80s and living on their own”, does anyone know if the victims shared any other characteristics ?

I can’t help thinking that

a) if the victims had been of all races it would have been mentioned in the media coverage. The fact that it isn't may be significant - we may be seeing what Professor Sarah Annes Brown describes as "the initial urge to cover the story up in order to protect sensitivities".

b) that if they were all white it might provide part of the explanation as to motivation, gratification etc of the attacker – irrespective of the outcome of this particular trial.

Any info, anyone ? Were any of the victims non-white ? It may be I'm barking up the wrong tree here, and that Mr Night Stalker stalked and raped in a manner inclusive of all ethnicities, sexualities and degrees of disability. But I've just got a funny feeling we'd have been told, were that the case.





Another case with a Victim Of No (Relevant) Appearance and Perps Of No Motivation was reported in March 2009 - the stabbing of Oliver Hemsley in August 2008, which left the 20 year old permanently paralysed.

Mail - "A student tipped as a star fashion designer of the future has been left paralysed after being stabbed in a random street attack. Oliver Hemsley, then 20, was set upon by a gang of youths as he innocently walked with a flatmate on a summer evening last year. "

Mirror - "Budding fashion designer Oliver Hemsley, 21, was picked at random and stabbed repeatedly by a schoolboy thug as he walked with a girl pal."

Indie - "A brush with death: Why Britain's coolest art and fashion names have rallied around a victim of random knife crime"

There you go. Just one of those random, tragic things. Could have happened to anyone, anywhere.

Johann Hari - for it is he - tells it a bit differently :

"In September 2008, a young gay man called Oliver Hemsley, is walking home from the gay pub the George and Dragon when a gang of young Muslims stabs him eight times, in the back, in the lungs, and in his spinal column. In January 2010, when the thug who did it is convicted, a gang of thirty Muslims storms the George and Dragon in revenge and violently attacks everybody there. "

Well, there's no doubt that the G&D is 'gay-friendly' (this Pink Paper report on the stabbing seems to have been ignored by the MSM), or that one of his attackers was 15 year old Nazrul Islam. Apparently he got 10 years - I presume that means he'll be out in three (the judge called the attack 'motiveless' - and what of the other attackers ?). My only concerns with his tale are that Islam was sentenced in April 2009 and a/c/t Johann the attack on the pub was 9 months later - and even with our media, would an attack like that not be reported at all (can't find it on the Web)? I guess it's just possible, but only just. In the Bradford, Burnley and Oldham riots dozens of pubs were trashed or burned out (oh, my Upper Globe and my Bavaria long ago !) by Muslim youths, and it got zero press coverage - but they were only pubs for working class types, after all. A gay pub in London is quite a different thing. It may well be that Important People, or Friends of Important People, drink there.

I digress. The point, alas, is that for some crimes, either in some areas or by some people, the MSM reports seem to be as much about concealing as revealing what's going on. Were this limited to the local press, I'd suspect the hand of the local Community Cohesion Partnership - but what keeps the nationals - especially the Mail and Telegraph - in line ?

If People Wouldn't Notice Things We Wouldn't Have To Hide Them

Blogger (and English professor) Sarah Annes Brown comments at Shiraz Socialist on 'grooming' :

"The grooming case seemed very complicated – I don’t think it is necessary to think that the men were wrongfully convicted to be able to at least *ask questions* about the way the case was reported. Was it under reported/investigated at first? Was it then over reported? If men of Pakistani origin were over represented in one particular crime in one particular area, does the picture change greatly if you look at a wider area and a wider range of sex crimes? Is it enough to ask whether a particular report of it seemed fair and balanced? Should one also look at whether the attention paid to the crime was (if not inherently objectionable) disproportionate, and thus a possible vector of anti-muslim bigotry? Or was the real problem the initial urge to cover the story up in order to protect sensitivities? Yet of course that initial urge wouldn’t have been felt if it wasn’t for the bigots."

(after the grooming issue appeared to be going mainstream in January, February seems to be business as usual. This story appears to have been completely ignored by BBC/Telegraph/Guardian etc. What's particularly impressive is the total, complete, utter silence on the issue from feminist writers* - saving only the mighty Bindel. As I've said before, race seems to trump gender for most soi-disant feminists. Not so for JB. She doesn't care what race or creed the abusers are - she judges them not by the colour of their skin, but by the contents - indeed the existence - of their scrota.)


* UPDATE - one or two people said 'what about Yazza' - and she has indeed condemned grooming by her co-religionists on more than one occasion and in no uncertain terms :

"The criminals feel they did no wrong. These girls to them are trash, asking to be wasted – unlike their own women, who must be kept from the disorderly world out there."

It's true that Yazza is indeed a feminist, but not a professional one. She has too wide a range of interests, enthusiasms and sympathies - which is why she's my monstre sacré. The missing feminists are the people who would, were the perpetrators white, be all over these cases.

People like the F-Word, or Cath Elliott, who finds time to bewail the involvement of Helena Kennedy in Julian Assange's defence team but has nothing to say about joint enterprises, often involving males from school-age to middle-age, to abuse, rape or prostitute young working class girls. For some bloggers (the Stroppers and Harpy spring to mind) I get the impression (and impression is all it is, garnered from reading their blogs regularly) that it's almost an unconscious decision - it raises all sorts of uncomfortable issues, it gives comfort to the far right - why go there when there are so many other things to blog about? I'm not sure that Cath Elliott, who from her writing seems to be a serious person quite capable of facing unpleasant realities, falls into that category.

One For The Guardian

Next time there's a Guardian article (and there will be, soon) on crime and punishment, and the usual suspects show up to contrast their empathy for the murderer of the moment with the sick, punitive authoritarianism of what I'd call 'my side' of the argument, I hope someone links to this, by a surgeon in South Africa (now there's a country for surgeons, if you like plenty of work).

(via)

From Know-Nothing To Know-Everything In Two Years

It's cognitive dissonance time again.

"Lib Dems: raise age of criminalisation to 14"

After all, there's no way that a thirteen year old can know whether something is wrong or not, is there?

"Nick Clegg: Yes I am a big supporter of votes at 16. The state can ask a 16 year old to fight and die for this country*, why not vote too?"

After all, there's no way that a sixteen year old isn't mature enough to take decisions on who should govern, is there ?

This leaves just a narrow window of two years for a young person to develop from only just being responsible for their own actions, to being responsible for the fate of the nation. As I wrote previously :

"The liberal policy wonks seem to be engaged in a process of lowering the age of political responsibility while simultaneously raising the age of responsibility for everything else."

* Clegg's talking nonsense. 16 and 17-year-olds don't get sent to the front line.

Is This Serious ?

I saw a comment at Red Maria's traducing the saintly Sir Peter Vardy, philanthropic provider of half-decent education in the North-East. He's just nailed leftie paper Tribune after they accused his schools of teaching creationism (whatever that is - presumably the ridiculous idea that God said, 'let there be light', and there was light. Everyone knows that there wasn't anything at all, and then suddenly up popped a whole hot expanding universe - from nowhere, and with no reason. Makes far more sense).

The comment was "Money talks. ****s."

Who is this ignorant swearblogger, I thought. What's his blog like ? Lordy.

"Emergence

As dogma becomes exposed through increased communication, ideas begin to form from the emerging cognitive dissonance. These ideas are presented as rationalisations within the context and under the regulation of the existing memetic monopoly (as cause-and-effect demands). As knowledge advances and more of the unknown becomes known (diluting the power of the mythological other), these sporadic rationalisations become untenable and cognitive dissonance spreads with more veracity for it, eventually leading to a paradigm shift in political governance and identity creation."

And it's all like that. Page after page of cultural studies drivel, where occasional tiny grains of meaning glitter for a brief instant before submerging again under the turgid flow of his sentences. He's far more readable in two-word sentence mode - understanding is instant.

You do wonder if he's a student of John Hutnyk's. Or is the entire blog an elaborate hoax - a sort of Sokal of the blogosphere ?

Cognitive Dissonance Alert - Jonathan Freedland

Freedland :

"The fear was that – for all his oratorical brilliance – Obama somehow lacked empathy, that he was a slightly chilly, aloof figure, that he struggled to connect emotionally.

We'll hear much less of that talk now.

For the address he gave at last night's memorial service for the victims of the Arizona shootings was elegiac, heartfelt and deeply moving."

Alas, it didn't actually move Mr Freedland, or connect with him emotionally - in the sense of altering his behaviour.

Here's that fine Obama speech :

"But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds...

For the truth is that none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack. None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped those shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man’s mind. So yes, we must examine all the facts behind this tragedy. We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future.

But what we can’t do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together."

And here's how much it moved Freedland :

"This was meant to be the Republicans' week, as they took control of the House of Representatives and its legislative agenda. Instead they look small – as well as defensive, fending off accusations that it was the violent rhetoric of the right that fuelled the current toxic political environment. None smaller than the de facto leader of today's Republican party, Sarah Palin, who preceded the Tucson address with an aggressive, self-regarding and petty-minded videotaped message that claimed she had been the victim of a "blood-libel"."

Maybe he was just too busy praising the speech to actually listen to it.

"The Key Quality of Social Awareness"

The Magistrate is puzzled by a poll question at the Magistrate's Association website :

Regarding magistrate applicants, does the key quality of social awareness cover the need for local knowledge?

Agree
Disagree

Social awareness, as I'm sure we all know, is one of the six key personal qualities looked for in new magistrates. I'd been hoping that 'legal awareness' was in there somewhere, but maybe you pick that up as you go along.

I wonder if my comment was perhaps a bit too cynical?

Well obviously 'social awareness' (as opposed to the old-fashioned, outmoded concept of 'legal awareness') is a key competency for the modern magistrate. The question is, should a knowledge of social conditions in a particular location inform that social awareness or not ?

I'd imagine the correct answer is 'Yes'.

An example would be a case where a minority youth is charged with an unprovoked assault on a stranger. Apart from the broader social context of historic slavery, oppression, racism etc by the host community, something that every magistrate should be aware of, should he also be aware of the local context - let's say a recent EDL rally in the area and the concomitant ratcheting up of rhetoric against minorities, resulting in justified local anger, albeit misdirected?

Another example would be a case where a white youth is charged with an unprovoked assault on a (minority) stranger. Apart from the broader social context of historic slavery, oppression, racism etc by the host community, something that every magistrate should be aware of, should he also be aware of the local context - let's say a recent EDL rally in the area and the concomitant ratcheting up of rhetoric against minorities, resulting in unforgiveable racist assaults which must be stamped out?

Nature Vs Nurture (Again)

Pop psychologist Oliver James plumps for the Blank Slate, the whole Slate, and nothing but the Slate in the Guardian - with a topping of political partisanship :

Politics may be the reason why the media has so far failed to report the small role of genes. The political right believes that genes largely explain why the poor are poor, as well as twice as likely as the rich to be mentally ill. To them, the poor are genetic mud, sinking to the bottom of the genetic pool.

A commenter writes :

Please Guardian people - get a geneticist to respond to this article

And as if by magic appears one Bob O'Hara on the Guardian's Science Blogs :

During one of my frequent breaks, I saw this twitter comment, from Mark Henderson, science correspondent at The Times:

Oliver James demolishes another straw man...
http://bit.ly/aTuMlX

A couple of minutes later, when I took my next break, I followed the link. Henderson was only sort-of accurate about Oliver James demolishing a straw man. If you know anything about the subject, it was clear that he wasn't even attacking the straw man he was setting up: he was tilting at a windmill that he mistook for the straw man he had set up.

James' Comment is Free piece resurrects the straw man of the old nature-nurture debate. Is human behaviour determined by genes or by the environment? We've pretty much answered this: "it's more complicated than that". Both genes and environment have an effect, and it's going to be messy (genes can change susceptibility to having a psychiatric disorder, but growing up in a bad environment will make it more likely that you will actually suffer from psychiatric problems). The interesting genetic questions surround the relative importance of different genetic and environmental effects, and finding the genes that are involved in genetic disorders.

What's really scary are the comments on James' piece. The Blank Slate is a religion, and any deviation from it is the heresy of evil people :

" ...any child at school knows that some people are sh*ts and some aren't; there's rarely any particularly clear reason for this. And if you are, you're likely to become a right-winger, because the political right endorses your character defects and cruelties of nature; it provides a justificatory ideology which encourages you to play out your sadism and cruelty.
Rightwing politics dont make people nasty:- nasty people support rightwing politics! Eureka!

PS:- why are there so very, very few Ciffers from the left, prepared to post in the two rightwing broadsheets? Why are you prepared to let the right crow triumphantly from on top of it's dunghills in the Times and Telegraph? They're not only nasty people, on the whole; they'e often really, really dense; go on, expose them for what they are:- stupid, malicious people bereft of human decency."

Or how about :

Right-wing authoritarian followers prefer to see the world in stark black-and-white. They conform closely with the rules defined for them by their authorities, and do not stray far from their own communities. This extreme, unquestioning conformity makes them insular, fearful, hostile to new information, uncritical of received wisdom, and able to accept vast contradictions without perceiving the inherent hypocrisy… Conformity also feeds their sense of themselves as more moral and righteous than others…

I presume that unimaginative insular parents produce unimaginative insular children however wouldn't it be great if it was down to a faulty/missing gene that could be fixed because I honestly believe that the human race can not evolve further until we can fix them.

Brrr !! That Theodore Adorno (and the people still teaching him at Uni) have a lot to answer for.

Chinese Eugenics

Well strike a light :

In other sports, size is more important - and the government appears to be discreetly trying to influence this too. Top basketball coach Wang Libin says the government encouraged the exceptionally tall mother and father of Yao Ming, the 7ft 6in superstar of the American basketball league, to marry. They did the same for his own parents, and for him and his wife - both basketball players. Their daughter is only 15, but she is 6ft 4in tall and dreams of playing in the 2012 London Olympics. Now, he says, tall people are exempted from the one-child policy so that they can breed more tall offspring.

Hmm. If they'll do that for a few gold medals, what might they not do for a few Nobel-winning scientists ?

UPDATE - apparently a Chinese law of 1994 provides for the compulsory sterilisation of those who carry serious genetic disorders and wish to marry. "Wish to marry", eh - how quaint and old-fashioned that sounds to a Brit. I have to assume there aren't many Ed Milibands in China. In fact :

"it is illegal in almost every province for single women to have a child and that people who have children out of wedlock must pay "social compensation fees" (29 Feb. 2009, Sec.1.f). The US Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) reports that those who give birth to a child outside of marriage can face fines six to eight times the amount of their income from the previous year (US 31 Oct. 2008, 97). According to a 2005 article in Reproductive Health, very few children are born out of wedlock in China (11 Aug. 2005, 3)."

I'm not surprised. But has anyone told Andy Newman ?

Those Awful Stereotypes

One Timothy Egan in the NYT :

Beware, they told us in the train stations of northern Italy, of the Gypsy baby trick — an old ruse by Europe’s most reviled underclass. A woman will suddenly ask you to hold her child, and then just as you fumble to respond another Gypsy will grab your wallet.

Watch out, they cautioned us in the lovely Turkish port city of Kusadasi, for the Gypsies who prey on tourists along the waterfront. And old lady will bump you, while a teenage hooligan grabs your bag. The Gypsy old-lady trick.

Those Gypsies, known by the less pejorative term of Roma, are getting kicked around the continent again, hardy perennials of European scapegoats. Unspoken characterizations based on ancient stereotypes — they are shiftless, clannish, prone to petty thievery and to begging, prostitution and dark motives — are now out in the open.

Funnily enough, I was given a similar warning in Malaga some twenty years back - 'watch out for the gypsy flower-sellers' said the girl at the hotel desk. Now Laban pictured someone sitting in front of large flower-baskets in the style of the late Buster Edwards at Waterloo, and wasn't too worried.

About to cross a road - a lady of maybe sixty blocks the way, thrusting a carnation at me and smiling. A younger woman with her.

"Cuanto es ?"

"Una peseta - para fiesta" (it was nearly Christmas and large fireworks were being sold from open street stalls - not at all like the UK)

(Rapid calculation - about 0.5p. Much too cheap to be kosher)

"No. No peseta. No fiesta"

Would you believe, she wouldn't take no for an answer, stepped up to me and started pinning it. I leapt backwards about a yard. Which pulled her left hand (empty) out of my right-hand rear trouser pocket. Impressive - my eye had been on the hand with the carnation, had not had a clue.

I spoke to them both in English then. They seemed to understand and went away.

He, for one, welcomes our new overlords

In the last year or so born-again Labour man Andy Newman's Socialist Unity blog has started to constantly beat the drum for soi-disant Communist China. I whacked a comment on his latest breathless report, but the spam filter nailed it, so here it is.

Andy - why the constant worship of our new Chinese overlords? The socialism of China has a highly nationalistic and patriotic flavour - one that you would hate and fear were a UK party to be offering it.

As a born-again cultural conservative I can appreciate what China's doing - looking after #1 while useful idiots all over the world embrace globalisation. As the new manufacturing powerhouse, they'll naturally be in favour of free trade and open markets - for others. The US firms which rushed into China, swooning over the size of the market ('if we only had 3% that could be x million customers'), are discovering that the Chinese have no intention of allowing roundeyes major influence.

Meanwhile military spending increases and the sabres are rattling in the South China Sea, while China is buying up as many resources in Asia and Africa (ores, coal, oil) as it can and developing strongly in future green technologies, especially solar generation.

They're driven by Chinese national interest, something I can completely understand. But Andy - and, to be fair, pretty much all the UK left - openly hate the concept of British national interest. What have they got that we haven't, Andy?