Cultures so far apart can tear down our civilisation

"Mohammed is God's apostle.  Those who follow him are harsh
 to the unbelievers but merciful to one another"  Quran 48:29

THE SICKENING STORY of an 11-year-old Down’s Syndrome  girl being arrested in Pakistan[1] for throwing away pages of a Koran prima (it was not even the Koran), and, as a consequence, is now facing death for blasphemy; must once more bring home to our politicians their ill chosen decision to allow this religion to make such an entrance into our society.

            The young girl belonged to a Christian family who, after their daughter’s arrest had to flee in terror because their lives would be in danger from their Muslim neighbours. It pains me to think what this child is now going through. Beaten and unable to understand why, and ignorant of the charges she is being faced with; and all alone without a familiar family face to reassure her.

            But it gets worse, an 11-year-old boy, a resident from the Christian Colony of Faisalabad, was brutally tortured before being killed. His family could only recognise him from a mark on his forehead. His lips, nose and belly were cut off, and his body badly burnt.

            The boy’s mother Asia Bibi said "We neither received any phone call for ransom nor were we told that Samuel had committed blasphemy,". It seems that being a Christian was crime enough.

             Penalties for blasphemy in Christian societies thankfully died out with the Enlightenment. However such medievalism has been given access to Europe and the UK in particular by our politicians. Under the rainbow banner of Multiculturalism, we now have over two million Muslims living among us in the UK.

            Islam seeks to conquer the world for Mohammed; just as, from the 15^th century onwards,  Christian proselytising sought the same objective using similar means in, for instance, South America where the Christian faith, as well as those Iberian monarchs, coveted the Inca and Aztec gold.

            But thankfully, as secularism advanced throughout the Christian world, such medievalism disappeared from the West’s religious culture. However it continues today as part of another great religion; Islam.

            The Islamic world has never been faced with a Renaissance, Reformation, or Enlightenment, to humanise the faith and put it in its true place within a civilised society. Secularism is today blamed for many things in Western society including the absence of a morality that only a religious faith can make work – and as an atheist myself, I subscribe to such a belief.

ISLAM STILL TO THIS day, resides in a medieval backwoods where all sorts of feudal practices are still performed and minor transgressions punished by death, usually at the will of illiterate Islamic peasant communities who have known little social and cultural advancement in over 1400 years. Ever since Mohammed was forced from Mecca to Medina in 622AD.

            Such a religious faith should have surely been kept at arm’s length when, those who reside over us in  parliament, sought to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony[2] by liberal  happy-clappies introducing us all to multiculturalism.

            Multiculturalism was an experiment based upon skin colour rather than culture. For all that mattered to our liberal class, from whatever party they belonged, was that ethnic minorities should live together in England’s green and pleasant land in retribution for our past colonial sins.

            Despite what they called it[3], our liberals were more concerned about the colour of a person’s skin than the culture  they came from. Indeed much ignorance and little thought was ever given to culture, despite the multifarious  warnings that were available. Presumably, once the Muslim nations such as Pakistan, imbibed British culture, then they would be so overcome by the appeal of Western culture, that they would at the very least tone down their medievalism, and, after two or three generations, become secularists and conform to a post-Enlightenment society. This was supposed to be the short cut that left out the Renaissance, Reformation, and  Enlightenment. But, as we see around us today – the experiment failed.

WE 60 MILLION BRITISH have been cold-called by our politicians and have been brought into an ism that never registered in any manifesto for fear of losing votes. Yet we find ourselves today living aside people that do not speak our language: and in the case of those  from Islamic nations like Pakistan who, as Muslims resort to the kind of barbarism described above, we have to zip our mouths for fear of causing offence.

            We fought for centuries at the expense of hundreds of thousands of lives; to at first rid ourselves of the Roman curse, followed by the puritan curse. Religion within these isles was forced into a more temperate form of behaviour ultimately referred to as secularism. Once religion was put in its place, then science could be liberated to do what it eventually promised. Which left the Islamic world unable to advance because of their faith, whose strictures left them floundering within a previous century.

            Since the so-called Arab Spring Christian communities have come under threat causing thousands to flee their Muslim persecutors. Tolerance is not part of the Muslim vocabulary when it comes to other faiths, as has been proven by the events in Pakistan and Egypt.

            The indigenous people of these isles have been betrayed by their politicians for decades, ever since they put Powell to the wheel and drove him from public life. Now, it is becoming more and more apparent that he was right on the issue of culture – his naive accusers have inflicted, over the decades, a dangerous multicultural concoction that can only fall foul of  disharmony and conflict.

            As with the euro, where economies at different  stages of economic progress were, through, a European idealism, brought together into a single European currency. We now see the same process  entered into by our politicians, allowing whole cultures that are centuries apart in the case of  the Islamic world to become a whole…what madness! We now live in the UK with female genital mutilation, exorcism performed on children, and, as in Rochdale the harvesting of young white women from our streets by members of our Muslim community, in order to gratify the sexual frustration that Islam imposes.

            Decades of liberal guilt and colonial sensitivity has allowed this current danger to our culture to manifest itself – we have indeed been ill-served by our politicians.     

           

           

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[1] Where, by the way, are our human rights lawyers and celebrities when it comes to such barbarism.

[2] Remember that old Coca-Cola ad from the 1970’s, that set the whole multicultural ball rolling?

[3] Multiculturalism

The BBC’s Director General and George Orwell

THE OUTGOING DIRECTOR GENERAL (DG) of the BBC, Mark Thompson has been approached by Joan Bakewell to get  George Orwell’s statue built  from public subscription; and no lesser BBC luminaries  than Andrew Marr, James Naughtie, and Liz Forgan, lent their support.

            Ms Bakewell’s approach was however turned down by the DG, which is fair enough. But Thompson’s reason for doing so is bizarre in the extreme. Apparently Orwell was too Left-wing to be considered for a plinth at the BBC.

            When I read Ms Bakewell’s piece in today’s Daily Telegraph, I at first thought she must have got it wrong, and Thompson would step forward with the usual get out on such occasion of  having had his comments “taken out of context”; for what other reason could there be for such a display of ignorance on behave of a well educated and obviously intelligent  man who, no doubt, had read Orwell’s volumes of essays and journalism, as well as his novels.

            That Orwell was of the left, there is of course little doubt. But for someone to consider him too left-wing, needs to explain themselves further; and I hope Mark Thompson will do so.

            George Orwell could never be pinned down. In Spain he fought with the Trotskyist POUM and in his book Homage to Catalonia, he clearly loathed and distrusted the Communists who were in thrall to Moscow and Stalin, and carried as great a loathing for the POUM as they did Franco.

            During the war years he broadcast for the BBC (who never thought him too left-wing then). Orwell was the willing tool of anti-fascist propaganda. He broadcast from  the now infamous Room 101 at the BBC, and some have suggested that his greatest novel 1984 was not only based on Stalin’s Russia, but also on the culture at the BBC at the time.

            The creator of 1984 and Animal Farm was I believe a socialist patriot. He loved his country, and would today have been considered a nationalist, in the modern sense of the word. He would not, I believe, have supported those who wish to see his nation absorbed into a United States of Europe.   Neither would he have been a believer in Multiculturalism. In India, like Enoch Powell, he experienced the phenomenon which Powell called communalism; that was to lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths, and ultimately the creation of Pakistan.

            He would have believed in a multiracial society where different races could become British, but he would not tolerate sacrificing British culture on the altar of diversity – of putting British culture on an equal footing with the many dozens of other cultures. He would have insisted that Great Britain and its culture remain supreme over others, and if those others wished to become citizens, their cultures would have to obey British laws and customs, or return to the culture from which they came -does this sound like being too left-wing?

IF ANYTHING, today George Orwell would consider himself  somewhat to the right of David Cameron and just, but only just, to the left of UKIP.  But as I wrote earlier, Orwell could not be pinned down; which allowed many parts of the political compass to claim him as their own .

            When I read Orwell back in the 1970s, I did so warily as a supporter and member of the British Communist Party (BCP). The BCP at the time never thought him too left-wing, and neither did the branch I belonged to.

            One day, I took myself off to London. I went to Collets book shop in the Tottenham Court Road and I bought the whole Penguin paperback edition of Orwell’s essays and journalism, which I have still, sitting on my book shelves – his novels I picked up locally.

            If anyone deserved the notoriety of being too left-wing , it was surely myself at the time. First of all I refused to read Homage to Catalonia, as I had also done with Hugh Thomas’s definitive study, The Spanish Civil War, both of which bared heavily down on Communist Party orthodoxy .

            Of his novels I brought myself to trust at the time were Burmese Days and Keep the Aspidistra Flying. 1984 and Animal Farm were to come much later, when my own doubts began to overwhelm and supplant Moscow’s overtures.

            Orwell was indeed the greatest journalist of his time. He also wrote the greatest dystopian novel of his time, which has transcended his time to become a warning beacon in our time. 1984 was indeed an anti-Stalinist novel, but his time at the BBC gave him much of the material for composing  it.

SO MANY ON THE left have claimed Orwell as their own, including the Labour Party, who at times have used a quote or two to make a point.

            I believe that George Orwell would today be considered a nationalist  with a social conscience. But if he saw what had happened to his country in the years since his death, I think he would, for a start, having believed in the original Welfare State, would today have come to the conclusion that the 21^st century welfare state had become a hindrance. Instead of a safety net, the welfare state had become a whole supermarket of different entitlements.

            If anyone on the left today can claim (risibly) Orwell as their own, then they need to once more return to a study of the great man’s works and put them in a modern context. Like, I hope Orwell would; I believe that the great master of the revolutionary process, Karl Marx, would also transcend and eliminate his whole philosophy if he could return to witness the capitalism of the 21^st century;  instead of depending upon the 19^th century and before, as his philosophical model.

            George Orwell has lightened the load of many a modern journalist by proffering them an independent spirit that cannot be imprisoned by the corporate institution that pay their wages. It is up to them whether they agree the great man’s terms, or continue to cow-tow to their employers and continue to draw the manifold funds awarded to them by whatever news network they scribble for.

            Orwell should have had a statue in his honour decades ago (I would have thought that the NUJ would have seen to this), and, as the BBC refuses to have such a statue on their property; may suggest upon its completion it sits somewhere in London that overlooks our modern journalists as go into and from work, to remind them that there were once standards within their profession.

           

           

            

For, I hope, the last time – the BBC

YES IT IS TRUE. The BBC is liberal and left wing-leaning. This time poor old Ian Duncan Smith had a go at the broadcaster; or rather their economics’ editor, Stephanie Flanders for the way she interpreted the governments’ unemployment statistics.

            The first thing to say is that the people will be on the side of Ms Flanders; not because of the rights and wrongs of the issue, but because Mr  Duncan Smith is a member of the government – it could be any government. The people do not like politicians and would sooner believe that Hitler was a liberal than give the benefit of any doubt to any government.

            I would ask Mr Duncan Smith to remember this; the BBC’s left-leaning liberal bias has the support of all the main party leaders; simply because they are themselves left-leaning liberals. It is a pity that this is the case, but that is where the politicians believe the Holy Grail of the centre ground is - as does the BBC.

            Mr Duncan Smith on the other hand, like myself, sit somewhere right of centre. The BBC takes my money as it does his, but we have no choice but pay. It is, like any other tax, punishable by a stint in prison for none payment. Liberally speaking it is a violation of my human rights – but this is the elephant in the room; and no liberal wants to face up to such an inconsistency in their thinking .     No other nation (outside of a failed state) allows its broadcasters to use the law in such a fashion; but when the state itself controls the broadcaster, via the amount by which the licence fee is to be set, then something is gravely wrong and needs to be dealt with.

            I have no objection to any broadcaster being biased – Fox news in America is biased to the Right. There are also dozens of radio stations in America also turning out a right-wing agenda. So the BBC is by no means alone in its own particular bias. But of course, in America these right-wing broadcasters are not reliant on taxpayer’s money - unlike the BBC.

I NO LONGER TAKE  seriously any attack made on the BBC by politicians; and neither does the BBC. Yet still, politicians from the right of the spectrum allow the BBC to raise their hackles and torment them into chants of bias.

            Now, because of Mr Duncan Smiths’ intervention, the government has followed up with an intent. The BBC’s output during the Tory Party conference this autumn will be closely monitored by call me Dave; on penalty of  - what?

            The battle between the BBC and the politicians is as concurrent as Christmas. But the BBC knows that, although they, the politicians may spitefully disallow the full increase in the yearly licence fee, the BBC believes that the British public are on their side and the politicians dare not go any further.

            But for how much longer can this reliance on the British public’s support be taken for granted? If the BBC is, as those who work for it believe it to be, a British institution whose popularity is as fixed on the nation’s culture as the monarchy; then why does  the BBC not go it alone?

            This institution has lived for decades off the sentimentality of generations of viewers and listeners. So why not give the people a choice. Instead of penalising them for none payment of their broadcasting tax. Why not let them go elsewhere and use the licence fee to select their own form of entertainment; while still remaining “popular” and solvent from the now freely given yearly subscription by those who wish to buy into the BBC?

            For an institution that brags of being the finest broadcaster in the world, to then fear choice, makes me think that the BBC  are far less certain than their boasts make them out to be. They fear the market place and their ability to survive within it without the need for  taxation; if not; if they truly believed that they had the top hand over all other broadcasters, then they would allow people like myself to go our own way in the market place, and not threaten us with imprisonment for none payment of our broadcasting tax.

IF THE POLITICIANS were serious, especially the Tories; they would break up the BBC and set it free from their (or any other government) control. Mr Duncan Smith, as a true believer in the private sector, should be campaigning for such an outcome.

            His silence on the issue of the contentious BBC interpretation of the  unemployment figures would have been preferred. He should have sat back and let the corporation provide itself with enough rope to hang itself; he should have set about trying to reform this antiquated institution on the quiet, so to speak.

            Yesterday in confirmation of the BBC’s bias, statistics provided through the Freedom of Information Act told us what we all suspected. The BBC buys up a quarter of the Guardian’s daily circulation. Over 50,000 copies are bought each day by the BBC. The paper’s job vacancy columns are filled with employment opportunities  from the BBC.

            I can remember as a member of the British Communist Party from 1972 to 1974, buying the daily Morning Star. It was as heavily subsidised by the Soviet Embassy then, as the Guardian is today by the BBC.

           

IF THE BBC’S PARLIAMENTARY ACCUSERS are serious about this institution, then they must act to transform it into a privately financed and truly independent broadcaster. I have heard many politicians attack the BBC but I have never heard from any of them who wished to replace it and put it on a sure footing where it can flourish through private subscription.

            Until the politicians give the BBC its liberty, I will ignore the likes of Mr Duncan Smith as well as any other politician. The politicians have it in their hands to liberate the BBC from their control, and if they cannot bring this about they have no right to complain about any kind of bias.

            The BBC has built up a worldwide reputation and can flourish without threats of imprisonment for those who  refuse to pay the licence tax. The BBC must be set free to go it alone. The confidence is there. They believe themselves to be the best broadcaster in the world; and subscribers should be banging on the doors of Broadcasting  House to subscribe.

            All I want is to be allowed to make a choice in the broadcasting market by using the £149 I am being currently forced to pay to the BBC and through it  the legal eye of the British government; and using it to make my own choice and decision about what I choose to watch. The BBC licence fee denies me this choice, and Ian Duncan Smith denies me this choice by his attack, not on the whole remit of the BBC institution, but by one of its mere supplicants –  the BBC’s Stephanie Flanders.

           

           

            

The Aussie narcissist is to address the nation on the balcony of the Reichstag tomorrow at 2pm

ONCE MORE A British government has managed to make a mountain out of a mole hill, in the way they have reacted to that egomaniacal self-publicist Julian Assange, currently holed up in the Ecuador Embassy in London.

            All they had to do was leave him there to stew without the oxygen of publicity, until he eventually stepped outside the embassy and made himself available to the authorities. Instead; what happened? The British government had an emotional spasm and  issued threats about entering the embassy and arresting Assange[1]: all grist to the Assange mill.

            Accounts I have read regarding his living conditions in the embassy suggest they fell well short of what Assange is used to, and would have eventually convinced him that a Swedish prison was preferable. It seems to me that  Assange is well used to his comforts as well as addicted to publicity; both of which will be in short supply in his current exile.

            Which means that all the British government needed to do was give him enough rope to hang himself; and such a goal would have been best achieved through silence and a degree of patience  on behalf of the UK government.

           

NOW WE HAVE a diplomatic farce on our hands, with the Organisation of American States (OAS)[2] calling a meeting in Washington to discuss the diplomatic dispute between  the UK and Ecuador. The meeting however, was not called over Julian Assange but over the “inviolability” of the Ecuador embassy.

            So the government’s original knee jerk reaction of threatening to enter the embassy to retrieve their “stolen goods” so to speak, has turned this whole wretched business into an international theatre, where the main performer, is no longer able to perform, but knows that the show is all about himself.

            The idiocy of our politicians, and their civil service advisors, it appears, have no  boundaries regarding  their capacity for doing the wrong thing. It was once observed that the main function of Russia in the world was to teach the rest of the world how not to do things.

            I now wonder, after the performance of  our political class since 1997, whether it has now become the UK’s main function.

             Julian Assange can now relieve the boredom that would have once been guaranteed to drive him from the embassy, by enjoying his performance on the world stage without even opening his mouth. The British government has, since its original idle threat, remained silent, but will be drawn into a contest by the OAS. They have now put themselves on the back foot, and will have to respond to the OAS findings after they meet in Washington – a response which will no doubt be responded to by Ecuador.

            Ecuador likes Assange because, as a chippy South American country they will support any one who upsets the mighty West – and the UK government has certainly proven its value to Ecuador in this regard.

            As we have witnessed with the behaviour of Argentina; we are not exactly popular in many parts of South America. Our past colonialism is still, pitifully, used as a custard pie aimed at our face by countries, who were once the victims of Spanish colonialism; which put to the sword  many an indigenous people – something the British never had a hand in.

            But many of those South American politicians who now confront us with our past, are the direct decedents of the Spanish conquistadors, who have the bare-faced cheek to now accuse us of colonialism, after the genocide of the indigenous peoples orchestrated by Spanish colonialism.

WE HAVE ENOUGH ON our plate with Argentina without inflaming the passions of the rest of South America.

            Julian Assange knows he has the power to raise the hackles of  Western politicians. He adds such a bait to his line, knowing it will haul in further converts. Assange sees himself as a kind of messiah persecuted by Western governments. Whether it be the UK, USA, or Sweden, he orchestrates the natural animosity there is in the world for such states to his own advantage.

            Assange cares little about those he has used to his advantage. Probably seeing them as his means to an end – that end being his “priestly” ordination as saviour, and all that he has calculated it will bring him.

ONE SUCH  “MEANS” came in the form of the journalist Vaughn Smith,[3] who provided him with an address that allowed him to stay in Britain. Mr Smith[4] agreed to stand Assange’s bail and provided him with accommodation at Ellingham Hall. Assange lived there for a year before, in 2011, moving to a lodge on Lord Abergavenny’s  Eridge Park estate neat Tunbridge Wells.

            When this second messiah left Lord Abergavenny’s estate and took up residence within the Ecuador Embassy, poor old Smith lost thousands in bail surety.

            But it seems that such a betrayal mattered little to his godliness. He looked only to himself and his vain ambitions.

            Yet Assange is not short of supporters within the liberal community, or those rushing to crown him with various awards. Awards like Amnesty International Media Award, Readers' Choice for TIME magazine's 2010 Person of the Year, the 2011 Sydney Peace Foundation gold medal and the 2011 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism .

            Yes, the liberal tribes have truly helped elevate the Assange Ego. They celebrated Wikileaks as a true, and in the new digital age, a positive contribution to democracy. Julian now entered liberal Rome (London) in a chariot, to be given his triumphrate; but lacked the advice whispered in many a Roman conquerors ears on such occasions…remember, you are human.

            The more popularity Assange harvests, the less he will feel himself of human flesh and blood. He will use the Ecuador embassy as freely for his own purpose as he did Ellingham Hall. Unluckily, the UK has no number of wealthy people willing to support this  mountebank.

JULIAN ASSANGE IS NO Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He is a fraud of the first degree who only sees himself as the prime celebrity in this celebrity age. He truly believes that the charges levelled against him are political rather than criminal. He is wanted in Sweden to face charges of rape and sexual abuse. Sweden is a pioneer social democratic  nation which exemplifies the “European ideal”, and as such offers Assange, if found guilty, far better conditions in their prisons than does the Ecuador embassy.

            What Assange fears is being  sent to America. He fears that the American system of justice will deliver him, if found guilty, to a more regimented and efficient system of justice which he would never escape until the full measure of his sentence was completed.

            This basic and mundane consideration is Assange’s sole concern. He fears more than anything else being delivered into the hands of the USA. He would sooner abandon those who have stood surety for him, than be deported to the USA. Assange  is the kind of  articulate fraud  whose  primary use of the English  language is for keeping  himself solvent and out of prison.

           

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[1] Well Mr Hague

[2] The USA is not a member

[3] According to Wikipedia:  Henry Vaughan Lockhart Smith (born 22 July 1963) is an English restaurateur, sustainable farmer, news pioneer and independent video journalist. He ran the freelance agency Frontline News TV and founded the Frontline Club in London. The Guardian has described him as "a former army officer, journalist adventurer and rightwing libertarian."

[4] Jemima Khan is also out of pocket

EDUCATION, EDUCATION, EDUCATION

I HAVE BEEN READING A wonderful piece by Tim Rayment in today’s Sunday Times. Titled Q: When is it right to put family ahead of principle? It is about the hypocrisy of professional left-wing types who have forsaken their long held attitudes of  strident opposition to private education by sending their own children and grandchildren to some of the country’s finest public schools.

            Ever since the Guardian journalist Janet Murray spilt her guts to her readers about her sending young Kate, her daughter, to a private nursery, she has been receiving email complaints from Guardianistas almost daily, and some of them show, what many of us already knew; that the Left can be very nasty indeed, even to one of their own, particularly if  they break one of their strict observances over any of their “progressive” policies.

            In all Ms Murray has had 986 complaints posted by Guardian readers in two days; and they range from the barmy to the nasty with little room for rational argument in between. They accuse Ms Murray of racism, elitism, snobbery, and, would you believe, encouraging street riots!

            Although such comments overstep the mark, they at least reflect the anger which flows from being betrayed by people, like Ms Murray, who have spent their lives castigating the independent sector, while standing full square behind the state sector. One would have hoped that such people as Sir Jonathan Miller, Polly Toynbee, Andrew Marr, dear Emma Thompson, Will Self, and Radio Four’s Jim Naughtie, would have remained true to their beliefs, when it came to planting their own children within the comprehensive system. After all these are the very people who, over decades, stood out against the “elitism” of the grammar schools and encouraged the evolution of the “bog standard comprehensive”[1], down whose corridors their own kin will never walk.

            For over 40 years the left has worked their deranged magic of dumbing down the  country’s education system, by driving out those parts of the sector they consider “elitist”. This meant the grammar and independent schools. Their logic being, that if these institutions took only the brightest, and it was only those who could afford to send their children to them, then they had no role to play within an egalitarian system of education.

            The same logic was put to use within the public sector regarding exam results – always denied by New Labour, yet their philosophy of - all must have prizes (for fear of disappointing, particularly their voting parents) held sway.

            The whole state sector was undermined by the conjurer’s hand. The logic of egalitarianism is to make everybody the same. The highest and the lowest must meet somewhere in the middle, and if the highest find themselves unchallenged by such positioning – then to bad.

            The march of the “progressives” has been unremitting over all parts of society; but particularly in education where their egalitarian prejudices have set the background music for the calamity we see today within the state sector where the dumbing down process is at its most damaging for the country’s youth: and where the exam results of previous students will now be undermined by the reality that they were never truly stretched on ideological grounds, and were given an easy ride.

            This whole farce began with New Labour; but at least Tony Blair helped redeem himself by creating, much to the anguish of many of his back benchers, and, above all the teaching unions; the academies.

            Much harm has been done to our educational system through the egalitarian prejudices of the left. Dumbing down good – elitism bad. This has been the Orwellian chant used by the left in private.         These creatures now send their children into the enemy camp for their education, yet I suppose, they still believe in their egalitarian principles applying to the other, more unfortunate and unaffordable families; who have to make do with whatever the state tells them they must.

THE ARCHITECT OF THE COMPREHENSIVE SYSTEM was of course Shirley (now Dame Shirley Williams). She it was who believed and still believes in the comprehensive system. She was Secretary of State for Education under James Callaghan in 1976.

            She was the Henry VIII of her time. She set about doing to the grammar schools what Henry did with the monasteries. But thankfully the dissolution of the grammar schools never quite succeeded where Henry once did with the monasteries.

            I believe this lady has a lot to answer for today, but she persists, no doubt through what must be left of her pride, to observe still, that: ‘I have never in any way regretted them and I still believe strongly in them. The problem was that in many places they were heavily skimmed because people kept grammar schools in place beside them’.

            But as Wikipedia says, Ms Williams has, “Controversially…skimmed off her own daughter Rebecca to one of the best selective schools in London, Godolphin and Latymer. The Williams family lived outside the catchment area of this school, so Rebecca was sent to stay with friends who lived close to the school, in order to qualify for entry”.

            I almost, but not quite, feel sorry for the those complaining Guardianistas, who, in all probability, sent their maybe gifted children into an inner city comprehensive to prove an ideological point; believing that those left-wing intellectuals who believed in state education would also sacrifice their children’s futures on the shrine of comprehensive education.

THE GRAMMAR school system was the one means by which talented working class children could be sent to university – and hear I mean, not the second rate prefabricated  universities created  from the old  polytechnics.                      .

            Our  liberal left-wing elites have, as in many other fields, a lot to answer for. At least those on the extreme of “progressive” thinking stand full square behind egalitarianism in education; even if it costs them their marriage.

            Jeremy Corbin MP, was fully prepared to sacrifice his son to the comprehensive system. The Labour MP for Islington North took up the shield and sword of socialism and faced …his wife. His wife had however stood firm and gave the young Corbin a private education. The battle between the two however resulted in the break-up of their marriage. Which takes a principle to ridicules lengths. But Mrs Corbin stood firm and did the right thing for their son.

            If I had had children and been financially well provided for, I would have wanted my children to have been given the best start in life. I would have gladly paid for the best education I could provide; and I believe the same  applies to every other working class parent in this country.

            I believe that any parent, with the financial means to do so, should give their children the best education they can. I do not blame those “progressive” types for transgressing the rules. I would merely challenge their views. I do not expect them to send their children to a bog standard comprehensive school, but merely to acknowledge that, like in every other sphere of economic activity, there are choices to be made, and that they all made the right one for their children.

           

           

           

             

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[1] quoted by Alistair Campbell  - another “progressive”

LUVVIES FOR “PUSSY RIOT”

LET US HERE IT FOR Jarvis Cocker, Pete Townsend, Martha Wainwright (who she?), and Neil Tennant. These celebs among others have given birth to new cause-celeb. As far I can see, it is the first this year and has nothing to do with Aids, malnourished Africa or Zionism.

            Pussy Riot is what the media describes as a Russian punk trio, who staged a performance against Vladimir Putin in a Moscow cathedral. This caused the cathedral authorities to demand the trio’s eviction. Caring very little for the rights of worshipers, or their deeply held beliefs; these gilded youths of Russia’s new freedoms set about abusing the cathedral’s spiritual tranquillity in a manner worthy of what the Russian Orthodox Church came to expect under communism.

            In a letter to the Times our celebrities described the arrest of the pop group as “a minor breach of the peace” – well, they know little about how much the Russian people care about the religious sovereignty of the churches and cathedrals; especially after the totalitarian years.

            These three young ladies will only have diminished whatever cause they were advocating. They will not find much sympathy among the Russian people; including those, who, like themselves are against president Putin.

            If these “dissidents” had been protesting in a mosque in Tehran against Ahmadinejad, the silence from such celebrities would have been deafening.  But they are a pop group and so people from that milieu in the UK have found the perfect cause to support.

            In their letter to the Times they continue thus,  "Dissent is a right in any democracy and it is entirely disproportionate that they face seven years in jail for what we consider a preposterous charge of 'hooliganism motivated by religious hatred'.

            Dissent is indeed a right, and the prospect of seven years in jail for this group, is indeed over the top, or, in the favourite riposte of the left, “disproportionate”. Whether, however, they are given such a stringent sentence, remains to be seen. But such behaviour should not go unpunished, not because they were dissenting against a Russian president, but because they showed such contempt for an institution that over 90 per cent of the Russian people believe in and had held on to such beliefs throughout the communist era.

            But then, what did these “artistes” understand of what their parents and grandparents suffered under?  The Russian orthodox church, was, in the darkest period of, in particular, Stalin’s rule, the victim of such destruction of church property not seen since Henry VIII’s destruction of the monasteries.

            This limited and enfeebled sisterhood know nothing of Russian history. In fact I believe I know more than them. They, like their 1970s feminist mirror image in the UK , will either fall foul of drugs or a conservative mentality in older age when the realities of life start to mature.

THE TROUBLE WITH the celebrities who have written to the Times; is that they treat religion like a superstitious witchcraft; a hideous and irrational blot on the rationalist landscape. They see no problem with invading a cathedral or church because they, like the Pussy Riot care little for these institutions. If they did, they would understand what such an infringement would have meant: and even more, what such institutions meant for the majority of their fellow citizens, who turn to them when loved ones are Christened, married, or buried. Simple humanity should always orchestrate a person’s actions, including a dissidents, which in Pussy Riot’s case, has been abandoned.

            I write as an atheist. As a humanist I can readily understand why the Russian Orthodox church should demand Pussy Riot’s eviction. They should never have targeted a cathedral or church to make a point. As they did, they have now lost the support of those anti-Putin Russians which the Pussy Riot had hoped to appeal to.

            Some of these women have children and are now appealing to the public, at least, for leniency in sentencing which I hope they get. But they knew the system they were about to play; and their separation from their children was always on the cards.

             

           

PUTIN IS AN AUTHORTARIAN by nature; like all Russian leaders going back to Ivan the Terrible. The Russian people, on the whole, prefer a strong leader. It has always, after all, been Russia’s historical task to show the rest of the world how not to do things.

            Pussy Riot chose the wrong target to self-publicise themselves. These young women should have been sent packing; in one case, back to her children who she now complains about being separated from.

            This group has been tolerated within the compass of Russian democracy. But in Russia, unlike in the Anglican UK, religion still has a grip upon the Russian people’s conscience. Having long been (far longer than the UK) an agricultural society, its people are deeply religious and as such cannot abide such behaviour from such a group.

            If Pussy Riot had not invaded the sacred onion domes of mother Russia, the people would no doubt today be on their side - freedom does not mean licence: it means acting responsibly with consideration for others when protest invades what millions of Russians believe to be a sacred institution where people facing the darkest periods of their lives go to in order to find peace of mind and sanctuary. Pussy Riot mocked such people by their stunt, and should pay a price – say 12 hours in prison and a 200 rouble fine.

           

           

           

           

           

Was the opening ceremony honouring the state?

AS A SPECTACLE  Danny Boyle’s offering was without doubt theatrically brilliant – however, what it was doing opening a festival of sport is beyond me. Half of its subject matter would have been lost on a good three quarters of the globe; not to mention  a similar quantity of the British people who have long since stopped being taught their country’s history.           

            The bucolic opening, underscored by Beethoven’s 6^th symphony (what else?)[1] reminded me of the opening landscape of  the Shire, ala Peter Jackson. The emergence of the 19^th century foundry ogre with its four puffing chimneys spewing forth, and a cigar smoking Isambard Kingdom Brunel, looking with personal satisfaction upon the unfolding monster, suggested the Industrial Revolution as a necessary evil created by greed from the pastures of this green and pleasant land - which brought untold misery to the people, many of them, suitably attired, and present throughout.

            We British do like to dress up and perform, and the volunteers who took part in this piece of theatre will now, no doubt, all be looking for an agent. So we can now look forward to thousands of wanna-bees, having put on the grease paint, and now not wishing to take it off – especially after the reviews.

            Perhaps the most bizarre feature, and the one which has upset Aidan Burley, a Conservative MP, and probably led him to call the whole enterprise "leftie multicultural crap",  was Boyle’s tribute to the NHS.

            The sight of ranks of NHS beds with bouncy children being admonished by what we today call their “carers” was almost surreal in the context of the opening ceremony to an Olympic games. Yet there it was in all its glory – a pastiche of Soviet like proportions praising state health care. This occurrence carried with it a testament of Boyle’s left-wing credentials, however inexplicable, to the outside world.

           

BOYLE’S POLITICIS ARE left-wing. This does not mean that, creatively speaking, he cannot escape its clutches in his work, as he has already proven. But he has deliberately chosen to display his politics on this occasion, which has led of course to criticism from the likes of Aidan Burley.

            Mr Burley is a fool who should have kept his mouth shut. Now his chance of reselection may be in the balance. This does not mean that the foolish MP was wrong in his judgement, but merely naive in sharing it with the British public on Twitter.

            He later tried to dissemble without success – it is not the first and it will not be the last that an MP has embarrassed himself or herself on this social networking sight. Like the demented egos they are, politicians and celebrities believe that their opinions on the most banal of subjects are expectantly awaited by the public – and you know what? Sadly they are!

            The latest mouth to open in criticism of the opening ceremony on political grounds comes from across the pond.

            That right-wing American talk show host  has added his weight to Mr Burley’s views on Boyle’s perfunctory[2] adaptation of British history from the rural and industrial to state patronage. Limbaugh calls such intrusion the "honouring socialism and collectivism" by Danny Boyle.

            While not wishing to associate myself with the Burley-Limbaugh outpourings, and with no parliamentary seat to defend; I would say this. The directorship of the opening ceremony was given to Danny Boyle by the last Labour government[3] who fought to get the London Olympics. His  ability to do the job should never be in dispute. His professionalism has been very well proven by his results –based purely upon creativity in theatre or film.

            Political avowals such as those in support of the NHS or women’s suffrage have no part in an Olympic opening ceremony, however overwhelmingly and entertainingly they are presented. However subtlety are such creative protests woven into the ceremony, they should be left outside of G20 meetings.

            What Danny Boyle has done is to sneak, via his reputation, his left-wing message onto a world stage. He did indeed honour the state without any reference to the state’s dependence on the collection of people’s taxes to pay for the NHS.

THE OPENING CEREMONY  was worthy of its reviews on purely artistic grounds. It was indeed better than Beijing, which truly exemplified the totalitarian spirit. Beijing cost more, and left us at the time of our selection for 2012, wondering whether we could better the state funded spectacle. In the end we beat it ideologically and surpassed it artistically.

            We should be proud of these Olympics, but we should not allow, in the future, political  ideology to become the purpose of an Olympic opening ceremony as it appears Danny Boyle has presented us with, via the most spectacular of opening displays.

            However grandiose and subtle it may be to the ordinary people; the opening ceremony must  remain politically neutral. Only in ideologically driven counties like China, can the odour of political supremacy govern, through whatever means, the Olympic successes.

            It is interesting that China praised the opening ceremony. Perhaps it was because they were able to see what only the likes of Aidan Burley could. After all, China more than any other nation knows all about "honouring socialism and collectivism".

            Boyle’s theatrical masterpiece captivated all parts of the political spectrum on a night when all we wanted was to be entertained – and entertained we were. But we were also drawn into the magnificence of the ceremony, while either ignoring or not noticing the socialist message that was woven throughout.

            Aidan Burley was wrong (if only for the sake of his career) to be so outspoken so soon after the event when the viewers wonder was at its zenith, and calls for a knighthood for Boyle was gaining widespread support. When will politicians control their appetite for peddling their opinions on social networks? It only ends in them complaining about taking what they said out of context; and how they have been misunderstood.

            This piece of theatre was a 90 minute left-wing tainted extravaganza. My one objection was, as I wrote at the beginning of this piece – what on earth was it doing heralding in a sporting event? I believe its grandiosity impacted more than did the clever and understated propaganda intended by its creator: and for this alone Danny Boyle deserves our congratulation.

           

           

             

           

           

           

           

           

             

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[1] Well a more fitting musical backdrop would surely have been – Vaughn Williams?

[2] Yes, I do know that Mr Boyle took a beginners course in the history of Britain from 1700 to 2012. But it was researched merely as a piece of theatre that was only meant as a backdrop to a far important event.

[3] Here I am indeed guessing