David Davis .... touching a nerve in the country

The resignation of David Davis has shaken the kaleidoscope.

It is far too early to clearly understand the timing of the decision, the reasons for the decision and it's short and long term consequences.

The summer is a bad time for politics. The media are swamped with pictures of busty ladies in funny hats at weddings, horse races and garden parties. Men are off watching rowists, shooting pheasants or catching the dwindling fish species our polluted rivers still support.

Increasingly the TV / Press will praise to death the few Olympians amongst us , ready for their eventual slaughter when they so nobly fail in Beijing.

Not a good time to raise concerns about brown men in beards given an extended opportunity to read their Korans in the comparative ease of Paddington Policer Station whilst Plod ploughs through terabytes of trash.

Whilst Davis is not a loner, his name does not conjure up a tightly knit cabal of like minded souls anxious to slot into an alternative posse of Shadowy Ministers, ready to lever out the toff persuasion.

There is little evidence of planning - when he faced a bemused press to tell them of his decision, he appeared to have no Press release, no supporters, straining every sinew to leap into action to unfold the master plan. No Billionaires, millionaires or modestly wealthy car traders have heard the clarion call. There was no itemised list of the incursions on our liberties - which is just as well because a "bi-partisan" approach to terrists means he and his party were happy to vote for most of them.

The Press, forced to think, are consequently all over the place ... Rupe the Poop however has sprung into action and is ready to spend the odd shilling to promote as candidate, in the late summer by-election his Performing Monkey, the absurd Kelvin McKenzie (proud inventor of the News Bunny and Naked darts) - although the call is even now, sounding a little uncertain.

In the short term, Cameron and his gang of monied shysters are safe - David Davies will not unseat him , soon or easily, although his actions will unnerve him and his callow gang. It may even make them improve their act.

What is certain however is that David Davis has sniffed the faint scent of a hunted , disaffected and numerous crew. There is out there, beyond the world of the Metropolitan mutterers a less than gruntled class of sturdy voters. Over 50, educated, capable not only of reading the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail but also completing the crossword. They listen to Radio 4, Radio 7 rather than Five Live and Kiss FM, they mourn Humph and Alan Coren, would like to meet Ed Reardon and whilst earnest readers with a well used library ticket and keen on self improvement have never read a Booker Prize winner.

There is out there, an ageing , solid middle class who are feeling increasingly dispossessed, harassed, as they slide into the necessary clutches of the state through the NHS. As they and their family become entangled in the many and insanely bueaucratic branches of what are laughingly called the social services ,their concerns mount.

Bewildered, they watch the breakdown of marriage, many of their their own children, the remorseless rise in abortion, illegal drug use, urban squalor, alienation in their own home towns swamped in unwanted multiculturalism.

In Lord Patel's patch , a prosperous urban retreat on the edge of the Pennine moors , in one of the northern Greater Manchester Metropolitan Boroughs, returning Conservative councillors for periods of geological time - a BNP candidate forced the Liberals into third pace in the May elections.

They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
...

We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.
......

...we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.

Are some lines from G. K. Chesterton which seem somehow appropriate. Probably not what Blunkett, Charles Clarke, kebab eating, plump Mrs Smith understand by Englishness..or even Britishness.

It would be a fool who writes off the maverick David Davis. There is in the hinterlnds a voiceless throng, Mr Brown and Mr Cameron ... and even Mr Clegg would be unwise to dismiss their concerns.

In-out,In-out Sarkozy comes to the aid of perfide Albion to promote L'entente cordiale

Nicolas Sarkozy to bolster force in Afghanistan with 1,000 extra troops

French President Nicolas Sarkozy will tell Gordon Brown next week that France plans to send an extra 1,000 soldiers to Afghanistan to bolster the battle against the Taleban. Senior ministers have told The Times (March 22nd 2008) that Mr Sarkozy wants to underline his commitment to the alliance during his state visit to Britain.

Sarkozy calls for timetable for troop exit from Iraq

French President Nicolas Sarkozy made his first major foreign policy speech since taking office at the Elysee Palace before 180 ambassadors to France (Monday 28th August 2007) said Iraq's road to recovery begins with a clear timetable for the pullout of foreign troops as he outlined an assertive role for France in world hotspots.

Sarkozy recalled that France had opposed the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 "A clear horizon must be defined concerning the withdrawal of foreign troops," Sarkozy said .

Ex (?) MI5/6 Spy takes the Moral High ground in Scotland - Carry on Lying

Good news for the Lady Dame Jane Baroness Pauline Neville Jones Fan Club - they have insinuated another spook into the Conservative fold - this time as the Chairman of the Scottish Tory Party - not that under the frightful Mrs Annabel Goldie there are many of them left.

Andrew (call me "Andy" ) Fulton, 64 is an ex (?) MI6 operative , who was in a long and no doubt distinguished career , "attached" to various embassies over the last 30 years. He was "seconded" (trans. imposed) from Washington to his alma mater , Glasgow University's school of law to "help" the Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit *** give impartial advice to the world's media.Ho.Ho.Ho.

However his pompous and conceited adoption of the title "Professor" has rebounded on him and he is exposed in the Herald today in peddling himself under this adopted title dishonestly - Proudfoot Consulting, a firm which lists Professor Fulton an adviser, as does the website of edoMidas, a company that has him as its non-executive chairman, and as "Prof R A Fulton" on the site of the Scottish North American Business Council, which he chairs.

The Herald quotes a spokesman for the university : "Mr Fulton is not associated with the University of Glasgow's law school and is not entitled to call himself a Professor."

Fulton himself said: "We need to emphasise to people that voting Conservative is equally important in Scotland as in the rest of the UK. When I was growing up the Conservative presence in Scotland was strong. I see no reason why we cannot aspire to building towards that again."

Perhaps he should also emphasise that telling the truth is " equally important in Scotland as in the rest of the UK"

It will be interesting to see what emendations are made to the websites to put the record straight.

We went to the Bide A Wee Home for Distressed members of the Security Services to ask the grea Lady Dame Jane Baroness Pauline Neville Jones for her reaction to the news about her fellow Ex (?) spies joining the Conservative Party ...



Sadly she had fallen asleep so Toni Fabuloso ate ALL the grapes herself.

**** Alas the Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit Website http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/schooloflaw/lockerbie/is no longer - well it's there but it's "Not found ", here is a brief description of the Unit and here is the link to the Herald exposing Prfessor Fulton in May 2000 as a spy...."Last night, Fulton's boss, Professor John Grant, who is head of the briefing unit, said if allegations that Fulton was an MI6 agent were proved true he would have no option but to ask him to step down. Fulton works as co-ordinator of the unit, controlling its day-to-day briefings. His work with the unit, and as a visiting professor, is unpaid"

Fultons name appeared "Robert Andrew Fulton: 69 Saigon, 73 Rome, 78 Berlin, 84 Oslo, 89 New York; dob 1944. " in the list published on May 21st 1999 in the Executive Intelligence Review. Also on the Alpha List assembled by Richard Tomlinson . Not that that proves anything.

Mark Thompson is a twat, The BBC , lack of Trust and the triumphs of Strictly Come Dancing

The Trouble With Trust: Building Confidence In Institutions by Mark Thompson, DG of the BBC. Speech given at QEII Centre, London Tuesday 15 January 2008.

Is a tiresome piece of corporate self serving bullshit , only worth reading to confirm one's first (and lasting impression) about this lickspittle accountant and Gubment apparatchik . He kicked off by quoting Comrade Blair's "feral beast" speech to Reuters last year , as he exited with his carpet bag to keep the Zionistas happy in Tel Aviv (who evidently don't give a fuck about public trust, local or global) ..

"... this relationship between public life and media is now damaged in a manner
that requires repair. The damage saps the country's confidence and self-belief;
it undermines its assessment of itself, its institutions; and above all, it
reduces our capacity to take the right decisions, in the right spirit for our
future."

The audience in his echo chamber composed of metropolitan muttering classes were bombarded with charts, slides and powerpoint wizardry (apparently) ..but everything is OK now ..

"Surveys definitely suggested falling public confidence in phone voting, yet the
actual numbers of people voting – at least on BBC programmes like Strictly Come
Dancing – went up, not down."

So that's alright then. Thank Christ..democracy is safe in their hands.

He concluded .."Public trust is the life-blood of the BBC." and in the way they can of course orchestrate public views (see the current beautifully directed Newsnight / Today / WATO / PM syndicalised and syndicated drumbeat on Radicalising the young brown skinned, Koran waving, internet groomed , terrist, suicidal jihadist fundamentalist sons and daughters of chip shop proprietors ) the DG was on "Feedback" today just after WATO.. and Mark Thompson was batting off the softballs lobbed by Roger Bolton " ...this is all about giving the public the information , the facts and the arguments so they can make their own minds up.." (20.40 secs into recording available here (only available for 7 days replay)

Well consider this information ...

The Guided Bomb Unit-24 (GBU-24) Paveway III Low Level Laser Guided Bomb [LLLGB] consists of 2,000-pound of lethal High Explosive , in the typical MK-84 general purpose bomb, US $55,600 a pop. The operator (pilot) illuminates a target with a laser designator and then the munition guides to a spot of laser energy reflected from the target. One way to deliver LGBs from low altitude is a loft attack. In this maneouvre, the aircraft is pulled up sharply at a predetermined point some miles from the target and the LGB is lofted upward and toward the target. Get it wrong and the bomb will impact well short of the target. This can be dropped from Harriers and Tornado GR4's and other now antique RAF hardware and the Typhoon / Eurofighter (19 years in development at a cost that makes Northern Wreck look reasonable) dropped it's first into the Irish Sea recently , althoughn it neded another plane to illuminate the target (We'll ignore the BL755 CLUSTER BOMB with 147 bomblets that they can also carry and drop).



These two photographs show the general configuration and one with artificers gives a better idea of the size ...these are big muthas .. 2 tons all up.




Now the Royal Air Force are dropping these bombs on Iraq and Afghanistan every day ... and have been for years ... have the BBC provided you ...er .. " information , the facts ..." or even "the arguments " for dropping them?

Go and have a look at the daily bulletins of the Coalition bombing from the air on civilians for the last 4 years which Bomber Harris and the embryonic perfected in Iraq in the 20's and Hitler tried out first in Spain in the 30's

Here is the most recent (Jan 16th) of the daily airpower summaries for coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan

..."In total, coalition aircraft flew 65 close-air support missions for
Operation Iraqi Freedom - and Five Air Force and Royal Air Force intelligence
surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft flew missions as part of operations in
Afghanistan

" What happens on "close-air support missions" missions is rarely detailed ..on Jan 13th .."A Royal Air Force GR-7 Harrier performed a show of force to deter enemy activities in Musah Qal'eh. A JTAC confirmed the mission a success." In reading these reports for years, we haven't seen one described otherwise.

This relentless, endless daily listing of the massive firepower of the coalition forces, unchallenged either from the ground or the air does have it's comic elements. Only today there is a fine piece of military journalism ... entitled "Don't overlook airpower in joint counterinsurgency doctrine"

Field Manual 3-24 by the Army and Warfighting Publication 3-33.5 by the Marine
Corps, has been widely celebrated since its publication in December 2006 for
filling a gap in American military doctrine.

However, its relegation of
airpower to a five-page appendix does not fully recognize the important part air, space and cyberspace operations can play in neutralizing insurgencies, said
Maj. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap Jr., the Air Force deputy judge advocate general.etc.,

Apparently according to Maj. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap Jr., over 4 years into this illegal invasion of Iraq and "recosntruction" of Afghanistan the Coalition Air Forces aren't dropping enough bombs, shooting enough missiles and shooting up the terrists.

Now that's something else mark Thompsons BBC , dedicated to trust and "giving the public the information , the facts and the arguments so they can make their own minds up.. haven't told you. Yet.

As we finish this vile bile we are listening to BBC 4 "PM" .. Toni Fabuloso is inconsoleable to learn from the news headlines that Dawn French AKA Vera Duckworth of ITV's "Coronation Street" is killed off tonight.

Northern Rock Redux - Wisdom in hindsight, paralysed by inaction at the Treasury, and indecision at the Bank

"Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we inquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find that, as force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments as well as to the most free and most popular."

David Hume, 1758, "Of the First Principles of Government"

Is part of an anonymous comment to a post "(Northern) Rock - Paper (Tiger) by Prof. William Buiter at his blog "Maverecon" last week.

In this , Buiter made clear his view on the solvency / insolvency of Northern Wreck which he only hinted at in interviews on TV / radio ...

" ..... it is by no means obvious that Northern Rock (total assets £113 bn as of 30 June 2007) suffered just from illiquidity rather than from the threat of insolvency. The organisation has followed an extremely aggressive and high-risk strategy of expansion and increasing market share, funding itself in the expensive wholesale markets for 75% of its total funding needs, and making mortgage loans at low and ultra-competitive effective rates of interest. No matter how efficient you are, or how safe your assets are, if the effective interest rate on your borrowing exceeds that on your investments, you are unlikely to be a long-term viable proposition, no matter how impressive the growth of your turnover. Northern Rock’s share price had been in steep decline since February of this year, well before the financial market turmoil hit."

The same anonymous (and most likely American based) commentator also makes some penetrating observations about the way things are seen in the Brave New World of the Internet... (original capitalization)

"as the internet seeps further into mass use it dissolves the glue that has held together the nation state which itself has been concocted and held together through the control of opinion.

the internet is one large truth searching machine chewing through every scrap of data separating as it goes, the real from the fairy tale. anyone with a desire to find out what is what and who is really who can do so at little or no cost. this forces all governments and central banks to forsake widespread fraud, lies and deceit in the creation of their policies. a reality regrettably they have not yet figured out. washington, greenspan and wall street are emblematic of this principle.

they all wove and spun gigantic lies and frauds which have either collapsed or in the process are collapsing. washington with its lie based middle east pageant, greenspan whispering into the ears of homeowners to use their abodes as an atm machine and wall street for knowingly creating fraudulent derivatives and then flogging them to anyone and everyone while eschewing the risk.

we have reached a david hume moment of credibility.

welcome to the new world disorder."

It is increasingly evident that the Directors ( belatedly we notice the Chairman is a journalist - the pompous Matt Ridley) rude provincials to the core - and evidently proud of it, have prepared false accounts, declared themselves handsome and increased dividends, (which it appears they still inentd to pay themselves) continued (and continue) to trade whilst insolvent and gulled the BOE / FSA by cleverly allowing the politicians to conceal the truth of their folly.

The Daily Telegraph today

" ...the Bank has admitted that it is struggling to determine the impact of the credit meltdown on the economy.

Charles Bean, (known apparently as "Charlie. ed.) chief economist, said assessing conditions in the economy is "subject to considerable uncertainty".

(We will pass over the fact that Mr Bean ***(evidently well versed in the direst of platitudes) is in charge of the economics section - the plainly incompetent Sir John Gieve , who left the accounts at the Home Office in such turmoil that the National Audit Office would not sign them off, is one more useless civil servant than is necessary to run a Bank)

The Telegraph go on to report that ..

On Wednesday the Bank is due to publish the details of its new quarterly survey into credit conditions in the UK. The survey was launched in the 2nd quarter to help monitor conditions in the consumer and corporate lending markets, the first time the Bank has monitored the credit markets in this way.

The US Federal Reserve first introduced a similar survey in 1967, while the European Central Bank introduced its own in 2003.

That the German banks could, within ten days, resolve the almost identical problems that arose in the Saxony state bank demonstrates not their more efficient and effective monitoring , but the abitlity to make and take decisive action. It is claimed that Mervy King is a distinguished academic ... he gives the impression that he cannot really decide which shoe to put on first in the morning.

*** It appears - this is true, that Mr Charlie Bean was a classmate of Mr Griff Rhys Jones and te now sadly departed Mr Douglas Adams. Evidently a natural comedian.

Dubya's grammatical solecisms - it's all Barbara and George Snr's fault

Language Log is a treasure trove of anecdote and example of the precise use of the English language, it's history, development, etymology and often its current, sloppy and imprecise use.

Guru Mark Liberman ***(University of Pennsylvania Linguistic Data Consortium) brought our attention yesterday to the recent remark of the future ex-employer of Karl Rove;

"It surprised me, frankly, because the impression you get from people who are reporting out of Iraq is that it's like totally dysfunctional -- that's what your -- I guess your kind of -- your friend or whoever you talked to is implying. "

Keen followers of the President's more memorable public speeches will remember this was on the occasion of the White House Press corps harassing him after he had signed into law the COMPETES Act on August 9th when he more memorably opened his remarks with ..

"Good morning, thank you. When I came into office in 2001, our nation was headed into a recession. So we cut the taxes across the board......the American economy is the envy of the world"

From inanities to insanities in the course of a few minutes.

Anyway,back to Mark who had a friend who queried the claerly ageing ( he's 60) President's use of what we have become accustomed (we think, but read on) to hear from more youthful destroyers of their mother tongue.

Mark provides a detailed, clear account of his researches which commence with an appropriate record of the actual solecism ..



He includes other examples ;

On July 19, 2007, President Bush said:
"And the reason I say that, it just shows how difficult it is to do what some assume can be done, which is, like, totally seal off the border. "
And on April 2, 2004:
"I mean, I think it's a wonderful story about a mom and a wife who, instead of getting, like totally distraught with the circumstances, says, I'm going to go back to school."

He points out, that we are accustomed to frequent usage by what he describes as "Valley girl" (an anthropological distinction which is not apparent to us goddam limeys - but we like get the idea) as an emphatic adverb meaning something like "definitely", e.g. "omg, that's totally going on my myspace".

He starts by exemplifying the usage as "an occasional modifier of gradable predicates" (like dysfunctional), totally with an illustration from Jane Austen's Emma, the 1950's beat generation ("it's like nowheresville, man") 1960's hippies ("it's like psychedelic, man") making a shrewd guess that the current generation probably learnt it from their parents, rather than the reverse.

He also quotes from an academic paper by Muffy Siegel Like: The Discourse Particle and Semantics in the Journal of Semantics in 2002.

"Using data from interviews with high school students, I first adduce evidence that lends support to Schourup's (1985) claim that the United States English adolescent hedge like is a discourse particle signalling a possible slight mismatch between words and meaning."

In an update today, as a result of reader's comments he has undertaken some more research and searching an academic treasure trove (from the Linguistic Data Corporation dated from 1975-1977) of transcribed telephone conversations ( is this what warrantless surveillance is for ?) of 15,672 female speech and 12,571 conversational sides where the speaker is male.

He makes the surprising finding that there is a considerable sexual distinction in the use of like ; 184,184 for women and 156,799 for men.

Furthermore an analysis of the use of "like" in various word associations reveals an even greater and unexpected sexual divide ...

"In this collection, women used the expression "like I say" 545 times, and the expression "like I said" 2,264 times. But men used "like I say" 563 times, and "like I said", 1,302 times.

For women, the ratio of "like I said" to "like I say" was 4.51 to 1,, whereas for men, it was only 2.3 to 1. "

All this leads him to conclude ;

1. Adults were using discourse-particle like fairly frequently in professional settings, even a decade ago;
2. Contrary to stereotype, men apparently use it more than women do.

Taught the principles of constructing an English sentence at Altrincham Grammar School by the lofty and haughty Mr Brian Millard ( for whom we had the hugely original nickname of Milord), who used to scatter red ink exclamation marks across our work, for the incorrect use of gerunds or a hanging participle, as he scoured (and scored through) our essays with the enthusiasm and skill of a hungry truffle hound. Lord Patel will now, thanks to Language Log have an ear finer tuned to the usages of "like" amongst 60 year old men approaching their retirement.

Also with a little more tolerance of a younger generation, to whom one of their more irritating spoken solecisms of our language, has evidently originated long before their birth.

So we can therefore blame Barbara and George (Snr.) for their son's mangling of the language - and we had always blamed the booze, drugs and dissolute lifestyle as a rich, spoilt kid who never really grew up after his adolescence.

***Responsible for ..(2004) "The Simpsons has apparently taken over from Shakespeare and the Bible as our culture's greatest source of idioms, catchphrases and sundry other textual allusions." (see Times 11/8/07)

This drawing illustrating the above has been stolen from Mr Murdoch