Category: Blog

Democracy is about the rule of the people, and Mr Mellor is one of those people.

I can think of no one who typifies our ruling elite better than this former minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government, no one who could preside over our cherished democracy as successfully.

Well, perhaps I could think of a name or two. Quite a few names actually. Or, to be exact, just about any of our rulers – whichever party they represent.

They all profess to be ruling in the name of the people, while cordially despising those same people – presumably because of the people’s failure to see through them.

Not many of our rulers, however, get caught expressing such sentiments publicly, but Mr Mellor is one of the chosen few. Yet again he has been undone by the technological advances of which modernity is so justly proud, specifically by the advances in recording technology.

The first time was back in 1992, and that put paid to Mr Mellor’s political career, though of course didn’t remove him from the ruling elite. Once in, never out, not even if there’s a bit of prison time involved.

There was no prison for Mr Mellor, even though he transgressed against a biblical commandment, if admittedly one that few of us regard as just.

Though very much married, Mr Mellor was having an affair with a lady of easy virtue. At the time his amorous tastes struck me as slightly bizarre, but then I’m notoriously square in such matters.

Apparently he wore the home strip of his beloved Chelsea FC during sex – while everyone knows that all worthy men support Arsenal or, at a pinch, Spurs.

Also, he had a taste for sucking the girl’s toes, which I suppose is harmless enough, provided the toes are clean and neatly pedicured.

Such intimate details became known when the young lady subsequently sold her suck-and-tell story to News of the World for £35,000, as one does.

The story, and that’s where the recording technology came in, was supported by telephone conversations secretly taped by the girl’s landlord, and I bet Mr Mellor is still cursing Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of both diabolical devices used therein.

A scandal ensued, and in the process a few other indiscretions came to light, such as Mr Mellor having accepted a free holiday from the PLO, an organisation then not universally seen as Britain’s friend.

In his defence, the PLO woman he dealt with had the best pair of legs in London, which I once ascertained walking behind her up the stairs when she was wearing a short skirt.

Anyway, Mellor had to resign, yet here he is now, 22 years later, again caught by a hidden tape recorder preserving for posterity yet another toe-sucking… sorry, I mean toe-curling, incident.

Mr Mellor and his mistress were going home in a black cab, when he took vociferous exception to the route the driver was taking.

Now, before getting anywhere near a black cab, aspiring London cabbies have to take ‘the knowledge’, a written test that takes most of them several years to pass.

No wonder: to pass the test, the applicant has to know just about every building within a seven-mile radius from Charing Cross. He must also be able to name every street along both the shortest and, depending on the time of day, fastest route to every destination.

Mr Mellor’s cabbie passed the test and then drove for 10 years before his car was graced by Mr Mellor’s august presence.

As a member of the ruling elite, Mr Mellor knows everything better than anyone who isn’t a member, even if that person is an experienced professional.

Geography of London is one area in which hoi polloi can’t possibly be more knowledgeable than Mr Mellor. I imagine nuclear physics would be another such area, along with cooking, microbiology and last season’s statistics of Chelsea FC.

Mr Mellor is naturally superior to the plebs, a category that includes more or less everybody the other side of the select group.

This he communicated to the stubborn driver in no uncertain or polite terms. Alas, unbeknown to him, the driver was not only stubborn but also tricky. He pushed the ‘record’ button and now we can all take delight in Mr Mellor’s self-acknowledged superiority.

To open a dialogue, he described the cabbie as a “sweaty, stupid little s***” and a “smart-arsed little bastard”. Mellor then told him to “shut the f*** up” and tested the driver to find out if his ‘knowledge’ exam included familiarity with Mr Mellor’s credentials.

“I’ve been in the cabinet,” he screamed. “I’m an award-winning broadcaster! I’m a Queen’s Counsel! Don’t give me a lot of s***!”

Since repetition is the mother of all learning, Mr Mellor proceeded to go over his CV several times, to make sure the information would be retained.

Actually, the driver wasn’t challenging Mr Mellor’s expertise in any of the listed areas. He stayed in the confines of his own profession, not realising that, comparatively speaking, his knowledge was as inferior to Mr Mellor’s as his social standing.

At the end of the conversation, whose transcript is almost a newspaper-page long,  Mr Mellor called the cabbie a “stupid little s***” and told him to “stop here, by the red light. Then you can f*** off.”

I’m sure you’ll join me in issuing this plea, which comes from the bottom of my heart.

Please, David, come back to politics. Our democracy needs superior, educated, cultured gentlemen like you, gentlemen being the operative word.

For one thing, the revival of your political career may stop you writing on classical music, in which your taste is, frankly, a tad philistine and your knowledge well-nigh nonexistent.

Most important, at this time of rampant egalitarianism we need someone who can show us our place. Someone to keep us on our toes – if you’ll pardon the expression.

Come the f*** back, David. All is forgiven.

 

My new book, Democracy as a Neocon Trick, is available from Amazon and the more discerning bookshops. However, my publisher would rather you ordered it from http://www.roperpenberthy.co.uk/index.php/browse-books/political/democracy-as-a-neocon-trick.htmlor, in the USA, http://www.newwinebookshop.com/Books/0002752

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

American cities are aflame.

Fires raging everywhere. Riots paralysing urban life. Manhattan tunnels and bridges blocked by the mob of ‘protesters’.

Cars ploughing through crowds. Rioters, no doubt made thirsty by the heat of burning rubbish, busting into off-licences.

Tear gas in the air. The state of emergency declared in Missouri. The governor solicitously recommending that white people don’t go out if they can help it.

‘Peaceful’ demonstrations rapidly becoming an orgy of vandalism and looting. State of emergency declared.

Do you sometimes feel that Americans are having all the fun?

Sure enough, we have our share of riots too. But ours are strictly local, almost parochial. They lack both breadth and depth.

The denizens of Tottenham may be wreaking most enjoyable havoc, but other postcodes of London remain quiet. And as to Liverpool or Newcastle, they may not even know what’s going on in the north of the capital.

Not so in America, and here I’d like to dispel the impression I may have given in the past by often describing our society as a lunatic asylum.

That may be, but we didn’t start the pandemic of madness. That honour belongs to the Americans, and they can still teach us a thing or two.

For example, from personal experience our papers don’t allow journalists to describe jury verdicts as wrong or, God forbid, unjust.

Due process has worked, justice has spoken and that’s all there is to it. To suggest that in a particular case justice spoke ungrammatically and with a bad accent is to bring into question the fundamental principles of our polity, which is discouraged.

Even the more radicalised segments of the British population grudgingly accept the rule of law, for the time being. And if this or that verdict seems unjust to them, they seldom express their feelings by setting cities on fire, although this may change before too long.

The events in Ferguson, the largely black suburb of St Louis, Mo, and the string of riots they’ve triggered all over the place, show that not all Americans have intuitive respect for the law coded into their DNA.

So what happened?

After weeks of deliberation, the grand jury decided that there were no grounds for prosecuting the police officer Darren Wilson for shooting the black teenager Michael Brown.

But the riots began even before the verdict. The very fact that the grand jury had to think about it was a sufficient trigger.

Any time a police officer, especially if he is white, shoots a black man, it’s racially inspired murder.

Large segments of the American population, and not necessarily just the blacks, don’t acknowledge that sometimes the officer may be acting in self-defence.

If the prison population in America is 80 per cent black, it’s not because black Americans commit more crimes. It’s because they are discriminated against, as many left-leaning Americans have kindly explained to me.

This is the good story, and no facts are allowed to interfere with it. That’s why President Obama implicitly endorsed the legitimacy of the rioters’ grievances by sending three of his administration’s officials to attend Michael Brown’s funeral.

The circumstances of the case are well known. Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson were quietly going about their business, which that August evening involved robbing a convenience store.

Afterwards they walked home in the middle of the street, smoking their stolen cigars.

Officer Wilson stopped his car, rolled down the window and told them to get on the pavement.

In response, Brown rushed to the car and started throwing punches through the window, causing the officer numerous lacerations and, by some accounts, a broken eye socket.

Now Michael was not only a bad boy but also a big one. Standing 6’4” and weighing the better part of 21 stone, he had a clear advantage over officer Wilson in unarmed combat.

That’s why the combat didn’t remain unarmed for long. Wilson pulled out a gun and the boys ran away in opposite directions.

Wilson ran after Brown, who suddenly turned around and advanced on the policeman. Fearing for his continued good health, Wilson shot Brown six times, the last shot proving lethal.

Examining reams of evidence, including CCTV footage, the grand jury cleared officer Wilson of all charges, and riots ensued.

The rioters, inspired by the rousing pleas of the Brown family, are demanding justice, which in civilised countries is usually associated with due process.

But American blacks have been corrupted by their white ‘liberal’ champions into believing that true justice has little to do with the law. Each case in which a black man is the victim has to be judged by the higher law of righting an historical wrong.

The blacks have been conditioned to identify themselves by their race first and their nationality a distant second. Yet ‘African Americans’ aren’t really African, and they are encouraged to think they aren’t really American either.

They are members of the international and supranational communion of victims, which also includes women, homosexuals, Darwinists, champions of sustainable energy, Muslims – in fact, anyone who sees himself as a victim.

This whole mindset is generally deplorable, and indeed I’ve deplored it on many occasions. Yet, specifically talking about American blacks, one has to wonder if the Americans are reaping what they’ve sown.

For black slavery did exist in America until the 1860s, and Jim Crow discrimination in the South for a hundred years after that.

In that, America largely compromised her founding principles and indeed claims to Christian antecedents, which was brilliantly pointed out by Dr Johnson: “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”

Past sins tend to come back to haunt not only individuals but also countries. Can it be that America is now paying the price for past wrongs, exacerbated by the wrong of knee-jerk post-Enlightenment liberalism?

Sins can be repented, which in this case America has done. Correcting them is something else again, and no easy solutions exist.

America did indeed opt for easy solutions by creating a huge black underclass bankrolled by the public purse, corrupting it with a sense of automatic entitlement and practising ‘affirmative action’, otherwise known as reverse discrimination.

This didn’t so much solve the old problem as replaced it with a new one. Ferguson, Missouri, provides a vivid illustration of that but not a useful lesson.

No lessons, especially those of history, are ever useful in the madhouse of modernity. It’s proud of its madness.

 

My new book, Democracy as a Neocon Trick, is available from Amazon and the more discerning bookshops. However, my publisher would rather you ordered it from http://www.roperpenberthy.co.uk/index.php/browse-books/political/democracy-as-a-neocon-trick.htmlor, in the USA, http://www.newwinebookshop.com/Books/0002752

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Parliament yesterday: our government submitted a bill that officially defines the United Kingdom as a nation state of and for the British people.

The bill, intended to become part of Great Britain’s basic law, would recognise the country’s British character, institutionalise Christian law as an inspiration for legislation and confirm English as the only official language.

When I heard the news, I jumped up, punched the air, shouted Yes!!!… and woke up.

Actually the opening two paragraphs came from a Guardian story almost verbatim. (I hasten to reassure you that I didn’t sully my hands with a copy of that awful newspaper. This is something I refuse to do on principle, so thank God for the Internet.)

I only changed a few words because the story wasn’t about Britain. The bill submitted by the Israeli cabinet to the Knesset was about Israel, Jewish law and Hebrew.

The Guardian wouldn’t be what it is if the story’s very next sentence informed the readers that “Arab Muslims and Christians make up 20% of Israel’s population.”

No comment necessary: the proposed law will discriminate against Christians, just like in Saudi Arabia.  Hence this practice isn’t indigenously Muslim, as assorted fascists/reactionaries/fossils/Ukip supporters will have you believe.

Clever journalism, that: the fact cited is both accurate and misleading. It’s like saying that 20 per cent of the restaurants in my area are Italian and Bolivian. Without a further breakdown, specifying how many are Italian and how many Bolivian, the information isn’t very helpful, is it?

In Israel’s case, of the Arabs living in Israel only nine per cent are Christians. The rest are variously fanatical Muslims, many of whom are wholeheartedly committed to the destruction of the country in which they live, with the attendant massacre of most people in it.

Prime Minister Netanyahu drew a perfectly valid distinction between civil and national rights, again making me both envious and eager to throw darts at Dave’s picture.

Civil rights, he said, would be equal for all, but national rights would be reserved for Jews only: “It cannot be that those who harm Israel, those who call for the destruction of the state of Israel, will enjoy rights like social security.”

This statement made me think of those thousands of British Muslims dancing in the streets after the destruction of the World Trade Centre and then again after a series of terrorist attacks on London transport.

How many of those dancers ‘enjoy rights like social security’? How many of them vote, deciding who will govern the nation they hate? Just about all of them, is the answer to that.

In the wake of murderous attacks on Israelis in synagogues and streets, Netanyahu also talked about establishing a proper balance between the national and democratic aspects of his country.

This immediately led to an outburst of indignation all over the progressive world. Who cares about national character or indeed survival? Democracy is sacrosanct, it must be worshipped like the surrogate secular deity it has become, and if it proves to be a suicide pact, then so be it (provided it’s not our suicide).

True enough, genuflecting at the altar and kneeling at the guillotine involve assuming the same posture. But the consequences are rather different.

That democracy may be suspended, or at least curtailed, at wartime used to be taken for granted.

It wasn’t democracy but national survival that made the Americans intern all Nissei Americans in camps for the duration of the Second World War. It was similar considerations that led the British to intern all resident Germans in the Isle of Man.

Not many screamed bloody murder then. So why doesn’t Israel enjoy the same latitude? Why don’t Israel’s desperate times call for desperate measures?

Unlike Britain and the USA that were only at war for six and four years respectively, the State of Israel has been under attack for 66 years – from the day it came into being.

Netanyahu feigned surprise at some glaring contradictions voiced by Israel’s critics. On the one hand they insist on the right of Palestinian Muslims to have their own national state. On the other hand they wish to deny the same right to Israel.

That Israel still retains democratic institutions at all, along with equal civil rights for everyone, is a miracle of self-restraint to which one struggles to find any analogues. This in spite of Israel not being blessed with a patina of centuries during which just secular institutions could evolve at an unhurried pace.

Let Peter Hitchens pine for a strong, meaning fascist, leader like Putin. I wish we had a strong leader like Netanyahu, someone who realises the lethal potential of Enlightenment contrivances like democracy in a country struggling for its survival.

 

My new book, Democracy as a Neocon Trick, is available from Amazon and the more discerning bookshops. However, my publisher would rather you ordered it from http://www.roperpenberthy.co.uk/index.php/browse-books/political/democracy-as-a-neocon-trick.htmlor, in the USA, http://www.newwinebookshop.com/Books/0002752

 

 

 

 

I’ve lived in four countries and have at times been treated as a foreigner in each, including the one of my birth.

So take it from me: a bit of ethnic snobbery can improve the breed on both sides, the snobs and their targets.

The success of some ethnic and racial minorities, such as Indians in Britain, Vietnamese in the USA, Germans in Russia, Italians in Argentina, Jews and Chinese just about everywhere, shows how victims of ethnic hostility can, if they so choose, put it to productive use.

If, say, a Jew is taught from birth that being merely twice as good as his gentile competitor isn’t good enough, and nothing short of 10 times as good will do, he’ll be more likely to become at least twice as good.

There will, of course, be some collateral damage – rather than being made stronger, some will be deeply damaged. But that would intensify the natural selection within the group, if you’ll forgive my waxing Darwinian in such a cold-blooded fashion.

Natural selection doesn’t explain much, and certainly not everything. But it does explain something, and this is one example.

So in a way diasporic groups should welcome all those ‘kikes’, ‘chinks’, ‘wops’ and ‘dagos’, even though I know how hard it is to react with such equanimity.

This point is easy to argue, though many, especially those blessed with heightened sensitivity, will disagree. But what about the effect ethnic prejudice has on those who mete it out? The argument in favour becomes harder, but not impossible.

It’s in people’s nature to prefer the company of their own kind and be on guard against those perceived as strangers. Not all natural qualities are commendable, but this one is too human to disparage.

The Greeks despised all outlanders, so did the Romans. The Persians saw the world as concentric circles of virtue, with themselves at the centre and goodness dissipating towards the periphery. The Japanese saw the gaijin as savages.

These days the Dutch and the French crack jokes about the Belgians, the Russians about the Georgians and the Chukchi, the Americans about the Mexicans and the Poles, the English about the Irish, the Swedes about the Finns – and everyone has fun at the expense of the Jews.

This isn’t always innocent, and sometimes the seemingly good-natured quips belie real nastiness lurking underneath.

But usually such variably funny humour and indeed ethnically pejorative terms serve simply to establish, emphasise and protect the jokers’ group identity, which can be done by stressing both sameness and otherness.

However, care must be taken for word not to become deed. Haughty disdain giving way to hatred may end up as persecution, which must be nipped in the bud.

People aren’t entitled to protection against everything they find offensive, but they are entitled to all the security civilised society has to offer, along with equality before the law.

Any attempt to deprive ethnic minorities of this entitlement offends not only them personally but society at large. Hence it must be discouraged and, if need be, punished.

Yet penalising pejorative words and ethnic jokes, even when they are manifestly innocent, is a treatment that’s much worse than the disease. In fact it may well be lethal.

When the state first encourages, then promotes and then enforces totalitarian (also known as PC) Zeitgeist, it never does so out of noble intentions. Its aim is to expand and perpetuate its own power while limiting individual freedom.

It’s in this context that we ought to view the current hysteria involving the football manager Malky Mckay and his new employer, Wigan owner Dave Whelan.

Mckay made Cardiff City hugely successful but then was fired, along with recruitment head Iain Moody, for some questionable transfer deals.

As part of the investigation Moody’s house was raided and all his computers seized. So far no evidence of criminal acts has been found or at any rate reported.

What was found were all sorts of communications suggesting that Messrs Mackay and Moody don’t always express themselves in strict compliance with the culture of diversity.

They circulated a photograph entitled Black Monopoly, where every square said ‘Go to Jail’, referred to Cardiff’s Malaysian owner Tan as ‘f***ing Chink’, pointed out the Jews’ inordinate affection for money, described a colleague as ‘gay snake’, expressed a preference for recruiting white players, suggested that it would be nice to ‘bounce on [female agent’s] falsies’ – and in general gave every indication that in their private correspondence they aren’t always guided by Debrett’s Etiquette for Young Ladies.

The ensuing outcry filled the papers for a week at least, with the severity of suggested punishments increasing towards the left end of the publishing spectrum. Capital punishment wasn’t mentioned, but only because it’s not on the books.

As a minimum, the papers were united in demanding that Mackay never work in football again. He let the side down by compromising the image of footballers’ pristine purity we like to cherish in our hearts.

A footballer, you understand, is there primarily to set an example of probity and virtue for the young generation. Even if he spends his working life trying to break opponents’ legs, in the after hours he’s expected to impersonate a Franciscan abbot.

Though these tattooed chaps frustrate such expectation every time they go out on the town, it doesn’t matter – provided they stay within the confines of Zeitgeist rectitude.

Stabbing a lit cigar into someone’s eye, taunting American visitors in the aftermath of 9/11, driving drunk with a Stop sign attached to the rear bumper, bottling or nutting a nightclub doorman – all these are, well, if not exactly forgivable, at least understandable.

Boys will be boys and all that, as long as they transgress against individuals only. But God forbid they offend the prevailing ethos – no punishment can be too severe.

Nevertheless, rather than becoming a bus driver (at best), Malky Mackay has just been appointed manager of Wigan Athletic, owned by Dave Whelan, 77, himself an ex-player.

Clearly this self-made millionaire had to have an ulterior motive that went beyond simply finding a manager with a proven record of success.

An investigation was in order, and what do you know, it established gruesome facts about Mr Whelan. Apparently – are you sitting down? – he can’t see what the brouhaha is all about. Who among you, he said – out loud! – never referred to a Chinese person as a Chink?

Moreover, he opined in a Guardian interview that “Jewish people chase money more than everybody else”, although few Jews among my friends have been as persistent in that pursuit as Mr Whelan himself.

Boorish, yes; silly, of course (just consider the paper Whelan chose for airing his observation); promoting derogatory ethnic stereotypes, no doubt; offering the traditional anti-Semitic apology along the lines of ‘some of my best friends are Jewish’, definitely.

But a criminal unworthy to be part of the saintly football community? Absolutely not.

Yet this is exactly the punishment for which our press is clamouring. Both Mackay and Whelan are supposed to be drummed out of football for ever, with the latter banned from access to his own club.

This is worse than just hysterical overreaction: this orgy of political correctness is fascism by a different name.

Admittedly, Messrs Whelan and Mckay aren’t the kind of people I often see at my dining-room table. But I’d rather break bread with these uncouth chaps than with their detractors.

I don’t mind chatting about football all evening (though my wife might). But I do mind listening even for a second to the hypocritical bien pensant inanities one can confidently expect from Guardian readers – and writers.

 

My new book, Democracy as a Neocon Trick, is available from Amazon and the more discerning bookshops. However, my publisher would rather you ordered it from http://www.roperpenberthy.co.uk/index.php/browse-books/political/democracy-as-a-neocon-trick.htmlor, in the USA, http://www.newwinebookshop.com/Books/0002752

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ALEX BOOT will be talking about his latest book, Democracy as a Neocon Trick next Tuesday, 25th November at 1.00 pm sharp in the Griffin Room at The Counting House, 50 Cornhill, London EC3V 3PD.   Alex, who has proved one of the most popular (and provocative!) speakers to address The Freedom Association’s Freedom in the City events, will be signing copies of the book, which will be available for sale at the event.   Admission is free, and open to all. There will be a voluntary collection at the end of the meeting, to help cover the costs of room hire etc.   Should you wish to have lunch before or after the event, you will find that the Counting House serves a wide range of (by London standards) reasonably priced food.    I do hope that you will come and hear Alex, and look forward to seeing you at the Counting House on Tuesday.

Observing the 1961 Jerusalem trial of the mass murderer Adolf Eichmann, Hannah Arendt coined the phrase ‘the banality of evil’.

In 2014 the mass murderer Charles Manson, 80, proves yet again that evil isn’t just banal. It’s also extremely attractive in all sorts of ways, including sexual.

This monster, serving a life sentence for the 1969 cult murder of the actress Sharon Tate and seven others, including her unborn child, has been issued a licence to marry a 26-year-old woman who says she loves him.

The bride, Afton Burton, first became smitten with the bridegroom, who had Sharon Tate’s baby cut out of her womb and butchered, when she was 17.

At that impressionable age she read Charlie’s jailhouse scribbles on the harm nasty people do to the environment and realised he was a man after her own heart.

Since then this loving daughter of Baptist parents, who inexplicably disapprove of her nuptial plans, has moved to California to be nearer Charlie’s prison. She has been visiting him regularly, though not in a conjugal way (as a lifer, he’s denied that privilege, even assuming that at his age he’d be able to take advantage of it).

The girl bears an uncanny resemblance to some murderous female members of the Manson ‘family’, and the same question can be asked of her as of them.

What exactly is the bridegroom’s attraction?

What, for that matter, is the attraction of other murderers, many of whom have panting fans ‘on the out’?

Certainly in Afton’s case this question is hard to answer in any rational terms and yet, until we hear the contrary, we have to assume the girl is sane.

Considering that the bridegroom will next be up for parole in his mid-90s, Afton can’t look forward to any domestic bliss, however short-lived. Nor will her passion for Charlie ever be consummated in any traditional way.

Generally speaking, it’s possible to love deeply flawed and violent people. Though we like for something, we love in spite of everything.

But, delving into the issue a bit deeper than Hannah Arendt, perhaps we’ll discover that the answer isn’t so close to the surface.

For I’m convinced that many people are attracted to murderers or other nasties not in spite of their being evil but because of it.

Gangsta thugs with a string of criminal convictions to their names are seldom short of middleclass girlfriends. And it’s out of ‘lurv’ that many women routinely stay with violent men who break their bones.

Looking on a larger scale, historically unprecedented mass murderers, such as Lenin, Stalin or Hitler, had millions of fans in the West.

Many of those didn’t necessarily share the ideologies behind the murders – they were driven not by theoretical abstractions but by the anomic evil within them.

The attraction was often sexual, as it was with many Bloomsbury chaps who envied the leather-jerkined commissars their masculinity, something they themselves didn’t have.

There was something irresistibly butch about all that rustling leather crisscrossed by belts supporting Mausers. Beats regular rough trade any day.

Or take women like Unity Mitford, who loved the Führer not just ideologically but erotically. Opinions differ on whether or not she sated her passion with Hitler himself, but she certainly entertained SS officers created in his image, a dozen at a time.

Evil attracts; absolute evil attracts absolutely. That never changes, and today one sees hordes of so-called conservatives, both male and female, pining for the muscular masculinity of Col. Putin (Peter Hitchens, ring your office).

And I doubt that all those British Muslims who join the ranks of ISIS cannibals do so out of Islamic piety. It’s much more likely that they are attracted by the horrific violence that they can both admire and perpetrate.

That sort of thing may or may not have sexual overtones. But even when it does, those aren’t the initial impulse.

Rather sex in such instances is the expression of deep-seated evil, whose origin is not in the libido of Freud’s fancy but in the workings of the hideous creature to which an earlier source refers as ‘the prince of this world’.

I hope when the long-awaited wedding takes place, whoever is officiating will say “What therefore Satan hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”

The rest of us should perhaps take some time to ponder evil, and why it’s so much more than just banal.

My new book, Democracy as a Neocon Trick, is available from Amazon and the more discerning bookshops. However, my publisher would rather you ordered it from http://www.roperpenberthy.co.uk/index.php/browse-books/political/democracy-as-a-neocon-trick.htmlor, in the USA, http://www.newwinebookshop.com/Books/0002752

It has taken 20 years after female ordination for the Church of England to go completely, as opposed to partially, bonkers.

The C of E Synod yesterday rubber-stamped the consecration of women bishops, thereby confirming its PC credentials at the small cost of relinquishing whatever residual claim it had to being a Christian ecclesia.

To reinforce the impression that we’re dealing with a clinical, rather than merely theological, aberration, the Archbishop of Canterbury mournfully admitted that it might be as long as 10 years before the episcopate faithfully reflects the demographic makeup of mankind… sorry, personkind is what I mean.

This reminds me of the Soviet story of an alcoholic looking at an “Alcohol is slow death” poster and saying “Well, we’re in no rush.”

In the overall state of euphoria some Synod members confidently predicted that before long we’d be blessed with gay bishops as well, and they didn’t mean it as the antonym of morose.

They missed a trick for it’s likely that two birds, as it were, will be killed with one stone. If malicious rumours are to be believed, some of the women candidates for bishoprics combine the two essential qualifications by being both female and homosexual.

Considering their general take on theology and Christian tradition, they probably see this as a reflection on the dual nature of Jesus Christ.

Commenting on the historic ruling, for which he had campaigned with nothing short of maniacal persistence, Archbishop Welby couldn’t contain his joy: “Today we can begin to embrace a new way of being the church and moving forward together. We will also continue to seek the flourishing of the church of those who disagree.”

I’m not sure I fully understand the second sentence. If His Grace meant conservative Anglicanism within the C of E, then some may accuse him of hypocrisy. For years now, under the leadership of its principal prelates the Church has been marginalising conservative, which is to say real, Christians.

They have been effectively silenced at church assemblies, such as this Synod; their priests have been pushed out on the slightest pretexts; their continued use of the Prayer Book and the Authorised Version has been discouraged and mocked.

Not long ago I met an intelligent young man who had matriculated at a seminary and was about to be ordained in the Church of England. He enthusiastically admitted that he had never in his life attended a 1662 service, which ought to tell you all you need to know about the meaning of ‘moving forward together’.

Probably coming up next: making rock ‘n roll music mandatory for all Anglican liturgy.

Contrary to the misconception dominant for 2,000 years, when Jesus said “you are the rock on which my church will be built”, he wasn’t making a pun on the Greek word for Peter (Petrus). As we have to acknowledge now, Jesus presciently foresaw the advent of rock ‘n roll and saw its vast potential as the building block of Christian worship.

When, by way of moving forward together, the proposed measure goes into effect, such services will gradually start to downplay the God part of the masses, turning them into out-and-out pop concerts. Ushers at the door will be making sure that all three sexes are proportionately represented in the audience (formerly known as congregation).

Clearly, the Catholic Church has much to learn from the Anglicans. For the time being, Pope Francis, whose natural instincts are similar to Archbishop Welby’s, has been forced to accept grudgingly that “children have a right to grow up in a family with a father and a mother.”

Personally, I would have tried to express the same thought in the terms of the God-given natural order, rather than relying on the purely secular construct of rights. But hey, let’s not quibble – we must be grateful for whatever we get.

However, His Holiness didn’t specify the sex of either parent, which, depending on how you read it, may be either a careless or deliberate omission. After all, two homosexuals wishing to adopt a child may nominate each other for these formerly ‘gender-specific’ roles.

If, as I optimistically believe, the Pope hasn’t yet realised that such old-fashioned terms might these days need qualifying, then it’s clear that orthodox Christians still exert some influence at the Vatican.

This may point out the direction in which orthodox Christians among the Anglicans may consider ‘moving forward together’.

Swiftly shifting from religion to politics, one has to compliment the Tory party for its restraint – while wishing it had been more decisive.

Desperately trying to keep the projected  margin of Ukip victory at Rochester and Strood in single digits, a Tory spokesman kindly explained to the local electorate the dangers of voting wrong.

Should you in your folly, he proclaimed, decide to vote for Ukip, the value of your house will drop like a rock. Potential buyers wouldn’t want to move into the otherwise desirable area knowing that Ukip voters roam free at night.

Truer words have never been spoken in any lunatic asylum of my knowledge. But more strident words have.

In this instance, the threat would have carried so much more punch had the voters been told that a cheaper house would be the least of their worries.

Vote Ukip, the Tories should have said to complete the clinical picture, and your wife will have an affair with your best friend, who will then join forces with her to poison you and reclaim your devalued house. Alternatively, your brakes will fail at a motorway speed, you’ll contract Ebola at your Aids clinic and you’ll never see an openly homosexual bishop in your area.

I’ll keep you posted on any future developments. Meanwhile, may I suggest installing another lock and a more up-to-date alarm system?

 

My new book, Democracy as a Neocon Trick, is available from Amazon and the more discerning bookshops. However, my publisher would rather you ordered it from http://www.roperpenberthy.co.uk/index.php/browse-books/political/democracy-as-a-neocon-trick.htmlor, in the USA, http://www.newwinebookshop.com/Books/0002752

 

Sir John, who, I don’t mind admitting, is my political, moral and intellectual idol, hit the nail on the head the other day, with Ukip being the nail and Nigel Farage the head.

Ukip, explained my idol, “is peddling sheer nastiness” that is “profoundly un-British in every way”.

In my case he was preaching to the choir, for I never diverge from Sir John’s judgement on anything. But, for the benefit of the nay-sayers among my readers (and God knows there are plenty of those), I rang Sir John up and asked him to enlarge on his concept of Britishness, so egregiously betrayed by Ukip.

The great man kindly took some time from his busy schedule of planning his season at the Oval and Lords to talk to me and, vicariously, to you. This is what he said:

“They are anti-everything. They are anti-politics, they are anti-foreigner, they are anti-immigrant, they are anti-aid.

“That’s un-British. Real Brits are never anti-anything. Except Ukip, that is, especially when they’re about to commit the ultimately un-British, treasonous act of winning another parliamentary seat from the Tories.

“For example, both Norma and Edwina are real Brits. That’s why they’re up for anything and down on nothing and, well, no one.

“So I asked them if they agreed with my judgement of Ukip. Now Norma and Edwina don’t always agree on everything and hardly ever on me, I mean with me.

“But here they refused to sit on the fence, or anything else for that matter. Yes, John, they said, you’re absolutely right.

“You were the best prime minister Britain has ever had, and you were for things, not against them. You were a pro kind of bloke and never a con.

“False modesty aside, I had to concur. I have deep convictions that are none of them negative, like Ukip’s. They’re all positive, even if the consequences of practising them sometimes weren’t.

“For example, I was very positive about Maggie when she was positive about me, all the way to making me Chancellor.

“Then I was equally positive about the chaps who stabbed Maggie in the back after she turned negative on me. John, she said, could make a good doorstop and that’s about it. Well, served her right, that… Sorry, I must remain positive.

“When I became prime minister, I was positive about Europe or, to be specific, the European Union.

“That’s why I signed the Maastricht Treaty with nary a negative thought in mind.

“Why? Because we’d had a good innings as an independent nation and what did we have to show for it? That… Maggie Thatcher.

“I felt it was time to say yes to all the good things in life: German bratwurst, Italian pasta, French wine, Romanian… well, you know what I mean.

“And the only way to enjoy all those wonderful things was to hand our so-called sovereignty to the Germans, French, Italians and yes, I stand by my convictions, Romanians.

“Hanging on to our so-called sovereignty was putting the negative cart before the positive horse, or leg before wicket, if you’d rather.

“I also felt positive about the single European currency. Part of the reason is that on my European travels I could never quite figure out how much a pack of Y-fronts cost in real money.

“Arithmetic was never my strong suit, which is why in my youth I failed the bus-conductor exam and decided to become prime minister instead.

“So, in my positive state of mind, I put Britain in the ERM and on course to joining the single currency designed to make us as successful as our oldest ally Portugal.

“The anti-everything bastards point out that as an immediate result Britain lost £3.4 billion, but I like to look on the bright, British side: my true Brit friend George Soros made £1 billion out of it and, apart from the EU, who better to spend our money for us?

“And I’m still as positive about the EU as I’ve always been. Outside the EU we’ll never become as prosperous as our oldest ally Portugal is. Or our newest ally Bulgaria.

“That’s what being British is all about. It’s also about sharing, and Norma and Edwina agree wholeheartedly, in that particularly British way of theirs.

“So I applaud my very British friend Dave for being ready to share our wealth, which we owe to the EU in any case.

“Dave is about to spend another £600 million on flood defences in Africa, which is a British thing to do.

“Those anti-everything Ukip bastards scream that Somerset is about to be hit by the worst floods in history, and there’s no money in the kitty to do anything about it.

“Charity, they say, begins at home, and trust them to come up with a phrase no real Brit has ever heard.

“What begins at home, you negative un-British bastards, isn’t charity but sheer nastiness.

“Transferring funds for fighting Ebola and Children in Need, I mean helping children in need, not fighting them, is British. Voting for Ukip isn’t.

“Why do people do it? Even though these bastards are anti-children and Ebola victims?

“Out of sheer frustration with the ongoing recession, the belief they are being left behind our oldest ally Portugal and our newest ally Bulgaria.

“The counterpoint to that, and I hope, Alex, you don’t mind the posh term, it means the British alternative, is to banish the negative thoughts and vote Tory or, at a pinch, Labour.

“You know and I know and your British readers know, that the economy will improve soon, by the end of next April to be exact.

“For as long as the coalition remains positive about getting our national debt up to two trillion, that’s 2.25 trillion euros by the way, the economy has nowhere to go but up.

“And once my friend Dave gets it up, people will again feel positive. They’ll feel British – unlike those nasty nattering negativists of Ukip.”        

 

My new book, Democracy as a Neocon Trick, is available from Amazon and the more discerning bookshops. However, my publisher would rather you ordered it from http://www.roperpenberthy.co.uk/index.php/browse-books/political/democracy-as-a-neocon-trick.htmlor, in the USA, http://www.newwinebookshop.com/Books/0002752

 

 

Arithmetic and statistics are useful tools for liars. A little massaging here, a little bending there, and suddenly a lie sounds plausible.

When it comes to liars in our government, they don’t have to distort their sums to make a false point. All it takes is applying arithmetic to issues that cry out for more sophisticated tools, those requiring more than just the ability to add and subtract.

The recently released report on the economic effects of EU immigration is a case in point.

Reducing the whole complex argument to a simple calculation, our leaders added up the amount of tax EU immigrants have paid, subtracted the amount of benefits they’ve received, including their use of social services, and declared triumphantly that the difference is plus £5 billion or some such.

Considering such clear-cut advantages, the likes of John Major must be downright daft when they beg those stern EU officials to agree, in their munificence, to let us reduce the scale of immigration.

If the 243,000 migrants arriving from Europe in the year ending in March 2014 delivered five billion to our economy, then, say, 20 million of them would add half a trillion, a third of our national debt. And 60 million would wipe the debt off altogether. So why not fling our doors open even wider?

This report deceives by asserting implicitly that the economic effect of mass immigration is easy to calculate. It isn’t.

A little illustration, if I may. Confronted with a choice of earning £2,000 a month at a local garage or receiving £1,500 from ‘social’, a Polish welder commendably chooses the dignity of honest labour.

Ostensibly the Exchequer thus saves £1,500 it otherwise would have to pay out, while getting an extra £600 or thereabouts in tax.

Granted, the welder and his family will be using the NHS and his children will get the full benefit of our ‘free education’ (which is in fact neither). But the net effect of his presence in England still looks positive, which is what the report seeks to prove.

However, do let us take a closer look at the arithmetic, before we consider more serious matters. If the Pole hadn’t graced our shores with his presence, how would the welder vacancy have been filled?

When a garage needs a welder, it can’t do without one. Hence it would have hired a native-born worker, and don’t tell me that, even considering the catastrophe going by the name of our comprehensive education, a Brit can’t be taught how to weld.

That same Brit now goes unemployed, collecting instead the same £1,500 the Pole would have picked up had he not taken the job.

Also, had the garage hired Kevin instead of Zbigniew, the Brit would probably have been paid more.

As I can tell you from my own experience going back to the time long before either Kevin or Zbigniew was born, new arrivals are so desperate for a job they’ll accept derisory pay. To expect that employers wouldn’t take advantage of their plight constitutes a woeful misreading of the innate fallibility of man.

A higher pay would have meant a higher tax, making the Exchequer even better off. By contrast, the overall downward pressure on wages exerted by new arrivals, makes employment less desirable for Brits, and welfare more so. After all, expecting people to work when they can get the same income by doing nothing would again be presuming too much on human goodness.

All things considered, the economic balance sheet begins to look much less attractive than the government report wants us to believe.

These are just the most transparent falsehoods. Among the hidden costs, quite apart from the unbearable extra pressure on our already creaking social services, is the toll exacted on the whole infrastructure.

Take our streets and roads, as one example among many. With a quarter million new arrivals every year (and this is just from the EU), British thoroughfares are becoming more crowded than ever, which increases the number of accidents, especially since not all immigrants come from countries where they have to take a stringent driving test.

And, again spoken from personal experience, even a competent driver needs quite some time to adjust to driving on the left. Meanwhile he’s likely to cause an accident, potentially requiring more NHS time.

Also increasing is the wear and tear of road surfaces, necessitating more frequent repair works and again making accidents more likely.

These are small and seemingly trivial examples, but they add up with sufficient persuasiveness to make us abhor the statistical larceny of the report.

Another, still purely arithmetical, falsehood is treating all immigrants from the EU as a homogeneous group, wherein average numbers actually mean something.

If you take the Duke of Westminster, Richard Branson and every member of my family, our average annual income will be in eight digits. On the basis of this perfectly accurate statistic, what do you think you’ve learned? The square root of zilch, is the answer.

Contrary to the assurances of EU champions, there isn’t, nor will there ever be, such a thing as a single European nation. Europe may cease to be an aggregate of states, but it will for ever remain an aggregate of nations.

And looking at, say, France and Bulgaria, it takes a blind man not to see they’re as different from each other as either of them is from Peru or Mexico.

Lumping together a French banker pulling down £1,000,000 a year in the City and a Romany beggar harassing pedestrians in Piccadilly can be done for one purpose only: to cheat.

All in all calculating the overall economic effect of mass EU immigration is difficult, but it’s not impossible. It would, however, take serious thought along with much gathering and classification of information, putting into the equation infinitely more variables than the half dozen or so used in the report.

What’s impossible to calculate is the cultural and social damage.

All arrivals from the EU have been raised in a culture and under a legal system based on different or, in the case of Eastern Europe, diametrically opposite principles from ours. The aforementioned French banker may be trusted to adapt, but what about the aforementioned Romany beggar?

Again the government resorts to the same trick of lumping the two together. This is sufficient to claim that crime falls, rather than rises, in areas where many immigrants live.

True enough, the arrival of thousands of French families into my part of London hasn’t noticeably made the streets unsafe to walk. But areas blessed with the blight of heavy Romanian and Bulgarian influx report altogether different results.

Yet even supposing that all EU immigrants are well-behaved, law-abiding and generally angelic, their presence beyond a certain critical mass is destructive.

A few thousand Poles here or there would add to the rich panoply of life, and I for one like the odd authentically Polish meal in a local restaurant. However, a few million of them, plus tens of millions of other foreigners, may well change England beyond a point where it remains England.

Such an outcome is precisely what the EU, aided and abetted by our ruling elite, craves. And, considering the credulity, or perhaps indifference, of a growing swathe of our population, they may just get what they want.

 

My new book, Democracy as a Neocon Trick, is available from Amazon and the more discerning bookshops. However, my publisher would rather you ordered it from http://www.roperpenberthy.co.uk/index.php/browse-books/political/democracy-as-a-neocon-trick.htmlor, in the USA, http://www.newwinebookshop.com/Books/0002752

 

The famous, if probably apocryphal, headline in a London newspaper said “Fog over Channel, continent cut off.”

Whether real or made up, the phrase has become proverbial for the same reason proverbs become proverbial: it conveys a simple truth.

People tend to view geography from the vantage point of their own country. It is central; other lands are peripheral.

Never mind that the continent is somewhat larger than Britain. For an Englishman his country is larger than life.

The headline proceeds from this assumption and yet also has a chuckle about it. Sure enough, most Englishmen would agree with Cecil Rhodes that “to be born English is to win first prize in the lottery of life.” But they’ll do so with an ironic and self-deprecating smile.

It’s partly because of its ability to laugh at itself that this island has never become insular. While singing about England’s green and pleasant land providing the site for a new Jerusalem, the country has always happily intermingled and traded with other nations in every corner of His creation.

Russia lacks this ability. Her patriotism is served neat, undiluted by self-irony, good taste or any sense of history and her real place in it. That’s a heady drink, with enough punch to intoxicate the nation into crazy behaviour.

Thus for much of her history Russia, despite straddling two continents, has found herself in isolation from the rest of the world. Or rather, it is the world that has been isolated from the glorious Third Rome, if the Russians are to be believed.

If the world refuses to share Russia’s view of herself, she can go it alone. If the world isn’t with Russia, it’s against her, and so much the worse for the world.

It’s in the context of this mentality that Putin’s Russia and her current actions are to be viewed. Perceiving correctly that the demob-happy West has neither the stomach nor the wherewithal to fight, Putin has begun an aggressive war against a sovereign European state.

In spite of that the West has refused to let on that it’s aware of the savage nature of Putin’s Russia. In spite of imposing mildly painful punitive sanctions, Western leaders continue to wipe Putin’s sputum off their faces and invite him to come back into their eagerly awaiting embrace.

One such invitation was to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, and you’d think Putin would RSVP with an enthusiastic acceptance.

Here’s his chance to present Russia’s case, which does need presenting. As the sanctions, feeble though they are, begin to bite, gnawing at Russia’s brittle economic bones, and the price of oil drops below $80 a barrel (at least $20 under the level at which Russia’s Nigeria-style economy can remain solvent), what better moment to negotiate? What better time to fake friendliness even if it’s not sincerely felt?

Instead Russia crumbled the proffered invitation and flung it into the West’s face. Neither Putin nor even his poodle Medvedev will be attending the Davos talk shop, it has been declared.

The underlying message is as simple as it’s eternal to Russia. If the West, and industrialised East, choose to isolate themselves from Russia, let them. With Putin in the lead, and his poodle on the lead, Russia will henceforth decline any mollifying peace offers.

Meanwhile, Russian tanks and personnel carriers are driving into the Ukraine, with President Poroshenko honestly admitting they can’t be stopped by any military means. The Ukraine has to rely on ‘negotiations’ instead, which is akin to negotiating with a mugger to leave you two quid for the bus fare home.

For the first time since 1945 a European country is being dismembered by invaders. However, in this instance the invader has no just cause.

The situation is fraught with danger. By refusing every overture offered by the West, Putin is painting himself into a corner and may feel he has to fight his way out.

The West doesn’t have much room for manoeuvre either. Just like those Left Bank Parisians shrugging their shoulders and asking rhetorically “Mourir pour Danzig?” in 1939, it’s reasonably clear that Europeans won’t want to die for Kiev in 2014.

Even if they felt differently, Nato no longer has enough presence in Europe to stop Putin’s tanks in their tracks. The only possible restraining mechanism is the same one that so far has prevented major wars in Europe since 1945: and it’s not the EU, as it mendaciously claims. It’s the American nuclear umbrella.

However, by effectively declaring war on what’s left of our civilisation, Putin implies he has no fear that this umbrella will be opened over Russian cities as he’s devastating Ukrainian ones. He’s probably right.

So what countermeasures are left? More sanctions? Driving the price of oil down artificially?

Such measures may prove devastating to a country where millions already subsist on the brink of starvation. Yet anyone who thinks that starving Russians are ever a burning concern for Russian leaders, should read a few textbooks on modern Russian history.

Putin’s billions are intact in Western banks, and so are the billions of his cronies. If not all of them can have access to their purloined wealth at the moment, so what?

Their money will simply accrue interest, while Russia finds herself one on one with the world – not for the first time, nor for the last. It’s just that at this time the world seems more impotent than ever.

 

My new book, Democracy as a Neocon Trick, is available from Amazon and the more discerning bookshops. However, my publisher would rather you ordered it from http://www.roperpenberthy.co.uk/index.php/browse-books/political/democracy-as-a-neocon-trick.htmlor, in the USA, http://www.newwinebookshop.com/Books/0002752