The G-Gnome Rides Out

The G-Gnome Is Being Outsourced

2006-01-13T21:10:00.000Z

to his creator's new, slightly less anonymous blog.

I always hated the serene, fat little bastard anyway...

Some Initial Thoughts On The British Government's Proposed Illegal Immigrant Bonus

2006-01-13T07:43:00.000Z

Blogging rule of thumb; a relevant story about a topic that interests you always appears when you have the least amount of time to dissect it.

I'll be coming back to this. However, some initial thoughts:

As reported in The Times -

"ASYLUM-SEEKERS and illegal immigrants are to be offered a £3,000 bounty to leave Britain voluntarily as part of the Government’s efforts to increase the number who are returning home. ..."

The Scottish Daily Mail, headline January 12 -

"WE'LL GIVE YOU £3,000 TO LEAVE SCOTLAND"

As reported in The Daily Telegraph -

"The Government expects to spend about £6 million over six months encouraging around 3,000 refugees, who have been refused permission to stay or are awaiting decisions, to return home."

Altogether now, from the top - when is a criminal not a criminal, but a 'refugee' ?

When The Daily Telegraph is writing about them.

Some Thoughts On My Role In The History of Evolution

2006-01-13T07:41:00.000Z

If I were a dinosaur, I'd be the one contemplating the beauty of the ball of light coming towards me.

Foreign Criminal Of The Day - Bail Jumping Billy

2006-01-12T22:52:00.000Z

Even the most ardent admirers of onshore offshoring must despair at the conduct of Adam Zugaj.

Zugaj, a Pole, today failed to appear at Edinburgh Sheriff Court to answer charges of dangerous driving and drink-driving, offences alleged to have been committed last December 17.

The offences were allegedly committed while he was driving a bus.

He was one of a job-lot of 700 Eastern Europeans recruited overseas by First Bus, which is in turn part of First Group - the same First Group which operates First ScotRail, whose commercial director Gordon Dewar is one of Scotland's Haughty Immigration Tsars.

Zugaj has been sacked and the BBC reports that,

"His solicitor told the court that he was unable to explain his client's failure to appear."

Indeed.

An Unhealthy Speculation

2006-01-12T22:36:00.000Z

In a Strangeloveian column for today's Daily Telegraph entitled 'We should be very worried about Iran', Sir John Keegan wrote,

"Iranians may well be the missing link for which MI5 is searching behind the July 7 bombings in London."

Indeed they might be - as also might the Martians be responsible, for the logic behind throwing about wild suggestions concerning the nationality of those responsible for killing 52 people without displaying firm evidence is certainly otherworldly. It will play well with the neocon moon-howlers who go up to the cusp of accusing British generals of treason, and then back away; but with few others.

You never know, it could all have been the work of the gnomes...because you don't really think they spend all night just sitting about your garden looking decorative - do you?

The Connected World of Jack Abramoff

2006-01-12T22:31:00.000Z

The huckster extraordinaire appears to have been in league with everyone from Israeli settlers to Montenegrin nationalists.

The whizzing sound you can hear is the pebble going down the well - and one thinks it will be a long time before anyone finally hears the splash.

Quote Of The Day

2006-01-12T10:56:00.000Z

"People here want to work for 60 rands (£5.60) per day. But the Zimbabweans will work for 30 rands or 20 rands so the businessmen hire Zimbabweans and they take our jobs."

Timothy Mbanba, 57, a resident of Choba, South Africa.

That pretty much puts mass immigrations's most personal negative effect in a nutshell.

What A Friend We Have In Allah

2006-01-11T23:16:00.000Z

The Devil's Kitchen has been having a merry old time with this drivelling, authoritarian post from Neil Harding, a Labour supporter from Sussex.

However, a quick shufti round Harding's blog revealed this classic post - 'The Truth about Hizb ut-Tahrir'.

The post contains the following comments -

"Hizb ut-Tahrir.

It is a legal, non-violent organisation that has no links to terrorism and no terrorist has ever been a member of it.

Yes, it has extreme irrational views. It wants the unification of all Muslims into one state- the Caliphate under Sharia law.

There are many such groups of all religions. There are far worse organisations than this, arguably the BNP, Jehovah's Witnesses, countless scientology cults etc etc".

Hold on a minute. The Jehovah's are oddities for sure, but worse than Islamist extremists? One cannot recall a single incident of a Jehovah's Witness blowing themself up on a Tube train; or expressing sympathy for Jehovahs who have blown themselves up in other countries; or, indeed, calling for all Jehovah's to be united in one land, under one law, under one leader.

Whay would such a leader be called? 'The Great Jehovie's Boabie'?

On can almost hear the strains of the new Hizb ut-Tahrir anthem wafting from the minarets of Muswell Hill:

"What a friend we have in Allah,

He says Jews are good to hate,

And the gates of Heav'n will open

When we all self-detonate.

What a friend we have in Allah,

He rules how we live our lives,

And he says 'Yes' to honour-killing,

Taking slaves and beating wives.

And the stage of Allah's drama

There, for all the world to see,

Is where the mighty feared Osama

Would shout "one-nil" at Highbury!

What a friend we have in Allah,

He guides us along the road,

And we all shout 'Discrimination!'

That's our one-note default mode"

And you did read the date on Neil Harding's original post correctly.

It is dated July 22 2005.

Into The Shell

2006-01-11T07:53:00.000Z

Jeff Randall, the Daily Telegraph's business columnist, has today published a typically honest and forthright column on the UK's pensions crisis, entitled 'How pensions treasure has slipped from our grasp'.

Unlike many others, Randall has the guts to the spread the blame for the crisis in five equal measures; between Labour administrations; Conservative administrations; avaricious pension scheme operators; fund managers; and the regulators.

Yet such honesty only brings home the really shocking truth about the crisis; it was entirely avoidable. That is its great shame; an explosive mixture of the destructive ideologies of both left and right, greed and wilful failure to follow the most basic rules of prudent investment has resulted in the futures of many British people looking very bleak indeed.

As for myself, I am reconciled to working until I die. My own pension arrangements are unsatisfactory, I have neither the drive nor aptitude to run a business and it is highly unlikely that anyone's going to be offering me a good pensionable job anytime soon, with an increasing pool of young graduate labour (in itself a consequence of both Labour and Conservative maladministration) and a labour market rigged in favour of the foreigner over the native. The limits of my talents seem to extend only to banging out crapulous and repetitive weblog entries; and by their blogs shall ye know them.

Yet, without wishing to sound in need of urgent psychiatric treatment, virtually everything one writes is motivated by something best described as amorphous love of the nation. I can vividly recall hearing Peter Hitchens describe himself as a 'British patriot', on an edition of 'Question Time' broadcast from Cardiff in 2003, and thinking that it seemed glaringly immodest, not the sort of phrase one should use to describe oneself.

However with all British political movements now geared to hanging on to the fictional 'centre ground', but in reality offering only different shades of big-state-big-business neoconservatism, one can't help but wonder why any of their leaders have gone into British public life.

They all possess very vivid authoritarian streaks. They are all 'internationalist', which seems to mean little other than greater interest in alleviating suffering abroad than at home. They are more interested in abetting absolute any policy which advances the chimera of 'globalisation' rather than in ensuring the United Kingdom can stand on its own feet by growing the food it eats and producing whatever it consumes through manufacturing; while the Armed Forces, funded by us for the defence of the realm, are deployed to ensure that other societies are fractured along cultural and ethnic lines in order to try and make them more like us, when they have not subjected to themselves to the same stresses and influences which got us to where we are now.

It hasn't worked. It was never going to work.

We owed Iraq nothing prior to 2003. Thanks to our abetting in the country's destuction, we do now.

Where do we fit into all this? Down there, on the bottom, in our place. And I can't think of a time in recent British history when the interests of the governing seem to diverge so markedly from the interests of the governed.

Forget them all. The Britain they have made is just like them, ugly and vicious; and they can keep it. If that means one must reside in the Britain of one's mind, so be it. Let the mandarins play for now - our day will come.

In the meantime, it would be a good idea to return this crap to its previous owners.

A Daily Telegraph Article Of Interest To Readers Of iSteve.com

2006-01-10T09:16:00.000Z

In its issue of December 9 2005 (Eye 1147), Private Eye wrote the following concerning Telegraph columnist Simon Heffer's ideological battle with David 'Swampie' Cameron -

"Despite the best efforts of Simon Heffer, the Daily Telegraph eventually came out for David Cameron. It could hardly do otherwise, given how many Cameroonies work at the paper.

Telegraph columnist Alice Thomson wrote a long, adulatory profile of 'Dave' last Saturday - though she forgot to mention that she and her husband Ed Heathcoat Amory are close friends and neighbours of the new boy-wonder, as leading lights in the New Age cult known as the Notting Hill Set".

The same Alice Thomson has an article in today's Telegraph entitled 'When everyone meets in the middle, whom do you vote for?'. She kicks off thus:

"Politics is no longer red, blue or yellow; Left or Right; Tory, Labour or Liberal Democrat. It's all about sets now. There is the Notting Hill Set, the Primrose Hill Set and the Orange Book Set."

So much for liberal representative democracy. She concisely encapsulates the grinding homogeneity of their collective 'centrism':

"The three sets pretty much agree on the nature of that centre. They all champion localism while being naturally paternalistic. They prefer talking about the environment to immigration. Members of the Notting Hill Set chat happily about wealth redistribution and want to be Compassionate Conservatives. The Orange Book Set call themselves Tough Liberals and talk easily about market forces. And Labour's Mr Miliband and his friends are still following the primrose path towards Mr Blair's Third Way - that hard-to-find political nirvana that David Miliband and Douglas Alexander recently insisted should be described as "traditional values in a modern setting".

All three groups agree on the little issues as well as the bigger picture. They have a shared dislike of Turkey Twizzlers and are determined to tackle obesity while admitting to the occasional McDonald's and kebabs themselves. They prefer Richard and Judy to Punch and Judy politics, and are as happy answering questions about Mini Cheddars as the minimum wage".

However, it's at this stage she gets interesting -

"To stand out without abandoning the middle ground, these politicians need to find ways of making themselves exciting, relevant and innovative. One answer to this conundrum could be found in a new bestseller, Freakonomics - the book they have all been reading over the Christmas holidays. Written by Harvard economist Steven Levitt, it comes up with radical solutions to everyday problems".

One ears start to prick up. She goes on,

"He meticulously examines all the statistics and data to turn preconceived wisdom on its head, which is why he is consulted by everyone from General Motors to the New York Yankees, and Presidents Clinton and Bush. His results are not always comfortable reading, to wit his deduction that relaxing the abortion laws in America was the main reason that crime subsequently fell."

As one of my countrymen once remarked -

"RIGHT FULL RUDDER! REVERSE STARBOARD ENGINE!"

When he is bad he is horrid - but when Steve Sailer is good he is very, very good, and never better than when demolishing the 'Abortion cut crime' theses propounded by Levitt in 'Freakonomics'.

Think Alice reads Steve? She really should, you know.

Juan Mann On 'Operation Iraqi Asylum'

2006-01-10T08:46:00.000Z

US lawyer Juan Mann has a piece on VDare today, relating to the continued growth in numbers of Iraqis seeking US asylum three years after the fall of Saddam.

He quotes the readers of a previous piece on the subject as saying,

“I get the feeling that refugee status for both politically persecuted and economic migrants alike and resettlement to one of these three industrialized nations (the US, UK and Canada) is being viewed as a virtual right by third world countries who view with envy the refugee status and new lifestyles granted to those who came before, to those who had the good fortune to get a ticket to America. As evidenced in this sad case (of the Sudanese asylum-seekers massacred by Egyptian police), even resettlement to Egypt is not considered "good enough." They don't just want protection and the basics, they want the big score, a wealthy industrialized nation.”

That seems to be precisely the attitude expressed by Somali asylum-seeker Warsame Ali Garare when asked for his opinion on finding himself beached in Malta rather than Italy.

However, Mann's most telling example comes from the files of the so-called Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc (CLINIC). He quotes them as writing,

"Mrs. B, a Christian Chaldean who fled Iraq and received asylum in the United States, filed an I-730 Asylee Relative Petition for her husband in March 2003. …

Mrs. B and her attorney were told that Mr. B's case was undergoing a "security screening" and that he just had to wait. Despite additional inquiries to DHS, Mr. B's case continues to be pending and he and his wife remain separated":and notes,

"So according to the Treason Lobby’s henchman in the immigration bar: send more Iraqis!

But why isn’t the alien’s husband serving a tour of duty defending his homeland in the Iraqi National Guard, at least in the meantime? Will someone also please remind the “Catholic Legal Immigration Network” that family reunification can work both ways, that is, outbound as well as inbound into the Untied States"

Indeed. As Sir Andrew Green has noted (HT- Adam Lawson) almost 25% of those detained in the UK upon suspicion of plotting Islamist terror attacks have been asylum-seekers.

The asylum game's a bogey, and the party's got to stop.

Glasgow's Domination By Its Underclass

2006-01-10T08:17:00.000Z

It has transpired that Sharon McMillan and Andrew Morton, whose three-year old son Andrew was murdered by Mark Bonini, are drug-dealers.

They are exemplars of everything that is wrong with Glaswegian culture - not Scottish culture, but specifically Glaswegian culture; the over confident strut; the blatant disregard for the rule of law; the wilful failure to understand or even acknowledge the primacy of personal responsibility; and the aggressive, in-your-face attitude, their faces twisted into sneers of perpetual anger, a rage only leavened by the continuous consumption of drink and drugs.

They are of a type which sprang fully-formed from the head of the welfare state, rapidly and alarmingly usurping and displacing the old respectable working-class, the last vestiges of which can be seen doddering into the Post Offices to pick up their pensions; the old men ramrod straight, the old women with not a hair out of place.

The Mortons and McMillans have ascended to dominate us and our way of life. Scotland's, and especially Glasgow's, politicians, will always seek to place the blame for the carnage they cause elsewhere, and a case can be made that the levels of poverty we endure, reflected in our declining life expectancy, have been induced by macroeconomic trends well outwith local control.

Yet even the poorest households can elect to live respectably. Too many of Glasgow's don't, preferring to live like animals.

And when misery, the only consequence of such behaviour, is the result, we have nobody to blame but ourselves.

Notes From A Wonderful Country

2006-01-10T07:58:00.000Z

Scared for Blighty's Future?

Pah!

Your psyche dulled by the death grip of Seasonally Affected Disorder? Are you ready for the revolver and the bottle of whisky after being back at your work for a day?

Don't want to know!

Enough of pessimism!

'Notes From A Wonderful Country' will be an occasional series outlining what a bloody marvellous place the United Kingdom really is, where, if the odds are on your side, you can get anything, you can do anything and really be the person you want to be.

The first example of how marvellous we are is provided by Anita Ho.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal has ruled that Ho did not receive a fair hearing at her initial industrial tribunal case against Crystal Services, against whom she lost her claim for unfair dismissal, race discrimination and victimisation, because the chairman of the original tribunal rather crassly remarked that her skin was "as white as the English".

Ho is a native of Vietnam - the land which gave the world the punji stick, a place with no historic connection to the United Kingdom and one where the local idea of sex discrimination seems to be based more on age than gender.

God, we're a wonderful country!

San Juan, County Antrim

2006-01-09T23:23:00.000Z

There seems to be a remarkable similarity between those Puerto Ricans who spew hatred of the gringos while pocketing the gringos' welfare cheques with those republicans in Northern Ireland who praise the memory of Bobby Sands while cashing the English giro.

Keeping An Eye on Russia, cont - The Great Alternative Sources of Energy Smokescreen

2006-01-09T22:34:00.000Z

It seems that the practicalities of Russian public life continue to induce hysteria amongst our opinion formers.

In today's 'Telegraph', at the end of a discussion of alternative energy sources Ruth Lea of the Centre for Policy Studies declaims that,

"The country's economy could be held to ransom at any time by Mr Putin and his friends".

Attempts like this to paint the Russians as wannabe Saudis, willing to turn off the spigot if they don't get their way, are nonsensical.

What does Russia have to sell?

Resources.

What do we want to buy from them?

Resources.

A willing buyer and a willing seller - bingo! You have an energy market.

Now compare the behaviour of the Russians over the last two weeks with the behaviour of the Saudis and Iranians during, say, the Yom Kippur War.

Were the Russians trying to annihilate the Ukrainians? They were simply trying to get a fair price for the goods the Ukrainians buy from them when they aren't stealing them.

In 1973, however, the Umma was trying to annihilate the Israelis. And in order to do this they put the world economy in peril by manipulating the price of crude oil, a commodity capable of many more purposes than natural gas and therefore of much greater strategic importance, to record levels.

Ruth Lea refers to our economy being held to 'ransom' by 'friends' of Putin. Putin doesn't have many friends; as George Trefgarne noted yesterday, he doesn't seem to be interested in having friends. What interests him are the interests of Russia - how can the leader of any nation be blamed for pursuing that goal?

Putin's behaviour throughout this fiasco has been that of a guy who wants a fair price for the resources under Russian control. He has given no indication of wanting to dominate his buyers; that would be the action of an economic madman, and he is not that.

And if he did - well, he has the gas and we want the gas; the perfect recipe for a little price-gouging.

The diversification of its natural supply is always a perfectly sensible measure for any country to take, if only on the basis that you shouldn't place all your eggs on the one gas hob. In that respect, we clearly need more nuclear energy, and now.

But one can't help but think that we wouldn't be having this debate if we hadn't so cavalierly abandoned our coal industry 20 years ago. No doubt smashing the miners felt good at the time; but perhaps our lust for doing everything on the cheap may just have turned round and bitten us.

It's certainly put a lot of people's gas at a peep.

Muggings Of One Sort Or Another

2006-01-09T10:49:00.000Z

is now up on No Compensation for De Menezes.

Abuse Of Science Notes

2006-01-09T10:44:00.000Z

The Little Rajahs Ride Again.

Think of all those delicious curries lost forever...and of the souls of their makers...

Calling Sir Iqbal Sacranie!

2006-01-09T10:39:00.000Z

The voice of moderate Islam's input is clearly required in this inflammatory dispute.

Given his expertise in managing 'certain sensitivities', one looks forward to receiving the dispensation of his wisdom.

Hopefully all Saudi visitors to the United Kingdom will be advised to leave, in no particular order, their Korans, robes, swords, whips, spouses (or multiples thereof), whores or slaves at home for the forseeable future.

I'll Give You Odds Of 2-1 They're Romanians

2006-01-09T10:37:00.000Z

This is a favourite stupid motherf-Romanian wheeze.

(Update 9/1/2005 - And I was right, bejaysus! The original RTE page I linked to this morining was before their court appearance, and didn't refer to their nationality. It's been updated after their appearance, and it appears they are indeed stupid motherf-Romanians.

How vibrant Dublin's crime scene now must be. )

South African Notes

2006-01-09T10:35:00.000Z

It's seems that a life on the ocean wave might not be much fun if you're a Tanzanian stowaway.

About as much fun as trying to buy a drink in Cape Town.

Chinese Notes

2006-01-09T10:32:00.000Z

It looks like the Eastern comrades have their eyes on the pies in both Nigeria and Bolivia.

And of course free trade makes us all richer - particularly when we're buying stuff...we used to make ourselves?

The Great Big Brother Fee Question

2006-01-09T10:24:00.000Z

As earlier noted, I called Channel 4 this morning and enquired as to what arrangements might be in place for the payment of George Galloway and other contestants on the current series of 'Celebrity Big Brother.'

I was advised by a very pleasant young man that the contestants were receiving a fee for their participation, and that if they were the 'winner', then the prize money which would ordinarily be payable to a winner would go to their nominated charity.

When I asked him what the participation fee actually was, he started to stammer and said that's something 'he wouldn't go into'.

So it looks like Galloway will come out on top even if Interpal doesn't get a penny. And the march of his British Islamic Left proceeds uninterrupted.

Keeping An Eye On Russia, cont: Mad Sunday

2006-01-08T21:59:00.000Z

The level of anti-Putin, anti-Gazprom and generally anti-Russian hysteria doing the rounds in today's papers has been an awesome sight to behold.

The 'Sunday Times' kicked off with a piece by Mark Franchetti entitled 'Putin blesses Europe's last dictator', referring to Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus.

Franchetti quotes one Western diplomat as saying, "Putin claims to be in favour of democracy but he is far too close to the Belarussian regime. It makes the West very uneasy." Although it seem's Putin's lot to be damned if he does and damned if he doesn't, he can probably draw some satisfaction from knowing that such criticism means he's doing his job properly.

However, the looniness of Franchetti's 'western diplomat' is matched and surpassed by Irwin 'The Yak' Stelzer, who takes a break from his day job being the Mouth of Sauron to warns us all about those goddam pesky Russkies!

In an 'American Account' column entitled 'Pay up or dance to tune of foreign energy suppliers', Stelzer turns the clock back all the way to 1956 - you can almost hear Khruschev's shoe banging on the table as he writes,

"Ukraine is the West writ small" (like hell it is - but that's another story): and,

"Putin kept a straight face when he announced that his willingness to restore gas supplies proved that Russia was a reliable supplier. Never mind that it was on his orders that Gazprom cut off supplies to Ukraine, and by extension to Germany, France and other countries, despite contracts that run until 2009. ": and he does not write one word about the loss of supply to nations other than Ukraine being caused by the fact of Ukrainian thefts!

In the Sunday Telegraph, however, the owlish figure of George Trefgarne at least acknowledges both Russian sovereignty and the laws of the market before starting to slaver:

"President Putin is perfectly entitled to demand that Ukraine pay market prices for Russian gas, as he did last week. But we should wonder at his ruthlessness.

By suddenly quadrupling the price of gas to a country traditionally seen by Moscow as little more than a satellite, he has, according to ING, swung Ukraine's current account from a 2 per cent to 3 per cent surplus to a deficit. Ukraine will now have to rely on foreign direct investment inflows to prop up its currency.

As for Putin, well, he looks more and more like the very embodiment of Machiavelli's Prince: a man who prefers to be feared than loved".

However, the piece de resistance of the day's, actually the week's, anti-Putin nuttiness is a piece by Peter Hitchens, the thinking man's Richard Littlejohn, in today's 'Mail on Sunday'.

It is entitled 'Today Ukraine - tomorrow us', and begins,

"Natural gas is a much better weapon than an arsenal of H-bombs. You can actually use it. Nobody dies, no cities turn to vapour. Best of all, your victims cannot retaliate by doing the same to you.But people treat you with more respect when you remind them that you can, if you wish, shit down their industries and freeze them in their homes".

Or, as the Ukrainians discovered last week, you can agree to give up the 80% rebate you receive though the good offices of the people of another country, and preferably stop stealing the gas as well (a phenomenon in respect of which Hitchens did a Stelzer, forgetting to mention it at all) - in which event the gas comes back on quite quickly.

Keep an eye on Bulgaria.

Who Will Look After The Foxes?

2006-01-08T21:30:00.000Z

Now that Tony Banks has died?

Hopefully more honest obituarists than the BBC will record that Lord Stratford, a Labour man all his days, made it his business to destroy the livelihoods of those members of the English rural working class who depended on fox-hunting in order to put bread on their tables.

At least he can go his grave knowing that if his intention was to break the spirit of country people, then he failed.

The End Of Her Teather

2006-01-08T21:05:00.000Z

According to the Sunday Telegraph, it seems that the rather lumpy figure of Sarah Teather MP (for the avoidance of doubt, she's the short-arse in red - the one of her in a sari was...well...see for yourselves) may have helped to pull the strings that eventually throttled Charles Kennedy.

It has reported that she and another MP were openly agitating against Kennedy; and she was also quoted as saying,

"The situation is completely untenable and it is damaging the party for Charles to have organised the leadership campaign in this way. And I just hope desperately that he will reflect over the weekend and that he will step down and indeed step aside for the good of him, for his health, and the party".

Now look at that picture. There she is, looking as nice as ninepence standing beside the man she may have later plotted to destroy, an ambitious little 31 year old whippersnapper whose record of service to the Liberal Democrats pales in comparison to his.

It is devoutly to be hoped that the gates of power remain forever locked against her.

Glasgow's Asian Gang Problem

2006-01-08T20:52:00.000Z

is getting Mohammed Sarwar MP a little hot and sweaty, never a bad thing in itself.

And the comments of Ayub Khan, of Glasgow's 'Multi-Faith Coalition', are worth noting -

"The fact is most of the crime (in Asian communities) is being carried out by Asian youths...

We need a heavy-handed police approach because that is the only way to deal with the gangs that are running amok in places like Pollokshields. The softly softly approach isn’t working, we need to do away with this political correctness.”

Quite. However, the usual anonymous 'community leaders' provide their own explanation for the problem of Asian gangsterism -

"They admit the rise in violence and criminality by Asian youths is due to cultural changes. The first immigrants who came to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s wanted to make money and succeed, they said, but the younger generation is “picking up the bad habits that afflict society”.

So if you have not been harmed by the white man's racism, you will be harmed by his decadence.

So much for personal responsibility.

(The now late) Tookie Williams was something of a 'community leader' in his day...

The Leaving of Liverpool

2006-01-08T20:31:00.000Z

If I were an asylum-seeker waiting to be deported, I couldn't imagine which fate would be worse: the prospect of fast-track deportation, or being made to wait for it in Liverpool.

Before hordes of cheeky, scally Scousers inundate me with death threats telling me I'm 'hard-faced' and how 'disgusted' they are what I've written (and I really couldn't care less what they think), it should be noted that for all the bravado of the reported proposal it has the hallmarks of one which seems intended to fail.

According to the Sunday Telegraph,

"(The potential deportees) will not be kept in detention centres but will live rent-free in flats or hotels, coming and going as they please.

The only curb on their movement will be a request to report regularly".

These hardly seem the most stringent restrictions on freedom of movement that could have been imposed upon people who have a real incentive to go underground.

Indeed, Liverpool City Council seems to have factored the absconding of potential deportees into its plans before it agreed to host the scheme. A local Lib Dem politico, Steve Radford,is quoted in the ST piece as saying, "If people do a runner they will probably go to London or Manchester".

So, it looks like yet another expensive Blairite mirage designed to create an illusion of activity in an ocean of official indolence and indifference. Restrictionists should await the advent of 'Tough on Absconding, Tough on The Causes of Absconding', in the not too distant future.

The Curious Case of Angus Bristow

2006-01-08T18:07:00.000Z

The 'Scottish Mail on Sunday' has reported that Angus Bristow, the Australian constiteuncy agent for the Galloway & Upper Nithsdale Conservatives, has been re-admitted to the UK.

Bistow had been deported after attempting to convert an Australian driving licence to a British one. His two year visa had expired, but had received legal advice that he could continue working while an extension was being sought. He has now been granted a five year visa.

Bristow is quoted as saying,

"The immigration system is clearly overly prescriptive and and does not have enough latitude for those involved to use common sense".

As a once deported and now re-admitted foreigner, Bristow's views on the shortcomings of the immigration system are neither here nor there.

What is depressing is that the Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party would see fit to recruit a foreigner for the purpose of managing party business. Was there really no more qualified British person available for the job?

It's 846 AD All Over Again!

2006-01-08T17:08:00.000Z

Sandro Magister has posted a very interesting reminder of the days when the jihad reached the gates of Rome.

As Magister notes,

"...in the ninth century, during which Rome was assaulted and Sicily was conquered, the Muslim armies occupied Bari and Brindisi in Italy for thirty years; Taranto for forty; Benevento for ten; they attacked Naples, Capua, Calabria, and Sardinia several times; they put the abbey of Montecassino to fire and the sword; they even made skirmishes in northern Italy, arriving from Spain and crossing over the Alps."

Can't see the old Popes having stood for this sort of guff.

Perhaps those nasty Crusaders knew what they were doing after all...

Albania's Blood Feuds, Gun Culture And Other Little Oddities

2006-01-08T16:45:00.001Z

A recent stroll through the BBC's archives produced some items concerning one of the many less wholesome aspects of Albanian culture, the blood feud.

And,inevitably, costly resources provided by British taxpayers for the safety of British taxpayers have already had to be deployed to deal with this crap when it's floated to the surface here.

The BBC's Paul Henley once wrote of Albania that,

"Criminal groups, whose stock-in-trade is people-trafficking, drugs and prostitution, as well as arms, are a threat mostly to each other".

Given the volume of crime being committed by Albanian nationals here, they would also seem to present a major threat to the financial stability of the United Kingdom, for we will soon be bled to death by the cost of policing it.

I mean, what is the game with all this? How seriously can you take a country whose capital city had no street names as recently as 2004? Come on!

The Suffering Of The Palestinians Alert: The Administration Of Criminal Justice In Gaza

2006-01-08T16:36:00.000Z

It seems that an easy way of getting out of a kidnapping charge in Gaza is to ensure your supporters go on an 'armed rampage'.

How much money did we give these people last year? However much it was, it was throwing good after bad.

Foreign Crime Victim Of The Day

2006-01-08T16:33:00.000Z

Nokukhanya Mkhonta, aged 20, a Swazi national in the UK on a working visa, has been stabbed to death in Southampton.

An individual with the un-Anglo-Saxon name of Jose Assis Pedro has been charged with her murder.

He may be a victim of 'Greco's Disease'.

Canadianna - Sloganeer Extraordinaire!

2006-01-08T16:26:00.000Z

My good friend Canadianna has written a post which should earn her the post of Campaign Director for the Conservative Party of Canada.

If Stephen Harper is elected, one hopes he will not disappoint his followers by turning into David Cameron.

Turkish Flu

2006-01-08T16:24:00.000Z

Has all travel to and from Turkey been suspended?

Have all Turks who've arrived in the UK in the past two weeks been quarantined?

Or is the mass movement of people more important than preventing pandemics?

Foreign Criminals Of The Day

2006-01-07T22:34:00.000Z

goes Latino!

Cue the salsa!

In a move which may result in me becoming the Simon Cowell of Foreign Criminal of The Day Blogging, Dennis has featured the mean mestizo hombres of Mara Salvatrucha, those finest flowers of El Salvador (aka The Somalia of the South) who make the late Tookie Williams look like a boy scout, the Latin Kings look like blushing senoritas and who are well on their way to becoming to their own state.

Now, if some MS-13 SOB screws with Dennis or his property, he can shoot them! Why can't we do that?

Some Thoughts On the Resignation Of Charles Kennedy

2006-01-07T22:06:00.000Z

Charles Kennedy, the drunken liar who consistently lied about his drunkenness to his colleagues, his party and the country he aspired to govern, has resigned.

I await with baited breath a column from Melanie Phillips describing Kennedy as 'an icon of irresponsibility' - or is her obloquy reserved for dead, not very well-educated former footballers?

Daisy McAndrew would be well advised to dig out a VHS copy of a mid '80's TV movie called 'Scandal Sheet'. The plotline might very well describe her role, and the role of her editors at ITN, in this affair -

"The publisher of a celebrity gossip tabloid sets out to destroy an aging actor, whose career is foundering and who is also facing a battle with alcoholism".

She might also care to reflect on why Harold Fallen, the scandal sheet editor played by Burt Lancaster, sits in a glass office in the middle of the news room floor. It is because he believes in neither privacy nor secrets.

And as we all know, what goes around, comes around.

I am delighted to agree with The Devil's Kitchen when he describes Lembit Opik MP as 'an honourable man'. Opik's conduct has shown him to be a man of both character and conscience; he is to be commended for both.

Actually, it's amazing he's made it that far in a party which seems to purge those who dare to speak their minds.

The Islamic Republics Of Tower Hamlets And Newham

2006-01-07T20:49:00.000Z

The entry of George Galloway MP into the Celebrity Big Brother house might not be as weird an event as it first appears. Indeed, I would be very surprised if he did not jump at the opportunity enthusiastically.

It looks like the Islamosuckers who elected him to his new manor of Bethnal Green & Bow are already suffering the mortal effects of having wee Shanghai Georgie as their MP. Having been a constituent of his in Glasgow Hillhead, and later Glasgow Kelvin, between 1987 and 1996, my principal memory of my former representative is of his invisibility. I do not ever remember him campaigning in the swathe of his constituency that sat to the north and west of Broomhill Cross. Crow Road was terra incognita for the bold former Leader of Dundee City Council - it was as if the people of Broomhill and Jordanhill did not exist for the purposes of Parliamentary elections.

The sulphurous emanations of his illtiterate supporters aside,I would be very interested to know precisely what fee, if any, has been waved in front of his nose for this stunt - for possibly the biggest political battle of his life is only a few months away, and he may just need the money in order to fight it.

It's not one he intends to lose.

Now, just remember that George Galloway, for all his manners, comments and affiliations, is a very politically astute and very able and calculating man who became the Chairman of the Labour Party in Scotland at the age of 26 and who has consistently bested the very worst that the London libel bar has been able to throw at him. He is nobody's fool.

Galloway draws £57,000 p.a. as an MP. He also lifts £60,000 a year from Viscount Rothermere's pockets for writing a largely drivelling column (a brief and not unrealistic parody might read, 'I hate Tony Blair. I hate Jack McConnell. I love Yasser Arafat. I love Gerry Adams. And I'd love to shag Charlize Theron') for the 'Scottish Mail on Sunday'.

This puts him on an income of approximately £117,000 p.a. He may lose two weeks Rothermere money for participating in Big Brother - so that has got to be made up from somewhere. Right now he would not be participating in 'Big Brother' unless it was worth his while.

If he is being paid, say, £30,000 to participate in Big Brother, that still puts him many thousands of pounds in front. All his libel winnings from the date of his second marriage, to Dr Amineh Abu-Zayyad, until the date of his separation from her might be considered 'matrimonial property' for the purpose of the negotiation of a financial settlement between them, so he can't use that money to fund his forthcoming meta-campaigns; the one aimed at ensuring that George Galloway will once more have his hands on the levers of real power for the first time since he packed his napsack and slung it over his shoulder on the road from Dundee to Glasgow.

Those campaigns are the forthcoming campaigns for control of the London Boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Newham. Galloway is first, foremost and always a ward boss. He started life in local politics, and was never anything but an extremely effective local politician.

Controlling a council enables you to set council tax. It enables you to decide if churches or mosques get planning permission. It enables you to decide which streets are swept, and when. It is real power - and it is power that Galloway explicitly committed himself to gaining, when he said,

"We will now build on our campaign to capture the London Boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Newham, starting on Monday. We intend to be the new broom that sweeps clean these two rotten boroughs. "

It looks like Shanghai Georgie has power in his sights - and as the personification, the very essence, of the 'Respect' party, the old Dundee ward boss is going to let nothing, not even public humiliation, stand in his way of getting it.

(Update, January 8 2006 - Curiouser and curiouser. The comment below from The Devil's Kitchen was quite thought-provoking, so I e-mailed bbhelp@channel4.com twice to try to clarify the precise position on what fess, if any, are being paid to Galloway and the other contestants and if any proportion of these are being remitted to the nominated charities directly. Both e-mails were bounced by C4's server.

The Big Brother website has an 'Extras' box half-way down the left side of the page containing a link marked 'Charities'. When you click on that, it takes you straight back to...the Big Brother website.

The Respect nutter who's commented on DK's site has suggested that the charity donations are being funded through a proportion of the cost of the calls, and presumably also the premium text message services, which will be made in order to vote. I'm going to phone Channel 4 in the morning to get this clarified.)

The Next So-Called Energy Crisis

2006-01-07T20:40:00.000Z

looks like it will be between Russia and Bulgaria.

Hopefully the editors of the 'Daily Telegraph' will record Bulgaria's status as a leader in the industry of baby-smuggling when they enthusiastically jump to Sofia's defence.

The Divine Mrs. McAndrew

2006-01-07T13:03:00.000Z

would appear to be something of a snivelling wretch, if one believes all that one reads.

It almost begs one to write, 'Please, Don't Eat the Daisy'...

(Edited for being unduly nasty).

The Fine Balance Between Fighting Terror And Race Relations

2006-01-07T12:58:00.000Z

is causing concern to the Oldham Race Equality Partnership (OREP).

Maybe they should ask this guy.

Oops!

A Muslim Moron

2006-01-07T12:53:00.000Z

What was this guy actually doing in France?

I mean, just what was his point? What was he doing with his life? What was he trying to achieve? In what way was he actively seeeking to improve his daughters' lot?

How many like him are there here?

A Rather Mundane Explanation

2006-01-07T12:51:00.000Z

for one of the Binbag Crew being worth £120,000 might rest in the family's tax affairs, as opposed to the global Islamist terror web.

When Are Foreign Criminals Not Foreign Criminals?

2006-01-07T12:48:00.000Z

is now up on The Daily Treasongraph.

A dose of bile with added spleen, even if I say so myself.

Spot The Ball

2006-01-07T11:06:00.000Z

is now up on The Devil's Kitchen.

Foreign Criminals Of The Week: Los Bastardos

2006-01-06T13:51:00.000Z

Meet Jesus Anibal Ruiz-Henao (left) and Mario Tascon.

Both natives of Pereira, Colombia, and brothers-in-law as well as brothers outside of the law, they were the masterminds of the biggest cocaine smuggling ring to have been broken up by the british authoritites so far.

Their gang was 50-strong, and included Wimar de Jesus Ospina Castano, Jose Manuel Rojes-Pineda, William Ruiz-Henao, Ramon Navarro, Roque Garcia-Martinez and Ivan Garcia Ospina. They are believed to have imported £25m worth of cocaine every year they were in business, and when they were arrested 645 kg of the drug was recovered.

Anibal and Tascon both received 'indefinite leave to remain' after having requested for asylum, when they both, very oddly, arrived in the UK in 1990. Their possession of 'indefinite leave to remain' status means their initial applications for asylum were in all likelihood refused.

They are a pair of death-dealing foreign bastards. The expense to which they put the citizens of this country is immense; their legacy vile; and while one should not think this, one can't help but think that a good fate for them would have been to see less plato, and a little more plomo.

Adios, amigos.

The BBC and Islam

2006-01-06T13:43:00.000Z

The BBC is today holding another of its 'aren't we poor benighted Muslims, nobody understands us' vomit-fests at licence-payer's expense.

It is written that the kufr could not give a camel's toss how bad it is being a Muslim in Europe; and that some of them will, inshallah, constantly mock such pious attempts to be 'inclusive'...

Some Thoughts On The Travails Of The Liberal Democrats

2006-01-06T13:40:00.000Z

Their leader announces he is an alcoholic, and exposes himself as a liar.

Everyone praises him for his honesty.

An ordinary party member speaks his mind - he is subjected to disciplinary proceedings.

Go figure.

Foreign Criminal Of The Day (False Passport Special), Part I: Here's One I Missed Earlier

2006-01-06T11:30:00.000Z

Now seriously, ask yourself this question - would you buy a false passport from this man?

On December 22 this individual, a 42 year old stupid motherf...Romanian national named Cornel Tirnaveanu, was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment having been found guilty of more than 20 charges of deception. He charged up to £10,000 for false passports which never quite appeared.

Victoria Tirnaveanu, his wife, received a sentence of one year's imprisonment for her role in the scam.

It is not reported whether any of those who requested the passports have also been prosecuted.

Poor Cornel. He really is one stupid motherfucker.

Foreign Criminal Of The Day (False Passport Special), Part II: The Ligging Liberians

2006-01-06T11:25:00.000Z

Even if the four men accused of torturing them are acquitted, ligging Liberians Joe Smith and Peter Dennis win themselves places in 'Foreign Criminals Of The Day' for their admission they sought to purchase false British passports.

The Great Canadian Weird Stuff Tag

2006-01-05T21:40:00.000Z

Canadianna has very kindly tagged me with the latest meme doing the rounds in the Great White North - 'the weird meme', whereby one is supposed to list five 'weird' things about oneself and then tag five others to do the same.

In the interests of the historically strong relationship between Scotland and Canada, one supposes one must oblige.

1. I qualified as a lawyer - now I work in a call-centre. How did that happen?

2. If a word I can spell is spoken to me, I can instantly tell the number of letters it contains.

3. I cannot write the word 'minimum' on pen and paper, because of my illegible handwriting's very angular nature. It's not for want of trying, for sure, but I just can't do it.

4. I write constantly about the perils of immigration - yet my fiancee of eight years is an immigrant...

5. My left foot is not only shorter but also wider than my right.

Those to be tagged:

The Elegant Evisceration Of Niall Ferguson By Allan Massie

2006-01-05T16:57:00.000Z

Ye cursed Mail!

Quite the best demolition of Niall Ferguson's recent guff-ridden trashing of Scotland appeared in yesterday's 'Scottish Daily Mail'; and the Daily Mail being the Daily Mail, it's not, of course, online.

It was written by the classicist, novelist, historian, columnist and conservative public intellectual Allan Massie. Massie, who is every bit Ferguson's intellectual equal and whom I have perhaps unfairly criticised for exhibiting a glimmer of Scottish cringe in the past, dished out the most elegant kicking that Ferguson has probably ever received.

The article was headed,'Scorn that can only be treated with contempt'. Amongst many other good things, Massie wrote,

"There is another kind of exiled Scot who is so delighted to have achieved success elsewhere that he comes to look on the 'auld wife, Scotland Our Mither', with contempt. Scotland in the eyes of such expatriates is a miserable backwater, grossly inferior to wherever they find themselves received, admired and well-rewarded for the exercise of their talents.

There's something rather sad, even pitiful about this: it's like a middle aged man still obsessed with what he sees as the failure of his parents to understand him."

Massie continues,

"I am sad to find Professor Niall Ferguson giving vent to ths sort of stuff in a newspaper article in which he describes Scotland as 'a small, sparsely populated appendage of England' and says it is time to cut the country down to size.

Sad because on the couple of occasions I have met him he has seemed intelligent and agreeable; sad also to think that he is ready to tap out such nonsense, describing Scotland as 'the Belarus of the West', because somone has dangled a cheque before him. Surely he can't need money that badly?"

That was sore - but Massie is not done with The Pout just yet. He writes of Ferguson,

"His career recalls JM Barrie's observation that 'there are few more impressive sights in the world than a Scotsman on the make".

Having got Ferguson down, Massie starts wading into him. He writes,

"Certainly I have heard Scottish historians speak despairingly of his recent books - 'riddled with errors', one said to me. Could the diatribe have been provoked by wounded vanity? Or was it simply a joke that misfired? Who can tell?"

But the power of Massie's coup de grace is just stunning. He immediately continued,

"It is depressing, however, and this for two reasons. The first is the wretched inadequacy of the article. It recalls nothing so much as the absurd piece that the dramatist John Osborne published in Tribune in 1961: 'Damn you, England. You're rotting now, and quite soon you'll disappear".

But, secondly, it suggests that Professor Ferguson may be in a bad way himself, in a worse condition indeed than Scotland. When he says his native country should be put into 'liquidation', the only reasonable response must be, 'are you feeling all right, old chap? Suffering from a touch of the sun perhaps?"

Brilliant, brilliant stuff - and Amen to every word of it.

Frum on Crime in Canada

2006-01-05T16:52:00.000Z

David Frum, the least relevant man on the American right, has published an hilarious editorial on crime in Canada.

He mentions immigrant crime fleetingly, in the context of failure to deport.

Hmm...looks like he needs to expand his range of reading material...

The Religion Of Peace Steams And Creams

2006-01-05T16:45:00.000Z

It looks like the trains in the South of France are to be avoided for the time being; and Islam in no way encourages criminality.

The Banning of Qat

2006-01-05T16:43:00.000Z

has been mooted, and no bad thing it would be.

The Great Unwashed Become The Great Unpaid

2006-01-05T15:30:00.000Z

In the year 2005, is it acceptable that 4,759,000 people in the United Kingdom worked any part of their day for no pay?

Or should those of us who work for others all just shut up and be grateful that we've still got jobs, bowing and tugging our forelocks as we walk backwards towards the exit marked 'Human Resources'?

If one believes in free enterprise, one must accept all its consequences. Those who assume the risk of starting their own businesses deserve praise for having the courage to do so; their activities are the cornerstone of liberal capitalism and should not be hampered by an intrusive state unless they are directly contrary to the public good.

Offshoring is an example of the kind of corporate practice on which the State should stamp, as it warps classic comparative advantage into absolute corporate advantage. Ever seen the price of an outsourced service go down? I haven't either - and if this report is to be believed, the failure of offshorers to factor relative geopolitical stability into their calculations might soon turn round and bite them on the rump.

One cannot ever recall any party saying they would deliberately destabilise the British job market, but that appears to have been the direct consequence of virtually every single employment reform since 1979. Whilst the right will always praise every development intended to reduce the cost of business, the left will always advocate increased immigration, a tendency rooted in their ideological rejection of their own nation and which has no consequences than inducing demographic change, depressing wages and changing the character of towns like Inverness and Wrexham.

Such reports as have appeared today also do not sit well with employer comments such as those I linked to last November 6, that "the Poles are terrific people and foreign workers tend to work a lot harder than the Scots". If the native Scots they employ are already working for no pay, what else will satisfy so avaricious a person as this employer clearly is?

Poles paying him for the privilege of working?

Brian Montieth's Sales Tax Proposal

2006-01-05T13:53:00.000Z

Having mulcted £8,000 in salary from the taxpayer in the eight weeks since I called for his resignation, Brian 'No Mandate' Monteith MSP has come up with a proposal based on a local sales tax as a means of effecting reform of the current, iniquitous system of local government funding (hat tip -David Farrer).

Anything is preferable to council tax, which is just the rates by any other name. A local sales tax is, like Communism, a great idea in theory - however, it would be difficult to see how such a tax could be fairly collected.

No tax is effective unless three conditions can be met. Firstly, it must be understood precisely who is liable to pay it; secondly, the rate of tax must be clear; and thirdly, it must be capable of collection.

A local sales tax is fine if all goods and services supplied to liable persons in the area where the tax applies are vended by the same retailers. Its collection is then a simple accounting matter.

However, as I noted in David's 'Comments' section, alternative methods of retailing have grown massively in recent years. The burden of the tax should rest with local consumers. If it is only capable of collection from local retailers, then it becomes a cost to business instead of a tax on consumption.

For it to be collected from online retailers would very possibly require a massive expansion of the already behemothic tax-collection apparatus; which would in turn very possibly lead to so-called 'investment' being required in new IT systems; which would in turn be delivered late and wouldn't work.

In the most extreme case, a local sales tax would be the perfect argument for the introduction of ID cards, as sales confirmed by a mandatory ID card verifying place of residence would enable the tax payable for online goods to be transmitted to the proper local authority - or at least that's how the argument would run.

It's a good idea in theory, but one to be vehemently opposed in practice until such minor details as who would pay it and how it would be collected can be clarified.

Corduroy

2006-01-05T13:40:00.000Z

Having reached intermediate fogeydom, past The Railing At Societal Change but before The Sewing Of The Elbow Patches and the pinnacle of The Donning Of The Flat Cap, I am a committed wearer of corduroy, and rather puzzled by One's exclusion of the material from its dress code for cabbies.

A Corduroy Protection League is clearly called for, if only to improve its image in the face of the bigotry of the Daily Telegraph, which says, "it has often been linked to dishevelled, Left-leaning polytechnic lecturers in sandals".

Tripe! Corduroy is as much the fabric of dishevelled, overweight, Right-wing weblog writers in slippers as the mythical "dishevelled, Left-leaning polytechnic lecturers in sandals". As with compassion, the Left has no monopoly on corduroy - or looking dishevelled.

Now, which corduroy is best - green or mustard?

Brazil and Slavery

2006-01-05T13:12:00.000Z

The Daily Telegraph has reported that 'Cheap Brazilian beef imports are 'subsidised by slave labour' (hat tip -Tim Worstall).

Tim has produced a typically thorough and effective cost analysis of Brazilian beef based on classical free-trade principles, and reaches the perfectly reasonable conclusion that both the Brits and the Brazilians are making themselves poorer for not importing more of the stuff.

However, one can't help but think that the reported comments of Alberto Fonseca of the Brazilian Embassy in London, that 'it was impossible to say that beef from forest areas cleared with slave labour was not coming to Britain' should exclude all Brazilian beef from our markets until the practice is stamped out. The core question is, do we need their beef as much as they need our money?

Not really. The meat may be more expensive, for sure, but if British producers are being undercut by imports farmed with the help of a practice which has been illegal in the home market for centuries then, regardless of what other market factors apply, the playing field is uneven.

And I for one don't like being lectured to by Brazilians on the iniquity of our society when such disgusting practices appear to persist in theirs.

Keeping an Eye on Russia, cont - A Quick Round-Up

2006-01-05T12:30:00.000Z

Although her views on immigration look a bit dodgy, Bronwen Maddox, the Foreign Editor of 'The Times', spoke out against the now apparently waning anti-Putin hysteria yesterday with a piece entitled 'Obnoxious, but gas war is not Putin's worst crime'.

She writes that "to label Russia the bully and Ukraine the victim is a caricature. It ignores the role of Ukraine, down many years, in skimming off gas profits. It ignores the many levers that Ukraine has over Russia, through the huge web of other trade that links them. And it ignores Russia’s right to charge the market price for its gas. It had given some notice, through price rises to other countries, that it was thinking of this, even if the abruptness of the demand was a surprise. "

She was joined by Carl Mortished, who published a piece in the same paper entitled 'Europe has left it too late to wrest back control from Russia over gas'. Although critical of Putin's negotiating tactics, he very fairly notes that, 'Ukrainians were enjoying very cheap gas, less than a quarter the price charged to most Europeans, a subsidy worth several billion dollars a year'; and that, 'European politicians are in a flap, noticing for the first time their utter dependence on Russian gas. Instead, they should reflect on their even greater dependence on pipelines — yesterday’s sudden drop in gas pressure in Austria, France, Germany and Hungary was due to theft by Ukrainians from transit pipes, not a Russian embargo'.

In the same vein, Neil Craig has taken a break from his current woes with the illiberal, undemocratic Scottish Liberal Democrats and posted an excellent piece on the anti-Putin hysteria entitled 'Ukraine, Russia & Gas'.

Neil puts the MSM's wholesale Russophobic agitprop into a nutshell, in a comment which should already be in the running for quote of the year -

"Let us all rally round & object to the Russians refusing to subsidise Ukrainian gas. Next thing Germany will be refusing to sell us their cars at a special price.

For years we have told them that they should all be good free marketists & that they should treat the Ukrainians as a fully independent people. When they do so we do everything short of threatening invasion".

Indeed. The Liberal Democrats, who in an act of Roman banality have permitted the appointment of a child as a local party branch chairman, don't appear to appreciate that it is strengthened by having veterans like Neil, who's been an activist for 36 years, inside rather than outside the tent. Clowns.

However, just when you thought it was safe to turn on your cooker, up pops a predictably anti-Putin 'Daily Telegraph' scribe to hammer home the insidious nature of the Russian bear. That newspaper was not founded during the Crimean War for nothing.

Yesterday, its Diplomatic Editor Anton 'An Aid to Migration' La Guardia published a post on his diploblog entitled, 'Gas row revives Cold War fears'.

One for the round file of history, by the looks of it...

The Sober Thistle Rides Again!

2006-01-05T12:26:00.000Z

With a burst of speed that moves his blogging pace up from the geological to the glacial, my father has put on not one but two new posts.

Five posts in a year, Dad? You'll tire yourself out...

Alice

2006-01-05T12:23:00.000Z

Today is the 25th anniversary of the passing of my paternal grandmother, Alice McKerrell Kelly (1907-1981).

She was a lovely lady, a very devout woman who was much loved in life and greatly missed in death. I wish I had a fraction of her faith; and if any of you happen to be praying today, please remember her. She had a good soul.

RIP.

Keeping An Eye On Russia, cont; Putin Was - Embarrassed?

2006-01-04T07:48:00.000Z

The Daily Telegraph continues its turgid Putin-bashing today with a leader that states,

"Mr Putin has been embarrassed into reversing his policy. He might not always be so easily influenced."

Huh? As far as we were concerned, the gas was never switched off - and unless the leader's writer possesses the gift of foresight then it could not have been accurate at the time of writing.

There's a fair bit of Putin-bashing on the Letters Page as well.

Just when did it become OK to hate Russia again.?

For the purposes of maintaining one's sanity, I recommend Paul Reynolds of the BBC (who, as regular readers of The American Expatriate will know, is not afraid of standing up for himself in a blog's comment box), who posted a very interesting and very much more rounded piece on the crisis yesterday.

He quotes Mary Dejevsky quite extensively; and Ms. Dejevsky's views seem to conform with my own.

Everybody's Talkin

2006-01-04T07:44:00.000Z

If Joe Buck was the Midnight Cowboy, then Jack Abramoff is the Midnight Indian.

And if he sings to Congress, then everybody will be talking.

Probably to grand juries.

Rabbitte Run

2006-01-04T07:27:00.000Z

Pat Rabbitte, the leader of the Irish Labour Party, has taken a baby step towards right thinking on immigration by calling for a new work permit system for the Republic.

In Rabbitte's case it's one step forward, two steps back - at the same time as suggesting a new system may be required, he managed to mention two immigrationist shibboleths, workforce diversity and the protection of immigrant labour - but to even hear the call coming from the nearest thing Ireland has to a Left is to be welcomed.

Last October, the Irish Enterprise Minister Michael Martin mooted a similar, though apparently softer, scheme; one would hope that Rabbitte's might have more teeth.

What's That Smell? Oh, It's Michael Medved on Birthright Citzenship!

2006-01-04T07:00:00.000Z

A Great Big Hat Tip to Glaivester for this one, by Michael Medved, the former compiler of worst-movies lists turned conservative guru.

So, let's see how many examples of immigrationist propaganda can be fished out of his little morsel -

1. "Seventy misguided Congressional conservatives are pushing to end the long-standing practice of granting automatic citizenship to all children born on American soil — even if their parents came to the U.S. illegally" -

Aha! Ye olde 'misguided' fanny, the sibling of that other old favourite he deploys, mentioning illegality of immigration at the point of entry and not mentioning whether or not the illegal ever regularises their status!

2. "This effort likely requires a change in the Constitution and stands no chance of success, while sending an ugly, destructive message" - Who gives a toss if the message is either ugly or destructive? If the rule of law demands percieved 'ugliness' and putative 'destruction', what of it?

3. "Immigrants, illegal as well as legal, come here for work opportunities, and changing the status of their children won't remove the potent economic incentives that draw them here." -

Yep, there are always plenty of work opportunities running guns, drugs and whores. Next!

4. "It could, however, do incalculable damage to the conservative cause by powerfully alienating Hispanics — the nation's most numerous minority." -

and here he assumes that Hispanics will at all times and under all circumstances vote in the Hispanic ethnic interest, not as American citizens; a rather tired and patronising view.

Medved should stick to Godzilla Versus The Swamp King.

Hasta La Visa - Baby!

2006-01-04T06:57:00.000Z

It seems that some of those charged with holding off intruders via the front door may have left the bedroom window open.

If true, how tawdry - but how typical.

(Update - a closer read of the article reveals that Brazilian sambinhas are allegedly heavy recipients of immigration favouritism, a development I, well, put into song two months ago.

No doubt they're just being treated with the respect with which Brazilians should be treated wherever they go. )

Public Relations Disaster of The Day

2006-01-04T06:48:00.000Z

In a scenario reminiscent of the wages of the Titanic's crew being stopped when the ship went under, the AA refused to answer a call-out to a member requested by his family on the basis that his sudden death at the wheel of his broken-down car apparently terminated his membership.

In its own words, the Automobile Association is owned 'by two leading European private equity firms, CVC and Permira'. Hopefully this incident has everything to do with an ignorant operator - and nothing to do with cost restraint.

The Nine-Inch Nail of Language

2006-01-04T06:11:00.000Z

According to the BBC, a Kent builder called Dean Osmon has had a stern talking to from a 'diversity and race equality team' after placing a Jobcentre advert insisting upon applicants fluent in written and spoken English.

One does hope Mr.Osmon couldn't care less - but it's fascinating to see just how prehistoric the attitudes of the diversity brigade are towards language. Although perhaps grateful for their help in diminishing his wage bill, Mr. Osmon may have grown tired of having to explain the same thing again and again to Janusz and Tomasz, who, although utterly deficient in English language skills, both have skin tones as white as the driven snow.

But the diversobots assume that such a requirement must be racial in origin; they need diversity training.

And they have clearly never had to consider such trifles as the possible increases faced by Mr.Osmon in both his employer's and occupiers' liability insurance premia if Janusz has a fall because he can't understand what Mr. Osmon has told him to do. Vibrant immigration may be - but on a building site, the ability to understand instructions is more important.

After all, the easiest words for most language learners to pick up are the short ones, with pointed meanings - like 'sue'; or 'court'.

And when it comes to criticising hiring choices based on language skills, Jobcentre Plus should not throw stones at its own great glass house.

Swampie's Bedside Manner (It's Free At The Point Of Use)

2006-01-04T06:01:00.000Z

The Prat of Witney is 'promising to defend the values of the NHS'.

Presumably these values include waiting lists, over-compensated administrators and deaths from hospital-acquired infections.

The next Conservative to receive my vote will be the one who promises to annihilate the vampiric National Health Service, now apparently little more than a job creation scheme for foreigners.

Keeping An Eye On Russia, Part I - The Skibbereen Eagle Flies Again!

2006-01-03T08:50:00.000Z

In 1841, a County Cork newspaper named The Skibbereen Eagle (now The Southern Star) published an editorial saying it was 'keeping its eye on Russia'.

The phrase has passed into legend - yet it has been brought to mind by the anti-Putin hysteria of the British press.

A typical example is today's leader in the 'Daily Telegraph' entitled, 'The West must resist Russia's bullying'.

Sure now, the Skibbereen Eagle flies again!

Keeping An Eye On Russia, Part II - The Thunder Blunder

2006-01-03T08:47:00.000Z

The Times joins in the ongoing neoconservative 'Let's kick Putin fest' with a leader today entitled, 'The new Cold War'.

Keeping An Eye On Russia, Part III - A Glaswegian History Professor Speaks Sense (For Once)

2006-01-03T08:42:00.000Z

Although his ARSE status is unknown, Norman Stone speaks with great wisdom when he writes in an outstanding piece in today's Telegraph that, "Europe needs a functioning Russia much more than a semi-functioning Ukraine".

People Trafficking And Rape

2006-01-03T07:55:00.000Z

Denis MacShane has a piece in today's 'Telegraph ' advocating that Johns who use trafficked prostitutes should be charged with rape.

MacShane's credibility on this issue is brutally compromised by his having been a member of a government whose one-world ideology, blinkered policies and pathological torpor have consistently aggravated the people-trafficking problem; and his suggestions, although clearly motivated by humanitarian concerns, are unworkable.

He writes,

"We need to tackle the demand for sex slaves - and that is where the Government can help. Before Christmas, Home Office minister Tony McNulty told me in the Commons that a man who has sex with one of these beaten, terrified women can and should be charged with rape.

He is quite right. Rape is a criminal act, and having sex with a woman who has been intimidated into having sex, even for payment, is nothing other than rape. Mr McNulty's brave statement now needs to be converted into action by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service."

No, it is not rape. Rape is the vaginal penetration of a female by a male achieved by the use of force and against her will. You can create politically correct offences such as 'male rape' until you're blue in the face, but they will never change the historical characteristics of the offence of rape; that it can only be perpetrated by a male upon a female; that the penetration must be vaginal; that the offence is perpetrated by the use of force; and that the penetration took place against the female's will.

It is perfectly possible that some, no doubt many, of the poor souls trafficked in to Britain to satisfy our appetites are subjected to the indignity of rape; but it far exceeds the bounds of reasonable doubt to believe that all of them are.

MacShane continues,

"Something else Britain should do is sign the convention on trafficked women agreed by the 46 member states of the Council of Europe. This has nothing to do with the EU and is an effort to offer protection to trafficked sex slaves by treating them as victims, not criminals or accomplices in crime. In essence, the convention allows any woman to be protected and sheltered once she escapes from her slave owners. The idea is that, once freed of fear, she can help the police and, with the assistance of British embassies, return home and tell her sisters and friends not to believe the gangsters' lies.

Home Office jobsworths are resisting the convention on the grounds that it might give a reason for some of these sex slaves to believe they can stay in Britain rather than be expelled. On the contrary: signing the convention would send a signal to the pimps that their slaves can win freedom in a Britain determined to tackle this scourge".

Rape remains a difficult charge to prove. Although great advances have been made in the law's Jurassic treatment of rape victims over the past 30 years, it is still the case that successful prosecutions are largely dependent upon juries preferring the evidence of the victim over that of the accused,where the accused elects to give evidence at all. As unpleasant as this may be to read, prostitutes tend to be very wise in the ways of rape, and not slow in complaining when it happens. There is therefore no need for a specific offence - nor should there be any allocation of additional resources towards the detection and prosecution of rapes perpetrated against foreign prostitutes.

Instead, resources should be allocated exclusively towards the one thing that will deter the perpetration of such rapes - greater immigration controls.

MacShane would also seem to be arguing that the only condition that would require to be met by a trafficked woman in order for her to gain British residence would be to become a victim of crime. Many of these women already have a full right of residence here, a right vested on them by the Nice Treaty which MacShane's government enacted into law without a referendum.

Perhaps the 'jobsworths' know what they're doing.

He is also being extremely disingenuous, for two reasons, when he writes,

"Given that the rise in sexually transmitted diseases parallels the rise in massage parlours, there is a legitimate public health interest in slowing down the new industry. "

Point One - Blairistas such as himself did nothing to stop the problem in the first place(see above).

Point Two - the rise in sexually transmitted disease mirrors the rise in immigration as a whole, not merely the existence of massage parlours. Nanny Melanie was kind enough to remind us yesterday that the rise in HIV diagnoses mirrors the rise in African immigration precisely. If higher levels of STD's are a phenomenon of immigration, then it's an across the borad phenomenon.

Perhaps one shouldn't be surprised - but it still really gets under one's skin that a senior politician should think the people so stupid that they can write an 800 word article for a national newspaper on crimes which are exclusively phenomena of immigration and not make a single reference to the even the possibility of limiting the number of entrants.

It seems that even that tiny leap of the imagination is beyond Her Majesty's Government.

South Asian Arrogance Alert, Part I - Checking Your Figures

2006-01-03T07:41:00.000Z

I had a very interesting discussion at work last week with a South Asian co-worker, a native Pakistani, who very innocently told me how he regularly manipulated our ultimate employer's website in order to obtain free ringtones.

I don't think he felt so smart after I dubbed him up to my boss.

His fund-raising drive having been completed - I would recommend to him 'The Wall Street Gurus - How You Can Profit From Investment Newsletters' (Now Out of Print)' - Peter Brimelow has published this letter from a displaced American IT worker on the hazards of South Asian arrogance. The displaced writes,

"On Wall Street, I worked in derivatives and IT areas, and on several occasions, Indian nationals (who are aggressively recruited into quant/tech departments) openly doubted my skills.

On the first occasion, I scored within the top three of twenty students on a derivatives finance exam. A British instructor graded my exam and the Indian, so convinced I was stupid, did not believe the score and demanded the chance to grade it himself. He finally agreed I had earned the score."

And the bastard should have been pink-slipped on the spot.

South Asian Arrogance Alert, Part II - The Infiltrators

2006-01-03T07:29:00.000Z

"At the most external level I think it's because we've infiltrated the city at every socio-economic level, from fruit vendor to taxi driver, from busboy to investment banker" .

Abha Dawesar on South Asian migration into New York City.

'Infiltrated'? What a cheeky bitch.

Some Thoughts On The Nature of Italian Civil Procedure

2006-01-03T07:23:00.000Z

An Italian judge has ordered that a priest appear before him to prove the fact of Christ (hat tip - Glaivester).

One wonders whether Italian civil procedure affords interested parties the opportunity to file 'amicus curiae' briefs; and if it does, hopefully some smart and pious Italian lawyer will file a frustrater calling for the court to prove the existence of Mohammed.

And Finally: Trifkovic Swamps Swampie

2006-01-03T07:11:00.000Z

During a a period of remission from his rampant Serbophilia, Srjda Trifkovic takes aim and fires at David Cameron and his fellow eneuretics in the Conservative leadership.

Migration Watch: Heroes Of The Age

2006-01-02T21:04:00.000Z

It seems that the redoubtable Sir Andrew Green and his colleagues at Migration Watch are urging 'zero tolerance' for 'foreign criminals'.

Good!

Lawrence Auster on Mark Steyn

2006-01-02T20:31:00.000Z

Dennis points in the direction of this fine fisking of The Steyn by Lawrence Auster.

Auster links to this Steyn piece from the New Criterion, whose online version I used to lap up but which I hardly look at any more, and lets rip -

"He focuses on the supposedly irreversible low European fertility so as not to have to say anything about the actually reversible Muslim immigration; indeed, he only uses the words “immigration” or “immigrants” twice in this entire 6,300-word article. As in other columns of his that I’ve discussed, Steyn, the recent winner of the Claremont Institute’s Winston Churchill award, does not declare in Churchillian fashion that losing many or most European countries to Islam is totally unacceptable and that we must do whatever we can to prevent such an unimaginable calamity. No, more in the mode of Lord Halifax than of Churchill, he tells people it’s too late to stop it. The best he hopes for is to save some parts of the West, by which, based on his previous writings, he presumably means America. He has written off Western Europe".

I know where Auster is coming from, because I've made precisely the same criticism of Steyn myself.

The Case for Vladimir Putin

2006-01-02T17:52:00.000Z

Why is William Rees-Mogg saying 'that 'The Russians are ready for a new Cold War', in yesterday's 'Mail on Sunday'; or Simon Heffer declaiming in Saturday's 'Telegraph' that 'President Putin should be put down'?

The current energy crisis between Russia and Ukraine has meant that this morning, the front page headline in the dead-tree 'Daily Telegraph' was 'Putin sends a shiver through Europe'.

However, the piece notes that the price being demanded from Ukraine "merely brings Ukraine in line with the price that most of Europe pays: about $240 per 1,000 cubic metres".

This afternoon, the Telegraph has posted a report claiming that 'Ukraine 'stole $25m of gas''. It says that,

"Russia has promised to pump an extra 95 million cubic metres of gas to Europe to compensate countries experiencing a shortfall of up to 40 per cent following alleged thefts by Ukraine"; that "Gazprom, the Russian energy company which yesterday cut off deliveries of natural gas to Ukraine, accused the country of diverting about $25 million worth of fuel intended for customers in Europe."; that "Alexander Medvedev, deputy chairman of the state-controlled energy supplier Gazprom, said Ukraine siphoned off about 100 million cubic meters of natural gas yesterday alone"; and that, contrary to the denials of Victor Yushchenko, "Ukraine's energy minister Ivan Plachkov said Ukraine had the right to take a share of the gas exported via the Russian pipeline and would do so if the temperature fell below minus 3C".

One thing that shines through the fog of anti-Russian, anti-Putin propaganda surrounding this dispute is that Putin is determined to abolish subsidies and enforce market standards, the actions not of a brutal enforcer but a classical free-marketeer.

The Ukrainians have been paying a price far below market rate for Russian gas - Putin appears to simply be removing the subsidy of nearly 80% paid for by Russian consumers. The Ukrainians aspire to join the EU and NATO? Fine, but they pay EU rates. If one believes in free trade and free markets, you really can't have any argument with Putin's thinking.

If, as the Telegraph notes, "analysts estimate that a sudden quadrupling of gas prices would lead to the economy shrinking at five per cent a year - comparable only with Zimbabwe - bringing inflation of up to 30 per cent and costing millions of jobs", then, although that would be very sad, it would be as much a consequence of Ukraine's failure to diversify its economy after independence. Perhaps Yulia Timoshenko, Yushchenko's former ally and the so-called "Gas Princess", might have some suggestions for curing the current crisis - after all, she's made enough money out of Ukraine's privatised energy sector to have acquired some expertise in such matters.

But Putin's using Russia's resources as a political tool!

So what? One would very much rather have him pumping the oil to the West than to the East, and there's not going to be much relief from Iraq for a while. Putin might in fact be the reincarnation of Ivan the Terrible he is sometimes painted to be; on the other hand if he is using his country's natural resources as a diplomatic tool he might merely be acting in the best interests of the Russian people, which is the job they pay him to do.

But Putin's been bad to Mikhail Khodorkovsky!

Again, so what? Khodorkovsky, like Berezovsky and Abramovich, is little more than a common thief. They are as despicable as Putin is painted to be. Putin's prosecution of Khodorkovsky can be construed as a very healthy signal that the elected government of Russia intends to keep a monopoly on power. Khodorkovsky and Berezovsky both broke the deal whereby Putin would leave the oligarchs alone if they left him alone; and, in the interest of maintaining good Anglo-Russian relations, I for one would have no hesitation in revoking Berezovsky's asylum-seeker status and giving him a one-way ticket to Moscow.

Did we expect that democracy in Russia would spring from Gorbachev's birthmark like a fully formed Athena? If we did we were daft.

Putin at least has the virtue of being elected - he is their guy, and it does the cause of Russian democracy no good for Russia's citizens to see a Daily Telegraph columnist write that their electoral choice should be 'put down'.

Democracy in Russia is a process which may yet require some nurturing, if only because this is the first time in that country's long history that it has existed in any meaningful sense; and the constant baiting of Russia is not healthy either for their country or for ours.

Putin has also had the guts to be daring - in 2001, he instituted a flat tax and kicked off a wave of tax reforms which have shown him to be a very much more prudent fiscal conservative than either Tony Blair or George W. Bush; and prudence is not a virtue normally associated with fascists and tyrants. Economically, Putin is one of us.

At the time of Ukraine's so-called 'Orange Revolution', Justin Raimondo of Antiwar wrote a marvellous series of reports on just how deeply the process had been manipulated by neoconservative interests intent on circling Russia with a ring of bases. Raimondo's cynicism has been shown to be justified in every respect; and all of the negative criticism hurled at Putin by those newspapers like the 'Daily Telegraph', which so assiduously hectored for the invasion of Iraq and the Orange Revolution, are sour grapes for his refusal to swallow neocon crap, and for daring to put the interests of Russia first.

And the vodka of the neos leaves a very bad taste indeed.

Gorgeous George Broadhead Of The Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association Rides Again

2006-01-02T17:35:00.000Z

A mere one day after receiving the Anti-Catholic Bigot Of The Year Award For 2006, it seems that Gorgeous George Broadhead, Chief Spokeslad for the Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association, has gotten himself into some hot water from his fellow gays over some imprudent remarks about Muslims and immigrants (hat tip- Andrew Sullivan).

GB has got the hee-bees for writing that- well, I'll leave it to 'The Guardian':

"A gay magazine which described immigrants as "criminals of the worst kind" and Islam as a "barmy doctrine" has been condemned as racist by other gay rights groups. According to the magazine of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (Galha), Islam is growing "like a canker" in the UK through "unrestrained and irresponsible breeding".

The magazine also published an article endorsing the rightwing populist Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, and described immigrants as "ill educated and culturally estranged Third Worlders".

The Grauniad goes on,

"Peter Herbert, chairman of the London-wide Race Hate Crime Forum, said he would be writing to the Crown Prosecution Service about the remarks and would "vigorously pursue" a prosecution of the editor or writers who had made the "racist and degrading" comments.

A number of Galha's honorary vice-presidents, who include the Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris, the musician George Melly, the writer Claire Rayner, and Michael Cashman, the former EastEnders actor turned MEP, are understood to have expressed concern about the comments.

Galha's executive committee said the magazine's editor and deputy editor had been forced to resign over the comments, published in the autumn issue, and the magazine had been relaunched under a new editorial team. "We've done everything we can to rectify the situation," said the secretary of Galha, George Broadhead.

The group has renounced the comments about immigrants and immigration, which Mr Broadhead admitted could be "regarded as potentially racist". However, he said he stood by the remarks about Muslims and Islam.

Mr Broadhead wrote in the magazine: "What is wrong with being fearful of Islam? (There is a lot to fear) ... What does a moderate Muslim do, other than excuse the real nutters by adhering to this barmy doctrine?"

He described his article as "slightly over the top in wording maybe but basically we're saying Islam is homophobic".

He told the Guardian: "There may be people who think of themselves as moderate but we've yet to see them coming out and condemning their fundamentalist counterparts. If they want to follow a belief that we think is execrable it's up to them - it's a question of religion per se and the damage it can do in extremist form in theocracies where gays are not just put in jail but whipped and tortured."

According to Imaan, a support group for gay and lesbian Muslims, the anti-Islamic views of Galha are just the tip of the iceberg in the gay community. "These comments are completely outrageous," said Imaan's spokeswoman, Rasina X. "In lots of ways the gay community reflects the straight community but Galha has gone beyond what the average straight person thinks. These comments are disgusting. They are worse than what the BNP would publish. It is racist."

It seems that Gorgeous Georgie's reign of anti-clerical terror might have run its course, for Peter Herbert certainly has more bottle than I have.

You see, reprinted below is the text of an e-mail to Lothian & Borders Police which I composed yesterday, but did not send:

"Dear Sirs,

Complaint of Breach Of The Peace Aggravated By Religious Prejudice
George Broadhead, Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association

I wish to make a complaint of breach of the peace aggravated by religious prejudice against George Broadhead, a spokesperson for the Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association.

On January 1 2006, BBC News Interactive reported that Keith Patrick Cardinal O'Brien, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of St. Andrews & Edinburgh, would use his sermon on New Year's Day to oppose developments in family law enabling homosexuals to enter into marriages/partnerships. It reported that his comments would include the following;

"When our lawmakers condone and endorse trends in society which are ultimately ruinous of family life we are entitled to question their motivation and condemn their behaviour".

Cardinal O'Brien would appear to be doing nothing more than reiterating Roman Catholic doctrine on the nature of human relationships, the essence of which has been in the public domain for decades.

BBC News Interactive then reported the above named George Broadhead as saying,

"These relentless Vatican-inspired attacks are reaching a level that could lead to an escalation of violence against gay people"; and

"The Catholic Church's hierarchy has used increasingly extreme language in its desperate attempts to hold back progress for the gay community"; and

"This kind of hate-mongering will be seen as a justification by some people for their already existing prejudices.

"It might even lead to more violence against a section of the community that is already subject to harassment and discrimination".

Broadhead's comments about 'Vatican-inspired attacks' that 'could lead to an escalation of violence against gay people' are clearly hysterical. However, one would suggest that his remarks descend from the odious to the criminal when he says,"This kind of hate-mongering will be seen as a justification by some people for their already existing prejudices".

Broadhead's description of Cardinal O'Brien's re-iteration of Roman Catholic teaching on the nature of the family as 'hate-mongering' could itself be construed by a reasonable person as being hateful. However, it is specifically directed against Roman Catholic doctrine, and therefore against Roman Catholics; and it is there I would respectfully suggest that the offence complained of lies.

The URL of the relevant web page is
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4571190.stm

It is the practice of BBC News Interactive to update their pages regularly throughout the day. A copy of the page has been printed.

Yours faithfully,

Martin Kelly, LL.B., Dip.L.P,"

What Katie Should Do Next: And What Should Happen To Her If She Doesn't

2006-01-02T15:34:00.000Z

I am indebted to David Farrer for pointing me in the direction of the DEBKA File, which on December 28 published the following report on the release of the Burton family:

"All day, the foreign office in London insisted there was no contact with the Palestinian kidnappers of Kate Burton, 25, a human rights worker at the Gaza-based al-Mizan organization, and her parents, who were snatched at gunpoint in Rafah Wednesday and their kidnappers were unknown. It was announced that an envoy of the British Muslim Council would travel to the Middle East to seek their release. However, DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report that officers of the British secret service MI6, who are stationed in Rafah, were in constant negotiations with the abductors who demanded a hefty sum in ransom. They therefore knew exactly who they were, the Fatah-al Aqsa Brigades’ Black Panthers represented by their leader Nidal An-Najar. For London, paying out ransom to Palestinian terrorist kidnappers was a hard pill to swallow. This problem was overcome when the Palestinian Authority offered to front for the British and hand over the agreed sum. This made it possible to wind up the negotiations and obtain the Burtons’ freedom. "

If this is true then the Burtons owe their liberty to their fellow British citizens, and have assisted in setting a dangerous precedent in that the gangsters of Palestine will now know that every Brit who strays into their sewer is fair game; an opportunity waiting to be taken.

Today, both The Times and the Daily Mail have reported on what seems to be a rather disturbing development - the refusal of Kate Burton to discuss any details of her captors with the intelligence services which may have procured her release.

The 'Telegraph' today also carries an almost puke-worthy profile of the Burtons, which notes,

"Friends described the family as being "internationalist".

I prefer my original assessment of them as 'fucking dilettantes', a trait they share with all such 'internationalists'. All British 'internationalists' become diehard patriots when the crap hits the fan, they phone the Foreign Office and the so-called love of their fellow man they so self-righteously lactate dries up like a wadi in July.

They want the benefits of being British, without seeking the company of the British.

No deal.

There is a time in everyone's life when they are called upon to take a stand - to answer the question, 'Whose side are you on?' If this foolish young woman wishes to return to Gaza to continue making a fool of herself and to play dress-up, she should be free to do so. However, if any ransom has been paid for her release by the British government then, as a British citizen and taxpayer, I have been on her side - not her international trash pals in Brussels or at the LSE, not her pals in the Islamocharity rackets and most certainly not her other pals, Jihad's Useful Idiots, who fester like rotting leaves in the undergrowth of Palestinian 'peace activism'.

It was me and all the other poor unenlightened British slobs hacking away on the home front who were on her side; and she owes us.

If she doesn't so-operate with the intelligence services then a mechanism should be found for stripping her of British citizenship. That would be a real test for the mettle of an 'internationalist'; and a just reward for failing to respond to the trust her fellow citizens have placed in her.

There are enough poor, disenfranchised people in this country without any British citizen picking up the burden of the Palestinians. For that this story should appear today has a beautiful irony.

Earlier this afternoon, Channel 4 broadcast 'Lawrence of Arabia'. T.E. Lawrence was the spiritual grandfather of Kate Burton - besotted by the land, peoples and culture of Arabia, British through and through and utterly blind to his role as a pawn in the plots of peoples' whose burden he had taken up.

There is a lesson for Kate in there. It's that there's no place like home.

New Year, New Nicknames - Part I: Steve Sailer

2006-01-02T14:53:00.000Z

One of my biggest blogging regrets of 2005 was that Michelle Malkin never made good on her promise to counter Steve Sailer's proposition that the root of the chaos in post-Katrina New Orleans was the inherent gap in IQ between blacks and whites.

Well, at least I can sleep knowing I countered it; and not just that, but kept countering; and countering; and countering; and countering; and countering; and countering; and countering; and countering; and countering.

Perhaps the argument was too hard for her.

Sailer, who in my experience disappears when called upon to remove the beam in his own eye after he has remarked upon the beam in his brother's, has got 2006 off to a flying start with a piece that gets straight into, you guessed it, race and IQ.

Foe the remainder of 2006, The Sage of Studio City shall be referred to as 'Piltdown'.

New Year, New Nicknames - Part II: David Cameron

2006-01-02T14:49:00.000Z

For his love of the environment, David Cameron will be referred to as 'Swampie'.

New Year, New Nicknames - Part III: Magnus Linklater

2006-01-02T14:39:00.000Z

Historically, relations between these pages and former editors of the 'Scotsman' have been poor - well, they're going to get worse.

For the loss of cultural heritage occasioned by a defect in his Christmas lights, that scion of the Scottish elite Magnus Linklater will hereafter be referred to as 'Griswold'.

Ireland's Missing

2006-01-01T15:11:00.000Z

It looks like 2006 is going to be a cracking year for people trafficking in the Republic of Ireland; if only because 2005 proved that An Garda Siochana can find its ass with neither hand.

A Very Special Happy New Year to Humberside Constabulary

2006-01-01T15:08:00.000Z

They earned it.

Harvard's Pouting Prof - A Clear Case of ARSE

2006-01-01T08:19:00.000Z

Apoplexy Rampant amongst Scottish Emigrants (ARSE), also known as 'Connery's Disease', is a little-known psychological condition affecting many Scots permitted by other lands to make their lives within their borders.

The primary symptom is a spastic reflex produced by the mention of the word 'Scotland'.The mouth of the ARSE sufferer will start to twitch at its corners. Their eyes will start to blink involuntarily.

They will then gush forth a torrent of criticism of Scotland; the Scottish people; the Scottish climate; how they find Scottish culture so limiting; and generally how much better, oh just how so much better, everywhere else other than Scotland really is.

It is my sad duty to report that one of our most illustrious native sons, Niall Ferguson, the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and self-proclaimed 'fully paid-up member of the neo-imperialist gang', appears to have succumbed to the grip of ARSE.

You see, Professor Ferguson has published a column in today's 'Sunday Telegraph' entitled 'Happy Hogmanay - and to celebrate, let's put Scotland into liquidation'.

One can almost see the twitch replacing the usual pout on the neo-imperialist gangster's lips as he sat down to write it. He writes,

"Whatever else 2006 may bring, whatever unknowns the future may hold, a Scottish Hogmanay makes one thing absolutely certain: the New Year will start with a fearful hangover."

Speak for yourself, pal. He continues,

"To be absolutely sure of escaping my Caledonian heritage, I have fled south - to Cape Town, no less. And as you read this, the only headache I am worrying about is the one I risk getting if I spend too long in the golden summer sun."

In the case of Scottish emigrants to Australia and South Africa, it is not unknown for the symptoms of ARSE to be accelerated by over-exposure to tropical weather. He goes on,

"Yes, I have finally reached the parting of the ways as all of us Scots emigrants do."

Do they all - really?

Another symptom of ARSE is that it brings to the surface the Scot's native tendency to harshess. For example, Ferguson writes,

"We go through a long period, which can last up to 20 years, of telling whoever will listen that Scotland is God's Own Country; that its Highland scenery is matchless; that its people invented all that is worth preserving in the modern world - Scotch, golf, economic liberalism, penicillin, television and, er, Scotch - and that it is only a cruel fate that consistently robs its sporting representatives of the resounding victories to which they are entitled by dint of Scotland's proud history".

Does this man, who would have been 14 years old in 1978, expect us to believe that the words of 'Ally's Tartan Army' have never crossed his lips?

Why, his students should ask him to sing it for them!

Hopefully, in his cloisters on the banks of the Charles River, its ghostly refrain haunts him in the bitter watches of the night...'And we'll really shake them up'....'When we win the World Cup'...''cos Scotland is the greatest football team'....

Professor Ferguson then engages in what amounts to a bog-standard 'Apologia Pro Vita Caledonia' -

"I banged on incessantly and tediously about the superiority of Scottish education, Scottish law, Scottish rugby, Scottish water, Scottish tweed, Scottish holidays - you name it. I quoted Burns. I quoted Carlyle. I quoted the statistics that showed that Scottish regiments were the ones that did the real fighting in the First World War".

He sounds like a crashing bore to me. His analysis of this behaviour is strange, to say the least:

"Now, this wasn't behaviour attributable to an inferiority complex. That would have been forgivable. But the Scottish problem is the opposite. As a nation we are cursed with a superiority complex. We really do believe that we are better - not just better than the English; better than everyone."

Criticism of a superiority complex? From a Harvard professor?

The depths of the insight ARSE is capable of inducing are astonishing. He says,

"There is no Scottish cringe, in the Australian fashion. There is only the Scottish swagger - a swagger inspired by the authentically Calvinist certainty that we and only we (by which of course I mean we White Aggressively Scottish Protestant males) are the Elect."

Ah yes, the White Aggressively Scottish Protestant males! Like the stupid bastards who paid for him to be educated at Glasgow Academy!

And how many young Scottish women has he met recently? Damn few, by the sound of it. X-X can match X-Y in the aggression stakes with their hands tied behind their backs. And one really does hope that he's not suggesting that only his 'White Aggressively Scottish Protestant' males are 'true' Scots - because that's a whole different can of worms, Paleface.

He then addresses his fellow countrymen as if he were a dominie and they a group of unruly schoolchildren -

"Well, it really is time to bin all that and face up to some harsh realities - realities which I think moving from England to the United States has made it easier for me to acknowledge.

1. Scotland is a small, sparsely populated appendage of England. Those who called it 'North Britain' in the 18th century had it right.

2. The weather is impossibly wet.

3. Most of the land north of Loch Lomond is barren rock.

4. Scotland lost its political independence 300 years ago and the creation of a Scottish Parliament, a glorified county council housed in a risible and over-priced folly of a building, has not restored it.

5. Educational standards in Scotland, once the highest in Europe, have - with a few exceptions - collapsed.

6. When it comes to sport - and I do not count the one decent tennis player - Scotland is the Belarus of the West.

7. In fact, when it comes to just about everything, it is the Belarus of the West.

8. That is why so many Scots emigrate. As I did."

Good for you, Niall!

I'll concede 2, 3, 5 and 6. However, the rest of his case is cauld kail.

1 - Culturally and historically, Scotland has never been an 'appendage' of England.

4 - As no fan of Scottish devolution, the Scotland Act was not intended to restore political independence; and it is grossly disingenuous of Ferguson to suggest that it was.

7 - 'The Belarus of the West'? So, like, he thinks Scotland is a dictatorship?

It is at this point that Ferguson makes his most staggering, ahistorical misjudgment; and coming from an imperialist, it's an absolute cracker.

He says,

"It's over. Over the way countries are sometimes just over. Over the way Prussia is over. Over the way Piedmont is over. Over the way the Papal States are over. Or, if you prefer, over the way General Motors will soon be over.

My modest proposal for 2006 is quite simple. The country hitherto known as Scotland should go into liquidation. The assets, such as they are, should be broken up, sold off and the proceeds (which won't fetch much) distributed to the creditors and, if anything remains, to the shareholders.

The Scottish Parliament should be wound up and its ridiculous building turned into a multiplex cinema or a shopping mall. The Scottish Football Association should be taken over by its English counterpart and Rangers and Celtic should go where they belong, which is pretty near the bottom of the Premier League."

His Thatcherite depiction of nationhood in terms of the rights of limited companies can be put down to the mania of ARSE; but the flaw in his argument runs much deeper.

In 2005, I wrote a post on precislely this point, entitled 'An Open Letter to Nicola Sturgeon MSP'. It is not Scotland that is over; not as a people, not as a culture, not as a nation. However, it may very well be the case that it is the United Kingdom which is going the way of Prussia and Piedmont, and which has had its day; which, if true, would be down in no small measure to the destruction of the economic balance between North and South which gave the entity some rationale.

Indeed, a point of view to which I am coming around is that Britain needed the British Empire in order to survive just as much as the British Empire needed Britain. The Empire gave common focus and purpose to four very separate nations whose peoples' had been thrown together by history into one entity. Perhaps the removal of that national crutch expedited the end of the United Kingdom. That story isn't over - yet.

Yes, it seems that Professor Ferguson has a clear case of ARSE. Nurse - the gloves...

Hoodie!

2006-01-01T08:16:00.000Z

Some Thoughts On the Current Obloquy Being Heaped On Steven Spielberg

2006-01-01T08:05:00.000Z

In 1993, Steven Spielberg made Schindler's List; a horrifying film to watch, but which made one realise that no matter how terrible the depictions they were nothing compared to the reality of the Final Solution to the 'Jewish question'.

In 2004, Steven Spielberg made 'Munich'; a movie which appears to question some Israeli policies. Now, some of those who applauded him in 1993 are making out that he's all manner of bastards.

May his critics be condemned to watch a double bill of 'Hook' and '1941' on an eternal loop.

And The Anti-Catholic Bigot Of The Year Award For 2006...

2006-01-01T07:48:00.000Z

goes to the exquisitely named George Broadhead of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association, who, in language which conjures up the Pythonesque image of gangs of Little Sisters Of The Poor roaming the streets hunting for unsuspecting gays to bash like the Hellfire Club, has accused Cardinal Keith O' Brien of 'hate mongering'.

Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.

Have A Happy New Year (If You Must)

2005-12-31T19:21:00.000Z

New Year is as enjoyable as throat cancer.

A New Year's Message To The Scottish People

2005-12-31T19:19:00.000Z

The first of my countrymen to call me a 'bawbag' in 2006 is going to learn decency and good manners by my jumping on their head.

Some Thoughts On The Government Of Egypt

2005-12-31T19:16:00.000Z

If they keep this up, they'll go blind.

Some Thoughts On The Release Of The Burton Family

2005-12-31T19:14:00.000Z

Fucking dilettantes.

The Good Old Daily Telegraph's Immigrationism (Gimme Shelter)

2005-12-30T21:36:00.000Z

The third day of the 'Daily Telegraph's attempt to shove mass migrancy down our throats brings an effort entitled 'Traffickers, not refugees, are the problem'.

It starts with a critique of the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees, and a quotation from the redoubtable Sir Andrew Green of Migration Watch describing it as 'hopelessly out of date'.

Way to go, Sir Andrew!

It then proceeds to an interview with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, former Portugese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres.

The Telgraph report, by David Rennie, states that,

"His view is simple - the system can be made to work but there are problems that have to be solved urgently.

The first is finding a way to distinguish refugees from other migrants. The second is cracking down on the people smugglers, criminals whose interest is to blur the lines between genuine refugees and economic migrants."

Sounds good so far. Rennie quotes Guterres as saying,

"Let's be honest. It's not in Europe that you will find today the largest number of refugees. The largest numbers are close to the countries where their problems originated. What today sustains the institution of asylum is the generosity of some of the poorest countries in the world."

With how much development aid is anyone's guess, but one can concede the broad point. He goes on,

"Do you think that the people attacked by the Janjaweed in Darfur moved because they are looking for a better life, or because they are running for their lives?"

Which is a pretty fair point - and one would be very interested to know what programs the UN funds for the purpose of evangelising the Janjaweed. That would certainly eradicate the root casuse of their barbarity, their Mohammedanism. (Edited by author)

But it's unfortunate that at this point, Guterres' facade of reason starts to crumble, revealing the the ideologue beneath. He says,

"Mr Guterres is not afraid to defend economic migrants, even if they sometimes break the law while seeking a better life. In the 1960s and early 1970s, more than one million Portuguese left to seek work in western Europe, many of them illegally, he recalled. "I don't consider them criminals. I have a lot of respect for them".

Are our incomes diminished by taxes to actually pay this guy? Rennie continues,

"The rich world needs a new migration policy that can manage rising flows, and avoids "almost forcing migrants to use illegal ways", he said."

So, they'll come here, whether we want them to or not?

One can't help that Senor Guterres has been at the United Nations for too long, and has forgotten that quaint concept called 'sovereignty'. It's us who decide what our migration policies will be, dude, not fat-assed Portugese politicos in Turtle Bay.

He is, to his credit, dead set against people traffickers - but then every moral man should be.

According to Wikipedia, as well as being the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres is also the President of the Socialist International.

Why didn't the 'Telegraph' see fit to mention it?

The Inaugural Sore Arse Of The Day Award...

2005-12-30T21:13:00.000Z

goes to Constable Zahid Malik of Nottinghamshire Police, for complaining that the description of the crime museum of the Metropolitan Police as the 'Black Museum' is racist.

Poor wee soul; he doesn't think it's "sensitive" - or "appropriate".

Zahidistan must be a really fun place to live...say, isn't Nottinghamshire where Constable Diedrik 'Robocop' Coetzee hangs out? I wonder how the Zahidster's arrest rate compares to Diedrik's...or if he can wield a mummified hippopotamus penis just like Diedrik can...

Bestselling Indian author paints grim view of outsourcing jobs

2005-12-30T14:18:00.000Z

It seems that some Indian middle-class wanker is unhappy about the kinds of jobs being outsourced to his country, and he's written a bestselling book about it:

Shyam Mehra, 26, hates it when the Americans call him Sam. He hates it even more when his boss calls him Sam too.

That's not all. He hates his work, his "semi-girlfriend" ... and himself.

Mehra is one of the American-hating characters from a new book that has struck a chord with India's fast-growing middle class.

He could, however, easily be any of the hundreds of thousands of faceless Indians who take on western names and fake accents to provide client services to millions of foreign customers, mostly in the United States.

English-speaking young people like Mehra form the backbone of India's rapidly expanding outsourcing industry which adds 17 billion dollars to the economy and employs 700,000 people.

And just like the country's outsourcing services, which are much in demand, "One Night at the Call Center" by Chetan Bhagat is flying off the shelves.

In a month since its release in October, the book has sold more than 100,000 copies -- an impressive feat in a country where 5,000 copies of a book can ensure it a place in the bestsellers' list.

The man takes a dim view of Americans, and expresses it in such a way that if he lived in the West, he'd be prosecuted for a "hate crime":

Meanwhile, an instructor preparing trainees for the job scribbles a golden rule on the blackboard for handling difficult customers: 10=35.

"Remember, a thirty-five-year-old American's brain and IQ is the same as a 10-year-old Indian's brain ... Americans are dumb, just accept it. I don't want anyone losing their cool during the calls..." the instructor tells a class.

Oh, wait. You can say anything at all that insults Americans and no one cares.

At any rate, India should thank its lucky stars that so many call centers have located there, a country with massive poverty, disfunctional government, a place which most of its citizens can't seem to leave fast enough. To be blunt about it, Mr, Bhagat, if Americans are so dumb and Indians so smart, why is my country so much better ...way better...than yours? And, gee, call center customers can be rude?

This strikes as a case of "cultural weapons of mass destruction". The linked article refers to China:

If the Chinese are becoming rootless, sexually anomic modern individuals, with all the destructive social implications that suggests, will that not also undermine their national discipline and reduce the political, economic, and military challenges they may pose to us?

Three years ago in an exchange at VFR, James Woodhill proposed the deployment of “Cultural WMDs” against the Islamic world. “Ally McBealize” the Muslims through a massive infusion of low-level, Western-inspired pop entertainment, he argued, and they would become utterly demoralized and their societies would fall apart and lose any ability to wage jihad. We could defeat them without firing a shot. Ally McBealization has not happened in the Muslim world. Is it happening in China? Will America’s bacon be saved by the destructive forces of the very modernity that America foolishly urged China to embrace a quarter century ago?

The bestselling Indian novel demonstrates that along with a rising level of living standards and call center jobs, India has also imported a Western virus: one that has symptoms of resentment and alienation. May it do them all the good it's done us.

The Parliamentary Conservative Party On Immigration: Where The Laffer Curve Meets The Bell Curve

2005-12-30T07:23:00.000Z

The Devil's Kitchen reports that the Conservative Party has lost his vote, and that he has become, like me, an electoral ronin.

Good on him. Under the new leadership, they don't deserve to have it.

Yesterday, they released a statement to the effect that,

"Conservatives have called for the EU Worker Registration Scheme to be scrapped in a bid to help restore public confidence in Britain's immigration system. Shadow Immigration Minister Damian Green has protested that controls on workers from central and eastern European accession states - requiring them to pay £70 for a form allowing them to work - have backfired, promoting mass evasion, and encouraging thousands to disappear into the black economy".

It continues,

"We want hard-working people in this country. To charge people big money for a worthless piece of paper encourages them to stay out of the official economy. This is a classic example of the Government talking tough but acting incompetently. Instead of this bureaucracy we need proper border controls so we know who is coming in and going out. That way we will know how many people are here at any one time."

Whenever I see the words 'worthless piece of paper', I can't help but think of the one I have that's headed 'Bachelor of Laws'. And we have plenty of hard-working migrants in this country, many of them Lithuanian prostitutes held under duress by Albanian gangsters.

This plea to common-sense and the rule of law would seem to be a worthy attempt to clear up a bureaucratic nightmare - but it's not really.

It's motivated by a desire to increase the tax-take, a necessary consequence of the party's new liberalism.

The 'Laffer Curve', broadly put, indicates that tax revenues rise when rates are low because taxpayers do not use avoidance mechanisms that would otherwise appeal when rates are high. If they get the migrants all legal, they become taxpayers - therefore more tax income would be generated.

Paranoid? Perhaps - but today's 'Daily Telegraph' reports that Francis 'We are all immigrants' Maude, the Conservative Party Chairman, has said that "The Conservatives will not raise taxes on the rich as part of their new-found commitment to the redistribution of wealth". So the cash has to come from somewhere.

He then goes on to say,

"Immigration has been good economically and has contributed to us being a much enriched country culturally, but it has to be controlled".

Immigration is Newtonian in character; for every good reason for it there's an equal and opposite bad reason to oppose it. Bollywood movies? Honour killings. Indian food? Cousin marriage. Reggae? Yardies. Chinese food? Snakeheads. Francis Maude, the grandee son of a grandee whom one would hope would be delighted to have a reception centre in his constituency, has uttered words which some people will have noted very closely; and which they will remember when the time is right.

And the Conservative Party's new immigration policy will fail as much for the gaping flaw in its theory as for the inevitable bad faith in its ultimate execution.

It assumes that Janusz and Tomasz will stop doing under the counter work because they don't have to register!

Yeah, right.

But the courage of the New Model Tories has been well and rtuly screwed to the sticking post, and they are determined not to fail. Also in today's 'Telegraph' is a letter from the fruitily voiced Aberdonian NMT, Michael (fit like) Gove MP.

Commenting on the 'Telegraph's leader on the destruction of the green belt two days ago, Gove wrote,

"A much bigger factor in the pressure on housing is increased longevity and the shift towards single-adult households. Managed migration makes a significant contribution to economic growth and cultural richness. It is important that we do not lose sight of that fact in the necessary debate about balancing the need for new houses with respect for the environment."

Anyone think that Frankie and Mikey are singing off the same hymn sheet? Any day now, they'll be calling themselves the 'Cultural Richness Awareness Party'.

And a more fitting acronym would be hard to find.

Does He Take Sugar? Do They Speak English?

2005-12-30T06:57:00.000Z

The BBC has reported that 'record numbers of teachers are coming to Scotland from overseas because of excellent pay and conditions'.

Being the son of a retired headmaster, that which enriches teachers would normally seem a good idea, although ST would be the first to tell you that teaching contains its fair share of drunks, layabouts and psychotics; much like any other line of work.

The current clover in which our didacts are rolling is much more a symptom of the Scottish Executive's belief that the problems in our education system, for example some children leaving school unable to read, can be solved by throwing money at it, when the problem is a result of the flat-earth philosophy that all children will learn at the same speed in unstreamed comprehensive schools, combined with the touching belief that all parents solicitously encourage little Hamish and Morag to complete their quadratic equations before they settle down with the collected works of Balzac.

Going for the 'more, more, more' solution is all well and good when the system itself is structurally sound. However when your education system is as buggered as ours seems to be, throwing money and resources at it will more likely than not compound rather than eradicate the problem.

But hiring teachers from overseas raises its own problems. Can they speak English to an adequate degree of proficiency? One would hope so; indeed, one would hope that an English test would be mandatory - but this is the Scottish Executive we're dealing with here...take nothing for granted...

And the countdown is on for the first cultural misunderstanding, such a foreign teacher striking a child. It is only a matter of time - and the gymnastics that will be gone through to explain away the incident will be a marvel to behold.

At least it doesn't seem to be the sort of con game perpetrated on teachers in Nevada...yet...