Gary Monro’s blog

In the US, when a man has sex with an underage girl they debate is about whether to jail him or not….

In the UK, underage sex is encouraged.

— NY Times article by free sign-up only - to read full story click (more…)

Nice to see Sunni Iraqis helping the coalition forces:

US warplanes bombed suspected safehouses being used by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s insurgent group near the Syrian border yesterday during what one local leader called an unprecedented push by a Sunni Arab tribe to drive out Zarqawi’s foreign-led forces.

Ali Rawi, an emergency-room director in the border city of Qaim, said at least 56 people — the majority of them apparently followers of Zarqawi — were killed in yesterday’s air strikes and ground fighting. Zarqawi’s group, Al Qaeda in Iraq, said in a statement posted in local mosques that it had lost 17 men.

The clashes between Sunni Arab tribes and insurgents, coupled with growing vows by Iraq’s Sunni minority to turn out in force for national elections in the coming months, coincided with US hopes for defusing the two-year-old insurgency. US military leaders have repeatedly expressed optimism that public anger at insurgent violence would deprive insurgents of their base of support.

Terrible news from the US as the death toll from Hurricane Katrina runs into the hundreds.

Hundreds of people are feared dead in Mississippi, and the Louisiana city of New Orleans is badly flooded.

The city mayor said rescuers were unable to retrieve the dead. “They’re just pushing them aside,” he said.

Amid worsening conditions, officials plan to evacuate a New Orleans stadium where up to 20,000 people took shelter.

I recall seeing the Mayor on television a few days ago ordering people to leave the area. It seems his advice, which I initially thought was a little dramatic, turned out to be prescient - to put it mildly.

Then in Baghdad we have more than 600 dead in a Shia march to a holy shrine.

The incident happened on a bridge over the Tigris River as about one million Shias marched to a shrine for an annual religious festival.

Witnesses said panic spread because of rumours that suicide bombers were in the crowd. Many victims were crushed to death or fell in the river and drowned.

The pilgrims had already withstood one attack:

Earlier, mortar rounds had been fired into the crowd, killing 16 people.

About 36 others were injured when four mortar rounds landed close to the Kadhimiya mosque.

Tension between the two main factions in Iraq - Sunni and Shia - may come to a head over the proposed constitution. Sunnis fear it will lead to a break-up of the country depriving them of the oil in the Shia south of the country.

George Trefgarne in the Daily Telegraph seems ot believe the flat tax is coming to Britain. In a piece titled Whatever Brown says, the flat tax is coming - confident chap, isn’t he? - he suggests that, with the tax being taken up by ever increasing numbers of countries - 11 so far - and getting steadily closer to the UK - Greece appears to be the next one considering it - it might be more difficult to resist the flat-tax than to advocate it.

The one country that, he speculates, might adopt it - and which gives him a spring in his step, evidently - is Germany:

The flat tax - where all exemptions and allowances are abolished and everyone pays the same rate - is marching across Europe, just as other ideas have conquered the Continent once every generation or so.

Judging by the polls, [covering Germany’s upcoming elections] Angela Merkel is likely to win on September 18: her rating soared after she appointed a slightly eccentric professor called Paul Kirchhof as her economic adviser.

In fact, Merkel is so far ahead that the stock market has leapt, too. Germany, investors believe, is at last on the threshold of economic recovery.

“With her surprise move to name Germany’s flat-tax guru, Professor Kirchhof, as her preferred choice for finance minister, Merkel has regained the political initiative and stirred up a healthy debate about tax reform,” writes Lorenzo Codogna, Bank of America’s European economist, in a note to clients.

“If Germany turned itself into the first major Western country to adopt a flat tax, it would probably become a much more attractive place for business investment in general.”

Professor Kirchhof believes he can slim down or scrap more than 90,000 German tax rules and 418 tax exemptions.

And what about for Britian? According to Mr Trefgarne things don’t look quite so rosy for flat-tax advocates. He says Mr Brown does not like the flat tax because it would see the end of his beloved tax credits. I would add that, if the claimed advantages of the tax were fulfilled we would need thousands - possibly tens of thousands - fewer government employees to administer it.

And that would never do.

One of my first posts on this blog was regarding the police station being set up inside Hampstead Royal Free Hospital to tackle the escalating crime there.

From The Daily Telegraph we learn that the NHS now has a zero-tolerance policy of people who abuse its staff:

The number of successful prosecutions of patients and relatives who physically abuse NHS staff has jumped nearly 15 fold in a year as the Department of Health’s “zero tolerance” policy starts to bite.

Figures released yesterday show that in 2004-05 there were 759 successful prosecutions compared to just 51 in the previous year.

Fantastic news. Move that policy out into the wider community and let’s all have some…

From the BBC:

The housing charity, Shelter, conducted a survey that revealed that living in a safe neighbourhood and being able to afford housing costs are more important to people than owning a property. According to Shelter:

If the government really wants to meet people’s housing aspirations, it should focus public money on helping them to live in a decent, secure home in a neighbourhood where they feel safe, rather than encouraging them to chase the property dream.

I’ve lived on housing estates and I’ve lived in private houses. I know which I prefer.

Isn’t the reason that people want to own - rather than rent - is because they’re aware that living amongst other owners puts them in the environment most conducive to their aspirations to feeling safe whereas living in rented housing - particularly on council housing estates - is one of the least safe options?

Labour’s tough new policy on failed asylum seekers has seen 26 year old Vanda da Graca and her 4 year old daughter evicted from their home. Ms da Graca’s benefits have been stopped and she is not allowed to work. She and her daughter are currently staying with friends.

Rochdale council evicted her in compliance with section 9 of the 2004 Asylum and Immigration Act which, at the end of a five-stage process, deprives failed asylum seekers of benefits. This can also leave them homeless - in which case their children are taken into care by the local council.

The policy of eviction - and taking the children into care - conflicts with councils’ obligations to keep children with their parents. It may actually be cheaper for the council to leave the family in a council house - rent unpaid - than to put a child into care.

The councils are doing the Home Office’s dirty work:

In Bury, Greater Manchester, Vahid and Zoreh Khanali, an Iranian couple with children aged six and seven months, lost all benefits at the weekend, but Bury council has not moved to evict them.

“We are in a cleft stick,” councillor Tim Chamberlain told the Bury Times local newspaper. “If we act to do what the immigration authorities want, we would be in breach of our duty under the Children Act. We don’t feel that we are the right people to throw them out. The Home Office has washed its hands of the problem and passed it on to us.”

In nearby Bolton, the Sukula family, with six children, five of them under 18, has failed to return to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The family has lost benefits and is living on cash given by charities and supporters. But they have not been evicted.

“We are seeking to keep the family together in their home, pending legal clarifications,” said a Bolton council spokeswoman.

Michael Howard was ridiculed - and worse - for attempting to expose the disgrace of unknown hundreds of thousands of failed asylum seekers walking our streets free from the attentions of the authorities who should have been deporting them. In the end, the government was forced to admit - although only after the election - that there were about 500,000 illegals in this country.

The majority of British people, I believe, would support a clear, controlled asylum process which extended the hand of help and charity to fellow human beings fleeing imminent torture or death. A transparent procedure, honestly administered, which reflected this country’s peaceful and caring ideals in a manner that was sensitive to both the applicants’ needs and this country’s would be uncontroversial.

But because of ongoing government deceit and lies an ever-increasingly cynical, distrusting and disgusted public, despairing at the abuse of our hospitality by uncontrolled numbers of incomers, is having to be placated with ever-increasing ‘toughness’ - where, clearly, toughness is now a measure of what we’re prepared to deprive vulnerable people of.

I believe that applicants for asylum in this country must accept, as a condition of their being permitted to make their applications, that they will be housed in a comfortable but secure facility for the duration of the process. On completion of the application process - which the immigration service should be achieving within 3 months - they will either be escorted out of the country or handed over to their assigned local council.

This Labour government doesn’t look ‘tough’ to me. Even if Ms da Graca’s refusal to respect the conclusions of this country has led to her current plight our government looks stupid and cruel.

Blair’s opportunistic swings from stout defence of the asylum system as was and contempt for those questioning it to lying about it to pretend it worked to, eventually, overhauling it to the point that it is now damaging to everybody is the result of a populist and self-serving government making things up as it goes along.

Labour’s pandering to the tabloid mentality means that those of us on the right who remain attached to principles of fairness and decency on the one hand whilst wishing to take care of our nation’s own interests on the other see both principles taking a back-seat to a government-inspired knuckle-dragging loathing of all asylum applicants. Neither the previous nor the current asylum process serves our national interest. Unless fair, practical and considered conservative principles can be applied to this problem it will remain a festering and ugly sore on the national life with its only physician being a desperate, cynical and immoral Labour government.

The government is being panicked by its own relaxations of alcohol consumption laws. I ridiculed wrote about the idea recently that television ads were planned to combat excessive drinking. Now we may be getting warning labels on beer bottles:

Alcohol manufacturers have agreed to use the warnings after talks with the Department of Health. The alcohol industry hopes the move will pre-empt any legislation to force it to introduce stark health warnings similar to those now seen on cigarette packets.

Yes, I see it now. Hordes of drunken chavs experiencing their very own Damascene moments as brightly coloured warning labels catch their attentions. Throwing down their bottles (in the litter bins provided for the purpose, of course) they make declarations of sobriety and go home to play dominoes. Tony Blair takes a bow and wins the next three elections.

Watching the news this weekend confirms - if it needed confirming - that the Sunnis, Kurds and Shi’ites are simply three, unrelated tribes thrown together by Britain’s border creation activities after World War 1 who have no desire to live with each other if they can possibly avoid it.

With the world’s recent history showing that some states kept together by fear - the USSR and Yugoslavia, for example - will try to go their seperate ways when given even a glimmer of a chance one cannot be overly surprised should the various tribes of the Iraqi state seek to take advantage of the present situation and make a break for independence.

The draft constitution was mainly a Kurdish/Shi’ite creation, handed to the Sunnis on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. The Sunnis may very well leave it - with serious consequences for the region’s coalition rulers.

An Iraq partitioned along its ethnic and cultural groupings might create a far simpler scenario for the US to administer. And a simpler, more stable region requires fewer troops - an ideal domestic sweetener for President Bush.

Ken Clarke has tried to put the European Union issue out of the frame by announcing that the single currency would not be appropriate for the UK for at least 10 years.

He hasn’t become anti-European. He’s become pro-Being Leader of the Conservative Party.

EU-Serf suggests a test for Mr Clarke to pass if we’re ever to believe we can trust him not to sell our soul to the EU:

If Ken Clarke has really renounced the EU and all its evil ways, will he resign from the Euro Movement and the Tory Europe Network?

The European Movement - wants to create increased unity among European nations and peoples. It’s ‘About Us’ section is short but manages to name-drop Winston Churchill twice.

The Tory Europe Network - quotes Mr Clarke thus: “a very large number of Conservatives believe in the pro-European tradition that has made our party so great for so long.”

They must have wrung this one from him at the end of a particularly intensive pub-crawl because not even he can possibly believe this…

And David Cameron’s attempted wooing of pro-European ex-Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine doesn’t exactly endear him to conservatives either. Unfortunately for him, the pro-European Heseltine is plumping for the equally pro-European Clarke.

Police feared this:

Muggings rose by 23 per cent in London last month as thousands of police were sent to guard the capital’s transport network after terrorist attacks.

Areas of London that provided most bobbies experienced the steepest rises. Waltham Forest, northeast London, saw robberies nearly double.

Make hay while the sun shines, eh?

A Tangled Web yesterday covered a post by another blogger on this subject.

I also covered this - just after the death of Mr Whelan. The incidents happened so close together - actually only hours apart - that the comparison was easy.

Anthony Walker (below) was stabbed to death by a group of white youths. Richard Whelan (bottom) was stabbed to death by a black man on a bus.

I did think that Anthony Walker being only 18 made some difference to the story but, in reality, him being black made quite a bit more to some people.

While I could find only one, short reference to Mr Whelan’s funeral after a (brief) Google search - and it’s in a Boston newspaper - I can find plenty on Mr Walker’s.

It’s events like these that expose the rank hypocrisy and prejudice that is rife in our society. In our society black people are reduced to mere tokens, the means by which the unctious and self-serving - politicians (chasing votes), community ‘leaders’ (also chasing votes), media channels (chasing viewers) and various others tying to outdo each other in their strike-a-pose concern - can show just what fine, humane members of society they are.

The reality is, they don’t grieve for Mr Walker. They pretend they do but they don’t. They never knew him. His family, a close and loving one, grieve. His friends grieve. Ordinary people with less to gain from crocodile tears feel sympathy with Mr Walker’s distraught family. But the rest? It’s just show.

There are two types of white racist in this country and it takes a tragedy like Mr Walker’s and a similar one like Mr Whelan’s to expose them in their full glory.

Both types of racist judge a person by his colour. One type of racist sees the colour of the skin and hates it. The other sees the colour of the skin and exalts it. When a tragedy befalls a black skinned person the first type thinks, ‘Good riddance’. The second type thinks, ‘How do I make something of this? How can I obtain respect and admiration and an improved standing from this?’

Which of the two is worse? It’s hard to tell.

Those of us who see skin colour and are indifferent to it, seeing it as neither warranting poor treatment or special treatment are the only ones who actually attempt to be colour blind. I believe, actually, it’s impossible not to be affected by what you see - clothes, colour, build, features, etc - but intelligent people try to see beyond the surface and allow the other chap to make or break his reputation himself by his own words and his own deeds.

The white haters and the white poseurs have made up their minds about blacks - ’scum’ and ‘poor little inadequates needing my help and support’ respectively - before the black person even opens his mouth. We who do not care about your colour are not praised for being colour-blind but condemned for not being ’sensitive’.

Ironic it is indeed that those of us most likely to judge you on your merits and give you the room to define yourself by your words and actions are the least likely to be appreciated for honest and principled services to the multi-ethnic experiment.

Here we go again…

Nearly 98% of students taking the GCSE exam passed. I tell you, that 2% that didn’t must feel pretty stupid…

But pupils have been criticised for opting for so-called easier courses, and employers lashed out saying standards were still slipping leaving students lacking basic skills.

The Institute of Directors said many children left school without basic reading and writing skills.

“The starting point for employers recruiting staff is surely to have access to candidates with basic literacy and numeracy skills. We are not there yet,” said Richard Wilson, Head of Business Policy at the IoD.

Want to know one of the reasons why our youth are becoming less educated? Lack of aspiration.

No, not amongst the youth, silly. Amongst the incompetents who run our country:

Jacqui Smith, minister for schools, said the Government was working with employers to ensure “functional” English and Maths were studied in GCSEs.

Functional? That’s what we aspire to? Just ‘functional’? So if you aim for ‘functional’ - which is in itself a tragically low standard - and then fall short what do you get? How about ‘Neanderthal’?

And the incompetents who want to run our country:

Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat education spokesman, said GCSEs were “failing” and should now be replaced.

That’s right, mess a thing up and then throw it away. What will you replace it with? If the underlying attitudes in education are that we must aim for equality of outcome what use is just replacing it? The phrase, “Same s**t, different bucket”, springs to mind…

The students themselves are getting irritated by the low quality of their exams:

Students at Magdalen College independent school (MCS) in Oxford joined their deputy headmaster Richard Cairns in speaking out at their frustration at the “patronising” exams which often award full-marks even if errors are made.

And the attack on working class aspirations was made clear by MCS’s deputy headmaster Richard Cairns:

“It is effectively left to individual schools to provide the extra intellectual stimulation that bright teenagers demand but some schools are better placed than others to offer this extra dimension.

“Some very clever boys and girls from academically deprived backgrounds are doubtless missing out. There is, in my view, a stronger case than ever for the state to support scholars at leading independent schools, selected on the basis of academic ability and genuine financial need.”

For as long as we are governed by a party whose ambitions are not the improvement of the British people but the furthering of their leftist ideological obsessions there is no hope in sight. When a 23 year old Guardian journalist can obtain an A grade in his AS level sociology degree after just two weeks of studying and nearly everybody who takes this nation’s main exams - the GCSE and the A-level - passes them we know we are hurtling in the wrong direction.

For those of us with children in education the private sector seems to be the only place to go. Ironic it would be indeed if our anti-elitist rulers were the main cause of an expansion in private education…

Seems some anti-war demonstrators will stop at nothing:

The Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., the current home of hundreds of wounded veterans from the war in Iraq, has been the target of weekly anti-war demonstrations since March. The protesters hold signs that read “Maimed for Lies” and “Enlist here and die for Halliburton.”

I was under the impression that these people were anti-war at least in part because they felt for the soldiers who were suffering in an ‘unjust’ war. Not according to Kevin Pannell’s experience. He was recently treated at Walter Reed and had both legs amputated after an ambush grenade attack near Baghdad:

Pannell said he initially tried to ignore the anti-war activists camped out in front of Walter Reed, until witnessing something that enraged him.

“We went by there one day and I drove by and [the anti-war protesters] had a bunch of flag-draped coffins laid out on the sidewalk. That, I thought, was probably the most distasteful thing I had ever seen. Ever,” Pannell, a member of the Army’s First Cavalry Division, told Cybercast News Service.

To even things up a little there’s a conservative counter-demonstration:

“[The anti-war protesters] have no business here. If they want to protest policy, they should be at the Capitol, they should be at the White House,” said Nina Burke. “The only reason for being here is to talk to [the] wounded and [anti-war protests are] just completely inappropriate.”

Albion Wilde concurred, arguing that “it’s very easy to pick on the families of the wounded. They are very vulnerable … I feel disgusted”.

It’s hard not to feel that at least some parts of the anti-war movement glory in American dead and wounded.

I remember way back being very, very surprised that, a short time after the fall of communism and the ascendency of Boris Yeltsin, Russians were marching in Moscow demanding the return of communism.

But then I was young and naive.

Now I am older. But still find this a bit of an eye-opener:

Thousands marched in adoring praise of Iraq’s deposed leader Saddam Hussein on Friday, offering a stark display of the loss of power and leadership felt by some of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs.

Drawing inspiration from the Baath party strongman, who now languishes in jail awaiting trial, marchers in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, danced and chanted his name and condemned plans by the Shi’ite and Kurdish-led government to push through draft constitution to create a federal Iraq.

“Bush, Bush, listen well; We all love Saddam Hussein!” crowds chanted. “We reject the American and Iranian constitution” and “No to a constitution that breaks up Iraq,” their placards read.

The news still has the ability to surprise…

Busy at work but I… gotta… post….

I’ll let Fox do the work.

By the way, do any fellow Brits here watch Fox on cable? Their way of doing news is very, very different from ours. Their conservative slant is obvious - and refreshing. Their approach to interviewing grates though; abrasive, a little rude - interruptions when someone is actually answering the question - and a contrived sense of urgency. Like sobriety just isn’t sexy enough (they obviously never had Sophie Raworth as a presenter)

If we could get the BBC’s presentation style and Fox’s content then maybe we (where ‘we’ = conservatives) would have the broadcaster from heaven?

I mentioned the other day that pulling out of Iraq early could present problems, what with the Iraqi soldiers taking over not being anywhere near good enough to replace coalition troops. President Bush - one of my regular readers - has taken note:

“It’s going to mean a disaster for the whole region,” said Tanya Gilly, director of democracy programs at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “If we leave Iraq now before its security forces are strong enough to fight the insurgents and the terrorists, we are creating a new breeding ground for terrorists.”

The President regards Iraq as the centre ground in the war on terrorism, where the winner - America or Iraqi insurgents - then becomes the model for the rest of the middle east. He’s also aware that the killing of American soldiers inspires horror - and debate - at home.

“They’ll kill women and children, knowing that the images of their brutality will horrify civilized people. Their goal is to force us to retreat,” Bush said on Wednesday.

Something else I wrote about recently - having just got back from the US - was the giant Wal-Mart. People do protest about the effects a single - but enormous - Wal-Mart can have on their local community. This has really annoyed one American city council who have banned mention of the company’s name…

Tired of hearing residents complain about plans to build a mammoth Wal-Mart in town, the Yelm City Council [in Washington] has banned the word “Wal-Mart” from its meetings. For good measure, it also passed a moratorium on the term “box store.”

This isn’t the council’s only ban:

The City Council refused to hear public comment on a plan being floated to build a NASCAR track in Yelm, even though an application was never submitted. In defending the censorship, the city attorney said council members can decide what they want to hear and what they’re tired of hearing.

Anyway, the good people of Yelm actually get to vote on the issue in the end so the trashing of the American Constitution in the meantime is okay then.

I’ve not blogged on the Cindy Meehan story because, well, who cares? Her son died in Iraq - a truly awful and very sad experience for her. No doubt in my mind that she is very badly hurt - who would blame her?

But she appears to believe she deserves a special audience with the President as a result and he, er, doesn’t. And since she’s already met him once she’s done better than most in that respect. She’s a heroine of the anti-war crowd and, therefore, the bogey-woman of the pro. Both get some mileage out of her campaign. Here’s the basics:

Casey, her son was killed in April and soon after she met with and was quoted to have been happy with the president’s attitude as he offered her condolences. Now, she is making her stay in Crawford a huge vigil to pull the troops out of Iraq. It’s causing her family, including her grandmothers, aunt and godmother, to say she is using her son’s death to fuel her anti-war agenda and gain promotion. Other grieving parents have lined up against her saying it sullying their kids’ service to run down the cause. Either way, the president addressed it head on and seemed, as usual, to legitimately feel the pain of the rattled parent.

Unless her son was conscripted into the army my sympathy is with her loss but not with her demands for what seems very much like a political gesture to damage the President.

Exercise: you’re the new marketing chap/ess for a fast-food ‘restaurant’. You get to choose where to locate it. All else being equal, where’s a pretty good place?

Researchers show that on average fast-food restaurants were located less than 1 mile away from any school in Chicago. They estimate that fast-food restaurants were three to four times more likely to be within less than 1 mile from a school than what would have been expected had the restaurant been distributed throughout the city in a way unrelated to schools.

The findings add weight to the growing argument that the availability of high-calorie, low-nutrition fast foods play a role in the nationwide epidemic of obesity among children

Everything about America is big - so why exclude the people? And before you chortle - we’re catching up…

Finally, the earth spins more quickly at the core than at the crust. Now that does surprise me…

The solid core that measures about 1,500 miles in diameter is spinning about one-quarter to one-half degree faster, per year, than the rest of the world.

The spin of the Earth’s core is an important part of the dynamo that created the planet’s magnetic field, and researcher Xiaodong Song said he believes magnetic interaction is responsible for the different rates of spin.

Apparently the relative rates of spin does alter so sometimes it will be the crust that spins more quickly. In case you were concerned.

Home Secretary Charles Clarke has published his list of unacceptable behaviours which will result in deportation of those foreigners found to be at odds with them.

We know, of course, from the July 7 and July 21 bomb events that at least some of the most murderous people in our midst are actually British traitors. Quite possibly some of their support network, mentors, suppliers and financiers will also be British.

They may have received inspiration - from British citizens - in a manner that might not have broken the law but which was in breach of Mr Clarke’s list of unacceptable behaviours.

What do we do with those particular people?

Part of the dilemma we face now is this: on the one hand we want the freedoms of thought, dissent, demonstration and argument that we spilled centuries of blood to obtain. On the other hand, we have a mutli-ethnic community which, while mainly respectful of the British way, includes those who are contemptuous of everything that freedom really is. They are not the kind of people that we British envisaged when we thought of ideas of freedom.

Do we give up the freedoms? Because, let’s face it, we can’t easily deal with the traitors in our midst without taking a turn for the authoritarian.

Or do we imprison those British citizens who would, had they been foreigners, been deported using current legislation?

If the burden of proof for deportation is lower than for standard UK criminal cases - which it may be and, perhaps, should be - then how do we reconcile imprisoning British citizens for unproven crimes with the desire to avoid an overbearing state?

Think also of situations where the laws we’re clamouring for could be used against us.

What if The Falklands were successfully over-run by Argentina? (Not possible, I know, but for the sake of argument, imagine it). A weak British government works out a ‘compromise’ and does not seek to liberate the island. Over the years the islanders are forced to accept their lot and even take part in local elections to select their preferred governor. The ownership of the island seems settled.

But I, a freeborn Englishman, rant and rave about the situation of British comrades under foreign occupation and exhort them to fight their rulers, resist the occupation and to kill them where possible. Am I encouraging terrorism? Are the British people fighting back against tyranny rebels, resistance fighters or terrorists? The authorities there will certainly call them terrorists and demand the British government punish me. If we’re not careful, the British government will be able to.

I realise my example is overblown but it illustrates the point, I hope. I believe we should be relentless in our pursuit of the evil in our midst. But we must use some imagination to see where ideas we think will help in our efforts against terror will actually run contrary to our desire for freedom of thought, deed and speech. I don’t have the answers - just some of the questions.

We must ask ourselves these questions though because a mistake made now may not reveal itself until it is too late for us to rectify….

Since the start of the Iraq was in March 2003 the price of a barrel of oil has doubled. That’s not good news to me - but, then, I’m not in the GCC:

…all six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia - have experienced levels of economic growth not witnessed since the 1970’s.

According to a recent Institute of International Finance report, the GCC’s aggregate nominal GDP grew by 17% in 2004 and is likely to grow as impressively this year.

It’s being suggested, on the one hand, that if it weren’t for the war oil would be cheaper.

Some in Washington had hoped that by now Iraqi oil would be flooding the market, rendering OPEC obsolete and acting as a counterbalance to Saudi Arabian influence.

This has not happened, partly because Iraq’s pipeline infrastructure has been sabotaged no less than 257 times since 2003 but also because its oil infrastructure is in a dilapidated state.

In the final months of the UN Oil for Food programme, Iraqi oil exports averaged at 2.5 million bpd. At peak levels, prior to sanctions, Iraq produced 3.5 million bpd. Last month Iraq managed to export only 1.6 million barrels daily.

However, the production of the black gold may have peaked while demand - especially from rapidly developing economies plus the US - are placing upward pressure on the price.

China, which is now the world’s second-largest consumer of oil, has over the past few years accounted for approximately 40% of the growth in global demand. The EIA forecasts that Chinese demand will double by 2025.

India, another rapidly industrialising Asian state, is importing more oil than ever. Demand is still growing in developed economies, especially the US, where gasoline for motor vehicles accounts for most of its demand.

It is interesting to note that Ford’s current range of cars achieves, on average, fewer miles per gallon than its Model-T did 80 years ago.

See? However complicated the world becomes the unseen hand of supply and demand wins out in the end…

President Bush has declared that “as Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.” But decreasing coalition troops while increasing Iraqi troops is not necessarily the correct exit strategy for Iraq.

The US is creating a force of light infantry. Increasing use of Iraqi troops has its own advantages : they may be better placed to collect intelligence and will possibly be more acceptable to the Iraqis they are protecting. But it will not constitute an army and will not be able to conduct a counterinsurgency by itself for many years.

Further, the Iraqis are heavily dependent on the US army:

For example, it appears that efforts to establish Iraqi logistical elements are lagging badly behind the formation and training of light infantry units. Iraqis thus rely on coalition logistics when they must move from their home bases - or, more commonly, they simply do not move from those bases at all. Their transportation assets are minimal, and so they lack the ability to project their forces within Iraq. As a result, they would not be able to concentrate force rapidly in particularly violent areas or to destroy insurgent concentrations quickly. For as long as these conditions hold, the U.S. military will remain an essential part of the struggle against insurgency in Iraq.

Worse, Iraqi soldiers are becoming dependent on the kind of fire-power that only the Americans can provide:

It is also important to understand that the current Iraqi forces rely heavily on the availability of responsive U.S. airpower. They do not have their own organic fire support (artillery or aviation), and so must wait for the American soldiers embedded within their formations to call in coalition air support when they run into any sort of serious opposition.

Many of the skills needed to fight a determined insurgency - planning and conducting large-scale raids and sweeps, coordinating the activities of multiple infantry units, and using artillery and air power - take years to learn.

To judge the right moment to withdraw from Iraq by counting the number of Iraqi soldiers is not an accurate method of assessing Iraq’s ability to stand alone. At present there are many situations in Iraq that only the US and its allies can handle effectively. It is likely to be this way for years to come. Whatever the invasion finally achieves, a too-soon withdrawal could ruin it all.

Most of us on the political right accept - to differing degrees - that economic liberalisation is ‘a good thing’ and that, especially, it’s a very good antidote to despots and tyrants.

The logic goes that economies tend only to flourish within free and open societies where the freedom of ideas - and speech - are primary sources of the ideas and enterprise that lead to successful capitalism. For a government to enjoy the fruits of free trade it needs to liberate its people so that they can provide those fruits.

The International Herald Tribune explains why this might not necessarily be the case.

Political freedom requires some supporting freedoms:

To effectively pursue political power, citizens have to engage in “strategic coordination”: activities such as disseminating information, recruiting and organizing party members, selecting leaders, raising funds and holding meetings and demonstrations.

Economic progress requires some supporting freedom also:

“Standard public goods” include public transportation, primary and secondary education, and public health; all of which contribute to economic growth and pose relatively little threat to the regime.

The more sophisticated regimes have managed to provide the latter but not the former, so enjoying improved economic performance while flat-lining in the personal freedom stakes. This has happened…

… in China, Russia and other states where authoritarian regimes loosened the economic reins. Economic growth arrived but liberal democracy is still nowhere is sight. The reason is simple but disturbing: A new and more sophisticated breed of autocrat has discovered a strategy that permits them to enjoy the benefits of economic growth while postponing - often for decades - the emergence of authentic competitive democracy.

We need to recognise that promoting economic growth is not nearly as effective a way to promote democracy as was once believed. It may that donor organisations need to tie civil liberty strings to their loans. Until a country has a free press, the right to organise itself politically and freedom of speech it is not free in any meaningful sense of the word.

Here’s the Home Office’s list of ‘unacceptable behaviours’ . If you’re foreign and you commit any of these you’re out:

According to the Home Secretary the list is indicative rather than exhaustive and covers any non-UK citizen whether in the UK or abroad.

Terrorist violence

Cannot foment, justify, glorify terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs

Terrorist acts

Cannot seek to provoke others to terrorist acts

Criminal acts

Cannot foment other serious criminal activity or seek to provoke others to serious criminal acts

Inter-community violence

Cannot foster hatred which might lead to inter-community violence in the UK.

Method

Individuals who do the above by any means or medium are caught by the legislation, including:

- writing, producing, publishing or distributing material;

- public speaking including preaching

- running a website

- using a position of responsibility such as teacher, community or youth leader

Seems the No. 30 bus bomber called his accomplices shortly before his bomb exploded. But they were already dead.

He did not try to contact anyone else, which suggests there was no “mastermind” or that he did not want to implicate them, said Daniel Sandford.

The most likely explanation was that he had tried to board the Northern Line, but it was closed, so when things started to go wrong he tried to phone his co-conspirators, he added.

Terrorism expert Michael Clarke, of King’s College, said the calls showed Hussain was in a panic and probably rang his accomplices to make sure their bombs had exploded.

The bomb attacks killed 52 people and injured over 700. Three of the four July 21 bombers are in UK custody with the fourth awaiting extradition from Italy. Another 11 people have also been arrested.

Blogsome, which hosts my blog, was obviously feeling a bit poorly today. I think access was impossible for most of the afternoon. I realise not being able to get a regular dose of Gary-love must be quite distressing to my legion of fans. I apologise to both of you.

If you own a Blogsome blog the key to sorting this problem out is this: go into one of your posts, open it for edit, then save it. (You don’t actually have to change it). This clears the problem although it may well recur. You’ll just have to keep an eye on it.

Now you might be wondering how on earth you’re going to be able to edit a post when you can’t get into your blog in the first place. Here’s the answer: next time you edit a post copy the url of the opened post. Email it to yourself (or save it in favourites). That way you can go directly into edit mode.

A lull in the afternoon’s workload gave me an opportunity to wander around some American blogs.

Honestly, some of those conservative/liberal chaps are spiteful. As a person with grave misgivings about the war in Iraq I found myself roped in with appeasers, self-haters, anti-Americans - and worse. As a conservative myself I suspect I would be strung up for thinking the war isn’t a good idea.

Anyway, I thought I’d clear my head on this subject and try to describe why I am uneasy about the Iraq project. Quite a bit of how I feel is based on gut instinct rather than hard-core statistical fact. This is a bit risky, thinking out loud on a blog. If you can intelligently challenge my opinions then please go ahead; I’m willing to listen because this is how we learn.

There are sensible arguments against the invading of Iraq that are not based on pacifism or any dishonourable cowardice in the face of terrorist threats.

Firstly, if one is even a little disposed to nationalist ideas then one respects national borders and would generally only cross one if one’s own security was at risk or if one had a treaty of some sort with a threatened country. I’m fairly certain that, for all his monstrosity, Saddam was little or no threat to the UK whatsoever. That the government needed to enhance, exaggerate and even fabricate an argument justifying the war is strong evidence that the motives for the war were not then ones expressed by Blair - that is, reasons of national security in the face of an imminent threat of attack by Iraq.

Second, democracy is not an object. It can’t be air-lifted into a country, plugged in to the nearest electricity socket and then switched on - hey presto, we have democracy. Democracy is usually an evolved state of affairs for which a population is primed over time, weaned from whatever they previously had until, in stages they reach a type of democracy (or whatever) that most suits them.

Iraq is a country that has existed for centuries on an Islam-based tribal social system - which has, to a large extent, survived Saddam’s secular regime. Whatever we in the liberally democratic, nominally Christian UK might think of it, tribal Islam is the natural and preferred means to living the good life for the average Iraqi. It’s not my cup of tea but it probably is theirs…

From a UK point of view - and this is a personal view undoubtedly tainted by an intense dislike for Tony Blair and his government - the imposition of ‘our’ system on ‘them’ is typical of an authoritarian administration that regards personal liberty as an obstacle to be overcome rather than a value to cherish. I realise Iraqis didn’t have much personal liberty under Saddam but they were still a people who lived their lives independent of UK control. Our government - and America’s - sudden regard for their well-being, so overpowering that a military invasion was considered necessary, has all the hallmarks of a coalition desire to impress their own will on a people regardless of whether those people wanted it at the price they were going to have to pay.

Finally, it seems that, in order to achieve the Iraqi Constitution that they want the US is having to acquiesce to demands that Iraqi law be informed by Islam. However we dress it up that means sharia. They’re simply reverting to type, to what they feel most at home with.

Given the choice between Saddam and western democracy many Iraqis will of course prefer western democracy but that’s less to do with the attraction of an imposed democracy and more to do with the abhorrence of Saddam. As I reject internationalist imposition in my country - via the EU especially - so Iraqis naturally object to western imposition from the US and UK.

I am not in any way anti-American. The US is a superb country and I visit there at least once a year (just got back from Boston this Sunday, in fact). I have a lot of respect for America generally and Americans particularly. I am genuinely aggrieved to hear the death reports of their soldiers - as well as our own and as well as Iraqi civilians and security personnel. Furthermore, I do not in any way support the awful statements of some anti-war commentators who, to my mind, are bordering on the gleeful at every mention of US difficulties in Iraq. This Cindy Sheehan lady (she lost a son in the war and is now demanding a one-to-one with President Bush to, probably, yell abuse at him) seems to be being used by anti-war groups to further their own political agenda. I find it - and the behaviour of some American anti-war people - deeply distasteful.

But if we are suggesting that the inspiration for the war was to spread democracy - since it almost certainly wasn’t a battle against a sovereign state which had the desire and the means to attack us - then why Iraq particularly and who’s next? Because there are dozens of nasty countries throughout this world of ours whose people are no less deserving of our concern. Are we just going to leave them to their fates? If so, why?

The means we use to achieve an end are as important - and can be more important - than the ends themselves. It is a typically Marxist attitude to believe that the ends are what count and how you get there is of little importance. If this invasion was an aspect of a clearly defined project to gradually work through all the tyrannies on the planet one by one to end the suffering of populations under vicious leaders then it would at least have the credibility of being a coherent and consistent policy backed by some semblance of honourable intention. But this is a seemingly arbitrary action, executed with no real idea on how to develop the project over time once the initial battle was won.

I believe we cannot pull out now. I genuinely hope that, now we’re in, we can make a good job of things, minimise casualties and, eventually, leave the Iraqis in substantially improved circumstances than those we found them in. America is strong, daring and resilient and can, if the will is there and if they have some favourable luck (they’ll need at least some), make a decent job of things.

It is not for me to judge though whether the loss of life amongst our soldiers and our American comrades - who have suffered particularly badly - and the Iraqi populace - who have suffered awfully - was a price worth paying for whatever is eventually created from this operation.

Wal-Mart is America’s largest retailer and is really, really very big. Apparently some stores are bigger than small British shopping malls (mega-Wal-Marts are the size of five football pitches. American football or soccer - that’s big).

It also represents a fascinating focal point for discussion about values and standards, freedom of speech and the over-arching of corporations to impose their own will on a country’s culture. It appears that Wal-Mart, a company with family-based values and a conservative outlook, has a prominent affect on all these.

Wal-Mart is known for several practises. Even I have heard accusations that it pays low salaries and provides poor health benefits to its staff. I also am aware that the family heading the company is a committed Christian one. And I am aware also that Wal-Mart makes its own decisions on whether items are family-friendly - and it will not sell those it regards as contrary to its own value system.

Take, for example, Wal-Mart’s refusal to sell Sheryl Crow’s self-titled album in 1996, citing objections to a lyric that criticized Wal-Mart for selling handguns (a practice that the chain has since discontinued), which they felt was “unfair and irresponsible.” Much as Crow probably appreciated the paternalistic advice, as the No. 1 CD retailer in the world (yes, the world) with sales accounting for 10% of total domestic CD sales, a Wal-Mart boycott can result in hundreds of thousands in lost album sales.

Music producers sometimes produce two versions of their albums - the original and the Wal-Mart friendly version - in order to get round the company’s embargo:

(more…)

It’s Barbados. Whoo hoo.

To paraphrase John Prescott:

“Enjoy your holiday. Make it a long one. Heh heh heh…”

If the Iraqis are going to be ‘allowed’ to apply Islamic law to their country - which, seeing as it’s their country seems entirely reasonable - one has to wonder if one of the major benefits of the war is being lost.

The country’s draft constitution - already delayed once - is due by the end of today and there is some anxiety to see that it’s produced on time.

American diplomats backed religious conservatives who threatened to torpedo talks over the shape of the new Iraq unless Islam was a primary source of law. Secular and liberal groups were dismayed at the move, branding it a betrayal of Washington’s promise to advocate equal rights in a free and tolerant society.

According to Kurdish and Sunni negotiators, the US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, proposed that Islam be named “a primary source” and supported a wording which would give clerics authority in civil matters such as divorce, marriage and inheritance.

Women have begun to protest against the constitution and their perception that they would become second-class citizens. That the US might be instrumental in the creation of an Islamic state would be ironic indeed:

If approved, critics say that the proposals would erode women’s rights and other freedoms enshrined under existing laws. “We understand the Americans have sided with the Shias. It’s shocking. It doesn’t fit with American values,” an unnamed Kurdish negotiator told Reuters. “They have spent so much blood and money here, only to back the creation of an Islamist state.”

From a UK perspective this war was fought to protect us from Weapons of Mass Destruction, evidence for which had to be fabricated in order to sell the idea to Parliament and the world in general. To date, none have been found.

For those few of us who are uneasy with the war altogether but also do not want to join in the unthinking anti-Americanism of many who also oppose, the imposition of democracy was a kind of compensatory argument, a ‘well, it should not have happened but at least the Iraqis get something out of it’ type of silver-lining.

That argument slinks quietly out of the room as Islamic law marches boldly in.

A robber who stole a laptop computer from a shop selling Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) security equipment was caught on 8 separate cameras while carrying out his theft. The shop owner, David Arathoon, was amused.

I’ve got to see the funny side of it, even though I’m annoyed to have lost a £700 laptop. The stupidity of the guy to think stealing from a CCTV shop of all places would be a good idea is quite astonishing, really.

The clear shots of the robber were shown in the press and the shop is now doing a roaring trade…

Mr Arathoon has blocked off a part of his shop where the thief’s hands may have left fingerprints. He just needs the police to come and do their bit now:

“I’m a bit surprised that they haven’t come back yet, because I’ve got all this evidence on a plate for them.”

A spokeswoman for Greater Manchester Police said: “We will certainly be gathering any evidence, including these pictures and any fingerprints as part of our investigation.”

She added that a forensic team had called at the shop to take fingerprints on Sunday afternoon - the day after the thief struck - but that the shop was closed.

In the meantime, The Manchester Evening News has printed some of the picture which will hopefully lead to the culprit being identified soon.

Following the spoof email for a Bin Laden-free see-through rucksack, Assist Safety Project are selling a range of clear vinyl bags and cases designed to assure your fellow commuter that you’re not carrying a little something extra with your cheese salad sarnies.

For would-be bag snatchers they add the convenience of knowing who’s worth robbing and who isn’t…

Actually, these are a little more practical than the posters now being displayed by London Transport whose attention it is to make travellers feel safer. The posters inform us that there are more police on the underground, random checks and police dogs.

This is all very nice but I suspect none of these things will prevent a concerted effort to detonate more bombs on the Tube if somebody out there has the desire to do such a thing.

Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honour, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means.

— Charles Dickens (1812-1870) English Novelist

It seems a foreign Muslim is using his London-based radio station to prepare broadcasts in England calling for the deaths of British soldiers in Iraq. Because his programmes are actually sent abroad for broadcast he’s getting away with it.

…there are seemingly no legal or regulatory restrictions to prevent Dr al-Massari from disseminating his messages through his radio, or his website which features videos of bomb attacks on UK troops.

So we can deport him anyway can’t we because, suddenly, this Labour government of ours has discovered that, despite various apologists for terrorism being given free reign to preach their hatred here for years, we had the necessary laws all along. So off you go, Dr Muhammad al-Massari.

Er, not so fast:

The problem, though, would be where to send him. In Saudi Arabia, he might be liable to torture and, though he was almost dispatched to Dominica in the 1990s, no other destination has been suggested.

Ah. So because he has upset another country’s laws and because we, the high-minded British, are a bit fussy about how that foreign country treats its own citizens, we have to put up with him instead. He is free to encourage the killing of our soldiers because we are concerned with his well-being.

He has a website too:

The material on it, including beheadings, so-called acts of martyrdom and advice on terrorist warfare, is shocking to many people - but it does not contravene any UK laws.

Somebody remind me again: why do we put the well-being of people like this before the well-being of our own? Am I being a bit nasty to suggest that, in the hierarchy of things, British subjects should be catered for before foreign Britain-haters? Am I being a bit, you know, racist?

Yep, I guess I am.

However, I am an optimist. I hope the necessary furore over this man will encourage Blair to see a populist opportunity - he rarely misses one - and send this man back to face the music in his own country.

It seems the best tippers in New York are… New Yorkers.

From Village Voice:

New Yorkers are the best tippers on earth. They’ve been aware of the minimum dollar-a-drink rule ever since they got their first fake ID on West 4th Street. Some don’t like it, but most know it. And most do it.

Tipping in the UK is still a voluntary thing, where we tip either because the service was out-standing or because we don’t want to look cheap. In New York tipping forms an essential part of a person’s income - a fact understood by the worker and her boss. (And, I’ll wager, the average New Yorker):

Cocktail waitresses, unlike waitresses and bartenders, usually don’t even get a piddling shift pay. As far as my manager is concerned, there is a direct correlation between my income and my ability to hustle. There are no guarantees, he once told me, but if you really work your ass off you can succeed here. And if you make $37 one night . . . hey, shit happens.

I’ve probably had some of the best service of my life in New York. I’ve definitely had the worst. I felt happy to tip at just over 15% for the former (in England I’ll make it about 10% normally) but for the latter I resented paying the bill let alone paying over the odds. I flat refuse to pay over the asking price for service that deserved a slap round the face rather than a gratuity. Would a New Yorker have tipped regardless?

Foreigners often don’t understand the American way with tipping. The waitress staff have their own way to deal with this problem:

Without the option of auto-gratuity they’d have in tonier restaurants, some servers resort to drastic measures. On one of my first days working at a little tourist hot spot of a jazz club, a bartender I used to work with let me in on a little secret. “Overcharge whenever possible,” she cautioned. “If you hear a weird accent, if you can just tell by the look in their eye, the beer is eight bucks rather than six. You keep the extra two—they’ll never know.”

She’s right. Fumbling drunk people in a strange, crowded setting will almost always fork over whatever money you ask for. “Aida,” one of my former co-workers, overcharged all the time. “That’s $118,” she announced one Friday night, without so much as a stutter, to three toasted, cavorting Floridian lushes she “had a bad feeling about.” The real amount was $98. A silicone-breasted blonde handed over her card, not even asking for a printout. Sure enough, the gratuity line on the charge slip later read $5, but Aida just shrugged. “I took care of the tip,” she said. “Works every time.”

We have been warned, methinks…

Norman Tebbit has a pop on ‘unreformed’ Islam today:

“The Muslim religion is so unreformed since it was created that nowhere in the Muslim world has there been any real advance in science, or art or literature, or technology in the last 500 years.”

Well, I believe strongly that science and technology, used well, is an outstanding force for good. It started in countries that happened to be Christian - it didn’t start there because they were Christian. Europe was where today’s technological society all began, the US and Japan (not Muslim but not Christian either - Shintoist and Buddhist mainly) is where much of it continues - and leaps forward - now. It seems churlish to pick out Islam as having not contributed so much to a specific area of life when neither have most other religious traditions.

I might also add that, as wonderful as scientific endeavour is, there are many ways of living a good life and material improvement and the gaining of knowledge - whilst immensely valuable - are not the be-all and end-all. We need a number of criteria with which to assess the good life - and other cultures’ contribution to it.

On multiculturalism:

“If a community was looking back at where it had come from instead of looking forward with the people to whom they had come to, then there is going to be a problem sooner or later.”

Lord Tebbit said multicultural society was “an impossibility” because if there were two cultures there would also be two societies.

“A society is defined by its culture. It is not defined by its race, it is not a matter of skin colour or ethnicity, it is a matter of culture.

“If you have two societies in the same place then you are going to have problems, like the kind we saw on 7 July, sooner or later,” he said.

He warned London was “sinking into the same abyss that Londonderry and Belfast sank”.

The thing is, with British society so ashamed of itself and so unwilling to demonstrate any pride in its past - and, hence, any optimism for its future - why would a person coming here want to adopt our culture? They’re better off clinging to that which they left behind because it was almost certainly clear, uncompromising and comfortable. In other words, all the things a human needs yet all the things our culture can no longer provide.

From The New Scientist:

A man has been arrested in Japan on suspicion carrying out a virtual mugging spree by using software “bots” to beat up and rob characters in the online computer game Lineage II. The stolen virtual possessions were then exchanged for real cash.

What’s a ‘bot’?

By performing tasks within a game repetitively or very quickly, bots can easily outplay human-controlled characters, giving unscrupulous players an unfair advantage.

Oh. I didn’t know that. Can anything be done about them?

Many games firms employ countermeasures to detect this bot activity. For example, they can ask the character questions or present them with an unfamiliar situation and monitor their response.

“There’s an ongoing war between people who make bots and games companies,” he told New Scientist. “And making real money out of virtual worlds is getting bigger.”

I’m still stuck on the idea that you can steal something in a computer game and then sell it in the Real World. Isn’t there, you know, a difference between the two?

…the line between virtual and real cash has already disappeared. The game EverQuest, for example, lets players buy and sell virtual items and characters for real money through an authorised online trading site.

Reynolds says the growing number of online game players will only increase the incentive for scammers. “There’s nothing exceptional about the virtual world,” he says. “Wherever there is that sort of money, there’s always crime too.”

So cyberspace seems to offer the same crime opportunities as Real Life. What crime is this man in Japan actually been arrested for?

The article doesn’t tell us. I imagine the police are still trying to work that one out themselves…

The Israeli government is pulling out of Gaza. Those citizens who didn’t want to leave were removed forcefully and now their former homes are being demolished.

Israel started demolishing evacuated homes in Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip today, as troops forcibly entered two synagogues at the centre of protests against Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan.

Cranes began pulling apart pre-fabricated buildings in the small settlement of Kerem Atzmona, the first homes to be taken down in Gaza’s main settlement bloc.

There were reports that demonstrators, who were chanting “Don’t expel Jews”, had covered themselves and the synagogue floor in cooking oil in an attempt to disrupt the removals.

Sobbing settlers were dragged out of homes and synagogues in six settlements but most did not put up a fight. In all, 11 of the settlements being evacuated had been emptied by this morning.

Noga Cohen, a Kfar Darom resident and the mother of three children injured in a Palestinian shooting attack on a bus, claimed Israel was surrendering to Palestinian militants.

I feel profoundly sympathetic towards Jewish people. The Israelis are not saints and have done some horrible things to the Palestinians - although I won’t actually start judging them until we in England are also subject to random and sustained suicide bombings and mortar attacks carried out by our neighbours.

Jews have been subjected to the worst atrocities in history and I cannot imagine myself what it must be like to be a member of a grouping so despised, so persecuted and to not have a peaceful place to call home. I have England, a land I love and which is good and kind and peaceful. I hope Jews get the same.

There are no upsides to the London atrocities but the aftermath has shown at least one thing: we have lots and lots of police officers.

I took the tube last week and they’re everywhere, both around the stations, on the platforms and outside. So we do have them - plenty of them.

And while they’re around how many bag-snatchings, muggings, sexual assaults etc are likely to take place? Very few I believe.

So. We want all those police to stay in place permanently. We’ve always wanted more police and now we’ve got them. All that paperwork they’re now not doing because they’re on the beat - it obviously isn’t necessary so scrap it. We want the police.

But beware: designs should ‘reflect modern Britain’.

Pictures depicting smiling (British) Britain haters or lesbian mothers with their NHS-supplied fatherless babies would be appropriate. Or maybe couples in minor stately homes, earning impressive salaries and collecting their New Labour welfare bribes.

Or maybe a piece of street art depicting drunken, vacant-eyed teenagers stepping over a couple copulating in a pool of vomit outside an all night bar.

How about heavy duty machinery ripping up English countryside to make way for affordable housing?

I recommend at least two spelling mistakes.

And a disproportionate number of non-whites (not sure how they’ll depict all the different cultures in a single-colour coin though. We’ll need a crowd scene if we’re to not leave out any particular cultural victim-in-waiting grouping).

Absolutely there’ll be no military scenes. Despite Iraq we’re not proud of our military past and should continue the project to reject it. And no writers or scientists unless they’re not white. (But not Salman Rushdie or anybody who has upset the Muslims.) Composers are a no-no unless they’re ‘relevent’ (hip-hop, boy band or The People’s Pop Star, Dame Elton John).

Maybe we should just cut to the chase and decorate our coinage with pictures of Emperor Blair. On both sides.

Rule Britannia, eh?

When you’ve run out of things to say, steal from others. It’s the sincerest form of flattery - honest.

David Vance at A Tangled Web wants to why, if the west is under attack from the jihadists for their actions in the middle east, Bangladesh was treated to over 300 bomb explosions today.

Last time I checked Bangladesh wasn’t exactly spearheading the action in Iraq. I’ve not seen too many Bangladeshi troops fighting their way into Baghdad. Nor has Bangladesh been a good friend to either the US or Israel. It appears that the primary reason for this massive blitzkrieg across Bangladesh is because the Islamofascists want to kill and bomb their way into power everywhere.

He’s also go the hump over the shooting of Mr Menezes and the gulf that lies between the initial explanations for the event and the gradually emerging truth. Either the Police Commissioner is incompetent or the media are. Somebody, he says, needs to resign over this.

DE’s latest post picks a small hole in the neocon idea that if one decide’s a country’s political system is bad for its people then you can just crash in and remove it:

I kept hearing the argument for the invasion of Iraq (before W.M.D. became the vogue) was that the Iraqi people were “prisoners” of Saddam Hussein, and needed to be “liberated”. In short it was not a democracy, and members of the free world were required to convert it into one.

I don’t know exactly what DE’s views are on the Iraq war but I am very uncomfortable with the idea that you can force an evolved system - democracy - on a tribally-based country that was, it seems, more or less randomly selected for the purpose as an example to anybody even thinking of crossing the US. I have a lot of time for America - and Americans - but I believe the thinking behind this war was faulty.

Frank O’Dwyer is convinced our liberties are about to be removed by an authoritarian Labour government. I hope he’s wrong but I know he might not be. He quotes no less an authority than Herman Goering on the methods of affecting that removal. And ol’ Herman ought to know:

“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”

Bishop Hill quotes the CBI’s Digby Jones saying we - the British - need to learn foreign languages in order to be successful in business. On no we don’t, says the Bishop:

Why on earth must the people employed by British businesses be British? If you run a business and want someone to speak to your French customers get a Frenchman.

Thersites has a long post about the motivation of suicide bombers. These aren’t random acts carried out by seething hateful nutters, he concludes. A summary made up of quotes from his post:

The vast majority of suicide terrorist attacks are not isolated or random acts by individual fanatics but, rather, occur in clusters as part of a larger campaign by an organized group to achieve a specific political goal.

In general, suicide terrorist campaigns seek to achieve specific territorial goals, most often the withdrawal of the target state’s military forces from what the terrorists see as national homeland.

During the past 20 years, suicide terrorism has been steadily rising because terrorists have learned that it pays.

The most promising way to contain suicide terrorism is to reduce terrorists’ confidence in their ability to carry out such attacks on the target society. States that face persistent suicide terrorism should recognize that neither offensive military action nor concessions alone are likely to do much good and should invest significant resources in border defenses and other means of homeland security.

It’s worth reading the whole thing.

Dumb Brit has had enough of the Church of England’s fannying about over gay clergy and whether or not they ought to be, ahem, getting it on within their gay partnerships.

…the Church has decided, once again, to betray its members, its doctrine, and its history (not to mention all the martyrs it’s betraying).

So he’s leaving the C of E. I always wondered how the C of E squared the godliness of marriage with its decision some years ago to not regard non-married, cohabitating couples as living in sin. I find religious pandering to the latest fads contemptible, to be honest. Sincere Christians can surely only take so much. Brit’s evidently taken enough. Well done Church of England - you’re doing a better job to put people off religion than us atheists ever could.

At Once More, the EU Serf makes the important distinction between a multi-cultural society and a multi-ethnic one.

Multiculturalism means making no judgements about another’s chosen way of life. At its worst it means accepting Polygamy, Female Circumcision, Forced Marriage and a host of other wonderful ideas, from cultures whose value is apparently equal to our own.

The fact that we have a significant number of immigrants who plain don’t understand our way of life is down to Multiculturalism, not a Multi-ethnic population. A multi-ethnic society can celebrate Britishness, a multicultural one cannot.

The Serf has his own blog here in which he exposes the rotteness of the European Union.

A non-political blog I look at has this