Imagine: the US pulls out of everywhere

P J O'Rourke makes a rare appearance in the Scotsman, extolling the benefits of US withdrawal from world politics.

"America had everyone’s sympathy after the World Trade towers were attacked. We can get that sympathy back if we limit our foreign-policy objectives to whining."

One thing to whine about will be the fate of Israel. Without American safeguards, that nation is certain to be militarily attacked. To judge by previous Israeli wars, in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982, the result will be serious headaches for Israelis as the Knesset furiously debates the status of Jewish settlements outside Damascus and on the west bank of the Euphrates.

Elsewhere, however, Islamic fundamentalists will likely triumph. Is this necessarily a bad thing? Our own country was founded by people who, today, would be considered religious extremists.

The threat of nuclear proliferation will abate as dangerous stockpiles of atomic weapons are quickly used up. The loss of life will be regrettable. But this will be counterbalanced by the welcome disappearance of long-standing international flashpoints when the India-Pakistan border is vaporised, Tehran disappears in a mushroom cloud, and whatever is left of the Korean Peninsula becomes reunited.


Read the whole thing.

The Scotsmans leader takes up the perennial theme of immigration, and why the stupid Brits (aka English) just don't seem able to appreciate the benefits.

It's always entertaining to hear a Scot (population density 64 per km2, half the European average, monocultural and monoracial, very few immigrants since the Normans) wonder why the English (population density 377/km2, 3 times the European average, multicultural, multiracial) are so bothered by immigration. Is it the tabloids ?

"The answer to these synthetic worries probably lies in the extraordinary pace of social and economic change (especially in London) and the psychological impact this has. At a time when middle-class pensions have been eroded, when jobs are no longer for life, when even the children of professional families experiment with recreational drugs, it is easy to become stressed and uncertain about the future. Anything or anyone who seems - no matter how ignorant or erroneous the impression - to be adding to the hectic uncertainties of life, gets the blame."

What I call the Weimar theory - that middle class collapse paves the way for bad things. But for the full effect you need to have lost a war as well. We happen to be fighting one now. So remember - a vote for the Liberal Democrats is a vote for fascism.

"If Scotland can attract skilled and enthusiastic immigrants - as it has done many times in the past - their example in building a modern, successful society will calm many exaggerated fears."

Don't hold your breath.

Maybe I'm not great at Scottish history - John Prebble's 'The Lion In The North' and 'The Highland Clearances' are the only books I've read on the subject - but I just can't recall any of these great waves of immigrants - unless he means the English refugees of the last thirty years, running post offices, small hotels and mobile cafes all over the Highlands. Not to mention the hippies scattered from Findhorn to the Butt of Lewis.

UPDATE - Marcus at Harry's Place argues that Scotland is multiracial and multicultural - thanks to the 19th century Irish immigration which has left us Celtic, Hibs, and their tricolor-flying supporters as well as the contrasts between the Catholic and Protestant Hebridean islands. It's true that this contrasts with England where Irish Catholics have almost completely integrated (you could just about make a case for Everton and Man. U. as a pale Celtic and Hibs of the North West).

And Some People Deny the Existence Of God ...

"Modern art classics including Tracey Emin's tent and Hell, by Jake and Dinos Chapman, may have perished in the blaze."



PS - Robingate latest - Alan Coren sells his Wyevale shares.

Those Victorian Values ...

They just won't go away. What was probably the most successful and progressive society in British history speaks to us yet.

Tristram Hunt lectures on modern British history at Queen Mary College. Or he researches Victorian civic thought at King's Cambridge. Maybe he does both. Either way he's a fan of the Victorian age, and tells us why in the Guardian.

"After almost a century of disparagement, we are currently witnessing a remarkable reappropriation of the Victorian age by modern progressives. Instead of Charles Dickens's world of Bumble and Gradgrind, mill owners and moralists, acquisitive individualism and laissez-faire economics, today's socialists are suggesting we should look far more favourably on the vibrant civil society, confident public domain and professional service ethic of the 19th century."

In a word - cobblers. The only socialists who are looking favourably are probably, much as I love them, yesterday's socialists - people like Frank Field or Norman Dennis and Professor E.H. Halsey, the authors of 'English Ethical Socialism'. Hunt's sole evidence seems to be David Marquand's recent work 'Decline Of The Public', which praises the public service ethic of those who created "a distinct, self-conscious and vigorous public domain", blamelessly free from the corruption of 18th-century patronage and unsullied by modern, consumer capitalism.

For 95% of what passes for the UK Left the Victorians still summon up Neil Kinnock's vision of "a place where a few got rich and most got hell. The Victorian values that ruled were cruelty, misery, drudgery, squalor and ignorance."

Even for an aged man like myself, educated in the 1960s, it came as a surprise to discover that a collectively funded welfare system existed before 1945. Admiration was joined to surprise when I realised that the system was created and administered by working men and women in complete independence from the state. The Friendly Societies, Voluntary Health Associations and mutual hospitals had 750,000 members in 1803 and more than eight million members by the 1930s.

I quote from a biography from my home town of Bromsgrove, describing a Nursing Association created by local women. "All members were entitled to the free services of the nurse, with non-members paying 2/6 for the first visit and 1/- thereafter ... (the nurse) was paying about 300 visits per month" (Pat Warner, 'A Lock-Keepers Daughter', 1986). The Tardebigge District Nursing Association was disbanded in 1946. It was one of two associations serving the small rural communities of Hewell and Tardebigge.


You can read about such societies in two Civitas publications - "Before Beveridge - Welfare Before The Welfare State" (ed. David Gladstone) and David Green's "Reinventing Civil Society - The Rediscovery Of Welfare Without Politics".

But these societies were not founded purely for their material benefits. They were also schools of morality and self-improvement. David Green quotes from the rules of the Ancient Order Of Foresters.

"In your domestic relationships we look to find you, if a husband, affectionate and trustful, if a father, regardful of the moral and material well-being of your children and dependents, as a son, dutiful and exemplary, and as a friend, steadfast and true."

Yes, Victorian Values. They covered their piano legs ! Queen Victoria couldn't accept the existence of lesbianism ! Prudery, Mrs Grundy, sexual repression - all coexisting with industrial-scale prostitution, alcholism and adultery.

How different, how much less repressed, less hypocritical, how much better we are now. We destroyed the old morality. Everybody's happy nowadays.

"Modern porn is becoming increasingly savage", writes the Guardian's Katharine Viner. "Still you have to wonder how it got to this point in (American culture's) cultural trajectory, where the blunt authenticity of real vagrants, really beating each other up passes for entertainment" sighs Zoe Williams. Susan Sontag bemoans "an increasingly out of control culture of violence, in which sex, entertainment and physical brutality are intertwined". I didn't know she watched Casualty.

For Nick Cohen, "the Methodist conscience of Britain has been replaced by greed, insobriety and the worship of wealth".

And the great Yazza says "Britain is infamous for hooliganism, drunkenness and a lack of respect for people and places." But Yasmin, surely the decline of deference is one of the greatest achievements of the cultural revolution ?

Something seems to have gone wrong with the hippie dream. "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" doesn't seem to have produced the perfect society.

Yazza again, on British TV. "The dross overwhelms, the detritus is everywhere". Sounds like my study. "The left must also take some of the blame. We should have been more concerned about what was being destroyed in the name of freedom".

And Aaronovitch is asking questions.

"But who - an intelligent conservative might ask - championed sexual freedom if it wasn't us on the liberal left? Who made films full of shocking violence and endless sex? Who wrote the 80s and 90s books on how to bring up your kid? If there has been a decline of the sort that Sontag laments, do the liberal "we" not share any responsibility? Didn't the conservatives warn us that all this would happen?"

Well, yes, actually, they did. Especially one lady who didn't like what was happening to TV. Ray Honeyford's virtues only became apparent to liberals after the Bradford riots. Yasmin Alibhai Brown's Indie article is the first step in the rehabilitation of Mary Whitehouse. Whoever next - Enoch ?

And the word 'smut' is used without irony.

Build Nuclear Plants As Fast As You Can, Says Mr Gaia

James Lovelock commits heresy. It's as if the Pope became a Wiccan.

"Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media. These fears are unjustified, and nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources. We must stop fretting over the minute statistical risks of cancer from chemicals or radiation. Nearly one third of us will die of cancer anyway, mainly because we breathe air laden with that all pervasive carcinogen, oxygen. If we fail to concentrate our minds on the real danger, which is global warming, we may die even sooner, as did more than 20,000 unfortunates from overheating in Europe last summer.

I find it sad and ironic that the UK, which leads the world in the quality of its Earth and climate scientists, rejects their warnings and advice, and prefers to listen to the Greens. But I am a Green and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy.

Even if they were right about its dangers, and they are not, its worldwide use as our main source of energy would pose an insignificant threat compared with the dangers of intolerable and lethal heat waves and sea levels rising to drown every coastal city of the world. We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilisation is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear - the one safe, available, energy source - now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet."

My bet is that the "Green" movement will ignore him completely. After all, we're talking about religion, not science.

If he's right that London could disappear underwater, maybe climate change isn't so bad after all. And if the Gulf Stream disappeared as ocean currents changed, Cotswold skiing would be fabulous. London is on the latitude of Winnipeg. Scotland could see polar bears.

Admittedly a four-month winter would affect agriculture and we might have difficulty feeding sixty million people in a tiny semi-Arctic country - but you can't make an omelette etc.

Only A Host Of Phantom Bloggers ...

First Jackie packed up, then Paul Richards. Peter Cuthbertson is exammed up, Socialism In An Age Of Waiting defunct, British Spin is earning some money, even Tim Blair announced a month off (he lasted a day or two). Now the great Briffa is taking a break.

My sidebars point like fingerposts on a lonely moor.

"I feel like one
Who treads alone
Some lightless hall deserted"

Fortunately Mick Hartley is doing some good stuff, linking to items like La Contrariana's latest outburst and Richard Webster's take on Abu Ghraib. Having discovered Webster about six months ago and devoured a mort of his writing, I've failed to keep up with his new stuff. Thanks to Mick for reminding us.

Of course Mr Hartley is correct when he writes

"No doubt we'll be seeing more and more of these pictures, their publication being greeted with smug satisfaction at the powers of a free press to expose the evils of Western power. We will not, however, see too many re-runs of, say, Nick Berg's decapitation, or other gruesome reminders of anti-Western brutality. Too upsetting for the relatives... It's this pursuit of a shamelessly partisan approach wrapped up in high moral language which I find so unpleasant."

Such images (as used, incredibly, in the Liberal Democrats' local election literature) are likely to create rage and a desire for revenge among Muslims, but this is not a consequence which concerns the Guardian's Ian Mayes. Images of the David Berg murder are likely to create similar feelings among Americans and Westerners - which is exactly why we won't see them.

Anger and revenge are for 'them', not for 'us'.




And big shout for Dumb Jon, who keeps hitting the nail on the head, though I get my ROPs (Religion Of Peace) mixed with my L3s (Liberal Left what ?) and my TINOs (pass). How about this, on Blunketts fantastical plans to evacuate London in the event of a dirty bomb.

"THE Army and police will commandeer coaches and trains to move hundreds of thousands of Londoners out of the city in the event of a massive terrorist attack".

Would that be the Army that's been slashed to the bone ? Never mind the problem with soldiers deserting to protect their own families (and no doubt taking their weapons with them), what of the Police ? Here's people who almost all will have family in the affected areas - are they just going to stay at their posts and let their kids die ?

And about those coaches ? What about the disabled ? Will people just pile on the coaches and leave their possessions behind ? Never mind looters ..

Tell it like it is !

Robingate - The Crisis Deepens

In another journalistic coup, the BBC Today programme revealed that permission to kill the robins had been granted by DEFRA. In an interview, Agriculture Minister Ben Bradshaw stated that similar permissions granted last year resulted in the deaths of six robins, a blackbird, a blue tit and a pied wagtail.

Local Thornbury Liberal Democrat MP Steve Webb will be asking questions in the Commons today.

Story is covered by BBC News, Telegraph and the Scotsman.

Heroic BBC Expose Hideous Massacre

OK, so five nights of rioting in Peterborough didn't make it onto the Today programme, which concentrates on more serious issues like 'should nipples be shown in an EU broadcast ?' or the damage caused by urban seagulls.

But this morning the Radio 4 Today programme exposed a massacre of innocents which will outrage Britain, one which makes Abu Ghraib, Oradour and My Lai pale into insignificance.

Wyevale Garden Centres are a large capitalist organisation with 124 branches in England and Wales. According to the Today account, at their Thornbury branch some robins had nested in a greenhouse by the cafeteria, and were soon flying in and out with food for their young. What a pleasant sight for the shoppers, you might think. But the management saw it as potentially a health and safety issue in litigious Britain. They might defecate on someone's lunch. A pensioner might be startled by a low-flying robin.

So pest controllers were called in. The nest with the young robins inside was taken way and the young killed. The garden centre and pest controllers have refused to confirm or deny that the parents were shot.

Ironically the nest was close to a display of nesting boxes and wild bird food.

Words fail me.

Would You Employ This Man ...

As a domestic violence counsellor ?

Our Rainbow Nation

Apparently they've been rioting in Peterborough for four days now, and I haven't heard a whisper of it on BBC radio news. This low profile is probably because no evil white racists are involved.

Peterborough - isn't that where 17-year-old Ross Parker was killed ten days after 9/11, in one of those racist attacks that don't seem to get any media attention ?

"Cambridgeshire Police Ch Supt Nigel Sunman said the long-established Pakistani community and the asylum seekers had clearly articulated what was disturbing the other community.

"It is cultural differences in the large part. We are getting to understand those issues and what we are trying to do is feed back to each of the communities what it is that is antagonising them," he said."

More details on Claire's Liberty and Livelihood Blog.

Perhaps something on Channel Four set it off.

UPDATE - several news reports at Peterborough Today. I await David Aaronovitch's piece on the bigotry of the locals with interest.

STOP THE COALITION !

Via Harry, a link to a wonderful site. Here's a sample, but read the whole thing. And link to it. As I shall.

"At a local StW Coalition meeting I attended the question was raised, “What do we want the outcome of the war to be?” On a personal level, my view was that, although I opposed the decision to go to war, I felt that the least worst outcome would be a swift coalition victory, ending the whole business as quickly as possible and causing the minimum amount of suffering to the Iraqi people. Others at the meeting, took a different view. They stated that what they hoped for was for Britain and the US to receive, as they put it “a bloody nose.” By this they meant they hoped for the coalition to lose the war with massive casualties.

This was too much for me. Quite apart from the unpalatable issue of being asked to hope for the mass slaughter of one’s own countrymen, which I was not prepared to do, the only way such a scenario could conceivably come about would be one in which Iraqis, soldiers and civilians alike, died in even greater droves. What happened to this being about compassion for the people of Iraq? Within days, I had stopped attending StW Coalition events.

It’s a safe bet that those at that meeting who were praying for the War in Iraq to turn into a gigantic bloodbath are now cheering on the guerrilla attacks on coalition troops that have continued after the war, in full knowledge of the fact that by far the greatest number of casualties caused by the guerrillas are Iraqi civilians."

More Liberal Self-Censorship

Channel Four, that challenging and controversial broadcaster, has decided that some things are just too challenging to broadcast. (Thanks Gary for the link). BBC also have a story.

"Channel 4 has pulled a documentary about Bradford social workers dealing with child abuse from its schedule tonight after local police warned the programme could inflame racial tension in the city.
The network, which normally takes great pride in its reputation for stirring up controversy, has made the self-censorship move "as a responsible broadcaster" and because of "exceptional circumstance", a Channel 4 spokeswoman said."

I hate to say it, but perhaps some people are a bit more prickly when challenged than others ....

The Dependency Class

EurSoc has a lovely post on the Sun's revelation that yesterday's Guardian carried 'job' adverts worth £10 million p.a. in the 124-page Society section. I reported on the Guardian's monopoly of public sector advertising back in December.

I particularly like the description of the Guardian as "the in-house journal of Britain's dependency class".

But the bad news is that the Sun's drop-down listbox no longer appears to feature the towering genius that is Richard Littlejohn.

Has Murdoch agreed to drop him in exchange for privatising the BBC ? I only asked.

BBC Bias Part 948

John Humphrys displays his liberal conscience on the latest Abu Ghraib photos.

"I've seen them ... they're actually waving, grinning ... quite shocking stuff to see ... ".

Fair enough. It's just that I've never heard him emoting about Iraqi children abusing dismembered Americans or Palestinians waving body parts around and using human heads as press conference props.

Instead the BBC report says without comment that 'many ordinary Iraqis want revenge' for the photos. Presumably revenge to be exacted on any Brit or American - exactly the attitude which Humphrys would condemn if expressed by an ordinary Brit.

But like so many other things, revenge is for 'them' and not for 'us'.



And I do love the BBC use of quotes on the Falluja mutilations. The headline is

"Horrific" Iraq deaths shock US

and in the report we get

White House spokesman Scott McClellan blamed "terrorists" and supporters of ousted Iraq leader Saddam Hussein for the attacks in Falluja.

After all, one man's "terrorist" ....

Bishop Bashing Latest ...

Following the defeat of the attempt to install Canon Elton John as Bishop of Reading by a small but determined sect calling themselves "Christians", those progressives attempting to get the Church Of England's historic struggle against homophobia back on track have appointed him Dean of St Albans, an appointment in the gift of one T. Blair.

In an attempt to pre-empt the groundswell of opinion which forced the Reading decision to be reversed, he will be confirmed in his post three months earlier than expected. Opposition is certainly not lacking, and one church is already witholding its diocesan funding in protest. They could do worse than to send the money to the Church in Africa.

Not a bad site, gay.com. They also have reports on the treatment of Tatchell & Co. on the Palestine march, and the really big story - that Julia Volkova of Tatu is pregnant.

State Educashun

Watching my son play cricket last night, chatting to another parent. He gave up a well-paid but stressful job in sales to teach physics at a comprehensive with a poor reputation, and after one year was approached by the only decent State comprehensive for thirty miles around - he starts there in September. "A-level physics now" he said, "is about the level I did at O-level" (he's forty). We talked about discipline and I asked him how he coped. "Never shout - you're just providing entertainment for them."

I missed this Private Eye piece, a fortnights diary written by a comprehensive maths teacher, but I read the anguished mailbag it produced from teachers.

I think I'll ask my children to read it on the weekend - they attend a not-very-good comprehensive in the same town. My eldest's maths teacher was sacked last year when a pupil struck him in the face, drawing blood. Instead of reporting him, the teacher knocked the boy down, then picked him up off the floor and hit him again. His replacement was a woman with a heavy South African accent, who had trouble with keeping order - some of the boys mocked the way she spoke, which was difficult to understand. He has had six maths teachers in three years at comprehensive.

At this year's pre-SATs test the school told me my son's maths attainment level was still level 5, which it was in his last year of primary school. We took him to an excellent private maths tutor who said he was the fourth child from that maths set he'd been asked to coach.

The school has been awarded Specialist School status in Maths and Computing.


"We teachers often control the behaviour of the class with the work that we set. Easy work that creates no insecurity will result in reasonable behaviour. Difficult work that creates self-doubt will be meet with aggression. This constantly leads to the dilemma: do we set hard work that will stretch them but also lead to poor behaviour and so cost learning time? Or do we set easy work and get reasonable behaviour - and more teaching time - in return?

I kept them quiet by giving them work that did not make them feel insecure (ie easy work) and by not challenging them about their work rate. I should have been able to stop them after 15 minutes, explain harder work and push them to think. I didn’t because of the issues of controlling them that this would have created. There are times when we mistake activity and silence for learning."

New Blogger In Town ...

Well, sort of (three posts this year) ... one Richard Thompson, musician, late of this parish. Strange how many old folkies (Donovan and Robin Williamson come to mind) end up in California, while the metal musicians (Ozzy, Robert Plant) seem to end up in what's left of the English countryside. Another of life's little ironies I suppose.

She's At It Again ...

AL Kennedy in the Guardian.

"Last night Mr Blair - contacted by cell phone - also had nothing but praise for the troops who have reduced his state dining room to a glowing shell filled with the stench of burning flesh. "I can only send my heartfelt support to the coalition forces. I think I speak for all of us here when I say that we welcome their cluster bombs, their re-branded napalm and their intermittent tracer fire."

Haven't the Guardian realised yet that they are paying over and again for what is essentially the same article ?

I must get one of her books out of the library. She can't be as bad a writer as she appears, surely.

(The library, declining as it is, is sure to have some. An organisation staffed by nice, middle-class, vaguely feminist women tends to stock a lot of books by vaguely feminist women. I like to measure the 'Waugh/Weldon ratio' in a library - the number of Evelyn Waugh books on the shelves against the number of Fay Weldons. Usually a 1/5 ratio. But try, say, asking for Thomas Moore's poetry, of which there's not one copy in the whole of Gloucestershire's libraries, including the Reference sections.)

Liberal Self-Censorship - is the tide on the turn ?

I reported a while back on the case of Mohammed Dica - a Somali asylum seeker convicted of deliberately infecting his lovers with HIV (he's since appealed), and how every UK news source described his asylum status save for two - the Guardian and BBC.

In the similar case of Feston Konzani things seem to be changing somewhat. The Guardian, Telegraph, Independent, Mirror, Scotsman, Sun, Ananova, Scotland on Sunday and Tyne Tees TV all describe Konzani as an asylum seeker.

So do five out of the ten BBC stories. It must be difficult - to reconcile the BBCs ancient mission to report news and its more modern mission to produce the perfectly tolerant society, even at the price of - shall we say suppressio veri ? Five out of ten ain't bad - someone at the BBC is showing positively Solomonic news judgement.

George Bush Dies .....

.. and goes to hell. "I'm short of space", says Satan, "I'll have to let someone go who wasn't quite as bad as you. Tell you what, I'll give you a choice - I'll show you a few people and you can decide whose place you'll take".

Satan opens a door. In it is a deep pool and former President Richard Nixon, doomed to endlessly dive in, climb out, and dive in again.

"Who else is there ?" says GWB, "I don't want to do that all day long". Another door and inside is Tony Blair, breaking rocks non-stop.

"My shoulder might not stand that - anyone else ?". Another door, and inside is Bill Clinton, lying on a couch, with Monica Lewinsky attending to him in her inimitable fashion.


"I can handle that" says George.

"OK" says Satan. "Monica, you're free to go !"




Thanks to Timmyhawk for the joke. Get that template sorted, Timmy !

GOTCHA !


Name : Piers Morgan
Redeeming Features : None whatsoever
Appearance : large amount of egg on face. Appears to have been recently pelted with ordure.
Charge : Deliberately endangering British lives to further the Mirror's political agenda and/or to raise circulation. Damaging the national interest for the same reasons. Killing Bambi. Anything else I can think of.
Pleaded : Not guilty
Verdict : Guilty
Sentence : To be determined. Perhaps when the first deaths occur he can break the news to the widows.




Of course the real price will not be paid by this wealthy, privileged individual, but by some other poor mother's son or sons. There are people alive now who are going to die because of what he has done.
Former QLR Colonel David Black got it about right :
It's time that the ego of one editor was measured against the life of a soldier.