The Coffee House Wall – 25th/31st May

Posted on May 25, 2015

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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188 thoughts on “The Coffee House Wall – 25th/31st May”

  1. I note that the suggestion that EU citizens will not be able to vote in the EU Referendum is being played by the DM as showing how tough Cameron is. Of course they are not able to vote in the GEs so it is nothing new at all. But there will be 800,000 Irish citizens invited to vote, as well as an unspecified number of Commonwealth citizens. On the DM comments I see various Australians etc insisting that they should be able to. That is hardly the issue. The bulk of Commonwealth citizens resident in the UK are not Australians or New Zealanders, but Pakistanis, Banglaedeshis and Indians. None of whom have the Queen as head of state. None of whom, it seems to me, should have any say whatsoever in the future direction of the UK. Migration watch estimates that there are 1 million Commonwealth non-British citizens who will be eligible to vote.

    This means that 1.8 million non-British citizens will be able to vote in the referendum to determine the future of a nation that is not their own.

    Of course it is too late to do anything about recent migrants, or the children of migrants, who might also reasonably be excluded from such an important decision. But it seems very wrong to cover up the fact that 1 million mostly Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indians will be voting without having citizenship.

  2. Peter, a word pf thanks. Even on a Bank Holiday, the Wall is built. It adds a lot to many lives, and it’s good to know there are still idealists (in the best way) in this confused and often unhappy world.

  3. Let me add Malfleur’s list of things that could be done here to the beginning of a new wall.

    Who votes
    No muslim countries in the EU
    Keep Farage as UKIP leader
    Sound money – gold and silver backed
    Oppose and expose the West’s sock puppet, ISIS
    Oppose and expose Soros and other hydra heads
    Pressure the Christians to become muscular and militant
    Ramp national classical and humanist culture

    Articles
    Videos
    Speakers
    Debates

    Peter Hitchens and Alex Boot

    Paul Johnson and Martin Gayford – the merits or otherwise of Picasso

  4. I looked to see if I could put a petition up on the no 10 website but its still having its election time holiday. Grrrrrr.

    Commonwealth and the irish should not be able to vote in our general elections and referenda.

    To be honest I didnt realise they could till a few days ago…

  5. I have emailed my mp about the no 10 petition site being down. Can others here do the same.

    I also asked him about commonwealth citizens voting.

  7. What makes SNP cybernats so obnoxious? They froth mightily whenever they are accused of being anti-English but their rabid comments absolutely reek of it.

  10. The national newspapers report the senior muslim officer in the Met Police Service(a word I use ironically) claiming that muslim children as young as five are expressing extremist views.But this is not my central theme.

    By 23rd of May the Conservative Leader of Portsmouth Council was having hysterics because the Hampshire elected Police Commissioner said the same thing.She reported him to the Home Secretary and said he should be subjected to a `brain-washing`by experts from Special Branch.She said he should have spoken to her and the Chief Constable in private,and not spoken in public…….This is not quiet the Rotherham position,as theirs was not to say anything to anybody about what they all know.

  12. EC 25th, – 17:27

    “all washed down with a pint of heavy.. bile.”

    There’s a very nice ale available locally that hails from north of the border. It’s (genuinely) called ‘Bitter and Twisted’. 🙂

  14. It beggars belief, still, that CMD can walk into such easily laid traps:

    Germany and France agree closer eurozone ties without treaty change
    Proposals to be presented at EU summit in June will come as a blow to David Cameron who will table British pre-referendum demands at same meeting
    “Germany and France have forged a pact to integrate the eurozone without reopening the EU’s treaties, in a blow to David Cameron’s referendum campaign.

    Sidestepping Britain’s demands to renegotiate the Lisbon treaty and Britain’s place in the EU, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French president, François Hollande, have sealed an agreement aimed at fashioning a tighter political union among the single-currency countries while operating within the confines of the existing treaty”
    http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/25/germany-france-eurozone-integration-no-lisbon-treaty-change-david-cameron

    It’s not just ‘ever closer union’, it’s ‘a pact to integrate the eurozone without reopening the EU’s treaties’.

    And will the other Eurozone countries get a say?

  16. BBC sinks to a new low with its character assassination of Churchill tonight. They seem to have wheeled out every bolshy, commie and lefty to stick the knife in, attempting to trash even his wartime speeches. Triumphing and trumpeting Atlee’s 1945 Labour landslide victory is perhaps their much needed subliminal therapy for the election surprise that saw all that specially ordered BBC champagne going to waste.

  17. Colonel Mustard 21.53
    They could have made a better case against Churchill. His role as Chancellor in the late ’20’s early ’30s saw Britain’s defence budget determined by the ‘Ten Year’ rule; with military expenditure based on the planning assumption that there would be no war for ten years. Allied to his unholy desire for war in 1914 and the Gallipoli disaster, there is sufficient evidence to tip the scales against him without recourse to the post war socialist disaster he unavailingly opposed.

  18. Colonel Mustard 15.30

    “What makes SNP cybernats so obnoxious? They froth mightily whenever they are accused of being anti-English but their rabid comments absolutely reek of it…”

    There is an virulent, irrational, anti-English loathing they refuse to admit to. There is nothing good to say about the murderers of the IRA, but many SNP supporters display the same levels of hatred, yet without the courage to take up arms like the Fenians. What would make them do so? Less than we might think perhaps.

  19. Colonel Mustard (21:53)

    Ironically, the last statement by the commentator belied all in the analysis and assertions of the lefty iconoclasts among the talking heads scraped from the bottom of the barrel in order to construct several strawmen for the documentary:

    “In 1951, Churchill stood again for re-election and won!”

    Quite!

  21. I have always seen Churchill as the manifestation of the British spirit rather than a spirited leader.
    His character as stated is best defined by Gallipoli and the lies after his stroke.
    He was no god.
    He was the Simon Cowell of the forties.
    Just ask the Duke of Windsor.

  22. “I have always seen Churchill as the manifestation of the British spirit rather than a spirited leader.”

    I wouldn’t attempt to pigeon hole within a single soundbite such a complex and controversial character whose varied career progressed and regressed in the dramatically changing contexts of his times.

    “His character as stated is best defined by Gallipoli and the lies after his stroke.”

    Tripe. Character is never “best defined” by cherry picking specific failures or successes. But maybe that is the trend in the polarising, black vs white age we live in.

    “He was no god.”

    Has anyone suggested that he was?

    “He was the Simon Cowell of the forties.”

    Really? Has Cowell identified the currently emerging threat to Europe in the face of non-sayers and would he have the gutsy determination not to capitulate when all the chips were down? Can’t really see that somehow. But it’s a twee little characterisation.

    “Just ask the Duke of Windsor.”

    Well, apart from the slightly impeding fact that he is dead, he would hardly be the best judge of strength of character and fortitude since his main devotion in life appeared to be wanting to be able to continue to lick Mrs Simpson’s expensive footwear unencumbered by the constraints of public duty.

  23. Frank P May 25th, 2015 – 23:45

    I never got to the end. The nasty albino Geordie bolshevik was enough when he asserted all Churchill’s wartime speeches were made whilst he was drunk.

    “Politically Dave (Douglass) describes himself as “a revolutionary Marxist on the Anarchist left, and a member of South Yorkshire Class War and the IWW””

    I didn’t explore the antecedents of the other less well known mouthpieces being trotted out. Would the BBC invite a far right extremist to comment on, say, the career of Harold Wilson without making his far right extremist credentials absolutely apparent? The BBC habitually describe think tanks as “right wing” or “independent” (even when a cursory examination reveals that “independence” is suspect because they are stuffed full of leftist rent seekers) but never as “left wing”.

    The programme was an absolute disgrace. Just another step in the ongoing leftist campaign of the BBC to trash the cherished mythology of the past in order to clear the way to ordain a presumptive socialist future. And I say that with no rose tinted view of Churchill. Objective history is one thing, character assassination another.

    If (In)Famous Reds came under the same level of “scrutiny” there might be less to complain about but the BBC are guilty of reinforcing their own prejudices and cleaving to an outdated, thoroughly discredited Red romanticism and mythology. They won’t be pioneering a revisionist, “edgy” look at that nonsense any time soon.

  24. This is the kind of communist crap – where hanging a soviet flag out of the window of a stately home is seen as some wonderful, triumphant gesture:-

    http://alayerofchips.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/interview-with-dave-douglass.html

    One might think that the historical record in Eastern Europe from 1945 to 1989 might go some way to disabusing such homegrown bolshevik loonies of their ridiculous aspirations. But not a bit of it. Where Farage with no blood on his hands is cast as the Anti-Christ the usual suspects continue to wallow in the very real blood of communist horror like a cat purring over a bowl of cream. And, what really grates, is that they are still treated as respectable and worthy of attention. Labour still sing ‘The Red Flag’ with not a grain of self awareness of what that bloody flag really represents.

    Whenever the Loons of the Left parade, unkempt and unruly, with their bolshevik banners and drums and whistles, so pleased with their own idiotic certainty, a great army of ghosts – millions of them – follows unseen. The persecuted, imprisoned, tortured and murdered of a dozen regimes which followed the same creed. If those parades were accompanied by the blood of the innocents that their politically ideology has claimed, they would be up to their necks wading through it, if not drowning.

    They disgust me. They are the real fascists who deserve no platform. Instead they get to crow from their moral dung heap to a BBC chorus of oohs and aahs.

  25. Colonel Mustard (09:52 et seq)

    Thank you taking the time to construct a rational critique of yet another example of BBC agitprop at its worst – and for fisking Ferguson’s puerile post.
    I concur completely with your excellent essay. Moreover, though I’m no fan of Max Hastings anyway, I’m still somewhat surprised that he allowed himself to be used by the makers of this ‘documentary’ to provide the pretence of ‘balance’ to the infamy. I doubt he was aware that it would be quite so appalling, but he should have known what was afoot.

  26. Colonel Mustard @ 21:53

    Quite.

    It didn’t cross the mind of the programme creators, or those taking part that had it not been for Winston this piece of shite wouldn’t have aired, and if it did, it would have been in German, the hero the Austrian house decorator, and almost all those who commented would not have been able to watch it anyway, they would have been either incarcerated or few feet under because of their political leaning.

    When offered the Order of the Garter after the election defeat, one of the greatest men this country has ever bred said ‘thank you, the people have already given me the order of the boot’. This alone should tell anyone unbiased what kind of an exceptional individual we have here.

  27. You really should try to get a composite of your posts on the Churchill travesty published as a review in one of the less leftist magazines, Colonel. Try Nelson, there might still be some semblance of decency and patriotism left in his bone marrow somewhere, even though he generally shames the name he carries.

  28. Colonel Mustard (09:52 et seq)

    Reading your review I’m very glad that I missed the program. It would have would have made me angry, depressed, and it would have done my BP no good whatsoever.

  29. Fergus Pickering @ 08:59

    Here’s what’s wrong with then, Fergus, you saying ‘I have always seen …’, your eyes are to blame, arrange a visit to Specsavers, have it fixed.

  32. What gets me is the Hollywood style adulation of a flawed man who just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
    Like Reagan who the media tries to tell us pulled down the wall.
    There is an inevitabilty in history and to invest individuals with sainthood is a crass intellectual simplification of historical facts.

  33. “There is an inevitabilty in history and to invest individuals with sainthood is a crass intellectual simplification of historical facts.”

    How is objecting to a blatant and rather shabby character assassination “investing an individual with sainthood”?

    The BBC played fast and loose with the historical facts by introducing so much partisan subjective opinion without qualification.

  34. Frank P May 26th, 2015 – 11:34

    No chance of that! Nelson under the influence of his Labour sympathiser Hardman, cosy chum of telemachus, would have no truck with someone he probably sees as far right and “left behind”. I think the magazine is now aiming for “balance” and therefore become anodyne when it is not actually providing a platform for guest lefties. “Balance” nowadays means a predictably left of centre convention with plenty of politically correct constraint and a down the nose hauteur about any genuine conservatism. There is far too much left of centre “balance” in England which generally means playing by the left’s rules in fear of their denouncements and therefore losing to them anyway.

    I came late to the Speccie, before Nelson became editor, as the result of a magazine being passed on by a family friend. I found it refreshingly conservative, old fashioned and anti-bubble with a depth of thoughtful writing. But it now seems to have shifted left and embraced the bubble, descending into a lot of political celebrity speculation and gossip. The biggest joke was saying ‘No’ to Leveson whilst busily banning commentators.

    The writing was on the wall (excuse the pun) when Nelson dodged his promised editorial on Neathergate and he recently wrote a horribly predictable pro-immigration puff piece for another paper. The Spectator should have skewered New Labour on Neathergate but Nelson seemed unable to separate the personal experience of an overseas matrimony from the real immigration issues facing the country as a whole. And he seemed to imbibe the prevailing lefty “wisdom” that anyone objecting to the country being swamped with an unlimited number of foreigners seeking to better themselves thanks in part to the benevolence of the British taxpayer is a horrid “racist”.

    It’s too late now. The “narrative” is so skewed, so far from truth, so replete with platitude and the wimpish desire not to offend bullies that the country is doomed to become Hong Kong with high taxes.

    I prefer the Salisbury Review and Standpoint for conservative writing, although a few closet lefties have even slithered into the latter.

  35. Fergus Pickering @ 12:44

    Nobody’s elevating Winston to sainthood or anything, Fergus, the fact remains that were it not for him the world we inhabit today would look and feel different, and different for the worse, even you must admit it.

    In Baron’s humble view three events shaped the war, and also the post war settlement, more than anything else: Winston becoming the PM here, preventing Britain from making a deal with Adolf, facing up to him with bare hands as the only leader of a major power in the world; the battle of Kursk since when the Nazis didn’t stop retreating until the Ruskies devastated Berlin, and the dropping of two nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which showed everyone the evil of nuclear weapons, and has served as the best deterrent to another world war.

    You would be hard put to convince the barbarian otherwise, young sir.

  36. EC @ 11:35

    Actually, EC, it wasn’t the major thrust of the argument advanced by the left leaning commentators what made Baron see red, he’s got used to it, no surprise there even though some of the statements were palpably silly and questionable. ‘There really wasn’t much difference between Neville Chamberlain and Winston’, said one of the contributors, ‘By 1939, Neville Chamberlain ordered ….’ By the end of March 1939 Wehrmacht was already in Poland, and it was Munich where the two differed totally.

    What irked Baron more was the niggling snapping – Winston is waiting for the BBC guy to give the go ahead for a recording, the guy says ‘please wait for the Big Ben’, to which the actor portraying Winston replies, rather angrily ‘people aren’t waiting for the Big Ben but for me’. In another acted scene Winston asks ‘what’s the noise here’, a voice says ‘it’s the clock’, to which the actor responds, irritatingly again ‘stop it’. Or, the remarks by at least two of the contributors that all of his speeches were delivered when ‘he was totally pissed’, that his speeches weren’t heard (he made some of them in the House), but nobody remarked the speeches were printed in newspapers, newspapers were much widely read then than now ….

    It is remarks such as these that do the damage, they stick, those viewing the programme tend to remember them, judge the man by them. Sickening this.

  37. The boy is negotiating concessions from the EU as the powerful Germany with France in tow are proposing a closer ties (the rest of the EU equals matters not, they’ll fall behind the German Frau, one must suppose).

    Good luck to him.

  38. Dearest Dav-y Cam-ron,
    You think you’re mighty hot,
    Standing on the platform,
    Talking tommy-rot.

    (sung to the tune of `Lili Marlene`:it probably sounds better in German)

    (Acknowledgements to the British 8th Army whose response this was to Nancy, Lady Astor.)

  39. Colonel Mustard @ 13:44

    What about Spiked, Colonel, they may be interested, and have wider readership than Standpoint or the Salisbury Review.

  42. Baron
    May 26th, 2015 – 16:33

    Overall, do you honestly believe the world would be a much worse place today if Hitler had won?

    I accept fully there would be no Israel and very few, if any, Jews.

    But when you look at the Middle East (and I in no way blame the Jews for that mess), do you think the world could be in any worse mess?

    I suspect that, along with very few Jews, there would be very few Muslims, the oil would be under the Third Reich’s control (keeping the sand-niggers where they belong – broke and in the desert), the USSR would never have happened (they would have lost, along with the UK) and Japan would rule the whole of the Far East (most probably including Australia).

    All up, not a pleasant thought in terms of human rights, but then, on a day-to-day basis, would we be any more oppressed than we are now? I don’t think so, it’s just that we have a semblance of feeling free today.

    But just try drawing a cartoon of a paedophile in a turban and you’ll soon find out how free you really are.

  43. Common Purpose graduates leading beyond authority, as usual.

    In normal parlance, covering each others arses. Like the Police and the masons, every CP graduate should be forced to register their attendance on any brain-washing courses and steadily purged from all public services and quangos. A question along the lines “are you or have you ever been..” should be included in job application forms, with a positive result precluding employment anywhere in the public sector.

  45. It’s a big mistake creating those various tailor made quangos and commissioners staffed by all the usual suspects to oversee specific areas of public hysteria. With such lucrative sinecures on offer they will never consider any “job done” but instead seek to extend their remits, perpetuate the dog whistle language, continue feeding the “reports” with dodgy statistics to the media in order to seed soundbites in the public mind and to create new “issues” to campaign over.

    One can almost guarantee that any findings will pander to advancing their own agenda rather than addressing realities. Thus the grooming gangs inquiry will seek to condemn all men as part of a broader feminist agenda, ameliorate any findings that point to trends of ethnicity and religion and exonerate fellow officials involved in previous crass decisions. They will no doubt ignore the fact that many of the women responsible for providing protection (drawn from the same pool staffing the inquiry) failed in their duty and/or provide them with a public platform to point the finger elsewhere.

  46. Clear Memories @ 23:07

    Sorry, Clear Memories, no time to reply at some length, Baron’s typing this his face covered in Gillette gel (he leaves the stuff on for few minutes, the shaving’s smoother, he reckons) then he has to rush out to catch a trai n, so fo r now just this.

    You haven’t lived in a dictatorship of the sort the National Socialist, the Red Menace were running, have you. The barbarian did, under both, the first killed some of his relatives, one because he tried to protect his girlfriend from being groped, pushed a Wehrmacht soldier doing the groping away, told him to fuck off back to the Reich. For this he was shot on the spot. Under the other he, the barbarian spent time in jail himself. His crime? Writing, talking about one subject those in power didn’t like people talking, writing about that, ‘communism’s not only evil but incapable to feed its own people, it cannot last, must collapse.

    Whatever warts and boils the Brussels tyranny has, and it has more than many, Baron would swap it without hesitation for any of the two tyrannies he has experience of. Trust the barbarian on this, my blogging friend, he know s, he lived it.

  48. Was signed up to The Times for 1 quid but the offer has run out now, time to cancel the subscription. http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/columnists/136684/labours-israel-question Can still read Finkelstein’s columns here at the Jewish Chronicle for free
    Some thoughtful stuff, quite like it actually

    The most interesting thing he posted at the Times was about how Nigel Farage was sweating in the TV debates and that it was compared to a similar incident where Nixon (?) was sweating in a TV debate and did really badly. Body odour, sweat, who would have thought Nigel Farage would have been so badly embarrassed during the election campaign? What was worse for UKIP’s chances? 2010’s accidental plane crash or 2015’s accidental armpit catastrophe?

  49. Baron, I’d not want at all to diminish your own experience. But I do believe very strongly indeed that the EU is and will morph into a totalitarian state very quickly, and we are seeing the beginnings of this even in the UK, where some opinions (conservative and christian) are now treated as criminal, while other opinions (socialist and muslim) may not be challenged. We are heading for the experience of East Germany I fear. In the name of a pseudo-equality and a faux-fairness, we will find increasingly that we are silenced, and our remaining conservative institutions closed down.

  50. This post is being reviewed, before being published, on ToryHome, so here it is, on the record:

    It is obvious that Hollande/Merkel arranged the timing of the ‘more integrated Europe’ agenda as a spoiler to Cameron’s long awaited revelation as to what critical areas were to be renegotiated. And all, including Hannan are amazed at how little is being requested, not even demanded: no Red Lines! How naive can anyone, especially a politician, get?

    As Leader of the Opposition, Cameron should have persuaded Britain that conservative policies were better for the country, in preparation for the 2005 general election. He didn’t. In fact, he did the opposite, he became the ‘Heir to Blair’. No wonder he failed to win!

    I can see the same thing happening again, with Brussels. Hannan has a pretty good shopping list (for a Tory 🙂 ). If that had been taken up, everyone would know where they were.

    But instead, we have this pussy-footing around, shadow boxing, where neither we, nor Brussels, have a clue about anything, except that Cameron doesn’t mind appearing to be absolutely clueless about Britain’s desire to rule themselves!

    For many, that is the ONLY consideration. The rest, we can fight over, in our own parliament!

    After the Working Time Directive was pushed through H&S, how can Brussels be trusted, on anything.

  52. Clear Memories:
    So Hitler was a good egg?
    I’ll give that he liked us Scots but you English were destined to be fodder.
    The men as slaves and the women for breeding farms.
    Your antisemitic posts bring this site into disrepute.

  53. There is undoubtedly an agenda to de-legitimise traditional conservative views, to proscribe them first by intimidation and a contrived moral basis but to gradually ramp up the policing of speech.

    Within the Tory party how much of that trend is long marching or a genuine if naive wish to “modernise” which concedes ground to the cultural marxists of the left is uncertain. There certainly seems to be an unwillingness to purge leftist obstructions and contrivances from the unelected arms of government. But the most worrying aspect is that the Tory party appears to have succumbed to the notion of social engineering and control through central diktat.

    The extent of statutory instrumentation and “nudging” at the behest of unelected lobbying and pressure groups is most unhealthy and a threat to individual freedoms, including the freedom of expression.

    It might not be as blatant as the communist regimes but it is incessant, incremental and heading in the wrong direction.

  54. I find it incredible that anyone should suggest that we might be no worse off had Nazi Germany prevailed.

    Don’t confuse the triumph of victory with its fruits that have literally been thrown away by succeeding politicians ignorant of what that represented or malevolent as to their agendas.

    No regime proud of victory against the Nazis should ever have countenanced banning smoking in pubs, for example. It is like a gardener having exhausted himself eradicating weeds from a lawn encouraging their seeds to be sown again. A repudiation of simple, fundamental principles – the right of a landlord to decide how his premises should be run and his customers how they might conduct themselves. Legislating disapproval and raising officious bureaucracies to pander to their zealotries is going to cost freedom dear. The wedge is getting fatter.

  55. Is it because we saw off the cancer of Hitler that we need to banish the pernicious cancer of smoking from our public spaces?

  56. “No regime proud of victory against the Nazis should ever have countenanced banning smoking in pubs,”

    But it did. Like many others that should have known better where personal freedom was concerned.

    And that is my point exactly – hard won freedoms have been slowly and steadily eroded with very little resistance leaving us in a position, I dare to promulgate, that is little different (hypothetically) from where we would have been had Hitler and the other fascists won.

    I have no wish to in any way diminish or lessen Baron’s experiences – I, after all, have not lived them. But I view Nazis and Socialists as one and the same at their extremities – the SNP’s supporters have proved that, they’re no different to the BNP and Surgeon is no more than Nick Griffin with tits. Most regimes change over time, Hitler would have died, others would have followed and most probably relaxed the centralist grip over time. Freedom, starting from a dark place, would have evolved. The China of today, for example, could never have been imagined 50 years ago.

    And Fergus – anti-Semitic? Piss off into the cellar with Telemucus.

  58. China is still a dark place but conceals it better than it used to. Unfortunately that type of authoritarian socialist government (that thinks it knows what is good for you) embracing the worst excesses of exploitative corporate capitalism seems to be the model for the UK government.

    I am wary of the inner nanny in Cameron and that he seems to want to impose his personal approvals and disapprovals on everyone.

  59. Fergus Pickering
    May 27th, 2015 – 10:16
    Clear Memories:
    So Hitler was a good egg?
    I’ll give that he liked us Scots but you English were destined to be fodder.
    The men as slaves and the women for breeding farms.
    Your antisemitic posts bring this site into disrepute.
    Actually I couldn’t see any antisemitic content in the post you criticise. Please, Fergus, point out the part where you consider Clear Memories exhibits any prejudice.
    By the way, I like the new colour format!

  62. Anne
    You mean apart from all of it?
    …the world a worse place…
    ….very few if any Jews…
    Now just which bit is not antisemitic?

  63. Fergus Pickering
    May 27th, 2015 – 17:29
    But when you look at the Middle East (and I in no way blame the Jews for that mess), do you think the world could be in any worse mess?
    I suspect that, along with very few Jews, there would be very few Muslims, the oil would be under the Third Reich’s control (keeping the sand-niggers where they belong – broke and in the desert),

    I still can’t see his remarks as antisemitic, and believe me, in a long life I have met plenty of rabid antisemites. I do find his term ‘sand-niggers’ nasty, although personally I detest the islamic cult, which I refuse to term as a legitimate religion.

  64. Peter from Maidstone
    May 27th, 2015 – 17:20
    Which colour format?
    Most weird, but the names of the comment writers appeared in blue. Oly happened once, did anybody else see this?

  66. Peter from Maidstone
    May 27th, 2015 – 18:20
    Peter, I agree with you 100%. Actually I think Clear Memories was going a bit over the top, rather like a little boy who wants to shock. I imagine he was writing rather tongue in cheek

  67. Clear Memories May 27th, 2015 – 13:37

    “No regime proud of victory against the Nazis should ever have countenanced banning smoking in pubs,”

    We have just returned from a wet week in the Austrian Tyrol, there was smoking everywhere, café’s, bars and restaurants, tobacconists flourished and there were cigarette vending machines all over the place.

    A packet of twenty was 4.40 Euro that is the equivalent of £3.04p.

    The trains were clean all new and they ran on time, and not one pot-hole did we see on any road.

    Makes me wonder who is paying for the new roads?

  68. Regarding smoking: I smoked from the age of 13 until the age of 63, and finally got some patches to help me quit. Too many dear friends, all smokers, had died from lung cancer, and I was frankly scared. I think that there should be places where smoking is allowed, and separate rooms reserved for non-smokers. That way, the smokers can smoke all they like, and the anti-nicotine brigade can breath air that is free from the weed. Taking about weed, if there was true freedom of choice, there would be room reserved for those who want to smoke cannabis, Well I can dream, can’t I!

  69. Anne, two good friends of mine died recently in their mid fifties with lung cancer. They had been lifelong believers in the healthy alternative to tobacco, weed.
    Didn’t do them a lot of good.

  70. John birch
    May 27th, 2015 – 20:41
    That’s terrible. Maybe the answer is not to smoke, either nicotine or the weed. As I wrote earlier, in the interests of freedom of choice, there should be separate rooms for smokers and non-nonsmokers.
    David Ossitt
    May 27th, 2015 – 18:56
    David, today I cannot sit in a room where people are smoking, but not wishing to deprive anybody of their own choice, we really should have smoking and nonsmoking rooms.

  73. ROD LIDDLE
    Benefits for people who don’t live here? Great idea

    Yet another exciting discovery from the world of Islamic science. As you are probably aware, Islamic culture has always paid a high regard to science and Muslims will tell you proudly that they invented absolutely nothing. That is, they have provided the world with the mathematical representation of absolutely nothing, what we now know as zero. Where would we be without nothing? In the tenth century the scholar Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Khwarizmi decided that it would be useful to draw a little circle to signify zero if you were doing some complex calculation. He called it sifr. There is some dispute as to whether this really was the first time anyone had recognised the existence of nothing, because the Sumerians may have stumbled across the now-familiar lacuna many thousands of years before Mohammed — the other Mohammed, the really famous one whose image we must not depict for fear of instant decapitation — existed.
    But it is churlish to carp and quibble, I think. They want the possession of nothing, I think we should let them keep it. Anyway, that was all a very long time ago — but still Islamic culture keeps giving and will not rest upon its laurels. Just this week, for example, the Turkish Muslim scholar and evangelist Mücahid Cihad Han announced on television that people who masturbate will end up with pregnant hands. I don’t think there is much doubt that Islamic culture is the first to come up with this discovery; I have done my research and can reveal that the Sumerians, for example, thought onanism a perfectly respectable practice and quite undeserving of censure or likely to result in appalling consequences. So this is an incontestable first, and a rather worrying discovery at that. Because let’s be honest — none of us want pregnant hands. It would be a terrible encumbrance, especially if you were trying to tie your shoelaces or endeavouring to put up a flat-pack bookshelf in the spare bedroom. You would find it awfully difficult to grip the shoelace, or the Allen Key, with your palms bulging out all over the place.
    Mücahid — whose pronouncements I will in future follow with great interest — suggests that the pregnant hands will complain to God about their rights, and that self–abusers will be forced to pay for the upkeep of their hand-begotten children when, through whatever rather odd process, they emerge. Given this new information, I would strongly urge you to desist from masturbation. Take a shower or go for a brisk walk instead. Or better still, read Gordon Brown’s 2010 collection of speeches, The Change We Choose, which will dull your sexual appetite to many, many degrees below absolute zero. You will never want to fiddle with yourself again after reading that. Or indeed with anyone else.
    We underestimate this culture at our peril. There is a charity in east London called Families for Survival UK which does a lot of work attempting to alleviate poverty in the Islamic state of Bangladesh. One of its directors, a lady called Asma Khanam, is accused of having taken this poverty–alleviation business a little too far. She has been arrested — along with 12 other people — for allegedly operating a scam whereby Bangladeshi migrants, holding EU passports and a whole bunch of forged documents, drop into the UK for one day in order to claim a vast amount of various welfare benefits. For themselves and their wives and their children. Hundreds and hundreds of Bangladeshis, according to the police; they swing by the UK, trouser the benefits and then skedaddle on the first available flight back to Italy — where one assumes they further alleviate their poverty by claiming the statutory benefits there.
    That, I thought at first, is the least they might do as a form of recompense – share in the national misery
    I ought to point out that there is not the slightest suggestion that Families For Survival UK itself was involved in this criminal operation, either officially or on an ad-hoc capacity, notwithstanding the fact that its offices were searched and a lot of computers and documents taken away for examination. A total of five organisations in the London and Essex area are alleged to have provided the Bangladeshis with fraudulent documentation which would help them to obtain taxpayers’ money.
    The authorities were alerted when a significant number of Bangladeshis arrived from Italy armed with letters to attend job interviews in London, the better to obtain National Insurance numbers — but with return air tickets for the same day. Some bogus wage slips were also discovered. This is supposedly the biggest scam of its kind ever discovered — and one’s first reaction is an intense annoyance, a sort of seething rage, that these people are going to be getting our money without even having to live in this increasingly absurd country. That, I would have thought, is the very least they might do as a form of recompense — share in the national misery which the rest of us are forced to endure. But not on your life: a quick visit, and off they go with the cash.
    I suppose one could see these people as the sort of flip-side, negative image, of the famous non-doms — those people who are content to live here but prefer to pay their taxes in countries with a slightly lower top rate. The awful people who Ed Miliband decided to persecute in order to soar to victory with the popular support of the people on 7 May. By contrast, this lot have no intention of living here, but they are keen on our largesse. I wonder which group you would prefer to take out for dinner at The Ivy?

    As it happens, I’m slightly conflicted on this story. The press has reacted with outrage that these people spend only 24 hours in Britain yet still coin it. By contrast, I am rather happy that they do not intend to live here. If we could spend a similar amount of money paying some other Muslim immigrants not to come here, I think it would be financially and socially worth our while. Bung them a few million quid and hope to Christ they stay in Italy.

  74. anne wotana kaye@May 27th, 2015 – 21:28

    Thats all very well but what about the staff who have to go in the smoking room to collect glasses, empty the ashtrays, pick up the fag ends off the floor (why do smokers not think fag ends are not litter) etc.
    and how many pubs these days have separate rooms? They were all bashed through into open plan years ago. reversing that would be expensive for an industry that is bordering on unviability.

  75. “if there was true freedom of choice, there would be room reserved for those who want to smoke cannabis”

    That room is called a padded cell!
    For the dealers that room should be called a prison cell.
    OK, if the prisons are full then build more.
    I don’t care how many people that get locked up.

    Even back in the 70’s cannabis was never harmless, but today it’s downright dangerous.

    Something else to ponder on:

    http://www.nhs.uk/news/2015/02February/Pages/Super-strength-skunk-cannabis-linked-to-psychosis.aspx

  76. EC (10:38)

    Last time we kicked off this debate, Melanie had to close her first blogsite because of the hopped-up trolls who viciously bombarded it.

    The ‘Cause of Freedom’ would not be enhanced by giving these brain-damaged agitators and exploiters of the ‘useful idiot’ brigade their way with legalisation of hallucinegens and narcotics. Society has to protect itself against them and the law is the only weapon. The problems now derive from the fact that current legislation is not being properrly enforced.

    As for tobacco? The avaricious corporate poisoners will never give up and I’m afraid the excuse of ‘free choice’ is one of their major propaganda weapons. ‘Personal freedom’ is a piss-poor excuse for facilitating such a manifest and proven attack on the physical health of a nation, imho! C’mon folks. Freedom is one thing, abtuse stupidity is another. Puff away in private if you can’t live without it, but please don’t impose it on the rest of us, the young in particular.

  77. Regarding the hoo ha over the Human Rights Act, it was in the Conservative manifesto, which a majority of the electorate voted for, this is called democracy by the way. Those who are now objecting to its repeal should be reminded of this inconvenient truth. If the repeal of this act is so unpalatable to them, why did they not make their feelings known before the vote, and why did Cameron not point this out to the duplicitous bastards? Thank God I voted UKIP.

  79. I cannot be but irritated by the obsessions of the cultural mafia and their determination to stuff their dietary certitudes down our throats. I grew up in rural Wales where everyone smoked, faggot peas and chips was the national dish and every week the pop man came around dispensing such delights as Tizer and Dandelion and Burdock. I am still here.

  81. John birch@May 28th, 2015 – 12:19

    So rising sea levels has a good side. I have been to Hull 🙁

  82. anne wotana kaye May 27th, 2015 – 19:26

    “Regarding smoking: I smoked from the age of 13 until the age of 63”

    Exactly as I did, I loved every puff but had I known how difficult it is to live with C.O.P.D. I might well have stopped sooner, even after twelve years abstinence I still get the occasional urge but never do.

  83. Stephen Mayberry (11:15)

    Please don’t ‘fight to the death’ over my paltry opinions, they’re not worth that, agreeable or otherwise. But do try to fight the habit, please, or ere long you’ll be fighting with emphysema at best – or lung cancer at worst … or arterial schlerosis … or, well, I’m sure you know the other dangers. If it’s worth that, then good luck with the vagaries of the seven blind bastards of fickle fate – and enjoy your smoke while you can. 🙂

    And btw – doesn’t it piss you off that the fat cats of American British Tobacco (or whatever they call themselves these days) are pocketing the exorbitant proceeds of your habit – pro bono publico and ‘in the cause of freedom’, of course? And the Inland Revenue sharks taking their bite, too? As a preventative measure … of course!

  84. Coming from the West End of the Lowlands I observe from afar the dangers of drugs in trainspotting on the Edinburgh estates. And see as an ex inhabitant of the lung cancer capital of Europe the evils of smoking.
    We should round up and fine those who smoke in front of children.
    And reinstate the death penalty for those who push drugs.
    And classify advocacy of cannabis smoking as incitement to a hate crime.
    Too long we have been tolerant of these poisons in society.
    Come on Ms May.
    What did you win the election for.
    Come on Mr Gove.
    Use your talents.

  86. David Ossitt
    May 28th, 2015 – 12:30
    David, one must always be vigilant. Even after 16 years, I am still occasionally tempted, but thank G-d, I have never weakened.

  87. To Alexsandr
    E.C. and everybody I have offended.
    Please forgive me, if in perhaps my over anxiousness for personal freedom, I suggested that cannabis should be available for those who want it. As a teetotaller, I find alcohol horrible, and the diseases and problems it causes are terrible. But, I do not advocate banning it, each for his own poison! Sorry, fellow Wallers, I will ponder some more.
    Regarding the staff who must clean rooms used by smokers, I can only suggest that smokers are employed, and should wear protective clothing during their working hours.

  88. And while I rant I hear the homophobic Irish bakers are appealing a just decision.
    No doubt at our expense.

  89. Frank P – 11:36

    Re: Cannabis

    Ahem, my fatwa earlier did seem a bit strong, but I have some undisclosed dogs in this fight, and they shall remain undisclosed. From 1970 onwards, amongst the people I’ve seen use it, I’ve never seen anything positive come of it. I have, however, witnessed the great harm that it has done some to them. I don’t buy into the “less harmful than alcohol” justification used by its pushers.

    I know cannabis has medicinal properties, and I would I never object to it being prescribed and used under medical supervision.

    Re: Tobacco :thumbs:
    It allows people the several times daily opportunity to demonstrate their “free will” by choosing not to give it up! 🙂

    At up to £7 for a packet of 20 it is an expensive habit!
    Beer is anything up to £32 per gallon
    Petrol is currently about £5.50 per gallon.

    HMRC are ‘avin a larf aint they!

  90. anne wotana kaye – 13:56

    Anne, I’m not aware that your have offended anybody. You provided the stimulus for an interesting discussion!

    Please pay no attention to my little knee jerk rant earlier. I can’t go into details.

    Until I read CHW I was about to ‘ave a go at them Methodists!
    Maybe later 🙂

  91. Pub rooms used to be full of smokers and smoke. No-one fretted about having to clean them then.

    We have been conditioned. And the problem is not the problem but the widening wedge that follows its “resolution”.

    Education and evolution by all means, voluntary refrain, polite requests (“We thank you for not smoking”), but if you agree with the state intervening to criminalise private behaviours in a private place in which no-one is forced to enter, imbibe or puff, just because you disapprove don’t be surprised when it becomes a precedent for many other forms of state intervention control. As indeed we have seen with the move to criminalise smoking in your own car.

    Already the Ban It Brigade are circling alcohol and the first salvoes have been fired at meat. Breakfast cereals tax Burnham mightily and he is the very personification of the post modern fascist. Hitler of course was a zealous anti-smoker, tee totaler and vegan. The Nazi government promoted the most powerful anti-smoking movement in the world during the 1930s and early 1940s. Their anti-tobacco campaign included banning smoking in trams, buses and city trains. They also imposed restrictions on tobacco advertising and smoking in public spaces, and regulated restaurants and coffeehouses (!). At the time that intervention was seen as an integral component of the fascist state. It is simply astonishing that a country that fought Nazi Germany should so readily adopt the sort of intrusive state intervention and control it excelled at.

    But if logic dictates that life and health threatening personal behaviours are not to be tolerated then there is much that is also in need of attention and a lot more to ban. You will never convince me that the “disease” is worse than the “cure” and I am a non-smoker so have no skin in the game anyway.

  93. The defenders of degeneracy 1518 pay no heed to the effect of the degeneracy on the next generation.
    I for one do not wish pub smoking room morals visited upon my progeny.

  94. And this time it’s the turn of tee-total, non smoking, Methodists!

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32909444

    WTF is wrong with these people?

    Note to Fergus (tele?) – 13:28

    Prompted the memory of my old woodwork teacher who was a quiet man with full beard- ginger. He never shouted or got angry at the ham fisted attempts of the boys in his charge to master the medium at he was so adept.

    He was also a Methodist lay preacher and quite often used to fit in a homily in ‘form time’. He was a man after your own heart, Fergus. Long before the Common Market(EEC), EU or ECHR banned such thoughts, he frequently used to say that prisoners(convicts) ought to be used for medical experiments – with or without volunteering. Bugger voting rights,eh!

    Maybe he was right…

  98. “Pub rooms used to be full of smokers and smoke. No-one fretted about having to clean them then.”

    Hmmm. I owned and ran a country pub for almost five years during a spell of post- constabulary stress disorder. There’s a saying in the pub trade, that it takes six months for a fool to acquire a pub and five years to escape from it.

    Life behined the bar gave me a whole new perspective on my erstwhile idyllic notion of the village inn from the punter’s side of the bar. It was not just the involuntary inhalation of second hand smoke for thirteen or so hours a day; the stench of stale tobacco on one’s clothes; the mouth like a parrot’s caage of a morning. Nor having to clean up the coughed up blood in the carsey, nor the wheezing chain smoking alcholic regulars I was exploiting daily to earn my crust at that stage of my life – about which I soon became thorougly ashamed.

    It was the first he first time I decorated the saloon bar that really cracked it. As I started to clean the walls, I peeled off massive yellow strips of solid smokers’ exhalation at least a third of an inch thick (like Chivers jelly mix) from the embossed papered, gloss painted, walls. It was then that I knew I had to escape from the gas chamber before the same thing happened to my lungs.

    I also credit John Betjamin partly with my epiphany:

    THE VILLAGE INN

    “The village inn, the dear old inn,
    So ancient, clean and free from sin,
    True centre of our rural life
    Where Hodge sits down beside his wife
    And talks of Marx and nuclear fission
    With all a rustic’s intuition.
    Ah, more than church or school or hall,
    The village inn’s the heart of all.”

    So spake the brewer’s P. R. O.,
    A man who really ought to know,
    For he is paid for saying so.
    And then he kindly gave to me
    A lovely coloured booklet free.
    ‘Twas full of prose that sang the praise
    Of coaching inns in Georgian days,
    Showing how public-houses are
    More modern than the motor-car,
    More English than the weald or wold
    And almost equally as old,
    And run for love and not for gold
    Until I felt a filthy swine
    For loathing beer and liking wine,
    And rotten to the very core
    For thinking village inns a bore,
    And village bores more sure to roam
    To village inns than stay at home.

    And then I thought I must be wrong,
    So up I rose and went along
    To that old village alehouse where
    In neon lights is written “Bear”.

    Ah, where’s the inn that once I knew
    With brick and chalky wall
    Up which the knobbly pear-tree grew
    For fear the place would fall?

    Oh, that old pot-house isn’t there,
    It wasn’t worth our while;
    You’ll find we have rebuilt “The Bear”
    In Early Georgian style.

    But winter jasmine used to cling
    With golden stars a-shine
    Where rain and wind would wash and swing
    The crudely painted sign.

    And where’s the roof of golden thatch?
    The chimney-stack of stone?
    The crown-glass panes that used to match
    Each sunset with their own?

    Oh now the walls are red and smart,
    The roof has emerald tiles.
    The neon sign’s a work of art
    And visible for miles.

    The bar inside was papered green,
    The settles grained like oak,
    The only light was paraffin,
    The woodfire used to smoke.

    And photographs from far and wide
    Were hung around the room:
    The hunt, the church, the football side,
    And Kitchener of Khartoum.

    Our air-conditioned bars are lined
    With washable material,
    The stools are steel, the taste refined,
    Hygienic and ethereal.

    Hurrah, hurrah, for hearts of oak!
    Away with inhibitions!
    For here’s a place to sit and soak
    In sanit’ry conditions.

    John Betjeman

    The old boy ‘got it’ in a nutshell of a ditty.

  102. “The defenders of degeneracy 1518 pay no heed to the effect of the degeneracy on the next generation.”

    A comment worthy of telemachus in more ways than one.

    I am not “defending degeneracy” but attacking state intervention. Not my fault if the point of my argument sails several feet over your head.

    And this “next generation” moral blackmail, a socialist’s ploy, is tedious. All the other more horrible things that have been bequeathed to the “next generation” by our modern crop of do good politicians are conveniently ignored.

  103. I meant to the add that the threat from “second hand smoking” and yellow gel on the pub wall will pale into insignificance against the other bequeathed threats coming down the road.

  104. Colonel Mustard @ 15:18

    Hear, hear, Colonel.

    Where indeed would one stop ‘banning’ things?

    When you think about it even the most healthy diet, vigorous exercise, avoidance of substances such as nicotine, alcohol, caffeine bring us all to a certain death anyway, our bodies are programmed to decay at a rate specific to each of us, some of us are luckier than others. Stimulants unquestionably shorten one’s life, but also give pleasure during it. Baron remembers fondly the taste of Balkan Sobranie smoking mixture in his pipe – sweet, caressing the tongue, creating a high nothing else could ever reach or emulate, and add to this the clout of niacin, the oxidised nicotine on the barbarian’s cell regeneration…..on second thought, not much, Baron should have smoked more.

    If Welfare of the sort we are all proud of, many benefit from, some live on, were not around, each of us would behave very differently. Smoking, drug use, obesity of whatever else may be speeding up the entropy of the human body would be far less prevalent for everyone would know that if things turn for the worse there isn’t the ‘free at the point of delivery’ NHS. It sound barbarous, but in the end, the current set-up of the Welfare will come to an even sticker end as those in charge run out of other people’s money.

    Baron’s paternal grandfather laboured as a coalminer for 45 years, smoked from the age of 10, drank alot, a bottle of wine a day (towards the later stages of his life the cheapest wine he could buy), smoked rolled unfiltered cigarettes up to last thou (his huge moustache was the colour of chocolate, his hair was white as snow). He died aged 96 asleep, after a meal, a drink, and a smoke.

    Go figure.

  105. Frank P @ 17:33

    Ah, more than church or school or hall,
    The village inn’s the heart of all.”

    Quite true, Frank, only the verb tense’s wrong, it ain’t anymore, it was.

    The little village Baron resides in had a pub, it was full of punters on Sundays, the barbarian included, the talk was flowing as was the beer, the air was near blue from smoking, not that many minded (if they did they didn’t say). It got shut (admittedly before the smoking ban). Unbelievable as it may sound, Baron knows very few of his neighbours now. Pity this.

  106. EC @ 17:22

    That’s an excellent piece by Douglas, EC. Baron often wonders how we managed without the uman rites convention.

    Amongst the many innovations of the anointed, polluting the centuries old, time tested judicial system of common and criminal law making here must rank as the most harmful step. Once the politicians take over the guarantee of our freedoms we are doomed. The country may yet regret it.

  107. EC @ 17:42

    That’s nothing new, EC, the wind turbine monstrosities are backed by diesel generators, too.

  108. Baron (19:53)

    You crafty old debater, you’ve delibertely chosen to quote a couplet from John B’s poem as though he meant it literally – and bounced off it accordingly. As you well know it was an ironic inner quote, which he answered with a less idyllic burst of reality.

    Lookit – I’ve no desire to increase statism; but neither do I wish to give succour to those who wish to exploit weakness by generating addiction of any sort. Education is obviously inadequate in dealing with these matters, because all (bar one) who gather here know, the halls of academe are riddled with Granscian gnomes, who will propagate anything in the young that eventually puts hoi polloi under its spell.

    Smoking has been a scourge of this nation since SWR introduced the noxious weed. Recently great strides have been made to eradicate its worst effects. Regardless of the invincibility of your granddaddy. I could quote a thousand uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters daddies and mummies to counter that and who have died nasty deaths as the result of the avaricious cynicism of the corporate poisoners and their propagandists. Sometimes the law has to protect those who are incapable of protecting themselves. I’m not espousing aggressive intervention – just common sense.

    As for ‘worse things coming down the road’, Colonel: I agree, but the problem of addiction is already here and needs to be addressed sensibly for it is one of the devices used by our leftist adversaries.

    I liked this stanza in the poem better than your crafty quote, Baron:

    “Until I felt a filthy swine
    For loathing beer and liking wine,
    And rotten to the very core
    For thinking village inns a bore,
    And village bores more sure to roam
    To village inns than stay at home.”

    That must ring a bell? 🙂

  109. Btw Baron – it was the drink-drive laws that did for the freehouse pubs, not the smoking ban. That and the bleeding telly.

  112. Why has this twat Steve Hilton suddenly become the flavor of the month? It is reported that he is married. Are they sure? That surprises me!

  113. Frank P @ 21:50

    You sure, Frank, it was irony? It must be the barbarian is losing it faster than he thinks.

    Look, if Baron knew what he knows now he wouldn’t have started on the weed, but he still objects to things being banned. Tax it massively, run a campaign against it, encourage farmers not to grow it, all that’s fine. But banning a consumption of a legally available product, one that’s taxed massively, and the the cultivation of which is subsidised? Hmmm.

    Alcohol isn’t much better, in fact the addiction to spirits is much harder, almost impossible, to shake off than that to nicotine. Logically, as Colonel says, it must come next. Then the mean spirited lot will find something else to ban. In the end, the people will be allowed to do what to stimulate the senses? Grazing on a genetically modified field? Arghhh

    The drink drive laws certainly did alot of the damage, granted, but banning smoking didn’t help either.

    And as for the stanza, well, it does ring a bell, but that’s life, Frank, not everyone can be intellectually gifted, pen sonnets, comprehend the theory of relativity, the world at large is populated mostly by those who aren’t and cannot, but short of gassing us leaves little room for the raising of the plebs’ IQ, in pubs or elsewhere, don’t you think?

  114. Frank P @ 23:40

    If you look carefully, just before 1 o’clock, there you’ll see the smiling face of Baron in the picture (only joking, but the biker seems deadly unlucky to look almost like the barbarian.)

  115. Frank P @ 23:51

    Excellent link, Frank.

    The great Steyn’s great, what else, but Miss Coulter doesn’t come second either, the quote on culture ranks on par with what he may say, probably wishes he did (apart from her book title), and is so right and so counter the Susan Sontag’s quote Baron keeps banging about – the white race, cancer, human history.

  116. Frank P 23-40
    Perhaps if that one doesn’t have the required effect the next one should be Gay Christian bikers supporting Israel.

  119. Baron, I’m sure that the demise of pipe smoking has had a deleterious effect on the placidity, circumspection and understatement of the English bloke.

    The rise of a leisured but strident neo-peasant class and their move into the limelight of entertainment and the mainstream of society has exacerbated that demise. Unfortunately the damaging effects of that move on the health of the population are unquantified and probably unquantifiable. I know that I would prefer the specimens living near me to be hard at work in the fields from dawn to dusk with no time or energy for play rather than engaged in ways to make the maximum amount of noise and disruption in their plastic detritus heaped “gardens”.

    I recall the look of vacant incomprehension when I breezily apologised to a neighbour that I was planning to make some peace and quiet that afternoon and I hoped it would not disturb their noise too much. I’d much rather have clouds of pipe tobacco smoke wafting over the fence from contentedly puffing deckchair occupiers than the reek of barbecue fuel, the thump of music and the screeching of kids.

  120. And to add to the smoking and drink driving impacts it was John Major who permitted unruly, screeching kids to run riot in pubs, those hitherto sanctified adult “safe spaces”, the pea-eating, back stabbing, egg mcmuffin diving bore.

  121. Frank P – 23:40

    Can’t wait!
    Last week’s party at the “Twin Peaks” diner in Waco, Texas certainly went with a BANG!

    The local cops should keep their weapons holstered in case they accidentally shoot a black biker or black passer by – or Loretta might organise another Lynch mob.

  122. Colonel Mustard – 10:08

    Juke Boxes, One Armed Bandits(Fruit Machines), “Space Invaders” etc.

    Not forgetting the 60’s/70’s scourge that were “Folk Music” nights – which were as prevalent as Clap, Crabs, Nits etc. at that time – not least in some of tone deaf performers and audience, I would imagine. 😯

  123. Baron 0103
    In Paisley’s pubs before I moved to the green and pleasant lands of Teston many a tired man had cause to chant Middleton’s ode to smoking.

    Well forty years he paid the price
    With pain and much regret
    He paid the final payment
    With his life he paid the debt

  124. Colonel Mustard (10:05)

    Heh, heh, heh! I sometimes wonder whether you are ‘Bron Waugh reincarnated. Had you been one of my regulars, I may have been tempted to soldier on just for the craic – and rigged up a more efficient air conditioning system.

  126. it was cheap booze from booze cruises and later in the supermarkets that did for pubs. The price differential between pubs and booze for home consumption made many pubs unviable.

  127. John Birch (07:54)

    ” … the next one should be Gay Christian bikers supporting Israel.”

    Or the straight Christian Irish bakers, even?

    I’ll get me (rain) coat!

  128. ‘Bron and I parted company from each other on the EU. His view that the best government would be a “junta of Belgian ticket inspectors” appears manifest in the EU Commission. Every little officious and petty “ihre papiere, bitte” bureaucrat seems to have gravitated there, a nest of nascent surrogate Himmlers. Their common uniform now the horrid ‘Je Suis Charlie (er Not)’ blue suit.

    However, on the wearing of tweed suits as the last defiant self-expression of the pipe-smoking Englishman we were as one. If I were Farage I would ensure that I wore one on every occasion whilst speaking in that Temple of the Dreary Left, pipe (minus tobacco) in hand to jab emphasis at the po-faced Euro-twat line up.

  129. Not sure if Frank P and John Birch are seeking the ire of Shuja Shafi or Neuburger.

  130. I’m trying to think of some famous pipe smokers

    Eric Morecombe
    Sitting Bull
    Harold Wilson
    Anthony Wedgewood Benn
    Stalin

    Sherlock Holmes
    Alexander Waverley (Leo G. Carrol – The Man from U.N.C.L.E.)
    Dimmock (Michael Aldridge – The Man in Room 17)
    Percy Alleline (Michael Aldridge – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy)
    Popeye The Sailor Man
    The Bloke on the St Bruno advert
    Gandalf The Grey / White

    er… that’s it. Anybody any more?

  132. When did companies decide to call you by your first name and not use your title and surname?

    I find it slightly disturbing that in conversation with companies representatives they all seem to home in on my Christian name.

    Another rant, after failing to contact the Revenue by telephone I emailed them twice without a reply and when completing my tax return I reminded them of this but yet still no reply.

  133. EC May 29th, 2015 – 15:27

    “I’m trying to think of some famous pipe smokers

    Harold Wilson”

    I once read that he was in fact an inveterate cigar smoker but in public he used the pipe as more befitted one who was one of the little people.

  135. Has anybody noticed that good old Rowntrees Fruit Gums have been literally buggered up! First they changed the name to Fruit Gums, and now they have changed the format and they do not taste the same. Nestles, I believe have taken over this company, and I wonder whether the removal of WINE in the name is to do with the msolem market.

  137. David Ossitt
    May 29th, 2015 – 15:56
    There is a fine painting by Sir Phillip Burne-Jones of Rudyard Kipling. The great poet, and pipe smoker is seated at his desk, with his pipe at hand. I bought a copy in the National Portrait Gallery London shop, and the postcard graces a book shelf.

  138. E.C.
    Sorry, I meant to have your name too on the above posting. Princes Margaret once caused a minor scandal by taking up pipe smoking!

  143. We have just joined the NT again, having been members many times before. It was only £8.50 a month for a couple membership. Old people pay even less! And we have been to two places already. Ightham Mote and Sissinghurst Castle Gardens, so that would have cost us £49.00. That’s more or less half of the annual fee in one week.

  145. Advice please! I now want to buy and read a biography on Rudyard Kipling, his life starting with childhood, and onwards. Recommendations, please.

  147. Peter from Maidstone
    May 29th, 2015 – 21:21
    I’ve a birthday next month, and thanks Peter, I will ask for that autobiography together with a good biography.

  149. I am absolutely fascinated by the Daily Mail’s tactical positioning after the election.

    Gone are the stories day after day about large white families on welfare (message: let’s make the election about welfare, and keep immigration in the cupboard).

    And in place of Nick Clegg? Story after story about the SNP in Westminster. Message: Here is the new Aunt Sally. Here are people to blame instead of Dave and chums. And what an equisite lightning rod Mr Dacre will turn the SNP into in the run-up to the EU referendum (which is going at breakneck speed). The heat will be taken off the EU by the Mail by trying to focus all its readers’ anger on the SNP.

    Even after Mail readers fell for the SNP/Labour scare line and got their Conservative ‘saviours’, the numer of comments on SNP stories seems to outnumber all other political stories. Message: Look here, folks. Hate here. Hate SNP. Don’t worry about the EU.

    But the SNP can’t do a thing. Dave has a majority now. He can be held to account on his own. But won’t be by the Mail who will churn out SNP click bait.

    And the the EU coverage is pure theatre of the worst kind. A dreary old pantomime about the ‘concessions’ the UK will get, that Dave ‘fought for’, that there was a load of ‘late-night brinksmanship’.

    And the Daily Mail readers will vote to stay in the EU, which is just where the SNP wants them. Curious, that. They’re all so blind they can’t see who their real enemies are – but that’s why Dacre is Dacre. He’s excellent at his job, even if Dave isn’t. Sheep herding. Pure sheep herding.

  150. Tory councillor Ben Harris-Quinney: “Last year I received a threat that I would be suspended from the Conservative Party unless I stopped asking awkward questions on issues such as Party management and the historic investigation into child abuse.”

    http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/steerpike/2015/05/ben-harris-quinney-suspended-from-conservative-party/

    I’m not surprised. As well as the farce of Labour’s Greville Janner, who has been well enough to do all sorts of things, apart from stand trial – especially divesting his million pound homes to his children, I was gobsmacked to read in the Times this week the full list of attendees at Leon Brittan’s memorial service.

    Nick Clegg was there – which gives you some idea of why the whole Establishment know about this sort of stuff but need it covered up because it reflects badly on them. Brittan gave Clegg his introduction to politics, employing him as an office aide when he was a trade commissioner in Brussels.

    Innummerable ghastly Tory MPs. Although notably not Theresa May, which is a break with convention because as sitting Home Secretary she would normally go to a deceased Home Secretary’s funeral (it is one of the four highest offices of state: PM, chancellor, foreign and home).

    And the other absentee was Lord Tebbit. Lord Tebbit said he thought there had been a cover up.

    Then Leon Brittain died. Then John Gummer said Leon Brittan’s accusers should put up or shut up, even though child abuse cases are very hard to bring (as Jimmy Savile proved).

    And the odd thing was, after John Gummer said Leon Brittan’s accusers should put up or shut up (who could he be talking to, Lord Tebbit?), Tebbit refused to run to TV studios or newspapers or anywhere else to retract his accusation.

    He always was a clever man that Tebbit. And probably the only honourable one among the whole lot of them.

    A clever man Tebbit, who can speak even when silent. I get the message.

  151. It was the length of attendees and names of them that really threw me. Michael Beloff QC, Sir Ivan Lawrence QC and Sir John Nutting QC. It really was a list of the Establishment.

    Sir John Nutting QC was a very famous barrister who spent a lot of his career in the Old Bailey prosecuting some of the UK’s most serious criminals. And he, other barristers and judges, yes judges, found the time to go to Leon Brittan’s memorial service.

    Frightening.

  152. A tsunami of Muslims washes up on Kos. The locals keep calm and carry on. Why?

    ‘We have a big problem for a tiny island,’ he adds, before beginning to laugh. ‘But soon we know they will have left for England and, in a few months from now, they will be your problem.’

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3103162/SUE-REID-went-investigate-Kos-shocked-found.html

    As people like Hitchens keep pointing out, the breeding programme is blind-siding people. Europe will actually be Islamified by immigration. The EU is not going to break up, Britain will be locked into it and through Libya and Turkey, the Continent will be Islamified.

    Top destination: EU patsy Britain.

  153. Diane

    On pedo rings and other perversions which are used to control politicians, you will have noticed that the former Republican Speaker of the House, Denis Hastert, was charged by the FBI a couple of days ago with inappropriate sexual conduct with minors.

    Alex Jones deals with the political implications of this devlopment, and Wayne Madsen a former NSA operative and currently an investigative journalist, was interviewed by him yesterday on the matter and on ISIS at:

    https://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play;_ylt=A2KIo.BzGWlVBzcA1mH7w8QF;_ylu=X3oDMTByZWc0dGJtBHNlYwNzcgRzbGsDdmlkBHZ0aWQDBGdwb3MDMQ–?p=The+Alex+Jones+Friday+May+29+2015&vid=fe7a547057c3e5960739d0d6932bc19b&turl=http%3A%2F

    Whether the English ring and the US ring interconnect would be interesting to know. The use of blackmail by the state’s real masters to control policy seems to be central to our times.

    The 3rd hour by the way carries an interview with William F. Jasper, the Senior Editor of the New American who joined the John Birch Society in 1976 when he concluded from listening to his parents that American involvement in the Vietnam War was wrong. The interview throws light on the TPP, which is another monster like the European Union and the North American Union not unconnected with the vision of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission.

  154. It is fascinating, Malfleur. And when people do try to expose what is going on, those involved in the security services who join in and help cover up seem to blackmail them to keep them silent: we’ll tell your wife about your affair, you can kiss goodbye to that job, we’ve got footage of you taking drugs. I don’t think it’s that people didn’t know what was going on. Savile seemed to half half the senior constabulary in Yorkshire covering his back, all going round for coffee every Friday morning. To do what together? The crossword!

    There was another girl this week talking about an anonymous Lord raping her while police covered his back. At that level of society, it’s impossible to break the code of omerta. There is just a panoply of blackmail weapons they use.

  155. Anne
    Lord Birkenhead wrote an excellent tome which I have on my shelf and which is still available on Amazon.

  156. Judging by some of the comments to that Daily Mail article we are still busily heaping up our own funeral pyre. The desire for compassion appears to have outstripped reason and will bring about circumstances where little or no compassion will exist anyway.

    Stupid doesn’t even begin to cover it.

  157. Thanks to all Wallers who have so kindly responded to giving me help in selecting books on Rudyard Kipling. I will be checking them out in the coming weeks before my birthday. Again, many thanks.

  158. Here is an updated plan from Richard North et al:
    http://www.eureferendum.com/documents/flexcit.pdf

    It is quite a lengthy document, but it has a short executive summary that explains how we could untangle ourselves from the EU in several managed stages.

    I haven’t seen any other suggestions, yet, and I still haven’t seen any of Cameron’s ‘goals’ in his quest to renegotiate our relationship with the Continent.

  159. anne wotana kaye – 10:37

    In addition to the legacy of his work Rudyard Kipling featured on one of the (in)famous seaside postcards of Donald McGill.

    “One of his [McGill] postcards, featuring a bookish man and an embarrassed pretty woman sitting under a tree, with the caption: “Do you like Kipling?” / “I don’t know, you naughty boy, I’ve never kippled!”, holds the world record for selling the most copies, at over 6 million”

    That card formed the basis of the corny schoolboy joke that was repeated ad nauseam in schools up and down the country for decades, although I doubt it made it into the Comprehensive era.

    McGill’s postcards sold in their (200) millions in the 1930s & ’40s, and in the early 50’s too. However by 1954 the PC prudes managed to get him and his publishers prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act 1857. At the age of 79 (Janner take note!) he was put on trial at Lincoln. He was bullied into pleading guilty on four counts, and his publishers agreed not to reprint another 17 designs. He was fined £50 with £35 costs!

    What was accepted as harmless fun in the the ’30s and ’40s suddenly became a threat to society by 1954? ?? McGill graded his cards Mild, Medium & Strong. They all seem quite harmless to me now, and still quite funny – although I do prefer the saucier ones 🙂

    This probably pre-dates Frank P’s police service, but do you remember this affair Frank? McGill was hardly a subversive Soviet agitprop merchant was he?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_McGill

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7928443/Bawdy-seaside-postcards-on-display.html

  162. EC
    May 30th, 2015 – 18:23
    This gets better and better! How I regret that I have only read and studied Kipling’s work, without an in-depth concentration on his life, etc. If I could go back in time, I would like to study books on the man himself. Oh well, as I said, it’s my 79th birthday next month, and as some say it’s never too late……….

  164. Fergus P. at 19.50
    The one whose side lost the Falklands War. (See Daily Mail)

  165. Radford NG – 19:25

    Thanks, I’ve filed that one for future use.
    By way of return, here’s one of McGill’s that made me laugh earlier

    http://snag.gy/ZqLhC.jpg

    Now tell me you haven’t read about this stereotype in the NoW !
    … actually, the last one I read about was in the DT.

    I suppose that the authoritarian types didn’t like him sending them up!

  166. Diane May 30th 0742

    Illuminating points, thank you.

    It is difficult to go anywhere in the UK, and in effect most of continental Europe, without noting the large number of head dress or burqa wearing ladies with significant numbers of children present. Now, clearly, the fact that I’ve remarked on this must mark me as a racist, but I find it perturbing.

    The Government, I assume, is not alarmed by this, therefore I assume I should be sanguine but, yet I am deeply worried. I would defy anyone to tell me that the UK indigenous population is not being progressively replaced. Is a slow-genocide less bad than than a genocidal war?

    All this pussy-footing about how Mr Cameron is going to change the immigration laws is so-much hot air. Someone or some group has decided that the countries of the Anglosphere: US, Canada, UK, NZ & Australia are inherently evil and need to be destroyed from within. Mass legal, illegal & non-measurable immigration to our countries: the silent destroyer of an alternative to Christian-based culture. Cui bono?

  167. This is a debate at Hay with Peter Hitchens on the panel.

    Peter Hitchens’ precarious employment status over the past six weeks means when the host calls him ‘columnist for the Mail on Sunday’ she has to add ‘that’s his description’ and the place erupts in laughter.

    It looks very much like he was offered a big pay rise because they haven’t got anyone else like him.

    In the debate, he talks about all the rubbish in the Tory manifesto that was put there to gain votes at the election and then to be used as something to be conceded in coalition negotiations. Only now they’re lumbered with it.

    The triple lock on pensions (which I like) is unpaid for. The Right To Buy means – under EU law – paying £12 billion in compensation to the housing associations that own them (they are not owned by councils any more). That’s the sort of thing he’s talking about. Isn’t ditching the Human Wrongs Act also now gone?

    And he bangs on – quite rightly about the Tory press and Tory party baiting Scots to vote SNP and baiting English voters to hate the SNP. The Tories run with the hare and with the hounds – and are friends to neither.

    At the end, all four on the panel think the sheep will vote to stay in the EU. Uber-depressing.

    https://www.hayfestival.com/p-9644-bronwen-maddox-peter-hitchens-david-aaronovitch-johann-hari.aspx

  168. Just watched Catalonian FC Barcelona, beat the Basque Athletico Bilbao 3-1 in final of the Copa del Rey.

    The Catalonians certainly put all the Basques into one exit!

    One of the best individual goals ever scored anywhere – by Lionel Messi … of course!

  169. Diane – 22:34
    If I have recognised the voices correctly, we had:

    Peter Hitchens who, as you said, rubbished the Tory manifesto, but wasn’t really, very constructive and didn’t pick to bits the Lefty view from JH. OTOH, his despair at everything being not what it seems might be the most truthful expression of the current situation.

    David Aaronovitch who appears the most ‘sensible’, such as saying, for example, that even though voters might like many of the Labour policies, they could see that, taken together, they weren’t affordable.

    Johann Hari did a good imitation of Owen Jones! His ‘It’s all the bankers fault’ goes against the knowledge that it is the government the governs: creating law, regulation and institutions and everyone else acts accordingly, or should, wasn’t questioned at all. If that isn’t true, then it is up to the Government, elected by by the people, to fix it!

    I do think that the minor parties would be better served with a more even handed media than a few extra seats at Westminster.

  170. I agree with you up to a point RobertC, but I think Hitchens and Hari, with answers to questions like Why did the Tories win: ‘lies and money’ are pointing out the fact that City financial honchos – bankers included (they pay not to be regulated) – paid a lot of money for this Tory victory, which the financial bigwigs didn’t quite want either. An outright Tory victory means paying for all the things Cameron wanted to drop.

    Where will Cameron find £12 billion of taxpayers’ money (it has to be paid for) to comepensate the housing associations whose houses he wants to sell off? A lot of conservative (small c) people find it insulting they had to scrimp and save while lots of Muslim families in social housing will be walking way with £500,000 market value homes in London at 30% of that value and then being put on the hook for it as taxpayers.

    This £12bn compensation is required under EU law.

    Christpher Booker, who co-wrote a book on the EU with Richard North thinks the whole referendum will be run along the lines of ‘we’ll lose business with Europe and you’ll lose your job or be paid less’ (that’s all it will take with the sheep) and that the margin of the IN victory will be quite large.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11641374/Six-predictions-for-that-EU-vote.html

    I really wish I could disagree with him but this is one of those occasions where all people can do is say well, at least I know I tried to vote us out. I too expect the margin to stay in to be quite big.

    I don’t like to be downbeat but I think it’s worth knowing that the OUTers are going to be stitched up like kippers by the MSM. I don’t think we should be misled into thinking this will be a fair contest or that we will be given a fair hearing. ‘Lies and money, principally’ will rule the day on the referendum too.

    We must get ready to despair because we are ruled by Brussels. And once this vote is over, we will likely still be ruled by Brussels. And we’ll be told we have to keep quiet on Europe and just vote for LibLabConners who do nothing but essentially impose Brussels’ will.

  171. In anticipating a stitch-up of the OUT vote, and attempting to prevent it, we should be studying the voting on the TPP in the United States Congress. Unfortunately, no large number of people in Great Britain seem to have recognised that the TPP, the EU and the NAU are three heads of the same beast. As such, events are susceptible to the same techniques of political manipulation and social engineering with local variations. These techniques, I believe, can be analysed and countermeasures devised. They do however require at least, say, 5% of the population to be conscious and engaged.

    Study for instance this article from which this extract is taken which appeared in Zero Hedge today.

    “It took just a few days after the stunning defeat of Obama’s attempt to fast-track the Trans Pacific Partnership bill in the Senate at the hands of his own Democratic party, before everything returned back to normal and the TPP fast-track was promptly passed. Why? The simple answer: money. Or rather, even more money.

    Because while the actual contents of the TPP may be highly confidential, and their public dissemination may lead to prison time for the “perpetrator” of such illegal transparency, we now know just how much it cost corporations to bribe the Senate to do the bidding of the “people.” In the Supreme Court sense, of course, in which corporations are “people.”

    According to an analysis by the Guardian, fast-tracking the TPP, meaning its passage through Congress without having its contents available for debate or amendments, was only possible after lots of corporate money exchanged hands with senators. The US Senate passed Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) – the fast-tracking bill – by a 65-33 margin on 14 May. Last Thursday, the Senate voted 62-38 to bring the debate on TPA to a close.

    Those impressive majorities follow months of behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing by the world’s most well-heeled multinational corporations with just a handful of holdouts.

    Using data from the Federal Election Commission, the chart below (based on data from the following spreadsheet) shows all donations that corporate members of the US Business Coalition for TPP made to US Senate campaigns between January and March 2015, when fast-tracking the TPP was being debated in the Senate.

    The result: it took a paltry $1.15 million in bribes to get everyone in the Senate on the same page. And the biggest shocker: with a total of $195,550 in “donations”, or more than double the second largest donor UPS, was none other than Goldman Sachs….”

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-30/how-little-it-cost-bribe-senates-fast-tracking-obamas-tpp-bill

    I do not think however that bribery is the only component. The ‘pro-active’ use of blackmail helps keep the expenditure of cash down, but is in many cases a more effective tool of control. By ‘pro-active’, I mean the efforts of those representing the interests of organizations like Goldman Sachs, namely the international corporate fascists using a socialist ideology where effective who run the states in the countries which comprise the EU,TPP, and NAU, and who consciously and systematically construct and when required activate the webs of blackmail into which their targets are drawn and held.

    Bribery, paedophiliac honey-traps and clubs, violence: these are some of the stock-in-trade used to construct the world in which we find ourselves increasingly trapped.

    Expose or oppose and you may fall out of a high window, have an accident, or shoot yourself in the back of the head.

    What is to be done?

  172. Diane at 00.59

    Thank you for the link to the telegraph article.Please see my 5 comments on this (down amongst the oldest ones). I had been intending to make those points on the CHW.I keep making them in various places.

    Most importantly the only valid ballot offers two alternative views to be chosen from;not a single Yes/No choice.

  173. The apotheosis of Sepp Blatter was entirely predictable, he was elected by representatives of some of the most venal states on Earth. As the old saying goes, shit sticks to the blanket.

  174. “apotheosis”

    That’s a difficult word first thing in the morning.

    How long is Blather going to last, though? Those already arrested in the USA have been singing like canaries. Those recently arrested, when extradited, will be chirruping too, in order to reduce their sentences.

    Bladder’s fate is going to depend upon the plea bargains of others.

  175. Given all that has happened, all the privations that the general population has suffered at the hands of the EU/ECB, it seems odd that the euro sceptic government in Greece, the “cradle of democracy”, hasn’t held an IN/OUT referendum.(ditto Cyprus)

    Odd, that.

  176. Baron

    This is a followup to the entry of a US battleship into the Black Sea early this year which prompted a short exchange between us at that time.

    news/2015-05-30/russia-wards-provocative-and-aggresive-us-warship-black-sea

  177. Diane – 00:59
    I agree with what you have said, apart from singling out the bankers, as if it is all bankers, and mostly bankers! In fact much of the recent dysfunctional Banking can be laid at the door of non-bankers in Banking, like those from Marketing or Retail(Andy Hornby, HBOS), or like the Coop(Paul Flowers), a Methodist minister!

    Most of those who work in Banking are there operating under company policy. Any ‘faults’ should have been dealt with by the Regulators, (reorganised by Brown 🙂 ). And the few bankers that are involved are not the only drivers either. It is the Elite, including senior politicians, Whitehall mandarins, financial regulators, local government officials, the QUANGO elite, the universities, the BBC, the NHS elite, the judiciary. I expect most help comes from inaction, which is harder to spot, and deal with.

    The last Labour Government spent their time filling every public post with one of their own, and they circulate around, for example, from Labour, to the BBC, to a QUANGO, back to Labour, yet always within the political system, never making widgets! And they ensure that they are not very competent, or well informed, so they can avoid blame, AND to allow practices to continue.

    OK, the banks are not saints, but they are in a market place. It has been pointed out that Enron, not only directly caused a lot of damage, it also caused its competitors to try and compete with their results, so causing damage by trying to attain the unobtainable by cutting headcount and other unusual practices. It looks stupid now, but at the time, there is very little else that an individual can do.

    It isn’t as though they see people dying, in front of them, and do nothing! That could only happen in the NHS!

    Paul Moores (HBOS director of Risk) was sacked for pointing out that HBOS was lending to much. And he was sacked by the man who later took a top job with the Regulator! The only reason we know this is because he was allowed to break his silence due to being summonsed in front of a select committee. He sacrificed his job for doing the right thing.

    By blaming the Bankers, you are allowing the real culprits to get away. They only finance it. But then, they finance most things. It is their job!

  178. I agree RobertC that most people in financial services are not to blame and not even those lower down the chain, but the Paul Moores case seems to characterise where we move from ordinary working people to the puppet masters. The man who sacked him going to work for the regulator shows how rotten the system is – those at the top run with the hare and the hounds I feel.

    Paul Moores had a rather lucky escape because whenever these ‘suicidal’ bankers are found on the pavement, they always seem to be people working in the risk department. In other words, they’re the people who carry the can. They’re the people who know where the skeletons are in the cupboard, and if they could just – rather conveniently – fall from a great height well they take all the blame and they’re not around to tell you that they were over-ridden by people at the top.

  181. RobertC – I just saw that story and was going to say where were all the stories like this BEFORE the election!

    Your version has the accurate headline. I am looking at a revised headline that seeks to minimise the MUSLIM nature of all this violence:

    Watch amazing scenes as Bangladeshi community centre meeting turns into a mass brawl with chairs and punches thrown and blood spilled

    COMMUNITY CENTRE! Why has the headline been downgraded from mosque to community centre.

    We all know what these COMMUNITY CENTRES are – they are MOSQUES.

    They were called community centres to get round the planning law an avoid objections. They are mosques.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3104540/Watch-amazing-scenes-mosque-meeting-turns-mass-brawl-chairs-punches-thrown-blood-spilled.html

    What absolute cowardice by the Daily Mail to change that headline.

    This is what we’re up against folks – Muslims getting more and more violent, more and more ME. ME, ME.

    Baroness Warsi and Sajid Javid and so on and so on.

  182. This is what the public have been conned into with five more years of Cameron and his wretched EU.

    More and more of that waltzing through the borders.

    Allahuah akbar, inshallah be willing. ‘Make war on the unbelievers’, to quote The Koran. Multi-culti – feel sorry for the boat people. come to the UK, slice people’s heads off and blow up the tube.

    Five more years of that. With plenty more years to follow. For crying out loud, who are these people who vote LibLabCon – it’s going on under your nose if you would but look.

    Alllllllaaaaaaaahh huaa Akkkkkbaaaaaar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Where’s Guzman the Good when you need him?

  184. Our EU ‘friends’ dig the hole a little deeper:
    UEFA nations betrayed pro-reform mandate to oust Sepp Blatter as FIFA president
    * Up to 18 European countries rebelled against mandate to kick out Blatter
    * Spain, Russia and allies in the eastern bloc went against UEFA orders
    * France and Spain as nations are huge beneficiaries of Qatari investment
    * UEFA have called an emergency session in Berlin next Saturday
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-3104028/UEFA-nations-betrayed-pro-reform-mandate-oust-Sepp-Blatter-FIFA-president.html

  186. A key part of the Daily Mail / Torygraph business model is to try to integrate every story with a video so that a 30 second ad can go before the video to generate ad revenue.

    But for the Leeds mosque Muslim riot (I refuse to use the misleading Leeds community centre Bangladeshi label) – neither news website has found a sponsor who wants to be associated with THAT. So no advert.

    The two most debauched words in the English language: COMMUNITEEE and DIVERSITEEEEEE. I cannot stand in when people use those words – it’s nearly always indicative of a bare-faced lie.

    These people come from the Islamic world, where they claim to be oppressed, and then promptly re-create the Islamic world, first in miniature and then with ambitions to take over everything, starting with the law.

    And they know the British are a pushover. There are police in the video and none of them are frightened of them.

    It’s my CULTCHA, innit? I’m OFFENDED, innit. ‘A get me?

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11641724/Mass-brawl-in-Bangladeshi-community-centre-in-Leeds.html

  187. If it was a pub it would be closed down, of course.

    But MUSLIMS are soooooo special.

  188. Can there be a more exciting time to be alive
    I have been having a Cricketfest these last couple of weeks
    An old client of mine gave me tickets for four out of five days of the Lord’s test including the final day when we beat the Kiwi’s by 124 runs
    I had to agree with Ed Smith
    “It was one of the best Test matches of the modern era. Sometimes a great story needs a great ending and the look on Moeen’s face after that fantastic catch was a mixture of joy, innocence and hopefulness.”
    I was so taken that I forked out a princely sum to sit in the North East Stand at Headingley yesterday and saw Cook surpass the Graham Gooch run record before an unfair lbw to Craig
    *
    So as I visited the city, the source of my depression in the early hours of May 8, I reflected that our great country had given the world the greatest game known to man
    And in doing so taught the world about fair play
    It confirmed my pride in being British
    I know at least that this is something we can all share

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