Keep St George in my heart .....

So the overpaid, drug-addled "roasters" of Olde England managed not to lose - let rejoicing be unconfined.

But while I agree with her on the hypocrisy of some feminists, I must take issue with Jackie when she writes I've always heard of it as "spit-roasting". That particular phrase refers to a particular act, not to be described in a family blog, but one which could not involve more footballers than, say, a couple of Newcastle or Charlton strikers.

The 'moral' of the roasting incident is that the rock generation of the 60s and 70s (or in Peter Hitchens' phrase 'the suburban revolutionaries now occupying the corner offices') have passed some attitudes on to today's youth, the 'celebrity generation' - and anyone with enough fortune and/or fame/nice hotel suite/VIP table can now do rock star things (Parental Advisory), though perhaps with less gonzo style.


UPDATE - Jackie responds in robust fashion on the great debate of our times.

Back at last ....

Though no-one seemed to notice the absence, save only Jackie, who dropped me from her 'Required Reading' list. No deluge of emails demanding a return of service. Perhaps I should put an address on the site. Or something.

Apologies. The builders are extending the house, I'm selling another (my late mother's), and above all the earning a living thing have used up all my time. But the house sold today (STC), the Project From Hell is at last getting into shape, and Susan is at Warren's Malthouse for the evening - or is it the PTA ?

What's strange is that nothing really seems to have happened in politics over the last few weeks.

The Lib Dem conference was just like last years. Then it was porn at 16 and let the burglars out, this year it's ban smacking, compulsory porn (sorry, sex education) at 7, and let the burglars out. And people are still voting for them, showing that if you have no prospect of power, policies aren't important as long as you present well. Which they do. The Brent by-election was just a gigantic 'Not In My Name' directed at Labour and the Tories.

The Labour conference was only noteworthy for the dog that didn't bark in the night - said dog being the anti-Blair revolt. Better men than I have commented on this, but the lesson is that today's Labour activists simply have too much to lose too quickly. The old working class, the steelmen, miners, metalbashers have mostly disappeared. Plaintive pleas to save what's left of UK manufacturing are ignored. In the olden days activists could be as left as they wished. British industry would still be there, under Tories or Labour. I doubt very much if anyone really thought that it would vanish - and in fact it took decades to kill it.

But let's say you're one of the social workers employed on an anti-truancy project as part of Labour's great crusade against social exclusion. They were still recruiting them last month in my local education authority. You may have read the figures - that 600 million pounds worth of expenditure later the level of truancy has hardly altered - that each extra day in school for one child has cost over £1,000. Do you think your job would survive a change of government ? There are huge numbers of polytechnocrats whose jobs depend on Labour continuing to spend. They may hate Blair but they know open warfare would be electorally disastrous.



And the Tories ? Presumably they'll be trying not to shoot themselves in the foot Theresa May-style, while Ken Clarke and Portillo snipe from the sidelines.

But what a great story this is. Should get them all hot and bothered at the Guardian and Indie.

Rising Tory star Tim Metcalfe galvanised the Tory conference yesterday by asking for three cheers for Tony Martin, the farmer who shot a burglar dead, and demanding the return of hanging. The IT consultant, who hopes to become an MP, received a warmer ovation during the debate on crime than any other speaker, including Shadow Home Secretary Oliver Letwin.

He won the biggest cheer of the conference so far when he said it was time to stop being soft on criminals.

"Make prison a genuine punishment, bring back solitary confinement, take away their TVs and snooker tables and let them earn privileges," he said. "Bring back birching for young tearaways that terrorise council estates and vandalise graveyards, castrate paedophiles and bring back hanging!"

And there was an equally enthusiastic response at the end of his speech when he shouted: "Let us show the country that we really do mean business on crime by showing our support for Tony Martin."

Mr Metcalfe three times said "hip, hip" and thousands of delegates responded with "hooray!"

I could do with an IT consultant like that on the Project from Hell.

Don't Kill The BBC

Says Peter Hitchens in the Spectator.

"The time has come for sensible reactionaries to rally round their old enemies at the BBC, and for the BBC to seek support among those moral and cultural conservatives it has spent too long despising. Those who think that such an alliance would be as unprincipled and doomed as the Nazi–Soviet pact are mistaken. There is a real community of interests here, if only both sides would see it. Unless the BBC makes some new friends rather quickly, it will not survive much longer in anything like its present form. If it does open itself to people and ideas it now excludes and scorns, then it will become better as well as stronger. And if the BBC goes, the things conservatives really value will suffer. "

His solution ? For the BBC to drop its pretence of impartiality and encourage partisanship and open debate in its current affairs programmes - hence opening up the airwaves for cultural conservatives. I think he has as his model the late lamented 'Grilled On Both Sides' - the Sunday morning Talk Radio show which caused me to desert the Archers Omnibus after 20 years. Presented with the Labour MP Austin Mitchell, it was compulsive listening.

Only one problem - I just don't think the BBC are institutionally capable of reforming themselves. It just won't happen. They're like a much-loved dog suffering from an incurable and fatal disease that has to be put down. You know you won't ever have another dog like it, you know you'll be losing a friend and part of the family - but you still take that trip to the vet.

And the reason it won't happen ? A world-view which says that it would be better to be abolished by a future Tory Government than to admit that conservative ideas have any cultural validity.

The Today Programme - we don't report the news, we make it

So the BBCs apology lasted until Andrew Gilligan got out of the witness box. This morning the Today programme wheeled out Hans Blix, repeating what he's already said. This is now the main item on R4 news.

And for an unbiased look at the BBCs current position we had a studio discussion with ex-Times editor Peter Stothard and top BBC partisan (she was its social affairs correspondent for years), the Guardian's Polly Toynbee, who was allowed to both open and close the debate and was given about twice as much airtime. Ms Toynbee considered no criticism of the BBC from an ex-Murdoch employee was was valid, and slagged off all the papers except the Guardian and Indie.

This is what the BBC calls debate.

Update - as at 6.30 pm the Blix story (main item at 9.00 am) has completely vanished from the 30 minute R4 bulletin.

Neighbours From Hell, Frank Field, and the IWCA

Frank Field, one of the best Labour MPs, the man who Blair told to 'think the unthinkable' on the welfare state then sacked him for doing just that, has a new book 'Neighbours From Hell', describing the conditions that many people are forced to live in on our estates. The only review I've found is a small and flippant one by Fabian Paul Richards, but if this Sunday People article is any guide he's not short of ideas.

One of the greatest failings of the left, and a factor in peoples disengagement from politics, is the attitude which cares more for the offender than the victim. This is an especially grave failure in view of the fact that the poor, elderly and vulnerable are the main victims of crime. This is the theme tirelessly pursued by the good doctor Dalrymple.


So it is with pleasure that I can report on a small left group called the Independent Working Class Association or IWCA - a far-left group that actually seems to think that crime and fear of crime is an objective reality, with an existence outside a Daily Mail columnists mind.

They appear to have started as a quasi-anarchist grouping in London, but have branches in places like Harold Hill, Essex, and the notorious Blackbird Leys estate in Oxford. I haven't studied their policies in great (or any) detail yet, though headlines like 'Working Class Rule For Working Class Areas" don't exactly fill me with confidence - would they also support "Middle-Class Rule In Middle-Class Areas" ?

But you have to warm to an organisation which campaigns to get crack dealers evicted, and is then criticised by the police for doing so - whose side are they on ?

"Responding to the IWCA public meeting on the drugs issue, Inspector Eugene Gratwohl of Oxford police issued a warning to Blackbird Leys residents, telling them they could be ‘overstepping the mark’.

Speaking in the Oxford Mail (‘Residents Threaten Action on Dealers’, 1 July), Inspector Gratwohl said that residents who tried to gather their own evidence or demonstrated outside the homes of drug dealers risked ‘contravening the human rights of those implicated.’"

The IWCA responded to the police with classic British understatement :

"The police statement on the issue of ‘human rights’ for crack and heroin dealers will do nothing to reassure concerned residents that police priorities are in order"

Well, well, well. The Left is not completely dead after all.

Lay Off The Politicians ....

Aaronovitch joins Jackie Ashley and Polly Toynbee in a triptych of Guardianistas who all, correctly, feel that unremitting abuse of politicians is bad for democracy.

"... a piece in which a music magazine journalist writes about award-winning musician Dizzee Rascal, and his lyrics. '[His] album,' said the journalist, 'depicts Dizzee's life in Bow, east London. Uncompromising, raging, it is not easy listening - but every MP in Westminster should be forced to hear it.'

When music journalists speak, the world ought to listen. But I wondered whether this one actually knew who the MP for Dizzee's patch was? Or if he did, did he ask himself whether Oona King might not be more familiar with the problems of Bow than even the UK garage correspondent of Mixmag?"

Do you think this means that the Guardian will lay off Archer ? Dream on !


Triptych - what a lovely word ....

So put your hands together for ... Ambrogio Lorenzetti !


Triptych: Madonna and Child with Mary Magdalene and St Dorothea c. 1325. Wood, 90 x 53 cm (central panel), 88 x 39 cm (side panels, each). Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena Source:Web Gallery of Art

Rewriting History

The BBC and Guardian on the 'Three Degrees' .

"The Three Degrees may not have won anything together, but their influence cannot be exaggerated. 'At a time when far-right groups were recruiting outside other grounds, going to the the Hawthorns was more like being at a left-wing rally,' recalls Adrian Goldberg. 'The Three Degrees raised the political consciousness of Albion supporters everywhere.' "

Really. Was that why those same Albion fans made monkey noises at John Fashanu and Carlton Fairweather for the 90 minutes of their 4-1 F.A. Cup defeat at Wimbledon in 1989 ?

I was there and have never felt more ashamed of them. I think I was actually glad when the Dons got their fourth.

Note - the 'Three Degrees' were the three black players in the West Bromwich Albion soccer side of the late 1970s. Laurie Cunningham, a mercurial winger who never quite reached his full potential and died tragically young, Cyrille Regis, the powerful Guyanese centre-forward with a thunderous right foot, and full-back Brendan Batson. They WERE the start of the wave of black players into top clubs, but we never thought of them that way. Albion fans admired them as players and people, not as black icons. And I certainly never felt my consciousness rising as I stood at the Brummie Road End.

Why The BBC Must Still Go .....

The Guardian on Charles Moore, Telegraph editor, and his Beebwatch campaign.

"Shall we guess that breakfast in the elegant home of these serious and discerning folk is partaken to the background of the Today programme rather than, say, Planet Rock or Talksport? Come tea time do the smaller Moores watch JackAss and Kerrang, or are they tactfully steered towards Newsround or the Simpsons? Is that a prom on Radio 3 we hear in the background over supper or is it Heart 106.2? And as bedtime nears do we find the grown-ups glued to the mediocre film on Sky One, or are they throwing cushions at Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight? "

But Natalie Solent only notes that "I may even find a little tear trickling down my cheek as I take my £116 to the bank."

Strangely for a Biased-BBC contributor, I find myself more in agreement with the Guardian. As a Radio Four listener since the age of nineteen I often wonder what I shall do when it's gone. I have a vivid memory of sitting in a San Francisco flat, flicking through the 200-plus channels available, coming to the awful realisation that there was nothing worth watching on any of them (we ended up watching old Doctor Who episodes on PBS). There's no doubt that the BBC even now, after 30 years of relentless dumbing down, is still producing some great stuff.

But for me the price is too great. Unlike many libertarian bloggers, I accept the idea of a state-funded broadcaster in principle. Were the BBC still Lord Reith's BBC, I would be fighting its corner. I'm happy with a paternalism - the idea that the BBC should reflect the best of British culture and reinforce values, often now derided as "middle class", which were once shared by all classes. I'm happy with a measure of elitism, happy with excellence, happy with the view that what people want isn't always what is good for them.

The problem is that the BBC is too successful in reflecting the views of an influential and articulate section of the educated English middle class. That is why it must die - because the views of this section are so pernicious.

(Those views are in essence still those of my campus some thirty years ago, when we considered that 'straight white society' was the enemy. On the flagship Today programme, a Patti Smith comeback album is now greeted as if Adam Smith had written a new economics text. Radio Four are broadcasting a programme about West Bromwich Albion's three black stars of the 1970s in which they apparently made an impact on society like MLK's march from Selma to Montgomery. As one who was there at the time, Baggies fans simply thought of them as good players who happened to be black. (Oh, my Regis and my Johnston long ago !) And how dare they ignore Remi Moses ?)

There can be no doubt that the loss of the BBC will be grievous. And the domination of Murdoch more so. But things must get worse before they get better.

Good News From Sweden

After a grim week for Swedish democracy, the Euro is decisively rejected. The mooted "sympathy vote" for the (pro-Euro) Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, tragically murdered on Wednesday, was insufficient to claw back the anti-Euro lead.

And Bjorn Again will be touring this autumn.

Oh Dear

For the BBC to reinforce sexist stereotyping in this way is disgraceful.

Still, they do use a photo of a couple of babes.

Is Lamb ?

From the Gulf comes the distressing news that a ship carrying 57,000 sheep from Australia to Saudi Arabia (Sadly I don't think they're founding a knitwear industry ...) is stuck at sea after the Saudis refused it entry. The sheep are dying due to the heat - more than 3,000 so far.

Apparently the owners are trying to give the sheep away - to the Baa'th Party ?

Thank You Ian Buruma

For dissecting brain-dead anti-Americanism so well. And thanks to Norman Geras via Harry for the pointer.

It's only human to admire someone who reinforces a point you've made. Even better when he does it in language you can only aspire to.

"When Indians kill Muslims, or Africans kill Africans, or Arabs kill Arabs, western pundits pretend not to notice, or find historical explanations, or blame the scars of colonialism. But if white men, whether they are Americans, Europeans, South Africans or Israelis harm people of colour, hell is raised."

"As long as white people aren't spilling it, ANY amount of Iraqi blood can be spilled and you won't give a damn, let alone pick up a pen to write about it. "

"Democracy, to conservative realists, was fine for us but not for strange people with exotic names. It was the left that wanted to change the world, no matter where. Left-wing internationalism did not wish to recognise cultural or national barriers. To them, liberation was a universal project. Yet now that the "Bush-Cheney junta" talks about a democratic revolution, regardless of culture, colour or creed, Gore Vidal claims it is not our business, and others cry "racism"."

"In politics there always seem to be two views of 'the Other' - the Other in this case being the people of Iraq. One side says 'they're just people like us - they want the things we want', the other says 'these people are not at all like us - beware'. Historically the former view was held by the Left - think of the idealism with which the African colonies were liberated (or abandoned), or the argument that asylum-seekers will in no time be helping with the PTA and sending the kids to medical school, compared with the traditional 'right' view of peoples 'half devil and half child' or (circa African independence) 'they're just not ready for it'.

But these days its a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world. The repentant Trotskyites who make up America's neocons seem confident that the whole Middle East can be 'liberated' from feudalism or theocracy, and it's the Left who are suddenly saying 'don't kid yourself - these guys are very different to you and me. "

They're Getting It - But They'll Get It Too Late

Jackie Ashley (Mrs Andrew Marr) looks at some uncomfortable truths - then shies away.


"We live in a new world and there is a new politics, bleakly confronting everyone who grew up through the liberal revolution of the 60s. Ministers who have been talking to voters during the summer, looking for what the people really care about, are coming up again and again with the same word. "Security"".

Good - she's got that.

"The politics of security is fundamentally reactionary. It is the politics of fear - fear of the outsider, fear of losing your job, fear of the people at the mosque down the road, fear of youths on the corner, fear of the European superstate, and fear of change."

Oh no she hasn't.

"Any government which simply brushes fear aside as a force in politics is foolish. Fear is probably the strongest political force of all, even stronger than hope."

Has.

"But go very far in appeasing or reassuring fearful voters, and you become a reactionary government."

Hasn't.

"We should acknowledge that "security" neatly matches one strand in old Labour, too often ignored by the nostalgists. How many party members - or trade unionists - wanted both a high-spending, security-providing welfare state, and were also anti-immigrant and vehemently rightwing on crime, even including support for the death penalty?"

Has (memo to Jackie and Andy - these people were once the backbone of the working class, in the days when it HAD a backbone. You read about them, or people just like them, in your E.P. Thompson books at Uni. You idolised them - from a distance.)

"So long as people think their government has a bit of a grip on things, everything can be held in check, and progressive politics moves forward."

Hasn't. Progressive politics = keeping people in check ? I don't remember that in "the liberal revolution of the 60s".

"The danger starts when people feel their own state is powerless or out of touch."

Oh yes she has.

"Trevor Phillips, the new boss of the commission for racial equality, hits a good note when he reminds audiences of just how much the NHS they rely on for a sense of security is propped up by Indian and Pakistani doctors, Somali cleaners and Caribbean nurses."

Hasn't.

You see, Jackie, the trouble is that people aren't going to take any notice of Trevor Phillips. Or Ian Duncan Smith, or their head teacher, their priest, counsellor, social worker, or Jackie Ashley. Polly Toynbee last week pointed out "the left, which purports to believe in government, should be wary of joining the same all-governments-are-rubbish camp. This anarcho-individualism is a very British mindset - and it is not compatible with social democracy." But it's not just governments, Polly, it's every-institution-is-rubbish.

The Guardian yesterday celebrated the death of deference in the UK in an editorial, congratulating those Brits who made fun of David Blaine. That 'fun' consists of throwing missiles and shining laser pens at him - he now has a police guard.

"Perhaps all of us, reflecting on a rancorous, cynical period in politics, should think again about the need to work with progressive politicians instead of always carping from the sidelines. Effective parliamentary democracy - not troops, not spooks - is our only long-term defence."

But effective parliamentary democracy is just what we HAVEN'T got. After all, doesn't progressive government consist of "keeping everything in check" ?

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

That sounds a pretty good description of England to me. Interesting times are coming.

Does the BBC think British soldiers are Nazis ?

John Pienaar on BBC Radio Five was interviewing Baghdad Blogger Salam Pax this morning. Pax described how when the Allies were bombing, he and his friends would hide in the basement with drinks and sweets.

"Just like Anne Frank, then", said Pienaar.

UPDATE 14/09/03

Natalie Solent at Biased-BBC writes

"To be fair, if Pienaar really has read Anne Frank, he might have intended a more subtle and accurate comparison. I haven't a copy to hand, but in her diary Anne Frank several times expresses her support and admiration for the Allied bomber crews - even though she was at risk of being bombed herself. So Pienaar might have meant to equate the citizens of Baghdad hiding in cellars from American planes dropping bombs, all the while praying for the bombers to be victorious so that the tyrant Saddam will be overthrown, to the citizens of Amsterdam hiding in cellars (or attics in Anne Frank's case) from American planes dropping bombs, all the while praying for the bombers to be victorious so that the tyrant Hitler will be overthrown. "

She may be right - although I find the comparison somewhat inappropriate. Anne Frank, unlike Salam Pax, had nowhere to go (26/7/43) when the Allies bombed Amsterdam.

But if this is what Pienaar meant, it must be the first recorded instance on the BBC of a commentator comparing Saddam to Hitler, the citizens of Baghdad to the Jews of Europe, and the armed forces of Bush and Blair to those of Roosevelt and Churchill.

I know little of John Pienaar's politics. He wrote on "urban crime, domestic violence, sex, drugs and rock’n’roll" at the South London Press, before moving to the Independent then the BBC. Does that give us a clue ? With his name, fearsome moustache and barn-door build, he looks like a Guardian reader's caricature of an Afrikaaner farmer - but he doesn't seem to have the attitudes of one. When he was reporting in August 2002 from the UN conference on racism and colonialism (you remember - the one which turned into an anti-Semitic hate fest, the one where Ghaddafi and Mugabe were given standing ovations), Esther Rantzen on R5 rang him to ask the question 'Poverty - Do we owe the Third World ?'.

John's reply showed all the neutrality traditionally associated with the BBC.

‘Well, as a neutral I can only say yes’

Self Hating White Liberals Part 126 - AL Kennedy

She's a grown woman (38 next birthday) and a writer of some repute - though God knows why if this is anything to go by :

"So, the lean and noble figure of Alastair Campbell jogs away from No 10, a whole new selection of profitable marathons opening up, and the luscious and reliable figure of Mandy slips back in. Doesn't it all impregnate you with confidence and pride? "

Uh ? Campbell lean and hungry maybe ... Mandy ? luscious ? reliable ? Why not stick to the tried and tested cliches if you can't find a striking adjective - Mephistopholean is always reliable - unlike Mandy. Sounds as if she's composing an ad for a gay contact mag. And as for being 'impregnated' with confidence and pride - come on, lecturer in creative writing - 'marinaded' would surely do as well if you're just chucking any old words in there. Or think your favourite restaurant and try 'drizzled'.

Surely the day she put this Guardian piece together she was suffering from the ailments described by Christina Patterson in an Independent interview.

"Almost her first words are to request that the harsh office lights be turned off. She speaks in a voice that's barely a whisper and sips water frantically as if trying to quench some terrible thirst."

Sounds like the mother of all hangovers to me, but I may be being unfair - she suffers with a twisted spine.



Here we go - her problem is the blood on Tony Blair's hands.

"I am willing to ignore the blood spilled as a result of Blair's transport policies, Blair's health policies and Blair's decisions relating to arms sales and the escalating bloodbath that is Afghanistan. This leaves me with only Iraq." Cheers, AL. Decent of you to ignore the blood spilled by his increases in NHS spending. Let's stick with Iraq, then.

We won't count the Iraqi servicemen killed "because the ones the CIA couldn't buy off beforehand were, therefore, Evil and deserved to die" - thank the Lord that some noble Iraqis resisted the CIA dollar and fought on ! Didn't Saddam put Republican Guards behind front-line troops to shoot any deserters ? The CIA must have spent a lot, as the vast majority of the Iraqi army survived and have melted back into civilian life. A proportion of them are attacking and killing our soldiers.

There follows some pleasant counting of the possible number of pints of civilian blood spilled during the war - "estimates of the completely dead vary between 37,137 and the much more comfortable 6,118". For 'comfortable' read 'accurate' - there is almost no upper limit to the civilian toll you can find on the sort of websites where Michael Meacher does his research.

Now we come to the bit that makes this Caucasian's blood boil - all eight pints of it.

"Now one wouldn't want to be racist about this, but Iraqi blood does seem to matter a good deal less than more civilised, more Christian, more Caucasian blood. "

How true. How very, bloody, true. Damn right it does, to a self-loathing liberal.

As long as white people aren't spilling it, ANY amount of Iraqi blood can be spilled and you won't give a damn, let alone pick up a pen to write about it.

No one knows how many people died in Saddam's prisons, tortured and without trial. Most estimates are around 200,000. New mass graves, sometimes containing small children, are being uncovered.

Sorry. You don't count. You see, we're really more interested in whether 'the West' killed you. And they didn't.

Sure, it's sad you're dead, but we're campaigning for truth and justice here - got to stay focused on the important things. We're the good people - we care. And our campaign isn’t about you – it’s about us.

‘Not in My Name !’ In Saddam’s name – fair enough. Suddenly we don’t want to count bodies anymore.

The wrong people killed you. Maybe we can say the Americans or British sold Saddam the weapons used - give you a bit of recognition. That's what we did with the million dead in the Iran-Iraq war - focused on some technology sales and a few photos of Rumsfeld with Saddam. So they didn't die in vain. Got several Guardian articles from them. But get real – one Iraqi child with his legs blown off by a Raytheon missile is worth more to us than any number heaving out their last breaths, lying in their own blood, vomit and faeces in one of Saddam’s torture chambers. You see, that won’t have been done ‘in my name’.



She’s not an isolated case of course. Her ideas are those of her class – Warwick Uni, “Community Arts Worker”, “Writer in Residence for Hamilton & East Kilbride Social Work Department” (could you make it up ?), and now a college lecturer. Her gums have been clamped firmly round the nipple of the despised state all her life.

Forty years ago Kennedy would have been writing about Sharpeville while ignoring the atrocities in the Congo. In 1947 she’d have written about Amritsar while half a million died in the Punjab.

And today we can be sure that she won’t tell us about Congo massacres, Nigerian conflict, violence in the Philippines, Indonesia, or any other ‘non-Caucasian’ deaths. Unless, of course, she can use those bodies as weapons in her own – and the Guardian’s - dirty little war.

Gone ....

Leni Riefenstahl dies at 101. She was rather gorgeous ...











... but had some very dodgy friends ....



"Alright, Leni - it IS a Heinkel" "Told you so - thats 100 Reichmarks you owe me"


Leni was probably one of the last people on earth who can remember when being on the far right rather than the far left was cool - hip - trendy - whatever. First the Futurists in Italy then the Nazis in Germany had the same appeal as, say, the hippies of 1967 or the punks of 1976 - the appeal of youth and energy, of a total disregard for bourgeois convention.

"We intend to glorify the love of danger, the custom of energy, the strength of daring.
The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity, and revolt."

"There is no more beauty except in struggle. No masterpiece without the stamp of aggressiveness. Poetry should be a violent assault against unknown forces"

The far left has been the cool place to be ever since 1945. And that today is probably a very good thing indeed. We have an increasingly ill-educated and intolerant population, inhabiting a moral and cultural wasteland - what a good thing that hatred and ignorance mostly gravitates towards the left. It would be scary indeed if it became hip to be far-right, and people with the mentality of Seattle or May Day protesters were smashing foreign-owned shops - like MacDonalds ....

The Towering Genius That Is Richard Littlejohn .....

Gives Patricia Hewitt a good shoeing.

And no worthier target could he find. This public-school diplomat's daughter commented during the 1981 Brixton riots how tragic it was that the rioters were destroying their own poor area of London. When the interviewer asked her if she'd prefer them to be burning her own privileged area she fell silent. She is the archetype, the exemplar, of the guilt-stricken white liberal, and a massive hypocrite to boot, as she heads off in a private jet to solve the problems of world poverty from a five-star hotel suite.

He then moves on to New Labour, the party once of miners, engineers and railwaymen, now of lawyers and polytechnocrats :

"Once Labour revered the dignity of manual work. The party was built on it.

These days they look down their noses at anyone who gets their hands dirty.

They sneer as much at self-employed plumbers and brickies as they do at those they see as chinless wonders.

In an ideal Labour world, everyone would pass seamlessly from school, through the students’ union into a life spent researching, lobbying, consulting and litigating.

They never pause to think where the money is coming from.

It doesn’t all come from the so-called “rich”. Hardly any of it does, in percentage terms.

It comes from taxes paid by plumbers, carpenters, bricklayers, electricians, plasterers and everyone else who goes out into the world and creates wealth, earns an honest living instead of spongeing off the state.

Who the hell does Hewitt think is picking up the £50,000 bill for her and her delegation to swan around the Caribbean, flitting from seminar to spa bath, from buffet lunch to Jacuzzi in the name of fighting poverty?"

Tell it like it is, brother !

Aren't these wonderful ?




A plume of steam rises from an Antarctic Ice Tower , which have joined the Dry Valleys and the Black Smokers in the catalogue of strange places supporting life.

Funny ....

Why can't I find this story - that Andrew Gilligan lied to the Foreign Affairs Commitee - on the BBC ?

"The BBC reporter has already been criticised by corporation executives after he e-mailed two members of the foreign affairs select committee (FAC) revealing that Dr David Kelly was the source of a report by the BBC Newsnight journalist Susan Watts.

It has since emerged that three days after sending the e-mail, Mr Gilligan told the committee he had no knowledge of the MoD scientists’ dealings with other journalists, including Ms Watts.

The contradictory statements have infuriated Labour MPs on the committee and will raise further doubts about the credibility of Mr Gilligan as Lord Hutton prepares for the second stage of his inquiry.

Committee member and Labour MP Gisela Stuart said she would be asking her colleagues to consider referring Mr Gilligan to the appropriate Commons authority for his alleged contempt of Parliament. "

Prison Works (Part 41)

Thomas Sowell on crime and punishment.

"The purpose of a criminal justice system is not to be fair. Its purpose is to protect law-abiding people from criminals. There is no need to be unfair but, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said: "It is desirable that the burden of all should be equal, but it is still more desirable to put an end to robbery and murder.""