I have to boast that I lead such a busy life that I don’t have time for reading the books I should be reading. Although I did have a quiet hour or two to sit out in the warm October sun this afternoon, reading the actual Times newspaper, when a seagull shat on my head with such a splat that I had to abandon the Times and wash my hair.
Anyway, certain things have passed me by, one of which is a book called Easy Meat by Peter McLoughlin. Now I come to think of it, Jack Straw used that phrase many years ago, when he got a whole load of flak for characterising Pakistani men in an uncharacteristically (for him) politically incorrect way. Did he read this book?
Anyway, it brings me to Tommy Robinson, and, since the comments on Harry’s Place are routinely deleted after a week, I’ll save this one from the author of the aforementioned book, which popped up a couple of days ago below the line on that enigmatic Tommy Robinson thread. Why the mysterious “Lucy Lips” posted the piece, which consisted solely of an anti-TR video made by Hope not Hate, no-one seems quite sure. Was it a talking point - like, a ‘serving suggestion?’ Or was it supposed to be a straightforward expression of the kind of Tommy-bashing that is usually found on the ‘far left’?
So here’s the comment.
Peter McLoughlin • a day ago
Never ceases to amaze me how staggeringly ignorant people are.
1. EDL Mission Statement (circa 2011) reads like it was written by liberals. http://gatesofvienna.blogsp... Yet morons continue to describe it as a fascist or racist organisation.
2. Tommy Robinson's first appearance with the EDL on TV was on BBC Newsnight in 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/... Notice the banners promoting racial unity, notice the burning of the Swastika and denunciation of Nazism. Do you even notice the black men surrounding Tommy Robinson? When I first saw this in 2009 it was clear to me that this was not a racist or fascist organisation. Further investigation of photographs and videos of EDL protests in 2009 showed that signs about women's rights and opposing Muslim homophobia were to be found peppered in those early protests. Thus the appearance on Newsnight was not an outlier, and the Mission Statement of 2011 was in keeping with the statements of the previous two years.
3. The trumped-up "mortgage fraud" case came back-to-back with a 3 year long "tax evasion" case, where a jury found Tommy not guilty. The next week the "mortgage fraud" case began, where Tommy was enjoined to plead guilty if he wanted to keep his mother (who had cancer) out of the dock. Cf. Mandelson and Geoffrey Robertson - Mandelson was "ennobled" after that became public. https://www.theguardian.com... One report in The Telegraph concluded that 1 million people in in Britain had committed this kind of mortgage fraud, but only Tommy Robinson was imprisoned. As with contempt of court, when the law is only applied to one man, it's not the rule of law anywhere except in a tyranny.
4. When the mortgage fraud case was taken to appeal, the High Court judged agreed that what was done to Tommy was unlawful, but decided that having been imprisoned and fined unlawfully, this was not sufficiently serious for him to rule in Tommy's favour and compensate him.
5. Hope Not Hate have done nothing about the systemic hatred that Muslim men have for non-Muslim schoolgirls. HNH could have taken a stance on this industrial scale rape before the EDL even existed. http://www.blowe.org.uk/200... Nearly a decade on, and to the extent that these gangs have faced any punishment, there is nothing but the presence of EDL marching across England that can claim responsibility for this eventuality.
6. The man who Tommy attacked at an EDL demo was in fact a neo-Nazi, sent to plague an organisation which had denounced Nazism from its inception. Such Nazis and racists would turn up at EDL protests precisely because organisations like UAF and HNH would tell them that such protests were the place for them.
7. When the police Domestic Extremism Unit investigated EDL, they concluded that EDL was not a far-right organisation. But HNH profits from promoting the idea that the UK suffers from a burgeoning threat from "the far right". If there is a rise in Nazism and Jew-hatred in Britain, give the thanks to the Left.
8. Tommy Robinson has more support than Theresa May and is fast catching up on Jeremy Corbyn. In fact, Corbyn's support is almost certainly inflated by the lunatic Left making multiple sock puppet accounts just to pretend that Corbyn is not unpopular.
9. My book with Tommy (Mohammed's Koran) went straight to No.1 on Amazon and stayed there until the entire print run ran out. Care to tell me of another book on the politics and terrorism of Islam which achieved that?
10. The media have lied about EDL and Tommy Robinson for the best part of a decade. Tommy exposed this week how they will edit together his words to take the answer from question and put it as the answer to another. Active deception.
I am specifically including this info to counteract some of the reflexive demonizations of TR that come from all and sundry, including some surprising names. Feel free to criticise, as always.
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Another casualty of my hectic lifestyle is that I thought I’d heard (some years previously) of the false-flag type of escapade, wherein some audacious academics submit jargon-filled parodies of academic papers for peer review and the like, and manage to have them taken seriously.
As I said, I’m sure I read about this ages ago, but it has surfaced again - or maybe it’s a new one.
Douglas Murray has written about it here, and its message has been adopted by EoZ and appropriately applied to Middle East studies here.
One has to ask if ‘Education’ is imploding. Lookout, Melvin, and careful what you wish for.
“Now that millions of people have gone to university, but have focused on a couple of subjects, the idea of getting a spread of knowledge is attractive.”
Nearly half of Britons can now expect to attend university by the time they are 30, compared with less than 10 per cent in the 1960s.
My view of the EDL is that it was a genuine expression of working class anger directed at the government's failure to address the Sharia penetration of the UK. I supported their democratic right to protest against a totalitarian movement that threatens all of us who are not part of it. I didn't approve of their methods (street confrontations) which I felt were playing into the hands of the Islamic-left alliance. It wasn't far right but it was infilitrated by a large element of the far right - as TR said himself.
ReplyDeleteTR himself is somewhat erratic (his attempt at a Portillo style TV makeover was dubious) but overall I find he has been good at mobilising opposition to Sharia, he is admirably fearless despite the machinations of the state to put him behind bars.
Harry's Place has long been a friend of unrestricted mass immigration, political correct abolition of free speech and allowing the growth of Sharia in the UK. I don't take them seriously.
One thing to understand about the grooming scandal is that action was taken only after the BNP - a real far right party - began to eat into the Labour vote, causing Blair and co. some real panic. It is an uncomfortable fact that it was the BNP - not Times journalists, or CPS prosecutors or anyone else - who brought this into the public arena. In other words our political elite knew about it all along but refused to take any action until it appeared there would be negative consequences. At that point wheels were set in motion and we have had a succession of huge trials. But the publicity around them has been tightly managed, both by the judiciary and the media, as we know from the way the BBC covers the trials - often relegating them to regional pages.
"Nearly half of Britons can now expect to attend university by the time they are 30, compared with less than 10 per cent in the 1960s."
ReplyDeleteWhen I went to university in the 1960s I doubt if more than 5% of students were awarded 'firsts', now the University of Surrey is handing them out to 40% of its intake. That means that in the 1960s out of 200 pupils only 20 got to university and one of those was awarded a 'first'. Now 100 go to university and 40 get 'firsts'. If only 'the brightest and best' made it to university in the 1960s and the present day numbers are at 50% because standards have been lowered one would still only expect one pupil out of 200 to go on to university and get a 'first' so the award rate should drop to 1% of intake!
One reason that fewer went then and more go now is that so many in the past went to teaching training colleges, polytechnics, nursing training and so on who now all go to universities.
DeleteAgree with your maths but....the current higher education system is devalued with such a wide range of worthless courses available and the guaranteed hand out of degrees that go with them.
ReplyDeleteIn reality your maths still apply. The very bright 1 in 200 will still rise to the top, as will the 20 in 200.
The rest will end up just like the 180 in the 60’s.
It’s still about ability, intelligence, ambition, opportunity and desire as it always was.
Handing out degrees like sweets will not make a jot of difference to an individuals success.
I think increased access to higher education is a mark of advanced economies. The USA led the way in making higher education available to a huge proportion of the population, and the USA is probably the least socialist or PC country on Earth. So I don't think increased access to higher education is anything other than to be expected.
DeleteThe UK has very much a two gear system. The Oxford-Cambridge plus other elite institutions really hold their own against all comers around the world. We should be proud of that and promote that.
There are certainly issues about other parts of the university sector. We only need x amount of media studies graduates. It's cruel and immoral to pretend to young people that by embarking on these courses they will be guaranteed a media career - they won't.
I don't believe access to higher education in the 1960s was that restricted, there were colleges and polytechnics that took in those not able to get the 'passes' needed for university. There may well have been a relatively small number of graduate quality candidates that missed out, perhaps because of illness but I don't think that was a major issue.
DeleteRather the window has been widened and all those ONCs and HNCs re-classified as 'degrees'. Not only has hairdressing now been equated to physics but the grade thresholds have been lowered. I would expect only one hairdessser on an ONC course to get top grade, why should calling it a degree mean that 40% of the class are now marked as top grade?
When I left school the Civil Service required only 'A--level' passes to join at the Executive Officer grade, now they appoint 'honours graduates' to jobs two grades below that, jobs that any average secondary modern child could have done at age 14.
That's a good point about the alternatives to Universities. I recall many of the Polytechnics had good reputations...although there were also complaints about the ones that focussed too much on the then fashionable sociology (whatever happened to sociology did it die or mutate into women's, gender and race studies?).
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