NWOBJ Update

I pointed out last year the contrast between the social isolation of adherents to the New Wave of British Nazism (NWOBN - © Laban Tall 2008) as compared with those of the New Wave of British Jihad (NWOBJ - © Laban Tall 2007) :

"... there's really very little practical equivalence between the "incomer" terrorist and his native equivalent, other than incompetence (a tribute to Brit science education). Indeed, the only jihadis who seem to fit the "weirdo loner" profile of yer average native pyrotechnician seem to be converts like poor lost Nicky Reilly.

The differences, on the other hand, are significant. The main one being that unlike the native wannabes, 95% of wannabe jihadis are not sad loners. They have comrades, sometimes support networks, lots of ideological support even from those who aren't going to set any bombs anywhere. Quite a few of them have reasonably successful lives. There's a big Islamist sea for them to swim in. If 10% of UK Muslims - nearly twice the percentage that voted for the BNP in the Euro elections and got lefties in such a tizz - are prepared to tell an interviewer that they wouldn't tell the police if they suspected that a fellow-Muslim was a terrorist (another 10% either didn't know, were 50/50 or wouldn't say) that's a lorra lorra potential support."

Rachel Cooke in the NS reviews Episode 2 of the BBC's 'Generation Jihad' documentary and mentions Episode 1 :

In the first programme of the series (8 February), Taylor went north, to West Yorkshire, to talk to two men who, thanks to their fondness for gore tapes and al-Qaeda's nonsensical dribblings, had fallen foul of Britain's anti-terrorism laws. I'm not qualified to say whether they should indeed have served prison sentences for their activities. But they were loathsome: ignorant, boastful, utterly lacking in imagination or - and here's the irony, given their belief in the umma - any kind of empathy...

Episode 1 - Pt1, 2, 3, 4 (proselytising in Peckham), 5 and 6. Some nice shots of Halifax, Savile Park and the road to Sowerby Bridge in 1 and 2.

The case of our old friend Hamaad Munshi, aka 'Britain's Youngest Terrorist' and grandson of a leading imam, features. But I missed the convictions of the two men here, Rizwan Ditta and Bilal Mohammed, who got four years and three years for distributing jihadi videos and possessing suicide vest instructions. Mohammed and Ditta were released after half their sentences, but you wouldn't say from the long interviews they gave the BBC that they were exactly penitent.

To be fair to them, the terror laws are somewhat debateable - as I've said before, I'm a little - more than a little - concerned about the legislation under which you can be charged with possessing items "likely to be of use for terrorism" - a category so vague and wide-reaching as to render pretty much the entire UK population liable to arrest. A road map ? A Stanley knife ? Every arable farmer with a bag of ammonium nitrate is a potential mass-murderer. Perhaps they should be taken into preventive custody.

In Mohammed's case, suicide vest instructions are pretty damning. One could potentially have explosives or firearms out of enthusiasm for shooting or making bangs, or even (see Robert Cottage) for alleged self-defence, but it's difficult to argue that blowing yourself up is a hobby.

As for Ditta, cheering on our enemies is reprehensible, and he deserves to be publicly horsewhipped, but is it criminal ? When our Yankee colonists ('Provincials') revolted 200 years back, they had some UK supporters, but we didn't bang them up. Sir Gilbert Eliot :

"The parricide joy of some in the losses of their country makes me mad. They don't disguise it. A patriotic Duke told me some weeks ago that some ships had been lost off the coast of North America in a storm. He said a thousand British sailors were drowned — not one escaped — with joy sparkling in his eyes all the time... In the House of Commons it is not unusual to speak of the Provincials as 'our army'. This is not general, however ..."

While Sir Gilbert was mad with rage, he didn't want the Yankee fans imprisoned.

Be that as it may, recall that this somewhat rambling post opened with the thesis that unlike the NWOBN, the NWOBJ aren't socially isolated. Well, our two boys aren't exactly being shunned by their fellow-Muslims in Halifax. Back to Rachel Cooke's review :

I thought back to the first part of the series, to the two cocky young men in their nylon tracksuits and flashy trainers, newly released from prison. Taylor asked them how their communities had welcomed them back. Cue wide smiles all round. The food, the presents! The money, the visitors! No one thought that they were terrorists, or anything like terrorists. It was more a case of: "Hail the conquering heroes!"

I think we have a problem on our hands.

UPDATE - not much social isolation here either:

Radical Muslim gangs are imposing a form of sharia law inside some of Britain's prisons, a BBC investigation has found. Non-Muslim inmates at the high-security Long Lartin jail have been forced by the gangs to stop playing "Western" music and take down pictures of women from their cells, according to one former prison officer there. Prisoners at the jail, although allowed to cook their own food, are not allowed to prepare pork for fear of offending the Muslim inmates, the officer said.

The officer, speaking to Radio Five Live's Donal Macintyre show, told how younger prisoners were targeted for forced conversion to Islam by the gangs. "They went along because they were intimidated. They genuinely weren't of the Muslim faith," she said. "I knew one lad quite well, who was approached by the radical Muslims and he changed. He was being controlled and bossed around and he wasn't even allowed to look at me or speak to me. "He just seemed very frightened all the time. He used to be forced to pray at certain times and he was even forced to grow a long beard even though he didn't want to."

One Catholic prisoner who refused to convert was seriously assaulted after being repeatedly threatened by the gang, the officer said. "He said every so often they would come to his cell and hold the Koran up through the small window in the cell door and start running their fingers along their throats," she said.

The officer's testimony is consistent with findings by the official prison watchdog, the chief inspector of prisons. In a report last year, the inspector, Anne Owers, quoted a number of prisoners at Long Lartin about the increasing dominance of Muslim gangs in the jail.

Long Lartin was, said one, "turning into an American-style jail, [where] if you are not in a gang, you're in trouble. People are converting to Islam for protection."

or here :

The Muslim prison population in England and Wales has sharply increased in recent years. The BBC's Ushma Mistry hears from former inmates and prison officers who claim gangs of Muslim prisoners are an increasingly powerful force.

"Muslims run it. Muslims run the prisons and there's nothing the screws can do about it. For a Muslim you'd say it's good but for a non-Muslim, it's very, very bad," a former inmate called Jay says.

Friday Night Love

From a more innocent age of black music - rock steady heaven :



A lot of reggae from that era has a slightly Western feel - the drums and guitar chugging along like a wagon and horses.

'Ring of Gold' is nice too.

Lets stay with geriatric reggae.

"Men without religion
Just can't keep in a righteous man position"

How true that is.



Finally ... something right up to date - banjos. A bunch of publicans, but none the worse for it. Via my son :

"Green Thieves Were My Delight"

The pair found that those in their study who bought green products appeared less willing to share with others a set amount of money than those who bought conventional products. When the green consumers were given the chance to boost their money by cheating on a computer game and then given the opportunity to lie about it – in other words, steal – they did, while the conventional consumers did not. Later, in an honour system in which participants were asked to take money from an envelope to pay themselves their spoils, the greens were six times more likely to steal than the conventionals.

File this finding along with the news that liberals are more racist than conservatives.

And Another One ...

Lefty (but no party line-toer he) blogger and toilet-mouthed iconoclast John Band, like Ben Elton, has 'done a Darcy' and moved to Oz.

"Mineral wealth, newly-elected centre-left government, and no bloody ice. And about as far as you can get from George bloody Osborne… "

And, as I noted in the Elton post, a place that's a lot less diverse than the UK, especially his old stamping ground of London.

Mr B, whatever else he may be, is an intelligent, competent chap. I wonder who we'll import to replace him ?

I used to chaff him somewhat for not having children, on the grounds that only parents should be able to vote on matters affecting children (i.e. most things). The poor chap's now running on one cylinder after a series of unfortunate events, but he mustn't think that centre-left Aussie Premier Kevin Rudd is going to let him off sprogging :

I was at a function where Kevin Rudd was giving the keynote address. He talked about the ''crisis'' of Australia's ageing population and the various economic challenges we will face as a result.

Arguments were made about superannuation and the strain on healthcare. But there was a deeper message: young people (women in particular) are failing in their civic duty to reproduce. Apparently, gen Y is to blame for the inverted population pyramid.

There were hundreds of people in the room but only a handful under 30. As one of the under 30-crowd, I shuffled nervously, hoping no one would recognise me - and my empty womb - as the deeply unpatriotic and traitorous felons that we are.

After Rudd came off stage, he spoke to me and the few other under-30s (we had congregated for strength in numbers). He extended his points about the problems with the ageing population and the financial problems gen Y will incur when the baby boomers become pensioners.

At that point one of my friends introduced me, dropping in that I am completing a PhD. At this, Rudd rolled his eyes and in a terse voice lacking any sense of irony remarked that is the "excuse" that "all" young women are using nowadays to avoid starting families. Since then I've come up with numerous one-line retorts, but in the moment I just froze in shock.

Hah ! Kevin Rudd seems more switched on to the demographic implications of failure to reproduce than any UK Labour MP. Mr Band's duty stands plainly before him.

Normblog Profile - The Gift That Keeps On Giving...

Writer Lucy Coats :

What do you consider the most important personal quality? > Tolerance.

Do you think you could ever be married to, or in a long-term relationship with, someone with radically different political views from your own? > No.

Other conflicted people - Alis Hawkins, Elizabeth Baines, Antonia Bance.

Why don't any men fall into this particular heffalump trap ?

Imagine ...

That the UK kept the government and social policies it has had for the last 50 years, but had never had an Industrial Revolution in the beginning. Wouldn't it look a bit like Kerala without the beaches?

Kerala defies all stereotypes of a "socially backward" Indian state - swathes of people living in abject poverty, men outnumbering women because of female foeticide, internecine caste politics.

Many of its social indicators are on par with the developed world and it has the highest human development index in India. It also has the highest literacy rate (more than 90%) and life expectancy in India, lowest infant mortality, lowest school drop-out rate, and a fairly prosperous countryside.

That's not all.

In contrast to India's more prosperous states, like Punjab and Haryana, Kerala can boast a very healthy gender ratio - women outnumber men here. Life expectancy for women is also higher than for men, as in most developed countries. Thanks to a matrilineal society, women, by and large, are more empowered than in most places in India.

Super. And this is thanks to ?

All this happened because of the region's early trading connections with the West - the Portuguese arrived here in the 15th Century, followed by the Dutch and then the British - and a long history of social reforms initiated by the missionaries and the kings of two princely states that were later integrated to create Kerala.

And thanks to pioneering land reforms initiated by a Communist government in the late 1950s, the levels of rural poverty here are the lowest in India. Decent state-funded health care and education even made it the best welfare state in India.

I'm not sure why the West should have had such a beneficial impact here as compared with the rest of India, where they were also involved in trading.

Yet, today, Kerala is a straggler economy almost entirely dependent on tourism and remittances sent back by two million of its people who live and work abroad, mostly in the Gulf. Joblessness is rife due to the lack of a robust manufacturing base - more than 15% in urban areas, three times the national average. More people here are taking their lives than anywhere else in India. Alcoholism is a dire social problem - the state has India's highest per capita alcohol consumption. People migrate because there are no jobs at home.

Kerala's biggest advantage - high literacy - has become a strange liability: the vast majority of educated unemployed have to go elsewhere for work.

Economists find this paradoxical given the fact that Kerala has met most of the UN's millennium development goals.

Hmm. It does sound like the UK - or maybe the UK in another 40 years, when the last manufacturing has gone.

Some commentators say the problem stems from the fact that Kerala is an over-politicised and "over-extended state". The argument goes that radical unions, bolstered by successive communist governments, have acted as "pressure groups advancing particular vested interests". In the process, the general prosperity of the state has been neglected.

Hmm. An over-extended state where the unions* act as vested interests to keep the state over-extended, at the expense of general prosperity ? The parallels with the UK get closer ...

"trade unions and political parties are acting merely as pressure groups either to defend the status quo or to extract the maximum possible share of a cake that is not increasing in size"

The parallels aren't exact though. Kerala isn't (as far as I know) importing millions of less-educated people of differing cultures to compensate for the educated Keralans who leave, building up ethnic resentments when integration does not take place. Perhaps they've taken a look at Assam and West Bengal.


(via Steve Sailer, whose view is "if you want to turn your country into Sweden, it's best to get fairly rich first")

* I think unions are a good - indeed a vital - thing in private industry, when they protect workers from employers trying to drive wages down. Alas UK unions support the employers in this.

Busy Doing Nothing

Marvel at the CV of the new Children's Commissioner, 'Maggie' Atkinson.

Two salient points

a) after writing her "personal summary" she must have gone up a couple of hat sizes. Humility not a key skill (but aromatherapy is).

b) she hasn't had a proper job since May 31, 1989 - more than 20 years ago.

The Labour Revolution

(idea by Martin Kelly, lousy graphic by Laban)

"No English Workers Have Been Involved In Making These Asda Sausages"

British workers have been turned away from jobs in a local factory – for not speaking Polish. Cooked meat manufacturer Forza AW effectively barred anyone but Poles for applying for jobs on its production line in East Anglia by insisting all staff speak the language fluently. The company claimed it was necessary as all health and safety training was conducted in Polish.

But Forza – a major supplier of Asda supermarkets – was last night accused of anti-British discrimination because of the adverts.

Forza’s advert was sent out via email by East Anglia-based employment agency OSR Recruitment earlier this month.

Headed ‘Immediate factory work available!!!!’ it continued: ‘If you are available or have any friends available, work is starting tomorrow for induction training.

‘Ongoing factory work (meat production) for 4-5 months, shifts are 7am-5pm or 9am-7pm.

‘Transport provided. Applicants must speak Polish. Please call asap!!!!!!’

The advert was signed Katrina Massingham, the company’s ‘industrial team leader’ and it was dispatched to hundreds of potential applicants on the firm’s books.

But wait ! It might just be all an unfortunate error !

A reporter listened in as the 31-year-old man called OSR to ask about the jobs last Tuesday. The first question he was asked was: ‘Are you Polish?’ When he said no, but could speak the language ‘a little’, he was told: ‘Actually, you have to be fluent because the health and safety training is all done in Polish.’ By Friday, however, after The Mail on Sunday rang again several times and got the same response, the company appeared to have second thoughts about the wisdom of the advert.

An OSR employee gave a different version to a Polish-speaking reporter saying: ‘Actually, you don’t have to be Polish, but it helps.’

When another reporter posed as an English applicant, Ms Massingham told him that all the jobs had been filled but that the language requirement was ‘not too important now’.

She added: ‘For some reason the training was in Polish but we’re trying to get them to change it, because it’s a bit silly, really’.

Yesterday, Mr Max Hilliard claimed the advert’s wording was a mistake and due to a ‘breakdown in communications’ between his firm and OSR Recruitment. He said he was unaware of the ‘Must speak Polish’ clause until The Mail on Sunday alerted him to it.

‘In normal circumstances, this ad would have been vetted and the error removed,’ said the 51-year-old, who is Forza’s chief executive and principal shareholder, owning 60 per cent of the company.

‘We employ many English workers as well as Poles and Lithuanians, though I can’t give you exact figures ..."

Phew. Almost thought for a moment there was something to be worried about.

New Children's Commissioner Is Childless

Maggie Atkinson

Born in Barnsley, Dr Atkinson studied at Cambridge University.

She taught English and drama for 10 years before moving into a national training and advisory role on the national curriculum in the late 1980's.

She became director of children's services in Gateshead in 2003.

She was president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services until March 2008, and is currently chair of the National Expert Group on the Children's Workforce and national chair for the new Centre of Excellence in Outcomes.

She is married with two adult stepchildren.

Ms Atkinson has just replaced the unlamented Al Aynsley Green as Children's Commissar for England. Appointed apparently as a non-campaigner by Ed Balls (who must have one of the most annoying voices in politics, btw), she's opened up in fine style by announcing that the Bulger killers shouldn't have been prosecuted :

“The age of criminal responsibility in this country is ten — that’s too low, it should certainly be moved up to 12. In some European countries it’s 14. People may be offenders but they are also children. Even the most hardened of youngsters who have committed some very difficult crimes are not beyond being frightened.”

I like that 'difficult'. Seems to have been all too easy for Thompson and Venables (among others).

“What they did was exceptionally unpleasant and the fact that a little boy ended up dead is not something that the nation can easily forget."

"Ended up" ? Any human agency involved in that, or was it an act of God ? "Exceptionally unpleasant" ? I'd use that phrase to describe something like a 10-year old defecating in the school book cupboard (which somebody did do at my primary school - the teacher burst into tears), not abduction, torture, sexual assault and murder.

It is wrong, Dr Atkinson insists, to describe a child as evil. “None of us is born a good person or an evil person. The backgrounds from which we come, and whether we are nurtured and secure, will shape our character. The adults who role-model for us — or don’t — will change who we become, for better or worse. I’m far more a believer in nurture than nature.”

They're depraved on account of they're deprived !

Now that's true up to a point - most of the disastrous kids come from disaster homes. But (alas) lots of kids are brought up by their lone mothers, and some of those lone mothers are alcoholic, and some of those lone mothers' kids run wild - yet not all of them kill toddlers. Robert Thompson and Jon Venables shared their upbringing with brothers and sisters, and they've managed not to abduct and kill any little ones. Why did Robert and Jon ?

Ms Atkinson, as a believer in the Blank Slate, is a follower of the Utopian Vision - otherwise she'd never have got the job.

By strange chance, a week or so before another childless leftie blogger of a certain age had bemoaned the evil tabloids and their punitive agenda, agreeing with the sentiment :

"Whatever Venables has done he will still need our support."

Prompting Laban to respond :

Shorter Leftie Blogger : “If it wasn’t for those nasty tabloids, no one would ever hate people who abduct and kill toddlers for fun”.

I think we can cut this more simply. The people who feel visceral loathing for Thompson and Venables are called ‘parents’, and every one of them has

a) experienced that awful hole in the stomach when your little one goes missing in the shopping centre – and it happens so easily! – and you find them after seconds or minutes of panic, but that sick feeling is not ever forgotten …
b) seen a shot or video of a little figure tottering through the mall, trustingly holding the hand of the boy who will torture and kill him.

The people who don’t feel that are called ‘non-parents’.

Our game, our rules. In an ideal world only parents would be allowed to vote on any issues affecting children.

We lost our youngest once at Knutsford Services northbound on a dark Friday night. Not a good place to lose a small child. Running from one cashier to another :

"Have you seen a little girl - she's three - in a pink dress ?"

You never forget the feeling even though I can't, thank God, reproduce it in my head. It's too physical. It's a feeling Maggie Atkinson will never know - which is why, in a sane world, her views on child killers would carry slightly less authority than Jon Venables' mother's views - or any mother's views.

Target Culture

When you set service targets and reward managers for hitting those targets, you create an incentive to fiddle the stats.

In some areas - say call centre response times, where x% of calls must be answered within y seconds, it's difficult (though not impossible- you can just drop a call to pick up another one, or you can be more innovative) to fiddle the stats unless you've got a bent IT guy.

In other settings you can be more creative. The NHS is renowned for its achievements in this area.

So, you think the staff and managers might be bending the stats ? Why not bring in an outside firm to test the systems anonymously? That's what Royal Mail did.

People sometimes say there's no initiative and invention in middle management at a large corporation. I wouldn't say that myself.

The unnamed source told Postcomm that several Royal Mail staff had found a way of cheating the supposedly independent system of checking mail delivery times, which was carried out by an external market research company... By intercepting the "test" letters, postal workers were able to hijack the performance assessment by making sure they were prioritised and delivered bang on time, giving an artificially high figure for the number of letters and parcels arriving on time.

Managers would note down the name and address on the envelopes, and in some cases illegally open the mail to find addresses of other volunteer panellists. The addresses would then be entered into computer spreadsheets, listed by postcode area. In sorting and delivery offices, panellists were known as “key customers” and given top priority to ensure their post was delivered in time, to hit the performance targets. In some cases individual pillar boxes were also earmarked to make sure they were emptied as late as possible, to ensure the panellists did not miss the last post.

In the Motherwell delivery office a notice pinned to the wall told staff to bring any mail addressed to two particular people to the attention of the delivery manager's office. One of the addressees was a panellist. Postal workers also learnt to look out for "suspicious" mail. In some cases postmen realised they were delivering "test" mail when they delivered driving licences to people who did not have cars.

Postcomm found that Royal Mail delivery office managers were “accustomed to looking for (test mail) and showing other colleagues how to identify items of test mail”. In some cases, managers photocopied panellists’ mail and sent the copies to other managers. One manager from Scotland is even thought to have travelled to Manchester to brief his colleagues on how they could get involved in the scam.

I imagine the fact that the monitoring was by outsiders also stimulated group cohesion and company loyalty (sort of) in the Royal Mail chaps - and I bet they were chaps. It could almost become a game, outwitting them.


Just shows what can happen when you get the incentives right ;-)


No steering group needing reports and minutes, no sponsoring senior director, no project plans and milestones, no internal auditing, no box-ticking to show how actions are aligned with the latest version of the corporate culture - just spontaneous, organic co-operation at all levels and the required outcomes are achieved. Almost like the Marxist vision of how industry would run itself in an ideal Socialist society. Fantastic.

Friday Night Music (Time Lapse Edition)

I think this one speaks for itself.



(the inspiration, if that's the word, is here)

Plus Ca (Spare) Change ...

Harold Wilson's 1967 Labour Government. Sterling crisis followed by devaluation. Jamaican musicians (a young Bob Marley, no less) comment.

"This devaluation (pound get a blow)
Will cause an eruption (pound get a blow)" :

Fellow-Jamaicans the Bleechers went as far as suggesting that "Pound Paper" should be replaced by dollars and cents. Rank treason IYAM. I always wondered why Lee Perry hadn't got a knighthood.


By 1976 Labour were back in power under Jim Callaghan, and there was another sterling crisis. Once more there was comment from down yard way, via the late Vivian 'Yabby You' Jackson.

By the next sterling crisis in 1992, the Tories' Black Wednesday, Jamaicans had lost interest in UK events. The Mother Country had become the Mother****** Country and West Indian musicians no longer titled themselves Sir, Lord , Count or Duke.

So we're unlikely to get much comment on current sterling woes.

Never mind. In the finest tradition of the Green movement, Laban has recycled Yabby You's 1977 tribute to the collapsing pound.

"Did you read it in the news today ?
The pound has fallen down"

Good News or Bad News ?

"Jon Venables could be murdered if identity revealed - judge"

Is that an argument for or against ?

Yazza - She's At It Again ...

I must confess that I haven't noticed an enormous surge in anti-Muslim rhetoric or action by "the establishment" recently. Indeed, after 9/11 and 7/7 their response was to visit mosques, give them extra police protection, talk a lot about a religion of peace and even define terrorism as "anti-Islamic activity".

But then I'm not as close to the establishment as Yasmin Alibhai Brown. Apparently the Chilcot enquiry, the sentencing of various hotheads for rioting, vandalism and attacking the police during a London demo, the Channel Four documentary on Islamic 'entryism' in East London politics, and, er ... er ... - well anyway , as Shameless Milne puts it, this tide of anti-Muslim hatred is a threat to us all.

The Yazztastic One cranks up the threat level as only she can. After all, I doubt that Shameless hangs out with many Muslims outside of his political activity. And I bet he doesn't pray before starting his column.

I can see that for the British establishment Muslims are contemptible creatures, devalued humans. As I prayed before starting this column I felt tears stinging my eyes and my face was burning as if I had been slapped many times over. Do they expect me to turn the other cheek? Millions of other Muslims must have felt what I did. And some may well go on to do things they shouldn't. Their acts will intensify anti-Muslim prejudices and will be used to justify injustice. The cycle is vicious and unrelenting.

Oh dear.

Once again at weddings and birthday parties, in quiet, tranquil mosques, at dinner tables across the land, including those of millionaire Muslims, I am hearing murmurs of trepidation and disquiet – voices kept low, sometimes vanishing into whispers, just in case; you never know if they will break down the door. These people are, like myself, well incorporated into the nation's busy life. Some own restaurants and businesses, others work in the City or law firms and chambers. At one gathering a frightfully posh, Muslim public school boy (aged 14), an excellent cricketer, said in his jagged, breaking voice: "I will never live in this country after finishing my education. They hate us. They'll put us all in prison. Nothing we do is OK. Do you think I am wrong Mrs Yasmin?" No I don't, though his hot young blood makes him intemperate.

Where do I start?

No, where do I start ? I can just see the Met top brass salivating at the thought of breaking down a few Muslim millionaires' front doors, can't you ? Excellent career move.

We're back in familiar Yazza territory :

"This week, I have been at three events where the majority of people in the audience were educated, sharp Muslims, some exceedingly rich and good friends with key politicians and Prince Charles. Guantanamo Bay and Iraq are topics that now madden even these establishmentarians.

One gentleman took my elbow, shuffled me to a discreet corner and whispered 'I have been here for 40 years, dined with royalty. Today, if I was young, I would go straight to Bin Laden. Mr Blair is a war criminal. Don't put my name down, but tell him we detest him'".

One of the things I love about Yazza is that she shoots straight from the hip. Can't say we've not been told. Pray God that she is, while wonderful, a self-centred hysteric with a 56-pound chip on her shoulder, unrepresentative of the wider Muslim community. Because if she's right that millions of Muslims feel anything like she does, there is indeed cause for concern.

Glorify the Father, The Spirit And The Son

Recorded in Toddington Church, Gloucestershire, though I can't hear any steam trains.


Ex-Sinfonye operative Jocelyn Montgomery (nee West) has some impressive (if somewhat gothic - that Nick Cave has a lot to answer for) new music out - Salt Birds. Just be careful you don't head too far in this direction, m'dear. As Lovecraft would say 'that way lies madness and the void'.

More Flag-Flappers

Remember Gordon 'Union Jack' Brown ?

Remember when 'Britishness' turned out only to apply to England ?

It looks as if our rulers are giving up on 'Britishness' and worrying more about 'Englishness'. John Denham MP on England :

"the next election will be determined by which party has the most convincing story about our society and our country. Who has the most convincing tale about where we have come from: and the most positive and optimistic story about where we go next."

So it's all a matter of good PR, you see. The trouble is that the most convincing tale about where we have come from will definitely not provide a positive and optimistic story about where we go next.

These stories work because we have a sense of who we are; what our society represents. Put a different way, people ask politicians to pass the ‘people like us’ test.

Keep digging.

"... at once progressive and patriotic ... Billy Bragg ... Morrissey ... multi-ethnic identity ... white working class ... disconnect ... zzzz"

This is the nub. Been here before, of course.

The problem of multi-culturalism was not its insistence on respect for those of different cultures, or of their freedoms to express themselves as they wish: it was the neglect of the glue that binds us together; it was the failure to recognise a multi-cultural society can only work if there is equal engagement and activity in building and developing shared values and the framework of a shared identity which enables us to be multicultural within a cohesive society.

Or to put it another way, the problem of multi-culturalism comes when people don’t have shared values and identity. In other words, one common culture.

Someone tell me - what does ‘multi-’ mean again ?

PS - one of the comments at Socialist Unity - you can see the confrontation here :

At yesterday’s confrontation, the EDL demo was composed overwhelmingly of young working class men. The UAF demo consisted mainly of palpably middle class students.

Which group is “our class”?

Another comment :

It was said the EDL chanted at UAF ‘you're not English anymore’, and this much to Mark P’s annyance is actually true. Once you become a socialist your first self identity is as a worker, part of an international class, that has more in common with workers from abroad than with bosses here.

I wouldn't mind that so much were it true. But the trouble is, the UK left mostly "has more in common with workers from abroad than with workers here."

Words Fail Me

Passing sentence, Judge Beckett told the two 15-year-olds that in determining the punishment part of their sentences he took account of their age, and the fact that the boy who struck the fatal blow had been doing well at school.

Compare and Contrast

The United Kingdom - from Bedfordshire council's enthralling document "Dealing with Racist Representations on Gypsies and Travellers"

Not only is it fair and morally responsible to treat racist representations seriously: it is also a legal requirement.
Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers are recognised in law as a distinct ethnic group. The Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985 requires any material which is defamatory or likely to incite racial hatred or contempt, and information the disclosure of which is prohibited by law, to be marked 'confidential' and not disclosed to the public.

Anyone who, either in writing or verbally, objects on racist grounds to a planning proposal is potentially contravening one of these Acts, by applying pressure to discriminate.

How do you define a racist representation?
In general terms, a racist representation is one which includes words, phrases or comments which are likely:
• to be offensive to a particular racial or ethnic group
• to be racially abusive, insulting or threatening
• to apply pressure to discriminate on racial grounds
• to stir up racial hatred or contempt
The context in which such words, phrases or comments are used must be considered carefully, in order to ascertain their true meaning and effect.

EXAMPLES OF RACIST REPRESENTATIONS (S31 of 1976 ACT) [applying pressure to discriminate]
• I object to the proposed Gypsy & Travellers site because these undesirable people
will damage my neighbourhood with their littering and crime will increase.
• If it is approved the number of gypsies in the area will make house prices fall. Put
them somewhere away from the normal community.
• The council should be more responsible and look after respectable peoples interests.

And we see the policy in action - here in Devon :

Mr Lee's objection stated that problems were caused by the number of families using another permanent site for vehicle wrecking. Mr Lee also highlighted that the police were called to the site a number of times and livestock was regularly let loose on his land.

The authority replied: "I have to tell you that if the council receives any more racist representations from you, this matter will be referred to the Commission for Racial Equality or the police for investigation."

And in Bedfordshire :

When residents were asked to provide feedback on council plans to build traveller camps on their doorstep they dutifully responded. More than 3,000 homeowners filled in forms outlining their views, many raising concerns over a possible increase in noise, traffic, rubbish and a detrimental effect on property prices.

However, such objections were not appreciated by Mid-Bedfordshire District Council, which partially or fully rejected nearly nine in ten of the replies for including comments 'of a racist nature'.

Meanwhile, across the pond, at the Official Portal for the State of Georgia, Governor's Office for Consumer affairs :

Irish Travelers Perpetuate a Tradition of Fraud

Around the time that schools let out, individuals known as Irish Travelers load up their pick-up trucks and take their show on the road. Sadly, their business is not a very entertaining one and can cost you way more than a ticket to the Big Top. These descendants of Irish immigrants live in nomadic clans and make their living by perpetrating home improvement fraud and selling substandard machinery at huge mark-ups.

While there are several communities of Irish travelers throughout the South, the largest is an enclave located just outside North Augusta, South Carolina. With the exception of their “marks”, Travelers have little contact with outsiders. Generally, in the spring, they spread out throughout the eastern seaboard and beyond.

Travelers go door-to-door, often targeting the elderly. They usually drive unmarked pick-up trucks with out-of-state plates, often from South Carolina. They are pavers, roofers, painters, repairmen who just happen to have left-over materials from a previous job, allowing them to offer huge discounts, but only if you act now. You will rarely receive a written contract from them, and if you do, the contact information will have only a toll-free number and a post office box, making it impossible to track down the conman when the homeowner discovers the inferior quality of the workmanship and materials.

Hmm. Quite a difference.








(via a comment replying to the Capitalists Nick Drew's point 5 in the following list, an attempt to answer the question 'why do we let politicians lie to us?'.

1) in most people the Will to Truth is very much weaker than the Will to Power (Nietzsche passsim)and several less exalted things besides, including

- the Will to an Easy Life
- the Will to Not Rocking The Boat (Homer Simpson passim)

being untrue doesn't count as much of an objection in the face of many other considerations

2) people for whom the Will to Truth is strong are generally Trouble-makers and hence outcasts, easily ignored / ostracised / burned at the stake

3) human beings are geared up to defend the Holy Lie (whatever it may be at any given time), using strategies like double-think, or shouting lalalalala very loudly, etc etc

4) why single out politicians ? Aristotelian physic is laughably false but it ruled the roost for centuries, through a combination of Church endorsement/ enforcement, and a complete absence of empirical curiosity / regard for consistency etc

5) many truths are deeply uncomfortable / embarrassing / infra dig. There are things one might just about get away with in the comments column of a blog, that are 100% true, and at the same time could not be voiced by any mainstream politician. This being the case, why do we even expect truth from them ?

6) despite all experience, we have a huge subliminal propensity to believe that, if a public figure can bring himself to state something as fact, or a newspaper to report it, it is probably true

7) tabloid journos have tapped into, and mastered, these phenomena - the doctrine of the reverse ferret, e.g. They make money from it. NuLab has tapped into tabloid journo-wisdom (Campbell etc al) and deploys the brazen lie, the shameless U-turn etc etc with confidence born of mastery

I could go on ... but hey, it's Saturday morning !)

UPDATE - the Georgia Consumer site really is rather good. From their page on scams to watch out for, this innovative (to me, anyway) Nigerian 419 fraud :

They met on a dating website just before Valentine's Day 2005. Richie described himself as "loving, caring and hard-working." His photo, of a handsome, bearded man in a cheek-to-cheek snuggle with a cat, sold Theresa Smalley on the "loving and caring" part. Richie explained "hard-working" in the first of their many online chats.

"He said he was from Massachusetts, but [that he] was supervising a construction project in Nigeria," says Smalley, a supermarket cashier in Middlefield, Ohio. Weeks into daily instant messaging, she knew she had lost her heart to Richie. By April she had also lost $2,700 to him.

Richie claimed he was paid in U.S. postal money orders and was having trouble cashing them at Nigerian banks. "He asked if he could mail me his paychecks and then I could wire him the money," says Smalley. "He even offered me some money for doing it, which, of course, I refused to take."

Over two weeks she deposited two paychecks in her bank account and wired the money to Nigeria; she wired a third payment to resolve what Richie called a "visa problem" so he could return to the United States and they "could finally meet."

Then the bank called. It seems Richie's deposited money orders were authentic. But they were worth only $20 each—they had been chemically washed and altered to read $950.

I like the touch with the cat. These guys are brilliant marketers. Mind, I'm almost inclined to believe she deserves it :

"The bank said I was responsible for the money I wired; it was everything I had," says Smalley, a divorced grandmother and college student pursuing a degree in social work.

Who's The Criminal Here ?

A landlord who lets people smoke in his pub ?

Or a smackhead who steals Poppy Appeal tins from shop counters, hiding them in his daughter's pram (his pregnant 'partner' nicks them, too) ?

The State gives its verdict.

Sentencing Michael Bailey at Oxford Crown Court last week, Judge Julian Hall said he was not going to jail him because the amount of money stolen was 'very little'. He told him: 'One's first reaction is to be quite horrified but I have to stand back a little bit and put it into perspective, having in mind the total amount of money involved is very little and why you committed these offences. It does seem to me they were drugs-driven. I'm prepared to suspend the sentence of imprisonment you so richly deserve.'

























At the same court last week pregnant Sabrina Burton was also let off the hook after she admitted stealing a poppy tin from a Londis shop in London Road on November 6. She also admitted stealing a MS charity box from Frog Orange in Windmill Road on the same day and attempting to steal another poppy tin from a shop on November 9. Judge Hall told her: 'It's the sort of case where everyone has a sense of outrage that you should do this - "how could anyone do something as mean as this?" - but I have to keep some sense of proportion. The monies taken were obviously fairly given for good causes, but they cannot have been huge amounts. I will give you a chance to put your life back in order. Your baby deserves it, if nothing else. It will do your baby the power of good if you keep off the drugs.'

A former pub landlord yesterday became the first person to be jailed in connection with the smoking ban.

Nick Hogan, 43, was sentenced to six months in prison for refusing to pay a fine imposed for flouting the legislation.