The Last Ditch

Obama hits CTRL-ALT-DELETE; Russia declines to reboot?

Obama heads to Moscow for reset summit | World | Reuters.

I shall be in the same city as "the One" for a day or two. Yawn. I shall work from home tomorrow. The traffic in Moscow is quite bad enough without the POTUS motorcade.

I fear Mr Obama's hosts will have some fun at his expense this week. They enjoy these diplomatic set pieces and are rather good at them. Perhaps the White House is learning though. The President's undiplomatic "one foot in the cold war" remark only makes sense as a preparatory cover for failure.

It's a shame relations between the two countries are no better. Given a more friendly chat, President Obama's hosts could have shared some useful experiences of socialised medicine with him, for example. Future generations of Americans would have benefitted from that. As it is, I doubt either side will learn anything.

More strutting. More posturing. More money thrown away. Government business as usual.

Is it democracy they don't understand, or the English language?

Drivers back bans for using mobiles | Metro.co.uk.

So, I glean from the linked article, less than a third of motorists are nanny's boys who think the state should ban - for an unemployment-inducing six months - those caught using a mobile phone while driving. Hurrah for common sense, you might think. After all, phoning while driving is still legal throughout the civilised world. That it's illegal in Britain is hardly worth mentioning. After Labour's creation of one new crime a day for more than a decade, almost everything now is. In Britain, the list of lawful activities may soon fit around the circumference of a pound coin. Something like this perhaps;

"Vote Labour, pay taxes."

I am sure it will sound better in Latin. But I digress. How does the Metro report the views of a small group of busybodies notable mainly for their irrelevance?

"Drivers back bans for using mobiles"

So then, according to this journalist, the views of a few craven submissives aching for the firm crack of the state's whip are more important than those of the majority of drivers? To be fair, given how few Labour voters it needed last time to produce a thumping majority in Parliament, one can forgive some confusion as to whether this democracy thing involves living with the choices of a majority or a minority.

Web site story

This is from the sporadically-brilliant Collegehumor.com. It should send you off smiling to your weekend.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

h/t Theo

How to call a liar a liar without making a personal attack?

politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Is this getting a little personal?.

The success of the New Labour Project is based on lies. The mother of all these lies is that Labour has changed. That it is no longer the party of profligate "tax and spend." That it is no longer the enemy of  prudence and aspiration. That is is no longer a class-based party. Such lies work well and are fertile breeders.

Remember Gordon Brown's one-word slogan as Chancellor? To counter Labour's historical reputation for profligacy, he repeated it ad nauseam; "Prudence." A good Conservative word; the kind that sat comfortably on Margaret Thatcher's lips. A word never heard from Labour before and for good reason. Brown ran up huge debt while the country's credit was was good. he mixed it with stealth taxes equivalent to a 100% increase in income tax. Then he poured that easy cash over Labour's payroll vote like syrup on pancakes.

 "Tax, borrow and spend" - Labour's modus operandi ab initio. Nothing had changed  except for Tony Blair's plastic smile and a stolen word.

The bust Brown promised us  (untruthfully) would never come again is now worse for Britain than any other OECD country. The OECD and the IMF regard our economy as the most damaged in the developed world and are pointing the finger at government debt. Debt now so high it will take generations to repay it. Always assuming, as frighteningly we cannot, that a future government does not make it worse.

Even without tax cuts to stimulate the economy public services must be cut (however much Labour lies to the contrary) just to meet the interest payments. When private borrowers finally return to compete with governments for available credit, interest rates will rise and we must shudder to think what the costs will be then. I think it is fair to say in this context that "prudence" did not truthfully describe the Prime Minister's conduct during his time in Number 11. It was a propaganda word repeated as a mantra to deceive trusting voters. In short, it was a deliberate lie.

Now the party that thinks "he's a toff" is a reasoned argument is crying foul; complaining that in exposing Labour's lies HM Opposition is indulging in "personal attacks" and "dirty politics." Political Betting, usually astute on these matters, thinks this tactic may work. It speaks to the old theme of the Conservatives as "the nasty party." It assists in persuading Labour's core voters to "hate the Tories again." Some wonderful, kind, naieve voters will undoubtedly respond to syrupy themes of "let's all be nice to each other" and "can't we all just get along?" Indeed David Cameron foolishly made himself vulnerable to this tactic by promising to end "Punch and Judy politics." So how are the Conservatives now to respond, without letting Labour off the hook?

The political lies capital of Europe

UK is violent crime capital of Europe - Telegraph.

No-one who is paying any attention could doubt this. For goodness' sake, even Henley Regatta has suffered hooliganism. I hear that the city where I have my pied à terre in the North of England suffers one murder every time there is a race meeting at its ancient hippodrome.

Analysis of figures from the European Commission showed a 77 per cent increase in murders, robberies, assaults and sexual offences in the UK since Labour came to power.

If I were a criminal, Labour is the party I would vote for. In the unlikely event that its politicised police - far more interested in persecuting ideological offenders than real criminals - were to catch me, I could rely on Labour to release me early. As long, of course, as I was guilty "only" of crimes against the person and property. Thought crime is another matter, but for good old-fashioned loutishness and thievery, I could count on Labour. I could also count on it to provide me with a base income and a "cover" for my life of crime.

Of course criminals have been on a decade-long, Labour-sponsored spree. That's to be expected. Remove the risks of crime and it will rise. What really shocks me is how ready the voters of Britain have been to believe political lies. Every Labour Home Secretary has announced that crime figures are stable or falling. See, for example,  here, here, here and here. The press never challenged the lies. The public seems to have believed them.

We are a trusting nation, raised to believe that the British state is beneficient. it isn't. No human agency is. It contains just as many self-serving individuals as any other group. In fact, since politicians, civil servants and state administrators have chosen a life of parasitism, it is quite possible they number rather more people on the make among them than average.

An adult, intelligent electorate must learn to doubt what it's told and trust its own judgement. Our poor, lazy performance as a democratic electorate has allowed freelance thugs to steal our nation from us, while the state's thugs stood uselessly by. If we want to be a free people, there is a price to pay in vigilance.

This seems like a good idea

10 Drowning Street by Lord Elvis: The Truth Is Back In Business - Sign Up Now!.
What do you think? Collective blogging? Not sure it's my style.

All blacked up and nowhere to go

 BBC NEWS | UK | England | Kent | School bans black-face Morris Men.

Sir Thomas Beecham said one should try everything once, except incest and folk-dancing. I quite agree. Nonetheless, God help us, Morris dancing is part of England's cultural heritage. No matter what colour face paint the dancers wear, there can be no rational objection to an authentic traditional performance in a school.

I hate all those "isms" daily used by leftist idiots as lazy substitutes for thought. However, isn't there something "raaaayshist" in the idea that white people blacking their faces is necessarily mockery? What's wrong with being black? If there's nothing wrong, what's to mock? Why should it not be seen as a compliment? Do black people actually care about this stuff? Aren't any of them offended by the absurd paternalism of the Left? I certainly would be.

These black faces are anyway nothing to do with race. The Morris Men of this tradition used burnt cork to disguise themselves when begging for money. Who can blame them? You would not catch me Morris dancing without a far more effective disguise. Seriously, the men who long ago began the tradition would never, whatever the BBC's historical advisers may have told them, have met a black person. Burnt cork simply happens to be black.

It is not enough to bemoan this nonsense. It's not funny, it's not clever and it makes the English feel uneasy in the one place where they need not be embarrassed by Morris dancing; England. It also plays into the hands of the BNP. I hope a Conservative Minister of Education in the next government will formally discipline every head teacher who has made such a stupid decision in the last decade.

A spell in detention listening to English folk music might be a suitable punishment.

The "right" to talk?

Anglican Mainstream » Blog Archive » Doctors want right to talk faith.

This article is distressing. In my opinion, the NHS has no right to discipline its employees for discussing anything with patients. The patients are the true employers. The NHS is merely a monopolistic state agency between them and their medical carers. If a patient didn't want to talk about religion and asked a carer to stop, that's another issue. Asking for the "right" to talk faith (or talk about anything else) implies that the state has the right to dictate the content of private conversations. It doesn't.

A line has been crossed

Benefit payouts will exceed income tax revenue - Telegraph.

How can Britain's taxpayers fail to erupt in rage at this information? Their income taxes are not enough to cover defence, education or health any more. Every single penny ripped from their hard-earned income in tax now goes to those on state benefits!

In fact, far more than that and not only because income tax receipts fall short of benefits payments on the figures in the linked article. Don't forget those figures include money paid as "income tax" from state salaries, which is of course quite ridiculous. Those paid by the taxpayers pay their taxes from taxpayers' money. The transaction is entirely circular and pointless. They contribute no created wealth to the Treasury. Only private sector taxpayers can do that. They, poor souls, are an abused minority, relentlessly exploited by Labour and its client vote.

I don't understand why it remains safe for Labour Party members to walk the streets. What is the matter with the oppressed taxpayers of Britain? Are they cowering in fear of the parasitical majority Labour has created?

Friends vs "Friends"

With the growth of social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, all of which revolve around the idea of "friends", I have to wonder what the word really means now. Apart from my "friends" on such sites (both in my capacity as Tom and as my alter ego - all of whom I am very happy to have) I also have a number of Second Life "friends." One or two of them might not deserve those quotation marks, even though I have only virtually clapped eyes on them.

Can one really have so many friends? I don't know about the rest of the world, but the  Anglo-Saxons/Celts already use the word more freely than Germans, Poles or Russians. There's a big difference between a freund, a sportfreund and a geschäftsfreund in German for example. You might play squash or do business with someone you would never dream of bringing into your home. The word for "friend" in Polish is quite rare. An Englishman might think that's because przyjaciel is so hard to say, but it trips readily enough off a Polish tongue. Use the female variant carelessly and you may imply rather more than intended. Someone a Brit or American would cheerfully call a friend is more likely - to a Pole - to be a znajomy (literally someone known, i.e. an acquaintance). Many a dobry znajomy or "good acquaintance" probably feels closer than many Anglosphere "friends".

It seems to me that in other cultures, the obligations of friendship are taken more seriously and therefore not given or accepted lightly. When I read that Tony Blair's son had been left drunk in a London gutter by his "friends" years ago, I thought them unworthy of the word. No Russian friend would have done that. He would have seen the unfortunate chap home as, ahem, I can vouch for from personal experience.

The English language is able to make all these important distinctions of course, but from a social point of view it's difficult to do so politely. I did not know whether an Austrian client was a friend or not for years, because his cheery bonhomie in English was so indiscriminate. Only when he described me to someone else in German as his "very good business friend," did I understand my true position. In the Anglosphere, the situation is blurring further as social mores change. My instinct to frost a young salesperson who uses not only my first name, but the chummy abbreviated form, is no longer understood when I visit Britain. I still do it, mind. I suppose they think I am a crusty old sod. I have never bought anything from anyone who does it, which is adequate vengeance for now. Soon though, I shall be unable to shop in person.

When, as I do, one works across cultures, all this can be a cause of confusion. It's perfectly possible, in a recession, for an Englishman to find himself firing someone he has called a friend. Whether the friendship will survive is, admittedly, another matter. In other cultures, it would be simply unthinkable.

I have heard "friend" defined as someone who would come to your funeral, even if it was raining. I am not sure that's a good definition either. I have gone to the funerals of employees who were not my personal friends, to show my firm's respect and gratitude. I know elderly people who go to funerals merely for the social possibilities; a rather maudlin analogue Facebook. Funerals are a poor test.

If a friend is someone who will be there for you if you are in trouble; someone on whose shoulder you could cry if the need arose, how many friends do we really have? Certainly not the large number leaving chirpy messages on Facebook.

How, dear reader, would you define a friend?

Unsentimental education

Labour to junk Tony Blair's flagship school reform | Politics | The Guardian.

What Labour seems now to be saying, with such announcements, is this;

"When deciding whether to vote for us, please forget what we did in the last 12 years. Please judge us on these policies we have stolen from the party we fear will crush us."

Democracy in action? To a point. The problem is that, whatever it says about education, Labour always harms it. Labourites believe academic achievement to be the unfair product of social and material (perhaps even genetic) advantages. And we all know how much they hate "unfairness." They hate it more than they love art, science, literature, justice or, sometimes I fear, life itself.

Except, it seems, where it's an outcome of sucking up to them.

Can pupils be expected to achieve with such people in control? Yes, thank goodness. There will always be a handful of geniuses no mediocrities can keep down. There will be the strong ones who pursue their dreams regardless. The cunning ones who masquerade as "cool" kids, but study on the sly. For a while yet there will be those lucky enough to live near the few remaining grammar schools. There will be those whose parents can pay for private schools and who are getting better value for their money than for generations; thanks to Labour. Labour may close them one day, but they will simply move to Ireland or Switzerland.

Can a modern, technological society survive with only those minorities well-educated? Doesn't it need education for the weaker masses; those who want to fit in and can't be expected to swim against the current? Can a modern democracy survive with an electorate that is economically illiterate? Voters who, literally, don't know where wealth comes from and don't care? Has Labour made itself the natural party of government; its rule only intermittently interrupted for an emergency economic clean up by "the nasty party?" Is that true, however insane Labour's policies and however incompetent its leaders, because indoctrinated voters form a permanent majority?

There was a time when the Labour movement, through working men's institutes and the like, encouraged poor people to study widely. For working people, Labour was long associated with a quest for educational opportunity. That's ancient history now. For all my life, Labour has destroyed opportunity on doctrinaire grounds. It has been the party of class war, not class sizes.  It almost seems to fear what will happen if working class kids are allowed to escape from the party's voter farms. Perhaps it has a point. Look at David Davis. Look at me. We are not what they want, are we?

Everything that is wrong with modern Britain is to do with Labour's dominance of British education. From the front line teachers through the lecturers who train them, the educational "advisors" who police them to the professors who design the courses, education in Britain is under the influence of the left. Pupils can pass through the whole system with no exposure to the ideas of classical liberalism; the ideas that are the foundation of the West. If they hear of "the West" it will be as a pejorative. What civilisation before has ever taught its schoolchildren to despise it? Many university students have to pay lip service to the left in their essays and exam answers, or be punished for their heresy.

Tinkering with funding will make no difference as Balls knows full well. It's not how schools are funded that matters, or even, to a great extent, how well they are funded.  What matters is what's taught in them and by whom. Who will change that? And how?

Housekeeping

I have been with Typepad for a while now and I find it more elegant and easy to work with than Blogger. As it should be. It costs money. Blogger is free.

I have had complaints from readers who find it hard to comment here. That's bad. Reading my own blog is boring, because I know what I am going to say! My contributions are the price I pay to hear your views on issues that I care about. Many Typepad users have taken this up with the company and improvements are promised. In the meantime, it all gets easier if you can take a moment to register. The blog will "remember" you and commenting should become simpler. If you are a regular commenter, I would be grateful if you could take a moment to do it.

The Last Ditch has just moved to the latest version of Typepad. I may try some new features in the coming weeks. It's tempting to go to town with all the gizmos on offer, but I am aware that's not why you come here. Many readers visit the way I do other blogs (when I occasionally exit the wonderful Google Reader); scanning the post to see if it's of interest and moving on before the page has finished loading. I have rearranged the layout so that you should not have to wait for fripperies to load before you get the text. I hope this is working for you.

Please let me know in the comments if there are improvements I can make to your experience here. I began my blogging career thinking a blog was an electronic soap box. In fact, hard to believe, I first blogged before even reading another blog. Such arrogance! I have learned that blogging is a conversation and I love it. Anything I can do to help you join in, I will.

As for other bloggers reading this, I have just one request. If you are a wordy sort, please set your RSS feed to deliver a short extract, not the whole thing. Some of my favourite blogs are eclectic, which means some posts are fascinating to me and others are, erm, not. Scrolling pages of Google Reader to get past the "erm, not" posts is a waste of my waning life. Thanks a lot.

I have only one question about this...

Money Central - Times Online - WBLG: Gordon Brown's 10 worst financial gaffes.

Why were the financial journalists silent when these gaffes were being made? It's a bit late now.

h/t The Crown Blogspot

Sticks, stones and sexism

Quaequam Blog! » Iain Dale calls Lib Dem candidate a “whore”.

I don't usually cross-post or refer to my contributions elsewhere but not all my readers may visit the Quaequam Blog by LibDem James Graham. I recently took him mildly to task for accusing Iain Dale of sexism, earning this stern retort;

I have to say that I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard so-called libertarians criticise people employing their own freedom of speech when they choose to use it to criticise people for being bigoted and rude. It is as if “politically correct” language has some kind of magic power that all other language somehow lacks.

Why this blind spot? I genuinely don’t understand it.

With apologies, I repeat some of my latest response here;

If this class of defective thought is as important as you think, then perhaps you should (suggestion, not prescription) make the accusation with care and consideration, not just lob it willy nilly when you want to damage an enemy.

You devalue ideas about which you care deeply because you are so casual in invoking them. For example, the Northern working classes have been called “racist” so often as they struggled with the consequences of mass immigration, that many no longer care. They regard it (at best) as casual abuse designed only to shut them up. That perception has helped, not hindered, the BNP. Overuse the antibiotic, and it ceases to work.

“Whore” has many everyday uses as metaphor and simile, as you might have remembered if it had been used by a political ally. Used by Mr Dale, of course, it’s “sexism”. As I said, he uses such thought-substitutes himself, so is hoist by his own petard.

I found it almost as amusing as when he lobbed it at Michael White and “you too yah boo sucks” ensued. White was called (idiotically) a sexist and suddenly his accuser was a sexist too. My point is that this is about the level of thought that typically goes into the use of such words as “racist”, “sexist”, “homophobe” and “islamophobe”. Most of the time, they are no better than playground abuse and are registering as such with the man and woman in the street. That should be a problem to you. No?

What do other "so-called" libertarians think? Feel free to chip in, here or there.

Truth in comedy

YouTube - Steve Hughes on Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow.

Michael McIntyre is funny and his Comedy Roadshow is a good programme. Of course, most of his guests are right-on, politically-correct comedians, but not this guy. I cheered as well as laughed at his set. Dick Puddlecote (to whom, a tip of the hat for the link to the YouTube excerpt) asks if it's more social commentary than comedy. I think that misses the point. Observational humour works because it is true. The audience, reassuringly, seemed far from shocked by it.

I am glad I have found a way to watch the BBC's iPlayer from Moscow. It's worth the subscription just to hear someone tell it like it is, wittily, on national TV. I fear we may not see much more of Steve Hughes. The aparatchiki of the BBC will have marked his card. But for a few minutes, watching him, it was like being from a free country again. Do watch it all, you will enjoy it.

Le mot juste

In the land of the one-eyed King………...

M' learned friend Anna Raccoon is on fine form today and has come up with the perfect name for the MPs expenses scandal.

Profli-Gate

Wonderful. Do click on the link above to read the rest.

How not to handle an angry electorate

politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Who’ll get the blame for the expenses blackout?.

If our politicians truly understood what they have done, in an ethical or even a political sense, they would never have made such a hash of yesterday.  Of course, many of the worse offenders have nothing to lose now (unless by some miracle, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service do their jobs as no-one, tellingly, expects). The massed ranks of doomed Labour backbenchers might as well loot the Palace of Westminster before they leave it. Their careers are over and they will command no more respect in the ethically-barren society their benefits culture has engendered if they don't. As Political Betting points out:

...everything in the expenses story goes back to July 3 last year when 172 MPs, 146 of them Labour ones, voted to block reforms...

I have some small sympathy with honest Labour MPs. Some Conservative and LibDem members (not to mention the Sinn Fein ones) behaved just as badly as Labour's worst. But Labour was ostentatiously in control throughout, claiming the right to intrude into the minutiae of our lives and to wag the finger of righteousness in our faces. The fact is that the Parliamentary Labour Party's (and the iconically Labour Speaker's) response to this issue was to intimidate and smear honest people seeking the truth and then to cover up. This alone contradicts the tedious daily lie that "I thought it was within the rules/acceptable/approved by the Fees Office." If they did not know they were behaving badly, they would never have tried to conceal it.

For many voters today, Labour's attitude is symbolised by one trivial receipt submitted (and "redacted") by Dr Phyllis Starkey MP (h/t Dizzy);

As a rule of thumb, I never trust anyone in the English-speaking world who mentions their (non-medical) doctorate outside an academic context. They are usually on the make and/or trying to command a respect they know they don't deserve. Dr Starkey has demonstrated that she has neither ethics, political judgement nor a sense of humour. Yes, it's funny, but she can't have known that or she would have realised it would be picked up on for that reason.

This latest fiasco will inflame voters further, given today's headlines. As the scandal happened on its watch, Labour will get the blame. After all, did Labour in Opposition hesitate to trash honest John Major for comparitively minor "sleaze" of which he knew (and could have been expected to know) nothing? Of course not. Blair, Brown and Prescott gleefully made political hay. Those who live by the sword shall perish by it.

Big Bang, or damp squib?

UK Parliament - Allowances by MP.

I took a few moments to examine the claims of the MP for my "home town" in England. As a long-time expatriate, I lost my vote in the UK before I ever bought a house there, so she's not technically my MP. She's the nearest thing though and I have long known she is a waste of her wear on the green leather in the Commons. From this useful website, I can see she has only ever spoken to ask fawning questions of ministers, presumably planted by the whips. Each seems to have been rewarded with a ministerial word of praise or constituency visit, so she even had to be bribed for that. Perhaps she's just shy.

So many details of her expenses are blanked out that, if this is typical, there would have been no scandal without the leaks to the Daily Telegraph. She pays someone for secretarial services, but the name is blanked. It could be her husband, it could be her dog. She claims small amounts each month for "incidentals", which could be porn movies or pens. She seems to have a very healthy appetite, but there's really no way of telling if she is honest or not.

Politicalbetting.com describes this as "big bang" day for the expenses issue. They must be joking. Perhaps some MPs have been less liberal with the black masking, but if "mine" is anything to go by, this squib is decidedly moist. If it were not for the Daily Telegraph's chequebook journalism, it seems clear that we would never have discovered how many of our legislators are ethical degenerates and, in some cases, petty criminals. There would have been no resignations, no early retirements from politics. More even than to the Daily Telegraph, we owe all that to MPs' dilatoriness in preparing their expenses for publication. Had they complied in even this half-arsed way a lot sooner, the issue would have died.  If there is justice in the world, it seems that sloth is a more deadly sin than cupidity.

If  "my" MP is typical, all we will learn from comparing the official with the unofficial disclosure is just how careful they are to keep us in the dark - and just how aware they are of the sensitivity of the claims they pretend they thought proper. Do take a look at your MPs claims though. Perhaps you will learn more than I did.

Virtually the best place for Libertarians to meet?

The Libertarian Party of the UK now has about 25 members in Second Life. Other LPUK members and supporters can of course easily visit Second Life by downloading the free client software and signing up for a free account. There's no need to spend money there at all and a half-decent graphics card will cope with the load.

If I were to host a meeting/party/fundraiser in Second Life, which of these places (mostly) on my virtual estates would be the best and why (click on the pictures to enlarge, if you like)?  Be careful. Your answer may be as psychologically revealing as the less whimsical of you no doubt think the question is.

Drawing Room, Castle Nanga

Dining Room, Castle Nanga

Stonehenge

Schroedinger's Cats night club

Bar, Airship "Limoncello"

Officers' Mess, USS "Colin Campbell"

LPUK SL Offices

Tom Baker Square (an open area inside a Tardis)

Murdoch's despicable rag serves the state again

Ruling on NightJack author Richard Horton kills blogger anonymity - Times Online.

Though regularly and willingly used as puppets of ministers who lie and smear off the record through protected anonymous sources "close to" them (such as Damian McBride) The Times has fought blogger Nightjack in the High Court to win the right to publish his name and picture. This, despite his understandable wish to remain anonymous. His force has now disciplined him and his Orwell Prize-winning blog has been taken down. A great loss.

Nightjack was a superb blogger. He wrote well and with passion about his subject. He cared about his job and about the public he serves. The press is there to question and hold authority to account, not to deliver the state its victims. Though I don't question the judge's legal analysis, I do believe that Nightjack is far more of a credit to the police force than The Times is to the press. It might have the legal right to "out" him, but it should have had the decency not to.

Mostly harmless

Angela Rippon: I should be host of Top Gear - Telegraph.

Angela Rippon is a harmless "old bird" (her phrase, not mine, I would never have dared). But she believes in a disgusting modern fallacy, which is the very antithesis of fairness. A fallacy notably promoted by the woman who is fairness's worst enemy in Britain (because she wants to replace it with a system of corrupt quotas) - Harriet Harman. I defer to no-one in my feminism. My offspring are both female and anyone who tries to place improper obstacles in their career path should beware. Beware of them, mainly, formidable as the Misses Paine both are, but also of their aged father, should he be in range to contribute a helpful punch or sly trip.

It was sound feminist advocacy that opened Miss Paine the Elder's ancient college to women less than 30 years ago. It would not be feminism for her to have been admitted to fill a quota of women or marked more leniently than male students in her final exams (results due this week). If her status as a scholar (effectively a co-owner appointed on academic merit) were even partly due to her sex, she would be justifiably furious. No decent feminist should want my daughters or theirs insulted with quota opportunities. We feminists should want them to soar as far as their talents take them and no further. After all, we surely wouldn't want them as miserable as others whose ambition has outreached their abilities?

If men and women are truly equal before the law, then a woman can provide goods and services to a man just as well as to a woman and vice versa. The common idea (as indirectly expressed in "women and ethnic minorities are under-represented in Parliament") that only a black person can properly represent the interests of black people or that only a woman can properly represent women is every bit as offensive as Nick Griffin's similar ideas about other groups. In fact, damn it, they are not similar ideas. They are the very same.

Ms Rippon, national treasure though she may be, is a minor - if rather laughable - fascist. So is Harriet Harman. So is most of the British Left. And all without smart uniforms, punctual trains or adequate motorways by way of mitigation for their sins.

The left/liberal/Green obsession with interfering with Top Gear is instructive in so many ways. A business which has a successful product should be trying to understand its appeal, not destroy it. Top Gear makes so much money for the BBC that the corporation can't bring itself to cancel it, yet it cannot conceal its hatred for its successful child. Likewise the Government, though the programme represents one of few (can you think of any other?) profitable products of the British public sector. Pace Gauleiter Rippon, the viewing figures show that it appeals to women already. The women in my family love it, not because (sadly) they care about cars, but because (as one of them explained to me) "...there is nothing sexier than the sight of men [particularly the Hamster, apparently] enjoying being men..."

This makes sense to me. There is nothing sexier than the sight of women enjoying being women, which is nicely symmetrical. Even fair, if you like. So get lost Harriet. You too, Angela. If you want a job, drop the disgusting and dishonest special pleading and go explain to the producers why you would make the product even more successful. Or go pitch a better motoring show to a rival channel. Maybe you have what it takes, Angela, but I strongly suggest it is not where you are looking for it.

The real Robin Hood

The Devil's Kitchen: An anniversary

For almost 800 years Magna Carta has been cited in arguments between free men. The ideas which make us who we are (and by us, I don't just mean the English, but the whole English-speaking world) began on the day King John, notorious from the Robin Hood legend, reluctantly signed.

DK is right to celebrate the anniversary, but makes the common mistake of saying that the Great Charter established the Great Writ, habeas corpus. In fact, it makes no mention of it. Blackstone cites the first recorded use of the Great Writ in 1305, but similar writs were issued earlier. Habeas corpus is a keystone of our freedoms, but Magna Carta did not set it in its place.

For me, Article 39 of Magna Carta is the most important;

(39) No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.

This established an Englishman's right to "trial by his peers." For a commoner, this meant trial by jury, which has done more to keep us free than any other invention of our fertile civilisation. When it has gone, and we may be apprehended, charged and judged by paid employees of the state, English civilisation will have ended. Every man, however sophisticated his argument, who proposes a limitation of jury trial is King John's spiritual heir and therefore your enemy.

You may see Magna Carta online here and (significantly) here, where it is described as part of the "ancestry" of the US Constitution. You may read an English translation (the original was of course in Latin) here. You will relish such articles as

(40) To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.

but you will be disappointed by most of the others. Much of the document deals with the banal interests of the barons who forced King John to Runnymede long ago. Some of the language (for example about the Jews) is offensive to modern ears. That's why it is vital to understand that it is not what this document says that matters. It is what it did. For the first time in history, it limited the power of the state. It ended the rule of men and began the rule of law.

King John's subjects, even most of his barons, believed him God's choice of ruler. Yet Magna Carta set boundaries to his power. Few have read its words (and most would be disappointed by them) but that is why Englishmen cite the Great Charter whenever they feel threatened. That is why any man who does not revere it is no Englishman at all. The legend of the Great Charter is more important than the fact. It is the Robin Hood of legal history, while the state is - perennially - the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Magna Carta remains a great litmus test. Modern enemies of freedom have this in common with King John; they believe in the essential benevolence of the state and feel no need for it to be limited. Like him, they will be restrained only by force. Like him, they are keen to weaken any power but state power. Now, as then, the enemies of freedom may be detected by their desire to seize or imprison men without the lawful judgement of their peers. They may be detected by their desire to limit or abolish jury trial.

Almost 800 years after it was signed, it is vital that Englishmen who wish to remain free understand not what the Great Charter says, but why it matters. England will be England only for so long as they do.

Why there are still mugs to vote Labour

Gordon Brown: David Cameron's cuts will make the recession worse - mirror.co.uk.

From time to time switched-on bloggers express incredulity that there are still millions prepared to vote Labour despite the dog's dinner it has made of, well, everything. I grew up among those millions and think I know why. Click through to the linked article in the Sunday Mirror for an example of how Labour manipulates these poor fools (bearing in mind that for many Labour voters in the heartlands The Mirror and, perhaps, the BBC are their habitual sources of political "news").

Gordon Brown has found a simple story to tell; one that will resonate with such voters. It's not true, but that doesn't bother him. The man is making political omelettes and will shed no tears over the breaking of ethical eggs. While even the panellists on such mainstream shows as Have I Got News for You are now openly laughing at him, he is targeting not even the viewers of such light entertainment, but the nation's idiots (each of whom has just the same vote as you or me). Forget your intellectual pretensions. Forget your sense of shame that your IP address may be recorded at such an embarrassing location. Click through to The Sunday Mirror site and marvel at the contempt in which this man holds the British people. Then worry that they might be worthy of it.

A Conservative analysed Labour's spending plans (by adjusting them for inflation and how much would go on servicing our massively increased debts) as a 10% cut in real expenditure on public services. Brown (or, more likely, Mandelson) heard the words "Conservative", "cuts" and "10%" and stitched them together into the standard Labour electoral message. Now they have their minions repeating it everywhere, and Brown has chosen the Mirror, the grand old propaganda organ of that great Socialist Captain Bob, to sound his own clarion.

Never mind that the Conservatives have so far said nothing except (foolishly, in my view) that spending on the NHS and foreign aid will be protected under their spending plans. Never mind that the Conservatives are in no position to say how hard they will have to cut everything else until they know how long Labour is able to pursue its present scorched earth policy. Never mind that it will have to be a damn sight more than 10% in real terms, even if Labour (Heaven forfend) were re-elected.

Every word of Brown's article is politically dishonest. We are now led (if garnering our cash while cowering in fear of our eventual wrath can be characterised as "leading") by moral degenerates clothed scantily in the tatters of their always-flimsy democratic mandate. The only interesting question now is whether Brown of the Broken Moral Compass is their master or their puppet.

Whose child is it anyway?

renegadeparent.net | For leaders. Not followers.

I really have nothing to add to renegadeparent's analysis. Mr Badman certainly lives down to his name. But then, appointed as he was by an incredibly authoritarian government, what else did we expect?

Perhaps his judgement is not totally flawed...

Flint reveals why she resigned from Brown cabinet | Metro.co.uk.

You have to smile sometimes. Politicians hold two inconsistent thoughts in their heads so often that they don't notice when they express them both at once;

Ms Flint quit as Europe minister last week, accusing Gordon Brown of using his women ministers as "female window dressing" and of running a "two-tier" government.

The MP for Don Valley told GMTV: "The reason I resigned was because I did not feel that the Prime Minster had full confidence in my loyalty."

He wasn't far wrong, was he?

Jobs in fairyland

Government jobs | Guardian Jobs "page 1".

Almost every company I know in the economically-productive sector of the economy has a hiring and/or salaries freeze (usually imposed after making redundancies and/or renegotiating salaries and benefits). Not so the public sector. At a time when the state payroll should be slashed to avoid leaving our grandchildren our debts, The Guardian has more than 500 public jobs on offer at salaries of up to £150,000.

Even the slightest intellect now realises that the debt rave is over. Yet still the political parties squabble and lie about the size of the inevitable economies. The more custard-brained Labour bloggers can be found gleefully exclaiming "Tory cuts", as if spending could go on unchecked even were the country mad enough to re-elect Labour. The leadership of the Labour Party is less naive. It knows it cannot win and is in scorched earth mode; making the inevitable clean up as unpleasant as it can be for the next government. To hell with the national interest, they are preparing the ground to win the election after next.

This is why the Conservative Party has become known as "the nasty party." It is the Winston Wolf of British politics; brought in by the voters to clean up the blood and guts after each Labour "hit" on the economy. It gets little chance to build its "nice" credentials, because once the mess is cleaned up, Britain's indoctrinated voters tend to recall Labour for another doomed attempt at repealing the law of supply and demand. For all Cameron's attempts at cuddliness, this will be his fate t00. The best he can hope for is to get the clean-up done quickly enough to have time to demonstrate his "caring" side before an election. Given the state of the country's finances, that's a faint hope. Especially as it's hard to imagine him acting with sufficient resolution to do the job quickly. He's a PR guy at heart. Relations with the public will be appalling during such dirty, necessary work.

Meanwhile, it seems the cowardly pols are waiting for the nation's creditors to send in the bailiffs so they can blame them for the cuts. Decent, honourable leaders would be acting by now to bring the public finances under control. Their balancing of popularity against duty is likely to cost the nation its AAA debt rating, which will make servicing our massive debts even more expensive (and public spending cuts even more intense).

David Cameron has already pledged to offer government jobs via a direct website, cutting The Guardian's life support. Without taxpayers' money for job ads, the paper could not survive. The staff rooms and SCRs of Britain would need to turn to The Morning Star for their daily dose of economic magical realism.  Yet The Guardian has made a cardinal error. It opened fire on Gordon Brown, failed to kill him and left him angrily wounded. Maybe it's time for the Prime Minister to steal another Conservative policy?

h/t Old Holborn (Never Ever SFW)

More sympathy for the Prime Minister

Mrs Paine was chatting to the nurses during her out-patient visit today. "I feel sorry for him," said one, pointing at a newspaper picture of Gordon Brown. "How much must he need the job? He must realise he's no good at it. Everyone knows."

Were she a psychiatric nurse, she might realise that Mr Brown knows no such thing. Somewhere, away with the fairies, he is a fearsome lord and all tremble before his might.

Another way to interpret the results?

Unenlightened Commentary.: Labour's Strategic Brilliance.

Unenlightened Commentary (one for the daily reading list, I think) has seen through Labour's spin and worked out why Harriet Harman ran the "non-campaign" of which Prescott complained.

I feel so foolish now.

What did the voters mean?

Our journalists are really betraying their biases today. Elections are, admittedly, a crude tool. It is hard to express complex opinions with a single "X" on a ballot sheet.  But the media interpretation of the EU Parliament election results is shocking. It seems the left/liberal Establishment now sees every election as no more than an opportunity for the people to enter into a dialogue with the Labour Party.

Labour secured the votes of about 1/5th of the electorate in the 2005 General Election. We have generally (and, I think, wrongly) accepted that as a democratic mandate to do all in its manifesto and more. Yet now it seems that those of us who vote for any other party are not approving its polices so much as expressing discontent with Labour's and/or with Labour's leadership.

Is our "default" vote now Labour? Is an "X" beside any other party's name, simply a negotiation of what we require to return to the Socialist fold? If so, this seems a dangerous route to follow.

No passing Martian today would believe that anyone voted for UKIP last Thursday because they wanted Britain to leave the EU. Its astonishing success, in the face of hostile coverage that consistently and unfairly bracketed it with the BNP, is (very oddly) presented as a protest against Westminster corruption. Nor would that Martian believe that more than a million BNP voters actually want non-white immigrants to be encouraged back to their lands of origin. The discussions simply assume they were expressing extreme discomfort with Labour.

There may be elements of truth in these interpretations, but they are no less impertinent for that. Surely votes should be taken at face value as positive support for the policies of the party voted for? That may never be 100% true. Even within parties, there is a wide range of opinion and any given voter's opinions may be highly nuanced. Still, it's the safest and most respectful approach. It is also the only one that forces our would-be leaders to engage in a genuine discussion about the nation's future with those outside the narrow circles of their followers. Yes, voters can be wrong. Sometimes, they can be very wrong, but it's not helpful to tell them so. In fact, it is likely to infuriate them and push them to ever greater extremes. Perhaps politicians, journalists and other opinion-formers should embrace the shocking possibility that the voters may be right?

Brown Sugar

THE CROWN BLOGSPOT: The reshuffle task - Gordon Brown faces Lord Sir Alan Sugar in the boardroom.

The excellent Crown Blogspot nails it again

"Here in this place, where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead"

I can conceive of no better way to commemorate the 65th anniversary of Operation Overlord than by listening to this moving speech by Ronald Reagan from 25 years ago. He was able to speak of the spirit of the men who took part as no modern politician can. Indeed much of what he said would stick in a modern politician's throat.

Listening to his explanations of what motivated the soldiers of all nations who fought to liberate Europe, it was hard not to worry if such motivations still exist. I doubt a better speech will be made today and I am grateful to Iain Dale for reminding us of it.

Sympathy for the Prime Minister

Flint Departs With Sexist Blast At Brown (from The Herald ).

I laughed when a colleague told me yesterday that, whatever one's political views, one must feel a little sympathy for the hapless Gordon Brown. She even thought he might get some "pity votes" at an election, so pathetic a figure does he now present. I could not imagine such emotion troubling me. Then I read this story.

Of course, it could not happen to a more appropriate man. Brown has been at the heart of Labour strategy for a long time. Encouraging a sense of victimhood among women, gays and ethnic/religious minorities has long been the core of that strategy. Self-defined victim groups have replaced the working classes as Labour's main political clients.

Everyone trying to do business under such conditions, knows full well that sacking, demoting or even failing to advance the career of a member of these favoured elites is highly dangerous. No matter how incompetent one of them they may be, s/he will always play the victim card. Many a straight white male will have been selected for redundancy during the current economic unpleasantness merely because he has no such card to play. He cannot blackmail his company with the implied threat of dragging them to a victimhood tribunal on charges of thought crime.

Flint is a person of slight consequence, with no serious contribution to make. She may be (having recently posed for a distinctly un-Ministerial photo-shoot for the Observer Magazine) one of the most complete hypocrites ever to play the "victim" joker.  But her attack on Brown for "sexism" has achieved what I thought impossible. Just before I roared with laughter, I experienced a momentary twinge of sympathy for an appalling man hoist on his own ideological petard.