Light Posting Today

Occasioned by having to wade through one's own archives in order to cross-reference materials.

Back tomorrow.

Enough Of Foreign Criminals, For One Evening At Least

Which of the following would be the coolest runaround -

TARDIS, Delta Flyer or Jedi Interceptor?

Aberdeen Babylon

Grampian Police have 'been asked by the Home Office to carry out a series of intelligence operations on foreign nationals living in the area', in the wake of The Great Foreign Criminals Fiasco.

Pals of Joama Myers, probably.

Fit like, Babylon, there be a puckle o' Yardies in the Silver City, man...

The Uselessness Of David Cameron

"He appeared keen to impress with a range of cultural references, including his wife’s relationship with Tricky of Massive Attack and his chats with Bob Geldof. He was less keen to engage with substantive questions on the decriminalising of drug taking, giving secular schools the same advantages as faith schools and pulling troops out of Iraq."

The Times.

And he melted down like a chocolate fireguard on Sky News this afternoon.

Anatole Kaletsky On The NHS, Crime And National Priorities

I've recently taken two potshots at Anatole Kaletsky of 'The Times', but he hits the nail right on the head when he writes,

"The NHS is becoming an incubus steadily eating away at every other responsibility of government. If the nation’s demand for healthcare keeps growing much faster than the economy — and it certainly will — voters and politicians will soon face a choice: do they want a tax-financed health system and a paralysed government or will they start paying for their healthcare and hope to get a government that works?"

One could add that amongst the other burdens that British taxpayers need not shoulder include girls' education in Niger, limiting the spread of HIV/AIDS in Kyrgyzstan, treating the province of Kosovo as if it were an independent country and subsidising the following, absolutely up-to-date resume of the country of Nicaragua:

"Following the Sandinista revolution, society is considered by many to be more equal than elsewhere in Central America, but despite this impression it has a highly inequitable income distribution, its’ poor economic performance means that 50% of people still live in poverty and 19% in extreme poverty."

Someone should lose their job for that.

Sid's Lasting Achievement

Mohammed Siddique Khan, the Binbag Crew's ringleader, is described today as being the BNP's 'invisible poster boy' in his home borough of Kirklees.

This was inevitable; and what delicious irony lies in him throwing his life away for the savage and ignorant ideology of jihad, only for his suicide to give political capital to the savage and ignorant ideologues of racial nationalism.

God is Great.

Mahony's Disease In London

It is my sad duty to report an outbreak of Mahony's Disease in London.

It has been reported that His Eminence Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster and the Englishman with the best Irish accent since Michael MacLiammoir, has

"called on London's Catholic parishes to embrace migrants whatever their legal status ahead of a major Mass in the capital.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor has made the call in the Tablet magazine as he prepares for a Mass for migrant workers at Westminster Cathedral on May 1, the Feast of St Joseph the Worker.

He said: "Illegal immigration is not something the Church can approve of or encourage. But our Gospel mandate is to assist strangers, whoever they are, and meanwhile to urge that the rights of undocumented workers be respected."

The Archbishop is bringing the bishops of London's three Catholic dioceses together for the ceremony next week which is expected to attract more than 2,000 people.

Following the Mass the congregation will stage a rally in the cathedral piazza to launch a new Workers' Association and to urge employers to pay a "living wage" to migrant workers.

The living wage is the necessary minimum for a human standard of living in the capital. The Mayor of London Ken Livingstone has set the the living wage at £6.70 an hour, where the national minimum wage is £5.05.

Trade union and faith leaders, including deputy general-secretary of the TGWU, Jack Dromey; the head of the Muslim Council of Britain, Sir Iqbal Sacranie; and the canon theologian of Westminster Abbey, Nicholas Sagovsky will attend the rally.

The Mass, the first of its kind, is organised with the support of London Citizens, a community-based organisation which includes many Catholic churches as members.

Also attending will be the papal nuncio, Archbishop Faustino Sainz Munoz, and the Orthodox ecumenical patriarch Gregorios.

During the ceremony several parts and readings will be conducted in different languages, including Vietnamese, Polish and Spanish, to reflect the changing face of London's Catholic Church.

In his homily, the Cardinal will tell migrants that "as far as the Catholic Church is concerned, you are Londoners".

Tens of thousands of practising Catholic migrants have arrived in Britain's capital, notably from central and eastern Europe following the accession of the new EU states in May 2004. About 90% of the capital's low-paid jobs are performed by migrants.

The tide of newcomers has buoyed Mass attendance figures in the capital's parishes in recent years and led to higher numbers of new Catholics and priestly vocations.

In his Tablet article, the Cardinal recognises the need for ethnic chaplaincies as "a staging post, a path into the wider Church".

However, he also warns against "two parallel Churches in London: one for Londoners, one for foreigners".

The Archbishop said: "Our Church is Catholic, it is not British or Irish or black. As migrants settle and find work, it is to be hoped that they move into local parishes and there find a warm welcome."

In order better to understand the needs and conditions of migrant workers, the three Dioceses have commissioned research entitled "The Ground of Justice", which is being carried out by the Von Hugel Institute in Cambridge together with London Citizens.

Ground of Justice researchers are busy collecting data through interviews with parish priests and migrants across the capital. The research, which will contain practical suggestions for solidarity with the migrant, is expected to be published in September".

One would have two small observations about this report.

Firstly, increased Mass attendance obviously results in increased collections.

Secondly, migrants should not be regarded as 'Londoners' or 'Americans' in the eyes of the Catholic Church, but as, er, 'Catholics'.

Hat tip - Migration Watch.

If I'd Known You Were Coming I'd Have Baked A Yellowcake

might be an appropriate encore for the old subversive's 'Bye, Bye (Miss) Uranium Pie'.

The Great Foreign Criminals Fiasco, Continued: The Lengthening Shadow

The Times has reported today that 'Clarke knew of releases but still they carried on'.

Oh dear.

And the number and variety of the offenders concerned makes one ponder the likelihood of the eventual citation of a partridge in a pear tree; because there seem to be a few more of them than first thought.

And a hat tip is owed to Migration Watch for pointing out that the suggestion by 'The Mirror' that the hapless oaf Tony McNulty might have to walk the plank - but I called for his dismissal nearly two months ago, so it's no skin off my nose one way or the other.

Another Possible Reason For The High Price Of Oil

might be Iraqi gangsters.

They're free now, you know...

Oh, What Naughty Swedish Muslims!

Some of them are gunning for a separate legal system.

Hopefully Bjorn and Olof will observe the highest standards of cultural propriety when telling them to get stuffed.

HT - Modern Tribalist.

Freeing A Dog Trapped In A Car

was more urgent to Wiltshire Police than arresting Hugo Quintas, before he went on to murder Hayley Richards.

Wilstshire Police - great value for money.

The Cough Heard Round The World

A farm worker has bird flu.

But not the bad kind.

The Perils Of Being A Privatiser

Go to jail. Go directly to jail...

So You Think The American Economy's Doing Well?

You might think that, certainly...until you remember the Chinese have just raised their interest rates...

But in such situations, you've always got to look on the bright side...

The Late Peter Law

Peter Law MP, the lifelong servant of the Welsh Labour movement who refused to accept the legitimacy of all-female candidate shortlists, and who proved his point by turning over a 19,000 majority, has passed away.

RIP.

The Great Foreign Criminals Fiasco, Continued: A Sticky Wicket

"The Police National Computer stores details of convictions and cautions but one official told the BBC no trace of 20 of the 80 most serious offenders had been found because police were given only surnames, or names with multiple spellings."

Failure, they name is Clarke.

Time to go home, I think.

The Koran Or The Sword

The principle which informed conversion policy amongst early Muslims seems to be alive and well in Pakistan.

Some people will do anything for a quiet life.

An Innocent Brazilian

Should Luiz Felipe Scolari agree to become the next coach of England's national soccer team, he will drinking from a poisoned chalice.

His every public move will be watched, his every tactical decision pored over by a ravening press possessed by a pathological urge to harry England coaches, building them up and then knocking them down time after time after time.

Scolari is a long in the tooth old pro with a formidable record of achievement; but if he makes one wrong move on the pitch or with the press, he might give a new meaning to the phrase 'an innocent Brazilian'.

Then again, it might need one.

The Great Foreign Criminals Fiasco, Continued: They Think It's All Over

It is now.

Or will be soon.

One consequence of the fiasco has been the widespread publication of the actual numbers of imprisoned foreigners.

The events of the past few days have not brought to light any mere crisis of law enforcement or penal policy. What has been exposed is a wholescale, root and branch failure of the entire immigration system. As I wrote yesterday, that more foreigners are imprisoned here is a direct consequence of having more foreigners; a point made with far more eloquence than I can muster by the commentators quoted below:

"In the past few years the metropolitan elite have been too busy boasting about how little they pay their Filipina nannies and Hungarian cleaners to bother much about the violent gangs, paedophiles, traffickers and drug mules who have slipped in alongside. Now they are told that Wormwood Scrubs is occupied by 85 nationalities speaking 24 languages, and that almost 13 per cent of those in detention are foreign, it will be harder to cast the white working classes so exclusively as the thugs and xenophobes. The failure to deport foreign criminals is not just a “breakdown in communications”, as Charles Clarke has claimed. It is also a consequence of the deliberate policy of encouraging immigration on an unprecedented scale, a policy that has never been put to the electorate. Once again the Government is lamenting that it has lost control of the paperwork, and is promising to do better. But when you’ve lost control of the borders, the paperwork is pretty meaningless. "

Camilla Cavendish.

"HOW could it possibly have happened? That must have been the question on everybody's lips when they heard that nearly 1,000 foreign criminals had been released into the community without any consideration of their deportation. Not just criminals – serious criminals at that.Regrettably, this is just one symptom of an immigration system that has been allowed to crumble into chaos over the past 10 years. Behind their happy talk about "managed migration", the Government has simply lost control of our borders. Hence David Blunkett's admission a year or so ago that he "hadn't a clue who was in Britain"

Sir Andrew Green.

'The foreigners still locked in our jails are the other scandal'

says 'The Guardian'.

As if we care.

9.75 Euros Per Citizen

was the amount of profit the Irish government made from selling passports last year.

O Mary, this Dublin's a wonderful sight,
Where they're doling out passports by day and by night...

The White Powder Polka's Dublin Debut

doesn't seem to have been a snorting success.

Britain's Economy Would Still Grow Without Immigration

The Office of National Statistics has isssued a preliminary estimate for GDP growth in the first quarter of 2006 of 0.6% (.pdf).

According to the 'Ernst & Young Item Club', growth would be 0.2% lower were it not for the 300,000 Eastern Europeans currently displac-working in the UK.

So, we might not be talking the full 0.4%, but it's very hard to imagine that growth would halt altogether if immigration stopped; nor, indeed, that the economy would have failed to grow at all had we decided not to harvest Poland's middle class.

Who knows what growth would be like if we pursued responsible fiscal policies?

Such as abolishing the petrol and car taxes?

Is The UK's 'Persistent Skills Shortage' Really A 'We Can't Find Enough Dummies Who'll Work For The Wages On Offer' Shortage?

One wonders if one should ask the managing director of Manpower.

'Putin criticises West over energy'

Gulp.

The Great Foreign Criminals Fiasco, Continued: The Missing Pieces Of The Jigsaw

Readers will no doubt have had moments when a possible solution to an otherwise apparently impossible problem pops into their head entirely unbidden; a realisation of such blinding clarity that they are left with nothing other than a morbid fear of their own stupidity.

Such a realisation concerning The Great Foreign Criminals Fiasco came to the writer last night, inevitably after Dell's Best Old Faithful had been powered down for the night.

As far as I can see, the question of what role the automatic remission of sentences might have played in creating this mess has not been examined.

Unless a minimum tariff has been imposed, every custodial sentence dispensed by British courts is automatically remitted by a period of either one third or a half depending on its initial length. All figures used from this point on are for the purpose of argument only. I haven't stepped inside a courtroom for eight years, and at this stage in the day don't have the time to seek out the exact remission rates.

A sentence of six years might attract remission of one third. Therefore, if a particularly bad-assed Jamaican drug runner got sent down for six years in 1998, he'd be on the street in 2002.

This mess has arisen as a result of the failure of the Prison Service and the Immigration and Nationality Directorate to communicate with each other. The Prison Service has a duty to to know when their guests' periods of detention would be up - but does the IND?

I would also be very interested to know whether there is any actual statutory duty on the IND to liaise with the Prison Service.

It might exist, certainly, but I have not seen any reference to it in the iceberg of commentary the topic has already accumulated.

If there isn't, then another plausible reason for this fiasco could be that they have not done so because the Home Office was fearful that if any evidence of unofficial collusion between the jailers and the booter-outers ever came to light, the deportations would have been subject to challenge under the Human Rights Act; the most pernicious piece of British legislation since the Abortion Act.

Foreign Criminals Of The Day, Part I: Our First Recorded Polygamist

Meet Mohammed Faruq - conspirator, frustrator of the immigration laws, slum landlord and - polygamist?

Well, they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder - inshallah.

Foreign Criminals Of The Day, Part II: Judgment Day

One hopes that Ali Mohammed showed leniency towards those brought before him when he served in the Afghan judiciary.

Having sought asylum and then committed £100,000 worth of frauds, he's soon going to need some himself.

HT Migration Watch.

The Great Foreign Criminals Fiasco

The current spanking being doled out to Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, for the series of, ahem, systemic failures that have led to the release of The Lost 1,023 shows no sign of abating.

The government's acknowledgment that 288 of the blighters went under the wire and into the woods both on his watch and after the problem had come to light has done him no favours, resulting in some of those, such as David Davis, who were yesterday saying he should be allowed to clean up his mess now demanding that a new broom is required; or, as Civitas would have it, a new mop.

The newspapers have even found their posterboy foreign criminal in the unpleasant shape of Rashid Musa, whose crimes make him seem almost like a caricature of what a candidate for chemical castration should be.

There has been much ringing of hands over the exponential rise in the number of foreign prisoners over the last decade, when Occam's Razor would appear to provide the simplest solution to anyone really interested in the answer to the question of how this has come to pass.

An increase in the number of imprisoned foreigners is a direct consequence of increasing the number of imported foreigners.

The hyposcrisy of the mainstream media continues to astonish. On January 7 2006, the Daily Telegraph described Jesus Anibal Ruiz-Henao and Mario Tascon, the leaders of the biggest cocaine smuggling gang thus far broken up in the UK, as 'refugees'.

Today the same newspaper trumpets the 'Hunt for 900 dangerous criminals freed in error'. Notice what's missing from the headline. Yes, they're all 'criminals'. The Telegraph possesses greater confidence than I do in describing them all as 'dangerous'. But they all had something else in common, which the Telegraph's headline forgot to mention.

Yeah, that was it. They're all foreign. They're not British.

Their foreign-ness has been as critical to their roles in this shambles as their criminality, and it would have been nice to see the Telegraph pay due regard to that most obvious fact - above John Steele's byline, at least.

Something is rotten in the Home Office, clearly; and the blame for that can only be laid at the door of Tony Blair.

His bad faith in opening our doors to the world while degrading our borders and allowing the immigration services, a bulwark of nationhood, to wither while Muslim savages play their 'game' shows him to be a globalist of epic grandeur. His lack of interest in this nation is such that he does not care if foreign murderers are set free to kill again. He either genuinely believes that this nation is just like any other, so it doesn't matter who lives here, or else hates both it and its people so much that he came to office determined to destroy their way of life.

To have started with such polarising intentions has resulted in the population becoming, well, polarised; and this scandal has the potential not just to score lots of votes for the BNP on May 4.

Once a Royal Commission is called for and appointed, its ripples may spread very much wider.

Tony Parsons On The BNP

and the crimes of Viktor Dembovskis;

"Latvian Victor Dembovskis, welcomed into this country because he is an EU citizen, has just started three life sentences for the rape and murder of 17-year-old schoolgirl Jeshma Raithatha.

But of course she would not be of much interest to the BNP party machine because she was of Asian descent.

Ask yourself, do you really want to vote for a party that doesn't give a damn about the tragically short life of Jeshma Raithatha?"

Parsons doesn't speak a word of a lie, of course; but should you need proof, I would suggest you peruse The Fallen List.

The Great Arbitrage Comes To Belfast

Some might think it mad; but others might think it prudential.

'Lawyers to waive fees for charity'

"More than 100 solicitors are to waive their fees for drawing up wills as part of a drive to help children in Malawi.

They will ask clients to donate their fees in May to Will Relief Scotland. "

Why can't they just bloody well give the money out of their own pockets?

Tight gits.

More Poles Than Live In Warsaw

have travelled to the UK in the last two years.

Public prayers will soon be being offered to The Black Madonna of Auchenshuggle.

Hat tip - Migration Watch.

Out Of Control

That's the foreign crime gangs, by the way; the ones that we'll all soon have to carry ID cards to protect ourselves from.

Foreign Criminals Of The Day: The Lost 1,023

(First posted on The Devil's Kitchen)

“I've seen many people kept going in difficult circumstances by ethos”

Lin Homer

Firstly, I must proffer my apologies to His Satanic Majesty for invading his space with my ongoing manic crusade for the expulsion of all foreign criminals –so hopefully I will not suffer the hellish fate of forever trying, and failing, to withdraw money from Chechen cash machines.

The news that 1,023 foreign criminals who were are all eligible for deportation have been released back into society over the past seven years, without so much as a second glance from the Immigration & Nationality Directorate, shouldn’t really have come as too much of a surprise – not when foreigners comprise 13% of the prison population.

It would be very satisfying to believe that this has been the result of some sort of mysterious ‘firewall’ at work, preventing the IND and the Prison Service from speaking to each other in the same way that 9/11 was facilitated by the firewall that stood between the CIA and FBI for much of the ‘90’s.

Indeed, it would actually be preferable if it were the result of a sinister political plan, rather than through the appalling, and very British, series of cock-ups that seem to have been behind the affair, and which have led The Safety Elephant to trumpet that,

“We simply didn't make the proper arrangements for identifying and considering removal in line with the growth of numbers that were there,”

So, the bottom line is that for the last seven years the British government’s policy towards the deportation of foreign criminals has been benign neglect. The completion of judicial process, otherwise known as upholding the law and the rule of law, has been reduced to a matter of making ‘the proper arrangements’, with duties incumbent upon ministers of the crown and officers of the law officially considered to be no more burdensome than those upon the shoulders of funeral directors.

Perhaps they thought the criminals would just go away of their own accord.

More likely than not, the neglect was motivated by touchy-feely ‘We Are the World’ political correctness, the absurd idea that nations don’t matter and that all countries are just the same; an idea which would be proven wrong by any figures which might exist for the number of British citizens currently seeking asylum in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But more sinister is the admission by the above-quoted Lin Homer, the IND’s Chief Executive that, of the missing, 160 had been recommended for deportation at sentencing; of whom nine who were subsequently located had been deemed ‘inappropriate for removal’.

New Labour’s contempt for the law is absolute. Deportation was an essential component of the sentences that had been handed down on these criminals by our courts. These sentences were the law of the land, interference with them an offence against the administration of justice; and no executive agency, no matter how well intentioned, has any business thwarting them.

The person who made that admission was previously the £172,000 a year head of Birmingham City Council, who made something of an, ahem, name for herself as Birmingham’s returning officer before apparently taking a £2,000 a year pay cut to head the IND.

Any crime committed by a foreigner in the United Kingdom constitutes a dilution of British citizenship. Citizens, regardless of their race or creed, pay taxes to fund police forces for no purposes other than to detect and prevent crime in their own communities. If someone who should not be in that community commits a crime, the resources that citizens fund are diverted away from their proper purposes to the citizens’ loss.

If the criminal has been admitted as a result of laxity or ideology on the part of those whom the citizens have entrusted with their governance, then those responsible are indifferent servants, unworthy of the trust that has been placed in them. The officials responsible thumb their noses at the citizens while simultaneously demanding their wages in taxes.

There is also a calculus to foreign crime. The cases reported include murderers, rapists and paedophiles, but to how many unpaid parking tickets does a murder equate? Or to how many unpaid TV licences?

The right to live in the United Kingdom has consistently been vested in citizens of other nations without recourse to the British people. We have no immigration policy, only anarchy. Our leaders, both Labour and Conservative, have consistently paid no heed to our right to determine who lives amongst us.

For the most part, we can live with that with a shrug of our shoulders; but government by human rights lawyers for human rights lawyers has turned us into a hunting ground for the scum of the world.

Charles Clarke could do no better than reflect upon how the department he heads has allowed citizenship to degrade to the extent that foreign criminals need have no fear of deportation. The Home Office need to review its ethos; perhaps they should ask Lin Homer.

She’s a big fan of ethos, for sure; but so were The Seven Brides For Seven Brothers Gang.

The British Government's Pathological Immigration Lies

have been busted by Migration Watch.

Lock Up Your Wallets!

The Romanians are coming, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research.

It would have been nice of Tony McNulty to perhaps make the government's immigration policies known to Parliament first, or even, God forbid, to the people, rather than to a progressive think thank; but something's better than nothing.

The reasons being given for allowing unlimited Romanian migration upon their accession to the EU are

" - new inflows are likely to be relatively small
-the impacts on the UK labour market are likely to be positive
-free access will have to be introduced eventually and a separate scheme would increase bureaucracy
-those Romanians and Bulgarians already here would be able to regularise their status."

Now, where have we heard that before...

And one has to think Danny Sriskandarajah of IPPR wouldn't know a turnstile if it hit him in the face.

But someone should tell Brian Micklethwait of the Adam Smith Institute that increased Romanian immigration might be bad for our wealth.

Oops! It seems that someone already has...

'The Nice Frog On The Telly'

An interesting analysis of David Cameron, from no doubt one of the first of many friendly advertorials.

Or desperate attempts to bolster his image.

'Why We Should Love High Oil Prices'

Hmm...geopolitical instability...throwing money at Saudi Wahhabist savages ...the prospect of the lights going out before we've actually 'harnessed new energy from the sun, the tides, the wind, the hydrogen cell and advanced forms of nuclear fission'...greater imbalances between the rich and poor...might have been worth a mention...

The Decline In Value Of A British Degree

is noted by BBC Scotland.

And of course our government has no plans to improve it.

Oilver Kamm Notices 'Respect'

A little later than some of us; but better late than never.

The Warsaw Concerto

According to Wikipedia, 'The Warsaw Concerto' is 'a piano concerto written by British composer Richard Addinsell for the 1941 film, Dangerous Moonlight'.

It is a love theme, no less, and one could not think of a better name for the noise generated by the British elites during their periodic bouts of Polonophilia.

The most recent outburst has been fuelled by a report from a body called the 'Ernst & Young Item Club', which has found that, according to the Sunday Telegraph,

"interest rates would be 0.5 percentage points higher and gross domestic product 0.2 per cent lower were it not for an estimated 300,000 new workers from Eastern Europe alone."

Cor! GDP would be 0.2 lower? We can see how immigration's making us all wealthier!

Mind you, I'd love to know if that's gross GDP or GDP per capita they're talking about.

In fairness, the ST does give ample space to the indefatigable Sir Andrew Green, who comments on the report that,

"We should not be starry-eyed about East European immigration. They are good workers and employers benefit from buying non-unionised, sometimes skilled, labour."

"But there is also a downside. Most of these workers take low-paid jobs and so they are holding wages down at the bottom end of the labour market. This makes it more difficult to achieve the Government's aim of moving 1m people from welfare to work."

But what's this?

" For instance, government data says nearly a third of these migrant workers have found jobs in business administration. Only 4 per cent of Eastern Europeans who have registered since May 2004 work in the construction industry".

Hang on - a third are in 'business administration'? Those aren't the sort of jobs we can't or won't do...

The same 'good news' is bellowed from the pages of The Business. But of course it's not good news- it's very bad news.

If Poles are coming to the UK and obtaining jobs which British employers usually have no difficulty filling, then one would have to surmise that they possess some advantage over British citizens in the hiring market.

The evidence doesn't point to it being because of the level of their education.

Neither does it point to it being on account of any particular local skills crises.

Unless they are all the beneficiaries of ethnic and nationalistic hiring networks, then it can only really be on account of their desire to work for wages below market rate. Whilst this is often vaunted as proof of a more highly developed work ethic, it fails to take into account that the cost of living is significantly higher in the UK than in Poland; a fact for which the advance of stealth taxation since 1997 has been in no small way responsible.

And it also fails to note that such labour is effectively a subsidy for businesses which might not be able to survive without it; hardly a practice to be encouraged in a presumably free market.

Mass migration is pricing low-income Brits out of the jobs market in their own country.

By having pursued uncontrolled immigration so avidly, Tony Blair has shafted the ranks of the UK's bungled and botched; people like me. Regardless of the damage he has done to whatever he has touched, be it the British constitution or the country of Iraq, what he has done to Britain's poor will truly be his darkest legacy.

And although 'The Warsaw Concerto' is a beautiful piece of music, one can tire of hearing the same song again and again and again. After all, the Governor of the Bank of England made precisely the same argument 10 months ago.

Cameron Fiddles While Barking Burns

Philip Davies, the Conservative MP for Shipley, was quoted in yesterday's 'Observer' as saying,

"'People feel nobody is standing up and talking about [asylum and immigration] issues. This whole thing about political correctness is a key driver of that. They feel the only way they've got now to express their opinions is to put a cross in a secret ballot for the BNP...The fear is if you are white and you say something that may be considered derogatory by somebody about an ethnic minority, you are going to be sacked or locked up."

How did David Cameron react to this? Did he react at all?

Well, the first thing he did was "commit his party to reducing carbon emissions from cars by nearly a third."

The second thing was proclaim that,

"I hope nobody votes for the BNP. I would rather people voted for any other party."

That Hizb-ut Tahrir are not fielding candidates must rank amongst the smallest of mercies.

Peter Hitchens On Margaret Thatcher

"I am most certainly critical of her dismissive and unconservative attitude towards institutions and professions (ably assisted by Kenneth Clarke), her presidential behaviour and her reliance on the market as a substitute for morality. I also think she deserves strong criticism for a number of failures and wrong actions during her premiership. These include the Single European Act, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984, the Children Act of 1989 and the introduction of the GCSE, all of which have contributed to the rapid decline of our society. I could go on, but this is a Q&A, not a book."

Bravo.

Hat tip - Laban Tall.

Lawrence Wilkerson On The Neos

"Never in our almost 800-year history since the Magna Carta have we been radicals."

Hat tip Antiwar.

I think Col. Wilkerson is being too polite; after all, I once called them subversives.

The Day Of The Bears

Paul Krugman's 'CSI: Trade Deficit', which contains a fascinating analysis of the taxation of overseas investors' American subsidiaries, is subjected to the lamest of all possible fiskings by Don Boudreaux.

Gary Duncan notes the IMF's fears that the whole show's about to go belly up.

And James Hamilton asks 'Who's afraid of $3 gasoline?'

Well, er, he is...

The Welfare-Warfare State Red In Tooth And Claw

From The Business:

"Defence contractors such as Honeywell, United Technologies and General Dynamics all reported double-digit jumps in first-quarter revenue and profit. United Technologies’ profit soared 18%, mostly on demand for new jet engines and spare parts from its Pratt & Whitney division.

General Dynamics’ profit climbed 11% on demand for Gulfstream business jets and US Army vehicles. The combat systems unit’s sales rose 41% to $147m. Its shipbuilding and information technology divisions also saw profits climbing, the latter by 13%. Honeywell’s net income rose 22%."

Whilst no doubt General Dynamics' stockholders may be pleased, the efficacy of its contraptions in deterring Iraqis from seeking the fast track to the virgins has not yet been conclusively proved.

Immigration Restrictionist Quote Of The Day

"Why is it that illegal immigrants always toil while Canadians merely work? "

They Hyphenated Canadian.

Amen to that, bro...

You Can Put On The Stopwatch Now

for the coverage that will appear over the next few days of how dreadfully any British tourists caught up in the Dahab bombings have been suffering.

Hopefully the Foreign & Commonwealth Office will gently remind them that nobody forced them to go to a hotbed of Islamist terrorism with guns at their heads.

Is Jack Lang A Xenophile?

would seem to be the appropriate reply to the charge of xenophobia that he has levelled against Nicolas Sarkozy.

How Globalist Libertarians Think

It's even more of a car wreck than you imagine.

Mancunian Muslims Against American Sovereignty

Mohammed Umar Haleem Khan (left) doesn't seems to understand that if you want to visit America, you sort of have to...do what the Americans tell you...

The Cultural Philistinism Of Mark Thompson

The Director-General of the BBC is axing Grandstand.

BWAH!

The Fall Of The House Of Bevan

The National Illness Service is dying.

RIP.

Happy St. George's Day!

Now, have any Sassenach bloggers actually, er- noticed?

'How The GOP Lost Its Way'

A very interesting analysis of the division between the Republicans' elitists and populists by Craig Shirley; and an interesting companion piece to 'How the Neocons Will Kill The GOP'.

Hat tip to The Tory Anarchist.

Foreigners March Through London, Demanding Rights Under British Law...

but these characters are doctors who are only in the country because the Labour Party nationalised illness in 1948: so that's all right then.

' We are keeping an open mind as to why one group of Asian men attacked another'

Anyone for honour?

Russian Gas

The Sunday Telegraph demonstrates typical neoconservative contempt for the sovereignty of Russia; the only country to which the rules of free trade are not to apply.

For Conspiracy Theorists Everywhere

The Trilateral Commission's annual meeting finishes tomorrow.

So anyone looking for these guys should know they'll be back at their desks on Tuesday.

If anyone knew, of course, that they were away....

A New Leaf

I'm breaking from writing for an indeterminate length of time, which will very probably be until I read something in tomorrow's papers that winds me up.

Compiling and writing this blog involves a time commitment averaging anything between four to seven hours every day. Like most bloggers I receive no remuneration for doing this; I even got rejected by Google Ads. To cover my bills I work a low-paid, extremely stressful job with unsociable hours and which I can lose at any second. I can't go back to my profession, because I do not possess the type of character required to conduct it professionally. As regular readers know I have the monkey of the Gilles de la Tourette Syndrome on my back, a non-life threatening condition which still impairs quality of life and with which neither my family nor I have come to terms due to the late onset of physical symptoms - I was 21. My doctor has told me that my blood pressure is far too high for a man of my age, with the next step in its treatment being life long medication if I can't bring it down myself; not an appealing prospect at 35.

But none of that would bother me if I could meet two conditions that I set for myself.

The first is whether I can believe that what I am doing is of some consequence; however, advocates of the superiority of British culture can become discouraged by constantly battering their heads against the brick wall of the British people. Unlike many British commentators I live amongst the people; and the British people, for the most part, really, really suck. Some might describe the defence of the British way of life as a labour of love; but the British way of life I defend is one which has long gone, in its place an amoral, valueless stew that celebrates the crass, the selfish, the venal, the vulgar, the rapacious and the licentious; not a living, thriving culture but a perverted simulacrum of what a culture should be.

What our grandfathers must think of us is anyone's guess.

The second is perhaps an expression of unmanly petulance; but I really couldn't care less.

Although I am very grateful to Dennis Mangan, Chris Mounsey, Steve Sailer, VDare, Glaivester, Inchbrakie, Neil Craig, Laban Tall , USS Neverdock, Longrider, Dave in Boca, The Hyphenated Canadian and others for having taken the time and trouble to link here, too often one feels as if one is screaming into the dark. This is a life long feeling, borne out of being something of a peculiarity within one's culture and locale; but when you're like that to begin with, it doesn't help your frame of mind when you spend so much time putting information into the public domain and then receiving a volume of reader feedback so small that an electron microscope would be required to measure it. At that point, the blog becomes an exercise in echolalia; nothing more than a verbal tic in black and white.

The hope I have had ever since I started banging out articles for 'The Washington Dispatch' has been that I would some day be able to support my household by writing; and miracles can happen, of course, but it seems very, very unlikely that that will ever happen.

It would seem that there isn't much of a market for the thoughts of a Glaswegian reformed neo turned Buchananite.

BUT THE BLOG IS NOT BEING DELETED! Service will, however, be a little less frequent.

So please stay tuned, don't delete links and keep an eye out for postings.

And thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read.

The Sage Of Santa Rosa Speaks Great Wisdom

"Yes, men and women are different alright. Women are crazy."

The Plight Of Foreign Doctors In The National Health Service

Hard luck.

The International Organisation For Migration At Work

They help displace Canadian meatpackers.

Russian To Judgement

They want to see - gasp!- evidence of nuke-building by the Iranians before considering sanctions.

'China, US fail to agree on closing trade gap'

There's a surprise.

The Chinese might have thought that the advice they were getting was duff.

Modern Times

Kiera Chaplin, the grand-daughter of Charles Chaplin and presumably also the great granddaughter of Eugene O' Neill, is the president of the holding company behind a website called webforjetset.com, which, according to the BBC, is "aimed at helping the super-rich source the must-have helicopter and Ferrari, or finding a reliable bodyguard."

I'd love to know what Grandad would have thought of that. He'd probably have encouraged her to smile...

Foreign Illnesses

In the UK, it's TB.

In Canada, it's German flu; otherwise known as Zundel's Disease.

'Tory MP urges Iraq troop pull-out'

contrary to party policy.

Ah yes, the congenital indiscipline of the Parliamentary Conservative Party.

You've got to love it.

Is it any wonder that today, the 'Telegraph' reports thus on a YouGov poll which reveals that seven per cent of voters back the BNP:

"The surge in support for the BNP - which displaced the National Front as Britain's main far-Right party in 1982 - could damage the Conservatives in the local elections, which will be David Cameron's first electoral test since becoming Tory leader.

The poll suggests that the BNP draws its support more from the Conservatives than from Labour - and is gaining ground at the expense of the Liberal Democrats and UK Independence Party."

The Conservative Party is useless, invisible and incompetent.

With an opposition like the Tories, for a senior Labour figure to worry about his party's failings is just sweating the small stuff.

Going Native

It seems that the logical next step for India's former High Commissioner to New Zealand would be to claim asylum.

George Bush SERIOUSLY Needs New Economic Advisers

From the BBC - 'Bush presses China over currency'.

From RTE - 'Chinese leader vows to reduce trade surplus'.

This is scary stuff. How does Bush actually think the trade surplus is going to be reduced without causing catastrophic short to medium term damage?

By penalising offshoring? Encouraging domestic saving? Cutting the budget deficit and raising taxes to cover the balance? Plugging the immigration gap to enable wages to rise?

Even, God forbid, pulling out of Iraq because it's not just affordable any more (not that it ever was)?

How is he going to achieve this aim? How?

One of the hazards involved in being a prophet of doom is that doom sometimes doesn't appear on schedule. But if Bush is serious about restoring a measure of health, i.e. long term stability, to the American economy then just for once he should think holistically about what he plans to achieve and both why and how he plans to achieve it.

For, contrary to popular belief, economics is apolitical; it has no single issue demographics to be courted.

The Best Defence Against Romanian Cash Machine Crime

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the River Danube.

English Cranks

We have too many Jeanne Wildings in this country.

They poison our soul.

'The Spectator' Comes Out In Favour Of Keeping The British Poor

"Economic migration ought to be an engine for low-inflation growth from competitive wages. Competitive wages, it is true, can be bad news for manual workers already living here. The answer to this is not to keep cheap labour out of Britain, but for the government to provide a schools system that offers all children the chance of acquiring skills, both academic and technical."

Ah yes - the skills canard...

The Office Of National Statistics On Inward Migration

A picture tells a thousand words, don't you think?

However, there is news for which to be thankful. Inflation has been tamed by falls in the prices of milk and vegetables(.pdf) - although if a fall in a price of milk is all it takes to conquer the disease of money, then I shudder to think what our export profile really looks like.

Damian Green On Foreign Crime

Although the Conservatives' immigration spokeman's fulminations against poor border control are to be welcomed, it should never be forgotten that it was his party's policy to promote the Single European Act and ratify the Treaty of Maastricht.

What short memories the Tories must think we have.

Dean Baker On Low Wage Jobs

Hat tip to Steve Sailer for point out Dean Baker's blog, 'Beat the Press'.

Steve has linked to a post of Baker's entitled 'Immigrants and “Low Wage” Jobs'. Baker writes,

"Immigration has been one of the tools that have been used to depress wages for less-skilled workers over the last quarter century. Many of the “low-wage” jobs that cannot be filled today, such as jobs in construction and meat-packing, were not “low-wage” jobs thirty years ago. Thirty years ago, these were often high-paying union jobs that plenty of native born workers would have been happy to fill. These jobs have become hard to fill because the wages in these jobs have drifted down towards a minimum wage that is 30 percent lower than its 1970s level.

In response to this logic, the “low wage” job crew claims that if the wages in these jobs rose, then businesses couldn’t afford to hire the workers. It’s time for more econ 101. Businesses that can’t make money paying the prevailing prices go out of business – that is how a market economy works. Labor goes from less productive to more productive uses. This is why we don’t still have 20 percent of our workforce in agriculture."

I explored a similar theme in a post called 'Scotland's Human Subsidy', based on the deficiencies of the migrants working in Scotland's tourist sector. I wrote then that,

"Because the business owners are not prepared to pay a living wage; or because they run their businesses so poorly; or because they have started businesses in already saturated markets; the migrants have acted as a form of subsidy to enable them to continue trading when they are to all intents and purposes insolvent.

You can get away with anything in the UK now if you say you run a business. Private enterprise is the cornerstone of a free economy - but businesses have no votes. The right of business to pursue profit should never clash with the right of citizens to enjoy the amenity of their country unmolested.

That is what corporate calls for immigration ultimately aim to do - to dilute the value of the citizen's rights.

If a business cannot trade on equal terms with all others in a free market, it should go under. That is the law of the market. No business has a divine right to stay in business.

And business owners should most certanly not receive what Paul Craig Roberts might describe as a human subsidy; which in the case of Scotland's overpopulated hospitality industry, a sector apparently so vital that without it we risk sinking into the North Sea, has proved about as useful a solution as putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound."

That some businesses might go under without a subsidy from migration labour is not society's problem. That they can only operate with it most certainly stores up problems for the future.

Menzie Chinn Values The Renminbi

And his solution?

'Cut the budget deficit and decrease oil imports' (.pdf)

Close Down China's Building Sites

or it's crash helmets at dawn come 2008.

The Crimes Of Angela Baillie

Although both Angela Baillie (left) and I may both have had legal careers which were 'a sham and a facade masking stress, illness and an inability to cope with life', at least I never took smack into Barlinnie.

Baillie is a disgrace to her profession. And that's some kind of stick coming from me.

Some Thoughts On Anatole Kaletsky

Anatole Kaletsky of the Times today 'confesses' to having regrets about his support of the Iraq war. Not the war itself, mind, but the nature of its aftermath.

He's nearly two full years behind the curve on that score, but we can let that pass.

He denounces Donald Rumsfeld: a pretty standard trick of Trotskyites, and one well used by their neo descendants.

On Thursday of last week, Kaletsky wrote a column suggesting that wealth redistribution will only take place in the UK once Londoners have sold their properties to bankers and relocated.

This was, of course, before the rise in support for the BNP in East London had been announced.

It seems that it might not merely be the London property market that operates in a bubble.

'Strangers at our gates'

The Guardian beats its breast for desperate Africans - without noting that some gates are more open to migrants than others...

One Reason For Cutting Compensation To Victims Of Miscarriages Of Justice

might be the grotesque amounts overpaid in benefits.

How Are Things In Bratislava?

Well, when the Brits come to town, they tend to be remarkably quieter than in Prague.

The Ministry Of Defence has 'Critical Shortages'

Or should that really read 'too many overseas commitments?'

That's The Way To Do It!

If found guilty of a passport violation in Iraq, one can expect to receive 15 years imprisonment.

Why the USA and UK should ever have thought they would be able to secure Iraq's borders is a mystery, given their consistent failure to secure their own.

Border security - a job the elites won't do...

Islam's War On Dirt

Islam has hygiene issues.

One not merely restricted to doctrinal matters, apparently...

'The white flight to the Right'

An interesting, and impeccably timed, piece from Michael Collins.

This is quite difficult to articulate, particularly with one eye on the clock - but what Collins is describing is an absolutely unique, very adaptable and wholly indigenous subculture which those who should represent it, the Labour Party, has probably been out to smash since the '60's.

He hits the nail right on the head when he says,

"Growing working-class willingness to vote BNP is not necessarily because of an endemic opposition to multiculturalism, but more an objection to the debate around it. It’s a discussion that fails to consult them; it’s a discussion in which they are daily cast in a dual role: as a dying breed, and as a racist blot on the landscape preventing multiculturalism reaching its true Nirvana.

If this “protest” vote does live up to the worrying forecasts, it may have little to do with the BNP’s flimsy excuse for a manifesto. Perhaps it’s simply that in an age when every racial or religious group demonstrates its right to be offended because of a lack of representation, the white working class has decided that it is its turn to take offence. "

Indeed. Multiculturalism is absolutely nothing to do with culture and absolutely everything to do with racial identity, and in a culture with encourages ethnic grievance it is not surprising that the principle which should be known as 'Brimelow's Law' applies; as Peter articulated it himself,

"It's inevitable that whites join the celebration of group pride and group self-determination. In a political culture like the U.S. today, groups that don't organize get rolled."

As evidenced by the growth in the popularity of the BNP, this is precisely what's happening in the UK now; and this turn of affairs means that the culture is at something of an unfortunate crossroads.

That one culture should permit others to make themselves as free in its space as in their own is symptomatic of its weakness. Either the dominant indigenous culture can revive, or it can go under into ethnic division; and there is no indication of any willingness on the part of the political establishment to take the steps necessary to reclaim the culture's soul.

The Labour Party's a lost cause; but the Conservatives should perhaps be listening to those on the ground who are looking for them to raise their game, as opposed to crushing dissent and continuing to chant their mantra that 'It's the market and it's the only way.'

This is a nation, not a market.

The Chinese Organ Transplant Racket

seems to be particularly popular amongst Japanese, Koreans and Chinese Americans.

It's a great pity that British culture has been corrupted by money to such an extent that middle aged Brits, the products of a thousand years of culture and ethics, would probably think nothing of dipping their toes in this market. After all, you get what you pay for...money talks...got to have free trade...

Malice Through The Looking Glass

Timothy Garton Ash mourns 'The tragedy that followed Hillary Clinton's bombing of Iran in 2009'.

The practice of substituting fantasy for commentary is, of course, governed by Cory's Law.

Foreign Criminal Of The Day: A Caliph Amongst Conmen

The BBC's failure to confirm Dr. Adeniran Yesufu's nationality means that one must make do and mend with the sorry tale of Tunisian conman Youssef Babbou.

Before coming to the UK Babbou had served time for fraud in both France and Italy; and yet his career remained unimpeded by nothing so insubstantial as British border controls.

But he'll see the wrong side of the border soon enough, inshallah; for when he's served his four years he's being deported to Tunisia.

Allahu Akbar!

'Asylum Fatigue'

Antonio Guterres, the former prime minister of Portugal who serves as UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and who's also a former president of the Socialist International, has said that 'global numbers of refugees have fallen to a 25-year-low'.

Good. Hopefully this means fewer asylum-seekers.

But one can't help but get the feeling that he thinks that this is bad news; he's in the refugee business, after all.

And we can't have UNHCR and the International Organisation for Migration twiddling their thumbs all day long...

Is 'A Requiem For Gonzoconservatism' Coming True?

On March 14 I published 'A Requiem For Gonzoconservatism' on Antiwar.

Since then Andrew Card has quit as White House Chief of Staff.

Today, Scott McClellan went, with Karl Rove "giving up his policy role to focus on the November mid-term elections".

In 'A Requiem For Gonzoconservatism' I wrote,

"It's also not at all unreasonable to imagine that Dick Cheney will not be vice president come November. Deadeye Dick is a far bigger electoral liability than bonus given, inter alia, his status as Scooter Libby's last pre-arrest employer. If Karl Rove still has his wits about him, then organizing the Last Flight of Gonzo One may be near the top of his agenda."

Now I'm not a betting man...

The Great South African Passport Scam

is brought to my attention courtesy of Migration Watch.

All together now-

"Nkosi sikelel' iAfrika..."

Miscarriages Of Justice

In seven years practicing law, I was perhaps fortunate to have been directly involved in only one palpable miscarriage of justice.

In 1997 I represented a young man accused of lewd and libidinous conduct by exposing himself. He had been drinking in a park all afternoon, and on his way home had relieved himself in a doorway; certainly a disgusting and antisocial act, but by itself lacking the character of lewdness necessary for a conviction.

His 'victim' saw exposed flesh because, after urinating, he had staggered backwards as off-balance drunks do, turning away from the doorway back towards the kerb before he had fully adjusted his clothing. The 'victim' claimed to have been absolutely terrified by her ordeal; and yet she was so terrified of the young man she claimed had lewdly exposed himself to her that she sat at the back of the court for the duration of the trial.

It must have been a great day out for her.

I can't even remember where the corroboration came from; if memory serves, the cops saw him with his zip down and that was that.

He was convicted by a 'temporary sheriff', an office since rendered functus by the Human Rights Act.

That young man, against my advice, failed to provide me with timeous instructions to appeal his conviction; which means that somewhere out there is a man now 10 years older, who has a conviction for flashing which the character of his behaviour, and his intentions in so behaving, on the date of his 'offence' did not merit; and which will stand beside his name for the rest of his days.

The moral of the story is that justice is a malleable thing, capable of being bent out of shape very easily; and it carries absolutely no price tag.

Hat tip to an uncharacteristically aerated Tim Worstall.

The Hyphenated Canadian Pounds The Mean Streets Of Hogtown Once Again!

After a break of nearly two months, The Hyphenated Canadian is back on Toronto's immigration beat.

And he's come back in style, noting that the Harper government has (not before time) outlawed the Tamil Tigers, with the backing of the Toronto Star (the Tigers seems to be expert at the charities racket); noting the existence of ethnic divisions in Toronto's Catholic schools; and recording the penitence of Canada's foreign criminal of the day.

Now, where has Canadianna gone...

Cameron Speaks! About The BNP, By God!

The Guardian -

"I want them to get the smallest possible share of the vote," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme ahead of campaign visit to Brentwood in Essex.

"I would rather people voted for any party other than the BNP."

The Tory Leader admitted that his own party had to do more to show people there was a "really moderate, sensible, reasonable alternative to this government that is failing them".

Well, I suppose it's something; although after five days he could have come up with something a little more substantial...

The Mexican Reconquest Of Georgia

Mexican impertinence seems to know no bounds.

Econo Bits & Pieces

Whilst 'The Business' shouts 'Global economic growth best since the 1970s', Stephen Roach gets jittery about oil, while James D. Hamilton gives the inside track on the oil price.

Meanwhile, in anarcholibertarian cuckoo-land, the Mises Institute gets round to asking 'Is the US Economy Depression Proof?'; a question some of us have been asking now for some time...

The Hell Where Youth and Laughter Go

An uncharacteristically sombre piece from Taki; a masterpiece of antiwar polemic.

Hang Honour Killers

for they never know when to stop.

Clyde Wilson On Immigration

"My forebears who came to North America in the 1600’s were not building “a nation of immigrants.” They were settlers building a new country for themselves and their posterity. They came to a dangerous wilderness, not an urban welfare state."

Religion And South Asian Entrepeneurialism

The Daily Telegraph has had a fit of the vapours over the wonderful, wonderful, wonderful economic success story of British Indians, and writes that its Asian rich list 'bears testament to the much lauded "Asian business values" of sustained hard work and family enterprise.'

Reading this, one might think that nobody ever started a business in the UK before mass South Asian migration, which would certainly have been a revelation to my maternal grandfather P.J. Forry (1894-1950); an Irish migrant who started at least three of them in the Glasgow of the 1920's, and whose growth was impeded by the small matter of the Second World War.

Having been born in Co. Mayo between 1801 and 1921, Grandfather was, of course, a British citizen by birth; but his story could be duplicated tens of thousands of times, not just here but of course also in the USA and anywhere else that experiences large inward migrations.

At that point in history, gargantuan welfarism did not exist; so there was very much more incentive for the migrant to be economically independent. Indeed, the desire to achieve economic independence seems to be a common psychological feature amongst committed migrants, and the same behaviour patterns seem to occur time and time again.

As already mentioned the 'Telegraph' reports that one reason for Indian success is faith in the idea of a 'family business'.

There's nothing new in that. At the risk of exposing my deficiencies as a joke-teller...

An old Belfast shopkeeper is on his deathbed. He calls to his wife,

'Mary, are you there?'

She replies,

'I'm here, Paddy'.

He sobs to his son,

'Seamus, are you there, son?'

Seamus replies,

'I'm here, Da'.

He cries out to his daughter,

'Bridie, are you there?'

She weeps,

'I'm here, Daddy'.

Having heard enough, Paddy sits bolt upright and shouts,

'WELL WHO'S MINDING THE SHOP?'

The Daily Telegraph also fails to note that despite Asian businesspeople not having had 'support from banks when they were setting out 20 or 30 years ago', they were no different from any other sort of entrepeneurs.

Indeed, it would be interesting to speculate on how many Asian businesses might have failed had the period of their operation not also coincided with the wholesale liberalisation of the banking laws between 1979 and 1990. The era of South Asian business has coincided with two critical points in British economic history.

The first is that it has occurred during one of the longest periods of geopolitical stability in our history.

The second is that it has happened when credit and operating capital has largely never been easier to obtain; certainly far easier than in the 1920's. The ease with which substantial amounts of capital can be raised and deployed might have resulted in a disproportionate rate of return for less effort than might have been required in order to make an equivalent return for earlier migrants.

The rising tide, and all that.

It would also be interesting whether or not cultural factors such as the caste system have also operated to the advantage of some within the Indian community to the detriment of others.

However, the DT's business wallah gets nearer the true roots of the reason for Indian prosperity. Although he fails to note the roles played by such British oddities as representative democracy, geopolitical stability, the universal franchise, the rule of law, sanctity of contract and secure banks, all of which have been around for some time, when he wrote that 'Britain's level playing field is key to success', Jeff Randall noted that,

"A survey by the Policy Studies Institute showed that self-employment among Asians in Britain grew disproportionately during the 1970s and 1980s. The PSI noted, however, that: "In self-employment, as in employment generally, the position of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis is much more disadvantaged compared to African-Asians and Indians."

So, regardless of what factors might and might apply to the South Asian success story, one factor would seem to be absolutely clear.

Islam is the path to poverty.

Their Own Worst Enemies

No lawyer who does stuff like this should be let out of the house without wearing a pair of baby-reins, let alone be granted a practicing certificate.

Bubonic Plague Hits LA

The above Sky News report notes quite innocently that 'the case is unusual because it occurred in an urban area', ignorant of the knowledge that, unlike most of the world's other major English-speaking urban areas, LA might contain a higher than average percentage of Guatemalans with pet black rats.

'Graduate wins appeal against deportation'

Whilst the above headline is not incorrect, the Daily Telegraph could have ensured the absolutely accuracy of its report by adding the words 'and outlaw' immediately after its first word.

But hey - the Government's priority for higher education seems to be increasing the share that institutions receive from the dripping roast of the overseas student racket/market, so the last thing anyone should do is alienate the aliens.

And why is it in the UK's 'national interest' to expect its taxpayers to subsidise the education of Chinese, Indians and Africans? No wonder the BNP's gaining ground, when the British government ignores the fundamentally defective nature of Chinese, Indian and African societies and panders to their elites whilst treating the British people like cattle in their own country.

It must be because they're just so much better than we are.