Money Isn't Everything, Says Millionaire Etonian

"Tory leader David Cameron says there is more to life than making money, arguing that improving people's happiness is a key challenge for politicians.
In a speech to the Google Zeitgeist Europe conference, he said the focus should not just be on financial wealth.

Under a Tory government, the public sector would become "the world leader in progressive employment practice".

But he conceded that some on the right would believe people's well-being was nothing to do with politics."

Would they ? I thought the idea on the right was that independent people were happiest and that politics should facilitate this by getting the state out of the way as much as possible. Maybe not.

Mr Cameron does seem to be a bit of a Boho.

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


It's the education bill today, in which Labour MPs will once again try to deny working class kids the sort of education most of them had. Tim Worstall has the links here and here.

Robert Crampton tells it like it is :

The people I’ve met who went to grammars learnt in greater depth and breadth than I did. Their lessons were more rigorous and more challenging. Roy Jenkins? Denis Healey? Harold Wilson? I don’t think they were baking sheets of paper in the oven to make them look like medieval parchment for history homework in the Thirties, as I was 40-odd years on.

I didn't do that at grammar school either. But my sons did, in year 8 comprehensive.

They should consider this, these Labour men and women who detest their leader and educational selection in equal measure. For more than 30 years, from the death of Hugh Gaitskell to the death of John Smith, when the grammar school generation was on stream, the Labour Party did not feel the need to choose a public schoolboy for its leader. Since 1994, when the comprehensive generation started to become available, they’ve had Blair from Fettes, and soon they’ll have Brown, the product of a ruthlessly selective fast-track education. And before too long, I suspect, we’ll have Cameron from Eton. He’ll be that school’s nineteenth Prime Minister. We’re still waiting for the comprehensive system to produce its first.

Fight ! Fight ! Fight !

Brute Anderson :

"Britain exists for the benefit of the British. Foreigners are here by sufferance. If they become a nuisance, they should be deported."

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown :

"We immigrants should withdraw our labour for a day. I feel ashamed of being an immigrant. We take the abuse when we should be rising, as they are in the US."

Brute : "There is no case for admitting Kosovan gangsters or Somali criminals"

Yazza : "Any man with swarthy skin is now suspect"

Brute : "immigration has worked to our advantage, by controlling wage inflation"

Who's this 'our', paleface ?

Yazza : "Have you noticed, no businesses join in the demonisation of migrant labour ?"

At last the Indie comes out in support of unfettered capital !

Brute : "If we find ourselves apparently bound by international conventions on refugees and asylum which pre-date mass air travel and are reminiscent of the era when all the political refugees in London couldhe accommodated in the British Museum Reading Room, we should repudiate them. If we find ourselves restricted by international laws which oblige us to treat foreigners as if they were British we should repudiate those as well. After the war, the shattered nations of continental Europe, whose legal systems had been polluted by dic tatorship and occupation, felt it necessary to rebuild them according to abstract international principles. Forty years later, the nations who had escaped from the Soviet empire also decided to draw on others'experience in order to introduce the rule of law. Hence the popularity of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

In Britain we had no problem with either human rights or the rule of law. We had enjoyed both for more than two centuries. We signed the ECHR to encourage the foreigners, not because we thought that it could ever be needed here. In the 1960s we abolished the death penalty, legalised homosexuality, liberalised divorce and permitted the mass murder of foetuses - which now seems to be regarded as a human right - without foreign help.

Today human rights legislation incites prisoners to spend their idle hours dreaming up compensation claims, while schoolmasters wonder whether they are entitled to confiscate their pupils' mobile phones. Those who believe in Britain for the British also believe that our people should elect our Parliament to make our laws,and that legal disputes should he adjudicated by our judges. Those who think like that take a benign view of British history. They feel grateful that they were born to a double privilege: the Queen's subjects, they are also British citizens. They believe that over the centuries their country has been a powerful force for good. At least until the port has been circulating they will be too modest to attribute this to moral superiority. They will merely point to the geopolitical advantages ofthe English Channel.

As an island, we were insulated from the ravages of foreign wars. We should now exploit our insularity, both legal and geo graphical, to protect us from the ravages of foreign judges and uncontrolled immigration. Whether in Nato or the EU, it might be necessary to give up some righhts to take our own decisions, making lesser conces- sions to achieve greater goals. But we remain sovereign. That is a prospect which appals those who take a different view of British history: the Ken Livingstone campp. To them, our history is a criminal record of oppression and exploitation. It is not a matter for pride but for apology (there have been moments when Tony Blair seemed to endorse that view). Whenever Britain was in dispute with another nation, Britain must be in the wrong (until the blessed day when we quarrel with George Bush's America). It would be absurd to suppose that we could dispense with the EHCR - if anything we need it more than the other Europeans do.

The Livingstonians so dislike their country that they wish to transform it out of recognition. To them immigration is an agent of irreversible cultural change : the more disruptive and less assimilable the immigrant, the better."

Yazza : "Why didn't we move to Canada when we could have ? We need to say enough is enough. Immigrants, refugees and their descendants are in this together. We should launch an Immigrants Proud campaign, organise nationwide marches and boycotts, monitor speeches by politicians and rain down objections on those who play this card, expose bigoted bureaucrats and officials, engage in robust debates with academics, boycott media outlets guilty of serial hostility against immigrants and so on. To accept animus in perpetuity as a condition of citizenship is an intolerable deal and we should now be bold enough to reject it."

First They Came For The Firemen ....

You do have to wonder if some Guardianistas in Essex are closet BNP activists.

"Patriotic students have been banned from bringing the St George's flag into college during the World Cup - in case it causes offence.

Teachers are refusing to allow teenagers at Palmer's College in Thurrock to get behind their team and have ordered them to leave their England flags at home."

UPDATE - and now they come for the taxi drivers ...

UPDATE2 - now they come for the taxi-drivers of Cheltenham ...

"The council has cited safety concerns over the flags. A spokesman for the borough council said the ban was not just on the grounds of taste."

UPDATE3 - now they come for the (Asian) taxi-drivers of Rochdale and Oldham ...

Taxi proprietor Farooq Yousaf came unstuck with Oldham Council when they banned him from sticking posters in the back of his cabs bearing the flag of St George and the words ‘Come on England’.

The council told Mr Yousaf, who owns Motown Private Hire which has 40 taxis, the stickers were a form of advertising and therefore banned.

He said: "It’s ridiculous. They told me we were advertising, but what are we advertising?

"All I am advertising is England. I think it’s the ‘Come on England bit’ that’s upset them. I can’t understand it. It’s just a show of support of England for the World Cup."


What with Mr Harker's 'Is it just me, or is anyone else slightly worried about the number of St George’s flags flying from road vehicles right now ?', it's time to repeat a two-year-old post.


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



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

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

from Treasure Island, by R.L. Stevenson.



Bowler-Tip - The England Project

More Demographics

"Birth rate increase may reflect Blair policies, says expert"

Thus the Guardian.

The birth rate has climbed to its highest point in 13 years to an average of 1.8 children for every woman in England and Wales, the Office for National Statistics said yesterday.
The climb from an all-time low of 1.63 children per woman in 2001 is still significantly below the level needed for replacement - which is more than two. But there was speculation yesterday that the childcare reforms of the Blair government might be having an impact.

Huzzah for Sure Start !

"We looked at the reasons for this slight, hopeful rise," said Julia Margo, author of a report called Population Politics published in February by the Institute for Public Policy Research. "It seems to map on to 2001 when Labour started pushing on family friendly policies and childcare. There is a better deal now from government than ever before."

Hooray ! We won't all have to work till we're 156 ! The family lives !

Yes, but whose family ?

But, she added, there were other possible reasons that do not hold out promise for the rise across all groups which is needed for a sustained increase in births. "We don't have access to the background data, which would tell us whether there are socio-economic differences, whether professional women will still be having less children." It could be that the rise is restricted to poorer women and those from migrant groups, who traditionally have had larger families.

The figures are here.

The figures by health authority (.xls) and local authority are interesting. The lowest birth-rate ? The hideously white north-east (which you may recall has the highest bastardy rate in England). The highest ? West Midlands and North London.

A quick Excel sort gives us the following top ten local authorities, ignoring Rutland, where a woman having quads seems to have distorted the figures.

Newham
Blackburn with Darwen
Bradford
Barking and Dagenham
Luton
Oldham
Peterborough
Pendle
Slough
Boston

Yes, that last one's right - Boston, Lincs.

The bottom 20 or so are interesting, too. Three categories.

a) wealthy white urban areas - there aren't enough yuppies moving back into town. Chester, Cheltenham, Warwick, Oxford, Cambridge, Durham.
b) poor white city centres - Sunderland, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle under Lyme. Same phenomenon ? Natives avoiding the cities ?
c) certain London boroughs - Islington, Camden, Ken & Chelsea, Westminster. By the time you can afford to live there your breeding days are over.

Doing The Jobs We Don't Want To Do ...

In a Home Office style. Who says John Prescott's had no effect on policy.

Are you a cultural competent helping professional ?

Via Faceright, the Seattle School Board website in all its ghastly glory.

This may seem an extreme case, but the same principles are at work throughout the UK public sector, and have been ever since the principle of 'treat others as you'd like them to treat you' was abandoned as hopelessly ethnocentric, and replaced by 'to treat people the same you have to treat them differently'.

I was reading Susan's 'Nursing Times' the other day, and a midwife was describing how she was coping with the challenge of diversity. When introduced to a family she shook hands with the mother, but the father greeted her outstretched hand by putting his firmly behind his back and turning away.

Our heroine was quite miffed by this, but fortunately she discovered later that the clients came from a culture where a male could not touch a pregnant woman (our midwife was with child) to whom he was not related. So it was all right after all !

This would just about be justifiable if applied consistently. But imagine if the guy came from, say, a neo-nazi survivalist cult, and didn't want to shake hands because of her race ! No NHS treatment for you, scumbag !

Turns out in practice all cultures aren't equal. But the cultures you can discriminate against are limited to one ethnic group. Can't imagine why.

To quote this old post :

I was in a Government legal department a day or two ago. The walls and stairs were covered with anti-racist and 'diversity' posters, and as I awaited my appointment I could read the rules against discrimination of any kind on grounds of sex (sorry, gender), race, disability or sexual orientation.

During my interview I noticed a Bible on a shelf, used for swearing affidavits. 'Do you have a Koran ?' I asked. 'Oh yes', said the woman behind the desk, 'but women aren't allowed to touch that - I have to ask a man to get it.'

Cracking Stuff ...

Shuggy with a long, thoughtful, beautifully argued post on regime change in Iran. RTWT.

Shuggy's either
a) writing a lot in the evenings
b) during the day when he should be teaching
c) knocking this stuff out in his lunch break, in which case he's a genius

There's A Small Postette

At Biased BBC.

Satire Throws In Towel ....

"The under-fire Home Office has suffered a fresh blow with the news five illegal immigrants were found cleaning one of the department's offices in London.
The Nigerians were arrested after checks on their immigration status.

They were working for a firm which was contracted to clean Becket House, part of the Immigration and Nationality directorate (IND)."



Passport forgery law is repealed by accident.

The Home Office faced fresh controversy last night after ministers were accused of accidentally repealing the law which makes it an offence to have a forged passport.

In an extraordinary development, it was claimed that Labour's Identity Cards Act had repealed the existing laws before the new laws to replace them come into force.

One court case involving two men who were caught with forged passports has already had to be adjourned.

Peter Briffa channels Gary Younge (among many others) ...

"But this is Blair’s Britain, where black footballers are tolerated just so long as their white colleagues get all the limelight ..."

Joseph Harker, whose work I usually admire, beats him hollow ...

"I've been looking at the drivers of these flag-waving vehicles, and - OK, I admit this isn't exactly scientific - half of them are in white vans, and the rest are white, male, tattooed, pot-bellied 35 to 55-years-olds: exactly the type I've been seeing on TV for the past month complaining about "our houses going to the asylum seekers", or that "we're losing control of our country". I can't tell if these drivers come from Barking and Dagenham, where the BNP gained 11 seats, but that borough is just a short drive from where I live, so who knows?"

Followed by :

"There is a serious point to this."

At Least They're Honest II

Former Home Office minister John Denham :

I think the real problem is that community cohesion ends the idea that a diverse society can be built without the white majority having to change very much.

The change-over from "they're a tiny minority - your fears are groundless" to "there are other cultures than yours - you might want to consider changing" (with its unspoken 'or else') is almost complete. Only compulsion is left to follow.




Denham's article is apparently (I couldn't find it) available at Catalyst, a tax-funded magazine produced by the Commission For Racial Equality. It also contains an entertaining article by one Rachel Pillai, bemoaning the tendency of some tabloids to "play loose and fast (sic) with the statistics they publish".

"In the lead-up to the last round of EU enlargement, one of the tabloids claimed that 1.4 million eastern Europeans were on their way to Britain – a completely unsubstantiated claim."

As she doesn't name either the tabloid or its publication date, her claim is also completely unsubstantiated. But let it pass.

In contrast to the evil tabloids with their right-wing agenda, the Home Office estimate was 5,000-13,000 - and this was backed up by the Guardian, quoting an unreferenced "new survey".

British fears of an influx of immigrants from eastern European countries joining the EU in May were rubbished in Brussels yesterday as a new survey found that total migration into existing member states after the EU's biggest ever enlargement is likely to be about 1% over the next five years. If correct, the figures mean there will be about 220,000 immigrants a year into all 15 current members. That suggests that the government's original "open-door" estimate of 5,000 to 13,000 a year coming to the UK is realistic and does not require limits on benefits, quotas or other restrictive measures.

"This study confirms the commission's view that fears of a huge wave of migration from the new member states will be proven to be unfounded," insisted Margot Wallstrom, commissioner for employment and social affairs. Pat Cox, the Irish president of the European parliament, was blunter. "The biggest flood we've had to date is not of humans, but the flood of ink on tabloid red tops," he said.

The actual number - according to the BBC, was about 329,000 over 18 months. The unnamed, unsubstantiated tabloid estimate was out by a factor of 7. The Government estimate was out by a factor of about 20. What a pity the CRE don't see fit to share those "unsubstantiated claims" with us.

It Gets Worse ....

I missed this - the reason why we've lost large numbers of foreign criminals. It's our old friend "management by target".

"The Home Office instructed immigration officers not to deport foreign convicts because of fears that they would claim asylum, a senior Whitehall insider has alleged. The policy was implemented more than two years ago as part of a wider, undisclosed strategy to reduce asylum claims so that the Home Office could meet Tony Blair’s target of driving down the number of applicants for refugee status.

This undermines claims by Blair and Charles Clarke, the home secretary, that a simple breakdown of communication between immigration and prison service officials was to blame for the fiasco."

So Blair's asylum promises of 2004, apparently so effective, are actually being produced like this. Reading councillor (now an MP) Robert Wilson went out on patrol with Thames Valley Police.

"Wilson, a councillor at the time, was stunned by what he saw that Saturday night. “The vast majority of people being picked up and processed by Thames Valley Police were not in the UK legally,” recalled Wilson. “That surprised and shocked me.”

At the time, police avoided his questions on the numbers of foreign nationals being arrested by saying they did not keep such statistics. Most of the drug-related crime in the area, Wilson was assured privately by officers, was being carried out by foreign gangs. He now claims police officers in any major town in England will have a similar story to tell."

"When he was elected to parliament as a Conservative MP for Reading East last year, Wilson pursued the issue with more vigour and more authority. In the course of investigating the level of foreign criminality in his constituency, the MP drew out comments from senior police officers and immigration officials. Their testimony has convinced him the Home Office is turning a blind eye to foreign criminals for an easier sweep-up of law-abiding individuals and families who have had their applications for asylum rejected."

Hence the Samina Altafs and Sarah Hatas of this world. It's just less hassle to get a mum and two kids on a plane than to sort out criminals.

“The immigration service has been told to pick the low-hanging fruit,” says the MP. “They have turned their back on anybody who could cause the least bit of difficulty.”

It makes a kind of perverted sense, I suppose. For thirty years now law-abiding natives have been left to fend for themselves while the people who make their lives a misery have had state funds, lawyers, social workers and safari holidays chucked at them. It seems only fair, and in keeping with previous policy, that the least offensive, and most law-abiding illegal immigrants should get the 5 a.m. knock on the door, while the real bad boys go untouched.

By now Wilson had made enough waves to generate a flow of information towards him. In a letter to the MP, one senior immigration official, who remains anonymous, confirmed that immigration officers were forbidden from going on police operations or dealing with immigration offenders arrested by the police unless they were failed asylum seekers.

The immigration service officer wrote that his colleagues’ hands were tied by orders to specifically target failed asylum seekers.

“Immigration service personnel are under instruction not to get involved in assisting the police with offenders unless they happen to be failed asylum seekers,” wrote the officer. “This is because these offenders are likely to claim asylum and tip the scales the wrong way. Thus are the figures massaged.”

“Reading is no different from any other town or city in the UK, every economic hub will have the same problems as we do,” said Wilson.

“The only difference is that I have uncovered police and immigration officers who are willing to give me the information that shows it is illegal foreign nationals who are involved in most of the criminality here.

“The police have done me that service because they fear for the public and the lives of their officers.”

Immigration - Don't Know, Don't Care

I think the full evidence will be worth a read when it turns up on the Parliament website. Notice in the BBC report the appearance of a new panacea.

"Mr Roberts said he could "understand the public's frustration" but the system would be tightened up when new "electronic borders" came into effect."

Electronic borders, eh ? The ID card will save us all !

Times - "The committee was told by the chief economist at the Department for Work and Pensions that between 200,000 and 300,000 national insurance numbers were issued each year to foreigners and that immigration checks were carried out on only 2 per cent."

BBC - "A senior immigration official has told MPs he did not "have the faintest idea" how many illegal immigrants there were in the UK.
David Roberts, of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND), added there was little point trying to hunt individuals who overstayed their visas."

Telegraph - "In the past, immigration officers went to addresses given by asylum seekers or potential illegal immigrants only to find they were not there."

"The committee questioned other officials over the distribution of National Insurance numbers to foreign nationals. These are used by people who have no right to work in this country to prove they are eligible to do so.

Jonathan Portes, the Department for Work and Pensions chief economist, said NI numbers were not meant to prove entitlement to work, so Jobcentre staff issuing them made no checks about an applicants' immigration status.

Again, the MPs were nonplussed. Mr Denham said: "Given that there is very limited enforcement, would it not be sensible not to issue NI numbers to people who are not legally in the country?"

Mr Winnick said: "Has that thought never occurred to you? Millions will think it the most sensible thing to do."

But Mr Portes said it was the task of the Jobcentre interviewer to establish that the applicant was who they said they were. "It is not about ascertaining whether someone is legally in the country or has the right to work."

At another hearing, Sir Gus O'Donnell, the head of the Civil Service, said the release of foreign prisoners with no attempt to deport them was unlikely to result in the dismissal of any officials."

Scotland Attracting Economic Migrants

Well, Jack McConnell said he wanted fresh talent. Yesterday my wife had lunch with an old friend, whose elderly parents have just moved from Surrey to Banffshire - to avoid having to sell their home in old age to pay care fees. The fees are, of course, state-funded in Scotland.




South of the Tweed, England attracts younger, more vibrant migrants.

Baybasin first came to Britain in 1997 and claimed asylum. While his application was being considered, he was sentenced to three years for possession of a firearm and ammunition — although this was reduced to one year.

He was refused asylum but won his appeal and it is believed that the Home Office was appealing against his victory when he was arrested.

Abdullah Baybasin, who is said to have been responsible for 90 per cent of the heroin in Britain, ran an extortion racket in North London, terrifying Turkish and Kurdish businessmen with extreme violence, using petrol bombs, guns and machetes.

In 2002, the gang openly clashed with supporters of the Kurdish political party, PKK, on the streets around Green Lanes, North London. One man was stabbed to death in the fighting.

Scotland Yard was so concerned about the gang that armed patrols were put on the streets.

From Pole To Pole

I've been writing about the Poles off and on for a couple of years - ever since I realised who the student-looking chaps in the farmers portakabin down the road were. Nice chaps working on the farms, anaemic blondes staffing the Lidl tills - they're all over the place. Stories like this and this are popping up too.

The Sunday Times reckons some 350,000 in eighteen months. Blunkett's Home Office estimated some 13,000.

Coleman believes the only comparable migration was that of French Protestants, known as Huguenots, after the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685 ended their right to practise their faith at home.

An estimated 50,000 fled to Britain in the 17th century, adding about 1% to the country’s 5m population. The current Polish intake, although far greater in numbers, is a lower proportion.

Professor John Salt, of the migration research unit at University College London, agrees with Coleman’s view. “What we are seeing now . . . is something unprecedented,” he said.

Some Brits have welcomed these new migrants with open arms. The Telegraph's Tom Utley loves Marek and Anna - so pleasant and so affordable.

When a member of the English educated classes finds a polite, hard-working immigrant, it's the done thing to make a noise about it, like the inner-city teacher lauding Ghanaians ("the most polite and respectful society I know").

I'm a little more leery of what's happening. Firstly, many Poles are coming here to stay. They're bringing wives and kids. In the nearby market town a Polish deli has opened. Great news for a Catholic primary a tad short of the faithful (our first Polish kids start next term) - on a national scale, great news for Catholic educators, otherwise looking at vast areas, once the Irish immigrant hearts of our great cities, which are full of Catholic schools with 90% Muslim pupils.

I'm trying to take a long view on this. The fact that these new Brits are polite and hard-working, do not do crack or firearms, nor are they likely to blow up Tube trains, is a function of the culture they have arrived with. It tells us nothing about what their first and second generation descendents will be like after twenty years exposure to the cultural vacuum of the UK.

Before the borders were effectively opened in 1997 there had been three great waves of 20th century immigration into the UK - West Indians from the Caribbean, Pakistanis/Bangladeshis from what was then East and West Pakistan, Hindus and Sikhs from India and the Punjab.

All of these groups on arrival were intensely respectable and law-abiding. The Windrush generation were as good a bunch of people as you'd find anywhere, and their education in the 1940s/50s Caribbean was as British as anything taught over here. But they were coming to a Mother Country that had just stopped believing in itself, armed with a culture which turned out to have no value in its original home. Something happened to many of their children between 1957 and 1981 - and it wasn't good. You can see the cultural descendents of Windrush in the immaculately dressed families heading for Wandsworth churches on a Sunday - but you can also see street crime, shootings, a gigantic bastardy rate - what Robert Whelan called a warrior culture on the streets.

Likewise the parents and grandparents of those who torched Manningham, "protesting against the BNP" by attempting, 600-strong, the mass murder of 22 elderly white Labour Club members, were a law-abiding bunch who came here expecting to become Brits. I've posted on this previously.

The first generation of immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh came here as "immigrants". They came expecting and wanting to integrate to some extent into the existing community. The collection of photographs taken of the first generation by the photographic studio in Manningham Lane illustrates this. The first week’s wages went on a Burtons suit and the men proudly displayed watches, pens and radios, mostly supplied by the photographer.


Two great migrations - two serious sets of problems twenty years down the line. What's the secret of the Sikhs and Hindus, whose migration was around the same time as the Muslims yet after twenty or thirty years here still aren't setting fire to other people or their property, but instead are becoming richer and better educated ? Is it that they, of all immigrant groups, have effortlessly translated themselves into the middle class ?

I'm really not sure - I'll have to ask Sunny. Family values will account for some of it - but Muslims have those too. My gut feel is that the Hindu community are perhaps the most economically valuable, and also the most portable. Were things to go terribly pearshaped here we might well find their marketable skills and capital heading elsewhere.

Some of the new immigrants since the borders were opened - Kosovans, Albanians, Somalis - came from countries with an existing culture of violence. Poland has been at peace, whether it wanted it or not, for sixty years.

Under Communism, the Catholic Church became the soul of Poland and centre of resistance to Soviet occupation. To be a Polish Catholic was to be a Polish patriot.

Then the Wall - and the Soviet Empire - fell. I don't know what that's done to church attendance back home, but there are about 300 Poles, mostly under 30, living within a four-mile radius of our church. You can count the Polish attendees at Mass on the fingers of one hand.

These people - and more their children - will not have the faith or the memory of oppression which sustained their parents and grandparents. They will have TV, a UK State schooling, cultural vacuum, and the Welfare State. It may well be that their children won't fancy a Portakabin and a fiver an hour. It's a bit early to celebrate the Poles - about 25 years early.

Think Of It Always - Speak Of It Never

There are some political truths that are better not uttered. Take terrorism and the Iraq war, for example. You know, I know, the cat knows that overthrowing Saddam made a terrorist attack, home-grown or sourced overseas, more likely. IMHO that's just one of those crosses we have to bear.

Some on the left love to remind us of this basic truth - particularly in its home-grown variant. The Government, for eminently sensible reasons, shy away from it like an alcoholic sighting a pink elephant.

The BBC, for some reason, really likes to play the 'if you upset them they'll riot/blow things up' angle, often mixed 50/50 with 'really nice people/religion of peace'.

I can only assume that for the left, and for the BBC, the tolerance and good nature of the natives is a given that they can presume upon, no matter what is inflicted upon them. Their first reaction to 9/11 was to ask 'what have we done to upset them ?', so they assume that the mass of Brits will react likewise to 7/7 and any future slaughters.

Here's a BBC piece on the proposed new Britishness lessons, in which one 'Harris Bokhara' (sounds like a tweed rug to me), of the Muslim Association of Britain, tells it bluntly.

"What was the reason why these people actually committed these disgusting acts?

Unfortunately it was our foreign policy, it was the issue of the illegal war, the illegal occupation of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the continuing abuses of the Palestinian people, the illegal occupation of Palestine by the Israeli state.

So I think until the government actually addresses these issues unfortunately we'll keep on having these problems in the UK particularly."

Can't put it straighter than that. The MAB spokesman's message is simple :

"Change British foreign policy or more British Muslims will try to kill you. You may not like it, we may not like it - but that's the way it is."

Soggy Clippings From The Curate's Lawn

Tim Worstall says the necessary on the Kill The Sick Bill.


Computational Racism ?


BBC News 24 interview not the planned guest, but his taxi driver.


Good news for some :

The poor state of the economy is having an effect on infrastructure
Zimbabwe's inflation rate has surged past the 1,000% mark signalling that the African country is struggling to keep its economy functioning normally.

Not the poor Zimbabweans, but for those who (up to the last budget) avoided tax via offshore loans.

It was rather beautiful if you like that sort of thing. Instead of being paid for your work, you worked via a company (usually in the IOM or Channel Islands) who the client paid. They then didn't pay you much, but they gave you a large, repayable loan in a carefully chosen foreign currency. Carefully chosen from a range of basket case economies so that by the time repayment was due the loan was worth about a fiver. Zimbabwean currency was a favourite. When you got the loan, of course, you immediately converted it into a solid currency at whatever the going rate was.

I wonder on what grounds the IR are challenging ? Presumably if the rate of interest was non-commercial ?

True British Values

"The BNP is the complete opposite of the true essence of Britishness.

Our community has four years to think about what has happened, in the recent local elections, and I look forward to the first opportunity when we all can soundly and robustly vote out the fascist BNP and restore true British values to Hainault."

With these stirring words the Labour Party's Mark Santos wrappeth himself in the Union Flag.

Mr Santos, as director of the taxpayer-funded London East Aids Network, exemplifies the good old fashioned British values so dear to the hearts of those who fought against Hitler.

Such as

- the advocacy role of our African Services,
ensuring that people can overcome cultural
and linguistic barriers
- a pilot of workshops for gay men dealing
with issues of long-term diagnosis and mental
health
- a pilot of courses targeted at recently diagnosed
African clients under the title
‘Maisha Maizuli’ and held in English and
French
- having an Artist-in-Residence for a year,
allowing people to explore living with the
Virus in an holistic and creative way
- our new gay men’s website promoting
access to relevant services and information

It's enough to make you sigh for the days when Labour Party people were happy to be open about hating Britain. Only Ken Livingstone and the SNP still carry the torch.

UPDATE - the ordinary people of Redbridge are upset too.

"This is a borough that has provided a haven for the survivors of the holocaust and also for those fleeing persecution, a tradition of which it could be proud."

says Diana Neslen.

Indeed, a haven for the survivors of the holocaust is something to be proud of - like the State of Israel. Er ... is that the Diana Neslen who wants the EU to continue funding the Hamas Government ? Who signs petitions for the IRA front group Relatives For Justice ? Any relation to former Al-Jazeera correspondent Arthur Neslen, I wonder ?

Me no understand. The BNP, who Ms Neslen thinks should be excised 'like a cancer', have some decidedly dodgy views on Red Sea pedestrians, and think illegal immigrants should be sent home - the latter a policy which is, in form if not in fact, shared by Her Majesty's Government.

Hamas, who Ms Neslen thinks should get EU taxpayers money, believe Jews to be sons of pigs and monkeys, that the very trees will call for their deaths, and have a policy of slaughtering those they believe to be illegal immigrants - men, women and children. The category of 'illegal immigrant' consists of every Jew in the State of Israel.

Ordinary legal caseworker Krista Everington was shocked and saddened too.

"I hope that Redbridge Council will ensure that the views of the single, and therefore thankfully quite powerless BNP councillor, are challenged at every point"

"Before joining RNID, Krista worked in welfare rights advice and advocacy with a range of national organisations for the past six years."

Good to see the ordinary folk are finding their voices.

What The Hell Happened In Kingstanding ?

From the vote fraud capital of England, this BBC story:

"A court will have to decide on the validity of a Birmingham election result after the acting chief executive said some votes were counted twice.
The BNP has officially won a seat in Kingstanding, but it was later announced this was not correct and it should have been a Labour win."

"It was later announced".

When was 'later' ? Who announced it ?

It appears that the votes were counted thrice (two recounts), in the presence of the usual tellers, party and council officials. The result was declared.

A couple of hours later, when the only people with access to the ballots were Birmingham council officials, the council apparently decided to conduct a third (and invalid - the winner of en election is s/he who is declared so by the returning officer) count all by their little selves. Apparently, some votes had been double counted, an error not spotted in the three public counts, but immediately apparent once council officials were alone with the ballots.

Amazingly, Labour won both seats in this private recount - for as luck would have it, far more BNP votes had been double counted than any others. And they are inviting the unsuccessful candidates (at the council tax payer's expense) to get their private recount confirmed as the correct one.

Words fail me. DSD has the details, as do the Birmingham Post.

This is serious stuff. I don't care if the winners were Combat 18 or the People's Revolutionary Army, the principle's the same. You count and decide in the presence of those who can keep their eyes open for dodgy dealings, not in the presence of a couple of mates when everyone's gone home.

Reading the council's explanation (pdf) I'm prepared to admit that it's possible, though it will need proving. How was this 'additional column that should not have been on the sheet' not spotted in the previous three counts ? How did this column come to be on the sheet ?

The Returning Officer presiding over this shambles should be sacked. By accident or design, this gives the appearance of an unpopular minority party being cheated of office by the paid staff of the ruling party. The terrible thing is that with the track record of Labour and the Lib Dems I wouldn't put it past them.

UPDATE 1 - Councillor Bob Piper points out in his usual entertaining style that Brum is now a Tory/LD coalition, so although the election staff may have been appointed under Labour, they no longer work for a Labour administration.

UPDATE 2 - it appears that the reverse of this scenario (someone apparently missed the '1' off the front of the BNPs vote figure) is being played out in Barking.

UPDATE 3 - stories like this and this, from Barking and Dagenham, are what make people cheesed with the main parties.

"A YOUNG boy is searching for a shy hero who saved him 'being kicked to death'.
If the brave adult hadn't intervened, 13-year-old Ryan, of Halbutt Street, Dagenham, might have suffered more serious injuries when he was attacked by a gang of thugs.
Now the youngster wants to find the have-a-go hero to say thank you.
Police say that Parsloes Park in Dagenham has become notorious for crime in the past few months.
Ryan and two school friends were cutting across the park at 7pm on Tuesday, last week, when they ran into the crowd of 60 boys and girls, aged between 11 and 20."

"A FRAUDSTER who claimed a staggering £130,000 in tax credits for 12 non-existent children will be deported after greed led to her capture.
Julie Olanrewaju, 31, of St Mary's Road, Barking, claimed the amazing sum after the immigration services simply 'lost' her.
She was only caught because she became greedy and tried to change her tax credit claims to income support.
Olanrewaju was jailed for four years, after which she will be deported.
In a barbed comment, Judge David Radford at Snaresbrook Crown Court said: "I make the recommendation for deportation - with the hope it will be acted on by the Home Secretary."
It was revealed Olanrewaju had applied for leave to remain in Britain in 1991, but was turned down."

1991. She's been here illegally - and ripping off the taxpayer - for 15 years.

A Couple Of Bluebells From The Curate's Hedge

Diane Abbott discovers Mr Blair's Turkey Army.

"In recent decades the Labour Party has drawn its activist base disproportionately from the public sector"

She stands as a proud supporter of the public sector.

" ... the market is not the answer to every social issue ..."

" ... except education, of course"


Jane Kelly at the Social Affairs Unit blog has a fascinating interview with one of Muriel Gray's "appalling little people", a BNP council candidate from Keighley.

When I met Rose Thompson she was at home, on the seventh floor of an eleven-storey block, with a broken lift, knitting and crying. Tiny and frail in discoloured white fluffy slippers, crocheting a scarf, with two budgies chirping in the background, she looked like a leftover from a grittier Carla Lane sit-com. She moaned:

When I told them I was going over to the BNP no one believed me, now I've done it and everyone hates me. The Mayor says he's disgusted and my sister won't speak to me.

She also has just been warned by a neighbour to expect some kind of assault, but she still thought it was worth it. She said tearfully:

I'm worried but I can deal with it.

But her sense of abandonment was palpable:

As a councillor I have spoken for everyone, but no one has ever spoken for me. I am not a racist but Labour and Conservatives have done nothing for me, nothing. All the people I grew up with used to vote, we were told to vote Labour as we were going out the door, now hardly any of them vote – that is a big change. People up here feel there is no one on their side.

Read the whole thing.


Tottenham Lad has more on Jon 'demographics' Cruddas.


And Adloyada writes on yet another proposed boycott of Israel, and the remarkably low-key BBC response to the Lib Dem "wallowing in your own filth" story.

Killing Wales

One of my hobbyhorses is the way the M40 and A55 are helping to destroy Welsh culture - as hippies in the South, scallies in the North, and retiring English everywhere take advantage of the improved communications to move in and price out the locals.

And here are the hippies - Steiner school types to a man or woman, I'll be bound, planning a new settlement in the occupied West Bank (of the Severn).

While in the North, the great Dalrymple writes of the A55 and mourns the death of innocence.


UPDATE - Welsh Labour and Plaid debate the really important issues.

UPDATE II - I've added a sidebar link to Cymuned (English language version), who are campaigning against the slow-mo ethnic cleansing of Welsh Wales.