"It is shameful, Tommy. It is shameful"

There's plenty of farce on show up there in Edinboro'. But there's tragedy too.

Mr Sheridan put it to Mr Green during cross-examination that the minutes were fake, and were part of a plot to topple him. “This so-called minute is as genuine as a ten-bob note, isn’t it?” he said. Mr Green replied: “No, Tommy, you know it is true.”

Mr Green then accused the MSP of taking “a shameful step to smear good comrades. For you to turn round and accuse the likes of myself of monstrous frame-ups is an appalling thing for you to do,” he said. “I can hardly believe you are doing this. You know that, like yourself, I have spent a lifetime to build up the socialist movement. You can lie, accuse me of monstrous frame-ups, none of it the truth. It is shameful, Tommy, shameful.”

Mr Green said that problems had arisen as to how the matter of the newspaper article should be handled. He said that Mr Sheridan had accepted that the claims were true but “wanted to prove the story was false”.

Party workers pleaded with him to drop the court case, knowing how much damage it would do to the party, he said.

“Nobody at the meeting favoured Tommy’s course of action. Everyone agreed that Tommy should admit the story or maintain that his private life is not for public discussion,” Mr Green said.

There's a real Freudian slip from Sheridan as well. The expression is 'bent as a nine-bob note'. The ten-bob note is genuine.

More On Tommy Sheridan

I wrote yesterday that if Mr Sheridan's colleagues were against 'privilege, inequality and greed' surely they must recognise that their leading light is consuming far more than his fair share of life's goodies.

Paul Stokes agrees.

"I have no doubt that the unfettered sexual marketplace operated in what we term the capitalist West is failing to allocate resources either fairly or efficiently. How else do we explain the fact that Scarlett Johansson never returns my phone calls ?

There are clear tendencies towards monopoly ... market failure is everywhere. Some people have strings of lovers. Others have none."

Christians believe that marriage and monogamy are the surest foundation for stability in family life and the successful transmission of a culture to a succeeding generation. But our rulers don't - and by the bastardy rates, neither do a large minority of Britons. Mum, kids, and whoever she's shacked up with at the time constitutes 'the family' as supported by New Labour - and Blue Labour too.

The government are tremendously keen on addressing disparities in income - between the deserving poor, struggling to get by on £31,000 of benefits (plus house and lots of extras) and the bloated plutocrat paying top rate of tax on his outrageous £37,000 salary (in the interests of fairness, the same rate as paid by a billionaire on his). Yet money isn't everything. I'm sure Chris Dillow would be able to lay his hands on the research which shows that people would rather have a high relative income than a high absolute one.

And there are other perceived goods too - like sex and power. Some people believe that these are simply a function of how much money you've got. Such people have spent little time on council estates. A violent criminal, even though only successful in his immediate neighbourhood, with a take-home income (mostly illegal and untaxed) of say £40,000 a year, has much more power and respect in his community than the marine underwriter from Dorking, on £100,000 post-tax has in his. He has more - and younger - women, too - especially if he always has access to drugs. People get out of his way. Everyone will know what he does, but no-one will want to tell the police. He gets served straight away in the local. Everyone wants to keep in with him.

The guy who lived four doors up from my father dealt smack and other drugs. Everyone on the estate knew it (he'd served a sentence for just that crime), they assumed the police knew it, but no-one wanted to give evidence and become a 'grass'. He had the best car of anyone on the estate, and he never got out of bed before two in the afternoon. He had some nice girls, too - nice as in pretty. On one occasion a large container arrived on the pavement early one morning, for once our man was up early and for the next three days an impromptu cash-and-carry liquor and tobacco business was run from the pavement, with cars being loaded up half way down the street.

Polly Toynbee would have us believe that the guy was 'poor' and 'disadvantaged' compared to the secondary school maths teacher in his own semi a couple of miles away. He appeared to me to be having a great time.

Perhaps this is why so many initiatives against crime and anti-social behaviour fail. Liberals seem incapable of grasping that criminal behaviour can not only be financially profitable, but profitable in other ways too, as well as great fun. It's a failure of empathy on their part.

The left's attitude to sex since the Glorious Sixties Revolution has been 'if it feels good, do it' - a mantra on which Graham Coutts is relying to get him out of jail. This laissez-faire attitude contrasts sharply with their micro-management of every facet of economic life.

As I wrote two years back :

In Victorian times a person could dispose of property more or less as he wished, whereas sexuality was subject to many legal and social restrictions. Now the situation's been more or less reversed.

Back before the sexual revolution of the 1960s, sexuality was a public, not a private affair. Marriage was a public ceremony, the only socially approved expression of sexual desire was within marriage, and married couples held a privileged position in law, some vestiges of which still remain. It was also a time when employers could operate a colour bar, hotels or guest houses could display 'no coloureds' notices, and a private citizen was free to discriminate or not as he chose on any grounds in any area of life.

The Old Labour sociologist Norman Dennis, in his 'Families Without Fatherhood', commented on the cultural change which elevated the freedom to have relationships as and when you chose, regardless of the damage to third parties (for example children or an abandoned spouse) to an absolute right. Already, he wrote, the the classic phrases of rampant capitalism come to mind as the number of fatherless families mount - "Cannot a man do what he likes with his own ? As for the other party, caveat emptor - let her take the consequences of her bad bargain !"

The only difference, he continued, was that now the State, through taxation, would take the consequences of a wrong choice of partner - ' ...in sexual conduct the cast of mind is that I please myself, but if anything goes wrong, you must be responsible that my children come to no harm. In effect such a biological father is saying, "You must be a socialist so that I can be an egoist. My baby is the hostage through which I, who will not do my duty, will hold you to your duty."


Yet on the face of it there seems no logical reason why this state of affairs should continue. Attractive people (a class into which I must assign Mr - and Mrs - Sheridan) tend to get more sex. Yet the physical characteristics of attractiveness are just as unearned and unmerited as inherited wealth, an evil which Gordon Brown is attempting to wipe out.

Surely those Labour MPs and other egalitarians who would wish, for example, to abolish private education, should address themselves to the glaring sexual inequalities which enable Kate Moss to snog Jemima Khan - while Paul still awaits that call from Scarlett.

Which brings us back to Mr Sheridan. Take a look at the 2003 list of candidates and nominate those who appear in urgent need of congress. John Milligan looks like a nice chap, but when did he last indulge in coke-and-champagne-fuelled orgies ? Why have all the male candidates for Katrine's area (North East Scotland) got smiles on their faces ? Which three dictators does Bob Goupillot remind one of ?

There is no doubt - in my mind, at any rate - that, as well as giving up half his salary to party funds, Mr Sheridan should also share his other goods more equitably among the party faithful.

Spillane, Steyn

You, The Jury - Judge Steve Holland presides over the case of the most vilified author ever to sell 200 million copies.

* "The dialogue and action leave little to be imagined." - New York Times, 3 August 1947.
* "Able, if painfully derivative, writing and plotting, in so vicious a glorification of force, cruelty and extra-legal methods that the novel might be made required reading in a Gestapo training school." - Anthony Boucher, San Francisco Chronicle, 3 August 1947.
* "Lurid action, lurid characters, lurid writing, lurid plot, lurid finish. Verdict: Lurid" - Saturday Review of Literature, 9 August 1947.
* "His novel is a shabby and rather nasty little venture from the indefensible logic of its opening scene to the drooling titillation of its final striptease." - James Sandoe, Chicago Sun Book Week, 17 August 1947.




Spillane interview :

But what if it were today and the American Way is a series of crooked Presidents...what happens to Mike Hammer then?

That's demoralizing...then how can you do this...there was a piece in our local paper the other day about girls, 12, 13, in school, they're practicing oral sex. And when someone tells them to stop they say, 'what's wrong, the President does it'.

This comes out in the paper, a big deal. This guy has no sense of shame. I can't get over how many of the vets voted for him, he's a draft dodger. You understand the Kennedys, everybody says 'they're good Irish boys' but the phoniness of it all.

And that poor Kennedy boy who crashed. I'm a pilot, I got 11,000 hours, I was a big fighter pilot during the war, I just passed my physical...they hate it, I'm over 80, they don't want guys over 80 flying, anyway, he had what, less than 100 hours? All the pilots I know knew what happened to him, he spun out, and he couldn't drop his stick...you what we say about this guy, 'he ruined a damn good airplane'. And took people with him.





Mark Steyn on a favourite liberal myth - the Noble, Peaceable Savage.

"Both Keeley and LeBlanc believe that for a variety of reasons anthropologists and their fellow archaeologists have seriously underreported the prevalence of warfare among primitive societies. . . . 'I realized that archaeologists of the postwar period had artificially "pacified the past" and shared a pervasive bias against the possibility of prehistoric warfare,' says Keeley."

That's Lawrence Keeley, a professor at the University of Illinois. And the phrase that stuck was that bit about artificially pacifying the past. We've grown used to the biases of popular culture. If a British officer meets a native -- African, Indian, whatever -- in any movie, play or novel of the last 30 years, the Englishman will be a sneering supercilious sadist and the native will be a dignified man of peace in perfect harmony with his environment in whose tribal language there is not even a word for "war" or "killing" or "weapons of mass destruction." A few years ago, I asked Tim Rice, who'd just written the lyrics for Disney's Aladdin and The Lion King, why he wasn't doing Pocahontas. "Well, the minute they mentioned it," he said, "I knew the Brits would be the bad guys. I felt it was my patriotic duty to decline."

Well, good on you, Tim Rice !

Lawrence Keeley calculates that 87 per cent of primitive societies were at war more than once per year, and some 65 per cent of them were fighting continuously. "Had the same casualty rate been suffered by the population of the twentieth century," writes Wade, "its war deaths would have totaled two billion people." Two billion! In other words, we're the aberration: after 50,000 years of continuous human slaughter, you, me, Bush, Cheney, Blair, Harper, Rummy, Condi, we're the nancy-boy peacenik crowd. "The common impression that primitive peoples, by comparison, were peaceful and their occasional fighting of no serious consequence is incorrect. Warfare between pre-state societies was incessant, merciless, and conducted with the general purpose, often achieved, of annihilating the opponent."

Why then, against all the evidence, do we venerate the primitive? And to the point of pretending a bunch of torturing marauders devised the separation of powers in the U.S. Constitution. We do it for the same reason we indulge behaviour like that at Caledonia, Ont. We want to believe that the yard, the cul-de-sac, the morning commute, the mall are merely the bland veneer of our lives, and that underneath we are still that noble primitive living in harmony with the great spirits of the forest and the mountain. The reality is that "civilization" -- Greco-Roman-Judeo-Christian -- worked very hard to stamp out the primitive within us, and for good reason.

I'd Stick To Attacking Christians If I Were You, Mate - II

I posted a while back on the "battle of the designated victims" between the Muslim community and the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA), whose magazine called Islam a 'barmy doctrine' and accused its adherents of 'unrestrained and irresponsible breeding', the sort of thing people used to say about Catholics not so long ago. Not the first ding-dong between Pink and Green, either.

I noted that Islam wasn't big on turning the other cheek and suggested that Christians might make a safer target.

Judging by their home page, GALHA have taken my advice to heart. And so have the Gaye Police Association.

"The Gay Police Association (GPA) is being investigated after it claimed a rise in homophobic attacks was due to religious belief.

An advert, showing a Bible next to a pool of blood under the heading "in the name of the father", appeared in a national newspaper's supplement.

Scotland Yard said the inquiry "centres on whether the advert constitutes a faith crime."

The GPA refused to comment while the matter was still under investigation.

The advert appeared in the Diversity supplement of the Independent newspaper on 29 June, two days ahead of the Europride gay and lesbian parade in London.

It stated: "In the last 12 months, the GPA has recorded a 74% increase in homophobic incidents, where the sole or primary motivating factor was the religious belief of the perpetrator.""


Alas I couldn't find the figures on their website - there's a surprise. But we are all well aware of the huge number of homophobic attacks carried out by Christians. Why, Rasputin himself has blamed his flock for provoking such assaults.

As a citizen, it's good to see that the police are so aware of the communities from which such crimes are most likely to spring. I'm sure that, whichever religion it was preaching hate against the GLBT community, they would not hesitate to picture the relevant holy book next to a pool of blood, complete with quote.

And as a Christian, it's good to see that they recognise that the practice of Christianity is not compatible with the practice of homosexuality. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for your belief. These guys certainly did.

I Must Update My Links ...

I posted a comment elsewhere the other day to the effect that I admired the Spanish Nationalist General Moscardo.

This chap goes further - and he's only just started blogging. Vote Franco !

Do I hear 400,000 failed asylum seekers ? 450,000 from the gentleman on my left ...

Real life trumps satire yet again.

"Ministers are set to admit they may have significantly underestimated the number of failed asylum seekers living in Britain, the BBC has learnt.

Last year the National Audit Office estimated that the figure could be as much as 283,000 - but at the time the Home Office insisted that was too high.

But a trawl of files in the Immigration and Nationality department has produced between 400,000 and 450,000 case files. "

Figures, schmigures. What's the odd 50,000 files here or there ?

From Each According To His Abilities ....

To each according to her needs.

It certainly seems that the Scottish Socialist Party, like the early Christians, "hold all things in common". Yet if they're against 'privilege, inequality and greed' surely they must recognise that their leading light is consuming far more than his fair share of life's goodies. Just one of his many alleged encounters with the fetching Ms Trolle could have kept a poor crofter going for months, or inspired some ned in Easterhouse to brush his teeth, shower and change the sheets.


Members of the public queued outside Court 6 of the Court of Session in Edinburgh to secure one of the 18 seats in the public gallery on day 10 of a sensational case that has dominated headlines in Scotland over the past fortnight.

Mr Sheridan has brought a £200,000 defamation action against the News of the World after it printed claims in 2004-05 that he had visited a sex club and participated in orgies.

From the (admittedly limited) evidence available to me, this defamation suit would seem somewhat unwise.

Asked by Michael Jones QC, representing the Sunday newspaper, who was in the house, Ms Trolle replied: "Andy (McFarlane), Tommy (Sheridan) and myself."

Mr Jones said: "What happened?" The witness replied: "We had sex."

Mr Jones sought clarification as to what Ms Trolle meant when she used the term "we".

She replied: "All three of us."

Mr Jones asked: "Together?" Ms Trolle said: "Yes."

Good trades unionist practice would be 'one out, all out'.





UPDATE -

“It’s better than television, I’ll say that,” admitted Jack Anderson, a pensioner who had driven up from Peebles for the trial. Each morning he joined the small gang who competed for entry. “It’s like a wee cinema in there,” a Sheridan family friend explained to a passer-by.

I like to think that Mr Anderson and the very wonderful Peebles blogger Kirk Elder are one and the same. Glorious stuff.

Mickey Spillane 1918-2006

It was one of those nights when the sky came down and wrapped itself around the world. The rain clawed at the windows of the bar like an angry cat and tried to sneak in every time some drunk lurched in the door ...


Fox News : "He was a quintessential Cold War writer, an unconditional believer in good and evil. He was also a rare political conservative in the book world. Communists were villains in his work and liberals took some hits as well. He was not above using crude racial and sexual stereotypes.

Viewed by some as a precursor to Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry, Spillane's Hammer was a loner contemptuous of the "tedious process" of the jury system, choosing instead to enforce the law on his own murderous terms. His novels were attacked for their violence and vigilantism— one critic said "I, the Jury" belonged in "Gestapo training school" — but some defended them as the most shameless kind of pleasure.

"Spillane is like eating takeout fried chicken: so much fun to consume, but you can feel those lowlife grease-induced zits rising before you've finished the first drumstick," Sally Eckhoff wrote in the liberal weekly The Village Voice."

Alex Cox on Kiss Me Deadly : "the roughest, least compromising film noir of them all"


"Hemingway hated me. I sold 200 million books, and he didn't. Of course most of mine sold for 25 cents, but still... "

Guardian obit.

"Those big-shot writers could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar."

Philip Marlowe's dark counterpart.

"I have no fans. You know what I got? Customers. And customers are your friends."



"I'm the most translated writer in the world, behind Lenin, Tolstoy, Gorki and Jules Verne. And they're all dead..."

Interesting 1998 piece.

Unofficial site here.

Community Action

"Residents and traders in Brick Lane, east London, have threatened protests and street blockades to prevent filming of a screen adaptation of a book by bestselling novelist Monica Ali which they claim is "racist and insulting" toward the Bangladeshi community. The Booker- shortlisted novel, Brick Lane, tells the story of Nazneen, a Bangladeshi woman who is sent to London for an arranged marriage, but later cheats on her husband with a radical young Muslim."

Quite right, too. After all, whose streets are they ? It's not as if they were a public space, open to just anybody.

Abdus Salique, chair of Brick Lane Traders' Association, who is coordinating the campaign from his sweetshop, said he feared the book would enrage younger members of the community. "Young people are getting very involved with this campaign. We had more than 100 people attend yesterday's meeting. They are willing to blockade the area and guard our streets."

"Of course, they will not do anything unless we tell them to, but I warn you they are not as peaceful as me"

If you like irony it's entertaining to see yet again the huge cultural gap between the literary Guardianista (who loved "Brick Lane") and the average Ibrahim in the street. Note also the 'our streets', a refrain much beloved of the left, going back through the anti-fascist years to Cable Street.

Mr Salique seems to know who he means by 'our'. Guardianistas aren't included.





UPDATE - see also this post on community action.

The Wisdom of Vicky Pollard

"Teenage girls who plan to get pregnant do so to improve the quality of their lives, a report out today has found.

A study published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that girls as young as 13 see motherhood as preferable to working in a low-paid, dead-end job.

Far from the common assumption that teenage pregnancies result from irresponsibility or ignorance about contraception, some young girls actively choose to have a baby as a way to change their life and to gain independence and a new identity."

To 'gain independence', eh ? That sure lays to rest the hoary old right-wing myth about doing it to get a council flat.

Generally speaking pregnant teenagers should be a Good Thing. After all, the girls are at their fittest (in every sense) and should have the healthiest babies. The problem comes with Dad.

Back in those bad old days (aka 'the golden age that never existed') Dad wasn't necessarily too chuffed to hear the news. You'd have to get married or face the moral (and sometimes physical) sanctions of the community. Probably live with the in-laws until you got a place of your own. Work hard at the job until you could afford it.

The old disciplines of marriage, fatherhood and work have been wiped out by welfare, with the results you can see on White City, Matson or Hester's Way in leafy Gloucestershire any day of the week, any hour of the day or night.

Dad is now Gordon "lifting children out of poverty" Brown. "Job" ? what's that ? 27% of children in the UK have no father living with them. As Jill Kirby points out in the Sunday Times, hoodies need fathers more than they need hugs.

That Mr Hutton

Is at it again.

And this is a little gem from Norm.

Lebanon and all that ...

Pass. Haven't been following it, or any other news, closely enough, for the same reasons I'm not posting much. A vague feeling that Israel should be concentrating on Hezbollah rather than the road to Damascus - some say they're trying to stop the captured soldiers being spirited away to Syria or Iran. I'd have thought you don't need a main road to do that. Armchair strategist sits at home.

Norm has news and views, Natalie has a question for the BBC.

In other news ...

Many Angry Gerbils is another identikit leftie blog of the "Bush and Blair are the real terrorists" persuasion. Who reads them all ? There's one I see on UK Poliblogs a lot - huge cut'n'paste jobs of the latest Guardian whatever - 5 or 6 long cut'n'posts a day, lots of neat sidebar stuff (currently featuring a tasteful photo of an injured face, captioned "Shock and Awe 2003", which then changes to the Tavistock Square bus - "Shock and Awe 2005"), neat design - for about a quarter of the readership here, where the design hasn't changed since Day 1 and I'm currently posting every other day or three.

But I digress. He (and it always is a he) surely deserves a link for this wonderful sidebar graphic, which appeals to me greatly.



UPDATE - I don't mean to imply that low-readership blogs are valueless - far from it. Anyway, what's low readership ? "Less than mine, whatever that is". But rightie or non-political blogs tend to be idiosyncratic, individual. So many of the lefty blogs are meeting a need that the Indie already supplies.

Fairford 2006

If you've not got broadband, hit the 'back' button now.


When I was 11 or 12, I knew every Brit and American fighter jet off by heart, having studied the Observer's Book of Aircraft and the like. Lightnings, Hunters, Sea Vixens, Buccaneers, Phantoms, Starfighters ...

Now 'they all look the same to me ..'.

I think this is an F18 Hornet.



Whatever it is, it's damn noisy when he wellies it off the runway.


Hang on a min - what's that hiding behind him ? That tailplane looks familiar ...



Tally ho ! Next stop Dortmund !



Not really.



Viva Espana ! And don't mention the War on Terror !

OK, which nation fitted out a Hercules with a samba sound system ? Featured dancing aircrew ? And offered refreshments to visitors ? Especially pretty ones ?

I suppose, as with Argentina, that any nation producing top Formula One drivers will also have some top pilots.



Did you know that the Brazilian Air Force fought in WW2, flying P47 Thunderbolt sorties in Italy ? I didn't.

We watched the presentations of the Flying Scholarships For The Disabled. Moving stuff.


The first ever UK visit by the Pakistan Air Force - a 'thank you' for the international air effort.

"Immediately after the earthquake, Royal Air Force aircraft including C-130 Hercules and C-17s carrying CH-47 Chinook heavy lift helicopters, departed RAF Fairford to help deliver aid to the devastated region. The Royal Navy and Army also provided vital support.

US helicopters flew more than 3,300 sorties delivering relief supplies to the disaster area and transported over 15,000 people, including around 4,000 needing medical attention. An additional 250 US military and civilian cargo airlift flights delivered in excess of 7,000 tons of medical supplies, food, shelter material, blankets, and rescue equipment to Pakistan.

In March, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz visited Downing Street to thank UK troops involved in the humanitarian relief effort following the earthquake, which claimed 73,000 lives."

All part of that global war on Muslims I read so much about in the Guardian ...

Hmmm ... again.

I can't keep up with these Jihadist intellectuals. Who's Abu Mus'ab al-Suri ?

So he's a top Al-Quaeda strategist, is he ? Who looks disturbingly like a white Brit ? And he thinks that the future of jihad lies in "Individualized Terrorism" - small cells like the 7/7 bombers ?

Scholar Gypsy has the info here and here.

Hmmm ...

Maybe I just missed it - but I'm surprised the great Dalrymple - or any Brit bloggers I've read lately - haven't commented on this story - the sad end of Dianne Brimble, who boarded a P&O cruise ship with her twelve year old daughter, and within twenty-four hours was dead of a GHB overdose.

"Local media have shown photographs of a beaming Brimble boarding the ship in September 2002 with her then 12-year-old daughter, her sister and friends at the start of a South Pacific cruise for which she had saved for two years.

Within hours Brimble was lying naked and dead in the cabin of four men whose main concern was that the death of a woman one of them described as a "dog" had ruined their holiday."

A year after her death P&O were running this advert for the cruises.

Chiaroscouro wonders exactly what route we took to get here, and has the story links.

Long, thoughtful posting at The Thin Man blog. You have to read the whole thing, really.

Sorry ...

So much news. Alas the Project From Hell is soaking up my time and energy.

The NatWest three. No-one's a stronger supporter of the Great Satan than I, but there is such a thing as fairness and reciprocity - something conspicuously lacking from the extradition treaty.

Lord Levy arrested. Innocent until proven guilty and all that, but politically damaging to NuLab. I bet the Zionist conspiracy is all over the Guardian comments.

Police force mergers, ID cards in trouble ? Huzzah !

I posted ages ago on the discrepancy between our rulers atttitudes to police and NHS recruitment. It's a Bad Thing for an ethnic minority population to be policed by people of a different race or culture, but a Good Thing, to be celebrated, for the natives to be nursed and doctored by people of a different race or culture.

The elderly population of this country are predominantly natives. I'm not sure why it's any less important to have people of your own culture nurse you when you're frail or dying than it is to have people of your own culture arrest you when you're young and fit.

There are bad and good people of all races, but if you tell people enough that it's all whitey's fault, you increase the likelihood of getting more stories like this. Not nice.

"Solicitors of a pensioner who received a five-figure payout after care workers allegedly force fed her talcum powder have welcomed the settlement.

Lucy Neal, 89, had allegedly been given the powder by care workers at her home in Handsworth, Birmingham.

Nordia Noteman, Maxine Davidson and Rosemarie Malvo, who worked for the Welcome Care Agency, were cleared of assault in February 2004.

The pensioner's lawyers said the agency admitted negligence in a civil action.

The five-figure settlement would help Mrs Neal overcome a "harrowing" experience and raise awareness for other people in a similar situation, her legal team said. "

Bombs, Trains

At my desk around four this afternoon I became aware of something disturbing some Indian colleagues, who were clustered round a PC with the BBC news website.

They were all from Bombay.

That Dreadful Incident

All over the BBC they're debating the appalling incident which has so tarnished world football, and on Five Live's 'Breakfast' they're discussing what punishment is great enough for such a hideous offence. Is there no end to the vile racism which so affects our society ?

Materazzi should be banned from soccer for life.

Zidane, on the other hand, was merely reacting against the years of oppression and racism which have kept him a poverty-stricken unknown, finally driven beyond endurance by the continuing taunts of his opponents. Coming on top of the invasion of Iraq, the continuing struggle in Palestine, and the murder of Shamil Basayev, he finally decided to fight back.

The BBC have decided to ask some French fans what they think.

"We wanted to know if the kids and youths playing football in the streets, wearing Zidane football shirts, had a lesser opinion of him following his sending off against Italy.

We started filming in one of Gennevilliers' streets, between the endless rows of tower blocks that dominate the horizon.

A stone thrown from one of the balconies landed with a thud right by us. Another just missed our producer's head. "





Elsewhere ... the Dumb One has an interesting juxtaposition of tales from Scallyland.

Then And Now

Now :

The bodies of four adults, thought to be members of the same family, have been found at a house in Newcastle.

Officers made the discovery in Benwell Grove after a man went into Westgate Road police station early on Sunday.

Bomb squad officers later carried out a controlled explosion at the house and surrounding roads remain sealed off.

Northumbria Police said the man was in custody and they were not looking for anyone else over the incident, which is being treated as a multiple murder.



Then :

Are You Me Hinny Bird

It's oh but I ken well,
Are you me hinny Bird,
The bonny lass of Benwell,
Are you oh
She's lang-legg'd an' lovverly,
Are you me hinny Bird,
See her rakin' up the dyke,
Are you oh

Now the Quayside for sailors,
Are you me hinny Bird,
And Castle-garth for tailors,
Are you oh
The Gateshead Hills for millers,
Are you me hinny Bird,
The North shore for keelers
Are you oh

There's Sandgate for auld rags,
Are you me hinny Bird,
An' Gallowgate for trolly bags:
Are you oh
There's Denton an' Kenton,
Are you me hinny Bird,
An' canny Lang Benton.
Are you oh

There's Tynemouth and Cullercoats,
Are you me hinny Bird,
And North Shields for sculler-boats;
Are you oh
There's Westoe lies iv a neuk,
Are you me hinny Bird,
And South Shields the place for soot
Are you oh

There's Horton and Holywell,
Are you me hinny Bird,
And bonny Seaton Delaval;
Are you oh
There's Hartley-pans for sailors,
Are you me hinny Bird,
And Bedlington for nailers.
Are you oh


A beautiful song recorded by the High Level Ranters more than thirty year ago. Colin Ross of the band is married to my favourite Scottish singer Ray Fisher.

Crime And Punishment

From BBC News :

Reforms of the criminal justice system are largely ineffective in cutting crime, an independent think-tank says.

The Crime and Society Foundation, at King's College, London, says ministers should focus instead on tackling root causes such as poverty and sexism.

This 'independent think-tank' is staffed by :

A former communications director for the anti-prison, pro-criminal National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders.

A former researcher for the anti-prison 'children's liberation' National Children's Bureau and the Child Poverty Action Group.

A former Communications Officer at Action for Prisoners' Families.

A former employee of the Howard League for Penal Reform, aka the Howard League For The Abolition of Punishment.

On its advisory board sits the anti-prison campaigner Una Padel and one Nick Page. Could it be this Nick Page ? Alas I think it's this one. Liberals on crime do seem to live in leafy villages rather than inner-city estates - have you noticed ? The consequences of their ideas are for other, poorer people to face.

Elsewhere one Ian Marchant is cutting crime :

"I felt my fist in his face, and I loved it. I still love it now. I loved each punch. Thwack . . . for your girlfriend, for all the times you’ve hit her and threatened her and terrorised her, for all the women you’ve terrorised and will terrorise. Thwack . . . because of what you are, what you wear, what you represent, the sneaking crimes you commit, the petty sneaking thefts, the pointless aimless vandalism, the joyless stupidity of your empty mind, for what you are doing to England, useless dregs of the earth, you and all the people like you. Thwack . . . for me, for the pleasure of it, because I can, because I love the feel of my knuckles against your flabby mouth, your flat nose, your vacant eyes."

"Then came the post-match analysis. Part of me wanted to say, “Poor little lad. What chance does he have in life? There are no jobs for stupid people any more. He’s got no future. He must have been brutalised at home. And the drink companies exploit kids like that, and fill them with cheap booze, and it’s not his fault he can’t handle it, poor wee baby.” But that’s not really what I think.

Really, I can’t buy into relativistic accounts of behaviour at all, despite a lifetime of Guardian reading. Plenty of people live in poverty, bad housing, are the victims of an education system which serves only to prepare people for life in a call centre. Plenty of people get pissed. My own mother was brutalised at home by her father in conditions of unthinkable squalor, and she didn’t take it out on anybody else.

What I really think is this: there is evil at work in the world. Some people are evil."

Give him a job, O 'independent' think-tank !