The Left: stupid or mendacious?

With such a title we could be here all day, but I have a specific point: this article. The main thrust of it is criticism of the police for not shouting a warning to the suspect before shooting him.

The huge, glaring omission from this article is that shouting a warning would have allowed the suicide bomber (and the whole point of the incident was that the police, under pressure, thought he was a suicide bomber) to detonate his bomb vest. That's why they shoot them several times in the head, to stop even a reflex detonation of the device.

My best guess is that this article deliberately left out this vital fact to piss on the police and hamper their efforts to combat Islamic terrorism (sorry, make that 'Asian' terrorism, as the BBC is so fond of libelling an entire continent to cover up the actual culprits).

The BBC - telling you half the story.

BBC propaganda, not news

Labour's Pravda is trumpeting another useless splurge of cash by the chancellor. Obviously, pressures of space in the article meant they were unable to mention the other ways Labour has 'helped' small businesses, such as this and this.

Comrades, the chocolate ration will increase to 25 grammes this week! Rejoice!

A great headline

Here. The maths are beyond me, but I expect they are beyond the people who thought up the 80% cut. I blogged on this earlier - we can beggar our economies to reach this impossible millstone (no mispelling), only to see the carbon savings we made wiped out by more people than expected tuning in to watch the Chinese Cup Final in 2038.

The Latest News from Diversityland

David Davis, MP for the fine town of Monmouth, dissed the brothers yesterday. You would think that pointing out that a policy which excluded people on the basis of their skin colour was racist was completely obvious, but alas not in the Vibrant Land of Diversity we now inhabit. Note also the classic whinge that by telling them the truth he "disrespected" them. Will Davis soon be the victim of a drive-by shooting from a Panda car, one wonders?

Anyway, back to the article. The BBC is clearly sympathetic to the grievance mongers in their use of headline: "MP defends police race criticism". This is a classic BBC dodge - it suggests very strongly that Davis was wrong and has been forced to defend his actions, whereas in fact he spoke the completely bloody obvious to a bunch of cossetted single-issue fanatics. The average man on the Clapham Omnibus can see this, but the extremists in the BPA and the BBC cannot, or will not, so the whole sorry saga continues.

Location, Location, Location

Not the best place for a Nazi gag...

Moving to Authoritarianism

A good piece here on how countries slide unthinkingly into authoritarianism and totalitarianism. I have long thought that governments fall into one of four categories:

Benevolent and weak
Malevolent and weak
Benevolent and powerful
Malevolent and powerful

'Weak' and 'powerful' here relate to their power over citizens of that state.

The best, obviously, is the former - a state which has no malign intent towards its citizens and which has limited powers against them. Power is distributed amongst citizen groups, e.g. localised police forces, independent schools and hospitals, a free market in goods and services. Even with malign intent, the scope of State power is limited. Some obvious examples are the Anglo-Saxon democracies of about 30, 40 years ago.

The second, 'malevolent and weak' is a difficult one, simply because a malevolent state will quicky acquire whatever power it needs. A malevolent state will seek to centralise power, taking it from the hands of empowered citizen groups and exercising it itself.

The third, 'benevolent and powerful', is probably what our political class imagines itself, or wishes itself to be at this moment. You can easily question the 'benevolent' part, but it is not openly malevolent in the way that Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union was.

The main problem is that, once the State has acquired huge power over individual citizens, it is not particularly difficult for the State to turn malevolent. When the State controls whether you receive hospital treatment, or your children's education, you are sitting ducks. When Nanny sees the kids aren't doing what they are told, a quick smack around the ear results.

We are somewhere between three and four at the moment. The State has acquired great powers over us, and is greedily seeking more. Their benevolent attitude is becoming more belligerent by the day. These are troubling times ahead, unless you are a socialist.

The dinosaur Left

This article is ludicrous enough, the sort of socialist nonsense which the fifty-year old Guardianistas will lap up in a nostalgic remembrance of the 1980s. The most laughable stuff is in the comments though.

This one from "mrbuttons" is a joy:

Capitalism is clearly collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. Now we need the ownership of the means, distribution and exchange of production in the hands of the proletariat. This means a complete state run economy adopted by every country, headed by socialist governments committed to internationalism. This will mean that we can achieve a society where a surgeon or engineer is paid the same amount as a binman or cleaner.

If you pay a surgeon the same amount as a binman or a cleaner, you will end up with a binman as a surgeon. Don't get ill, mrbuttons.

Though I assume that given the many, many references to 'proletariat' and 'workers' in your post you are a middle-class student, so under any socialist system you will neatly side-step the misery of standard state (non)provision of healthcare and instead will enjoy the service provided to the Nomenklatura.

The recession will also hasten the decline in the family as divorce and separation increase – this will break the stranglehold the family has had on revolutionary politics. The Tories scum may bang on about the family to keep the workers down and fuel their self interests but with family breakdown comes a chance for the urban street kids to get involved in building a new society.

That just seals it - bourgeois Leftie pus seeping from every pore. What a fucking nutter.

How the left debates, part 112

Usual behavour from the usual suspects, here. There is a certain schadenfreude at a socialist minister getting a taste of his own medicine, but this post is about the extremist(s) who assaulted him. Some prize quotes:

We threw the pie because we didn't want to engage in debate

Evidently. When did the Left ever engage in rational debate with its enemies? Instead, far better to chant mindless slogans and physically attack your opponents. Actual debate, and reason, exposes you to contrary viewpoints, which cannot, ever, be tolerated.

What he was spouting were right wing anti-immigration policies. The danger is that people like him are making such views mainstream.

What planet is this loony on? Does he/she/it really believe that a cap on immigration is not a mainstream political opinion? I know they are extreme leftist students, but do they actually interact with people in the real world? Oh, I think I answered my own question there.

More from our fascist overlords

A hat tip to Devil's Kitchen for this one:

Shoppers buying alcohol at the supermarket face a 'walk of shame' to a dedicated checkout counter. The plan is being drawn up by ministers to extend their control over people's lives still furter.

Actually, I edited the second sentence, but as the Left would say in other circumstances, it is "fake but true".

Personally, I don't think these proposals go far enough. Here are some more exciting proposals, well in keeping with the 'Progressive Liberal' cultural march:

• People who want to buy a bottle of wine at the supermarket should have the word 'paedo' tattooed on their forehead.
  
• People who want to buy a couple of bottles of Old Arsewipe to enjoy on the patio on a warm summer's evening should be pelted with manure by specially trained wankers employed by the state.
  
• Cider should be permitted for sale in only one supermarket in the UK, one specially built at the north end of North Uist (residents of Scotland will only be permitted to travel here via Basingstoke).
  
• Alcohol consumption should be further encouraged in bars in the Houses of Parliament by more enormous public subsidy (How did this one get in, shurely shome mishtake?)
  

Then, only then, will this country become what it truly can be - a joyless, socialist state full of people spying on each other. Oh yes.

Bring it on!

Maybe my utterly unreasonable dream of owning a small house of my own to live in (note: NOT an investment, a HOME) isn't quite so bonkers after all...

Well, at least it wasn't Barbados

A striking indication of the contempt public 'servants' have for the captive mich-cows who feed them. Not quite the "fact-finding trip to Barbados" so loved by Private Eye and Yes, Minister but not far off. No doubt any day now they will be complaining once again about how short of resources they are.

I blogged earlier about how astonished I was at UK councils not just losing a colossal amount of money in dodgy Icelandic banks, but how they had such huge amounts of spare cash in the first place. Hertfordshire council lost £28m in the debacle, but the really astonishing fact is that the local council has £300m invested, on average, in a number of UK and foreign banks. £300fuckingmillion!

Honestly, why bother working?

Free computers. Not just free PCs, but free internet (presumably broadband) access, free software and free technical support for three years. If you are on welfare, why on earth should you bother getting a job and lose all of that, along with everything else?

Five plumbers arrested

In Birmingham. When the BBC are so coy about the details, there is a definite odour of rat in the air. As usual though, there are one or two fragments which give the game away:

Meanwhile, specially trained officers have been supporting the men's families and have been speaking to community leaders.

Take a wild guess which 'community' they are talking to.

The fact checkers must have been away on diversity training

This article on the Islamic Broadcasting Corporation (though 'article' is a bit generous; hatchet job would be closer). Much of it is the standard BBC line on Islam - evasion of reality coupled with attacks on its critics. One line stands out though, defending Mohammed's marriage to this young girl:

I lost count of the references to "child bride". Even till relatively modern times, marriage for women in their early teens was completely natural and common in parts of the world, including Europe.

This is outstandingly mendacious. His bride was not "in her early teens", she was nine years old. This is not some weird fact which had to be dug up - it is freely available information. I knew it, but checked it anyway, an act which took approximately two minutes.

Let's leave to one side the lie itself. We can understand her motives, they are fairly clear. But what are the motives of the BBC in allowing this to pass them by? Does 'impartiality' mean not pointing out blatant lies in articles on their website?

An outrageous lie?

Darling claims here that they can afford to splurge on public works because

The government says it can afford extra borrowing because it has reduced debt over the past 10 years.

Isn't government debt now at a record high?

Groan

Letters From a Tory is the inaugural winner of Pun of the Week, a new, regular...OK, we'll skip that.

Bonsai Bank announced plans to cut some of its branches.

I admitted to not knowing what a 'hopolophobe' was (to be honest, as phobias go, it isn't the most talked about phobia in today's media). I am now doubting that the above is even a pun. Is it even ironic? After the furore over Alanis Morrisette's 'Ironic' song, where at least 90% of the instances she cites weren't, in fact, ironic, am I falling into the same trap?

I am also concerned about a possible over-use of commas and apostrophes.

UPDATE: I have just realised there is no such bank as 'Bonsai Bank'. I blame the beer and the late hour, not any innate racist assumptions about what the Nips might call their banks. Sorry, I meant Japanese. Sorry.

East Anglia Night is now over

I hope you enjoyed it. Aha!

East Anglia Night

It is East Anglia Night on Furry Conservative, a new, regular part of the show. Here's one of that region's favourite adopted sons in a couple of amusing clips:

World Cup Countdown


Tour de France


And, of course, the ultimate:

A Partridge in Paris

East Anglia

As someone who grew up in a fairly hilly area, the landscape of East Anglia is quite a contrast, as are the emotions I experience dependent upon my means of travelling through it. Today, while passing through it on a train, I was in a pleasant reverie gazing at its endless, flat vista, despite the efforts of the fat Spanish couple next to me trying to spoil it by CONSTANTLY eating NOISILY and rustling crisp packets.

It is only now that I remember the last time I travelled through it, that time on a bike. After a few hours of fairly vigorous cycling I turned to do the thirty miles or so back to my car. Into a wind I estimated at about 25mph. There is nowhere to hide from the wind in Cambs; after an hour of crawling, exhausting progress at 13mph I was near tears; after another hour I had passed through wild abuse and into the mad, staring abyss of an approaching defaillance, my end to be witnessed only by some sad looking cows and whatever ducks were flying overhead. The final 30 minutes were mercifully blanked from my memory and will only be revealed in the final moments of my life, when I lie gasping on my deathbed and wondering where it all went.

So, East Anglia. No place for the weak.

Worst excuse evah

Even the BBC didn't stoop so low as to include it in this report, but Keith Vaz (that most trusted and saintly member of our much respected political class) was interviewed by the BBC about the government's latest attempt to grab cheap votes, and his interview was broadcast every 30 minutes on Radio Bloke (Five). I cannot remember the verbatim quote, but it went something like this:

How are the Government going to keep the population below 70m? Are they going to apply chastity belts to everyone?

Well Keith, you win Disingenuous Rat of the Week, a new, regular part of the show. Who knows, given the government's increasingly disturbing (and insane) efforts on smoking, eating, drinking and, er, lots of other things, perhaps there is indeed a working party beavering away on this?

Perhaps not. No, the disingenuous bit is because Keith, like everyone else with their eyes open and an IQ over 90, knows that a high birth rate isn't the cause of Britain's unsustainable population growth. In fact, our birth rate, while above that of the death-spiral countries like Russia or Italy, isn't high enough to even replace the number of people who, for various unfortunate reasons, shuffle off to a better place (and we won't even go into our abortion rate).

Unless something remarkable happens over the next decade (e.g. free Barry White albums given to the Middle Classes), the birth rate isn't going to affect the UK's population. Our absurd property prices and tax rates ensure that those who should be breeding cannot. No Keith - you, I and the cocker spaniel next door know that the only factor affecting population growth in the UK is immigration. So, why does the BBC not challenge him, and why does it repeat his lies all evening till it gets to the point when I am yelling at my car radio?

Painting each other's nails for a living

Laban has a post on the decline of Britain's economic power. He quotes some interesting passages:

The loss of manufacturing expertise will compromise our military strength. History repeatedly shows the correlation between a nation's wealth and its diplomatic and military powers.

A valid point, though perhaps an old-fashioned one. Not to say that it doesn't apply now, of course it does, but the main reason for Britain's decline is not economic decline but the collapse (no other word for it) in the will of our political class to defend Britain's national interests above all else. You can have twenty carrier groups, but if your collective mind is obsessed with internationalism and 'soft power', you will never use them, and your threats to use them have no credibility.

we now produce only 3,000 physics graduates a year. Compare that to an astonishing 15,000 psychologists

Every now again some harmless looking statement just jumps out of the internet and punches you flat. Does the work of a psychologist increase GDP? It's arguable either way, I would say it doesn't. And when the economy is growing due to the efforts of others, the effect is obscured. When we nosedive into recession, as we are now, what then?

At it again

Those lying Labour bastards are at it again.

On Wednesday Ms Smith attempted to reassure people that the content of their e-mails and phone conversations would not be stored and local authorities would not be able to trawl through looking for "lower level criminality".

You'd get Great Big Dirty Lie of the Week for that, love, if I rashly hadn't already awarded it to Mark Thompson for his whopper about Islam and 'TV quality standards' (still giggling, by the way).

The civil liberties side of it is a clinching argument anyway, but let's consider the financial cost, just because we still can. This will cost a phenomenal amount of money, it always does. This phenomenal amount of money must be added to the phenomenal cost of ID cards, the phenomenal cost of Labour's totally botched NHS master computer system, the phenomenal cost of rescuing Northern Crock and the other banks, the phenomenal cost of the Olympics, of PFI...are they trying to bankrupt the country so that the Tories are fucked when they get in, get all the blame and Labour are back in the shortest possible time?

CiF - the slowest site in the World?

The Guardian online presence, Comment is Free, must be the most irritatingly slow website in the free world. When you load the page, it locks up every Firefox browser open on your machine for up to a minute. What the fuck is it doing?

Who'd have thought it? The most state-worshipping newspaper in the UK turns out to be extremely slow and unreliable, and you are invariably disappointed by the quality of the product when it arrives.

Milliband ups the ante in mythical promises

It is a rule in modern politics that if you want to bury a story or cover up how useless you are at something, commit to an even more grandiose scheme to be done far in the future, like this one. The media class isn't interested in what you have (or haven't) done about something, but they lap stuff like this up.

In a letter to Mr Miliband, Lord Turner said the tougher target would be "challenging but feasible", and could be achieved at a cost of 1% to 2% of GDP in 2050.

Not challenging for Lord Turner and the rest of the extremely comfortable political class, of course.

Anyway, the bit about 1% to 2% in 2050 is extremely misleading - the implication is that it will cost 1 or 2% of GDP only in 2050. Of course, this is rubbish - it will cost 1% to 2% of GDP every year until 2050. Doesn't sound much? Well, average growth of the UK economy is about 2.5% per year, on average. To meet this ludicrous target, however, 1% to 2% will be lost per year, in other words a 1-2% contraction in the economy. That means little or no overall growth for the next forty years. Government projections of spending (on health, welfare, etc) rely on the economy expanding, not contracting or stagnating. You can have a welfare state or a green utopia (which it won't be, of course), but not both. Meanwhile, India and China laugh at our suicidal politics and plough on regardless industrialising their billion or two billion population economies. The irony is that we will beggar our economies, while the pittance in CO2 we save over forty years will be wiped out by about nine months of Sino-Indian economic growth.

Oh, and this forecast of 1% or 2% is by the same people who brought you the estimates for the Olympic games, i.e. born liars. Expect the true cost to be 4% or more, or a fucking economic disaster, in other words.

Great Big Dirty Lie of the Week

Mark Thompson, BBC Director General, wins the first of a new, regular feature of the show, Great Big Dirty Lie of the Week, for this effort (HT: Biased-BBC). This is the winning quote:

Mr Thompson, who spoke at a lecture for think-tank Theos, said shows critical of Islam would be shown if they were of high quality.

Ahahahahaha! Am I cynical in thinking that the quality threshold for that genre will always be tantalisingly out of reach? Could that quality threshold be applied to the rest of their pisspoor output please? Contrast Thompson's mysterious and sudden commitment to 'quality' programming over Islam with the execrable piece of crap Bonekickers, which clearly had no quality threshold applied at all.

The Guards caught with their trousers down

This has me wondering if there is a single public sector organisation which hasn't deposited a huge sum in a failed Icelandic bank. Aside from the obvious question of where 'cash-strapped' public sector organisations have got approx £1bn of our money from to invest, others are wondering why there is a preponderance of public sector failures here, why they chose to invest, and continue to invest, in a banking system described last year as the most highly leveraged in the world.

The answer, to my mind, is obvious - it wasn't their money, so they didn't give a shit. I'm sure that they believe that the taxpayer will always be called on to bail them out, so what's the problem if a billion is lost here or there?

This quote made me laugh:

The commission said the deposits were in "full compliance" with their guidelines "on prudent investment".

They put £5m into the bank in July this year. Burning Our Money has been keeping an eye on it, with good articles here and here. The information was there, it didn't take a genius to see it, just an interest in protecting the taxpayer's interests. I imagine their guidelines on "prudent investment" are about as rock-solid as Gordon Brown's.

So, this underlying economy...

Brown keeps going on about, and it's "fundamental strength" compared to the banking sector. Hmm, what about this and this? Inflation and unemployment at their highest level for sixteen/seventeen years? Predictions that unemployment could hit 3m by next Christmas?

I'd like to know what Brown's idea of "fundamental strength" is.

M'aidez! M'aidez!

Continuing the French theme on bubble and crashes, this news item. As well as the good news about prices continuing to fall, we have this additional, unexpected nugget:

Estate agents sold on average under one property per week each in September.

Sounds like quite a few of the snakes will be going out of business as well. I wouldn't normally cheer unemployment for anyone, but I'll make an exception for estate agents, lawyers, journalists, MPs, anyone who works for the council, anyone involved in enforcing the smoking ban...I'll get back to you on the rest of the list.

Enrichissez-vous!

Laban is wondering why the reaction to the current crisis is to prop up the bubble for a few more years, not to fix it:

As far as I can see he wants to solve the crisis by restoring the property overvaluation - in which case we may get another collapse in a few more years.

The problem is, all of the people who matter - the political class, the media, those who run the great finance houses - benefit from this bubble. Either they rely upon the votes of homeowners, or they own extensive property which they do not want to see devalued, or their incomes rely directly on a soaring stockmarket. They want to hang on for a few years more to make their packet and get out.

As we approach the election, if house prices are still dropping sharply I expect this venal corrupt swarm to propose that the state protects 'homeowners' and boosts the housing market (i.e. raise prices again). They will use taxpayers money to do it. After all, there will be votes in that, and we are in a Democracy, aren't we?

Not a Spammer

I have been cleared of being a spammer after a lengthy judicial process.

Anyway, back to the spam...

Yeah, right

Another Watchdog.

The usual stuff:

A new multi-agency team has been set up in Northern Ireland to monitor the most dangerous sexual and violent offenders after they are released from prison.

"This is another initiative to strengthen the way we reduce the risk from serious offenders,"

Just like all the other 'watchdogs' which actually end up doing f*ck all, except for when someone ends up getting killed and then there is an orgy of hand-wringing, 'lesson learning' (hah!) and pious pronouncements on what a tragedy it was.

No doubt it will work with the same effectiveness as similar 'watchdogs' in England did with this one.

Driven to Create a blog

Finally, after all of the crap we have had to put up with for the last ten years, this has finally driven me over the edge and into blog land. I am interested in who commissioned this report - our government, or another stuffed-full-of-public-cash organisation like the EU or UN?

Anyway, it's the usual boiler plate green authoritarianism, which fifteen years ago would have been laughed at but is rapidly and disturbingly becoming mainstream, but the killer quote is below:

'it concedes that this approach "raises enormous questions and accusations of nannystate misery-guts spoilsportism".'


Or Fascism, as I'd rather call it, because it is (a) snappier and (b) more accurate. When the State uses its power to decide what you eat, could it be described as anything else?

I believe you are meant to 'hat-tip' your source, in this case 'Chapeau!' to Devil's Kitchen

Update:

I've been thinking a bit more about this. In order to meet their demand that we consume far less meat and dairy produce, they have two options:

• The hands-on, skull smashing variety of Fascism. That is, the use of force to impose rationing. There is no way such an extreme level of rationing could be imposed in peacetime and at a time of unparalleled prosperity without the indiscriminate and massive use of State force.
• The abuse of the market to price such goods out of the reach of all but metropolitan socialists.

The second option is mentioned in the article. But fixing the price at an artificially high level is a weapon almost as blunt and indiscriminate as the truncheons used to impose rationing. The limit on such foods they say we should consume are

one quarter-pound burger, two sausages, three rashers of bacon and one chicken breast, along with a litre of milk and 100g of cheese.

Now, at what price should these goods be set so that I am limited by my income to no more than this? My income is a lot more than many, and a lot less than those who own sumptious properties in Hampstead and vote Labour. How should the price be set? Will we have punitive taxation to steal money from the 'rich' (those able to afford two chicken breasts per week) to the 'poor' (those who spend their money on fags instead)? Are we going to have black-booted bacon inspectors turning over pubs to smash the flourishing black market in illicit pork products?

Like previous scares, e.g. about health, this report and others like it are produced for one reason, and it isn't to combat global warming. It is to prepare for the increase of State power.