ContraTory

It is not the voters who are in a trance Mr Brogan, it is the mainstream media’s commentators and “opinion formers”

ContraTory — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:37:11 +0000

“Mr Brown's act of hypnosis is to make us ignore the facts about what will become of Britain should he be left in charge for much longer: economically relegated, permanently crippled with debt, addicted to public spending and big state interference, reliant on ever higher taxes and ruled by the trade unions.”

Gordon Brown has voters in a trance - it's time for a wake-up call – Benedict Brogan

Well said, sir

ContraTory — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:50:23 +0000

“We British Muslims, who enjoy full freedom of faith, should remember that Islam obliges us to be good neighbours and respect others. Rather than dismissing objections as either racist or intolerant, we should listen to local opinion. And if the Muslims of Camberley are still determined to build their “traditional” mosque, they should seek an alternative site. More importantly, they should jettison reactionary ideology and adopt a progressive Islam that is part of the British mainstream.”

Taj Hargey

The Liberal Democrats in a nutshell

ContraTory — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:46:41 +0000

“[The Liberal Democrats] show no sign of ceasing to be the third party in British politics. They remain a dustbin for the votes of all those whose policy on cake is pro-having it and pro-eating it, and who think you can govern the country by sucking and blowing at the same time [My emphasis].”

Boris Johnson

Whenever a Labour Government finds a slippery slope, it just has to try to slide down it

ContraTory — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:23:29 +0000

“You would expect [the Bribery Bill] to criminalise both the person who pays a bribe and the person who accepts one. And so it does. But the Bribery Bill also makes it lawful for a very broad range of law enforcement agencies to provide or receive what would otherwise be improper financial inducements. They include not just the police, prosecutors and bodies such as HM Revenue & Customs and the UK Borders Agency. Clause 12 would allow every environmental health officer and local authority trading standards officer in the land to go around handing out or accepting cash if they can prove, on the balance of probabilities, that this is necessary for the prevention, investigation or detection of ‘serious’ crime.

Officers from all the security and intelligence services would also be able to pay or receive bribes if they can show it was needed for the ‘proper exercise of any function’. So would all troops on active service.”

Joshua Rozenberg

Says House of Lords Constitution Committee member Lord Pannick QC,

“It is quite unacceptable for any intelligence officer of whatever rank, any employee of the CPS or any employee of a local authority carrying out law enforcement functions to be able to decide for themselves to carry out an act of bribery.”

Quite so.

A point worth noting

ContraTory — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:51:45 +0000

“Having overcome rivalry between Protestants and Catholics, and learned to live in harmony with the Jewish faith and other minority religions and cultures by accepting a society based on Judaeo-Christian principles, we should be wary of those who seek to implant a rival culture with its own legal systems and standards of public behaviour to keep separate its followers from the mainstream of our majority. Apartheid is made no better by being voluntary.”

Norman Tebbit

How so very predictable...

ContraTory — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:32:18 +0000

“Although designed to deal with serious crime, European Arrest warrants are often issued for minor crimes. This puts huge pressure on the police and courts, and shipping people across Europe for petty crimes is, in itself, grossly disproportionate.”

Jago Russell

Forgive them not for they know what they do

ContraTory — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:51:53 +0000

“And the next time a Labour politician bangs on about Thatcher having destroyed Britain’s manufacturing base, remember this: under new Labour, manufacturing output has contracted by 1.2 per cent every year, down to around 12 per cent of GDP. Britain’s finances were in deep structural deficit before the crisis hit — one reason why, even with aggressive fiscal pump-priming, it has taken Britain longer than any other major economy to start emerging from recession.”

Rosemary Righter

That about sums it up

ContraTory — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 11:29:48 +0000

“Class attack is an inherently discourteous and unpleasant way of conducting yourself. Voters and the news media already have an image fixed of the viciousness and spite that [Gordon Brown] and those around him show to enemies both within and outside their party.”

Matthew Parris

But what do you expect from a bunch of know-nothings?

ContraTory — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 08:43:06 +0000

“What has become evident in the run-up to [the climate change conference in] Copenhagen is that every time someone comes up with some ludicrous, self-flagellating proposal, yet another chunk of the population becomes disenchanted with the whole issue. There can hardly be a farmer left in Britain who has any truck with fighting climate change after being told last week that 30 per cent of the livestock in this country needed to go.

The failure of the “experts” to understand the situation was staggering. They clearly did not know that 60 per cent of our farm land is grassland, suitable only for rearing animals. The environmental damage that would ensue should this be ploughed up for cereals and legumes would be catastrophic.”

Charlie Brooks

And the chickens are coming home to roost

ContraTory — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:44:16 +0000

“When Thatcherism destroyed organised labour and unleashed free market fundamentalism 25 years ago, the middle-class professions cheered, wearied of power cuts and grateful for tax cuts. But the bell tolled for them too. ‘Professionals’ replaced miners as the ‘enemy within’; they too had to be neutered as one of the remaining bulwarks against the power of the state and untrammelled markets. And so the assault began, through privatisation, commoditisation, the sweeping away of restrictive practices, and an obsession with costs and targets at the expense of amorphous ‘value’.

That the status of professionals should have diminished in consequence was only to be expected.”

Editorial – Law Society Gazette

Not the politics of “we” for Gordon Brown

ContraTory — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:03:22 +0000

“The brazenness with which Mr Brown reduced the election ahead to a battle between the rich and the rest has one advantage at least: it exposed the fraudulence of his claim to govern for all the people, or whatever the phrase was that he used when he first took over in 2007. He governs for himself and his party, first and always.

And, like the Russians retreating before Napoleon, Mr Brown pursues a scorched earth strategy. Its purpose is two-fold: to put the Tories on the spot as an Opposition by driving them towards difficult policy choices that can then be demolished, while doing everything to ensure that if they do get in, they will find the wells have been filled and the fields ploughed with salt.”

Benedict Brogan

Another false dawn for Labour’s revival

ContraTory — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 13:00:35 +0000

“Labour’s hopes of avoiding a general election rout at the hands of David Cameron’s Tories will be boosted today as a new poll shows a sharp fall in the Conservative's lead, raising the possibility of a hung parliament”

reports The Observer today. The figures show Conservative support slipping to 37% - only six per cent ahead of Labour. However, the field work for this “new poll” conducted by Ipsos MORI was undertaken between 13^th and 15^th November 2009, the same period as The Guardian’s ICM poll published six days earlier. The Guardian/ICM poll disclosed the Conservatives as being thirteen points ahead of Labour.

One of these polls looks like a rogue. Now let me think…which one?

Steve Richards in La-La Land

ContraTory — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:14:35 +0000

Yesterday, discussing why it would be suicidal electorally for either of the main party leaders to holiday abroad in a hot clime this Christmas Steve Richards of the Independent explained,

“The case of Cameron is more revealing. Unlike Blair he would be taking a big risk if he headed for somewhere hot this winter, and the reasons highlight better than any opinion poll why he has not “sealed the deal”, to apply the accurate cliché.”

Four days earlier Julian Glover of the The Guardian reported the result of the latest Guardian/ICM poll under the heading, “Cameron closing deal despite Labour boost – Guardian/ICM poll”. According to the poll, as well as indicating that Labour had lost its crown as the champion of the poor,

“Cameron appears to be cementing his reputation with voters on key issues of character – suggesting that voting Tory isn't just about being fed up with Labour, but is now being seen as a positive move.”

If the facts don’t fit your argument, ignore them.

Enough of this nonsense about David Cameron not having “sealed the deal”

Let’s put Labour’s little victory in context

ContraTory — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:22:02 +0000

So Labour held Glasgow North East in yesterday’s by-election. This was hardly a surprise, particularly as the Labour Party was likely to throw everything into the fight to retain the seat. As reports The Times today,

“So desperate was Labour to hang on to this seat that the party flooded the constituency yesterday with hundreds of activists from all over Britain.”

Now, they are not going to be able to repeat that concentration of their remaining activists at every vulnerable seat during a General Election, are they?

Ah, The wisdom of the cognoscenti!

ContraTory — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:50:29 +0000

In The Sunday Times on 1^st November 2009, Andrew Sullivan wrote,

“And my bet is that in a decade’s time, the banning of cannabis will seem as strange as the banning of alcohol.”

This is not the first time I’ve heard that sentiment expressed. Indeed, it was a common view at my school. In 1971.

Get a grip: The EU isn’t the most pressing issue of the moment

ContraTory — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:28:43 +0000

“…Mr Cameron and his close allies are proper, robust Eurosceptics. The Tory split on Europe at the beginning of the last decade was always misunderstood. The party was not split down the middle. The vast majority were on the Eurosceptic side. The row came because a relatively small, senior and ageing group at the top of the party was intent on resisting the stance that everyone else wanted to take. So in Mr Cameron’s generation almost everyone is a Eurosceptic. His position was, and remains, standard on the British centre Right.”

Daniel Finkelstein

And while you’re at it you should read this, too.

It is disingenuous to suggest that David Cameron has reneged on his Lisbon Treaty referendum promise

ContraTory — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:32:49 +0000

Addressing The Sun newspaper on 26th September 2007, David Cameron announced,

“Today, I will give this cast-iron guarantee: If I become PM a Conservative government will hold a referendum on any EU treaty that emerges from these negotiations.

No treaty should be ratified without consulting the British people in a referendum.”

To highlight the obvious, Gordon Brown signed the Treaty of Lisbon on 13^th December 2007 thereby completing, in effect, the ratification process on behalf of the United Kingdom. Today, the last outstanding signatory, President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic, signed the Treaty. Ratification by all member states of the European Union is now complete. It is all over bar the shouting.

The referendum pledge by the Conservatives envisaged that the Treaty had not been ratified – “No treaty should be ratified without consulting the British people in a referendum”. We now know that the ratification process was accelerated (and according to some conspiracy theorists, a General Election delayed) to avoid the prospect of a Conservative Government throwing a spanner in the works. The Conservatives have little choice but to give up on the Lisbon Treaty referendum. It has been overtaken by events.

Labour and its Media fellow travellers will now no doubt present the Conservatives as having reneged on their promise. That would be worse than disingenuous.

A point often overlooked

ContraTory — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:48:53 +0000

“We have seen from alcohol and tobacco exactly what legalising certain substances can do to health, so why on earth add others?”

Ann Widdicombe

Only the “progressive” Left believed in Moral and Cultural Relativism, anyway

ContraTory — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:48:09 +0000

“All peoples possess a culture, but this does not mean all cultures are equally valid and commendable. Some values and ideas are better than others.”

Peter Tatchell

I knew there was an appropriate phrase out there somewhere

ContraTory — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 21:32:42 +0000

“Policy-based evidence making”

It’s what Labour do.

Hat Tip to Obnoxio

Criminal irresponsibility

ContraTory — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:56:51 +0000

According to The Sunday Times today,

“Gordon Brown is planning a final public spending spree to help pull the economy out of recession and put pressure on the Conservatives over their plans for deep cuts….

....Brown also hopes the stimulus package will open a new dividing line between Labour and Conservative plans over the public finance. “At the next election we need a clear story to tell about how Labour will support the economy through investment while the Tories would choke off the recovery with draconian cuts,” said a cabinet source.”

The report continues,

“However, the proposals have caused alarm among Treasury officials who fear any increased spending could upset the financial markets, making it harder to service the growing national debt.”

Just how much long term damage is the Labour Government prepared to inflict upon the British economy in return for a small amount of political gain against the Conservatives?

Labour’s smear campaign against Michal Kaminski has proved counter productive

ContraTory — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:37:17 +0000

The problem with pointing out that Polish MEP Michal Kaminski has a splinter in his eye when he doesn’t is that as well as damaging Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s credibility; it also causes attention to be drawn to the plank in Labour’s own.

This is yet more proof that Labour cannot even run an effective smear campaign anymore.

Accusing Euro-sceptics of anti-Semitism is the most shameful tactic yet

Experts provide advice, politicians make decisions

ContraTory — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:59:37 +0000

As should be expected, the “progressive” Media has roundly condemned the removal of Professor David Nutt from his position at the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. In essence, the pro legalisation of “recreational drugs” lobby approve of what Professor Nutt has to say, so it is outraged by his treatment by Home Secretary Alan Johnson.

As an adviser who has suffered the rejection of sound advice, I can commiserate to a small degree with the Professor but at the end of the day he is paid to give an opinion and his “client” is entitled to accept or reject it, notwithstanding that he is a high and mighty academic. It is the Professor’s paroxysm at the rejection of his advice and reaction that shows, to my mind, that the Home Secretary was right to ask for his resignation.

Sacked drugs adviser accuses Gordon Brown of meddling in cannabis decision

Sacked – for telling the truth about drugs

Sacked adviser criticises Brown

A thought for conservative minded individuals who are toying with voting for UKIP

ContraTory — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 10:18:52 +0000

Do you really want to help Labour divide and conquer?

On the matter of faux outrage

ContraTory — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:03:06 +0000

As usual, someone else expresses my thoughts better than I ever could, so today I quote Dominic Lawson (with my emphasis),

“People seldom seem more pointlessly pompous than when they declare a joke to be "not funny"; and as for [Jimmy] Carr's career being at an end, I suspect he will still be doing successful stand-up long after everyone has forgotten who Patrick Mercer is – assuming that they knew in the first place.

Above all, I am certain that Jimmy Carr will be much more popular with the squaddies out in Iraq and Afghanistan than any of the politicians who sent them out there into harm's way. This is not least because Carr, unlike Ainsworth apparently, has been a regular visitor to the Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham and the neighbouring rehabilitation unit Headley Court, where maimed British soldiers – hundreds each year – are treated within the NHS. He will have witnessed for himself the amazing moral and physical strength required to recover from appalling injuries and trauma – and also the remarkable skills of the medical teams giving the hope of some sort of tolerable life to men who in previous wars would have had little possibility even of survival.”

Ripe for "surgical removal"?

ContraTory — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:44:49 +0000

“David Cameron could find old regime partisans sniping at him from the hills; the people who sit on boards and commissions, hold chairs and run reviews: the whole well-intentioned infrastructure of progressive society that, almost like royalty, remains in place from one government to the next.”

Julian Glover

Labour’s fifth columnists

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

You too, Mr Gove?

ContraTory — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 23:08:19 +0000

“…in the past six years, I have risen several hours earlier than I used to in my innocent bachelor days and, in consequence, I now go to bed at the hour I used to start going out….”

Michael Gove

It'll all be over by Christmas

ContraTory — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:17:54 +0000

So, Gordon Brown says that the British economy will be growing again by the turn of the year, according to his podcast yesterday. Taking into account that the next quarter will include the Christmas trading period and the figures for the most recent quarter showed a slowing contraction of the British economy, I suppose he might be proved right, technically. In any event, one “good” quarter would not make a recovery, especially if it is followed by indifferent figures, let alone figures showing further albeit small, contractions of the economy. A weak recovery is little better than no recovery at all, except for the purpose of temporarily boosting moral, unless prolonged. In fact, the prospects for real sustainable growth in 2010 are not good. A stall of “the recovery” in the first quarter of 2010 is more likely than not, notwithstanding the Labour Government’s attempts to engineer a phoney uplift in the economy during the months preceding the next General Election.

This recession is unfortunately, another struggle that will not “be over by Christmas”.

“My” final, final word on Nick Griffin and the British National Party

ContraTory — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 08:43:26 +0100

This is the crux of the issue, isn’t it?

“They feel [uncontrolled immigration] diminishes their chances in life.

It threatens their jobs, they believe. Ten years ago, a self-employed painter and decorator in, say, Barking might have earned £120 a day, enough to get a reasonable mortgage and sustain a modestly secure family life. Today, after the Government underestimated the number of Eastern Europeans likely to come here by almost 20 times, he would get £70 or £80. If his ailing father pays regular visits to hospital, he may be denied a bed because so many foreign women are giving birth. If his child has special needs, he may find the local school neglects them because it is desperately trying to teach English to children who do not speak it at home. If his brother is a soldier, he may return from risking his life to be insulted on the streets of his country by people who hate it.

…If they complain, they are told they are racist. It is not surprising that they say things like “My country is being taken away from me”. They are not completely mistaken.”

Charles Moore

Too right

ContraTory — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 22:32:09 +0100

“It should have been laughably straightforward for the panellists to debate with and destroy Griffin’s arguments. Instead, inflated by their outrage, the other speakers repeatedly interrupted, spoke over and cut short the BNP leader. They could have given him all the rope he needed to hang himself. By treating him as a pariah not even granted the liberty of finishing many of his sentences, never mind a particular proposition he was beginning to elaborate, they showed precisely the disregard for others and their views that they condemn in Griffin’s party.

Nearly one million people voted for the BNP in the Euro-elections. Whatever one thinks of their party’s platform, they have a right to be heard. Some parties cannot be more “legal” than others. That is a consequence of living in a democracy and it is part of cherishing the right to free speech. You persuade such people that they are wrong by discussion of what they say; and that means exactly what they say, not what it can be distorted into sounding like...”

Sholto Byrnes

________________

“Was there nobody to restate, with the relaxed confidence that philosophical certitude should bring, the only available position for a modern British liberal: that this is a free country in which a range of highly diverse opinions may be held and, if held, published, subject to the law? Full stop. Yes, full stop; for heaven’s sake, full stop.”

Matthew Parris