Sunday 31 October 2010

How very odd

They are not allowed to show the outline of their bodies (for apparently if they do us men cannot control ourselves and will forthwith rape the lot of them) save for a pillbox-like slit at the eyes and to some extent their hands. But they are allowed to have opinions. Muslim (not Islamic) 'culture' continues to baffle me with its staggering contradictions.

I wonder what Stalin would have answered, with regards to particular aspects of the proles he would remove given the choice: 'opinions' or 'fashion'.

Friday 29 October 2010

Immigration and the cap

I have had a thought that has been bungling my head now for some time, naturally in the current PC climate I have not uttered it for fear of character assassination and impending fathwas. It would appear that businesses think that the current cap is hurting their profits rather than helping them
The Government's immigration cap is facing fresh pressure after evidence from one of its own business advisory committees shows the damage it is doing to UK businesses.
Okay, so the 101 is that businesses want to bring in more cheap labour so that they do not have pay, admittedly, the astronomical costs associated with employing a British person. And since it is such an imperative, apparently, to bring in that cheap labour then why are they even bothering with having the business in the UK in the first place, if they are not going to employ British people? Surely if it is such a burden on them why not simply relocate and they do not have to pay the government imposed ridicule that constitutes the frankly affronting percentages that has become NI. Not to mention the soon to be raised income tax.

UK business have known for some time that this country does simply not produce cutting-edge graduates anymore, since we appear hell bound on becoming a third-world country on par with Zimbabwe. With this in mind it would seem easier to just relocate than to whine-down the government for attempting to stem the ridiculous levels of immigration seen under New Labour. They too must know that it is not politically expedient for the government to backtrack on anything remotely related to immigration.

The EU and our money

Sold short again then, not much of a surprise there, what is a surprise is that no one can get it into their heads that Cameron is not a eurosceptic and Hague even less so. Of course there is an argument to be made for the "victory". Usually these budget increases go without much event. Instead Cameron went out there, made a case, got support and got some kind of result. £460m is better than £1bn. Slowly, slowly catchy-monkey.

This is an absolutely shit argument because it is the "gentle rape" argument. Surely an oxymoron. Who governs Britain? The EU.

We shall leave one day but it will not be whilst Boy Dave is in charge. He should have walked out. No accounts signed off for 14 years and you say "it's better than a billion". Turkey, Christmas and all that.

Where are we going to get those £460m from then? Well, perhaps if we define the EU as a "failed state" we can divert some DfID money? I am sure it could work. But no; we will just take it from the defence budget or the police budget whichever harms Britain the most.

Thursday 28 October 2010

The Socialist Brain of a Liberal Democrat

Wednesday 27 October 2010

BBC Narnia

I watched this when I was small and I absolutely loved it and still do (the remake can only be described as complete and utter shite). It goes to show what the BBC really can do if it steps down from its pillar of righteousness and does what it is supposed to: provide a public service and not a public re-indoctrination. That tune is probably one of the finest ever written in my opinion, and one does not have to play it twice to bring tears to my eyes.

BBC Narnia was a proper public service, and I for one dearly thank them for it. They made it into an adventure; they followed in the steps of Lewis' imagination with no CGI but by the strength of their creativity. There probably are hidden leftist messages in the series but they are so subtle that I never picked them up at least. I can only hope that this was because the producer thought it inappropriate for children to be tainted by the distasteful intellectual-political battles we still fight today.


“…But I cannot tell that to this old sinner, and I cannot comfort him either; he has made himself unable to hear my voice. If I spoke to him, he would hear only growlings and roarings. Oh Adam's sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good! But I will give him the only gift he is still able to receive.”
He bowed his great head rather sadly, and breathed into the Magician's terrified face. “Sleep,” he said. “Sleep and be separated for some few hours from all the torments you have devised for yourself.”
The Magician’s Nephew – Chapter 14

Don't ever grow up.

Self-righteous

Self-righteousness (also called sententiousness, holier-than-thou) is a feeling of (usually) smug moral superiority derived from a sense that one's beliefs, actions, affiliations are of greater virtue than those of the average person.

Does this sound like anybody you know? It is essentially very easy: somewhere along the line someone started to believe that 'wrongs' were not wrong if they were done by "nice" people like ourselves. Wrongs were right and 2+2=5, even war was peace. Funny what you can do with language to convince people without independent thought, how they should live their lives.

Monday 25 October 2010

Melanchtron on good form

Later this week - on October 28th - Cameron goes to attend the EU summit in Brussels. Top of the agenda will be the Franco-German proposal for a new EU Treaty. I have already explained, many times, that Eurosceptics want a new EU Treaty - one that renegotiates our position within the EU, repatriating key powers as we have promised in our past three General Election manifestos. This is a superb opportunity to achieve what Eurosceptics have wanted for years.

To enable our leaders to take this opportunity, though, they must have confidence that renegotiation will not result in our leaving the EU. One past fear about that can be discounted on this occasion - namely the fear that our EU partners would respond to a request for renegotiation through simply rejecting it and that the logic of suggesting that renegotiation was vital would be that, absent renegotiation, we would be forced to leave. That's not going to happen here, because our EU partners absolutely must have a new Treaty in order for the Eurozone to survive at all, and no such Treaty can proceed without British agreement, so there is no chance of their being able simply to deny us any discussion of renegotiation.

The other problem is slightly more tricky. This is the fear that renegotiation would result in a referendum in the UK, and that once one had started down the path of referendum it could ultimately prove difficult to avoid holding a referendum on membership - such a referendum potentially resulting in our leaving. Since our government and Party leadership have no interest whatever in leaving, that means that there must be no risk that renegotiation would lead to a referendum on continued membership.

And why should it? What I and my allies want to see is a new Treaty that renegotiates Britain's position within the EU. Why would we need a referendum on that? Suppose it were won - what would have been the point in the referendum? Suppose it were lost - then we would have rejected repatriating powers from Brussels to London and would be left with the post-Lisbon Treaty; what Eurosceptic would want that?
We don't need any kind of referendum on a repatriating Treaty - the only point of demanding one would be as a Trojan horse for getting a referendum on membership of the EU; a referendum that we don't want.

Forget demanding a referendum - all you will achieve is to damage the cause of renegotiation, and leave us trapped in a post-Lisbon scenario. However, because of the low public confidence in our government’s dealings with the EU after Blair’s broken promises on Lisbon, I do think there must be a strong case for pre-committing, prior to the renegotiation, that the deal struck will be brought for ratification to the House of Commons on a free vote. I’m not normally a fan of free votes – whips are essential to the functioning of political parties, and the presence of parties improves government immensely. But on this occasion, I think a free vote is a reasonable compromise with and comfort to those that feel they were denied a referendum. I hope that agreement on a free vote could be achieved across the House – prior to the renegotiation – and that the large Eurosceptic majority in the House of Commons would be comfortably adequate to ensure that a renegotiated Treaty were ratified.

The next issue is what the renegotiation should be about. The Sunday Telegraph discusses two kinds of things:

a) allowing Britain to trade without tariffs with countries outside the EU
b) withdrawal from the Working Time Directive.

Well, (a) is just withdrawing from the EU. The EU simply isn't a free trade area; it's (inter alia) a customs union, and as such it is essential to its nature that there is a Common External Tariff - that is to say, that EU members are not free to trade without tariffs with countries outside the EU. I am a big fan of Douglas Carswell, but that's a non-starter.

As for (b), it's far, far too little. The very idea that a renegotiation of our position in the EU would focus on something as petty as the Working Time Directive!!

The fact that even a newspaper that takes as much interest in EU matters as the Telegraph is unable to see what could lie in between dissolving the EU altogether (i.e. allowing free trade with countries outside) and reversing one petty measure (the WTD) illustrates an extraordinary lack of understanding of Euroscepticism in the press.

To try to help, I'll explain what are some of the real issues about which we would need to have a renegotiation.

At the heart of Euroscepticism is the fact that the EU is a state-under-construction. I know that many Europhiles deny this, claiming that this was something briefly believed in in the 1990s but now passed. They are talking codswallop. The central doctrine of the EU is (and always has been) "ever closer union". EU members are committed to seeking always to merge themselves more closely - trade-wise, economically, politically, socially, constitutionally, legally. The European Union already has a supreme court, a common legal space (more developed in terms of civil and commercial law, to be sure, but also encompassing criminal law), a civil service, a democratically-elected Parliament, a central bank, a currency, a foreign service, a constitution, a charter of fundamental rights, an international legal identity, a military structure. In both legal and practical terms it already functions as a state. It is, of course, a confederate state, not a centralised unitary state like the UK (at least pre-1997) or France. But being a confederate state does not make it any less a state. Sometimes Europhiles suggest that what Eurosceptics really object to is the idea that the EU might become a centralised state, with too many centrally-determined decisisions and not enough decided more locally. They claim that principles such as subsidiarity imply that this can never happen. But that argument misses the point. The Eurosceptic objection is not to the sort of state that the EU is. It is to Britain's being dissolved into another state. Europhiles suggest that this is a "fear" that is unwarranted, as if there were some concern that the EU might stop us playing cricket or eating Yorkshire puddings. But Britain is only a constitutional entity. Without Britain being the sovereign entity there will be no Britain at all.

Now arguably that doesn't matter any more - arguably there is so little unique merit in Britain as a constitutional entity that it would be better to take the gains of involvement in the Single European State at the very small cost of losing Britain's constitutional heritage. I'm very tempted by that view, and indeed if the British Establishment flunks this golden opportunity to re-assert itself as the master of its destiny and to renegotiate Britain's membership of the EU, I might well think the game is up. But not yet. We may be in the last chance saloon, but for now we are still drinking.

What follows from the above is that the topic of the renegotiation must not be mundane matters about particular regulations that we don't like - that's all for another day. The key is for us to assert that we shall not be part of the Single European State. That means that the new Treaty must contain the following provisions:

Britain must explicitly be exempted from the obligation to seek "ever closer union". This is the single most important point. If we do not get this, little else will count for aught.
It must be asserted that, in respect of the UK, conclusions of the European Court of Justice do not have independent legal force. They constitute only an arbitration over whether we are or are not in violation of our Treaty obligations. (This provision probably needs to be supplemented by some piece of British legislation (a “Sovereignty Act”) that changes the legal status for British bureaucrats of acting in ways that violate Treaty obligations - specifically, that they are not subject to malfeasance findings if they do.)
We must withdraw from the common criminal space (the essence of which was already present in the Amsterdam Treaty).
We must withdraw from the common defence force (ditto).
We must withdraw from the common foreign service provisions of Lisbon.
We must state that the UK shall not be bound by any measures under the passerelle clause of Lisbon, even if British representatives in the European Council vote in favour.
We must state that the UK is not part of the single legal entity, for international negotiations, created by Lisbon.
We must become "outs" of the euro project, not merely "pre-ins".
My view is that the above constitute the essentials of any renegotiation. If these are achieved, then in due course we will be able to negotiate with the Single European State and other EU members (who, like ourselves, will not be members of the Single European State) over matters such as the Common Fisheries Policy or the Common Agricultural Policy or particular measures of financial regulation or health and safety rules that we dislike. The key thing in my view is to achieve enough disentanglement (and decisive enough disentanglement) from the Single European State that it becomes in the interest of the Single European State to disentangle itself from us, further, later.

Thus I don’t think we need to achieve everything in one hit. But perhaps I’m wrong. I certainly think it’s debatable and ought to be being debated. But at this stage we are struggling even to secure an effort from our government to renegotiate.

By October 28th we need Cameron to be saying that he favours a new EU Treaty and that the UK will use it to seek to repatriate powers. So there’s not much time to impress upon him and his team that they will ultimately have no choice here. We must convince them that their way to a quiet life on Europe is to renegotiate, not to seek to avoid renegotiation, and that the latter option would cause huge ructions on the Conservative side and make Europe a central issue of politics for the new five years. A good start from Eurosceptic backbenchers, though, with the rebellions over the Budget, the Bill Cash EDM and the pressure from Eurosceptics on Cameron over the weekend. Good show! Keep it up!

I do not agree with all of it, I think that we do need to leave the EU, but it is nice, just for once, to hear someone who actually grasps the concept of the EU other than Mr. North and Mr. Booker.

Saturday 23 October 2010

A Hero

An act of heroism is rarely, if ever, a planned act. It is more a reflection of the human spirit's willingness to do good where it can, where it should and where it must.

Sunday 10 October 2010

Sparse posting

Naturally still very angry but that is of no use if you have no internet in your flat, onto which to went thy anger. The latter is true for myself hence blogging is very sparse at the moment. Apologies.

Sunday 3 October 2010

Mathematical Manipulation

This is a Sunday, a fairly nice Sunday I might say. That is taken in the light of what could be discussed in this blog rather than what will be. The weather is cold, windy and the leaves are falling to the ground like weights, as if they wanted to reach their final descent and grave quickly, not realising that this is their final journey and that they wont have the privilege again of covering the canopy of some ancient birch for the benefit of the rest of us. But alas I digress.

I like maths, I like maths because I might be so bold as to say that I am relatively good at it when compared to the rest of the populace of my age. Granted, people at my university are even better than me at maths but some are also worse much to the chagrin of their tutors I can imagine. Maths is a difficult subject if one considers its image, it is not what one would call 'blessed' with a sexy image but is rather vexed by the revulsion it involuntarily invokes in so many young compatriots. Those who were not fortunate enough to be blessed by mathematical fortitude have come to know the wrath of this unfortunate handicap which they possess.

It has become en vogue to try to redefine the founding pillars of maths for the benefit of the majority. 'Retake the Arithmetic' the hoi polloi shriek or more familiar yet 'Rein in the Nerds.' A bit insulting if you ask me (who invariably is the subject of their bemusement) but I know it is all in good fun if not with a hint of seriousness steeped in animation. There have been a lot of valiant attempts by Mathematicians and non-Mathematicans (and by science and non-science types) to try to instil a sense of ease in those not predestined to walk the halls of Integrals. Take this for example or why not this. 'Popular science' and 'popular maths' have become part of the colloquial tour de force with which science correspondents try to explain and convey the most abstract of concepts. Good for them they have certainly not chosen an easy task. However one must not forget that people without proper foundations in science will face difficulties understanding it, whilst they might have chosen a difficult field they also wield great power for they often get things hopelessly wrong. And look rather peevish when real scientists have to come in a clean-up their mess. I am going to step on an arrogant note here: we should not have to come in and clean-up their mess, if they do not comprehend a subject they should leave it alone or pass it on to someone who does. That said I will echo Einstein when I propose that science and maths are of little use if people cannot understand them.

Much as I admire Einstein was he correct in that latest of assertions? Most people do not know how or even why their iPhone4 functions as it does but they do not seem to be particularly worse of do they? The same with computers, they are ridiculous difficult machines to understand and the governing maths even more so, yet this is not the main concern for users. Quantum computing is on the rise but only a handful of people in the world (less than say 100,000 and yours truly does not count himself among those) have in-depth knowledge of the fundamental physical interactions which govern the behaviour of quantum functions which acquiesce the building of computers who can 'think' at the speed of light.

It would appear thus that intricate knowledge of the gears and spanners that make today's information society possible, are not necessary in order to take part in said society. Only for a select few is that knowledge necessary in order to further the boundaries of science. Which is why, though I admire their attempts, it seems somewhat futile to even begin to write Natural Science titles which begin with the epithet 'popular' since that is anathema to the confines of science. Science should be open for everyone, of course, but only for those who seek it. We obsess to a degree seldom seen, that everyone must take part in the latest results from CERN, yet only very few people can take any joy out of those numbers. Naturally, tax-funded the whole establishment was, its main benefit to society wont be the results it produces directly as part of its raison d'ĂȘtre, no, but rather the spin-off technology which will be developed to reach that end. That is where the true value to society lies and not in endless terabytes of data it spews out every second it is turned on.

This the principle by which I live; most people are stupid. But, everyone is good at something but by some stroke of nature the majority are not predisposed to natural science. Unfortunately. We can either accept this and press on with more urgent matters or we can, as is the current trend, continue to harbour under the illusion that everyone is equally bright and can reach the same standards. You do not even need a GCSE in maths to function normally and successfully in today's society. Yet politicians insist that virtually everyone needs to go to university - even those who have no desire to do so. As much as I regret to say it, unless you have a penchant for natural sciences you are going to find it difficult and it really is not something you can learn. Inhaling facts is not the same thing as understanding them. Like singing we say as part of 'good-will', that anyone can learn it, but most teachers know that this is simply not true. They tell that to parents so that they shall not think their children inferior to their peers, and quite right too, but the reality is far darker than the unicorn/fantasy-world parents are falsely led into.

Saturday 2 October 2010

The blowing up of people


Now I am firmly on the sceptical side of the AGW debate and I know what constitutes proper science and what is complete and utter bullshit. But this must be the most tasteless fucking thing I have ever seen. Sure we do not agree on AGW but here you are blowing people up, to poke fun at us who don't believe in your thesis - and you think that is going to strengthen your position? How completely fucking retarded are you people exactly? I know you are all die-hard left but you guys seem to be beyond stupid, clinically and mentally incapacitated, seems a more appropriate depiction.

Richard Curtis’s eco-prop video confirms the worst impression people have of greenies, namely that, behind all the self-righteous rhetoric, they are misanthropic and nihilistic.