The Gods of the Copybook Headings

Wednesday Night - Civilisation

Anti-Work

Anthony Daniels:

The British, and no doubt many others, are unable to distinguish between work and activity. This is not really surprising, since they call anything work if they would not do it without being paid. Whether this work, as they call it, but remunerated activity as I call it, contributes to the production of anything of value, economic or otherwise, is not a question for them. If they wouldn’t do it without payment, it’s work. 

I realized a long time ago that a very large number of people in a modern economy are paid to do things that not only fail to add to the economic product of the country, but on the contrary reduce it, insofar as they obstruct others from producing as much as they otherwise might.

And a surprising number of those "obstructors" work in the private sector.

Scenes From The Imperial Capital

Bible Dave

David Cameron finds religion:

Britain should be unashamedly “evangelical” about its Christian faith and actively hand churches and other faith groups a greater role in society, David Cameron has insisted.

In a declaration of his personal beliefs, he said he had experienced the “healing power” of religion in his own life and insisted that Christianity could transform the “spiritual, physical, and moral” state of Britain and even the world.

Unfortunately the power of Christ was unable to compel David Cameron to grow a spine. There are degrees of cynicism in politics. Then there is the vile hypocritical nonsense that is regularly emitted by Her Majesty's First Minister. Apparently the Queen and Cameron are distant cousin, though only in the strictly biological sense. 

It suggests that the Prime Minister, who once described his own faith as being “like Magic FM in the Chilterns” – meaning that it periodically fades and reappears – has found greater strength in religion since entering office.

It's been commonly remarked that people often find their faith reappearing just before arriving at the scaffold. Capital punishment was abolished in Britain some years back. Yet this same phenomenon can still be observed before an equally terrifying prospect: Massive defeat in a General Election. Think of it as a good old fashioned hanging for politicians. It'll help you get through the Writ Period.

Contrary to popular perceptions there are still actual Christians living in Britain. These forlorn descendants of St Augustine of Canterbury have not had an easy go it. Still they soldier on. Most are ordinary people going about their daily lives. Virtually none of them occupy high positions within the British Establishment. Taking religion seriously has been considered tacky among the Great and Good since at least the early 18th century. There was a brief revival around the time of Gladstone, though the GOM was routinely mocked for his piety.

For the British elite religion is something that only two kinds of people take seriously: Idiots and Americans. These two groups are frequently conflated in the British imagination. That is excepting those moments when the Germans or Russians have overrun the continent. Once the danger has passed the lordly conceit returns as surely as the loonies to Stonehenge for the solstice.

There will be some, blessedly simple souls, who believe that David Cameron is attempting to reassert traditional British values. Bring back the good old religion to the Mother Country. Nope. He's so desperate for votes he's doing what no British politician has done since the time of Mary Whitehouse: Pander to British so-cons.

This is about as despised a minority in modern Britain as is possible. I should, of course, clarify that I'm referring to white British so-cons. An Anglo-Saxon by blood declaring that filth should be removed from the BBC would be deemed a lunatic. A Pakistani immigrant treating his daughter or wife in a manner that would have been regarded as obscene by medieval Englishmen? He is pointedly ignored. Only specially designated minorities are allowed to dissent from modern political correctness. More than this they're allowed to dissent from civilized conduct as it has hitherto been known.

This is not a case of religion interfering in politics. It's the case of a political coward trying to save his own hide. 

 

Tuesday Night - Beautiful Girl

The Last of the Red Hot Reformers

The passing scene:

More than two decades after those 52 original Reform party MPs arrived in the nation’s capital and redefined the federal Conservative movement, only a half-dozen remain — and their ranks will dwindle yet again with the next election. Backbench Conservative MP Garry Breitkreuz, one of the original Reformers, announced recently that he won’t run  in the 2015 federal campaign.

Scenes From The Imperial Capital

Bureaucrats Honouring Bureaucrats

Your Tax Dollars at "Work": 

Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) thanked the Community of Federal Regulators for honouring it with the 2013-14 Regulatory Excellence Awards in the areas of Collaboration, Leadership and Innovation.

You have a group of federal paper-pushers handing out awards to other paper-pushers for their "skill" at pushing paper. It's past understanding how they don't have broken arms from all this backpatting. Some of you might want to use a more colourful methapor. 

The CRTC received the award for Collaboration for the video relay service proceeding, which was launched in March 2013. In partnership with Public Works and Government Services Canada’s translation bureau, the CRTC provided unprecedented access for Canadians who are Deaf, hard of hearing, or speech impaired. 

Out of curiosity how many Canadians "who are Deaf, hard of hearing, or speech impaired" tune into watch CRTC hearings? I have watched exactly one CRTC hearing in my life and that was because Sun News was on the block at the time. Aside from that normal people, whatever their disabilities, don't spend their time watching or even being aware of these hearings. Only the most miserably low rung of hacks even gets sent to cover these things, no doubt as punishment for the grave folly of having attended journalism school. You wanted to be Woodward? Now you're Bernstein's liver.

The remarkable self-regard of the bureaucratic class doesn't end there. Nope. None of us are that lucky in life.

The CRTC was also recognized as an innovator in engaging Canadians in new ways to develop a code of conduct for wireless service providers. The CRTC made extensive use of social media and other technologies to engage Canadians and include the public’s views in the discussion at a public hearing.

I don't remember being engaged in developing a code of conduct for wireless providers. Do you? I didn't think so. But then again we get out of the house from time to time. Spare a moment, if you can, for the poor wretches who bleed away the hours developing codes of conducts. Not even actual regulations but mere codes. A guide of regulatory etiquette. Emily Post for the Sir Humphrey Applebys of modern Canada. I have no idea what crimes these code of conduct drafters committed in their previous lives, yet this is a punishment well beyond human understanding. Please just draw and quarter the lot of them. It's the merciful thing to do. For all of us. 

Bureaucrats are different from you and me, they get to waste other people's money.  

 

Monday Night - The Gathering Storm

Wing Commander Archie Boyd

The Telegraph:

In March 1943 Boyd was given command of No 219 Squadron, with the task of preparing it for an unknown destination overseas. After re-equipping with the latest night-fighter version of the Beaufighter, and with a new air intercept radar, the squadron was ready to depart at the end of May. Led by Boyd and his long-serving navigator, Alex Glegg, 18 aircraft headed for an airfield in Cornwall before leaving at five-minute intervals on the long flight across the Bay of Biscay to Gibraltar.

Scenes From The Imperial Capital

The Vanity of Protest

Laureen Harper goes to the cats:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's wife, Laureen, was briefly interrupted during a speech at an online cat video festival  in Toronto Thursday night after a university activist demanded she take a stance on a subject she considered to be much more serious.

She was just beginning her brief remarks ahead of Just for Cats: Internet Cat Video Festival at the TIFF Bell Lightbox cinema when 21-year-old student activist Hailey King began shouting from the crowd.

I have nothing but sympathy for Laureen Harper. Hardly a great tragedy but these outbursts must, after a time, become incredibly annoying. Being the wife of the PM is something of a thankless task. Either you sink out of sight, like Mrs Chretien and Mrs Martin, or you play advocate for various worthy causes. It is understood that in addition to being worthy the causes must also be utterly uncontroversial. Helping homeless cats must be the least controversial cause imaginable.

Being a prominent figure, especially a Right leaning prominent figure, makes you an obvious foil for a long and undistinguished train of crackpots. I have an important cause, or at least something I think is important, and everyone must pay attention to me. Nominally this is because of the important cause, in truth it's because of the vanity of the protester in question. 

Sincere protesters, those not primarily driven by personal vanity, rarely expresses themselves in the manner of cheap and rude stunts. Other people spent a great deal of time and money putting together a charity event, somehow convinced Laureen Harper to make time in her busy schedule, and then staged the whole thing. A lot of hard work. But the vain protester decides she has a right to free ride off the efforts of others. In a sense Hailey King is more than a silly young girl, she's a vain silly and parasitical young girl. The cause isn't the issue, it's the manner in which it is promoted. 

Now compare Miss King's antics with a genuine protester, the anti-abortion campaigner Linda Gibbons. A harmless grandmother who stands outside an abortion clinic in Toronto holding up a sign. For this simple act of protest, which if you're familiar with the antics of the Toronto Left is incredibly courteous and respectful, she has spent about nine years in jail. At one arrest five police officers were present. 

Five. 

It should not have to be added, but it must be, that if Mrs Gibbons were protesting whales, beavers or seals in exactly the same manner the Canadian Establishment would be falling over themselves to give her awards and banquets. Not the slightest doubt she'd have the Order of Canada. Perhaps even a Senate appointment. Her cause is an unfashionable one so she remains in jail at the mercy of a temporary injunction that is now reaching the twenty year mark. There is nothing so permanent as a temporary suspension of individual liberty.

There are those willing to pay the price for upholding their principles. Then there are those too lazy and vain to risk anything but some minor embarrassment at a posh festival.

 

Friday Night - Kevin Spacey

Secret Agent Iggy

They're giving you a number and taking away your tenure:

Recently released British intelligence files note that the family of former federal Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff spied on suspected Nazi sympathizers in Canada on behalf of the British security service MI5.

[...]

Grateful to the British government for offering them exile, the Ignatieffs cooperated regularly with the British intelligence service after settling in Canada in the mid-1920s, according recently released MI5 files obtained by the Star.

Before anyone starts saying that Iggy's family are a bunch of snitches, please keep in mind that his uncle was ferreting out Nazis. John Buchan, the man who in many ways created the modern spy novel, even tried to recruit him to be a full-time spy. Say what you will about the deposed Lord Iggy of Etobicoke-Upon-Lakeshore, he had some pretty impressive ancestors. 

Scenes From The Imperial Capital