Doing jobs the indigenous population won't do...

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Romanian beggars in gang effort to get cash
Gangs of professional beggars from Romania are pleading for cash on Edinburgh's streets - after being dropped off for "work" in cars and vans.

 Police are growing increasingly concerned about the gangs, spotted in the city centre, the Southside and Leith in recent days.

Carrying identical messages written on pieces of cardboard, the mainly women beggars claim to have children to feed and no money. Most of the money they collect is believed to be sent back to Romania.



Blah Blah, Hitler; Blah Blah, Blitz; Blah Blah, A nice cup of tea and an arrowroot biscuit...

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Sun Says: We stand firm
When Gordon Brown says “we will not yield”, it’s not empty rhetoric. It’s a firm prediction based on our nation’s history and character.

Hitler’s Blitz merely hardened our resolve against the Nazis. Two decades of IRA atrocities similarly failed to dent London’s spirit.

The brainwashed Islamist fanatics who have chosen mass murder as a way of life are beyond reason, of course. But they should know the futility of their acts.


Gordon Brown urges the British public to go on “living their lives as normal”. Thanks, Gordo. You've brought me up sharp. I was just thinking of clearing out the Anderson shelter and moving the family in with six months supply of dried egg and Everton mints. Fuck me!

I'm sick of hearing how these attacks are designed to change our cherished way of life forever. I've lived long enough to see dramatic changes in our way of life and none of them were down to terrorists. Our way of life is under greater threat from our government (and rabid cheerleaders like Melanie Phillips) than from these (largely inept) attempts at urban terror.


Gorra light, mate?

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Keith Waterhouse: No smoking ban in George Orwell's 1984
Appropriate, I suppose, that the first full week of the Brown regime, which does not sound as if it is going to be a laugh a minute, should coincide with the start of the No Smoking Terror...

Already the old smoking rooms are being converted into mini-gastro pubs, where non-smokers may toy with their confit de canard without having to wave their menus about like fans, in protest at what they always choose to call the "stink" (never "smell") of cigarette fumes, real or imaginary.

(No smoking signage is available in bilingual versions including: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Gujurati, Turkish,Urdu Polish and Punjabi.)




Done up like a kipper

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Sean Gabb wasted an evening at 18 Doughty Street
Now, I have been accused, because of my recent postings, of political nihilism. My accusers have a point. But what is wrong with nihilism?

Suppose you are taken into a restaurant, where everything offered is some preparation of stinking fish. Do you placidly go ahead with your order? Or do you throw the menu aside and comment on the smell?

And suppose the other guests—who all seem to have a connection with the management—strike up a debate on the merits of poached as against grilled stinking fish. Do you join in? Or do you head for the door?

And—to complete the analogy—suppose you find yourself chained to the table with a feeding tube shoved down your throat. Is it reasonable to do other than wish for the waiters and the unseen kitchen staff to be taken out and shot?

That describes the politics of this country at the moment. And if saying so is nihilism, I am a nihilist.

Via



No change here then...

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British premier stresses his pro-Israel credentials

Gordon Brown has also been at pain to stress his Christian Zionist credentials. In a speech to the Labour Friends of Israel annual fundraising dinner in April 2007, quoted by the Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post.

Many of you know my interest in Israel and in the Jewish community has been long-standing... My father was the chairman of the Church of Scotland's Israel Committee. Not only as I've described to some of you before did he make visits on almost two occasions a year for 20 years to Israel – but because of that, although Fife [Scotland], where I grew up, was a long way from Israel with no TV pictures to link us together – I had a very clear view from household slides and projectors about the history of Israel, about the trials and tribulations of the Jewish people, about the enormous suffering and loss during the Holocaust, as well as the extraordinary struggle that he described to me of people to create this magnificent homeland.

Indeed, Gordon Brown made a strong impression on his Zionist hosts. Jane Kennedy, chairwoman of Labour Friends of Israel, said:

 I have always felt that Gordon Brown is instinctively a good friend of Israel and I look forward to working with him. The combination of Gordon as prime minister and Tony Blair as Quartet Middle East envoy is a really exciting prospect and gives real hope for progress in the Middle East peace process.



Friday Spiked picks

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Still busy, but here is my selection from this week's Sp!ked:

10 reasons why Gordon Brown is not fit to be prime minister
He’s yesterday’s man; And he espouses yesterday’s politics; He sees security as the highest aim of politics; He’s an enemy of liberty; He wants to change our ‘bad behaviour’; He’s a political coward; He’s a New Colonialist; He’s a politician of low expectations; He’s a miserabilist; He has a weird effect on commentators’ critical faculties


Despite the evidence that he is illiberal, interventionist and curmudgeonly – and despite the leading part he played in developing New Labour’s narrow and increasingly behaviour-based political agenda – some in the commentariat still believe that Brown will breathe life back into the British political scene. Others claim that he just has a personality problem, and if only he had a fashion, hair and conversational makeover then everything would be okay. This is wishful thinking in the extreme. This isn’t about personality; Brown’s problem is that his politics are dour and dull. He is now the face and voice of New Labour, representing its inherent values of austerity, interventionism and security-over-freedom better than anybody else. And yet, Brown is best known for what he is not: he became Labour leader on the basis that he is not Blair (despite sharing all of Blair’s political prejudices) and he will stand in the next General Election, possibly next year, on the basis that he is not David Cameron.
The global crusade against the ‘evil weed’
As of 1 July, it will be illegal to light up a cigarette in designated places of work in England. Across the world - from the pub-culture of Ireland to the formerly smoky cafés of Italy to the lager-swilling bars of Australia - smoking bans are being enforced with alarming uniformity. What’s behind this global crusade against the evil weed? spiked writers report from London, Paris, Galway, Rome, Stockholm, Glasgow, Brisbane and New York on the impact of enforced stubbing-out

Seeing through the smoking ban
The passive smoking issue has become a symbol of this disconnected state of affairs, a sort of metaphor for a mindset that always sees somebody else and their behaviour as the problem in your life. It is not just other people’s smoke that is now seen as toxic - it is other people themselves. And perhaps we can no longer even trust ourselves not to harm us without the professional help of the therapeutic state.



I need a drink!

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Tennessee poised to become first state to require universal carding on beer sales


Beginning July 1, Tennessee will be the first state in the U.S. to require universal carding for purchases of beer for off-premises consumption.The Tennessee Responsible Vendor Act is hailed by proponents as an innovative and strong step in the fight against underage drinking.

Jarron Springer, president of the Tennessee Grocers and Convenience Store Association, concedes older customers, who are obviously of legal age to buy beer, may not be too thrilled with the mandatory carding. However, he says the cooperation of those customers will help busy clerks establish requesting an ID as part of their working routine, helping fight underage purchases.