Month: May 2015

The other day, when my friend Will and I were having a couple of pints at the King’s Head, I complimented him on his interview with Gary Lineker.

Will succeeded, I said, in sounding as if he had finally divested himself of the stigma of his shamefully high birth. Why, he even refers to beer as ‘pig’.

This is what he told me in response:

“Ta, Alex, me old china.

“You may think I’m well posh, being a prince and all. But when I had that chinwag with me mate Gary, he knew I was a regular bloke who don’t like nothing more than going down the pub with me Brummie mates and watching Villa on the box.

“I even wrote me own Villa song, Claret ‘n Blue, One Loves You. Sang it to me trouble, but she stuck her fingers into her shell-likes.

“Me missus, she’s different, see. Coz she wasn’t brung up posh from birth, like, she has them aspirations, djahmean? Me, I don’t mind coming across like a prole, to make Gary feel at home.

“Sat in the box during the match, like a goodun, but wish I was with me Brummie mates. Villa, see, got a good kick up the bottle, and everyone in the box rooted for Arsenal, so they were well chuffed. Right berks, the lot of them.

“They like looked at me strange when the ref didn’t give us a stonewall pen and I jumped up and screamed ‘Ref is a wan…’ Stopped myself in time though, coz I was on that big screen and any bleedin’ lip reader would know what I was saying, djahmean?

“This etiquette is a load of old Jacksons, if you follow me meaning. I got me Geoff from St Andrew’s so I know how to talk posh when I have to. But me old lady, she now tries to talk all the time like she got an umbrella up her khyber.

“When I met her, she wasn’t like that. She was a good time girl, see. Swore like a trooper, drank pints of pig, shook her bristols down the pub, even talked chitty chitty.

“Now she got a pair of dustbins, she wants to be a proper royal trouble, she says. Me Nan, she always smiles sly when Kate says ‘one’ instead of ‘me’.

“The other day she told me ‘I rather think Katherine overemphasises the royalty bit, Will. One fears people may laugh.’ And I say ‘Cheers Nan. I been telling her that meself.’

“Now I’m so full of this pig, me back teeth are floating. Order us a couple of mahatmas, will you, Al?”

As I was shouldering my way through the crowd at the bar, I reminded myself that in the royal rhyming slang ‘mahatma’ stands for ‘brandy’. These days one has to take a crash course in chitty chitty (the Cockney rhyming slang for Cockney rhyming slang) to be able to understand what some royals are saying.

But then, as my friend Tony Blair once put it to such great political effect, Prince William’s late mother was a ‘people’s princess’. That, one supposes, makes him a people’s prince.

If you’ve led a shamefully sheltered life, you probably don’t realise that the title of this piece is actually a variation on the first line of a popular football chant, used by the fans of a winning team to taunt their opposite numbers.

Decorum prohibits my quoting the second line verbatim, but the gist of it is that those losers have nothing to sing about. However, in Sepp’s case, the answer is a resounding yes.

For Sepp managed to get himself re-elected as head of FIFA, world football’s governing body. This in spite of a whole platoon of his closest associates being indicted in America for various degrees and types of corruption, from bribery to tax evasion.

Moreover, US Attorney General Loretta Lynch is confidently predicting that there’s more to follow, for only the surface of the football fraud has been scratched. Since the fraudulent sum already mentioned is $150 million, before long the total amount to have changed hands will approach the combined wealth of all the Russian oligarchs who, like Abramovich, have a direct stake in football.

The Russians have been supporting Blatter unequivocally, bringing to mind the proverb about birds of a feather. With their unerring nose for conspiracies aimed at them (this nasal sensitivity is otherwise known as paranoia), they’ve declared that all the charges have been trumped up specifically for the purpose of taking the 2018 World Cup away from Russia.

According to the Russian media, as part of that incredibly intricate plot, the FBI informer within FIFA not so much blew the whistle on the corruption as organised it himself. As Putin’s RT mouthpiece Soloviov put it, addressing the perfidious Yanks: “If you really installed your mole [into FIFA], this raises the question: Did you investigate the corruption or perpetrate it?” Indeed. No other question could possibly cross anyone’s mind.

The same gentleman screamed hysterically: “Corruption in FIFA? And when they talk about it [on Western TV], they show footage of Blatter and Putin chatting. Even though neither one has been implicated!”

Neither one has been arrested, rather. As to not being implicated, this is, how shall I put it kindly, not quite so.

Blatter is implicated by association at least. Just imagine what would happen to the president of, say, BP if seven of his vice presidents were arrested for fraud and seven more were expected to be nabbed within days. He’d be in a mad rush to tender his resignation before being sacked and, most likely, indicted.

As to Putin, while the US action is attracting all the attention, few have noticed an even more important parallel development. For the Swiss Prosecutor’s office has started criminal proceedings against “a group of unspecified persons linked to irregularities in selecting the countries to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.” In other words, Russia and Qatar. Interestingly, in this instance FIFA is mentioned as the victim rather than the perpetrator.

For old times’ sake we must presume that the two countries are innocent until proven guilty. But between us boys, does anyone really think there was nothing untoward about the selection?

One can just see it, the FIFA chaps pondering the possible options in a totally objective and disinterested way. England? No, too misty. France? No, too many temptations for the players to stuff themselves. America? No, what do they know about football?

And suddenly, as if out of the burning bush, comes the epiphany: “I have an idea! Why don’t we award the first one to Russia and the second one to Qatar?”

Everyone gets up, a spontaneous ovation breaks out. Why didn’t they think of that? Russia, with her corruption rating of 156 out of 175 countries, and Qatar, with its summertime temperatures around 50C. Unbeatable choices, both.

As if to prove their sterling credentials to host such events, the Russian Duma is about to pass a law calling for the use of slave labour in the construction of the World Cup sites. And Qatar is already using slaves for the same purpose, de facto, if not yet de jure.

Officially, their construction workers are visitors from India, Nepal and Bangladesh. Unofficially, as if to remind footballers of what can happen when people overexert themselves in extreme heat, they are dying at a rate of one a day. So far the death toll stands at about 1,000, but then it’s early days yet.

As to Russia, the sports establishment in that country is known for its corruption levels far exceeding those considered par for the course in one of the world’s most corrupt countries. Thus about $20 billion of the funds raised for the Sochi Olympics was pilfered by Putin’s cronies with hardly an eyebrow raised anywhere.

Anyway, let’s not be churlish about it. I hope you’ll join me in congratulating Mr Blatter on his re-election. Well-done and well deserved, Sepp!  

 

 

 

Dave is currently on a trick-or-treat junket to Europe, or rather treat-and-trick. He wants the EU to treat him to a few ploys enabling him to trick us into voting Yes in the referendum.

As any marketing man will tell you, respondents in any survey find it much easier to say Yes than No. Hence, by wording the big question as ‘Do you want to stay in the EU?’, rather than ‘Do you want to get out?’, Dave feels he’s already halfway there to the result he craves.

Now he wants the EU to help him with the other half, by agreeing to seemingly attractive but in fact purely cosmetic changes to the existing arrangement, which changes can at any rate be withdrawn after the referendum.

After all, if the plebiscite returns the desired outcome, we aren’t going to be asked to vote again, are we? It’s only when nations vote wrong that the EU tells them to do it again and get it right this time.

The only problem is that the EU is playing hard to get. Dave may have failed to communicate his real objective lucidly enough, or else the federasts are genuinely afraid of the domino effect. What if, following Britain’s example, others start getting ideas above their station? Das ist ausgeschlossen, in the language of the EU metropolis.

One way or the other, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius explained the facts of life to Dave, choosing the language he felt even un sale Anglo-Saxon could understand:

“Mon petit David,” he said. “Britain joined a football club, but no? Zey cannot now say in ze middle of ze match zat zey want to play rugby. It’s one sing or anozzer. What part of non don’t you understand, mon ami?”

Mr Fabius probably didn’t realise how well his metaphor works. For, if what’s going on is a simulacrum of an international football match, then the EU acts in the capacity of FIFA, with all that this entails.

Specifically, it entails corruption on a Putinesque scale, routine bribery, a phoney democracy that is in fact a crypto-dictatorship, contracts going to the boys willing to play ball, blackmailing recalcitrant members – the lot.

My friend Dave winced at both such an unfortunate turn of phrase and an even more unfortunate failure to understand his true goals. He decided to follow suit and resort to the football idiom too.

“Laurent,” he said. “You are being unreasonable. You must realise that unless the ref’s decisions, the least important ones, go our way, we may have to take an early bath.”

That incensed Mr Fabius even more because he was unfamiliar with the expression and decided Dave was rudely referring to the recent survey showing that half the French don’t wash regularly. The conversation rapidly went downhill, and both parties felt the final whistle couldn’t come too soon.

Dave missed an open goal yet again because he failed to realise the goalposts are fixed and can’t be moved. Or else he was caught offside yet again – choose your own football jargon.

What I find intriguing is the way Dave explains the situation to the Europeans. Unless we get what he asks for – and God knows he’s not asking much – Britain may have to leave the EU, he keeps repeating.

And there I was, thinking that the whole point of the referendum is letting the people decide. Since our decision hasn’t yet been made public, how does Dave know whether we’ll vote Yes or No, concessions or no concessions?

He can only feel so prescient if he’s certain he can manipulate the referendum to get the result he wants. He probably can, with a little help from his EU friends, and it’s refreshing to hear a politician in general and Dave in particular tell the truth. If only inadvertently.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Congratulations to the whole region. It will henceforth be spared Tony’s malevolent presence to which the Middle East owes much of its present ordeal.

Had Mrs Leo Blair suffered a miscarriage 63 years ago, the Middle East might have been spared the Walpurgisnacht of Isis, while Europe wouldn’t be besieged by swarms of refugees risking watery death to flee from Libya.

Israel would also be safer, although, with the ‘Palestinians’ expertly playing on the West’s post-colonial guilt and perverse attraction to Third World diversity, she wouldn’t be completely safe.

But at least the threat of crazed nuclear-armed ayatollahs would be counterbalanced by Saddam’s Iraq and Gaddafi’s Libya, with Assad’s Syria sitting on the fence. Now, with those major players off the field, Iran is emerging as the region’s strongman.

America has withdrawn from the mess, having first started it under Dubya in collusion with our miscarriage manqué. Once bitten by the fiasco of the ill-conceived and illegal invasion, she is now twice shy to do something about Iran’s nuclear threat – other than tacitly encouraging it.

We’ll have to suffer Obama’s sanctimonious waffles for another couple of years, but at least we stand a good chance of not being exposed to the smug noises produced by arguably the most hideous character ever to occupy 10 Downing Street.

Tony had a good thing going while it lasted. First he went along with Dubya on his criminal aggression against Iraq. Then, when that went sour, he asked his American accomplice to put in a good word for him with the self-appointed Quartet of the UN, EU, US and Russia (!), which was looking for a front man.

“Yo, Blair,” said Dubya. “You scratched my back, I’ll scratch yours. Count on me, boy. And get me a refill, will ya?”

Bush was as good as his word. Tony ‘Yo’ Blair got the job of peace envoy and made it a resounding success. For himself, that is.

He could now go through the motions of global politics, while focusing his undivided attention on building his business empire, much of it made possible by his contacts with Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and other Emirates, not to mention the Palestinian mobile phone company he got together with another one of his clients, JP Morgan.

As to his supposed day job, he brought to it the defunct notions he shared with the US neoconservatives. According to Tony, all problems in the Middle East spring from the conflict between Israel and the ‘Palestinians’.

As Tony’s sponsor Dubya said, Islam is a religion of peace (Tony’s successor Dave saw fit to repeat this idiocy, but then he’s the self-described ‘heir to Blair’). Let those poor Palestinians, happily displaced for three generations, have their state, and Islam will return to its normal peaceful self.

A worthy goal towards which to strive, or rather it would be if it were true. In fact, the briefest of looks at some of the world’s flashpoints over the last 20 years will show that most of them involved Muslims – and had nothing to do with Israel.

Specifically one could mention the conflicts between Bosnian Muslims and Christians, Côte d’Ivoire Muslims and Christians, Cyprus Muslims and Christians, East Timor Muslims and Christians, Indonesian Muslims and Christians in Ambon island, Kashmir Muslims and Hindus, Kosovo Muslims and Christians, Macedonian Muslims and Christians, Nigeria Muslims and both Christians and Animists, Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims throughout the Islamic world, Muslims and Christians in the Philippines, Chechen Muslims and Russians, Azeri Muslims and Armenian Christians, Sri Lanka Tamils and Buddhists, Thailand’s Muslims and Buddhists in the Pattani province, Muslim Bengalis and Buddhists in Bangladesh, Muslims and Protestant, Chaldean Catholic and Assyrian Orthodox Christians in Kurdistan.

But moral and intellectual integrity mean nothing to our Tony. What matters is maintaining his image of the global dove of peace, while feathering his nest to the tune of hundreds of millions.

I don’t know the Hebrew, Arabic or Farsi for good riddance to bad rubbish. But whatever it is, the Middle Easterners should be saying it. There’s hope for them yet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vlad and his trained cronies are the best travelling circus in the world. Its travel from Petersburg to Moscow is particularly entertaining.

When Vlad moved from his post as Petersburg’s deputy mayor to bigger and better things in Moscow, he brought his whole gang… sorry, I mean team, with him. Most members were Vlad’s comrades-at-arms in the KGB, so mutual understanding wasn’t a problem.

Those who are curious about the team’s shenanigans should Google Marina Salye, the Petersburg politician who a few years ago published a dossier implicating Putin et al in pilfering on a massive scale, to the tune of $100 million-plus.

But one always seeks fresh material, and this was provided a few days ago. The Petersburg businessman Freidzon gave an interview to Radio Liberty, in which he elucidated the team’s modus operandi.

He had to accept Putin as a silent partner in his firm, and Vlad was satisfied with a modest four per cent share. The unspoken understanding was that he’d take either a piece of the action or a piece out of Mr Freidzon, who was wise enough to make the right choice.

In addition, he had to keep greasing Vlad’s palm with whatever amounts Vlad thought fair, usually $10,000 at a time. Mr Freidzon stresses that Putin, being royalty in the making, never sullied his hands with the folding stuff. Instead he’d just summon Mr Freidzon for a chat, during which he’d absent-mindedly jot down a numeral on a pad. The businessman would then pass the specified sum to Alexei Miller on his way out.

Vlad thereby showed that KGB tradecraft was useful in covering one’s tracks. As a KGB case officer, he also knew how to be loyal to his assets. Hence, when Vlad became national leader, he not only brought Miller with him to Moscow, but put him in charge of Gazprom, the world’s largest gas producer.

One hand washes the other and all that, so Miller was happy to do a Freidzon and hand over to Vlad a piece of the Gazprom action as well, and, if rumours are to be believed, a considerably larger chunk than a paltry four per cent. I wish I could put a monetary value on Vlad’s reputed 15 per cent share, but my counting ability doesn’t go that high.

Sergei Ivanov is another one of Vlad’s colleagues from the good old days of the Petersburg KGB, in which he actually outranked Vlad. He now heads Vlad’s personal administration, and it’s his job to put out fires – such as the one conflagrated by the Freidzon interview.

Apparently the fire spread to Western media, with an unspecified London newspaper and an American news channel daring to ask Gen. Ivanov for a clarification.

What they got instead was a torrent of abuse. Speaking on Russia Today, the good General waxed indignant about “the libellous statements about the circle of Russia’s head of state which often appear in foreign press.”

“Some articles appearing in Western media maintain that President Putin and his retinue are utterly corrupt and are concealing their huge wealth; even accusations of links with the criminal underworld sometimes slip in.”

Crikey. Just goes to show how deep Western media have sunk. Why, those running dogs of Wall Street and the City of London dare not only to read incriminating evidence but even to publish it.

Clarification? There’s nothing to clarify. And if you insist there is, read up on the cases of Messrs Litvinenko, Perepelichny, Berezovsky et al. Remember what happened to them?

Don’t know about Western media, but Mr Freidzon’s memory is in working order, and his interview was removed from the Radio Liberty site the day after it appeared. The text was replaced with an apology, to the effect that it had been removed on the interviewee’s request, as he is concerned about his safety. Obviously, Vlad’s KGB colleagues had dropped a quiet word into Mr Freidzon’s shell-like.

Meanwhile, the state of Russia’s economy is such that some responsible citizens are concerned about the cost of staging the 2018 World Cup. Not to worry, according to Vlad’s trained MP Alexander Khinstein.

He has pointed out that prisoners aren’t being used as effectively as in Stalin’s days. Why not use them, for example, to do logging in the Siberian taiga? Anyone who has read The Gulag Archipelago could have answered that question, but there was no need. It was rhetorical.

However, by way of concrete immediate proposal, Deputy Khinstein has tabled a bill solving the fiscal problems of hosting the World Cup. According to this legislation, all the necessary facilities could be built by prisoners, otherwise known as slave labour.

This cost-cutting measure is expected to sail through the legislative process, such as it is in Russia. No doubt it’ll be warmly and loudly welcomed by the population at large, about half of whom confess to nostalgia for Stalin’s way of running the country.

I, on the other hand, detect a spot of KGB perfidy in this idea. Vlad has used his Duma mouthpiece to make sure Russia finally wins a World Cup.

Since most countries in the world are still squeamish enough to boycott any event made possible by slaves, only North Korea is likely to take part. The organisers would thus be able to dispense with time-consuming preliminaries and proceed straight to the Russia-North Korea final.

Vlad’s bailiwick would be the odds-on favourite in such a confrontation, thereby demonstrating to the world the strength of Vlad’s leadership. Perhaps Peter Hitchens would like to present the trophy.

 

 

 

 

Amnesty International has written an open letter to our Lord Chancellor, begging him not to scrap the Human Rights Act.

The document has been published as an advertisement, signed and paid for by over 1,000 people. Well, there’s one born every minute.

They aren’t idiots simply because they support this hideous document – we are all occasionally misguided and misinformed. Errare humanum est and all that.

They are, however, idiots because they argue their case in an irredeemably imbecilic way. This starts from the title: Don’t Scrap Our Human Rights.

I’m not aware of RT Hon Michael Gove hatching a fiendish plan to do away with human rights, and I’m sure that neither are the signatories. Even should Mr Gove harbour such dastardly intentions, it’s a safe bet he wouldn’t be able to act on them.

In other words, the authors of the letter confuse human rights with the document featuring these words in its name. This is like believing that abolishing the inheritance tax would deprive us all of the right to inherit or that no one would have the right to buy in the absence of a corresponding law.

The argument starts from that low point and rapidly goes downhill: “A government cannot give human rights or take them away, nor can it decide who is entitled to human rights and who isn’t.”

Quite. I couldn’t agree more. A government can do no such thing – which is precisely why we in England don’t need a written document codifying human rights. This, regardless of whether the document is issued by our own government or especially the political, moral and legal abortion calling itself the European Union.

In this country – unlike on the continent – it’s not the government that traditionally imposes its laws on the people, but rather the other way around. Such is the difference between our venerable common law and the so-called positive law practised elsewhere in Europe.

Imposing EU diktats on Britain can only serve the opposite purpose to the one professed by the signatories: it’s bound to diminish the rights Englishmen have enjoyed for centuries.

Really, the 1,000 idiots who signed the petition should take a remedial course in historical, political and legal literacy before bothering themselves with such matters.

However, they obviously don’t need a remedial course in demagoguery: “Human rights are universal – they apply to all of us simply because we are human.”

The first time this worthy idea was expressed in this kind of language was in 1789, and the language was French (actually, the Americans were first, but they had got the idea from the philosophes). By way of punctuation, nearly a million Frenchmen were then murdered, tens of thousands of churches were razed or defaced, and France began to pounce on everyone within reach, losing another two million people in a succession of aggressive wars.

This isn’t a case of post hoc, ergo propter hoc, but a causal progression. For whenever a government seeks to enforce the universal rights protecting the congenital goodness of its subjects, it inevitably acquires the urge to kill them all.

People always fall short of the loftier expectations, and operating the guillotine is an excellent way to express one’s disappointment.

I’d suggest another remedial course for the 1,000-odd idiots: theology. They’d benefit from learning how related issues were handled in various books that have evidently escaped their attention, from the Bible to Summa Theologiae. Alternatively, Google natural law, chaps. See if it rings a bell.

“[The Human Rights Act] protects women fleeing from domestic violence,” proceeds the letter. In other words, before 1998, when this pernicious act was passed, a bleeding woman running down the street with her thuggish husband in hot pursuit had no protection whatsoever.

A policeman, should he have happened to observe the scene, would have been powerless to intercede. “Sorry, love,” he would have said. “You’re on your own. We haven’t yet signed the Human Rights Act. So run faster.”

“It makes it safer to be gay…” Same situation here. Presumably until 1998 it had been legal to pummel homosexuals into a bloody pulp. It’s only thanks to the Act that they can now walk the aisle in perfect safety. It’s amazing that Britain managed to legalise homosexuality in 1967, all on her own.

“The Human Rights Act brought home to us the rights we have under the European Convention on Human Rights, enabling us to hold public authorities to account in our own country.” Absolutely. Until 1998 public authorities in England had been blissfully unaccountable.

The authors clearly haven’t heard of the great ancient charters aimed to protect the individual from the despotism of the rulers. The Charter of Liberties (1100) and Magna Carta (1215) were only the culmination of this development; its beginnings go back centuries earlier.

I suggest that on 15 June, when the rest of us celebrate the 800^th anniversary of Magna Carta, the signatories to this letter raise a glass to the Human Rights Act instead. May I suggest bromide as the beverage? These people are much too excitable for their own good.

“We urge you not to roll back our hard-won human rights,” they plead at the end. Well, by the looks of it, the right to idiocy is still held sacred in some quarters.

 

The arithmetic of Ireland’s homomarriage referendum has worked out exactly as I predicted the other day, which partly redeemed my prophetic powers in my own eyes, if no one else’s.

About 35 per cent of the Irish still follow ecclesiastical guidance in such matters, while 65 per cent voted Yes. I don’t know if there was an overlap between the two groups, but I doubt it. In any case it couldn’t have been large.

Observing crowds of homosexual men and women engaged in celebratory public foreplay with drag queens all over Dublin, Ireland’s equalities minister Aodhán Ó Ríordáin couldn’t contain his paroxysms of joy.

He rushed to the computer and tweeted: “Ireland hasn’t just said ‘Yes’… Ireland has said ‘F*** YEAAHHHH!’” If so, and one has no reason to doubt the comments of a  man whose finger is on the pulse of progress, Ireland ought to have her mouth washed out with soap.

Nevertheless she should be congratulated on being governed by men/women/other who express themselves with such elegance and panache. Then again, the jubilation fits the cause.

I have pointed out on numerous occasions that a government boasting the post of equalities minister is ipso facto tyrannical, not to mention cavalier in its frittering of public money. I think Ireland should shut that ministry down and move Mr Ó Ríordáin up to the post of foreign minister, where his eloquence could find a proper outlet.

One can just see him asking a US Secretary of State “What part of f*** off don’t you understand?” He could also test the mental agility of his French counterpart Laurent Fabius by suggesting that he take the words ‘off’ and ‘f***’ and arrange them in the right order.

It fell upon Sinn Fein Gerry Adams to put the victory into a broad political context by stating that this was “a huge day for equality”.

Having scrubbed his hands clean after abusing them by shaking Prince Charles’s hand, IRA Gerry expressed the hope that this was but one battle in a never-ending war: “I also think that given that the government parties were pressing quite rightly for equality in this issue then we need equality in other issues – we need equality in social issues, economic issues, we need everything to be equality.”

Except for the bloody Prods, Gerry must have muttered under his breath, but was clever enough not to say it out loud. It’s good to see that the noble cause of equality all around has such distinguished champions who display not only self-restraint but also stylistic mastery.

The same issue wasn’t put to a referendum in the UK, for Dave belied his reputation for shilly-shallying by pushing it through Parliament without resorting to plebiscite. Some might say that such leadership qualities are worthy of a better use, but at least we were spared some of carnal festivities all over London.

I don’t think Ireland should rest on her laurels. Once some of the rainbow flags draping Dublin have been removed, the country’s equality-happy government, with IRA’s support, should open debate on another burning issue demanding speedy resolution.

Should the traditional slogan ‘Up the Republic!’ be changed to ‘Up the Republic’s!’? This is another idea whose time has come, and one hopes it’ll come to a popular vote.

I can’t vote in Irish referenda, but if I could, I’d reply with a resounding “F*** YEAAHHHH!” This would make me sound ministerial.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As our re-elected PM embarks on a whirlwind tour behind EU lines, one hopes all those little-Englander vermin in Ukip feel suitably ashamed of themselves.

For, contrary to their vitriol, Dave has drawn a list of iron-clad conditions for Britain to stay in the EU, regardless of the results yielded by the referendum our re-elected government has promised.

Should the EU wisely choose to comply with these conditions, Britain will regain her sovereignty, and never mind the referendum:

1) The EU undertakes not to refer to the euro as ‘the single currency’. Henceforth, it shall be known as ‘the solitary currency’, ‘soccur’ for short.

2) The British pound shall be pegged to the soccur only under duress and definitely not in the next six months.

3) The French undertake not to refer to the English as ‘les rosbifs’. Instead the English shall be known as ‘les hautes cuisines’.

4) The EU will let Britain decide how many Australian-American billionaires she will allow to own British newspapers and TV stations.

5) Britain shall likewise decide how many Russian, Chinese and Arab oligarchs she admits, provided they have not secured EU citizenship beforehand.

6) When applied to Britain, Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen shall be known as Declaration of the Rights of Man/Woman/Other and of the Subject.

7) The Germans undertake to keep their bloody beach towels to themselves.

8) Britain’s right to buy as many German cars as she wishes shall in no way be curtailed.

9) Ditto, Britain’s right to buy French wine – even though our own Kent product is clearly superior.

10) Ditto, Britain’s right to buy anything continental at the asking price.

11) The EU undertakes not to send in its own police to arrest British subjects unless it must.

12) The EU shall not impose on Britain more than 60 (sixty) per cent of her new laws, give or take a few.

13) Those Eastern Europeans promise to stay in their own countries, crossing their hearts and hoping to die.

14) Britain shall be allowed to sign unilateral trade treaties with whomever she pleases, provided the EU does not mind.

15) The EU undertakes at least to match HMS’s funds required to launch a sensible campaign for the In vote in the upcoming referendum, provided it indeed upcomes.

16) The EU undertakes to adopt as its official anthem the British football chant ‘If It Wasn’t for England, You’d All Be Krauts’, adding the words ‘And Now You Will Be’ at the end.

17) The EU shall replace the words ‘ever-closer union’ with ‘ever-tighter union’.

18) Angela Merkel and members of her government undertake not to end their public speeches with ‘Gott Strafe England’ or any shout that includes the word ‘Sieg’.

19) The French shall take an enthusiastic part in celebrating the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June.

20) The EU undertakes not to tell us how much deficit we can run. We will borrow as much as we bloody well like.

21) No continental drinking establishment shall henceforth ban British stag and/or football parties.

22) Britain shall retain the right to abbreviate Jean-Claude Juncker’s name to ‘Junk’.

23) The Queen shall be allowed to renounce her EU citizenship, thereby becoming stateless.

24) Those Europeans who speak what they call English shall abandon their pathetic attempts to imitate the American accent. To provide a reliable guide to proper English pronunciation, EastEnders shall be taught as a compulsory subject in all continental schools.

We must all admire the diplomatic skill with which Dave has painted those Eurofederalists into a corner.

If they accept these conditions, on pain of Britain’s leaving the EU, nothing will ever again compromise our sovereignty. And if they reject them, Dave will think up some new ones.

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Love Thy Neighbour, says a poster prominently displayed in Dublin. A welcome reminder, one would think, except that this Biblical fiat appears under a secular one: VOTE YES. In tomorrow’s homomarriage referendum, that is.

I don’t know, it may be just me, but the two fiats seem to be at odds. I’m not sure that sexual perversion sanctified by the state is quite what either Testament meant by loving one’s neighbour. Then again, love comes in many different shapes, and scriptural texts do leave room for interpretation.

Offering it is one of the functions of the Church, and it still hasn’t wavered in its opposition to this particular step in the march of progress. But the Church no longer wields the same influence in a historically pious Ireland: only 35 per cent admit to following ecclesiastical guidance in such matters.

It may be a pure coincidence, but the polls are predicting a Yes vote of 65 per cent. Since 65 is the balance between 100 and 35, arithmetic indicates where the watershed runs in the Republic.

The country has come a long way since 1993, when she finally bowed to the diktat of the European Court of Human Rights and decriminalised homosexuality. Nonetheless, the distance Ireland has travelled towards perdition still remains somewhat shorter than elsewhere in Europe.

True, the referendum on divorce delivered a Yes vote in 1995. But the government still hasn’t called a referendum on liberalising abortion, which is wise. Why fight a battle you’re likely to lose? Let’s wait until the influence of the Church has dropped down to zero, which it will soon enough under the sage guidance of the European Union.

This, in spite of the EU supposedly being a direct descendant of the Holy Roman Empire, a claim often made by the more fanatical and less clever fans of European federalism.

Well, not quite. The Empire’s adhesive was Christianity, whereas the EU’s is brought together by Germany’s urge to conquer Europe by peaceful means. This is underpinned by France’s fear that Germany might change her mind and again opt for the old way.

Still, it isn’t the EU that’s responsible for originating most of the existential ugliness of modernity. Starting from the counterintuitive pronouncement that all men are created equal, that distinction belongs to the USA by right (or wrong, as the case may be).

Step by step, that dubious idea has degenerated into political correctness, the most pernicious tyranny of our time. Part and parcel of it is the conviction that all men are created equally entitled to marry one another.

Since America is the natural leader and flag bearer of modernity, Europe is often eager to push her subversive notions to their logical extreme, with Holland tending to lead the way. And when Europeans are a bit slow on the uptake, Americans are increasingly eager to lend a helping hand.

As they have done in this case, in the shape of a massive transfer of funds to the Yes campaign and other LGBT causes in Ireland. Specifically, the US charity The Atlantic Philanthropies has pumped £25 million into four influential organisations: GLEN (the Gay and Lesbian Network), Marriage Equality, TENI (the transgender Equality Network Ireland) and LGBT Diversity.

Has the money been well spent? The columnist Bruce Arnold thinks so: “In my opinion, The Atlantic Philanthropies has bought this referendum.”

The other side doesn’t disagree. Brian Sheenan, director of GLEN, isn’t bashful about giving credit where it’s due: “Atlantic’s commitment to GLEN allowed GLEN to follow the strategy of building a majority from a minority…”

Broden Giambrone, director of TENI, explains that “Atlantic’s multi-year commitment allows for TENI to employ core staff, which was unprecedented in the trans community.”

And Marriage Equality’s director Healy puts it in a nutshell: “…We have unleashed that potential and that passion that the supporters of marriage equality have, but more than that we’ve been able to channel it into political change.”

While congratulating the Irish on the upcoming political change, I feel sorry they have to rely on American support to promote the noble cause of debauching marriage. We in England managed to do it all by ourselves.

But then we are blessed with an all-powerful domestic resource, called DAVE (Destroy Any Vestige of Ethics).

 

Belfast-based Christian baking company Ashers (so named after a Biblical tribe of Israel boasting many skilled bakers) got off easy. A paltry £500 fine plus court costs? I’m amazed the bakers weren’t all sent down. Or, better still, put down.

Their crime is much worse than, say, burglary or mugging. For such indiscretions only hurt individuals, whereas the Christian bakers struck against the very essence of modernity. Its essence, as I see it, is an unquenchable desire to uproot the last vestiges of Christendom and then sow the field with coarse salt to make sure nothing ever grows again.

Those wishing to contest this observation could do worse than to consider the Asher case.

‘Gay rights’ fanatic Gareth Lee staged a fiendish, well-timed provocation by asking the bakers known for their staunch Christian beliefs to put the slogan ‘Support gay marriage’ on the cake he ordered.

The provocation was fiendish because Lee knew they’d refuse. It was well-timed because Northern Ireland is at present debating the issue of homomarriage. Lee and his fellow fanatics clearly felt that the ensuing publicity would serve their cause well, and they were proved right.

Homosexuality no longer has much to do with merely an act of sticking certain body parts into receptacles not manifestly designed for that purpose. It has become a political movement, a sort of cross between sexual democracy and homosocialism.

Campaigners for homomarriage like Gareth Lee – or, for that matter, our re-elected PM – are the shock troops of the movement, the present-day answer to Hitler’s SA or Mao’s Red Guards. They might as well call themselves Pink Guards and, if Peter Tatchell runs with this designation, I’ll demand royalties.

The less said about these gentlemen the better. What’s truly worrying is that the law plays along. Perversion of justice seems to be in synch with the sexual variety.

For the wronged Mr Lee immediately ran to the good offices of the Equality Commission, which was more than happy to file a discrimination lawsuit on his behalf. Such parasite organisations couldn’t possibly exist in civilised society, and even in our uncivilised one they still have to earn their keep somehow.

The worst was still to come. For Belfast County Court district judge Isobel Brownlie ruled that the bakers “have unlawfully discriminated against the plaintiff on grounds of sexual discrimination… This is direct discrimination for which there can be no justification.”

Given our tradition of common law, this ruling establishes a precedent that in one fell swoop wipes out many civil liberties the Brits have taken for granted since God was young.

One of them is freedom of religion, which for devout Christians means more than just freedom of worship. It also means organising their life in accordance with the moral demands of their faith.

For such people homosexuality is a deadly sin, and legalising homomarriage means that the state endorses, institutionalises and thereby promotes the deadly sin.

Hence the Ashers bakers have not only the right to refuse to participate in the propaganda of homomarriage, but indeed the duty to do so. They have to regard reneging on this duty as a sacrilege that might jeopardise their salvation.

It has to be said that theirs isn’t some obscure cult but the religion that lies at the foundation of our constitution. To prove this point, this perversion of justice occurred in the same week in which our new MPs swore this oath of allegiance:

“I swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and successors, according to law. So help me God.”

Another liberty violated here is that of enterprise. A privately owned company ought to be able to decide which custom to accept and which to turn down – within reason.

The qualification is important here, for refusing to serve, say, Jews, blacks or Muslims in a restaurant is sheer savagery, which ought to be discouraged with or without law. Members of such groups don’t ipso facto violate any moral traditions of our society.

However, propaganda of aberrant sexuality does – again whatever the law says. To demand that pious Christians actively participate in it denies them not only religious but also commercial freedom.

This affront is aimed not against religion in general, but specifically against Christianity. If you doubt this point, I suggest you stage a little private experiment.

Go to a Muslim bakery in Brick Lane and ask them to decorate a cake with the inscription “Support Israel”. Then, if you are still in one piece, ask an Orthodox Jewish baker in Golders Green to put “Support Hamas” on his cake. When they refuse, ask the Equality Commission to sue both businesses for discrimination. See what they say.

The Asher bakers should count themselves lucky. A few years from now a crime like this will surely bring about a custodial sentence. That is, if the country is still there.