US Financial Meltdown - Who and Why and How

How on earth did those bankers get embroiled in the subprime market - it's a dirty word now, of course, but a few years ago some people had a different perspective. Watch this and then ask yourself why the big media in the USA and here have not tracked right back on this issue............

Obama campaign - a link to anti Palin youtube smear?

Fascinating story circulating in the US blogosphere here about a possible link between Obamas guru David Axelrod and an anti Palin vid on youtube - what is more, since the story emerged everything has been pulled....mmmmmmmmm...interesting to see if the big media picks up on it....

DAVID DAVIS

The trouble with sites like ConservativeHome is that the vast majority of posters are party political trainspotters obsessed with the minutiae of our niche fetish and/or the Westminster Village Commentariat. Now normally that is fine and, like the Collectors of Car Tax Discs, we can pursue our little hobby with all the fury and intensity of your regular anorak. However, when something as out of the box as the David Davis resignation comes along we struggle to fit it into our Weltanschauung because it it transcends the parameters of party political discourse – it’s the sort of thing one would discuss in a seminar as part of a Political Science degree…hence the bewilderment of hacks like Robinson and Crick – if they can’t understand it then it must be either a “stunt” or part of some sort of conspiracy.
Fortunately this issue is now beyond the village and the anoraks and and is in the hands of those ordinary, everyday folk who are not political hobbyists. These are the people who we often claim to represent and love but who do sometimes display an annoying tendency to make up their own minds and ignore our sage and well informed advice…..

The Iraq Surge and the DT

"Military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al Qaeda"

So says The Washington Post in a recent article headed "The Iraqi Upturn". Now the WaPo is the Bible of the Beltway, the parish magazine of the East Coast chattering classes, the Court Circular of the Democrat elite so when it starts to say this it must cause consternation at the BBC, The Guardian and The Independent where the concept of the Iraq "quagmire" has been deeply embedded as a self evident truth.

But, more worryingly, it must also be causing concern at The Daily Telegraph which, over the last few weeks, has been peddling a rather curious line about events in Basra and Sadr City, portraying the current offensives in a rather negative light - and it raises again the issue of the DT Editor Will Lewis and his relationship with Gordon Brown. The sudden spate of articles from Mary Riddell have been very defensive of Brown and it just makes you wonder if "Private Eye" is on to something when it describes a degree of "cosiness" between Lewis and the Brown coterie.....perhaps someone should tell those Barclay boys......

Channel 4 and Bobby Sands

Channel 4 is risking fresh controversy over a film that portrays Bobby Sands, the IRA hunger striker, in a sympathetic light says The Daily Telegraph.

“Hunger” premieres at the Cannes Film Festival today and is directed by Steve McQueen, the Turner Prize-winning artist.

It recounts the 1981 IRA hunger strike inside Northern Ireland’s Maze Prison which Sands led for 66 days until his death.

Jan Younghusband, the Channel 4 commissioning boss, said: "I feel it is the right moment to be revisiting and reconsidering the ideals of these young men who put themselves and others through a great deal for their belief that they could make their world better."

Laudable indeed – but why does it always seem that Jan and her media buddies use a sat nav that only seems to take them in the direction of those who support the maiming and murder of innocent civilians as well as British soldiers and police officers by bomb and bullet? Or is that what she means by saying these young men put “others through a great deal”

Perhaps Jan would next commission a film about the IRA bombing of Belfast’s Abercorn Bar restaurant on a Saturday afternoon in March 1972 which killed two young Catholic girls and maimed many others including a young bride to be who lost both her legs yet months later walked up the aisle on her artificial legs, so determined was she to put her life together – but then perhaps she might see the bomber (who was never identified) – as another young man who put himself through a great deal for his “belief that they could make their world better."


The Jan Younghusbands of this world are straight out of the world of Tom Wolfe, they are the Radical Chic, the beautiful (and wealthy) people of the media elite, our new ruling class who despise the ordinary plodders of the suburban world and prefer, as one commentator said, “to identify themselves with what they imagine to be the raw, vital lifestyle of the lower orders.”

What next from Jan, then…………… Reinhard Heydrich – Violinist?

NATWEST THREE CONFESS TO US COURT

'NatWest Three' face jail for Enron fraud says The Daily Telegraph reporting the probable result of a plea bargaining effort by their lawyers which might see them jailed for thirty seven months instead of a possible thirty five years after they agreed to admit to one count of fraud instead of four.
The DT then explains out that the three men were extradited to the USA "amid much public protest"......what the paper fails to point out was that the "public protest" was mainly cheerled by the DT itself. Over a period of several months we were drip fed a skilful PR campaign of sob stories and family photo ops portraying the three as innocent victims of an American witch hunt.
This didn't cut much ice with many of us who realised that a lot of UK suits (some of them well known to the media on this side of the Atlantic) who sailed a little close to the financial edge were terrified that, instead of the ponderous investigation and genteel slap on the wrist usually given to "respectable"fraudsters by British courts, they would face an American judicial regime which acts swiftly and hands out draconian prison sentences and massive fines...............

Swimmers throw abuse at injured servicemen in pool

How can they sink so low? "Servicemen from Headley Court rehabilitation centre near Leatherhead were about to begin their weekly swim at Leatherhead Leisure Centre, which helps with their therapy, when they were verbally abused by a group of regular swimmers" reported the Leatherhead Advertiser on November 21st.

Apparently a number of regulars objected to them using a roped off area of the pool claiming that they paid to use it and should have prority. The leader of the Headley Court party withdrew the group from the pool to avoid further confrontation. It would have been gratifying to hear that the Leisure Centre staff had told the men to get back in and banned the complainers from using the Centre again but this is England 2007 - the reaction was supine and clearly the complainers felt vindicated.............if ever there was a justification for a tabloid "name and shame" this must be it.......