The Neather Brouhaha: A Correction

Beer Moth

Is this it?

After a whole week of near schtum, all you can point to is the fact that Murphy has chosen only to speak of other excisions from the report? And that he wouldn't have missed such an opportunity? You mean we might here have come across yet another member of the press who isn't doing his job? The incontrovertible evidence of the dog that didn't bark.

And anyway, what does come out of his article is the unmistakable picture of an early term Labour government, furtively working to find ways to take away the restraints on immigration which were in place at the time. You're offering us this piece to show that they had no idea at all that what this would lead to would be a massive influx of alien cultures? They just stumbled into it? It's weak Doc. It's piss poor.

And the piece you point to at 'Though Cowards Flinch' (bless) is a belter. Semple, having declared himself as a no holds barred socialist, and who litters his every paragraph with mindless ravings about the right wing blogosphere; assures his readers that they will just have to trust his elision of someone else's Phd paper! OK David we know we can go with that.

The paper, relating to 'epistemic communities', apparently comes to the conclusion that, yep you guessed it: immigration is good for the UK.

Once again Doc, 'We only THINK it's a problem'

Greg Dimple

Honestly, what a load of trollop. I can see the strings pulling your fingers as you type, Massie.

But to your actual piece.

Firstly, Neather mentions "drafts" in the plural. He also mentions various different discussions. The other Standard article mentions "draft" - e.g. singular. Surely, as a journalist you should know the difference. It is quite plausible to assume that the draft seen by Murphy was not the final draft, and even if it was, that the white-working-class concerns Neather expresses had already been deleted. Your reasoning is red-faced and over-stretched.

Secondly, in Murphy's piece, why do you think that mentioning Britain's "positively shameful record towards Jews" fleeing the Nazis had to be deleted? I find it hard to believe that such a reference would be offensive to anybody. It is certainly not inflammatory. But get it in there for good measure? Could it be that Murphy's article was a distraction from the burgeoning conspiracy theories growing around an article - in the very same newspaper?

Thirdly, why is Neather's article so hard to find when you visit the Standard and look up his latest articles?

Fourthly, why has the BBC completely ignored this? Why has the Sun not touched it? Why did it take the Times over a week to write a comment piece on it (whose thread is growing as I write)?

Your estimation of your readers' intelligence is low indeed.

Oops! I hear a whistle! Time for dinner, you mutt.

daniel maris

Yes, that's a pretty basic point. The reference was to drafts plural. Government papers can easily go through 20,30, 40 drafts, especially if they involve several different departments. And please let's not be naive and think that official draft no. 1 to be found on the files by future historians will really be draft no. 1. There are likely to be informal drafts before that, especially with a document of this kind.

Final point: I don't think one has to take the view that Neather was seeking to "destroy Britain". One can accept that Neather and friends would think that mass immigration was indeed just what Britons needed, or at least those who had the cash to make use of cheap plumbers, car wash workers, nannies and gardeners etc. Or they might have thought that while mass immigration would create problems it would deliver permanent Labour government which would in their view be a "greater good".

Frank P

Heh,heh, heh! It's too late, mate. You would need more than this load of badly written bullshit to call off the hue and cry. The cat's out of the bag and you can't stuff it back in.

Almost all of the commentariat of these blogs are fully aware of Gramsci's writings, Alinski's rules for revolution, et alia - and the current mob in Government's devotion to them. We also understand now why you have been despatched to this magazine.

We're still waiting to hear from the organ grinder. The monkey is unconvincing, Fraser.

BOO

"Tiresomely, then, there seems to have been no plot to destroy Britain at all. Because if there was, you might think someone would mention it and let us know what's going on."

Huh? So you're deaf, blind, wrapped in cotton wool - and have never even been outside of some happy zone.
I mean, I bet you've never even been a train where carriage after carriage is full of sprawling aliens: and you wouldn't dare to go in and take a seat, because hatred at the sight of you was tangible. And that happened to me at least 30 years ago. And what did our Rulers do about it? They encouraged them take over the cities.

And you want evidence?

And maybe, more recently, you've never had a group of aliens stalking you in an M1 shop - tangible hatred and intimidation all the way: and then, when you got to your destination, had your car broken into overnight.

You also must have been sleeping through your marxist theory courses. Not that I blame you there: it takes an alert mind not to get lulled by the claptrap. However, many of the 'masters' do spell out the method for creating the anti-dialogical mess we have about us. cf. Freire, and many of the Gramsci posts on CH. The reality fits the theory so closely that 'coincidence' seems very unlikely indeed.

So the overall point is that Neather simply confirms what the rest of us are experiencing. Oh - an btw - what about all the riots and demonstrations nobody's reporting?

simon

BOO = BNP - Take this racist crap down. Coffee House is turning into Crystal Meth for the brain.

Geoff Miller

Too late mate.

Despite the media shutdown the story has got legs now. the internet is awash with the policy and its consequences.

Come the General Election every voter will be made aware of Labours treachery. Every working class estate, every cowed inner city denizen in a no-go area, every suburb and village.

The silence from the opposition only confirms what we all know - that our politicians care not a fig for native Britons, their culture or even our existence.

They will be repaid, with interest, over the coming months and years.

Geoff Miller

Just lets be honest about Labours policies. Look at them all from Labours self interest.

Mass immigration = More Labour votes

Bogus Asylum seekers = More Labour votes

Benefit dependency = More Labour votes

Poor working class education/opportunity/indoctrination = More Labour votes

The inequity of Scottish MP's voting on English matters and smaller Scottish constituencies = More Labour votes

Multiculturalism = More Labour votes

Sucking up to Islamic extremists = More Labour votes

Postal votes = Postal voting fraud = More Labour votes

Special treatment for minorities = More Labour votes

Vast increase in State employees = More Labour votes.

Get the picture?

It used to be called Gerrymandering. I call it Treason.

Wake up folks - Labour has not got YOUR interests at heart. The British, and the English people in particular, are not important to them.

Power and their Marxist ideology is.

Ken

The answer, Mr Massie, is plainly visible to the naked eye, on the streets and in the ethnic ghettos of Britain's cities and towns.

If it is of any help, even Labour's broadcasting mouthpiece has now produced a "Neather-like" contribution:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8332314.stm

Obviously you, in the rare airs of the Scottish highlands, are spared the realities of those with more mundane lives.

The Gateless Gate

The commentariat have a morbid fear of anything that reeks of conspiracy and are therefore well and truly shafted when confronted by one, because they have been programmed to poo-poo such dangerous thinking ever since they first picked up their play-pen crayons.

Ray Burston

According to Neather,"(Labour) probably realised the conservatism of their core voters: while ministers might have been passionately in favour of a more diverse society, it wasn’t necessarily a debate they wanted to have in working men’s clubs in Sheffield or Sunderland."

So they understood perfectly well that this was a titanic policy decision that even Labour's own voters - never kind the rest of us - would not be prepared to sanction. Yet they went ahead with it anyway and sought to deflect the inevitable opposition by either downplaying the numbers involved, pointing to the dubious economic benefits; or, if all else failed, simply tarnishing the doomsayers as 'racists'.

We're not stupid, Alex. We can clearly perceive what Neather was trying to tell us: namely, that our own government has conspired to effect a fundamental and irreversible change to our nation without asking us and then lied to cover up its tracks! Not since Ted Heath blandly assured us that membership of the EEC involved "no fundamental loss of sovereignty" and was merely a way of "creating a common market" has a British government engaged in such a blatantly dishonest and treasonable act.

Publius

"Tiresomely, then, there seems to have been no plot to destroy Britain at all."

A straw man, Mr Massie. Really, how you insult your readers!

London Calling

I do not understand why any government would want to crush its own people to accommodate others. The British are renown for their tolerance, but we are reminded that it was not tolerance that fuelled the British Empire or fought two world wars. We did not go to war with Germany to defeat Nazism, it was to protect our own shores from invasion. That is why the war in Iraq has never had the full support of the British people, a tolerant people we may be, stupid we are not, Iraq posed no threat to us as a nation whatsoever. Our Government is guilty of attempting to enforce democracy on other nations whilst at the same time as eroding our freedom and liberties.

Labour have caused their own death and Britain’s also, what needs to be done is to acknowledged the severity of the situation and prevent our melting pot of a nation from over spilling into chaos, any logical person must share the flash
Forward, why didn’t our Government? And what can David Cameron do to make a difference if he remains silent? A hung Parliament at the next election?

Alex knows the Truth is out there…..Area
51...I think ….:0

Adam Murphy

Why is the Spectator going out of its way to play down what Labour has done?

He who controls the language of an argument, has already half won.

By labelling this affair a "conspiracy" the author of this article is doing a disservice to people with legitimate - and well founded - concerns regarding Labour's national experiment.

Peter From Maidstone

The Spectator seems to care less about its readers and their concerns. Many of the writers just seem to want to sound cocky and edgy. Why not have some of the regular posters here write occasionally for the CH? It can't be worse, and I think it could be a lot better.

Alan

Methinks Mr Massie doth protest too much, as the bard might have said.

Paul

Beer Moth @1:

An entertaining enough rant, though totally inaccurate.

You say:

'And the piece you point to at 'Though Cowards Flinch' (bless) is a belter. Semple, having declared himself as a no holds barred socialist, and who litters his every paragraph with mindless ravings about the right wing blogosphere; assures his readers that they will just have to trust his elision of someone else's Phd paper! OK David we know we can go with that.

The paper, relating to 'epistemic communities', apparently comes to the conclusion that, yep you guessed it: immigration is good for the UK.'

1. I wrote the blogpost, not Dave Semple. That's clear enough if you look at the bottom of it.

2. I don't refer to someone's PhD for my evidence' I refer to someone's article (which I reference, though copyright consideration don't allow me to copy it all over)) which is based on his phD.

3. The article, as I make clear, is about how migration/immigration policy is made, not about whether that migration/immigration policy is 'good'; it does so by showing how economists influenced the new policy, and not other people.

4. You don't believe my 'elision' of the article? One of the first comments on my blogpost is from Dr Alex Balch, who wrote the article (based on his PhD, which I've not seen, who offers praise for the blogpost and in no way suggests it misinterprets his article.

Beer Moth

Paul

Great. Keep up the good work comrade.

dic

I'm not sure which story I prefer - the conspiracy theory (Labour wants to destroy our Nation) or the "cock-up" theory (Labour is well on the way to destroying our Nation).

If the first statement is true, their action is treasonable.
If the second statement is true, they have been guilty of a level of incompetence that is unforgivable.
Either way they should go.
But these people are the products of the Stalinist gerrymandering, filibustering, bullying crowd who dominated Student Union politics in our Universities (certainly in mine) in the early 1970's. The kind of people who would pass a Union motion at 1 o'clock in the morning to transfer the Boat Club's funds to the National Union of Miners.
Now they are in power, they are capable of anything in order to hold on.

Geoff Miller

Watch.......

........and weep.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nig7Qm8-UPI&feature=player_embedded#

BOO

Simon: November 2nd, 2009 7:56am. Which all goes to show... You clearly know all about crystal meth. I, on the other hand, wouldn't recognize it if I saw it, or know what to do with it, except probably throw it down the drain. I certainly don't understand what all the fuss is about, or what effect it has on people.

So, physician .... And, while you're at it, maybe you could peruse some really old copies of the Spectator, just so you can discover what a brilliant magazine is.