It is now an archive for my newspaper and magazine pieces. My blog can now be read at: www.spectator.co.uk/stephenpollard
Politics, economics and culture from the master. Unmissable.
Melanie Phillips home page
Melanie Phillips' peerless blog. Read, and learn.
Daniel Finkelstein's Times Comment Central
A daily must-read.
Tim Worstall
Lots of interesting nibbles - and a ruthless swatter of economic gibberish.
Harry's Place
Must-read left of centre blog from writers who understand the threat to the West.
Clive Davis
Always interesting selection of culture and politics, from an Anglo-American bent.
Samizdata
Libertarian blog, packed every day.
Norm's blog
The thoroughly sensible thoughts of renowned left-wing academic Norman Geras, Professor of Government at Manchester. And cricket, too.
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Peter Briffa's inimitable take on The Yazzmonster and other assorted demons.
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The public sector reform group; their website is an invaluable source of data and ideas.
Centre for the New Europe
The leading European public policy think tank.
Developed by:
| February | 02 |
| 2007 |
Earlier today, Neil Clark emailed me about my post below. I replied to him.
Decent people ask permission before publishing private correspondence. But then anyone who hero worships a genocidal butcher hardly qualifies for the word 'decent'. So I wondered if he would simply print my reply. And, of course, he has.
A few people have reminded me that last year I inaugurated the Neil Clark award for Stupidity and suggested that I make a similar award this year. But there could only ever be one winner: Neil Clark. So I have, reluctantly, retired the award. Indeed, I decided at the start of this year not to keep kicking this sad and ridiculous defender of murderous tyrants.
I couldn't, however, resist his spectacularly stupid post on an Iranian nuclear weapon. (Stupidity is the charitable explanation for his stance; given the impact of such a weapon, there are other explanations which spring to mind.)
The dam however has now burst and, to judge from the emails I have now had, some of you who also look in awe at this peerless buffoon's inanities have assumed that I wish to resume giving him a good kicking. I don't. But one correspondent's email is too good not to share with you. So let me point you to Clark's words on proposals for a smoking ban in France.
Here's Clark's comment in full:
France without tobacco smoke? C'est ne pas France. C'est L'Etats-Unis. Quelle dommage!
Or, as anyone with an ounce of intelligence (points out my correspondent) would put it instead:
Ce n'est pas la France. Ce sont les États-Unis. Quel dommage!As my correspondent says, the full stupidity of Mr Clark lies not in making half a dozen howlers in a dozen words but in believing he was capable of writing elementary French to start with. Or perhaps he just thinks it's hilarious that in other countries they speak in peculiar foreign languages. It's as if Mr Clark were to write about international politics while being completely ignorant of the subject.
UPDATE: Still more. A correspondent writes:
I tried googling his nonsense-phrase "C'est ne pas France" in inverted commas to see if he might have got it from somewhere. It's difficult to believe, but there is literally not a single hit. This means that every single person who has ever written a word of French that has ended up on the internet is less stupid than Neil Clark.
MessageSpace
Well, yes, but that also means that Clark has performed a googlewhack, a highly treasured accolade.
Well, it is if you intend to perform one, at least.
Neil Clark is so stupid that it didn't even occur to him to check his French by testing it with a Google search. This means that almost every single person in the world is less stupid than Neil Clark.
There was a study recently which has some bearing on this: people at the lower end of a skill spectrum consistently over-rated their competence, whereas the more highly-skilled under-rated theirs. Neil Clark lacks introspection, which is one of the hallmarks of really stupid people. A smart person would know how hard it is to write grammatically-correct sentences in a foreign language and would have had the nous to either abstain or rigorously check what he was writing.
You need to bear in mind that Neil Clark regards the work of Jimmy Perry and David Croft as occupying a similar aesthetic plane to that of Shakespeare and Molière...
...and that Croft was responsible for co-writing and producing 'Allo 'Allo!.
So perhaps Clark's mangling of the French language was an act of homage - or even hommage?
If Neil Clark is the buffoon that you say he is, Mr. Pollard, then why do you spend so much time attacking him? Why does he get under your skin?
He has asked you to produce evidence that Milosevic was a "genocidal tyrant" yet you refuse. Surely you can point us to one piece of incontrovertible evidence to support your assertion.
If Neil Clark is the buffoon that you say he is, Mr. Pollard, then why do you spend so much time attacking him?
I can't be arsed to do the searches all over again, but last time I checked I found that Clark had mentioned Pollard considerably more frequently on his blog than vice versa.
I also strongly believe that Clark has initiated more private e-mail conversations with Pollard than vice versa.
In other words, I believe the ball is firmly in Clark's court - and if he finds this attention unwelcome, I suggest he stops trying to pick fights with people who are demonstrably cleverer than he is.
(Mind you, I notice he's still banging on about Oliver Kamm, even though I suspect that Kamm hasn't given Clark a second's thought since he took us behind the scenes of Clark's failed libel action.)
Who said Neil Clark finds the attention unwelcome? The fact is that neither Pollard or Kamm have substantiated allegations of genocide against Milosevic. Clark has delivered an overhead smash.
Given that Clark's usual tactic is to follow up a few days of zero comments with a ratings-grabbing personal attack on someone, I suspect he finds the attention extremely welcome.
Which is why Kamm's approach - i.e. totally ignoring him - is undoubtedly the right one.
But if Clark really wants to deliver an "overhead smash", how about celebrating the first anniversary of his notorious promise to deliver "a thorough fisking of Kamm's work by finally producing one?
Naturally, I suspect this was Clark's plan all along, and I commend him for his heroic refusal to rise to repeated jibes along the lines that his failure to deliver thus far is because he simply isn't bright enough. We'll all be laughing on the other side of our faces come February 21st!
Meanwhile, we continue to wait for proof of that genocide which was the focus of Clark's letter to Pollard.
BTW, "fisking" of Kamm is nothing new. Check out:
http://indecent-left.blogspot.com/
Clark's (and he)readers don't seem to know the difference between National Socialism and International Socialism.
Reading his manifesto he writes "...Syria, Iran or Belarus, or any other country which refuses to pay Danegeld to The Empire- or lasting peace and security- based on respect for the sovereignty of nations."
What a Quaint Idea, you can kill, murder, mutilate, suppress and disperse your subjects, but as long as you respect our sovereignty, then we will respect your right to do so, and/or the UN will send a strong letter of protest to you to rid us of our guilt, just in case.
Throw modernity in the bin, everything is now relative as there is no such thing as truth. We are all equals, democracy is just the same of totalitarianism, Welcome to the post-modernist nightmare.
Meanwhile, we await proof of that genocide.