David Cameron's Tourettes Gaff

I'm against the clock again, and the background music's terrible, so here goes.

In his book 'Peace of Soul', the Servant of God Fulton Sheen recorded how 'GK's Weekly' once published a satire on Freudian psychology in which the word 'beer' appeared wherever a Freudian would mention the word 'sex'. The result was, of course, hilarious.

This piece came to mind when hearing that David Cameron had said of Ed Balls's behaviour in the House of Commons that 'it’s like having someone with Tourette’s permanently sitting opposite you'. He would never dream of saying that 'it’s like having someone with cancer permanently sitting opposite you', or 'it’s like having a schizophrenic permanently sitting opposite you'; so why mention Tourettes?

Utterly predictably, this incident says more about Cameron than it does about the condition. He required to accustom himself to being challenged by other people at an age far older than the rest of us, and accordingly finds the experience unpleasant; hopefully not as unpleasant as developing a Tourettes symptomology in adulthood, but unpleasant nonetheless. His ideology is still sodden with the dreary insolence that has been the mark of the Tory Party since the eighteenth century. When insolence meets challenge, it lashes out in rage, and rage takes no account of propriety when fixing on a target. Balls challenges Cameron; Cameron lacks the character and experience of life to handle it; so Balls acts like someone with Tourettes. QED.

When barracking Cameron in the House of Commons, Balls is not in fact acting like a Tourettist. He is instead using the time-honoured leftist tactic of trying to prevent your opponent from speaking by talking over them all the time. It says much for Balls that he should try this in a noisy room. I can vividly recall the late Mick McGahey doing this to a representative of the National Coal Board on 'Reporting Scotland' during the miners' strike of 1983-84. It was unpleasant to watch then, indeed is something of a bad memory, and it's still unpleasant to think of now. On the other hand, it's impossible to watch the blimpish Kenneth Clarke on 'Question Time' without seeing him do the same thing to whatever sacrificial lamb the Labour Party has put up for the purpose. Clarke's scenes on that show give me the impression that he must be an utterly horrible person to be around. On the other hand, perhaps it's all theatre. On the other hand perhaps it's not.

What is also evident from Cameron's outburst is that he seems to think he is free to say the same things in public as he might do in private. If correct, this may suggest that the circle within which he moves is a very narrow one, and that he does not make a great deal of contact with people who are not similar to him in terms of their backgrounds and experiences. To my mind, the proof of this is Cameron's now bog standard response to this controversy of his own making, that he didn't mean to cause offence. If he did not realise that he would cause offence, then he may be accustomed to causing offence as a matter of routine, or else spend a lot of time around people who are in the habit of saying offensive things. I recall David Lindsay once writing that Cameron's accent was narrowing with age instead of broadening. With trademark certitude, David remarked that this was the consequence of Cameron only having contact with people like himself, and he might have been more correct than he imagined. If so, it says little about the mindset of the circles Cameron moves in if they are all of the mind that their will should be obeyed without question. Two other groups in society are affected by this pathology; the first are tyrants, the second children. Tyrants tend not to do apologies under any circumstances, leaving only children as the ones to expect conduct demanding an apology to attract no other consequences.

But what should we expect of a Prime Minister whose Chancellor, when in opposition, described the then Chancellor as 'autistic' without suffering any penalty? These incidents say much about those in power and their calibre, or lack thereof.

As a sufferer of Tourettes, I find it a bit rich that a person who refuses to discuss his historic use of recreational drugs should describe a person whose conduct he finds objectionable as having my problem. Hopefully he wasn't strung out when he said it; for how terrible it would be if the finger on the nuclear button belonged to a cokehead or a stoner.  

Happy New Year

The Year Of Our Lord 2012 has begun with my fourth dose of food poisoning in nine months. My hands are inflamed with contact dermatitis, the windows still haven't been fixed, my face is adorned with a crop of pustules the like of which I haven't had since I was 14, I can't hear out of my left ear as a result of getting water in it in the shower this morning, the Internet's still switched off, I still haven't started the book and I'm back to work on Wednesday. Piling masochism upon improvidence and infirmity, I'm also reading Emerson's 'Essays', a work which, when read along with 'Walden', proves that in the 1840's there couldn't have been a great deal to do in Concord on a Sunday afternoon.

All in all, the year's shaping up nicely.

A very happy, blessed and prosperous New Year to you all.

'Grumpy Old Men'

I usually look forward to the BBC's annnual Christmas offering 'Grumpy Old Men', in which a group of aging and probably wealthy celebrities with unrivalled media access moan publicly about how much they dislike the behaviour of the people they share the planet with.

Sometimes it's quite funny, but an odd thing happened while watching this year's (or is it now last year's?) edition. Usually they've got guys like Will Self or Arthur Smith on it, men whose stock in trade is disgust and disaffection, so they make the exercise amusing. However this year it had a remarkably lightweight line up that included Bobby Davro, Huey Morgan and Matthew Le Tissier.

While I was watching it, the thought occurred to me that that particular selection of grumpy old men was, to put it bluntly, crap; and I thus became a grumpy old man at 'Grumpy Old Men'.

I do hope that the producers will do better next year - or is that this year?

David Cameron's New Year Message

The tardiness of its delivery makes one wonder whether he was not preparing a statement for New Year, but formulating a position on it instead.

Moving To Somalia

Well, it's been an interesting few weeks since I last blogged, all of them jam-packed with life changing incidents of the type you wouldn't believe if you read about them in a book, which you will hopefully be able to do in the near future.

Although the squalid lack of professionalism which assorted commercial contractors have subjected my household to over the past two months shouldn't be considered surprising, it still has been. We have been forced into the act of having to comprehend the depths of the mental squalor in which some of these people operate, and at times it's been very unpleasant. What has been equally surprising has been the discovery that some of them seem to think that you live in that kind of squalor as well. Nothing in the UK seems to work any more. You agree that you will give people money to do things for you, and then they don't do them. This has happened three times in the past two months, capitalism so stagnant and squalid it makes Marxism seem vital. The past two months have merely reinforced my long held impression that the United Kingdom is sinking into a state of torpor and squalor so squalid that recovery from it is an impossibility.

You see this squalor in everything, from the streets paved with dogshit to the almost comically Ruritanian uniforms worn by the Royal Family, from the grossly high number of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed thinktankers and journalists talking about capitalism rather getting out there and doing it, from our Coalition government's dogged insistence that the private sector will take up the slack in the job market when the history of the past 200 years shows that it never does because it never can (if only because true entrepreneurs are as rare as phoenixes), and in the squalid anthropology of the contractor, from their absolute, in my mind now proverbial, lack of dependability to their willingness to lie to you. In his compelling if necessarily grisly book 'Sins Of the Fathers', the late James Pope-Hennessey recorded that the act of subjection makes liars of the subjected. The extent to which the British now tell each other lies makes me wonder whether we have also assumed the psychological mantle of the subjected, and express it in false expressions. If so, we are subjects of the most squalid form of mainstream capitalism that has ever existed; the capitalism of inefficiency, incompetence, squalor and lies.

It's enough to make you want to emigrate. I think Somalia would be a good bet. They've been badly governed for so long that at least it's understandable if things don't work. With any luck, bits of it might be being administered by the UN, so you'll still get rice and bog rolls. Anything, anything, is better than the squalor in which so many British people are forced to live so that some can get rich. If you think it would be better in an independent Scotland think again, because for what my opinion's worth it would be run as squalidly as the UK is run at the moment, but with a higher proportion of narrow-minded village bullies - Bothyneuk Curling Club's Gala Committee writ on a national scale.

All in all, I will be glad to see the back of this year. Merry Christmas to you all.

'Let The Children Live'

It's not been the best of weeks.

Essential building works being conducted in the house, which should have ended on Wednesday, are still apparently ongoing. It has been largely uninhabitable, rendering the effort to inhabit it unpleasant for everyone concerned. Indeed, at times it's felt that if a movie were to be made of our home life over the past week, of a mother, father and small son living in a cold property full of furniture swathed in dust sheets, it'd be called 'The Shining'.

This has meant that none of us have really been able to do the things we like doing in the comfort of our own home. It's taught us a lot of lessons about ourselves. Hopefully we can take them to heart. In my case, I had planned to blog a little more than usual, if only because Internet service is being switched off tomorrow. This means that any new posts that appear on the blog from now on will be written from other locations, and will appear at best infrequently. Please don't email me, because I won't be able to answer you.

Yet at 12.00 Mass today, God, in His sublime way, gave me a kick up the backside to remind me that no matter how unpleasant the past week has been, there is always some more unfortunate than myself.

We had a guest celebrant today, Father Peter Walters of the charity, 'Let The Children Live'. Father Walters, a convert from Anglicanism whose attitude to the aid establishment seems to be what I can only describe as benign exasperation, has devoted his life to caring for the street children of Colombia. He pulls no punches, particularly to a congregation in the country with the highest rate of cocaine consumption in Europe.

He is a passionate speaker, which makes him a compelling one. He certainly made a good case for supporting his charity to me.

Please support him and his charges.

On Disposing Of Your Constituents' Confidential Documents In Public Bins

I wonder if he'd ever have dreamed of doing that with paperwork from Rothschilds.

On Freezing Out Civil Servants

If a hypothetical Cabinet Minister, one who might both look and sound like he was the sort of wee boy who always stayed in the classroom at playtime in order to read 'The Lord Of The Rings', or to play 'Dungeons and Dragons' along with the rest of the nerds in Muck o' Pitbonkle, were to try to remove Labour appointed senior civil servants from his department, would that not amount to an attack on the integrity of the civil service?

Or could it be a much more profound, ideologically motivated attack not upon the Civil Service but on the state itself - to make the state so unattractive an employer to work for that nobody will want to work for it, thus causing the size of the state to reduce; or more properly, for the state to atrophy?

All very neoconservative, it seems to me; all very entryist. But then again it's entirely hypothetical.

Misconduct In Public Office?

"Misconduct in public office is an offence at common law triable only on indictment. It carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. It is an offence confined to those who are public office holders and is committed when the office holder acts (or fails to act) in a way that constitutes a breach of the duties of that office" -

The Crown Prosecution Service.

Don't want to kick a bloke when he's down and all that, but doesn't seeking funds for a private company, even a non-profit one, when you're a member of the Cabinet fall within that definition?

A Short Thought On Civil Liberties (As We Near The End Of The Blogging Road)

The Labour government of Tony Blair created over 3,000 new crimes.

This can only be described as government against the people, proscribing the people, attacking the people.

One of the little patterns that Western history has splashed onto the history books is that when an ideology is fresh and untested, it very quickly butts its head against the brick wall of events and then retreats to its natural limits.

The French Revolution's 'Grande Terreur' was the natural consequence of unbridled liberalism. Liberalism born of absolutism proved itself to be as capable of bloodthirstiness and score-settling as absolutism itself. When La Grande Terreur hit its buffers, less than two days after Robespierre was laughed at, so did liberalism, and for all practical purposes it's been on the back foot ever since, and don't let anyone tell you anything different.

Similarly, the oppression of the poor in the early to middle phases of the Industrial Revolution occasioned by self-serving readings of the 'Wealth of Nations' hit the buffers once that book's very obvious failings became clear. That moment came when the evangelical Anglicans of that period, the type deplored by the less reputable type of modern British historian, got wise to them.

So it is and will be with this attack on civil liberties. Under Blair, the Labour Party became a party of the right, intent on restricting the ability of labour to express its collective desires rather than promoting and encouraging it. They never saw a strike they didn't deplore. Yet even although many of Labour's natural supporters now seem to be almost as demented as Adam Smith in their pursuit of self-interest (a pursuit which is a feature of all societies blighted by failing public institutions and a consequent narrowing of what Francis Fukuyama and others have labelled 'the radius of trust'), I retain great hope that the Blair government's attack on civil liberties will go the way of La Grande Terreur and the dark satanic mills in the end; the people will see through it, and its effect will be nullified by that peculiarly British combination of obstinacy and apathy best described as 'Britishness'.

There is always hope.

Men Behaving Badly

One doesn't really wish to kick a loyal son of South Lanarkshire when he's down, even a self-proclaimed Thatcherite one who might not hesitate doing the same thing to you were the boot ever to be on the other foot, but it's good to see that the 'Daily Telegraph' has picked up on what, for me, is the most disturbing aspect of the current unpleasantness surrounding Doctor Liam Fox.

That newspaper has picked up on the fact that Adam Werritty resided with Dr. Fox at the latter's flat in Southwark at a time when his mortgage costs were being picked up by the taxpayer. 'Resided' seems to be the best verb to use in this context, for Mr. Werritty cannot be described as having been a lodger, if only because the flat's then owner has indicated that he didn't pay rent.

Although one is fully aware that previous regimes for the claiming of parliamentary expenses were notoriously lax, by the same token it is staggering that it didn't occur to a person of opinions so emphatically right-wing as Dr. Fox's seem to be that he might have some moral obligation to minimise the loss that his arrangement with Mr. Werritty occasioned to the public purse. A loss was certainly occasioned, for Mr. Werritty received shelter at no cost to himself, his housing costs being borne by the taxpayer instead. Dr. Fox could have minimised this loss to the taxpayer by charging Mr. Werritty rent. He didn't do so. To my mind, this illustrates an inability to understand his own ideology so profound that it casts a very grey shadow over his judgment.

It all seems very redolent of the kind of relationship portrayed in the sitcom 'Men Behaving Badly'.

In Scotland, Hatred Never Dies

The best book about Ireland that I have ever read is VS Naipaul's 'Among The Believers'.

Some people might find that sentence surprising, perhaps not least Sir Vidia. However, his analysis of Pakistani nationalism's mindset circa 1980-81 almost directly matches my experience of the Irish nationalist mindset. In particular, his description of how Pakistani nationals of that era regarded emigration as wholly acceptable as they already had a country of their own to be eerily redolent of thinking that I have encountered in some Irish quarters.

This makes all the more questionable the claims of some Scottish civic nationalists - see Angus Calder's 'Scotlands Of The Mind', for example - that everyone who comes to Scotland should be considered to be a Scot, if only because it impertinently removes the freedom to choose which nation they consider themselves as belonging to from the objects of their affection. We can and should consider them to be neighbours; the obligation to show charity demands no less. However, whether they should be considered Scots is really their choice to make. The civic nationalists of the soi-disant, ersatz 'Scottish Government' might know fewer new Scots, and be more unfamiliar with how they think, than they are letting on.

And it goes without saying that any independent Scotland crafted by Scottish civic nationalists will also produce emigrants who feel the same way about Scotland as some Irish emigrants feel about Ireland and Sir Vidia Naipaul reported some Pakistani emigrants as feeling about Pakistan. But they'll be Scots, so it'll be all right.

However, those of us who really have no choice but to belong here must labour under the constraints imposed by the culture of the sometime Best Small Country In The World. Ruth Davidson, a kickboxing lesbian who is currently running for the leadership of the Scottish Conservatives, has parted company with one Ross McFarlane after he got a little carried away with the sectarianism.

If one were in an uncharitable frame of mind, one might be tempted to believe that the very unpleasant nature of his comments reveal Mr. McFarlane to be, in an untranslatable Glaswegian vernacular, a baw-faced balloon. As far as a political career in Scotland goes, he's toast. His name is now filed in too many memories to make any kind of comeback viable; not soon, not ever.

However, it's the disappointingly casual nature of his contempt for others' beliefs that gets to you. In Scotland, this sort of thing never stops getting to you. I've worked in places where being a Catholic, particularly one with some education, has given me the sort of status I imagine that an educated Greek slave might have had on a Roman latifundium; a useful guy to have around when brainwork needs doing but otherwise firmly out of the loop. In this respect, Scotland will never change. In this country, there will always be ignorant wallies out there who feel offended by you just because you're here.

Yes, we're a great wee country.

March Them To The Cashline

Listening to an alleged tax avoider claiming that the motorway speed limit should be raised from 70 mph to 80 mph in order to bring people inside the law almost had me kicking the TV in fury.

This proposal is absolutely Thatcherite, red meat for Del Boys and rich ferals who regard compliance with the law not as a civic duty but as a lifestyle choice. Lives will be lost so that 'business' can be done even more quickly in the country with the most worker-unfriendly employment laws and longest working hours in the European Union (and the visceral hatred of the Conservative Party for people who work for a living is proved by its stated intention to revisit one of the Blair government's very few progressive measures, the reduction in the qualifying period for bringing a claim of unfair dismissal from two years to one; for people who claim their ideology requires the removal of restrictions on business, they show not the slightest hesitation in regulating those who have only their labour to sell).

A suitable response to such specious claims about speed limits would be to demand stricter enforcement of existing laws and tougher penaties on speeders, such as the confiscation of vehicles driven in excess of the speed limit on the motorway network and mandatory life bans for those found guilty of a third offence. To bring people into the law when the law in unclear is one thing, but to bring people who won't obey the law into the law, even when the law is flashed in front of their eyes in orange lights as the speed limit is on British motorways, is quite another. At that point, such people have won whatever game they think they're playing, because the law will always be changed to suit them and the rule of law has ceased to have any meaning.

However, it was doubly sickening to hear another alleged tax avoider mouthfart today from the Conservative Party Conference about the financial mess the country's in. Their brain may have been addled by the small talk of cravatted manacle salesmen and wannabe sanctions-busters, but the irony that the country's finances may be as bad as they apparently are - a myth I do not buy into - on account of our authorities' ludicrously lax approach to the payment of personal tax by the wealthy might have been lost on them.

No person who's used as a tax avoidance vehicle, either personal or corporate, should be permitted to even become a Member of Parliament for a period of five years after their use of such vehicles has ceased. Any Member of Parliament found to have used such a vehicle should be barred from the House until they have paid all sums that would have been or may be owing at the correct rate of tax, in other words of personal income tax, on sums which they have either paid themself or been paid as rather smelly dividends. As they are both income, salary and dividends should be taxed at the same rate and under the same rules. If this means marching ministers to the cashline to pay up so that they can continue in government, so be it. Similarly, no minister found to have ever used a tax avoidance vehicle should be able to claim their full pension, instead being able to receive one calculated to reflect their calculated failure to contribute; and let's face it, they probably don't need the money anyway.

Fish rots from the head down, says that rotting old Russian proverb; and I for one am damn tired of knocking my pan in at the bottom of the heap while the guys who make the rules also seem to be able to slide around them with no or few questions asked.

The Predatory Pricing Of Nicotine Replacement Therapies

The braying donkeys of the British mainstream right, which is in fact a far right for all practical purposes, often bray at their opponents that if they are opposed to the business practices of supermarkets then they should not shop in them.

This begs the answer that the world the braying donkeys have helped create is one where there are few shops other than supermarkets, and that even their opponents have the right to eat.

Yesterday's storm in a whisky glass over a supermarket chain's apparent determination to flout the spirit of the law if not its letter, yet another example of a crappily drafted law having oozed out of the Queen's Scottish outhouse for no apparent purpose other than to cause confusion amongst those delegated with its enforcement and contempt amongst those upon whom it is supposed to be enforced, is not the worst example of antisocial business practice by supermarkets I have come across. The worst is one I have recently encountered myself.

I stopped smoking on 9th April this year but continue to use nicotine replacement therapy, specificially Nicorette 4 mg Freshmint gum, sold in packets of 105. These are not prescription medicines. I have purchased them at the branch of Boots on Crow Road, Glasgow at a price of £15.00 per box, if memory serves. I have also purchased them from my local supermarket, at an initial price of £10.00, again if memory serves.

However, the supermarket later cut the price for a packet of 105 Nicorette 4 mg Freshmint gums to £5.00. At the same time, it was retailing a packet of Nicorette 2 mg Freshmint gum, if I recall correctly also a packet of 105, for £8.00; more money for less nicotine, or, if you prefer, less money for more nicotine. At that point, I resolved not to buy anymore. However, my willpower has wavered. When I went to check this afternoon, it looked like the deals were off, and they certainly didn't have any packets of 105 Nicorette 4 mg Freshmint gums on display.

A medicine remains a medicine even when it does not require a prescription. I cannot see how that supermarket chain's decision to charge £5.00 for a medicine which sells for £15.00 in a pharmacy can be anything other than predatory pricing. The predatory pricing of goods that make you well is, to my mind, even more morally reprehensible than the predatory pricing of goods that make you ill. You stop taking the latter when you get ill, but need the former to restore yourself and will suffer more when the price goes up.

The only rational explanation I can think of for this apparently irrational pricing behaviour is that the supermarket might intend its customers to become accustomed to cheap nicotine, and when that's withdrawn they will have second thoughts about not visiting the cigarette stand. If that's the case, then the time has come for the operation of supermarkets to be licenced.

On Lemon-Flavoured Napkins, And Other Things

In one of his 'Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy' books, I cannot remember which, the late Douglas Adams placed his sublime antihero Zaphod Beeblebrox on a passenger spaceship which has crashed on to a wilderness planet.

Beeblebrox is startled to find the passengers sleeping, when they all instantly wake up screaming. A robotic steward later explains to him that the ship crashed while searching for lemon-flavoured napkins. With none available, the passengers have been placed in stasis until a civilisation capable of producing lemon-flavoured napkins can arise, at which point their journey will resume. They are revived once a year for coffee and biscuits, explaining their extreme reaction to a being with two heads.
The story, tall as it is, sprang to my mind after cancelling my Internet subscription a few days ago. For reasons of the type easy to imagine in our current economic climate, but which good taste dictates are still best kept to oneself, the decision has been made to disconnnect oneself from the online community until such time as its activation can be justified again.

Although this might seem hard to believe, it isn't really going to be much of a loss. This is the first time I've been online in days. I have not broken into cold sweats, nor been observed muttering to myself on the streets of Lanarkshire, or certainly no more than usual, at least as far as the muttering's concerned. Life goes on. There was life before the Internet, and there will be life after it. Blogging is a uniquely self-renewing medium. My best man The Big Lad has recently started his own blog, and a very good one it is as well. He has my best wishes for its success. Without wishing to engage in a maudlin 'Vitai Lampada', this kind of churn in creative personnel amongst bloggers is a good thing, a very good thing, for it keeps the medium fresh.

And having had more retirements from blogging than Frank Sinatra from Caesar's Palace, it's a fair bet I'll be back at some point, God willing.

With that in mind, I thought I'd give some last random thoughts before my blogging career goes to the Great Dashboard in the Sky, where everyone can read HTML and nothing is overcoded.

While Orlando Figes may at times have been mercurial and capricious in his personal dealings, his brilliance as a Russianist cannot be doubted. 'The Whisperers' makes the case that Stalin set out to destroy private life in Russia. There never was any real need for eight or nine families to be sharing apartments, but it suited the ideological agenda; fifty people sharing one toilet, and that indoors, can have few secrets from each other.

Having read that book, one can wonder whether neoliberalism has a similar agenda for the destruction of public life. The constant assaults on workers' rights to withdraw their labour - shamefully abetted by leaders of the Labour Party who have never seen a strike, no matter how just, which they haven't deplored and whose consistently spineless failure to defend working people's use of their bargaining chip of last resort will hopefully cause historians of the future to spit their names with venom - the petty indignities inflicted upon Scout troops unable to go to the park or the seaside because they don't have insurance and so on, all seem to indicate the workings of an ideology totally opposed to people having any kind of communal lives, either in the workplace or in pursuit of a shared interest. If it's true then it's rather sad, if only because it's so pathetic.

Murdo Fraser MSP wishes to become leader of the Scottish Conservatives and then reform the party into oblivion. The application of Occam's Razor makes me wonder why he just doesn't resign from the party he's in and start his own.

I am still getting to grips with the new English translation of the Mass. The overly pre-Free State Irish, at times overly-clericalised nature of much Catholic worship in Scotland may have been why the old lady behind me, 85 years old if she was a day, was bobbing up and down with slothlike nimbleness. It would be very sad to think she was putting herself through a set of physical jerks worthy of a Nazi summer camp in order to satisfy her conscience that she has tried to do everything a priest has told her to do. For the first few weeks, a little bit of the Mass's dignity was, to my mind, stripped away as worshippers seemed to be engaged in some sort of arthritic Pilates, a geriatric Zumba class for people who don't yet understand whether they should be standing up or kneeling down for the 'Agnus Dei'. Seeing the apparent discomfort of some of the old, and not so old, people around me at this point in the worship they have chosen to join, I have to confess that an uncharitable recollection concerning public comments made by the Scottish Catholic Church's spokesman regarding the Hokey Cokey has flashed through my head more than once. However, the element of unexpected physicality introduced by the new translation seems to be settling down now. Maybe the hip replacements are finally screaming for mercy. I'm also puzzled by some of the wording. In the Creed, the words 'of one being with the Father' have been replaced with 'consubstantial with the Father'. One would have thought that the words 'of one being' have precisely the same meaning as the word 'consubstantial', while also being very much easier to explain to young children. The more mean-spirited might think that 'consubstantial' is the sort of word best tossed out as refectory repartee, and while theologically exact doesn't really sit well with those, like me, who have no desire to be the most accomplished theologian in the graveyard, particularly when a very much clearer alternative is being pushed aside in its favour. These matters are not in my hands, thank Goodness, but for the first few weeks I was extremely disoriented, a sensation I never handle very well - quiet mutterings, quieter raspberries and all that - and came to understand and develop great sympathy for those souls who must have been disoriented by hearing the Mass in English for the first time. Given that the Mass is, or should be, an act of orientation towards the ultimate, I hope that the grace of the God who has guided the production of this new translation will descend upon His worshippers and lead them to appreciate its subtleties.

While I was not party to the negotiations, and have great sympathy for their loss as a family no matter whatever foibles some of them might possess or have possessed as individuals, the compensation reported as having been paid or which is becoming payable to the family of Milly Dowler by News International for the hacking of her mobile phone seems excessively high.

Earlier this evening, Channel 4 broadcast a documentary entitled 'The Wonderful World of Tony Blair'. This is a very good title for any item which is either written or broadcast about that gentleman, so good in fact that I used it as the title for an article I wrote for 'The Washington Dispatch' almost exactly nine years ago.

And that, for the time being, is that. Thank you all for your kindness in reading, and may God bless you and keep all of you in His tender care. I have made many generous friends through this blog, and wish all of you all the very best. Ave atque vale.

Does The Royal Family Use Tax Avoidance Vehicles?

This is probably a most unworthy thought for such a loyal subject as myself to have, but given that the Queen now actually pays tax one can't help but wonder whether she or any of her immediate family are the beneficiaries of any schemes the purpose of which is to legitimately minimise their tax liabilities.

I realise that in some circles that question might be regarded as being as tasteless as asking whether any of them have offshore bank accounts - Heaven forbid - but if their advisers have allowed such schemes to be set up on their behalf then that would send out a very poor message to the rest of us. Even if the person in whose name tax is collected isn't aware that they aren't paying as much as they could, what message about paying tax does that send to the rest of us?

'Downton Abbey'

The second series of Julian Fellowes's sublimely produced period toff porn is shaping up quite nicley.

The first episode, broadcast earlier this evening, was set in 1916. Some of the younger male servants are still not at the front - to the apparent chagrin of some of the more bloodthirsty female characters, it must be said - and at a concert in the Big House two young women start distributing white feathers. Enraged by this, the Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) shouts at them 'You are the cowards here!'

Later on his gallant valet Bates (Brendan Coyle) leaves Downton at dead of night, apparently to prevent a sexual scandal from engulfing his empoyer's family.

It's edge of the seat stuff, I can tell you.

'The Rational Optimist'

In my last post, I described Matt Ridley's book 'The Rational Optimist' as being 'thoroughly squalid and meretricious'. Having now finished it, I fear I might have been pulling my punches.

With the justified garlands gained in his previous career as a scientist and populariser of science now tarnished by that irrational optimism which led him to believe that he could help run a bank, Ridley may have felt that he had something to prove to his public, with this book being the result. If that was the case then in my opinion he has failed, for to my eyes it merely reads like a frantic restatement of his really quite right-wing economic beliefs; the thoughts of a man desperately clinging on to the hope that the beliefs he holds and has held are true beliefs.

It is blighted by Ridley's belief, perhaps a predictable one given his background, that human beings evolved from apes, a proposition for which, to my knowledge, not a shred of evidence sits on the scientific record. Earlier this year, it was very interesting to see two different writers advance almost exactly the same argument for this faintly absurd suggestion; that it was so credible that it could only be true, and to think otherwise could be deemed unreasonable. One was H. G. Wells, in his 'Short History Of The World', published in 1928, while the other was Simon Schama, in his appositely titled anthology 'Scribble, Scribble, Scribble', published in 2010 (and a wonderful read it is as well, if only because the author, already much beloved on this blog, manages to skid from extremes of fanatical Obamaphilia to the most dessicated pointy-headedness when discussing art to his apparent default mode of Tiggerish harmlessness, all souffles and Charlotte Rampling, in the way other men change their socks).

Ridley might not have set out to be self-serving, but it is certainly my opinion that his perhaps legally accurate description of himself as having been 'non-executive chairman' of Northern Rock at the time it required to be rescued does seem self-serving. Were the words 'non-executive' included to try to put even a little distance between himself and what was going on inside the institution? If they were, it hasn't worked.

The thrust of the book is that human development has grown up through trade and, in Ridley's rather squalid phrase, 'ideas having sex'. Organised religions seem to be bad because, in Ridley's rather sweeping view, they need temporal empires in order to spread themselves - what Saints Paul, Thomas, Patrick, Columbkille and Francis Xavier might have thought of this view can only be speculated upon. But while organised religion may be a very bad thing - and organised religion is, incidentally, the only entity that lends legitimacy to the ranks held by the aristocracy of which Ridley is a member, on the basis that they are or have been granted by monarchs whose own very slender claims to legitimacy have depended upon their seizure of the title 'Fidei Defensor', that title which they claim to be theirs and which is so important that it's the only one on the coins - spontaneously ordered religion seems to be very good, and that old Mitteleuropan hack Hayek is its prophet. According to Ridley we should be actively seeking Catallaxy, not a good idea in my opinion for, as he should know very well, Catallaxy bites. We are not into science here, folks, but we are very heavily into eschatology of the most brutally materialistic sort.

This would all be a better class of agitprop if he hadn't made such sweeping judgements, nor tripped over himself so much, nor made such glaring mistakes. One mistake that really jumped off the page appears on Page 129, when he writes that,

"Other descendants of the Black Sea refugees took to the plains of what is now Ukraine where they domesticated the horse and developed a new language, Indo-European, that would come to dominate the western half of the Eurasian continent, and of which Sankrit and Gaelic are both descendants".

If you wish to read one book of universal history, read Felipe Fernandez-Armesto's 'Civilisations'. In that most wonderful of books, Professor Fernandez-Armesto writes that there is absolutely no evidence for the existence of, in his words, an 'ur-Sprach' from which the Indo-European family of languages sprang, nor of any particular place, no 'ur-Heimat', from which they sprang. If Ridley had studied this area of history more closely before sitting down at the PC, he might have learned, possibly even to his great delight, that modern scholarship in this area believes that the Indo-European languagess grew from, of all things, trading links. To my mind, this error reveals a glaring gap in Ridley's scholarship in matters outwith his own area of expertise, which in turn leads one to think that anything he writes upon anything not within his own area of expertise isn't really to be trusted.

And you really can tell something about a man by hearing what sort of people he admires. On Page 170, after listing all...zzz...of the achieve...zzz..ments...that they...zzz...made by, with almost tedious predictability, having little or no government and virtually absolute freedom to trade, he writes 'But in truth, was there ever a more admirable people than the Phoenicians'?

Well, yes, in fact just about anybody who doesn't or didn't practice child sacrifice is more admirable than the Phoenicians. I am perfectly willing to accept that Ridley's over-evolved enthusiasm for his economic beliefs got the better of him when he wrote that sentence, but to my mind it's a shocking, and squalid and meretricious, error of judgement. Then again, it might not be the first one he's ever made.

He trips over himself. On Page 291 he includes the name of Naomi Klein amongst those he seems to think are modern prophets of doom, yet on Page 318, in the context of how the aid system actively impedes development in Africa, he writes,

"...in recent years, much aid has been granted on condition of free-market economic reform, which far from kickstarting economic growth, frequently proves damaging to local traditions, undermining the very mechanisms that get enrichment started".

This sentence could have come straight out of 'The Shock Doctrine', by, er, Naomi Klein. Accordingly, I have to wonder whether Ridley read 'The Shock Doctrine' before denigrating its author.

This may indeed by cold comfort to Ridley, but in this matter he even seems to be to the left of John Pilger.

The last nail in this book's coffin is its list of acknowledgments: Richard Dawkins, Niall Ferguson, Johan Norberg, Nigel Lawson, Russell Roberts, David Willetts...the gang's all here. I merely report that having listed Nigel Lawson among the acknowledgments, the paperback version carries a very favourable quote from his son Dominic Lawson on the front cover, quite some way above the title.

This book was not worth reading. In my opinion it reads like a frantic iteration of belief from a man whose experiences may have shaken it. At times, Ridley's writings on economics seem like the outpourings of a fanatic, if only because he will analyse every aspect of the physical world around him but seems to accept the teachings of Hayek absolutely and without question. After reading it, I actually felt quite sorry for him - he puts everything under the microscope but himself.

Twenty Years After

My apologies for not posting recently - been catching up on my reading, although in the case of Matt Ridley's 'The Rational Optimist', in my opinion a thoroughly squalid and meretricious book, I might as well not have bothered - I couldn't let the occasion pass without comment.

I became physically symptomatic on Friday 13th September 1991 - a day that will live in infamy.

The very insecure old solicitor whose tedious Rumpeltskinian shenanigans got the ball rolling is now dead, so, if only to preserve a point of good manners he was never very keen on observing himself, 'de mortuis nil nisi bonum' and all that. At that time in his life, his early '60's, he looked like Stroessner on the slide - a pot belly on a five foot five inch frame somehow miraculously suspended above a grey Bobby Charlton combover and a pair of Reactolite Rapides. Every damn day he would lose confidence in himself and what he had directed should be done, and blow his top with someone as a result. It seemed like every damn day there would be an apologetic missal posted on the office notice board saying that each day was a new start, or some crap like that; the classic behaviour pattern of an abusive spouse.

However, as far as I was concerned any relationship with the man ended at about 14.30 on Friday 13th September 1991, two months into a two year traineeship on, if memory serves, a very sunny early autumn afternoon on Sauchiehall Street, when the ritualised bollocking, almost a hazing, of being forced to stand in front of his desk while he ripped up my work in front of me while screaming at the top of his voice, got too much for me and both my head and right arm suddenly snapped from the middle to the right and would not stop snapping no matter what I did ('duties of care', anyone?). I remember running through the office from his room on the ground floor to mine on the mezzanine level just to get away from him, and I don't remember anything else of that afternoon. A year long diagnostic process followed thereafter, I was diagnosed in November 1992 and by the grace of God I'm still bloody well here.

It's been an interesting twenty years - you can't have 22 jobs in 20 years and not have an interesting time - but the high points have, of course, been becoming a husband and then becoming a father. He's a lovely boy, you know. I suppose many fathers look at their children slightly wistfully, hoping that they will be able to do more with their talents than their fathers have. Maybe he'll be the one to crack writing for a living.

On the other hand, I'm not dead yet.

The Neil Lennon Verdict Explained (I Think)

While one side of my brain remains baffled by John Wilson's acquittal, the other thinks it might be able to explain why the jury reached its decision.

The critical element in the BBC report is this passage -

"The jury of seven women and eight men deleted the reference to making a sectarian remark from the charge relating to breach of the peace, and that the offence was aggravated by religious prejudice."

I may have this all wrong, and have not examined the relevant legislation - pulling out one's own fingernails with a pair of pliers would be an infinitely more enlightening and profitable pastime - but the wording of that report suggests to me that it has been framed in such a way that the alleged crime which is alleged to have been aggravated by sectarianism cannot be separated from the aggravation. In other words, in cases such as this, where a sectarian aggravation has been libelled, it is not enough merely for the crime to be proved for a conviction to be obtained; in order for the prosecution to be successful, the aggravation must also be proved.

If this is true then the law is not just an ass, it's ass backwards. For want of a better expression, an aggravation should always be the icing on the cake in such matters. A crime must always have been committed before it can be aggravated. What we might have here is an aggravation in search of a crime to attach itself to.

If this is the case, it suggests to me that the pitifully low standard of legislative draftsmanship displayed by the Scottish Parliament since devolution shows no signs of improving. Holyrood has a track record of producing badly written laws, and this one may be no exception.

It could also suggest that we might be on the way back to those days recalled by G. M. Trevelyan in his 'English Social History', when the phrase 'You might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb' had real meaning. Trevelyan records that in the 18th and 19th Centuries juries were often unwilling to convict in cases of minor crimes, often committed out of desperation, which carried grossly disproportionate penalties (ah yes, 'Merrie England', the birthplace of transportation and the man-trap). Given the political focus on stamping out sectarianism - a futile exercise to conduct in the west of Scotland, but I suppose God loves a trier - it may be the case that juries will not convict unless they are absolutely sure of guilt, applying a self-imposed standard of absolute and not merely reasonable doubt to their deliberations and allowing perfectly good cases which would have succeeded without the allegation of sectarian aggravation to fall.

And just as well, because as a self- proclaimed civil libertarian one can't really take any issue with 100 guilty men going free and so on and so forth and all that.

If any of the above is not the case, then I would be very interested to know whether the Crown Office was placed under any pressure by the soi-disant, ersatz 'Scottish Government' to prosecute this matter with a sectarian aggravation attached. The Tartanissimo has held forth at length on the need for anti-sectarian legislation, and what better way of driving home the need for such laws than a high-profile trial in which it will be alleged (with the word 'alleged' in this context meaning that the events were broadcast around the world) that a high-profile Catholic was subjected to a sectarian assault during the course of his employment as manager of Celtic Football Club, with the scene of the crime being pitchside during a league fixture. In Scotland, you don't get more high profile than that. If it is the case that the Crown Office was leaned on to make sure that the sectarian element stayed on the indictment to the bitter end, we're further down the road to Tartanitarianism than even I have feared.

The End Of Solicitor-Client Confidentiality In Scotland

It seems that my former professional brethren are all at risk of being co-opted as special constables in the war against the gangs.

I don't care what fine words are uttered by the President and Council of The Law Society of Scotland on this matter; although they might not intend to turn solicitors into snitches, that will be the consequence of their actions. The purpose of solicitor-client confidentiality is to ensure that clients are able to receive all relevant advice, and they can only receive all relevant advice when they are able to provide their solicitors with all relevant facts. If solicitors feel compelled to act like Eaglesham's or Eyemouth's answer to Eliot Ness, then clients will not discuss matters with their solicitors as fully as they should.

One possible, and very possibly unintended, consequence of this state of affairs coming about will be non-gang members being prosecuted for gang-related crimes. If a gang-member knows that he can't discuss gang activity with his solicitor then there is no reason for him to plead guilty to anything, if only because he can't obtain the appropriate professional advice. This would in turn result in increases not only in the number of unsuccessful prosecutions but also of less convincing prosecutions being brought before the courts; should the police ever feel under pressure to keep up their war on the gangs, the temptation to cast their net wider and throw a whale in order to catch a sprat might become very strong.

Another very possible, and most hopefully unintended, consequence would be jealous and avaricious solicitors maliciously 'shopping' their more successful peers in the hope of tarring them with the suspicion of being gang lawyers. One would hope that if such behaviours were ever detected, the beaks would have the culprits in their jaws in a flash.

This is just another example of how the civil liberties of Scots are being degraded during an administration which boasts of its wish to set Scotland free. Although freedom might be slavery and ignorance strength, The Tartanissimo and the agencies under his control also seem to believe that tyranny is liberty. As James Erskine of Grange remarked of pre-Union Scotland in 1732, 'Liberty was a stranger here'. It seems that in many ways she's still a stranger.

'That Bastard Verdict'

Although I will defend Scotland's unique 'Not Proven' verdict with the last breath in my body, there are times when one knows just what Walter Scott meant.

This is Scotland in the 21st Century, folks. Go figure.

Libyan Extradition Policy

The announcement that the now located Abdelbaset al-Megrahi would not be extradited by any new Libyan government, as neither would any other Libyan national, does make one wonder just why the BBC keeps referring to Gaddafi as being wanted by the International Criminal Court.

If he is ever caught, then it would seem to be the case that if his former subjects wish to try him themselves they will do so without any interference from abroad.

Similarly, it would be hard to see how any offer of amnesty or immunity made to him by any new Libyan government could ever be challenged by any other nation. The Libyans seem to be following the line taken by the Russians in their insistent refusal to extradite Andrei Lugovoy to the UK for questioning regarding the death of the late Alexander Litvinenko, that to do so would be contrary to their law (which it would be) and that they're not going to be dictated to in their own country by foreigners. We'll see how this one pans out; hopefully not into nationalism or pan-Arabist chauvinism, but a healthy regard for civil liberties, for law and for the rule of law instead.

To be forced to live in peace in a peaceful country in which he knows he is immune from prosecution but in which he can't oppress anyone anymore would be hell on Earth for Gaddafi, and at that point his transformation into a North African Pinochet would be complete.

A Short Guide To Reading 'The Guardian'

While the BBC, the 'Daily Telegraph', the 'Daily Mirror' and the 'Daily Mail' all saw fit to record the passing of the Scottish SAS veteran John McAleese, as at the time of writing this I have been unable to find any reference to his death in the online edition of 'The Guardian'.

I hope that they have made some mention of it in the paper edition. If they have not, its editors would be guilty either of shocking carelessness or unforgivable churlishness. While we might not like the uses to which our armed forces are sometimes put, we should always be on the side of the very brave men on the ground who do the fighting, the ordinary soldiers who didn't go to Eton or Harrow. They're the ones whose side 'The Guardian' is always supposed to be on.

'The Guardian' is often at its best when Britain is at its worst, such as during the phone-hacking scandal. Equally, it is when Britain is or has been at its best that 'The Guardian' is often at its worst, and this is a classic case in point. It takes physical courage greater than I can fathom to do what Mr. McAleese and his colleagues did in 1980, and to be disrespectful to those who preserve your liberty is to treat it with contempt.

My condolences to Mr. McAleese's family.

Legal Thoughts, Part I

It has been reported that a new suspect has been identified during the re-animated investigation into the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher. I am troubled by this.

The heartbreaking fact of the matter is that WPC Fletcher's murderer, whoever they might be or have been (given the current situation in Libya, this might perhaps be a more fluid, less definite condition than they might be wholly comfortable with), very probably walked out of the Libyan Embassy in London under the cover of diplomatic immunity. If they had immunity at the time, then I cannot see how they do not enjoy immunity now. I cannot possibly see how diplomats whose credentials have once been accepted can later be held to account for anything they did or might have done while their credentials were recognised.

For even after her murder, their credentials were recognised. That's why they walked out of their own accord, rather than being carried out in body bags after a brief encounter with some gentlemen from Hereford.

All we would achieve by pursuing a prosecution in this matter would be to make every British diplomat fair game for illegal prosecution, wherever in the world they might have served and without regard for whatever period of time might have elapsed after their posting had finished. I am beginning to wonder if those in charge of this country's government have finally lost all understanding of that the rule of law really is.

Legal Thoughts, Part II

The apparent thuggishness displayed by Frederick Goodwin, the most financially destructive incompetent in British corporate history, while flying the Royal Bank of Scotland nose first into the ground is being exposed in a soon to be published book entitled 'Masters Of Nothing: The Crash And How It Will Happen Again'.

Goodwin is reported as having thrown a Queeg-like wobbly when presented with the 'wrong' type of biscuit. If true, it seems like pathetically juvenile behaviour from the leader of a multi-billion pound organisation. More alarming, however, is the question of fire alarms.

As inimitably paraphrased by 'The Daily Record',

"At dinner functions, an engineer was kept on standby until the early hours to switch off fire alarms when fatcats wanted to smoke inside".

This raises two issues which might appear to merit closer investigation by the authorities.

The first is whether or not the Royal Bank of Scotland jeopardised the safety of its staff or contractors contrary to the Health and Safety at Work, etc Act 1974. There would be staff and contractors on site while these dinners were taking place, even if it was only the engineer who turned the fire alarms off having to wait around to turn them back on again. It would be interesting to know whether individuals who pursued what might perhaps be a course of criminal conduct, the alleged neutralisation of the fire alarm system, did so of their own volition or under duress, and if under duress what form that duress took.

The second is whether any of these reported puff-fests took place during the period between the banning of smoking in certain public places in Scotland and Goodwin's defenestration from the Royal Bank of Scotland. One would imagine that the Royal Bank of Scotland does not permit its staff to smoke within any of its places of business, although it might permit smoking in certain designated areas outside them. One would also imagine that the law of Scotland would deem all of the Royal Bank of Scotland's places of business to be public places of the type in which smoking has been banned. If the ban has been breached, then it would seem to be a simple matter for those who breached it and for those who allowed it to be breached to be held to account for their actions. We do not have one law for people at the top and another for people at the bottom.

That's the theory, anyway.

On Mozilla Firefox

This puppy's wonderful!

I've been paying for broadband for over six years, and at last I've got what I've been paying for!

As sad as it is to say, when even a literary-minded non-techie Internet Explorer loyalist like me decides to investigate whether there might be better browsers out there, the only conclusion one can draw is that Bill has blown it; and that is a state of affairs for which he has nobody to blame but himself.

The 'Publish Post' button actually works now! Look! Look!

On Gaddafi And Bounties

As someone whose repugnance at the rapprochement between the western nations and the Gaddafi regime has now been on record for the best part of a decade, I still have reservations about the approach being taken to effect his capture.

I can't stand the whole 'bounty' thing; it reeks of the desperation that accompanies lawlessness. It sends out the wrong message, that justice is a commodity that can be bought and sold like any other. The FCO, otherwise known as the FO with a great big C in the middle, should be discouraging it forcefully, if only because it gives the impression that either the world's most sophisticated intelligence services don't know where he is, or that it is thought that he might be much more difficult to catch than anyone anticipated.

If it is legitimate to pay a bounty for Gaddafi, it would presumably also be legitimate to pay bounties for the capture of other people associated with his regime, such as Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, and this is where the law and morality of it all becomes very muddy. There have been rumblings from Washington that Megrahi should be delivered to American justice. This would be a travesty, as he has already been convicted under the law of Scotland. For the rest of his days, he will be a prisoner of Her Majesty's sentenced to a period of imprisonment for life but who has been released on licence. That is his status; he has no other. It is unfortunate that many relatives of American victims, and some American politicians, were unhappy that he was released on compassionate grounds, but that's all it is; unfortunate. In fact and in law the USA has no jurisdiction over him, and any ex post facto claim of jurisdiction over him by the USA would be contrary to law and the rule of law; revolutionary justice of the worst sort.

They might see it as being unfortunate that he has survived for so long after his release, to which one can only say that if you were a non-UK national dying of cancer in Greenock prison who was released on compassionate grounds, then the combined effects of being transferred to your own country, of being around your own family again and of having access to drugs and medical care which might not be available on the NHS might prolong your survival for longer than anticipated as well. That he is still alive so long after having been released shouldn't really be a cause for irritation. It's only surprising that we should be surprised.

If the chaps from Fort Bragg do wish to take him for a ride, they can perfectly legitimately take him to see his social worker at East Renfrewshire Council, the only non-Libyan official in the world with legal authority over him; and the sight of Dwight and Clayton Lee doing a rope slide from a Black Hawk over Rouken Glen Park would probably be something they don't see in Giffnock every day.

(Update 26/08/11 - a matter of moments after this item was posted, the 'BBC Six O'Clock News' reported that Megrahi might appear to have broken the terms of his licence by no longer apparently being in residence at his villa in Tripoli. While this is obviously an undesirable state of affairs, I can't really recall any other situation where a Scottish prisoner on licence has breached its terms while living in a country which was undergoing a revolution and in which they were regarded as being close to the ancien regime, perhaps making them feel that they might be at risk if they continue to stay at the address they provided to the authorities. Megrahi's case has been exceptional from the outset, and I think even the Scottish Prison Service might understand if he's uncontactable for a few days under present circumstances. If he were really smart, he'd be looking to claim asylum in the one country in the world which possesses both a working government and a duty of care towards him, which is, er, the United Kingdom. Just imagine what fun the Daily Mail would have with that one, and by law there wouldn't be a damn thing anyone could do about it. The bugger will probably end up living in Buckingham Palace before he's done).

Back On The Blog

Regular readers will have noticed that the blog has been off-line for six days. I had deleted it.

This was on account of my desire to write a book, and the blog was proving to be so much of a distraction that I could not commence that task. However, having finally started writing it last night, I realised that it would be too big a job, and that I would be unable to complete it without causing lasting damage to my health.

So with my apologies to my loyal readers, I'm back here and will stay here, unremunerated and unedited but at least able to write something that someone, somewhere might read. Blogging might be one of the most ephemeral forms of literature, its merit lying somewhere between pamphleteering and graffiti, but I find it's one of the most enjoyable to produce. I never should have stopped.

Where was I?

(Update 27/08/2011 - Some reflection has led me to believe that readers deserve an explanation of the phrase 'I would be unable to complete it without causing lasting damage to my health'.

The realisation was achieved while banging my head off the wooden leg of a sofa in my workplace, during the course of one of those seizures to which I am fortunately only occasionally prone)

Raising Train Fares In The Wake Of The Riots

Last week, we saw riots in England, many of them in areas where there is high unemployment.

This week, we hear that there will soon be large increases in the cost of rail fares.

Constantly telling people of the importance of having a job and then making it very difficult for them to get to it seems to me to be an unsatisfactory way of trying to reduce unemployment, or of staving off the threat of violent dissent.

On David Cameron's Use Of The Word 'Sick' To Describe Some Parts Of Society

This was fascist language, used in the fascist sense. Individuals are sick. Cultures can become corrupt. Polities and peoples are never sick.

What's coming next, some great plan to restore national vigour? A little more therapeutic violence overseas? A new political liturgy? Shirt movements? What? Once you've complained about the cultural hygiene of parts of the society you govern, anything's on the cards.

On The Character Of Alex Salmond

It has been reported that the First Minister recently exchanged words with Thomas Docherty MP, and that during the exchange The Tartanissimo remarked to Mr. Docherty, 'How long have you been an MP, son?'

If true, this extremely patronising remark shows just how deeply arrogance and aggression run with The Tartanissmo's character. I have been trying to tell you, you know.

HRH The Prince Of Wales Favours 'National Community Service'

On a visit to Tottenham yesterday that was probably 11 days too late, HRH The Prince of Wales spoke of his desire to see a scheme for 'national community service'.

That HRH The Prince of Wales is in favour of something usually means that it should be opposed unflinchingly, and this is no exception. To my mind that was an unwarranted and perhaps even unconstitutional intrusion into politics. Under our system, what he does or does not want to see in our society is neither here nor there. His functions are to wave politely, to ask people whether they have come far and to sign bills passed by Parliament into law.

If he believes that he will reign as some kind of benevolent pater patriae, a philosopher king sharing his wisdom to his subjects when he feels it is required, then he is frankly delusional. I am the best arbiter of the type of education and training my son will require in order to become a rounded member of society, and I will suffer no more damn insolence from HRH The Prince of Wales on that subject.

On The Absence Of Comparative Justice In The Wake Of The Riots

Although Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan's attempts to start a riot in Latchford via Facebook were malevolent, and although he deserves to have his Facebook page thrown at him for the attempt, it is hard to square the sentence of four years' imprisonment he has received with the sentence of 16 months' imprisonment handed down to Elliot Morley for claiming more than £30,000 of parliamentary expenses to which he was not entitled.

On the face of it, it is hard to see whose offence was more grave. Sutcliffe-Keenan is an unpleasant, dough-headed yob; Morley was at one time a Minister of the Crown, not merely expected but presumed to possess the highest standards of integrity. No harm to life or property took place as a result of Sutcliffe-Keenan's actions, while Morley got away with a lot of money. Sutcliffe-Keenan's offence would not have been committed if like-minded unpleasant, dough-headed yobs not taken the initiative in Tottenham; Morley's was a premeditated, calculating and very cynical course of conduct pursued over the course of several years. Although Sutcliffe-Keenan was trying to incite violent disorder, Morley certainly wasn't the only one with a creative approach to accounting and an over-developed sense of entitlement.

It is hard to determine just why these offences have been treated so differently. If a savage and retributive sentence required to be imposed on Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan pour encourager les autres, it must surely have been passed in the knowledge that les autres were in no way encouraged by those actions of his which have placed him before the court. Trappist monks have ignited rioting more effectively than he did.

Where is Shami Chakrabarti when she is most needed? Come to think of it, who's Shami Chakrabarti?

On The Unpleasantness Of Libertarian Rhetoric

Given that they might have seen and possibly even lived through real looting, I hope that no libertarian ever describes the simple act of paying lawful tax as looting ever again.