BBC News - Football fans jailed for abusive Stephen Lawrence chants.

Some thick young men have been given sentences of twelve and eighteen months for uttering bad words. They now block six prison places that could more usefully have been occupied by people convicted of violent crimes or even such crimes against property as our socialist police force can be bothered to detect.

BBC News - Can you persuade people not to buy stolen goods?

The British authorities now seem to have placed property criminals on the 'too difficult' pile. The authors of a new "report" say that those who steal take so little interest in the law that they don't even know the relevant punishments. Surprise, surprise.

Frexit fever reaches heart of French establishment – Telegraph Blogs.

When the Euro was about to be launched a colleague and I were in Germany on business. Over drinks with our German business partners they teased us about it. In all previous such conversations with them we had been primarily concerned about the impact of EU policy on the UK's interests. As a global trading nation, we argued, these often diverge from those of the more parochial economies of mainland Europe. To their surprise, on this occasion we were more worried about Germany for whom we predicted the Euro would be a disaster.

The dream has given way to nightmare. We must face the reality that the EU itself is now threatened by the euro. The current efforts to save it are endangering the Union yet further

Money has to be at the service of the political structure, not the other way around

We had robber barons then and we have robber barons today. But there’s a big difference between the robber barons then and the robber barons today. The robber barons then primarily could get their money only if people freely gave it to them. They got their money by selling a service. And nobody had to buy it. And if people bought it it was because it was a better service than it was before. The robber barons today are in a large part able to get their money by sending a policeman to take it out of your pocket.

At the O2 Arena last week, popular comedian Micky Flanagan got a roar of approval from most of his capacity audience for the following line;

"I am not religious ... because I AM NOT FUCKING MENTAL."

He went on to make them roll in the aisles (a dangerous pastime on the steep tiers at the O2) by conducting a conversation with an imaginary vicar about 'teabagging' his imaginary gay boyfriend. This to give his audience the comedic pleasure of picturing the discomfiture of the 'homophobic' clergyman. 

I am sure his audience members are more typical of current British public opinion than the Christians among my friends. Religion in general and the faith of our fathers in particular has become little more than a synonym for 'homophobia' in metropolitan circles. If most Londoners met their creator on Hampstead Heath (as an accountant does in one of my favourite jokes) they would not fall to their knees. They would look Him up and down contemptuously and say "Some people are gay, God. Get over it."

I have stated my own views on religion here before. They have not changed much, even after the shock of the late Mrs P.'s conversion to Catholicism. I hope I am no smug, dismissive, arrogant Dawkins-style atheist. I have religious friends. I like them, respect them and am careful not to deploy my weapons-grade argumentation to undermine their faith. When I see a friend in trouble, I envy them the confidence their faith gives them to try to help in the face of implacable fate. 

Every culture in history evolved at least one religion in the course of its development. The utility of religious belief in handling the central problem of being human is obvious. Voltaire said it best. Like most people, I am not so narcissistic or self-important as to worry about my own death. My passing will make no significant ripple in the cosmos and that's fine with me. But every time I lose someone I care about, I would love the comfort of religion. When I look back on some aspects of my life, I also understand the appeal of the Catholic rite of confession. Absolution. What's not to like?

Christianity, even if little-practised now in Britain, is an inseparable part of our culture. Even British atheists are clearly a- the Christian Theos. It informs who we are. Our art and literature are so steeped in it that they make little sense without a basic understanding of The Bible. I feel guilty when a Christian would and am impelled to similar good acts. I feel bad if I am not suitably grateful for the blessings in my life; ludicrously as I have no-one to thank for conferring them. I don't think a Christian neighbour would be able to identify me as an atheist without asking.

I am not in any way against religious belief. I simply don't have it.

At the suggestion of a friend I have been attending weekly viewings of Father Robert Barron's film series, "Catholicism". I asked the organisers if it was ok for an atheist to come along and explained that I wanted to understand what my late wife had signed up to. They have been welcoming and I rather fear becoming their pet heathen. I am certainly now the most prayed-for atheist in Chiswick. They are good, serious, kind people but they are even more hopelessly at odds with the zeitgeist of modern Britain than I am. Like so many in our weirdly fragmented society, they operate in their own social bubble and seem unaware of the rising hostility they face. Their naievety is touching and worrying. I feel as protective of them as they do of me.

The recently retired Chief Rabbi wrote an interesting article suggesting that atheists are failing in an implied obligation to offer an alternative moral structure.

I have not yet found a secular ethic capable of sustaining in the long run a society of strong communities and families on the one hand, altruism, virtue, self-restraint, honour, obligation and trust on the other

Most atheists I know are quick to say that the religious have no monopoly on morality. Fair enough. There are many moral atheists. I hope I am one of them. But Rabbi Sacks is right that we offer no common moral basis for society. As the rubble of the old faiths is consigned to the landfill of history, I fear that without common values our behaviours can only be kept within safe bounds by state power. If men fear no gods, they must fear other men.

That's a sobering thought because, while we can mock the violence caused by religion (the conquistadores, the crusaders, the Inquisition, 'the Troubles', Islamic terrorism etc.) the state is an institution with a worse record. Having conceded control of so much of our lives to it, are we now ready to let it define our morals too?

Here is a short quote from someone you have never heard of; Elise Groulx Diggs, co-chairman of the International Criminal Bar. The source for the quote is here, though I read it in the International Bar Association's dead tree magazine.

Law is an amazingly transformational tool and it doesn't take that many people to bring about change.

Whether or not you agree with the particular changes she's talking about doesn't really matter that much. Law is there to set limits to human vices, not to promote human virtues. This not least because humans are in closer agreement as to the former than the latter. Every law diminishes liberty and even a good one is a necessary evil. A bad one (and most are now bad ones) is just evil.

To put it another way, Law itself is a prison and the fewer people who ever see its bars, the better. That 'not that many' people can transform the lives of the rest of us by force of law is undoubtedly true. It happens all the time, but does not strike me as a thing to be happy about.

The lady has had a distinguished career and, from my brief research, has done a lot of good in this world. I am sure she is very admirable and I don't single her out because I think she is in any way to blame for our situation. It's just that her words sum up crisply, for me, the great mistake about the nature of Law that is making the Free World less so by the day.

The real reason why poverty is increasing is that we have had government after government making public sector cuts. This has led to more expensive services and unemployment which forces wages down. And all this has been done in the name of tax cuts for the rich. 

Rent and utility bills are killing everybody including business, they must be capped and energy re-nationalized. I don't care if people think it's socialism because at what point do you say capitalism with no rules or morals has to stop and isn't working?

So much for our government's claim that work is what stops poverty and benefits is (sic) what keeps people in it

I couldn't care less how well the banking sector is doing or what the GDP is or the UK's position in wealth tables is so long as I can turn the lights and heating on and eat decent food without worrying about the cost. [my emphasis] MAJOR wealth distribution needed

This fawning piece lavishes praise on Indian bureaucrats - the country's 'best and brightest' - for their response to Cyclone Phailin. Perhaps they even deserve it.

Yet India's potential is wilfully and systematically damaged every day by official corruption; corruption that is the key story in the world's greatest democracy. I do appreciate that journalists can't tell that story quite so easily. It would certainly take more work than calling government offices and lazily listening to officials praise themselves.

Even then, the true masters of India inadvertently reveal their true colours. One official is quoted as saying;

Those who were not willing (to be evacuated), I was telling the local official to use force, because the rules permit that.

So adults said they would prefer (for whatever reason) to stay put and take their chances with the cyclone, but were dragged away violently for their own protection. The official openly boasts of this assault and the uncritical journalist reports it as a positive. After all it was within 'the rules' and what else matters?

It sounds like these officials did a reasonable job on this occasion and of course I am delighted the fatalities were so few, but I still doubt their credentials as 'public servants' and their understanding of ethical concepts.

The conventional view in Soviet Britain is that those who do business are heartless sorts driven by selfish pursuit of that dirtiest of all words in our foul-mouthed society; p**f*t. Yet my recollection of thirty happy years in business is of being under constant pressure to find ways to serve the interests of others. I like my fellow-men, trust them and certainly respect them more than any Socialist I ever met, but I didn't do it for love of them. I did it because that was the best way to help my business prosper.

Now I live mostly on my savings plus an occasional fee for consultancy, my life is very different. I suspect that in its daily details it's much more like that of a leftist academic (let's call him Ralph) who thinks profit is a dirty word. Subject to my social and domestic obligations, I spend each day more or less as I please. I have an online subscription to The Guardian so as to understand what my enemies have in store for me, but I no longer have any obligation to read outside my field of interest. Indeed most of what I read is written by people of the same views as myself. Despite my painful time with The Guardian each day, I am now almost as little exposed as Ralph to opposing points of view. Everything I write is to promote my own world view and - I suppose - to garner the approval of like-minded folk.

Unlike Ralph, I am not a cost to anyone else. His conscience is of the 'social' variety and is therefore untroubled by living on money taken by force from others. Mine would be. Like him, I now deliberately contribute very little to GDP by my labour, though my capital is doing its bit, as perhaps is his. He may - after all - have inherited from a family who were economic hosts rather than parasites. There are many Socialists of that ilk, not to mention the ones whose fathers prospered mightily as parasitic Ralphs.

Our Ralph does no productive labour because he's more focussed on redistribution of wealth than creation. I limit mine because I already have enough and am apparently - rather to my own surprise - less consumed by greed than he would think. I also don't see the point of working if more than half of my earnings would be taken from me and almost half of what was left when I died would be taken from my children. Ralph is probably an advocate of the policies that created this situation but thinks me selfish for refusing to work anyway and thinks I should be somehow forced to labour (a notion towards which all Socialism trends).

I pay indirect tax on everything I buy (£118.17 on my new iPhone, for example). I also pay Council Tax. This is tax taken from income already taxed, but in fairness Ralph pays it too. The only difference is that he pays from money ripped violently from his fellow men. I pay from cash received freely in return for contractual value.

The more my life becomes like Ralph's and the less I live the way he disdains as selfish - the more selfish I feel. The more I think about how he actually spends his time, the more I despise his self-indulgent lifestyle and his selfish refusal to contribute even his own costs, let alone pay those of many others - as I have done. He has not paid for his childrens education, for example. I paid for mine and for that of countless others.

So who is the more selfish; the man who creates wealth or the man who claims the right to seize the wealth of others? Who is the more heartless; the man who feels a twinge of conscience about no longer serving his fellow-men (despite having done do for decades) or the man who has lived his whole life on them as guiltlessly as a flea on a dog?

You can't look because the rangers aren't being paid

Mark Steyn relates the story of a park ranger ordering American pensioners back onto a bus in Yellowstone National Park, telling them they 'couldn't recreate' because the park is closed. He reports that the rangers have barricaded 'Old Faithful' and are keeping an armed guard on the nearby hotel so that no-one can approach while they are not being paid.

You would think that, if park rangers were unpaid, they would stay home and - to the precise extent that they usually perform a useful function - problems would ensue. Perhaps there might be a higher rate of accidents. More people might get lost or hurt by dangerous animals. There might be an increase in vandalism or theft. There might be damaging fires because no-one would enforce park rules about camping. People would see these bad consequences and insist their legislators taxed them more or - more likely - borrowed more against their unborn grandchildrens' future earnings so the rangers could be paid.

In fact, what has happened is that self-interested state dependents have turned up to work, unpaid, in order to prevent any member of the American public enjoying land that statists laughably claim they own. In truth, these 'public servants' are harassing their supposed 'masters' in pursuit of a political campaign. They are demanding with menaces increased public borrowing to pay their wages, benefits and future pensions.

If the money stolen by government was spent as usefully as statists insist, the US would be in crisis right now. Frustratingly for them, life is going on. So those who - in statist fantasy world - serve 'the people' are showing up to work unpaid to ensure the people can't enjoy 'their property'.