Uncertainty or good manners ?

Norm takes this remark, by the (female) vicar officiating at John Mortimer's funeral, as signifying uncertainty :

"Sir John called himself an atheist for Christ," the vicar said. "He always came to midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. But he emphatically did not believe in life after death. My hope," she added, "is that he has had a wonderful surprise."

What, you mean she isn't sure ?

Given that she was a female CoE vicar, Norm may not be too far from the truth. But there's always another possibility. Maybe she was just being polite. After all, to have added 'but my fear is that he's had a nasty shock' would have been impolite at the least, no matter what her thoughts. Few are those shepherds of Christ's flock who'll front up a funeral with Isaiah 14:9.

Captain Ginjah

As written by F.W. Leigh and sung by George Bastow, a man who with this and 'The Galloping Major' pretty much cornered the Victorian music-hall market in incompetent military lechers. Three generations of my family were bounced on mother's or father's knee to the chorus of 'The Galloping Major' - a rather dubious song about one man's quest for more 'bumpety bumpety bumpety bump'.

Bastow's version of 'Ginjah' is not on Youtube, but Harry Faye's is. A 'masher' was a Victorian dandy, a young man about town, dedicated to the pursuit of young ladies.

A soldier once was I, by jingo much admired,
The army lost a treasure on the day that I retired.
They begged of me to leave, they asked me as a boon;
They said my fiery whiskers made the guns go off too soon
But demmit, ???????, to make it all the same
The ladies, bless 'em, mashin' them has always been my game
Mashed them years ago, when I was in my prime
I'm known as Gingah, Captain Ginjah, Ginjah all the time

Chorus :

Gingah, Ginjah
They all know Captain Ginjah
Jolly old pot
O-T 'ot
Ninety-five in the shade, what what !
I love the ladies
Not one of them would I injure
All the girls are fond of Gin
Gin-gin-gin-gin-Ginjah !


I've been in action twice, and fought while blazing hot
The first was in Japupuland, and wounded there I got,
When I recall it now, it hurts my peace of mind
I stooped to pull my socks up and a spear stuck in behind
But Action Number Two was quite a different sort
To tell the truth, it took place in the breach of promise court
Plaintiff told her tale, when she proved it true
The judge said 'You be thankful that he didn't marry you !'

The soldiers of today, they don't deserve the name
The rough old dogs of my day used to live on smoke and flame
Each time the mighty guns discharged their shot and shell
I used to sniff the gunpowder (??) and demmit what a smell !
But what chance is there now, for men of blood and breed
My heart and soul are all afire to do some daring deed
Some say 'take a wife' - that game's not for me
I might find one more gingery than I know how to be !

(When lefty academics - and there are few other types these days - write about this type of stuff in a political context, they usually get it hopelessly wrong. The worldview seems to be that the songs can only fall into one of two categories :

they're either

a) deliberately manufactured stuff to keep the Empire upright, the soldiers fighting, women chained to the sinks or factory benches and the workers diverted from their own best interests by jingoism and a racist patriotic narrative. The same things we hear about the stories in the Sun and Daily Mail today.

b) the voice (often 'authentic' and 'working-class') of anticapitalist, anti-Imperialist subversion. Remember that 'subversive' is a good thing.

So 'Ginjah' is "a type which allows satire to undermine an upper class which assumes and has bestowed upon it undeserved status and authority". Funny. If ever an upper class deserved status and authority, it was the Victorian one. After all, their country controlled about a third of the world's surface - quite an impressive showing for a small island.)

These Are The People They Starve To Death, Aren't They ?

Sunday Times

Ten years ago, Kate went into a deep coma and was on a ventilator for several weeks. She had suffered severe brain inflammation after contracting a viral infection. When she came out of the coma, she opened her eyes and could breathe naturally, but she was unresponsive to speech and visual stimuli, and appeared to lack all conscious awareness. She was still in this condition four months after falling ill, and was later diagnosed to be in a persistent vegetative state, or PVS: in other words, persistently unaware. But the diagnosis was wrong.

Although Kate could not speak, or hear properly, or make any kind of signal, or take in sustenance except through a tube into the stomach, she was sometimes aware of herself and her surroundings. She had a raging thirst that was not alleviated by the ward staff. She was racked with pain. Sometimes she’d cry out, but the ward staff thought it was just a reflex action. Kate suffered so much pain and despair that she tried to take her own life by holding her breath.

A Few Snowdrops From The Curate's Field

(photo by Ozier Muhammad for The New York Times)

A feel-good Obama story - while generally the Obamarama drives me nuts, and I hate the racism and inverse racism that gave him so many votes, you can still see why these guys, who I've blogged about before, would be chuffed.

Now in their 80s and 90s, most were frail and bundled up against the cold in wheelchairs. “All of the things that are wrong can get washed away,” Spann Wilson, 92, a Tuskegee Airman who flew P-51 fighters over North Africa and Europe, said as he listened to the Marine Band playing at the Capitol.

More Labour sleaze. No wonder the bankers aren't going on trial - the precedent would be too uncomfortable.

Baron Truscott of St James’s took a bite of his teacake before explaining to the two lobbyists in front of him just how much it would cost to hire a peer of the realm.

“Rates vary between £1,000 and £5,000 a day,” he said quietly, his voice almost drowned by the chatter in the House of the Lords dining room. It was a question, he agreed, of getting the right person rather than haggling over the money.

Truscott — a former Labour MEP who was a government minister until 18 months ago — made it clear he had exactly the right credentials.

In the course of their short tea-time conversation he agreed to help them amend a government bill that was harmful to their client, in return for cash. He said he had done similar work before. He said he had intervened on the Energy Bill — a piece of legislation he had been responsible for as a minister only months earlier. His fee was seemingly modest by peers’ standards, but probably not for most people outside the house. He charged £2,000 a day, which would have added up to £72,000 for the three-day-a-month one-year contract he later proposed ...

On Thursday, Lord Snape, a former Labour whip, also indicated he would be willing to help the reporters amend the bill for a fee of up to £24,000 a year. “Depending on who is on the Commons committee, if I had a chat I could see if I could get them to table an amendment in committee. It would be better if you could get a government person to do it, purely in political terms.”

He also offered to make representations to Healey. “I can approach him behind the scenes to say, ‘You know this is the purpose behind the amendment, look at it’.”

Lord Moonie, a former defence minister, also offered to assist in return for an annual fee of £30,000. Moonie said he would contact Healey and offered to identify people who could put down an amendment.

Moonie is a social friend of Gordon Brown and was ennobled in 2005. He gave up his parliamentary seat reportedly so that Brown could keep his in a boundary change.

The peer said the rules in the Lords were lax. “The thing with the Lords is that there’s virtually nothing they can do with you, unless you break the law . . . Even if you don’t declare, there’s nothing they can do but jump up and down.”

They're dirty dogs, aren't they ?

More anti-Christian activism - using taxpayer money as a weapon of culture war yet again :

A local authority has withdrawn the grant it gives to provide warden services at a care home because the residents have refused to answer "intrusive" questions about their sexuality. Pensioners living at the home in Brighton are supposed to be questioned regularly about their sexual orientation under the council's "fair access and diversity" policies. But the charity running the home has declined to do so, and nor will it use images of elderly homosexuals, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people in its leaflets. As a consequence, the council has accused the charity of "institutional discrimination" and withdrawn its £13,000 grant.

Did you know that the top police officers lobby group ACPO - the Association of Chief Police Officers - is a limited company ? A limited company that's totally state-funded ?

So is a company I'd never heard of, Solace - which is owned by council chief executives and has a subsidiary which acts as a paid consultancy to local authorities - for headhunting chief execs and setting their salary levels !

No wonder you see senior officers leave in disgrace after some scandal only to pop up somewhere else on a similar salary.

More instances of taxpayer money being used to fund lobby groups - who then lobby for the policies the paymaster wants. They really are a corrupt bunch, aren't they ? Democracy is being hollowed out from the inside.

Earlier this month the Health Secretary, Alan Johnson, announced that the display of cigarettes and tobacco in shops would be banned in England and Wales from 2011. He added that people wanting to buy cigarettes from vending machines would in future have to show proof of age to obtain a token to activate the machine, and machines could be banned altogether in the future.

Mr Johnson boasted that the display ban was favoured by an "overwhelming majority" of 96,000 responses to a six-month public consultation on the subject. Yet only a handful of those 96,000 respondents came from individuals submitting their personal views. Almost 70,000 came from those collected by pressure groups entirely funded by the Department for Health. Among the groups submitting block responses were SmokeFree NorthWest, SmokeFree Liverpool and SmokeFree North East, which were all set up by the Government to lobby against the tobacco industry. The finding has prompted critics to accuse the Government of spending taxpayers' money on establishing groups designed merely to back the Government line on public health issues. Ministers have effectively been accused of "astroturfing" - cultivating a fake grassroots movement in order to make a position appear more popular than it really is. The Government also published responses to a consultation on alcohol consumption earlier this month, in advance of a Policing and Crime Bill currently passing through Parliament, which proposes giving the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, sweeping powers to control licensing in pubs and clubs. The consultation attracted 2,336 responses. Almost 2,000 of these came either from a survey by Alcohol Concern, a charity which last year was given almost £400,000 by the Department for Health and raised nothing through fundraising, or postcards distributed by the Department itself, which posed the question: "Fed up with alcohol problems where you live?" Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, said the disclosures summed up Labour's "cavalier" approach to consulting the public. Mr Lansley said: "It will come as no surprise to us if the Department of Health has funded organisations that provide the responses to consultations that the Government is looking for".

The Devils Kitchen (parental advisory - toilet-mouthed posts) had a piece on the subject of these fake charities - and there's now a directory of fake charities to which you may add your own examples.

And finally .. that fine police blogger Nightjack is winding the blogging down for a while while he does his exams, leaving us with these thoughts on policing. Go read.

His back pages are well worth a browse too - he has a list of his most visited posts on the sidebar. I liked his take on the so-called "Children's Commissioner" Al Aynsley-Green (Laban's view here - note that Al has now reinvented himself as 11million.org.uk - cool or what ? He's another one of those tax-funded pressure groups at £3 million pa of our money) - he sees him as The Dad At The Disco.

"to gain votes by a despicable method"

Another politician is in the dock - not for fraud, incompetence, dishonesty or one of the many other possibilities, but for saying the wrong things about the wrong people :

Last Wednesday another European politician living under police protection following Muslim death threats, was convicted by a court in Austria to a suspended jail sentence of three months and a fine of 24,000 euros.

Susanna Winter, a member of the Austrian Parliament, came to the court room in Graz under heavy police protection to defend herself against allegations of “inciting racial hatred and degradation of religious symbols and religious agitation.” In January 2008, Mrs. Winter, a member of the Austrian Freedom Party FPÖ, said that the prophet Muhammad was “a child molester” because he married a six-year-old girl. She also said Muhammad was “a warlord” who had written the Koran during “epileptic fits.” The politician added that Islam is “a totalitarian system of domination that should be cast back to its birthplace on the other side of the Mediterranean.” She also warned for “a Muslim immigration tsunami,” saying that “in 20 or 30 years, half the population of Austria will be Muslim” if the present immigration policies continue.

Following these remarks, Muslim extremists threatened to kill Mrs. Winter, who was subsequently placed under police protection. “I do not feel guilty of racial incitement,” Mrs. Winter told the court. The judge, however, disagreed. He told the elected member of parliament: “You have only one goal: to gain votes by a despicable method, by appealing to xenophobic feelings.” The judge also argued that it is impossible to write during epileptic fits.

Now, as regular readers will be aware, I'm not totally in tune with Ms Winters. I'm not temperamentally averse to living under a theocracy where the head of state is, under God, also the head of the state religion. A light-touch theocracy, where divorce and adultery are frowned on (and career-wreckers), outraging public decency in the theatre, cinema, newspaper or television attracts severe and immediate sanction, the differences between the sexes are acknowleged, blasphemy or profaning the holy day are punished, where abortion and attempted suicide are illegal. After all, I lived under just such a theocracy until the late 60s. The Queen is still officially head of the Church of England, it's just that the Church seems to have dropped Christianity.

Trouble is I'm not sure the only theocracy currently on offer is a terribly light-touch one. And I think that's what Ms Winter's worried about, too.

Airheads

When whoever-it-is says "To give up plastic" I presume she's talking about surgery.



Have they no sense of shame - or at least of irony ? But these people apparently take themselves seriously. I hope they don't expect us to ...




(I don't see much 'cult-like service' here, though. I see a lot of posers. If I knew who any of them were I'd boycott their films that I don't watch anyway. I'll make a start by deleting the kids Chilli Peppers mp3s. Or maybe I should put them on a file-sharing website)



Andrew Breitbart wields the scalpel :

This video illustrates that the current celebrity class are not citizens but serfs. They need a leader to put their minds in the right place to do the right thing. They are not heroic individualists seeking to extend America’s promise but conformists who chose to sit out and complain during the tough years in order to ensure their guy got in the next go-around ...

They never spoke up against the movies that demonized our military.

They never made movies to counter the libel.

They took the easy route. And blamed Bush for everything.

Moore’s nauseating video — which, like Steven Soderbergh’s “Oceans” franchise, grants a pristine look into the modern celebrity’s sense of self-importance — is not a sign of desire to serve the country under Obama. Watch, by March this pledge like New Year’s resolutions will fall by the wayside. It is a sign that the Democrat is in the White House now. It is a sign that they get to sleep again in the Lincoln Bedroom.

Twenty years ago AIDS was the number one cause for the Hollywood left. Remember the trendy red ribbons at all the self-aggrandizing awards shows? Hollywood has moved on (dot org) to better blame-your-fellow-American causes. But President Bush didn’t. And aside from Bob Geldof and Bono, they ignore this president’s demonstrable goodness ...

Remember this video: It is a instructive relic of the era of celebrity decadence and boutique anti-Republican activism under President Bush. It is a sickening display that they want fast and easy absolution for having comported themselves like ill-behaved children for eight difficult and war-torn years.

Good luck, President Obama. The rest of you can go to hell.

And Iowahawk (who else ?) the rapier :

Totally-wasted-on-heroin guy from the Red Hot Chili Peppers: I... uhhh.... ihhh... ahhhh... monkey funky like da junky...

Jason Bateman: I plehhhhdge... to fondle this microphone in a whimsically provocative manner.

Mr. Haney from Green Acres: To never give anyone the finger when I'm driving again. I will instead moon them, with my frightening elderly haunches.

'Greg and Darma' chick with scary feral baby: To save water, by never bathing my child.

Underwear model: I pledge.

I think it's that Spunky Winkerbean chick, the one who had a boob reduction: I pledge.

Brain-fried Chili Peppers guy: To caaaare? For? America's elderly?

Pockmarked guy in Urban Outfitters T-shirt: To make sure America's senior citizens have access to free healthcare and iPods and ringtone downloads.

Spunky Winkerbean: So that our next generation's USB memories will not be forgotten.

Eva Longoria: Now I'm pledging here on the other side of the frame!

Absolutely no clue who this is, whatsoever: To bring awareness to mental disease, like I am doing right now.

Weirdly bloated lips chick: To advance research into stem cells, collagen, and Botox.

Huh? Maybe I'm just getting too old but this is another guy who simply isn't ringing a bell: To spread the awareness of autism -- by becoming autistic.

Quote Of The Day

"On the plus side, this does mean the week after the death of Princess Di is no longer the stupidest moment in modern pop culture"

"these statements substantially harm the religious esteem of the Islamic worshippers"

Dutch MP Geert Wilders (he of Fitna fame/notoriety) is to be prosecuted in Holland "for the incitement to hatred and discrimination based on his statements in various media about moslims and their belief".

I think this site is the Dutch equivalent of our very own MinJust. Here's the indictment in English.

Amsterdam Court of Appeal orders the criminal prosecution of the Member of Parliament of the Dutch Second Chamber Geert Wilders

Amsterdam, 21 january 2009 - On 21 January 2009 the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam ordered the criminal prosecution of the member of parliament Geert Wilders for the incitement to hatred and discrimination based on his statements in various media about moslims and their belief. In addition, the Court of Appeal considers criminal prosecution obvious for the insult of Islamic worshippers because of the comparisons made by Wilders of the islam with the nazism.

The Court of Appeal rendered judgment as a consequence of a number of complaints about the non-prosecution of Wilders for his statements in various media about moslims and their belief. The complainants did not agree with the decision of the public prosecution which decided not to give effect to their report against Wilders.

The public prosecution is of the view, amongst others, that part of the statements of Wilders do not relate to a group of worshippers, but consists of criticism as regards the Islamic belief, as a result of which neither the self-esteem of this group of worshippers is affected nor is this group brought into discredit. Some statements of Wilders can be regarded as offending, but since these were made (outside the Dutch Second Chamber) as a contribution to a social debate there is no longer a ground for punishableness of those statements according to the public prosecution.

The Court of Appeal does not agree with this view of the public prosecution and the considerations which form the basis of this view.

The Court of Appeal has considered that the contested views of Wilders (also as shown in his movie Fitna) constitute a criminal offence according to Dutch law as seen in connection with each other, both because of their contents and the method of presentation. This method of presentation is characterized by biased, strongly generalizing phrasings with a radical meaning, ongoing reiteration and an increasing intensity, as a result of which hate is created. According to the Court of Appeal most statements are insulting as well since these statements substantially harm the religious esteem of the Islamic worshippers. According to the Court of Appeal Wilders has indeed insulted the Islamic worshippers themselves by affecting the symbols of the Islamic belief as well.

Secondly, the Court of Appeal has answered the question whether a possible criminal prosecution or conviction would be admissible according to the norms of the European Convention on Human Rights and the jurisprudence of the European Court based thereon, which considers the freedom of expression of paramount importance. The Court of Appeal has concluded that the initiation of a criminal prosecution and a possible conviction later on as well, provided that it is proportionate, does not necessarily conflict with the freedom of expression of Wilders, since statements which create hate and grief made by politicians, taken their special responsibility into consideration, are not permitted according to European standards either.

Thirdly, the Court of Appeal has answered the question whether criminal prosecution of Wilders because of his statements would be opportune in the Dutch situation (the question of opportunity). According to the Court of Appeal the instigation of hatred in a democratic society constitutes such a serious matter that a general interest is at stake in order to draw a clear boundary in the public debate.

As regards the insult of a group the Court of Appeal makes a distinction. In general the Court determines that the traditional Dutch culture of debating is based on tolerance of each others views to a large extent while Islamic immigrants may be expected to have consideration for the existing sentiments in the Netherlands as regards their belief, which is partly at odds with Dutch and European values and norms. As regards insulting statements the Court of Appeal prefers the political, public and other legal counter forces rather than the criminal law, as a result of which an active participation to the public debate, by moslims as well, is promoted.

However, the Court of Appeal makes an exception as regards insulting statements in which a connection with Nazism is made (for instance by comparing the Koran with “Mein Kampf”). The Court of Appeal considers this insulting to such a degree for a community of Islamic worshippers that a general interest is deemed to be present in order to prosecute Wilders because of this.

The Court of Appeal concludes that the way in which the public debate about controversial issues is held, such as the immigration and integration debate, does not fall within the ambit of the law in principle indeed, but the situation changes when fundamental boundaries are exceeded. Then criminal law does appear as well.

Otherwise, the Court of Appeal emphasizes that this is a provisional judgment in the sense that Wilders has not been convicted in this suit of complaint. The Court of Appeal has only judged whether there are sufficient indications – at the level of a reasonable suspicion – to start a criminal prosecution against Wilders. The penal judge who will ultimately render judgment in a public criminal trial will answer the question if there is ground for conviction, and if so, to which extent.

LJ Nummer

BH0496

Bron: Gerechtshof Amsterdam
Datum actualiteit: 21 januari 2009

Hmm. There's enough material there for a whole conference.

Help Wanted ...

By Sam Tarran :

I've just been assigned a report on the economic performance of Germany based upon the indicators of unemployment, inflation, balance of payments, and GDP over the last thirty years, to be submitted in three weeks.

Any advice? Pointers? Little snippets of information?

Any ideas out there ? I've no idea if you can get OECD stuff going back 30 years.






UPDATE - and while we're talking economics, pro-immigration and anti-British zealot (but learned economist) Willem Buiter agrees with Laban that the high street banks should all be nationalised. Alas he's forgotten the bit about putting their directors on trial and confiscating their assets, before repeating the process with the accountancy firms who signed off the accounts since, say, 2002. He's nearly as pessimistic as Ambrose Evans Pritchard :

In the name of preventing a collapse of the UK banking system, we are witnessing the socialisation - at first gradual, but now quite rapid - of all balance sheet risk of the UK banks by the UK government. This is risky and, in my view, unwise. The manner in which it is done also seems designed to maximise moral hazard ...

But even if the UK is not the next European country to face a sovereign debt challenge, there is a non-negligible risk that before too long, the growing exposure of the British sovereign to the banking system (and especially to the foreign currency funding risk faced by the UK banking system), together with the 9 and 10 per cent of GDP general government fiscal deficits expected for the next couple of years, may prompt a loss of confidence by the global financial community in the British banks, currency and sovereign.

We may well witness the UK authorities going cap-in-hand to the IMF, the EU, the ECB and the fiscally super-solvent EU member states (if there are any left), prompted by a triple crisis (banking, sterling and sovereign debt), to request a bail out. I hope and trust that the UK authorities are in regular contact with the IMF, the US administration, Brussels, Frankfurt and the leading EU member countries to prepare for a possible internationally coordinated bail-out operation for the British banking system and sovereign.

He seems to think the Great British Pound may go the way of the Great Icelandic Krone. The Krone halved against most foreign currencies, I believe - whereas sterling's only halved against the Yen and lost a third against most other currencies.

Not actually that far to go then. Let us see what the dawn will bring !

Lloyds Another 20% Down

At 34p the price is lower than HBOS ever went (yes, market capitalisation and all that, but all the same).

HSBC and Standard Chartered holding up.

Barclays are currently valued at about 1.2 times their annual profits. Down nearly 20% in 15 minutes - does someone know something we don't ? Got to be worth a dabble, surely ?

RBS hanging on at 10.5.

Gosh, this is exciting. Or it would be if I didn't bank with Lloyds. Doubtless Gordon will ensure that I don't lose out.

"England has not defaulted since the Middle Ages"

While the eyes of the world were on Washington DC, the eyes of Laban and quite a few others were watching the pound lose nearly 5 cents in a day, and the bank shares continuing to slide.

Gordon Brown really is an economic genius. With hindsight his abandonment of the competition laws to save HBOS ("too big to fail"), by steering it into the grateful embrace of Lloyds, creating "much much too big to fail", seems more like the advice of a man who comes across someone sinking into a quagmire, and recommends to a naive passer-by that they should reach out and save him.

"There'll be a handsome reward for you, Sir Victor - he's a very rich man !"

Sir Victor thinks of the reward, steps up, stretches out his hand and pulls lustily. But the weight ! The man is too heavy ! He pulls his hardest but with horror he finds his feet slipping inch by inch towards the swamp ... he wants to let go, but the sinking man has his hand clasped in the iron grip of fear, and feels himself being dragged inexorably towards the quicksand ... it's giving way under his feet, and the man, still clinging, pulling, is sinking down ... down ... the Lloyds 'rescue' is going to be the death of the rescuer.

“Some people are saying that we are nothing more than a big hedge fund, not entirely unlike Iceland, and that national bankruptcy is a real possibility,” noted the man from ITN. “Whatever else this represents, surely it is total failure of bank regulation?”

Gordon, so angry that his eye-bags were packing up and leaving without a backwards glance, noted sharply that American sub-prime was to blame. “I utterly dispute what you are saying. I would urge you to be cautious in the remarks that you make."

Some interpreted this as a threat to the journalist - a foolish idea. Gordon is instead becoming distinctly aware that the markets are looking for the next falling domino. Spain and Ireland were the front-runners, but the UK is coming up on the rails in fine style.

“I would urge you to sell any sterling you might have,” Mr Rogers advised his army of investment followers. “It's finished. I hate to say it, but I would not put any money in the UK.”

The collapse of the RBS share price reveals another puzzle :

Taxpayers put £5bn into RBS in the form of preference shares in October. The bank now has a market capitalisation of £13.7bn (as of Friday night).

The government is tomorrow expected to swap the preference shares for equity. We - the public - will end up with another 10 per cent of the bank, ie up from 58 per cent to 68 per cent.

So we seem to be exchanging £5bn of pref shares for £1.4bn of equity.

That was £1.4 bn with a share price of around 36p - it's now a third of that. Is this fraud or incompetence ? Just Gordonomics I guess. He really does seem to be moving non-existent divisions around the map.


My new favourite hell-in-a-handcart merchant, Ambrose Evans Pritchard, thinks it looks bad. He thinks that in every article I read, mind - but he's been right so far.

What have our leaders wrought? The reckless conduct of City, the fiscal incontinence of Gordon Brown (3pc deficit at the top of the cycle), and the pitiful regulation of the UK housing boom have all combined to bring the country to the brink of disaster.

England has not defaulted since the Middle Ages. There is a real risk it may do so now ...

The Baby Boomers have had their moment in power. The most spoilt generation in history has handled affairs with its characteristic hedonism. The results are coming in.

Well ? Dollars ? Yen ? Euros ? Property ? Swiss Francs ? Tell me, someone - before exchange controls are reintroduced !

A Leak From Every Seam

Riots in Latvia, Lithuania and Bulgaria.

Putin's Russia gets more gangster-like every day. And his Chechen satrapy is even worse.

While UK banks collapse, things are looking even scarier across the water. Bank shares in the Free State dropped 48% yesterday. The Irish government took the lead in guaranteeing deposits, but the nightmare, Icelandic scenario is if the banks' liabilities are greater than the Irish treasury's purse. The UK is in the same boat, but we can always inflate (i.e. collapse) the currency.

Can anyone suggest a safe-ish currency for my savings ?

Spain's in the doo-doo. I wonder how Santander, only a few months back a safe haven for Alliance and Leicester, Abbey National and B&B, is faring, given the Spanish property slump ?

Spain also has demographic collapse plus mass immigration.

Alice Cook is a woman after my own pessimistic heart :

Today was an historic moment. The RBS and its barely comprehensible loss signaled the end of an era. The days when finance was the engine of the UK economy are definitively over. The UK banking sector has become the 21st century equivalent of coal mining; over-staffed, over-paid, and profoundly unproductive ...

So what happens next? The government will continue to prop the banking system with liquidity. Whatever Brown and Darling might say in public, they now have the minimalist objective of preventing total collapse. It is simply inconceivable that lending could return to the 2007 levels. The heady days of near limitless credit growth have gone. The government would be doing well if it simply avoids another financial sector meltdown ...

What about the real economy? This too will adjust, and it will be painful. The bulk of the adjustment will be in financial services, which has just begun to shake out all that value-reducing labour that created this appalling banking crisis. Currently, the sector employs about 6 million people. Don't be surprised if that number falls by half.

I said 2009 was going to be interesting !

It's The Economy

Things are moving with remarkable speed. By next week Barclays and HSBC may be in the Government's bail-out tent, while Lloyds TSB, which was meant to be coming to the rescue of HBOS, may be more than 50% state-owned. Given that most of the banks would be bust without taxpayer guarantees I don't know why they don't just wind them up in a controlled manner, transferring assets and liabilities to the state, before beginning the process of building a case against their boards, freezing their assets and attempting to claw back their bonuses, property and pension funds - on the basis of the effectively fraudulent accounts, based on flawed asset evaluations, which have showed such huge profits over the last ten years. What would happen to a small or medium sized quoted business which inflated its assets in the accounts year on year, distributing huge dividends and bonuses until the day the assets turned out to be not quite as valuable as the liabilities ? At a minimum, HMRC would be all over their books, if not the Fraud Squad. In the States they'd do time - why not here ?

They might claim they truly believed the valuations - in which case sectioning under the Mental Health Act might be more appropriate. Their delusions have turned out profitable for them and dangerous for us.

Laban's not generally a believer in the state doing what can be done by private enterprise. But the banks are in a unique position - licensed to create money - and have been found grieviously wanting.


Only a few months back any Tory spending proposal would be greeted by Labour with cries of 'where's the money coming from', with dire prognostications of closed hospital wards and classrooms. Now Gordy's spending money he hasn't got like the proverbial drunken sailor, and the tab marked 'taxpayer' behind the bar gets longer and longer.

When the Tories stopped believing in God and Labour stopped believing in the British working class, they soon found other things to believe in. The Gods of the Market Place satisfied the spiritual needs of many Tories, while Labour returned to the Old Religion of the Pelagian Heresy - that man is essentially good and perfectible - but with a twist that Marx would have noted with a sardonic smile - perfectible only with enough teachers, social workers, Housing Officers, Funding Stream Co-ordinators, outreach workers and other Labour-activist beneficiaries of the Caring State.

Old Labour scorned the Gods of the Market, but New Labour realised that the taxes (and the party donations) would have to come from somewhere, so were quite happy to let the Market Place rip while taxing it to feed their core constituency clients - said social workers, Housing Officers etc. Indeed, for the architects of New Lab, it was but a short step from being intensely relaxed about others getting rich to being intensely interested in getting rich themselves. In this context I would recommend a read of lefty Yank Greg Palast's expose of Mandy's mate Derek Draper. It certainly dispels any illusions about the People's Flag.

Draper should have been pleased with his success. But his mood was philosophical.

“I don’t want to be a consultant,” he said. “I just want to stuff my bank account at £250 an hour.”

Blair and Gordy took the whole thing a little too far, though. Convinced that with enough social workers and Sure Start schemes, crime would fall, they didn't bother to build any prisons - and now the ones they have are full. Convinced that 'something would turn up' - like wind power - and afeared of the Guardian, they closed all the nuclear power stations and didn't commission any new ones. Now they've had to sell our energy future to the French, and the lights will soon be going out as the old stations shut faster than new ones can be built. The story of Anglesey Aluminium is a disgrace.

Above all, they spent and taxed in the boom years as though they would never end. What are they going to do now that they have ? The kitty's empty.

IMHO there's only one option open to them. They'll keep spending and start printing. Consider their position. With unemployment projected to rise to three million, they'll be worried about keeping order among the youth of our rainbow nation. No way can they let up on the outreach workers, but who will pay for them ?

The oldies will - especially those who were employed by the private sector. They don't fight. They probably voted Tory anyway. Many of their company pensions have been destroyed, but there are still a fair few impacting the bottom line with their future pension liabilities. Just print money, let inflation rip, and zap ! those future pension liabilities are halved in real terms.

That solves the problem of paying the outreach workers, it ensures more donations and directorships from grateful capitalists - and it also makes a lot of pensioners, with their pensions eroded by inflation, once again dependent on the State. It's a win for everyone - except the pensioners, but who cares about them ? They don't riot !

Of Fergie and Herbert Chapman

By any count of trophies, Alex Ferguson is the greatest manager there's ever been in British football. He's won them consistently over 30 years, too. Someone keeps his Wikipedia entry very tidy, omitting all reference to the Magnier saga or Jason's Old Trafford dealings.

IMHO he's up there with the very best and is probably the best. But you can't use the massive trophy count to put him head and shoulders above the others. Footy was very different in times past. Three things changed it and made it easier for richer clubs to stay at the top for long periods.

Until the maximum wage was lifted in 1961, no player in England could earn more than £20 a week. If you were getting £20 a week at, say, Ipswich in 1960, why move to a bigger club where you might not get a regular game and you'd be on the same money ? Unless the club wanted to sell, local heros tended to stay put in those days. A young Aaron Ramsey or Theo Walcott might have spent their whole careers with one club. Carlos Tevez is unhappy enough as it is about sitting on the United bench - despite all that cash. A 1960 equivalent would never have swapped a guaranteed first team place to be one of a squad for the same pay - and after all, you can only have so many forwards in a team.

That's not to say that transfer fees didn't make a difference - but the club had to want to sell. Lots of transfers today are basically forced sales.

Another difference was retention of registration. Until the 1995 Bosman ruling the club had your registration even if you were out of contract. To sign you, another club had to stump up. Turnover of players is much higher since Bosman - before, a player who wanted to leave might kick his heels when his contract ended, if his club got stroppy. These days he'd be a free agent - so transfers tend to happen when the player's still got a couple of years left on the contract.

Last, the footy TV cash and the marketing cash. Sky wasn't around in those days - the clubs earned what came in at the gate on matchdays unless they had a wealthy sponsor, and the mega-rich of those days didn't watch a lot of footy.

So a great manager way back when could (with the right club) disband an ageing team of stars and wield the chequebook, but not to anywhere near the same effect as today. Rebuilding was a slower process (and I'm aware that Ferguson has a fine record in bringing on new talent at United).

Mind, Herbert Chapman sounds a bit of a cunning old fox himself. What would El Tel, 'arry and Cloughie make of his teetotal transfer dealings ?

We arrived at the hotel half-an-hour early. Chapman immediately went into the lounge bar. He called the waiter, placed two pound notes in his hand and said: "George, this is Mr Wall, my assistant. He will drink whisky and dry ginger. I will drink gin and tonic. We shall be joined by guests. They will drink whatever they like. See that our guests are given double of everything, but Mr Wall's whisky and dry ginger will contain no whisky, and my gin and tonic will contain no gin."

The inebriated guests were then beaten down on the transfer price !

UPDATE - James Hamilton has more (and better-written, and better-researched) - on Herbert Chapman.

PS - three home wins in a row ! The Baggies may be bottom, but there are only six points between bottom and ninth ! Surely United and Chelsea will be nervously glancing over their shoulders ...

Dumb Britain Part 3,492 - Diversity Edition

"The pastor of Zion Baptist Church has expressed his disappointment after vandals daubed anti-semitic graffiti on the church wall."

(h-t Harry)

West Country Woes

Just as HMG tax flights in the name of the environment, before approving another Heathrow runway, the same contradictions apply in the lower tiers of government.

Swindon Borough Council are a bit strapped for cash. Diversity consultants and anti-racist outreach 5-a-day smoking cessation co-ordinators don't come cheap, you know.

So how can they save money ? Believe it or not, one of the proposals is to scrap the Groundwell Park and Ride - a boon to those of us who approach the Celestial City from the north and don't fancy the Magic roundabout plus the hefty town centre parking fees.

At the other end of the A419 another of the notorious Johnson clan once again finds himself in front of a beak. But it was this little-noted report from last year that struck me :

SIX members of the notorious Johnson family that stole metals worth more than £300,000 were today ordered to repay just one pound each after police found they had no assets to their names. Ten of the Johnson gang, from Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, were jailed for 38 years last year for a string of raids on business premises. A financial investigation hearing today was told that one of the conspirators, Charlie Lee, 39, profited by over £137,000.

But Bristol Crown Court heard that Lee, of Cleeve Prior, Evesham, who is in custody, had no cash or property, so a judge was forced to make an order for the nominal seizure of one pound. He will have to serve one day's imprisonment, on top of his original sentence of five-and-a-half-years, if he fails to come up with the coin.

The crew were jailed last year after pleading guilty to conspiracy to burgle or steal from businesses in Thames Valley, Warwickshire, the Midlands and Gloucestershire.

Another member Danny O'Loughlin, 32, was ruled to have made over £126,000 from the enterprise, where valuable metals like titanium were exported to China and India for recycling. O'Loughlin, also of Cleeve Prior, also had no 'realisable assets' - such as a house or car - and was also told to pay back a pound. Chad Johnson, of St Pauls Road, Cheltenham was deemed to have made £25,000 from his part metals thefts, but was also told to come up with his pound.

Francis Laird, defending, said: "There are members of his family in court who have agreed to meet the sum."

Sonny Johnson, 24, of Welwyn Court, Gloucester, sentenced to two years for conspiracy to steal, will again have to find a pound to satisfy the court, despite owning £8,400. Lee Johnson, 21, who made £38,000 from the raids which garnered the gang more than £365,000 over a three-month period, will also repay just one pound. Prosecutor Simon Burns said the money could simply be handed over after the hearing 'to save enormous red tape'. Christopher Keylock, 39, of Green Meadow, Bamfurlong, Cheltenham, benefited to the tune of £33,000 and also handed over his pound. Stephen Ford, 39, who owes £8,400 actually had some assets worth £3,000 and has been given 56 days to pay that sum, or serve 2.5 months in default. Ford, of Withington, Cheltenham was sentenced to two years and six months after admitting conspiracy to steal. Stephen Davis, 27, and Sean Lillis, 28, who only joined the scheme at the very end of its life in June 2006, where not deemed to have made any profit at all and owe nothing. A final conspirator Jamie Lake, 22, sentenced to two years, had his case adjourned until later this month.

The law really is a charade in such a case. I would be amazed if there was a single person in court who truly believed that Sonny Johnson, or people like Danny O'Loughlin (who not only pulled off the metals thefts, but was involved in robberies to the value of £80 million) had no assets.

Ten years or more back a family from the Cleeve Prior travellers site (I forget the name) earned a living knocking on old ladies doors, pointing out the broken slate or the chimney in need of repointing, and then ripping them off for tens of thousands of pounds. When the police and courts caught up with them one of the ringleaders had over £400,000 in building society accounts - which by the time the Asset Recovery boys caught up had diminished to about £100,000. Still a lot of money to lose, though.

It would appear from the poverty of these guys that the relevant 'lessons have been learned'. If only our Criminal 'Justice' system could say the same !

"Run you cowards ! Kuffar! Run you kuff! Allahu Akbar!"

"Police attack Gaza demonstration in London.

Riot police trap protestors in Hyde Park underpass."

So (according to Socialist Unity - the stopwar site has been hacked, by the Zionist Entity no doubt) sayeth the Stop The War Coalition, or whatever they're now called. George Galloway was apparently most upset.

Doesn't look like that from this video, of Her Majesty's Finest retreating from a band of doubtless peace-loving sons of the Prophet the Saturday before last.

How quickly history moves. Before 9/11 and despite the Rushdie affair, radical Islamists in the UK were a curio, presented as a comedy act by people like Louis Theroux and Jon Ronson.

So I drove Omar into town by a route that avoided Soho. We passed a poster advertising the Spice Girls' debut album.

"Such a very stupid thing," mumbled Omar. "Spicy Girls."

"What will become of the Spice Girls when Britain is transformed into an Islamic nation?" I asked.

"They will be arrested immediately," he replied. "They will not even be existing in an Islamic state. OK. We can go on. Turn right at the lights."

Even after 9/11 and 7/7 there was a police escort for people carrying banners saying 'Butcher those who insult Islam'.















Now we seem to have moved into a new phase.


(hat-tip - Beer n Sandwiches and the Pub Philosopher)


UPDATE - via JuliaM, this police blog (with more video) on the demo a week later.

As usual we had been told that our role was to facilitate the lawful demonstration and that we were effectively 'community Policing' unless the situation changed and things became violent. Crucially, we were told that despite the fact that nearly every march relating to the Gaza/Israel situation had experienced violence, this was not sufficient evidence to suggest that THIS march would become violent. As such, because the senior officers are so afraid of offending the wrong people, we were NOT in possession of riot helmets or shields which were left on the carriers, although we all were in our protective gear and coveralls under the yellow jackets. We were wearing our normal everyday beat helmets and to say some were not happy about that would be a slight understatement.

You won't be too amazed to learn that it doesn't end well.

Indian Exam Papers

Download samples from here. Year XII is apparently GCSE age.

You Can See How Wars Start ...

Scribbles observes manifestations of original sin. Kitchen Wars.

He said "Jehovah" !

(Hastily edited after a correspondent informed me that council firewalls were classifying the post as 'hate speech' !)

I was hoping to ignore the Prince Harry brouhaha, but as it was the main story on BBC news yesterday, occupied most of John Pienaar's 2 hr R5 'politics' programme and was the phone-in topic on R5 this morning ... a few points :

a) this was another Murdoch press-sourced story. The Dirty Digger, now a Dirty Yank, has never got over his lack of honours and social acceptance for his services to soft porn and the general coarsening (parental advisory) of British life over the last 30 years. His papers are as a result republican. If Prince Philip really had the power that Al Fayed thinks he has, Murdoch would long ago have been at the bottom of Sydney Harbour in a concrete overcoat.

b) '****' is about as racist as 'Brit'. It's a nickname, a diminutive. A year or so back my daughter and I were looking at a globe, and I was showing her all those fascinating countries northwest of Tibet and west of China.

"All the countries round there end in -stan, because that means country in Persian, which is what their languages are based on. There's Uzbekistan, the country of the Uzbeks, where the Uzbeks live, Turkmenistan, where the Turkmen live, Kirghistan, where the Kirghiz live, Kazakhstan, where the Kazakhs live, Tajikistan, where the Tajiks live, Afghanistan, where the Afghans live - and Pakistan, where the Pakistanis live !"

It's true that, unlike the preceding countries, Pakistan isn't named for one ethnic group but (by this guy) for many geographical regions (Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, Turkharistan, Afghanistan, BaluchistaN) - but I bet the BBC don't know that - I'm sure I didn't.

"It means the land of the Paks- the spiritually pure and clean. It symbolizes the religious beliefs and ethnical stocks of our people; and it stands for all the territorial constituents of our original Fatherland. It has no other origin and no other meaning; and it does not admit of any other interpretation"

c) why's it considered to be racist, then ? Because white people use it. Given that any nicknames /diminutives for ethnic minorities will at some time be used by some bad white chap in an assault - and at that point will be used to classify the assault as a hate crime (aren't ALL assaults hate crimes ?), it therefore follows that white people who do not wish to be considered racist can have no nicknames or diminutives for people of another race. Not allowed.

Indeed, it's best if they allow others to tell them what the acceptable form of words is. Remember that the use of 'coloured', fifty years ago considered more genteel and polite than 'black', was presented at the Lawrence tribunal as evidence pointing towards an officer's racism. The poor chap just hadn't kept up. Didn't read the Guardian or New Society.

So - no nicknames, no diminutives, no spontaneous descriptive creation - all things the Brits are rather partial to. Instead, use the words you're told to - and when they change, you change your language.

This only applies to whites addressing non-whites or possibly Jews. A google of "Welsh Windbag" produces 4,000 references, nearly all to Neil Kinnock - but nobody is likely to be prosecuted for incitement to racial hatred. Laban calls Charles Kennedy the Great Chieftain of the Pudding Race - an obviously disparaging reference to his ethnic origins (as well as his resemblance to a pudding that's been well laced with Glenlivet) yet the post survives. No, it's a non-white - or at least non-British thing.

It works inversely too. Kanye West can rap about the n-word as much as he likes, but the BBC don't mind. The killers of Christopher Yates can shout "We have killed the white man. That will teach an Englishman to interfere in P*** business" but the judge doesn't call them racist.

d) I forget which linguist, probably all of them, said that you can control thought by controlling language, and make some ideas literally unthinkable for lack of words. Let's just ask the question - what are the equivalent words, nicknames, diminutives that an Asian or Afro-Caribbean would use to describe whites ? Gora ? Cracker ? I don't know, the BBC and Guardian certainly won't tell us. Anyone out there know ? As we've seen, they don't in themselves have to be insulting. What are the magical words which make an attack a racist one ? The ones that the courts and BBC will present as indubitable proof of anti-white racism ?

You see. The words (officially) do not exist. It's easy to 'prove' a racist element to an assault or murder by whites. Evidence that any one of a few words was used is sufficient. The prosecutor seeking to prove a racist asaault ON a white person has no such handy shortcut (btw, I'd be interested to know what Christopher Yates killers actually said - and in what language). No wonder non-white racism has such a low profile - there are no words to describe it or identify it, so how can it exist ?

As I've said before, I'm extremely uneasy about the whole hate crimes concept. But given where we are, I'd like some racial equality when it comes to the definition of such. Give me.