petermullen – Page 22 – All Things Considered

25 Jul

‘Ee bah gum–there’s Sharia up ‘ere!

When I was growing up in Leeds, we knew Dewsbury as a small town a few miles down the road. A Yorkshire town on the edge of the Pennines. An English town. Nowadays it might as well be a town in Pakistan or Bangladesh. Parts of the the borough are no-go areas for non-Muslims and the social system there is separate development – what we used to call Apartheid when it was practised in South Africa. Of course, we condemned Apartheid in South Africa but we approve of it when it is practised in Yorkshire.

I exaggerate, surely? Well, how about this…

Ofsted’s schools inspectors have given a “good” rating to a Muslim school in Dewsbury which threatens to expel its students if they socialise with “outsiders.” The definition of an outsider is any non-Muslim Briton..

The Institute of Islamic Education in Dewsbury is praised by the education watchdog despite its pupils being taught not to speak to the media and being banned from watching television, listening to the radio or reading newspapers.

This was disclosed by SKY News in the week when David Cameron declared that improving integration was the “the struggle of our generation.”

You’re losing the struggle, Dave. In fact you’ve lost. For Dewsbury is not an isolated example of the Islamification of British life: as Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali has pointed out, many parts of our country are similarly no-go areas for British white non-Muslims.

In this week’s speech, Cameron promised a counter-extremism bill in the autumn to tackle what he called “intolerant ideas which create a climate in which extremists can flourish.”

Meanwhile, Dave, Ofsted, part of a department of your government, praises and officially congratulates an institution which practises separate development. In its most recent inspection report Ofsted said, “The Islamic Institute of Education provides a good quality of education and meets its stated aims very well.”

Too right it does.

The school is housed in Dewsbury’s Markazi Mosque compound and run by the extreme Tablighi Jamaat sect, which imposes a strict Sharia code on students. The school has no website, but SKY News obtained copies of documents given to parents which state that students “socialising with outsiders will be expelled if there is no improvement after cautioning.”

The school’s Pupil and Parent Handbook contains a Sharia section which lists “Items that are prohibited in Islam… such as portable televisions, cameras, etc.”

Where in the Koran exactly does it say TV and cameras are forbidden?

The handbook says boarders are also banned from wearing un-Islamic garments and using music players or mobile phones at any time.

There are no school trips but wait, – it can’t be all bad – there is no sex education.

Mosque elder Shabbir Daji, chairman of the school’s governing Shura – aye, there’s Shuras i’Yorkshire now, tha naws! – told SKY News the school “works for unity,” but would not comment on how its restrictions prepare children for life in Britain.

He added, “Our policy is to keep away from the media.”

I don’t criticise the Muslim governors of that school. They intend to promote their policy of Muslim supremacy and to hell with the Kaffirs. They are simply acting in their own interests according to their own lights – if one may use the word light in such encircling darkness.

I do blame Ofsted for their policy of pre-emptive self-abasement.

Don’t be found guilty of “Islamophobia” – whatever that is. Don’t say anything to upset the community. But it isn’t a community. The word we are looking for is ghetto.

23 Jul

Our One True Statesman

If you see me going around with a big grin on my face, it’s because for the first time in nearly forty years it looks as if I shall get the Labour Party leader – and possible future prime minister – I want. I refer of course to that courageous patriot Jeremy Corbin who showed true magnanimity by entertaining Gerry Adams and other IRA terrorists in London a few weeks after the Brighton bomb. Jeremy is not only patriotic, he is progressive and far-sighted: he wants rid of the Queen and all that Establishment tat and much prefers that Britain should become a republic.

He has a developed gift for international statesmanship, evidenced by his close affiliation with the Marxist regime in Venezuela and his willingness to cede sovereignty of the Falklands to Argentina

He is progressive too on educational matters and would abolish grammar schools – though he attended one himself – and academies. He is gifted with the visionary insight which recognises the far superior quality of the state comprehensive system.

His defence and foreign relations policies are nothing short of enlightened. A long-serving member of CND, he knows that Britain will be a far safer place once we abolish our nuclear weapons unilaterally. And he has nothing but scorn for the flawed logic which says that the only country ever to have suffered a nuclear attack was Japan – which didn’t possess nuclear weapons at the time.

And anyone who hates the Israelis and supports the Palestinian Arabs – he calls Hamas and Hezbollah “friends” – surely understands the meaning of democracy and civilisation

Jeremy Corbyn is very far from being a political nerd or a mere apparatchik. In fact there is something of the renaissance man about him, and certainly of the literary man – as evidenced by his weekly column in The Morning Star.

And he is one of the most humane and tender-hearted of men. Not only would he ban the importation of foie gras, but he campaigns against the Yulin Dog Meat Festival.

Economic policy is truly his strongest point, as demonstrated by his intention to tax the well-off until the pips squeak. He proposes no upper limit on the highest rate of taxation, a large increase in corporation tax and a 7% rise in national insurance contributions. And he is wise enough to see the need to re-nationalise the railways.

I hear that membership of the Labour Party costs less than a fiver. I think I shall invest and then I can vote for Comrade Corbyn in the leadership election. It is but one step from Labour leader to the high office of prime minister, and I am confident Jeremy will make it.

My earlier preferences for prime minister were Michael Foot and John Prescott, but alas these came to nothing. Jeremy will put that right.

I can’t end without mention of my attendant joy – approaching ecstasy – when I behold this morning the expressions on the faces of Margaret Beckett and Frank Field who so wisely proposed Jeremy for the leadership.

22 Jul

“Not Nazis, but Nazists”–Churchill

Our prime minister Mr Churchill made a great speech today in which he said – after taking a fortifying sip of his Pol Roger – “The enemy we face, my friends, is not the Nazis. It is Nazists. Nazism, as Herr Hitler has made very clear to me, is a politics of peace and love – or, as he put it in that strange articulation he favours, ‘Freundschaft und Liebe’.”

The premier stressed that nothing should be done to alienate the Nazi community here in Britain and he added, “Let us be quite clear about this: the overwhelming majority of Nazis in Britain uphold British values and they deplore the Nazists as much as you or I do.”

Mr Churchill was very passionate: “The fact that a few Nazist hotheads and lone wolves have gone around smashing up Jewish shops and assaulting their proprietors should not distract us from the reality, which is that most Nazis wish for nothing other than the peace and prosperity of England, and indeed of all Europe.”

The prime minister made it very plain that the Nazi occupation of Alsace Lorraine, the Anschluss with Austria, the subjugation of Czechoslovakia and the invasion of Poland were all a legitimate response to our own aggressive policies. “What we need more than everything else,” Mr Churchill said “is a thoroughgoing policy of appeasement. If we reassure the Nazi leaders – peace be upon them – that we have no quarrel with them and that we could wish for nothing more than that they come over here and take their rightful place in British society, then I think I can reassure our people that we shall have no more trouble from them.”

Mr Churchill went on to make the inspired suggestion that we might give Nazis suitable political work to do in such as Tower Hamlets and encourage them to form connections with schools in Birmingham. He was emphatic: “It’s nonsense to say that the Nazis don’t integrate into British society. They entirely support the view that we are all part of one united community. Only yesterday, when I was paying a visit to the local synagogue, my good friend Heinrich Himmler assured me that the Nazis have nothing but the utmost affection for the Jewish people.”

At this point I’m sorry to have to report that there was a certain amount of booing and jeering: “Mr Churchill, you’re nothing but an appeaser and a traitor! Can’t you understand that these Nazis mean the death of us?”

But the prime minister was adamant, unmovable: “Let me say again, it is only a very few who pervert the Nazi tradition of peace and love. These are not true Nazis. I do not wish to see these, our friends and brothers the Nazis, victimised and persecuted, and therefore I shall bring before parliament a bill to outlaw Naziophobia – I shall make it a crime.”

Meanwhile, bombs were going off everywhere. The Nazists were embarked on a reign of terror. All Europe was in danger. There had been Nazist terrorist outrages in Spain, France and in England too. But courageously Mr Churchill insisted, “These terrorists in no way represent the great tradition of Nazism.”

The prime minister then raised two fingers and declared: “I shall not rest until we have secured complete victory over the Naziophobes.”

20 Jul

Just a little point, Ms Klein…

Something has gone very wonky with the BBC Promenade Concerts series. These summer concerts used to consist entirely of music, but now they contain material which is hostile to music..

For example, this summer when you tune-in to the Proms, you might find you’re hearing “The Ibiza dance party” presented by the “disc-jockey” Pete Tong. This is billed as “a musical homage to Ibiza, home to hedonistic dance clubs for twenty-five years or more.” If that is not quite to your taste, you can catch a RadioIXtra Prom programmed by the BBC’s “urban music station” and featuring the “rappers” Wretch 32, Stormzy and Krept & Konan in “a grime symphony.”

I suggest that this programming amounts to false pretences. The Proms, since their founding by Henry Wood in 1895, were always meant to provide musical excellence in a variety of styles – from Monteverdi to Anton Webern – but to exclude stuff which isn’t music at all.

You are perhaps offended by my outrageous elitism? Certainly, Suzy Klein, a presenter on Radio Three, disapproves of me. She says, “Classical music listeners who criticise the diverse line-up are self-elected snobs and scaremongers.”

I own up: I am an elitist – because I’d rather be an elitist than a mediocratist.

It is said – nay, bleated – “everyone has a right to their (sic) own taste.” Indeed they have. But that does not mean that everyone’s taste is as good as everyone else’s. As there is literature, to be contrasted with pulp fiction, so there are standards in music: and it is precisely the great composers who determine what these standards are.

Ms Klein adds, “Fondness for classical and grime genres is not mutually exclusive. I love dancing to an addictive club anthem as much as I adore listening in the stillness of a concert hall to a Brahms symphony.”

With the utmost respect, Ms Klein, that is not the point. Of course it is logically – though not, of course, aesthetically and critically – possible to enjoy both Brahms and “an addictive club anthem.” But we do not look for these things in the same place.

Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask for bread, will he give him a stone?

The fact is that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of radio and TV stations which provide pop and rock music 24/7. The rubbish is inescapable. Every TV documentary, every sports programme, every Hollywood movie, is stuffed full of it. Why is it too much to ask that music lovers should be allowed one sane repository – Radio Three in general and the Proms in particular – which remains free from this noise?

Ms Klein says that, because she likes both Brahms and “an addictive club anthem,” that it’s acceptable to feature them both in the same concert series.

No it isn’t. I’ll tell you what, Suzy, you wouldn’t ever get that the other way round: I mean, you’re never going to hear a Brahms symphony on a rock music station.

So, if there are indeed “self-elected snobs and scaremongers,” there are also self-elected oiks and philistines.

Filth is everywhere.

19 Jul

In yer face

O dear God, what are we coming to?

A near relative of Don Lock, stabbed to death after a minor traffic accident in Sussex, came on Radio Four to give thanks for that “We have been completely inundated. People have tweeted to say that they’ve replaced their own image on their Facebook page with that of Don.”

And have we come to this? I thought we’d reached the bottom when expressions of grief and sympathy at the time of the death of the People’s Princess in 1997 chiefly consisted in the bestowing of more flowers than you’d need for the Chelsea Festival in front of Kensington Palace. And more than half the population glued to images of funerals on TV, relieved only by the sight of hundreds of gross sentimentalists running out into the street to throw teddy bears at passing hearses.

But that was restraint compared with what we have today.

We inhabit a gadgeteered, narcissistic, sentimental bedlam. Institutionalised me-ism. The word selfie says it all. I recall Dr Johnson saying of a particularly odious contemporary: “That man would roll in the gutter – if only someone would look at him.”

Nowadays, if you will pardon the mixed metaphor, we roll in the gutter at the drop of a hat.

People replacing their own mugshot on Facebook with that of a deceased person they never met? That cannot possibly be sincere.

In better days, if we were informed of the untimely death of an acquaintance – never mind a perfect stranger – we would quietly express sympathy and perhaps say a prayer for the repose of the departed soul. The words decency and in order come to mind. Now we do something akin to setting up a gaudy advert – the electronic equivalent of shouting one’s virtue from the rooftops.

It was the Scribes and Pharisees, lovers of such outward show, who came in for Jesus’ severest condemnation: “Be not ye like unto them.”

And that close relative, why did he feel the urge to give a press conference, as if he were a chamberlain in the royal household bringing news of the death of the prince? Grief and bereavement used to encourage us to withdraw, to reflect and above all to be silent. Again the word respect comes to mind.

A death should be mourned, not tweeted.

We have lost all rational use of the word private.

How much further into this vulgar process of electronic abstraction do we have to go before we shall no longer speak to one another as we used to speak in the street, but only the gadgets will do our talking for us?

The Greek drama provided that the most tragic scenes should take place offstage. The word they used for this was obscene.

If even parts of the Greek tragedies were regarded as obscene, what words are left to describe our universal mawkish obsession with the gadgets?

18 Jul

Princess Elizabeth and the Hitlerjugend

Was the Queen a member of the Hitler Youth when she was Princess Elizabeth, aged six?

You might be led to think so if you turn to the seven pages dedicated by The Sun – sister paper to The Times’ – to showing the young princess making the Nazi salute. I don’t think so. The princess, with her sister Margaret and her mother Queen Elizabeth, were clearly egged on by Uncle Teddy – the inadequate creep and narcissistic dandy who was soon after to abdicate the Throne and travel with the sybaritic gold-digger Mrs Simpson to be photographed giving help and comfort to Adolf in Berlin.

The year was 1933, when Hitler came to power. His election victory was on all the front pages and obviously the Nazi salutes were part of an ill-considered party game or charade concocted by the treacherous Prince Edward.

Princess Elizabeth’s attitude towards the Nazis can be inferred from her enthusiastic active service during the Second World War in the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) – the women’s branch of the army.

What, apart from bald sensationalism, could have persuaded The Times’ sister paper to make a song and dance out of this trivial incident eight decades old?

A nasty streak of republicanism, that’s what. There is plenty of anti-monarchy stuff in the British press, amounting to a colossal gesture of ingratitude for the unsurpassed devotion to her people and country which the Queen has demonstrated throughout her life.

If the toads and snides in the Murdoch organisation are looking for the hint of treachery, they are looking in the wrong place. But I can tell them where to look.

In the 1930s the traitors were the whole British political class and establishment; every political party supported the appeasing of Hitler who was given a free hand to take what he wanted in Europe.

There was one man, with a very few colleagues and friends, who saw that that toadying to Hitler would not bring peace but catastrophe.

If you’re looking for signs of treachery in 1930s Britain, don’t pick on a child’s silly charade.

The very emblem and image of treachery was that picture of Neville Chamberlain waving his piece of paper, while foolishly proclaiming “Peace for our time!”

17 Jul

Come into my (nuclear) parlour

This marvellous nuclear deal between the West and Iran, aka The West’s sell-out to the duplicitous ayatollahs over the issue of Iran’s uranium enrichment programme is already producing consequences likely to cause a disaster for British subjects. David Cameron – smelling the money – has cuddled up to President Rouhani in a twenty-minutes phone call. Both leaders declared that the deal struck in Vienna could and should lead rapidly to improvements in relations between Iran and Britain, improved trade and better security.

President Rouhani tweeted that Cameron had welcomed the deal and “Iran’s constructive role in the negotiations.”

At this point in the conversation, Dave was seen to fall to his knees and purposefully place his head in the giant mousetrap prepared for him by Rouhani.

So the deal is constructive, is it? Constructive for whom? Not for Israelis who must continue to live under the threat of nuclear annihilation. Not for Britain, now left to deal with the increased risk of terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Iran. But certainly and solely constructive for the Iranians who will now be able to develop their atom bombs more or less unhindered and spend the $160billions coming to them from lifted sanctions on their violent jihad against the West.

Rejoice ye Hezbollah and give thanks all ye Houthis, for thou art about to receive a generous pay-rise!

I can still hardly bring myself to believe that the West’s pusillanimous leaders could fall for such a trick. They have carried appeasement well beyond anything dreamed of by the treacherous Chamberlain, Halifax and Butler in the 1930s.

But there is one aspect of this “peace dividend” which is beyond fantasy. Rouhani tweeted: “The British Prime Minister has expressed interest in re-opening embassies and expansion of ties in the framework of mutual interest and respect, plus combating terrorism in the region.”

Re-opening embassies? What was it John McEnroe used to say to the umpire, “You cain’t be serious!”

Iran has form when it comes to embassies. Are we to forget the seizure of fifty-two American diplomats in Iran in 1979 and their captivity for 144 days? Or the Iranian Embassy siege in London in 1980? Then there was the storming and subsequent ransacking of the British Embassy in Tehran as recently as 2011.

Does a man – even a man as weak and gullible as Cameron – propose to hand the barbarous Iranian regime further opportunities for hostage-taking and political blackmail?

I can just imagine Rouhani’s next tweet: “’Come into my parlour,’ said the spider to the fly.”

16 Jul

Che Guevara among the fishermen

Pope Francis has been taken to task. Asked why he had rarely spoken of hard-working, tax-paying families, instead concentrating on the marginalised and poverty-stricken, he said: “You’re right. It’s an error of mine not to think about this,”

Well, it would indeed be nice to see him take a few minutes off from his effusive rhetoric about the picturesque poor. True, Jesus commanded his disciples to care for the poor, but his attitude towards poverty was rather more complex than that of Guardian-reading sentimentalists. Jesus actually called the poor blessed. Why? “Because theirs is the kingdom of God.” And when he was anointed with expensive ointment, a Guardian-reading disciple protested, “This ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor.”

Jesus replied, “Ye have the poor always with you, but me ye have not always.”

That wasn’t very Christian of Christ, was it, Francis?

Jesus also said that it is hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of heaven, the province of the poor. So you would think that the Pope might be led to have sympathy for the rich and spend more time and effort helping them in their hard task of entering the kingdom.

Francis’ predecessor Benedict XVI is one of the greatest theologians since St Augustine. Francis – great self-publicist as he is and a close friend of vox pop – is no theologian. But he must have attended Sunday School when he was a nipper. There he would have read, or had read to him, the Gospel stories in which Jesus has much to say about the poor, but where he is also seen spending much time with the rich and influential.

He eats often in the houses of rich Scribes and Pharisees. He also eats with “publicans and sinners.” But when we hear that word publican, we should not imagine that it connotes a scene in which Jesus likes to go out of a night with his disciples – the lads – for a few pints at The Rose & Crown in downtown Capernaum. The publicans were not landlords. They were public servants – actually tax-gatherers for the occupying Roman power. Naturally, they were loathed by the poor.

Jesus loved the poor? Of course he did. But he also loved those well off enough to put on a wedding that lasted ten days, attended by numerous guests. Not only did Jesus attend the wedding – with the lads – but when the wine ran out, he created a further 180 gallons of the stuff.

The Son of God who said, “Blessed are the poor” also said, “I am come that ye might have life; and have it more abundantly.”

The Pope and just about every bishop and clergyman you have ever heard are so fond of preaching that mawkish Christmas sermon about Jesus being born into poverty in a stable. As if the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity had been a lesser condescension if he had been born Mayor of Tunbridge Wells.

He wasn’t born into poverty. His earthly father was of the house and lineage of King David. Joseph was an established craftsman and a member of the middle class,

We know the Pope is a Catholic – but does he read the Bible?

13 Jul

Equality is bad for you

The so called agreement just announced between Greece and the EU will have a devastating impact on poor people in Greece. This agreement effectually confiscates Greek assets and imposes the most severe austerity on the Greek people. It was concluded in order to preserve the Euro – the instrument for ensuring the survival of the EU’s centrally-planned, one size fits all, European economy.

Socialists try to create a more equal society. They believe in levelling. Unfortunately, owing to the nature of socialism itself, that philosophy always ends up achieving the opposite of its aims. The other day, Alexander Boot put this in a nutshell in his persistently enlightening blog where he says we must not confuse the socialists’ slogans with their practical policies:

“All socialist economies (which is to say all modern economies) have the widest gap between the rich and the poor. And, the less developed the socialist economy, the greater the gap, the harder the poor are hit. For example, in the 19^th century, the era of dog-eat-dog capitalism, the average ratio of income earned by US corporate directors and their employees was 28:1. Yet in 2005, when socialism had made heavy inroads into the post-New-Deal US economy, this ratio stood at 158:1.”

There are comparable figures for Britain

In other words, the less money there is around, the more of it will be grabbed by the rich and the poor will consequently get poorer.

This is the truth expressed by Friedrich Hayek in his classic The Road to Serfdom (1944)

In fact, all socialist roads lead to serfdom. When socialism is practised moderately, the poverty of those in the lower reaches of the social scale is quite moderate. Where socialism is practised more thoroughly, poverty consequentially becomes more severe. Where socialism is practised absolutely – one might say ideally – the poverty of the poorest is absolute too. Moreover, extreme socialism always ends up in dictatorship, the oppression of the people and, in the most notorious cases such as the USSR under Stalin and China under Mao, the socialist experiment culminates in gulags and mass slaughter: by Stalin at least twenty millions and by Mao around sixty millions.

But socialism sounds so promising, so nice, kind and humanitarian. So what goes wrong? It is always the same thing which goes wrong: the replacement of the free market by the planned economy.

The free market has raised more people out of poverty than any other economic system in the history of the world. So why are such notable humanitarians as the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury so down on it?

I described socialism as an experiment. Why do we keep on repeating an experiment which always fails?

As Einstein said, “To keep on doing the same thing while expecting different results is the first sign of madness.”

09 Jul

Methodismophobia

The BBC has done us a great service by revealing that between 2010 and 2014 more than 11,000 honour crimes were recorded by the police. We are even given the definition of an honour crime which is “one committed to protect or defend the reputation or supposed honour of a family or a community.”

Diana Nammi, director of the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation – a charity that provides support to Middle Eastern women living in the UK who are the victims of honour crimes – said the figures suggested incidences of the crime remain “consistently high” in the UK and that the issue is “not going away.”

She said: “Unfortunately the figures do not show the real extent of the problem. So many crimes are unreported because the perpetrators are often the victim’s own family. We need a national strategy for all agencies – including police forces, courts, and schools – to be trained and to work together to end this problem.”

A police spokesman said, “These crimes go largely under the radar of local agencies, including the police. The number of crimes reported is certainly only a very small proportion of total crimes committed.”

These crimes are usually committed against women and include beatings, abduction, imprisonment in the victim’s own home, ostracism and female genital mutilation.

Estimates of how many women and girls have been subjected to FMG in Britain range from 65,000 to 137,000. FMG has been illegal in this country for thirty years.

In all that time, not a single perpetrator has been convicted.

Unfortunately, the BBC report doesn’t tell us which community is overwhelmingly responsible for this disgraceful practice. But I have my suspicions and I can understand why prosecutions are not brought against the barbarians, bigots and sadists who subject women ands girls to this torture in the name of religion and cultural integrity.

I’m pretty sure that the practitioners of FMG are mainly Methodists – give or take a handful of low church Anglicans. These people are very sensitive and they don’t like to be accused. When they are accused, they complain that they are being subjected to “Methodismophobia” or, as it might be, “Low churchophobia.”

And immediately the police back off for fear of giving offence to these Methodist and Anglican communities.

This must stop. The police must be given authority to enter the chapels, tin tabernacles, manses, bring-and-buy sales and coffee mornings and root out the atrocity of FMG once and for all.

All Things Considered

Rev Dr Peter Mullen

Author Archives: petermullen