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Friday, September 28, 2007

So do I


Six mounted police on the beach at Bournemouth erased the slogan that was written on the West Undercliff Promenade in Bournemouth, clearly visible from the Bournemouth International Centre and the secure zone around it, where the Labour Party conference was being held.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

That's so gay

Among the long and growing list of things I like about Britain is that in this country, the term "gay", while sadly hardly ever used in its original OED sense, is almost exclusively used as a derogatory.

I am glad, in general, that my experiences thus far have bolstered my theory that the great majority of people here are not on with the Labour/BBC/Guardian political orthodoxies. That "gay marriage" is just as scare-quoted in ordinary conversation as it is in certain online publications. (In fact, I was very happy to note that the Daily Telegraph also uses the quotes. Good on 'em.) That the only people not willing to openly admit that it is mass immigration from cultures wholly alien to ours that is causing most of this country's problems, are the members of government (and their media toadies) who have allowed it. That nearly everyone thinks the "political correctness" thing has gone to absolutely intolerable lengths of absurdity (though no one seems willing just to thumb their noses at it...yet).

Happy to report that the Ordinary British Subject (that I have met so far) is, while not the intolerant xenophobe so gleefully depicted in the self-hating screeds of Jeremy Paxman, every bit as old-fashioned and sensible, honest and normal as one could hope.

Today I realized something very important about the difference between Britain and That-Country-North-of-the-US. In TCNOTUS, there is no market for a paper like the Telegraph. There could not possibly exist anything like a backlash party like the BNP. It seems clear that the average Canuckistani is totally incapable of thinking outside the box of Officially Approved doctrine, a gift that, TBTG, still exists here. (Of course, the question is now, how to get the polite Brits to move from "Oh isn't it dreadful, they've banned Bonfire Night, conkers and fox hunting," to the pitchforks and torches phase.)

In contrast, the Canuckistanis are, in a word, Goodthinkful. To a man.

Couldn't make this stuff up

I have been informed by a reliable source that in this country there are areas in which the local government installs microchips in people's bins to make sure they are not throwing away things that might be recycled.

Average British tax rate: 40%

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Saturday, September 22, 2007

All well stop Unable to write more due to delerium of joy stop more news later

All well. emailing from the computer room at the Oxford and Cambridge club on Pall Mall in London stop

Have just been stuffed full of scones and tea at another club on the patio of the tea garden Stop

All following Pontifical High Requiem Mass for King Henry XI, the Cardinal Duke of York stop

Aux bishop of Westminster pres., where hat rec'd hon. mention in lay dressing-up category stop

Aux bishop very nice stop

Lord Someoneorother also very nice stop

Plan to leave Canuckistani backwater and commence life as character in Evelyn Waugh novel ticking along nicely stop

Must go see Buck House before train stop

Will wave to Queen stop

please don't ever ever let it

stop

HJW

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Monday, September 17, 2007

The New Tory Party


it's pronounced "Poofcack" (which it will be called on the sidebar, until I stop laughing and become distracted by something else.)

Boris Johnson for Mayor of London



While it might seem unnecessary to say it, I think we can all agree that he's a sight better than this guy...

Two...



They're "doing well", according to Jack Straw, because they haven't had any race riots...yet.

Nice standard for "doing well".

(In case you're not familiar with British media euphemisms, "Asian" is the favoured term for "Muslim". It doesn't mean that Japanese, Koreans, Chinese or Vietnamese people are pouring into Blackburn and making the public authorities afraid there will be riots.)

...but comrade, if you've committed no crimes, what have you to worry about?

Confidential personal data is being shared at unprecedented levels, the
information watchdog will warn today.

Data from sources as diverse as store loyalty cards, electronic travel
cards and driving licences is being used without people's knowledge as
never before.

People have "almost zero awareness" of how the information is being
passed around because the web of public and private organisations storing
it has become so complex.

Experts fear it will soon be impossible to stop the "information
sharing juggernaut".

Friday, September 14, 2007

Ye Bittes of Olde Ynglonde...

are falling off the corpse.

You might have guessed, from my somewhat precipitate departure from public blogging a few months ago, that I had other duties that required my attention. As has been suggested elsewhere, there were communications coming from an undisclosed location, but they were of a private nature.

As of today, I'd like to say thank you to all the people who sent me nice notes, especially about my mother's death and especially those who said Mass, had Masses said and who prayed for the repose of her soul. I'd like to say an especial thank you to those who said nice things about The Devout Life and how they'd miss me an' all.

I would also like to thank the posters of the vitriolic personal insults and attacks; nice to know I'm not wasting my time.

As of today, I am happy to announce my return to public blogging. As you see, there are a few changes. With the publication of The Long-Awaited Document from Over the Mountains, I feel that there is little more that I have to say about All That.

But the other great change that has happened lately is of a more personal nature. The countdown continues for my departure from the land of my birth, to return to the land of my origins. I shall be touching down on the ancient tarmac soon and by this time next week, will be commencing life as a British political blogger. Or perhaps, just a blogger in and about Britain.

I hope to do justice to the complexities and wonders of that green n' pleasant land, now so beset with terrors.

Why Britain, some have asked.

I've had quite a few notes sent in to point out the many reasons why everything is going very badly over there.

Yes, I know. Yep, know about that too. Yep, mmmm hmmm, covered that one. No, no, haven't missed it. Got it, yep. Uh huh, that too.

Mostly people have asked, "Why?"

As I said in a recent invitation to my Toronto friends to take me out tomorrow night and buy me a last pint:

because my mum died and it's time to end the exile.

because I want to go see the people I'm related to...

because I've wanted to go back since I was a child...

because there's just more interesting stuff to do there...

because Canada has become such a pointless self-parodying Trudeaupian wasteland of idiocy that there just seems no reason whatever to continue living in it and no eartly reason to be bothered trying to save it...

because there's more politics worth fussing over, more newspapers worth reading, more castles worth visiting, more beer worth drinking, more tweed...

and, after ten thousand years of my ancestors living there, building a culture, a history, a way of life, a way of thought, a manner of governance, a philosophy of law...there's just more stuff there than here that's worth fighting to the death for...


All the things that make Canada stupid and pointless are going double over there. But it has been pointed out to me that in the case of Canada, there isn't anything else. It's just a stupid and pointless ideology that happens to have attached itself, like a giant tundra mosquito, to a particular bit of geography. Canada doesn't really exist any more. In the case of Britain, the stupid pointless ideology is there, probably worse than here, but there is also a real country.

Why England is rotting?

England leads Europe in illiteracy, obesity, divorce, drug use, crime and STDs. Bloody hell

MARTIN NEWLAND | June 11, 2007 |

There used to be a time when taking on the Royal Navy was a bad idea. The force that policed the high seas through two world wars and protected the largest empire ever seen was for years the emblem of British national pride and pugnacity. Which is why it was particularly humiliating for many Britons to witness the spectacle of the navy's finest peddling stories about their capture a couple of months ago by the Iranian Republican Guard to the newspapers. The British had already watched televised "confessions" by servicemen, in which they criticized national foreign policy and admitted to crimes and trespasses they had not committed.

But it was the paid interviews given once safely home that left the nation wondering what has happened to traditional British reserve and the notion of the stiff upper lip. Leading Seaman Faye Turney told the nation of the sheer hell of being reduced to counting carpet tiles in solitary confinement while waiting to learn of her fate (Iranian prisons, one is led to believe, are carpeted). And the diminutive Operator Mechanic Arthur Batchelor complained to the media that the Republican Guard had taken away his iPod and called him Mr. Bean.

It was not long before commentators drew parallels between the behaviour of our fighting personnel and the collapse of traditional British values. The venerable right of centre newsmagazine The Spectator, in its editorial, said the episode "demonstrated just how deeply British society has been corrupted by the twin cults of celebrity and victimhood." These sentiments were echoed by the social commentator Theodore Dalrymple, who said the affair showed Britain "to be a country of very slight account, with a population increasingly unable to distinguish the trivial from the important and the virtual from the real, led by a man of the most frivolous earnestness who for many years has been given to gushes of cheap moral enthusiasm."

Getting a little worried?

PM: My focus is on governing, not snap election
Gordon Brown once again refused to be drawn on the prospect of an early general election today, insisting he was focusing on "getting on with the job of governing". Without directly naming the Conservatives, he pointed the finger at David Cameron's party for fuelling speculation over an early poll in the autumn this year or spring 2008.

...but of course, no one ever asks us...

Judging from the wallet-polls, not very many British people are in agreement with the BBC/Guardian Axis editorial position.


The Daily Mail has one of the largest circulations of any English language daily newspaper, and the twelfth highest of any newspaper in the world....The Daily Mail considers itself to be the voice of Middle England, speaking up for "small-c" conservative values against what it sees as a liberal establishment. It generally takes an anti-European, anti-immigration, anti-homosexuality, anti-atheism, anti-abortion view, and is correspondingly pro-family, pro-tax cuts and pro-monarchy, as well as advocating stricter punishments for crime. The paper is generally critical of the BBC, which it perceives as being biased to the left.

Thoughtcrime of the day

BNP website is the most popular in politics, with more hits than all other parties put together.
A website run by the far right British National Party is the most visited website of any UK political party, with more hits than all other parties put together, a survey has found...Young and well educated city dwellers are also over-represented amongst visitors to the BNP's homepage.


"over-represented"

Nope, no bias under here...

Saturday, September 08, 2007