Northern Ireland is run by the mob

Following the collapse of the Robert McCartney murder trial, you can understand why Northern Ireland is referred to by some as "Sicily without the sunshine".

The paramilitaries may not be bombing Belfast, but they continue to shoot, stab and maim anyone who stands in the way of their criminal activities. The rule of law is fast becoming replaced by the rule of Omertà. But the politicians in London and Dublin have been too busy congratulating themselves to notice. They consider Northern Ireland to be a showcase to the world on how to achieve peace and aren't going to let anything so trivial as organised crime overshadow it.

But organised crime isn't trivial. It blights the lives of millions and will ultimately hurt Northern Ireland just as much as the troubles did. Do the people of Ulster really want their country to end up like Sicily where 80% of businesses have to pay protection money and where the local population live in fear of the Mafia, knowing that theirs is the only authority that counts? If I was Tony Blair, it's not a legacy I'd be proud of.

I'm tired of hearing that "Something must be done about Mugabe"

So Mugabe has "won" another sham election, and is feted by his fellow African leaders as a statesman....so little has changed in Africa. People will continue to cry out "something must be done" and of course precisely nothing will be done.

I am struggling to understand why so many on the left continue to revere the UN as a holy institution after their failure in Srebrenica, Rwanda, Darfur, and now Zimbabwe. In fact the tragedy of Zimbabwe points to the total failure of transnational institutions altogether. So long as the Middle East, Africa (with a few exceptions), Russia and China continue to be run by dictators, the UN and African Union will have little clout.

And I'm not sure what the solution to Zimbabwe is. America and Britain are too tied up militarily to liberate Zimbabwe and even if they did, the whole world (and the liberal intelligentsia) would accuse them of colonialism, and it's not even clear who or what would fill the vacuum left by Mugabe.

The most likely scenario is that Zimbabwe will just carry on imploding to the point that most of her population will have fled abroad and even Mugabe's supporters will be starving. Then presumably there will be a coup with yet another dictator to take Mugabe's place.

The BBC's bias towards Mugabe

The BBC is often criticised for its alleged one sided reporting of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. But, it's not only Israel where the BBC gets it wrong. Check out Daniel Finkelstein's blog where he comments on the BBC's coverage of the "election" in Zimbabwe. Their correspondent John Simpson is quoted as saying:

"that Mr Mugabe is on course for a remarkable victory, when only three months ago he seemed to be on the ropes".

It can hardly be called a victory when it was a rigged election. He finishes his report by saying:

"The moral is clear: never underestimate Robert Mugabe's ferocious determination to stay in power, nor the ability of his political opponents to destroy their own case".

Whether it's the Islamists or Zanu PF, the BBC seems to have a soft spot for despots and autocrats.

The EU is increasingly beginning to resemble a communist politburo

The EU's obsession with "ever closer union" reminds me of that cliche "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". Its founding ideals were based on the desire to prevent the kind of nationalism and populism that led to the rise of Hitler. Unfortunately, this has blinded it to the ideals of national sovereignty and democracy. The Irish are a fiercely independent people. It was less than 90 years since they were freed from centuries of British rule. Not surprisingly, they are not in a hurry to be ruled by a foreign power and in the light of this, you can understand why they rejected the Lisbon treaty. Similarly, former communist countries such as the Czech republic have bitter memories of the Warsaw pact and are in no hurry for political union. For them, the EU is increasingly beginning to resemble the communist regimes that only 20 years ago were running their countries.

Neither the Soviet Union nor any of the Warsaw pact countries had any democratic legitimacy, but were run by a political elite who thought they knew what was best for their people and felt little need to consult them. National sovereignty and democracy does not equate to nationalism and populism. It's high time Europe's political elite adjusted to reality.

Education is far too important to be left to politicians

I can think of no quote that better sums up the dumbing down of Britain's educational system than the following from Charles Moore:

No one would say that, because it is useful to be able to drive, the driving test should be made easier. No one says that it is "elitist" to insist that candidates know how to make an emergency stop. No one, so far as I know, compiles figures to show that a disproportionately high proportion of white males from private schools passes the driving test, and therefore "access" to test passes should be skewed in favour of black girls at state schools. Everyone knows that it is more important to avoid car crashes.

The quicker the Tories get in and introduce school vouchers, the better.

Britain's inhumane health service

It has been reported in the Times that the medical establishment is in revolt against denial of NHS treatment to patients who pay privately for cancer medicines. This follows several recent cases of cancer patients who have tried to purchase life saving drugs that were not available on the NHS. Some have since died. Britain has one of the worst survival rates in Europe for cancer. Many life saving drugs that are freely available in other European countries are not available on the NHS.

But hold on a second, isn't our national health service supposed to be morally superior to America's 'private' system (so private in fact, that 45% of healthcare is paid for by the US Government)? The latest NHS scandal has killed this myth once and for all.

It seems to me that the NHS is driven more by petty class hatred rather than by any desire for universal health coverage. This latest scandal is yet another story that is likely to infuriate Britain's already overburdened taxpayers.

Just Journalism

If you have a few minutes to spare, this video from the recently launched 'Just Journalism' is worth watching. Their aim is to promote accurate and responsible reporting about Israel in the British media.

Never blame the perpetrator

There is a good post on Spectator blogs about the violence that took place on the Tube on Saturday night. Rather than blame the perpetrators, the RMT Union bizarrely decided to blame London's Mayor for bringing in the booze ban too hastily.

There does indeed seem to be a general trend for blaming the supposed provocation rather than the perpetrators, whether it's hooliganism, suicide bombers or knife crime. Only the other week, there was a "yoof worker" interviewed on the one o' clock news who blamed knife crime on kids having nothing to do. Just think, if only our cruel heartless government were to build more youth centres, there wouldn't be so much violence.

If only it was that simple.

Why we can't stand up to Putin

After years in the political wilderness, conservative political thought seems to be making something of a comeback in Britain. In the circumstances, the launch of the new magazine Standpoint could not have come at a more appropriate time.

If you have time to browse, it's worth reading Edward Lucas's piece about Putin's Russia. It goes a long way towards explaining why the West is unable to stand up to Russia, North Korea or Iran. During the cold war, both Reagan and Thatcher had the self confidence to defend western values. Today, we no longer know what we stand for. If you attack the lack of human rights in China or the lack of democracy in Russia, the likely response is "what about..." i.e. "What about Abu Ghraib" or "What about Guantanamo" - Western democracies have never been perfect, but we have always had an advantage when compared to non-democratic countries. To quote Edward Lucas:

When things went wrong in communist countries, you were powerless. In Western countries, you had a chance, either through politics, the law, or the media, to get something done about it.

We seem to have forgotten this basic fact.

Changing attitudes towards abortion

It's interesting to see how attitudes towards abortion have changed in Britain. It used to be seen in the simplistic light of religious Americans (pro life) vs enlightened secular Europeans (pro choice).

Clearly it's more complicated than that. Contrary to popular belief, abortion is legal in ALL states of the US (where you have a constitutional right to an abortion) whereas it is still illegal in some European countries such as Poland and Ireland. Secondly, it is no longer a religious vs secular debate. Scientific advances have increased the viability of the foetus to a much earlier stage of pregnancy. And we now understand that the foetus can experience pain at a much earlier stage than was previously thought.

In the light of this, I wonder whether progressives will one day re-examine their attitude towards abortion. For over 40 years now, they have been chanting the mantra about "a woman's right to choose". But there's nothing progressive about killing a human being. You don't have to be a right wing born again Christian to realise this. As our understanding of foetal development improves and as scientific advances continue, we may one day ask ourselves how we allowed abortions to take place at all.

How to fight the knife crime epedemic

Another weekend and another rash of violent deaths, it's become as predictable as rain on a bank holiday. And after 11 years of promising to be "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" all that Labour can do is to promise ever more crime initiatives.

Of course, we don't need more initiatives or "tougher sentences", we just need the authorities to impose the tougher sentences already available. But as I said in my previous post, this country is run by an establishment who lives in another universe. To quote Stephen Pollard...

...police must be given full powers to stop and search children. But instead, not only do the courts and CPS treat children found with knives with kid gloves, dangerous idiots such as Sir Al Aynsley-Green, to whom we pay £130,000 a year for his wisdom as the Children's Commissioner for England, warn that allowing police the power to search children might antagonise them. That just about sums up how the whole edifice works: God forbid that a potential murderer is upset by having his coat examined.

Nostalgia for a bygone age

When I was growing up in the and 1970s and 80s, there was a tendency amongst the older generation to bemoan the behaviour of unruly teenagers and to get nostalgic about the 1950s, the "good ol' days" when murderers were hanged and when unruly school pupils got the cane. Much of that generation has died off or has long retired. It has been replaced by an ageing baby boomer generation who similarly cling to a bygone age, this time the 1960s, and who seem determined to stick to their discredited utopian ideals by any means necessary. The problem is that much of that generation are now sitting in parliament, running our education system and judging in our courts.

It seems to me that over the past 40 years, our politics have come full circle. Where we once had an elitist establishment of toffs running the country, we now have an elitist establishment of guardian readers running our country instead. And much like the toffs, they are highly educated, enjoy a priveleged lifestyle and understand little of what goes on beyond their enclaves of Islington and Hampstead.

Your average voter may not be Oxford educated, nor are they particularly well versed in the ideals of penal reform, but they understand that taking violent offenders off the street would make their housing estates safer and that a more visible police presence would ward off the thugs who terrorise their neighbourhood. But instead they are patronised by a ruling elite which believes that criminals are victims and that regards any effort to be tough on crime as pandering to the tabloids. The Labour party used to be the anti-establishment party and on the side of the underdog, but now they are the establishment. You can understand why Labour's election tactics backfired so spectacularly in Crewe. There is little point in attacking toffs when you end up behaving increasingly like them.