Teaching Amnesia To British Youth

"Our face is our autobiography", historian Will Durant remarked in one of his 1,000-page volumes on the Story of Civilization. This observation compliments one made by another Will -- William Shakespeare, in As You Like It:
"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts..."

As we make our own individual entrances we are arriving at a mid-way point in an ongoing story. The players we see looking out at us when we face ourselves in the mirror can delude themselves into believing that the play began with the rise of their own individual curtain, but a more humble, and honest, recounting would reveal that the clock started ticking long before our arrival into the scene.

What story are we joining? What role is missing in the play, that we can fulfill? What are the hopes, and regrets, of those already having passed through the drama before us, from which we may take our cues?

Looking into their own mirrors, I wonder what the youth of Great Britain are seeing written into their autobiographies, now that they are no longer being taught about the story they are joining:

History Vanishes From One In 20 Schools

[Michael Gove, the Conservative shadow schools secretary] said: “History is effectively disappearing from some secondary schools. Giving children a proper knowledge of our island story so they can take pride in our historic achievements is the best way to build a modern, inclusive future for our country.
“But after a decade of decline under Labour less than a third of children now take the subject, and yet again we see that it is poorest pupils that are disproportionately missing out.”

Given how history's being taught when it is being taught, maybe it's disappearance is becoming the lesser of evils..?

[T]here is no doubt that something has gone badly wrong when seven out of 10 schoolchildren are no longer studying history at the age of 16, when two out of 10 think Britain was once occupied by the Spanish, and when some identify Sir Winston Churchill as the first man on the moon. And the blame lies at the very top, shared by politicians of both parties, who have been systematically cheating and betraying our children since the 1980s.

During the Thatcher years, it was meddling from the top that downgraded history from a compulsory to an optional subject at the age of 16 – which, because it was seen as "difficult", made it easy pickings for Mickey Mouse subjects such as Beauty Therapy. It was supposedly "progressive" interference, meanwhile, that did away with old-fashioned essay questions and replaced them with empathy exercises and multiple-choice quizzes that sacrificed any sense of intellectual depth or discipline.

And perhaps above all, it was in Westminster and Whitehall that officials designed our absurd Yo! Sushi approach to history, in which schools randomly pick unrelated historical topics like saucers from a conveyor belt, instead of studying our national story as a continuous narrative, which is how any sensible person sees it.

One student survived his youthful education with his curiosity intact, and pursued history as a more serious subject in university, but now admits he seems to spend more time defending his favorite topic than studying it:

Whenever I tell someone outside university that I'm taking history, they look puzzled, suppress a giggle, and ask "Why?"
...
People assume I'm deranged (or just a bit simple) when I mumble my reason for studying history: I enjoy it. I like reading and writing about history.
Basically, I'm doing a hobby degree. "But what will you do with a history degree when you graduate?" is often the next question.

Here's how you answer them: we study history as a precursor to greater understanding of other subjects, not just for its own sake; it helps us recognize the existence of cause-and-effect relationships, the fallibility of Man, the possibility of unintended consequences, and most especially, it teaches us how to learn, so long as history is approached as the study of stories... as learning from experience.

Sadly, in the UK such wisdom is fast becoming history.

How could you see a future, when you don't see a past?

Thursday Trails

Four-day work weeks are one of the smaller pleasures in life, but my, how they satisfy..! The weekend is already right around the corner, and it's hard to keep from thinking of its restful potential as we glance through the news on a warm Thursday morning.

Victory: Gurkha veterans have won their battle to live in Britain, as Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government reversed its earlier roadblocks to Gurkha resettlement.

Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said: 'This has been a great victory for Joanna Lumley and her well-run campaign that has publicly embarrassed Ministers and has reminded us all of the role that the Gurkhas have played in helping defend this country over the centuries.
'First and foremost this case was about basic decency. People from around the world have come to live in this country in the past decade.
'There was never a justification to deny that right to a group of people who have long lived in the nation's affections, and who have risked and often given their lives for its protection.
'It is just a shame that the Government had to be dragged kicking and screaming through the courts and then through the crowds of Gurkhas outside parliament before it finally did the right thing.'

Scandal: And speaking of the UK government... On his talk show yesterday Hugh Hewitt interviewed firebrand pundit Christopher Hitchens to get his perspective on the unbelievable expense scandal unraveling within Great Britain's parliament. Items as petty as tampons and porn film rentals, and as grand as chandeliers and castle moat-cleaning, were approved as appropriate expenses by an amoral bureaucracy. In his assessment Hitchens makes a drive-by comment that puts a shape to the half-formed thoughts I had been having while following the scandal's parade of daily outrages. From the transcript:

Christopher Hitchens: Do you remember A Man For All Seasons? It’s just occurred to me to ask you.
Hugh Hewitt: Yes, I do.
CH: Do you remember when the man sells out for Sir Thomas More?
HH: Yes, I do.
CH: And he does it for a small sinecure?
HH: Yes. He should have been a teacher.
CH: Yes. And the man does it for a small sinecure in Wales. And Thomas More, I can’t remember exactly how it goes, but he says to him, I can see, I can imagine selling your immortal soul and your friends and so on for, as it might be, a kingdom. But he said but for Wales?
HH: For Wales.
CH: For Wales. What’s amazing is how it’s always the same with corruption scandals, I find, how little people will settle for before their integrity is all gone.

Integrity: While far-reaching, Britain's "home allowance" expense scandal is not all-encompassing; there are a few members who did not break the rules, or exploit them, and the British national newspaper The Telegraph, which first broke the news on the scandal, has given credit where credit is due to the honest representatives.

Leadership: Mal Fletcher uses the expense scandal as a backdrop for an eloquent lesson on the difference between leadership and management. The distinguishing characteristic is... character:

[W]ithout moral leadership - leadership based on conviction rather than pragmatism - administration is left hopelessly at the mercy of expediency.
At the end of the week, the moral of the story is this: we have very few true leaders in government and a great many followers. There are few who will go against "standard practice" - that is, what the rest of the pack are doing - and set out on a righteous path.
The nature of modern government, built as it is around a labyrinth of complex committees and regulatory bodies, allows very little scope for real leadership to develop among the representatives of the people.

Saturday Stories

A pretty picture to introduce some ugly news spotted while reading the British press on a cloudy Saturday morning.

Undelivered: Neither rain, nor sleet, nor dark of night... only political beliefs can stop the UK mail, as Britain's postal union workers decide not to distribute BNP election leaflets:

The Communication Workers Union says that Royal Mail is breaking a “conscience clause” agreed four years ago that allows staff to refuse to deliver literature they find offensive.
...
"...The clause says members don’t have to deliver material if they feel threatened or if it is against their personal beliefs."
...
One postman working in the Fishponds area of Bristol, said that his route bordered two ethnic-minority areas and it was “concerning” to be made to deliver inflammatory material.
He told the Western Daily Press: “We are being forced by management to give out the BNP material even though it’s against my beliefs — everyone knows what they stand for.
“We are being made to dish out this rubbish. I’ve read the BNP literature and although there isn’t anything racist or fascist on it, it does say ‘No to immigration’.”

Menace: A perennial danger is finally being addressed, as British school uniforms dispense with... ties:

Concerns over accidental strangling, playground games in which pupils yank each others' ties and fears that ties might catch fire in science lessons have seen the classroom institution fall victim to its clip-on cousin.
...
Clip-ons have also been credited with improving pupils' behaviour at Arthur Terry School, in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands.
Head Christopher Stone said: 'It's a mess when you walk around town and you see children with their buttons undone and their ties all over the place. Both attendance and behaviour had improved since the ties were brought in.'

Guilty: Great Britain's grim statistics in their war on terror: Out of 1,471 suspects detained in counter-terrorism operations, only 521 - just over a third - were charged with a crime. Of these, 340 were accused of terror-related offences, with 196 later being found guilty in court.
Fortunately they can add one more to their guilty column:

A man was convicted Friday of involvement in firebombing a London publisher behind "The Jewel of Medina", a controversial book about the child bride of the Islamic prophet Mohammed.
Minicab driver Abbas Taj, 31, drove two men to the offices of Gibson Square publishers last September who poured diesel through the letter box and set it alight.
...
"These men planned to carry out arson as a violent reaction and protest against the publishing of a book," said John McDowall, head of counter terrorism command at London's Metropolitan Police, after the trial.
"They did not care whether anybody would be killed or injured when they poured diesel through the letterbox and set fire to it.
"Photographs, tapes and documents found at their homes showed the violent mindset of this trio of arsonists."

Priorities: North Wales tells its police to focus law enforcement manpower towards dog owners who don't clean up after their dogs and people who litter on the street, instead of actual criminals:

Police in North Wales, where serious crime has rocketed year-on-year, have this week been told they need to “up the number” of people they stop for littering offences.
PC Richard Eccles, the General Secretary of the North Wales Police Federation, said: “Police officers act as litter-spotters but because they cannot issue the fines they have to detain the offender and wait for the PCSO to arrive. They feel like idiots.”
...
“We should be more focused on more serious crime like burglaries, violent crimes and theft rather than being tasked with offences more suitably dealt with by the local council,” he said.
Compared with the same period last year, violent crime in North Wales has increased by 18 per cent, burglaries have risen by nearly 8 per cent and robberies have rocketed by an astonishing 115 per cent.

Surprise: I find myself reading the British press every morning, despite an almost daily oath to include it less frequently in my news reading; it's just too depressing and infuriating to be consumed in such regular doses. Fortunately, I have an ocean between me and these dispirIting stories; I can't imagine what it's like when this upside-down world is the one right outside your front door. Is this new poll, therefore, really all that shocking:

British people, long known for their pragmatism and "stiff upper-lip," have surprisingly come out on top in a poll to find the angriest nation in Europe, it was revealed Friday.
The survey, commissioned for comedy channel Gold, found that Brits on average get angry four times a day, while the supposedly hot-headed Italians only admit to 3.5 bouts of fury over the same period.

UK's Ingratitude To Gurkha Veterans: "It's Absolutely Shocking"

Another example of the UK's growing ingratitude towards its veterans. In February we blogged on Once-Great Britain's unwillingness to sponsor a group of surviving D-Day veterans in their hope to return to France one more time -- for many maybe the last time -- to the 65th anniversary of their great act of courage in participating in the liberation of Europe.

Last week, it was the turn of the loyal Gurkhas to see the current value placed on their service:

Thousands of Gurkhas were yesterday shut out of the UK in what was described as 'shameful betrayal' by the Government.

Immigration Minister Phil Woolas claimed changes in the rules would allow 4,300 more former Gurkhas to settle here out of the 36,000 who served in the British Army before July 1997.

But lawyers battling for the Gurkhas said they believed only around 100 would benefit. Hundreds of former rank-and-file soldiers will face deportation while thousands more will be barred from entering the country.

Under the new rules, former Gurkhas must prove they have either served more than 20 years or have won one of the top four medals for gallantry: the Victoria Cross; the Distinguished Service Order; the Distinguished Conduct Medal; or the Military Cross.
...
Campaigners said it was virtually impossible for ordinary Gurkhas to meet those conditions.

The vast majority - 98 per cent - are rank-and-file soldiers who are permitted to serve for only 15 years. Only officers are allowed to serve for longer.

Top-level gallantry awards are given to a tiny minority of soldiers. Only one living Gurkha would qualify for entry on the basis of his medal alone.

Lawyer Martin Howe said that of more than 2,000 Gurkha veterans refused entry to Britain, only Military Cross-holder Lalit Bahadur Gurung would be eligible.

Mr Gurung, 81, who was awarded the cross in 1964, was refused entry to Britain for medical treatment last year.

Most Gurkhas who retired before 1997 were based in Hong Kong, so they will be unable to prove they have lived in Britain for three years, or that they have family settled here.

And for the oldest veterans living in poverty in Nepal - the fourth-poorest country in the world - it will be difficult to prove that their injuries and illnesses were caused by their Army service.

British actress Joanna Lumley , whose father fought alongside the Gurkhas in Burma during World War II, has taken a strong stand in support of the Gurkhas' cause, becoming the public face of the Gurkha Justice Campaign. Her disgust with the guidelines is palpable:

[1:30] "I'm sick of the insulting size of this ghastly little document. Most of the second page is just 'if you need more help or contacts...' This has taken them four months to come up with this, they've answered none of our letters, they've allowed us into no briefings. [pause] It's absolutely shocking."

The BBC offers the government's side of the story:

Immigration Minister Phil Woolas denied he had betrayed the Gurkhas, adding: "This improves the situation."

He said: "It has never been the case that all Gurkhas pre-1997 were to be allowed to stay in the country. With their dependants you could be looking at 100,000 people."
...
[P]rime Minister Gordon Brown insisted the new rules were fair and took into account "the responsibilities we have accepted" towards the Gurkhas.

"To go back 20 years from 1997 is something that's a major change in policy and will help a large number of Gurkhas if they wish to make the decision to come to Britain," he said.

"And remember that there are costs involved in that decision that we have got to meet."

It's too bad that the one cost referenced by Judge Justice Blake in his ruling last September, does not seem to weigh heavily on Gordon Brown's conscience:

The Home Office will doubtless wish to consult with the MOD [Ministry Of Defence], but if Home Office policy to discharged veterans does not impede military effectiveness, and there are no international law or foreign policy constraints, it is difficult to see why the MOD should not itself welcome clarity and the honouring of a historic debt. The court is conscious that at the heart of military life and the sacrifices that soldiers make in the discharge of their duties is the Military Covenant. This reads:

"Soldiers will be called upon to make personal sacrifices – including the ultimate sacrifice – in the service of the Nation. In putting the needs of the Nation and the Army before their own, they forego some of the rights enjoyed by those outside the Armed Forces. In return, British Soldiers must be able to always expect fair treatment, to be valued and respected as individuals, and that they (and their families) will be sustained and rewarded by commensurate terms and conditions of service".

Rewarding long and distinguished service by the grant of residence in the country for which the service was performed would, in my judgment, be a vindication and an enhancement of this covenant.

How to promote "homophobia"...

During the dark days of Soviet oppression, there was a joke that did the rounds in Russia. ‘ Homosexuality is a crime and the punishment is seven years in prison locked up with other men. There is a three-year waiting list.’

Don’t laugh too loudly. It could soon be illegal to repeat a joke like that.

Fighting fire with fire, the UK passes [planning to pass] more hate speech laws :: International Free Press Society

Radio Memories: Wartime England

“Don’t judge us by the lobbies of the few hotels in London… see us as we are.”

This entry in our weekly series of posts devoted to remembering the halcyon days of radio drama follows the above advice, first offered over 65 years ago by a young RAF pilot, as we remember a Great Britain at war, a nation seen through the eyes of… An American In England.

An American In England was an unusual summer 1942 CBS series actually broadcast from London, where it was to be re-broadcast domestically in the US through a technologically challenging, hit-or-miss short-wave radio arrangement with the BBC. (The show got off to a rocky start when lead actor Joseph Julian gave such a convincing performance of a man struggling to hear a telephone call in the opening moments of the series’ first episode, that a stateside technician assumed the dramatized technical difficulties he was hearing were genuine, and cut the live broadcast off the air..!)

The background: in 1942, at the beginning of the US' entry into World War II, popular American radio playwright Norman Corwin had been asked by CBS to spend four months doing research in Great Britain. His assignment: to write and direct a package of 10 radio plays, from London, based on his on-the-scene observations, that would allow American audiences to better appreciate the wartime struggles and day-to-day experiences of the besieged British people.

One of radio's most distinguished writers, Corwin used his poet's eye for detail to leave us a remarkable time capsule, an audio diary of daily life turning at an agonizingly slow pace for the better, assisted by a perseverance forged in the grueling test of faith from a few months before. Taking the forementioned RAF pilot's advice to get out and meet the people, Corwin found a nation short of food, stressed for labor, and crowded for space, by continental refugees dreaming of returning home as well as fresh US troops getting their first taste of war.

The focus of the episode of An American In England served up this Sunday is self-evident, I guess, given the title: “The Women Of Britain”. It was originally broadcast on Monday August 24th, 1942, a week after the failed Canadian landings at Dieppe the previous Wednesday, in the middle of fierce Japanese counter-attacks at Guadalcanal, and amid news of an increasingly demoralized government bureaucracy at home. Its examples of British tenacity, endurance and hope, therefore, could not have come at a better time... then, or now.



Previous Radio Memories posts:
Cavalcade Of America: Bob Hope Reports
The March Of Time: Feb 10 1938 broadcast
Hear It Now: Coming Home From The Korean War
Escape: Vanishing Lady
Rogers Of The Gazette: Rewinding The Town Clock

Excellent essay on the misconceptions of "tolerance" and "open-mindedness" in today's mulitcultural empire

Do read the whole thing (HT: Dag), but here's an excerpt, from the desk of A. Millar:

From prosecuting people for flying the England flag to kindergarten guidelines suggesting that if a child as young as three says “yuk” at spicy food that this is a sign of racism. From the erosion of free speech to the unwillingness of police to prosecute or even investigate crimes such as burglary. From the attempt to deport Gurkha war heroes that had fought for Britain to the protection of terrorists from deportation in case their human rights might be violated abroad. From the harassment of moderate Muslim and Conservative MP Baroness Warsi for suggesting that parliament discuss the crisis in immigration to then London Mayor Ken Livingstone’s open support of terrorism-supporter Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Or from lower sentences for honor-killing (and thus less protection for Muslim women) to cultural apartheid and the creation of Muslim ghettos. Close-minded “tolerance” has encouraged – even demanded – all of this.

And close-minded tolerance has meant that liberals have protested that sharia is a “right” of Muslims, because, they argue, Jews have their own courts. It is not a question of allowing one group to have their law because another has its law, but rather it is a question of whether these laws are just. Are women given an equal or lower status, for example? From what I know about Jewish law it in no way conflicts with democracy. As we know that women, homosexuals, and non-Muslims are regarded as inferiors in sharia, to defend its use as a right is absurd. How, for example, can it be a right of Muslim women to have less rights? Or for a Muslim man to allow his wife or daughters to have less rights?

Of course, if by “tolerance” we had meant the kind of laissez-faire attitude that underpins mature democracies (such as allowing, and even defending the right of, all sides to speak, regardless of whether we agree with the expressed views or vehemently oppose them) then the worst we could say would be that the term was being used wholly inaccurately. “Tolerance” has undoubtedly been peddled in part in a misguided attempt to make it more like the US, but Britain does not understand the country with which they claim to have a “special relationship.” Britain, EU member states, and their populations have a love-hate relationship with the US. On the one hand they admire it for its “diversity,” modernity, cities, etc. On the other hand they believe that US culture, such as freedom of speech, is the culture of a people with no clear view of right and wrong.

I should like to point out that, on the contrary, freedom of speech only emerges in cultures with a very clear view of right and wrong indeed – and that includes the US. Once, Britain was also known for being one of these countries. Journalist Luigi Albertini, who risked his life to write against Italy’s fascist regime, was inspired by his time in London and at The Times newspaper during the first quarter of the twentieth century. This, according to his brother, “confirmed in him the faith in ideas and in the possibility, in a free country, of promoting the elevation of minds through discussion and objective, unprejudiced criticism.” (Frank Rosengarten, The Italian Anti-fascist Press (1919-1945), p 34.) Today no-one would describe Britain in such terms.
[...]
When I first heard someone say that multiculturalism is natural and that Britain had always been multicultural I was entirely skeptical. If so, I wondered, why have we only recently heard of multiculturalism? On reflection, the speaker appears to have meant that it is natural for societies to be composed of different types of people doing and thinking different things, and in this sense he was undoubtedly correct. It would seem, that whether the speaker knows it or not, he or she is saying that multiculturalism is in accord with natural law. But, if so, they are wrong. Marriage may be natural – or at least in accord with natural law – but an ideology of ‘marriage-ism,’ or laws forcing everyone to marry, would quickly undermine marriage, just as laws that appear to enforce the government’s vision of multicultural Britain have fragmented society, created ghettos, have emboldened extremists at the sake of moderates, and given rise to seething resentment.

The natural can be allowed, but cannot be legislated into existence. Open-mindedness is manifest when people feel that they are in the same boat. When people feel this, racial and religious distinctions either disappear or are actually regarded as interesting. Cultures coexist without animosity in cities such as New York (which is now seen as a model for Britain to copy), not because multiculturalism is enforced by law, but because it is not enforced by law. Because the government seems to stay out of people’s private business, and because the police concern themselves with crime, not thought crime.

Indeed, while the US has had its share of racial troubles – and while there is still a problem with illegal immigration in particular – where it has overcome them, it has done so because of a shared belief in its Constitution. It is the belief in “liberty and justice for all” that supports an American nationalism that crosses racial and religious boundaries.

In other words, America works to the extent it remains a covenantal nation where the constitution is the most sacred of all American things (which might help explain to non-Americans the interest in the little scandal of the Chief Justice and President Obama flubbing the oath of office yesterday.)

Latest free speech controversy: UK Muslims call to shut the sow up

Sarah Maple's exhibition poses questions that anger Muslims - Telegraph

The artist [Sarah Maple], who has shown at Ronnie Wood’s Scream gallery, has a new exhibition with a headline picture showing a Muslim woman cradling a pig.

Already, Mokhtar Badri, the vice-president of the Muslim Association of Britain, tells Mandrake that his organisation plans to visit the SaLon Gallery, in Notting Hill, west London, to demand that it remove Maple’s painting when it exhibits it next week.

“Although we condemn violence, Muslims have a right to express their disgust at this work,” he tells me. “An artist has the right to free speech and to express him or herself, but people also have the right to protest. She clearly wants to provoke a strong reaction from Muslims and that is what she will get.”

Maple, 23, who was brought up as a Muslim, has already evoked Islamic wrath. Her exhibition at Rolling Stone Wood’s gallery earlier this year depicted Muslim women in provocative poses, including one suggestively sucking on a banana.

Badri explained the upset that would be caused over the image. “Muslims believe that all of God’s creatures should be treated with respect, but we are taught to keep our distance from pigs because they are unclean,” he said. “That is why this picture is so offensive to us.”

A spokesman for the gallery explained: “She doesn’t intend to offend anyone but simply wants to pose questions about Muslim culture and identity.”

You may wish to send messages of support to the gallery: info@salongallery.co.uk
sarahmaple@salongallery.co.uk

UK's Suicide Sculpture "Celebrates Life", Says Sculptor

More news from a culture besotted with the poison of nihilism: next year commuters in London will get to see "art" depicting a guy being run over by a train:

Rail passengers at London’s St Pancras International station are to be greeted by a work of art depicting a commuter falling into the path of a train driven by a Grim Reaper figure.
The macabre image will appear on a bronze relief frieze at the base of The Meeting Place, the 30ft statue of an embracing couple.
Paul Day, the sculptor, said he was trying to be “truthful” about the human condition and described his images as “a celebration of life”. London & Continental Railways, the station’s owner, said it wanted the work to be “a talking point”.
The frieze has been condemned by families of rail suicide victims and transport unions. Last year almost 200 people took their own lives on Britain’s railways. Paul Smith, whose daughter Rosie, 18, threw herself in front of a Tube train last August, said: “It’s insensitive.”

Insensitive is the most polite term to use for such blatant attempts to inject yet more misery into this suffering world. Sculptor Paul Day's defense of his proposed sculpture is the kind of nihilistic sophistry an artist is reduced to when they recuse themselves from morality. Of all places to exhibit visual images of people committing suicide by jumping in front of a train, the most aggrieving place to display them would be in an actual railway station!

Day, however, claimed the frieze was a deliberate contrast to the “ideal” of the towering lovers embracing above. “It is about daily life – about the hopes and fears, the loves, the joys, the loss and tragedy that are bubbling along together in human life,” he said.
The bronze relief will feature a variety of scenes depicting life on the railways, including images of soldiers going to war and emergency workers dealing with the 7/7 bombings.
“If certain images cause a small amount of offence, I’m sure that will be heavily compensated for by a sense of joy . . . that the other images will give,” said Day. “It’s balance, it’s contrast. The overall effect, I think, will be very positive.”
...

Of all people, an artist should be perceptive enough to be able to see into the human heart and observe that the degree of "offence" caused by such reminders will be anything but "small".

Last night Kate Redway of the Samaritans said: “It’s really important that any images don’t portray suicide methods. Research has shown that it can lead to an increase in copycat deaths, particularly among young, vulnerable people.”
Rail union bosses called for the frieze to be scrapped. “Every train driver in this country will be sickened by this image,” said Keith Norman, general secretary of Aslef. “A body lying under their wheels is the dark cloud that troubles drivers’ every working day. To see these respectable, professional men and women portrayed as agents of death is insulting, facile and malicious.”

What is art, if it is not a celebration of life? The very art of living life itself should be one of celebration, but the "party" should be seen as the middle stage: we have been given the precious gift of life, therefore we show our appreciation for that gift, so that by how we use that gift we grant meaning to the life we've been given. When you take out the first and third parts of this formula, you're left with art that celebrates nothing more than the vanity of the artist himself... and his self-obsessed sponsors:

LCR said: “... [The frieze] will be a talking point and that is testament to the character of St Pancras International and to this bold commission.”

Pat Condell is back

Not all Saudis are mentally ill (Pat is sorry if he gave that impression): some of the women there might be facing up to reality, if you can do that with only one eye showing through the burka... (Saudi cleric pissed at the country's present corruption, given the allure of women showing two eyes, with a little mascara...)

A vote for Labour is a vote for Islam.

This and much more...

We will know we are winning the war when we can safely ignore our strippers

The terrified pole-dancing daughter of radical cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed is in hiding after death threats from Muslim extremists.

Read about it all at Blogging for a Free World.
-----------

UPDATE: Reading more about this story, I see the UK paper, The Sun, reporting that:

HATE preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed paid for a boob job which launched his daughter’s pole dancing career, it was revealed last night.

He forked out £4,000 in CASH for 27-year-old Yasmin Fostock’s bust-boosting surgery — while living on BENEFITS in the UK.

The revelation will spark further public outrage against the fanatical Muslim cleric — now in Lebanon after being kicked out of Britain.

Bakri, 50, who rants about Western “depravity” and blasts women who flaunt their sexuality, secretly paid for Yasmin to increase her A cup size to a DD.

Sources close to the blonde beauty said the op set her on the path to the raunchy career which shamed her strict Muslim family.
[...]
“She played the daddy’s girl and said it would make her feel more of a mother when she was breast feeding her children.

“He went along with it and even went to the top London clinic with her where he paid for the surgery in cash.

“The rest of the family were set against it, but he insisted she should have her way if it would make her a better mother.

“But it backfired disastrously because her new figure encouraged her to go out and flaunt her new body.

Preview Of Post-Christian UK: Burdensome Old People Have A Duty To Die

Materialism taken to extremes: Baroness Mary Warnock, Britain's "leading moral philosopher" explains the morality behind licenses to kill burdensome old people who do not measure up to a subjective standard, and why suicide is a patriotic duty that these less-than-perfect people have to fulfill in order to keep the gravy train flowing for the rest:

The veteran Government adviser said pensioners in mental decline are "wasting people's lives" because of the care they require and should be allowed to opt for euthanasia even if they are not in pain.
She insisted there was "nothing wrong" with people being helped to die for the sake of their loved ones or society.
The 84-year-old added that she hoped people will soon be "licensed to put others down" if they are unable to look after themselves.
...
Lady Warnock, a former headmistress who went on to become Britain's leading moral philosopher, chaired a landmark Government committee in the 1980s that established the law on fertility treatment and embryo research.
A prominent supporter of euthanasia, she has previously suggested that pensioners who do not want to become a burden on their carers should be helped to die.
Last year the Mental Capacity Act came into effect that gives legal force to "living wills", so patients can appoint an "attorney" to tell doctors when their hospital food and water should be removed.
But in her latest interview, given to the Church of Scotland's magazine Life and Work, Lady Warnock goes further by claiming that dementia sufferers should consider ending their lives through euthanasia because of the strain they put on their families and public services.
Recent figures show there are 700,000 people with degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's in Britain. By 2026 experts predict there will be one million dementia sufferers in the country, costing the NHS an estimated £35billion a year.
Lady Warnock said: "If you're demented, you're wasting people's lives – your family's lives – and you're wasting the resources of the National Health Service.
"I'm absolutely, fully in agreement with the argument that if pain is insufferable, then someone should be given help to die, but I feel there's a wider argument that if somebody absolutely, desperately wants to die because they're a burden to their family, or the state, then I think they too should be allowed to die.
"Actually I've just written an article called 'A Duty to Die?' for a Norwegian periodical. I wrote it really suggesting that there's nothing wrong with feeling you ought to do so for the sake of others as well as yourself."
She went on: "If you've an advance directive, appointing someone else to act on your behalf, if you become incapacitated, then I think there is a hope that your advocate may say that you would not wish to live in this condition so please try to help her die.
"I think that's the way the future will go, putting it rather brutally, you'd be licensing people to put others down."

[Hat Tip to Hot Air]

UK Jury: Global Warming Is "Lawful Excuse" For Committing Crime

Greenpeace vandals cause thousands of pounds of damage to a power station, but are let off the hook by a jury who agreed with their "green agenda":

Jury decides that threat of global warming justifies breaking the law

The threat of global warming is so great that campaigners were justified in causing more than £35,000 worth of damage to a coal-fired power station, a jury decided yesterday. In a verdict that will have shocked ministers and energy companies the jury at Maidstone Crown Court cleared six Greenpeace activists of criminal damage.

Jurors accepted defence arguments that the six had a "lawful excuse" to damage property at Kingsnorth power station in Kent to prevent even greater damage caused by climate change. The defence of "lawful excuse" under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 allows damage to be caused to property to prevent even greater damage – such as breaking down the door of a burning house to tackle a fire.

The not-guilty verdict, delivered after two days and greeted with cheers in the courtroom, raises the stakes for the most pressing issue on Britain's green agenda and could encourage further direct action. ...

[Hat Tip to this morning's Dennis Prager radio show, where I heard Dennis talking about this all-too-believable story]

British MP Laments Post-Christian Europe

An observation by the Member of Parliament for the County of York:

"I can hardly ever read the conditions Christ attributed to the time of the flood without thinking of the parallels in our own time. The wickedness of humanity was represented as being great and prevalent. It was a time of selfishness and luxury. People were anti-religion and inconsiderate. It reminds me of many European countries today. Yet the warnings against such things seem not to have influenced the day-to-day business of their societies. Jesus said they were 'eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage' (Matt. 24:38) right up till the day the flood came. The result? They were all destroyed."

The author? William Wilberforce, anti-slavery advocate who led the movement to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

This observation comes from chapter four of Wilberforce's 1797 book, A Practical View of the Prevailing System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes in This Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity.

It's either a sign that the British Empire, like the Roman Empire before it, is taking a long time to fall... or, that precedents exist for continuing to hope for a renewal of spirit in the UK, that the struggle to keep faith in the possibility of a future worth living in, is not a new challenge, unique to our times.

If One Can Do It...

This won't be news for many, but it will be news for some, it was new to me and for someone out there it will be new to you.
So this is for you:




That was the beginning. Here's the happy ending.

Sometimes, if we keep looking, we can find dreams that do come true.


"If"

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master,
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling

[hat tip to Shooting Star for the inspiring video]

UK Schoolboys Punished For Not Praying To Allah In Class

Once upon a time there was an England:

Two schoolboys disciplined after refusing to kneel down and "pray to Allah" during a religious education lesson

It was claimed that the boys, from a year seven class of 11 and 12-year-olds, were given detention after refusing to take part in a practical demonstration of how Allah is worshipped.
Yesterday parents accused the school of breaching their human rights by forcing them to take part in the exercise.
....
"The teacher had gone into the class and made them watch a short film and then said 'we are now going out to pray to Allah'.
"Then two boys got detention and all the other children missed their refreshments' break." She added: "Not only was it forced upon them, my daughter was told off for not doing it right.

"They'd never done it before and they were supposed to do it in another language."

She said the pupils were asked if they had water on them, and when one girl produced a bottle, the teacher began washing her feet with it.

The alleged incident, at the Alsager school, one of Cheshire's top performing schools, happened on Tuesday afternoon. The teacher, Alison Phillips, the school's subject leader in RE, is understood to be staying away from the school until the furore dies down, although she has not been suspended.
She is said to have got prayer mats out of the cupboard and also asked children to wear Islamic headdresses.
...
Sources at the school said the incident could have been down to Miss Phillips instigating a role play and not properly briefing the pupils, all aged around 12, what she was doing.

Yes, it's role-playing all right:

"What would our curriculum consist of, if British traditions were worthless...

What could we do to make sure these kids never learn about the awe-inspiring legacy that the United Kingdom can be proud of...

What's another excuse to avoid talking about William Wilberforce, Horatio Nelson, Edward Pellew, Winston Churchill, William Shakespeare, John Milton, James Cook, Francis Bacon, Thomas More, I. K. Brunel, Isaac Newton, Charlie Chaplin, Charles Dickens, Thomas More, John Wesley, John Wycliff, Arthur Wellesley, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton..........."

I would presume that this misbegotten teacher is simply the result of being a good student of the system currently in place in the UK for teaching teachers how to teach students in their turn. Like all but two of her students, maybe she's simply not been introduced yet to what she would most benefit from learning.

There used to be a time when British history, as taught around dinner tables at home as well as in schools, consisted of more than learning about Houston Stewart Chamberlain, John Hawkins and Jack the Ripper.

You can't forget something if you've never been given the chance to remember it in the first place.

BBC Robber Barons

The spectre of medieval robber barons lives on in Great Britain, courtesy of the nefarious tax that UK residents must pay for the priviledge of living in the 21st century, the information toll known as a "TV Licence".

To earn the priviledge of watching television, listening to the radio, searching the internet, watching movies on DVD, you must pay the UK's feudal communications gatekeepers the annual fee of £139.50, or about $275.

The tolls are collected by TV Licensing, the "...trading name used by companies contracted by the BBC to administer the collection of television licence fees and enforcement of the television licensing system."

They're an organization not entirely without heart; "If you are blind or severely sight impaired, you can apply for a 50% concession on the cost of your TV Licence."

While there are precious few public funds available to run the UK prison system effectively, there seems no shortage of funding for collecting the TV License tolls, resulting in 1,000 toll evaders being caught every single day:

At the heart of our operation is the TV Licensing database. This contains more than 29.5 million home, business and student addresses, telling us which of these have a TV Licence. All of our Enforcement Officers have access to this database and can check whether or not you have a licence. We also have a fleet of detector vans, which are capable of detecting the use of TV receiving equipment within 20 seconds, and many of our Enforcement Officers carry hand-held detection devices too.

As you watch your TV in the UK, your TV watches you. You are all In The Database:

[Hat tip to Flares Into Darkness]

Cushy UK Prisons: Europe's New "No-Go Zones"?

Breakfast in bed, tv, cash perks for good behavior... the age of Newgate Prison is definitely over. I wonder what Elizabeth Fry would think?


If "life in British prisons is so comfortable that inmates have given up trying to escape", as the British media reports today, then that is scandal enough, but if the prisons are so understaffed that sections of them are now "no-go zones" for police, surely that is the far more troublesome revelation.

Yet, it is passed over like a pebble at the bottom of the Thames.

Was it just hyperbole on Glyn Travis' part, or have the good people of Great Britain become so shell-shocked by their collapsing country that they can only handle one nightmare at a time..?

(Video of the story here):

...
"We have got no-go areas in certain prisons because prisoners have got complete control. There is not sufficient staff, there is no interaction between staff," [Glyn Travis, assistant general secretary of the Prison Officers' Association] told BBC radio.

"We have got a serious crisis in our prisons today, but unfortunately prisons are not a vote-winner, so we are a soft target for the government to force its fiscal policy on public servants." Travis said intruders had entered the low-security Everthorpe jail in Yorkshire, northern England, by scaling a wall using ladders and he said cases had been uncovered of prostitutes entering open prison to service inmates.
...
"These were prisoners who have a history of escaping from lawful custody, and the prisoners did not take the opportunity or plan to escape because, we believe, life is so cushy in the prison system," he said.
...
Travis blamed the problems in jails on chronic under-staffing. "We have got a massive shortfall of staff. We are 1,000 prison officers short across the country.
"There is a serious recruitment problem," he said.

Sky News adds some details from Mr. Travis' account, suggesting that UK prisons may not be "no-go zones" as far as fellow criminals are concerned:

"Members of the public were climbing over the prison wall to take drugs into prison," he said.

"They had a ladder on the opposite side of the wall and prisoners were so comfortable in the environment they were living in, that none of the prisoners tried to climb up the ladder and escape.

"Now, to me that says there's something wrong in society when people are breaking into prisons to bring drugs and prostitutes, and the prisoners are quite happy to stay in our prisons."

Sudden Suicides Continue In Bridgend

"We just don't understand what is going on in Bridgen", says a relative of a young lady who was found hanging in her bathroom.

20-year old Kelly Stephenson was one of three more young people that have killed themselves in the small Welsh town of Bridgend, a nightmare story continuing from our earlier post in January of this year.

Two cousins hung themselves last week. A 16-year old girl hung herself Tuesday.

The London Times talks to "A senior social worker who knows the area well", but no answers seem forthcoming:

"These deaths come out of the blue, without any explanation. It could be a sort of copycat thing, and the net is a likely target. From the cases I’ve been involved with it seems that young people are killing themselves as an extreme reaction to everyday things. They’re not being bullied, they’re not in high-achieving families where they feel they’ve failed. It’s as though they do it without expecting any consequences, and that’s hard to understand."

The UK paper The Mirror talked to many residents of the area who personally knew the kids who hung themselves:

A friend of Kelly's named Rosie said: "It's going crazy in Bridgend and it's not going to stop. No one can understand what is going on."I know seven of the people who killed themselves. People are saying it's got something to do with the internet but I don't believe that. But then I can't explain it either.
"Everyone is talking about Kelly's death. It's awful. I saw her a month ago and she was fine, smiling and laughing."

Yahoo news has some details on this week’s horrible hanging:

Police identified Jenna Parry, 16, as the latest victim. Her body was found hanging from a tree in the woods by a passer-by walking his dog in the village of Cefn Cribwr, five miles from Bridgend.

The papers have quotes from many friends and relatives, many acquaintances and co-workers of the youth that committed suicide. The kids who hung themselves were often even
friends with each other. So it seems safe to presume they did not kill themselves from loneliness.

I read the unnamed social worker's insights with great, overwhelming sadness. Is a generation being raised to view the precious gift of life as such a trivial blessing that they could toss it away with such impunity..? Do they find no treasure in having a family that loves them? Don't they realize how few people can boast of having wealth of that value? What do they understand of "friendship" that having so many friends fuels no sense of obligation, no sense of service, and so little sense of gratitude, towards those friends? Don't they know how many teens are scraping by without any friends at all, and how delighted they would probably be to have half as many as these kids reaching for their hangman's noose?

If someone grows up without family, without friends, they can still live a meaningful life, so long as they live with faith, the belief that life itself is worth living. From that affirming, positive belief you can attract and find friends, you can create and enlarge a family, you can build everything that is truly of lasting value. When cynicism and nihilism exhale their poisons, belching worse pollution than anything that ever came out of a Welsh mining town, you get the bitter fruit from that tree of "knowledge": the conviction that the nullity of death should be the "life" most worth "living".

Godspeed to those left behind, may this be the last of these terrible stories to come out of Bridgend.

For Queen and Country

The other day I was having a conversation with someone who used the expression "menials". "What do you mean, menials," says I.

"The menials do the ordinary housework that the courtiers won't touch."

So what do the courtiers do?

Well, today comes the answer: they let the world know that the Queen is, how do they put it, not amused by the Archbishop and his calls for Sharia:

According to a royal source, the Queen has not expressed any view on whether Dr Rowan Williams was unwise to say it was "unavoidable" that aspects of the sharia legal system could be incorporated into English law.

But as Supreme Governor of the Church of England she has been dismayed by the controversy that the remarks have generated at such a difficult period in the history of the Established Church, which faces possible schism over the issue of homosexual clergy.

The Queen, who approved the appointment of Dr Williams on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, takes her role as Supreme Governor very seriously.

One royal source said: "I have no idea what her view is on what the Archbishop said about sharia law. But the Queen is worried, coming at such a difficult time in the Church's history, that the fallout may sap the authority of the Church."
[...]
Another royal courtier said: "The whole thing has not been skilfully handled. It can only have undermined the authority of the Church."

A Buckingham Palace spokesman declined to comment.

H/T Up Pompeii who argues:

Statements such as this do not get issued lightly and the words used go much further than a critique of the Archbishop, this is a clear indication that HRH is not happy at all with the Islamic presence in the UK.

HRH is obviously aware of the crisis within her realm and she has now broken her silence, we can only hope for more of the same.

We were happy to note last week that the Royal Family is granting the use of Windsor Castle for a special dinner to mark Israel's 60th anniversary. Again, the speculation is that the Queen is sending the British government a message on what values it should be upholding.

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