DUFF & NONSENSE!

Incredible, I know, but I actually feel sorry for Theresa May

It's not often I feel sorry for politicians, least of all those as obviously useless as Theresa May, our 'not-fit-for-purpose' Home Secretary in charge of, but not in command of, our equally 'not-fit-for-purpose' Home Office.  However, the current imbroglio over the deportation, or not, of 'Abra Cadabra', or whatever his wretched name is, has arisen over a very easily made error by one of Mrs. May's lawyers not by her.  Be honest, did you know or remember that it was a Leap Year this year?  I had forgotten, and obviously so had the legal not-very-smarty-pants lawyer who acted on Mrs. May's behalf.  She, to her credit, has done the proper thing and refused to blame her officials (in public, anyway, but what was said in private is probably unpublishable!) and in parliament she accepted full responsibility.  'The law is an ass', as we all know, but it would be a pleasant surprise if the judges concerned, who must see the confusion was a tiny and very understandable human error, acted with commonsense and allowed the deportation to ensue.  Unfortunately, these are foreign judges and one must assume that most of them have a deep and abiding animus against this country for a whole list of historical wrongs supposedly inflicted on them by us and will thus enjoy every moment of tweaking HMG by the nose.  It simply leaves me wondering why the idiots in Westminster ever allowed such people to hold sway over our own home-grown 'Cocklecarrots' who, whilst equally dopey at times, are at least part of us!

 

Should foreigners be allowed to sue HMG?

I ask the question in the light of today's controversy over the Libyan who was, apparently, handed over to the former Libyan government where he was maltreated.  He is now suing Jack Straw and planning to sue Tony Blair.  I, too, would dearly love to sue both of those 'gentlemen' not for the same reason as 'Ahab the Arab', or whatever he's called, but "I have a little list" ready and waiting if any of m'Learned Friends are interested on a 'no win no fee' basis!

But back to the main point, is it right that foreigners should be allowed to sue ministers or ex-ministers for actions taken when they were in government?  They say that diplomats are sent abroad to lie for their country and I think government ministers are appointed to be beastly to foreigners - as and when required by the interests of state.  To be honest, I am somewhat pressed for time this morning and I confess not to have thought this through in any detail but provided that no personal interest is involved and that a minister is acting solely for reasons of state then he or she should be immune from legal action in our courts.

Am I wrong?  Convince me!

(Sorry, still no sensible suggestions from TypePad so you will have to suffer with this miniscule font size for a little longer.)

(At last, it's fixed!)

 

Mad or bad?

The Breivik case in Norway resurrects some old questions like is he mad or is he bad?  I hesitate to enter the fray because it is a quagmire of language, meaning, pseudo-science, legalese and good, old-fashioned gut-feelings, still, let's give it a try.

I would start by accepting that insanity does exist.  If a man regularly dresses up as Napoleon and insists that everyone refer to him as 'Emperor' then he is insane, or demented, or irrational to the point where his actions are no longer his responsibility.  In other words, his conduct is not freely chosen from a list of alternatives, he is merely a puppet subject to the delusion with which he suffers.  Do you lock him up?  Well, I would suggest that it depends on whether his actions are likely to hurt him or others.

But if a man goes out and shoots dead 77 strangers, is he mad?  You might say that such behaviour is as demented and irrational as 'Napoleon', above.  But is it?  Lots of people for different reasons have gone out and killed strangers en masse.  We briefly considered Che Guevara yesterday and he was but a mere apprentice in the killing game.  The reason that lies behind their mass murdering activities is claimed to be politics, as though that made a difference!

Breivik uses politics as his excuse.  In doing so he exhibits rational, you might call it super-rational, thinking.  He views the world about him and comes to some conclusions which are not without foundation.  He thinks - and I stress the word deliberately - that his country in particular and Europe in general is under threat from an Islamist invasion.  You may disagree with him but it is not an irrational opinion because it can be backed up by facts and figures.  (That does not make it true, of course, because there will be contradictory facts and figures to take into account.  My point is that it indicates a thinking, rational man at work.)  He comes to the conclusion that an act of what I can only describe as "shock 'n' awe" is required in order to bring about a radical shift in political opinion and activity.  Again, in political circles that is hardly an original strategy!

One other thing must be borne in mind when pondering these difficulties.  I am happy to state with complete conviction that the vast majority of psychiatry is pseudo-science.  Psychology, as a description of general human behaviour has merit - but only applies in the general and hardly ever in the particular.  The fact that these useless disciplines have maintained an influential grip on judges and juries is one of the more malignant characteristics of our current legal system.

In my view, Breivik is bad not mad and should be 'hung by the neck until he be dead' to use an old phrase I would dearly love to see return.

 

I'm not saying I feel sorry for politicians but . . .

I didn't want to drone on yet again on the subject of security measures versus individual liberty, really I didn't, so I blame that Lord Carlile!  Lord who? I hear you mutter! No, I hadn't heard of him either until I saw him on Sky News this morning.  He is, I suggest, a perfect example of the exception that does not disprove the general rule.  That rule, I sh0uld make clear, is the one that states that all Lib-Dems are brain-dead plankton!  On the basis of a three or four minute interview - oh yes, it doesn't take an old hand  like me long to judge the cut of a fella's jib (whatever a 'jib' is) - I would say that Lord Carlile, a Lib-Dem, himself, has more brain cells in his toes than Cameron and Clegg together have in their silly noodles.

No-one knows what the government have in mind (assuming that they actually possess one) in regard to secret intelligence being used in trials of suspected terrorists because they haven't bothered to tell us, thus allowing the media to run wild with this or that speculation.  However, as Carlile pointed out, there is a real problem to be solved.  Suppose you have a terrorist gang coming up in court accused of plotting an atrocity.  There are two main reasons why you have been able to catch them.  The first is that you have a source who is part of the community from which they are recruited.  He has risked his life to provide you with the information.  Also, he has the connections to possibly provide you with further information on another gang.  Secondly, having broken their codes you have signals intercepts to a foreign power who is helping the gang in their planning.  Other than that , you have nothing because as yet they have not broken the law or at least, you can't prove they have.

The question is simple but deadly.  Do you blow your sources to prove their guilt or not?  If you do not, they will go free and probably sue the government (in effect, you and me) for huge amounts of compensation.  You cannot even disclose the sources of information to the defence team because they will not necessarily be trust-worthy.

So there's the problem - and the answer is  . . . ?

In the meantime, I am starting a 'Carlile for Prime Minister' campaign!

 

Monitor me and die of boredom, why don't you?!

Further to my preceding post on government monitoring of all electronic communications and to the gasps of Shlock-Horror from the usual liberal hypocrites who love using governmental powers to beat you up if you break one of their beloved shibboleths on race or colour, forgive me if I yawn!  Acording to them it was going to be the culmination of George Orwell's prophecies when camerers were placed in public places but the only result has been an increase in police arrests following outbreaks of public disorder or criminality.  So what's not to like about that?

The same applies to monitoring communications but if you don't like the idea of your late night, computer visits to 'Pussy Galore's Delights' then don't go there.  Or, if you really cannot resist the urge, then keep going happy in the knowledge that your infinitesimally tiny number of electronic bytes will be the equivalent of four snowflakes in Russia in the winter.  Unless, of course, one of Pussy Galore's 'gels' gets bumped off suddenly, in which case the plod will be quickly at your door - and quite right, too!  And if that's embarrassing, well, tough!

That, of course, is a trivial possibility compared to the all too real dangers and potential tragedies that are being plotted even as I write.  I would rather risk losing my dignity by being exposed as 'Pussy Galore's oldest customer, in all senses of the word, than have bits blown off me in a tube train.  In fact, I would prefer it to reading about other people having bits blown off them, too.  And I would remind so-called liberals that semtex is soooo 20th century now!  In the future, the weapon-of-choice for your urban terrorist is likely to be infinitely more serious and far-reaching in its consequences than anything we have seen so far.

Yes, of course, no-one trusts governments but all that is needed are some simple and effective safeguards.  For instance (and I don't suppose this is comprehensive), the legislation should make it crystal clear as to which suspected crimes and misdemeanours would allow a person's electronic records to be investigated.  Inside the security agencies, only specific and senior officers should be able to give consent to such investigations and they should be warned that they personally will be held legally accountable for their decisions.  In other words, no more hiding behind a minister who, we all know, hasn't a clue!  At this stage, we are dealing with intelligence matters rather than legal ones and so the basis for proceding with an investigation should be 'reasonable suspicion', not 'reasonable proof'.  Obviously, any unauthorised investigation, or release of information, not concerned with the sort of matters covered under the Act would be a criminal offence with severe penalties.

Over 3,000 people were slaughtered on 9/11 and many more injured.  I am not being flippant when I suggest that "you ain't seen nuthin' yet"!

 

Colourful legal quibbles

As usual I find myself in a state of confusion over the law and its ramifications, particularly the law regarding the use of racial epithets.  For example, if I call a Negro ‘a black bastard’ am I likely to be charged with using the word ‘black’, a specific and impeccably accurate adjective; or for saying ‘bastard’, a term of insult and abuse?  I can see no harm in the former which is merely descriptive but, if said loudly in a public place, even in this day and age, such a mild epithet might cause someone somewhere to be offended.  (Of course, if in fact it does turn out that the target of my language actually is a bastard, then how does the law stand then?  All I have done is tell the truth!)

I gather also from the media that a young man has been sentenced to 56 days in jail for using racial abuse in a series of ‘tweets’.  In other words, they were not said face-to-face and therefore were unlikely to cause a breach of the peace, although given the state of British streets on a Friday and Saturday night another breach of the peace is unlikely to register on the police radar!  I thought Kenneth Clarke had laid down that prison sentences were to be confined to hardened criminals only, so why a twit of a ‘tweeter’ should end up being housed and fed at my expense I do not know, particularly when the number of burglars getting off scot free so-called ‘Community Service Orders’ is steadily rising.

Finally, we have the brave Guardian publishing the recorded comments of a copper allegedly using ‘racist language’ to a young man he was arresting.  This was reported at the time and all the facts were studied by the Crown Prosecution Service and the Independent Police Complaints Authority who decided that no prosecution was warranted.  Now, however, The Guardian is bellowing from the rooftops and every black loudmouth in the land is on TV demanding a trial.  If it turns out that one or both of the authorities change their minds, not on the grounds that fresh evidence has arisen but because they are under public pressure, how can a judge do anything other than throw the case out?  Unless of course, the authorities, to use the current jargon, ‘name and shame’ – and fire – the officials within their bounds who made the mistake.  Do not hold your breath!

"Stand your ground!" Love it - only in America!

I really do love American English.  They seem to encapsulate quite complex matters in one neat phrase.  "Stand your ground" is a perfect example.  For those Brits and Euros not familiar with it, let me explain that it has suddenly hit the headlines 'over there' following the shooting to death of a young black man by an armed community cop.  The proper local police investigated the matter and decided that the community cop had no case to answer on the grounds of the fairly recent "Stand your ground" law enacted in Florida and other States.  Needless to say, like just about every law ever written it is mired in a mixture of myth and half-knowledge and misinterpretation. which, of course, instantly confuses the peanut brains in your average news-room!  Over at The Cato @ Liberty site, Walter Olsen explains with great clarity the finer points of this law:

Let’s start with one of the most common misreadings of the law, namely that (in the words of Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne) it sets out a rule of “Feel threatened, just shoot.” Florida law justifies lethal self-defense in a public place only under reasonable belief that force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm.

Belief that’s not reasonable is of no account. No wonder, according to Sentinel reporting, Central Florida police regularly arrest people who try to claim self-defense after committing violent acts, and courts regularly convict them. That’s consistent with the “stand your ground” law.

The best-known provision of “stand your ground” rejects the so-called “duty to retreat.” Under that rule, prosecutors could sometimes overcome an otherwise valid claim of self-defense by arguing that you could have safely fled your attacker.

But — to clear up another misconception — the old duty of retreat would not have put Zimmerman at fault for following Trayvon around the neighborhood. Instead it came into play only when a confrontation had boiled up to a point of imminent violence.

The defence rests, m'Lud!

 Thanks again to Cafe Hyek

 

Theodore Dalrymple tells it the way it is

By and large, if you are of a tender, delicate disposition, I would advise against reading Theodore Dalrymple.  Shades are lifted to let in the light, blinkers are removed and in a perfectly polite but relentless way he calls a spade a bloody shovel!  The main target of his brutal honesty recently was some twerp called China Miéville, a 'novelist' - and, no, I haven't read him either, nor indeed have I ever heard of him.  Apparently he is leading light amongst Left-wing, er, 'intellectual' circles.  He is quoted by Dalrymple on the City-Journal site as saying:

“Oh, London, You Drama Queen,” novelist China Miéville writes: “The aftermath [of the recent riots] was one of panicked reaction. Courts became runnels for judicial cruelty, dispensing sentences vastly more severe than anything usual for similar crimes.”

In one brief salvo, Dalrymple sinks him:

This is the statement of a typical intellectual whose indifference to the actual lives of the urban poor masquerades as compassion for them. Miéville fails to mention that most of the sentences handed down were for people with criminal records, no doubt in many cases long ones. The real judicial cruelty—not to the criminals but to their victims—was the leniency before the riots that gave the rioters a hitherto justified sense of impunity.

Aided and abetted by our benign and utterly useless Minister for non-Justice, Ken Clarke, who will do almost anything to avoid actually jailing anyone for anything.  Dalrymple offers some facts and figures which seem hardly to have impinged on Clarke, probably because the chances of him ever being knifed or burgled are vanishingly tiny, not least because of his constant police protection:

Some figures: in 2011, there were 12,699 knife attacks in London known to the police (up 13.6 percent from the previous year); 58,160 burglaries (up 8.8 percent); and 68,754 street robberies (up 13 percent). The average national detection rate for burglaries is about one in 12, though even this is an overstatement, due to police manipulation of the figures. Approximately 800,000 domestic burglaries took place in Great Britain in 2009; this means that some 67,000 were detected by the police. In that same year, 6,136 people went to prison in Great Britain for burglary (for an average of 17 months each). Considering the 800,000 burglaries annually, a domestic burglary attracts on average four days’ imprisonment: hardly indicative of judicial ferocity, and not much of a deterrent to burglary.

This very morning my breakfast was ruined by the sight of the plump, smug features of Ken Clarke on my TV telling us all what a wonderful world it will be when the very latest technology in satellite-monitored bracelets will mean that criminals on so-called Community Service Orders can be closely controlled.  I give the 'latest technology' about three months before the scallywags have found a way round it.

 

 

If the not-very-reverend Al Sharpton is involved - it's BS!

'Fun and games' of an exceedingly tricky nature are going on 'over there' following the shooting of a black youth by some sort of semi-official policeman, a sort of community cop, I gather.  I haven't followed the story in great detail because the minute the Rev'd(?) Al Sharpton put in an appearance I knew that it would all degenerate into a PR blizzard in which the truth would end up 'deader than the kid'!  Needless to say, the Great American Public, for whom I am beginning to feel an increasing sense of sympathy, have been wickedly served by their so-called 'free press'.  Here is a prize example, via those watchful critters at IHTM (God bless their smelly socks!), who pointed me to the Riehl World View which ran this story:

Among a few interesting items uncovered in trying to examine the facts behind the shooting of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin without drawing any conclusions, was that a widely viewed photograph of Martin appears to have been altered, somewhat.

Here is the original photo:

Not a good image, is it?  I mean, you would be quite right to avoid going down a dark alley with a 'youf' who looked like that.  However, appearance is not proof of guilt or innocence.  Appearance is just that, appearance, and no more.  However, that was not good enough for the picture editors of the MSM who had to - how shall we put it? - lighten the image up a bit!  This is the picture that appeared in the papers:

Now, that's more like it.  Looks like a proper boy scout, doesn't he?  But, of course, I say and stress again, looks do not prove guilt or innocence.  Or do they?  I mean, why would the MSM go to all that trouble to alter a photo if it wasn't important?  Dan Riehl ends his story with two cryptic sentences:

However, [the confusions in the story] did not stop Barack Obama from weighing in, claiming if he had a son, it would look like Trayvon Martin. That may depend on what photo of him he's seen, of course.

The whole tragic incident is sounding like a plot line from a Tom Wolfe novel.

What you get in the most gun-restricted city in America ...

. . . are lots and lots of gun-shot murder victims.  Like last Saturday night/Sunday morning, for example, as reported by the Chicago Tribune:

Five people were killed and at least 12 other people wounded in shootings Saturday night and Sunday morning across the city. 

Well, as dear old Frankie told us so memorably:

On State Street, that great street I just wanna say
They do things they don't do on Broadway

Things like:

Police were questioning two suspects after Deering District officers were able to chase down the occupants of a car who fired on three people, killing a 24-year-old man, about 1:50 a.m. on the 5300 block of South Loomis Boulevard in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. The 24-year-old who died was shot multiple times and taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was declared dead.

It is worth noting that back in the '30s the "Back of the Yards" district was 'organised' by that ultra-Marxist 'organiser', Saul Alinsky, a role-model hero to that later Chicagoan 'organiser, 'Comrade' Obama!  But let us continue our lively tour of Chicago, er, hotspots that flourish under a regime that resolutely refuses to allow its own citizens the means to defend themselves:

The evening attacks follow the fatal shooting of a 6-year-old girl and the wounding of four other people in Chicago within an hour Saturday afternoon, and 16 shootings, including the slaying of a 42-year-old man, overnight Friday and early Saturday morning. [...]

A 36-year-old man was killed on the 7500 block of South Wolcott Avenue in the Gresham neighborhood about 1:20 a.m., police said. He was at a party on the block, in a back yard, when someone drove by and opened fire, police said. [...]

A 24-year-old man was found dead in a car at the University of Chicago Medical Center about 10:30 p.m., according to authorities. He's believed to have been shot in the back in the 6300 block of South Ellis Avenue in the Woodlawn neighborhood

And so, on and on ad nauseum.  Even the WaPo in an editorial recognises the wickedness of a situation in which the hoodlums can carry guns and the private citizen cannot:

Illinois has the worst gun laws of any state. Only police officers and the taxpayer-funded bodyguards for ex-Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley have the right to carry a handgun outside their homes. Everyone else is out of luck.

And it's not as though the evidence isn't all around them:

[S]tates with generous concealed-carry provisions are safe places to be. The wild-west shootouts that the gun grabbers predicted have never materialized. In the 23 years since Florida began allowing concealed carry, 1,976,774 permits have been issued. A mere 0.008 percent of permit holders have been nabbed for using a gun in the commission of a crime. As gun ownership soars to an all-time high, the crime rate continues to plunge.

My only question, which is not solely directed at my e-pal, regular commenter and proud Chicagoan, Hank, is why on earth do the people of Chicago keep voting these corrupt jerks into office?  And whilst I hardly dare raise a whisper of criticism against the greatest singer of them all, I really don't think Frankie told the whole story:

Bet your bottom dollar
You'll lose the blues In Chicago

I suspect you stand to lose a lot more than just the blues on a Saturday night in Chicago!

 

I just don't know what London's coming to!

What in hell's name is going on in our capital city?  I ask because of this report of an incident near the churchyard of St. Paul's:

"Suddenly there is a great commotion near the market.  'Repent, England!' yells a man at the top of his voice.  He is dressed in black, handingout printed leaflets as he stridea along. 'Repent!' he shouts again and again, 'Christ Jesus is come with his fan in his hand to judge the earth!'  This man is no mean fool; he is a prosperous London citizen, Mr. Edmund Coppinger.  Another gentleman, also dressed in black, is following him, striding down the alley called Old Chamge in Cheapside.  He too calls out, declaring that 'Judgment Day has come upon us all!  Men will rise up and kill each other as butchers do swine, for the Lord Jesus has risen'.  The printed bills they hand out declare that they are intent on a complete reformation of the Church of England."

Well, I know the Archbishop of Canterbury has just handed in his notice and that there is likely to be a fierce competition for the job but this is going too far:

"For the illiterate majority in the crowd, they call out their message: 'The bishops must be put down!  All clergymen should be equal!  Queen Elizabeth has forfeited her crown and is worthy to be deprived of her kingdom.  Jesus Christ has come again.  The reborn Messiah is even now in London in the form of William Hacket.  Every man and woman should acknowledge him as a divine being and lord of all Christendom.'"

Of course, the whole thing is a con trick in the worst possible taste and everyone knows where these tricksters live so even the London 'plod' can find them and they are soon arrested.  From now on you will realise, in the unlikely event that you have not already guessed, that this is the London of yesteryear.  So you will not be surprised to discover that, instead of being given as is the process today, the services of a barrister free of charge, the ministrations of a psychiatrist, the tender care of a trauma counsellor and the possibility (at the most) of four weeks community service, they are charged with high treason and sentenced to death.  On 28th July [1591], Hacket is:

 "dragged on a hurdle to the gallows, hanged whilst he spits abuse at the hangman, then cut down and beheaded and butchered in the traditional manner, his headless body being cut into four parts, each with a limb attached.  Mr. Coppinger dies in prison: the authorities claim he starved himself to death. ['Yeah, yeah, sort of like, well, he fell down the prison stairs trying to escape, know wot I mean, m' Lud?']  Mr. Arthington enlists the support of powerful friends on the privy council and thereby saves his life, publishing his renunciation of all the things he has said as part of his penance."

All of this is to be found on the first two pages of the Introduction to Ian Mortimer's absolutely marvellous book, The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England.  Er, actually, I have only read the first two pages before I rushed upstairs to tell you lot all about it so I really have no solid grounds for telling you that it is a terrific book - but it is - so there!  Go buy it - now!

 

Rape stats and tractor stats!

I have just caught a news item on Sky News telling us all, yawn, that yet another 'survey', bigger yawn, has concluded that 10% of women are raped, a jaw-breaker yawn!  This total waste of oxygen and effort comes to us via the good offices of some outfit calling itself Mumsnet - yeeees, quite!  I suppose I had better make clear immediately, before a flock of harridans attacks me, that my sympathy for women who have genuinely been raped in the old-fashioned sense of the word, that is, sexually assaulted against their will with violence or the threat of violence, is considerable.  I use that word rather than total because I suspect that in some rape cases, even under my definition, there are complicated circumstances which would give one pause for thought.

However, I tend to treat these never-ending 'surveys' of rape stats with the same degree of scepticism as I treat similar 'surveys' in the, er, raunchier types of men's magazines which aim to tell us how many women the average man has slept with before the age of 40.  The fact of the matter is that we all know, do we not, chaps?, that the only certainty is that men always, but always, lie about their sexual prowess.  Also, I am not at all sure what Mumsnet defines as rape and sexual assault.  I suspect that if they actually have a definition it is rather loose, in fact so loose that it is possible that 'back in the day' my furtive fumblings might have made me guilty, too, m'Lud! 

IRONY ALERT!  And this one is delicious.  Further doubts might arise from the Mumsnet survey when The Daily Mail reports the following:

[T]he founders of Mumsnet are facing a rather delicate problem after their well-educated members began using the parenting website to exchange information on rather spicier activities.

Justine Roberts and Carrie Longton have been forced to delete dozens of highly explicit messages posted on the discussion boards after they were deemed pornographic.

But many of the explicit online conversations between the middle- class mothers remain, with new messages being posted daily. Editors at Mumsnet's headquarters in Kentish Town, North London, appear to have abandoned efforts to stop many of the X-rated discussions.

By Jove, a jolly lot these Mumsnet gals, what?  Ding-dong!

Needless to say, all these so-called 'surveys', far from clarifying a problem simply obfuscate it.  It is significant that the ladies of Mumsnet describe their 'survey' as "Our new campaign"!  (My emphasis) Oh, I see, just another bunch of axe-grinders, then.  And theyhave given their 'campaign' a rather twee name - "We Believe You" - which means in my book that you can safely reduce their figures by 90%.

 

The dictator is dictated to!

There is nothing quite so amusing as when organisers of events which are almost entirely inconsequential start to take themselves seriously.  Thus it is with the Oscars.  The mere fact that the organisers entitle themselves as The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences - my dear, an academy, no less - is enough to set off the giggles.  Very quickly it provides a sitting duck target for the likes of Sacha Baron Cohen who can spot over-inflated pomposity at a hundred paces.  He has just completed a picture called The Dictator and 'The Acadamy' have graciously granted him and his company tickets to attend the Oscar ceremony, but, only on condition that he does not make use of the obligatory red carpet along which all the stars strut their stuff for the purposes of publicity. Publicity?!  Movies?!  Hollywood?! Perish the thought!

 

According to Hollywood Deadline:

The Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has pulled actor Sacha Baron Cohen‘s tickets from the 84th Academy Awards. This means he is banned from attending the Oscars even though he is an Academy member and one of the stars from Hugo, Paramount’s 11-nominated movie and Best Picture contender. “Unless they’re assured that nothing entertaining is going to happen on the Red Carpet, the Academy is not admitting Sacha Baron Cohen to the show,”  Paramount just told me. The reason is that a proposal reached the Academy for Baron Cohen to strut the Red Carpet in full costume as his title character in the upcoming Paramount comedy

Despite all the shrewd, keen insight one automatically attaches to The Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, it is obvious that Cohen has already won hands down:

Of course, the next best thing to that publicity stunt is all the media coverage which this ban is going to generate for Baron Cohen’s film. So the Academy has decided to act like dictators about the actor playing The Dictator.

Doncha' just lurve show business?

 

This Blog is a gloat-free zone!

And that is an order!

Look, I told you, absolutely no gloating is allowed! This Blog prides itself on its high-minded sense of British fair play in which a lesbian-straightener distinguished politician of the very highest moral rectitude is always considered innocent until proven guilty.  The sight of this poor man being hauled in front of the 'Cocklecarrots' to stand side-by-side in the dock with the ex-wife who grassed him up inadvertently let slip some information, which has been wildly taken out of context, is no cause for celebration and if I could only get the cork back in this bottle of 'champers', I would.  To indulge in gloating and celebration over a fallen politician is demeaning to the gloater and indicates a small, cramped and mean-minded personality.  (Oh, alright, if the cork's out I'll just have a couple of glasses!)

 

"The Sun - We Love It!"

Well, actually, I don't except in an abstract sense - you know, it's like fancying the obviously naughty bit of stuff across the road but you wouldn't want to be caught 'bang to rights' with her!  Anyway, The Sun is in big trouble and today Trevor Kavanagh unleashes a counter-attack at the political class and their glove-puppets, 'Her Majesty's Plod', who seem to be adopting the procedures of the KGB or the Gestapo as they go about their business.  For example is it really necessary as Kavanagh describes that they raid houses at 4.00 am and that:

Wives and children have been humiliated as up to 20 officers at a time rip up floorboards and sift through intimate possessions, love letters and entirely private documents.

What is their alleged crime?  Possibly, because no-one has been charged as yet, bunging government employees a few quid, or offering them slap-up dinners at the best restaurants in town, in order to get hold of information.  Not, I stress, information likely to endanger the state but almost certainly information likely to be embarrassing for the political classes who rule over us.  To call this 'bribery' is to 'gang-bang' yet another word out of all meaning.  Just pause and remember some of the scandals that the hacks have exposed over the years including the juiciest of them all, MPs' expenses which was obtained by buying stolen documents.   

Given the combined weight of police activity aimed at curtailing press activity - there are three separate investigations under way with 171 officers employed, some of them having been taken of major crimes and security investigations - you would expect (if you were dumb enough) for the 'liberal' press to come out with a screech of protest.  Instead, all The Guardian can raise is a little whimper in the form of a 'on the one hand' and 'on the other hand' editorial which is as utterly pathetic as it is predictable.

Whether you read it or not, if 'the authorities' are successful and The Sun is castrated we will all end up squeaking in high pitched voices!

 

Bad news for lawyers so good for us - er, I think!

A somewhat esoteric subject arose in Der Spiegel which reported on a legal case brought by descendants of Italian citizens massacred by German troops in 1944.  The case was joined by similar litigants from a small town in Greece where a similar atrocity took place.  In both cases the claim for reparations was pursued by individuals not by their national governments.  The highest Italian court judged in favour of the litigants and allowed them to pursue a policy in which German-owned property in Italy could be seized and sold if the German government refused to pay up.  The case went higher, to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which on Friday pronounced in favour of sovereign governments and against individuals.  In effect, what they said was that whilst one government can sue another, individuals may not.  To be honest, I'm not sure what to make of this.  On the one hand, I am always and forever anti-governments; on the other hand, I am sick and tired of foreigners suing my government - or me, as I like to think of it when it comes to shelling out money!  If any of my readers have a view I would be interested to hear it.

Hurrah - a double-bubble celebration day today!

First, and far and away the most important reason (he added quickly) for celebration is that today is the 'Memsahib's brithday.  All sorts of events will now ensue - fireworks, a coachride through the village so that the locals may show their appreciation, a masqued ball tonight in the Townhall - that sort of thing, or perhaps just dinner for two at our favourite local restaurant.  Of course, nothing would force me to divulge her age - well, a few Harry Redknapp readies in a Monaco bank might do the trick - so suffice to say that thanks to years of tender loving care from me she has aged elegantly and well.

But secondly, to add to the joyous tone of today's celebrations, we have the heart-warming news that the 'Lesbian-straightener' has been nicked!  The 'honourable' member for Eastleigh, Mr. Chris Huhne, has been charged with perverting (no,no, not that - behave yourselves!) the course of justice.  Oh dear what a pity never mind!  Yes, I do realise that indulging in schadenfreude indicates a small, nasty, mean-spirited mind - guilty as charged m'Lud, now pass the champagne and make mine a large one!  Alas, his ex-wife, who I believe was the one who blew the gaff, has also been charged which is very silly when what she deserves is a seat in the Lords!

I have it on very good authority that 'Big Bubba' in D-wing is very excited at forthcoming prospects!

 

The answer to my question is - YES!

Some time ago I asked if David Ruffley MP was the most pig-ignorant MP in the Commons and today I have my answer - a resounding YES!  I happened to catch a fragment of Sky News in which some loud-mouthed oik was haranguing poor old Alistair Darling who is, whatever other faults he might have, always quiet and reasonable in his tone.  However, that did not stop the mouthy yob facing him who appeared to be the amalgam of all the Saloon Bar 'know-it-alls' you could ever wish to avoid.  "Is he that shit-for-brains MP I once wrote about?" I wondered just as a sub-title came up telling me that it was indeed Mr. David Ruffley MP for Bury St. Edmonds which should change its name as rapidly as possible to 'Bury David Ruffley'!

Oddly enough, I was intending to write a post today pointing out what a deeply nauseous experience it is watching and listening to MPs howling after Sir Fred Goodwin and now cheering because his knighthood has been removed - which is why I shall continue to give him his title.  Has Sir Fred committed a grave crime?  Fiddled the books at his old bank, perhaps?  Given his PA a seeing-to over a ministerial desk as some of our, er, 'Honourable Members' are prone to do?  No, all he did was what vitually all bankers were doing in the 'naughties' only he did it bigger and when his bank went broke it went broke with a louder bang.  And what was Mr. Ruffley doing whilst this was going on?  Well, apparently he was trying to top himself by jumping under a train possibly because of his conscience - do stop giggling! - over his exorbitant expense claims.  Or, possibly he knew the crash was coming and thought he'd end it all!  I don't know but what I do know is that, incompetent even in self-destruction, this buffoon missed both the train and the live wire.

Alistair Darling, having some regard for natural justice, entirely missing from Mr. Ruffley's legal experience - well why not, he's only an ex-solicitor after all - was pointing out the dangers of picking and punishing one man for a misdemeanor of which many were guilty.  I would also suggest that David 'when's the 6.49 due in' Ruffley also takes a look in the House of Lords and checks to see how many Lords and Ladies there are with criminal records but still on the public payroll?

Finally, one is reluctantly forced to ask the question as to exactly how stupid are the voters of Bury St. Edmonds?  I realise that one's suspicions are raised on account of how very much they all resemble each other but surely they still retain their sense of smell!

Ne dites pas, "Non, ce n'est jamais arrivé".

Not bad my French considering that I had to take two goes to pass my 'O'-level.  Oh, alright, yes, I did have just a little help from mon ami, 'M. Google Translate'.  Anyway, the point of this (fairly useless) post is to ponder on the decision by the French Senate to ban the denial of genocide in general, and in particular, the genocide allegedly inflicted on the Armenians by the Turks in 1915.  I use the word "allegedly" for the simple reason that I have no idea whether or not the Turks are (or were) guilty of what is a crime under international law.  Commonsense (never a totally reliable indicator, particularly mine) indicates that a great number of Armenians perished at the hands of the Turks but whether it amounts to 'genocide' is quite beyond my pay grade, and indeed, my knowledge, to decide.  It sounds to me like the sort of squabble likely to keep lawyers busy for years, and international lawyers for decades, if not lifetimes!

So, setting aside guilt or innocence (and thus risking a hefty fine and/or imprisonment were I to say this in France), I would like to dwell on the sort of people and their mind-set that allows them to insist that other people say or unsay things.  It is a peculiarity mostly confined to those of a political persuasion and not necessarily full-time politicans only, but also the myrid bottom-feeders who swim round the arsehole of parliamentarians and nibble away at them until they take on board the message of the day.  Nor, of course, is it confined to our French neighbours.  I am still waiting in trembling fear for a knock on my door at 3.00 am because I have twice referred to Ms. Diane Abbot MP as a "fat, black clown" - and when it comes, I don't think it will be at the behest of the United Union of Clowns who are so useless that they can never carry a pail of water ten feet!

What these 'denialist deniers' fail to understand is that simply banning people from saying what they think or believe does not somehow make the beliefs go away.  In fact, I suspect that it has just the opposite effect of making the gagged believe all the more strongly that they are onto 'The Truth'.  It must be true, they say to themselves, quietly, under their breath, because otherwise why would the authorities make such an effort to silence them?  And because they have been silenced there is now no opportunity to bring to their attention certain established facts which might change their minds.  I mean, personally, I am more than willing to listen to arguments attempting to convince me that Ms. Abbot is, in fact, not fat, not black and not a clown!

 

'KILL A KID - OR - 2 FOR THE PRICE OF 1!'

Not a very nice title, is it?  Not exactly tasteful or discreet.  Not something you would want to flash in front of your vicar or your grandmother.  But I'm just trying to get you all used to the idea now 'They' - yes, those mysterious 'They' who decide things without asking us - have allowed abortion factories to advertise their killing skills on our TVs.  So warn Granny, or your young teen-age daughter, as she watches her favourite chat show that when these ads come on, in between the double-glazing offers and the cut-price sofas, she will be able to compare and contrast the various offers, and decide on exactly how skilfull the 'providers' are at gripping, twisting, pulling and tugging the various bits of a baby out of a woman's womb.

Of course, they won't put it like that, oh dear me, no.  There will probably be some soft music, a long view over the English countryside and one of those actresses speaking very slowly with a truly rich, melodious voice assuring you of absolute privacy, comfort and tender loving care as 'you kill your baby adjust your life-style priorities', or something like that.

In fact, having thought about it, there is another reason not to let Granny see any of those ads because it might occur to her that now that killing babies is no longer frowned upon, it can only be a matter of time before there will be companies advertising their skills at 'offing the elderly'!

 

56–58 Am Großen Wannsee, Berlin

Last Friday, as Der Spiegel reminds me, was the 70th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference and if there is a God one would have prayed that he might have arranged a Lancaster-load of bombs to fall on that elegant villa on the 20th January 1942.  On that day, 70 years ago a collection of fanatics, intellectuals, security policemen and bureaucrats met to take the Final Decision.  There was nothing special about the meeting, it only lasted around 2 hours, and for most of the participants it was but one more meeting in a constant schedule of meetings.  The result, of course, was horrific almost beyond description.  However, it is worth emphasizing because it seems to have been forgotten, or perhaps 'buried' is a better word, that it was not the first such decision of that sort and the results, compared to other efforts in mass extermination both before and after, were paltry by comparison.  It is appropriate, and admirable, that the Germans represented by their President, remembered the anniversary.  However, if you are waiting for Russia or China to commemorate their monstrous acts of human extinction, please do not hold your breath, it could endanger your health!

Incidentally, anyone wishing to see a depiction of the conference should treat themselves to a DVD of Conspiracy, a film of the event starring Kenneth Branagh and Stanley Tucci amongst many other very fine actors.  It is a great example of art and artifice telling truth.

 

J. Edgar Hoover: man or monster?

Clint Eastwood's film, J. Edgar, provides an opportunity, or at least a nudge, that it is perhaps time to try and judge the man fairly.  His reputation has taken some 30-odd years of calumny either by direct (and usually false) accusation or by sly hints and nudges until today he is considered to be a monster.  I have no particular view simply because I know little or nothing of the man but I do recognise a witch hunt when it is in full cry!  John Preston in yesterday's Telegraph puts up, if not a stout defence of the man, at least a plea for a fair and factual weighing of the pros and cons of his life.  Like all men, Hoover had his faults, and the 'Big Men' of any age tend to have virtues and vices to match - think Churchill, Roosevelt, and so on.  However, as Preston points out, one thing cannot be gainsayed, Hoover turned the original FBI from a gang of incompetent, corrupt rascals into a superb police force and in doing so insisted on a scientific approach to crime-fighting.  The FBI were the first to have a national fingerprint database and Hoover encouraged his newly formed forensic department to investigate the possible uses of blood type and handwriting analysis as well as wire-tapping techniques.  Undoubtedly he stayed in office for too long and thus his individual enemies became over time battalions.  Still, to be attacked by both Richard Nixon and Harry Reid is, I feel, no mean achievement!

 

The Lesbian-straightener might get a lesson in going straight!

One of the 'il-Lib-non-Dem' cabinet ministers who, er, stands straight and true and is a hero to us heterosexuals is, of course, Chris Huhne.  As I have told you before, his good works amongst the lesbian community has resulted in at least one poor confused woman being led back to the manifold delights offered by chaps.  Of course, it is a pity that his missus, hitherto the grateful recipient of 'Hot Dog' Huhne's undoubted libido, was rather muffed miffed when she found out and instead of agreeing to join the party - no, no, not the 'il-Lib-non-Dems', do pay attention! - instead she ratted him out to the 'Plods' by claiming that she took the penalty points he should have incurred whilst speeding dangerously in his car.  There is a totally unconfirmed rumour going about that the speed of the car gradually increased as he was explaining in some detail to her exactly where-in lay the pleasures of Sappho.

Vicky Pryce and her ex-husband the Energy Secretary Chris Huhne Photo: PA via The Telegraph

Anyway I remind you of all this rather stale tittle-tattle because the latest news is that The Times has withdrawn its objection to providing the 'Plod' with the e-mails in which, apparently, the ungrateful ex-Mrs. Huhne blew her master's cover story to smithereens!  Surely the so-called Director of Public Prosecutions-Provided-You-Are-Not-A-Cabinet-Minister can no longer continue the soft-shoe shuffle he has executed so brilliantly for so long and any minute now poor old Chris will have his collar felt and even - oh, say it ain't so! - face the rigours of 'D' Wing where-in, I am assured by commenters at Guido's place, 'Big Bubba' is waiting impatiently!

I am in London for most of the day tomorrow so whilst I'm away you can amuse yourselves, provided you are not easily shocked, by reading the suggestions to Guido's caption competition which this week features our hero.

 

Tinker, Tailor, Physicist, Chemist, Student . . .

I am obliged to Michael Ledeen of PJ Media and even more obliged to Potkin Azarmehr, a British-Iranian blogger, who is the source for this story even though it shows me up for the sort of idiot who jumps to conclusions without evidence. (Surely not, I hear you murmur – er, you did murmur, didn’t you?)  Alas, my guilt is all too clear because on the news of the murder of yet another Iranian physicist I assumed, along with the rest of the MSM, that those peerless, ruthless, super-efficient MOSSAD agents had been at work.  Well, to be fair, they might, but then again, they might not.

As Mr. Ledeen stresses:

Tehran is an armed camp.  There are security forces, check points, men with weapons and cell phones, and countless informers, all over the place.  If a citizen makes a phone call that is the least bit suspect to the regime, that citizen is located, on average, in less than half an hour, and sometimes in a few minutes.  Several Iranian officials and scientists involved in the nuclear project have been blown up in the last two years, and the killers have always gotten clean away.  Indeed, the latest assassins killed their man just a few feet from the headquarters buildings of the Intelligence Ministry.  That’s quite an accomplishment.  If agents of a foreign intelligence service are doing it, they’re better than Tom Cruise’s fictional operatives in the Mission: Impossible movies.

‘Titchy Tom’ better than the dreaded MOSSAD?  Oh no, tell me it ain’t so!

To be serious, when you think about it, and the fact that so far there have been no arrests in a city that is crawling with security police and their hundreds of informants, it is rather odd and stretches one’s credulity to think that MOSSAD can seemingly come and go and murder as they see fit.  But there are other oddities to this story, as Potkin Azarmehr points out in some detail.  The first victim:

Ali-Mohammadi was in fact a Quantum field theorist and elementary particle physicist. His academic achievements included some 53 research articles and numerous translations of text books like the Modern Quantum  Mechanics. He was NOT in any way related to the nuclear weapon or the nuclear power industry, nor was his name on any sanctions list. More importantly, he was an active supporter of the Green Movement. Ali Mohammadi actually actively encouraged and organised his students to take part in the post-‘election’ protests. He was one of the 240 university professors who publicly and openly expressed their support for Mir Hussein Moussavi, one of the main leaders of the Green Movement, now under house arrest with his wife.

He was also part of an international scientific group concerned with some obscure piece of physics which included scientists from Israel and whose meetings he attended regularly.  He seems, in retrospect, hardly likely to have been a member of Iran’s top secret nuclear bomb programme.

The second assassination victim was:

Majid Shahriari, again was a theoretical quantum physicist and not on any sanctions lists, although unlike Ali Mohammadi, he had no interest in politics and supported neither side during the post-election protests, but he too worked alongside other regional scientists on the SESAME project [the same international programme to which Ali-Mohammadi was a member.

He was killed in his car broad daylight in a crowded street by two men on a motor bike who attached a ‘sticky bomb’ to his driver’s door and then drove off, never to be seen again!  Interestingly, the authorities made no public appeal for witnesses.  On the very same day, another ‘assassination’ attempt was made but failed.  The ‘victim’ in this case was definitely attached to the Iranian nuclear programme but he survived unscathed.  The authorities said it was a bomb attack but his car only showed some bullet-holes.  A report on a quasi-government site giving somewhat contradictory reports was quickly removed.  According to Potkin Azarmehr:

It seems [this ‘victim’s] assassination was a fake and staged attempt to justify the Western/Mossad hit squad story to give it more credence.

The next victim might (or there again, might not) be a case of mistaken identity.  His name was Dariush Rezaee Nejad who was shot dead in front of his family and not only was he nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear efforts, he was actually a student studying for his MSc in electrical engineering.  A man with a very similar name is a nuclear physicist but he lived in an entirely different area of the city and anyway was out of the country when the shooting occurred.

The latest victim, according to Mr. Ledeen’s story was:

a chemist, not a physicist, and his main connection to the nuclear program was administrative, not technical:  he worked in the purchasing office for the Natanz operation.  He was important enough to have been interviewed by IAEA inspectors, and after his death, Iranian leaders alleged that the IAEA people had passed on classified information to the assassins.  But this isn’t very convincing; administrative officers are a dime a dozen, after all.  Blow up one, you get a dozen applicants for the position. More mysteries.

However, the cry through the ages reverberates once more – ‘It was the Jews wot dunnit!’  And yet . . . and yet . . . Iran produces not one jot, one tittle or even a tiny scintilla, of hard evidence to prove that the devilish cunning MOSSAD did the dirty deeds.  Of course, they might have done.  Because the fact is that no-one, as Mr. Ledeen is keen to stress, no-one has the slightest idea of who did it - and that includes me!

 

Make these men government advisers now!

Their expertise will be vital for the new HS2 (High Speed train) from London to somewhere called Birmingham which was announced with great pride by 'Dave' earlier this week.  However, I do feel that given your average government minister's inability to know which end of a spade is required to dig a hole they would profit from the expertise of these chaps who seem to know exactly how government projects work, er, or fail to work, perhaps!  As The Daily Mail reports it:

A persistent group of thieves went to extreme lengths to get their hands on extra cash - after digging a 100ft tunnel under a building to reach a cash machine.

The labour-intensive robbery saw the gang spend six months digging a passageway under a Blockbuster Video in Fallowfield, Manchester to get up underneath the cash machine.

Actually, they began their tunnel four years ago but it was discovered by some cable repairers and so the project was delayed - how often do we hear that from government ministers?  But, showing admirable perseverence, they came back to it later and kept on digging for six months.  Their profit for this work intensive exercise was - £6,000!  Assuming there were only four of them that works out about £62 a week!  Duh!  They would have earned four times that stacking shelves in Tesco's.

As of this moment I remain strictly neutral on this HS2 project.  All I know for certain is that you will not get me on it for gold sovereigns.  Hurtling along at 225 mph! on rails maintained by whatever semi-governmental organisation it is that gets sued so regularly following the many crashes that occur, and driven by some dozey train-driver with a hang-over from the previous night's union meeting, is not my idea of a fun away-day.  And anyway, who the hell wants to go to Birmingham? 

 

Why Ken Clarke is a tit!

I hesitate to call Ken Clarke a tit because, as you all know, I am rather fond of tits, but in his case I use the word as a derogatory term.  Quite apart from anything else, the time is long overdue for him to do the decent thing and join the 'il-Lib-non-Dems' since his Tory days have disappeared as his incipient senility has increased.  He is our so-called Justice Minister and as far as I can tell he wants to release as many prisoners as possible and instruct the 'Cocklecarrots' not to lock up any more than they absolutely have to.  The idiocy of this policy, or 'dereliction of duty' as I prefer to think of it, is obvious but it is useful to have some facts and figures backed by some keen intelligence on the subject.  Thus, I was pleased to read this piece by Charles Murray on The American Enterprise site:

He concentrates on violent crime as opposed to soft crime aimed at property.  The figures for property crime have dropped and almost certainly this has something to do with the hardening of security measures:

It’s impossible to steal most new cars this day because there is no way to get the engine started without the key. Hot-wiring is futile. Try to burgle a home in a neighborhood where homes have much worth stealing, and you’d better be prepared to get in and out before the high-tech security system brings the cops. If you’re in a commercial area, you’ve got omnipresent surveillance cameras to worry about along with the security systems.  The effect of these innovations on violent crime has been much spottier. Yes, it can be harder to rob a convenience store (robbery is classified as a violent crime), but for the most part, robbery, homicide, aggravated assault, and rape are not technically more difficult to commit than they used to be.

However, as Murray shows, the incidence of violent crime in the States has dropped like a stone as the number of prisoners has gone up:     

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, FBI Uniform Crime Reports. “Prisoners” refers to inmates of state and federal prisons and does not include persons in jail

When crime gets safer, crime goes up very quickly as a response. In the late 1950s, the “prison only makes people into smarter criminals”  school became dominant in criminal justice circles. By the early 1960s, imprisonment rates were plummeting. For that matter, even the raw number of prisoners fell.

From 1960 to the mid '90s, violent crime nearly quadrupled.  However, beginning around 1980 the imprisonment rate began to go up.  As always there was a time lag before more and more of the criminal fraternity began to realise that crime doesn't always pay but, as the message was received and experienced by more and more of them, the crime rate began to drop.  Murray refers to the “dirty 7 percent” of offenders who commit about 50 percent of all crime" and points out that a high percentage of them would have fallen foul of the 'new improved' sentencing policy and that their incarceration would have had a large effect on crime rates.  Murray finishes with this summary:

So how much of the reduction in violent crime was produced by increased incarceration? This kind of analysis doesn’t tell us. But neither am I sure that the armory of social science quantitative techniques adequately models what has gone on. Here is my simple-minded thought: Suppose we had maintained imprisonment for violent crime at the rate that applied in 1974. In that case, we would have had 276,769 state and federal prisoners in 2010 instead of the 1,518,104 we actually had. Suppose tomorrow we freed 1.2 million inmates from state and federal prisons. Do we really think violent crime would continue to drop at a somewhat slower pace?

In one sense, it is a silly question, as all counter-factuals must be. And I’m not saying that our current incarceration rates are appropriate. We may very well have been in a state of diminishing returns to incarceration for the last decade, as the experts DiIulio [an academic crimonologist] cites have argued. But I continue to harbor the belief that without the massive increases in incarceration after the mid 1970s, crime rates wouldn’t have turned around at all. Higher imprisonment was the necessary condition for 100 percent of the reduction in violent crime.

If anyone knows Ken Clarke, feel free to pass this on to him!

 

They're not all 'Cocklecarrots', thank God!

Some of my posts might lead you to suppose that this blog is 'Judge-ist'!  I admit that is true to a certain extent but I am always delighted to report on any exceptionally good examples of practice by our judiciary.  Thus, I would ask you all to pop over and read a report from 'Gildas the Monk' on the case of Stephen Neary and Hillingdon Council.  It is a long-ish tale but 'Brother Gildas' tells it well and I will not attempt to paraphrase it.  Also, it shines a searchlight into an area of the law which could entangle any of us all too easily!

http://www.annaraccoon.com/court-of-protection/hillingdon-dol-house/#comment-52195

 

Alan Turing: crushed by conformity

I have mentioned before the fact that that very nice old man, 'Rupe', sent me a devilish clever 'magi-recording-playback-thingie' which has only taken me several months to master.  Needless to say, having mastered it and recorded numerous items on it I hardly ever watch any of them!  It must drive poor rich old 'Rupe' potty.  However, today, having been robbed of watching an exciting 'footie' match between the two Manchester teams (and hoping thereby to see a full scale inter-Manchester riot to follow) because the ref sent off one of the players in the first ten minutes - pillock! - I decided to try and watch one of the programmes I had recorded.  I chose a 'dramatised documentary' by Channel4 on the life and early death of Alan Turing.  It is an irony of the gloomiest sort that the technology behind 'Rupe's 'magi-thingie' could be traced back, in whole or part, to the genius of Alan Turing, himself.

With countries as with people there are 'different strokes for different folks'.  Thus, in most countries of the world, if you step out of line they shoot you.  Here, in this "scepter'd Isle", we 'conform' you out of existence, and at no time did we do it better than the 1950s.  Honesty impels me to confess that, personally, looking back to the '50s and my teenage years, I think of it as almost a lost golden age of safety and security.  But then, I wasn't an outsider.  I was a conformist.  Turing's tale, which is too well known for me to retell here, shows what happened if you failed to conform.  No need for the lead-filled cosh, water-boarding, Gulags or any of that, just steady, constant, unrelenting pressure by the authorities - who never failed to call you 'Sir' - until you fell back into line.  This is what Turing suffered.  They crushed the spirit and then the genius and finally the life out of arguably the greatest British genius of the 20th century.

The film kept repeating that Turing was the man who did more than any other to win the war.  Nonsense, of course, there were others equally deserving of that sort of praise, but he was certainly up there with them.  Nor, to be accurate, can the surreptitious pressures of the security services be entirely blamed.  By any standards, unless you knew the man intimately, Turing was a walking, talking security risk, not just because of his homosexuality but more because of his other-worldly innocence.  Alas, government bureaucracies, especiallyif they have the word 'Intelligence' in their title are often short of that very ingredient.

However, none of that excuses the lack of proper action by contemporary governments.  As far as I know there are only two 'memorials' to this English genius.  The first is the 'Alan Turing Way', a ghastly dual-carriageway on the outskirts of Manchester where he worked at the University.  The second, set up by private funds, is a statue in a Manchester park set, appropriately, between the Univerity and a 'Gay Village'.   In my view it really is time that the nation, through the government, set up a suitable memorial in central London to his lasting memory.

 

Should Clegg be nicked for receiving?

I ask the question because if some East End gang leader was in receipt of stolen money he would surely have his collar felt.  Of course, he might plead ignorance of the fact that the money was stolen when he received it but if, having been appraised of the fact, he then hung on to it, it would surely risk a visit from the Plod.  I see no difference between my scenario and that of the all too real 'il-Lib-non-Dems'.  True, I don't think Clegg was capo di tutti capi at the time the dosh was handed over but he is now and the responsibility is his.  But even if he refuses at least he could tell that wizened old prune, Vince Cable, to shut up with his non-stop cranky, waspish attacks on so-called 'City slickers and greedy bankers'.  According to The Telegraph, this is the statement issued by this gang of corrupt money-launderers:

"The Electoral Commission inquiry in 2009 found that the party accepted the donation in good faith, and were in no way at fault.

"It cleared the party of all wrongdoing and accepted that at the time of the donation, Michael Brown was a permitted donor.

"There is no indication that the Electoral Commission will revise its opinion in this matter but any arrest abroad should lead to his extradition to the UK."

Notice, not a word about the people, the victims of crime, from whom the money was stolen.  In the stinking septic tank of politics some turds float effortlessly to the top.

 

God bless Anna Raccoon's bad temper!

I will not attempt to paraphrase Ms. Raccoon's hissy-fit brought about by her watching - silly girl! - Newsnight with Paxo, the Fat Black Clown (see two posts below), Paddick the Pansy Policeman, and, God help her, Charlie Falconer, the cronies' crony of choice.   They were discussing the Lawrence case and, as usual, Ms. Raccoon, despite her grumpiness, writes more sense on the subject than I have read anywhere else.  In addition, you can enjoy my e-pal, Julia M, in the comments.  Julia could fence for Britain in the 'Olympics using foil, epee, sabre - or broadsword!  Go read:

http://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/newsshite-with-paxo/#comments

Am I right to be worried about the Stephen Lawrence trial?

There are two main aspects of this whole sorry business which worry me.  First, is the fact that these two men, Norris and Dobson, were the 'victims' (I use the word with care) of the decision taken under the influence of a liberal-led outcry in which the ancient law of no double jeapardy was set aside for crimes of violence.  Indeed, as I understand it (and please correct me if I am wrong) not only were the two men aquitted when they stood trial years ago in a private case brought by the Lawrence family, but their aquittals then had to be set aside at a later date in order for them to be charged last year.

Double jeapardy is, or should be, a cherished part of a civic society in that it provides the authorities with one chance, and one chance only, to charge people with a crime and attempt to prove their guilt.  The fact that it was the whipped-up emotions of this specific case which brought about the change in an ancient practice worries me even more.  However, I do see that there is one good argument in its favour.  The rate of advance in forensic science is such that it is possible for more and more cases to be re-examined in retrospect and for hard evidence to be produced and I can see that there is an injustice if that has to be ignored.

The other factor which worries me about this particular case is that it draws my attention, once again, to this invented offence of 'racially aggravated crime'.  Were I, an elderly, white, male Englishman to be 'offed' by some thug I would be severely displeased if, as I looked down from my cloud in heaven (sorry, what was that?), my perp drew a shorter sentence than the perp in Court Two who bumped off a black or brown victim.  Where-in lies the difference?

In fact there is a third thing which worries me about this whole Lawrence case and that is the way in which it has been coloured (pun intended) by colour prejudice, and I do not just mean white on black.  It has, at times, almost amounted to hysteria and that is no setting for the conduct of legal proceedings and a fair trial.

Tell me I'm wrong and put my mind to rest.

Oh, sorry, one other thing.  Why hasn't the Black Police Officers' Association been had up by the Race Relations Board?

 

 

Ban all cars - NOW!

According to Guns.com (via IHTM), 'over there', cars are killing more people by accident than guns.  Surely it can only be a matter of time before the Archbishop of Canterbury, or some equally dim, dumb daftie calls upon the government to ban all cars.  I should add that suicides by gun rose - but then the suicide rate as a whole rose during the year in question.

 

 

As we watch the bodies of murder victims piling ever higher in this country - I have lost count of how many people were butcherred in December - it is worth noting that 'over there' more and more States are authorising their citizens to own and carry concealed weapons.  The results are beginning to show:

 

 

Time for us to insist on the right to bear arms, I suggest.

 

Should Judge 'Cocklecarrot' Munby be locked up for his good?

I love this internet-thingie!  For me, it's like a random searchlight which wanders hither and thither, usually illustrating the tedious detritus of life but occasionally fixing on an arcane detail nearly always ignored by the MSM but of profound importance.  So let's hear it for (I believe 'the cousins' call it 'a shout out' to) Sam Smith at the Anna Raccoon site.  In his post, he explains the intricacies of the law governing the behaviour of (mainly) local authorities in their conduct to those so severely disabled that it is necessary to deprive them of their liberty.  It is formulated under the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards Act (DoLSA) which is essential to safeguard the rights of those so deprived of their liberty even if, because of their condition, they are unable to do it for themselves.

However, as Sam Smith informs us in his fascinating article, there has been a case recently brought by a recalcitrant council in which they have sought to avoid the safeguards set down in the proper procedures.  It is fair to say, as Mr. Smith does, that the drafting of the law under the last Labour government and its civil servants is hugely and mostly unnecessarily complex and makes it hard going for anyone to pursue.  However, this particular dispute came up before the Appeals Court and Lord Justice 'Cocklecarrot' Munby was the bewigged prat learned justice who wrote the judgment.

There was no dispute that the man concerned, given his severe mental disability, needed to be deprived of his liberty for his own sake.  However, 'Cocklecarrot' Munby in his judgment went further according to Mr. Smith:

The essence of the judgement appears to be that where a person is so disabled that they need care and support, that care and support cannot be a deprivation of liberty. The comparator is not a [normal] ‘man or woman on the Clapham omnibus’ but ‘the kind of lives that people like X would normally expect to lead’ (pgh 97).

The circular nature of this argument requires clear highlighting. The Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards are the process required by law to determine whether someone lacks mental capacity and it is in their best interests to be deprived of their liberty. The point is – if you like – to prove they are as disabled as Munby LJ suggests and allow the finding to be challenged. However what the Court of Appeal has now added is in effect that if those conditions are met then there is no deprivation of liberty and therefore no safeguards need be used. [My emphasis].

Apparently, 'Cocklecarrot' Munby has something of a reputation.  Sir Nicholas Mostyn, formerly a QC but now a judge, himself, had such a 'high' opinion of Lord Justice Munby that when his favourite pedigree sow gave birth to seven piglets he named them: James, Munby, Self-regarding, Pompous, Publicity, Seeking, and Pillock.  Courtesy of The Daily Mail here is a picture of them:

  

 

Not a bad likeness, I reckon!

 

 

Right, move along, sir, or make my day!

I have been meaning to return to a post written a few days ago by 'Inspector Gadget' but the fact is that I can't quite make up my mind about it.  This, as regular readers will know, is a rarity for a man of my instinctive (and treasured) prejudices.  What 'Insp. Gadget' is proposing strikes me instantly as good commonsense but it is only after about 3.5 nanoseconds of reflection that the doubts begin.

He has been moved by 'the slaughter of the innocents' perpetrated in Belgium by a lone gunman but praises not just the quick re-action of the Belgian police but even more so their ability to be able to re-act because they are always armed.  He suggests that the time is long overdue that British police were routinely armed and points at the incident in Cumbria when Derek Bird shot nine people dead after the (unarmed) police first arrived because they were helpless to intervene and were forced to wait until a fire-arms squad arrived.

Seems obvious, doesn't it?  Well it does but only up to the point where you think of your average British copper toting a gun!  Already, a more or less constant stream of stories describing police blunders from shooting the wrong man in a tube train to standing idly by while hooligans ransack a High Street is enough to make one doubt their ability to handle a gun with intelligence.

But on the other hand, he does have a point about . . . and so the argument goes round and round in my mind.  To date I have come to no definite conclusion - and I'm not happy about it, I mean, it's just not me, is it?

 

Well, who'da thunk it?

I can hardly believe it!  Quite extraordinary!  The news has shaken me to the core!  What's the French for 'gobsmacked'?  You had better sit down because this is going to come as a shock:  that very nice man, M. Jaques Chirac, has been found guilty of corruption!  Yes, really!

I know, I know, incredible - or even incroyable!  According to BBC News the poor old chap wasn't in court because, you see, he suffers with memory lapses.  (Funny that, I once tried that on the Inland Revenue - and they actually giggled!)  Apparently he will go down in history as the second French Head of State to be convicted in a court of law.  The other was Marshal Petain.  A match made in heaven, I reckon!  Anyway, I cannot write more because I have run out of exclamation marks!

Give Neville Thurlbeck a knighthood and . . .

. . . the freedom of Wapping Wharf!  I had better explain, not least for the benefit of my foreign readers.  Whilst waiting for Dave to give his sub (very sub) -Churchillian report to parliament and to relish the sight of Clegg trying desperately not to fill a sick-bag, I watched some of the proceedings of the Leverson enquiry into press practices.  Today, Mr Thurlbeck has been in the witness box interrogation cell.  He was the chief reporter for The News of the World.  My heart went out to him as he tried, manfully, to inject just a tiny amount of realism into the fairyland ruled over by that pompous prat, Lord Justice Leveson.  Checking his Wiki entry I was unsurprised to see that he acted for the Inland Revenue ('the dirty rat'!) in the case against the beloved Ken Dodd for tax evasion:

Leading judge Sir Ronald Waterhouse QC later commented in an interview on Leveson's performance in the courtroom that "he lost the mood of the case, and he certainly lost the jury".

Well, he certainly lost me today.  A typical 'bigwig', far removed from the real world inhabited by the 6 million readers of the NotW whom he, and his little bearded stooge posing the questions, obviously consider to be so far below the salt that they are out of sight and thus out of mind and may, indeed, should, be safely ignored.

Thurlbeck, impeccably polite, refusing to rise to the sneers of his interrogator, stood up bravely for his newspaper and praised both its reporters and also its ethos - which is more than you can do for The Guardian which has now been forced to retract its lie story that it was the NotW who hacked Millie Dowler's 'phone, thereby killing off a newspaper and putting hundreds out of work.  No doubt Thurlbeck will be shot later!  I don't think I have ever read the NotW but I have regularly cheered it as it raked the sewers of the land and placed the shits they found on their front page.  We have lost a great institution and if the high and mighty Lord Justice Leveson has his way there will be more to go.

 

Who gives a flying, er, fig what they think?

Definitely not the best way to start my day!  On the 'telly' and on my news pages nothing else but sundry wiseacres telling my why the rioters rioted.  Who the hell cares 'why' they did it?  And who has the time and money to waste going around and asking them, and then spending even more time and money trying to translate the clicks and grunts they use for language?  Well, of course, step forward and take a bow, or at least, bend over, the 'London-Libyan School of Economics' and 'The Gruaniad'.  The first has money coming out of the orifice nearest its brain, stuffed in there years ago by the Ghadaffi family - and that's 'family' in the Sicilian sense of the word.  'The Grauniad', of course, in between screeching vituperation at rich people sensibly avoiding tax, fills its time by carefully ensuring that its own tax-avoidance trust is water-proof - how else would they be able to pay their dipstick editor £800k+ and 'Polly Toyboy' enough for her to own a villa in 'Chiantishire'?

In the meantime, who cares what the various thugs, criminals, robbers, drunks and druggies offer up as excuses for what they did?  We all know why they did it - because they are thugs, criminals, robbers, drunks and druggies, that's why.  All I want to know is why the police failed - again - in their basic duty of keeping the peace on the Queen's highway?  Apparently, now we are told, it was because their brand spanking new radio sets did not work and they were reduced to using their own private mobile 'phones for communication.  Will we ever find out who was responsible for that?  Will the London-Libyan School for Dodgy Backhanders ever ask the question?  Or is it likely that 'The Grauniad' will attempt the impossible by sending one of its useless reporters to go and actually investigate?  Don't hold your breath!

Oh, and have a nice day!

 

"Evenin' all!"

That was how dear old Dixon of Dock Green greeted the viewers back in the good old days (heh!) of black and white 'telly' but now might be the time for his successors to remember his farewell, "Good night, all" because it might be the end of their shift!

The 'cousins over there' have stumbled upon a bit of a winner.  According to The Atlantic, more and more cities in America, desperate to keep within their budgets, are cutting back on their hugely expensive 'plods' and replacing them with private security guards:

KARE-TV reports that the town of Foley, about 60 miles outside of Minneapolis, has handed over its police work to General Security Services Corporation, a private security provider that serves private homes, companies, commercial areas and government buildings. Full-time patrols will begin in January.

The town of about 2,600 had previously been relying on sheriff’s deputies from Benton County, who would patrol the city for 17.1 hours a day at a monthly cost of about $23,000 a month. The new deal with General Security Services will cost $98,500 for six months, or about $7,000 less per month than the cost of the sheriff’s deputies. [...]

It’s a trend that’s growing in cities much larger than Foley. Oakland, California, for example, hired a number of private security guards to patrol a crime-ridden part of town in 2009. They got four private guards for less than the price of one police officer. (My emphasis)

Under American law, and I guess, British law, too, the security guards are allowed to patrol and to make 'citizen's arrests' but they cannot investigate crimes or carry out traffic stops.  However, one advantage is that your local authority can at least get them to patrol where and when they are needed, which appears to be quite beyond the abilities of your average local Police Authority.  To be fair, unlike here, many American States permit suitable adults to own and carry guns and which is remarkably effective in damping down the efforts of the local villains.  Still, as 'Ed 'n' Ed' (or Edx2) never stop telling us that 'Dave the Defender' is a nasty, brutish Tory red in tooth and claw I'm sure he wouldn't stand in the way of letting us own guns, would he?  Oh . . . !

 

His head kept turning but no words came out

This is quite appalling!  The President of the United States has been struck dumb.  No, really, his lips twitch slightly and you can see his throat trying to work but actual words come there none.  How the American people will cope without the rich baritone of their Commander-in-Chief droning on inspiring them onwards and upwards is not known.  This terrible tragedy will have unforeseeable results.

What was that? 

What's happened? 

Throat cancer, or, the cat got his tongue? 

No, no, much worse than that; some unmitigated swine has nicked his teleprompter!  Now he faces audiences with his head going side to side like a metronome and his mouth opens and shuts but, praise the Lord, no words.  No more of those sonorous platitudes which hit the floor with the sort of dull thud you might expect from dropping a dead dog.

If they catch the thieves I trust they will be given a Congressional Medal of Honour.

H/T to Drudge

 

"Go ahead, make my day!"

Thus spake, not Zarathustra, but Clint Eastwood as the invinceable Harry Callahan in the 1983 film Sudden Impact when he produced a revolver which looked the size of an anti-tank missile and invited a punk to go for his gun.  I was reminded of this last night when I came across an old interview (1998) by the University of Chicago with a gentleman called John Lott of whom I knew nothing until then.

He was being interviewed following publication of a research paper and a subsequent book, More Guns, Less Crime, which claimed to prove that in those areas of the USA in which the State permitted citizens to carry concealed firearms the number, not only of murder by gun, but also other crimes involving gun use dropped enormously.  According to Lott in an interview:

Criminals are deterred by higher penalties. Just as higher arrest and conviction rates deter crime, so does the risk that someone committing a crime will confront someone able to defend him or herself. There is a strong negative relationship between the number of law-abiding citizens with permits and the crime rate—as more people obtain permits there is a greater decline in violent crime rates. For each additional year that a concealed handgun law is in effect the murder rate declines by 3 percent, rape by 2 percent, and robberies by over 2 percent.

Concealed handgun laws reduce violent crime for two reasons. First, they reduce the number of attempted crimes because criminals are uncertain which potential victims can defend themselves. Second, victims who have guns are in a much better position to defend themselves. [...] The analysis is based on data for all 3,054 counties in the United States during 18 years from 1977 to 1994.

Amongst other things, the interviewer reminded Lott of the fear amongst many people that if the practice of carrying a gun became general the incidence of strangers shooting each other during tense confrontations such as traffic accidents would increase.  Not so, according to Lott:

During state legislative hearings on concealed-handgun laws, possibly the most commonly raised concern involved fears that armed citizens would attack each other in the heat of the moment following car accidents. The evidence shows that such fears are unfounded. Despite millions of people licensed to carry concealed handguns and many states having these laws for decades, there has only been one case where a person with a permit used a gun after a traffic accident and even in that one case it was in self-defense.

The interviewer then pressed him on the probability that more guns being available would lead to an increase in the number of attacks on women.  Again, the opposite is true according to Lott:

Murder rates decline when either more women or more men carry concealed handguns, but a gun represents a much larger change in a woman's ability to defend herself than it does for a man. An additional woman carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for women by about 3 to 4 times more than an additional man carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for men.

The entire interview is worth reading but in the meantime - make my day!

 

A couple of juicy legal quibbles!

The death of the late but unlamented, by me, Anwar al-Awlaki has raised some legal quibbles.  The problem, I gather, is that unlikely as it seems, al-Awlaki was born in the USA, er, the Land of the Free and, according to the more mawkish of their patriots, a country where the government is not permitted to go around killing its citizens without due process.  Needless to say, the American MSM are pussy-footing around this tricky subject because, 'hey, it's our guy givin' the executive orders'.  It goes without saying that had it been 'Dubya' signing off on the operation the furore would have been heard on Mars!  So, it has taken a Republican, Ron Paul, to stand tall and accuse the president of being party to an assassination of an American citizen:

Paul, a Texas congressman known for libertarian views, says the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki on Yemeni soil amounts to an "assassination." Paul warned the American people not to casually accept such violence against U.S. citizens, even those with strong ties to terrorism.

How right he is.  But another, and potentially even bigger matter of life and death involving the American government is beginning to reach boiling point 'over there' as the details of  'Operation Fast &Furious' gradually, and despite the frantic efforts of the administration, inexorably leak out into the public domain.  In the entire history of security service cock-ups this must rank down there at the bottom of a fairly large pile as one of the most stupid ideas ever invented and definitely the worst executed.  It was the sort of plan that a latter-day Baldrick might have proposed to Blackadder.  In it, the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) ran a scheme whereby they facilitated the sale of guns to crooks in the full knowledge that they would be shipped over the Mexican border to the drug cartels.  The end result was that an American border guard was shot and killed with one of these weapons.  All this took place under the command of the 'Hope 'n' Change' man, himself, as in, 'Hope' this works but 'Change' the story if it doesn't!  CBS reports that an e-mail trail from the dickhead running the operation back right into the White House has been discovered but the White House is refusing to publish everything.

Earlier this week, I saw on Fox News a rather grim-faced Sheriff from, I believe, Oklahoma who was asked what he would do about anyone on whom he had evidence that they had been involved in passing weapons to known criminals.  A man of few words he replied to the effect of, 'you know what we'd do!'  I think I might actually die laughing at the sight of Obama in an orange jump suit with feet and ankles cuffed.  Well, a man can dream can't he?

 

One last chew and then you can spit it out!

(This follows the subject matter of the three previous posts.)

The last bit of trickiness arising from this sad tale of the unexpected earthquake which virtually destroyed L' Aquila in Italy which I would like to dwell upon concerns the all too common disputes between experts and non-experts in the fields of science and technology.  My own very slight personal experience of this sort of thing came years ago as a teenager reading Nevil Shute's No Highway and later seeing the film with the great James Stewart.  This story written in 1949 tells of a lonely scientist's efforts to convinve the authorities that the cause of an aircraft crash is metal fatigue which he worked out using a (fictional) version of quantum mechanics.  He is an awkward cuss with few social skills and his interest in the symbolic meanings of ancient Egyptian pyramids is used against him when he tries to get people to take his ideas seriously.  In the end, of course, he is proved to be correct and the consensus opinion of the scientific hierarchy wrong.

In L' Aquila, a local man with a scientific background but no high degrees or published works to back his opinions, undertook regular measurements of radon gas emissions, this gas being endemic in the area.  I am not quite sure exactly what he was doing but it was based, I think, on his theory that the nature of the gas changed when tremors were imminent.  Consequently he warned that the chances of a big tremor hitting were very much greater than the 'experts'.  He ran his own open blog on which he published his data and his theory and so many people were reading it and becoming panicked that the authorities decided to place him under investigation.  A big-ish shock occurred the same day, and the really big one hit about five days later.

Does that remind you of something?  AGW, for instance, although in that case the concensus science is the one predicting enormous catastrophes whilst the 'maverick' outsiders are denying it.  The 'Warmers'/'Changers' (at the moment they appear not to be certain which climate they are forecasting!) have retreated into their stockade defended by 'peer review' which in practice means reviews conducted by other scientists (and sometimes friends) who agree with them.  Happily, we now have 'internet review' in which everyone and his uncle can join in, although that mass rapidly filters down to a few very expert blogs whose owners are extremely knowledgeable.

So, yet another intractable problem to add to the others I have referred to.  I certainly do not pretend to have solutions.  I only ask for complete openness on all sides so that we, the public, can best decide for ourselves.  However, I would add that a healthy dose of scepticism when it comes to 'experts' is often very good for your, er, health!  Unless, of course, it is your local cardiologist telling you that your indegestion is actually a sign of an impending stroke and the prat selling you homeopathic lichen is having you on!

'What's a body to do?' you may ask.  'Pay yer money and take yer chance', is my fairly useless reply.

 

So keep on chewin'!

(This post follows on from the two preceding posts.)

In the comment thread to my preceding post my commenters pointed up the fact that I had failed to make absolutely clear exactly what the unfortunate Mr. Fish, the weatherman, actually said on his famous night of the 'hurricane' that never was.  In doing that, of course, they illustrated exactly the next point I wished to raise, that is, the difficulties of using language correctly.  The word 'hurricane', for example, means one thing to a weatherman, that is, a wind of a particular measurable force which places it in one category, 'hurricane', rather than another, say, 'gale'.  But to the likes of me and you, those 'gales' which battered Britain in 1987 were indistinguishable from 'hurricanes', being winds of such force that none of us had ever experienced the like before.  And several people died as a result.

Returning to Italy, after the conference of seismologists which, due to the near panic developing  was moved from Rome to L' Aquila, two of the scientists and two 'civilians' (so to speak) came out to talk to the press.  It was at this point that the inherent problems of probability and possibility were doubled by the problems of language.  "Words, words, words", the gloomy Dane complained but in this context of approaching catastrophe words really did matter.  The mixture of scientists and 'civilians', each putting a greater or lesser emphas here or there merely added to the confusion.  But are there any 'correct' words in such circumstances?  I am reminded of the terrorist security gradings issued by HMG which are issued with colour grades to assist understanding.  One can imagine the man-hours invested by civil servants in parsing as exactly as they can the precise distinctions between each grade of risk.  But do they actually help?  At which point on the scale do you decide not to use the tube or an airport?  Probably the day after an atrocity which speaks volumes!

What was that?  Did someone ask what the solution was?  Haven't a clue, old boy, I always rely on gut instinct!

ADDITIONAL:  By coincidence, a good friend of mine, Mark Bannister, who combines computer 'geekery' of the highest order with a brilliantly creative musical talent - he composes music for all my theatre productions - has just written a post on the subject of the old NASA 'clunker' about to fall to earth in a shower of bits and pieces, and the liklehood, or not, of being hit.  An odd coincidence of minds pondering the same subject.  Worth a read.

 

Now here's a juicy wrangle to chew upon!

I do not wish to sound my usual flippant self on this topic because some 300 people have died and several men face criminal responsibility charges.  The topic has been reported elsewhere but, with other important matters playing out in the news, it has been pushed to the inside pages.  My remarks are based on the report at the Nature site.  Apart from the particular complexities of this case, there are very much wider implications for science in general and us in particular.

I will try to sum up the story briefly but read the full report for the details.  In 2009 an earthquake hit the medieval town of L'Aquila in Italy.  This town, situated in a traditional area of earthquakes, had been suffering low-level tremors for several months and the population was becoming increasingly worried.  The general tenor of the information put out by the Italian scientists specialising in earthquakes was that periods of frequent low-level shocks, known as 'seismic swarms', rarely precede major earthquakes.  Note the word 'rarely' which is not the same as 'never'!  (This is, perhaps, an example of 'consensus science', an expression all too familiar to those of us who follow the global warming (AGW) controversy.) 

However, in this case there was, as in AGW, a 'denier'.  A local man who, whilst having a scientific background, did not have any high-ranking degrees to his name and who had not published, with peer review, the results of his scientific enquiries.  Instead of analysing seismic patterns, he measured re-actions in the radon gas which is endemic in the area.  He published his results and predicted that a 'quake was highly probable.  The local authorities, irritated by the alarm his reports were causing in the local population, took legal action against him on the 30th March 2009 - and on that day a 4.1 magnitude tremor shook the town of L'Aquila.  By now the townspeople were really worried and in response the authorities called on the top seismic scientists to hold their scheduled meeting at which their latest findings were to be evaluated in L'Aquila rather than Rome, which they duly did. An announcement, of sorts, was made by two of the scientists, the mayor and a civil servant to the waiting reporters in which they attempted to translate scientific complexities into language suitable for non-scientists which would be further 'translated' by the popular press.

The result is best described as a shambles of misunderstandings, mis-statements and mistakes.  The local people were somewhat pacified but then, on the 6th April, the town was hit by a 5.1 'quake and the ancient buildings collapsed killing 308 people.  To add one further ingredient to this witch's brew, in 1985 a man in charge of civil protection in the earthquake zone was investigated after he ordered the evacuation of several villages because of the threat of a severe seismic shock - but nothing happened!

So here we have a nice mixture of professional science and 'amateur' science, language and liability, mathematics and understanding, probability and probity.  I would not wish to be a judge in this matter.  I hope to return to this fascinating and intricate tale tomorrow, provided I have recovered from having a tooth out in the morning!

 

Nice to know we share so many things with the 'cousins over there'!

Well of course we share things, you know, like, er, well I know they have a constitution and we don't' but even so at least we all talk the same language, sort of, so long as their English-speaking films have, er, English subtitles . . .  OK, OK, maybe not quite so much as I thought but there is one undoubted characteristic both our nations share - our policemen, here and there, are as thick as a sack of spanners!  Ours, known colloquially as 'the plod', 'the filth', 'the old bill' and so on, are renowned for their dimness.  I seem to remember reading only a day or two ago that a huge number of constables have considerable difficulty writing and reading!  What is truly remarkable though, is that by very careful selection only the truly and monumentally stupid rise up to positons of leadership.  Of course, there are exceptions but as a general description I believe I am accurate.

Thus, it warmed my heart to read that 'Noo Yawk's finest' are equally vacant in the brain area.  Their, er, leadership have issued a booklet to train their officers and any security people involved in watching the city's night life on what to look out for.  This from the New York Daily News: 

The 27-page booklet, titled "Best Practices for Nightlife Establishments," advises owners to be cautious about nervous customers who are sweating profusely and with "bulging veins in the neck."

Yep!  I reckon that sounds pretty dodgy especially if they're carrying an axe at the time.

"Counter-terrorism security plans should include training for all staff in the detection of possible suicide bombers," the guide, released Monday, says.

Good thinking, that man!  It goes on:

On how to spot would-be terrorists, the guide recommends being alert to people with "visible wires and tape" protruding from their clothing and "individuals who are obviously disguised."

Heavens to Betsy, who'da thunk it? 

On the more mundane business of spotting drunks, the booklet suggests that officers should remember that:

they're usually the ones with slurred speech and bloodshot eyes who appear "sick, confused, abusive, profane, antagonistic or incoherent."

Crikey!  Never mind 'Noo Yawk', that reminds me of Aldershot circa 1960, place was full of 'em!

 

The Lesbian-straightener caught between two ladies!

Damn, I nearly missed this from The Daily Mail.  Our hero - oh, come on, chaps, you have to hand it to him, how many lesbians have you ever straightened out? - was caught on camera looking a tad stiff, if you will excuse the expression, upper-lipped today when he was told that both his ex-wife and his ex-lesbian girlfriend were in town for the 'il-Lib-non-Dem' conference.

Well, to be honest, I wouldn't wish to be caught between these two formidable ladies because somehow I don't think it would quite come up to my expectations.  (Mind you, we shall owe them both a debt of gratitude if they succeed in parting him from that dreadful tie!)

Still, I do think Chris Huhne should make the most of what's on offer because if the 'Plod' feel his collar over that very unfortunate mix-up over who exactly was driving the dangerously speeding car he might spend some time at Her Majesty's pleasure in a place where female company is at a premium.  Mind you, there are, I believe, some sexually confused people inside who might need and appreciate some straightening as well!

 

Do NOT read this on a full stomach!

Hitherto, whilst contemplating what goes on 'over there' I have concentrated on the 'good ol' US of A' and rather ignored their somewhat placid and provincial neighbours to the north.  Today, I stumbled upon a Canadian horror story which has forced me to re-appraise the entire country.  It comes from Pyjamas Media who have headlined the story, only slightly innacurately, thus:

Canada Legalizes Infanticide

A 1996 exhibit in Washington DC featured the remains of an Incan child sacrifice.

I read the story whilst sipping my morning coffee - and nearly spewed the lot over my keyboard!  There are two villainesses in this repellant tale.  The first is Katrina Effert who, in 2005, at the age of 19, gave birth to a baby son secretly in the basement of her house in order to avoid telling her parents.  When the baby began to cry - and please make sure you are not eating or drinking now - she strangled him with a pair of thongs and then tossed his little body into the next door neighbour's backyard like a piece of garbage.  When the body was found and the police began to investigate she told them it could not be her because she was still a virgin.  This was disproved and so she then tried to frame her boyfriend by saying that she had given her baby to him.  In her subsequent trial the prosecutors used her lying and framing of her innocent boyfriend to bring charges of murder rather than infanticide.  They needed that extra evidence because in Canada, that bastion of liberal opinion, infanticide is not considered to be a crime, merely a 'mental aberration' brought about by the 'suffering' that women go through in giving birth.  How billions of women have managed this feat without slaughtering their babies is not considered by the liberal judiciary of Canada to be of any importance.  Anyway, this hag was duly found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.  Personally, I would have strangled her with a pair of her own thongs!

So, exit 'Lady MacBeth', but now, enter her twin sister, in the deeply unlovely guise of Judge Joanne Veit who presided over a second trial brought about by Effert's lawyers who claimed that the murder charge was wrong and that it should have been infanticide for which, in Canada, the maximum penalty is 5 years!  From Pyjamas Media:

According to Veit the murderess is the victim:

Queen’s Bench Justice Joanne Veit rejected the Crown’s call for a four-year prison term — which she described as “essentially” seeking the maximum five-year punishment when taking into account the time Effert has already spent behind bars and under strict bail conditions.

Based on the fact infanticide has not been struck from the Criminal Code and it has no minimum penalty, Veit said she feels Canadians “understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support.

“Naturally, Canadians are grieved by an infant’s death, especially at the hands of the infant’s mother, but Canadians also grieve for the mother,” said Veit.(PM's emphasis) 

Alas, I cannot find a photo of Judge Veit and so any resemblance to this woman must be entirely coincidental:

Irma Greese

Only one conclusion can be drawn from this bestial story.  In my eyes Canada, as a nation, now ranks somewhere between Zimbabwe and North Korea.  If I ever hear another Canadian liberal preaching and prating on the subject of human rights I shall simply shout out "Baby Effert" and "Vile Veit" before trying to find a shotgun!

Er, sorry to have spoiled your day!

 

 

'Murder she wrote'!

MDA - oh, for goodness sake do I have to explain every time - My Darling Ann - has written a fairly forensic piece on the Amanda Knox case currently going through an appeal hearing in Italy.  'De goil should swing', about sums it up.  I have no views one way or t'other simply because I do not know the details, however, MDA has no doubts and lays out a very impressive case for the prosecution.  Doubts are being raised concerning the DNA and the possibility that it was contaminated but as MDA reminds us, convictions for murder were, and still are, capable of being reached without DNA evidence.

Needless to say, MDA cannot resist the temptation of laying into the liberal Left who have been raising their banners in support of poor, little, misunderstood Amanda:

As described in "Demonic," liberals defend the guilty and impugn the innocent not only because they side with barbarians, but because a fair and just system of law challenges their hegemony as judges of the universe. (My emphasis)

Gotta love that last phrase!

No, really, should we hang Shirley Williams?

I only ask because someone is to blame!  Whenever a catastrophe occurs it is all too human to search for a culprit and given the looting and arson on our streets last week I insist that someone is to blame.  Usually, of course, the fingers are pointed at groups of people, certain classes, particular types, but that is to dissipate the feelings of vengeance which need to be appeased.  Much better, in my opinion, to pick on an individual and then all of one's pent up fury can be so much better aimed and directed and thereby relieved.  So, given that, why shouldn't we drag 'Dame Shirl' kicking and screaming from the House of Lords and deliver her to a bonfire on Tower Hill where, prior to various bits of her being burned at the stake, she can be hung, drawn and quartered and her head stuck upon a halberd mounted outside the ill-named Ministry of Education?

Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian

What, you may ask, has this rather sad old sack done to deserve such treatment?  Well, for openers, in my opinion she has inflicted more damage on this country than anyone else since Hermann Goering and his Luftwaffe!   She alone was responsible for the wanton destruction of the Grammar Schools.  (Yes, yes, I know, she had her collaborators but remember, it is essential to personalise this in order to extract the full rich flavour of revenge!)  In this one terrible act of wanton vandalism she struck down the only sector of excellence in the state-run education system and by inflicting Comprehensive Schools on the nation she pushed the whole education system off a cliff.

Last week you saw the grand culmination of all that 'Dame Shirl' was warned about at the time but refused to acknowledge with all the obduracy of the truly and monumentally stupid.  In addition, and just to rub it in to all the equally stupid people who voted for her and her party (yes, you, you and you over there trying to hide your shame), she made sure that her own children were educated in the best selective schools available, even sending her own child to stay with friends because she happened to live outside the catchment area!  For that alone I want to be the first to throw a match on the petrol-soaked kindling awaiting her.

Go on, admit it!  Even thinking about it makes you feel better, doesn't it?

Bang 'em up! Er, the Police Chiefs, that is!

Or at least, shut them up!  They are behaving exactly the same as our senior officers in the armed services, mouthing off at the prime minister but lacking the moral guts to start by resigning.  Cameron, for all his myraid faults is the prime minister of our country, an office which gives him ultimate authority, and he was put there by the choice of the electorate.  If he fails to discharge his duty properly we will all have the opportunity to turf him out.  We have no such chance with these jacks-in-office who parade up and down after the event telling us all what an excellent job they did despite the evidence of our own eyes, or at least, our own TV screens.  They want the best of all possible words, to swank around with their silver braid, slagging off the prime minister whilst they remain in their over-paid jobs quietly ticking off the months in the calender before they collect their grossly swollen pensions.  I would remind them that if the PM wishes to reprimand them that is his prerogative.  If they feel strongly enough to disagree then the honourable course is to resign first and then speak their mind.  It has been increasingly clear for the past few decades that the police forces in this country are not fit for purpose.  It's not entirely their fault but their spineless leadership has to bear much of the responsibility.  Personally, I would like to see all Chief Constables chosen by election and thereby forced to stand on the record and reputation of the force they lead.  And, no, I'm not holding my breath, thank you for asking!