European spectre of banned political parties

Readers will know I've little time for the antics of either the BNP or the EDL, both of which target their nasty public face against immigrants rather than against immigration. As I've written many times before, it's hardly the fault of the immigrants for grabbing what the government have made so freely available; If Dubai offered me £250k a year and a luxury apartment for life I'd be there like a shot. Actually perhaps not. But you get the point. Unsustainable immigration isn't the fault of the immigrants but of our governments past and present.

However, if the government proposed to use the Supreme Court to ban the BNP and EDL as political parties, I'd be very worried indeed. This is exactly what's happening in Germany, as the Constitutional Court is asked to ban the zenophobic and anti-Jewish NPD. The problem is, the NPD enjoys enough popularity to qualify for State Party funding, something the big three parties would dearly love to see here. This puts a party with economically poor supporters on the same footing as one with wealthy donors. It also, under the German system, allows them to pose a threat to the established  political cabal of redistributive left-liberalism, Frankfurt School cultural radicalism, and Marxian socialism, something the big three will never allow, say, UKIP to do in the UK under their proposed State funding agreement which ringfences tax funding to, erm, themselves.

The spectre of banned political parties has haunted Europe through the twentieth century, under Salazar, Franco, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Tito and all their ilk. Banning the opposition is one of the first acts of totalitarianism. The collective left in Europe, and in Germany in particular, is scared at the support that Fidesz enjoys in Hungary - and fears the appeal of such policies to their own voters. 

If they succeed in banning the NPD, be afraid.  

Local councils must lead the devil dog cull

The Staffie-cross bull terrier is the weapon of choice for London street thugs. The seats of childrens' swings in the local parks bear deep toothmarks and tears, and the lower branches of trees are torn where both these things have been used to 'train' the dogs in aggression and attack. These are not devoted companion animals, not man's best friend, but brutally and ignorantly treated creatures who have only ever known curses and blows. The animal charities' pens are full of these dogs, rejected and thrown out as not aggressive enough, but no one wants to re-home them and take the risk. Quietly, they are euthanised as they are found. 

The failure to deal with the menace of these dogs is local. Parliament may legislate as many Dangerous Dogs Acts as it likes, but without trust and action at the most local level we will never be rid of this danger. I have met my local Council's dogs officer, a man extremely fond of dogs, as they have to be. His wisdom and experience as to whether a dog is dangerous or not is far, far superior to any objective biological tests set by Parliament, yet we are not permitted to rely on his professional skill. Such men and women, who can coax a fearful and mistreated stray from its cowering hiding, will be reluctant to condemn any dog to death, but they will do their duty and comb out the worst of the devil dogs from our scum estates if supported and permitted to do so. What's lacking is not the skills and resource, but the political will.  

Running amok

Running amok in Malay, or spree killing in US, or beserking in Norse, is hardly a new phenomenon, and not confined to any single culture. Following a period of depressive or dissociative brooding, an individual arms themselves and embarks on a series of killings and attempted killings. It may be a single episode of violence if the weapon is an edged blade or suchlike - where the perpetrator is immediately proximate to the act, and can be himself killed or restrained - or over a longer period using a firearm if the perpetrator can evade immediate capture. Women never run amok; it's always men. Raoul Moat, the Washington sniper, Thomas Hamilton, Anders Breivik are just a few recent cases. And now Mohammed Merah in Toulouse.

The trigger for this behaviour can be anything from an unjust parking ticket to a sophisticated ideological self-delusion, a bad divorce, a bollocking from the foreman. You simply can't predict it. Yet governments will continue to want to try; they prefer to understand these mentalist episodes as 'lone wolf terrorist attacks' and search for group memberships and affiliations. Der Spiegel falls straight into this trap today, declaring "A man like Mohammed Merah is Western law enforcement's worst nightmare. The suspected perpetrator of the Toulouse attacks fits into the "lone wolf" category of terrorist."

But law enforcement agencies feel obliged to be responsible for such events happening, and always respond with "If only ...". If only we had access to everyone's emails, twitter posts, nectar cards, bus tickets, dvd rental records, radio listening habits, web surfing histories they say, we could better predict such behaviour. But of course they can't. Where the trigger can be as minor as a Kiwi barman short-changing them, leading them to assault the whole of Earl's Court with a samurai sword you can just never predict it.

Malays have long learned to accept the risk of being killed by someone running amok as part of normal life. They would, I'm sure, regard police roadblocks and metal detectors at the entrance to every market as an unwarranted intrusion on daily life. Let's not allow Merah to be the excuse for ever more intrusive State surveillance.

Budapest

UK price for a cartouche of premium fags £80

Hungarian price for the same £21 (7100 HUF)

Ryanair return fare May £35.60

1 night *** hotel £35

Breakeven at 239 fags

800 fags saves net £165

3400 fags saves net £933

With a saving of near £1k on a 3 month supply of legal, duty paid smokes for a heavy smoker - £4k a year - I'm expecting Budapest to be a popular destination this Summer

Prize prat Bercow

Squeaker Bercow yesterday offered a warning to men of small parts everywhere not to over-reach themselves. Bercow, an ill-socialised intellectual pygmy, subjected the Sovereign to an ugly and poorly judged little encomium to ... himself. Clumsy with sixth-form alliteration, his jejune speech even managed to incorporate some product placement, with the ghastly little dwarf stopping just short of draping the Soho rainbow  flag over Her Majesty's elegant shoulders. As he pompously handed HM the text of his truly dreadful speech the Duke of Edinburgh's eyes betrayed his wish for its destination - the nail in the staff water closet, at a guess

As the First Commoner, Bercow is supposed to represent all of us in the nation who are not peers. Never have we been so poorly represented. The fool is an embarrassment to the nation and a drug on Parliamentary efficiency. It really is time for him to go.

Another Cameron U turn

The utter disregard of respect for anyone's private property but their own led Labour MPs in the Rotten Parliament to pass a raft of laws allowing a plethora of minor State functionaries the right to break down your front door. Every semi-literate prodnose in the country it seemed who could painfully complete a short form in block caps could take a hammer to your dwellinghouse on suspicion you may have a bootleg DVD, or had been feeding garden birds crumbs from a domestic kitchen, or a Nike trainers box was visible from the street in contravention of the Olympics Act.

Cameron of course promised a bonfire of Labour's prodnose laws. And like many of his other promises, it's a crock. The Government's Protection of Prodnoses Freedoms Bill does nothing to reverse any of these powers. It does, however, allow inverts to wed at 3am if they wish, no doubt making Brighton just a little more like Las Vegas, and offers full pardons for any convicted for consensual same-sex sex. Too late of course for John Gielgud and it wouldn't apply anyway, his offence being 'persistently importuning' in a public toilet, but Alan Turing would have been forgiven had he not killed himself with cyanide at the unbearable shame. Whilst ending the persecution and public humiliation of good men for their private consensual sexual peccadillos is undoubtedly a very good thing and deserves our support, I really wish Cameron would display the same regard for the rest of us.  

Kony, duty and African incompetence

Diarmaid MacCulloch's recent TV prog, on why the English are God's true Chosen People (and it's hard to tell whether his tongue is firmly in his cheek or not), is still available online if you missed it. His theory is that once we accept out innate superiority over all the other peoples of the world, we also bear the burden of a duty to intervene to improve their own ways of life; no foreigner can ever become English, of course, but we permit those in settling here from overseas to be British instead, as a sort of consolation prize, and to copy our way of life. 

Now when some Americans sought to publicise the activities of a particularly loathsome African warlord called Kony they attracted a barrage of criticism from Africans themselves, the pressure allegedly driving one of the film makers to wandering around on foot in his underpants in LA. It was the walking rather than than the nudity that alerted police; no sane person ever walks in LA. A flavour of the criticism they attracted as 'White' people daring to lecture black Africans can be found here. It's the usual faux-academic African mix of pomposity and chippiness.

With the possible exception of Tanzania, no African nation has effectively managed its own affairs post-independence. The whole is a well known mess of incompetence, graft, corruption, violence and atavism. No continent of people anywhere in the world is more needful of outside management, and of course as God's Chosen we English feel a deeply frustrated duty to provide this. I know in my bones that given a set of khaki drill, Sam Browne, Mark II landy and a couple of loyal Askaris with SMLEs I could govern a province the size of Suffolk, bringing peace, prosperity, equitable justice and the English Way to the benighted African. Ouch! That was my tongue I think ...