.How strangely these qualities can bump into each other .I noticed that the born again bleeding heart Iain Dale whilst Rawandering on the victim trail had time to mention that he would be nervous about giving money to charity . This reminded me of an article by Peter Hitchens entitled ( in his endearing way) “The Fat Cats Who Betray our Generosity”. Sure enough there it lay in my “Sleaze file “( next to Tax and after Race Relations ). Wiping a sentimental tear from his beseeching eye Peter cries out …….
“The well loved organisation you have supported since you dropped your childish pennies into its collecting tins may now be little more than a politically correct pressure group which long ago stopped doing what it says on the tin- and it does noted your money anyway. One renowned institution now receives 88% of its resources directly form the tax payer…we do not in most cases give our money for company cars £100,000 salaries and TV campaigns that have a political agenda”
This is not the first time I have come across stories about the conduct of international charities which casts their role in a rather strange light and I have always had doubt s about the nature of the transaction.
Peter Hitchens` tone becomes monotonously acidic though and I have come across another unpleasant but readable man in George Walden whose book “ Time To Emigrate “ I am just reading . Its one of those entertaining but infuriating pot boilers journalists write. A collection of bite sized polemics hung on a fairly arbitrary washing line .” Big Babies “ by Michael Bywater is another and I always think Judy Burchill when I find myself reading one
He spends a lot of time on the subject of immigration in a sort of cod-erudite Yosemite Sam mood that I find a bit embarrassing in one so old .Words like dumb-ass hang as incongruously as a medallion on an old swingers chest but it is splenetically riveting for all that . It is written as a letter to his son who is thinking of leaving the country after his own young son was brutally attacked in a racially motivated assault ( the most common kind of course). Perhaps this explains the unrelenting venom
“ With Muslims its become bad form to say they have the biggest households in the country, an average of 3.8 because its racist to talk about them breeding like rabbits …The fact is 57% of births in the Capital are to mothers who were born abroad says something about the kind of City you’ll soon find yourself living in…Anyone who thinks that selective immigration ..is an abomination should remember that countries that have long been in the habit of sermonising the rest of us , like Canada , have been practising it for years ….How can the words “sense of national purpose “retain any meaning in a country increasingly composed of co-habiting tribes whose chief point of agreement seems to be the urgency of abandoning indigenous habits and institutions for PC reasons “
On David Cameron he turns to the flame thrower up to eleven…
“ I have children , you have children. Can we imagine ourselves playing on our son’s disabilities to show we are in touch with the health needs of the masses ? Nauseating isn’t it ? You can’t imagine Churchill or Macmillan saying I’m one of you because I’ve got an disabled son and he’s treated on the national health. DeGaulle had a disabled child , the only thing he ever said publicly was when she died.. “Now she is like everyone else”
Allowing or the generation DeGaulle belonged to that is rather moving but David Cameron is only part of the new order not its creator . George Walden on the other hand has written a book palpably aimed at money and its supposed inspiration was a vicious assault on is Grandson ……. I end up by feeling queasy at so much hate perhaps its woolly minded of me but there is too little English coolness here. Roger Scruton said “ “How can we decided what to do if there is no ‘we.” in England an elegy a far deeper book both are worth reading though.
To be fair to Walden he does occasionally lighten the mood and once with one of my all time favourite gags from a comedian who bloomed very late but is one of the few old entertainers to truly stay on form .. You will see his face reincarnated by technology in an advert for cancer research and his death lends a tincture of sadness to this wry self knowing one liner
“ They laughed when I said I was going to be a comedian …Well they’re not laughing now ….”
The magnificent Bob Monkhouse . Just to show not all old men become sour even if what they say may be true .For some the best comes right at the end ...
15 comments:
Classic line from Bob.
Taxpayer funding of charities makes me nervous - it removes their accountability to their "private" donors and soon they are in hock to HMG.
It's a difficult circle to square though, because some charities will be much better at providing useful services than the state because they are closer to the real action.
I favour rolling back the state so that we can be more generous with our personal charity.
Who and exactly what does Peter Hitchen stand for ? Smug Liberal Elitists perchance ?
Ed- I think you make a very fair point as usual.. its not soemthing I have a fixed viewabout
TB-Welll...its just feeding the beast fro him isn`t it . I don`t take him all that seriously really
It's all about accountability for me. As an individual voter I have very little control over money spent by central government - both in terms of overall quantity and on a micro level of how it is spent.
Charity.
Well charity clearly doesn't begin at home for Minister Yvette Cooper. She infamously said, in the face of critcism of the Government's out of control development which is hugely exacerbating our recent catastrophic flooding:
"To paraphrase Bill Clinton, it's about building more homes, stupid."
Given that she was a pains to emphasis that flood plain development is to continue, regardless of the untold misery it's exacting on our fellow countrymen and women, I can't think of a more callous comment or more apt death warrant for Ms Cooper's Ministerial career.
Not all of Uk is flooding, of course, 'just' parts of:
Glos, Beds, Oxford, Bucks, Berks, Oxon, Shoprshire, Dorset, N Yorks, Lincs, Hants, London, Essex, Brum, Hereford. And 'just' four flood warnings remain in force across England: on the Pant, Blackwater and Brain rivers between Braintree and Witham in Essex; on the Colne and Roman rivers between Great Yeldham and Colchester in Essex; on the River Cam between Cambridge and Upware in Cambridgeshire; on the River Soar between Cossington and Cotes in Leicestershire.
Ms Cooper also said:
"What we are not saying is that there should be no house building anywhere in the city of York, which is on a flood plain - the Romans built it on a flood plain - or around 10 Downing Street - that's also on a flood plain."
Ms Cooper, Downing Street has a flood defence barrier that cost billions.
And to paraphrase Bill Clinton, what the Romans built on a flood plain and called Eboracum was a 200 house village of mud huts with the odd Roman villa and temple thrown in. Not the 75,000 house modern, flood prone, York which you, greedy woman, want to massively expand.
What you're building in England is bloody Soddom and Gomorrah, STUPID
And as for Mr Broon's role in this fetid, flooding catastrophe, that stinks too.
Brown is up to his neck in the widescale mass migration and linked development policy which, during the decade he's been in government, have masqueraded as economic policy.
Broon has recently said that 240,000 of the 3m new homes promised by the government over the next 13 years would be "eco-houses, in eco-villages and towns".
Would that be the like the new eco developments that are flooding Harlow, Mr Brown?
And would the SUDS - sustainable urban drainage sustems i.e. flood prevention measures - you're planning be like the one's up the road from me which flood not just the new developments they're on but established communities for miles around?
Soory, newmania, so angry when I think about this that I forgot to sign the last two posts.
Auntie Flo'
Yes and as Nicholsa Soanmes pointed out 1,000,000 of the 3,000,000 proposed new homes will be occupied by immigrants who have not yet got here.
Madness
What's the govt's solution? SuDs - flood retention systems.
Advantage: They're cheaper than conventional drainage systems (pipes and plant) and the govt claim they're sustainable and eco friendly.
Why use them? Because, as the Chairs of water companies in the South tell us, our conventional waste water drainage and sewage systems are hopelessly overloaded.
They cannot cope with either the hugely increased rainwater runoff (which becomes floodwater in storms) that concreting over our green soakaways (fields) for development produces, or the additional waste water imported into all of this development.
Suds sound wonderful in theory: which claims they collect and hold flood water, safely releasing it into the land and streams in controlled, sustainable volumes.
But the theory says nothing about:
Deliberately overloaded SuDs = floods
Badly designed SuDs = floods
SuDs can't cope with heavy rainfall/storms = floods
Overloaded Suds can cope even less with heavy rainfall = ongoing, bigger floods
Safety concerns of 100,000s gallons of water torrenting across public footpaths etc
SuDs here (everywhere?) raise the level of the water table = increased flood risk
Suds here (everywhere?) raise the level, volume and velocity of streams, turning them into raging torrents = potential floods
In order to appear part of a swanky, price upping, wetland landscape, some SuDs' systems of streams, weirs, swales, balancing ponds, reed beds are unfenced and don't have signage explaining the risk of a sudden, huge, surge of water through their slippery sides which are magnets to children. 'Elf & Safety? Would house purchasers be so keen if the risks were explained?
Here, SuDs simply shift floods onto communities in the flood plain below them, flooding streams, ditches, countryside, roads, blocking storm gullies with silted water, flooding streets - my street! Can I prove this, yes, I've hundreds of films amd pics etc.
Now the government want another 10,000 houses built here, with guess what? More SuDs, another balancing pond.
Auntie Flo'
They were warned
There have been many warnings about the poor state of flood defences they have cropped up in the Press under two headings ,. The danger of building 3,000,000 new homes in the South East (1,000,000 of which are for immigrants who have not even arrived yet )and set against he wastefulness of fake environmental posturing courtesy of smarmy wonk Milliband
Just one example Paul Ecclestone in the Daily Telegraph some time ago
“ FEWER THAN HALF THE COUNTRIES DEFENCES IN HIGH RISK AREAS ARE AT THE REQUIRED LEVEL “ according to the national audit office. The environment agency has failed in its stated objectives and was called on by an all Party commons committee to explain..
The committee referred to its last warning in 2001 and noted that it had been ignored. The money has been there but the reorganisation of the environmental Agency taking over what Local Authorities had done seems to have bogged down delivery....and there is plenty more
So yes the Government have been delivering misery and now they are trying ,as usual to slide out from their responsibility for the poor people whose lives are wrecked . Then …on top of that the cretins-re -us Labour Council decided to self insure for flood . For Flood ? !!! Did they think it was only likely to flood one or two houses at once ..,.unbelievable . This has all the hallmarks of the corrosively inept statist governing style of the Brown Blair period , their botched administrative fiddling is directly responsible for worsening the chaos and destruction in this area as it has been in so many others .
The housing crisis is yet another example of localism v centralism, accountability v tyranny.
My next exciting post is on this!! Watch this space. Well, not this one exactly.
Brown was warned alright.
He was warned by his own committee of experts that continuing to over develop the South East would increase the flood risk to England. But Broon ignored them and did nothing to avert this flood disaster.
He was warned by the Met office months ago that an El Nino flood effect was on its way. But, again, Broon ignored them and did nothing to avert the disaster.
He was warned by Treasury officials about pensions - but once again he ignored their good advice.
What does Broon do on such occasions, run off to his bunker and hide away while eating himself to the quick?
Auntie Flo'
This Broon, Cooper, Balls trilogy, interesting, yes?
I always thought there was some sort of Master Slave dialect between Blair and Brown. One glimpse of Balls' compulsive blink reflex and dear, twee little Cooper's iron CV, and I'm bloody convinced of it.
I seem to remember reading that one of Cooper's grandfathers was a miner. One of her biog's says her father was a trade unionist and her mother a maths teacher.
Love O'Reilly, no wonder the lady's so icy, beautiful and heartless, she's chiselled from solid granite.
Cooper was born in ice cold Inverness, birthplace of one of my ex's. There the, twee little women talk in DEEP BOOMING baritones, while their muscle bound farmworker and fishermen men spouses are all sopranos.
For countless generations the women of Inverness and nearby villages were bred to be bloody hardy - and bloody hard too. Until relatively recently, in the fishing villages around Inverness, the fish wives carried their men out to their boats on their backs to save the poor wee things from getting their wee boots wet.
Poor old Broon, between the wee madam and big Balls, he's not going to know what hit him.
I smell Wuthering Heights :)
Auntie Flo - excellent comments as always.
theres no mistaking the style
Jaq ... just a little word ...oh its awful
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