Peter C Glover's ... WIRES from the UK

You see, this is why some of my fellow Christians are such a severe embarrassment. Talk about picking the wrong battles.

Remember, that other idiot, Stephen Green of Christian Voice and his taking the producers of the Jerry Springer Stage Show to court (and rightly losing). Don't get me wrong. I'm no fan of such things. But our God does not need his honour defended by pursing litigation through the courts in a post-Christian society. The Blasphemy laws are, and always were theologically, a dead letter. Its culture. Forget it. Move on. What Christians should be fighting against is a level playing field so that we can debate freely and publicly any issue, including the latest cultural developments at a time when Islam cannot be criticised openly and is increasingly being given special treatment and protection in European/British law.

Now there's a battle worth fighting.

I hear that Europe has made Liverpool its 'City of Culture' for 2008. Is this a joke? Just listen to the BBC here describing how Liverpool intends to kick of its first day in the cultural limelight.

"The show's centrepiece will be a rooftop performance by Ringo Starr who will be premiering a new song."  Right then. So the ex-Beatles DRUMMER (ie. the one with no talent) is going to sing (have you heard this guy sing?) a new song. The Beeb carried on with the irony. " Recent chart toppers The Wombats will also be taking centre stage at the proceedings." Oh stop it! I've been trying to sit upright on my chair ever since I heard the announcement. No wonder Europe is in a mess.

Clare McColgan, executive producer for the Liverpool Culture Company said the opening show "will be something the city has never seen". Well Claire, you could say the same about clean streets.

Referring to Liverpool as a 'city of culture' is on a par with praising Baghdad for its safety record or Teheran for its work towards world peace. But then what would I know. I'm from Manchester. For those who remain unaware of the fact: Liverpool, of course, is one of Manchester's poorer suburbs.

Altogether now: "I'd like to be, beside the sea, in an Octopuses Garden with you."  Don't you just love these special moments of high culture?

If only their parents had smacked them the Mass. lawmakers wouldn't be considering the latest assault by liberals on God-given parental rights!

A piece by me published over at US Human Events (December 12). Go here.

It begins. The wave of optimism about changing France's socialism hand-our culture, which swept Nicolas Sarkozy to power in the expectation of a national 'Thatcher moment', has already subsided. The usual response of France's cosseted population now ruined by the benefits of the handout culture which demands cradle to grave nappy changing, is to take to the streets in national strikes. The current wave of strikes shows that until the power of the French unions is finally broken he may make a stand, but it will end being more like that at Isandhlwana than Rorke's Drift.

Will the conviction-driven Sarkozy succeed where previous spineless politicians have failed? I doubt it. The rotten to the core socialism in France has already done its damage of weakening national spirit and will. That's what decadence does. And we may not be far behind, as the French-styled EU treads the same social path. The French will make all the noises about change recognising what should be done - right up to the point where they have to make any sort of sacrifice to do it.

I did a deal with my wife the other day. I will go and watch Atonement if she will come and watch 3.10 to Yuma. I was desperate not to have to go and see the former. It's not that I don't like English period films. I do. Its just that I could see this one was geared up to be an amoral weepie - and I hate films made specifically to appeal to the emotions. (Actually, I negotiations fell down when my wife announced she was only too pleased to see the western as she is a big fan of Russell Crowe -- pretty much my favourite current actor -- too. Try his TOFOG music too!)

In the event, I was proved right on this one (I have got it wrong in the past). Though Atonement is undoubtedly a beautifully shot and cleverly constructed film, it left us both feeling that we had spent two hours in the presence of a deeply dishonest 'art' work. The scenes depicting Dunkirk translated one of the most uplifting and successful war-time evacuations (of over 300,000 soldiers) as something defeatist, soul-destroying and downright seedy to name just one thing. I have since read a number of reviewers who agree entirely. The Sunday Times review was quite cutting (giving Atonement just 2 stars) warning we should never believe the pre-release reviews the kind of arty-farty critics who attend the famous festivals claim is 'super' - as they are not on Planet Reality with the rest of us.

In stark contrast, I note that almost all the post-release reviews of Crowe's 3.10 to Yuma remake - a mere Western! -  are speaking about in terms of Oscar nominations. I have yet to see the film itself so can't comment. Now 3.10 is, I understand, the first of a crop of new Westerns about to be released - and I have a theory about the enduring success of the Western. It's this: the better ones are well-liked because of their plain honesty in depicting good and evil starkly, and in the 'Wayne-like' justice that often accompanies the denouement. I suspect many of us hanker after times when political-correctness did not hold sway in our justice systems. Now, if only the shoot-out at the end of Yuma could have been transferred to Atonement...

I don't know about you, but I have always preferred the honesty of a Turner or Constable (I live near his home) to the  conceptual contrivances of a meaningless Picasso and Pollock. But then I've always had a strong sense of Yuma.

I've always appreciated Theodore Dalrymple's take on world affairs. Here he is a few days ago on the response of the Picts and Caledonians north of the border and their increasing capitulation in the multicultural mire of their liberal socialist society (England voted Conservative, remember, at the last election.)  

In an effort to ensure that no Muslim doctors ever again try to bomb Glasgow Airport, bureaucrats at Glasgow’s public hospitals have decreed that henceforth no staff may eat lunch at their desks or in their offices during the holy month of Ramadan, so that fasting Muslims shall not be offended by the sight or smell of their food. Vending machines will also disappear from the premises during that period.

Apparently the bureaucrats believe that the would-be bombers were demanding sandwich-free offices in Glasgow hospitals during Ramadan. This kind of absurdity is what happens when the highly contestable doctrine of multiculturalism becomes a career opportunity for the semi-educated and otherwise unemployable products of a grossly and unnecessarily swollen university system.

For the rest of this short piece (which cites growing Italian Islamification, too) go to the excellent City Journal  here.  

Our finest moral minds will be preaching 'a better way' to you at Live EarthI don't normally double-up on postings on both of my sites. However, given the scale of the global idiocy pandemic associated with the parading of gullibility (by a generation which prides itself on being 'anti-establishment) endemic in the Live Earth project...

Here's what appears in a post today over at Global Warming Hysteria.  Now don't you get fooled again...!

It has always been a paradox that the anti-establishment 'music can change the world' generation tends to be the first to line up and parade its anti-intellectual gullibility buying into the latest mass media 'establishment's' populist and scary propaganda.  Live Earth is just the latest naive manifestation.

Even parts of the mainstream media are beginning to grasp the irony of the situation. Here's is a key excerpt from a recent piece at Reuters: 

'Glitz and glamour risk making the fight against climate change sound like a passing fad championed by a bunch of hedonists'

 

It does indeed - not the mention the irony of hundreds of stars jetting about the world having given themselves a-moral (on their own hypothesis) CO2 passes.  But then it is surely because they are more important than the rest of us? And all that's before we get to the real science which reveals warming stopped in 1998, the sun, not CO2, is responsible for that warming and we have had less than a degree of warming when, at times in history, it was far warmer.

 

The above quote is taken from 'Can stars save the plant'. The answer must surely be a simple: No chance -- given they are such hypocrites who believe themselves exempt from their own strictures on  CO2 emissions. (Why, for instance, not erect a giant screen and beam performances live from wherever these guys happened to be?) Imagine if Jesus Christ had preached the sermon on the mount - then gone off for a 'clandestine' weekend in Capernaum - and you get the picture. 

 

I also note the criticism Live Earth has had from some rock stars including Bob Geldof and Coldplay, including from one of my favourite bands, The Who. They are not performing (though hardly - see link - for the best of intellectual reasons). Won't get fooled again? If you are a subscriber to the Sucker for Propaganda Generation you will.

Now that Blair is out of office he appears to feel more able to speak openly. How about this for a bit of (highly appropriate, as it happens) detente with the constantly moaning Muslim community in Britain?

Tony Blair has launched a powerful attack on 'absurd' British Islamists who have nurtured a false 'sense of grievance' that they are being oppressed by Britain and the United States.

In his most outspoken remarks on Islamists, the former Prime Minister warns that Britain is in danger of losing the battle against terrorists unless mainstream society confronts the threat.

Blair's remarks, in which he also attacks some civil liberty campaigners as 'loopy loo', were made in a Channel 4 documentary recorded last Tuesday on the eve of his departure from Downing Street.

'The idea that as a Muslim in this country that you don't have the freedom to express your religion or your views, I mean you've got far more freedom in this country than you do in most Muslim countries,' Blair told Observer columnist Will Hutton, who presents the documentary.

'The reason we are finding it hard to win this battle is that we're not actually fighting it properly. We're not actually standing up to these people and saying, "It's not just your methods that are wrong, your ideas are absurd. Nobody is oppressing you. Your sense of grievance isn't justified."'

Just a shame he did not say and act on these beliefs when he actually had the power to do something about it (other than take up arms with our American friends and take the fight to their own backyard - which I thoroughly applaud).

Source: The Observer 

NB. Two of the arrested suspects are doctors born in the middle east (one, seemingly, Iran) - and thus number among the top professional  money-earners in the UK.  This is not about poverty or opression (except theirs on us) it is about ideology and religion.

Just when you thought it was alright to go back into a music store...the Spice Girls are, it seems, about to announce they are reforming. Gordon Brown will be disappointed. Just as he announces a new start for Britain, the five fashion victims are back to ruin it all. One the upside it is perhaps just what the country's youth needs: solid role models.

Mel B. has just proven, via DNA tests (necessary when it could be any one of a number of subscribers), that Eddie Murphy is the father of her unborn).  Mel C. needs the fillip of going on another diet. Obscurity doesn't agree with Geri or Baby. And String Bean Spice was facing a new job as pre-match lead Pom-Pom dancer with the LA Galaxy (so she clearly needs the money).

NB. Its my understanding is that the news has also thrown Mr Brown's Cabinet plans into disarray. Scary Spice was pencilled in to replace even-more-Scary Margaret Beckett (a move calculated to put the frightners on Hamas - as well as the rest of us); Sporty was set for Ministry of Food; Baby was a shoo-in at Social Security (you have to plan ahead); Geri was down for Culture Secretary (obvious really); and Posh would have gone to for Education (where else?).

Just what the country and world need - more Union Jack knickers.

Now saving the world can be an exhausting and fraught business. Just ask Brad and Angelina Jolie. Going green - while driving around Prague in a gas-guzzling four-by-four while earning megabucks making one's latest B-movie 'epic' - may need one to have to obtain an Hypocrisy Pass from the media. And who can you trust in this celebrity-worshipping world when you want to adopt a rainbow family - if not the advice of a five-year old?

If you are not yet sick of Hollywood megastars telling you how to live your life while they can afford to buy carbon offsets to assuage their 'repented', while continuing in their sins of emission (and wasn't it good recently to hear Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant sound off against the pompous Bono about his morality preaching?) then try this excellent Daily Mail antidote piece.

The problem with listening to the Brangelina's of this world is the dilemma it leaves us with. On the one hand we want to rush off to the toilet whenever Brad and Angie open their mouths on social issues. On the other Sheryl Crow only wants us to use a single sheet of toilet paper when we get there. (Sheryl now claims this was only a joke, but a scrutiny of previous comments reveals she's quite barmy and meant it when she first said it.)  

Without question the Dutch 'reality' TV show The Big Donor is plumbing the depths of good taste and morality with their 'win a kidney' competition. But then should we expect of Europe's most 'progressive' liberalizing democracy?

But does a liberal democracy which has its population shaking in its clogs, the result of the ticking multicultural timebomb created by their open borders policy, and that was the first to legalize numerous drugs, making The Netherlands the European jumping off point for everyone else's burgeoning drug problem, deserve all it gets? 

My only surprise, given the Dutch predilection for leading the way in liberalizing sexual perversions, is that the organ they started with was the kidney.

But did you know...? 

You may know that the Big Donor show is made by Endemol the same company which brought us Big Brother. But I'll bet you didn't know that Peter Bazalgette, chairman of Endemol, is a direct descendent of the brilliant engineer Joseph Bazalgette, who is famous for masterminding London's superb Victorian sewage system?

Ironic, is it not, that while Joseph Bazalgette was responsible for ridding major urban cities of polluting effluent his descendant should be responsible for piping it back to them again?

I have long said that all banning guns achieves is prevent decent people being able to defend themselves and others from evil people. Evil individuals, on the other hand, will always find a way to get guns and hurt the innocent.

And if you don't believe that doing the reverse and allowing far more decent people to own guns IS the moral answer, then you need to read this...(from a Reuters article):
 
25 years murder-free in 'Gun Town USA'
Crime rate plummeted after law required firearms for residents

As the nation debates whether more guns or fewer can prevent tragedies like the Virginia Tech Massacre, a notable anniversary passed last month in a Georgia town that witnessed a dramatic plunge in crime and violence after mandating residents to own firearms.

In March 1982, 25 years ago, the small town of Kennesaw – responding to a handgun ban in Morton Grove, Ill. – unanimously passed an ordinance requiring each head of household to own and maintain a gun. Since then, despite dire predictions of "Wild West" showdowns and increased violence and accidents, not a single resident has been involved in a fatal shooting – as a victim, attacker or defender.

The crime rate initially plummeted for several years after the passage of the ordinance, with the 2005 per capita crime rate actually significantly lower than it was in 1981, the year before passage of the law.

Prior to enactment of the law, Kennesaw had a population of just 5,242 but a crime rate significantly higher (4,332 per 100,000) than the national average (3,899 per 100,000). The latest statistics available – for the year 2005 – show the rate at 2,027 per 100,000. Meanwhile, the population has skyrocketed to 28,189.

One of the great marks of our age is the determination to absolve ourselves of personal responsibility and guilt (what the Bible calls 'sin' - but let's not upset peoples psyche by mentioning that too often as it implies there is a God to whom we are answerable for that sin). And nowhere is this propensity found more keenly than in the current attempt to blame our genes for our personal 'wrong-doings'. 

It seems the 'experts' believe (i.e. employ faith) they have discovered an obesity gene. So getting fat is not really anyone's 'fault' it is an inescapable fact of life for some people. Now here's a shock. But even if there was such a thing as a 'pre-programming obesity gene' it doesn't make a scrap of difference to the moral lifestyle choices some believe that implies.

Let us say, for instance, the 'experts' (who say butter is bad for you one day then good for you the next) believe that there is a paedophile gene. Would that 'fact' exempt the 'carrier' of it from moral and social norms? Would it mean treating him any differently after he raped or indecently assaulted a small child?  Predilection or not, there are some things you just cannot do - without moral, social and national consequences.

Here's another fact: 35% of all sicknesses are associated with obesity. Work out what that costs the nation - and each one of us who have to pay to treat these sicknesses brought on through 'immoral' over-eating. My wife is a director of finance in the NHS. She will tell you fat people (together with smokers) and their need for treatment is bleeding the NHS dry.

Blaming genes for our personal sins is no different to saying "The devil made me do it". It is always someone else's fault - never mine. And, just for the record, if bleeding heart liberal do-gooders don't like this opinion, they should understand this: it's not my fault, just put it down to a faulty opinion gene.

Here's an interesting juxtaposition of stories today: news of a massive increase of the number of one-parent families and daft strategies aimed at combating the rising tide of indiscipline in our schools.

Now, do you think the social scientists, like the gentleman commenting on BBC's Radio Four Today programme this morning who did not see the rise in single-parent families as "either a good or bad thing", might just spot a correlation here?

Now if we'd 'whacked' these social scientists at an early age could it possibly have helped jolt their single-cell neurones into action (a bit like kicking the TV)?  It's a theory isn't it? A bit like that which deems no link between the two stories above.

As regards the latest strategy which suggests rewarding disruptive pupils with prizes, we had a similar at my schools.  usual, it involved receiving the 'prize' of a cane, ruler or soft-shoe (somewhere out of sight). Of course, that probably accounts for why I have turned out to be the anti-liberal warmongering, Churchillian/Thatcherite that I am.