Technical Illiteracy

Luke Harding in the Guardian on the German Maglev rail crash.

The accident is the first involving the Transrapid system and calls into question the long-term viability and safety of magnetic trains. They had been hailed by some as an ecologically friendly alternative to conventional diesel-powered train travel.

Of course. Conventional trains are perfectly safe to run at high speeds over a line containing a stationary maintenance vehicle. It's only with maglev that you get a collision.

London

You can find these reports tucked away on the BBC website, but somehow you never hear them on the news :

A man was stabbed to death yards from his front door in an attack by a mob of up to 40 youths on bicycles.

Jason Gayle-Bent, 29, was sitting on a wall with two friends when the gang rode up in Ludwick Mews in south-east London on Sunday, police said.

One of the youths pulled out a gun, aimed and fired several shots before the group dispersed.

Police believe the same gang may also have attacked and wounded another man shortly afterwards in Deptford Wharf.

Straight after the attack on Mr Gayle-Bent, the gang is thought to have fired shots in the air outside the Community Action Centre in Grove Street.

Police believe they then chased a man who fled the centre on a moped. In his bid to escape the gang, he crashed his bike and then tried to run off.

The youths caught up with him at a doorway of an address in Deptford Wharf, where he was assaulted and stabbed.

A firearm was also discharged at the scene. The victim was treated in hospital and has since been allowed home.

Police are investigating whether the two attacks were linked and are keeping an open mind as to the motive.

More today - again I haven't heard anything on the news.

Gang threat shuts schools early

More than 2,000 pupils were sent home early on police advice, after threats of gang violence outside two schools in south-east London.

Pupils at the Peckham Academy, Peckham, and Harris Girls' Academy in East Dulwich were sent home at 1400 BST.

Police advised head teachers to end the school day early and said they would step up patrols over the weekend.

BBC London correspondent Guy Smith said it could be linked to the murder of a man in nearby New Cross on Sunday.

"Revving Engine in a Racist Manner"

via Tangled Web, this story.

Scottish motorist Ronnie Hutton, 49, was jailed for two days for the crime of "revving his car in a racist manner" last September. After waiting more than a year to try the case, the Stirling Sheriff court finally convicted Hutton last week of breach of the peace and fined him £150 (US $282).

An off duty officer, Chief Inspector Eoin Jenkins, said Hutton had revved the engine of his Lotus Esprit near two Muslims last year. After Hutton dismissed Jenkins' concern with an expletive, Jenkins immediately dispatched two police officers to Hutton's home where he was taken and thrown in jail for two days without formal charges. Hutton explained that his revving had nothing to do with nearby pedestrians, rather, he was keeping his temperamental and expensive V8 engine from stalling and being damaged.

"To be convicted for revving my car in a busy street is hard to take," Hutton told the Sunday Mail newspaper. "Does this mean anyone driving a noisy car in Scotland is now a criminal?"

Asked in court why the man may have revved his engine, Hana Saad, 23, said through an interpreter, "Maybe because we are Muslim."

That great patriot Billy Bragg is interviewed "by phone from his Barking, Essex home".

Somebody tell the Ottowa Citizen he left years ago ... but he's still got his finger on the pulse.

"People are being deported from our country because they have Arab-sounding names"

More Lib Dem Moonbattery

Even before the Lib Dems Mark Oaten found himself in the pooey stuff, I'd long since marked his card.

It was the go-karting lessons that got me, even more than votes for Ian Huntley.

But this is worse than any amount of dodgy daggy doings.

Radical ideas were suppressed - such as his long-held wish to abolish prison. "If I'd been brave enough when I had the home affairs brief, that's what I wanted to say, that we should abolish prisons. But I was clamped down. 'For God's sake, Mark!' they'd say. 'Even just saying something like prisoners should have the right to vote is causing us enough electoral damage.' So I never said it."

This was at the same time the dippy deviant was coming out with stuff like this.

"The plan for community justice panels is part of what Mr Oaten calls "tough liberalism" - policies which he says are liberal, effective, but not perceived as weak.

The challenge is to appeal to voters wanting a tough approach on crime while keeping support from those preferring a liberal stance.

Mr Oaten told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the idea of recruiting residents of estates or parishes to the panels was a "tough option" against offenders. "

Tough liberalism, eh ? While all the time he'd have let all the bad guys out ?

Two faced ? He's got more faces than Bradford Town Hall clock.

"the best possible nanny"

La Toynbee :

"if they want to avoid future generations of scary youth, they should urge higher taxes to pay the state to become the best possible nanny to all babies. "

Erm ...

Three-quarters of children in care have no educational qualifications at all when it ends, a report into the state of the care system claims.

Out of the 6,000 children who leave the care of the state each year, 60 make it to university, says a report by think tank the Centre for Policy Studies.

Report author Harriet Sergeant said a failing system was a "major contributor to social exclusion in this country".

But don't worry - something is being done.

The Department for Education said it had plans to help children in care. A department spokeswoman said: "We are already working on a major consultation document"

The Countdown Begins ...

Following the distresssing news of Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond's high-speed crash, how long before the first "what goes round comes round" piece about it in either the Guardian or Independent ?



UPDATE - at 8.58 pm Richard Williams is first out of the pits in the Guardian.

"an expression of a culture that is long past its expiry date ... how could anyone possibly justify the need to drive a car - any sort of a car, in any circumstances - at more than 300mph ? .... Campbell ... Cobb .... distinguished ... engineering history ... the makers of Top Gear and their viewers, however, appear oblivious to the fact that those days have gone for good ... very stupid indeed ... heedless self-indulgence that imperils the future of the planet ... a culture that is now not only obsolete but positively dangerous ... to the human race as a whole, and to its habitat ... Some will say that Richard Hammond's accident used up scarce medical resources".

Others will say that Richard Williams uses up scarce oxygen.

Well It Made Me Smile

Go to Google.

Type in "Woman Sour".

Hit "I'm Feeling Lucky".

Spot The Racist

via Majority Rights, an apparent (i.e. if it's genuine) EU-funded project to automatically scan the web for racist websites (well, some racist websites anyway - those of "majority groups"). I wonder what they'd want to do that for ?

I'm not sure about the methodology. They're picking a bunch of what are generally agreed to be racist websites (the stormfronts of this world), analysing the text and applying the results of the analysis to other websites. Whether that'll pick up the hideously subtle racism which according to the Guardian pervades almost the entire UK media and infects Brit society from top to bottom I'm unsure.

While I've little sympathy for some of the more outre views on sites like MR (according to the comments Baroness Tonge's Global Zionists are behind it all), I can't but enjoy the irony of this bit.

"Minority social groups and belief holders conceptualise truth as something which has been repressed or ‘concealed’ through socialisation processes and global information control at the hands of their chosen out-group. This paranoiac worldview ...."

So you're paranoid if you witter on about global information control and the repression of some ideas - according to this tax-funded supra-national project apparently designed as an aid to exactly that.

“We are living in dangerous and potentially cataclysmic times”

Pity Lord Carey never came up with stuff like this in the days when he had more influence. Still, more rejoicing over one repentant sinner etc etc.

Lord Carey said that Muslims must address “with great urgency” their religion’s association with violence. He made it clear that he believed the “clash of civilisations” endangering the world was not between Islamist extremists and the West, but with Islam as a whole.

The Magna Mater notes the speech, and also John Reid's words in London today.

It seemed to me that what Reid was doing, by addressing the Muslim community in this way, was not merely making a plea to parents but also, for the first time, drawing a line in the cultural sand. In effect, he was saying: this is one country, and it will not be fragmented but everyone has to observe the same basic rules ...whether this tentative throwing down of the cultural gauntlet in the face of creeping Islamisation does mark a more general shift away from the Whitehall strategy of appeasing extremism that has obtained until now remains to be seen. There is still a huge distance for the government to travel before it emerges from its state of collective denial.

Damn right there is. No, I think the collective liberal attitude to Islam and its followers is still to grasp at any hopeful straws (how about "they could hold a multicultural conference") and look steadily away from anything disturbing.

Time for the old post once again :

Blair has no intention of doing anything about the chain migration which, along with natural fecundity and a severe shortage of lesbian feminists, will have tripled the Muslim population of places like Bradford in thirty years.

The liberal elite's attitude to Islam reminds me of Churchill's comment about Prince Paul of Serbia, whose nation had deeply offended Hitler by the (anti-German) coup of early 1941, but who feared to provoke Germany by mobilising their armed forces.

Prince Paul's attitude, Churchill wrote, "is that of an unfortunate man in a cage with a tiger - hoping not to provoke him, while steadily dinner time approaches".

"How Dare You Come To A Muslim Area ?"

Sometimes you think it's a good thing Labour won in 2005. I imagine had this been a Tory Home Secretary that the Labour Party would as one be denouncing the Islamophobic racists in the Home Office.

Home Secretary John Reid's attempt to connect with British Muslims was hijacked by radical protesters claiming he was an "enemy" of Islam.

Others attending a speech he gave to a 30-strong group of Muslims in Leyton, east London, were angered by calls for Muslim parents to look out for the signs of brainwashing in their children in the fight against terrorism.

Mr Reid was 10 minutes through his speech when well-known extremist Abu Izzadeen, clutching the hand of a small boy, interrupted him. The Home Secretary had just listed a number of terror attacks around the world when Izzadeen began his tirade and forced him to stop.

"How dare you come to a Muslim area when over 1,000 Muslims have been arrested?" he said. "You are an enemy of Islam and Muslims, you are a tyrant. Shame on all of us for sitting down and listening to him."

The Home Secretary stood and watched as police officers ushered him out of the room, followed by hoards of cameras, photographers and reporters. Continuing his diatribe, Izzadeen accused the Government of state terrorism and said Mr Reid, Tony Blair and George Bush with their crusade could "all go to hell".

After the furore died down, Mr Reid said: "This is not a new experience for me or for those involved in politics. There will always be people who will not be prepared to take part in a dialogue, but who will try to intimidate and shout down. They are not confined to the Muslim community."

But Mr Reid had only just re-started his speech when a second protester, radical Anjem Choudary, stood up to protest.

"Muslims do not need British values," he said. "We believe Islam is superior, we believe Islam will be implemented one day. It is very rich for you to come here and say we need to monitor our children when your Government is murdering people in Iraq and Afghanistan."

In his speech Mr Reid stressed that the terrorists were waging a "violent and indiscriminate war" and warned that communities needed to be more aware of signs of terrorist activity. He urged Muslim parents to look out for the "tell-tale signs" of radicalisation in their children.

"These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for one thing," he said. "Grooming them to kill themselves in order to murder others. Look for the tell-tale signs now and talk to them before their hatred grows and you risk losing them forever."

I'm not sure I'd have used that last argument - does Mr Reid actually think about his audience ? Just as a Christian would prefer a child to be in heaven rather than on earth but doomed to hell (believe it or not such a view would have been quite mainstream only a few generations back), so a religious Muslim parent might not consider having a martyr in the family to be 'losing them forever'. After all, they could argue, they'll meet again in paradise. Life on earth is short, and eternity a long time.




UPDATE - of course what the press reports fail to mention is that the vast majority of moderate Muslims at the meeting threw themselves on the hecklers, roughed them up, and slung them out the doors ;-)

Lib Dems For Suicide Bombers

And againat the evil Jewish Conspiracy, as reported on the Today Programme (RealAudio, 20 mins in).

Baroness Tonge: "The pro-Israel lobby has a grip on the western media - a financial grip".

She went on to repeat the remarks about suicide bombers which Charles Kennedy considered to be 'completely unacceptable and 'not compatible with Liberal Democrat party policies and principles'.

Only one, nuanced change to her views. The bomber pilot who inadvertantly kills non-combatants is no longer merely the moral equivalent to the suicide bomber deliberately targeting civilians. No - he's worse. After all, the bomber pilot "goes home for a beer" afterwards. I don't think these guys do, actually.

Her views were echoed by MEP Chris "wallowing in your own filth" Davies.

Upper Class Lefties

We've seen the background of media darling Jon Snow.

But compared to the Guardian's Felicity Arbuthnot, Snow is a raving Tory. Anyone who can seriously compare US policy in Iraq with Pol Pot's Year Zero has a different angle on reality. No wonder she and John Pilger are as close as any two people can be without signing a civil partnership form.

Idly wondering about her aristocratic-sounding name, I did a quick Google.

Blimey.

Felicity Anne Clarendon-Hyde (mind you, if she came from this family, she might have married down) married into a family of blue-bloods whose connections are straight out of a Python sketch. A little map of a corner of upper-class Britain, with more soldiers 100 years ago and more solicitors now.

Thelma Grace Arbuthnot. Born 3 October 1911. Died 23 June 1974. Married first, 8 October 1932, Somerset Struben de Chair, ygr son of Admiral Sir Dudley Rawson Stratford de Chair, KCB, KCMG, MVO. Divorced 1950. He remarried more than once.

Rodney Somerset de Chair. Born July 1935. Educated Wellesley House, Broadstairs. Married first Sarah Trubshawe. Married second, 10 July 2000, Camilla ("Cilla") Joy Victoria Burdett-Blackett.

The younger generation are doing well :

Alexander Broadbent Arbuthnot. Born 1 May 1986. Educated Westminster under school; Eton College; Imperial College, London (Physics).

Katherine Rose Joste Arbuthnot. Born 14 July 1989. Educated The Lycée, then Highfield, then Wycombe Abbey.

Eleanor Sophie Duff Arbuthnot. Born 11 August 1992. Educated The Lycée, then Wycombe Abbey.

Alice Wemyss Tempest Arbuthnot. Born 31 May 1998. Educated The Lycée.

I see David Hare, another upper-class leftie, also married in. Different world.

"May Allah Curse The Pope"

At Mass today :

"We pray for Pope Benedict, that he may bring understanding to those of different faith - even those whose misunderstanding is deliberate. Lord hear us.

Lord, graciously hear us".



Meanwhile at Westminster Cathedral ....

Boom ! Boom !

Douglas Murray gives David Cameron both barrels.

There is the worrying fact that David Cameron has now joined the legions of politicians who have decided to speak about Islamic theology and get it fanatically wrong. Mr Cameron said yesterday that Muslim terrorists:

Are driven by a wholly incorrect interpretation - an extreme distortion - of the Islamic faith.

Aside from the distastefulness of a Tory leader feeling the need to interpret Islamic scripture, this statement is simply untrue. Muslim terrorists are driven chapter and verse by justifications in the Koran. They may be debatable interpretations, or interpretations which may be argued away from, but to pretend that their Koranic impetus is "wholly incorrect" or an "extreme distortion" is itself wholly incorrect and an extreme distortion.

Be fair - he's following in the footsteps of those great Islamic scholars Tony Blair and George Bush, both of whom have said much the same thing.

If Mr Cameron is going to take the reins of government he is going to have to look like he can run a country, and - most importantly - the country's foreign policy. He must prove himself worthy of the task. Monday's speech gives me less hope on this front than I had previously thought possible. Although he offered no specific answers to the problems of resurgent Islamo-fascism, and though he spent a deal of time attacking our friends for wholly justified policies of containment, the only answer Mr Cameron gave was that we should introduce a new style into our foreign policy. It should always raise alarm-bells when politicians talk style and not specifics. Style does not save lives. Cameron said:

I believe that in the last five years we have suffered from the absence of two crucial qualities which should always condition foreign policy-making. Humility, and patience.

This is not just disagreeable stuff - and un-statesman-like stuff. It is dangerously misguided stuff - the result of a man who appears to see foreign policy through the eyes of domestic habit.

What we need to demonstrate least of all with Iran at the moment is "patience". Patience on the part of the international community has all but given Tehran a nuclear bomb. An increase in our level of "patience" now will produce a permanent existential threat to Israel and the West, and ensure the whole Middle East goes nuclear within a few years.

And as for "humility". It is simply embarrassing that a candidate hoping to lead one of the world's foremost military powers should hope to win votes by speaking like this. This is domestic posing - deeply trivial and irrelevant. What will an onslaught of "humility" directed at Syria and Iran achieve at the moment? Anything? Of course not. And what Cameron worryingly fails to realise is that it is our weakness - our humility - which makes the Ahmadinejads, Assads and Nasrallahs of this era hate us even more. Our weakness is a provocation to them (witness the upsurge in Hezbollah-sponsoring defiance in the last year). Mr Cameron's deeply misguided message is that we need an increase of weakness when he should realize that our weakness - perceived or otherwise - is the problem, not the solution.

Where I part company with Mr Murray is in recognising that, like it or not, David Cameron has sound electoral reasons for his foolishness. Anti-Americanism has been the (only) acceptable prejudice of the educated English for the last few years, and recent polls showing a majority in favour of decoupling from US foreign policy may well have had the same effect on him as the 1933 East Fulham by-election had on Stanley Baldwin.

Just as Baldwin's reluctance to rearm (supported all the way by Labour and the Liberals, who both voted against the introduction of the first Hurricane and Spitfire squadrons) had dire effects in 1939 and beyond, so Cameron's desire to chime with the thoughtless prejudice of the Brits will not do them any favours either.

In Churchill's words : "The cheers of weak, well-meaning assemblies soon cease to echo, and their votes soon cease to count. Doom marches on."

Don't Quote Me On That ...

Muslim leaders have accused the Pope of attacking the Islamic faith after a speech earlier this week in which Benedict XVI referred to the concept of jihad, or holy war.

In his address at the University of Regensberg in Germany on Tuesday, Benedict quoted from a book recounting a dialogue on the truths of Christianity and Islam between Manuel Paleologos II, a 14th century Byzantine Christian Emperor, and an educated Persian.

"The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war," the Pope said.

"He said, I quote, ‘Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached’."

Apparently aware of the delicacy of the issue, Benedict described the phrases on Islam as "brusque", and pointed out several times that he was quoting - although he neither explicitly agreed with nor repudiated the emperor's views.

"Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul," the pontiff said.

But in the Islamic world this has been taken to indicate that the Pope straightforwardly endorsed Manuel Paleologos's views.

Some people are just waiting to be offended.

A statement issued by the Vatican last night to clarify what was meant and to apologise for causing offence appears only to have made things worse.

Because this isn't about peaceful co-existence. This is about imposing one's will on the spiritual enemy. In fact, the greater the apology, the less likely it is to be accepted - because it's taken as a sign of weakness, to be exploited further.

No religion has been mocked and vilified more in the last 40 years than Christianity. And it continues - because the consequences don't involve bodies with knives pinning notes to their chests, decapitation, explosions, burning buildings or trains.

Faced with such things, Western society retreats, draws back, self-censors - engendering a sense among the bad hats (and among those who share the aim even while having reservations about the method) that there is no limit to the retreat - no ground on which the enemy will turn, stand and fight.

They may well be right.

Discuss

"Women will thus only have as much freedom as their men are willing and capable of guaranteeing them. It is a major flaw in many feminist theories that they fail to acknowledge this. The difference between women’s rights and women’s illusions is defined by a Smith and Wesson, not by a Betty Friedan or a Virginia Wolf."

Fjordman on men, women, feminism and Islam.

It's Cognitive Dissonance Time ...

The problem : The World Bank are refusing to give money to some countries unless they comply with the World Bank's conditions.

The solution : Refuse to give money to the World Bank unless they comply with Hilary Benn's conditions.

Gun Dealer "had lots of guns" shock horror

Sigh.

Most weapons, which also included automatic and semi-automatic weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition, were found at the house, which is believed to belong to a registered gun dealer.

Detectives said some weapons may be legal, others may not.

Can't Say We're Not Being Told ...

" ... some police officers and sections of the media are demonising Muslims, treating them as if they're all terrorists — and that encourages other people to do the same. If that demonisation continues, then Britain will have to deal with two million Muslim terrorists — 700,000 of them in London" :
Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain in the Sunday Telegraph - remarks which are unreported by either the BBC or Guardian.

The interview also contains the famous Muslim/Christian parallel.

"When the IRA was blowing people up, the entire Catholic population of Britain was not demonised, so why is it happening to the Muslim community ?"



"Britain ... is in danger of turning into Somalia with chip shops" : Mark Steyn.

Brrr !

A parent committing suicide is indubitably a Bad Thing. IMHO any parent has a motive for suicide, but one just shouldn't drop a burden like that on the kids.

Via the Backword One, the story of the woman whose affair with the poet Ted Hughes caused his wife, the writer Sylvia Plath, to top herself. Not exactly a sympathetic portrait.

The only close friends of hers [Plath’s] whose phone number he possessed were Gerry and Jillian Becker; but Jillian did not ave Ted’s number. She called Suzette Macedo – but she, too, had no idea of Ted’s whereabouts. So Suzette phoned Assia. Thus it was the mistress who had the grim task of notifying Ted Hughes.

At work, Assia also spread the news. "Something terrible has happened: Sylvia has killed herself," she announced, stepping into art director Julia Matcham’s office.

Assuming that Assia must be overwhelmed with guilt, Julia sympathised: "Oh, you must feel awful."

Assia’s eyes opened wide. "Why should I? It was nothing to do with me."

Plath left her two small children motherless. Unforgivable.

Love set you going like a fat gold watch
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

But in best Thomas Hardy tradition, the dead wife loomed larger in the poet's consciousness than she had when alive. Assia's 'nothing to do with me' started to sound somewhat hollow.

She increasingly doubted the permanence of Ted's commitment to her. In her view, Sylvia would remain his precious wife, while she was cast for ever in the role of mistress. "At the forefront is Sylvia, and after that, the Grand Scheme, the Genius, the children, and the fixity of the sun, the millions of hawks and fishes and owls, and nightshade that I neither see nor hear."

A horrifying thought began to creep in: that she was inviting Sylvia's doom on herself. She confided in her diary: "She had a million times the talent, 1,000 times the will, 100 times the greed and passion that I have. I should never have looked into Pandora's box, and now that I have, I am forced to wear her love-widow's sacking, without any of her compensations.

"What, in five years' time, will he reproach me for? What sort of woman am I?

The gruesome Gothic gripper moves remorselessly towards its denouement.

" ... in one diary entry Wevill blames the ghost of Plath for making her suicidal."

Old Ted - what a card.

Wevill, 42, gassed herself with Shura, her four-year-old daughter by Hughes, in 1969 after discovering that he was having an affair. It was an eery re-enactment of the suicide six years earlier of the American poet Sylvia Plath — the wife Hughes abandoned after starting an affair with Wevill.

He sure could pick 'em. Two motherless toddlers and a dead one.