Evidence based medicine

The Left finds something else to tax. Others will fisk this statist outrage far better than I, but I was struck most by this statement:

Dr David Walker, a GP in Lanarkshire, said many people eat their entire daily calorie requirement in chocolate, on top of their normal meals.

"Many" is meaningless. Is it ten? A thousand? One percent of the population? He wants to impose a nationwide tax because he has a feeling that 'many' people are stuffing their faces with chocolate. Personally, I prefer an independent study with verifiable results. Unusually for the BBC, they allowed a single dissenting voice, though they were at pains to point out her industry connection, twice. When a source is favoured by the BBC, they are simply labelled "an expert".

Anyway, as another commenter said - "there goes the womens vote!".

Gun control works

Apparently.

If this was in America, the article would be accompanied by some lobbyist from a fake charity saying lax gun controls were responsible. Germany has very tight gun control laws, hence the perfunctory and almost embarassed report.

Little Brother, endorsed

Put aside for a moment your revulsion at the people prosecuted here. Yes, your first impression (and probably further ones, too) is that these are the sort of neighbours you'd move to Somalia to avoid.

Instead, read with horror the remarks of the judge:

Deputy District Judge Alan Fowler said the CCTV cameras, which had been pointed into the couple's back garden by the four neighbours, did invade their privacy but they were entitled to do this by law as they were detecting a crime.

Is behaving "very odd" a crime? Is simulating sex on your own property a crime? Vulgar, of course, but a crime? Every television executive in Britain should be arrested, they broadcast far worse.

But the coup de grace...you can set up CCTV cameras to monitor the private property of your neighbours if you are 'detecting a crime'. Of course, as Labour have introduced about one million new laws, there's a fair bet that you will catch someone doing something.

So, incredibly, it is now legal and permissible to film the private lives of your neighbours. The State is happy as it gets a cadre of willing spies and informants, and it is only a short step from private monitoring to State monitoring.

Communism sidles closer

Comrade Harperson pronounces judgement.

This is typically New Labour, in that they always choose an extreme target as a shield for extending their illiberal rule. Godwin is, obviously, a useless greedy failure who is feathering an enormous nest when he should be broke, if the Market was truly allowed to perform. However, he has a contract and the f*cking government approved it, so that is that.

Anyway, how sinister is this line from the Harpy?

The sum was unacceptable in "the court of public opinion"

Is that the one which used to be called Bow Street Magistrates court, I wonder? What, it isn't actually a real court? Funny how you can despise populism one minute, and tearfully wave the tattered populist flag the next. She'll be saying that he is "an enemy of the people" next.

What the Government wants to do is to break a contract unilaterally and steal a legally agreed pension. If they can do that to this c*nt, they can do it to you as well. After all, they need the cash, don't they?

EU recommends more power for the EU

BBC reports it as a good idea (i.e. no contrary points of view allowed). Obviously, given the previous track record of the EU, this will be a tremendous success, and it certainly wouldn't be used by the French and Germans to legislate the City out of existence to benefit their own financial centres, of course not.

While the BBC liberally smears scare quotes over any proposal or phrase it is suspicious of, it reports an EU body calling for an EU power grab without even raising an eyebrow. Nor does it point out the truism that the further away a supervisory body is, the less accountable it is.

Still, it's another step on the way to political union, and that's good enough for the BBC.

It is called 'printing money'

The BBC manage to publish a government press release without mentioning what it will do, which is merely print money.

Quantitative easing effectively allows the central bank to write cheques to banks in exchange for assets.

The BBC are using the word'effectively' in the sense of "it means the same as" rather than doing something effectively. They key phrase, though, is "in exchange for assets".

What assets are these? My guess is that they will be the tarpaper shack of Mr and Mrs Hillbilly, Esq. of Tenessee, last valued at $740,000 but whose true value is probably around $59.99. Our savvy and bold government will give the banks $1m of loans in exchange for this asset, because they haven't got a fucking clue what they are doing. Oh, and also because it isn't their money.

Brass neck of the year

Branson gives his views to his panting, adoring public. No bail-outs, but £1.4bn of subsidy just isn't quite enough for the entrepreneurial genius.

Scottish cash for Scottish dogs

A tremendous illustration of the lunacy of single-issue groups. Emotive and ludicrous over-reaction of the year is awarded for this statement:

"It's time the RSPCA stopped stealing food from the mouths of Scotland's defenceless animals."

Those English bastards!

OK, we'll stop "raising awareness" north of the border, but at the same time we'll stop paying subsidies so that Scottish dogs can lounge around all day swigging McEwan's lager and watching daytime tele. OK?

Obligatory snow pic

River scene in Verulam Park.

Umm...

Congratulations on her one-woman campaign to give environmentalists appoplexy, but this line struck me:

her daughter already has six young children and never expected fertility treatment she had received would result in eight more babies.

Er...if you have six kids already why on earth would you need fertility treatment?

The woman's husband is expected to return to Iraq where he works as a contractor.

"Flee to Iraq" is probably a closer description.

Nuclear humbug

The natives are getting restless. Normally the response from Labour would be to shrilly denounce them as racists, but they feel the chill wind of political mortality and thus are trimming their sails. After a decade of mass, uncontrolled immigration to undercut native labour, it takes incredible chutzpah for Hilary Benn to come out with this gem:

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said the angry workers were "entitled to an answer".

An answer to what? Why Labour kept a million natives on the dole while foreigners undercut their wages?

Politicians - does anyone not utterly despise them?

CLICK! Goes the ratchet

The health fascists are circling their waggons around the last few people daring enough to drink alcohol in Britain today.

It is legal for parents to give a child over five alcohol in the home and the guidance is not expected to become law.

Yet. This is a typical tactic, announcing 'guidance' which quickly becomes dictat. Of course, the fake charities are delighted:

The easy availability of alcohol at pocket money prices is far more important.

An absurd statement. Alcohol is not available at 'pocket money prices', not unless you are the son of a metropolitan high-earning 'liberal' anyway.

There is serious harm that can come to children if they drink and the main advice is that childhood should be an alcohol-free time. Certainly under the age of 15 there are serious risks.

The French don't seem to have these problems. They give young children watered wine from an early age. Usually the Left is keen to push the virtues of France upon us; curiously they chose not to in this instance.

It is yet another turn of the ratchet from the kill-joy puritans.

Best edercated genurasion in histury

Click.

Why anyone should be surprised, after nearly twelve years of Socialism and nearly forty years of comprehensive education is a mystery.

Military procurement

Rockets, guns and ammunition don't come cheap these days. Much, if not most, of this money will end up in the hands of Hamas. The UN are happy for Hamas to use their property as launch pads for rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, do you really think they are going to baulk at passing on the cash?

There's never a Blears around when you need one

A short while ago, we had the toxic dwarf Hazel Blears bleating about how trust in politicians was declining, and that it was the fault of bloggers who unfairly tarnished its image.

Well, Hazel, still blaming the bloggers? What about this? Or this?

Perhaps it is that ol' victim culture again. You know, the one where favoured minorities commit criminal acts up to and including murder because they are 'oppressed' in some way. Those shadowy and oppressive bloggers are forcing Labour peers to accept bribes! That's it!

Frankenfood, anyone?

Wide-eyed innocent that I am, I assumed that if the Left was against genetically modified food then they would be against genetically modified humans as well. Foolish boy.

I made the remark several years ago (in those dark pre-internet days) - the Left only supported stem-cell research because Bush opposed it. Prior to this you couldn't move without a Guardian journalist warning about 'super-humans' abolishing trade union rights, or something. But George Junior comes out and opposes stem cell research for ludicrous reasons of principle (religion, or something), and suddenly we are no longer at war with Eastasia, but with Eurasia.

One wonders - if Bush had expressed his loathing for a genetically modified spud, would we have cured hunger in Africa by now? If Georgie had laid a friendly arm around the shoulder of Osama B-L, would the New York Times now be calling for even tougher bombing of Tora Bora?

The Left has for decades defined itself by who it opposes, not by what it believes. Stem cell research is just another marker on that long trail.

Why bother to vote?

Call me Dave wants the Conservatives to be indistinguishable from the other set of tossers currently ruining the country.

Despite the economic downturn, it should focus on promoting fairness, protecting the environment and maintaining public safety, he added.

It is incredible that with the economy already contracting by 1.5% this year, and likely to reach 4% by the end, our political class is still intent on hobbling it even further with the consequences of ludicrous and unilateral environmental policies. Of course, Call me Dave was talking to Demos, the quintissential political class group. The public can just fuck right off.

Mr Cameron also warned against too much state interference.

You can have more progressive liberalism, Dave, or you can have less state interference. The absolute essence of progressive liberalism IS state interference - they believe they know how to run your life better than you do, and they use the power of the state to impose their whim. If you really believe you can have both, you either don't understand progressive liberalism, or you are mad.

The economic crisis should bring people together not divide them, he said.

Perhaps we could all sing a song. Really, what is he going on about here?

This recession doesn't vindicate big government; it hammers the final nail in its coffin.

That's why you want more of it - more imposition of 'fairness'; more environmental controls; no doubt more state fascist nannying of drinking and smoking.

Until Call me Dave comes clean and chooses one or the other, I will simply see him as Gordon Brown without the winning personality. Good luck getting the Guardianistas to vote for you, Dave.

Liberalism, defined

The sort of mindset which shies away from making any moral judgements on ideological grounds will inevitably come up with an abomination such as this. Terrorists treated in precisely the same way as their innocent victims. Still, I'm amazed it is that even handed - I would have expected the killers to get a premium.

Obesity in childhood

No, don't panic, I haven't gone all Guardian and started wringing my hands about the fact that apparently 99% of all British children are now morbidly obese. No, I was struck by this entry over at Julia's blog.

Of course it is an outrage, but one point I wanted to add - doesn't this absolutely epitomise how the Western state infantilises people to the point where adults are incapable of realising that their behaviour is going to kill them, and have to be induced instead with extra pocket money? Childhood now lasts from birth until (early) death.

One small, cynical part of me believes that nearly all public spending is deliberately designed to piss off taxpayers, a sort of abuse of power by the state. Stories like this tend to reinforce that idea. The idea that in the beginnings of this century's own Great Depression the state is taxing people already in financial trouble to get other fat greedy bastards to stop cramming their face is enough to make your average tax payer drop dead from apoplexy.

It's not all bad news

Here. Hopefully it will result in a few less Saudi-funded 'think tanks' in the West, acting as 'culture launderers' for extremist Islam.

The State cracks down

Soft target.
Hard target.

(HT to Laban).

Boilerplate leftist surrenderism

No surprises that this was originally written in the Guardian, or that the BBC welcomes it enthusiastically.

He said the right response to the threat was to champion law and human rights - not subordinate it.

That's why you want to hold us without charge for 42 days, invade our private property on even more flimsy pretexts, and use anti-terror legislation to persecute Enemies of the People, such as parents who want a good education for their children.

The BBC, after a post-Christmas famine of scare quotes and qualification, vomits up a pile of them in this next quote:

US President George Bush's administration, which has led the so-called "war on terror".

"So-called" and scare quotes! You can feel the Leftist, patrician derision from a thousand miles away. Shame the BBC didn't follow its guidlines and use qualification in stories such as this or this, the Dear Leader's plan to "create 100,000 jobs" (see, it's easy, anyone can do it).

Anyway, back to Milliband's articles of surrender:

Calling for groups to be treated as separate entities with differing motivations, he wrote that it was not a "simple binary struggle between moderates and extremists, or good and evil" and treating them as such was a mistake.

Milliband doesn't think that we are moderates and the Taleban, al-Qaeda etc are extremists. Let's just check the score here. Milliband thinks that people who do this, or this, or this, or this...we could be here for the rest of the day and the flow wouldn't stop. If Milliband thinks that these are not extremists, and that we are not moderates, then he is mentally ill. Obviously he gets all of his information about the world from the BBC, so it is likely that he is utterly ignorant of what is actually happening in Islam. He might think that he is practising nuanced and serious thinking, as against cowboy simplisme, but if it quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, no amount of nuanced thinking is going to make it anything other than a duck. Nuanced thinking in the context of terrorism is simply the process of denying reality in more and more sophisticated ways. It goes down well in Paris and Hampstead but, sadly, it is suicidal.

the stance he now promoted was international "co-operation"

Co-operation with whom? Who are we not co-operating with that we should be? Is he referring to terrorist groups which he doesn't consider to be extreme?

BBC worried

A plaintive cry. Obviously, if we are eating more cheap pasties from Greggs, things can't be THAT bad on the economic front.

Come on, people, pull yourself together! Gordon is on the case, he will save us (from something which isn't a problem anyway). etc.

The carbon footprint of handwringing

The BBC promotes some obscure academic to turn the ratchet of global warming induced hysteria one further notch.

This article has 'dodgy' written all over it, I just know it instinctively. One of the lines which suggest this is this one:

Mr Wissner-Gross's study found a typical Google search on a desktop computer produces about 7g (0.25oz) of carbon dioxide.

If you enter another request you obviously end up with double that amount.

Why 'obviously'? When people use the word 'obviously', and it is not completely and demonstrably obvious, and they aren't experts in their field I start to think 'agenda' or 'laziness'. Do Google cache search results? A cached result will return far quicker, and use less energy, than the original. 'Obvious'? Hardly.

This is quibbling while our culture burns, however. A culture and society which obsesses and agonises to this level of detail about perfectly normal things being done by billions of other people around the planet is a doomed one. What's next - the carbon footprint of breathing?

I'd like to see a study done on the energy produced through liberal handwringing. We could line 'em up in rows, attach them to generators and show them statistics about education, or photos from Africa or something. At times of peak demand we can bus in a load of Church of England bishops. It's win-win - energy crisis solved and liberals, at last, doing something useful.

The oldest hatred

Steyn, as always, hits the nail on the head:

Once upon a time on the Continent, Jews were hated as rootless cosmopolitan figures who owed no national allegiance. So they became a conventional nation state, and now they're hated for that. And, if Hamas get their way and destroy the Jewish state, the few who survive will be hated for something else.

Antisemitism is now rampant on the Left, and is seeping into the mainstream. I'm not sure about the claims that Israel is the only country in the world which isn't allowed to defend itself - the Left and much of our establishment would be calling for our surrender if Hamas was lobbing rockets into Kensington.

Note also the catalogue of anti-semitic attacks throughout Europe, and note the almost total absence of reporting of it by the BBC, especially the most important part - WHO did it and WHY. Someone only has to light a fag within 100 yards of a Mosque for the BBC to yell racist attack, but try and burn down a Synagogue and suddenly they get all coy, labelling them as 'youths' in a hamfisted attempt to distract attention from the real culprits.

What has happened to The Times?

You read insanity like this and wonder. He claims to be a "non-socialist economist". I'd hate to see what a socialist economist comes up with that is worse that state confiscation of private individual savings. Kaletsky has been wobbling for quite some time and has finally wobbled Left into a deep hole.

The comments to the article sum it up nicely. People like Kaletsky are the reason why I despise people who blindly trust 'experts' to solve all their problems.

Two things, thankfully, which will work against any efforts by the state to do this:

One, the power of the elderly voting block. These people rely on savings to supplement the pensions that Brown destroyed in 1997. Labour would be massacred by the grey vote at a general election if they tried this.

Two, I and everyone else who isn't a cretin will be straight down to the bank if even a whif of this comes out of the Treasury. I will draw out my money with everyone else and f*ck the banking system.

Update:

One further comment - as far as I know, the British government didn't confiscate private savings even in 1940, when we faced the greatest crisis in our history. Yet Anatole "I'm a non-socialist economist" Kaletsky wants our very own lite version of War Communism applied because Woolworths and sundry other over-extended retailers have gone bust.

That little pop you heard was the last, tiny remnants of this man's credibility disappearing. He's only there for giggles now.

Prudence is futile

Laban on Labour's Weimar impression. Labour specialised in the sleight-of-hand of saying one thing while practising the complete opposite, e.g.

"Tough on crime" while being ludicrously lenient
"Tough on immigration" while having an open borders policy
"Education, education, education" while presiding over a system which became designed to do anything but educate.

This time, it is the untruth that prudence is a virtue. Of course, in the real, sane and just world prudence is not only a virtue but is essential. An economy which consumes on credit and doesn't save is one destined for disaster. For years Labour have lied blithely about how they are prudent, and on the side of prudent people, while engineering the biggest credit splurge in history.

So, what happens when you combine a large enough demographic who have effectively bankrupted themselves with their reckless financial incontinence, a democracy and the most venal group of politicians in this country's history? You get a government which tailors policy to suit the reckless, because there are more votes in it, and f*ck the prudent. They can easily be rebranded as wealthy 'kulaks' and demonised.

Laban's example of the pensioner who saved for his retirement is absolutely typical. To assume that this man gets a rate of return of 10% NET (not even gross!) of his savings is insane. To have got a return like that you would have had to invest in DodgyBank Inc. registered on an island somewhere in the Atlantic. You would have lost your money and cheerily been branded reckless by the same government which is clawing back the money you are entitled to (of course, if you were a public sector institution things would be different, but that is another story).

This is one of the one million disincentives against saving for your retirement or 'a rainy day'. The improvident get rewarded; the prudent get nothing. Some of these disincentives are explicit, like this one, others are 'signals' like the government plundering private pensions to pay Trotskyites in the public sector, or printing more money to reward the reckless. The only way this pensioner can get the money he spent 40, 50 years paying taxes to get is to blow his savings.

I have often wondered how people could have lived through the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s without saving a penny, even though that period saw the greatest prosperity this country has ever enjoyed. But the reality is, every signal from the government told them loudly and clearly that they would be a fool to do so.

Islam - trendsetter in convenience

While many parts of Islam are straining every sinew to return us to the 7th century, other parts are eagerly embracing the modern world. Divorce is often a tedious and exhausting process, so the innovation of being able to send an SMS saying "I divorce you" three times was a welcome and bold innovation.

However, even that was deemed to be too onerous for some. Now, you don't even have to send it! All you have to do is enter it into your phone, and Bingo! Allah takes care of the rest. That irritating chattel you were tied to is gone and a new, exciting and quite possibly above the age of consent chattel is yours.

I'm sure this convenience is open to women as well, of course...what's that? It isn't? WHAT!!! The International Sisterhood will be all over this, any minute now...tumbleweeds...

On a related note, more work for Feminism from Afghanistan. Western feminists might have a stroke over 'Trophy wives', but these are real, actual trophy wives, chattels stolen from their families and wedded to murderous maniacs. What a shame that the International Sisterhood doesn't give a shit about them, and in fact campaigns to get us out of Afghanistan. You see, the Taleban are no different from us really.

Pressure group press release

The BBC fearlessly reports the news, as always. Well, actually, no...the BBC are publishing a press release from one of their favourite pressure groups. The Beeb just can't get enough of illiberal, authoritarian pronouncements on alcohol (and smoking, previously) at the moment.

BTW, the BBC labels them as an alcohol charity. However, if you examine their 2007 report, and look on page 22, you can see that over half of their money came from...the Department of Health. This is a classic case of the State sponsoring arm's length organisations to report back with demands for stuff the State wanted to do anyway, only this way they can claim that independent charities are calling for it, and who but a complete bastard would disagree with a charitee?

As with smokers, so it will be with those who drink. You have been warned, many, many times.

Wot no scare quotes?

The BBC discard even the pretence of impartiality. This is a government press release, no more, no less, together with hilarious Private Eye type picture of the Dear Leader.

If the Conservatives, sorry Tories, had proposed this, then "create 100,000 jobs" would have been in scare quotes a mile high. The BBC report his claim as fact. Let's make a prediction here - he won't create 100,000 jobs, and the jobs he creates will be hideously, massively subsidised by the taxpayer. And they will all, mysteriously, be in Labour marginals.

Still, that's all good news for the BBC. Gordon must be Saved.

The BBC and Israel

Some snippets from their blanket anti-jewish coverage:

A vegan chef from Totnes is important enough to get an article on the BBC international website. Who'd have thought it? I'm sure that the fact she has stridently anti-Israeli views and is a member of an organisation dedicated to Israel's destruction is irrelevant. The BBC are currently interviewing non-entities from the West Country and writing long articles about them. Who knows, it might be a Jewish solicitor from Blandford tomorrow.

Where's the screaming racist murder attempt headline? Usually the BBC are pretty good at this when an ethnic minority is targeted. Of course, this only works if the target and source groups are correct - sadly, in this case, the target were Jews and the source a palestinian, so he could have chopped up their kids in plain view, screaming "death to the Jews", and the BBC would still report it as a legitimate political act.

Police said they were unsure what the motive was, but Danish media have speculated it may have been a protest against Israeli air raids in Gaza.

Hmm, yes, what could the motive possibly be?