Just Like South Africa

It's always been a problem for the UK Left that Britain hasn't actually got an unpleasant, preferably fascist or racist, recent history to scare people with. You can't say - "If the Daily Mail had their way, it would be like Britain under Anthony Eden !".

We have Mosley (yes, I know the Daily Mail once wrote something nice about him), Cable Street and what else ? Kristallnacht or the Wannsee conference they ain't.

So we have to import our demons from elsewhere and adapt for home consumption. The Shoah is always a good standby - as the Department of Education says "Such events could happen anywhere at any time unless we ensure that our society is vigilant is opposing racism, sexism and other forms of bigotry". Continuous parallels are drawn, for example, between modern asylum-seekers and 1930s German Jewry.

The Ku Klux Klan are another useful standby. I'd like to see all our outdoor Church services end with a fiery cross - it's a wonderful image. But 30 years of BBC documentaries have indelibly associated the fiery cross with a far-away people of whom we know nothing other than that they're not very nice. Only north of the Border does some small memory persist of the cross which summoned the clan to war.

In its time even Pinochet's Chile was used. Peter Hitchens wrote in "The Abolition Of Britain" that 'when he ran schools in his home city of Sheffield, Mr Blunkett abolished uniform - in defiance of a ballot he himself organised - and corporal punishment. In a barely coherent defence of the uniform decision, he seemed to link the idea of school blazers with repressive and reactionary forms of government such as apartheid south Africa and Pinochet's Chile. Many years later, as a consumer of schooling rather than a council leader, he would vote for the introdution of uniforms at his own son's school.'

South Africa is back, following the decision of Greater Manchester Police to ban the word 'township', previously used to describe the sub-divisions. What was wrong with the word sub-division ?

The author of the memo, Chief Insp Jeff McMahon, said the term had "clear connotations" with South Africa's old apartheid regime and outlined the ban in a newsletter to his officers on December 17.

It said: "The term township has been deemed unsuitable for use by the force. There are clear connotations with this term and (the) apartheid regime of South Africa and the discriminatory treatment of black Africans."

His statement continues: "With immediate effect this term will no longer be used. The new term is `partnership'."

It adds: "Thus, in all written and verbal communication this should be substituted where the term township would currently be used. The term partnership suggests the notion of working together to fight crime and protect people."

Inspector McMahon has grasped the essentials of PC policing - form is everything and content unimportant. I do like "partnership suggests the notion of working together to fight crime and protect people".

"Notion" is about right - I'm reminded of Churchill's remarks when WWII officials wanted to set up 'Communal Feeding Centres'. "Why not call them British Restaurants ?" said WSC, "Everyone associates the word restaurant with a good meal, and they may as well have the name if they cannot have anything else".

As you can imagine the locals are well chuffed.

Of course there is one way in which the UK is very like the South Africa of thirty years gone - the guilty white liberal's mania for racial classification. If you have children at a State primary or secondary school, they will have been classified, sometimes via a form sent to parents, sometimes (at secondary level) by asking the children to self-classify (in the process making them ethnically aware in a way they might not otherwise have been), often at primary level by the head teacher's fiat. My children have never been asked so presumably the head takes a look and decides.

Each school's PANDA report (a report on the school by the local authority and not available to parents) contains a page like this one.

PS - according to Gene Expression, nineteenth-century Tory Prime Minister Lord Liverpool would have been classified as coloured under the apartheid laws.

For once ...

I can wholeheartedly recommend Johann Hari's piece on the torture and murder of Iraqi communist and trade unionist Hadi Salih.

Scotsman report :

Hadi Salih, a 56-year-old labour rights advocate and official of Iraq’s Communist Party, affectionately known by friends as Abu Furat, was found strangled to death with a steel wire in his home, his face beaten to a pulp, his hands bound behind his back.

His personal files, containing the names and addresses of colleagues in both the party and the labour federation he led were also stolen, his humble home ransacked.

With its signs of politically motivated brutality and torture, the scene resembled the interrogation rooms of deposed president Saddam Hussein’s security forces, officials said.

"The people who did this are very clearly members of the Ba’ath Party from the former regime," said Mohammad Jassem al-Abad, a leader of the Communist Party, which is participating in the forthcoming parliamentary elections that insurgents violently oppose.

"The way they killed him makes it very clear they’re the ones who did this," he said. "It is their methods. His assassination wasn’t random."

Hari raises no new issues - but his points need to be made over and again.

"The IFTU has reported a pattern of attacks on trade union offices and trade union members. The murder of Salih bears all the hallmarks of Saddam's Mukhabarat - the Baathist KGB. Whatever you thought about the justice of the recent war in Iraq - and there were plenty of good reasons to oppose it - the only decent path now is to stand with a majority of Iraqis against the murderers of Salih and dozens of other Iraqi trade unionists.

Yet - I can't believe I'm saying this - a significant portion of the left is not standing with them. John Pilger - who says he has "seldom felt as safe in any country" as when he visited Saddam's Iraq - now openly supports the resistance on the grounds that "we can't afford to be choosy". The Stop the War Coalition passed a resolution recently saying the resistance should use "any means necessary" - which prompted Mick Rix, a decent trade unionist, to resign from the STWC on the grounds that this clearly constituted support for the murder of civilians. George Galloway has attacked the IFTU as "quislings" and described the tearful descriptions of one of their members of life under Saddam as "a party trick".

A few months ago, Subdhi al-Mashadani, a representative of the IFTU, came to speak at the European Social Forum in London. This is a really important gathering of left-wing campaign groups who fight on issues nobody else in the political spectrum stands up for: defending refugees, opposing the sale of weapons to tyrants, ending the international drug patenting rules that are killing hundreds of thousands of Africans, and much more. So you would expect the international left to welcome him and hear him politely.

But he was an Iraqi who didn't restrict his comments to the need for occupation troops to leave once a democratic election has been held. He also insisted on talking about the nature of the Sunni "resistance" - one of the most reactionary political forces anywhere on earth, consisting of homicidal misogynists, homophobes and supporters of Sharia law. The audience at the Social Forum booed and hissed him so loudly that he had to leave the stage."

Speaking as a homicidal misogynist and homophobe, as well as a former NUR shop steward, the left in the West is a sad remnant of what it was, say, sixty years ago. But people like Harry Barnes and Mick Rix are still keeping that righteous flame cupped between their palms. They must feel awful cold and lonely, though, with only Johann, Aaronovitch, Nick Cohen and Peter Tatchell standing by them.

Another Doctor Writes

I can't afford a subscription to the British Medical Jornal, so what a good thing that the Magna Mater Melanie keeps tabs on it. Last time she took issue with an item - not to mention the comments posted to it - this time she loves it. She seems to have found a Glasgow GP who's a Theodore Dalrymple clone. The link is pay-for, so via Melanie here's a sample.

'If you're male and of the underclass in inner city Britain then watch out, because your life may well be poor, violent, and short. You will leave school at 15 with no qualifications. This in itself doesn't matter, because the real barrier is your complete lack of any life skills or social skills. You will be incapable of living independently and won't even have the basic ability to clean, cook, or pay bills. You will never understand how social systems work, and the height of achievement will be to get on "the sick"... Your lack of understanding and communications skills means that even when minor problems arise you resort to what you know: aggression and violence. You may have a girlfriend, but when the baby comes along it's all too apparent that you have no parenting skills and can't cope. Your frustration is expressed through taking drugs and beating the only person who actually loved you. You never see her or your daughter again, but her brothers give you a beating just for good measure... The years roll by, and you continue to steal, take drugs, and carry and use a blade. One Saturday night a younger version of you, aged 16, sticks a blade in your chest over an argument about football, the passion that is your only acceptable emotional outlet. One hour later the doctors walk away, having split your chest open but to no avail. "Just another dead ned," they all think. Thank Christ, anyway, because even though you're only 27, in all likelihood you would have strung yourself up in the next few weeks. Your attacker gets 10 years and a ride on the merry-go-round that you've just left. Nobody cares. This scenario is played out 24 hours a day, 365 days a year across the United Kingdom.'

Once again there's plenty of moonbattery on display among the medical comments. The response from Paul S Mcloughlin, of Ottawa Health Research Institute, makes me assume he's the subject of the research.

And I wonder if 'Sol Ridgeback' isn't extracting the urine. I hope he's not serious but it's possible.

"This hurtful and inaccurate article .... these poor, uneducated and villanous males all of whom are victims of modern greed and neglect by society .... the charisma and strength of soul displayed by such poor 'boys' that have been forced to reside in youth housing schemes ... drug addictions and violence merely go hand in hand when youthful cries for help are ignored time and time again."

Here are a few typical Glaswegian victims of modern greed and neglect by society :



And this is how they display their charisma and strength of soul.



While we're on the urban angst track, Harry recommends this blog. Full of delicately limned sketches of Hackney life.

United Queendom

Via the Times, the publicly funded Visit Britain organisation proudly presents "Welcome To Gay Britain".

A bit difficult to parody anything which opens with "Welcome to the United Queendom of Great Britain" and asks "isn't it time you came out...to Britain !"

All entertaining stuff, if you can square the Governments health promotions with a site which tells you how easy it is to pull strangers. London is "catching the eye of a local as you cruise down Old Compton Street and holding his hand four hours later as you sit on a bench by the Thames."

Well holding something, anyway. I'm a little more concerned that taxpayers money is used to promote the following message.

“We also have equal age-of-consent laws (set at 16), partnership laws and even legal-commitment ceremonies in some of our major cities. As for marriage, it’ll just be a matter of time!”

BBC Stealth Edits - The Baby Vanishes

When an unfortunate underclass woman, heavily pregnant, was stabbed to death in Hull, BBC Online had a tragic story.

"Murdered woman's babies also died" - was the headline on an item which began "Twin babies of a pregnant woman who was stabbed to death in a Hull street both died in the attack, police said."

Babies ? What ? Hang on a minute - isn't it the Vera Drake opening today ? It's only a foetus, after all - an 'insentient blob' (© J. Hari 2004). Better change that headline.

21 hours later the headline reads "Extra time to quiz stab suspect". The babies have disappeared from the first paragraph as well.

Polly is on top form with her Vera Drake piece. . How about 'no woman ever wanted an abortion ?'. That's right, Polly - just like no man ever wanted to fill the car up with petrol.

But Ms Stevenson's sad fate illustrates Polly's point. "Whenever abortion is hard to get, thousands of desperate pregnant women end up dead".

And remember - organisations like Life offer 'pro-life propaganda'. Whereas the fictional Vera Drake is, according to Polly 'excellent social history' about the 'bad old days'. After all, "Ask any woman ... from those pre-60s liberation times and they all have stories to tell about sex and terror for themselves or friends."

The older members of my family can talk about little else.

Another For The Sidebar ...

Third Avenue - another Englishman in New York. Seems a civilised sort of chap. And apropos of nothing at all (other than the NY setting), a totally gratuitous link to the Susquehanna hat company sketch.

Lake District Walkers - Hideously White

Woe unto any publicly funded body whose customers are mainly white, middle-class and middle-aged.

The Lake District is facing mass resignations by its volunteer rangers over a decision to scrap free guided walks in the national park because they do not attract enough people from ethnic minority communities.
Ranger-led walks are among 900 Lake District events planned for 2005-06 that are to be dropped because they appeal mostly to “white, middle-class, middle-aged people”.

It's true. "Visibly ethnic" minorities are like hen's teeth in Caldbeck or Cockermouth, although in summer Far Sawrey is besieged by Japanese lovers of Mrs Heelis. You will find the occasional black girl or young Asian professional walking the fells, but hoodies and gold teeth are pretty rare.

We were at Threlkeld sheepdog trials this summer (they were all found guilty) and - though it seems almost incredible in 21st century Britain - I'm sorry to have to report that there were very few black and Asian farmers present. There were however a few women farmers, one or two tweed-skirted, flat-shoed, mannish ladies with dogs, and a number of people with apparent disabilities - well, the beer tent had been open for several hours.

If this precedent is followed it could be farewell to most State subsidy of the Arts. Good riddance Covent Garden, get lost Glyndebourne, adieu Alhambra, ciao CBSO, push off Proms.


Above: not much melanin in evidence at Birmingham Royal Ballet.

The Royal Ballet was pretty pale last time I looked, too. And as for the arts and literature festivals - well, all the black faces at Cheltenham are on the lecture podium. Hasta la vista, Hay on Wye !

Cultures and Crimes - the Guardian strikes back

The new book on British policing, Cultures and Crimes by Norman Dennis and George Erdos, is dismantled in the Guardian.

"Leading experts on law and order have dismissed a claim that Britain has one of the highest crime rates in the developed world, caused by a decline in faith and moral values. "

Well, up to a point. We only get two comments - one from a Professor Mike Hough, director of Criminal Policy Research at King's College, London, who said: 'This is nonsense. Academics mostly agree that crime in the UK rose in the early 1990s, peaked around 1995 and has been falling ever since.'

Nothing like knocking over a straw man - Dennis' work is concerned with trends in crime from the 1950s to today. In any event, as Dennis responds, the only crimes which have fallen in the 1990s are those which the victim can do something about - burglary and car crime.

And an ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) spokesman called the book 'simplistic'. Nothing like a detailed rebuttal. Norman Dennis calls this approach 'contentless criticism'.

The Home Office have also chipped in, with the remarkable statement that "the risk of being a victim of crime is at its lowest since records began."

Are Newcastle Fans That Dangerous ?

I heard on the news that Premiership clubs are each giving £50,000 to victims of the Toon Army.

Season's Greetings

AL Kennedy's Christmas message, in which the old and much-loved themes of the traditional Guardian Christmas (Iraq, depleted uranium, Christians, TV, excessive consumption) are recycled in true sustainable style.

As much a part of Christmas as the Queen's traditional appeal to the evil Native Brits to abandon their childish fears of our multicultural Nirvana, although I notice her speech to the troops was singularly short on appeals to reach out to unfamiliar cultures.

It's All Our Fault (Again)

I wondered how long it would be. A few days ago I heard the first letter from a Radio Four listener suggesting that the UK was dragging its feet over aid 'despite spending billions on an illegal war'. Then a Radio Five news report in which unnamed persons were 'criticising George Bush' for sidelining the UN, and suggesting that he cared not for the poor and afflicted.

The Indian Ocean disaster is a heaven sent opportunity for liberal breast-beating into which can be shoehorned the correct views on globalisation, George Bush, Iraq, whatever. Try Jeremy Seabrook in (where else) the Guardian, who manages to cover imperialism (holidays to you), Iraq, globalisation and asylum seekers in a few short paragraphs.

"when we distinguish between "locals" who have died and westerners, "locals" all too easily becomes a euphemism for what were once referred to as natives. Whatever tourism's merits, it risks reinforcing the imperial sensibility."

"while the tsunami death toll rises in anonymous thousands, in Iraq disdainful American authorities don't do body counts."

Of course the Guardian has a different, non-imperialist view of dead Asians. If white people kill them the Guardian will give max publicity. Otherwise forget it. Congo is the locus classicus - maybe five million deaths, but an absulute sod to blame on Whitey.

Which is why I've read little about Aceh in the last few years, where tens of thousands died in the wave but the news was slow to emerge - as journalists, diplomats and NGOs have been barred from the area for years due to a separatist revolt which got minimal coverage. I wonder how many have died in the revolt ?

The script has an interesting subtext, too - that these poor people are completely incapable of helping themselves and are utterly dependent on the Great White Gods coming across the sea - a kind of latterday Cargo Cult mentality projected onto the inhabitants of Indonesia and Sri Lanka by BBC correspondents who on a conscious level would reject racist stereotyping as something that only the Evil Right do. The victims are interviewed as if they're chavs complaining that the windowframes have needed painting for six years but the council haven't done it yet.

I'd recommend the reports of a Radio 5 reporter called (I think) Julie Ashmole.

"The promised aid hasn't arrived yet - how do you feel about that ?"

The interviewee failed to rise to the bait. He seemed to have other things on his mind.

I'm trying to find a source for the BBC story of a few days ago that the ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations) summit a year or two back rejected a proposed early warning system, such as exists for the Atlantic and Pacific, on grounds of cost and the low risk of such an event. I'm presuming it's true, in which case this can perhaps be seen with hindsight as a mistake.

Watch for more breast-beating in the days ahead.

None of the above, of course, absolves us of the obligation to stump up. Hilary Benn has shown the way, announcing that of the Government's annual £400 billion tax take, no less than £15 million, or 0.00375% of Government revenue, has been earmarked for the disaster. An example to us all. For a take-home pay of £20,000 pa it works out pro-rata'd at 75p.

The Government needs the other £399.985 billion for vital health initiatives like this one.

125 Years Ago

One of the pleasures of a holiday away is the time to read, and despite a return trip to Old Trafford I found time to get through most of Denis Healey's 'The Time Of My Life' and all of John Prebble's 'The High Girders'.

I'd read Prebble's Scots history primer The Lion In The North, and The Highland Clearances, but had no idea he'd been writing so long - The High Girders was published in 1956, and it's about the collapse of this bridge. Which inspired the Bard of Dundee to pen this - started the day after the disaster, when the news became public in Dundee, and finished the following day.

The bridge collapsed at about 7.20 pm, one hundred and twenty five years ago today.

"On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time."

Prebble's book describes the storm that night, when people could not stand up out of doors, the retired admiral in his house overlooking the bridge, fearful for it, reading his storm books and watching the barometer, the young people sitting in the dark with the curtains open to watch the train cross the bridge and the dawning realisation that it has disappeared half way across.

For me the hero of that night is the locomotive superintendent, Roberts, at the Dundee end of the bridge. The train has not arrived, although he knows it went onto the bridge. Contact has been lost with the box at the far end of the bridge. Realising that something is very wrong, he and the stationmaster set out on their hands and knees, in darkness and a force 10 gale, across a two mile bridge to find out what has happened. One turns back, but Roberts crawls on alone in the dark, feeling his way, until his arms touch space and he finds the thousand yard gap where the bridge had been.

The bridge's designer, Thomas Bouch, was blamed for the collapse by the public enquiry, and died of a broken heart within a year, although there is still debate as to the exact cause of the disaster. Bouch had been due to design the proposed Forth Bridge but was hastily replaced.

The remaining girders were reused when the new Tay Bridge was constructed. The remains of the old bridge can be seen today alongside the new one. The railway engine was also salvaged and worked on land for another thirty years, much loved by her crews and affectionately knon as 'The Diver'.

If you're in the land o'cakes, there's currently a commemorative exhibition in Dundee.

The Indigenous People Of Britain

Are quite well described in this BBC item on the end of the United Nations "Decade For Indigenous People".

"Their land has been taken away, their sustainable use of land dismissed, and their cultures have been denigrated"

"There is a sense of hopelessness about the ability to control our own destiny that leads to social ills so common in indigenous communities, such as alcoholism, drug abuse, and domestic violence"

"They get disconnected from their communities and the environment and many eventually get completely detached from their own indigenous identity"

Indeed. And anyone who isn't detatched is a Nazi.

Merry Christmas ! Blogging will be light to non-existent as I shuttle between London, Old Trafford (treat for the kids, not for me - give me the Victoria Ground any day) and Swansea. Back on New Year's Eve.

Murderers Against Capital Punishment

TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS - Gunmen riddled a Honduran bus with bullets, killing 23 passengers and wounding 16 others in what they called a protest against plans to reintroduce the death penalty.

A police spokesman, Deputy Commissioner Wilmer Torres, the gunmen left a note saying they represented a revolutionary group that opposes plans to reintroduce the death penalty for serious crimes in the country.

The message also threatened politicians who have spoken out against organized crime, including President Maduro.

I imagine Sinn Fein/IRA are against the death penalty too.

The Welsh Are Bastards

On current demographic trends, this statement will be true in another thirty years or so.

In 2003, Wales became the first constituent country of the United Kingdom where more than half of births (50.3 per cent) were outside marriage. Northern Ireland had the lowest proportion of births outside marriage (34.4 per cent), while in the United Kingdom as a whole 41.5 per cent of births were outside marriage.

The area of England with the lowest bastardy rate ? Swinging London (34.5%), where the large Asian and African (though not Caribbean) immigrant communities frown on illegitimacy. And the highest rate in England ? The hideously white North-East at 53.5%.

The graph on page 73 shows illegitimacy, after falling in the late 60s and early 70s (probably due to the advent of the contraceptive pill) rocketing in the Thatcher years, doubling between about 1983-1988. By the mid-1980s the working class were increasingly fragmenting, the underclass was burgeoning, and the song which reflected the traditional working class view of bastardy ceased to be heard on the football terraces of England.


Who's your father
Who's your father
Who's your father referee?
You ain't got one
You ain't lost one
You're a bastard, referee

The Writing On The Wall

"30somethings lead a baby boom" trumpeted the Times last week, in an upbeat piece celebrating a 4.3% rise in the number of babies born in England and Wales in 2003. At last, a change in the profile of our ageing population ! Maybe we won't have to work till we drop to pay all those index-linked public sector pensions.

But the really important information was half way down the item.

The figures, published yesterday by the Office for National Statistics, show that the proportion of older mothers would be even higher if not for growing numbers of births to immigrants, who tend to start their families much younger. Births to mothers born outside the UK accounted for nearly a fifth of all births in 2003, more than 50 per cent higher than the proportion ten years earlier. The increase was due entirely to a rise in births among immigrant women aged under 35.

The full ONS report is here.

Think about it. In England, one baby in 5 (19.2%) born last year was born to a mother who was not herself born in the United Kingdom. When you consider the number of second and third-generation immigrants (from whatever country) living here, forecasts that the Native Brits will be a minority by the end of the century start to look conservative.

In London, according to the Independent newspaper, 43% of all school children are non-white (note - it's not skin colour but culture which is important - so immigration from Albania, for example, is probably more problematic than immigration from India, a country with which we have many shared cultural links). Given recent large-scale immigration from Eastern Europe, Native British schoolchildren are almost certainly already a minority in London schools.

47.3% of 2003 births in London were to mothers born outside the UK (p74). The NUT will soon have a new minority to worry about.

Way back in the early Eighties when Mrs Thatcher talked about being 'swamped by people of a different culture', she was attacked on the grounds that the number of immigrants was a tiny percentage of the UK population. Nowadays the tone has changed from 'we're a tiny minority' to 'there are a lot of us, so you'd better take us into account'. I don't think that's an unreasonable thing to say - I merely illustrate how the terms of the debate have changed.

There is a politically honourable (though IMHO practically idiotic) position on immigration - namely that any attempt to restrict it is inherently racist, and that anyone who can afford the fare is entitled to live here. For those who take this view, the numbers are irrelevant, although strangely the same rules don't seem to apply, for example, to Jews living in the West Bank.

This may be the view of Her Majesty's Government. But if so they're remarkably shy about articulating it.

Others continue to worry at the numbers. There's a real split on the left between the 'figures are overstated' response (which implies that were they true or understated there WOULD be something to worry about) and the 'it doesn't matter what the figures are' response.

David Aaronovitch criticises the "melange of questionable statistics, assertions dressed as facts and straightforward scapegoating cranked out by Migration Watch UK and its main scribbler, Anthony Browne", and attacks the 'lies, damned lies' of the anti-immigration lobby. Yet when you read the pieces, he doesn't actually rebut anything, presenting the arguments of Migrationwatch as if they are self-evidently incorrect.

In this context an internal Government email is revealing.

"Can we stop saying that Migrationwatch forecasts are wrong . . . Migrationwatch assumptions are often below the Government Actuary's Department high migration variant."

Which brings me onto our old friends the BNP, and the stir created by a recent Searchlight article.

The vast majority of BNP candidates will be in Labour constituencies, an indication of where the fascists’ support is beginning to emerge and solidify. Searchlight has long argued that traditional Conservative voters have been the first to switch to the BNP in local elections, largely as a means to keep Labour out or as an anti-Asian protest, but this vote is soft and returns to the Conservative Party or goes elsewhere in national elections. The BNP support among traditional Labour voters is firmer and is an indication that sections of the working class are breaking with their traditional loyalties. These voters tend to be less embarrassed by the overt racism of the BNP while finding its anti-capitalist rhetoric appealing. It is also clear that many BNP voters, especially the young, have never voted for another party in their lives or have not done so for many years.

I have argued before that New Labour, and the UK left in general, having given up on Clause Four, is implementing the agenda of the 1970s student union, the politics of race, gender, sexuality - none of which have great appeal for the remnants of the British working class.

The coming change in the makeup of the English population is unprecedented. As the Observer said, "It would be the first time in history that a major indigenous population has voluntarily become a minority, rather than through war, famine or disease." I feel that though we may be able to avoid war, famine and disease, the chances of British politics splitting on racial lines are very high, with perhaps Fiji as a model for the future. The only real question is at what percentage level of non-Native Brit population the change to racial politics will occur. Given the large birthrate differentials between immigrants and Native Brits, it's quite possible that it will occur well beyond the point at which political action will be able to prevent minority status occurring. After all, 20% of the new voters in 2021, and half the new voters in London, will have mothers born abroad, and nothing can change that.

So arresting BNP members, Guardian exposes, BBC undercover documentaries, forced multiculturalism in schools are in the long term ineffective. Unless some kind of leftist police state comes into being.

Interesting times for my children. Where's that New Zealand Consulate phone number again ?

New Blogs In Heaven Tonight

Well on my blogroll, anyway, in no particular order ...

Militant Moderate - who, along with three quarters of the blogging world, isn't impressed with the Tory stand (or lack of) on ID cards.

Mugged By Reality - does exactly what it says on the tin. Good stuff if you don't mind a fair sprinkling of clubbing/party reminiscence. Which I don't. Mind you, as an old man I'd say this was well out of order. But confession purges the soul and after repentance comes salvation ...

What's That Smell ? - I think the word for this is eclectic.

And After Grog Blog - some witty stuff here. I think Norman Geras would appreciate a post which begins:

"I wonder how often Martin Flanagan saw Robert Louis Stevenson bounding in from the Kirkstall Lane End."

Lastly - it's not a new blog, but for all round coverage of the Scottish Regiments disaster and a lot of other things, Cabarfeadh is your one-stop blogging shop. Lots of good stuff, not all on military matters.

More parochially, among the casualties of Hoon's Howler are the Glorious Glosters, the regiment of this man.

Three Great Posts

Difficult to find the time for major posts, what with wrapping, shopping and the odd party - but what need when you can sit back and see people saying just the things you'd want to say, given time, knowledge and writing ability.

Tim Worstall brilliantly takes apart the caring Dutch, who now deliberately kill 4-5,000 old or sick people in their hospitals each year, quite apart from the babies. From 'post-natal abortion', through the killing of the old, to the UK where you must provide ramps for the disabled but can kill a baby for a cleft palate, he hits every target.

Euthanasia has been practised for 10 years in the Netherlands, the first country in the world to legalise the practice, and now accounts for 4-5,000 deaths a year, 3.5% of the national death rate.

Huh? This ever so rare proceedure, one to be used only in extremis, in the most difficult cases, now means that for the poor benighted Dutch they have a 1 in 30 chance of being murdered in their sick beds? This is an advance in civilisation in exactly what manner? With these numbers would you want to be placed in an old people’s ward in that country? It is of course absolute proof that there is no validity to the slippery slope argument, no, none at all.

The practice is severely circumscribed and tightly regulated.

I believe this is known as gallows humour.


Melanie Phillips takes apart the Law Lords judgement on the Belmarsh 'detainees' (who are of course free to leave the UK at any time), focusing particularly on the bizarre theory that the law cannot discriminate between UK and foreign nationals - I believe we still have, for example, residence and immigration laws which (in theory at any rate) explicitly discriminate, and on Lord Hoffman's apparent ability, in his own eyes at least, to judge terrorist threats better than the elected Home Secretary.

And I urge anyone with an interest in the UK Criminal Justice system to read Norman Dennis at the Civitas blog, currently posting up a storm on Blunkett, the myth of "falling crime", and the claim that Jack Straw had left the Home Office "in a mess".

In the first eleven months of 2004, the year of Mr Blunkett's departure, with December's figure of about 2,500 still to be added in, there have been 33,673 personal-property robberies in London--with December included, not fewer than 36,000 for the full year.

Thus Mr Blunkett has not succeeded in getting the figures back even to the 35,709 personal-property robberies of 2000. Mr Blunkett was all the further, of course, from getting back to the figure with which Mr Straw began, the 27,000 of 1997, which included business robberies as well.

Robberies of personal property in London is a good figure to take. The Home Office is directly responsible for London's policing. There's been no significant change in how it robbery is defined. The category of "robberies" has hardly affected by changes in recording practices by the police. The British Crime Survey has too few cases of robbery for it to be of much use, so the Home Office uses the police figures. The figures are right up to date, so officials and ministers cannot claim that things have (unprovably) improved since the figures were collected

For all these reasons, the usual slipping and sliding between one set of figures and another is not possible here.

On the assumption that the December 2004 figure will be very low at 2,500, robberies in London would have fallen from 48,000 in 2001 to 36,000 in 2004.

But as late as 1990 there weren't as many as 36,000 robberies in the whole of England and Wales!

Taking the generous and hopeful estimate I suggested above--that the figure for London for December 2004 might be only 2,500--as late as 1961 there weren't as many as 2,500 robberies a year in the whole of England and Wales.

In the year David Blunkett became Home Secretary, 2001, there were 5,900 robberies in Lambeth alone. The national figure for robberies did not exceed 5,900 until 1969.

It is scarcely an occasion for popular celebration when the figure for Lambeth alone in the first 11 months of this year is 2,419. For this is more than the national figure of robberies for the full twelve months of 1961, 2,349, just before the cultural revolution began to shower its blessings upon us.

No the wonder people "fear" that crime is growing. People would have had to be extremely stupid not to come to fear crime. The stupid thing is to say that the fear of crime is "as much the problem" as crime itself.

Don't Smack Them, Drug Them - Part II

Scotland is the part of Britain which is closest to one of the two dreams of the children's liberation lobby - the removal of a parent's right to discipline their own child.

By happy chance it also has increasing misbehaviour in schools - and a tenfold rise in Ritalin prescriptions to children in the last seven years.

Children are no longer badly behaved - now they 'suffer' from "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), which causes (my italics) hyperactivity in children."

The other dream of the children's liberation lobby ? Well, children should have all the rights of adults. Work it out for yourself. Hint - there may be a motive involved. The children's liberation lobby (NCH, Barnados, NSPCC, who support policies which would horrify their founders, such as the lowering of the age of consent for homosexual acts to 16 and the abolition of Section 28) are also the people who are most excercised by internet child pornography. Projection, anyone ?

Two Plays

One play produces protests which get no publicity and the play goes ahead.

The other produces violent protests which get lots of publicity, and the play is stopped.

Violence seems in this case to work quite well. It'll be interesting to see how this one pans out. Will we see Harold Pinter and co lining up to defend free expression against the 'religious right' ? Will the Guardian and U75 talkboards resound with condemnation of the protesters ? Don't hold your breath.

I'm presuming that no-one in Birmingham is planning to dramatise this story in the near future.