It's for your own good

I will take this opportunity to point out that several of my comments on the Peter Hitchens blogs about the 'hacking scandal' are being censored

Literally all I did was point out to people Guido's interesting post obtained via the Information Commissioner's office regarding the press and recorded offences of 'blagging' - that's it, in fact I didn't even mention details, but advised people to seek out information on the blogs

Absolutely nothing libellous, offensive, rude etc nor is anything in Guido's chart, it's all freely available government information - yet it didn't make it through

When I made the comment (which is often found on the Hitchens blog from a variety of posters) that my posts were disappearing without notice, this too failed the mods - I deliberately kept it that brief because I was pretty confident it would happen, I don't know of a way to prove this, I'm not that tech-savvy and didn't bother taking a screenshot, but I am hopeful a couple of other people had the same problem

I am not outraged by this behaviour - I think it perfectly reasonable that a company choose not to publish harmful information about itself - that's the job of others - isn't it?

Not if you listen to Hitchens arguments, last week he was warning us of the big bad politicians and how they need to be held to account

All true, but as we've just seen - nobody is holding the press, who lie, cheat and flout the law, to account and I can see no condemnation of this behaviour from Hitchens - he seems to take a 'better the devil you know' approach, and seems to justify the culture of silence between the press as a necessary evil to maintain commercial success

If we criminalise the press, and take away a vast resource of information from them (the tabloids at least) then they will not have the power to scrutinise the government

But I'd like to know who is meant to scrutinise the press - controlled by a tiny elite, they have vast power themselves and arguably papers like the Mail have a detrimental effect on our society by reducing debate to that of childish name-calling and scaremongering, we need these publications and they need to be allowed to do what they want? It's all for your own good you see

Hitchens, supposedly a man of strong moral conviction (something I've always questioned seeing as he opts to work for probably the least moral paper of them all), is quite happy to allow the press the freedom to make up s h one t, so they can make money and scrutinise the politicians, but yet won't allow people on his own blog to scrutinise one of the most powerful and influential industries in our society? The press do not scrutinise themselves ('dog eat dog'), that would just bring chaos - so how exactly do the public bring newspapers to account? They can't, which is why this hacking scandal has been quietly kept away from the public for the best part of ten years

Nobody is denying that politicians are scum, but the media are also scum, and it can quite easily be shown that the law has been violated for decades to make grubby stories about royals and celebrities to line pockets 'hold the government to account', this is not a price we must pay - scrutiny of the press will not bring about a North Korean situation, in fact the British press is infamous for it's cut-throat behaviour, you don't find it in perfectly free countries like the US, Australia, Japan or Sweden, a few ethical rules, such as those that we are supposed to already have and don't enforce, would quite easily control them

The real truth behind this is that the press in Britain need to behave in this manner to be successful, not because nobody would pay them without their gossip/nonsense, but because competition is fierce - Britain has a huge amount of national dailies, all vying for a piece of a dwindling readership - they need to be shocking, and therefore their tactics verge on the desperate - if the Sun doesn't do it, the Mail, or the Express, or the Mirror will

Whereas, in Australia for example there is only one populist rag - the Telegraph (or it's local NI equivalent), then there are two 'high-brow' papers - one left, one right - all controlled by one of the two main media players

While we're on it, virtually nothing the press do scrutinises politicians anyway, 'investigative journalism' essentially means celebrity/royal sex scandals - in fact I am struggling to think of an example of illegal activities bringing us a story for the public good (eg expenses scandal, WMD) - public interest arguments easily override this anyway, the crux of Hitchens defence (which I regard as a squeal) is that they need to be able to generate revenue, but the revenue is fixed - they just compete for a share, and in doing so engage in a race to the bottom (declining moral standards eh?)

Proper rules would not stop scrutiny, I find that scenario incredibly hard to believe when our media is so powerful anyway - it would just rid us of a few silly newspapers that are, in essence, solely there to sell smut

Losing a few unpopular (intelligent) papers might be bad for decent opinion you might say, but there'll be no trashed murder victims either

I know I have posted a few times before regarding Hitchens, first I lost respect, then I came to see him as a troll, but now I'm struggling to even take a word he says seriously - this act of self-serving deflection and hiding behind supposed 'freedom of the press' and an Orwellian nightmare is pretty abhorrent

Actually why do I keep going back? Silly boy

83%

Anyone would think the media types somewhat over-represent those top rate tax payers...

Yougov have produced a poll that shows 83% are in favour of this cut (sorry no reliable link)

Roughly 15% pay higher rate tax...

Yet the journalists harp on about it, when any chump could tell you the whingers are actually very few in number, even if they are very vocal on the BBC forums

Clearly, they're overpaying the journalists

I think we all agree it unfair on some level, but it's hard to have sympathy for people who earn enough to have the choice to not work and the unfairness is mostly theoretical - affecting I would bet, a few thousand lucky sods

I've seen the gripes about how these people 'can't afford it' - yes, you can, love, because I've been there and grew up on rather a lot less, and the rest of us do not even have the choice - they can whinge about two earners but the whole point is those two earners need to work, therefore you are better off in the first place!

I'm not saying you're 'rich' - but you're blind to the fact that you have the luxury of choice, which the vast majority of us don't, so welcome to our world!

They are whingeing about a benefit cut to the wealthiest earners in society, while benefits to the poorest (deserving or not) are being cut at the same time - the fact is you cannot cut an expenditure without it hurting someone

I think I've boiled it down to a simple point:

We don't 'need' a universal child benefit, we don't have a sole breadwinner model anymore and the system is not designed to prop up the housewife model (nor does it) - it's a token from a bygone age, the problem people have is that they are losing money - which we all hate, but if you never have it, you can't miss it - a BBC documentary on high earners pointed out that wealthy GPs were living hand to mouth because of their mortgages, cars etc - when we have it, we spend it

doesn't mean we 'need' it

Blatantly Biased Against...United

Following on from the damning (and incredibly robust...) report in the Sun about anti-Conservative bias in the BBC I have unearthed further bias

Just look at this

Arsenal draw favourites Barcelona

Why do they focus on the left-leaning French squad and not Fergie's men?

It's a disgrace...

Me been reeding!!

I thought I would compile a list of stuff I found interesting

Clarkson is worth a read this week, with a bizarre list of rules that Brown has apparently imposed on farms, I never knew it was so complicated...

The Fink pointed me out to strangemaps.com - and I found this one which removed the bottom 5% of global GDP, rather intriguing

Roy Hattersley made me chuckle, telling Labour to rediscover its old principles and stop worrying about gaining votes and winning elections, the problems started back in '94 - right...

Bias aside, I liked David Elstein's particular take on the BBC, so much I want to write about it myself (maybe later..)

William Rees-Mogg demonstrates why having a life-peer system that naturally favours the elderly has it's problems, oh and something about banking regulations...

And that's enough for the Times - they must be very happy that they managed to direct me towards several good articles

The only thing in the Independent I particularly liked was Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's criticism of Israel's nuclear arsenal - I tend to avoid anything about Israel as it's always the same boring tripe from both sides, so I thought it worth noting

Guido reminds why he's so popular with this bitchslap to the media who are having a go at Marr over 'that' question (Guido and Marr...now that's a weird scenario)

The Mail...ummm...admittedly they did a good job with the Ofsted idiocy, they have a reasonable piece about saving the pint, but not from the EU! - Albeit very prematurely...

I also can't help but agree with this on the birthmark/human rights issue - especially considering it's basically my last post..

and finally in the Sun - Rihanna's in her Nundies

Well, one out of two isn't bad

For once I actually agree with (Archbishop) Cranmer (see Sept 19th)

He posts in response to this story in the Sun over a regional Tesco (Bangor) ejecting a Jedi for wearing a hood

‘Threat to safety’ etc etc no doubt - but the hoods are not the issue, the issue is that other people are allowed in wrapped head to toe in black cloth, revealing nothing but eyes

These are of course Muslim women in burkhas - I know they are allowed in because, aside from it being common knowledge, I have been many a time besieged by these trolley-menaces (for some reason they seem to have little spatial awareness...)

Now there is respecting religion and there is this - why is a person in a crash helmet, or a hoodie/Jedi knight outfit, obliged to show their face, but a woman in full Burkha not?

Religious reasons of course, it is 'disrespectful' to ask them to take it off - bollocks is it, we're just cowards

The fact is, it's a legitimate safety concern, if a shop (or an airport!) requires you to not hide your face then you can't bloody hide your face in there - either you accept that or you don't go there

But no no, we must be able to do what we want where we want because it's a religious thing - we will ignore the fact that it isn't a religious requirement at all, and question the logic here

We can debate academically about religious freedom all we like, but the cold hard reality is that some aspects of Islam (for I do not wish to slander all followers) are tolerated in spite of the law for no logical reason - there is no legal definition of a religion - and to secularists like me, we see all religions as equally silly nonsense

Many may ridicule Jedi knights, but to people like me, they are as valid as Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Jews etc - they may well be a bit of a joke, and we know it, but they are based on pretty much the same thing - fiction, in a thousand years it may be that Jedi is a proper respected religion based on the ancient tales of Skywalker, as told by Luc-as in the holy trinity (the prequels got lost in time)

'Real' religions have no logical grounds on which to be seen as superior - except they are older and have more followers, Scientology is a legally recognised religion in some states

So the fact is, you allow adherents of one religion to cover people's faces, but no others may do this - the law is for all, religion must bow to the rules - there is a reason Christianity is so tame nowadays - because it was controlled by modern Anglo-centric liberalism, we (as in, every western nation) developed our own codes of what is acceptable, you don't get to usurp that with an alien culture and then cry foul when we deny you the right to behave how you would in another part of the world

In this case it simply refers to an article of clothing, but we are happy to condemn honour killings and female genital mutilation, another part of certain people's religious convictions - why do we have to tolerate this when it's clearly also against our laws

I will put it in simple metaphor - let us say a religion states that all members must be naked at all times - acceptable?

Yeah right, that religion would be forced to practice these acts (which are against public decency laws) in private, and they would have to conform, but considering the 'tolerance' shown to Muslims this should be permissible, just as it is their duty to cover their whole body, despite public interest, it is their duty not to cover any part of their skin, despite public interest

This is nothing against Islam - I simply believe that the law should apply fairly to all, and it should be respected by all

---

The second I refer to is Peter Hitchens, who, in a tirade against the Unions briefly mentioned the film 'Good', a story about a German academic drawn into Nazism through his support for euthanasia

Hitchens smugly declares this as

"about a nice, civilised academic who is slowly seduced...by ambition, flattery and his own anti-Christian moral liberalism.
Fashionable Leftists wouldn’t want to be reminded that the National Socialists shared quite a few of their views."

Liberalism takes us nearer to fascism than we might think...

It is a strange, twisted view, and is rather unfair to the film, and any 'liberal' (although I've no firm idea what he actually means by liberal), to condemn the main character's viewpoint as specifically being linked to Nazism

The point of the film was that any 'good' person can be quite easily corrupted by evil, I think the best way to destroy Hitchens' selective reasoning is to point out that abortion (another liberal pet-peeve of his) was of course, outlawed by the Nazis, whereas it was legalised in Weimar Germany (no doubt this is just as guilty for the converse - bringing down Weimar by destabilising the family structure..)

Hitchens points to the current support for euthanasia (somewhat different to the 1920s version I might add) and shows how evil leftie things such as this are not that far from the Nazis - but surely his own (and many conservatives') opposition to abortion is just as in line with Nazi ideology as to be pro-euthanasia was, after all they played to conservative, traditional thought far more than they ever did to liberalism, but no, support for a liberal idea that the nazis used in a horrific way is far more dangerous than any of the bulk of conservatism (family, nationalism, anti-obscenity etc) that made up Nazi ideology

In short, I found it a rather vile comment that is insulting to both the makers of the film and any 'liberal' who he smears with this contorted view, I don't expect a huge amount from him, but he's usually a decent person

But one conservative out of two isn't bad for me

Give us our label back

I found this piece by Jon Gaunt from the Sun, while having a look at reaction to Jackboots' list of undesirables

Now while it's not exactly an interesting piece (it's in the Sun), I have picked up on "Gaunty"'s use of the term 'Liberal elite'

Now I'm well aware that in the US 'liberal' means communist and will apply to anyone who doesn't believe in killing all foreigners, but in Britain surely we know better than to call Labour 'liberal' - particularly when we still have a Liberal party

Now as far as I'm concerned, Liberal means to support liberty (the clue is in the name) - that's individual liberty, and generally supports freedom of speech and conscience, amongst a whole host of things with freedom written in front of them

Now against individual liberty is collectivism - the rights of the many and so on - that is the core tenet of communism, or socialism, which Labour traditionally advocate

So what exactly is liberal about Labour?

Well the truth is, bugger all - to be liberal is to allow individual choice and a true liberal would never support the equalities bill (ie. affirmative action), political correctness, bans on drug use or I.D Cards

I would call myself a liberal, because I believe in freedom fundamentally - Labour are the antithesis of that, so I really hate it when they are referred to as liberal (or a liberal elite)

Of course, we know what the right are doing - branding anyone who isn't right-wing as a softie Liberal who wants to molly-coddle you through the power of the state, which is actually socialist, and is more opposed to liberalism than conservatism

It annoys me because if you regard yourself as a liberal you are then regarded by others as a Labour-type

So what am I supposed to call myself? I'm not conservative in many ways, so I'm left with libertarian, which is the extreme end of it, and I'm not really an anarchist

Truth is, there's actually a strong liberal element in the Conservative ranks, Thatcherism at its core is ruthlessly liberal (economically), Churchill was a lifelong liberal, even if both were socially conservative, these huge Conservative figures were all for freedom, civil, political, economic and aren't that far removed from the arch-liberal; Gladstone

The Tories are still often in agreement with the Lib Dems, particularly on civil liberties, the Tories still like to advocate law and order, but a belief in the small state remains at the core of many conservatives - to be honest the line between the Tories and the Lib Dems is pretty shallow, except perhaps for their positions on the EU

I don't really mind that the Tories have absorbed a lot of liberalism over time, that's two hundred years of liberalisation for you, I don't advocate the Tories returning to protectionism or anything of the sort, but to call Labour the 'liberal elite' is way off the track, you can't redefine such a fundamental term to simplify the argument, and it's derogatory to those of us who want our civil LIBERties restored

It's a slur on the true liberals who have given this country so much