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.
Nicholas
April 30th, 2012 – 10:22
It depends what you want to achieve. In order to ‘fight one’s corner’, information is necessary. Simple sniping is not an effective ploy against socialists/watermelons etc. – thats not much more than trolling. You need to be able to unpick the very essence of their arguments. Peter can place long posts where he will – even in the bin if he so wishes, its his site.
The aim is not just to win the argument, but to turn them over. With muzzies, there can be no greater triumph than getting an adherent to question what he has been taught (that, of course, is why it carries a death penalty). You cannot do that without cold, hard facts.
Otherwise, you’re not fighting the battle – and beating the marxist sheet-heads, the Labour Party, the EU and the Obamamessiah is a battle and the internet is the greatest weapon we have, which is why this freedom is forever under attack.
What Clear Memories said.
It’s Monday morning, the last day in April, and the sun is actually shining!!!!! 🙂
It must be Global Warming!
Not up here it ain’t! 🙁
I love puns and other wordplay. Some of you will remember that on the BBC Home Service/BBC R4 from 1956 to 1990 there used to be a wonderful literary based quiz/panel game called “My Word”. I used to listen to it most weeks. It was great fun and, for me, highly educational.
I particularly enjoyed the feature at the end of the show when Frank Muir and Dennis Norden were each given a quotation and asked to explain when, where and by whom the phrase was first used. Last year I managed to source a copy of “The Complete and Utter ‘My Word’ Collection (Menthuen 1984) which contains the majority of FM’s and DN’s flights of fancy.
Frank P’s deployment of morse code (not for the first time) last week reminded me of the following story, which I thought some of you might like.
“A nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse”
R.H. Barham
‘The Ingoldsby Legends’
As explained by Dennis Norden
E&OE (scanner & OCR)
It’s awfully good of Clear Memories (30 April, 8:33 am) to set the agenda (apparently dull, worthy and humourless) of Peter’s Blog and also to festoon it with comments which while, perhaps, are models of cogency and profundity, are far, far too long.
As Peter Sellers recommended: be short, be neat, be circumspect.
Thanks for the lecture on writing, Clear Memories. Silly me, and I thought I had been fighting back but now I see that I was just sniping and trolling and should instead have been converting the impact of words into the length of their construction. Unpicking the arguments of socialists (difficult as they are so seldom reasoned) and meticulously counterpointing them (usually pointless since most of them never engage when you take that tack – as has even been shown here). You do realise, don’t you, that your power to persuade by these long, turgid quotations is qualified by the fact that our opponents think you are just a nasty, racist, right-wing bigot and would scream incoherently at you if you tried to speak rather than write?
Still, I’ll leave it to experts like you in future. You can get on with it – with knobs on.
V
When in Rome, eh?
The novel War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy begins in July 1805 in Saint Petersburg, at a soirée given by Anna Pavlovna Scherer — the maid of honour and confidante to the queen mother Maria Feodorovna. Many of the main characters and aristocratic families in the novel are introduced as they enter Anna Pavlovna’s salon. Pierre (Pyotr Kirilovich) Bezukhov is the illegitimate son of a wealthy count, an elderly man who is dying after a series of strokes. Pierre is about to become embroiled in a struggle for his inheritance. Educated abroad at his father’s expense following his mother’s death, Pierre is essentially kindhearted, but socially awkward, and owing in part to his open, benevolent nature, finds it difficult to integrate into Petersburg society. It is known to everyone at the soirée that Pierre is his father’s favorite of all the old count’s illegitimate children.
Also attending the soireé is Pierre’s friend, the intelligent and sardonic Prince Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky, husband of Lise, the charming society favourite. Finding Petersburg society unctuous and disillusioned with married life after discovering his wife is empty and superficial, Prince Andrei makes the fateful choice to be an aide-de-camp to Prince Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov in the coming war against Napoleon.
The plot moves to Moscow, Russia’s ancient city and former capital, contrasting its provincial, more Russian ways to the highly mannered society of Petersburg. The Rostov family are introduced. Count Ilya Andreyevich Rostov has four adolescent children. Thirteen-year-old Natasha (Natalia Ilyinichna) believes herself in love with Boris Drubetskoy, a disciplined young man who is about to join the army as an officer. Twenty-year-old Nikolai Ilyich pledges his teenage love to Sonya (Sofia Alexandrovna), his fifteen-year-old cousin, an orphan who has been brought up by the Rostovs. The eldest child of the Rostov family, Vera Ilyinichna, is cold and somewhat haughty but has a good prospective marriage in a Russian-German officer, Adolf Karlovich Berg. Petya (Pyotr Ilyich) is nine and the youngest of the Rostov family; like his brother, he is impetuous and eager to join the army when of age. The heads of the family, Count Ilya Rostov and Countess Natalya Rostova, are an affectionate couple but forever worried about their disordered finances.
At Bald Hills, the Bolkonskys’ country estate, Prince Andrei departs for war and leaves his terrified, pregnant wife Lise with his eccentric father Prince Nikolai Andreyevich Bolkonsky and his devoutly religious sister Maria Nikolayevna Bolkonskaya.
The second part opens with descriptions of the impending Russian-French war preparations. At the Schöngrabern engagement, Nikolai Rostov, who is now conscripted as ensign in a squadron of hussars, has his first taste of battle. He meets Prince Andrei, whom he insults in a fit of impetuousness. Even more than most young soldiers, he is deeply attracted by Tsar Alexander’s charisma. Nikolai gambles and socializes with his officer, Vasily Dmitrich Denisov, and befriends the ruthless and perhaps psychopathic Fyodor Ivanovich Dolokhov.
Book Two begins with Nikolai Rostov briefly returning on home leave to Moscow. Nikolai finds the Rostov family facing financial ruin due to poor estate management. He spends an eventful winter at home, accompanied by his friend Denisov, his officer from the Pavlograd Regiment in which he serves. Natasha has blossomed into a beautiful young girl. Denisov falls in love with her, proposes marriage but is rejected. Although his mother pleads with Nikolai to find himself a good financial prospect in marriage, Nikolai refuses to accede to his mother’s request. He promises to marry his childhood sweetheart, the dowry-less Sonya.
Pierre Bezukhov, upon finally receiving his massive inheritance, is suddenly transformed from a bumbling young man into the richest and most eligible bachelor in the Russian Empire. Despite rationally knowing that it is wrong, he proposes marriage with Prince Kuragin’s beautiful and immoral daughter Hélène (Elena Vasilyevna Kuragina), to whom he is sexually attracted. Hélène, who is rumoured to be involved in an incestuous affair with her brother, the equally charming and immoral Anatol, tells Pierre that she will never have children with him. Hélène has an affair with Dolokhov, who mocks Pierre in public. Pierre loses his temper and challenges Dolokhov, a seasoned dueller and a ruthless killer, to a duel. Unexpectedly, Pierre wounds Dolokhov. Hélène denies her affair, but Pierre is convinced of her guilt and, after almost being violent to her, leaves her. In his moral and spiritual confusion, Pierre joins the Freemasons, and becomes embroiled in Masonic internal politics. Much of Book Two concerns his struggles with his passions and his spiritual conflicts to be a better man. Now a rich aristocrat, he abandons his former carefree behavior and enters upon a philosophical quest particular to Tolstoy: how should one live a moral life in an ethically imperfect world? The question continually baffles and confuses Pierre. He attempts to liberate his serfs, but ultimately achieves nothing of note.
Pierre is vividly contrasted with the intelligent and ambitious Prince Andrei Bolkonsky. At the Battle of Austerlitz, Andrei is inspired by a vision of glory to lead a charge of a straggling army. He suffers a near fatal artillery wound. In the face of death, Andrei realizes all his former ambitions are pointless and his former hero Napoleon (who rescues him in a horseback excursion to the battlefield) is apparently as vain as himself.
Prince Andrei recovers from his injuries in a military hospital and returns home, only to find his wife Lise dying in childbirth. He is stricken by his guilty conscience for not treating Lise better when she was alive and is haunted by the pitiful expression on his dead wife’s face. His child, Nikolenka, survives.
Burdened with nihilistic disillusionment, Prince Andrei does not return to the army but chooses to remain on his estate, working on a project that would codify military behavior to solve problems of disorganization responsible for the loss of life on the Russian side. Pierre visits him and brings new questions: where is God in this amoral world? Pierre is interested in panentheism and the possibility of an afterlife.
Pierre’s estranged wife, Hélène, begs him to take her back, and against his better judgment he does. Despite her vapid shallowness, Hélène establishes herself as an influential hostess in Petersburg society.
Prince Andrei feels impelled to take his newly written military notions to Petersburg, naively expecting to influence either the Emperor himself or those close to him. Young Natasha, also in Petersburg, is caught up in the excitement of dressing for her first grand ball, where she meets Prince Andrei and briefly reinvigorates him with her vivacious charm. Andrei believes he has found purpose in life again and, after paying the Rostovs several visits, proposes marriage to Natasha. However, old Prince Bolkonsky, Andrei’s father, dislikes the Rostovs, opposes the marriage, and insists on a year’s delay. Prince Andrei leaves to recuperate from his wounds abroad, leaving Natasha initially distraught. She soon recovers her spirits, however, and Count Rostov takes her and Sonya to spend some time with a friend in Moscow.
Natasha visits the Moscow opera, where she meets Hélène and her brother Anatol. Anatol has since married a Polish woman whom he has abandoned in Poland. He is very attracted to Natasha and is determined to seduce her. Hélène and Anatol conspire together to accomplish this plan. Anatol kisses Natasha and writes her passionate letters, eventually establishing plans to elope. Natasha is convinced that she loves Anatol and writes to Princess Maria, Andrei’s sister, breaking off her engagement. At the last moment, Sonya discovers her plans to elope and foils them. Pierre is initially horrified by Natasha’s behavior, but realizes he has fallen in love with her. During the time when the Great Comet of 1811–2 streaks the sky, life appears to begin anew for Pierre.
Prince Andrei accepts coldly Natasha’s breaking of the engagement. He tells Pierre that his pride will not allow him to renew his proposal. Ashamed, Natasha makes a suicide attempt and is left seriously ill.
The Battle of Borodino, fought on September 7, 1812 and involving more than 250,000 troops and 70,000 casualties was a pivotal turning point in Napoleon’s failed campaign to take Russia. It is vividly depicted in great detail through the plot and characters in War and Peace.
With the help of her family, especially Sonya, and the stirrings of religious faith, Natasha manages to persevere in Moscow through this dark period. Meanwhile, the whole of Russia is affected by the coming confrontation between Napoleon’s troops and the Russian army. Pierre convinces himself through gematria that Napoleon is the Antichrist of the Book of Revelation. Old prince Bolkonsky dies of a stroke while trying to protect his estate from French marauders. No organized help from any Russian army seems available to the Bolkonskys, but Nikolai Rostov turns up at their estate in time to help put down an incipient peasant revolt. He finds himself attracted to Princess Maria, but remembers his promise to Sonya.
Back in Moscow, the war-obsessed Petya manages to snatch a loose piece of the Tsar’s biscuit outside the Cathedral of the Assumption; he finally convinces his parents to allow him to enlist.
Napoleon himself is a main character in this section of the novel and is presented in vivid detail, as both a thinker and would-be strategist. His toilette and his customary attitudes and traits of mind are depicted in detail. Also described are the well-organized force of over 400,000 French Army (only 140,000 of them actually French-speaking) which marches quickly through the Russian countryside in the late summer and reaches the outskirts of the city of Smolensk. Pierre decides to leave Moscow and go to watch the Battle of Borodino from a vantage point next to a Russian artillery crew. After watching for a time, he begins to join in carrying ammunition. In the midst of the turmoil he experiences firsthand the death and destruction of war. The battle becomes a hideous slaughter for both armies and ends in a standoff. The Russians, however, have won a moral victory by standing up to Napoleon’s reputedly invincible army. For strategic reasons and having suffered grievous losses, the Russian army withdraws the next day, allowing Napoleon to march on to Moscow. Among the casualties are Anatol Kuragin and Prince Andrei. Anatol loses a leg, and Andrei suffers a grenade wound in the abdomen. Both are reported dead, but their families are in such disarray that no one can be notified.
The Rostovs have waited until the last minute to abandon Moscow, even after it is clear that Kutuzov has retreated past Moscow and Muscovites are being given contradictory, often propagandistic, instructions on how to either flee or fight. Count Rostopchin is publishing posters, rousing the citizens to put their faith in religious icons, while at the same time urging them to fight with pitchforks if necessary. Before fleeing himself, he gives orders to burn the city. The Rostovs have a difficult time deciding what to take with them, but in the end, Natasha convinces them to load their carts with the wounded and dying from the Battle of Borodino. Unknown to Natasha, Prince Andrei is amongst the wounded.
When Napoleon’s Grand Army finally occupies an abandoned and burning Moscow, Pierre takes off on a quixotic mission to assassinate Napoleon. He becomes an anonymous man in all the chaos, shedding his responsibilities by wearing peasant clothes and shunning his duties and lifestyle. The only people he sees while in this garb are Natasha and some of her family, as they depart Moscow. Natasha recognizes and smiles at him, and he in turn realizes the full scope of his love for her.
Pierre saves the life of a French officer who fought at Borodino, yet is taken prisoner by the retreating French during his attempted assassination of Napoleon, after saving a woman from being raped by soldiers in the French Army. He becomes friends with a fellow prisoner, Platon Karataev, a peasant with a saintly demeanor, who is incapable of malice. In Karataev, Pierre finally finds what he has been seeking: an honest person of integrity (unlike the aristocrats of Petersburg society) who is utterly without pretense. Pierre discovers meaning in life simply by living and interacting with him. After witnessing French soldiers sacking Moscow and shooting Russian civilians arbitrarily, Pierre is forced to march with the Grand Army during its disastrous retreat from Moscow in the harsh Russian winter. After months of trial and tribulation—during which the fever-plagued Karataev is shot by the French—Pierre is finally freed by a Russian raiding party, after a small skirmish with the French that sees the young Petya Rostov killed in action.
Meanwhile, Andrei, wounded during Napoleon’s invasion, has been taken in as a casualty and cared for by the Rostovs, fleeing from Moscow to Yaroslavl. He is reunited with Natasha and his sister Maria before the end of the war. Having lost all will to live, he forgives Natasha in a last act before dying.
As the novel draws to a close, Pierre’s wife Hélène dies from an overdose of abortion medication (Tolstoy does not state it explicitly but the euphemism he uses is unambiguous). Pierre is reunited with Natasha, while the victorious Russians rebuild Moscow. Natasha speaks of Prince Andrei’s death and Pierre of Karataev’s. Both are aware of a growing bond between them in their bereavement. With the help of Princess Maria, Pierre finds love at last and, revealing his love after being released by his former wife’s death, marries Natasha.
The first part of the epilogue begins with the wedding of Pierre and Natasha in 1813. It is the last happy event for the Rostov family, which is undergoing a transition. Count Rostov dies soon after, leaving his eldest son Nikolai to take charge of the debt-ridden estate.
Nikolai finds himself with the task of maintaining the family on the verge of bankruptcy. His abhorrence at the idea of marrying for wealth almost gets in his way, but finally he marries the now-rich Maria Bolkonskaya and in so doing also saves his family from financial ruin.
Nikolai and Maria then move to Bald Hills with his mother and Sonya, whom he supports for the rest of their life. Buoyed by his wife’s fortune, Nikolai pays off all his family’s debts. They also raise Prince Andrei’s orphaned son, Nikolai Andreyevich (Nikolenka) Bolkonsky.
As in all good marriages, there are misunderstandings, but the couples–Pierre and Natasha, Nikolai and Maria–remain devoted to their spouses. Pierre and Natasha visit Bald Hills in 1820, much to the jubilation of everyone concerned. There is a hint in the closing chapters that the idealistic, boyish Nikolenka and Pierre would both become part of the Decembrist Uprising. The first epilogue concludes with Nikolenka promising he would do something with which even his late father “would be satisfied…” (presumably as a revolutionary in the Decembrist revolt).
The second part of the epilogue contains Tolstoy’s critique of all existing forms of mainstream history. He attempts to show that there is a great force behind history, which he first terms divine. He offers the entire book as evidence of this force, and critiques his own work. God, therefore, becomes the word Tolstoy uses to refer to all the forces that produce history, taken together and operating behind the scenes.
Ok, so I cheated and this is just a précis. Must try harder.
Nicholas, am I to understand that you see no point in lengthy, reasoned and researched posts because lefties won’t engage and will just shout back bigoted abuse? We know that is the case face-to-face, but the written word, especially in the blog format, forces them to at least try and address the arguments if they wish to be respond.
Otherwise, is there any point in discourse? Or in this site?
And as for Austins’ comment, I did make the point that it is up to the site owner as to what they publish – and we’ve had one lengthy discussion about exploding muzzies and their humour value (or otherwise).
Whether the site ends up as a series of concise points or lengthier articles will, I guess, end up decided by the readers and the site owner, perhaps with some tangential input from the advertisers.
On the other handf, perhaps bollox is a better response.
Can we all join in?
Swann believes that he has no memories (or at least Clear Memories) of Combray apart from being deprived of his mother’s goodnight kiss, yet, years later the taste of a madeleine dipped in tea inspires a nostalgic incident. He remembers having a similar snack as a child with his invalid aunt Leonie, and it leads to more memories of Combray. He describes their servant Françoise, who is uneducated but possesses an earthy……
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….nnnnnnghhhh….Zzzzzzzzzz…
Still at it.
I admire tenacity.
Bang on cue, enter stylish wit and raconteur, Fergus ‘Prickering’ Pickering, the man who has scoffed more madeleine biscuits than most of us have had hot dinners.
Fergus, you’re a buffoon.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/5306676/discontent-is-in-the-air.thtml
Right we’re all strapped into our chairs. I think we are now all just about ready for one of your prize winning poems, Fergus.
Fergus, I think I may have found one of your efforts in one of the vanity publishing recesses of the world wide web.
Right. Everybody strapped in?
OK, earwig go!
Ye gods, what an unmitigable abomination.
Fergus also publishes as ten year old ingenue, ‘Phoebe Flood’, last seen languishing at 2,699,496 in the Amazon bestseller lists.
http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=11137
An authentically depraved, even deranged, individual.
John Whitworth, moderator at Eratosphere:-
“For the A to Z competition I sent in both of my 156 word pieces. I put my name and address at the top and stipulated that the second of my entries was to go under the name of Fergus Pickering. Fergus Pickering can also be found in The Faber Book of Blue Verse as the translator of some rude bits of Latin and Greek. Fergus HAS won the odd competition though not, I think, at the same time as old JW. I have a female alter ego, Phoebe Flood. She sends poems to Myslexia and stuff like that. I don’t think she’s won anything. I don’t make a very attractive girl.”
For those who like to put a face to a few names, er pseudo-nyms:-
http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=11137
I don’t think you make a particularly attractive man ether, no offence. Yep, still at it, Fergus. Still chipping away.
V
PS I quite like the poem although the “big brown depths” has me puzzled as I contemplate the everlasting azure of hope and delight that blesses (some of) us today. As that splendid combination of peekaboo sun, billowing white and perfect blue changes gently above us, as it did over our ancestors for many a long century, I marvel at the arrogance of 21st Century UK Man, personified by Nick Clegg – the bastard – who thinks only in terms of controlling and constraining our three score and ten for the obscure and unproven benefit of those who come after.
PPS that should be ‘either’ not ‘ether’.
V
Cyanide for the soul …
____________
Tuneable Tweak, Melodious Minotaur,
Sweet-breasted Bronstrops to the great O’Toole,
May forty barbers’ basins sound before
Instead of trumpets, sleek siphonophore,
Dainty, nectareous toadstool.
Mouth we in majuscule thy syllabub
Of syllable, Harmonious Hippocrene,
Thou Bantling Bawdstrutt of Beelzebub,
Thou Prestidigitant, thou Rub-a-dub,
Thou Scapegrace Forkytaileen.
“Nicholas, am I to understand that you see no point in lengthy, reasoned and researched posts because lefties won’t engage and will just shout back bigoted abuse?”
I give up, are you to understand that?
No, seriously, what you understand is your business, old fruit. I can only tap out an opinion or an observation. What you do with it, what you read into it, how you might twist it beyond recognition and then play it back is entirely down to your own whim, perspicacity and purpose.
As has sometimes been mentioned hereabouts before – less is sometimes more. As in this example.
V
Warming to a theme. Do we now care for the passion and agonised arguments of Barbara Castle, say, as we experience small aspects of her power in a different context? Barbara went West (or perhaps East) in 2002, having put her foot down at Cobras doing 180 mph on the M1 (or was it Tom Fraser, equally obscure?).
Enoch Powell dismissed the Castle Diaries as the “overpowering impression left on the reader’s mind by her diary is that of triviality: the largest decisions and the profoundest issues are effortlessly trivialised.”
Poor old Barbara. Still she was maintaining a good Labour tradition and might have found herself anew in modern Britain, where trivialisation is second only to infantilisation as the national pastime. I remember her as a sort of earlier, slightly more dour version of Hazel Blears. It all seemed so important at the time but she is ten years dead already. Will Clegg be remembered for anything? Will it be what he wants? Does he ever think about his physical transience and the inevitability of death as he huffs and puffs for Europe or some other hobby horse?
V
I once declined a trip to an oriental brothel because I was far too pissed to do the honours. In order not to upset the hosts, I told them I could only get it up with red heads. Murmurs of sympathy and tapping of noses all round. Hazel Blears is pretty darned fit though. Imagine her re-enacting La Dolce Vita in the Trevi Fountain. Phwoar! (‘Scuse me …)
Ostrich (occasionally)
April 29th, 2012 – 14:32
Malfleur 29th, – 11:57
“I would prefer “discretion”.”
Isn’t it excessive use of “discretion” that’s part of the problem?
_________________________________________________________
How would that be? I don’t think so. If the police had to enforce the law as a “statutory duty”, there would be no end to officious prosecutions, surely?
One of our main complaints here is the mass of legislation foisted unbidden upon the citizenry by government and the EU since, say, 1997. Do we really want all those laws rigorously enforced German style? We want to get back to the old English principle which was: if it’s not forbidden, it’s permitted; and we want to get away from the European approach which is: if it’s not permitted, it’s forbidden.
A good start in this direction would be in principle to have a police force that takes a sensible, discretionary approach to enforcing all the rubbish that is on the statute books, while we wait for it to be cleared off the books. In the 1960s the classic example was the Blasphemy Laws and the question was whether those who infringed them by washing their cars of a Sunday should have been brought to account. It was thought back then that the police should exercise their discretion and turn a blind eye. How much more do we need blind eyes turned today.
However, I agree with you in so far as we have to have a police force which is not politically correct, otherwise the discretion is exercised in all the wrong directions. Having had an opportunity to peruse the website of the Norfolk Police last week, I have the impression that this task is on the scale of cleaning out the Augean stables.
Where to begin?
Hello, nice to see this site. hope it thrives.
I’m looking for help with two potential projects. Is there anyone who wants to help?
Project #1 is to work as a group to find out which lobbyists the http://2020conservatives.com/about.php group is working with and inform the media about anything odd or irregular looking. Afterall these are the loyalists to George Osborne that helped to get rid of Liam Fox by use of scandal.
Project#2 is to analyse the general election results from 1992-2010 and find contradictions between the real results and what the (left wing biased) opinion poll companies have been saying.
Andy Car Park
Well … there’s something you and Fergus Pickering have in common; a proclivity for chattering chipmunks, or to be more scientific, the genus tamias. Personally I wouldn’t spend the three coins required to jump in any fountain with Nutty, not least because we might be joined by the ghost of Frank Sinatra (or was it Sammy Davis Jr?) .
Clear Memories
I did follow your suggestion and googled Herman
Rosenblat and was therefore rather surprised to find that the story “A Girl with An Apple” was part of a hoax on the part of Mr. Rosenblat, at least in so far as he allowed people to believe that it was a true story. I don’t think that this necessarily detracts from the story as fiction, but I am not quite sure what your general point was in citing it (at length) except to underline that we should “never forget”. Now, while I appreciate that your uncle was one of the first into, it does sometimes seem to me that that the number of senior relatives of the western allied armies who were among the first into Belsen are as thick on the ground as Frenchmen of that generation who served in the Resistance.
I have no particular axe to grind here, and curiously enough when I read your post I had just broken off from watching a dramatisation on YouTube of the Wannsee Conference that had frozen on me. (I was watching that as a consequence of going to YouTube to look at clips of the Forsyte Saga which I am reading…). I don’t see though that your storyline of the “Girl with an Apple” is a “reasoned and researched” post. Nicholas makes the same point I suppose, at length and somewhat Germanically…
What a disorienting start to Coffee House this week! All reminisces of old radio shows and uppity toxic old time leftie nazis.
I get up in the morning and I want to see some hatred and desructiveess of the greatest danger to our society and our country … the left … formerly known as commies until Joe McCarthy blew them wide open in all their hideous squalor. I want to read of David Moron’s latest appalling, self-serving bad judgement made with his eye on the top table in Brusells.
Brevity is the soul of wit
I’m not saying those reminisences were not entertainig and well written, but I come here for raw meat.
Fergus Pickering looks to be a congenial old cove, notwithstanding his confessed, and slightly worrying, female alter ego. His poetry though is dire – spondees fighting a rearguard action against doggerel.
He’s the sort of chap you’d find commandeering the corner seat in a barnacled Cornish pub hoping the emmets mistake him for a ‘character’.
No such luck, shipmate.
Right you techies … explain this: when I call up Melanie’s link with Google Chrome, I get very blurred and wishey-washy colour and typescript with regard to the posts, yet when I use the Mozillia Firefox facility the colours and sharpness are distinct. How come? I think it applies to other links too.
Hi Frank
In Chrome do the following and report if it makes a difference… (These are menu selections..) (You may need to restart the browser as well afterwards)
Control Panel/Display/Appearance/Effects/Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts/ClearType
Thanks Peter – I’ll follow those instructions and report back; in general, I have to say that Mozilla does appear to be quicker and better. Is that the general consensus? The other thing – do the two compete for prominence in the entrails of the works? And if I intend to use Mozillia Firefox should I uninstall Chrome? I’m not short of capacity on the hard drive, just wondered if they cross-sabotage, as I have had a few glitches recently not experienced before?
Andy Car Park.
“madeleine biscuits”
And all of these years I have thought Madeleine’s were small shell shaped cakes, at least those that my wife bakes are.
Pray tell why are some having a go at Fergus Pickering?
What has he done or written to deserve this.
Anne Wotana Kaye 1, @15:26
“Brevity is the soul of wit”
Ah, soul!
😉
Andy Car Park @14:08
“Hazel Blears is pretty darned fit though. Imagine her re-enacting La Dolce Vita in the Trevi Fountain. Phwoar! (‘Scuse me …)”
If you think that then you should see her in her black motorbike leathers. I suppose I’d best leave the helmet jokes out.
Peter
Your instructions have resulted in different and clearer typeface on both Firefox and Chrome. Thank you very much.
Some depressing reading.
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm/blog_id/41772
I haven’t yet read the article in detail, but in today’s “The Times” , Vernon Bogdanor has written an article entitled, ‘UKIP is giving Englishness the voice it craves’. It appears that ‘as Europe becomes a diversive issue again, protest votes are flowing away from the Lib Dems’. Will a person who declares he/she will vote UKIP now become a persona non gratis, and will the BBC either ignore this Party or sneer whenever it is mentioned?
“but I come here for raw meat.”
I reckon some of it’s been getting a bot over-cooked.
Frank Sutton
April 30th, 2012 – 17:38
“but I come here for raw meat.”
I reckon some of it’s been getting a bot over-cooked.
As long as it’s not a bit of rough trade :=)
I offer the following clip for the ex-habitues of The Daily Ablution as a dire warning of what can happen to ex-bloggers: this is Scott and Zum Burgess who fled from Britain to Slovakia to escape the onerous task of posting and hosting most of the regulars of this blog. It is not for the squeamish:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Dp01HdRnW9E#!
And for the full chronicle of their gradual assimilation into Eastern European life, see:
http://whoseideawasthis.typepad.com/whoseideawasthis/
Peter de Maidstone, beware!
“Pray tell why are some having a go at Fergus Pickering? What has he done or written to deserve this.”
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that he wafted in on a cloud like some Taoist fairy, sneered at the assembled dissidents, and wafted away again. Bogus, like telemachus. And if I recall correctly, I could be wrong, he has sneered a few times about this website over at the Speccie too. It is not necessary for him to do that in order to make the point that he is a superior being. He could do it more effectively, arguably more honestly and at less cost to our yawning motors by putting a full page ad in the Spectator along the following lines:-
“I, Fergus Pickering (or insert pseudo-nym of choice here) am a superior being to you little people who rant, foaming, at your little website. I write poetry.”
V
Fergus P is quite a confusing phenomenon David O; we thought that he had been ‘cloned’ over on The Coffee House, now it seems he is several personae anyway, and uses trans-sexual apparel to boot (probably thigh high), so what are we to think? As we have common initials perhaps I should make it clear that I am not one of his many sobriquets and I certainly recoil at his taste in ratty little female socialistas; but I have noted that he is apparently not alone in that perversion. But Bruce F, aka etc. etc. may be teasing!
A Scottish couple decided to go to Spain to thaw out during a particularly icy winter. They planned to stay at the same hotel wherethey spent their honeymoon 20 years earlier. Because of hectic schedules, it was difficult to coordinate their travelschedules. So, the husband left* *Glasgow and flew to Barcelona onThursday, with his wife flying down the following day. The husbandchecked into the hotel.. There was a computer in his room, so he decidedto send an email to his wife. However, he accidentally left out oneletter in her email address, and without realizing his error, sent theemail. Meanwhile, somewhere in Blackpool , a widow had just returned home fromher husband’s funeral. He was a minister who died following a heartattack. The widow decided to check her email expecting messages from relativesand friends. After reading the first message, she screamed and fainted. The widow’s son rushed into the room, found his mother on the floor, andsaw the computer screen which read: To: My Loving WifeSubject: I’ve ArrivedDate: October 16, 2010 I know you’re surprised to hear from me. They have computers here nowand you are allowed to send emails to your loved ones.. I’ve just arrived and have been checked in. I see thatEverything has been prepared for your arrival tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing you then! Hope your journey is as uneventful as mine was. P.S. Bloody hot down here!
Might I commend this month’s Standpoint to fellow dissidents, should they not have seen it? Issue 42 May 2012. There is much in it to enjoy, including an article by Melanie Phillips and an interesting insight piece by Pinto-Duschinsky about Lib Dem power play within the stillborn “UK Commission on a Bill of Rights” (note to Reichsfuhrer Clegg, we already have a Bill of Rights, it was made in 1689.) It is tempting to read sour grapes into this but don’t, because everything he writes is redolent of the truth about those Janus-faced stinkers.
But standing out is Tim Congdon’s brief but hard hitting swipe at the criminals of New Labour:-
“Within a few months (of the 1997 general election) a number of major administrative changes to the UK’s immigration procedures were being implemented. No new legislation was passed, and no big debate took place either in Parliament or the media. Nevertheless, the sequel to the new immigration rules was a demographic transformation. Whereas the UK had historically been a nation of net emigration from 1998 it became a nation of substantial net immigration. The New Labour agenda was corrupt and cynical. The party’s top strategists – including such luminaries as Peter Mandelson – reasoned that because people from ethnic and religious minorities tended to vote Labour, an influx of people from such minorities would boost Labour’s electoral fortunes.”
They appear to have got away with this – devolved scot free – and of course their own “hate speech” laws have suppressed their being too much vociferous protest about it. Coincidence? Or were those wretched and asinine laws intended to do just that?
Galloway and Bradford and Salmond and Scotland suggest it is not going to pan out quite the way New Labour hoped. But when the sectarian violence really kicks in will Britain’s Stupiderati have long enough memories to impugn the real cause of it – New Labour? I doubt it. Only the Left do revanchist causes like a dog worrying sheep until they get the public enquiries they want for the purpose of advancing their own stinking, rotten agenda. In this Cameron appears willing to help them. The Levison enquiry is a gift to the nasty shits, with its promise of an emasculated press. A Royal Commission on New Labour’s secretive and unmandated immigration policies and their future impact on the peace and stability of our country is far too bold and worthy a call to expect from the spineless tossers in government.
I notice that Red Ed and his gang of Brown protegés seem to have dropped the “New”. Quite implausible since they are essentially the same ratbags at the heart of that charade and Red Ed’s shift left is meaningless in terms of their overall national socialist aspirations – which are a constant as long as the same incestuous gang plot and scheme their propaganda.
Foam over.
V
Nicholas, Frank P, thank you for your replies, I have not been attending this site as often as I would have liked (I have been a touch off colour) though I had noticed either hear or at the Spectator that Fergus P often posted in lower case.
In fact; thinking about it, I seam to remember some time back that some posts that claimed to be from Fergus P held wildly different opinions. Very odd.
He walks with more than one
Shadow lingering behind him
He looks around anxiously
With eyes that are set on
Finding his next victim
He carries a briefcase full
Of notes that boast his ego
He stops to look at you
Only if you have done
Something wrong
His words are judgemental
And quite unfair
He knos nothing of fairness
Or level headedness
He is a terror and will
Not acknowledge his own demise
He is a manager a tyrant and a buffoon
So EC and Andy put that in your pipe
David Ossitt
April 30th, 2012 – 19:03
Been missing you. Hope you are now better 🙂
Thank you Anne; I am on the mend.
“Hazel Blears is pretty darned fit”
She might have been, at one time, but ten years of bloated government ribbed off on her…
Ostrich (occasionally)
Do you think Jackie Smith is ft for purpose?
AWK – depends on the purpose. Target practice, yes.
But for beginners only as she provides a generous target.
Verity
April 30th, 2012
Bull’s eye!
Nicholas, sir, an amazing digest of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, you brilliant man, Baron has never come across anyone in the West who was anywhere near possessing such an intimate knowledge of this Russian epic, you’ve read Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman perhaps? Have anything to say about it?
Nicholas
“The party’s top strategists – including such luminaries as Peter Mandelson – reasoned that because people from ethnic and religious minorities tended to vote Labour, an influx of people from such minorities would boost Labour’s electoral fortunes.”
This is the start of the list which we need to draw up so that blame can be precisely assigned for corruption of our electoral system; sanctions imposed on the guilty and policy reversed.
To nobble them: a Royal Commission? How do we get one appointed? It would require the cabinet, or at least the prime minister, to recommend it.
A plan with more chance of success, if the mood of the country continues to develop on this issue, might be to campaign for an impeachment trial of the guilty men by the House of Commons along the lines of that afforded Warren Hastings.
Let’s start by naming names:
1. Peter Mandelson
2….
Very pleased to see Baron posting here. His timely interventions at the Other Place remembered. Does Baron recommend Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman?
EC 30th, – 11:19
OK, EC, I’m going to bite…
The only one of FM & DN’s flights of fantasy I remember went roughly as follows:
President Syngman Rhee (remember him?) had a son who took a job with ‘Life’ magazine. The magazine shortly assigned him to a series they were doing “In the footsteps of Livingstone”. Accordingly, young Mr. Rhee disappeared into the African jungle for a protracted period. After a while, nothing having been heard from him, Time magazine despatched another reporter to search for him. After a prolonged search, the reporter at last found him in a jungle clearing and declaimed,
” Ah, sweet Mister Rhee of Life, at last I’ve found you.”
Neither Muir nor Norden ever did it as briefly as that!
Ostrich (occasionally)
“She might have been, at one time, but ten years of bloated government ribbed off on her…”
Rubbed off on her what?
In the battle of those who wish to be Mayor of Londonstan, the conversation turned to cyclists on the city roads. Poncie Paddick declared that cyclists unlike cars, never killed pedestrians. The man is either a liar or daft. Probably he is both! Many people, especially elderly pedestrians have been run over by cyclists failing to stop at the lights, and have received fractures. A lot of these breakages require spending time in hospital, and those of us who follow the news know what happens to the old people once they are placed in ‘caring’ NHS beds. I wonder how many accidents involving vehicles are the direct resut of careless and arrogant cyclists.
With Chinese gunboats still operating in Philippine waters while the Obama administration studies its finger nails, Max Boot in Commentary invokes American honor and interests on the eve of an American delegation’s arrival in Peking on Thursday led by H. Clinton in the case of Chen Guangcheng, the blind lawyer thought to have found sanctuary in the United States Embassy in China.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/04/29/standing-up-for-human-rights-in-china/
The Christian Science Monitor also has a useful piece on this today: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Foreign-Policy/2012/0430/Can-US-contain-flap-over-dissident-before-Hillary-Clinton-gets-to-China
Max Boot’s parents emigrated from Russia to the United States. I wonder if he is any relative of Alexander Boot.
Ostrich (occasionally)
No apparent connection (may be it was the madeleine) but your story put me in mind of:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nebe1zuEtbc&feature=related
A footnote to my post at 23.13 (Impeach Labour’s Neatherites)
“(Britain is a different case: In one of history’s greatest acts of collective folly, the Brits voluntarily opened up their unique, ancient, introverted national culture to a rabble of Third World sadists and cultists. They are now choking on their folly, and it’s hard to have much sympathy.)”
John Derbyshire (made to resign from the National Review) on Taki’s blogsite:
http://takimag.com/article/the_basis_of_a_real_conversation_john_derbyshire#axzz1tZ5l8thc
Comment: no, we didn’t “voluntarily” open up our culture to that rabble; Labour Party politicos, unopposed by “H.M.’s loyal opposition” and with no prior announcement, covertly subverted the state to enhance their own chances of a majority in the electorate. If Hasting could be indicted for exercising tyranny over a city, it should be possible to accuse Mandelson and the others on the list to be compiled of exercising tyranny over the British electorate. I wonder if Fraser Nelson over at the Spectator has any views…?
For individuals to conspire to bring foreigners into the country in order to gain power…I wonder if there is an impeachable offence anywhere thereabouts?
Malfleur and others – I am still absolutely baffled that Britain is the only country in the world that accords the precious vote, which by right should be the possession of citizens only, to anyone washing up on our shores.
In the US, as I’ve said before, I was a Permanent Resident, with a Green Card, and so had most rights of a citizen, but not the right to vote. In Mexico, foreigners have to have lived in the country with a clean record for seven years before they can even contemplate applying for citizenship … and thus winning the right to vote.
Meanwhile, we cannot even attend a political rally or put up a political poster in our window because right of residence does not carry with it the right to participate in the political process. And certainly no right to vote!!!
Austin Barry
April 30th, 2012 – 17:31
Your cited article: http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/113331/sec_id/113331
Depressing reading indeed.
Last week we discussed Norwich City Council’s ban on the use by Pastor Alan Clifford’s Norwich Reformed Church of the market square for distribution of a pamphlet critical of islam. It appears that ban was made on the basis of a single complaint. It also extended to any further use for church services of a hall which the Pastor’s people had been renting for the last 18 years.
http://www.inspiremagazine.org.uk/news.aspx?action=view&id=6006
It may seem a small ripple disturbing the surface of Norfolk’s English life, but when read together with the piece Austin Barry refers us to in the New English Review, who can doubt that there is a fearful trend under way that is going to sweep through Norfolk in time too, unless stopped, and reversed.
Pastor Clifford is working to reverse the Council’s decision with “Andrea Minichiello Williams, CEO of the campaign organisation Christian Concern, [who] said: “Freedom of speech is under huge pressure in this nation. Criticism of other religions now appears to be seen as a hate crime. How have we come to this in a supposedly free society?
“The Council appears to believe that Christians are not entitled to their opinions and should be silenced. Unfortunately this appears to be a common trend in the public sphere.”
Fergus Pickering (30 April at19.23) surely a confirmed Bachelor Boy, writes an ode to Cliff:
“He walks with more than one
Shadow lingering behind him”
Excellent. Can we expect some Freudian take on Freddy and the Dreamers?
Austin
You were not made for me
Ostrich (occasionally) @23:18
Ah so, velly gud!
All FM’s & DN’s fofs in the compendium are about 900-1000 words. Just say the word and I’ll scan some more! 🙂 🙂 🙂
Anne Wotana Kaye 1, April 30th, 2012 – 23:30
“I wonder how many accidents involving vehicles are the direct result of careless and arrogant cyclists.”
100%
Fergus Pickering
Everybody tells me so..
AWK 1 30th, – 20:34
“Ostrich (occasionally)
Do you think Jackie Smith is ft for purpose?”
Up around these parts there’s a local song called “Cushie Butterfield”.
One line describes the eponymous lady as “Like a bag full o’ saadust tied roond wi’ a string.”
EC
May 1st, 2012 – 09:19
Hi, EC
That’s a fair estimate!
I’m telling you now
That I have not kissed you on your lips
From today’s London Evening Standard
“Scotland Yard today launched a probe into “unprecedented” evidence of voter fraud in a key London borough less than 48 hours before the mayoral and assembly polls open. Worried councillors are now calling for election security to be tightened in Tower Hamlets.”
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/
As one wag observed, it is a delicious irony that Labour is under threat from the very voters it imported to ensure its eternal success.
John Jefferson Burns at the Speccie:-
“Demember (sic) after the civil war the Yanks knitted together with the Confederates and the US took the mantle of world domination from the Brits.”
And from last week’s Wall:-
“Not sure who else should tell the Brits that Empire had come to an end.”
Hmm. I see a theme developing here.
Will the real Fergus Pickering please stand up. The one posting here this morning smells faintly of telemachian troll.
Among the old Coffeehouse lurkers
Is an amateur poet called Fergus.
His doggerel lacks flair
And he lost all his hair
After eating too many beefburgers.
Here’s a robust view from an old-school Englishman: “In his interview for the latest edition of Radio Times magazine, on sale today, [Patrick Moore] suggests that Germany still thirsts for world domination, saying: ‘We must take care. There may be another war. The Germans will try again, given another chance. A Kraut is a Kraut is a Kraut. And the only good Kraut is a dead Kraut”.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2137652/Patrick-Moore-says-hates-Germans-70-years-Nazi-bomb-killed-fianc-e.html
Making Norwich safe for islam:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2135522/The-nights-Norwich-burned-Dramatic-images-reveal-cathedral-city-suffered-hands-Hitlers-Luftwaffe.html
Forgive me, Mr Ayland, I’m not having a go at you, but rather at the whole corporate management bloatation scam:-
“Richard Aylard, director of sustainability and external affairs for Thames Water, said they were aware of the “irony” that heavy rain had set in after the hosepipe ban was announced. “We had more than double the rain we would expect for the last month,” he said. “In fact, it hasn’t really stopped raining since we and six other companies imposed ‘hosepipe bans’ on April 5. We are alive to this irony, and our contribution to the endless talking point that is the British weather. But it took the two driest years since records began for us to get into this drought, and one wet month, even one as wet as April, will not be enough to get us out of it.”
The Thames Water website tells us this about Mr Ayland:-
“Richard joined Thames Water in 2002 as Corporate Responsibility Director.
He leads the company’s engagement with external stakeholders, including Government, the Environment Agency and the Consumer Council for Water, and is the principal spokesperson with the media and other audiences. From 1998 to 2002, he worked at Burson-Marsteller, an international corporate communications company. From 1985 to 1996, Richard worked in the Prince of Wales’s office, initially on secondment from the Royal Navy. There he was Private Secretary, Treasurer and Head of Household from 1991 to 1996. From 1974 Richard served in the Royal Navy. He held a wide variety of appointments, including service in HMS Invincible during the Falklands campaign, and retired in 1988 in the rank of Commander.
Richard is a Senior Associate of the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership, an Ambassador for WWF (UK) and an Associate of Forum for the Future.
He holds a degree in Applied Zoology and Mathematics from the University of Reading, and is an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management. As Sustainability Director, Richard is the Executive team member with responsibility for environmental and social issues.”
I’m “sorry, but” prosaically I thought that water companies were just responsible for collecting, storing, treating and providing water to peoples homes – a simple service provider with engineering gubbins to deal with. Why do they need a “team member with responsibility for environmental and social issues” who is also, apparently a Director of “sustainability and external affairs”?
Is this an example of “leading beyond authority”? How many Mr Ayland’s are there in our corporate service provider galaxy and how much do their salaries and perks contribute to consumer costs? How is the value of a Mr Ayland measured? How does one quantify “engagement” with “external stakeholders”?
In 2009 Thames Water made 300 jobs redundant. I wonder what those jobs were (the bulk from “support services” in Reading and Swindon), who decided that they were redundant and on what grounds whilst presumably considering that Mr Ayland’s role was essential?
V
Coming soon to a town near you?:
“Of the 630 youngsters at Iqra Slough Islamic Primary School in Berkshire, just ten are non-Muslim and more than 99 per cent class English as an ‘additional’ language.” (DM)
Further to my last:-
http://www.corporateculture.co.uk
“A new world needs a new kind of business. One that can help engage employees and customers to achieve long-term social and commercial results.
The public sector, facing huge deficits, needs to simultaneously save money, achieve public policy goals and engage citizens in social change. We offer social marketing services to achieve real behaviour change and measurable social results.
The private sector, following the recession, needs to regain trust and focus on long-term commercial success. We offer corporate social marketing to engage customers on social issues and sustainable business strategic counsel.
For both the private and public sector we offer services in stakeholder engagement, employee engagement, research and insight, and branding and creative.
Our focus is on behaviour change – based on new understandings of what motivates people to act.”
Note the emphasis on “social”. Me, old-fashioned dinosaur that I am, just wants a service to be provided, without the provider trying to form a phalanx with government to change my behaviour by bombarding me with propaganda. PR and Marketing meets Cultural Marxism. The final victory of an authoritarian nanny state that knows best married to a greedy corporate culture, hectoring, badgering, bullying and nagging whilst ripping the arse off you. The worst of both worlds I call it.
V
Great speech on Islam and the EU from Geert Wilders in NYC yesterday.
It should be mandatory reading for our pusillanimous, duff, self-serving politicians.
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm/blog_id/41779
I’m mildly surprised by Mr Moore’s use of the term “Kraut”. I have always held that to be more an American term, whilst the British, in the First World War, described the German enemy as “the Hun” or “Huns” – or adapted from the French the term “Boche” – and in the Second World War the same or the slightly more benign “Jerries”.
There are quite a few comments to the article that find Mr Moore’s views “offensive”. In this age of moral relativism I wonder if they are more or less offensive than a foreign army invading your country and carting off its Jewish population and any objectors to extermination camps? That was in the past though. Now it merely deposes democratically elected leaders and parachutes in banking technocrats rather than stormtroopers.
“‘A German general said to me at the end of the war, “You won two wars. You won’t win the third. And that’s the economic war.” I hope he’s wrong.’”
Indeed. But it doesn’t look like it. Of course, as noted previously, Germany’s economic miracle was much assisted by the cancellation of its war reparations by the USA in 1953 whilst poor old Britain, bankrupted and ruined, was forced to continue paying off its American debts until 2006. And we had been “told” our Empire was at an end too. What joy for us. If we were not such a phlegmatic people, resigned always to making the best of it, playing the cards dealt to us as Attlee wryly observed, there might have been the sort of resurgent, aggressive nationalism seen in Germany or a hundred other places around the world “blessed” the departure of Empire.
V
Austin Barry on Geert Wilders
Yes, thanks for the link. This particularly caught my attention:
“…we have to end the biggest disease in the world today, the cultural relativism which pretends that all cultures are equal. This is simply not true. Our Judeo-Christian and humanist civilization is far superior to any other civilizations like the barbaric Islamic civilization. We should not be afraid to say so. It is more free, more democratic, more tolerant than any civilization the world has ever seen.”
We have to start asking our politicians about their view on cultural relativism. Of course, they are taking a bet that this is not on the agenda of the average elector.We have to show that they are wrong by insisting that the question be posed to them.
Our political class though are intent on collaborating to debase our culture so that any such question becomes meaningless.Galloway is the locus classicus of this attitude; but most of the other politicians see their personal future built on the ruins of western culture.
More on Germany (how did our political class let us get to this point):
Dr. Jim Willie is not the world’s greatest English stylist, but if you can fight your way through the undergrowth of his syntax he has some interesting insights; for example,
“…a German banker contact informs that as a result of a high level meeting in Germany (not in the news), a decision has been made for France to exit the Euro currency first. They are ordered out. Regardless of whether Hollande displaces Sarkozy for the president post, the French have been instructed as to how business will be conducted. No other information, like whether France will revert to the Franc currency and not risk a severe Latin Euro devaluation after Germany and Netherlands depart. My impression is that Germany will launch a new currency very soon….France would become a ward of the German state, with dictated policy and direction…My belief is that France has been offered something important, like financial support in return for leading the broken chaotic Southern European nations…Germany might also have wanted to put France in the spotlight, while the German industrial leaders and bank leaders forge their next big accord and create an alliance more formally with Russia and China.”
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_12/willie042512.html
Malfleur – Anyone got the email address of the piece of ambulatory dog shit that made this decision. Being stormed with contemptuous and personally insulting emails works. It worked when some council dork somehwere decreed that henceforth all burials would be done with head pointed east to Mecca because “Christians didn’t care, and it was important to muslims”.
Well, he soon found out how much Christians “didn’t care” about the bodies of their deceased loved ones being ponted at the cesspit of all that is abnormal, mecca. The decision was reversed.
I believe emails in rather large numbers persuaded (was it Norwich?) council that a gentlemen who had held an allotment for six years should be allowed to continue to hold it rather than be sacrificed to the ambitiouns of a husband and wife who are council members.
Let’s find out who made the decsion about Pastor Alan Clifford’s ban on his church being allowed to hand out leaflets. Could someone please call the organisation and get the name and address of the little Hitler so we can all send him/her toxic, highly personalised messages. If we could get a photo of he person, that would be good because we could comment on their looks.
We got the decision to bury Christians facing mecca reversed. We can get this reversed. These are just cheap, uppity little opportunists with no metal ballast.
Thought so. A quick scan of the new edition Radio Times in Satanbury’s about a half an hour ago revealed no use of the word ‘kraut’, or the phrase about dead ones quoted in the Daily Mail. Reckon he might sue! I went to one of his lectures in the early 70’s. He’s very tall, you know.
I have been saying for years that Geert Wilders is a hero.
Funny, is it not, that the tiny country of Holland has produced four heroes in the fight against islam: Pym Fortuyn, outspoken candidate for MP … shot and murdered. Theo Van Gogh, making a film “Fitna” about the failings of islam as a religion and/or ideology … shot while reading his bicycle peacefully along the canal in Amsterdam. Aayan Hirsi Ali, a refugee from Somalia, outspoken, working on Van Gogh’s book with him, elected member of the Dutch Parliament and forced never to leave her house witihout a police escort until she opted for having a life again and moved to the US to work for a think tank. And now the very courageous Geert Wilders.
All from Holland.
Who has Britain produced who is committed to taming or ridding our company of the toxic virus of islam?
Obviously didn’t scan the Radio Times (printed edition) hard enough!
Sir Patrick’s remarks, as quoted by the Daily Mail, are on the Radio Times website.
http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2012-05-01/patrick-moore-im-no-european–the-english-are-best
Seeeeee? Told you!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2137722/Nonamum-pregnant-Fallopian-tubes-removed-years-ago.html
As she lives in a state contiguous with the United States, she was probably planning on doing some kind of TV studio touring show with these nine babies, any babies, and how God had blessed her, although not with the money she needs, brought along.
Notwithstanding the bleating of sub-Hemingway hacks in tin-hats, the West does well to let Syria sink by itself into the abyss.
http://www.debka.com/
EC
May 1st, 2012 – 14:36
Thought so. A quick scan of the new edition Radio Times in Satanbury’s about a half an hour ago revealed no use of the word ‘kraut’, or the phrase about dead ones quoted in the Daily Mail. Reckon he might sue! I went to one of his lectures in the early 70′s. He’s very tall, you know.
Dear EC: you must have looked at last week’s RT. See page 28, paragraph 3, and there you have the Kraut! We called them Gerries, after their helmets which were like Gerry Pots.
That is partly true. Unfortunately I have a great many Christian friends and contacts there whose lives and futures are in the balance.
Bishop Nazir-Ali and Patrick Sookhdeo, both with personal experience of Islam as it happens, and both absolutely and resolutely opposed to it.
Well, I don’t understand the thinking behind this decision, but, given that it’s Marine, I am sure there is a lot in it. Anyway, first time I have seen her speak and she certainly has charisma!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2137770/French-presidential-election-2012-Marine-Le-Pen-set-endorse-candidate.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2137770/French-presidential-election-2012-Marine-Le-Pen-set-endorse-candidate.html
Well, I don’t understand what is behind her decision, but I am sure we will find out. This is the first time I had seen her talk and she’s charismatic.
(PS – There’s something wrong with the site, P from M)
Stand by for a meeja feeding frenzy today, after the weasel report from the H o C select committee on the phone hacking affair, as the Left wing media tries to remove the last vestiges of opposition to their counter-culture war, by insisting that The Dirty Digger should be denuded of his print and TV holdings around the world. One thing that is certain, regardless of whether Rupe is a ‘fit and proper person’ to run a company, how any of the members of the sub-committee could regard themselves as a ‘fit and proper persons’ to adjudge anybody ‘fit or unfit’ is the height of cant and irony.
I suggest Peter that you organize a little vote:
Which of the following would you consider to be better fitted to run the UK (or even a piss-up in a brewery):
Rupert Murdoch
David Cameron
Harry Rednapp
Tom Watson (in conjunction with Bob Dylan and his ‘top and bottomless ladder of justice’).
What a cabbage-headed, fat, beady-eyed, ugly wee stoma-pouch, Commissar Watson is!
Sorry, I didn’t mean to influence the vote, ignore that last sentence.
I suggest that we form some sort of organisation with a name like the Committee for Public Accountability and investigate how far our politicians and public sector executives may be considered to be ‘fit and proper’ or ‘unfit and improper’. if it were well organised it might even be possible to get the Murdoch press to report the press announcements from the CPA.
I keep having a vision of the CPA also organising public executions with a guillotine!
This is the most disconnected Coffee House Wall we have ever had. Everyone is writing about something different, and no one is responding to anyone else’s post.
I posted a rather disparaging comment on TWatson’s website: http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/2012/05/news-international-and-phone-hacking#comments
Just checked; it has mysteriously been removed whilst his back-slappers’ comments remain. Freedom of speech, eh, Tom-boy?
Verity @17@16. My post @ 17:18 is in response to Frank P @ 16:58.
And now, in response to myself, I should take more care with my typing. Not Verity @17@16, rather Verity @17:16.
Verity:
You are concerned, as most of us are, about the ruling of Norwich Council, banning the Pastor Clifford from distributung pamphlets on council-owned Eaton Park. I have done some research, and discovered his anti-muslim stance has enraged the council going back over eight years. I also found the following info, which may be a good start if anybody wishes to send emails:
NORWICH COUNCILLORS
FOR EATON WARD.
They are all Lib Dem:
JAMES WRIGHT j.wright@cllr.norwich.gov.uk
JUDITH LUBBOCK jlubbock@cllr.norwich gov.uk
CAROLINE ACKROYD c.ackroyd@cllr.norwich.gov.uk
I actually introduced the story of the allotment taken away from the pensioner, and you and David Ossitt, together with myself started the ball rolling. For very personal reasons, I do not want to send an email to this Council, believe me I am up to my neck in many campaigns and want to step back and catch my breath for a while.
Frank P:
Hi Frank,
Read your posting and thought I’d let you see what I posted in Martin Bright’s blog in the Speccie:
Looking at the poor calibre of British politicians from all parties,I believe we could do worse than have a man such as Murdoch in charge. Tenacity, cunning and intelligence, all the qualities missing in contemporary ‘snout in the trough’ politicians.
Frank P @16:58
Rupe, assisted by Kelvin MacKenzie, would sort things out in next to no time!
EC – Agree! Absolutely. Rupe’s the man! Looking at Cameron v Rupe, the comparison is comical.
My computer is now, without warning, suddenly ringing a bell. It sounds like a schoolbell. It doesn’t do it every day and I don’t have to be on any particular site for it to suddenly ring out.
Does anyone have any idea what this is all about? Can I stop it wiithout getting a techie out. It only happens now and then …
Any thoughts?
The following brief blog in Commentary, dealing with a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, is illustrative of how people play the “minority” card when it serves them and abandon it when it does not; it really is an industry that should be condemned for pollution, whether in the USA or here:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/05/01/elizabeth-warren-and-affirmative-action/
*****
AWK 1
Many thanks for identifying and posting the email addresses of the three Norwich City Councillors and for noting the history of the Council in the matter.
Verity: I didn’t know you were Quasimodo – the bells, the bells! 🙂
Verity: Can it be that you are Quasimodo – the bells, the bells! 🙂
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2137929/Jacqueline-Woodhouse-Racist-London-Underground-passenger-faces-jail-YouTube-rant.html
AWK 1 1st, – 22:24
“the bells, the bells!”
A very average whisky 😉
Ostrich (occasionally)
May 1st, 2012 – 23:19
Hick!
More on the water shortage – including Piccadilly Circus:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2137754/UK-weather-Thousands-homes-risk-flood-heavy-rain-way-again.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9239417/European-Court-of-Human-Rights-blocks-more-deportations-from-UK-than-any-other-country.html
The vile ECHR blocks more deportations of people judged undesirable aliens from Britain than from any other country.
Of course, they should not have the power to block any at all. Decisions made by a sovereign nation are sovereign. We managed to be the most successful country in the world for hundreds of years without the help of European sleaze bags.
Britain should leave tomorow. What would happen? Not a bloody thing. The ECHR has absolutely no power.
On the anniversary of the belated discovery of OBL and dilatory decision to interdict, an appreciation of the courage displayed by the POTUS in single-handedly taking him out at great personal risk – allegedly:
http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/5minute_arguments/courage_he_hasnt_got_it.php
Why is there a ban on the use by Pastor Alan Clifford’s Norwich Reformed Church of the market square for distribution of a pamphlet critical of islam?
What is the reasoning, given that it is clear that none of the coucil is educated in this moon-worshipping belief system.
Maybe they could explain your malinformed diktat? Do they have the slightest historical knowledge of the belief system they are so fiercely – and undemocratically – defending?
Islam is a primeval belief system born out of hundreds/thousands of years of tiny groups of people living in the sand dunes and having little to do after dark but discuss the meaning of the stars and imbue the moon with godlike qualities.
With such meagre resources, no one expects them to have produced anything rivalling the West, or even Africa. But they have produced violence and aggression.
And the ones from the Hindu Kush (mountainous region) follow their own ancient traditions and chop the clitorises off little girls so they will never be motivated to run off with a pair of humourous eyes, a charming smile and a nice line in chat … thus messing up the contractual arrangements they have made with another family to conserve money within the famiily. The whole system reeks of the Stone Age.
Yet, they have a 1500 year old determination to conquer Christianity for their desert diety … which is what the Crusades were all about: our Western Christian armies defending Christian Europe against islamic aggression on behalf of their all-powerful diety who wouldn’t have known what to do with a match if anyone had ever given him one.
As we know, they got through to Spain, but for the rest of Europe, they were stopped at the Gates of Vienna.
They are still on the same mission.
Their sex-obsessed god assigns jihadis 72 virgins (the virgins don’t get a vote) and accords them “rivers of wine” – although they are denied alcohol while they’re alive – for dying for him. in the cause of conquering Christendom for allah. Sounds like a real obesssive. I’ll bet he lined the virgins up by height.
The more information that the Brits have about the real nature of this ancient, moon-worshipping, deeply sexist desert belief system the better … and the easier it will be to insist on their integrating with long-established British mores – or leaving the country, if they prefer their own violent lifestyles.
It is clear that none of you knows the first thing about islam … except from magazine articles … or has spent any time in an islamic country. Your must make decisions for the community based on facts, not Arabian Nights fantasies.
And British law is British law. I do not know that you have the right to ban information being distributed in a church. Surely the decision is that of the bishop and the governors? You might find yourselves at the wrong end of a massive law suit!
Anyway, back to Norwich et nos moutons! Does the town council get to decide what is said in church?
The confused tenses above are accounted for by the fact that I originally wrote this post to the Norwich coucillors themselves, but I later realised they are too ignorant and uninformed to have understood the finer allusions. Obviously, I didn’t edit it very well, for which I apologise.
Verity: Did you bell the cat? Is one of your cats wearing a collar with a bell attached?
AWK – Bell what cat? Where did that come from?
As it happens, I would never bell a cat. I had a friend who belled a cat and it learned to hold the bell down with its chin so it didn’t have to put up with that insufferable sound in its ears every time it moved.
But where did this come from?
Verity: Aesop: Belling the Cat is a fable also known under the titles The Bell and the Cat and The Mice in Council.
I would never bell a cat either, nor have it declawed.
Nicholas, May 1st, 2012 – 10:54 & 11:11
Two very interesting posts on “corporate bloat” and PR parasites. It set me thinking as to when the rot set in and I’m not too sure. Did it first occur in the private sector, privatised former public sector, or the public sector? (incl quangos, third sector, fake charities)
There is no doubt that after New Labour came to power this “corporate bloat” grew exponentially, as evidenced by the number of public sector “non-jobs” advertised in The Guardian every week. (so did employment laws, and with it the rise of HR together with bogus equality criteria, tick-box culture, ‘person descriptions’ allied to job descriptions etc.) One would have thought that private enterprise, with the imperative of the profit motive, would have resisted this culture but apparently not.
There is no doubt the price we paid for goods and services rocketed too. eg. Council tax. All the crap outlined above is just an additional tax levied to keep people in highly paid sinecures.
eg. During the 2000’s the seat warmers(*) in many local authorities etc., tired of their former toil have decided to make themselves grand sounding titles like “Strategic Directors of” and award themselves six figure salaries. Of course no Strategic Director of Finance, IT or HR could be expected to sully their fair hands with actual work and this necessitated the the appointment of a whole raft of ordinary “Directors of” beneath them in to do the work. Criminal!
Google “Strategic Director of” and it comes up with about 878,000 results in 0.21 seconds!
(*) The Germans call them “sesselfurzer” directly translated as “seat farters.”
Who says they don’t have a sense or humour, or at least irony.
A factor that I forgot to mention above, is that there are now too many people in the UK. (*) The UK functioned perfectly well, better even, when the population was half or two thirds of what it is today.
(*) Regarding our recent “drought” – another way to look at it is that we have plenty of water, but there are now too many people using it!
There may well be too many people in the UK. But in regard to the seven companies imposing drought restrictions, they are actually losing 300 million gallons of water a DAY. Enough to satisfy 11 million people. The real problem is not us using the water, but the companies not being severely penalised for losing so much.
AWK1 2nd, – 00:51
“Hick!”
Haec Hoc
AWK1,
Quasimodo?
Nah, can’t place the name but his face rings a bell.
Oh, you must mean Isaiah, don’t you?
EC I call it “corporate bloatation” and unlike the floatation of companies it causes them to sink.
Concomitant with a rise in the amount of bullshit around “mission statements”, etc., and grandiose boasts about improved service to customers most services have declined horribly. Only 25 years ago it was possible for me to telephone my insurance company in the nearest city using one number that was answered by someone actually in the office concerned – I even knew the manager’s name – and he could pull my details (paper copy) in a few minutes and be making decisions in real time with the discretion to do so. Same with the bank. Now it’s a telephone “menu” – multiple choice hoops to jump through, an inevitably long wait, “security” questions (again multiple gateways) and eventually talking to an Indian call-centre operator working from a script. They have no discretion to make decisions – assuming the reason you called is covered by their script in the first place. Often faceless and unaccountable decision makers are referenced or “computer says no”. And the biggest scam perpetrated on the British is that this is somehow all an improvement to their miserable, bullied, badgered, nannied and ripped-off lives.
There will be the argument “there are now more people” – but who’s fault is that? No-one asked me if I minded the population density of my country being increased beyond good sense and sustainability by mass immigration to serve party political purposes. That having been bombed and terrorised into granting Irish independence we would be expected to host their travelling communities tax free in perpetuity and to enjoy the vibrant benefits they bring – like Dale Farm – never mind the cost to the poor old British taxpayer.
Then there is the expectation of young people in the corporate world to become “Heads of” and “Directors” with fat salaries in next to no time. Older and more experienced people are shunted out the door with each “organisational” change (progress!) and yet more chiefs are created to manage the dwindling bands of onshore indians coping with ever more irate customers whilst under the threat of redundancy themselves. Are these appointments on merit? Are they Hell! They are all about internal politics, favouritism, back-scratching and faces fitting. Senior staff operate in a Machiavellian world of empire-building, petty jealousies, subversion and departmental rivalry. And in many cases the “successful” are utterly selfish and self-centred, inexperienced, under-skilled, overly ambitious and thoroughly unpleasant to boot (think ‘The Apprentice’). I have had the misfortune to see many of these shits at work first hand and sometimes wondered how they manage to face their wives and children having secured their own success by obliterating the careers and lives of others. The result is often incompetence on a staggering scale, inefficiency, indiscipline and bloody idleness. Surrounding it all is the delusion that they actually know what they are doing and it will work plus the typically socialist-imposed pretence of harmony, caring and the group-hug. Speak up in a bullshit project meeting with genuine reservations based on years of knowledge and experience and you are a “barrier to progress” or not a team player (the same “team playing” that sees Lemmings hurling themselves en masse over a cliff). No wonder there was a banking disaster. The whole thing is a tottering house of cards reeking of bullshit. And all of that crap has been shunted into the public sector, all the top down worthless “measurements”, key performance indicators and tick-boxes that mean bugger all when you have to deal with them as a consumer or customer. All the absence of discretion and decision making at the coal face so that the customer is alienated, disenfranchised and ultimately oppressed, whether by the planning office or the police.
Coincidentally, yesterday I received in the post a glossy leaflet from the local water provider urging me to save water and telling me in detail how I might do that. This is a marketing project dressed up with all the socially responsible bullshit personified by Mr Ayland’s job. The money I pay for the privilege of turning on the tap is spent in part on the salaries and outputs of people telling me not to.
Hang on a mo’ I thought. Surely as a private business they want to sell more water and make more profit? If everyone uses less then either they have to increase their charges to sustain their shareholder investments or reduce their operating costs – already encumbered by the scandal of leaks. And yet here they are, printing glossy, jazzy, so pleased-with-themselves, let’s all celebrate how fucking good we are leaflets fundamentally undermining their own unique selling proposition. And you know the name of this mind-bogglingly moronic piece of non-advertising?
“Beat the Drought With Drops”
That is “drops” in the amount of water I use. No, I tell you what. Let’s beat the drought with you spending some of the money you get from the exorbitant charges you demand for my natural right to British rain and river water by repairing the fucking leaks in the archaic systems you operate because you are too busy thinking about how I can save water rather than DOING YOUR OWN FUCKING JOB.
This is the scam. The “social change” to get the customer to do all the heavy lifting and still pay (ever more) for the privilege, slyly articulated by “social responsibility” messages and other emotional blackmail. It is all about “social change”, from councils, to banks, to quangos and fake charities. All in the lucrative business of bombarding us with propaganda telling us what we should and shouldn’t do whilst making us pay (ever more) for the privilege. It’s great work if you can get it. And the government (Brussels, central and local – we have three tiers of control over us now) and the corporate world combine and conspire to squeeze us and bully us more and more. The most surprising thing is the apathy that lets it happen. But of course you can get arrested and prosecuted now for daring to kick up a fuss, to make a row – zero tolerance don’t you know.
The typical rant of a grumpy old man, you might say. But, in terms the socialist mindset ought to understand, why are there now so many grumpy old men and what has radicalised them? Don’t blame them or abuse them, Guardianista comrade, try to understand what has caused them to become like that.
There was a young rhymer called Phoebe,
Whose voice became deeper than need be
When she developed face fungus
She called herself Fergus
And applied to become a Wahhabi
Nicholas @10:09,
Rest assured, I am as grumpy as you about the state of the nation as you are. I agree with and have experienced much, if not all, of what you write about. ( esp. with ref. to bullshit project meetings & ‘team briefs’ etc.)
Also, don’t get me started on management consultants, bean counters impersonating accountants, accountants posing as management consultants, ‘investment’ bankers and bankers’ bonuses. etc.
Your last sentence troubles me slightly. I do hope the ‘Guardianista comrade’ remark was aimed at the likes of the malign dead Greek impersonators and the eco mentalist Marises of this world and not myself.
That’s another comment mangled (above) for the lack of proper checking! Still, at least it has my authentic ‘signature’ as it were. Beware of imitations! 😉
e&oe
What a lot of idiots the British government is. The Government’s attempts to deport Abu Qatada have now been bogged down by claims that Jordan permits torture. Even if this was true, would it matter? All our governments, both Brown’s or Camerons are concerned with, are the welfare of filthy ragheads who are bent on our destruction. No money to care for the needy here, but funds always provided for the wives and inbred offspring of terrorist scum to be kept in style.
Alexander Boot gives one arresting example of a bureaucratic Ponzi scheme in his book, ‘The Crisis Behind Our Crisis’. When Britain rules the waves in C19, there were 3,000 Royal Navy civil servants. Today, with the Navy denuded of aircraft carriers and five years after the detention of the HMS Cornwall mariners by Iranian Revolutionary Guards, there are 30,000 Royal Navy civil servants.
“Your last sentence troubles me slightly. I do hope the ‘Guardianista comrade’ remark was aimed at the likes of the malign dead Greek impersonators and the eco mentalist Marises of this world and not myself.”
Oh, not at you! It was aimed out into the ether at the kind of socialist “everyman” (or more often woman) who is so much responsible for imposing their fervent political ideology upon our everyday life. And especially to highlight the double standard and hypocrisy that allows them to excuse thieving rioters on grounds of conditioning but to condemn “foaming” conservatives and “grumpy old men”. I grew up in one country and the socialists have turned it into another. Yet they expect me not to be alienated and disenfranchised but instead to be “re-educated”, to swallow their bogus bullshit and be happy about it all?
More rather odd Anglophobia from JJB at the Speccie:-
“The very proper Brit establishment think it still rules the world but in truth it needs to be put firmly in its place. Eden got the message. Major drowned in sleaze. Cameron will be buried by corruption. And to what end?”
Only Conservative politicians named and yet the most recent “Imperial adventurism” was perpetrated by New Labour in full cahoots with the USA. And what a parcel of incompetent nonsense that was judging by the ‘Hunt for Bin Laden’ last night.
Eden should have told the USA to take a running jump. There would not be half the trouble in the Middle East that there is now if Suez had not been undermined by the USA. Arab “spring” my arse.
Re: JJB (jnr/snr/II/III)
Anybody remember “Yank”? He went slightly weird too. Had a strange fixation with “The Lords.”
Re: “Arab spring” – “The times they are a changing”
(everything but the “aroused islamist rogering a corpse”)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k695GEtnfL8
Men of Destiny
The following biographical extract, from worldwide web suppository of all knowledge, ‘Wikipedia’, describes the youthful enthusiasms of a man of destiny, currently featured in the news. But which of the following is it? You decide!!!!
(a) Simon Cowell
(b) Robert Mugabe
(c) Ken Livingstone
‘It was at Tulse Hill Comprehensive that he first gained his interest in amphibians and reptiles, keeping several as pets, leading his mother Ethel to worry that rather than focusing on school work all he cared about was “his pet lizard and friends”. Meanwhile, he attained four O-levels in English Literature, English Language, Geography and Art, the subjects that he later described as simply being “the easy ones”.’
(b)
ACP 13.01
Trick question. All of the above
Clue: Ethel Mugabe sez, ‘He wasn’t the messiah. He was a very naughty boy!’
AWK – No! I would never have a cat declawed!
EC – V interesting post and I will comment when I’ve finished reading it, but just to note that Norwich council has 33 council members. WHY???????????????? Thirty-three self-elevated twats busy running this little market town and ruling that you cannot say anything negative about islam in a public place. Surely such a ruling is unconstitutional and therefore illegal?
Norwich must be the British capital of dhimmitude. The Left is like that
EC – “His face rings a bell” ………… ha ha hah aha! V good!
AWK -Yes. Why would we care if Al Whatsit is tortured? Give him a volt for me! Why do we have to faff around with deportation. Why not just tell him we’re giving him the honour of dying for allah and shoot him in the forehead? Then say he tripped up going down the steps bashed his head open and the wound turned sceptic so we had to bury him at sea?
EC 10:14 – V good!
Andy Carpark —You mention three truly bizarre, creepy, pointless people. But you left out David Cameron, the most inexplicable of all. What, in God’s name, is this inadequate piece of self-regarding thistledown doing running a country? His silly, empty little face does not have one line of experience in it and he is how old? Totally unmarked by life. Empty.
Apologies if this one (found in the DT comments) has been round more times than Halley’s Comet but I thought it was worth nicking.
‘A chimp has learned the rudiments of the English language. His minders have nicknamed him “Noam Chimpsky”.’
Noam CHIMP-sky. Haha LOL!
(PS Reckon if there were really a person called Noam Chimpsky, he’d look a bit like Fergus Pickering.)
” . . . this little market town”
Norwich is actually a city of 367,000 and quite densely populated. To provide some background it has long been a Lib Dem stronghold noted for the bolshy character of its residents.
One of the two MPs is now a Conservative but you wouldn’t know it from her website. She is the youngest MP in the Commons, looks about 18, is an atheist, supports gay marriage and has very close cropped hair. She has a classic “parachuted in” background and probably appealed to the “yoof” vote (and those who still think they are part of “yoof” which more or less covers anyone born after 1980, e.g. “kidults”). The other MP is a Lib Dem. He is an ex-teacher, ex-councillor and an environment/carbon nutter.
Norwich is a transition town, pioneering “environmental and social movements” and is also home to the University of East Anglia, a hotbed of lefty fundamentalism and as you will know connected in no small part to a certain climate change email scandal.
Norwich is of course the capital city of Norfolk – or, correctly “Narfuk” – and once held to be the second city of England. Narfuk is a county of distinctly unique folk, many with long roots in the “travelling communities” and often characterised by a pig-headed bolshiness. I was once told seriously by a man of the Narfuk soil that once he knew that what he did irritated someone then he would do it all the more. I think that just about sums them up. Bolshy and contrary, lots of old traveller money and inter-connected semi-criminal clans amongst which champagne socialist bien-pensants like Stephen Fry, along with the odd writer, poet and artist have country houses or weekend cottages and patronise antiques rackets – er, I mean shops.
Oh, yeah. I forgot the farmers. Probably the worst of the lot. In the main tight-arsed, money grubbing, employee exploiting, tree-destroying, footpath ploughing little Hitlers who dominate parish councils for their own benefit and irritate the local residents by letting inter-bred morons with scrambling bikes use their land.
Nicholas … It sounds like hell on wheels. Why do voters tolerate self-elevating garbage like this running their city? It amazes me how supine the British voter is. They even tolerate all the fanciful titles and fanciful “briefs” all these people award themselves.
Why don’t the people start issuing orders? The slimeballs will do as they’re told because they don’t want to lose their sinecures.
Here is weird piece of ignorance from The Mail. In a story about the McCanns and their search for Madeleine, they refer to Mr McCann and Mrs McCann.
Mr McCann is a specialist and therefore uses the title “Mr”, but his wife is Dr McCann. I wonder what the point of diminishing her achievement is.
Oh, another characteristic that I forgot. The thicker they are the more arrogant, smug, opinionated and self-satisfied they seem. They think they are the bee’s knees, especially the thick, wealthy ones who have made their money from having umpteen old relatives and the housing boom.
Lefty British MPs are calling for Rupert Murdoch to be destroyed, saying he is not fit to run a business. Never have been off the public tit in their lives, how would they know what it takes to run a business? The slathering, drooling, envy of the left is probably the world’s greatest emetic. If you feel nauseated at any time, think of a sleazy British MP, who was probably cheating the taxpayers on his expenses and has never yet found the time to pay the country back, and I assure you there is no better emetic.
There are probably around 5,000 slimy lefty legislators in the Anglosphere who are not fit to lick Rupert Murdoch’s shoes clean after he had stepped in dog shit.
The left are not stupid. They are unalloyed evil. Yes, Jacqui Smith, Tony Blair, Chereeeeeeeeeeeee, Mandelbum, Jack Straw, Gordon Brown, Hussain Obama, Margaret Moran, Eric Illsley, Harriet Harman and more … destructive, hissing vipers.
Interesting that you never get a good looking lefty, isn’t it? That tells us that they grew up ugly and resentful and searching for a means to get even with the lookers who got all the best dates. The Left is politics for ugly people.
“Probably unlawful” This is the profound, highly intelligent remark made by the Police Spokeswoman regarding the MI6 agent found naked in a holdall.
AWK – You can’t beat those British police for acuity!
And frankly, as a woman, I would rather see women out of the police. They are a hindrance.
Verity: Some of the females are brighter than what goes for ‘male’ these days. So I don’t think that says much. Too many fat-assed dykes and hard-faced slappers.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/labour-mps-expenses/9231264/Margaret-Moran-found-unfit-to-stand-trial-for-expenses-fiddle.html
The judge says she’s “unfit” to stand trial because she has “feelings of abandonment by the Labour Party”. Awwwwwwww!! … that mean old Labour Party not standing by her on charges that she fiddled her expenses to the tune of £80,000 of taxpayer money. What a bunch of old meanies!
According to The Telegraph: “Moran was also caught up in another scandal in March 2010 when she was one of four retiring Labour MPs who were found to have offered their services as paid lobbyists to an undercover reporter.”
Verity: Margaret Moron – perfect example for your earlier posting on ugly socialists. She wasn’t so bad to start with, just a clod hopping peasant, but over time she metamorphosised into a fart MORON.
Oops – meant fat, not fart!
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/normantebbit/100155335/war-debt-drunkenness-a-broken-nation-the-real-legacy-of-tony-blair/
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/iainmartin1/100155199/could-tony-blair-come-back-to-uk-politics-in-an-elected-house-of-lords/
Verity 2nd, – 15:27
“Here is weird piece of ignorance from The Mail.
Mr McCann is a specialist and therefore uses the title “Mr”, but his wife is Dr McCann.”
I ‘ve noticed this before, most particularly with ranks in the services. I don’t there’s anything malicious, or any hidden agenda; it’s simply sheer pig ignorance on the part of sub editors.
Ostrich (occasionally) – Yes, I agree. But it’s such a weird mistake to make. Referring to Kate McCann as Mrs McCann instead of Dr McCann. They probably don’t even know that “Mr” McCann is so addressed because he is a surgeon. Do you really think it’s the ignorance of the subs? I don’t. I think it’s an editorial direction and is aimed at making the McCann’s sound cozier and more sympathetic.
Either way, it’s repulsive and creepy.
Alex Massie has a piece in the Spectator headed “Did Cameron Text Rebekah Brooks 12 Times A Day?”
It gives me the impression that Massie is full of glee & hopes that the texts will be published, sink David Cameron, and lead to Milliband becoming P.M.
The possibility that they might sink David Cameron makes me feel gleeful too, but I’d be ecstatic if it helps to persuade the electorate that all current politicians are sleazy and that it’s time to turn elsewhere. I’d be even more overjoyed to see Murdoch encouraging that to happen. Maybe he could throw in the bonus of reviving the News of the World.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8451917/Who-is-to-blame-for-fractured-Britain.html
Comment by “Thomas” iro the last link:-
“Why should the immigrants have to learn English? The English people should learn Spanish and come to terms that Blair successfully fundamentally transformed Great Britian. You made the deal. Now celebrate it.”
I didn’t make the deal, Thomas, you twat, I didn’t vote for Blair and I certainly wasn’t given any say in the mass immigration imposed by the Labour Party in order to “rub the right’s nose in diversity”. And it won’t just be diversity that this country has its nose rubbed in as issues of sustainability and sectarianism begin to kick off big time. Those responsible committed a crime against the English people and should be prosecuted for it.
As far as I can see, all the newspapers have at one time or another referred to Mrs McCann.
I don’t see this as a problem. I don’t refer to people as Dr. just because they have a PhD, or because they are a GP, unless I am in a relationship where that matters.
Otherwise we would have to refer to everyone as Mr Smith, B.A (Hons), MA, PhD, OBE.
She is, after all, Mrs McCann.
Nicholas @7:31,
Re: immigration, taxes and the trouble in store:
http://alexanderboot.com/content/our-neo-totalitarian-state-wearing-out-its-democratic-mask
petertheodore1963 @08:01
Agree, I only use titles in a formal context.
See Sykes (1972 – 1979) aka “Eric & Hattie”.
The policeman played by Derek Guyler always insisted:
‘Helmet off, it’s “Corky,” helmet on, then it’s “Constable Turnbull”.’
In Startrek the boundary between informality and formality became more blurred. Mr Spock would more often than not address Kirk as “Captain” and occasionally “Jim,” but Dr Leonard McCoy would almost invariably address Kirk as “Jim.”
In fact, due to the nature of his profession, Dr. McCoy’s lines consisted almost entirely of, “He’s dead, Jim!”
Proof here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0yXqU-w9U0
Captain Kirk, on the other hand, would almost always refer to the learned doctor as “Bones.”
Ostrich (occasionally): On the nature of pig ignorance and misunderstanding.
I have been impressed with the hostility which some of my erudite posts have been greeted here and hereabouts.
There is perhaps a tendency to decry those a little different.
In different centuries they were burned as witches. Now they are just roasted with the pen.
Misunderstanding is of course what I have for anyone who may stray to put the insane in office. I refer of course to those advocating abandoning Cameron for Miliband, those wanting 4 more years of the dangerous health leftie Obama but most those who appear deranged enough to stick Hollande in the Elysee Palace.
I have posted before on the continued attraction of the English to the notion that they still rule the world. But the haughty French are one worse than the Brits. They truly think they still rule half of Africa and most of South East Asia. God help the world when the arrogant residents of Paris are led by a socialist toad whose only qualification for the job is that he has not (yet) had sex with a maid in a New York Hotel.
Perhaps the world deserves Miliband, Obama and Holland.
Me, I think I will move to Germany to live in the glory of the pastor’s daughter
Re: John Jefferson Burns at 3 May at 9:07:
At the risk of decrying ‘those a little different’ (and not a little pompous) this is what I posted yesterday on the Speccie website commenting on one of Jefferson’s self-regarding inanities:
“This John ‘Jefferson’ Burns character seems to lack his Monticello namesake’s intellect and erudition, but perhaps his mother named him after an unfortunate backstage encounter with one or two members of Jefferson Airplane. Certainly, he seems to enshrine that paradoxical combination of confidence and idiocy shared by some Americans and most sociopaths.”
But where’s Frank P. when you need someone to skewer a smug target with deadly invective?
John Jefferson Burns, May 3rd, 2012 – 09:07
“Me, I think I will move to Germany to live in the glory of the pastor’s daughter”
Please don’t let us detain you any longer, old bean.
Zum Vierte Reich, sofort!
John Jefferson Burns 3rd, – 09:07
I’m puzzled as to why I should have been so exclusively referenced in your post.
EC 3rd, – 08:49
“It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.
“I have posted before on the continued attraction of the English to the notion that they still rule the world.”
We had noticed (yawn). But in the interests of erudition it should perhaps be qualified that the “continued attraction” etc., is a matter of your opinion and perhaps stems more from a bug up your arse or a chip on your shoulder rather than any factual characterisation. The latest sentence in this tiresome repetition contains three generalisations and you are also in the habit of confusing the “English” with that tiresome diminutive so beloved of chippy colonials the “Brits”. Let me try and make this as clear as I can. England is a once sovereign nation within the island of Great Britain, and once the jewel in its crown. I am both English and British by birth, but the endeavours of our government are, presently, British rather than English. England does not have a government or parliament. The government is British, as is the parliament. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are also governed, in part, by the British, but each has it own parliament or assembly, cleaving to the needs of its own national identity. Let me put it this way, so that you might understand better. It would be like Hawaii being a State of the USA (as it is) but having no dedicated governance or identity either in Hawaii or in the Federal government. Therefore when you bandy about the words “English” and “Brits” interchangeably in respect of their “notions” there is a degree of sensitivity hereabouts. Capiche?
And coming from an American, if you are an American, it is something of a cheek, given that since about 1945 the notion of ruling the world has been demonstrated more forcefully and more globally by your own country. Why, in Hollywood, the notion extends even to a belief that the USA was the only combatant nation against Germany and Japan in World War 2.
But, in terms of pig ignorance and misunderstanding, I wonder how any of us might fare if we took ourselves to a conservative website in the USA and expressed that similar opinion about the USA using the diminutive “Yanks”?
Hostility? Are you surprised then, that as a guest here your continued impoliteness to the host country is unwelcome – especially on conservative forums? Or do you represent so many of those foreign folk who wash up on our shores and appear to take our natural modesty, tolerance and politeness as an invitation to be openly rude about us? Roasting with a pen seems a very little penalty for so great an impertinence.
PS JJB, you might wish to take a closer look at our Commonwealth too. A benign gathering of nations we once ruled and even some that we didn’t. It is a collective that shares many positive Imperial legacies and whose friendships perhaps bely the “notion” of resented arrogance that some Americans, like you, bestow upon the British.
Can you point to an American equivalent? Or is there just the uncomfortable human and cultural wreckage of your own ill-conceived and worse executed Imperial ambitions in South-East Asia, in Iraq and in Afghanistan?
Nicholas 3rd, – 10:49
Going for the jugular… it’s the only way.
Why is everybody so grumpy? No wonder really, seems we may even have snow this Bank Holiday! 🙁
Anne Wotana Kaye 1 @11:29
Aye! Today, here, the torrential “drought” continues unabated!
Torrential drought here in Kent too.
I keep checking a major local reservoir and it is definitely filling up. I have just started saving the webcam image so that I can see what is happening day to day. I note that the papers have discovered that the seven water companies imposing the drought order are losing 300 million gallons of water a DAY! Enough for 11 million people. But we are the ones who have to pay for their incompetence with no redress.
EC
May 3rd, 2012
EC, at least you bring a little sunshine. And, where is Frank P?
Nicholas @ 10.49
“PS JJB, you might wish to take a closer look at our Commonwealth too. A benign gathering of nations we once ruled and even some that we didn’t. It is a collective that shares many positive Imperial legacies and whose friendships perhaps bely the “notion” of resented arrogance that some Americans, like you, bestow upon the British.
Can you point to an American equivalent?”
The Philippines. Oh, wait a bit, the United States government just declared that it would not take sides in the territorial dispute between the Philippines and China.
Consequences: Philippine Senator Arroyo has stated that the recent meeting between US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario, at which the US government took that position, had just rendered the 61-year-old Mutual Defense Treaty useless in the event that China attacks the country over the disputes in the West Philippine Sea. (Christina Mendez, The Philippine Star)
In today’s Manila Bulletin,the columnist, Gemma Cruz Araneta, called the special relationship between the Philippines and the USA an empty farce .
Wasn’t it the late Chuck Coulson, who said in that summation of American principle “when the going gets tough, the tough get going”?
In a BBC report perversely both sad and encouraging, rubber bullets are on their way:
“The month before last August’s riots, the Metropolitan Police held just 700 baton rounds. But by December 2011, the number had jumped more than 14 times to more than 10,024, a Freedom of Information request shows.”
A step in the right direction perhaps, but expect howls of outrage from the Nike faith community and its fellow travellers.
Oh, dear, the Respect Party, alayhi s-salām, seems to be demanding proper respect from its election rivals.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/mayor/police-call-for-reinforcements-at-tower-hamlets-polling-station-fracas-7711502.html?tw_p=twt.
Havig major problems posting on the site. Have rebooted the computer three times.
Here’s one I made earlier:
Herbert Thornton 1:07 – First post read this morning and …. APPLAUSE!
Rupert’s built a powerful and wealthy business FROM SCRATCH. He runs it well. People buy his products OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL. Geddit, Dave? People spend their money OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL on Rupert’s products because they want them and feel they are getting value.
I would say that I wished the vile, conniving, sleazy David Cameron would go and boil his head, but it looks as though it has already been boiled. His face looks like an over- boiled pink turnip.
Bye, Dave. Don’t let the door hit you on the arse on the way out.
AWK asks, “Whys is everyone so grumpy?”
Well, the village priest has been shouting his “brains” (sic) out for the last HOUR out of loudspeakers he has facing the four cardinal directions up on the church roof. Talk about fascism. Never move to a village in Mexico. I am moving back to the city. Here, they start off some days … who knows why or gives a monkey poo? – with the priest aka “village idiot” – letting off fireworks for 20 minutes at 6:30 a.m. One way of keeping control.
That’s why I’m so grumpy, AWK. I wish I were back in Britain, but then I think of David Cameron’s strange, nasty face and that option doesn’t look good, either.
From http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/mayor/police-call-for-reinforcements-at-tower-hamlets-polling-station-fracas-7711502.html?tw_p=twt …
“I complained to the official inside and when I came back out the Respect guy started mouthing off to me. When I told him what they were doing is not allowed, he threatened to punch my lights out.”
Obviously a new meaning of the word “respect”, of which we were hitherto unaware.
P from M … No one addresses PhDs as doctor!!!!! (Except some pretentious Americans, referring to themselves …) But are you seriously saying you don’t address a medical doctor, or refer to them, as doctor?
Verity
May 3rd, 2012 – 14:45
Verity:
AWK asks, “Whys is everyone so grumpy?”
Well, the village priest has been shouting his “brains” (sic) out for the last HOUR out of loudspeakers he has facing the four cardinal directions up on the church roof. Talk about fascism. Never move to a village in Mexico
Verity, at least the priest isn’t just facing east with his arse in the air. Also, they are only letting off fireworks, not lethal bombs. Looking around me, I’ll change places any day with you. Dopey Dave has a face like a beetroot!
Verity, you do say some very odd things. Of course PhDs are referred to as Doctor. The PhD is a Doctorate. It is what you get to call yourself when you have one. I deal with many academics who are all Doctors. None of them are GPs. I know plenty of GPs and I don’t refer to them all as Doctor. I have titles myself but do not expect them to be used outside of relevant contexts.
Further to my posts at 19.31 and 19.40 2nd May: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2138668/Im-ready-comeback-Blairs-millions-quitting–wants-engage-UK-politics.html
A propos forms of address, one of the strangest of US affectations, at least to English eyes, is the suffix “Esq.” used by some male, but more often female, lawyers.
It’s odd to receive emails from ‘Jane Doe, Esq.’. When I first came across this nonsense I thought it was an obscure US code for “Hello, I’m an old uncle” but apparently not.
Austin Barry.
“Esq”
I had always thought that it was correct to use ‘Esq’ when writing to a teenage male and prior to teen males as Master, perhaps I am wrong.
Austin Barry.
Hi, Austin
How does it work with same-sex male marriages? Is one Mr and the other Mrs, or would it be Master and Mistress? For same-sex female marriages, would it be Ms and Esq?
I don’t think anyone uses ‘Master’ any more. I had a school chum, Tim Bates, who was mortified when referred to as “Master Bates” much to the glee of his fellow pupils.
Catherine Ashton has got titles:
1) Baroness Ashton of Upholland (appointed 2007)
2) The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (appointed 2009)
3) Milk monitor at Upholland Primary school.(appointed September, 1962)
Regardless of any relevant contexts she’s plain old CAshton to me (or Mrs Kellner at a push). The same goes for all the other faux barons and baronesses. Lord Mandelson, my arse! (ouch!)
Austin Barry
Tazers don’t work in wet weather, or if the adversaries of Met’s stormtroopers are wearing gumboots. Hence the recourse to rubber bullets. Not only do they float in damp conditions, but they can also be recycled – into gumboots.
QT:
Tonight’s panel includes work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith MP, Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman MP, former leader of the Liberal Democrats Ming Campbell MP, leader of the PCS union Mark Serwotka and the businessman and star of Dragons’ Den Theo Paphitis.
Accounting for Dimblebro it looks like IDS is outnumbered 5 to 1.
(don’t most things ending in “itis” result in a visit to the doctor?)
Blimey, I thought Ming was dead. This evening should confirm it.
Herbert Thornton 1:07 … “It gives me the impression that Massie is full of glee & hopes that the texts will be published” …
Me too!
Austin Barry
May 3rd, 2012 – 17:50
They are all dead, but the buggers wont lie down!
Austin Barry 3rd, – 17:08
“I don’t think anyone uses ‘Master’ any more”
Kennybhoy does, although he spells it funny.
Peter Theodore … Yes in the world of ACADEMIA they address each other by their titles. No one addresses their next door neighbour, who has a PhD, as “doctor”!
AWK, how do you know the priest doesn’t have his arse in the air? Anyone who can wake up a whole community to broadcast lessons to them is nuts. Anyone who wants to hear what this ignorant jerk has to say can go to church and listen to him in 3D. How dare he broadcast into my home? I put on Ravi Shankar at top volume, but it didn’t make a dent.
Right now they are all letting off giant fireworks. Something to do with Easter. Who knows? The priest is king. Also Mexicans love NOISE. Two more hours of fireworks tonight, apparently because it’s the Fiesta of The Cross. No. I don’t kow how it relates, either. All I know is, I’m moving.
Peter of Maidstone:
Peter, should I address postings as above or is it Peter Theodore?
Yesterday evening I couldn’t get the Coffee House for hours, and today too there have been prblems. For once, I know it’s not my laptop since I can access all other sites. I was concerned that the trolls hadn’t been causing mischief once agin.
Verity: You really sound cross and not at all like yourself. Today it is 3rd May, The Fiesta de las Cruces, and as a visitor to Mexico, a country which you have always said is so good, you must surely show tolerance. Maybe the priest is a very wise man, how do you know he is “an idiot”. If you went along to the church you might find it enriching, and I don’t mean on a spiritual level. Surely one of the bonuses of travel and living abroad is involving oneself in different cultures. I wish I was there with you, Saint Helena was always one of the characters who intrigued me. Evelyn Waugh (my favourite author) wrote a great book about her. She was the mother of Constantine, and that is what this festival is all about. Seriously, it will soon be over, so don’t move away from a place where you have seemed so happy. Apart from the terrible p olitical situation here, snow is forecast for the Bank Holiday!
AWK – I have lived in Mexico for five years and the priests aren’t allowed to run the show in the larger cities. They have boundaries. Here, the priest seems to think he is the boss and I am sure that there are lots of complaints from expats as there are two or three thousand of us around here. He is just an arrogant, ignorant twerp. Who else would put LOUDSPEAKERS on the church ROOF with speakers facing in four cardinal directions so no one can escape the sound of his stupid voice? No. I do not find noise “enriching”, nor the meanderings of some ignorant village priest, even if I could be bothered to try to understand what his bleating was all about. This guy has a nasty, arrogant, controlling attitude and he can include me out.
I have absolutely no idea who the St Helena was and don’t care. I am very cross with the Chinese for introducing these people to fireworks. How the Chinese got in on the act I do not know. There is a huge firework going off about every five minutes … since 6 a.m. It is now 1:30 pm. You have to have a very, very empty head to not mind being assaulted by loud percusssive noises every few seconds for seven and a half hours. It is due to go on until 10:30 this evening, which means midnight in real terms.
Sounds tough. I’m cross with the Chinese, because you can’t buy a garment that wasn’t produced in China. The cut is so poor, that one sometimes find three sizes larger than nomal is needed. British workers thrown out of their jobs, and all for greedy mass marketing.
I am not sure if your views are justified Verity. Imagine if you were reading a news piece where some Middle Eastern immigrants were complaining about the noise being made by the bells ringing in a Medieval Church. What if they said, “Here, the priest seems to think he is the boss and I am sure that there are lots of complaints from expats as there are two or three thousand of us around here. He is just an arrogant, ignorant twerp.”
Surely you would be saying that if they didn’t like the local culture they should go back home.
How can you justify complaining that Mexicans are celebrating their Mexican culture?
Well, you can’t blame the greed of bolshy British uniions on the Chinese. They are very commercially minded people, and they work very hard, long hours and step into anywhere someone else has been stupid, or lazy, enough to leave a commercial vacuum.
Peter, I don’t need your little lectures because you never been exposed to anything like this. They’re not “celebrating their culture”. Any more than little boys banging on toy drums are celebrating their culture. This is noise for the sake of noise. Infantile. This behaviour was not legal in the state I lived in before.
PS Peter from Maidstone, church bells do not ring for 12 hours, and they perform a purpose, which is reminding people that the hour of the service draws near.
But you have chosen to live there among people who are living as you describe. You are happy to offer lectures to everyone else. Lol! What would you tell any foreigner if he said he didn’t like something about England?
Here in England Church bells often ring for many hours and not to draw people to church but because bell ringers like ringing bells.
No, Peter. I did not realise that there could be such a huge difference between states. The first time I came to Mexico, I was 11 and I loved it. When I lived in Texas, we used to sometimes drive down on weekends. When my mother came over to visit, we drove down to Monterrey for three days.
I like Mexico City very much. It’s elegant. I liked the city I lived in before, but it was too hot and too expensive. I came over here two or three times to look at houses and loved the weather. I forgot that the areas are made up of different tribes and they have different folkways as well as different looks.
This is something those of you who have never lived outside the UK would find difficult to understand.
Pat Condell’s latest: “Hello Saudi Arabia!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnLTHHpKl60
Why be patronising Verity? I think that most of us are well aware that different places have different cultures. It is you, after all, who is getting annoyed by the local Mexican priest being Mexican. As you say, it is YOU who forgot that different areas have different customs.
I am not being patronising, P from M. I am not annoyed with the local priest for being Mexican, for God’s sake. I am annoyed at his assumption of droits de seigneur over the interior ambiance of my household. I don’t want his noise and his message infused electronically into an environment I have paid for … my own home.
Interesting when one gets to see the “progressives” and their left-wing compadres in action isn’t it?
Round these northern parts, elections are normally conducted in a gentlemanly fashion: freedom of speech etc. I couldn’t help but notice, driving through the Main St. this morning, the profusion of “nae Nazis” boards adjacent to the usual “Vote Conservative” etc. These indicated a litany of so-called “hate crimes” that the NF has planned.
These had clearly been set out in response to the National Front putting up a candidate in today’s elections. I can honestly say I have never seen anything as agggressively manipulative in relation to UK Elections before. Now I have no problem with any UK citizen despising the NF or Socialists or Greens or indeed any Party: however this need to control our choices is only ever manifested by the Left. Or am I biased?
EC @ 21.39 Pat Condell’s “Hello Saudi Arabia”
The only important point Pat Condell missed from his eloquent excoriation is that Saudi Arabia appears by some accounts to have been using its oil wealth for a long time now to buy the loyalty of senior members of the US government with “post-dated cheques”. Whether SA is the only Arab state in the market for such loyalties and whether Americans are the only ones who have been bought and sold, I don’t know; when I come to consider the British political class however…
A few days ago, we were mentioning words which have suddenly become “buzz words” and of which many of us are heartily sick. One which I seem to hear all day long on radio and TV is ‘Aspirational’.
AWK – “tasked with”.
Verity – “on the ground”
Is this willingness to threaten military action against NATO another sign of the loss of status by the United States as a result of its bungling of its finances?
“Russia’s most senior military officer said Thursday that Moscow would strike and destroy NATO missile defense sites in Eastern Europe before they came online if the U.S. pushes ahead with deployment.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/3/russia-threatens-strike-nato-missile-defense-sites/
The feckless abuse of its own power by the political class of the USA in recent years is going to make a cold world for Great Britain under its own reckless politicos.
AWK – Under-represented.
Verity: I,to, much object to electronically enhanced bell-ringing from church towers.I’ve heard the bells ringing (or so I think ) in the heart of England. Then they cease ,and there is silence:then there is a distinct ‘click’ heard;indicating it was a recording, not bell-ringers at all.This annoys me as much as the old buggers who are too lazy to climb a few hundred steps to proclaim’Allah El Akbar’ in person;then get in a huff if anybody objects to their loudspeackers.
Radford NG – “Verity: I,to, much object to electronically enhanced bell-ringing from church towers…”.
I didn’t say a word about electronically enhanced bell-ringing. I object to an elecronically enhanced priest whose speakers on top of the church point in the four cardinal directions so he can force his bossy, provincial, meandering pensées out to a wider audience in their own houses. In other words, you can stay home, but you can’t hide. (The only way to avoid listening to him is to put one’s stereo on the terrace and play The Village People at top volume. This morning, I branched out to Ravi Shankar.)
And I object to the fireworks at 6:30 a.m.
This evening (3May),in the rain ,I went passed the polling station to ASDA having decided not to vote in a mayoral referendum on the basis that which side won would not have legitimacy on a low tearn out.(The No side won.) For good reasons I can not support either side.
It may be recalled it was in Leiceister that a local young woman was assulted by 4 drunken Somalia girls who were let-off by the Court.When the EDL turned up to protest they were met by police from surrounding counties,while the elected Mayor took himself off to the centrel mosque with TV cameras to show support.He has now rejected a salary increase to £100,000.His Deputy wants 75% as much as the Mayor gets.And they still have to pay for a Lord Mayor.
Hurah!I Just hear turn-out in my Ward was 8.5%.Can not do much worse then for the contempt for the Blair-Cameron project
I agree with Verity. Whether it be the broadcast of tape-recorded bells from church towers or the amplified wails of the muezzin from a minaret, the use of electronics cannot be considered traditional and both examples are an abomination. (the latter case being doubly un-islamic since electronics are an infidel invention and not mentioned in the Koran)
In addition, if Verity has a priest playing his pre-recorded sermons directly into her living room she has my complete understanding and sympathy. However, fireworks, aircraft and motorbikes etc. don’t bother me overmuch.
Nice to see the BBC making no effort to hide its partisan views this morning.
I dislike noise too. Especially the moronic kind inflicted by people who are having a good time and think everyone else should too. Those who prefer peace and quiet are totally dependent on those who prefer to make a noise – and there are plenty of those morons. Those who prefer peace and quiet can’t make the lives of others a misery. You can enjoy peace and quiet but you can’t inflict it on anyone else. Noise morons on the other hand, whether it is scrambling bikes on footpaths or radios blaring in neighbouring gardens or from unattended vans, or that communalist curse the loudspeaker and liking for the sound of their own voices, don’t consider this and I imagine them to be grown up versions of those toddlers who mindlessly bang things together and shriek at high pitch whilst their stupid parents smile indulgently and there is not a W C Fields in sight. There is a total absence of consideration. I’ve mentioned it before but on a recent visit to a museum I was shocked by the cacophony of noise in the place, the running, shouting, screaming roar of hundreds of out of control children accompanied by their indulgent, moronic, grinning, fast food chomping parents. It was unpleasant, distracted from appreciation of the exhibits and quickly gave me a headache and the desire to be homicidal. The last time I had visited the place, many decades before, it had been a place of hushed reverence and awe, with whispered conversations, not a noisy indoor theme park.
They all need a damn good clip round the ear or better still a bowl full of custard overturned on their empty heads. Bah, humbug.
Lol! I am certainly not in favour of noise. But you can’t go to someone else’s country and complain about how they want to live. If you don’t like it, don’t live there. That is what we keep saying to those who come here and don’t like it. The cause of the dislike is irrelevant in the case of an immigrant.
JJB at the Speccie:-
“The Isolationist Brits march on.”
When it looks like a troll, reads like a troll and smells like a troll, the chances are . . .
More fatuous Anglophobe inanity from JJB at the other place:-
“Those who visit here from Coffee House Wall perhaps do not appreciate that from afar the isolationist tendency of the British is seen as a curiosity. How can a little island of 60 Million hope to compete with China, India and certainly the US.”
Apart from the message being somewhat confused (does he really mean isolationist or imperialist?) he seems to forget that a “little island” of far less than 60 million once ruled much of the world. In the words of Arthur Harris “We shall see.”
And America is busy self-immolating under Obama. The socialist gunk that will stop up the works, the whole works and nothing but the works is about 10 years behind the Peoples Republic of Great Britain. Give it time.
‘better still a bowl full of custard overturned on their empty heads’
Just before the end of the last century, the now moribund bookstore chain, Waterstones, used to exhibit a carousel of black and white postcards in its windows. My favourite was the picture of a bawling baby strapped into it’s high chair with an upturned bowl of spaghetti over its head.
I wonder for how many more years the un-PC PC lasted before being withdrawn as ‘inappropriate’.
Nicholas @09:51
Yes, other people’s electronically amplified noise is very intrusive and is the scourge of modern living. Have you noticed how, these days, the great british workman (painter, builder etc.) is incapable of working at all unless he is accompanied by the output blaring from a ghetto blaster?
My neighbour owns 3 quite expensive electric guitars. He can’t play any of them. To mask his ‘prowess’, after plugging in to his amp, he puts heavy a metal CD on his HiFi (LOUD) and then tries to play along with it. What a twat! He is SO bad it makes me laugh, but I feel sorry for his wife and dog.
AWK May 3rd 23:25
Sustainability. Sustainability of WHAT? An erection?
EC yes indeed. My particular favourite is the white van man who leaves his van with its radio blaring and the doors open while he goes in and out of a house on a job. I once perplexed one of these morons by going out and turning off the radio each time he went back into the house (I was tempted to drive the van away and park it in another street). After the third time and a bit of head scratching and looking around he left it switched off. Some people need “background” noise (usually a radio turned up to full volume with some irritating BBC twat of a DJ on it and morons calling in to whinge about something) in order to keep their brains functioning.
Let’s hope that the ubiquitous, neologism-de-jour ‘omnishambles’ vanishes from public discourse. That grim harridan Harriet Harman used the word on QT yesterday evening and drove me to an early night in my holdall.
Andy Car Park
AWK May 3rd 23:25
Sustainability. Sustainability of WHAT? An erection?
PASSIONATE? ROBUST? ON THE GROUND 🙁
Speaking of mind-numbing stupidty,, the builders had their special day yesterday. It was a “celebration of builders”. No events or celebrations. Just drinking and letting off fireworks.
They began round about 2 in the afternoon. The ones who were celebrating being builders on an empty lot near my house drank beer and lit fireworks from around 3 in the afternoon until 3 a.m. That was it. Banging fireworks for 12 hours. I called the police several times and they said the would “send a patrol”, as they are supposed to stop their fireworks impressario activities at 11, but, of course they did not.
I said “What about sick people being assaulted in their homes by this pointless, stupid moronic noise and the officer said, “oh, they don’t mind”.
Then when it stopped locally, there was another assault from the next town. I called the police again and she said, oh, they were celebrating the church. I said, “With amplifed rock music and firecrackers” and she said, “yes”.
I want to get back to my former, civilised, city, but Mexico is a huge country and it will be a very expensive move.
An example of the “middle ground and reasonableness” of telemachus/Hadjinikos:-
“Barry
“An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination”
Farage, Cameron and Cleegg.
Then a general election.
Then a Balls economic regime of growth and jobs.
There would have been a big national vote if the public saw chance to shift the current Downing Street rabble”
Endorsing the murder of those he disagrees with. Just like his idol Stalin. The model of the “Middle ground and reasonableness”. More full of shit than a septic tank and twice as toxic.
I wonder if there is any way to get the meaning of the American post of “First Lady” into the heads of thick ‘ead British reporters and subs.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2139237/Francois-Hollandes-wife-Valerie-Trierweiler-wants-Frances-new-First-Lady.html
They think that somehow, being married to the president of a country elevates his wife above all other women. Even British moron reporters have referred to to the wife of a prime minister as “Britain’s first lady”, our monarch slipping teir minds in their desire to sound trendy.
Again, for those with porous minds … First Lady is an official American positiion. It is a real job. It ha departmental premises in the White House. It has dedicated staff. IT IS WHOMEVER THE PRESIDENT CHOOSES TO OCCUPY THE FIRST LADY POSITION DURING HIS PRESIDENCY.
Most men, even stupid one like Obama and Jimmy Carter, recognise that appointing their wives to the post is the route to a quiet life. But Theodore Roosevelt appointed his daughter to the official position of First Lady. Another president who name I do not remember appointed a family friend, deeming her the most suitable for the position.
The ignorant British press must stop referring to the wife of an elected head of government as, say, France’s First Lady. She is the President’s wife. That is all. She has no position of her own.
The British are such slavish imitators of the Americans, and they so often get it so humiliatingly wrong.
I was perusing the MPs’ Register of Financial Interests to see how much an appearance on BBC Question Time is worth. Alas either no MP gets paid for it, or nobody declares it.
The register of interests contains a disappointing amount of detail. However, I did discover that Diane Abbot’s eye-rolling appearances on ‘This Week’ cost us licence payers £839 per session (apparently 3hrs work!)
Browsing through the entries for other MPs reveals that the BBC’s scale of fees for appearances is as follows:
‘This Week’ – £839, £800 or £500.
HIGNFY – £1500
Any Questions(radio) £150.
An article for News International rings up to £600 on the cash register. (depending on how high up the greasy pole you are) Alistair Darling earning top dollar at £600, Jack Straw’s weekly column (Times) £500.
(amazing how many troughing MPs have taken Rupert’s shilling but are quite prepared to call him “unfit” – hypocrites!)
Interestingly a book review for The Spectator appears to be worth £250
(plus a free book, presumably)
Hattie Horror has been doing a lot of travelling – but she always comes back!
(always keep the padlock key inside the holdall with you, Austin)
Peter Theodore 10.01 -, you are being deliberatrely obtuse or, worse, unintentionally obtuse. I said I like Mexico and have done so since childhood. I had not realised that there can be such a vast difference between states … which can be ascribed, obviously, to the vast differences between the original tribes who occupied, and still do, those areas. Some were cracking clever and some were … not.
I liked and respected the people in the state I lived in before, but it was too hot. I decided to move, forgetting that, unlike in a European country, or the US, I would be among different ethnics.
Verity 4th, – 16:37
I appreciate that the two alternatives may not be totally exclusive, but there’s
something about “Too hot” or “being pestered by the noise of a priest” that brings a smile to my lips.
Verity: Hi, England is a small country, but having lived in both Wiltshire and Surrey, I can tell you that the people in these two counties are like chalk and cheese. Wiltshire people are the kindest, most genuine and warmest people possible. I wonder if other posters haev noticed distinct regional differences.
Yes. Human beings are tribal. And tibes differ.
Nicholas @12.56
One reason for some needing constant full volume shite filling their heads is not so much to keep the brain working but to fill a rather big hole. Without the sounds there would be a big nasty black void. It must be difficult coping with that feeling and fear of the dark/void can provoke some rather nasty reactions.
Best leave them to their anaesthesia (!)
Forgive the vulgarity, but watching TV, I find that Baroness Warsi’s face resembles an anus.
Well, I don’t think I’ve seen enough anuses to agree or violently disagree with you, AWK, my main experience of anuses being a cat’s anus when it walks away disdainfully with its tail held straight up, and I would have to say that I don’t think Baroness Warsi looks that good.
Verity: I agree. Felines are purrfect in every way! The Baroness is accusing UKip of increasing its votes by ‘persuading’ BNP supporters of voting for them. Shall we name her Hen’s Anus to go with her leader Hen’s Ass? 🙂
Verity: As two educated ladies, we have certainly conducted a wholesome conversation.
AWK – Vullture’s term for David Cameron’s horrible mouth was Hen’s Arse, out of which he laid so many eggs. I just have a feeling that, given the natural – and effortless – superiority of cats, that Cat’s Anus may be a bit above Warsi’s station.
Not that I want to be unkind.
Verity – Until you described a cat’s habit of turning its back on us and walking away with its tail pointing straight up I hadn’t realised the significance of it.
It’s mooning us. And doing so very elegantly.
Comment by “Boudicca” at the Speccie:-
“Perusing the comments at ‘another place’ you know, the sad little island with three people on it, who all agree with each other. An odd assortment of armchair generals, windbags and cranks. The digital despot who designed the site, an eccentric vicar pontificates that he ‘believes in freedom of speech’ yet he censors everyone ! We are disgusted by his hypocrisy. This peculiar chap wants to reform the Kent Yeomanry and buy a £9000 tank, his wife thinks he’s rather strange. Nuff said.”
“We” are disgusted? Hmm. As a “sad little island with three people on it” one wonders why it should so occupy Nick Hadjinikos that he feels the need to use so many different pseudonyms so obviously. But shame on the Spectator for letting him do so.
He came to the Speccie by way of the old Wall. He pretty much never posted on the other Speccie threads until the old Wall disappeared and now almost as many of his comments relate to this site as to the subject of the threads there. Rather obsessive behaviour towards a “sad little island with three people on it”. But we know from Peter that he wanted desperately to post here and was more than upset that he was not allowed to. And we know from his own comments how much he lurks and rails in his inability to articulate his “message” here.
At the old Wall it was clear from the very start, when he first appeared as “telemachus”, that it was the political opinions of the other commentators that bothered him the most. He began with a proposed “Charter” of rules to try to exert control over an open forum and to impose his own beliefs. Then he began asking the Spectator to censor other commentators and resorting to hyperbolic pejoratives in a futile attempt to discredit and undermine them. Unfortunately he was not politically neutral, but of the Left, even though he occasionally tried to pass himself off as a “one-nation tory”. He revealed himself as an admirer of Stalin and romantic towards some aspects of pre-1989 communist totalitarianism, attempting a ridiculous defence of Katyn that switched between denial and justification – really rather repulsive. But perhaps we should not be surprised by his belief in the legitimacy of the extermination of political rivals, even as we are repulsed by it, as he has recently advocated the assassination of UKIP, Tory and Lib Dem leaders.
But at one stage he also tried to pass himself of as a multi-denominational Christian seeking harmony between Christianity and Islam. His current tack is to profess the centre ground which is at least more “honest” towards the current tack of the Labour Party, which pretends the same thing. But of course it is not the centre ground at all. It is actually the left of centre to which the centre ground has been shifted by decades of guile and subversion, the brainwashing of our young and the inability of the centre right to either identify or confront the danger. Instead they have moved into that ground of the enemy’s choosing and attempted to occupy it, resulting in even greater opposition and clamour from the collective which sits further to the left – the Borg – the great British communist-socialist collective and alliance of public sector, academia, unions, champagne socialists, quangocrats and the BBC.
But we shouldn’t entirely dismiss him because he is a good representation of what we are up against. The face of the intolerant Left that is more interested in suppressing any dissent to its orthodoxy and shutting up opinions that it does not want to be heard, than in promoting any tangible and verifiable value in its own assumptions and beliefs. Thus a logical right wing challenge to a fatuous piece of Leftist propaganda is met not by engagement or argument but by a pejorative one-line dismissal, usually involving the characterisation of good vs evil or hyperbolic assertions.
Curiously this approach has gained ground in a Britain once remarkable for its pragmatism, tolerance and common-sense. I’m not sure how or why. It is the reason that people like Ken Livingstone can still attract as many votes as he did, and why Labour are “resurgent” when most of their hierarchy should instead be in prison for conspiracy to commit crimes against the British people.
So this lurker, this stalker, this cheerleader of the Left really represents the old comintern, now masquerading as some sort of centre ground (e.g. the centre left) with its aspirations for the power to oppress shrouded in ideas of multi-culturalism, “progressive reform”, equality and fairness. So far many of the Right have correctly identified this but have not managed to effectively confront it or win ground from it. The Right does not invoke the same tribal collectivism as the Left, cannot draw together the same influential force under the banner of strong, emotive beliefs that drill home ideas into the minds of the young, the wavering or the stupid. The Right is fractured. By embracing not the broad church of the Right but instead the ideas of a bien pensant elite minority, trying to occupy what it thinks is the centre ground of British politics but which is in reality the centre-left or left, Cameron both fights on ground of the enemy’s choosing and fractures his own side into warring factions. He is not a uniting force and he does not offer leadership to pragmatic, tolerant common sense. His enemies still hate him and work against him, especially those establishment agencies and organisations he foolishly neglected to purge when he came to power, and now many of those who should be his natural friends hate him too, for not representing them, fighting for them or protecting them.
And more, this time as “telemachus'”:-
“Boudicca
May 5th, 2012 2:26am
Particularly helpful since Verity has been angling to recruit you to the Verity-Wotana Harem for a while.
I do think you are being unfair on Peter who seems a nice man, although a little full of his own self importance and prone to tantrums.
I think you should also be careful because he talks to the Carter-Ruck folk.”
Nicholas re the deeply moronic Cameron: “Cameron both fights on ground of the enemy’s choosing and fractures his own side into warring factions.”
Yes. That’s what stupid people do. I am still baffled that it has taken the public so long to figure out that Cameron is Davy Dim. He fizzles and twizzles around with ideas that an aspirational 14-year old might judge rather cunning.
Fortunately for the Tories, it becoming accepted that Cameron, although very, very high on the Richter Scale of self-regard, is actually Davy Dim.
I don’t like this comment, Nicholas: ““Boudicca
May 5th, 2012 2:26am
Particularly helpful since Verity has been angling to recruit you to the Verity-Wotana Harem for a while.”
AWK is a thoughtful, articulate, right-thinking individual. As is Boudicca. As am I. I find your reference to “harem” terribly Fourth Formish and out of place here.
Verity: Sorry, lady
You have got the wrong end of the stick. Our good Nicholas did NOT write that about Boudicca. She did! See copies from the blog on the “Speccie:
Boudicca
May 5th, 2012 2:26amReport this comment
Perusing the comments at ‘another place’ you know, the sad little island with three people on it, who all agree with each other. An odd assortment of armchair generals, windbags and cranks. The digital despot who designed the site, an eccentric vicar pontificates that he ‘believes in freedom of speech’ yet he censors everyone ! We are disgusted by his hypocrisy. This peculiar chap wants to reform the Kent Yeomanry and buy a £9000 tank, his wife thinks he’s rather strange. Nuff said.
telemachus’
May 5th, 2012 9:29amReport this comment
Boudicca
May 5th, 2012 2:26am
Particularly helpful since Verity has been angling to recruit you to the Verity-Wotana Harem for a while.
I do think you are being unfair on Peter who seems a nice man, although a little full of his own self importance and prone to tantrums.
I think you should also be careful because he talks to the Carter-Ruck folk.
“Particularly helpful since Verity has been angling to recruit you to the Verity-Wotana Harem for a while.”
Not to mention that smutty contrarians’ club under the deeply sinister chairmanship of Frank ‘P-on-everything-progressive’ and abetted by his catamite chorus of Andy Carpark, EC and its craven fellow travelers of keening tosspots.
I urge Peter to close this toxic blog forthwith and allow more reasoned debate to prevail elsewhere.
AWK – Thank you! I missed that as I so seldom go to the other place these days!
Verity, as AWK has clarified, I was quoting from telemachus’ comment. The inverted commas are the clue but I’m sure I was taught their use in an earlier form than the fourth.
Now I’m puzzled whether Austin Barry’s post above is the real Austin Barry, tongue in cheek, or more subterfuge.
Nicholas
Tongue in cheek and, as they say over here, being bold and just messing.
Sorry, my cat had to go to the vet and they opened up the clinic early for him. I thought for a minute she was going to give me a shot of the same sedative and the worrying bit is, I was going to accept it.
Verity
May 5th, 2012
Verity
Don’t be alarmed. Many years ago, I had a friend who was a vet. If I didn’t feel well, I asked his advice, and it was always excellent. Kept away from the quacks. Now, seeing the awful NHS doctors and really useless ‘nurses’ and Health Care Assistants, I sorely miss my old friend. I believe I have reached the age I am today because I avoid doctors’ surgeries. Hope your cat is OK.
Thank you, AWK.
Nicholas @15:06
“Now I’m puzzled whether Austin Barry’s post above is the real Austin Barry, tongue in cheek, or more subterfuge.”
Not elegant enough. It surely has to be one of the telemachus’ shadows.
Peter?
Austin has said it was him, tongue in cheek. (And all the info I have shows that it was him)
Inconsistency always troubles me.
Good luck.
Peter
Thanks for that. I was beginning to have an incipient identity crisis. Now, where is my holdall, I need a good night’s sleep.
I know ‘beginning’ and ‘incipient’ are tautologous. Apologies. Now, if I can just get this padlock to close…..
These Radio Times:in this weeks issue(beyond Sir Patrick Moore)is an article by Jonathan Meades;”Enlightened? Moi?”.Of America he writes of British journalists”taking seriously the billionaire fruit-cakes who aspire to preside over it (the USA).—- Of France(where he lives in Marseille) he writes: “the bogyey of the ‘far right’….predictably invoked…result of Mariane Le Pens substantial showing.”And in France and Britain” there exists a liberal-left ‘pensee unique’–even in papers of the right, even in the Tory …coalition”.Sarkozy’s cimes are not to subscribe to the media consensus;”its consensus”.He sugests Sarko may win,but nothing will change:”France will is too used to being France to let that happen”.
The first seven items on The Speccie blog are about London and Boris.
As though the rest of the country has anything other than a mild, passing interest in parochial London politics. It’s not as though they were voting for national leaders. Do they really think that anyone who doesn’t live in London gives a stuff who the mayor is?
Mr Cameron,
As others have written here before, It is relatively straightforward:
1. Clamp down on immigration.
2. Get rid of illegals.
3. Admit to liking Europe but get out of the monstrosity of the EU and the ECHR.
4. Announce we cannot have 6 million on benefits; the vast majority must work to earn their living and we don’t need cheap foreign labour to exist: Romanians commandeering the Big Issue spots via violence, does not a harmonious, multicultural society make…
5. Make it mandatory to get our children educated to a competitive level:they can take it, for goodness sake.
6. Enforce harsh penalties in prison, hang paedophiles and generally get a grip.
Behave like a wimp, with no principles and you’ll be eaten alive in the real world.
Voila Kenneth Williams singing ‘Ma Crepe Suzette’
http://www.callingengland.net/2009/04/sunday-morning.html
On a Dublin bus, but equally applicable to Cameron’s awful coalition.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2012/0505/1224315629923.html?via=mr
Andy Carpark … Thank you! How very witty and funny and knowing Kenneth Williams was!
He never allowed anyone to use the loo in his flat. He sent them across the street to the tube station. (Can’t remember which one.)
I think it was Hammersmith.
Pity Letwin didn’t follow Kenneth Williams wise rule. He let a stranger in his home at four in the morning and got punched up his ‘ooter for his pains!
Here’s an idea, telemachus. Start your own blog. Then you can have a charter of reasonableness and blog about “serious matters” to your heart’s content without being a sad, one agenda lurker and poster of the same inanities under different persona. That way you’ll also attract a coterie of red fellow travellers instead of having to embarrassingly beseech the odd confused and pompous old pedant at the Spectator to be your friend – or worse use another pseudonym to pretend you are your own friend.
It can’t be healthy for you to spend so much of your time obsessing about a “sad little island with three people on it” – and all three foaming, revanchist curmudgeons at that. It must be like being locked in an auditorium watching an endless repeat performance of ‘Waiting for Godot’.
No, much better you start your own blog. The rubbish spouted by foaming lefties is so much funnier than the rubbish spouted by foaming revanchists. Then we could come over and troll there. It would be like old times. What larfs, tele, what larfs.
PS When pretending to be someone else it helps if you can deploy more than one writing style. Yours is . . . er . . . a bit obvious, as well as crap.
Kenneth Williams’ Diaries were “a reet rivettin’ read like” for anyone interested in showbiz of the 20th century. His last diary entry was, “Oh what’s the bloody point…”
I think we all feel like that occasionally. I know I do, particularly after weeks of grim weather, like it is today.
Austin Barry, May 5th, 2012 – 15:09
Smutty? I’ve never once expressed a desire to bunker Hazel Irving at the August National or indeed show her my cue action on a snooker table at the Crucible in Sheffield.
Saw a rather haggard & dishevelled Kirsty Squark on Newsnight on Thursday. Thought she may be have been dressing down to compliment the sack that Baroness(my arse!) Warsi was wearing. There again, they were probably both auditioning for a part the Scottish play.
Redneck 6th, – 00:29
“Make it mandatory to get our children educated to a competitive level: they can take it, for goodness sake.”
Y’know, I agree wholeheartedly with your premise, and also that both the surrendering of discipline in schools and changes in teaching methods are significant causes of the deterioration, but sometimes I have to ask myself “How?” when the thrawn little b*ggers WON’T learn.
In my final year at primary school (when traditional teaching methods largely prevailed) there was a lad who had twice been held back a year because he had failed the end of year exams. To watch and hear him, when he was asked to stand up and read was painful, and as for his arithmetic…! But he didn’t care. A couple of years later I ran into him at the shops. He’d never got beyond that final year, and left school when he was 15. But now he was working as a builders apprentice, and happy as Larry. Where he went from there I don’t know but, even as a young teenager, it made me realise that children coming from certain upbringings will never fit into the school system, and consequently never succeed.
Upbringing: A word that, in certain groups, spreading in the sixties, was seen as deeply unfashionable. Laissez-faire liberalism, to them, was the answer. Are we ever going to be able to rein that in? We must give it a shot.
Redneck – great proposals but none are possible until 3 (b) in your list has been accomplished. Our own removal from the ECHR. This replaced Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights and prevents us from practicing common sense. Even withdrawal from the EU would not give us rights to hang child molesters. The ECHR is the first on the list to go. And it would be the hardest to remove, since the politics of Britain’s minority groups owe their lavish existence to it. Once that’s gone, points 1, 2 4 and 6 would automatically follow, and then there is education: if *even* super lefty gob Janet Street Porter can say comfortably on prime TV as she did a few weeks ago that she thinks that children should sit in neat rows facing the teacher with their traps shut, then I would say that the sixties’ liberal idea of relaxed education is completely dead and kept alive only by the insistence of a tiny minority. Let’s find these people, crush their arguments with polls, and campaign to restrict the tax money they receive. You will probably find that they will convert to capitalism when their socialist money making scheme is over, like Derek Hatton who now develops property on Crete, or some Greek island.
Socialism is capitalism without the rigours of the market. A way of carving a career without ever having to face proper criticism (i.e. that no-one will buy your product). The poor dears, Fatty Abbott, Red Ken, Bob the Old Crowe, have not enough belief in themselves that they could create something that people would buy and that they could sell enough of it to keep on swilling Veuve Cliquot and holidaying in Tuscany. Let’s help them out by cutting off the tax money and putting their understanding of mankind to the real test. In the market. Perhaps then they will find out how restrictive and poverty-inducing their own policymaking has been all these years.
Anyone see the pro-Capitalist black man on QT Thursday? What a guy! Love a black capitalist. They scare lefties to death! They turn the whole leftie machine on its head! Like Ann Coulter, a sexy and powerful woman who loves old school men! Hahaha.
AWK – I do not believe Kenneth Williams let a stranger into his house at 4:30 a.m.or any other time. He was notoriously fussy and stand offish. He wouldn’t even let legitimate guests use the loo. He used to send them across the street to the tube station.
Frank P, where are you? Hope all is well.
AWK 3:24 – apologies. You were referring to Oliver Lewin, not the sainted KW. I had only had a total of one sip of tea when I dashed off my response to you.
Nicholas 8:30 – Brilliant idea for telemuckus. Have a blog and populate it with imaginary friends wth different names! Who contribute to your blog! All in he same writing style and all with the same obsessions. Telemucous, I sincerely urge you to take this solution to your loneliness and anger kindly proferred by Nicholas.
Conversely, there may be a Bloggers Anonymous for compusive bloggers who throw caution to the wind for the opportunity to get just one more blog in before passig out.
As Nicholas kindly pointed out … you are making up friends (all of whom agree with every word you write, and who admire you so much, they even imitate, note perfect, your style). There are blogs for people like you. If you can’t find one, do as Nicholas suggested, and start one.
Dean Street writes, “Fatty Abbott, Red Ken, Bob the Old Crowe, have not enough belief in themselves that they could create something that people would buy …”. }
With good reason. They couldn’t create anything people would buy. They are the greedy brain dead, like all socialists.
This morning, there was an urgent message from Facebook, or one of those other ego sites for the legally brain dead, telling me that three people, who they named and who are in my address book, were urgently trying to get in touch with me.
Well, how about if they just emailed me?
What is the bloody point of these ego sites? I’ve never even visited one, in case I caught an infection, but they’re all people … judging from the ones who have begged me to join their pages (oh, except a real estate agent I had written to in Jakarta, who wanted to be my “friend”), they are already know me and have my email address, obviously.
So what is the point? To be able to point at the page and show how many “friends” you have? (Given that you already have all their email addresses and they have yours.)
What is behind this scam? Is it to sell email addresses or what? Cui bono? Certainly not all the little mice who scamper around collecting email addresses for the owners of the companies.
Any thoughts?
And the first annual Deerhunter Cartridge Case for bagging two clowns with one shot goes to …
Mark
May 5th, 2012 1:11pm
David Lindsay, You could bore for England. Are you related to Fergus Pickering ?
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/7826583/boris-is-back-and-ken-retires.thtml
What are you all doing? No contributions from anyone but N America (or, I think Malfleur is somewhere else) for two or three hours, yet you’re being drenched over there. What’s going on??
Facebook is very useful indeed for promoting various activities and I use it every day. I don’t tend to post my personal activities but it has been successfully used for lots of things, including promoting this site.
I am not brain dead, and many of the people I deal with on FB are not brain dead. If you haven’t even visited then how do you know that everyone using it is brain dead or on an ego trip?
I was in the East End at a Church mission yesterday, and at Church this morning. Then out with my wife. Just got in. I’ve had various pressing work things to do. I’ve had a busy week and not been able to do as much online as I’d have liked. I’ve also been reading the brilliant, fantastic, important book by Delingpole – Watermelons – I can’t recommend this book enough.
Because they send messages through Face Book begging me to join, although they obviously have my email address because they have given it, without my permission, to Face Book and similar. Why are these people, some of whom I have known for years, so keen to get me to join, given that they have had my email address for years and can get in touch with me at will? Why do they want to get in touch with me through a third party?
If you already know all the people who have joined your page or whatever, why don’t you just write to them personally?
P from M – James Delingpole is aces plus.
They haven’t given your email address to Facebook. They have set up a page to advertise their business, or to keep in contact with people they know, and they are inviting you to join. Businesses are doing what is called marketing, and individuals are keeping in touch. That’s all. You don’t want to respond then don’t. Businesses have websites to reach all of their clients at once, they don’t write personal letters to everyone. FB is not different for businesses.
I could keep in touch with the 974 FB friends I have, one at a time, and abandon all other activities, or I can use FB and keep in touch with all my friends at once.
If you don’t like the idea then don’t participate, but it works for millions of people and businesses, and lets me be in touch with hundreds of people who might be interested in this website, in a way that would otherwise be impossible.
Andy Carpark – Agreed about David Lindsay, but have you encountered his superior in teeth-grinding bossy opinions? At least David Lindsay, however wrong-headed and long winded, generally knows what he is talkig about even if his conclusions are wrong.
What about the Nigerian immigrant to the US, Jack Igonikon (his real name, whch is not Igonikon Jack) who lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and thinks he is leader writer to the world.
P from M – This morning I got a “reminder” in the form of a fake joint email from three people who do not know one another asking why I have not joined.
It’s called marketing. It’s how business works.
Gosh, thanks, Peter! I hadn’t realised how business works! I must write that down in my “To Learn” notebook!
Well then why be surprised that FB would want you to open an account?
This has just shown up on Fox News –
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/06/attorney-in-hijab-defends-call-for-other-women-at-11-hearing-to-wear/
I don’t know what other people think, but I think her behaviour is scandalous and that she ought to be disbarred.
Herbert Thornton, thanks for the Sunday laugh.
Cheryl (chav name) Borman is a self-satisfied, self-elevating ignoramus.
She … requested that the court order other women to follow that example so that the defendants do not have to avert their eyes “for fear of committing a sin under their faith.”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/06/attorney-in-hijab-defends-call-for-other-women-at-11-hearing-to-wear/#ixzz1u6sUNg2t
Again, Cheryl, the hijab, niqab, keffya etc are ancient desert attire (ancient being thousands of years), intelligently designed to keep the searing desert sun and the constantly blowing desert sands out of eyes, ears, mouths and throats. Duh. For a lawyer, who surely must have some deductive abilities, you certainly are away with the fairies, Cheryl. This is why men wear the same attire!!!!!! Has that never struck you, Cheryl? Have you never noticed that the kings of Saudi Arabia and the Emerirates, etc., also wear these long loose flowing garments? And those Pakis roaming the streets in pyjamas and kurtas? Did it never occur to you that the reason for these desert garments is the sun and the sand?
Why do you think it is anything to do with mo’ and why do you think such pantomime dress has a place in a British courtroom? Touting for more business, dear? And some grants from rich Arabas? And publicity so you can get on talk shows?
I agree, Herbert Thornton, that she ought to be disbarred. We don’t want dhimmis pleading cases in advanced Western society.
Cheryl, could you be an angel and point out where in the q’ran or surahs where these get-ups are even mentioned – never mind mandated?
In a way, Cheryl, you are committing blasphemy, because you are ascribing thoughts to mohammad and allah that they never had.
Herbert Thornton
May 6th, 2012 – 17:58
Herbert,
I’ll tell youu what I think – she is a typical Democrat bleeding-heart, bolshie, scrubber. Here , she would be a LibDem or Socialist, bleeding-heart, bolshie scrubber. Disbarred, she will probably replace Hiliary Clinton when she retires!
Cheryl … as you are clearly illiterate in the q’ran, let me take a load of your mind and tell you that mo’ never gave fashion advice. Even he knew his limits. All he ever said on dress, in their q’ran, for the record, is these two sentences: “Women should dress modestly. So should men.”
That was it!!!
Not too much to remember, Cheryl! Do you have any idea how comical you look dressed up in desert attire in a British court?
Oh, thanks, AWK! I hadn’t bothered to read the piece and that it was a British scrubber. Thanks for pointing out that it’s in the US. She’s probably angling for a job in Baraka Obama Hussain’s administration. She’s left it a bit late.
Peter @ 17.01. Agreed on Delingpole’s Watermelons. His style is very readable and he absolutely nails the chicanery and fraudulence of the climate change loons and the weakness of the likes of dave who fall in line.
BTW have you read ‘From the Holy Mountain’ (W Dalrymple) where he follows the route of a 6th century Byzantine monk through the M East?
Hexhamgeezer, I don’t have a lot of time for general reading at the moment, but after starting Watermelons I read it non-stop through the week.
I’ve read ‘From the Holy Mountain’ and found it interesting and enjoyable. Have you read any H.V. Morton? Through the Lands of the Bible etc?
Why are you all copying Telly’s very odd posts from the Speccie and re-pasting them on the Wall?
Peter won’t let him post here. So why encourage Hadjii?
Strange days indeed.
The DT reckons that the election of Francois Hollande will lead to a large influx of wealthy Frenchmen into England. Mass immigration may finally have developed an upside.
What’s happened to the other commentators here by the way – did our two women drive them off?
Hexhamgeezer, are you from Hexham? We stopped off there a few years ago so I could visit the ancient Saxon crypt and touch the frith stool. I have a great love of St Wilfrid.
Malfleur, every other language of the world is heard on the streets of Maidstone now, so some French would not be out of place.
“WILDERS: Resisting threat of fanatical Islam
West must not surrender permanent liberty for temporary tolerance”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/4/resisting-threat-of-fanatical-islam/
Peter
I look forward to them launching a “mission civilisatrice” in some of our big cities.
Malfleur 6th, – 19:59
“– did our two women drive them off?”
What? Like Thelma and Louise?
Personally I am appalled by that Cheryl Borman story. I can’t really understand any lawyer willingly taking up this defence, let alone “showing respect” to those monsters. My thoughts, unlike some it seems, remain with the thousands of innocent people consigned to a horrible death in those aircraft and buildings, in many cases a tortured and lingering death of futile hope and ultimate despair – like those many other victims kidnapped, held for months and then murdered by terrorists with the same beliefs. Yes, the treatment of the accused should be governed by the rule of law and justice but I think the line should be drawn at treating them somehow as human rights “victims” which seems to be occurring with all the usual suspects. Those clamouring about their rights and deprivations seem to forget the magnitude of their crimes and their evil intent.
“I feel it is incumbent upon myself as a counsel to point that out and ask for some consideration from the prosecution”
The 3,269 true victims were shown no consideration or respect and had no justice bestowed upon them; their murderers took no steps not to offend them.
Noa, May 6th, 2012 – 19:56
“Strange days indeed.”
Yes, Noa. This week, the story so far…
It transpires that the ageing, fat, balding, amateur prize winning poet known as Fergus Pickering has an alter ego who is a young girl called Phoebe Flood.
Meanwhile, there have been far too many posts about cats’ anuses. Coincidently, Verity’s cat who had to go the Vets after, presumably, getting a firecracker up its arse. We are still not sure which of them got the needle with the sedative as Verity is now talking to a chav called Cheryl who is not even here.
The really good news? France is now fucked too!
… and what Nicholas just said.
I note that both a Fergus Pickering and a fergus pickering are posting at the Speccie. One disparaging of and one supportive of telemachus. The little shit himself is caught up in the red flag waving, march on the Winter Palace hubris of Hollande’s win and a bit of Ballsphoria but I am not convinced by his appeals to Boudicca, an apparent stalwart of UKIP, to join him in his little harassment games on the basis that this is a “UKIP porn site”. And anyone who thinks JJB is one of the “greats” must be barking. Something does not compute – although I suppose that, in telemachus’ case, is like wondering whether bears shit in the woods.
Ostrich 1234
Agree, some you can’t teach but hopefully we could easily improve the standard of education for the majority?
Dean Street 1340
Hadn’t thought of them in sequence: have to agree with ECHR first, would make the rest far easier to achieve.
Re-chap on QT: occasionally see similar on Fox News (fair and balanced) and thought the same i.e. bet the bedwetters hate this!
EC – What a very nasty post. Why is it funny to imagine that an innocent animal would have a firecracker up its arse? The tone around here is cratering.
Nicholas 2118
Clearly this woman is loco.
I think it is disrespectful to the poor victims for her to dress in this ridiculous fashion: by doing so she has lost any pretence of being an objective, professional attorney.
Clown.
When Brian Paddick made his little swan song after the election results were announced, he thanked his “husband” for his support. Interesting to know that an ex-police chief had the female role in this travesty of a marriage. Even more weird to know that if Lib Dems had won, this election, his husband would have played the part Dennis did in the Thatcher years
The wheels are coming off the Fourth Reich as was foretold by Nigel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krM6YCQql2k
Well, I suppose to Paddick ‘husband’ is a synonym for ‘bender’ or perhaps ‘pillow biter’. It really is hard not to laugh at this nonsense. Has the world gone bonkers or have we?
Redneck – the official categorisation for this woman is “dhimmi”. Dhimmis are required to pay a special tax to be allowed to live. They also have to step off the pavement when an islamic passes, and are required to cede their place in queues to islamics. The official name for this condition is “dhimmitude”.
In other words: submit. The word islam, by the way, means “submission”.
This lawyer under discussion is in state of dhimmitude and the state should not be allowing her to represent victims of islam becausse she has surrendered to them.
A prosecutor with some knowledge needs to get her kicked off the case, and preferably out of the profession, which she is bringing into disrepute.
That should of course have been a synonym for ‘wife’. My apologies to ‘benders’ and ‘pillow biters’ everywhere.
Aren’t you getting the impression that this blog is becoming incestuous and rather tedious?
Ping pong between AWK and Verity, facile slightly surreal absurdities between me and Andy Carpark, intellectual and grumpy episodes from Nicholas and genial good humour from EC and Peter. It’s like a family gathering at Christmas just before everyone sinks into afternoon torpor and oblivious sleep.
AWK and I occasionally pass a short – and sometimes acerbic – comment to one another, but in the main we both engaged with the majority (male) on a regular basis.
It is awfully silly to say that because we pass a comment or two in the course of a 24 hour period, we must be talking to one another because we’re both women.
Go back and check your figures. And if the blog is tedious, no one has you manacled to the door.
There is a small but telling lack of precision in the recent posts ostensibly authored by Austin Barry. I have known stone-faced elders of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland that are more renowned for their ‘genial good humour’ than Peter from Maidstone (No offence, mate).
Poster at 23:25, I call you for an impostor and provisionally for an onanist.
It’s becoming a fascinating hall of mirrors rather like the last scenes of Lady from Shanghai. Who are any of us: shadows in a shadow drama like Javanese puppets. I think I’ll turn in. Are you ready, Brian?
EC – 21:24
Blimey! Thanks for the catch up.
‘Rather tedious … Who are any of us?’
I used to quite enjoy our banter without harbouring too many illusions as to its ultimate profundity. Now I am beginning to wonder if I was taken for a ride by an undergraduate from the faculty of Global Studies at the University of East Anglia.
Tell you what. Why don’t you and me form a ‘crowd crystal’ at the forthcoming seminar by David Icke at Wembley Arena? He’s rather good, you know. If you substitute giant lizards for Common Purpose, the bones of coherence start to glow and pulsate, like in an airport X-ray.
http://www.davidicke.com/headlines/54813-david-icke-live-at-wembley-2012-tickets-on-sale-now
President-elect Hollande apparently made many trips to England, though none of them appears to have included a visit to a tailor – his suit looks as though he had spent the night in a Hastings telephone kiosk.
In his victory speech, he urged his countrymen to be generous and announced opposition to austerity. As French national debt is already about 90% owned by Germany, one can imagine whose money he was urging his countrymen to be generous with.
Still, nice to have something of an Anglophile in the Elysee Palace; I shall have to learn to sing Crepe Suzette.
Learn to sing “Douce France, chere payee de mon enfance”. That is a sweet song with no politicall message. And it is how most French (indigenous) French people feel about France.
A recent letter to the Guardian(from France)points-out the Franco-German alliance under Merkel & Sarkozy was known as ‘Merkozy’.The writer wonders ,if there is a Hollande victory,they can then look forward to ‘Merde’.—(Information from The Week news mag.)
PfM.
Peter,
I’m not from Hexham but live here – We are about 5 minutes walk from the Abbey (we’ve got a good view from the house). The choir, bells and organ are all very active – all very traditional and none the worse for that.
I’ve not heard of H V Morton but will look him up. Russia and Central Asia (fact and fiction) being mostly my thing.
Whenever we visit somewhere like Hexham my wife is always suspicious and says ‘Why have we come here? What ancient Christian site are you planning to visit?’.
It is this sense of being truly surrounded by our Christian heritage which makes me so angry when politicians, judges and the media act as though we were a secular society. It is a wonderful thing to visit Hexham and touch the very cathedra that St Wilfrid sat upon. Or to visit St Augustine’s Abbey and sit at the spot where my patron saint is buried. Or to visit any of hundreds and thousands of such special places in the British Isles.
I must doubt that any of this means anything at all to almost all politicians and those with power (though not authority) at the moment.
Briekvik thing – OH why did not any of the young people defend themselves. After 10 shot dead, some others could have done something. No, they all ran away and got killed anyway.
Peter, I have posted three posts here this morning, they appear for a couple of minutes the disappear from the screen.
I asked why the deeply self-regarding and not-very-bright, but lucky, Trevor Phillips refers to Pakis “grooming” little indigenous girls to be passed around Pakis for sex. Does he mean fixing up their hair and making sure their clothes are coordinated? What does “grooming” have to do with being passed around to be raped by a serious of Pakis?
Why is this word “grooming” being used? To soften the offence and make it sound more like a social gaffe than an assault on a child?
Tevor Pbillips sould learn to speak English.
Here’s a tragically stupid comment from Jennifer:
“After 10 shot dead, some others could have done something” Like what?
“No, they all ran away and got killed anyway.” Yes, running away would be the natural human response. What would Jennifer suggest the children should have done? Disarm him?
PS – I am getting my keyboard fixed this morig. mornig. morning!