Menzies Campbell lies and dissembles

I see that Sir Menzies Campbell has added his voice to those calling for a referendum. Well, he sort of has, but mainly he hasn't. To be precise, he has called for a referendum on British membership of the EU itself, dismissing the "reform treaty" as "comparatively minor".

There are two points here. First, when he says that the reform treaty is "comparatively minor", he is lying. The reform treaty is only "comparatively minor" if the EU constitution itself was comparatively minor - after all, they are essentially the same. The reform treaty will entail the handover of a considerable number of powers from the UK to the EU, not to mention the creation of a de facto EU foreign minister, and the incorporation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights into British law, at a time when the overwhelming majority think that it is we who should be taking powers back from the EU. To dismiss this as some sort of irrelevancy is deceitful, undemocratic, and treacherous.

Secondly, it is to be noted that Campbell has, like Keith Vaz before him, attempted to turn the question, from being focused on the specific issue of the treaty, to being focused on the general issue of whether or not we should be in the EU at all. In fact, Campbell has gone further than Vaz, since Vaz only wished to frame the debate in such a way that it appeared that voting against the treaty would lead to EU withdrawal, whereas Campbell wishes to ignore the reform treaty altogether, and simply ask "EU membership - yes or no?".
Of course, neither Vaz nor Campbell is a big fan of popular democracy. The only reason either of these pro-EU fanatics has suggested a public vote on anything is that they believe that a referendum is now almost inevitable. If it is indeed almost inevitable, then that is cause for celebration.

However, as I have written before, it is imperative that both the referendum question and the debate surrounding it stay focused on the treaty, and are not allowed to turn into a de facto (or indeed, a de jure) vote on EU membership. The reason that pro-treaty elements want to shift the parameters of debate is that while they are virtually certain to lose any referendum focused on the treaty, they would probably win a referendum on EU membership itself, and they are, of course, keen to fight any campaign on the ground which offers them the best chance of victory. Having won, they would then aim to claim their victory as a mandate for all further handovers of power, at least for the next thirty years or so, whether the public wanted these handovers or not.

Unspeakable Scum

Sick yobs degraded a dying disabled woman as she lay collapsed on the floor outside her home - and filmed the whole attack on a mobile phone.

During an horrific ordeal, Christine Lakinski, 50, was drenched with a bucket of water and had shaving foam sprayed all over her face and body.

And as a final insult, her brother Mark Lakinski revealed the men had urinated on his sister before she was discovered by passers-by.

What can motivate any ostensible human being to act in such an obscene way is completely beyond me. Sadly, however, this case is not without precedent, although I think that it does represent a new low point.

Hat-tip: North East Scotland Nationalists, who quite reasonably suggest public birching as a suitable punishment.

A sign of things to come

Have you seen that Hertfordshire Police have produced a series of posters which will be placed in prominent locations, in an effort to deter would-be criminals? In order to achieve maximum effectiveness, these posters will carry hard-hitting slogans, such as "Don't Commit Crime", and, for those that will be put up in petrol stations, "All fuel must be paid for". And why not? After all, we've all been there - that moment when you've just broken into someone's house, and you suddenly remember that you shouldn't commit crime. Maybe this will make it easier to remember, for those of us of a forgetful nature.

Commenting on the posters, a Hertfordshire Police spokesman said:

We are not saying it is going to stop hardened criminals but it may make someone who is nervous think twice.

Yes, they might think twice. After which they'll probably go ahead and do it anyway, because, so far as I know, a sign does not have powers of arrest.

Policemen, on the other hand, have extensive powers of arrest. Maybe, when they've finished putting up the signs, they could actually try doing the job they're paid for, and go out patrolling the streets. Somehow, I think that the sight of a burly policeman watching them with interest might prove a rather better deterrent for most aspirant criminals than a sign telling them not to be naughty.

There was an Englishman, a Scotsman, and, um...a censorious liberal cretin

In the village of St Breward, Cornwall, they have a parish magazine. Until recently, it was edited by Denis Lusby, who also runs the village shop, and is chairman of the parish council. Exhibiting a sense of community pride which impresses and bemuses in equal measure, he gradually, over eleven years as editor, built the magazine up from being a flysheet, to being a fifty-six page monthly publication, selling five hundred copies.

So, why is it that Mr Lusby is no longer the editor of the magazine? Well, it seems he fell foul of the head of Cornwall Council's "Equality and Diversity Service", Ginny Harrison-White, after he published a number of jokes in the magazine, including a couple of Irish jokes. None of these was particularly vicious, and since Mr Lusby is himself a Northern Irish Catholic, one might have considered it self-evident that he was not, in fact, a wicked racist harbouring a deep-seated hatred against the entire Gaelic race.

Ms Harrison-White thought otherwise, however. She was particularly concerned that schoolchildren might read the jokes, and thereby be driven to go and bomb Dublin, or something along those lines. Accordingly, she wrote to local schools, describing herself as a "concerned local resident", and demanding that they refuse to allow Mr Lusby to publish school news in his magazine. As she put it:

There are three items which are distasteful and two of them use racist language or ridicule based on race as defined under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 and which may have an impact on the attitude and behaviour of the children and the wider school community.

I am asking if you feel it is appropriate for the school and church to have their articles, which demonstrate and promote respect and celebrate achievement, published alongside such derogatory material.

The "racist language or terms of ridicule based on race" consists in the fact that characters in the jokes Mr Lusby used had the names Paddy and Murphy. Apparently, this was not the first time that Mr Lusby had had a run-in with Ms Harrison-White: she had previously written to object to the inclusion of Essex girl jokes in the magazine. After this latest complaint, Mr Lusby felt driven to resign by the woman's interference.

There is a common liberal stereotype of conservative Middle England, exemplified in the apocryphal correspondent "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells". However, far more common is the "concerned local resident" in the Ginny Harrison-White mould. The kind of sanctimonious, often nimbyistic, always interfering, upper middle-class liberal, equipped with an endless stock of self-righteousness, and a complete and utter absence of anything approaching a sense of humour. I believe that more than half of the politically-correct censorship that goes on in this country is brought about on a purely local level, by people like this. It was exactly the same kind of smug white liberal, no doubt, who disrupted the village fete in another Cornish village, St Columb Major, because some participants made mild fun of Muslims.

Perhaps it was Ms Harrison-White herself who kicked up a fuss about the fete. Certainly, it seems that she is something of a professional do-gooder. Aside from her (completely unnecessary) job at Cornwall Council, she is also president of the (completely unnecessary) National Association of Teachers of Travellers, in which capacity she called in May for Romany, the language of the gypsies, to be taught in schools, in order "to [increase] knowledge of gypsy communities and help break down barriers of prejudice". I wonder if she's even come close to doing anything vaguely useful in her entire life?

Anyway, here is Denis Lusby's finest Irish joke:

Father Murphy [note that the use of the name Murphy caused particular offence to Harrison-White - FR] walks into a pub in Donegal and says to the first man he meets: "Do you want to go to heaven?" The man said "I do, Father."
The priest said: "Then stand over there against the wall." Then the priest asked the second man: "Do you want to go to heaven?" "Certainly, Father," was the man's reply. "Then stand over there against the wall," said the priest.
Then Father Murphy walked up to O'Toole and said, "Do you want to go to heaven?"
O'Toole says: "No, I don't Father."
The priest said: "I don't believe this. Do you mean to tell me that when you die you don't want to go to heaven?"
O'Toole said: "Oh, when I die, yes. I though you were getting a group together to go right now."

The mark of a crypto-fascist bigot? Or simply a rather amusing bit of humour from a good local magazine? Which do you think?

More footage from Brussels

Here are two more videos from yesterday's protest. Readers will notice that among the "bigots" of SIOE, there are plenty of skinhead thugs and associated low-life. They can be identified by their blue police uniforms. The protesters, on the other hand, appear to me to be well-dressed, respectable-looking people:





Hat-tip: Abandon Skip

Respectable, mainstream politics

A Labour councillor who took an “unwinnable” seat from the Liberal Democrats did so by using smear campaign against her opponent, a court has heard.

Miranda Grell, a 29-year-old aide to the Deputy Mayor of London, appeared to have a glittering political career ahead of her.

A rising star in the Labour ranks, she had been photographed with high-profile figures, including Cherie Blair and Jesse Jackson, and many saw her election to Waltham Forest Borough Council, East London, as the first step on her road to high office.

But yesterday, the Manchester and LSE graduate appeared at Waltham Forest magistrates’ court accused of labelling her rival a paedophile to win the seat. The court heard that Ms Grell told voters that Barry Smith, an incumbent Liberal Democrat councillor, slept with underage Thai boys and was “dirty”.

Mr Smith, 56, a high-profile member of the council cabinet who has a long-term, 39-year-old Malaysian partner, lost his seat by 28 votes. He broke down in tears yesterday as he told of the impact that Ms Grell’s alleged lies had on him.

Gareth Branston, prosecuting, said that during her election campaign Ms Grell, whose parents came to England from Dominica in 1973, told voters: “Don’t vote for Barry because he’s a paedophile.” She led a “whispering campaign” designed to play on constituents’ “fears and aversion to paedophiles”, he claimed.

Ms Grell, who cites Barbara Castle and the suffragettes among her political heroes, is charged under the Representation of the People Act 1983 with four counts of making false statements about another candidate in order to gain an electoral advantage.

She denies all the allegations. Paul Williams, for the defence, said that the accusations against her were “some sort of a Liberal Democrat group conspiracy” and that the court case was now being used as “a political weapon” to attack Ms Grell.

So, if she's guilty, then a relatively senior Labour official and councillor has been caught spreading obscene lies about a political opponent. Lies, indeed, which could potentially have put him in quite serious danger; Mr Smith said in his evidence that after the lies were allegedly spread, he was threatened and spat at in the street.

Or, if Grell is innocent, then the Lib Dems would appear to have brought about a court case in a bid to smear an opponent, and individual Lib Dem supporters might even have committed perjury.

Either way, it doesn't look good, does it?

Rowan Williams: Morally and Intellectually Retarded

Via Dhimmi Watch, I find the latest display of completely indescribable stupidity from Rowan Williams:

The Archbishop of Canterbury used the eve of the anniversary of the September 11 attacks on America yesterday to defend religion against claims that it promotes division and violence.

Dr Rowan Williams said that although Islam and Christianity had histories scarred with violence, they carried the “seeds of non-violence and non possessive witness.”

Jihad, or holy war, could nowadays be interpreted as a “struggle of the heart” rather than the defence of the Muslim community against its enemies, he said.

Well, he may interpret it that way, but Yusuf al-Qaradawi does not. He interprets it as meaning that one can wage violent war against those living in Dar al-Harb ("the domain of war", i.e. non-Islamic lands). Al-Qaradawi is seen by Muslims as one of the greatest contemporary Islamic scholars. Rowan Williams, by contrast, is seen by Muslims as a useful idiot, and by everyone else as simply an idiot. Which one do you think knows more about Koranic interpretation?

He added that both faiths could offer society an ideal of peaceful co-existence despite their violent histories because they were guided by beliefs that transcended human conflict.

Note the moral equivalency between Christians and Muslims. Williams appears not to regard Christianity as in any way superior to Islam: both offer an equally good vision of peaceful co-existence. Now that's a pretty odd position for an Archbishop of Canterbury to adopt. Not an unexpected one from this particular Archbishop, though.

The Archbishop’s lecture to a Christian Muslim Forum conference in Cambridge follows mounting criticism of religion as dangerous and destabilising.

While there are some who attack all religion in this manner, I can think of one religion which has carried out more than its fair share of dangerous and destabilising actions, and which consequently tends to get rather a lot of (richly deserved) criticism. Can you guess which one I mean? Because Rowan Williams can't.

But Dr Williams argued that religion should not be judged by the failures of its adherents but on its vision of a social order that is “without fear, oppression, the violence of exclusion and the search for scapegoats”.

He compared the “act of nightmare violence” six years ago, when extremists flew aeroplanes into the twin towers in New York, with the birth of Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent protest movement on September 11, 1906, in Johannesburg.

He said that Gandhi’s movement showed it was possible to reject a response to oppression that “simply mirrors what has been done by the oppressor.”

Now, this is the real low point. As Robert Spencer at Dhimmi Watch points out, Williams actually appears to be saying that the 9/11 terrorists had a just cause, but simply went about expressing their justified grievance against violent US "oppression" in the wrong way. To say this at all is indicative of a severely dysfunctional moral compass. To say it on the eve of the anniversary of the attacks themselves is simply reprehensible.

Free Speech? That's only for Muslims, isn't it?

Unsurprisingly, it seems that the thugs of the Belgian police force got pretty heavy-handed with those who turned out for the Brussels protest against the Islamification of Europe. Al-Beeb reports that dozens of people were arrested, including two leaders of the Belgian Vlaams Belang party, and it appears that the demo was over before it had begun. Once again, we see that free speech is only for those the left likes.

Mr Smith was there, managed to avoid arrest, and has written an eyewitness report of events, which is well worth reading. Meanwhile, the SIOE site is silent: perhaps the organisers of the demo are among those experiencing the hospitality of the local filth.

Update: Via Laban Tall and the Brussels Journal, I find this video of the Belgian police arresting a couple of demonstrators, including the Vlaams Belang's leaders, Frank Vanhecke and Filip Dewinter:



The piece at the Brussels Journal also has an eyewitness account of the demo, and of the police thuggery which shut it down. Read it, watch the video, and then ask yourself, "are the police on our side, do they protect us, or are they an enemy and an obstacle to freedom that needs to be removed?"

Update (2): There were 154 arrests in total, according to Australia's ABC News. Meanwhile, the secretary general of the Council of Europe described the protesters as "bigots" who posed a threat to European values (unlike, say, Sharia law), and added:

It is very important to remember that the freedom of assembly and expression can be restricted to protect the rights and freedoms of others, including the freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

Actually, though, I'm not aware that any of the protesters did pose a threat to anyone else's freedoms of thought, conscience, or religion. What they were doing was criticising other people's beliefs. Now, I suppose that this might have upset those poeple, but if the rights to freedom of assembly and expression can be taken away simply because someone might get their feelings hurt, then they really are worthless.

Give this man a gun!

Gary Souter likes a drink. And when he drinks, he can get a bit violent. In February, he was banned from every pub in Cardigan, South Wales, after getting in a brawl in a wine bar in which two people were injured. He himself was accused of assaulting a bouncer.

Would you give Gary Souter a gun?

For Dyfed-Powys Police, the answer is a resounding 'yes'. Because, not long after being banned from thirty pubs, Police Constable Gary Souter was transferred to the force's armed response team.

Now, personally, I support the right of all law-abiding citizens to possess a gun. And, since Souter has not actually been convicted of a crime, this could include him, at least in his private capacity. But, in a society in which it is illegal for most people to have a gun, is Gary Souter really the kind of person who should be singled out for the privilege, and responsibilities, of carrying one? And is he, in any event, the kind of person who should be part of a police armed response unit? After all, it is of the very nature of such units that they will often be involved in tense and potentially dangerous situations - situations calling for the exercise of a considerable degree of self-control and restraint, neither of which Souter appears to possess in any degree whatsoever.

Target Practice

Dumb Jon takes the ball and runs with it.

Really, Janet Snell, the proverbial ball in question, is a Godsend to right-wing bloggers. An instruction to fisk her post on Fran Lyon's case can be interpreted in more ways than a Shakespeare play. A million bloggers with a million typewriters (well, PCs with internet access anyway) could fisk away for a million years and still not find every possible permutation!

Incidentally, Ms Snell has now added a comment to her original post which is almost as fiskworthy as the post itself. I won't bother dealing with it now, since the comment doesn't really add anything that we haven't had in the post itself, but I would point out that her attempts to justify her characterisation of the Daily Mail as "vile" contain just as high a level of dogmatic assertion, and just as little evidence-based reasoning, as the original claim itself. Which is quite impressive, in a way.

Update: Well, Janet Snell's post appears to have been pulled. Clicking on the links to it now just brings up a message telling you that "the page cannot be found". Does this mean that Janet Snell is withdrawing her various claims, and accepting that she was wrong?

I doubt it. Rather, I imagine that she, or one of her colleagues, simply didn't like the attention they were getting. When I last saw the post late this afternoon, it had about twenty comments added to it. The only one of those which was not critical of social workers, was that written by Snell herself.

Of course, deleting the post raises further questions. Such as, what does it say about Janet Snell that she writes a post complaining that no one listens to what social workers have to say, and then deletes it because, um, too many people were reading it? I mean, social workers hiding themselves from public scrutiny? Now I really have heard everything!

But readers should not despair. The complete annotated post is still available here. I have also put the Community Care blog, The Child Minder, in my bookmarks, and I can tell you, that Janet Snell's post was really just par for the course over there. There are simply so many posts just crying out for a good fisking. Like this one ("black gang violence is the fault of everyone, except the black gangs themselves"). Or this one ("social workers were the real victims in the Climbie case; I mean, she only died, we get criticised"). Oh yes, I foresee many happy hours ahead, for all concerned.

Update (2): The post is now back up, after having been down for somewhere in the region of five hours. The reason for this volte-face is unclear.