Olympic Costs Rise Faster, Higher, Stronger.

So Tessa Jowell, aka Mrs Shit-for-brains, has admitted that she doesn't have the foggiest idea how much the Olympics are costing us.

More than seven months after Jowell announced the project would cost £9.3 billion, she admitted in the House of Commons on Monday that "line by line" analysis of what she called the "baseline budget" was a work in progress.

Bearing in mind that the budget has already risen from £2.5 billion to £9.3 billion this is just taking the piss. Yet it misses the point, the real cost of the Olympic Games isn't merely the amount of taxpayers money the organisers pay out to get the facilities built but the economic ruination of a large part of London. The talk of regenerating London is nonsense for the simple reason that littering the landscape with large sporting facilities that will almost never be used to capacity ever again creates a black hole of economic activity. How many people will a Velodrome employ in years to come? A couple of dozen at most, but it will take up space that could be filled by productive businesses employing hundreds or even thousands of people.

I linked to the Telegraph's report of Jowell's admission but really they should bear some of the responsibility for this looming disaster too. They were by far the most enthusiastic cheerleaders for the Games in the press and can in some ways take the credit for the London bid being launched in the first place. I even heard that they actually banned any of their journalists coming out against a games bid". This is from an article back in 2003:

The Daily Telegraph has unashamedly campaigned for London to bid for the 2012 Olympic Games for the last three months on the basis that it would be one of the best things to happen in sport for generations. Beyond sport, it would electrify the capital, its populace and the country as a whole.
....

Increasingly isolated, the sceptics have droned on about cost and past failures. Nothing else.

Those failures, including the Dome, Picketts Lock and Wembley, are beyond dispute, but it is time we left them behind. In this context they are easily dealt with. No one - politician or serial sports administrator - who had anything to do with any of those fiascos should be allowed within a marathon distance of an Olympic bid.

Cost - which has ranged between a possible profit according to the Arup report, and a deficit of £10 billion (Tony Banks!) - is a much more emotive subject, but the official report put the worst case scenario at less than £2 billion

Even Tony Banks had a better idea of what was likely to happen than the Olympics propagandists at the Daily Telegraph whose predictive abilities make Paul Ehrlich look like Nostradamus! So it cannot be argued that the problems could not have been forseen. Is it too late to withdraw?

Prescience.

Dumbjon on the 26th of August:

"One thing that's being missed in coverage of the Learco Chindamo case has been the precedent set by the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal. Yes, as an EU citizen, this pond life can't be exported anyway, but now our friends on the Left has established as a legal principle that even non-EU murderers can't be deported, if only they've had the nous to bring their family over with them."

In the news today:

A serial sex offender from Sierra Leone has been allowed to stay in the UK after a judge ruled deporting him would breach his human rights.
....
Mr Justice Hodge, who is the husband of Government minister Margaret Hodge, said article eight of the Human Rights Act, which enshrines the "right to a family life", meant the sex attacker could not be deported.

{Second story via A Tangled Web}

500

Did I mention that my last post was number 500? Well it was.

Dummies Denounce Dummies.

Further proof, if any were needed, that in the absence of any actual racism self appointed 'anti racism' groups will invariably try to use their positions to inflame racial tension by directing a two minute hate against completely innocent targets:

A chain of fashion stores has been accused of racism over a window display of black mannequins hanging from the ceiling.
...
Police arrived at one branch, in Exeter, to investigate claims that the display was offensive and the Rural Racism Project says it has been "inundated" with complaints calling for it to be removed.

Spokesman John McKenzie said: "These disturbing displays are reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan and the lynching of black people in America.

Uh huh. It doesn't really seem likely that a fashion store that wants to sell its products is going to celebrate the KKK, unless their biggest sellers are white hoods.

"The chains used to hang the mannequins also bring to mind slavery and some of the complainants have commented on this.

They really don't unless any use of chains for anything evokes slavery. The store's spokesman points out one of the more obvious flaws in the argument that hanging black mannequins represents hanging black people:

"The models are not black – they are grey."

Presumably John Major ought to get indignant about the mannequins now.

Bigmouth Strikes Again.

Cherie Blair writes in the Guardian that:

Even in the UK, where there has been huge progress, women in full-time work still take home 83p for every pound that men get paid and the glass ceiling at the top is as unbreakable as ever.

And, importantly, these barriers and discrimination are not an accidental byproduct of gender. They exist simply because of it.

So if Cherie had been a man she would have taken £120 482 from a children's cancer charity for a 10 minute speech instead of a measly £100 000?

Dramatising Terrorism.

Various Muslim groups are complaining about an upcoming Channel 4 drama about a female suicide bomber. I can understand why most Muslims do not enjoy dramatic depictions of Islamist terrorism but the idea that it is the dramatic portrayals of Islamist terrorism that cause people to associate Islam and violence rather than actual Muslims killing people and proclaiming that it is in the name of Islam is bizarre. The complaint about stereotyping Muslims is foolish and misplaced, anti abortion activists and fathers rights campaigners have been portrayed as terrorists recently on TV yet no one seriously thinks that they are a significant danger.

However Khurshid Ahmed, chairman of the British Muslim Forum makes a very good criticism of the drama when he says that "A film which attempts to glamorise or rationalise the actions of suicide bombers has no place on our screens". The writer of the 'Britz' is you see a root causer whose previous work makes the same sort of arguments that most Islamist felow travellors would adore:

" Britz has been made by Peter Kosminsky, the director of the 2002 political drama The Project. It suggests that Britain’s foreign policy and draconian antiterror laws, particularly control orders which keep some suspects in effect under house arrest, have alienated Muslims."

So it is good that at least some Muslim groups are wary of these kinds of arguments too.

Human Rights & Wrongs.

Those of is who are old enough to remember the time before the Human Rights Act was passed in 1998 can well remember the absence of human rights before that date. We remember all too well how under the John Major junta people were regularly dragged off the street and out of their homes and tortured for months on end for daring to criticise the government. Well ok I can't think of any particular examples but I'm sure there must have been because we're forever being told that it is essential to upholding core human rights and to prevent the horrors of the Nazis being repeated.

Actual examples of Human Rights Act related cases (actually I'm including all cases made under the European Convention on Human Rights, which is what the HRA derives from*) involve nothing like this but instead consist of arbitrarily deciding that one groups interests outweigh everyone else's for example:

• The interests of plane hijackers who may be mistreated in their home countries outweighs the interests of law abiding plane passengers who are at increased risk from our courts decision to incentivise hijacking.
• The interests of a school pupil to wear clothing that advertises her affiliation to extreme ideologies outweighs the interests of all other pupils whose parents want a school that can set its own uniform policy. This verdict was overturned by the Law Lords but the fact that the law is so confusing that it even the two most senior courts in England & Wales disagree over who is right emphasises just how much of a hazard it is to law abiding citizens trying to behave well and mind their own business.
  
• The rights of terrorists to murder police officers unimpeded outweighs the rights of police officers not to be murdered.
• The right of murderers to be near their family outweighs the right of the citizens of a country to deport foreign killers.

These cases emerge because the very concept of 'rights' involves giving some arbitrarily defined interests the ability to trump all competing interests regardless of the circumstances. The vagueness with which human rights are defined put almost everyone at risk of being subjected to a costly and damaging nonsense suit, the Begum case must have cost the local education authority and by extension taxpayers hundreds of thousands of pounds. It is hardly a surprise to see a local councillor claim that a couple's conservatory extension is a breach of the HRA. It is a charter for harassment, because let's face it one right that won't ever be upheld by the court is the right to be freed from nuisance lawsuits.

* The fact thatthe Human Rights Act derives from a conventions which we are already signatories to has led apologists for the Act to claim that it has therefore not made any real difference. This is untrue as noted here:

A Westlaw search against the Act in March 2006 produced a list of 4,459 cases citing the Act. Compare that to research carried out in 1996 which found that the European Convention on Human Rights had been referred to in 316 cases between 1975 and 1996 but had influenced the outcome in only 16.

The really pathetic thing about the rights culture is that it has done absolutely nothing to prevent genuine threats to free speech that are currently stronger than ever before.

Update: There's a good article on this subject Comment is Free by David Cox, whose relative common sense is something which I've noted before.

My MP Is Actually Quite Good.

Via the Fulham Reactionary at A Tangled Web I see that my constituency MP, Phillip Hollobone, claimed the lowest expenses of anyone in the house. As Guido Fawkes notes, his carefulness with other people's money comes in addition to him being effective both as a constituency MP* and a legislator. This is all the more impressive considering that he occupies a marginal constituency that was held by Labour from 1997 to 2005, his predecessor was both more costly and less efficient.

On top of this he wants to leave the EU too, what more could I possibly ask for?


* Although he is good as a constituency MP, I don't really like MPs doing constituency work as I have said before. It is not their job to be glorified social workers.

Animal Lovers Or People Haters?

You decide.

{via John Derbyshire}

Close The Beeb!

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is worried:

Last week I was contacted by apprehensive black and Asian staff working across the BBC – from journalists to support staff, including one of those many silent tea ladies. Most were fearful that in the imminent mass sacking, they would be the first ones to be cast out.

At first I thought that she was simply trying to stir up some racial aggro in order to make sure that her friends weren't affected by the proposed BBC cuts, but I have now decided to take her very seriously, because as the rest of her article shows it isn't as if she is in a habit of making preposterous squeals of 'racism'. The BBC is run by white racial supremicists who will try to ethnically cleanse the organisation if they get the chance, clearly we must shut it down.

Ask A Stupid Question.

I'm always keen to resolve any questions Guardian writers may have so I'll have a go at solving this one from the Guardian sport blog:

is it really that ridiculous to argue that the disastrous invasions of Vietnam and Iraq were at least partly the fault of the games that America plays?

Yes it is, in the sense that it is an absurd idea. However it is a good career move for a Grauniad writer to be able to use any subject as a stick to beat Amerikkka with.

Some Hospitals Not Cesspits! Hooray!

I was watching Question Time just now and the topic of Britain's unhygienic hospitals came up. In the middle of the discussion someone in the audience said something like "I work in the NHS and we work very hard and most hospitals are very good", she got a round of applause. What has it come to when the fact that some hospitals don't infect all their patients is worth a round of applause?

Prosecute James Watson Say Race Groups.

The co-discoverer of DNA James Watson is being lambasted for making controversial remarks about race and intelligence:

The 79-year-old geneticist reopened the explosive debate about race and science in a newspaper interview in which he said Western policies towards African countries were wrongly based on an assumption that black people were as clever as their white counterparts when "testing" suggested the contrary. He claimed genes responsible for creating differences in human intelligence could be found within a decade.

Obviously this is extremely controversial viewpoint and people are entitled to disagree and criticise Watson for saying it. What isn't on is for organisations and MPs to try and have him prosecuted for expressing an opinion.

Anti-racism campaigners called for Dr Watson's remarks to be looked at in the context of racial hatred laws. A spokesman for the 1990 Trust, a black human rights group, said: "It is astonishing that a man of such distinction should make comments that seem to perpetuate racism in this way. It amounts to fuelling bigotry and we would like it to be looked at for grounds of legal complaint."

The 1990 trust is of course the organisation that promoted such laughably bogus accusations of racism against Boris Johnson earlier in the year, a fact which has a lot to do with their source of funding being from Ken Livingstone. Do these people really want Britain to regress to a country where Nobel winning scientists, or any scientists, cannot openly discuss ideas without facing the brunt of the law. It doesn't matter whether the ideas being discussed are right or wrong, it must be possible to discuss them openly.


Update: Incidentally whilst I deplore the thuggish efforts to prosecute people for what they say, it is a pity that James Watson will be cited by race cranks at tedious length for decades to come, much like a previous Nobel Laureate who delved into these waters. That can't be nice fate for the man partially responsible for the discovery of the century.

Still Rigging The System.

A couple of months ago I blogged about Labour plans to stop Michael Ashcroft, who was once the subject of vicious smears by the government in cahoots with the Times, from funding the Conservative Party for no obvious reason than partisan advantage. It appears that following on from the cancelled election fiasco these plans have been reignited. As I said in August these plans are both an infringement on free speech and tilt the system heavily in favour of the incumbents who enjoy enormous resources courtesy of the tax payer (and the fact that their opponents can't dedicate themselves to campaigning full time).

{via Chicken Yoghurt, who unlike myself can't be accused of having partisan reasons for opposing this (although I hope I would behave the same if the Conservatives pulled this crap) and who succinctly and brilliantly sums up Brownism:

It is doing what is easy rather than what is right. It is using power for the direct benefit of one’s political party. It is a childishness that takes rather than earns. It is mere tinkering; a sticking plaster here, a stitch there - the patient is dying but nobody is interested in why, just in keeping him going a bit longer.

Courage & High Ideals.

Like most people when I think of Cherie Blair courage and high ideals are what come to mind. My sentiments are widely shared apparently.

{via Daniel Finkelstein}

Subsidising Misery.

The left wing blog Harry's Place currently has a guest post about homelessness by Martha Bridegam, who I'm not otherwise familiar with. She is angry at the campaign by San Francisco's main newspaper the San Francisco Chronicle, to get the city's politicians to get the vagrants off the streets, according to Bridegam it is a 'hate campaign' designed to ensure the wealthy don't have to mingle with the very poor. She particularly despises a certain type of people who support the campaign:

These scapegoating articles and comments are full of quotes from people who begin by describing themselves as "liberal," then announce that, after some dreadful personal experience with an individual they presumed to be homeless, even their own sainted selves have had enough of sharing a city with homeless people in general.

I think this is what used to be known as liberals being mugged by reality.

The Chronicle is the principle newspaper of the most left wing city in the United States so why would they feel comfortable adopting such a supposedly right wing platform for dealing with homelessness? Quite simply because the ultra liberal (in the US sense of the word) policies that the city has pursued up until now have created a disaster in slow motion. The city has more homeless than New York despite being less than 10% of the size according to some sources, although the exact figure is unclear and estimates range from 7000 to 20000 people. More than 200 of them die each year. The cause of the city's problem is pretty obvious though, they pay people to be homeless:

San Francisco still gives about one-third of its homeless population its benefits all in cash - as much as $395 a month.

Yes you read that right, being homeless has a starting salary of almost $5000 a year, plus there is lax enforcement of begging laws, perhaps a few homeless charities can top up the figure too and there are few overheads. Whilst the death toll suggests that it is not a comfortable living in the long term, in the short term it isn't exactly onerous. If you subsidise something then you will get more of it, it really is pretty simple. It isn't compassionate to support the homeless when the effects of that support are to make homelessness more entrenched than ever.

Ming Campbell Resigns..... No I Don't Care Much Either.

When Henry Kissinger was asked why academic politics are so vicious he famously replied "because the stakes are so small". This maxim applies in spades to the Liberal Democrats who have now knifed two leaders in the back since the general election. Blogs like Iain Dale's or Political Betting are probably the best place to go to see who is likely to succeed Ming but honestly- Clegg, Huhne, Davey, Kennedy, Hughes, Opik, why bother learning any of these names when they'll only be dumped by the party in a year's time? Think of all the time wasted learning that 'Menzies' is pronounced 'Mingis'! However since this is a political blog I still feel that I ought to provide a guide to the Liberal Democrats leadership options. There are in my view three main options:


Mark Oaten- I like the cut of his jib, in times of crises the Lib Dems need a solid family man like this to steady the ship. The contents of his brown box are more than a match for whatever Labour take out of their red boxes.


Charles Kennedy- Well how sober to you need to be to lead the Liberal Democrats anyway?


Gabriela Iminia- A strong candidate with rare gravitas among the parliamentary party, but her partnership with Lembit Opik might just make her hard to take seriously.

They Get The BBC In Sri Lanka Too.

The BBC's reporting of terrorists militants annoys people the world over it seems.