tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82284464100101070392024-03-05T06:52:24.873+00:00Just Leave Us Alone!- an antidote to left-liberal nonsenseScott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.comBlogger1076125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-63622464427164934882017-11-25T15:37:00.000+00:002017-11-27T15:37:53.078+00:00Twit of the Year contest - I'm betting on a win for Alastair Campbell<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'd add "Conservative" MP Nicky Morgan to the list. In fact, it seems a shame...</div>
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that the other 13 Brexit rebel Tory MPs can't be on there instead of ineffective leftie gum-flappers like Yasmin Alibhai Brown, Polly Toynbee and the farcical Owen Jones. And there's probably no need to put meaningless showbiz idiots such as Lily Allen, Charlotte Church and Eddie Izzard on the list (and, anyway, why no Emma Thompson or "Sir" Lenny Henry?). All these people are <i>massive</i> twits, of course, but I'm not sure anybody listens to them any longer. I'd certainly have Michel Barnier on there. And the American football player, Colin "Take a Knee" Kaepernick - but you'd probably need another list to fit on all the American twits. </div>
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Anyway, all this jockeying for position doesn't matter, because the Twit of the Year award must go to arch-traitor Alastair Campbell, who is Lord Haw-Haw, Tokyo Rose, Benedict Arnold and Vidkun Quisling rolled into one:</div>
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What an unspeakable swine Campbell is:</div>
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"No election would elect"? Mainly because the three main parties (four if you count the SNP) "offered" the electorate in most constituencies a choice between three or four ardent Remain candidates. When voted were given a choice, they voted Leave. How is this "imposing" an agenda?</div>
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In which alternative reality is there a majority?</div>
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Ah - <i>that </i>alternative reality. </div>
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It's a pity media organisations can't be included on the list:</div>
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Ms Swift has committed the unspeakable crime of refusing to involve herself in political issues - i.e. to virtue signal by loudly trumpeting the causes dear to progressivists. Therefore, in the terrifying, dystopian alternative reality which the <i>Guardian</i> inhabits, she's basically a Nazi. </div>
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While the <i>Guardian</i> and the <i>Independent</i> would be worthy winners of any Twit of the Year award for media organisations, they'd face some stiff competition from any number of American fake news outlets:</div>
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I remember the hard left journalist Paul Foot using the same argument in his book about Enoch Powell published in the late '60s: the Trotskyist spent several pages arguing that the fact Powell and the National Front had both used the phrase "England's green and pleasant land" several times proved conclusively that Powell was a Nazi. </div>
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Manson mania also gripped the <i>New York Times</i> last week:</div>
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An interesting argument, given Manson's opinions:</div>
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As I said, the <i>Guardian</i> and the <i>Independent </i>face some steep competition from across the Pond. One of them should immediately hire this fruit-loop:</div>
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Someone needs to find the portal which leads to the horrible world these people evidently inhabit - <i>and close it forever!</i></div>
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-52064422207492432892017-11-21T15:36:00.000+00:002017-11-27T15:36:36.823+00:00Aussie MP Bob Katter's instantaneous Jekyll/Hyde transformation...<div style="text-align: center;">
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Blimey! You wouldn't want...</div>
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...to spill his beer, would you? But give him his due: the veteran politician has been pretty damned consistent on the utter irrelevance of gay marriage. Here he is, five years ago, making the same point - only it was suicidal farmers rather than shark attacks back then:</div>
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Granted, he had to row back after endorsing a homophobic television advert, and he once claimed that there were no gays living in his constituency (i.e. no queens in Queensland). But I can't help admiring The Man in the Bateman Cartoon for refusing to cave in to left-liberal moral bullying over the issue of gay marriage (or whichever cause they happen to be obsessing about - transgenderism is evidently the current battering-ram being used to assault traditional values and embarrass conservatives). To be fair to Mr. Katter, he is actually reflecting the view of his constituents (something MPs don't tend to go in for much over here nowadays) - 133 Australian constituencies voted to legalise gay marriage last week, but North Queensland was one of the 17 that voted against. </div>
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So good on you, Mad Katter! And if someone offers to give you media training, just say no.</div>
Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-24128733448488861152017-11-15T15:35:00.000+00:002017-11-27T15:35:34.590+00:00Black Tory MPs blast Labour's racial "stereotypes and low expectations"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Clive "On your knees, bitch" Lewis is a Labour MP, so his extraordinary narrow-mindedness...<br />
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...isn't all that surprising. Still, this sort of irrational bigotry is always disappointing, especially from someone who has served as an officer in the British army (including a three-month tour of duty in Afghanistan). Fortunately, not all black MPs who have served in the army are quite so blinkered:<br />
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Then again, James Cleverly is a one of those horrible, racist Tories - unlike the very white Labour MP for North Kensington, Emma Dent Coad, who, it emerged this week, posted some extraordinarily insulting remarks about black Tory candidate, Shaun Bailey, in 2010 and 2011:</div>
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For good measure, Dent Coad also called Mr. Bailey a "freeloading scumbag" and a "low life". She has also compared the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to the Kardashians, recently claimed that Prince Harry - a qualified Apache helicopter pilot - couldn't fly helicopters, posted a doodle of a Tory strung up from a tree, and once sent a letter to the <i>Guardian</i> containing the following charming suggestion: "Have we forgotten the delights of prolonged snogs, slow caresses, fumbling through clothing? An explicit manual on heavy petting could be given to all 13-year-olds. Embrace the joys of sex; avoid the dangers." Calls for Jeremy Corbyn to remove the Labour whip from this ghasty woman (in any case, one hates to imagine what she does with it) were met with a typically decisive response from the Labour leader - Corbyn said he'd have a word with her about her language. <i>Coo!</i></div>
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Coming out as a black or Asian conservative in Briton (or - even more so - in America) strikes me as a genuinely courageous act. There have been a handful of "token" Tory appointments which have ended disastrously (Lord Taylor of Warwick and Baroness Warsi spring to mind), but the current crop of "ethnic" Conservative MPs (who, unlike Taylor and Warsi, were voted into office) includes Kwasi Kwarteng, James Cleverly, Priti Patel (missing her already), Sajid Javid, Adam Afriyie, Nadhim Zahawi (ex-KCS, by the way), Sam Gyimah, and, of course, Kemi Badenoch. I can't swear that none of them have benefitted from tokenism at some stage of their political careers, but their profiles would suggest that, unlike many ethnic Labour MPs, they've more than earned their seats - and some of them are evidently stars in the making or, even, in some cases, potential leaders. Whatever, there's no sense of them being second-raters parachuted in to make the Tory Party seem less "hideously white". They strike me as true believers, who will have suffered all sorts of nonsense from other blacks and Asians and white Labourites for refusing to toe the line and do what people of colour are supposed to do - i.e. support their benevolent white masters in the Labour Party (whose most senior ethnic politician, let's not forget, is <i>Dianne Abbott!</i>).</div>
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Being a black or Asian Tory politician and having to put up with sneers and insults from ethnic members of the divisive, identity-politics rabble opposite - whose passage will undoubtedly have been eased by the colour of their skin - must be bloody maddening. That's evident from Kemi Badenoch's splendid response to Clive Lewis's repellent tweet, which says it all:</div>
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I'm aware of the danger of sounding patronising when praising black right-wingers - but I genuinely admire them: they've evidently chosen the road less travelled by, and that takes <i>real</i> courage. I doubt I'd have had the guts. </div>
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I'll leave the last word to James Cleverly:</div>
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-82981680150529784032017-11-13T15:34:00.000+00:002017-11-27T15:34:30.856+00:00Gay lions, the wisdom of four-year olds, poppies, and cuddly Marxists...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Hard not to agree with the little twerp for once - even though this is pretty much <i>exactly</i> what he was saying about the Labour Party this time last year. It's also hard to disagree with any of the following tweets: </div>
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Meanwhile, this is an interesting question:</div>
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I'm not sure - but probably when Richard Ingrams was editing it. This month's prize for pretending your child said something that fits your political agenda when they obviously said no such thing goes to...</div>
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The rest of us would just like to thank Hillary from our bottom, Michael. Perhaps someone should slip Mateo Ali a book by Thomas Sowell:</div>
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Yup. The same, of course, is true of many Britons. Out of habit, I switched on Radio 4 late last night while making a last cup of tea - and switched it off 20 seconds later, having inadvertently stumbled upon a programme described as follows: </div>
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<i>Marxism - Laurie Taylor talks to David Harvey, Professor of Anthropology at CUNY and world authority on Marx's thought. His latest book explores the architecture of capital & insists that Marx's original analysis of our economic system still resonates today. </i></blockquote>
Here's someone else who felt that Marx's original analysis of "our" economic system still resonated in <i>their</i> day:<br />
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Sounds <i>great! </i>I bet I know one leading British politician who will have been glued to Professor Harvey's interview (although he won't have understood a word of it):</div>
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Nice one, comrade! Remember, to guarantee the victory of the proletariat, you must surround yourself with the very best people:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy6hjCjyIYfbN7w0GsoH7X5Hof_EFlZiSGHD8LtaiikUFuQO7AXdRCTZUIiPxKMeH1dsLK5WLxDg5IwL9okYZziRyyeza_1k7PNih5n2Vkf5lZsFDAhHBB9Rjf2Hc8MdP1A1C2C13FkjQ/s1600/BS+ROUND-UP+-+1+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="474" height="375" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy6hjCjyIYfbN7w0GsoH7X5Hof_EFlZiSGHD8LtaiikUFuQO7AXdRCTZUIiPxKMeH1dsLK5WLxDg5IwL9okYZziRyyeza_1k7PNih5n2Vkf5lZsFDAhHBB9Rjf2Hc8MdP1A1C2C13FkjQ/s400/BS+ROUND-UP+-+1+%25281%2529.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Talking of left-wingers, whenever I want advice about how to behave patriotically, I invariably consult <i>The Independent:</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIS7TBv616d0iqS25MbmwQcaybMHKQcbSG0PS-h2De17HO51anEIcudeHo-0xwN8woynbFgkmRkZ_2RmyJQM4opLcERmSoevaKgyLhors0QX5yGn5OTpHU1YteuJhOlcZa33hLsTWCGTI/s1600/BS+ROUND-UP+-+17.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="254" data-original-width="924" height="135" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIS7TBv616d0iqS25MbmwQcaybMHKQcbSG0PS-h2De17HO51anEIcudeHo-0xwN8woynbFgkmRkZ_2RmyJQM4opLcERmSoevaKgyLhors0QX5yGn5OTpHU1YteuJhOlcZa33hLsTWCGTI/s400/BS+ROUND-UP+-+17.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Just wait there - I'll fetch the nurse. As for the next item, I'm shocked at the very suggestion that a rich social justice warrior might be guilty of hypocrisy!:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-zLRgJob4_EveKtV7BS2oeTvtw3OQuzhX-t1fvJVvx5Jtsbt0UNR-dRrM1zdg4wnrNRJFakPn5kpS_b0dKWV9HEOXG0B9wxPxHbrAk0nrePf0hFGkhiadTk1cMdibHb3XnRsPegFJ9mk/s1600/BS+ROUND-UP+-+21.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="259" data-original-width="623" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-zLRgJob4_EveKtV7BS2oeTvtw3OQuzhX-t1fvJVvx5Jtsbt0UNR-dRrM1zdg4wnrNRJFakPn5kpS_b0dKWV9HEOXG0B9wxPxHbrAk0nrePf0hFGkhiadTk1cMdibHb3XnRsPegFJ9mk/s400/BS+ROUND-UP+-+21.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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It's good to see CNN giving the lie to all those "fake news" charges:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLrgX-63mrXSxTbaNxfb_pEBYZhOIgoffs0usYTvXQCESuGTjajyHEQMhq_PduzvGHepFarDlJC9Z5FCLA8NM8oamSiPiSzc13KJACnbqGls6Y7Y3Ecue-RswfxhNl3NpvIH1zEDct2SQ/s1600/BS+ROUND-UP+-+26.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="588" data-original-width="572" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLrgX-63mrXSxTbaNxfb_pEBYZhOIgoffs0usYTvXQCESuGTjajyHEQMhq_PduzvGHepFarDlJC9Z5FCLA8NM8oamSiPiSzc13KJACnbqGls6Y7Y3Ecue-RswfxhNl3NpvIH1zEDct2SQ/s320/BS+ROUND-UP+-+26.jpg" width="311" /></a></div>
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And it's good to see that America's left-wing media has removed its collective tongue from Barack Obama's sphincter:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7kCM8JYZnlBa9f0t6snsBmLRdlWOvZUZUReCCPduv_jncNTnxo4j9HrWN9bF_7_eIEsZQ2TRTuRj5IVw4LB_G8GM0-CizDdCWIotd7xR-VPKDywbkCzOTERRt3ghC_TJ5uYQz_K_oalA/s1600/BS+ROUND-UP+-+28.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="394" data-original-width="508" height="380" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7kCM8JYZnlBa9f0t6snsBmLRdlWOvZUZUReCCPduv_jncNTnxo4j9HrWN9bF_7_eIEsZQ2TRTuRj5IVw4LB_G8GM0-CizDdCWIotd7xR-VPKDywbkCzOTERRt3ghC_TJ5uYQz_K_oalA/s400/BS+ROUND-UP+-+28.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Sorry- my mistake! It's still firmly wedged up there. As for this next story - I simply refuse to believe it:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZJAeuEzyGxklvEkkkcIWyfbE9MSlK-JVwwMSN0kGFdvRyZHRGKLJVL2yBsDRxg_TwJgOilKD8hyphenhyphenFG6x8_VD7GYSdJEzGyhrysZm1xjG8f9fh_eEcryGLC93i1BJQb3ZbRyXkH9V4FSRE/s1600/BS+ROUND-UP+-+12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="97" data-original-width="494" height="97" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZJAeuEzyGxklvEkkkcIWyfbE9MSlK-JVwwMSN0kGFdvRyZHRGKLJVL2yBsDRxg_TwJgOilKD8hyphenhyphenFG6x8_VD7GYSdJEzGyhrysZm1xjG8f9fh_eEcryGLC93i1BJQb3ZbRyXkH9V4FSRE/s400/BS+ROUND-UP+-+12.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Although, come to think of it, this turns out to be the case in just about every hate-crime reported in America - it's as if some left-wingers are only too willing to lie in order to advance their poisonously divisive political agenda. For instance:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF85pl2B-S16E2pnkCwLiQ3ZKyKy8nTEO-OsPd-S2VQ9tqdb8bbizgfqc1vbuyX55zqs2hcIWdULEUdIlbAmgXrU5APCVpRJOuspyifeqLemKaDZEIo7jywhrUov1964qfP8OePqYN7kU/s1600/BS+ROUND-UP+-+32.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="212" data-original-width="577" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF85pl2B-S16E2pnkCwLiQ3ZKyKy8nTEO-OsPd-S2VQ9tqdb8bbizgfqc1vbuyX55zqs2hcIWdULEUdIlbAmgXrU5APCVpRJOuspyifeqLemKaDZEIo7jywhrUov1964qfP8OePqYN7kU/s400/BS+ROUND-UP+-+32.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Well, I bet all those sceptics who claimed that the Southern Rail drivers' strike was all about money rather than passenger safety (as the drivers had claimed) will be feeling jolly silly now!</div>
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Any conservative or right-winger looking for silver lining in these distinctly overcast times might derive some comfort from the following observation:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNkslkpBwUkAWgyQCYlpaEG_Z9tO32c2d8ZQ9AQj00SgNVNjs9RFGqAN7Mg3jxwdJYPr6kImv8MnhaY3Mwu5TJ0I7nyaCrrlDytuhXauR9Jrnq3vJhivLmqVQ75vhs5DGxKY7SiqJxmQM/s1600/BS+ROUND-UP+-+24.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="79" data-original-width="504" height="78" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNkslkpBwUkAWgyQCYlpaEG_Z9tO32c2d8ZQ9AQj00SgNVNjs9RFGqAN7Mg3jxwdJYPr6kImv8MnhaY3Mwu5TJ0I7nyaCrrlDytuhXauR9Jrnq3vJhivLmqVQ75vhs5DGxKY7SiqJxmQM/s400/BS+ROUND-UP+-+24.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Hmm. Given the current furore over the sexually predatory behaviour of many politicians and entertainment industry types, I think we should applaud Andrew Lawrence for speaking up:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZzktGrr5Gmfr3GN3uy9LkB-4OmdCRiKzNCWIcKvl3A6_O88_uZGZNz75GWJ5I7Ed21a3jdq9zKToMfEDG8Eu_5U5ZE1LALj1sfNBaZC5QgVlQ1IeaYqzw4PcOifEKinhuYQ_v2hR5fpw/s1600/BS+ROUND-UP+-+20.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="106" data-original-width="527" height="100" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZzktGrr5Gmfr3GN3uy9LkB-4OmdCRiKzNCWIcKvl3A6_O88_uZGZNz75GWJ5I7Ed21a3jdq9zKToMfEDG8Eu_5U5ZE1LALj1sfNBaZC5QgVlQ1IeaYqzw4PcOifEKinhuYQ_v2hR5fpw/s400/BS+ROUND-UP+-+20.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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I'll end by saluting gay tourists to Kenya, who, it seems, even wild beasts can't keep apart!</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFCHp-Y1kDi3xZGw87flSK89gAiVkic4xt6C5LC_9mAuDgC2EmzQVNVXXxtkP0-YTQU7lBAa0SVq8s1EZcf1siyvo9PbHwq7jlgq_95M7NgJaP9UoImq_3HwT7Oz1DuIhf-HiBVp3Pw5Q/s1600/BS+ROUND-UP+-+16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="218" data-original-width="457" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFCHp-Y1kDi3xZGw87flSK89gAiVkic4xt6C5LC_9mAuDgC2EmzQVNVXXxtkP0-YTQU7lBAa0SVq8s1EZcf1siyvo9PbHwq7jlgq_95M7NgJaP9UoImq_3HwT7Oz1DuIhf-HiBVp3Pw5Q/s400/BS+ROUND-UP+-+16.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i>Respect!</i></div>
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-22012921410585228872017-11-12T15:32:00.000+00:002017-11-27T15:33:32.081+00:00Lest we forget...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJE5vsojEGLjon8FEyz5zisoN2Bs4-8LAhqW1f8d4o9iln3gTPCV-ux-oQ1_bVPZLx8UGwTXmrGXbMXAdFYwQBKIhsZ6s6iP5HKhKflYgSKnpPjy_IQMzvNXF-ZASVGoMOgJykIs_cCqU/s1600/TRAITORS+-+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="750" height="335" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJE5vsojEGLjon8FEyz5zisoN2Bs4-8LAhqW1f8d4o9iln3gTPCV-ux-oQ1_bVPZLx8UGwTXmrGXbMXAdFYwQBKIhsZ6s6iP5HKhKflYgSKnpPjy_IQMzvNXF-ZASVGoMOgJykIs_cCqU/s400/TRAITORS+-+1.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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And definitely not forgetting these two patriots:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh98UEP7p8OddQ3JiC93YMl3KSa0bHdiCflxvSA9TW7_S51oSpkk7PT12fPrbgeEJPwzfWhNhPkfKgDyIdhSoNZJmhyIkMIAxkGIoEU0x77XrBcmkNJ5lzsKV7i8n8TEsZiio6ng0k588/s1600/TRAITORS+-+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="750" height="335" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh98UEP7p8OddQ3JiC93YMl3KSa0bHdiCflxvSA9TW7_S51oSpkk7PT12fPrbgeEJPwzfWhNhPkfKgDyIdhSoNZJmhyIkMIAxkGIoEU0x77XrBcmkNJ5lzsKV7i8n8TEsZiio6ng0k588/s400/TRAITORS+-+2.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio6UTWpe5RjxUqB5I3KvbJ7cl1OFcjI7kQpYBB5WWtRPM7z9vMRIajK1N_g7-vLmfPk5FBYdOYqoVlDYTvxROrE3zQU4sG63I1twcHVb6xW7xHZLtPl9OTRs4pTqOkCiz15GlveSIlpec/s1600/TRAITORS+-+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="750" height="335" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio6UTWpe5RjxUqB5I3KvbJ7cl1OFcjI7kQpYBB5WWtRPM7z9vMRIajK1N_g7-vLmfPk5FBYdOYqoVlDYTvxROrE3zQU4sG63I1twcHVb6xW7xHZLtPl9OTRs4pTqOkCiz15GlveSIlpec/s400/TRAITORS+-+3.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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So who does the Conservative Home Secretary Amber Rudd choose to target on this of all days?</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAkrjHq6HQiS9Sijjtab3IUlKFdNkHTsMjiSvFhKwH-01kpo2Nk_XXeL9B-VVN88LuM5LExjnVdbGDhUrbSQa01MitEZEYPCKMJw1XvooncOI1OKfZJ59OrilctbmNscIMwHgPP4Ol_9s/s1600/TRAITORS+-+1+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="335" data-original-width="770" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAkrjHq6HQiS9Sijjtab3IUlKFdNkHTsMjiSvFhKwH-01kpo2Nk_XXeL9B-VVN88LuM5LExjnVdbGDhUrbSQa01MitEZEYPCKMJw1XvooncOI1OKfZJ59OrilctbmNscIMwHgPP4Ol_9s/s400/TRAITORS+-+1+%25281%2529.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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The headline atop her article in today's dead-tree edition of the <i>Telegraph</i> read: "Toxic hate of far-Right must not be allowed to hijack the poppy". </div>
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<i>¿Qué pasa? </i>How does this line of attack make political sense? Which group of potential Tory voters is Ms Rudd appealing to here? Because of the abject uselessness of the Tory Party leadership, this country faces the distinct possibility of falling into the hands of a far-Left clique which despises Britain - its people, its history, its culture and its values - and whose leaders have revealed on numerous occasions. by word and deed, a contempt bordering on hatred for Britain's military, and their support for those who are engaged in direct conflict with British troops. This should nauseate any right-thinking person. The current Labour leadership's disgraceful record of undermining this country's armed forces at every turn should represent an open goal for any Tory politician, especially on Remembrance Sunday, should they choose to sully this most solemn of days by indulging in cheap party politics. </div>
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I'm no fan of any of the neo-Nazi/fascist groups Amber Rudd cites in her article: that's not surprising, given that I'm a philosemitic, free market, small state, private property, rule of law, free speech and democracy-supporting conservative right-winger and the people she attacks are <i>none</i> of these things. But rather than attack unpleasant groups for misappropriating the poppy, what about attacking all those nasty, unpatriotic left-wing creeps <i>who refuse to wear one</i> (or, worse, insist on wearing a white one)? They are the <i>real</i> enemy - and, unless Rudd and her colleagues can bloody well get their act together pronto, these unpatriotic poppy-hating shits might be running the country within a matter of months. And why single out the fascist Right for anti-Semitism and Islamophobia when the main sources of anti-Semitism these days are the Labour Left and Muslims? </div>
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The Home Secretary chose to publish her article in the Tory Party house mag. I suspect very few regular <i>Telegraph</i> readers feel any temptation whatsoever to support Britain First or the BNP - so why bother addressing them on this subject? Are you worried that your government's Blairite stance on a whole range of issues risks turning traditional Tories into ranting extremists? Well, here's an idea - <i>drop all those ghastly Blairite policies! </i>And, for God's sake, stop all the me-too aping of Labour's multiculti agenda - and start banging the drum for the glorious benefits of capitalism, and keep explaining in words of one syllable until you're blue in the face that Socialism is possibly the worst idea the human race has ever come up with: the evidence is entirely, completely, wholly, absolutely overwhelmingly <i>on your side. </i>For God's sake, you fools - <i>concentrate!</i></div>
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If, on the other hand, you were trying to reach the 30% of Britons who, according to a recent poll, are averse to buying or wearing a poppy - the snivelling, ungrateful wretches - then I'd suggest that the <i>Telegraph</i> isn't an appropriate platform. I guarantee that every single person who reads the <i>Telegraph</i> will have bought and worn a poppy, with pride and with a sense of deep gratitude for the sacrifice made by others on their behalf. </div>
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Finally, I have no idea who's in charge of the government's media coverage. Whoever you are, I know you have an extraordinarily difficult task, given that the broadcasters and some of the newspapers and most of the online news outlets hate the Conservative Party's guts, and would be willing to do almost anything to see this government lose power. But, even taking that into account, you're doing a spectacularly lousy job: your performance on Twitter alone is utterly execrable. Please shape up - or ship out. For all our sakes. Just like Theresa May, you're quite evidently not up to the job, and you'd probably be a lot happier doing something else (unless it involves organising drinks parties in breweries, of course).</div>
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-3875697697984298522017-11-05T15:31:00.000+00:002017-11-27T15:32:21.635+00:00Best comment on the hysterical reaction to over-sexed politicians - yesterday's Telegraph letters page<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGgx4Hftk1psOMKnlbF6k9WVR6WEZh0CxRXeasYS4IUSp8YwOfUSd9p0KnM-jqKFBQhrhmwnGdjqTEXTNu2ahWNhWsxHH4QnsSqQeN4voWDiQ3LLqAbuJRj-d8a_hoptLi5ppKcr-fYTg/s1600/TELEGRAPH+SEX.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="815" data-original-width="1200" height="330" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGgx4Hftk1psOMKnlbF6k9WVR6WEZh0CxRXeasYS4IUSp8YwOfUSd9p0KnM-jqKFBQhrhmwnGdjqTEXTNu2ahWNhWsxHH4QnsSqQeN4voWDiQ3LLqAbuJRj-d8a_hoptLi5ppKcr-fYTg/s400/TELEGRAPH+SEX.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
No, I'm not belittling the women who have come forward recently to talk about their...<br />
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...unpleasant experiences with salacious male politicians. I'm dreadfully prudish about this sort of thing, and, besides, I'm naturally shy (believe it or not), I've always despised bullies, and I hate anybody invading my personal space: I don't see why women should have to put up with this nonsense. But let's not over-react.<br />
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There's a difference between flirting, playful badinage, or simply complimenting a woman on her looks/clothes/hair/personality etc. and groping any part of her body or making lewd suggestions or trying to blackmail her into having sex with you by implying that a refusal will harm her career. The first set of behaviours is the very stuff of social intercourse, and life would be duller and less pleasant without them. They do not in any way resemble or inevitably lead to the second set of behaviours, which are disgusting.<br />
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The problem with questions of social propriety these days is that, no sooner do they arise as issues than they're turned into "issues" by the provisional wing of the Progressivist movement: in an eye-blink, the debate has shifted from "some men are creeps" to "all men are rapists". This happens <i>every damned time: </i>"some white people are racists" becomes "all white people are racists"; "some heterosexuals don't like gays" becomes "all heterosexuals are homophobic"; "some religions are intolerant and violent" becomes "all religions are inherently intolerant and violent".<br />
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This process almost invariably follows reports of wrong-doing by leftists or by members of one of their pet victim groups. Some Hollywood Democratic Party cheerleaders are revealed to be sexual predators and a couple of Labour MPs are accused of making sexist remarks (in the flesh or on social media) - and the next, every male politician from whichever party is a slavering sex-fiend, and, besides, the Tory Party (two female leaders so far) is inherently sexist, unlike Labour (no female leaders so far). Corbyn's Labour Party is revealed to be stuffed with virulent anti-Semites - no, they're anti-Zionist pro-Palestinians, unlike all those Tories, who, of course, are genuine racists! Yet another Muslim nutcase kills yet more totally innocent city-dwellers - and the problem is not Islam, but <i>all </i>religions (apart from islam, which is a religion of peace, in case you hadn't heard). Asian paedophile gangs raping white girls in British cities? What about Catholic priests??? And, anyway, paedophilia is rampant in every town and village in Britain, so don't go blaming Asian men! The BBC is revealed to be using license-fee payers' money to pay some of its presenters eye-watering salaries? Instantly, the problem is a gender-pay-gap, because all men are rabid sexists and society is just so unfair to women!<br />
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This pathetic, obvious ploy works <i>every time</i>, because the people who should be exposing it as a clumsy trick designed to fudge the issue and deflect the blame from progressivists and their designated victim groups enthusiastically embrace the lie. When a few policeman are revealed to be racists, the police force goes the whole <i>mea culpa</i> nine yards and declares itself to be institutionally racist. When the crime figures for London reveal that young blacks are grotesquely over-represented when it comes to muggings, stabbings and crimes involving guns, our then-Home Secretary, Theresa May, declares an end to stop-and-search based on racial profiling; the anti-Brexit, anti-Tory BBC is paying its presenters far too much of our money ? The government agrees with them that it's all about sexism. Islamic extremists are slaughtering people in this country and Christians abroad? Don't worry, the Church of England is only too eager to assure us that it's "nothing to do with Islam".<br />
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<i>Voila - </i>specific, localised, definable problems - paedophile rape gangs composed of Pakistani-origin Muslim men, Islamic extremists, Labour sexism and antiSemitism, indefensibly high BBC salaries, black crime etc - which could all be addressed by specific measures have been transformed into vast, amorphous societal "issues" which can't be solved, but which allow endless virtue-signalling and moral bullying - and, at the same time, allow blame to be deflected from those who truly deserve it.Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-39676971352341839582017-11-01T15:30:00.000+00:002017-11-27T15:31:01.953+00:00The New York attack, Tory gropers, the sleazy Clintons... and the wisdom of Diane Abbott<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Oh dear. Meanwhile, in case you imagined that yesterday's attack in New York was carried out by a radical Islamic terrorist acting in the name of ISIS, let the BBC's North America Editor put the right:</div>
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You mean it's like some horror movie where inanimate objects take on a life of their own and start killing people? I think most of us would be able to think of something else these cities all have in common. But don't say it out loud, because...</div>
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He's a sociologist at Rice University in Texas, which, so its logo tells us, believes in "Unconventional Wisdom" - what I suspect the rest of us tend to think of as "Conventional Stupidity". Meanwhile, NBC knows exactly who the real victims are here: </div>
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Just check the media script below, and, yes - Day 2 AM, <i>right on schedule!</i></div>
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One of the things I truly admire about the Left is the way it can magically transform a news story about left-wingers behaving badly into a narrative about right-wingers behaving badly. This is happening on at least two fronts right now. First, there's a stack of allegations regarding sexually predatory behaviour by Democrat-funding Hollywood liberals, then one Labour MP has the whip suspended after the release of a string of homophobic and racist social media posts and a woman accusing him of calling her an "ugly bitch", while Clive Lewis, another Labour MP, is recorded on stage at a Momentum event telling a woman in the audience to "get on your knees, bitch!" - but suddenly all we're talking about is a dodgy dossier involving a string of allegations of sexually improper behaviour against <i>Tory</i> MPs? That's pure genius, that is!</div>
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As so often, the Tories only have themselves to blame: with each passing day, this feels more and more like the last grim months of the John Major government, when, under a weak, politically inept leader, the Conservative Party scored an endless series of utterly avoidable own goals. As so often, the <i>Daily Telegraph</i>'s Matt summed up the whole ridiculous Tory dossier brouhaha astutely:</div>
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Meanwhile, in America, the same trick has been deployed to deflect attention away from sensational allegations involving Hillary Clinton, her sleazoid husband, uranium sales, a vast sum of cash being "donated" to the Clinton Foundation, and the Clinton campaign team colluding with the Russians to cook up an anti-Trump document: within the blink of an eye, the left-liberal media's favourite smear campaign had swung back into life, and, suddenly, all we're talking about are alleged dealings with the Russkies by members of <i>Trump'</i>s team!</div>
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No, really - I doff my cap to the truth-twisting maestros of the Left and their mainstream media chums: it's like watching brilliant magicians at work - no matter how carefully you watch their hands, <i>you simply can't tell how they managed it! </i></div>
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Here in Blighty, of course, the subject which brings out the very best in political spinmeisters from the vast, sludgy, Balirte/Cameroonian centre ground - aided by the broadcasters, the banks, the Green Industry/Scam, Big Business etc. - is the EU. No matter how badly it's doing, no matter how many splits appear in its jerry-built edifice (<i>geddit?</i>), no matter how arrogantly or how insultingly its bureaucrats behave, no matter how many predictions regarding the UK's imminent economic collapse fail to materialise, post-Brexit Britain will prove a catastrophe, while the EU will go from strength to strength:</div>
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-45494849960123357352017-11-01T15:28:00.000+00:002017-11-27T15:29:36.081+00:00The Great British Bake-Off's co-creator admits it's a vehicle for pro-EU, pro-multiculti propaganda - is that okay?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm perfectly aware that some of the things I've written over the years regarding the way the...</div>
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...left-liberals who control broadcasting use mainstream entertainment programmes to brainwash viewers into accepting their world-view as normal can make me seem like a basement-dwelling, neck-bearded paranoiac. I usually focus on crime drama, because it's a genre I enjoy, and I hate having my pleasure spoiled by the endless stream of thunkingly obvious leftist "messages" in series such as <i>George Gently (</i>which mercifully came to an end last week) and <i>Grantchester,</i> both of which used the past (the '50s and '60s, respectively) to relentlessly reinforce the lessons dunned into our thick heads by news and current affairs programmes night after night - i.e. indigenous Britons are irredeemably racist, sexist and homophobic, businessmen are evil, Tories are scum, Christians are bigotted nutters, etc. </div>
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To be honest, the rampant political prejudice to be found in a vast swathe of popular mainstream programming strikes me as so screamingly obvious - insultingly so - that I've often wondered if I haven't gone a bit nuts: you know, imagining hidden messages that simply aren't there. Will I end up watching television wearing a tinfoil titfer so that the sinister Powers That Be can't beam messages directly into my brain? But whenever I begin to think this way, one of the people responsible for turning harmless entertainment into left-wing propaganda pops up and admits that that's exactly what they've been up to! </div>
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Usually, the admission of a secret political agenda only emerges years after the event. For instance, it wasn't until 2010 that the <i>Dr Who</i> actor Sylvester McCoy proudly spilled the beans about the late '80s version of the show. Here's what the <i>Telegraph</i> wrote at the time: </div>
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McCoy, now 66, who took over as the Doctor three months after Margaret Thatcher's third election victory in 1987, said they brought politics into the show "deliberately" but "very quietly". </blockquote>
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He said: "We were a group of politically motivated people and it seemed the right thing to do. </blockquote>
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"Our feeling was that Margaret Thatcher was far more terrifying than any monster the Doctor had encountered," he told the Sunday Times.</blockquote>
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Cartmel [the script editor] said it was almost a job requirement to detest Thatcher.</blockquote>
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When asked by John Nathan-Turner, the producer, what he hoped to achieve in being the show's script editor, he recalled: "My exact words were: I'd like to overthrow the government. </blockquote>
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"I was a young firebrand and I wanted to answer honestly. I was very angry about the social injustice in Britain under Thatcher and I'm delighted that came into the show."</blockquote>
A science fiction serial aimed at kids being used to overthrow the democratically-elected government of this country - paid for by BBC licence-payers, more of whom voted for Margaret Thatcher's Tories that for Neil Kinnock's Labour Party. <i>Lovely! </i>But, lefties chortle, that was <i>then</i> - we don't do that sort of thing <i>now</i>. But only last week up pops Richard McKerrow to tell us - beaming from ear to ear - that, until this season, when it switched to Channel 4, a much more successful BBC show has been deliberately used to pump out "radically anti-Brexit" and pro-multicultural messages:<br />
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Again, the majority of license-payers voted for Brexit (well, a majority of those who could be bothered to vote), and, while many of us feel that multiculturalism (as opposed to multiracialism) has been an absolute <i>disaster </i>for the social fabric of this country, even the dimmest of bulbs can surely see that rampant multiculturalism accompanied by barely restricted mass immigration has not only placed huge strains on education, housing, the criminal justice system and the NHS, but has also left many indigenous Britons feeling like strangers in their own land. Richard McKerrow can think what he likes about politics - but why does this smug, pompous prat imagine, for one single instant, that devising a popular entertainment format gives him the right to lecture the rest of us (albeit covertly) on our attitudes to the European customs union or to immigrants. <i>Who made it his fucking business?</i></div>
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We know what these people are up to. We know why the villages in <i>Midsomer Murders</i> are suddenly awash with black and Asian residents. We know why former <i>Bake-Off</i> winner Nadiyah Hussain is never off our screens these days. We know why BBC Sport's twitter feed is stuffed with news about women's football and women's cricket and women's whatnot. We know why there are so many programmes celebrating homosexuality; why transgenderism has suddenly shot to the top of the "hot issues" pile; why it's now <i>de rigeur</i> to feature black and Asian actors in historical dramas depicting events in which blacks or Asians would have played no part; why Christianity is either ignored or derided while other religions are treated with kid gloves; why Sinn Fein is treated with respect, while the conservative DUP is depicted as a neo-Nazi Party; why the myriad deficiencies of the NHS are invariably blamed on a lack of funding rather than on an unwieldy structure, an unsustainable remit, and widespread administrative incompetence... and why some bloke called Richard McKerrow not only feels justified in using a programme about baking to rewire our political views, and, safe in the knowledge that the people he mixes with share his political prejudices, is happy to crow about doing so.</div>
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I'm not paranoid - the bastards really are monkeying inside our heads, and we can throw away our tin-foil headgear, because they're not using invisible beams to do it: it's all there on our TV screens, bold as brass. And, as far as I can see, there's not a bloody thing we can do about it. </div>
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-29589920627183501242017-10-27T15:27:00.000+01:002017-11-27T15:28:10.916+00:00Next, a measured, sensible and unbiased look at the week's main news - with just a splash of sarcasm<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb0pDPJxnKSmlL0qaMfu47ZZocdy0CqwB3jewi1yIKzfhRnLkJX7pzHn61XsaiLsvvCnYZszNU1XXJiWsGrh0B-Qvh3HMrjpwYlFB0deW9zwCSwODl0wCnhpT8wOjTTAYVQNOg29hf2is/s1600/NEWCRUD+-+2+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="520" data-original-width="750" height="350" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb0pDPJxnKSmlL0qaMfu47ZZocdy0CqwB3jewi1yIKzfhRnLkJX7pzHn61XsaiLsvvCnYZszNU1XXJiWsGrh0B-Qvh3HMrjpwYlFB0deW9zwCSwODl0wCnhpT8wOjTTAYVQNOg29hf2is/s400/NEWCRUD+-+2+%25281%2529.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
Now there's a slogan I can really get behind! If that was the Freudian Slip of the Week, this was the Oxymoron of the Week:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVmiCQkwBrAPxe2DiUFIOtrNkNwlabhGGFkNci4kOpX8zHht1x07Q3GoeSeBf7_ruJTWO3KJ2XKVbEeLK4PMOkxwqdjNuUy4JG5SKt3pSodGIQSlEXBmUGedyjQ82DozCv_EC87zqM3uQ/s1600/NEWCRUD+-+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="570" height="123" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVmiCQkwBrAPxe2DiUFIOtrNkNwlabhGGFkNci4kOpX8zHht1x07Q3GoeSeBf7_ruJTWO3KJ2XKVbEeLK4PMOkxwqdjNuUy4JG5SKt3pSodGIQSlEXBmUGedyjQ82DozCv_EC87zqM3uQ/s400/NEWCRUD+-+3.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
Common sense socialism? <i>Snark! </i>Thank goodness there's a Tory government in power:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYIygjj9qK96SI5N5NU7RiL9ddzrrfpLdnxtHd8BEr2f2vyjJcwXTCNziRnqxTh7tsPaTsko1_6ia9O9KfT_9SMl2d69CN5B3c-aUj0-IBEVXSFk7hWACMSQpd8lPpvd_VFpp5oZKcQ64/s1600/NEWCRUD+-+4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="135" data-original-width="521" height="129" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYIygjj9qK96SI5N5NU7RiL9ddzrrfpLdnxtHd8BEr2f2vyjJcwXTCNziRnqxTh7tsPaTsko1_6ia9O9KfT_9SMl2d69CN5B3c-aUj0-IBEVXSFk7hWACMSQpd8lPpvd_VFpp5oZKcQ64/s400/NEWCRUD+-+4.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Presumably the result of years of strong, stable leadership at the Home Office. I'm sure it would't have anything to do with the police losing their focus on the things that matter to the public who pay their wages - you know, silly things like being burgled or mugged or physically assaulted:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYvBHsQgihOyK8uVC1c2uP07Mij56aRO-8VQAAMaKoBnhyphenhyphenMB3py0RKeod2Ip83T7q_lghPZ5EaY7XD1OZ1uH2GROSfVcM-YoZnugmJyUOdn6IkPZfoFzpKsCGhz1buKwJ_xV5GH1o9mh8/s1600/NEWCRUD+-+1+%25286%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="340" data-original-width="647" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYvBHsQgihOyK8uVC1c2uP07Mij56aRO-8VQAAMaKoBnhyphenhyphenMB3py0RKeod2Ip83T7q_lghPZ5EaY7XD1OZ1uH2GROSfVcM-YoZnugmJyUOdn6IkPZfoFzpKsCGhz1buKwJ_xV5GH1o9mh8/s400/NEWCRUD+-+1+%25286%2529.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Sorry - my mistake. Still, I bet they're spending their time on stuff that matters even more to us than being burgled:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-fqjDLUy72mb1CqrVwsp_0IQ6QBZ3zFSfZNbP-L_51R9aKUjytuDh6cIWfPbxObHRTKuc9vk2FbFFPF6QUnH_g4zVu_-QD_sb6u94k2RmQc1fRxfvzY9KFvljy0M9xMMyiMh4UFxkK4Q/s1600/NEWCRUD+-+1+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-fqjDLUy72mb1CqrVwsp_0IQ6QBZ3zFSfZNbP-L_51R9aKUjytuDh6cIWfPbxObHRTKuc9vk2FbFFPF6QUnH_g4zVu_-QD_sb6u94k2RmQc1fRxfvzY9KFvljy0M9xMMyiMh4UFxkK4Q/s400/NEWCRUD+-+1+%25282%2529.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Oh, right. Still, at least our police won't be making fools of themselves by going in for a lot of silly, feelgood, virtue-signalling stunts, like their Swedish and Dutch equivalents:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilbEbDIhqpOW2IqqY9xE43LmxMR-ozlkgRdo05y469nC3nb-BbByud1TVDKSO3C12zeSzphKmsEG30aGiLGFQ63fn-zSScaQHRSvl11fIPqTvFpmf-cJbGlecHm7ft3oq9Z82VsSGCa08/s1600/NEWCRUD+-+2+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="960" height="335" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilbEbDIhqpOW2IqqY9xE43LmxMR-ozlkgRdo05y469nC3nb-BbByud1TVDKSO3C12zeSzphKmsEG30aGiLGFQ63fn-zSScaQHRSvl11fIPqTvFpmf-cJbGlecHm7ft3oq9Z82VsSGCa08/s400/NEWCRUD+-+2+%25282%2529.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9MnrZ-8o-ZxEjQiguOL04PSyHq71rZAKKWKlytuwZxtIzwdh6wqdkPPEf6y8FgfmQkNZo5UAMgagNrhYqIpIwBxCkUeEDaFqyye_TDgnfI-68QYYLo1GsDoHrFceTdSm8A7_3QOmAsxI/s1600/NEWCRUD+-+3+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="508" height="550" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9MnrZ-8o-ZxEjQiguOL04PSyHq71rZAKKWKlytuwZxtIzwdh6wqdkPPEf6y8FgfmQkNZo5UAMgagNrhYqIpIwBxCkUeEDaFqyye_TDgnfI-68QYYLo1GsDoHrFceTdSm8A7_3QOmAsxI/s400/NEWCRUD+-+3+%25282%2529.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Oh, sod it! I give up. Sometimes I think the country's going to the dogs. So does the BBC's John Simpson, apparently:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTDR7XLc5y7KXGSEvDEETb8ZTIn4z6e06c-QR7VDU4ywD2W9QVQG71_c7haQvYcV0C5R5uE4HsNKHKlZY_xPrB83bbxvufoHLM-nuZSgUz1RYer2kiatkyq3IYUGrxT6CFPBXY_R0YyXU/s1600/NEWCRUD+-+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="575" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTDR7XLc5y7KXGSEvDEETb8ZTIn4z6e06c-QR7VDU4ywD2W9QVQG71_c7haQvYcV0C5R5uE4HsNKHKlZY_xPrB83bbxvufoHLM-nuZSgUz1RYer2kiatkyq3IYUGrxT6CFPBXY_R0YyXU/s400/NEWCRUD+-+2.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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So, anti-Brexit, pro-illegal immigrants, and presumably jolly upset that some newspapers are pro-Brexit and not too keen on illegal immigrants - in other words, yet another BBC leftie! Oh, wait...</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEFQ97pUeCpOy7jrjCmNkLfQrN19jj-TNOmIMljRs-5UDxJMg_oVNcrMBA7VRacWv0HAmZPuA0V0u-kW_cXIKxj-eymPUWhgFoDzHcMUiBF2cAla1V5gF682L2Ph_LqmCcdZmN9GAc7GA/s1600/NEWCRUD+-+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="577" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEFQ97pUeCpOy7jrjCmNkLfQrN19jj-TNOmIMljRs-5UDxJMg_oVNcrMBA7VRacWv0HAmZPuA0V0u-kW_cXIKxj-eymPUWhgFoDzHcMUiBF2cAla1V5gF682L2Ph_LqmCcdZmN9GAc7GA/s400/NEWCRUD+-+1.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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I don't blame John for being annoyed by assumption regarding his political leanings: after all, I know <i>so</i> many right-wingers who are anti-Brexit and who are utterly <i>appalled</i> at the thought of foreigners being deported. I suppose one answer might be for him to keep quiet about domestic political issues, which, given that he's the BBC World Affairs Editor, is probably what his contract stipulates. As for all the current viciousness in British public life - how true:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3UPnZ2l4TooIZZwg9PrNbXGmE14d_5GFzXAldMOwZ0LnpSjvO2vcF-palbX04Kkg5m7xZpehsnHl9wfFQedeTaei5bvm7LwCLwLBrtgQXSX-JxwsfbZX2HZMYdI2ZsZqhnux-kRIKr2g/s1600/NEWCRUD+-+7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="166" data-original-width="553" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3UPnZ2l4TooIZZwg9PrNbXGmE14d_5GFzXAldMOwZ0LnpSjvO2vcF-palbX04Kkg5m7xZpehsnHl9wfFQedeTaei5bvm7LwCLwLBrtgQXSX-JxwsfbZX2HZMYdI2ZsZqhnux-kRIKr2g/s400/NEWCRUD+-+7.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Meanwhile, on a lighter note, entertainment news...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigFcsZdUKEvlkK1P_P8Upl8HM7BysoLdzV4OgFtEPl39yD5vCQCmBdyV6kDjZs6B3KAI3Y_MCBIN7SrC1K-LENhGQSJCl6ELiNeX3mWTGC9d8b_xRpmemsemcqlwk9h2_BeHYlBIkmhXY/s1600/NEWCRUD+-+8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="518" data-original-width="579" height="435" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigFcsZdUKEvlkK1P_P8Upl8HM7BysoLdzV4OgFtEPl39yD5vCQCmBdyV6kDjZs6B3KAI3Y_MCBIN7SrC1K-LENhGQSJCl6ELiNeX3mWTGC9d8b_xRpmemsemcqlwk9h2_BeHYlBIkmhXY/s400/NEWCRUD+-+8.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Of <i>course</i> she is! Purely because it's in the best interests of the child, and not because it will allow her to demonstrate how fabulously hip and non-judgmental she is. I can feel a Parent of the Year award in the offing. Speaking of which, the Chelsea couple who advertised for a nanny to raise their children in a gender-neutral fashion sound simply <i>adorable</i>:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmD8Z3Fgga2zq-1imGoYJn4QOL_V2DdPr05XA8BdhugRwHH3hR0Uko6kIuCln8yk6nrY4PdYa3nJqmvI8OCknnsT7OLeJ70fjKDHDvvpJbSd7NMrVVDvTXtd8DOYtzMq50UJeoWU28IqU/s1600/NEWCRUD+-+2+%25283%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="230" data-original-width="562" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmD8Z3Fgga2zq-1imGoYJn4QOL_V2DdPr05XA8BdhugRwHH3hR0Uko6kIuCln8yk6nrY4PdYa3nJqmvI8OCknnsT7OLeJ70fjKDHDvvpJbSd7NMrVVDvTXtd8DOYtzMq50UJeoWU28IqU/s400/NEWCRUD+-+2+%25283%2529.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Choosing a gender? Why stop there? Why not let your children choose their race, their intelligence levels and their height while you're at it?</div>
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I'm getting tired of snotty, witless anti-Trumpery on social media - but every now and then...</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp7ZNQoUF6gbOkhzGiGvo1G_YtsiJWWwtJE08rA-OgsmsNFoY_-IxSllA3y0dffmJYaE92-sH7Np6m-2YJfjYd-yqIy_2g6OMfRxPRV7FQ1oAGVF1Fd3QhhviLtTvV_ckgkIiAn_YByDc/s1600/NEWCRUD+-+3+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="676" data-original-width="792" height="420" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp7ZNQoUF6gbOkhzGiGvo1G_YtsiJWWwtJE08rA-OgsmsNFoY_-IxSllA3y0dffmJYaE92-sH7Np6m-2YJfjYd-yqIy_2g6OMfRxPRV7FQ1oAGVF1Fd3QhhviLtTvV_ckgkIiAn_YByDc/s400/NEWCRUD+-+3+%25281%2529.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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I recommend you have a bucket within easy reach before reading this last tweet:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOS25D_4DGyDFdVyPtcFbF9AB2PYcD-5vXflnyuYvcYkAGLNLDLHkdn5XjI-bKrrcEB8fq2j52HB9jgLYckTmtsg9DnnriGlURcCJ0feItJZ-L_Eqx-Mg9XnsfKskRg4BWU6HTzBh6BvM/s1600/NEWCRUD+-+3+%25283%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="570" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOS25D_4DGyDFdVyPtcFbF9AB2PYcD-5vXflnyuYvcYkAGLNLDLHkdn5XjI-bKrrcEB8fq2j52HB9jgLYckTmtsg9DnnriGlURcCJ0feItJZ-L_Eqx-Mg9XnsfKskRg4BWU6HTzBh6BvM/s400/NEWCRUD+-+3+%25283%2529.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Because...</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhAKQ5jByTwUklhOvz22otlGtZTzLY64K6a1N0T6Ii9jO9dP-yxqCP-8qljVG3ntLecXO2or0Wqfq2i7WdX9qcGo8UJxSuwA9S-x9bP9wBf-w9Fi7xknZesLqO0bLa35og3Pn5aVUFu08/s1600/NEWCRUD+-+1+%25285%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="728" height="375" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhAKQ5jByTwUklhOvz22otlGtZTzLY64K6a1N0T6Ii9jO9dP-yxqCP-8qljVG3ntLecXO2or0Wqfq2i7WdX9qcGo8UJxSuwA9S-x9bP9wBf-w9Fi7xknZesLqO0bLa35og3Pn5aVUFu08/s400/NEWCRUD+-+1+%25285%2529.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-48358041380140989652017-10-26T15:26:00.000+01:002017-11-27T15:27:05.872+00:00A neighbouring council has allegedly spent £55,000 a head on getting 21 smokers to quit!The above figures come from a fascinating article, <a href="http://council%20anti-smoking%20campaigns%20are%20an%20expensive%20failure/">Council anti-smoking campaigns are an expensive failure</a>, by Harry Phibbs, published on Conservative Home yesterday. The council in question is Hammersmith & Fulham, and their grotesque squandering of the Public Health Budget - which comes from general taxation rather than the rates - should be enough to make anyone, whatever their political leanings, weep with frustration. Ultimately, that represents £1.2m taken from the private sector (where all the tax ultimately comes from - the tax paid by public sector workers was taken from the private sector in the first place) to help a handful of nicotine addicts who could have visited either <a href="https://www.totallywicked-eliquid.co.uk/electronic-cigarette-kits/starter-kits.html">Totally Wicked</a> or <a href="https://www.shopec.co.uk/starter-kits">Shop E-Cigarette</a> on King Street and...<br />
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...picked up a decent starter kit and some eliquid for around £25! (And if the addicts are unable to get to the shops, I'm sure a council employee would be delighted to pick up a kit for them.)<br />
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It's not as if vaping is some sort of big secret. There are reckoned to be about three million vapers in the UK, half of whom have given up using tobacco entirely. It's a mainstream activity. There are still some nine million smokers in this country. If the government, or local councils, or NHS administrators, or health campaigners, or any of the vast army of morally superior busybodies who are addicted to spending other people's money really want to help smokers to quit, then, for the love of God, get them<i> vaping</i>. It's the cheapest, healthiest and cleanest method of ingesting nicotine yet devised. In an ideal world, of course, smokers would renounce nicotine altogether - but this isn't an ideal world. So go for the next best option - the one that even our health authorities reckon is <i>at least</i> 85% safer than smoking. As Harry Phibbs puts it: "What this does show is that the market has come up with an innovative and cost-effective solution – while the municipal alternative is to spend a fortune of our money on alternatives which fail."<br />
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Discussing his £55,000 per quitter figure, Phibbs writes:<br />
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Even in the very stiff competition provided in the public sector that is staggeringly poor value for money. Yet I am not assuming that the anti-smoking element is any more wasteful than other items in the Public Health budget. Nor that Hammersmith and Fulham is untypical with such dire performance. Just ask for the equivalent figures for your own Council.</blockquote>
That's a chilling thought - but even more chilling is the suspicion that the public sector is pissing our money away on thousands of similarly pointless, fruitless schemes covering a vast range of "issues" across the whole country, while at the same time whining endlessly about Tory "cuts". What a wicked, wasteful farce.Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-82555003736713584982017-10-15T15:25:00.000+01:002017-11-27T15:25:47.747+00:00"To think people like you ruled a country..."<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-i6pmkRnQIh-LCWCCgHiyfWadWKx7MJR4HAF2VSs5U-TCECIvS_Zik5iJpELVTmj_5mPGW5Zn5UA_WBR-hwB-WzLvJW2PptJZrjiG8mh6nzqbH9WcnrojCA0_o6kegMmG1kDPv8I2Q9Q/s1600/CAMPBELLCUNT.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="308" data-original-width="581" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-i6pmkRnQIh-LCWCCgHiyfWadWKx7MJR4HAF2VSs5U-TCECIvS_Zik5iJpELVTmj_5mPGW5Zn5UA_WBR-hwB-WzLvJW2PptJZrjiG8mh6nzqbH9WcnrojCA0_o6kegMmG1kDPv8I2Q9Q/s400/CAMPBELLCUNT.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
In case you're finding it hard to place the quote in the title of this post, it's from...<br />
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... <i>The Lives of the Others, </i>the 2006 masterpiece mainly set in Soviet-era East Germany. In this scene, which follows the fall of the Berlin Wall, a playwright who had been loyal to the communist regime runs into one of the state's former rulers:<br />
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-53351340466296187772017-10-10T15:24:00.000+01:002017-11-27T15:24:48.070+00:00I'll leave it to the Bonzo Dog Band to explain why I'm not posting much about politics these days...<div style="text-align: center;">
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I'm not bored with anything else - just...</div>
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...politics. I normally look forward to the <i>Telegraph</i> headlines, the latest tweets, and robustly right-wing articles on websites like <i>American Thinker</i> and <i>Taki's Magazine, </i>but right now I just feel slightly sickened by it all. I suspect it's because the choice currently on offer is so unappetising: on the one hand, it's a mixture of Old School "Marxism for Dummies" economic idiocy encased in a peculiarly repulsive New Left "free stuff" identity politics wrapper; on the other, it's Blairite cultural Marxism masquerading as "caring" conservatism mixed in with dollops of Cameron/Osborne-style crony capitalism, but with an ever greater emphasis on hobbling the free market (workers on boards, caps on energy prices, positive discrimination - all that old pish). As for Theresa May, I can't decide if she's Ted Heath without the charm and the people-skills, or John Major without his clarity of vision, air of command or his gift of oratory. I mean - <i>blecchhh! </i><br />
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As for America - oh, forget it.<br />
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Nevertheless, despite my political dyspepsia, I do - out of habit - dip my toes into the stream of current events... and invariably wish I hadn't, because this is the sort of malodorous stuff I find floating in it:<br />
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PRESS GAZETTE: Hertfordshire Police have failed in a bid to force Private Eye to reveal its subscriber list after a Muslim police employee was sent a cut-out of a joke about terrorists from the weekly magazine.</blockquote>
Evening all! Mind how you go. Mind what you say. Mind what you think. <i>Cos</i> w<i>e know where you live, sunshine - and don't you forget it! </i><br />
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THERESA MAY TWEET: Today, I launch a world-leading project on the impact of ethnicity on people's lives. Time to tackle injustice.</blockquote>
Oh, please - just go away, you <i>silly</i> woman. This ghastly, divisive, guilt-trip nonsense won't gain you a single additional vote, but it <i>will</i> alienate yet more natural Tory voters - well, the handful you and your predecessor hand't already managed to drive out of the party. Just <i>be</i> the nasty party and get on with helping create a world-leading economy with a world-leading military and a world-leading police force. If Britain is the prejudiced hell-hole you evidently imagine it to be, why do black and brown people keep flocking here in droves?<br />
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CONSERVATIVE PARTY TWEET: We are acting to stop plastic entering our oceans, by banning microbeads and exploring a deposit return scheme for plastic bottles.</blockquote>
Here, Maureen - have you seen this Tory tweet? There was I accusing the government of not concentrating on what really matters to voters - but this announcement has shown me how wrong I was. That's it, I'm switching my vote from the Greens to the Conservatives next time round, and you can hold me to that!<br />
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DAILY EXPRESS HEADLINE: UK is a 'USELESS country!' Europhile sparks OUTRAGE in furious BBC News row on Brexit</blockquote>
A Belgian journalist - Marc Roche from <i>La Point </i>- calls the UK "useless"? From <i>Belgium -</i> a country, which, according to General de Gaulle, was invented by the British simply to annoy the French? My irony-meter just broke. In case you imagine this is merely typical <i>Express </i>pro-Brexit sensationalising, you can watch the clip <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/863546/BBC-European-UK-Brexit-bias-Brexiteer">here</a>. For those of you who are lucky enough never to have seen it, the BBC News Channel's <i>Dateline London</i> provides a weekly opportunity for foreign left-liberal journalists to get together to worship the EU, mock the Conservative Party, and sneer at Donald Trump. There's usually a conservative on the panel, so the three left-wing journalists and the left-wing presenter (sorry - <i>neutral</i> presenter, of course) have someone to sneer at in the flesh. An odd thing to spend licence-payer's money on, I should have thought - but that's probably because I'm too old, stupid, racist, useless and low-information to get it.<br />
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Remember how the liberal media recoiled in horror when the then-Mayor of London Boris Johnson had the effrontery to suggest that the then-US President, the "part-Kenyan" Barack Hussein Obama, may have harboured an "ancestral dislike" of Britain? <i>Silly old Boris!</i><br />
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RT HEADLINE: Obama ‘mocked Britain in secret, thought special relationship was a joke’</blockquote>
Mind you, that's only according to one of Saint Barry's former aides, Jeremy Shapiro, who told the Cheltenham Literary Festival: “From my perspective it was very important for us to mention the special relationship in every press conference that we had when the UK were here. But really we laughed about it behind the scenes. Typically, I would try and slip in a reference to the Malvinas or something to spoil it.”<br />
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I caught 10 seconds of <i>Have I Got News For You </i>last night, entirely by accident, only to hear a female panelist tell us that she <i>really</i> hated Boris Johnson. Everyone tittered. These people are loathsome. <br />
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This next story in the <i>Telegraph</i> improved my mood no end:<br />
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An Oxford College has banned the Christian Union from its freshers’ fair on the grounds that it would be “alienating” for students of other religions, and constitute a “micro-aggression”.</blockquote>
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The organiser of Balliol’s fair argued Christianity’s historic use as “an excuse for homophobia and certain forms of neo-colonialism” meant that students might feel “unwelcome” in their new college if the Christian Union had a stall.</blockquote>
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Freddy Potts, vice-president of Balliol’s Junior Common Room (JCR) committee, said that if a representative from the Christian Union (CU) attended the fair, it could cause "potential harm" to freshers. </blockquote>
Doomed, I tell you.<br />
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My acidie wasn't alleviated by learning that Ireland have introduced a stamp featuring the psychopathic mass-murdering sadist Che Guevara. As for the Wiltshire Police and their attempts to justify destroying the reputation (such as it is) of a former Conservative Prime Minister, despite an absolute lack of anything remotely resembling actual evidence, I truly despair. God knows I despised Ted Heath - but this is sheer <i>lunacy.</i><br />
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I'll end with that evidently lovely chap, Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. The response to allegations (as I'd better call them) of this thug's sexually predatory behaviour by Hollywood liberals - who shrieked in outrage when it was revealed that Donald Trump had once bragged about grabbing women's private parts - demonstrates hypocrisy on a cosmic scale. Of course, some of them have started emerging from the woodwork since Weinstein was fired to condemn his alleged behaviour, but most of the virtue-signalling moral pygmies are keeping <i>shtum</i>.<br />
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Perhaps some older film-industry types have reminded younger Hollywooders that when, in 1977, the actor Cliff Robertson blew the whistle on the head of Columbia Pictures, David Begelman, over a forged $10,000 cheque, Begelman - who was revealed to have embezzled an additional $65,000 from the company - was suspended, although still being paid, only to be reinstated for a brief period. (In 1980 this convicted criminal was appointed CEO and president of MGM for four years.) The CEO of Columbia, who refused to reinstate Begelman after his paid vacation on the grounds that he was a crook, was himself fired. The actor Cliff Robertson was effectively blacklisted by Hollywood in the 1980s. No wonder the moral relativists of the US entertainment industry backed Hillary Clinton to the hilt.<br />
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I'll end with this scene from the 2008 film <i>Tropic Thunder.</i> Obviously, I have no idea whether Tom Cruise's Les Grossman character is modelled on a specific Hollywood mogul - but, whoever he's meant to be, he doesn't seem particularly nice:<br />
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-69989198004594092852017-10-01T15:22:00.000+01:002017-11-27T15:23:43.168+00:00Cartoons and t'ing - from Blower on Catalonia to Matt on Hugh Hefner...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsE4gP4jdpNCnKuWUB0E4wA6DEdLysj6B1W8FpBAfMsiNHzn4CO2gM10wUW1JYV4uVCUT8ZTnYFM0kI9tGxOxUlnKzDmzpBg3NegdljqdvJIkvCOV-Htv6LXvCb5spkIRMzqZzucyjrDA/s1600/CATALONIA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="756" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsE4gP4jdpNCnKuWUB0E4wA6DEdLysj6B1W8FpBAfMsiNHzn4CO2gM10wUW1JYV4uVCUT8ZTnYFM0kI9tGxOxUlnKzDmzpBg3NegdljqdvJIkvCOV-Htv6LXvCb5spkIRMzqZzucyjrDA/s400/CATALONIA.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
There have been several good political cartoons in the <i>Telegraph </i>recently, including this one by Bob:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi81s2LJE1l4JExTItcU_4cD_MFykdjQ7oD7rmSwOiw2pv-uYXiGkqhUYo5eZMMgK_ZEHHYA7UaGMFvRhTnZqD2EVGAVhFvMfQNxbDdX0CUB6VCfDljW58G8FRlfJeaY8bVbtyBdu00iBg/s1600/CARTOONS+-+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /><img border="0" data-original-height="794" data-original-width="1200" height="330" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi81s2LJE1l4JExTItcU_4cD_MFykdjQ7oD7rmSwOiw2pv-uYXiGkqhUYo5eZMMgK_ZEHHYA7UaGMFvRhTnZqD2EVGAVhFvMfQNxbDdX0CUB6VCfDljW58G8FRlfJeaY8bVbtyBdu00iBg/s400/CARTOONS+-+1.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
...and this one by (who else?) Matt:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxLBGZPjxenqRX1kZX4ngOKhrQNPLC5sQtT6oZ5a8ySuiTi9r-LeFHC-eomKuPzo7fbKhyphenhyphenJfd6NxnJYn45JhCboJ77Zk2jq9W7CxL-u7al7-Rx29FHtSWsQ3HlzGp2fH1kOTt9tstZ1WU/s1600/CARTOONS+-+4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="720" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxLBGZPjxenqRX1kZX4ngOKhrQNPLC5sQtT6oZ5a8ySuiTi9r-LeFHC-eomKuPzo7fbKhyphenhyphenJfd6NxnJYn45JhCboJ77Zk2jq9W7CxL-u7al7-Rx29FHtSWsQ3HlzGp2fH1kOTt9tstZ1WU/s400/CARTOONS+-+4.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Hugh Hefner's demise was marked by a genuine classic from Matt:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpTp6RBALQl6uNJoqrJhZUaupuBMqi-B1eyAHsk0JQRl3IeSbig7B9-Tso-PUhQ24_k0B2AK567JzFkC-2GHFvFdsywuenNmC67hslhyphenhyphenXkE1rcLcp-Mu5J22cBZnLb-p3WmQqhlyK3m_8/s1600/CARTOONS+-+1+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="503" data-original-width="296" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpTp6RBALQl6uNJoqrJhZUaupuBMqi-B1eyAHsk0JQRl3IeSbig7B9-Tso-PUhQ24_k0B2AK567JzFkC-2GHFvFdsywuenNmC67hslhyphenhyphenXkE1rcLcp-Mu5J22cBZnLb-p3WmQqhlyK3m_8/s640/CARTOONS+-+1+%25282%2529.jpg" width="376" /></a></div>
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Nothing to do with the <i>Telegraph</i>, but I'm not convinced this is the best way for Labour to win the hearts and minds of potential voters:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEzKhkAvIN0uIZDD85rJatnFhqeh7obbLSg4679rcQ-vJDGeirm8UR6fqbcCJBmr6jx5uLDPzchr5dLEQZUENXknFfRBuq0IQMiCS6DZHHhwsEWAKaXPs84CHnpkTRrU7uuqWVAEZMsU0/s1600/CARTOONS+-+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="554" data-original-width="573" height="580" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEzKhkAvIN0uIZDD85rJatnFhqeh7obbLSg4679rcQ-vJDGeirm8UR6fqbcCJBmr6jx5uLDPzchr5dLEQZUENXknFfRBuq0IQMiCS6DZHHhwsEWAKaXPs84CHnpkTRrU7uuqWVAEZMsU0/s640/CARTOONS+-+5.jpg" width="600" /></a></div>
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At least they didn't address him as "Tory Scum".</div>
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Toddling even further along Irrelevance Boulevard, I'll end with this thoroughly confusing example of xenophobia from America:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfUAtLJ8xXGgCt1WxE6RjBjWz23ohUA7OjMvrUVZGD4uqVLsZofNGruepJYMhf7uXm-hUkOiJ3eoXRF965mUR8F1Fm03j5ov5sQT2U2O3oAhsB8gikSmc4SfJOfH9qomiLdh_PtW2Y9CA/s1600/CARTOONS+-+6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="269" data-original-width="946" height="140" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfUAtLJ8xXGgCt1WxE6RjBjWz23ohUA7OjMvrUVZGD4uqVLsZofNGruepJYMhf7uXm-hUkOiJ3eoXRF965mUR8F1Fm03j5ov5sQT2U2O3oAhsB8gikSmc4SfJOfH9qomiLdh_PtW2Y9CA/s400/CARTOONS+-+6.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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<i>Some mistake surely?</i></div>
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-20157970158937020602017-09-03T15:21:00.000+01:002017-11-27T15:22:25.595+00:00Snapshots from our mad, mad, mad, mad world this weekend...Bit of Background: Jess Phillips is the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley. Nadeem Ahmed is a Momentum Corbynite. First came this:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXzOyc67n4IZVOalXF7M623EEZFgwKUeOcDsTsqR5tn7G0guPUizHwhvY2F7PrV97ecel6gkhnYe1gnU2413xCenMvMIHYSqKpF0GMmngWoU3s8hD3flIbliWZxB6k9jZka07mvbryajk/s1600/SUNDAYTWATS+-+1+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="82" data-original-width="500" height="95" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXzOyc67n4IZVOalXF7M623EEZFgwKUeOcDsTsqR5tn7G0guPUizHwhvY2F7PrV97ecel6gkhnYe1gnU2413xCenMvMIHYSqKpF0GMmngWoU3s8hD3flIbliWZxB6k9jZka07mvbryajk/s400/SUNDAYTWATS+-+1+%25281%2529.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Which was followed two days later by this:</div>
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Which was followed by this:</div>
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And all through no fault of his own. Gosh, I hope he's all right! Meanwhile, the Prime Minister once again demonstrated her political astuteness by using Eid to suck up to Muslims - not a single one of whom of will switch their political allegiance to the Tories as a result of her craven, Uriah Heep-like writhings:</div>
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<i>Lick-lick, slurp-slurp... </i>What a repellent, inept performance! Does she <i>seriously</i> imagine she's going to lead the Conservatives into the next election?</div>
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Other news now, and John Lewis has announced that it is removing the labels "boys" and "girls" from its children's clothes, in order not to "reinforce gender stereotypes". How deeply caring, progressive and enlightened of them. After all, gender is a mental construct: it's not as if Nature has given us any physical clues as to whether we're male or female - of has it?</div>
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Meanwhile, aren't we all getting a bit tired of leftists promising to do things, and then not doing them?</div>
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Following the Texas floods, The Donald and Melania have been down for a visit. For all his faults, Trump undoubtedly gives good empathy in the flesh. If Barack Obama had still been Prez, America's mainstream media would no doubt have informed us that he had walked across the waters to lay healing hands on his people. But as this was Literally Hitler, they concentrated on the unsuitability of Melania's choice of shoes, because that's what really matters to people caught up in a natural disaster. These two screen-grabs pretty much sum it up:</div>
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It seems that some members of the public weren't all that impressed by CNN's attempts at empathy:</div>
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Mind you, empathy was in short supply in some quarters:</div>
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Here's another take on the liberal-left media's coverage:</div>
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Back in Blighty, the Remoaners were out in force:</div>
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And he posted that little gem on the day that the EU's chief Brexit negotiatior, Michel Barnier, had the effrontery to suggest that the British people needed to be "educated" regarding the consequences of leaving the EU (one of which would be not having to suffer any more lectures from arrogant, self-important, jumped-up little pillocks like Michel Barnier). No doubt Labour peer Lord Adonis will also be complaining about the vast, malodorous pile of unfiltered pro-Remain propaganda excreted by Mark Mardell and his chums on Radio 4's <i>The World This Weekend</i> earlier today - and on every other BBC programme every other day of the week, unless Andrew Neil is the presenter. Personally, I'm all for the BBC appointing Julia Hartley-Brewer as their EU Correspondent:</div>
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Amen to that. </div>
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Say what you like about Katie Hopkins (and most people do), she has a way of dealing with foul-mouthed social media hecklers that often has me in stitches. Here are two recent examples:</div>
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I'll leave you with something more uplifting, posted by another hate-figure, Tommy Robinson. Made me blub:</div>
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❤❤❤❤🇬🇧 <a href="https://t.co/H1CpYEbEm7">pic.twitter.com/H1CpYEbEm7</a></div>
— Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 (@TRobinsonNewEra) <a href="https://twitter.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/903783804434882560">September 2, 2017</a></blockquote>
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-86370102518331894072017-08-31T15:20:00.000+01:002017-11-27T15:21:20.572+00:00Traitor Kim Philby is welcomed by KGB boss, Vladimir Semichastny, after fleeing to Moscow <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-60708697074528561292017-08-29T15:19:00.000+01:002017-11-27T15:20:26.702+00:00Standard list of BBC questions to EU politicians and bureaucrats<div>
That report was from our Pro-EU correspondent, Tim Surrender-Monkey. To answer some of the issues it raised, I'm now joined on the phone by Schleswig-Holstein's Deputy Minister for Cultural Suicide, Hermann Jeering, who is an MP for the Liberal Democratic Socialist Christian Union Alliance Free Green Conservative Party of Schleswig-Holstein - the left-leaning, right-leaning, centrist, anarchist, far-right, nationalist, globalist, socialist, anarchist, communist LDSCUAFGCPSH...</div>
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Herr Jeering, thank you for honouring us with your God-like presence. We are not worthy. Let me start by asking you this. Just how pathetically disorganised is the British Tory government's Brexit negotiating team?<br />
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Just how big a clown is Boris Johnston - and how big a threat is he to world peace?<br />
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Isn't Donald Trump utterly frightful!</div>
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One or two deluded commentators in our sinister, racist, xenophobic, politically-biased (unlike us) right-wing press have suggested that the insistence by chief EU Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, that Britain agrees to pay whatever the EU demands before negotiations on substantial issues can begin is somehow delaying any deal. <i>They</i> claim it's a bit like a car dealer insisting that a customer hands them a large sum of money without knowing which cars are for sale, or how much they'll cost, and then forcing to accept whichever car they're damn well given. But what do they know, right?</div>
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Many Britons who wish to remain in the EU have reported that, while on holiday, people from other countries keep streaming up to them to ask whether the UK has gone mad. Surely we need to listen to what some random foreigners may or may not have remarked to drunken Remainers who were probably suffering from sunstroke and who probably started the conversation by slurring out "Brexit, eh? We're fucking mad, we are. I bet you think we're mad, don't you? Was that a yes? Too fucking right... Oh, have you got to go already? What a shame. Oi, you, waiter! Another magnum of this agreeable vintage, pronto, por favor! I'm a citizen of the world, I am!" Be honest - <i>everyone </i>in Europe thinks we've gone mad, don't they?</div>
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Britain depends for its safety on the military might of EU countries like Germany and Slovenia and Greece. How soon after Brexit do you think this powerless little island will be invaded by a foreign power - of course, I don't mean <i>yours</i>, Herr Jeering. Oh dear me, no!</div>
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A terrifying prospect. When it comes to fighting terrorism, it's well known that Britain depends entirely on information from the French, German and Belgian intelligence services, who've done such a brilliant job preventing terrorist attacks in their own countries. Presumably, this sort of co-operation will cease post-Brexit. In your opinion, how many hundreds of thousands of Britons are likely to die as a result? Or could it be millions?</div>
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As all trade between the EU and the UK - the EU's biggest export market - will cease post-Brexit, as will all air traffic in and out of Britain, so we won't be able to travel abroad to negotiate trade deals with the rest of the world, how long before Britons actually start dying of starvation?</div>
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It's well known that - unlike, say, your own country, with its long, proud, democratic tradition of guaranteeing the rights of individuals under the law - Britain will have no such tradition to fall back on when its citizens are no longer protected by enlightened, socially just EU laws. Do you think Britain will become a brutal dictatorship as soon as it leaves the EU - or could it take a few years?</div>
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That soon, eh? Tell me, Herr Jeering, does it surprise you that the UK state broadcaster, which is funded by a compulsory poll tax of those very citizens who last year voted in favour of Brexit, and which, under the terms of its charter, is meant to be politically neutral, is quite happy to ignore the democratically-expressed wishes of licence-payers by pumping out an endless flow of anti-Brexit propaganda designed to weaken Britain's negotiating position, thus ensuring that the UK ends up with a far worse deal than it might have got if we'd remained even vaguely neutral?<br />
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Why, <i>thank</i> you, Herr Jeering. We are indeed doing our bit for the glorious "European Project". What's that? Of course - resistance is futile, for we Britischer pigdogs the war is over, <i>Deutschland über Alles!</i><br />
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Coming up later in the programme:<br />
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- How broadcasters can undermine good economic news headlines by adding the word "but", followed by a spurious qualifying statement for which there is absolutely no evidence. <br />
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- Abdul al Cuddlybum, head of the NothintodowithIslam Foundation, tells us why Brexit supporters represent a far greater terrorist threat to this country than Islamists.<br />
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- We examine Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's proposal that Grenfell Tower fire survivors should be allowed to decide whether Brexit goes ahead or not.<br />
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- Sir Lenny Henry on why black actors should be cast as Sherlock Holmes, Queen Victoria, Winston Churchill and Alice in Wonderland in forthcoming television productions.<br />
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But first, Polly Toynbee joins me on the phone from her delightful Tuscan hideaway to explain why Brexit will mean the end of the few remaining bits of the welfare state that this heartless Tory government hasn't already destroyed...</div>
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-20126842033842791602017-08-21T15:18:00.000+01:002017-11-27T15:19:16.990+00:00The extraordinary generosity of our mayor, Sadiq Kahn<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The brazen juxtaposition of "I've" and "your" makes it sound...<br />
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...as if Kahn has been the generous donor, and it's now up to the rest of us mean blighters to follow his lead, when the truth is that <i>all</i> of the money the Mayor has pledged is ours in the first place: he won't have contributed a penny of his own. What about "I've pledged £400,000 of <i>your </i>money to support projects of which you may very well not approve - and I'm taking all the credit, sucker!"<br />
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Obviously, I've no idea which particular pot of gold the Mayor dipped into for these funds - London ratepayers, income tax-payers, the EU - and I can't be bothered to find out. The answer is "the private sector", because that's where <i>all </i>the money ultimately comes from - although you wouldn't know it if you listened to politicians, academics, public sector employees, the BBC, or anyone who studied PPE at Oxford. I foolishly imagined that one of Margaret Thatcher's enduing legacies would be to ensure that, when politicians enthusiastically power-hosed money at voters, we'd all understand that it was voters' money gushing from the end of that hose. But no such luck: 26 years after she was forced out of office, we're pretty much back where we started, with politicians once more routinely presenting themselves as multibillionaire philanthropists "putting something back". As the great Thomas Sowell put it:<br />
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"First you take people's money away quietly, and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly."</blockquote>
Some of the schemes on the Mayor's list seem perfectly reasonable, but I'm not sure I fully approve of my taxes or rates being spent on the following items:<br />
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<i>Croydon's Anthem for Peace</i>: A peace-themed musical score and a large scale community performance in Croydon.<br />
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<i>An Oak Sculpture Trail for Furzedown!</i> (Wandsworth): Create sculptures from a felled local tree, forming a trail.<br />
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<i>GLOW: Barking and Dagenham Light Festival</i>: Local people in Barking and Dagenham will create a light festival, providing learning and employment opportunities.<br />
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I'm all for local initiatives and charitable giving - and crowdfunding strikes me as a particularly good idea - and I accept that, for practical reasons, the government/local council can't seek the direct approval of each and every taxpayer/ratepayer for every penny it spends - but I strongly object to politicians taking credit for their generosity when they're being generous with other people's money.Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-44920924515109307072017-08-06T15:17:00.000+01:002017-11-27T15:18:03.829+00:00The National Trust's climbdown on gay badges is a temporary setback for the forces of Progressivism - which never rest, never sleep'Dame' Helen Ghosh has been stymied in her attempt to punish National Trust volunteers who refuse to wear pro-Gay rainbow lanyards by forbidding them contact with the public. This is very good news. The former civil servant's tenure as director-general of the organisation is due to end soon in any case: she's due to take over as Master of Balliol College next March, where she will no doubt busy herself rooting out anything tainted by custom, tradition or common sense. After all, this is the woman who attempted to ban the word "Easter" from the the annual Cadbury's/National Trust Easter egg race. She can now tinker and busybody away to her heart's content overseeing a vital section of Britain's educational assembly-line, whose main purpose these days appears to be churning out yet more self-righteous fools to further swell the ranks of left-liberal elite social engineers determined to rewire our brains and our instincts...<br />
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While we celebrate 'Dame' Helen's humiliation, we must resist any sense of triumph. Overturning this sort of silly, virtue-signalling progressivist diktat requires an awful lot of work by any number of people - the volunteers themselves, the conservative press, the blogosphere, as well, no doubt, as quite a few sensible adults behind the scenes trying to persuade the silly woman that's she's bringing the organisation into disrepute, and that there is no earthly reason why (mainly elderly) people who give up their time in order to help preserve the historical architectural and artistic fabric of the country they love should be expected to "celebrate" Gay Pride, any more than they should be expected to bedeck themselves with symbols expressing enthusiasm for mass immigration, Islam, transgenderism, the EU, free school lunches, Cornish independence, mass euthanasia for the over-70s, or lowering the age of sexual consent to 10.<br />
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In order to resist the tide of "Progress", the effort required to overturn the rainbow lanyard silliness would have to be repeated thousands of times a day by millions of people across the country - because progressivists never rest, and, unlike conservatives, they are never, ever, satisfied. That's because their sense of meaning, of self-worth, depends on changing how things are. Changing things, "making a difference", makes them feel <i>tremendously</i> good about themselves. In fact, it makes them feel <i>so</i> good about themselves, they become addicted to messing us around in the name of social justice. When conservatives lose a battle, they tend to quit the field, shrug, and say "Oh, well - can't win 'em all!" When progressivists lose a battle, they turn into crack addicts denied a fix: they instantly regroup, choose a new or related issue or pet victim group to champion, and try to implement some other incredibly daft left-field scheme. While conservatives are barely half-way through their second celebratory gin-and-tonic following the last battle, and looking forward to returning to their normal lives, the progressivist army is already attacking on yet another front. As often as not, it's a front of whose existence conservatives were formerly unaware.<br />
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For all I know, Dame Helen is already planning to make all Trust volunteers wear pink tutus or T-shirts bearing the image of Jean-Claude Juncker - or niqabs. Maybe she'll insist that all volunteers must be black, or under 25, or homeless, or disabled. With any luck her "work" at the Trust is done, and she's already dreaming up ways to make Balliol more vibrant, more inclusive, less cisgender, less academically judgmental, and more relevant to a socially just, compassionate, multicultural 21st Century Britain. Whatever she comes up with, it'll catch conservatives entirely by surprise, and resisting it will require a whole heap of effort. Progressivism doesn't advance by persuasion or consent - it wins by relentlessly wearing down its opponents, who, on the whole, would much rather be doing something else.<br />
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<br />Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-66227150410797059152017-07-27T15:15:00.000+01:002017-11-27T15:16:11.391+00:00The centenary of the Russian Revolution is an opportunity to restore the reputation of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Harvard Commencement Address, 1978</td></tr>
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(This is an article written for the next edition of <i>The Salisbury Review.</i>) When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn rose to deliver his Commencement Address at Harvard University in June, 1978, he was arguably the world’s leading cultural figure: a globe-bestriding literary giant in the tradition of Tolstoy; an implacable, grim-faced Old Testament prophet in the mould of Jeremiah; a heroic, seemingly indestructible truth-teller who survived imprisonment, exile and cancer to bear witness to the horrors that ensue whenever Communism is put into practice.<br />
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The audience at Harvard that day was probably expecting praise for publishing Solzhenitsyn’s books (which were banned in the USSR), for repeatedly criticising the Soviet leadership for persecuting him, and for offering him unstinting adulation and a safe, comfortable haven after he was unceremoniously bustled out of Russia following the publication of <i>The Gulag Archipelago</i> in the West. Instead, they heard this:<br />
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A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society.</blockquote>
It got worse. Having bitten the hands of those who regarded themselves as his saviours, Solzhenitsyn proceeded to tear into Western liberalism, the very system this unwilling refugee from totalitarianism might have been expected to celebrate: “Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defence against the abyss of human decadence…”<br />
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Denied an opportunity for self-congratulation, the West’s left-liberal elites reacted with outrage. President Carter snubbed the writer. Even the First Lady, Rosalynn, publicly repudiated the speech. The <i>Washington Post</i> and the <i>New York Times</i> produced outraged editorials. The West’s reaction was satirised by <i>Private Eye</i> in the Sun-style headline: <i>“Sod off, Solly!”</i><br />
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Faced with the inescapable fact that Solzhenitsyn was a deeply conservative Christian traditionalist who thought them cowards, western intellectuals huffily turned their backs on him and followed the example of the Soviet authorities by virtually reducing his status to that of a non-person. This suited him fine: he wasn’t much interested in the West, never bothered to learn spoken English (although he could read it), and, despite his mistaken belief that the democratic powers were too weak and self-indulgent to overthrow the Soviet regime, remained “inwardly convinced” that he would return to his homeland one day. It would be 18 years before that day arrived, most of which were spent in seclusion on his Vermont estate working on <i>The Red Wheel</i>, a multi-volume fictional work about the Russian Revolution. He continued to grant media interviews to admirers such as Bernard Levin and Malcolm Muggeridge, with whom he sometimes allowed the mask of the stone-faced apocalyptic visionary to slip sufficiently to reveal the engaging, good-humoured, vital human being behind it; on occasion, he positively twinkled.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Solzhenitsyn chats to a loyal fan</td></tr>
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When Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia in 1994, I experienced a pang of guilt, realising that I hadn’t read anything new by him since his enthralling memoir, <i>The Oak and the Calf</i>, published in 1980, and nothing substantial about him since Michael Scammell’s splendid 1985 biography. I’d been expecting English translations of the various volumes of<i> The Red Wheel</i> to appear regularly accompanied by fanfares of publicity throughout the 1980s, but there didn’t seem to have been a peep. Between 1994 and his death in 2008, news coverage consisted mainly of disapproving items about Solzhenitsyn’s Russian nationalism and his support for Vladimir Putin, and charges of anti-Semitism following the publication of <i>200 Years Together</i>, a history of Russian Jewry which remains - as does much of his later work - unpublished in English. French and German translations of his writings have appeared regularly since the mid-1980s, but English translations have been rarer. An American edition of <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/November-1916-Red-Wheel-Paperback/dp/0374534705/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501161604&sr=1-1&keywords=november+1916">November, 1916</a> </i>- the second part of the four-volume work, <i>The Red Wheel</i> - received some respectful reviews when it was published in 1999, but sold poorly. An expanded, restored version of the classic 1968 novel, <i>The First Circle,</i> published in America in 2009 (retitled <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/First-Circle-Restored-Text/dp/0061479012/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501161549&sr=8-1&keywords=in+the+first+circle">In the First Circle</a></i>), was similarly well-reviewed and sold better.<br />
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Apart from what was widely regarded as Solzhenitsyn’s ingratitude to the West, his extended bouts of self-imposed isolation, and his espousal of unfashionable political and religious beliefs, how to account for this literary giant’s fall from grace? For a start, the sort of people who keep literary reputations alive in Britain and America don’t much like the essentially conservative quartet responsible for the defeat of Soviet Communism, i.e. Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II - and, of course, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Neither are left-liberal literary types much interested in the sort of books Solzhenitsyn wrote. In many ways, he was a traditional 19th Century novelist whose work doesn’t readily lend itself to modish critical analysis: you don’t need to be an intellectual to “get” <i>One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich</i>, or to have an intellectual explain it to you. Then there was the inescapable fact that the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the Soviet system - and his choosing the Russian Revolution as the main focus of his later fiction - made Solzhenitsyn’s work seem less burningly relevant to a contemporary audience: one suspects that a novel about life in Putin’s Russia might have generated more excitement than <i>The Red Wheel</i>. (But, then, one suspects Solzhenitsyn wasn’t much interested in appearing on “Best Summer Beach Reads” lists.)<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Then you type in LOL, and press "send"</td></tr>
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Finally, does the quality of Solzhenitsyn’s books - as literature, rather than as historically-significant documents - justify revisiting his reputation? I suppose it depends on whether, like me, you consider <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Day-Life-Ivan-Denisovich-ebook/dp/B00BMKMK3M/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501161728&sr=1-1&keywords=denisovich+solzhenitsyn">One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich</a></i>, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cancer-Ward-Aleksandr-Solzhenitsyn/dp/0099575515/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501161756&sr=1-1&keywords=cancer+ward">Cancer Ward</a></i> and <i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/First-Circle-Aleksandr-Solzhenitsyn-ebook/dp/B00667J1HE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501161798&sr=1-1&keywords=the+first+circle">The First Circle</a></i> to be three of the finest novels of the 20th Century, which deserve to be read as long as <i>Crime and Punishment</i> and <i>War and Peace</i> are read.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLdp9KiLtl3uLq-k9Fp3J0BBPhdNctQJ8DRegR0N5IbF9Gq6Flz0gY76QJa7Oi2YRo0Y6pE262fYqYLuiBxSEQ1M8NIiBGWKodDSVDX1FCnYCbVpPu0PCwT7jUbrvq8jq-9PHW5dkp64Y/s1600/SOLLY+-+1+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLdp9KiLtl3uLq-k9Fp3J0BBPhdNctQJ8DRegR0N5IbF9Gq6Flz0gY76QJa7Oi2YRo0Y6pE262fYqYLuiBxSEQ1M8NIiBGWKodDSVDX1FCnYCbVpPu0PCwT7jUbrvq8jq-9PHW5dkp64Y/s320/SOLLY+-+1+%25281%2529.jpg" width="213" /></a>As I write this, the final two volumes of <i>The Red Wheel</i> remain unpublished in the West. As recently as 2010, the author’ son, Ignat, doubted they ever would be: “I don’t even think the sales would pay the cost of the translation.” I’m delighted to report that he was wrong, and that the University of Notre Dame Press will be publishing an English translation by Marian Schwarz of the third volume, <i>March 1917</i>, later this year (<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/March-1917-Center-Culture-Solzhenitsyn-ebook/dp/B071S8ZH3V/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501159243&sr=8-1&keywords=Solzhenitsyn+the+red+wheel">it's available to pre-order on Amazon)</a>. This would present an ideal opportunity for a revival of interest in one of the 20th Century’s greatest writers: his books deserve it.<br />
<br />Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-84887048927322092712017-07-23T15:13:00.000+01:002017-11-27T15:14:16.322+00:00Doreen Tipton addresses the issue of BBC pay<div style="text-align: center;">
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And here, Ms Tipton (who suffers from LCS - of Lazy Cow Syndrome) interviews Sakari Faisal-Lamb, Minister for Things Going Wrong:<br />
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My interview with a top Government Minister... <a href="https://t.co/mHXk7PqXmo">pic.twitter.com/mHXk7PqXmo</a></div>
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<br />Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-30084445488761378712017-07-21T15:12:00.000+01:002017-11-27T15:13:00.878+00:00New Tory MP Kemi Badenoch - a ray of hope in grim times?<div style="text-align: center;">
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I'll admit it - the maiden speech from the new Tory MP for Saffron Walden, Kemi Badenoch...<br />
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...brought a tear to the eye! Politically, the last six weeks have been among the most depressing I can remember: the nauseating, irrational, Diana-like paroxysm of national grief appropriation following the Grenfell Tower fire; the borderline-traitorous reporting of the Brexit negotiations by our broadcasters and their ongoing refusal to accept that Brexit will happen; Corbyn's emetic Glastonbury appearance; the fact that the useless, frozen-faced social democrat, Theresa May, is still Prime Minister - and that we're probably stuck with her for at least two years; the hysterical hatred directed at the DUP for being - gasp! - <i>socially conservative!</i>; the deranged ferrets-in-a-sack infighting amongst Tory leadership hopefuls; the way a paralysed Tory Party has failed to capitalise on Labour's astonishing U-turn on scrapping student fees: the fact that one of our leading TV news presenters joined in chants of "Fuck the Tories!" at a music festival - and still managed to hold on to his job; and learning that the ghastly left-wing cockwomble who presents <i>Match of the Day </i>is paid at least seven times more by the BBC than the sainted Andrew Neil for doing a fraction of the work.<br />
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Grim times. I'm normally an optimist, but, for anyone of a conservative or right-wing disposition who loves this country and its people, the future has begun to look distinctly bleak.<br />
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Then up pops Kemi Badenoch, who was born in Wimbledon (where I mostly grew up and went to school), got a degree in computer systems engineering (from the same university my son attended), another in law from Birkbeck (where the great Sir Roger Scruton taught for several decades), and is now the Tory MP - with a huge majority - for Saffron Walden (about which I know absolutely sod all). And she stands up in parliament and declares her love for Britain and her enthusiasm for Brexit - with Diane Abbott staring glumly at her from the opposition benches. And she wants to repeal the ban on fox-hunting. <i>Delightful!</i><br />
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I know absolutely nothing about about the new intake of Tory MPs. One can only hope Ms Badenoch is representative of the new Conservative generation - because the old one is beginning to look distinctly unappealing.Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-42027151876045760902017-07-21T15:11:00.000+01:002017-11-27T15:12:07.618+00:00Diane Abbott - proof that Care in the Community is a bad policy<div style="text-align: center;">
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<i>"Police people"?</i> There's a popular idea on the Left that anyone claiming that Diane Abbott..</div>
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...is a stupid, incompetent hypocrite is guilty of both racism and sexism (and, presumably, "healthism", as she blamed her various displays of stupidity and incompetence during the general election campaign on the fact that she suffers from Type II diabetes). There may be a scintilla of truth in that charge - but, come to think of it, it's 99.99% about her being an insufferable, stupid, incompetent, arrogant, virtue-signalling hypocrite who is quite evidently totally unfit to hold public office of any kind.<br />
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Just think - a few thousands votes the other way and she could have have been Home Secretary, i.e. the person responsible for keeping law-abiding citizens safe from criminals and terrorists. The mind doesn't just boggle at the thought - it freezes in absolute <i>horror.</i></div>
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Ms Abbott read History at Cambridge, where she was tutored by Simon Schama. I know I've mentioned these facts before, and I'm going to keep on mentioning them until someone (perhaps Professor Schama) can explain (a) how she got a place at what used to be one of the world's greatest universities, and (b) how she ended up being awarded a degree. Mystifying.</div>
Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-55463563397201599172017-07-14T15:10:00.000+01:002017-11-27T15:11:04.839+00:00Pass the sick-bag, Alice! More social media madness - and something for the weekend...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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...If you need further proof that irony is dead, look no further than ghastly old communist film director, Ken Loach. This was the reaction of Radiohead's Thom Yorke (a popular beat combo, m'lud - I am reliably informed that the gentleman in the picture "sings" and strums the banjolele) to anti-Israel BDS killjoys at a gig in Glasgow a few days ago who were heckling the band over its decision to stage a concert in the only tolerant, inclusive democracy in the Middle East:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV7lUxEC7RWKpogzb5c3kMBvsr4ub84Fc2t4iT_5Flow9Ja4lhIYpkxVlF25zo9ID2CXAnW0CkZuCjg2CFqtf175I3Yl0mzzvZX7yUmJHERNFLaFRvOKUpuSxmgAREwoWBgz47vlJi618/s1600/NEWCRAP+-+1+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="364" data-original-width="520" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV7lUxEC7RWKpogzb5c3kMBvsr4ub84Fc2t4iT_5Flow9Ja4lhIYpkxVlF25zo9ID2CXAnW0CkZuCjg2CFqtf175I3Yl0mzzvZX7yUmJHERNFLaFRvOKUpuSxmgAREwoWBgz47vlJi618/s400/NEWCRAP+-+1+%25282%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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This was crazed Corbynite Loach's beyond-satire response:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcLXXPQe8fxO58urGf9k46hEerdPVXuZw42nN6czPrTx1CDctSPuge3GjXWJpNbhdmn5XLj6imwVsd-JLlcDlO1mJ1n8LikSSmokRRmUi2vXe24CP3AzE3MWtellv2YIw832XzZ9WizSg/s1600/NEWCRAP+-+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="181" data-original-width="582" height="123" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcLXXPQe8fxO58urGf9k46hEerdPVXuZw42nN6czPrTx1CDctSPuge3GjXWJpNbhdmn5XLj6imwVsd-JLlcDlO1mJ1n8LikSSmokRRmUi2vXe24CP3AzE3MWtellv2YIw832XzZ9WizSg/s400/NEWCRAP+-+5.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Apparently, they stand with the victims of endless rocket and terrorist attacks by Arab fascists, you vile, posturing old hypocrite. </div>
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If there's anyone leftists hate more than Jews...oopsZionists, it's Donald Trump. Not that keen on the man myself, but he <i>is</i> the democratically-elected leader of the most powerful country in the world, so it pays to have him onside - something the two-faced, wily French understand only too well. Even Piers Morgan is able to grasp the point: </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT6j4Wnpurmd2MPwPUjLU8OCIP0nrC-nn-3zMgXSfArPIpxkrC5P34sZUq7xKnUiUJnyGPwYOoz0HkeE2D6_EgBbRmHOsaeSV5wGeO7GiGAHh9quYuizcrKSPWWxcqUr-hmDKj7-zt7fQ/s1600/NEWCRAP+-+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="465" data-original-width="573" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT6j4Wnpurmd2MPwPUjLU8OCIP0nrC-nn-3zMgXSfArPIpxkrC5P34sZUq7xKnUiUJnyGPwYOoz0HkeE2D6_EgBbRmHOsaeSV5wGeO7GiGAHh9quYuizcrKSPWWxcqUr-hmDKj7-zt7fQ/s400/NEWCRAP+-+3.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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No, Janice - Macron is actually looking out for France's interests, like he's supposed to do. Our own weak-kneed government lost the opportunity to do some serious - and extremely necessary - sucking-up to America by inviting its president for a state visit at the earliest opportunity because of the grotesque snobbery of our left-liberal elite and its fear of Corbynite louts staging a series of ugly, violent, nappie-filling riots which the British authorities would be too wet to crush with an appropriate display of force. The state is apparently terrified of what a bunch of childish, middle-class university graduates might do if provoked (burst into tears and run home to mummy and daddy, I reckon). Perhaps the police could shower the next pro-Corbyn rally with the following handy guide to Corbynomics from <i>Private Eye:</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCT7icz5NCL0Pvlu4xvK9KMYqeCHijLjqeEukKlLOVRtBBMQhz1MmJvuUW1EpLpTM-fmiOwXEiSyd-amTjFf58EWVWuTn8Siz853_PH6HqjXLUZlhq6lq0_1mB9QuzJ30UzBmi9UflGtQ/s1600/NEWCRAP+-+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="638" data-original-width="613" height="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCT7icz5NCL0Pvlu4xvK9KMYqeCHijLjqeEukKlLOVRtBBMQhz1MmJvuUW1EpLpTM-fmiOwXEiSyd-amTjFf58EWVWuTn8Siz853_PH6HqjXLUZlhq6lq0_1mB9QuzJ30UzBmi9UflGtQ/s400/NEWCRAP+-+2.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Actually, there have been one or two funny things in <i>Private Eye </i>recently,<i> </i>including this Owen Jones parody by Craig Brown (hard to read, I expect - but you'll get the drift):</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4gkMF5Si91SHis9DShn3CISP1zSwgq_PchtGyn0uQaYziPQRH9y0pjryJ-BmVhkpfG6uMg1IRTHYRhhqjvChwER_NEWF9qdCGP6M3wukteRh4CURy8xTHtOFSxK5Gq-wacc1qByMwoz8/s1600/NEWCRAP+-+1+%25283%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1006" data-original-width="1200" height="410" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4gkMF5Si91SHis9DShn3CISP1zSwgq_PchtGyn0uQaYziPQRH9y0pjryJ-BmVhkpfG6uMg1IRTHYRhhqjvChwER_NEWF9qdCGP6M3wukteRh4CURy8xTHtOFSxK5Gq-wacc1qByMwoz8/s400/NEWCRAP+-+1+%25283%2529.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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In case you missed it, Inspector Mark Evans of Sussex Police recently posted this photograph of a special "gay pride" police car:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixcT3VkA02QK1HWAsIjS3qphPTjDnPbW8Rk2RgeTT8WBfqoiLp1twIUhYTiqoARXTmR6yB5xp_NOeQ559H1mlz6jXKCyuPQ4FHcGw1NPWuqvpT_XsRNM7QNW7io-Cy6NqBj6_YNq82218/s1600/NEWCRAP+-+1+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="358" data-original-width="634" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixcT3VkA02QK1HWAsIjS3qphPTjDnPbW8Rk2RgeTT8WBfqoiLp1twIUhYTiqoARXTmR6yB5xp_NOeQ559H1mlz6jXKCyuPQ4FHcGw1NPWuqvpT_XsRNM7QNW7io-Cy6NqBj6_YNq82218/s400/NEWCRAP+-+1+%25281%2529.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Ah, sweet! I was reminded of it by a timely article in <i>The Sun</i> by the excellent Brendan O'Neill (which you can read <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3997736/its-time-the-cops-spent-more-time-nicking-people-and-less-time-larking-about-dressed-like-the-village-people/">here</a>):</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW8webwF5zGyrv_c1PuvRFQRhaQEwisQ3IQXr6lOszUmxSNzSVbRHs7m-sO2ZVGX-8FzwGmX8MmUuxjV22zFgpI0HaP7a5sg4RIpPM7YNewYWxl0_8e0TACcjfXKgzsjAcCmjIBhvbMuw/s1600/NEWCRAP+-+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="302" data-original-width="629" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW8webwF5zGyrv_c1PuvRFQRhaQEwisQ3IQXr6lOszUmxSNzSVbRHs7m-sO2ZVGX-8FzwGmX8MmUuxjV22zFgpI0HaP7a5sg4RIpPM7YNewYWxl0_8e0TACcjfXKgzsjAcCmjIBhvbMuw/s400/NEWCRAP+-+1.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Let's hope the police immediately cease looking for the perpetrators of a spate of acid-throwing attacks in vibrant, multiculti London - not to mention a plethora of stabbings - in order to turn their attention to what really matters, i.e. hate crime:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcHGC8raZB3RfSRrurLpETv0zdZx1RurlYzS_1GSuo6UnPrfztTMEFdAnz2UAuGeYS9EW_AjLtYps-hF4fFI6-H7xbgmVjSrXMpIE0oMShMsSDEwiVT4mEwyWsS0tMrSZU7cZ9PaR1g2E/s1600/NEWCRAP+-+4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="308" data-original-width="575" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcHGC8raZB3RfSRrurLpETv0zdZx1RurlYzS_1GSuo6UnPrfztTMEFdAnz2UAuGeYS9EW_AjLtYps-hF4fFI6-H7xbgmVjSrXMpIE0oMShMsSDEwiVT4mEwyWsS0tMrSZU7cZ9PaR1g2E/s400/NEWCRAP+-+4.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Shameful! I'll leave you with two tweets that lightened my mood:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk6tE0egpW2kijRJQw_0GTHypmG74bi5L2TE3QK3Zm5JyMoYhk8D1gGIznlyMzcUF3-laJ6he84SEa9BHMCXuU4IMCbfZSgg-d77U41h_Nygeq9kID1gbfUdcNWHosuLGsC5JHD-IZK78/s1600/NEWCRAP+-+8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="599" data-original-width="582" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk6tE0egpW2kijRJQw_0GTHypmG74bi5L2TE3QK3Zm5JyMoYhk8D1gGIznlyMzcUF3-laJ6he84SEa9BHMCXuU4IMCbfZSgg-d77U41h_Nygeq9kID1gbfUdcNWHosuLGsC5JHD-IZK78/s400/NEWCRAP+-+8.jpg" width="387" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl1AFSaImeEZhzee5YlAd7Cbw5ezebnAK27xbenCi8M3b8fRHPJ3KrvaWXy1TqJrZ8_04vdsgg1CUJUZr8pcnB5Rsbl5788zQEWwQDeiOGVnCHiLjfUKBBkrtfwkbWPZfbCx7NTf-YB1Q/s1600/NEWCRAP+-+7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="521" data-original-width="578" height="450" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl1AFSaImeEZhzee5YlAd7Cbw5ezebnAK27xbenCi8M3b8fRHPJ3KrvaWXy1TqJrZ8_04vdsgg1CUJUZr8pcnB5Rsbl5788zQEWwQDeiOGVnCHiLjfUKBBkrtfwkbWPZfbCx7NTf-YB1Q/s400/NEWCRAP+-+7.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Anyway, I'm past caring this week: Roger Federer, the greatest sportsman of my lifetime, is going for an eighth Wimbledon win on Sunday, having dispatched Tomáš Berdych in three sets in a hard-fought semi-final this afternoon. I'm getting nervous already. If he wins (and, despite Federer being the odds-on favourite, Marin Čilić is no pushover, having a grand slam under his belt) I will be running around the house, screaming deliriously and frightening our new Spanish neighbours (who seem very nice - I hope they never read my comments about Nadal). And to think I was convinced Federer should have retired seven years ago when he had reached the grand old age of 28 - because it would be all downhill from then on. I am an idiot - but you already knew that. </div>
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-53121147796470110322017-07-09T15:09:00.000+01:002017-11-27T15:09:47.508+00:00Sunday's Comic Cuts... aka "We really are going to Hell in a Handcart"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Feeling safer already...</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpXlYBZWwA_etZ49zhc8kfIi1vzyvXuLqY6rHOrYS8oMzwS3ioOAi1YPRzPulpPzjTxsQyB9Zp1laUL7DvIEt5BFPTOqoqJJ1xUPzRx0H1Yy-HzHh0hVvEDjtqXRPaqmJ5BN3azNf3-ko/s1600/HELLHANDCART+-+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="696" data-original-width="597" height="575" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpXlYBZWwA_etZ49zhc8kfIi1vzyvXuLqY6rHOrYS8oMzwS3ioOAi1YPRzPulpPzjTxsQyB9Zp1laUL7DvIEt5BFPTOqoqJJ1xUPzRx0H1Yy-HzHh0hVvEDjtqXRPaqmJ5BN3azNf3-ko/s400/HELLHANDCART+-+1.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
It's too hot to think, let alone write anything, so here's the result of another lazy trawl...<br />
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...through social media for the purpose of raising some groans of disapproval and a few cheap laughs from fellow-indignants.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk5p87y7LBKgagLn1r5Z-9FyCor8X-zQeyClAj6czVpV8N0aFxLaYLr_eMkga0OFAZloPbwnew9KvYhZf_3bSmm9WXsktDOTk-BOqXYBn-dZtFVfc7xOQHDkyGOKrcv_pjCcN-IcfMKYw/s1600/HELLHANDCART+-+14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="324" data-original-width="653" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk5p87y7LBKgagLn1r5Z-9FyCor8X-zQeyClAj6czVpV8N0aFxLaYLr_eMkga0OFAZloPbwnew9KvYhZf_3bSmm9WXsktDOTk-BOqXYBn-dZtFVfc7xOQHDkyGOKrcv_pjCcN-IcfMKYw/s400/HELLHANDCART+-+14.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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I'm sure church attendance will go through the roof as a result. Meanwhile, the present is beginning to feel like a foreign country - they do things differently here:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi22b4dK-8NSx805EnHTupmitMNJRDX3PWEDOfWQJ4JpmyLJvj_fScbKHgP-GbDfU1xkjUM3segJ0xJ_DrHTH6xsIYAcTPaLNhEGUumoUylnJhrE0ViKlBG5WdZhEn7ECC9_NkL4i7yaI4/s1600/HELLHANDCART+-+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="418" data-original-width="641" height="325" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi22b4dK-8NSx805EnHTupmitMNJRDX3PWEDOfWQJ4JpmyLJvj_fScbKHgP-GbDfU1xkjUM3segJ0xJ_DrHTH6xsIYAcTPaLNhEGUumoUylnJhrE0ViKlBG5WdZhEn7ECC9_NkL4i7yaI4/s400/HELLHANDCART+-+5.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
I have no idea what the above headline means, and I have no desire to find out. Just...stop it.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCo7StXnsfZvAPos8AcsQC_9kK8WDXFgJABFjlSVlY3FXjEkqJjYCFH2vpVv6uMt4ArNYhNfeAnJYhTFXOdo-AXYKFmjoJ4SQx6INJTao9X878OEA40-ML9UqcOXqEKk4lFD-BON0OEOE/s1600/HELLHANDCART+-+4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="757" data-original-width="628" height="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCo7StXnsfZvAPos8AcsQC_9kK8WDXFgJABFjlSVlY3FXjEkqJjYCFH2vpVv6uMt4ArNYhNfeAnJYhTFXOdo-AXYKFmjoJ4SQx6INJTao9X878OEA40-ML9UqcOXqEKk4lFD-BON0OEOE/s640/HELLHANDCART+-+4.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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I said <i>stop it! </i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6Z2Hzq7Hw20s43BJlD1T0BhhIB1X79Ytv7HbRQz2qTfWcVZhuyVQ6GdVZ6dkVqLVLk98eHAAkJbq50JTAqL_cJUb2xdHQR9ogNFEKupPpvDWjGsKQ6PdaCQq6MCyb1rzEn6ZNzq3bx5k/s1600/HELLHANDCART+-+9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="278" data-original-width="582" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6Z2Hzq7Hw20s43BJlD1T0BhhIB1X79Ytv7HbRQz2qTfWcVZhuyVQ6GdVZ6dkVqLVLk98eHAAkJbq50JTAqL_cJUb2xdHQR9ogNFEKupPpvDWjGsKQ6PdaCQq6MCyb1rzEn6ZNzq3bx5k/s400/HELLHANDCART+-+9.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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What? Conservatives aren't allowed to be LGBT? Or they are, but they should stay in the closet? Gosh, I so love events like London Pride 2017, which are aimed at celebrating inclusivity! </div>
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YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT THESE CELEBRITIES LOOK LIKE NOW!!!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgATl99q_ncHo7DuynYT7a31A0B5Obg7jY316l89ffTqKzUllxsk-K3xgvA4xYUWGIcO-OT-0O0qfw3b2VAMD4M6tms7WCWrc24r0WjOYyp804xdMLiQzPcvSiYJUf9VZPLjZvgAEVQQ8Y/s1600/HELLHANDCART+-+1+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgATl99q_ncHo7DuynYT7a31A0B5Obg7jY316l89ffTqKzUllxsk-K3xgvA4xYUWGIcO-OT-0O0qfw3b2VAMD4M6tms7WCWrc24r0WjOYyp804xdMLiQzPcvSiYJUf9VZPLjZvgAEVQQ8Y/s400/HELLHANDCART+-+1+%25281%2529.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Still, maybe she fancies a career change. Sounds like there's a tailor-made job waiting for her at the <i>New Statesman:</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVGfE7dPwW5a0hod8_ziPldTurUFBn5qKbNnxX6Me3HmMHnulaBrg9dKpA9IKNWx4IT1tpl88adrVLlnDxjS7hgTGOKdtcywCInJiV6piOKV5j9RDd8HCTPaRR-cYRQB4XuIU8qvLe0qk/s1600/HELLHANDCART+-+16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="305" data-original-width="504" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVGfE7dPwW5a0hod8_ziPldTurUFBn5qKbNnxX6Me3HmMHnulaBrg9dKpA9IKNWx4IT1tpl88adrVLlnDxjS7hgTGOKdtcywCInJiV6piOKV5j9RDd8HCTPaRR-cYRQB4XuIU8qvLe0qk/s400/HELLHANDCART+-+16.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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I expect the <i>NS</i> will be advertising a "whites only" version shortly. That way, they won't lay themselves open to a charge of rampant racism.</div>
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Who's making those peculiar <i>lick, lick, slurp slurp noises? </i>Oh, look: it's Mrs. Ed Balls performing colonic irrigation on her party leader:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHsIIXHJJNVurJiWpN3jEXNcv5zQH-scDxndyVeo6oMdO8bQHIV2-7Q2HynduEHXN7kPHSsfr9KnbWsjwdPXf18HpAtNW9dH8IX6JY78rmsllGTVh2dZW8-vAl98pQ1d0gvGG7UE-4C7w/s1600/HELLHANDCART+-+6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="181" data-original-width="572" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHsIIXHJJNVurJiWpN3jEXNcv5zQH-scDxndyVeo6oMdO8bQHIV2-7Q2HynduEHXN7kPHSsfr9KnbWsjwdPXf18HpAtNW9dH8IX6JY78rmsllGTVh2dZW8-vAl98pQ1d0gvGG7UE-4C7w/s400/HELLHANDCART+-+6.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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But she isn't afraid to say things Labour members won't like:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwdqRic3Cu7cJzPfOPj8rT-YvEC4rnewWQO50XgcAnmpKAYm2JMhO-8d-Z3kbik-AQlDPjcTcadIkvXeaX9xgqudFeI778SrgQyVfVqtY95vlOGSKrv5R0FIF1M1QgzalRz-Xlj_oeFYE/s1600/HELLHANDCART+-+15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="143" data-original-width="572" height="130" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwdqRic3Cu7cJzPfOPj8rT-YvEC4rnewWQO50XgcAnmpKAYm2JMhO-8d-Z3kbik-AQlDPjcTcadIkvXeaX9xgqudFeI778SrgQyVfVqtY95vlOGSKrv5R0FIF1M1QgzalRz-Xlj_oeFYE/s400/HELLHANDCART+-+15.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Wow, Yvette - posting that must have taken <i>real</i> courage! As gangs of black-unformed Trump-hating leftie thugs have spent the last few days burning and looting Hamburg, I think it's important that people like you have the guts to accuse President Trump of "normalising hatred". Violette Szabo had nothing on you, you feisty little freedom-fighter.</div>
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Meanwhile, CNN have been equally fearless in reporting the Hamburg riots:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHrXPDlrZOh6Me4dCxYijc2vlYDizdDzpDoicVt1kcx9tpRQJwmLVO_VORtd9VlvEO0vbpbZyd8s4iRO8qXf1LLEUMmujksK5M2FSD0Kb8DB-KPF-6xUYwbgxtFb7grE0AC9lvw8PEA9c/s1600/HELLHANDCART+-+12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="572" height="127" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHrXPDlrZOh6Me4dCxYijc2vlYDizdDzpDoicVt1kcx9tpRQJwmLVO_VORtd9VlvEO0vbpbZyd8s4iRO8qXf1LLEUMmujksK5M2FSD0Kb8DB-KPF-6xUYwbgxtFb7grE0AC9lvw8PEA9c/s400/HELLHANDCART+-+12.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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"Eclectic", "international", "peaceful"? <i>Riiiight. </i></div>
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Speaking of Trump, it's good to see America's other main left-wing news outlets reporting the president's European tour without a hint of political bias:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAjJu6ms7O0_-hV24_5JTfbuG_eMLP_vSmpRoS6d9X0RbquqKE6tkgRFN7EP-1Y02KWT7M2yc2hQzFrr4sNQzuoem2MGnL9Nz33HDZ-CJtsEADLWMy4wqtqqMhoDjx13ZsB15gP2jQyuk/s1600/HELLHANDCART+-+7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="579" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAjJu6ms7O0_-hV24_5JTfbuG_eMLP_vSmpRoS6d9X0RbquqKE6tkgRFN7EP-1Y02KWT7M2yc2hQzFrr4sNQzuoem2MGnL9Nz33HDZ-CJtsEADLWMy4wqtqqMhoDjx13ZsB15gP2jQyuk/s400/HELLHANDCART+-+7.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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All the news that's fit to print? Really? Still - I expect MSNBC managed to avoid political prejudice:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_6-FNBACE9uS1FpoxtqSTudmqwSwbU5ArXQfsF7ENVVCstQfl1MYsVMloTDKcUqEG8qekHPcxDUKXx-gCMDpyhehCUgEfHGzDXJ_PtWglAsPVcS-lklQGNO6nuvVc_TrR1hrYdubIy1E/s1600/HELLHANDCART+-+8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="180" data-original-width="639" height="145" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_6-FNBACE9uS1FpoxtqSTudmqwSwbU5ArXQfsF7ENVVCstQfl1MYsVMloTDKcUqEG8qekHPcxDUKXx-gCMDpyhehCUgEfHGzDXJ_PtWglAsPVcS-lklQGNO6nuvVc_TrR1hrYdubIy1E/s400/HELLHANDCART+-+8.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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I bet Britain's main left-wing news outlet wouldn't fall into the same trap: </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFHgLPNIlLKuhw3HzYF-VMG9W0DAFcIxgPTsTQu6-kmsL9czcqB0t7KJoUJeJ3qovw59lMW7vVp5ip6WhyphenhyphenRzg892fPGjatfjLDXuDfbtavwQXCEFdamE2CjS_IEGU05ZUg3s5wMZRWMmI/s1600/HELLHANDCART+-+11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="321" data-original-width="650" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFHgLPNIlLKuhw3HzYF-VMG9W0DAFcIxgPTsTQu6-kmsL9czcqB0t7KJoUJeJ3qovw59lMW7vVp5ip6WhyphenhyphenRzg892fPGjatfjLDXuDfbtavwQXCEFdamE2CjS_IEGU05ZUg3s5wMZRWMmI/s400/HELLHANDCART+-+11.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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"Despite" appears to be the BBC's favourite word when reporting right-wing successes. Despite the Lib Dems' catastrophic election performance running on a "Brexit denial" platform, Vince Cable has apparently decided to double down on the strategy that did for his predecessor:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj020Kie7rcICejSyo9NPPWvYcOwkbvzsKS5L_Sygo9Qxw6VSfKovbQlIVyXE5nG76AYmhZfZdpnBIKpDW17cCL-YcxtNJs6-49dwJUqecs16dqgJsE6o0_jPcUwCjibj0-Th1_ii7qnhw/s1600/HELLHANDCART+-+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="572" height="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj020Kie7rcICejSyo9NPPWvYcOwkbvzsKS5L_Sygo9Qxw6VSfKovbQlIVyXE5nG76AYmhZfZdpnBIKpDW17cCL-YcxtNJs6-49dwJUqecs16dqgJsE6o0_jPcUwCjibj0-Th1_ii7qnhw/s400/HELLHANDCART+-+3.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Britain is leaving the EU, you ghastly old twit, because that's what the British people voted for 12 months ago. If you're confused, just look up the word "democracy" in any reputable dictionary. </div>
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Finally, yet more proof that aliens have taken human form and walk amongst us. They're undetectable... right up until the point when they open their mouths and say something bonkers:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFqABJqhBihujsWBY_UDP0MyDqbCA0vXD6MjYIExzuVCfUQ3xRNwA-bS-sPd2k9zALXvPSHkwFZkzcekdn9v3GkuNheC3adzhQCjr4ZHY3SFh84fB-QOfVZuAoUb-R1FQpaVxZufeUSEE/s1600/HELLHANDCART+-+13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="529" data-original-width="572" height="450" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFqABJqhBihujsWBY_UDP0MyDqbCA0vXD6MjYIExzuVCfUQ3xRNwA-bS-sPd2k9zALXvPSHkwFZkzcekdn9v3GkuNheC3adzhQCjr4ZHY3SFh84fB-QOfVZuAoUb-R1FQpaVxZufeUSEE/s400/HELLHANDCART+-+13.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228446410010107039.post-55058165573641216562017-07-08T15:07:00.000+01:002017-11-27T15:07:56.485+00:00Saturday's Comic Cuts...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmrPegKikNOLrCr3rJb8LeGfTYLiWhcNzT6iJOYs6QOX90JQTXhW_ocCZNUu4ekL3achx3kCeRHPCbIrSeq327rFVsakv2akpUvTYDg5wzCU9ViuXswWWzcfyv4TAxpya2ltBwSIWdvZ0/s1600/SATURDAY+TWEETS+-+11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="720" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmrPegKikNOLrCr3rJb8LeGfTYLiWhcNzT6iJOYs6QOX90JQTXhW_ocCZNUu4ekL3achx3kCeRHPCbIrSeq327rFVsakv2akpUvTYDg5wzCU9ViuXswWWzcfyv4TAxpya2ltBwSIWdvZ0/s400/SATURDAY+TWEETS+-+11.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Hereditary peerage for Telegraph pocket cartoonist Matt Ridley. Now. This instant...</div>
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...Mind you, according to a programme I keep failing to avoid on Radio 4 in the early hours of the morning as I prepare my final cup of tea, Brexit really is the worst thing that ever happened to any country, anywhere, at any time, and Britain is going to be left trailing in the wake of the EU and Japan because those two entities have signed a trade deal (apart from agreeing a few piddly details) and they bet the UK will be <i>really</i> sorry they won't be party to it and Japan won't even bother looking at Britain now and, just, "Ha ha ha!<i> Serves us right!</i>" (President Trump just said he expects the US to conclude a trade deal with Britain "very, very quickly", but the BBC will no doubt somehow manage to make this sound like bad news.) Lord Haw Haw is alive and well and living in W1AA.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBEUB5SPdrjnSwdilGylC9jfunrtzZDt4nUBkednzsFep9nQXBfo08DT5vs_ZWxf-MBKstbtQIWxQSmmKEBgdtd-sIqvoxPIueNUiQY_yRwqxWlHDJUTxXO727LF8Umzdqi9dfq6aEWcE/s1600/SATURDAY+TWEETS+-+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="273" data-original-width="511" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBEUB5SPdrjnSwdilGylC9jfunrtzZDt4nUBkednzsFep9nQXBfo08DT5vs_ZWxf-MBKstbtQIWxQSmmKEBgdtd-sIqvoxPIueNUiQY_yRwqxWlHDJUTxXO727LF8Umzdqi9dfq6aEWcE/s400/SATURDAY+TWEETS+-+5.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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According to Wikipedia, the evidently brilliant Caroline Criado-Perez is a Brazilian-born British freelance journalist who "has been involved in campaigns for women to gain better representation in the British media and to be depicted on banknotes." Her "activism" earned her an OBE (I'm not making this up). She has complained about receiving a lot of abuse on social media. Perhaps she should stop posting this sort of hysterical, moronic drivel? Just a thought.</div>
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Let me get this straight - 1,400 British girls are raped in Rochdale by Pakistani-origin Muslim rape gangs, the BBC makes a drama series about it - <i>and it's all Tommy Robinson's fault?</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCoUtMf2lBS_sJDPnNTAmsTz9YmhH_SFnBUEhVtiSZGdxS5nm6S0Q4_ixWCcFK5tLITqVSkO3T5beltMa8g1NUqfqxT9JYadJZ-FLpRUqTRMm2KAzJ53Z10S-2aLuSzBwGWUzP50xm_cE/s1600/SATURDAY+TWEETS+-+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="732" data-original-width="1080" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCoUtMf2lBS_sJDPnNTAmsTz9YmhH_SFnBUEhVtiSZGdxS5nm6S0Q4_ixWCcFK5tLITqVSkO3T5beltMa8g1NUqfqxT9JYadJZ-FLpRUqTRMm2KAzJ53Z10S-2aLuSzBwGWUzP50xm_cE/s400/SATURDAY+TWEETS+-+2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Let's draw a veil (<i>geddit?</i>) over the minor issue of thousands of young white girls being sexually abused by gangs of Muslims in British cities, and move on to a far more pressing social issue...</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnt4c773588gbIFZ6iDbbX-4KIvSGVVA7X5kJ01HObwI7-rdD9iwZYvEi1jefiBVixSOwkxqJZ29C9WtRj0WnwAhC2uPhygteltzi1sIogew5xy1tec0kNYVwtwqg5nMMdsYlAsBJNozg/s1600/SATURDAY+TWEETS+-+9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="87" data-original-width="487" height="100" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnt4c773588gbIFZ6iDbbX-4KIvSGVVA7X5kJ01HObwI7-rdD9iwZYvEi1jefiBVixSOwkxqJZ29C9WtRj0WnwAhC2uPhygteltzi1sIogew5xy1tec0kNYVwtwqg5nMMdsYlAsBJNozg/s400/SATURDAY+TWEETS+-+9.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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I would suggest that offendees grow a pair, but that might be construed as insensitive. Now, I believe there are some Londoners - just a tiny (Trumpian?) handful of non-progressives - who aren't particularly enamoured of our Labour mayor, little Sadiq Kahn. But they should reflect on the plight of conservative (which I deploy here as a synonym for "decent") New Yorkers, whose mayor, Bill de Blasio, is at least a foot taller, but even more of a useless, virtue-signalling, left-wing idiot: </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMlJT3ZsxwCGvnXT3qLjN4huRS6Vgokt9-CmvOG0kQcDjwwhG5HfMM1JMRc2sWHCFbyy6MDINTf9g4Zqr1_278A6vfResAEb6srvXmrDarNX_cORf9QTMm4XMYmXETcvp04j04plw5ONU/s1600/SATURDAY+TWEETS+-+1+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="873" data-original-width="780" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMlJT3ZsxwCGvnXT3qLjN4huRS6Vgokt9-CmvOG0kQcDjwwhG5HfMM1JMRc2sWHCFbyy6MDINTf9g4Zqr1_278A6vfResAEb6srvXmrDarNX_cORf9QTMm4XMYmXETcvp04j04plw5ONU/s400/SATURDAY+TWEETS+-+1+%25281%2529.jpg" width="356" /></a></div>
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<i>Sheesh! </i>Of course, he may just be trying to get away from the Palestinian-American political activist, Linda Sarsour, who is the former executive director of the Arab American Association of New York: </div>
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<i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHSTaekn_u9eM27ElmLYRA2bs_HmSwhqB2pQM-vu4oJ_iBjcc1zw1AEyQN_01S4_bRVQJqMmO5ljw_3UawOwQ2gY9FkOsDqltAkr6oK3c4OPkugbqp7q5YIpoxqUuTqduNQvAwSpbjn7I/s1600/SATURDAY+TWEETS+-+10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="309" data-original-width="519" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHSTaekn_u9eM27ElmLYRA2bs_HmSwhqB2pQM-vu4oJ_iBjcc1zw1AEyQN_01S4_bRVQJqMmO5ljw_3UawOwQ2gY9FkOsDqltAkr6oK3c4OPkugbqp7q5YIpoxqUuTqduNQvAwSpbjn7I/s400/SATURDAY+TWEETS+-+10.jpg" width="500" /></a></i></div>
When some silly commentators expressed alarm at Ms Sarsour's use of the term "Jihad", she fired back (<i>sorry!</i>) with the criticism that it was their fault for not understanding what the term means, culturally insensitive troglodytes that they are. Don't they realise it's the job of every non-Muslim in non-Muslim countries to understand the nuances of every Muslim/Arabic word uttered by Muslims? I bet she would immediately realise that by using the Norwegian term "Drittseck" about her, I am not calling her a "shit-bag", but mean it in its <i>other</i> sense - i.e. "a really nice person who is making a very sensible point if you just think about it". I'm sure this group of fine young people are in full agreement with Ms Sarsour that "jihad" doesn't actually mean "jihad":<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT8UQ6c_VYssoEuDtV1DCNlQsKkKzt6noNKIO2z7lMh9MX4Qakj9cnh_IVlEXzXpgFwPz6FW4B1hX-i80ypOPYsnZAHyiICoPFFpuxCPj_A938yeF7Ui0tMo5-nSehlcfzyW57xU712-I/s1600/SATURDAY+TWEETS+-+8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="508" data-original-width="508" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT8UQ6c_VYssoEuDtV1DCNlQsKkKzt6noNKIO2z7lMh9MX4Qakj9cnh_IVlEXzXpgFwPz6FW4B1hX-i80ypOPYsnZAHyiICoPFFpuxCPj_A938yeF7Ui0tMo5-nSehlcfzyW57xU712-I/s400/SATURDAY+TWEETS+-+8.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Hi, guys! Remember - if someone is running towards you brandishing a dirty great knife and shouting "Allahuh Akbar!" while hacking away at young women, relax. Yes, he <i>is</i> waging Jihad - but that's a <i>good</i> thing! (And, when you finally reach Planet Earth, do let us know!)<br />
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Please make sure you're sitting down before you read this next headline, because it will <i>astonish</i> you!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEaSPPIq2WMp-igp7ksQ18NDgBN8goNB7QuqkRAw54suZRuScnK4jWb46lAW5FHmKw1XUaus62sAwNyGTO_VmU7SlRC78QBlLsl_SzvjZG-_eb-XuR4cD6QMtlc7v3luAo3-n5p7ZmYkE/s1600/SATURDAY+TWEETS+-+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="686" data-original-width="434" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEaSPPIq2WMp-igp7ksQ18NDgBN8goNB7QuqkRAw54suZRuScnK4jWb46lAW5FHmKw1XUaus62sAwNyGTO_VmU7SlRC78QBlLsl_SzvjZG-_eb-XuR4cD6QMtlc7v3luAo3-n5p7ZmYkE/s640/SATURDAY+TWEETS+-+1.jpg" width="404" /></a></div>
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<i>Racists! </i>Meanwhile, the <i>Scottish Daily Mail</i> printed the following reader's letter/email, which can't be true, or else the BBC is guilty of politically biased reporting:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyETMv0yZ5Q_nL21odTO2zDVugkGQJqpl6TvzcEAtsOT1Q9W-zDp7KozvCHl96aNBQFQP5PyM7yE4zwyBvCplKmbOP5HTO2Pu8PTk-DCO-6LyVS56DuTPfvqvewCUMLIf8WrznPJ4ivsQ/s1600/SATURDAY+TWEETS+-+13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="599" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyETMv0yZ5Q_nL21odTO2zDVugkGQJqpl6TvzcEAtsOT1Q9W-zDp7KozvCHl96aNBQFQP5PyM7yE4zwyBvCplKmbOP5HTO2Pu8PTk-DCO-6LyVS56DuTPfvqvewCUMLIf8WrznPJ4ivsQ/s640/SATURDAY+TWEETS+-+13.jpg" width="318" /></a></div>
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<i>Nazi! </i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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On a lighter note, I wish I could remember who posted this on Twitter, accompanied by the comment: "And she can move in any direction..."</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBsM14miAtHAlbTSaWX6nox6WINM14hH1PHU1TnyogEDWJmWQrpicboQvYGzTnxvAzJIZz927rGzWw4okuzCqv5-Fvh-um0fU4dWPp827Q7JGqYjaAd7JxOv5agrWUoX9xANVdPFVadRo/s1600/SATURDAY+TWEETS+-+12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="768" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBsM14miAtHAlbTSaWX6nox6WINM14hH1PHU1TnyogEDWJmWQrpicboQvYGzTnxvAzJIZz927rGzWw4okuzCqv5-Fvh-um0fU4dWPp827Q7JGqYjaAd7JxOv5agrWUoX9xANVdPFVadRo/s400/SATURDAY+TWEETS+-+12.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Nice one.<br />
<br />Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0