Never the right time

On the one hand...

'Helen Brayley, from University College London's Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science, said people should not draw hasty conclusions.

'Ms Brayley, who wrote the first independent academic analysis of child sex trafficking, said: "When you jump in with thinking about race too quickly, you can miss a whole load of other things that are happening in other areas.

'"So by racially stereotyping this early on without a national scoping project... we don't know what the situation is in other areas around the country... you might be leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy of if people are looking for Asian offenders, they will only find Asian offenders."'

(Or you might want to avoid stereotyping people concerned about this as racist morons, but I digress)

On the other hand...

'He [Keith Vaz] said: "Why didn't Jack Straw say something about this (before)? He has represented Blackburn for 31 years, he's been the home secretary."'

(all from the Beeb, betraying no hint of awareness of a contradiction)

Well, actually, not the other hand but very much the same one. Too soon, too late, any time but the right time. Which is of course never.

Pravda!

'2 killed as Koreas exchange live fire'

- headline in the Morning Star. It's reassuring to see that some things never change.

Suspended by the chasubles

So the Right Reverend David Spart, Bishop of Neasden, has been suspended. Quite right, too, and I trust the incandescent +London has selected a suitably sensitive part of the anatomy to suspend this prize twerp by.

I had a long republican phase and am still by no means an ardent monarchist, though my respect for the Queen is considerable. I hope, however, that even as a Trot I would not have been quite mean-spirited enough to derive satisfaction from predicting the demise of somebody else's marriage before it had started.

What's not to dislike about Bishop Spart's remarks? I don't know which is worse, the smug schadenfreude or the no less smug assumption that he can be an outspoken red republican whilst simultaneously holding high office in an institution headed by the Queen.

Says Spart:-

“I think we need a party in Calais for all good republicans who can't stand the nauseating tosh that surrounds this event.

“I managed to avoid the last disaster in slow motion between Big Ears and the Porcelain Doll, and hope to avoid this one too.”

Well, I avoided it too. I spent an agreeable day with my comrades in Boulogne (note to Bishop Spart: nicer than Calais). As I recall, the local Communists laid on some kind of reception, but apart from them and the lefties from across La Manche practically nobody was out and about. Royalty addicts are nowhere thicker on the ground than in Europe's republics.

That was of course nearly thirty years ago. One would hope that having done a certain amount of growing up in the meantime would be an indispensdable qualification for a bishop - even the Bishop of Neasden.

And then he invaded Belgium...

Inevitably much instantly forgettable comment on The Engagement, but I did enjoy this slice of history from Christopher Howse:-

'The service, in St George’s Chapel, was full of copes, scarlet robes, ermine, silver trumpets, tabards, choirs and quizzing-glasses. But it was something of a shambles. The Garter Knights became entangled in a mêlée, Disraeli had to sit on his wife’s lap on the train back, and the four-year-old future Kaiser threw his jewelled dirk across the chapel in a tantrum, biting the leg of one of Bertie’s brothers when told off.'

Prophetic, did they but know. Bertie, the bridegroom, was the future Edward VII, and let's hope that William proves to be husband material of rather better quality than him.

Islamophobia (the real thing)

As ever. Just the kind of story to make you feel extra good about our civic duty to hand out passports to hate preachers.

Unbeliever On Board

Just walked past a car with a sticker in the back window declaring "ATHEIST" in big red letters. I just find this such a strange thing to do. What message is it meant to convey? That the owner considers himself (and I dare say it is a he) a better person than those of us who believe in fairy stories? Or a happier one? What, then, should I do with this information? Sorry, but I can't just decide to stop believing.

I could understand if it was saying "if you're one too you're not alone". But why, then, does the sticker also feature a fish logo cancelled by a diagonal red bar? It is not enough for our atheist to declare his own belief in nothing, he feels the need to point to somebody else's belief and actively reject it. What for?

And why, if you're going to do that, pick on the fish? I'm not the kind of Christian who puts a fish logo on his car, and not only because I don't own a car. For me those fish have always had a faint whiff of the Masonic handshake about them. But in point of fact I don't know of any actual harm attaching to them whatsoever. So in what way does our atheist feel that fishy types have got it in for him? It can't be, surely, that he suspects them of wanting to blow up a Tube train while he's inside it.

Or even of being liable to scratch his paintwork or let his tyres down. And that's the real irony, isn't it? The sticker suggests both a theoretical belief that Christianity is the root of all evil and a complacent assumption in practice that Christians are utterly harmless. I suppose as a Christian I should feel flattered that we're seen as such safe enemies to have. But I must confess to a degree of irritation.

Coincidentally, when I came home from my walk I started leafing through the Catholic Herald and came across their Thought for the Week:-

'If there were no God, there would be no atheists'
(G K Chesterton - of course)

If I ever do acquire a motor I'll be very tempted to put that in the back window, anticipating many stimulating conversations. Atheists are, after all, mostly harmless.

Waitrose don't preach

For a blogger of my stripe there is practically endless material to be found in food packaging. I've been meaning for ages to devote a post to the Co-op's instructions for preparing a carrot for consumption.

The other day Frau Grumpy brought home a bag of Waitrose potatoes adorned with the slogan "Grown with care by farmers who share our values". This really must not be allowed to pass without comment.

Let me first put before you the image of a gaggle of Fenland farmers being examined in their catechism by the local Waitrose buyer. Diverting, is it not?

Then let me suggest that Waitrose have clearly determined that our appetite for corporate sanctimony is so insatiable that we will tolerate it even when it is utterly, 500% vacuous. For these are not even organic potatoes. They are the ordinary, bog standard variety (indeed, since they come from Curmudgeshire it is very likely that they were grown in a former bog).

Our newly rediscovered compulsion to be preached at is, you might suppose, good news for the churches. Well, perhaps, but they will surely blow their chance if, as all too often seems to be the case, they confine themselves to preaching about exactly the same things as Waitrose. It's a contest they are unlikely to win. Just before the Papal Visit I was vastly entertained by a Catholic Herald piece penned by a chap of liberal leanings who'd decided there must be some good in the old boy after all on learning that he has had solar panels installed on the Vatican roof. Parody is redundant.

A final thought: with the Equality Act now in force, are Waitrose not skating on thin ice? I foresee an action brought by potato farmers who are ******ed if they're going to parrot the Waitrose creed and don't see why they should be discriminated against...

A warm welcome to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI

At least that's what I call him. What Stephen Fry and friends call him is "Pope Ratzinger".

Isn't the oafishness of that the most revealing moment in their letter? It reminds me of nothing so much as the Koran-burning antics of Pastor Terry Jones. The same gratuitous bad manners, betraying the same inability to deal on a human level with the existence of persons who sincerely hold different beliefs from oneself - in a word, intolerance.

Unlike Jones, though, Fry and Co. are members of a cultural and intellectual elite who have no excuse for ignorance. Also unlike him, they have not and will not trigger a frantic damage-limitation exercise. They will not need to lose any sleep over the possible consequences of sticking two fingers up at a billion Catholics.


Well, it ought to have at least one consequence. The ayatollahs of secular liberalism have it in for all Christians who are not prepared to swallow their agenda whole; the Pope is just a particularly potent symbol. Deo volente I'll be in the West End tomorrow evening to wave to him, and I hope to have plenty of non-Catholics for company.

NO POPERY: a liberal fatwa

With the round robin letter published in today's Guardian, the anti-Pope campaign cranks up to a shrill crescendo (I'm sure there's worse to come over the next few days, though). That not just the likes of Stephen Fry and Johann Hari but so many of the Great and the Good have deemed it worthy of their signatures is a depressing commentary on the state of intellectual life in Britain.

Practically every sentence cries out for fisking, but I'll be selective.

Among the misdeeds laid at B16's door is...

'Opposing the distribution of condoms and so increasing large families in poor countries and the spread of Aids.'

So if you come from a large family in a poor country, you can rejoice in the knowledge that all these movers and shakers consider you surplus to requirements.

Here, of course, we have plenty of condoms and plenty of Aids. Is it too much to ask for just a little humility from the ayatollahs of secular liberalism?

Another grievance, and a decidedly bizarre one:-

'In any case, we reject the masquerading of the Holy See as a state and the pope as a head of state as merely a convenient fiction to amplify the international influence of the Vatican.'

Riiight. So how, exactly, do we identify proper states? By the blushing diffidence with which they surrender any claims to international influence?

This one goes without saying:-

'Failing to address the many cases of abuse of children within its own organisation.'

Now because this is a debate in which no benefit of the doubt is ever extended to anyone who speaks up for the Pope, let me say at once that this is a serious matter which has been dreadfully mishandled by the Church. However, the accusation that he has failed to address it is simply untrue.

And let us take a look at the glass house from which the stones pour forth. Did I mention that Peter Tatchell is one of the signatories? Did I need to? In fact I strongly suspect that the wording is his. Now in 2008 Mr Tatchell had an article published in an Irish paper in which he argued that the law should allow adults to have sexual access to fourteen year olds. As he points out in the article, this is an issue on which he has campaigned since the 1990s. In 1997 the following appeared in a letter to the Guardian from Tatchell (at least Peter Hitchens says it was a letter, I remember it as an article):-

'The positive nature of some child-adult sexual relationships is not confined to non-Western cultures. Several of my friends – gay and straight, male and female – had sex with adults from the ages of nine to 13. None feel they were abused. All say it was their conscious choice and gave them great joy.

'While it may be impossible to condone paedophilia, it is time society acknowledged the truth that not all sex involving children is unwanted, abusive and harmful.'

I'd really like to see some of the Professors, Baronesses and Lords who have signed the round robin letter confronted with this quote and asked to defend their association with its author in a campaign ostensibly motivated by concern over child abuse. If this happens on the BBC or Channel 4 (which recently screened a hatchet job on the Pope fronted by... Peter Tatchell) I'll eat my hat. Mr Tatchell is Teflon Man incarnate.

Doubtless the Professors, Baronesses and Lords would, if put on the spot, counter by asking what this has to do with children being raped by priests. But that would be sophistry. The roll of shame of priestly rapes (and however much exaggeration of the figures has gone on the real ones are shocking enough) includes every case where a child was subjected to penetrative sex. Consent is irrelevant since the law deems children incapable of giving it.

Change the law, though, and you convert large numbers of priests from abusers to legal lovers. For example, in one of the US cases which was talked up in the hope (I use the word 100% advisedly) that the Pope could be incriminated, one of the victims recalled that he hadn't liked to say no because the priest was such a nice guy. Well, consent is consent. Plenty of adult sex happens on the same basis. Of course he had subsequently regretted it, but you can't have it both ways. If consent is valid you can't allow those who have given it to retrospectively cry "rape".

I would not dream of suggesting that Peter Tatchell has ever had nefarious designs on fourteen year olds. If he had, though, he could hardly have supplied himself with a more perfectly self-serving argument than this one (from the Irish Independent piece):-

'This sexual disempowerment of young people [by an age of consent set at 17 in Ireland] plays into the hands of adults who want to abuse them. Guilt and shame about sex also increase the likelihood of molestation by encouraging the furtiveness and secrecy on which abuse thrives.

'One way to protect young people against unwanted sexual advances is by promoting sex-affirmative attitudes which challenge the idea that sex is something sordid, and by empowering teenagers to stand up for their sexual rights. Sexually informed and confident youngsters are more likely to resist sexual exploitation.'

So the way to protect kids from abuse is by redefining it so that adults who succeed in persuading them that they want sex aren't guilty of it at all.

Sexual empowerment is for adults. Children have one sexual right and it is the right to be protected from sex. Blur that distinction and you start sliding towards the rationalizations of the paedophile in denial.

To sum up: I'm not the only person who remembers reading the Guardian in 1997. You can bet that 80-90% of the signatories to the letter did. If the campaign against the Papal Visit was really about protecting children, they'd have quietly ensured Peter Tatchell wasn't invited to sign. My suggestion is that they didn't because it isn't.

I have more on the letter but this is already a longish post. Another to follow, time permitting.

The rules for them and the rules for us

A senior Islamic cleric is about to pay Britain a visit, so the BBC marks the event by polling British Muslims on whether their faith has been shaken by the scale of Islamist terrorism. You can just see it, can't you?

Nein, danke!

What have I done to deserve this? Here's the latest offering that amazon.de is trying to interest me in:-

Can't help feeling the title comes over as ever so slightly sinister in German. That and the author's choice of shirt colour...

Grave Concerns, or the Jobsworths Who Make a Vase Difference

Bad news and good news on the hazards of life here in Curmudge. The local paper reminded us last week of an incident earlier this year in which the police took eleven hours to respond to an alleged rape. We also learned that the average speed cameras which have dramatically reduced deaths on the notorious A14 are threatened with the spending axe.

Thank goodness, though, that staffing levels at the City Council are adequate to protect us from the Invasion of the Killer Flower Vases...

'Cambridge City Council has introduced “rigorous” new rules to enforce a ban on glass and pottery containers left as memorials. Now the council is sending letters to relatives ordering them to remove flower vases which may pose a danger.

[...]

'Cllr Tim Bick, the authority’s communities chief, said there has been a “significant reduction” in memorabilia after the order was made.

'He said: “We recognise what remains might be because our notices have been missed or relatives may not have been able to visit, so we expect and hope that a direct reminder will help us complete this as sensitively as it is intended.”'

So no unkind comments, please. This being handled sensitively. And the risks here are plain for all to see:-

'The crackdown came after a child cut her hand on a broken glass vase in the grounds of Cambridge Crematorium – even though it had been damaged by a council worker.'

Always nice to see the folk who spend our taxes getting their priorities right. I'll let you know when my Curmudge City Council-issued regulation cotton wool suit is delivered.

Something completely different

I defy anyone to be grumpy after watching this.



Or for the even more unashamedly sentimental (and for added entertainment watch out for the pianist's haircut - made in Germany)...



He's great in Bach too.

More unsaintly remarks concerning a great Catholic man of letters

Thank you Ross, this has made my day.

In which Mr Grumpy blows his chances of canonisation

Light posting of late, so how about a sideswipe at a really easy target to get back into the swing of it? Oh, look, Cristina Odone's at it again. Today's pearl of wisdom:-

'I’m afraid Cardinal Newman was just too bitchy to be made a saint.

'The Catholic Church’s great intellectual convert was a magnificent writer, a bold thinker, a rigorous Church historian. But his Apologia Pro Vita Sua leaves no doubt that he was also supremely catty and precious, guilty of the self-absorption of a latter-day celeb.'

So no hint of bitchiness there, then. Pretty much a case of "takes one to know one", might one say (miaow)?

I've read the Apologia twice and it changed my life. Self-absorbed? Well, he was after all defending himself against a savage assault on his integrity. What he was he supposed to write about if not himself? If you really don't like the autobiographical slant, there is an abundance of other works to choose from. No doubt Cristina will be giving us her reactions to the Grammar of Assent in due course (miaow no. 2).

And what makes the Apologia unexpectedly unputdownable is, quite simply, the fact that Newman had a mind worth being absorbed in. Unlike some people (miaow no. 3).

Oh, and one other thing. Few Victorian English gentlemen would have doubted that the Italians were dirtier and more superstitious than the English. Certainly not Charles Kingsley. Might this view not, at the time, have contained a grain of truth? I'm not aware, though, that Newman ventured any predictions about comparative hygiene standards in the early 21st century - as Cristina's aggrieved present tense implies. Oh well, I suppose 1 September still counts as the silly season (miaow no. 4).

Double standards and self-deception: Barack Obama on the Ground Zero mosque

A brief questionnaire...

1. Should the construction of a mosque at Ground Zero be

(a) allowed in the name of religious freedom

or

(b) prevented on the grounds that it is grossly offensive to those bereaved by 9/11?

2. Should the Catholic convent at Auschwitz have been

(a) closed down on the grounds that it was grossly offensive to Jewish Holocaust survivors

or

(b) allowed to stay in the name of religious freedom?


Would I be wrong in thinking that a broad swathe of liberal opinion would reflexively choose answer (a) to both questions?

True, not a few conservatives would offer a (b) in both cases. That, however, would arguably be less inconsistent since the parallel is not an exact one. The Nazis did not claim Auschwitz as a Christian project; indeed they were very happy to murder Christians there, not least one who perished 69 years ago today. 9/11, on the other hand, was of course the work of men who saw themselves as Muslims acting in the name of Islam - and the fact that they sacrificed their lives for this conviction might seem like reasonably strong evidence that they held it sincerely.

Barack Obama, however, supporting the Ground Zero mosque, thinks he he knows their minds better than they did:-

'"Al-Qaeda's cause is not Islam," he said, "it is a gross distortion of Islam"'

Apart from anything else, this is simply a cowardly way to argue for religious freedom. 'Liberty, if it means anything, is the right to tell people what they don't want to hear' says the banner at Harry's Place (and whilst I'd rather not hear the gross dishonesty of pieces like this, I certainly don't want them banned). Religious freedom is a costly good. The cost would be a small one if it could be assumed a priori that all religions are just different ways of articulating a belief in motherhood and apple pie. They aren't.

And who made Obama an authority on what is Islamic and what is not? Undoubtedly many Muslims would agree with him about Al-Qaeda, and that is naturally very much to be applauded. But who will adjudicate between them and the many Muslims who take the opposite view?

9/11 was not the work of callow converts. Nearly all the perpetrators were born and bred in Saudi Arabia. So is Saudi Arabia a genuinely Islamic society or isn't it? Was the Islam these men absorbed from families and mosques real or bogus? If it was real, when and why did they stop being real Muslims? When they started drawing particular practical conclusions from the doctrine of jihad? That was a very bad thing to do and, to repeat, makes them very bad Muslims in the eyes of very many Muslims, but how did it turn them into non-Muslims, Mr President?

If his choice of a place of worship in Chicago is anything to go by, I'd say Barack Obama is a less than perfect Christian. If my church started putting material from Hamas into the parish magazine I'd protest, and if that didn't work I'd walk. What this doesn't do, though, is make Obama a non-Christian. Far worse people than him have been bad, but real, Christians.

It is widely believed among Muslims that 9/11 was not the work of Muslims at all, and that no Jews were killed because they'd all been warned to stay off work. Others believe that 9/11 was fitting punishment for America's crimes against Muslims. Are these non-Islamic beliefs? If they are, can Mr Obama assure us that none of these non-Muslims will be plausible enough to insinuate their way into the Ground Zero mosque?

Places of worship can be powerful symbols of reconciliation. The reconstructed Frauenkirche in Dresden is topped with a cross made in Britain by the son of an airman who took part in the bombing of Dresden. Reconciliation doesn't happen to order, though. If I was a Muslim wanting to build a mosque at Ground Zero, I'd wait to be invited.

Father forgive them, for they know not what they do

'Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said bibles translated into Dari had been found.

'"Yesterday at around 0800 (0330 GMT), one of our patrols confronted a group of foreigners. They were Christian missionaries and we killed them all," he told the AFP news agency.'

I'm more or less at a loss for words over this. The BBC lives down to expectations: you have to get past the headline and the first four paragraphs before you find a hint that this is a story of religious intolerance (whether the Taliban actually fired the shots is virtually irrelevant in this respect - they want to claim the credit).

One word I hope I won't hear today is "Islamophobia". I won't be answerable for the consequences if I do.

ContactPoint: goodbye and good riddance

For me it was what they call a defining moment: the Blair government's response to the nightmarish death of little Victoria Climbie.

The state had all the power it needed to save this beautiful child's life, and access to all the knowledge it needed to identify her as being at risk. It failed her through the blinkered incompetence of its servants.

How, then, did the New Labour state react when confronted with its inability to make proper use of the power it had? Simple: by awarding itself more power. If it could not protect a child where there were multiple indicators of risk, the "lesson to be learned" was that it must invent a new Stasi to monitor and collect data on the millions of children whose parents, far from torturing them to death, were doing a far better job with them than the state could dream of doing. And all this data was to be centrally held, with security as good as the competence and integrity of the people using it - people like, well, like the ones who let Victoria Climbie die under their noses.

Thus was ContactPoint born. And now, after an outlay of £235m and, at length, a change of government, the whole thing's being switched off.

Which seems as good a note as any for me to come out on. If the admirable James MacMillan can do it, why should I skulk in the closet? Like MacMillan, on 16 May I voted Tory.

And on the day the plug was pulled on ContactPoint, non, je ne regrette rien. The state has been too long in the hands of those who believe it is the cure for every ill and can never have too much power.

Quote of the Week

Brought to my attention by him and her:-

'Our society has moved towards, or some might say reverted to, a legislative approach that punishes those who commit crimes not solely on the basis of their actions, but on the reasoning behind those actions and the identity of the victim.'

Too right, mate. It makes a total mockery of the principle of equal justice for all, doesn't it?

Oh no, wait, this is a barrister defending hate crime legislation in the Grauniad. He's telling us about a good thing...

Typo of the month

'Social networking sties means [sic] that animal-rights campaigners can spread their message with touch-of-the-keyboard ease, says Judith Woods.' (here)

I'm all for confining the persons who have been harassing the Koupparis family to sties in which they can network with each other to their hearts' content. Not that I would want them to share their accommodation with pigs - that would be most unfair to those intelligent and pacific animals.

And since you ask, I only eat pork if free-range.