Author: Alexander Boot

Yesterday this venerable newspaper published an article claiming that that Nick Clegg’s Russian great-aunt, of whom he is notoriously proud, was a whore in the employ of the Bolshevik secret police: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3030339/Revealed-Nick-Clegg-s-femme-fatale-ancestor-Moura-Budberg-DID-spy-Soviet-secret-police-chief-Genrikh-Yagoda-notorious-Gulag-prison-camps.html

The article is full of such turns of phrase as ‘we can now reveal’ and ‘as we have found out’. Well, I wrote on the same subject on 14 December 2011, which you can find on this blog.

To save you the trouble, here it is:

Does Nick Clegg love the EU so much because he carries it within himself? The English, German and Dutch rivers intermingle with the as yet non-EU Russian brook in his bloodstream. Add to this his Spanish wife, and verily I say unto you: the mix is explosive.

Now far be it from me to suggest that one’s personality, or much less behaviour, is solely, or indeed mainly, attributable to one’s ethnicity. This isn’t a bed we made for ourselves, even though we have to lie in it. Genes, ethnic or otherwise, may give a bias to one’s life, but they don’t determine it. We make our own free choices throughout, some good, some bad. It’s perfectly acceptable to be proud of the former and ashamed of the latter. It’s wrong to attribute either to our ancestry.

Logically then, one’s ethnicity by itself is nothing to be either proud or ashamed of. We are what we are. However, one can legitimately be either proud or ashamed of a specific ancestor. A German descending from Heinrich Heine can be forgiven a spot of familial pride. The same emotion in a descendant of Heinrich Himmler is cause for summoning the men in white coats. Stands to reason, doesn’t it?

Nick Clegg, however, defies reason by claiming that he is proud of the Russian part of him. If he means this in general, it doesn’t make much sense, and Nick isn’t a stupid man (he’s many other things, but we won’t talk about it now). So he has to imply a particular affection for his great-great aunt, who put those Russian drops into the family barrel. Well, let me tell you, there’s nothing to be proud of.

When those muscular, leather-jerkined Bolsheviks took over in 1917, they immediately began to murder, torture and rob millions, often for no reason other than wrong class origins. That, no doubt, was most satisfying, but the trouble was that the West had some misgivings about that sort of thing. And Lenin’s gang couldn’t have survived without the West’s support.

This meant they had to offset the bad press they were receiving, by countering it with some good press. That could only come from those Western cultural and political figures whose sympathy the murderers could court.

Some of those, such as the American communists John Reed and Louise Bryant, didn’t need to be asked. Many others required inducements. These were provided by the Soviet secret police, known at the time first as VCheKa and then as OGPU, an organisation that could be commended for its deviousness, but never accused of subtlety. The very unsubtle ‘honey trap’ figured prominently in their bag of tricks.

But, even if westerners could be initially trapped by the ‘kitchen maids’ who, according to Lenin, would one day form the government, they would soon spring the trap out of sheer boredom. No, to taste really sweet the honey had to be provided by the fragrant, multilingual, cultured ladies from the same classes the OGPU was busily exterminating.

There was no shortage of them, young girls prepared to prostitute themselves to redeem their unfortunate nativity. A spate of famous Westerners went on to acquire OGPU wives or mistresses (list available on request). One of the busiest WAGs was Clegg’s great-great aunt, Moura Budberg, née Zakrevskaya. A life-long Bolshevik agent, she was particularly good at her job, first bagging R.H. Bruce Lockhart, the British envoy who played an ambivalent role in the post-revolutionary events.

Then on to Maxim Gorky, who was at the time feeling queasy at the sight of freely flowing blood. Then, or rather in parallel, on to H.G. Wells, who described Lenin as ‘the dreamer in the Kremlin’ at the time the dreamer was outdoing  the later nightmarish exploits of Hitler.

In due course Moura moved to England, and was free to travel back and forth to Russia any time she wished – the NKVD, as it had become, was sure of her loyalty and grateful for her service. It was in England that Moura gave her descendant Nick something to be proud of by marrying Baron Budberg.

As I said, I don’t believe that Clegg’s double-dealing, self-serving behaviour over the last few weeks is in any way attributable to Moura’s genes. But perhaps one could suggest that, even if he has little else to be proud of, this particular pride is misplaced.

Still, better late than never, and I congratulate The Mail on its incisive reporting and expert fact gathering. And yes, I do know that ‘I told you so’ are the most despised words in the English language.

As to my friend Nick, perhaps on second thoughts his take on the morality of politics does run in the family.

Since 2006, when Alexander Litvinenko died of polonium poisoning, the case has been treated as murder.

And not just any old murder but one commissioned by my friend Vlad, who, if Peter Hitchens is to be believed, represents the world’s last bulwark of conservative, Christian values.

Conversely, anyone who denies that Vlad is any such thing can only do so out of malignant Russophobia, and that goes for some Russians as well.

After all, as Putin’s press secretary Peskov explained recently, Putin is Russia and Russia is Putin. Hence anyone casting aspersion on Vlad has to hate Russia. Unassailable logic, as far as I am concerned.

The polonium that killed Litvinenko is believed to have been administered by two of Vlad’s KGB colleagues who were having tea with Litvinenko at a London hotel.

Hours after the London Tea Party, the two gentlemen remembered they had to attend to some urgent business in Russia and left for Moscow in a huff. Since then they have maintained Trappist-like silence on the matter, flatly refusing to testify either by video link or especially in person.

In its turn, Vlad’s government turned down every British request for extradition, no matter how politely phrased.

Just in case, the key suspect Andrei Lugovoi was hastily elected into Russia’s parliament, the Duma.

It has to be said mournfully that some Russophobes suggest with their characteristic malice that providing parliamentary immunity for criminals is the Duma’s main, not to say sole, function. They point out that its legislative activity boils down to rubber-stamping Putin’s diktats.

All I can reply to those naysayers is a resounding ‘so what?’. Putin is Russia, is he not? And isn’t it the job of Russia’s parliament to do what Russia wants? Of course it is. That’s what democracy is all about.

Because the key suspects have been unavailable for questioning, the inquiry into the death of Litvinenko has proceeded in stops and starts, with nothing much to establish beyond the obvious fact that he was poisoned with polonium-210, which experts maintain can only be obtained in such quantities from a government installation.

All this changed dramatically the other day. Dmitri Kovtun, the other suspect, has called a press conference in Moscow. There he explained what happened to his unfortunate ex-colleague, shedding blinding light on the case.

Reading his revelations I felt like an intellectually challenged Scotland Yard inspector put to shame by Sherlock Holmes’s brilliance. Why didn’t I think of that, I moaned, tearing what’s left of my hair out.

Like so many discoveries of genius, Mr Kovtun’s version of the incident is deceptively simple, self-evident even. But detecting self-evident explanations that escape others is what genius is, isn’t it?

I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. Litvinenko’s death, revealed Mr Kovtun, was suicide. It may have been deliberate or accidental, but suicide none the less.

Either possibility makes sense, if we discount as a venomous lie any suggestion that a man of Putin’s angelic character could have ordered such a heinous act.

Mr Kovtun was marginally more in favour of the accident hypothesis, and he made a believer out of me.

Apparently, Litvinenko always carried large amounts of polonium on his person, constantly coming into contact with the poisonous substance. It’s also possible that he habitually put some of the isotope into his tea, preferring it to such orthodox additives as milk, sugar or lemon.

Can’t you just see it? “Gizza cuppa Rosie, dahlin,” Litvinenko would say to his wife Marina (he had lived in London long enough to pick up the patois). “Milk and sugar, love?” Marina would enquire. “Nah, you dozy cow,” Litvinenko would retort. “Giz some polonium, jahmean?”

A perfectly realistic situation, if you ask me. Yet Mr Kovtun generously offered an alternative version. It’s also possible, he opined, that Litvinenko ingested polonium from ambient air, and we all know how polluted London is.

He didn’t explain why Litvinenko was, and so far remains, the sole victim of the incipient pandemic of polonium poisoning, but then someone has to lead the way. A stroke of bad luck, that’s all.

Mr Kovtun didn’t enlarge on the possibility of deliberate suicide, which is unfortunate because I for one can see a clear motive, especially during this paschal season.

Litvinenko killed himself for the same reason Judas did: repentance. Like the Gospel villain, he had betrayed his God and benefactor, and the unbearable shame of that deed drove him over the edge.

After all, Litvinenko had already published one book libelling Putin (Blowing Up Russia). There he showed that Putin had some Russian blocks of flats blown up as a pretext for starting another Chechen war.

Rumour has it that in his next volume Litvinenko was planning to document Vlad’s personal links with organised crime, ignoring the real, utterly plausible explanations for Vlad’s $40-billion wealth (they escape me for the moment, but I’ll get back to you).

Not only that, but Litvinenko is said to have found documentary evidence for the rumours making the rounds in Russia about the reason for Vlad’s rather sluggish career path in the KGB (I’ll spare you the naughty details).

At some point, Litvinenko must have realised the abysmal depth of his moral fall. Unable to live with his vile deeds, he passed the death sentence on himself and executed it with polonium.

Admittedly, this version of events leaves a few questions unanswered. Such as, where exactly did Litvinenko get polonium? Last time I looked, it wasn’t sold OTC at London pharmacies or DIY shops.

Another question is, why did he choose such an agonising way of killing himself? A gun is much easier to find in London than a radioactive isotope, and wouldn’t it have been easier just to point and shoot?

Still, it’s not Mr Kovtun’s job to provide all the answers. That’s what we have police for. His job was to utter the magic word ‘suicide’.

Suddenly everything clicked into place, leaving but a few i’s to dot and t’s to cross. After all, our investigators have to do something to earn their keep.

Now I wonder if Mr Kovtun would still put forth the suicide version if Litvinenko had been shot in the back a few times? Probably. We all know that truth, especially Putin’s truth, can be stranger than fiction.

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

 

 

Tony may not be the worst prime minister we’ve ever had: one or two others, Dave among them, are firmly in contention for that honour.

But he is easily the most disgusting, a feature that’s blown up to grotesque proportions by his talent for self-publicity.

If a revolting individual wanted to appear half-decent, he’d be well-advised to keep a low profile and his mouth shut. But my friend Tony isn’t like that, is he?

He wants to put himself in the public eye, and what the public eye can’t fail to see is duplicity, complete absence of any discernible principles, a mediocre mind, the moral sense of a wild animal, egoism on a stratospheric scale and the integrity of a card sharp.

Hence I never thought I’d agree with Tony on anything – which only goes to show that one can’t foresee one’s reactions on the basis of experience. For at last Tony has said something that made me jump up, punch the air and shout “Yes!!!”

What provoked such uncharacteristic enthusiasm was Tony’s pronouncement that the issue of Britain’s exit from the EU is so involved that voters can’t be trusted to make the “sensible choice”. Hence there should be no referendum, especially since support for “the sensible choice” seems to be rather understated.

I couldn’t agree more. Except for one minor detail: his definition of the sensible choice.

Tony thinks there should be no referendum because the public may just vote to get out. I think there should be no referendum because the public may just vote to stay in.

The choice to get out isn’t merely sensible – it’s the only moral option. Hence I’d support Brexit even if the economic case against it were as clear-cut as it now is in favour of it.

Staying in the EU would exacerbate the original treasonous act of entering it: the constitution that ignoramuses say we haven’t got indisputably vests Britain’s sovereignty in the Queen and her parliament.

Transferring sovereignty to a foreign body is therefore an act of treason and constitutional vandalism.

That alone should be sufficient for any sensible individual to pray that one day we’ll be governed by intelligent, moral and responsible men who on their authority will restore our ancient constitution to its past grandeur by taking the country out of this foul multinational obscenity.

Edmund Burke, one of the subtlest constitutional minds England has been blessed with, once explained that our MPs should act according to the people’s interests, not necessarily their wishes.

That at a stroke removed any constitutional justification for any plebiscite – regardless of how we feel about its results, past or future.

In the past, specifically in 1975, the EU, or the EEC as it then was, was still in an inchoate stage. Its power to swing and swindle public opinion in member countries was still limited, as were its resources.

However, that sinister organisation ably assisted by a handful of homespun eurocrats, managed to trick the Brits into voting the right way, which was really the wrong way.

Now imagine what any future referendum will look like, what with the EU now able to throw the weight of billions of pounds behind the vote to keep Britain in.

Think of the spivocrats in all our parliamentary parties, with the minor exception of Ukip, who’ll collaborate with the fervour that’ll make Quisling look like a resistance fighter.

Think of the massive mendacious campaign threatening every manner of calamity should Britain regain her sovereignty.

Think, I am sad to say, of our gullible public whom two generations of moron-spewing ‘education’ made defenceless in the face of Goebbels-style propaganda. Do you believe they can be trusted to make the sensible choice of getting out and shaking the toxic EU dust off their feet?

I don’t. That’s why I’m opposed to the referendum not only on constitutional principle but also because we – the people still capable of making the sensible choice – are likely to lose the vote.

There are only two reasons to support the Brexit plebiscite. The rational one is that at least that way there’s a glimmer of hope – as there is none that we’ll ever have a government made up of anyone other than spivs like Tony, Dave or Ed, immoral nonentities who’ll always play lickspittle to the EU.

The emotional reason to support the referendum is simply that Blair is opposed to it. That, I am afraid, is all.

 

P.S. Between Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond, don’t you think there’s something fishy about Scottish politicians?

 

 

 

  

 

 

In the midst of the wholesale murder of Christians by Muslims, the Archbishop of Canterbury has called on Christians not to use violence in self-defence.

This entreaty was a veiled reference to the Sermon on the Mount, specifically Matthew 5:39, where Jesus talks about turning the other cheek. It was also yet another demonstration of His Grace’s dubious grasp of theology.

For talking about nonviolence in this context isn’t just bad geopolitics. It’s also bad Christianity.

In this world a successful society cannot be built on the Sermon on the Mount, especially when understood in a literal, mechanistic way. Nor can the Christian cause be advanced by selective quoting from the scripture.

Tolstoy was a past master of that art. He too loved Matthew 5:39, using it to claim, among other things, that Christianity is incompatible with military service:

“It should not be allowed that a man, true Christian, should be a member of a society that has an army and military institutions.”

The novelist wasn’t in the least bothered that his take on Christianity differed from Jesus’s – since, according to him, Christ wasn’t divine, his views were as good as Tolstoy’s, and usually nowhere near as good.

Yet, though Christianity is a pacific religion, it’s far from being pacifist.

In fact, during his time on earth Jesus himself was a member of a society that had an army. Moreover, when he received the Capernaum centurion and heard him out, Jesus did not demand that the officer give up the service as being contrary to his faith – even though one did not get to command a company in a Roman legion without being an expert killer.

Rather than waxing indignant, Christ was effusive in his praise of the officer’s faith: “When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.”  

Nor is Matthew 5:39 readily reconcilable with his 10:34, where Jesus says “I came not to send peace but a sword.” This is not to say that the two verses can’t be reconciled. It’s just that the whole issue is much more profound and subtle than His Grace seems to realise.

Even though no great thinker has ever extolled violence, they all mournfully admitted that sometimes it’s necessary. For example, Aristotle, with his unsentimental reading of human nature, wrote in Politics that “There must be war for the sake of peace.”

Christianity too, while accepting that war is evil, has always believed that there exist evils that can be even worse. If such evils can only be stopped by violence, then in that instance violence is to be condoned.

That is why the church, including such seminal figures as St Augustine of Hippo (whose The City of God first expressed the concept of just war in Christian terms)and St Thomas Aquinas, has always blessed righteous war for as long as it stayed righteous – and damned unjust war for as long as it stayed unjust.

Denying Christians the right to use violence in self-defence against evil also obliterates in one fell swoop the entire history of the church, especially its crusading arm.

His Grace clearly doesn’t believe that the Crusaders, along with the heroes of Poitiers, Lepanto and Vienna, were true Christians. Yet it’s conceivable that without those men Europe would be a caliphate now, and Archbishop Welby an ayatollah.

Would allowing such a development have been consistent with Christian teaching? Tolstoy thought so. So, evidently, does His Grace.

The Archbishop then helpfully informed the faithful that the Christians being slaughtered by Muslims are martyrs and, as such, will ultimately triumph over evil  despite “their cruel deaths, the brutality of their persecution”.

That much is true and, when it can’t be avoided, true Christians accept martyrdom with courage and humility. It’s also true that martyrdom is a necessary qualification for sainthood.

But actively seeking, rather than nobly accepting, martyrdom smacks more of Islam than of Christianity. Suicide, after all, has been treated by some great theologians as a worse crime than murder, and, unlike murderers and traitors, suicides are traditionally denied Christian burial rites.

Suicide is condoned by many Eastern religions, especially those that regard this world as inherently evil and preach escape from it. However, Christ taught salvation of the world, not from the world.

Refusing to lift a finger to save one’s life is tantamount to suicide, and His Grace ought to have pondered such things before delivering himself of such ill-considered opinions.

One suspects that, unlike Pope Francis, the Archbishop is opposed to the West’s intervention in Syria, Iraq and wherever else Christians are being murdered.

It is true that such intervention would be disastrous – but only if undertaken for wrong reasons and, consequently, in a wrong way.

As the US, with Britain bringing up the rear, has demonstrated beyond doubt, intervening in that region for the purpose of introducing democracy and building nations is worse than criminal. It’s stupid.

However, intervening for the express purpose of protecting Christians and Jews, and punishing those who do them harm would be consistent not only with secular but also with Christian morality, which after all calls for defending those who can’t defend themselves.

The right end would dictate the right means: any Western action in the Middle East should be purely punitive, with the punishment meted out to be sufficiently cataclysmic to have a strong deterrent value.

In parallel, Western governments should generously and unconditionally provide refuge and help to our own co-religionists in the Middle East. I am sure that not even Nigel Farage would object to such an act of Christian mercy.

Yes, we should all pray for the martyrs, those being murdered for their faith. One wishes His Grace urged us to do just that, rather than indirectly promoting a course of action that’s bound to produce more martyrs to pray for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Usually on this most joyous day of the year I write a longish piece, wishing my readers a Happy Easter – regardless of whether or not they are Christians.

The point I always make is that there is enough in this event even for non-believers to celebrate, for without it our civilisation wouldn’t exist, and my readers, regardless of their religion, are civilised people.

Without Easter our world would be a very different place and, for all our complaints and laments, not nearly as glorious a place.

However, since we all, believers and non-believers alike, realise this, belabouring the point would be superfluous. It would be, to use an English cliché, preaching to the converted or, as the Russians say, trying to break in through an open door.

Speaking of our glorious world, my readers come from every corner of it, and – though they all self-evidently speak English – the words even strangers traditionally exchange on this day must sound more familiar to them in their mother tongue.

So Happy Easter, wherever you are:

 

Christ is risen!

Le Christ est ressuscité!

Christus ist auferstanden!

 

Cristo ha resucitado!

Cristo è risorto!

Kristus on üles tõusnud!

Kristus er oppstanden!

Xристос воскрес!

Chrystus zmartwychwstał!

Kristus vstal z mrtvých!

Cristo ressuscitou!

Kristus ir augšāmcēlies!

Christus is verrezen!

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη!

 

Krisztus feltámadt!

Kristus är uppstånden!

Kristus prisikėlė!

Hristos a înviat!

 

The Muslim slaughter of 150 Christians in Kenya serves yet another reminder  of the West’s impotence. It’s not just that we don’t protect our own; we no longer even realise who our own are.

This being Good Friday, I feel more contemplative than enraged. Hence I wouldn’t be able to write an appropriately indignant piece called for in this situation. In any case, doing so would be repeating what I’ve said many times before in other articles. So here is one of those pieces, from last September, written in the aftermath of some public beheadings perpetrated by Isis.

You’ll find that everything I said then applies, mutandis mutantis, to the Kenyan tragedy.

 

Religion of peace is getting ever so slightly out of hand, wouldn’t you say?

Suddenly a seditious question crosses one’s mind: can it be that perhaps Islam does have something to do with IS monstrosity, if only a teensy-weensy bit?

No, surely not. In the aftermath of the twin towers collapsing, George W. Bush explained that Islam isn’t to blame for anything Muslims do, even if they claim to be acting in the name of Allah.

One wonders. We don’t see many Buddhists lunching on human organs, nor many Confucians engaged in terrorism and general mayhem all over the world, attacking anyone within close proximity.

Neither do many Christians publicly behead journalists, this in spite of the severe provocation provided by the entire editorial staffs of The Guardian, The Independent, The Times and the BBC.  

Sorry about sounding facetious about this, but my first editor all those years ago taught me not to rant, instead using irony as a defence mechanism.

Such self-restraint isn’t easy in the face of the monumental stupidity, cowardice and moral corruption happily co-existing within the breast of our leaders.

It’s thanks to this confluence of character traits that they refuse to acknowledge the obvious. Those IS animals, including the now famous product of our comprehensive education, wouldn’t be committing their midnight horrors on such a scale if they were Buddhists, Confucians or Christians.

They commit them because they are Muslims. Unless we realise this, and act accordingly, things will get much worse and we’ll find ourselves on the receiving end – yet again.

The copout so beloved of our spivocratic leaders, that only a minority of Muslims cut off people’s heads, doesn’t wash.

Only a minority of Dresden dwellers were SS murderers, yet that fact didn’t queer the aim of US and British bombardiers. The Soviet communist party had a total membership of under 10 per cent of the population, yet this didn’t deter us from training nuclear missiles on Soviet cities.

Violence on a massive scale is always initiated by a radical elite, the red-hot end of a largely inert mass. The rest follow half-heartedly or at least acquiesce, until they too get into the spirit and become indistinguishable from the elite in their murderous ardour.

These aren’t theoretical abstractions. They are premises for a coherent strategy executed by appropriate tactics.

When the first American journalist was decapitated on camera, President Obama said “We don’t have a strategy yet” and went off to work on his golf swing.

When the second American pundit lost his head, Obama didn’t say anything. Our own Dave wasn’t particularly forthcoming either – he was too busy fuming about Israel’s ‘deplorable’ occupation of an area roughly equal in size to the parks between London’s Westminster and Kensington.

By all accounts our great leaders are busily working behind the scenes in an effort to put together an ad hoc anti-IS coalition, including the Saudis, the Jordanians, the Kurds and anyone else willing to join.

As far as I know, neither the IRA nor the Tamil Tigers have been asked. They must feel terribly left out, wondering where they’ve gone wrong.

It has to be said that Dubya and Tony were considerably more decisive back in 2003, when committing US and British troops in the Middle East. It was thanks to them that democracy came to Iraq, though it has since left.

The vacuum thus formed was filled by Islamic terror, now threatening to engulf our countries as well. Yet God forbid we should act decisively and unilaterally to stamp out those IS thugs like cockroaches – we only ever go in when we shouldn’t, when doing so is guaranteed to set the world aflame.

A rapid unilateral offensive might look as if it’s us against them, the post-Christian West against the Islamic East. How multi-culti would that be? Not very. Certainly not enough to mollify The Guardian, The Independent, The Times – and, I hope you’re getting up to salute, the BBC.

Turn those chaps against you, and you can kiss the next election good-bye, Dave has no doubts on that score. Nor is Obama in much doubt on the electoral prospects of the Democrats should the TV networks, The New York Times and The Washington Post fall out of love with them, however temporarily.

Hence the urgent need to form a coalition with Muslim wolves, on this occasion donning synthetic sheep’s clothing. Look, we’ve got the Kurds on our side, they are Muslims, so who are you calling anti-Islamic bigots, Mr Voter?

This is all terribly wrong. The proper way for our countries to act is to straighten out the mess of our own creation.

It’s thanks to our own criminal stupidity that Islam has entered an impassioned phase, a development kept in check prior to that by the secular thugs we’ve removed. The region and the religion are now on fire, and only fire can put it out.

Rewind the clock back 100-odd years and ask yourself this question: How would Britain and the USA have responded then to public murders of Englishmen and Americans in Islamic lands?

How likely would those prime ministers and presidents have been to ponder whether or not it was justified to hold a wide group responsible for the crimes committed by a few of its members?

The question contains the answer. They would have hit the whole region with all they had, laying about them with rather indiscriminate violence and without giving a second thought to extraneous considerations. No one murdered Englishmen or Americans and got away with it.

In 1904, when the Moroccan brigand Raisuni kidnapped a Greek-American named Perdicaris, President Theodore Roosevelt (also involved in an election campaign at the time) immediately sent a squadron of warships to Morocco.

The ships levelled their guns on Rabat and flew the signal “Perdicaris Alive or Raisuli Dead!” No poll was conducted to determine the proportion of the Rabat population sympathetic to Raisuli or complicit in his crimes.

How far should the West go to protect its citizens and allies against Islamic barbarism? There’s only one geopolitically viable or indeed moral answer to this question: as far as it takes, and never mind multi-culti rectitude.

Yet we in the West have lost the knack for providing such answers. Nor do we realise any longer that those who won’t fight for their civilisation don’t deserve to keep it.

I used to think that Ed is nothing but your typical leftie demagogue with learning difficulties, the moral sense of a skunk and an abiding hatred of his country and the rest of the West.

But Ed has proved me wrong. There’s more to him than that. Turns out he’s bonkers as well.

The clinical picture for this diagnosis rests on two symptoms, each of which would be sufficient in its own right.

First, Ed thinks James Bond should be played by a woman. Second, he has delusions of being a casting director, in which capacity he proposes Rosamund Pike for the 007 role.

Miss Pike, according to Ed, “is a great British actress, she’d make a great Bond”. The first part of the accolade is aesthetically questionable; the second is clinically insane.

Tory MP Philip Davies correctly identified the suggestion as “politically correct nonsense”, but he was wrong to say that “James Bond is not a woman – the clue is in the name.”

That is, he wasn’t wrong within the confines of the sane world he inhabits. But in the virtual reality of Ed’s febrile mind such incidentals would never get in the way of ideology.

Obviously, if James Bond were to undergo a transsex operation, he would change his name as well, for, say, Jemma. You must admit that Bond, Jemma Bond has a certain ring to it.

“This is 2015, I think we can move with the times,” explained Ed.

I couldn’t agree more. And the times are such that being a man isn’t just passé, but also somehow offensive. Who needs men anyway, if women can lead bayonet charges, discuss philosophy, carry bags of cement and reproduce parthenogenically?

Actually, to add verisimilitude to his mental picture of the times, Ed himself ought to become a woman. In his case nothing but minimal cosmetic changes would be required.

A little tuck here, a little nip there, and presto: Edwina Miliband, easily as gorgeous as her namesake Currie, plus a bit of goitre. Sorry, Ed, it has to be done. Got to move with the times, old boy.

As to Edwina’s casting choice, it may turn out to be a bit confusing to the fans of the Bond franchise. After all, back in 2002 Miss Pike already appeared in a Bond film, as 007’s treacherous girlfriend.

It would be eerie to see her in a new incarnation, brandishing her Walther PPK, guzzling endless vodka martinis (shaken, not stirred), smoking 40 devilishly strong cigarettes a day and kicking the living bejesus out of all and sundry.

Then of course there is the slight problem of Bond’s trademark tendency to bed whole harems of lasses, of whom Rosamund herself was one all that time ago.

A problem? Not to worry, I hear Edwina say.

As Jemma Bond, Rosamund would have to become lesbian, by way of moving with the times. Thus she could continue to have her bed restocked with a steady stream of scantily dressed babes, and the director will still be shouting ‘Cut!’ at the most interesting moments.

In due course Jemma could marry one of the babes and live happily thereafter, for a day or two, until she either tired of her wife/husband or saw her/him killed in front of her eyes, in the good tradition of the series.

Dyed-in-the-wool reactionaries like Philip Davies may argue that James Bond has been a folkloric hero for three generations, thereby joining the ranks of the Scarlet Pimpernel, Robin Hood et al.

How far would Edwina be prepared to push her revisionism of folklore? There’s only one possibly answer to that, Philip: as far as it takes to move with the times. It’s 2015, mate. Time you realised this.

Hence the Scarlet Pimpernel could become the Scarlet Woman Pimpernel or, to make it sound more mellifluous, the Harlot Pimpernel, to be played by Kim Kardashian in any forthcoming films.

In addition to defeating her enemies with time-honoured swordplay, the Swashbuckler Mark II could catch both male and female villains in honey traps, with her jutting attractions acting as honey.

And Robin Hood wouldn’t even have to change his name: women, especially those who move with the times, are often named Robin these days.

As a voluntary contribution to future scripts, I suggest that Robin, sporting a PVC bra and her male precursor’s traditional tights, could wink scabrously at Maid Marian and whisper “Hey, babe, I have more than one string to my bow, djahmean?”

Alternatively, Robin could remain a man, a bisexual one of course, have sex with the Sheriff of Nottingham, wait until he dropped off post-coitally and then slit his throat. The possibilities are endless.

We ought to keep in mind that Edwina, she of fecund imagination, may well become our next prime minister, thereby gaining a wide field in which to bring her ideas to fruition, and unfortunately not just those on cinematography.

Joseph de Maistre famously said that every nation gets the kind of government it deserves, a thought that came to him after spending a few years in the Russia of Alexander I.

The maxim was probably true in the Russian context, and it still applies there, considering that 86 per cent of the population support Putin and 45 per cent retrospectively approve of Stalin’s massacres.

Yet one likes to think that we haven’t done anything quite so awful as to deserve Edwina’s premiership. Then again, one also likes to think that some day sanity will return to our government – it has been away for far too long.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every other week during the football season my neighbourhood is overrun by feral-looking chaps.

This isn’t to say that all Chelsea FC osupporters are feral — it only seems that way.

When their team wins they drink copious amounts of beer joyously. When their team loses they drink copious amounts of beer morosely. In either case they urinate in the street and throw up at my doorstep (nothing personal, I hope).

And they sing. The musical content of their songs can’t compete with Schubert’s lieder, but I dare say those crude chants are more instructive anthropologically.

It goes without saying that obscenities figure prominently — the genre demands them, just as Schubert’s lieder demand the words Tränen in meinen Augen (‘tears in my eyes’).

I mean, those fans aren’t going to sing about Tränen in their Augen, are they? So they sing “We win home and away, we win every f***ing way” and “Chelsea here, Chelsea there, Chelsea every f***ing where”, with the rousing chorus easily penetrating my double glazing.

My wife invariably voices strong objections to obscenity, but for me to do so would be hypocritical — unless I were prepared to repeat the phrase “Do as I say, not as I do.”

Yes, I do reserve my swearing for the delectation of my interlocutors, not for everyone within 200 yards, but one ought to make allowances for mass enthusiasm.

That’s not all they sing though. Some of the chants make strong statements on race issues, the most popular of them being “There ain’t no black in the Union Jack”.

That’s true: there ain’t. There are, however, quite a few people, both black and white, who find that sort of thing more offensive than the oft-repeated expletive.

In yet another example of life imitating art, the fans sometimes act on their songs’ messages. As they did, for example, in Paris, when they threw a black man off a Metro train to the vocal accompaniiment of “We’re racist, we’re racist, and that’s the way we like it.”

Who am I to argue with what other people like? However, and this is a life-long observation, real racists hardly ever describe themselves as such.

Neither do fascists, this side of Mussolini’s Italy. Neither do paedophiles. Neither do murderers. These terms don’t smell good, and the practitioners of such vices are good at finding acceptable euphemisms.

So, even assuming that those Chelsea fans genuinely hate other races, why do they scream their racism off the rooftops? I suggest this is a resction, or rather overreaction, to the ethos of political correctness that has been shoved down their throats for half a century at least.

All races are equal at the only level that matters, and we ought to be reminded of this postulate constantly, and especially during this week.

“There is neither Jew nor Greek… for ye are all one in Christ Jesus,” wrote St Paul, and mankind has so far failed to come up with an alternative bond tying people together.

That failure, however, hasn’t stopped mankind from effectively abandoning the sole available bond and separating sharply along national and racial lines. This development is rather recent.

For example, we take the concept of nation state for granted, forgetting that it’s barely 200 years old.

Also, at roughly the same time that concept appeared, the great champions of liberty in America, including the sainted Thomas Jefferson, regarded and treated blacks as not fully human.

Of course neither the French nor the American Enlighteners saw Paul, or for that matter Christ, as an authority on the conduct of everyday life. What they saw in their min’d eyes wasn’t God Man, but man as God, a sort of deincarnation.

Their views on nations and races more or less held sway, with varying degrees of virulence, for the next two centuries. Then suddenly they became unfashionable.

Specifically in Britain all races were declared equal, but not at the only level that matters. They were pronounced equal in being equally entitled to unlimited access to the country and its social benefits. The glorious idea of equality was replaced with the repugnant one of egalitarianism.

Suddenly even uttering the word ‘immigration’ in any context other than a burning desire for more of it became impossible in polite, which is to say politically correct, society.

Successive Labour governments insisted on opening British borders — and social rolls — to millions of people who not only looked unlike the indigenous population but also behaved differently.

There was nothing they could do about their appearance, but there was much they could have done about their behaviour, bringing it in line with the traditional culture of their adopted country.

However, they weren’t encouraged to do so. On the contrary, the new arrivals were imbued with a sense of entitlement springing from the colonial past of their home lands.

It would be presuming too much on human goodness to expect that the Brits would accept this development with universal equanimity. Truth to tell, the English aren’t known for their welcoming spirit when it comes to strangers, even chromatically similar ones.

A friend of mine, for example, retired to a Cambridgeshire village, having spent his working life elsewhere. Though the village is five miles down the road from the one in which he was born and grew up, it took his new neighbours 15 years before they began to respond to his greetings.

A massive propaganda job was needed to prevent popular uprisings against the influx of Labour voters on social benefits, and the arrival of many hard-working people with Tory leanings didn’t change the overall perception.

The propaganda guns couldn’t be levelled at just race: they had to bombard every aspect of traditional customs and beliefs. The ensuing barrage goes by the name of political correctness.

In its name any millennia-old belief, regardless of its intrinsic quality, was castigated first as socially unacceptable, then as immoral and then, exceedingly, illegal.

People have been conditioned to accept that it’s not just death and taxes (however exorbitant) that are unavoidable, but also criminal prosecution for deeds and even words that go against the propaganda diktats.

By and large the effort succeeded, but, if history  has taught us anything, the Brits may succumb to propaganda for a while, but sooner or later they’ll rebel.

The nation, after all, taught others the true meaning of political liberty, and this lesson sprang from the depth of the British natoional character (yes, there is such a thing).

The rebellion may take various forms, depending on who is rebelling. You’ll notice that in this election campaign it has become possible (if, one suspects, ultimately futile) to discuss immigration as a serious issue at dinner parties in the better areas of London — something unthinkable even 10 years ago.

Most Chelsea fans, however, don’t live in Chelsea or adjacent areas. They come from rougher neighbourhoods, where verbal and pghysical violence is common currency.

The older ones still remember the times when those neighbourhoods weren’t all that rough, when one could leave one’s door unlocked without fear of being robbed. The younger ones just react from their gonads.

Rightly or wrongly they ascribe the change to the dilution of the social and ethnic coohesion brought about my institutionalised political correctness. And they react in the only way that comes naturally.

So far this takes the shape of obscene chants and the odd act of hooliganism. Full-scale riots may follow, and we hope they don’t while fearing they might.

This isn’t to excuse the yahoo hooligans, especially those among them who are visceral haters. But I’d venture a guess that those thugs are in the minority. Most act that way because they don’t know what else they can do.

Please join me in shedding a tear for a once venerable newspaper.

In the distant past, The Times voiced opinions with which one could usually agree or occasionally disagree. In either case, the paper’s columnists supported their views with sound arguments.

This is no longer the case. Any intellectual integrity in The Times has fallen by the wayside, and one hardly ever finds evidence of grown-up thinking there.

Today’s article by Libby Purves is a case in point. Miss Purves has taken time off her busy schedule, mostly devoted to ‘gay rights’, to write a piece whose title caught my eye: You Can Have Depression and Still Fly a Plane.

Since my yesterday’s article reached exactly the opposite conclusion, I had to examine Miss Purves’s arguments on the off chance that she may have a point. Alas, having done so, I found no reason to change my mind either on the issue at hand or on my general assessment of The Times.

Her eponymous conclusion is based on three points: 1) Human normality is hard to define (“it is worth remembering what human normality is”), 2) Depressed pilots don’t often crash planes on purpose (“how rare and abnormal such events are”), 3) Most people aren’t mass murderers (“how extraordinarily un-murderous and protective of one another most human beings feel”).

If this is the foundation on which Miss Purves’s conclusion rests, no wonder it comes crashing down.

Her first point is irrelevant in this context, though it wouldn’t be out of place in a philosophical essay contemplating the complex interplay between ontological and existential factors in human behaviour.

Yet airline executives screening potential pilots don’t have to be philosophers guided by abstract ratiocination. They should proceed from that increasingly uncommon quality called common sense.

Hence they should realise that no person who has undergone extensive psychiatric treatment is fit to take control of a plane carrying hundreds of passengers. End of story.

This may sound insensitive, callous and discriminatory, failing to meet the stringent moral demands of a gay-rights campaigner. But if such abominable characteristics save lives, any reasonable person would put his sense of moral outrage on hold.

Miss Purves’s second point is absolutely correct. However, it in no way justifies her conclusion.

As someone who in his somewhat tempestuous and lamented youth used to drive home a bottle of spirits in the bag, I can testify that most drunk drivers get home safely. Would Miss Purves accept this fact as a reason to repeal drink-drive laws?

One suspects not. She would probably decide that statistical probability is a wrong tool to apply to judgement concerning human lives.

Considering that a drunk driver is unlikely to kill more than half a dozen people, and a depressed pilot has just demonstrated an ability to kill 150, why such double standards?

Well, you see, drinking is yobbish, the curse of the working classes, as Victorians used to say. Of course in our progressive times dipsomania has crossed the class barriers, but the old conviction persists.

Depression, on the other hand, is oh-so-fashionable around Hampstead and Notting Hill, while touching sensitivity to it is oh-so-de rigueur. That is perfectly fine, unless of course we don’t let such puny considerations cloud our judgement on matters of life or death.

Miss Purves’s third, pardon the expression, argument refutes itself, making my effort to do so both redundant and unsporting.

It’s God’s own truth that few people are murderers. Does this mean we should decriminalise homicide? Or do nothing to prevent it? Should we force our police officers to assume the duties of social workers, even more than is already the case?

The article goes downhill from there. Miss Purves quotes a German expert as saying that psychiatric evaluations are difficult, depending as they do “on the patient being truthful or the doctor being perceptive.”

Sir Simon Weassely, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, confirms: “no amount of mental health screening will predict [such events].”

Both statements are doubtless correct, but Miss Purves’s conclusion is a complete non sequitur.

It is true that a reasonably clever chap can usually beat psychological tests, especially if he has a strong incentive to do so. But such tests and personal interviews aren’t the only screening tools possible. By far the most reliable one is the patient’s history.

Even the most unperceptive of doctors examining the most untruthful of patients can still read the patient’s notes. If they reveal a long history of psychiatric treatment, any responsible airline should rule that the pilot is unfit to fly.

It’s true that medical mistakes are possible, especially in this notoriously obscure area. But then jurisprudence is also error-prone, which doesn’t disqualify courts from passing prison sentences.

In addition to a deficit of logic, Miss Purves is richly endowed with ignorance.

“To demonise all forms of sensitivity and depression is itself crazy,” she writes. I’m not aware of anyone suggesting that all forms of sensitivity be demonised, and nor does keeping psychiatric patients from airliner controls constitute demonisation.

That’s the crepuscular logic. Now comes the ignorance: “Many people suffer from sadness, depression or family and romantic failure [yet they don’t crash planes on purpose].”

There is such a thing as endogenous depression, Miss Purves, which can be triggered by an unpleasant event but is not caused by it. That type of depression is a legitimate clinical condition characterised by a severe biochemical imbalance, and it is usually resistant to drugs.

It’s touchy-feely ignorance to use the word ‘depression’ as a full synonym of ‘sadness’ in any other than purely colloquial parlance. In general, it’s best to steer clear of such extremely involved and technical areas if one isn’t sure of one’s footing.

Of course the problems with our popular journalists is that they are never unsure of their footing. They have been anointed by the hand of public opinion, and thereby given the licence to say whatever they please with scant regard for logic or facts.

One wonders, however, if Miss Purves would show the courage of her convictions by embarking on a plane knowing in advance that the pilot has been treated for mental disorders. It would be like vaccine pioneers inoculating themselves, though with less of a benefit for mankind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First a disclaimer: I dislike the BBC and quite like Jeremy Clarkson.

With every word out of his mouth, the sacked presenter of Top Gear challenges the prevailing ethos, especially its more revolting aspects so ably promoted by the BBC.

Clarkson talks and writes in a lucid, entertaining and occasionally witty fashion, with none of the emetic self-righteousness typified by the network’s ‘serious’ programmes.

He is the quintessential Jack the Lad, not the anthropological type that appeals to me before all others, but surely one preferable to the pseudointellectual lefties making up the bulk of the BBC staff.

Moreover, I am man enough to admit that I like cars (and I know real conservatives aren’t supposed to), if not quite with the same pitch of demotic passion exuded by Top Gear.

Hence over the years I must have watched a dozen Top Gear episodes, which, among BBC programmes, places it second in my affections to Match of the Day (another disqualifying factor for a real conservative I’m afraid).

If you detect a sense of mild, dispassionate approval for the show in general and Mr Clarkson in particular, your antennae are in working order. However, there is nothing mild and dispassionate about the contempt I feel for the BBC and everything it represents.

The network, this side of Top Gear and Match of the Day, proves my deep-seated conviction that trendy lefties aren’t just misguided but actually stupid.

Nowhere is this law of nature revealed more palpably than in BBC ‘educational’ programmes that are, with one or two exceptions, culturally demotic, intellectually feeble and morally decrepit.

Having said all that, it isn’t immediately obvious how such BBC highlights as Match of the Day, Top Gear, along with its once and future stars like Jonathan Ross or Russell Brand, uphold the corporation’s charter.

The Charter specifies the desiderata the BBC must pursue in order to qualify for public money. The five off the top are:

·      Sustaining citizenship and civil society

·      Promoting education and learning

·      Stimulating creativity and cultural excellence

·      Representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities

·      Bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK

At the risk of sounding elitist, one may argue, albeit timidly, that the kind of education, learning and cultural excellence meant there aren’t to be advanced by watching Mr Clarkson drive unaffordable cars at illegal speeds, or by hearing yet another tattooed chap with learning difficulties gloat how he “hit it first time, and there it was in the back of the net.”

Admittedly, the footage of English football fans rampaging through the streets to the accompaniment of the ‘Ingerland, Ingerland, Ingerland’ chorus does convey an idea of Britishness to the world, but I’m not unequivocally certain this is the best idea to convey.

I’d suggest that the demonstrable failure of the BBC to meet its Charter requirements is sufficient grounds for it to lose its licence fees and fight for its share of voice in the commercial market.

If it were indeed a commercial outfit, I bet it would never sack Mr Clarkson who has created and sustained all these years by far the most successful programme in BBC history. Nothing short of his credible promise to load up a Ferrari with Semtex and blow it up in the middle of the Oxford Street shopping crowd would get Clarkson the boot.

As it was, he was fired for beating up a lowly producer on his programme who was guilty of not having provided a hot meal at the end of the show.

The sacking caused an outburst of protest, featuring a petition signed by millions and even the odd death threat to BBC management. One can understand the protesters: clearly Top Gear has become an important part of their lives.

Regardless of what one may think of the kind of people whose lives just wouldn’t be complete without a particular TV show, most people are like that. And in our democratic times we can’t dismiss the majority out of hand, no matter how strong the temptation.

All this is a preamble to the following sentence: If I were in charge of the BBC, I would have sacked Clarkson too – and probably faster than he was indeed sacked.

Clarkson is nothing but an entertaining jumped-up yob with the gift of the gab. When he projects that persona on his show, more power to him. As I said, better that than the pseud effluvia of some faddish art expert or historian.

But when those same qualities give him the sense of being above the law, he ought to be punished. Clarkson obviously felt that his exalted status of a money-spinning celebrity gave him the right not only to scream obscenities at his underlings but also to attack them physically.

He must have felt stratospherically superior to his victim. Yet if Clarkson were a civilised man, he’d know that at the only level that matters we are all equal – and equally entitled to dignity and respect.

Hitting a man in the face, especially a man half your size physically and infinitely inferior to you institutionally, isn’t just causing physical pain. It’s stamping into the dirt the man’s dignity and humanity. As such, it’s an affront not only to the victim but to us all, the human race.

The victim has generously agreed not to press legal charges, sparing Clarkson an arrest for affray and possibly ABH (actual bodily harm). But any moral judge should find him guilty as charged.

It’s good to take those media celebrities down a peg once in a while, to remind them that, for all their trivial achievements, they are still expected to comply with the rules of civilised behaviour.

Mr Clarkson will now probably take his talents to a commercial station, where cash cows are treated as sacred ones. One hopes he has learned his lesson in self-control, though this isn’t the way to bet.

He is a celebrity, isn’t he? As such he is God in our otherwise godless society.