"Institutional racism"

The Director of Public prosecutions, Mr David Clavert-Smith, declares that the Crown Prosecution Service, of which he is head, is "institutionally racist" according to the definition laid down in the infamous Macpherson Report. So yet another worthy public figure has surrendered to this fashionable craze.

White people in the CPS, he says, will have to "examine their behaviour." Some will find it painful. "The first time you are confronted," burbles this misguided man, "with the fact that you behaving in a way that discriminates, your instincts is to say: "What me?"

The instinct of any sensible person is to say: "So what?" Everybody discriminates in one way or another, and rightly so. But endless soul-searching, painful self-examination, neurotic guilt and priggish compulsion to conform are all essential for the "war against racism" to which politicians and public men continually say they are committed.

Peter Simple, Daily Telegraph (3.08.01)

The Ealing bomb

The usual commentators drone that the Ealing bomb "must not be allowed to disrupt the peace process."

Politicians and others say that the bombers are "evil", though the evil men must be released from prison in their hundreds, with the willing agreement of our entire political establishment.

You fools, this is what the peace process is, a craven surrender to evil by both the Labour and Tory governments. They bomb, we give in. If we drag our feet about surrendering, they bomb again. Yet we like to pretend that this grovelling to terror is some sort of noble act.

Part of this national self-deception is the ludicrous fiction that there is something called the "Real IRA", a body of concrete-headed hardliners who think Gerry Adams has betrayed the cause. What blatant tripe. If they object to what Gerry Adams is doing, then why are they blowing up Ealing rather than engaging in a traditional republican faction fight?

The most militant IRA man in the most backward bog could not object to the concessions now on offer from Anthony Blair - an amnesty for terrorists on the run, the destruction of RUC Special Branch, yet more power for Sinn Fein.

And in return for what? Perhaps a tiny part of the enormous IRA arsenal may have concrete poured on it or it may even be set on fire, and we shall be allowed to see a video of the event.

The "Real IRA" cold not operate for a second without the approval of the Republican leadership, which has always been utterly ruthless in dealing with real opposition.

The Ealing bomb was simply a warning to Mr. Blair that he must put further pressure on the Unionists to cave in, or the "Real IRA" will bomb London to blazes. It was not mean to disrupt the "peace process." It was part of that process. The rest is just lies, as usual.

Peter Hitchens, The Mail on Sunday (5.8.01)

Delusions

Oh please, not again. I know that the Northern Ireland "peace process" has gradually evolved into a tortuous parlour game, with obligatory rules and responses - but must we still jump up, wave our hats and pretend that every convoluted IRA attempt to delay disarming is a "historic breakthrough"? One might have thought that, by now, even the most committed optimists would approach IRA statements with caution, but no, each time a new one comes out they fall upon it with unquestioning delight, like goldfish perpetually fated to forget that they swallowed the same thing six seconds earlier.

Jenny McCartney, Sunday Telegraph (29.7.01)

"Liberal"

The label "liberal"... remains one of the most woeful pieces of confusion on the political scene. It has nothing to do with Liberal in the classic sense. The term is an ugly import from the US.

The "liberals" believe in compulsion to make people behave in particular ways. For example, they have always been the first to call for draconian laws concerning racial and sexual "discrimination." They believe in compulsion, yet they enjoy the label "liberal."

We can, to be fair, find some superficial consistency to the notion that right-wingers attach a particularly high priority to law and order.

But this does not get us very far. The left is as keen as anyone on law and order when it comes to such matters as legislation about race relations or sex discrimination.

Andrew Alexander, Daily Mail (10.8.01)

Lame Ducks

For at least two decades the prevailing Anglo-Saxon wisdom has been in favour of letting failing businesses, especially the heavier industries and the smaller farms, go to the wall. The principle of creative destruction, the Darwinian notion that the weakest commercial concerns should not be propped up, for that only saps the strength of the whole economy, has become an almost unchallenged presumption. Lame ducks need strangling, not swaddling.

The consequence of this policy has been that the rapid decline of an indigenous British car industry, shipbuilding industry, steel industry and civil aviation industry. The departure of British Leyland, the silence on the Tyne, the ripping out of Consett's heart, the closing of Yorkshire's black seams, are all mourned, but their demise is considered inevitable.

Michael Grove, The Spectator 11.8.01)

"Global warming"

George W.Bush is right. The Kyoto Treaty is a silly waste of time. The green house effect probably doesn't exist. There is as yet no evidence for it.

Global warming is probably caused by, would you believe it, the sun. The temperature of the atmosphere, measured by NASA, has not risen in the past 22 years. There was global warming between 1870 and 1940, when there were far fewer greenhouse gases than now.