Tasteless Or What ?

Barry Beelzebub hits a brilliant new low with this piece on the Health and Safety Executive.

Let me give you a couple of examples of how far this cotton wool culture has permeated our daily lives. A friend of mine who works for a prominent firm of granny-stranglers (or financial advisors as some call them) recently managed to blag a couple of very fancy tickets to a football match. You know the ones: padded seats, luxury bar, free programme, post-96 middle-class muppet behind you, that sort of thing.

He thought this might be an ideal opportunity to introduce his four-year-old son to The Beautiful Game on the grounds that if the boy became bored with proceedings, his mother could take him downstairs to the luxury bar where they could play Stick The Tail On Emile Heskey while father watched the rest of the match in peace.

A quick phone call to the football club in question stymied the scheme. A four-year-old sitting on his father's lap? Out of the question. The child would be a clear and obvious fire hazard.

A what? A fire hazard? This is the country that became rich by sending four-year-olds up chimneys. Now I know that disabled people in cinemas are often regarded as potentially combustible, but a four-year-old kid? How many of those have you seen go up in flames in the last week? (An uneasy silence settles on the readership, understandably so.)

Fools Rush In ...

I noticed the gloating headline in yesterday's Guardian.

"Now it's Bush's turn to squirm" announced former Clinton staffer Sidney Blumenthal, revealing that "Evidence of the president's fudged war record emerged in time to undermine the Republicans' triumphal march".

The BBC and Indie echoed the claims - that new documents shed a bad light on GWBs performance as an Air National Guard in the early 1970s.

But as Natalie Solent points out, they weren't up with the story.


UPDATE - Ed Thomas has more at Biased BBC.

Thanks Harry ...

For the links to the Socialist Workers Party Joe Strummer tribute pages. The Clash were the ideal band for the Student Grant generation - from the idiotic cliches -

"After taking part in the riot at the end of that summer’s Notting Hill Carnival, lead singer Joe Strummer proudly announced:

“I think people ought to know that we’re anti-fascist, we’re anti-violence ..."

to the carefully concealed upper middle class background and the decision to forsake the Westway for rural Somerset. Turning revolt into not so much an art as an attitude struck - a pose, albeit one maintained for years ... you think it's funny ? Turning webellion into money ?

And the Clash could NOT do reggae. 'White Man In the Hammersmith Palais' is as embarrassing as the Boomtown Rats 'Banana Republic' or the Members dire 'Offshore Banking Business' ('kinda financial t'ing, yeah ?').

The Ruts were miles better.



UPDATE - Apologies for this descent into old animosities. But the Clash and the SWP were made for each other.

Brave Journalism At The Guardian

It's easy to knock the Guardian, purveyors of radical ideas such as 'Never Trust A Christian Cowboy', ideas which would otherwise never be heard in the mainstream media. Its pages are full of people who think it's brave to attack the war in Iraq or condemn people who take the Bible seriously.

But Catherine Bennett on 'animal rights activists' is a truly brave article. Because if the activists - who she rightly calls terrorists - run true to form she may well be in physical danger as a result of what she's written. The people whe writes about are seriously nasty.

In most English towns you'll see a young person on a weekend with a stall in the High Street, Stop Huntingdon leaflets and a petition against foxhunting. The other face of the movement you can read about here, or here, or on their own websites. If an entire community was - and still is - terrorised by racists or homophobes because it contained one black or gay resident, it would never be off the news. Yet what's happening at Newchurch in Staffordshire is remarkably low profile, and it's only one of many similar campaigns.

WAITE
Horrendous it may be but it's by no means unique. Other targets in the community here include the local golf club where John Hall used the gym. When threatening letters were ignored turf on its greens was dug up and red paint poured over the fairways. Mr Hall chose to resign. His newsagent was targeted and no longer delivers the papers. His solicitor bowed to pressure and no longer acts for the family. The glazier, who repaired the farm's vandalised windows, was threatened and withdrew his labour, so did the local vet. And the Halls have been stopped from visiting the nearby hotel when it too received warnings. Indeed the entire community here received letters of abuse and accusation about the Halls and their alleged cruelty to animals, including the village pub, the Red Lion, where landlords, the Marklews, tried at first to resist the pressure.

MRS MARKLEW
We had a letter to say that the Hall family have been using the Red Lion and that we'd got to stop them coming in, which we ignored it. So then we got intimidating letters and threats, what they were going to do - they were going to burn the place down, they were going to trash the cars, they were going to smash the windows. Then after that they sent letters to everybody in the village telling them not to use the Red Lion because we're serving scum - i.e. John and his family.

MARKLEW
And that's when the bricks started coming through the window. The phone calls was horrendous, you'd get them 24 hours a day non-stop and every time you picked the receiver up, because you had to because I was running a business, you got silence or abuse.

WAITE
But the Marklews stood their ground and point blank refused to bar the Halls. However, when senior management at the Union Pub Company, which owns the Red Lion, also became the target of hundreds of hostile letters, phone calls and e-mails, officials met the Marklews and told the couple that it would be best if they left their tenancy.

Bennett's view of this is

"Perhaps, in the context of al-Qaida's massacres, the blowing up of Israeli buses, and the slaughter and abuse of children which Tony Blair has described as "extreme terrorism", milder terms seem more appropriate for our domestic product. But if terrorism must now be identified with acts so unspeakable they seem to render the word, by itself, inadequate, this should not prevent our home-grown, less extreme specialists in fear from being known for what they are."

I'm reminded by her bravery of the famous 1960s Private Eye article which named the Kray Twins as the people behind a series of tabloid headlines about the 'reign of fear' in London's gangland. They closed the item with a statement to the effect that 'if the Krays live up to their reputation, this may well be the last issue of Private Eye under the present management'.

Careless Talk Costs Lives

The saintly Rev Peter Mullen of Reform on Rasputin's view of 9/11.


Would Dr Williams argue that the brave men who fought back against the terrorists in the fourth aircraft to crash were in the wrong? He reckons that the terrorists had no choice: “We have something of the freedom to consider whether or not we turn to violence and so, in virtue of that very fact, are rather different from those who experience their world as leaving no other option.”

This is a high-grade sample of the drivel we have heard these past three years from those in the West who despise the civilisation which is their inheritance. Of course the suicide bombers had “other options”: not every impoverished Muslim thinks the only answer to his problems is to destroy New York. If the atrocity were not the terrorists’ fault, what next? “We begin to find some sense of what they and we might together recognise as good.” Really? But it is impossible to make common moral cause between democratic freedom and the rule of law on the one hand and nihilistic killing on the other.

Dr Williams is praised as a man of superior intelligence. But there is no intelligence in Writing in the Dust, only romantic faux naivety. As his writings reveal, he is an old-fashioned class warrior. He dislikes our Western way of life and romanticises the Islamic world as much as Marxists used to romanticise the USSR. This wouldn’t matter much in normal times, but these days we live on the edge of destruction.

Great stuff, Dr Mullen. But I think the bishopric may be some way off.

Islamophobia Part 734

Norm and newbie clever-clogs Jonathan Derbyshire do a pretty good job on Madeleine Bunting's tastelessly timed Guardian piece.

But five stars for the following - Jack Straw, as spotted by Harry.

Sometimes we are too swift to move away from the original and fundamental causes of such terrorism, namely the terrorists who perpetrated such an act, and shift away to other things - in a sense taking for granted their culpability.
There are some things which happen amongst human kind which are almost inexplicable according to any basic moral norms - Nazism was and this is.

And the wondrous Yasmin Alibhai Brown, a burning bright flame amidst the hideously white self-haters of the Indie. No liberal guilt there.

When confronted by such abominable crimes, we have an obligation to cross over the horror which wells up and try and comprehend (not forgive, but understand) the perpetrators and the circumstance which led to the violence. Today I find such searching analysis almost impossible. For some people that line was crossed with the Sept 11 attacks (which, it will be remembered, Yazza believed the US brought upon themselves - but it's never too late to repent). There are events which silence the voice ... for now, for me, this crime has no place even within the farthest boundaries of human behaviour; it has destroyed the fundamental definition of what it means to be human.

For Yazza, for Jack Straw, and for me, the crime is too disgusting, too unspeakable, to be balanced in some equation against Russian actions in Chechnya. Not so the Indie's vile cartoonist, who I presume is the same guy who did the baby-eating Sharon.

Putin stands, dunce's cap on head, in the corner of a bombed-out classroom, blood and glass on the floor. Surprisingly there are no dead children, not even being eaten by Mr Sharon.

The blackboard contains the equation

LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE + REPRESSION = TERRORISM

The caption ? "Back to School".


UPDATE - as I've said before, what Ms Bunting knows about history could be tattooed under a child's armpit.

" ... the particular association of Islam with violence is a colonial hangover, dating back to the 1857 Indian Mutiny, when Muslims rebelled against British imperialism."

Two points. The Indian Mutiny involved Hindu and Muslim troops. As the Army Museum site says "Fortunately for the British the Mutiny was almost exclusively confined to the Bengal Army. The Company’s Madras and Bombay Armies were relatively unaffected and other units, including Sikhs, Punjabi Moslems and Gurkhas, remained loyal.". Nicholson's force at Delhi mainly consisted of Muslim tribesmen from what is now the Afghan border region.

To say the revolt was against imperialism is incorrect. Imperialism of one sort or other - Sikh, Muslim, Hindu - was the usual form of government on the subcontinent. The mutineers proclaimed the re-establishment of the Moghul Empire under Bahadur Shah. In Charles Allen's words 'the root cause was a growing unease among both Hindu and Muslim sepoys about the way their traditional way of life was being interfered with .. a real fear that religion and caste were being actively undermined. The British Government was forcing the pace of change in ways that threatened the customs of centuries, bringiong reforms such as the banning of suttee and female infanticide ...'.

Caste, suttee (the burning of widows), female infanticide. Can't say Madelaine doesn't know a good cause when she sees one.


And as for the particular association of Muslims with violence, I'd better quote again the Archbishop of Canterbury. No, not Rasputin - Queen Elizabeth I's Matthew Parker, nearly 300 years before the Mutiny.

" Better it is for us to fall into thy hands, than into the hands of men, and especially into the hands of Turks and Infidels thy professed enemies, who now invade thine inheritance... First, the Turke with his sword, what landes, nations, and countreys, what empires, kingdomes, and provinces, with cities innumerable hath he wonne, not from us but from Thee! Where thy name was wont to be invocated, thy word preached, thy sacraments administered, there now reigneth barbarous Mahumet with his filthy Alcoran. The florishing churches in Asia, the learned churches of Grecia, the manifold churches in Africa, which were wont to serve thee now are gone from thee."

Or what about the Irish poet Thomas Moore, who wrote 'The Fireworshippers' in 1817, describing the conquest of Zoroastrianism in Persia by Islam. He described

One of the saintly, murderous brood,
To carnage and the Koran given,
Who hold through unbelievers blood
Lies the directest path to heaven

I'm not saying I agree with Moore or Parker. But to suggest that Islam only became associated with violence in 1857 is ridiculous. She's making it up as she goes along.

A Couple More links ...

To Susurration and new kid on the blog Eric The Unread, both of whom are posting some good stuff. Though Eric, I'd question whether the market for posts attacking the Daily Mail isn't somewhat saturated.

I'm not sure about Susurration's description of this site as 'Conservative' though, nor Coppersblog's 'Superior (liked that bit) Conservative UK Blog.

What on earth is there about Britain in 2004 which is worth conserving, apart from the countryside ? The few shreds and tatters of pre-1960s culture, I suppose.

And from the Policeman's blog, a little Dalrymplesque vignette of British underclass 'family life' in 2004.

“Did you hit her?”
“Basically, I really love her, but she just pushed me too far this time.”
“I see, so you didn’t really mean to do it.”
“No, I just lost it, I really love her.”
“So you say. Are you drunk?”
“Well, I’ve had a few.”
“So you’re a violent drunk?”
“You’re twisting my words.”
“And you’re under arrest.” Strike one for justice.
Returning to take the statement from the battered (and not in a fish and chips way) female, I ask penetrating questions:
“How long have you been together?”
“On and off for 18 months.” (It’s always “on and off” in these cases).
“Has he always been violent towards you?”
“Yes, pretty much.”
“And at what point did you decide he would make an ideal father for your child?”
“Well it just sort of happened.”

It's Dreadful, But ...

"But depraved terrorism of this type does not come unannounced. Russian forces fighting the two wars in Chechnya have distinguished themselves with their own brand of brutality ..." - Observer editorial.

"The hostage-takers committed crimes beyond the capacity of any judicial or spiritual authority adequately to condemn ... But it cannot be enough simply to condemn the wickedness of the hostage-takers ... " - Independent editorial.

Note that to the Independent (and the BBC) the people who slaughtered maybe as many as 500 innocents are 'hostage-takers'. To the Guardian they are 'militants', just like the 'militants' who target little girls in Gaza, or Afghanistan.


Thank God for the great Aaronovitch.

The Script Is Written

It was

a) the fault of the incomptetent and disorganised Russian security forces (cue SAS man in studio to say how much better we'd have done it)

b) anyway, such attacks are inevitable because of what the Russians are doing in Chechnya (© one Lord Judd, who seems to be all over Radios 4 and 5)

c) anyway, Putin, Bush and Sharon are the real terrorists. As Isabel Hilton so rightly points out in the Guardian "As the drama of Beslan was entering its final hours, George Bush was bidding for re-election on the promise of security to the American people, a security premised on the willingness to use overwhelming military force. It was the same promise that Putin gave to the Russians and Ariel Sharon to the people of Israel. All three have used violence freely in pursuit of electoral reward: Sharon's provocative visit to the Temple of the Mount that triggered the second intifada, Putin's reckless adventurism in re-launching the Chechen war in 1999, and the Bush invasion of Iraq."

I'm particularly impressed with her insight into the moral equivalence between a peaceful visit by a Jewish head of state to a Jewish religious site and the deliberate slaughter of hundreds of innocent children, teachers and parents.



UPDATE - Following Isabel Hilton's description of a visit to the Temple mount as 'using violence freely', Joan Smith in the Indie takes things one step beyond.

President Vladimir Putin's contribution to the war against terror, prosecuted with wanton violence in Chechnya, has created carnage: in less than two weeks, Chechen terrorists have blown two passenger planes from the sky, bombed a metro station in Moscow and murdered hundreds of men, women and children at a school in southern Russia.

Leaving aside the valid criticisms that can be made of Russian policy in Chechnya (after Friday's events it's obviously much too soft), such a sentence turns logic on it's head. All the acts of which Ms Smith writes were carried out by Putin's enemies. In Ms Smith's world the perpetrators aren't responsible - Putin made them do it. If only she'd been around in 1940.

Prime Minister Churchill's contribution to the war against Hitler, prosecuted with wanton violence in Norway, has created carnage: in less than six weeks, German forces have overrun France, burned thousands of soldiers at St Nazaire and forced Jewish men, women and children into the Lodz ghetto.

Mary Whitehouse Was Right II

Following in the footsteps of Yasmin Alibhai Brown, John Humphrys wonders where it's all gone wrong in his MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh Festival.

Humprhys acknowledged that his comments could be characterised as "coming from the collected works of Mary Whitehouse", the veteran clean-up campaigner. "She said television was on a downward moral spiral. Foul language and fornication would become routine if nothing were done to stop it. They said she was wrong. Was she?"

Of course she was right, John. Let me tell you why. When you, and I, and lots of young people, and some not so young, cheered on the defendants in the Lady Chatterley and Oz trials, mocked Mrs Whitehouse and the Festival Of Light (I remember counter-demonstrating as the 'Festival Of Life'), we'd all been brought up in what was still a Judaeo-Christian culture. We were under the illusion that you could open the floodgates just as much as we wanted and no more. Mrs Whitehouse, with an explicit Christian analysis, correctly reasoned that without a Christian culture (or a strong culture replacing it) there were potentially no limits to what was permissible.

Christianity and the other major world religions have been around a long time. They understood, accepted and respected the power of sexuality, which was precisely why it was bound in with all manner of prescription, proscription, culture and custom. Procreation, the link between sexuality and the family, then and now still the chief transmitter of culture between the generations, was similarly attended.

Then two things happened - the decline in religious belief coincided with the invention of cheap and reliable contraception, an invention which appeared at the time to sever the link between sex and procreation. Sex could become, according to your nature, a means of deepening a fulfilling relationship, good fun, better than sleeping alone, or something different to all of these. The choice was yours.

If you have no religious perspective and sex is a pleasant leisure activity, why should you not explore its dimensions, watching, participating, selling, buying ? After all, these dimensions have been around for a very long time. Mrs Whitehouse would have been well aware of these issues. As time passes the Humphrys view (1960s version) looks more and more out of touch with reality, and the Whitehouse version more and more realistic and worldly.

What's happening now is different. This is a battle between people who are concerned about society and those whose interest is simply to make programmes that make money. Those who fought for the word f*** in Lady Chatterley didn't do it to make money. Now the cash registers go ker-ching every time there's a fumble beneath the bed sheets.

How naive can you get ?

There has always been a clash between freedom, especially freedom of expression, and the conservative wish to preserve values. In the 60s, Mary Whitehouse was taken apart by the liberal elite, who defended Lady Chatterley and the Oz publishers, arguing - in my view rightly - that it was not just censorious but stupid to pretend that sex happened only in the marital bed. This was a genuine debate between different views of what was good for society.

I'm beginnning to see a picture here - that it was alright when my mates were opening the gates, but now the peasants have all rushed in. Let's have a look at two parts of that argument.

" ... it was not just censorious but stupid to pretend that sex happened only in the marital bed." I don't think anyone, even Judge Griffith-Jones, ever pretended that sex only happened in the marital bed. The point of the Chatterley trial was more the (for the time) graphic descriptions of the sex than the fact that it was adulterous. And hang on a mo. What did you write a paragraph earlier ?

"You can't use people with real lives and real problems and real children as "just entertainment". Well, you can, but it's corrupting. The first time I watched Big Brother live there were two men lying on beds and talking about women. Or rather "f*****g women". And talking about their responses to them. Or, rather, "my f*****g stiffy". My, how we've pushed back the boundaries of television. How proud we should be."

I hate to say it John, but it is not just censorious, but stupid to pretend that some men don't talk like that. Why is that speech, apart from a certain inarticulacy, so much worse than Lawrence's description of a tumescent Mellors ?

"This was a genuine debate between different views of what was good for society."

Your point being ? In a post-Christian culture, it seems generally agreed that giving people what they want is good, and there can be no doubt that people like watching sex and fighting (not usually simultaneously).

The old culture was quite comfortable with the idea that what people wanted wasn't necessarily what was good for them - or as Humphrys puts it "in the bad old days we had paternalists trying to capture the masses for what they believed in their patrician way to be good". Wrong again, John. By the 1960s the ruling elite didn't give a toss, and it was the despised lower-middle and respectable working class who provided the bulk of Mrs Whitehouse's support.

But without a Christian or other religious culture I really can't see how you can object to Stu and Shell on grounds of anything but taste. This is probably only a beginning. Humphrys has called for assisted suicide to be made legal. I'm sure there are people who'd pay good money to watch the death in real time - with perhaps a lottery involved, the lucky winner to remotely operate the barbiturate driver from their PC or mobile. Poor countries which still retain the death penalty have a sure-fire media earner. And how long before sex is classified as a sport ?

Taking Children Hostage

The house we rented for the last week had a book collection frozen in time somewhere about 1970. There was a shelf of World Books from the early 60s, some of which I remembered from my mother's collection but had never read. So forty years on I read Adrian Hayter's story of navigating single-handed to New Zealand, Eric Ambler's gun-smuggling tale Passage Of Arms, and CE Lucas Phillips' The Spanish Pimpernel. This turned out to be a true (though I thought I detected a hint of embroidery) tale of a Brit banker in Madrid during the Civil War who devoted his energies to helping people escape from Republican Spain.

For those of us brought up on Orwell and Hemingway the book's something of a rude awakening. Democracy under the Republic was decaying to the point at which political assassination was a commonplace. Lucas Phillips describes the protests in Parliament of the Conservative Senor Sotelo, and the bitter response from lefty icon La Pasionara.

"You have just made your last speech" she spat at him. He was assassinated a few days later. At which point Franco raised the standard of revolt, and Republican Madrid started arresting and shooting without trial anyone suspected of right-wing views, sympathies or family connections. Tens of thousands were killed in Madrid alone. As Churchill put it, Franco's forces then repaid the Republicans 'with interest'.

But the story which stuck in my mind was the siege of the Alcazar, the Military College, at Toledo, fiercely defended by the young cadets until Franco's troops relieved them.

The Republicans had arrested the teenage son of the Alcazar's commander, General Moscardo, and put him on the phone to his father to tell him that unless the fortress surrendered his son would be shot.

They bred them hard in those days, though I wonder what Senora Moscardo thought - for according to Phillips, Moscardo replied as follows:

"My beloved son, I order you to die like a hero. May your last words be 'Long live Spain and Christ the King !'"

I Forgot To Mention ...

That along with the new records for abortion, HIV and injecting drugs, we've got record immigration. It also appears that the 'independent' government Office Of National Statistics has been timing its releases of information to minimise the political fallout - and that the Home Office has set up a rebuttal unit, paid for by the taxpayer, to combat the independent immigration monitoring organisation Migrationwatch. Apparently the BBC, Immigration Advisory Service and the other 20-odd publicly-funded immigration lobby groups just aren't doing a good enough job.

In Migrationwatch chairman Sir Andrew Green's Times piece he makes a telling point.

"The Government’s policy has been described as “talk tough and let them all in”. They will deny it of course but, as politicians, they cannot be oblivious of the fact that immigrants vote overwhelmingly Labour. They will deny this, of course, but they must know that, in 1997, 83 per cent of black and Asian votes went to Labour."

Dame Shirley Porter was fined squillions of pounds and fled the country after it was disclosed that she tried to get a few dozen more Tory voters into council houses in some Westminster wards. Naughty girl. Yet it's apparently OK to import a few million extra Labour voters, find them housing, then ask why the Tories can't win in the cities any more.

There are a couple of worrying codas to the record abortion and HIV statistics as well. The first is that, following Joanna Jepson's success in gaining a review of the decision not to prosecute doctors who killed a baby because it had a cleft palate, the Government abortion statistics have dropped the breakdown of late-term abortions by type of foetal disability. This seems to be a purely political move designed to suppress the information which enabled Ms Jepson to take legal action. The second is that HIV figures are rising in the regions as a direct result of the government's dispersal of asylum seekers.

If the Tories, with their manipulation of unemployment statistics in the 1980s, can be said to have started the corruption and politicisation of independent civil servants, Labour have taken the policy to new depths. As whistleblower Steve Moxon said of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate "we were an extension of the government’s efforts to supply spurious information to the Office for National Statistics (to downplay the immigration problem)."

Crime, asylum, immigration, available beds, waiting lists - you name it, they'll fiddle it. The Soviet Union may be dead, but its statistical techniques live on. And at least the Soviets did actually make a few tractors.

A Sensitive Tribute

To Paula Radcliffe - by Barry Beelzebub.

"Suddenly it all goes wrong. Ms Radcliffe, far from steaming home a league ahead, jacks it in just three miles from home after being dropped down to fourth place. Then the Beeb's commentators lose all sense of perspective.

"Poor Paula", they wail. "Fancy having to run over that hilly track in such terrible heat."

Well excuse me. I didn't notice it bothering the Japanese woman who won the race in style. Even worse, while the worthy winner is entering the stadium the Beeb, instead of honouring her triumph, are conducting a hasty post mortem into the Golden Girl's demise, who at this point is sitting in the gutter with snot and vomit running down her chin.

It's very shabby. Even my Grandad, who had little time for the Japs unless they were on the end of his bayonet, would have shown more grace. "

Hat-tip to Barry's discoverer - Mr Free Market.

And Another One

Readers will be aware that one of my hobby-horses is the phenomenon of right-on rebels or PC exemplars who, when the kids come along, up sticks from the vibrant multicultural melting pot of the city to a leafy, conservative area. May I present the latest recruit, one Jah Wobble, late of Public Image and full many another alternative musical project.

Five years ago, they moved with their two young sons from the East End to leafy suburban Cheshire. “I know the inner city, I know those estates, and it ain’t got no better,” Wobble says. “I wouldn’t like to be an old person living in Bethnal Green.”

Thank heavens he can afford to get out of the paradise he's helped, in his own small way, to create. Pity about the people who can't.

Well that was nice ....

a fortnight with no newspapers or TV, and only occasional radio. Instead - biking, walking, climbing, fishing, sleeping. I did find an internet connection in Brodick Co-Op (only 50p/hr with your dividend card) but didn't get the time to blog. House prices are at silly levels, but Arran is still beautiful, the sea still clear and you can see seals on the rocks as you drive into town.


Jellyfish in the clear water of Corrie Harbour.

So what did I miss ? The announcement of record levels of abortion, HIV infection and drug abuse - nothing new there. Still trundling down the broad and pleasant road.

The greatest excitement seems to have been the Mark Thatcher brouhaha, where papers like the Guardian, Indie and Mirror have been able to vent their hatred - a hatred based purely on who Mark Thatcher's mother was.

Isn't that a kind of racism ? As Churchill said to Hitler's aide "Putzi" Hanfstaengle in 1931, "what is the good of being against anyone because of their birth ? How can anyone help how he is born ?"

Mark Thatcher may not (or may, for all I know) be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but remarks like George Monbiot's 'too thick for anywhere else' are in Scott Burgess' phrase 'breathtakingly elitist'.

The Monbiot article tells us that "Africa, to the British upper classes, remains an adventure playground", and quotes the school and university of various upper-class individuals.

I guess Monbiot knows of what he speaks, and he certainly has the genuine upper-class hatred of the respectable working and lower-middle class, though his website is surprisingly reticent about his own school and university.

Doubtless mater and pater sent this horny-handed son of toil to the local comp followed by the polytechnic. I think we should be told.

The Indie's editorial on mercenaries is white liberal racism at its best.

"Black Africa is no longer willing to accept the use of white mercenaries to upset governments, however repellent some of them may be"

Just switch that around, say with reference to the Gurkhas and the French Foreign Legion.

"White Europe is no longer willing to accept the use of black mercenaries to upset governments, however repellent some of them may be".

Imagine that in the Indie ? I can't either.

What Am I Doing Here ...

Car's packed, milk stopped, wife and three are long gone up the M6, son and I remain until the cat, who escaped from the house this morning, deigns to return (when he'll be imprisoned for the duration).

As I listlessly browse I see that david at Harry's Place is troubled by some of the content of Egyptian magazine Aquidati, as translated by MEMRI.

"Murdering non-Jews pleases God, because the flesh of non-Jews is the flesh of donkeys and their sperm is the sperm of animals."

Now I'm not sure about murdering Jews, but the last part is the prophet Ezekiel's opinion of Egyptians.

Ezekiel 23 is a lament for Samaria and Jerusalem, who have turned away from God. The prophet expresses this poetically as a parable of two bad girls :

19 Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt.

20 For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses.

'Flesh' is a slightly euphemistic translation for the male organ, comparing it to that of a donkey, and they've translated 'issue' into modern English.

I'm somewhat surprised the Egyptian Tourist Board don't use the verse to attract female visitors. It might also have been appropriate at a certain Royal funeral.

Away To The Hills ...

Followed by the Islands. Blogging will be light to non-existent for the next two weeks, unless I can borrow the PC from a right-on relative ('we saw Fahrenheit 9/11 in Penrith last night - really good') or there's an internet cafe here.



There's a lot of new blogs to catch up on, so apologies for the cursory shouts for Squander Two (liked the post on the burglar but don't seem able to link to it), Blithering Bunny (with great post on the unknown-to-me Keith Windschuttle affair), Boston blogger John R Pierce, European Weblog Review - a good idea, but could an RSS-powered site do the same job ?, and Assistant Brighton - the weblog of Jonathan from the band Assistant, who surprisingly are from Brighton. Demos available (at 5 meg I'll wait for broadband) and posts about Brighton Gay Pride. You are linking to the right blog, aren't you ?

British Sea Power - what a great name for a band.


And London had better watch out. Latif is coming.

Self Hating White Anglicans II

Neat post by George Miller.

Susurration, a blog that's been around a while (but I've only just found), has the follow-up to the Bishop Stephen Lowe story - the inevitable Guardian letter.

However good its tune, the real problem about I Vow to Thee My Country, like all aggressive and male-oriented hymnody, is that, in an age which has effectively relegated the second verses heavenly ways of gentleness and peaceful paths to a fairly painless insurance policy, an emasculated dreamlike world is wheeled out to sanctify whatever current war effort. Why not keep the tunes, but with some revamped non-patriotic, non-violent lyrics?

David Partridge

Oxford

Male-oriented - well, you can't get much more aggressive and fascistic than that, can you ? He must feel awful trapped in his gender.

David Partridge is a retired Anglican priest who works for the Oxford-based International Interfaith Centre, which "facilitates networking, encounter, education and research between religious and spiritual individuals, organisations, and communities throughout the world". He works on the "Palestine/Israel programme, Religion, Community and Conflict, in co-operation with Hope Flowers School, Bethlehem". At least the Hope Flowers School looks like a cause we could - and should - all support.

He also runs Clergy Against Nuclear Arms and in his spare time takes part in what Independent Catholic News calls "nonviolent civil disobedience" and what you or I might call politically motivated vandalism.

Stephen Lowe and David Partridge worry about patriotic, 'male-oriented' hymns and nuclear weapons. If only they could focus on male-oriented evil a little closer to their front doorsteps. In the newsletter of this Oxford Unitarian Church, after notification that David Partridge will preach about Peace on 26 January, there is a portrait of a chapel member.

Suzanne was the first pupil from her State school in Watford to win a place at Oxford University. She began reading for a degree in physics at St Hilda's College six years ago, attending Sunday services in Manchester College chapel, but spending most of her spare time doing unpaid work for 'Oxygen', Oxford's student radio station ... At the start of her second year at Oxford, in November 1997, Suzanne was attacked without provocation by a gang of youths late one night in Cowley Road. The head injuries that she received impaired her memory and concentration, and made reading difficult for her. She had to withdraw from her physics course and has only recently - after four years of recuperation - resumed her studies. During her long struggle to reclaim her life, she lost most of her school and college friends, became homeless, and suffered depression.

The perpetrators were doubtless "some of the most abused and brutalised people in our society" (© Johann Hari 2004).

Which brings this rambling post to the current issue of New Criterion magazine, devoted to religion. I recommend Christie Davies piece "The death of religion & the fall of respectable Britain".


Finally - you couldn't make it up - Labour MP Martin Linton appears on BBC Radio Four's Today to discuss a proposed new set of lyrics for 'I Vow To Thee My Country' by English patriot Billy Bragg, a man who believes his political opponents should be beaten up in the street.

Hacking Billy Bass For Pleasure And Profit

Dr Azizi (PBUH) links, I'm not sure why, to Middle East Times, who have this old story, which links to this site. The ingenuity of the Linux community never fails to amaze. The ultimate project goal - being able to videoconference via a talking fish - is one we can surely all support.



They also link to this tech blog, which has a link to these free games. Not Java or Shockwave either - real ones.

419 letters ...

Those fascinating offers one gets from a total stranger in Nigeria with 60 million dollars to share with you ?

I've had the Zimbabwean White Farmer variant, from "Timothy Kruger" ...

"Two weeks ago, our headquartes in Harare was attacked and looted by black protesters and in the process burnt down the whole building. Fortunately, they did not get access to the huge funds kept in the strong room which belong to the co-operation. This cash was kept at the secretariat rather than in the bank for fear of seizure by the government. Now I have the funds in my possession and would need to get it invested in a viable business venture in Europe."

Now, courtesy of "Adule Azizi", (who, like Mr Kruger, has a UK email address) is the Iraqi variant.

"The total amount involved is (USD114.2million) ONE HUNDRED AND Fourteen Million, Two hundred thousand United States Dollars only. I am revealing this to you with faith In Allah ,that you will never let me down in this business, You are the first and only Person that I am contacting for this business, So please reply urgently so that I will inform you on the next step to take urgently. With My influence, all will be safely handled and well done. At the conclusion of this Business, you will be given 40% of the total amount ,60% will be for me. We have to make haste to avert this fund being written off as excess profit and being channeled to the Islamic Terrorist Purse.

Awaiting your prompt and Positive response.

Yours Truly,

Dr.ADULE AZIZIs,ACCA,FCIA."

As Dr Azizi has only written to me, and I already have more dollars than I know what to do with (thanks to Mr Kruger), I'm happy for any reader who wishes to help him to do so. Anything but fill the Islamic Terrorist Purse (my daughter wants to know what they look like and if she can have one).