Gary Monro’s blog

Most social problems are caused by a lack of social conservatism. When normal, human institutions are replaced with militant individualism and the usual functions of individuals, family and community are replaced by government programmes, initiatives and diktats society inevitably crumbles.

To solve the problems of a crumbling society one must reapply the principles of social conservatism that one abandoned just prior to the creation of those problems. If one is reluctant to do such a thing then one must accept that the problems will arise in ever increasing numbers, their solution will prove increasingly intractable and so one’s measures for dealing with them will, by necessity, become increasingly draconian.

And when the forces of social depravity meet the anxieties of political desperation - with the depravity consistently having the whip-hand - the results are never going to be pretty. Tony Blair, highly tactical but deeply stupid, takes his eye off The War Against Terror (T.W.A.T.) and casts it, instead, on the appalling - but predicted - results of his own sub-human ideology. Unable to face up to the source of the problem - because he and his perverse political party is the source - he pretends the problems ‘just are’ and instead packages himself as the no-nonsense PM who will deal with them.

So Blair promises various measures to try to suppress the results of his failed social experiment but it’s the philosophy behind them, described in The Guardian, that reveals the man’s increasingly desperate need for these issues to just go away:

The prime minister confirmed yesterday that this “radical extension of summary police powers” will be hammered out in the next few weeks and published before the end of the year. It will put the rights of law-abiding people to live in safety before the need to protect the innocent from wrongful conviction if necessary.

But the innocent are the law-abiding. In this circular argument we are protecting the innocent from the crook but increasing his chances of being victimised by the state instead. Rewrite the above sentence like this and you’ll get my drift: It will put the rights of law-abiding people to live in safety before the need to protect the law-abiding from wrongful conviction if necessary.

“I will have meetings in the next few weeks on this issue. Whatever powers the police need to crack down on this, I will give them,” he said.

If the police are given a free hand to choose the rules by which they do their difficult - and, I imagine, sometimes intensely frustrating - job then they can hardly be blamed if they ignore the niceties of traditional British freedoms in favour of giving themselves a fighting chance of making an impression on the surge of anti-social behaviour coming their way.

Hence they have already barred a senior citizen from attending a conference discussion - for which he had a pass - by invoking the Terrorism Act.

Judges are concerned that an authoritarian policing system would conflict with New Labour’s other cherished ideological prize - human rights legislation:

Judges have already warned the Home Office that they are not happy with the idea of imposing restrictions on people’s liberty without a proper hearing. One district judge told Home Office researchers last year: “It would come under the human rights situation, wouldn’t it? Making orders without there being any evidence considered?”

In all likelihood, Blair has basically said ’stuff it’ to human rights on account of the fact that they are going to get in the way of his need to appear tough on crime. The lack of principle is breath-taking but, in its own perverse way, it makes sense. I have no reason to believe he wants a police state but his abject failures as a Prime Minister are pushing him towards one. His only alternatives to authoritarianism are unthinkable: admit that family is best and that its breakdown is one of the primary causes of our current woes or else just let the situation be.

When it’s put to him like that, a police state doesn’t seem quite so bad…

The fiend… the monster…. killing’s too good for him…. This man is dangerous and should only be tackled by highly trained security professionals…

Walter Wolfgang, 82, first of all heckled the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, when he started talking nonsense about Iraq.

‘Nonsense!’, he said.

The heavies came out and removed him. Mr Wolfgang may not have been too co-operative so, maybe, a little firmness was required. Anyway, eventually they ejected him.

Mr Wolfgang tried to re-enter the hall, but was refused permission under Section 44 of the Prevention of Terrorism Act. His conference pass was also confiscated.

It didn’t stop with Mr Wolfgang - a member of the Labour Party for more than half a century:

Steve Forrest, a constituency party chairman from Erith and Thamesmead in south-east London, was also ejected after complaining about Mr Wolfgang’s treatment. Mr Wolfgang, a party member for 57 years, told the BBC 2’s Daily Conference Live programme: “I shouted ‘nonsense’. That’s all I said. Then these two toughies manhandled me out.”

And this is where it all starts to get a little frightening. Exactly how extensive is the Prevention of Terrorism Act that it can bar a person for heckling? Which area of our lives is the Act not able to intrude? This from the ACPO site gives a rough plain English description of Section 44 and most of my tea-break Googling reveals the section to be mostly concerned with stop and search of potential terrorist suspects.

It’s worth noting that this behaviour is being meted out on Labour’s own supporters at their own televised conference. If that’s how they treat their own then how will they treat the rest of us?

With the disdain and contempt that they always have treated us, no doubt…

From The Times:

The entire lay leadership team of the main Anglican church in Iraq is presumed to have been killed after they were attacked while returning from a conference in Jordan.

Canon Andrew White, of the Foundation for Reconciliation in the Middle East, who is the clergyman in charge of the church, said: “Anglican leaders in Baghdad have been missing for two weeks and they are presumed dead.”

British Bishops recently decided to make an apology for the Iraq war in an act of public penetance. In the light of the deaths of a number of their fellow religionists the response of British Imams will be informative.

The Conservative Party voting system is quite simple. MPs vote for their preferred candidate and the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. Repeat until there are just two candidates left. At that point, all Party members vote for their preferred candidate, the winner becoming party leader.

Is it possible for the Conservative Party’s conservative wing (supporters of David Davis and Liam Fox, for example) to vote tactically so that Ken Clarke does not make it to the final two?

Maybe the excess Davis vote can ensure that Fox is never the last-placed candidate by voting for him. When we get to, say, three remaining candidates could that knock Mr Clarke out?

Could they arrange it so that the final battle is between Mr Fox and Mr Davis?

Who paid the bill?

Pensioner Sylvia Hardy has been freed less than two days into a seven-day jail term after an anonymous donor paid her £53.71 council tax arrears.

But the 73-year-old, of Exeter, Devon, said she was disappointed she had not been able to serve her full sentence.

Ms Hardy, who argues the tax is unfair on retired people, was jailed on Monday and had been due to be freed on Friday.

Her attempts to draw attention to the steep rises in Council Tax bills was thwarted last year too; another anonymous benefactor stepped in and paid her arrears:

“I don’t know what the motives of this particular person were - he might have been a person that was against the campaign and wanted to blow it up, or he may have been a person misguided who wanted to help, or thought he was helping.”

I reckon a scan of Labour Party accounts - searching particularly for the sum of £53.71 (perhaps itemised as ‘Tea and coffee’ or ‘printing costs’) - might provide the answer…

The BBC describes the Conservative Party’s selection process succinctly:

Any Conservative MP with the support of at least two colleagues can stand.
Nominations for the leadership close on a Thursday, with the first round of voting by Tory MPs the next Tuesday.

The candidate with the lowest number of votes drops out. There are then further rounds of voting on Thursdays and Tuesdays until two candidates are left.

There is then a postal ballot of Conservative Party members, with the candidate getting the most votes becoming the new party leader.

That should hand the leadership to David Davis then. Who might - just might - put the ‘conservative’ back in to Conservative Party.

We live in hope…

From the BBC:

A West Yorkshire hospital has banned visitors from cooing at new-born babies over fears their human rights are being breached and to reduce infection.

Some new mothers have already said they are astonished by the rules which stop people asking questions about their babies or looking at them in maternity wards.

Debbie Lawson, neo-natal manager at Calderdale Royal Hospital’s special care baby unit, said: “Cooing should be a thing of the past because these are little people with the same rights as you or me.

“We often get visitors wandering over to peer into cots but people sometimes touch or talk about the baby like they would if they were examining tins in a supermarket and that should not happen.”

Here’s an interesting take on the hospital’s appreciation of the human rights of these ‘little people’:

…in the last two years, 76 girls under 16 have had an abortion at Calderdale Royal Hospital. Of those, 23 were aged 15 and nine were just 14.

Sometimes little people can be just too little to have rights…

From the BBC’s report on the decommissioning

General John de Chastelain: “We are satisfied that the arms decommissioned represent the totality of the IRA’s arsenal.”

“We have observed and verified events to put beyond use very large quantities of arms which we believe include all the arms in the IRA’s possession.”

The two church witnesses: “…it demonstrated to us - and would have demonstrated to anyone who might have been with us - that beyond any shadow of doubt, the arms of the IRA have now been decommissioned.”

Sometimes, when something is emphasised so emphatically it makes you wonder whom they’re actually trying to convince.

How do they know how many weapons the IRA actually possessed prior to them being decommissioned?

“In September 2004, the commission got estimates of numbers and quantities of arms from IRA security forces in both jurisdictions.”

They asked the IRA..?

The loyalists haven’t decommissioned. And, with 10,000 British troops still in Northern Ireland the country is still (if you’re an IRA supporter) ‘occupied’. Would the IRA leave themselves defenceless while loyalist paramilitaries are still armed and the British Army still patrols?

I think it unlikely - unreasonable, even - to expect that the IRA would do such a thing. Unless incontrovertible evidence can be provided I believe the IRA are still sufficiently armed to be a menace to the peace.

At last, something we lead the world at.

A United Nations report has labelled Scotland the most violent country in the developed world, with people three times more likely to be assaulted than in America.

England and Wales recorded the second highest number of violent assaults while Northern Ireland recorded the fewest.

Alcohol aggravated assaults helped Scotland pip first position.

Detective Chief Superintendent John Carnochan, head of the Strathclyde Police’s violence reduction unit, said the problem was chronic and restricting access to drink and limiting the sale of knives would at least reduce the problem.

Some of the statistics printed in The Times:

The study, by the UN’s crime research institute, found that 3 per cent of Scots had been victims of assault compared with 1.2 per cent in America and just 0.1 per cent in Japan, 0.2 per cent in Italy and 0.8 per cent in Austria. In England and Wales the figure was 2.8 per cent.

Scotland was eighth for total crime, 13th for property crime, 12th for robbery and 14th for sexual assault. New Zealand had the most property crimes and sexual assaults, while Poland had the most robberies.

As an aside, it’s interesting that Scotland is regarded as a country while neither England nor Wales are and are instead lumped together to form EnglandandWales.

I have been selected as a Conservative Party local government candidate for Cranbrook Ward in the London Borough of Redbridge. The local elections are in May so I will begin working on my election campaign very soon.

The ward is already Conservative which is good news but nothing is certain in life and there are some recent ups and downs to contend with. I am being supported by excellent people - including the lady whose retirement created the vacancy - so, while I realise I have to work very hard, I know I’m being guided by the best.

From small beginnings…

From The Daily Telegraph:

The terrorists, freed in the belief that “they posed a very low threat”, have either been killed, captured or wounded in attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Others are thought to be still organising attacks with the Taliban or al Qa’eda.

Guantanomo Bay is just another sore on the backside of this whole Iraq escapade. We could come out of the whole affair a lot cleaner if we applied our genuinely superior western values to the captives, imprisoning those we found to be guilty, releasing those found to be innocent and killing, in combat, those we were mistaken about.

From The House of Dumb blog, this story about Burqa King Burger King…

THE fast-food chain, Burger King, is withdrawing its ice-cream cones after the lid of the dessert offended a Muslim.

The man claimed the design resembled the Arabic inscription for Allah, and branded it sacrilegious, threatening a “jihad”.

You know who I feel sorry for? Not the retard who took offence - or the cowards who gave in to him. I feel sorry for all the normal British Muslims out there who realise this politically correct tripe - instigated from within their own ranks - just heaps derision on them personally.

The Conservatives are brimming with confidence:

The Conservatives could form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats if there is a hung parliament after the next election, the Tory chairman Francis Maude, has said.

Sorry, Mr Maude, but I didn’t join the Conservative Party so I could team up with a mixture of frustrated socialists and frustrated libertarians. Frankly, I’d rather be decimated in the polls than form such a coalition.

After giving reasons for why we should not have invaded Iraq in the first place I said that, once there, we really were in no position to bail out in the short-term. I suggested that if the coalition withdrew from Iraq then they’d leave the country facing a civil war.

My reasoning - such that it was - was that the coalition could keep the opposing sides apart long enough for the installation of something vaguely democratic while in the meantime training the Iraqi security services to carry out the formidable task of maintaining order once the coalition had left.

Recent events seem to be suggesting that one of my underlying objections to the war - that you can’t just install your own personal favoured government system in a country that has its own ideas about how it wants to be governed - is proving to be so. It seems that the Iraqi security forces - in Basra at least - are so heavily infiltrated by the very people they’re supposed to be fighting that the British Army is claiming to be in control of only about 25% of them. The infiltrators are going to be representing religious and tribal groupings and are probably positioning themselves for the final showdown when power is up for grabs and the strongest will get the booty.

If this is the case and if the declaration of war against Shi’ites is being taken seriously by Sunnis then maybe the civil war that is looming is about to become a fact.

If a civil war is inevitable should the coalition withdraw? Where is the advantage of being the common enemy of all three factions?

Would it be better to acknowledge an impending civil war (if, indeed, it’s agreed that one is inevitable) and actively partition the country rather than wait for it to take place in an uncontrolled - and violent - manner?

Or should we dig in and simply fight it out?

The Iraq situation seems muddled and confusing. What do people think we should do next?

Seems some suicide bombers, erm, weren’t.

A suicide bomber captured before he could blow himself up in a Shiite mosque claimed he was kidnapped, beaten and drugged by insurgents who forced him to take on the mission. The U.S. military said its medical tests indicated the man was telling the truth.

He might not be the only one.

His story was similar to those recounted by other captured militants. The captives routinely claim they were either coerced or fooled by insurgent leaders who promised them a role in the holy war against the U.S. military, only to find themselves as would-be suicide bombers sent to attack civilians.

Their confessions make good television:

Televised interrogations and confessions are becoming increasingly common as Iraqi and American officials capture more militants and use their confessions in an attempt to undercut support for militants.

Maybe the insurgency is running a bit short on volunteers?

“The kidnapping demonstrates the desperation of al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his ability to execute his strategy,'’ said Col. Billy J. Buckner, a U.S. military spokesman .

“He knows that he can’t win against Iraqi security and coalition forces, and is therefore willing to use innocent Iraqi citizens to further his cause to disrupt the election process and prevent a free and democratic Iraq,'’ he said.

Immigration in this country could be summed up as white liberal-leftists telling the white working-class poor to live cheek to jowl with people those same white liberal-leftists wouldn’t be seen dead with themselves. The poorest of whites live with the poorest of immigrants, competing for stretched local services, jobs and room to breathe.

Those whites who protest are abused as racists until they see the light. Diversity programmes hammer the message home until we’re all too afraid of the abuse that being honest entails - so we go with the herd. Meanwhile, every aspect of non-white people’s failure, frustration or unhappiness is blamed squarely on white people and their institutions.

Yet the intolerance and disdain shown to us by those in authority still has not achieved the intended aims. And as the multicultural experiment starts fraying, its advocates start panicking. Trevor Phillips (pictured), head of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE):

“The fact is we are a society which, almost without noticing it, is becoming more divided by race and religion. We are becoming more unequal by ethnicity.”

The dewy-eyed belief that children will pave the way for a multi-cultural wonderland seems not to be delivering the results the diversity-fanatics want:

According to Phillips, new research also pours cold water on hopes that children mixing in schools might break down the barriers between communities. The study by Bristol University found that children are slightly more segregated in the playground than they are in their neighbourhoods. “That means that not only aren’t the children meeting — nor are their parents”.

In school or out, people just won’t do what their masters require of them:

New CRE research will also show that most white people do not have a non-white friend, while young Asian and black people have almost exclusively Asian or black friends.

In a country that’s 92% white if you picked your friends on character alone then statistically most of your friends would be white. But blacks and Asians seek out people like themselves - not people like me.

Phillips suggests that schools could be given cash incentives to increase their ethnic mix and local education authorities could be forced to broaden their catchment areas to include a more even racial mix.

He suggests that young people of different ethnic backgrounds should be brought together in summer camps to overcome suspicions and prejudice; he will also say that schools should be encouraged, or even coerced, into accepting a greater ethnic mix of pupils.

He wonders whether local authorities should be forced to redraw their school catchment areas so as to encourage integration.

I think Mr Phillips misses the point. People tend to stick to their own racial or religious type not because they dislike other races but simply because they prefer their own. All the force and coercion in the world won’t change what people prefer.

And what good is a greater ethnic mix of school pupils if those kids seek out and socialise with their own? You end up with the same number of segregated groups but with more people in them. Segregation is chosen by the very people whose segregation Mr Phillips laments…

In Aston, a predominantly ethnic minority area of Birmingham, Pardeep Modhvadia was quite frank last week about how insulated his life can be from mainstream white British culture.

“We are very much involved with our mosque and events in the Asian community,” said the 34-year-old IT consultant whose wife, Nazia, is 33. “Many of these events involve Asians exclusively and it can be easy to get wrapped up in Asian culture and not embrace other communities around you.”

Modhvadia admitted that he and his wife “mainly only see Asian people”, partly because of religious and family ties.

Truth is, there are so many immigrants in this country that individuals don’t have to integrate - there’s plenty of their own to live a whole and happy life with. In London, in fact, 45% of the population comes from a minority so why seek relationships with people whose language, religion, culture, mindset and so on is so different from your own? There are, after all, plenty of people around who are just like you - whoever you are.

Whites are just the same:

James Parker, a 24-year-old mechanic, who lives in the same area of Birmingham with his girlfriend Chloe, 22. He, too, was straightforward about the ethnically restricted ambit of his life.

“Our friends are mostly white,” he said. “I knew a lot of Asians in school and they mainly talked only to each other and would sometimes speak in Gujarati — it was like their own club. So everyone kind of divided into their own racial groups.”

Mr Phillips and his middle-class intellectual friends might hob-nob with whitey but his brothers and sisters in da ‘hood prefer their own.

At least Mr Phillips recognises and, more importantly, acknowledges the failures of the multicultural experiment:

[M]ulticultural tolerance, Phillips now believes, has ultimately helped to build ghettos. “We have allowed tolerance of diversity to harden into the effective isolation of communities in which some people think special separate values ought to apply,”

It has also allowed the traditional British values of free speech and family to be eroded. He points to such incidents as Sikh activists trying to ban a play they found offensive rather than support free speech; and to the “almost casual” acceptance of Afro-Caribbean fathers abandoning their children.

We even tolerate evangelical African churches performing exorcisms on children in the name of multiculturalism, he notes.

Unfortunately, despite sounding like the most sensible of the various ‘equality’ promoting intellectuals in this country when it comes to ways of forcing us to integrate - because that, in the final analysis, is what he’s trying to do - it’s all stuff we’ve seen and heard before. He suggests

A better balance to be struck between multiculturalism, “which leads to greater division and inequality”, and enforced assimilation, which creates an “intolerant repressive uniformity”. “Integration” is the key.

Sorry - but completely meaningless to me. Mr Phillips wants to balance two bad things - multiculturalism and enforced assimilation? And what is this magic ingredient - integration? How does it work and how do you get it?

Establishing a set of non-negotiable “British values” to which all groups must subscribe, including respect for democracy, freedom of speech, tolerance of others, care for children and equality of opportunity.

Nice but when some of these values are only patchily shared by the white community these days how exactly do we persuade people - white and black - brought up on a diet of rights, victim status and the certainty that all the evils of society are whitey’s fault to suddenly transform themselves?

A recognition by government that anti-discrimination laws alone are not enough to foster a properly integrated society, and for new measures to be taken to foster greater “equality, participation and interaction” between ethnic groups.

‘New measures’ suggests to me we’re going to have government schemes to make us want to live with each other. This is also known as social engineering and brainwashing - held together with the certain knowledge that if the average joe doesn’t comply he’s going to be called a racist.

More “equality audits” to root out institutional racism in the public and private sectors; more ethnic minorities to be appointed to public bodies such as health boards.

Witch-hunts, widescale branding of white people as racist (which is what the term ‘institutionally racist’ does) and quotas of blacks and Asians in public jobs - discrimination against white candidates, in other words. What’s known, I believe, as fighting fire with fire….

And absolutely no mention whatsoever of whether or not the minority groups themselves should do anything to meet Mr Phillips’ desire that they be integrated.

And, of course, no admission that maybe many people don’t integrate because they simply don’t want to.

[Quotes from The Sunday Times]

It doesn’t happen often but the government has the right idea here. Because we know they will never do the things necessary to prevent crime from happening in the first place (supporting family structure, providing first-class education, reducing welfare, arresting and imprisoning larger numbers of criminals and so on) their only real focus can be on reforming the miscreant while they have him.

The UK’s reoffending rate is very poor - about 80% within two years of release - and more than one commentator has pointed out that when you imprison a criminally-inclined person and then simply release him at the end of his sentence - back into the arms of his criminally-inclined friends - you actually support the person’s descent into persistent offending.

In his first keynote speech on penal policy, Mr Clarke said the emphasis needed to shift away from a contest to see who could be toughest and towards stopping people re-offending when they had finished their sentences.

“We need to move away from the idea that prisons can be universities of crime towards them being institutions that ensure offenders become working and productive members of society upon release…we have to make reducing the number of re-offenders the central focus of our policy and practice…It is essential if we are to cut crime.”

Mr Clarke said he wanted to devise a system built around “a form of contract between the criminal and the state where each individual in prison, on remand or on probation is required to commit to a non-criminal future, to no future re-offending.”

I’m deeply sceptical of government intervention in private lives and I suspect that Labour’s tendency to believe in its own innate power to make the world a perfect place - a delusion not cured by the fact that almost all areas of UK life are in decline - will be the undoing of this plan. But the thinking is good so I’ll cross my fingers and hope they follow though and do something useful.

CCTV evidence suggests three of the July 7 bombers carried out a practise run 9 days before the bombings.

And relatives of those who died will receive £10,000 compensation.

Will this include relatives of the bombers? More to the point, which public figure would you bet yor last 10 quid on as being stupid enough to even suggest such a thing?

The Church of England should arrange a meeting with Muslim leaders to say sorry for the Iraq war, a group of senior bishops suggests today.

Why?

If you oppose the war then do your best to describe why you oppose it. Reason your way through the pros and cons and reach a sensible, sincerely held position.

But don’t belittle your audience - and yourselves - with crocodile tears. The bishops’ apologies, however well-intentioned, cannot possibly be sincere since you can’t apologise for something you didn’t do. And what do you say to the millions of Iraqis who actually want to thank the coalition for the war? I guess their views are considered unworthy….

I try to be even-handed with the religious because not sharing their faith isn’t reason enough to be rude to them. And many religious people lead far better lives than their critics. But this kind of ‘reaching-out’ PC nonsense just invites derision.

The holders of authority…are so ready to spare us all sort of troubles, except those of obeying and paying!

They will say to us: “what, in the end, is the aim of your efforts, the motive of your labours, the object of all your hopes? Is it not happiness? Well, leave this happiness to us and we shall give it to you.”

No, Sirs, we must not leave it to them. No matter how touching such a tender commitment may be, let us ask the authorities to keep within their limits. Let them confine themselves to being just. We shall assume the responsibility of being happy for ourselves’.

Benjamin Constant

Well, the Germans seem to have a hung ‘parliament’ and its two leading lights are arguing over who will be Chancellor. Angela Merkel says, ‘I am - I’ve got the biggest party’. And Gerhard Schröder trumps her with his mastery of the art of debate - ‘No, you’re not. I am’.

The only detail that stands out for me in what would otherwise be a bit of a yawn of an election was the voter turnout. It was 77 per cent. And that’s down on previous turnouts. In 2002 turnout was 79% while in 1998 it was 82%.

Whereas in the UK’s May 2005 election the turnout was 61% - representing an increase on 2001’s turnout of 59%.

The last time the UK managed a turnout like Germany’s most recent one was in 1992. That, in fact, is when apathy started to set in and turnout has declined overall ever since. Prior to 1992 turnouts were always in the 70% plus range, reaching a heady 82% in 1951.

With German citizens well aware of their country’s woes and the UK’s oblivious to theirs maybe the argument that people only vote when they’re unhappy with something is true. Not a very healthy state of affairs though, is it?

“Don’t vote Conservative because we all know what happened under them - 3 million unemployed!”

I saw the BBC take this government’s unemployment figures to task some time ago, describing how there are ever-increasing numbers of people going onto disability allowance rather than becoming officially unemployed.

Then I posted about the extent of this fiddle - moving the unemployed into the less politically-sensitive category of disabled - in Scotland where 21% of Scotland’s entire workforce is on invalidity benefit.

Now, Thersites has come up with the official figures. Just over 1.1 million people have been diverted from unemployment benefit to sickness benefit - thus depressing headline unemployment figures. He’s added that figure to the headline unemployment figure - 1.42 million - to arrive at a more accurate figure of two and a half million unemployed.

Then Lascivious added the final touch by noting that over half a million jobs have been created in the public sector by Gordon Brown since 1997. Assuming all these jobs were Brown’s version of the YTS scheme and so unnecessary - and if you believe in shrinking the state rather than increasing it it’s an easy enough assumption - we find ourselves hitting the Thatcherite 3 million mark.

I would add that forcing tens of thousands of kids into university places that are often inappropriate to their needs (although entirely appropriate to the government’s needs) is also another expensive and dishonest way of suppressing the true scale of unemployment in this country.

And the adverse effects of all this manipulating and twisting of real life are now starting to come back and, as an American might say, bite our bottoms.

Labour still isn’t working.

UPDATE - this just in from our sloppy blogging department:

The 21% on incapacity benefit is quoted from this piece in The Scotsman: “The number classed as economically inactive, largely those on sickness and incapacity benefits, was 655,000″

(My emphasis).

So they’re not all on benefit after all. I would do well to read my sources a bit better. My apologies for my mistake.

NASA will be putting man back on the moon by 2018 as a major step in its plan to expand space exploration - and humankind’s presence throughout the solar system.

One of NASA’s reasons for going back to the Moon is to demonstrate that astronauts can essentially “live off the land” by using lunar resources to produce potable water, fuel and other valuable commodities. Such capabilities are considered extremely important to human expeditions to Mars which, because of the distances involved, would be much longer missions entailing a minimum of 500 days spent on the planet’s surface.

Space travel really is the final frontier and, if I could think of one reason why I would like to live forever it’s so I could see what we discover when we finally start exploring our galaxy in earnest…

A full-screen version of the earth rise picture can be found here. It’s stunning.

I do like an intellectual punch-up. And if you’re going to be abusive, do it with some panache. George Galloway and Christopher Hitchens had a set-to in New York a couple of days ago - the Grapple in the Apple - and here’s a Galloway put-down of Mr Hitchens’ change of stance from anti-war (America vs Iraq, 1991) to pro-war (America vs Iraq, 2005):

“What you have witnessed is something unique in natural history - the first ever metamorphosis of a butterfly back into a slug.”

Labour’s city academy schools aren’t finding much favour with head teachers:

Only 6% of headteachers support Tony Blair’s controversial plans to build more city academy schools, according to an EducationGuardian/ICM poll.

The findings come after the prime minister brushed aside criticism of the £5bn academy programme yesterday, insisting “parent power” would fuel its expansion.

It found that 57% of headteachers in England believe the government listens to few of their needs, while 27% say the government does not listen at all.

The poll also shows that only 6% of headteachers support academies, with 43% opposed and 40% unsure.

What teachers want and what the government wants are at odds with each other:

The government’s plans to hand greater power to parents in the running of schools - likely to be outlined in a schools white paper later in the autumn - also receive a lukewarm response. Just 1% of headteachers are interested in parents having greater involvement in the management of schools.

However, there is overwhelming support for parents exerting a greater influence at home. Many headteachers are keen to see parents enforcing discipline at home (42%) and ensuring attendance at school (35%), but these figures leap to more than 60% in favour of parents teaching moral values and social skills at home.

Oh, well - they’re just teachers so what do they know? But what does Blair see as being the point of the academies?

“The purpose is very simple: fairness and opportunity for all. Public services exist so that those who cannot afford to buy good healthcare or schooling are not at a disadvantage.”

AKA social engineering. Why no mention of a school’s real function - learning to read and write?

Oops - that might be because they actually aren’t doing so well at that bit…

From the US:

Local, State and Federal Gas Taxes Consume 45.9 Cents Per Gallon on Average

From the UK:

You pay 60 pence in taxes per litre…

60 pence is about 1 dollar per litre.

And there are four and a half litres per gallon.

So that’s $4.50 tax per gallon of fuel in the UK - 10 times the US rate. Kind of throws a bit of persepctive on things doesn’t it?

Nearly 200 people have been killed in Iraq in the last 24 hours as certain Sunnis declare war on the Shia community. It seems that Iraq is fracturing along the faultlines kept together by decades of tyranny.

Shortly after yesterday’s wave of explosions and shootings, a group linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, calling itself al-Qaeda in Iraq, claimed responsibility on an Islamist website and urged all Sunni Muslims to “wake up from your slumber” and join the fight.

The group claimed that the carnage came in response to a successful Iraqi and US joint military offensive against the rebel stronghold of Tal Afar, a staging post on the Syrian border used by foreign recruits, five days earlier.

The Times has learned that al-Zarqawi, considered to be Osama bin Laden’s lieutenant in Iraq, has united insurgent groups in Baghdad to target the Shia community with the aim of bringing civil war to Iraq as it prepares for a referendum on its constitution next month.

According to US military intelligence sources , al-Zarqawi, the man responsible for the bloodiest acts of terror in Iraq over the past two years, now commands thousands of fighters from various rival groups and is set to order further waves of bombings.

Al-Zarqawi promised war, without mercy, against all Shi’ites everywhere - a pledge that will probably raise the $25 million bounty already on his head. In the meantime I stand by my original assertion that deliberately partitioning Iraq now rather than being eventually forced to deal with a de facto partitioned Iraq will avoid the inevitable bloodshed in between times.

How did they manage this?

The summit has failed to agree a definition of terrorism.

But the UN Security Council backed a resolution brought forward by the UK calling on all states to outlaw incitement to terrorism.

How do you outlaw incitement to something you can’t even define?

The UN’s difficulty with a definition stems from the old ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’ school of thought. There is some truth in this of course.

But if you need a definition of terrorism then maybe one has to consider who the ‘fighters’ are, whether they’re part of a recognised army, who they attack - and how - and whether they act in accordance with internationally agreed standards of warfare. Some combination of factors from these - and, probably, a number of other criteria - to define terrorism in a meaningful way surely isn’t beyond the ability of the UN.

At the very least it would produce something concrete to argue over and refine.

Paul Beston The American Spectator comments on President Bush’s declaration that September 11 be known as ‘Patriot’s Day’ in honour of the sacrifices of firefighters, police officers, and rescue workers on that fateful day.

He suggests the attack in 2001 is analogous to the attack on Pearly Harbour in 1941 in that it was only the second time Americans had been attacked on their own soil - and both times they were unprepared. In 1941 however the US concentrated their efforts less on grieving and more on the business of avenging their dead.

Last Sunday, families gathered at Ground Zero to read the names of the dead, and emotions ran high as always. I wonder for how much longer we will encourage survivors to come back to the scene of their greatest torment and re-enact their grief in such a public way. Such rituals can only serve to keep old wounds forever fresh, and they provide an annual reminder for our enemies of the devastating effectiveness of their deeds.

Even while the wounds of Pearl Harbor were fresh, Franklin Roosevelt recognized that a great nation shouldn’t grovel so much in the mire of one of its darkest days, especially when it had a war to win. It is not true that repressing the pain of loss means forgetting it. That is one of our touchy-feely myths. Repression is a key to survival, and Americans once knew this intuitively.

Better that we privately ackowledge our feelings than turn them into an annual ‘Diana moment’. Nothing degrades real grief more than others - politicians, primarily - free-riding on its back in order to demonstrate some superior qualities of their own.

Due to large amounts of spam heading my way I am forced to moderate initial comments.

If you have never commented before your first post will need moderating by me. All subsequent posts by you will reach the comments section unmolested.

I apologise for this. I value highly comments made and am reluctant to be a hindrance to new arrivals who wish to agree with, criticise or otherwise remark on anything said on this blog.

I’m hoping though that the short wait to have your first comment posted is preferable to having to wade through comments sections full of adverts for poker sites, viagra and naughty schoolgirls - who should, in my opinion, actually be at school and not plying their wares in a respectable blog…

I shouldn’t be constantly shocked and dismayed by this kind of news but I am. Thanks, EU Serf, for ruining my day:

European commissioners yesterday hailed a landmark legal judgment that could give them the power to use criminal sanctions to enforce EU law.

But Foreign Office sources said that, although the judgment raised the possibility of Britain having to create new criminal offences against the wishes of the Government, in practice EU member states would never agree to such a loss of sovereignty.

So the law is made but will never be used? As my teenage daughter would say, ‘Yeah, right’.

The ECJ decision is hugely sensitive because until now the EU has only been able to use the criminal law to enforce its decisions in certain categories where all member states agree legislation by unanimity. In theory, qualified majority voting - which allows EU law to be made against the wishes of a minority of member states - could now be used to take decisions that would have to be enforced throughout the EU by criminal sanctions.

Oh look - there’s a Conservative Party leadership contest going on:

Liam Fox, the Tory foreign affairs spokesman, claimed the decision could be deeply damaging to British national interests.

“Despite all Tony Blair’s protestations, we in the UK are bit by bit losing control of our own ability to make our own laws,” he said.

Never fear, Liam - Ken Clarke will fight the buggers on the beaches blah blah blah…

A brief wander around the blogosphere today…

Gaffa’s blog is new and looks good - although I’m giving him a hard time in his post about Ken Clarke.

Blognor Regis does an interesting review of the old British movie, the Blue Lamp, featuring location stills from the film that depict late 50s England.

I ‘ve heard of House of Dumb but never actually visited. Put that right today and glad I did. A number of entertainingly well-written rants about… well, lots of things actually.

Driverchris pokes fun at the silliness of objecting to the misuse of shackles and handcuffs by protesting outside the gates of the manufacturers…

A Tangled Web is a fast and furious read… Fasten your seat-belts first. Almost everything on that blog is worth reading - and the comments can be a bit of a riot too.

If the stand-up comedians are to be believed, your mother-in-law is the bane of your life. The last thing you’d want to do is marry her. And, in fact, English law forbids it.

Ah, says the EU. That’s a breach of your human rights. Britain’s laws contradict Article 12 of the European Human Rights Convention. And that will never do…

[The] ruling means the Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer must sweep away British law on the issue and replace it with new rules to allow such marriages.

The UK didn’t want to make this change - which basically allows marriage between parents-in-law and their children-in-law:

The Government had claimed the existing law protected the family and morality, prevented sexual competition between parents and children and shielded children from confusion, anxiety and harm.

[T]he Government’s lawyer Emily Willmott told the court there were moral and practical reasons why the British law should stay.

Children would be harmed and morals endangered if marriage to parents-in-law was allowed, she told the European judges.

In the couple’s case, she said, “the marriage would have the effect of making the first applicant stepfather of his grandson which situation could well be deeply confusing and disturbing for a child”.

Miss Willmott said there was “risk of such marriages undermining the foundations of the family and altering relationships between relatives”.

But, of course, the UK has no choice. Choice is something only free countries have. We are not a free country.

It’s not the bag of chips you eat that makes you fat. It’s the sitting in front of the television eating them that does the damage.

“After taking a range of other factors into account, our research showed that time spent watching television is a significant predictor of body mass index and being overweight,” said Dr Hancox.

“While there are a number of factors involved in childhood obesity, the strength of the association we found with TV viewing was greater than that commonly found for the effects of nutritional intake and physical activity. Clearly further work is needed to unravel all the critical factors and how they interact.”

No surprises there. When I was a pup we ate absolute rubbish (anyone for bread and dripping?) yet we weren’t fat and we didn’t have the range of disorders modern kids have. That’s because children’s hour on the idiot-box really was, more or less, an hour. After that was the news (boooooring) and then stuff which you either weren’t allowed to watch or was on too late for you to watch. What did we do instead? We played outside. Hence no fat.

An insightful politician would reasses our country’s relationship with the television. Incorrectly used - and it is often incorrectly used - television is a very bad thing and will be responsible for any number of social ills - illiteracy, poor behaviour and relationship breakdown to name a few.

If you fancy a giggle though you can read Polly Toynbee’s view that fat is a class issue (how could it be anything else?) The article’s a year old but retains its awesome power to make you laugh out loud…

Red Ken Livingstone, Mayor of Londonistan, believes Yusuf al-Qaradawi - a controversial imam who is banned from the US - is like the reforming pope, Paul XXIII.

“Of all the Muslim leaders in the world today, Sheikh Qaradawi is the most powerfully progressive force for change and for engaging Islam with western values,” Mr Livingstone told the Commons home affairs select committee.

“I think his is very similar to the position of Pope John XXIII.”

Red Ken suggests Qaradawi’s thoughts about executing gays is a ‘question of a philosophical nature’.

If you see this post of mine and click on ‘more’ at the bottom you’ll see a few examples of fatwas issued by Pope Yusuf. This includes a rather un-pope-like view on female mutilation.

Next week: ‘Osama Bin Laden like Mahatma Gandhi’

As oil prices escalate, haulage companies - which could go to the wall as one of their major costs goes through the roof - plan to demonstrate to ask the chancellor to cut the per centage he rakes in from his tax on petrol.

Mr Brown seems not to be of a mind to resist the lure of increased tax revenues. After all, his government spends money as if they’re oil sheiks…. But he wants others to make use of their increased oil revenues:

He is also pushing oil-producing nations to divert their current windfall into funding more production and refining facilities.

At the same time, Mr Brown wants more effort put into finding greener alternatives, with the World Bank to set up a fund to help developing countries do the same.

The IMF should create a fund for poorer countries hit by the rising prices, part-funded by Opec, he said.

So there you have it - the Brown approach:

Everyone else - do something! The British government - do nothing!

Even if you think some of his ideas are a little eccentric (I don’t - but I understand others do) I would rather listen to something meaningful - life affirming, even -which I can ponder over for a while, than the tsunami of effluence pouring out of the mouths of our government:

“I just think we need to remember that we are a part of Nature and not apart from it, which I think has been one of the great problems of the 20th century. It’s a balance, it seems to me, we have to try to find, and I just feel we have got out of balance.”

In a comment that might well have been aimed at the current government, he added: “And this business of reflection and action: you have to have both, you can’t just endlessly act.

One of the Muslims the government consults with is convert Ahmad Thomson:

“Pressure was put on Tony Blair before the invasion. The way it works is that pressure is put on people to arrive at certain decisions. It is part of the Zionist plan and it is shaping events.”

The Daily Telegraph quotes a government source:

“It is by talking to people with varying views that we find out what the range of opinions is. It doesn’t mean we agree with what they are saying.”

Of course. Why bother with right and wrong - principle, in other words - when there are people like Thomson and co to appease?

Firemen free boy stuck in toilet
A six-year-old boy had to be freed by firefighters after getting trapped in a cubicle in a women’s toilet.

The youngster became stuck under the partition between two toilets at a pub in Bristol - with his head in one cubicle and his body in the other.

Fire crews called to the bar in Hanham High Street on Saturday evening first tried lubricating his head with washing up liquid and pulling him free.

When this did not work they chipped a hole in the partition to rescue him.

The boy, who became very scared and distressed while stuck, was unhurt and happy to have been freed.

I wonder how he explained this to his parents…

Today is the 4th anniversary of the mass murders of innocent Americans in the Twin Towers and Pentagon building.

Watching, over the last week, some of the coverage of that awful event reminds me just how lucky most of us are to not have personal experience of such horrors.

The death and pain so many went through - and the tales of heroism - remind us of what it is to be human. Suffering, stoicism, determination, duty - are all part of the human condition. It is our response to these that determines what we actually are and gives us our ability to be happy. Despite my misgivings over the Iraq war I believe America shows itself to be tough, dynamic, united and, in the end, very human.

We should be grateful we have the freedoms we do - and be vigilant in their defence, wherever the attack comes from. In the meantime, our thoughts are with our American cousins.

I understand from news reports today (not had the opportunity to delve deeper) that MI5 - the domestic security service - has suggested our liberties may need curtailing in order to fight off the terrorist threat.

The more I think about this ‘civil liberties versus the need to defend ourselves’ issue the less I seem to know.

Clearly, the ideals of the liberal democratic society and all its attendent freedoms were not created with the existence of murderous and evil jihadists in mind. Relatively open and free societies like Great Britain’s are created on the basis that the people living in them will be like the average Anglo-Saxon, with similar values, a broadly comparable outlook on life, similar ideas on ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and so on. A certain, general mind-set is assumed.

Enter those who do not share this mind-set.

If we allow the actions of the murderous to dictate our own next steps then they are, effectively, pulling our strings. They themselves succeed in restricting our liberty.

If we don’t take necessary action against them then they kill some of us.

The dilemma, in my mind, is that of we take the necessary steps to effectively curtail terrorists’ activities we give up some of our basic liberties. To avoid tyrannical government this simply cannot be allowed. But if we don’t do whatever’s necessary to stop them killing us then our liberties are still impaired, except in a different way. We live in a kind of fear instead and are occasionally maimed or killed. Are we to carry on spilling our blood in order to constantly emphasise our liberty?

Actually, the only answer to the whole conundrum is to not allow foreigners into the UK in the first place - and, probably, to have an isolationist foreign policy. But the first isn’t desirable and the second isn’t practical. And both require a time-machine to implement.

So what should we do?

Lascivious just lost his place on my christmas list after making a modicum of sense regarding the upside of a Clarke victory in the Conservative Party leadership race.

In a nutshell, Clarke gets Labour out of office and then we build a case for a truly conservative party - and a truly conservative leader.

Unless of course, we can persuade our Ken to truly see the light.

Ontario province in Canada already has faith-based tribunals for family disputes in Catholic and Jewish communities. More fool them. Now they’re offering Muslims the opportunity to apply Sharia law to the same.

Ontario is considering a report which recommends that it allow sharia religious arbitration for issues such as divorce and child custody.

The government insists that the process would only have its roots in sharia and that the equal rights of women would continue to be protected under Canadian law.

… many Muslims believe that because Canada is a secular country, its legal system makes it difficult for them to govern themselves by the laws of their religion.

The protests are well under way.

Opponents say the proposed arbitration process will violate women’s rights.

Approval would make Ontario the only Western jurisdiction to adopt a form of sharia arbitration.

Homa Ar-Jomand, campaign protest co-ordinator, believes that the system should be completely secular.

“We strongly believe that Islam has never been moderated,” she said, adding that faith-based arbitration of family disputes is not relevant in the modern world.

If they succeed in Ontario will we in the UK be branded Islamaphobic if we don’t also permit this kind of thing?

Keep the church - and other religions - and the state seperate. It’s the only way.

[Thanks, A Tangled Web]

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) has plans to move its offices to Newport, Wales. Unions are reporting the ONS to the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), accusing it of racist social engineering.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is accused of “social engineering” by two Whitehall unions because it is arguing that one of the benefits of the relocation would be “to improve the ethnic mix of the Newport area” by moving its own staff there.

Improve the ethnic mix of the Newport area? In what way ‘improve’? What are the actual benefits? Will the residents of Newport be consulted on this improvement? Have they been asking for it?

The dispute has arisen because under the Race Relations Act all departments must draw up a race equality impact assessment when they want relocate large numbers of staff.

Its resolution will have wide ranging implications for plans to move up to 20,000 civil servants out of London over the next three years.

The ‘worry’ is that Newport won’t be able to provide the ONS with the desired quotas of non-whites. Here’s some more Labour-speak:

“Replacements for these staff could not be recruited in Newport in the same racial mix, because of the composition of Newport, nor could they be recruited from Cardiff or Bristol for the same reason.

“As a consequence, the proportion of ethnic minority staff employed by ONS overall would be considerably lower and this would have an adverse effect on racial equality.”

Bloody selfish Welsh, eh? I guess Newport is an area that the BBC would describe as hideously white.

A spokesman for ONS said: “We reject the complaint that we are trying to introduce social engineering by moving people from ethnic minorities down to Newport as totally out of proportion.”

So it’s not untrue? Just ‘out of proportion’?

“We have told the CRE we are planning a number of initiatives to try and solve the problem,” the spokesman said. “We intend to invite our staff to a series of tea parties to explain the move and are offering to pair up staff with “buddies” to help them move from London to Newport.We are also going to advertise in all the Welsh universities, to encourage students from ethnic minorities to come and work at ONS in Newport.”

That’s a great job of promoting racial equality you’re doing there, chaps. I think you need to think a little more clearly about who exactly is doing the social engineering…

It’s a question that’s being asked. Is it worth recreating what was there before?

The city’s romance is not the reality for most who live there. It’s a poor place, with about 27 percent of the population of 484,000 living under the poverty line, and it’s a black place, where 67 percent are African-American.

The state of Louisiana rates 47 percent of New Orleans schools as “Academically Unacceptable” and another 26 percent are under “Academic Warning.”

The police inspire so little trust that witnesses often refuse to testify in court. University researchers enlisted the police in an experiment last year, having them fire 700 blank gun rounds in a New Orleans neighborhood one afternoon. Nobody picked up the phone to report the shootings. Little wonder the city’s homicide rate stands at 10 times the national average.

New Orleans puts the “D” into dysfunctional. Only a sadist would insist on resurrecting this concentration of poverty, crime, and deplorable schools.

A number of factors mitigate against New Orleans becoming viable. The city’s geographical condition - low-lying, over-settled, ex-swamp, hurricane-prone - means that hurricane Katrina isn’t necessarily the worst it can get. Many of those with home insurance may realise this and decide to rebuild elsewhere - that will include many of New Orleans’ main professionals - and tax-payers: doctors, lawyers, professors and so on. The Wall Street Journal thinks many businesses will relocate completely.

The destruction wrought by Katrina may turn out to be “creative destruction,” to crib from Joseph Schumpeter, for many of New Orleans’ displaced and dispossessed. Unless the government works mightily to reverse migration, a positive side-effect of the uprooting of thousands of lives will to be to deconcentrate one of the worst pockets of ghetto poverty in the United States.

On paper the arguments make sense. However, the human factor is the intangible that can make all the difference. People - even those who know how bad things are in New Orleans - may still not want to live somewhere else. Even if it were easy to move them elsewhere New Orleans is where they have a lifetime of friends, family, experiences and memories. The irresistible pulls the city has on its inhabitants may well be the undoing of a large-scale removal plan.

Thomas Sowell (pictured) makes some telling observations on the moral breakdown in New Orleans:

During good times or bad, the police cannot police everybody. They can at best control a small segment of society. The vast majority of people have to control themselves.

That is where the great moral traditions of a society come in — those moral traditions that it is so hip to sneer at, so cute to violate, and that our very schools undermine among the young, telling them that they have to evolve their own standards, rather than following what old fuddy duddies like their parents tell them.

Now we see what those do-it-yourself standards amount to in the ugliness and anarchy of New Orleans.

In a world where people flaunt their “independence,” their “right” to disregard moral authority, and sometimes legal authority as well, the tragedy of New Orleans reminds us how utterly dependent each one of us is for our very lives on millions of other people we don’t even see.

(Emphasis added).

It’s not a long article and is well worth reading…