Saturday, July 07, 2007

More Upper Class Lefties

Thanks to Harry's Place, something on the background of the Guardian's Seaumus 'Mad Dog' Milne.

"You know what they used to say in the twenties ? 'Show us your calluses ! Why are your hands so white and puffy ?' Now that was Marxism !"

"I've been a worker, I've worked !" cried Rusanov, ..."


from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward.

Friday, July 06, 2007

Fire !

BBC

People in Oxfordshire are being advised to stay away from a large mass of foam, which is travelling down the River Thames and killing fish in its way. The fire-fighting foam spillage, which can cause irritation to eyes and skin, was first reported at Dudgrove Brook in Fairford, Gloucestershire, on Thursday. It is travelling towards Oxford and has already killed a large number of fish.

Hmmm. A large amount of firefighting foam coming from the direction of Fairford, eh ? Where on earth could the source be ?

The Environment Agency said it had traced the source of the pollution, but would not say what it was.

How mysterious. I trust nothing is amiss - least of all something that could affect the grand festival of big boys toys.

I took a quick google for Dudgrove Brook and found this :

The permission was subject to a number of conditions including engineering and surfacing work on Washpool Lane — the quarry’s main access road — and a Section 106 agreement covering further improvement works to surrounding public roads.

In addition, the site’s close proximity to the main armaments compound at RAF Fairford called for a number of other extraordinary safeguards over and above the more customary planning provisions. Following consultation with the Ministry of Defence, an inner ‘blast zone’ extending over a distance of 400m from the ammunition bunker was designated, within which the installation of any buildings used for the ‘congregation of staff’ is not permitted, a safety measure which necessitated a change in the planned location of the quarry’s office, weighbridge, workshop and welfare facilities.

Also, in response to the RAF’s concerns over the possibility of birdstrikes, the quarry will be worked dry to minimize the amount of standing water and hence reduce the site’s attraction to waterfowl. With the water table lying just below ground surface, this involves perpetual pumping and the licensed discharge of around 7,000m3 of water a day from a newly created perimeter drainage ditch into the local Dudgrove brook.


A Google Map search (hybrid or satellite is best) for GL7 4NJ seems to land you on something pretty similar to a main armaments compound. Go south a tad and there's the quarry. Lots of big pits.

Immediately south of the quarry there's another area where a lot of earth-moving seems to have taken place. At first I wondered which was the quarry, but Multimap, using what must be slightly older satellite imagery, shows the area south of our putative main armaments compound as a green field, with the trace of a road across it. This then is the quarry site, as work only began there in 2003. The earth-moving zone to the south is still there, but it's extended across the road to the west in the Google image.

Fascinating though it is, I'm not sure this kind of imagery - of the buildings, road layouts, fences of RAF/US bases - should be available on the Web. Too many politically motivated anti-Western vandals about, not to mention people with worse intentions than the useful idiots.

Makes life easy for spies though. Carry out espionage without leaving the home country.

Let's look at another secret place which had conflagration issues - Hanbury, Staffs. If you go hybrid or satellite then zoom out a tad, look to the east of Hanbury Hill and you'll see a large wooded area with some industrial buildings to the north and a roughly circular wooded area to the south. This circular area is the crater from the 4th largest explosion in World War II - the other three being nuclear.

BBC Audio on the blast here. Some site geology here. They still store fireworks up the road. More memories here.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Peter Akinola Interview

Times :

“The missionaries brought the word of God here and showed us the way of life. We have seen the way of life and we rejoice in it. Now you are telling me this way of life is not right. I have to do something else. Keep it for yourself. I do not want it.”

No Nigerian bishop needs to go to Canterbury to learn how to be a bishop, he says. “No Nigerian Anglican needs to go to Lambeth Palace to learn how to become a Christian. It is all available here. We rejoice in our fellowship, we rejoice in our heritage as Anglicans. We celebrate it. But our unity will never be at the expense of truth, of the historic faith.”

In spite of what Western church leaders fear, he has no ambitions to lead a breakaway church. “That has never been on my mind. This is the media thing. You see we have scripture. We have our traditions. We have not broken the law. It is your churches that are breaking the law. You are the ones breaking the rules. You are the ones doing what should not be done with impunity. We are saying you cannot sweep it under the carpet. Maybe in the past you could get away with it, but not any more. We have aged. So we are not breaking away from anybody. We remain Anglicans. We are Anglican Church. We will die Anglicans. We are going nowhere.”


Rasputin's not been a very good shepherd. The ageing, barren American and English sheep in one part of his pasture are given over to practices offensive to the healthier, more vigorous Nigerian flock. One side of the field bleateath not to the other. All very sad.


(An aside - perhaps the first violent jihadist attack in the UK was the 1995 murder of Nigerian Christian Ayotunde Obanubi, stabbed to death at Newham College in east London by mates of Ed Husein and totally off the radar of liberal England. One of those charged (the charges were dropped) with the murder was banged up for nine years not long back.

A Briton who allegedly tried to buy missiles to shoot down airliners has been jailed, it has emerged following the Old Bailey fertiliser bomb trial. Reporting restrictions covering the conviction of Kazi Nurur Rahman have been lifted. Rahman, 29, was arrested in November 2005 after trying to buy three Uzi sub-machine guns in a police sting. He pleaded guilty and was jailed for nine years but details were kept secret because of his links to the defendants.

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Burka Beardies

From the Guardian :

Tony Wright, a clever Labour MP, said we had heard enough from the minister about who would not be prosecuted under the act. But who might be?

Mr Goggins - his boss, Charles Clarke looked simultaneously stony-faced and embarrassed at his side, which is quite a trick - said vaguely that you might get a poster "showing women wearing burkas, saying that such women are not to be trusted, er, could be suicide bombers, er, who knows what they are hiding under their coats, a poster of that kind ..."


From the Australian :

Aziz was caught after a group of 20 burqa-clad women from the mosque started screaming as they were taken to a nearby school for security checks after giving themselves up, saying the procedure was un-Islamic.

"Our men spotted his (Aziz's) unusual demeanour. The rest of the girls looked like girls but he was taller and had a pot belly,'' a security official said on condition of anonymity.

Paramilitary officer Manzoor Ahmad, who saw the incident, said a policeman spotted one member of the crowd staying silent.

"The officer pounced on the lady, and as he grabbed her, the burqa came off and his beard fell out. He asked the man who he was and he said 'I am Maulana (senior cleric) Abdul Aziz,'' the soldier said.

Who Was That Masked Man ?

A few years ago, someone turning up fully masked to face trial in a UK magistrates court would probably have found themselves doing seven days for contempt.

These days it's the magistrate who's in trouble.

The vanishing M and I Words

I noted this week that the BBC had started to emphasise the non-Britishness and immigration status of terrorist suspects or arrestees - in stark contrast to their reporting of criminal cases.

Here we see common-or-garden young killer Hannad Hassan, described by the BBC as "Hasan, 17, of Colindale, north London" and by the Telegraph as "Hannad Hasan, 17, a Somalian refugee".

Contrast that with the coverage of these three.

"Al-Daour, who was born in the UAE and lived in Bayswater, had CDs containing instructions for making explosives and poisons."

"Moroccan-born Tsouli, of Shepherd's Bush"

If they'd just murdered someone they'd have been "Al-Daour, of Bayswater" and "Tsouli, of Shepherd's Bush" (the third guy was UK born).

So if a criminal's a foreigner we don't mention it, still less if he's a refugee or asylum seeker. Don't want to encourage xenophobia, do we ? But terrorists, since 7/7, are a different kettle of fish. The name of the game is now social cohesion, the celebration of commonality rather than difference. If a jihadi is a foreigner, we'll emphasise the fact.

The Today programme has a fascinating debate (20 mins in, RealAudio) on what seems to be a change in Government terminology. Apparently the words 'Muslim' and 'Islam' are pretty much being banned by government - and they're not "terrorists", they're "criminals". According to Nick Robinson, the M and I words did not cross the lips of either the Jelly Bellied Flag-Flapper or Home Secretary Smith during the recent comedic unpleasantnesses.

Funny - didn't the Labour Party during the Thatcher years go on about how unhelpful it was to call the IRA "criminals", that they were rational people fighting for a political objective ?

It looks from this report as if the BBC are already falling into line. Maybe Mr Altimimi is a revolutionary Marxist.

Those Who Cure You Will Kill You

Times

Canon White, who runs Baghdad’s only Anglican parish, said that he met the al-Qaeda leader on the fringes of a meeting about religious reconciliation held in Amman, the Jordanian capital.

“He talked to me about how they were going to destroy British and Americans. He told me that the plans were already made and they would soon be destroying the British. He said the people who cure you would kill you.”




(Graphic via the excellent Curly's Corner Shop)

The BBC has been wondering for years what the common factor was in a wave of attemped or thwarted British terror attacks. At last they've found a link.

Terror suspects all linked to NHS



Peter Briffa agrees - the NHS rather than Islamist ideology is the problem :

"The fact is, murder has long been a part of the NHS' remit.
For forty years now, ever since David Steel decided to get all sentimental about the pregnant poor, NHS doctors have been practising their homicidal skills on the nation's foetuses. It was only a matter of time before they decided to move on to the rest of us. We see this with the craving to embrace euthanasia, forcefeed ritalin on our children, and exterminate Mongolian Idiots. Death is what the NHS does."



UPDATE - Dumb Jon :

"They probably subcontracted the bomb-making to a nurse practitioner".

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Half a Ton of BNP Rice

With immaculate timing, the Crown gives us more alleged comedy terrorism.

"Kerena Cottage describes her husband beginning to discuss Asian and white cultures and began listening to what she considered radical radio broadcasts over the internet."

Some time after the chemicals were delivered on 27 September to Cottage's home in Talbot Street, Colne, police arrested him. The Crown say Cottage also had BB guns, a cross bow, gas masks, two 56 kilogram bags of sugar, a box of mini flares, half a ton of rice, 34 gas canisters, a selection of pellets and an air pistol. Also, officers found a series of printed bomb recipes from "The Anarchist's Handbook", downloaded from the internet.

"The prosecution say these recipes, particularly though not exclusively,show what the intention was of these defendants," said Miss Blackwell. "Namely, they intended to make an explosion from what they had. These two men agreed to order chemicals that put together would cause an explosion and had the ability to endanger life or cause damage to property. They didn't have them for any lawful purpose."


I can't work out here if the CPS are crap at their job or the newspaper reporter is. 56-kilo bags ? 56lb bags, yes - that's half a hundredweight in real money.

A crossbow, air pistol, BB guns, a 'selection of pellets', a 'box of mini flares' - are those like those mini rockets that we've got a box of, left over from Guy Fawkes - the ones that whistle ? I hope possession of such stuff isn't a direct route to the Old Bailey, because if so a lot of country-dwellers with kids will be arranging hasty bonfires.

During their search of Cottage's home, officers also discovered a hoard of food and weapons, which Cottage told police he had stockpiled as he feared civil war was about to break out.


Stockpiling food, eh ? Those '34 gas canisters'. I wonder if they'll turn out to be camping gas canisters ? And what's happened to the rocket launchers ?

Mrs Cottage told police her husband listened to radical radio programmes on the Internet and he became more controlling. "For example, he removed the aerial from the TV so she couldn't watch what he described as brain-washing material put out by the Government," she said.


Mr Cottage is being very unfair if he thinks the BBC is a mouthpiece of the Government. As I've said many a time and oft, they're quite happy to attack whoever is in power - from the left.

Mrs Cottage told the court her husband and Mr Jackson were "solid" friends who met regularly outside BNP meetings to discuss politics, the party and Hitler.

She said: "He thinks there's a war going to happen with the culture, the Asian culture and the white culture and that Tony Blair and President Bush are scheming against people. It sounded to me as if he was delusional."


It sounds to me as if he should be writing for the Guardian. And I presume the lovely Kerena isn't the star witness for the defence.

Giving evidence via a video link, Mrs Cottage said her husband had become friends with party leader Nick Griffin during his three-year membership of the BNP.


Likes to chat about Hitler, Nick Griffin's best mate - sounds too good to be true. It's things like this that make me yet again wary of (rightist) conspiracy theorists who think this whole thing is a setup, a kind of demonstration of even-handedness. After all, you've got an ex-BNP candidate - why not trail the offer of a couple of weapons and make the whole thing a bit less Comedy Capers ? Then have the trial before an election, with Mr Griffin having to bat away the questions at every interview ?

No, it's Mr Cock-Up yet again. Kerena Cottage either really doesn't like her husband, or was so reality-challenged as to think her social worker was the most sensible person to discuss hubby's firework fetish with. You do wonder if there may have been the odd leading question to establish the Hitler and Griffin 'signifiers', but that's as far as it goes.



Previous posts :

Huge BNP Bomb War Horror Shock Apocalypse

It's Tin-Foil Hat Time ...

Tsk Tsk

"Assassins In White Coats"

It could be worse. We could be living in a Socialist Republic.

Compare And Contrast

Yazza, 2007 :

"Send them packing to the Middle East or Pakistan," said a solicitor to much cheering at one table. "Time to say we love this country. For Muslims, no better country - that's why so many want to come over," added a businessman, who had come here penniless and turned his fortunes around within 10 years.

The father of the bride, too, arrived in Britain with little and joined a small English family firm. He brought entrepreneurial energy; they gave him encouragement and support. This ultra-loyal immigrant for many years led the pre-dawn prayers at our main mosque in Kensington.




Yazza, 2006 :

"This week, I have been at three events where the majority of people in the audience were educated, sharp Muslims, some exceedingly rich and good friends with key politicians and Prince Charles. Guantanamo Bay and Iraq are topics that now madden even these establishmentarians.

One gentleman took my elbow, shuffled me to a discreet corner and whispered 'I have been here for 40 years, dined with royalty. Today, if I was young, I would go straight to Bin Laden. Mr Blair is a war criminal. Don't put my name down, but tell him we detest him'".



Just goes to show the diversity of views among the Muslim community, I guess.

Monday, July 02, 2007

There's A Small Postette

At Biased BBC.

Hitchens ...

On top form, describing why the survival of the Tories is so important to Labour.

Mentioning that he (Peter Kellner - LT) had himself been a Labour Party member for 33 years, he said: "I think it's really important that the Conservative Party does survive as a substantial brand, because there will always be a need for a centre-right party."

Oh, really, I wondered as he spoke. What might that need be, and who felt it? Mr Kellner read my mind and continued:" If the Conservatives were to go the way that Peter expects (and I think possibly would relish) I am frightened as to what kind of right-of-centre politics would then spring up...

"One of the great virtues of British politics...is that we have not had a substantial far-right nationalist xenophobic party in Britain. A substantial Conservative Party is our best bulwark against the kind of politics that I think could become very nasty".

The scary language about 'far-right', 'xenophobic' and 'nationalist' is just the jargon that Labour Party people like Mr Kellner use to describe those who want to leave the European Union, those who don't want mass immigration and those who think that criminals should be punished. As for things turning nasty, I think myself that this would be far more likely as long as there continues to be no mainstream party to speak for the people of Britain on such issues.

He is absolutely correct to see the Tory Party as the Left's best line of defence against the development of a party that was properly pro-British and socially conservative - and the Cameroon Tory MP Ed Vaizey, who was sitting on the same platform, did not leap in to disavow Mr Kellner's endorsement.


He has a point. The BBC believe that it was Rock Against Racism which saw off the National Front. I thinkit was more likely to be Margaret 'Swamped' Thatcher.

The most famous use (of 'swamp') was by Margaret Thatcher way back in 1979, when the immigrant communities in Britain were half their current size. She spoke of people’s fears about being ‘swamped by people of a different culture’ and was roundly assailed for this by people who pointed out that ‘ethnic minorities’ only made up a few percent of the British population. With hindsight, some on the left have acknowledged that this speech, so condemned at the time, cut the ground from under the feet of the anti-immigration far right, who disappeared off the political map for twenty years.

In the light of the above, I blogged on the Tory choices regarding the minority vote and multicultural Britain here.


There are therefore three choices open to the Tories.

a) embrace multiculturalism in a half-hearted fashion as done currently, with the conspicuous success described above, in the hope that the wheels will come off Gordon Brown's bus in spectacular fashion.

b) embrace it and really mean it - go beyond Teresa May's wildest dreams. Major on self-help and education (thank you Hindu voters) and family values (add the Muslim vote). Problems ? Most competent potential Indian/Hindu leaders are too busy making money to bother with politics, Muslim leaders care about politics, but it's intimately linked with religion. The other great risk is that you'll shed party members like autumn leaves, some of whom, perfectly decent people, will find a home in the BNP.

c) accept the fact that these votes are unattainable and all that springs therefrom. Become the political voice of the Native Brits, grab what remains of the white working class vote, campaign strongly against further immmigration while retaining a strictly One Nation approach (i.e. no discrimination of any kind, judging on content of character rather than skin colour etc) to those immigrants already here and their descendants. Risk - a sad farewell to the Letwins and Camerons of this world. Plus no prospect of power for the foreseeable. On the plus side, the BNP will wither away like the State in an ideal Socialist society.


Hitchens view of the Tories ?

The Tories are an unleadable party based on a hopeless, seething coalition of people who hate each other and have nothing in common to enforce unity in their ranks. Some want to leave the EU, some love the EU. Some want homosexual marriage.

Others want heterosexual marriage to have unique privileges. Some want more grammar schools. Some hate grammar schools. These are not positions over which it is possible to compromise. Were he the Archangel Gabriel, and he is not, David Cameron could not turn this rabble into an election-winning force. Nor, if he did so, could he govern the country with any conviction. He would be in office, but not in power.

This means that the urgent task is to replace the Tories with a movement that can beat New Labour and which believes in something, and to do this we must bulldoze the wreckage of the Tories out of the way.

Sunday, July 01, 2007

The Risks of Passive Smoking

Christopher Booker :

In 1998 and 2003 came the results of by far the biggest studies of passive smoking ever carried out. One was conducted by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organisation. The other, run by Prof James Enstrom and Geoffrey Kabat for the American Cancer Society, was a mammoth 40-year-long study of 35,000 non-smokers living with smokers. In each case, when the sponsors saw the results they were horrified. The evidence inescapably showed that passive smoking posed no significant risk. This confirmed Sir Richard Doll's own comment in 2001: "The effects of other people's smoking in my presence is so small it doesn't worry me".

In each case, the sponsors tried to suppress the results, which were only with difficulty made public (the fact that Enstrom and Kabat, both non-smokers, could only get their results published with help from the tobacco industry was inevitably used to discredit them, even though all their research had been financed by the anti-tobacco cancer charity).

Robert Putnam

I blogged last year about Robert 'Bowling Alone' Putnam's research which suggested that the level of trust in a community is inversely related to the level of ethnic diversity.

He presented a paper with some of the data here.

(Professor Putnam is still optimistic though. As far as I can see the reasoning goes - America is a successful society. America has had lots of immigration. Therefore lots of immigration is the recipe for a successful society. It's not recorded if the Native Americans were asked for input.)


(name corrected - thanks)

Quote of the Day

Blognor Regis :

'why, generally, do the same people who reckon someone is totally British the instant he prises his fingers off the underside of a Eurostar almost always describe The Queen as "a German" despite her being able to trace her ancestors back to the 7th Century Kings of Wessex and 6th Century Scots ?'

Didn't Last Long, Did It ?

Financial Times :

Gordon Brown quietly slashed by a third this year’s hospital building and equipment budget in one of his last acts as chancellor.

Prompted by the tightness of the public finances, the new prime minister, who has placed the NHS as his “immediate priority”, cut the capital budget of the English NHS for 2007-08 from £6.2bn to £4.2bn. The move could delay the government’s hospital building and reconfiguration programme in England.

However, Mr Brown avoided equivalent cuts to the Scottish and Welsh NHS budgets even though the funding formula for the UK nations suggests they should have shared the pain. That decision leaves him open to criticism that he favoured patients in his home country.

...

The Treasury Friday night confirmed the NHS capital budget had been “adjusted”. But it indicated that, although it was not yet published, it would allocate the missing £2bn to spend to English hospitals over three years from 2008-09. No published health spending plans exist for these years yet, so hospitals will not be able to verify that the money is additional.


Well, everyone's been saying public spending is too high. But Mr Union Jack is getting off to a cracking start - by giving the English one last slap in the face as he leaves Number 11.

I can't see this story on Ian Dale or Conservative Home. Who will "speak for England" ?

Olga Craig

Middle name "gullible" .

Katie Gillespie gives a slight shrug. "It was a pretty average night out really, nothing overly out of the ordinary," she says, as she begins counting on her fingers.

"Let's see. Well, we saw the tail end of Ben Hitchcock's murder, the 16-year-old lad who was knifed to death in Beckenham. That was pretty scary. The gang of about 25 boys in dark hoodies scattering from the scene was really intimidating. Then, just after, we saw a kid injecting himself with heroin on the street. We drove up to traffic lights on our way to a bar and across the road there was a girl smashing a bottle and thrusting it into her boyfriend's neck. He was covered in blood and tried to get away by crawling across the bonnet of a car. But she came after him and stabbed it into his face and gouged it round and round."

The 18-year-old pauses for breath. (LT translation - she's thinking up her next story).

"Then, in the nightclub, there were a couple of fights. Most of the boys had knives. They keep them down their socks and you can see the bulge. That is the clue. If a boy approaches you and you see that, you walk away. Even the posh boys have them. Oh, and one lad chased another with an axe and a machete. He swung it into his head. He was covered in blood, too. I can't remember if that was before or after I saw another fight between two groups of boys.

In next week's Sunday Telegraph - the fifteen year old boy who sleeps with seven different women every night.

Muslims "Very Angry", Fear Backlash Part 4621

As ever, the BBC are foremost with the least predictable stories :

Mohammad Sarwar told BBC Scotland that he had received calls from people who had been threatened or targeted by abusive graffiti.

"I have spoken to a number of people from the Muslim community and the Asian community who feel very angry," he said.

"They're concerned about a backlash and that's why the emergency meeting has been called."


I feel we (and the BBC) need to keep a sense of proportion here. When Islamic terrorists killed 52 people on London trains and buses, what was the backlash ?

Someone said something nasty on a bus to a mate of Yasmin Alibhai Brownes, or was that after 9/11 ? A school dinner lady made an inappropriate remark to a Muslim child. An Afghan taxi-driver was badly beaten up in Kingston on Thames (I don't know if its ever been established if 7/7 was the motive). And an idiot in Edinburgh tried and failed to set alight to a mosque.

Perhaps before we beat ourselves up we should consider the deaths of 50-odd people killed by Islamic 'militants' on a train at Godhra, India in 2002, and the "backlash" of the non-Muslim population of Gujarat to that atrocity.

Kinda puts graffiti, even unpleaasant graffiti, into perspective. There are by the way, according to the BBC, some 500,000 Gujaratis living in the UK.

Council Election Results

via 24dash.com

Milton Keynes City - Whaddon: Lab 1108, C 914, England First 221, Lib Dem 129, Ukip 109, Ind 49. (May 2006 - Lab 1125, C 984, Lib Dem 220, Ukip 202, Better MK Ind 93). Lab hold. Swing 1.1% C to Lab.

England First voters are the difference twixt Labour and Tory votes. Looks like half their votes came from Tories and half from UKIP.

Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough - Slough: Lab 862, BNP 582, C 499, English Democrats 102, Lib Dem 83. (May 2006 - Lab 792, C 708, Lib Dem 346). Lab gain from C. Swing 6.3% C to Lab.

BNP from nowhere to second. Another English party takes votes. Lib Dems squeezed out of existence.

Pendle Borough - Craven: Lib Dem 632, C 260, Ind 241, BNP 237, Lab 76. (May 2007 - Lib Dem 736, Ind 428, C 405). Lib Dem hold. Swing 2.3% C to Lib Dem.

Lib Dems lose votes to Labour, Con lose more to BNP.

Sandwell Borough - Charlemont with Grove Vale: C 870, Lab 801, BNP 544, Lib Dem 238, Green 71. (May 2007 - C 1460, Lab 970, BNP 788, Lib Dem 671). C gain from Ind. Swing 4.9% C to Lab.

Haven't done the maths on this - the turnout seems to have dropped a lot. Labour gain Lib Dem and Green votes - share increases, Cons lose vote share, BNP tread water.

Wigan Borough - Tyldesley: Lib Dem 784, Lab 619, Ind 377, C 170. (May 2007 - Lib Dem 1838, Lab 447, C 370, Green 260). Lib Dem hold. Swing 19.6% Lib Dem to Lab.

Big Labour swing. The fabled 'Brown boost' ?

Fight of the Week

Ed Husain vs Ken Livingstone on the Today Programme (RealAudio). Not quite in the league of Galloway vs Graffy, but still good stuff.

I'll say this for Ken - his hatred of straight white England is totally non-ideological. If it was 1947 and Mervyn Paice and Clifford Martin had just been murdered, Ken would be welcoming Irgun delegates to Zionist conferences while explaining that the root cause of terror was our racist refusal to allow Jews into the ancestral homeland.

I read his "If voting changed anything" a few weeks back - surprisingly very tedious stuff, practically no politics in it, but lots of politicking. Organisation man par excellence. He'd have gone far in a big multinational. I noted his struggle with, and total defeat of, one John O'Reilly, who I would guess is probably the John O who ran various pro-criminal sites like MOJUK and NCADC from a Digbeth council flat.

Another ex-Jihadi, Hassan Butt, in the Observer :

"By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the 'Blair's bombs' line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology."