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The British government has issued a formal apology for Britain’s conduct during the Second World War.
Speaking from the House of Commons, Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett described Britain’s conduct in the 1939-1945 period as “shameful”:
We recognise that British military aggression between the years of 1939 and 1945 led directly or indirectly to the deaths of many, many people in Europe, Asia, Africa and elsewhere. It is time to acknowledge this fact and to apologise for it.
The opposition Conservatives roundly condemned the Foreign Secretary’s remarks as not going far enough and being “too little, too late”. They urged the Government to issue a further apology for all the environmental damage inflicted on the world by British forces during the war and since.
In Germany, a spokesman for an association of SS veterans described the apology as “a good start”.
Whatever you may be doing this weekend, whether it’s playing a few rounds of golf or taking a trip to the seaside or pruning your rose bushes, let us help you to set the mood and deepen your sense of tranquility and peace with this admirably tolerant, progressive and diversity celebrating video.
Relax and enjoy!
I have always regarded it as reliably axiomatic that government departments are named after whatever it is they are trying to put a stop to. One need look no further than the Department of Education for practical proof of this principle in action.
For the same reason I have always regarded it as a blessing that the legal system has been administered by something called ‘The Home Office’. For all of its indisputable shortcomings, I took great comfort from the fact that we do not, nor have we ever had, a ‘Ministry of Justice’.
Until now:
New department: the Ministry of Justice
A Ministry of Justice will be created to provide a stronger focus on the criminal justice system, and on reducing re-offending.
This new ministry will take over the staff and responsibilities of the Department for Constitutional Affairs, and the National Offender Management Service (NOMS), including the prison and probation services, and have lead responsibility for criminal law and sentencing…
The Prime Minister said the new Ministry of Justice ‘will take the leading role in delivering a fairer, more effective, speedy and efficient justice system.’
I rather think that a more realistic appraisal will be opaque, incompetent and, above all, self-serving.
They may as well just go ahead and set up the Ministries of Truth, Prosperity and Freedom and I daresay that, in the fullness of time, they will.
I suggest that you read this before you sit down to eat breakfast and not afterwards, lest you spend the rest of your morning mopping semi-digested coco-pops off the kitchen floor. Here are a few tasters:
I’m in tune with the ‘I can’ generation
Wow! Is that anything like the Pepsi Generation? Like, totally kewwwwllll. Not to mention hot, hip, happening, in the groove and sexeeeeeee.
That is why social and economic change today require government leadership and profes sional innovation, as well as mass mobilisation.
Certainly, sir. Corporal Tremayne reporting for duty, sir (salutes).
In public services, an “I can” service will continually ask: how can we devolve power, funding and control to the lowest appropriate level, while maintaining high national minimum standards? Can teachers and children inject more creativity into what is learnt, where and how?
Well, ‘I can’ tell him what the ‘lowest appropriate level’ is for funding and power.
This is not a zero-sum game between government power and citizen power; it is a genuine partnership that breaks down the divide between producer and consumer.
Eh?
It doesn’t get any better than that. This man has penned a whole mainstream editorial vision every single syllable of which is complete bollocks. I have to ask myself whether he actually believes this horse-manure or is he just saying these things because he thinks that this is what the public wants to hear? What world does he see through his eyes? Does he actually see hordes of shiny, happy, clappy ‘I can’ people exalting at his feet and begging him to lead them to the Promised Environment? Is he so twisted by lies that he can open wine bottles with his fingers or he is so spaced-out on his own propoganda that he has drifted hopelessly away from anything that could reasonably be described as the real world?
Perhaps one of you ‘I can’ types out there can tell me.
It will not have escaped the notice of our regular readers that I have shown a somewhat less than charitable attitude towards the leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron. I think the time has come to provide some reasons for my hostility.
I realise that some people (maybe Cameron supporters among them) would dismiss my onslaught as the product of a crotchety, pessimistic and intolerant personality. Well, as a matter of fact, I am crotchety, pessimistic and intolerant but I have what I consider to be very good reasons for singling out David Cameron as the particular object of my animosity.
I also want to make it clear that I am not hostile to Cameron because he is not a libertarian. I do not expect Conservatives to be libertarians hence they are called ‘Conservatives’. Nor am I bitter about the fact that he is not a Conservative either. I expect very little from the current crop of moral and intellectual midgets that have aggregated in the Conservative Party and I am seldom disappointed.
Nor am I especially, or even moderately, outraged by his brazen careerism, his opportunism and his readiness not just to be cynical but to openly be seen to be cynical (e.g. peddling his eco-friendly bicycle to work, a few yards in front of the gas-guzzling limo bearing his briefcase). To this extent Mr. Cameron is probably no better or no worse than any of the other political jobbists who have infested our public realm like a colony of plague bacteria in the lymph node of a 14th Century peasant and from where they can, and do, distribute their pathogens around the national bloodstream. → Continue reading: What’s that coming over the hill?
After global warming, what will be the next hysteria?
If it were not for the fact that I saw ‘300’ on its UK opening night (i.e. last night), then this hilariously PC review would have me thrusting my hand into my pocket to whip out the price of a ticket:
It’s an ugly business: brutal, racist, homophobic – dare I say fascist? Harmless escapism indeed.
Damn those warmongering Neo-Spartans!
I am sending an email to the producers with my suggested title for a sequel – “300 II: the Persians are back and this time they’re Islamic!!” The cultural cringe alone will be worth the budget.
As odd as it may seem today, there was a time when the Conservative opposition was expected to call for cuts in the levels of taxation if only to pressurise the Labour government into not raising taxes too much or too quickly. Occasionally (very occasionally) they even lived up to this expectation.
But that ‘golden era’ is a long way behind us now:
Gordon Brown is expected to raise taxes substantially on larger-engined cars in Wednesday’s Budget.
Some reports suggest that road tax on the least fuel-efficient cars will double to about £400 a year.
Mr. Brown is not to be blamed. After all, it is sheer foolishness to expect a pig to issue anything but a grunt. No, the man to blame is David Cameron. His pernicious eco-tax manifesto has not only incited a pissing contest with the current Chancellor to see who inflict more punishment on those wicked Gaiacidal motorists, it has also (in electoral terms) legitimised this latest round of pure plunder.
The Tories are the enemies of the people so please remember your ABC (Anyone But Cameron).
Tomorrow is national No Smoking Day. Whoopeeeeeeee!!!!
I shall mark the occasion by puffing my way through at least one pack of my favourite Belgian cigarettes (not contributing to the cavernous coffers of HM Treasury makes the experience so much more enjoyable) while blowing great, billowing clouds of grey, acrid, carcinogenic fumes into the air.
I shall consider quitting if and when we ever have a national No Nagging, Preaching, Hectoring, Finger-Wagging, Pecksniffing, Condescending, Nannying Or Sanctimonious Sermonising Just Bugger Off And Mind Your Own Fucking Business Day.
Some of the so-called faithful are shamefully unwilling to put up with just a teensy-weensy bit of discomfort for the sake of Gaia:
World-renowned polar explorers and educators, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, today suspended their historic expedition to the North Pole seven days in, citing severe safety concerns due to a combination of damaged gear, frostbite and extreme cold.
The goal of this year’s expedition has been to raise awareness among students and adults worldwide on the impact of global warming on the Arctic region.
Mind you, it could have been worse. If there was such a thing as global cooling they would have died from heatstroke.
My inestimable thanks to the commenter who linked to this exquisitely germane wiki in the comments section of my post below:
Sumptuary laws (from Latin sumptuariae leges) were laws that regulated and reinforced social hierarchies and morals through restrictions on clothing, food, and luxury expenditures. They were an easy way to identify social rank and privilege, and were usually used for social discrimination. This frequently meant preventing commoners from imitating the appearance of aristocrats, and sometimes also to stigmatize disfavored groups. In the Late Middle Ages sumptuary laws were instated as a way for the nobility to cap the conspicuous consumption of the up-and-coming bourgeoisie of medieval cities.
I was wrong about Cameron. He is not trying to drag us back into the 19th Century, he is making a bid for the 14th Century!! I suppose it may be to some advantage that we know exactly what is driving him and his ilk. Of even more advantage is to accept that the struggle for freedom, prosperity and progress is necessarily going to encompass some degree of class war.
The Conservative Party has long been regarded as having a certain nostalgic, and some would say romantic, yearning for the past. I had no idea that this included a desire to drag us all back to the 19th Century:
Harsh new taxes on air travel, including a strict personal flight “allowance”, will be unveiled by the Conservatives tomorrow as part of a plan that would penalise business travellers, holidaymakers and the tourist industry.
The proposals, to be disclosed by George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, include levying VAT or fuel duty on domestic flights for the first time as part of a radical plan to tackle global warming.
The Conservatives will also suggest – most controversially of all – rationing individuals to as little as a single short-haul flight each year; any further journeys would attract progressively higher taxes, a leaked document entitled Greener Skies suggests.
Even if this is just policy-mongering, the fact that such proposals could even be considered is per se a megaphone-warning about the true nature of the Tories and their future likely conduct.
The mobility that has been afforded to people on relatively low incomes by cheap international air travel is one of the most productive and liberating benefits of this age. By declaring war on this, Cameron and his lickspittles show themselves to be not just opportunist but also disreputable and loathsome (as is anyone who either supports them or votes for them).
As for me, I will be unaffacted. I do not intend to hang around long enough to witness the huddled masses setting sail from Southampton to seek a better life in the free world. If (God forbid) Cameron does win power in the next election, I shall utilise my air travel ‘ration’ to purchase a one-way ticket out.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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