A Million Page Views !

I'm not really big on the trumpet-blowing. Even with bloggers I admire I cringe somewhat at the sidebar testimonials (unless they're funny of course). Good wine needs no bush, inshallah.

But I'm pleased to have hit a million views, having started tracking in May 2004. 750,000 unique visits so it'll be a while yet before the really big marker is reached. The blog seems to be holding steady at around 5,000 weekly uniques. I can remember how pleased I was when it first got a hundred visits in a day.

Thanks for visiting.

Todd In Dinorwig

When Chief Constable Todd was found dead near Llanberis, one assumed suicide while the balance of his marriage was disturbed.

Now ...

After the details of blood tests were revealed, the coroner, Dewi Pritchard-Jones, asked him: "So, not a huge amount of alcohol then?" Dr Caslin answered: "No, sir."

There were no injuries on the body, and Mr Todd was fully, although lightly, clothed when found on Snowdon, the inquest at Llangefni, Anglesey, heard. There were no external or internal injuries.

The coroner said: "There was no evidence this man had jumped from height or sustained any significant injuries."

Hmmm.

In 2006, he was elected as vice-president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO). He was a member of ACPO's terrorism committee and the organisation's media advisory group. He led the ACPO inquiry into whether CIA rendition flights had used British airports.

I feel a conspiracy theory coming on ...


Another one.

The body of a Dorset police inspector has been found washed ashore at an expensive seaside peninsula. Police said the body of Insp Neil Munro, 43, was found along Panorama Road, nicknamed "Millionaire's Row", in Sandbanks, at about 0830 GMT.

A gardener is reported to have found the body under a jetty belonging to a multi-million pound seafront mansion. Brittany Ferries confirmed a foot passenger of the same name had boarded one of their ferries on Wednesday. His death is being treated as "unexplained" and a post-mortem examination was being carried out.

Hmm. More conspiracy.

And more.

The police officer in charge of security at the Duchess of Cornwall’s family home in Wiltshire has been found shot dead.

I don't pretend to be able to make out all the connections. But Mohamed al Fayed must be a worried man.

"The National Vigilante Organisation"

I'm not sure if, like other crime reduction charities, this lot "receive money (around £50 million pa) from a wide range of sources, including local authorities, learning and skills councils, Jobcentre Plus, the Home Office, Prison Service, Youth Justice Board, Welsh Assembly, European Social Fund ..." aka the taxpayer, nor if the Esmee Fairbairn Charitable Trust or the Joseph Rowntree Foundation are digging deep for them.

But you have to admit they bring a radical new perspective to the fight against crime.

Under such a system honest decent people have no chance at all - they only thing they can do - in fact they have a DUTY to do, if they ever wish to live in a decent society again, - is totally reject every thing to do with that corrupt system and establish their OWN system of Justice!

In other words - BECOME VIGILANTES!

Sadly they seem a little short on concrete proposals - and for perhaps understandable reasons, true-life case studies and testimonials are thin on the ground.

Wee Postie

At Biased BBC.

Rasputin Consolidates New Fan Base

In the UK and US they think he's mad as a fish, but Rasputin's views on Sharia law have made him a host of friends in the Muslim north of Nigeria.

Mauled by the media for suggesting aspects of Sharia Law should be incorporated into the British legal system, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has become something of a hero -- even a Christian legend -- in Muslim-dominated northern Nigeria.

Speaking at the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London on March 6, the leader of the multi-million strong Qadiriyyah wing of the Islamic faith, Nigerian Sheikh Qaribullahi Nasiru Kabara, told academics and diplomats that he felt "very good" when he heard what Williams had to say at a February lecture.

"I felt very good," the sheikh said. "The people of northern Nigeria are very happy. It shows the recent upward rating of the British and the way they see Islam...That call from the Archbishop of Canterbury caused a serious round of celebrations because people feel, 'These people are now listening to us. Let us look at them and talk to them properly.'"

Of course, happy or not, some of the people of northern Nigeria have killed thousands of Anglican Christians in the last few years.

Over 10,000 people have died in religious violence since 1999 when several northern states decided to implement the Shariíah penal code in defiance of the countryís secular constitution. The Wase area of southern Plateau State has experienced intermittent violence since the summer of 2002 when attacks by armed Muslims on the predominantly Christian Taroh tribe left at least 5,000 people dead, 100,000 displaced and over 80 villages destroyed.

There was a lull in the violence during 2003 when the State Governor, Joshua Dariye, convened local peace talks. However, tensions mounted once again on January 3 2004 after it emerged the Muslim Emir of Wase, deeply implicated in the violence of 2002, had brought more than 500 Muslim families to the area to settle in towns and villages abandoned by displaced Christians.

I somehow doubt that Nigerian Christians are quite as chuffed with the Mad Monk.

Another Liberal Repents ...

US playwright David Mamet. I suppose after Oleanna this was always a possibility.

"How could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it?

I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.

I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.

For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests.

To that end, the Constitution separates the power of the state into those three branches which are for most of us (I include myself) the only thing we remember from 12 years of schooling.

The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long."

Peterborough - New Burst of Vibrancy

Our very own favela. Slowly the infrastructure of a third world country is being put together.

A council has said a group of eastern European immigrants living rough and "rent-free" in a city are giving migrant workers a bad name. Up to 20 Lithuanians, Slovakians, Poles, Ukrainians and Russians have set up camp in an area of Peterborough.

The city council said the group had refused offers of help and work opportunities and were continuing to live rent-free on the streets. A council spokesman said they had been warned their camp was illegal. "They have been told that their camp is illegal and must be removed but have moved their tents only a short distance further along," the spokesman said. "It may next be necessary to take enforcement action. Essentially, they have refused opportunities for work and only undertake sporadic employment when no other means of support are available. They prefer to live rent-free."

The spokesman said three tents have been put up in the city's Bourges Boulevard, with up to 20 "rough sleepers" thought to be living there.

Irony Alert ...

Public school leftie comedian (seems to be on all of those six-blokes-and-a-girl-called-Sally-who-knew-each-other-at-uni-plus-thirty-five-scriptwriters Radio Four shows) Marcus Brigstocke :

The main thing we've done since we got here is making everything green. It's an agonising financial experience. We've spent about a hundred grand ...

We have solar panels, and are having photovoltaic panels fitted as soon as we can get hold of them, but the demand is very high. They are full-on energy-producing panels – they will run your lights for you and contribute to the national grid. You can get photovoltaic panels in the UK but the waiting lists are long. Also, the Government has set a cap on grants for installing them, at the same time as saying, "Yes, we are taking climate change seriously!" I am getting my panels in from a Chinese plant, the only one in the world with a really solid eco-record for making them. A lot of these things you buy thinking, "Yes, that's the right thing to do", and then you find out that the carbon footprint caused by construction and transport makes the action useless.

Ah yes. Those famously eco-friendly Chinese. And they're delivered by magic pixie rather than ship.

It's an iron law that the more you parade your green credentials, the more long-distance flights you make - hence all those "Bali from £17.99 if you fly Tuesdays" ads in the Guardian's travel section, and all that one-upmanship about finding somewhere "totally unspoiled" off Sumatra. One can never know how trustworthy the figures are in sites like this or this - one says a return flight to Miami releases the same CO2 as 10,000 miles in a family car, another says return to NY "has as much effect" as that 10K of motoring - something to do with high-altitude CO2 emissions being worse. But the general message is clear.

Our Mr Green is an archetype :

"I first skied when I was 15"

"People who have listened to my Giles Wemmbley Hogg series are sometimes surprised to discover that I am he. I spent a great deal of my gap year in his shoes, travelling round Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia"

"When I was in my twenties, we used to go to Mallorca a lot"

"We spent our honeymoon in Mauritius, at the Paradise Cove Hotel"

"My last three holidays were all snowboarding in Méribel, at the beginning of this year. Ideally I’d like to go for two or three weeks, but what with work and family, I can’t do that. Instead, I go several times for three or four days."

"In summer, we go fairly regularly to Canada"

Guardian commenter CaptainCrunch sums it up neatly :

I can't get over the number of people who claim to be concerned about climate change but still feel the need to take foreign holidays.

Either they really haven't joined the dots between their holiday activities and the global climate, or their outward concern is just an act designed to portray themselves as caring middle-class liberals. Either way, I wish they'd give up the pretence and come right out with it: my travel plans are way more important than the environment.

(Just put the icing on the Giant Cake of Hypocrisy, Mr Brigstocke tootles off on a freebie to the Arctic to tell us all about the horrors of climate change.)


According to his Wikipedia entry, Brigstocke's essential theme is "the hypocrisy of the affluent".




(via)

Bearing A Grudge

Via Stephen Stratford's excellent Crime History site, the story of Udham Singh, whose brother had been killed in 1919 by General Dyer's troops at Amritsar. Sir Michael O'Dwyer was governor of the Punjab at the time and supported Dyer.

Twenty one years later ...

As the meeting was breaking up Udham Singh fired all 6 rounds of a .45 Smith & Wesson revolver into a group of people on the platform of whom O'Dwyer was a part. O'Dwyer was was hit twice in the back, and killed instantly. One bullet passing through his heart and right lung. Another bullet passed through both kidneys.

Lord Zetland, Secretary of State for India, was hit twice although he was only slightly injured, as were Lord Lamington and Sir Louis Dane. The numbers of people killed were not as large as could have been expected, as Udham Singh used 30 year old, poor fitting .44 bullets.

Udham Singh was overpowered before he left the room. His hatred had not been diminished by killing O'Dwyer:

"I did it because I had a grudge against him, he deserved it. I don't belong to any society or anything else. I don't care, I don't mind dying. What is the use of waiting until you get old? That is no good ... Is Zetland dead? He ought to be, I put two in him. I bought the revolver from a soldier in a public house. My parents died when I was 3 or 4 ... Only the one dead, eh? I thought I could get more."

Singh was hanged in 1940.

Poverty Causes Crime Part 183

A group of teenagers drank champagne before going out and attacking a French schoolboy, a court has heard.

Yes, It's Polonophobia !

It was surely only a matter of time.

Initially Poles had a warm press and sympathy from the political elites, the employers and the trade unions, and their positive input into the British economy was rightfully stressed.

The political elites ? Check.

Employers ? Check.

Trades Unions. Check. As I've pointed out, a bit of a contrast with times past.

There was always an undercurrent of the less successful elements in British society who saw the massive sudden Polish influx as the cause of their own misfortunes, particularly in the rural areas and small provincial towns where the Polish presence was very visible and there was little experience of a multiethnic society.

I get a bit of an undercurrent of 'primitive yokels' from that too. Perhaps the massive influx into areas where employment was already extremely hard to find and extremely low paid - like rural England, Wales and Scotland - had something to do with it.

Initially these voices remained silent, but a virulent campaign in certain newspapers, Polonophobic in effect if not in intention, has now given these malcontents a voice.

Malcontents, eh ? And Polonophobic to boot !

The traditional Polish community's successful practice of integration without assimilation was also unlikely to work with the sheer numbers.

Well, yes. Nowt to argue with there. The displaced Poles, Ukranians and Latvians of the Second World War have integrated pretty well. But they'd (mostly) just fought a war on our side - and I don't think there were getting on for a million of them.

There is a growing volume of hate crimes now against Poles throughout the countryside and the Government needs to take steps to challenge this.

Wiktor Moszczynski

Throughout the countryside ? What about the cities ?

The Indie don't bother to tell us, but Mr Moszczynski is a member of the Presidium of the Federation of Poles in Great Britain.

Didn't I Tell You ?

To repeat myself :

The solutions will be the entertaining bit. Having knocked down Britishness over 40 years, they're arrogant enough to believe they can rebuild it with a few citizenship lessons, a rebuild of the history curriculum and some media pressure. They'll find destruction is much easier than construction.


Here we go again :

School-leavers should be encouraged to swear an oath of allegiance to Queen and country, says a report commissioned by Gordon Brown on British citizenship. Report author, ex-attorney general Lord Goldsmith, says it would give teenagers a sense of belonging. Council tax and student fee rebates are suggested for people who volunteer - as well as a "Britishness" public holiday.

Let's pass on what exactly qualifies Lord Goldsmith as an expert on social cohesion. I guess it's an encouraging sign of incompetence that Gordon Brown thinks his input will be useful. The derision he's attracting from both left and right is most beautiful to be seen, as the Bard of Dundee would say.

I have a feeling the Labour Party focus groups must be telling them some rather unpleasant stories. At this moment BBC Radio Four's "You and Yours" is discussing the white (i.e. British) working class, and drawing calls from bemused middle class lefties asking "what's this all about ?".

It's about our rulers crapping themselves, that's what it's all about. No, that's not fair, they probably haven't got to that point yet. The BBCs sudden rediscovery of the WWC is a prophylactic, a catch-up exercise in reminding the poor Brits that they do count, really.

Elsewhere, Tim Lott in the Indie, of all places :

My father worked in a greengrocers' shop for 35 years; my mother was a housewife before she committed suicide in 1987. They were both lifelong Labour voters. My mother hanged herself in the house she lived in all her life, in Southall, west London, a town that had changed beyond all recognition. It is today the least white place in the whole of Britain.

She wrote in her suicide note: "I hate Southall, I feel so alone."

By what methods were the white working classes (WWC) despatched? The first development that undermined WWC hopes and morale was the great betrayal in education – the abolition of grammar schools and the retention of private schools.

Grammar schools, in the guilt-ridden WLMC view of things, favoured middle-class children over working-class children. What they actually favoured – or could have favoured, if the tests were designed sufficiently well – was clever children over less clever children. And if you look at the dyna7mism of the post-war grammocracy (Pinter, Dyke, Potter, Jacobson, Sillitoe, Bragg, Bennett and hundreds of others), it provided a crucial injection of WWC sensibility into the wider culture.

Now, in the name of everyone being equal – except for the WLMC who could pay for private schools – no one could be admitted to a school just on the basis that they were clever, which a remarkably large number of working-class people are. The WLMC had it that the WWC are all about as clever as each other (not very, though you had to pretend otherwise) and thus must all go to the same, very big, often rather crappy schools in which maybe dozens of languages are spoken.

The second great betrayal was multiculturalism. This was the creed that said all cultures were as valid as each other (in theory) but that minority cultures were somehow – no one was quite sure how – actually superior to the host white indigenous culture which was axiomatically racist. So even if you happen to come from a culture that endorsed female circumcision and was misogynist and homophobic, it was a given that you were a "victim". And who were the "victimisers"? The WWC who were faced with the profound challenge and stresses of assimilation.

There was a lot of WWC resistance to immigration. This was partly about racism, which, of course, the WLMC are immune to. Something in the organic bread, I think. But it was also about losing housing opportunities, cheap labour taking away jobs, and the simple, profound problem of learning to exist in a new kind of culture, which in some cases overwhelmed and bewildered the indigenous one. The trick of learning to feel ashamed at the same time as everything was being taken away from you was a really hard one to pull off.

And the mighty Yazza in the same place. You've been talking to that Melanie Phillips* again, haven't you ?

A Jewish friend prompted this column. She said to me: "I condemn Israeli politics and some things British Jews are up to. But when anti-Semitism seeps through the land, unseen, unacknowledged, I must stand up for my people. You must too. It is your duty. Powell's ghost is awake, Racism is everywhere. I can feel it. Can't you?"

I can see the Tories pinching that last line for their next campaign, but that's by the by.

"I must stand up for my people"

And if you do that, Yasmin, you are a doughty campaigner against oppression. If I do that, however, I am a hideous racist !





* not really. I do love the Magna Mater, but she would never use a word like 'seeped'. It would be a 'raging tsunami' at least.

Turning Back the Hands of Time

Ah me. It's 1976. Takes me right back.

"Are all men rapists, or are some of them OK (ish) ?"

"I know she's violent, but she's got a lot to be violent about"

"It's my turn to host the Women's Group meeting. Would you mind going out, and not coming back till, say, 11.30 or midnight ?"

"MEN off the streets !"

Cath Elliott on the Million Women Rise March (attendance somewhere betwen 1,000 and 4,000, moderate violence). There's a quote somewhere about the bitterest disputes being the ones with the least at stake. Worth a read for the sheer energy that goes into the 'who said what to who' debate, as well as for Solzhenitsyn's revelation about that great feminist Angela Davis, whose hair made her a countercultural icon.

There's a certain woman here named Angela Davis. I don't know if you are familiar with her in this country, but in our country, literally, for an entire year, we heard of nothing at all except Angela Davis. There was only Angela Davis in the whole world and she was suffering. We had our ears stuffed with Angela Davis. Little children in school were told to sign petitions in defense of Angela Davis. Little boys and girls, eight and nine years old, were asked to do this. She was set free, as you know. Although she didn't have too difficult a time in this country's jails, she came to recuperate in Soviet resorts. Some Soviet dissidents--but more important, a group of Czech dissidents--addressed an appeal to her: `Comrade Davis, you were in prison. You know how unpleasant it is to sit in prison, especially when you consider yourself innocent. You have such great authority now. Could you help our Czech prisoners? Could you stand up for those people in Czechoslovakia who are being persecuted by the state?' Angela Davis answered: `They deserve what they get. Let them remain in prison.'

They've come ...

... to rape the people the Brits just don't want to rape.

Andrzej Jaromin, 45, will also be supervised for five years after his release. The judge, Lord Mackay of Drumadoon, heard how Jaromin subjected the woman to a brutal rape and serious assault after they had been drinking.

He had been released from a six-year sentence in Poland two years ago. The High Court in Glasgow heard he had come to Scotland to be with his parents and sister who live in Inverurie. Lord Mackay told the court he had no powers to order Jaromin to be deported after he completes his sentence.

It's A Theocracy I Tell You ...

Did you know that no feast day of the Church can fall in Holy Week ?

Easter's very early this year, and two feast days fall in that week - St Patrick on the 17th and St Joseph on the 19th.

So Paddy's been moved back to this Friday, the 14th, and St Joseph to the 15th.

And as all racegoers know, where St Patrick goes, the Cheltenham Drinking Festival is sure to follow.

(This annual drinking festival also features some kind of horse-racing, traditionally watched in an on-course bar over a sea of heads).

Ezekiel 37:12

Was the reading at Mass today. Seemed kind of apposite.





12 Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel.

13 And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves,

14 And shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know that I the LORD have spoken it, and performed it, saith the LORD.

Blimey

I've been saying this for six years :

The philosopher Hannah Arendt argued that the origins of totalitarianism lay 'in one great unorganised mass of furious individuals" who had nothing in common except their apprehension that the most respected and representative articulators of the existing culture were fools, and the elected holders of public office were fraudulent.

The problem is that the most respected and representative articulators of the existing (2008) culture are fools, and many of the elected holders of public office are fraudulent. Where does that leave us ?

Take a look at the comments on this CiF piece warning of the dangers of a BNP London Assembly member. The usual anti-BNP Guardianistas are simply overwhelmed - not by BNP supporters, but by people totally disillusioned with NuLab, some of whom are almost nihilistic in their desire to give them a shoeing. I've not seen so much weary contempt for a party ... I'd say a rough split in the comments is 10% basically supportive (anti-BNP), less than 5% pro-BNP, another 5% who might vote for them to poke a finger in the NuLab eye, and 80% a-virulent-plague-on-your-house stuff - the most wounding coming from ex-Labour voters.

Interesting times.

"a cross-section of the community"

Telegraph

RAF personnel have been banned from wearing their uniforms in public after suffering abuse in the streets. The order was given to servicemen and women at an air base in Cambridgeshire on the advice of RAF police.

The base commander at RAF Wittering, near Peterborough, took the decision after reviewing incidents of abuse over a seven-month period. Sqd Ldr Tony Walsh, a spokesman at the base, said a number of personnel who lived in the city and its outskirts had suffered abuse when wearing their uniforms off-duty.

The abuse had come from a "cross-section" of the community, he added, and was believed to be linked to the RAF's operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Call me an old cynic, but I do wonder about that "cross-section" bit. On the other hand, Peterborough saw five nights of rioting in 2004, more trouble at its Anand Mela that year, was number seven in the top ten local authorities for the number of births, and at least one (Mohammed Choudhary) Labour councillor has been convicted of vote-rigging. Maybe "cross-section" is le mot juste.


UPDATE - this morning Victoria Derbyshire on Five Live opened her show by stating that Peterborough MP Stewart Jackson had claimed a small number of "young Muslim men" were responsible. Alas the first few minutes of her show are not available on the BBC website - by accident or design, it starts a few minutes in. I can't find any corroboration of this anywhere else.

BBC Reporter Stephen Chittenden reported from Peterborough that no-one seems to know exactly what the abuse consisted of, where it happened, who was involved or how many times. Wittering RAF are referring journalists to the MOD. It appears that all we DO know is that they've been asked not to wear uniforms.

One For Mr Tarran

And all patriotic Englishmen, Scotmen, Welshmen, Irishmen, Canucks, Aussies, Kiwis and South Africans.

Patriotic Song : a a book of English verse : being an anthology of the patriotic poetry of the British Empire from the defeat of the Spanish Armada till the death of Queen Victoria

The pdf version is bigger, but it reads better than the text file.

It is needless to dwell upon the inspiring energy of song. Since the age of Tyrtaeus it has everywhere been recognised as a powerful incentive to valour. A nation can scarcely exist without a national anthem. How characteristic are the anthems of the nations ! It may almost be said that the difference of the English and the French nations is expressed by the contrast between God Save the King and the Marseillaise.
What an influence songs have exercised upon the life of nations! The debt of Scotland to Burns, the debt of Ireland to Moore, is greater than words can tell. Fletcher of Saltoun was perhaps not wrong in his estimate of the songs, as compared with the laws, of a nation ...

To consolidate the Empire, and to animate it as a whole with noble ideas, is one of the greatest needs and duties of the present day; and an empire, like an admiral, lives not by bread alone, but by its sentiments, its ambitions, its ideals.

So said The Right Reverend J. E. C. Welldon, Lord Bishop of Calcutta, Late Head-Master of Harrow School (in fact Churchill's headmaster), in the foreword to this 1901 volume. You'd have to go a long way now to find a Church of England Bishop who wouldn't call him a fascist.

Quote of the Day

Sam Tarran

(It) was not the fact that the Government stabbed their voters in the back by going back on their manifesto promise; it was not the fact that the Liberal Democrats, as ever the majority spineless, refused to take any position whatsoever; and it was not the fact the vote was lost, as was expected anyway. It was probably the way the Labour MPs cheered as the results were announced.

It is a contemptible, evil thing when the elected representatives of the people cheer as they vote away both the will of the people themselves, and most likely the only chance to save Britain from being dragged further into the Napoleonic monolith that has ensnared the nations of Europe. Never has such contempt been shown for the British people by any Parliament in any age.