Sunday 27 July 2008

"A spontaneous squeal in medias res"

Mr. Justice Eady: There seems to be some sort of game involving rivalry between blondes and brunettes. At one point, the dark-haired woman lying on the sofa raises her head and cries out “Brunettes rule!” Within a moment or two, a voice from off-camera can be heard (accepted to be that of Woman A, who is indeed blonde) gasping out words to the effect “We are the Aryan race – blondes”.

Not surprisingly, this has been fixed upon by the Defendant as being a reference to Nazi racial policies. It is said that the reference to “Aryans” cannot bear any other interpretation…..


What is clear, however, is that the remark was unscripted and that it occurred amid a good deal of shouts and squeals (of delight or otherwise). One had to listen to the tape several times to pick out exactly what was going on and indeed nobody had spotted “Brunettes rule!” until the middle of the trial. It is also clear that there was nothing spoken by the Claimant on this occasion which reflected Nazi terminology or attitudes. There is no reason to suppose that it was other than a spontaneous squeal by Woman A in medias res.


At least Mr Justice Eady has a sense of humour. He must have needed it, having to sit po-faced through all the piffle spouted by both sides in the Max Mosley libel case. Each contended that the crux of the matter was whether the German-speaking ‘orgy’ Mosley enjoyed with a bevy of expensive tarts had Nazi overtones. If - as the News of the World claimed - it did, Mosley was justly infamous. If - as he claimed - it didn’t, the proceedings were a purely private matter between consenting adults, and warranted no censure.


What utter humbug! It WAS a purely private matter, and Nazi overtones were neither here nor there. So there was an element of hypocrisy in Mosley’s case, as well as dollops of it in the defence proffered by the “newspaper’” [if you can dignify a lurid scandal-sheet with such a misnomer]. I’m glad that Mosley won, but not for the reason he did. Private sexual behaviour of whatever kind between consenting people that isn’t unlawful is nobody else’s business – least of all that of the prurient gutter press.


But of course we now have agonised squawks from the usual quarters. Even such pillars of journalistic respectability as Peter Preston in the Guardian and Lord Rees-Mogg in The Times [well. after all, it’s a Murdoch-owned paper and has in honour[?] bound to defend its unsavoury stable-mate] have been wailing that the Mosley case heralds the end of socially responsible investigative journalism. It does nothing of the sort – it merely hoists a warning flag to those who mistakenly claim that all aspects of the private life of anyone in the public eye are fair game for lying reporters.


And, most recently, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, has said in the News of the World [where else?] that the judgement sets a dangerous precedent, and that “as a Christian leader” he deplores the protection it gives to “unspeakable and indecent behaviour, whether in public or in private”. I wonder how much the muckraking organ paid His Holier-than-thou-ness to spout this canting bilge?


For all Mosley’s hypocrisy towards his wife [whose life, he belatedly claims, as well as his own, has been “devastated” by the unsavoury revelations of his spanking high jinks] I have much more sympathy with him and all those who rightly believe that what they choose to do privately is no-one else’s business provided that it does not conflict with their public posture. During the great gay ‘outing’ controversy of a few years ago, I maintained that revealing whether MPs and others in the public eye were gay or not should be left entirely up to them, unless they had behaved hypocritically around the issue by voting against or otherwise actively opposing gay rights.


As for the childish naivety of persons such as Archbishop Carey – though not the editor of the News of the World - about the widespread daily occurrence of commonplace sexual activities such as sadomasochism, whether or not involving giggling prostitutes, I really do despair of the inexhaustible British capacity for sanctimonious self-deception. As a senior venereologist once remarked to me: “Every big city is absolutely rumbling with every imaginable kind of sex 24 hours round the clock.” [Thinking of my "bachelor" great-great uncle's numerous children, he might have added "every small village too"!]


A century or so ago, Freud said that the cultural climate of the West did not favour sexual candour, and that most people concealed their true sexual natures under a heavy overcoat woven of a tissue of lies. Although there is much more openness nowadays – much of it more sniggeringly prurient than healthy – candour is still hazardous. The observation that the English vice isn’t buggery, but humbuggery, still holds true.

Saturday 19 July 2008

Ghetto city

In a moving article in today's 'Independent' about a murder this week on her street, Deborah Orr writes:


"London is often described as a multi-cultural city, and most Londoners relish the mix. But what a crime like this brings home is that house by house, flat by flat, it is ghettoised."


The truth of this is obvious to anyone who doesn't view the world through the distorted lens of politically-correct "multiculturalism".

PC mobs are OK

In today's Times there is this report:

Teenagers attack police officers who asked girl to pick up litter

Pair kicked to the ground in front of shoppers


“Two police officers who asked a teenager to pick up some litter she had dropped were attacked by a mob in a suburban high street and punched, kicked, slapped and bitten.


"Witnesses said that the two male officers had to use batons to fight off about 30 teenagers who had kicked them to the ground. But two men then joined the attack, one of whom punched an officer in the face, as they shouted insults at the officers.


"The extraordinary scene took place in the middle of the afternoon in a high street in Croydon, South London. Local shopkeepers said that the area was plagued by youths and gangs fighting and causing trouble.”



Read the whole article here. It is followed by comments, one of which is:


“No description of the mob, so am I to assume they were minority groups?”


To which a Croydon resident responds:


“Not necessarily. I know the area quite well, and one of the heartening things is that the feral packs often comprise a healthy mixture of all ethnic groups, including plenty of whites. They may be moronic psychopaths, but at least they're not racists.”


“A healthy mixture”? “At least they’re not racists”! So THAT’S alright then.


Ye Gods!

Thursday 10 July 2008

From the Horses' Mouths

The [not so] Silly Season is starting early.


President Bush jauntily labels himself “the world’s biggest polluter”. How true – and not merely because of the USA’s excessive carbon gas emissions. During his eight-year presidency, Dubya has emitted more verbal poison than a dozen herds of belching Texan steers.


Our very own broody PM Gordon Brown rashly confides that he sees himself as an “older, wiser” Heathcliff. As Emily Brontë’s Gothick anti-hero of Wuthering Heights is just about the most viciously destructive character in fiction, inflicting disaster upon everything and everyone around him including those whom he professes to love, GB’s Labour colleagues may well concur in his self-assessment.


And that stalwart champion of feminism, Harriet Harman, titters that she couldn’t possibly supplant “true grit” Gordon as PM, because if she did "there aren't enough airports in the country for all the men who would want to flee the country". She flatters herself. I know a good many women who would be jostling for places on those overcrowded planes in that unlikely event.

Monday 7 July 2008

'Yuk' to spicy foods is racist - official!

These days, every day is April Fools’ Day. According to today’s Telegraph, the National Children’s Bureau, which receives £12 million a year [mostly from government] , has issued a 366-page ‘guidance’ document for staff in charge of pre-school children – “Young Children and Racial Justice” – warning them to look out for, and reprobate, signs of ‘racist’ attitudes among their young charges.


These allegedly include a toddler saying ‘Yuk!’ if served with unfamiliar foreign food. So if you don’t like hot spicy dishes – I don’t: they upset my digestion – you are a ‘racist’.


What utter codswallop!


According to the Telegraph, this egregious document – which I certainly don’t have the time or inclination to read in full – advises nursery teachers to be on the alert for childish abuse such as ‘blackie’, ‘Pakis’, ‘those people’, or ‘they smell’. But it is an unfortunate fact that some people, regardless of their ethnic background, DO smell because their standards of personal hygiene are inadequate. I know. I once had the misfortune to share an office with one such, who was indubitably white English, and it took the intervention of the staff welfare officer to resolve the problem.


The authors of this worthy [?] document apparently don’t include abusive terms such as ‘queer’ in their condemnation, presumably because homophobic abuse – which is at least as prevalent among schoolchildren as racist attitudes - doesn’t come within their terms of reference.


And the cloven hoof of this initiative is starkly revealed in their urging nurseries to report as many incidents as possible to their local council. Yet more prodnose busybodying for the mostly useless jobsworths and licensed snoopers who infest our Town Halls nowadays.


In the 1970s and ‘80s, I worked with the National Children’s Bureau when it was a responsible, balanced outfit with a realistic agenda. What a pity it’s fallen prey to the PC multiculti crowd for whom ‘racism’ [which they perceive one-sidedly, of course] is the most heinous social sin.

Wednesday 2 July 2008

No puppies, please!

This just about takes the [dog] biscuit.

I had to read it twice for the full implications to sink in.

Tuesday 1 July 2008

DD and the 24 pygmies

Something distinctly odd is happening in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election, sparked off by David Davis’s impulsive decision to resign his seat over the ‘42 days’ issue.


Although he has since broadened his campaign to embrace other important civil liberties matters of great concern to the electorate, the government has ostentatiously declined to run a candidate against him, dismissing his stance as a ‘stunt’. The LibDems are not running against him because they support his position. The only other mainstream party to run a candidate is the Greens, who are putting themselves forward as being sounder on civil liberties than Davis himself is.


However, there are no fewer than 24 other candidates. Here is the full list:

  • Grace Christine Astley - Independent
  • David Laurence Bishop - Church of the Militant Elvis Party
  • Ronnie Carroll - Make Politicians History
  • Mad Cow-Girl - The Official Monster Raving Loony Party
  • David Craig - Independent
  • Herbert Winford Crossman - Independent
  • Tess Culnane - National Front Britain for the British
  • Thomas Faithful Darwood - Independent
  • David Michael Davis - Conservative
  • Tony Farnon - Independent
  • Eamonn "Fitzy" Fitzpatrick - Independent
  • Christopher Mark Foren - Independent
  • Gemma Dawn Garrett - Miss Great Britain Party
  • George Hargreaves - Christian Party
  • Hamish Howitt - Freedom 4 Choice
  • David Icke - No party listed
  • John Nicholson - Independent
  • Shan Oakes - Green Party
  • David Pinder - The New Party
  • Joanne Robinson - English Democrats: Putting England First
  • Jill Saward - Independent
  • Norman Scarth - Independent
  • Walter Edward Sweeney - Independent
  • Christopher John Talbot - Socialist Equality Party
  • John Randle Upex - Independent
  • Greg Wood - Independent

While I haven’t read these peoples’ election manifestos, most of them would appear to be distinctly unserious, and one pauses to wonder why so many are prepared to risk a lost deposit.


Could it possibly be that some of the battle-hungry 25 are covert government supporters, drafted in to distract the electors from the important issues DD is raising, and to turn the by-election into the ‘farce’ which ZaNu Labour claims it to be?


Just a thought.