Tuesday, 19 April 2011


How appropriate it is that a former cult leader should break his silence to endorse another cult. Had he been born later, one suspects he would have been a climate scientist.

COMMENT THREAD

The blogger's blogger describes the addiction in The Spectator, with an uncannily accurate assessment of the state of the art. Consider my friend Richard North, he writes:
... whose EU referendum blog has just had its ten millionth hit. His areas of interest and expertise are so broad, from the EU to defence procurement to Afghanistan to climate change to the NHS, that you need scarcely bother with newspapers: go to North and you'll get more accurate reporting and usually more scoops than almost anything in the print media. North performs this valuable service gratis because he happens to be a workaholic in a state of constant fury about the injustices of the world which he hopes (mostly in vain) to avenge with his burning sword of truth. It will, I fear, be the death of him.
A "state of constant fury" ... hmmmm. Everybody who knows me knows I'm a pussycat. Calm, friendly, tolerant, even-handed, laid back ... Can't think what the Dellers is talking about. But he's right about blogging. Read the rest of the piece.

COMMENT THREAD

That's what the Press Association says. I guess Gaddafi must be short of nicotine patches ... although it has to get permission from the UN first. But never fear ... it has drawn up a "concept of operations".

The EU has established an operations headquarters in Rome under the command of an Italian rear-admiral as part of its plan for a military deployment to Libya. The Ashton thing has written to Ban Ki Moon, the UN secretary-general, offering the military assets, but hey! The overture has been declined.

"The operation is agreed. It's ready to go when we get the nod from the UN," said an (unnamed) EU official. And behind the scenes in Brussels ... there is much ambivalence as well as attempts at point-scoring between the bigger member states.

The Libyan government, however, has told the EU where to put its Army firmly rebuffed a proposal from the European Union, saying "it would fight any foreign troops that landed on its soil, even if they were supposedly there to escort humanitarian aid convoys".

Dear God! It's like Ruritania meets Crossroads. You couldn't make this sort of stuff up. Even a comedy scriptwriter couldn't swing it. But never mind ... Pravda is on the case.

COMMENT: LIBYA THREAD

"To boost the European Parliament's popular legitimacy, an extra 25 MEPs should henceforth be elected from EU-wide lists in EP elections ... ". From an EU parliament press release. One should not promote violence, but I make the exception here.

COMMENT THREAD


Considering that this is what our boys and goils are supposed to be doing (preventing the deaths of all these innocent civilians) – when they can tear themselves away from the pool, that is – they arenot doing a very good job.

In fairness, though – although they are not being very fair to us the taxpayer, or even Libyan civilians – they have an impossible job. And that is why they should not be doing it. You either do it properly or not at all. We had neither the will nor the means to do the job properly, and neither was it our business, so we should not be there.

But, as ever, the road to Hell is paved with politicians' egos, or in this case with the bodies of 10,000 Libyans. And all because slimy Dave wanted to posture and preen amongst his scummy chums. What a brave man he is, now sending military advisors fresh from their victories in Southern Iraq and Helmand. One hopes they are well-stocked with iPods.

When that goes belly-up, no doubt the touchy-feely little Dave will smile his self-deprecating little smile, and let his chums tell him that at least "he tried". But it does not change one iota the fact that, by any metric you choose to apply, this adventure has been a dismal failure.

Not only that, the worst is yet to come. There is no recovery. With every passing day, Gaddafi looks more secure, and the lessons will be taken by every despot and thug from here to North Korea. Dave, the victor of Benghazi, they all salute you.

COMMENT: LIBYA THREAD

"Those who remember their Charles Dickens will remember exactly why Madame Defarge knits: she is recording in code the names of those members of the elite whom she will ensure are killed when the revolution comes. So I offer this as fair warning to the LibDem MEP Andrew Duff: I can knit".

In another delicious offering from Mary Ellen Synon, it's interesting how we are all beginning to use the same rhetoric, albeit some in a coded, guarded way. But anyone with a feel for history and an understanding of the way the world works knows that the political élites are lining themselves up for a fall.

With that, I really get a little tired of the people who are telling me that I should not write such things ... that I am getting a reputation for being "extreme". But some of these are people who revere Jefferson as the great historical figure, the great democrat and statesman. Yet it was he who wrote about governments fearing their people. Was he extreme?

Another thing here. There is much nonsense talked about the right to bear arms in the United States. What people lose sight of is that that right is for. It is not to allow Americans to defend their homes against burglars. It is there so that Americans can defend themselves against their government.

In recognises that, in the final analysis, if government gets out of control, the citizens of the nation must rise up, march on Washington and depose them, and - let's not beat about the bush here – if necessary, kill the politicians and their supporters. The American constitution and the freedom of the people is underwritten by the promise that, if the politicians get out of control and usurp their power, they will be killed.

There is also a recognition that it is unsafe to allow the state a monopoly of violence. And again let's not beat about the bush. Behind that nice, smiling Mr Scumeron stand ranks of uniformed thugs, some with guns and some with sticks. If you do not do as the State tells you, they will come and get you. If you resist, they will forcibly restrain you, beat you up and perhaps kill you.

The State's power, therefore, is underwritten by violence. And in the way they have all but disarmed us, the State has a near monopoly of violence. But in fact it doesn't. The classic revolution relies on state thugs - either the army or police - changing sides, or the people killing the thugs and stealing their weapons. The more police thugs who carry arms, the easier that will get.

In the meantime – and for a short time only - they have the power. But there is a huge difference between a state that is governed by consent and with the willing participation and support of the people, and one ruled by force, where people obey through fear and coercion. Here in England, we are moving from one to the other. The latter is unstable, and must eventually break, even if it takes decades to do so.

For the moment, though, all we can do is watch and wait. But, as with Madame Defarge, we can remind them up there, those with their noses in the air and their easy contempt for our aspirations, that we too can knit. If they are too stupid to mend their ways, the revolution will come - and we, the committee of public safety, have their names.

COMMENT THREAD


Andrew Ryan is the author of his own misfortune, but the mishandling of this episode by the establishment is what will be remembered.

In particular, we had Inspector Paul Marshall, of Carlisle CID, saying after the sentencing: "Today's result shows how seriously we take hate crime in the county". It does no such thing, of course. It simply reinforces the impression that whites are being dealt with more severely for the same crime than Muslims.

And, if that is the message Carlisle magistrates wanted to send out, then they have succeeded. They have done a very stupid thing. And there is nothing more corrosive than a sense of unfairness, where one group gets the idea that it is being treated differently than another. But, asRaedwald points out, this is increasingly the case.

Littlejohn makes the same points - except he gets paid very highly for making them – but no one is listening. This is unsurprising, when you think what we are dealing with - the rot starts at the top and there we have a prime minister who "is an opportunist who doesn't believe in anything". So says Peter Hitchens.

In that context, our attention is drawn to the closing parts of Dave's speech on AV. The link between this and Ryan is not self-evident, but it is all part of the continuum. Dave tells us that: "If you want a system that lets you, as the Americans say, 'throw the rascals out'. If you want a system that makes your politicians accountable ... You must vote on May 5th, and you must vote No to AV".

This is a man who is not living on this planet. He is not in touch with reality. We have a man who refused us a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and who is content with ceding the nation's powers to an unelected supreme government in Brussels, one which we can't throw out and most certainly is not accountable. And he has the sheer brass neck to come up with that trite garbage?

This isn't a speech. It is taking the piss. There is no other way of dealing with something like this. You can't treat it fairly and honestly, and consider it on its merits. It is not a fair and honest speech. The only thing you can do is reject it in his entirety for what it is - a studied, deliberate insult to our intelligence. There can be no half-measures. For all his fine suits and expensive manners, this man is as much scum as Andrew Ryan.

But this is the scum that has risen to the top, and defines politics as we know it, for the time being. It is the likes of this man which inhabit the top of the Multi-Kult pyramid, divorced from reality, smug, arrogant and self-assured. It cannot last though. This man is sitting on a powder keg – even our sheeple have their limits and are some day going to rebel.

COMMENT THREAD


If you had been foolish enough to watch on TV yesterday the programme which the BBC passes off as news, you would have come away with the impression that the most important thing in the universe was the coming referendum on AV.

The cry is taken up by the MSM, with the likes of the Daily Mail offering us its leader headed: "How apathy over AV vote threatens Britain's democracy". The sentiment is, of course, fatuous, indicative of the shallow, one-dimensional thinking that afflicts British politics and the media.

There is no apathy, only indifference – which is a completely different thing, even though the Mailleader-writer manages to confuse the two. Indifference is a rejection of the agenda set by the political classes – a simple statement that their values and priorities are not ours.

The real threat to democracy, of course, comes with the steady encroachment of the European Union, the refusal of the media to recognise and acknowledge it, and the ignorance and gullibility of the general public. That very much makes the media part of the problem, about which the likes of the Mail are doing absolutely nothing.

As for the AV referendum – it is an insult. We wanted a referendum on the EU treaty, and they gave us this instead. The referendum itself, and the result, is a complete irrelevance. It matters not HOW we vote, when we are ruled by an unelected supreme government in Brussels.

However, the other aspect of this attempt to set the agenda is, of course, to provide a distraction from the more important and pressing issues of the day. Far more important, for instance, is thegrowing crisis over Tunisian immigrants. Even The Economist is flagging this up as presenting "the greatest danger to European unity", over and above the economic crisis and the bailouts.

This issue is all over the international press and the agencies, but you will struggle to find any serious coverage in the British MSM. And we are long past the days where there can be any suggestion that this is accidental. The dumbing down is combined with a quite deliberate attempt to keep the population focused on trivialities, "bread and circuses" and issues which interest the political classes – hence the AV referendum.

Too often, one fears, our politically naïve, gullible and increasingly poorly educated populus falls for it, but there are occasional signs about which one can be optimistic. A Bristol firm has just announced that it is cancelling two coaches for the royal wedding, through lack of interest. That is one of those "bread and circuses" issues that the media is desperately talking up, but it is now so over-hyped that people are turning off in their hundreds of thousands.

What we must learn from this, and what they must be told, is that their agenda is not our agenda – we have to learn to reject theirs. When the media or the political classes tell us to look in one direction, then is the time to look the other way, to see what is really coming. And as for their AV referendum, they can stick that where the sun does not shine. It is theirs, not ours and we want nothing to do with it.

COMMENT THREAD

"Only a quarter of UK population concerned about climate change", says The Ecologist. More specifically, a survey conducted by Ipsos MORI found that only a quarter of Britons believe climate change is one of the most important environmental issues facing the UK today.

The Ecologist calls this "ambivalence", demonstrating once again that the Greenies are totally out of touch. In reality, climate change has dropped so far off the radar that you would have to go ferreting around in the Challenger Deep to find a spark of interest round here. Indifference doesn't even begin to describe it. People don't even make jokes about it any more.

By contrast, we are told, in Asian countries like India, South Korea and Japan, 50 percent of those polled consider climate change to be one of the most important environmental issues. Well, that's their problem. Nothing to do with us Guv. Although, I'll bet the little Ipsos MORI wonks didn't do much polling around Fukushima.

COMMENT THREAD


We're in "bread and circus" territory here, as the mindless media pile into the (front page) red herring raised by the idiot Hennessy. With not a brain cell between them, The Guardian's Richard Ehrlich and the hand wavers earnestly discuss types of date markings, and their relative merits.

Autonomous Mind takes a jaundiced look at the subject, noting that, to a man (and girlie), the media are oblivious to the singular fact that there is to be no change. Despite this, the story is repeated by dozens of media outlets, all chewing over the same misinformation, with not a single reference to the EU.

Then today up pops our favourite girlie with a new headline: "New labelling scheme to make clear the difference between 'best before and 'use by'". Consumers, we are told, will be encouraged to adopt a "sniff it and see" approach to old food under Government plans to cut waste. That is what ministers are reduced to ... telling the electorate to sniff their food, because they no longer have the power to change the labelling.


Thus, using exactly the same picture as she did last time (above), the girlie tells us that, no ... after all that, the date marking isn't going to be changed. The ministers are just going to change theguidelines ... just like the Labour ministers did before them, to absolutely no effect. The EU produces the law ... British ministers produce guidelines, telling us how to understand it.

And this time we even get to know why ministers are so useless. Richard Dodd of the British Retail Consortium informs us: "You cannot just do away with 'best before' and' use by dates' ... it is governed by EU legislation". Two years ago that was the case. Nothing has changed. Eat your heart out Hennessy ... please - and stop wasting our time.

Meanwhile, the rest of the media cretins are still romping around the subject ... a new maxim for them: all the stupidity that's not fit to print ... give it to us, and we'll print it. As for the Cleggerons, do they really think we are so thick that we would not notice their little games?

COMMENT THREAD

John Page in The Purple Scorpion picks up on the "True Finns" phenomenon in the Finnish general election, where an anti-EU party has made significant progress. Don't expect much from the British MSM though – Reuters has done it, but the girlie in the Failygraph really doesn't get the point. Our babies don't do "Europe" at all well.

Their pathetic little minds can't cope with it, so anything that comes out has to be heavily filtered, to stifle any independent thinking. Such as the hand wavers don't disappoint. The True Finns are nationalists, therefore they must be "extreme". It must be so comfortable and reassuring to live in such a small, sterile little bubble.

Page also deals with the Greek situation, as the government there stares down the abyss towards default, denying the inevitable. We all know it is going to happen – must happen. But the time is not yet right for our masters to admit it. The plebs must be conditioned, so the story is filtered out in dribs and drabs. Once they can get used to it, and the hand wavers judge that the news will not come as too much of a shock, they will let us have the next bit.

The funny thing is that, while the babies dribble (who the f**k cares what Katy did next?), the blogs get on with giving us the real news. Witterings from Witney is a must read, and have a look at Raedwald, who has a classic example of baby dribble.

Unfortunately, the bulk of the plebs will continue lapping it up. Do we therefore, have contempt for the "great unwashed" as well as the fool journalists that produce their pitiful wares? Well, there is the madness of the crowd, but there is also the wisdom. I am an eternal optimist and live in hope that the latter will prevail.

COMMENT THREAD




Well, there isn't one really - not a substantive difference. But the articles are two years apart. One is from the Baby Failygraph of 10 June 2009, while the other is from the Sunday Failygraphof yesterday. This, in a copycat piece, has been reproduced by The Daily Fail, which has recyled two-year-old statistics, without so much as a blush.

I don't why this sort of low-grade journalism upsets me so much, but it does. But what really gets to me is the gullibility of the reading public. As I wrote on the Failygraph website, I wish I had a pound for every time somebody told me the don't believe what they read in the newspapers - and then go on to demonstrate that they believe exactly what they are told.

So here we have a recycled story, that is completely wrong yet - to judge from a lot of comments ... especially the very early ones - a lot of people swallow the bait, hook line and sinker. At least, to give it what little credit is due, one is able to say that much on the comments. Not so The Daily Mail, which premoderates and then loses critical comment.


What particularly depresses me is that, after the last effort two years ago - when Lord Willoughby de Broke called the Government's bluff - you would have thought the media would have learned its lesson, and the public would be less gullible. It was not to be. And when we have neither media nor public which can recognise who are masters really are, we have a serious problem.

Helen takes the cudgels with the cry: "labelling is an EU competence!" One feels this is almost like crying: "Soylent Green is PEOPLE!" Would the media even be interested if the EU Commission ate babies?

So to the bigger problem is that I don't really know what the answer is, other than to underline that which is already obvious - that newspapers are part of the problem. If you want to be ill-informed, read a newspaper. But it is more than that - theirs is a betrayal of trust ... they purport to keep the Government in check, but they are just playing games. They are the babies - and the EU Commission has them for breakfast.

(And just a little note on yesterday's pic ... it shows unwrapped bread - which, of course, doesn't have any labelling.)

COMMENT THREAD


While Dave basks in the reflected glory of saving all those plucky Libyan rebels from a fate worse than death (not), it seems that the Brylcream boys and their bomber baron friends are being forced to slum it in four-star tourist hotels in the Adriatic resort of Conversano.

At one, the Grand Hotel d'Aragona, over 100 RAF pilots and their support staff are said to having to hide the shame of living on a package rate of about £50 a night, including half-board – and so austere are the conditions (pictured) that they are doubtless getting hardship pay as well.

However, just the en suite costs are getting on for about £150,000 a month, and then there are about other 600 of "our brave boys" having to slum it in similar Mediterranean resorts, under similar conditions of hardship. That puts the hotel bill up to about £1.2 million a month. But since that is only the price of one of their Storm Shadow bombs, the MoD bods must reckon it is good value, especially as it is us and not them paying the bills.

However, it seems that we are also paying rent to the Ities for the use of their nearby air base at Gioia del Colle, to the tune of £30 million a week, which rather puts the drinks and swimming pool bill in the shade.

Since we are supposedly helping out the Italians, not least helping to restore their oil contracts with whoever takes over, this is redolent of the British Army having to pay rent to the Kermits for use of the trenches in France during the First World War.

That, incidentally, was denied by no lesser personage than Winston Churchill, although he did admit that we paid £25.5 million for the transport of British troops on French railways (about £3 billion-plus in today's money).

We paid our war expenses, said Churchill and various arrangements were made which can, of course, "from time to time be represented in an unfavourable light by persons who by implication or otherwise have anti-French bias". You bet!

Anyhow, in current money, it looks as if keeping the boys and goils out in the sunny Med is going to cost well over £1 billion for the projected six-monthly deployment, and that is even before they start playing with their toys or dropping any bombs.

Retired Admiral Sandy Woodward, it seems, is a little miffed, as he is saying that this is more expensive than running a carrier, even with the toys thrown in. But then, nothing is too good for our brave boys and goils, especially when we are paying the bills. Trebles all round, and pass the suntan cream!!

COMMENT THREAD


This Booker column story is almost a throwback to the "good old days" when Booker and I were doing "red tap folly" stories and other such delights. Booker describes it as the "perfect little vignette" of the benefits we derive from our EU government, where Calor, our largest supplier of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), have been dumped on by the EU by a particularly mad regulation.

Recently, Booker tells us, the firm spent millions of pounds on a new fleet of state-of-the-art, British-built tankers, so much more efficient than those they replaced that the firm now needs ten percent fewer vehicles.

On 1 July, however, a new regulations come into force, known as The Carriage of Dangerous Goods and Use of Transportable Pressure Equipment Regulations 2009, based on an EU Directive laying down Europe-wide standards for "transportable pressure equipment" (TPED). This means that Calor will gradually have to replace its new tankers with ones that are heavier, more cumbersome and carry less gas, costing them an extra £3 million a year.

The new requirements for thicker-shelled tankers might make sense in the hot countries of southern Europe, where the temperature may necessitate extra protection. But as our Department for Transport has accepted, there is no need for them in Britain, the only country where Calor's tankers are allowed to operate.

However, when the directive was approved at a meeting of the Council of Ministers, the only British representative present was one of our permanent officials in Brussels, who said that the UK supported it.

There is a story here, and one that is rarely told. The Directive was actually signed off in 1999, in the earlier stages of the Blair administration, and if ministers had kicked up enough fuss, doubtless they would have got an exemption, as there is no cross-border transport involved.

But that is not the way things happen. While it is possible to get "derogations", that requires getting the support of other member states, for which there is always a political price to pay. And the UK always prefers to husband its political capital for more important issues, although for what we are never told.

So it is that Paul Blacklock, Calor's director of strategy, then noticed that David Cameron had recently launched a "Red Tape Challenge", calling upon the public to identify "those unnecessary, frustrating regulations" that are "burdening businesses, hurting the economy and damaging society".

He wrote to Dave to point out that this regulation was a perfect example of what he was talking about. The new, less efficient tankers that his firm will be required to buy will simply add more vehicles to our congested roads, increase his drivers’ hours and fuel costs, emit more CO2 – for no benefit to anyone.

As the Red Tape Challenge website bluntly explains, however, "the UK government cannot scrap EU regulations", although it does go on to say that the Government does "recognise the burden they impose".

Indeed, they represent around four fifths of our total burden affecting business, a proportion that is rising all the time. Still, at least this makes clear – despite Cameron's fine words – that when our masters speak, there is nothing we can do but obey.

COMMENT THREAD

"The 'best before' dates on food packaging are set to be scrapped in a drive by ministers to stop millions of tons of perfectly edible produce being thrown away each year". So says the Sunday Failygraph today, in a pathetically inadequate report which misses out two absolutely crucial words: "European Union".

The point is, of course, that the "best before" dates are not going to be scrapped. This is because food labelling is an exclusive EU competence and the provisions are set out inDirective 2000/13/EC of 20 March 2000 on "the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to the labelling, presentation and advertising of foodstuffs" (pictured).

The Directive is transposed into British law by the Food Labelling Regulations 1996 as amended (several times), and there are absolutely no plans to amend the Directive, or change the Regulations.

Nevertheless, the Failygraph is telling us that it has "learned" that the Cleggerons want "an end to the confusing proliferation of instructions on food labelling which have greatly expanded over the past decade".

Thus, we are told, instead of marking food "best before" a certain date, retailers will in future have to produce labels which give details of the health risks associated with individual foods that remain on shelves or in the fridge for a lengthy period before being consumed.

Bluntly, the story is wrong. The Directive remains in force and ministers are not in a position to abolish "best before" labelling on pre-packed foods. Furthermore, if or when there is any change, it will come from Brussels, not Whitehall.

Interestingly, the Baby Failygraph did a story on this on 12 July 2010, with the heading "Best-before' is well past its sell-by date". It was written by Philip Johnston who suggested that: "A 'use-by' date would stop billions of pounds of food being thrown away".

This was on the back of research by Morrisons, the supermarket chain, found that 55 per cent of people will throw away an item that is past its "best-before" date, despite the fact it is safe to eat. Every year as a nation we chuck out an estimated 400,000 tons of perfectly good food because we think it has gone off, or is about to, when it hasn't and isn't.

But, like the present writers, Johnston omitted those magic words "European Union", as he so often does. Nothing happened after his article, and nothing can until the EU decides to act.

So why, oh why do our journalists and politicians play these silly games? What is it about them that they can no longer deal with the real world, and admit that we no longer make our own laws in a whole raft of areas? How much longer do we have to put up with stupid, empty stories like these?

COMMENT THREAD

We are missing the point: the real problems with the European Union; our bloated, centralized, inefficient and corrupt welfare and social security system; above all, our education system. Too difficult ... so much easier to scream abuse about foreigners of all description.

COMMENT THREAD

We wanted a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Instead, they gave us a referendum on AV – an obsession of a small cadre of the political classes, mainly the Lib-Dims. Then The Independent tells us there is "apathy and anger" and that both camps are having to "struggle to convince voters of importance of 5 May poll".

Well, there is certainly anger – but there is no apathy. Both camps are struggling because the poll is not important. Just because the political classes - still less the media - think it is important does not make it so.

That is something the political classes seem to have difficulty understanding. If they address issues of importance and interest to us, we take an interest in them. But as long as they devote themselves to their own concerns and ignore ours, then the electorate is only too willing to reciprocate. But it should not be called apathy. This is indifference, which is not the same thing.

Further, when you cross-link issues – which the politicians hate you doing - and you see the pig's ear they are making of things, they should count themselves fortunate that it is just indifference they are having to confront.

Unfortunately, they are bolstered by the media, which is setting an agenda which daily becomes more bizarre and distant from the real world. Even the doyen of critical comment doesn't really get it. In an incredibly limp piece, Simon Heffer wants Cameron to "take the lead" in demanding that discussions for the future (of the EU) be conducted on a basis of what it is, rather than on what the eurocrats would like things to be.

If that is the best contribution he can make to the debate, he need not have bothered – as some of his commenters have been quick to point out. But then, none of these political commentators can really cut it. They have yet to understand that they are also part of the problem, and are never going to contribute to the solution.

For the moment, though, they will still find humour and derision, but it won't be that long before that evaporates and anger takes its place.

COMMENT THREAD