Kill the wrinklies!!

So, let me see if I've got the logic worked out: Because the NHS does such a lousy job of treating cancer patients, they have the worst rates of survival in the EU, particularly for those over 75.

Because older people have such lousy survival rates, we're now going to not treat them at all, in order to save "resources" for younger patients who have a *slightly* less-lousy chance of getting out of an NHS oncology ward alive.

Did I get it right? Do I win something?

I notice that the DM writer, however, didn't look too closely at which govt' body might be contributing to the kill-the-wrinklies policy.

Psst...you need to interview these guys: National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (N.I.C.E.)

To quote... err... myself...

In 1945, the great 20th century Christian apologist, C. S. Lewis, wrote a science fiction novel in which he proposed an alternative British history. In this history a government-funded scientific think tank, the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.), dictates government policy according to eugenic, utilitarian principles.

In that novel, That Hideous Strength, the ironically acronymed N.I.C.E. takes over Britain and attempts to create an anti-human totalitarianism in which human rights are abolished and people are used as disposable tools in medical and social experiments. The guiding principles of Lewis’ N.I.C.E. are immediately familiar to people on the pro-life side of our current Culture Wars: a mechanistic and ultra-utilitarian, anti-life philosophy that regards human beings as merely a disposable means to an end.

...

Set up by the Labour government in 1999, the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (N.I.C.E.) produces "guidance" for the NHS on what drugs and treatments should be provided by Britain’s government-funded health system. From the extraction of wisdom teeth, to the funding of Alzheimer’s drugs, to the provision or withdrawal of nutrition and hydration to disabled patients, N.I.C.E. lays down what will and will not be paid for by Britain’s National Health Service.

~

"Dangerously English"

The cultural self-loathing of Britain's ruling elites has really come to an almost hysterical, self-parodying pitch.

This is the latest from the guy who organised the famous Last Night of the Proms for eleven years. If someone was wondering why it was looking less and less English every year, we are now told that it was no accident.

"...The flag-waving finale to one of the cultural highlights of the nation’s calendar.

But according to its former director, patriotic fervour should be kept to a minimum at the Last Night of the Proms.

Sir Nicholas Kenyon, who ran the concert series for 11 years until 2007, claimed the event was ‘dangerously English’ until he brought in a host of international musicians to make it more ‘inclusive’.

The former BBC Radio 3 controller welcomed the fact this year’s concert will feature talent from overseas.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House programme yesterday: ‘The Last Night of the Proms, from being something dangerously English, has now become something totally inclusive.

Wanker. Tosser. Pillock.

You had to know this was coming. Though the Proms' Englishness is mostly ironic, a typically tongue-in-cheek English in-joke, it could hardly get past the self-hatred censors on the left forever. What started as healthy and charming national habit of modest self-deprecation has been nurtured by people like this into a dangerous national mental disorder. I've come across no other people in Europe, except perhaps the Germans, who are so thorougly trained in this mass neurosis.


But here's a little secret: English people are patriotic. And they're emotional. The people bobbing up and down and singing along to Elgar in their black-tie and dinner jackets at the Royal Albert Hall are only doing it in an ironic way as a cover for their real feelings. Trust me, by the second chorus, the irony is the fake, the shield, not the patriotism.

It's not an accident that all the English people I know can sing along to Jerusalem. And this Last Night sing-along has grown into a mass annual outpouring, now being broadcast every year onto giant screens in the biggest public parks in three cities to huge and totally unsophisticated crowds of flag-waving chavs and shopkeepers...all. singing. along.

It's the nation's best kept secret: they really are the good natured, "keep calm and carry on," stiff upper lip, mustn't grumble down to earth people the stereotype says they are. For all the studied sophistication on display in the Capitol, one doesn't have to scratch too deep to get the average Englishman back to his fish n' chips and flat-cap roots. I've talked to them, and compared to the real thing, the real soulless moderns inhabiting the world's centres of the anti-culture, the modern urban Brit is what he's always been. And away from London, away from Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, the people in the small towns and villages have very little modernian skin to scratch off. Plenty of tweed skirts and twin sets, plenty of flat caps and wellies out there if you know where to look.

Like much of the Islamic rage one sees on the evening's newscasts, Britain's self-hatred, outside this little cadre of elites, is staged for the cameras. And judging from the comments sections in newspaper reports like the one above, the general population is going along with it less and less.


Here's one of my favourite clips of one of the all-time great English actors in one of the all-time great English films, about one of the all-time great English heroic characters. Leslie Howard as the Scarlett Pimpernell.

..."This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,--

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm,

this England.



~

Bad

Nope.

Who'd have thought that Stupidity Shielding would be so effective.

I've had some more correspondence from our little English girlfriends afraid of the Boogey Man. Y'all are not going to believe this, but they're still asking, "So, just what are your thoughts on the BNP?"



Perhaps I was not clear below. I'll try again, using smaller words.

The BNP doesn't matter.

They were only ever a symptom of Britain's deadly political disease.

You have fetishized them because that was what you have been taught to do by the brainwashing you have undergone from the BBC/Guardian Bubble you all live in. Unless you leave the UK, in mind as well as body, you will never know how enmeshed you have all become in the Marxist honey trap.

You've been trained, like a bunch of performing seals, to ritualistically spit on the ground and make signs against the Evil Eye whenever their name is mentioned. In short, your terror of getting the BNP-cooties, and your accompanying fear of a robust political conservatism, is a result of having drunk the lefty Koolaid.

When Call-me-Dave started his "modernising" programme for the Tories, it was, in effect, a white flag, a declaration that the left's bullshit critique, "nasty," of the party was correct. It was, in short, a capitulation, and a declaration that from now on, the goal of the "right" in British politics would be "ever-closer union" with their opponents. Classical or Traditional Conservatives (look it up) now have no representation in Britain's political life. So, good work there, guys, we've been Stockholm-Syndromed, thanks.

(My own political position has had no representation since the mid-16th century, so it's hardly surprising that the likes of you all didn't have a frame of reference to identify it.)

UKIP, as well as the BNP, only went as far as the zeitgeist would allow, that is, to libertarianism. Yes, the joke all along has been that the BNP were never "rightwing" according to any objective standards of political theory. They were socialists and statists as much as every other British political movement. None of which matters much now since they are defunct as a political force in Britain, with nearly all of their support having gone over to UKIP.

But hey, don't let these "fact" thingies stop you. By all means, continue to play your crucial role in the programme destroying our country. That none of you has any idea that fascism and socialism are the same political species, that their diseased shoots come from the same political root, is what tells me there's no hope at all Britain can be turned back to the path of the grownups.

So anyway ladies, if you want another fish from your political masters, or really feel the need of another bitch-slap, feel free send me another email asking if I support the BNP. I'm only too happy to keep mocking and ridiculing you in public.

~ * ~

Oh, and in case you're wondering? Yes, I did actually leave the link to Simon Darby up there specifically in order to get under your skin. Y'all will note that I've moved it up to the top of the list now.



~

Brits freak out

I have scant memories of the lower middle class life I lived with my family in Manchester c. 1972, but I do recall that it wasn't pretty. It really, really didn't look anything like Downton Abbey. One of the things I appreciate about YouTube is its ability to show us television from other periods.

This

kind of shows what life was like then in a middle class suburb of an English conurbation in the 70s/80s. And how they really felt about it.

Is it any wonder that the English are kind of freaking out right now? The only thing holding them together at all since the Anglican takeover and the forcible suppression of The Real, has been the social rules.

Well, we got rid of those, didn't we?



~

Nice dress

Apparently, my dislike for the ... err... I suppose we must now call her the Duchess of Cambridge ... is eliciting comment in some circles. No idea why. What is surprising about a Traditionalist Catholic - one whose life's work is to repair the societal ravages of the Sexual Revolution - disliking a woman who made her name parading around 4 fifths naked, allowed the photos to be published, and then publicly shamed herself by living in an immoral relationship with another man for ten years? A man who, moreover, would some day sit on the throne?

That this is now accepted behaviour, even by Her Majesty, is a testimony to what has happened to that country. But it really never seems to have occurred to anyone over there, anyone, that it is perhaps just a wee bit of a scandal that the grandson of the monarch should be, first, publicly keeping a concubine and then marrying one. One might have thought that someone, anyone, might have looked at the trouble caused by the outrageous behaviour of the late Princess of Wales (how many were there? did anyone count?) and give some thought to turning back the clock a little. But it seems never to have occurred, even to the Queen, that the disaster All That caused should have prompted a revival, at least within the family, of more, shall we say, old fashioned standards of behaviour.

But no. We're all fine with this sort of thing now. We're the New Britain. Whoopee!

But more importantly, the fact that her pretty face has so turned the heads of my readers that they are surprised by my calling her a tart, will perhaps be an indication that they, not I, need to rethink a few things. Yes, she's very pretty. I believe that was the point she was making when she took off her clothes and flaunted herself in front of the cameras and the son of the Prince of Wales.

I'll say one thing for her, she's got good taste in clothes ... when she chooses to wear some.

I do sincerely hope that is taken into account for her when she is standing in front of the Judgment Seat.



~

Breaking News! Ocean very large, filled with water

"New Labour look down on the working class and despise their voters."


Of course, it's hard to hold it against them. The "working class" in Britain has been lying around on the sofa eating crisps for 50 years.



~

Cold Comfort

This is precisely what I mean when I talk about the brutality of Anglo medical care and the utilitarian ethic that has taken over much of western medicine. It's not just Britain, but is the norm in Canada. Whatever their administrative failings, there is simply no way this would happen in an Italian health care facility. Ever.

All her life, she was appalled by the thought that one day old age, infirmity or sickness might make her a burden on others.

Like many of her generation she did not like to make a fuss. Quiet fortitude was her style. So during her final illness she did not protest when she was treated with a level of dismissive contempt that amounted to cruelty.

When she was quarantined in a bleak and windowless hospital room, Mama — who had been diagnosed with terminal leukaemia — was accorded neither compassion nor care.

And there is no other reason that the euthanasia movement has taken such hold. Frankly, people are terrified, and with good reason. They have seen how their relatives and friends have been treated by this Godless, heathen, human-hating "autonomist" philosophy.

The English can thank heartless Protestantism for creating this cultural paranoia of "being a burden to others" that really does have the whole country in its icy grip. There is almost no religion left in this sad realm, and the Protestant revolution can be thanked for most of their current cultural woes.

Every day I thank God (and, incidentally, St. Philip, who as good as "told" me to come here) and my friends who convinced me, for bringing me to Italy and delivering me from this horror, so much worse than the simple frustrations of Italian secretaries.




~

A few little notes on the news

OK, I get the whole "let's not kill off our future" thing that the American black pro-life movement is saying, and I'm with it all the way...

But I have to say, I really don't understand American race issues at all. Never have. I mean, in what universe is this person "black"? What counts as "black" in the US seems to be more a political question than a question of genetics.

And finally, what the hell difference does it make what colour you are? Isn't there something... well... racist about the 'black pro-life movement' altogether? Is it asserting that people have value in spite of their colour or because of it? I'm really not sure, since the message is so confused. I understand that the people who founded Planned Parenthood, and the people who run it today, have been and remain very interested in killing as many black children as possible, both domestically and abroad.

Some years ago, I was having a conversation with a woman in the pro-life movement about some issue or other, and she asked me, "I'd like to know what you think of this as a woman." I had absolutely no idea what she meant. I don't think things "as a woman". I just think things. I told her that it was a meaningless question. The moral law does not make such distinctions. I have not looked very closely at the "pro-life feminist" sub-branch of the movement, but I can't help think that there is some deep contradiction at work there, some profound misunderstanding either of what feminism is and where it came from or what the pro-life philosophy means taken in its entirety.

I don't think the "black pro-life movement" is saying that it is more wrong to kill children who are black. But maybe they are saying that it is more wrong to kill a child because he is black, and I'm not sure I would go with that. The end result is the same. A child is dead. The child is just as dead if you kill her because she is black, or because she has Down's syndrome, or because the mother simply didn't feel like having a child. Dead is dead.

The same question can be applied, and is being applied, to this latest kerfuffle in the UK over sex-selective abortions. What difference does it make if you kill a child because she is female or kill the same child because she cramps your personal style?

We've got a video clip that illustrates perfectly the absurdity of British abortion laws and procedures. In Britain, you can get an abortion, paid for on the public dime, if you give the right reason. The kerfuffle now is over women getting abortions after giving the wrong reason. This means that if you want to kill your child because she's a girl, that's "morally wrong" (according to Andrew Lansley, the health secretary) but if you want to kill the same child because you're "not ready for pregnancy" that's just fine, morally respectable and perfectly legal.

So, the Telegraph reporter and the pregnant woman go to the abortion facility and she says, "I want to kill this child because she's a girl..." What happens next?

"Is that the reason?” asked the doctor, who introduced himself as Dr Raj. "That's not fair. It's like female infanticide isn't it?"

When the pregnant woman asked if he could put down a different reason for the termination, the doctor said: "That's right, yeah, because it's not a good reason anytime

… I’ll put too young for pregnancy, yeah?"

So there we have it. That this is how the law works in Britain is, I suppose, something very few people ever think about. So, despite the whole thing seeming utterly silly to us, people who do understand why the entire premise of the UK abortion law is insane and self-contradictory (not to mention evil), this is probably the first time that regular, normal people, people who do not have a lot of training thinking logically, are being confronted with such a stark presentation of that insanity that we all know so well.

If this matter gets enough attention, and if the pro-life people in England make the right points, this may actually do some good. It seems possible that this will open a debate in Parliament in which something might get said that makes some sense. At last.



~

"Big Society" meets "Real World"

Ah Britain...

It's a long story, but in a nutshell...

For quite a long time, however many years it was, the Labour Party under Tony Blair tried to make Britain a different place from what our mums and dads had known.

Very different.

Now, David Cameron, who likes to make people think he's a "conservative," has made up this new plan to make things more like they way they were. It's called "Big Society," in which, he figures, regular people will start helping each other, without going to the government to fix all their problems.

Trouble is, this requires the kind of people who lived in our mums' and dads' Britain, not the kind of people that Tony Blair's Britain has produced.

Here's a little example of why this isn't going as well as hoped. One of Tony Blair's friends' little projects, that gets talked about rather too infrequently, was this new thing, Not-A-Cop. Called "police community support officers," PCSOs, Not-A-Cops function just about as well as you would imagine from the name.

Here's a headline typical of their great contribution to British society and policing...

"PCSOs trash penniless homeless guy's tent, bought by local charity"

"The tent was warm and it was out of people's way in woodland.

"It was secure my own private space where I could read a book with my torch."

The tent disappeared when Mr Hicks was out walking around the town during the day.

He returned back to the area behind Witney's Windrush Leisure Centre to find the tent gone.

Mr MacKenzie said: "I inquired in the leisure centre (about the tent) as to whether they had any information and was told that the manager authorised two Police Community Support Officers from Witney Police Station to clear Justin's home away.

"Also, if the police had dismantled it then it should have been treated with respect and taken back to the police station so that Justin could have claimed it back.

And here's a funny video about it, so you can have a laugh in case you were starting to worry about this too much...


(Watch out for language...)





~

Ocean very large; filled with water: study

Sometimes the temptation to climb up onto the top of the cupola at St. Peter's and yell "I TOLD YOU SO" down into the piazza is overwhelming.



~

A parade of naked emperors

Why do I have no interest in the "mainstream" art world?

Well, this:

Walking publicity stunt tapped as "Professor of Drawing" by Royal Academy.

Tracey Emin, someone I think of as a human sneer aimed at everything good, true and beautiful, has been appointed to the job by the General Assembly of Royal Academicians.

Painter Anthony Green said, "She draws at the speed of thought, which is a very rare ability."

Yes indeed, behold, this miraculous "natural talent".

Miss Emin herself comments on her amazing ability: "Some of my favourite drawings I have done with my eyes closed - or so drunk I do not remember making them."

Never would have guessed.

“...Being an artist isn’t just about making nice things, or people patting you on the back; it’s some kind of communication, a message.”

James Abbott, another angry art blogger I've recently discovered, responds: "I believe, in her heart of hearts (deep down where one may still reside), Emin’s message to the world is: 'sucker!'"

Apparently there are still about 60 students actually studying "art" at the Academy to whom she is now obliged to give lectures and workshops in drawing.

Many of the classical realists I've become interested in studied "fine arts" or "studio art" in university or at some accredited school and they uniformly say the same thing about it. That it was time wasted and they learned nothing of any use whatever.

Is it any wonder?



~

26 per cent of Brits support EU membership; 100 per cent of their political betters support it

And yet, facing imminent surgery for cancer, I'm still obsessed with European politics.

...polling makes the British public's position devastatingly clear (summary here). It shows that just 26 per cent view our EU membership as a good thing.

Yet this is the view of 100 per cent of the main parties in the House of Commons. There is a large democratic deficit here, a gap that might yet be filled by another party.

...these issues are complex, lawyerly – can we expect ordinary folk to reach an informed opinion based on a hunch? Does the bouncer's opinion count for as much as the barrister's?

To me, this questions cuts to the very nature of left vs right. I'm a free marketeer because I believe that the masses are smarter than the elites.

Stanford academic Thomas Sowell argues that the world is so complex that no one person can possess "even one percent of the knowledge currently available, not counting the vast amounts of knowledge yet to be discovered". So, "the imposition from top down of the notions in favour among elites, convinced of their own superior knowledge and virtue, is a formula for disaster".

Hence central planning, the Soviet Union, etc. As Sowell says, the real ideological fault line – rather than the diminishingly useful party political labels – can be drawn here.

How do you define knowledge? Do you see it as something that is concentrated (i.e. in universities and libraries) or spread across society? If you believe the former, then you're on the side of the Polly Toynbees and the Tory Paternalists who believe power (and money) should rest with an enlightened elite.

If you believe the latter, then you'll be in favour of transferring power to the many, not the few, and be against nicking their cash.

I think this is the problem with the whole left/right paradigm, as it is now manifest in American politics. I thought it was interesting that the OWS "protesters" used the term "Republican" exclusively as a political insult. I imagined what they would make of me, a right wing Anglo-Canadian who lives in Europe. I would obviously have had to correct them if the epithet Republican were aimed at me, because I am not an American and, frankly, don't know very much about the details of American politics (it's not my beat).

The idea that Fraser Nelson puts forward above shows a basically stagnant, and unwinable, situation in the political realms in Britain and the US. While in most of Europe, the "right" has failed and when one is presented with even the most extreme, fringe "right wing" parties like the BNP you find that a brief analysis shows they are still in favour of state-enforced wealth re-distribution that we used to recognise as socialism.

What is needed is a genuine new paradigm. I am not myself qualified to offer one, but I believe that the Catholic Church offers a solution that transcends the inescapable battle over class wars, top-down elites vs. freemarketeers. The trouble with the Marxian paradigm is not that Marxism, whether cultural or the more direct kind in China and the former Soviet Union, presents a threat to the "free world". It is that the Marxian worldview, the framework and terminology presented by the Marxist idea, has cornered the market on political thought. No one in the business of political and economic ideas seems capable of thinking outside the Marxist box.

No one, including the left in the Church, seems to have read the social encyclicals in the context of Catholic moral teaching.

I wonder, however, if a door and a path out of the interminable lockdown of the Marxist paradigm, can't be found by looking there.



~

Was Jacqui Smith grown in a vat?

I've just finished reading a rather fun series of sci-fi novels in which a mad scientist attempts to replace the human race with his new improved species that he grows himself in vats. (Yes yes, a standard sci-fi trope, but I prefer to think of it as 'classic') One of the characteristics of the mad scientist's new race is that they know nothing about human procreation (well, you wouldn't, would you?).

I never thought it could be actually happening, however, until I read this today about Labour's Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith.

"In an interview with the Radio Times to publicise a documentary she has made for Radio 5 Live on the subject, Ms. Smith admits that, despite overseeing legislation outlawing violent and bestial pornography, she found it “quite shocking” to learn of the ubiquity of online porn.

“I thought the attraction of porn was that it’s illicit: you go into a private shop to buy a DVD,” she told the magazine. “But what the internet has done is to open up free, hard pornography to anybody of any age. I found that quite shocking.”

She thinks the attraction of porn is that it's illicit...

A mistake anyone grown in a tank could make.



~

Like, OMG! what's "Habeas corpus" anyway?

So, yesterday, I got to do one of my very most favourite things in the whole wide world.

I got to read Hansard! Woot!

And my confidence in the sober and responsible government of David Cameron's appointees continues unshaken.

Lord Vinson (who is one of those newfangled fake "Lords" Tony Blair invented) told the Ministrix of State for Security, "...hundreds of UK citizens are being compelled to appear before any EU court without the merit of the often frivolous charges being first assessed. They can be locked up without pre-trial.

"Is she not concerned that this totally overrides the ancient liberties of the British citizen enshrined in Magna Carta and habeas corpus? Will she assure the House that this will be resolved? It really is time that we started to say no to damaging EU legislation."

Another fake "Lord" (but real lawyer) rose to say, "Does not the Minister agree that habeas corpus is a process and not a principle? It is designed to make sure that a person who is in custody is there legally. If a European arrest warrant has been issued improperly, a writ of habeas corpus will succeed and, if not, it will fail. It is a simple issue and there is no conflict between the principles..."

The Hon. Ministrix giggled, stuck the tip of her little finger in the corner of her mouth and said, "My Lords, in this House of legal eagles I hesitate, as a non-lawyer, to get on to the grounds, but I understand that the principle of habeas corpus is indeed a legal remedy against unlawful detention...." (Oh good. So glad you know about it.)

"It is therefore right to say that the European arrest warrant in principle is compliant."

Well, it's obvious, right? Since it is a principle, the EAW simply must be compliant...because,like y'know, if it weren't then it wouldn't be y'know... like compliant or anything...innit?

I could almost hear her flipping her hair back and forth with her fingers while the grownups talked about all this boring legal stuff...

Reports that while the Lords were debating, the Ministrix of Security for the Home Office sent a text to her gir'friends saying, "I mean, OMG! wht language is that even? Latin?!"
...

remain unconfirmed.



~

Civitas? Name rings a bell...

Oh yeah, they're the ones who told us we need to abolish Christmas because it might upset "minorities".

"Islamic face-veil part of 'British way of life'"

Yeah. Civitas. That's the one. Think tank. Big Labour Party think tank.

"Cancel the kitchen scraps for lepers and orphans, no more merciful beheadings, and call off Christmas!"

Right. Got it.

A Corpse Decaying: "People travel miles to jump from our multi-storey carpark."

I didn't vote in the last general election. I think I could have, but I didn't. I'm pretty sure that a lot of other people have given up.

What is going to save Britain now?

In Ruraltown, the elderly are like dirty, damaged vultures. They converge at awful jumble sales. They rummage and fight for socks and underpants that have been torn from the stiff corpses of their previous ancient occupiers.

In Ruraltown, I have seen a woman die in the doctor’s surgery. No one noticed until 3.00 pm.

It is always cold and dark. Unemployment in Ruraltown is, of course, staggeringly high. This part of Ruralshire is so divided along class and racial lines that it is hardly the old shire at all but a collection of tribal groupings.

Some of its outlying towns are concrete wastelands too terrible to describe.

People travel miles to jump from our multi-storey carpark. They truly do.

...

I once saw a bloke in custody, who was in my year at Ruraltown Comp. The Sergeant asked him if he could read and write before offering him the custody record to sign. He said he couldn’t. I interjected. ‘I was at school with you buddy, you can read and write for God’s sake’ he said ‘I used to be able to but I forgot how’. He hadn’t had to read or write anything for 20 years, so he simply forgot how. An ‘agency’ for everything, all on a plate. A filthy mean little plate, but a plate none the less.

I don't know.



~

I keep saying it,

Britain really isn't the monolith of cloistered self-congratulating leftism everyone outside it seems to think. If you land anywhere other than Gatwick or Heathrow, you can find real people who live in the real world. And none of them can stand all this crap.

--- On Mon, 9/20/10, J--- B--- wrote:

From: J--- B--->
Subject: Daily Mail Benedict
To: "Hilary White"
Received: Monday, September 20, 2010, 8:25 PM

Reaction from the Daily Mail.
Is the Mail that conservative? I cant really seem to find any articles critical of his visit. If anything, they seem to be saying the protests were pointless.

Aitchdub responds:

Yes, on some issues, the Mail is more or less on our side. More to the point, it is more or less representative of mainstream British opinion outside the Orbital. I keep telling anyone who'll listen that the hyperliberalism that we all equate with Britain is the product of a tiny, London-based elite, all mostly talking to each other.

I've said it a hundred times, Britain needs to secede from London. Invite the Queen to live in Winchester, the ancient seat of the Anglo-Saxon kings, and build a big wall. We'll have to give up the Thames estuary, but I hear Portsmouth needs some economic boosting.

Give a six month grace period during which anyone who wants to live in the real world with the rest of us can get out of London, and anyone who wants to live in Peter Tatchell's Wonderland, can go in. But then the wall goes up and we post armed guards along the border.

HW

~

I must be getting more right wing,

(just pause and contemplate that for a second) because I really don't like QI any more.


Yes, it's often funny. It's certainly what the English call "clever", but it's just so much a product of smug British elite liberalism that it's almost painfully embarrassing to watch. It's almost a kind of trite parody of that self-enclosed world of London's leading "brights", all busy congratulating each other and demonstrating every time they open their mouths how little they know outside their own shrinking sphere.

Stephen Fry really disgraced himself this week with his bigotry and stupidity, his ignorance and intolerance. And I'm disappointed. His good humour, his courtesy and his likeableness have vanished behind a sneer and a spray of vitriol, and I am left wondering what on earth has happened to the man.

Everyone says he's terribly intelligent. He's supposed to be one of Britain's "leading intellectuals". But I think what is meant is that he is Britain's leading TV intellectual. Which means, in practice, that there is a vast gulf between "clever" and "intelligent". And I think we've seen that difference thrown into sharp contrast this week.

I used to like him. And I'm still a huge fan of his portrayal of Jeeves. I liked him in Peter's Friends, and a few of the other things I've seen him in. I really enjoyed his book about poetry, and agreed with him wholeheartedly that the technical aspects of poetry need to be preserved in schools and taught properly. I felt terribly badly for him when he went through his difficulties and I've made a point of praying for him sometimes. But my admiration for him has been draining away steadily over the last couple of years.

I read a novel of his once, and found it loathesome. Just stupid and filthy.

But it has been his jumping on the Cool Kids' bandwagon against the Church that has really disappointed me. I had hoped he would be a temperate and intelligent voice on the other side. That he would give a nod to natural justice and take the trouble of looking things up in his criticism. I would have expected at least as much responsible comment from him as I get from someone like, say, John Allen, a man who at least takes the trouble to understand what he is writing about.

But he's just become another idiot anti-Catholic ranter. A "hater," in fact. A bigot. And I'm so disappointed. I just can't say.



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Does Vincent Nichols read the newspapers?

One has to wonder. Some of the comments he made to this Tweedie bloke are utterly amazing.

It's quite difficult to begin figuring out the truth from the bullshit in this article, not least because, as with nearly all the mainstream press, the Telegraph's apparent editorial policy is to keep a firm clamp on the nature of the so-called "pedophilia" scandals. Tough to keep that one under wraps when there are publicly available reports that demonstrate that over 90 per cent of the victims were adolescent boys and young men between 14 and 17. That's not pedophilia, kids. There's another name for that.

But one does wonder, and wonder, how long the bishops can keep up this incredible pretense:

The crimes of the past, he says, will not be repeated. "It is a difficult and painful issue. It is vital that we ask advice from people from outside the Church, and that they take the lead. The sexual abuse of children is the most hidden crime, and it's taken a long time to be understood.

"Let me give an example: there was a priest in Birmingham who in the late Sixties or early Seventies was reported to the police by the diocese and brought before the court. He was given a £600 fine and told not to offend again. It wasn't just the Church that didn't understand the nature of the offender and the gravity of the offence. Remember, there was a movement in the Seventies to make sexual intercourse with minors of 14 legal. So there was a whole different culture.

I'll just give you that last one again, shall I?

"...there was a movement in the Seventies to make sexual intercourse with minors of 14 legal. So there was a whole different culture.

Yeah, you read that right. That's really what he said.

Whatever you were smoking in seminary in the 70s, Your Grace, must have been pretty powerful.

That culture is still in full swing, (so to speak). Lobbying and producing BBC documentaries on the pope.



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Coming to the gig tonight?

If one were looking for a demonstration, in a single piece of paper, of everything that is wrong with EngBishCorp, (a wholly-owned subsidiary of BritCathCorp)


he need look no further than this helpful pamphlet produced by the Church organisers of the papal visit.



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