Gee, Officer Krupke.......

If I may emulate Ken Frost on Nanny Knows Best, I hereby award my Solemn Noodle of the Year prize to Plymouth's Assistant Chief Constable Paul Netherton who, when asked to clarify the nature of material seized in the recent "terrorist" arrests, sagely observed that

"It's political, it relates to political organisations, it's not extreme but it's a different political view. It leads to motives and things like that."

Whoever would have thought it?

From Mr Bean to Mr Has-Been?

So Gordon Brown has got his 42 days, but only thanks to the pristinely selfless and patriotic votes of the Ulster Democratic Unionists.

This humiliating "victory" may prove to have been won at too high a price. There's a well-known saying that one of the risks of asking for what you want is that you might get it. This could well turn out to be true not only of tonight's vote, but of Brown's entire long-coveted premiership.

If I were a Labour MP, I would be seething tonight whichever way I had voted.

What goes around, comes around.

Riders on the Storm

For those concerned about the Saudi connection with Islamic terrorism, this post on Yankee Doodle's blog is essential reading.

'Fleshcreeper' rides again

Just after posting Crooked Cobwebs of Mental Moonshine I switched on the lunchtime TV news and was greeted by the spectacle of Dr John “Fleshcreeper” Reid regaling an influential audience with the serious prospect of a massive terrorist attack upon our infrastructure – electricity supplies, computer systems, etc. - and warning of the chaos that would ensue if such an event evaded the vigilance of our ever-watchful security services and police [whose own spokesman was later seen lamenting that the public didn’t trust them sufficiently - is it any wonder?].

If “Fleshcreeper” actually does believe that there is the remotest prospect of such a dire happening, he should instantly resign his post as Home Secretary, as he is clearly utterly unfit for the job. And so should this entire bat-brained government, which is enmeshed in such delusional fantasies of its own manufacture about the nature of the “war on terror” that it is totally incapable of defending this country in the needful manner.

To unravel this bundle of garbage, let us consider the following indisputable facts.

There is a segment of the Muslim world who are bitterly hostile to the West, not just because of our idiotic military blunders in the Middle East, but because they hate and despise our free – and to them “ungodly” – way of life.

The militant adherents of this anti-Western ‘jihad’ probably number at the most a few thousand and belong to a number of different groupings, of which al-Qaeda is the archetype, whose composition, whereabouts, and sources of funding seemingly remain impenetrable secrets to the intelligence services of the Western powers after almost a decade of avowed and spasmodically active hostility.

I find this, frankly, so incredible as to be almost hilarious. Are we seriously being told by the British, American, and other Western governments that with all their incomparably sophisticated resources they are incapable of smoking out and disposing of a few groups of stateless fanatics?

If this is true, we are indeed in real trouble. If it is not true, there must be deeper, hidden, reasons why these threats have not been effectively dealt with; and some of the wilder conspiracy theories loom over the horizon.

Even if such groups are capable of a massive attack on our infrastructure, and willing to carry it out, would they be lunatic enough to do so? I very much doubt it – for the simple reason that they are as dependant on the said infrastructure as we are: if it collapses, so does their ability to communicate, to travel, to move money and other resources around the world. Only brainless idiots would embark upon such an enterprise.

In my view, the nature of the terrorist threat we face is quite different to that perceived by “Fleshcreeper” Reid and his colleagues. Even successful explosions and loss of life inflicted by a few terrorist cells will not weaken our national resolve, or result in a change of policy on our part.

Of course, we do need to change our policies in various ways. To start with, we should withdraw our forces from the Middle East and renounce our arrogant design of imposing “democracy” upon countries and peoples who do not ask for it. We should deal with terrorist threats and terrorist cells at home in the same way that we did with the Provisional IRA during the Ulster troubles – by vigilant undercover intelligence work and effective policing. We should not allow terrorists the dignity of believing that they are fighting a “war” against us; they should be treated as the common criminals which they are.

We should reverse and wind down the burgeoning curbs on civil liberties which, far from being effective against terrorism, are simply alienating and oppressive to the long-suffering mass of the population.

Above all, we should restore our national morale, proclaim the superiority of our free way of life with all its imperfections, live with the knowledge that if something nasty happens and our personal number is on it that’s just too bad, and cease to be scared nearly to death by the bugaboos routinely manufactured by "Fleshcreeper" Reid and his minions in their spook factory.

Why is this foolish government working so hard to make us all fearful? Franklin Roosevelt said: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. Amen to that.