'I don't have to accept someone who lives off a state they reject'

"I don't have to accept someone who lives off a state they reject, ..."

This, apparently, is what Mr Sarrazin, who works for the Bundesbank and was Germany's finance minister, said when referring to some German immigrant populations.

He also said the influx of immigrants is making Germany 'dumber', because

immigrants from 'Turkey, the Middle East and Africa' were less educated.

and

Because immigrants tend to have more children than Germans - who have the lowest birth rate in Europe - this caused 'a different propagation of population groups with different intelligence

So ... picking apart the article it seems that a man has looked at a load of statistics relating to new arrivals in Germany and has, perhaps clumsily, said that, many newcomers :-

1) Have limited education in their home country.
2) Choose to ghettoise their living arrangements, and
3) Are reluctant to integrate and adopt the German way of life
4) Have more children than the average German family, and
5) Pass on their own cultural and education aspirations to their children

According to the Mail Mr Sarrazin shouldn't have done any of this and he

has not yet apologised. and It is thought his position at the Bundesbank may now be untenable.

Mrs Rigby wonders why he should even imagine apologising? There's no point, he's already been condemned by both the media and a respresentative of a presumably vocal self-interest group because ...

A spokesman for a Muslim group in Berlin said: 'He is a tired old white Christian male full of prejudice and few ideas.'

Mrs Rigby is delighted to acknowledge that this response as a wonderful example of the freedom of speech we enjoy in the Western world. So let's look again at what Mr Serrazin said

'I don't have to accept someone who lives off a state they reject'

That, is for Mrs R, the bottom line - and she turns it into a question.

Is it not reasonable to ensure that those who live off the state accept, acknowledge and abide by, the rules of that state?

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Ainsworth interview

Coventry North East MP Ainsworth, who spent the 11 months up to the General Election in the cabinet, was rarely able to secure one-to-one meetings with Mr Brown and when the two did get together Ainsworth says his views on defence policy were generally ignored, he has revealed.

“It’s no secret that Gordon and I are not each other’s greatest fans,” he explained. “I found him very difficult to work with. Impossible really.”

Makes Mrs R think, "Aww, poor Bob.

Then she read this :-

In his first major interview since resigning as Secretary of State, Ainsworth admits he is struggling to get used to “normality”. He’s gone from a cossetted life, whisked around the world with first class travel accompanied by a retinue of support staff and armed security guards, to the role of a backbench constituency MP.

Why on earth did he, or indeed any government minister, need all that? It does, though, help explain this profligacy. Since 2008 (Fausty)

£178 million [spent] on MPs' pay and perks

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Labour leadership #6

Andy Burnham
Born 7 January, 1970

Researcher to Tessa Jowell 1994-1997 election.
Parliamentary Officer for the NHS Confederation from August to December 1997, before taking up the post as an administrator with the Football Task Force for a year. (wikipedia)
Special Adviser to the then-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport 1998-2001.
Elected MP for Leigh 2001.
Health Select Committee from 2001 - 2003
Parliamentary Private Secretary to then-Home Secretary David Blunkett 2003 - 2004. PPS to then-Education Secretary Ruth Kelly 2004-2005.
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State 2005 - 2006 (with responsibility for implementing the Identity Cards Act 2006.)
Minister of State at the Department of Health 2006-2007.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury, a position he held until 2007 - 2008.

Working Class Tory quotes Mary Riddell:-

In some respects, Mr Burnham is the most Right-wing of the four candidates. A Roman Catholic, he is the most enthusiastic about promoting marriage and likely to be firm on law and order. On the Iraq War, he is neither regretful – like the two Eds – or as reflective as David Miliband. To him, regime change and weapons of mass destruction were inter-connected reasons for the invasion.

Working Class Tory goes on to and suggest that ...

Burnham would appear to be the least worst option if Labour were to win the next election. However, a Labour win would be the worst possible future outcome, and if Burnham is more likely to achieve it, I hope he does not become leader.

Mrs Rigby would tend to agree.

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Bustards and red things.

Nice news

One of the world's most spectacular birds is becoming established once again in the UK - more than 180 years after it was hunted to extinction.

The great bustard - a gigantic bird with an eight foot wingspan - was reintroduced to England six years ago using chicks rescued from Russia.

Now the birds have scored their biggest success yet with the hatching of four wild chicks this spring.

It's the second year that the birds - which can stand more than 3.5 feet tall - have bred in the wild.

And the Kites? Red ones that is. Mrs R has never seen one, she'd be delighted to swap places with this chap, who is less than happy about their successful reintroduction

They have reintroduced the Red Kite near us, now we are plagued by the horrible things. There were eleven of them over my house yesterday, there were more than forty of them flying around one area ... swooping, wheeling and screeching. Things that have gone from an area should not be reintroduced.

And so on to more red things. Squirrels this time - a creature Mrs R has only ever seen in captivity. There are plans to cull grey squirrels in Cornwall.

Thousands of grey squirrels are to be culled in an attempt to reintroduce native reds to Cornwall more than 20 years after they went extinct.

Some Mail commenters, naturally, think the decision is racist whilst others indicate a great deal of ignorance and ramble on about 'diversity' and 'right to life', completely forgetting that nature is harsh - the strongest survives. Maybe they'd be happy for the British Red Squirrel to become extinct.

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Labour leadership #5

Diane Julie Abbott

Born 27 September 1953
Married Richard Thompson, divorced
Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington since 1987.

Attended Harrow County Grammar School
Studied History at Newnham, Cambridge.
Admin trainee @ Home Office 1976-1978.
Race Relations Officer @ NCCL 1978-1980
Researcher/reporter Thames TV 1980 -1983.
Researcher/reporter TV-am 1983-1985.
Press Officer GLC (Livingstone) 1985-1986.
Head of Press and PR Lambeth Council 1986-1987.

Elected to Westminster City Council 1982-1986.
Elected MP 1987

She is well known, possibly because of her TV show "This Week", where she and Michael Portillo discuss, errm, the Political events of the week.

She has been called a hypocrite because she chose to send her son to a private school, whilst condemning others for doing so. She is, as far as Mrs Rigby is aware, against Grammar Schools - although she attended one herself.

She decided to enter the Labour leadership race because she thought the "white, male candidates 'all look the same'."

She likes the idea of positive discrimination.

Of all the Labour Leadership candidates mentioned so far she has the longest political experience, although she has never been a government minister. At 56 (57 in Sept) she is the oldest leadership candidate - almost 17 years older than Andy Burnham.

She managed to gain the necessary 33+ nominations only after John McDonnell had stood aside and asked those who had nominated him to switch their allegiance.

The Mail reports that Mr David Miliband has nominated her rather than himself.

To be honest Mrs R thinks it's highly likely she will be elected Deputy Leader of the Party - they 'have to' have a woman to satisfy the quota hunters and to claim some legitimacy and stamp their feet on the moral high ground when demanding parliament and employers follow their equality-hunting rules - doesn't matter too much whether the individual is any good, it's their genetic inheritance that's most important.

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Why should ...?

One of the questions asked about the ownership of guns was ...

"Why should a taxi driver want a gun?"

Simple answer - because when people aren't doing their day job they are doing something else, even if it's only sleeping. Okay, yes, perhaps that's a flippant response but it's true.

Mrs R is more than aware that the current 'discussion' is about why anybody should want to have a gun, of any sort, because guns are dangerous and guns kill - and one man did dreadful things in the Lake District with legally held weapons. QED - so some say. And they say let's ban guns, permanently, for ever - because the unspoken bit is that normal people don't use guns.

But Mrs Rigby disagrees, and so do lots of other perfectly normal, rational and law-abiding people. She's going to try to explain why, and then offer a question or two in return.

Years ago, it seems like a lifetime away, there were people in this country who enjoyed taking different sorts of pistols to a club and firing ten, twenty or more rounds of ammunition at bits of paper. They did it to see how close together they could group their shots, and had competitions to see who was best. The winners of those in-club competitions were often chosen to compete in inter-club competitions, and some of them even went on to represent their country at even more important competitions - such as the Olympics, World Championships and Commonwealth Games.

British shooters always did quite well in these competitions, even though they wore weird-looking gadgets on their heads and had fancy sort of custom-made grips for their pistols, and managed to win gold medals. They were patted on the back and told how good they were, how dedicated to their sport. We were pleased with them because they helped Britain get quite high up the international medal tables.

Overnight, all those years ago, many of not-medal-winning people had their private interest - their sport - outlawed by the then Labour government, and had their means of 'having fun' made illegal. In short they were criminalised in a knee-jerk legal sledgehammer in response to some nutter having done awful things with a gun. The events of last week show that even sledgehammers sometimes miss their target, because sometimes 'targets' do unpredictable things.

As a result of the legislation some shooters handed their carefully maintained and carefully secured guns to the police, knowing they would be melted down and made into manhole covers. Others took their guns to France, some stayed there permanently. They did this because their sport meant so much to them, and because their weapons were too valuable to be melted down.

Britain is due to host the 2012 Olympics. The list of Olympics sports still include various shooting disciplines, perhaps because the Olympic movement acknowledges that shooting is a skill that requires patience, dedication and lots and lots of practice to be any good. It's probably why the military still acknowledge 'marksmen' as being particularly skilled, so skilled that they get their own special weapons and more often than not, their own very special tasks and a special badge to wear on their sleeve.

As already mentioned, Britain has always done quite well at shooting and according to Wikipedia is ranked 6th in the overall Olympic tables - a cumulative score dating from 1896. Britain has won 12 gold, 15 silver, 16 bronze medals. It might not seem many, but has to be compared with those higher up the table and, ignoring the whopping medal roll of USA, second is China with 19 gold, 11 silver, 12 bronze. These medals cover the sporting disciplines of using air pistol and rifle, .22 pistol and rifle, and shotgun/clay.

The 2012 Olympics shooting events are due to be held in a temporary arena at Woolwich Arsenal, much to the dismay of Sportsman's Association and the National Shooting Centre at Bisley - where the Commonwealth Games shooting events were hosted in 2002. It was pointed out that a

shooting fans will get "nothing in return" if the temporary venue is used ...

Tessa Jowell is reported to have said that

... the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich would be used because they "allow us to deliver the compact Games we promised in 2005".

Compact maybe, but Mrs R thinks it's a whopping waste of money to build

... a 7,500-seat structure that will be taken down after the Games have finished, with the cost ranging from an initial quote of £30m to the latest estimate of £42m.

Anyhow, the venue may actually be the least of the worries, because although the 2012 Olympics website extols the virtues of shooting, and says

Shooting is a fun way to learn discipline and responsibility. In the UK, more than 350,000 people currently practice the sport, with equal numbers of boys and girls entering competitions.

If you want to get involved, British Shooting is a good place to start.

There is a problem, because our gun laws are quite complex and very, very strict. The laws are ...

... so stringent that Britain’s Olympic gun team has been forced to train for the London 2012 Games overseas.

These very strict laws cause other knock-on problems too, as the Guardian reports (20 May 2010):-

London 2012's shooting event is heading for chaos because of Britain's draconian firearms legislation for athletes from European countries. Some European teams have been unable to compete at a clay pigeon World Cup event in Dorset this week after failing to lodge original certificates of firearms permits with UK police long in advance.

Without having that paperwork in their possession several athletes would be in breach of their national laws to hold their firearms at home. They have also been unable to travel after they waited four to six weeks for the documentation to be handled. Indeed, in order to guarantee German athletes' participation, that nation's administrator was flown in to the UK by tournament officials – at a cost of £1,500 to the event – with a sheaf of athletes' documentation for on-the-spot processing by police.

and

"This situation has arisen with only 350 competitors. It would take the Metropolitan Police a year to process the 2,000 people at the Olympics.

That seems to be a heck of a lot of people and legally held weapons to be arriving in one small corner of London, and Mrs R has no idea if it's accurate, but considering that there are

... 15 events in all: five in each of the three Shooting disciplines – Rifle, Pistol and Shotgun.
In each of these disciplines three events are for men and two for women.
Gold medals : 15
Athletes: 390

Presumably there will be support staff and technicians who also need to be registered and licensed.

There are also the Modern Pentathletes

Events: Fencing, Swimming, Riding, Combined Run/Shoot Event
Gold medals : 2
Athletes: 36 men, 36 women

Maybe the Fencers will also need to be Police checked?

Gold medals : 10
Athletes: 212

Stepping sideways for a moment it's interesting to look the winter Olympics sport that also includes shooting. The Biathlon - a gruelling cross country race, carrying a rifle. This 'sport' was developed from the cross-country training enjoyed(?) by Norway's military.

So, when you look at all that, is it really odd that somebody so ordinary as a taxi driver might have been licensed to use a firearm? Nobody seemed to mind too much that a myopic plasterer had thought it was a good idea to learn to ski. Shooting, and wanting to be good at it - is a sport, an interest, a skill, that's all.

Some people, in post-Labour Britain, are very quick to make value judgements based on their own narrow interests and lifestyles. Anybody who might want to do something, anything, that's outside their experience is open to derision. Their interests and activities challenged as being 'odd' or even 'elitist'. And if what they do is too odd (or too elitist) for the ignoramus with an opinion? Well, it should be banned - naturally.

So in pandering to populist opinion, and seemingly hating anybody who wants a bit of freedom of choice, it isn't really a surprise that the BBC's HYS had a write-in about Britain's gun laws, asking the question Are [Britain's] gun laws tough enough? Naturally the very first comment is from somebody very much 'on message' who says

Why did a man that lived in a terraced house in a village have a licence for a shotgun and a rifle? I should have thought that the minimum requirement would be to be a farmer or landowner and thus be able to justify using these weapons as part of pest control

Maybe neither that individual nor the BBC are aware of the London2012 message which, to remind you, says that "In the UK, more than 350,000 people currently practice the sport" - and they do so safely, and within the strict confines of the law.

And that's why Mrs Rigby has to ask a question. Taking all things into account, and assuming we can't legislate for the unpredictable - why shouldn't a [not rich] person who lives in a terraced house in a [rural] village have a license for a shotgun and/or a rifle?

She asks this alongside media reports of teenagers in inner city high rise flats having illegal machine guns, pistols and sawn-off shotguns that they use so frequently that deaths from using these weapons rarely hit the headlines other than in the local paper.

Also, if Britain's very strict laws (which were supported by almost all political parties prior to the incident in the Lake District) are so effective then how, for example, could this have happened - on 29th May 2010?

A man has been charged in connection with a triple shooting in east London that left one man dead and two injured.

A 36-year-old man died during the incident in Newham during the early hours of 29 May.

Kevin Powell, 34, unemployed, of Harlesden, west London, was charged with the attempted murder of a 26-year-old and possession of a firearm.

Perhaps, maybe, the BBC and the person who left the previously quoted message on HYS could try to explain why an unemployed man living in lovely Harlesden, with its' "Jubilee Clock which commemorates Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee." and "... its vibrant Caribbean culture" needs a firearm, of any description because it's unlikely he is either a farmer or a landowner. Or wouldn't those rules apply?

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Labour Leadership #4 - Buffoons!

Most generous of you, Mr Parris, to offer such cogent advice to a bunch of dangerous buffoons.

so 'Someone Once wrote' in the Telegraph, commenting on Matthew Parris's column concerning the "hustings statements" of the four men at the top of the Labour Party's leadership list.

Here's a taster or five from the article:-

David Miliband looked for a moment as if he was going to.

Come to think of it, that sentence bids fair to be chiselled on to his gravestone: “David Miliband looked for a moment as if he was going to.”

and

This — from Ed Miliband, but for all the difference it makes, it could have been from the chief executive of Pepsi-Cola, the Chief Rabbi, or the chief lyricist of Abba —

and

Mr Balls’s submission is simply clunking and charmless.

and

Mr Burnham’s is kind of sweet.

but

All four men are anyway inextricably tangled in the failure of the last Labour Government. Yet all are Privy Counsellors and three at at least are of considerable stature. You can actually imagine them as prime ministers. You just don’t want them to be.

Yes, these are out of context extracts, so you need to read the whole thing for yourself and, as usual, don't forget to also read the comments .... where you'll be reminded, again, that

this... is the collection of GOATs* that was 'running' this country until recently?????
Much is explained, if not excused.

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* Edited and amended because NotASheep left a comment saying, "Leave us goats alone!"

GOAT = Mr Brown's "Government of All Talents"

Not this sort

Picture from here where you can discover How to tell a Goat Goat from a Man Goat.

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Lord Monckton snacks on George Monbiot & John Abraham

At Last, the Climate Extremists Try to Debate Us!

Here's an extract

First, the IPCC also says, on the very page quoted by Abraham, that even if there were a major collapse of the ice the Greenland ice sheet would not entirely disintegrate for millennia, a phrase that was also used in the IPCC’s 2001 report, where it was made plain that surface temperatures at least 2 Celsius degrees higher than today’s would have to persist for several millennia before either the Greenland or the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could melt away.

True, the British Antarctic Survey disagrees with the IPCC and maintains that the WAIS is in imminent danger of collapse, but so far even the IPCC has not bought that alarmist story.

Secondly — as I said in my talk, but as Abraham very carefully failed to point out in his — both sides of this particular argument have been carefully heard in the impartial forum of the British High Court. The British government, unsuccessfully attempting to defend Gore on this point, had eventually been compelled — when confronted with what the IPCC actually says about several millennia — to concede that Gore’s 20 feet of sea level rise was a flagrant exaggeration.

And the judge’s finding could not have been blunter:

The Armageddon scenario that he [Gore] depicts is not based on any scientific view.

Read the rest of the article, it's worth it.

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Not abolishing boom and bust

The greatest economic mind of the last century ( ..ya Maynard.. ) argued many things, but he is best known for his insight that the capitalist economy is cyclically unstable. Government needs to stabilise economic activity by monetary and fiscal policy. To do that, it should balance the budget over the course of the business cycle. So it should build up surpluses when the economy is expanding in order to run deficits - beyond those that would normally arise from the contraction in output - and boost demand in a recession.

This obviously is not a description of what Gordon Brown did as Chancellor after 2002, because he disastrously believed he had abolished the business cycle. The share of public spending in national income rose from just under 40 per cent when new Labour took office to 48 per cent when the credit crunch arrived. That's an extraordinary figure for an economy that was growing briskly throughout that time.

Taken from Newmania in Lewes

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Flat tyres and bagpipes.

Determination, or desperation?

From Fail Blog

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