Several regular readers have had conversations with me about American Blogger, Roissy. Travelgall, for example thinks he's satire. And since I pointed him out to Juliette, who loved it at first, but now hates him, I thought I'd share my thoughts. I can't work out what I think of him. Whilst I like the fact that he puts his truth out there, and a lot of what he says makes sense and pearls of wisdom like the following should be taught to girls at school in sex-ed...

Your woman must be either an angel on earth, or a dirty whore. A middle of the road typical chick with gangbang experience under her belt or a commitment to the three date rule isn’t going to cut it. If you want to lift yourself to the heights of ecstacy you must feel like you are piercing the womanhood of a truly uncorrupted vagina, or, on the opposite end, spiralling downward into the pits of sin with a filthy slut.

...Because he does understand the id which drives the basest human desires: he's right, for example about the 3-date rule. Girls I've loved have always fucked on the first date, or held out for much, much longer. But they don't detract from the fact that reading his blog is like looking at a mysoginistic, racist car crash. It's often unpleasant, but you can't take your eyes away.


There is the nagging suspicion that the constant banging on about Alpha superiority is a cover for a less-than-Alpha existence. The constant need to pick up new girls could be covering for an impotence which means he probably needs to have new "pussy" every night. The girls clearly just don't stick around to be "gamed" into spending another night night with a flaccid cock. Allegations of impotence, or indeed closet homosexuality are easy to make, but the fact is we have no evidence either way. He has said that Roissy is an alter-ego, and not the real him. Whatever the reality of Roissy's life, as a 37 year-old single Pick Up Artist and self-confessed player, he may be an 'Alpha' by his own standards, he can dish out, but can't take, which marks him out as a bully, and the lack of respect for people marks him as much less than a Gentleman.

Like a poundstretcher version of Patrick Bateman. (Thank-you, for that one, Juliette)

Women select men for their attributes as a mate, and vice versa. The ultimate aim of life being to pair up with the best possible mate, and raise nice children. To further this aim, Men like pretty, young, demure women about as intelligent as they are themselves. (Contrary to perceptions, men don't like bimbos. At least not for long term relationships.) Many men, however show a marked aversion to women who earn more than they do, probably because women who 'go get' will be lousy, neglectful mothers (and this may even have been true once, back in the distant evolutionary past). Women on the other hand, like strong, rich, tall, dominant, high-status men who get the goodies who don't mind if their man is brighter or better paid than they are, probably because back in the evolutionary past, men concerned themselves with getting protein from big beasts, and defending the tribe from other men. New Men would have been cuckolds or lunch - evolutionary death.

Thus, if we chaps want to get laid with a hottie (and we do) we have to be big, strong, high status, and ideally rich, with a devil-may-care attitude to risk, because these things were correlated with success in hunting and war back when female sexual preferences were evolving.

Men, by comparison are not that much interested in shagging a woman's bank balance, so a woman's wealth does not alter her status on the mating market, though money may buy things like nice teeth and lustrous hair which do. On the other hand, the only thing which really drives a man's status and desirability up is money, which is distilled power, and it is that power which drops knickers. So getting to the top of the greasy pole pays men directly in the only currency that will never devalue: Access to a high-status Quim mate.

Thus it pays men to take risks. Therefore men take risks to get to the top more than women, who tend to play it safe. So men who take a few risks end up running things.

Which is a good thing, because if your generic risk-averse 'mum' ran things 100,000 years ago, we'd never have gone to have a look at what was over the valley yonder because we'd never have got home for tea; we'd be a bunch of dry bones in Ethiopia and investment banking would never have been invented.

So when Robert Peston lays into men by saying

...women had a lucky escape: they are only innocent of this particular crime against global prosperity because men unfairly elbowed them out of the way in the unseemly race to the top.

And there must be some truth in the notion that we'll only be a fair society when we can heap opprobrium on women for a banking crisis (of course they had their moment in the sun in respect of responsibility for a recession with Margaret Thatcher's economic contraction of almost 30 years ago).

He manages to be a patronising twat, avoid the real issue as to why there are few women at the top (it isn't discrimination, it's that fewer women decide the extra work, stress and hassle is worth it and decide to live their lives rather than work them) and get a dig into St, Margaret of Thatcher. All in one spectacularly ignorant, licence fee-funded post.

Men are clay, shaped by women's sexual preferences just as Women are shaped by men's sexual preferences. We're a species. We're all to blame. For everything. So if "men" are to blame for the recession, it's because that's the way you made us, girls. In any case, we're the ones suffering the most, so you can thank your lucky, risk-averse stars for that one.

Will people stop blaming "risk taking" for the recession and just accept that recessions happen from time to time, and they're usually worse under the party founded on that ultimate expression of the principle of risk-aversion: The socialists of the Labour party.

This morning I awoke to news that there was a report out which had all manner of busy bodies and other assorted prodnoses calling for more regulation of "the sunbed industry". Adding the word "industry" to anything seems to be a bien-pensant dog-whistle to the ancient prejudice of the British upper classes against "trade".

Life gives you cancer. And if you're not exposed to UV radiation, it also gives you rickets. So there has been a rise in a disease of Malnutrition recently because people who are not adapted to our environment do not produce enough vitamin D in their skin, hence the prevalence of rickets amongst Asians (particularly women, who cover up) and Afro-Caribbeans. This is especially true in Scotland, where the sun's occasional appearance has the terrified natives running to church and burning widows to appease God's wrath made real by the terrifying fire in the sky.

Unmelanated skin is an adaptation to low levels of UV radiation at high latitudes. The increase in Vitamin D production in the skin offsets a greater likelihood of debilitating sunburn and eventual cancer. The flip-side is that were I to go and live in southern India, for example, I would spend all day, every day hiding from the sun, before immediately dying of a malignant melanoma.

Everything is a trade-off. Every hour I spend exercising, I could be working, but do so because it makes me feel better. At work every hour I spend reading research, I could be chasing client leads.

Unfortunately for me (probably the pastiest man in NATO), tanned skin is considered attractive. Therefore I take on a small risk of cancer by going shirtless when I can, to prevent a greater risk of not getting laid.

But that personal choice wouldn't be enough for the risk-averse busy-bodies who wish to remove all fun from life, and want to do so by regulating every waking moment and controlling what we eat and drink. And people who exercise (without playing risky sports, like Rugby) and don't drink (and seem to have an increased risk of death anyway) and eat healthily, and never have sex, let alone the unprotected kind. Such people might find that when they're cycling from their green, energy efficient home to their eco-office to do a job deciding what proles can and cannot do with their money, might still get hit by a metiorite on the way. Or will if there's any justice in the world.

So.

Here's a message to the Bansturbators. Before you get to work on "regulating" the "tanning industry" why don't you just leave us the fuck alone? You cunts.

This week's pick of the British Blogosphere is up over at Amused Cynicism. Next week it's here, so start picking your posts, people.

There is a massive shortage of money in the public sector, and commentators are suggesting that this will lead to a 1950's style period of 'Austerity'. Whilst this leaves statists on the left salivating at the prospect of curing obesity and global warming by a return of food and petrol rationing, I think there will be less effect on the man on the street than the headlines suggest.

Basically we're already paying as much in payroll taxes as we will bear, this isn't going up even under Brown because, he'd get lynched if he tried, and the Tories are merely mewling about 'green taxes' which means 'soak the motorist'. So unless you really, really need to drive a lot (and I cycle everywhere), then the Government isn't going to cost you much more in the short term.

So what about the services my taxes are supposed to pay for? What about these 'vital public services' that are going to be "slashed" by the Tories, by as much as 10%?

The short answer is I don't use 'em.

The long answer is that you can cut costs without losing vital services. I couldn't give a shit if the local day-care centre went the way of the dodo. Likewise anything with outreach in its title. I don't receive benefits, and I couldn't care less if they are cut. There is nothing the council does which I use, except some of the sports pitches, but I have to pay for those, on top of council taxes I pay anyway. The roads are shit, and will probably continue to crumble, so at worst nothing will change and with a shortage, maybe the roads budget will be spent on filling potholes rather than grandiose traffic calming schemes which reduce the carrying capacity of the road and increase congestion, so things may even improve. I have no school-age children so schools are not an issue. In any case, I think a voucher will do more than an extra billion on the budget, so a Conservative GE victory may improve schools at no cost. Hospitals are rubbish now, and will remain so despite their funding being ring-fenced. And in any case, I'm very healthy and intend to stay that way. Bins are going to go to twice weekly collections what ever happens, so that can't get worse either.

I struggle to think of anything Government, local or national, does for me which goes close to justifying the obscene level of tax I pay. So a bit of austerity from the tax-payer funded sector is long overdue, meaning Diversity outreach coordinators and their like losing their jobs, meaning they will have to cut back expenditure on Guardian supplements and ill-fitting vaguely ethnic clothing. Which means the Guardian goes bust and so does the local hippy shop. Neither of which would trouble me with its passing.

If we can assume for example, that the MoD can shed some of its 100,000 pen pushers without having to cut any soldiers, sailors or airmen from the forces, and that you can shave some of the DoJ without losing coppers on the beat (which, inexplicably people seem to favour). You can gain efficiencies. Then there is the whole nannying quango state, which can fuck off in its entirety with as much effect on the country as a passerine's fart in the wind. Bye-Bye Equality and Human Rights Commission! Don't let the door hit your arse on the way out, Trevor.

So it is entirely possible that, as the Private sector recovers profitability, Austerity Britain will be felt entirely by people I neither know nor care about. People who I've been describing as parasites for most of the last few years. You know. The kind of cunt who's been keeping Gordon Brown in Downing street for 12 long years whilst drawing an overgenerous salary at the taxpayer's expense. Cuts do not have to mean fewer Soldiers, Teachers, Policemen and Nurses; they can get to keep their jobs, which may get easier without bureaucratic interference from complete cunts. Worthless state apparatchiks, however will lose theirs. En masse, if there's any justice.

And as the cardboard city under the motorway flyover fills up with unemployable social science graduates who no longer have a bureaucratic teat from which to suckle, I'm expected to feel sympathy. Which I will have to look up. Between 'shit' and 'syphilis' in the dictionary, isn't it?

This weekend, I took the Eurostar to Paris. Now this is the first time I've used the new Terminal at St. Pancras, and I rather miss the genius of diplomacy which used to see the trains to Paris leave from Waterloo station, which rubbed the French nose in their military uselessness whenever they came to London. But it has to be said: The new terminal is excellent. The seating at the international departure lounge is both plentiful and comfortable. The bars are stylish and accessible. The Train, though looking tired and dilapidated was comfortable and clean. The service was on time. And compared to the dingy, cramped and uncomfortable waiting area at Gare du Nord, frankly I was impressed with the British bit.

As this is a story of British public transport, there was an inevitable 'But'.


I was carrying my Brompton. Because I am a good boy-scout, prepared for every eventuality I carry a small repair kit whenever I go anywhere on a bike. I was carrying a multitool, a puncture repair kit and a spokey. The security monkeys at check-in objected to the presence of a multitool in my luggage because it contained a knife.

Unbelievably, when I pointed out that I was also carrying a cricket bat, which would be a far more effective weapon should I, for whatever reason want to kick off, perhaps smashing the skulls of stupid security wallahs (for example) who object to perfectly reasonable bicycle maintenance tools, they saw the ridiculousness of their objection and waved me through. I was not arrested, for what would inevitably be described as a "threatening outburst" but was merely a statement of fact. Nor did I recieve bum-rape off a truncheon in the cells wielded by a paramilitary Terrorism gestapo. Perhaps some good has come from the drop in the UK terrorism threat level of the UK from "seriously and dangerously paranoid" to "merely officious and unpleasant". I didn't try to take any photographs.

Anyway... onto the main event: We won the toss, put the SCC into bat, and they put on 249 for 6 in 40 overs, in which my analysis was 6 overs, 0 maidens 2-29. Respectable, and the pick of the bowlers (though others had seen off the openers). I was bowling off my absurd 18 pace run-up in borrowed trainers half a size too small and both my big toenails have subsequently turned black.


When I went in at number 11 later, however I did not trouble the scorers, as I ran out the other batsman without facing a ball. Yes. It is possible to do worse than a golden duck. It is because (possibly) that sitting in the sun, drinking heineken is not the best preparation for an innings. Or perhaps because I am useless anyway. Or more likely a bit of both.



I think we lost by 100 runs or so... Mainly because we lost our batsmen early and our tail started somewhere around number 6. The opposition contained 2 members of the French national side and had some very good players. Despite the one-sided result the teams were actually reasonably matched: an excellent day was had by all.

There is something rather pleasing about playing cricket an a sunny day in Paris, on a ground over which flutters the Union Jack. It's like we never lost the Angevin empire...

I'm actually reassured that there is a "Near Earth Objects Task Group" lurking in the corridors of Whitehall. At least some of my taxes go to something useful.

Letters from a Tory points out a quote indicating that perhaps Cameron does have some balls.

No, not a man wanting to get his balls cut off by the Harridan in Chief. This headline was from the FT.

Was that Harvard professor of victim politics a victim of police Racism when he was arrested for breaking into his own house? No. The police are just a bunch of cunts. Wherever, and whoever you are.

You give a man power of arrest, and he would rather use it safely (against the respectable citizen) than take risks (by dealing with potentially armed and aggressive scrotes). And the Police bleat about being "on the front line". With the Army taking casualties which no longer merit front page news, on an almost daily basis, the Police should have some fucking humility. Fishermen are more likely to die on the job than the box-ticking, health n' safety obsessed boys in blue, whose job doesn't even make it into the top 10.

There are some good guys, but they're fighting a culture which has become Them 'n Us... with no-one in the public being given the benefit of the doubt, and everyone getting dealt with administratively when a ticking off would usually suffice. Real crime is being ignored in favour of the Sanction-detection target. Crime is blighting more and more lives, while the police hassle people who really should just be left to get on with it.

I am not convinced that we would be worse off without a police force, especially without new Labour's speeding-obsessed bully-boys in black shirts, who seem to delight in assaulting non-violent drunks, raid an MPs office illegally and in force, yet cannot bring themselves to turn up to a burglary. And in doing so, they have broken the contract: we the public ask the police to protect us, and instead they can't be bothered to protect us, and prosecute us when we protect ourselves. As a result, the police are losing the consent of those they police.

What possible good do they do? Obviously, if we got rid of the welfare state too, then much of the petty criminal class whose lifestyle the welfare state subsidises, would either starve or be sucked into work, it is difficult to see how my life would be worse. Crime wasn't any more of a major problem before the police were invented than it is now. No doubt society would find a way to catch miscreants and bring them before the courts after the police have been disbanded. Perhaps the police could be reduced to crime investigators, with no functions of patrolling and harassment of the public, but a focus on bringing criminals to justice.

No victim, no complaint, no crime = Fewer people pissed off with the police.
Victim of crime, complaint, thorough investigation, prosecution = More people happy with the police.

Indeed if the police investigated crime only when there was a complaint, then the patrolling (which is what the public want the police to do), could be done by private business, and be responsive to, and respectful of the people who pay them. Just like in that right-wing, crime ridden hell-hole, San Francisco, the US's 12th largest city which despite being a diverse place, with massive income inequality manages to have crime rates at about the national average. Indeed it is the second safest major city in the US.

Locally elected sherrifs are a start, but if that doesn't get the police to behave themselves, then privatisation could be the answer!

Some police forces have, completely oblivious to historical precedent dropped the Traditional white shirt for a black one, because it doesn't show the civilians' blood is more practical. I had not noticed, till I saw some of Hertfordshire's finest looking like they were on an outward bound expedition rather than policing the streets.


Then, I saw two coppers in London, looking more like paramilitary thugs than people whose job is to protect the public. I would have taken a picture, but I would have got arrested immediately and had a knightstick rammed up my arse. Whilst this might have been fun in its way, I was on my way to a date with an example of the non-hairy half of the human race, and in a hurry, so bum-rape off a truncheon came a poor second. If I wanted paramilitary thugs to ram knightsticks up my crack, rather than police who catch the bad guys, I'd go live in an uncivilised country like France or Spain. But I don't want to do that. I want to be able to trust an impartial, civilian police force, thank you very much.

Note to New Labour: Appearances matter. Can we have a civilian police back? Please?

That Harry Potter 'star' caught for cannabis offences: what led the police to Arrest him?

Waylett and his friend John Innis, 20, were stopped under the Terrorism Act in St John's Wood, north-west London, after the actor took a photograph of a police patrol as they drove past. Innis's black Audi was searched and police discovered a butterfly lock-knife under the driver's seat and eight small bags of herbal cannabis.

First a butterfly knife is not a lock knife - the two terms are not interchangable. And secondly where does it say in the Terrorism act that two young men 'photographing' the police, probably as part of a You Tube film making attempt, using mobile phones, constitutes grounds for being stopped and searched?

Everyone should take pictures of every pig bastard they see. We've all got mobiles. Let's have the police waste their time, the cunts. The bastards cannot arrest us all, and sooner or later someone will point out to the thick fuckers who were too fat and stupid for the army, that photographing the police, or photography in any other public place IS NOT ILLEGAL and DOES NOT CONSTITUTE GROUNDS FOR ARREST OR SEARCH, unless THERE ARE REASONS TO SUSPECT IT IT TERRORIST RELATED. i.e. INTELLIGENCE OR AN ONGOING SURVEILLANCE OPERATION.

Another badly written law, extended by misinterpretation by the police serving to make law abiding people get into trouble with the police totally unnessesarily and enabling the police to go on fishing expeditions. So some young men had some weed. I bet everyone is safer and sleeps easier in their beds knowing that there's one more tick in the sanction detection box. Useless New Labour Cunts. Goose-Stepping plod twats. fuck! I hate them all so very much.

is up over at Redemption Blues, with the chameleon's usual thoroughness... Enjoy!

Not since 1934 has England beat Australia at the home of Cricket. Which brings me to the genius of Test Cricket and the futility of "Accessibility".

With matches taking 5 days, and long periods in which a purist might say "pressure is building" but most observers think are simply "boring" and "nothing much happens", Test matches still manage to captivate a nation. Whereas I know no-one who actually thinks the cricket world cup is more important than a Test series. And this despite the fact that one-day cricket was designed specifically to be "accessible".


Yes One-day cricket is amenable to television audiences, but it is the test matches which everyone wants to win. The Saturday (usually the third day) of the test matches being the most popular, with Lords tickets in particualar even being a useful currency in business circles. T20 is an even more TV-friendly format, with matches lasting just 3-4 hours. But even new cricket watchers get bored with a slog-fest, in which the fielding team makes no serious efforts to take wickets.

If you forgive the jargon, England took the field this morning with a slip, a silly-mid-off and a short leg to Graeme Swann, whilst Flintoff at the other end was bowling to 3 or 4 slips and a gully. There were only a couple of sweepers covering the boundary, and most fielders were bearing down on the batsmen, saving one. England were able to say "hit the ball, if you dare". The doubts build in the batsmens' mind and eventually the wickets fall, though Batsmen were able to score a lot of boundaries. This was therefore a great test.

One-day cricket, on the other hand requires rules which force the fielding side to have anyone at all 'saving one'. If it weren't for the rules, fielding sides would be even more negative than they are at the moment, by putting the whole team in the outfield, gifting 1 or two runs a ball. Aside from an occasional slip, there are almost never any close catchers in ODIs. Endless Tip 'n run makes for a dull game, so rules were invented to force the fielding side to give runs away, and force the batsman to take risks. This makes me think the whole thing is artificial. Changes to the format of the game lead to problems and perverse incentives, which require rule changes, which entrench the problem.

Test cricket does not require rules about where fielders can go (apart from those resulting from the Aussie Whinge about 'leg theory'). There are no fatuous "power-plays", there is just a captain and his team, trying to get the other lot out. And the result is often a draw, and is not always pretty, but at its best a test-match remains the most compelling spectacle in sport. By measuring the wrong thing, run-rate in this case, you create rules which spoil the game.

Which is sort of like New Labour's attempt to change the country. So what if a free country is unequal? Especially if you use a measure as fatuous as income inequality or GINI , so long as everyone is getting richer, we're all better off. And freer countries are richer on average than unfree ones. Attempts to sort out GINI, tend to be increases in taxation and more spending on social provision - direct transfers of wealth which reduce freedom for both the taxed and the benefit recipient.

So like the ICB trying to make the supposedly more exciting game even more exciting, the Labour Government tinkered with the rules. Seeing "a problem" that there are some people who don't earn very much, it was decided to give those people money. So that this could be targeted at labour voters the most needy, the system designed was incredibly bureaucratic. Because of the bureaucracy in accessing the rest of the benefits system, people choose not to take up work because of lost benefits, because short periods of temporary work just do not pay; or they decide to work cash-in-hand. To counter this, Labour forces its clients to accept unsuitable work, and criminalises those who take cash in hand.

The result is a human misery machine without equal. The moderately wealthy (and even people who are by any measure relatively poor) are taxed at punitive rates, in order to trap 10% or more of the population on benefits.

There is nothing which exemplifies the New Labour approach than the 10p tax band. Introduced by Gordon Brown as a tax cut to the poorest paid, it was scrapped so he could offer a boondongle to the middle-England voter who was steadily deserting him for the Tories. It made the poor poorer* but 'solved' a problem. It's just the manifest injustice of it was noticed and not thought worth the few quid that most middle income households would save.

Likewise, someone worked out the vast scale of 'benefit fraud', a crime most people rightly see as 'very poor people claiming benefits, and doing a bit of work when they can get it, in order to make their grim lives a bit better and maybe get something... y'know... permanent out of it' but Labour class as 'theft'. So they decide that everyone will need an ID card, to access benefits, and that benefit recipeints (and also the rest of us) were going to be subject to the most obscene level of sureillance found anywhere in the world.

Every policy, every measure of this hopeless Government stems from the idea that Government should sort out peoples' problems, leading to ever more micromanagement and legislative diahorrea in an ever expanding civil-service circle-jerk of insanity. And all because they measured something unamenable to government action and made it the centre of a Government by target, they chased their tail in a futile attemt to "end poverty".

So just as Cricket authorities spoiled the game to satisfy their hard-on for television ratings, Labour, in attempting to make the unequal equal have turned the UK into a hellish panopticon, causing misery for all. Of course, of the two problems, the growth of so much limited overs cricket is by far the more serious of the problems, cricket being cricket, whereas politics is, well just politics.

*which does not mean I think it was a good policy at the start. What about raising the allowance?

Iain Dale is undertaking his annual appeal for people to vote for their top Blogs.


Naturally you're all to vote for me by e-mailing

toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com

I am not allowed to tell you for whom to vote, but I will tell you who I voted for (this is not the order I voted for them Don't just copy and paste this list because that is against the rules, and will get your vote discounted, assuming I have more than a handful of readers....), But I would especially like to see Heresy Corner, Underdogs Bite Upwards and Raedwald do well. Anyone from my sidebar (apart from those in "blogs by idiots") would be worth a vote!

Whilst I am a card-carrying member of the Tory party, I am unusual amongst libertarian bloggers. Mr E votes Tory, but isn't a member; and the rest of the tribe are of the Foamy Mouthed "blu-Labour, they're all as bad as each other, nothing will change" nihilistic cynics and support the Libertarian party if they can bear to support anything.

Which is why Luke Akehurst's attack on "libertarian bloggers" as Tory stooges this morning is so risible.

Libertarian blogger Paul Staines (AKA Guido Fawkes) has said he’s donated £5,000 towards the £100,000 needed to bring a private prosecution against Jacqui Smith over her expenses claims.

This post is attempting to link the Tory party to Libertarian attack dogs based on the idea that you're either Labour or a "Tory". Either you're open about being and enemy of the people a Tory, or you will be exposed as a cryptofacsist Tory. Why use Staines' real name? Everyone knows who Guido is, and his name has been in the public domain for a long time. Using both makes Akehurst look like a particularly stupid teachers pet, telling on the naughty boy long after the troublemaker's been caught.

The case is being brought by the Sunlight Centre for Open Politics – which was founded by Staines and employs Chris Galley, the former Tory council candidate and Home Office civil servant who was sacked after being arrested in connection with leaking information to the Tory Immigration spokesperson, Damian Green MP.

It should be noted that no prosecutions were brought in the Green case, and the whole thing smells of a politically motivated abuse of due process. "Former Tory council candidate" does not mean "has Cameron's number on speed-dial". I am a former Tory Council candidate for Christ's sake! Staines is backing his political campaign, which he sees as a campaign for justice against thieving politicians with his own money. It is a principle of democracy that the Government should be scared of the People, not the other way round. If Jacqui boots has done nothing wrong, then British justice should see to it that Staines loses a lot of money.... either that or after 12 years of New Labour, British Justice is so corrupted that Smith cannot get a fair trial. Which is it, Luke?

Despite their public confidence about electoral victory, the Tories and their "provisional wing" of arms-lengthed blog attack dogs seem to be resorting to increasingly desperate tactics.

Desperate tactics? I think arresting an opposition spokesman on trumped up charges using an obsolete 19th century law, riding roughshod over Parliamentary privilege and the principles of democracy in order to do so is pretty desperate. And if you're calling the Tory party "desperate" because someone who isn't a member, but you think might be sympathetic to the Tory cause is bringing a private prosecution on something he's long campaigned, then you're the one being "desperate" Luke, not the Tories.

They are right not to put blind faith in the opinion polls and they know that the next election is all to play for. They are panicking and lashing out with extra-democratic measures in an effort to harm the government.

I Think the Labour government, which governed by focus group and opinion poll, with its control Freakery and abuse of process; its briefing, deception and spin could teach the Tories a thing or two about "extra democratic measures".

Cameron has already tried to scare voters by warning of riots in the streets if Labour win the next election. His father in law, Lord Astor,...

did you see the class-war dog-whistle there?

...has called for the Countryside Alliance to adopt civil disobedience and the editor of the Daily Telegraph has admitted that his papers’ motivation for its exposé of MPs expenses was to get “that place (Parliament) cleared out” because of the “bad laws that have been passed by what we now know to be a number of bad people”.

And what is wrong with a paper exposing wrong-doing?

Luke?

LUKE?

Oh yes... some of those exposed were nomenkultura, who have every right to fiddle expenses in a way which would have us little people in front of the beak. Of course you want one day to enjoy the perks so badly, it hurts.

And now we have the adoption of US-style private prosecutions. Brought with the aim of harassing Labour, diverting it from the job in hand and ultimately discrediting it with the electorate on a "no smoke without fire" basis.

Which is why Jacqui boots authorised the arrest of Damien Green... What? You mean she denies all knowledge? Sue Me.

The Sunlight Centre for Open Politics is straight out of the Republican Party handbook of dirty politics. The most famous persecution of a politician through the courts in America was the Starr prosecution against the Clintons

He shouldn't have got gobbled off by a fat lass then, should he? Or more accurately he shouldn't have lied about not having "sexual relations with that woman"

does anyone really think that case did anything to strengthen America’s democracy? It was a massive distraction from the important issues of the day and a huge financial and emotional drain on the targets.

My heart bleeds for the poor little multi-millionaire twice-elected US president and Commander in chief of the most powerful nation on earth, Bill Clinton.

Of course Staines and co are off the leash enough from the Tories that they will, as with the Telegraph expenses saga, take out a few Tory politicians too - acceptable collateral damage for Cameron as it enables him to parachute in more A listers - but social democratic politicians are always going to be the primary targets for the libertarian right.

We attack Social Democrats because social democratic politicians are hell-bent on increasing the state's control over our lives. We don't agree with social democrats because we don't want smoking bans in pubs, compulsory eating of vegetables, sin taxes and all the nannying interfering shit with which New Labour attempt to control our every waking moment. What you're saying boils down to "there are people who don't agree with me, and some of them might be Tories". Well welcome to a competitive democracy, you totalitarian squit.

Cue foaming at the mouth comments and links from the most rabid section of the attack blog dogs.

It doesn't need "foaming at the mouth" comments. Most libertarians would vote for a floating turd before they voted Labour, and the first principle is to get rid of the Government. This does not make Staines et al. Tories, and to assume that all enemies of Labour are conservatives or in league with them says more than you realise about how you view politics, Luke, and it is not a pleasant sight.

Akehurst has form: he was, if you remember, the oik who thought, like Jo Moore, that getting a victim of the 7/7 bombings, to run in support of 42-day internment without trial for brown people Terrorist suspects against David Davis*, was a good idea (read the comments!). Someone like Rachel from North London perhaps?

Look at his "about me" section. Look how serious and po-faced he is. Look at the list of meagre achievements, which say "I want to be an MP, soooooooo badly". This post demonstrates why New Labour failed. It is because it attracted nasty little power-hungry principle-vacuums like Luke Akehurst, who almost certainly fantasise about their acceptance speech on election night when they masturbate. It's rather pathetic.

Luke Akehurst is The Emperor's clothes.

*Haltemprice was Sir Alan Beresford B'Stard's seat in 'the New Statesman' just thought I'd chuck that in there...

Political Correctness Gone Mad! You couldn't make it up!

Are two phrases on the banned list for contributors to this blog. For the simple reason that the former is shorthand for poorly thought-out opinion, which is being reinforced by a perception of oppression. The latter because you can make it up, and if the story is coming from a newspaper report, someone probably has.

So I have some sympathy for Don Paskini's contribution to Liberal Conspiracy today. He is right, one can talk about immigration or the family without suffering punishment for doing so. And he's right that anyone committing the two weasel phrases (PCGM and YCMIU) to the page can almost immediately be described as an idiot, and any subsequent opinion ignored. Debate is no longer stifled.

The problem with Paskini's charge is that the the coalition of left-wing opinion formers which form the idealogical core of the New Labour project have attempted to do just that for most of the last decade: the 2001 and 2005 elections for example were fought with the Conservatives saying that "there are too many immigrants" and the Labour party saying "look at the nasty racists". Likewise anyone suggesting that the Nuclear family containing a man, woman and a brace of sprogs is 'an ideal' will be described as homophobic, or not reflective of 'modern' Britain. Out of touch. And if the speaker has dipped his wick in anything other than his wife, there will be the inevitable charge of Hypocrisy.

What has happened is opinions which were off limits - immigration sucks for those of us already here; or marriage should be supported by the tax and benefits system - are now no longer off limits. Indeed as Don Paskini points out

For example, I have read or seen these opinions argued for, and claims made about how they have been suppressed, in the Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Daily Telegraph, the Times, the Evening Standard, by religious leaders of all the major faiths, by the Conservative Party, the UK Independence Party, the British National Party, in bookshops, in reports produced by think tanks, on the telly, on the radio, and, of course, on the internet (this is not an exhaustive list).

I therefore conclude that us lefties are obviously doing a pretty hopeless job of using political correctness to stifle freedom of speech...

The fact is that the left, on these issues anyway, lost. The people don't like immigration. They're wrong not to, It's the welfare state they should hate instead. Most people still exist in, or aspire to exist in a nuclear family. Personally, I think a nuclear gay family is certain to be better than what is laughably called 'care', and homosexuals should therefore be allowed (encouraged?) to adopt children. People should be free to marry, and it is none of the state's damn business whom. But a plurality of people disagree, and despite new labour's best efforts, we do still live in a democracy.

So we can rightly dismiss claims of a suppression of free speech, but we mustn't get upset when the left disagrees. Commenter Neil:

Basically, they’re allowed to call a spade a spade. But we’re not allowed to call an idiot an idiot.

We must instead seek to persuade. Commenter cjcjc:

In other words there hasn’t really been much of a “debate” - rather both the proponents and opponents of immigration have been talking pretty much to themselves, but not to each other.

And they are absolutely right. Which is why I rarely comment on blogs I agree with, and instead make a nuisance of myself over at Bob Piper, Stumbling and Mumbling or Lib Con. So if someone thinks my opinions are as vile as I think a lefty's are, I should not get upset when they point out their disagreement in robust Anglo-Saxon. It is after all what I do all the time.

If I can make one complaint though, it is left-wing bloggers lumping libertarians who really, really care about freedom in general and freedom of speech in particular, with authoritarian petty bourgeois ignoramuses who read the Daily Hate, who all get put in an amorphous lump as 'the right'*. Mail readers, it should be noted are the constituency which delivered three general election victories to the Corporatist totalitarians of New Labour. I hate the daily Mail more than the pinkest of Guardianistas. Being lumped with those bastards fucking pisses me right of, and anyone who makes that mistake, is a cunt.

*I'm certain I am guilty of the same crime with "the left" . Sorry, but at least I have tried to define what I mean.

The much delayed juicings from the fruitiest bits of the British Blogosphere are up over at the Wardman Wire. Travelgall's work gets an honourable mention, but I get the credit. The perks of being boss!

Tip of the hat to Counting Cats.

In a recent post, Cranmer has a go at the new NHS programme which advises kids* that knocking one out a couple of times a week is healthy. The aim is that if teenagers learn to enjoy sex by wanking like little grey monkeys in the zoo, then they might delay getting to grips with each other, spawning bastards and catching a dose of the clap. Needless to say, our god-bothering correspondent is not amused and asks

Why is the NHS devoting resources to producing what is, in effect, child enticement?

He does have a point, but in this case, I think I can play the man, not the ball. The church has not exactly covered itself in glory with its abstinence only nonsense, whilst at the same time, queering around with the choir boys (yes, I know Cranmer is an Anglican...) On balance I think I would rather the NHS Sheffield approach than someone telling my kids that sex is a 'sin'.

Anyone who tries to import the poisonous, religion-fuelled abortion 'debate' from the USA, by making the issue party political loses the right to be taken seriously on anything else willy, bum and fanny related. Reducing the abortion limit to 24 weeks is not "the thin end of the wedge" towards outlawing elective terminations, it merely pushes the boundary back to the current limit of viability. Any suggestion that the Conservative party (as opposed to some of its nuttier elements) are aiming to ban contraceptive abortions is ludicrous.

*more specifically the leaflet is aimed at 'educators', so the entire premise of Cranmer's post rather falls over.

If someone's having a heart attack, you'd go into a building to help 'em. Wouldn't you? Especially if you were a paramedic, and that was your job? But according to Reynolds at Random Acts of Reality, standing around for 16 minutes conducting a risk assessment exercise is perfectly OK, because the paramedic was... wait for it... on his own. Solo paramedics are an innovation that the Labour government assured us would cost no lives. Well Ben Bradshaw should have one man's death on his conscience. Another petty new Labour lie.

On Tuesday, I had a drink with a teacher, who resolutely defended the state education system, and took any criticism of it almost as a personal slight. The thesis was that state education is getting better, and exams aren't getting easier, and my opinion that it isn't and they are was not worth spit, because I am not of the profession. A trait I notice across much of the public sector. Just as many doctors and nurses see criticism of the bloody NHS as criticism of them personally, true to form, Reynolds, a paramedic plays the men, not the ball, and has a go at the ignoramuses of the 'My Sun' sandpit

what really sticks in my throat is the comments by the Great British Public who take the rubbish that is printed in the Sun as gospel. When every story becomes a trial by media it's interesting how quickly people are to judge something based on 380 words that they have read in a tabloid paper.

this idiot should be given life in prison

This medic should be struck off straight away, no questions ...

Typical Britain today,what a b****y disgrace, everything is Health and Safety, Hitlerite jobsworths ...

These people want us to risk our lives to save them when they make comments like that? What next? Moaning because I have two perfectly good kidneys and I should give one of them up for transplant so that someone else can live? Offering to be stabbed in place of someone else because we 'save lives' and are 'paid for it'?

but I'm afraid I am tempted to agree with them. In this case though "hitlerite" is probably a bit strong, someone died because of another's failure to do his job adequately, and 'heath and saftey is the given reason'. There are laws against such incompetence, and perhaps this paramedic should see the inside of a gaol cell "pour encourager les autres". After all, I can suffer unlimited fines and seven years in gaol for failure to fill forms in correctly. Why shouldn't a paramedic risk gaol if excessive "risk assessment" costs a man his life?

Yes. Coppers do a difficult job, so do nurses, paramedics and teachers. But none put themselves at risk like fishermen or construction workers, who are not routinely lauded for their bravery and selflessness. In this case, the paramedic is guilty of unprofessionalism and yes, cowardice. But we lay people who merely pay for these brave and selfless people to do their thing are not, according to my friend and Reynolds allowed an opinion on someone's actions because we don't know what we're talking about. I cannot possibly have an opinion on education policy because I am not a teacher. Reynolds says I'm not allowed to criticise a cowardly paramedic, scared of his own shadow, because I've never driven an ambulance. Yet I have to put up with ignoramuses lecturing me on how "bonuses caused the financial crisis" on the evening news every night.

No wonder the bureaucracy becomes captured by producer interest, and public services in this country are shit - we give the people paid out of taxation too soft a ride, constantly massaging their obviously delicate egos by telling them, over and over, what wonderful selfless people they are. The sooner these professions are accountable to people who aren't going to be knee-jerk apologists for their union buddies, the better.

And if you're asking, yes. I would have done it differently. I WOULD have gone in.