Blair at home and abroad ... and why we will attack the enemies of the US, but appease our own

Harry is impressed by Blair's Congress speech, but wonders why he's so much more inspiring internationally than domestically.

"What I find bizarre is that many of those on the left who would broadly back Labour on the domestic front, are reviled by Blair's actions on the international scene.

I find myself in the other camp. I'm not enthused by the domestic agenda but I am very glad we have a radical and progressive leader on the international scene."

I think I have the answer, given me by Libby Purves, and given to her by one of her mates.

"You see, the trouble with Tony Blair is that he's terribly good when it isn't his problem."

I speculated at the time I read this that "had Al Quaeda put a couple of 737s through Canary Wharf rather than the WTC - Bin Laden would probably still be living in Afghanistan and doing the occasional 'Thought For The Day' on Radio 4, while Blair would be negotiating for Sharia law to be introduced into some British cities - after all, shouldn't the law reflect the diversity of modern Britain ?".

And on Tuesday in a Times (T2) Andrew Billen interview, ex-Northern-Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlem pretty much confirmed this.

I can't find it on the Web, so here's the relevant bit verbatim.

"Her fundamental quarrel with Blair and Campbell over Iraq, however, is not over the extent of Saddam's specific weapons programme or even over whether the nation was misled, but the philosophcal question of how to defeat terrorism. "You don't defeat terrorists by bombing and shooting. They can always bomb and shoot worse than you can as a civilised country". She has an alternative approach ... her second thought was reinforced by her previous 29 months in Northern Ireland. It can be summed up in the word 'talk'.

But, I say, Osama bin Laden was never going to get round a table and discuss his demands ?

"Well, you never know. Why do you always assume that bombing will be better ? Bombing won't be. Bombing will put Osama bin Laden's back up."

Of course, Mowlem is criticising Blair here for fighting terror abroad - but he appointed her to fight terror at home !

How Adams and McGuinness must have loved her !

BBC Bias Part 138

Great Oliver Kamm post on the BBCs Congress coverage, with a well-deserved swipe at the Tories for their opportunism. Duncan Smith's intervention today was as unworthy as Patrick Cormack's remarks were praiseworthy. The Quiet Man should pipe down.

And can't the BBC site find room for the full text of the Blair speech ?

BBC Bias Part 137

The recent coverage on BBC News of WMD, African uranium and Blair's Congress speech has once again shown that the BBC is quite happy to criticise a Labour Government - as long as the criticism is coming from the Left.

When I read last night (at Stephen Pollard's) of Blair's speech and its rapturous reception by Congress, I wondered how the BBC would spin it this morning. I woke up to find the Today programme billing the speech not as a triumph, but as the case for the defence. By nine o'clock Radio Four news felt it important, in a two-minute bulletin, to quote Peter Kilfoyle's disgusting remarks comparing the US Congress (and its freely offered applause) to a Soviet or Chinese Communist Party meeting.

This didn't make it onto the BBC website. Instead, we had a report where all three BBC staff quoted were negative. Gordon Corera said "the pair left many questions unanswered on the issue of intelligence and Iraq's weapons of mass destruction - an issue that has plagued both leaders domestically and which they hoped could be settled by developing a common line during the visit. ". Nick Assinder volunteered that "Mr Blair is preparing the ground for a fresh justification for war in the event WMD never turn up". And "the BBC's Laura Trevelyan says that even by admitting (sic) the possibility that he might have been wrong will give ammunition to Mr Blair's critics."

Ms Trevelyan then flew off on Blair's jet to Japan. Half way through the flight the news of the presumed death of Dr Kelly broke. By the P.M. news programme the spin had changed. Ms Trevelyan reported how Blair's 'triumph' in Washington had been shattered by the news. Mr Blair's conquest of Congress, previously played down, was now reinstated, the better to contrast with the news from Britain.

My view is that the number one suspect in the death of Dr. Kelly must be Andrew Mackinley. I suppose a man can't be blamed for his accent, but after this unpleasantness, delivered in Mr Mackinleys whining tones, anyone would dread the prospect of a repetition.

Economic Management II ....

Just come back from having my foot X-rayed (middle-aged man does too much running). The radiographer had been there for 35 years, and we talked about the changes in equipment over that time as I admired the shiny new machine.

"Are any still made in Britain ? Or are they all from Germany and Japan ?" I asked. Alas, I was fifteen or twenty years out of date. "They're all made in India or China now. This is a General Electric machine but it's made in China. Hardly any of our equipment is British. Bit depressing, really".

Every Other Blogger Has Said It ....

I suppose I may as well add my voice to the chorus - that Oliver Kamm is good.


On John Major .....

"John Major became Foreign Secretary because he wasn't Geoffrey Howe, Chancellor because he wasn't Nigel Lawson, leader of the Conservative Party because he wasn't Michael Hesletine, and prime minister because he wasn't Neil Kinnock. His political success, in short, depended on his being less offensive to his party than anyone else, and on the Labour Party's continuing to be even less interested in public opinion than the Tories. All that changed when Blair became Labour leader; like Margaret Thatcher, he has innumerable detractors but he is plainly prime ministerial and he thereby commands respect."

And on his successor as Prime Minister .....

"He deserves credit on economic management and welfare reform (including the cuts in benefits), criticism on the pointless affectation that decries what it calls 'elitism' but which actually means excellence, and strong support on his willingess to intervene militarily in order to effect humanitarian ends. "

I would take issue on two out of those three though. Blair's economic management consisted of continuing Ken Clarke's (successful) policies, until the pressure to tax and spend conquered, and he abjectly failed to bite the bullet on welfare reform.

His 'pointless affectation' has real effects as excellence becomes increasingly confused with elitism. As Peter Hitchens said of the Gordon Brown/Laura Spence affair, where else could you make political capital by attacking your country's finest universities ?

Only on international intervention does Blair sit with the angels. And I'm not sure even then that Kosovo was a good idea. But compared to the Major/Hurd Bosnia shambles he's like a good deed in a naughty world.

Economic management ..... ?

Not a week passes without another famous UK name relocating overseas. And the Start-Rite story has a chilling descant. One of the reasons they packed up is that all the individual components of the shoes were already made overseas.

A friend who works for a car manufacturer is moving to Shanghai for a few years.

And what used to be called 'British Rail Enquiries' may be moving to Bombay.

What A Pity ...

That this announcement by a senior Muslim cleric won't get any of the publicity awarded to more inflammatory pronouncements ...

.... and that this decision won't attract any of the publicity or liberal outrage that would be incurred by, say, the USA.

I recall Amnesty International's condemnation of the treatment of internees at Guantanamera, while in Morocco a suspect was said to have died 'of heart and liver failure'. Must have been cirrhosis - you know how these Islamics put it away. Had the guy died in US custody we'd have been hearing of electric shocks and beatings.

Well It Made Me Laugh ...

"In 40 years time do you want to tell your grandchildren that you were clad in clogs, sitting by some poncey Italian lake or tell them stories of fighting three giant sausage eaters in a back street Magaluf bar......?"

Hijacked Again and Again ....

Following Rowan Williams call for a period of calm and reflection, (Loose) Canon Slee has responded by accusing Evangelicals of being the Taleban wing of the Church.
He obviously thinks homosexuals are in danger of being crushed under stone walls as happened in Afghanistan.

And Ruth Gledhill, Times religion correspondent, who seems to cheerlead for the liberal wing of the Church as Mary-Ann Sieghart cheerleads for New Labour, resurrects 'hijacking'.

Thank heavens Synod will soon be over and I can blog about something else, like what's happening to the RSPCA. Only the Tatchell protest to go - and here it is already !

He'll be back tomorrow I'm sure !

Vast Religious Conspiracy - An Evangelical Answer

Joel Edwards, of the Evangelical Alliance, in yesterday's Telegraph addresses three issues emphasised by Dr John's supporters.

To charges that the resistance to Dr. John's appointment was the work of a disaffected, unrepresentative minority (the 'hijack') he points out that "There are about two billion Christians in the world today, and at least 700 million are evangelicals. Most of these live in non-Western countries. By comparison, the worldwide Anglican communion is small: numbering 70 million, it is dwarfed by the global evangelical movement. Of course, some Anglicans - a clear majority, in fact - are themselves part of that movement."

On the idea that the Church in the Third World should defer to the greater wisdom and understanding of Western liberals:

"Liberals within the Church often call us to "listen to the voices of the Third World", but on the issue of homosexuality there has been apparent outrage that leaders from developing nations should suggest that if an appointment such as Jeffrey John's were to go ahead they might have to consider their position within the Anglican Communion. It suggests that when millions of believing Christians outside our shores hold fast to beliefs that don't fit Western pluralist assumptions, they are disregarded as outmoded and irrelevant."

And on Canon Slee's suggestion that Evangelicals are responsible for the seemingly inexorable decline in church attendance:

"There is evidence that a "Liberal Gospel" breeds decline, in the Church of England and other churches. The fact is that only a tiny minority of Christian denominations around the world have formally approved the ordination of practising homosexuals, same-sex blessings and other such measures. Two of the most notable examples are the United Church of Christ in America and the United Church of Canada. Since they adopted these policies, their membership has declined sharply. This gives the lie to the oft-quoted assumption that if the Church adapts to Western cultural trends on this matter people will come flocking through its doors."

This one will run and run, so let's turn our eyes from these somewhat sorry and ignominious facts and remember the great good the Church brings. As at a Pentecostal church in inner-city Birmingham, from the good doctor Dalrymple.

""But we are all sinners, Lord. Therefore we pray for forgiveness. We do not always follow Your ways, Lord; we are proud, we are stubborn, we want to go our own way. We think only of ourselves. That is why there is so much sin, so much robbery, so much violence, on our streets."

I recalled the faces of the young men in the prison now accused of murder: their hard, glittering, expressionless eyes—young men who recognized no law but their own desire of the moment. The old lady described (and explained) their radical egotism in a religious way.

Murmurs of assent were heard everywhere. It wasn't the police's fault, or racism's, or the system's, or capitalism's; it was the failure of sinners to acknowledge any moral authority higher than their personal whim. And in asserting this, the congregation was asserting its own freedom and dignity: poor and despised as its members might be, they were still human enough to decide for themselves between right and wrong. And they offered hope to others, too: for if a man chose to do evil, he could later elect, by an act of will, to do good. No one had to wait until there was perfect justice in the world, or all the circumstances were right, before he himself did good."

Amen to that.

Vast Religious Conspiracy

It looks as if the BBC line on Canon Jeffrey John will follow yesterdays 'hijack' line - if this report (RealAudio link) on the Today programme is anything to go by.

Though to be fair the Bishop who spoke pointed out that the opposition To Canon John's appointment had been expressed by people from all sections of the Church. It was the BBCs Robert Pigott who was the conspiracy theorist.

Apparently a tightly knit group of religiously motivated men are organising to take over the church and change it. Of course this is the reverse (inverse ?) of the truth. The Church has dispproved of adultery in all its many and varied forms for quite a long time now, and it's the 'liberals' who are bent on change. Those who resist change have in some dioceses been expelled from the Church.

But I imagine the BBC will be able to run with this for quite a while. Organisations like Reform will be presented as the Militant Tendency and the cry will go up for a Neil Kinnock. Already Libby Purves in yesterdays Times has decided Rowan Williams is more of a Michael Foot.

"It would have been possible for him to tell the narrow-hearted evangelical rebels (in a kindly, humble and caring way) to go and boil their heads.

I have to say, I thought he might just do that. Rowan Williams seemed like a wild card, an inspirer, a holy man from the West come to revive the faith. Alas, the dreadful suspicion grows that he is just another Archbishop of Canterbury. "

I would imagine Peter Tatchell and friends are planning some kind of spectacular for the General Synod.

Church Hijacked Again

Remarkable BBC R4 'Thought For The Day' this mornng by one Martin Palmer, Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education and Culture in Manchester, where BBC Religious Affairs are also based.

Apparently the Church has been hijacked again - by people who believe in good and evil.

After two thousand years of 'what's right for me' Christianity, evidenced by a mosaic featuring Jesus alongside Greek mythological figures, suddenly people are getting hung up about sin. A Nigerian Bishop even talked about 'Satan'.

Sometimes 'Thought For The Day' goes beyond parody.

Motorway Madness

One of the many things I hoped my Labour vote would get me in 1997 was an end to what Mrs Thatcher called 'the great car economy'. Labour had denounced the ever-increasing volume of vehicles and the ever-increasing roadbuilding programme. They stated categorically, for example that the Birmingham Northern Relief scheme would be abandoned.

In office it went ahead, as have many other schemes. So much more greenery is now under concrete. I particularly mourn the A465 from Glynneath to Neath, a magnficent valley now disfigured by four concrete lanes exactly in its centre. Work continues on making the entire length from Abergavenny to Swansea dual carriageway. Alright, so we might be in Gower 35 minutes earlier - but at what cost ?

Now look at this. If Swampy were alive he'd be turning in his grave as a 'massive' road building programme is announced.

And for what ? I guess the answer is 'to put off charging 'til after the next election'.

But why has Labour's public transport strategy failed ?

One issue consistently ignored by this joined-up government is the impact of crime and disorder on transport. Start with the no-brainer - that despite road accidents people feel safer in their cars than on public transport. There can be few Londoners who haven't had an unpleasant experience on the Tube or a bus. So people use their cars even when public transport is available. I still remember Steve 'Five Mistresses' Norris, then Tory transport minister, making disparaging remarks on the personal qualities of public transport users. More car use.

This factor extends much further.

You end up taking the kids to the edge-of-town MacDonalds on a Saturday, rather then the yob-infested town centre branch. More car use.

You drop the town centre shops for Cribbs Causeway (our nearest equivalent to that massive Essex shoperama) or Merry Hill. More car use.

You move (if you have the money) to some greenfield development or village, where you might still be burgled but neighbours from hell are much less likely. It's almost a badge of middle management where I work. More car use.

But don't worry, crime is sure to drop as our caring government teach citizenship and 'respect' to all children. I found this story particularly pathetic - and I generally admire the NAS/UWT.

And once the NSPCC get their way and disciplining children by smacking is abolished, then behaviour is sure to improve, just as it has in Scotland since the law there was changed.

A Few More Website Rankings

Traffic Rank for jewishworldreview.com (US): 4,203
Traffic Rank for frontpagemag.com (US): 4,720
Traffic Rank for spectator.co.uk: 14,248
Traffic Rank for spiked-online.com: 47,991
Traffic Rank for urban75.com: 50,971
Traffic Rank for viz.co.uk: 90,481
Traffic Rank for stopwar.org.uk: 144,890
Traffic Rank for newstatesman.co.uk: 237,244
Traffic Rank for redpepper.org.uk: 275,420
Traffic Rank for Weekly worker (cpgb.org.uk): 558,972
Traffic Rank for right-now.org: 825,900

Hillary .....

I completely forgot to mention yesterday's Hillary Clinton Interview on R4's Today programme (she's also been reading her book on R4). She ran through the traditional story - vast right-wing conspiracy .... wealthy neo-conservatives .... 'the politics of personal destruction (copyright Neil Hamilton ?)' ... and only once did the interviewer sound a critical note, after she'd said that those who live by the sword will die by it.

'But he put the sword in his enemies hands, didn't he ?'. Hillary seemed nonplussed at this.

I'm not sure it was in the hands, actually. I thought it was putting his sword elsewhere that caused all the trouble.

BNP Website Shock Horror

Looking back at the archives I wonder if I haven't got some kind of BNP fixation - I think I probably have. Watching their rise is like witnessing from a high window an accident about to happen - you can't look away but wait with a kind of fascination for the inevitable collision. As I've said before, liberal hegemony (as Gramsci or Ralph Miliband would put it) on race matters is so absolute, and educated white self-hatred so prevalent, that I simply can't see them going away - because, in marketing-speak, they're meeting a need that no other party is attempting to meet.

Not a need to be racist (I'm sure that's met too, but I don't think that has a wide appeal), but a need to be proud of one's nation, to feel that you belong, have a culture, a history and a homeland.

Unexceptional for Iraqis, Palestinians, Irish ('Ourselves Alone'), Scots ('Whae's Like Us ?') or Zimbabweans - but for those who identify as British or English a very thin diet is provided. You should see my son's school history textbooks.

But whether or not you agree with the above, you would probably be surprised, as I was, to learn that the BNP site is the most popular UK political party site by far - twice as popular as the Labour Party, according to Alexa. Indeed, I was so surprised that, just like the BNP webmaster, I had to enter the urls myself and see if it really was true. It was.

But on reflection I could pull some threads together.

I visit the BNP site every week as part of a trawl through political sites like Weekly Worker (see - don't get me wrong - some of my best sites are left-wing), urban75, Fabians and stopwar. And I'd read the New Statesman if they didn't charge.

But I rarely if ever go to the Labour, Tory or LD sites. The difference being that there won't be any news on them. Weekly Worker will tell you who's slagging off whom on the Left, or carry a passionate denunciation of 100,000 anti-war lefties being led by a mullah in cries of 'Allahu Akbar !'. Stopwar has details of the latest actions at the Fairford perimeter fence. U75 has some of the funniest bulletin boards around.

And the BNP site gives news. The last time I read any political theory on the BNP site was when the Weekly Worker linked to it. And I hated it. But when the riots broke out in Wrexham the BBC was almost useless as a news source in terms of what had taken place and in what order.

When you find your children scrapping your first questions are 'What actually happened ? Who started it ?'. You try getting that data from this, entitled 'Complex Truth Behind Wrexham Riots'.

You could, if you checked several different pages on the BBC and Guardian sites, put together a story. The first day's trouble - an isolated incident followed by the trashing of a pub. You could read between the lines - would it be the locals trashing the Red Dragon ? And the second day - presumably the locals didn't take too kindly to their pub being trashed. Or you could go here (Parental Advisory - possible neo-Nazi content).

It's a shameful thing when national news organisations report news as some kind of morality play rather than telling us what happened. The coverage of this incident on the BBC was basically 'There's been a lot of trouble. The trouble was between locals and asylum seekers. Racism is bad.' That may all be true, but it ain't news coverage worthy of the name.

Similarly when the Oldham riots broke out only the BNP and the Guardian carried what now appears to be accepted as the truth about their genesis - that they were sparked by Stoke City thugs who acted most unpleasantly as they walked to Boundary Park on their way to a football match.

Just as the main political parties have aided the BNP by bequeathing them a swathe of political territory, so the mainstream media, in their desire not to report anything which may reflect badly on multiculturalism, are creating an alternative news source - the only news source which is a wholly owned subsdiary of a political party.

Bloggers, Web nerds and others like epolitix are keen to see the Web as a means of creating alternative political structures - but this may be a bit too alternative for them. What will they make of it ? Harry - what do you think ?

Church Sacrifices Gay Bishop

What a headline. I couldn't work out whether we were looking at an Abraham/Isaac scenario or a report of an ecclesiastical chess tournament.

The BBC Today programme, as ever, was quickest off the blocks in condemnation of this hideous act of homophobia. The interviewer actually seemed convinced that a small minority of anti-gay 'bigots' had moved the Church away from its historic acceptance of homosexuality in a sudden 'lurch to the right' - whereas this seems to me to be the opposite of the truth.

The Very Reverend Colin Slee of Southwark said on the programme "I think it is a catastrophe for the Church, mainly because there are many people who look at the Christian church and they see the extreme Evangelical churches and think that is certainly not for me, thank you very much.

"The people talk about empty churches. Empty churches may well be empty because of the image that we are presenting of narrowness and bigotry and prejudice. ".

Now that's possible - but the strange thing is that the Evangelical, Bible-based churches are the only part of the C of E with increasing congregations. It seems improbable that if the Evangelicals are driving good folk away their churches should be full. And I haven't heard of lockouts every time Richard Harries or Peter Selby (to name two of the Bishops most exercised by the oppression of gay clergy) get up to preach.

Perhaps St John The Divine is right - and this quote was also a favourite of Jerry Lee Lewis :

Rev. 3:15-16, "I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of My mouth."

The Guardian and Independent are predictably outraged - and find it a great deal easier to abuse UK churchmen who hold to Biblical teaching than to probe too much into the real reason for Rasputin's about-turn - the threat of secession by overseas Anglicans - particularly Nigeria. I think Dr. Williams and his colleagues in Oxford, Southwark and Worcester would have been happy to split the Church in the UK - they just didn't fancy losing all those Asians and Africans.

Being Archbishop of Lagos must be a bugger of a job - le mot juste in this case. Your main competitors in the ecclesiastical market place are the radical Islamists - the sort of people who like nothing better than to kill a few hundred Christians in protest against Miss World - i.e. thirty women in bikinis. If the head of your 'corporation' is quite happy to state in public that uphill gardening is an acceptable hobby for a Bishop of the Church I can quite see this could present you with a marketing issue - perhaps even an issue of life or death for some of your flock.

So it wasn't surprising that the leader of 17 million Nigerian Anglicans was definitely not lukewarm on this one.

"The Most Rev Peter Akinola, the Archbishop of Nigeria, said of his schism warnings: “I wasn’t making threats, it was a statement of fact. We aren’t a Church of ‘anything goes’. We believe in the Scriptures, we believe there are boundaries. We believe that there are ‘don’ts’ and there are ‘dos’. "

But to Andrew Brown of the Times "it cannot be an entirely pleasant experience to find yourself in bed with the Archbishop of Lagos, even metaphorically". And for the Guardian it was an outrage that these uppity Nigerians should forget who pays the bills.

"While Africa has burgeoning numbers, it is the church in the west's money which has helped to support them. Liberals are exasperated that their churches should defer to bishops operating in vastly different societies." complained the Guardian's Religious Affairs Correspondent, Stephen Bates.

Strange then that Colin Slee should complain that Evangelicals "use monetary wealth as a tool ", and that the Times should report that "Church leaders’ fears about the appointment had grown when it became clear that threats from wealthy evangelical parishes to divert funds away from the diocese were real. Had parishes in other dioceses followed suit, the Church’s financial problems would have become crippling."

I think I've got that. Nigerians are obliged to obey their paymasters. UK liberals are not obliged to obey theirs.

Peter Cuthbertson considers the outcome 'a victory for the Church', but barring a miracle I think it's a rearguard action (le mot juste again) in a long and losing struggle. And I'm presuming he won't be at Holy Trinity Darlington this Sunday !

He said 'Jehovah' !

The Berslusconi 'controversy' is being plugged by the BBC and others for all it's worth - about 5p in my opinion. I know comparing a political opponent to the Nazis is a 'debating' tool copyrighted by the liberal left, but surely what's sauce for the Green Party goose, who started the handbagging by comparing one of Berlusconi's supporters to a Nazi, is also sauce for the Forza Italia gander ?

But Berlusconi is a BBC target only bettered by GWB and Georg Haider (who once said that Hitler built a lot of autobahns or something equally outrageous). A year or so ago the R4 current affairs series 'Crossing Continents' devoted a sympathetic programme to the 'radical left' in Italy, and how they were reacting to the Berlusconi administration.

OK, put aside the fact that a sympathetic Radio 4 programme about how the 'radical right' were responding to Schroder in Germany or Blair in Britain is about as likely as a Woman's Hour feature entitled 'Back In The Kitchen Bitch'. What was amazing was the omission of perhaps the most noteworthy response of the 'radical left' - the shooting dead by the Red Brigades of two advisers involved in drafting employment legislation with which the left disagreed.

Imagine (without smiling please) that Combat 18 had shot dead Will Hutton and Anthony Giddens. Could you really see any news organisation worth its salt discussing the response of the 'radical right' to Blair's government and not even mentioning it in passing ?


Straight Outta Compton (Warning - Link is Parental Advisory)

Serena beats Venus.

If people who talk about 'the cycle of deprivation' were right, that the poor will inevitably stay poor and those born in the ghetto are destined never to escape, we'd still be living in caves and banging rocks to make fire. After all that's what our relatives were doing a few millennia back.

Comtpton's more famous for rappers like Dr. Dre and Ice T. and for its industrial-scale violence and drug abuse than for tennis, yet these girls learned on public courts - though they did have to sweep the glass off first. Obviously they must have talent - but how many other talented kids stay in the ghetto ?

"His wife Oracene said tennis and other matters ranked a distant third on the Williams' list of priorities -- behind religion and family".


The Walrus Of Love - R.I.P.

Harry Hatchet says it all - Respect. That man had Luuuurrrrvvv enough and to spare. As a BBC correspondent said 'Heaven has gained a rather large angel'.

We're All Doomed !

Fascinating Spectator article by Steven Nixon on the forthcoming energy crisis, as the oil and gas run out and the nuclear power stations age and are not replaced.

Energy policy has been strange ever since Mrs Thatcher closed pits and coal-fired stations in order to meet emission targets on CO2 and sulphur dioxide. I can't understand why she's not a Green heroine .....

Nixon writes

"Not only is the government failing to address the problem, however; it is actually making it worse — by reducing our energy diversity. Coal, which used to deliver 80 per cent of our electricity, is virtually obsolete, a victim of strict new environmental laws. Now the government is determined to run down the nuclear industry, which produces 23 per cent of our power. All but one of our nuclear power stations are to be decommissioned by 2010 and no new ones will be built. Instead, the government says that we will make up the difference from renewable sources — primarily wind. By 2010, it wants 10 per cent of our electricity to come from renewables, rising to 20 per cent by 2020, up from less than 1 per cent today.

These are preposterous targets. Professor Ian Fells, a supporter of wind power, reckons we’ll be lucky to get 7 per cent of our electricity from wind by the end of the decade, and 10 per cent by 2020. To meet the government’s target, we need to install 20 2MW windmills every week from now until 2020. Yet no one knows where these windmills will go, let alone what they will cost to install. Most will have to be located offshore and new transmission lines will have to be built to bring the electricity to the national grid. Indeed, the grid itself will have to be substantially reconfigured. It is designed to transport power from large central power stations to the periphery; wind power will require it to do exactly the opposite. What’s more, windmills run at optimal capacity for only a few weeks every year. This means that 100 per cent back-up is needed. But where will this back-up come from? The government hasn’t a clue. "

It could of course be a cunning plot to tie us to Europe. We are I believe connected to the French system - but the link at 2000MW is only to help cope with peaks in demand. No, it's cockup not conspiracy. Just as with their inability to build prisons, our Government is looking the other way and hoping that the laws of physics and economics will be suspended just for them.

A few weks ago we took the kids to Big Pit, a day out I'd thoroughly recommend. Blaenavon is set in magnificent country - the back road over the hill from Abergavenny is wonderful, and the National Mining Museum of Wales is free. At last a use for my taxes I can approve of. And the children, who hadn't been keen, loved it when they got underground.

There is only one other deep mine left in Wales, Tower Colliery.

If this article is correct we need to start building nuclear stations and re-opening mines now. There is no chance at all of this government doing anything of the sort.

While successive New Labour Home Secretaries have continued the policy of increasing use of imprisonment begun by Michael Howard, they (or the Chancellor) have resolutely refused to fund the building of new prisons, with the exception of a few privately funded ones (of which by the way I completely disapprove. Prisons, like police and defence, should not be privatised).

Yet the population is remorselessly increasing - if the American experience is anything to go by, our prison population will probably have to double to 150,000 or so before crime is reduced to U.S. levels (did I really write that ? What have we come to when the U.S. is a low-crime paradise by comparison ?).

But the countryside is still relatively low-crime, although increasingly targeted by town-based or travelling thieves, as well as our own local smackheads (yesterday our neighbours had their trailer stolen, and a 90 year old woman in the next village found a burglar in her house). Certainly a police presence is non-existent - the village bobby went 30 years ago. The only advantage being that our local can 'lock-in' with impunity on a Friday night.

So the decision to ban hunting should pose an interesting policing problem. ACPO, the Association of Chief Police Officers, is one of the more politically correct bodies in Britain, as Chief Constables are increasingly recruited from fast-tracked sociology graduates, rather than hard-nosed guys who've come up the hard way. But its Rural Affairs spokesman is screaming about the issues which will be created by mass civil disobedience in the countryside.

It's pretty obvious. If all hunts go out simultaneously on a Saturday and mobilise their supporters - say one, two or three hundred thousand people - there won't be enough room in all the cells of the UK for us. And the towns will be empty of police. The young lads will enjoy blocking off the lanes with bales or trailers to stop them getting through - and if they do, even a 4x4 isn't much use for catching someone on a horse in woodland.

I suppose they could always arrest the hunt followers - who round our way are lovely old boys in battered vehicles .....

As behaviour and civility has declined over the last 50 years, the countryside has remained on the whole courteous and law abiding. Goodbye to all that ?

The Church May have Nothing to Say To Marxists, But Marxists Certainly Have Nothing to Say to The Church

A hilarious article by Michael Malkin at the Weekly Worker on the 'gay bishop' saga - enjoyed it immensely. It's impossible to say which was the best bit - probably the bit about Carlisle being 'a third-rate see if ever there was one' - surely Trollope himself speaking. I had no idea the CPGB was so au fait with the Church.

Or perhaps the 'loaded language' of which Malkin (not alas the wonderful Michelle Malkin ) complains, just after describing the traditionalist bishops as a 'coterie'.

The punctuation's interesting too - especially for a writer who criticises the Church's 'genuflection in the direction of political correctness' - god and bible are lowercase, King James, Saint and Torah uppercase, the j/Jews both. Perhaps Marxists should respect royalty but not divinity.

It's always entertaining to see a Marxist, dedicated to driving out primitive superstition with the light of reason and science, debating theological points. Malkin mentions Aquinas, Aristotle and St Augustine of Hippo, the greatest of the African saints - but you can't help feeling he's more comfortable when assailing 'ecclesiastical dinosaurs'.

He's a historian and anthropologist too. 'It is surely the case that in the period covered by the Torah, there was no concept of ‘sexual orientation’ .... and their procreative function was self-evidently determined - sexual preference was never an issue.'

Really ? What were all those prohibitions in Leviticus for then ? And what did those bad boys in Sodom want to do to Lot's guest ? I don't pretend to be a historian, but surely homosexuality has been with us from earliest times.

And last of all we're told that in contrast to the Church, 'for us Marxists, sexuality in all its diversity and complexity, rooted in the materiality of the human condition as it exists, is an intrinsic part of what it means to be a human being'.

I remember Engels in particular had a lot to say about 'sexuality in all its diversity and complexity', particularly in relation to Lancashire mill-girls.

Not to mention Lenin in his great works 'One Step Forward. Two Steps Back. Withdraw Nearly All The Way, Then Put It Back In' (Progress Publishers 1972 edition), and 'Left-Handed Masturbation - an Infantile Disorder'.

And as a Marxist with an interest in bestiality, necrophilia and flagellation, am I flogging a dead horse ?