Why I like Jeremy Corbyn

I've finally worked out why I quite like Jeremy Corbyn and want him to be the next leader of the Labour Party.

He actually has ideas. Really bad ones, but ideas none the less. He thinks stuff like railways should be owned and run by the government. He thinks the erosion and degradation of British society is a good thing. He thinks we should destroy our military capability.

All of these things are wrong. All of them have happened anyway under both Labour and Tory governments who said these things were wrong and that they wouldn't happen. I don't know if Blair or Cameron actually think these things are good like Corbyn does. I suspect they just don't care and do them when in office because it's expedient.

If Corbyn stands up and says they are right then he has to say why they are right, and the Tories have to say why they are wrong. Cameron and his ilk can't do this because they don't really believe they are wrong, but others can. Whether that's a rump of level headed people in the Conservative party, UKIP or someone else compeletely doesn't really matter.

Next time we might not have to suffer the banality of the last election, with two vaccuous imbeciles arguing over basic administrative competence (of which neither have any) and attempting to outbid each other on a meaningless array of tax and spending promises they couldn't possibly keep.

Instead Corbyn's stupid, failed and wrong headed ideas would be brought out into the open where they would once and for all be smashed to pieces by uncompromising reality, probably even more comprehensively than they were smashed in the late 1970s where a then timid Thatcher was being advised by wets from the Heath camp, and Hayek, Friedman et al were a guilty secret, and the National Front was the main opposition to mass immigration. Now we have the likes of John Redwood who have been in governments who implemented free market policies and saw them work. We have the likes of Nigel Farage who can make a compelling case for national independence without being fascists.

So bring it on. Verbalise what the Labour party actually think and are planning to do next in their century-old quest to ruin Britain and watch the rotten idea fall apart. Or vote for another bland "modern" candidate who says all the right things about free markets, moderate taxes and national independence then continues to piss all over them.

Tin Foil Hat

As a keen wielder of Occam's Razor I tend to throw out conspiracy theories pretty quickly as convoluted explanations which rely on too many guesses, when there is enough errant nonsense and blatant lies spouted publically to last any angry man several lifetimes.

However, if the current migrant crisis leads as it probably will to calls for joint European efforts on asylum and foreign policy, and an EU defence force to back this up, haven't we had a brilliant few years of disastrous British foreign policy to make it seem like an attractive option? From our foolish intervention in the Balkans, to the disaster of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the idiotic overthrow of Gadaffi with no follow up plan, and our tinkering around in Syria despite parliament roundly rejecting our involvement. 

All of these things have directly contributed to the current crisis, and all were apparently inspired by a stupid desire to run behind the US and pretend we're part of some sort of global crusade for freedom, but one which we clearly don't have the military or financial might to make good on.

What better background against which to frame a new approach, pooling our resources with our more humanitarian European neighbours to have an EU foreign policy which Britain can be a leading part of? What better carrot to dangle in front of a vainglorious dimwit like David Cameron than the irresistible prospect of facing the President of the US as a true equal? 

In short, if you wanted to discredit the whole idea of a British foreign policy and pave the way for it's replacement with an EU one, you couldn't do much better than the dismal mess of nearly everything we have done since 1997.

Petition to the Guardian

I hadn't heard of Richard Seymour until his spiteful little comment recently about Simon Weston. Weston was injured during the 1982 Falklands war when an Argentine bomb hit the ship Sir Galahad on which Weston was serving. When Weston recently expressed his antipathy to Jeremy Corbyn apparently saying he would seek a deal with the Argentine government over the disputed islands, Seymour decided to step in with: "Seriously, who gives a shit what Simon Weston thinks? If he knew anything at all he would still have a face." 

I'm all for free speech and the right to express an opinion, but Seymour wasn't expressing an opinion. He could have said that Weston was just an old squaddie and his opinions on diplomatic matters didn't count for anything. He could have even said Weston was a publicity seeking right wing stooge if he really thinks that, though I would like to see any attempt at a reasoned argument for saying so.

He was making a crass and extremely nasty remark, which can only really be read as jeering at the life-altering injuries Weston sustained in the defence of British sovereign territory against annexation by a military dictatorship.

I don't think he should be prosecuted for it or exiled to Siberia or anything. He has the right to say it. I do think however, that it is a prime example of the sort of vitriolic hatred that many on the left have for everything good and decent which this country ever stood for, and underlines the fact that, at heart, they favour the grubbiest and most despotic regimes of the world when they're plainly in the wrong over a democratically elected British government whose colours they don't like.
So I have posted up a petition on change.org to ask Katherine Viner, editor of The Guardian, to stop publishing Seymour's work and giving a platform to this nasty and spiteful little cretin who has put himself far outside the boundaries of civilised discourse. Please sign it here.

Killing with Kindness

Anyone with a heart would be appalled at the picture of a dead toddler washed up on the beach at Bodrum, now being bandied around by papers like The Independent who link the story with their petition to let more refugees into Britain. As emotional blackmail goes, you don't get much more blatant or cynical.

However, it's worth looking a bit further into the story behind this shocking image before reaching the conclusion that throwing open the doors is the humane and decent thing to do.

Ayland Al-Kurdi, the boy who drowned had fled with his family from the war-torn Syrian city of Kobane. They had applied for asylum at the Canadian consulate and been turned down and were staying in the resort town of Bodrum in Turkey, far from the fighting in Syria. It was from Bodrum that they attempted to make the short sea crossing to the Greek island of Kos, where presumably they believed onward travel within the EU would be easier.

They could have applied at a European consulate in Turkey and made the journey overland quite easily in relative safety. Instead they chose to make a risky and illegal journey in the belief that this would speed up their resettlement. With Angela Merkel saying that Germany can take 800,000 refugees, you can't really blame them for trying. Who in their right mind would not attempt such a journey, when you can see Kos from the beach in Bodrum?

That though, is precisely the problem. Europe, with it's crowded cities and faltering economy simply can not throw open its doors to millions more migrants. The rise of right-wing parties across the continent demonstrates that Europe's population recognises this. The notion that we can is a dangerous delusion.

This child was not killed by those who recognise this and are demanding a tougher stance on asylum, but precisely by those like Merkel who deny this obvious reality and continue to encourage thousands to make these risky journeys in the mistaken belief that they will be welcomed with open arms and enjoy a life of plenty if they can just cross the 4km body of water between Bodrum and Kos.

True kindness is not competing to take more mirgants than we can absorb but sending a very clear message that illegal entry to Europe will not be tolerated or rewarded. Only then will we stop seeing these heart breaking images which are the inevitable consequence of encouraging thousands of desperate people to make dangerous journeys for which they are woefully ill-equipped.

The Transgender Fraud

You can see it gathering pace. The Huffington Post called it The Next Civil Rights Frontier and the sickly fawning over Bruce Jenner's decision, in his 60s, to become Caitlin Jenner. While CNN all but directly blamed the parents for causing the suicide of their 17 year old son by not embracing his wish to be a woman in one of the most cynical and one sided articles you could ever hope to read.

Of course Britain as usual is thoughtlessly bounding after this clearly ridiculous American craze. The BBC are fully on board as you'd expect with this article explaining how happy two young boys were to be treated as girls at the ages of 6 and 8; while Louis Theroux made a programme about some 'pioneering medical professionals' who are helping people change gender at ever younger ages.

Just to be very clear about what this means - children as young as 6 years old are being taken seriously in their expressed desire to be raised as members of the opposite sex. By age 11, or Tanner Stage 2 of puberty that can be administered 'puberty blocker' hormones to delay puberty until they are in a position to choose which sex they wish to be. Worth repeating. The perfectly natural and healthy development of children into adults is being medically delayed in case they wish to change gender.

One of the most common drugs used in this is Lupron. Luron isn't actually designed for this use. It is used to stop precocious (early-onset) puberty in children and to reduce the symptoms of prostate cancer in adult men. Lupron used on children and adolescents is said to cause "disastrous irreversible damage to sexual functioning," the long term effects of use in this way are completely unknown.

Secondly the idea that this treatment in itself will not prove hugely traumatic and disruptive to the life of these adolescents seems absurd. How can the child possibly develop mentally into the adult of the physical sex they are when they are prevented from doing so by drugs?

They are conditioned at a very vulnerable stage of their lives into believing a total myth that they can simply choose a gender and have surgery to make reality conform to this fantasy. It is nonsense.

I can't see this as anything other than child abuse.

If it is harmless then why not extend this choice to all children and let them make a fully informed choice about gender much later in life? Of course no-one would advocate such a thing at present. Who knows where a few more years of this insanity will lead?

There are detractors of course, and not just the religious right. Renowned psychiatrist and former Chair of Psychiatry of Johns Hopkins Paul McHugh wrote an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal explaining why he ended gender reassignment surgery. Feminist Julie Bindel has also voiced her opposition and come in for considerable flak for doing so, from the usual guard dogs of the politically correct Taliban - the NUS, feminist groups, and other activists.

And it's not just acceptance they seek. According to these estimates about 0.4% of the UK population defines themselves as "non-binary" and 31% of those confidently identify as trans. Out of a population of 60 million with a bit of farmer's maths I make that about 74,000 trans people in the UK, or slightly less than 1 in 800 people. I find that number quite high, but even so  that means you could go your whole life without knowing any trans people at all, and if they're somewhat convincingly presented as a woman you'd probably never have cause to find out. If this tiny number of adults wanted to parade around as being members of the opposite sex it seems doubtful that many people would even notice, let alone "discriminate" against them or treat them as outcasts.

But that wouldn't be enough. They want approval. They want the sort of gratuitous fawning that greeted Bruce Jenner, and they want permission to live out their obscure fantasies and impose them on children who they diagnose as having gender dysphoria. It is an absurd situation, and one which is being aggressively pushed as normal.

Dhimmitude

One of the ways in which the entire western world is utterly miss handling militant Islam is by focusing on large scale terror attacks and the despotic lunacy of groups like ISIS in the middle east.

Look at any part of the world where Muslim and non-Muslim populations live side by side and you will find problems with a number of common themes. As this demographic grows to be a larger proportion of the British population and the dominant group in certain areas I can't see any reason to believe that the same problems won't increase here.

Never mind the London attacks, the Lee Rigby killing or other such incidents which are extremely rare. Look at the systematic child sex abuse in Rotherham, or the deliberate Islamisation of schools in Birmingham and the systematic election fraud in Tower Hamlets. Look at so called "self-policing" where rape and murder go unreported in some areas.

And look at the way the authorities deal with this. Or don't. Systematically covering it up and allowing it to grow. And this list, admittedly published with a very clear agenda but no less true for it, of racially aggravated crimes against whites overwhelmingly by Muslims, and of the lenient treatment of offenders.

Then look at Kosovo, Chechnya, Burma, western China, southern Thailand, Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, East Timor, Sri Lanka, India and just about anywhere else in the world where a significant proportion of the population are Muslim and a majority are not, and you see the same pattern of violence, sexual abuse and intimidation from Muslims going hand-in-hand with claims they are oppressed and discriminated against.

This is not just a bit of friction or a few isolated incidents, it's a consistent pattern of behaviour. And nor is it something that was dreamed up by the tabloids. The Covenant of Umar sets out the terms for non-Muslims in Muslim conquered lands and outlines their status as second class citizens. This has been applied in some form by Muslims for centuries across the middle east and north Africa and other areas where they have come to dominate.

Of course it's not all Muslims, but nor is it just a few extremists. I suspect this sort of militancy is inherent in the way that evangelism is inherent to Christianity - you can be observant and sincere in your faith without it, however the urge to spread the good word and the feeling that doing so is a favour to the recipients appears to be very real and constant.

The result is dhimmitude. Areas where non-Muslims must be on their guard. Schools, prisons and other institutions being held hostage by the need to accommodate Muslim eating practices, observe Muslim prayer patterns and bend to the particular sensitivities of Muslims, and "authorities" who are too afraid of the shrill cries of racism and Islamophobia to act.

So don't just look at how many people are killed and seriously injured by explicit Islamic terrorist attacks in a given period of time in one place. Look at how huge swathes of the non-Muslim world are under constant attack, and how non-Muslims end up with living in fear, and and ask if this is something we really want to run the risk of replicating in Britain?

For me the answer is very simple No. I don't care a jot about international treaty obligations, they come and go. I can sacrifice the humanist, secular values which say that we should treat everyone equally regardless of religious beliefs, and that we should be welcoming to those seeking a better life. I can throw out my libertarian belief that border and immigration controls are a hindrance to the operation of a free market. And if that falls under some people's definition of racism so be it.

I would happily halt all further Muslim immigration tomorrow, have a strict system of deportation for any foreign criminals convicted of crimes in Britain and have an open campaign of rooting out Islamism in public institutions. I am also coming around to the idea of some sort of elective repatriation for those with dual nationality or recently acquired British citizenship who either choose it or who are convicted of certain crimes. For example 10 years for racially aggravated assault, or 3 years if you renounce British citizenship and leave the country permanently. 

Collective Masochism: The Cuckolds of Calais

And I didn't have to look very far for the first example of this crackpot sexual fetish which has come to dominate the political mainstream. Gleefully reported in The Guardian.

Meet Linda and Yves. A soppy couple in their late 50s who took in a Syrian migrant, 20-year-old Sayid. Linda cooked and danced to Syrian pop music with him. She reports that Sayid had said she was like a mother to him, and how she felt that it was something she had to do. There is a picture of them walking the dogs on the beach, Sayid proudly standing in the middle of the pathetic couple.

Yves, the hapless and weak-willed "father" who had the double pleasure of being cuckolded and having his daughter degraded by Sayid, wears his shame like a trophy. He reports with pride how their neighbours were "scandalised" by these arrangements and now cross the street to avoid him.

Of course "scandals" are racy and fun, but sorry to say Yves it was probably less of a scandal and more a mix of pity and disgust, with a healthy dose of anger at their new neighbour, who if he can't even hold back from criticising his hosts daughter one can only imagine how he might have behaved towards neighbours even less sympathetic.

And believe it or not it wasn't all a fairy tale. He would criticise their daughter, also 20 years old, for having uncovered hair and not yet being married. It's worth repeating that. This charming young man who was staying for free in their home and eating their food while attempting to illegally migrate to Britain, took it upon himself to criticise their daughter for not behaving like a third world Muslim.

Sayid eventually made it to Britain, leaving a big empty illegal migrant shaped hole in their hearts, and was housed in a B&B, presumably at the tax payers expense. His asylum application was rejected, so now he's living in Wakefield. Obviously.

Can this be read as anything other than a couple living out a cuckold fantasy?