A sob story about long term unemployed jobseekers offered work experience placements as Diamond Jubilee stewards being badly treated was too good to miss for the media elite of the left. Frustrated by the widespread support for the Queen exhibited by millions of ordinary people and uncomfortable with the sight of so many union flags being waved the Guardian and BBC jumped with glee into the issue using anonymous sources to buttress accusations of “slave labour”

Unsurprisingly it was also picked up in the USA by the left wing agitprop website Gawker.

Rather than do some real journalism to find out if other stewards embedded in the scheme shared a similar negative experience the Guardian hacks looked around to see if there was any dim witted pompous windbag who could be wound up and propelled into the media spotlight to give the story political legs.

They needed a pea brained dim-witted has been who would be obtuse enough to pontificate loudly and aggressively without bothering to do any homework

Enter John Prescott

They then needed a highly paid and extremely wealthy member of the soft left media elite to highlight the wages of the people who ran the Jubilee Stewards project and to then try to sandbag one of them on BBC Newsnight.

Enter Kirsty Wark

The trouble with anonymous sources, however, is that it is always difficult to validate the truth of their statements by referencing their backgrounds and checking their claims under hostile cross examination so when several fellow stewards went public with their experiences while offering up their names the BBC/Guardianistas should have been delighted.

Unfortunately these people said their experience had been positive and questioned the accuracy of the Prescott/Wark line.

Isn’t it annoying how facts can so often spoil a good left wing fantasy…

Abu Qatada, the Jihadist hate preacher who hates our country and its culture of democracy so much is still fighting his deportation order to Jordan despite even the Kafa-esque European Court of Human Rights saying he could go. He is making an appeal to the ECHR via a very expensive lawyer (naturally – after all he is one of our privileged elite, living on benefits and thus subsidised by we the taxpayers) and asked for bail.

IT WAS REFUSED!!!!!!!

I’d love to say that Theresa May, the Home Secretary, backed by a former PR man for a failed TV company (aka David Cameron) had suddenly discovered spines and said don’t give him bail because we are going to bundle him onto a military plane and fly him to Amman, economy class with handcuffs within two hours at the same time we send the ECHR a message saying “Whoops, sorry but you can stuff your decisions where the monkey keeps his nuts….come back in a thousand years when your legal system is as mature as ours”

Unfortunately that wasn’t the reason..

It was because if he was given bail it might upset the Olympics…

That’s right folks – we have to allow these Britain haters plenty of elbow room to facilitate their “rights” to encourage vicious scumbags to blow us up but when it comes to interfering with a festival of sweaty over hyped narcissists strutting their stuff at the public ‘s expense (and that’s just the politicians and celebrities) even an al Qaeda groupie must stay banged up.

No wonder they despise us and think we lack the will to resist – I sometimes think they may be right…..

“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

The dog that did nothing in the night?

Why, it’s the US media, of course which doesn’t seem too keen to unravel the mystery behind what appears to be an attempt to discourage conservative bloggers from reporting facts that are already a matter of public record

Read this and then ask yourself why, at present, there is virtually nothing about it on American TV screens and in the pages of those Pulitzer prize winning investigative “journalists” from New York and Washington…or their branch office in London, the BBC.

Surely it cannot be because of certain influences?

However now a trio of ornery conservative saddle tramps like Dan Riehl, Instapundit and Legal Insurrection with many others have gone into the darkened woodshed at night with their torches what rough beast will be revealed slouching in the corner?

BTW, if you think it couldn’t happen here just remember this and this…

Well he has said it

On Tuesday, Euro judges rode roughshod over the will of Parliament by upholding a 2004 ruling that Britain’s blanket ban on prisoner voting is unlawful. MPs had previously voted by an overwhelming 234 to 22 majority to keep the ban.
Yesterday Mr Cameron was asked in the Commons by DUP leader Nigel Dodds: ‘Will you give an undertaking that you will not succumb to the diktat from the European Court of Human Rights in relation to prisoners’ voting?
‘Will you stand up for the resolution that was passed in this House by an overwhelming majority and that you will stand up for the sovereignty of this House and the British people?’

Mr Cameron said yes.

POW!!!!!!

Cue all the BBC and Guardian bleeding hearts to say how unhelpful this and surely Cameron could have a quiet chat with the ECHR and negotiate some form of weaselly compromise that would give European judges the green light to carry on dismantling our centuries old tradition of common law and parliamentary sovereignty. Cameron has let it be known that he will also defy any “punishment” issued by the ECHR (a stiff letter or maybe a fine) so he has really left himself no room for manoeuvre.

Trouble is he is not known for translating his verbal defiance of Europe into deeds…..remember his embarrassing retreat at a recent EU summit on the question of allowing the European courts to police any infringements of a future EU Fiscal Union? His original stance of open defiance was reduced to that pathetic “watching like a hawk” squeak.

Voting is a right and those who break the law and go to prison give up that right, no matter how many GCSEs or degrees they gain while inside.

Cameron is of the metro elite, a creature more at home with the chattering classes. His Euro scepticism is a sop to the right wing in his party who he secretly despises. But even he can see the growing appeal of UKIP so a bit of red meat thrown to the beasts has got to be par for the course.

Will he do it? We shall have to see – but if he doesn’t then I predict more Tory voters haemorrhaging to UKIP and the bell will be tolling for any hope Cameron might have of being Prime Minister in 2016…..

From Stephan Shakespeare an excellent postscript to Boris Johnson’s re-election as Mayor of London in a city that is natural Labour territory at a time when everywhere else the Tories were getting a drubbing.

You don’t win London by luck. And you don’t win London, at the very moment when 50% of its electorate are saying they would vote Labour at the next general election, just because you are likeable and funny. Look at the polling: the majority credit him not just with charisma, but with doing a good job – even a significant fraction of Labour voters approved of how he handled his first term as Mayor.

That is the key fact about Boris. Beneath the golly gosh public schoolboy upper class twit image is an incredibly shrewd political brain. What is more his four years as mayor has now shown that he is also a savvy and efficient administrator. Interestingly enough many working class Londoners recognised this aspect of Boris and broke with their tribal loyalty to Labour in sufficient numbers to vote for his return to City Hall. It seems that they have latched onto something that has bypassed most of the commentariat.

Boris is competent. He is charismatic, likeable and competent. He is quite separate from the Conservative Party machine and competent. He is low tax, anti EU tough on crime and competent.

Boris is one of the few politicians of any party who combines brains with charm and humour. They are three very useful skills to have when running for anything. I am not sure whether Boris will be a future Prime Minister, but one thing will be sure, if he does decide to go for it, nobody will say to him he hasn’t had any experience of running anything… unlike Messrs Cameron, Osborne, Clegg, Milliband Mi and Balls.

If I were David Cameron I would be feeling rather nervous about Boris – and if I were George Osborne I would be giving up any hope of becoming leader because the one word you cannot now associate with those two is COMPETENCE.

For the moment, at least, Boris is the only Tory game in town…..

Over at Legal Insurrection they picked up on the Obama campaign slogan for 2012…FORWARD. Some critics mocked the echoes of early 20th century socialism to be found in the word.

But to me it brought to mind Macaulay’s splendid poem about the Roman hero Horatius and his two comrades blocking the path of an Etruscan army as it attempted to capture the narrow bridge across the River Tiber that gave access to Rome.

The heroic trio fought so savagely that the Etruscan soldiers in the front line hesitated before their onslaught. However those in the ranks behind who were safe from the Roman swords tried to persuade them back into the fray.

Was none who would be foremost to lead such dire attack:
But those behind cried ‘Forward!’, and those before cried ‘Back!’
And backward now and forward wavers the deep array;
And on the tossing sea of steel, to and fro the standards reel;
And the victorious trumpet-peal dies fitfully away.

Might not that ring true today when Obama and his team, safely ensconced in Washington and living off the public purse, demand greater sacrifices from those on the front line outside Washington in order to fill the government’s coffers and keep them in the style to which they have become accustomed.

But where oh where is there an American Horatius to keep those ravenous beasts at bay….

In a withering polemic against the political class Brendan O’Neill points out that 68% of voters did not exercise their franchise on a day when seats across the country were up for grabs in this year’s elections for local councils. As he points out 68% could easily be described as a “vast majority” if applied to a particular candidate – ergo one could say that the vast majority of UK electors decided to go NOTA and vote for None Of The Above.

What the political class (politicians, journalists and academics) might describe as “apathy” O’Neill perceives as a quite justifiable indifference

There’s nothing peculiar about the majority’s refusal to vote. It’s perfectly logical. At a time when the political class is fantastically disconnected from everyday people, when mainstream political debate has been almost wholly colonised by suits and PR people and media darlings, it makes sense for people to deduce: “This has nothing to do with me.”

But it is not only at the ballot box that ordinary folk are manifesting a distaste and disregard for political activity. The political parties, for many years the main engines of popular political engagement, have become professionalized and reconfigured beyond all recognition. Once thriving hubs of local grassroots activity swamping the streets during elections and raising cash between them, and always jealously guarding their own manor against the central party they have withered away into glorified branch offices of the London machine. The big money comes no longer from subscriptions, coffee mornings and jumble sales but from corporate or union donors meeting with party professionals in swish London offices.

The established parties have now become corporations whoring themselves out to special interests and dominated almost entirely by a tiny Oxbridge educated metropolitan elite who segue effortlessly from university to media/academia/political consultancy with little if any experience of real work in office, factory, shop or in any area where they actually have to make business decisions.

The result?

Britain is morphing into an oligarchy, with a gaping chasm emerging between the spin-doctored politicians and Twitterati who “do politics” and the man and woman in the street who do not.

But this disconnect cannot survive the dark hours that will certainly overwhelm us when we realise that the vapid word games and pretentious promises with which the political class seek to appease us will stand for nothing as the frightening truth about their financial ineptitude is finally confronted. As usual Mark Steyn points the way.

There’s a famous exchange in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Someone asks Mike Campbell, “How did you go bankrupt?” “Two ways,” he replies. “Gradually, then suddenly.” We’ve been going through the gradual phase so long, we’re kinda used to it. But it’s coming to an end, and what happens next will be the second way: sudden, and very bad

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Barker insisted that the Conservatives should not be tempted to adopt a more Eurosceptic stance to win an outright majority at the next election…….we don’t need to follow UKIP into swivel-eyed rhetoric. People expect grown up statesman-like leadership on Europe, and with David Cameron, that is what they get.”

A very smooth (and rich) chap the Energy Minister is said to be a close chum of David Cameron and George Osborne and one of the key figures planning the Tory strategy for the next election. His view is that the Conservatives need to capture the “fertile ground” where 21st century elections will be won.

Mr Barker said the Tories had to attract more voters from ethnic minorities as well as homosexual and lesbians. He said: “Absolutely – it is policy for the whole country.”

Ah yes – that’s “Greg” Barker, who in the past has faced questions about his links to Russian oligarchs and who also had his own starring role in the MP’s expenses scandal.

In December 2006, Mr Barker briefly moved the second home allowance back to Cheyne Row, where he claimed a further £3,492 for his mortgage interest. He also claimed £4,400 in food allowances – 11 months-worth in one go.
He moved house after leaving his wife Celeste in October 2006 following an affair with William Banks-Blaney, an interior designer, but he still claims the house he shares with her and their three children in Peasmarsh, East Sussex, as his main home.

Nice to know that Barker and his friends are still addicted to the myth of the centre ground and pimping the electoral genius of team Cameron/Osborne. Problem is that team Cameron/Osborne were unable to deliver a crushing victory over what was possibly one of the most unpopular and discredited governments of all time even though they were aiming for Barker’s “fertile ground”

As for “Greg” I suspect his “swivel eyed” rhetoric jibe had a slightly personal edge to it for it must be so irritating to see a man he and his pals in the Tory establishment had believed to be consigned to the “dustbin of history” in East Sussex in 2001 leading what was once seen as a “fringe”party (UKIP) which is now gaining considerable momentum in current opinion polls.

Keep on digging that hole you are already in, Greg, just don’t blame anyone else when you find you are stuck in it…..

A belated and timely reassessment of John Major’s premiership from Peter Oborne at the Daily Telegraph.

His administration has enjoyed a terrible reputation and remains associated with sleaze, incompetence, drift and weakness. But as time has passed this verdict has started to look unfair. History may yet be much kinder to John Major than many would have thought.

Yet a closer look at the facts (those oh so inconvenient nuggets of truth that undermine the seductive charm of wishful thinking) Major’s government had a good record of solid achievement in Northern Ireland, public service reform, education and pensions. The benefits of the Maastricht monetary union opt out, though widely derided at the time by the great and the good from the left have kept us out of the current Euro quicksand. Above all, after the (admittedly self inflicted) trauma of Black Wednesday in 1992, within five years the economy had been turned around.

By 1997 employment was rising, growth stable, and the deficit was well under control, meaning that Gordon Brown as chancellor inherited the most benign economic scenario for any British government of the last century. The situation was so fundamentally strong that it took three successive Labour administrations to wreck it.

But at the time, as Oborne guiltily admits, he and his fellow journalists waged an unrelenting campaign of contemptuous denigration against Major.

Yet during the later stages of his premiership, Major was treated with almost universal, vicious derision. Calumny after calumny was heaped upon him, and though this campaign of laceration was led in Parliament by Blair’s brilliant New Labour opposition, the newspapers were all too happy to join in.

His humble origins were viciously mocked. His ordinary, untheatrical bank manager demeanour was constantly compared unfavourably with the flashy showmanship of Tony Blair’s car salesman – and the charge was orchestrated, not so much from the natural enemies of the right at the BBC and Guardian but from that so called bastion of conservatism at the Daily Telegraph. Day in, day out vicious barbs were penned by the likes of Simon Heffer and Boris Johnson (yes, that Boris) deliberately aimed at undermining Major and preparing the way for their chosen messiah….Michael Portillo….

Don’t laugh – the saviour of the Tories was going to be a shallow, etch-a-sketch glamour boy, a trimmer who played to whichever gallery was making the most noise. Somehow (only the gods know why) the Telegraph fell madly in love with Portillo and so successfully tarnished Major’s reputation that in 1997 Labour swept back to power with a massive majority of parliamentary seats. Hundreds of Tories failed to win their constituencies – including (to the laughter of the gods) Portillo, the Telegraph’s “man of destiny”

By the way, this month, twenty years ago, saw the last Tory victory in a General Election. Against the prophesies of the pundits and the prognostications of the pollsters John Major was returned to Downing Street.

Right up to the BBC exit polls, it was assumed that Neil Kinnock’s Labour would win. But John Major, always underestimated by a sneering metropolitan media class, triumphed against the odds.
He won more votes – 14 million – than any other British prime minister has ever done. In popular terms, the margin of victory was immense. No less than 42 per cent of the voters came out for Major, 34 per cent for Kinnock. But the bias of the British electoral system hit the Conservatives hard.
Had Labour enjoyed that 8 per cent lead in the popular vote, it would have secured a parliamentary majority of more than 100. Unlucky Major ended up with a majority of just 21, which was whittled away over the coming years until his government ended in ignominy and defeat

That’s right – the disdained John Major managed to achieve something that has eluded David Cameron (AKA Michael Portillo Mk II)….a decisive Tory victory in terms of popular voter support…

…and, partially thanks to the Daily Telegraph it might possibly be the last…..

Today is the 30th anniversary of the outbreak of the Falklands War in 1982 when Argentine forces invaded and occupied the isolated South Atlantic islands. There is no doubt that Margaret Thatcher and her government were asleep at the wheel at the time ignoring the ratcheting up of rhetoric from the military junta over previous months.

When we heard about the invasion there was anger mixed with humiliation as we saw the pictures of UK marines lying on the ground in surrender. Nevertheless most of us believed that after decades of following the advice of our diplomatic mandarins and the sermonising of the BBC the Thatcher government would wring it’s hands, write an angry note and then accept the offer of a UN special conference that would eventually come up with some wheeze like “shared sovereignty”

But we had reckoned without Margaret Thatcher. It was her willpower that drove the organisation of the task force that travelled thousands of miles and drove the invaders into total capitulation. With hindsight, of course, it all appears to have been a foregone conclusion. But, like D Day in 1944 it was a tremendous gamble with only one possible throw of the dice. Failure would have been the final nail in the coffin of British power and self respect, a vindication of the BBC/Guardian siren song of eternal appeasement and, naturally, the end of Thatcher’s political career.

Nothing illustrated the sudden transformation of will than the sinking of the Belgrano. The Argentines realised that they had sown the wind and had now reaped the whirlwind. They faced a foe that would go to all lengths to break them.

Today, of course, another government in Argentina is seeking to use the Falklands as a useful drum to beat to distract attention from domestic problems. But no self respecting UK government could dare offer any negotiation for a land streaked with the blood and bones of those British servicemen who died in 1982.

Ask the widow of Colonel H Jones who died leading his paratroopers in an assault upon machine gun emplacements at Goose Green.

Ask Simon Weston, the Welsh Guardsman who was horribly burned in an Argentine air attack.

1982 uncovered a Britain that had been hidden away for many years. It’s back under cover, of course, but, much to the chagrin of the left and their friends at the BBC, it’s still there….