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…..

From Private Eye

£400m = Profit made by South Africa from World Cup

£700m = Profit made by FIFA from World Cup

ZERO = Tax paid by FIFA to South Africa, as per agreement made when FIFA chose S Africa as 2010 venue

FIFA has been described

as a house of privilege, arrogance and corruption, built not of bricks but mud.

….interesting…….

“Sea-Fever”

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

Although John Masefield (1878-1967) was a very popular poet in his day he is now largely forgotten – his poems regarded by the modern literary elite as too romantic and lyrical. Yet I would argue that Sea Fever is a beautiful poem that captures the feelings of anyone as they gaze out over the sea.
Strangely enough, though Masefield had briefly been a seafarer he was never able to adjust to the hardships of a sailor’s life. Yet his poems are probably more evocative of the sea than those of any other poet in terms of imagery, cadence and rhythm – and the nature of the modern world…..

“Cargoes”

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amythysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

Your daughter’s being bullied, your son’s class isn’t learning anything because the teacher can’t control it, the playing field has been sold off, the roof leaks, reading levels are below average and Year 4 have had five teachers in two terms but stop worrying – the school has its priorities right….

The kids lunchboxes have been secretly opened, the contents photographed and certain parents have been summoned to the school and accused of not conforming to official “healthy eating” guidelines…

A recently discovered unpublished chapter discovered in a mislaid file in the office of the publishers of George Orwells “1984”?

If only….

Its from something that’s been going on in schools in Gloucestershire in the UK for several months. However it has now been stopped because some parents thought it was a little intrusive.

Nonsense, said the school, acting as “soft cop”

we did it in a very nice and careful way, and in no way was it demanding and intrusive

The local Director of Public Health was “hard cop”

Childhood obesity is a serious concern and has major implications for the individual’s health and health services

The lunch boxes were opened and photographed by teachers who then marked them and fed the information into a database and parents who failed to get good marks were “invited” to discuss their failure with teachers (whose union leaders are always claiming are overworked)

All the parents were very positive about it

No doubt – but one can’t help wishing that several parents had gone in and suggested, forcefully but politely, that the man hours wasted in this KBG type snooping would have been better spent teaching the kids to improve their reading, writing and arithmetic……

In 2004 Paul Bristow and his wife Thea didn’t have much money. They lived in a modest house near Torquay in Devon and had fairly low paid jobs – he worked in a zoo, she in a souvenir business. But the father of three didn’t bear grudges for any of that. Indeed he and his wife had organised the local scout troop for twenty years in the belief that being part of a community meant giving something back.

His one concession to his own pleasure was to go regularly to watch his local football team, Torquay United, a lowly under achieving club in the nether reaches of the professional leagues, in their consistently doomed attempts to break through into the higher divisions.

One day Thea came home and told Paul she was almost certainly facing redundancy.

The next day they won £15 million in the National Lottery.

They then rented a cheap trailer in a seaside resort in neighbouring Cornwall and gave themselves a week to ponder their future actions.

When they got back they paid a builder to put a new roof on their garage. They had some new carpets fitted in some of their rooms. They replaced some of their furniture. They refurbished their bathroom.

Then they paid half a million pounds to take their entire scout troop for a two week all expenses paid trip to explore British Columbia.

A year or so later they paid for a similar trip to Austria.

He heard that neighbours were worried that nearby woodland was going to be ripped out by property developers. So he spent £100,000 buying the site so it could remain untouched.

And when he heard that his beloved Torquay United was about to be put into liquidation he led a consortium which took over the club and revived its fortunes.

This week Paul, aged 59, died of a heart attack

I went to his scout group, he was a lovely man and so generous to all of us, not only did I know him as a leader but as a great family friend

Thank you   RIP Paul Bristow x

So sad he died so young. But then I guess a man like Paul Bristow would see things from a different angle – thinking he was incredibly lucky to be able to use his good fortune to help others.

Thank God for people like Paul and Thea Bristow…