Paul Dacre, much feared editor of the UK Daily Mail, wanted a journalist to go to America to find out about the Tea Party and Sarah Palin. One would have hoped that this might have produced a reasonable and fairly balanced bit of reporting on two topics that have not really been treated seriously in the UK media. Unfortunately he wanted to do it on the cheap.

So he sent airhead celebrity gossip hackette Jane Fryer instead. Fryer, who likes to pimp herself as “quirky” and “cutting edge”, is in fact a long established “filler” – that is when the paper needs a thousand words or so to fill an empty space she will scribble something on a topic nobody else is interested in….think paper clips, unicycles, turnips…..just to fill the gap. Think of her as a decorator rather than a journalist (I am sure there are millions of such hacks in the US…)

Still, equipped with her one brain cell and her company blackberry Fryer tootled off to flyover country to give us Brits the lowdown on what was shaking up American politics and came back with this.

Garbage. Garbage on stilts. A mephitic, palpitating pillar of guano – and what is worst, unlike the bats she actually got paid for depositing this malodorous mess onto virgin paper. For that reason alone I feel she could be a firm favourite to win the coveted Glenda Slagg Award.

She obviously went to the US and travelled around a bit so her expenses were probably quite fruity – hacks on expenses never stay in cheap motels or fly coach. She met up with Tea Partiers in Kansas and Illinois and played the usual hack game – all smiles and understanding nods with the “stiffs” (journalese for non journalists) then caricaturing them with an air of supercilious disdain once on the plane back to Blighty.

Palin, of course, gets it with both barrels in a way that is quaintly retro to those who keep up with the PDS scribblers of the MSM (RINOs and lefties). Even they have ditched the Palin as ditz meme now – the party line is the cunning and crafty Wicked Witch of Wasilla. Clearly Sullivan, Ambinder and Huffington didn’t send Fryer the memo.

So from which dark cave did Glenda (whoops, Freudian slip there folks….I mean Jane) collect and process her bat’s dung on the ‘Cuda?  The stuff about the Lear jet, Levi, the resignation speech etc. – was it someone else’s cave she visited, was there other DNA on the guano?

Enter “Sally from Anchorage” who told her that Palin had quit to make money and was now dead fish in Alaska. Fryer was so impressed by Sally’s honesty and perspicacity that she felt no need to vox pop beyond one (and anyway maybe the bean counters in the London office were sending a few texts about expenses)

Now here is a conundrum. Is there a familiar odour about the source of this Anchorage guano? And would we need to call for Sherlock Holmes to tease this one out – or maybe “Sally from Anchorage” is really someone else whose name also starts with S….

With her brain cell working to the max Jane is puzzled why the “Tea Baggers” (now where would she get that from?) should take Palin seriously as a politician as “She appears to know little about government”. She’s also “batty” with a “tawdry” family and ignorant about Russia and Africa.

Of course outside the weird world of right wing Republicans Fryer found nobody had anything positive to say about Palin

Investor’s Business Daily? They lied.

Roger Simon? You might be a big cheese at Politico but Jane Fryer has got your number. 

Camille Paglia? What would she know – and who the hell is she?

Willie Brown, former Mayor of San Francisco – obviously seduced by Fox gold.

Veteran Chicago newsman Clarence Page? Probably a GOP sleeper…

None of them have a clue about Palin. It needed a feisty, fearless and cut price hackette from London to tell it how it is, someone who knows about wrestlers….

Paul Dacre you have in your employ a true symbol of the current state of the dead tree press, a woman who embodies the core values of journolism.

She is already worthy of following in the footsteps of Glenda Slagg in terms of literary style but maybe some might go even further – is it possible that Jane Fryer’s investigative reporting skills are as well honed as those of that giant of The New York Times…..Jayson Blair?

You, dear reader, must be the judge……

Conservativehome has, in just a few years, become the leading website of the UK right. It tends to be Thatcherite in tone though contributions come from several positions on the conservative spectrum. It supports the Conservative Party but it has its own vision of what the party should be. It is often critical of the leadership and is not greatly enamoured of the coalition though, unlike many conservatives here and elsewhere it recognises that pragmatism is not a sin and that politics is about power as much as purity.

It also takes an interest in conservative movements in other countries and regularly comments on upcoming elections in Australia, Canada, Germany and, of course, the USA – and it’s the ConHome approach to American conservatism that is really beginning to wear me down.

Take, for example, this piece about David Cameron’s recent visit to the USA. From the headline – “ Could Cameron Provide Republicans With The Model To Beat Obama” – UK readers unfamiliar with the American political scene would assume that Cameron had made a massive impact on the American right – so much so that Republicans were no longer running around like headless chickens because Cameron had told them about budget cuts…

Read – and despair…..

Tuesday’s New York Times piece described David Cameron as a “Slasher of Government Bloat”. The article by John F Burns was premature in comparing Cameron to Thatcher but the fact that it appeared on the front page of America’s most important newspaper is noteworthy. Americans are partly interested in Cameron because they know that the Obama administration cannot delay its own budget cuts much longer. Cameron also fascinates the Republicans as they seek to be more than “the party of no”.

There’s the clue – “the party of no”……but then what more can you expect if you are reading about Republican politics in the New York Times? Well you can expect references to “Former Bush speechwriter Mike Gerson” writing in the Washington Post and – yes, you guessed it, the douchebag himself, the NYT’s conservative-in-residence Ross Douthat.

I couldn’t resist a comment

“America’s most important newspaper” – the fish wrap of record? You must be joking – and if you think Gerson and Douthat have their finger on the GOP pulse from their Beltway perches then you are mistaken.
In many parts of the US the GOP is more energised than it has been since the early 90s as a result of the Tea Party and they are turning away from the GOP establishment and choosing candidates who will fight Big Govt, not adapt to it.
Please please PLEASE stop getting your political insight from the NYT and WaPo – for a UK conservative site it is just not good enough…

You see almost every time conservativehome references American conservatism it is via people like these – plus, naturally, Brooks and Frum. That’s why very little has appeared there about the town hall meetings, the Van Jones affair, the Tea Party, the Palin endorsements, the Tea Party, ACORN, the Tea Party, the NAACP….and did I mention the Tea Party?

Toby Harnden at the Daily Telegraph is a hit and miss hack but at least he was savvy enough to include some names in his list of the top ten US conservatives that you will rarely see mentioned at conhome – except disparagingly ( 2,3,4,6,7 FYO)

The cure for this myopia? Visit my blog and regularly check out the sites on the right hand bar if you want to get a feel of what real conservatives (mostly outside the Beltway) are buzzing (OK I’m a traffic whore….) but if you’re really short of time just go to Free Republic and Hot Air – that’s worth twenty Douthats…..

Last year those on the left – and the right – who were writing off Sarah Palin (and they were legion) were directed to some wise words from the Chinese philosopher Lao Tse….. “No disaster is greater than underestimating the enemy.” This sage advice was given by a veteran who had cut his journalistic teeth in the mean streets of Chicago politics.

Roger Simon is the Chief Political Columnist of Politico. He grew up on the South Side of Chicago where politics was a contact sport.
At the Chicago Sun-Times, where he wrote a column four times per week, Simon was taught that the only way for a journalist to look upon a politician was down. He now fights against that impulse daily.

Not the first person who would spring to mind as a defender of Sarah Palin against the howls and sneers of a dismissive and disdainful pack of media pundits from right and left when she resigned as governor of Alaska last summer,

More than 13 months ago, I wrote a column that began: “Sarah Palin can be the Republican nominee in 2012. I am not saying she will be, but she can be. Those who underestimate her do so at their own risk.”
It was not the most popular column I ever wrote. I remember snickering and mockery from those who could not find actual vegetables to throw

I remember reading Roger Simon’s Politico article of thirteen months ago. I also recall at the time constantly checking to see that it was on Politico and not some sort of spoof site – and when I saw that Simon was “Politico’s chief political columnist” I just had to clear my head with a generous gin and tonic to ensure I was still on my familiar planet and had not been transported to an alternative universe by a red shift.

It was fair, it was respectful, it actually accepted her words at face value and it presented a shrewd analysis of her political potential. It wasn’t adulatory and it wasn’t written from the heart because Simon is a hard nosed veteran of the political scene and is very much old school in that he tries to work out the narrative behind the headlines. But also, like the grizzled small town sheriff working a case alongside the eager beaver college FBI suits, he trusts his instincts – and his gut feeling told him something about Palin that still stands true today

Now, more than a year later, I have not changed my mind about Palin’s political potential.
…………
I am basing my belief now, as back then, on Palin’s ability to connect with the base of her party. Name a bigger name in the Republican Party today. Heck, name any name in the Republican Party today.

I also remembered the advice Simon had for her. Now if Palin ever sat down to read the “advice” that she was given from the time she first appeared on the national political scene she would still be shuffling through pieces of paper when Willow was finding her first grey hairs. Fortunately she ignored it all. Yet you must wonder if Simon had a crystal ball somewhere in his office….

Since unsolicited advice is a columnist’s stock in trade, I had seven suggestions for Palin, back last summer when she was still governor of Alaska: Dump Alaska, surround yourself with people smarter than you are, pick a handful of issues and stick to them, study up, don’t believe you can’t do it, don’t go changing and don’t worry about failure.
Whatever Palin has been doing since then seems to be working. And I have noticed a certain change in how the media are viewing her.

Roger Simon is the perfect antidote to the serpentine slitherings of Allahpundit at Hot Air who merely uses Palin to generate traffic and who sentences her to political oblivion every three weeks.

Sarah Palin has something more than intellect. She has the ability to understand, connect with and energize her party.
And considering her likely opposition — Romney, Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty, Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee or Haley Barbour — tell me she has no chance. Go ahead and tell me. It’s enough to make one snicker

Read the rest here. As Simon says politics is all about connection and he has grasped a key political fact about Sarah Palin. There are, already, a considerable number of Americans who would sleep more easily in their homes with the knowledge that this fascinating and rather mysterious woman was keeping watch over their land…

Remember this Facebook post from Governor Palin a few weeks ago?

Something has to be done urgently to stop the out of control Obama-Reid-Pelosi spending machine, and no government agency should be immune from budget scrutiny. We must make sure, however, that we do nothing to undermine the effectiveness of our military. If we lose wars, if we lose the ability to deter adversaries, if we lose the ability to provide security for ourselves and for our allies, we risk losing all that makes America great! That is a price we cannot afford to pay.

Military historian James Corum, writing in the UK Daily Telegraph, highlights the risks of trying to deter adversaries with military forces based on the model inherited from the massive cuts of the Clinton era.

He lays the initial blame on President George W Bush and Donald Rumsfeld.

When the United States was forced into conflict after 9/11, President Bush made a huge strategic mistake – he accepted Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s policy of fighting wars without increasing the size of the armed forces. Bush’s close cabinet and advisors wanted to prove that the US could fight and win major foreign conflicts on the cheap.
This was unprecedented in American history. In every conflict since the colonial campaigns against the Indians, the Americans had increased the armed forces; defence came first because defeat was not an option

Rumsfeld’s attitude seemed justified in the early weeks of the Iraq campaign as Saddam’s forces crumbled in the face of superior US firepower and technology. But the subsequent insurgency exposed the flaws in Rumsfeld’s policy.

But fighting insurgents requires a lot of time and people on the ground. This was obvious after the first few weeks in Iraq when the failure to put enough troops into the country allowed it to dissolve into chaos and offered insurgents an environment to thrive in. Still, Bush and Rumsfeld were not going to admit a mistake – so the US forces were not even marginally increased until Rumsfeld was fired in late 2006

Even though the post Rumsfeld surge transformed the military picture the price of engaging in extensive deployments with Clinton sized forces is being paid by service personnel and their families.

For those of us working in the US military it was clear that by the surge in 2007 the US forces were in terrible shape. By 2007, the repeated deployments resulted in an estimated 30 per cent of the US Army with some degree of post traumatic stress disorder. Every indicator of morale showed problems. Divorce and suicide were way up. Officers leaving the service after repeated deployments meant that the promotion selection of those remaining rose to 100 per cent

Yet under President Obama there has been no attempt to reduce this strain

…..despite evidence of serious personnel problems throughout the armed forces, the Obama administration has continued the policy of defence on the cheap. In fact, President Obama has opted to further cut the armed forces even though the conflicts continue in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Navy and Air Force have already undergone significant cuts and there are plans to cut more personnel over the next two years.

Corum believes that no military force can survive long term on will power and courage alone and his assessment of the future is grim.

While Bush’s policies undermined the US forces, Barack Obama’s policies will break them. For the sake of the defence and stability of America and its allies, the Republicans need to fight these cuts and make national defence a major issue in the 2010 and 2012 elections.

Sarah Palin is the only leading conservative politician on the national stage who recognises that in a conflict between fiscal rectitude and the need for national security the cards must not be stacked against the military. This does not mean that the generals and admirals should be given carte blanche – history teaches us that they can be as profligate with the public purse on grandstanding projects as any Cook County machine politician especially in the key issue of procurement which can so easily get caught up with political pork. The money needs to be spent wisely – but there has to be enough money available to allow the military to operate at maximum efficiency.

At present there is not a shred of evidence that Obama and the Democrats are ready to face up to this challenge. Unfortunately, as Corum warns, it seems possible that the GOP establishment might well be as ostrich like as their opponents on this matter…

….and the enemy will smile……

Recently at a Labour Party meeting attended by the movement’s great and good, one of the speakers made a comment about Margaret Thatcher.

Labour leadership candidate John McDonnell drew loud applause from a party hustings after quipping that he would like to travel back in time to “assassinate” Margaret Thatcher.

Notice the loud applause – it exemplifies the hatred and venom still felt against Lady Thatcher from the left and its ideological accomplices in the media twenty years after she left the political scene – and the reason is absolutely simple. She committed the cardinal sin of breaking the left’s decades long grip on the levers of government. She pushed back the tentacles of the state. She broke the power of the unions. She refused to follow a foreign policy of apology and retreat. She completely ignored the advice of media and academic pundits – and she did it all with the support of the ordinary, everyday people who felt that she remained, at heart, one of them.

The left hate her because the Labour Party, which sprang from working class roots, has come to disdain the values of the very people it originally claimed to represent.

it turned its back on what used to be called “the respectable working class” because of its embarrassing resentments and “prejudices” against welfare claimants, immigrants, and anti-social youths. Bizarrely, among people who see themselves as profoundly empathetic, there was an utter failure to understand why the spirit of benevolent understanding and tolerance did not flourish among those whose daily lives were directly affected by a mass influx of foreign workers, or local delinquency, or a welfare system that rewarded inertia

So writes Janet Daley in the Sunday Telegraph in a warning that President Obama, the Democrats and a complicit media are now following the same path.

the Democrats, who once represented the interests of ferociously self-respecting blue-collar America, are now seen – under their highly educated president, who wholeheartedly embraces the orthodoxy of the liberal salon – as having abandoned their traditional following.

It’s a deliberate process, says Daley.

The president’s determination to transform the US into a social democracy, complete with a centrally run healthcare programme and a redistributive tax system, has collided rather magnificently with America’s history as a nation of displaced people who were prepared to risk their futures on a bid to be free from the power of the state.

The key to this, for Daley, is a strange new alliance

What is more startling is the growth in America of precisely the sort of political alignment which we have known for many years in Britain: an electoral alliance of the educated, self-consciously (or self-deceivingly, depending on your point of view) “enlightened” class with the poor and deprived.
America, in other words, has discovered bourgeois guilt

This alliance has sought to confine cultural and political debate within a framework specifically structured to delegitimise the concerns of ordinary Americans.

this sentiment is taking on precisely the pseudo-aristocratic tone of disdain for the aspiring, struggling middle class that is such a familiar part of the British scene.
Liberal politics is now – over there as much as here – a form of social snobbery. To express concern about mass immigration, or reservations about the Obama healthcare plan, is unacceptable in bien-pensant circles because this is simply not the way educated people are supposed to think. It follows that those who do think (and talk) this way are small-minded bigots, rednecks, oiks, or whatever your local code word is for “not the right sort”.

Hence, of course, the frenetic media attacks on the Tea Party (ignorant, racist, violent etc) and any political figure like Sarah Palin who appears to resonate (as did Thatcher) with those who are out of step with the this new aristocracy.

Read more of Daley’s article here – then go to Professor Angelo M. Codevilla’s brilliant and perceptive piece in the American Spectator where he drills deeper into the issues raised by Daley. The Democrats and their allies in the media and academia are, he says, the new “ruling class”. Outside this regime is the “country class”

Describing America’s country class is problematic because it is so heterogeneous. It has no privileged podiums, and speaks with many voices, often inharmonious. It shares above all the desire to be rid of rulers it regards inept and haughty. It defines itself practically in terms of reflexive reaction against the rulers’ defining ideas and proclivities — e.g., ever higher taxes and expanding government, subsidizing political favorites, social engineering, approval of abortion, etc. Many want to restore a way of life largely superseded. Demographically, the country class is the other side of the ruling class’s coin: its most distinguishing characteristics are marriage, children, and religious practice. While the country class, like the ruling class, includes the professionally accomplished and the mediocre, geniuses and dolts, it is different because of its non-orientation to government and its members’ yearning to rule themselves rather than be ruled by others.

Significantly the Professor titles his essay “America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution”. Like Daley he sees this time as a seminal moment- for unless action can be taken now the new aristocracy’s agenda will assume an air of unstoppable inevitability……a sad ending for what was once a unique experiment……..

Cross posted at Conservatives4Palin

Just when you think that all is dross you suddenly discover a glittering diamond……

This is Siobhan O’Dowd. She is a 21 year old “student” who set up a Facebook page praising a murderer who killed himself when cornered by police.

The creator of a sick internet tribute to killer Raoul Moat was yesterday revealed as an unemployed single mum.
Siobhan O’Dowd, 21, took down her Facebook page – which had attracted 38,000 supporters – after being confronted by The Sun.
O’Dowd set up the “RIP Raoul Moat You Legend!” site as the gunmen hid for six days from police after shooting his ex-girlfriend, killing her new boyfriend and blinding a cop.

This is Kate Nesbitt. She is a 21 year old Royal Navy medic who won the Military Cross in Afghanistan.

The brave blonde dashed 70 yards across a war zone to reach fallen Corporal John List, who was choking to death on his own blood. An enemy bullet had ricocheted off Cpl List’s body armour into his mouth – smashing his jaw and tongue.

Despite heavy fire from Taliban machine guns, Kate worked for 45 minutes to save his life. She stemmed the bleeding and then expertly performed a tricky procedure to open a second airway through the soldier’s nose.

God bless you, Kate….

The new UK government recently launched public consultation websites asking for ideas on how to cut public spending and reduce bureaucracy.

The results have shocked the media elite and their political outriders in the Labour Party. Ordinary everyday folk, forgetting that their true station in life is to accept without question the musings of the thousand families who form the Guardian/BBC/Academia Axis of Cultural Supremacy, have unleashed a wave of politically incorrect suggestions that strike at the very heart of Received Wisdom.

One Labour MP dismissed them as “offensive drivel” – I fancy she might have been referring to this

If someone steals cut a finger off for punishment, how many people do you know who would likely steal if they risk having a finger cut off? not many

Why can’t left wing media/political types be more nuanced about these sort of ideas?  Drill deeper into this and you’ll probably find someone who lives on a hellhole of a council estate where muggings, burglaries and vandalism are daily events largely ignored by a police force more concerned with ferreting out homophobic utterances or racist remarks than aggressive and bloody minded criminals with weasel lawyers.

Maybe the poster remembered an earlier time

Our society was once one where the vast majority were law abiding citizens who respected the rule of law and those who enforced it.  Doors were left unlocked, even open and only very rarely did anyone take advantage of that fact to steal, assault, rape or even murder the homeowner.

Which is why they made this suggestion (which got a fair amount of agreement)

It is high time that our legal system stopped pandering to the bleeding hearts and returned to a time when the law was feared, when sentences were harsh and prisons uncomfortable.  Some will say that the old system treated them like animals.  My opinion and I am sure the opinion of many others too is that CRIMINALS ARE ANIMALS and animals are NOT Human and therefore are NOT entitled to HUMAN RIGHTS.  They choose to act like animals and I respectfully suggest they be treated as such and therefore have entitlement to Human Rights legislation and protection revoked as a punishment for their actions and choices.

Another popular poster, who clearly worked hard for not much of a wage, was fed up with seeing “parasites and scroungers” living a life of Riley on government hand outs from his or her taxes…

Hardworking and honest people are undermined by a benefit system which appears to facilitate a more luxurious lifestyle for people out of work/ unwilling to work. The majority of social housing estates are littered with satellite dishes and, a glimpse in some homes (through programmes like the Scheme and others which illustrate the laziness and unwillingness of some people to work) inevitably have the latest leather sofas and the largest flat screen TVs/ gadgetry that money can buy.

Clearly the BBC needs to broadcast many more documentaries emphasising the human rights of these people to have plasma TVs and leather sofas to build up their self esteem….

And, of course, there is total ignorance of how it would upset the feelings of Guardianistas if we cut foreign aid – not to mention all those juicy salaries paid out by the aid industry.

I read in the D Telegraph that £42 million was given to China in 08/09to aid such projects as providing reading material so Chinese kids could identify Climate change! This is the country that gasses its population and has the worse human rights policy in the world!

£380000 was given to Saudi Arabia; argubably one of the world’s richest nations. My son is a policeman – that would buy him 12 colleagues.

India is one of the biggest recipients of our generousity with £250m a year. A nuclear power with growth expectations of 10% and a power that has its own Foreign Aid system – this is surely a joke?

And of course the inevitabe question of how much of this aid actually reaches those in need arises when despots and dictators are exposed with their fat bank accounts regularly.

Doesn’t this person realise that the whole point of Foreign Aid is to make the guests at London NW1 dinner parties feel good about themselves as they chatter over the sun dried tomatoes and chilled white wine?

It’s all smoke and mirrors, of course….not much will change. But at least it shows that decades of propaganda from schools, universities and the media have still not managed to suppress British robust common sense and sheer bloody mindedness – and a thread of dark, mocking humour…

Repeal the law of universal gravitation in it’s entirety.

Repealing the law of universal gravitation would help fast track our space program by making space exploration considerably easier and less costly.

 A possible side effect may be falling into the sun or shooting off into space, effectively killing all life on Earth.

Maybe one day we might eventually be so provoked that we shall rise up and break the grip of the elite…..meanwhile we can always make a note of convenient lamp posts….

According to Lord Mandelson in October 2009 the then Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown held a meeting with his cabinet colleagues in which they discussed possible strategies for the forthcoming 2010 General Election.

The talk turned to coining a pithy, easily remembered slogan that would clearly identify everything Labour stood for.

Brown’s deputy, Harriet Harman, brightly suggested the theme of Future, Family and Fairness, positive buzzwords that could be bracketed together as the three Fs.

Other ministers, battle scarred veterans of Brown’s shambolic government with a more realistic understanding of how much the UK public despised the political class in general and the Labour party in particular, believed that three Fs would indeed provide an appropriate encapsulation – but they had different words in mind.

Futile said election co-ordinator Douglas Alexander.

Finished was offered by Lord Mandelson himself.

As Gordon Brown glowered and Harriet Harman fidgeted uncomfortably all eyes turned to Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, the man who had tried to warn Brown about the risks of increasing the deficit.

Fucked declared Mr Darling.

Which neatly summarised the degree of confidence the Labour ministers had in their leader…..

Check the sky for flying pigs.

Has Hell frozen over?.

The impossible has happened. Alex Spillius, Washington correspondent  of the London Daily Telegraph has actually written a respectful, almost positive article on Sarah Palin. For nearly two years this man, together with his fellow Telegraph hack Toby Harnden, has totally belittled and trivialised Palin as an irrelevant airhead with quotes from the usual run of Republican “consultants” to buttress his disdain for The ’Cuda.

Spillius and Harnden, even though resident in the USA have never, to my knowledge, made any attempt to use actual shoeleather to research Palin or sought to arrange an interview.  Instead they have been content to parrot talking points from the NYT and WaPo or dinner party put downs from the great and the good of the Beltway.

But that video has affected the mercury in the political barometer.

Sarah Palin has released a campaign-style video heralding a “mom awakening” across America, renewing speculation that she will run for the White House in 2012.

Having styled herself as a “hockey mom” during her failed 2008 campaign with Sen John McCain, the mother of five has been instrumental in helping women, some of them relatively unknown, to win Republican primaries.

Nikki Haley, who is likely to become South Carolina’s first female and first Asian American governor in the autumn, was struggling until Mrs Palin endorsed her.

The fact that the new, slickly produced video became an instant talking point among Washington’s political class demonstrated how the former vice-presidential nominee retains a star power unmatched by anyone else in her party.

No Spillius article on Palin is ever complete without the compulsory quote from the Republican “consultant/strategist” – yet this time it’s no hit job…..

Despite the lightweight content of the video, she has recently made more policy-based speeches, including one on the need to protect defence spending from government cuts that Right-wingers are demanding.

Mary Matalin, a veteran Republican strategist, told Politico that while Mrs Palin wasn’t quite ready for a presidential bid, “every time this conversation takes place she has advanced the ball in her favour”.

An article like this in the UK’s top selling broadsheet is important on two levels. Firstly, for the Brits, it allows a foreign audience to see Palin as a serious political figure rather than a one minute wonder out of a Jerry Springer show.

But it has a much deeper significance for the USA. Spillius, Harnden and Co. purvey gossip and rumour from the political players of DC and their hangers on. For Spillius to write something like this means that there has been a shift of the tectonic plates.

Washington has started to take Sarah Palin much more seriously – and it’s beginning to show….

You can be a gangland killer and get £44,000 compensation for toothache.

You can throw your baby out of a window to her death because you’d had a row with your boyfriend and walk free from court.

You can kill another driver on the road because you were drunk and drugged up and get 4 years in prison (which means you are out within two years)

But if you want to watch your son compete in the races on his school’s Sports Day you must have been cleared by the CRB (Criminal Records Bureau)

A SCHOOL was yesterday accused of “lunacy” after it emerged that parents were not allowed to attend sports day without undergoing criminal records checks.

A horrified parent was turned away by teachers at De Lisle Catholic Science College in Loughborough, Leics, when he arrived to see his son compete.

The father was told he would need to have a criminal records bureau check to cheer on his 12-year-old.

He was incredibly angry but agreed to leave because he did not wish to embarrass his son by getting involved in a public confrontation.

This Kafkaesque nightmare springs out of legislation designed to ensure that convicted or suspected pedophiles are not able to mingle with children.

These laws have had no impact on the current levels of child abuse. Large numbers of children continue to be regularly raped, tortured and trafficked throughout the UK. On TV graphic sexual imagery and coarse language is now an integral part of many programmes. Retailers and designers  and children’s magazines encourage the sexualisation of young girls in order to maximise profit.

For the real abusers it’s Christmas every day.

But, via the CRB, a Mount Everest of bureaucratic paper has to be climbed by the law abiding guiltless while the guilty merely slither around it.

Never mind – it has created a nice little empire for several thousand jobsworths to get paid by the taxpayer to annotate files and tick boxes.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be too critical of the school. In today’s world turned upside down wise teachers with an eye on their career prospects are inclined to err on the side of caution in such matters.  Too often they have seen colleagues hauled before courts or pilloried by the media for displaying what in another age would be described as a nelsonian eye – otherwise known as basic common sense.

Oh –and one final ironic twist to the story of the dad and his son on sports day.  He is a taxi driver and therefore is regularly checked by the CRB…..