The Coffee House Wall – 26th/1st Sept

Posted on August 27, 2013

This is the Coffee House Wall for this week. I won’t say that it is your chance to communicate with us, as we are all in this together. It is, nevertheless, the Conservative Blog post that has no particular theme, and where everything is on topic. Let’s just remember that we want to avoid ad hominem attacks on others. We don’t want to engage with trolls. We want to moderate our language ourselves as responsible and mature adults, choosing to use fruity language only where it is necessary. This is our opportunity to show what the Spectator Coffee House Wall could have been like.

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310 thoughts on “The Coffee House Wall – 26th/1st Sept”

  3. I received this email from Miss Lukas Wilson. Certainly the funds would come in handy and prevent muy home being repossessed and the electricity turned off. I shall respond to Miss Lukas’ kind offer and post our correspondence here…

    ————————-

    This is Miss Lukas willson from Trinidad &Tobago.I am writing from the hospital in Cote D’Ivoire, therefore this mail is very urgent as you can see that I am dying in the hospital. I was told by the doctor that I was poisoned and has got my liver damaged and can only live for some months.

    I inherited some money ($2.5 Million) from my late father and I cannot think of anybody trying to kill me apart from my step mother in order to inherit the money, she is an Ivorien by nationality.

    I want you to contact my servant with this informations below:

    Mater Augustin Maranatha.
    Address: Rue De La Princess L/G 152 Cocody
    Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire.

    Email monligth01@ymail.com

    He will give you the documents of the money and will direct you to a well known lawyer that I have appointed to him, the lawyer will assist you to change the documents of the money to your name to enable the bank transfer the money to you.

    This is the favour I need when you have gotten the money :-

    (1) Give 10% of the money to my servant, Mr Augustin as he has been there for me throught my illness and I have promised to support him in life. I want you to take him along with you to your country and esterblish him as your son.

    (2) Give 10% of the money to Charity Organisations and Churches on my name so that my soul may rest in peace.

    Note;This should be a code between you and Augustin in this transactioin “Hospital” any mail from him, the barrister he will direct you to, without this code “Hospital” is not from the barrister, Augustin, the bank or myself as I don’t know what will happen to me in the next few hours.

    (3) the lawyer’s name is Mc Lambert Adams. And Let Augustin send you his National ID or his passport to be sure of whom you are dealing with. Augustin is so little therefore guide him.

    May God bless you and use you to accomplish my wish.

    Pray for me always.

    Lukas Nanda Willson.
    Thank you

  5. Here is my first reply….

    ————————

    Dear Mater Augustin Maranatha

    I was so surprised and pleased to receive an email from Miss Lukas Wilson who is dying in hospital. This is very sad of course, but I cannot tell you how useful this money will be for me, and I will promise to do much good with it.

    Please let me know what I should do to receive this money?

    I understand the secret code word is HOSPITAL.

    With best wishes

    Peter Wimsy

  8. Peter,

    I hope you realise that if poor Mrs Wilson is talking $T&T (as opposed to US$) her fortune is only worth about £250k. So don’t commit to dividing the money up and keep it for yourself and with perhaps a tenner for the poor house in Maidstone.

  9. I managed to keep one of these going for three months once, by pretending that the correspondent had struck lucky by stumbling across a famous, and stupid, movie star. I always refused to reveal my name to him, “as my fans may not approve of my considering sending money to someone I have never met, or even heard of”.

    Anyway, the scammer was most accommodating and did everything I asked him to … “just to satisfy me that you are who you say you are”. Eventually, I got bored with it, after about six weeks of almost daily correspondence, and wrote telling him I had married my manicurist and he needed money to set up an upmarket manicure salon.

    Why not answser this one and publish the correspondence here, for a little light relief? This one seems to be original enough to be from the ME. Most of them are from Africa, with Nigeria being particularly prolific.

  10. I haven’t had an offer like that for a long time. They used to address me as “My dear”, which I found old fashioned and touching.
    Didn’t take up the offer, though.

  11. On R5Live just now, Brooks Newmark (Con Braintree) has been putting the case for intervention in Syria. He is principally calling it a moral imperative to act to support what he has repeatedly called the ‘moderate (Sunni) majority’.
    What he and his supporters fail to address is why the Sunnis, with their overwhelming numbers and Qatari and Saudi arms and finance, are incapable of defeating Assad after all this time. Additionally he fails to explain why these ‘moderates’ will drift to the Sunni and Iraqi based beheaders Jabhat Al_Nusra (currently providing job opportunities to British jihadis). JAN are supposed to be a small minority and yet the likes of Newmark want our foreign policy to be guided by their presence. According to him their very presence risks the descent of a supposedly (relatively) secular Arab state into extremism (I recall similar descriptions being applied to Iraq against invasion) and so we must ‘do something’.
    This is crazy.
    Newmark has also made some extremely credulous statements about the Russians and seems to think that the UK and USA can credibly change Syria for the better. His moral imperative argument is a very selective one when one looks around the world. While have done wonders for the world in the past it is doubtful that we ever had the capacity to radically overhaul !$lamic cesspits. One thing is guaranteed with any intervention. More hate more ingratitude and more millions (billions?) wasted.
    Syria hasn’t signed the Chemical Weapons Convention (one of only about 5 states) although it has had plenty of time and opportunity to do so. The fact that it hasn’t shows how disinterested it is in our opinion. It may well have developed new variants with freelance Russian help but our condemnation matters not and deploying their sick toys on themselves is not a reason for puny gesture politics from us.

    One side issue of this mess is that if we do get involved it will give Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and their allies excuse to blame Israel (Galloway is already at it) Perhaps that is why so many on the left are in favour of intervention?

  13. … and in similar vein from the same source, John Derbyshire in mischievous, meaningful mode:

    http://takimag.com/article/why_we_cant_talk_about_iq_john_derbyshire#axzz2cpPIGjOo

    a wonderful writer and warrior against the Gramsci gremlins, is John D.

    Dumped from National Review he his fighting a rearguard action, courtesy of the old Spectator playboy; I’m less impressed by Theodoracopulus as a columnist, btw, but his mag. is far better than than the current Speccy – great bunch of regular contributors – as many here have noted (and linked) over the years.

  15. Whatever happened to the idiotic Fergus Pickering? I would rather send half a dozen half-starved ferrets down me strides than read any more of his abominable poems. How dare he inflict them on an unsuspecting public. And meanwhile, the Complete Poetical Works of Phoebe Flood is currently languishing at #2,627,866 in the Amazon sales rankings.

    I once saw a sixty year old ‘schoolgirl’ on the Pentonville Road. She did not have many teeth left. Maybe this deficit was expedient in the context of what she had been up to the previous night. Reckon ‘she’ might have been Fergus ‘himself’.

  16. ACP (15:44)

    Heh, heh, heh! Perhaps he finally succumbed to my persistent imperative: “FOF!”

    But he’s still plonking away in Trolltopia occasionally. When I lurk there, occasionally, to read Austin Barry’s posts (and perchance, to feed my sado/masochistic streak) I’ve noticed his style.

    I note that Rhoda has sadly cashed in her chips from that casino. I tried a couple of posts myself a couple of weeks back on Liddle’s patch , which got through. Then somebody dug the ‘censor’ in the ribs and the block went up again. Childish kuntz.

    Disquis now post Austin’s stuff to me by email, so I don’t really have to add to the footfalls any more.

  18. Here is the response from the Miss Lukas team over at Scam-International…

    My special greetings to you and your entire family, thank you for your message thank you once again for your message ,My madam said that i should give you the contact of the lawyer so that you will contact him and he will give you the details on how the fund will be transferred to you there in your country and help you to change the whole documents of the fund to your name as the new beneficiary to the fund,

    Since when this problem started i have been running around from hospital to a hiding place in the church, right now the condition of my Madam is getting worst now and i can’t predict what tomorrow will be if her condition continues this way.

    My Madam is dying there in the hospital sir please I want you to do all possible for me to join you. I will like to thank you again for your mail and understanding towards the fund and love you have for my Madam, my prayer is that almighty God will continue to reward you abundantly for everything you are doing in life for your consideration in helping me as your son.

    Her condition right now is painful to me, and she is the only one i have now. I cried when this problem started but all I know is that almighty God will fight for her for all her suffering right now.

    Please see the below contact information of the lawyer;
    ESQ BARRISTER LAMBERT ADAMS
    PRINCIPAL ATTORNEY
    MC LAMBERT & ASSOCIATES CHAMBERS
    RUE 215 RIVERA ABIDJAN COTE D’IVORE
    Phone Number +225-04819053
    Email: baristarlambatadams@lawyer.com
    Email: lambertlaw@consultant.com

    Try and contact him immediately, I will also appreciate if you discuss with him on the phone direct to enable him facilitate the release of the fund as urgent as he can help because the Man is always busy with his Government work.

    Please be fast over this because my madam recent health condition right now is very critical as the doctor has said that he don’t know if she can make it after or before the operation that is why they stop her surgery operation to watch her for now to know the observation, for now and keep shouting in pains all over her body. you need to be here to see what my Madam is passing through.

    Please i will like you to help me and my Madam out from this miserable world. Since death of my parents i have not been myself, if not because of the promise and help my Madam rendered to me since that time i don’t think i would have become somebody today. Right now the condition of my Madam has caused me a lot of damage in my life today and without her i can’t succeed in this country again. Please help me as your son so that i will find a better life to live again where i can still further for my education and regain a better future in regards to respect of the death of my parents.

    My promise to you is that i will be loyal to you at all cost even in any situation i find myself in your place. The condition of my Madam made me to be sleeping in the church because my Madam’s step mother she knew that i am the only person that knows that she was the one that poisoned my Madam and she wouldn’t want me to expose her, she has been after my life sending tugs and assassins to kill me that was why i ran into a church for my dear life.

    I will appreciate if you can make it possible for me to join you in your country as my Madam pleaded you because i can’t stay here any longer to avoid any harm to me. Please i beg you to consider me as your son and take the responsibility of making my life better tomorrow, i still want to go to school and become somebody tomorrow since my Madam is sick and i know that if not because of her condition today she will fulfill her promise in supporting me to school and becoming somebody in life. So please help me as your biological son.

    Please always remember the code madam gave you in her first mail as (HOSPITAL) Also, please I will like you to be calling from time to time so that i will be telling you if there is any development of my Madam’s condition.

    See the attachment file including the deposit certificate you will use to contact the Lawyer on behalf of my Madam and if there is any contribution you can make to help because I don’t like the way they are treating her here in that hospital without any hope. I will wait to hear from you immediately. you can call me here +22567356057

    Thank you and may God continue to bless you and your family.

  20. Pat Buchanan raises some valid issues and asks some reasonable questions:

    http://takimag.com/article/do_we_really_want_a_cold_war_ii_patrick_buchanan#axzz2cqCTGOkj

    He makes several good points, as the Cold War II (to which he thinks we are heading) seems to be transmogrifying into a potentially very hot one indeed.

    As an ex Law Enforcement Officer, I wonder what, if I was still serving, I would have to say to a staid and well dressed member of the public who calmly walked up to me and said, “Officer, I wish to report that the entire cabinet of Her Majesty’s Government are showing signs of collective insanity and several of my neighbours are of the same opinion. Three of the said neighbours are clinical psychiatrists and one is a Chief Inspector of the Metropolitan Police. Would you please investigate immediately and take the necessary remedial action?”

    How, given the nature of my office, should I deal with the complaint?

    It would make a good ‘Knowledge & Reasoning’ question in a police promotion exam, wouldn’t it? Particularly as it is based on a current and very real scenario.

  21. This arrived in my in-tray today. Forgive me if it has been linked before, but I think many Wallsters will not object to a repeat, even if it has:

    http://ncrenegade.com/editorial/i-am-a-racist/

    It’s the song that appeals; not necessarily the singer. I’m still sucking my teeth on his antecedents; but as the war hots up, choosiness becomes a luxury we can’t afford, I fear.

  24. Frank P @ 19:46

    Excellent link! “I am Spartacus”, too!
    I am a little preoccupied with work at present, so thanks for the collection of other links. A ready made digest of reading matter.

    Re: Cheryl. I think she’d be well advised to steer clear of the Friday night Vindaloo at Abdul Lateef’s in Newcastle. How did Elton sum it up? Er…. “Goodbye English Rose….” Or was that Hurricane Smith?

  25. Some good news items. Newark on Trent.A local Business Club has set up a group to find ideas for celebrating St. George’s Day.They say;”We want to be patriotic”,and associate with Scouts and Guides who have a service and parade.______________Stapleford (Notts. Derbys. border -nr.Toton on the [unlikely]HS2 line).A group has set-up a project to distribute thousands of red poppy seeds to mark the centenary of the Great War. (I notice Arthur Mee was born there in 1875.)

  26. Frank P @19:42 & 19:46

    Much as the thought of TB et al being put on trial for treason is appealing, would it make a difference to the outcome? The demographic time bomb is exploding as we speak. The genie cannot be put back in the bottle.

  27. The orchestrated fervour with which ITV and the BBC seem to be preparing the nation for Cameron’s upcoming war in Syria is sickening.

  28. EC 27th, – 22:33

    “The orchestrated fervour with which ITV and the BBC seem to be preparing the nation for Cameron’s upcoming war in Syria is sickening.”

    Indeed it is. I have in the past, sneered at hand-wringers who won’t get off their ass to sort out a situation, just because it might cause them some limited inconvenience. This is different. However it may offend our moral sensibilities, what is going on in Syria is beyond our ability to alleviate. Rather than wringing hands we must firmly sit on them, and perhaps be immediately ready to offer humanitarian aid when the antagonists finally batter themselves into a bloody sarin soaked stalemate. One of my other correspondents offered this this evening:

    http://www.wnd.com/2013/08/video-shows-rebels-launching-gas-attack-in-syria/

    I don’t believe I’m gullible enough to take this at face value, but it clearly shows the danger we run in involving ourselves with the wrong side (IF THERE IS ONE), rather than the right side (IF THERE IS ONE)!

  29. In a future time how will civilised men and women judge the neo-con interventionists? How will Bush, Blair, Obama and Cameron be regarded? As advocates of democracy and freedom in oppressed countries like the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Syria…?
    Or as useful idiots and fools who actively and knowiingly connived in the destruction of their own peoples, their religion, culture and civiisation?
    As history is written by the winners, is it not likely that they will simply be regarded as minor pawns, useful idiots who served a major purpose in the establishment of the world caliphate. When that triumph is completedd, sometime about the third quarter of this century It is unlikely that much in the way of records will be retained about the current persecution of 100 million christians by islam around the world. So this article and the book it reviews may well be more an early requiem than a eulogy to the death of Christianity and its followers. Oh yes, and western civilisation too.

    http://www.thecommentator.com/article
    4069/islamism_s_slow_genocide_against_christianity

  32. GREENMANTLE [by John Buchan] : November 1915 ; Richard Hannay crosses enemy territory to Constantinople to seek out and thwart a dastardly plot by the Huns to raise the muslem world in Jehad against the British Empire.This is on BBC 4 Extra at 3am [pt.1] and at 10am/3pm [pt.2]…..ALSO:to be found on the BBC iplayer for the next week.The plot can be found at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenmantle

  34. While taking a break from the alternations of accidie and anger brought on by trying to determine, for instance, who was forcing little Willie Hague into supporting Al Qaeda’s bid for power in Syria, that same Al Qaeda who blew up double-decker buses and underground trains in London not so long ago (could it be that the NSA has the goods on him), I looked at the copy of the Spectator which I had picked up at Hong Kong airport early in the month.

    The back of the magazine is still first rate.

    On this occasion I would recommend as a primus inter pares James Delingpole’s contrasting reviews of two BBC documentary makes. Michael Wood on Alfred the Great (“One of the greatest English military heroes there ever was ” Delingpole) and David Starkey on Music and Monarchs.

    Wood excoriated; Starkey deified.

    Delingpole writes of one aspect of the film :

    “[Starkey] makes not the slightest concession to dumbed-down modern audiences [and allows] the singer … to explain to us what it is that makes English music so English. It has to do with the spaces, apparently. Foreigners would fill them with flourishes, whereas we don’t go in for that sort of thing. Handel quickly learned this, which is why, despite his being German, we rightly consider him one of ours.”

    Impossible to see this in Asia. Why is this? I thought the best of English culture was the job of the BBC to promote to savage parts…

    http://www.spectator.co.uk/arts/television/8988741/is-david-starkey-god/

    Could UKIP perhaps transfer the capital back to Winchester when it is voted in?

  37. ‘brought on by trying to determine, for instance, who was forcing little Willie Hague into supporting Al Qaeda’s bid for power in Syria’

    The Antichrist cannot be far behind when Daniel Korski is given a cosy sinecure in No. 10 to whisper sweet interventionist nothings into the ear of Cabbage Patch Doll.

    There would be something drearily condign about the c*ntry being pushed over the edge of the abyss by a professional idiot like him.

  38. Here is the interesting sting part of the correspendence with my friends in the Ivory Coast…

    Attn Peter Wimsy

    Barrister Lambert Adams & Associates wishes to acknowledge the receipt of your message from Miss Lukas Willson with the Official Code “HOSPITAL”, the contents are well noted.

    Regarding this case, i have received report previously as you stated and also the source of my legal services to you as the new beneficiary to her late Father’s funds in Access Bank.

    REGARDING THE FUND

    Kindly be informed that i have heard as you stated and it is my obligation to assure you that i will help to make sure that the bank releases the fund legally into your nominated bank account without any problem if we work together with one mind.

    First, we need to process Power of Attorney and Agreement Form on your names on behalf of Miss Lukas Willson and her late Father here in my Chamber in conjunction with Chief Commissioner of oath to sign the Endorsement approval. Therefore, kindly forward to me your full details below for processing of the approval Power of Attorney here in my Chambers in conjunction with Chief Commissioner of Oath to know the legal possibility of the Endorsement.

    1) Your Full Name…….

    2) Your contact Address…….

    3) Your Phone Number including your Fax if any.

    4) Your International Passport or any of your Identity Card for my official use during my meeting with the bank.

    Secondly, we need to get in touch with the bank with your full details on behalf of Miss Lukas Willson to know the legal steps to approve the release of the fund into your nominated bank account as the new rightful beneficiary to the fund.

    Also, i have to contact the bank of my appointment meeting with them concerning this issue first and also book specific time of the meeting. In that case, i will try as much as possible to contact them to have meeting with them with the Power of Attorney, Agreement Form and other compile message from my chamber regarding the stated funds so that after the meeting i will let you know the legal procedure on how to move forward.

    Note: if there is any requirement i will let you know further ahead, always keep mailing to confirm the success of the transfer because i will like us to unit together to enable us facilitate the release of the fund as you demanded .

    Finally, you are required to call me urgent (+225 04819053) for further discussion after you forward the needed information. Waiting…..

    Faithfully,

    Lambert Adams Esq.
    Principal Attorney
    Lambert Chambers & Associates.

  39. And this is what I have sent Barrister Adams…

    Dear respected Barrister Adams

    Thank you for this message. I will send a copy of my address and passport etc straight away. Do you need my bank account information as well?

    I have one big problem here that you must help me with. Because I have a large amount of savings in my bank account, almost £1 million, my bank card and passport are kept with my accountant here in this building. I need some excuse to be able to go and fetch them and send them to you.

    This is what you must do. I need you immediately to visit this website…

    https://www.paypal-donations.co.uk/pp-charity/charity.jsp?NP_ID=58506

    and make a donation of £50 or more to this organisation. It is not very much money but my accountant has some connection with this charity. You must make the donation of more than £50 and then I can go to my accountant and ask him about the donation and take my passport and bank card to send copies to you. Otherwise he will ask many questions about why I need these documents.

    Please make this donation immediately and send me the email that Paypal will send you. Then I can take it straight to my accountant as an excuse and send you my passport and bank card for you to process. This should give you full access to my bank account.

    Best wishes

    Peter Wimsy

  40. ACP (09:38)

    You are right; the entire populace of the UK has, by the default of myriad individual sins of omission and commission, allowed this current pantomime to develop. The only way we could even begin to atone for those sins is for all who are cognisant of the horrendous conspiracies being perpetrated against us, to march as a body to the infested corridors of power in Westminster and environs and with suitably modified chemical weapons gas the entire political class and its media cronies.

    Similar operations would have to be mounted in almost every other municipality throughout the land to rid the provinces of their own corrupt affiliated cells. As this would clearly be impossible to organise, we shall instead have to watch the dissolution of our nation continue, while amusing ourselves by whimsically describing the complex web of insanity that is engulfing it as we patiently wait for the Oblivion that cures all ailments both physical and psychiatric.

    In other words, none of us are suffering from anything that can’t be quickly remedied down at the fuckin’ crematorium.

    But as a final gesture of defiance, I recommend thay you make sure you remove all bodily trinkets that are made of precious metals (including you gold teeth-fillings) and donate them appropriately, in order to thwart the final conspiracy – that of the Coroner’s Officer, the Undertaker and the local Pawnbroker.

    There is little that you can do to prevent the necrophiliac mortuary attendant from buggering you post-mortem; but comfort yourself with the thought that it is unlikely that any sane person would not undertake such an office – and I suppose it is scant reward for such an unpleasant and otherwise boring occupation. And by then you won’t care anyway.

    I know, I know … WBGTDWI?

    But then … no rant worth that label is complete without slippin’ it in, is it?

  41. Frank P – An alternative to a mass march on Westminster (is there a chemical weapon which could penetrate and neutralize the noxious atmosphere in those parts?), would be for everyone at the next election to cast their vote for anyone but the sitting MP.
    There, done and dusted.
    Our problems won’t be solved, but the biggest impediment to that end will be removed at least.

  43. Here’s wimpy-face, self-regarding Obamaphile Dave on Syria.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2403780/Syria-crisis-David-Cameron-makes-case-air-strikes-talks-Barack-Obama.html

    I was in Syria once, when my flight to Delhi was hijacked to Syria. I eventually stumbled through, and slipped out of, the pitch black airport (in those days they closed the airport down at night) and got a taxi and went to what looked like, and was, a respectable small hotel.

    I found the Syrians to be rather nice, except for the men shouting, as I navigated my way through the pitch dark streets looking for what looked like a respectable hotel, “You are my seester! Come home with me!”

  44. I notice that no one has referred to today’s great anniversary which gave joy to countless thousands and set in train a series of events that changed lives across the globe.

    I refer of course to Kevin Keegan’s debut and 1st goal for Newcastle United in 1982 on a beautiful sunny day against QPR. It was. for those of us there, a historic moment which improved the lives of thousands of oppressed, disadvantged and marginalised citizens. The King had a dream – promotion to Division One – which against the odds was realised.

    The fact that in later years he shot himself in the foot and was subject to character assassination should not blind ourselves to that shot in the 60th minute of the game – a shot that went around the world.

  45. “There is little that you can do to prevent the necrophiliac mortuary attendant from buggering you post-mortem;”

    He spends the night in dead Ernest?

  47. If I were a mortuary attendant and recognised a Common Purpose cadaver, I would do what Idi Amin allegedly* did to his second wife: saw off her arms, legs and head, sew them back on the wrong way round and then force her children to file past to see what becomes of you if you turn into a cheap slapper.

    * Note to the sensitive. It turned out to be all an urban myth.

    If any of youse have been affected by any issues in this post, why not ring 0800 959 9595 and have a good old moan.

  48. Just a note to say that on the site at…

    http://www.coffeehousewall.co.uk/coffee-house-tv-exciting-crowdsourcing-opportunity/

    I am launching a serious and sustained effort to generate investment which will allow the pilot of a professionally produced right of centre monthly internet politics and current affairs programme to be created and broadcast. The efforts to raise investment are being made as strenuously and widely as I can manage. The intention is to have at least 3 well known figures be interviewed, with comment from others who are perhaps less well known by experienced bloggers.

    If you feel able to support the endeavor then please do so. I am making a lot of sacrifices to try and get this project off the ground, if others are willing and able to invest that would be a great encouragement.

  50. Like many weak and probably effeminate men, both Cameron and Hague display loud squarks and wave their arse pin feathers to impress the world. Now they want to intervene in the tragedy of Syria, this after they have reduced the arms budget and personnel to the lowest level. Their obedient servant Hammond has not only allowed the military budget to be slashed to the bone, but he has also made sure that the bones are ground and the marrow splattered on the ground. Cameron is a true marxist, denigrating British Christianity, encouraging same-sex marriage, and promoting everything which is the opposite of decent Western civiiization. Hague, his cur, follows his example, because he is stuck in his closet and is reluctant to ‘come out’. What dreadful characters leading this country, they should be removed as soon as possible.

  51. I note that the Archbishop of Canterbury has called on his flock to repent of its erroneous views of homosexuality. I must admit I find it harder and harder to engage in ecumenical relations with the Anglicans. Much as I have many Anglican friends whom I respect and value. But the Anglican organisation seems determined to make itself as irrelevant as possible as quickly as possible.

  54. Frank P, August 28th, 2013 – 13:08

    True, we need a military coup d’etat. This is why the Lab/Lib/Con cabal have successively underfunded the armed forces, sent our men, and women, abroad to be killed in some very dubious and futile causes. Like the police, much of the top brass has been bought off with a few sinecures and titles.

    There is little that you can do to prevent the necrophiliac mortuary attendant from buggering you post-mortem… And by then you won’t care anyway.

    Quite! So get the NN, or other close relative, to pack your clinker box, post croak, with a few chopped green chillies. That should make the ‘tard’s eyes water!

  58. The NHS in England could save between 12,000 and 42,000 lives a year by simple checks on the kidney function of hospital patients, says the health watchdog. ” This item on the BBC web made me want to weep. I started SRN (State Registered Nurse) training in 1954, when each hospital had one matron and ‘managers’ were non-existent. Nursing was considered as a vocation, and there were no ‘health assistants’ or whatever. Nurses, and student nurses, closely supervised by ward sisters and staff nurses, bathed, fed and attended to all the basic needs of the sick. There was such a procedure called Input and Output, whereby measurements were carefully taken of how much fluid the patient received, and how much urine was discharged. One didn’t have to be a brain surgeon to follow this routine, just a conscientious, dedicated nurse. I wonder if any of our more senior posters recall those days?

  59. Now every nurse has a degree and no one wants to keep wards clean and backsides wiped. Its worse than Victorian times because people still think their relatives will be completely cared for.

  60. Peter frpm Maidstone @ 23.07
    Yes, Peter, you are quite correct. And to complete the horrors, there is the dreadful hospital food. Anybody without relatives or friends who can come daily carrying food and even feed them is in dire trouble.

  61. pack your clinker box, post croak, with a few chopped green chillies. That should make the ‘tard’s eyes water!

    🙂

  62. Checking my local MPs website (Opperman Hexham Con) I find the usual cameronian weasel words on Syria. He is ‘reluctant’ to take action but notes that cameron has told them that things have ‘changed’ in recent days.

    One vote in the bag for the H2B.

    I written to show him that not everyone has $#!te for brains – not that it will do any good.

  65. Over the past few months I have linked several articles by Clare M Lopez, an ex-CIA Operative and expert on the Muslim Brotherhood. Her she is in full flow, in person, on the podium with visual aids. It’s worth an hour of the time of anybody that is interested in the apparently insane confusion of Western Leaders over the Syrian conflict. Grab a cuppa and fasten your seat belts. It’s a bumpy ride:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU13D4ZPtQM

    Should help to answer your two questions, Malfleur.

  66. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10272555/Cameron-backs-down-on-urgent-Syria-strikes.htmlthe Coalition executive

    Good to see that our loyal, if besieged United Kingdom military and the loyal opposition, albeit perhaps largely fired by opportunistic motives, and the happy few MPs still loyal to conservatism and our country, have reined in the Cabinet which is largely manipulated by God knows who sets the agenda for the coup-d’etatists in the U.S. Department of State.

  67. Do we have anyone on the Wall who has knowledge of arms and military equipment suppliers and who might have an insight into what interest of those whom President Eisenhower called the military industrial complex might be served by war in the Middle East (and environs)?

  69. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2404837/Cameron-forced-concede-vote-Syria-military-action-await-UN-chemical-weapons-report.html#ixzz2dJt1g9ST

    “British officials had to phone their counterparts in the US last night to explain that President Obama would have to go it alone …” because the last time we went to war, a socialist war criminal lied to the world and now, as a nation, the British don’t trust a word any politician says.

    Further and based upon historical evidence, the US never turns up on time then claims all the credit but rewrites history to avoid any blame.

    And finally, Mr President, you, personally, hate the British and most of us believe you’re a commie and a closet Islamist so why the f**k should we waste any British lives by getting mixed up in your adventures. Didn’t hear you warning Argentina when it got bellicose and haven’t heard a US policy statement over Gibralter in our favour. If you want to start a war, do it by yourself. We’re knee-deep in little sheetheads in the UK. If you want to risk a civil unrest in your own backyard, you go right ahead but risk your own lives and treasure, leave us out of the shit.

    Understand and be clear, Mr worst-president-in-US-history, most of the UK couldn’t care less if Muslims are helping each other to their paradise. We are not interested in how they die, which other bunch of nutters kills them or how many there are. We just see it as a step in the right direction of making the planet safer by reducing the number of inbred, intolerent lunatics.

  70. Clear Memories 3:19 … Bravo! Bravo! (Or brava! as the case may be!) Couldn’t agree more! Let the sheet-heads continue to send one deliver one another to their allah figment.

  73. Good.
    So yellow belly Obama has finally made a decision.
    Bomb Syria.
    What does the Limey Premier do?
    Does your Cameron not remember with gratitude how we saved you from Hitler?
    All you folks should get on the phone to your legislative representatives and tell them about moral values.

  74. Incidentally, I don’t want to alarm anyone, but right at the end of the link in my last post Jones is about to move into a section of his show where the allegation is made that Assad of Syria has just warned about the impending use of nerve gas in Europe by terrorists which will in fact be a false flag to snuff out our liberties.

    You will remember of course that the Reichstag was burned down by communists…

  75. John Jefferson Burns@August 29th, 2013 – 06:46

    we have moral values
    we dont go round invading places all the time
    we are not so arrogant we think we run the world

    and as for ww2, – well who resisted Hitler alone till 7th december 1941?

    and as fory our morals, how about the self determination of the falkland islanders. I haven’t heard your government supporting them.

  76. JJB

    No, your impeachable president has NOT made a decision to bomb Syria, just as Clovelly is NOT in Cornwall. He is sitting on his fence awaiting instructions.

    Our limey prime minister has had his orders from whomever is now running your country checked by the British people. You should try that system again one day – with balances too of course.

  77. JJB – and who put the yellow-bellied coconut in the Whitehouse? Not democracy but a mobilised black vote. Basically, a racist decision. Which you noisy yankee bastards swallowed and swallow again each day.

    Don’t even try telling us you saved our arses, you only got involved because the slitty-eyed scum punched your collective nose. Yes, you nuked ’em but barely one of them got punished for war crimes. Your government couldn’t wait to get its hands on all the “experiments” the Japs carried out researching germ and chemical warfare. That fact alone makes your nation little better than Assad.

    As for helping us, well, that help came at a price. For starters, you basically dismantled the British empire. You stole our jet engine secrets. You lumbered our nation with massive debts and you stole all the Nazi scientific advances for yourselves.

    Now, when a British rime Minister acts as a democratically-elected leader should, you whinge and whine. As I noted and others have commented, you Yanks were of little fucking help in the first Falklands war and because your watermelon-in-chief acts in a hateful manner towards us, the Argies think they can kick it off again. Plus, Spain is belligerent but the worlds most expensive Golfer says nought for fear of upsetting the hordes of illegals, most of whom speak Spanish.

    I assume that you wrote the last sentence of your post striving for irony.

    Well, here’s the message from a democracy, something you no longer live in – fuck off Yank, fight your own battles.

  78. Reichstag Fire Gazette – breaking news

    “Syria says ‘terrorists’ will strike Europe with chemical weapons

    DAMASCUS | Wed Aug 28, 2013 8:56am EDT

    (Reuters) – Syria’s deputy foreign minister said on Wednesday that the United States, Britain and France helped “terrorists” use chemical weapons in Syria, and that the same groups would soon use them against Europe.

    Speaking to reporters outside the Four Seasons hotel in Damascus, Faisal Maqdad said he had presented U.N. chemical weapons inspectors with evidence that “armed terrorist groups” had used sarin gas in all the sites of alleged attacks.

    “We repeat that the terrorist groups are the ones that used (chemical weapons) with the help of the United States, the United Kingdom and France, and this has to stop,” he said. “This means these chemical weapons will soon be used by the same groups against the people of Europe,” he added.”

    (Reporting by Marwan Makdesi; Writing by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Jon Boyle)”

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/28/us-syria-crisis-europe-idUSBRE97R0N220130828

  79. I missed the fact that 25 Aug.was the 199th anniversary of British forces burning Washington DC; this only after eating President Madison’s diner and taking care not to damage any private property.

  81. I see Downing Street has described Milliband as a c**t.

    How wrong can you be? We all know, even c**ts have their uses, unlike Milliband.

  83. Alexandrovich, thanks for pointing this out. I am entirely behind Dr Clifford and will send him an email when I get home.

    I note that a couple of homosexuals are preparing to take the Church of England to court for failing to allow homosexual ‘marriage’.

  84. Yes, only a couple for now. What will happen to the cast-iron locks given to the Church of England?
    I commend you – actions do speak louder than words.

  85. Frank P
    August 29th, 2013 – 01:38

    This should be compulsory viewing so people are forced to understand what’s going on.
    Clear and to the point.

  86. Malfleur -02.34am
    External pressures of greater or lesser iimpact, resulting from UK sales of weapons are almost certainly being applied to the UK by the ‘friendly’ nations who have bought them from us.
    The recent article in the DT, revealing that the Saudis proposed a world oil cartel to Russia, on the threat of unleashind jihadist terrorists at the Winter Olympics, is strongly persuasive of the inference that they have used similar tactics with the poltroons in Westminster.

    http://liberalconspiracy.org/2013/07/19/we-need-to-talk-about-the-british-arms-industry-and-its-exports/

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/blood-money-uks-123bn-arms-sales-to-repressive-states-8711794.html

  87. I attach a copy of my own letter which I have sent to my (conservative) MP.

    Dear Sir,
    I have read with great interest your principles, views and opposition on the Coalition government’s proposed intervention in Syria. It is with great disappointment that I note you are prepared to be persuaded of the
    necessity and benefits of intervention. It seems to me that from the UK’s perspective, there is no benefit, either to our own primary interests, or to the people of Syria, by the UKs to becoming involved in attacking a country with whom we are not at war, on evidence of the most equivocal nature.
    The policy of international liberal interventionism, inaugurated under New Labour by Tony Blair and perpetuated without pause by the Coalition, has been seriously flawed and indeed is inimical to our best interests.
    The argument that the use of chemical weapons is in some way more egregious than, for example, ripping out and eating an enemy’s heart on Iphone is simply wrong.
    I perceive that the latest alteration to the government’s bellicose position, as reflected in e.g.
    http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/c…
    is simply due to a general lack of support and enthusiasm
    from backbench MPs’ such as yourself rather than any sea change in principle or policy.
    Why, if it can be proven, should evidence of the use of gas
    by Assad’s forces justify using our armed forces to attack his government? If
    it was found that gas was used by the anti-government rebels would that then justify entering into an alliance with Assad in order to attack them?
    Why should we accept any involvement in the killing of people by the coalition government in another country with whom we are not at
    war? On people who may not now, but will afterwards hate us for doing so.
    If the basis of the argument for legitimising such involvement is the UK’s present membership of the UN Security Council we should give serious consideration to our resignation from it.
    Perhaps rather than the US, France and Great Britain, emerging superpowers like India or Brazil might like to take on a
    responsibility for committing mass murder or the neighbouring middle east
    states could take on a peace-keeping role which includes protecting the
    persecuted Christian minorities.
    As a former conservative, and someone who has direct experience the horrors of war at first hand, I remain totally opposed to a vainglorious intervention which will not serve either our own interests or those of the people of Syria and may indeed have much more serious consequences.
    I trust that, when the matter of the UK’s intervention in the bloody mess that is Syria is debated, you will remain steadfast to your former principles and oppose any active military intervention.

  89. Reagan was the US’s last true patriot and patron-of-freedom president.

    After that they veered offf and hired the laughable Jimboy Carter, who was as inept and thick as our own current PM. After that, they got the priapic (or however you spell it; it’s too early here to look things up) Bill Clinton. Then, for the first time ever, they voted in a foreigner (against the Constitution) as their Golfer-in-Chief.

    Nothing that came after President Reagan has been a credit to the land of the free.

  90. JJB – bollox.

    British troops landed, yomped and triumphed. They’re not like your useless nancyboys. They kill willingly, hand to hand, without the need for an accompanying TV crew. They tend not to pick on unarmed asian villagers but fight as soldiers should – something your nation has forgotten a long time ago.

    Now your front line troops sit in shipping containers in the desert outside Las Vegas and play a glorified video game against the mentally defective.

    Reagan helped in a minor way, despite the best efforts of the Pentagon & CIA to stop him.

    The truth is, you had the world on your side in 90-91 but Bush decided to call a halt and piss off home before the job was finished. Had the then-coalition chased the Iraqi rag-heads all the way to Baghdad and destroyed Saddam, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.

    But, as usual, you either turn up late or piss off early. Either way, you Yanks never finish the job. (And we Brits usually pay the price.)

  91. Oh, and by the way, were it not for the Brits, you’d be posting this in French!

  92. Clear Memories-13.44

    And were it not for the French, JJB would be writing his posts in standard or Canadian and not American English.
    I doubt though, that they would be any more comprehensible even for that.

  93. I have just subjected myself to a morning of madness by watching the Sky News coverage of the mendacious and meaningless manoeuvring of the Westminster Wankers and the equally devious and daft deliberations of the ‘journalistic’ toadies who are reading the issued scripts and commenting as instructed.

    Luckily it does seem that someone has pointed out to the inept bunch of juvenile bastards that their attempt to shore up their electoral popularity by engaging in yet another foreign intervention (on the side of the most inimical of the lunatic Islamists involved, btw) has backfired because the British punters of all stripes are not up for it.

    So it looks as though all the political posturing will come to naught, despite the ludicrous ‘legal’ opinions jigged up to justify both action or inaction, as the case may be.

    Unfortunately, watching simultaneously the shenanigans on the other side of the pond, it looks as though the shares of the Military Industrial Complex are in need of a boost and there will be some sort of fucked up intervention and of course the Camerloons will try to hang on those coat-tails and try to rub a little Obamadust on themselves without actually doing anything.

    I note with some amusement that Nigel Farage was interviewed in conjunction with the tortoise-headed green woman from Brighton in order to enjoin them in the eyes of the viewers; but when Nigel was in full flow and about to disassociate himself from the Greens and make himself clear about where he stood on Syria, some techie pulled the plug on him. So they had got what THEY wanted and made sure that Nigel would gain nothing from the segment.

    Why did he allow himself to used like that, Noa? I know he can’t be blamed for for the ‘technical hitch’ but he should have foreseen what would happen when agreed to the coupling.

    The insanity of this silly season of politics is more dire than anything that we saw post 9/11 2001. and there is no-one with sufficient nous or cojones among the top military brass to get a grip and save the country with a coup d’etat. Which is about the only thing that could now halt our accelerating descent into the abyss.

    Now I must keep my appointment with the optician, because I can’t really believe what I’m seeing. It’s ironic that a few years ago if I had had trouble with my minces, in the area that I was residing, I could well have consulted al Assad.

  94. Re Frank P’s post above, how is Nigel faring at the moment? Is his popularity still growiing? Is he getting the air time that he and his party deserve? Are there any other UKIPer getting air time?

  95. ‘…Why did he allow himself to used like that, Noa? I know he can’t be blamed for for the ‘technical hitch’ but he should have foreseen what would happen when agreed to the coupling…’
    I’m damned if I know, Frank! The logical explanation to me is that, by making himself available for any and every media opportunity, he sometimes gets the chance to make his case, often beguiling hostile interviewers in the process.
    And given the growth in the UKIP share of the vote it seems to be working.

    Verity-for information here is the latest position. I’m sure these do not reflect the anti-bombing revulsion of two thirds of the British public and another surge in popularity is likely.

    http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/

  96. Verity, I think Nigel’s star is fading – and with his, UKIP’s – as the many who are disenchanted with the mainstream political monoculture despair of UKIP’s resemblance to a one-man band plus a few loonies and its lack of strategy in general.
    Shame – maybe you’ll be able to shake ’em up a bit when you’re back in Blighty

  97. Frank P August 29th, 2013 – 14:33

    “tortoise-headed green woman from Brighton”

    Frank how perceptive of you, I loath this woman and all of her silly opinions but I had never spotted how much she looks like a tortoise.

  98. Frank Sutton August 29th, 2013 – 15:48

    “Verity, I think Nigel’s star is fading – and with his, UKIP’s”

    I could not disagree more, given that he and his party are deliberately not given the air time that a party that is ahead of the totally useless LibDems in all of the polls should be getting, he and they are doing extraordinarily well.

    I predict that UKIP will do very well in next year’s MEP’s elections and this success will put the frighteners on the three main parties.

  102. On the news just now, police say the woman murdered in the street in North West London the other day was “in the wrong place at the wrong time”.
    Her fault then…
    Why are the cops so apt to make stupid statements?

  104. Cigar-chompin’ JJB

    If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times. You come from an adolescent society which breeds adolescent attitudes. You are a citizen of the World Bully and therefore make loud macho noises from sufficiently far away not to get the crap kicked out of you.

    In short, you are a coward as well as a retard. The best favour you could do yourself would be to spend an afternoon standing manfully with fists on hips and a 12kg kettle bell attached to the end of your knob. Also consider suicide.

  105. Comment DM doesn’t publish re London shooting : “The shooter was in the wrong place;Great Britain”.

  106. At the risk of sounding like a coldhearted witch, let me say now that I couldn’t give a hoot how many Syrians are killed, poisoned or shot. Nothing to do with Britain. A thoroughly nasty country run by a thoroughly nasty dictator. Sod the lot of them.

    Normally I have no time at all for E.Miliband, but this time, whatever his motives, I applaud him. As for Cameron, he is lower than the slimiest reptile and thicker than John Prescott, which is the worst insult I can think of.

  108. Andy Car Park
    August 29th, 2013 – 17:32

    Andy, your patience seems to be wearing a bit thin. !!!

  112. A lot of hot air in the Commons about Syria.

    We should listen to the Archbishop.

    Summarised as fools rush in

    +++++++++++++++++++++

    The Most Rev Justin Welby insisted that MPs must ask themselves whether they are “sure” about the facts on the ground before acting amid a “really delicate and dangerous situation”.

    Archbishop Welby, who spent several years promoting reconciliation in war zones in Africa and the Middle East, insisted that there were “numerous intermediate steps” between doing nothing and full regime change in Syria which could be considered.

    But speaking to The Daily Telegraph, he acknowledged that there was no “good answer” to the crisis in Syria and that a simple solution “just doesn’t exist”.

    Speaking from his own experience after touring the Middle East to meet Christian and Muslim leaders recently, he spoke of a mood of mounting fear which was “beyond description and horrible”.

    There was a “tangible” sense that the region was going through a “terribly, terribly dangerous time”, he added.

    The Archbishop emphasised that he detected no sense that politicians were “slavering” to “unleash the dogs of war”.

    But he urged them to bear in mind the “inter-linkedness of everything that happens” in the Middle East and the risk of actions in one area having serious consequences far away.

    He said: “The things which MPs will have to bear in mind in what is going to be a very, very difficult debate is firstly: are we sure about the facts on the ground?

    “Secondly: Is it possible to have a carefully calibrated response including armed force, if you are sure about the facts on the ground, that does not have unforeseeable ramifications across the whole Arab and Muslim world?”

    He went on: “I am extremely conscious of my own lack of knowledge having spent a lot of time in the area over the years very much in the reconciliation area, so dealing with the people involved in these things.

    “I am deeply, deeply aware of the enormous complexity and inter-linkedness of everything that happens there.”

    “You do something in one area and it has an impact far away in a most serious way and

    they know that. … There are no generalisations you can make in the Middle East apart from the fact that there are no generalisations you can make.”

    He went on to describe the mood of mounting fear among Christians across the region.

    “I have had a lot of conversations with people in the region I think the overwhelming sense is of a really moving and terrible sense of fear about what might come out of, what might be happening in the next few weeks – not predicated on people doing one thing or people doing another just a sense that this a terribly, terribly dangerous time,” he said.

    “Certainly when I was there in June and I think it has got worse since then I can scarcely remember a time of being in meetings where there was such a sense of apprehension, I mean it was tangible, this sense of ‘what will happen? What will be the impact on us?.…the impact on people not directly involved in the fighting is beyond description and horrible.”

  113. Or leave it to the delicious Angela

    “German Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to use talks in the UN Security Council to agree on a prompt international reaction to last week’s alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria.

    Russian leader Vladimir Putin was urged by Germany’s Angela Merkel during a phone call on Thursday to seek a quick unanimous international reaction within the UN to last week’s poison gas attack in Syria being probed by UN inspectors, according to her spokesman in Berlin.

    Chancellery spokesman Steffen Seibert said the German and Russian leaders agreed during their conversation that the United Nations should deal with the alleged attack and that Syria’s conflict could only be solved politically.

    NOTE

    and that Syria’s conflict could only be solved politically.

  114. Lesley C.
    August 29th, 2013 – 17:42
    Common sense and honesty. Attributes thatare very rare. I agree with your sentiments, Lesley.

  115. Lesley C 17:42 – “As for Cameron, he is lower than the slimiest reptile and thicker than John Prescott,”.

    I would say that Cameron equals Tony Blair in the slime pit, and it doesn’t get more viscous than that. And he is not just thicker than John Prescott, but also than “American citizen” Obamarama, who had all his thinking done for him in his campaign for president by former imprisoned terrorists William Ayers and Bernadette whatsits.

  117. David Cameron : “It’s clear to me that the British parliament and the British people do not wish to see military action:I get that,and I will act accordingly.”

  118. Just been watching that prat Phillip Hammond on BBC2. He confused Saddam with Assad, and Paxman, so bored and cynical did not even bother to correct him. Is Hammond a congenital idiot, or is he ‘in his cups’?

  119. Apropos this evening’s shenanigans, isn’t it serendipitous that the Beeb should be screening a programme about Greek playwrights and their critical excoriation of politicians who got it wrong and overstepped their mandate.

    Even the BBC doesn’t necessarily get everything wrong.

    And tomorrow is another day.
    (Scarlett o’Hara)

  120. Re: Cameron’s regime: Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
    Sir Winston Churchill, Speech in November 1942

  121. If Britain were still the genuine democracy that it once was, the consensus would be that Cameron has no longer enjoys the confidence of the House of Commons – and that Constitutional practice and convention requires him to resign.

    He will of course wriggle out of that on the shallow argument that it was “not a binding vote”.

    It would be interesting if the Queen could be persuaded that she should call on somebody else to form a government. It would of course precipitate a constitutional crisis, but if she did exercise this last vestige of the Prerogative, it would be a first rate precedent for the future and greatly strengthen the case for the continuation of the Monarchy.

  122. AWK 1; thanks Anne for your kind words.

    Henry Kissinger once said about the Iran/Iraq war in the 80s; “Pity they can’t both lose”. My feelings about the two sides in Syria.

    Cameron has made an even bigger fool of himself than usual. His days as leader are hopefully, numbered. For once, the voice of the people has made itself heard.

    And as has been mentioned earlier, I think by Malfleur, with regard to the siren voices in the arms industry, “cui bono?” Someone must.

  124. PfM @24:48

    If you mean that a vote of no confidence must result in a General Election, I think that’s mistaken. I believe the Monarch then has the prerogative to invite a different M.P. to try to form a government.

    There was, you will recall no election when the House of Commons lost confidence in Neville Chamberlain and the King invited Winston Churchill to take his place.

  127. PfM,

    I can’t agree with your categorisation of this vote as ‘merely losing a vote in Parliament”. Merely losing a vote on some trivial matter is not all that uncommon.

    This was a very serious vote indeed on a profoundly important matter – one of War and Peace. It was, in every true sense, a resounding vote of no confidence in Cameron. It is his duty to resign.

  131. Malfleur
    Why has Cameron not resigned?

    ‘But I also believe in respecting the will of this House of Commons.

    ‘It is clear to me that the British Parliament, reflecting the views of the British people, does not want to see British military action. I get that and the Government will act accordingly.’

    Highly principled I wopuld say

    As I posted last night he needs to make common cause with Angela now

    “Russian leader Vladimir Putin was urged by Germany’s Angela Merkel during a phone call on Thursday to seek a quick unanimous international reaction within the UN to last week’s poison gas attack in Syria being probed by UN inspectors, according to her spokesman in Berlin.

    Chancellery spokesman Steffen Seibert said the German and Russian leaders agreed during their conversation that the United Nations should deal with the alleged attack and that Syria’s conflict could only be solved politically.”

  132. Is there a list of those MPs who voted for the government’s motion anywhere available? Let’s put those names under a microscope.

  136. Peter from Maidstone@August 30th, 2013 – 08:26

    and mine, the useless Zahawi, Nadhim

  137. Were it not that, until yesterday, Parliament was in recess, I’d be asking, “What’s the b*gg*r up to elsewhere that needs a smokescreen of this magnitude?”

  138. It’s difficult to see how the Lib Dems could support killing Syrian civilians. But 45 of them did. I would not have thought that would go down well with their constituency.

    But the vast majority of Conservative MPs supported the insanity of Cameron and Hague as well, together with the outrageous insults being peddled such as that anyone not supporting Cameron was giving support to Assad.

    The Archbisop of Canterbury has urged caution (although I increasingly disregard what he says I am afraid), but more importantly, the Church leaders in the Middle East reject an assault on Syria.

  139. Peter

    Thanks. Let’s try to look at their alternative allegiances. Who bought them?

    Or are they all honourable men?

  140. PfM 8.26
    As I see, did my own MP Ben Wallace. The MP for Fylde. Not that I expected otherwise from him.

  141. I am going to see if I can organise an open letter from all of the various Christian ministers and clergy in my constituency criticising our MP for voting for the attack on Syria, without being party political. I’ll try to get it published in the local press.

  142. Times are changing!

    The Daily Telegraph: He, [Lord Ashdown], told the BBC: “Maybe I am just an old war horse from the past but I think it, last nights vote], has a profound implication for our country. I think it diminishes our country hugely.
    “We now have a bunch of people – the same ones who voted against this last night – who want to get out of Europe and have smashed our relationship with the United States.“

    So, who removed the Churchill’s bust from the White House, who hasn’t supported us over The Falklands or Gibraltar, who wanted BP to Feel either a ‘Boot On Throat’ Or ‘Feet To Fire’ while Haliburton destroyed incriminating evidence (getting only a $200k fine)? And maybe Obama didn’t think that Piper Alpha was part of his history?

  143. Herewith my letter to my ‘Ayes’ MP:-

    Dear Mr Wallace,

    I note with great disappointment that you voted in support of the Coalition government in last night’s motion.
    It is with satisfaction, though not pleasure, that a narrow majority of MPs accepted that the majority of their electorates does not support unprovoked military intervention in the Syrian civil war.
    Perhaps MPs such as yourself can now see fit to addressing matters properly within your domain; the cessation of immigration, addressing the National Debt, the wasteful haemorrhaging of taxpayer funds on welfare, the NHS and foreign aid, a disastrous renewable energy policy and the restoration of an effective independent defence capability.

    Yours sincerely.

  144. Ostrich (occasionally) (09:40)

    I’d like to list the probabilities for you, but what’s the point? From your previous posts I have deduced that you could list them yourself. The mendacious idiocies of the ‘coalition’ have been myriad and widespread since they took office – and I do mean ‘took’ office – as in ‘usurped power’ – with a marriage of convenience that should go down in history as one of the major stains on British Parliamentary history.

    Personally, though I welcome the ‘government’s defeat last night, it gives me no satisfaction because it was the only outcome that wouldn’t lead to a complete disaster and even amongst the current crop of scaly-backed, jumped up, never-come-down, juvenile and craven douche bags of Parliament in both the Upper and Lower Houses, there were enough (but only just, remember) with sufficient self-interest and low cunning to realise that.

    But the confusion and chaos that reigned during the run-up to this fiasco was a clear manifestation to the world that Britain as a once great international power for good, is done; it is over; it is now a clapped out third world shit-heap infested with the imported dross of the world’s con-men and spongers, with 3rd rate minds infesting the once-hallowed halls of HM’s HoC & HoL. And the overt disagreements between the current and recently retired military chiefs demonstrates clearly to the world that our military capacity is now a risible pretence.

    And rather than the boast of Parliament’s inmates, regarding yesterday’s day of infamy, as ‘exhibiting proof that democracy of Parliament working’, imho it merely proved just how crass and corrupt it has become. The few sane voices that emerged from yesterdays debate were on the whole drowned by the cacophony of crap from opportunistic partisan pricks elbowing each other to the front for a posturing performance. In the end it was the fear of the electorate that drove those with more than two joined up synapses into the “No” lobby – self preservation prevailed, thank fuck! But no credit to any of ’em. As for Cameron …. it should be his swan song. But I fear he’ll survive – however as Anne neatly alludes with her Churchillian citation, it may the end of the beginning of something.

    One last thing – I do not celebrate, as some do here, the widening of the Atlantic trench. All that means is strengthening ties with le continent de Yurrop. And that suits the Camerloons fine.

    Farage has to play the hand he has been dealt here with great care; appearing in a twosome with the likes of the tortoise-headed green woman should not be repeated, unless she volunteers to do a Mylie Cyrus/Robin Thicke type exhibition with him on a specially constructed stage in Hyde Park; I might just break my resolve not to enter the area inside the M25 beltway, in order to watch that – provided it was free.

  145. On second thoughts, Nige; if you can get Ms. Tortoise to agree to it, hire Houghton Hall for a day; it would be a sell out and as there would be no travel involved for me, I’d therefore buy a ticket. Wonderful venue and worse Shenanigans have taken place there in its chequered history. [My spell-chequer changed that adjective from ‘checkered’ to ‘chequered’. Which right?

  146. Naughty Niece in theological mode:

    Selling Bibles

    A pastor concluded that his church was getting into very serious
    financial troubles. While checking the church storeroom, he discovered
    several cartons of new Bibles that had never been opened and
    distributed.

    So at his Sunday sermon, he asked for three volunteers from the
    congregation who would be willing to sell the Bibles door-to-door for
    $10 each to raise the desperately needed money for the church.

    Jack, Paul and Louie all raised their hands to volunteer for the
    task.

    The minister knew that Jack and Paul earned their living as
    salesmen and were likely capable of selling some Bibles. But he had
    serious doubts about Louie who was a local farmer, who had always kept
    to himself because he was embarrassed by his speech impediment.

    Poor Louie stuttered badly. But, NOT WANTING TO discourage Louie,
    the minister decided to let him try anyway.

    He sent the three of them away with the back seat of their cars
    stacked with Bibles. He asked them to meet with him and report the
    results of their door-to-door selling efforts the following Sunday.

    Anxious to find out how successful they were, the minister
    immediately asked Jack, “Well, Jack, how did you make out selling our
    Bibles last week?”

    Proudly handing the reverend an envelope, Jack replied, “Using my
    sales prowess, I was able to sell 20 Bibles, and here’s the $200 I
    collected on behalf of the church.”

    “Fine job, Jack!” The minister said, vigorously shaking his
    hand…”You are indeed a fine salesman and the church is indebted to
    you.”

    Turning to Paul, “And Paul, how many Bibles did you sell for the
    church last week?”

    Paul, smiling and sticking out his chest, confidently replied, ‘I
    am a professional salesman. I sold 28 Bibles on behalf of the church,
    and here’s $280 I collected.’

    The minister responded, “That’s absolutely splendid, Paul. You are
    truly a professional salesman and the church is indebted to you.”

    Apprehensively, the minister turned to Louie and said, “And Louie,
    did you manage to sell any Bibles last week?” Louie silently offered the
    minister a large envelope.

    The minister opened it and counted the contents. “What is this?”
    the minister exclaimed. “Louie, there’s $3200 in here! Are you
    suggesting that you sold 320 Bibles for the church, door to door, in just
    one
    week?”

    Louie just nodded.

    “That’s impossible!” both Jack and Paul said in unison. “We are
    professional salesmen, yet you claim to have sold 10 times as many
    Bibles as we could.”

    “Yes, this does seem unlikely,” the minister agreed. “I think
    you’d better explain how you managed to accomplish this, Louie.”

    Louie shrugged.. “I-I-I re-re-really do-do-don’t kn-kn-know
    f-f-f-for sh-sh-sh-sure,” he stammered.

    Impatiently, Peter interrupted. “For crying out loud, Louie, just
    tell us what you said to them when they answered the door!”

    “A-a-a-all I-I-I s-s-said wa-wa-was,” Louis replied,
    “W-w-w-w-would y-y-y-you l-l-l-l-l-like t-t-to b-b-b-buy th-th-th-this
    B-B-B-B-Bible f-f-for t-t-ten b-b-b-bucks—o-o-o-or— wo-wo-would
    yo-you j-j-j-just l-like m-m-me t-t-to st-st-stand h-h-here and
    r-r-r-r-r-read
    it t-to y-y-you?”

    Remember when the funniest jokes were the clean ones?
    They still are!

  148. But back to Miss Tortoise … I’m reminded of Ogden Nash:

    The turtle lives twixt plated decks
    Which practically conceal its sex.
    I sometimes wonder how the turtle,
    In such a fix, could be so fertile.

    Let us know, Nigel, if you pull it off (so to speak).

  149. Herbert T

    Well, even O’Reilly of Fox is insisting that the US must do a bit of dick-waving to ‘save America’s face’., because of O’Barmy’s ‘red line’ clanger. The neo-cons are gung ho – and the bleeding hearts of the Liberal Left are on the MB’s side, so they are urging him to side with the rebels.

    There is a coalition of kuntz across the Pond I’m afraid. Alexander Boot’s son Max and people like Karl Rove and Bill Kristol signed the petition urging the POTUS to ‘intervene’. As we have constantly noted, the Muslim Brotherhood is deeply entrenched on both sides of the aisle over there. It’s a mess! Follow the money – as ever.

  150. And here’s more tooth-sucking on Syria. As the old saying goes, opinions are like a-holes; everybody has one. Problem is some proffer them for immoral usage.

  151. Patriccia Shaw @ 08:15

    I was too cynical. I agree with you.

    Here is the great American radio talk show host, Michael Savage

    “What you just heard democracy in action the way it’s supposed to work in the British PaliamenI which voted tonight thumbs down to the rogue administration of Obama launching a war on his own…UK equals democracy; US equals dictatorship. Now mind you Cameron …wanted to go to war but he conceded after the vote that, listen to what he said, it’s very important you understand what this man said as opposed to this, this, this gang banger we have in the White House, I don’t know ahat to say any more, IT”S LIKE A GANG RUNNING AMERICA, LIKE A GANG BANGER TOOK OVER THE COUNTRY, WHO THE HELL DOES HE THINK HE IS? Prime Minister Cameron wanted to go to war, but he said this “the British Parliament reflecting the view of the British people does not want to see British military action” PERIOD. But OUR gang,Obama, the Obama Gang, the tyrant in the White House could give a rat’s behind less about what Congress think You are not living in a democracy,your democracy HAS BEEN HIJACKED BY A GANG! That is why I said to you listen carefully to what Cameron said. Cameron wanted to go war, but he didn’t. He listened to the will of the parliament and to the will of the British people In America nine per cent want to go to war. Nine! The same thing would apply here if we had even a shred of democracy. We have no democracy! None whatsoever. And so I ask you tonight on The Savage Nation:Will Obama the dictator go to war alone? …”

    He continues in similar vein with an extended history lesson…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z5pzU7jgDU

  152. I thought you might be interested in this article: Fort Hood killer warned before shooting of possible ‘adverse events’.

    The point is, they shouldn’t be in western armies in the first place .
    Our army should be made up of people who are our people.
    The other point , and I think the main one is they shouldn’t be here at all.
    If they weren’t here their women’s body’s could spit out their children somewhere that would be of no consequence to us.
    Being invaded by stealth is the real
    Danger to this country.

  153. Ostrich 9:40 – Agreed. The slime ball’s up to something and “American citizen” Obama will be in on it.

    Noah 11:16 – an excellent letter that should bring a quiver of fear to your MP.

    Frank P 12:16 – As lucid and well argued as ever.

  158. Gosh, AWK, I do not thank you for putting the thought of Obama’s underpants and socks into my mind. That will haunt me all day.

  159. Malfleur

    And the reputable NBC

    “Nearly 80 percent of Americans believe President Barack Obama should receive congressional approval before using force in Syria, but the nation is divided over the scope of any potential strike, a new NBC News poll shows.
    The White House telephone briefing with top members of Congress left many wanting a lot more details on the mission, as Britain chooses not to strike. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reports.
    Fifty percent of Americans believe the United States should not intervene in the wake of suspected chemical weapons attacks by Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to the poll.
    On Thursday night, the Obama administration briefed congressional leaders in its effort to make the case for military intervention.

    Also on Thursday, Britain’s parliament rejected a motion urging an international response to the chemical weapons attacks blamed on the Syrian government.
    But White House officials told NBC News that the administration was prepared to go it alone.
    “As we’ve said, President Obama’s decision-making will be guided by what is in the best interests of the United States,” Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House and National Security Council, said in a statement.
    Still, a whopping 79 percent of respondents – including nearly seven-in-10 Democrats and 90 percent of Republicans – say the president should be required to receive congressional approval before taking any action.
    The poll also finds that only 21 percent think taking action against the Syrian government is in the national interest of the United States. And just 27 percent say that U.S. military force will improve the situation for Syrian civilians, versus 41 percent who say it won’t.
    The NBC poll also shows that President Obama’s overall job-approval rating has dropped one point since last month to 44 percent, which is tied for his lowest mark in past NBC News/Wall Street Journal surveys.
    He gets even lower marks on foreign policy: Just 41 percent approve of his handling of the issue – an all-time low.
    And only 35 percent approve of his handling of the situation in Syria.”

  161. AWK1 (15:53)

    Don’t you mean knickers and tights, Anne – ‘underpants and socks’ is a bit butch for subject under discussion, perhaps? Though it would apply to the FLOTUS …

  162. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2406621/Police-officer-tasered-blind-man-thought-white-stick-samurai-sword-NOT-face-criminal-charges.html

    Of course he won’t be charged – the laws allow that the simple-minded and those incapable of understanding the concept of right and wrong cannot be charged.

    Instead, society used to lock them away for both their own safety and the good of the population at large. Now, of course, they are given a smart uniform and called Plod.

  165. Frank P
    August 30th, 2013 – 16:22
    Frank, I stand corrected. Should have mentioned the suspender belt and fishnet stockings!
    Verity:
    Sorry, friend
    Guess I have really made you feel sick. He could do a double act with Hague……

  166. Peter from Maidstone
    August 30th, 2013 – 17:01
    I have always believed that both sides in the Syrian conflict are capabel of, and indeed have used, chemical warfare. Syria is a cruel nation, which unfortunately has attractive people, which makes the naive think they are normal, decent citizens. I pity any Christians left there, they receive the same treatment as the ancient community of Syrian Jews did. I do not take sides in this civil war, let each side destroy as many as possible of the other. Just let us keep out!

  167. Frank P
    August 30th, 2013 – 12:46

    I share your misgivings – but when you write – “Follow the money – as ever.” I’m not entirely clear in what direction the money is moving.

    However, the two links in your later posting (August 30th- 16:56) and in PfM’s following posting (August 30th, 2013 – 17:01) –

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-30/dont-show-obama-report-about-who-really-behind-syrian-chemical-attacks

    http://www.infowars.com/rebels-admit-responsibility-for-chemical-weapons-attack/

    seem to me to be rather more plausible than those that blame Assad.

  168. PfM
    Of course the good Mr Watson is a trusted unbiased source
    Worth reading some of his recent material

    Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones
    August 23, 2013

    Despite engaging in a seemingly endless and racially-charged national debate about the Trayvon Martin case, the US corporate media has shown no interest in reviving this obsession despite a spate of black on white murders, at least two of which indicate a racially-charged hate crime motivation behind the killings.
    Facts cannot be labeled “racist”. The deliberate policy of the national media in hyping the idea that blacks face a growing hate crimes threat from whites – when it clearly appears that the opposite is true – means the genuine problem of black violence and how to address its root causes for the benefit of all Americans no matter what their skin color is being buried.

    Are we sure the gas attacks were not an Israeli provocation?

  169. I puzzled about the current fashion for referring to “chemical” weapons as if they meant only poison gas.

    I should have thought that most warfare uses chemicals. Does not nearly every commonly used device for killing an enemy – whether a rifle bullet or a blockbuster bomb – rely on the detonation of chemicals?

  170. PfM @ 17.01

    I wouldn’t give much credence to that report. Both sides are shameless liars and savages – which is why, IMHO, we should stay out regardless of any reports or evidence.

    What I find most annoying about the interventionist argument is that their aims and suppositions, if deployed by the Right, would be howled down.

    We are encouraged to believe that the world is united in condemnation at the very idea of using CW or BW but this horror comes mainly from Europe’s experiences in WW1. We are also told to understand and respect the multifarious multicultural values out there, so why does Cameron and Obama want to intervene and impose their emotional reactions on Syria? What evidence is there that the Middle East and !$lam agrees with this view? Syria houses teenage combatants that will saw the heads off captured enemies. It has men who will pull the hearts out of their enemies and chew on them. Using CW in this theatre of war is no game changer.

    BHO and dave need to learn the lessons from their own multicultural songbook and not force savages to dance to our tune.

  171. AWK – I agree with you that Syria has attractive people. Once … I don’t think I have mentioned this before … when I was flying to Delhi, the plane I was on was hijacked over Damascus. It put down and let the passengers to grope their way off the plane into a totally black airport. I didn’t operate 24 hours a day in those days, or it did, but the staff had been told to vacate it.

    Anyway, there we were in the gate area we had stumbled to from the aeroplane, and it was pitch, pitch black. They locked the door to the runway. So we stood around in utter bafflement and darkness. Eventually, after about 45 minutes, some attendant (or perhaps it was just an enterprising fellow passenger) turned on the light over the bar and we all swarmed over.

    Then we waited in the dark, save the little bulb over the bar, and waited and waited. I decided to try to go it alone, so I stumbled down the blacked out corridors and eventually, after a couple of wrong turns, made it to the main airport door which, mercifully, wasn’t locked.

    Of course finding a taxi at an abandoned airport in the middle of the night isn’t easy. A couple of them stopped offering to give me a ride free, adding the inevitable, “You are my seester”. I shooed them away and eventually got into a taxi driven by what looked like a stable family man and asked for a hotel. The first one he took me to, I shrank away from. We drove some more and spotted a small hotel with its doors wide open. The check-in counter was just a couple of yards from the door, and there was a man, the night manager, his elbows on the counter reading a newspaper.

    It looked normal enough, so I checked in and spent a peaceful night.

    The next morning I went, of course, back to the airport, which was fully operational by then. No mention at any of the ticket counters, but we were all checked in to the destinations we had been going to before being hijacked. And, miracle, our luggage was on board.

    So we boarded the plane to Delhi, feeling shakey and fragile, but on a plane, in daylight and flying to delhi with our luggage.

    Anyway, the point of recounting this is, I found the Syrians … other than the ones who chanced it and said I was their “seester”, to be courteous, kindly and, in general, nice looking.

    And we landed in Delhi without incident. Nothing was ever explained to us by the airline or the ground staff at the airport.

  174. Tommy – Rudyard Kipling

    O I went into a public-‘ouse to get a pint o’ beer,
    The publican ‘e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here.”
    The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
    Well I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:

    Well it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, go away”;
    But it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins”, when the band begins to play,
    When the band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
    It’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins”, when the band begins to play.

    So I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
    They gave a drunk civilian room, but they ‘adn’t none for me;
    They sent me to the gallery or round the music-‘alls,
    But when it comes to fightin’, Lord! they’ll shove me in the stalls!

    For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, wait outside”;
    But it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide,
    When the troopship’s on the tide, my boys, the troopship’s on the tide,
    It’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide.

    Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms what guard you while you sleep
    Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;
    An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit
    Well, is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.

    Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, ‘ow’s yer soul?”
    But it’s the “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll,
    When the drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
    It’s the “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll.

    Well, we aren’t no thin red ‘eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too,
    We’re just single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
    An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints,
    Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints;

    While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be’ind”,
    But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind
    When there’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind,
    It’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind.

    Now you talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires, an’ all:
    We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
    Don’t mess about them cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
    Thatte Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.

    But it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
    But he’s a “Hero of ‘is country” when the guns begin to shoot;
    Well’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
    But’ Tommy ain’t no bleedin’ fool—you bet that Tommy sees!

  176. ACP,

    Missing Fergus? Then you might (not) want to revisit his “Shadows” epic:

    http://www.coffeehousewall.co.uk/the-coffee-house-wall-26th1st-sept/#comment-28208

    Which prompted the following response from Austin Barry:

    Austin Barry
    May 1st, 2012 – 08:03
    Fergus Pickering (30 April at19.23) surely a confirmed Bachelor Boy, writes an ode to Cliff:
    “He walks with more than one
    Shadow lingering behind him”
    Excellent. Can we expect some Freudian take on Freddy and the Dreamers?

  180. Radford NG – Do people on the Left themselves chaff because of the insufferableness of having every last bloody thing we want to do either banned or made compulsory? I mean they’re all a bunch of narcissistic anarchists and now that they are the established dominant orthodoxy where is that old sense of rebellion?

    PfM – That’s good news about Messrs. Boot and Dalrymple. Both gifted with that acerbic bite that only intellect and experience can bring. Congratulations!

  181. Patriccia @ 16:00

    Not just a poll of the people – the Constitution demands that Congress concur before the president may make war in these circumstances.

    The criminal American administration gives short shrift to constitutional considerations although its casuistical spokesmen may nod in the document’s direction
    (http://cnsnews.com/news/article/wh-chemical-attack-syria-goes-core-natl-security-interests-usa),
    however it may have to consult Congress whether it likes it or not and Congress, which could not be arsed to return from holiday early to debate the matter, will have to face the question albeit in retrospect whether it wants to or no:

    “The U.S. military, struggling after defense cuts of tens of billions of dollars, will be unable to pay for attacks on Syria from current operating funds and must seek additional money from Congress, according to congressional aides.”
    (h/p Drudge Report)

    Furthermore, the US government will run out of money for its
    overall exenditure in October, at which time it will have to have another session of its much larger shell game.

    And just over the horizon looms a far darker prospect for them and us:

    “The situation today is in no way comparable to 1980. When you’ve got 3 or 4 American banks with derivative exposure that is three of four times larger than all of the wealth in the world combined, these bets can’t be covered. No amount of money can be printed to bail that out.

    It’s the Americans that deregulated and destroyed their own financial system. It will have repercussions worldwide because, to varying degrees, every part of the world is connected to the American financial system. The ones most connected will be hurt the worst.

    I think the results of the toll will fall on the United States and Europe. So it will be Western civilization which is simply moved aside, and is no longer the #1 arbiter and decision-maker (in the world). They (countries in the West) have brought failure to themselves. They, the United States and Europe, are going to become 2nd world, and 3rd world countries.” ”

    kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2013/8/30_Former_US_Treasury_Official_-_U.S._To_Experience_Total_Collapse.html

    Whether this is only the result of the incompetence of damn fool politicians, or whether of some sinister overall plot to grasp total control from plunging our civilization into chaos, the end will be the same.

    Nonetheless when I read stories like the following, I wonder if I am not looking at a small piece of a well-designed jigsaw puzzle:

    “Migrants’ poor English is a strain on state resources. A third of Britain’s biggest migrant communities cannot speak English well, prompting concerns about strain they place on the NHS and schools.” (Daily Telegraph)

  182. Verity @ 19:17

    “…some attendant (or perhaps it was just an enterprising fellow passenger) turned on the light over the bar and we all swarmed over.”

    I hope you had the presence of mind to mix yourself a stiff G & T before you swarmed…

  185. “Obama says U.S. only considering ‘limited, narrow’ response”.

    That’s the latest headline I’ve seen about the U.S. and Syria.

    Presumably President Obama is not going to specify in advance exactly what response he has in mind, but whatever can “limited and narrow” possibly mean and what purpose will it serve?

    Is his aim is to create”shock and awe”? If so it will it no need to be something either extremely destructive, or extremely spectacular?

    Judging from the disgraceful US betrayal of the Christian Serbs in the former Yugoslavia (when President Clinton’s military forces not only deprived the Serbs of their ancient heartland of Kosovo and handed it over to Islam but also bombed a Chinese Embassy) I fear that the’limited and narrow” response is quite likely to be very foolish indeed.

  186. Scenario;somewhere in England : “Hello,Mohammed!I hear you Muslim cultural centre was burnt down by the racist EDL.”……”Shhhhh,Akbar,that’s next week.” // (Apologies to the old Jewish humourists and recent GofV.)

  187. Herbert Thornton re the Obama quote above – “… but whatever can ‘limited and narrow’ possibly mean …?

    A self-portrait?

  188. Ever heard the argument that goes ‘it’s a good thing for left wingers to write articles for right wing papers because it allows you to see what the other side is thinking’? Telegraph blogs have taken it too far. Dan Hodges and Tom Chivers represent the Richard Dawkings brigade. Then there’s Mary whatshername from the Labour Party. Then there are the loyal but lame Tory attacks on Ed Miliband from randoms who are hoping to become MPs. As for the very good there’s Tebbit, Delingpole, and Hannan. As for the rest? What happened to Gerald Warner and Peter Mullen? Seems to grow more and more PC every year.

  190. “Lord Ashdown, the former Lib Dem leader, said he felt “ashamed” and “depressed” about the failure of politicians to support action. “Call me a”n old warhorse if you wish but I think our country is greatly diminished this morning,” he said. “The special relationship with the US is seriously damaged, and Britain is now more isolated.”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10277598/Ministers-face-sack-over-Syria-shambles.html

    Tough shit, my Lord.

  194. Peter from Maidstone

    Lord Tebbit
    Tommy Robinson

    Perhaps a joint interview, with Frank P asking the questions?

  195. Radford NG

    Yes, once the Americans take their country back, we will happily resume the special relationship and in return we will loan them the bust of Churchill.

  196. Interesting take on events in the Grauniad this very morning

    “David Cameron accused Ed Miliband of siding with Russia and letting down the United States over Syria in an acrimonious phone call made between the leaders a day before the Commons votes against intervention in Syria, according to Labour sources.

    Details of the remarkably frank conversation emerged after Downing Street aides attempted to blame Miliband for killing off the government’s plans to take military action against Bashar al-Assad’s regime in conjunction with the US.

    When Miliband made it clear in the call he would not support the government motion without more conditions, an exasperated Cameron accused him of “letting down America” and “siding with [Sergei] Lavrov”, the Russian foreign minister, and an ally of Assad.”

  197. Moving closer to Germany and Russia might not be such a bad idea. It worked in 1812-15 and might be the smart play for the rest of this century. Does anyone have any informed sources with a view on this?

  198. Absolutely

    Obama made common cause with French last night and Kerry recalled
    the “Treaty of Alliance with France” which was signed on February 6, 1778, creating a military alliance between the United States and France against Great Britain. Negotiated by the American diplomats Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee, the Treaty of Alliance required that neither France nor the United States agree to a separate peace with Great Britain. In addition to the Treaty of Alliance, the Treaty of Amity and Commerce with France was signed on February 6, 1778, promoting trade and commercial ties between the two countries.

  199. Malfleur 08.02

    “..in return we will loan them the bust of Churchill…”
    Rather we will provide it on lease lend unti at a rate equivalent to the fraudulent ‘compensation’ sums being claimed from B.
    I suppose though, that they’d be far happier with the bust of Cheryl Cole, which, like anyone else, they can have for free.
    And Max Hastings provides a trenchent analysis of the ‘special relationship’ over in the DM.

  200. Remember also our common royal heritage with Germany:

    The Hanoverian kings of Great Britain (from George I up to William IV) were also the rulers of the German state of Hanover. Queen Victoria married Albert, the German prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and their grandsons included the rulers of Britain and Germany in 1914. The Mountbatten family is of Hessian ancestry. And before that there was the dynastic alliance pursued between Æthelberht of Kent and Charibert I, and subsequently that between Offa of Mercia and Charlemagne.

    And of course English and German are both West Germanic languages. The Hanseatic League was a commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and their market towns that dominated trade along the coast of Northern Europe. It stretched from the Baltic to the North Sea during the 13th–17th centuries, and included London. The main center was Lübeck, Germany.

    The Kaiser and Hitler were blips and we should certainly take up with the delicious Angela as I have been posting.

  201. Malfleur, I will see what I can do about a third man.

    Let me invite those of you who are reading these pages but don’t usually post here to consider supporting the internet TV politics programme we are trying to develop. If you haven’t seen it mentioned already, we have booked Alex Boot and Theodore Dalrymple to discuss current social and political events, and we are working hard to book a third significant commentator. We do need to raise funds for equipment, professional services and broadcasting over the internet, so please consider making a donation, however large or small, to allow this project to come to fruition. If you donate £25 or over you will receive a DVD copy of the broadcast, which we expect to be informative, educational and entertaining, and definitely from a conservative point of view.

    You can make a donation now, investing in this exciting project, by visiting this page on the site…

    http://www.coffeehousewall.co.uk/coffee-house-tv-exciting-crowdsourcing-opportunity/

  202. PfM – 7.42

    Peter, everyone here is very aware of what is happening in this country, but I’d love to know who is pulling the strings. The simultaneous happenings of, for instance, world-wide campaigning for gay marriage or small things like the sudden use of phrases like “going forward” point to a co-ordinated strategy, so who is instigating this?
    And why is Islam being given such privileges not just in legal sanctions against any public criticism? White Christianity is attacked on questions of woman priests, gay marriage etc (naturally the BBC don’t want to question black evangelical Christians on such matters in case they get the wrong answer), but Islam openly does dreadful things to women, and won’t be hosting any gay marriages within the next 1000 years at least, but such questions will never be asked by the champions of feminism and gay rights, The Guardian and the BBC? Why is this? And the fact that this is so, suggests they know what the “programme” for the UK and the West is, but has everyone been bought? Is there nobody on the “inside” who might become a whistleblower?
    We know the “what”, but I’d love to know “who” and “why” so if you can think of someone who could answer, then book them!

  203. Fox News has a tame retired general that it leads out from time to time to comment on matters geo-political and military. Hannity interviewed him yesterday and pressed him on the apparent contradiction in Obama’s supporting Al Qaeda in Syria while fighting against them elsewhere.

    Alex Jones by the way argues that Al Qaeda are run by Obama’s controllers who have overarching interests and that therefore there is no contradiction

    The general responded to Hannity that, oh well.,you know, Al Qaeda are all in he north of Syria just occupying the ground. Elsewhere, the forces of active opposition to Assad who will benefit from an American strike, are “moderates”.

    By contrast, the New York Times reported on April 27th this year that:

    ” Across Syria, rebel-held areas are dotted with Islamic courts staffed by lawyers and clerics, and by fighting brigades led by extremists. Even the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government.

    Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of. ”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/world/middleeast/islamist-rebels-gains-in-syria-create-dilemma-for-us.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

    While it is not clear what our respected general or the Obama regime that has temporary control of the White House means by “moderate”, it is reasonable to believe a fuddy-duddy wet liberal daily like the NYT on this aspect of the civil war in Syria. It should follow that it be hard to credit that since April, Al Qaeda has detached itself from “across Syria” and withdrawn docilely to an isolated corner in the north, allowing its sharia courts and its military command in the greater part of the rebel-held country to be abandoned.

    The rogue administration in Washington D.C. and its holiday prostitutes in Congress and the media are thus by active design or supine passivity taking their people into war for Syrian islamofascists.

    So, Americans, “be not too bold, for Dickon thy master is bought and sold”.

    Cui bono?

  205. The only real problem I see with an alliance with Germany is cultural. The Kaiser could never understand why everyone preferred to go to Paris rather than Berlin…

  208. Radford NG – 07:34 ‘New York Times article’
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/world/middleeast/syria.html?comments#permid=261

    It is interesting that, though the comments are very supportive of the Westminster vote, there is great spread of opinion within this support. To me, this indicates that people with many different prejudices are of one mind on this issue.

    I like this one from ‘furnee’ in ‘holland’:
    “There is little ground for mr Cohen to reproach the British Parliament and by that the British nation or by extension the European peoples …”

    I thought France, and the French president, were in Europe! And, with a ‘holland’ tag, does the poster not notice a connection with the French president?

  209. IRISHBOY @ 9:43

    Further: I did suggest here some time back that it would be useful to have a pge similar to the “Discover the Networks” section of FrontPage magazine. Of course, that is a laborious task and the CHW would need funds before it could even consider undertaking it.

    But consider, on the FrontPage site you can for example go to “Arab LobbY

    http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/summary.asp?object=Persons&category=

    where Item 15 on the extensive, alphabetical list is HUMA ADEDIN who it will be remembered was the close conifante of Hillary Clinton when she was Secrretary of State. She is also married to a disreputable politician who was forced to resign from Congress and more recently has been running for Mayor of New York City.

    Click on Huma Abedin’s name and you are taken to the following summary:

    Daughter of Saleha Mahmood Abedin, a pro-Sharia sociologist with ties to numerous Islamist organizations including the Muslim Brotherhood
    Longtime assistant to Hillary Clinton
    Wife of former congressman Anthony Weiner
    Longtime former employee of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, which shares the Muslim Brotherhood’s goal of establishing Islamic supremacy and Sharia Law worldwide

    This is followed by a detailed narrative of her background, career and connections; links to persons to whom she is connected in one way or another; and a bibliography of books of which she is the subject, for example:
    The Abedin “Affairs” with Al Saud
    By Walid Shoebat
    August 2012 .

    Her penetration of the highest political circles in the United States and her connections with numerous and often dubious islmaic organizations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, paint their own picture of some of the “whos” and “whys”.

    http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2556

    There are 1364 names on the Arab Lobby list alone…

  210. Those setting out to make such connections though, whether islamist, left-wing, authoritarian, etc., should be prepared to find themselves on the receiving end of the usual excoriation:

    “The 9/11 Truther organizers of the “Million American March Against Fear on 9/11,” formerly known as the “Million Muslim March,” aren’t keen on those who dig up their alliances with foreign Islamist groups like Viva Palestina in the U.K. and Jamaat-e-Islami in Bangladesh. In a recent conference call, one of the organizers even attacked me as a “Nazi bulldog.” ” – Ryan Mauro

    http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/the-million-muslim-march-and-its-foreign-islamist-ties/

    The Million Muslim March is scheduled to take place on September 11th in Washington D.C.

  211. Peter from Maidstone@August 31st, 2013 – 09:56

    why not Rt Hon Anthony Wedgewood Benn. It would give it a good perspective, and hopefully your other guests would not give him an easy ride. And he is civilised, so you wont end up with a fight in the car park!.

  212. ‘We now know Brits cannot be counted on’: White House snub as US and France prepare to strike Syria as early as TOMORROW over chemical attack that killed 1,429
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2407764/We-know-Brits-counted-White-House-snub-US-France-prepare-strike-Syria-early-TOMORROW-chemical-attack-killed-1-429.html

    Putin: US claims of Syria gas attack are ‘utter nonsense’
    http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/middleeast/article3857298.ece (£)

    Get the popcorn out!

  214. Alexsandr

    I agree – good idea! Wedgie is a national treasure and an old school conservative. I remember in the early 1970s, when I was living in Manhattan, asking an old friend,a Lieutentant [Loo-tenant]-Colonel in the Marines, a lawyer and a radical leftist (anti-soviet), about him and he said “Oh, he’s playing long-stop for the ruling class”.

    So let’s have him on by all means. Though he may have changed his ideas of to whom his allegiance now lies since those far off days.

  215. No-one is talking about the oil pipeline from Iraq to the med coast. Maybe thats why the US is getting into a lather about Syria.

  219. An extract from the comments section in the New York Times;

    From Bob Bunsen, West Texas
    “………..There’s a possibility that our special relationship wouldn’t convince the Brits to back action in Syria under ANY circumstances. The fact that it’s a very good friend who wants me to do a stupid, futile, or fruitless thing doesn’t make the thing any less stupid, futile, or fruitless.”

    well said, Bob.

  220. Peter

    Did you expunge my last post?

    Just in case you didn’t and it disappeared into the cybermuda triangle I repeat it hereafter (or perhaps paraphrase it, as a I didn’t keep a copy):

    Suggest all Wallsters read Alexander Boot’s last three blog posts if they haven’t already (the most recent on Cranmer’s blog). They tend to deflect from any idea that seems to be forming on this Wall that it would be a good idea to form a new ‘alliance of the unwilling’ with the Huns and the Russkis.

    His previous blog writings, since ACP introduced him to us some moons ago, on the subject of both of our recent enemies (one his native country, btw) had already reinforced my doubts in that regard.

    I know there is a certain amount of political confusion in the air at present. But FFS!

    I’m sure any Islamic jihadists who monitor our traffic will be delighted that anti-American nature of the graffiti here of late. While I abhor Obama and all who sail in him, I see no point in letting either the Camerloons or the Obamites with their extreme leftist puppeteers (such as Anita Dunn and Valerie Jarrett), drive a wedge between what’s left of the United Kingdom and what’s left of our alliance with what’s left of the US of A, in favour of stronger alliances with Moscau and Berlin . That our pussy- whipped PM is also embracing SamCams cloying sentimentality over the Syrian refugee camps is bad enough.

    As our politicians have for decades gradually run our own military capability into the ground, I suggest that we might be a little short of wherewithal if the shit hits the fan in the Near East – as seems likely very soon – if the Septics suddenly go isolationist on us. Whilst ’tis true that they are not always the most reliable of friends; they certainly would be the very worst of enemies.

    As for that barmy old twat the erstwhile 2nd Viscount Stansgate, why do you think the media have stopped wheeling him out of late? Last time I saw him on TV he was ga-ga and boggle eyed – and that was some time ago. Even the MSM eventually know when it’s time to stop mocking the afflicted. I’m not sure whether it’s just hereditary or whether all that tea-swilling did it (reportedly two gallons a a day), but his salad days are definitely o’er. And I speak as one whose Cos leaves are limp and soggy and whose tomatoes have shrivelled, albeit still on the vine.

  221. dg
    August 31st, 2013 – 04:58
    “Ever heard the argument that goes ‘it’s a good thing for left wingers to write articles for right wing papers because it allows you to see what the other side is thinking’? Telegraph blogs have taken it too far. Dan Hodges and Tom Chivers represent the Richard Dawkings brigade. Then there’s Mary whatshername from the Labour Party.”

    Mary whatshername (I can’t remember it either) is one of the main reasons why we stopped ordering the Telegraph a couple of years ago. I don’t notice the leftwing papers featuring regular articles by rightwing journalists.

    I bought a copy of the Telegraph the other day, the first time in ages, to read the coverage of the Cameron’s nausea-inducing idiocy, and found the editorial actually appeared to support him, and that the whole coverage was inferior to that in the Mail. Won’t be buying it again for a very long time. It is no longer a Conservative-supporting newspaper but a wet rag that doesn’t know what it stands for.

  224. Frank P – Wonderful, readable writing at all times. Never a dull post from you in the time we’ve been cyber acquaintances.

  225. Verity –

    When I asked whatever ‘limited and narrow’ can possibly mean, you answered – “A self-portrait?”

    Conrad, Lord Black in today’s National Post, expresses a similar sentiment even more colourfully. He describes Obama as a narcissist who is saying – “All the world must watch while I pull the petals off this daisy.”

    Today’s N.P. has several other pieces that are well worth reading – especially one by George Jonas, accurately describing R2P (Responsibility to Protect) as a left-liberal “progressive” doctrine and a do-gooder’s conceit as well as the power-seeking bureaucrat’s self-justification.

  226. I’ve just read that Obama is about to make a speech in the White House Rose Garden.

    Any guesses what he’ll say?

    My own guess is that he’ll announce that he’s ordering his limited and narrow step to take place – and that when it does it’ll turn out to be a cruise missile demolition of the Syrian Presidential Palace.

  227. I’ve located the address of Lord Tebbit and will write a letter to him tomorrow and send it Monday. We can but hope. If there are other suggestions I will certainly consider them.

  230. I have found the last two weeks incredible.

    The elephant in the room (again!) is UKIP.

    There was no conscience in the Commons.

    There was just a bunch of people who know that their parties are in mortal danger.

    The media put a blanket ban on UKIP’s position.

    You had to go to the internet to find it out.

    The Commons pooped its pants over UKIP on Thursday.

    What goes parp, splat, stink?

    A FibLabCon elephant in the room losing controls of its bowels at the sight of the UKIP mouse.

  231. Yes, Noa, all good suggestions, but I think James Delingpole is the best bet because he wields such an exquisitely sharp scalpel that enemies don’t even know they’ve been cut until the see the blood.

  232. Syria –

    After watching Obama’s speech on the White House laws it’s clear that he’s in fact doing a David Cameron.

    Isn’t it deliciously comical?

  233. Consider the news management propaganda of the past four weeks.

    Week one: Five syllables uttered by Godfrey Bloom are splashed across the newspapers for seven days non-stop. On the seventh day Matthew Dimcona is still banging on about it in a full-length opinion piece.

    Week two: We find out LibCon have robbed the grave of a dead woman for party funds.

    Why wasn’t it top of the TV news bulletins? Why did the story sink after a day?

    Compare that with the previous week’s ‘misdemeanour’.

    The two lawyers who ‘helped’ that woman write her will have links to construction and personal injury empires. Useful to have emissaries for such things in the House of Lords. If that’s what money buys.

    Other people’s money.

    But I’m sure it was an honest mistake. I mean, it’s not like the woman is dead and so isn’t here to argue her case.

    And if no-one else was to benefit from the will who would go through the rigmarole of mounting legal action against the executors?

    They wouldn’t gain anything, even if they won.

    I’m sure that never occurred to Dominic Grieve when he rubber stamped the decision to snatch the dead woman’s money.

    How curious, with it all being above board and all, that as soon as it became public knowledge, everyone ran a mile and backtracked.

    Nowhere near the outcry at UKIP the week before for five – count them – syllables.

    Weeks three and four: Syria, Syria, Syria.

    No mention of UKIP’s policy on Syria at all.

    Important enough to bang on about UKIP for a whole week over five syllables. But this?

    ‘UKIP? Who are they? Never heard of them. Extremists.

    ‘The people in the Commons aren’t frightened of UKIP.’ You want to watch out with UKIP – they’re probably pro-violence, you know.’

    UKIP didn’t influence their ‘conscience’ vote. It’s not like they’re so hated they’d rob people’s graves to fund themselves where party member funding should be.

    So there’s your four weeks. Multiply four warped weeks like that by 12 and you have a year.

    Stand back and just appreciate the level of co-ordination that has goes into Big Media news agenda manipulation.

    Breathtaking.

    Isn’t it?

  234. Tim, I agree entirely that there is a co-ordinated effort to undermine UKIP.

    I would hope that if this pilot programme can be shown to work, and be a platform for robust conservative views, then Nigel Farage might be willing to appear and explain himself without constant interruptions.

  235. I found this video disturbing on so many levels.

    It starts off by explaining the low-level nepotism in investment banks.

    Then, with the background, we get on to the big fish.

    And a special one.

    Tony Blair and JP Morgan. $25 million per year.

    Cameron’s past month has been a business blueprint.

    Whenever there is a rise or fall there are huge amounts of cash floating about – and slices to be taken.

    I thought my notebook on Blair was full, but this added new stuff to it.

    Most disturbing of all is that George Galloway, the Left’s showman equivalent of Boris Johnson is making such capital out of this.

    The thing I notice about Galloway and Johnson is their appeal to younger voters, who see them as ‘characters’ and completely misread how they exploit genuine concerns.

    Galloway’s entire career is built on being like a broken clock.

    He is, sadly, right at least twice a day.

    Don’t be duped, kids.

    http://rt.com/shows/keiser-report/episode-489-max-keiser-991/

  236. Dulce et Decorum Est ;(Wilfred Owen). David Cameron declared this to be his favourite poem re. National Poetry Day,7 Oct. 2010. With it’s line:”Gas!Gas!Quick,boys!” etc.could this be some reason for his attitude to Assad and Syria? (Various ref. can be found by googling : david cameron wilfred owen )

  237. And the most delicious sleight of hand is after the vote – draw the mugginses into the straw man pantomine fight.

    Give them some skin in the game.

    Column inch after column inch of who came off best Ed or Dave.

    Get angry about that.

    That’s OK with the elite.

    Just don’t get excited about an alternative.

    The debate is all wonderfully under control.

    Political choice. Rigged.

  239. Tim
    August 31st, 2013 – 19:36

    Any questions today(repeated from last night) had pontification from vacillating Shirley Williams, absolute garbage spouted by Diane Abbott and bombast from Gove’s ex flat mate Nick Boles.

    And then there was Nigel Farage.

    He spoke common sense from the beginning of the programme to the end.

    The other 3 shouted and screamed at each other and said nothing useful.

    Farage was statesman like.

    Further he was the only one who spoke common sense on Syria without having to sideswipe.

    He was magnificent.

  240. These ‘anti-fascist’ groups are heavily funded to produce headlines: that there is violence at EDL rallies.

    Yes.

    And who ALWAYS starts it?

    They’re wannabe Alastair Campbells.

  242. It appears that The Right Honourable Dr James Gordon Brown MP served the people of his Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath constituency by not cutting short his holiday to vote on the Syrian motion.

  243. With the Cameroons in some disarray,and thus the ties of political allegiances loosened somewhat, would this be the opportune time for Fraser Nelson to publish his long-awaited views on Neathergate?

  244. The vote in the House, in effect against the renegade Obama,is in some small measure payback for Eisenhower’s betrayal of Eden at the time of Suez.

  245. Th question whether Britain should lean towards Russia and Germany in coming years is a perfectly reasonable one for debate. Serious men anticipate the financial collapse of the United States (and indeed of the United Kingdom) and the Pentagon disclosed only this week that it did not have the funding for Obama’s Syrian adventure. It’s a hard rain that’s gonna fall and we should begin to think of options for surviving the storm.

  248. Yes, Malfleur. Britain should lean more to France and Germany. And China. They’re all full of clever people. (Well, Britain’s been ground to powder by Blair and Shameron, but France, Germany, Russia and China still think the right way.)

  250. “Britain lost that coveted status [a great imperial power] after the Second World War when she had to sell all her overseas possessions and gold to pay for the aid generously provided by the Americans. In fact, we paid off the last of the war-time debt only in 2006, which perhaps hints at the one-sided nature of the special relationship (American aid to Stalin came free of charge).”
    Alex Boot – http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/

  251. Malfleur (23:38)

    “The vote in the House, in effect against the renegade Obama, is in some small measure payback for Eisenhower’s betrayal of Eden at the time of Suez.”

    Yeah … and Paul Harris was covertly testing, on behalf of Homeland Security, the US immigration department’s efficiency, when he used a bogey passport in the attempt to enter the States.

    But seriously … each and every MP who voted in both the motion and the amendment had their own fucked-up personal agenda; I doubt any of them had Eisenhower on their minds. It was partisan or factional posturing from beginning to end. Moreover it was a damned near-run thing.

    I suspect that few of the small majority who voted against the motion/amendment did so for the only logical reason: the fact that attacking Assad would give succour to the real enemy – islamic jihad, the multiheaded monster of the Muslim Brotherhood.

    And the ‘effect’ will not be known for some time. It is also probable that Cameroon did O’Barmy a favour: he now has someone to blame for his bottling out – which he wanted to do anyway.

    Watching the travesty being played out today, on Septic TV, was like watching one of the funnier episodes of Dad’s Army.

    “Don’t give him your name, Obama!”

    In fact Capt’n Mainwaring would have made a better POTUS than the current incumbent. And Private Pike reminds me of our Deputy Prime Minister. It was his rambling, contradictory crap in the round-up speech that swayed many of the potential yeasayers into naysayers, thank fuck!

    It would be interesting to know exactly what happened between Gigolo Kerry’s emetic guff yesterday and Obama’s climb down today. One wonders whether someone got wind of the fact that the UN Chemical Weapons team’s findings were not exactly as expected. Only time will tell.

    And finally, if the $ does go down the shitter, both Putin and Angela will be in the cacky with the rest of us. Whether we like it or not, our survival is linked to America’s; I’d swap our current status (as a ‘region’ of the EUSSR) for adoption as the 51st of the US of A, any old day.

    Obama’s days are numbered, not America’s. They have more chance of working their way out of the shit than the UK on current projections. But it may take some time. The GOP need a credible candidate next time. The last two were dire.

    Seems to me that our time has run out, given the state of the current administration and the putrid possibilities of succession. I hope I’m wrong, but there just isn’t enough time left for Farage to gather a band of credible candidates together. He’s a very entertaining one-man-band and has the gift of the gab; but the urgency of the predicament means he has arrived too late with too small and too weird a crew to effect a rescue.

  252. A political cartoon might well have Obama being dragged on a lead behind a British Bull-dog.

  254. I, too, would prefer us to join the US than stay in the foetid EU. States’ rights are very important in the US and every state runs itself to its own taste. In (I think it’s) Montana, condemned criminals get a choice of the means of death penalty employed. Freedom to the end … they can choose being shot by a firing squad or lethal injection.

    Other than the slimy and distasteful aspect of having Obama as president, the US still the has the best form of government and every state governs itself to the taste of the citizens of that state. Unlike the Kremlim in Brussels, where all must abide by the same diktats. Britain could do worse than become the 51st state. They would probably let us keep our royalty under some mandate that they would come up with to accommodate the notion. It is certainly preferable to the iron grip of the greedy bastards behind the EU.

  255. Noa

    Peter Hitchens is an honourable man but I do sometimes think that it is easier to take a moral stand when the only decisions you face are which keys to hit – ordinary bloggers face this same quandary. For instance, he writes “If you start a fight, you provoke retaliation. And you then start a chain whose end you cannot possibly know. So it isn’t limited.”

    But then again if you stand idly by “if the only alternative is to do something stupid” do you not also “start a chain whose end you cannot possibly know”?

    Scrolling a little further down in your link, we find a separate short section on Mark Carneyvorous, representative of what some would say is one of the sinister organisations behind many a domestic and foreign policy outrage. Hitchen’s comment here is spot on and hard fact rather than moral speculation:

    “By keeping interest rates below the level of inflation, he [Carney] uses his enormous power to make the nation’s prudent, thrifty savers pay for our national debt binge. It is targeted inflation, immoral in a dozen ways.”

    We now know that LIBOR was illegally manipulated for years. The mechanisms of the free gold market are brazenly abused. Vast tranches of public revenue are used to build political constituencies. Digital money is infused into the banking system without regard for any corresponding value. What else? The financial system of state and corporate hanky-panky needs an Augean clean out; when the rivers of financial collapse begin to flow, that will be the opportunity to sweep out Carney and the rest of the self-serving banking ordure into the Thames and to instal an honest and clean system once more. Well, you can hope…

  256. Noa 0226
    “In some ways, most shocking has been the behaviour of the BBC. It uncritically promoted atrocity propaganda from the beginning, making no effort to be objective. It frequently treated opponents of the rush to war with nasty contempt. If the BBC Trust is to justify its large budget and fancy offices, it would do well to investigate this grave failure to be impartial.”

    Interesting that no sooner had we had the Commons vote that the BBC began running wall to wall coverage on Napalming a school on no evidence whatsoever that I could see.

  257. It is unclear to me why the Mail is going full out on a pro-attack Syria campaign. The editorials and blogs are full of the shame we now bear as a nation with warnings that the Falklands are about to be invaded because we didn’t agree to blow up children in Damascus. Its all rather revolting and vomit inducing.

  260. Malfleur, August 31st, 2013 – 23:55

    “When you’ve got someone by the balls, their hearts and minds tend to follow.”

    If Russia turns off the the gas taps much of Europe will freeze every winter until some fracking alternative can be found. Ironic, isn’t it, how gas has turned out to be Germany’s Achilles heel.

  261. Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis is due to be `inducted`today as Chief Rabbi of Britain and the Commonwealth at St. John’s Wood synagogue ;Prince Charles is to attend.Rabbi Mirvis (56) was born in South Africa;he has been Chief Rabbi of Ireland;and is currently at the Finchley synagogue. (Ref.;various news sites@google news)

  264. EC
    September 1st, 2013 – 09:44

    Therefore I say that it is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.

  266. Also by LP I notice:

    The Beer Shops licensed to have the Beer drunk on the Premises, are a Pest to the Community. They are Haunts of Thieves and Schools for Prostitutes. they demoralize the lower Classes. I wish you would turn your mind to consider Whether this Evil could not be abated. That Beer should be sold like anything Else, to be taken away by the Purchaser to be consumed at Home is most reasonable and the more People are enabled so to supply the labouring Classes the better, but the words “licensed to be drunk on the Premises” are by the common People interpreted as applicable to the Customers as well as to the Liquor, and well do they avail themselves of the License.

    Letter to William Ewart Gladstone (20 October 1853)

  267. Patriccia Shaw 1st, – 07:39

    “In some ways, most shocking has been the behaviour of the BBC……..making no effort to be objective.”

    As they did about Egypt, where they trumpeted repeatedly that Morsi had been ‘democratically elected’ while ignoring for days that his actions while in power had been undemocratic and designed to subvert any future democratic election worthy of the name.

  268. Malfleur and Patriccia Shaw. Greetings on my sunday morning to you early risers!

    Wallsters will have noticed by now that I tend to recommend Peter Hitchens posts and books.
    This is not because I always agree with him, I don’t. He is an unreconstituted cyclist who would have frozen the railways in the Beeching era and is an unconditional though cynical monarchist.
    However his posts are always based on extensive research and painfully honest in challenging the self deceptions and lack of original thought and a national unwillingness to challenge or even recognise to the decay and corruption which is now endemic within our political system and which pervades every aspect of our society.
    Much of what we recognise is deeply wrong in society we do intuitively, recognising from what we have been taught as children that criminals shoud be punished for the real hurt they have inflicted, personally and as an example and deterrant to others who will do the same unless they are frightened of the consequences.
    I know of few other writers who seek to examine and portray their own beleifs as honestly and who do so at considerable personal cost..

  269. Verity
    Your posts are always amusing and/or thought provoking.
    And on travelling in the middle east I once remember making the mistake of sitting next to a taxi driver who, before we had even left the airport terminus in Riyadh, had demonstrated his sexual proclivities by clamping his right hand firmly on my thigh rather than the gear stick. The altercation that followed nearly resulted in a head on smash and a bloody nose and lip (his), before we proceeded to our destination.

    However, whilst I agree that the American model offers its citizens real constitutional safeguards that the UK’s constitution does not, that is primarily because holders of the position of POTUS, their monarchical equivalent, are elected and time limited. Any introduction of both a hereditary and and an elected ruler would be an unworkable political cocktail, resulting in the citizen becoming the subject, as now prevails in the UK, with the sovereign’s prerogative powers simply entirely usurped by the executive

  271. Noa@September 1st, 2013 – 11:39

    I fnd the american model is too dependant of obscene amounts of money, and that the winner of the presidential elections is too often decided by their finances and not by the argument. That, I think, makes their system flawed.

  275. Verity
    September 1st, 2013 – 03:55
    Verity I agree whole heartedly with you. It truly pains me to see soem of the spiteful remarks made against the USA. Obama is NOT America, and his time will pass, and he will fade away. I jsut feel sorry for black Americans who felt proud and voted for him. Slavery was not so very long ago, and a black president was a wonderful achievement. Most people who voted for him could not have understood that he stood for neither black nor white, but was a candidate of the professional democrates who follow the marxist line. A real coconut! Actually I think a lot of the nasty comments about the USA are made in a spirit of mean jealousy, rather like the British in World War II who were glad enough for American boys to die for them, but resentful of the smarter uniforms, better wages and food, and naturally most of the prettiest girls. Resentment of success and achievement is a weakness of many British and not an attribute of which we can be proud.

  277. Radford NG 13.00
    And if we had had governments which acted as they should, restricting citizenship to those who were worthy of it and enforcing harsh and just punishment against criminals who committed crimes of violence like rape, Mrs Mason would not have thought it necessary to have to so protect her daughter and the BBC would not be enforcing discrimatory policies which suppress endemic indigenous concerns about the real problem of islamic appeasement.

  279. Sikh girls being seduced and pimped (like the cases of white girls;but even less publicised).Documentary on BBC 1 in East Midlands and in London at 7-30pm Mon.2nd Sept.___________There is an issue of Sikhs being arrested in Leicester for taking things into their own hands when the police wouldn’t help;don’t know if this will be dealt-with.

  280. AWK 13:09 – ” Actually I think a lot of the nasty comments about the USA are made in a spirit of mean jealousy.” D’accuerdo!

    I would like Britain to become the 51st state — they have better checks and balances than Britain now does after shredding our own sytem of democracy — but what would happen with the Commonwealth? Fifty-four countries. The US would wisely not allow more new countries to join than states that already make up the US (50).

    So, this would need to be worked out.

    We may have to divest ourselves of the Commonwealth. It would be the hottest of political potatoes, but it would provide a New World Order which was directly opposite to the one which is currently being so carefully and stealthily constructed by the Left.

  282. P from M – I lived in the US for over 20 years, and I admire their system of government. States’ rights is an important foundation. The states govern themselves. Only matters of national importanced are settled in DC. The senates of the individual states have enormous power.

    One example I never tire of quoting is, the right to carry (a gun) concealed. I believe Texas is still the only state with this huge advantage over criminals for the average citizens.

    Before, in Texas, as in most states that allow individual gun possession, you had to make sure that your gun was evident, so if anyone wished to attack you, they would know in advance that you had a gun, and could think up ruses to deal with it. For example, in your car, you had to have your gun on the seat next to you or on the dashboard. This meant that any quick witted person could think up a ruse for getting your gun and then attack you.

    George Bush, when he was Governor of Texas, pushed through a bill that citizens could carry their guns concealed. This passed the huge advantage on to the law-abiding gun owner. Now, criminals can’t check first to see whether their victim is armed. You can keep your gun in your pocket, your purse, your shopping bag … wherever.

    So now, the criminal element is considerably more fearful and cautious. That little granny pushing her shopping trolley to her car may be packin’ – and she will know how to use it.

    You have to get a licence to carry concealed, so the criminal element is still arrested for owning an unlicensed weapon. All legitimate guns are licensed after a thorough background check of the owner. But you never know who they are, because they have a legal right to carry concealed. So even criminals don’t let doors swing shut in the face of the elderly man directly behind them entering that bank or backing out of a parking spot.

    Vivo George Bush. Several other states have followed Texas’s example. I think Arizona is one. The result is a drop in gun crime.

  283. My own comment, above, reminded me of the old Mae West line, when she was having a brief conversation with a man: “Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?”.

  284. As far as I can see the dominant position of federal authority is constantly increasing and subverting the role of states. The US was born out of violence, rebellion, self-interest and betrayal. I want no part of it.

  285. Well, well. I had thought that only two or three states had followed Texas’s “right to carry concealed” law, but on googling it, I note that just recently, Illinois became the 50th state to enact such a law.

    I don’t know of any other piece of legislature brought in by a state senate has spread nationwide.

    I hope George Bush Jr had a mean-spirited chuckle. Even those that boring bastion of leftyism, Massachusetts, had to concede to its citizens. Just this year. Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

  286. Peter from Maidstone
    September 1st, 2013 – 14:43

    “The US was born out of violence, rebellion, self-interest and betrayal. I want no part of it.”

    Peter, I’m not thinking of contemporary US policy and life, but sincerely do not understand the reasoning in your above remark. I respect your views, so would appreciate an explanation as to how you have reached your conclusions.

  288. P from M – Texas and the other pioneering states passed the “right to carry” acts 20 or so years ago, and when they observed the overwhelming success of the legislature, other states followed.

    Maybe Illinois was forced by the federal court, but the vast majority of states jumped on the bandwagon once they noted how effective the law was in Texas and several other of the pioneering states.

    Gun crimes went down in Texas once the specialists in robbing 7-11s and similar at gunpoint got a taste of their own medicine.

  290. Well, Peter from Maidstone, the US is a country. I am baffled by your reluctance to accept that the carry concealed laws have saved hundreds of lives. And Illinois doesn’t seem to be getting a bad deal. Anyway, it is not an independent country. It is a state in the United States and shouldn’t be so silly. Maybe the gangs in Chicago, Obama’s old stamping ground, are miffed at the threat that anyone who wants to be armed, can be armed legally …. unlike the old days, which Obama will remember, when only criminals carried guns.

  291. Verity@September 1st, 2013 – 15:48

    I think I prefer the UK position where most citizens are unarmed and police only by exception.

    can you imagine the mayhem on a friday night when young britain gets drunk, and they have guns?

  292. Alexander: So some unemployed yobs might shoot one another on a Saturday night? Please explain what is wrong with this.

    Seriously, though, folks, people applying for a handgun licence, with a right to carry concealed, are extremely unlikely – in fact, 100% – to be issued with a gun licence. Those gun laws in the US are STRICT. It is not the free-for-all the British seem to fantasize.

    I also believe in armed police, these days. In fact, I would rather see them armed with guns than tasers.

  293. Alexsandr
    The subject’s right to carry arms in the UK has like much else, been progressively withdrawn by successive governments:-

    “Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police. Unlike the countries of the European continent, the state did not require its citizens to perform military service. An Englishman could enlist, if he chose, in the regular army, the navy, or the territorials. He could also ignore, if he chose, the demands of national defence. Substantial householders were occasionally called on for jury service. Otherwise, only those helped the state who wished to do so. The Englishman paid taxes on a modest scale: nearly £200 million in 1913-14, or rather less than 8 per cent. of the national income. The state intervened to prevent the citizen from eating adulterated food or contracting certain infectious diseases. It imposed safety rules in factories, and prevented women, and adult males in some industries, from working excessive hours. The state saw to it that children received education up to the age of 13. Since 1 January 1909, it provided a meagre pension for the needy over the age of 70. Since 1911, it helped to insure certain classes of workers against sickness and unemployment. This tendency towards more state action was increasing. Expenditure on the social services had roughly doubled since the Liberals took office in 1905. Still, broadly speaking, the state acted only to help those who could not help themselves. It left the adult citizen alone…”

    Wrote AJP Taylor in “The Effect and Origins of The Great War”

    http://www.heretical.com/British/mhistory.html

    Because of the increase in state intervention, a consequences of the war, and despite have an educated honest, homogenous law abiding society,an effective policing and justice system which both prevented crime and punished criminals harshly the crime rate, and murder, successive governments have progressively debauched the Queens subjects and diminshed their rights of freedom of thought, speech, association and to bear arms to protect themselves.
    Perhaps that would be a satisfactory compromise if Her Majesty’s subjects were better protected by her appointed representatives, but that is not the case. Crime is continuing to soar as lawlessness has become acceptable and goes unpunished and the subject now goes in fear of both the criminal and the state he is coerced to fund to ‘protect’ him.

  295. I have just read this via the BBC website –

    “The US has evidence that the chemical nerve agent Sarin was used in a deadly attack in Damascus last month, Secretary of State John Kerry says.

    He said samples from hair and blood gathered after the attack tested positive for signatures of Sarin.

    Washington said only the Damascus government has the capacity to launch such an attack.”

    After reading that I also discovered that the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo used Sarin in two attacks in Japan in 1994 in a failed attempt to kill three judges.

    It will not surprise me in the least if there is proof that Sarin was indeed used in Syria. But what I cannot understand is how Washington can announce that it must have been the Syrian government that authorised it.

    Surely it’s obvious that if a Japanese cult used Sarin, then the “capacity’ to use it is not confined to governments?

  297. Herbert Thornton
    You are of course quite right.
    We have already seen from his comment that France is the United States’oldest ally that Kerry is hot tempered and prone to expressing premature, ill-judged opinions.

  298. Verity, I am not concerned about any particular laws. But you had said that the advantage of the US system is that each state makes its own laws. I was pointing out that increasingly each state is told what laws it must pass or laws are passed federally. That is no better and in fact much worse than where we already are. I’d rather fight to the death than be governed by Obama or any US president.

  299. P from M – States are extremely jealous of their states’ rights and anyone, including the president (not capitalised in the case of the unelected Obamarama), trying over overrule a state’s right to accept or reject a law has a fight on his hands.

  300. Noa, the interview with Vladimir Bukovsky featured on Liberty GB’s website is fascinating.

    The EU is structured exactly like the USSR.

    The UK is so obsessed with Hitler, a war in the end it may have even been pointless fighting given the UK’s subsequent surrender, people cannot unearth the Marxoid puppet strings that hang around them.

    That filth didn’t die away, it just mutated via the culture wart like some ghastly John Carpenter sci-fi monster.

    It’s like The Thing, only we can’t hold a blow torch up to the blood of suspected Common Purposer and see if it reveals what they are!

  301. Herbert
    Kerry is mad and grasping at straws.
    He looked deranged on the videos.
    He is the Rumsfeld of 2013 without the comical streak.
    QUESTION
    If we accept firm evidence of Sarin in a rebel held area, who is to say that it was not fired there by the Al Qaeda rebels.
    Remember life is cheap to the sons of Islam.

  302. Galloway!

    Following the revelation in the video posted above that Galloway wants to run for London Mayor, I have put the feelers out.

    Oh, yes, I am told. You’ve missed the spin. And indeed I have.

    Galloway has been quietly turning his campaigning efforts to causes associated with mainstream voters to position himself for a mainstream seat in high office.

    He has joined in the middle class idiots who worry about Twitter.

    It’s a double edged one, that. He wants to tickle the political clitoris of Middle England and – like and true Leftist – expoit it for his own ends.

    He’ll use the useful idiots who support such a campaign to close down free speech.

    Pure Julia Middleton.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/9956480/George-Galloway-launches-campaign-against-reprehensible-Twitter.html

    Very clever positioning, though.

    And, again, another campaign. This time for victims of the Arch Cru fraud. The victims were all likely to have been middle or upper class, not Galloway’s usual constituency.

    But he needs to court that constituency both for votes and because part of his campaign will be on cleaning up the endemic culture of financial fraud in the City. He’s got the Muslims and their bien pensant grovellers sewn up, but he needs to reach out to Middle England.

    http://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/regulation/george-galloway-calls-on-mps-to-back-arch-cru-edm/1072731.article

    Both of these are mood music campaigns that act as slow burners to the intended audience.

    They can also be wheeled out to deal with election interviews.

    ‘You’ve never really campaigned on financial fraud George, so why are you the man to clean up the City of London?’

    ‘Stop. Stop and think. You stupid man. I am the person who campaigned for the people (pause) who lost their life savings in Arch Cru [and so on]’

    He wants a little cupboard full of answers like that ready.

    He is third favourite to win the mayoral vote now and the bookies will rescind those odds and make him favourite if he is made the offical Labour candidate.

    Miliband will have to give it to him. They don’t want another Ken embarrassing Labour by getting in without being Labour.

    By god he’s a viper.

  303. Verity @ 14.45

    you’re absolutely spot on in approving the right to carry the conceal handgun legislation in some of the States. It does lead to a reduction in both violent and non-violent crime. It did in Texas, yet the number of concealed carry licences has never exceeded 2% of the Texas population.

    It would do so here, too, and not only because it makes a criminal to think more than twice to strike. Also, because it puts trust in the law abiding, it empowers them, holds them responsible for ensuring laws are enforced not only through the State controlled agencies, but by the citizenry, too. The evidence from Texas shows that those who have the licences are less likely to commit crime, behave better than the average Texan does. It’s unlikely any of the Friday night drunkards would get the licence as Alexandr fears. Instead, we are all treated as little children, who must be supervised, protected (pretty badly, if you look at the crime rate), looked after by the State or its agencies.

    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1552567/posts

  305. Thanks Baron.

    It’s the children. That’s when all the bien pensant drivel stops.

    Your children are going to have to go to school with that filth and be bullied for being white and held back from developing because the schools are cesspits.

    None of the bien pensant want for themselves what they advocate for others.

    What white parent with a conscience would let their kids live in the stinking filth of London or Birmingham and so on.

    It is genocide.

    And there is no point expecting any LibLabCon politician to do anything about it.

    It’s now just lie after lie about they’ll control it.

    They won’t.

    Once that decision was made to let the Windrush land and to cast out Enoch Powell – that was it.

    We need to revisit the fundamentals so warped beack then and have mass repatriations and mass compensations.

    It is genocide.

    And it is pure evil.

    Where is the homeland for the whites, please?

  306. Baron 20:50 – Agreed. The police look on people with licenses to carry a gun as allies.

    When the police came to my house when I had a prowler in my back yard at 2 a.m., they told me not to hesitate to shoot him if he came back. They also advised me to shoot to kill, not wound because he would just make up a story that I had invited him in, saying I was lonely, if he was caught.

    They said if he were wounded, he would make up´a story like, “Well, the lady … she seemed a bit drunk … said she was lonely and ast me if I wanted a drink. Then she had one too many, officer, and started swearing and threatening me and all I did was try to get away, then she shot me.”

    The police advised against giving the intruder this opportunity. Shoot to kill was the advice.

    So I was all pumped up for it, but the police sent another patrol car, then they sent a low flying helicopter that hovered over my back yard shining a BRIGHT light into it, and I never hide nor hair of him again.

  307. Peter from Maidstone @ 13:11

    Here is an extract from a “cui bono” piece on the Syrian crisis:

    “There would be other winners from a U.S. war with Syria as well. For example, it is well-known that Qatar wants to run a natural gas pipeline out of the Persian Gulf, through Syria and into Europe. That is why Qatar has also been pouring billions of dollars into the civil war in Syria.

    So if it is really Saudi Arabia and Qatar that want to overthrow the Assad regime, why does the United States have to do the fighting?”

    http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/08/31/321438/who-benefits-from-us-war-on-syria/

    I am not sure yet who presstv is.

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