Sorry for the absence.

I can't promise I'll be posting regularly just yet, but I should have completed a move from one flat to another by this weekend, so then we'll see about internet access...

Caliphate near

Once again the French have proved themselves meddlesome inadequates when it comes to their Africa policy. Unlike the British, who never want to be tangled up there again, the French fancy themselves a bit of an African player on the ground.

That's the principle reason why Chad is about to be seized by Islamists coming out of Sudan. The French as guarantors of the continuation of stability have failed. Whether that failure is permanent remains to be seen.

Yet if you look at the map below, you can see that, with radical Islamists in charge of both Sudan and Northern Nigeria, the way is clear for a pan-Africa Islamist alliance stretching from the Red Sea to the Gulf of Guinea and the South Atlantic.

Both Sudan and Nigeria are oil-rich countries. No one seems to see where this is trending. Obama wants the US out of Iraq, the British appetite for action seems to be determined by the likes of Matthew Parris and the BBC. All the time vital resources are coming more and more under the power of hostile entities who are essential to the interests of China, and potential allies of Russia (which is in turn vital to Europe's energy requirements).

Oh, and the economies of the West are showing ever greater fragility.

Blogger in spirit.

Students, "on the sudden transported under another climate to be tost and turmoil'd with their unballasted wits in fadomless and unquiet deeps of controversie, do for the most part grow into hatred and contempt of Learning, mockt and deluded all this while with ragged Notions and Babblements, while they expected worthy and delightful knowledge; till poverty or youthful years call them importunately their several wayes and hasten them with the sway of friends either to an ambitious and mercenary, or ignorantly zealous Divinity; Some allur'd to the trade of Law, grounding their purposes not on the prudent and heavenly contemplation of justice and equity which was never taught them, but on the promising and pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat contentions, and flowing fees; others betake them to State affairs, with souls so unprincipl'd in vertue, and true generous breeding, that flattery, and Court shifts and tyrannous Aphorisms appear to them the highest points of wisdom; instilling their barren hearts with a conscientious slavery, if, as I rather think, it be not fain'd. Others lastly of a more delicious and airie spirit, retire themselves knowing no better, to the enjoyments of ease and luxury, living out their daies in feast and jollity; which indeed is the wisest and the safest course of all these, unless they were with more integrity undertaken. And these are the fruits of mispending our prime youth at the Schools and Universities as we do, either in learning meer words or such things chiefly, as were better unlearnt."

I wonder what Milton would have made of universal education or 50% university attendance? Probably in this context he would have welcomed the healthy appearance of the Mcdegree. Milton's full text and commentary here.

Our BBC boys go large

Recently there's been some hoohah over the BBC's funding from the EIB. EU Referendum blog has been on this case for almost four years, as have I, and I think there's a very broad picture here to talk about.

The Huntsman has a detailed analysis of the EIB case.

Surprisingly few people are aware that the BBC World Service is funded directly by the UK Government, not from the License Fee. Think of all those tie ins of expertise and knowledge between the BBC and the Foreign Office. This World Service is growing, not contracting, and its support from the Government is growing too. Lately they launched Arabic and Farsi TV, for instance, through a greatly enhanced funding package. The propagandist possibilities are endless, and they feed back into a BBC "we know best, we're the experts and know secrets" mentality that places them above their real direct funders, the public.

The BBC has not only received loans from the EU banking tool the EIB, it has also received direct funding from the EU.

That doesn't stop the BBC acting as a commercial operation at every opportunity. Its profits are its own, its liabilities are ours through the funding of all sorts with which taxpayers support it. When they're getting away with so much, why wouldn't they be arrogant?

One can rightly say that Conservatives have failed to see the BBC for what it is- a fundamentally unconservative concept and operation. This hydra head of state communications badly needs cutting back.

Self-preservational cynicism

I read with interest the latest UK crime figures, and noticed that gun crime was up by four percent, while overall crime fell by nine percent.

I am aware of the existence of the British Crime Survey of public opinion, which acts as a counterweight to the statistical approach, but all things considered I find myself still sceptical.

It's interesting to me that the crime figures would go down when the "enforcement" mechanism of serious crime and organised crime, guns, should be on the rise.

I also wonder, because in the UK I had some experience with crime (on many occasions). There was especially one occasion when, living in York, my car was broken into- nothing was stolen, but many hundred of pounds of damage was caused. All I received was a written invitation to visit the local station and report the details along with parts of the car that had been the focus of the attack and were possibly forensically interesting. No police officer came out, and as I couldn't use my car I would have been forced to walk three miles to the station- if I could have been bothered- with a plastic bag full of bits I had no knowledge of how to treat to enable their effective use in the investigation (ha!). Being young I was supposed to be able to take, you know, whatever. I don't think the crime was ever recorded. Or maybe it was- I don't remember, know or care. It was just a very bad dream to be carless in that location for about six weeks as complex repairs took place.

Well, that wasn't my only experience, but it had a deadening effect on my perceptions. You see, crime tends to intimidate- one is so preoccupied with the most serious that others almost go unnoticed. Crime committed to property, for instance, or crime you witness. You're only bothered about the minor disaster that effects you. I don't think the authorities ever face up to that kind of reality- it's frankly far too much work. And so it goes, always worse, unheralded except in spasms of taboid righteousness.

And this brings me to the point about gun crime. It's so serious it has to be noticed; it's so intimidating it's all absorbing, but the thing is that it swallows up in its maw such a miserable array of crime- that's the point; guns shield crime. It's what they're for- at least when guns themselves are criminal.

Seriously worrying, but good writing.


Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has a startlingly good analysis in the Telegraph of the financial crisis hitting world markets. Bottom line: the Fed did not panic.

A very short post


"Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for President of the United States. I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort. Jeri and I will always be grateful for the encouragement and friendship of so many wonderful people."

Right, said Fred, I'm off. You have to love the simplicity of it.

Well, Fred came third in North Carolina, second among registered Republicans. A creditable performance but probably not enough. Still, if creditable is credit-worthy then I feel in credit, especially reading this.

Just as well, considering the parlous economic state out there.

I Hate Writing Things Like This But Anyway...

GO FRED!

I have been observing the US Republican Primary race with quite some attention for a while now. Recently Thompson has been awesomely good, in the sense of the best a person can be when they don't believe "awesome" belongs in politics. Slap downs and humour, serious debate and moments of humanity outstripping in all modesty the rest. Very good indeed. But most people think it won't be enough. Romney would do, I suppose.

Sample recent Fredism:

"I'm opposed to global warming... I was up in New Hampshire a little while back for a debate - that's the only reason we went, because the circus was in town... and while we're on our way, there was a snowdrift that must have been six feet high... on this snowbank, there were about 15 signs stuck in that said, "STOP GLOBAL WARMING." They don't see any irony in things like that in New Hampshire."

There's no question we're going through warming and we need to understand it more... But we don't have the answers to a lot of questions. We don't know if this is the end o the story, or something that will be followed by cooling... If we shut down our entire economy, it still wouldn't do anything about what's coming from India and China... We are a small part of the solution, and we don't even know the extent of the problem yet."

A video of Fred taking the media down another peg here

Not stellar, but brilliant. That is the point of Fred.

Or hows about this?

"We want to take our coverage of Westminster, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, the Northern Ireland Assembly, the European Parliament, as well as local councils up and down the land and turn them into the most engaging, the most creative multimedia portal for democracy in the world... all of it available to every secondary school in the UK as part of a strengthened commitment by BBC Learning to supporting citizenship and modern media literacy." (Mark Thompson, Director-General of Auntie)

What a turn off. Deeply scary. Speech here. The Times here. Mr Dale here.

"I think little of people who will deny their history because it doesn't present the picture they would like."

Quote of the week.

A List

Usually quite boring, lists can be useful for ordering information when that information is quite diffuse. Er, yes, well...

anyway, the Times have come up with a list of interest to me, mainly because this site's favourite poet, Philip Larkin, is placed at number one in their rankings of finest British postwar writers.

It's quite surprising- I thought I was quite unusual for placing him there but I think that he's one of these characters whose persona was so miserable people want to posthumously recognise him as a kind of exculpation of neglect. It helps that he happens to be transparently good.

What's so good about Larkin? David Baddiel writes a nice account.

Looking at the list, I am struck by its thinness- I feel that Ted Hughes at number four must be there to save the blushes of those of us who had to spend months, years, nay, decades, aeons, perusing his hamfisted countryside ramblings. Nice for kids... ah- but actually not, since his worldview is much more darwinian-dark than Larkin's ever was. Then there are the novelists, and with William Golding at number three one feels something like despair. And that's where Larking comes in, as quoted by Baddiel:

"If I seem good it’s because everyone else is so bad. Well, almost everyone. Well, anyway ..."

well, exactly Philip.

Onwards and Upwards.

Progress: "misinterpreting the weather is getting easier and easier."

That UK Janus face again

Complicated country, Britain.

As we enter a new year, Mark Steyn picks up two stories which show the two sides of Britain:

The NHS worshipping side, and the martially soaring spirit.

See, what we need is to divert a little of the latter to rip into the former, and then we'd be kicking, so to speak.

An amusing Beeb-based opening to 08

Sometimes the deference shown by the BBC to the statements of the so-called authorities of questionable nations can be hilarious. Sometimes it's just foolish and unfair, since the Beeb can be so critical of western governments with whom they wish to pick a bone- for example the US.

Well I think in this case it's the former.

"Malaysian Health Minister Chua Soi Lek has admitted that he is the man who features in two widely circulated DVDs of an unmarried couple having sex.", runs the lede (italics and emboldening mine).

Later we learn "his own wife and children had accepted his apology.". So what was the point of the "unmarried couple" thing? He's married, alright, so why the tricksy little moralistic-sounding intro? Or is that just to help me with my google search- ahem, not that I would, of course (and anyway it doesn't seem to produce anything)

I dunno. It does get funnier though, when they quote:

"I am the man in the tape," Mr Chua, 60, told reporters.

"The girl is a personal friend."

Mmm. Certainly what I call a personal friend.

'she was everything we in the west would like a Muslim leader to be. We should be modest enough to acknowledge when reality conflicts with our illusions. Rest in peace, Benazir.'

Mark Steyn says it so well.

I was thinking today about the distinction between fairytale and fantasy. Benazir Bhutto facing down the Islamists falls firmly into the latter category, if one remembers that fairytales contain a germ of human reality (the princess coming to her senses, the Prince ordering the garden, cutting down the undergrowth, seeing through the charade and inviting the modest girl to the dance, etc.- symbols of real action and change), fantasy drops from the sky.

One should give up on fantasies, but not fairytale. I've been sitting with my neice and nephew, watching such things- and now I'm following the Bhutto trauma online. Fairytales cannot lead anywhere but up or they peter out into fluffiness; fantasies can distort into nightmares, and almost always do.

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.

Being busy without reason is a public menace.

In a week when the BBC have been trumpeting what they see and highlight as the latest evidence that global warming is fact (and of course, they always include the man-made hypothesis in this as though it were necessary to add it when it is implicit in the very presence of "Global Warming" stories in our societies' dailies), it's a relief to find Stephen Fry put his support for the movement in a philosphical context, reframing Pascal's Wager about God's existence:

"For the eco-believer it’s no-lose situation: we all survive if they’re right and we’ve acted on their belief, we survive if they’re wrong and we’ve acted on their belief. Whereas for the eco-denier we survive if they’re right and we’ve done nothing but we perish if they’re wrong and we’ve done nothing."

So often we get pointless and rebuttable anecdote- here we get a theory of action.

It's good to be able to say that Fry's thought is quite inadequate on this matter.

It's clear that there is not one accepted result of ignoring global warming. There are many, and few of them catastrophic in the short term save to a small minority of the world's population. Yes, that does sound rather Benthamite, doesn't it? Well, the eco-enthusiasts are the real Benthamites, it seems to me. They figure that focussing the world's economic, scientific and political resources on one aspect most prominent to themselves and their interests has and will have no consequences to those falling outside the sphere of action envisaged by the protocols of rich nations.

And if it does, well, tough. IT'S THE ONLY WAY. Win-Win :-).

Update: I've just come across this rather excellent post from Sean Gabb of the Libertarian alliance on the subject.

Amazing, isn't it, how much ground the solidly conservative Thompson can make up, just by ambling along?

Interesting article, with the opinions of ace pollster Frank Luntz, here.

Fred is the man as far as my thoughts go on the US Presidential trail. I still think he'll be the winner. It's funny that it's so much more encouraging (with caveats) to follow US politics than it is to follow the UK's.

It becomes wearisome

No I've not tired of blogging in the few days since I got my laptop back from the cowboys technicians who fixed it.

No, the wearisome thing is the extent to which writers with whom I am in agreement are suffering from the scrutiny of the law.

I mentioned Susan Ehrenfeld a while back- a lady who cannot publish in or visit the UK after being landed with a GBP250,000 libel order from a British judge. Ehrenfeld was just among the most vocal in a line of victims of Islamic terrorist conduit sewer suer-in-chief, Khalid bin Mahfouz.

As I mentioned below, Mark Steyn is now in the line of fire, predictably- through his Canadian publishers Macleans. I've had a read of the muslim lawyers' complaints document and they are predictably lacking in substance and long on generalities- but perhaps the law relating to "Islamophobia" is too.

Stanley Kurtz makes a valid point when he says "the anti-free-speech attacks on Steyn and Maclean’s, by Western-trained lawyers, no less, show that Steyn’s concerns about poorly assimilated Western values are more than justified."

The only problem with that is that it isn't Steyn's viewpoint- he sees such lawyers as understanding all too well the lessons of their education. I think he's right. Arguing in generalities laced with a vague scent of human rights is about the level of public discourse, and I would say not so far from the standard of legal discourse, today. The whole incitement of religious hatred thing is a vague nonsense open to abuse from day one- and so it is proving.