A tale of three cities - by Richard... Saturday, April 30, 2011

A tale of three cities - by Richard... Saturday, April 30, 2011

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Craig Easdale wrote: "This was a great event, and the behaviour of everyone was good on the whole, up until the police arrived. I feel if the event was shut down more calmly a lot of drama could have been avoided and the police definitely didn't handle it as well as they could have".

COMMENT THREAD

Share

Print ready

The ring of servitude - by Richard...

While the crowd in the Mall waved their plastic, printed-in-China flags, it is interesting to note that the royal weddlings acknowledged our real masters, flying their flag rather than that of the province in which they reside - on their illegal number plate. How interesting also that the "UK" under the ring was replaced by "♥U" ... was that addressed to the EU?

Iain Martin puts the tawdry ceremony in perspective. We have a supreme government which specialises in hollowing out the institutions of state, robbing them of power and meaning, but leaving the facade in place.

He goes a little off the rails, stating that: "What was originally a free trade organisation rapidly became an anti-democratic supra-national monster". It was always that, and never intended to be anything else. It is not and never has been a free trade organisation. The choice between that and a customs union was not accidental.

But, writes Martin, the most fervent Europhiles — such as Tony Blair — were very cunning. They realised that to make Britain more European they would have to dismantle steadily the traditional structures of government and erode this country's sense of its own distinctive institutions.

Yet so easily are we taken in by the fluff - and the ceremony without the deeper significance is fluff ... just theatre. But even though the mask slipped as the Mark of Cain embellished the royal plaything, the crowd still roared. They are being offered bread and circuses, while our nation is being stolen from us under our very eyes.

For the "colleagues" who watched yesterday's charade, they must feel it's as easy as stealing candy from babies, especially with our gushing media. You do wonder about those poor, lost souls though ... "royal couple with a common touch" says The Times, underneath its headline telling us that the weddlings have been "whisked away by helicopter". I mean to say, how boringly common is that?

COMMENT THREAD

Share

Print ready

That narrative again - by Richard...

Fourteen riot vans were cruising the Stokes Croft area of Bristol last night – three of them Welsh, containing the finest thugs the principality can supply – the best part of a hundred police. Thus have community relations deteriorated, to the extent that the police only dare go into the area mob-handed, tooled up with sticks and riot gear.

All they are doing, of course, is picking at the sore – an army of occupation imposing their writ through violence and thuggery. The first riot was triggered by them, their intrusive, aggressive and ill-judged policing. The second riot was a protest against the police behaviour in the first. The main players, directly involved in the events say so, and even the Tesco spokesman agrees that it is not about the supermarket.

Yet, despite all this, the brain-dead media can't cope with the idea that, in one of Britain's major cities, we have a police force out of control. Instead of investigating and reporting the situation as it is, they continues to trivialise the events, labelling the disturbances as "Tesco riots".

Classic of the genre is the mind-rotting Sun newspaper, which parades its ignorance and prejudice with: "Cops' new battle with anti-Tesco mob" (above), publishing a series of lurid pictures and even more lurid prose that completely misses the point.

Different only in style rather than accuracy is The Daily Failygraph with its headline parading: "Two charged after police injured in Tesco riot". Continuing the meme, the strap tells us: "Two people have been charged by police after protests against the opening of a new Tesco store turned violent".

Then, in a classic example of why local newspapers are not worth buying, we have two offerings from the Bristol Evening Post. Having studied the videos of the event, read carefully the dozens of eye-witness reports and then pieced together a relatively, coherent narrative, it really is very clear that this was a spontaneous uprising against the police, and that upwards of a thousand or more people were involved. This was not a "small minority" of troublemakers – it was the larger part of the Stokes Croft community.

Yet, first in this piece and then this, the local newspaper attempts to project the falsehood that the disturbance was caused just by a minority, "nothing more than mindless thugs, intent on destroying property and inflicting serious injury".

Inevitably, the meme is picked up by the local MP, Stephen Williams, a Lib-Dim who displays the classic stupidity of the breed, condemned the violence in Cheltenham Road, and describing it as a "bad advert" for the city.

After spending several hours with the police yesterday, to get his indoctrination correct, and speaking to a carefully selected group of residents, the mighty mouth feels that legitimate, peaceful protests against Tesco had been spoilt by a minority determined to make trouble. "This has been hijacked by hard-left, extreme anarchists or anti-capitalists ... These people, I don't know what they are – self-indulgent vandals – probably in a few years' time they will be going on nice middle-class skiing holidays".

At least, when one is confronted with genuine "mindless thugs", there is some sort of remedy, but against "mindless MPs", there is little protection. "The police have to defend themselves, local people and property", the moron dribbles. "I hope it will end peacefully and we can move on".

Highlighting these falsehoods is very far from pedantry. When the media and MPs get it this wrong, we are in very grave danger from a police force which is already dangerously out of control and over which there seems little restraint.

We are now learning of a police operation in London where twenty squatters were arrested ahead of the royal wedding. Police sources said the raids were made as part of investigations into recent outbreaks of disorder in central London, including student and anarchist riots. "These arrests are part of ongoing proactive work to tackle suspected criminality," a Scotland Yard spokesman said.

This is perilously close to the fictional doctrine of having the police arrest us for what we might do, rather than what we have done. By the time this becomes established, the fears that we are lurching into a police state will have come true – by which time, or course, it will be too late.

What stands between us that that state are active, alert MPs and a robust, free media. Yet we no longer seem to have either. Instead, we are in the grip of the narrative. When that takes hold, we are in serious trouble.

COMMENT THREAD

Share

Print ready

Another grand day - by Richard...

Marking our slow but inexorable transition from a free society, we have today the EU's herbal medicines directive coming into force. This is a measure that has been going through the systemfor ages. It has absolutely no legitimacy and exists only to reinforce the grip of big pharma on the market, excluding a small but important sector of competition – and choice.

I suppose it is significant that today is also the anniversary of Hitler's death (yesterday was the anniversary of his marriage to Eva Braun), marking the final stage of the long process of breaking free from the grip of the Nazi regime which had terrorised Europe.

And while no-one sensible would begin to suggest that we are in any way seeing the dark clouds of a new totalitarian state descend over Europe, it is germane to note the aspirations of a new enlightenment - Churchill's "sunlit uplands" – are eroded daily, as the combination of EU and domestic bureaucracy extends its grip.

We cannot say we are less free than we were in 1945. Britain then was, effectively, in the grip of a dictatorship – with laws more draconian in some ways than ever the Nazis imposed – and it was a long time before the process of liberalisation got under way.

Arguably, it was very far from complete before it was reversed, by our own bureaucrats and then by the torrent of laws coming from the "Common Market", that was to become our supreme government, the European Union.

In 1945, however, we were "free" in the sense that we were self-governing, albeit that we were so broke that the IMF called the shots before very long. But now we are broke again, and not free. We are no longer a self-governing nation. We see it in small things – many products we took for granted, we can no longer buy. Today, that list got longer.

Increasingly, it is not just the small things, and the intrusions daily become more apparent. Yesterday, though, we saw an orgy of celebration in the Mall, with a storm of Union Jacks, an increasingly empty symbol as our government moves to Brussels and ships of the Royal Navy already fly the ring of stars.

So, this is another grand day for us to celebrate, another in the long march towards the loss of our freedoms that our parents and grandparents fought to preserve. We can wave our Chinese-made plastic flags, but the freedom and the aspirations that they represent have long gone.

COMMENT THREAD

3Share

Print ready

Getting a result - by Richard...

A Glasgow "street party" to celebrate the royal wedding has been broken up by the polis. But what is so delicious about this jolly little riot is that it was triggered after the organisers took David Cameron at his word and set up a street party without permission of the local gauleiters.

Two teenagers had organised the rave in Glasgow's Kelvingrove Park, using facebook to advertise the event. Over four thousand turned up, many proceeding to get rat-arsed. Rather predictably chaos ensued as the drunken revellers turned violent.

It was then left for the police to intervene, with officers on bicycles attempting to make arrests. Much to their surprise, this attempt went pear-shaped as they were surrounded by other "guests", who offered the police various helpful suggestions.

To entertain the rest of the bystanders, the police then obligingly organised a mounted charge on bottle-throwers, who had now promoted the event to a full-blown riot. As groups of "innocent" revellers caught up in the mayhem applauded the display, hundreds of missiles were thrown at the police, but only three were injured - police, that is ... no missiles were hurt in the making of this riot.

A spokesman for Dave was not contacted but one suspects that, if asked, he might have denied that a drunken bash by a horde of Glaswegians in a public park was what he had in mind when he attacked "pen pushers and busybodies" for thwarting royal wedding celebrations. But he did say: "They have no right to stop you from having fun. I am the Prime Minister and I am telling you if you want to have a street party, you go ahead and have one".

However, many would assert that there is no greater entertainment for the average Glaswegian than for them to get smashed out of their skulls and then indulge in prolonged, gratuitous violence against the police. And unlike the wuzzies in Bristol, this lot managed to smash the windows of at least three police vans.

On the other hand, Strathclyde finest enjoy nothing more than beating up drunken Glaswegians, on which basis, it looks as if everyone did have "fun", just as Dave wanted. This once, taking Cameron's advice has yielded a result. There is no truth to the rumour, though, that Glasgow council is sending the clean-up bill to No. 10.

COMMENT THREAD