BREAKING NEWS!!!!

So the £10 000 000 inquest has discovered that Prince Philip didn't murder Princess Diana and that Paul Burrell is a charlatan. These are things which I was aware of before £10 million was spent.

World To End, Lawyer Objects.

The New York Times reports:

Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.” Their suit also says CERN has failed to provide an environmental impact statement as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

So not only will these scientists destroy the planet, they've also failed to produce an environmental impact study, the fiends!! Of course being the New York Times I'm surprised they haven't mentioned the impact that the end of the world would have on women and minorities.

Racist Traffic Accidents.

In a tract on racial inequality in London, Cif contributer Claudia Webbe writes:

Recent research highlights that BME groups make up a significant proportion of the 51% inner London children living in poverty. For Pakistani and Bangladeshi groups, this reaches 69%, and 33% of people accepted as homeless in London were from BME groups.

Black African and black Caribbean children are still twice as likely to be casualties in road traffic accidents as their white counterparts.

Let's run over more white kids! OK let's not, but I'm struggling to see what point she is making, is she seriously suggesting that drivers are hitting more black kids because they are racist?

Shut Up & Do What You're Told.

Labour Councillor Bob Piper, decries the lack of member participation in his own party. Given his demonstrable lack of judgment this might seem like a good thing in his particular case. However in general it highlights the lack of accountablity of the upper echelons of the political class. The Conservative Party is no better than Labour in this regard, for instance earlier this week the Party pretended to allow its members to choose the candidates for the next European elections.

This seems like a simple enough task, send out forms to members and let them put a cross next to the names of the candidates they support and then count the votes. However the leadership decided to make the process so byzantine in complexity that the authors and commentators over at Conservative Home's 'Seats and Candidates' blog find it to be highly dubious:

The exclusion of the whole membership from vetting incumbent MEPs, restrictions on hustings, the preferential treatment of women candidates so that they have leapfrogged men who won more votes, the confusing nature of the voting process that has led to large number of ballot papers being spoilt.

Now when the writers of a Conservative supporting blog dedicated to covering candidate selection don't understand the process by which the Conservative Party 'elected' their MEP cnadidates then this is a clue that something is up. Unsurprisingly the Europhiles did rather better than might have been predicted by an observer. The man who oversaw the process was John Maples, a keen Europhile.

Both parties are baffled by declining interest in politics and membership of political parties.


This lack of accountability would be bad enough if it just concerned how they managed their internal affairs but this is not the case, Wellingborough Councillor Tony Sharp explains over at his blog how local government works in England:

Wellingborough can choose up to 35 local priorities from a long list of actions on which money can be spent. However 28 of the priorities are being imposed on us. That leaves seven priorities we can identify. But even then, the money is shared around the county, so Wellingborough's needs may not be addressed as money could be allocated to somewhere in Corby or Northampton as a 'more deserving case'.

In other words local councils don't represent their constituents' wishes but instead largely administer tasks that are set for them by unelected Quangos who are accountable to no one. Both parties are equally mystified by the low turnouts for local elections. Iain Dale also points out the increasing use of faux 'Consultations' which end up 'consulting' a few hand picked lackeys who approve of whatever schemes the Quangos which to push through. In this case it involves the minor matter of allowing several Norfolk villages to be flooded, I guess all those webbed toes will come in handy now.

The end result of all this is that Britain is run by bureaucrats who are too distant to run things well and have little or no incentive to listen to the public and a select group of politicos who are willing to dedicate their whole careers to climbing up the greasy pole high enough so that they can actually be the ones to appoint the bureaucrats. There is little or no role that concerned citizens can play in how the country is run. In fact British citizenship consists of shutting up and doing what you're told.

Insightful Economic Analysis.

After not blogging anything for close to four days I must come up with an important and hard hitting entry that cuts right to the heart of contemporary issues.

So is it me or does the stricken US bank, Bear Stearns, sound like it should be the name of a male porn star?

NUTfest '08- They Take A Stand On Indoctrination.

Letting propagandists into schools, they're against it:

Members of the National Union of Teachers said military visitors to schools pushed a partisan view of becoming a soldier which promotes the career prospects, training and travel, while downplaying the "fatal realities".

In a motion put forward at the union's annual conference in Manchester, they said: "Schools should not be conduits for either the dissemination of MoD propaganda or the recruitment of military personnel."

Except when they are for it:

Muslim clerics and other faith leaders should be sent into state schools to teach children about religion, according to a teachers' union.

Pupils should also be given the time and facilities to pray during the school day, it said.

The system drawn up by the National Union of Teachers would replace traditional religious assemblies - which must be broadly Christian - as part of a radical overhaul of faith-based education in England.

Glad that's cleared up then. Okay no more NUT related posts until NUTfest '09.

First They Came For The Loonies...

Recruitment drive as mentally ill teachers asked back to school

Well obviously, the NUT conference has finished now so where else are the delegates going to go back to?

Teachers who have been declared unfit to work in the classroom are being approached in a “desperate” recruitment drive to fill vacancies in key subject areas, the National Union of Teachers said yesterday.

This must be the first time in recorded history that the NUT have tried to stop someone teaching just because they happen to be unfit for the job.


In other NUT news:

Schools should return to an early 1980s style of liberal education with more time for play and less rigid methods of teaching children to read, according to the largest teachers' union.

Citing mounting evidence of a crisis in children's happiness and mental health, the National Union of Teachers will today debate calls to scrap the most restrictive elements of the national curriculum and reverse a government order that literacy be taught through phonics.

"Teachers want a return to a system which is liberal and flexible and not top-down [and] imposed by government. We want a return to a time when there was a potential for magic moments in the classroom," said Steve Sinnott, the general secretary of the NUT.

For all that the 1980s is considered a right wing decade, it was actually where the left reached an high water mark of influence in many sectors including education. I grew up in that decade and had a headmistress from the age of 5 to 8 who believed that children shouldn't be forced to learn. It seemed to involve a lot of playing with plasticine and little actual learning (I can't recall any books that I read at school in those years for example), if I hadn't spent my very first year at a school that thought that literacy was kind of important I don't know what would have happened.

That doesn't mean that a less prescriptive approach to teaching is off limits, it's just that the freedom to teach flexibly can only happen if it is combined with a freedom to choose schools and a freedom for schools to sack under performing teachers.

NUTfest 2008.

After last years NUTfest, where the head NUT made a rambling Gallowayesque speech denouncing capitalism, Zionism and of course Britain, I have been looking forwards to NUTfest 2008. Sadly it doesn't appear to have scaled the heights of last year just yet but there have been some highlights. Notably the demand by the new head NUT that independent schools be abolished:

“Let’s consider our own direction of travel – from private to public, towards bringing all schools into the state sector,” he said. “Then we would soon see some urgent improvements in our state system.”

I think that Mr Greenshields in suggesting that private schools do better because they have better pupils, because how else would taking over the independent sector improve the state sector? Of course their might well be another reason why he wants to get rid of them.

The relatively strong performance of independent schools might have something to do with the fact that their staff don't attempt to sabotage the students education once a year by going out on strike unlike the chippy & workshy members of the NUT.

{first link via}

Quote of the Day.

Inayat Bunglawala writes:

An alcohol-fuelled attack on a Christian priest in east London has stirred up more Islamophobia

You see who the real victims are here!

Via

Pretexts For Terrorism.

When I referred in my previous post to how I focused too much on the arguments made by the antiwar crowd, one of the claims that I had in mind is the idea that it would cause more terrorism. The recent statement released in the name of Osama Bin Laden shows the problem with that line of reasoning:

Osama bin Laden accused Pope Benedict XVI of helping in a "new Crusade" against Islam and warned of a "severe" reaction to European publications of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that insulted many Muslims.

Bin Laden's new audiotape message raised concerns al-Qaida was plotting new attacks in Europe. Some experts said bin Laden, believed to be in hiding in the rugged Afghan-Pakistan border area, may be unable to organize an attack himself and instead is trying to fan anger and inspire his supporters to violence.

Sure the terrorists might find that an invasion of an Arab country is an excuse to commit terrorism, but if they also regard publishing cartoons or making obscure references to what medieval statesmen thought about Islam is an excuse for mass murder then it suggests that they were hardly going to lead productive and peaceful lives in the absence of an invasion. The Iraq invasion may well provide the pretext for a terrorist attack but it is not the real reason.

Iraq Five Years On.

The fifth anniversary of the start of Iraq war is coming up in the next couple of days. As I wasn't blogging at the time  I can't remember my precise views. I was though broadly in favour of it although I had reservations over how achievable some of the ambitions for the country were. After the massacres of Shias and Kurds after the allies had encouraged them to rise up at the end of the first Gulf War it seemed like a point of honour to rectify that mistake. Also I believed that a country in the Middle East that was a more or less open democracy would neutralise the attempts by Islamists to encourage young men into terrorism as the only way of accomplishing anything with their lives.

Overall though I did not enough attention to examining the claims of the proponents of the war and too much attention looking at what the opponents were saying. Just because the anti war case was mostly nonsense that did not preclude the pro war case from also being mostly wrong.

In my lifetime up to that point almost every war that Britain or the United States had entered (Falklands, Panama, Grenada, Iraq 1, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and others) had accomplished the stated aims in the face of nay saying by the anti war mob so I kind of assumed that any reservations that I thought of about Iraq, had been taken care of by the planners in the Pentagon and MOD.

Five years on I still believe that there was a case for entering Iraq but not a strong one, and not in the way that we did. There should have been far more troops, the Iraqi army should not have been disbanded and we should have moved to set up democratically elected bodies to administer Iraq within weeks of taking over.

Quote Of The Day.

"If we can get it right in our big cities, humanity has a future. That's what is at stake in this election."

Ken Livingstone keeping municipal government in perspective.

Persecution Fantasies.

In the group letter to the Guardian warning London's Oirish community about the sinister plans of the BNP to recruit them it states:

Only a generation ago, signs in British pubs and boarding houses reading: "No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs" - were not an uncommon sight.

Now by my reckoning generation is about 20-30 years and I very much doubt that these signs were around in the 1980s. In fact I doubt whether the signs were ever a common sight. Think about it, in a country with a large ethnically Irish population like Britain putting a sign like that in your window would be like painting a target an saying "Throw brick here". The sign has about as much basis in reality as the "No Irish Need Apply" signs that supposedly existed in the United States.

It's also rather strange to see that whenever someone shows an example of these all too common signs it's always the same sign, in other words one sign was put up once some time in the 1950s and the left uses that to propagate a myth of racial oppression. Actually the letter writers don't even go so far as linking to the solitary genuine example and instead link to a book by the Sex Pistols frontman John Lydon. In a world where the fictional incarceration of two make believe stoners is evidence of the inherent racism of the USA this is actually a relatively high standard of proof.

The paternal side of my family came over from Ireland yet they appear not to have endless tales of oppression, it turns out that the oppressors chose to target only those whose children and grandchildren would find it quite useful to identify to a persecuted group. Whether this is because left wing politicians and their groupies are bare faced liars or because parents with a strong disposition towards cultural self pity are likely to produce little race hustlers I do not know. The ironic thing is the creation of a narrative of racial victimisation is almost exactly the same as what the BNP do gain recruits.

We The Undersigned....

.... are pompous wankers whose self regard is not shared by anyone else. I suppose what gets me about these group letters is the sense of being lectured to by those who have demonstrated no particular reason why there opinion is of special importance. Without even looking at the subject of this letter it would be hard to see what credibility any of the signatories would have on any subject whatsoever, take a look at some of signatories before reading the letter and try and guess what the letter is about, and why these people are authorities on the subject:

Franz Ferdinand
Will Self
Peter Doherty
Tony Robinson
The Bluetones
Billy Bragg
Diane Abbott MP
Jon Cruddas MP
George Galloway MP
David Kelly, ex-Newcastle Utd, West Ham Utd and Republic of Ireland international
John McDonnell MP
Bob Crow, general secretary, RMT

Pete Doherty!!! Who is supposed to be called to action by the considered opinion of a cokehead?

Labour's Death Wish.

With the latest opinion polls indicating a 16 point lead for the Conservatives and Labour seemingly down to their core support of white, working class males in the North, what do Labour come up with? A plan to screw over white men:

White men could be legally blocked from jobs or promotions under controversial government plans to help women and black employees achieve equality.

Employers would be allowed to give jobs to qualified minority candidates in preference to other candidates under a change in discrimination law being drawn up by the Equalities Minister, Harriet Harman. The 'positive action' tactic, already used in the United States, has been a legal minefield in the UK and Harman's plans are likely to upset MPs who believe that merit alone should determine who is hired.

Brilliant, when Labour elected Harriet Harperson as their deputy leader it was obvious that it would end in tears. She may be able to push Labour's support below 20%.

Dutch Ban Bestiality.

I was going to speak up against this but I was feeling a little hoarse. That joke works much better when spoken aloud. Speaking up for zoophiles isn't a popular position but should our prisons really be filled with people whose only crime is to fancy a bit of cow, goat, pig, dog, frozen or chicken? Hell yeah!

As ever it is the details of animal sex cases that make them so hilarious, take the goat lover:

A CHEF had sex with a goat ? and was seen by a trainload of passengers, a court heard.

Stephen Hall, 23, lassoed the animal with his belt at the Paradise allotments near his home.

As the packed Hull to Bridlington train stopped at signals, dozens of passengers stared out in amazement.

....

British Transport Police Detective Inspector Dave Crinnion, who investigated, said: "I saw the goat the next day ? it did not seem too upset but it is difficult to tell."

That is good to know, but the part that really got my er goat was this:

Hall, who says he is gay, said after the hearing: "My friends have been giving me a lot of stick. They are all joking with me about it.

"I have never done anything like this before."

He has friends! I don't consider myself a judgmental sort but if you mount a goat we aren't going to be friends.

Via A Tangled Web.

Angry White Black man..

Hasn't Ali G already done the 'white man with a stupid goatee who thinks he's black and comes out with racial victimisation crap?'


Well this character the Guardian has invented 'Orlando Lima' seems not to have noticed, as he says:

Let's set the record straight on this race issue yet again. I'm a black man. Despite how close my skin tone is to white,

In that case I'm black too, just because my skin tone is white and my hair is blond that doesn't stop me being a victim of our kkkountry's racist power structure. Just like the equally black Mr Lima:

Stupid Poor People.

Polly Toynbee writes:

Child poverty is "boring" because it hasn't entered the political bloodstream..... But the word "poverty" plays badly with focus groups, even with the poor themselves: people are unconvinced it exists outside Africa.

So the people whom Polly is so keen to rescue from poverty, don't actually consider themselves to be in poverty? To me this suggests that the formal definition of poverty is not really measuring poverty. To Polly Toynbee this shows that she is better able to judge whether someone is impoverished than the poverty stricken wretch themselves.