Ban It!

Predictably, the latest Medal Of Honour game has come under fire because, being set in Afganistan, players can play as the Taliban and “Kill British Soldiers” (although you can’t) making the game “disgusting” and “un-British,” according to Liam Fox at least. This being the same Liam Fox who personally helped kill British soldiers in real life by voting for the invasion of Iraq, which is presumably fine.

This is far from the first time that the morally superior have called for a popular thing to be banned, although I haven’t been aware previously of bans being required for purely patriotic reasons…

Question Time

Oh. I love saturdays, especially the ones I don’t have to work. I love my telephone too; my wife and sister-in-law are here and have control of the television, so I took advantage of the time to watch thursday’s Question Time on IPlayer, on my phone.

Now. I’m no BNP supporter, I could never support a leftist party racist or no. I’ve been down the left-hand path before and I didn’t like where it was going. I determined to watch it with an open mind however, and I thought he came across quite well. In fact, I think this was a spectacular own goal for an establishment still crippled by the no-platform debate.

They started on race issues in an early attempt to derail Griffin, and he manfully managed to dissemble his way through, not a difficult task as the other panellists (and audience) talked over and interrupted him throughout the section. This had the dual effects of not only setting him up as an underdog straight away (and as we know, the British love underdogs) but also saving him the trouble of having to explain and debate his views. Classic.

Once the ‘debate’ moved onto Islam, he was remarkably restrained, clearly and simply mentioning the things from the Koran that we’re not supposed to talk about while the other contestants panellists frothed and foamed. He cleverly framed the issue in terms that nobody can disagree with (women’s rights and the stoning of rape victims etc.) and was fairly unimpeachable on this, at least among those who don’t really want shariah law, thankyou very much.

In fact, once he was past the race section of questions he was pretty straight throughout. He may have been lying (and probably was) but if he was, he was lying straight out, while the others waffled and dissembled and shouted him down and refused to answer questions in traditional Westminster style. To someone pretty pissed off with the LibLab Con (who didn’t know any better) he could really seem like a straight-talkin’ kinda guy.

Which leads me again to wonder, is this deliberate? There was a lot he said that I could agree with. He doesn’t like the EU, he doesn’t like the BBC, and I had to nod my head when he asked Jack Straw if he would dare go to a Maori or a Sioux and ask them “what do you mean by indiginous?” Not because I’m a white supremacist (I’m not) but because it was a fair and logical question, and Straw’s refusal to be drawn on it was frustrating. If I didn’t know any better, and didn’t know all about liberty and freedom and what leftists like Griffin really want (control, same as the other three leftists on the panel) I might well have started to think maybe he’s got something, and no wonder the others don’t want him to speak, because they’re all saying the same things and he’s saying the sort of things that people are really thinking. In short, I may well have thought he was a reasonable man not being given a fair shake of the stick, and he’s not really a racist anymore, and maybe we should give him a chance?

Of course, I didn’t think any of those things because I know what Griffin’s really about, but to others? Especially those white, English working class who are sick of being disallowed from acknowledging or celebrating their own culture (another point Griffin tried to raise and was shouted down on), and some of them do watch Question Time, you know.

This was either a spectacular own-goal or this was how it was intended to be. I’ll let you decide for yourself.

Say What?!

The BBC are reporting this morning that the 1984 law banning the sale of 18-rated video games and DVDs to children is “unenforcable” and all prosecutions will be halted. Sounds fine, but hang on…

The reason is because 25 years ago when the act was passed the European Commision wasn’t informed.

I’m flabberghasted. I knew we weren’t a soveriegn power anymore but really, I didn’t know that we couldn’t enforce our own laws if we didn’t tell the boss we had passed them. It’s going to take three months, apparently, to pass the law again and tell the Commision that we’ve done it, so it’s open season on blue movies and torture porn in the meantime.

But it gets worse:

But previous prosecutions will stand, according to the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS)

So… although the law doesn’t (and has never) existed, technically, if you fell afoul of it in the past, you’re still a criminal. How does that work?

Norwich North

I’ve been following -well, sort of- the by-election in Norwich North. Mostly, via Craig Murray.

I have a lot of respect for Craig Murray. His dogged determination to force the government to admit to receiving intelligence from torture has been an inspiration. The government’s determination to ignore him, and the client MSM’s determination to ignore it has been disheartening but not one bit surprising.

Craig is standing for election in Norwich North. He’s not the horse I have in this race, I am rooting for LPUK candidate Thomas Burridge. There’s a lot of things Craig Murray says that I don’t agree with, as well as a lot of things I do. He seems a decent man. Hence this post… it seems that the forces of the state are doing their best to deny this decent man his voice:

It has realy started in earnest now. Before the election was called, we had booked halls for the meeting schedule which you have seen. One of these was Hellesdon High School this Friday, 10 July.

The school has now phoned to say the Governors have decided not to permit my meeting -despite Nick Clegg having already held a by-election meeting there.

This is not just unfair, it is illegal. The Electoral Commissions rules state:

6.1 Once an election is called, candidates are legally entitled to use publicly funded schools and other public meeting rooms for election meetings free of .charge…..

and this too.

I shouldn’t be surprised, but I’m still angry. A decent man, standing for parliament, as they are supposed to. That is SUPPOSED to be the idea. Bastards.

Tragedy Into Opportunity

The news that Olivia Crowther travelled to San Francisco to commit suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge is tragic, there is no doubt about that (although from the Mail’s story there seem to be doubts that it was, in fact, a suicide), but rather predictably it has led to more calls for internet regulation (censorship) as she had been looking at suicide websites before she left. While I cannot understand people frequenting these sorts of websites (I’ve just had a look at a couple, like this and I really hope this one is a piss-take, if not they are some very scary people) I absolutely believe in their right to do so. Those websites I just linked to popped up while I was searching for the news story in the first place, and I also discovered that the Golden Gate Bridge is the world’s ‘suicide capital’ with over 1300 deaths since it was built.
But I digress. A tragedy of this sort is easy fodder for those who wish to regulate and censor the internet. First they call for suicide sites to be banned or regulated or monitored, or whatever. Once that’s accomplished they will turn to something else. Maybe political sites. Maybe Infowars. Maybe the BNP. Maybe blogs like this one. Maybe blogs like YOUR one.
Just as they turn the spotlight from smokers to drinkers to fat people in the offline world. Incrementalism is the name of the game, and the game isn’t fair.