Words and Phrases to Detest - "Life Chances".

"Life Chances" - officially, the opportunities each individual has to improve their quality of life.

This phrase is usually penned in the context of someone missing out on something that they or the writer believes they should get by default, even if they are too ashamed to admit it openly, preferring to blame others for denying them. Getting these "chances" the expense of whom is rarely tackled.

Fabians and such prattle on about "life chances" and wish to see more equality in them. This is basically entropic, but due to their sociofascistic dogma or just plan envy and self-loathing, they cannot see it or refuse to face up to it.

If you increase the chances of one, you must either increase the number of chances in the pool or reallocate the chances from one group to another. The first option is the Churchillian view, where more progress, more industry, wealth etc will raise some of those who have the capacity. The term "life chances" appears to be used by those advocating the second, entropic, viewpoint. Not only is it entropic, but there is a very strong Authoritarian, Sociofascistic element to it. If the chances are not created and there for the taking, then some entity needs to redistribute those chances - taking from one group or denying access to one group so they can be plopped down in front of those the Sociofascists decide in their infinite wisdom need more. Fact is people will not be happy with something handed to them. In some cases it will be resented. This basic human response is in a blind spot of those who want to salve their burning self-hatred by patronising and "helping" the "less fortunate" (but never to the extent of lifting them on a par with themselves, oh no). People value that which is won. Chances need to be fought for, earnt. Dismantling prejudices is a good way to assist people in advancement, while positive discrimination will breed resentment.

The Rule of Law is the prime mechanism for ensuring people have a fair crack at the whip, given the abilities they have or their ability to exploit that scenario. By building in bias, you erode the Rule of Law.

Alas, Sociofascists believe it is better to have the poor poorer, than see the rich richer, as Mrs T once said, as long as the gap is smaller between.

I think you will gather that I am in favour of equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes.

Hazel Blears - Totally MAD

I know I am not one for fence-sitting in regard to old Haze, but I can restrain myself no longer. Hazel Blears has the utter conceit to run for Deputy. Why should this poisonous creature ever consider herself fit to run a whelk stall let alone be DPM.

Hazel appears unable to separate truth from fiction, spin from fact. Questions are ignored and instead of an answer this rancid monster spews forth a torrent of disingenuous, sanctimonious political clap-trap. Totally at ease in delivering such nonsense with a straight face, Hazel is either utterly corrupt and contemptuous of the Public or is a deluded and deranged mental case.

We need to know who votes for her in the election so we can make our views plain.

We're Doomed because of YOU, mate.

Neal Lawson says we are doomed...well, we will be if we let him doom us, that is.

The last week seems to have thrown up an amazing array of dispiriting and bewildering stories for anyone who wanted to create a more equal and democratic society.

Depends on what you mean by "equal" and "democratic".

The news that CCTV cameras are to be given a voice to shout at anyone caught in the act of misbehaving...Then we have the benefit fraud lie detectors. In my youth I signed on. Then it was a degrading and humiliating experience. I don't suppose it has got any better. Now we make it worse by treating people as suspects and fraudsters. The government's message is that
it's being tough on scroungers - yet another crackdown to appease the Daily Mail and the Sun.

If the benefits system was not arranged like a hammock instead of a safety net, this kind of thing would be far less common. Neal forgets that sections of the community have been conceived, born, raised and now spawn their own paid for by Welfare. To them it is an automatic right, not a blessed relief from destitution.

What these two government measures have in common is that they both target the poor

They both target everyone else too. "The poor" is redundant and illogical.

and undermine any notion of collective security.

Highlight, more like. They are a manifestation of an extant undermining. Stop attacking the symptom (cameras) and attack why the cameras are there. You are missing the target and will not solve the problem.

Are insider-dealers or tax fraudsters subject to lie detector tests? Or, come to think of it, politicians who say that Iraq has WMD? Of course not. Will the cameras and the loud speakers be focused on cocaine snorting city traders? No.

Who else will they be focused on? Burglars? Coke dealers? Red Diesel sellers? Asylum Seekers? No.

The establishment believe society's problems are always caused by the poor and the weak.

Yes, if you consider the Establishment to be the Polly Toynbees of this world, who feed off the weak and unfortunate for their own patronising self-puffery. Poor do not cause problems per se, but they sure as hell give employment to armies of handwringers.

They are the ones who must be hounded and punished. It will be the people of Mosside not Mayfair that will be threatened. This is the way to divide and conquer while the real cheats and proponents of anti-social behaviour, some of the very richest in our society, get away scot-free.

like the present cabinet. It is not just Mosside, but Maidstone too. Your "rich v poor" argument is again without basis.

Another mad story is of course the kiss and tell Navy personnel, back from Iran and willing to spill the beans to the highest bidder. This issue has broken through to the population in a bad way. It was the subject of half time chat at a football match I was at on Monday night and the least political people in the world were outraged.

Have you considered this a refelction of the PC agenda being pushed? This event is utterly the beast of the New Labour and PC generation, the infantilisation of the population, not money.

Finally, and most sad of all, another young black boy gets knifed to death on our streets. A 13 year old takes the life of someone just a year older. How little can he have valued his life to take another so cheaply? One can only guess at the trivial incident that sparked it. When society has no respect for them these children create their own

Who lost that respect? Again, deal with the underlying problems not the symptoms.

So what joins all of these stories up? A society that puts money, private wealth and the economy first. A free market demands a strong state.

I disagree. What links them is an intrusive, overbearing and large State as the creator of the problems. A disempowerment of individuals has created anarchy on the streets where people cannot intervene. This has created the intrusion via CCTV and exactly what the State wants - it creates a problem and then "fixes" it in a way to further its original agenda. It creates feral children. Welfare State that is massive, dysfunctional and disconnects the giver from the receiver. It funds people to have yet more children regardless of their ability to care for them. It fuels more youth crime.

These kids have no geographic mobility, let alone social mobility.

Reason: Council housing. If they were in private housing they could move away. The big state is to blame yet again.

The one bit of good news is that the government seemed to have refused a Megan's Law style approach to paedophiles. It's not good in the sense that things got better, just that they didn't get worse. The fact that 80 children a year die at the hands of their family and only six by a stranger, means common sense has prevailed and more paedophiles won't be driven underground.

In this I wholeheartlily agree, except you miss out the important fact that PDO's need to be locked up, not left to roam.

Labour is supposed to be going about a process of renewal through its leadership and deputy leadership race. Campaign teams, web sites and, for some, hoodies with their name emblazoned on them, are all in place. Media interviews are eagerly secured. But on the issues that matter, like these, there is only silence.

Yep, and Santa is busy wrapping presents for next Christmas.

Only Jon Cruddas has attempted to comprehend and explain the social recession Britain is facing. He knows we can do better than this.

"socal recession". A new phrase to be scorned.

Hypocracy, thy name is Socialism

Well, Michael...hold on while I just take this call...Meacher wants the outgoing head of BP to have a pay cut.

"I call on BP shareholders to reject this grotesque pay-off," said Florence.

Well, I call on BP shareholders to reject this grotesque interference.

Yes, I think it acceptable that Meacher the Preacher should raise the existence of the payout, but he is in no position to pontificate on the matter. Considering MPs can and almost always do vote themselves substantial pay rises and other rarely audited cash perks it is a bit rich of Meacher to postulate:

"We need to end the situation where city bosses set each other's rewards. The remuneration committees that decide on chief executive pay should include representatives from the shop floor, to inject a sense of reality."

A "representative from the Shop Floor"? Who will that "representative" be, I wonder? Oh, let me see...a Union representative., I suspect. What will Fred Kite do once involved but use it as a lever for his/her members to get more than they deserve. It is natural for the Union rep to do that, but that does not mean it is right. Thus, it does not "inject a sense of reality".

This comes after a similar outburst by the now rather disappointing Peter Hain over City bonuses. Hain and all those who agree with him really are ibeciles - as if banks would pay someone a penny more than they needed to? Maybe they are so far up their own self-filling troughs they forget how the real world works...

UPDATE: I posted a comment on a related story to do with rents vs city bonuses at Tim Worstall.

Des Browne, NATO

...as in No Action, Talk Only.

So, the buck stops with him? Ok, then that would mean resign. But then again, that assumes the Minister has any true sense of responsibility. Words, it seems, are all that matter in NeueArbeit. They substitute policy, action, thought and even honour.

He wants to keep his job. I am sure the old chesnut about "so close to the May elections" will be trotted out blah blah.

Tone talked of "no reverse gear". His entire cabinet and ministers appear have not a single resignation letter between them.

Sea Sickness

Both Samizdata and The Devil have covered the vomit-inducing steaming pile of sopping wet nappies also known as "Who Moved My CryPod?", i.e. Arthur Batchelor's bleating story about his capture.

And the MoD purposely let this trash out the door?

A systematic attempt to discredit, destabilise and undermine the Armed Forces seems the only rational explanation but hey, we are under NeueArbeit, so anything is possible.

Court Martial. Nothing more, nothing less. The RN should be UTTERLY ashamed at this. I am VERY disappointed indeed.

p.s. what the HECK was someone doing taking an iPod on a search patrol? No wonder they were taken by surprise when they had their ears blasted by Coldplay.

Heathrow: The State Is Out of Control

In a story here, we see a classic problem. Fix after fix, tweak, fiddle, botch, patch and munge just to keep something going that should be rethought or replaced. In this case, Heathrow.

Heathrow is in the wrong place.

Prevailing winds blow the fumes over London - this is why smelly and dirty industry was put into the East End.
Aircraft approach over densly populated areas, often across the entire stretch of central London.
There appears to be something in the soil that prevents engineers from building rail platforms anywhere near terminal buildings and vice versa.

Their answer? Expansion. Congestion charging. A tunnel for traffic fumes. All this to enable Heathrow to expand whilst remaining within EU directives.

Expansion: A new runway, more terminals. Results in a destruction of villages.
Congestion Charging: To push people onto public transport they say - anyone with more than 1 bag or in any way unfit is in deep trouble using public transport at Heathrow because it is such an utter dogs breakfast. Long walks, up down up levels and the slowest lifts in Christendom. Result - people pay more, Heathrow is less competitive, Government gets more unearnt, undeserved revenue.
Tunnel for Fumes: The aircraft make the fumes, so clean the road traffic. This is absurd beyond measure. This is like saying there is too much illegal gun crime, so ban legal handguns. Oh, they've done that. Figures.

And remember all this to enable BAA - a SPANISH private company to make even more money. It was bad enough when a BRITISH private company could get the government to dance! At least the profits would be booked in the UK before. No guarantee of that now.

The answer is simple and it solves many problems at once. Anyone who has been to Hong Kong would know the answer because the wise custodians of that place made some excellent decisions over their awkward, congested and busy airport at Kai Tak. Their answer was to build a new airport at Chek Lap Kok on an artificial island and link it to the city via a new toll highway for vehicular traffic (mostly high speed buses) and a dedicated ultra-rapid rail link from Central to the terminal. Passengers are disgorged, not to some subterranian dust trap miles from anywhere connected via a long, tortuous, badly signposted, drafty set of dingy corridors and broken lifts, but to a platform in plain view of the check-in desks on the way in. For arrivals, picking you up from a platform in plain view of and at the same level as the arrivals meeting area. It makes the "Heathrow Express" look like a caravan on the silk road.

London needs such an Airport. The best way IMHO is to build it anew in the Thames Estuary and link it to Central London via high speed express railway. It will be easier to protect from terrorism, fumes will disperse out to sea, aircraft will no longer need to approach over a city of 7m people, no land will be taken and it can be built to a high specification using all the good ideas of Hong Kong and other airports.

Heathrow can then be shut down or scaled back to a fraction of its size. Land can be freed for housing or industrial use, remembering that Heathrow has existing transport links and would make an ideal residential area for commuters into the City. Blight can be removed from swathes of West London freed from turbine drone at 90-second intervals.

But no, this Government is going to spend our money on propping up the monopoly and profits of a foreign-owned organisation and take even more of our money. It is like they are demanding their "cut" of the deal - "We'll help you expand Heathrow, but the Congestion Charge is OURS!".

Britian is made less competitive, more expensive, still under threat, more congested and still one of the ugliest and inconvenient major airports to arrive at.

The importance of words pt.1

Improvement, not change, not reform, not modernise.
Investment, not spending.
Freedom, not choice.
Rule of Law, not leglislation.

"The Muslim Council of Britain"

"The" implies it has some right to exclusivity. This is untrue and misleading. It should remove "The" and use "A".

Next, the use of the word "Council" implies a State sanctioned, legally enforced and democratic mandate. It has none of these things. Remove the word "Council" and replace with another to suit their mechanism for membership and their behavour.

"A Muslim Cabal of Britain"

That is more accurate.

Bright Kids: "Lack of manure, Holmes" - Watson.

The Daily Telegraph reports (hat tip) that bright kids are dragged down - 120,000 going backwards.

How long does it take for Educationalists to wake up to basic common sense? 20 years? What is with these people? I know what - it is dogma. The dogma of "equality", of "mixed ability", of "lowest common denominator". The dogma of "Comprehensive Education" - a newspeak inversion if ever there was one. This is not a dogma of education, but of politics, and it has been bankrupt for generations.

Even before we get around to Grammar vs Comp, we need streaming in the forms and sets in the subjects so kids can be stretched to the correct degree. I think "houses" should also be used to bind years together and create healthy competition within the school. Gasp! The C word! The houses can be mixed ability and used to promote social mixing between the various aptitudes and abilities. Sportsmen, artists, thinkers, debaters can all represent the house in their best light as a champion for all, not be seen as exposing others' weaknesses or delaying progress within a class.

It is to the advantage of the Government we now have to breed a generation of dimwits who are incapable of critical reasoning, discipline or concentrating on one topic for any length of time. I do not trust Sociofascists who desire a "lumpen illitariat", a clay for their molding.

"Reject Labour and Its Mimics"

..., say FibbleDums.

Well, matey, the reasons I reject New and Blue Labour are pretty much the same reasons why I reject the Fibberal Dumboldtwats! You are all a bunch of Statist control freaks.

Reject the lead pipe for the rubber hose, eh? Not blinkin' likely!

The Life and Death of Colonel Blair

I do consider Nazism to be Islamism but without Allah (this is distinct from being a Muslim, btw, which is something altogether different).

From "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp", one of the best films of all time:

Clive Candy: I often thought, a fellow like me dies - special knowledge, all to waste. Well, am I dead? Does my knowledge count for nothing, eh? Experience? Skill? You tell me!
Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: It is a different knowledge they need now, Clive. The enemy is different, so you have to be different, too.
Clive Candy: Are you mad? I know what war is!
Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: I don't agree.
Clive Candy: You...!
Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: I read your broadcast up to the point where you describe the collapse of France. You commented on Nazi methods--foul fighting, bombing refugees, machine-gunning hospitals, lifeboats, lightships, bailed-out pilots--by saying that you despised them, that you would be ashamed to fight on their side and that you would sooner accept defeat than victory if it could only be won by those methods.
Clive Candy: So I would!
Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: Clive! If you let yourself be defeated by them, just because you are too fair to hit back the same way they hit at you, there won't be any methods *but* Nazi methods! If you preach the Rules of the Game while they use every foul and filthy trick against you, they will laugh at you! They'll think you're weak, decadent! I thought so myself in 1919!
Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: [he pats Clive's shoulder] You mustn't mind me, an old alien, saying all this. But who can describe hydrophobia better than one who has been bitten - and is now immune.
Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: Do you remember, Clive, we used to say: "Our army is fighting for our homes, our women, and our children"? Now the women are fighting beside the men. The children are trained to shoot. What's left is the "home." But what is the "home" without women and children?

Clive Candy: I heard all that in the last war! They fought foul then - and who won it?
Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: I don't think you won it. We lost it -but you lost something, too. You forgot to learn the moral. Because victory was yours, you failed to learn your lesson twenty years ago and now you have to pay the school fees again. Some of you will learn quicker than the others, some of you will never learn it - because you've been educated to be a gentleman and a sportsman, in peace and in war. But Clive! [tenderly] Dear old Clive - this is not a gentleman's war. This time you're fighting for your very existence against the most devilish idea ever created by a human brain - Nazism. And if you lose, there won't be a return match next year... perhaps not even for a hundred years.

We failed to learn in 1945, 1956 and 1989. We failed to learn each year since then. Islamism is just Nazism + God. It is Nazism with the excuse of "Divine Authority".

School Leaving Age Raised to 67 Pt2...

School leaving age raised to 67...then you are on your own!

Following on from my previous post, there has been some talk about the need for some compulsory education as a means to undermine the libertarian arguments against raising it (it exists already, so why the concern etc).

Well, the orgininal purpose of compulsory education was "to prevent young children being sent out to work".

Seeing as many people are (or is that now "were" due to NewLabour infantilisation?) quite fit for work at 14, let alone 16, the need to make education compulsory has a new purpose:

"to prevent young people being (recorded as) unemployed."

Typical NeueArbeit in that they utterly misunderstand what needs to be done.

Schooling should be there to prevent people being UNEMPLOYABLE, something this government has totally failed to do. And btw, don't be fooled by the stats regarding "5 or more GCSEs", as some GNVQs are recorded as the equivalent to 5 GCSEs. Lets see the numbers excluding GNVQs and my guess is it will paint a very different and tragic picture.

Now you can see why NeueArbeit refuses to accept such an idea that schooling is to prevent unemployability - for the solution would be to abandon their dogma surrounding education, that of equality/dumbing down and a "one size f's all" curriculum chock full of wiggle room in the form of "course work".

CourseWork scores should be published separately from exam grades. Cat, meet the pigeons.

F*ck off, I'm Too Highbrow

No, BBC, you are not.

Take a look at BBC1 on any given weekday evening and you will see an endless stream of vapid pap (Holby City, Casualty) or car-crash TV like Eastenders, which, as far as I can tell, is just a means for Sociofascists to brainwash the lumpen illitariat into behaving like twisted, deranged, paraniod, ranting, self-destructive losers - i.e. just how the Sociofascists want them to be. I have not watched BBC1 before 10:30pm more than a few times in over a decade, if at all.

Over on BBC2 Horizon has gone downmarket and is very often repeating itself every 5 minutes to cater for the international advert-riddled market - what I call the "Smokey Bacon Crisps Effect". 20 mins of content for every 60 endured. Some history programmes have cut the mustard. I suspect this is because the presenter IS the Historian and "over my dead body" being bellowed at the Producer by said.

The BBC has four Freeview TV channels. One should be dual SD/HD1080p right now and really should stretch the minds of the watchers. It should produce programmes that some people may on occasion have to watch again just to understand fully. The BBC is the best place for it, as the programmes are blissfully free from advertising breaks and so can pursue a complex theme and topic at length in one go without the disruptive intrusion of "AXA Home Insurance", "Cillit Bang!" or some bunch of chavs singing with their gobs full of fast food.

There should be programmes lionising great and good people such as engineers, heros such as those seen in Jeremy Clarkson's wonderful progamme on the raid at St Nazaire, inventors, sailors, farmers, doctors, scientists and philosphers. Programmes to inspire the young so they go on to want to make something of themselves, not slough off the couch into a Media Studies course or Doctorate in Beckham.

The BBC is THE place for it. ITV is quite capable of meeting the vegetative market for incontinent, background, entropic pap. The BBC has to raise the bar, not lower it. Do less, better. Eastenders should be stopped right now, in fact. Why should taxpayers money be spent projecting the worst kind of behaviour into homes every night as if it is the norm? It is a form of abuse.

Oh, I forgot. Just remembered what kind of person runs it - bunch of ladder-kicking Sociofascists. Figures.

Marines held hostage in Iran

Franky we do have a rather large squadron of bathtub Admirals and an almost equal, but disappointing shower of "scuttle before launch" self-loathers out there. (At least the Admirals have some backbone and spiwit).

This incident to me has 3 main aspects. Iranian motivation, the events of the siezure and the behaviour of the EU in the negotiations.

I see the hostage taking as a sign of Iran (read: Revolutionary Guard factions) doing anything to distract from being to blame for sanctions either by the distraction itself or heading off said sanctions. What does this tell you? Well, it tells me that the RG are concerned enough about the negative reaction to sanctions domestically to the extent that it might threaten their position. Even now reports are coming out of an internal conflict between reason and rabidity. What I hope can be pursused is that the UK government bears the Iranian people no ill will, because I certainly don't. We need to expose the hardliners in the administration as the problem, not the moderates, not the people.

Still does not explain fully how on earth the Marines got into the position to be nabbed in the first place, but seeing as all that information is only available to us via cyphers, it is hard to come to a firm conclusion, sitting at my keyboard. It could be anything from intentional blunder to scandalous malpractice and all points inbetween. We have no idea how many times the RN has had to operate at the border with Iranian forces lurking about. But 2 Nautical miles and a boat that can do 25 knots does mean about 5 mins before they would be surrounded.

The biggest concern I have is that the EU and EU member states are not contemplating economic leverage AFAICT. Frankly I regard the EU "foreign office" as a department hungry for influence and status. I suspect it will want to withhold its levers until the UK F&CO yields to its authority. It is thus trecherous and uttery petty, vain and self-interested. If the UK F&CO yields, I wish 4 drunken knights, fresh from the Iraq war, go round and scoop out the watery porridge that functions as Beckett's brains.

All this does not excuse the utter spineless, self-loathing, surrender-monkey behaviour of a rather large section of society so deep in their indulgence they cannot bring themselves to be outraged at the capture. It is shocking how silent such groups are when they are so quick to bleat and bellow when a self-confessed UK-loathing non-citizen is held because they are asked to leave but refuses to do so (and that no other country wants anything to do with them, mind). I detect a similar and frankly disgraceful echo in the way some NHS staff are said to shun the wounded being treated. How utterly disgraceful of them. How VAIN and self-indulgent.