There is a solution

Via Dizzy, Gordon Brown goes into advertising:



Hilarity. :)

The Doctor is a libertarian

This Sunday gone I indulged in a bit of a duvet-evening watching my way through Season One and Two of Doctor Who. The Doctor is one of my geeky pleasures; one of many. It’s classic BBC science-fiction at its very best: just a little bit crap but absolutely enthralling for it. David Tennant remains brilliant and I’ll be sad to see him go at the end of the year. He’ll be a rather tough nut to follow, I’d wager.

Anyway, to cut to the point, two lines uttered by The Doctor – one as Eccleston, one as Tennant, suggested that the BBC is projecting its leftie tendencies on to the travelling Time Lord in his little blue box. I point you to season one, ‘The Empty Child’ and season two, ‘Tooth and Claw’. Both are pretty incidental, but they did set me thinking.

In ‘The Empty Child’, the Doctor introduces himself to a group of vagrant children living in the blitz. Following an elder girl who acts as a ringleader and mother figure to the kids, he cheerfully declares their household invasions to feed themselves as ‘Marxism in action’. So, a ragtag group of individuals heroically take from another group of individuals in order to feed themselves. The scriptwriters justify this action by painting the aggrieved party (the bourgeois family) as morally depraved. The father is having a secret affair with the butcher to get extra rations, therefore getting more than his due. I suppose I can kind of see where the scriptwriters were coming from, but it basically boils down to ‘rob from the rich, give to the poor’.

Was the State telling them to do this? Well, clearly not. It was a bunch of kids stealing to survive. That’s not Marxism. It made for a nice line, but a Robin Hood gag would have been more appropriate.

Ooh, hang on... does that mean Robin Hood was a Marxist?

I’d say these kids were instead capitalising on an opportunity in a very enterprising fashion.

So, on to the second leftie moment. ‘Tooth and Claw’. The TARDIS has landed in what The Doctor and Rose believe is 1979. As he rattles off a list of great things that happened in 1979, he says ‘Thatcher’, catches himself, and shivers.

Oh, frak right off.

The Beeb just LOVES to demonise her. Even Doctor Who doesn’t like her, apparently. Because she only saved and rebuilt the British Economy after Labour trashed it and led us into the Winter of Discontent. Yes, the Government wasn’t perfect, yes, they were a bit on the authoritarian side (but not nearly as much as ZaNuLab), but please. It’s always plucky working-class types and evil corporations.

Still, however much the scriptwriters try to make The Doctor an extension of their leftie agenda, they have created a paradox in so doing. You see, The Doctor is an optimist. He doesn’t have much truck with authority, he also loves humans; our idiosyncrasies, our drive, our spirit, our enterprise. He believes in our innate good and our boundless sense of invention and adventure.

In short, The Doctor is a libertarian. He might even be a little left-wing, believing that the poor should be protected by the rich and helped, but he would never think it right that anyone could force you to do it. He believes in freedom and liberty, in peace, and protecting others, but allowing everyone to choose for themselves.

To my rather rudimentary understanding, the libertarian, especially the right-wing libertarian, is an optimist who believes in human endeavour and enterprise. Helping each other through trade and hard work, free to profit, but also free to choose to spend that money on helping those who have less – be it through employing them, or through philanthropy. The point is that he who has much will choose to help he who has less, but no one can or will force him to do so. The libertarian capitalist is the ultimate optimist, believing in the good of everyone and that ultimately we will want to help others, because others will want to improve themselves.

So to commit the fallacy of affirming the consequent and pretend it’s really modus ponens: The Doctor believes in the ultimate good of humanity and in liberty. A right-wing libertarian believes in the ultimate good of humanity and in liberty. Therefore, Doctor Who is a right-wing libertarian.

Discuss.

Funniest thing I've read all day...

Oh oh oh... but this did make me giggle. This one is going on my blogroll...

You almost had me...

Capitalists@Work have, I suspect, just played an almost believable one.

It is the 1st of April, right?

Englandshire rules the waves

A fellow twitterer directed his followers to this article on the insidious and devious path by which the EU is attempting to dismantle the United Kingdom. Reading on through the comments, I stumbled upon this... well, essay, for wont of a better word:

Briefly, England is the greatest country that the world has ever seem. We are greater than the furthest expanse of the 1st Chinese Empire, more powerful than the Egyptians, more influential than the Greeks, and more organised than the Romans. We have proved this by first silencing our troublesome neighbours; Scotland, Wales & Ireland (to some extent) all of whom were and probably still are, jealous of our freedoms, our independence, our genius and our power.

We adpapt very quickly and this makes us almost unbeatable in war - unless we are fighting ourselves - of course! Since we have this indispensible capacity, we have been fortunate enough to use it wisely not only to ensure our survival, but the survival of our way of thinking, our generous attitude, our benevolence, our warmth and fairness, all of which are far far more important. This is our real culture and this what we will die for. For we know how to accept that which we cannot change and subdue that which attempts to change us.

Because since our establishment here in Britain ovr 1500 years ago, we English have turned the basic British way of life into an enigmatic novelty and we have imposed our language, our culture and our glorious traditions on these war-like elemetals who have been forced to accept us, mostly against their wills to begin with, and gradually, to accept us by tollerating the benefits they have received from us over the years.

Under the British flag, we the English, have led the peoples of this island to economic conquests and dominance all over the world, and we have forced all peoples to learn our ways of living and our ways of prospering over and above their own, and for their own good, which most, now accept with few provisos. The gun has been a big part of this, and without it, our culture would not be as dominant all over the world, as it is today, in every country and in every culture and in every continent: in fact, almost everywhere on planet Earth!

We are the people who have subdued and civilised and educated this whole planet into our way of thinking - but the work is not done. There is still some work to do - because our children, the USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and others have been blinded by anti English propaganda which demonises us for creating riches where there were none, organisation where there was chaos, a sense of jutice where there was only force and brutality, an aim of healing where there was only suffering, and healthy living where there was predominantly sickness and pain.

This is what it means to be English and this is the weight that every English person carries with them on their shoulders, not as a yoke (as our enemies would have it), but as a burden of responsibility which must not be released into the hands of others, or the world that WE have created will fall into a dark age, far darker than any dictatorship, far darker than any cowardly gutless obedience, far far darker than any state imposed unfair laws, and more obscure than any futile war of greed.

Criticisms of our desired way of life and our peaceful tolerant society, come from the enemies of our civilising influence and from those who would rather not have what we have given, but instead the nihilism and barbarism of the ignorant which must be anathema to ourselves and to our English people.

Without an England, the world must implode upon itself and be subdued by the land of darkness which hangs over us like shadow of the re-introduction of the wolf into our peaceful forests, the dismantling of our Hadrians wall which has kept us safe for centuries. It currently lies almost abandoned and can’t keep wolves out for too much longer. Lets start to re-man that wall - and keep an eye our for those blood-thirsty wolves!

They are there, and they are coming; and they will take what is yours unless you stand up and do something. Now.

Adrian Thurston| 12.21.08 @ 9:32AM

Smashing stuff, what? I wasn't sure if this might have been a superb work of irony in the truest, English vein, but as I reached the end I swear I was almost humming Rule Britannia. The man is completely without hinges, but full marks for effort!

Sniggers...

Heh.

The prime minister added: "I was making some very insightful points about Fred Goodwin's pension, but he just kept looking at that watch and I'm thinking, 'gosh, it must be a really good one'.

Funny. Oh how he must be seething inside - Bliar got all the bells and whistles, Jonah brings the wind and snow. Then gets a quick chat before he's shoved out the door.

I say this not in Brown's defence, but Obama really isn't the messiah. He is not the panacea to the world's ills. He is, however, the President of the USA, and this whole sorry affair makes Brown look far more like the poodle we thought Bliar was.

Nailed. On. The. Head.

Daily Mash is teh pwnz0r.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Hypocritical, lying, arrogant, devious son-of-a...

Basementcat's February Obsessions

Via the delights of Wordle, here's what's been on my mind the most this month...



Click to see the full size version. If I can figure out how to get a proper screen-grab I will...

Bit of an oversight. Or not...

Okay, so I know the splash on Clarkson's hilarious comment was at the tail of last week, but I do feel it is worth saying that I entirely agree with the sentiment.

He is after all: a) one eye'd, b) Scottish and c) an idiot.

Is it used to dig from the ground? Yes, you say? Then it is a spade.

His apology is understandable in the sense that perhaps mentioning the 'one eye'd' part in the same phrase as idiot could offend everyone else with a visual impairment (to be fair, more by association with Jonah than anything else), but he is very definitely Scottish. Jeremy, may I just offer that not all Scots were offended. We're embarrassed by him too.

Lord Foulkes reaction did amuse me greatly:

“Something should be done about Clarkson.

“He has insulted Gordon Brown three times over — accusing him of being a liar, having a go at him for having a physical handicap, and for his nationality.”

Clarkson didn't take the piss out of our premier for his disability or nationality. You would only be offended by those things if you thought that somehow those made you less of a person. Given Foulkes' history, I think he might perhaps want to engage brain before mouth; he who is without sin, and all that...

Canuckleheads?

The Conservatives certainly have no shortage of ammunition to fire at New Labour - they've manifestly failed to deliver on education (a key pledge way back in 1997), stuck a broken bottle up the backside of the national economy by spending like an old dame in a casino, given even more of our sovereignty away to the EUSSR than I care to think about, increased Government spending beyond sustainable levels and inflated the public sector into a gargantuan mess. To name but a few.

Still, their latest billboard does raise a question - have they got something against Canadians, or do they have a rep for bad maths that I just don't know about?

Propellorheads feat. Dame Shirley Bassey

Snow.

Strikes.

Labour Government.

Recession.

It’s all just a little bit of history repeating... *cue Shirley Bassey*

Relax, there's probably no recession

Devil's Kitchen has found the single most hilarious widget I've seen all day.

Check it out here.

Have a play, see what you can come up with... it's not like we're going to be short of ammunition.

Political Spectrometer Analysis. Sounds like something out of Star Trek...

Saw this little quiz over on Tory Bear, and decided to give it a pop. Looks like I'm a right social libertarian... I can live with that.

My Political Views
I am a right social libertarian
Right: 4.85, Libertarian: 6.46


My Foreign Policy Views
Score: 3.46


My Culture War Stance
Score: -5.16


Didn't expect to be quite such a neo-con, but hey, there you go!

Have a go here if you're a bit bored.