It's McTorture In The Community

The latest English fashion finally crosses the Tweed.

A man who was found dead in his home in Fife on Thursday suffered a "horrific ordeal" before his death, police said. A murder investigation has now been launched into the death of Mark White at his home in Glenrothes. Fife Constabulary said the 31-year-old's body might have been in his home for some days.

Det Supt Alistair McKeen said that Mr White was "a harmless young man, who despite his learning difficulties, led an independent, happy life".

I'm sure there were dark sides to the old "homes" and "loony-bins", where those who were once called 'simples' or 'naturals' often ended up (in the absence of devoted, fit and time-rich relatives). But there's little evidence of their inmates being tortured to death.

Doubtless the heartbreaking details will unfold in due course. If the past is any guide to the future, his torturers and killers will turn out to be well-known locally, "known to social services" and the law, and with habits including petty crime, assault and drug abuse. It's quite possible that at least one of them will be female.

Is Sir Ian Blair in charge of Bombay Police ?

I know, fog of war, confused situation and all that. But :

Mumbai's chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said two "British-born Pakistanis" were among eight gunmen captured alive during bloody shoot-outs with soldiers ...

One commando leader described how suspicions of a British link had been raised when investigators examined BlackBerry mobile phones seized from some of the captured Islamic extremists, which they had used to monitor the internet.

General Noble Thamburaj, head of India's southern command, told the Telegraph: "There was a lot of content from the English media, not just in London but the Urdu and Arabic sites that are very strong in the north of England.

Yet according to BBC radio news this morning, all the 'militants' are dead except one :

Police say they have arrested one suspected attacker. The number of militants involved in the coordinated attacks remains unclear.

From eight down to one in a day - does that look like a counting error to you ? It's while the info coming out is of that quality that I'm leery of putting too much weight on the reports that operatives came from the "Jihad Triangle" of Beeston/Dewsbury/Bradford.

(I suppose the alternative theory is that there WERE eight, and the other seven are being "debriefed with extreme prejudice" prior to their demise. Maybe reports that they're dead are just a week or two premature.)

Bombay - the Christian-Lite Perspective

Ekklesia :

The carnage in Bombay (officially known as Mumbai), in which gunmen have killed over a hundred people, injured many more and taken hostages, has shocked the world. It has thrown a spotlight on religious extremism of various kinds.

Is It Him Or Me ?

Has Blognor Regis been bought out by a private equity company ? Or was it something I said ?

Godwin's Law

"Politics in Germany are not as they are over here. There you do not leave office to go into Opposition. You do not leave the Front Bench to sit below the Gangway. You may well leave your high office at a quarter of an hour's notice to drive to the police station, and you may be conducted thereafter very rapidly to an even graver ordeal."

Churchill, History of the Second World War Vol I

"excuse me if I give the whole 'Day of Infamy' thing a miss"

Dumb Jon

Mourning the victims of terror in Bombay ...

"Our second responsibility is obviously to root out terrorism ..." - Gordon Brown.

All-party support for terror in London.

Despite Thursday being a working day, the 25,000 seat ExCel centre in Southeast London remained packed to capacity from mid-day to early evening, with thousands of people paying their respects and leaving after some time so as to make way for those crowding outside, venue officials said.

Vaiko addressing the gathering

Toby Boutle, Conservative candidate for Ilford South

Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat MP for Kingston

Siobhan McDonagh MP

Joan Ryan MP

The day began with a silent tribute to the Tamils who had died in their people’s liberation struggle. Thereafter, the flame of altruism lit by Mrs Yoharani Manohararasa, mother of late LTTE Lt Col Vaikunthan.

Then the lights dimmed for lighting of lamps by the attending people whilst the ‘Great Heroes' Resting Home’ song played in the background.

Throughout the day families waited patiently in line with groups of teenagers and retirees to place flower petals before portraits of Tamils killed in the liberation struggle against Sinhala domination.

It took an hour for those joining the queues to reach the petals, people said. Families of the fallen brought portraits of their loved ones to place on the dais, they added. As in recent years, large quantities of the Tamil national flower, the karthigaipoo (gloriosa lily) were among the petals piled up for attendees to pick and place, they said.

Private bus companies plied from many of London’s boroughs (districts) to the cavernous venue in the glass fronted Docklands area. Thousands of people also travelled to London from locations across the British isles, from as far away as Edinburgh in Scotland and Cardiff in Wales to participate in the event.

Whilst people waited to pay their respects of took their seats afterwards, dozens of Tamil expatriate arts groups staged dramas, traditional dance (bharathanatyam) and other cultural performances which were interspaced with speeches on the Tamils’ oppression in Sri Lanka and their struggle for freedom.

Among those who addressed the event were British parliamentarians Edward Davey (LibDem, Kingston and Surbiton), Robert Evans (Labour, MEP) Siobhain McDonagh (Labour, Mitcham and Mordern), John McDonald (Labour, Hayes and Harlington), Andrew Pelling (Independent, Croydon Central), Joan Ryan (Labour, Enfield North) and Vireindra Sharma (Labour, Ealing and Southall). The Conservative candidate for Ilford South, Toby Boutle, also spoke.

To be fair, you'd certainly have attracted the Galloways, Livingstones, Corbyns to an IRA front gathering, opened by the mother of a late PIRA brigadier, twenty years back- but Lib Dims and Tories ?

What I can't work out from the reports is whether the usual highlight of Heroes Day - the broadcast speech by the Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, was actually heard at the ExCel or not. According to the Indie (which says this year's main speaker is an LTTE supporter) :

The Independent understands that the traditional events celebrating Prabhakaran and suicide martyrs will be toned down or held in secret.

Nirmala Rajasingham, the founder of the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum and a staunch critic of the Tigers who she accuses of murdering her sister, said the British Government should do more to stop fundraising in Britain. "I am opposed to the Heroes' Day celebrations because it is a morbid celebration of the suicide cult and it is a fundraising event for the Tigers," she said. "The Tamil Tigers may have been banned but they continue to operate freely in Britain."

Some estimates suggest as much as 40 per cent of the Tamil Tigers' funding comes from Britain's 150,000 Tamils, although many are bitterly opposed to the terror group.

Mrs Rajasingham said it was important to recognise that not all those attending today's celebration would be Tamil Tiger supporters. "A lot of those attending will actually be against the LTTE but they will go anyway because they have had relatives and loved ones killed by the Sri Lankan government and want to remember them."

Dominic Whiteman at the Centre for Social Cohesion blog is not a happy bunny :

When we as a society are seeking to uphold bans against Islamist groups who threaten us, it seems incorrect and immoral of us to be allowing the public gathering of a terrorist group and its cheerleaders right under our noses in London so they can celebrate their fallen comrades and, worse still, raise funds for their cause, which results in thousands of deaths in Sri Lanka.

Dominic Whiteman, depending on which source you believe, is either a doughty latter-day Bulldog Drummond with a keyboard, or an infidel stirring up attacks on elderly Muslim shoppers.

We Can Sleep Safe In Our Beds Tonight ...

Anti-terror police have arrested a Tory shadow Home Office Minister ...

"First they came for the BNP members, and I did not speak out, because I was not a BNP member.

Then they came for the Tories ..."

"Television as a force multiplier"

Ross argues against this morning's wall-to-wall media coverage of the Bombay atrocities.

Those Christian Pharmacists Are At It Again

There was a young lady from Ealing :

A musician was left feeling “humiliated and disgusted” after being refused the morning after pill twice.

Tiffany Berton, a 28-year-old singer songwriter went to two different Boots stores in Ealing to get the pill as a extra precaution.

But both times she was refused the contraceptive, which costs £25 to buy over the counter, on moral and religious grounds.

She said: “I went to the Boots store next to Ealing Broadway station, but was told they did not stock it on religious grounds and was sent to the other Boots shop in Ealing Broadway.

“When I got there I was made to fill out a form, then the assistant showed it to the pharmacist, before coming back and telling me I could not have the pill.

“It made me feel like I was being judged and branded an amoral woman, even though I was being responsible.

Miss Berton, who lives in South Ealing Road, continued: “I was furious, but also humiliated and disgusted.

“I'm on low income and on housing benefits, and now is not the right time for me to bring a child into the world.

“Yet the way these people were acting it was as if they were saying your either single and celibate or married.”

She said she now intends to mount a campaign to stop pharmacists being able to refuse treatments on religious and moral grounds.

I expect it's those Christians again, with their idiotic ideas about celibacy and marriage. Honestly, it's getting as bad as America.

Vat ?

I don’t know why Brown didn’t reverse a Tory tax rise (introduced at a time when they were scrabbling for revenue themselves) and remove VAT from building work (it’s levied on all improvements - everything except new build).

It would help the builders - and people usually have to buy things to go in the extension/loft conversion. Plus, bricks, plasterboard and mortar are some of the few things we still produce in the UK.

I can't see a 2.5% cut having much more effect on people's spending than the stamp duty cut had on the housing market.

The BBC (in the form of business correspondent Robert Peston, whose commentariat are a well-informed bunch - the blog's worth reading for the comments alone) are still talking about the crisis as a problem caused by not enough people buying houses at high enough prices :

"at the heart of our economic problems has been this decline in the housing market ... "

It's not a decline, it's a correction. What was amazing is that the boom (fuelled by easy credit, dual income buyers, and City bonuses) lasted so long. It was about four years ago that I started getting invites through the post to buy-to-let seminars. Isn't there a saying to the effect that when the taxi-driver starts giving you share tips it's time to sell ?

If the view of HMG (and Peston seems to have a hot-line to the Treasury) is that declining house prices are the problem, then the only way they'll fix it is by printing money.

(UPDATE - my commenters tell me that Gordo CAN'T scrap VAT on building work - like so many EU things, it's a one-way ratchet. We had an opt-out, but we got rid of it and we can never get it back again. That's also why the VAT cut was to 15%. Apparently the EU won't let us cut any more)

UPDATE - from Peston commenter thinkb4, this :

Dear Mr Brown

Are your debts becoming harder to pay?

Is your over inflated Housing Market in Crisis?

Have your Banks been squandering money at a level that could bring your economy down, but the revenue was good, so you didn't want to meddle?

Are you up a creek without a paddle?

If so, then:

Consolidate your debts into one easy to pay loan from the IMF !

With IMF loans your can delay the inevitable even further and maybe have enough spare for that holiday you promised yourself.

Normally only available to 3rd World Countries, the IMF is now making available Billions to help world leaders secure re election.

Just complete the attached application form and you can turn the "Spend Now, Pay Later" philosophy of the past 10 years into a "Spend Now, Borrow Later, Borrow Again, Pay Much Later" Manifesto for your upcoming campaigns.

PS - Choose your free gift from below:

1. All expenses paid "World Leader Pack", simply attend a gathering of World Leaders, have your photo taken, read the sound bites and take back to your voters credibility as a Global Influencer. (Please note: No decision making commitments necessary, this activity is a mutually beneficial showpiece to help heads of state retain power)

2. Parker Pen Writing Set

"Astonished"

I hope I'm not picking on Natalie Bennett, but she does come out with some shockers ...

"Astonished to read that people spend £1,000 a year on energy. Okay I have a reasonably small flat, and I try, but my electricity comes to about £10 a month and gas about £15 in winter"

People have families, Natalie - and houses, not flats, to put them in. Flats are more efficient at retaining heat, as the roofs and floors of one flat are the floors and roofs of the flats above and below - minimising heat loss. The last time I filled the oil tank (admittedly two months back at the price peak, alas) it set me back £1,000 - and I imagine the electricity comes to another £450 a year. And we burn wood. And coal. Many of us have more to lose if the planet goes pearshaped than you do - in the form of our kids.

It's not as if we just wap up the thermostat and wander around in shorts - in fact I'm the energy ogre, castigating the kids for their sins against a non-renewable resource and my wallet and telling them to get a pullover on. But there are six of us in the house and we live in more than one room.

Somehow it all tangentially relates to this old BBC story, brought to my attention by a correspondent.

There are more unmarried mothers in the prosperous Kent town of Tunbridge Wells than in the poor London borough of Tower Hamlets, a survey has shown.

It found 33% of babies were born outside marriage in Tunbridge Wells in 2002, and 21% in Tower Hamlets.

The study was compiled by the Economist magazine, based on figures from the Office of National Statistics.

Researchers said the countryside could no longer be seen as the bedrock of traditional family values.

In the Kent town, many unmarried couples have families together, while in inner London young people of south Asian origin are traditionally expected to be married.

Well, yes and no. The countryside can still be seen as the bedrock of traditional British family values, if somewhat friable and crumbly bedrock. I'll lay that there are fewer "babies born outside marriage" - i.e. bastards, in Cirencester or Down Ampney than in Bradley Stoke or Penhill. What our BBC chappie is contrasting them with are traditional Bangladeshi family values.

Childbirth outside marriage is low among groups including Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and black Africans, according to the research.

Dr Muhammad Abdul Hannan, director of Tower Hamlets Parents Centre, said marriage was a holy institution to the Bangladeshi culture and it was rare to find an unmarried Bangladeshi mother.

"The family structure is very important. There is a father who is the head of the family, most mothers are housewives and they have lots of children," he said.

"Young people brought up here are influenced by western modern culture. Even so, parents expect their sons and daughters to be married."

Almost half of Tower Hamlets' population were from ethnic minority groups and one-third was Bangladeshi, according to the 2001 Census.

This compares with Tunbridge Wells where white people made up almost 98% of the population.

This is the country I visited four years ago, when I noted that Swinging London had the lowest bastardy rates ("the large Asian and African (though not Caribbean) immigrant communities frown on illegitimacy") and the hideously white Wales and the North-East the highest.

Let's just listen to the words of Dr Hannan again, shall we ?

"Dr Muhammad Abdul Hannan, director of Tower Hamlets Parents Centre, said marriage was a holy institution to the Bangladeshi culture"

He means it's a "holy estate" which is "ordained by God".

"and it was rare to find an unmarried Bangladeshi mother"

It was rare to find an unmarried British mother, too, until thirty or forty years ago, despite the unreliable contraception and unavailable abortion of those days.

"There is a father who is the head of the family, most mothers are housewives and they have lots of children"

We used to be like that :

"There was Mummy Woodentop and the baby and Daddy Woodentop.

And then there were Willie and Jenny, the twins. And Mrs Scrubit who comes to help Mummy. And Sam who helps Daddy Woodentop. And last of all, the very biggest spotty dog you ever did see"

Now "we" are more like Natalie, except that she, as a good Green, would (rightly IMHO) never see marriage as "a luxury to splash out on when there was enough money for a big celebration". (I wonder if there's still a Mrs Scrubbit though - most lefty two-earner families have a cleaner. What happened to the Dignity of Labour, as I ask Susan when she's cleaning the shower ?).

At which point the good Doctor Hannan might well ask, in the immortal words of Tonto, "Who's we, paleface ?"

And he'd be right. Thanks to a strange mix of feminist/leftist synergy - no babies and no borders - with capitalist consumerism (babies as an expense and burden, marriage as a big party) the way is clear for London to become less like England (admittedly that's not saying much) and more like Bangladesh.

Damn White People ...

The very wonderful Snuffleupagus on "white liberals":

"And how can we, the poor, the blacks, the underdog, complain? Whenever we fail, old whitey is there to catch us. He has set up debt loopholes so we can run big businesses out of town. He has engineered it so that we can never be excluded out of school. He has structured society to teach us how to lack manners, be aggressive and, oh yeah, be angry ALL of the time. And he always forgives us! We are never allowed to feel shame. Whitey knows how hard it is for us. Whitey knows we can't help ourselves."

She's not trying to have it both ways. Snuffy, while not colourblind, comes, if I read her correctly, from the "content of character not colour of skin", Booker Rising school. What she's asking is "how do we raise good people when the sanctions for behaving badly are non-existent ?". It's a question that can be asked in the context of the white underclass as well as unruly black youth.

(Of course the sanctions aren't completely non-existent - but you have to push things an awful long way. No-one in education wants the Guardian or Joseph Rowntree Foundation on their back)

Snuffy posted the above piece a year ago and pulled it for fear of people taking it the wrong way. After someone "outed" her to her Head as a blogger (and he turned out to be on the side of the angels), she felt confident enough and supported enough to repost.

Although we must be fair. The likelihood of a black teacher (who obviously, from reading her blog, cares about all her children and their education) being sacked for a blog is, while not zero, a lot lower than it would be for a white teacher. Her head would be facing a media firestorm PDQ. I can see the headlines now - "The Inspirational Black Teacher And Uncomfortable Truths About Race" in the Guardian, something a little rougher-edged in the Voice, and I don't even like to think how Ligali would cover it. A white teacher posting about black people in a Snuffy style would be out of the door faster than you could say 'institutional racism'. Nonetheless, I'm chuffed she's still with us. She shines through her writing.

Doesn't Obama Look Like His Mum ?

Dreams From My Father, Face From My Mother.

I'm just reading Dreams From My Father at the moment - the guy writes well, even though he's a bit on the portentous/pretentious side. If young Barry sees a snake catch a grasshopper in the garden he has to stop and think about power relations for five paragraphs. Mom comes over as a bit of a crazy mixed up liberal kid with a thing about 'authentic' third world men - she gradually goes off second husband Lolo - a fine, sympathetic portrait by Obama - as he becomes less Exotic Third-World Student and more Mr Doing-Well - even though he's doing it for his family. Only read a few chapters in - our young hero's just been sent to Hawaii.

I see that state harassment of the BNP's gone open.

Police said those arrested were a 29-year-old and a 51-year-old from the south Liverpool area; a 64-year-old from the Wirral; a 19-year-old; a 46-year-old and a 41-year-old from north Liverpool; a 61-year-old and a 42-year-old from Knowsley; a 70-year-old; a 44-year-old; and a 29-year-old and a 48-year-old from St Helens.

Mr Goodwin said he understood 12 of his members had been arrested "distributing official party leaflets in Merseyside".

He added: "There was nothing unlawful in the leaflets - all the contents of the leaflets had been carefully vetted, or they would not have gone out."

Merseyside Police Assistant Chief Constable Colin Matthews said: "Merseyside Police condemns racism in all of its forms and will take prompt action to support all of our communities".

All except one, that is.

Remember Phil Woolas' tough soundbites on immigration ?

"The government's points-based migration system could lead to a rise in the number of people entering the UK in the future, Phil Woolas has said."

There's a surprise.

UPDATE - more BNP arrests in Lancashire on Wednesday.

Death In Real Time

I wrote what seems like an age ago :

Humphrys has called for assisted suicide to be made legal. I'm sure there are people who'd pay good money to watch the death in real time - with perhaps a lottery involved, the lucky winner to remotely operate the barbiturate driver from their PC or mobile.

This week :

It’s thought that up to 1500 people watched 19-year-old Abraham K Biggs, of Broward County, Florida, take an overdose on website Justin.tv, earlier this week.

Numerous online sources have reported that his broadcast – the copy of which has since been removed from the web – showed Biggs swallow a mixture of pills before becoming unconscious.

Anxious viewers called local police after Biggs’ body lay lifeless on a bed for several hours. The broadcast also showed police and paramedics bursting into the troubled teen’s room.

A Dhobi-Wallah's Daughter

Times :

An Indian teenager who dared to write a love letter to a sweetheart from a higher caste was beaten and paraded through the streets before being thrown under a train and killed.

Manish Kumar, 15, a member of India’s Dalit, or “Untouchable”, community, was seized by a gang of men as he went to his village school.

He was beaten and his head was shaved before he was thrown on to the tracks, as his mother begged for mercy, witnesses said. It was alleged that police looked on as the incident took place.

A teenager has since been arrested and a policeman has been suspended. Five other men were detained.

Three months ago the boy sent a letter “expressing his interest” in a girl from the Dhobi community, another Dalit sub-caste, which has traditionally washed clothes for a living – but is fractionally above the Ravidas in the Hindu hierarchy. The note was discovered by the girl’s parents.

Hmm. I don't know why, but I've got this story in the back of my mind :

Urgent action is needed to boost the number of Muslim officers in counter-terrorism units, the National Association of Muslim Police has said. A survey carried out by the association and think tank Demos suggests Muslims remain under-represented in the police. Half of the 51 UK forces took part. There are 27 Muslim counter-terrorism officers out of a total of 2,300, and few officers overall in high ranks.

The association said progress on diversity was "painfully slow".

I think the idea that to police Community A you need officers from Community A, with its implication that Community B officers just can't cut it (for reasons of racism if B = white) is an extremely dangerous one. What you need are officers who'll enforce the law impartially among all communities. Otherwise, what happens when Community A come into conflict with Community B ?

Well, we see what happens when those officers have more loyalty to "their" community than to the law. I'm presuming the officers in India who watched the killing of Manish Kumar weren't Chamar (ac/t the Times, "another term by which the group is known, chamar, is considered a grave insult"), any more than the officers watching/encouraging/participating in the 1984 killings of Sikhs were Sikh, or than the officers who told the killers of Ehsan Jafri and others that they had three or four hours to work in were Muslim.

Up to now, the vast majority of officers in the UK have been natives, something that causes our rulers no end of breast-beating and soul-searching. Although I'm informed that officers did not intervene during the 1919 Liverpool riots, when natives were doing the attacking, they certainly intervened in 1958 in Notting Hill, probably the last UK 'race riot' when the attackers were natives. They also famously guarded mosques all over the UK following the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks.

If the police and firemen who turned up at Manningham Labour Club had been more representative of the the local community, would those elderly Yorkshiremen and women still have been rescued from immolation ? It's a question worth asking - because one day, perhaps not so very far away, they will be (this report says that Muslims will be 15% of the workforce by 2017).

It's not Muslims in particular - all the Indian examples of partiality above featured Hindu officers. But the question still stands - it's one I've asked before. Import people from countries where there is a higher incidence of corruption or partiality among State functionaries than there is in the UK. What exactly is the mechanism by which the lower levels of corruption and partiality in the UK are transmitted to its new citizens ?

"cricket truly is a metaphor for everything in life"

Another idiotic post by NuLab MEP and all-round nasty person Mary Honeyball, transformed by the wit of the Guardian commentariat ... yes, it's Comment Is Free Cricket !

• WheatFromChaff

  Nov 21 08, 11:19am (about 8 hours ago)

  necroflange

  I might start keeping a record on how long it takes someone to blame 'the left' on every single sodding CiF article. haardvark wins the prize this time, by pointing out that the author does work for New Labour, and is therefore a representative of the hive-mind of everyone with socialist leanings.

  Anyone can play. Just find something you don't agree with, and define it as 'the left'.

  What a good idea.

  You can get a run for every time somebody blames "the left", "the right" or "Fatcher".

  A four any time blames "Major" or "Attlee".

  And a wicket every time somebody points out that the Nazis were socialists.

• JayReilly

  Nov 21 08, 12:36pm (about 7 hours ago)

  "I seem to have wandered into a Daily Mail forum" - continual padding up to a leg spinner? Not worthy of dismissal but tiresome for all involved.

  "This comment has been removed" - 20-20 cricket. Repugnant and a sad indictment of the times....

• SwiftyBoy

  Nov 21 08, 12:42pm (about 7 hours ago)

  @JayReilly:

  Yep, agreed.

  Just goes to show what right-minded people have been saying since it was first played - cricket truly is a metaphor for everything in life.

• Benulek

  Nov 21 08, 12:47pm (about 7 hours ago)

  How about virtually every comment ever made by the blessed MrPikeBishop?

  Opening the batting as regal, Ganguly-esque Viceroy of the Libertarian Free Town of Mogadishu - looks the bowler sternly in the eye, watches him hawklike as he steams down to deliver, canters forward to slog him back over his head ....... and BLAM! splattered wicket! How's that for a slower ball?

• tommyjimmy

  Nov 21 08, 12:49pm (about 7 hours ago)

  I'm still looking for a "middle peg uprooted cartwheeling toward the wicket keeper"-type clean bowled. I suspect the Daily Mail might be there or thereabouts. Godwin's Law could be a sneaky glance for a couple to fine leg.

  Ah, but it depends on the pitch and the bowler. On any Russia thread, 'war criminal Saakashvili' sends them flying. 'Sky Pixies' on anything by Theo Hobson. And if Woolly's bowling, 'Nutty Troofer Denialists' on any global warming thread. Similarly, if Politicus is up, I'll have 'Russophobia', please.

  Howzat?

• SwiftyBoy

  Nov 21 08, 12:58pm (about 7 hours ago)

  @tommyjimmy:

  Brilliant, and you're absolutely right, of course. Something dull and worthy by young Rowena Whatsername is a slow, low turner, not much life in it, making for a brisk day in the beer tent.

  Whereas... a Polly Toynbee, Inayat Bunglawala or Julie Bindel effort is a veritable West Indian firecracker of a pitch, bouncers, rattled slats and bruises all over the place, rivetting viewing.

  Oh, and Martin Wainwright is Headingley. Obviously.

• gillesboy

  Nov 21 08, 1:02pm (about 7 hours ago)

  Bah! I've just googled 'scantily clad school girl' and have ended up on this fascist Nulla-Bore rant. That's five minutes of my life I'll never get back.

• SwiftyBoy

  Nov 21 08, 1:08pm (about 7 hours ago)

  "And gillesboy trudges back to the pavillion, bat under arm, eyes on the big screen, a solitary streaky single to his name..."

JayReilly

Nov 21 08, 1:26pm (about 6 hours ago)

Bindel would surely be the 'Murali' of CIF? Generates a lot of results but from a rather shameful technique.

• SwiftyBoy

  Nov 21 08, 1:42pm (about 6 hours ago)

  From Wisden:

  "Many commentators say KillingTime produced one of the finest innings of CiF cricket ever seen in this country. Indeed, only socialistmike managed a higher score in the game's brief history, although it has to be said that the pitch (a truly dreadful piece by Harry Phibbs) was a gift to a "buzzword batsman" of his calibre."

• JayReilly

  Nov 21 08, 1:47pm (about 6 hours ago)

  Yes i think Tatchell is a competent Harmison.

  Who would the mods be? What sort of life draining, souless, spiteful, po faced, narrow minded, cowardly, spineless, sniggering parasite of the thinking mans game could possibly be worthy of the honour? Glen Mcgrath?

  In fact, perhaps the mods would be rain clouds, inconsistent, sometimes nowhere to be seen, sometimes virtuously balanced and scattered, but always threatening to completely ruin a game with a sudden downpour of misery.

  I havent got high hopes for the life span of this post, a youngster suffering cruciate ligament damage to the knee perhaps....

And so on .. and on .. and on .. England hasn't run out of good men yet.

• Mendoza

  Nov 21 08, 2:33pm (about 5 hours ago)

  Max Gogarty - Don Bradman. Quite simply a legend

  Cathy Elliot - Jack Russell. Stubborn, small, can be prickly but plenty of character and bundles of belief

  Bindel - Monty Panesar. Not a journalist who has written 33 articles for the CIF, but one that had written the same CIF article 33 times

  Ariane Sherine - Brian Lara. Walks on with a breezy grin and proceeds to demolish the record books

  Charlie Brooker - Merv Hughes. Scowling Curmudgeon who puts you in mind of a particularly pissed off ee-yore.

  John Harris - Darren Pattinson. No-ones quite sure how he ended up getting picked?

  Ally F - Shaun Pollock. A ginger, consistant all rounder, who doesn't miss much.

JayReilly

Nov 21 08, 2:47pm (about 5 hours ago)

I dont know what PMSL means, someone help me out goddamn.

Mendoza on Gogarty/Bradman - one of the finest comments i have seen on CIF. Spot on, Goggarty was in a class of his own. That was the most brutal onslaughts i have ever witnessed. I'll bet that was more of an 'experience of the real world' than any amount of wiping rhino's arses in the Congo. His thrashing became a news story in itself.

Come on chaps, who is the Tendulkar of the below the line team? Who consistently wields a vast array of prohibited words and sophistry, who is the master of the trade? SocialistMike doesnt count, he only used two words, racist and fascist, he just uses them so often they are more punctuation.

Boycott? Tricky one....

• WheatFromChaff

  Nov 21 08, 3:08pm (about 5 hours ago)

  And there's another beautifully taken boundary from Dave Swift - he really has got himself well and truly set now.

  For those just joining us, it is a lovely day at Honeyball and the visiting "below the line" team has clocked up 208 shortly after lunch. No wickets yet, in spite of the rather uneven pitch, and some spirited bowling by NaturalBlond.

  I'm joined by Swifters, Reillers and Jamo, and we are just tucking into a lovely Dundee cake sent up by a Mrs Elliot, currently stranded in a train near Truro.

  In the meantime, the commentary will be taken up by Benelers.

Dow hits new lows ..

and the FT100's not much above last months low ... although they were lower in 2002-3.

It'll get worse before it gets better. I gather Japanese markets are up overnight, so today might see some respite.

The Northern Rock saga continues. As part of their sustainable business model they created a Channel Island company (or was it a trust ?) called Granite, sold it their mortgage book, and then Granite sold mortgage-backed bonds to global investors.

Now : "The government is orchestrating the wind-down of Granite, the complex web of companies created by Northern Rock to raise billions of pounds on international capital markets using its mortgage book as collateral. Granite's £35bn of assets will be sold and investors in the bonds it has issued will be repaid."

Presumably 'selling the assets' means selling on the loans to someone else. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this wouldn't seem to be the best financial climate for unloading £35bn of mortgages.

If they can't raise enough money ? "Taxpayers could face a loss of £3bn on the wind-down."

Remember the Paulson plan, to buy out 'troubled assets', rejected by Congress then passed because otherwise the entire world financial system would collapse ?

Since then, if Caroline Baum is correct, Paulson and his advisers have been making it up as they go along.

Every time Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson updates us on the government’s efforts to stabilize the financial system and announces the latest twist in the Troubled Asset Relief Program, I get a sinking feeling in my stomach.

I know he will introduce a host of new acronyms for new lending facilities to rescue new asset classes from new and anticipated distress.

And I know that, no matter how hard I focus on what he says or how many times I read the press release and accompanying stories, I won’t be able to get my arms around the details.

And then it hits me. There are no details. Only a set of loosely linked concepts -- something between a trial balloon and a hot-air dirigible -- that flows out in a stream-of- consciousness format, with the details to be filled in later.

There were no details when Paulson delivered a three-page draft of a bailout proposal to Congress in September, authorizing him to spend $700 billion buying “troubled assets” from banks, with no questions asked and no provision for oversight.

There were no details when Paulson announced in October that he was shifting gears and using the congressionally authorized funds to recapitalize the banks, a provision of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 and an option Paulson had dismissed weeks earlier in favor of buying troubled assets through some kind of reverse auction.

... Too bad it was a non-starter ...

Last week, Paulson announced that TARP, the program for buying troubled assets, was dead. (How can you have a TARP without the “T” and the “A?”) In its reincarnated form, the program will be reoriented toward helping the consumer.

There were no details.

Now to be fair, it may well be that what prevented ? postponed ? world financial meltdown eight weeks back was simply the fact that somebody was being given lots of money to do something. Markets are strange things. In that context the details aren't so important. But it certainly doesn't fill one with confidence to realise that the people at the top during the years when the disaster was being constructed don't seem terribly sure as to what to do next.

BNP Brouhaha

Laban, way back :

"as long as demographic change on this scale continues, banning the BNP from Facebook, harassing and sacking its activists, "duffing them up in the street" (copyright B.Bragg) are in the long run not going to make a difference.

The BNP may have many idiotic ideas. They may also have some very nasty ones at the heart of their ideology and among their senior people.

But that isn't why people are voting for them. The native Brits haven't suddenly become swivel-eyed types with obsessions about black IQ, Jewish conspiracies and the other things that make a BNP ideologues eyes light up. The English don't do fascism. They just don't want to be a minority in their own country."

And again :

"a big heave this election might keep the BNP vote down. But the effort needed will be higher each time as the tide rises."

Well, the effort gets higher. Yesterday's news that the entire BNP membership - names, addresses, phones, email - was out there on the internet, along with news that mass immigration continues at historically unprecedented levels, marks a new escalation. It's likely to be very damaging - no-one likes receiving threats, the witch-hunts and sackings have begun, chaps are piteously pleading their innocence of the grave charge of belonging to a legal political party. Early 50s America, or seventeenth century Salem ?

Generally I am a firm believer in Mr Cock-up rather than Mr Conspiracy. But the thesis put forward by Nick Griffin yesterday - that the list was released by a senior ex-member who thought the party were too moderate - seems unlikely. I'm not a guru of BNP internal politics, but I thought last years split was over tactics and personalities rather than strategy.

No, this looks like Labour really are crapping themselves as the economic crisis deepens (seen bank shares this week ? the sector's dropped 20% in three days), the country feels more and more Weimar-ish, and the Govt, having long given up on enforcing existing laws, are passing new ones criminalising men who pay prostitutes. I thought it was not paying them that was the crime.

I'd say State involvement is as likely as not. You would tend to assume that MI5 have someone at a senior-ish level in the party - after all, the late Julia Pirie, PA to the general secretary of the Communist Party, was a State agent. I take it as a matter of course that every visit and email to the BNP site is logged.

But it's a sign of desperation. As I said, the effort needed gets more each time. After this there's only really one escalation left, short of making the party illegal.

As you know, the secret ballot isn't in fact terribly secret. Each voting slip has a number, the number of your slip is noted as your name's ticked off on the register and it's handed to you - it would not be beyond the wit of our rulers (with a major track record on vote fraud) to organise a reconciliation. What happens, I wonder, to the voting slips and polling station returns after the count ? Anyone know ?

If, as I think quite likely, the BNP get Euro seats next May, the only list left to publish will be that of their voters.

More Girlie Vocalists ...

Mid-60s London, and one Andrew Loog Oldham, Rolling Stones manager, trawls the city for pretty girls who want to sing. One is Marianne Faithfull. I pass her by like the idle wind, heeding her not.

Another of his finds rose to fame in New York before a long, drug-fuelled decline and an early death. A third lived quietly in the country, raised children and found acclaim only twenty five years later.

Mr Loog Oldham presents :

Nico - I''m Not Sayin

Vashti Bunyan - Some Things Just Stick In your Mind



Here's a few folkies I missed in the previous posts.

The wonderful Shirley Collins - perhaps an acquired taste but a lasting one.

Big-eyed, quizzical looks and another pure voice - Pentangle's Jacqui McShee.

A woman I could listen to till the cows come home - Mary Black.

Perfect voice for the song - the late Lal Waterson sings 'To Make You Stay". What a pity her "Fine Horseman" is not out there.

Finding an affordable recording of Tex Ritter's 'Old Paint' - and it's got to be the really gritty, primitive version Hank Wangford played on his Radio 2 series "Ghengis Khan Was A Cowboy Too" - is difficult. I have no idea who mmcs122 (aka Molly from Nashville) is, but this version by her is, while not at all gritty, quite charming.

Bits and Bobs ...

Andrew Rawnsley on Sunday :

It is astonishing to behold Gordon Brown tearing up all the rules by which he spent more than a decade swearing. The Chancellor who used to eviscerate the Tories for reckless fiscal 'black holes' has transmogrified into the Prime Minister who now hails unfunded tax cuts as the 'fiscal stimulus' that will save the world ... The man who once swore that he would stick to his rules on borrowing, come sunshine or showers, now declares that the never-never is the new prudence. This is a stunning inversion of what were once all the basic axioms of New Labour.

It is absolutely breathtaking. But the breath that has been most taken away is that of the Tories. They simply cannot comprehend how the Prime Minister can be getting away with it. Dazed and confused, they search for a goat to scape.

I'm not George Osborne's biggest fan, to put it mildly. But if even Vince Cable can't nail Gordo, what chance does Osborne have - in the short term ?

This crisis has yet to run its course - IMHO we're only at the start. Gordo's bounce will probably deflate. Although there is the (to the Tories) dreadful possibility that things will get really bad, and the worse they get, the more we'll cling to him.

In the light of the new BBC campaign against saying nasty things about da youth, a link to the origial 'chav hunting' video, and the wonderfully po-faced BBC commentary thereon.


David Green in the Times on the welfare state and its disincentives to work and marriage - or even coupledom :

Worst of all, low-income couples with children – precisely those who can make ends meet only by combining their efforts – are discouraged from living together. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, if a single mother earning £10,000 was contemplating living with a boyfriend earning £25,000, the pair would be £5,473 per year better off if they told the government they lived separately – a bonus of 22% for doing the wrong thing.

Many single parents live with a boyfriend or girlfriend despite such financial pressures. A survey for the work and pensions department in 2004 found that 23% gave up benefits to “re-partner”. Their decision to live together was a triumph of romance over economics and we can conjecture that, without powerful government incentives to live separately, more people would marry.

We now have a big problem with welfare dependency. In 1960 all social security benefits cost 5.5% of GDP. In 2006-7 the cost of “social protection” was 13.4% of GDP. The solution is not to harden our hearts and invoke a crackdown. It is to put the welfare state on a new footing: reciprocity.

The Jersey children's home murders turn out to have been a mass outbreak of moral panic - Richard Webster at spiked.

L’Obama, ossia L’Avvento del Messia
Opera in Tre Atti

And a magnificent film review by David Cox in the Guardian, of all places. Think he'll be asked to do any more ?

Hunger, the much praised and garlanded Britflick hagiography of Provo hunger striker Bobby Sands, didn't quite do it for me.

It began by laying bare the supposedly brutal treatment of Republican prisoners at The Maze. I'd been under the impression that standards at this facility were carefully maintained, if only because the cunning Brits were keen to fend off international protests about their dubious judicial arrangements. This wasn't, however, my problem. That lay elsewhere. Far from being shocked at seeing the inmates roughed up a bit, I found myself wishing they'd been properly tortured, preferably savagely, imaginatively and continuously.