'Nother Solent

Anyone else on AOL?

I suppose somebody must be; I can't be the only one paying for all that advertising, it just feels that way. Isn't it adorabubble the way the pre-printed favourites list includes an entry called "Recipies". It's been that way for months and nobody has noticed except me. I was put off steak and kidney by school dinners, but chicken is nice. So is apple, but I think I'm right in saying that recitart would be the correct British usage.

Most boring Tim Blair post ever. But it made its point, dears, didn't it?

UPDATE: The curse of Blogger strikes again. This time it's the bug I call the "Mystery Tour." I refer not to the "Democracy, Whiskey, Sexy" post, which is quite interesting - and would probably be very interesting if I understood what to do with those MP3 doodads - but to the Ted Turner one. Just click here and scroll up, down or sideways.

Anyone else on AOL?

I suppose somebody must be; I can't be the only one paying for all that advertising, it just feels that way. Isn't it adorabubble the way the pre-printed favourites list includes an entry called "Recipies". It's been that way for months and nobody has noticed except me. I was put off steak and kidney by school dinners, but chicken is nice. So is apple, but I think I'm right in saying that recitart would be the correct British usage.

Most boring Tim Blair post ever. But it made its point, dears, didn't it?

UPDATE: The curse of Blogger strikes again. This time it's the bug I call the "Mystery Tour." I refer not to the "Democracy, Whiskey, Sexy" post, which is quite interesting - and would probably be very interesting if I understood what to do with those MP3 doodads - but to the Ted Turner one. Just click here and scroll up, down or sideways.

Parting shot.

I just noticed Dawson's last ever* comment :

bet every time you go to pee you whip out a hair and piss in your pants, Klotz. No fried catfish for you!

Thanks to all, you folks are righteous, and swell pals to have.

Way to go, amigo.

*Last so far.

Parting shot.

I just noticed Dawson's last ever* comment :

bet every time you go to pee you whip out a hair and piss in your pants, Klotz. No fried catfish for you!

Thanks to all, you folks are righteous, and swell pals to have.

Way to go, amigo.

*Last so far.

Come, Comrade, Join Us in the Collective Farm!

as Vera Korableya's poster once put it, to the admiration of softhearted 1930s liberals from Stockholm to San Francisco. Their childrens' hearts (and heads) are still soft. Colby Cosh points out a naive article in the Christian Science Monitor glowingly describing the way that Venezuelan oil workers once hostile to Chavez have started to bubble with enthusiasm for his brand of redistributive politics, including slashing their own salaries... since the army took over their workplaces.

Come, Comrade, Join Us in the Collective Farm!

as Vera Korableya's poster once put it, to the admiration of softhearted 1930s liberals from Stockholm to San Francisco. Their childrens' hearts (and heads) are still soft. Colby Cosh points out a naive article in the Christian Science Monitor glowingly describing the way that Venezuelan oil workers once hostile to Chavez have started to bubble with enthusiasm for his brand of redistributive politics, including slashing their own salaries... since the army took over their workplaces.

Thomas Sowell on what's wrong with the welfare state:

One of the most dangerous things about the welfare state is that it breaks the connection between what people have produced and what they consume, at least in many people's minds. For the society as a whole, that connection remains as fixed as ever, but the welfare state makes it possible for individuals to think of money or goods as just arbitrary dispensations.

Thus those who have less can feel a grievance against "society" and are less inhibited about stealing or vandalizing. And the very concept of gratitude or obligation disappears -- even the obligation of common decency out of respect for other people.

The next time you see a bum leaving drug needles in a park where children play or urinating in the street, you are seeing your tax dollars at work and the end result of the vision of the anointed.

I was going to say, "I love this man and want to bear his children". Instead I will say a big hel-lo to my dear husband of so many happy years and speak of my intellectual admiration for Prof. Sowell's precise and economical distillation of something I had long thought in an inchoate way.

I just love

the delicate phrasing of the pricelist for the Indy's new Pay-per-view scheme.

Much of the content on the site will remain free to read, but subscribers will be able to tailor their Independent Portfolio to include one or more of the following sections:

Opinion. All articles by our regular columnists and commentators and leading articles from The Independent and Independent on Sunday.

Robert Fisk. All articles by our world-renowned Middle East Correspondent, Robert Fisk.

News and Sport archive. All articles more than seven days old in the news and sport channels.

Crosswords. Our intriguing and taxing Cryptic Crossword each weekday, with a six-month archive of crosswords.

Makes it sound as if the presumed snob-appeal of being able to choose which options to buy far outweighs the inconvenience of having to pay (and pay plenty, a quid for a day's hire* of one Fisk column, for goodness' sake) for what once came free. Some copywriter worked hard on those words. Appreciate them.

I feel a cold wind blowing over all these blogs of ours.

*Just to clarify here, you have to pay them.

Thomas Sowell on what's wrong with the welfare state:

One of the most dangerous things about the welfare state is that it breaks the connection between what people have produced and what they consume, at least in many people's minds. For the society as a whole, that connection remains as fixed as ever, but the welfare state makes it possible for individuals to think of money or goods as just arbitrary dispensations.

Thus those who have less can feel a grievance against "society" and are less inhibited about stealing or vandalizing. And the very concept of gratitude or obligation disappears -- even the obligation of common decency out of respect for other people.

The next time you see a bum leaving drug needles in a park where children play or urinating in the street, you are seeing your tax dollars at work and the end result of the vision of the anointed.

I was going to say, "I love this man and want to bear his children". Instead I will say a big hel-lo to my dear husband of so many happy years and speak of my intellectual admiration for Prof. Sowell's precise and economical distillation of something I had long thought in an inchoate way.

I just love

the delicate phrasing of the pricelist for the Indy's new Pay-per-view scheme.

Much of the content on the site will remain free to read, but subscribers will be able to tailor their Independent Portfolio to include one or more of the following sections:

Opinion. All articles by our regular columnists and commentators and leading articles from The Independent and Independent on Sunday.

Robert Fisk. All articles by our world-renowned Middle East Correspondent, Robert Fisk.

News and Sport archive. All articles more than seven days old in the news and sport channels.

Crosswords. Our intriguing and taxing Cryptic Crossword each weekday, with a six-month archive of crosswords.

Makes it sound as if the presumed snob-appeal of being able to choose which options to buy far outweighs the inconvenience of having to pay (and pay plenty, a quid for a day's hire* of one Fisk column, for goodness' sake) for what once came free. Some copywriter worked hard on those words. Appreciate them.

I feel a cold wind blowing over all these blogs of ours.

*Just to clarify here, you have to pay them.

Radio 4

just said they've got Tariq Aziz.

Which country

is about to overtake Sweden as having the highest level of government spending per head in Europe? Which country spends more of its national income on health than any other country in the developed world? Which country has the lowest life expectancy in Europe? The answer is the same for all three questions.

(Via David Farrer - to whom congratulations, BTW. Scroll up to see why.)

Radio 4

just said they've got Tariq Aziz.

Which country

is about to overtake Sweden as having the highest level of government spending per head in Europe? Which country spends more of its national income on health than any other country in the developed world? Which country has the lowest life expectancy in Europe? The answer is the same for all three questions.

(Via David Farrer - to whom congratulations, BTW. Scroll up to see why.)

Want a little anger before you go to sleep tonight?

I meant to post this hard-hitting Michelle Malkin article quoted by Joanne Jacobs earlier but happy scenes of Eastertide drove it from my mind. Now I'm back to my usual grouchy self, why should you be happy? Joanne certainly isn't. Scroll down to her comments at the end:

Pre-schoolers can be "activists" for more TV or later bed times. When it comes to military and foreign affairs, pre-schoolers can be cute, little puppets for the person who controls snack time. Scaring pre-schoolers into thinking the Blue Angels are going to bomb Seattle . . . That's not fair.

UPDATE: The link within a link takes me to the wrong Michelle Malkin article. I could have sworn it was working before. I'm on the case.... Aha! Joanne's link takes you to Ms Malkin's latest, which was then but isn't now the kiddy peaceniks thing. Here it is from the archives. By the way, I woke up still angry. It's not so much the political indoctrination of pre-schoolers, disgraceful though that is, it's the deliberate lies told to put the children in fear of their lives.

"Respect our words, Blue Angels. Respect kids' words. Don't kill people."

"If you blow up our city, we won't be happy about it. And our whole city will be destroyed. And if you blow up my favorite library, I won't be happy because there are some good books there that I haven't read yet."

It is not clear whether the words above are quotations from the children or Ann Pelo taking it upon herself to speak in their voice, although the former quotation, particularly, sounds like activist-speak not toddler-speak. It is clear that she felt it quite OK to leave her charges under the impression that the Blue Angels, the US Navy's equivalent of the RAF's Red Arrows, might really turn round and bomb their local library. Perhaps she justified herself on the grounds that, well, they do bomb Iraqi children (she would, of course, ignore the unprecedented success in avoiding civilian casualties in the war just ended) and so it's morally right that American four year olds should feel the same fear.

A whole generation of Irish writers, I sometimes think, became writers in order to finally express their resentment about the way their Catholic schools would terrify pupils with visions of hellfire - but at least the monks and nuns believed in the hellfire themselves and were passing on the truth as they saw it. This woman Pelo inflicts psychological torture on children in order to bring them to her version of correct thinking: the very charge sometimes justly laid upon Christian educators. But Ann Pelo doesn't think the Blue Angels will bomb Seattle, she just thinks it useful that the children she teaches should.

LATER: Just out of interest, This link from 'Rethinking Schools Online' and this blurb about 'That's Not Fair' provide more insight into her thinking (such as the chapter heading 'Preparing the Travelers: Fostering Dispositions for Activism in Young Children'). You know, it is probable that she did eventually get round to reassuring the children that they were not about to be killed by US Navy pilots, having allowed them to think otherwise for long enough to produce the stuff about the library. Yet in the 'Rethinking Schools Online' link, when talking about derogatory racist stereotypes arising in play, she rightly says that the teacher should immediately step in to give the children a more accurate view of the world.

Waiting for permission.

One of Junius' correspondents writing from China points out how China's authoritarian culture weakened its response to SARS.

Want a little anger before you go to sleep tonight?

I meant to post this hard-hitting Michelle Malkin article quoted by Joanne Jacobs earlier but happy scenes of Eastertide drove it from my mind. Now I'm back to my usual grouchy self, why should you be happy? Joanne certainly isn't. Scroll down to her comments at the end:

Pre-schoolers can be "activists" for more TV or later bed times. When it comes to military and foreign affairs, pre-schoolers can be cute, little puppets for the person who controls snack time. Scaring pre-schoolers into thinking the Blue Angels are going to bomb Seattle . . . That's not fair.

UPDATE: The link within a link takes me to the wrong Michelle Malkin article. I could have sworn it was working before. I'm on the case.... Aha! Joanne's link takes you to Ms Malkin's latest, which was then but isn't now the kiddy peaceniks thing. Here it is from the archives. By the way, I woke up still angry. It's not so much the political indoctrination of pre-schoolers, disgraceful though that is, it's the deliberate lies told to put the children in fear of their lives.

"Respect our words, Blue Angels. Respect kids' words. Don't kill people."

"If you blow up our city, we won't be happy about it. And our whole city will be destroyed. And if you blow up my favorite library, I won't be happy because there are some good books there that I haven't read yet."

It is not clear whether the words above are quotations from the children or Ann Pelo taking it upon herself to speak in their voice, although the former quotation, particularly, sounds like activist-speak not toddler-speak. It is clear that she felt it quite OK to leave her charges under the impression that the Blue Angels, the US Navy's equivalent of the RAF's Red Arrows, might really turn round and bomb their local library. Perhaps she justified herself on the grounds that, well, they do bomb Iraqi children (she would, of course, ignore the unprecedented success in avoiding civilian casualties in the war just ended) and so it's morally right that American four year olds should feel the same fear.

A whole generation of Irish writers, I sometimes think, became writers in order to finally express their resentment about the way their Catholic schools would terrify pupils with visions of hellfire - but at least the monks and nuns believed in the hellfire themselves and were passing on the truth as they saw it. This woman Pelo inflicts psychological torture on children in order to bring them to her version of correct thinking: the very charge sometimes justly laid upon Christian educators. But Ann Pelo doesn't think the Blue Angels will bomb Seattle, she just thinks it useful that the children she teaches should.

LATER: Just out of interest, This link from 'Rethinking Schools Online' and this blurb about 'That's Not Fair' provide more insight into her thinking (such as the chapter heading 'Preparing the Travelers: Fostering Dispositions for Activism in Young Children'). You know, it is probable that she did eventually get round to reassuring the children that they were not about to be killed by US Navy pilots, having allowed them to think otherwise for long enough to produce the stuff about the library. Yet in the 'Rethinking Schools Online' link, when talking about derogatory racist stereotypes arising in play, she rightly says that the teacher should immediately step in to give the children a more accurate view of the world.

Waiting for permission.

One of Junius' correspondents writing from China points out how China's authoritarian culture weakened its response to SARS.

More than one hot cross bun.

Remember how blogger David Holford got a letter full of Lawyer Macho from Tower Hamlets council after publishing a post called Hot Cross Councils (scroll down) a little while ago? You can read his updates here, but it seems he wasn't the only one who came under the Sauron-like gaze of the redoubtable Tower Hamlets Head of Communications. I posted about David Holford's experience on this blog and on Samizdata, and Joanne Jacobs commented that she had got the same letter, or rather Jewish World Review which linked via Fox to her blog post on the matter had got it. They ignored it. I wonder how many other sites had the same letter, and how many of them complied with Tower Hamlets' demands through fear?

And I wonder how much of the Community charge so gladly paid by the citizenry of Tower Hamlets goes into employing officials to blogsurf looking for unfavourable mention of their doings?

NEW exciting bonus post!!!!

This post was originally a half-written version of the one above which first dis and then re-appeared in the system somehow. Now it has been reborn as an exciting new Galloway Hypothesis #5: Agatha Christie Rides Again. Remember the one where the chap plants evidence against himself for a murder he did actually commit, his motive being not contrition but a cunning plan to be tried for the murder, have the case break down because the evidence is flimsy and then be protected by the double-jeopardy rule forever....

In this version Galloway (or, far more plausibly, a Galloway-friendly person or organisation acting entirely without Mr Galloway's knowledge or consent, M'lud) fabricates and plants evidence of dramatic, obvious and well-paid treachery, anticipating the libel trial. The trial occurs, breaks down when Abdul Al-Somebody confesses to having made up the letter, and no-one ever dares investigate the remaining evidence for a less well-paid and more ambiguous, but still disgraceful, form of cooperation with Saddam Hussein.

My ingenuity astonishes even me.

More than one hot cross bun.

Remember how blogger David Holford got a letter full of Lawyer Macho from Tower Hamlets council after publishing a post called Hot Cross Councils (scroll down) a little while ago? You can read his updates here, but it seems he wasn't the only one who came under the Sauron-like gaze of the redoubtable Tower Hamlets Head of Communications. I posted about David Holford's experience on this blog and on Samizdata, and Joanne Jacobs commented that she had got the same letter, or rather Jewish World Review which linked via Fox to her blog post on the matter had got it. They ignored it. I wonder how many other sites had the same letter, and how many of them complied with Tower Hamlets' demands through fear?

And I wonder how much of the Community charge so gladly paid by the citizenry of Tower Hamlets goes into employing officials to blogsurf looking for unfavourable mention of their doings?

NEW exciting bonus post!!!!

This post was originally a half-written version of the one above which first dis and then re-appeared in the system somehow. Now it has been reborn as an exciting new Galloway Hypothesis #5: Agatha Christie Rides Again. Remember the one where the chap plants evidence against himself for a murder he did actually commit, his motive being not contrition but a cunning plan to be tried for the murder, have the case break down because the evidence is flimsy and then be protected by the double-jeopardy rule forever....

In this version Galloway (or, far more plausibly, a Galloway-friendly person or organisation acting entirely without Mr Galloway's knowledge or consent, M'lud) fabricates and plants evidence of dramatic, obvious and well-paid treachery, anticipating the libel trial. The trial occurs, breaks down when Abdul Al-Somebody confesses to having made up the letter, and no-one ever dares investigate the remaining evidence for a less well-paid and more ambiguous, but still disgraceful, form of cooperation with Saddam Hussein.

My ingenuity astonishes even me.

The Telegraph

is very sad that we can't hang Mr Galloway.

I've often thought the same. Oh, my ears and whiskers, there will be the mother of all libel trials if they're wrong about this.

Iain Murray thinks they're right. I daren't, I simply daren't, fully trust anything so utterly confirmatory of all my prejudices.

Hypothesis #1: Secret service black op. A little obvious methinks, and probably Saint Tony wouldn't want to know about it, but it's not as if they haven't done some breathtakingly ruthless things.

Hypothesis #2: Prankster. People are funny sometimes, and about some pretty grim subjects too. Remember the Observer's Farzad Bazoft, hanged by Saddam Hussein in 1990 in part because it was someone's idea of a joke to get the papers to say he was a spy? (I can't find anything on the internet about the hoax angle, but my memory insists that some such claim was one of a series of hoaxes perpetrated on British newspapers at about that time.) In favour of this hypothesis is the story's very appeal.

Hypothesis #3: Cultural confusion. In this one Galloway really does think he's raising money for worthy causes (however misguided his definition of worthy), but his Iraqi opposite number thinks he's taking a bribe because that's what he'd be doing.

Hypothesis #4: Tra-la-la boom -ze -ay, we're gonna hang Gall -o - way...

Howdya wangle that, you jammy b...

And his comments are up the spout, preventing me from fully expressing my envy.

UPDATE: His archives are even further up the spout. It's Briffa I'm talking about. You know, Peter "Just a little thing I dashed off for the Times" Briffa.

The Telegraph

is very sad that we can't hang Mr Galloway.

I've often thought the same. Oh, my ears and whiskers, there will be the mother of all libel trials if they're wrong about this.

Iain Murray thinks they're right. I daren't, I simply daren't, fully trust anything so utterly confirmatory of all my prejudices.

Hypothesis #1: Secret service black op. A little obvious methinks, and probably Saint Tony wouldn't want to know about it, but it's not as if they haven't done some breathtakingly ruthless things.

Hypothesis #2: Prankster. People are funny sometimes, and about some pretty grim subjects too. Remember the Observer's Farzad Bazoft, hanged by Saddam Hussein in 1990 in part because it was someone's idea of a joke to get the papers to say he was a spy? (I can't find anything on the internet about the hoax angle, but my memory insists that some such claim was one of a series of hoaxes perpetrated on British newspapers at about that time.) In favour of this hypothesis is the story's very appeal.

Hypothesis #3: Cultural confusion. In this one Galloway really does think he's raising money for worthy causes (however misguided his definition of worthy), but his Iraqi opposite number thinks he's taking a bribe because that's what he'd be doing.

Hypothesis #4: Tra-la-la boom -ze -ay, we're gonna hang Gall -o - way...

Howdya wangle that, you jammy b...

And his comments are up the spout, preventing me from fully expressing my envy.

UPDATE: His archives are even further up the spout. It's Briffa I'm talking about. You know, Peter "Just a little thing I dashed off for the Times" Briffa.