Only the BBC would dream of digging up a graveyard full of corpses who were punks in 1977 when we were celebrating the Queen’s Silver Jubilee.

“I was against the Silver Jubilee, against the symbolism and the money being spent on the festivities. My friends and I thought the royals could afford to pay for the party themselves.”

Thus one Louise Bolotin, a 50 year old “writer”, reminiscing about those glory days. A real rebel was Louise..to show her rage against the machine she wore her “Stuff The Jubilee” badge ALL DAY…tell that to the Solidarity members who were being imprisoned in Communist Poland or the Cuban dissidents being tortured by Castro’s secret police. Louise showed true defiance and, what’s more, she feels the same today.

The Beeb revived other corpses to find the same sentiment and then proceeded to inform us of the historical/sociological significance of punk

Her attitude typifies those following the punk movement at that time. Although the nation had been encouraged to have a party in honour of the Queen, not everyone wanted to come.
The rising popularity of the punks provided a snarling, spitting, sometimes swearing outlet for some of the angry youths disillusioned with 1970s Britain – a time of strikes, economic hard times and high unemployment

What a load of pretentious colour supplement drivel. It wasn’t a movement, you moron, just a fashion trend like the Teds, hippies, mods, skinheads, Goths and thousands of others. There was no political dimension, just, like me in my Teddy Boy drainpipes in the 50s, a wish to irritate my elders by wearing something that made me stand out from the crowd and to make me seem intimidating (think hoodies)…the badge of youth in every generation.

However a tiny group of student/arty types muscled in on the trend and created a style industry and bigged it up to get some PR traction and, of course, with sound capitalist motives, to make some money selling music and fashion. These, like latter day Jacobites, are sad dinosaurs still dining out on the “movement” . Most of the punks, however, like the Teds and Goths and Mods grew up and became adults with families and proper jobs.

As for the BBC’s political point, as a teacher in South London during the 70’s, I remember that the punks tended to be the spotty, insecure loners on the fringe of school social life who found out of school solace in belonging to their outlandish tribe. In full punk gear they looked violent and terrifying but they were plaster board warriors who were essentially the embodiment of Urban Wimpdom.

So why did the Beeb even bother to visit this particular cemetery? The clue is in the description of 1970s Britain.. “a time of strikes, economic hard times and high unemployment”…it’s the BBC narrative about Cameron’s Britain and they are constantly searching for signs of disaffected youth. They thought they found it in the 2011 rioters but had to pull back when the public supported belated tough police action and harsh sentences. So, at the moment, they need to go back in time…except they forget to mention that punk erupted under a Labour government and the black fog of despair that fell about the nation in the 70s and helped spawn the punks was dispelled for the ordinary people of Britain in 1979 with the arrival of the BBC’s nemesis..

cross posted at Biased BBC

For the first time Britain’s Got Talent was not won by a singer or a dancer – but by a schoolgirl and the dog that sleeps under a sink in the family’s utility room – and though we were transfixed by the soaring operatic voices of Jonathan & Charlotte and our spines tingled with the passion of the Welsh boy’s choir we fell in love with Ashleigh and her dog Pudsey.

The public put those three acts top of the poll – a girl and her dog, two young people singing opera and a choir singing Welsh hymns. No rap, no hip hop, no street dancing, no pseudo Beyonces, it was almost revisiting the times of innocence in the 1950s…

The normally curmudgeonly and combative Jan Moir probably summed up the victory of Ashleigh and Pudsey best of all

what I love most about Pudsey and Ashleigh is the innocence. In the end, it is all about a teenage girl, her pet dog and the deep bonds forged between them as they grow up together.

Amen to that, Jan….

The BBC lost no time in pimping the foiling of the Yemeni Underwear bomber plot.

The US has foiled a plot by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to detonate an upgraded version of the failed 2009 “underwear bomb”, US officials say.

Quotes followed from Sec of Defence Leon Panetta and Sec of State Hilarry Clinton

“These terrorists keep trying. They keep trying to devise more and more perverse and terrible ways to kill innocent people,”

Full marks to all those involved in the uncovering of this AQAP (al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) terrorist attempt to blow up a plane. The US media really went to town on the story with wall to wall coverage in what became a clearly orchestrated valediction of President Obama’s record in the war on terror – and remember, it’s Presidential election year.

First the celebration of the anniversary of OBL’s termination, now this….”tough on terrorism, tough on the causes of terrorism”
As the UK arm of Obama’s re-election campaign naturally the BBC went deepthroat on the story. Except, as the days went by, it became clearer that this was much more of a Saudi/UK operation than a CIA coup.

The Guardian has learned from Saudi sources that the agent was not a Saudi national as was widely reported, but a Yemeni. He was born in Saudi Arabia, in the port city of Jeddah, and then studied and worked in the UK, where he acquired a British passport

The Saudi’s recruited him for their own security service and almost certainly kept the UK’s MI6 in the loop. However the Obama administration’s boastful publicity has probably made AQAP more aware of the threat from double agents. Experienced US intelligence operatives were certainly not impressed

Mike Scheur, the former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden unit, said the leaking about the nuts and bolts of British involvement was despicable and would make a repeat of the operation difficult. “MI6 should be as angry as hell………………………..this is really tragic,” Scheur said.
He added: “Any information disclosed is too much information. This does seem to be a tawdry political thing.”

Sorry, Mr Scheur, you obviously haven’t grasped the fact that the item at the top of the agenda was not the need to protect an existing network – it was to create a useful 2/3 day “shining moment” to maintain Obama’s re-election campaign. Kudos to the the left wing UK Guardian for posting this – to date nothing on these lines has appeared in the BBC website; indeed I wonder how much of it has been picked up by the msm in America. One thing is certain, however, if this had happened under President Bush the Beeb would have been in full Bush derangement mode.

Meanwhile, as Obama, Clinton and Panetta bask before the adulation of the media elite, British, American and Saudi agents must be bashing their heads against office walls in frustration…

….and doubtless, somewhere in Yemen, men and women are screaming in agony as they are tortured by AQAP “specialists” tracking down moles. But, as they and their families die, bleeding and broken, they must find comfort that they died for a higher cause – a nice spread of Obama boosting coverage in the New York Times and, naturally, the BBC…

Mark Mardell is so excited about Obama giving his support for gay marriage. A “courageous act” on this “hot button issue” chirps the Beeb’s man in Washington as he religiously obeys the BBC handbook on brown-nosing Barack Obama at very possible opportunity.

But many Democrats would rather their man led, than followed.
Just because the timing of this announcement was unplanned and unwanted doesn’t mean it was undebated within the White House.
They may have seen little alternative, but also recognise that President Obama gets some kudos for being the first president to support gay marriage.

You see the strategy – yet another OBL type “tough call” for the President with a spine of titanium channelled via Mardell who is clearly consolidating the BBC as the unofficial UK arm of the White House re-election campaign.

Mardell is obviously flagging this up as a gift to Obama’s base. What he conveniently forgets to mention is that the reason why it came out at all was because his “base” appears to be withering away leaving him vulnerable on his left flank. Moreover Mardell’s identification of this as a “hot button issue” is open to question. He quotes poll data but can it be really true that across America this is the number one question in factory, office or store rather than gas prices, Obamacare costs or entitlements?

Perhaps the waspish John Nolte from Breitbart.com hit the nail on the head when he tweeted

John Nolte ‏@NolteNC
Did Obama’s cynical same-sex marriage move energize his base more than our’s? Doubt it. And by “his base” I of course mean the media.

The slavish adulation of the American media elite and their refusal to ask any questions about his background, experience or questionable Chicago acquaintances was a major factor in allowing this man to rise without trace to the highest office in the land. They remain a major bastion of his support – and, to these people in New York, Washington and Hollywood, gay issues are at the top of the agenda.

But to the rest of America, maybe not so much….with the exception, naturally, of Mark Mardell and the folk at the BBC….

cross posted at Biased BBC

I am wandering around encircled by a mist of uncertainty and aimlessness. I need therapy. I need The Lovely Mrs P to cuddle me and kiss me better….

My Blackberry has been misbehaving – or, more specifically the scroll button has gone awol and refused to function. It has now been despatched for repair. The helpful young man at O2 says it will go to a UK based “repair facility” but I know that in reality a guy in a loincloth is running across Europe and Asia, through urban hellholes, across scorching deserts and over cloud piercing mountain ranges to deliver it to an inscrutable phonesmith in a secluded village in a far corner of China. Breaking from his study of Confucius and his imparting of the secrets of kung fu to silent acolytes he will conquer the recalcitrant scroll button with sharp blows from the edge of his hand and the perfume from an infusion of lotus blossom.

Meanwhile I must go cold turkey until the loin clothed messenger returns to Crawley Town Centre.

Well, not exactly cold turkey. The chap at O2 revived my ancient steam driven Motorola mobile and, after a frantic search around the house I recovered the appropriate charger so I will have some sort of connection on the move…but, how humiliating, just calls and text…no e mails, no tweets, no BB messenger, no street cred…

Just to think, this time last year I didn’t have a Blackberry. Indeed we used to make rather caustic comments to the younger members of our family about “being on that Blackberry all the time…”

How times and circumstances change…

But, do you know the worst thing about this whole scenario? The Lovely Mrs P’s BB is still working fine and this evening I will have to try to look elsewhere as she checks her e mail, sends her texts and – the unkindest cut of all – SCROLLS around with effortless ease….

BTW – I don’t feel so bad now I realise that a certain member of the royal family shares my pain….

Nigel Farage mocked the Eurocrats with his usual panache by this tongue in cheek encomium to Europe Day (May 9th). Good knockabout fun, as usual, but, towards the end he makes reference to a spectre of civil war and revolution in the wake of the EU’s self serving attempt to defy gravity by forcing savage austerity policies on counties like Ireland, Italy and Greece in order to shore up the Euruzone and, more importantly, protect German banks from the consequences of their drunken sailor lending policies over the last two decades.

The established Greek political elite unwillingly submitted to the austerity package demanded by EU. But a few days ago the people of Greece were able to voice their opinion via parliamentary elections.

The result? A total collapse of support for the mainstream parties and a large swing to the extremes of left and right – exactly the same thing as happened in the German election of 1932…and we all know what came out of that….

From Stephan Shakespeare an excellent postscript to Boris Johnson’s re-election as Mayor of London in a city that is natural Labour territory at a time when everywhere else the Tories were getting a drubbing.

You don’t win London by luck. And you don’t win London, at the very moment when 50% of its electorate are saying they would vote Labour at the next general election, just because you are likeable and funny. Look at the polling: the majority credit him not just with charisma, but with doing a good job – even a significant fraction of Labour voters approved of how he handled his first term as Mayor.

That is the key fact about Boris. Beneath the golly gosh public schoolboy upper class twit image is an incredibly shrewd political brain. What is more his four years as mayor has now shown that he is also a savvy and efficient administrator. Interestingly enough many working class Londoners recognised this aspect of Boris and broke with their tribal loyalty to Labour in sufficient numbers to vote for his return to City Hall. It seems that they have latched onto something that has bypassed most of the commentariat.

Boris is competent. He is charismatic, likeable and competent. He is quite separate from the Conservative Party machine and competent. He is low tax, anti EU tough on crime and competent.

Boris is one of the few politicians of any party who combines brains with charm and humour. They are three very useful skills to have when running for anything. I am not sure whether Boris will be a future Prime Minister, but one thing will be sure, if he does decide to go for it, nobody will say to him he hasn’t had any experience of running anything… unlike Messrs Cameron, Osborne, Clegg, Milliband Mi and Balls.

If I were David Cameron I would be feeling rather nervous about Boris – and if I were George Osborne I would be giving up any hope of becoming leader because the one word you cannot now associate with those two is COMPETENCE.

For the moment, at least, Boris is the only Tory game in town…..

OMG – this is the sound that, for me as a South London schoolboy in the mid 1950s, burst virtually out of nowhere and became my music. Raw, roughly hewn and totally ignored by the BBC, we could only hear it via the wobbling wavelengths of Radio Luxembourg or AFN Europe. There were no pretentious pseudo political lyrics, no “messages”, no pompous arty farty “rock journalists”……just a songs about girls, parties and having fun all played with a solid driving beat.

I thought it was all in the past – until, sixty years later, I came across J D McPherson…..unfortunately, because it’s 2012, you have to read about his band via a pompous arty farty “rock journalist”….

Great stuff…(the music, not the article)…

Over at Legal Insurrection they picked up on the Obama campaign slogan for 2012…FORWARD. Some critics mocked the echoes of early 20th century socialism to be found in the word.

But to me it brought to mind Macaulay’s splendid poem about the Roman hero Horatius and his two comrades blocking the path of an Etruscan army as it attempted to capture the narrow bridge across the River Tiber that gave access to Rome.

The heroic trio fought so savagely that the Etruscan soldiers in the front line hesitated before their onslaught. However those in the ranks behind who were safe from the Roman swords tried to persuade them back into the fray.

Was none who would be foremost to lead such dire attack:
But those behind cried ‘Forward!’, and those before cried ‘Back!’
And backward now and forward wavers the deep array;
And on the tossing sea of steel, to and fro the standards reel;
And the victorious trumpet-peal dies fitfully away.

Might not that ring true today when Obama and his team, safely ensconced in Washington and living off the public purse, demand greater sacrifices from those on the front line outside Washington in order to fill the government’s coffers and keep them in the style to which they have become accustomed.

But where oh where is there an American Horatius to keep those ravenous beasts at bay….

In a withering polemic against the political class Brendan O’Neill points out that 68% of voters did not exercise their franchise on a day when seats across the country were up for grabs in this year’s elections for local councils. As he points out 68% could easily be described as a “vast majority” if applied to a particular candidate – ergo one could say that the vast majority of UK electors decided to go NOTA and vote for None Of The Above.

What the political class (politicians, journalists and academics) might describe as “apathy” O’Neill perceives as a quite justifiable indifference

There’s nothing peculiar about the majority’s refusal to vote. It’s perfectly logical. At a time when the political class is fantastically disconnected from everyday people, when mainstream political debate has been almost wholly colonised by suits and PR people and media darlings, it makes sense for people to deduce: “This has nothing to do with me.”

But it is not only at the ballot box that ordinary folk are manifesting a distaste and disregard for political activity. The political parties, for many years the main engines of popular political engagement, have become professionalized and reconfigured beyond all recognition. Once thriving hubs of local grassroots activity swamping the streets during elections and raising cash between them, and always jealously guarding their own manor against the central party they have withered away into glorified branch offices of the London machine. The big money comes no longer from subscriptions, coffee mornings and jumble sales but from corporate or union donors meeting with party professionals in swish London offices.

The established parties have now become corporations whoring themselves out to special interests and dominated almost entirely by a tiny Oxbridge educated metropolitan elite who segue effortlessly from university to media/academia/political consultancy with little if any experience of real work in office, factory, shop or in any area where they actually have to make business decisions.

The result?

Britain is morphing into an oligarchy, with a gaping chasm emerging between the spin-doctored politicians and Twitterati who “do politics” and the man and woman in the street who do not.

But this disconnect cannot survive the dark hours that will certainly overwhelm us when we realise that the vapid word games and pretentious promises with which the political class seek to appease us will stand for nothing as the frightening truth about their financial ineptitude is finally confronted. As usual Mark Steyn points the way.

There’s a famous exchange in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Someone asks Mike Campbell, “How did you go bankrupt?” “Two ways,” he replies. “Gradually, then suddenly.” We’ve been going through the gradual phase so long, we’re kinda used to it. But it’s coming to an end, and what happens next will be the second way: sudden, and very bad