It's The Stag's Antlers

New blog Cabarfeadh, by an ex-member of what was once the Seaforth And Cameron Highlanders, looks promising. I think the name literally translates as 'big antlers' (thanks to Gaelic Dictionaries Online).

Author David Terron lives in Elgin, where the Tall family spend a day curling (great fun), skating and swimming each February half term as a break from skiing. We usually combine it with a trip to Lossiemouth, a pretty town with spectacular free daily air displays. And if you take a wrong turn onto the road which crosses the runway you're stopped politely, but at gunpoint (it was just before Iraq 2003, planes were leaving for the Gulf). The children were very well behaved that day ...

He's training to teach history. Good luck - we need teachers like you. I don't know about Scottish education, but in England history teaching is designed to make us feel bad about our evil past.

He's also the webmaster of the Highland Warriors website, devoted to the Seaforths, Gordons and Camerons.

Just imagine a totally devolved (or dismantled) UK. The English are a fine fighting race when roused, but in time of trouble I'd also like to have men like these on our side.

Dumb Jon ...

.. yet again tells it like it is. Mr Cuthbertson is right behind him, if that's le mot juste.

Thoughtful people can disagree on the rights and wrongs of granting civil partnership rights to homosexual couples, but surely everyone can agree that same sex couples living together should be given the same rights whether or not they have sex?

Apparently not. Militant homosexual groups have denounced the whole idea as "deeply distressing". When the amendment was attached to the bill, the government refused to pass it.

Not so long ago it was all about love, about acknowledging a caring relationship between people. Only sad straights were hung up on who put what where. Small minded bigots.

But now apparently who puts what where is a bit more important. Can't just let any old couple join the party.

It seems a little unfair that two elderly sisters who have shared a house for years cannot be treated in law the same way as the two elderly teppich-fressers next door.

And what of Canon Elton John, who lives with his significant other, but has been celibate for many years ? Will Gordon Brown force him to do a spot of uphill gardening before he can pass on the house free of inheritance tax ? I say, Gordon, that's a bit stiff.

NOTE - some of the comments on the blogs above seem a trifle hysterical, implying the usual 'bigoted homophobia' mullarkey. I'd like to make it plain that if I describe an act as 'an unspeakable perversion suited only to the lowest gutter' that this is in no sense a perjorative description, and only a very narrow-minded person could take it as such. In my experience unspeakable perversions can often be tremendous fun.

The Final Call To (Black) Power

Johann Hari's been to a meeting of the Nation Of Islam and he's a worried man. The anger and sense of exclusion he encounters has left him fearful. Let me tell you all about it ...

It's not so bad as long as the target is those evil white men.

"Why is this area called Broadwater Farm?" he (Brother Hilary Muhammed) asks. "They don't call it the Hamptons. They don't call it a boulevard. What were the architects and the council thinking, when they called an estate for black people a farm?"

So far this all feels comfortable - stirring, even. There's nothing here a white liberal can't nod aggressively to.

I think that's par for the course.

The Hamptons are the holiday retreat of the American East Coast rich, whereas a Hampton is Cockney rhyming slang for a penis. What would the Brother have made of it if the estate had been called the Hamptons ? Broadwater Farm was named because it was built on the site of - guess what ? (And the farmer's daughter was an anti-slavery campaigner). The estate wasn't built "for black people" - we had to wait until 2004 for apartheid housing. It's not the Man's fault if the remaining Native Brits got out after the events of 1981.

But enough of this. The point is that someone comes out with a patently idiotic and culturally ignorant statement. And because of the skin colour of the speaker our self-described white liberal can 'nod aggressively'. Tell it like it isn't, bro !

Then leader Louis Farrakhan starts to depart from comforting liberal certainties.

"No Jewish person who reads their history will come away saying their hands are clean of the stain of slavery," he says, waving a book that has been widely discredited as an anti-Semitic screed. Children are crying in the hall now, and the air is ugly. People are cheering bizarre Jew-hating theories. Farrakhan reads sneeringly from the Torah. For the first time, these people I recognised - people I grew up with - look frightening.

An educated guess is that the book is either "The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews", an NOI publication, or The Jewish Onslaught, by Wellesley professor Tony Martin (no relation), both of which expand on the theme that Jewish merchants and Jewish capital played a major role in the transatlantic slave trade, a role which has up to now been concealed. The BBC website consider Martin acceptable enough - he has a piece in the Religion section on Marcus Garvey. Others link him with the sort of anti-semitic demagoguery that lead to the Freddy's and Crown Heights killings in New York.

And it hits me: if mainstream politicians don't deliver justice for ethnic minorities fast, this is our future. Smart, fascistic Farrakhans will develop messages of rage and hate nuanced for British ears. The ghettos of tomorrow will not be passive and defeated, nor should they be. They will be angry and fighting, and they may even have the distant scent of Nuremberg.

There are a lot of assumptions in these few sentences.

"And it hits me: if mainstream politicians don't deliver justice for ethnic minorities fast, this is our future."
The implication being that
a) ethnic minorities don't get 'justice'
b) that justice is something that can be delivered by mainstream politicians

Johann's being a bit disingenuous here, methinks, when he talks about 'ethnic minorities'. Does he mean the Jews ? The Indians or Chinese, who so outshine the Native Brits academically and economically ? The Irish ? Which of these minorities aren't getting justice ? And will Pakistanis join the Nation of Islam ?

He means of course one particular minority - Afro-Caribbean people with dark skin, whose ancestors were shipped forcibly across the Atlantic by Brits and others until the trade was stopped around 170 years ago, and who make up the overwhelming majority of the Nation of Islam's adherents. 'Back To Africa' isn't a slogan likely to inspire a recently arrived Ghanaian, though the BNP might be interested in adopting it.

To go into the question of justice will take more space and time than I have here. Suffice it to say that there are a number of commentators (like Tony Sewell in the UK and John McWhorter in America) who consider that the problems black people face are more caused by a self-destructive culture than by white racism, that white liberal guilt reinforces this destructive culture, and that change must come from within 'the black community' rather than being 'delivered' from outside.

The NOI may have an idiotic ideology, but one thing they've grasped that Johann Hari hasn't - the need to do it for themselves. NOI members reject the street, drug and criminal cultures, believe in education, monogamy, fidelity. Which community in Britain has the highest rate of single parenthood ? The lowest educational attainment ? The highest (by a terrifyingly large factor) rates of criminality and incarceration ? There is, of course, a black Britain outside of the crime reports. People like the spotlessly attired families heading for church on a Sunday. But they don't exist as far as popular black street culture or white liberals are concerned. The only times you hear in the media about a black kid with good grades and school attendance is when his poor mother's asked to come and identify the body. Stephen, Damilola, Kieran.

Smart, fascistic Farrakhans will develop messages of rage and hate nuanced for British ears.
Looking at this there's a hint of it already. My college professors rarely lectured flanked by guys in paramilitary kit.


Professor Martin speaking in London last year.




The ghettos of tomorrow will not be passive and defeated, nor should they be.

We're back in Patricia Hewitt country here - this recalls her celebrated and idiotic remark that the tragedy of the 1981 London riots was that the rioters were burning their own (poor) areas. When asked if she'd prefer her own (well-heeled) suburb to be burning she fell silent. After all, the degree of violence will be directly related to the degree of oppression - won't it ?

They will be angry and fighting, and they may even have the distant scent of Nuremberg.
Well, anything's better than being passive and defeated - apparently.

The fact that so many black Britons want to hear him should tell us something.
I'm still waiting to hear someone say that the existence of an audience for Nick Griffin or Jean-Marie Le Pen 'should tell us something' .

His foul radicalism must be met not by silencing him but with an authentic and progressive radicalism of our own. It would mean abolishing the racist practice of stop-and-search, investing heavily in schools in black areas, and introducing positive discrimination across the public services. We need to deal with black Britons' real grievances now - or they will mutate into ideologies we cannot appease.

Journeys end in lovers' meeting. We reach our preordained destination. Spend more. Discriminate against whites (who, of course, have caused this situation to arise). Abandon the streets - black and people will suffer from more crime and violence - but our hands will be clean. The word used for this is absolutely the correct one - appeasement.

Didn't you listen to the man ? "Would you like us to whimper and plead for your white liberal pity?" he snaps. From Lord Scarman's report after the 1981 riots through to the Lawrence enquiry, we've seen a hundred well-meant enquiries, confessions of racism, millions pumped into the inner cities, into schools, youth groups, social workers. Even as I write the BMA are the latest establishment body to confess their sins. White liberal pity has done all it can for twenty years now - with conspicuous lack of success.

You want more of the same ? All to stop the Nation of Islam ? You really think that the new school IT suite, given by the stroke of a pen in some council office, will raise academic achievement ? That taking the police away will stop street robberies ?

Dream on. How can a culture be changed from without ? It has to come from within. I would much rather see a black cultural revival that wasn't driven by hatred of whites and Jews. But that a revival is needed there's no doubt. And it isn't in your gift to give it, Johann - nor mine neither, nor Blunkett's nor Gordon Brown's. And for once, that is because of the colour of our skin.

"It must be the flag they are aiming at ..."

"Would it not be wiser to take it in ?"

"Strike my colours!" cried the captain. "No, sir, not I"; and as soon as he had said the words, I think we all agreed with him. For it was not only a piece of stout, seamanly, good feeling; it was good policy besides and showed our enemies that we despised their cannonade.

from Treasure Island, by R.L. Stevenson.

Cultural Suicide

Rasputin is very excited about a new translation of the Bible produced by wadical Chwistian organisation One (their name refers to the total membership). Like all good radicals they value diversity of everything except thought and opinion.

Apparently it's a book of 'extraordinary power' which Dr. Williams hopes will spread 'in epidemic profusion through religious and irreligious alike'.

We're taking optimism into a whole new dimension here. If, as Muslims and some Hindus think, madness is a sign that God has touched you, some people have been well and truly touched.

He also reckons 'we have here a vehicle for thinking and worshipping that is fully earthed'. I wish the same could be said of my old BSA, with its electrics by Joe Lucas, the Prince Of Darkness.


Let's see this work in all its glory, next to the hideously sexist, racist and homophobic version by the late King James VI of Scotland.

Matthew 3:1-3

Authorised version:

In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea,
And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, saying,
The voice of one crying in the wilderness,
Prepare ye the way of the Lord,
Make his paths straight.

New:

It was the time when John the Dipper started speaking in the desert.
"Change your ways", John shouted. "God's New World will be here any day now!"
Isaiah, one of God's speakers, talked about John the Dipper. He said,
"Listen for the 'Voice' in the desert, shouting,
"Repair the road for God; straighten out the bends!"


Matthew 23:25

Authorised version: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!”

New version: “Take a running jump, Holy Joes, humbugs!



I'll keep a lookout for it in the bestseller lists.



UPDATE - young Mr Cuthbertson gives it what you might call a lukewarm review.

"The best analogy that comes to mind is of someone scrawling a cheesy grin on the Mona Lisa."

Oliver Kamm's not too happy either.

'Tis Now The Very Witching Time Of Night

When churchyards yawn

And Hell itself breathes out

Contagion to this world; now could I drink hot blood

And do such bitter business as the day

Would quake to look on ...



I suppose it's only a game. But if you try to defend a single goal lead for 80 minutes against class forwards what do you expect ? We'd have been better off going one down after three minutes, then we wouldn't have been able to surrender midfield.

What's heartbreaking, as in 1990 - and 1996 - and 1998 - is that we had the ability to win the game and the tournament.

We could have been contenders. You can moan about a ref and the quicksand round the penalty spot, but we beat ourselves when we chose not to chase that second goal. All we can do now is accept defeat with dignity. Thank God it's a cold night for fighting in the streets.

Rebel Without A Pause

In a hideous act of censorship, DJ Tony Blackburn has been suspended from his Classic Gold radio show - for playing Cliff Richard songs.

On Tuesday he played the singer's 1963 number one Summer Holiday, leading to an e-mail from head of programmes Paul Baker.

"We shouldn't be playing Cliff Richard," Mr Baker wrote. "We might carry out research on him, but for now we have a policy decision that he doesn't match our brand values. He's not on the playlist, and you must stop playing him."

On his Wednesday breakfast show, Blackburn read a print-out of the e-mail live on air. He then tore it up, threw it in the bin and played two more chart-toppers by Sir Cliff - Living Doll (1959) and We Don't Talk Any More (1979).

Now I am not a cruel man by instinct. But it is difficult to imagine the amount of torture which would be too great for a mentally competent adult who is prepared to say in public that something 'doesn't match our brand values'. Such talk should be kept for internal company documents, to be circulated between consenting marketing managers only.

From hip young dude to embarrassing oldie. It's only a matter of time.

PS - for those interested in little cultural signifiers, note Ed Stewart's beard in the Radio London link - a hangover from the beat/jazz days of the fifties (Stewart played double-bass). The goatee was not to be seen again in hip society for another thirty years.

Great Internet Mysteries

The mighty Richard Littlejohn seems to have vanished from the Sun's website. Last week the site carried an 'If you want to read him, buy the paper' banner.

And Harry's Place seems to have disappeared. The Bloghouse.net site name appears to be available for sale.

Two of the greatest reads on the Web - as one with Ninevah and Tyre !

White Flight

150,000 people a year are leaving inner London. Yet the populations of the inner London boroughs are rising - and getting younger, as immigration continues (immigrants tend statistically to be younger and to have more children). The Greater London population has risen by 627,000 in the last decade.

35,000 people arrived from just one country, Ghana last year.

It's not all white flight, of course. The middle classes of all colours are getting out of the English cities. A few miles away from me is a new edge-of-town estate almost entirely populated by ex-Brummies or Bristolians. My optician, a Kenyan Asian, left Birmingham a few years ago for Gloucestershire, as did a Sikh colleague, who had previously described to me how he heard a noise and opened his bedroom window one evening to be hit in the face by one of the two youths on his kitchen roof. He is stretched to pay the mortgage on his four bedroomed house, bought to house his parents as well as his wife and children - but as he said 'I just couldn't leave them there'.

This isn't good news for everyone. As agriculture declines, council houses have all been sold, and house prices rise, the rural poor tend to end up in the towns - often in the roughest, least desirable council properties. And I can testify that the character of country lanes is changing. The people who twenty years ago would have bought a big suburban house are now out in the sticks. My journey to work starts with 5 miles of back roads, once empty, now made dangerous by the solicitors and sales directors doing sixty in their Mercs and 4x4s. They all live in the converted stables of a local stately home - a development the size of a small village. Affordable housing at £400,000 a pop.


UPDATE - the Countryside Agency's new report is here (5 pdfs - approx 400k each) for those of you with fast links.

And the Indie cover the report well here.

More than a million people every decade are now leaving England's towns and cities to live in the countryside, according to new figures.

Between 1981 and 2002, the rural population grew seven times faster than the urban one, at 81,000 (0.7 per cent) a year, compared to 48,000 (0.1 per cent). Just over 14 million people (28.5 per cent of the population) now live in England's rural districts.

Can We Have Our Boats Back Please ?

Those pesky Persians are at it again. How to put a stop to it ? A cutting-out expedition ? Or do we ram them with our triremes ?

Decisions, decisions.

Shackleton Shot My Cat

Chippy McNeish, the carpenter on the James Caird, the lifeboat which carried the men of Shackleton's expedition 800 miles to South Georgia, is to have a bronze sculpture of his beloved tabby cat erected on his grave. Shackleton ordered the shooting of the cat along with the sledge dogs, after their expedition ship, the Endurance, was crushed by ice and the expedition marooned with little food.



Without McNeish's skilful adaptation of the boat for its voyage, the expedition would have been lost. But for questioning Shackleton's authority after the loss of the Endurance, McNeish lost the confidence of his leader, and was not awarded the Polar Medal despite his contribution to the saving of 29 lives. McNeish died in poverty in 1930.


Another feat of exploration was announced today - the first privately owned spaceship flight. Burt Rutan, who designed the first aircraft to fly non-stop round the world, is an engineering genius.

The Aristocracy Of Mind

Great Times article by David Brooks, with perfect parallels for Britain.

The percentage of voters with college degrees has doubled in the past 30 years. As the educated class has grown, it has segmented. The economy has produced a large class of affluent knowledge workers — teachers, lawyers, architects, academics, journalists, therapists and so on — who live and vote differently from their equally well-educated but more business-orientated peers.

Quite. We can see the same thing here as a larger percentage head for college each year. The middle class isn't just increasing in size but changing in character, a trend accelerated by deindustrialisation. The BBC's weekly 'Any Questions ?' radio show was known to radical 1970s students as 'Any Fascists ?'. Now the audience are the people who fill the Guardian's letters page. Still middle class, but the middle class has changed.

This phenomenon will be even more marked in the UK, where the state-funded sector is so much larger - all those social workers and healthy eating consultants - and the industrial working class has shrunk more than in America. We saw in the local elections that the anti-war vote was (outside Muslim areas) primarily middle class and that Labour's vote held up in areas with a high number of working-class voters.

As the 'left' middle class expands, so the definition of 'left' changed to reflect the interests of that class. You could call that a Marxist analysis, or a Mandy Rice-Davies analysis. It would, wouldn't it ?
My generation were more interested in sex, drugs and rock'n'roll than in the nationalisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange. None of us thought we'd do anything like actually making things for a living (alright, I'll except pottery, knitwear and wood furniture). Real working class people, with their unreconstructed views, could be a little embarrassing (too like the parents ?) - although an NUM donkey jacket from Saltley had all the status of Bilbo's mithril coat.

And the definition of 'right' changed too. Fifty years ago a socialist could advocate the nationalisation of 'the commanding heights' of the economy while simultaneously supporting economic protectionism, the imprisonment of homosexuals and abortionists and upholding the monarchy. The grammar school was taken for granted as the path to education for ambitious working-class youth. Now a prospective Labour candidate with such views would be offered counselling for his deep seated problems.

The old working class changed too. It shrank as our industrial base disappeared (started under Wilson, accelerated under Thatcher, continued under Blair) and as the skilled beneficiaries of the Thatcher years moved off the estate. It also lost large numbers to the underclass, the non-working class - many of whom have disppeared from the unemployment figures thanks to the tripling of the long-term sickness and disability figures (started under Thatcher, continued under Blair).

Where America leads, we tend to follow. Blue-collar America has long been more conservative than white-collar. In my youth, canvassing at election time, I remember the warm response of the terraced streets, the coolness on the new detached estates ('You're the scum of the earth !'), the relief at finding the occasional middle class leftie there. Remembering our changing definitions of left and right, how long before it's the other way round ?




NOTE - David Brooks is the author of the wonderful and recommended 'Bohos In Paradise', a book about the people who need a Freelander and North Face jacket for the three-mile commute to the IT centre.

"To calculate a person's status, you take his net worth and multiply it by his antimaterialistic attitudes. A zero in either column means no prestige, but high numbers in both rocket you to the top of the heap. Thus, to be treated well in this world, not only do you have to show some income results; you have to perform a series of feints to show how little your worldly success means to you.... You will ceaselessly bash yuppies in order to show that you yourself have not become one. You will talk about your nanny as if she were your close personal friend, as if it were just a weird triviality that you happen to live in a $900,000 Santa Monica house and she takes the bus two hours each day to the barrio. "

Cash For Good Causes

"An illegal network has channelled hundreds of members of Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu PF party into Britain, a BBC investigation has found.
Birmingham-based Zimbabwean Community UK is thought to have given fake documents to party members and coached them on how to falsely claim asylum."

Zimbabwean Community UK was created last year with an initial £5,000 grant of lottery money.


Not the first time. I thought this story was entertaining - unless you were a victim.

But it all pales into insignificance compared to with the £340,000 given to the secretive John O'Reilly, who from a council flat in Birmingham runs Miscarriages Of Justice UK (no white middle class victims need apply - like Tony Martin) and the National Coalition Of Anti-Deportation Campaigns, a group with [irony]no political agenda whatsoever[/irony].

Vote Fraud Update

I did wonder whether I'd be accused of racism, the worst crime a Native Brit can commit (and it's not even illegal - yet), when I suggested that among the glories of multicultural Brum were now the voting practices of the Indian subcontinent.

Good to see that in George Galloway's words 'I'm Not The Only One'.

"We've been cheated," said a Lib Dem councillor who had just lost his seat in Aston, the place he described as the "jewel in the crown" of his party's strategy. He said local bigwigs had come into Asian homes, pressuring voters to cast their postal ballots in front of them - insisting they back Labour. "This is the politics of Pakistan or Bangladesh and they've brought it here," he said.

Even better to see that the councillor accusing 'them' of bringing it here is one Ayoub Khan. Little things like that give me hope.

The liberal leader in Birmingham, John Hemming, has a vote fraud website which I recommend. Didn't realise he's been banging on about this for some time.

Sometimes you just have to love David Aaronovitch ...

Alright, so he's a classic product of 70s university leftism. He's a hypocrite who sends his child to private school, but opposes choice for parents without his sort of money. But we all have our faults - and I still think of him as basically a decent bloke. He gritted his teeth and supported Blair over Iraq when it would have been easier to join the left consensus and shout 'it's all about oil !'.

He likes to think of himself as a sophisticated, metropolitan sort of chap, easy about prostitution, laughing at suburban bigots, at ease with all sorts and conditions of men.

He's only lived in London for twenty-five years, so when he met his first angry taxi-driver the other day he reacted like a maiden aunt in a teashop when the truck-driver at the next table breaks wind loudly.

Where do these awful people come from ?

" ... the polls were showing heavy Ukip support, and yet no one I knew or met thought that the party of Kilroy, Collins and disgraced former Tory MPs was anything but a vaudeville turn."

'No one I knew or met'. I think that's rather sweet. As sweet as Tracey Emin's hurt-child reaction when people laughed as her artworks burned.

UKIP got 2.5 million votes against Labour's 3.5 million. There's a country that isn't London and isn't Hay-on-Wye at Festival time.

Our citizen of the world seems blissfully ignorant of the lives and opinions of millions of his fellow-countrymen.

He needs to get out more.

Tomorrow's Guardian/Indie Editorial

Now Blair Must Make The Case For Europe

The results of the European elections, and the rise of UKIP, have shown us all the limits of a policy based on the avoidance of confronting complex, and therefore potentially unpopular, issues. While such a sophisticated politician was well aware of the pitfalls involved in saying nothing, abandoning his principles, and hoping the issue would remain low on voter priorities, with hindsight this decision can be seen as fatally flawed.

His decision has had repercussions abroad. Our European partners despair of his lack of stomach for the fight and his failure to defend the proven need for closer European integration, which has weakened British influence with important allies.

It is now time for Mr Blair to stand by his European partners, robustly defend EU ideals, confront the Eurosceptic press - and be prepared for months of tough political struggle in the political bear-pits of Britain. Acceptance of the EU constitution is a battle which Mr Blair can - and must - win.




Time To Say 'I Was Wrong' Over Iraq

The results of the elections, and the collapse in the Labour vote to anti-war parties, have shown us all the limits of a policy based on personal conviction in the face of overwhelming voter hostility. While such a sophisticated politician was well aware of the pitfalls involved in fiercely defending his policies and sticking unswervingly to his principles, with hindsight this decision can be seen as fatally flawed.

His decision has had repercussions abroad. Our French, German, Russian and Chinese partners despair of his stomach for the fight and his defence of ever-closer links with George Bush's America, which has weakened British influence with important allies.

It is now time for Mr Blair to detach himself from American foreign policy, withdraw our troops immediately from Iraq, apologise to those newspapers which bravely opposed the war - and be prepared for months of weary diplomacy, emollience and fence-mending in the political arenas of Britain and the chancelleries of the world. Iraq is a battle which he cannot - and should not - win.

What Will The Guardian Make Of This ....

Manna from heaven for the 'Britain is a nation of immigrants' brigade.

Families who have lived in the English-Scottish Borders for generations could be descended from African soldiers who patrolled Hadrian's Wall nearly 2,000 years ago.

Archaeologists say there is compelling evidence that a 500-strong unit of Moors manned a fort near Carlisle in the third century AD.

The unit was probably mustered in the Roman province of Mauretania, in modern-day Morocco, by the emperor Septimus Severus and arrived in Britain in the second or third centuries AD. Aballava lay at the western end of Hadrian's Wall in Cumbria.

Mr Benjamin is calling for a major study of black Roman Britons. He believes that DNA tests of locals could reveal genetic links with modern-day north Africans, while skeletons of Romans found in the area might contain telltale clues to their childhood origins.

Fascinating stuff. Be great if it were true. But I feel a liberal myth coming on.

Link via Mirabilis.

Disastrous European Result

I don't mean the elections. Followed by the traditional post-defeat violence.

Maybe I'm particularly jaundiced this morning, having watched the game in an NHS casualty department festooned with Domestic Violence posters ('It is the physical, emotional, sexual or mental abuse of one person by another within an intimate relationship such as marriage. Domestic violence is, in almost every incident, carried out by men against women') and where the old Sunday Times magazines in the waiting area all carry a small sticker :

This magazine has been donated for the use of patients and visitors by John Wilmott Compensation Claims - Your Local Specialist Injury Claims Company.

Lawyers - why chase an ambulance when you can advertise in Casualty ?

My considered views on the Euro election results, written on May 31, are here. Tories squeezed from right, BNP squeezed from left. Whatever happened to the anti-war vote, so prominent in the council elections ? Even the Indie will have a job to spin these results as being about Iraq.


UPDATE - it wasn't a totally disastrous weekend, though the less said about Wales, England, Ireland and Scotland's rugby results the better. England's cricketers came back well to beat New Zealand, and I discovered the music of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.

"It's The Procedures ..."

No one is responsible for anything in our brave new world.

"Professor Pennington said BBC South East Today's footage, filmed by a journalist working undercover for the hospital-managed cleaning service, revealed "inexcusable" practices.

He said the hospital, which is used by people living in north Sussex and west Kent, was not even clean by domestic standards.

At one point during filming, the accident and emergency department almost ran out of paper towels - vital to dry hands after washing to prevent spreading infection.

Prof Pennington compared being so short of hand towels to running out of anaesthetic gas during an operation.

The University of Aberdeen professor also criticised medical staff for leaving used instruments in an operating theatre sink for seven hours and a blood stained gown on a trolley for 24 hours.

After watching the film, he told BBC South East Today: "It's been scandalously easy to find major deficiencies in this hospital.

"It's a dirty hospital, it's the worst I have ever seen.

"It's putting the lives of patients and staff at risk." "

A hospital spokeswoman said its cleaning service was being improved.

For God's sake, what improvements can you make if your staff seem unaware that you just don't leave dirty kit lying around ? What kind of cretins have they got working there ?

But apparently it's all down to lack of money. It's amazing what can be turned into a claim for more budget.

Rose Gibb, the newly appointed chief executive of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells Trust, was shown the footage.

In response she said: "The hospital has got cleaning problems, I've been aware of those for the last six months.

"I've put a massive amount of improvements into them, and I'm going to continue to put improvements into the hospital until we get it to the level we want it to be.

"There are particular issues at the Kent and Sussex that are not found elsewhere.

"It's cramped, it's overused, the fabric is appalling, there's next to no storage facilities, and staff are working in unacceptable conditions."

Miss Gibb said it would take nine months to get the service to a high standard.

Medical technology has advanced enormously in the last thirty years. But since the matron was abolished and nurses no longer have responsibility for the cleanliness of the ward, we're apparently unable to manage such complex tasks as emptying bins and washing water jugs. The Kent and Sussex Hospital has one of the worst MRSA superbug infection rates in the South East.

Man Versus Horse

For the first time a human has won the annual 22-mile Man versus Horse cross-country held in Mid-Wales each year. Photos from last year's race here.



27 year old IT consultant Huw Lobb, who finished fourth in this year's London Marathon, won the £25,000 prize.

"Everybody was cheering and shaking my hand and telling me I'd have to buy them a drink with my prize money," he said.

And on a totally different subject, which areas of England have the highest house price rises over the last nine years ? The home of provincial values, the market towns, where average prices have more than doubled. It isn't just hypocritical lefties to whom they appeal. Of course, as newcomers arrive the culture which attracted them is diluted and decays (there's probably now as much heroin in Cirencester or Tewkesbury as in Blackbird Leys) - but that's another story.