Thought So...

In the latest atrocity committed by the rambling Socialist experiment that is twenty-first century Britain a woman has been jailed for speaking out about her concerns. For the supposed hate crime of having fears relating to the uneasily and unevenly shifting demography of this country she has been sentenced to twenty-one weeks loss of her freedom and most likely her ability to earn a future living unaided by the state. Good move, Judgey.

At the same time, violent young thugs up and down the country are being given feeble tickings-off by magistrates, receiving fines which will never be paid and being offered counselling and anger management courses – at huge cost to you and me – which are almost universally ineffective. Those same thugs will go on to perpetrate ever more violent acts on individuals and society with impunity: statutory rape as they create more under-aged mothers, drug-peddling, casual theft and routine threatening behaviour, often spilling over into actual assault.

So, jail for Jacqueline Woodhouse for drunkenly saying out loud what is now considered a crime to even think about, but counselling and care for real violent offenders. The race-hate-filled Lee Jasper must be cock-a-hoop as the state spends more and more of your money pursuing new, easy targets – white people who dare to be afraid or ignorant – rather than tackling the true crimes all around us.

Woodhouse was undoubtedly drunk and disorderly and she definitely used threatening language, but did she actually hurt anybody? Her language was indefensibly offensive, but were any of her words translated into action? And since when did causing offence become an actual offence? As with the case of ‘Olly Cromwell’ in Bexley she has been punished for nothing – absolutely nothing – more than speaking her mind. Sticks and stones…

In vino veritas, they say, except often that simply isn’t true – we say things under the influence of drink that we definitely don’t mean and in any reasonable society her drunkenness, whilst a misdemeanour in itself, would be taken as partial mitigation for her words.

Even if her intoxicated tirade represented what she actually thinks, Is it a crime to prefer the company of your shared heritage peers? Really? It’s an actual offence to feel like a minority in your country of birth? It’s illegal to feel physically intimidated by persons of significantly different appearance to your own? Animals survive by recognising shapes and postures as friendly or otherwise – is it now a crime to allow evolutionary instinct to shape your views? Apparently so.

Diplomats learn foreign customs and gestures so as to fit in and to understand the ways of the countries they visit. When Woodhouse’s lawyer asked for a lesser sentence, combined with a “diversity awareness and prejudice training course” her plea fell on ears deaf to the very notion. If judges think we can re-train the uneducable chav scum of our society, why should not the same accommodation be offered an otherwise useful member of the same society?

And as for threatening behaviour, have any judges actually been to a town centre on a weekend evening and seen at close quarters what their liberalism has wrought on Britain’s moral fabric? Have they ever watched a soap opera where virtually every plotline revolves around some moral failure or other? Threatening violence? Why not just lock us all up for thinking violence?

Orwellian thought crime - Labour's legacy - will take a generation to eradicate even if we start today. But that’s not going to happen, is it? Because tomorrow’s judiciary and educators, police and politicians have already been brainwashed into believing the Socialist diktat.

We used to say you can’t be locked up for telling the truth. Well that seems to no longer be so. At least some of what Jacqueline Woodhouse said was true. We’re fucked. 

Will the last intelligent Briton please put the cat out and unplug the telly?

Feeling the Benefit

Well, I appear to have come back from holiday to a shitstorm of stuff going on and it's going to take a few days to get my head around it all. I'm assuming that Greece is still being dragged along in chains behind its European gaoler and that the economies of Spain, Italy, Portugal, France and Ireland are teetering on the brink and that we still have six days to save the doomed Euro (dear god, let it die).

I see that the Leveson business (what IS that about, really?) continues apace and that Tony Blair now seems to be in charge, so I've ordered a Kevlar jacket for when the next war starts. The government appears to be cack-handedly not doing the things it said it would do and the opposition, as ever, have sprouted the wings of innocent cherubim and continue to fool large chunks of the lumpen proletariat by simply lying about their culpability in all that is wrong with this country.

Which brings me to this outrageous benefits saga, the only news article I've really had a chance to read today and for that I offer thanks to a stray Tweeter who broadcast it early this morning.

An impoverished family in Breadline Britain 2012

Go on, click the link and have a quick look. The headlines say it all. Late last night I finished reading "Our Culture, What's Left Of It", by Theodore Dalrymple in which he discusses at erudite length the progressive infantilisation of an increasingly ill-educated populace and the abrogation of personal responsibility. Mr D waxes lyrical indeed on society's ills and I thoroughly recommend his book to anybody wanting a stimulating and learned reading of the situation.

But, not possessing Theodore's deft touch with the pen, I offer the blunter appraisal that this 'news' story pretty much sums up what a crock of shit Socialism is. Is this what we've come to? To openly play the system that is sinking this nation and not give a toss? Are we so far down the rocky road that it is no shame to openly boast about stealing from the state?

And when I say 'state' I mean, of course, you and me - the dwindling number of fools who work to pay for it all.

Homeward Bound

I'm sitting in a railway station, got a ticket for my destination, as yer man said. Okay, Mr Simon, close enough. I'm actually here in the Ata Lagoon Hotel in Oludeniz, at the foot of Mount Babadag, Turkey, with said ticket and a heap of baggage enough to build our own mountain. Paraglider pilots don't travel especially light. There's your wing itself, for a start, a harness to sit in and a reserve parachute. Then there's your flight suit (gets cold up there) helmet, variometer, GPS, camera, camera boom, VHS radio, headsets etc. Plus your normal luggage which, as well as clothes (2xT-shirts/socks/pants) nowadays includes laptop, tablet, smart phone, normal phone, normal camera, Kindle, plus all the chargers and adaptors. You get the picture...

Any old hoo, we now have the unenviable task of hoicking all that crap through Turkish security and the UK border controls during a ten-hour gruelling epic of transfer from hotel, Dalaman airport, four-and-a-half-hour flight, Manchester airport and the drive home to Brum. Then work tomorrow. Oh, dear readers, don't you worry about old Batsby. By the time I've endured the incessant chatter of the crowded bus, the aimless meandering of brainless morons in the airport and the excruciating wait to be readmitted to the country of my birth I will be fully back to my vitriolic self, ready to blog in anger once again!

So, keep the faith; Mr Nice Guy will be well and truly out the window and we can get back to business as usual. In the meantime, have a lovely picture of the bay.

See you back in Blighty!

King of the Hill!

Some days you just have to claim bragging rights.

It's not a competition, but yesterday I won! It can take an hour to get up the mountain - loading up the transport, waiting for stragglers, paying the fees, and struggling up the track, avoiding wild tortoises on the way. At the top you have decisions to make - which launch point, where to set up, whether or not to go off in a gaggle or wait for a solo slot, etc.

Then you have to wait for the right launch conditions and sometimes this means changing launch sites, at which point you have to rely on Shanks's Pony and lots of huffing and puffing. Then, of course, there's the flight itself,which can take anywhere from twenty minutes to several hours if the conditions are right.

From a nine o'clock start it could easily be midday before you are packed up and ready to start again from the bottom... find a lift, load up the transport... you get it.

So, I was particularly chuffed to get in not two, not three but FOUR - count 'em - flights yesterday. Here's a picture of me being chuffed:

And here's a short video of the start of my last flight down.

VIDEO LINK

See you all back in Blighty!

Whether or not...

If there's one thing that preoccupies paraglider pilots it's the gift that keeps on giving; the endless conversational smorgasbord that is the weather. Yes folks, not only can we bore for Britain about being 'aviators' we can also do your head in with  mutterings about microclimates, frontal systems, convergence, inversions, convectivity and cloud tops. We have, indeed, looked at clouds that way.

Find a group of plots on the hill and listen in - they'll be easy to spot, huddled together, slowly advancing towards hypothermia and jabbering away about this cloud or that cloud; about whether it's going to get windier or whether grey, orographic whispiness will develop. They'll point at the sky and consider the implications of ice formations at 35,000 feet and they'll look far out to sea to try and read the wind in the waves.

Sometimes they will spook each other with tales of errant pilots, who turn up on the hill, quickly check out the current conditions, launch and fly... and then die horribly, sucked up into a vigorous cumulo-nimbus cloud. Or be picked up and dragged bodily backwards into the turbulent rotor-streamed air because of an unforeseen gust on take-off. Or... or... or...

Most pilots have had or seen an accident requiring medical attention or air ambulance evacuation, but it's almost never the fault of the weather. It's almost always pilot error and one of the gravest errors is being taken in by the phenomenon of 'ground-suck'. Just as a big cloud can suck you into its white embrace, the weather guru can persuade you that flight is too dangerous to contemplate and it's not unusual to find a gaggle of pilots sitting on launch in perfectly flyable conditions, waiting for a wind-dummy to show them the way.

Often I am that dummy because, having once made a living as an aviation meteorologist, I know that most of what most pilots know about the weather is bollocks. I'd rather be flying. So here's a short clip of me doing just that:

CLICK ME

Poetry in Motion

Sometimes words just won't do it.

So today, I'm going all zippy-gobbed and just uploading a very short clip of exactly how one goes about tossing oneself off.

This is the westerly launch on Babadag mountain, at 1700m above sea level - I joined the 'nearly-a-mile high club'!

Olly Olly Olly!

Oludeniz - Olly - Turkish paragliding paradise where the cool kids come to play – yay! When I say cool “kids” I am entirely correct in the use of the outmoded vernacular because the average age of yer actual paraglider pilot is, well, it’s about my age. And last time I looked I was in my fifties.

It’s a sport entirely suited to we crusties involving, as it does, a fuck of a lot of sitting around, waiting. Waiting for a ride up the mountain, waiting for a slot in the ever-variable weather, patiently waiting your turn on the crowded take-off. Oh and patiently listening to the far-too-comprehensive site brief from the old hands who forget that at our age it’s nigh-on impossible to take in more than one piece of, er... you know, oh what’s the word I’m looking for? Anyway, here's a pic of the lagoon at Olly taken from my headcam:

At every paragliding destination I have ever been to I have been told “This is the worst weather we’ve ever had! Normally it’s as predictable as night and day and we fly whenever we want, wherever we want!”Last week was always absolutely brilliant and thus typical and somehow this week, the week I am here, is always the worst it’s ever been.

There are only two logical explanations for this; either paraglider tour operators are inveterate liars or I’m a Jonah!

Anyway, despite the “appalling weather” (judge for yourself from the pictures!) we’ve had some spectacular flying. In particular, I’ve not long landed from my sunset flight through clouds, in company and intact, which is always nice.

Away from a decent Internet connection it’s been hard to keep abreast of the news and impossible to engage on Twitter beyond a brief ‘hello’ from time to time. I can’t even upload video via this service – bandwidth of an under-nourished gnat’s pubic hair! As a result, I am entirely unaware of whether or not there is still a Euro, or whether Greece is still a part of it. I have no idea if the Falklands or Gibraltar are still British. I don’t even know how low my pitifully few shares have sunk this week. Instead I have slavishly served the needs of a non-European tourist trap while simultaneously indulging myself - It’s a tough life, but someone’s got to live it.

Normal service will be resumed on my return!

Turkish Delight

I'm not all there, There, that is; where you are. I'm all here, 'here' being Ölüdeniz in Turkey, for a week of tossing myself off a dirty great lump of rock into an azure sky above a turquoise sea, over and over again.

Lest you faint away at the sheer manly audacity and the godlike heroism of my deeds and imagine me to be of superhuman mien and other-wordly prowess, let me let you into a secret. I forgot to re-charge my new camera, so today's footage is a bit, well... rubbish.

But I'm putting it up anyway! This is team-leader, Brian, doing his best cat-herding impression and attempting to brief us "Olly-virgins" at the 1700m take-off.

The flight was terrific, but wind conditions contrived o keep us on the ground a long time before launching - which I did superbly, I might add - and then put us in the bar afterwards. Tomorrow I will do better - promise. until then my blogglings I bid you a balmy sea-breezy farewell and a jolly fine evening.

It's Digital, Man!

I can't be arsed with all this Greece nonsense. They are going to be enslaved, exiled or invaded and there's nothing any politician really cares about it, so long as they can stay in office by pandering to the uneducated, egocentric wiles of their increasingly dumbfounded electorate and keep telling them what they want to hear. Why change a winning formula?

So, sod the economies and the concerns of Greece, Italy, Spain Ireland and whichever knave in the house of cards is next on the world stage, professing to have the first clue as what is needed. Sod ‘em all and let’s look closer to home. Good old Blighty.

The UK is a pretty affluent country, you know? Of course we got troubles – who don’t, innit? – but Birmingham didn’t seem to think so yesterday. From the teeming masses out on the spend I saw little sign of a country in crisis.

There is nothing – and I mean NOTHING for sale in the Bullring that anybody actually needs. From the bizarre bubble-wrap skin of Selfridges, to the plethora of games and gadget shops, sunglasses huts, coffee emporia, perfumiers, chocolatiers and jewellers, there is sweet F-A that anybody needs to live on. For a country that’s supposedly broke it’s doing a great job of looking like a consumer paradise.

Every other outlet sells mobile phones with enough computing power to get man on the moon, or run an army from exile; the sheer capability of these things is truly awesome. But look who’s really using them and for what purpose.

The digital native, it is said, needs no formal knowledge-based education, for all knowledge is at the fingertips. What use is there in teaching history, geography, the sciences, language and maths when you can carry your brain in your pocket? (Something, incidentally, that men have been doing for millennia.)

Educationalists posit that ‘digital immigrants’ (that’s us crusties, folks) have trouble teaching digital natives because of the proliferation of a new language and new social paradigms. Educationalists, it seems can always come up with another pseudo-scientific reason not to educate. This, however, is a simple case of the tail wagging the dog – who is supposed to be teaching whom?

If the aimless, lardy simpleton waddling along New Street, glazed eyes fixed to a tiny screen, is an example of the digital native (and it certainly is) then you have to ask yourself at which point this genius is going to transform our brave new world.

For every Alpha entrepreneur, using technology in a new and interesting way, you have a million drooling Deltas using the same technology to order pizza. Aldous Huxley’s novel, while not great literature, was nevertheless prescient… and far more stuff needs cleaning than inventing. As long as you keep the drones happy, the world keeps on turning. 

Hmmm, (shudder at the thought) maybe the Eurocrats know what they're doing after all?

Marathon Man

That the sacred Olympic flame sputtered and died before it could light the torch last week might be seen as a prophetic sooth for Greece itself.

Stock markets tumble yet again as Hellene stumbles in her marathon, brought to her knees by greed and corruption and the utterly fraudulent behaviour of the Eurocrats. Unable to form a government - wrong answer from the first vote - the bewildered electorate are going to be asked to vote again. In the cradle of democracy, democracy is being asked to fix something it isn't able to do.

As other people's money pours in to the bottomless pit that is Euro-wide false accounting, the politicians appeal on platforms built from the answer they seek , rather than the answer they need. Wrong answer? We'll keep asking until we get the number we already thought of. But the people don't have the answer. If they did and if the elected ones allowed, we'd all be celebrating blue skies and a return to sanity.

Instead, the politicos are wedded to a future they appear to have no control over and little faith in, yet they universally feel incapable of acting in the interests of their countrymen. The European monster lumbers on and on, making its own mythology and  lurching into ever deeper crisis while the voice of the populace goes unheard.

While the world predicts the utter collapse of European democracy, the inquisitor Angela Merkel and her cabal will persist in asking Greece - and then others -  the same question,over and over again, until the exhausted demos gives them the answer they want to hear. "Is it safe?"

Pucker Up!

It's no good, I'm all out of angry right now. I can't seem to get riled about anything very much at the moment.

I've tried. I tried shouting at a recording of Andrew Marr yesterday, but what with it not being live I somehow didn't have the enthusiasm.

I've done Europe to death. I've ranted myself hoarse over the diversity and leftification of a once independent Britain and there can barely be a raggedy-arsed, fake-Roma, pikey metal thief in all the land who has not raised my ire.

I've had it with politicians, I've railed all I want about the monstrous children some of you are raising and the pointlessness of your moronic welfare-fuelled existences and  I've come to the realisation that pretty much the entirety of modern society isn't worth a weak wank into the winceyette .

Then, just when I'm thinking it's all over, the Daily Mail gifts me with this: a young woman is described as "A woman addicted to lip filler injections " FFS Addicted? Addicted to having poisonous fillers pumped into her lips to make her look like she's wearing a pair of bloated pink slugs on her face? Get out of here. Oh my giddy, piss-soaked aunt - what in the world of sweet Jesus-fuck do these deluded princesses think they are doing?

Leslie Ash, Meg Ryan, that ridiculous Jordan woman, Patsy Kensit, Amanda Holden... the list goes on and on and depressingly on.

Fortunately, I harvested the article before the DM pulled the link. It goes on to say: "[Her] problems started while growing up in Hampshire. At the age of 12, she was diagnosed with acute anxiety, insomnia and obsessive compulsive disorder. Poor self-esteem saw these problems develop into body dysmorphic disorder - a mental illness in which people become obsessed with perceived physical flaws or imagined ugliness - by 15. Following a breakdown, [she] was admitted to Warneford Hospital in Oxford and was prescribed anti-psychotics for her increasingly obsessive behaviour. At no point did any of the doctors who administered the injections attempt to stop her, despite knowing that she was taking medication to combat mental illness."

Dear Lord, seeking such treatment is itself a sign of mental illness. And most of her head conditions are actively promoted by a mental health system driven by a deep desire to pathologise the entire population; only when we're ALL mentally ill and self-harming to suicide music will they finally be satisfied.

They give this look the cutesy epithet of The Trout Pout, as if wearing the rubbery-lipped look of a young Mick Jagger gurning like a malevolent, thwarted child was a desirable thing. In case you didn't get it the first time - it looks bloody ridiculous. You want to look like that, you're seriously screwed up and it doesn't take a deluded shrink to say so.

But the body-chop-shop industry really doesn't give a shit either, does it? You want to have a nose shaped like a shovel, Jodie Marsh? Go ahead! What else awaits the poor woman? Tummy tucks, tit jobs, arse-implants, botox... cut it out, stick it in, move it here. Picasso wasn't just an artist, he was a prophet.

And talking of profit - it's this sort of shit that passes for industry these days. If we just took a step back down the road to simple, fruitful and worthwhile endeavours, such as making stuff we actually need, the whole country would benefit from better prosperity, dignity and - who knows - we may even recover our once-proud sense of humour.

Angry? Don't talk to me about angry! Grrrr!

Bora Bora

So I wake to yet another glorious day. As the sunlight gently teases its way through the blinds, the radio turns itself on and the world floods into my bedroom.

Greece, it appears, has finally found a solution, electing a coalition government that somehow appeases the masses and stays broadly on track with the reforms needed to avoid total bankruptcy. Good for them.

Closer to home – or globally, if you just open your eyes, man - Occupy have joined forces with the Greens and against the odds created a credible alternative to hard commerce. More and more disillusioned voters join hands and join their ranks in an outbreak of peace and humanity.

In further news, it turns out that the IMF computer has inadvertently been stockpiling funds after a stray decimal point was mislaid in 1971. Far from being hugely indebted, the world economy is actually in surplus. It will take a couple of years to redistribute everything, of course, but early estimates suggest the UK deficit will be eliminated by 2015.

More easy oil has been found in the North Sea. In a previously discounted field, a test drill has located a significant reservoir sufficient, it is estimated, to make Great Britain a net exporter of crude within eighteen months.

As I doze I realise how lucky I am to live in a world finally at peace with itself and striving for perfection… and then my alarm clock shocks me rudely awake.

As you were. Waking fully I realise it was all wishful thinking – as it always was. I feel sorry for you deluded fools, but I’m alright, Jack; here on Bora Bora it's all good!

Next! Occupation?

Fifty years ago there were spongers and scroungers; people who never did a day’s work and scraped by on the dole, a bit of thievery, fencing and the odd job on the side. They were almost universally reviled and sneered at, but they were few and the rest were striving for a better life on the straight and narrow.

Forty years ago the population continued to climb while overseas industries became more competitive. The unions in their pomp, perfectly legitimately fighting for better standards for the workers, were inevitably putting some of their members on the dole as factories closed and production moved to countries where a sustained and reliable living could still be made.

By thirty years ago the principle of living from cradle-to-grave on the state was becoming established – in some areas whole communities suffered the loss of their livelihoods and the working classes became the claiming classes through no immediate fault of their own. The unyielding unions repeated their tired old battle cries but never thought to ‘do the maths’. Once you price people out of a job and make them idle, how do you think they’re going to spend their time? Exactly… now we've got millions of the fuckers.

Into the fray steps Occupy. Occupy wants to change the world. (Yay, hooray! Who doesn’t?) With no perceived irony at all they want to change the world so that it’s how they think it should be, to which end they have scribbled out a manifesto in the back of one of their school exercise books during prep. (They still have prep at the schools Occutards attend.)

Their manifesto contains such earth-shaking objectives as an end to poverty, jelly-babies for all, no more homework and calls for everybody to be happy all of the time. Well it might as well do, for it is a list of 'demands' with no plausible method for their achievement.

Occupy is a global movement, they say, all three hundred and fifty of them - occasionally joined by the regular rent-a-mob who love to turn a peaceful demonstration into a punch-up with the police - and they insist that: 

“The current crisis is not a natural accident; it was caused by the greed of those who would bring the world down, with the help of an economics that is no longer about management of the common good, but has become an ideology at the service of financial power.”

Of course, of course, the global conspiracy. Have you ever heard, Occupy, of Mr Occam and his marvellously infallible shaving device? Man is no more capable of the level of complex sustained cooperation that this would imply than he is of, say, not forgetting the wife’s birthday.

Occupy go on to say “To achieve these objectives, we believe that the economy should be run democratically at all levels, from local to global. People must get democratic control over financial institutions, transnational corporations and their lobbies. To this end, we demand:"

Demand? Demand? There's that word again. Right on, man! What they, in effect, demand is a radical overhaul of human nature itself. And to that end, now the rain has stopped, they've been out to play again, assembling at St Paul's then going on to protest at The City. On a Saturday. D’oh! It would have been far more apt - and funnier - I'd have thought, to have started from St Jude's, surely? (Go on Google St Jude + Patron)

  

In their silly little masks, with their trite, silly little slogans, these silly little children have had no contact with the pointy end of real human nature. 

If you want to know how low it’s possible to go (Rapping, see? Piss-easy!) I can heartily recommend TheodoreDalrymple.

Occupy – the joke that keeps on joking.

I wouldn't start from here...

As the old joke goes, O'Reilly, when asked for directions would reply, "Now, Oi wouldn't be after startin' from here..." Cue much hilarity.

I have to wonder if France's new president, Francois Hollande's real name isn't perhaps Frankie O'Lande given his perplexing grasp of the nature of money. It's like Socialist Economics 101.

He wants to raise super-taxes on the creators of wealth, then splurge it on the feckless. He says he is 'anti-austerity' and 'pro-growth' which are meaningless and contradictory phrases, especially in the face of the catastrophic market reaction to the news of his election. He wants to levy financial transaction taxes but simultaneously and "openly describes himself as an 'enemy of finance', [and] said he would make his antipathy towards the City of London clear."

So, in other words he's going to declare open war on the people who dare to bring that horrible prosperity stuff, then expect them to stand still while he extorts it back from them. Without turning France into a barbed-wire fenced open prison I fail to see how that's going to happen. (Every WWII movie set in France seems to have at least one scene where border guards demand "Papers!" in a German accent)

Frankie's grand plan then, if I'm reading this right, is to drive out the people who make the money yet somehow take the money they won't be there to make and redistribute it to 'the poor' (along with some cake, presumably) who will then spend it on... well, what, exactly? Who will be left with the capital, resources and skills, the vision, drive and cash-flow to make and distribute the stuff his newly purchased electorate will want to buy? Who will pay for the enlarged state machine, which will be the only employer left in town?

So wouldn't you want to be a fly on the wall as this Gallic charmer meets David Cameron intent on telling him what a scumbag he is, what scumbags the British are, what Euro-taxes he is intent on pursuing to bring about the demise of the City of London and then, in the same breath, demanding that we in Britain turn out our pockets still deeper to shore up the fatally crippled and universally hated Eurocracy.

If I was David Cameron I would have to ask him, "Jaysus, are youse absolutely sure you want to be startin' from here?" 

PS: Can you show me the way to World War Three?

Race ya!

Last night the BBC news reported on the trial of the Rochdale Rapists with the words "All but one of the men were of Pakistani origin.” They neglected to mention that the ninth man was an Afghan and more pertinently that ALL of them were from Muslim backgrounds.

Of course, to declare that would have been seen as ‘racist’ as the race relations industry has been utterly triumphant in claiming Islam as a race for its own misguided and highly suspect agenda. If there’s one word that sends the Rozzers into fits of politically correct self-flagellation it’s the deployment of the R-Bomb.

This sort of thinking is grist to the mill of the likes of the abhorrent racist Lee Jasper, as he preaches his doctrine of hate towards all white people, even going so far as to declare that only white people can be racist. Yet the language of the Rochdale defendants is entirely racist when speaking of their victims, who they regard as sub-human and displays utter contempt for the rule of what’s left of British law.

It matters not what the BBC regards as ‘sensitive’ the simple facts are that there has been a spate of such gang-grooming of teenage girls and the two common features are that the gangs have been almost exclusively from Muslim communities and their victims almost exclusively white. Whatever the police want us to think they believe, there is an overt and obvious racially aggravated element and motivation.

Islam is like politics  - you can discriminate unchallenged, mutilate your own young girls, treat your women as chattels and all other women as rape fodder then, if challenged, all you have to do is lie. And keep on lying. (Thanks, Livingstone, Galloway et al) There's nothing the police dare do because, as Jasper keeps saying, brown people cannot be racists. No, but as they’ve amply demonstrated, they have no problem being rapists - what a difference a single letter makes.

Some clown of an apologist for all this then produced some specially massaged statistics declaring that as something like 38% of such crimes were committed by white men and only 25% by Asians, there was no racial element. Well, you can’t pull that if you’re simultaneously trying to lie to us that only 4% of the population are Asian. Oh, of course, it’s race AND politics, I forgot. You are allowed to lie and we are supposed to just take it.

The real face of hatred in Britain 2012

Racism has become such a powerful descriptor that once that particular joker has been played we have no defence. Thus we are hated in our own country even while those who hate us are here to take what we have. What a self-loathing pushover Britain has become. This is the Blair legacy. (Oh, yeah, there's that European business... and the 'war against terror'... ) But don't worry, Tony Bliar's coming back into British politics to apologise for all this and make it better, isn't he?

It's okay, my mate's paying...

All eyes are on France, as the great juggernaut of fluffy-bunny socialism relentlessly grinds all before it. Will François Gérard Georges Hollande’s presidency really be a new start for the European experiment? Or will he bring an already struggling French economy to its knees? A 75% top-rate tax has been proposed.

Tax and spend, tax and spend. Borrow and tax and spend and spend. It’s like a childrens’ song, where the wheels go round all day long, but nobody goes anywhere and all the adults in the vicinity go slowly mad and turn to drink.

But tax who? And what did those taxees do to so incur the red rage of socialist envy? What’s that? They made money, so fuck them until they give it all back? Is that really the plan, because it certainly sounds like it. Why not tax them at 120% to speed up the process? Rich bastards – that’ll show ‘em – I’m sure a liberal-minded economist could explain how that would incentivise them to work twice as hard just to keep up.

Maybe, if I close my eyes, I too can see the new Utopia? How would this work? Let’s start with a bankers ‘windfall tax’. It would be like me winning, say £100,000 on the lottery. (Totally free money being an essential plank of socialist fiscal policy) Okay, here goes… wish me luck! (Batsby squeezes eyes tight shut.)

***Floaty-wobbly-flash-forward-scene… with harp***

Wow, £100k! There's the deposit I need for a house. I can borrow another £400k on that, easy, so now I’m a half-millionaire. I read somewhere that with a pension of £500,000 I could retire comfortably for the rest of my days. So there’s plan A sorted.

Obviously, I’ll need a new car; nothing too flash, but a nice little run-around. And I really want to visit Australia; as I’ll be retired I could go for a couple or three months. While I’m at it, that sofa needs replacing and I could do with a bigger telly. I'll have loads of change from half a million.

In fact, why stop there? I have half-a-million in the bank now – as good as – so I can easily borrow another £500k to make me a proper millionaire. What’s that you say? Pay tax on my interest earnings – take a hike, Mike. I’m retired now. Why can’t you just leave me alone to enjoy my twilight years? And anyway, I read somewhere that, as a millionaire, I don’t have to pay tax at all apparently, so I’m good to go…

***Harp. Floaty shit. Back on terra-firma***

How is this happening? Are the voters just simpletons? I mean, the lying, cheating, muck-raking, anti-Semite, Ken Livingstone was only narrowly defeated in the mayoral election despite his sins being daily and loudly broadcast to all who bothered to listen. Or have they worked out that before long the whole world will be bankrupt, so sod it, let’s grab what we can before it all goes tits-up? Because that’s what it feels like - desperation. In the lock-up, surrounded by the Sweeney and with nowhere to run, the train robbers nevertheless carry on divvying up their haul.

Ali Baba's treasure - the last resort of the European Central Bank

Our only chance rests on these two hopes: First, that the whole EU edifice comes crumbling to an undignified end before they've had every last penny of our borrowed money, and secondly, that the voters really are simpletons – because if they are actually doing all this on purpose, sooner or later cold hard reality will hit home and they'll see the scorched earth at the bottom of the European money pit. 

And then it's World War Three. Brace yourselves.

Born Free!

"You're a what?" they say, "A blogger? I thought they were imaginary creatures like, you know, like gremlins or hobgoblins... or Star Trek fans."

"Trekkies?" I offer, praying they don't just think it's a posh pronunciation for chavpants, "No, they're real enough." I leave off the unimportant information that I web-log on an almost daily basis. No point in painting yourself into a corner.

"What's the point of them?" they demand to know.

And I respond firmly,"Umm..."

A silence descends while we each ponder the uppers of our footwear or explore the waxiness of our ears. A few undignified seconds tick away before somebody breaks the impasse.

"Well then..."

"Right. Yes."

"Must be, you know, things to,er..."

"Of course. Bye then."

So, the blogger lives to blog again. What do we do and more to the point, why do we do it? Who cares, but just in case you think we really are denizens of a nether world or bots that auto assemble blog content, here's a tiny glimpse into my own personal hell. This has been produced under duress, I'll have you know and every expense has been spared. Warning! If you blink you'll probably miss it!

(This travesty of the video arts has been brought to you by the combined weight of @TrickyBee @nursiedeb @clareyh @rachelradiostar @BibaFever @yummymummy108 and many others. You'll notice, they're all chicks, right?)

Here's the file in .mov format for Apple users:

The Ballad of Red Ken

Red Ken, Red Ken,

Once had his sights on number ten.

But London Mayor would do for now,

How hard could that be anyhow?

Red Ken led out his merry band,

And fought with tactics underhand.

Courting votes despite the views,

Of honest men and wealthy Jews

 The ‘ghostal’ votes of Tower Ham’,

Lets those made up by Lutfur Rahm’,

And any who can be persuaded,

Do the same and vote as they did.

Yet all the dirty tricks and pleading,

All the lies and cheats, misleading,

Tax affairs, still not conceded,

Could not give Ken the boost he needed.

But all for nought, the Twitterati

Exposed his tactics, crashed his party.

Supported Boris as Mayor, so then,

Red Ken is unemployed again.

Read Ken's political obituary in The Guardian

Him Mullah?

Being mildly stalked during Question Time, my usual Thursday night shouting-at-the-eejits-on-the-telly session was rendered less fluid as my pursuer wanted to engage in some serious left-right discourse. Attempting to throw him off I made a schoolboy error and invoked Godwin's law, in the form of the throwaway "Hitler was a Leftie" jibe, hoping he'd be dismayed and appalled... and more to the point, leave me alone to get back to the ranting.

I underestimated my assailant because the clever bastard countered with this. Good move, but Oh, my gawd I really wasn't interested. It takes all the fun out of it. (When I'm king there'll be none of this 'discussion' nonsense, I can tell you!)
It's largely irrelevant anyway because, left or right, the 'wings' of politics can only ever achieve a disastrous lack of balance and it's high time we returned to the dead-centre policies of the sainted Maggie.

As the (exhausting) article proclaims, it doesn't really matter what you call it and words are bandied around like confetti in politics, as Alan Massie writes. In fact, earlier this week I had already read this 2011 article by Jasper Copping which reveals the word 'Nazi' to be a linguistic insult. And here, Peter Mullen argues that the Tories have lost their direction and their conservatism, an assertion I tend to agree with.

 But all this brandishing of political labels is mere chaff to distract from the much more serious issue. What,exactly, was Hitler? Left, right, centre, sideways... socialist, facist, liberal, labrador... Whig, Tory, Marxist - who gives a Trot? I returned to the lengthy thesis again this morning and the truth revealed itself to me, as Moses with the ten commandments.

No wonder the man stirs up such enmity, yet such fanatical support from some quarters. He wasn't a fascist after all. he was obviously a Muslim.

The Crosses I Bear

The delightful and self-effacing Samantha Brick (for whom, who can have anything but awed admiration?) has come out on the side of A A Gill and his protestations regarding Mary Beard’s appearance on television. You can read her learned essay here and I urge you to do so.

For gifted people like Mary, Samantha and me, things are not as easy as you might believe. All my life I have suffered because of my supreme intelligence coupled with an almost unbelievable athletic prowess. My immense brainpower has caused me to be both envied and shunned by others; others with whom I have to grudgingly share oxygen.

I always emerge victorious, yet many believe I have not properly earned my place in the world. Just because my intelligence surpasses all those around me, this is no reason to make me a figure of hate. I was born special and I remain so, improving with maturity, like a fine wine, acquiring the wisdom of the ages and continuing to hone and perfect my powers.

To those naysayers I offer my sincere commiserations – they are clearly motivated by unchecked jealousy. Some say all I have to do is deploy my effortless charm and things are delivered unto me. I say it’s only my right. When you are as gifted as I am, it is difficult to comprehend the struggles of lesser beings.

For I am multiply blessed, or cursed, as it sometimes feels; with great gifts come great responsibilities. Few will ever know how hard is my lot to bear on all fronts, bestowed, as I am, not only with superior intelligence, but also with rare beauty and grace.

Now please, excuse me, I have a blog to write.

Haha, I Haz Blogged!

The Students are Revolting

During yesterday’s spasmodic tweeting I noticed a few comments referring to a Student Union meeting at Leeds University. The front-line correspondent was tweeting in exasperation at the pointlessness of much of the meeting – I believe at one stage they were voting to ban Israel or alter the laws of physics, or some other such thing as would satisfy the general student political curriculum.

I was a student once. I knew I didn’t understand politics. I did notice, however, that the students actively engaged in the black art were, almost universally, of the various-hues-of-rabid-socialism variety. They were often studying ‘unhappy childhood’ indicator subjects such as sociology, behavioural studies (‘psychology-lite’) and other ‘modern’ degrees with the word ‘studies’ in the title; subjects for which very few jobs existed back then.

This was a happy coincidence, as the socially motivated student wore then, as now, a uniform (and it was a uniform, however individual’ it seemed to them) which didn’t really say “I would very much like to work for a living, please.” Rather it stated – and still does – I am exercising my right to be indulged by the adults who pay for all this in my preening and posturing and shoving it all back in their faces.

I remember being perplexed by the NUS campaign “Education – a Right not a Privilege” when it was clear to me that higher education is, indeed, a privilege which, to this day I feel I barely earned, but which I am extremely grateful for.

These politically active, yet so childishly selfish students – or simply children as I now realise – had their counterparts in the far smaller Conservative student movement and the contrast was immediate. They studied more recognisable (dare we say useful) subjects, such as engineering and the sciences and dressed as if perpetually ready for an emergency job interview. They didn’t really go on marches or shout quite so much, largely because there were always assignments to be handed in and deadlines to meet.

Okay, they were a bit boring, but whilst the revolting students struck me as fanatic fantasists and pointless hippies, forever unilaterally banning bombs, opposing imaginary Nazis and preaching doom and hate while marching under the red flag, the blues had a positive glow that came, at least partly, from the expectation of a fruitful life ahead. Decades before it became de rigueur to present a fictitious CV for even a cleaning job, they were armed with a purposeful stride and an armoury of credentials.

Of course, many students used to progress in the time honoured fashion of being broadly left when young, broadly right when they needed to earn a living and support a family and then, when reason deserted them and they had feathered their nests, they could retire as woolly liberals. But, oh, how the diversity and equality industry has changed all that.

Georg C. Lichtenberg (1742 – 1799) said, “We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.”

Thanks to many years of state indulgence, easy access to welfare state and the insidious rise of the notion of human rights, we have created a political never-never land in which development of an adult view of the world is simply not necessary. Nobody credits Oscar Wilde with plausible adult political sensitivities, as this 1891 essay shows, but at least he had a grasp on the nature of humanity.

 The Student Union in Leeds should read that essay. Whether they learn anything or not is immaterial – but at least it would shut them up for a few hours.