God bless you, Gibraltar

I cannot express too warmly my admiration for the Chief Minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo's reaction to May's docile surrender to the hysterical Spaniards. The Spanish government, with an election in the offing, resorted to crude overwrought rabble-rousing, demanding rights over Gibraltar. May of course was happy to give way to them; after all, having surrendered Northern Ireland to the EU, giving Gibraltar away would be peanuts. Luckily, the Withdrawal Agreement was 'locked', so no legally binding changes could be made. She changed instead the waffle-document, 26 pages of supine abasement by the United Kingdom to the EU.   

The reaction of the Gibraltarians could have been angry, disappointed, frustrated, or filled with bitter recrimination against May's signal incompetence. It was none of these. It is instead a reminder of the dignity and magnitude of the Rock; geographically it is small, but in the grace and decency of her official response, she towers above the moral pygmies of the EU. God bless you, Gibraltar.

Putting lipstick on a pig

Mrs May is now engaged for the next two weeks in, as our American cousins would put it, putting lipstick on a pig. Rather than heavyweight media interviews, she will be going for Mumsnet, Radio 5Live, Take-a-Break, pap TV sort of shows to try to win over in particular women voters, perhaps in the hope that her ratings will increase. She will repeat endlessly that the Robbins Treaty is the best deal for Britain, despite the CBI, the serious media, all intelligent commentators, Parliament, economists and assorted wise persons having decided conclusively that the opposite is true. The Parliamentary vote is expected in two to three weeks, and during this time May's cabal will use extraordinary methods to push her nationally destructive deal through.  

She is unfortunately a stubborn woman who will not listen. This doesn't help her. Even after having been told many times that sovereignty, freedom, independence and democratic control were the key drivers of Brexit, she continues to focus on the most prominent symptom - limiting the numbers of EU workers in the UK. It really isn't that big an issue for most people. With the £ at €1.12 it isn't even an issue, as coming to the UK to work is scarcely financially attractive to minimum-pay EU workers. Indeed as the numbers of EU workers in the UK have dropped dramatically and shortages bite, wages have increased - quelle surprise! - and employers are even offering permanent jobs in place of zero hours contracts. 

In the face of this, May proposes bringing in wholly pointless additional controls on EU carers, catering workers, fruit pickers and veg packers. I can hear the howls of frustration from 'Farming Today' already, with forty minutes still to the programme going on-air. Astonishing.  

The comments de jour are from Andrea Hosso in the Telegraph (£).

This “Great Game” seems to have been leading us here all along, to this impasse characterised by the Italian business paper Il Sole 24 Ore as “a deal which… represents a resounding victory of the EU over the subjects of Her Majesty”.

He writes. The EU's aims, he says, are not to conclude a Brexit agreement, but to tie the UK in an unworkable, impossible tangle of stasis, inaction and imprisonment, with neither the ability to free ourselves or to change the terms. And because

A weakened UK in the permanent limbo of an undefined transitional period would be susceptible to the impact of eurozone-centred regulation and policies.

Sterling and our financial strength won't be able to prevent us being dragged down in the imminent collapse of the Eurozone - like a latter-day Götterdämmerung, they are determined to drag all around them into the maelstrom of flames and destruction. 

The most effective action we can take right now is writing, talking and countering May's relentless media onslaught - social media warriors. Unfortunately, the planned UKIP event in London on (I think) 9th December is unhelpful. It will attract few non-member followers, and given the attendees, many UKIP members will decline to come. The press will present the tiny huddle of 'swivel-eyed' 'kippers in the freezing wet weather as being the nation's voice in support of Brexit. It really does 'Leave' no favours. If it comes before the Commons vote on May's deal, it will help her. If it comes after, it will bring nothing but derision on UKIP. Ladies and gentlemen of UKIP, I urge you to lobby your party leaders to cancel it.  

And now a new Brexit plan ... and it just may work

It is often the way with seemingly intractable negotiations that novel solutions frequently pop-up late in the day. So with Brexit. Now it is becoming clear that the Robbins Treaty will not clear the Commons - a fact which, for those who watched it, even became clear to Mrs May yesterday. Her Commons announcement and the questions following was another Duracell moment, but a quiver in the metallic voice, a slight tic and shivering of the Kevlar exomembrane, indicated that she faced six hundred MPs only one of whom offered her any comfort, and that this lack of Parliamentary confidence in the Robbins Treaty was sinking in. 

It doesn't mean she's giving up. She is said to be banking on big business and the Daily Mail to secure a tsunami of public support in favour of the deal, which she can then use to pressurise MPs. Unfortunately, a series of emails from the CBI saying essentially "May's deal is crap - but she made us clap her" has leaked, and the Daily Mail's change under Geordie Grieg to a Remoaner rag has unfortunately cost it a spectacular drop in sales and online readership. It is unclear what else Mr Robbins can do at this stage to keep his flawed and damaging plan afloat. 

The trick of a doable deal is that all sides know quickly that it is a good fit. The suggestion now being made is that a way forward to which we can all sign-up is emerging. Fraser Nelson sets it out in the Telegraph. If Parliament rejects the Robbins Treaty by a large enough margin, which looks more likely by the day, we can go for the Clean Brexit for which May has signally failed to prepare, but postpone it for a year to allow both us and the EU to get ready.  

No-one now believes that the Irish border is a 'thing'. It is a non-problem that was weaponised by Brussels to screw Robbins, and it worked. 

Well, I can buy into a Clean Brexit in March 2020. We'll be out of the EU next March, but just won't implement the change for a year. The EU will get another £10bn, which they need, and we will be gone before their fake elections next May - which could produce a populist EP with no power sniping at a Federast Commission that holds all the cards. If Italy hasn't brought it all down. 

Robbins has to go of course. People say he's bloody clever and I reckon that's true - after all, he's managed to draft a treaty which is unacceptable both to the people of Britain and our Parliament. You have to be bright to do that.

Clean Brexit could depend on Corbyn

Like the Duracell bunny, Mrs May just keeps going. I'm beginning to think it's my fault. Back at the time of her Lancaster House speech, and knowing her reputation for dithering and indecision at the Home Office, I prayed hard for the Lord to give her a backbone of steel. I fear my prayers were answered. Be careful what you wish for, as they say.

The number of Conservative MPs in favour of voting to realise a Clean Brexit on WTO terms (yes, I like those words too - many thanks) is reckoned on Twitter to be over 80, and by the Telegraph to be over 60. Someone has also leaked the Cabinet minutes to the Telegraph - with a number of Cabinet Ministers keen to confirm to the paper that though they haven't resigned, the minutes prove they objected to aspects of the Robbins Treaty.

The Spanish and French are also helping by blackmailing Brussels into enhancing their claims to Gibraltar and British fish respectively. Germany wants to ensure the UK continues to shoulder her defence and security costs, so they don't have to spend their own money. All help in making the Robbins Treaty even less attractive to MPs - for it's our MPs on whom we must now rely.

Make no mistake - this is an international treaty. Once we've agreed it, we're bound by it. Hence Mrs May's indecent haste is forcing it through before the nation realizes the trap to which she is committing us.

AEP has the best tunes this morning;

There is no doubt that the EU weaponised the Irish border to shoehorn the UK into the customs territory, but I strongly suspect that the Cabinet Office, the Treasury, and the Prime Minister were complicit. It enabled the switch from a constitutional Brexit that respected core demand of democratic self-rule to a supply-chain Brexit that serves chiefly the interests of CBI multinationals, the foreign car industry, and EU-linked parts of the traded goods sector. It is not even a workable customs union.
..............................
Theresa May told MPs today that they "risk no Brexit at all" if they reject her deal. That is a risk that I am willing to take, for nothing can be worse than foreign legal writ in perpetuity, with no veto. Obviously it would be better to remain in the EU. My preference at this juncture is a no-deal on WTO terms, mindful that Mrs May’s failure to prepare has made this very hard. Global Britain’s report this week is right to argue that the costs of trading on this basis (until free trade deals are negotiated) have been systematically exaggerated by the Treasury and commercial interests talking their own book.
.....................................................

Needless to say, Parliament has set its face against any such action. It will impose a deal that ends its own legislative supremacy. My working assumption is that a bloc of Labour MPs will support Theresa May’s package and push it over the top in December. Britain will then be a legal prisoner until the EU sees fit to release us.

AEP is not necessarily right on this last point. With the DUP and 60 - 80 Conservative MPs voting against the deal, it will be up to Labour whether it get through the Commons or not. Corbyn (rightly) hates the EU. Will he now lead sufficient of his MPs in voting against May's poisonous deal, a deal that would prevent Labour from its manifesto State Aid commitments for decades to come?

Brexit on the brink

The most optimistic rumours about the ERG's efforts to defenestrate May is that the plotters have 46 of the required 48 signatures. The bad news is that consensus is that she will win the vote of confidence and we'll be stuck with her for the next year. The better news is that her actions to get Brexit through the next stage may destroy her. 

The DUP have become semi-coalition partners. With only half of their £1bn so far secured, they're keen to maintain just enough ambiguity over their status to get the balance. What's not in doubt is that they won't support the government on a Commons vote on May's renegade deal. Neither will some 52 Conservative MPs who have so far signed up to a 'save Brexit' declaration.

Mrs May has sent her troops off with threats. James Cleverly, a new boy, is proving a star anilinguist, thrusting himself across social media proclaiming how entranced and supportive are anyone he meets of the Robbins Plan, how perspicacious and how gifted is our wonderful Prime Minister. He's not so much laying it on with a trowel as pressure blasting it from a five-tonne silo. The threats that May is making seem to come down to three -

1. If Parliament doesn't pass her treaty, she'll cause markets to be rigged to trigger spectacular falls in Sterling and share prices, to teach us a lesson 

2. She'll make a deal with pro-EU labour MPs to use their votes to get it through

3. If everything else fails, she'll suspend the Brexit process until Parliament complies

If she does any of these, she may get the Robbins Treaty through, but she is finished. Not even my deeply flawed party could sustain her as Leader after this. 

The vote is scheduled for next month, but many voices are urging her to bring it forward. She won't. She'll push every single resource, every dag, arselicker, placeman and everyone and everything that can be bought, bribed, blackmailed or commanded into an intense campaign to rubbish our NO DEAL position, so be ready. 

There is only one option and we must fight for it as we've never fought before - NO DEAL

  

Throw out May's poisonous renegade deal

If you have not done so already, I urge you to read the Speccie's '40 horrors' - unacceptable terms lurking in the poisonous treaty that May sought to bounce her government into accepting, after giving them fifteen minutes to skim-read the 500+ page document in a small room with the heating turned off*. A sample;

3. The European Court of Justice is decreed to be our highest court, governing the entire Agreement – Art. 4. stipulates that both citizens and resident companies can use it. Art 4.2 orders our courts to recognise this. “If the European Commission considers that the United Kingdom has failed to fulfil an obligation under the Treaties or under Part Four of this Agreement before the end of the transition period, the European Commission may, within 4 years after the end of the transition period, bring the matter before the Court of Justice of the European Union”. (Art. 87)

4. The jurisdiction of the ECJ will last until eight years after the end of the transition period. (Article 158).

5. The UK will still be bound by any future changes to EU law in which it will have no say, not to mention having to comply with current law. (Article 6(2))

Even more tellingly, then read the government's rebuttals, rushed out to the Speccie over the weekend. They are feeble. So feeble, and rebutting so little, that rather than lessening the impact of the Speccie's fatal analysis, they actually underline its accuracy. Downing Street's own defence of the renegade deal is itself damning. 

It is also being reported in the Sun that Martin Selmayr has delighted in the humiliation the poisonous deal would impose on the United Kingdom - the loss of Northern Ireland was the price the UK would pay for leaving, they report him saying.   

For those who say this is not a war, pray tell me the difference? 

And our Prime Minister is a Petain, an appeaser, waving the white flag and offering the enemy our abject surrender. 

No, there is no way our nation and peoples can ever live with this treacherous treaty. Rejecting it, throwing it back at Selmayr and his corrupt cabal, will hurt our GDP but we must reject the idea that Brexit is just an economic process. It is not. It is about our nation, our freedom, our constitution (unwritten) our laws and our way of life. And I'm not about to surrender ANY of those. 

* This may only be partially true

We need to leave May in office until .....

When the Conservatives fight the next election, we need to do so under a new Leader. That much is absolutely clear; Mrs May is finished. 

We also need to ensure we either leave the EU next March either with no deal, or a deal very different to the May-Robbins capitulation. So the first job is to ensure May's travesty is defeated in Parliament.

The Win situation would be the Neutron Bomb option - defeating the Robbins Treaty but keeping May in office to sort out the chaos and disruption that could have been avoided had she prepared contingency plans in time or sought a deal that the people of Britain could accept.  Since May has been responsible for the screw-up, it's only right she should be in office when it all goes down.

But as events of the last week have proven, outcomes are impossible to predict. Even in Brussels where they were discreetly chilling the champagne yesterday to celebrate Britain's humiliation, they're not now so sure. 

There are few Conservative party members and fewer Conservative MPs that have confidence in Mrs May, but don't discount the Doenitz Vanity*. Even as the Third Reich was collapsing in ruin and defeat, just days before her unconditional surrender, ambitious functionaries were still seeking appointment to government and ministerial posts. Better to have been a minister for 48 hours, they reckoned, then never to have been a minister at all.

You can be sure that there are enough Conservative MPs who think the same way to ensure she can fill her Cabinet table.  

*With the Daily Mail taking the role of the Völkischer Beobachter if this morning's edition is a guide ...

It's got to be NO DEAL

Oliver Burkeman presented a neat little 15 minute programme on radio 4 yesterday - available on podcast - that really is worth a listen. It explains why pushing for a No Deal outcome that sends Europe into chaos and forces each side to take an economic hit may not only be the rational choice, but the beneficial choice. The answer is faith, hope and charity. 

If we accept May's humiliating deal it will leave only the members of the CBI, the FTSE100 and the global corporatists of the European Round Table happy. If GDP hardly changes, she can claim it as a victory. But this will be short lived. And it is a victory for international money, not for the United Kingdom. Both Leavers and Remainers will become even more angry, even more negative, even more disillusioned with politics and the political process. The nation will become polarised, divided and discourse will become violent, vituperative and schismatic. The smug grins on the faces of Barnier and his corrupt cabal at Britain's grovelling humiliation will become unbearable. The EU will try to keep the UK in this permanent state of internal division and rock-bottom morale until the nation is too exhausted to resist further.

A No Deal exit next March on the other hand will cause short-term chaos. The big matters will be swiftly sorted and both the UK and EU will get back to almost normal service on key movements and facilities. A host of lesser matters will remain unresolved, and both we and the EU will take a hit to GDP. Unemployment will increase and manufacturing production will decrease. Most of all it will allow us as a nation to come together and focus on the future - we have shared goals of peace and prosperity, we want cordial and mutually helpful relations with the 27 nations of Europe that are members of the EU, we have great strengths. Most of all we will work together for a new future, a future of hope. It will give us a chance to make changes that allow greater intergenerational equity, deeper local democracy, a more trusted politics, a bigger stake in housing, secure in national defence and with the aid and encouragement of our anglophone cousins from the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and, yes, India. But only the shock, the disruption, the hiatus of a sudden exit and the challenges it brings will achieve this.

So it has to be No Deal. But not a No Deal of hatred, anger and nihilism but a No Deal that is the only way to heal this fractured nation and secure a future for all in the British Isles. 

 

Crunch time

There's a Cabinet meeting to come, and none of us have seen May's draft agreement, and more importantly Parliament hasn't seen it. So I'm not going to join in a chorus of hysterical skirt-waving until there's something to shriek about. 

Of more import this morning is Merkel's call for an integrated European Internal Security Force - see John Vasc's comment to the piece below for an overview.

Herr Tusk - psychologists call it 'Projection'

In 1943, the tide of war had turned and Goebbels realised that Germany faced defeat. His propaganda ministry daily pumped out news of victories as German armies retreated everywhere, and allied bombing reduced German cities to ruins. He said in a speech;

"It is clear that the enemy does not hesitate to tell the most outrageous lies, even when we possess irrefutable and persuasive numerical evidence. They clearly are not trying to impress us with their figures any longer. The sole goal is a more or less short-term impact on world opinion. They no longer have the courage to tell the whole truth, since they begin to realise that it could be a shock to domestic public opinion that could not be controlled."

It's what the psychologists call 'Projection' - ascribing to an enemy or adversary our own worst fears of our own faults.  

So When Donald Tusk - one of the EU's several unelected 'Presidents' - said in an interview;

"In this Parliament, it is possible to have two movements represented: one becoming more and more “brown shirt” nationalist and anti-European, the second wanting to push integrating with the EU as much as possible"

What he really meant was;

"In this Parliament, it is possible to have two movements represented: one becoming more and more "brown shirt" in seeking to force Europe's nations and peoples to surrender their sovereignty to the EU, the second patriotic and determined to preserve their freedom"

And when he said;

"This doesn’t apply to MPs just yet, but these forces are gaining strength right in front of our eyes. Forces that create conflict rather than cooperation and work for disintegration rather that integration"

What he really meant was;

"This doesn't apply to MPs just yet, but these forces are gaining strength right in front of our eyes. Forces that resist national disintegration, ready to oppose losing sovereignty to the EU, working against their nations being integrated into the Federation"

It's a clear warning, a warning that an authoritarian EU is preparing to deploy social and political controls to counter internal dissent.

Be afraid.  

Macron pitches for globalism and world government

At the Arc de Triomphe yesterday, with the Place Charles de Gaulle and Champs-Élysées smothered in French tricolours and nary a different flag in sight, President Macron pitched for the benefits of world government. 

The papers are pitching the speech as an attack on President Trump, with Macron saying 'Patriotism good, Nationalism bad' but it was really a little more nuanced than that. It was an explicit plea for the UN, the EU and for collective globalist government. It declared that nations which sacrificed their own interests to the collective good were 'moral' whilst those that did not were a threat to peace. It was as much an attack upon Brexit as Trump. 

So eager is the press to portray this speech as a public rebuke for Trump, few have managed to recall what Trump actually said to provoke it. On 22nd October, Trump said "A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly not caring about our country so much, and you know what, we can’t have that. I’m a nationalist. OK? I’m a nationalist. Nationalist. Use that word."

Trump went on to say "We’re giving all of our wealth, all of our money, to other countries and then they don’t treat us properly. For many years other countries that are allies of ours... they have not treated our country fairly. So in that sense, I am absolutely a nationalist and I’m proud of it."

Macron raised the spectre of nationalism fomenting war, and praised the role of the EU and UN in the past 70 years in maintaining peace. The same old tripe, in other words, with nary a mention of NATO, or of the costs to nations such as Britain of maintaining an army on the Rhine for forty-three years. Europe's failure to pay for its own defence, and its 'leaching' of US money and goodwill, have also angered President Trump.

I couldn't help but conclude that Macron's whole speech was no more than a chauvinist plea for everyone else to make sacrifices to help France. Without British taxpayers subsidising French farmers, American taxpayers subsidising French defence commitments and German taxpayers paying for France's economic inefficiency, France would return to being the poor, rural, open dungheap and Gites nation of our youth, with squat toilets and tap water unsafe to drink. 

Do you know, I actually preferred that France - the crumbly, pavé, Gitanes-tinted formica skintness of her. Better than the global sponger. 

Surrounded by a sea of Tricolours, Macron criticises Nationalism

Thankyou.

There is really nothing I can add to the words, the verse, the painting, sculpture and music of the men who have seen our nation in War. Or to their silence and inward turning. So to all those men, and today women, quick or dead, I say simply thankyou.

And for my father. A bigger man than I will ever be. 

We will remember you.

The Christmas market goes up on Adolf-Hitler-Platz

A pane of window glass is an odd thing. Just 4mm thick, and so fragile that a child's ball may shatter it, in our minds it is as much of a bulwark against the elements, against the chaos of the street, against the bad outside as nine inches of brick and mortar. Anyone who has had a broken front window pane will know the sudden vulnerability, the sense of unprotectedness, the anxiety and the naked exposure of that void. Until mended, we can't sleep. We imagine dark forms, of burglars, deviants and suchlike attracted like moths to the boarded gape - blind to the reason that the piece of plywood covering the hole is many times stronger than the thin, weak pane it replaces. 

Eighty years ago today tens of thousands of our German cousins had their windows deliberately smashed, windows of not only their homes but their businesses. Synagogues were smashed and burned. Kristallnacht marked the change from social, economic and political discrimination to physical attack. Kristallnacht marked the start of the Holocaust. 

The boundary, the constraint, the separation between discriminatory treatment, between scowls and insults flung in the street and on the trams to physical battery, to rape and murder, to violence and robbery and to organised genocide was just as thin and fragile as a sheet of glass. Eighty years ago it was smashed and the first thirty thousand of Germany's Jews were rounded up for the concentration camps, to be killed in an ad-hoc, haphazard fashion, from starvation, lack of care, overwork and shooting. It was to be another thirty-eight months before the Germans agreed the designer death factories at Wannsee - Vorsprung durch Technik - but already the fate of Europe's Jews was effectively decided. 

NEVER AGAIN

I was in Villach yesterday, enjoying a beer on the broad, elongated space that stretches up the hill from the Drau to the church, paved in the same red catshead cobbles as a century ago, and called Adolf-Hitler-Platz until the British occupation force changed its name in 1946. The Christmas tree was already up, the size of the tree in Trafalgar Square, and carpenters were building the Christmas village, sturdy huts and braziers soon to be filled with the scent of burning pine, Glühwein and hot Leberkäse. As I write I can't actually remember what the space is called today - after having seen all the photos from March 1938, such as that below, it is forever Adolf-Hitler-Platz in my mind. Among this crowd, I wonder, were the Jews of Villach watching the procession? Still at that time with faith in the strength of their windows to protect them from rape, brutality and death?

The house that screams 'Arsehole'

If ever I saw a house that tells me it was built by an Arsehole, this is it. Predictably its FTW approach has put it on the shortlist for the 2018 RIBA prize. This piece of crap is exactly why appointing Roger Scruton to chair the new building quality commission is exactly the right decision.  

Where to start. A terrace of Edwardian houses is an architectural whole; typically the two corner houses, the bookends, are slightly quirky, possibly slightly larger than the rest, often with dual facades. Somewhere along the terrace will be one or more passages to the rear gardens, narrow and inconspicuous, sometimes only 2'9" wide, often gated. Door and window openings in the facade are enhanced by composite stone or terracotta detailing, robust enough to allow even plastic replacement doors and windows to be less visible. The design is in fact strong enough to allow considerable variation in roof covering, fenestration, door and window paint colours all to be accommodated without compromising the essential integrity of the terrace.   

The traditional terrace reflects quite well both British culture and society, with plenty of room for individuality but within constraints of a unifying commonality. They afford privacy while allowing communal security, bay windows in particular allowing mutual monitoring of the entire street outside. London terraced housing is far less susceptible to burglary than wonky, cranky little modern developments pushed like crooked teeth into small building parcels. 

The terrace also affords the illusion of a sort of egalitarianism that serves to bond residents to a locality as limited as a particular road, despite disparities in income, education, culture and class that would rarely bring them together outside of the street. 

All of which of course is well known to Dr Scruton;

In Chapter Seven of The Classical Vernacular, Dr. Scruton dares to enumerate a number of propositions, which lovers of beauty may adopt, as “Architectural Principles in an Age of Nihilism.” For example, there is the fifth proposition: “Architecture must respect the constraints imposed on it by human nature.”

This means that vertical windows and doors, mirroring the human form, are more appropriate than horizontal shapes that run in the opposite orientation for no other reason than a desire to deliberately transgress the quaint notion of mirroring nature. Dr. Scruton observes, “As animals, we orient ourselves visually, move and live in an upright position, and are vulnerable to injury.”

The importance of the visual analogy cannot be underestimated. If we do not take our bearings by anatomical nature in architectural design, our constructed habitat will hardly condition us to seek harmony with nature in other spheres. “As persons we live and fulfil ourselves through morality, law, religion, learning, commerce and politics,” writes Dr. Scruton. And yet how can we build a world worth inhabiting in those larger domains, if we cannot build homes for our bodies that are no more beautiful than sheds?

Consider his twentieth proposition, which attends to an apparently small point: “it is necessary to use mouldings.” And yet do not great errors result from a careless attention to something that seemed negligible in the beginning? Sir Roger argues, “Without mouldings, no space is articulate. Edges become blades; buildings lose their crowns; and walls their direction”.

The example illustrates a more general principle, which Dr. Scruton usually expresses as an aesthetic paradox: It is the useless that makes something truly useful. Mouldings may be considered “useless” from a utilitarian design point of view, and yet, as Dr. Scruton observes, without mouldings, “Windows and doors cease to be aedicules and become mere holes in the wall.”

The red excrescence at the end of this charming little terrace does itself no favours. The arsehole who built it will only ever be able to sell it to another arsehole; it will be liable to burglary, those sheer windows that can't open will fry the inhabitants in Summer, the flat roof will leak and rot, the hidden internal gutters and downpipes will block with leaves and soak masonry, that fashionable Farringdon brown-grey (almost indistinguishable from the grey-brown which is the only other powder coating colour in these people's palette) will chalk-up and fade and that blank flank wall of pretty London stocks will be defaced with graffiti in no time. In short, in fifty years when the rest of the terrace is still thriving, this decrepit wreck will be ripe for demolition.  

But the utter pretentious arseholeness of its creator is in terming it 'Red House' - as if this ugly hubristic stain on our urban fabric could offer even a simulacrum of comparison to the genuine house of that name, by Webb and Morris, whose genius produced a dwelling entirely antithetical to the jejune delusions of this nasty carbuncle.  

Journalists murdered working on EU / mafia corruption investigations

June 1996, when Veronica Guerin was murdered by Ireland's drug barons, seems an age ago, but it shows just how long-lived have been the links between official corruption, EU money, organised crime and drugs.  

More recently, in February this year, Slovak investigative journalist Ján Kuciak, 27, together with his innocent partner, were gunned down in his home. At the time he was working on a story on the links between EU money, bent Slovak businessmen, and the Prime Minister's assistant's links to corruption and a mafia crime figure. 

And last month in Bulgaria Victoria Marinova ws found murdered in Ruse. She had been working on a story about corruption involving EU funds. The second Bulgarian journalist murdered in a decade, the gunning down in Sofia of radio presenter Bobi Tsankov in 2010 being a grisly precursor.

In 2010 Investigative journalist Sokratis Giolias was gunned down in Athens. And just over a year ago, in October 2017, Daphne Caruana Galizia was blown apart by a mafia car bomb in Malta. A 53 year old mother of three, her investigations into political and EU corruption on the island and the links between EU funding and crime figures offended scores of bent Maltese politicians. In Poland in 2015 Investigative journalist Łukasz Masiak was beaten to death in Mlawa.

Dead journalists make the news. But it's reasonable to suppose that for every stubborn and tenacious reporter who refused to be intimidated, a score or more will have been cowed into silence by a bullet in the post, a beating, their family or children approached, their windows broken, their cars dripping in bloody paint.

The EU uses money taken from Europe's taxpayers to buy political loyalty and to corrupt politicians across Europe, under the pretence of aid and development. But building up a cabal of loyal bent politicians comes at a price - they frequently come attached to organised crime gangs. And although the EU would rather play down the links between EU favour and funding and the mafias, at times the links are so blatant, the passage of cash from EU taxpayer purses to mafia pockets so conspicuous, that even the EU are forced to act;

In an unprecedented move, the EU has withheld funds from new member Bulgaria because the ineffective measures it’s taken against organized crime. Killings, frauds and corruption all seem to go unprosecuted and unpunished. The European Union’s (EU) dramatic action in suspending aid to Bulgaria came after ample warnings that mere commitment to judicial reform was not enough.

But of course the EU can't act too harshly; the foul and noisome compact between the EU, Europe's criminal mobs and her bent politicians is vital to Berlaymont's interests. And a carpet of journalists' corpses is the cost.

A Week of Remembrance

The centenary of the ending of the Great War will make this year's Remembrance Day celebrations some of the most poignant of our Cenotaph ceremonies. The Western Front holds a place on our collective national conscience like no other war; there was no such occasion in 1956 to mark the centenary of the Crimean War, nor in 2002 to mark the end of the Boer War. 

The wars of the last century were fought by British and Empire, later Commonwealth, troops from every corner of the globe. Our brothers in arms were Christian, Sikh, Muslim, Daoist or one of a score of other beliefs, with skins both white as milk and black as ebony and every shade between. When you're together in the line, no real soldier is a biological racist. 

Today, in British units stationed around the world on this special anniversary, the newness is not the racial diversity of our armed forces - this is long established - but the women who share the dangers and privations of the men. May God watch over them all and keep them safe in their duty.

Sikh troops on the Western Front in WWI

It all starts with the insects

I have written before about the great concern I have in the decline of insect numbers in Europe. Long term studies in a German nature reserve have shown that populations have declined by around 75% since 1989 - a catastrophic loss of environmental quality. The impact goes right up the food chain - old world fly catchers can eat 1.5kg of insects in the breeding season, and amphibians and reptiles that depend on insects are stressed and will decline. Once the amphibians start to go, smaller mammals will follow. Nature goes into imbalance, and other populations are threatened. Human growth in Africa means the loss of half of the continent's biodiversity - and growing Asian demands for meat and fish will mean these oceans will be practically depleted within two decades. 

And it's not just third-worlders who are responsible; every bastard who has block-paved his front garden, every proud housewife who fills her home with wasp killers, moth killers, ladybird terminators and all the panoply of chemical warfare insecticides is not only exterminating biodiversity but harming the long term health of her own family.

Biodiversity destroyers - write to them politely

And until the Catholic Church, itself complicit in the destruction of God's bounteous earth, His loving gift to man, repents of its grievous fault and sin it is in no position to dispense moral leadership in other areas of life. 

Though the Guardian does so from a political slant, its warnings are not exaggerated. We must all take action to halt this catastrophic loss of biodiversity - and this can start with writing polite letters to the inhabitants of houses who have block-paved their front gardens. They not only cause flooding that ruins the lives of thousands each year, but have created ecological deserts inimicable to life. Garden-pavers are simply anti-life and anti-social. Then throw out all the insecticides - welcome insects as part of living. 

It all starts with the insects. 

My resident fire salamander, at least 30 years old, who wanders the stream bed

Jefferson Inaugural address

No apologies for quoting today at length from Thomas Jefferson's inaugural address, from which our 50p coin inscription is derived. I do wish both the Federasts of the EU and Remoaners would read and absorb; his points about the Union of the US apply equally to the Union of the United Kingdom. And note the line " ..absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority".

Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political:—peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none:—the support of the state governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns, and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies:—the preservation of the General government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home, and safety abroad: a jealous care of the right of election by the people, a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided:—absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of the despotism:—a well disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace, and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them:—the supremacy of the civil over the military authority:—economy in the public expence, that labor may be lightly burthened:—the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith:—encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid:—the diffusion of information, and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason:—freedom of religion; freedom of the press; and freedom of person, under the protection of the Habeas Corpus:—and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation, which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages, and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment:—they should be the creed of our political faith; the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps, and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty and safety.

It's official - the EU is off the UK's Christmas card list

Much to his great displeasure, the Chancellor's department announced today a new commemorative Brexit coin. The news stuck so badly in Spreadsheet Phil's craw that he couldn't bring himself to announce it in his budget speech - but allowed his officials to sneak it out in the press releases.

The reason for his distaste is clear. Whilst we wish peace, friendship and so on to the 27 remaining nations of the EU, and indeed to every other nation on the globe, our good wishes are conspicuously absent for the EU itself - which is not a nation at all but a Federation, a bureaucracy, a snoopdom of prodnosing unelected officials. 

Not only have we cold-shouldered the bullying, hubristic Federasts in Brussels but we're opening up our quick-entry passport readers to all our more mature anglophone cousins, plus the Japanese.

PTSD Adonis and 'Howler' Grayling and their dags will be having hysterical vapours on Twitter, I have no doubt. Just a shame the coin won't be out for Christmas - I can see a few million Christmas puds being loaded with the things for the extended family if they were. 

 

Mohammed was NOT a paedophile, OK?

There's an old joke about a disconsolate Welshman complaining bitterly to his local pub barman. "I've written poems for eleven Eisteddfods - but do they call me Dai the Poet? I painted the sign for this pub, the general store, the post office and the chapel - but do they call me Dai the sign-painter? I've made garden gates for every house in the High Street but do they call me Dai the gate-hanger? No. But they catch you fucking ONE goat ...." 

Dai, had he existed in reality, would have enjoyed the ruling this week from the ECHR. Not so Douglas Murray, writing in the Speccie. I fear Douglas has actually got it wrong. He either hasn't fully read the court decision, or doesn't understand it. Let me reassure him. It's OK to state anywhere in Austria that the Prophet Mohammed married Aisha when she was six years old, and had sex with her when she was nine. No problem. The court accepts this as a fact that can be openly stated. 

The ECHR even accepts that this act is open to moral critique, as to whether it was an act of child abuse, was detrimental to Aisha's mental and physical well-being, or even whether Aisha could have given informed consent, or whether a pre-pubescent child, being the vassal and property of a man who was her husband under the belief system of that time and place, could be subject without restriction to his sexual penetration whatever her age or willingness. All fine. Discuss.   

What the court ruled we can't do is to call Mohammed a paedophile. A paedophile demonstrates a sexual predilection for sex with an entire class of pre-pubescent girls or boys - it is a state of continuous sexual perversion, a condition not an act. There is no evidence that Mohammed inflicting sex upon a single prepubescent child is sufficient evidence of a condition of paedophilia, ruled the court. Therefore the accusation is abusive and unlawful under Austrian law. 

Dai the goat-fucker would down his pint in satisfaction.

Five things we owe to the EU, they say ...

After reading the blurb for the new multi-million House of European History in Brussels, a building that pays homage to the architectural genius of Albert Speer, here are five little known facts about European history. They must be true because Antonio Tajani, one of the EU's several unelected Presidents, said so in public last week:-

1. Conflict
The EU not only defeated the Nazis, but it was the Common Agricultural Policy that crushed the Soviet Empire in the Cold War, leading to the lifting of the iron curtain in 1989 and the freedom of the enslaved serfs of Eastern Europe. The EU has kept the peace in Europe since 1945 and no wars or conflicts have ever happened since. 

2. Information Technology
Since the EU invented the Internet in the 1990s, computer technology has transformed the world. The EU leads the globe in rolling out new phones and tablet computers and our browser Euview and operating system Eudoze lead the world in quality and function. Our search engine Archimedes has superior functionality to any other. 

3. Art and Culture
The EU are global leaders in popular music, culminating each year with the Eurovision song contest, which attracts viewers and many homosexuals from around the world. The contest sets the gold standard for modern popular music - much of which can be heard on the trams of Porto or Budapest played by young people on their Euphones!

4. Education
The EU is home to the world's highest-rated German, French and Hungarian language universities - ranking number one for both German speaking and French speaking institutions, and the EU rates number two in the world for Hungarian speaking higher education institutions.

5. Sport
During the 2016 Olympics, the EU28 took more gold, silver and bronze medals than any other competitor - beating the US, Russia and China. This demonstrates the sporting excellence in the Union that produces world class sportsmen and sportswomen. 

Although the EU is proud to disseminate this information to EU children through the Euro Museum's learning packs, my old friend the Major has some minor quibbles with the claims - which he noted as

Conflict - Since 1945 the EU has defended bugger all and has actually fomented war in the Balkans and Ukraine
IT - The EU lags both the UK and US, and now China in computer development, with not a single world class product or application achieved 
Culture - The EU ranks abysmally low in pop music and culture; their last star, Johnny Hallyday, has just died of old age
Education - The EU 27 don't have one single university in the global top 20 - the UK has 4
Sport - The EU can only claim a decent medal haul by including the UK, which alone reached 2nd place in the 2016 medals table

All eyes on Italy

Italy has learnt from Greece, and the Lega coalition has drawn a line in the sand as they move towards a showdown with the EU. The new Italian government has done all it can to prepare for savage retaliation from Brussels - bond market manipulation, threats to international banks, financial sabotage and all the rest. Don't be fooled - for the EU this is war, yes real war, just sans the tanks and artillery. The EU will now defend its remaining empire with the tenacity of the retreat from Russia after Stalingrad. 

But what the Italians may not have prepared for is the same hidden weapon that has destroyed Brexit - the enemy in our midst. We have the Euphile mandarins, Italy has the Euphile Dirigenti, a professional class of senior civil servants who run the ministries, regions, PM's office and education. There is no reason to believe that la dirigenza is any less committed to the international brotherhood of unelected bureaucrats - nor any less loyal to the capos in Brussels.  

France and Germany are at greatest risk of Italian independence - French banks own Italian debt that totals 11% of French GDP, and 46% of Germany's Target 2 trillion Euro credit balance is owed by Italy. The EU will fight like a trapped tiger to prevent Italy's freedom. 

Faceless bureaucrat

The crushing recrimination of hindsight

I was amongst those who were willing to give Mrs May a fair chance. I didn't join the chorus of warning and disapproval when she took office. Even during her crass, awkward and unconvincing election campaign, when she threw away the Conservative's remaining strength, I gave her the benefit of the doubt. It was Nick Timothy's fault, we were told, and to my shame I was prepared to believe it. Let's give her a chance.

But of course anyone who has reached even a middling senior position knows the one job you can never take a chance on is the boss. There's no backstop, no one to watch them, no one to head-off the errors. But that's exactly what we did; we accepted as Prime Minister a woman wholly and utterly unsuited to the demands of the role at this most critical juncture of the nation's life. Now as she's entirely screwed Brexit, Tim Stanley in the Telegraph (£) catalogues with the crushing recrimination of hindsight our errors;

... what we’ll end up with is a Brexit shaped by both this woman’s remarkable strength of will and her catastrophic lack of political vision.

.. She sees life as a series of challenges to be overcome in order and by careful steps. Mrs May followed the EU’s route to Brexit, which seemed reasonable enough: first we talk money, then citizenship, then Northern Ireland, then trade. But the EU set a trap – the Irish border – and Mrs May walked straight into it

... Britain did sit down with the EU, did run with a complicated European game plan and it did get screwed. The fault for this lies directly with the Prime Minister. 

... When Mrs May says that she’s delivering what the people want – as she reiterated in the House – then by any standard of our democratic tradition she is lying.

... The greatest tragedy of Mrs May’s leadership is that she has squeezed the vision out of Brexit.

... It’s a damning indictment of her colleagues for not having the courage to dump her – and of Mrs May, too, for not grasping her own limitations.

Will our grandchildren ever understand or forgive us for entrusting the nation's future to a woman so inept, so lacking in judgement, so devoid of emotional intelligence, so cerebrally unequipped and so entirely unsuited to the demands made of this great office of State? Will they forgive us for giving this destroyer of hope a chance? God forgive me, I was one of those that did.

Conservative Leadership contest

Oh Dear. It looks like those 48 letters to Graham Brady, Chair of the '22, have already been written. But hang on, chaps, I'm not ready; I re-joined the party (after an absence of about 36 years) in mid August - which means I must wait until mid November to vote. I wonder if the qualifying date is the date the contest is announced, or the date the party membership actually votes? I think we should be told. 

David Davis would do very nicely as the Leader to get us through Brexit. Council estate, grammar school, SAS TA, then business for two decades until Parliament. Keen supporter of civil liberty and a man of proven principles. If the rest of the party won't accept Boris, David, then. Which brings me on to my fantasy cabinet.

Gove as Chancellor. Chancellors don't need to be popular, just clever. Keep Hunt at Health, and Sajid at the Home Office. Move Liam Fox to the FCO and give International Trade to Penny Mordaunt. And a revival of the Prescott / Clegg role for Boris as Deputy Prime Minister. 

Hammond of course must go, as must  Gauke, Clark, and Lidington. Brandon Lewis can become Minister for Plastics without a cabinet seat, with a remit to find ways of stopping the bloody Chinese, Asians, Africans and Indians fom throwing all their waste into the great rivers. 

And of course suitable postings must be found for our dedicated public servants Oliver Robbins and Sly Sedwill, neither of whom I think will wish to remain in Whitehall. 

Head-choppers release statement on Khashoggi murder

From the desk of the Chief Head Chopper (advisor: Mr Barrister Tony Blair)

"Mr Khashoggi came to the consulate to straighten out a visa matter. Unfortunately, after he was locked in the reception room, he took fright at a number of Saudi butchers attending purely in a ceremonial role, dressed in their colourful tribal costume of forensic overalls, masks and bone-saws. Mr Khashoggi unfortunately panicked and in his attempts to open the locked door, struggled with two security heavies who restrained him for his own safety. It was at that point that Mr Khashoggi stumbled against a head-chopping sword and regrettably amputated his fingers. Whilst attempting to administer first aid, the butchers inadvertently began to dismember him from the legs upwards. Mr Khashoggi did not survive the lamentable accident.

Lessons have been learned. The butchers are being sent for first-aid retraining." 

Martin Rowson in the Guardian  - Treason May and her Shitshow ticket an' all

May's stupidity has screwed the negotiations from the start.

Mrs May caved in to Brussels from Day One. There are many who believe it has all been a deliberate plot - a conspiracy to wreck Brexit. I don't think so. I think it is rather the stubborn stupidity of a woman who values her abilities far above what they're worth. If I could buy Mrs May's strategic appreciation for it's market value and sell it for what she herself reckons it's worth, I'd make my fortune. Excluding the few wise heads in the FCO, her own cabinet and a willing battalion of external experts from the Brexit process and using instead her self-deluding small team of ditherers, incompetents, fools, cowards, Quislings and Treasury dullards, May's complicit dags, she conceded to the EU on every point. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.

She's not fit to be Prime Minister of Great Britain. She's not fit to run a whelk stall.

Now she's faced with an impasse - either the UK stays part of the customs union for ever, a Satrap, vassal state, kow-towing to the anti-democracy that is the EU, or we split the Union. 

There's a third option. Screw them. No deal, and pick the bones out of that. 

Get rid of that Rasputin idiot Robbins. Let the Cabinet take charge. Keep the stupid woman as a figurehead, at least until next year; load her with bad-taste costume jewels and ridiculous, asinine shoes, but never, ever let her speak again.

Mandarin boss Sly Sedwill confuses with false equivalents

Sly chief mandarin Mark Sedwill is feeling a little public heat against his too-powerful central Statist mandarinate. Dominic Raab's boss Oliver Robbins in particular was excoriated by MPs frustrated that parliamentary democracy is being trumped by Sly Sedwill's unelected pro-EU consiglieri and are saying so openly for the first time.

Of course, as a diligent civil servant unable to answer back at criticism, the first thing Sly Sedwill does is write a letter to the Times warning critics of the mandarins to 'back off'. Or what? An invitation to journalists to the Cabinet Office building, where a forensic scientist and a team armed with electric bone-saws are waiting?  Remember, it is Sedwill and his cabal who are so cosy with both the EU and the KSA - against this nation's interests. Who exactly do they work for?

Sedwill can't resist raising a false equivalent. MPs and blogs such as this have criticised Robbins and Remoaner mandarins. The Head of HMRC has received a death threat from a nutter. Sedwill lost no time in linking these separate events in creating a false equivalent - “However, the anonymous sources on whose sniping it also draws should be ashamed of themselves, especially in a week when another senior civil servant reported having been threatened because of comments about Brexit implementation. This has to stop". Yep, straight from the Jo Cox school of "Jo was murdered by a raving nutter, therefore everyone who voted Brexit is a murderer". 

How the Hell has our civil service gone from a Rolls Royce to this dreary mediocre cabal of dullards, incompetents and non-achievers? Once Brexit is over, we must turn our attention to the much-needed reform of this failing sector.

Well, our senior armed forces and intelligence figures at least are fighting back. In response to Sly Sedwill's snipey whinge, they wrote their own letter to the Times.

Sir,

Sir Mark Sedwill, the acting cabinet secretary, is wrong (letter, Oct 16). It is not critics of the once great British civil service but members of that service in No 10 who need to cease and desist. Olly Robbins and his defence adviser Alastair Brockbank have serious questions of improper conduct to answer — Brockbank for the now infamous “Kit Kat tapes” on which he was secretly recorded seemingly advocating hoodwinking the 17.4 million Britons who voted Leave while covertly working to lock UK defence and security under EU control after Brexit; Robbins for failing to control him and, it appears, sanctioning the “technical note on external security” of May 24 that echoes the tapes.

Veterans for Britain has just published a full analysis of how the prime minister’s proposals put the autonomy of our armed forces in jeopardy and risk fatally compromising our “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance. It is by far the worst aspect of the Chequers deal and hitherto has not been made clear to the British public.

The EU has no business being in defence or security at all. These are either Nato or nation-to-nation matters. The UK should withdraw all proposals to the EU in these areas. The withdrawal agreement and proposed defence treaty would keep the UK under EU power permanently after the transition period. This is not what the people voted for.

Major-General Julian Thompson RM, chairman, Veterans for Britain; Sir Richard Dearlove, former chief of the Secret Intelligence Service; Rear-Admiral Roger Lane-Nott, naval board member VfB; Professor Gwythian Prins, academic board member VfB

Well done chaps. Both barrels and 10 bore to boot. 

'Head Choppers are really cuddly bunnies' says Con

It's good to see that Con Coughlin is back on form today with a glowing tribute to the selfless and altruistic kindness of the Saudis, who have nothing but British interests at heart. In return, says Con, we owe it to those kind, gentle head-choppers to defend them in 'the court of global opinion'. 

Not only are they under threat from the wicked crane-hangers, but they are currently the subject of unwarranted Yemeni aggression, says Con. If some journalist was hamburgered, and this is by no means proven, and it's possible that persons of Saudi extraction just may have been responsible for something that may or may not have happened, is no reason to obstruct KSA in exercising its kind and selfless consideration for a number of Brits who have grown immensely wealthy from the relationship, nor should our misplaced concerns over press freedom and human rights lead us to restrict those individuals from becoming ever richer from those relationships. 

Allowing the Saudis to subvert our society, corrupt our ministeries, stuff gold into the mouths of Quisling backers, pervert our laws and distort our economy to the detriment of the vast majority of British people is a good thing, says Con, and we should not allow the alleged, unproven primitive head-chopping butchery of Mr Khashoggi to impair it.

Daily Mail shares the evidence of Saudi barbarity

 

Plausible deniability - West decides to believe Saudi lies

It was the threat of oil at $200/bbl that erased any doubts in the President's mind. King Salman told him the silly Grand Vizier had done it and the US administration decided to believe it. Of course we understand, said the US ambassador. Your Grand Vizier was just a little overzealous in questioning Mr Khashoggi and instead of waving his biro about mistakenly reached for his chopping sword and chopped the poor journalist into several box-sized pieces by accident. It was a mistake anyone could have made. Phew. Well that's kicked the recession back into 2019 and we're still hoping something will turn up. 

The Saudi king has no doubt promised the harshest punishment to be meted out to the offender - his wives are to be banned from their London and Paris shoplifting trips for a month. 

Meanwhile the Salafist fanatics continue pouring Saudi blood money into Europe to subvert Islamic moderates, continue to export Islamist imams to preach hate and death and through bribes, kickbacks and corruption have fouled those charged with preventing such abuses. The dead of 9/11 cry out from their ashpit graves for justice, for the indictment of the Saudi backers of the massacre. And the Western press puffs out its cockerel chest in boast and braggadocio about press freedom and quietly closes down all news stories about the murder of a fellow journalist by the Saudis in their Turkish consulate. 

Gentlemen, you disgust me.

Con Coughlin 'owned' by Owen Jones

Readers of this blog will know we have long regarded with some humour Con Coughlin's defence pieces in the Telegraph; too many are clearly the result of a good lunch with an MoD official and a rehash of an MoD briefing to endow it with the gloss of journalism. His columns have always been useful in stating the official MoD policy without the MoD having to, erm, state its official policy. We thought everyone knew. 

Perhaps not. In a surprising piece of actual journalism, lefty polemicist Owen Jones has just taken Coughlin's entire journalistic career apart in a series of linked posts on Twitter. Con Coughlin is reported to have deleted his twitter account in response. If true and accurate, Jones has indeed 'owned' Coughlin, in the vernacular of the young. But two questions are foremost -

- Why was this not published in the Guardian? Was the story spiked on a 'dog don't bite bitch' journy-chums basis? 

- Will Coughlin now sue? 

I shall sit down with a large glass of port and re-read the whole thing again. This kind of waspish MSM in-fighting is just the thing to round-off Sunday.

Update - from this blog

27/9/17
"It's always good to know there are some certainties in life, and Con's willingness to parrot the message of his contacts at the MoD are amongst them. Sometime, though, during his most recent lunch, he must have confused the reality..."

24/12/16
"Poor old Con Coughlin must be coughing into his Christmas cornflakes this morning. Following instructions from his FCO and MoD masters, poor old Con has being doing his best to talk-up a war with Russia all year...."

6/1/16
"Con Coughlin has earned his establishment biscuit again with a crawling encomium to the sagacity, tolerance, wisdom and mercy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and urged us all to back the primitive head-choppers against the primitive crane-hangers..."

7/5/14
"One must have to be both wilfully stupid and amazingly gullible to get the defence correspondent's job on the Telegraph these days; EU shill Con Coughlin, perhaps repeating what some bloke told him in a bar, writes today..."

and so on.