Too Many Blacks

Last week the inevitable happened - England failed in their bid to host the World Cup in 2018. Far more interesting than the story of the bid, though, is the story of the post-bid recriminations.

Since the Panorama broadcast which highlighted FIFA corruption, just before FIFA's decision was announced, it is hardly surprising that most of the blame has been directed at FIFA as their apparent corruption has been exposed - although, more shamefully, some have blamed the BBC for daring to broadcast their allegations at such an inconvenient time. How dare they? Without going into this well-trodden debate too deeply, suffice to say that I would far prefer a free press to a World Cup.

For me, though, there was one angle on the bid failure that almost all news outlets failed to pick up on. All but one - the Daily Mail.

In a quite extraordinary article entitled "Was this the video that cost us? The very un-English presentation screened to FIFA delegates", the blackshirts' favourite daily (through the medium of the hopefully-made-up "Paul Harris") decided that the bid failure was entirely down to - you guessed it - Political Correctness Gawn Mad.



In an article peppered with sarcasm, and liberally sprinkled with screengrabs from the England 2018 bid video (one hilariously subtitled "A clip from the part of the video depicting a Muslim country" - gasp! Muslims! RUN!!), the Daily Fail employs the usual code, not quite racist enough to prompt a complaint but plenty racist enough to make most sane people feel ill.

This, remember, is the same paper that arguably started the process of the bid failure by exposing Lord Triesman's affair (and his off-the-record allegations of bid corruption) some six months ago - including this classic pair of 'articles' praising Lord Triesman's mistress and pointing out TWICE that it is not hard to see why he might find her "ivory skin" alluring. God forbid that a man might fancy a girl with some colour.

They didn't even bother trying to rewrite the sentence:

The woman who cost Football Association chief Lord Triesman his job is revealed as a flame-haired 37-year-old with an impressive academic background.

As the Labour peer reflects on his speedy exit it is not hard to see why a man of 66 might find Melissa Jacobs with her slim physique and ivory skin alluring.

And....

It's not hard to see why a man of 66 might find Melissa Jacobs attractive.

With flowing flame red hair, a slim physique and ivory skin, she looks younger than her 37 years and has, it seems, an impressive academic background to boot.

Note to journalism students - clearly if your work to date comprises lazy stereotypes, and liberal use of copy/paste, there's a career out there for you somewhere.

So. Anyway. Back to the bid, and why it failed. It's not so much the article itself that is staggering - although it is, particularly with quotes like:

Selfless, that's us. Doing it for the greater good of the world. You could see it in the faces the film featured from locations all around the planet.

They've got the wrong kind of faces, you see. That's the problem. We failed because we used "ethnically diverse figures" (ie black people), or "African and Asian spectators" (ie black people), featuring fans including a "Caribbean family" (ie black people). To be fair they also point out that "close-ups of the players further underline the multinational diversity of our favourite Premiership icons" (yes, it seems even the team itself has been infiltrated by... black people). Terrifying, isn't it.

Well... no. No, it isn't. Not as terrifying as some of the comments, anyway. Here is a selection.

Britain has "multiculturalism" and is frightened to death of "offending" anyone.

- But at least we're not frightened of "superfluous punctuation".

Silly me thinking England was predominantly a white, christian country. Shows How wrong I was then.

- Or, perhaps, it just shows how racist and intolerant you are. Silly you indeed.

How disgusting that whoever organied this shambles of a bid chose not to portray England as English.

- Did we portray England as Fijian? I missed that bit.

Of course the good thing about losing the bid is that we wont have thousands of "spectators" claiming asylum.

- The bad thing is, you already live here.

The way we are going England is going to look like that before too long anyway.

- Yes, that's right. Because THEY breed, don't they.

Until the english start having some pride in Englishness instead of constantly living their lives through the cultures of other ethnic and national groups, they are simply not going to get themselfs out of the social malaise they're trapped in.

- This from a reader in, er, New Zealand.

Dear oh dear. We seem determined to PC ourselves out of existence.

- I think this one was looking for an IT helpline.

Maybe if England had done more to promote the Englishness of football and a little less multicultural ribbish theyd hVe had a better chance. Sucking up being all PC obviously failed miserably

- And this from a reader who loves England so much he lives in, um, Canada. Where apparently they say 'ribbish' a lot.

Once again, an example of how we are too scared to celebrate our national identity for fear that the PC brigade will come along and moan that there are not enough different cultures and minorities represented.

- Now I'm getting images of the PC Brigade, sort of like the Light Brigade, but with black people instead of horses.

This is the problem with multi culturalism...everyone loses their identity amidst the racial and cultural mash.....

- Bloody hell, even the potatoes are multicultural.

toe curlingly embarrassing, the insincere simpering and whimpering, the extraordinary, and weird obsession that this country has developed for multiculture

- Yes, it's us that's obsessed with multiculture isn't it. Yes.

Our heritage has been sold down the river, what remains is a hotchpotch that few people feel any connection with. England I am afraid is dead and soon even its history will be rewritten!

- Branching out from a World Cup bid to a complete rewrite of the school history curriculum. Because of these fools, we lost at Agincourt and Waterloo.

In this film Britain looks like a foreign country, which increasiingly it seems to be

- Based on last week, that foreign country is Greenland. Brrr.

It makes me feel sick to the stomach when we have this 'multicultural' rubbish rubbed in our faces. We should stick to traditional values and celebrate our heritage.

- Yeah! We want traditional values! Like xenophobia! And bigotry! Yay!

Final proof our identity, heritage and history have been whittled away!!

- You read it here first, people - England is now just a sharpened stick.

I want to see a video of GB, not Africa!! It's about football!! Not multiculturalism!!

- No!! It's about exclamation marks!! Lots!! Of!! Them!!

We are hardly the country we used to be. We have been watered down to much by uncontrolled immigration and folks wanting asylum.

- Ah yes, the purity of our gene pool, watered down by... oh I can't be bothered.

Typical. Hijacked by the PC loony left multiculturalists.

- Loony left? Who, exactly? David Cameron?

This country is dying because of its own generosity. Anyone can come here, be what they like, pray how they like, behave how they like.....no worries, the natives will pay, the natives will tolerate. It doesn't surprise me that our promotional video was full of foreigners; even if it had only been filmed in England it would still have been full of foreigners. Did I say this country was dying? yes, we had an Empire but it was largely taking good things to the world.

- I don't know where to start with how wrong this statement is. I just hope this person doesn't live near me.

well i am pleased, it will keep some of the scum of the world trying to get here more easier on the back of being a football supporter.

- Er, I'm pretty sure we've got plenty of our own scum right here...

And my personal favourite:

Well done Daily Mail for having the courage to speak up and say the things the silent majority are thinking!. It's about time we took pride in OUR culture for once.

If only Diana were here to see what this nation has become. What would she say?

Now, ask yourself. Honestly. Do you want to host a World Cup, and find people like this welcoming fans and players from around the world (ie black people)? Neither do I.

Disappointed kids wondering what Diana would say

More Tea, Vicar?

I have been inundated with requests to resume this blog.

Oh, alright then, I got two requests.

From my father and my sister, if you must know.

But hey, who am I to decline. So here goes.

There has been much focus recently on the 'success' of the billionaire-funded ultra-reactionary Tea Party movement in the US mid-term elections, followed by today's release of George W Bush's memoirs, in which he claims (inter alia) that torture helps prevent terrorism. I'll leave the staggering wrongness of that assertion aside - for now, at least - and just copy below a series of comments written by Doug Offenhartz, which I saw on the Twitter feed of Ayelet Waldman.

Hey, tea bagging pricks! NOW you're mad?

You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.

You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy and push us to invade Iraq.

You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.

You didn't get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.

You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.

You didn't get mad when we spent over $800 billion (and counting) on said illegal war.

You didn't get mad when Bush borrowed more money from foreign sources than the previous 42 Presidents combined.

You didn't get mad when over $10 billion in cash just disappeared in Iraq.

You didn't get mad when you found out we were torturing people.

You didn't get mad when Bush embraced trade and outsourcing policies that shipped 6 million American jobs out of the country.

You didn't get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.

You didn't get mad when we didn't catch Osama Bin Laden.

You didn't get mad when Bush rang up $10 trillion in combined budget and current account deficits.

You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed Hospital.

You didn't get mad when we let a major US city, New Orleans, drown.

You didn't get mad when we gave people who had more money than they could spend, the filthy rich, over a trillion dollars in tax breaks.

You didn't get mad with the worst 8 years of job creation in several decades.

You didn't get mad when over 200,000 US Citizens lost their lives because they had no health insurance.

You didn't get mad when lack of oversight and regulations from the Bush Administration caused US Citizens to lose 12 trillion dollars in investments, retirement, and home values.

You got mad when a black man was elected President and decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.

Beautifully put, Doug. It just makes you wonder how people's memories can be so short, that Obama is now taking the blame for all the ills that the US is currently suffering. Given Bush's total lack of remorse for the damage he did, the above comes as a useful reminder of just how far we have come in the past two years. Now it's up to the American people to make sure we never go back.

A Short Announcement

This blog has been suspended/discontinued due to lack of interest/talent.

Ch Ch Ch Ch Changes...

The most closely fought and unpredictable election of my voting life is now drawing to a fascinating denouement. Here's my take on the past few weeks' campaigning, starting with the losers. And, just to make me look even more silly after the count on Thursday night, I've also added my predictions.

Labour - Gordon Brown

Yes, I know we are all voting for candidates, not parties or leaders, but such is the way the campaigns have all been structured - particularly with the new leaders' TV debates - that UK elections are becoming ever more 'Presidential' in style. Which has been a massive blow for the incumbents, given that they have no personalities to push forward in a personality-driven environment.

Poor old Labour. Thirteen years after the heady days of 1997 when they rolled into Downing Street on a wave of euphoria, Labour are about to be unceremoniously kicked out, despite their achievements. The past 13 years have been a mixed bag, but there is no denying that Labour has done extraordinarily well with policies such as SureStart. Sadly for them, their party and campaign are led by Britain's most uncharismatic man. With the possible exception of Piers Morgan.


Staring defeat in the face, and unable to afford the sort of massively expensive campaign the Tories have been able to roll out, Labour are limping to the finish line with ever more desperate attempts to woo the wavering voters. Calling a potential supporter a 'bigot' was supposed to be a low point, but still they kept digging the hole ever deeper, culminating last week in the reappearance of Tony Blair. Surely they're playing to lose, now. (In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they've put a massive bet on themselves to get trounced, and thereby refill the party coffers in one fell swoop. I call this 'John Higgins' fundraising.)

Overseas readers of this blog - if there are any - may be amazed to find that Tony Blair is now considered to be a political liability. His popularity in the USA remains very high, but here in the UK we have this quaint old-fashioned thing where we still dislike politicians for lying - even though hating a politician for lying is rather like hating a dog for licking his own balls: it's unsightly, but it's an integral part of who he his. (And we all wish we could get away with it.)

Incredibly, given the massive unpopularity that is inevitable for the incumbent party after three terms and amid a crushing recession, Labour may not actually do too badly. Psephologists worldwide are no doubt scratching their heads as to how Labour can be polling 28% just two days before the vote, which is actually several points higher than they have been polling for most of the current Parliament. You've seen it here first, people - millions of votes earned purely out of sympathy for a dying animal. Labour are, in fact, the political wing of Jedward.

My prediction - 215 seats

Liberal Democrat - Nick Clegg

The LibDem campaign has been a game of two halves. Prior to the first leaders' debate, hardly anyone knew who Nick Clegg was, and the LibDems were still polling below 20%. To be fair to Clegg, I think a major reason why so many people were unaware of his existence was down to the almost total lack of coverage of the LibDems in much of the (Tory) press, but his strong performance in the debates earned him an instance bounce in the polls up to almost 30% - and, creditably, this is a position they appear to have sustained to date.

This brings me to the second half of the LibDems' campaign, and possibly the most surreal part of what has been a pretty topsy-turvy few weeks. Once it became apparent that Clegg was a real threat to the status quo, the press reaction was instant and vicious. What began with some mild digs about nobody knowing who Clegg was - patently no longer true after the first debate - quickly descended into more desperate obloquy and ad hominem attacks. Not surprisingly, this is my personal favourite:


How can anyone seriously try to get any laughs out of the LibDems when you're up against this calibre of comedy?

When the Daily "Hurrah For The Blackshirts" Mail starts falling foul of Godwin's Law, you know you must be doing something right. Unfortunately for Clegg, far beyond these pathetic attempts to scare the electorate, he is still hampered by the same ball and chain he always was - a vote for the LibDems is statistically worth around 10% of a vote for another party, in terms of seats gained. Unless they are able to overcome an electoral system strongly skewed against them, they will never get the chance to change it, and so they will remain effectively irrelevant.

So, Cleggy, it's back to "my home town Sheffield" for the public-school educated Eurocrat. But look on the bright side. You might still be irrelevant, but at least people know who you are now.

My prediction - 84 seats

Conservative - David Cameron

Anointed as the winner as long as two years ago, Cameron and his motley band of homophobes and Bullingdon chums are now limping across the line. If you had just arrived in the UK and read the papers today - mostly heavily biased toward the Tories, of course - you would think that Cameron has run a spectacularly successful campaign, and is about to win a resounding mandate from the British people.

What seems to have been forgotten is that, just one year ago, the Conservatives were polling consistently over 40% (now seemingly stuck in the mid-30s), and had a lead over Labour of over 20%. Months of 'articles' like this...

3 Sep 2009 ... DAVID Cameron is on course to win a sensational landslide general election victory next May, an exclusive Sun poll reveals tonight.

27 Jul 2009 ... Get ready for a Tory landslide. That is the prediction of a new and sophisticated electoral forecasting tool...

Stephens Scown snap poll predicts Tory landslide ... David Cameron's Tory party will sweep to power with a massive 64% of the vote...

... have been quietly shelved in favour of bizarre attacks on the opposition parties, and (unwittingly) hilarious puff pieces about Dave the normal bloke. Meanwhile, the Tories are stuck on the level of support they had when Michael Howard royally buggered up the 2005 election.


For the immensely wealthy banker's son, educated at Eton and married into aristocracy, trying to come across as a regular member of the human race must be a massive task. So I suppose Dave deserves some credit for success in this regard, in that at least fewer than 50% of the electorate believe he breathes with the use of gills. (Note: this result was obtained from a non-scientifically conducted poll, and may not be an accurate reflection of public opinion.) Nevertheless, no matter how it is spun, this election is almost certain to end up as a failure for the Tory party, even if they do form the next Government.

Some of the best entertainment in the election campaign - despite Gordon Brown's best efforts to insult his way to the top - have come from Dave. His appearances on the leaders' TV debates have been must-watch stuff: from the rabbit in the headlights in the first debate, through to the more confident (but still appearing to look like a face drawn on a thumb) in the final debate. Cameron and his would-be ministers, particularly the hard drinking Billy Hague, have been zooming around the country in private jets kindly loaned by their 'ordinary hard-working family' friends to marginal constituencies flooded in leaflets by their 'ordinary hard-working' non-domiciled tax exile friends, in a chaotic attempt to achieve the victory they all thought was absolutely guaranteed.

The tactics have been brilliantly awful. Remember promising to give tax breaks to married couples, only to withdraw the policy, and then resurrect it in a form that punishes widows of military casualties while simultaneously pretending that £2.88 a week is going to make the blindest bit of difference to anyone's marital status? Remember the "great ignored" and the "big society", just two of their bizarre poli-speak anodyne slogans which vanished as quickly as they appeared? In any other year these would rightly be seen as the shambles they are, but somehow these people are going to be running our country for the next five years.

God help us all.

Prediction - 317 seats, one term of Government, three summers of civil unrest and the total destruction of the country

Take Me To Your Leaders

Three things stick in my mind after last night's historic first-ever UK party leaders' debate. Some or all of these may be utterly irrelevant, and as far from policy as it's possible to get. So if you're looking for a serious analysis, try a proper blogger.


The Missing Billions

About half way through the debate, Brown and Cameron's bickering about National Insurance Contributions (now known as "jobs tax" in Toryworld) reached a nadir with this exchange:

GORDON BROWN:

If you were elected, in a budget in July, you've got to take six
billion out of the system, other than health and defence.
Where does that money come from? You've promised you'll
take six billion out. It can only end up with the loss of
thousands of jobs, including teachers. You will not back us
and support us on keeping education. Why won't you support
educational spending, as we do?

DAVID CAMERON:

I think people can hear that this is a complete invention of a figure plucked out of the air. We're saying the government
could save one pound out of every hundred it spends. Now,
what small business, what large business, what family, frankly,
hasn't had to do that during this difficult recession?

David Cameron responded to Gordon Brown's claim that the Tories plan to cut £6 billion by stating that the figure was a "complete invention". I have italicised the relevant sentence above. (Incidentally, I can think of one family that probably hasn't had to cut their expenditure by 10%. Step forward Mr & Mrs Cameron of Witney, Oxon.)

Now if that were true, and Gordon had just plucked the figure out of the air, imagine my surprise when this happened:

AUDIENCE MEMBER:

How certain can you be that your party's policies will deal with
the budget deficits without damaging economic growth?

ALASTAIR STEWART:

Mr Cameron?

DAVID CAMERON:

This is an absolutely vital question, and I'm glad it's been asked, because we've got to get this economy moving. We've
got to get this economy growing. What we say is save £6
billion in the coming current year in order to stop the jobs tax
which we think will derail the recovery.

Now I'm a little confused. If this six billion was a "complete invention", where's the money coming from? Oh, I see:

DAVID CAMERON:

These two constantly argue about waste as if we can
create...or we can fill the black hole in public finances by
saving money on paper clips and pot plants in Whitehall. Of
course we can get rid of a bit of waste. But that isn't the big...
That doesn't really address the big questions we need to ask
ourselves. I think we need to be clear with you, open with you,
straight with you. We've tried to do that. We've set out £15
billion worth of savings. I've listed some of them.

... it's because the six billion is in fact FIFTEEN billion. "Some" of which Dave has listed - yeah, paper clips and pot plants. Thanks a million. Or, actually, thanks fifteen billion.


Serving Your Country

All three of the leaders used the tactic of anecdotes about 'real' people. Here's an example. This man has served his country above and beyond the call of duty.

DAVID CAMERON:

I was in Plymouth recently, and a 40-year-old black
man made the point to me. He said, "I came here when I was
six, I've served in the Royal Navy for 30 years."

Now, I may be wrong, but I have my suspicions that this man does not actually exist. I'm pretty sure the Royal Navy no longer uses ten-year-old boys on their ships. Unless Dave thinks the forces are still in the age of Horatio Hornblower.


Cross-Party Consensus

I couldn't resist. I tried, really I did, but I couldn't resist. So here it is - the (completely un-)official "I agree with Nick" count.

Gordon Brown - 4 (plus a "Nick also agrees with me", which Nick rebutted)

David Cameron - a very disappointing nul points

And I thought I even heard Nick Clegg himself say it at one point.





All quotes are taken from the BBC website, who kindly posted a full transcript in pdf format.

Mutts

This is still a young blog, and it doesn't get many readers. So imagine my surprise when - having already blogged on the BNP, the snow, and toilet roll dispensers - the number of hits on my blog quadrupled once I posted a few photos of my dogs.

So, in a shameless attempt to increase the hits yet further, I am eschewing political comment and taking the easy option. (Although I do appreciate that I may also get hits from people Googling "Nick Griffin dogging", and I hope they get over their disappointment swiftly.)

It has been almost a year now since Azul and Blackie arrived from the dog rescue centre in Spain.

Prepare for close-up...





Generally speaking, the boys have settled in well. Probably their biggest shock since arriving in England has been the snow. They absolutely loved it. Not having to commute through it probably helped.





I can only guess that they had never seen snow before. First time out, they just barked at it. The snow seemed relatively unimpressed at this display. Eventually their curiosity took over, and they got pretty excited about the idea of playing in this new stuff.
("Excited" generally means, for Azul, spinning round and round like a gyroscope with ADHD. Blackie is more sedate - excitement generally manifests itself as circular tail-wagging. Blackiecopter.)







They are still best mates, as you can see here. Playfights are a major part of their daily routine, apart from barking at ice cream van jingles. They never seem to get bored; there's always something valuable around to bite. Including eachother.





Like most dogs with husky DNA, Azul likes to counter-surf when we're not looking. This tactic has worked (he once scored half a Beef Wellington) as well as backfired (he once chewed up a whole box of dishwasher tablets). Blackie's dining tastes are somewhat more esoteric: he's quite happy eating the cats' food. Both before and after the cats have.








Surely the greatest ad ever for taking in a rescue dog, no? No? Oh.







To the victor, the spoils.

True Colours

I've been watching the general election campaigns warming up with some interest, particularly with respect to what appears to be increasing desperation in Tory ranks.

Just recently we've had lies about crime figures, lies about who attends Cameron's speeches, crass interference in the Northern Ireland peace process, lies about teenage pregnancy, lies about Tory funding donors, lies about Labour's tax plans (which also scuppered a cross-party consensus) and Cameron making personal attacks on Brown.

But this is what really struck me as to how low the Tories, or in this case one of their chief bloggers, will go.

These three tweets were posted last night on Twitter by a blogger who calls himself "Tory Bear". His tweets, and blogs, are generally a series of childish personal insults, smears and innuendo, but even he has sunk to a new low here.

Perhaps I am wrong, but I always felt that mocking politicians was fine, but mocking disability is just cheap and nasty.



Similarly, I think it's reasonable to hold a politician to account for his actions, but to deliberately repeat smears about drug dependency is not only desperately vicious, but also seeks to trivialise what is a serious issue for thousands of people.



And finally, just in case you thought the above wasn't tasteless enough, there's always the last resort of the utterly vile scoundrel: label your opponent as a paedophile.



Jolly well done, Tory Bear. Cowardly enough to tweet this disgusting abuse, and cowardly enough to try to delete the evidence when called to account for yourself.

Yep, the offending tweets have now been deleted. Classy.

No doubt he'll get away with it, and be free to continue his trivial vendettas against other people, but I for one think this spokesman for the Nasty Party has shown his true colours. Vote blue - fight dirty. Just the sort of people we want to ru(i)n our country for the next four or five years.