Says Eamonn Butler in The Times today, about the latest TV licence advertisement,

“It's time we citizens stood up against this state-sponsored intimidation, particularly now that anti-terror legislation is being used to spy on whether our dogs are fouling the pavement and that we're closing our wheelie-bin properly. And it's time we told our unelected officials that we don't much like “our town, our street, our home” being in their database - given their ability to lose it in the mail or leave it on laptops that they forget in the pub.”

It is more than fair comment to say that in recent years government has sought to criminalise an ever greater number of rule breaking activities and impose increasingly draconian penalties for “crimes” which though seen by the majority of the public as being worthy of some punishment are still considered by that same public as relatively  minor.  There is too much stick and not enough carrot.

In seeking to defend his colleague and mentor Gordon Brown yesterday, Ed Balls explained,

“You have had sporting stars who have been heroes and then become villains... and then built their way back”.

One such hero who comes to mind committed no more heinous a crime than kick an Argentinian opponent.  Mr Brown’s equivalent act was to jump into the stands and start kicking his supporters.

“…Corruption tends to flourish the longer an incumbent is able to hold on to power”

said Ken Livingstone in 1998, as Simon Jenkins reminds us.

I had always felt that there was something unwholesome about the Clintons.  In fact, my unease was not caused in any way by the stream of allegations concerning sexual and financial improprieties made over the years by political opponents, many of whom it should be said, had an axe to grind.  Rather, it was the relentless, unnatural thirst for power that I found and still find, repulsive.

Hillary Clinton in particular presents as being a ruthless, purely political being, devoid of common, ordinary humanity who displays emotion only when it is politically expedient to do so.  Andrew Sullivan of The Sunday Times sums up more colourfully.

“The Clintons have always had a touch of the zombies about them: unkillable, they move relentlessly forward, propelled by a bloodlust  for Republicans or uppity Democrats who dare to question their supremacy.  You can't escape; you can't hide; and you can't win.”

And,

“For the Clintons, all Democrats who oppose them are . . . Republicans.  And all Republicans are evil.   And evil means that anything the Clintons do in self-defence is excusable - even playing the race card, and the Muslim card, and the gender card, and every sleazy gambit that the politics of fear can come up with.  This is how they have arrested the Obama juggernaut.  It's the only game they know how to play.”

“But what is true is that this [donor] scandal serves Labour right. It is mired in the consequence of the false morality from which it profited so much in the 1990s.”

Charles Moore - The Daily Telegraph

Words fail me completely.

Our senior politicians might reflect how their headline catching pronouncements are interpreted abroad, as today’s article in Pravda about paedophiles and chemical castration shows.  One cannot help but suspect that something has been lost in translation.

Having discussed the purported success of chemical castration in Europe and some states in the USA, the Pravda article then continues incongruously about male pattern baldness:

“[Physical] castration prevents male pattern baldness if it is done before hair is lost, however, castration will not restore hair growth after hair has already been lost due to male pattern baldness...[and it] eliminates the risk of testicular cancer, and it may even reduce prostate cancer”

…nevertheless I’m minded to persevere with scalp massage and drinking cranberry juice, thank you very much.

Paedophiles will be castrated for their crimes in Britain

So, the BBC reports today that David Phythian, a Councillor of the West Lancashire District Council, has been prohibited from attending football matches for three years and fined £250 by the Wigan and Leigh Magistrates' Court after pleaded guilty to using racially aggravated threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour towards Tottenham Hotspurs' Pascal Chimbonda, a black footballer, during the Wigan v. Spurs match that took place in April 2007.  The local Labour group at the Council has now suspended Mr Phythian.

The BBC report contained most of the salient facts, but I could not help but notice that one additional fact, which I should have expected from a BBC report, had not been included in the title emblazoned, "Racist abuse councillor suspended".  Of course, the word Tory was missing.  Wigan Today, the newspaper that broke the story on 1st June 2007, was not so timid.  However, it transpires that the problem faced by the BBC was that Mr Phythian was a Labour, not Conservative politician. Only by reading the BBC's full report could we deduce that he was not a Conservative.  Most people would have gleaned all they wanted to know from the first few lines of the report and assumed the rest.

The BBC is often coy concerning the political affiliation of an individual involved in "minor, local difficulties", save when it is a Conservative.  In the matter of local issues, political affiliation is almost invariably irrelevant to the misdeed committed. As such it is not necessary to highlight or headline such a fact.  The BBC should exercise such restraint even-handedly when reporting "small town" misdeeds.

Racist abuse councillor suspended

Councillor gets football ban

Race-jibe councillor banned by Labour

According to Andrew Keen in his book The Cult of the Amateur, Web 2.0 is “killing our culture, assaulting our economy and destroying time-honoured codes of conduct” with amateurs creating an “endless digital forest of mediocrity: uninformed political commentary, unseemly home videos, embarrassingly amateurish music, unreadable poems, essays and novels.”  It is, “undermining truth, souring civic discourse, and belittling expertise, experience and talent.”  Wikipedia is identified as a particular villain, being riddled with “mistakes, half truths and misunderstandings” but yet being more popular than Britannica.com, thereby threatening the latter’s financial viability. What Wikipedia has done to reference books, bloggers will do to traditional news media, believes Mr Keen.

I believe Mr Keen is being alarmist, because ultimately, quality matters.  The laws of natural selection apply in the virtual, as well as the real world.  The very best survives and the rest fade away.  Britannica.com will live on because it is acknowledged as being authoritative whilst Wikipedia is not. The mainstream media cannot be seriously challenged by citizen bloggery and will remain ascendant because of its inherent professionalism and quality in depth.  Web logs are a passing fad and the current intense activity will pass leaving only a small number of the most committed.

Part of Mr Keen’s hypothesis relies also upon a premise that the average punter cannot differentiate between different sources of information with the result that the good will fall and the bad will prevail.  Yet we know that anything free is unlikely to be as good as something paid for.  Free, net-based sources of information are just a convenient, useful point of first reference before turning to, for example, the trusted newspaper, news magazine, or reference book.

Much on the net is trashy and ephemeral but the important point is that we all know it and when we don’t want monkeys, we avoid paying peanuts.

John-Paul Flintoff - The Sunday Times

David Smith - The Observer

Malaysia is a forward-looking, democratic country that abides by the rule of law.  It happens also to be a Muslim country.

According to the New Straits Times, at the High Court Registry in Shah Alam, the state capital of Selangor, on 14^th May 2007 a Hindu man, Mr V. Suresh, applied for a writ of habeas corpus seeking the release of his wife Siti Fatimah Abdul Karim (who I shall refer to, wrongly, as Mrs Suresh) from detention at the Baitul Aman Faith Rehabilitation Centre, where she had been sent by the Malacca Syariah High Court on 8^th January 2007.

Mr Suresh had married his wife according to Hindu rites on 10^th March 2004 at a Hindu temple in Malacca.  They lived together in Malacca and together had a daughter Diviya Dharshini, born on 19^th December 2005. The daughter was raised according to the Hindu religion.  By all accounts (and unsurprisingly) Mrs Suresh had professed the Hindu faith and had changed her name.  Following the marriage, she had attempted to formally change her name and religious status from Islam to Hindu and was advised by the Melaka Islamic Religious Department to make a formal application in this respect to the Malacca Syariah High Court.  The application was filed in late 2006 and the first hearing took place on 8^th January 2007.  Upon attending the hearing, Syariah Court officials detained Mrs Suresh and placed her in the Baitul Aman Faith Rehabilitation Centre.

You might think that my righteous indignation arises from the knowledge that this poor woman could be incarcerated simply for choosing to convert and practise the "wrong" religion. Whilst it is another example of how religious courts established to protect and advance the interests of their own faith cannot be trusted to apply justice without fear or favour, affection or ill will, in fact my ire is raised because in Malaysia, unlike the United Kingdom, its citizens still have an unrestricted right to apply for a writ of habeas corpus.

Jonathan Leake reports that the American mink, a lethal predator blamed for driving water voles to the brink of extinction, is being forced back by the resurgence of the native otter. 

“For thirty years mink, the descendants of escapees from fur farms, have been devastating Britain’s fish, aquatic birds and mammals, with conservationists losing hope they could ever be eradicated.”

A report from the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at Oxford University, suggests that when otters return to an area they seem to be attacking the American mink and driving them out.

I loved the bit about “mink, the descendants of escapees from fur farms.”  This conjured a mental picture of mink cleverly building tunnels and gliders Colditz style, to escape their captors.  It is true that some mink escaped from fur farms, but not in such numbers as to have enabled them to inflict such carnage upon our native wildlife.  In truth, these vicious predators gained a hold in this country only by reason of Animal Rights activists “liberating” tens of thousands of them during raids upon fur farms over a number of years. Eight thousand were released from one farm alone in September 1998.  It curious that none of the news reports I heard or read today made that point. I am sure that angry finger pointing at the moment we learn that our native vole population is not (as had been thought) heading for extinction, was thought inappropriate. It is a point that has to be made, however. Animal rights activists don't know a lot about animals.  They don't know much about the environment either, for that matter.  They do know a lot about hating, threatening and hurting humans, on the other hand.

Two sisters, Joyce Burden 88, and her sister Sybil 81, are liable for a large bill in respect of inheritance tax when the first dies.  They have brought a test case against the Government before the European Court of Human Rights, claiming discrimination against heterosexuals.  The case is the first of its kind since the law was changed to allow gay and lesbian partners the same inheritance rights as married couples.

Property left by one spouse to the other or inherited by a married or civil partner is exempt from the tax. Close relatives, such as siblings and descendants, are not eligible to register as civil partners.  The sisters  claim that the inheritance tax laws breach their right to enjoy their property under the first protocol to the Human Rights Convention and the anti-discrimination provisions of Article 14.

The Government claims that,

“Couples enjoy a relationship of choice.  Siblings however, enjoy a relationship of consanguinity. Further, the relationship between siblings is for ever, whereas couples may part.”

Adding,

 “... a couple made a financial commitment by making a personal commitment to each other.  This was not the case with siblings.”

For political reasons, the European Court will find against the sisters but the Government's arguments are nonsense.  When the inheritance tax “breaks” applied only to the special relationship of marriage, there was a clear and obvious difference between “marrieds” and “the rest”. The only real difference between a married or civil partnership and that of the sisters is that it is presumed that there is or was a sexual element to the former.  Consanguinity is an irrelevance.  Here, the sisters chose to live together (initially to care for their parents) and have made a de facto personal commitment, including a financial commitment, to each other. As with all partners they could, if they wished, separate. Thus, there is no significant, material difference between them and any gay or lesbian couple living together.   In principle, they should win the case.   Once again this Government, in pursuit of its political agenda, has not thought through the blatantly obvious consequences of its legislation and caused considerable injustice.

Sisters go to court over 'gay bias' in tax laws

“When we were all younger, we knew who the pillars of our local community were: professional men and women such as doctors, teachers, bank managers and solicitors. Now, though, the cracks start to appear. A firm of solicitors in Wiltshire has decided to tout for business by asking local traders to recommend them when they hear about marital break-ups that might lead to the parties concerned requiring the services of a lawyer. Happily, one dignified local tradesman — a hairdresser — has pointed out that the integrity of his bond with his customers includes not betraying the confidences relayed in the sanctity of the salon, least of all in return for a commission — or should we say kick-back? — from a firm of ambulance-chasers. What is even more appalling is that the firm protests, and I have no doubt it is correct, that all this is being done in accordance with Law Society rules. Doesn't the Law Society appreciate how a majority of decent solicitors are having their reputations dragged down by such spivvery? And does it care?”

 

Simon Heffer

No, it does not care.  It is all part of The Law Society’s Brave New World.

“No man but a fool ever wrote, except for money.”

Dr. Johnson

What does that make bloggers, then?

On 29^th August 2006 The Law Society published a report entitled "Career experiences of gay and lesbian solicitors."

The report explained,

"There is a large body of work, including a growing body of research undertaken by the Law Society, which explores how social divisions of ethnicity, race and gender impact on workplace experiences and career choices. To date there has been a gap in consideration of sexual orientation in this equation — something that this research begins to address with the encouragement and support of the Law Society Equality and Diversity Committee."

Under the heading "Sample" we are informed,

"Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with a sample of fifteen gay men and ten lesbians [my emphasis], who were working as solicitors in private practice or the employed sector, through regions of the South-West, London and the North-West."

This report came to be mentioned in the Guardian earlier in the week and had prompted me to post an article about one of its sillier recommendations.  Having now read the report, I am even less impressed.

The common weakness of much "research" these days is that it is just assumed there is a problem that has to be resolved, in this instance sexual orientation discrimination, and the researcher goes looking for it.  If the Law Society is going to undertake this sort of research, it must do it properly, with carefully chosen, representative samples.  It would have been helpful to establish for instance, what heterosexual respondents thought.  If, as was likely, they had thought the atmosphere at work was not particularly accepting and inclusive, that finding would have had considerable weight.  It is very foolish to create policy in reliance upon a survey involving such a small unrepresentative sample.

The Law Society research was interesting in one respect in that when discussing the factors that determined whether a gay would "out" at work, those factors seemed to comprise self-imposed constraints.  These included; the age of the solicitor; self-confidence; and the desire or ability to maintain a double life.

Too often individuals who perceive that they are significantly different to the majority[1] ascribe to that majority a viewpoint which in fact mirrors their own doubts and negative feelings about themselves.  What is not understood by many who consider themselves to be part of a minority group, any minority group, is that the "homogenous, unsympathetic majority" are mostly possessed of a complete indifference to their dissimilarity and accordingly cannot discriminate against them on that basis.

I can say without any fear of contradiction that nothing is more likely to drive a wedge between people of differing preferences than for one group to claim to be discriminated against merely by members of the other group being themselves.  Those who wish to transform and mould Society into their own image should dwell upon that fact long and hard.

Career experiences of gay and lesbian solicitors

So, Celtic goalkeeper Artur Boruc has been cautioned because he made a religious gesture, crossing himself, in front of Ranger's fans at Ibrox Park on 12^th February 2006. According to the Police (a view supported by the Procurator Fiscal):

"On this occasion, the actions included a combination of behaviour before a crowd in the charged atmosphere of an "Old Firm" match which provoked alarm and crowd trouble and as such constituted a breach of the peace."

My word, those Rangers fans must be extraordinarily over-sensitive fellows.

In response, a spokesman for the Catholic Church, Peter Kearney, is reported to have said that the Procurator Fiscal's [decision that a caution was warranted] was "alarming" and that, 

"It is extremely regrettable that Scotland seems to have made itself one of the few countries in the world where this simply religious gesture is considered an offence."

Of course, we have been here before.   In January 1998 Paul Gascoigne, then a Rangers player, was given a warning by the Scottish FA after miming playing the flute during a game against Celtic.  One might deduce that Celtic supporters, like their Rangers brethren, are also exceptionally sensitive.

A thin skin is not just the preserve of the clearly very over-sensitive Scots, however.  People south of the border have become upset over the smallest thing too.  The sight of a "Bollocks to Blair" T-shirt has been known to make some tearful, so much so that they have felt constrained to report the matter to the local constabulary, who true to their oath, have felt the offender's collar.  Signs suggesting that the dog of the household might consume calling Jehovah's Witnesses has turned the stomach of others.

Unlike Artur Boruc, previous offenders have not had Scottish Nationalist leader Alex Salmond or the Roman Catholic Church on their side.  Perhaps this particular piece of nonsense can be nipped in the bud, but I suspect not. 

Over the course of the past twenty years or more, the ever-widening concept of "causing offence" has become too ingrained. Those legislators who were so anxious to prescribe for instance racial abuse, never foresaw the unintended consequences of their actions, that is to say, that all people come to believe that they have a right not to be insulted.  Legislation in favour of one group raises a legitimate expectation in another that they are entitled to protection as well.  Our political leaders and judiciary readily accept that calling a person of Asian extraction a "Paki" is unacceptable, reprehensible, wrong and worthy of prescription by the Law.  On the other hand for example, an insult delivered against someone who is not a member of an acknowledged minority group, is considered unacceptable, reprehensible, wrong, but otherwise just one of those things.  It is not "just one of those things".  An insult, is an insult, is an insult.

If the Law protects one group against insult, then arguably it must protect us all.  A mindset has developed that those who feel offended can and should have those who insult them at the very least "spoken to" by the Police and with luck, prosecuted.  It is all very immature. Insulting behaviour has always said more about the person delivering it than the person receiving it.  Only a few years ago a black male was convicted of threatening and abusive behaviour by virtue of having called a conductress a "black bitch".  On the Law as it stands, the case was correctly decided, but the whole situation has become absurd.  We have lost a sense of proportion.

According to the BBC News website this morning,  one part of the heightened security arrangements for flights require that,

“Any liquids discovered must be removed from the passenger” 

Does this mean that airport security is going to take the piss?

The Department for Transport’s new advice to air passengers

I understand that one of the consequences of Mel Gibson’s outburst against the Jewish Police Officer who arrested him in Malibu for an offence of drink-driving last week was that one of his new projects, a mini series which was to have been entitled “Holocaust”, has now been shelved.[1]  This might prove to be good news.  Given his predilection for starring in epics whose historical accuracy was severely challenged in a very particular respect as evidenced in “Braveheart” and “The Patriot”, there was always the suspicion on this side of the Pond that Mr Gibson’s series might have sought to cast the English as the villains of the piece and the Nazis as poor schmucks who took the rap. Perhaps we should be thankful for small mercies.  In all other respects I wish Mr Gibson a successful and speedy rehabilitation.[2]

I have always felt that there was something of the wailing siren about Richard Brunstrom. Not the police variety of siren you understand; rather that of Broadmoor when someone has gone AWOL.

Perhaps he is just the victim of a bad press.  If so, no doubt he will set the record straight in his new blog.

Brunstrom's Blog

Michael Horsnell's article in The Times

Association of British Drivers

BBC News - Brunstrom: Road to controversy

Jasper Gerrard meets Richard Brunstrom

For all lovers of the wider concept of freedom of expression, this should make us warm to Mr Moyles, for a start.  It is not the first time  he has been singled out and criticised for amongst other things, being allegedly homophobic.  In an article in The Guardian on 7^th June 2006 he was roundly condemned by a contemporary, Tim Lusher.  A cause of Mr Lusher’s angst appears to have arisen not so much by virtue Mr Moyles’ perceived homophobia but rather his use of the word gay to mean rubbish.  Apparently, to the under-twenty-eights, this is the current meaning of the word gay.  I can understand Mr Lusher’s irritation in this respect.  I was more than a little miffed when the meaning of gay transmuted from “full of or disposed to joy and mirth; light-hearted, exuberantly cheerful, sportive, merry”.  Mr Lusher’s Guardian article leads me to imagine him to be a rather po-faced, humourless, politically correct  individual.

By all accounts, our Mr Moyles behaves occasionally in a coarse, insulting and rude manner to all and sundry during his radio programme and worst of all, he swears.  This makes me like him even more. His target audience appear to think he is good and worth tuning into, insulted or no.  The ratings certainly prove it.  He is very popular.  Some people have felt constrained to complain about him, but not that many.  Curiously, the BBC has shown remarkably good sense and judgment by avoiding censuring Mr Moyles, but giving a general warning to all of its Radio 1 DJ’s concerning “watching their language”, as reported in The Times today.

There are numerous, vociferous minorities who are all too ready to tell us how to think and how we should behave, so as not to upset their sensitivities.  They should be told to grow up and get a life, whoever they are.

How ironic that whilst our servicemen and women were trying to help create a democratic Iraq, most were denied the chance to vote in our last General Election;

“…a damning indictment of the Government”

says Liam Fox, the Shadow Defence Secretary.  Quite.

My imaginary, regular reader cannot have failed to notice that of late my blog cupboard has been bare.  It is not a matter of "writers' block", because people who write drivel suffer no such condition.  It has been more a case of "War and Peace" syndrome, where what had been intended to be a short, incisive critique of something silly someone had done or said somewhere, turned into a ten thousand word thesis.  Frantic editing is now taking place, so something entirely worthless is bound to emerge sooner or later....very much later if that imaginary reader's luck holds.

I am given to understand that the Liberal Democrats have about 73,000 members.  As it appears likely that Michael Brown's £2.4 million donation might have to be repaid sooner or later, plans should be made to meet this liability, now.  Might I suggest that each and every party member contribute the sum of  £32.88 to party funds without delay?  That is all it takes to preserve a great party.  You know it is worth it.

It is curious how certain hypotheses gain currency and quickly become accepted as an established fact, sometimes against the weight of evidence.

In the mid nineteen eighties I happened upon a BBC television programme examining the matter of heart disease.  The earnest presenter, a doctor, adamantly asserted that the “fatty heart hypothesis” was not a hypothesis, but a proven fact.  If you eat a fatty diet and don’t do any exercise, your arteries clog up and you die of a heart attack - plain and simple. It seemed a fairly sound argument to me. On the other hand I found his stridency jarring.  Other experts thought they were possessed of evidence undermining the fatty heart “fact” and this irritated the presenter, who saw them as heretics.

A few years later, I happened upon another programme about a body that had been discovered in a glacier in the Alps.  The body had been frozen intact, with the remains of clothes and some belongings. After examination by an assortment of experts, it was established that the individual had died about four thousand years ago.  He had been almost certainly a nomadic shepherd.  Forensic examination showed that he had not died of any illness nor had he been killed.  It was believed that he had been caught in a sudden blizzard and died of exposure. Examination of his bones suggested that he was aged about forty years or so old. 

It was possible to make a number of assumptions about his life style.  The glacier in which his body was frozen and transported down to the lowlands over the course of four thousand years, started life high in the Alps, where until the last century there had still been a tradition of shepherds moving livestock up and down the mountains through the passing of the seasons.  Thus he had not enjoyed a sedentary life style – it was not possible for him to have done so.  He had never eaten processed or fatty foods.  He had not been afflicted by any of the vices of soft, lazy, easy late-twentieth century living.  Yet examination showed that his arteries had fatty deposits just like your average, overweight, unfit company executive.  Oh well, it's back to the drawing board.

I was reminded of this when a number of scientists[1], who had been routinely ignored for years, published an open letter challenging the orthodoxy of “global warming”.  It was then disclosed elsewhere that the purportedly inevitable, inexorable increase in global temperature had fizzled out in 1998.[2]  The global warming theorists may yet be proved to be right. Then again, they might be shown to be as misguided as flat earthers. 
 

[1]   Sixty-one experts, as it happens.  The letter was dated 6^th April 2006.

[2] Professor Bob Carter, a geologist at James Cook University, Queensland.  For a full report see The Daily Telegraph 9^th April 2006.

So, Brian Galvin, the new president of the National Union of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) would have us believe that Baroness Thatcher is to blame for our current social ills.  Unfortunately, he did not prepare his homework; I mean speech, quite as well as he should.  In addressing his union’s annual conference in Birmingham last week he confided that “over liberalised attitudes in the 1960s and 1970s had also contributed to social ills.”

Now, bearing in mind that the Milk Snatcher did not have “over liberalised” tendencies and that those over liberal attitudes complained of pre-dated her Government by up to twenty years, doesn’t Mr Galvin’s argument contain the seeds of its own destruction?

Oh, and by the way, which profession was at the vanguard of introducing “liberalised” ideas into our schools during the 1960’s and 1970’s and making them orthodoxy during the 1980’s and 1990’s?

Three out of ten, Mr Galvin.

She is by all accounts, one very lucky lady.

It would appear that from early in her relationship with her former fiancé Howard Johnston, "they were trying for a baby".  It was when she failed to conceive that she sought medical assistance and then was diagnosed with tumours in her ovaries.  In consequence, she required surgery that would result in her being unable to have children.  What followed has been well documented.

Now, let us just assume for one moment that Miss Evans had not met Mr Johnston nor any other partner who wanted children "from day one" (as she alleges, did Mr Johnston) at that particular point in time. Is it safe to assume her ovarian cancer might then have passed unnoticed for a longer, potentially fatal, period of time?

Too often we overlook or discount our good fortune as ours by right.  Perhaps Miss Evans should reflect upon the fact that she is still possessed of her own life.