On the streets of London 10 January 2009 - Outside a Starbucks

You can read more about these attacks, because the video is not of the only one, here and here. You won't read about it here.

Leave my brethren alone!

The Mail reports under the headline "Police arrest goat accused of armed robbery" that:

"Police in Nigeria are holding a goat on suspicion of attempted armed robbery.

Vigilantes seized the black and white goat, saying it was an armed robber who had used black magic to transform himself into an animal to escape after trying to steal a Mazda 323.

'The group of vigilante men came to report that while they were on patrol they saw some hoodlums attempting to rob a car. They pursued them.

'However one of them escaped while the other turned into a goat,' Kwara state police spokesman Tunde Mohammed said.

'We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody.

'We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat,' he said.

Belief in witchcraft is widespread in parts of Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation.

Residents came to the police station to see the goat, photographed in one national newspaper on its knees next to a pile of straw."

Will my brethren's suffering never end?

The incredible shrinking banks

I have found a rather scary set of charts that show how the "market value" of many of the worlds' banks has collapsed over the last six months. Only Santander, JP Morgan and JP Morgan seem to have done better than simply collapse and that is only relative.




Thanks to JP Morgan, Bllomberg and FT Alphaville for getting the information to me and my readers.

Bluster and bluff from John Prescott

If you want to see a big Labour beast/broken down old Labour war-horse bluff and bluster then do watch John Prescott on The Politics Show. The man says he wants his "facebook" to be immediate and on the pulse but hasn't yet blogged about the allegations against his Labour colleagues in this morning's newspapers, in fact he hasn't even read the story. On the pulse Mr Prescott, I think not; it's the usual bluff and bluster from a man who might actually be less intelligent than he seems.

I particularly "liked" the way he avoided answering a question with his pre-prepared comedy pledge-card to BlackBerry routine. Spin and bluster, bluster and bluff; Prescott's back, this time he's a king blogger, I think not.

Harriet Harman class warrior

Harriet Harman has plans. Harriet Harman that doughty class warrior who managed to escape her working class roots to reach the exalted higher echelons of the Party and State. Sorry that was a flight of fancy; Harriet Harman being of course the daughter of a Harley Street physician and a solicitor, the niece of an Earl, the grandchild of a RAF Group Captain Malcolm Spicer and having as other recent ancestors an MP, and members of the Spicer paper manufacturing family. Harriet Harman also attended the impeccably upper middle class St Pauls Girls school.

So Harriet do you really want to make

"homeowners ... pay more council tax than local authority tenants in identical properties under plans that could lead to 'class war', the Conservatives warned last night.?"

Is it true that :

"At present, they would be in the same tax band. But the Government wants to base bills on the social background of homeowners, it is claimed.?"

Protecting "the Party"

The Times reports that: "Revealed: Labour lords change laws for cash" and the article starts:

"LABOUR peers are prepared to accept fees of up to £120,000 a year to amend laws in the House of Lords on behalf of business clients, a Sunday Times investigation has found.

Four peers — including two former ministers — offered to help undercover reporters posing as lobbyists obtain an amendment in return for cash.

Two of the peers were secretly recorded telling the reporters they had previously secured changes to bills going through parliament to help their clients.

Lord Truscott, the former energy minister, said he had helped to ensure the Energy Bill was favourable to a client selling “smart” electricity meters. Lord Taylor of Blackburn claimed he had changed the law to help his client Experian, the credit check company.

Taylor told the reporters: “I will work within the rules, but the rules are meant to be bent sometimes.”

The other peers who agreed to assist our reporters for a fee were Lord Moonie, a former defence minister, and Lord Snape, a former Labour whip.

The disclosure that peers are “for hire” to help change legislation confirms persistent rumours in Westminster that lobbyists are targeting the Lords rather than the Commons, where MPs are under greater scrutiny.

Brendan Keith, the registrar of Lords’ interests, said on Friday that taking a fee to help amend bills was a breach of the “no paid advocacy” rules which prevent peers from promoting the cause of a paid client in parliament. “The rules say that a member of the House must never accept any financial inducement as an incentive or reward for exerting parliamentary influence,” he said. "

Disgusting news of course but not that surprising.

The BBC report the news that it is Labour peers involved as sotto voce as they can, bearing in mind that that is the story. The BBC article keeps the party allegiances of the four peers back as long as they can:

"'Concern' over peers cash claims - The leader of the House of Lords says she is "deeply concerned" over allegations four peers were prepared to accept money to put down amendments.

The Sunday Times claims they offered to help make amendments to legislation in return for up to £120,000.

Lady Royall told the BBC she had spoken to the four Labour peers concerned and would be "pursuing the matter with utmost vigour". "

The story becomes the Labour reaction and (further on), the partial denial of the story and the fact that all four are Labour peers is relegated to the third sentence.

Can you imagine the BBC's coverage if it had been four Conservative peers? Would anyone like to argue that the word "Tory" or "Conservative" would not have been in the article headline?

Shifting the blame

The BBC eagerly report Lord Myners words in his Times interview that:

"Let us be quite clear: there has been mismanagement of our banks."

The BBC also paraphrase in their first sentence to give us:

"Banks and their "grossly over-rewarded" executives are partly to blame for causing the economic recession, a government minister has said."

Can Lord Myners or the BBC tell us who else "are partly to blame"? Obviously the Americans must top the list but do they think any blame devolves upon their Prime Minister? Gordon Brown having replaced the centralised control of City regulation with a tripartite system that let too much fall between the three parties. Gordon Brown who changed the inflation measure so as to keep the boom going so as to keep the middle classes feeling rich enough to ignore the changes in the Country that they otherwise would have railed against. Gordon Brown having stoked the fires of this bubble without any regard as to the risks. Does Gordon Brown share any of the blame? Well Minister, well BBC?

Guido Fawkes has some of the background that I am sure you know about Lord Paul Myners.


This attack on the banks follows Gordon Brown's earlier in the week and is about establishing the "narrative" that "greedy bankers" were the people responsible for the UK's problem , not the brave, resourceful, honest Prime Minister. It is rubbish of course but that won't stop the Labour propaganda machine rolling this out and there are enough people in this Country who will fall for it.

Well I never knew that - Rocky Horror & Monty Python related

Patricia Quinn, Magenta in The Rocky Horror Picture Show is the same actress as John Cleese's wife in the sex education scene in The Meaning of Life.






Well I never knew that...

For all the Rocky Horror Fans out there here's a couple of clips:

Part of "Sweet Transvestite"



"Wild and untamed thing"

More anti-Seimitic attacks in London

The number of anti-Semitic attacks on Jews in the UK increases but the BBC and the rest of the national media seem determined to ignore this; instead they worry about Islamaphobia.

Totally Jewish report that:

"Wearing a kippah and his long Shabbat coat, Michael Bookarz was walking home from La Fiesta restaurant on Golders Green Road on Saturday night when he was set upon by two hooded attackers. "I was walking towards the A406 at about 10.20pm when I noticed a guy was walking towards me," the 31-year-old told TJ.
"He suddenly started running and punched me in the face. When I was on the ground, another person ran over and they both started kicking me and stamping on my body and head.

"One of them said this is because of what's happened to the Palestinians in Gaza. Someone must have looked out the window because they suddenly just ran off leaving me on the floor.

"I was scared but the main thought running through my head as it was happening was self-preservation and defending myself. The second the attack finished my next thought was to get help. I took my phone out to dial 999 and I could see blood covering the screen of the phone - there was blood pouring down from my nose."

The software developer - who suffered extensive bruising and swelling - was taken to hospital where he spent several hours undergoing X-Rays of his skull and left hand. On doctors orders, he spent the past few days recuperating before returning to work yesterday, despite still suffering pain.

"One of the things I feel very sad about is that I can't walk around in England safely," he said. "This morning when I was walking to shul I saw a guy across the road with a cap on and a scarf over his face. It was a cold morning but I looked twice just to make sure he wasn't dangerous. I wouldn't have done that a few days ago."

But Michael is nevertheless determined to try to ensure that the attack does not affect the way he lives his life and he urged others not to shy away from wearing kippot in public. He said: "I want to continue leading my life as a Jew in this country, I want to lead it as a free person. I'm not going to let them win."

The attack on Michael was one of three assaults in recent days, contributing to the more than 220 anti-Semitic incidents in Britain since the start of Israel's anti-terror operation in Gaza in late December. That includes at least 12 incidents of daubings at London synagogues and in Jewish neighbourhoods on Thursday and Friday last week."

220 anti-Semitic attacks in a month but on the BBC not a word. However one attack on a Muslim and the BBC make it headline news. Why the disparity in coverage?


Meanwhile Vosizneias report that:

"The Jewish community in Golders Green has been the target of further anti-Semitic attacks, in the form of more offensive graffiti.

Graffiti reading "Kill the filthy Jews" was daubed on walls and pavements near Golders Green tube station and vandals wrote "Jihad 4 Israel" on top of Holocaust Memorial Day adverts.

Golders Green residents have unanimously condemned the ongoing hate crimes, which have risen up in the wake of the Gaza conflict.

"The graffiti is revolting," said one woman from Hampstead Way. "The conflict in Gaza is awful but people here have nothing to do with it. I want to call the police - this has to be reported. But what can you do when you are dealing with fanatics?"

Gabriella Lauffer, 22, from Golders Green, said: "The graffiti just comes down to anti-Semitism. Gaza is an excuse for anti-Semites to attack Jews.""

I feel less safe as a Jew living in London than I have at any time since the 1970s, what should I do? As I said earlier this week,

"I really do fear for my future as a Jew in a Country that has elements that increasingly show their hatred for Jews. I do not want what happened to the middle-class Jews in Germany in the 1930s to happen to me in the 2010s. The German Jews thought they could keep their heads down and that the troubles would pass, they were wrong and millions dies in the gas-chambers as a result. I do not want myself and my wife to face a similar fate in the coming years."

Did John Hutton mislead Parliament

The Times reports that:

"John Hutton has been accused of deceiving Parliament over his explanation for a two-year delay in the Royal Navy’s aircraft carrier programme.

The allegation came after Lockheed Martin, the American defence company, contradicted his account. He had said that the delay was linked to a later delivery date for the aircraft that the vessels will carry.

In a written Commons statement last month, the Defence Secretary said that construction of the 65,000-tonne HMS Queen Elizabeth and her sister ship, HMS Prince of Wales, would be put back a further one or two years in line with the expected delivery of the Joint Strike Fighter, the combat aircraft designed to replace the Harrier. The fighter project has been running behind schedule.

Under the delayed in-service dates announced for the two carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth, which was to have been ready by 2014, will now be completed by 2015 or 2016, and HMS Prince of Wales will not be in service until 2016 or 2017.

Lockheed Martin, however, confirmed to The Times that it had been ready to provide the combat aircraft by 2014 but had been told by the Ministry of Defence to deliver in time for a 2017 initial operating capability.

The company, which is developing the Joint Strike Fighter in partnership with BAE Systems, said that the aircraft’s assembly line was already running and that other partners in the programme would get their aircraft before Britain.

It emphasised that deliveries to the MoD would start well before 2017 to allow the Royal Navy to build up operational capability before the in-service date. “It’s true that the MoD wanted its JSF initial operating capability for 2017, although we told them we could deliver by 2014,” the company said. "

I presume Newsnight will be investigating this story in great detail; maybe not.

Jenin II (Update)

Yesterday I blogged that:

""It's possible that the death toll in Gaza was 500 or 600 at the most, mainly youths aged 17 to 23 who were enlisted by Hamas – who sent them to their deaths,"

so a doctor at the main Shifa hospital is quoted as saying."

And I drew comparisons with the lie that was the Jenin massacre.


Incidentally, please read this article about the Jenin affair.


Now I learn that:

"A Tal al-Hawa resident told the newspaper's reporter, "Armed Hamas men sought out a good position for provoking the Israelis. There were mostly teenagers, aged 16 or 17, and armed. They couldn't do a thing against a tank or a jet. They knew they are much weaker, but they fired at our houses so that they could blame Israel for war crimes." "

and that:

"The reporter for the Italian newspaper also quoted reporters in the Strip who told of Hamas' exaggerated figures, "We have already said to Hamas commanders – why do you insist on inflating the number of victims?"

These same reporters mentioned that the truth that will come out is likely to be similar to what occurred in Operation Defensive Shield in Jenin. "Then, there was first talk of 1,500 deaths. But then it turned out that there were only 54, 45 of which were armed men," the Palestinian reporters told the Italian newspaper. "

If there is found to have been lies and exaggeration of fatalities by the BBC then I will expect a full apology. I will expect one, obviously I won't get one.

The best Best Man's speech ever?

Thanks to Theo Spark for the spot.

Barack Obama's promises - a running check

Worried about whether Barack Obama is keeping his campaign promises Politifact is keeping a running check.

So far:

* Promise Kept 7

* Compromise 0

* Promise Broken 0

* Stalled 1

* In the Works 14

* No Action 488

Barack Obama's envoy to the Middle East

American Thinker report that:

"One of the great misconceptions Senator Mitchell has about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is that "if it worked in Northern Ireland it can work with the Israel/Palestinian conflict. That argument is as relevant as saying Michael Jackson should play Quarterback for the Tennessee Titans because both the singer and Vince Young are African Americans. There is little relationship between the two.

It is true that Britain and the IRA negotiated a peace, but there were so many MAJOR differences to the Middle East situation today that the comparison is just silly:

* The IRA did not threaten the very existence of Great Britain. Hamas promises to destroy Israel as a Jewish State. The charter of the ruling Fatah party also has the destruction of Israel as part of it charter.
* At the time negotiation with the British began, the IRA "military operations" were in a decline and so was morale, they felt that their positions were growing more tenuous. Hamas see no reason to make peace, they are already rearming, days after the cease fire.
* British state had no real geopolitical or strategic interest in maintaining presence on in Ireland, north or south. As the Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Peter Brooke, officially affirmed in 1990, Britain had "no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland." Israel has the most basic of interests, its very survival.
* There was no regional power rearming the IRA the way Syria and Iran feed the Palestinian terrorists
* Bringing in the terrorists was not the priority at the outset of the Northern Irish peace process and there were "preconditions" placed on the IRA to be involved with it. Mitchell intends to engage the West Bank ruling terrorist entity Fatah immediately.
* Both England and the Northern Irish government were working to end terrorism. Israel is the only party working to end terrorism. Elements of the ruling PA party Fatah fought along side Hamas in the recent Gaza war."

I couldn't have put it better myself, so I didn't even try.

"Mummy and Daddy don't laugh like they used to"

The next Labour Party Political Broadcast?


Thanks to Dizzy for the spot.

Heathrow Third Runway

The Conservatives are to pour more pressure onto the creaking Labour government by using next week's "opposition day" to debate and call a vote on the government's approval of a third runway for Heathrow airport. With the number of Labour MPs know to be against this expansion this could be very interesting. The Labour MP, John McDonnell for one thinks the decision to go ahead with the third runway is "a disgrace to the democracy of this country", he is right but then so much of what Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's government has done has been "a disgrace to the democracy of this country".

An economics lesson for our Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer

"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved."

Ludwig von Mises from "Human Action" (1949)


Any comments Gordon Brown?




Thanks to Guido Fawkes for the spot.

I Pledge

"TOGETHER WE CAN
TOGETHER WE CAN OBEY
DIVIDED WE ARE INSIGNIFICANT
BUT TOGETHER WE CAN BE A MOLECULE
ON OUR PRESIDENT'S CHEEKBONE
FADING AND MELTING AND SHRINKING
INTO THE ONE UNIVERSAL GLORY OF HIM
OBEY
OBEY
OBEY"

Read the detailed transcript of the new celebrity Pledge of Obama Allegiance video at IowaHawk.

The Today programme and "Brownies"

Once again the BBC Radio 4 Today programme has picked up one of my articles, this time a quote appears as the lead "REACTION FROM AROUND THE WEB" to Gordon Brown's 08:10 interview. The quote is

"[The Prime Minister] stuck rigidly to his script and refused to answer the key questions. Actually, if you don't really know what mistakes Gordon Brown has made, it might even have sounded convincing and that's my fear - that the public might fall for the Brownies again."

Not my best or most incisive line and I wonder if the casual reader would know what "Brownies" are. In case you are wondering; in this context I am not referring to young Girl Guides, or delicious chocolate comestibles but to Gordon Brown's skilful habit of answering a question by using a dodgy statistic to not quite answer the question he was asked but one more to his liking.

I think it was either Boris Johnon or Fraser Nelson who first coined the word Brownie in this context. Here is the earliest Boris Johnson call for the public to document such "falsehoods". I like Boris's writing so here's his call to arms in full:

"You may have seen the disgraceful suggestion by Gordon Brown in Prime Minister’s Question Time that I want to cut the Metropolitan Police budget when the reverse is the case. It is high time we stopped putting up with his falsehoods, and exposed them for what they are. So I would like you to help me, and Coffee House, form an online intifada against the little lies we are fed every day by this Prime Minister and his kindred spirit Ken Livingstone - whom I very much hope the Londoners amongst you will help me dislodge in May. The aim is to collate examples of all the porkies these two peddle. You can help, by adding below this post, in the comments, any example where either have sought to mislead. Then we will devote a little corner of cyberspace to setting the record straight."

Here is a fine piece by Fraser Nelson on the top four "Brownies" in the PMQs of Wednesday 16th July 2008. I won't repeat all four here, but do go and read them for yourself. However the Debt Brownie, the Inflation Brownie and the Jobs Brownie do bear repetition and the next journalist to interview Gordon Brown should actually do some research beforehand so that they have this sort of information to hand when Gordon Brown puffs out his cheeks and launches into one of his pre-prepared "Brownies" (Evan Davies are you reading this?):

"2. Labour inherited debt at 44 percent of GDP and reduced it to 38 percent of GDP. This was his response to Ken Clarke. One can set aside Brown’s vast array of Enron-style debt concealment vehicles and look at debt under the Maastricht definition (a definition he can’t tweak). Annex 62 of the OECD World Economic Outlook (data released a couple of weeks ago) shows us that Brown inherited debt of 50.6 percent which was fast falling and hit 47.4 percent (mid-98). It is 47.1 percent of GDP now. As his scorched earth policy gets underway, this debt will soar up to 49.5 percent next year. Let’s remember that Brown had 11 years of growth, which prudent governments use to pay off their debts. Denmark took debt from 60 percent to 22 percent over this period, Ireland from 54 percent to 28 percent. In Western Europe, only Germany and France join Britain in the ignominious club of countries that increased their debt during the boom years – and, of course, for these basket case economies there were no boom years.

3. Labour inherited rising inflation, which Brown had to bring down. Even by his own CPI measure, the inflationary dragon was slain in the early 1990s peaking at 8.5 percent in April 1991. By January 1997 it was 2.1 percent and by May 1997 it had fallen to 1.6 percent. This is what he inherited from Ken Clarke. And did I mention that CPI is now 3.8 percent? For more on inflation, our original Brownie, click here.

4. Three million jobs as a result of this Labour government. Or, to state it more accurately, as a result of this Labour government’s policy of paying 5 million Brits to stay on benefits and importing a new, cheap and dedicated workforce: the Statistics Commission tells us, 81 percent of the new jobs are filled by foreign workers. Brown also includes in this figure pensioners returning to work, and even then he rounds it up from 2.8 million. Strip out pensioners, immigrants and the public sector and there would – scandalously - be fewer people in work than in 1997."

There was an excellent article by Fraser Nelson, again in The Spectator, that I quoted from last November, here's that quote again:

"Whatever you may think about Gordon Brown, he does deserve to be recognised as a master of his art. I can’t think of a more accomplished confidence trickster ever to enter Westminster. And he’s ready to unveil a whole Potemkin Village tomorrow, the climax of his life’s work. It will be built out of non-sequiteurs, exaggerations, half-truths and Brownies. His interview on the BBC1 Politics Show gave a preview as to how he will conduct himself. He is in full election mode, talking as if he’s in the heat of an election campaign—which, in his head, he is."

You can read Fraser Nelson's full article here.


For even more "Brownies", take a trip over to The Spectator and prepare to be amazed and disgusted. As the UK economy fails and the public get angrier with their failure of a Prime Minister, it is my hope that the word "Brownie" becomes a well known word in common parlance.


I must add that I have always felt that a person who can not admit when they are wrong is not a person that I would choose to have as a friend or employer; Gordon Brown is such a person.

OK, who voted for these people?

I was looking through some old blogs of mine and found these examples of Labour duplicity and in the case of the second Gordon Brown video, sheer weirdness - just look at his reactions to Quentin Letts' question and retort between 0:14 and 0:25, are they the reactions of a normal rational empathetic human being?


Harriet Harman



Gordon Brown



Gordon Brown again



Caroline Spelman