Conservative Commentary
"the blogger whose youthful effusions have won him bookmarks all over Whitehall ... horribly compelling" - The Guardian
|
|
Conservative Commentary "the blogger whose youthful effusions have won him bookmarks all over Whitehall ... horribly compelling" - The Guardian |
|
|
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Chomsky condensed (Satire)
It is a truism that deposing a foreign tyrant can only be justified after all of his most heroic and principled domestic opponents have tried to do it themselves and been slaughtered. Obviously it's a shame they'll be dead and all, as they'd have been the ideal people to rebuild the country as a democracy, but how else can we be sure the population don't really love their murderous dictator? We may say it's automatically better to have a democracy than a genocidal tyranny, but that's a completely irrelevant, subjective cultural preference. When the choice is between rape rooms and gas attacks or freedom and peace, who are we to judge? Thanks to Harry Hatchet for the link. UPDATE: I've been asked to post here a comment I left at Harry's on one integral aspect of, or flaw in, Noam Chomsky's thinking: What is so striking about Chomsky's writing is how pathological is his obsession with hypocrisy. I read Media Control at the beginning of the year and I don't think there is a single argument within that isn't based on the assumption that it is utterly outrageous to do one thing, however good, while condemning someone else for doing something rather similar, however bad. Anyone with enough worldliness or sense of proportion to recognise hypocrisy as the tribute vice pays to virtue is going to laugh Chomsky's 'arguments' right out of court. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Tuesday, March 30, 2004
The Left's ultimate litmus test
I think this criticism is right on both counts, and I also suspect that most of the lefties now considering this same question recognise that the boundaries of political reality would rule out any attempt by Blair to intervene in the American election. They don't realistically expect Tony Blair to do anything publicly that shows partiality towards Kerry. What motivates their intense interest in the Prime Minister's leanings on this issue is the belief that it could answer the question of whether he and they actually occupy the same planet politically. If, whatever his faults, Blair at least can see that Kerry would be better than Bush, then they can breathe a rare sigh of relief. But if he can bring himself to support George Bush even given the alternative of John Kerry, then they will know that this is a man they just cannot understand, and with whom they just cannot share more similarities than differences. If the traditional Left can have it confirmed that Blair supports Bush, then they will know for sure that their own support for Blair was a really horrible mistake. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Monday, March 29, 2004
The balkanised bigger picture
Over at England's Sword, I look at another case of a council rubbing away a little part of a local community for the sake of political correctness: I recall Peter Hitchens once writing very insightfully of what he had always imagined would be worst about trying to live in an invaded and occupied country. For him it would be passing a foreign flag every morning on the way to work, seeing harmless and homely customs brought to an end, witnessing the demolition of precisely those little things that bring together a community and a nation. As the months and years go by, we are all getting a flavour of just what he means. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Friday, March 26, 2004
Quote of the Day
"As George Walden pointed out in The New Elites, it has become pretentious not to be a hypocrite: Our Betters trumpet the NHS as the Envy of the World while making their own secret arrangements to get better, private treatment (don't we all, if we can?). Oxbridge graduates applaud the breakthrough arrival of students who can't spell in our great universities, whose class-ridden fault is still wanting to curriculumise courses teaching scholarship, respect for truth, love of learning for its own sake and up-themselves cr*p like that." - Frederic Raphael Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Carey on Islam
How often have we heard Muslim clerics say that they condemn terror with a firm "on all sides" qualifier? How many of them can assert that they want to see an end to "all violence", but never find it within themselves to say that terrorism is plainly, unequivocally wrong? Based mainly on personal experience, I don't for a moment believe that extremist groups like the abominable Muslim Association of Britain are truly representative of most British Muslims, but how distant their rhetoric is from that of most Imams is not so clear cut. If the great majority of Islamic clerics are fiercely and unequivocally opposed to terrorism, anti-Semitism and campaigns to subvert liberal democracy, then it is all the more important that we hear from them, that they speak out against groups like Hamas, Al-Qaeda and the MAB. The head of the Muslim Council of Britain claims that "mainstream Muslim organisations have consistently condemned terrorist acts but their statements are often ignored by the media". It may well be the case that such statements are already being made, and for self-loathing PC reasons the BBC and its press counterparts are more interested in airing the grievances of those who know no better than Jenny Tonge than reporting the views of the decent majority. If this is true, then it is the liberal media who are responsible for creating the impression that most Muslim leaders propagate moral equivalence or worse, and it is they, not Lord Carey, who should be condemned. Thanks to Samizdata for the link. UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg stresses the crucial role for moderate Muslims: If every German I meet or see is a Nazi, it's reasonable for me to say all Germans are Nazis. It may not be true, of course, but having no evidence indicating otherwise it's certainly understandable that I would draw that conclusion. If, however, I constantly hear Germans condemn Nazism and anything which remotely resembles Nazism, if I see them repudiating German Nazis, and working to repair the damage done by German Nazis, it would be outrageously unfair and malicious for me to say all Germans are Nazis. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Thursday, March 25, 2004
Quote of the Day
"Let us kill the English: Their concept of individual rights could undermine the power of our beloved tyrants!" - Joan of Arc, The Simpsons Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Guest Post: Benjamin from Harry's Place on the Budget
In a matter of months, Benjamin Mackie has under various guises become the central figure of the Harry's Place comments section with his instant replies to anything and everything anyone says. Despite his leftism, I asked him to give his view of the Budget, and he was kind enough to accept. - Peter The Economist deploys the typical old nonsense when it comes to last week's Budget. GORDON BROWN'S eighth budget was about politics, not economics. No, it's a budget, so it's about both. :) Given how fast the budget deficit has been growing, a prudent custodian of the public finances would be raising taxes or cutting spending. But, with an election likely next year, neither was uppermost in Mr Brown's mind. Instead, he kept his budget neutral, stayed rather quiet about the state of the public finances and had a great deal to say about the economy. Typical Tory waffle. What has this got to do with anything? The economy is Labour's biggest electoral asset. LOL! This time Nu-Lab spin! Why can't he think for himself? But if the economy is strong, the public finances are not. More ad hominems. So shallow and predictable. How low will the Economist sink in its attacks on progressives and public spending? Four years ago, at a similar point in the electoral cycle, Mr Brown's fiscal position was impregnable, with a surplus of £15 billion ($27 billion). Now he has a deficit of £38 billion - 3.4% of GDP. He is forecasting deficits of £33 billion in 2004-05 and £31 billion the year after. Lies, damned lies and statistics! This pretentious drivel may just make it into Pseud's Corner in Private Eye! It seems the Nu-Lab/Daily Mail mob can't make any relevant argument that doesn't mean ad hominems. All they can offer is the same false divide between good and bad. That tells you all you need to know about how good the budget was. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Tuesday, March 23, 2004
The shame of statesmanship
The condemnations and complaints have come not just from the far-left, the French and the Islamofascist fifth column, but from the White House, Downing Street, the Foreign Office and the Conservative Party. While normal people of all political views are grinning modestly or rejoicing openly - self-described socialist Gene Zitver and even many of the Democratic Underground crew among them - the professional political class in all its ideological diversity delivers a petulant slap on the wrists of those bolshy Jews. World opinion isn't particularly hospitable to the US or the UK. Indeed, the esteem in which a nation is held abroad seems to be inversely proportionate to the good it has done the planet. But even these countries could expect an overwhelmingly positive reaction to any equivalent achievement. If the Americans managed to liquidate Bin Laden in this way, world leaders would be scrambling for the microphones to congratulate her, to express their relief that such a terrorist mastermind has met his deserved fate. But when Israel cleans up her own back yard and sends out an anti-terrorist message sorely needed in these days of voting out PMs who upset AQs, the world statesmen of the early twenty-first century all come out sounding like George Best's wife when asked to comment on her husband's latest return to the bottle. There is a case for a charitable attitude towards those who reach such heights of government. If they were openly to endorse such acts, it could lead immediately to questions about when they would and would not do the same themselves. If they're honest, most democratic states occasionally order assassinations. Recent British governments of both stripes have certainly concluded now and then that pacifying Ulster may mean bringing forward the dates of a few IRA or LVF funerals, and of course they are right to do so. But it's not the sort of thing you talk about openly. Perhaps that needs to change. Conservatives are usually somewhat defensive of hypocrisy, noting that in a world of fallible people the only alternative is the deliberate endorsement of wrong acts. But this sort of hypocrisy - a coy modesty about righteous and utterly defensible executions - only serves to foster an immoral climate in which even the worst of mass murdering terrorists are seen as sympathetic, as possessing a right to life. They don't. Terrorists no more have an abstract right to live than bureaucrats have an abstract right to be employed in the civil service. From the moment anyone becomes involved with a terror group and devoted to the murder of a country's citizens to the moment they sever all such links, they have a right to life only in so far as their opponents see advantage in granting it. The killing of terrorists, like the hiring and firing of bureaucrats, is a proper function of the state. We all need to start saying so. UPDATE: James Taranto supplies the grim death toll: Yassin was quite a prolific murderer. "Over the past 3 1/2 years, . . . Hamas has, in 425 attacks, killed 377 Israelis and wounded 2076," notes the Jerusalem Post. "Hamas perpetrated 52 suicide attacks, in which 288 people were killed and 1646 were wounded." Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Monday, March 22, 2004
Rationalists don't bow to the evidence because they're rationalists
Obvious as it seems in retrospect, it's because they are rationalists that they reject empiricism. The evidence of history is not the basis of their judgement - it's what works in theory, what ought to make sense, what plans would be preferable assuming their flawless implementation. Asking someone to look to all the dozens of cases where such plans have created not harmony and utopia but poverty, tyranny and murder is begging the question, assuming that evidence and tradition trump reason, that empiricism trumps rationalism. Of course, it is precisely this that socialists, modern liberals, communists, anarchists, fascists, some libertarians and most ideologues deny. If rationalists could be swayed with evidence of what appears to work, they wouldn't be rationalists at all. I'd therefore like to offer this definition: A conservative is someone who recognises that history is smarter than he is. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Saturday, March 20, 2004
My semi-absence
Posting should be very light for the next week, so don't expect much until a week on Monday. I may add the occasional thought, however, and will in the meantime read a couple of books out in paperback soon and probably review them, so do stop by between now and then. UPDATE: I am back a week early after all. Sorry to disappoint anyone. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Friday, March 19, 2004
Quote of the Day
"[I]t is one of the privileges of the Left to describe its inadequacies as dilemmas and its mistakes as tragedies: where a Conservative would blush and be quiet, a Socialist is privileged to enter a stage of audible self-examination in which the responsibility for his own errors is subtly transferred to the rest of mankind. The alleged dilemmas of Socialism today are nothing more or less than the failure of the whole Socialist technique of arguing straight from abstract principles to policies, the whole heritage of political rationalism in the naive form in which it passed to the intelligentsia of the 1920s and the 1930s. The move towards the Right is a move towards empiricism, towards scepticism of generalities in politics, and towards the belief that sound political thinking must begin from concrete situations understood in the light of the history which created them. It is a repudiation of the tradition of the Encyclopaedists and of the French Revolution, the tradition to which doctrinal Socialism is the heir." - T. E. Utley Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Trading on a flat earth?
But I do find his foreign policy attitude disagreeable and believe his economic views to be ignorant (as Peter Brimelow has noted, his advocacy of tariffs as a means of altering the trade balance apparently takes no account of how the dollar exchange rate would appreciate in proportion to the fall in imports, restoring the original balance of trade). An example of this is his piece in the latest American Conservative. One thing it certainly reveals is a very screwy sense of history. He attributes British decline to her acceptance of the theory of comparative advantage without a thought for the geopolitical circumstances. Except it wasn't Lord Salisbury, Prime Minister from 1895, who ushered in free trade. The nineteenth century considered as a whole was a time when this country opened its markets to the world, and benefited. We even adopted unilateral free trade towards those countries who, so much the worse for them, persisted with their own protectionism. It was the most globalised period in history, and it came at the moment when British prestige and power were at their greatest. Equally, the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff of 40% on imported goods immediately preceded the fastest rise in unemployment in the worst recession in American history. For so many smaller nations, cutting oneself off from international trade was what set them so much apart from their more successful neighbours, all those Asian tiger economies which embraced global markets outstripping them with ease. If history tells any story about trade, it is that Ricardo was right. I can't yet claim to understand fully the workings of the balance of payments or the current account. But I know enough to say with confidence that a trade deficit, though it may be epiphenomenal to other economic difficulties, cannot itself be deemed a problem. What, then, is Buchanan's evidence of other problems? That Americans are consuming 4% more than they are producing, relying on capital inflows to fund this. China is becoming the factory floor of the world. And as her leaders force her people to sacrifice for the future, America, where the consumer is king, indulges herself in the present. But unless one is to take the view that foreign investment in one's country is inherently bad and foreign consumption of one's country's goods inherently good, I don't see why a Chinese Pat Buchanan couldn't make an identical argument by looking at the figures the other way around: so flawed is the Chinese economy that its people want to consume far less than they are producing - but even with all that saving China still lacks the promising industry or services that would tempt her own people to plug the capital account deficit by investing more at home rather than in the US and elsewhere. As a result, she is only getting by at all by sweating away on the factory floor and then selling more of her goods to the rest of the world than she is getting back in return. Is this equally one-sided outlook any better than his on America? Is it the economy of a country "subsidizing [American] consumption ... [f]or the same reason a drug dealer hands out samples of crack cocaine to school kids. To get them hooked"? I am wary of saying this sort of thing is the equivalent of George Monbiot's Tuesday tripe, if only because of Warren Buffet's apparent agreement with some of it. But it does appear that Pat Buchanan's piece contains some unargued assumptions that few real economists - least of all conservative economists - would accept. UPDATE: Andrew at Southern Cross devotes an epic post to the historical debate. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Monday, March 15, 2004
Quote of the Day
"Galloway could, assuming a bomb goes off three days before the next general election, be the next British Prime Minister." - Peter Briffa Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
We'll be digging toddlers' limbs out of London rubble before a major public figure comments on this
Astonishingly, more British Muslims are now telling pollsters they support Al Qaeda's terrorist attacks on the United States than are expressing support for the liberation of Iraq. More than one in 10 British Muslims back al Qaida-style terror strikes on the United States, a poll has revealed. You read that right: 28%. I'm speechless. UPDATE: Laban Tall gets out his calculator: "Let me see, 13% of 1.6 million - that makes 208,000 terrorism supporters living in the UK." It took 19 to bring about 9/11. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
A terrible day for democracy
Plastic Gangster has a gruelling assessment of the Spanish elections, which as you'll no doubt be aware spelled a shock victory for the Socialists who have been so critical of the stance Jose Maria-Aznar's People's Party has taken over the war on terror, and who have promised to withdraw all Spanish troops from Iraq. In practical terms, the terrorists have won. They have launched an attack on an American ally and the result they have seen from it is that within 96 hours the anti-terror coalition has folded like a house of cards and one of the Coalition countries will be withdrawing from Iraq with almost immediate effect. There can be little doubt it was the events of Thursday that decided this one. As Denis Boyles reported in the National Review the next day: Aznar was responsible for ending the Socialists' 14-year grip on power. His subsequent success with Spain's economy, now the eighth-largest in the world; his stern denunciation of ETA, echoing the position taken by his predecessor; and his defense of Spanish interests in the face of French and German opposition meant the Socialists had almost no chance of winning the election before the blast. But the blast came, and it seems enough people blamed the Spanish government's resolution for the attacks Al Qaeda launched and the country has now opted out of fighting the war on terror. Plastic Gangster declines to blame the Spanish electorate. I cannot be so generous. The aftermath of mass murder ought to be a time when ordinary, decent people recover their inherent sense of moral absolutism and feel an unshakeable determination for the ruthless assertion of justice. Various US journalists have noted that the rest of the world had no appreciation of the uncomplicated fury, the sheer rage, that the American people felt after 9/11. Who can doubt that this anger - like anger at so many other injustices - was ultimately translated into good consequences for the world? Spain, in its own way, could have followed this path. Instead, the country has chosen introspection, division, surrender and the snake-oil of appeasement. To those Spaniards who let 3/11 swing their vote in the Socialists' favour I can only say: You selfish, myopic dupes. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Sunday, March 14, 2004
Quote of the Day
"The whole theory that colonialism was exploitative was dreamed up by Vladimir Lenin, desperate to explain why capitalism still throve decades after Marx had predicted its collapse. That theory, like the rest of Leninism, now has all the intellectual respectability of an Elvis sighting." - John Derbyshire Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Gosh! Who'd have thunk it?
Teenage pregnancies have risen fastest in areas of the country where the Government has specifically targeted resources to reduce them, a new survey has revealed. UPDATE: Susanne Fields outlines the alternative. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Saturday, March 13, 2004
The consequences of university expansion
John Clare's Education Answers, a collection of letters to and answers from the great Telegraph educationalist, is a surprisingly gripping read. The book is full of revealing little titbits and anecdotes, the letters and responses painting quite a picture of Britain's education system. Here is one depressing correspondence. "The first year of my nephew's three-year degree course in English and history at Plymouth University is being taught under a 'franchise' arrangement at a further education college. He did not study either subject at A-level and his knowledge of them seems negligible. What particularly concerns me, a former teacher, is the low standard of work he is doing at the college. It would be more appropriate for a pupil aged 12 or 13 and is certainly below GCSE level. Is this what studying for a degree means nowadays?" Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Quote of the Day
"We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress, while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization." - Caius Petronius, AD 66 Thanks to Patrick Whittome for this one. Any resemblance to present events and governments is entirely coincidental. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Friday, March 12, 2004
The common ground in the culture wars
I have for some time been planning a piece here on the prospects for a backlash in the culture wars, with particular reference to the experience of Keith Joseph, who ushered in the economic backlash against the left. In a week or two, I will probably find time for that. In the meantime, keen Burkean MP John Hayes has a good Spectator piece emphasising a similar point, in which he focuses on how and why British Conservatives should emulate their more successful counterparts in Australia and the United States by resisting the objectives of the left in cultural as well as economic and foreign policy issues. Making a point Margaret Thatcher and Iain Murray have both made, he advocates 'Social Thatcherism' - the rejuvenation of responsibility and self-reliance in the social sphere - as a counterpart to her achievements in restoring those qualities to economic affairs. Of particular note is the point he makes about Sir Keith Joseph's distinction between the 'middle ground' - the midway-point average of where politicians lie - and the 'common ground' - the values of the people of this country. The two are far from the same thing, and something supported by the great majority of politicians can still be vigorously out of step with public opinion, as demonstrated by the issue of capital punishment above all. Indeed, it is difficult to think of any social issue on which the political class is not to the left of the voters. It certainly is the case that every political advance of the social liberals for many years now has been against the wishes of most voters. Be it the lowering of the age of consent for anal 'sex' to just sixteen, the denial of parental consent to contraceptive and abortion pills handed out in schools, the quasi-legalisation of cannabis, the scrapping of section twenty-eight, the great wave of migration and asylum cases or the widespread introduction of early release and tagging as an alternative to proper sentencing, all these measures were opposed by the majority. In addition, encouraging research is now suggesting that the curious phenomenon in the United States of most members of Generation X being considerably less liberal than their Baby Boomer parents is true in this country, too. On issues ranging from abortion, marriage and illegitimacy to asylum and the monarchy, it seems the sons and daughters of Thatcher are more children of the twenties than of the sixties. (Thanks to DumbJon for the link.) Whatever else might be said of the culturally liberal agenda, it isn't being pushed through because the voters demand it, and nor is its opposition restricted to church-goers, pro-family campaigners and the elderly. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Thursday, March 11, 2004
Those for whom alleged evil is not worth considering, so long as it is anti-American evil
[T]hey had all been in the combat zone in Afghanistan. One had been picked up in Pakistan, in a safe house used by Abu Zubaydah, Osama bin Laden's former chief of operations and the most senior al-Qaida leader captured to date. Another one allegedly met Bin Laden three times. All four were described as veterans of al-Qaida training camps, schooled in terrorist skills from bomb-making to assassinations. It is certainly possible one of them was in that part of the world at that time for entirely innocent reasons. But four? Perhaps a trial will establish that this really is the case. But reading the left-wing press, it seems such questions simply aren't worth asking. To consider the very real possibility that they are traitors who waged war on British soldiers in defence of one of the most wicked regimes and terror groups in the world is just so uncouth. That they might pose a danger to British people if released is dismissed with the wave of a hand. 'The famous five with stories to tell' is the Guardian's comely headline. Those few words really do say it all. Famous five? Stories to tell? It seems that for the liberal elite, because these men are accused of waging war on those ghastly Bush cowboys, they must be earnest Enid Blyton characters, badgered and bullied by George's Golliwog Guards of Guantanamo Bay. It's not what they are or what they are accused of that matters - it's who defending them allows one to blame. I forget who it was noted that the left's preoccupation with defending the Rosenbergs owed far less to an assured belief in their innocence than to an utter indifference to whether they were guilty. It's a mentality alive and well today. UPDATE: All of them have now been set loose on a legal technicality. Dear Lord. UPDATE II: Richard Littlejohn has more: Security chiefs think it is only a matter of time before there is an atrocity here. We know al-Qa'ida cells are beavering away in Britain. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Tuesday, March 09, 2004
Quote of the Day
"For those who read their history, fascism was always about youth. Currently the nearest thing to a fascist youth movement is the area where animal rights, anti-globalisation and environmentalism meet. The kind of people who will hit an elderly hunt follower in the face with a hammer, surround a house containing terrified children and smash all the windows, burn foreign-owned property (if it's American owned, that is), publish lists of enemies to be dealt with, or wear 'Hurry up and Die, Queen Mother' t-shirts. Currently these movements all belong to the cultural Left." - Laban Tall Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Where one blogs
I don't write much here on blogging, but I liked Jeff Jarvis' suggestion that bloggers show their readers the locations where they write their posts. Glenn Reynolds and John Hawkins have both proceeded to put up their pictures. Here is my blogspace, when I am at university.
UPDATE: The online Through the Keyhole continues with Brian Micklethwait. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Monday, March 08, 2004
Partisan competition, not unity, is how to defeat fascists who lump all democrats together
Yet I genuinely don't see what good signing up to this campaign would do, and suspect that so far as people like me have any influence, it could do some harm. Liberal Democrat election chief Chris Rennard is of all people the one I think came closest to the truth on this issue, when the Guardian put him on a panel also containing representatives from the two main parties. All the panellists agreed that choice and healthy competition between the mainstream parties are essential to squeeze out the BNP. For all parties to 'Unite Against Fascism' in this way could mean falling securely into that trap of signing up to an anti-BNP campaign with the best of intentions and as a result portraying the BNP as the only real opposition to the existing state of affairs, the only ones who offer an alternative. This is a message the party's leadership fights endlessly to get across: as they put it, they are the only ones who can bring the change that the "establishment parties" all oppose. By publicly uniting into one single opposition, democratic politicians could be playing right into their hands. By definition, anyone who supports the Tories - as I do - opposes the BNP, and anyone who supports any party opposes all the others. Although the ideological source of the BNP's rhetoric and policies should never leave the lips of mainstream political activists who face them, I don't think voters need reminding that all the other parties oppose the British National Party. What they need to know is that the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats all offer different ideas and have different policies on migration and asylum. Under the last Conservative government, Britain had small-scale, controlled immigration. Under Labour, asylum and immigration rates both doubled in five years. Under the Liberal Democrats, we would have still more people coming here. Which of these proposals sounds most palatable is a matter for individual preference, but no one must be left with the illusion that the choice is not there, as they might by any campaign stressing the similarities rather than the differences between the parties. Conservatives who want to see the BNP defeated shouldn't be afraid to say the other parties have got it wrong, and that we will fix things. Ditto Labour and Lib Dem supporters and activists. Healthy competition between democratic parties that raises voter turnout and makes clear the genuine choice on offer will hurt the BNP. Tokenistic co-operation may only serve to strengthen the case they put to everyone with concerns about our asylum and immigration system that they alone offer an alternative. UPDATE: Yesterday also marked Tom Watson's first anniversary as a blogger. It's not terribly consistent with the rest of this post for me to say it of a Labour MP, but congratulations to him. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
The difference is the state
Anthony Browne has some surprising words for those who deny the quality of British health care. Don't listen to the denigrators - the health service in Britain can be wonderful. I was recently walking down a London street on a Sunday afternoon, when I decided to have a medical problem dealt with. I dropped into a medical centre I happened to be passing, which was open, and asked to see the specialist, who attended to me there and then with a smile. In a sparkling clean clinic packed out with a vast array of brand new medical equipment that seemed like something out of a science fiction film, dozens of tests were quickly done, which, as well as diagnosing my medical problem, checked out a range of other conditions from brain tumours to diabetes. The specialised medical apparatus that was prescribed for me was manufactured instantly. Meanwhile, back in government hospitals: She arrived at 10am. The place was dirty and grimy and smelly. Parts of the waiting area stank, to the extreme discomfort of those having to wait there. She was finally ushered in for her scan, where it emerged that in spite of having consumed large amounts of water as part of the prep for the scan she had to consume yet more. The harassed nurse departed to look for drinking water which was not readily available. After sitting waiting for a while, the door burst open to admit not the nurse, but a cleaner who, without acknowledgement or apology proceeded to hoover noisily around the room and around the patient. Now if you really want to leave civilised political discourse behind, why don't you see if you can reach some reasonable conclusions based on these entirely typical anecdotes? Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Sunday, March 07, 2004
Link of the Week
The link of this week is to WorldMagBlog, the weblog of the American magazine World. Now blogging for them is the excellent social writer Marvin Olasky, author of The Tragedy of American Compassion. The posts are good, and even the comments section has some real pearls of wisdom, Christopher Taylor amongst others really arguing well. Thanks to Laban Tall for the link. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Saturday, March 06, 2004
Quote of the Day
"So we have 'female genital mutilation' which, in English, is called 'Grievous Bodily Harm' and 'honour killings' which, again in English, are pronounced 'murder'." - David Carr clarifies some cultural differences between the West and the rest Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Retro Conservative Commentary
I try to avoid posting too much at the weekend, and I have other things to be getting on with now anyway, so in place of much content before Monday, here are the essays up there so far. Comments are welcome.
28.07.02 Self-control is not state control
22.08.02 An unknown liberal's manifesto for Britain in 2002, written in the early sixties
23.09.03 An issue to be determined in local elections, not by referenda
30.10.03 The last Conservative leader ... and the next
18.11.03 Not a lurch, but a step to the right - and a good thing too
24.11.03 Thoughts on Michael Howard
25.11.03 Thoughts on Tony Blair
11.12.03 Thoughts on Charles Kennedy
27.12.03 In defence of outsourcing
Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Friday, March 05, 2004
Bush or Kerry?
With the far more credible and interesting John Edwards defeated this week in the race to challenge Bush by Ted Kennedy's Massachussetts sidekick John Kerry, we now know the choice facing Americans in November: Bush or Kerry. Bush or Kerry?
 It's a tough one this time. More at Free Republic. UPDATE: The excellent Airstrip One, which doesn't receive nearly as much attention as it ought, focuses on Kerry's stance on Ulster: a rejection of Unionist demands that Sinn Fein/IRA uphold their end of the Good Friday Agreement if they want to sit in government. Philip Chaston thus concludes that "it would be in Britain's interests if Kerry remained where he belongs, unelected". I would go further and say that this stance might also give American voters further reasons to doubt Kerry's suitability. Can a man with such a selective distaste for terrorists really be the right one to fight a war on terror? As Mark Steyn has noted, waging war is about argument and rhetoric, not just bombing. Kerry may inherit the military end of this battle automatically, but he'll need to summon the moral side for himself. Is he capable of doing so? Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Thursday, March 04, 2004
Quote of the Day
"What I don't understand is why it's a great thing for unaccountable judges to change the meaning of the Constitution without a public debate while it is some form of tyranny for the House, Senate and fifty states to debate the issue over the course of months or years under the glaring spotlight of the media." - Jonah Goldberg Thanks to John Hawkins for the link. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Wednesday, March 03, 2004
The end of the line for Blairism?
[W]hat does such a swing [of 5%] do to the loyalist/rebel balance of forces inside the PLP? Twenty-one of the 50-odd losers would be MPs who are currently on the 'payroll vote': ministers, whips, or PPSs. These are solid Blair loyalists. A further eight are loyalist backbenchers, who backed the government on the crucial higher education vote. So about 30 Blair loyalists would be polishing up their CVs on a five percent swing. There are only four members of the Socialist Campaign Group - the so-called 'hard left' (hardcore serial rebels) who would be joining them: Philip Sawford, John Cryer, Robert Marshall-Andrews and Ann Cryer. Inside the PLP, the swing is towards those willing to vote against the government and away from those who support it. It is worth remembering how much the landslide of 1997 introduced a class of MP to the Commons who in normal circumstances would never have got there. In Servants of the People, Andrew Rawnsley records Blair walking into Parliament in May 1997, seeing some of the new Labour MPs gathering in the lobby and exclaiming "Doesn't he look like the guy who did Gordon's photocopying?!" to which he received the answer that the MP was the man who did Gordon Brown's photocopying. Above all, 1997 saw the election of many fiercely loyal 'Blair babes' who became their party's candidates only because superior male candidates were banned from competing. Independent-mindedness is not the first thing that comes to mind when one considers these sorts of member. The 2001 Election preserved this state of affairs, and has probably made Labour's first two terms much easier. So it should be no surprise that these landslide loyalists also look the surest to fall if Labour cannot secure a third consecutive landslide in 2005 or 2006. I have written before that Blair has little hope of getting forward any serious programme of reform either side of the next election. If Paul Richards' mathematics is correct, I now feel still more confident in that judgement. UPDATE: British Spin links to the same column, and his commenters give their thoughts. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Quote of the Day
"Amidst all the partying I did in Brussels last weekend, I somehow managed to find the time to actually learn a thing or two. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Now crooks have their own Suffragettes
Does the idea of vote-grubbing politicians in marginal constituencies canvassing the paedophile and rape sections of their local jails, smiling, shaking hands, making jokes and promises to the inmates, appeal to you? Apparently it does to the Liberal Democrats. A campaign has been lauched to try to overturn a 134-year-old law which deprives prisoners of the vote. And it's not just the Liberal Democrats, whose official policy is to allow convicts to cast their ballots in elections. They are being supported by the usual stock of prisoners' charities and even a few MPs from the two main parties. Why? Who knows? I certainly can't think of a good reason. One can only assume that the motivating principle is the same as that which prompts so much of modern legislation: the belief that making any distinction between right and wrong is a bit naff, a bit outdated, a 'subjective' judgement which rightly has no wider impact. Certainly, they'll no doubt argue, it's not our place to judge these people, to say that their inability to obey the law, for which they are currently doing time, should deprive them of a say in who makes those laws. In other words, the motivation stems from the very same immoral culture that helps ensure we have such fantastic levels of crime in the first place. At a time when voter apathy and distrust of politicians is a concern on the lips of almost the entire chattering class, this is a measure sure to help solidify all these problems. Could you shake hands through prison bars with a mugger who cracked a pensioner's skull open in the hope of taking her purse? Could you assure him that his views matter to you, that you will do what you can for people like him, that he can count on you? I don't know if I could. But some people could do that in a second, and some will no doubt already be in the House of Commons and many council chambers. What can safely be said is that more members of this class of politician will be elected if this immoral scheme succeeds. If canvassing the local nick becomes part of the job prescription of an aspiring MP or councillor, you can be sure that whoever is willing to sink the lowest and work the hardest at pleasing the most unsavoury elements of society will gain electoral advantage from it. No wonder the Lib Dems are so keen. They know that muggers, burglars and all the other undesirables they want released as a matter of course are going to vote for anyone offering them a get out of jail free card. But let none of them pretend that further lowering the class of politician elected to the parliaments and council chambers of this Kingdom will do anything but harm to the public's confidence in their representatives. One could, at a stretch, suggest that there are so few prisoners likely to be interested in voting that permitting it for those who do care would make no difference to any single election. Well, if it really will have no effect, then why on earth should it be pushed through? If it's not going to be an aid to shifty and callous politicians, then it's not going to help at all. Either way, there is no upside to such a reform. It should go without saying that there is not a single problem facing Britain today that would be solved if Ian Huntley and his fellow inmates were given the vote. All it would achieve would be to give a political elite already frighteningly partial towards the criminal a further, very self-interested, reason for so being. If that's what you want, vote Liberal Democrat. If they have any sense, that's what the criminals will be doing. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Monday, March 01, 2004
Quote of the Day
Peter Briffa is back, and brings with him a wonderfully revealing quote. "Too often the left's over-devotion to individual rights usurps what should be its natural role as the defender of the power of the state - and of its servants." - Polly Toynbee If you want just one reason for opposing the left in all its manifestations, there it is. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
'Work and investment? What do we need that for?'
Michael T. Darda offers some supply-side smelling salts to John Kerry, making clear just how damaging it would be to enact his retrograde proposal to reverse so much of President Bush's tax relief. Kerry is proposing to cut the deficit in half by boosting the top two income-tax rates back to Clinton levels. This would lift the top rate to more than 39 1/2 percent from 35 percent and the second highest rate up to 36 percent from 33 percent. Presumably Kerry also would reverse Bush's 2003 tax cuts on capital gains and dividends, clearly the most powerful and pro-growth elements of the Bush fiscal repertoire. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Site content Copyright 2002-2005 Peter Cuthbertson
|
|
 |
|
|||
|
 |
|||||
|
||||||
While Tribune editor Mark Seddon says the Prime Minister 
Lord Carey, the last Archbishop of Canterbury (and perhaps the last ever Bible-believing Christian to hold the post) has detailed a 
You have to feel for the Israelis. They can do no right in some eyes - usually those belonging to people who insist on moral confusion in every other area - but you'd expect at least some recognition from the global chatterati that killing the founder of Hamas isn't exactly nun-rape. Sheikh Yasin has helped ensure the deaths of hundreds of Israeli women and children. If you go in for all that cycle of violence stuff, he also helped provoke much bloodshed for his own people. He was the lowest of the low, the wickedest of the wicked; he deserved to die. In making that happen, any normal country would be congratulated. But not Israel.
Not to sound like 
I'm not someone convinced of Pat Buchanan's anti-Semitism, and I certainly do not see him as a curse on the American right. The very least one can say is that he is an able commentator and a great orator with the very rare distinction of having served both of the two greatest Presidents of the twentieth century; Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
The Guantanamo captives held by British authorities, let us be clear, were picked up in very, very dodgy circumstances. None of them have yet been found guilty of a crime, so it is wrong to say for certain that they are terrorists, but the 
A group called Unite Against Fascism has launched a blog-based campaign against the British National Party, and 
