Victimisation and Islamisation

REGARDING the arrests of nine men on 30/01/07 for the alleged plot to capture and behead a Muslim serving in HM Armed Forces Dr Mohammad Naseem opined:

'The German people were told Jews were a threat. The same thing is happening here. This is a persecuting course of action that the Government has taken. They have invented this perception of a threat. To justify that, they have to maintain incidents to prove something is going on. There is dismay and people feel they are being persecuted unjustly.'

Dr Nassem, who after the 07/07/05 atrocities notoriously denied the existence of al-Qaeda, is chairman of the Birmingham Mosque Trust (the Birmingham Central Mosque is one of the largest in Europe) and, if the above quote is anything to go by, also mayor of crazy-town. Even if Holocaust revisionism happens to be your thing, as it indeed is for many Muslims, comparing Britain's anti-terrorist measures to the policing methods employed by the NSDAP is a bit rich (actually, more than a bit). Do you think that those charming boys from the Gestapo would have thought to produce 5,000 goodwill leaflets (thoughtfully translated into the local lingo) to put through letterboxes after a raid on the ghetto for dissidents in an attempt to ease community relations, as the police in Birmingham did after Operation Gamble? Right. This sort of inflammatory statement from a venerable and respected member of the British Muslim community only serves to spread fear and division, which plays straight into the hands of the Islamists. If that is what Dr Nassem desires then fine; but if not he would be wise to watch his wayward tongue in future.

Soft on Crime, Soft on the Causes of Crime and, Crucially, Soft in the Head

IN the EU premier league of criminality, Britain is jostling aggressively for pole position with Ireland, who manages to hang tenaciously onto the top spot, according to EU International Crime and Safety Survey. The survey, compiled by the UN and the EU Commission, is billed as being, 'the most comprehensive analysis of crime, security and safety ever conducted in the EU.' It reveals that 21 per cent of British citizens saw or were subjected to some form of criminality in 2004, worsted only by Ireland's 22 per cent. The average rate of exposure in the EU's (then) 15 member countries (plus Estonia, Poland and Hungary) was 15 per cent which, when one considers this includes supposedly 'uncouth' former Soviet Bloc countries like Hungary and Poland, paints a depressing picture of Britain's lapse from it's renowned civility into the near lawlessness that currently blights so many lives. Interestingly, the report's authors upset the socialist apple-cart by concluding that, 'Within the European context levels of crime seem to be neither associated with poverty nor with national wealth.'
Humorously, Home Office bummer-boy Anthony McNulty, whom VPL has bloodily scourged before for his torrents of verbal diarrhoea, claims of the survey that:

'We have concerns about its quality and the comparisons. It does not take account of any recentcrime reduction measures to tackle alcohol misuse, the acquisitive crime campaign and tough new measures in the Violent Crime Reduction Act to tackle gun and knife crime.'

Well, Mr McNulty, sorry to break it to you, but according to your own figures, muggings and burglaries at gunpoint rose by ten per cent in 2006 and, as for alcohol misuse, don't even get us started on the Licencing Act 2003. To top it all off, hot-out-of-the-oven Home Office figures have revealed that of the 306,600 indicted wrongdoers sentenced in 2006, an astounding 269,806 (yes, that's 83 per cent) had prior convictions; proof perfect that our penal system is so ridiculously indulgent of its inmates that it no longer serves as an adequate disincentive to our criminal underclass. Maybe somebody should petition the government to reintroduce the Poire d'angoisser (okay, maybe just hard labour)? The whole government should go away and read The Abolition of Liberty and Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities.

Caught Out

THREE headlines:

'Saudi-backed school 'taught racism'' 06/02/07

'We do use books that call Jews 'apes' admits head of Islamic school'' 07/02/07

'Islamic school 'rips offending pages from textbooks'' 08/02/07

As Mark Steyn puts it:

'Jeddah? Don’t be silly. It’s the King Fahd Academy in West London – though, as the school puts it, 'This is not England. This is Saudi Arabia.''

Islamism: 'The Radicals are Here and They Must be Stopped'

THE Times2 supplement carried a disquieting and insightful interview with Gina Khan, a 38-year-old British Muslim woman, about the spread of Islamism in Birmingham and the hard-line attitude she asserts politicians will have to adopt in order to curb its deleterious proliferation.

'I truly believe that all these mosques here are importing jihad. The radical teaching is filtering through, and these mosques are not regulated. They are supporting everything that is wrong about Islam. We within the community knew this. People are lying. They are in denial. They knew they were bringing in radicals.'

Interestingly, she also stresses that:

'...there are still more English and British people, no matter what, and if they got together and wanted to stamp out this radicalism, they could. I am wasting my time talking to my own people; that is why I am sitting here talking to you, to open your eyes.'

Ah, yes Ms Khan, but, as much as your chilling message is both timely and appreciated, unfortunately the majority of white Britons are far too concerned with the tremendously important business of watching Deal or no Deal or following the progress of their football team to care about an impending Islamist takeover; the cult of self-indulgence of which the British citizenry are themselves fanatical acolytes is the principal reason this deadly situation has developed in the first place.
Anyway, digressions aside, do read the whole piece here.

Britain's Criminal Justice System: Run by Fruitcakes

REGULAR readers will know that VPL has a good moan about our imbecilic criminal justice system and the delusional metropolitan liberals who preside over it, oh, at least once a week, but then it is eminently difficult to remain silent when one comes across stories such as this.
Aside from the simple fact that it should be entirely permissible for constables to beat seven-shades of the brown stuff out of known criminals who are evading capture, it is this bizarre passage that completely and utterly defies all logic: ‘But the court heard he [PC Turner] failed to follow "police protocol" by using CS gas or a small truncheon first.’ So if PC Turner had cracked Mr Paskins over the noggin with his truncheon or liberally dowsed his oikish countenance with CS instead of kicking him in the leg, this complaint would’ve never have been upheld? Okay... Apparently Mr Paskins, who wasn’t even injured in the ‘assault’ (but who might have been were a truncheon or CS spray used), is ‘planning further legal action for compensation.’ Will anybody bat an eyelid if he gets it?

Wilberforce and the Whinger

A TYPICALLY fastidious Lee Jasper, that race-warrior extraordinaire, made some disparaging remarks regarding the film Amazing Grace (a biopic about William Wilberforce) which aroused VPL’s considerable ire. According to the morally imperious Mr Jasper:

‘The film prettifies the tragedy, the horror and the brutality of the slave trade. It seeks to give the impression that one man freed millions of slaves and negates the contribution of the enslaved Africans to their own freedom to a bit part.’

Which begs the question of just what is it that this indignant chap wants? What will finally make the right-on Chairman of National Black Alliance, National Black Caucus and Operation Black Vote happy? When every white person in Britain undertakes daily flagellation in ritual atonement for the behaviour of a small percentage of their forebears? Or if we were all forcibly strapped down to undergo a bizarre Ludovico-esque treatment in which we were made to watch a montage of unpleasant images of the maltreatment of slaves and natives for 24 hours so we would be left in no doubt as to the sadism and barbarity of our ancestors? Or perhaps if we were all forcibly sterilized, thus bequeathing Britain to the Negro and the South Asian (hang on...), Mr Jasper might then cease his incessant whining?
Throughout history many deeply unpleasant things have been done (and, of course, continue to be done) by man against his fellow, but continually focusing on these past transgressions is not healthy and, in the case of the West, this enforced reminiscence is responsible for fostering a feeling of general culpability (everything from Imperialism to global warming via the Holocaust is laid at our gore-splashed feet) which is causing untold damage to national confidence and leaving citizens estranged from the history and culture of their homeland. Perhaps Mr Jasper should reflect on just how fortunate he is to reside in a country that is honourable enough to acknowledge past wrongdoing and produce films like Amazing Grace, which confronts this disgraceful episode in our national story and our subsequent redemption from it by enlightened men like Wilberforce. Now why can’t he go and find a real job (id est one that preferably does not require him to discern some form racism or bigotry in every aspect of British culture and history).

Burying in Bad Taste

THE arrests of nine men over the alleged plot to kidnap a Muslim serving in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces and then behead him in an al-Zarqawi-style Islamist snuff movie has been extensively covered over at Western Resistance. The revelations that Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed’s poisonous rantings might be behind the alleged plot are of little surprise. In the aftermath of the 7/7 massacre, Bakri notoriously told the Evening Standard:

‘I blame the British Government, the British public and the Muslim community in the UK [for the attacks] because they failed to make the extra effort to put an end to the cycle of bloodshed which started before 9/11 and on July 7 was devastating for everybody.’

Before his permanent vacation in Lebanon began in August 2005 his repeated refusal to condemn Islamist atrocities against civilians had become well known. Indeed, if Britain was still a serious country with a patriotic government then several steely-eyed agents would already have been dispatched to Beirut to silence the nut-bag permanently.
From the welter of consternation over the increasing ruthlessness of this implacable enemy within also emerges the ghastly prospect that surreptitious media briefings regarding Operation Gamble were held by the Home Office in which - without police consent - secret operational details were discussed in a crass attempt to direct public attention away from the bloody great mess the government has got itself and the country into.

New Labour’s Criminal Weakness

THE following transcript is taken from a BBC Panorama interview between Jeremy Vine and Home Office minister Anthony McNulty and is one of the most revealing made by this government concerning their attitudes towards the citizen’s role in maintaining civil order.

Jeremy Vine: ‘You see something happening in the street. Do you step in?’
Anthony McNulty: ‘I think the general line must be to get in touch with the authorities straight and make sure that if things are as bad as you paint the police will be there as quickly as they can.’
Vine: ‘You see a young man looking aggressive, shouting at an old woman, what do you do? You retreat and ring the police?’
McNulty: ‘I think you should in the first instance. It may well be the simply shouting at them, blowing your horn or whatever else deters them and they go away.’
Vine: ‘He's now hitting her and the police haven't come, what do you do then?’
McNulty: ‘The same the same, you must always ...’
Vine: ‘Still wait?’
McNulty: ‘Get back to the police, try some distractive activities whatever else.’
Vine: ‘What jump up and down?’
McNulty: ‘But I would say you know sometimes that that may well work.’

So this, then, is official government advice: if you see an elderly woman being kicked to death by some snarling, speed-addled, tracksuit-clad reprobate then don’t dare intervene, other than to try and distract the culprit by shouting, beeping your car-horn or jumping up and down (or, presumably, a mixture of all three); simply withdraw to a safe distance and call the police (one imagines you'd have to stop leaping about and yelling to do this) and ‘if things are as bad as you paint’ the upholders of law and order should arrive shortly, hopefully before the victim has sustained any serious injuries.
Alongside behaviour like that of MP Andrew Dismore's shameful filibustering which blocked the Criminal Law (Amendment) (Protection of Property) Bill (a Conservative Private Member's Bill) in 2005, the above extract encapsulates perfectly the undying contempt elements of New Labour harbour for law-abiding citizens, who are scorned as the bourgeois upholders of the detested status quo, and their near reverence for the criminal class, who are regarded as the long discriminated-against martyrs of Britain’s economically-defined social order. In the actualisation of these prejudices common law has been ruthlessly snatched away from the common citizen and is now the sole preserve of the state. Crime-wise, a future as rosy as South Africa's awaits.

‘We are the Eurocrats: Leg-i-slate, Leg-i-slate!’

FROM The Daily Mail:

‘The growing burden of European red tape was laid bare yesterday with the revelation that Brussels has produced 120 miles of legislation since the EU was set up.
‘A study by the Open Europe think has found that Brussels bureaucrats have produced so many laws - many of them completely unnecessary - that the paperwork weighs more than a tonne, the same as a whale or rhinoceros.’

Read the rest of the article here.

The Undoubted Benefits of Ethnic Diversity III

IN another display of the vibrancy advocates of multiculturalism assure us accompanies and justifies the ethnic balkanisation of Britain, a Mr Sadiq Mohammed (you know, Mark Steyn was right), 32, has been jailed indefinitely for the abduction and rape of a seven-year-old girl in May 2006. Mr Mohammed, who came to Britain from Somalia in 1990 claiming asylum, had previously been sentenced to four years imprisonment in 2000 for indecently assaulting a 55-year-old woman and attempting to attack three others, including a 14-year-old. Sentencing at the previous trial Judge Lester Boothman recommended that Mr Mohammed be deported upon his release. The culprit was duly liberated halfway through his sentence, but remained in the country. And why wasn’t Mr Mohammed expelled forthwith? A Home Office spokesman explains:

‘Each case is considered on its individual merits in accordance to our international obligations and taking full account of conditions in the country concerned as they impact on the individual. We will only enforce return where we are satisfied that the individual concerned will not be at risk.’

Naturally, the risk that such an individual might pose to indigenous Britons is entirely irrelevant.
Update: The possibility that the culprit is a Kenyan national and so not eligible for asylum has now been raised.

The Undoubted Benefits of Unfettered Immigration II

UNDOUBTEDLY beneficial if you’re either a pimp or a client, at any rate.

Britain’s Fifth Column is a Minaret

JUST as Cameron starts to bleat about the need to ‘…create more opportunities for celebrating our sense of nationhood’ and Brown monotones that ‘What was wrong about multiculturalism was not the recognition of diversity, but that it emphasised separateness at the cost of unity’ (notice the use of past tense, as if multiculturalism as an active ideology in British politics suddenly doesn’t exist anymore) a survey commissioned by the Policy Exchange think-tank reveals in stark detail the alienation and, let’s not bandy words here, odium that young British Muslims feel from and towards their adopted motherland.
The findings make disturbing reading and indeed, as the stronger opinions are most prevalent amongst younger Muslims, do not bode at all well for future societal cohesion in urban Britain. For your own discomfiture VPL has reproduced some of the more startling findings below:

• 13 per cent of 16-24-year-olds said they admired terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda.
• 37 per cent of 16-24-year-olds said they would prefer to live in Britain under sharia law rather than British law.
• 32 per cent of 25-34-year-olds said they would prefer to live in Britain under sharia law rather than British law.
• 55 per cent of 25-34-year-olds said that, under sharia, a Muslim male should be able to have up to four wives.
• 37 per cent of 25-34-year-olds said that Muslim conversion (to another faith) should be punishable by death.
• 37 per cent of 16-24-year-olds said they would prefer to send their children to an Islamic state school than a mixed state school.
• 59 per cent of all those asked said that they felt more in common with Muslims in other countries than non-Muslims in Britain.
• 53 per cent of all those asked said they prefer that Muslim women choose to wear the veil.

Heady stuff, eh? When unrepentant socialists like Brown start warning of a ‘balkanised Britain’ and that ‘multiculturalism became an excuse for justifying separateness and … even greater exclusivity’ one may begin to hope that the worm is, at last, turning; that the potentially lethal seismic shifts occurring in Britain’s demographic and cultural composition are at last starting to shake the remote ivory towers which our governing class inhabit. However, what ultimate form the reaction of the Labour Party to this fifth column will take remains to be seen. Certainly, if it is to be effective, they will not only have to substantially review and moderate the over-sensitivity with which they treat with ethnic minority groups, but also overcome the obvious distaste with which they themselves view British culture and history; a distaste which has undoubtedly proven such an insurmountable obstacle to encouraging integration and patriotism in the past.

Word Defying

IS a complete and utter deficit of commonsense a perquisite for a career in the constabulary or as a Crown prosecutor? This story would certainly suggest so. Judge Dowse is to be heartily commended for halting the proceedings; it is comforting to know that a flicker of sanity may sometimes be glimpsed amongst the murky workings of our sclerotic criminal justice system.

Who Said That?

‘What is dangerous about this situation is not the fact of [Iran] having a nuclear bomb. Having one or perhaps a second bomb a little later, well, that’s not very dangerous. But what is very dangerous is proliferation. This means that if Iran continues in the direction it has taken and totally masters nuclear-generated electricity, the danger does not lie in the bomb it will have, and which will be of no use to it’

Find out here.

Roman Catholics and Homosexual Hoteliers Find Common Cause

NOW even the homosexuals are complaining about the provisions of the Sexual Orientation Regulations. It seems that the Britain's thriving homosexual tourist market - apparently worth some £3.5 billion an(nu)ally – will no longer be able to cater solely for the rectally prolapsed because to do so would be to discriminate against heterosexuals under the SOR, which will come into force in April. As hotelier Mark Hurst – whose runs a classy Blackpool establishment called ‘Guyz’ – bemoans:

‘Rather than improve gay rights, it will make things much worse. We run a gay hotel exclusively for men.
‘We feel if we were forced to a situation where we had to accept heterosexual people into our hotel, our gay clientele will not behave as naturally as they would now.
‘Many of them would feel more self-conscious. Many of our guests like to just sit on the settee in the lounge and cuddle up to watch a film.
‘They can hold hands and have a little kiss and would behave in a way they may not if they were in a mixed crowd.’

Aww. Of course, the SOR is evidently an assault on the fundamental right to freedom of expression; an unjustifiable imposition of state-morality that, were the morally-vacuous television-transfixed helots who comprise the electorate paying attention, should have sparked major unrest and protests. Melanie Phillips (wo)mans the 50 cal. and blasts some gaping, gory holes in the dogmatic regulations here.

British Border Security: How Bad?

THIS bad.

Jailhouse Rock

THE prisons overcrowding quandary received further unwelcome attention following the release of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons’ critical annual report last week. Of the crisis report author HM Chief Inspector of Prisons Anne Owers, whose unfavourable review of the Harmondsworth Immigrant Removal Centre last December sparked a widespread riot, commented that:

‘It is normally considered good practice to build an ark before the flood rather than during or after it. This means long-term planning and planning which in my view should have happened a long time ago.’

Of course, New Labour are to long-term planning what the ‘travelling community’ are to soap (anathema, in case you didn’t guess). Indeed, if one were searching for an appropriate term with which to characterise the formulation and implementation of the majority of this administration’s chaotic domestic policies, then knee-jerk would certainly be it.

Crossing the Rubicon

THE barbed response of Crown Court Judge Richard Bray to last weeks communiqué from the Home Office, asking judges if they'd be so kind as to stop dishing out custodial sentences, raised a wry smile at the breakfast table:

'Overcrowding in prison is not going to prevent me from passing proper sentences. The reason our prisons are full is because judges can no longer pass deterrent sentences. What message does it send to criminals when they are told they will only have to serve half the sentence the judge thinks appropriate? Until politicians wake up to this, criminals will continue to reoffend and the prison population to rise.'

Too true. Since its recent conception VPL has contended that the government’s unwillingness to construct more prisons derives as much from the deluded left-wing beliefs of its members, who view criminals as unfortunate victims of their social-economic status and thus see imprisonment as intolerably cruel, as it has from the reluctance of the machinating Prime Minister-in-waiting to earmark the substantial wedge of cash required for such an undertaking.
The endless cavalcade of promises from New Labour to deal decisively with criminality over the years have either proved to be comprised of hollow sound-bites, designed to reassure an anxious public or, if actualised by legislation, have been implemented in a confused and half-hearted manner. It is a demonstrable fact that, as alternatives to prison sentences, ASBOs, ABCs, cautions, the HDC scheme, PNDs, et cetera are wholly ineffective and, through their evident weakness as a restraint, are even responsible for encouraging further wrongdoing.

The Daily Mail put an interesting angle on the situation, reporting that:

‘The prison overcrowding crisis could be solved at a stroke if only Britain could send home 11,000 foreign citizens serving jail terms here.
‘More than one in eight inmates behind bars in England and Wales is foreign, and it costs the taxpayer some £330million a year to keep them there.
‘In some jails British criminals are in a minority. Jamaica alone accounts for around a fifth of foreign offenders in our jails - mostly drug offenders - and there are large numbers from Ireland, Nigeria, Pakistan, India, Turkey and China.’

But, of course, removing such undesirables would be far beyond the (very) meagre capabilities of the Home Office and, besides, would no doubt grossly infringe upon their Human Rights.
Leaping into the cratered trenches beside her beleaguered comrades (at least her camping stove will come in handy amongst the rotting bodies and rusty razor-wire), Margaret Beckett told BBC1's Sunday AM:

‘The Home Office does, unfortunately, go through these terrible phases from time to time and this is one of them. It'll come out the other side and so will John Reid.’

For ‘time to time’ read daily. As for John Reid coming out the other side unscathed; well, you can almost hear the rarely-heard and disconcerting sound of Brown chortling in the background.

Dangerous Talk Costs Lives

ISN’T this rather like Eisenhower telephoning Rommel on 05/06/44 and giving him the precise times and locations of the coming sea and airborne assaults and then, if such a disclosure were not compromising enough, asking if it’s actually okay to invade? This is precisely the sort of hyper-sensitivity toward so-called minority ‘rights’ that will cost Britain sorely in the ideological and military battle against Islamism.

More Fundamentalist Lunacy from the Wahabi Export Agency

Link. Fruity.

Laughter Really is the Best Medicine

'ABU Hamza must pay £1m for trial.' Perhaps not as satisfying as a public scourging followed by a spell on a judas cradle, but by the effeminate standards of our times still pretty good.

Merrie England 2007 and Reason is Nowhere in Sight

THIS story got VPL frothing at the mouth. Of course, increasing the indigenous British population with law-abiding individuals like Mr Coleman isn't part of the left's great plan to completely bugger the country up by undermining its cultural and ethnic homogeneity. Also, it goes without saying the fact that the chap's ancestors were British colonialists makes him little better than a concentration camp commandant, according to liberal orthodoxy. Boris Johnson has a rant about the injustice of it all here. Arggggh.

Criminal Injustice System

MORE on our no-nonsense, kick-butt criminal justice system here. With an uncompromising approach like this, it really is surprising that so many oiks still possess the inclination to commit crime.

Islamisation and the 'Super-Mosque'

THIS is the introduction to a piece which appeared in the 06/01/07 issue of The Spectator:

'In 2007, Britain will almost certainly be the chief testing ground of the attempt by radical Muslims to gain more power and influence in Western society.
'The United States, too, is threatened by militant Islam - not least by the prospect of terrorist attacks on its own territory - but the problem in the United Kingdom is much greater. In America, radical Islamists have used civil rights legislation and the habits of multicultural courtesy to gain advantages that might not be available to them in Europe. At any rate there has been no debate there about niqab or face-covering. Britain, however, gives the impression of a society approaching a fork in its historical road: either toward more 'Islamization' of the broader society or toward a powerful backlash as Britons grow increasingly troubled by the apparent forcible dilution of the majority culture.'

Read the rest of the article, if you dare, here.

The Undoubted Benefits of Multiculturalism II

MORE of the cultural diversity that makes Britain such a vibrant place to live.

Civility vs. Crudity: BB and the Dumbing Down of British Culture

THE furore that erupted over the chauvinism and spitefulness unsurprisingly exhibited by a number of the contestants on Channel 4's Celebrity Big Brother (CBB) last week provoked a flurry of reactions from the nation's columnists. Two in particular, VPL felt, got to the heart of the matter. In The Daily Mail, David Seymour wonders '…how it is that society tolerates the yobbish, drunken, inconsiderate behaviour that our young people exhibit…' and bleakly surmises that 'Jade, Danielle and Jo are not one-off misfits. …the sorry truth is that there are thousands – perhaps hundreds of thousands – of others like them in Britain today.' Whilst, writing in The Independent, Howard Jacobson eloquently concludes of the stupidity that typifies most of the housemates:

'They add up, though - the words you can't pronounce, the events you haven't heard of, the ideas with which you are not and do not wish to be acquainted. At some point the accumulation of missing information and curiosity amounts to your not being in the world at all. … There is vindictiveness in dumbing down. It aims to dethrone not only intelligence but the means by which we rate one thing above another. Dumbing down is an assault upon the very concept of value.'

Indeed, the notion that the boorish antics of self-obsessed and dim-witted CBB housemates like Jade Goody and Danielle Lloyd are somehow symptomatic of a wider cultural malaise which has beset the nation is the most valid and portentous to be drawn from this fiasco. As Mr Jacobson points out, it has to do with dumbing down, and the downhill charge that is the ongoing dumbing down of British cultural life has undeniably accelerated greatly in the last decade; with an obliging shove from the evermore senseless drivel that comprises modern popular culture it now careers on a relentless descent, destined for the great morass of excrement that festers at the bottom; the unpleasant location in which our self-destructing society will eventually come to rest: a fall from grace historically unequalled in its swiftness and execution. As a character from a Robert E. Howard story warns: 'Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.' Whether, in the end, it is the spread of Islamism or the prevalence of the witless amorality promoted through popular culture, or a lethal cocktail of the two, barbarism is not far off triumphing.
Parallel and indelibly connected to this rush to idiocy has been the rise to fame (or, rather, notoriety) of such ignoramuses as Jordan, Jade Goody and the plethora of other BB veterans, countless footballers wives, and the reinvented Charlotte Church; vulgar, unintelligent, aggressive, avaricious and largely untalented individuals whose secular narcissism greatly exceeds that of any twentieth-century European dictator, and whose very prominence conveys the detrimental notion that academic achievement and toil are not in any way essential to acquiring renown and riches in post-modern Britain. In fact, it may even appear to the observer that erudition and industriousness actually prove an insurmountable stumbling block to entering the bling-encrusted and tracksuit-clad ranks of this peculiar new aristocracy.
This seemingly paradoxical conviction proves especially attractive to the burgeoning and dysfunctional portion of our working class, from whose ranks these celebrities are almost exclusively drawn, but, ominously, it has also permeated upwards into the higher classes as well, as can be seen from the slatternly behaviour and appearance of wealthy socialites like Tara Palmer-Tomkinson and, in particular, Paris Hilton (who was pithily but accurately described as a 'stupid spoiled whore' in South Park). As psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple noted in his myth-shattering Life at the Bottom: '…in modern Britain, the direction of cultural aspiration has reversed: for the first time in history, it is the middle and upper classes that aspire to be taken for their social inferiors, an aspiration that (in their opinion) necessitates misconduct.' This downward cultural aspiration encompasses language, clothing and outlook and has in particular infected the insecure middle classes, whose younger generations are terrified of being thought 'posh' – now a fiercely derogatory term – and so do their level best to at least look or, worse, act like their social inferiors. When the behavioural traits of those who, generally for a legitimate reason, reside at the very bottom of the social ladder are accepted and even emulated by a significant number of those inhabiting the rungs above it, one may reasonably conclude that something has gone very wrong with society. As Dr Dalrymple points out such an inversion is unprecedented, except perhaps where civilised societies have been conquered and subjugated by barbaric ones. For obvious reasons such a scramble to baseness en masse has never willingly been undertaken by a nation.

Of course, to criticise the shameless behaviour of these 'personalities' is to be denounced as 'judgemental' and 'classist' by the left, but through their unashamed antagonism and gratuitous ignorance these false idols have themselves foully betrayed their own class by advocating its very worst traits, as have those unscrupulous agents and producers who promote them in the first place. To consider, as some do, Jade Goody and her drooling cohorts 'working-class heroes' of a sort is a grossly unfair slur on those elements of the working-class who do struggle, often against often horrendous odds, to better themselves and their families. These icons of idiocy are perhaps helpful in that they at least draw attention to all that is wrong with our depraved lower classes, as they have recently in CBB, but, simultaneously, through their prominence they succeed in making these very attitudes and modes of behaviour desirable to hundreds of thousands of impressionable spectators.
Indeed our new noblesse actively emphasise their worldly ignorance, for it is partly this 'talent' which gifted them their status. And what ignorance! Last year CBB contestant Danielle Lloyd appeared on BBC1's Test the Nation and was asked the implausibly difficult question of 'who was Winston Churchill?' To make things extra simple she was given the choice of four possible answers: a rapper, a US President, a Prime Minister, or a King. In a display of utter nescience that reflects darkly on our inadequate education system and the growing cult of ignorance she pouted and answered: 'Wasn't he the first black president of America? There's a statue of him near me - that's black.' In a nation where 5 million adults can't read or write and 11 million can't even manage basic arithmetic, this candid demonstration of complete detachment from the recent past, an echo of a 2005 survey of 15-year-olds in which 15 per cent of those asked the same question as Ms Lloyd thought that Winston Churchill was a nodding dog who advertises car insurance, is sadly to be expected.

Whilst it is might be easy to dismiss these wealthy simpletons as irrelevant, it would be foolish to underestimate their collective influence – or 'iffuence', as Ms Goody would verbalise it in estuary English – on the easily-influenced and the young in particular. A survey last year asked 1,500 children under the age of 10 'what do you think is the very best thing in the world?' The top three replies were: 1) being a celebrity, 2) having good looks and 3) being wealthy. The proliferation of celebrity-specific gossip magazines and columns in newspapers would suggest that many adults share to some degree these shallow and egocentric priorities and obsessions. Of course, people have always desired fame and wealth, but in the past they have generally had healthier rolemodels and their aspirations were at least tempered by Christian humility.
Those who lack the ability to follow in the footsteps of genuinely talented individuals, who often come from stable middle and upper class backgrounds, will automatically be attracted to the likes of Ms. Goody whose ascendancy (and, equally, descent) can be easily emulated by any foul-mouthed, dim-witted oik. Mere television exposure is all that is required.
It was Robert Frost who wrote 'I'm against a homogenized society, because I want the cream to rise.' At the eventual conclusion of the downward cultural spiral upon which Britain is presently and remorselessly descending there will be no cream left; just a foul coagulation of rancid milk at the bottom.

Usury: Alive and Well in Twenty-first Century Britain

ACCORDING to this article personal debt in Britain is increasing by £1 million every four minutes. As the Lord admonishes the Jews in Ezekiel (22:12-14):

'In thee have they taken gifts to shed blood; thou hast taken usury and increase, and thou hast greedily gained of thy neighbours by extortion, and hast forgotten me, saith the Lord GOD.
'Behold, therefore I have smitten mine hand at thy dishonest gain which thou hast made, and at thy blood which hath been in the midst of thee.
'Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, on the days that I shall deal with thee? I the Lord have spoken it, and will do it.'

The Undoubted Benefits of Unfettered Immigration

IF you are a child molester the advantages posed by New Labour's generous 'come one, come all' attitude towards immigration into the UK are clearly evident. You can berate Labour as much as you want, but it cannot be said that they're not inclusive.

Beauty and the BNP 'Beast'

MICK Hume of the - ahem - Revolutionary Communist Party evenhandedly sums up the excessive hullabaloo surrounding BNP-supporting ballerina Simone Clarke here.

Little Darlings

THIS is the unfortunate consequence when children are raised with neither morality nor discipline. Of course school bullies have always taken from weaker pupils, children will, after all, be children, but these figures illustrate an endemic problem which must be promptly tackled. Each successive generation will sink deeper into the depraved mire of criminality until a counterrevolution overturns the judicial leniency and permissive culture which are jointly fuelling this headlong descent into lawlessness and barbarity.

From China to East Africa: the Global Spread of Jihad

NEWS from China, if it is to be believed, provides further evidence of the truly global threat posed by militant Islam as its venomous tentacles slither silently (or not so silently...) across a border and into yet another country.
Meanwhile, as yet unverified reports have surfaced suggesting a number of wounded individuals carrying British passports have been captured by Ethiopian troops in southern Somalia. Apparently they were members of an 'international brigade' of jihadists, which also comprised extremists from Canada, Yemen, Pakistan and the Sudan, fighting to save the crumbling Islamic Courts Union, which had established control over much of the country since June 2006. As well as infantry it is also thought that British Somalis have donated some £600,000 in preceding months to support the beleaguered ICU.

Critics of the Ethiopian-US-TFG alliance argue that the toppled Islamist government brought relative stability to the stricken country with its ruthless implementation of Sharia. However, there remained the distinct likelihood that, despite the protestations of ICU's Imams to the contrary, if left to its own devices Somalia would have quickly degenerated into Afghanistan #2, providing a safehaven and staging point for militant Islamic groups. The instability such a transformation would bring to the region understandably compelled neighbouring Ethiopia, a relatively stable Christian country, to act decisively with the aid of Somali dissidents and, latterly, the US. Back in the UK the Islamists of Hizb ut-Tahrir are using the American air strikes in a cynical ploy to attract Somalis to their demented cause.

Muslim Sensibilities must not Determine Britain's Foreign Policy

A CLASSIFIED study commissioned by Metropolitan police into the financial cost of their anti-terrorism operations in the capital has been seen by reporters at The Daily Mail. The resulting article focused on one passage in particular. In response to the question 'What is new about the security situation?' report author Bob Whalley, formerly a senior civil servant at the Home Office, wrote that Islamist terror was being energised by the 'ongoing 'rallying cry' issues such as Palestine and Iraq which provide a ready claim for legitimacy, even for opportunistic threats or attacks.' The Daily Mail article used this comment as a foundation from which to launch an attack on the PM's military support for Operation Iraqi Freedom, which it clearly considers responsible for triggering the 7/7 atrocities. This hypothesis has found much credence in the UK, largely due to its espousal by much of our news media. But, as theories go, it is a fundamentally flawed one.
Undoubtedly our participation in OIF has further inflamed the feeling of resentment amongst a considerable portion of Britain's Muslim population towards their host nation (although there is not much Britain can do about the Israel-Palestine impasse), which is especially unsurprising given the unrelentingly negative coverage of the conflict and its aftermath by our mischievous left-wing news media. In this respect Anthony Blair and his cohorts are wrong to deny that the liberation of Iraq and, more specifically, the post-liberation period has deepened the hostility of a significant number British Muslims towards their government and the unfortunate dhimmi next door. Indeed, it is now a safe assumption that any subsequent British involvement in conflicts against Muslim countries, no matter how morally righteous that conflict might be, will invoke a similar domestic backlash. It is also true that the ongoing Islamist insurgency in Iraq has succeeded in effectively scuppering the opportunity provided by the removal of Saddam Hussein to establish a genuine liberal democracy, much to the detriment of the harassed Iraqi people. Whether Bush's recent promise of extra troops and new approach will make an impact remains to be seen.
However, with this 'no involvement=no threat' school of thought continuing to garner popular support throughout the UK, it must be remembered that the domestic terrorist threat existed before our participation in OIF and that countries who did not support the liberation have themselves since been targeted by jihadis. The French, for instance, have pointedly opposed America's prosecution of the War on Terror and were particularly critical of the decision to liberate Iraq. Did their absence from the ranks of the Coalition of the Willing erase them from the Islamist to-hit-list? Not if this is anything to go by.
Simply adopting a 'head in the sand' attitude towards foreign affairs will not protect us from further atrocities and, if anything, such displays of spinelessness will only embolden our opportunist foe. The bottom line is that we cannot have a dynamic and rational foreign policy if it is to be based upon what will and what will not upset the delicate sensibilities of our vocal Muslim population. (Although, having written that, with few exceptions, such sympathetic considerations already play a significant role in the formulation of our domestic policies.) And, whatever your attitude to the situation in Iraq or the War on Terror, Islamism poses a serious threat to every Western nation and every Western citizen regardless.

The Psychotic Jingoism of Islamism

THE following Islamist jingoism emanates, as raw sewage doth ooze from a cracked pipe, from the mouth of Dr Abdul Latif in a sermon delivered to around 100 acolytes somewhere in the deepest darkest Home Counties and recorded secretly in a disturbing Daily Mail expose:

'The British soldiers are the soldiers of Satan, the soldiers of evil, of evilness. And I pray to Allah openly and in English that they will not return back except when they are dead - all of them.'

Nice. He also regurgitates the old chestnut, earnestly trumpeted by Muslims the world over, that:

'We don't have Muslim terrorists... they do not exist. But anything that they [the Government] claim is Muslim terror, they do it themselves.'

Of course they do, Doctor. Fancy a lie down? How about a couple of Olanzapine? No, no, they weren't manufactured in Israel – they won't make your penis drop off. There you go; that's better…
If the government is even remotely serious about safeguarding its citizens from the sincere threat posed by Islamism then preachers like Dr Latif, who are in clear breach of 2006's Racial and Religious Hatred Act, should be bundled onto the next plane out of here or, even better, find themselves blindfolded and up against a wall, facing a firing line of those grim-faced 'soldiers of evil' that he prays 'will not return back except when they are dead…'. The Muslims will show the West no remorse in this conflict and, unless we do the same, we will not prevail against their stated intention to plunge the world into a new Dark Age.

The Failure of Electronic Tagging

MORE on the abject failure of another of New Labour's gimmicky and penny-pinching initiatives to release prisoners early here. This time the demented Home Detention Curfew scheme comes in for a scorching. Hint: if you want the majority of criminals to reform lock them up, take away privileges such as television sets, and make them do hard labour. It really is that simple.

More Flagrant Incompetence from the Home Office

THIS article does not require any commentary.
Update: Obviously the above revelations soon got much, much worse. It occurred to VPL that the Home Office might be attempting to set some new and virtually unassailable record in terms of the utter incompetence with which a government department can be 'run' (or not run, as the case may be). Certainly they will take some beating. While this is conjecture, one thing is definite: only a statist government of New Labour's dubious calibre could foul things up this badly.

The Eradication of Christianity Continues

THIS time in the VPL's own backyard, so to speak. Trust dippy-hippy Totnes. That there is nobody to be offended by such a lurid display of Christian piety at the Town Council's monthly pow wows indicates that this step was taken for purely ideological reasons. What was it Soviet People's Commissar of Enlightenment Anatoliy Vasilievich Lunacharsky said of organised religion? Oh yes:

'Religion is like a nail: if you hit the nail on the head, you only drive it deeper. ...Here one needs pliers. The religion must be grabbed, squeezed from below: you do not beat it, but pull it out, pull it with its roots.'

Looks like the teachings of the old Red ideologue haven't been completely discarded, unlike those of Jesus Christ. In the grand scheme of things stories of minor attacks on Christianity like this may seem rather inconsequential, but as the famous Chinese proverb goes: 'The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.' In the preceding forty years there have been many such stone-removers whose individual contribution may seem slight, but whose overall impact has been devastating. Christianity remains our last bulwark against the alarming spread of Islam and the excesses of the permissive culture and, as such, its precipitous decline must be reversed.

Seditious Craziness from Islamist Down Under

THE notorious Sheikh Taj El-Din Hamid Hilaly has been making more bizarre statements. You may assume from his comments that Sheikh Hilaly is some wildly gesticulating, frothing loon on the far-out fringes of Australian Islamic society; an outcast of the wider Muslim community. Afraid not. He may well be a fruit-loop, but he certainly isn't a pariah: indeed, Sheikh Hilaly is Imam of Lakemba Mosque in Sydney, Australia's largest such building, and the leading spokesman for many of the country's 282,000 Muslim inhabitants. If this chap's considered representative, one dreads to contemplate what the radicals might be like.

The NHS Dilemma

MELANIE Philips lays into Patricia Hewitt and NHS cutbacks in this fiery piece.

Britain's Longest-Serving Constable Criticises Modern Policing

MICK Mountain, 60, who in April will be Britain's longest-serving officer, makes some interesting observations concerning modern policing:

'There are many more laws dealing with diversity and equality, which have been triggered by the compensation culture. When it gets to the point where councils cannot even put up Christmas trees, it seems ridiculous. I do not believe we are going in the right direction. It means we do not have enough police on the streets where we need them. Community support officers are no replacement - they are not proper police officers and do not have the same powers of arrest.
'Criminals are more likely to attack officers these days because they do not have the fear of being punished. They are also more likely to turn violent during less serious crimes such as burglaries. I have been left with a bloody nose and punched in the face. You get less respect wearing the uniform whereas in the old days, it was a deterrent. Now criminals simply laugh because they know nothing will happen to them. With not enough room in prison they know they are going to get away with a fine or community service rather than being sent to jail. It is all wrong. Society is not getting the policing it deserves.'

MI5 were Oblivious to Imminent 7/7 Massacre

THIS does not exactly inspire confidence. Readers of Melanie Phillips' Londonistan will know the indifference with which the British security service viewed Islamism as a terrorist threat, even after the helpful jolt provided by 9/11. The waking-up process obviously accelerated after the London atrocities and it is of course a credit to MI5 that they were able to halt the execution of the transatlantic aircraft plot of August 2006. Still, uncomfortable questions regarding the abject failure of our intelligence agencies to detect the 7/7 attack remain and with this admission it seems an independent inquiry into their utter ignorance to this looming threat would be timely.

Too little, too Late

AS ethnic Britons become increasingly disillusioned with the multicultural experiment, this kind of noisy declaration from the CRE, although accurate, seems little more than a hollow gesture of conciliation after the damage has already been done. It is as if the hand that moments ago was helping to hamstring you is now genially patting your shoulder, its owner empathising with your predicament. For decades British culture and values have been consistently trivialised and disparaged by subversive groups such as the CRE; fatally weakened to the point that they are now in clear danger of being deposed entirely by a stronger and more vigorous contender (three guesses). There can be no restitution, except by bloody struggle, after such a wholesale deracination.

Army Muslim Recruitment Drive Mysteriously Fails

NOBODY could have been particularly surprised to read the following statement (from The Daily Telegraph):

'The Army is facing fresh claims of a recruitment crisis after the failure of a high-profile campaign to get Muslims to join up. Only a handful of the 200,000-strong Islamic community in the Midlands have joined the Army since the first recruitment drive aimed specifically at Muslims last year, it emerged... It is thought that many did not want to join up because they
opposed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. There are just 330 Muslims in the entire Armed Forces.'

It will be recalled that in July 2006 Lance Corporal Jabron Hashmi of the Royal Signals, a Briton of Pakistani ethnicity, was killed fighting Islamists in Afghanistan. Within hours of the news reaching the UK a website run by those pleasant chaps in Al Ghurabaa' had, in a distasteful stab at irony, denounced brave L/Cpl Hashmi as a 'home-grown terrorist'. Muslims in his hometown of Bordesley Green, Birmingham, also expressed their displeasure at L/Cpl Hashmi's career choice:

'I don't see how any Muslim can be in the British army, not with all the shit that's happening in Muslim countries. It doesn't make sense. It's not right. There's no space for Muslims in the army.'

This intolerance is not just reserved for those who dare to enlist in our Armed Forces either. In December last year a Muslim community worker in Waltham Forest, North-East London, spoke of his attempts to persuade his coreligionists to liaise with the local constabulary in the fight against Islamist violence. He was consequently branded an 'enemy' by his fellows for his efforts. The unnamed man complained: 'I am, at times, seen as the enemy and have to defend myself against criticism when I talk about both loyalty within our community and the loyalty we should show to the wider state' (full story). With the threat of social ostracism from their community, and even of wider familial liability, were they to join up, is it any wonder so few Muslims do? To be simultaneously patriotic and Muslim is, it would seem, an impossibility. Unless your patriotism is to the ummah, that is.

The Undoubted Benefits of Multiculturalism

THIS sad story would seem to support the belief that, encouraged by unforgivable government cowardice, arranged/forced marriages and the physical abuse of women that is often associated with them are now as British as fish and chips. This is exactly the sort of uncivilised and misogynistic custom that we must not allow to take root in Britain, let alone ever be enshrined in law. An unsettling report on the prevalence and controversy of forced marriages across Europe can be read here.

The Cost of Unemployment

STORIES about the dismal state of our under-funded Armed Forces (here and here) contrasted sharply with revelations that a staggering £61 billion a year is spent on the nations' 5.2 million unemployed. If it is a choice between keeping our idlers in smack and cider or maintaining a respected and confident military force in the face of an unprecedented threat to our liberty and security, which would you choose? Okay, this may be a crass over-generalisation of the requirements of our unemployed, many of whom are obviously legitimate claimants, but this inequality perfectly encapsulates the warped priorities of New Labour.
Apparently some 2.7 million of the above receive incapacity benefits, and, whilst many of these cases are genuine, the government estimates that around one million of recipients are actually capable of working. These malingerers are costing the taxpayer in excess of £11 billion a year. The defence budget is to be slashed by some £250 million this year (although forking out over £200 million in management consultancy fees from the national defence budget every year doesn't help). The disparity does not need to be highlighted.
The author personally knows a handful of freeloaders who fraudulently claim incapacity benefits; one in particular has been doing so for over five years. The defining and unifying feature of these layabouts is that they are habitual drug abusers (although not necessarily addicts), in most instances cynically feigning depression and chronic migraines to continue funding their never-ending party at the taxpayers' expense. The amount of authentic medical problems they will doubtlessly incur as a result of their government-funded hedonism is unknown, but the notion serves as a delicious slice of irony as well as a savage commentary on the utter absurdity of the situation. As it is the welfare state is, in the long-term, unsustainable, but, with the persistence of flagrant and costly abuses like this, its demise might come sooner than expected.

The Untouchables

HOME Office figures have shown that only one crime in 100 results in the perpetrator being caught and sentenced. This startling figure is thought to be due to 'the dramatic rise in the use of "summary justice" - instant fines or cautions and warnings handed out by the police…' Indeed, other findings published last week revealed that Penalty Notices for Disorder (PNDs - fines of £50 or £80 issued on-the-spot and payable within 21 days) are now being issued for one crime in nine (it is postulated some 167,000 have been issued in 2006, compared to 137,333 in 2005). An interesting commentary on the evolution of this 'pay-as-you-go hooliganism' can be read here.

The widespread and growing use of ASBOs, ABCs and PNDs as a quick and easy means to tackle the proliferating scourge of 'minor' criminality is being met with contempt by many of those recipients who, with their criminal credentials bolstered by their order or notice, continue to offend until they at last commit an offence of suitable severity that our judiciary is reluctantly compelled to incarcerate them for some paltry period in one of our revolving-door prisons. Upon their release the whole charade continues afresh. One of the principal and most damaging consequence of this unwillingness to properly punish our criminals is the message it transmits to other potential wrongdoers: it is a green light to go forth and be anti-social. This is not some baseless supposition from a detached commentator, but one based on personal observation.
Our adolescents are particularly vulnerable to this provocation (for that is what it is), primarily because of their amorality, but also because of their indoctrination by those sections of our frivolous and degrading popular 'culture' which present criminality, drug-abuse and sexual permissiveness as being desirable traits. This vulgar anti-culture, which on the one hand encourages absurdity and moral laxity (see Big brother, I'm a Celebrity…, countless soap operas, the debauchery of pop musicians et cetera) and on the other glorifies criminality (see countless gangster films – from Lock, Stock… to Boyz in the Hood – games like the Grand Theft Auto series and some Hip Hop) is having a deeply detrimental effect on the attitudes of the nations' youth. It may not be going too far to suggest that as much as punitive sentencing and prisons will indubitably make crime a less appealing prospect to our more timid potential wrongdoers, real headway will not be made until the poisonous immorality and idiotic triviality that characterise this 'culture' is addressed.

The question of why the government has come to rely on such weak and ineffective measures is complex, but may be briefly pared down to two dominant factors: firstly, with increasing anti-social behaviour on our streets and a chronic lack of prison spaces the government has been forced to bring in legislation which allows for the speedy processing of minor offenders whilst keeping them clear of prison: secondly, the government's attitude towards crime is based on the fallacious belief that criminals are themselves largely the 'victims' of poverty. But in this poverty=criminality equation, believed and promulgated by the majority of liberal leftists, wrongdoers have been handed the perfect ready-formed excuse for their unpleasant deeds, happily disavowing personal responsibility for their behaviour and placing blame instead upon their lowly socio-economic status, which they loudly proclaim they cannot alter (should have paid more attention at school, eh?). 'I wanna piece of the cake,' whined a spliff-smoking black gang-banger from London, interviewed for the Ross Kemp on Gangs series, when asked why locals displayed an alarming propensity for gunning each other down in the street. What nobody had the courage to tell the indignant young man and his cronies was that, of course, everybody wants a piece of the cake, but that you generally have to invest sincere effort to gain it; sitting indolently in your government-sponsored crack den waiting for a slice to come knocking will get you nowhere. Besides, recent research is pointing to the uncomfortable reality – uncomfortable for leftist liberals, at any rate – that many wrongdoers indulge in criminal activity, particularly street crime, because they take pleasure in it and because it earns them credibility in the much sought approbation of their thuggish peers and the fear, or 'respect', of their rivals.
Many will also agree that it is preposterous to suggest that anybody is genuinely poor in post-modern Britain (except, of course, spiritually), particularly when one considers the state of grinding poverty that exists throughout the third world. The surly denizens of our grimy sink estates are kitted-out with the latest in mobile phone technology and sports apparel. Habitations in these areas, those not burnt-out or boarded-up that is, are invariably festooned with a Sky satellite dish. None of these things speak of poverty and the fact that, despite the ownership of these non-essential luxury items, many of the hard-faced people who inhabit these areas still exhibit a propensity towards criminality is more suggestive of the narcissism and amorality that characterises their worldview and the brutal culture they have fashioned for themselves than material poverty.

The Jihad Rumbles On

OUR Muslim friends are still busily propagating the 'inclusive' and 'progressive' message that Anthony Blair assures us can be found in the Koran, so much so that our government has decided to take these measures. Oh yes, and we just cannot wait for the return of these heroic fellows either.

We don't need no Integration

YOU know this sort of thing really doesn't help societal cohesion.

Radical Islam on Campus

ADRIAN Morgan of Family Security Matters has posted an interesting two-part article entitled Radical Islam and British Universities, a piece which should be read by every British patriot. Part one may be accessed here and part two here. It makes for extremely alarming reading and also causes one to reflect on, in the face of such an insidious threat, just how out-of-touch and trivial the NUS' irrational persecution of the Christian Union is. Many people in Britain really do seem to have serious difficulties when it comes to prioritising what is really important.

The Lord Chancellor Strikes Again

BARON Falconer of Thoroton seemed to be on a mission to outdo himself in making contradictory pronouncements last week. On the distinct possibility of Scottish independence:

'I completely reject the argument that devolution has caused the current position.'

Isn't that rather like saying 'my contraction of HIV has nothing to do with the subsequent depletion of my white blood cells'?

Working Class 'Culture'

MARK Collins, a senior dog control officer in Wandsworth South-West London, tells of an enthralling pastime indulged in by locals:

'It happens in the lifts where they put two dogs in at the top floor, press the ground floor button, and leave the animals to fight it out. When the lift opens at the bottom, they see which has won.'

Ah, but you've got to love those cheeky tracksuit-clad chappies and their rougish ways. Not quite as senseless as the fabled slab attacks, but, still, pretty close.

No Wonder the NHS is in the Red

Link. THE disturbing thing is that this sort of preposterous disbursement doesn't even possess the power to shock any more; certainly it still stimulates tremendous anger and utter exasperation, but we're gradually becoming inured to the inept bureaucracy and gratuitous wastefulness that seemingly forms an integral part of this government's policy. In connection with this story a timely new series looking at ways to improve the management of the NHS and entitled Can Gerry Robinson Fix the NHS? begins this evening on BBC2 and may prove interesting viewing.