The Yazzmonster thinks bloggers are 'malign creeps'. Malign creep. Hmmm. Now which Independent columnist might that phrase be applied to?

And she has been affronted by the behaviour of two people recently:

One came disgracefully late to dinner the other day because she was lost in Second Life ( sorry to bring it up, S) and another took me to lunch and never looked into my eyes, lost in his bloody BlackBerry. All around Le Caprice, many others were indulging in the same pleasure, playing with the cheeky machines sitting indecently on their crotches. It was not nice.

Out of context that does seem rude behaviour. But put yourself in their shoes. You have been invited to dine at the Yazzmonster's home. Who knows, maybe you were under the weather or not thinking, but for some reason you accepted. It might indeed be rude to turn up late, but surely it would take an extraordinarily hard heart not to understand why you'd want to turn up as late as possible to such an encounter. And with one of the most gloriously far-fetched excuses ever: "I'm so sorry, Yasmin. i was transfixed by Second Life".

As for lunch with her... Wouldn't you simply have to spend the entire time staring at your Crackberry, to ward off the horror of having to engage with the Yazzmonster sitting opposite you?

(2)

I laughed out loud reading Daniel Finkelstein's latest column. A lot.

You will too.

If I was Japanese, I'd be wondering about the perceptiveness of my Foreign Minister. Taro Aso says:

TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- Blond, blue-eyed Westerners probably can't be as successful at Middle East diplomacy as Japanese with their "yellow faces," Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso was quoted by media as saying on Wednesday.

"Japan is doing what Americans can't do," the Nikkei business daily quoted the gaffe-prone Aso as saying in a speech.

"Japanese are trusted. If (you have) blue eyes and blond hair, it's probably no good," he said.

"Luckily, we Japanese have yellow faces."

This is the blonde, blue-eyed US Secretary of State.

(4)

Tim Worstall on the idiot that is Mark Steel (one of those unfunny 'comedians' who think that saying 'Labour is just like the Tories' is a side-splittingly original witticism):

So far, they've only gone part way down this route, for example by placing a series of businessmen from companies such as Deloitte and Touche on NHS boards.

Clearly appalling when we have people who understand accountancy helping to run something that swallows 9% of the entire nation's output.

(1)

The following piece of mine appears in today's Times:

I suppose we should all be grateful to the Prince of Wales. Until he opened his mouth in Abu Dhabi, I doubt if any of us realised how much better off we would be eating a Big Mac than wolfing down one of his own Duchy Originals Organic Cornish Pasties.

On a tour of a diabetes centre, Prince Charles asked a nutritionist: “Have you got anywhere with McDonald’s? Have you tried getting it banned? That is the key.”

Er, no. You see, old chap, if you’re worried about nutrition, it turns out that a Big Mac, according to figures published yesterday, has nothing on one of your own comestibles. A Duchy Originals Organic Cornish Pasty has 264 calories per 100g, and a Big Mac only 229 calories; a Duchy Originals pasty has 5.5g of saturated fat, a Big Mac just 4.17g.

You have to hand it to the Prince. There aren’t many people who can manage to be a loudmouth, a danger to the constitution and a buffoon all at the same time. Most of us can manage two of the three. Prince Charles is unique in getting the hat-trick.

That he is wrong, or at the very least a hypocrite, about Big Macs is, however, the least of it. Even if he was right — and by the law of averages he will surely be right about something, one day — his behaviour is an outrage against the constitution and undermines what little credibility the institution of the monarchy has left.

The Prince of Wales has shown over the years that he is simply a loudmouth who cannot resist shooting his mouth off when an opportunity arises. And as he is the heir to throne, such opportunities arise at will.

Whether it’s the supposedly deplorable state of modern architecture (a matter of taste), the efficacy of alternative medicine (voodoo, not science) or the superiority of organic produce (an assertion with no evidential basis), Prince Charles appears to be a man of limited intellect, but to be nonetheless desperate to share the produce of that limited intellect with the rest of the country.

You may think the accusation of loudmouthery somewhat hypocritical from a newspaper pundit. But there is one crucial difference, which goes to the heart of Prince Charles’s position. Newspaper columnists — and politicians — get paid to share their views with the country. The Prince of Wales gets paid to do the opposite: to share his views with no one. That’s what comes with being heir to the throne.

He may not like it. He may be convinced that we need to hear his wisdom. Tough. His job is to keep shtum like his mother has done for 81 years. And if he doesn’t like it, there’s a simple solution. Stop being HRH, stop being heir to the throne and join the real world. Step forward, Charles Windsor, La-La-Land Party candidate and rent-a-quote pundit.

(7)

One of my pet hates is people who holiday in Cuba, usually accompanied by the sentiment: 'we want to see it before it gets all commercialised'. Last week I heard a distinguished academic say how much he preferred Prague in the 1970s and 80s, before it became so 'commercialised'.

For 'commercialised', read 'free'. These people deserve the contempt of anyone who believes in freedom. Their moral code is no better than those who holidayed in Durban under apartheid, on the basis that - as some family friends once put it to me - 'you never see the blacks so you can completely escape the apartheid'.

Samizdata links to this idiocy from Charlize Theron:

Charlize Theron left a TV news anchor stunned by offering to "make out" with him in the middle of a tense interview. The star was being interviewed by Cuban-American CNN presenter Rick Sanchez on February 4 when she decided to make light of her recent trip to Cuba, where she produced new hip hop movie "East Of Havana."
The South African actress enraged Sanchez when she compared the freedoms she enjoyed in Hollywood to those she experienced in communist Cuba - from where his family fled to avoid Fidel Castro's regime.

And when the news host, a married father-of-four, suggested the actress didn't have a very high opinion of the America, she attempted to lighten the TV chat by saying, "I want to make out with you right now."

Ms Theron is clearly not troubled by an over-supply of brain power. As Jackie D puts it on Samizdata:

What is taking her so long to move there?

(4)

I'm sure I'm not alone in deciding that life is too short to respond to the claims of every crank who gets in touch. Whenever I write about the Middle East, for instance, I receive at least one email pointing out that the Holocaust never happened.

The 'demand' of Neil Clark that I produce evidence to support the label 'genocidal butcher' for Slobodan Milosevic is in similar vein, and thus something I would usually ignore. But Oliver Kamm has a relevant post, to which I point you.

If the proposed new EU law making genocide denial a crime comes into effect, I can see no reason why Mr Clark should not be prosecuted. His denial not only of Milosevic's guilt but, indeed, of the genocide itself is something which he trumpets. However, I would find myself in the odd position of believing that he should not have been imprisoned in the first place. As I wrote at the time of the antisemite David Irving's imprisonment:

[F]or all the manifest ways in which Austria has a shameful post-war political history, making Holocaust denial a crime is wrong both in practice and in principle.

It is wrong in practise because, far from helping to deal with the legacy of the single greatest crime in human history, it sweeps it under the carpet, allows it to fester, and makes false martyrs out of the most repellent human beings.

And it is wrong in principle because it goes against the very fabric of Western civilisation and liberty that people can be imprisoned for expressing a view, however vile that view may be.

It would ill behove anyone who defends the right of the Danish newspapers to publish cartoons mocking Mohammed then to defend the idea of Holocaust denial being a crime. Free speech is not absolute - I cannot call a certain politician a thieving liar, for instance, without the evidence to back up the statement - but it ought to be a guiding principle of our societies.

(It is important to separate out the expression of a view which might be - and, in Irving's case, is - used by violent thugs to justify their behaviour, from those times when the expression of the view is itself an incitement to violence or other criminal behaviour. In the former case, allowing such an expression is the concomitant of liberty; in the latter it is properly dealt with through the courts.)

So for all that genocide deniers such as Irving and Clark must be exposed for their historical innacuracies, their liberty to put forward such lies is an essential part of our liberty.

(7)

I love this piece. Ben Goldacre rips the dreadful 'PhD' Gillian McKeith apart.

It is too much to hope that after this demolition job, we will never hear another word from Ms McKeith. But I hope so, nonetheless. (There was a rather more subtle demolition job a couple of years ago, in a wonderful interview by Rachel Cooke.)

(4)

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!

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.

(12)

Oliver Kamm has an excellent piece up on Comment is Free about Nick Cohen's book.

I especially liked the comment which begins:

Maybe I'm thick, but I don't understand a word of this highly confused article.

Self-awareness is a rare quality among CiF commenters.

(I've been invited to the party at last, and am now reading the book.)

(1)

This is simply delicious:

[R]acist crank Gilad Atzmon is suing, erm, Sue Blackwell.

It's a bit like when Arsenal play Chelsea. You want both teams to lose.

(2)

How tiresome. I really didn't want to post about Neil Clark, but when you wake up to an email telling you there is a post on his site headlined Beyond sick: The mind of Stephen Pollard about a comment left by someone else on this site (and which insinuates that I am the person who left it), which is offensive and which was removed, then you are left with little choice.

The comment to which Clark objects (about Clark dying in an unpleasant manner) was left here at 8.42pm. As soon as I saw it, after I returned home, I deleted it because I thought it offensive. Clark's response is this:

Whether Joshua is Pollard's alter ego is something only Stephen knows and I make no accusation here. But for Pollard to allow such a sick comment to be published on his site and not to delete it as soon as it appeared speaks volumes about how low Pollard is prepared to go. I was once warned by one distinguished and very experienced British journalist that Pollard was a ' total shit'. I'll leave readers to come to their own conclusions as to whether the journalist's opinion was accurate. I've already made my mind up.

I will leave readers to come to their own conclusions as to whether the writer of the above paragraph is an idiot.

(6)

Here's a comment by Brendon Barber, General Secretary of the TUC, on the Goldman Sachs bonuses:

No one should begrudge generous rewards for hard work and risk-taking. But the obscene size of these City bonuses has lost touch with reality.

So he thinks that no one should think what he thinks.

(10)

Er, this story surely amounts to a whole lot of nothing:

Nigel Farage, the new leader of the UK Independence Party, has claimed he was offered a safe Conservative seat ahead of last year's general election.

I'd bet that the most that happened is this: a member of a safe seat's Conservative Association said to Nigel Farage that the chap (or maybe chapess) would really like him to put his hat in the ring for the nomination. And Mr Farage didn't.

So come off it, Nige. On that basis, I can claim to have been offered a senior position on the Conservative front bench. A Shadow Cabinet member once said to me that the party really needed people like me and I would make a good Education Secretary.

The fact that I was, at the time, a paid up member of the Labour Party, and was engaged in an hour long argument with him about whether I was even a Conservative (he said I was, I said I wasn't), only adds to the comparison with Mr Farage's stupid claim.

(2)

It's not often I read a piece by Germaine Greer and want to shout my agreement with every dot and comma of it, but her piece today against the somewhat dreadful Plain English Campaign is bang on.

(Oliver Kamm has been fighting the good fight.)

(4)

Now here's an intriguing thought. One of my more eagle-eyed readers has drawn my attention to the remarkable similarity between comments left here by 'Green Goddess' and some of Neil Clark's posts on his blog.

This latest one, for example - Green Goddess left a comment on my post A Principle To Fight For:

I'll leave readers to draw their own conclusions.

Ninety minutes later, Neil Clark concluded his post A Tawdry Affair (on the same issue - Clark's deeply misguided attempt to use the libel laws to silence criticism of his work) thus:

I'll leave readers to draw their own conclusions.

That's hardly proof of anything, and could easily be a pure coincidence.

So I had a look at Green Goddess' comments here. He/she has left 9. Eight of them have only one point: praise for the wisdom of...Neil Clark.

The other comment consists simply of the phrase Freedom to the pike is death to the minnow. It's a comment in response to a post by me in which - you'll never guess - I attack Neil Clark's stupidity.

So every one of Green Goddess' comments is about, and in praise of, Neil Clark.

It's possible of course that Green Goddess is simply a big fan of writers who hero worship genocidal dictators. But maybe Green Goddess actually is a writer who hero worships genocidal dictators.

Whoever you are, Green Goddess - do tell us, please.

UPDATE: Green Goddess has commented below that he/she is not Neil Clark. Naturally, I take that at face value. There is, however, an equally plausible explanation. I wonder, Green Goddess, if you are Mr Clark's wife? Given that Mr Clark himself has been so thoroughly discredited as a reliable writer, perhaps his wife is the only person left who is willing to defend the mass murderer worshiping lover of the Warsaw Pact in public. Do tell us.

(19)

Celia Walden has Jon Snow banged to rights as a hypocrite:

The increasingly pious presenter spoke of "poppy fascism", asserting that, while choosing to wear a poppy off-screen, "I am not going to wear it or any other symbol on air.

"I do not believe in wearing anything that represents any kind of statement," he added.

Snow clearly has a very short memory.

For the record, this is what he had to say in the New Statesman last May about his "Make Poverty History" wristband:

"I had it on as I was about to interview [then Conservative Party leader] Michael Howard on election eve. My producer suddenly asked: 'Do you think you should be wearing that? and I said I should, because it was beyond contention."

Hypocrite doesn't begin to describe him.

Beyond contention? In the closed-mind world which Jon Snow inhabits, perhaps. But not to the rest of us.

This is very funny.

(via Tim Worstall.)

(2)

From The Times:

British doctors seek patient for world's first full-face transplant

Well, it does say full-face, so it might well include the brain, too. In which case, I can steer them in the right direction. This chap's brain is ideal as it appears never to have been used.

BTW, the genius that is Neil Clark has another blinder today:

Whatever happened to dear William Shawcross? In the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq, it was almost impossible to turn on any television channel and not see the great sage gravely informing us of the mortal threat posed by Saddam Hussein and his Weapons of Mass Destruction. Now, strangely, he is nowhere to be seen. I wonder where he could have got to?

Yes, whatever happened to him? I wonder, too, where he has got to. He is indeed nowhere to be seen. Unless you include national newspapers and magazines available from every newsagent in the country. Try this, from The Spectator, 28 October 2006:

Tony Blair and George Bush are absolutely right to insist that we cannot abandon Iraq. We are there under a United Nations mandate (soon up for renewal), assisting the legitimate, elected government. We should hand over to the Iraqis as they become more capable, but a premature pullout would condemn Iraq and the region to unbelievable horror.

Neil Clark. If he wasn't a buffoon he'd be an idiot.

(I know, I know. But shooting fish in a barrel can be fun.)

(1)

Neil, Neil. we can't wait any longer. Please tell us when you're going to make good on your promise of 21st February:

Over the next week, I will be printing a series of posts on Kamm and the way he deals with those who question him. Those of you who have been urging me to do a thorough fisking of Kamm's work will not be disappointed!

It's been eight months almost, and we're all on the edge of our seats. None of us have ever before seen a mass-murderer-loving ignoramus who looks back with nostalgia to the days of communist tyranny fisk a man of Oliver Kamm's intelligence. Most of us doubt it's possible, so we're all so disappointed that so far you're proving us right.

Where's the 'series of posts'? In fact, where's...one post? Come on, Neil. Give us what you promised.

Or is just that you can't, because of that deadly double whammy: that you are a fool and there's nothing you can find to fisk in Kamm's work?

(1)

She's back! But did she ever go away?

(1)

Another reason to read The Times:

She will resume her regular column in the Guardian.

And I can't wait for this:

...and has agreed a book contract with the publishers Granta, on the future of the countryside.

Buildings and roads, I'd have thought. What else is it for?

(1)

I just heard this gem on a Five Live discussion of euthanasia. Someone emailed in with this:

Would these pro-life campaigners allow their pet to carry on suffering, or would they go to the vet to have it put down?

I assume the emailer was trying to make a pro-euthenasia point. In which case, a word of advice: you might want to stop comparing it with having a pet put down.

(I had a spelling error on an earlier version of this.)

(2)

I think I've been wrong about Ms Toynbee. I've always thought that, much as I disagree with pretty much every thing she says, writes and stands for, and much as I think her journalistic standards can be damn near contemptible, she isn't stupid.

Looks like she is stupid. Very.

(1)

The Spectator has a piece this week about Ken Dodd. He's appearing in Blackpool, and the author suggests that "one thing every person sound of mind and body can and should do before they die is catch Ken Dodd, the once-and-forever king of comedy, working his magic on stage."

That, of course, involves a journey to the s**t-hole that is Blackpool. Might I suggest that there is a much easier way to amuse oneself, by watching a buffoon in action. Simply click here. Within a matter of seconds you will, as the acronym has it, be ROFL.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I know I promised to give up posting on Clark. It's cruel to mock the intellectualy afflicted. Shooting fish in a barrel and all that. But you know what? In his case, it's fun.

(This comment from the analytical genius of Oxford Tutorial College is simply priceless.)

UPDATE: Oh dear, caught out by Clark himself for a typo. Red faced...

FURTHER UPDATE: Oh dear, maybe my syntax is wrong but it's not Ken Dodd I meant to call a buffoon but our friend Mr Clark!

(5)

There are many mysteries in this world. One of the least important is this: how did Neil Clark ever get to teach at Oxford? Oxford Tutorial College, that is.

His post today is awesome in its stupidity:

Not a single country that possesses nuclear weapons has ever been attacked in a conventional military manner. It doesn't mean that the country is safe from all attacks- as 9-11 showed- but it does mean that no other country is going to launch a full scale military invasion or rein bombs down on your cities.

The Hezbollah missiles which reined [sic] down on Israel were, I suppose, actually sherbet fountains.

(5)

I'll be out of action for the next few days, spending all my time at the John Pilger Film Festival.

Or maybe not.

Lord above.

(via Clive Davis.)

(1)

Andrew 'Mel Gibson had a point' O'Hagan is at it again today, with a piece which, if it had appeared in the 1930s, would have praised to the hilt the statesmanlike Neville Chamberlain and ranted against the war-monger Churchill. In that context, his opening quote from Churchill is plain ignorant - as is his dismissive diminishing of the threat we face as coming from "handfuls of terrible extremists". One has to wonder if O'Hagan ever looks up from his keyboard to read about what is going in the world around him, or if he has any knowledge of history.

I'd never heard of Mr O'Hagan until his Gibson piece, and I wish I never had, but he is fast becoming an icon of ignorance and bile, up there with the Yazzmonster.

(9)

(THis image is from Disturbingly Yellow.)

Five years after 9/11, here's how the Guardian's front page commemorated it:

With Nicole Kidman. Yes, Ms Kidman is admirably sound on terror but somehow one doubts that the Guardian had that in mind when deciding that the anniversary of 9/11 wasn't worth putting on the front page.

(An earlier version of this post had some lines in the wrong order.)

(2)

What would you consider merits the label 'obscene'? On this blog, I've recently used it to to refer to people marching with 'We are all Hezbollah' placards. You might think that the word also applies to such things as the West's failure properly to act to prevent genocide in Darfur or, before that, Rwanda.

It seems none of those really come close to the meaning of the word, which is Andrew Lloyd Webber's failure to cast a member of Equity as the lead in a musical, according to Equity member Gillian Royale.

In a letter in today's Times, Ms Royale writes:

Sir, Why does Andrew Lloyd Webber have to scrape the bottom of the barrel when searching for his Maria in the forthcoming production of The Sound of Music? We in the United Kindgom have a wealth of talented young professional artists fully trained in musical theatre.

I regard throwing open a role as important as this to untrained and mostly untalented performers as nothing short of obscene.

GILLIAN ROYALE
Equity member
London SW11

If anyone knows Ms Royale, perhaps they might care to show her a picture of dead bodies in Darfur or of a battered child's injuries. Then show her a poster for the new production of The Sound of Music. And ask her if she really thinks that the casting of a woman to sing and dance on the stage of the Palladium merits, in her considered opinion, the label 'obscene'.

This is beyond satire. If I was to draw up a list of the most dangerously wrong-headed people in Britain today, the Indie's hilarious list would be the perfect starting point.

(6)

've just been watching an old Dinner With Portillo on BBC4, recorded in 2003. It contains this fabulous version of 'some of my best friends are Jews/Americans' from George Galloway, one of the guests:

I am not anti-American. I am a world authority on the American Jew, Bob Dylan.

(1)

Here's Neil Clark's latest post:

Here's an excellent piece from anti-war.com by Jim Lobe on how hard-line neo-conservatives are opposing the UN brokered ceasefire in the Israel/Lebanon war. The question I have asked many times before and will continue to ask is why, if these people love military conflict so much, don't they ever enlist? I'm sure either the US Army or the IDF would be very happy to have them.

The article to which Clark links is particularly scathing about Charles Krauthammer. Mr Krauthammer is in a wheelchair.

The question I have asked many times before and will continue to ask is this: is there a greater buffoon on the web than Neil Clark?

(7)

Compass ("Direction for the Democratic Left") has this on its site today:

At every key political moment since last summer we have asked ourselves ‘what would Robin [Cook] think and do now?’

Yes, a very useful leitmotif indeed, which must be placed alongside the Polly Toynbee and Sir Simon Jenkins tools: think and do the precise opposite.

(1)

My loathing of Sir Menzies Campbell gets greater by the day. His interview this morning on the Today programme was a classic of its kind.

His comments on the Middle East were bad enough. First, he praised the BBC for its “eloquent” coverage of the conflict. To a died in the wool Israel-hater that's no doubt true.

Next he argued that Israel couldn't win because all Hezbollah needs to do is “resist” to win Arab support. Ah yes, the voice of the liberal indeed. Kidnapping soldiers and bombing Israel is “resistance” in Sor Menzies' mind.

Then he argued that, in effect, Israel should be defenceless. He doesn't think America should be allowed to use Britiish airports to help it transport weapons to Israel.

Fine. At least he can't deny now where he really stands, given his objection to Israel having the wepons to defend itself from attack.

But what fair took my breath away was his reaction to the conviction of Michael Brown, the man who has given £2.4 million to the LibDems. Asked if he was embarrassed, Sir Menzies replied that "these are matters which are sub judice" and then huffed that they "are not matters which are anything to do with the LibDems".

No, of course not. It's nothing at all to do with the Lib Dems that one of their main donors is a crook, and they have no intention of returning the money.

As I have pointed out before, the LibDem's website says this:

Unlike the other main parties, the Liberal Democrats do not receive funding from big business or trade unions.

But fraudsters are just fine.

I don't understand why people say Sir Menzies isn't fit to be LibDem leader. He's a hypocrite in charge of a hypocritical party. Seems like a perfect fit to me.

(3)

Oh dear. When I wrote in my post below that David Treddinnick MP is a moronic tit, I was inaccurate. What I should have written is that he is a corrupt moronic tit.

How could I have forgotten his involvement in the cash for questions scandal?

Incitement to treason? Glorifying terrorism? Or just Sir Simon Jenkins in the Guardian?

Of course something must be done about the agonies suffered by the people of the Middle East. Humanity demands it. I would sail the first Red Cross ship into Beirut harbour. But I would sink the first aircraft carrier.

Given his all round genius and knowledge of everything, Sir Simon is surely aware that a number of British citizens have been given passage out of Beirut on HMS Illustrious.

(2)

This is what the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Betty Williams, has to say for herself:

I have a very hard time with this word 'non-violence', because I don't believe that I am non-violent. Right now, I would love to kill George Bush.

(2)

Do have a look at Iain Dale's sort-of fisking (it's not really a fisking so much as a total destruction) of Mary Dejevsky's column in today's Indie.

It's astonishing that a leader writer and columnist should berate a blogger for "assuming they have something to say and that others want to hear about it". I am well aware when I write something, whether on this site or in a column, that my opinion on most subjects is merely that - my opinion. And that to offer that opinion to the wider world is, of itself, an act of some arrogance. To criticise a blogger for offering their opinion - in a newspaper column, duh - is the very definition of hypocrisy. As it happens, Ms Dejevsky's own assumption that she has something to say - something worthwhile, that is - and that others want to hear about it is now demonstrably wrong. She doesn't. And we don't.

Dale's post is actually rather cruel - his annihilation of Dejevsky's drivel is so complete that I started to feel a bit sorry for her by the end (nah, I didn't really). Haven't you been told it's wrong to mock the afflicted, Iain?

(6)

Today's Guardian contains this correction:

In a column headed Britain is smiling, but it looks daggers at Labour, page 31, June 20, we accurately reported a blog posting by Janan Ganesh but incorrectly attributed to him the heading on the blog: "Let the Sudanese die - it's none of our business". The heading was not written by Mr Ganesh.

It's better than nothing.

But.

I wrote to Polly Toynbee on Wednesday, pointing out her mistake. Although I can't publish directly from our correspondence, I can say that the gist is that, even though she accepted the fact that Mr Ganesh did not write the words she attributed to him, she would not accept that she owed him an apology, because the words were a good characterisation of his views.

It is simply astounding that one of the country's leading columnists cannot see that there is anything wrong with attributing words to someone which they did not utter.

I am sure she would have something to say were I to quote her thus:

"I happily misquote those with whom I disagree, because accuracy is the preserve of the pedant. What matters is that I have free rein to say what I want. Other people's reputations count for nothing."

She didn't say any of that, of course. But it appears to be an accurate reflection of her view. So as far as she seems to be concerned, it's perfectly ok to put quotation marks around words which weren't said.

Is it any wonder that the Guardian is so distorted in its reporting, if that's the standard of one of its leading writers?

(10)

I was intrigued by the end of Polly Toynbee's column today, in which she mentions this site - specifically, some comments left here by one Janan Ganesh.

Here's what she writes:

Many thanks to the reader who found other Janan Ganesh works. Here is a sample of his compassion in a comment on Darfur that he wrote on the website of Stephen Pollard, the rightwing commentator who brands his site "Never knowingly understated".

"Let the Sudanese die - it's none of our business.

"It isn't any of our business. Iraq is a strategically vital country, which is why the project to remove Saddam and install a civilised form of government is so justified and important. Sudan is not. These half-baked interventions to temporarily stabilise failed states are functions of Blair's ridiculous 'Let's save the world and love each other, guys' approach to foreign policy. How many is it now? Kosovo, Sierra Leone, we're still in Bosnia - pointless interventions in pointless places.

"Blair is doing this while simultaneously shrinking the forces. When Bush extends America's military commitments, he ensures that concomitant extra resources are provided (more than concomitant, in fact - defence spending is already up 35% under Bush). Labour politicians just see defence as another cash cow to milk so that more money can be blown on nursery schools for inner-city orphans or whatever. This government makes me want to vomit sometimes."

I thought I should have a look to check what Mr Ganesh had written on my site. And it turns out that most of what she has quoted is indeed posted by him.

But not the words ""Let the Sudanese die - it's none of our business" - which are clearly the most incendiary and vile words. The rest are an expression of mainstream traditional realpolitik Conservative policy. The sentence "Let the Sudanese die - it's none of our business" is the headline on my post, which is clearly a headline and clearly meant as a my take on the views of opponents of intervention.

Either Ms Toynbee saw it was a headline and nonetheless deliberately attributed them to Ganesh (of whom I have never heard until now, and with whom I disageee) which is shocking if true. Or she is utterly cavalier about such things. Or she is too stupid to realise the difference between a headline on a post and a comment posted by a visitor to a site.

I certainly don't think she is stupid.

(And yes, I realise that her point is that the Conservatives haven't really changed, and that Ganesh's views show that. But attributing words to him which he didn't write doesn't show that. It shows a lot more about Ms Toynbee.)

(17)

The question is, how can I not stand?

(4)

A commenter to the post below has alerted me to this response by Peter Wilby to my correction of his earlier piece:

I owe Stephen Pollard an apology. I wrote recently that he stopped contributing to the NS because we compared Tony Blair to Stalin. Not so, as he pointed out in a letter the following week. His protest was over an earlier piece which proposed that Blair might be a psychopath.

At the time, this was not an original contention. The Times columnist Matthew Parris had written that the PM's belief that he could reconcile the irreconcilable on the Iraq war was "a familiar delusion among people who are not quite right in the head". However, our writer, Peter Dunn, produced the most extensively researched piece, talking to psychiatrists and psychologists.

Now another Times columnist, Alice Miles, writes: "The Prime Minister has gone quite mad." She compares him to George III, talking constantly but making no sense.

Pollard is a frequent Times contributor. Indeed, one of his pieces for the paper appeared on Bank Holiday Monday, a few days after Miles's disgraceful calumnies. No doubt it is by some oversight that he still sends copy to the paper.

Apology accepted, of course. But the implication that I am somehow hypocritical in continuing to write for The Times says more about Peter Wilby than it does about me. For one thing, my letter informing him that I no longer wished to write for the New Statesman said that the entirely spurious psychological diagnosis - worthy of Goebbels in its intent - was merely the last straw, and that I felt uncomfortable writing for a magazine that had consistently attributed false motives to supporters of the war and had consistently distorted the case.

But leave that aside. If Mr Wilby cannot see the difference between two throwaway remarks by columnists - "not quite right in the head" and "gone quite mad" - and an article which purports to be an objective and serious piece of psychological diagnosis, concluding that a man is a psycopath, then I fear for Mr Wilby's own state of mind.

(15)

DRAT!

It seems the secret fifth columist traitorousness of The Times has been exposed at last by one Michelle Malkin.

Anyone who reads the columns of Gerard Baker, Daniel Finkelstein, Michael Gove, Oliver Kamm and yours truly - not to mention most of the other columnists - will have seen for themselves examples of the rampant anti-American, nay anti-Western bias which pours forth from every page of the newspaper. Now we have been exposed for what we truly are.

GULP!

(32)

Tim Worstall KOs Polly Toynbee.

(5)

Neil Clark (for it is he), propagandist for mass murderer Slobo:

All the drugs which Milosevic took in jail were taken under supervision. There is no way he could have obtained and taken the Rifampcin himself. There is no other explanation, except that Rifampicin was administered to him without his knowledge. We are dealing here with murder.

Nothing has been found to support allegations reported in some sections of the media that Mr Milosevic had been murdered, in particular by poisoning. The results of the independent investigation by the Dutch authorities demonstrate that such allegations are entirely false.

I must have a limited vocabulary, for the only word which comes to mind is this: prat.

(10)

Does Joseph Harker exist? Surely not. This has to be another Peter Briffa parody:

Flag-waving patriotism before the World Cup is fair enough, but is the BNP secretly smirking?

Joseph Harker
Thursday May 18, 2006
The Guardian

Is it just me, or is anyone else slightly worried about the number of St George's flags flying from road vehicles right now?

...Now, I wouldn't want to malign all east Londoners (though every time I saw shots of the West Ham fans at last Saturday's FA Cup final I couldn't help thinking: are you from Dagenham; did you vote BNP?), or all overweight male van drivers. And I certainly wouldn't want to deny football fans the right to these fluttering displays of national support come the big kick-off against Paraguay next month. But right now I can't help thinking that the BNP's leaders are secretly smirking every time they see the flag. And, even more, I wouldn't want to do anything that emboldens their hateful doctrine. So, is it just me.

Maybe he's real. In which case, to answer his question: no, Joseph, it isn't just you. The Guardian's April circulation was 385,219 copies a day. So there are 385,218 others.

(12)

I've given up reading Neil Clark's witterings since realising that even his political allies think he's a joke. But my attention was drawn to his latest post, with an example of his usual accuracy:

[T]he story which really took my interest was a full page article in the Daily Mail by a certain 'Jonathan Foreman'. Foreman is not a regular Daily Mail comment writer and there was nothing about his credentials for writing about Venezvuela at the foot of the piece. Intrigued, I set out to find out more about the man...

The message of this is: don't hire Neil Clark as a private detective. And certainly don't ask him to describe what is two feet in front of his eyes. In setting out 'to find out more about the man', it has somehow passed our Neil by that Jonathan Foreman works at the Mail and, far from being 'not a regular', has a piece in as often as any other Mail features writer.

Brilliant, Neil. Here's some free advice: stick to the horse racing.

(8)

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

The Yazzmonster is out there.

Nah. On second thoughts, be totally apathetic. To judge from the date of her 'latest article', she seems to be.

(via The Daily Ablution.)

UPDATE: Lordy. It's been pointed to me by The Pedant-General that the page consists of two paragraphs of prose, repeated 3 times. How could I not have noticed? Well, is there anyone out there who can stand reading more than two pars of the Yazzmonster?

As my correspondent writes:

Yazza having endlessly to repeat herself in shrill tones? Who'da thunk it.

One would have thought that the RSC would have realised that audiences have moved on from their nineteenth and early twentieth century predecessors and no longer feel it decent to watch freak shows.

Clearly not. This round robin email from the RSC shows that they literally can’t give away tickets for one such upcoming example:

Free tickets for Yasmin Alibhai Brown's Nowhere to Belong: Tales of an Extravagant Stranger, part of the RSC New Work Season at Soho Theatre

'This show is a gem - very funny and touching - and any person of spirit would find themselves falling in love with Alibhai-Brown.' Independent

Respected (and often controversial) political commentator Yasmin Alibhai-Brown explores a life-long love of Shakespeare and details how her own personal experience of playing Juliet as a teenager in ‘60s Uganda sent shockwaves through her family and helped to shape the emotional and political landscape of her life.

Yasmin returns after a hugely successful run at Soho Theatre last March.

Yasmin Alibhai Brown has written for The Guardian, Observer, The New York Times and many other newspapers as well as having a regular column in the Independent. In 2001 she was appointed an MBE for services to journalism; however, in 2003 she returned her MBE as a protest against the new empire in Iraq and a growing imperialism

Free tickets for this unique monologue are available for the following performances:

I'm sure it's simply by chance that that the the only paper from which they've found a positive review from which to quote is the one for which the Yazzmonster (for it is she) writes.

(It would be colluding in the staging of such a freak show to publish the details of how and when free tickets are available.)

I assume Neil Clark must be too busy penning his paens of praise to Aleksandr Lukashenka to stick by this promise made on 21st February:

Over the next week, I will be printing a series of posts on Kamm and the way he deals with those who question him. Those of you who have been urging me to do a thorough fisking of Kamm's work will not be disappointed!

I assume Clark is on his way to the funeral of his beloved mass murdering hero. Hopefully he'll find time during the journey to keep his promise. We're all waiting with bated breath.

(I know, I know - I really should stop flogging a dead horse, but something - the sheer stupid offensiveness of his drivel, most probably - just keeps drawing me back.)

UPDATE: The poor, put upon little mass-murderer lover doesn't like it when he's dismissed by those he writes to for the tyrant worshipping buffoon that he is. His post about Johann Hari being rude to him contains this glorious sentence:

Readers will be able to make their own minds up about the credibility of his reporting.

I think one might say Mr Clark lacks a certain sense of irony.

It's Neil Clark day here today. Forgive me, but I can't stop myself exposing this idiot to the ridicule he so deserves, given that he has gone overboard since Milosevic's death with a series of ever more ridiculous posts defending his hero the mass murderer.

Clark claims to 'expose' the 'hoax' of the entirely well-documented use of refrigeration lorries to transport corpses for burial or burning from Kosovo to Serbia.

He does so by citing this website.

Guess what? It's the work of one Francisco Gil-White, a conspiracist crank who believes that 9/11 was “an inside job” and 20 other other conspiracy theories before breakfast. Somewhat idiotically, on his web site he carries an interview he did with Hannity and Colmes on Fox TV where he’s pressed on this issue. It's idiotic because Hannity makes mincemeat of him:

HANNITY: Mr. Gil-White, Sean Hannity here. Did you or did you not call the September 11 terrorist attacks an inside job, sir?

GIL-WHITE: Yes. But that has nothing to do with why I'm being fired.

HANNITY: Let me -- Hang on a second. Did you or did you not write articles alleging that NATO framed Slobodan Milosevic?

GIL-WHITE: Yes, I did. I have an article…

HANNITY: Hang on. I'm not here to dispute this. I want to -- I want to get your track record on the record. Did you or did you not try to convince your colleagues that the United States is the secret enemy of Israel, sir?

GIL-WHITE: Yes.

HANNITY: OK. They're saying that this has nothing to do with those opinions, but I want to address those opinions. You really say that there's an inside job that -- about 9/11? Explain your little theory here.

GIL-WHITE: Look, I'm not a 9/11 scholar. What you should do is get Jared Israel here. He's the chief editor of "Emperor's Clothes," www.tenc.net. He's probably the world's authority...

HANNITY: You said 9/11 was an inside job. You just admitted to me. What do you mean when you say it's an inside job?

GIL-WHITE: Well, the reporter for the "Philadelphia Inquirer," Patrick Kerkstra, asked me whether I agreed with the views expressed on Emperor's Clothes concerning 9/11. I haven't done any real research on 9/11. Jared Israel has. I agree with his conclusions, and that is, indeed, the core of his argument.

And that's the source on which Clark relies for his 'exposure' of the 'hoax'.

Sometimes I wonder why I bother with the silly man. Then I realise why I do: it's crueller than shooting fish in a barrel. And we neocons just love cruelty, don't we, Neil?

A correspondent has sent me this piece by the aforementioned William Spring, whom our friend Neil Clark commends to us for his views on the BBC's coverage of the death of Milosevic. David Icke, eat your heart out:

Years ago I had a mystical experience. I have had a few such experiences, at widely divergent intervals. This one was around 1978. I had been at work & had come into the house @ about 5 am. I had not been married long. We were living in a flat in Crouch End, London. It was light & the birds were twittering outside. I sat in a chair & suddenly I had, not quite a dream, but a waking vision, as I was awake when I had it. I saw two scenes: in one I saw a room. In the middle of the room was a man, quite large, ( I think I actually met him later). He was @ prayer, but whether to an idol or to the Christian God I had no idea. The scene then shifted, & I was coming down rapidly, on to a city, as if in an aircraft, on to something which appeared like an island. The city had tall towers & masts. Simultaneously a voice said to me: "So they came to the Land of the Uttermost Darkness." (In fact I wasn't clear whether the word was "utmost" or "uttermost.") The vision then faded. Later I spoke to Isabelle & told her what I had seen. I said "who are 'they'? is it us? And where is "The Land of Uttermost Darkness." Isabelle replied, quite sensibly, "if 'they' is us, then this means we are going there sometime, & we will recognise the land when we get there." Which is what happened. We didn't go to Saudi Arabia for another six years or so. We went first to Zimbabwe & then to Cyprus, where I researched the position of indigenous Christian minorities in the Middle East. In January 1985 I flew to Riyadh, & in March 1985, my wife joined me there, with my 3 children. (Another child was born in Riyadh). I recognised the place from my vision. The sense of it being an island was possibly due to the fact that Riyadh is just stuck in the middle of nowhere, & hundreds of square miles of desert. While in Saudi I didn't earn high money, like oil people do. I worked for the University, then for a royal school, teaching. The royal school was complete mayhem. As far as I recall only the grandson of King Faisal worked well. He sat there with a lectern in front of him, while pandemonium prevailed all around. Our head of English was an ineffectual American called Don. Because all these little brats were princes we had to humour them, in the best child centred progressive style now favoured in the UK, & they took advantage. Later I left the royal school & had a contract with one of bin Laden's associates, a Mr Mafhooz , & later still, at the time of the Gulf War, I worked for the Saudi Ministry of Telecommunications. Of course the idea that Saudi Arabia might be a land of uttermost darkness rather than light would never occur to any Muslim. The KSA stamps show great beams of light radiating out from Mecca. But speaking to a Coptic Christian I found the phrase, "uttermost darkness " had a particular application.

It's clear to me after reading this that BBC editorial policy ought to be handed over to William Spring without further delay.

There's not long to go now until April Fools' Day, and I propose