Facial Asymmetry - Mayor of London

Just one more photography post and I'm done ...

A game we used to play when bored was to 'split' on Photoshop the full face photographs of convicts in US jails (many American states publish mugshots of their jailbirds on the web) to find the greatest degree of asymmetry. Convicts gave good results because they generally have the most asymmetric faces - balanced, sober, law abiding college football players tend to have very symmetrical faces.

Watching London's Mayor yesterday I was struck by the thought that he would also give a good result. Of course there's absolutely no suggestion whatever that Mr Khan is criminally inclined, but the two composites perhaps suggest that there is more than one side to the Mayor. 

This picture is genuine

This picture is credited to Jamie Lorriman. It is genuine. Jamie is a professional photographer. It appears, credited to Jamie, in the Standard. 

Islamist killers are just pathetic failures

Hate-bearded Islamist killers in Britain will all end up as cold lumps of bullet-torn meat in the common morgue. No glory, no martyrdom, just squalid deaths shot down like dogs. And no burial the following day - we'll keep the bodies in the fridge for weeks, or what's left of it after Heckler & Koch and the pathologist have finished. They will lose the humanity we grant them the moment they raise a weapon in anger against us. 

There are no good Islamists (using the former PM's definition of Islamism). Non-Islamist Moslems can live amongst us in peace so long as their true allegiance is to our realm and not to their faith. And Moslems cannot just walk by and pretend that they and their faith are not the root of the problem. Unless Moslems here are now active in helping destroy Islamism in Britain, they are also part of the problem.   

NB If anyone has evidence that this picture is a fake, I'll happily remove it. I've carried out an image-match search and it doesn't appear on the internet before yesterday early evening. Light and weather conditions are right, for yesterday, as is clothing. Could be a photoshop - please alert me if someone has done a pixel analysis.

EU's Brexit talks strategy - Hire Raging Ronnie

It happens from time that time that contractors lose big money on a construction job. Either they won the work with a loss-leading bid, hoping in vain to make it up on variations and instructions, or they mis-valued risk, or they simply badly mismanaged the process. Often, they simply don't figure the P&L on a job until site work has finished, get a shock and submit a claim for an outrageous sum to get them out of trouble. Usually a firm and very chilly meeting with full forces assembled was enough to see off trouble, but when senior jobs were at risk they would hire Raging Ronnie. 

Raging Ronnie was himself chartered in three professions, with an array of post-nominals that exceeded his own name in length. One of his professions was as an Adjudicator, but he was rarely appointed in that role. Mostly he worked as muscle for contractors. The first Raging Ronnie letter would come in, with copies to the Chairman and Secretary, expressing outrage and shock that we had refused his client's eminently reasonable claim, and demanding that we paid up straight away. The second would come a week later, expressing outrage and shock that we had not yet agreed to his demands, and threatening immediate Arbitration. The third would go just to the Chairman, as between equals, a reasonable and calm appeal over the heads of we stubborn underlings to intervene and pay, and the fourth would be the formal notice to seek Adjudication if the claim was not met. 

Our strategy was always the same. Ignore all demands and keep twitchy board members calm, stiffen their backbones and prepare for a hearing. 

Of course all Raging Ronnie's bluster, hubris, outrage, anger and threats would vanish in the case made. Adjudicators don't like intemperate parties. Then it was just a calm and patient slog to demolish their claims. We'd always have to pay something, of course; the Adjudicator will make an award to a contractor just for spelling their own name correctly, but usually it was peanuts.   

And so it is with this oh-so-carefully 'leaked' EU negotiating strategy document that threatens taking the UK to the Hague if we don't meet their demands. I'm beginning to think that Raging Ronnie has found a new client ..

When Guardian comrades fall out

The disintegration of the left is the gift that goes on giving; hardly a day passes without one fraternal comrade thrusting a knife into the back of another. Honestly. The Tories just don't have to bother - the brothers are doing it themselves.

Now two of the Guardian's foremost cis-scribblers are at eachother's throats; Nick Cohen and trainee welder Owen Jones. I don't know whether Cohen backs Fatboy or some fourth party but the handbags are definitely unsheathed.

"This is the final word on the matter" declares Jones optimistically on Medium, then goes on to write

The response to the current terrible political situation by Nick Cohen is as follows: “I Told You So You Fucking Fools!” In a profanity-ridden rant, he says supporting Corbyn in the first place was a colossal misjudgement despite all the warnings about what would happen. Let me be polite about this. Cohen was a passionate and unapologetic supporter of the Iraq war, one of the greatest calamities of our time, a ‘misjudgement’ (I’d prefer ‘crime’) so colossal that ‘catastrophic’ doesn’t even begin to cover it, a war waged on a false pretext which led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people, countless others maimed and traumatised, millions driven from their homes, Iraq turned into a hunting ground for sectarian murderers and Islamist fanatics, which played a critical role in violently destabilising the Middle East. Cohen demands penitence for those who backed someone who will lead Labour to defeat. That’s not quite on the scale of noisily backing a calamity that slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people. Imagine being unrepentant about backing one of the worst disasters of the post-war era and then abusively attacking others for failures of judgement.

Wow. 

Police Drones

"So, Inspector, this proposed Drone Squad can be staffed by transfers from the Internet Porn Squad? How's that gone?"

"Well sir since 2004 the lads have watched over 2 million hours of online porn. Deserve a medal, they do sir. Constable Hotchkiss can't hear the word 'Brazilian' now without twitching."

"And how many arrests and convictions have resulted?" 

"Just the one sir. The chairman of the golf club who put hidden cameras in the ladies. But that doesn't affect the deterrent effect of those evil film makers knowing that the Force is watching. And we've learnt our lesson - the lads need periodic rotation out of the squad. Hence the new Drone Squad, sir"

"Ah yes. Sergeant Thom bought one for his kids and saw the crime-busting possibilities straight away...."

"That's right sir. Of course, police drones would cost a lot more, it being taxpayers' money, and the lads would need professional training from the RAF"

"I'm still not happy about us flying these potentially lethal things over people's houses and gardens .. have you considered the risks?"    

"We estimate that 80% of the time we'll be flying over public roads and open land. In particular it will allow the lads to gather video evidence of widespread 'dogging' activity in Knickers Woods, sir.  We could spend a year keeping constant tabs on it all then swoop. Then there's the poofs sorry BLTs on Handy Heath. We can follow 'em sir from the sky without risking officers on the ground."

"You don't think there's a risk that some of this footage may leak onto the web? Doesn't this sort of surveillance constitute a variety of porn in itself?"

"That's the beauty of it sir. The Internet Porn Squad can keep an eye out for any leaked footage"

"Ah yes. When was the last time any of these men actually walked a beat or responded to a disturbance? Some of them look as though they have difficulty walking"

"Yes sir. Injuries incurred in the line of service, watching the porn sir. Sixteen early ill-health retirements so far. We're hoping that working the drones gets them out of their chairs, sir. Into other chairs."

"Very well. Carry on, Inspector"

More lies from the Fake News Guardian

Yep, that mendacious rag the Guardian has been at it again. This time it's a Fake News story that vast numbers of EU nurses are fleeing the NHS for fear of Brexit. The story is so risibly crooked, biased and laden with falsity that Guardian subs have not even dared allow comments.

Firstly - All context is absent from the story. No mention is made of the latest official Parliament report on NHS staffing, particularly that only 5% of NHS staff are from other EU countries, and of those some 48% work in London and the South East. No context is given to the bald claim that 2,700 EU nurses leaving the NHS in 2016 is unusual. No mention is made of normal staff 'churn' - usually 10% a year. Of 21,000 EU NHS nurses, we should expect that 2,100 leave each year; that gives us 600 EU nurses a year over the norm that are quitting. That's 0.05% of all NHS staff. Worth a headline?

Secondly - Little or no fact checking seems to have been done, certainly not using the Parliamentary report on NHS staffing, which states that far from falling, the number of NHS staff from EU states has been rising - "Of staff who joined the NHS in 2015/16, 10.8% were from other EU countries. This has risen from 6.8% in 2012/13" - though still only 5% of the total. 

Thirdly - The most risibly unevidenced claim, that floods of EU staff were leaving because of fear of Brexit, is nothing more than made-up agitprop that has no place in any newspaper. No survey, no voxpops, no reporter interviewing significant numbers. It's just a lie.

In fact, EU workers in all sectors including agriculture and horticulture have fallen since mid 2016. In all cases where evidence is available, this is primarily because of the weak pound; getting €1.15 for each NHS £1 is simply not as attractive as the old €1.35 rate. Particularly for staff in London and the South-east faced with high housing costs. But of course, not a single mention of this. 

In the face of such blatant omission, distortion and misrepresentation, such outrageous Fake News, is it any wonder that this foul little rag is going broke?  

Remoanian pissy whine extends across London

Before Lebedev's ownership, and when it used to cost 20p, London's Standard was popularly known as the Evening Mail, accurately reflecting its City-biased editorial stance. There would be up to four editions distributed between 1pm and 5pm, with insiders familiar with the arcane star markings and content of the post-printed racing results / late news strip on the back page who always ensured that they bought the latest edition. Before the internet, people would use it to find flats - homehunters would swoop on the orange and white chevron vans as they tossed out the first bundles of the first editions. That was back in the era of Headbags, when the echoes of Big Bang still reverberated. 

Now the Evening Standard has become quite the metropolitan socially liberal thing, a paper that beardy hipsters are not embarrassed to show in their Quinoa bars or ethical coffee salons. It reflects a new London readership of 800,000 daily copies, and is politically quite wet. No surprise then that Lebedev has picked an arch Remainian for the UK's most Remainian city, in new editor George Osborne. With only one edition, and edited now by subs who often offer bare evidence of literacy, it is today a lifestyle and opinion platform for advertising rather than a serious paper.  

No doubt the Standard under Osborne will join the Guardian in emitting a long pissy whine from all those that just can't get over Brexit. The fools are already blaming Brexit for the break up of the union, failing to realise that it has no more happened yet than the dire economic slump and financial tsunami that the Standard's new editor predicted. With Osborne's piss-poor judgement he will now proceed to give a platform to every Remoaner loon, fruitcake and bug-eyed zealot. Not only do they infest twitter and the Guardian's damp pages, but we'll have now have to snort at their lunacy whilst jammed in the doorspace of a stalled commuter cattle car. 

Tim Stanley in this morning's Telegraph catalogues yet more persistent Remoaners who just won't flush (to steal a phrase from a witty commenter) but Brendan O'Neill writing for Medium does the job perfectly; 

And, of course, all tantrums involve lashing out, as this one does. The levels of antipathy aimed at voters, and at democracy itself, has been extraordinary. We have failed to “keep the mob from the gates”, says Brexit-fearing columnist Matthew Parris. American writer Jason Brennan has become a favourite of liberal publications in the tantrum era because he wrote a book called Against Democracy and says “low-information white people” should not be trusted to make big political decisions.

American-British conservative Andrew Sullivan frets that the “passions of the mob” have been unleashed. A writer for The Observer says it’s time to smash the “taboo” against saying that ordinary people are often very stupid, and “there are times when their stupidity combines to produce gross, self-harming acts of national stupidity”. Don’t worry, mate: that taboo has been well and truly demolished, if it ever existed. Post-Brexit and post-Trump, the chattering classes have not been shy in wondering if the masses are too daft for politics.

But the biggest long pissy whine of all still comes from the Guardian's grievously butthurt scribblers - who are moving to a nihilistic, nationally self-destructive form of sutee to share their pain whilst seeking to destroy the nation's good. Screw 'em. 

Geert Wilders is a prybar, not a national leader

Geert Wilders scored his greatest success back in January, when the electoral threat of the PVV forced incumbent PM Mark Rutte sharply to the right. With full-page adverts on 23rd January in all the national papers and an interview for tabloid Algemeen Dagblad, Mr Rutte had a blunt message for the Netherlands migrants and Moslems - Get Out if you don't like it. Rutte wrote "We feel a growing unease when people misuse our freedoms to spoil everything, when they have come to our country for freedom. People who don’t want to adapt, who attack gay people, who shout at women in short skirts or call ordinary Dutch people racist." Those who wouldn't adapt to Dutch social liberalism should leave. "Be normal, or Begone".

Rutte declared back then that yesterdays election was not about the EU, tax, economics or public services but national identity. "There is one question to be answered. What sort of country do we want?". Last night he had his answer. And I think that we should welcome the result, which I interpret as strong support for a Dutch identity that means freedom, liberalism, tolerance and above all, social congruence. 

Rutte's view that the Dutch have rejected the 'wrong sort' of populism is, I think, correct. His own declarations from January were the 'right' kind of populism. Voters like his strong message, but also trust him to be fair. And Wilders was given just enough encouragement to ensure he continues to act as an effective prybar, keeping the new centreground levered to the right, and most importantly keeping the question of Dutch national identity to the fore. 

The Netherlands is a smart little country. 

Brexit: The Sekt is on ice .......

With our Article 50 notification now just a hair's breadth away, we can expect today some spectacular last-minute disruptions. Satan's little sex-toy to the North will probably announce a new independence referendum, just as US fracking is making third-stage extraction from the North Sea increasingly uneconomic. Soros and his little helpers will throw money at QCs in an effort to use the law to scupper Parliament. The BBC will no doubt find reasons to announce today some dire economic forecasts amid tones of general gloom. Little Owen Jones may offer free blowies to Brexiteers who recant, Lily Allen will give away copies of her dire new album, currently bombing, and even Lord Geldof may emerge to sneer at, shower with spittle and swear at the common folk before his carers get him back into his bath chair. 

None of which should make the slightest difference to the Brexit Bill. If it clears its stages today unamended, I can think of no greater gift to our Sovereign Lady than to submit the Bill for Royal Assent allowing the Prime Minister to give Brussels our formal notice tomorrow. 

There will be a general screeching from Farringdon as a distraught Polly Toynbee dribbles salty snot over a wailing Suzanne Moore's velvet kitten heels. Some hopeless little bloke called Farron will call all the TV stations ( "there's some bloke called Dim Pharom on the line ... yeah, third time he's called ... OK, we'll bar the number" ) Gina Miller will vow revenge on the British people and devote her remaining fortune to keeping members of the bar in Claret, and in Brussels the pressed duck (four fat Flemish ducks for each Commissioner, reduced to a cube the size of a fag packet by a powerful hydraulic press,  a favourite dish served by Herr Juncker) will regorge and repeat acidly into the night. 

Here, I'll pop the caps on a brace of Sekt bottles cooling in the fridge. If it happens.

Erdogan's hired street thugs intimidate Europe

I posted recently on Austria and Germany's refusals to allow the nascent fascist dictator Erdogan to campaign in their countries for support for the April referendum for his Turkish equivalent to the Nazi Enabling Law. Voters in Turkey are divided, and the Turkish Diaspora living elsewhere in Europe who can still vote may swing it. Of 4m Turkish-origin residents in Germany, some 1.6m can vote on this issue.

The latest to feel the rent-a-mob fury of the psychopathic Erdogan are the Dutch; they refused to allow Erdogan's foreign minister to land in Rotterdam, to headline a street rally in support of the Enabling Law. In retaliation, Erdogan's thugs are besieging the Netherlands Embassy in Ankara.     

Austria banned a further Turkish senior official from a proposed rally in Hörbranz on Friday on the grounds of risk to public order. 

Europe gives refuge to many tens of thousands of opponents of Erdogan's regime, not terrorists but professionals, intellectuals and former public officials, who otherwise face detention and torture in squalid Turkish jails at the hands of the Erdogan regime. To allow the very thugs who command the waterboarding to campaign openly in the countries of refuge of their victims for even greater totalitarian power is utterly unacceptable and European governments are doing exactly the right thing in repudiating these second-tier thugs.  

I expect Erdogan to throw half a million migrants into Greece in a tantrum of furious petulance. Let's hope Hungary's, Austria's and Slovenia's fences hold. 

UN greed and cupidity, EU waste and stupidity piss away $803m in Greek Aid

"One senior aid official estimated that as much as $70 out of every $100 spent had been wasted"

So says a piece in the Guardian today that catalogues the greed, stupidity, empire buiding, tantrums, thefts, frauds, jealousies and malfeasance that has pissed away $803m in aid to Greece to accommodate the migrants there. Who is surprised? 

The gainers from the aid have been UN bureaucrats, apparatchiks and aid workers paid third-world 'hardship pay' bonuses for being posted to this holiday destination, the international aid bandwagon, EU bureaucrats, Greek civil servants and their contractors, and Turkish and German taxpayers. Losers from the aid have been the migrants, who have little improvement in living conditions and the people of Greece, who have gained nothing and lost much. 

The piece is a damning litany of lunatics running the asylum. Few migrants have been returned to Turkey, few have been accepted under Juncker's quota rules but UN managers are fat with gold and puffed with a hubristic flatus of self-importance. Vicious turf-wars between aid agencies have seen donor aid pissed away in campaigns to counter opposing aid agencies rather than in assisting the migrants to go home.   

If any further evidence were needed that the UN and EU are run for the benefit of their officials, Greece provides it in spades. Nasty, self-loving incapable fools, chiselling little crooks, petulant penpushers and leeches, their vile misappropriation of tax and aid money is only now becoming clear.

Monbiot's annual outing on this blog - 2017

I read Monbiot every week in the Guardian and for fifty weeks a year there's really nothing worth commenting on. But as regulars will know, around once a year old Moonbat comes up with a column that presses all the right buttons. This year's hit is a post on Big Data.  

Not so much Big Data as the Big Money that uses it, in the West anyway. Those who have great wealth, from across the political spectrum, inevitably turn their attention to using it to gain greater political leverage than their single vote alone would allow. And they all make me nervous; Gina Miller and Tony Blair as much as Lord Ashcroft and Arron Banks. Whilst we're working towards controls that restrict their funding of political parties - controls that depend on also controlling TU funding - the funding of 'sniper' technology that allows campaigns to be precisely focused rather than shotgunned is not so controlled. And the State can also use it;

" ... deep-learning algorithms enable the state to develop its “citizen score”. This uses people’s online activities to determine how loyal and compliant they are, and whether they should qualify for jobs, loans or entitlement to travel to other countries. Combine this level of monitoring with nudging technologies – tools designed subtly to change people’s opinions and responses – and you develop a system that tends towards complete control."

However, Monbiot also recognises that Localism, Direct Democracy and other systems that 'take back control' from the overwheening centre can counter these malign effects

"But digital technologies could also be a powerful force for positive change. Political systems, particularly in the Anglophone nations, have scarcely changed since the fastest means of delivering information was the horse. They remain remote, centralised and paternalist. The great potential for participation and deeper democratic engagement is almost untapped. Because the rest of us have not been invited to occupy them, it is easy for billionaires to seize and enclose the political cyber-commons."

To a point, George. So long as we maintain universal adult suffrage and the secret ballot on all matters of importance, this can be supplemented by as many citizens' juries as you wish. But any solutions that disenfranchise any part of the population are unacceptable - and Labour has a shameful history of supporting Eugenics in the party's early days, a fascist tendency that resurfaces from time to time. 

So, Herr Juncker, let me see if I've got this right ...

The fury from across the Channel this week at a reports that finds that the EU have no basis in law for their demand of a €60bn reverse golden handshake reveals rather more than the Berleymont apparatchiks would wish, I think.

It can't be because they didn't know that they have no basis in international law for their demands. They know as well as we do they have no lawful right to ask this of us. The weakness of their case is amply demonstrated by their demand that the matter of the exit bill is decided before any trade terms are discussed. They must also know that there is no way that Mrs May can agree a lump sum before knowing by how much the trade deal will benefit or disbenefit us.

On the other hand, Mrs May has clearly signalled her fall-back position; we leave without a deal on WTO terms, our contributions stop in March 2019, and we use our rights under international law to reclaim our assets; unlike the EU's spurious claims, our reclaiming our investments such as the €40bn we've put into the European Investment Bank will be enforced. And yes, WTO terms will hurt our GDP, but the lump sum we win back plus the €10bn a year buffer of no more Danegeld could compensate for the downturn. Whereas the EU has no such capital cushion, and faces charging its contributing nations far more, and will also suffer its own hit to EU GDP from a Brexit without any buffer at all. 

Have I misunderstood this or are we negotiating from a pretty strong position? Are the comrades so cross because they've worked out how weak they are in all this?

Swedish establishment still the same Nazis

Ask me to name the most continuously Nazi European nation and I have no hesitation in nominating Sweden. Sweden was ahead of Hitler's Germany in inventing crude racial myths of Aryan purity, all that Volk cobblers around runes and race superiority, and had some of Europe's most repressive laws that equalled Franco's Spain in their Fascist reach. Sweden also fell victim to that fashionable Socialist and National-Socialist fake-science, Eugenics. George Bernard Shaw wanted a humane gas to kill the poor, Virginia Woolf wanted her own T-4 programme to kill the mentally subnormal and all believed passionately in controlled breeding to produce a master-race. The UK Labour party quietly dropped Eugenics from its manifesto some time in the 1930s, but Nazi Germany and Sweden never did.

I recall that in addition to being appalled by the Vietnam War in the early 1970s, we were horrified that Sweden still practiced compulsory sterilisation for those failing to reach an IQ minimum. It was pure Nazi T-4. Sweden only halted compulsory sterilisation for dim Swedes in 1975, after the Paris peace accords. Except of course for transexuals. Men and women wanting sex changes in Sweden had, by law, to have their balls lopped-off or their wombs pulled out. They carried on doing this until 2012 - yes, when I was building Olympic facilities in London, Swedish versions of Caitlyn Jenner were being castrated by court order. 

So it comes as absolutely no surprise that with such a poor history of social governance, the Swedes have also screwed up massively on immigration. Maybe to make up for a dip in the population caused by their sterilising tens of thousands of their own people, Sweden decided to import economic Moslem migrants, who, as Katie Hopkins reports, now commit the same crimes over and over again;

'here we go; this is what I've handled from Monday to Friday this week: rape, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, rape-assault and rape....violence against the police, threats to police, drug crime, felony, attempted murder, rape again.

'Suspected perpetrators; Ali Mohammed, Mahmod, Mohammed, Mohammed Ali, Muhammad, again, again, again. Countries representing all the crimes this week; Iraq, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Somalia, Syria again, Somalia...

Of course that shouldn't be a surprise. Nor should Sweden's outright denials that anything is wrong. After all, they told the exact same lie for the whole of my youth and adolescence when they were ripping the testicles and ovaries from the poor. 

Note: Postwar Swedish fascism was far more extensive than this; for a researched source see http://jonjayray.tripod.com/sweden.html

A line in the sand for Europe, and another migrant Summer

No, not about the upper house doing a bit of virtue-signalling from the, uhm, somewhat damp red benches. That will be reversed. And if Farron and similar idiots really want to know how their jejune posturing looks to the 1m Brits in Europe I'd be delighted to tell him. No, this is about our old enemy, Turkey.

Erdogan is going through a democratic sham process to grant himself Franco-like powers, following the text-book route to dictatorship with the instruction "Next, pass Enabling Act". There are 1.6m Turkish citizens in Germany and 110k in Austria who can vote - and Erdogan is desperate to downplay his evil dictator persona for a liberal democrat one, so wants to extend his campaign tour to the two nations. The answer likely from both is Nein. 

Austria has simply said no. The total Turkish-origin population here is 360k, and Erdogan's visit would 'disrupt' their integration. Germany is using Turkey's arrest and detention of a Die Welt Journo, Deniz Yucel, to prevent Erdogan reaching out to the 4m Turkish-origin Germans. Both nations are likely to accommodate regime opponents, and Kurds, whom Erdogan is doing his best to slaughter. It would be like the UK hosting a State Visit for some brutal Salafist head-chopper. Oh ... I see. Sorry.

The Somalis, Ethiopians and Nigerians on the streets of Rome will no doubt be kept out of sight of the EU's unelected Nomenklatura as they meet to feast and drink this month to commemorate the Treaty of Rome, but will nonetheless serve as reminder of the hordes of migrants waiting in Libya to cross this Summer. Add to those a million more Iraqis and Afghanis in Turkey pushed over the border by a furious and petulant Erdogan denied his pretence at being a democrat, and Europe is facing an issue that puts the petty virtue signalling of our party funders retirement home back in its place. 

Owen Jones must learn to weld

Although watching the Labour Party disintegrate gives a wonderful pleasure, nothing has really changed. I spent enough of my career attending those dreary trade conferences in bland 'international' hotels off the Euston Road to have met an entire cross section of the nation over stewed coffee and rubber chicken. The ones I genuinely enjoyed were those we termed, with real affection, the 'Northern bastards'. Oblivious to our soft southern conceits they would happily demand of conference executives "I'm parched here, love; be a poppet and fetch me a cup of tea, would you?". Their night out in London would involve beer and strippers. Even though they were construction managers, they were also local councillors, Labour party officials and at home were as likely to be drinking in their local 'institute' than in the golf club. By and large they were humorous, jocund and good value. They were a million miles removed from sensitive souls such as Owen Jones and the fashionable metropolitan left, but in their own way (expressed as "I don't mind poofs, me" or something similar ) were really quite liberal.

Anyway, for years now Labour has been trying to be a broad enough church to accommodate both the Northern Bastards and the London Poofs. And even though the Northern Bastards were quite good at committees, rules and procedures, the Southern Poofs were good at the media, and won. They immediately demanded that the Northern Bastards dropped 'pet' 'love' 'sweetie' and similar terms of endearment, made their own tea and flew a rainbow flag at the Durham Miners' gala.  

Even though they're no longer part of the same coherent party, both sides are still there. The Northern Bastards are still running vast swathes of local councils and the Southern Poofs the London boroughs; they still have a shedload of MPs. The problem is to come. If the Southern Poofs become a sort of rump regional far-left party, the Northern Bastards need a home. And as much as I'd like this to be UKIP, I don't think this will work. We're lacking a social democratic white van man and working men's club party, where wives make the tea and cobs for the meetings.     

My time in the North taught me several surprising things. Everyone north of Leicester, it seems, can weld. Perhaps it was taught in schools, perhaps it's a dad thing. If Labour is to survive in any form perhaps this is the answer. Little Owen Jones must go to Middlesborough and learn to weld, and in return he can show them how to open Prosecco and eat mussels or something. I can't think of anything else that would prevent there being two Labour parties.

Who will get the taxpayer's grapefruit bowls?

Gerald Kaufman was one of the most egregious expenses cheats exposed by the Telegraph in 2009. Amongst the misuse of tax funds for his London gaff was £220 for a pair of crystal grapefruit bowls, items Kaufman claimed were 'essential' for him to perform his work as an MP.

No hypocritical encomiums here today I'm afraid. Kaufman and those like him did more to devalue and befoul our ancient Parliament than those for centuries past. Here's a litany of his tax-theft;

The former environment minister was asked to attend a meeting with officials from the parliamentary fees office to discuss details of another claim relating to £28,834 of work on the kitchen and bathroom at his London flat. He told them that the work was necessary because he was “living in a slum”, though his second home, off Regent’s Park, is in one of the most fashionable areas of the capital. He was eventually reimbursed for £15,329. 

On one occasion he asked a civil servant “why are you querying these expenses?” and on another threatened to make a complaint unless a dispute was settled by noon on the day in question. In one document, an official in the fees office noted that invoices Sir Gerald had submitted took him to “within 6p” of his annual limit. He also claimed £1,262 for a gas bill that was £1,055 in credit.

Between 2001 and 2008 the Manchester Gorton MP, one of the Labour party’s longest-serving members, claimed a total of £115,109 in additional costs allowances on his London flat, which he owns outright. In June 2006, he submitted a claim for three months’ expenses totalling £14,301.60, which included £8,865 for a Bang & Olufsen Beovision 40in LCD television. The maximum amount MPs are allowed to claim for TVs is £750.

On July 7, 2006 the fees office wrote to Sir Gerald to say: “I regret to inform you that this item falls within the not allowable category of luxurious furnishings, and as such has been rejected.” He was paid £750. In March 2007 Sir Gerald submitted a claim for £1,461.83 for a “second-hand rug replacing 24-year-old carpet”, with an additional £389.91 for “customs duty on rug”, which was paid. The receipt showed that Sir Gerald bought the rug from the Showplace Antique Centre on West 25th Street in Manhattan for $2,750. The Green Book strictly forbids “antique, luxury or premium grade” furnishings. Later that year, on Dec 29, Sir Gerald, who was knighted in 2004, submitted an invoice from ABC Carpets in Harrods for £598, which was also paid.

A note of a telephone conversation between Sir Gerald, 78, and an official in the fees office, states that his reasons for claiming £28,834 for home improvements between 2005 and 2007 were: “Old flat, facilities out of date, decrepit, health reasons, update, living in slum.” Sir Gerald added that he had “not carried out any repairs/maintenance for 32 years”.Sir Gerald was also challenged over regular claims for “odd jobs” which he submitted without receipts at a rate of £245 every month — £5 below the then limit for unreceipted expenses. He replied: “Why are you querying these expenses?” On May 18, a senior official in the fees office noted details of another conversation about the kitchen and bathroom, saying: “MP believes that I have seen a detailed breakdown of the £12,416.51 claim he has submitted [for that financial year]… MP is becoming agitated and will be making an official complaint against me, if this matter is not resolved by 12 noon today.” When detailed invoices were submitted, they included £575 for undertile heating in the shower room and £2,695 for Bosch and Miele kitchen appliances. Sir Gerald was asked to attend a meeting with officials on the matter and the fees office eventually agreed to pay him £15,329 of the £28,834. Sir Gerald accepted, saying that he wanted to “draw a line under the issue”.

In June last year Sir Gerald submitted a £1,262 claim for his gas bill, covering the period March 2006 to May 2008. The fees office pointed out that his gas account was £1,055.60 in credit, and only agreed to pay £122.46. A note in the file on July 10, 2008 quotes Sir Gerald as saying: “I received a letter from [official] saying not pay as is credit. I paid £1,252 THIS year so want reimbursing!!!”
The fees office wrote to him on July 14 to say: “You might wish to ask British Gas to repay you the credit.”

Sir Gerald’s claims between 2004 and June 2008 also included £19,200 for food — close to the maximum — and £4,692 for cleaning.

Last night Sir Gerald offered to repay the money for the rug and admitted that his claim for the £8,000 television was “a bit daft”. He said that his flat had been in need of complete refurbishment because he had “neglected” it over the years and he had overclaimed for the gas bill because he “misunderstood” the invoice. He said that his odd jobs bill was actually more than £245 a month, so he had claimed close to the limit. His food claim was “appropriate” because his job meant he often had to “spend a lot of money” eating out, he added.

Deplorables must defeat the Illiberals to preserve democracy

I think my earlier confusion about what to call the self-righteous didactic restrictive bansturbators of Guardianista bien-pensants has been solved. From now on they will simply be the Illiberals. And I am content to be counted amongst the ranks of the Deplorables - deplorable presumably because we stand for free speech, free thought, universal suffrage, secret ballots and the rule of law. 

And it's the Illiberals of course who now pose the greatest threat to Western democracy. Since June last year I've catalogued on here the shock and horror of the Illiberals that the majority of the British people didn't do as they were told. Little Owen Jones joined Polly Toynbee in a profound shriek of pain. Even Roger Scruton declared that ordinary people were too stupid to make such decisions - before contritely recanting. 

And Mick Hume in a good piece in the Mail lists the others who think that democracy cannot be trusted to the people; A.C.Grayling's eunuch-like whine, John Major, Gina Miller, Richard Branson, Tony Blair, Hilary Mantel, all making crass and unintelligent comments. The litany of hate, insults, abuse, crude stereotyping, the street thuggery, bullying, coercion and intimidation employed by the Illiberals and I suspect experienced in some form by all of us, in reality or online, tells eloquently the extent to which they are ready to abandon democratic and civilised behaviour for the totalitarian Illiberal jackboot.

And now the tame stooges of the Illiberals - the think tanks, academic institutes, professional associations, the RSA and so on - are beavering away to find novel means of subverting democracy so as to silence the voice of the majority. 

We must stand absolutely firm. We must uphold the rule of law. We must defend free and open elections and ballots, universal adult suffrage, the secret ballot, free association and above all freedom of expression, speech and thought. Our freedoms are under prolonged and sustained assault by a fanatical enemy who will stop at nothing. We stand here against the Illiberals. We stand firm. 

 

Blair's Big Tent to have a different name again

Blair's big tent, constructed over several acres to accommodate all his enemies pissing out, and otherwise known as the Millennium Dome, is set to be called something different for the next ten years in a deal reported to be worth £125m.

The venue is expected to host the European scrabble championships in 2017 and an Algarve timeshare show next year.  

That's all.