I'm not in the German army

2:11pm

It makes you proud:

40% of German soldiers too fat

...The army was, he said, "full of fatties ... making us the laughing stock abroad where we're seen as overweight grumpy old men ... compared to the British, we're viewed as pathetic."

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You, yes you, on the Eurostar

2:14pm

This is for you, and you alone, if you are the idiot civil servant who sat opposite me on the train back from Brussels at 3pm today reading the Spectator (so there must be a chance you'll see this).

It's not clever to speak loudly about Gordon, Alistair and Yvette wanting something, arguing about something else and then agreeing to it because you persuaded them. The rest of the carriage weren't impressed by you. In fact we thought you a total twit - especially when you then started shouting at your assistant on the phone. And when you called (I assume) your wife and started discussing your oh-so-important trip to Geneva.

What is it with people who have to share their self-importance with the rest of the world? I suppose it's connected with the same thing that ownership of flash cars is said to be connected with...

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A bit of violent fun

7:17am

This is not what you want to hear from a taxi driver who has just picked you up (taking you to the Eurostar):

Him: I got the Eurostar once.

Me: Oh.

Him: Well, I got it one way. But they wouldn't let me on in Brussels.

Me: Why not?

Him: They said 'violent conduct'. But it was nonsense. I'd had a few drinks and was just having fun.

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Professional pride

3:37pm

I guess you're only going to complain if it's this way round:

Despite the fact he has not been part of the opera for several years, a picture of himself naked at the centre of the crowd has been repeatedly used to publicise the production.

The actor, born in Argentina, has contacted the Royal Opera House saying that if they are going to continue using the photo he should receive some form of payment. He has also complained that the image appears to have been distorted so that a certain part of his anatomy appears much smaller than it is in real life.

 

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Lottery - as in random, by chance, without regard to intention

10:25am

From The Times:

...[T]he first local authority-wide experiment of allocating places at oversubscribed schools by lottery has backfired.

Figures to be published today by Brighton and Hove council will show that 22 per cent of children have missed out on their first choice of school this year, compared with just over 16 per cent under previous admissions rules. Its mission was to bring greater fairness and parental choice.

Whodathunkit, eh? It's a lottery.

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Believing what you want to believe

7:34am

You know what they say about a lie being half way round the world before the truth has its boots on...

This sentence by Con Coughlin is the perfect example of that:

The unfortunate, and unworthy, comments made last week by the Israeli deputy defence minister, Matan Vilnai, who said the Palestinians faced a "bigger holocaust" than those suffered by the Jews in Europe during the Second World War if they did not desist from their rocket attacks, provoked widespread protests from Israelis, and Mr Vilnai has been obliged to apologise.

He said no such thing. As Melanie pointed out on Friday:

Vilnai said:

‘The more Qassam (rocket) fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger “shoah” because we will use all our might to defend ourselves'.

Reuters translated the Hebrew word ‘shoah’ as ‘holocaust’. But ‘shoah’ merely means disaster. In Hebrew, the word ‘shoah’ is never used to mean ‘holocaust’ or ‘genocide’ because of the acute historical resonance. The word ‘Hashoah’ alone means ‘the Holocaust’ and ‘retzach am’ means ‘genocide’. The well-known Hebrew construction used by Vilnai used merely means ‘bringing disaster on themselves’.

 

As a subsequent Reuter’s story reported, Vilnai's spokesman said:

‘Mr. Vilnai was meaning “disaster”. He did not mean to make any allusion to the genocide.’ Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Arye Mekel, added: ‘Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai used the Hebrew phrase that included the term 'shoah' in Hebrew in the sense of a disaster or a catastrophe, and not in the sense of a holocaust.’

But this grotesque mistranslation has given Hamas a propaganda gift which they lost no time exploiting:

Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said of Vilnai's comments: ‘We are facing new Nazis who want to kill and burn the Palestinian people.’

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Bleeding hearts and awful journalism

3:00pm

There's a truly appalling piece of journalism in the Obsever today. One of its writers, Elizabeth Day, has interviewed Denise Fergus, the mother of James Bulger, who was murdered 15 years ago and would have been 18 last month.

The interview itself is fine. What makes the piece repellent, however, is the bleeding heart handwringing in which it is wrapped up. Take this quote from James' mother:

The thing that rubs salt in the wound for me is knowing the two who killed him are walking around thinking they got away with murder. I can never forgive Thompson and Venables for the horrendous, calculated, cold-blooded murder of James. They were 10 years of age but much, much older in their minds. They knew full well what they were doing, yet they've never shown a single shred of remorse.  

It's followed immediately by this, from the reporter, Ms Day:

At the time, none of us was sure what to make of those two young boys, the static grins of their school photographs imprinted so forcefully on our consciousness. In the aftermath of the trial in November 1993, the Daily Star carried pictures of Venables and Thompson underneath the headline 'How do you feel now you little bastards?' alongside the unconsciously ironic masthead slogan, 'The newspaper that cares'. It seemed to sum up society's own discomfort: the conflicted paradox between feeling sympathy for children caught up in something they did not necessarily understand and the primal rage provoked by the murder of a toddler entirely unequipped to defend himself.

Is she kidding? None of us was sure what to make of them? I was pretty sure what to make of them - I still am - and so is almost everyone I know. A paradox? Sympathy for the murderers?

No, she clearly isn't kidding:

It seemed easier to say that Thompson and Venables were 'born evil', to absolve us of collective responsibility, to paint them as examples of a monstrous otherness whose actions were beyond rational explanation.

Here it is, you see. It was our fault. We all bear collective responsibility for such crimes and do anything we can to wriggle out of it.

I've rarely read a more disgusting piece of journalism. Ms Day has taken a supposedly thoughtful piece reflecting on a despicable crime by two despicable boys and used it as a vehicle in which to foist her almost caricature bleeding heart liberal views onto the rest of us.

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University educated idiots

1:42pm

Conclusive proof of the decline in university standards. The Guardian has this in its coverage of this week's Parliament rooft top protestors:

Plane Stupid is an umbrella group, run along anarchist principles, for around 150 UK climate change campaigners. A snapshot of the rooftop five - Thompson, George, Tamsin Omond, Olivia Chessell and Leo Murray - shows all but one was university educated.

As Ben Brogan put it on the day:

As this security breach will doubtless trigger another clampdown that will make access to the Palace of Westminster even more difficult for the law-abiding, I will now devote the rest of my days to campaigning FOR a third runway at Heathrow, and preferably a fourth - through the gardens of these idiots.

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The return of Neil Clark

10:16am

Oh dear, oh dear, am I really this weak willed?

I've stuck to my guns and ignored him. I've heeded the advice of others that reporting his latest idiocy is too much like shooting fish in a barrel. But really, this is too good not to share with you.

I am, of course - how could it be otherwise? - referring to the ethnic cleanser's bestest friend, Neil Clark.

Mr Clark appears from his blog to believe that Oliver Kamm and I are engaged in some kind of conspiracy to deny him work. Oliver, he says, criminally harasses him (I can't recall whether I am also supposedly guilty of this - and to be honest I can't be bothered to trawl his sire to check). Anyway, that's the context - plus the fact that he issued a libel writ against Oliver, which was quite hilarious in its ineptitude).

The latest episode, though, is spectacular even by Mr Clark's standards. He called the police to report Oliver for this crime (jocular as this post is, the crime of which Oliver stands accused by, er, Neil Clark, is not jocular at all).

Reader, reader. I implore you to read Oliver's accounts - first here, then here. I do so not because Mr Clark is a serious figure worthy of a second of your time, but because the story which Oliver relates is almost Dostoevskian in its sweep and emotional impact (actually it isn't remotely so; I just couldn't resist the idea of linking Neil Clark and Dostoevsky in a post).

One final thought. Mr Clark has a piece in this week's Spectator on Fidel Castro (clear evidence, obviously, of my conspiracy to deny him work). As it happens, I think his piece is spot on:

The totalitarian nature of Castro’s Cuba is no right-wing myth, but a reality.

Only a man of Mr Clark's intellectual prowess could, in the same week as writing an article protesting against the improper use of police and state power, call the police to demand that a man who had written some critical blog posts about him be arrested.

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