Straight outta Gwent

You may think this is Compton.

It’s not. It’s Gwent.

Hat tip, Old Holborn.

EI….EIO

Meet the new Home Secretary, same as the old Home Secretary.

To borrow, and alter slightly, a line from Dame David, the European Investigation Order is here.

It is entirely possible that Theresa May has an even tighter grasp on the Orwellian concept of Doublethink than her predecessor, Jack Straw (let’s not dignify Alan Johnson and Jacqui Smith by even acknowledging that they ever held a post that was completely beyond their abilities)….

It does not amount to a loss of sovereignty….

Trans: It amounts to a loss of sovereignty.

It does not incur a loss of civil liberties.

Trans: I’m confused. Could you run that civil liberties thing past me again?

It is in the national interest to sign up to it.

Trans: It is in the interest of the unelected bureaucrats who now rule us that we sign up to it.

….we have the opportunity to influence its precise outcome.

Trans: In Europe. Run by Europe. Watched on CCTV by Europe.

Just what has changed about this directive that it no longer shows a “relish for surveillance and disdain for civil liberties”, Home Secretary? That shouldn’t tax a bright girl like you too much.

24 types of authoritarian

I don’t know whether to laugh or open a vein….

Click image to expand.

Joyeux Jour de la Bastille!

If todays anniversary serves any purpose at all, it is surely to remind us that today’s libertarian can easily become tomorrow’s tyrant.

US Declaration of Independence 1-0 Droits de l´Homme.

Trust the French to make a complete horlicks of a good idea.

The Eleutherophobia vote

I’m afraid Iain Dale’s got this Chris Grayling bed and breakfast thing completely arse about face.

One particularly scholarly commenter sums up the matter perectly, I think….

Sorry, Iain. You’re way south of the mark on this one.

As I said over at The Groan….

Private property.

Personal choice.

Anathema to leftists.

If the way forward for the brand of Tory thinking you represent is to legislate on matters of conscience, and that represents the majority view in the party, then one of us, Iain, is no longer a Tory.

I should perhaps also reiterate my further comment that if it were my own establishment gay couples would be more than welcome.

Iain couldn’t possibly be angling for the Son of Campbell post, could he?

Oh, and Old Holborn (for whom you should be voting if you live in Cambridge)….

and Al Jahom….

….are very naughty boys.

Justify this, Labour supporters

Are 30% of the electorate on drugs? Are they victims of mass hypnosis?

This is the only explanation I can find for the fact that they are willing to re-elect a government that is hell-bent on leading us, like lemmings, over the precipice.

Today, four men were convicted of armed robbery, after being found guilty by a judge in the first serious criminal trial to be heard without a jury.

There are those who will argue that this case was only heard by a single judge in extremis, as a result of three collapsed trials and allegations (of which no evidence was made public due to its “sensitivity”) of jury tampering. Whether that is or isn’t so is, quite simply, irrelevant. Why do we have a police force police service) if not to protect jury members from interference by potentially violent defendants?

The 400-year-old tradition of trial by our peers is, or rather was, a bulwark against the power of the state and part of the fabric of our society, and the legislation that did away with it was politically motivated, ill-conceived and downright dangerous. One of the first acts of the next government should be to end it, and the thousands of other restrictive laws and regulations introduced since Tony Blair’s Year Zero, 1997, which drive a coach and horses through our individual freedoms.

It is stupefying that, if we are to put any trust in the polls, 30% of the electorate believe this, our most authoritarian government since the death of Cromwell, deserves another five years in power.

Or perhaps they just don’t care, in which case, as the saying goes, they will get the government they deserve, as will we if we don’t strain every sinew to consign the Labour Party to decades in opposition.

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

In other news, it is illegal to sell goldfish to children.

My will to live is ebbing by the second.