OK Come In

Via Lib Dem blogger Liberal England.

"All girls are soppy.

This fact is recognised by all boys and the message is clear but seme to become dimmer as they draw on to man's estate chiz.Eventually it fade altogether and all is lost in a welter of SOP and SLUSH, like you get in the films they dare not show us at Skool.

'How beautiful,' sa your mum to your pater. 'If only you could be noble like that ocasionaly.'

'It is only a world of makebelieve,' he repli. 'You must face up to reality.'

'Reality,' sa molesworth 2, 'is so unspeakably sordid it make me shudder.'

He take a bullseye and pater lite his pipe. The matter is closed."

St Custard's Online !

Scotsmen ! Welshmen !

The Land O'Cakes and the Land of My Absent Fathers needs you !!

Tickets are still available for Murrayfield on Sunday.

This fact doesn't quite fit with yesterday's Times, by the wonderfully named Owen Slot.

"... the number of supporters following the team to Edinburgh is astonishing. Tourist organisations are estimating a migration of some 40,000, many without tickets. Murrayfield’s struggles to sell out will be solved by vast seas of red."

Scotland had 47,000 for the Italy game, 20,000 short of capacity. Unless the Scottish performance was so dire that they're staying at home, those "40,000 Welshmen, many without tickets" actually consist of 15,000 going to the game and 25,000 (the 'many without tickets') watching at home or in the pub.

From The Curate's Garden

First an apology - I have a number of new blogs linking to me, and I haven't yet reciprocated nor given their blogs a quick one-line review, as is my wont. I'll get there in time. But welcome to the Spinster and Anthony Cox, both back in full effect.

The battle for liberty continues - all those calling for an elected Lords should ponder that without them, we would already be liable to be locked up on the word of a Government minister. Anyone who thinks this would stop with Islamist terror suspects hasn't thought too much about the future.

There is a case for such detention in exceptional circumstances, such as Ulster in the early 70s. We're not in that situation.

The proposal to drop habeas corpus is one of the unintended side-effects of mass immigration. In 1939-45 it was suspended for domestic fascists and UK-domiciled Germans (most of whom were, of course, refugees fleeing Hitler). German Intelligence, throughout the war, had remarkably little information on what was happening in the UK.

The War on Terror is different in lots of ways. One way is that there are far more potential fifth-columnists - in the form of several million Muslims. Note the word is 'potential' - this is not some blanket accusation. But the Guardian and BBC have devoted many column inches and much airtime to the notion that the war is a 'War on Islam'. Were I living in a land where the media daily critised the Government for their 'War on Christians' it might make me think too.

Britain is now an open country, in immigration terms the equivalent of the drunk girl on the sofa as the party ends, being eyed up by a couple of dodgy lads. I can see why the Government are worried about a terrorist strike. But these people are British too. They are entitled to the same liberty as Englishmen have enjoyed for centuries. Better to take the risk than surrender liberty.

Churchill has a neat quote in his History of the English Speaking Peoples. James VI of Scotland has accepted the English throne after Elizabeth's death.

"So ignorant", says Trevelyan, "was James of England and her laws that at Newark, he ordered a cut-purse caught in the act to be hanged without a trial at a word from his royal mouth." The execution did not take place.

Without a trial. Sums it up. Don't let it happen. How ironic that the Patricia Hewitts of this world should be the ones to destroy freedom. What did C.S. Lewis say again ?

The barbarians come, Lewis told us, not over the parapet, not carrying their clubs and wielding their weapons, but they come with polished fingernails and blue pin-striped suits, gathering in well-lighted conference rooms. They are the good people who say that they know how to make life better for all of us.

Mind The Gap, Democratic Deficit

Like many another blogger, I've been asked to give a shout to Mind The Gap and their London blog, which I wilingly do. The gap between politicians and the people is a mile wide, as both left and right recognise, the difference between the responses being that the idiot left's response is 'whatever you did before that didn't work, do more of it'. See Helena Kennedy for details.

The website is a rather snazzy production, with animated graphics, scrolling messages etc. One to watch.

As you can see from this site, I prefer content to form, and so also highly recommend the Democratic Deficit site. No idea who's behind it, but loads of content, and the recommendations are pretty straightforward.

Where To Next: A Democratic Manifesto

Preamble:

People are happiest when they have maximum control over their own lives.

You and your family are the best people to decide how your money should be spent.

Propositions:
1. The public services should (a) be controlled locally, and (b) by direct democracy.

2. Recall, on the Californian model should be introduced.

3. There should be an audit of this country's membership of the European Union, with special reference to its inbuilt democratic deficits. The new constitution - a politically correct manifesto of gigantic proportions - does at least have the merit of allowing countries to withdraw from membership.

Couldn't agree more. For example, there should be a direct connection between council voting and council tax - no central funding of any kind should be allowed.

If central government wants something doing, it should either

a) fund and manage it itself OR
b) make it a legal obligation on the local authority, and allow council taxes to rise accordingly

That way you can see what you're paying for. It would also have the effect of either causing massive council tax levels in certain authorities, stopping the huge underclass subsidies currently administered by said authorities, or causing central government to come out from behind the skirts of the authorities and administer/spend directly. The Guardian would be apoplectic, but that's a fringe benefit.

Can't understand why the Tories don't suggest something like this.

Extreme Tracking ...

Really is a little flaky around the edges. The service seems to go up and down like a navvy's pick.

A small example.

Last week my usual weekday traffic of around 280-odd lost souls (you know who you are) took a drop on Wednesday to 200 (link only valid for a week or so).

It took another hit on Saturday night and Sunday. Sunday eve I'd only had 90 visitors - and thirty of those had been in the previous hour.

Maybe I was posting rubbish those days.

But the funny thing is that (allowing for his marginally larger readership) exactly the same thing happened to Andrew Sullivan.

Trevor Phillips and Education

What Trev had to say about segregation wasn't really so important, though it's entertaining to see the Guardian supporting 'separate development'. Isn't there an Afrikaans word that means the same thing ?

As I blogged a while back, there are five main strands of opinion on the reasons for the dreadful academic performance of black boys in the UK.

They are :

Racist teachers

Institutional Racism

Black Street Culture

Black Pupils need Black Teachers (the Apartheid Approach)

Don't Ask Me, Mate

The first two boil down to 'it's Whitey's fault', and are still the main approach of white liberals - for reasons which will become clear.

The third is favoured by people like the great Tony Sewell, John McWhorter, and Joseph Harker of the Guardian. Any white person expressing such ideas is obviously a buttoned up racist, ill at ease with the realities of multicultural Britain and its vibrant black youth culture.

The fourth is seemingly now the view of Trevor Phillips, the Guardian and the BNP.

Trevor has moved from the 'Dunno, mate' school, of which he was still a member in July 2004, at the conference on 'London Schools and the Black Child'.

We could offer more support to schools with large numbers of African and Afro-Caribbean pupils," he says. "But why should we discriminate against Indian pupils who may be just as economically disadvantaged, but somehow have overcome that disadvantage, or white boys, increasingly among the lowest achievers and often among the poorest?"

Why indeed ?

But a closer reading of Trev's words moves him nearer to the Tony Sewell camp.

"Mr Phillips also called for tougher action on black fathers who do not take parenting responsibilities seriously"

"In order to tackle the lack of sufficient black male role models, he also suggested that the Government pay incentives to encourage more black men to join the teaching profession"

We're slowly moving somewhere. Trevor Phillips is right about the shortage of black male role models. He hasn't quite grasped that the missing role model is called a father.

As Joseph Harker said "At the top of the list must surely be the breakdown of the black family: 50% of Caribbean mothers under 35 have never been married - five times the white figure - and the number is increasing."

I remember a couple of years back a friend of Stephen Lawrence's describing how Stephen was different - in that both his mother and his father would turn up to parents evening.

It's difficult for a white liberal, who believes that the family is mum, the kids, and whoever she's currently shacked up with, to look at the community with the highest number of fatherless children, the highest level of criminal behaviour, and the lowest level of educational attainment, and put two and two together. It would mean a re-evaluation of some of their most cherished beliefs about the oppressive nature of the traditional, patriarchal family. Certainly for boys there is only one thing worse than being in a traditional family, and that's not being in one.

Nah - raises too many questions. Let's just stick to white racism, shall we ?

The other day I quoted Robert Whelan on the underclass :

We have created the classic conditions for the emergence of a warrior class: separation of economic activity from family maintenance; children reared apart from fathers; wealth subject to predation; and male status determined by combat and sexual conquest.

This is not only the view of a detatched commentator - it's how some black people see themselves (and of course it's not confined to the black community - there are just fewer guns in Shildon or the Rhondda). And let's face it, it's cooler to be a latter-day Beowulf than a burger-flipper. In the short term.

This is the story of a warrior and now you know It
True warriors go ahead make some noise
It aint healthy to be makin n****s paranoid
Hit your corner wit my weapon I dont need my boys
Im doin 120 in the fast lane
Kick back just relax let me do my thing
Dont give a f***k about you suckas gotta maintain
Money power and respect in this rap game

I can give you n****s somethin you can talk about
I can turn your smile upside down
You aint no G u a f****n clown
I can take your girl and t-t-turn her out
dont hold it in let it all out
I can give you f*****s something
to be mad about
invite her in send her back out
With my DNA all in her mouth

Popular romantic lyrics seem to have changed a bit. I'd love to hear Nate Dogg's version of the Victorian smash 'Come into The Garden Maud'.

The baby-father is only one aspect of the prevailing black culture, defined as the villain by McWhorter, Sewell and Harker. But the liberals sure don't help.

In McWhorter's words "it’s time for well-intentioned whites to stop pardoning as “understandable” the worst of human nature whenever black people exhibit it. The person one pities is a person one may like but does not truly respect"

Apologies ...

For light posting - especially when there's so much to post about - from Trevor Phillips (read John McWhorter for background), an English Parliament (Third Avenue has a good post - link in sidebar), astrakhan furs and abortion, Kosovo. Plus new links. When I get home.

As the older generation (the racist, sexist, homophobic churchgoing generation) pass away, and the sixties acid-head or the seventies speed-freak hit pensionable age, look out for the geriatric prison, full of people like this.


One more - I just have time to link to this fabulous post - The Pooter of Geek on the little known country of Fiskistan.

Underclass - You Get What You Pay For

From birth :

"She was last seen by officials four days before she died of severe blood poisoning caused by a dirty nappy in March 2003.

A friend of Pickering said: 'She's still on smack. She's using two tenner bags a day.

'When she told me she was expecting twins I couldn't believe it.

'I knew her baby had died but she didn't say anything about neglect.'

Two of 27-year-old Pickering's other children are looked after by her parents while another was adopted."

Once again social workers have done a great job.

"Social workers and health officials visited Alex 28 times in 11 weeks.

The baby was on the child protection register from birth."

"South Lanarkshire Council social work chiefs and health officials say they have already conducted an internal review which clears them of blame over Alex's death."

Mary Pickering obviously don't need no piece of paper from the City Hall.

Pickering lives with her latest partner at a council flat in Rutherglen, near Glasgow. Pickering was living in Larkhall with her then partner at the time of Alex's death.

Till (someone else's) death.

"A burglar who beat up a terminally ill pensioner has been jailed for life.
Cancer sufferer Mary Richardson, 81, died without ever leaving hospital after being battered by Barry Alderson in her home in North Tyneside.

The 24-year-old heroin addict admitted causing grievous bodily harm with intent and burglary last July.

A post-mortem examination showed how his victim died of pneumonia three months after the break-in.

The court also heard how the pensioner who was only 4ft 11in and weighed just six stone, suffered severe head injuries including a fractured skull and broken nose in the attack."

Don't worry though - the courts will protect you. Look at that life sentence.

Alderson, of Felton Close, Shiremoor, will serve at least three years and nine months before he can apply for parole, Newcastle Crown Court heard.

Three years and nine months. He'll be 27 or 28. That'll teach him.

Half-Term Treats

We don't watch daytime TV in our Victorian-themed household, so I missed the BBC's four day spectacular Streets of Vice, so well timed to catch the half term crowd.

Andrew Bowman has the details at Biased BBC.

Redlegs

What happened to the Scots sold into slavery in Barbados ?

Listen to the documentary on Radio Scotland.

Happy Lone Mothers Day

I know of no single instance in anthropological literature of a community where illegitimate children, that is children of unmarried girls, would enjoy the same social treatment and have the same social status as legitimate ones. The universal postulate of legitimacy has a great sociological significance ... It means that in all human societies moral tradition and the law decree that the group consisting of a woman and her offspring is not a socially complete unit. The ruling of culture runs here ... it declares that the human family must consist of a male as well as a female.


Bronislaw Malinowski, Sex and Repression in Savage Society, 1927.



The only real family is the mother and her baby. Everyone else is peripheral.

Claire Rayner, The Jewish Chronicle, 17 June 1994.



We have created the classic conditions for the emergence of a warrior class: separation of economic activity from family maintenance; children reared apart from fathers; wealth subject to predation; and male status determined by combat and sexual conquest.

Robert Whelan in the foreword to "Farewell to the Family - Public Policy and Family Breakdown in Britain and the USA" by Patricia Morgan, IEA Health and Welfare Unit 1999.

What A Country II - Evil and Stupidity

What's the connection between my sons and a 27-year old underclass adolescent ?

They all enjoy using their air rifles.

The boys are taught never to point, never to leave loaded. Never have anyone in front of the gun. Targets are concentric paper circles, tin cans, or (a favourite competition shoot with friends) small balloons tied to tree branches on long lengths of string - quite tricky on a windy day at 50 yards.

The other, a lowlife from the notorious Easterhouse estate in Glasgow, likes to take pot-shots at passing firemen and two year olds. He killed the toddler.

There are two things you can do here.

You can try and do something about a culture that produces physically, if not socially, grown men who think sniping at strangers is a reasonable way to spend a Wednesday evening. You can try and do something about a culture, and a benefits system, that produces places like Easterhouse, visted in 1989 by Charles Murray before he wrote 'The Emerging British Underclass'.

Or you can just ban airguns. Take them away from law-abiding people. After all, it worked with handguns, didn't it ?

It's a great thing, the welfare state. The law-abiding pay taxes to house and feed the underclass (their drugs are usually bought with the proceeds of burglary). Then when a member of said underclass acts as you might expect, the law-abiding get one of their pleasures taken away. Because it's far, far easier to hassle the law-abiding than to do anything about the underclass.


NOTE - Easterhouse has probably had more written about its problems than anywhere in the UK, partly because of the presence there until recently of the holy fool Professor Bob Holman, who gave up a well-paid academic career to work with residents groups, work which produced an idiotic book and an idea - the idea being that large sums of taxpayers money should be given to residents groups. Perhaps until their leading lights are paid as much as a Professor of Social Work ?

(The idiocy consists of a complete refusal to judge the poor the way he would judge others. I find that patronising and disrespectful, treating the poor as children who don't know any better. But he is a saint - albeit an idiotic one. Talk about going the second mile.

One Sunday afternoon, I settled down to watch Rangers v Celtic on TV. The buzzer to our flat went and for once I told the boy to go away. A few minutes later, it went again. A neighbour shouted, "Mrs Brown is having her contractions, can you take her to maternity?" Reluctantly, I heaved the woman into the minibus. What annoyed me was that her husband refused to accompany her as he preferred to watch the game.

Words fail me.)


CONTEMPT OF COURT WATCH - of course the 27-year old underclass adolescent may be entirely innocent. The toddler might have been shot by a different underclass adolescent.

What A Country

The theory :

Home Office minister Hazel Blears on anti-social behaviour :

"we are seeing much more cooperation from the courts in making sure decent people who are prepared to stand up and challenge this behaviour are properly protected."

The practice :

An unemployed kickboxer who killed a pensioner with a single punch was jailed yesterday for just 2 1/2 years.

Brutal Craig Swann hit out at 67-year-old William Bird who had asked him to stop cycling on a footbridge. Swann, 21, then cycled off, leaving Mr Bird seriously injured, and boasted later to his mates that he had "beaten the c*** out of an old duffer".

The grandfather-of-five died five days later in hospital. The attack in the Somerset seaside town of Bridgwater sparked outrage at the time and feelings were running high yesterday.

Deputy Mayor Bill Monteith said: "It's an absolute scandal that this happened in the first place. It's hardly a sentence at all. With good behaviour, he'll be out in 14 or 15 months."

More on the story here.

Distraught wife Jane broke down when the sentence was read out and was too upset to comment after the case.

Naturally the Tories have condemned Judge Thomas Crowther's (who described the killing as ‘unnecessarily violent’ – how much violence did he consider necessary ?) derisory sentence on the 'unemployed father-of-one who has previous convictions for battery'. Not.

Bridgwater MP Ian Liddell-Grainger said: "There is no excusing what he did, but he has pleaded guilty and it must be left to the judge to decide on the sentence."

The Home Office are putting lots of resource into tackling anti-social behaviour. Faced with three yobs riding their bikes towards you on a pedestrian bridge, they recommend Mr Bird should go here. What a pity his Blackberry wasn't working that day.


Meanwhile, just up the A38 in Bristol. This hardly bears thinking about. That poor child. England, 2005 :

A boy aged three spent three days alone weeping over the body of his father, who had been battered to death at their home in an apparently motiveless attack.
Abraham Marshall is thought to have survived on a few biscuits and had been sleeping huddled next to the corpse. He was finally rescued when relatives called at the flat in Bristol.

And in High Wycombe the girls are proving that when it comes to killing your schoolmates, equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity, is the name of the game. Sisters are doing it for themselves.

A girl aged 12 has been questioned over the “sudden and unexplained” death of an 11-year-old girl, police said yesterday. The suspect, who has not been named, was arrested on suspicion of assault after Alisa Haywood died from acute swelling of the brain.

"As long as you can't see any cameras, hit 'em"

Following the uncovering of abuse at the privately-run Oakington detention centre, immigration officials have found a sure-fire method of preventing further occurrences.


(and new reality TV star Jason Martin looks a perfect candidate for the Big Brother house. When he gets out, that is.)

BBC pay criminal for story

The Scotsman

"The BBC tonight came under fire for paying one of the men who burgled Norfolk farmer Tony Martin to appear in a programme.

Brendan Fearon – who was wounded by Mr Martin and whose 16-year-old accomplice was killed – is to receive £4,000 for appearing in a docu-drama.

The BBC has defended the move. But the farmer’s MP has accused the corporation of “gross insensitivity”."

The BBC version is here.

Perhaps they're trying to do a deal before the law is changed.

Doubtless Mr Fearon will be able to think of something to spend the money on.

Poverty, Crime and Terror

As all good liberals know, poverty is a breeding ground for terrorism. That's why most of the 9/11 crew were middle class grads, why the people who killed Daniel Pearl were lead by a public schoolboy, why a grammar school kid from Gloucester has just pleaded guilty to plotting to blow up an airliner, and why there seem to have been more Web designers in Guantanamo than in Silicon Valley.

Similarly in the UK, poverty is inextricably linked to crime. It's nothing to do with culture.

Just look at this FT report, analysing the 10 wealthiest and 10 poorest seats in the UK. Forget that the wealthiest seats are more likely to vote Labour than Tory. Just think on the poor seats and the associated crime and disorder.

Take the poorest seat of all - Camarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, a notoriously high crime area where no-one goes out after dark for fear of gangs of marauding English hippies asking the way to the nearest Steiner school.

Or the seething multicultural melting-pot of the next poorest - North Cornwall, where it's literally impossible to leave your towel on the beach in summer without it being vomited on by a sixteen year old public schoolboy. No wonder houses there are so hard to buy - I mean sell.

Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross. Caernarfon and Meirionnydd Nant Conwy. The very names strike fear - by-words for burglary, alienation, drug abuse and gang violence. Places where after dark the inhabitants cower in their fortified, alarmed and bolted houses, anxiously waiting the daylight hours.

In the wealthiest places, like Wimbledon, crime is almost non-existent.

How right the liberals are that poverty causes crime.

Ordinary People ...

Research their family tree. The 1861 data is out now.

Guardianistas take "A Journey Into The Heart Of Belonging".

Posting ...

At Biased BBC this morning. I should have added that Radio Four's James Naughtie was of course one of Mr Blair's Chequers dinner guests.

Meanwhile mosey on over to Dumb Jon's, back on top form, taking in Douglas Hurd and gay bishops ("Yes, Julian, people refusing to give you a job as a bishop is exactly the same as abducting you to a foreign continent and working you to death").

And don't forget to visit Peter.

I Don't Often ...

... take a crack at a Gary Younge piece, in the same way that I try to avoid hitting suicidal pheasants on the lanes hereabout. Fish, barrels, and all that. When he gets off the subject he was hired to write about he can be good.

But this is awful.

We're talking colonial oppression. I just can't be bothered to fisk it all (you can look at his Auschwitz comparison), but he does commit one gross outrage against truth.

" ... photographs from Camp Breadbasket showed British soldiers standing on Iraqis enmeshed in netting, forcing them to simulate oral and anal sex, feigning to punch them in the head and parading them around on forklift trucks. "

Yes. All very bad form. But atrocities ?

"... the truth is that the atrocities committed in Camp Breadbasket were not aberrant ..."

Gary, an atrocity is what happened in Iraq on Monday. The kind of thing that gets the editor of the Independent running into the room, trousers round his ankles, shouting "Hold The Front Page !"

Not taking photographs of someone 'feigning to punch them in the head'.

If feigning to punch someone, and photographing it, is an "atrocity", I look forward to Gary's take on this story.

A man told today how he was attacked by a gang on a London bus while an accomplice took pictures on a mobile phone.

Andrew Greenwood was asleep on the top deck after a night out in the West End when as many as five youths beat him up.

He said they took turns to punch him in the face "as if it were a game". One witness said a gang member captured the attack on his mobile phone camera - and police believe the assault may have been part of a violent craze where youths broadcast images of attacks on the internet and send them to their friends.

Mr Greenwood, who is 28 and works for Victim Support, suffered a fractured eye socket. His left eye is still closed and badly bruised and doctors fear his sight may be permanently damaged.

He said: "It's sick and disgusting people could take pleasure out of watching others suffer like that. They were bantering as though it was some kind of joke or a game."

A new AL Kennedy Column

Subject : dead people.

Madness rating : moderate

Phase of Moon : half full (or half-empty)

Mentions of

Depleted Uranium : No
Reality TV : Yes
Christians : No
Porn : Yes
Blood : No
Celebrities : Yes
Bush'n'Blair : Blair
Swearing : Yes