The Coffee House Wall 2nd/8th September

Posted on September 2, 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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282 thoughts on “The Coffee House Wall 2nd/8th September”

  2. @AWK1

    Re a previous thread on C.J. Sansom’s ‘Dominion’, this was reviewed in yesterdays S/Times:
    “The Windsor Faction” by D.J. Taylor is set in a Britain still ruled by Edward VIII, because the sudden death of Wallis Simpson made an abdication unnecessary. Apparently the period detail is excellent.

    Just thought you might be interested.

  3. Obama insults Britain : or is he just a naughty boy? There is a photo of him with his foot up on the Oval Office desk.This is presumably the Resolute desk given by Queen Victoria. HMS Resolute was abandoned in the Arctic on the search for Franklin.It was later recovered by a Connecticut whaler.At a time of tension it was sent back to Britain as a good-will gesture.Subsequently after being broken-up desks were made from it’s timbers and one was presented to the President by Queen Victoria.It was more recently installed in the Oval Office. SEE http://www.atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2013/09/disgusting.html#comments

  4. Ostrich (occasionally)
    September 2nd, 2013 – 09:31
    Sounds interesting and I will certainly get hold of a copy. Many thanks.

  5. RobertC @ 8.52

    Thank for the video link. The best for a long time.

    And superbly clear and simple logic, too, and so pleasing it backs up backs up Baron’s’ take that ‘asking people to pee into the ocean to stop a tsunami would be by far more effective than all the CO2 reduction projects are stoppping global climatic variations.

  6. Read a piece in this mornings Mail reporting that directors of the Proms think that the last night is too English. What the hell do the self regarding bastards expect it to be? English it has always has been and the day it is made over to be something else, (wog friendly I suppose) is the day it will shrivel up and die. By the way, on my travels I have met many folk who love the Proms, and whose great ambition is to travel to England and attend the last night. If in doubt just observe, on the last night the number of foreign flags being waved and the look of enthusiasm on the faces of they who are waving them.

  8. It’s not often Baron agrees with Simon Jenkins (would he care though?), but on this occasion the man’s absolutely right. Ww should either get rid of the dictator fully and irrevocably, or shut up.

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/02/west-attack-syria-idiotic-gesture#start-of-comments

    We knew Assad was a totalitarian thug, we knew he had chemical weapons, we knew he would use them if pushed to the wall. And what did we do? We have dealt with him, we’ve done business with his lot, we’ve even supplied chemicals that may be used to manufacture sarin.

    As Jenkins says to drop few Tomahawks killing even more of Syrians isn’t the right punishment for Assad.

    The more worrying thing nobody has yet addressed is why should the Americans be able to lob bombs into Syria anyway. The use of chemical weapons is abominable, as is killing people by other means, but since when are the Americans entrusted to be the world’s police force? Who or what has empowered the messiah to breach the sovereignty of an independent country?

    Bombing Syria would amount to a state of war between the two countries. So, what would or should Syrian nationals visiting the US do? More to the point, will the US Government arrest all Syrian nationals currently in the US? They should, these Syrians, in particular the young ones, would be potentially enemy combatants if they were allowed to return to Syrian, then enlist.

  10. See, see the loving sky
    Marvel at its big brown depths.
    Tell me, Roger do you
    Wonder why the giraffe ignores you?
    Why its foobly stare
    makes you feel disappointed.
    I can tell you, it is
    Worried by your nonculoid facial growth
    That looks like
    A mold.
    What’s more, it knows
    Your booby potting shed
    Smells of cricket.
    Everything under the big loving sky
    Asks why, why do you even bother?
    You only charm effluents.

    – Fergus Pickering
    http://britishfood.about.com/od/recipeindex/r/prawncocktail.htm

  11. Pilot Programme – I’ve now sent off an invitation to a senior political figure. Let’s hope that the subject in question responds positively to the proposed interview.

    What about a name for the programme? Does anyone have any ideas?

  12. Report on Sikh girls seduced and pimped;without mentioning which people are doing this. SEE bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23921570

  16. Radford NG@September 2nd, 2013 – 15:20

    I think parents who refuse to help the police progress abuse against their kids should be treated as abusers themselves. Tis the only way we can protect children.

  19. RobertC
    September 2nd, 2013 – 08:52

    Robert a splendid link, thank you.

    If any of you have not watched it, I urge you to do so.

  20. Baron
    September 2nd, 2013 – 13:27
    Neither America nor Britain should waste a moment’s thought in even considering attacking Syria. Just let the devils, on both sides in Syria, annihilate each other and give plenty of work for Orla Guerin and all the wailing BBC Middle East commentators.

  21. PfM
    “A Moments Insight”

    A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.”
    ― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
    Lighter stuff:-
    I have a Dream
    The Right Stuff
    Right On
    Eyes Right
    It’ll be all Right on the Night

  22. PfM – Reverie?

    From
    An Autumn Reverie

    Alas! Beautiful Summer now hath fled,
    And the face of Nature doth seem dead,
    And the leaves are withered, and falling off the trees,
    By the nipping and chilling autumnal breeze.

    The pleasures of the little birds are all fled,
    And with the cold many of them will be found dead,
    Because the leaves of the trees are scattered in the blast,
    And makes the feathered creatures feel downcast.

    Because there are no leaves on the trees to shield them from the storm
    On a windy, and rainy, cloudy morn;
    Which makes their little hearts throb with pain,
    By the chilling blast and the pitiless rain.

    But still they are more contented than the children of God,
    As long as they can pick up a worm from the sod,
    Or anything they can get to eat,
    Just, for instance, a stale crust of bread or a grain of wheat.

    Oh! Think of the little birds in the time of the snow,
    Also of the little street waifs, that are driven to and fro,
    And trembling in the cold blast, and chilled to the bone,
    For the want of food and clothing, and a warm home.

    Besides think of the sorrows of the wandering poor,
    That are wandering in the cold blast from door to door;
    And begging, for Heaven’s sake, a crust of bread,
    And alas! Not knowing where to lay their head.

    While the rich are well fed and covered from the cold,
    While the poor are starving, both young and old;
    Alas! It is the case in this boasted Christian land,
    Where as the rich are told to be kind to the poor, is God’s command.

    Oh! Think of the working man when he’s no work to do,
    Who’s got a wife and family, perhaps four or two,
    And the father searching for work, and no work can be had,
    The thought, I’m sure, ’tis enough to drive the poor man mad.

    Because for his wife and family he must feel,
    And perhaps the thought thereof will cause him to steal
    Bread for his family, that are starving at home,
    While the thought thereof makes him sigh heavily and groan.

    Alas! The pangs of hunger are very hard to hide,
    And few people can their temper control,
    Or become reconciled to their fate,
    Especially when they cannot find anything to eat.

    Oh! Think of the struggles of the poor to make a living,
    Because the rich unto them seldom are giving;
    Whereas they are told he that giveth to the poor lendeth unto the Lord,
    But alas! they rather incline their money to hoard.

    Then there’s the little news-vendors in the street,
    Running about perhaps with bare feet;
    And if the rich chance to see such creatures in the street,
    In general they make a sudden retreat.

    William Topaz McGonagall

  23. stephen, RE: the Proms – yes, I saw there was one this year full of rappers (with mainly white orchestra behind).

    Everything but everything that is cultural is now measured by how non-white it is.

    In Animal Farm Britain
    Non-white = good.
    White = bad.

    The pigs in the farmhouse say so.

  24. This is what happens when society reaches a tipping point.

    Politically disengaged people who can only be bothered to take an interest act when the danger is slap bang in front of them.

    I don’t disagree with this lady at all. She makes many points I had not thought of and her directness and articulacy are a welcome breath of fresh air.

    I notice, too, that YouTube has removed the number of views she had.

    I guess the powers that be don’t want the public to know how many people watched and agreed with her:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSQIZKyZ6Q8

  25. I passed on the excellent link given to us by RobertC today at 08:52 to a number who make up a small select mailing list; in doing so I completely forgot that one of those on that list is a retired High School science teacher.

    Had I remembered I would have temporally removed him from the list because he like many at the BBC think that the argument for global warming is irrefutable and any such as me that disagree are just plain wrong.

    Had I remembered I would not have had to read his email to me where he angrily discounts everything that RobertC’s link said.

  26. I like The Right Stuff, but I am not sure if that has been taken by anyone else doing something similar in the UK.

    I like it because I am a lifelong fan of Hawkwind and they have a track by Robert Calvert on the Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters album that I like, and which could be part of the introductory music.

  29. Sad to say I have only just become acquainted with the work of Laurence Auster because of the tributes paid to him today.

    His website was:

    http://www.amnation.com

    http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/021671.html

    I saw many angry comments on Jeff Randall’s piece in the Telegraph today, some denouncing him and Peter Hitchens as ‘plastic patriots’ – people who earn a living by appealing to a demographic, while know that the publication they work for is happily screwing the rest of us over by supporting the powers that are leading the West’s ruin. They act as shock absorbers, soaking up the public’s anger.

    Fair comment, I think.

    I note that Mr Auster refused the mainstream route deliberatley because of that, but had a wide audience nonetheless.

    BY the way, have you noticed how all the official data on UK immigration is now so massaged, Ashcroft had to conduct a poll about how people ‘feel’ about it.

    And how the Left have squealed all day. ‘Feel’? Feel isn’t the same as fact.

    Yeah.

    Tractor production facts.

  32. David Ossitt 2nd, – 19:24

    The trouble for scientists is that to advance a theory they have to start from a set of demonstrable facts. They can’t forever be returning to absolute basics and developing the argument from there; that’s reinventing the wheel; so they have to take a firm base and advance from there. But repeatedly, in the last half millennium, what had previously been accepted as a firm base turned out to be nothing of the sort. I remember, from one firefighting course, the class being asked for examples of fire suppressant chemicals. The class wag suggested ‘Phlogiston’!
    Even now, the bases of measurement continually have to be refined; observations that once ‘proved’ the Theory of Relativity turned out to contain enough errors as themselves to be worthless. In the last 5 years I have seen revisions to the various percentages of solar radiation that are absorbed, re-radiated etc, etc. When you’re walking on shifting sand you can only do the best you can, and try to improve your methods, although you know that none of them will ever be the absolute, definitive truth. So it’s never a good idea to extrapolate from approximations and call the resultant figures ‘irrefutable fact’.

    And so it goes on.

  33. Ostrich (occasionally) September 2nd, 2013 – 23:54
    Thank you for that post, the scientific uncertainties you mention remind us of our need to remain objective and open minded in all matters of fact.

    Fortunately we are not so constrained in matters of political opinion. 😉

  34. According to McCain – “What we want to do is degrade Assad’s capabilities and upgrade that of the rebel forces.”

    The BBC on the other hand under the headings “Second Barrage” and “Real Target” suggests that the U.S. also intends to destroy many Jihadist facilities. -http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23933681

    So both sides will be targeted? While Obama has been saying that any attack will be “narrow and limited”?

    And in Britain some Ministers are saying that a second House of Commons vote is out of the question and others – as well as Boris Johnson – are saying a second vote isn’t out of the question at all.

    They’re just like a flock of hens in a hen-house all squawking and flapping in different directions because a fox has just come in through the door.

    Are these the preliminaries to World War 3? It certainly brings to mind the ancient saying – “Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

  35. In the pause during which the noted teachers of American constitutional law, Messrs, Obama and Biden,await the deliberations of the members of the American Congress on the weighty question of war, peace and executive power, one question.

    I did hear Mr. Kerry aver, I think, that there was incontrovertible evidence that sarin gas had been used in last month’s nerve gas attack in Damascus.

    Did I miss something though? Was my attention briefly distracted from the great man’s words by my young daughter playing with her stuffed toy dinosaur in front of the televiision? Perhaps Mr. Kerry mentioned it then in the few moments my eyes and ears were turned away from his eloquence – but did I miss the evidence, which I am sure he must have given, that the nerve gas was used by Syrian troops on the orders of the government of Mr. Assad?

  36. And then a few hours later, I read the following, which consolidates my sense that the White House gang are fast boys, Grand Theft Psychos, and of course we know it’s all really a sordid story about a gas pipe:

    “Whoever accuses must provide proof. We have challenged the United States and France to provide the slightest proof. (US President Barack) Obama and (French president François) Hollande have been incapable (of doing so) even to their own people,” Assad told French newspaper Le Figaro in an exclusive interview.

    He questioned the “logic” of claims that his forces carried the August 21 attack outside Damascus, which the US said killed 1,429 people.

    “Supposing our army wishes to use weapons of mass destruction. Is it possible that it would do so in a zone where it is located and where (our) soldiers were wounded by these arms, as United Nations inspectors have noted during visits to hospitals where they were treated? Where is the logic?,” he asked. ”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10281519/Bashar-al-Assad-interview-Show-me-the-proof-of-regime-chemical-attack.html

    The American people should throw the bums out.

  37. Vinnie Jones doesn’t have to return the UK but he is right.

    England is a country that exists in the past, not the present.

    I think he softens his criticism by calling it a non-recognisable European country; the European human is the least worst of it – although the political part of Europe is what ensure its destruction.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2409481/England-past-sell-date-Vinnie-Jones-says-plans-return-home-brands-nation-completely-unrecognisable-European-country.html

    England is a place people escape to in their heads or when they’re with certain friends or certain isolated places.

    They can have the occasional pleasant flashback.

    England is a Third World cesspit – and the stink gets worse every day.

  39. Tim
    September 3rd, 2013 – 07:58
    You are right, and most people will know and agree with you. BUT ONLY PRIVATELY. This has become a nationof cowards, allowing their daughters to become the whores of filthy barvarians, and their sons castrated by the promise of the benefits system. Let the people rise up and throw the filth out and the filth that has encouraged and supported them. Let Harman, Miliband, all the politicianson the left, and Cameron, Clegg and their folowers be shot as the traitors they are. As much chance of anything happening as pigs flying!

  40. Apologies for poor typing. I was abraided for wishing to hurl the buggers over the white cliffs of dover. Too bad. On reflection why pollute the pristine cliffs? Just load up heavy duty planes and dump them (without parachutes) over Pakistan.

  41. Malfleur 3rd, – 04:11

    “the noted ‘teachers’ of American constitutional law, Messrs, Obama and Biden”

    Teachers??? Perhaps ‘mullahs’ or ‘imams’.

  45. Malfleur @ 6.35

    Like you, Baron has never been a supporter of Assad, hopes the guy’s kaput the sooner the better but he, Assad, is right, and we’re falling into another trap.

    It matters not how you google it, all one gets in searching fr the evidence of Assad’s troops deploying the gas is hundreds of ‘Kerry says we have evidence… the German intelligence says it has evidence…. the French military release report on Syrian chemical weapons stockpile…bla, bla, bla, not a scrap of the bloody evidence, and then this

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

    It seems inconceivable Assad would have given the order to shell civilians when he was winning. More to the point, shelling an area that had its own troops in action. A month or so ago one could just about swallow the possibility, his troops defecting, the rebels gaining here and there, but not last week, the rebels were in full retreat, why would he risk it to get the world against himself, there was no need for it.

    Virtually everyone else had a better motive to satisfy cui bono. The Iranians, a bunch of fruitcakes hoping to get the twelver to appear to save us, a holocaust is a must preamble for this miracle; The Gulf States, planning to build a pipeline to the Med, hence needing to cross Syria, the CIA even, the gassing providing the proof of the messiah wisdom in telling us that Assad’s evil. Every one player in the field, every single backer of every single player in the field would seem to benefit more from the gassing than the evil Assad.

    Why do our politicians lie so patently obviously? Most likely because they genuinely don’t give a shite about what we think. The corrupt elctoral system, the brainwashing machinery, the good naturedness of the hoi polloi enables them to get away with it. Until, one hopes, another Tyler emerges, one that won’t be fooled by a young boy.

  46. I was once eating a kebab in Hammersmith Bus Station when I happened to notice Mr Lemuel Kilmister asleep on a bench in the shelter opposite. Scruffy looking bugger.

  47. ACP, that could have been last week! He got thrown out of Hawkwind during a US tour when he was caught with cocaine and the band thought it best they didn’t have to answer too many questions from the US police.

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  50. Tim 7:58 – I gave up all hopes of returning a couple of months ago. It had always been my intention to come home, but there is no “home” there any more.

  51. Verity
    September 3rd, 2013 – 14:41
    Verity, I understand completely. All I can say to console you is that I am sure you carry an image of “home” in your mind and in your heart, and this will be forever unchanging and never leave you. Perhaps in our lifetimes a miracle will occur, and although things can never be exactly the same, a new day will dawn more vibrant than the longed for past, and the evil devils and their regime of horror will be swept away.

  52. Home is always England. It doesn’t matter the state of it, or how enjoyable the experience. This is our home, for good or ill, and we must live and die here as those whose home it is. We have not cared enough about it. We have allowed it to be stolen from us for a mess of pottage.

  53. On a completely different subject to the problems of the world, I am sure many here would enjoy a 2 hour play I have just discovered on u tube.
    My wife and I went to the Garrick theatre to watch Tom conti play the role of Jeffrey Bernard is unwell.
    This was in 2006 and it was brilliant.
    To my surprise the original play is available on you tube , but looks like it only went on on April this year.
    This was filmed at the appolo. And has Peter O’toole playing Jeffrey.
    Quality is top class.
    No wonder u tube wants to charge for some content.
    U tube address is. Jeffrey Bernard is unwell – Peter O’toole
    (Full play)
    Enjoy.

  54. Verity & AWK1 –

    Some years ago I read a few paragraphs about Australia, written by Auberon Waugh. It was a most eloquent expression of how of how essentially English it was and of how much he loved it.

    I spent several long holidays in Australia between 1987 and 1995 and entirely agree with what he wrote – I found it not just like England but like England with a much improved climate. I was especially impressed with Adelaide, Sydney & Hobart – as well as with Melbourne and the state of Victoria in general.

    I wonder if anybody else remembers Auberon Waugh’s comments? I think they may have been in the Spectator.

  55. So billions more of our tax money is to be used to educate the children of the invading army .
    In the past we would have fought them, now we give them jobs and Benifits.

  56. Today was a Lady Bracknell day.

    An article appeared by Jeff Randall yesterday (who hardly ever writes these days) on immigration (he rarely writes on that subject even when he does write).

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10279556/Now-for-Labours-lies-about-immigration.html

    And then, the deadly second, the day after, by Jeremy Warner.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeremy-warner/10282028/Mass-immigration-has-made-Britain-a-less-competitive-economy.html

    Something’s afoot.

    Two articles on consecutive days by a pair of writers who hardly ever touch the subject.

    Given the way the Telegraph and Mail work in tandem with the Tory party, I wonder if the reaction to Godfrey Bloom has meant a panicky shift of ‘raise the debate a bit’ and ‘we’ll make some more hollow promises to do something about it off the back of that’.

    That would certainly tie in with the Lord Ashcroft survey.

    It smells like pure Tory panic over UKIP.

    The subtext looks like: ‘Let’s pretend we’re on the readers’ side again. Sorry, Godfrey.’

    The Tories must destroy UKIP before the European elections in 2014 or be utterly humiliated.

    And they must be ready for a General Election at any point, because once the (pantomime) split with the Lib Dems happens, they may just have to go to the polls before the ‘fixed’ term is up or be accused of paralysing the country with inaction (Dave thought that one through, don’t worry – he’s not known as Mr Slippery for nothing).

    All the usual weapons have been deployed now:

    ‘We’ll match UKIP on the referendum policy. That will do it.’

    No one believes them.

    ‘We’ll smear them the Sunday before the council elections.’

    No one believes them.

    ‘We’ll pay an expensive outsider firm to dig up all the dirt we can and let them feed it to the media so our fingerprints aren’t on it. Tee hee! We don’t want another Ken on Sunday.’

    No one believes them.

    There’s another shift going on right now. The timing of those articles and that survey suggest panic.

    My guess is it’s back to the ‘We’ll promise a referendum on the EU membership’ approach. This time maybe ‘We promise to halt mass immigration. After the next election.’

    Something phoney like that.

    That slimeball Jonathan Portes has been out smearing Warner, who, puppet though he is, rightly points out that most of Portes’ data is derived from research that sets out to prove the benefits of immigration.

    http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jeremywarner/100025451/whatever-you-do-dont-mention-immigration/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

    ‘You don’t feel like the country benefits from immigration?

    ‘Why, just look at these lovely numbers.’

    Isn’t it funny how the statistics allegedly point to all the wonderful benefits of immigration and yet when people are asked how they feel, they’re all sick to the back teeth with it.

    I have heard it said that Labour might run on a ‘We’ll do something about immigration’ ticket at the next election.

    But if nobody believes Dave and his EU referendum, why do they think Labour can pull the same stunt with a hollow promise on immigration?

    This is the sum of 50 years’ decline.

    The dead speak to us every day.

    And Enoch’s words haunt louder as each sunset passes.

  57. P from M 16:14 – “We have allowed it to be stolen from us for a mess of pottage.”

    What mess of pottage? What has Britain gained from allowing primitive peoples (I don’t count the Indians in this adjective) to pour in and enjoy the advantages of Britain, including free everything? What did Britain get in return?

    There can only be an answer to this question if it is rephrased to “What did the lefty traitors get in return for betraying Britain?”

    John Birch 19:54 – “In the past we would have fought them, now we give them jobs and Benifits.” Quite. The question is “why?”. It can be answered only by the Left.

  58. Herbert Thornton
    September 3rd, 2013 – 19:04
    What a gifted family the Waughs are! I cannot recall Auberon Waugh’s comments on Australia, but I will start looking though my books.

  59. Re: Auberon Waugh
    Google is a wonderful source of information about Bron and Australia. Just had a peep, and will check it out further in the wee hours when I cannot sleep.

  60. If you are reading this, you should you be watching the debate in Congress, never have I seen such tonnage of bullshit proffered in one offering!

  62. Verity, many people have been very happy to gain the benefits culture, cheap credit, technology and mindless TV. All the trappings of consumerism willingly embraced while what was going on in society was ignored or tacitly accepted.

  63. Did you see the statement by Jamal Ahmed al-Tahiri, the spokesman for Al-Qaeda in Damascus (AQD), in support of Secretary of State John Kerry’s remarks on Syria on Friday, August 30, 2013.

    In the Name of Allah the Merciful, America the Accursed, Aslam O’ Alikum,

    If the British Parliament was filled with men with half the moral caliber and political vision of Mr. John Kerry, oh, what a wonderful world this would be! Sure, Kerry doesn’t know much about the history of Syria, or basic chemistry, but the world does know that he loves the Syrian people more than Assad.

    Inshallah the British public will throw out those bums who embarrassed Obama. They should look to the great Kerry as an example of an authentic 21st century statesman. This man has touched our hearts with his words. Only a brave and God-fearing man can call Bashar the dog a thug and a murderer. What eloquence! What poetry from this man!

    America, under what rock did you find this Mr. Kerry? Immortalize that rock, put it in a museum. Put everything that Kerry’s magical hands have touched in a museum. Let the future know what a great and visionary statesman America produced in its hour of greatest need.

    We in Al-Qaeda in Damascus (AQD) applaud this man’s bravery, vision, and eloquence. May the rest of the world follow Mr. John Kerry into Syria to bring down Bashar the dog.

  64. It gets better:-

    All informed Americans now know the forces fighting in Syria are 90 percent Saudi-financed foreign jihadists of the al Qaeda variety who are being rightfully crushed by Assad and Hezbollah. All informed Americans know Israel wants the US wallowing in the mire of religious and sectarian Middle East violence as they support al Qaeda as a CIA/Saudi proxy terrorist army.

    The absurdities, lies and hypocrisies place Washington DC at the pinnacle of human arrogance, hypocrisy and stupidity. As the economy crumbles in the US, Americans stand idly by as bankers and defense contractors steal hundreds of billions of dollars. This is occurring as the government gives perverse justifications for the expansion of police state powers. It is sickening to listen to the corporate media as they refuse to address the medacity of government officials by using even the most basic levels of reasoning abilities. And with many Americans cheering for the government against Snowden, Assange and Manning, it is as if many Americans want their government to lie to them and abuse them. The refusal by the political elite to admit what everyone knows is the truth has finally disgusted Americans to such an extent that the government is now in fear and has emplaced legislation that will shut down the internet, usurp the Constitution and turn America into a full-blown police state with the flick of a switch.

  65. Patricia Shaw, I couldn’t be bothered to plod through the turgid propaganda of your second post, above, having gathered from speed-reading the first post, in which you write, presumably with a straight face, “Inshallah the British public will throw out those bums who embarrassed Obama”. That would include Sultan Obamarama, who embarrasses himself daily.

    Allah Shmallah. In fact, I think I may start posting under this name.

  66. Ayesha Patricia Shaw writes, “All informed Americans know Israel wants the US wallowing in the mire of religious and sectarian Middle East violence as they support al Qaeda as a CIA/Saudi proxy terrorist army.”

    All informed Americans, and other peoples, know that it’s time that followers of the prophet Mo were returned to their own countries and begin depending on the bounty of allah rather than that of the British, French, Ozzie, Canadian, Dutch, Swedish, German and American taxpayers.

  67. Irony Verity.

    The 2 posts demonstrate on the one hand the use of US actions to support Al Qaeda and on the other the pure hatred of the US by much of the internet.

    The danger is of course that “surgical strikes” are never purely surgical and if we do have a cruise attack the collateral damage will produce videos every bit as distressing as the gas attacks,

  68. A convicted American has been found dead in his cell. It is believed he hanged himself.

    Why is this news???

  70. I received this message today. It seems that I am on the mailing list of the Italian Communist Party for some unexplained reason. I am posting it here. I have been reading Sir Ferdinand Mount’s book, The New Oligarchs, about the means whereby a managerial class in the UK has gained great wealth and influence without ever being required to pay the costs of the risks and harm it has caused society. In this volume he notes the very wide disparity between the executives of companies and public organisations and those who work for them, and the fact that these executive salaries and benefits increase even when an business or organisation collapses. With this in mind I read this attached post and wonder what the response of conservatives is to such a trade conflict? In the past we would side with the employers perhaps, but now that the employers are often not acting with the interests of anyone in mind other than their own short term benefit I wonder if conservatism actually has more in common with the ordinary worker than with the carpet-bagger.

    ——————

    Title: “International support to the bakery workers at Hovis, in Wigan.””

    Hundreds of workers at the Hovis bakery in Wigan have been on strike for seven days recently, in a dispute against zero-hour contracts and casual jobs. They are now demanding the company to listen seriously to their voices, instead of ignoring existing agreements and imposing huge attacks on their pay and conditions by reducing hours, and by using agency staff after making permanent staff redundant. Such an attack seems to be justified only by the bosses’ need to give themselves a huge pay rise, at the expense of their workers’ pay and conditions: a modern form of “benefit system” just for the Wealthy with a six-digit salary.

    On Saturday the 31st of August a group of members of the Italian CSP-Partito Comunista in Britain was in Wigan to express its solidarity to the workers outside the Hovis factory, and witnessed the marvellous response of the people of Wigan in support of their local heroes fighting against a modern case of unsustainable need-for-more greed from bosses.

    The British branch of CSP-Partito Comunista will carry on supporting the workers’ fight at the Hovis bakery in the next few weeks, alongside the local residents, and the workers’ families. Capitalism and the Capitalist need for more greed at any cost are not the solution to the economic crisis which is affecting thousands of people in Britain and Europe: only Socialism is the answer to the actual Capitalist crisis

    Mr. Alain Fissore
    Comunisti Sinistra Popolare
    British branch Pietro Secchia
    Partito Comunista.

  71. PfM 09:58

    ‘t ain’t only the DM; it was nearly ‘Top of the Pops’ on the ‘Today’ programme. It also features in the DT, although with a more appropriate level of prominence.

  72. James Delingpole’s article about his affinity with the Revolutionary Communist Party should strike an even more sonorous chord today than it did in 2007.

    http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/313821/i-am-facing-up-to-the-fact-that-i-may-be-a-marxist/

    Since then the State has continued to fail in its most elemental duties and treats the workers as a milch cow to feed its unregenerate expansion and self-enrichment.

    Power does not tend to disperse; it tends to coagulate – in accordance with a sort of opposite to the second law of thermodynamics. Remember what happened to Subsidiarity, anybody?

    The democratic nexus was severed long ago and the law is no longer worthy of respect. Time to start pouring sand into the machines.

  73. O-o 9:40

    ‘A convicted American has been found dead in his cell. It is believed he hanged himself.’

    If I were convicted of being an American, I would probably hang myself too. Non-news indeed.

  75. COFFEE HOUSE TV UPDATE: 4th September

    Thanks to some of the initial funding we have received from ordinary conservative voters, we are starting to investigate sources of the video recording and lighting equipment that will be needed to produce the pilot programme. We are also holding conversations about what the programme might be called.

    It looks like things are moving ahead for a December broadcast.

    But we urgently need more financial support. Much more. So if you are interested at all in watching a conservative politics programme that lets well-known right-wing commentators speak without constant interruption and subversion then do please make a donation today, right now, of even £5.

    Every pound will count. Please donate what you think this project is worth today.

  76. Peter from Maidstone@September 4th, 2013 – 14:07

    Consider a small invited live audience. Charge em for entrance. may help with costs, and you could take questions from the floor to give it a bit of pzazz.
    Just an idea.

    or film it outdoors. Then you cut out the cost of lighting.

  77. Hi Alex, no I think it really needs to be a professionally produced programme and it will require whatever equipment is required. If I cannot raise the very small amount required to produce and broadcast a pilot, with the encouragement and support of people of the calibre of Mr. Boot and Theodore Dalrymple then we are lost. It’s just 500 people giving up a coffee and a muffin once!

  78. POM @ 1418

    not sure having an audience or working outside would be unprofessional?

    I think an an audience of about 40 people would work quite well.

  79. Hi Alex. I just mean that as far as possible the equipment needs to be professional and produce a professional outcome.

    I am intending to interview each subject where convenient and so they won’t be all recorded together.

    It is also not easy to find 40 people to invest even £5 each so I’d be concerned about costs of a venue etc etc without a guarantee of 40 people willing to pay to be in the audience.

  80. The skulduggery of of the politics of the current Syria crisis gets worse by the minute. I commend all cerebral Wallsters to Baron Bodissey’s latest piece on The Gates of Vienna blog:

    http://gatesofvienna.net/2013/09/recognizing-the-wrong-people/

    It concerns the review by Clare Lopez of Diana West’s book “American Betrayal”; the review was published on the Gatestone Institute blog and then for some reason pulled.

    Baron B implies that David Horowitz may have exercised his influence in its removal. Horowitz is a Commie apostate who now selectively proselytises against the Left.

    The historical perspectives of Lopez are deep and wide and deserving of the utmost respect. The review is extremely well written and West’s book is amplified by Lopez’s own analytical abilities, which are second to none in the intelligence milieu. Not to be missed.

  82. Ha-ah! The Lopez review (see my 17:34 and 17:54) has now been restored on the Gatestone blog according to my email in-tray.

    Hold the phone … I just checked and it hasn’t. Wonder WTF is going on here?

  83. Frank P –

    Thanks for the links in your postings at 17:34 & 17:54. The general consensus in our Establishments to constantly whitewash Islam is noticeable here in Canada too.

    Just one example is what we are shown on TV. Two TV programs – one supposedly educational program called “Islam 101” and another, supposedly light-hearted, called the “Little Mosque on the Prairie” – make me too wonder WTF is going on?

  84. Herbert T

    It’s worth reading the comments on G of V regarding Lopez’s review of the Diana West book. Obviously all is not what it seems and there could be some sophisticated double-agency involved among supposed apostate lefties.

  85. Frank P –

    It is indeed worth reading. I’m going to try to get a copy of the Diana West Book too.

  86. ROD LIDDLE
    What are we supposed to say when a grooming ring comes to light?

    Rod tells it like it is in this weeks spectator .

  87. What has your once great country come to?
    Not very long ago your Premier won a war all on her own.
    In her words you are frit.
    I can see her turning.

  89. All of which reminds me of Brown worming his way to snatch two words in a corridor.

  90. Remind me.
    Did you once rule the world.
    God bless George the third.
    The first great Limey (and he was German).

  92. Cigar Chompin’ John Jefferson Burns

    Knit yourself a scarf and go hang yourself in the cupboard under the stairs, you Yank moron.

  93. Before setting fire to the White House, Admiral Cockburn took one of President Madison’s hats……..he also took a glass of wine and toasted the health of `President Jemmy`.

  94. Turkish delight – totalitarianism – islamic style.

    “Prime Minister Erdoğan has called on his supporters to inform on their neighbours who bang pots and pans in protest against his rule; the police will install “informant boxes” in neighbourhoods, so that complaints can be made anonymously.
    Mehmet Ali Şahin, deputy chairman of the ruling AK (Justice and Development) Party, has said that demonstrators should be punished with life imprisonment, according to Article 312 of the Turkish Penal Code, for attempting to overthrow the government.
    Furthermore, no education loans will be granted to students who engage in resistance, stage boycotts or chant slogans, and the chanting of political slogans has been banned at football matches….”

    http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3961/hot-turkish-autumn
    H/T Frank P- Gatestone

  95. Andy Car Park
    September 5th, 2013 – 09:25
    Cigar Chompin’ John Jefferson Burns
    Knit yourself a scarf and go hang yourself in the cupboard under the stairs, you Yank moron.
    Is this a Andy Car Park
    September 5th, 2013 – 09:25
    Cigar Chompin’ John Jefferson Burns
    Knit yourself a scarf and go hang yourself in the cupboard under the stairs, you Yank moron.

    Andy Car Park
    September 5th, 2013 – 09:25
    Cigar Chompin’ John Jefferson Burns
    Knit yourself a scarf and go hang yourself in the cupboard under the stairs, you Yank
    ===========
    Is this rhetoric as taught under the superior British educational system?

  97. John Jefferson Burns@September 5th, 2013 – 06:45

    Where was the US in our hour of need in 1939/1940
    Where was the US when we needed support over Suez?
    Where was the US when we needed support over the Falklands?

    Special relationship -Pah!

    The mother of parliaments has deemed the electorate has no appetite for another foreign adventure into Muslim lands. Its called democracy.

    And let me remind you. Obama is predident of the US, not president of the World.

  98. In 1939-40 you had a huge empire and anyway we rescued you when you could not cope in ’41
    You did not deserve help when you tried to retrieve your Egyptian colony
    You would not have won the Malvinas ( and it was a close run thing ) without our intelligence and help
    Remember it was French missiles that nearly did for you

  100. The relationship is special only in the sense that the relationship between Oedipus and Laius was special.

    There is no content in the American sense of history other than Oedipal grudge and adolescent tantrums.

    And watch the fingers, AWK. Your boyfriend is stupid and your last post was a bit of a mess. Not to mention the format.

  101. ‘Morning, AWK.

    You write “Is this rhetoric as taught under the superior British educational system?”

    The superior British educational system.? As far as I can make out, what was once superior has been dumbed down to Third World (at best). Fourth World, perhaps.

    I wonder, has any other First World leading country intentionally ruined the education of its children in order to cater to primitive immigrant? Perhaps the Swedes — I don’t know, but from what we read, they do appear to be the centre of dhimmitude in Europe.

  102. Verity@14.21
    Hi, Verity
    Yes I wrote in an ironic fraem of mind. It is so sad what has becoem of a wonderful language. The BBC speak a mongrel patois, cannot pronounce the letter ‘H’ and are a horrible crew, Verity, some of the immigrants from Africa and India speak the purest English and put the natives here to shame. These immigrants are from the privately educated class who were taught often by British teachers.

  103. Andy Car Park
    September 5th, 2013 – 13:41
    Yes, I am a real mess today. Just like you! I do not have a boy friend, not even a stupid one. 🙁

  104. John Jefferson Burns September 5th, 2013 – 06:41
    “What has your once great country come to?
    Not very long ago your Premier won a war all on her own. In her words you are frit.”

    John Jefferson Burns September 5th, 2013 – 06:45
    “Remind me. Did you once rule the world.(sic) God bless George the third. The first great Limey (and he was German).”

    John why are you looking for an argument? And why if you are do you not get your facts right.

    At 06:41 you remind us that the blessed Margaret won a war (Falkland’s) with only the British Army/Navy/Marines/Special Forces and Air Force, she bless her did not ask any other country to join in the actual conflict, though some did give peripheral support.

    You quote Margaret “In her words you are frit” poppycock, it is not fear that makes us Brits hesitate it is simply that nobody should interfere in Syria, dropping missiles on that poor war-torn country is not the solution to the problem.

    The Army of your country has a very bad track record, in that it seldom wins wars and I can’t think of one that it won on its own.

    At 06:45 you ask “Did you once rule the world.(sic) knowing full well that the answer is yes we did; you tell us that our sovereign (at that time yours) was a German, utter codswallop, because he was the third British monarch of the House of Hanover, but unlike his two Hanoverian predecessors he was born in Britain, spoke English as his first language, and never ever visited Hanover.

    John unfortunately you have a President who is a fool, his red line remark was an open invitation to al-Qaeda to use chemical weapons and then to make it look like Assad was to blame.

  105. http://ncrenegade.com/editorial/we-interrupt-this-program-for-an-important-message/

    But will The House deliver the old ‘numero uno’ to O’Barmy, that’s the question?

    I doubt it! They’ll pander to the prick, to prove ‘American exceptionism’. All this talk of ‘exceptionalism’. ‘Except’ they did fuck all to save their own Ambassador and his minders in Benghazi, when he was organising supply of weapons through the back door – to Syrian rebels, btw- and left them hanging in the wind. They couldn’t organise a fuck in a brothel with a fist-full of fifties – and they want to engage in an orgy of strategic stupidity in a chaotic civil war in the tinder box of the Middle East (which I still like to think of as the Near East – and too fucking near for my peace of mind at the moment)?

    My acquired affection for our American cousins has become somewhat lukewarm since the Chicago Outfit hired out a shill to the Alinsky disciples to front for them in the Shite House.

    I suspect somebody has laced the water ‘over there’ in DC with psychedelic junk. Charles Manson has reapplied for parole is now now the favourite to win the Democratic primaries for the 2016 election.

    And obviously Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was hired by John McCain to flake the film footage of the ‘gassing of innocents’ in Syria last week to enable the mad old Vet to earn his bung from the Saud family.

    Mind you … the fracture in the special relationship between AWK1 and ACP is far more worrying for me. Bruce F … behave yourself , old chum!

    You’re not Bruce Forsythe are you, by any chance? Working off a grudge against the Septics because you never really made it in Vegas (except as a piss-poor Sammy Davis Jnr. impersonator)? 😉

    Good game – good game!

  106. Back to serious copy … the Clare Lopez mystery deepens:

    http://tundratabloids.com/2013/09/ruth-king-at-ruthfully-yours-asks-gatestone-institute-if-this-is-any-way-to-treat-distinguished-author-clare-lopez.html

    and this morning, I have, from an impeccable source, the news that Lopez has been shit-canned from the Gatestone Institute as a result of her review of Diana West’s book. Yet they have reposted the review on the Gatestone website, after having expunged it, then circulating it through their subscriber email updates.

    Obviously there is a profound and baleful internal battle going on; John Bolton is now one of the luminaries of Gatestone and Douglas Murray is a contributor. It is suspected that the influence of David Horowitz (Front Page) the Marxist apostate is behind the sacking, because West’s book reveals too much of the historical subversion of the West by Gramsci’s Long March and its continuing development and sophistication, not to mention its temporary alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood.

  111. “John unfortunately you have a President who is a fool”
    I suspect that JJB agrees.
    Why he is a fool is that he will give Assad a pinprick and then not be able to follow through.
    At the same time he will antagonise the Assad regime and the Islamists, first by not doing more and then by backlash by being seen to interfere in the middle east again.
    It is my fervent belief from contact with the Bishop of the Gulf’s team based in Nicosia that the only way to protect Syrian Christians is to keep Assad in power.

  112. Obama wants to intervene in some way – the actual scale of which is undisclosed – in order “to set Syria free”?

    That’s absurd. It’s impossible to set any Middle East Muslim country free.

    All that his proposed interference can do is create instability and anarchy – and that will give Islam the very opportunities it craves to establish yet another medieval, Muslim Theocracy and to pursue its ambitions of still more conquest.

  115. YET ANOTHER STREET PREACHER ARRESTED

    You might have received a letter from me recently in which I highlighted the recent arrests of Christian street preachers.

    Well, I’m sorry to say that it’s happened again!

    Yesterday evangelist Rob Hughes was preaching on a high street in Basildon when he was arrested by police for a statement he didn’t even make.

    A bystander made a false accusation against him to the police and they arrested him on the basis of this false accusation.

    He was taken to Basildon police station and held there for seven and a half hours before being released at around 11.30pm last night.

    We were in contact with him as the arrest was taking place and were able to send a solicitor to help him in the police interview process.

    Rob said:

    “I am so grateful that the Christian Legal Centre was able to react quickly and effectively in my situation.”

    After his experience, Rob commented that it seems Christian street preachers face a situation where they are “presumed guilty until found to be innocent.”

  118. Yesterday I made a bet with my son.

    He says that Congress will vote to approve Obama’s proposal to do whatever it is that he has in mind in Syria and that this will be guaranteed by payoffs.

    I say that Congress, like the British House of Commons, will vote against it and that in this case, payoffs won’t work.

    We both agreed that it would be unfair to take $20 or even a bottle of beer from the other when the outcome was so predictable.

    So my son suggested and I agreed that the stake would be the right to tell the other “I told you so.”.

    Any other takers?

  119. Herbert Thornton @ 00:32

    May be the loser should devote the $20 to this site – a win-win solution?

  123. I am trying to read the shadows on the walls of my cave.The anti-Obama regime counter-narrative on the Syrian crisis online at present seems to be in broad terms as follows.

    The USA is the proxy of Saudi Arabia against Iran, on the way to attacking which Syria is a way-station to be destroyed as a necessary but insufficient preliminary to the Iranian end-game.

    The rebels including of course significant Al Qaeda elements, already supported by the USA & Co. for some years, were failing in their role in this narrative to overthrow Assad, so a pretext for US intervention had to be manufactured.

    Suggestions are being made that the Russian riposte to a strike against Syria by the Obama regime would be an attack on Saudi Arabia.

    “Anti-globalists” are arguing that outside, non-state interests going beyond Saudi Arabia (and the other Arab countries which have apparently offered to bankroll the Obama regime’s adventure) in fact control the US government, or key parts of it, which have Russia in their long-term sights, reflected in the recent statement by Ms. Samantha Powers, the USA’s ambassador to the United Nations, believing that the collapse of international order (such as it is) will redound to their own interest in controlling the debris.

    As we know, such a narrative features only in the nightmares of Hollywood scriptwriters.

  124. Unfortunately, Malfleur, we are governed in the West by a class which has managed to combine stupidity with venality. I am finishing an excellent book by Ferdinand Mount – the New Oligarchs – which describes the process whereby this has been achieved and the necessary synergy between elements of business and politicians.

    If anyone has an email address for Ferdinand Mount do share it as I would like to make contact with him and see if he would consider being interviewed.

  125. Malfleur
    September 6th, 2013 – 07:51 –

    No, my son hasn’t gone into hiding, but we both had a wry laugh at the Matt cartoon –

    https://twitter.com/JohnPollock/status/374135589760548864

    But when you refer to the shadows on the wall of your cave, I suspect that a great many people in the world are feeling that before long, hiding in a cave will become a very good idea.

    Of course it might be an equally good idea to first flush out all the Muslim occupants.

  127. Malfleur –

    P.S. Please don’t take my 10:42 posting as insinuating that you are Dhimmi.

  128. Noa
    September 5th, 2013 – 21:14

    And by far the majority of these poor abused souls have been taken into care to be ‘looked after’ by social workers, the most politically correct walking, talking oxygen thieves on the planet.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2413319/Father-secretly-records-moment-hour-old-baby-taken-away-social-services.html

    The DM, instead of disabling comments, should be printing the names and faces of the scum taking money from the public purse to steal children and raise them to be pimped to Muslims. Perhaps were their own families are at risk from outraged citizens, they might consider the impact of their blinkered actions on others.

    To misquote Gen. Sheridan, the only good social worker has just taken an overdose!

  129. I find myself getting very annoyed that Nat West has chosen to use a lesbian couple as the main characters in their new ad campaign, and that they are using depositors funds to support and promote the activities of Stonewall, the homosexualists lobby group. If I had an account with Nat West I would close it. When Banks are engaged in social propagandising like this in favour of a vociferous and dangerous lobby group we know that something is seriously wrong.

  130. Herbert Thornton

    Yes, I saw and enjoyed the Matt cartoon.

    But it seems “no boots on the ground” has now been overtaken by “75,000 ground troops required” if Alex Jones report yesterday (5th September) is to be believed. Would anyone like to trawl through that programme, by the way, and identify the places where he has his facts or analysis wrong?

    http://www.dailytube4u.com/viewvideo/40700/alex-jones/the-alex-jones-show-thursday-september-05-2013-full-show-larry-pratt

    And his interesting speculation that the Obama regime may need a really big false flag op to try to get them out of the shambles they have created with the “red line” crisis.

    Please persuade me that Jones is merely a raving lunatic! …please, pretty please!

    “We have to smash these cockroaches.” (A. Jones)

  131. CNBC is reporting that Obama was far from being isolated on Syria at the dinner in St. Petersburg last night. This to me only emphasizes the distance which separates the leaders from the led.

    Reports elsewhere are that the population of the water vole in England fell 20% over the last two years due to the American mink – JJB to note (and the Minister for Immigration -do we have one?, if so perhaps we should substitute a Minister against Immigration).

  132. New idea. Nurses and midwives all to be assessed every three years. Why stop at them? Why not, doctors, including consultants, hospital managers, social workers, teachers, all public officials, MPs, and every worker paid fromthe public purse.

  133. Clear Memories
    September 6th, 2013 – 10:47
    Noa
    September 5th, 2013 – 21:14
    This is really upsetting. Even removing the young from a cow, cat dog or other warm blooded animal can be heartbreaking, so these evil, cold-blooded social workers do not deserve to live! I wonder if the parents are so ‘retarded’ that the condition can be passed on. Are the adoptive parents told the whole background of the babies? These social workers are fascist/stasi creatures.

  134. AWK1, my wife, as a Nurse and Health Visitor, is continually assessed. She is always having to add to a thick portfolio demonstrating that she is continuing to study and reflect on her practice. It can all be a matter of tick boxes of course, but she is certainly subject to ongoing and quite demanding assessment.

  135. Peter from Maidstone
    It’s nonsense! Your wife, like other qualified nurses and midwives spent years studying and doing practical work, so why now have the powers that be come up with this ‘ticking boxes’? I imagine because latter day nurses did not have the intensive training an earlier generation had, nor the desire for a vocation. If nurses must undergo this routine, I repeat my suggestion that all other public workers must be assessed.

  136. AWK1, I agree. My wife has been a nurse, an old school nurse, for over 20 years. But now you have to have a degree (which she had to spend much of her own time acquiring), or an M.A (which she is constantly being badgered to acquire). Meanwhile, when she spent time in hospital she was not fed twice, because being alone in an over-flow section of a ward she was forgotten by the staff busy chatting at the nurses station.

    She remembers being trained in nursing, in actually caring for people, in keeping wards and patients clean etc. But it is very different now, and no-one with a brand new nursing degree wants to clean people’s backsides.

  137. UPDATE COFFEE HOUSE TV: 6th September

    I am very pleased to be able to announce that Lord Norman Tebbit has kindly agreed to be interviewed for the pilot programme of the Coffee House TV project.

    We can certainly guarantee that our interviewees will provide an interesting and stimulating programme. A reminder of the interviews already organised. They include Lord Tebbit, Alex Boot and Theodore Dalrymple. Any one of them would be worth watching a programme to listen to. But all three surely makes this a pilot programme which is worth supporting.

    Now we need your financial investment. Anything from £5 up to £250 or more. We have advertising schemese available as well, on our site and in the pilot programme. But having taking time to line up an outstanding array of interviews and comment we now need your help to make this project a reality.

    Please make your contribution today using the paypal links on the site.

  142. PfM 6th, – 13:47

    “no-one with a brand new nursing degree wants to clean people’s backsides.”

    Indeed, which is why being required to do it at one’s induction was an excellent way of sorting the wheat from the chaff.

  143. OO, of course. And it set the priorities early on, which were patient care not form filling. And the Matron was a military figure not a management one. More like the Mother Superior of a convent. And of course much nursing care began in such an environment.

  144. PfM & AWK1 –

    Your references to ticking boxes rang a very loud bell. It sounds like the very same system that was used in the old Soviet Union.

    Whenever there was a vacancy for a job in any organisation, every candidate’s application was considered only in light of the number of ticks that had been make on the candidate’s record. The person who’d accumulated the most ticks automatically got the job.

  145. enchanted by anarchism’ and tips off his chosen … – Evening Standard
    http://www.standard.co.uk/…/hampstead-headteacher-tells-police-of-pupil-enchan...
    5 hours ago – Jacques Szemalikowski, head of Hampstead School, said he stands by his … the blog showed the student’s “enchantment” with anarchism.
    This is a very dangerous head master. Read the link as it is too involved to write. Most frightening to think we have these characters in charge of English youth.

  146. Herbert Thornton
    September 6th, 2013 – 19:06

    Exactly! No wonder we have an English school governed by a head master called Jacques Szemalikowski.

  147. Channel 4 News is furious tonight that Kevin Rudd (Australia’s version of Anthony Blair, complete with Andrew Neather agenda) is on course to be beaten in a landslide by Tony Abbot.

    Abbot may be about to win, but has made gaffes, says Channel 4.

    Here he is talking about Syria.

    Video footage of Abbot runs and he says: Syria is not about goodies versus baddies. It’s about baddies versus baddies.

    No wonder he’s on course to win by a landslide!

    That’s the problem sorted.

    Go home from the G8/G20, whatever the wretched meeting is.

    Not anyone else’s problem.

    The problem for the Anglosphere is how to get the Muslims in them out and back in Muslim countries.

    Funny how telling the truth is a ‘gaffe’.

  148. Cameron thinks the UK is important?

    No.

    22 June 1948 was the start of Britain’s demise.

    It has been the laughing stock of the world ever since.

    I note how popular Putin is with Daily Mail readers, who have not missed the key qualities in a world leader: get TF out of and get your hands off OUR country.

    Crook he may be, but for his national loyalty, Putin is the best of the lot.

    ‘Get out, get out, get out.’

  150. The irony is that as the UK is allegedly in a ‘global race’, to use Cameron’s phrase, it is just racing to the bottom.

    No one respects the UK because it is so lousy and weak.

    It can’t even defend its own borders.

    So what the hell is it doing banging on about Syria?

    To be a global leader, you have to command some respect.

    Like him or loathe him, nobody tells Vlad – or Russia – what to do.

    Shut up, Cameron.

  151. Although I am pleased to see this story get limited coverage today, it is not on TV, when it should in fact be leading all TV bulletins.

    Readers of Brian Gerrish’s UK Coulmn website, will have seen the awful footage (and will know just what happens to those kids taken into the endemically paedophile world of ‘care’.

    How can courts ban stuff like this?

    Because half the time, the dirty judges are in on it.

    Not this judge.

    And how can the media give it so little coverage?

    It is the scandal of the age.

    It’s not just the child-snatching. It’s WTF happens afterwards.

    Maybe that’s why the media are so sheepish; they know the level of anger the public would be roused to if they knew the truth.

    Perhaps there are to many powerful people involved in abusing these kids once they get into the care homes on ‘trips out’ for it to ever get the coverage it merits.

    The oldness of the footage and the story just shows how unbelievably useless, unreliable and redundant all mainstream media now is:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2413319/Father-secretly-records-moment-hour-old-baby-taken-away-social-services.html

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/harrowing-six-hour-old-baby-taken-away-by-social-services/video-1034263/index.html

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2413373/Top-judges-war-secret-courts-Family-hearings-exposed-glare-publicity.html

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2413235/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-Secret-courts-publics-right-know.html

  152. Tamara@September 6th, 2013 – 20:19

    BBC midlands today covered this extensively in there 1830 bulletin today.

  155. This horrible case about a “Coronation Street” star being accused of child rape and continuing relations with her, somehow doesn’t ring true. Hoow come a mother allows a six year old girl to be alone with a man who is not family or a trusted friend? I wonder if the mother was having an affair with him and because theybroke off she apitwfully concocted this story. As I admit, I have no knowledge of the case, but something doesn’t seem right. The accused admits being unfaithful to his wife, but denies the paedophile charges.

  159. AWK1 & PfM

    “Coronation Street star”

    I don’t envy the jury on Monday or Tuesday having to deliver a verdict on such
    evidence.

  160. AWK

    “How come a mother allows a six year old girl to be alone with a man who is not family or a trusted friend?”

    Perhaps she didn’t.

  161. Austin Barry
    September 7th, 2013 – 01:15
    But it wasnt a one off occasion, it was time after time for years.
    Ostrich (occasionally)
    September 6th, 2013 – 23:34
    I agree!
    Peter from Maidstone
    September 6th, 2013 – 23:21
    I know it sounds harsh, but you may well be right,

  163. Glad it’s not only me who feels the coronation st actor court case feels wrong.
    The alarm bells were ringing at the teddy bear story.

  164. QUOTES from Headmaster on offending pupil : He “has become more and more enchanted by anti-establishment ways of thinking and has even said there is an inherent risk that ever government is corrupt.” “I phoned Glasgow (Uni.) to warn them…..that this person thinks thoughts like these….” Police officer said “he would pass these mad writings on…..” SEE http://WWW.camdennewjournal.com/news/sept/headteacher-reports-teen-blogger-who-criticised-school-police

  166. Charles Moore is spewing his splendidly toffee-nosed tripe in the Telegraph about Slurryria and a reader put the posh boy in his place:

    robfitzwilliam

    Friday 10:13 PM

    “At issue is not whether chemical weapons were used. At issue is whether it is any of our business, anyway.

    “Personally, I do not care who used chemical weapons. They did n’t use them in Britain against Britons, so we should stay out of it.

    “Of course, we have had recently a horrible example of Islamic terrorism in Britain (the murder of a serving British soldier in Britain by Islamic terrorists), and we are doing nothing about it.

    “We continue to give fundamental Islam a free rein in Britain, kow-towing to crazed imams, placing the believers of this vile cult in many respects above the Law, criminalising vigorous criticism of this cult, naming those who question its right to colonise our country as mere ‘racists’.

    “I do not care what the Syrians do to each other. I care very much what the Syrian rebels’ allies and co-believers in Britain are doing to us here – and I care that we are doing nothing about that.

    “Let us end the Islamic colonisation of Britain first, before we seek to interfere in Islamic affairs abroad.”

    Indeed.

    Let every single Muslim in the West pack their bags for an Islamic country – that way they can be Muslim without ruining life for everyone else.

  167. Isn’t the spin on the Russia thing amazing?

    50 years ago people would have believed a British prime minister (and back then there would have been some merit in what Cameron said).

    But now the Tory party thinks everyone will jump behind it and close ranks because Vlad tells the truth.

    Witness this spiteful spin article by Iain Martin:

    ‘Well done David Cameron for sticking it to Putin and the defeatist Ukip moaners who hate modern Britain’

    Oh. It’s our fault for not grovelling at Dave’s every spinning syllable.

    David Cameron, far from being a spiteful spin doctor who sells his own people down the river at every opportunity is some sort of hero.

    We should personally associate Dave with all the achievements of Great Britain’s past and not realise that he is a total fraud exploiting all that former greatness to enrich and gorge himself and to sell the rest of his people into Third World penury.

    http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/iainmartin1/100234660/well-done-david-cameron-for-sticking-it-to-putin-and-the-defeatist-ukip-moaners-who-hate-modern-britain/

    Just look at the bloody phrasing: ‘modern Britain’.

    As if the great Britons of the past would have like this ‘modern Britain’.

    That’s the point. Everyone hates modern Brtiain.

    The rest of the world hates it for being so weak and the indigenes hate it because it’s based on an ethnic cleansing lie.

    ‘Modern Britain’?

    Pure Common Purpose language.

    ‘You don’t like this? Well, it’s modern. You must be out of date. Let the ethnic cleansing of the indigenes continue.’

    That’s what Iain Martin means.

  169. RADFORD NG

    Sent this email yesterday to the wretched headmaster:
    To vacancies
    Reading about this headmaster, I wonder whether he is a dyed in the wool Marxist, a spiritual member of the Stasi, or a would-be Auschwitz guard. Possibly a Kapo.

    His disgusting behaviour reporting a student to a university, warning the university off because the lad says he is an anarchist is pure dictatorship.

    Mr. Headmaster, will you now report me for thinking you are a disgrace to the teaching profession, and you are a worm crawling in slime?

    THERE SHOULD BE A VACANCY FOR A NEW HEADMASTER!

    THE EMAIL IS : VACANCY (THEN THE NAME OF THE BEAST)! CAN B FOUND ON GOOGLE

  172. Tamara 8:37 – Applause!

    AWK – Mr Szemalikowski (do you think he’s a native Brit, by any chance, unfamliar with our history and mores for two thousand years?) added: “I must do something. In the last year he has become more and more enchanted by anti-establishment ways of thinking and has even said that there is an inherent risk that every government is corrupt.”

    Give that kid a medal, straight Grade As, and an application for a University in Singapore, plus a letter of strong recommendation.

  176. PfM – A question is out of the question at the moment, but I can run to a (very) modest contribution, which I’ve just made.

  177. Verity
    September 7th, 2013 – 14:05
    That creature is probably a native Englishman. There has been a radical change in genetical backgrounds here. The Smiths, Browns, and other once common family names are now becoming rarer and rarer. They already are viewed as minority ethnics, without of course any of the numerous benefits others in this group grab. By the way, the Pigs (Police) have gone back on their word, and have banned the EDL from marching through Tower Hamlets. George Galloway must be laughing his head off.

  178. At last, an honest chap from the crowd shouts “The Emperor had no clothes”.

    In a comment on Trolltopia following a reprise of Toby Young’s interview with David Frost (following the latter’s recent demise) …

    Austin Barry • 2 days ago
    ” Frost was as nothing: the ultimate Zelig. He was responsible for Through The Keyhole: voyeuristic, tawdry, getting off on Showbiz, but as nothing.

    Ned Sherrin invented TWTWTW, Frost was its sneering frontman. Its real talent lay elsewhere.

    The preposterous Stephen Fry loved Frost. Of course he did. They both gamed celebrity.

    Frost: one of the talentless byproducts of the sixties: hello, good evening and welcome. And, at long last, finally goodbye.”

    Barry is one of the shrewdest iconoclasts in the ‘sphere. I too never understood how Frost got away with such obvious superficiality; moreover he became senile long before his time and they embalmed him to keep the myth going. As for his ‘penetrating’ interviews’? The politicians queued up to use him and the myth. Nixon in particular played him like a violin.

    The interview with Savrunda, that originally made his reputation, was pure serendipity: the egoist con man arrived junked up, thinking he could front it out – and made a twat of himself; it was like picking apples of the low branches. In fact Frost’s somewhat hysterical nasal-falsetto haranguing of the Tamil fraudsman almost screwed up an ongoing investigation that was in its climactic stage, because of allegations of ‘trial by television’ after the show. And other much more powerful figures of the day involved in the FAM scam were alerted and slid out from under.

    But no doubt, as with all myths, it will be amplified according to need, post mortem, as others queue up to rub off some ‘stardust’ with anecdotal invention as the years unfold.

    Well said Austin Barry!

  179. Frank P@September 7th, 2013 – 17:08

    then there were those saccharin interviews he toadied his way through on his BBC1 show on Sunday morning. Penetrating? don’t make me laugh.

  181. East London was chaos this lunchtime, it took me ages to get from the East End to Kennington as they were not letting anyone head West or cross Tower Bridge. The person I was travelling with, usually a good judge of character, let himself down by suggesting that the EDL were fascist scum.

  182. Peter

    “The person I was travelling with, usually a good judge of character, let himself down by suggesting that the EDL were fascist scum.”

    You didn’t approve of the compliment, then?

  184. Clear Memories
    Correct me if I am wrong but I think you may be in a position to give us the low down on the victory of the right down under

  185. Tamara
    September 7th, 2013 – 07:05

    “robfitzwilliam Friday 10:13 PM

    “At issue is not whether chemical weapons were used. At issue is whether it is any of our business, anyway……. I do not care what the Syrians do to each other”

    My feelings exactly. Good for Rob Fitzwillliam. If the entire Syrian nation were to kill each other, I still wouldn’t care, and I still think we are well out of it. We owe Syria nothing, and it is not our problem.

    This is how WW1 started, one country threatens another, a third major power intervenes, etc etc. Russia backing Serbia to resist Austria’s demands. Then Germany backing Austria. Then Britain and France supporting Belgium, etc etc. Then every country gets drawn in. God forbid that anything of that kind ever happens again, but Obama and his toadies Cameron and Hollande are doing their best to ensure that it does.

    Going back to the “Coronation Street star” case, to me the whole thing sounds extremely fishy, and I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if a Not Guilty verdict is returned. I hope that it is.

  186. see cameron is plugging HS2 again. When will he realise this scheme is unaffordable, and no-one wants it.
    Come on dave, do the right thing and dump it.

  187. Lesley C.
    September 7th, 2013 – 19:15
    I like what you say!
    Now about the “Coronation Street” case, I fear that the accused has been put in a terrible light by the prosecution, and he has been judged guilty without a jury. I hope I am wrong.

  188. EDL march with 500 brave souls participating. with 3,000 Pigs to defend the ‘fearful’ islamists. If I was a criminal, I would have chosen today at the time of the march to burgle or commit some other crime.

  190. My first thought when I heard that Sarah Teather is standing down as an M.P. was that she is joining a circus or the freak show.

  192. Well, another Proms under our belts. Apparently it’s got to become more ‘inclusive’ and ‘progressive’, says this year’s last-night conductor Daniel Quilp. I’m sure the BBC will redouble their efforts next year to exclude, or at least dampen, the englishness of the finale.

  194. Lesley C. September 7th, 2013 – 19:15

    “Going back to the “Coronation Street star” case, to me the whole thing sounds extremely fishy, and I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if a Not Guilty verdict is returned. I hope that it is.”

    I would lay odds on a ‘Not guilty’ verdict, further more I am of the opinion that the case should never have been brought.

    In 2011 it was decided not to prosecute because of a lack of evidence, shortly after which the accuser miraculously remembered further occasions of abuse that had ‘slipped her mind’ and on the strength of this a case was made.

    If as I hope a not guilty verdict is given then the accuser must be named and I think prosecuted.

  195. David Ossit 23.54

    Without hearing all of the evidence, and significant and very material parts cannot
    be reported for a number of reasons; and without listening to the witnesses and judging their probity, we can hardly arrive at a view that the evidence is ‘fishy’.

  196. Alexandrovich
    September 7th, 2013 – 23:04
    Remembering proms in years past, standing high up ‘in the gods’ and being thrilled by the music and very atmosphere, tonight’s offering was pathetic. Perhaps the kindest thing one can say is that it is the last occasion where the Union Jack can be waved, without being accused of elitism

  199. Verity
    September 7th, 2013 – 22:56
    Just imagine it going SPLASH and all the shite spraying out! Ugh!!!! Well,one can dream, can’t one….. 🙂

  201. Lesley C.
    September 7th, 2013 – 19:15

    Imperial Germany was itching for a pretext to put the Schlieffen Plan into action. No false flag operation was necessary on their part, unless of course the incident in Sarajevo was itself a false flag

    What I mean is that World War 1 was a world war waiting to happen because Germany’s foreign policy was designed to make a play for the domination of Europe and the crazyman Wilhelm was deeply jealous of the French and British empires. Deep down therefore there was nothing accidental about WW1.

    If America’s rogue president, Obama, has as his ultimate agenda, or the ultimate agenda of those who are running him, regime change in Iran and the expulsion of Russian influence from the Mediterranean and the Middle East (broadly defined), he chose a damn fool pretext to initiate the next stage in his plan.

    If you are going to trick people into war by a lie, it has to be a credible lie. The idea that Assad used chemical weapons last month is simply not believable and the lie is made even less acceptable to the majority by its corollary that we must throw our support behind the rebels in Syria who are increasingly dominated by Al Qaeda whom we and American troops and the military of our allies have been fighting elsewhere and who are dedicated to our destruction.

    In Iran, as we saw in the revolt which was crushed by the mullahs in the absence of leadership from the United States, removal of the regime would bring to the fore representatives of the people at large who would disavow islam and expel Russia from its counsels. The root of support for Hezbollah and other genocidal islamist organisations would be severed from the tree, so that even Assad could perhaps relax his iron hand.

    But no, Obama seizes, apparently without proper thought or preparatrion, on an idiotic pretext either handed to him opportunistically by the rebel chemical attack or perhaps by a chemical attack engineered by his own rogue State Department in such cack-handed manner that left it open to considerable doubt that it was the act of Assad,

    Now it will be much more difficult than a few weeks ago to persuade the American people, the British people and others that regime change in Iran is a necessity. Obama may however try to ram his way to that objective through illegal means in Syria and without the support of the people.

    In this way, Obama’s puppet-masters may find their necks – and ours — entangled in the puppet’s strings.

  202. BBC did a good job of reporting on female sexual mutilation in Britain a couple of days ago on their world service. It appears, for instance, that since such assaults are outlawed in our country, islamic mutilation-oriented parents arrange for their young girls to join groups sent abroad to undergo the attacks.

    This is only one source of cultural dissonance which the English Defence League is prepared to sound in public demonstrations to educate the people.

    They plan to walk into the Borough of Tower Hamlets in London.

    The Metropolitan Police, no doubt concerned that a public assembly is being organised by individual Englishmen among whom is a former football hooligan who thereby has deprived himself of any further credentials for leadership, oppose this walk.

    They wish to limit the organisation’s attempt to communicate in public assembly to the outskirts of the borough.

    The English Defence League in response applied for judicial review of the police decision. The application for judicial review was heard last Friday and denied.

    So if you ever decide to join with your fellows to demonstrate against the government on some issue, and Rent-A-Mob proposes a counter demonstration, remember: if the police believe that the contribution of Rent-A-Mob to the event might lead to “serious disorder” you, the orderly, may be prevented from coming within a third of a mile of Trafalgar Square, Speakers’Corner, the Houses of Parliament, or 10 Downing Street.

    You can be sure however that Rent-A-Mob will find out where you are having to pull up short of your intended destination and will themselves arrive there without let or hindrance to add a little serious disorder to your gathering.

    Rent-A-Mob never, never, never shall be…

  203. From the FT Weekend edition:

    “…public libraries are the last place where one can feel like a citizen and not a consumer…”

  204. “If it turns out that the armed rebels are the ones who used weapons of mass destruction, what will the United States do with the armed rebels? And what will it do with those sponsoring the rebels? Will they stop supplying them with arms? Will they start fighting against them?” V. Putin

  205. “[H]ere we have the United States government going into federal court saying, ‘These are the bad guys, they’re supporting terrorism, they’re a front for the Muslim Brotherhood.’ And then as soon as they leave federal court, ‘These are our outreach partners, these are the moderates, these are the people that we need to be dealing with,’” Poole explained.

    http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/unashamed-president-obama-thanks-muslim-brotherhood-entity/

  207. Dave hasn’t got a supporter who isn’t insane or sucking on the teat of power.

    Ed should be able to capitalise, but his party know he is doomed.

    Dave won’t talk about Labour’s funding links to the Co-op bank and Ed won’t talk about trying rob that dead lady of half a million. They’re gentlemen.

    There is nothing there apart from the rich (Left and Right) clinging on with media propaganda provided by friends in high places.

    They are so desperate they will ban a march of 500 people through Tower Hamlets.

    They know that if the public just pushes a little bit further at the establishment, the whole lot will just be washed away. 500 people! Why so afraid of 500 people ‘your Lordship’?

    They are so desperate their media lackeys have been told since the Godfrey Bloom episode (when key press outlets, including the ‘impartial’ BBC were slyly briefed by the Tory party on Bloom) – to keep quiet on UKIP.

    ‘No more oxygen of publicity for UKIP.

    ‘Got that?

    ‘And next time you smear someone, do a better job.

    ‘You’re the press, for crying out loud. We know we’re incompetent, but you’re supposed to be able to tap in goals like that because you own all the big media outlets.

    ‘They don’t believe a word you write any more either?

    ‘Well then shut up about UKIP altogether.’

    There is not a single institution that is now believed.

    The political parties, the media, even the stealthily politicised charities.

    And this is what it ALL boils down to (from Peter Hitchens’ Sunday column):

    Those of us who warned for years about mass immigration can only grieve now that the things we predicted are coming true. It is starting – where else? – in the primary schools, where people are simply having to accept that many, especially in less well-off areas, will be too full from now on.

    Next it will be housing, which is why Government Ministers are screeching curses at those who are trying to stop them concreting over the countryside and turning spacious suburbs into crowded urban quarters.

    I can’t see why those who have saved all their lives to live in pleasant places should be forced to lose their peace and space, because cynical politicians left the nation’s door open for ten years and now can’t close it.

    Let the people in charge set an example – an ‘affordable’ estate in the grounds of Chequers, and a little development next to each of the many homes of the Blair Creature would be good.

    But that won’t stop the quiet spread of unofficial shanty towns in areas of high immigration. How long will councils be able to resist or police the five-to-a-room overcrowding, and the conversion of garden sheds into homes, which is the inevitable result of importing hundreds of thousands of underpaid young men?

    They can only afford to accept those wages because they live at a far lower standard of living than the indigenous population.

    Then it will be the NHS, if it isn’t already, with GPs and casualty departments overwhelmed by numbers, and, of course, the roads and public transport.

    This is a huge change in the lives of British people, unasked for, undeclared, undiscussed. It is only just beginning.

    And so the rest of us will try as best we can to live in harmony in the overcrowded, low-pay Third World economy which we have had foisted on us. We know that the migrants themselves are not to blame and are only trying to better themselves.

    Those who did it, and who still will not act to stop it, are another matter. As the truth dawns I think the voters will find a way of punishing the politicians who subjected us to this. The old parties are all complicit. They all dismissed protest as ‘racism’ and refused to be honest about the matter. Why should any of them survive?

    From now on, abandon them, and refuse to vote for them. Strip these unpleasant, sneering careerists of the money and power that protects them from the consequences of their own actions. Let them find out in detail what it is they have done to the rest of us. It will be some compensation.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2415273/PETER-HITCHENS-Yes-immigrants-need-homes-So-lets-Chequers.html

  208. A drivellous propaganda article about how Gordon Brown saved the world and how we should all fear the collapse of the big banks.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/news/article-2415003/ALISTAIR-DARLING-INTERVIEW-Britain-hours-away-total-social-collapse–Former-Chancellor-crisis-erupted-FIVE-years-ago-week.html

    What rubbish.

    Saved by the commenters, who put underneath the bankster propaganda:

    I have it on good authority from a few people on here that it is completely impossible for Britain to experience total collapse of its economy, monetary system and society. Thankfully, I don’t believe them.

    “The Big Reset” almost happened 5 years ago when one bank collapse triggered it but instead of allowing it to happen governments decided to press pause and delay it for as long as they possibly could.

    Nothing has been fixed in our economy and the banks are in the same state as they were 5 years ago and the debt we are carrying has only got bigger.

    The next time a major bank collapses the government wont be able to bail it out with taxpayers money, this time they will have to take your savings.

    The EU passed a law on 1st august that gives banks the right to seize savers deposits during the next inevitable bank collapse and the BoE have published a white paper saying how it might be a good idea to seize the FSCS fund and hand it over to whichever bank topples first. Fiat always dies!

    – frankie mcgill , manchester, 07/9/2013 23:46

    A ‘social collapse’ is what the banks use to keep us afraid, it would have not been a social collapse – but a collapse of a bankrupt pretend money system that robs us all – day after day – with debt based ‘money’ (currency) and fractional reserve banking.

    If the ‘great reset’ had happened then – instead of a year or so from now – then we would all just have to adapt to the new system – thats all – whatever it became. We would persist – but our funding the banks would have perished – and about time.

    Fear of the death of the pound as we know it now – is not our own fear – but that of the banks – who rob us of our value every day with a constantly depreciating currency.

    The pound is not ‘money’ – but a fiat illusion, one by which we are both imprisoned and emaciated every day we use the ‘pound’.

    The sooner it dies along with the banks the better.

    – SpaceNavySteve , Southampton, 07/9/2013 23:30

    By the way, the bail-in model was used again the other day in Poland – they just swiped the pensions.

    No mention in British mainstream media.

  209. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415139/Queen-ditches-Harris-portrait-Mystery-Buckingham-Palace-sends-scandal-hit-Rolfs-birthday-painting-Monarch-BBC–loses-it.html

    Oh dear.

    Freemason Rolf Harris’s portrait of the Queen has been ‘lost’.

    Rather like the mainstream media’s memory of the relationship between Jimmy Savile and the Royal family, whom he used to boast about having known ‘for a million years’.

    http://google-law.blogspot.com/2013/04/madlands-dissapears-after-publishing.html

    And how very odd that Prince Charles has made himself patron of the secret services.

    What is it you need to keep tabs on, Charles?

    Haven’t done anything you need chums in high places to hide, I hope.

  210. I believe that, not so many years ago, the petrol tanker drivers demonstrated that social collapse will happen somewhere between 21 to 28 days.

  211. Kindle E-Book reading devices:

    Has anybody else noticed that, as more and more people appear to have bought these e-poxy devices, Amazon (Kindle’s owner) has hiked the prices of its Kindle e-book editions? I’m glad I didn’t buy one.

    In some cases the Kindle e-books are MORE expensive than the hardback or paperback editions. Where the Kindle edition is cheaper then it is often only by a few pence. There are no additional printing or distribution costs so… what a rip off! I’ll continue to buy the hardbacks.

  214. Full account of EDL parade from Esmeralda Weatherwax in New English Review.Contrary to other reports it was a large number of UAF supporters who where arrested.There were a vast number of yellow-coated police present.The EDL were only allowed about 100 yards into the traditional home of the Cockneys. As E.W. writes; in 1936 the Black-shirts were stopped from entering the East End;today the black flag of jihad is flying there and `cockneys` are prevented from entering. Tommy Robinson was arrested for allowing speeches to go on for 35 minutes when the Police had only allowed them 30 minutes. SEE http://www.newenglishreview.org/bloga.cfm/blog_id/50305/From-Tower-Bridge-and-back-

  216. Radford NG

    What the hell was the British Medical Association doing at Tower Hamlets rallying against the EDL? Do they hope at some time in the future to get the female sexual mutilation business?

  217. I notice the following at the end of Miss Weatherwax’x\s report:

    “Unfortunately Tommy Robinson was also arrested for breach of the Order 14 condidtion; he allowed the speeches to overrun the allotted half hour. By my reckoning they lasted 35 minutes. ”

    Aren’t the Metropolitan Police taught the subtleties of English law: de minimis non curat lex?

    The purpose, by the way, of exercising the right of public assembly is that people may communicate their views to others ignorant of their views in the hope of persuading them of their truth and of rallying those who share them to their ranks. Hedging the assembly around physically with police and legally with tight restrictions largely negates the right and srationale.

  218. Malfeur @ 11:00

    THIS WAS EMAILED TO THE BMA TODAY. ANY BETS ON WHETHER THEY WILL RESPOND?

    One sees that you were there in Tower Hamlets protesting at the EDL marching through the area. Are you touting for Female Genital Multilation (FGM) business or are you into the hymen restoration operation, which is also becoming popular?

  219. Tamara – 8.10

    Even Hitchens succumbs a little to the pieties that discussion of immigration seems to demand – “We know that the migrants themselves are not to blame.”

    But with this he misses the most important aspects of mass immigration which are, that they come here not to enjoy the wealth of post-Enlightenment freedoms of individual liberty and all the scientific and technological achievements that have only, and can only, take place where such freedoms are paramount and aggressively guarded and lauded, but to destroy all such freedoms and instead of living like us, they demand that we live like them eating halal meat, accepting their dress codes which gives them total anonymity when walking the streets, rewriting laws to criminalize those who criticize or parody their beliefs, building mosques ten-times the size of St. Paul’s and so on.
    The second and even more venal aspect is that they come not to escape a vile society, but have been brought here by our own to deliberately destroy ours, and us with it.

    And for all the miles of columns on this subject, I still don’t know who is behind it all.

    And how come Lefties like Shami Chakrabarti aren’t up in arms about female mutilation and child-brides and marching with Vanessa through Birmingham burning their burqas? Or when will Stephen Fry prove that diversity and vibrancy is a two-way street and lead a Gay Pride march through Tower Hamlets?
    This pair, and all the countless others who have been screaming “racist” for the last 15 years, won’t be seen for dust when the proverbial hits the fan. Perhaps the next step for the EDL – I’m far too cowardly to do it – is to simply walk around East London wearing face coverings and let’s see how equally the law is applied. I mean on what possible grounds could they be stopped?

    I suggest balaclavas.

  221. I am at a loss to understand why the left support a repressive and misogynistic group as the islamists. Surely the left is against all that islam stands for. Perhaps someone could illuminate for me.

  222. Radford NG (10.34am)

    An excellent link to a balanced report with good visual back-up. I wonder if anything as comprehensive will appear in the MSM?

  223. EC – you get it!

    I am so glad.

    Amazon’s business model is this: make prices so low that we drive out all competition.

    When they are dead, we ramp the prices up.

    The Kindle is a micro version of that.

    Amazon has been happy to run at a loss in recent years to cash in later on (although some of that is a pretend ‘loss’ to cut the tax bill – and how!).

    And huge sums were lost on research and development of the Kindle and then selling them cheaply.

    The plan was this. Wait until the dupes have all forked out for one and, hey presto, jack the prices for ebooks up.

    And now they want to collect.

    But it is much, much worse than that.

    You only own the copyright for what is on YOUR Kindle.

    You cannot lend the book out (one of the most important things with any book).

    And should you die, unless other people have the code for the Kindle, that’s all those books gone.

    And even if they had the code, would they really sort through a load of e-books they couldn’t split up to various readers?

    They all have to stay on the one Kindle.

    These business sharks have thought through all of this.

    The same principles apply to electronic music you download and pay for.

    No-one will be inheriting record collections any more.

    The sharks are trying to do it with everything: let people think that they own something that they don’t.

    They want to be able to re-sell all that to the next generation.

    They don’t want you making money on Ebay or passing on a book for free.

    They want a slice of everything.

    I would never, ever buy a Kindle – or pay for music I did not properly own.

    It’s a bit like those cruel equity release schemes they pull on pensioners. The pensioner thinks there’ll be some equity left for their kids.

    Ha, ha, ha.

    In your dreams.

    It is one of the great modern scams: let people think they own something, but in the long term, they don’t and the Big Man collects.

    Keep your home where you can see it. Keep your books where you can see them and keep your music collection where you can see it.

    If you download anything, make sure it’s for free.

    Amazon! It’s so spivvy there must be a place for Cameron on the board after being PM.

  224. Talking of things you think you own.

    Someone told me about her daughter buying a shared ownership home.

    My heart sank.

    These shared ownership home schemes are ALL poisonous.

    When the time comes to sell up and the seller wants sell the home they bought for £100,000 at £110,00 and they own 25% equity, the landlord will say:

    ‘Well, you say it’s worth £110,000, but we value it at £150,000. When you sell your home, you will pay us 75% of that.’

    The occupant ALWAYS loses.

    Should I say anything?

    I didn’t have to.

    They’ve got another scam as well as that one.

    The daughter’s flat was bought at £400,000, of which she had a 25% equity £100,000 share.

    She fell into arrears after three years and was evicted.

    Fair enough, she said.

    ‘Can I please have the £30,000 equity stake I built up over the past three years back?’

    No. If you default, we keep everything.

    Goodbye.

    The ‘affordable’ home landlord has pocketed £30,000 profit, has put the flat back on the market at a higher price and just waits for the next sucker to bite.

    Think about that next time you hear some ghastly politician funded by developers pretending they give two hoots about ‘affordable’ homes.

    All in it together.

  225. There is no need to buy a kindle to read kindle files. I have a kindle reader on all of the devices I own and none are Kindles. I don’t see a great conspiracy. Some books I buy as kindle editions if I must have it now. Others as print. But the most important books I have are all second hand or review copies of expensive academic material.

  227. A last post on Kindle. Most of the world’s literature is available for free on a Kindle or other device. I am reading de Maistre on political constitutions while I am having a coffee in Costa and it has cost me nothing. The de Maistre not the coffee. Likewise most of the libraries of the world. £100 for a reader seems excellent value. I don’t want to read most modern fiction.

  228. Tamara
    September 8th, 2013 – 12:45
    You are so correct. The housing associations which are proud to build affordable housing, with shared ownership, are heavily involved. The old days of council houses for the ‘working and decent’ lower paid, were not perfect, but they were at least straightforward and didn’t provide housing for the disfunctional, criminal, immoral, foreigners and freeloaders who jump the housing queues today.

  229. All the points you make are very valid, Peter!

    However, there is always a ‘when push comes to shove’ moment with these corporations.

    So long as your book jewels are not on a Kindle, you’ll be OK.

    You can at least be assured that nothing like this will ever happen to your most prized books:

    http://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/oct/22/amazon-wipes-customers-kindle-deletes-account

    Nothing like that has ever been possible before in the history of bookreading (at least in the old days the authorities had to find them before they could burn them!) and I would not let anyone put me in a position where something I have paid for could potentially be mysteriously ‘wiped’.

    And the joy of owning a book one loves and holding it in one’s hands and knowing what future joy it will bring!

    And the pleasure of throwing down some book you discover is full of intellectual spivvery. That would break a Kindle. But emotional reactions are important to books.

    If anyone ever hands you a review copy of the memoirs of David Cameron, wouldn’t it be nice not just to not read it and leave it on a Kindle, but to bash over the head the impudent fool who handed it to you?

    For me, books win every time.

  230. Irish Boy 11:24 – Excellent post!

    AWK – I still don’t understand why they don’t send aliens back instead of housing them and giving them pocket money. I understand why the Left would wish it so, of course: the destruction of the United Kingdom is what they are working on. But surely the majority of real Brits is vast enough to swamp them – nay, drown them. Are they really so fearful of being called ‘prejudiced’? I’m not. I freely admit to being prejudiced towards the good of my own people, history and traditions first.

    Speakling of traditions, first to go, were I PM, would be the vile Notting Hill “Carnival”. That was the thin end of the wedge hammered into our own tradition of orderly celebrations.

  231. Verity
    September 8th, 2013 – 14:20
    The “majority of real Brits” is afraid of being labelled prejudiced and being prejudiced against themselves by housing authorities, police, and all public offices if they speak out. You are not afraid, Verity, but then you don’t live here and the lefties cannot harm you. I am not afraid, because I have always been a rebel and am now so old nothing can hurt me. I wish the Queen, who is ten years older than me, would speak out against FGM. It is not political, but a humanitarian issue. But of course she won’t. By the way, how did the BMA decide to poke its beak into the Tower Hamlets issue? Was there a general vote? Somehow I do not think so. There are many women doctors, doctors who are against FGM, and others who do not want to be involved in political issues siuch as EDL vs the so-called Anti-Fascists.

  232. EC (09:24)

    As an apocalyptic theme appears to pervade the graffiti on The Wall today let me flourish my spray can in similar vein with this link for those who have money invested almost anywhere, or just resting in the local high street bank losing value by the hour:

    http://ncrenegade.com/editorial/breaking-now/

    Time for us wrinkly paupers to begin spending a little more of our pensions on adding a few more shelves to the garage and stockpiling tinned goods, perhaps. No good stuffing our freezers; they’ll n.b.g when the power cuts begin. One wonders where the political crooks that are ahead of the game are hoarding their own stashes of cash and caviar; we may need to find out so that we can relieve them of some of it when the cacky hits the cooler. The truckers you cite say three to four weeks for the whole house of cards to tumble, eh? They know a thing or two those hauliers.

    Can never understand why they didn’t press home their advantage back in the early days of this millennium. Every time I reach for the one armed bandit at the local Asda petrol station and top up the tank with the exponentially priced unleaded, I wonder who paid whom what to neuter them and keep the tanker drivers quiet, when they had the government by the balls.

    Still living down in The Smoke when their last blockade brought the country to a standstill my trouble ‘n’ strife and I ran out of petrol in Norfolk, while in researching details of a distant relative: a ‘First Fleeter’ who had been sentenced to death for stealing some clothes from her employer and then transported to Australia instead, after spending some time in the prison hulks off the south coast.

    We cooled our heels in the much quoted Noel Coward ‘flatlands’ * of Narfook by exploring the village near Sandringham whence my maternal forebears hailed and decided that it would be an excellent refuge from the increasingly alien Metropolis, which had drained us of our energies and optimism – and in no time we were relocated. So at least we have the tanker drivers to thank for that provocation.

    However it was a vain hope that the refuge would be sustained for the remainder of our lives; within just over a decade, already the minarets are appearing and the demographics of the shoppers in the high streets hereabouts are becoming increasingly exotic. Abandoned churches, dance halls etc. are being replaced by Islamic ‘Community’ Centres (with roofs suitably reinforced for more domes and minarets when the new Caliphate eventually prevails and the ‘change of use regs.’ are adjusted to suit Sharia Law). And I’m ignoring the predominance of East European shops replacing the English stores vacated by a dying breed of indigenes.

    [* “Very flat, Norfolk!” pronounced the dismissive Coward. Well, Norfolk has it’s pleasant undulations in the north-west of the County, but then he probably made that off-the-cuff remark, head back, cigarette holder held loftily, as he remembered a day on The Broads with a bit of rough trade importuned from a West End ‘cottage’ as he dropped in for a leisurely pee and J Arthur with his old pal John Gielgud .

    The only undulations he would have experienced in that part of Norfolk would have been when he attempted get in sync with the rocking of the boat, as he buggered his new-found boy friend in gay abandon, to the squawks of the adjacent wildlife – ‘ booming bitterns or sky-dancing marsh harriers, wildfowl and waders, wheeling overhead or the haunting calls of roosting cranes in the Broads, Norfolk can deliver a truly memorable wildlife experience all year round’] You just have to sort out which of the tourists importuned by that propaganda (or proper gander, even) are twitching and which are switch-hitting – or both].

    Apologies to Verity and Anne, I know Noel is a hero of theirs, but even they would perhaps allow that his proclivities were varied and promiscuous, in the darker corners of his life.

    Btw – he could well have written this after a visit to Norfolk, also:

    The Stately Homes Of England

    Lord Elderly, Lord Borrowmere,
    Lord Sickert and Lord Camp.
    With every virtue, every grace,
    Ah, what avails the sceptred race.

    Here you see the four of us,
    And there are so many more of us-
    Eldest sons
    That must succeed.
    We know how Caesar conquered Gaul,
    And how to whack a cricket ball;
    Apart from this, our education
    Lacks co-ordination.
    Though we’re young,
    And tentative,
    And rather rip-representative
    Scions of a noble breed,
    We are the products of those homes,
    Serene and stately,
    That only lately,
    Seem to have run to seed.

    The stately homes of England
    How beautiful they stand,
    To prove the upper classes
    Have still the upper hand.
    Though the fact that they have to be rebuilt,
    And frequently mortgaged to the hilt
    Is inclined to take the gilt
    Off the gingerbread,
    And certainly damps the fun
    Of the eldest son-
    But still, we won’t be beaten,
    We’ll scrimp and scrape and save.
    The playing fields of Eton
    Have made us frightfully brave.
    And though if the Van Dycks have to go
    And we pawn the Bechstein Grand,
    We’ll stand
    By the stately homes of England.

    Here you see
    The pick of us.
    You may be heartily sick of us.
    Still, with sense
    We’re all imbued.
    Our homes command extensive views,
    And with assistance from the Jews,
    We have been able to dispose of
    Rows and rows and rows of
    Gainsboroughs and Lawrences,
    Some sporting prints of Aunt Florence’s,
    Some of which were rather rude.
    Although we sometimes flaunt our family conventions,
    Our good intentions
    Mustn’t be misconstrued.
    The stately homes of England,
    We proudly represent.
    We only keep them up
    For Americans to rent.
    Though the pipes that supply the bathroom burst,
    And the lavatory makes you fear the worst,
    It was used by Charles I
    (Quite informally),
    And later by George IV,
    On a journey north.
    The state departments keep their
    Historical renown.
    It’s wiser not to sleep there,
    In case they tumble down.
    But still, if they ever catch on fire,
    Which, with any luck, they might,
    We’ll fight
    For the stately homes of England.

    The stately homes of England,
    Though rather in the lurch,
    Provide a lot of chances
    For psychical research.
    There’s the ghost of a crazy younger son,
    Who murdered in 1351
    An extremely rowdy nun,
    Who resented it,
    And people who come to call
    Meet her in the hall.
    The baby in the guest wing
    Who crouches by the grate,
    Was walled up in the west wing,
    In 1428.
    If anyone spots
    The Queen of Scots
    In a hand-embroidered shroud,
    We’re proud
    Of the stately homes of England.

    😉 Seems the rot had set in, even back in those halcyon days (lest our rose- tinted specs obscure reality).

  233. I agee with you, AWK, but why be frightened of being labelled “prejudiced” by morons and chancers? Do the British really give a crap what Stephen Fry, George Galloway, Pritti Patel and other self-selected (and self-promoting) saviours of mankind think of you?

  234. No one makes people buy kindle editions. I’d never replace my library with electronic files and I’m aware that electronic versions are only temporary. But being able to read millions of books for free on an electronic device is a definite benefit that many people value even though the files are not permanent.

  236. Verity
    September 8th, 2013 – 14:20
    They are frightened. Period. I am being polite, Verity, so O.K. you have asked for it, “They are bloody yellow cowards with no guts, and deserve everythng thrown at them. Churchill would have given them a mouthfull!

  237. Frank P
    September 8th, 2013 – 14:34
    WONDERFUL! Frank, I have just speed read it as my old man wants the Mac. However will study it at lesisure tonight. Yes, Noel was often a bad boy, but weren’t all the best boys (and gals)?

  238. That’s more like it! D’accuerdo, AWK! The bullies on the left are winning the war against moderate governance and non-interference by the state, by the right being frightened of being tarred and feathered in the media if they speak up. Who on earth gives a butterfly’s poo what Stephen Fry et al think of them?

  239. There are lots of reasons for ordinary people in Britain to be silent. They could realistically lose their jobs, their homes, their children and even their liberty. For even simply expressing their opinion on the internet.

  240. Boudicca on good form over on the Telegraph blog commenting on W’Ancona’s column:

    boudicca
    Today 05:14 AM
    Read Rory Stewart’s article about Syria in today’s DT.

    Here is that rarity: a Conservative MP with real-life experience of something important and outside the Westminster bubble, in this case British participation in Blair’s middle eastern wars. So of course, he’s nowhere near Cameron’s pathetic Government – like Redwood, he’s languishing on the back benches.

    Rory Stewart advises AGAINST military action in Syria for the very good reasons that Nigel Farage set out as soon as Cameron recalled Parliament (it seems on Obama’s orders).

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new…

    This is the kind of experienced, intelligent and sensible man who should be in the Foreign Office. Not the idiot Hague.

    It’s about time keyboard warriors like d’Ancona – and politicians with no relevant experience like Cameron – learnt that you can’t bomb a country into stability and democracy. Blair and Bush proved that in Iraq and Afghanistan. Cameron and Obama have proved it in Libya.

    Finally ….

    d’Ancona asks: “How do we prevent unstable middle eastern countries from getting chemical weapons?”

    Well it would help if the British Government didn’t grant export licenses for them, wouldn’t it!

    Read the Sunday Mail’s report – published a week after this information was made available via the blogosphere.
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new…

    Bravo Boudicca!

  241. OK, Frank P. You asked for it! “Very flat, Norfolk” was uttered dismissively by Coward’s leading lady in “Private Lives”, when her lover, Elliot, mentioned that his new girlfriend was from Norfolk.

    (But thanks for The Stately Homes of England in its entirety! I’d never read or heard the whole thing before.)

  244. Verity (15:17)

    Yeah, I know, gal. But he wrote the play, didn’t he? And an author always gets blamed for the quips of his characters when they are quoted out of context – rightly so, too! That one did a disservice to Britain’s oldest second seat of power.

    I never guessed that you would be a pushover, just because someone admired your frock, until you related that personal anecdote about the dressing room. And if you are implying that the remark in the play was an oblique reference to the lack of ample tits on Elliot’s girlfriend, then that makes him sexist, as well as ginger, doesn’t it? Tut, tut! 😉

    But I too enjoyed much of his work and whimsy; his later role as a villain in the Italian Job was masterly, but then Troy Kennedy Martin knew his onions in he world of villainy. As long as your fey friends confine their horrible habits to the theatre where they belong, I’m prepared to live and let live. Truce?

  247. Frank P – “just because someone admired your frock”!

    I had had a crush on Noel Coward, for some reason, since I was a little girl and he was always pictured in newsreels boarding, or deboarding from an ocean liner and smiling at the camera. I thought he was the most glamourous thing on earth.

    Meeting him as an adult was wonderful. He was charming, and although I had been hoping he would be wearing a silk dressing gown, he carried off the yellow terrycloth one he was wearing with great elan.

    It was Amanda who said, “Very flat, Norfolk” as a catty remark about Elliot’s new girl friend. Not Noel.

    AWK – Who’s Henry Irving?

  249. Verity
    Henry Irving was so famous as a Victorian actor and manager that a statue of him was erected in Leicester Square, in London’s theatreland.
    Frank P
    I’m off for a delayed siesta, will reply tonight.

  250. Frank P 16:11 – Heartbreaking.

    When did the (deliberate) disintegration of Britain begin? I think it was the Seventies. Unbelievably, the Seventies are now 40 years ago – plenty of time in this day of immediate electronic contact, to undermine an entire civilisation.

  251. It was the 60’s at the latest. Enoch Powell was sacked by Heath in 1968, the rot had set in long before. Indeed the democratising of Britain in the 20th century can be seen as a root cause of the present situation.

  252. More or less Peter. Also, the 39-45 generation had just fought another World War which, in a sense, left them broken and tired and I think they, understandably, took their eye off the political ball. And, after the drabness of rationing and general deprivation, looked upon their children playing with abandon in the excessive sixties with a strange fascination. Perhaps they wanted them to have what they hadn’t. For free. That subsequent generation that stupidly prides itself on being their teenage children’s ‘best friend’, instead of their parent and guide. Sufficient opportunity to allow the Long March to pick up the pace. So complex, so sad.

  253. Peter et al reKindle and music files.

    Dont rely on your copies of stuff on your devices or on clouds like i-tunes. make sure you download the files and put them on a secure hard drive. not your laptop drive but a separate one.
    I have a freecom network drive. It plugs into my router and is available to any computer on my home network. It is also configurable so it can be seen by logging on via the internet, so I could access my files remotely, but i haven’t done that. It sits under my router. I never have to physically touch it.
    http://shop.freecom.com/store/freecom/en_IE/DisplayCategoryProductListPage/ThemeID.27720000/categoryID.52244500 These are newer bits of kit that what I have. I use mine mainly for storing photographs.

    Then I would convert any non standard formats to standard ones, so kindle .azw files I would convert to. pdf, and then save them on my network drive. Same with i-tunes music files which you should get as mp3 and save as that.
    Then your stuff will be safe. I dont use kindle or i-tunes but there is plenty on the internet about how to convert files between formats.
    To be mega safe buy 2 drives, and occasionally copy your working drive to the spare one.
    remember when doing massive file up and downloads from the internet, it is often quicker to wire your computer to the router rather than relying on wifi.

    Hope helps

  255. I think that First World War had several important effects. There was the great loss of much of the landed class, which is one of the three aspects of our successful democracy. There was also the increasing enfranchisement of those who had no real stake in the economic and social character of the nation, understandably as a result of the dutiful service of so many during the war. But instead of those who served being personally granted the franchise it was extended to all men over 21, and 40% of women, of whatever situation for perpetuity. And so the rise of the non-contributing electorate began. Even by the beginning of the Second World War only 20% of the population paid income tax, yet everyone over 21 was able to vote. This was the beginning of a situation where those who did not contribute were able to start voting for parties who would provide them with benefits.

    At the same time the general mobilisation of Britain during the First World War was an opportunity for the state to really roll forward the impulse to control more and more of the social fabric. The Defence of the Realm Act essentially gave the Government absolute and totalitarian powers during the course of the war, and many of the regulations passed and authoritarian habits developed, were not repealed or abandoned. And the Second World War served to roll such ambitions forward even further.

    All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.

  257. We live on Canada’s far west coast and Quebec politics are seldom a topic of conversation, but when I saw this headline in this morning’s Victoria Times Colonist I raised my eyebrows. Then I read the columns underneath.

    Far from my feeling offended, her remarks about the effects of multiculturalism on England made me feel like e-mailing her to repeat what I shouted over the breakfast table – “Vive Pauline Marois!” –

    http://www.timescolonist.com/news/b-c/quebec-premier-marois-says-she-didn-t-mean-to-offend-with-england-comments-1.616018

  258. PfM – I agree with Noa. On reflection, I also agree with PfM’s earlier post that the rot began before the Seventies. It was, indeed, the Swingin’ Sixties when it started. I wonder, is this a phenonemon of the entire West? Or just Britain and Europe?

  260. Anyone who thinks Fleet Street journalists are independent is mad as a hatter.

    The Telegraph has Janet Daley and Matthew W’ancona (to use Frank P’s excellent name for him) both today telling us all to waste our money on Syria.

    Both are taking dictation from Tory HQ.

    And over on the smelly Mail, the lobbying firm Westbourne, hired by the Tories, has handed another smear story on UKIP to that editor, who has dutifully published.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415383/Alan-Sked-launches-party-think-UKIP-racist-Nigel-Farage.html

    There was another one a couple of weeks ago that vanished off the Mail home page double quick after the reaction it got:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2396322/Nigel-Farage-EU-faces-violent-revolution.html

    And where is the extensive coverage of UKIP’s position on Syria in the Mail and Telegraph?

  263. P from M – Well, thank you for correcting me. I must have read her always lucid comments over on The Telegraph. She is an excellent writer and a lucid thinker.

  264. Frank P
    September 8th, 2013 – 16:11
    Verity/AWK
    Wonder if Noel would still write these words about the Mettrollups:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTsIMVIWjlQ&list=RD02QJ2kmw2b__
    =======
    Frank, unlike the piss-eyed Sam Cameron, (see DM where she weeps for the Syrians) I am not given easily to tears, but listening to this the tears are streaming down my face. I’m back in the war years, Grandfather over 75, but in the ARP digging out survivors, Father away in the army, aunts ambulance drivers, and the old family house half smashed as we emerge from the Anderson shelter, with the searchlights seeking out enemy planes. Then sent off to the country, and despite the lush flowers, still missing London Pride. Those brave little flowers still have a place in my heart, and I recall the bravery and solidarity of those times and bitterly see the garbage which now surrounds us. I wonder, though, dare I hope that somewhere in that filthy ‘multiculture’ manure, a London Pride is struggling and raising up it’s reoud little head?

  265. Frank P
    September 8th, 2013 – 14:34
    Let’s face it, the man was a genius. So he had his naughty side? Well even fifty years later nobody is having flashbacks and accusing him in a court of law! His verse and songs are pure works of brilliance, and thanks Frank for lightening my day. Like Verity, I had a girlhood crush on him, and imagined him in a jaquard brocade dressing gown, scarf tied around his neck, Sobrani Balkan cigarette swrling smoke into the air, and the supreme Noel always appearing with his profile ……Stop! I sound like an idiot!!!

  267. AWK 19:48 (oddly enough …)

    I also always pictured Noel Coward with a cigarette holder, elegantly held, blowing smoke coolly into the distance. He always seemed to be in newsreels boarding and deboarding from an ocean liner, coming down the gangplank, looking elegant and confident. Frankly, I was mad about the boy.

    That is why, of course, when I was in my twenties, the man I was going with had had a glancing connection with Noel Coward when he was being demobbed and had been put in First Class because there were no other places, and in that carriage was … Noel Coward.

    They began talking and my friend said he was hoping, now demobbed to get into some university – I forget which one – and Coward happened to know the chancellor or someone and said he would put in a word for him. (I think my friend had, at the time, thought Coward was just a rich, congenial man. I don’t think he knew who he was.)

    Anyway, Coward was as good as his word and my friend got in. Coward had also said something along of the lines of “If you’re ever in London and see one of my plays, do come backstage and say hello.”

    Anyway, that was a couple of decades before, but my friend took me, all those years later, to “Private Lives”, in which Noel was, of course, starring, and sent a note backstage mentioning the decades old promise.

    We were duly invited to come backstage after the performance.

    We went, and I had my fingers crossed that he would be wearing a dressing gown. Well, he was, but it was yellow terry cloth. Oh, well. He was charming and admired my dress (I had spent hours getting ready, with hair by Vidal Sassoon) and we chatted, very briefly, as there were two other couples lines up to see him. But my dream had come true and it is still very vivid in my mind!

    Anyway, AWK, that is my story of meeting Noel Coward.

  269. Verity. 20.54
    An absolutely facinating story. But you sound a much more interesting gal than your erstwihilw subject, Noel Coward.
    Now, where was that whimsical post of about three years ago by Austin Barry, written I think, in the style of Joseph Conrad…?

  270. Sunday night is Naughty niece tribute night. Here is a nostalgia piece, expats will recognise the style…

    “THE DIRE STRAITS TIMES” Monday 25th January 1965

    Singapore Trades Unions Threaten Industrial Action
    From our social affairs correspondent Ivor Rartha-Larjun

    During a quiet evening’s socializing with friends, this reporter witnessed some quite amazingly uncouth and antisocial Behaviour from a group of young Royal Navy servicemen. These malcontents were obviously the worse for drink, and judging by their sun-baked condition, they were probably also suffering from the effects of over-exposure to the elements.

    They were first spotted getting out of a taxi, in the early hours of the evening. At this time they vacated the scene without paying the fare, and sprinted across the carriageway of Geylang Road, where they hailed another taxi, jumped in, and sped away in the opposite direction. This ploy being a rather clever ruse used by Naval personnel, where the initial taxi journey from Sembawang takes the passengers beyond their ultimate destination, to a point at which the tight bastards jump out, leap over the central barrier and hail a taxi going in the opposite direction. In this fashion the cost of the journey is greatly reduced and the chances of being apprehended are virtually nil, as the taxi driver can not turn his vehicle around on that section of the dual carriageway. Taxi driver Mr. Rancid Ringh told this reporter that T.W.A.T.S. (Transport Workers Association – Taxi Section) is considering industrial action if these evil persons are not soon apprehended.

    The same group of ne’er-do-wells were then spotted causing trouble in the notorious Tokyo Bar, where some of the ‘regular’ young ‘ladies’ were endeavoring to ply their trade. One young lady told this reporter that she had never seen a weapon as large as the one possessed by a Scottish gentleman in the group. She claimed that she only wanted fair pay for the job in hand, (she might actually have said hand-job) and, seeing as how it was such a large member and such a small hand, she wanted extra pay. The uncouth, thrifty (typically Scottish), young man refused to pay, and administered the necessary manual manipulations himself. As a direct result of this action, W.A.N.C. (Wankers Against Non Conformance) are on the verge of a major industrial dispute. Only an apology from the well-endowed Scotsman can resolve the situation; unfortunately such an apology seems unlikely. The Tokyo Bar manager, Mr. Yu Cum Soon, told this reporter that there had been no other option but for him to evict the vile malefactors from the premises.

    Later that same evening the group, now even more intoxicated, caused an embarrassing scene at the highly salubrious Britannia Club. Having decided that diving into the swimming pool from the first floor balcony was not a viable option, they threatened to take over the bandstand. One of the group produced a forged UK musicians union card, and claimed that they were members of a top British rock band, but was then unable to substantiate the claim. He was also virtually unable to stand without assistance from his three colleagues. Meanwhile, the resident band, as members of C.W.I.M. (Collective Workers In Music), were threatening an immediate withdrawal of labour, unless the miscreants were promptly ejected from the premises; which they duly were!

    As the evening wore on, the group of reprobates created havoc in the “New World” dance hall. It might actually have been the “Happy World”; all those dance halls looked the same after a dozen or so pints of Tiger! In this well respected establishment they participated in some sort of ritual tribal dance involving a symbolically erected, locally manufactured, bamboo and wax-paper umbrella called for some reason a WanChai Burbs. They then caused mayhem as two of them snubbed their “taxi-dance” partners and danced together. The manager, Mr. Fuk Mi Slowli , pleaded with them to behave, as his ladies, who were all members of T.U.R.D. (Terpsichorean Union of Rhythmic Dancers) were threatening to withdraw their labour. This plea, unfortunately, fell on deaf ears, and the group was swiftly ejected from the premises by a choleric Mr. Slowli and his elephantine door managers.

    The trail of mayhem was then even more compounded as the four inebriated young men coerced two trishaw operatives into taking them on to another bar. It would seem that they even managed to convince the drivers to race against each other! The owner/driver of the trishaw which carried the second pair of malcontents told this reporter, from his hospital bed, where he was recovering from shock and minor burns, that the bastards had set fire to his shirt, which in turn had melted his plastic pith helmet causing him considerable distress and discomfort. It is now highly likely that all members of F.U.T.O.O. (Federated Union of Trishaw Owners & Operatives) will commence industrial action unless the pernicious perpetrators are apprehended.

    On reaching Bugis Street the, by now, paralytic group entered yet another disreputable dive and caused havoc, when one of these offenders jumped onto the table with his trousers around his knees and a rolled up newspaper inserted in the cheeks of his derrière, this was promptly set alight by another of the malcontents. He then started what can only be described again as some type of ritual tribal dance in which this reporter thinks is called “Zulu Warrior” which ended when his cohorts in crime threw beer over him to extinguish the flames. They then entered into a cacophonous and highly raucous harangue with a mixed group of kai-tias (transsexuals) and shirt-lifters. These inoffensive and harmless persons were then vilified and set upon with a pair of conveniently located dustbins, which were thrust, venomously and with considerable force, into the back of the taxi in which some of the persons of differing gender preference were attempting to escape the scene of the altercation.
    A spokesperson for S.H.A.T. (The Singapore Homomorphic Association for Transvestites) stated that they were now prepared to down their tools immediately, if not sooner, unless these nasty persons were quickly apprehended.

    The local authorities, in a fit of pusillanimous outrage, have issued a bulletin outlining their dissatisfaction with such disgraceful and unseemly conduct. They are becoming exceedingly brassed-off with this type of antisocial behaviour from British Services personnel, and are now searching most diligently for these four alcohol saturated and highly unpredictable persons.

    They have issued the following brief description. The four evil-doers are Caucasian, but somewhat sunburned, males. One is of medium build and obvious Scottish origins, having a pronounced accent, a huge tool and a hairy sporran. He occasionally answers to the name of Angus Toora-Bitters. Another member of the group, slim and slightly taller, was wearing fashionable hand-made, black, calf-skin, Cuban-heeled winkle pickers; despite which, or maybe because of which, he was limping somewhat, although the consensus is that the limp is due to a severe case of sunburned “tootsies”; regardless, he seemed to have no visible means of support. The third member of this heterogeneous crew is for some unknown reason carrying a forged UK Musician’s Union card, while the fourth, of relatively short stature, is carrying a locally manufactured waxed-paper and bamboo umbrella, and is believed to be travelling under the assumed name of Warwick Hunt.

    Prosecution is sure to follow their capture …

  271. Verity
    September 8th, 2013 – 20:54
    Verity, that is truly lovely. What a wonderful memory when the nights (and days) are cold and without charm.

  272. Quite so Tamara. And I’m sure you know that Allegra Stratton, Newsnight’s political editor, is the wife of James Forsyth. He of The Spectator. However, I’m sure no mutual back-scratching or string-pulling has occurred. Ever.

  273. Frank P @ 14:34

    ” One wonders where the political crooks that are ahead of the game are hoarding their own stashes of cash and caviar; we may need to find out so that we can relieve them of some of it when the cacky hits the cooler. ”

    They won’t be hoarding cash. They will be hoarding gold and silver. An ounce of silver is about £15 today (gold around £888) and in case the crooks have put too many obstacles in the way of finding their stash it might be prudent to use some of the confetti to buy some silver coins if only for one’s children’s sake.

    Unfortunately, they are likely to get to your stash before you get to theirs:

    “I think the situation is going to be dire, and people who have summarily dismissed the inflation threat are going to regret it.”

    Eric King: “Michael, there was a move by the Polish government to seize $37 billion of pension money. They literally just stole it. I’m just wondering if you think we are going to see that in other parts of Europe and even in the United States?”

    Pento: “The confiscation of wealth isn’t a new phenomenon. For many years it has been done through insidious inflation, and then what happened in Cyprus, and now in Poland. But the United States still prefers surreptitious use of inflation to steal from its citizens.

    “…I think the situation is going to be dire, and people who have summarily dismissed the inflation threat are going to regret it.”

    Eric King: “Michael, there was a move by the Polish government to seize $37 billion of pension money. They literally just stole it. I’m just wondering if you think we are going to see that in other parts of Europe and even in the United States?”

    Pento: “The confiscation of wealth isn’t a new phenomenon. For many years it has been done through insidious inflation, and then what happened in Cyprus, and now in Poland. But the United States still prefers surreptitious use of inflation to steal from its citizens.

    I think the confiscation of savings and wealth is going to continue to occur. It’s going to increase in intensity, and this will go on for years and years before they resort to more overt action of direct confiscation of wealth.”

    Eric King: “Michael, you say that government theft of assets will increase as they become more desperate?”

    Pento: “Yes, absolutely. There is no doubt in my mind that as revenue shortfalls intensify, they are going to resort more and more to inflation, possible default, and direct confiscation of wealth.” ”

    http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2013/9/7_Top_Economist_Predicts_Increased_Govt_Theft_%26_Surge_In_Gold.html

    In this following audio interview,preceded by a short but somewhat jarring commercial in the American style, Bill Fleckenstein analyses the fantasy world from which Americans (and perhaps the British) will be duly awakened:

    http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2013/9/7_Bill_Fleckenstein.html
    :

  274. Noa
    September 8th, 2013 – 21:38

    That sounds like Herbert Thornton’s world (he of the valued foreskin), but well before my time out East, unfortunately.

  275. I finally bought a Kindle a few months ago. Is there an Idiot’s Guide to downloading books from any site other than Amazon? I did succeed once in getting to Bartleby or Gutenberg and roping Cicero’s letters, but I’m damned if any other heiffers have been lassooed. Mind you, I become irritated very quickly with the device,and so do not spend the hours on cracking it which it seems to require. I can’t help thinking though that it was designed this way.

  277. Malfleur (8 Sept 21:38)

    I hope that your tribute to me (which is of course much appreciated) isn’t meant to hint that I am not equally opposed to FGM?

  278. Peter

    Invaluable info on Kindle. Thanks.

    Herbert

    No, of course not. That’s a very different kettle of fish.

  279. There are reports that Russian nuclear forces have been on alert for the past few days.

    The wording of the resolution sent by Obama to Congress is sufficiently broad enough to give Obama authority to strike not only Syria but anyone allied with Syria. Prominent allies of Syria include Iran, Russia and China.

    Here is the text of draft legislation delivered by President Barack Obama on Saturday to the speaker of the House and president of the Senate regarding authorization for the use of the U.S. armed forces in connection with the conflict in Syria.

    (CNN) — Whereas, on August 21, 2013, the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack in the suburbs of Damascus, Syria, killing more than 1,000 innocent Syrians;

    Whereas these flagrant actions were in violation of international norms and the laws of war;

    Whereas the United States and 188 other countries comprising 98 percent of the world’s population are parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention, which prohibits the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling or use of chemical weapons;

    Whereas, in the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003, Congress found that Syria’s acquisition of weapons of mass destruction threatens the security of the Middle East and the national security interests of the United States;

    Whereas the United Nations Security Council, in Resolution 1540 (2004), affirmed that the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons constitutes a threat to international peace and security;

    Whereas, the objective of the United States’ use of military force in connection with this authorization should be to deter, disrupt, prevent, and degrade the potential for, future uses of chemical weapons or other weapons of mass destruction;

    Whereas, the conflict in Syria will only be resolved through a negotiated political settlement, and Congress calls on all parties to the conflict in Syria to participate urgently and constructively in the Geneva process; and

    Whereas, unified action by the legislative and executive branches will send a clear signal of American resolve.

    SEC. ___ AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES

    (a) Authorization. — The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in connection with the use of chemical weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in the conflict in Syria in order to —

    (1) prevent or deter the use or proliferation (including the transfer to terrorist groups or other state or non-state actors), within, to or from Syria, of any weapons of mass destruction, including chemical or biological weapons or components of or materials used in such weapons; or

    (2) protect the United States and its allies and partners against the threat posed by such weapons.

    (b) War Powers Resolution Requirements. —

    (1) Specific Statutory Authorization. — Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.

    (2) Applicability of other requirements. — Nothing in this joint resolution supersedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution.

  281. Having finally escaped from the nightmares of the small wee hours, I steeled myself to face the world and turned on the radio for the 10a.m. news, only to be informed by Alan Deddicote that John Kerry, aka ‘Lurch’ aka ‘Gigolo’ (toyboy of the Heinz heiress) whose name would have been John Kohn, had not Fritz Kohn his paternal grandad, when desirous of changing his name, stuck a pin in the map of Ireland and came up with Kerry as a suitable moniker, is meeting in London with today our doughty Foreign Secretary Wee Willie Hague the vague in order to settle the fate of the world.

    Just what I needed after a lousy night to restore my optimism and calm my troubled breast, so I thought I’d let the Wallsters share that good news.

    One hopes that the room they are meeting in has separate beds; we don’t want any more rumours circulating about Wee Willy, do we? No doubt he dug out his butch baseball hat to impress the long streak of lying piss with his American cultural credentials.

    One wonders how many of Kerry’s constituents voted for him on the strength of his ‘Irish’ ancestry?

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