The Last Ditch

Of petrol, pasties and the rape of Liberty

I have taken a break from the world for a week. I cruised the single-track roads and waiting smilingly in the passing places of the Scottish Highlands and Islands. I drank whisky, ate poor food and looked at magnificent scenery. I pictured my ancestors (for, despite Salmond's history-pokery, we are all one people) cruising those sea lochs in renamed Viking longboats and scratching a living from a landscape the fertility of which varies inversely with the beauty of the shapes into which it is arranged. It was great.

I did cast an eye over an occasional newspaper. Some fusspot civil libertarians were jeopardising the nation's safety, apparently, but the main issue of the hour was whether or not our political leaders really DO like cheap pasties from some out-of-control Geordie pie-shop. Oh, and whether it had been sensible for some politician to give filling stations the excuse to rack up the price of my motor car's food.

Then I got home and read the blogs. No wonder the politicians constantly hatch schemes to bring citizen journalists under the same 'regulation' as the dying, old-fashioned, corrupt press. The pie shop barely rated a mention and the bloggers were largely unmoved by the 'petrol shortage'. What warped priorities are these?

In opposition, where soon they will repose again, the Coalition was - if not red-hot - at least pinkly-flushed about civil liberties. Labour's refreshingly honest, open, totalitarian-with-a-brave faced-schemes to monitor all citizens at all times lest they act in their own interests were, then, unacceptable. Like most honest citizens who ask little more than to be able to keep the bulk of the proceeds of their own labours and to be free to spend their lives as they wish, both the 'Conservatives' and the 'Liberal Democrats' (note the use of quotation marks as wash-tongs to hold soiled concepts at arm's length) were agin 'em. Trust the people, they cried, in the hope of reciprocation.

But now they are in power and the world is a different place. Or at least the British state is, now that its chain of command ends with them. The French have their own notion of what is the 'English vice' but we are self-aware enough to know that it is, and has always been, hypocrisy. We (not just the English ourelves but the whole Anglo-Saxon world that bears our DNA) are hypocrites to a man.

Who would have guessed that these pink-faced products of old money were the most vicious Englishmen of all? Let's have the other lot back. At least while they rape our liberties, they won't pretend to love them. Such is the fun to be had - once in power - in bossing others around that there apears to be no option to elect any that DO love our liberties.

In the meantime, here are some of the more sterling attempts to do what I should perhaps have been doing when I was having fun. If you don't want to live in a world where the Greggs' pasty is at the centre of political life, I suggest you visit these sites and bookmark or RSS them. Oh, and the picture of my favourite view in the world is to soothe you as you read this stuff.

Big Brother is back

There's something secret

Listen you ignorant trollop

Email and web snooping is unworkable

Meet the new boss

This guy thinks 1984 is an instruction manual

OK, so this is not an April Fool

Tell me this is an April Fool, please

Someone loves Big Brother

Internet privacy - a draft letter to your MP

Digital Dave is watching you

What Davy said, in opposition

Watching your fall

and the BBC's take on it (more regulations needed to regulate the regulators)

 

 

Speechless

I have been quiet I know. With the aid of family and friends I have been unpacking my chattels in my new home. I am now permanently and comfortably installed. My broadband is up and running.

No excuses. I could have taken a break to blog if I had chosen. But please consider this. The manager of our national soccer team, an Italian, has been fired for defending perhaps the most important concept gifted by our nation to the world; that of "innocent until proven guilty."

In such a time what more, gentles, could I add?

Don't treat us as "congenital idiots", Mr Cameron. Unless, of course, we are.

"Downing Street said yesterday that a referendum is unnecessary. It is, at the very least, an odd negotiating strategy for Mr Cameron to throw away the strongest card in his hand before the game has even started." - Telegraph leader

via conservativehome.blogs.com

The press are calling on Cameron not to treat us as "congenital idiots", but what if - politically and economically - we are? Let's not get into the whole 'in or out' issue of the EU. It inflames too many passions. Let's just look at one of the mooted solutions to the problems of the Euro.

The proposed EU Tobin Tax is a threat to Britain's economic future. The burden will fall, not merely disproportionately, but mainly on the City of London as the only global financial centre in the bloc. This has been reported in the quality press, as has the threat from City folk to move their businesses elsewhere, but there's no sign that the British people care.

David Cameron's political future depends, not on getting things right, but on pleasing that clueless majority. If he had the charisma of a Margaret Thatcher or a Tony Blair he might shape their opinions but he hasn't. He can't even influence the views of his coalition partners. Nor does it help that he short-sightedly joined in the scapegoating of bankers to cover for the failures of the political class at EU and national level.

Marcus Brigstocke's idiotic recent comment on Have I Got News for You to the effect that the bankers are always threatening to leave and winning political concessions, so "...maybe the public sector workers should all threaten to leave too..." probably better represents the general population's view than anything I can say. What, after all, is the City of London to a Warrington benefits claimant who is now more 'the man on the Clapham omnibus' of British politics than you or me? Well a great deal, actually, but if he doesn't understand that, a hapless, charisma-free, David Cameron can't help but listen to his ignorant views with attention.

For those of us who believe Britain would be 'Better off Out' the Tobin Tax proposal is further proof that our European 'partners' do not have our interests at heart. Yet it does not prove that the EU is rigged against us. It isn't. It's rigged, by its original French designers, against the German people. It was designed to exploit an historical guilt that no living German should now feel.

Unlike their federal government, which is as feckless as any group of politicians spending other peoples' money to buy votes, the hard-working German citizenry is largely debt-free. They produce fine goods, deliver fine services and more than pay their own way in the world. They are peaceful global citizens and no longer go in for armed evangelism. Would that we could say as much. Yet, true to the French design of the European Project, they have seen their pensions and public services cut, while they contribute more and more to bail out their feckless, massively-indebted neighbours. They are the EU's greatest victims.

Properly viewed, the EU is just a cynical game played to rules written by Frenchmen. It is a game played brilliantly by France and the other consistent net beneficiary nations. Only Britain and Germany ever naievely treat it as a serious political project. From this point of view, David Cameron is simply a bad coach of the British national team. Whether we believe Britain should play this game or not, for as long as we are in the league, we are entitled to have him try to lead the national team to victory.

The 'congenital idiocy' of British voters is something of an obstacle, perhaps. If Cameron believes in the EU and wants to see EU-scepticism decline however, then he needs to man up and do his job. Or make way for a new manager who will.

Keep it up, brothers and sisters

BBC News - Public sector strike rallies held across UK.

Did the strikes affect you? Me neither. I would be delighted if the strikers would really go for it; all out, indefinitely. At least that way, there might finally be some reductions in public spending. Because, without the unintentional assistance today of the public sector gang bosses, this government has been increasing the national debt daily. There are no 'cuts' for all the whining. We were driving towards a cliff edge at 155mph. The government has reduced the speed to 150mph. Big deal. 

At one level, I can understand the public servants' sense of grievance. They were told they would get pension x, but now they are told they must make an extra contribution in order to have pension x-y. The fact is, however, that their pensions were largely unfunded. The contribution most of them make (from money anyway supplied by taxpayers) is not adequate to cover the benefits expected. It never was. Their political masters assumed irresponsibly that they could always take the money by force from future generations of taxpayers.

All the consequences of that wicked, failed assumption cannot surely fall on the minority whose taxes are real, because they are not paid from money suppled by taxpayers? The proposals that have led to this strike do not go nearly far enough. They are only a modest beginning to what needs to be done. But the public sector workers' conflict of interest with real taxpayers is total. It is a conflict of interest that could only properly be resolved by removing their right to vote. Undemocratic? Perhaps. But a democracy in which voters dependent on the public purse are prepared to vote themselves more and more of an oppressed minority's money is doomed.

The Boy King's Speech

Conservative Party conference 2011: David Cameron's speech in full - Telegraph.

I could quibble about some of his sentiments; on the importance of government leadership for example, but essentially I agree with every word of David Cameron's conference speech. The problem is I don't believe he does. At least, he lacks the will to make it happen. The Conservative Party, as presently constituted and led, is a dog with no fight. It's a poodle of the liberal left. It might yap irritatingly occasionally, but it's never going to bite them and - most of the time - it wants them to stroke it.

The Conservative Party used to be the political rotweiler of Britain. It was an election-winning machine; a mass movement - and the most important dating agency of the middle classes. It was the largest political party in Scotland (can you imagine?!) and was briefly, under Margaret H. Thatcher, an intellectual hotbed. Sir Keith Joseph (a far better man than our leftist historians will ever admit) had the Centre for Policy Studies shaping national thought for a while. Those were the only times in my life when I had hope for our country's future.

I was never really a Tory though. I don't hunt or shoot, never wear tweed and feel no need to be paternalistic to the poor. I have no desire to tell other adults (unless and to the precise extent that they threaten person or property) what to do with their lives. I didn't give a damn if Cecil Parkinson bonked his secretary, any more than Margaret did. Once I got past my Che Guevara and Mao Zedong-worshipping teenage years (give me a break, it could have been drugs) it seems I was always a classical liberal.

The Conservative Party was only welcoming to the likes of us under Margaret. Daniel Hannan and other sound thinkers now look like Jews in Woody Allen's unkindest caricature of a 1950s country club. I admire their gall and persistence in joining, but frankly what do they hope to achieve? I don't think Mr Hannan has anything more in common with David Cameron's thinking (as opposed to his rhetoric) than with Gordon Brown's.

We need a Broad Right alliance in this country. The BBC's hysteria today about the suggestion people should pay off their credit cards (more sensible advice than which is scarce possible to conceive) suggests that the prudent are dangerously close to becoming an enslaved minority. They can't afford to be divided.

The likes of Dan Hannan are widely respected within UKIP and libertarian circles, for example. They could broker, if not a merger with the Conservatives, at least an electoral pact. The Eurosceptics have been proved right in the most convincing manner. The Tory hush puppy tendency of woolly-thinking wets are as weak as they have ever been since Thatcher's day. Now is the hour, for the good of the nation, to give the electoral quietus to Labour; the greatest divider of communities, destroyer of wealth and pimp to failure and degradation in our country's history. For David Cameron never spoke truer words than when he said;

We must never let these Labour politicians anywhere near our economy again.

If only he had the manhood truly to believe that could be achieved, it just might be.

Not 'Christian rights' but 'human rights'

Iranian Pastor Sentenced to Death: Nadarkhani Refuses to Convert - International Business Times.

Why does this story gain so little traction in the media? Why do only 'Christian rights' groups seem interested in the plight of a pastor who will not - even to save his life - renounce his beliefs? I can understand why libertarians are silent. We don't like it of course, but it's in Iran and therefore a matter for the Iranian people. But where are all the bloodthirsty statists who usually call for our soldiers to be used as armed educators?

I don't believe opinion or its expression (by anything other than deeds having serious adverse impact on others) should ever be punishable by law. I have heard many a leftist call for bloody revolution in my time. So what? Unless and until he actually starts to kill those who disagree with his views on control of the means of production, he's no problem. At least he's forewarned us of his predilection for violence. If someone calls for violence against Jews, immigrants or climate change deniers that's equally fine by me. As long as he doesn't act on it.

I wouldn't invite such nut jobs to dinner, you understand. I would be very concerned if one wanted to marry one of my daughters. But I have no desire to strike them with with that blunt instrument known as 'law'. There was a time when that was the typical British view of such matters. The last government's obsession with 'hate speech' however, and the Coalition's failure to repeal any of their stupid laws, has knocked us off that moral high ground. Perhaps that explains the silence of the usual suspects? It's not as if something important like this chap's 'right to work' is being threatened. Or his 'right' to an alternative sexuality. It's only his freedom of thought (and his thoughts are not like ours) so don't worry.

This story also strengthens my suspicion of all who preface the word 'rights' with any qualifier but 'human'. There are not nearly as many 'human rights' as are claimed, but one characteristic of a real one is that it is for everyone. For example, the 'right to life' or, more precisely, the right not to be wilfully killed by another human should apply equally to all. If any so-called 'right' is expressed as specific to a particular group, you will usually find that group (or someone seeking some benefit from that group) is on the make.

So I am disappointed (but not surprised) that few rights activists and advocates have had anything to say about Pastor Nadarkhani's imminent demise. A fellow-human is going to be killed for standing (rather impressively) by his beliefs. If that does not concern us, do we really care about 'human rights' or are we just hypocrites waving that flag in to obtain more privileges for our own favoured group?

More lost data

NHS loses CD of 1.6 MILLION patients' records • The Register.

The state is not your friend and, if it were, it would be the stupidest one you have. I love the expression "...the trust was handed an undertaking...", don't you? It's an unusual construction meaning - I think - that the offender was required to promise not to do it again.

Harsh, eh?

Be afraid

It's Christmas for the left-liberal consensus. They are still in their glee from the undoubted success of their suspiciously Campbell-esque campaign against News International. They are still earnestly blabbering over state-dominated airwaves, without a hint of irony, about the supposed 'dominance' of a private company struggling to compete with the funded-by-force BBC. A Norwegian nutjob has now made them an even greater gift. Watching the Andrew Marr and Murnaghan shows this morning (and wondering as usual why the Conservatives are as little in evidence as they were in opposition) their delight was manifest.

Jacqui Smith, well-deservedly-former Home Secretary, told us on the BBC that 'we' (a plural pronoun, as used by her, that does not embrace you and me) must 'insist' on certain 'shared values.' I doubt if - beyond the least controversial of the Ten Commandments - Mrs Smith and I share a single value. Minutes later, she was telling us that the internet provides a 'virtual community' for warped individuals. The BBC held out for mere seconds before dropping the 'extreme' from 'extreme right wing.' Compare and contrast with the way they never describe socialist violence as any kind of left wing but wrap it in the false black flag of 'anarchism'.

After the merest pause for a respectful nod to Norway's dead, it was on with the usual smear tactics and guilt by association before demanding that something be done about people whose opinions are readily detectable by their use of social media. If you tweet, blog or post any non-conforming opinions in comments, you should be very afraid this morning.

Try the following checklist:

• You do not trust the British state
• You believe that the Labour Party and its fellow-travellers are the greatest enemies of our liberty
• You believe the BBC has a left-liberal bias
• You believe that British academia is dominated - and our education system warped - by the left
• You believe that immigrants have been allowed into Britain faster than they could reasonably be assimilated into our way of life
• You believe that the left-liberal consensus facilitated this deliberately to create client groups for its own electoral advantage
• You are tired of our capital being known as 'Londonistan'
• You believe that citizens have the right to armed self-defence
• You have called for politicians to be held personally to account (perhaps with a few lurid 'swinging from lamp-post' references)

Tick any two or three of those, and you are suspect. If, when details emerge about Breivik's political motivations, it proves he has more in common with smug statists than with you, it will make not a shred of difference.

The feeding frenzy continues

How I misread News Corp’s taxes | MediaFile.

When you run a media business you make enemies. Not least the friends who believe they were insufficiently favoured. Rupert Murdoch's, especially those with axes to grind, love his current discomfiture. Especially the BBC, a state corporation* with a near-monopoly on electoral opinion-forming in Britain; a monopoly that Murdoch sought to challenge. It doesn't make what happened right, but it does explain the focus on a media group that is (as Cranmer has blogged) by no means the worst offender. Analysing data published by the Information Commissioner on the unlawful trade in confidential private information, his Grace came up with the following;

Trinity Mirror: 1663 incidents by 139 journalists
Mail Group: 1248 incidents by 95 journalists
News International: 182 incidents by 19 journalists

He did this by consolidating the data in this table by media group (click to enlarge).

So why is there no hue and cry for the group publishing the papers that are the worst offenders? I can't be bothered to waste pixels on so obvious an answer.

While right-wingers are content for the Guardian and the New York Times to exist (and rather enjoy critiquing their idiocies) left-wingers find the existence of competing views offensive. Indeed, they are marvelously creative when it comes to taking (or pretending to take) offence in order to suppress free expression. In its quest to get its man, Donal Blaney now thinks the Left is overplaying its hand. It seems to me rather that, in their excitement, left-liberals are now firing off random shots like Palestinians celebrating mass murder.

Columnist David Cay Johnston (13 year veteran of The New York Times and author of the snappily-titled Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill)) published a story (deleted now, but cached here) claiming that News Corporation received tax credits of $4.8 billion in the last four years. In fact that was the tax it paid. His 'apology' for this 'bonehead error' restated the other critical comments in his original piece:

The other facts I reported remain:

* Among the 100 largest companies in the United States, News Corp has the third largest number of subsidiaries in tax havens, a Government Accountability Office study found in 2009.

* On an accounting basis, which measures taxes incurred but often not actually paid for years, News Corp had a tax rate of under 20 percent, little more than half the 35 percent statutory rate, its disclosures show.

* Murdoch has bought companies with tax losses and fought to be able to use them, which reduces his company’s costs.

* News Corp lawyers and accountants are experts at making use of tax deferrals, though the company’s net tax assets have shrunken from $5.7 billion in 2007 to $3.3 billion last year as the benefits were either used or expired.

Gracious eh? He continues:

So I hope readers will trust that while I made a whopper of a mistake, it has been corrected forthrightly and promptly.

Not exactly, sir. All the damage you could have hoped for is already done. Your original piece has been picked up again and again as a weapon against Murdoch. Just as you hoped it would.

I am no friend of Murdoch, but the more I see of his enemies, the more I warm to him. And the more I worry that, without him, the left-liberal establishment will strangle the free press.

*Please don't ask me why a free country needs a state broadcaster.

The fight is on

David Cameron's self-serving attack on press freedom - Telegraph.

The oligarch supporters of President Yeltsin discovered by accident how to get their drunken but reliably corrupt puppet re-elected, despite national embarrassment at his failings. In desperation, they bought the national TV stations, whose newsdesks informed the political opinions of a decisive majority. To their surprise it worked. Their unsavoury skins were saved.

When Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was made Yeltsin's political heir, their media machine got him elected. They were confident he would reward them, but they underestimated their man. He and his "Chekist" faction didn't want to depend on them for power, so they seized those TV stations "for the nation". They used them to develop what they amusingly call a "managed democracy".

Having ensured a consistent line from key news desks, they found they could cheerfully ignore the otherwise free press. You can read criticism of VVP in Russian newspapers and magazines. You can hear it on local TV and radio too. He will happily point to it as evidence of Russia's free press. But you won't hear a word of effective criticism on national TV, which is all he cares about.

The occasional murder of a journalist seems born of exuberance, not necessity.

Living in Russia for several years, I wondered if the Chekists got their ideas from observing the relationship between the BBC and the British ruling elite. Why did the Conservatives not win the last election outright, despite economic circumstances that would have made Labour unelectable in any other place and time? Two reasons. Firstly a rigged election system. Voting figures that would have given Labour a working majority were insufficient for the Tories. Secondly the BBC News team (and their incestuous faux-competitors at Channel 4) did the same job for Labour that their Russian counterparts do for United Russia. The same team now consistently keens and wails about "Tory cuts" despite the fact that public spending is still rising, thus keeping the hapless Boy David firmly to leftist lines in all key respects.

By the way, how can that rigged election system remain in place? Because the BBC will never give airtime to anyone who points it out - and will report any attempt to reform it as Tory election-rigging. So there's really only one reason.

Love him or hate him (and he doesn't make himself easy to love) Rupert Murdoch represented the only well-funded and plausible threat to the BBC hegemony in British opinion-forming. For the good of the same ruling elite that loved him when they were successfully bribing him to do their bidding, he therefore had to be stopped from gaining full control of BSkyB. His reported remark that Sky News would be more like Fox News if his British management ever listened to him made that very clear.

Search Twitter today for the hashtag #newsnight and see the vengeful, malicious British Left in full triumphant cry. Having pitched the pompous right-on comedian Steve Coogan against a carefully-selected rat-like specimen of the tabloid press, the BBC's Newsnight team could barely contain its near-sexual excitement last night. It was glorying (as the BBC has for days) in doing immense damage to its only serious enemy.

Today's Telegraph leader has it almost right.

To punish the whole of the press for News International’s misdemeanours is wrong; so, too, is the sneering disdain of the political classes for the tabloid newspapers that are read by the majority of their constituents. It was a revolting spectacle to see Labour politicians cheer the closure of one of this country’s oldest newspapers, with the loss of 200 staff, most of whom had nothing to do with the scandal – especially since they only found their voice once News International had ended its support of their party.

Why almost? Because this is not about "them" - the Press, but about us, the people. What the dangerous new coalition of vengeful slebs, spurned and furious Labourites and politicians determined to ensure no repetition of the expenses scandal threatens is our very way of life.

The Britain I knew and loved, now fighting for its feeble life, was formed by centuries of press freedom.  The broadsheets might debate the issues of the day, but few were following them. It was the ferocious tabloid press that kept the elites in line. It instilled fear into those who, by dishonesty, excess, immorality or even mere snootiness towards the public that feeds them, deserved popular disapproval.

The BBC is a primary source of work for Coogan. It has the ability to enhance the career of Hugh Grant. They and other celebrities have their own reasons (for which the public had no sympathy before Millygate) to hate and fear the tabloids. After all these are the papers that personify the prurient interest in their private lives of the British public on whom they live - and for whom they feel such disdain.

We know what they want from new regulators. We also know what the BBC and Guardian will want. Most of all we know what the politicians of all parties will want. But it's not their disparate agendas that are the problem, it's what they have in common. That is a desire for working people to have neither ready access to anti-statist views, nor regular evidence of the moral corruption of the British ruling elite and its luvvie running dogs.

We don't need to like Mr Murdoch to recognize this. His employees' disgraceful misconduct has given our elites their greatest chance for decades to undermine that sturdy contempt for the powerful that makes us free men.