AHHA YANMAH and the changing world of spies

AHHA YANMAH - Or Anna Chapman, as we better know her, is no James Bond. Not for her the discretion of a Savile Row tailor, a Dunhill lighter and the panelled quietness of a Pall Mall club. These days, it seems, spies all have their own Facebook pages. And like the self-obsessed the world over, can't resist posting pictures in which they seem to have lost half their clothing.

Ah well. have a good BH all.

Olympic paramilitary thugs to patrol streets for dissent

Pity those of us who live anywhere in London close to an Olympic venue, for under the London Olympic Games Act we're going to be subject to such crushing prohibition of freedom of speech, expression and property rights so as to make the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 look like a cakewalk.

For a start, the ODA are empowered to set up their own uniformed force of boot-boys who are empowered to act anywhere in the vicinity of a games venue or Olympic Zil route. They have also been empowered to break into your home, seize and detain you on the street and remove or destroy your property. For why? You may ask

Well, not just for the heinous offence of displaying a commercial brand other than the official Olympics sponsors. Oh No. This legislation prohibits any protest or display at all contrary to the games and the massive disruption and upheaval they will cause.

As s.19(4) states, powers may be exercised in respect of any non-commercial advertising and against announcements or notices of any kind. s.19 (5) states this will cover the distribution or provision of documents or articles, the display or projection of words, images, lights or sounds and even spoof adverts or logos of Olympics sponsors. So whether you put an anti-Olympics poster in your bedroom window, or just stand at your front door shouting at the Zil cavalcade as it races past the closed-off streets, you're liable.

For breaching the regulations, you face a fine of up to £20,000 and are also liable to pay costs - wait for it - to the ODA's private army for the trouble and expense of breaking into your house and tearing up your anti-Olympics poster.

The only saving grace is that these Olympic boot-boys will need a magistrate's warrant before smashing your front door down, but with lay JPs set to be replaced across London with State Stipes (or District Judges as they're called these days) there won't be any quarrel getting such warrants easily.

If you live outside London or Portsmouth Bournemouth Weymouth and Portland, think yourself very lucky.

NB Unlike the previous post, this one's not a joke.

At last, a use for Scotland

The huge amounts we pay over to Scotland under the Barnett Formula have been justified to some extent in my eyes by the facilities Scotland provides to England in return; somewhere to keep our nuclear submarines, somewhere to shoot red deer and a decent fishing mark. Except for the midges. They also provide a scratch soccer team for England to practice with for our important international matches.

Now of course we're faced with another problem; what to do with hundreds of suicidally indoctrinated jihadists shortly to be released from Crapco's franchised prison service (drugs 'R us)?

The solution is simple. Confined to the highlands, with tazar-equipped anklets should they stray, the jihadists can do little damage except exploding themselves amongst sheep or pens of salmon. They will, of course, desperately seek out visiting English sportsmen to explode themselves against, and this danger will add spice and excitement for the sporting gent, and the opportunity to take a left and a right to some wild-eyed bearded and robed jihadist as he sprints towards you on the moor with bomb-vest flapping.

One could even set up decoy shoots for the visiting businessman short of time; a plastic figure of a banker dressed in Musto could be placed on the moor to attract roaming exploding jihadists whilst the shooters wait in a hide nearby. Or one could tether real bankers to a stake as bait. The Duke of Edinburgh could offer a silver cup for the season's best bag.

All in all, an idea with which I can see few faults.

Street Clutter - Where's Daniel Moylan?

Eric Pickles has generated some favourable publicity for himself with his plea to local councils to end street clutter, and in the usual half-truths and downright dishonesty of such announcements completely neglects to mention that the answer lies with, er, the Coalition government. In particular, the Department of Transport.

Had Eric asked Cllr Daniel Moylan (left), former deputy leader of RBKC and now Boris' top man at TfL and streets guru, Daniel would have told him that the main cause of all the rubbish and clutter on the streets is the DfT's Traffic Signs Manual.

You see, all those signs are there because the DfT tells councils that it's best practice to put them all there. It's not compulsory, or a legal requirement, but councils who fail to follow the DfT guidance risk legal action for negligence from anyone who suffers injury. When Daniel was at RBKC, he instructed the council's highways officers to remove a whole forest of signs. They refused, protesting they would become personally legally liable. In an unusual display of balls, Daniel and fellow councillors then took the decision themselves, against officers' advice, and also took personal legal liability.

It's somewhat disingenuous for Eric to expect every council in the country to act as bravely as RBKC. The answer is for Eric to have a quiet word with Philip Hammond, the Transport Secretary, and ask him to withdraw the Manual as approved best practice and leave road design to local engineers. Until he does, I'm afraid this announcement is just so much Cameronian bullshit.

Operation Sealion

Had the Battle of Britain been lost, and more importantly had the Navy lost control in the Channel (improbable) then we could well be marking the anniversary of the German invasion of England. The Battle of Britain marked a pivotal point in the war, and when we returned to France four years on the world was a different world.

When Lord Gort led the BEF to France in 1940 he took his charger and his groom with him; generals were expected to take their horses on campaign in those days. The poor creature was shot on the quay at Dunkirk when Gort evacuated, to prevent it falling into the hands of the enemy.

And despite the grainy newsreels of the German blitzkrieg in Poland, had the German army invaded it would have proceeded through Kent on a horse and cart. The German order of battle for Operation Sealion, the invasion of Britain, included 57,000 horses in the invasion fleet, and 500 tons a day of fodder in the supply train.

Well, we withstood Goering's assaults and regrouped. Command changes were made. The gentlemen went out and the players came in. Without horses or grooms. In the British army at least, the days of the horse were over. Not so for the Heer; fuel and truck shortages meant that even in 1945, when the secrets at the heart of the atom had been broken, the German army was still largely horse-drawn. The chaos at the Falaise gap was a jumble of dead horseflesh, and that remarkable colour footage in the collection of the USHMM online showing whole German army groups surrendering in 1945 shows also long columns of horses and carts and few German trucks.

When the allies re-entered Europe in June 1944 there was not a single horse in the entire invasion force. Patton later acquired one from somewhere, but that was narcissism. And perhaps for the horse, for horse-kind in general, this was a good thing.

I've still to see Morpurgo's Warhorse at the New London and perhaps this is a useful reminder to do something about it.

A freedom from hectoring

It may just be the Summer, but it's becoming apparent that for the first time in donkey's years no-one's lecturing or hectoring me. No government ministers with their fatuous do-goodery, no bloated overpaid quango heads telling me not to throw tea-bags in the bin, no socialist 'tsars' with spiteful and divisive messages coming from the radio, no Labour placemen with their needling whining about something or other. It's a bit like the peace that descends after a prolonged bout of vacuum cleaning.

And the whole lefty arts and culture sector, so irritating for so long with their need 'to get the message across' are blissfully silent. No joint letters to the newspapers, no vacuous publicity stunts, no carefully crafted sound-bites boosted by the BBC about the need for more funding for unemployed teens to play with expensive video equipment, Somali refugees to run their own arts centres or more libraries for the illiterate.

Even those major irritants Chief Constables are silent. No silver-braided ninnies lecturing us on driving whilst thinking, leaving children locked in the car without a bowl of water and the windows cranked open a fraction, diving into boating ponds or allowing the police to get on with ignoring crime and not to attempt to ignore it ourselves.

Autumn may bring it all rushing back like some great Tsunami of asinine pseudo-virtue of course .... but for now, enjoy.

Woman with fat arse replaces Myra Hindley as national hate figure

The nation's in witchburning mood at the moment. Until yesterday, 32 year old 'Fat Slag' Wendy Lewis, dubbed Britain's Most Disgusting Woman by the tabloids for urinating on a war memorial and then performing a sex act on a drunken tramp seemed lined up for the flames and faggots, but Wendy is now old news as Woman With Fat Arse Who Put Cat In Bin takes top-witch billing.

The Coventry Telegraph, which broke the story, now finds itself at the centre of a global animal-lovers storm after the nationals took up the tale. Before long, the woman will be identified and pictures of her neat bungalow with nylon netties at the windows, scarlet pelargoniums at the door and a Vauxhal Astra in the drive will decorate the front pages. She'll probably turn out to be the local RSPB secretary. This is still August, after all.

I'd be furious if anyone put either of my two in a bin, but knowing the self-satisfied smirk they wear when they've just crapped in a neighbour's newly-hoed veg bed I can understand the temptation.

The madness of Gordon Brown

Whether Brown's book, provisionally entitled "I certainly was in the right", will reflect the paranoid delusions of his days in office remains to be seen. The extent to which he was medicated whilst in Number Ten will no doubt be revealed in years to come. The lesson we must learn is never to allow so deeply mentally flawed an individual to occupy an office of State again. The Speccie carries an extract from Chris Mullin's book that is telling;

While Gordon and his party were inside, word reached them that David Cameron was waiting outside. Whereupon Gordon, fearing that his limelight was about to be stolen, went into a great sulk, strode out of the embassy, barely acknowledging Cameron.

Once in his car he began pummelling the headrest in front of him, causing his protection officer's head to ricochet, bleating about 'treachery' and 'conspiracy' and demanding to be told: 'Who did this to me?' A hapless official tried to placate him.

Eventually the official enquired who was in this conspiracy. To which Gordon, without batting an eyelid, replied: 'The Tories, the Chinese and the Foreign Office.'”

Arboreal defaecation habits of genus Ursus

The Grauniad is amongst several papers reporting concern this morning that dunces are failing to get top university places. The shock findings, that admission tutors have offered places to those with the most impressive A level grades, have upset socialists across the nation.

Diesel Damoiselles

Another gem from the Glasgow Herald;

"Not every lesbian fits the tabloid stereotype of a sexually promiscuous shaven-headed, tattooed androgyne. In fact, few, if any, ever tended to conform to that tired old image. And that is what has inspired Scotland’s latest lesbian club, Evolve, which is set to launch in Edinburgh on Friday ..... Evolve is the brainchild of 38-year-old Victoria Wilson, who works in the oil and gas industry in Aberdeen."

The Closed Shop

I have known a few 'economic entities' as the EU terms them in which the workforce is conspicuous by two or three surnames that dominate; in one small firm, half a dozen employees were related to one another. This of course is very much a remnant of the way in which the working class traditionally cared for their own; if dad worked on the docks, it was accepted by all (including the employers) that son would have a preferential place there too.

Those wonderful films that never make it to the TV screen these days, British 'B' movies of the 1960s, in which I delight, gave the inkling of change. Young Bob turns down the chance of following his dad to a job on the docks - he wants to be a hairdresser. Or go to Oxford. He's dating a middle-class girl in a mini-skirt and wants to drink things decorated with a Maraschino cherry on a stick, not pints of Mild.

At the same time transatlantic corporatism killed the paternalistic family-owned firm and socialists launched their attack on working-class self sufficiency; an independent working class was a potent enemy of the central State. The Closed Shop, often a vehicle to keep jobs in the family, became the enemy of both the right and the left. The left wanted places for women and immigrants, in exchange for driving down wages and job security. It was part of the atomisation of the working class that has left them adrift, dependent and weak.

Patronage lives amongst the middle class; we can still arrange internships for our relatives, 'put in a word' in the right place, pass on wealth. For working class kids, State policy evolved on the basis of those 1960s 'B' movies. The State proceeded on the assumption that all working class boys now wanted to be hairdressers or go to Oxford, when in reality most of them would be happiest with a job on the docks and a place to live.

A strong, independent, self-sufficient and self-regulating working class in this country may not be comfortable for the political class, but unless we enable the most positive benefits that it brings we face the horrors of not only intergenerational conflict but an intragenerational war we can't afford to win.

Libel and the legal shitehawks

Now I remember!

It was your name, of course

In the 'News of the World'

With the blonde and the horse

All dressed up in gymslips

I say what a lark ..

There is, one hears, more than one England soccer player grateful to Judge Cocklecarrot Eady for something known as a 'superinjunction' that bans not only any mention of spatchcocking with Brazilian transgendered rent-boys in a Croatian brothel by such players, but any mention that they've even applied for an injunction. Those with a prurient interest must be grateful for the interweb, and that (for now) it's beyond Judge Eady's reach.

One suspects that if Mr Eady had not chosen the bench, he would by now be a full partner at Messrs Carter-Fuck. EUReferendum carries a must-read piece deconstructing the Telegraph's non-apology to Rajendra Pachauri for a painstakingly researched and evidenced piece by Richard North and Christopher Booker.

Not only chambers but some parts of the bench have been taken over by legal shitehawks to the benefit of the super-rich and the detriment of the rest of us. It's time for some gamekeeping.

Incest - the elephant in the room

Back in February 2008 Phil Woolas talked up a storm by mentioning the unmentionable - the medical consequences of his Pakistani constituents breeding with their near relatives. The independent carried a story headed unambiguously 'Inbreeding'.The monstrous number of infant deaths and recessive birth defects attributable to the Pakistani habit of inbreeding was highlighted, and then rapidly disappeared out of embarrassment.

"Preferential patrilateral parallel cousin marriage" - in which the boy marries his father's brother's daughter - is the preference of traditional communities in Pakistan. First cousin marriages are not illegal in the UK, and the odd first cousin marriage in a large mixed society does no great harm overall. But within the Pakistani community such first cousin marriages are repeated generation after generation within a biologically tiny gene pool. Some 55% of Pakistanis in the UK are married to their first cousins; in Bradford more than 75% of all marriages amongst Pakistanis are between first cousins. The result is entirely predictable. Despite forming only 1.5% of the UK's population, Pakistanis have 30% of the country's genetic birth defects and unacceptably high levels of infant mortality. This cannot continue. The human costs alone are grim enough, but the costs to the British taxpayer in picking up the pieces of these cursed unions are astronomical. It has to end.

Channel 4 is screening 'When Cousins Marry' tomorrow at 8pm. It promises to offer a sympathetic insight into the problem. One hopes it will succeed in keeping this subject on the national agenda without us all squirming in discomfort at being thought 'racist' or without advocating more Pakistani immigrants. The answer is that our Pakistani community must start breeding outside their own gene pool; they may argue that increasing immigration from Pakistan is the way to achieve this, we will counter that they must seek partners from within the existing population in the UK, whether they're Pakistani or not.

The programme's webpage is already crowded with comments - mostly supporting an end to the practice, but several supporting it. One from an insider is informative:

As a Teacher of children with severe special needs, working predominantly within the asian community, I am very pleased to see this issue being publicly raised. Along with the distress the child may suffer throughout it's life as the result of a first cousin marriages, society has a huge financial burden to bare in providing the necessary support. These include a huge range of medical interventions, paediatric care, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, specialist teaching support, respite care, transportation, building adaptations etc, etc etc.

And this is the point. In rural Pakistan and Bangladesh, a defective infant will either rapidly expire naturally or be subject to infanticide. In our society, we'll spend a million pounds over its lifetime in giving it the best chance we can. We simply can't afford such third-world 'multicultural' practices so alien to our own culture.