Have any of you ever thought "I would love to play golf AND have a couple of beers in the 19th, but I have to drive, so I'll drink coke instead"?


If so, it is possible to get Golf clubs on the back of a Brompton so you can get squiffy in the bar. I like to think we offer a public service here at 'A Very British Dude'


In other news, Network Rail staff are a bunch of illiterate'sIlliterates.

Gordon Brown has been invisible for the past 6 weeks or so, during which time the FTSE 100 has returned a creditable 12%.

Coincidence? I think not.

This post is one of the funniest I have ever read. According to Dave Osler, soon...

...we will find out whether or not Trotskyism is deemed legally equivalent to religion, after the decision of Socialist Party members Brian Debus, Onay Kasab, Glenn Kelly and Suzanne Muna to take one of Britain’s largest trade unions to an employment tribunal under these very regs.

All four have been banned from holding office in Unison for between three and five years. Mabledon Place says that is because they are racists; the four activists say they are being singled out because they are Trots.

It is almost always a bad thing to hand jurisdiction of internal labour movement democracy over to the legal system...

Almost always?

Leftism a religion? So not a thought-through political theory, but the gibberings of a delusional schizophrenic, taken on faith by its adherents? It's amazing what they admit when they're talking amongst themselves.

Dan Hannan noted that he admired Enoch Powell, in a list which included Hayek, Rand and Friedman. The comments are at the beginning of this interview with a bunch of Republican pot-heads from California


I have no doubt there's a bit of mischievousness there. He must know that, even if he talks of Powell's economic liberalism and conservatism, and his commitment to national democracy, the left will jump on any mention of Enoch Powell as if the only achievement of his political life was the 'Rivers of Blood speech'. Sunny Hundal over at Leftist Conspiracy:

The importance of national democracy and living in an independent country? More like Enoch Powell was someone who wanted a racial war in the UK merely because a few immigrants had come over to settle here

Powell was an intellectual politician, whose economic thought, along with that of Keith Joseph underpinned Thatcherism. But for the left, any mention of his name is Haraam.

The left is not a system of thought. It is a religion. These people cannot be argued with because they do not recognise argument. For them, if one person has a 'bad' opinion (and I've dealt with 'Enoch was right' before), then all their other works are tainted. It means anyone referencing Powell must automatically subscribe to their views on Race. But everyone else referenced in that list is in favour of free immigration: the Hayekian position, with which this blog, and for that matter, Dan Hannan agrees, is that you can have free immigration only if you don't have a welfare state subsidising it.

It is obvious to me that if someone finds sense in the works of Marx, and there were interesting observations in his work about the nature of oppression in capitalist systems, it does not follow that that person desires the Stalinist purges and a Gulag Archiapeligo opening up in the outer Hebrides. But for leftists, Conservatives are merely on the way to being Hitler. Voting Conservative means you secretly want to gas the Jews, and send the Blacks 'home' and will look for evidence, however tenuous to support that pre-held opinion.

Witness the NHS debate. The Labour party sought to defend the staus quo with scare stories about the US healthcare system, whilst arguing that Hannan's cogent arguments in favour of NHS reform, which have been ignored until Barry O threatened America with an NHS, were presented as "the real face of the Conservatives". To the Left, it is axiomatic that Tories eat Babies, and want to remove healthcare from the poor. The idea that the NHS might not be the best possible solution is Haraam, as is the idea that there are other ways which maintain the "free" service, but lack the gargantuan national bureaucracy.

This isn't debate. Not about immigration, welfare reform or the future shape of the NHS. This is name-calling. This is Cum Hoc Ergo Propter hoc. This is Ad-Hominem. This is the Straw Man. This is fear-mongering. Because on all subjects, at all times, the collectivist left is wrong, and will be demolished if they debate intellectually, and their 'arguments' fall flat under the weight of evidence. Only the faith that the state can and should provide, and save us from the devil Conservatives sustains them. Over to Sunny again:

I suppose praising the BNP, as long as it’s not immigration related, is ok too? After all Nick Griffin must be a lovely chap as long as you ignore his mad, racist conspiracy theories. Why not invite him around for tea Mr Hannan?

This shit fisks itself. I'll tell you what Sunny, why don't you invite that nice Mr Stalin round for tea. We'll ignore the 20 million corpses and just pretend that he's trying his best, eh?

The reason the Conservatives are 16 points up in the polls is that the journalistic "Mr Cameron, someone Junior in your party has said something you disagree with and which isn't party policy. Are you going to excommunicate execute anathematise withdraw the whip from him?" no longer works. People want to see debate, and Hannan is sparking it. People want to see politicians coming up with ideas after 15 years of deliberate attempts by Labour and their shills in the BBC to close it down. Not all ideas will become policy, but please let's stop pretending that all Powell's (or indeed Marx's) ideas are evil simply because of who said them. Let's not try to put leftist shibboleths like immigration and the NHS off limits for debate.

Let's start thinking about how Cameron, the next prime minister is going to clean up the financial, bureaucratic and constitutional mess left by your fucking useless lot. Because he's going to need all the ideas he can get.

Raedwald is a bit of a puritan when it comes to drugs. In response to Guido's call to legalise everything on the basis that in most towns past 1am, drugs are easier to get than booze - the billions we spend interdicting supply are spent in vain and it would be better to regulate, tax and control the drugs market, he asks "what happens to the drug-dealers?

Legalising drugs won't eliminate criminals. As arguments go, 'prohibit a substance in order to provide something profitable for criminal classes to do' has to be the most wrong-headed and fatuous example of an attempt to justify ones prejudices that I've seen from this normally excellent, or indeed any other, blogger.

The drug-dealing scum would just turn to alternative criminal activity. At best this might be burglary, mugging and robbery. Or the profits to be made from dealing illegal handguns (and would those who advocate legalising drugs also advocate legalising handguns on the same basis?). At worst, our welfare ghettoes may grow to resemble Brazilian favelas, where a 'hit' can be bought for $50 and human life becomes cheaper than beef

The problem is, Altria, sometime most profitable company in the world, and the likes of Diageo and many, many others will tell you that recreational drugs are a very profitable industry. The murders and violence associated with the illegal end of it are a result of turf wars over that highly profitable trade, which in a legitimate business result in advertising hoardings, not corpses. Al Capone demonstrated that prohibition merely changes the destination of the profits: to whom would you rather profits from drugs went: Shareholders and pension funds (via legitimate companies), or gangsters? Without these profits, many of the Drug dealing scum would indeed do something else, and it may not even be criminal.

Booze and fags are highly taxed and regulated. From whom and to whom one sells and how the product in marketed are all subject to controls "for the children". The products themselves are subject to quality control and are reasonably safe. The Government generates tax to pay for associated health costs (and then some, so the NHS argument is bunk too)

Many of the health and social effects are caused by the muck the drugs are cut with, and the fact that users (lets get away from the idea that all drug takers are 'addicts') do not know the strength of the junk they're taking in advance. There's no quality control. Nor is there any meaningful attempt to prevent selling to minors: Heroin and crack in particular are subject to a highly effective pyramid marketing scheme by which the only way to fund a habit is to become a dealer, thereby causing users to recruit other users.

The "drug-dealing scum" might have remained functioning members of society if their tipple was legal, and wouldn't have to deal to fund their habit. If their junk was of high quality, injected with sterile needles, then they would be at less risk of the infections which make junkies so ill.

Every argument in favour of retaining drug prohibition can be shot down by anyone prepared to apply logic. The war on Drugs is insanely futile and counter productive. Anyone, who thinks the 'war on Drugs' is winnable, or even worth fighting, is an idiot.

Now I don't normally blow my own trumpet (erm.... is that strictly true?) but in January this year I wrote "It's just a recession, not the end of the world". I was a tad premature, the Market's bottom was a few weeks later - it touched 3,500 on the 9th March, Since when, the FTSE100 has climbed a magnificent 1,400 points to its intra-day high yesterday. This rally of 40% is the biggest gain of the last 50 years, and clearly signifies that either

1. The Markets have lost their minds now
   
2. The Markets lost their minds in Q4 08 and Q1 09.

Bears will be arguing (1) whatever the market does. They cannot be persuaded. I, however was arguing (2) during the crash, and argued that the markets had lost their minds in October last year. We'd seen it all before.

There's the "Derivatives exposure is going to kill us all" argument which definitely got an airing when LTCM went tits up. There's apocalyptic arguments about how houses are too expensive which I certainly remember from the early '90's. There's the high level of personal indebtedness which I definitely remember from the recessions of the 1980's. There's Sky-high government borrowing, which again featured strongly in every recession since the 1970's. There's the elliott wave theory bollocks, which tells us we're in a bear-market even when the market's been going steadily up for four years, and is based on the startling observation that if the market's been going down a lot, it should go up a bit some time, and vice versa.

The comments I made in that post about regulation are coming to pass, though there is a bit of back-pedalling on a lot of the more ludicrous ideas coming from the left like taking the entire banking system into public ownership, and banning fractional reserve banking.

Sure, what's left of the investment banking industry, which has done such a good job of spreading risk and capital around since the 1980's thereby generating the fastest growth since the industrial revolution, is probably going to get regulated to death. This will mean pulling out of this recession is going to be a lot less fun, as the people making funding decisions will be at the bri-nylon end of financial services. It also means people spotting opportunities in the rubble are going to have to fight through a more risk-averse class of bureaucrat should they wish to finance it. For what 'safe' lending actually involves is restricting lending only to those who don't need it because they already have it, and limiting risks to ones they understand - thereby stifling innovation. This is not meritocratic, and expect fewer small businessmen to own their own companies in the coming decade. The result: If you're working class, the Labour party will see to it that you stay that way.

But this isn't just a normal rally out of a recession. This is something else. The private sector has cut costs, and de-leveraged to deal with the new environment. With the companies now outperforming analysts forecasts at a ratio of 60:40, the evidence is the that the private sector has weathered the storm with some aplomb. The Banks have been recapitalised, and those which aren't supported by the Government are now profitable again and therefore will be able to extend lending soon.

This crisis was originally sold as an existential crisis of capitalism. It wasn't. Business has proved itself flexible and responsive to the environment. Once more Governments have been implicit in causing the crisis through inappropriate and politically motivated bubble blowing (keeping interest rates too low) and stupid regulation (the FSA, community reinvestment act etc...). Hedge funds, for example did not cause the crisis, and only regulation prevented some of them from profiting from it more. Indeed, the tighter the regulations on the market, the less liquid it became. Corporate debt and equity markets crashed and liquidity dried up, but CDOs remained liquid even after MBS markets had totally ceased to function. Instead it is the state, whose balance sheets have been most affected because they were already spending far too much when called on the implicit guarantees they gave when regulators encouraged banks to merge and get too big to fail. The problem now is massive, ludicrous, insane Government debt. Which I've been talking about since my 22nd post way back in 2005.

The Public finances are at the worst they've been for a long time at this stage of a financial cycle, due to a huge increase in the public sector salariat and the Government's desire to spigott ever increasing floods of cash at totally unreformed public services. No amount of tinkering with start dates will change the fact that Gordon has broken his golden rule and taxes will have to rise soon. Heaven forbid that a Labour Government will ever cut spending.

So... the public finances are a mess, the public services are broken, we've just come out of an oil shock, there's a 9 at the end of the year and a Conservative Government is about to be elected. Does that remind you of anything?

The boom of the 1980s was driven by the Governments not just here, but around the world retreating from things they shouldn't be doing. With western Governments broke, they will have to do the same - get out of huge areas of business - which will provide opportunities for people in areas previously 'crowded out' by the state. Hopefully the civil service will be cut, as the 'credit crunch' fades into memory, financial regulation will eventually become sane once again, local government re-invigorated by regaining powers from the central state leading to faster growth. As a result of tax-revenues rebounding faster than expected tax cuts can appear earlier. All those parasites redeployed into productive work mean the economy will grow faster in a virtuous circle of tax-cuts, deregulation and economic growth, in a new re-run of Ronald Regan's Successful Laffer curve experiment.

So... if I'm right, we're knocking at the door of a party which will go on for a decade or more. It's time for the girls to dust of the shoulder pads, leg warmers and back-comb their hair. Chaps, dig out the Kraftwerk records and reach for the red braces. Cocaine and electropop are going to be huge. Mobile phones are even getting bigger again.... Over to you, Mr Gecko.

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the [UK]

Did I mention I was a stockbroker? I can't fucking wait!

The "What's a Tory?" edition is up over at Slugger O'Toole. On that subject, A Tory has written a letter to William Hague bemoaning the Tory decision to "bring back foxhunting by the back door".

There's nothing "by the back door" about it. In fact Cameron's first firm policy was to offer a free vote on the repeal of the hunting ban. This Labour policy is a failure, and was introduced as a piece of vindictive class war, with the welfare of the countryside, and of the fox population coming a distant second to political considerations: it was red meat thrown to the baying mob of Labour back-benchers and party activists in order to help down the bitter pill of the invasion of Iraq.

You could argue that the repeal of the hunting ban is red meat thrown to high-Tory backwoodsmen to buy their acquiescence to the policies of the Cameroons, but that would be to massively overstate the divisions within the Conservatives. Such poorly drafted, unenforceable legislation has no place on the statute books, and in questioning the rationale for its repeal, the Anonymous scribe of his eponymous letters raises the question: is he in fact A Tory? Or merely a Conservative?

Immagine a likely scenario (England are 140-2 as I write this).

It's the fifth test of a five and the series stands at one all. Collingwood goes for 12, and England are OK. You've been taken into the side to rescue the batting line up, it's your debut but anything less than 40 will probably lose England the Ashes.

No pressure Jonathan. Mind you Legendary* Geoffrey Boycott thinks you've got the stuff. And there's historical precident. Every time we've needed a batsman to add a bit of spine to the middle order, we've whistled for the nearest South African.

*It must be true. It's in the Times of India.

...To support the Conservative Party, they announce an alcohol crackdown.

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

I guess all we can hope is that the Tories are less enthusiastic bansturbators, and this is kite-flying to appease the bitter harridans with mouths like dogs arseholes who read the Daily Hate. Puritanism: the nagging fear that someone somewhere might be having fun cannot be sated, and the Tories are foolish to try. The Scottish Tories are, after all, opposing this illiberal lunacy in Scotland.

Richard North is asking the Wrong Question.

I don't often post about matters military, because for me it is very close to home. But I've been reading Richard North's "Defence of the realm" blog for a while and there is no doubt it raises important questions.

Let's leave aside for the moment the fact that North is obnoxious on a heroic scale (which is why I neither read or link to his 'EU referendum'), and thinks everyone else is not just wrong, but wrong AND in the pay of the defence industrial complex. Boor though he is, there are areas where I agree: the dearth of mine-protected vehicles in Afghanistan is a scandal, the failures of procurement which led to the shortage of choppers is nothing short of criminal, Bob Ainsworth is a useless git, the MoD is a bunch of cunts and so on.

But he is rather too keen on criticising the Army command for decisions taken in an operational context, of which no blogger can know the details. In a recent post he says

"Then, on 6 June, an EFP "daisy chain" is discovered intact and successfully defused. It is taken away for forensic analysis, from which the Army confirms with no room for doubt that Snatch Land Rovers offer no protection at all to this type of device.

So what does the Army do? On 15 July it sends another Snatch patrol out into the same general area where the device is known to be used. Three soldiers are killed and two more injured. And then the Army does it again and again and again.

We are led to believe that the Army is manned by professionals – soldiers who know what they are doing. We can criticise the politicians freely, but not our "Brave Boys" who put their lives on the line.

So which politician was it that decided to send a foot patrol out into an environment where twice previously soldiers had encountered complex, multiple IED ambushes and experienced multiple casualties?"

Of course a snatch doesn't provide protection from an EFP (of which few are in Afghanistan... here he's talking about Iraq). A Main Battle Tank is vulnerable to these devices. So suggesting that a vehicle vulnerable to 7.76mm is at risk from EFPs and presenting it as an observation, is dishonest to say the least.

Blaming operational commanders for sending boys "into the same general area" for their deaths is bordering on the slanderous. Does he know what the "Brave boys" were there to do, because reading North's blog, you feel that he thinks commanders send their soldiers to act as target practice for Terry Taleban or Jonny Jihadi. If they're being sent into danger, it is because there is a job to do, which the commanders deem worth the risk. It would be nice if there were enough of the right vehicles to do the job, but in Iraq in 2005, snatches were all that was available.

Let's ignore the EFP for a minute. They aren't found in Afghanistan in any number. It's low Explosive, mostly made with fertiliser given by aid agencies, not a million miles away from the 'culvert bomb' familiar from the Northern Ireland campaign. In Afghanistan, the Taleban have long ceased to assault western forces - to go toe-to-toe with us, as they often did with the Russians, because to assault a position manned by Western forces is nothing short of suicide. Instead, they have learned the tactics of the Ambush - bomb, follow up with booby traps in cover, and rush in and shoot up anyone who's left.

The Taleban are good at this, and in the words of one soldier in my acquaintance, you have to be "a right ninja" to get out of a well laid Taleban ambush alive. In the excerpt above, North seems to be suggesting that British forces should not be sent somewhere where bombs are to be found, or have been found. Well given the sparse road network in Afghanistan, that's impossible. Eventually you'll drive over a device or into an ambush. Confining forces to base is not an option.

The NATO forces in both theatres rely not on armour to survive blasts, though that helps, but in what Soldiers now call TTPs. Tactics, Techniques and Procedures. It is these that must evolve, and do. We must get better at spotting devices before they go off. Because there are few vehicles which can survive the many hundred lb devices being deployed. Above all we must prevent the devices being laid, and just as in Iraq, that's about intelligence, and identifying the bomb-makers and interdicting supply of the most hard-to-get part, not about riding in ever more effective armour.

He seems to suggest that no road move should be in vehicles without boat-shaped hulls, which is just not practical. Yes. Vehicle procurement could and should have been better, but that is not why we're going to lose, and repetitive "I told you so" from North isn't going to save a single life.

It's not about kit. If we're going to lose, we are going to lose because of the decisions made at the political level. The army is going to have to deal with the tactics themselves. That is what they are paid to do.

The first principle of war is "selection and maintenance of the Aim". That is where we've gone wrong. The fucking Americans with their "war on drugs", the NGOs and development wallahs are paying bribes to the Taleban and the sheer corruption of the Karzai government all get in the way of the Clauswitzian victory necessary to allow an alternative to drugs for poor farmers and allow roads 'n schools to be built. We must degrade the Taleban's ability and willingness to fight BEFORE we can do anything else.

While the Taleban can set up ambushes involving multiple devices and many hundreds of lbs of explosive at will, then anything other than defeating them is going to be counter productive.

The fact is soldiers are there to do a job, and that job entails risk. If you mount a big, fuck-off offensive (what, like the one just done?), especially one which coincides with another in Pakistan, (what, like the one they just done?) then you're going to have to move men, materiel about more often. There will be more bullets flying and more men will die.

Incidentally, it was on 10 March 2007 that Anthony Loyd, soldier turned photographer and war correspondent, argued: "for once" an Afghan war is winnable, declaring that, "the tide is turning against the Taleban".

Some tide ... some Taleban.

This is defeatism. For all his forensic knowledge of military vehichles, North's is the knowledge of a Walt. The Taleban are fighting for their lives. Their commanders are at risk in Afghanistan, and increasingly in their bases in Pakistan. They do not have the manpower to launch an all out assault like they did in 2007. Nor do they have sufficiently educated footsoldiers to lay the most sophisticated devices - the EFPs he insinuated were in Afghanistan.

This is not to deny the Taleban are causing huge problems, but I don't think anyone underestimated how dangerous they are. The fact is North is ticking each death off, and using it to confirm an already-held opinion: That the Army should listen to him, because he knows everything. This monstrous ego is blinding him to the bigger picture: Afghanistan, like Iraq is winnable, but needs political support at home for this to be achieved (I am not suggesting that to Criticise the Army is unpatriotic). Like Iraq, soldiers will not be invulnerable, and will die both on the battlefield and on the road, and to use each death as a political football is offensive. Whether or not they are in decent vehicles, or helicopters, soldiers on operations get killed. The recent deaths around Sangin may be because of panthers claw, or despite it but, the current intensity of the fighting, like in the surge in Iraq of 2007, presaged a defeat of our opponents, not unless North and the Ignorant MSM get their way, a presage of defeat. No doubt soldiers on the Ground are modifying TTPs as we speak to deal with the relatively new Taleban tactics.

Unlike Iraq, the British Government is fully committed to the surge, and the British Army is taking a full part alongside our NATO allies.

In savaging the dead-tree press for fixating on the round-number of 200 deaths, he appears to be unaware that he's doing exactly the same. Coalition deaths, though terrible are inevitable if we're to achieve objective one. Was June 6th 1944 the greatest disaster of WWII? No. But it was the costliest in American, British and Canadian, lives. This is a price these nations deemed worth the result - the opening of a second front and the speedy demise of Hitler.

To talk about operations like Afghanistan, like Iraq and the Former Yugoslavia before it, as having a point when you can say "we won" is rubbish, and demonstrates you don't understand modern, low intensity war. These wars do not have victories, they have cost-benefit analyses. When the nation you're building is sufficiently unshit for it to be left to the natives to finish off, you leave. As I said about Iraq, In Afghanistan, we're playing for the point. There is no victory, and the absence of defeat is a simple matter of political will.

Richard North and others in calling the War "unwinnable" are way off the mark.

I had some drinks recently with a soldier recently returned from the 'Stan. During his 6-month tour, he had to take a flight across Afghanistan whilst carrying some items to an HQ for further investigation. Because he was a soldier serving on operations, he had the following equipment:

• A SIG Sauer 9mm pistol
• 28 rounds 9mm parabellum
• An SA80 A2 assault rifle
• over 200 rounds of 5.56mm NATO ball ammunition
  
• A Thermite grenade
• a couple of L109 A1 high explosive grenades
• The 'item' he was carrying was most easily described to the layman as 'a bomb, in a box'.
• a Penknife.

Guess which item(s), in order to comply with international regulations, he was made to check into the hold, and which they were happy to let him keep as Hand Luggage.

Yup. The only item which needed to be checked into the hold was the Penknife.

To be fair to them, the people who were tasked with enforcing this rule were well aware of the ludicrousness of the situation.

Britblog Roundup number 235 is up over at Charles Crawford's place.

Why can't lefties take criticism of the NHS?

Read this bollocks about Dan Hannan from Jamie Sport at Liberal Conspiracy. You can almost smell the pre-cum as he frots himself to the thought of an NHS "large and noble enough to bring good health to an entire population ". I thought we were the fattest, illest population in western Europe, but there you go. And even if he was talking about healthcare, the NHS doesn't exactly cover itself in glory there either. Don't get cancer in the UK.

Why do they stick to the ludicrous line that the NHS is "an entity admired the world over, and one that many now could not imagine living without"?

It isn't admired the world over, because no other country has created something similar. Many cannot imagine living without it simply because they lack imagination.

Never let the facts get in the way of a good lefty NHS wank.

All critics of the NHS are saying is the NHS is not the best way to run health care. It is not a binary system with NHS a shining city on the hill and the USA where road traffic accident victims have their credit cards swiped by Ambulance crews on the other. 25 million Americans do not have "no access to healthcare". They have no health insurance which is not the same thing. No-one defends the American system for its treatment of chronic disease for the poor. But to pretend that uninsured people don't get any emergency health care is absurd. As Dizzy points out, the left calls critics of the NHS "ignorant" and then demonstrates ignorance (if I'm charitable) or lies (if I'm not) about the USA in order to create scare stories of their own.

What is needed in the UK is an end to the state monolith, which needs to stop trying to do everything, because it ends up doing everything badly. People support the NHS because people think the NHS = Healthcare, and people like healthcare.

In answer to the question posed at the start of the article. Lefties cannot take criticism of the NHS because They've identified one part of the post war socialist settlement that the public actually like, and subsequently used it to define themselves. A real public debate would mean Healthcare would no longer equal NHS in the public mind, and destroy their one great political success and their entire self image into the process. If the public actually thought about healthcare, there might be an environment where advocating reform would not be political suicide.

So critics of the NHS. The hate, bile and lies you will endure mean the criticisms are hitting the mark. The enemy is to your left. Carry on, Gentlemen.

Many of the links in this article are emphatically Not Safe For Work.

One of the most popular posts I've written in the past four years is entitled 'porn for women'. It does not deliver what the title suggests and is in fact my review of the god-awful chick-flick 'love actually'. However it's popularity in the search-engine hits suggests that women are interested in visual erotica though, without the all pervading single-mindedness of the fellas. And now, here is an opportunity to give my (male) take on what women want from their grot. Now you may say "what could a man possibly know about what turns women on?". Well, I'm 32 and single, with only a handful of relationships passing the 6-month mark, I've a lot of data points to compare. Most women only know what gets a small number of their close friends off. Men who have had a large number* of Girlfriends are quite likely to know what gets a broad range of women frothing.

Over at CiF, there is an article about the problems faced by a magazine, Filament which aims to show men presented for 'the female gaze'. In the first issue, men were not presented naked. Now, women vary much, much more than men in what flicks their sexual switch. I've been out with many women, and for every one who was turned on by naked men, there was another (straight) girl who was visually stimulated by female breasts. One thing they all had in common, as Filament found out was that not one single girl I've ever dated has been stimulated simply by pictures of naked men, which is where Playgirl fell down (though it is still available online).

The reason (or one of them) is the cock. It does not have the roundness and pleasing shape of the Breast which so excites men (and some women), and unlike the breast, is not in itself attractive. Female arousal can be faked - a good porn model will look lascivious, and appear aroused. What the cock does do is signal, unambiguously whether the man is sexually aroused or not. The ability to achieve tumescence is a very good unfakeable signal of good physical and mental health, which is the same biological reason men like firm, round, perky breasts - until the invention of silicone, it was an unfakable signal for health, nutrition and youth.

Porn is about fantasy - it provides a face to the masturbatory thought. Not one girl I've ever met was interested in a floppy cock. That only interests men who like measuring and comparing (discreetly) in the shower-room. Women, on the other hand like cocks to be hard, because they like to fantasise that the gorgeous man in the photo shoot is excited by them. So the girls asked the magazine to show erections. But this caused problems due to the vagueness of the Obscene publications act, and the consequent unwillingness of printers and distributors to handle the magazine.

Women don't like looking at men, because there are no magazines for women, that must be the case. QED? But the problems Filament faced indicate that perhaps the feminists have a point. If women cannot actually get what they want from porn for legal reasons, then there are legal, social and moral issues which need addressing. There is a sexist hypocrisy surrounding what 'society' expects women to be, and that is passive partners in sex, which they don't always need 0r want to be.

The Heresiarch criticises Filament for its "its overwhelming, almost oppressive, air of moral seriousness". But surely this is inevitable for a ground-breaking publication. Playboy, for example has upped the nipple-count, and shrunk the number of interviews with politicians in order to compete with more explicit competitors, since its first publication and indeed from the 25th anniversary issue I nicked from my Dad when I was but a boy (containing the centerfold the magnificently named Candy Loving).

You cannot criticise Filament for not doing its research: In particular their desire for men who are not muscle-bound contrasts directly with playgirl, whose readership is 30% (according to them) gay. Instead, filament argues, it is the face which attracts women, though I am not sure that all women like "softer, more feminine faces", if that is what their communityy say, then who am I to argue? Much of this, however tallies with my experience - a muscle-bound body is only a turn-on to girls if it's a surprise (your new, charming man takes his business shirt of to reveal ... wow), or there's a non-narcissic reason for the muscle (like rugby, or an outdoor job involving heavy lifting). Gym-queens are boring and self-obsessed, and that is emphatically not sexy.

So, a woman who loves and fancies her chubby boyfriend, will still go 'Phoowar' at pictures of Jonny Wilkinson, not just because he's beautiful, but because he's a successful man, with a 'nice' public persona. She fancies her chubby boyfriend because she loves him, not the other way round. There's more than the six-pack to turn the girls on. Women need the whole story, not just the picture, which is why the guidance to photographers is to create "images that show the subject’s character and the environment he is in"

Female sexuality is bloody complicated (and bloody frustrating at times...) and consequently much harder to satisfy in a single publication, but I for one wish Filament luck in overcoming hypocrisy and prejudice and petty-fogging legal obstacles. I'm not going to read it myself, because I don't like looking at naked chaps, but I support the principle.

*I'm not telling you.

Certainly not at Liberal Conspiracy.

A few days ago, Sunny Hundal left the following comment on this blog.

You guys can't have a discussion without throwing ad hominems eh?

Well, that's what I expect from right-wingers anyway.

Apparently failing to see the Irony in the fact that he'd just called everyone racist for opposing positive discrimination. So here he is again, suggesting that "Tories...want to cripple the NHS" and are being used by republicans in the USA to scare the voters out of supporting St. Barack of Obama's healthcare plan.

What tickled me pink is that Hundal uses voters' opinions to define "reality".

Guess how many people share Hannan’s view that the NHS was bad idea and should be abolished? A spectacular 1% of Britons.

No-one would argue that abolishing the NHS would be a spectacularly unpopular move, which is why it is unlikely to be Tory policy. But the UK, despite its supposedly universal healthcare has strikingly steep gradients in health outcomes which correlate well with socio-economic group, as indeed LibCon points out. In this, we are similar to the USA. In many conditions, of which cancer is the most pressing shame, the NHS fares extremely poorly when compared to other first-world health systems, and even the poorest, blackest Americans are more likely to survive than the average NHS patient.

The NHS badly needs reform, and no other country has replicated it, and to do so now would be perverse. Rather than setting up a straw man by suggesting that the likes of Hannan want to adopt the US model of health provision in the UK, which no-one supports and is held up as the bogey-man scaring the public off reform, why does the left not debate the issues? All Hanan is doing is advising the USA that the NHS is a really, really bad way to organise healthcare.

The Universal principle works for emergency and life-saving care (as is the case most sensible health systems, including the USA), but cannot ever hope to deliver the resources to enable the newest treatments for all. The NHS should be there to ensure that everyone is looked after to a basic level, and insurance should top-up the rest. Non life-threatening conditions, such as infertility and cosmetic surgery should not be covered by the NHS guarantee, but should be available privately, again as happens in most juristictions. The newest treatments should be insurance-funded, which NHS care limited by NICE striclty and clearly rationing which treatments are to be paid for by the NHS. Otherwise the NHS will continue to bankrupt the state.

You see, most people support the NHS, because they have no concept that there can be another way of doing it. But when people were told that top-up funding was not allowed, these 'supporters of the NHS' cried foul and the Government was forced to relent, as it offended the public's sense of fair play. Allowing people to die, in order to defend a socialist dogma of universality seemed grotesque. Most people accept that the NHS cannot fund everything, and most also accept that people should be allowed to spend their own money on potentially life-saving drugs, if they wish.

The British public, being a largely godless lot have raised the NHS to be their idol. It seems fair, and the principle is hard to argue against. And many people get decent care. But most do not have any comparators and if you've ever hurt yourself in Canada or France, as I have, you will see how it should be done. If most residents of the UK are asked to criticise the NHS, they feel they are criticising the Doctor who patched up their son, or the Nurse who cared for their Gran. Of course the NHS is popular.

That doesn't stop it being shit, when compared to healthcare in France Germany, Canada and yes, the USA too. And in reducing the debate to EEEEEVil Tories who want to "destroy the NHS", against Labour who are "for" the NHS, Sunny Hundal is not debating the issues or adressing the arguments. He is setting up straw men, indulging in hypocritical ad-hominem and blowing a dog-whistle for his leftist, state-worshiping, soon to be out of power for a long, long time, friends

Charlotte Gore has come up with a brilliant idea to circulate ideas, which basically involves producing a easily printed black and white leaflet to be printed out by like-minded bloggers to distribute to those who don't pore over the rantings of political anoraks.

Her first suggestion is "the Free Market works".

I shall work on my offering now!

My only problems are that whilst the Blogosphere is largely libertarian (small 'L') in outlook, there is a significant minority which is hard left, and they are much, much better at this sort of thing. We don't want to give them ideas.

Secondly, politics is a small part of Internet discourse. Ask Tim Worstall, which of his blogs gets the most hits. The internet was invented as a means for scientists to communicate but now exists for Porn, Celebrity tittle-tattle, Porn, Gambling, Porn, Dating, Porn, Sports tittle-tattle and Porn. Political blogging comes way below porn, and knitting. I fear as yet there are few enough of us to make a difference.

At the next election maybe.

I still think it's a good idea and will be posting my leaflet here soon. You should all do likewise, and we will choose the best.

The main line the Labour Party have used to attack David Cameron and the Tories is that he has hooked up with "extremists" in Europe and this "calls into question his judgement".

This attack, which does not stand up to any detailed scrutiny, will be used more to sure up the Labour base more than gain votes from floating voters. If the Labour drones hate Cameron enough, they can be persuaded to get their carcasses out to vote. By making the tenuous link with the far right, Labour alleges sympathy with all the views of their new partners and some of them don't seem to like gays. The charge is that pulling out of the European Peoples' Party was a mistake, and has forced the British Conservatives to team up with extremists, like the Polish 'Law & Justice' Party, and the Latvian 'Fatherland and Freedom' Party. The former is alleged to be headed by an Anti-Semite and has strongly socially conservative views on Homosexuality. The Latter is alleged to Honour the Latvians who fought in the Waffen SS during World War II.

Let's deal with the Latvians first. If you've been invaded by Stalin, and you are where you are, the only hope is in getting Hitler to help you. It's a piss poor choice for anyone and given the information then available (the sheer scale of Nazi atrocities was not then widely known) The Nazis could be seen as the least bad option, and many Latvians were subsequently conscripted into the Wehrmacht. A Nationalist party could reasonably commemorate them, and the ceremony in question is supposed to honour all Latvians who took up arms against the Soviet Union. This is so uncontroversial in Latvia, all parties send representatives. This lot in particular seem a solidly Conservative, religious and Nationalist party which is not uncommon in Europe. For the left though, any taint of Hitler, or even being sufficiently catholic to denounce Gay marriage is enough to condemn a man and his beliefs as Fascist. For many, me included, Stalin bears the same mark of Cain, but no Labourite will ever be alive to the nuance. I wouldn't vote for these guys myself, but hey-ho. I'm not Latvian.

The Polish Law and Justice Party is where the real attacks are going. The allegation is that the leader of the Party, Michael Kaminski, is an anti-Semite. The evidence for this is a Newspaper interview in which he argued against the Polish Nation apologising for the Jadwabne massacre of Jewish people by poles, saying that He would only apologise if 'the Jews" apologised for their part in atrocities committed by Soviet authorities in partitioned Poland. It is possible to manufacture outrage about this, but only if you suspend logical faculties.

Most people on the left regard themselves and everyone else as part of the collective. Thus it is reasonable to apologise to the ancestors of people wronged by your ancestors. Many people who subscribe to individualist views think "I didn't massacre Jews, so I don't see why I should apologise". This, despite the best efforts of the Labour party to muddy the waters seems to be a storm about a poorly worded response, which may be distorted by translation, and definitely taken out of context. Kaminski was arguing against an apology saying, in effect, "no-one's asking the Jews to apologise for their part in Soviet atrocities". This taken out of context looks mildly anti-Semitic. But in context, an argument against the sort of Blanket apologies by leaders for ancient wrongs, it is entirely harmless.

He's also supposed to have been a member of a far-right party called "National Rebirth of Poland". He joined this when he was 15, when Poland was a Communist totalitarian state, and, he claims it was not then a far-right, anti-Semitic grouping. Mr Kaminski is now an active member of the Friends of Israel, and received fulsome support from the Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, and has stood up to genuine anti-semites in the Polish parliament, so I am prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt on charges of anti semitism.

It is not as if there are not equally unpleasant or even worse caracters in the EPP or the Socialist group in which Labour sits. These arguments are utterly spurious.

Allied to these charges of having Nazi friends, the idea that the Conservatives are "losing influence" and "taken themselves outside the mainstream" of European opinion. First, the EPP is an avowedly federalist grouping. The British Conservatives are (with a few exceptions) not, so they were not able to influence the direction of Europe from within the EPP. What they are doing is creating a block, of which they are the core, to which reformist and non-federalist parties who nevertheless wish to remain in the EU, can sit. It is this which is causing the vitriol, because this will derail the Federalist train more effectively than the Anti-EU parties, who actually have little support. The Eurocrats know that the people of Europe are broadly in favour of the EU, but don't like where it is now, or where it is going. The Tories aim to tap into this, and I suspect they will be more successful than when in the EPP.

The vitriol, the spite, the smears and the innuendo; not to mention the legal challenges and attempts to silence individuals are all evidence of the fear of Cameron's new group in the European parliament. So, if you think that David Cameron is sitting with Nazis, and has committed a massive strategic error, you're an idiot, and I've a bridge to sell you. But then you probably demonstrate that most clearly by voting Labour.

There are people, who appear to genuinely love cricket, and who sincerely want England to win the Oval test who are agitating for a return to the England side of Mark Ramprakash. Ramps is a fine batsman no doubt, who is averaging 100 for his county whose home ground is the venue for the next test, so the prima facie case for his inclusion is strong.


But he's playing in the second division, and the Surrey ground is notoriously favourable to batsmen. He's not facing world class bowlers, so his average is that of a flat-track bully. But these are not definitive arguments against his inclusion, a batsman can only hit what is bowled at him.

The real clincher is the feeling that those of us who remember watching England in the 90s got when Ramps was walking out to the crease when England were in trouble (a familiar feeling then as now). It wasn't hope of the sort Pietersen or Flintoff can inspire, nor was it confidence that Strauss seems to generate. The sad fact is that Mark Ramprakash is a talented batsman who was given more than a fair chance, and yet never cut it on the international stage: 52 tests, averaging just 27. And now he's 40, he's not going to be much cop in the field - let a few fours go or drop a catch, and you've got to add that to your innings to justify a place.

I'm not going to argue that Bopara should stay in; he has to go and regain form in the county game, and that Bell and Collingwood's places should be in jeopardy too. But if you want an England retread, surely Marcus Trescothick, another person at the top of the county scoreboard, whose self removal from the England squad had nothing to do with his talent or average, but a battle with depression which is the subject of one of the best sporting biographies ever written, is more deserving of another chance.

If the answer to England's woes is Mark Ramprakash, I'm afraid you're asking the wrong question.

Jonathan Calder is angry at the nominators for not sticking to the rules... Namely

1. From the Last Week
2. British (by a Briton or about Britain)
   
3. Not more than one from your own blog

I think I might have been responsible for the FBI one (sorry Jonathan) but the rest of the roundup, the two hundred and thirty-fourth no less, can be found here. Enjoy!

...And never underestimate England's ability to collapse.

63-5 and though Broad can bat a bit, we're into the tail, and the game is, to all intents and purposes, over before lunch on the first day.

As I write this, he's just edged one for four past the keeper's fingertips. This is looking like a potential record breaker - time to dust off the lowest first innings total scores - of all time, at Headingley and Vs. the Australians. Then cheer if we tick 'em off.

Update: 72-6. Broad just flicked it to Katich at square-leg, and off they go for lunch. At least you'll get your money back if you've tickets for days 3,4 or 5.

Update 2: And that's it then. All out for 102. Which is shit. Harmison needs to do something pretty special pretty quickly....

Update 3: and the first 2 balls of the Australian innings go to the boundary. This test-match is not going to take a long time to complete.

Update 4: Maybe I spoke to soon. Harmison strikes taking Katich for a Duck. 14 - 1

Update 5: No. They're going for 8 an over at the moment!

Bendy Girl, who writes at Benefit Scrounging Scum wrote an interesting post about the disability living allowance, which comes to an end for her in 2010.

It's impossible to explain how much people like me rely upon the extra income from Disability Living Allowance. My award ends in November 2010 and already I am worrying whether it will be re-awarded or removed because I've made a mistake on the form and not managed to translate the everday difficulties I experience into the required language of a DLA form. Without my DLA I would be housebound. I would not be able to afford to run a car, without which I cannot shop, access health care, collect prescriptions or pay for the care I receive.

No-one in their right minds thinks society shouldn't support the genuinely disabled. This country has a proud history of taking in the oppressed from around the world. What changed the ability of this country to achieve these noble ends, was the welfare state.

The welfare state has ceased to support the needy and instead subsidised the lifestyle of what in more enlightened times used to be called 'sturdy beggars'. People who could work, but decided that they can't be bothered and live on a sick-note instead. Often threatening doctors to sign off "their back". The idle scroungers are responsible for the lion's share of the abuse of the system. They are in a very real way taking money from the genuinely needy, and Governments of both flavours have been complicit: particularly in moving the unemployed onto the disability register. It is this fraud which sees the benefits system account for 25% of government managed expenditure, whilst ensuring there is not enough to guarantee someone like BG a living income.

It is the Bureaucracy of the welfare system which is so crushing to those at its mercy, yet so incompetent at weeding out the scroungers, which is in need of reforming. It is not the outcomes, it is the entire philosophy of the welfare state which must change.

Juliette, writing about Asylum seekers was apposite

Anyone who's ever been at the financial mercy of a huge inefficient bureaucracy will be able to imagine - if you multiply your own experiences by several thousand - how it feels to be ruled 24/7 by a system as capricious, unpredictable and powerful as a particularly psychotic Roman emperor. You might be waiting for the ultimate verdict on whether you can stay here or not for two weeks, two years, two months or two hours. Maybe you can stay and you wife and kids can't. Maybe your wife and kids can stay and you can't. Maybe none of you can. Maybe all of you can. In a second, everything in your life could change. And you never, ever know when that second's going to be.

And the bureaucracy's neverending.

Just reading BG's post, you're struck by the sheer number of awards to which you might be entitled. Because each recipient group is in receipt of a discreet benefit, which comes with its own few thousand staff to administer, a single benefit Disability living allowance or old people's attendance allowance can be cut "saving" money, whilst pissing relatively few people off. The Aged are campaigning for 'their' benefit to be saved, and against the disabled who are campaigning for theirs.

By dividing people into deserving and undeserving groups, which change according to political mood, the state is attempting to punish or reward lifestyles and behaviours that are, most of the time, none of the state's business. Instead of a free people, the bureacuracy maintains everyone in a state of subsurvient fear that the bureaucracy will not see the claim their way.

What is nessesary is a robust system, which protects the vulnerable, but does not subject them to the endless indignity of form filling, and doesn't require an Army of civil servants and local government goons to audit, inspect and review claims. Means testing leads directly to moral hazard, and actively mitigates against people taking on whatever work they might be capable of.

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that a citizen's basic income, or some varitation of it, like the negative income tax, and an additional disability allowance would dischage society's obligations with the minimum bureacuracy, making everyone happier. Oh. And assylum seekers should be encouraged to work. After they've paid tax for a bit, they can become citizens too.

From the poor and needy being supplicants to a bureaucrat's will, to being free agents and masters of their own destiny in one simple policy. And you get to fire an enormous number of bureaucrats, so they can move on and finally do something worthwhile with their drab lives. What's not to like?

Apparently Harridan Harperson was right to say "men are beastly" and "responsible for all that horridness in the world" and that everything would smell of petunias if women wimin womyn were in charge (though obviously not that woman). Not only was this the right thing to say, but terribly clever too. This is the key to exposing the Tories for the beastly sexist scum they are, and Labour should...

...force a political debate on why parliament has remained white and male for so long. Then they should ask what the Tories plan to do about it and watch them squirm.

I'll have a pint of whatever Sunny Hundal is drinking. Obvious retorts are Margaret Thatcher is a woman, or was last time I met her. That Tory poll ratings go up in proportion to the air time Cameron gets. That the Tories once elected a member of a minority reviled in much of Europe as their Leader. That Labour have been in charge for the last 12 years. What have the labour party done about it? To enact legislation to force companies to gerrymander their top people to meet diversity targets would be profoundly stupid. Are you going to chose the best person, or the person which ticks the box? Is a genuinely good minority candidate going to labour under the suspicion by others that they're there because of the colour of their skin or the location of their gonads.

But those arguments have been repeated (once more with feeling by Dizzy), and still the likes of Harman come out with this shit, cheered on by self-loathing simpering pinkos like Hundal. In truth, Left wingers have taken 'their' 'minority communities' for granted for so long that they actually think that 'oppression' or 'discrimination' can be measured by the number of women/homosexuals/black or other minority ethnic people in parliament or board rooms. A whole industry of professional minority 'community leaders' cheer politicians on, while most members of minorities get on with earning a living in this country which is getting harder for us all; man, woman, straight, gay, black or white.

They've lost sight of the fact that We're all supposed to be equal. All human. Isn't that the point of discrimination legislation? But instead, discrimination legislation asks (white, straight, male) people (who are assumed to be oppressors) to see people not as individuals but as a member of a group in a hierarchy of oppression from a patriarchal, racist and heteronormative majority; and to act to remedy the oppression. You're seen as part of a group you didn't choose to join, and treated accordingly.

Every time you apply for a job, you're asked to state your race. For 'monitoring purposes'. Left wingers did that. Just because it's done in a misguided attempt to help doesn't make it any less sinister. I don't like it. I don't like it at all, and nor would, I suspect the likes of Gandhi or Martin Luther King.

First they came for the Phallocratic oppressors*
And I didn't speak up, because (you get the picture....)

*apologies to Niemoller