A wedding present from the Home Office: postscript

Regimes which have prevented people with differing backgrounds from living together as man and wife:

1. Apartheid South Africa

2. Nazi Germany

3. Labour Britain

Like all right thinking people I was disturbed by the successes of the BNP in the European elections. I will never be found among those trivializing the threat to our liberties from a party with such a deplorable political pedigree. However, whilst the threat from these still fairly marginal opponents of 'diversity' remains theoretical, the stripping away of said liberties by the left-liberal establishment - as a direct consequence of their pursuit of 'diversity' - has long since become reality.

Keep the BNP out - don't vote Labour!

A wedding present from the Home Office

Hard to imagine many worse ways of starting a marriage: eighteen months of separation enforced by the whim of the state. As so often these days it's a whim compounded from a lethal cocktail of plain incompetence, mendaciousness and political correctness.

It seems no time since the government was in denial over forced marriages. Not a problem. OK, maybe a teeny weeny problem in a handful of cases, but nothing that existing legislation can't deal with.

Then somehow the balance tipped, and now we're in the next phase - the one where they try to find a fix that will let them off having to come clean about what the problem is.

For we do all know, don't we, that forced marriages are not a prominent feature of traditional Canadian or Welsh culture. And the Person from the Ministry knows that we know. But in order that he and his masters and mistresses may avoid pronouncing the 'M' word and/or the name of the country that separates India from Afghanistan, two newly-weds must be punished for a crime that everybody knows neither of them has committed. And just to add insult to injury, they get a lecture from the Person from the Ministry about what an evil crime it is that they haven't committed, and how admirable it is that the government is 'tackling' it (at their expense).

No doubt Rochelle and Adam will spend large parts of the next two eighteen months celebrating diversity. Unless, that is, they're too busy organizing Adam's permanent relocation to Canada.

Here's another take on the story. Note particularly the government's forced marriage poster: does either of those shackled hands look as if it comes from that mysterious anonymous space to the left of India?

Service announcement

For fairly obvious reasons I am switching on comment moderation for the time being. Sorry the technology doesn't allow me to exempt you, Snoopy, and please don't be put off!

To whom it may concern

Visitors to the blog have by now had ample opportunity of gathering that I am a scummy little smearbag. I suspect one or two may be feeling that the novelty is wearing off. I certainly am. So I have deleted the last batch of comments to this effect, and any more in the same vein will meet with the same fate.

Apart from anything else, I have no proof that the writer is who he claims to be. And I would certainly feel defamed if someone were posting comments in my name which made it look as if I was suffering from some digital variant of Tourette's Syndrome.

If the writer is indeed who he says he is, he may rest assured that an apology for legitimate and pertinent comment on material which he has chosen to place in the public domain is as unforthcoming as ever.

One last point. I recently leafed through a copy of the Economist whilst waiting to board a plane. Something rather unusual struck me about it: it's an anonymous magazine. Not a by-line from start to finish. And it is a former senior editor of the same magazine (or someone impersonating him) who repeatedly accuses me of moral cowardice for blogging anonymously. There's nowt so queer as folk.

Al-Beebi update

A loyal reader thinks I've been slacking long enough, so here goes, following on from the theme of the last. The Beeb and the Middle East - enough material for an entire something-or-other.

Whilst last time I was suggesting that a little contextualization wouldn't go amiss, here we get contextualization in abundance. Six bomb attacks on Baghdad churches over a single weekend might make it appear that this is not a great place to be a Christian, but these things are relative...

'There are some 750,000 people in Iraq's Christian community. Christian targets have been attacked in the past, but are spared much of Iraq's deadly violence.

'They have been targeted in some areas of the country, mainly in Baghdad and in the northern city of Mosul.

'However, most of the violence in Iraq is sectarian in nature and targets either Sunni or Shia Muslims.'

So, no whining from you Christians. Count your blessings!

When I first read the story this morning it was even more dismissive; methinks the middle paragraph has been inserted later.

Given the small size of the Christian minority, I'm not sure whether the writer's perception that Christians have been 'spared' is based on hard statistics or on the finger-in-the-wind approach. Iraqi Christians themselves feel the wind coming from a very different direction - they're emigrating in droves, and 750,000 is already almost certainly a gross overestimate of their numbers. Odd that that's not mentioned, don't you think?

And in any case, if we're going to do odorous comparisons, 'poor Muslims bearing the brunt of the violence' isn't quite the whole story, is it? There's also the small matter of who it is that thinks other people's places of worship are legitimate targets. Number of mosques blown up by Iraqi Christians, please? Over to the Beeb's man in Baghdad... Hmmm, we're having some trouble accessing that statistic. We'll get back to you as soon as we can.

Rod Little professes to be shocked that an esteemed colleague from his BBC days has taken the mullahs' shilling and joined the One Formerly Known As Gorgeous at Press TV. Really, Rod?

One for Biased BBC

A minute or two for blogging, and a topic chosen more or less at random (albeit one I've touched on before).

The murder of a young Egyptian woman by a deranged defendant in a German courtroom is a tragic occurrence. But at the BBC there are tragedies and tragedies. If we're talking martyred Egyptians, you might think that this or this would merit a place beneath the 'SEE ALSO' heading. And you might think it a little inconsistent that only one of these three stories contains the word 'martyr'.