Gunning for controlled EU borders

Many of Europe's nations take a fairly laid-back approach to firearms, and do so with hardly any of their citizens being shot at all. Many others, including the UK, are constipated about weapons to the extent that even some children's toys are illegal, and lots of people still get shot. In Austria, for example, only military-style Category A firearms are prohibited; with a Weapons Pass one can own Category B arms - pistols of all types and semi-auto rifles. Without a pass, anyone over 18 can buy and own as many shotguns and bolt-magazine rifles as they like - but all such Category C weapons must be registered through a gun-shop. For black-powder weapons, cannon, older revolvers, muzzle loaders, CS gas guns, Verey pistols and the like - category D - no registration at all is needed and they can be bought by mail order. 

As ORF reports this week, when police investigated a weapons-pass holder over an unrelated matter recently, in addition to an arsenal large enough to equip an assault platoon with pistols and semi-auto assault rifles (all legally held) they found fragmentation grenades, light machine guns, fully auto assault rifles and other Cat A kit. They told him he was very naughty, confiscated them and fined him €6,000. 

In the UK I expect the Cat A haul would have earned him 20 years. This enormous disparity in criminal law is just another fundamental reason that the 'convergence' needed to create a united Europe is many, many generations away. 

An Austrian schoolgirl returning home from a school trip to London was stopped at airport security late last year with a CS gas spray in her hand luggage. Cue panic and armed police. She explained that many schoolgirls in Austria carry them quite legally, given the new threats in public places, and that she had brought it into the UK with her. She had no idea she could get 5 years chokey in Britain for it. Thankfully, on this occasion she was allowed to go home without charge. 

As long as Europe's nations value their own standards and want to retain their own customs and laws on these matters, borders are needed - needed for all our good. 

The mostly-legal gun haul - only the grenades earned the owner a fine

Art is Art, Crap is Crap

It was in 1985 that I sat spellbound in Ronnie Scott's at Nina Simone. A musician, songwriter and performer of the most superlative talent, whose cadence, timing, keyboard touch and vocal skills are simply utterly brilliant. I'll remember that gig all my life. She had me, soul and heart, and that's what real art does.

However, this is where the logic of the illiberal left falls. "Nina Simone is Black. Nina Simone is a great artist. Therefore all black people are great artists" is simply a logical fallacy. I've tried and tried, for example, to see any merit in Maya Angelou's dreary words. Agaist Seamus Heaney, Robert Graves or even Larkin her verse is clumsy, ugly, untalented stuff, dross that should never have escaped from some smudgy gestetnered student rag.

Corrupt EU Nomenklatura miffed at Romanian justice win

Political corruption is endemic throughout Europe, and Britain can only boast that our populist checks and balances make it harder here for bent politicians to cheat, steal and defraud than elsewhere. Despite a Parliament-wide expenses fraud scandal in the UK, jut a handful of the most egregious thieves were jailed. The political establishment rapidly realised that the Commons green benches would be empty if all the crooked MPs were acted against. The rest remain on probation, watched by the hawks of a free press that they yearn to muzzle. 

Elsewhere, auditors simply refuse to consider the EU's risible offerings of accounts. So mired by fraud and corruption, so deeply infiltrated by organised criminal networks, so abused by bent and hungry power-seekers are the Federation's finances that no one in Europe regards seriously their fatuous offers of financial records. The EU is corrupt to its core. 

I must admit that my previous confident prediction that François Fillon would walk the French Presidential election looks somewhat shaky now. It emerges that he fraudulently bunged his family members hundreds of thousands of crooked stolen Euros on the pretence that they worked for him - much on the same basis that our MPs claim their young nieces are qualified parliamentary assistants worthy of a £30k salary. It's just theft. Just not the sort of theft that earned a young rioter who stole three bottles of water six months banged up in a Victorian cell with a Muslim rapist and a bucket to shit in. 

So when Romania passed a decree legalising theft, fraud and crookedness by politicians and public officials provided the sums stolen came to less than £38k, bent little ears pricked up all over Europe. This may be small beer in the UK, where £38k is just a year's worth of flipping homes by our MPs, but in Romania it will build you a tasteless vulgar palace with gold taps and individual stables for the goats. I'll bet the EU nomenklatura were particularly interested; if they exempted all transactions of less than €0.5m from accounting transparency, they might just be able to find a bent auditor somewhere in Europe to sign off their accounts. All seemed well and establishment politicians and public officials were rubbing their hands.

Then the people of Romania took to the streets. The politicians remembered what happened the last time they did so, and rapidly backed down. The thieves decree was rescinded. All over Europe one could almost hear the gentle hiss as miffed politicians abandoned dreams of new scams and frauds and let the air out of the hubristic pomposity that criminal immunity confers. Little tear-soaked tissues were flushed from the cloaca of the Berlaymont. Empty Sancerre bottles crashed inverted into Westminster ice buckets. We, the people, have won this round - but the price of a Parliament free from corruption is eternal vigilance.

BBC & RT news rivalry can only benefit the public

The chap criticising RT on the Today programme declared that it was a state-sponsored national broadcaster subject to government control and which represented the views of the establishment, before pausing awkwardly for a second or two as the leaden weight of the irony filled his soul. It was, I imagine, as he glanced about him with a sinking feeling knowing where he was and who was broadcasting his opinion.  Yes, of course RT and the BBC are equivalents; of course both broadcast untruths and of course both represent the view of their controlling establishment through biased production values that no-one is advised to take at face value. 

And that is exactly why their news rivalry is of the greatest public benefit. With RT exposing the BBC's fake news and the BBC doing likewise to false RT stories, by flicking between them one can get an approximation of the reality. 

The watershed was Aleppo and the BBC's mythical White Helmets reporting from the besieged enclave. Except they weren't there. They didn't exist. No-one there had seen them, and when the final rump of rebel fighters surrendered there was no trace of them. Either they escaped to Idlib disguised as rebel fighters - hardly the behaviour of an aid organisation - or they were never there in the first place. Despite which the BBC continued to broadcast their fake accounts of life under siege until near the end, accounts in all probability originating no further from White City than Vauxhall. 

Have you heard a single mention of the White Helmets since the fall of Aleppo? It's as though the MSM has realised that the secret is out and is desperate for people to forget all the past lies. 

Back at the height of the Cold War I used to tune to Radio Moscow on a short-wave valve radio receiver whose qualities I now greatly miss; the xylophone gongs of the 'Moscow Nights' station ident before the news quavered over the ether, with an impression of great distance. The Soviet news if all was well would be predictably dull; a speech from the Agriculture Convention of the 34th Plenary of the Uzhbek Soviet, mine production output gains in Novobyersk and so on. The absence of war rhetoric was, at the time, some sort of assurance that the 4 minutes had not yet arrived. 

Now forty years on we're back in the same place - trying desperately to find the truth in the ground between the liars. 

Christian crosses to stay in Austria - and Britain

Austria is going ahead with a ban on the Niqab and Burqa in public venues - places where there is an expectation that people will show their faces. I don't think this is anti-libertarian, and I apply the same policy personally; I simply refuse to hear or recognise anyone whose face I can't see, including anyone who tries to talk to me whilst wearing mirror sunglasses. They don't exist and are ignored. 

The backlash has come already in Austria, where the majority of public venues including courtrooms are graced with a Christian crucifix. Having a cross bearing Christ crucified in the judge's line of vision seems a compassionate boon to defendants, surely, as a constant reminder of love, goodness and mercy? Some judges have taken to removing them when sitting, but should I ever find myself in an Austrian court I should insist they were restored. Take every help you can. A legal attempt here (should we start terming these vexatious actions as 'Miller cases'?) to class crucifixes in the same way as Islamist head-bags* has already failed, and the crosses stay. 


We also have ubiquitous crucifixes in the UK, though somewhat more discreet.

On every police helmet, pillar box, court or government building; on every government report, paper, news release and letterhead, in and on every thing in the realm that bears an image of the sovereign's crown, we have the Christian cross. Mounted on the orb that is this world, it surmounts all - world, monarch, realm and people. And it says without any ambiguity Christus regnat!

We're not quite finished yet.

*OT but true ...
==============
As a callow youth first in London at a time when Jim Davidson and his ilk regularly termed ill-favoured women as 'double baggers' in their acts, and the parlace of 'yeah with a bag over her head ...' was the disgraceful sexist banter of the public bar, I was nevertheless actually shocked to see a large market sign declaiming "Head bags - 2 for £10". Well I was from Suffolk, so how was I to know that 'Head' brand bags were a London fashion item? For several months I actually believed that Londoners had recourse to bespoke tailored full-length hats for their women ... 

We must help the EU turn from self-destruction

A European customs union in which goods, services and capital can circulate freely is a pretty good idea. The power of Europe's 440m people as a trade bloc, the internal savings from lower frictional costs of trade and the spin-off advantages of a talking-shop at which representatives of the national governments meet to discuss trade matters are all powerful benefits of such a union of convenience. 

Unfortunately, what the EU has become is an unelected cabal of little men from small nations who want to be big. Maltese, Luxembourgers, Belgians and Dutch like the ability to talk on equal terms at France, Germany and the United Kingdom. Sadly, it has led to delusions - delusions that the EU can be a global superpower, and all it needs is an army to go with the flag and the anthem. Germany, the only member with the means to pay for this jejune fantasy, will only go along with it all whilst she is able to exploit the enforced poverty of all the nations of southern Europe that keeps German exports cheap. 

Tusk is one of Europe's little men who wants to be big. He is also literally a small man, with all the comedic chihuahua snappishness that comes with Small Man Syndrome. As the EU crumbles around him, all he can think of to say is "Everyone is against us. Therefore we must have even less democracy and a big army, now". Sadly, it is this sort of blind stupidity, remote from voters and the reality of democratic elections, remote from all modern reality in the make-believe Brussels bunkers, that will hasten the EU's failing. 

But it's neither in Britain's or Europe's interest to see it all crash. We must now work to turn the EU into what it should have been all along - a trade bloc that benefits its members, not a clumsy attempt at a Ruritanian world power run by the Mayor of Gozo. There's no point talking to fools such as Verhofstadt - they're all away with the fairies. We need to take a dialogue directly to the peoples of Europe's nations and plant the idea of a fundamental reformation of the EU.

USA & Australia set the new standard for immigration

The majority of illegals held after trying to enter Australia are not Indonesians, Thais or Vietnamese but Iraqis, Iranians, Sudanese and Libyans. Australia's uncompromising migrant policy sees them held in camps on Nauru and Manus. They will not get in. 

Trump's measures, though they will result in many injustices for those who are true friends of America and who have the economic capacity to contribute, are no greater than the measures that Australia already has in place. Both nations now make it easier for the UK to make migration policy more targeted - excluding nationals of the 7 banned nations, but plus Pakistan and Bangladesh, from whence much of the UK terrorist threat comes.

The outcome is that Anglophone nations are now making the point that the world is not some free, open, ownerless place in which migrants hungry for wealth unavailable in their home countries can move freely en masse and without restriction . They are making the point that nations are already owned by the people that live in them and whose ancestors have fought, bled suffered and struggled to make them what they are. The message is 'Go and make your own'. The message is 'If we want you, we'll call'

The United Kingdom now has the opportunity to join two other great anchors of the Anglophone world. And despite Trudeau's words, migrants will find it a lot harder to get into Canada than they might imagine. 

The Roots of Evil

SS-Sturmbannführer Ernst Lerch started adult life working in his father's cafe in Klagenfurt. A secret Austrian Nazi, when war came he served with the infamous Otto Globocnik in the purges of Jews in eastern Europe, being deeply implicated in the extermination programme. After the war, and whilst the British were occupying Kärnten, Lerch sneaked back to more or less openly run the family cafe. Oh, both the Brits and the Austrians tried to prosecute him, but not very hard. A charming schmaltzy character who presided lovingly over the Tanzcafe Lerch whilst tipsy British officers waltzed with dirndl-clad Mädchen. A loved and respected family man, he lived until Tony Blair formed his first government in the UK. A new play here, 'Tanzcafe Treblinka', explores the myriad issues around the astonishing tale of the man implicated in over a million murders. 

Franz Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka, was of course also Austrian. He was captured in 1970, and in the brief period between incarceration and death was interviewed at length by Gitta Sereny, whose book, Into That Darkness, remains one of the most profound and affecting books I have read. She believes that when he finally allowed himself to admit his guilt, the weight of his evildoing crushed him. His heart attack struck him 19 hours after the admission.

When I search for common characteristics, common backgrounds, amongst these people, not monsters of horror but ordinary, dreary men - Arendt's 'Banality of Evil' - I find unquestioning conformity, a willingness to believe, respect for bureaucracy and hierarchy, trust in the establishment, unwillingness to voice contrary opinions, dogmatism and, yes, limited emotional intelligence. All the characteristics, in other words, that you and I spend our time on the interweb decrying, destroying and combating, whether we find them in individuals or institutions. 

Every illiberal bully who wants to ban and control thought and language, to restrict personal choice, to subvert democracy, to limit people's control over their own lives, to coerce and twist and emotionally blackmail, has the potential to grow into an Ernst Lerch or Franz Stangl if allowed enough oxygen. Our work in checking them can never be done.

EU Disinformation Unit 'clarifies' Bulgarian Snowman Story

For non-readers of Cyrillic (including me) the headline in the Bulgarian Times claims that the EU intends to ban Snowmen as racist and sexist - unless they are non-white and recognisably female.

An EU spokesman immediately branded the story as nonsense, and the EU Disinformation Unit clarified the misunderstanding as follows: (unverified)

"The Commission merely reminded the Bulgarian government of the EU Public Actions Directive, which requires that European governments and local authorities undertake service provision in line with anti-discriminatory EU law. In this case, snowmen erected by government or local government staff, or erected in public parks, or on public highways, or military bases, or any land, locus or place on land or water owned or controlled by a governmental or quasi governmental organisation, must undergo a full Risk Assessment, be constructed in accordance with a written Method Statement, with any significant costs (e.g. for carrots or pieces of coal) submitted to the EU under the State Aid regulations, including the requirement for a 'Nil' return, and that each Snowman erection must be documented in an Equal Opportunities Achievement Statement. The erecting authority must demonstrate and publish electronically how the Snowman helps achieve the EU's aims in the Year of Organic Diversity of sustainable craft development and in imprinting the semiotics of diversity. 

So you will see this is no prohibition and there is no new legislation - the existing Directives, agreed democratically in secret by several commissioners democratically appointed by other commissioners - are quite adequate"

Good. Glad that's clear.

...And now for the Peers

I'm going to skate over comments on the Brexit court decision yesterday; everything has already been said elsewhere. Suffice to say that Gina Miller is no angel but just a rather petulant, selfish rich woman used to applying wealth and sharp elbows to get her own way, and we will be glad in the end that Parliamentary sovereignty has been adjudged supreme. Despite my initial anger.

Now for the hurdles in the Commons and particularly the Lords. Even though the government has offered to allow the Lords to "talk until they wet themselves", the place is unfortunately full of the corrupt, the venal, barrators, panderers, frauds, hypocrites, thieves and peculators and all the other rancid filth swimming in the festering ordure that is the output of the life peerage system. A vast number of these slime-coated denizens of the Eighth Malebolge owe greater allegiance to Brussels than to their sovereign. 

Which is exactly the reason I'm willing to allow my name to go forward to become one; if Mrs May has to pack the place with 'sunset peers' who are available to take up voting immediately, I'm happy to do my duty. The per diem and the decent bars and restaurants will more than make up for a few weeks of all night sittings, my bladder is strong and I'm both eloquent and erudite and used to speaking in such settings if required. And I won't mind if in February Mrs May then abolishes several hundred life peers from sitting, including me. 

I'm sure many regular readers are in a similar position. A regular luncheon table in the Lords licenced cafeteria made up of blog commentators would be rather fun. 

English Law - our £25bn a year service asset

I'll bet that if I mention Carlill -v- Carbolic Smoke Ball Company at least half of you will get the reference. For any that don't, it's one of the first contract law cases that English professionals from all sectors learn when first at the teat of contract law & tort. I aced law, and kept up with it all through my professional career, through both the Times law reports and those in Estates Gazette. Over the years I've come not only to respect but to regard with a deep affection the wonderful, elegant and self-evolving way in which the corpus of civil law works in England and Wales. No other nation could have developed a separate, parallel stream of law such as Equity - a shield, not a sword - to use when the mainstream was lacking. And the Chancery barrister from whom I first learnt my law was equally in love with it all. My final act before I retired was to wholly resist a claim of £1m under NEC3 at adjudication with the law supplied by an eager young chap from one of the big city firms. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. There ain't nothing so elegant as a 300-item Scott schedule with our column totalling to zero. 

Anyway, that little encomium apart, the Standard recognises the importance of it all both to the City and nation;

The Justice Secretary, Liz Truss, identifies one of them today in her summit with leading law firms. She promised to protect Britain’s status as the world’s biggest legal capital — a status which is worth some £25 billion a year. More importantly, it adds to the country’s historic reputation for probity, integrity and fair dealing. English contract law has evolved over centuries and it is used in contracts between individuals and countries which have little to do with England or the UK. Then there is the  reputation for professionalism of the English legal profession and the independence and quality of the judiciary — however much the judges may occasionally irritate us. And if England is the centre of the legal world, London is the centre of the centre.

Our justice system could of course be improved, notably the efficiency of the courts. But the Government is right to do what it can to safeguard the lawyers’ position. It should sign up to the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements immediately after Brexit — it cannot do so while we are in the EU — and seek a replacement for Europe’s “Recast” rule. This is crucial. Let’s look to our strengths; right now we must make the most of them.

With English law, rather than Euro Napoleonic codes, forming the basis of North American and much of Asian-Pacific law, we are wise to pull it away from the perversion and debasement of inferior European jurisdiction. It is self healing, and the Euro errors of the last 40 years can be healed and absorbed. With TTIP dead in the water, and CETA peculiar to the Euro Napoleonic 27, we stand in good stead to continue as the world's tribunal capital. In relation to 'recast', Allen & Overy have published an opinion, but it can be summarised in their graphic 

Brussels Regulation: Article 23

Brussels Regulation (recast): Article 25

"If the parties, one or more of whom is domiciled in a Member State, have agreed that a court or the courts of a Member State are to have jurisdiction to settle any disputes which have arisen or which may arise in connection with a particular legal relationship, that court or those courts shall have jurisdiction. Such jurisdiction shall be exclusive unless the parties have agreed otherwise."

"If the parties, regardless of their domicile, have agreed that a court or the courts of a Member State are to have jurisdiction to settle any disputes which have arisen or which may arise in connection with a particular legal relationship, that court or those courts shall have jurisdiction, unless the agreement is null and void as to its substantive validity under the law of that Member State. Such jurisdiction shall be exclusive unless the parties have agreed otherwise."

Germany deeply resentful of Trump Presidency

If you thought the snowflake whining in the US and UK reached a pitch of irritation yesterday at Donald Trump's inauguration, this is as nothing compared to the wailing, gnashing of teeth and rending of garments in Germany's government districts. Der Spiegel devotes an entire issue to Trump-hate and Trump-fear with no equivocation whatsoever - they make the post-truth Guardian look balanced. "Trump is the end of the world as we know it -- that much is clear", states the paper boldly. Trump's presidency is a particular problem for Germany for the following reasons;

• Trump has previously identified Germany and Japan as the most prominent enemies of US manufacturing - "Our 'allies' are making billions screwing us" - blaming high state subsidies for aiding product development while free-riding on US defence expenditure. 
• Trump knows that the EU is basically a vehicle for German hegemony and allows the sort of economic imperialism that enriches Germany at the expense of the southern states; he doesn't see this as a good thing
• Germany leads Europe's demonisation of Russia. Quite why Germany fosters such hostility is a puzzle; she is safer from Russian military threat than at any time since 1949, yet still bullies the rest of the EU in maintaining sanctions when many EU members - notably the eastern nations and Austria - want to wind them down. Without strong US backing, Germany fears the EU will fracture on the sanctions issue, and Trump is no fan of the sanctions
• On NATO and defence, Trump has made it clear he will not support the EU's free riding, and Germany will have to spend far more on her own defence. Add to this the lunatic narcissistic folie de grandeur in a Brussels that wants its own independent army and Trump's scepticism as to Germany's motives and it's clear a crisis is coming
• The EU is planning to throw a huge 60th birthday party for itself in Rome in March - at a time when the UK is submitting Article 50 notification. Germany fears this could be the zenith of the EU's growth; Trump sees the reason for the EU is as an economic rival to the US, and he will try to split EU nations to weaken the risk. Already eastern nations in tune with Trump ideology are gaining confidence at defying German hegemony, and Berlin fears this will grow
• Trump's direct criticism of Merkel's migrants policy and his identification of Islam as the greatest threat to western civilisation undermine Germany's policy of destroying European national identity to create a homogeneous consumer mass with no allegiances for the benefit of the global corporates. Germany fears that the resurgence of both American and British patriotism will encourage the EU's satrap states to rediscover their national identities.

Underlying all of this is a deep existential angst that America is now challenging the illiberal consensus of central State control, bullying and coercion. The very last thing that administrators such as Merkel want is a reversal of the policy so eloquently catalogued by Brendan O'Neill:-

It happened because you banned super-size sodas. And smoking in parks. And offensive ideas on campus. Because you branded people who oppose gay marriage ‘homophobic’, and people unsure about immigration ‘racist’.

Because you treated owning a gun and never having eaten quinoa as signifiers of fascism. Because you thought correcting people’s attitudes was more important than finding them jobs. Because you turned ‘white man’ from a description into an insult. Because you used slurs like ‘denier’ and ‘dangerous’ against anyone who doesn’t share your eco-pieties.

Because you treated dissent as hate speech and criticism of Obama as extremism. Because you talked more about gender-neutral toilets than about home repossessions. Because you beatified Caitlyn Jenner. Because you policed people’s language, rubbished their parenting skills, took the piss out of their beliefs.

Because you cried when someone mocked the Koran but laughed when they mocked the Bible. Because you said criticising Islam is Islamophobia. Because you kept telling people, ‘You can’t think that, you can’t say that, you can’t do that.’

Because you turned politics from something done by and for people to something done to them, for their own good. Because you treated people like trash. And people don’t like being treated like trash. Trump happened because of you.

The joys of Localism

Scotland is large scale proof that Localism works. As the Telegraph reports, Sturgeon is making an absolute cods of running the place; business rates through the roof, high income tax, dearth of investment and a failure to deliver the improvements in life quality that this all was promised to bring. And now she is being made dole monitor. Welfare spend is the latest bit of government to be devolved, and Nicola is wriggling like a drowning worm to find ways to distract the Scots from her new and unpopular rationing role. I suspect the canny Scots will kick Sturgeon out the next time they are let near the ballot box.

And so to Surrey County Council, which will ballot its citizens over a 15% rate rise to pay for old people's homes (not that they're called that any more - they're social care establishments or something). The vote may depend on how officious the Council has been in issuing parking tickets, nagging people about using the right bins or telling them not to smoke. The people of Surrey may well say no, and encourage the Council to lose even more staff. 

That these exhibitions of growing Localist importance are possible despite the dilettante Cameron rather than because of him is extraordinary. Cameron promised Localism in 2010 but delivered a change as insipid and homeopathic as the pre-referendum offer he brought back from Brussels. That man really was himself a useless streak. 

Still, more please. The closer we move to the Swiss model of devolved tax and spend the better, to the extent that central government commands barely a third of tax income to pay for essential and truly national agencies of the State. And the more that local politicians are held to account by local people the better - not Little Britain, but the hallmark of a great nation.

Is Soros behind anti-democratic Brexit law suits?

Whilst the secret funding behind Gina Miller's attempts to subvert the will of the British people is still mired in mists of secrecy, four more stooges and plants have popped up to use someone's secret funds to try to derail Brexit by law. Only these stooges don't fancy the publicity - so have asked if they can bring their secret funded case under conditions of, er, secrecy.

I strongly suspect that Soros is behind all this. Soros wants British national identity to be destroyed and replaced by a homogeneous consumer lumpen mass with no competing allegiances who will surrender to the serfdom of the global corporates. He has funded street violence, nihilistic 'actions' and the no-borders idiots and, in a campaign of social attrition, every day provokes small acts of disorder and fear. He is a thoroughly evil old man and the enemy of the United Kingdom.

Well, we have no great history of secret justice in England, and no reason why the latest stooges should sneak around like thieves in the night hidden from daylight and public view. If they believe in their cause, rather than in the pieces of silver with which their backer has stuffed their mouths, let them come forward.

And I don't know whether they seek an equitable remedy, but I once learnt that he 'who comes to equity must come with clean hands' - and it's a good principle also for those who seek to challenge the will of the majority of the British people. Let's see 'em. Let the papers get digging and chase the money. We need to uncover the seditious dogs behind them.

No more Courgettes, thank you

Back in the late '70s and in the last year of my teens I bought my first home - a two-up two-down Suffolk flint rubble cottage with pantile roof, massive open hearth that dominated the parlour and a large plot with half a dozen apple trees. It cost £5,750. This was the age of Richard Mabey's 'Food for Free' and a sort of trancey sun-dappled hippyish 'back to the garden' ethos. So I kept hens under the apple trees, brewed beer and grew food while in an undemanding student job. 

That was my gap two-years - though we didn't know the term. One of my horticultural successes were courgettes. I was advised to line a long trench with old newspapers before mounding soil over and planting. The Sun shone. I was a diligent waterer when sober. I had such a glut of courgettes that in the end even the hens wouldn't eat them. I couldn't give them away to Suffolk natives, whose closest experience was of stuffed and roasted marrows. Friends shunned me in case I arrived bearing a box of courgettes for them. I had no recipes for jam or pickle - this was pre-internet. All Summer and well into the Autumn the bloody things just popped up and swelled their little bodies and still I felt obliged to pick them and not waste them. Well, after that, it was fifteen years before I could face a courgette again. 

With many thanks to whoever recommended David Archibald's Twilight of Abundance - so far, I'm about 70 pages in, and it's uncompromisingly depressing. I hope it has a happy ending. Its cataloguing of the arguments in favour of global cooling, a reduction of between 1° and 3° in Europe, may mean big changes in food growing. And shortages. So when I saw this article in today's Guardian I thought immediately of my fecund Anglian earth back in the heat of the '70s;

The Guardian of course fails to use the cold snap (weather) as a useful segue to discuss global cooling (climate). And will no doubt continue to do so as crops fail for real all over Europe's salad belt. Hey ho.

Russia - good fences and good neighbours

At the home in which I grew up, our plot was separated from the narrow country road that ran along a boundary by a 2m wide strip that belonged to Suffolk County Council. It was annoyance at the Council's lack of maintenance that drove my mother to add its grooming to my boyhood task-list of mowing and trimming. So for a length of 70 or 80m as the road ran alongside our land, an unkempt, blowsy country roadside assumed a neatly trimmed tidiness. It took three or four years for the Council to twig that we were maintaining their roadside - whereupon, they started regularly to send out a maintenance gang to pre-empt my efforts.

My mother took it as a sign that local bureaucracy was amenable to her own particular form of 'nudge', and was happy that she had a neat boundary. I was happy at losing the task of maintaining it. Now, of course, I realise that the Council had been prompted not by a sense of obligation to a ratepayer but from fear that if we maintained it for 12 years and they didn't, we could claim ownership of the 2m strip from them through adverse possession. I'm glad my mother had no knowledge of this quirk in British law - it would have prompted her to surreptitiously expand on all borders. 

And so with Russia. Russia will expand in any direction that is not clearly and signally defended and 'owned'. That includes land, sea and air. It doesn't make Russia any more of an enemy than cutting a verge made me an enemy of Suffolk County Council; Russia acts in a very proper Adam Smith type of economic self-interest. And peace is best served by NATO and the UK maintaining forces, fleets and air patrol and response capacities that signal clearly and without doubt where the boundaries are. A minimum of 2% of GDP but ideally for the United Kingdom, a spend that gives us a standing army of 100,000 men and a fleet of 50 warships. 

That Russia also must be an ally in the coming conflict with African mass migration, Islamist aggression and Malthusian challenges doesn't mean we shouldn't also keep clear boundaries and military parity in sight. The EU of course is blind to the realpolitik and risks conflict through its insane territorial ambitions - a dangerous stupidity that needs the UK's level head to counter. If Theresa May makes Presidents Putin and Trump her key diplomatic priorities, she is doing absolutely the right thing.

Vaclav Klaus pierces EU pomposity again

The EU's pomposity and Folie de Grandeur needs pricking from time to time if only to suppress the Federation's insufferable senior unelected official, the egregious Herr Juncker. The former Czech President Vaclav Klaus does the job superbly;

I am a very known critic of the European integration process, everyone knows it, so it will be no surprise to hear from me that I am not so happy with what has been going on, and I was very much in favour - it was still in the dark communist days - I was really in favour of the European integration process, but this process has been switched, transformed by the Maastricht treaty, 25 years ago, and especially now by the Lisbon Treaty, later, to something totally different, and I call this a move from integration to unification. This was the beginning of the negative, wrong development, as I see it.

Klaus has previously provoked a walk-out of snowflake MEPs during a speech in which he said

There is also a great distance (not only in a geographical sense) between citizens and Union representatives, which is much greater than is the case inside the member countries. This distance is often described as the democratic deficit, the loss of democratic accountability, the decision-making of the unelected – but selected – ones, as bureaucratisation of decision-making etc. The proposals to change the current state of affairs – included in the rejected European Constitution or in the not much different Lisbon Treaty – would make this defect even worse. Since there is no European demos – and no European nation – this defect cannot be solved by strengthening the role of the European Parliament, either

It is difficult for the Establishment to brand a Czech anti-totalitarian warrior, who as a child resisted the Nazis and as an adult helped topple Communism, as a right-wing nutter or a fascist; as President of a NATO country he was also privy to highest level defence secrets, so hard to brand him as uninformed. Klaus is that rarest of creatures in Europe these days - a Statesman. 

I commend the RT interview - and I'll be clearing snow this morning with a smile.

Eyeties, Nips and Krauts

What's the betting that the 'Eastenders' scriptwriter who allowed the archaic term 'eyetie' to sneak into the programme's script is a bloke in his 50s? I'll bet he never imagined he would draw the wrath of the racial righteous upon his head, with the term being damned as a 'racial slur'. Well, yes and no. 

As old soldiers will know, in order to get large numbers of men ready to kill large numbers of other men without second thought, reflection, introspection or moral equivocation, it is necessary to pre-dehumanise the enemy. This is the kindest and most efficient way of doing things in the long term - you are not killing brothers but vermin. So wartime propaganda and military training invents derogatory terms and images for the enemy. 

Quite why these terms were still used in boys' comics up until the 1970s I'm not sure. But they were. Even though the poor eyeties by then were characterised as unwilling warriors, conscripted waiters ready to fall on their knees, wring their hands in surrender and cry 'Mamma Mia!' at the first sight of khaki. The Japanese became bandy-legged dwarves with buck teeth and milkbottle eyeglasses. Only the Germans remained lantern-jawed giants who could absorb vast amounts of lead in battle. 

As a boy who grew up with these comics, you can no more remove these crude stereotypes from my brain than you can all the Saturday morning cinema 'B' reels of bare breasted African girls grinning like watermelons as they danced in formation with lots of stamping to give the cameraman maximum jiggle. Surely their donning Western clothes is cultural appropriation? Perhaps not.  

We can pretty much learn not to use now the easy terms of our youth - including a Spanish mate who was quite happy to be nicknamed Spic from primary school - but the youngsters need to know we never, ever used them as 'racial slurs'. We just knew with absolute certainty from an early age that British people are superior to anyone else on the planet, and that we could use nicknames for other, lesser breeds with the gentle affection of an indulgent master.

Five more things they want to ban in 2017

Take this post with a pinch of salt - I don't actually believe there is a conspiracy for all this, but it just feels as though there is! Where we still have a chance, and if you agree, we can still try to stop them ..

The nets are closing in and the bansturbators, the disturbing alliance between the global corporates, the UN, EU and political establishments, have their sights set on five more things to ban during the year.

1. FM radio - Efforts to restrict and regulate transmissions have failed, so attention has turned to eliminating receivers. Because the transmission technology is so cheap, efficient, local and available, all official efforts to eliminate non-State sanctioned broadcasts to date have failed. Instead, attention now turns to ridding people of the means of receiving broadcasts. By switching off official FM radio broadcasts, FM receivers in car, home and personal device radios will drop out of the market and legacy devices will decline rapidly due to obsolescence and natural attrition. Future dissidents may broadcast on FM, but no-one will hear them.

2. Wood / Coal fires - There is no better way to bring a truculent and rebellious population to heel than cutting off winter heating. With electric heating, district heating schemes and natural gas networks, authorities can turn people's warmth on and off at will. However, a population equipped with coal and biomass burning stoves will not be so easily cowed; the Greek authorities were astonished last Winter as the people refused to capitulate, in a nation well equipped with stoves in which every variety of scavenged wood fuel, old furniture, pallets and combustible materials were  burned in defiance of the government. So stoves have to go. The UN has already taken measures, well supported by the BMJ (and wasn't Stalin right about bloody doctors ...) on the grounds of PM2.5 emissions. London's wood burning stoves, so popular in Highgate and Islington, apparently kill thousands of Londoners prematurely and are worse than TfL's entire bus fleet. So the BMJ says. Expect a ban on woodburning stoves in the UK this year.

One of my wood stoves .... from my cold, dead hands etc.

3. Shotguns - In implementing the latest 2016 EU Directive on firearms (and I'll bet this will be incorporated into UK legislation pronto and well before Brexit) all shotgun licence holders may have to undergo psychological testing by a State psychiatric examiner in order to retain their licence. The current arrangements, under which they must allow any person to hold a shotgun unless they have good reasons to refuse one, will be scrapped and the onus will be on the holder to prove (a) that they need one and (b) they are no mentalist risk to the State.

4. Power supply / Internet access - Already dealt with in a previous post. The State simply loves technology such as the new Smart Meters that can remotely cut power and Internet access to individual dissidents. Pretty soon disconnect-on-demand will be standard at the moment of a State police raid on a dissidents home, for example, to confuse and disorientate as the doors crash down. Homes of authors of personal blogs not licenced with the Mosley Regulator and people who don't use their real names on Facebook may also be disconnected on grounds of State Security ..

5. Democracy - This will be the subject of many future posts, but attempts to change systems to prevent events such as the Brexit poll are already under way. Already Labour, backed by the RSA, are pushing 'people's juries' in place of voting; a random selection of electors are comprehensively brainwashed briefed by establishment apparatchiks experts before making democratic decisions on behalf of everyone else. The anti-democrats are crowing already; how can this NOT be better than stupid uninformed people casting universal and secret ballots in defiance of the State's advice?

Anti Liberals pollute everything they touch

American sociologist Robert Nisbet valued what he termed intermediate institutions - groupings, communities, loyalties, memberships - because they allow us to face the centralising power of the State together rather than alone. The idea is a direct inheritance of Burke's Little Platoons, and in the 21st century intermediate institutions are much more diverse than the local church, the yacht club, the bell-ringers association or whatever. Vicarious membership of institutions, those clubs of which we are not members but whose values we recognise and value, such as holders of the Victoria Cross, also serve to unite us in valuing the qualities that they embody, such as self-sacrifice, courage and valour. They also serve as rival allegiances to the central State. 

All rival allegiances and rival values are hateful to the Neo Anti-Liberals, of course. In Terry Gilliam's 'Munchausen', the Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson is an AntiLib ruler par excellence;

JACKSON: Ah, the officer who risked his life by single-handedly destroying...Six enemy cannon and rescuing...Ten of our men held captive by The Turk.
HERO: Yes, Sir
JACKSON: The officer about whom we've heard so much. 
HERO: I suppose so, Sir
JACKSON: Always taking risks far beyond the call of duty. 
HERO: I only did my best, Sir 
JACKSON (to GUARD): Execute him.
JACKSON: This sort of behaviour is demoralising for the ordinary soldiers and citizens who are trying to lead normal, simple, unexceptional lives. I think things are difficult enough as it is without these emotional people rocking the boat.

By fouling, beshitting and filthily corrupting the honours system, for example, Cameron has left his greatest legacy - the destruction of an institution. A knighthood for his barber, CBEs for his wife's manicurist and hair stylist, peerages for his private office clerks. Taking the piss wasn't in it - it was the calculated destruction of an alternative institution, and with it the destruction of the value of any noble and virtuous qualities it represented.  

Charities in Britain, too, were once both local and beneficial. First came their AntiLib corruption as Fake Charities - PR and lobby organisations disguised as charities and largely covertly funded by both central and local government and their offshoots to create a false demand for action or legislation. Some of these Fake Charities are funded up to over 90% by tax funding from grants and awards, with only minimal income from voluntary donations.  

Then came the corruption of real charities - they were soft targets for their hijacking by AntiLib regimes that soon turned them into political lobby bodies stuffed with fat-salaried executives, with monstrous costs skimmed from donations made by a credulous but well-meaning public. AntiLib corporations even set up their own - the BBC's Children in Need, for example:

 "Trust in charities fell last year to the lowest level since records began in 2005, a Populus survey of 1,000 people conducted for the Charity Commission found, after a series of scandals including stratospheric executive salaries, the collapse of Kids Company, and the suicide of Olive Cooke, who died after receiving 3,000 mailings from charities, prompting questions about data-sharing and fundraising techniques. The commission’s director called the findings a “call to action” for the sector." The Guardian reports this morning, in a rare truthful insight.

They don't need a new smartphone app. They don't need a new Director of Twitter Engagement at £64k. They don't need a TV ad campaign to virtue-signal their love of migrants. What charities need most of all is to be free from the pollution, corruption and befouling of the nauseous AntiLibs.

The new Corporate slavery - escaping capture

This year will be make or break for many of the global corporates, and a desperate race continues to capture consumers before the chains go on. Here are a few tips to avoid capture:-

Cars -  Personal Car Leasing means increased sales for the manufacturers and is attractive to consumers who get a new car to drive at low cost for the first three years. The size of the 'bubble' payment is large, discouraging consumers from buying their own car and encouraging them to lock into a new three year deal on expiry. If the manufacturers' profits start to drop, they can nudge up monthy costs for new deals. To escape, bite the bullet, save your pennies and buy a 4 year old version of your car from an auction for cash. 

Electricity - The national drive to get everyone onto smart meters - ostensibly to allow energy savings - may allow price discrimination instead. The suggestion slipped out during the annual Autumn power scare that consumers could avoid blackouts in the future by paying a 'premium' electricity price to keep their 'lecky switched on. This suggests that power cuts in future will be controlled remotely via individual consumer meters rather than by pulling a switch at the power station. They will no doubt justify the technology with an excuse about remote consumer disconnection for non-payment being cheaper and kinder. Or to allow them to keep a home with a dialysis machine connected during a general cut. To avoid, resist the fitting of a smart meter at all costs. 

The Cloud -  This one's pretty obvious. Firstly, vast volumes of storage for all your music, films, data, photographs and so on is offered free. This is the consumer capture stage. Once the market has been fully enrolled, the charging can start. It will be crude blackmail - pay or we'll ditch your stuff. To avoid, never keep anything in the cloud. Back up your stuff onto external HDDs.

Amazon / Spotify etc - Similar. You buy videos, music, games etc only these are not loaded on your own computer but on the vendors' servers. Which means they can cut access, or start charging more, at any time. Your stuff is hostage. To avoid, buy real CDs / DVDs or download MP3s to your own devices unlinked to vendor software

Facebook / Twitter etc - These are the most overvalued stocks in the market, true bubbles. The only reason they're holding value and not bursting is the opportunity the companies have to start charging their massive captive consumer base. Facebook's market penetration means it's almost good to go. Initial fees will be modest to maximise retention, with universal payment via mobile phone charges plus the alternatives. To avoid, ditch Facebook. 

Internet of Things - It starts with apps to turn your central heating on from the office or have your fridge place a repeat order with the supermarket and will end with the corporates controlling your thermostat and filling your fridge with their stuff. This one's a no-brainer. The only thing in your house connected to the internet should be your router/modem and the device you use to surf the web and download data.  

The 'bite' has yet to come for most of these - the corporates are still in the phase of rolling out the tech and capturing consumers. However, they are all good to go if they have to. Together with the good points made in the comments to the previous post about robots, the future is arriving by stealth. I'm not a tinfoil hat sort of person, and the foregoing are just the sort of basic, sensible precautions I take myself. Any such additions to the list are welcome. 

2020 Migrant wave - and why Europe needs Russia as an ally

As a lengthy (45mts) but comprehensive briefing on the matter, the podcast doc by David Willetts now available from Radio 4, is reasonably good. Using the analogy of a python swallowing a pig, the blurb states 

"a big bulge makes its way slowly down the snake from the head end to the other end. That's a bit like what's happened to the UK demographically. The baby boom generation - which has changed Britain politically, culturally and economically - is now retiring. That means a large bulge of pensioners with big implications for the generations that come behind them. Other advanced economies face a similar challenge and emerging economies - most notably China - will be dealing with an ageing bulge themselves soon. But in Africa, the bulge is at the other end. A very young generation is about to make its way through the snake."

And it's the African bulge that is exercising minds in Europe. 

The current migration report of an Austrian intelligence service shows why the time for action is scarce: experts warn that 15 million young adults will be without jobs by the year 2020 in Nigeria, the Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Ethiopia and seven other African countries And the masses want to emigrate to Europe.

Whilst the Middle East youth bulge is now passing through and will generally decline by 2020, two exceptions; Iraq and the West Bank and Gaza are both expected to rise to 29% by 2020, when Iran's will have fallen to 22%. Both flash points will continue to push migrants into Europe through Turkey and the Russian federal states. 

Only utter fools believe that the present policy of the world's navies providing a taxi service from points 3 miles off the North African coast to Europe is sustainable. For that's the range of the boats and the fuel now being used by the smugglers; it's cheaper to buy a VHF to make an SOS call just outside the territorial limit than 100 extra litres of diesel. No ship can ignore a distress call, and a nice NATO frigate will come collect you to take you to Italy.

But to contain the migrants in North Africa or the Middle East will need the active co-operation of Russia, both on the ground and at sea and at the UN Security Council. It may involve taking control of sovereign national territory in North Africa to hold (and feed) millions of migrants.

This is Europe's biggest challenge. And we need Russia as an ally to face it.  

  

Petulant arrogant hubristic arsehole quits

Ivan Rogers, who after Balliol and the École Normale Supérieure spent pretty much his whole adult life working for government, was predictably seduced by the heady vapours of Brussels. The EU has made normal the elevation of unelected bureaucrats to positions of great power, and in such an atmosphere it was almost inevitable that Rogers, whose petulant, sulky, narcissistic face stares at the nation from today's front pages, would forget that he was just an unelected employee and start to imagine that he was someone important.  

If Rogers had been doing his job he would not have penned the extraordinary 1,400 word apology for his meretricious and dishonourable departure. If Rogers had a true allegiance to his nation and sovereign rather than to the unelected officials of the Commission, he would not have gushed his hubristic nonsense all over the papers. And if Rogers had any real intellectual grasp of the over-riding issues rather than a shallow official's understanding of the minutiae, the problem would not have arisen in the first place. The bloke is quite clearly a shallow, petulant arsehole and we're really much better off without him.

Banks - More Fake News from the Guardian

The Guardian has started 2017 as it ended 2016 - with Fake News, distortion, omission and misrepresentation. The paper's decline from the 1970s and 80s when it represented fearless journalism to the sad little agitprop rag it has become today is precipitous. Now just a platform for waspish spite and crude post-truth corporatist Federast propaganda, Paul Foot will be spinning in his grave. Still fighting the Brexit battle with Fear and Smear, today's risible guff is a story that banks are preparing to leave Britain. 

What the paper knows but omits from printing is that:-

• All banks are tackling how to split their retail from their investment operations by 2019 - a post 2008 crash requirement and nothing to do with Brexit
• That there is NO risk whatsoever that retail banks will move offshore
• That banks have a duty to examine options for the future location of investment bank operations - which require separate HR, legal and risk back-office support rather than shared as at present
• That London will retain global #1 ranking for financial ops, that Frankfurt, currently at #19 in the world ranking, is a dreary little provincial town to which bankers will not move
• That it is almost inevitable that the options appraisals will demonstrate that London remains the best option for bank investment ops - better staff pool quality, advantageous employment law, preferred law and court structure, best legal pool quality, best transport and time links - but just in case Juncker's bent chums in Lux suddenly offer banks a 5% tax rate, alternatives must be considered

Of course, if the Guardian had printed the truth, there would be no story. So they go with lies, omissions, distortions and misrepresentation of which Goebbels would be proud. Sad, nasty little rag.

That New Years Honours List in full

Her Majesty has been graciously pleased to grant:

Knights Bachelor – Knighthoods
Kevin Darren OUTHOUSE	Chair of Fake Charities International. For services to political corruption
John CHUNDER	Director of MoD weaponised sea mammals research. For gross expenditure of public money.
Derek Douglas HUNN-FELCHER	Campaign Director, the Privilege Trust. For services to the Establishment
Tarquin Henry BUMBRIGHT	Treasuer, Chipping Norton Conservative Party. For services to political Anilinction
Peter Arthur GROSSNONSE, Suffragan Bishop of Luton	Director, Rough Lads Foundation. For services to Young Men
Dean PFUNDER-PHART	Political philanthropist. For Services to Corruption
Henry Morgan EYEPATCH	CBI Director, asset stripper and crook. For services to Business
Lobitch Lowery LUDD	MP for Much Weeping, former junior undersecretary for Badger Culling. Services to political Anilinction
John FOMITT	Director Home Office Immigration. For services to Waste and Incompetence
Stan RUFFDIAMOND	Former barber to Mr Cameron. For services to political Hair
Dame Commanders of the British Empire
Sharon SHORTOTTY	Former toenail painter to Mrs Cameron. For services to Grooming
Polly WACHTER	Former roots-dyer to Mrs Cameron. For services to Grooming
Janet BAG-THROTTLER CBE	Former BBC Head of Talent and TV Pop. For services to Grooming
Hillary BHOY	Founder, the Naughty Panties Co, political donor. For services to Bad Taste, and services to Corruption
Aisha KHAN	Chair, Labour Lawyers for Sharia. For services to Islamism
Professor Myrtle DIESEL	Rights campaigner. For services to Hatred.
Commanders of the British Empire
Hugh Calvin BULLIE	Head of Fake Research, Department of Coercion. For services to Illiberality
Rupert Charles POINTLESS	Head of Treasury Brexit Unit. For services to the European Union
Christopher John MOLL-GOBBLER	Director, Unique Tiny Missiles Programme, BAe. For services to National Humiliation

Photo ID and the secret ballot

Let's be honest. We all know the real reason for rolling this out is that those from countries, notably those from Pakistan and Bangladesh, which have a tradition of electoral corruption, personation, vote rigging, electoral fraud and criminal politicians, have been caught many times trying the same tricks at UK elections. That's not racist - the Electoral Commission lays it out quite honestly in its 2014 report. 

Now photo ID requirements just for certain ethnic groups is of course highly discriminatory and quite wrong. But the Electoral Commission don't want to make it harder for the innocent majority to vote in the next election. What to do? Well, why not roll out a 'trial ID scheme' in all those places most likely to be subject to voting fraud? The EC identified the following; 

Cue howls of rage and anguish from the corrupt Left whose poll in many red areas depends on voting fraud and corruption. And thereby they also declare that for them, party comes before country. 

Labour's support of democratic corruption left the coalition in 2010 with a voting system of third world standards; Michael Pinto-Duschinsky advised parliament that there were 3m electors on the rolls who shouldn't be, and 3m missing who should be. Our constituency boundaries, and Electoral Quotient, did not even meet the minimum standards for First World standards of +/- 5%, let alone the +/- 3% standard applied by advanced economies such as New Zealand.

Since 2010, and since this blog joined in the chorus of horror and shock at Labour's complacency, from 2008 onwards, the EC have reformed voter registration (new IVR) and made some valuable changes to postal voting. New constituency boundaries are scheduled to be in place by 2020. All that remains (except reversing the Blair corruption of postal votes) is to tackle the South Asian practice of electoral corruption by personation - and this is now being done.  

I think cautious praise is due. It's all been done quietly and incrementally, drawing howls of rage from corrupt Labour each time but the changes have a fairness and equity that the population can recognise and welcome. So well done, the Electoral Commission. Don't let it all be corrupted again.

Woman achievers, stress and cancer

I'm just throwing a thought, a question, out this morning. Along with the headline sudden death of this Christmas, I received in an email exchange with an old workmate news that a woman ex-colleague died of cancer last month. Nothing unusual about that, you may think, but she's either either the fourth or fifth that I know about - albeit over about twenty years. 

They all had certain things in common. They were ambitious achievers, in reasonably senior positions and all worked under greater than usual stress and all have died of cancer in their 40s and 50s. The blokes all seem to be buggering on, with various ailments coming with age but not the attrition rate of the big C. And that's anecdotal, not empirical, so not science.

The science I can find tends to say there's no link between stress and female cancer but the many answers seem to indicate that I'm not the only one seeing a correlation and asking the question. Which is, does busting the glass ceiling, competing with men in a male-normative environment, and coping with above normal stress, increase the cancer risk for women?

H, who died most recently, had actually left her high-stress job more than a year ago to do something far more relaxed, that she enjoyed, in a county city that she loved. So poignant.

Con Coughlin coughing into his cornflakes

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. No incident was too trivial to be mis-interpreted, no pretext too minor for Con to rattle his lightsabre on the Telegraph's Defence desk. And all year all the poor sod's earned for his pains is laughter, mockery and regular pillorying in blogs such as this. And now his own paper mocks his efforts; former Moscow Ambassador Tony Brenton writes

"Russia is not a threat to the West. Our defence expenditure is ten times, and our economy 20 times, Russia’s. Putin is ruthless but not stupid – he will not take on those odds. Current western policy towards Russia has failed. Sanctions have cemented popular support for Putin even as the Russian economy resumes growth. The Russians are winning in Syria, and show no sign of letting go in Ukraine. Meanwhile there are important things we should be working on together. Islamic extremism is a much greater threat to both of us than we are to each other. The British government has been among the most vociferous hawks on Russia. Time for us to be more British; lower the volume, and think harder about where our real interests lie."

Amen to that. Peace and fellowship between our Christian lands, and love to all men except the buggers trying to kill us. Have a wonderful Christmas all and thanks for another superlative year - your comments are a joy, and inspire me each day.  

Post-Brexit status of EU prisoners?

Nothing too taxing for the holiday period, but looking at the most recent parliamentary prison stats document a couple of things struck me -

• We currently hold about 2,900 prisoners from EU countries - almost a thousand from Poland alone. Will they be included in a Brexit right of residence deal?
• Christians form 50% of the prison population but 60% of the general population while Muslims form 15% of the prison population but only 4% of the General population over 15. Does this prove Christians are better people than Muslims? (Athiests are only marginally over-represented in prison)

On a serious note, younger people are becoming progressively less likely to offend, which suggests the crim bulge may be just that - a moving, ageing crim bulge - and as it works its way through and the drunks, bottlers, tea leaves and  assorted ne'er-do-wells just become too old to be serious offenders our prison population will fall. So perhaps no need for panic - those born before 1976 just seem to be more criminal. 

When will we cut the head from this Saudi terror serpent?

What do virtually all US and European Islamist terror attacks since 9/11 have in common? Easy, isn't it. Not only is anti-western terrorism almost exclusively a Sunni Muslim occupation, but it comes from one single branch of radical Salafist / Wahhabi / Deobandi Islamism. And this originates in Saudi Arabia, is funded, promoted and exported by Saudi Arabia and is nurtured, protected and shielded by Western greed for Saudi blood money. 

Europe's governments, and particularly Germany's government already know this. German Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel told us so last year; "Wahhabi mosques are financed all over the world by Saudi Arabia. In Germany, many dangerous Islamists come from these communities" he told Bild am Sonntag. Austria recently passed a special law to ban foreign funding of mosques and imams - so far the only EU country to do so. Turkey's carpet-chewing dictator Erdogan was bitter in his reaction - the Turkish government directly employed and supplied 60 radical Sunni imams to Austrian mosques, all of whom would be deported and replaced with native-grown ones. And the Saudi patrons of terror are banned from any funding of Islamist organisations. Austrian foreign minister Sebastian Kurz defended the pragmatic new law, which only applies to Islamic funding, from accusations of discrimination; "The influence of foreign countries is a problem we only have in the Muslim community. We do not have this problem in the other religious communities" he shrugged.

The perpetrator of yesterday's Berlin outrage has tentatively been identified as Pakistani / Afghan. No doubt he is a Sunni, and no doubt from one of the Salafist branches. The only other question is whether he was radicalised by a Saudi-funded mosque serving the 25,000 strong migrant camp in which he was located. But I fear neither the BBC nor others of the #fakenews tendency will tell us.

So. We all know the Islamists have been planning Christmas attacks in Europe, ISIS and al nusra / al queda and the other Saudi terror arms have been encouraging their sleepers to commit such acts and now it's happened why should we be surprised? Europe including the UK still allows the Saudi serpent to spread its poison venom across our continent. When will we have the sense to strike the head from this terror serpent?

Update
=======
Adjacent to the Tempelhof camp is the Salafist-funded Ibrahim al-Khalil Mosque. According to Wikipedia, the Moroccan imam has a history of recruiting to Syrian terrorist groups and inciting Islamist violence ...