“[Sarah Brown] calls [Gordon Brown] a hero but she is considered a heroine for conquering her nerves and standing up publicly for her beleaguered husband. Actually she is an incredibly astute PR woman. She has exploited Twitter more effectively than any British politician or celebrity, overtaking Stephen Fry as the country’s foremost Twitterer. She wanders round Glastonbury with Naomi Campbell, organises photo shoots of the G8 wives for Vogue and is seen squeezing President Obama’s hand, just as the special relationship comes under scrutiny….

.....This is no meek housewife, it’s a woman who is enjoying the limelight more than her husband.”

Alice Thomson

Of the Labour Party Max Hastings remarks today,

“This is a Party in such dire straits that Peter Mandelson, a man with the moral compass of Dr Faustus, is perceived as its most plausible saviour.”

 

I have a problem with all this nonsense involving the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland.  Her mitigation is being spun currently on the basis that her “technical breach” of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 was merely an oversight by way of her not photocopying her housekeeper Loloahi Tapui’s documentation. Thus it is argued that she did not knowingly employ a person who did not have the right to live and work in this country.  Might I ask what documentation it was that Baroness Scotland omitted to copy?  It has been established that Ms Tapui had no right to remain in this country, so she could not have possessed any relevant papers to copy.  The Attorney General failed to read the documentation she was purportedly shown, or failed to read it properly before failing to copy it as the law required.

All this from someone who is the chief legal adviser to the Government and responsible for all Crown litigation, yet she does not resign nor is she dismissed.  Incredible.

Baroness Scotland must now stand down

In The Times yesterday Carol Midgley, a High Priestess of Vegetarianism and self confessed proselytiser for the Cause, was remarking upon the story of Marcus, a lamb that was raised and finally slaughtered as part of a school project. It was her view that,

 “many of those weeping for this sheep across the country are carnivores who seldom give serious thought to animal welfare standards as they throw another bacon vacuum pack in the trolley”.

The term “carnivorous” is applied to  animals who naturally prey on other animals, the carnivora most readily coming to mind being cats, dogs and bears. Humans are not carnivores, they are omnivores. Omnivores feed on all kinds of food.  The average meat-eating individual will consume more fruit and vegetables than meat.   It is as wrong to call meat-eating humans carnivore, as it would be for vegetarians to be described as herbivore.  Perhaps the vegetarian lobby should consider choosing their nomenclature for the rest of humanity a little more carefully.

I have had little time for George Monbiot ever since I read his vituperative correspondence in an exchange with Dr David Bellamy in The Guardian some years ago, concerning the issue of alleged man-made climate change.  Mr Monbiot’s recent spat with The Spectator regarding his participation in a debate about the same subject has reinforced my opinion. A writer’s equivalent of the stiletto blade not doing justice to this case, I endorse Rod Liddle’s baseball bat retort in response to the spat,

“You pompous, monomaniacal, jackass. The unchallengeable certitude with which Monbiot treats his second favourite subject, and the viciousness with which he denounces anyone who disagrees, reminds me a little of the hard-line creationists you find jabbering in the backwoods of the Appalachian Mountains: there is no argument, we are not qualified to argue, man-made climate change simply IS, and let there be an end to the debate. It is this very certitude, and the response to critics, which makes me doubtful.”

 

“The [ContactPoint] databases are a darkness at the heart of state; a belief that if we could just know everything about everybody, everything would work.”

Jenni Russell - Another invasion of liberty. And only the Tories are alert

“On Friday a BBC journalist announced on breakfast television that “a million children are being abused”.

Where do these figures come from? How do we know? Are we feeding the paranoia that stops a grandfather taking a picture of his nine-year-old grandson playing football? Surely this cannot continue. Someone needs to put things back on an even keel.”

Former Detective Chief Superintendent Chris Stevenson

Earlier in his article for The Times Mr Stevenson, the officer in charge of the Soham murder investigation, remarked,

“As a result of poor intelligence, [Ian] Huntley was appointed a school caretaker in Soham. Did that give him access to children? Yes, hundreds. Did he abuse them? No. In fact he reported to the head teacher that several teenage girls had made inappropriate comments. What Huntley did to Holly and Jessica was as bad as it gets, but did he come into contact with them through being a caretaker? Not exactly — he was caretaker of Soham Village College, a school for the over-11s. The two girls attended St Andrew’s Junior School. Different building, different caretaker. Huntley had contact with them because [his partner Maxine] Carr was employed at St Andrew’s as a classroom assistant. She worked in a class with Holly and Jessica, who both liked her. Holly’s mother sent Carr a box of chocolates on the last day of term to say thank you for helping her daughter.”

He concludes,

“How do we prevent such chance encounters happening? We can’t. No amount of legislation, record keeping or checking could prevent this type of crime completely. Thankfully it is extremely rare. Children are far more likely to be killed by a family member or on the roads.”

 Well now, we cannot have that sort of talk.  Something had to be done. Anything.

“Alan Clark was not wonderful. He was sleazy, vindictive, greedy, callous and cruel. He was also a thorough-going admirer of Adolf Hitler, although his sycophants persisted in thinking that his expressions of reverence for the Fuhrer were not meant seriously. They absolutely were.”

 

Dominic Lawson

It is my considered opinion that Clark’s account of the struggle between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany Barbarossa: The Russian German Conflict, 1941-45 is overrated, too.

Of the latest dire opinion poll ratings for Gordon Brown and Labour published in The Times today, Peter Riddell and Philip Webster comment,

“The Tories are, however, doing less well than Labour in opposition in 1996 (on 50 per cent) or the Tories in 1978 (48 per cent).”

I have already touched briefly upon the importance of comparing like for like.  Selective use of opinion poll results is also unhelpful.  It should be recalled that 1978 is the year the myth spinners would have us believe Jim Callaghan would have defeated Margaret Thatcher had he possessed the judgement to call a General Election.  In the summer of 1978, the Conservatives were marginally ahead of Labour in the opinion polls, but five per cent behind by the following October/November.

It follows that at this stage of the game, it is not significant that David Cameron has failed to poll Tony Blair’s fifty per cent or Margaret Thatcher’s forty-eight per cent, particularly as the Conservatives have maintained a healthy overall lead in the opinion polls since October 2007.

“[David Cameron] will also find, as Mrs Thatcher did, that Labour has used appointments to senior quango jobs both as patronage and to spread its ideas of what is politically correct.”

Cameron will have to fight the quangocracy 

The Conservatives winning the next General Election is not the half of it

Mr Ghulam Rabanni, the General Secretary of the Harrow Central Mosque criticized the anti-racism campaigners from Unite Against Fascism who ignored the mosque's pleas not to hold a counter demonstration against the English Defence League in Harrow today.  Said Mr Rabanni,

“All these people have come from outside the area to start up trouble in an area that has never had any racial tension. It is very sad.”

“But the incontinent expansion of the State’s reach degrades its grip. It undermines legitimacy, lowers confidence and breeds disregard. Twelve years of new Labour’s flabby-minded growth in the public sector, and the bloating of its claims on individuals’ lives, have begun to rot the whole idea of something the Left ought to believe in, and the Right do: society, and the public good.”

Matthew Parris

“UKIP appeals to a palaeolithic section of the Conservative vote, which — lacking any courage in its withdrawalist convictions — rightly understands that its interests are better served by Tory anti-EU rhetoric than by actually pulling out of Europe.”

David Aaronovitch

Professional photographer Andy Craddock caused a furore by taking photographs of semi-naked models at St Michael Penkivel Church in Cornwall. One photograph showed a model reclining on an altar.  The Diocese of Truro threatened to launch a legal action against him for trespass and not having permission to take photographs, as it was perfectly entitled to do.  Sensibly, the Church has decided not to press the matter any further.

Mr Craddock apparently takes erotic fetish snaps during secret photo shoots at churches across the United Kingdom. He ignored the Diocese's solicitor’s letter before action, claiming that they were powerless to stop him, defending his photographs as “art”.  He admits that his photographs could cause offence, but only to a minority of people.

It is implausible that Mr Craddock could have been unaware that had he informed the church authorities of his proposed photo shoot and the nature of that shoot, he would not have been granted permission. He trespassed upon property the sole purpose of which was for worship.  He must also have known that the compositions he arranged would universally offend the people who would frequent such an establishment. To them, “a sacred place was profaned”.  For Mr Craddock, the pursuit of Art trumps all.

In my book, it all comes down to a lack of respect for others and their beliefs.

Sky News    The Daily Mail   Run that past me again

Says Paul Waugh,

“…Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley got into hot water this year for musing idly that “the recession can be good for us”. He was pointing out that people smoked and drank less and spent more time with their families — but that didn't stop the Prime Minister ridiculing his online gaffe…”

 In a slightly different context Daniel Hannan wrote recently,

“Then, around about 40 years ago, journalists began to develop the idea that if Person X disagreed, on the record, with Person Y, it was a “gaffe” (a word that exists only in newspapers, never in ordinary conversations).”

Can it be right to describe a comment as a gaffe when it resonates with the public as being true or eminently reasonable?  Patently not, I think.

“A 2008 federal-funded survey conducted in New Jersey, where Megan’s Law¹ originated, concluded it had done nothing to deter the repeat offenders it is designed to target. It only made them easier to track down when they had reoffended….But a register is a knee- jerk response to the cry of “something must be done,” and that done, we are all too happy to do nothing more.”

Catherine Philp

___________________________________

¹ A law requiring information to be made public concerning registered sex offenders.

“One in three teenage girls has suffered sexual abuse from a boyfriend and one in four has experienced violence in a relationship, according to an in-depth study published today”

reports The Guardian.

The research was undertaken on behalf of the NSPCC at the Centre for Family Policy and Child Welfare, University of Bristol.  The Centre describes itself as “one of the leading national and international research centres on child welfare and child safety issues.”

The survey of 1,353 teenage girls and boys from across the United Kingdom found that nearly ninety per cent of these teenagers aged 13 to 17 had been in an intimate relationship. A quarter of the girls claimed to have suffered physical violence, including being slapped, punched or beaten by their boyfriends. Ninety-one teenagers were questioned at length and of these, one in six of the girls claimed that they had been pressured into having sex and one in sixteen claimed to have been raped.

A previous report from Bristol University published in late August 2009 concerning domestic violence declared amongst other things that,

“men abuse more than women do but women are three times more likely to be arrested” (my emphasis).

Having been involved in a professional capacity at the sharp end of domestic violence for a sufficient number of years, it was my experience that the overwhelming majority of individuals arrested were male.

It makes you ponder how representative of the general population were the samples relied upon for this latest research.  If sample data is not sound then neither is the conclusion drawn from that data; or as a computer bod would say, garbage in, garbage out.

“It is frankly a scandal that any kind of taxpayer-funded person should be conveyed about London in a taxpayer-funded car, adding to congestion and pollution, and insulating them from the vital need to upgrade the Tube and build Crossrail. It is time for the incoming government to end this outrage, axe the ministerial cars, and if necessary equip ministers with a lovely red ministerial bicycle with EIIR on the saddle.  Or else we will know that nothing has changed.”

Boris Johnson

“Almost exactly a year ago The Guardian carried an interview Alistair Darling in which he warned that the economic cataclysm which was just starting to engulf us would be “arguably the worst in 60 years”. How we jeered, how the accusations of gaffe and blunder were hurled at the poor fellow.  We learned that Gordon Brown was infuriated by the Chancellor’s candour - Mr Brown being a politician who has never done candour - and the air was thick with speculation that Darling’s days were numbered. But of course he was right, bang on the money”

avers David Hughes in The Daily Telegraph today.

That is not how I remember it.  I recall that HM Government was playing down how serious an economic mess it had caused, and the Chancellor’s gaffe was to have let the cat out of the bag, rather than to have told us something that neither the Government nor we then knew.  Whilst Darling was right in his assessment of the state of the economy, so was everyone else who predicted that we were in danger of suffering potentially the most serious recession in fifty years, if not a century.

I have noticed how this story of Alistair Darling being an all-seeing prophet concerning the economy has gained ground during the course of the mainstream media’s silly season. Even if the Chancellor had been uniquely prescient as is now (falsely) claimed, he does not deserve any credit in the light of his almost immediate “clarifying” of what he had told The Guardian as reported in the The Daily Telegraph the following day, 31st August 2008.

Not long after assuming power in 1997, the Labour Government changed the method of calculating unemployment such that a significant proportion of unemployed people were hidden from the official figures (designating a large number of individuals as long term sick rather than unemployed, being one device).  By this means, the Labour Government was always able to compare favourably their jobless figures with those of the proceeding Conservative administrations.

Today the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that the number of households with no one over the age of sixteen years old working has increased by two hundred and forty thousand over the past year to a total of 3.3 million. Furthermore, the ONS recorded that the number of working-age people in workless households rose to 4.8 million in the year to June 2009.

Put like that, it doesn’t look good, does it?

“The reality is people are bored with it.  Even at Channel 4 the vibe among staff is that if you like Big Brother you're not cool.”

Big Brother “to be scrapped”

“The idea that freedom is merely the ability to act upon one’s whims is surely very thin and hardly begins to capture the complexities of human existence; a man whose appetite is his law strikes us not as liberated but enslaved.  And when such a narrowly conceived freedom is made the touchstone of public policy, a dissolution of society is bound to follow.  No culture that makes publicly sanctioned self-indulgence its highest good can long survive: a radical egotism is bound to ensue, in which any limitations upon personal behaviour are experienced as infringements of basic rights. Distinctions between the important and the trivial, between the freedom to criticize received ideas and the freedom to take LSD, are precisely the standards that keep societies from barbarism.”

Theodore Dalrymple

“There are some brave folk who suggest that Britain will experience a sharp V-shaped recovery and the economy will grow buoyantly next year. But this is not credible. This recession is unique in terms of its combination of difficulties. In addition to the prospect of sharp tax increases and/or tough public spending constraints, the continuing impairment of the banking system and the restrictions on bank lending will, at the very minimum, act as a drag on recovery.”

Ruth Lea

Following developments this week, once again there is great wailing and gnashing of teeth concerning the purportedly low conviction rates for rape.  Now it is the turn of Janice Turner to wring her hands in despair and lament the denial of justice to rape victims.

The fundamental point frequently glossed over is that in many trials the entirety of the evidence does not assist the jury in reaching a verdict of guilty. It is this inability or refusal to confront the crux of the issue that prevents progress being made whereby the truly guilty can be convicted and punished appropriately.  In a significant number of cases, too often the prosecution case simple recites facts that would apply to any “courtship” taking place daily, up and down the country but where in the case before the Court, some four-fifths of the way through the ritual that would in almost every other case have led to consensual sexual intercourse, something went awry.  It is not a simple problem of it being one person’s word against another’s.  I have met women who have been raped in a social or “dating” situation.  Having known each woman for some time, I had no doubt in accepting as true what they had told me, but how is a jury to make such a determination of veracity, having met the victim only once upon the occasion of her giving evidence from the witness box? Is it so surprising that jurors err on the side of caution, particularly given the burden of proof borne by the Crown?

The “something must be done” campaigners have rarely had the benefit of sitting through numerous trials where having listened to the Crown’s evidence, it has become impossible to dismiss the thought that “something doesn’t add up here”. You have to be involved in a trial and listen dispassionately to the evidence before you can understand how a doubt about a defendant’s guilt can creep into a juror’s mind.  In those cases where the mating ritual has proceeded to that final stage, the reason for it coming to an abrupt halt must be plausible.   Perhaps fearing the loss of the Court’s sympathy (or more importantly that of the Police) in some such cases for instance, victims omit evidence that explains their behaviour and makes the Crown’s case truly complete.

In reality, a low rape conviction rate is little to do with juries having prejudices about how a woman should or should not behave.  Juries are not packed with individuals who were born before sex was invented in 1963.  Most have “been there, done that” and any curio from a bygone age would be put right, quickly. Tinkering by way of “re-educating” juries must just as surely lead to miscarriages of justice as would rigging the rules of evidence.

Whilst some inaccuracies in films are understandable, for example there were two bridges at Arnhem but just a road bridge in A Bridge Too Far and others are pure Robin Hood style fiction from start to finish (such as Braveheart, The Patriot and Gallipoli) it is always disturbing when falsehoods are unnecessary to the plot, such as Lord Burghley’s (formerly Sir William Cecil) political demise in Shekhar Kapur's 1998 film Elizabeth.  Why do cinema and TV film script writers do it?  What purpose does it serve?

Hollywood’s distortion of the truth

Under the headline,

“Almost 400 dentists earn more than £300,000 a year, NHS figures reveal”,

explains The Times,

“Almost 400 dentists working in England and Wales earn more than £300,000 a year, according to the latest pay and expenses figures.

 

Data released by the NHS Information Centre showed that 6 per cent of the 19,000 dentists earned a taxable income of more than £200,000 last year. Of these 1,172 dentists, 392 were in the top bracket of at least £300,000.”

The Times report continues,

“In England average salaries were calculated at £126,527, once average expenses of £218,843 for building hire, staff and other running costs were deducted. Dentists without a contract with the local primary care trust or health board earned £66,259 on average.”

 According to the NHS Information Centre in its report Dental Earnings and Expenses, England and Wales, 2007/08 published on 4^th August 2009 and referred to by The Times,

“As is to be expected, [the tables] show that average gross earnings, expenses and taxable income increased [as dentists] increased the average time per week they devoted to dentistry.”

and

“For all self-employed primary care dentists, taxable income for those dentists who worked an average of more than 45 hours per week was £147,283, compared to £69,330 for those who worked an average of less than 35 hours.”

The really useful information disclosed by this NHS report shows that depending upon the number of hours worked, the average dentist’s taxable income varied between £69,330 and £147,283.  These figures are not excessive given the professional qualifications that have to be secured by an individual in order to practise as a dentist and the number of hours worked by those earning the highest income.

Undoubtedly some people will be outraged that a very small percentage of dentists earn so much money, but the NHS report is hardly evidence of an overpaid profession.

“A comparison of the incomes of public figures between half a century ago and now is instructive. In 1958 the salaries of the prime minister, the lord chief justice and the director general of the BBC were easy to remember as they were all the same, £10,000 a year. Last year the prime minister was paid £189,994, the lord chief justice £236,300 – and the director general £816,000 (plus bonuses).

There are now at least 47 BBC executives paid more than the prime minister. Everyone who works in the media has heard the stories about people retiring early from the BBC with personal pension pots of anything between £4m and £8m, and the their expenses must have impressed even MPs adept at claiming for champagne flutes or "flipping" residences.”

Geoffrey Wheatcroft

Much has been made of the BBC practising ageism by dispatching older females from its programmes, only to replace them with “younger models”.  Notwithstanding the glaring clues, the point overlooked is that the BBC’s core objective is to ditch its audience.  In the main, particularly on a Saturday night, the BBC’s light entertainment audience is largely middle aged or older, with conservative tastes.

As reports  The Daily Mail,

 “BBC insiders have revealed that Strictly Come Dancing is undergoing an overhaul before the next series, to give it a ‘sexier’ feel and attract a younger audience” (my italics).

What more needs to be said?

“A publicly funded exhibition is encouraging people to deface the Bible in the name of art — and visitors have responded with abuse and obscenity”

reported The Times on 23rd July 2009.

 The exhibition, Made in God’s Image, at Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art, is part of the Sh(out) project, which we are told, aims to celebrate and raise awareness of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.  The work Untitled 2009, by the Rev Jane Clarke of the Metropolitan Community Church, a Church that celebrates “racial, cultural, linguistic, sexual, gender and theological diversity”, urged the public to “write themselves in” to the Bible if they felt excluded.  Perhaps predictably considering the target audience of the exhibition, some of the comments written into the Bible were not entirely thought provoking or uplifting.

Rev Clarke made it plain that she regretted the insults that had appeared.  This has not prevented Mark O’Neill, the Director of Art and Museums at Culture and Sport Glasgow, lambasting critics of the Bible exhibit as being motivated by an opposition to homosexuality and “[trying] to divert attention from the issue that the artwork aims to highlight: how religion marginalises homosexuals.”  Adds Mr O’Neill,

“If they want to condemn homosexuals, that’s up to them but using the Gallery of Modern Art as a vehicle for that condemnation, I don’t think is legitimate.”

Or perhaps Christians just don’t like their holy book being so deliberately and provocatively defaced no matter who is the perpetrator, Mr O’Neill.

 The Sunday Times

“The government has promised it will ensure the hacker facing extradition to the US would serve any prison sentence in the UK amid a deepening row over whether it has legal power to stop the transfer”

reports The Times.

How can the Government ensure anything of the sort?  All it can ask of the Americans is “pretty please”.  This is nothing more than a ploy by Labour’s Deputy Leader Harriet Harman to avoid acute political embarrassment of the Government’s own making. This sleight of hand should be seen for what it is, not only an attempt to avoid the heat but, given that Mr McKinnon's matter might not be resolved one way or the other until well into next year, also to ensure that any fall-out occurs on someone else’s watch – the Conservative Government’s.

“One of the characteristics of those most determined on assisted suicides is that they are powerful personalities used to exercising total control — the polar opposite of those who would be the most likely victims of their campaign, were it to succeed. Purdy is quite typical, described in The Guardian as “a self-confessed adrenaline junkie who had revelled in travelling the world diving from planes, conquering mountains, trekking through jungles and exploring the depths of the oceans”.

You can see why such a personality cannot bear to contemplate the complete loss of control that her condition might impose. Debbie Purdy is, in so many ways, an admirable woman. Yet when I saw her declare last Thursday, “I feel like I have my life back”, my stomach heaved. It is a sick society that regards assisted suicide as an affirmation of life.”

Dominic Lawson

Notwithstanding Daniel Hannan’s ruthlessly effective debunking of the “progressive” media’s recent attempts to smear Michal Kaminski, the Polish head of the new Eurosceptic Conservative and Reformist (ECR) bloc in the current European Parliament, The Daily Telegraph is seeking to breath life into the proverbial flogged dead horse.

Given that the Conservatives have contributed to the formation of an effective Eurosceptic bloc in the European Parliament, one might have thought that the rabidly Europhobic Telegraph would have been ecstatic but patently not, given sympathetic reports it has published concerning the European Union appreciative, former Conservative MEP, Mr McMillan-Scott’s criticism of the much maligned Mr Kaminski.

The Telegraph's thin veneer of columnists and commentators of moderate conservative persuasion  is insufficient to hide the fact that it has long since given up any pretence of being a newspaper which broadly supports the Conservative Party. For too long, too often the slant of reporting is indistinguishable from that of the BBC or The Guardian.  I have never subscribed to the Telegraph, ironically because in the past I had considered it to be “too Tory”.  Thus I am now denied the considerable delight of cancelling any subscription.

“Organic food is no healthier and provides no significant nutritional benefit compared with conventionally produced food, according to a new, independent study funded by the Food Standards Agency”

reports The Guardian.

I’m sorry, but I thought the whole point of organically grown food was that it was environmentally friendlier, not “healthier”.

“But in truth, [the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s Chairman, Trevor Phillips’] failings are not the issue. The EHRC is falling apart because many of the people who run it are not concerned about equality at all, but rather with gaining preferential treatment for their own specific set of clients.”

David Green

Says Martin Kettle (with my emphasis),

“Reports that Labour is braced for defeat in Ian Gibson's old seat are entirely accurate. So braced, in fact, that officials have begun floating the absurd idea that anything less that a 10,000 Tory majority – something the Tories did not even manage in 1987 – would be a setback for Cameron.  Some setback.”

Well, let us sit back and see how the Toryphobics try to spin the Norwich North result.

“Indulge me in some historical determinism. We, the peasants, are failing to rise up and embrace the need to change. We will not choose to give up modern life, with all its polluting seductions. Our intransigent refusal to choose green will be met by a new militancy from those who believe we must be saved from ourselves...”

Antonia Senior

As reported by The Times this morning,

“The economy shrank much more than expected in the second quarter to record a record annual decline, official figures show…..The economy has now shrunk by 5.7 per cent since the recession began in April last year, bigger than the downturn in the 1990s and in the early 1980s.”

Economy shrinks at record annual rate in Q2

During a recent dialogue concerning whether the United Kingdom should adopt a pluralistic legal system, Sheikh Faiz Siddiqi, founder of the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal said,

“in a jurisdiction where rights are afforded to many mistresses and there is recognition of same-sex marriages, the idea of polygamy should not be so alien or distant.”

He is right, isn’t he?

Challenging debates remain on Islam and English law

“The state needs responsible, educated and above all free individuals to function properly, but that won't happen until the left ditches its reflex respect for the state and stops thinking simply in terms of power, edict and obedience.”

Henry Porter

The Times reports today that,

“[Jay Hunt, BBC One’s Controller] confirmed that Bruce Forsyth, [Strictly Come Dancing’s] octogenarian host, would be returning to the show, albeit after agreeing to take an unspecified pay cut as part of the corporation’s drive to slim presenters’ fees.”

“....after agreeing to take an unspecified pay cut.” Good.  The BBC has taken on board public disquiet over the payment of highly inflated presenters’ salaries funded by the annual licence fee.  So can we expect all the other presenters’ salaries and fees being renegotiated downwards soon, then?

Nothing will stop Labour and its Media claque from continuing to seek the scalp of the Conservative Party's director of communications Andy Coulson, in an endeavour to inflict damage upon David Cameron.  The story will be kept rolling (or perhaps more aptly, limping) for a while yet, but it is nevertheless a severe blow to Labour that the Metropolitan Police have confirmed that there is not any need to reopen their investigation into claims of illegal ‘phone-tapping at the News of the World because no new evidence had come to light since the case was first investigated four years ago (my emphasis).  The Police emphasised in particular that no evidence was found that former deputy prime minister John Prescott's ‘phone was tapped.

A lot of hot air will be expended during the course of the next week or so by partisans seeking to cause the Conservatives the maximum amount of embarrassment, but in the meantime, those of us possessed of a critical facility will await the evidence.

Police rule out fresh investigation into News of the World phone-tapping claims

Another case of “Give a dog a bad name and hang him”

So, Labour politicians and their helpers in the Media think that as Andy Coulson had been a bad boy in the past, David Cameron should now dismiss him in the light of The Guardian’s latest “revelations”.

First let us remind ourselves that Mr Coulson was a bad boy in the sense that as Editor of  the News of the World, he accepted that the buck stopped with him concerning the criminal conduct of one of his journalists even though he knew nothing of that journalist's errant activities. Second, the events leading to Mr Coulson's principled resignation as editor took place long before he was appointed as the director of communications for the Conservatives.  More importantly, and forgive me for asking, but where is the evidence of Mr Coulson’s wrongdoing in relation this current story?

At least this episode will assist the Conservatives to determine who are their real friends in the Media.

Andy Coulson trusted member of Cameron’s inner circle – Terry Kirby

The concept of bull fighting makes me feel very uncomfortable, but everyone to his own.  Giles Coren’s article in The Times this morning did amuse me however, particularly this passage,

 “You who are so quick to anthropomorphise the bull and weepily to share its pain, try reversing the process. Imagine not that the bull is a man, but that you are the bull. Imagine that you are given the choice between living to, say, 35 years of age, mostly in a shed, in massive single-sex groups, feeding on silage (prison is a fair comparison) and then queuing with your mates to die at the hand of a shaven-headed thug with a bolt gun . . .

 

Or then again, imagine living free in thousands of acres of land, eating whatever you want, shagging who you like, and then, when you are perhaps 70, being asked to fight to the death against a Spaniard in pink tights.”

In 2007, during the commemoration of the two hundredth anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade following the campaign led by Tory MP William Wilberforce, a curious statistic was quietly and casually repeated.  This statistic comprised the claim that until the abolition of the trade by the United Kingdom in 1807, British slave traders had transported as many as fifty million Africans into slavery.  Complete, definitive records as to how many individuals were kidnapped and sold into slavery no longer exist (if they ever did) thus the “fifty million” figure does not have any basis in fact and it is hard to resist the conclusion that it was simply plucked from the air.

It is interesting to note that according to the fifth census conducted in the United States in 1830, twenty-three years after the abolition of the British slave trade, the total black population amounted to 2,328,626 individuals, of whom 2,009,050 were described as slaves and 319,576 as being free.  The census recorded that the total population of the United States was 12,858,670.  The population of the United States had grown rapidly, given that in 1800 records indicate a total population of 5,308,483 of whom 893,602 were slaves.  In 1790 the figures were 3,929,326 and 697,681, respectively.

It is a fair assumption that by 1807 a significant proportion of the population of African descent had been born in the United States and had not been transported.  For instance without the trade, the slave population nearly doubled between 1810 and 1830 (1,191,362 individuals increasing to 2,009,050).  Against this, it must be borne in mind that Africans were being abducted on a relatively large scale over the course of a century. Furthermore, though the main destination was the American colonies, many Africans were delivered to estates in the West Indies, albeit on a much smaller scale. Also, many prisoners perished during the journey to their new “home” or very shortly thereafter.

Taking all factors into account, fifty million is still an implausibly high figure which can only have been an extrapolation from various other estimates and loose guesswork of the likely numbers of individuals transported at the very height of the slave trade.  It is immaterial whether the figure for abductions was five million or even five hundred thousand.  It was an ugly trade, but funny figures do not make it uglier.

“British law, which, while it has its flaws, is more developed and grounded in reality and fairness”

Zeinab Huq

I’ll give a religious court (of any persuasion) a miss, if you don’t mind

It has been said before but clearly it needs saying again, that whilst Tony Blair was endeavouring to prevent a fifth consecutive Conservative victory in 1997 and bring to an end eighteen years of Conservative government, the Conservatives are seeking to thwart a fourth consecutive Labour success.  To compare David Cameron’s challenge to Labour after only thirteen years (by May 2010) is not comparing like for like, as Labour’s media partisans well appreciate.