Conservatives are nasty

Conor Burns has an interesting observation about the BBC's coverage of the Iranian elections:

According to the BBC  'Conservatives'  have done very well in Iran's election. Turns out that by 'Conservative' they mean supporters of President AhMADinejad's regime and other supporters of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei who want Iran to take an ever harder line with the West over issues such as nuclear weapons power. So why describe them as 'Conservatives'?  Surely descriptions such as 'hardliners', 'reactionaries', revolutionaries', or 'Islamic fundamentalists' would better suit? Not for the BBC.

It often strikes me that the BBC use the word 'c(C)onservative' as an implied term of abuse.  When the Communists do well in Russian elections they are styled as 'conservatives', Castro's Marxist regime likewise, China's old guard are 'conservative forces.' I've even heard what the BBC calls 'the insurgency' (what most of us call terrorism) in Iraq being described as having a 'conservative leadership.' Very sloppy.  Very unfair.  And, probably, very deliberate.

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Philip Hammond is...

I'll leave the issue of whether or not it is wise for the Conservatives to say there would be no tax cuts until a second term.

Whatever the merits of his case, Philip Hammond, the shadow Chief Secretary, is talking boll***s when he says this, praying Baroness Thatcher in aid:

We often hear talk about getting back to Thatcher-style cuts. Thatcher waited until she could see that she had stabilised the situation before she started to reduce taxes.

UPDATE: Ben Brogan makes the same point about income tax.

UPDATE: People have rightly taken me to task for my original final sentence . I wrote that "overall taxes were cut within weeks". They weren't; it was income tax which was cut, not the tax burden. I have corrected the post but apologies for the mistake.

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Conspiracies and the holocaust

Astonishing. I mean, really, really astonishing:

The Right Rev Joseph Devine...said parents of homosexual children faced a "nightmare".

Devine, who is Catholic bishop of Motherwell, said: "The homosexual lobby has been extremely effective in aligning itself with minority groups. It is ever present at the service each year for the Holocaust memorial - as if to create for themselves the image of a group of people under persecution."

There is a giant conspiracy against Christian values, an agenda here.

huge and well-orchestrated conspiracy.

Conspiracies? Fake Holocaust invocations? Yes, it's all the standard fare now to a growing sect - drawing from both Left and Right of the political spectrum - that see the world in this way. What gives?

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The yids set the agenda - you need to be careful not to let them tie you in knots, says the BBC

Talking in the Guardian about the upcoming joint BBC-HBO Passion series on BBC1, the BBC’s executive drama producer, Hilary Salmon, who is overseeing it, says this:

[HBO is] more sensitive than we are to the Jewish angle. Many of its core audience are Jewish liberals who set the cultural agenda much more than here, so we had a Jewish consultant, as well as experts on the gospels. You had to be careful not to tie yourself in knots though.

[ It]startles because of the ethnic-saturated stereotypes it contains, and because it presupposes a kind of wink-and-nod agreement by the readership of the publication in which it appears...

...What I’ve learned from this quote is the following: HBO, an American firm, is more sensitive to Jewish interests than the BBC. So far so good. A frank admission from the Beeb and one that may come back to haunt them.

Then there is the blanket assertion that ‘its core audience are Jewish liberals’. Anything wrong with that?...I’ve not seen any statistical breakdown of HBO’s audiences, but I would suggest that ‘Jewish liberals’, who themselves make up only a segment of an American religious demographic that itself comprises a tiny fraction of the total U.S. population is, in fact not the ‘core’ group of HBO watchers – especially when the subject is Christ the Saviour.

Next comes the phrase, ‘who set the cultural agenda…’, where a certain embedded negative resonance pops its head out for some air. The assertion is almost fictive in its unassailability: of course the Jews set the cultural agenda. We all know that, don’t we? And what exactly does ‘setting the cultural agenda’ mean anyway? Is it on-line? Can I Google it? Or perhaps it is only conspiratorially agreed-upon in a way that Jews, and only American Jews at that – can manage to accomplish – doing what focus-groups, market studies and programme sales simply can’t compete with.

Right. Better pay attention to those Jewish liberals who set the agenda – but not too much. One needs to ‘be careful not to tie yourself in knots’ – semantically, logically or attitudinally. Just hold on to your prejudgements and sally forth.

I've rarely seen such a classic example of BBC/liberal prejuduces at work.

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Oliver in the lions den

This looks like it will be the very definition of must watch TV.

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He did it first...

This is fascinating (from The Corner). There's been a lot of criticism (rightly) of the nudge nudge, wink wink 'his middle name is Hussein' message about Obama.

So who started it? Who said this (the first recorded such example)?

Well, I think if you've got a guy named Barack Hussein Obama, that's a pretty good contrast to George W. Bush.

This man did it first:

This is from Bret Stephens' WSJ column:

Sometime before Barack Obama's middle name slipped into the realm of the unmentionable, it was supposed to be a selling point of his candidacy. "Well, I think if you've got a guy named Barack Hussein Obama, that's a pretty good contrast to George W. Bush," Mr. Obama told PBS's Tavis Smiley on October 18, 2007. "If you believe that we've got to heal America and we've got to repair our standing in the world, then I think my supporters believe that I am the messenger who can deliver that message."

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The budget's PR core is based on nonsense

The one story the government would like to come out of the budget is its 'action' on that supposed environmental menace, plastic bags.

But a superb piece of reporting in Saturday's Times made clear that this is one of the great myths of our time. I urge you to read it all, because it shows how one of the most widespread assumptions of our time is complete nonsense. Here's the gist of it:  

The widely stated accusation that the bags kill 100,000 animals and a million seabirds every year are (sic) false, experts have told The Times. They pose only a minimal threat to most marine species, including seals, whales, dolphins and seabirds.

...Campaigners say that plastic bags pollute coastlines and waterways, killing or injuring birds and livestock on land and, in the oceans, destroying vast numbers of seabirds, seals, turtles and whales. However, The Times has established that there is no scientific evidence to show that the bags pose any direct threat to marine mammals.

...The central claim of campaigners is that the bags kill more than 100,000 marine mammals and one million seabirds every year. However, this figure is based on a misinterpretation of a 1987 Canadian study in Newfoundland, which found that, between 1981 and 1984, more than 100,000 marine mammals, including birds, were killed by discarded nets. The Canadian study did not mention plastic bags.

Fifteen years later in 2002, when the Australian Government commissioned a report into the effects of plastic bags, its authors misquoted the Newfoundland study, mistakenly attributing the deaths to “plastic bags”.

The figure was latched on to by conservationists as proof that the bags were killers. For four years the “typo” remained uncorrected. It was only in 2006 that the authors altered the report, replacing “plastic bags” with “plastic debris”. But they admitted: “The actual numbers of animals killed annually by plastic bag litter is nearly impossible to determine.”

...Professor Geoff Boxshall, a marine biologist at the Natural History Museum, said: “I’ve never seen a bird killed by a plastic bag. Other forms of plastic in the ocean are much more damaging. Only a very small proportion is caused by bags.”

...Charlie Mayfield, chairman of retailer John Lewis, said that tackling packaging waste and reducing carbon emissions were far more important goals. “We don’t see reducing the use of plastic bags as our biggest priority,” he said. “Of all the waste that goes to landfill, 20 per cent is household waste and 0.3 per cent is plastic bags.” John Lewis added that a scheme in Ireland had reduced plastic bag usage, but sales of bin liners had increased 400 per cent.

It's somehow appropriate that the PR core of the budget is based on complete nonsense,

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In hock

It seems to me that there are only two things of note to come from the Budget.

First, and really the only thing that matters, is what Andrew Neil refers to at Coffee House: borrowing.

The TV pundits still don't seem to grasp the enormity of the Chancellor's borrowing binge to come, all the more significant because of the borrowing binge we've already had. The sustainable investment rule, for example, is no more. It states that national debt must not exceed 40% of GDP. Even on the Chancellor's own forecasts it reaches 39.8% by 2010 which, given consistent underestimates of borrowing, means it will be broken. Add in all the off-budget items carefully squirreled away by this government -- from Northern Rock to PFIs to Network Rail -- and it will hit 45%.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the PSBR was a key figure to which we all paid attention. Borrowing has been barely mentioned in recent years. Maybe this budget will change that since even on the distorted Labour figures - without Northen Rock, for instance - the sustainable investment rule is shot through.

And that brings me to the second thing of note: David Cameron was, I thought, exceptionally good in his response. Full of facts and full of scorn - grounded in those facts and figures. He rightly emphasised the state of the public finances, and he seemed measured and in control of his figures, reducing Gordon Brown to the most dreadful dismissive smile in response. Can Brown have any idea how bad he looks when he does that? As for the rest of the Labour front bench - Matt is bang on:

Any citizen tuning in to the BBC to watch the Budget would conclude that we are governed by a wardful of maniacs. As Darling drones on, Jack Straw and Alan Johnson have their tongues lodged in their mouths. Ed Balls and Hazel Blears compete to nod like the dogs on the dashboard of a Ford Transit. Harriet Harman chides the Tories like an irritable headmistress. Ruth Kelly grins miserably. David Miliband looks on quizzically. Douglas Alexander slumps with abject melancholy as though he might at any moment burst in to tears...

UPDATE: Fraser has the debt table here.

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Help!

Oh dear. Not a single winner. Nada. Nothing. Just a contribution to the Bookies' Benevolent Fund.

I hope you took note of the health warning on my post below.

Tomorrow's another day.

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Torture Kamm

I mean no disrespect to my friend Oliver Kamm when I say that the real interest of his excellent piece in the Guardian (about extraordinary rendition) is in the comments on Comment is Free. Oliver writes:

The hypothetical kidnapping of Bin Laden illustrates two problems with the absolutist rejection of rendition. First, the Taliban regime in Kabul would no more have handed over Bin Laden in response to an international summons than it would have handed over Lord Lucan. Second, the evidence against a terrorist suspect might be circumstantial or partial. It might not be of a type admissible in court. I do not know if this is true of Bin Laden and the destruction of the twin towers. But I know he did it, and I want him stopped.

Rendition is justifiable because it interdicts terrorists, and terrorism is not merely a problem of law enforcement. The particular controversy over rendition concerns torture, and on this point European objections are on firmer ground. The US is a signatory to the Geneva conventions against torture, yet terrorist suspects have been sent to countries that are guilty of human rights violations and have used torture.

And THIS is being posted at Comment Is Free? Oliver, why do you do this to yourself?

Where is your evidence that OBL was responsible for the 911 event?

Kamm, you are an apologist for a criminal organisation called the govt. of USA and its ugly partners, UK and Israel. And you are a liar. Have you any evidence that bin Laden was behing 9/11? I have a lot more evidence that Cheney/CIA/ISI (Pakistan) were behind it. And you are convinced that the "war on terror" is genuine! How many muslims have these countries killed and how many in these countries have muslims killed? The ratio is 1000's to one. That's assuming 9/11 and 7/7 were not inside jobs, which is very doubtful.

You have the gall to talk about this unholy alliance implementing international law when they have trashed same, and destroyed muslim countries in order to grab their resources (see the article by John Hilary in yesterday's Guardian), and told the UN to sod off!

Every molecule of my body loathes you. I am also against torture but I will make an exception in your case.

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