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?