Frauds fingered

It is taking a while, but the internet is starting to expose some of the previously untouchable people who climbed into positions of influence pre-internet and post-decent traditional standards of competence. The BBC is more and more sensitive to criticism- the bubble of complacency has been disturbed. Their response to criticism is in the main an ever more obstinate denial- sticking to their established lines without examining their context.

That's not to say that under the surface it isn't having a real impact and influence, entailing the consideration of views that they previously considered next to impossible.

But it isn't only the BBC that is coming under pressure. I am sure the Smith Institute is much more careful than previously what titbits they offer the likes of Guido Fawkes, and MPs are considering rather more carefully than hitherto their handling of expenses after the experience of one Mr Hain.

And now several Canadian "human rights" commissions have wandered into a hornets nest by attacking my old fave, master of letters Mark Steyn, who notes:

""The wacky world of human rights commissions": I love the insouciance of that first sentence, the assumption that every reader will get it. Before this thing started in December, Canadian newspapers didn't use phrases like that about their "human rights" enforcers. There's a long way to go, but these frauds have had the worst four months' publicity in their history."

Amen to that.

Still freely mocking politicians....


Mark Steyn's stocking filler is a corker.

Best read in accompaniment to this video 'enhancement' of Hillary's latest campaign video.



As the US election cycle begins to hot up, I was struck with the contrast between that and the incredibly depressing spectacle of another generation of Lib Dems girding their loins to rally behind the miserable, vapid and vacuous Nick Clegg, whose acceptance speech was empty as hell and inept even at that. The BBC tried to find an interesting angle on Clegg and as the Beeb were trying to be interesting in the written word, something they have limited understanding of, the result was typically grotesque:

"The male clegg drinks nectar, and sucks blood.

It's is an old word for a gadfly - an insect which hops from one thing to another, irritating livestock and rarely settling in one place.

Nick Clegg, its namesake, will hope there is more political sweetness than bleeding ahead."

I think I'd be a little irritated by that, were I a Lib-Dem, if I didn't know that it was probably just BBC "creativity" gone wrong- which is rather different from their groupthink leftism as that tends to follow predictable lines.

Shhh- only me. Sorry I've haven't posted for a few days. I've been working on something a bit different.

As it is, I have only two slivers of Steyn brilliance to offer.

The king of wordplay was at his finest in 2002 when swapping barbs with the Saudi Ambassador to London: 'a couple of days later it was announced that King Fahd had appointed him Minister of Water - which, on closer inspection, turns out to mostly involve being Minister of Sewage. My fan has hit the s--t'

But then he's not so rusty today, though a touch more serious:

Last week freedom took another hit. Hillary Rodham Clinton unveiled her new health care plan. Unlike her old health care plan, which took longer to read than most cancers take to kill you, this one’s instant and painless – just a spoonful of government sugar to help the medicine go down. From now on, everyone in America will have to have health insurance.
Hooray!
And, if you don’t, it will be illegal for you to hold a job.

Read the rest for the statistical demolition job, and be illuminated.

And what encouraged me to post the below poem, was this article from Mark Steyn.

You see the article (registration -free- required) deals with an issue which I believe Philip Larkin intuited a long time past:

"one of the critical questions at the heart of the West's twilight struggle: what is a child?"

Worth registering to read.

Piccie of Britain. Canadian-American conservative Steyn writes:


"the dolly birds staggering around paralytic, the pools of "pavement pizza", the baying yobboes gagging for a shag and hurling bollards through the bus shelters to impress the crumpet - is a natural consequence of what happens when the state relieves the citizen of primal responsibilities."

How much of the first three lines do you imagine the US readership would understand without effort? Classic stuff. Personally, I've always felt that the type of characters outlined above were always subliminally aiming for the Hogarthian effect. I preferred to keep it to cartoons.

Dangerously Good

If you're not following the Conrad Black trial as blogged by Mark Steyn for Macleans, I strongly suggest that you do. Writing with such unpolitical perspicuity Steyn does what the great satirical writers have always done: open their opponents to ridicule while remaining scrupulously observant. I suppose none of the jury will get to read any of it, but if they did...

Sweet, sweet article from Mark Steyn on the Iran hostage crisis, complete with LoL moments such as this:

"Patrolling the Shatt al-Arab at a time of war, the Royal Navy operates under rules of engagement designed by distant fainthearts with an eye to the polite fictions of "international law": If you're in a ''warship,'' you can't wage war. If you're in a ''destroyer,'' don't destroy anything. If you're in a "frigate," you're frigging done for.

World as Stage

My previous two posts were a nod to the Czech political reality- which probably you knew very little about. Sorry for the irrelevance, but I actually think it should be relevant. After all, if Europe can't raise a mite of interest in the futures of 10 million of its inhabitants, what counts for anything? Big Brother and Jade's little outbursts?

Mark Steyn has a brilliant article in today's Chicago Times asking questions of the parochialism of US politics.

His main target is the Barak Obama love-in in the US media.

But, if the US is displaying a strong tendency to prefer talking about Iowa over Iraq, for instance, this at least has some apparent self-interest going for it.

However, quite rightly and incisively he speculates, amidst all this all-America dramatizing : "Whether the rest of the planet will be content with a non-speaking part".

And one just says, "quite".

I'm led to reflect on the fact that the world's most incisive columnist is a theatre critic. If we never go beyond the theatre concept in our understanding of the world we will be in trouble. This is no criticism of Steyn- he always points beyond the theatre but few are interested to follow his gaze.

It's what happens stage right that should concern, and the European media is not just parochial- if only- it's balkanised to a point where it cannot interest itself in its neighbours sharing its own interests.

Failure to support (maybe even school), for instance, the emerging Eastern democracies is a factor in their low birth rates (nb. the exception of Albania being above replacement level) which cannot be excused by conventional explanations of civilisational maturity etc. Eastern Europe has lowest low birth rates which endanger its emergence as a set of allies for a european future.

Here of course the EU is far more hindrance than help, entrenching outmoded social systems above economic necessity.

Failure to make due note of Imadinnerjacket's foray into South America, and Chavez's declaration of self-rule, and the trend towards formalising axes of evil, could lead to some pretty painful twists in the plot, rather than Shakespearian comedy.

And these are just two of the unfolding dramas that either never reach the limelight or only in the form of rough comedy for the lower orders.

Maybe Ahmadinejad will meet his Waterloo at home, but maybe that's not the fundamental drama anyway on the part of Iran.

"As I always say, there is no “stability”. We thought we’d “contained” Soviet Communism. Instead, the social pathologies that took hold during the Russian people’s half-century of “containment” will have profound consequences for us and the rest of the world long after the last Commie is dead and buried".

- Mark Steyn. Rest of article found here.

Over Christmas I read America Alone. I don't think any writer has made me sit up in my chair more, ever. It may explain the deeper reason why I was thinking along the lines I wrote about in my last post, largely about the fall of communism. The People's Tragedy is another book I've read- that one specifically about Russia- and its title is adequate to its subject.

Contrary to many people's imagination, there is nothing crackpot about Mark Steyn's reasoning.

"The Toronto Star (which is Canada’s biggest-selling newspaper and impeccably liberal) recently noted that by 2015 Muslims will make up a majority of Russia’s army."