UK Commentators

This blog, last summer :

I was reading just the other day about how Central London property prices are soaring as homes in the capital's richest areas are increasingly seen as a 'safe haven' for capital.

Now the financial centres and the central luxury belt are full of rich people who can buy their way out of a lot of London's nastinesses - the schools, public transport. But as the safer areas become fewer, they'll start to feel increasingly like islands of wealth marooned in a resentful and lawless sea.

Telegraph :

Gangs of homeless Romanian beggars sleeping rough are turning one of London's most expensive streets into a 'disgusting health and safety hazard', it was claimed today. The group of around 50 beggars set up camp on the grassy central reservation of Park Lane after being moved on from nearby Marble Arch several days ago.

Local workers say the group, aged between 30 and 60, spend the afternoons gambling and drinking at the edge of Mayfair. One end of the central reservation, opposite an exclusive Aston Martin dealership, has been turned into a rubbish dump. Empty beer bottles, cigarette packets, half eaten food and clothes littered the grassy area, just a stone's throw from London's most exclusive homes and hotels.

A Westminster City Council spokesperson added: "Groups of homeless people have been moving around the area. They have slightly dispersed from Marble Arch. There is continued dialogue going on with outreach teams to try and get them to move on. They try to suggest that they return home and ask them what they are doing and how they are earning money. It is an ongoing issue and one which we think will require various strategies to tackle, including talking with the groups directly and monitoring chartered coaches arriving in London from Romania."

Now a protected group making the lives of ordinary Brits an utter misery over years is one thing for our rulers. Who cares about people who choose to live in Essex, for God's sake ?

But inconvenience and unpleasant vistas for the very rich (and very rich tourists) is something quite different. After all, it might affect the image of London as a financial centre and a welcoming haven for the world's wealthiest people. So I imagine the authorities will find ways and means - where there's a will, and all that. Nonetheless, it's a straw that shows the way the wind blows.      

This was on Google News (UK) headlines at lunchtime, and it's still there now. I guess they might want to think about tweaking the algorithm which picks the stories. You never know, there might be an element of bias in that report ...

Listening to radio news coverage of the Breivik trial a few weeks back, I was reminded of a couple of comment threads that struck me more than a year ago, as I idly browsed lefty London blog Bob From Brockley.


The first was on the subject of comment threads, moderation thereof, and how much is too much.

"I've been searching my soul about the point of blogging, anonymous blogging, comments policies and such things."

Now that's something any blogger can relate to. I won't go into details, but no one likes offensive stuff in the comments. Of course, it may be that one man's truth is another man's offence, and on some occasions the truth can be offensive...

Anyway, a reasoned set of comments. I note that nice American lecturer Sarah AB (of "If People Wouldn't Notice Things We Wouldn't Have To Hide Them" fame) popping up.


Then I read this post - the tale, how authentic I know not, of a concentration camp survivor who on release as a teenager not only stabbed the son of the camp guard who'd killed his family, but made it his business to hunt down the guard, deserting from the Israeli Navy in the early 50s to join the Foreign Legion, where the villain had enlisted - and where he met his just deserts.

I was pleased to see that the general feeling in the comments was against stabbing children because of what their fathers did (as I occasionally point out, "the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children" is a description of what happens, and a warning to fathers of the consequences of their sin, not a prescription for action).

But also in the comments, from one "Waterloo Sunset"* :

"**** the "rule of law". Fascists deserve killing, the only questions surrounding that are tactical ones, hence the lack of dead fascists in the UK."

With one bound we moved from the morality of killing someone who has slaughtered your entire family, to a general principle that "fascists" should be killed.  I hadn't noticed that the UK had a fascist or Nazi party, so you have to assume he's talking about members of the BNP.

Does Bob, who searches his soul about comment policies, recoil in horror at this homicidal commenter and reach for the delete key ? The strange thing is, two comments posted after the homicidal one have been deleted, so it's not as if he's not reading his threads.

Another commenter tries to tease out the nuances in the approach to killing "fascists".

So Waterloo, does it make a difference to you if the fascists have/had power, or is simply holding fascist beliefs enough for you to condone their execution? 

Our potential mass killer (I've no idea what current membership is, but the BNP used to have ten thousand-odd members IIRC) responds :

It depends on whether you're talking about morals or tactics. (Although I'd see this as more about fascist activists, as opposed to those who merely hold fascist views without acting on them).

Morally, no, I don't have an issue with it either way. The violence we see from fascists now pales in comparison compared to how they'd be in power. So I don't think the argument that any direct action against fascists needs to be either a) strict self-defense or b) in retaliation for a specific act by an individual fascist holds any water. In fact, that strikes me as a really bad idea. Why wait until after fascists are in power to stop them? Fascism doesn't start with concentration camps. That's where it ends.

Tactically I think a policy of targeted assassinations would be very unwise, certainly in the context of Western Europe. I'd shed no tears if Griffin got killed, but I don't think it would do any real good overall. There's several reasons for that. To 'step it up' in that way would obviously lead to massive ramifications from the state and I don't think there's enough benefit to justify that. The political climate isn't right for this kind of 'propaganda by the deed' and is unlikely to be unless we do actually have a fascist movement on the verge of gaining power. It's a distraction from the more serious issue about taking back the streets (EDL) and the war for hearts and minds (BNP)....

On physical force anti-fascism generally, I think the old 43 group slogan of "maim, don't kill" is broadly still correct tactically. 
  
Bob removes a follow-up comment, presumably negative. That nice Sarah AB gamely sticks to the subject, trying to ignore the rapidly spreading pool of virtual blood. The guy who wasn't too sure about such tactics still isn't convinced, and our killer gives chapter and verse on why he's hopelessly naive and exactly why we must kill the "fascists" before they do anything bad. After all, by the time they're actually doing bad things, it'll be too late, won't it ?

And at last Bob descends to the fray. Whatever soul searching he's done, I'm not sure I like what he's found therein  :

On the substantive issues, I kind of think that we need to approach this question on something like 4 different levels: moral, political, strategic, tactical. Morally, I respect pure pacifists, but I can't go along with them, and it is certainly the case that certain forms of fascism straightforwardly pass any sensible moral test in terms of deserving stopping physically.

On a political level ...

and so on. And on. And on. Back and forth between the two, with the occasional interjection from that nice Sarah, gamely hanging on in there, not liking at all this talk of killing and maiming people - but then they are fascists, aren't they ?

I find some of the comments here a bit startling (though I'm not completely unsympathetic).

And on, and on, back and forth. While I think we can say that Bob isn't actually, at this moment, in favour of murdering BNP members and activists, his disinclination to grab a Kalashnikov and start shooting is hedged around with so many qualifications and reservations that, were he a hideous rightie, you'd decide that perhaps you'd rather not be linking or commenting there. Talk about "terms and conditions apply" !

Two points - nay, a third springs to mind

a) you can see where a UK Breivik could get ideas from, were Brits to go in for that kind of thing, which thankfully they don't. Once you kick into play the idea that the other side, whoever they be, are going to kill you if they can, so you'd better kill them first ...it's self-defence, innit ? Which is exactly what Breivik is pleading IIRC.

b) the idea that the BNP, English Democrats, UKIP or any other of the anti-immigration, anti-EU parties can in any sense be compared with the Nazi Party, amounts to a disgusting libel on the British people. The kind of vileness in that comment thread is an affront to the peaceful tradition of British, and especially English, political history since the Civil War. I won't go into all the history now, but the various unpleasantnesses and crimes of the Nazis, from anti-semitism to genocide and aggressive war, were all present in German history and politics before Corporal Hitler ever stepped into a Munich beer-hall. (And of course the "left" in the form of the Soviet Union, didn't manage too badly on the anti-semitism and genocide front itself). For good historical and geographical reasons, we have long been the only virgin in a continent of rape victims. Brits don't do fascism - that's a European political tradition - and we do well always and everywhere to avoid European political traditions.


c) Sarah's comments are instructive - in that they show in microcosm how an essentially decent person can, despite their (good) instincts, draw toward accommodation with evil - when the evil comes from those you've come to think of as good, and they tell you that bad things have to be done to other, worse people, in order to protect you. I think there's a lesson there for all of us - and thankfully, this time it's not a history lesson.    




* defiling Ray Davies' classic as well as being a potential mass murderer. I'm not sure which is worse.

(comments are off, alas for the usual reasons)

"Ikea 'used Cuban prisoners to make furniture' "

Someone called Michael Scarfo, on the threat to Western Civilisation that is Mark Steyn:

A more extreme example of right wing extremism can be found in Anders Breivik, the Norwegian gunman who chillingly murdered seventy-seven people last summer after publishing a manifesto speaking out against liberal policies and Islamic immigration.

This sort of xenophobia is abhorrent to most Canadians, just like it is to most Europeans, but it appeals to a larger portion of our populations than we'd care to admit.

Quite frankly I doubt that even a tiny proportion of Canadians, no matter how right-wing, are attracted by the idea of massacring scores of innocent people. I think he must be getting "innocent people" mixed up with "baby seals".

"As a Guardian comment thread grows longer, the probability of a critical or abusive reference to the Daily Mail approaches 1."

Guardian prison interview with Steve Gough - the "naked rambler" or serial indecent exposer according to your taste. I'm not sure I'd like to meet him when out for a stroll with the kids, but his periods out seem to be shorter and shorter these days - possibly due to his attempts to live his entire life naked - including his air travel. Apparently ever since his 2006 attempt to walk naked to John O'Groats he's been in a series of Scottish prisons - often being arrested immediately outside them as he leaves, naked, having just completed a sentence.

Eventually Gough's case was heard at Scotland's appeal court, where it was found that breach of the peace should indeed be interpreted to criminalise his behaviour. Since then Scottish sheriffs have fallen in line; his sentences have steadily increased to the maximum and, should he keep refusing to dress, he will be caught in an endless cycle of two-year sentences. He insists if he were allowed to return home naked to Eastleigh, he'd cease being naked in public "when I don't have to do it any more".

I have an awful feeling this story's not going to end well.

Whenever he pops up on the news (usually having been sent to prison yet again) I'm reminded of this passage from Hardy's Far From The Madding Crowd :

George's son had done his work so thoroughly that he was considered too good a workman to live, and was, in fact, taken and tragically shot at twelve o'clock that same day -- another instance of the untoward fate which so often attends dogs and other philosophers who follow out a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and attempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largely of compromise.

Osborne is truly the heir to Brown, although I doubt Gordon was big on coke and hookers in his student days. He's the heir in that the tax rises only become apparent in the days after the budget, couched in terms like "simplification" (a great phrase for his granny tax) and "correcting anomalies".

The "Greggs Tax", which adds 20% to the cost of food if it's bought hot (effectively taxing a pasty from the bakers like a restaurant meal), will, apart from wiping out the supermarket rotisserie counter (but good news ! when the chickens are stone cold there'll be no VAT!), do terrible damage to Swansea.

At the literal and metaphorical heart of Swansea Market (itself the heart of what the developers have left of the city) are the two stalls which make Welsh cakes on hotplates. There are other stalls selling the cakes, but aficionados like them hot. Whenever I'm there (quite often) I'll pick up some cold ones to take home and for work colleagues, and hot ones to eat within the hour at a relative's. Round the cake stalls are laver bread, cockles, local butter and cheese and other goodies. You may gather I'm fond of the place.

Hot cakes are already more expensive than the cold ones on other stalls, which are baked offsite. Adding a 20% tax to these cakes is a cruel blow to these small but historic businesses and to Welsh cake lovers all over the civilised world.

I doubt very much that Osborne has ever set foot in Swansea Market. It may not be his fault, but in the Commons he has the air of someone who at school might have delighted in holding lower-form boys heads in the toilet then pulling the chain.

I hope that the Welsh Assembly will be in uproar over this iniquitous tax. Let's see what the Plastic Parliament in Cardiff is made of. If ever a tax strike could command overwhelming support it would be here.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard ponders the wealth of nations :

For China, the cheap labour era is over. It faces the "Lewis Point" where the limitless supply of migrants from the countryside dries up and urban wages surge.

Pay has already been rising at 16pc to 18pc annually in the Eastern cities for several years, and this is now happening in Chengdu and Chongqing in the heartland.

I'd heard vaguely before of the economist Arthur Lewis, the first black person to win an academic Nobel, and his famous model :

In his story a "capitalist" sector develops by taking labour from a non-capitalist backward "subsistence" sector.

At an early stage of development, there would be available an "unlimited" supply of labour from the subsistence economy which means that the capitalist sector can expand without the need to raise wages. This results in higher returns to capital which are then reinvested in further capital accumulation. In turn, the increase in the capital stock leads the "capitalists" to expand employment by drawing further labor from the subsistence sector. Given the assumptions of the model (for example, that the profits are reinvested and that capital accumulation does not substitute for skilled labor in production), the process becomes self-sustaining and leads to modernization and economic development.

The point at which the excess labor in the subsistence sector is fully absorbed into the modern sector, and where further capital accumulation begins to increase wages, is sometimes called the "Lewisian turning point" (or "Lewis turning point") and has recently gained wide circulation in the context of economic development in China.

So as long as there's a plentiful supply of new labour, our capitalist doesn't need to raise wages. In its original development context, we're talking early-to-mid nineteenth century - the stuff that people like Dickens and later Zola railed against (in Zola's case after it was well on the way out).

By the latter half of the nineteenth century the country had moved to town, working class living standards were rising - and they didn't stop until the 1970s.

Lewis was writing in a 1950s Britain where "Globalisation In One Country" was undreamt of. It didn't occur to him that a wealthy country might start to put in train the reverse process, bringing in millions of poor from all over the world (a process which a change of government shows no sign or intention of stopping) and stopping wage growth in its tracks, before reversing it. Inflation's been over 5% for three years now, wage rises around 1% a year. That's a hefty cut. Asset price inflation - especially housing - has been high for 25 years.

And, as Adam Posen will tell you, it's a lot easier to let inflation lower real wages than "crush" nominal ones.

But unlike China, where the Communist capitalists, having a concept of a nation and a national interest, won't start importing millions of foreigners the moment wages go up, Britain seems likely to see this "un-development model" continue indefinitely. There are only a finite number of peasants in China, and it's a big country. Eventually, if the Communist Party continue their impressive capitalist stewardship, the average Chinese may be comfortably off.

The UK is a very small country, and there are a lot more poor people in the rest of the world. It could be a very long time before the "limitless supply of migrants" dries up and the UK becomes the first world economy to experience a second Lewis point.

Maybe when I mooted the prospect of UK real wages reaching Chinese levels I was being over-optimistic.

Following Google's announcement that they intend to harvest my entire Google search history and sell it to the highest bidder, along with my email address, blog posts and the right to drop ads everywhere based on the content of my personal emails and search terms (if I understand their (deliberately?) prolix but unhelpful privacy policy correctly - the above may not be 100% correct but it "illustrates a wider truth"), with a certain sadness I've today changed my homepage to IxQuick, which advertises itself as "the world's most private search engine".

It's probably wholly owned by some intelligence agency - indeed, it's approved by the EU, so caveat emptor. It has an anonymised Google front-end, for those who can't do without Mountain View.

Pity. Started on Altavista all those years ago, been using Google for ten or more years. But as the marketing side of Google took off, quite apart from the annoying ads which follow you around from site to site, I'm increasingly pained by Google's attempts to return the results it thinks I'm interested in, rather than the results I've asked for.

It's not just Andrew Gilligan - here's the Telegraph's Jeremy Warner on yet another looming Argentinian financial crisis (turns out that, like the Greeks, they've been fiddling the figures) :

Argentina's problem is that it remains mired in a politically and economically corrupt past. Until these things change, it will continue to stagger from one crisis to the next, regardless of the exchange rate regime it adopts. Devaluation is no substitute for structural reform. Given the origins of its immigrant population, it is perhaps no surprise that the Argentine economy actually has quite a lot in common with the troublesome periphery of the eurozone. In terms of its problems, it's Italy, or even Greece, magnified several times over.

I see. One set of wops and dagoes is very much like another, eh ? ... Laban takes him to task as I did Mr Gilligan.

Isn't all this stuff just the worst sort of racist stereotyping? The idea that Latins in Argentina are fiscally irresponsible because Latins in Europe are fiscally irresponsible is ridiculous.

Next thing he'll be saying that Swedes in Minnesota are thrifty and hard-working.

Mr Warner, you're an intelligent man. Surely you must have been taught that we are all exactly the same, and that's why we should celebrate our differences?

If you want snaps of punky herons, Harpy is your only (wo)man.

Her views of the turbulent sea off Mumbles inspired me to take the camera when I was down there today.

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It was pretty grey and getting dark, so it looks black and white. But Laban's no Ansel Adams, that's for sure.

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The magic of digital effects turns a slightly blurry shot :


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Into something a bit more more pointilliste :

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(I know it's all going to hell in a handcart ... but I'm too tired to blog political and cultural reality. Harpy and I look at the world from very different angles, but she blogs herons for the same reason I'm blogging Mumbles. At this moment I agree with Molesworth 2 :)

'How beautiful,' sa your mum to your pater. 'If only you could be noble like that ocasionaly.'

'It is only a world of makebelieve,' he repli. 'You must face up to reality.'

'Reality,' sa molesworth 2, 'is so unspeakably sordid it make me shudder.'

To do the torturing of children to death that the natives just won't do !

(You try getting a local exorcist these days when witchcraft's a problem)

Telegraph - "A soldier has been killed in an explosion in Afghanistan in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand Province."

It was New Year's morning, and I lay thinking of my boy, and wondering what this year would bring him. It was early in the morning before I slept. And it seemed to me that I had scarce been asleep at all when there came a pounding at the door, loud enough to rouse the heaviest sleeper there ever was.

My heart almost stopped. There must be something serious indeed for them to be rousing me so early. I rushed to the door, and there was a porter, holding out a telegram. I took it and tore it open. And I knew why I had felt as I had the day before. I shall never forget what I read :

"Captain John Lauder killed in action, December 28. Official. War Office."

It had gone to Mrs. Lauder at Dunoon first, and she had sent it on to me. That was all it said. I knew nothing of how my boy had died, or where - save that it was for his country. But later I learned that when Sir Thomas Lipton had rung me up the previous night he had intended to condole with me. He had heard on Saturday of my boy's death. But when he spoke to me, and understood at once, from the tone of my voice, that I did not know, he had not been able to go on. His heart was too tender to make it possible for him to be the one to give me that blow - the heaviest that ever befell me.

It was on Monday morning, January the first, 1917, that I learned of my boy's death. And he had been killed the Thursday before ! He had been dead four days before I knew it ! And yet I had known. Let no one ever again tell me that there is nothing in presentiment. Why else had I been so sad and uneasy in my mind ? Why else, all through that Sunday, had it been so impossible for me to take comfort in what was said to cheer me ? Some warning had come to me, some sense that all was not well.

Realization came to me slowly. I sat and stared at that slip of paper, that had come to me like the breath of doom. Dead! Dead these four days ! I was never to see the light of his eyes again. I was never to hear that laugh of his. I had looked on my boy for the last time. Could it be true ? Ah, I knew it was. And it was for this moment that I had been waiting, that we had all been waiting, ever since we had sent John away to fight for his country and do his part. I think we had all felt that it must come. We had all known that it was too much to hope that he should be one of those to be spared.

The black despair that had been hovering over me for hours closed down now and enveloped all my senses. Everything was unreal. For a time I was quite numb. But then, as I began to realize and to visualize what it was to mean in my life that my boy was dead, there came a great pain. The iron of realization slowly seared every word of that curt telegram upon my heart. I said it to myself, over and over again. And I whispered to myself, as my thoughts took form, over and over, the one terrible word : " Dead ! '. I felt that for me everything had come to an end with the reading of that dire message. It seemed to me that for me the board of life was black and blank. For me there was no past and there could be no future. Everything had been swept away, erased, by one sweep of the hand of a cruel fate.

Oh, there was a past, though ! And it was in that past that I began to delve. It was made up of every memory I had of my boy. I fell at once to remembering him. I clutched at every memory, as if I must grasp them and make sure of them; lest they be taken from me as well as the hope of seeing him again that the telegram had for ever snatched away. I would have been destitute indeed in that event. It was as if I must fix in my mind the way he had been wont to look, and recall to my ears every tone of his voice, every trick of his speech. There was something left of him that I must keep, I realized, even then, at all costs, if I was to be able to bear his loss at all. There was a vision of him before my eyes. My bonnie Highland laddie, brave and strong, in his kilt and the uniform of his country, going out to his death with a smile on his face.

And there was another vision that came up now, unbidden. It was a vision of him lying stark and cold upon the battlefield, the mud on his uniform. And when I saw that vision I was like a man gone mad and possessed of devils who had stolen away his faculties. I cursed war as I saw that vision, and the men who caused war. And when I thought of the Germans who had killed my boy, a terrible and savage hatred swept me, and I longed to go out there and kill with my bare hands, until I had avenged him or they had killed me too.

But then I was a little softened. I thought of his mother back in our wee hoose at Dunoon. And the thought of her, bereft even as I was, sorrowing, even as I was, and lost in her frightful loneliness, was pitiful, so that I had but the one desire and wish-to go to her, and join my tears with hers, that we who were left alone to bear our grief, might bear it together and give one to the other such comfort as there might be in life for us. And so I fell upon my knees and prayed, there in my lonely room in the hotel. I prayed to God that He might give us both, John's mother and myself, strength to bear the blow that had been dealt us, and to endure the sacrifice that He and our country had demanded of us.

Sir Harry Lauder, "A Minstrel In France". Captain John Lauder was their only son.

Apologies for the light to non-existent blogging, as things in the UK continue to get more pearshaped.

12 hour working days are taking their toll - and now there are a million things to do ... but tonight let's just give thanks and praise (i.e. Laban's all packed for once). A happy and a peaceful Christmas to all of you out there ...

I just love the singing on this - those Italian tenors ... Pope John Paul II live at the Vatican one Christmas in the late 70s - I think his first as Pope.


[Loband: Object Removed -]

Every Welshman (and woman) over 80 knows that Tommy Farr beat Joe Louis in the Yankee Stadium in 1937. Hadn't they heard the fight on the radio, and the American crowd booing the fixed result ?

I'm no great fan of the boy racer, cyclist clipper and swiper of pedestrians on pelican crossings, but it does sound as if Amir Khan got handed a similar verdict.

It could just be a bit of blustering gesture politics, but ...

"Argentina has launched a naval campaign to isolate the Falkland Islands that has seen it detain Spanish fishing vessels on suspicion of breaking the country’s “blockade” of the seas around the British territories."

Given we have binned our aircraft carriers and our Harriers, in one of Mr Cameron's less inspired moves, and just given Mr Sarkozy's blood pressure a shoeing, we'd be in a right pickle if the Miss Havisham-lookalike who runs Argentina decided to send a few thousand more conscripts to get killed. Once the airfields were occupied we'd be in trubs.

I'd resurrect the Harriers, and there was at least one small carrier still left in Portsmouth this summer. A 5% cut in public sector salaries over £50K should raise some cash - oh, and a performance-related tax on executive pay over, say, £1m or £2m pa.

There seems to be a fair bit of oil down there which is legally ours, and which others would doubtless like to get their mitts on. How exactly does Cameron think he's going to protect it? He seems to find the money and the kit when the oil ISN'T ours.


UPDATE - fair play to those Galician skippers. The Falklands is a long trip. I suppose they've emptied UK waters of everything more than an inch long, and are now looking to do the same to the South Atlantic.

The standard of school-leavers is so poor that one supermarket has sent back three-quarters of its recruits for "remedial pre-job training" before they start work. Morrisons, Britain's fourth-biggest supermarket with 135,000 employees, found that many of its applicants in Salford, Greater Manchester, lacked even the basic skills needed to stack shelves and serve customers. While some had a poor grasp of maths and English, others lacked simple skills such as turning up on time and making eye contact.

Well - it is Salford. But it was this gloss that struck me.

The warning will fuel concerns that schools are failing to teach the skills necessary for young Britons to find jobs, forcing firms to recruit migrant workers instead.

Now there's no doubt that our education system's been wrecked over the last 40 years, even as exam passes hit record levels. But I seem to recall that in the days before mass immigration, if you wanted to find a better candidate for a post you offered a higher wage - and that usually seemed to work.

My business contacts inform me that this business model is no longer in vogue for jobs at the lower end of the wage scale. Instead the "import someone better and cheaper" model reigns supreme.

But at the top end - say at board level - offering more money - lots and lots more money, the more the better - is still seen as the best way to attract a high-quality candidate. No UK or US bankers seem to think it's a good idea to get in, say, a Chinese CEO, despite the fact that they run the world's largest banks for salaries between 2% and 10% of US levels. Odd, that.






UPDATE - I disagree with young clever-clogs and Grabber look-alike Daniel Knowles when he says that "there are no jobs left for the dim" - there are plenty of them and they're all being done by immigrants. The thing is, no matter what the level of job - even shelf-stacker - the cleverer person's likely to do it better than the not so bright. Only in 'pure' manual jobs like fruit or vegetable picking does the intellectually-challenged employee get a level playing field - and that arduous work is done, if the fields around Bromsgrove and the gangmaster's white vans plying up and down the M5 from Brum are any guide, by an eclectic assortment of third-world chaps - beards and pugris at one end of the field, mustachios and bare heads at the other.

Of course, UK average intelligence would be higher if we hadn't been running a vast scheme, not of eugenics, but of dysgenics, for the last fifty years. Bright and conscientious women have been encouraged to go out and work, the not so bright and feckless have been encouraged with hard cash to stay at home and have lots of babies.

One of my great musical loves is gone.

[Loband: Object Removed -]

MudCat obit thread; Telegraph obit.

My daughter (14) was shopping in the big city with her friends on her day off school. There was a demo on ...

Came back festooned in Unison sashes and waving an NUT flag ...

"Dad - it was great ! We wore the sashes as headbands and loads of people photographed us ! We were interviewed twice ! What do we want ? Fair Pensions ! When do we want them ! Now !"

Oh dear oh dear ...