British constitutional historian David Starkey comments in the video below that the British riots demonstrate that the “chavs (British juvenile delinquents) have become black,” i.e., that a foreign and exotic underclass culture has successfully assimilated the British white lower orders, rather than vice versus.
What he said! Black as a pejorative term. Expressing a hierarchical preference for white, European mores over African-Caribbean mores. The British left is quite indignant about this kind of politically-incorrect speech, and accusations of racism are flying.
The Daily Mail reports that the British police have chosen a bit of Punjabi slang from the Imperial attic to be used as the code word for the American president during his state visit.
More than one person has wanted to call Barack Obama a ‘smart alec’, and now British police will get the chance to do so without getting reprimanded.
That’s because Scotland Yard has tapped the codename ‘Chalaque’ to refer to the U.S. president for security reasons during his upcoming state visit to the United Kingdom May 24-26.
Indarjit Singh, a Punjabi speaker in the UK who is director of the Network of Sikh Organisations, told the Sunday Times the word ‘is sometimes used when we want to denigrate someone who we think is too clever for their own good’.
Another Punjabi speaker told the paper the word Chalaque is ‘not considered rude’, but could be ‘mildly offensive’.
It is also said to mean ‘cheeky, crafty and cunning’.
As the financial burden of the Welfare State is bringing the economies of Europe and the United States to their knees, the Telegraph reports that the results of a British think tank’s investigation of public opinion on the issue of fairness strikes at its moral foundation.
As we report today, Policy Exchange – supposedly the Prime Minister’s favourite ideas outlet – has done a brave and unusual thing. Rather than polling the public just on policy and voting intention, it has put a far more abstract moral issue before them. It instructed the pollsters at YouGov to find out precisely what the public thought the most powerful term of approbation in the political lexicon – “fair” – actually amounted to.
The quite unequivocal reply that was received (with breathtakingly enormous majorities in some forms) came as no surprise to this column. To most voters, fairness does not mean an equal distribution of resources and wealth, or even a redistribution of these things according to need. It means, as the report’s title – “Just Deserts” – implies, that people get what they deserve. And what is deserved, the respondents made clear, refers to that which is achieved by effort, talent or dedication to duty: in other words, earned on merit.
As I have written so often on this page, when ordinary people use the word “fair”, they mean that you should get out of life pretty much what you put in. Or, as the report’s authors put it, “Voters’ idea of fairness is strongly reciprocal – something for something.” By obvious inference, a “something for nothing” society is the opposite of fair. And this view, interestingly, is expressed by Labour voters in pretty much the same proportion as all others.
Imagine that. After all these years of being morally blackmailed by the poverty lobby, harried by socialist ideologues and shouted at by self-serving public sector axe-grinders, the people are not cowed. Even after being bludgeoned by the BBC thought monitors and browbeaten by Left-liberal media academics with the soft Marxist view of a “fair” society – from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs – they have not bought it. They do not believe that if people are poor, it is necessarily society’s fault, and therefore society’s duty to deal with the consequences.
No, they say, as often as not, poverty is a consequence of lack of effort or self-control – and, therefore, the individual must accept the consequences. And they do not believe that such character failings and their consequences should be disregarded in the apportioning of welfare or help from the state – help which they know is made possible by the efforts of those who do “the right thing”. They still have a firm and undaunted conception of the “undeserving poor” – a term so unfashionable that no politician would be capable of uttering it – and would like such people to be made to accept their reciprocal obligation to society in return for any assistance from public funds.
Dornier 17 bomber lying inverted in the Goodwin Sands.
A largely intact casualty of the Battle of Britain, a Dornier 17 fast bomber, referred to affectionately by the Germans as the Fliegender Bleistift “flying pencil,” was found two years ago when a fishing boat snagged its net on the wreck.
The RAF Museum plans to raise the aircraft and place it on display.
A rare German wartime bomber which was discovered on a sandbank 70 years after it was shot down during the Battle of Britain is to be raised, it was announced today.
The twin-engined Dornier 17 first emerged from Goodwin Sands, a ten-mile long sandbank off the coast of Deal, Kent, two years ago, a spokesman for the RAF Museum said.
Since then, the museum has worked with Wessex Archaeology to complete a full survey of the wreck site, usually associated with shipwrecks, before the plane is recovered and eventually exhibited as part of the Battle of Britain Beacon project.
An underwater side scan of a twin-engined Dornier 17 German wartime bomber, which has been discovered on a sandbank off Deal, Kent, 70 years after it was shot down during the Battle of Britainy
The spokeswoman said the aircraft – known as a Flying Pencil due to its sleek design and stick-like lines – was part of a large enemy formation which attempted to attack airfields in Essex on August 26, 1940 but was intercepted by RAF fighter aircraft above Kent before the convoy reached its target.
The plane’s pilot, Willi Effmert, attempted to carry out a wheels-up landing on Goodwin Sands but, although he landed safely, the aircraft sank.
He and one other crew member were captured but another two men died.
The spokeswoman said the plane was found in ‘remarkable’ condition considering the years it has spent underwater, and is largely intact with its main undercarriage tyres inflated and its propellers still showing the damage they suffered during its final landing.
Back in Queen Victoria’s day, when Britain was still sane, you could buy one of these to protect your garden shed. If he breaks in, he gets both barrels.
The Daily Mail recently reported on police in Surrey and Kent intervening to protect criminals from home owners.
Don’t put wire on your windows – it might hurt burglars! Villagers outraged after police order them not to protect garden sheds
Residents in Surrey and Kent villages have been ordered by police to remove wire mesh from their windows as burglars could be injured.
Home owners in the villages of Tandridge and Tatsfield in Surrey and in Westerham, Brasted and Sundridge in Kent have said they are furious that they are being branded ‘criminals’ for protecting their property.
Locals had reinforced their windows with wire mesh after a series of shed thefts but were told by community police officers that the wire was ‘dangerous’ and could lead to criminals claiming compensation if they ‘hurt themselves’.
The Telegraph‘s perusal of the Wilkileaks leaked diplomatic documents finds that Barack Obama traded British defense secrets to Russia as part of the price for Russian agreement to the START Treaty.
Information about every Trident missile the US supplies to Britain will be given to Russia as part of an arms control deal signed by President Barack Obama next week.
Defence analysts claim the agreement risks undermining Britain’s policy of refusing to confirm the exact size of its nuclear arsenal.
The fact that the Americans used British nuclear secrets as a bargaining chip also sheds new light on the so-called “special relationshipâ€, which is shown often to be a one-sided affair by US diplomatic communications obtained by the WikiLeaks website. …
A series of classified messages sent to Washington by US negotiators show how information on Britain’s nuclear capability was crucial to securing Russia’s support for the “New START†deal.
Although the treaty was not supposed to have any impact on Britain, the leaked cables show that Russia used the talks to demand more information about the UK’s Trident missiles, which are manufactured and maintained in the US.
Washington lobbied London in 2009 for permission to supply Moscow with detailed data about the performance of UK missiles. The UK refused, but the US agreed to hand over the serial numbers of Trident missiles it transfers to Britain.
Professor Malcolm Chalmers said: “This appears to be significant because while the UK has announced how many missiles it possesses, there has been no way for the Russians to verify this. Over time, the unique identifiers will provide them with another data point to gauge the size of the British arsenal.â€
Duncan Lennox, editor of Jane’s Strategic Weapons Systems, said: “They want to find out whether Britain has more missiles than we say we have, and having the unique identifiers might help them.â€
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Anthony Calabrese, an American attorney working in London, felt obliged to remind his British friends that they had overwhelmingly rooted for Obama to win the presidency.
Well, you guys all wanted him and you got what you wanted. In my 18 months living in London (truly one of the World’s greatest cities BTW) I have met one person who did not want Obama to win the 2008 election (and most of my co-workers seem to be Tories). I have had these same Tories complain to me about something the administration has done (BP, the Churchill bust, the snubbing of the Queen) yet 15 seconds later react with horror when they find out I did not vote for him.
Look folks, you wanted him, you got him, now you are getting it good and hard. George Bush who you all revile would never have pulled that. John McCain would never have done that. But keep up your adulation of President Obama, maybe he will wave at you occasionally.
Holiday travelers found themselves stranded at Heathrow Airport, schools closed all over Britain, sporting events were canceled, and life generally ground to a halt due to snow-blocked highways, stalled train lines, and bitter cold.
How well did the Warmist Met Office and the East Anglia Climate Research Unit do in providing guidance for British officials, especially as compared to typically warming-skeptical meteorologists? Disastrously badly is the answer.
[A]s recently as late October the Met Office was predicting that we should expect an “unusually dry and mild winterâ€. This was news to every independent weather forecaster in the world from Joe Bastardi to Piers Corbyn who have been predicting a harsh winter for months.
But the Met Office of course knew better thanks to its spiffy new £33 million IBM supercomputer (90 per cent funded, of course, by the taxpayer) whose precognitive powers are so great, it is said that on a good day with a fair wind behind it and can very nearly match the track record of the dead celebrity Paul the Octopus. And of course, it’s this very same computer which is responsible for so many of the “projections†– not even “predictionsâ€, note, but “projections†– of Anthropogenic Climate Doom so lovingly detailed on its taxpayer-funded website.
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The Global Warming Policy Foundation posts a series of Met Office predictions and reality checks. The most amusing features a major reversal from late October this year.
Met Office 2010 Forecast: Winter To Be Mild Predicts Met Office
Daily Express, 28 October 2010: IT’S a prediction that means this may be time to dig out the snow chains and thermal underwear. The Met Office, using data generated by a £33million supercomputer, claims Britain can stop worrying about a big freeze this year because we could be in for a milder winter than in past years… The new figures, which show a 60 per cent to 80 per cent chance of warmer-than-average temperatures this winter, were ridiculed last night by independent forecasters. The latest data comes in the form of a December to February temperature map on the Met Office’s website.
Reality Check: December 2010 “Almost Certain” To Be Coldest Since Records Began
The Independent, 18 December 2010: December 2010 is “almost certain” to be the coldest since records began in 1910, according to the Met Office.
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John Hinderaker, at Power-Line, reminds us that, a decade ago, the experts at the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit were predicting sadly that snow in Britain would soon become only a memory.
Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.
Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain’s culture, as warmer winters – which scientists are attributing to global climate change – produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries. …
According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.
The Daily Express notes one more significant milestone in Britain’s retreat from greatness.
She was the backbone of the taskforce that took back the Falklands from Argentina and once boasted Prince Andrew among her crew.
Now HMS Invincible is about to meet a sad end, sold for scrap on an auction website.
Her seller, the Ministry of Defence, is better described as “cash-strapped†rather than as “one careful ownerâ€.
Launched barely 30 years ago, the 10,000 ton aircraft carrier is now just a hulk, her engines decommissioned and her pumps and generators broken.
But as one of Britain’s two flattops in 1982, the ship helped turn the tide after General Galtieri invaded the Falklands.
At the time of the invasion HMS Invincible had been earmarked for sale to Australia for £175million,
Critics claim it was that sale which emboldened Argentina to attack. It was hastily called off after the invasion.
Last month’s decision to scrap Britain’s only remaining aircraft carrier, Ark Royal, nine years before its replacement comes on line, has been criticised by admirals as having the potential to encourage Buenos Aires to again raise a claim over the islands.
HMS Invincible’s decline began in 2005 when MoD chiefs mothballed her 14 months after an extensive refit which was meant to extend her life by 10 years.
Michael Auslin says Admiral Nelson is spinning in his grave.
Imagine if someone had predicted in 1910 the loss of Britain’s position of economic leadership, the abandonment of the Empire, the complete triumph of socialism, surrender of the Royal Navy’s command of the seas, massive immigration of hostile and unproductive non-Europeans encouraged by a Labour government deliberately seeking to change the ethnic character of the British nation, and even a ban on hunting. How thoroughly and utterly destructive the impact of leftism would be could not possibly have ever been imagined.
If someone were able to travel through time and display to the population of 1910 Britain exactly what would become of the British Empire, British institutions, British liberty, and the British way of life in a century, I suspect the population would have risen en masse and slaughtered out of hand every pacifist, every socialist, every trade unionist, every Bloomsbury, and every reformer in the country.
A 15-year-old school girl resident of the multiracial Sandwell Council homes neighborhood in the West Midlands near Birmingham was arrested recently on charges of inciting religious hatred. The teenager had posted on Facebook two weeks earlier a video in which she burned on school property an English-language edition of the Koran in front of an audience of schoolmates.
On Tuesday, a 14-year-old boy was also arrested for posting threats on Facebook in response to the video.
Both teenagers were released on bail, and their Facebook accounts were eliminated.
The British press quoted an Islamic organization’s spokesman who advised readers that burning Korans was one of the most offensive acts imaginable in the eyes of more than a billion Muslims worldwide.
It’s not the Koran which is sacred to British authorities, of course, it is political correctness which trumps freedom of expression. You can still insult Christianity as much as you like.
Somebody seems to have whacked this poor chap over the head several times with a sword.
Excavation of a building site in 2008 for new student housing for St. John’s College, Oxford University revealed the remains of thirty-odd male individuals of fighting age bearing signs of violence and in some cases burns.
For it is fully agreed that to all dwelling in this country it will be well known that, since a decree was sent out by me with the counsel of my leading men and magnates, to the effect that all the Danes who had sprung up in this island, sprouting like cockle amongst the wheat, were to be destroyed by a most just extermination, and thus this decree was to be put into effect even as far as death, those Danes who dwelt in the afore-mentioned town, striving to escape death, entered this sanctuary of Christ, having broken by force the doors and bolts, and resolved to make refuge and defence for themselves therein against the people of the town and the suburbs; but when all the people in pursuit strove, forced by necessity, to drive them out, and could not, they set fire to the planks and burnt, as it seems, this church with its ornaments and its books.
A second similiar mass grave was found more recently in Dorset.
Unnamed sources indicate that reductions in defense spending being contemplated by Britain’s coalition government would be so drastic as to threaten the very existence of the United Kingdom as a strategic partner and fundamentally undermine the NATO alliance.
All leaks emerging out of the new British government’s defense review indicate a budgetary bloodbath is in the offing. Later reports indicate that the review was seeking cuts as deep as 15 percent in the UK’s defense budget. Later reports suggested reductions in the range of 10 percent. In addition, it is reported that the review will conclude that the Ministry of Defense must pay the entire cost for modernizing the UK’s strategic nuclear deterrent from its own funds. British defense spending is likely to fall below two percent of GDP, which is a threshold for strategic irrelevance.
Even at the smaller figure, such cuts would have a dramatic, even catastrophic, impact on the British military. Entire Army brigades would have to be disbanded, fighter squadrons eliminated and naval vessels scrapped. One or both of the UK’s planned new aircraft carriers could be cancelled, new intelligence programs terminated and the number of Joint Strike Fighters to be bought reduced.
Increasingly rare among U.S. allies, Britain retains the will and so far the means to oppose hegemony and aggression in critical parts of the world. This is the basis of the so-called special relationship. Without the means to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the U.S., of what good is British will alone? Without both will and wallet, how long can the special relationship continue?
The UK’s review may prove the final straw breaking the back of the U.S. willingness to underwrite the defense of Europe. Other NATO countries are conducting their own reviews looking to reduce government expenditures in the wake of the recent global financial crisis. Further defense cuts by major NATO nations will render moot the Alliance’s new strategic concept.
So alarming is the current trend that both Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of Defense Gates made mention of it at a recent NATO summit. Gates warned against the expectation that the U.S. would pick up the check if Europe reduced its defense spending. Clinton noted that NATO is premised on the idea of the common defense to which every member must contribute.
NATO could be sustained so long as a core group of countries were willing to invest sufficiently in their military capabilities. Britain was the symbol of Europe’ willingness to remain a relevant force in regional and global security. The review is likely to mean the end of the United Kingdom as a nation of military note. As goes Britain, so will go NATO.
In order to avoid a modest percentage of income tax underpayments, Britain’s equivalent of the IRS has come up with a startling new proposal which would de facto make every wage earner in Britain an employee of the state.
The UK’s tax collection agency is putting forth a proposal that all employers send employee paychecks to the government, after which the government would deduct what it deems as the appropriate tax and pay the employees by bank transfer.
The proposal by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) stresses the need for employers to provide real-time information to the government so that it can monitor all payments and make a better assessment of whether the correct tax is being paid.
Currently employers withhold tax and pay the government, providing information at the end of the year, a system know as Pay as You Earn (PAYE). There is no option for those employees to refuse withholding and individually file a tax return at the end of the year.
If the real-time information plan works, it further proposes that employers hand over employee salaries to the government first.
“The next step could be to use (real-time) information as the basis for centralizing the calculation and deduction of tax,” HMRC said in a July discussion paper.
HMRC described the plan as “radical” as it would be a huge change from the current system that has been largely unchanged for 66 years.
Even though the centralized deductions proposal would provide much-needed oversight, there are some major concerns, George Bull, head of Tax at Baker Tilly, told CNBC.com.
“If HMRC has direct access to employees’ bank accounts and makes a mistake, people are going to feel very exposed and vulnerable,” Bull said.
And the chance of widespread mistakes could be high, according to Bull. HMRC does not have a good track record of handling large computer systems and has suffered high-profile errors with data, he said.
The system would be massive in terms of data management, larger than a recent attempt to centralize the National Health Service’s data, which was later scrapped, Bull said.
If there’s a mistake and the HMRC collects too much money, the difficulty of getting it back could be high with repayments of tax taking weeks or months, he said.
“There has to be some very clear understanding of how quickly repayments were made if there was a mistake,” Bull said.
