That Ferry Has Already Sailed Jenny........

Via Julie, we find out that leftists in Liverpool are playing the Scouse nationalism card.

Hey, it's like they've never heard of Luciana Berger. Who she? The beyond Cameronesque rich kid who was parachuted into a Liverpool constituency despite not knowing much of anything about the place she supposedly represents - although, on the plus side, her defence that you can't ask a girl a football question at least means Andy Gray's got one supporter in the house.

In fact, she hadn't even been elected before she started giving the finger to the Scouse trash - and folks like Jenny sucked it up and said 'please sir, can I have some more'?

Pretty much the defining feature of a proud and self-confident peoples is that they don't accept being treated as latter-day rotten boroughs by rich families in the capital. In so far as Jenny and pals have no issues with this, they're in no position to lecture anyone else about pride.

....

Oh, and by the way, here's a question for Jenny and the rest of her 'proud Scouser' friends: if the Army was full of people from Hampstead and Dibden Purlieu, would the Guardian still be as keen on its 'All War Crimes, All The Time' coverage?

Libs Discover Constitution, Hilarity Ensues

Just in case General Dannatt ever tires of being a liberal hate figure, I have the perfect way for him to rehabilitate himself.

Of course, libs will point out that Sir Jacko was retired when he risked becoming a chattering class hero by calling Yanks STOOPID. After all, the constitution prohibits serving soldiers criticising Her Majesty's Government, right? PC Plod can hammer home Labour talking points with all the subtly of a comedian at a rugby club dinner, but soldiers are different. Well, except for this guy, obviously.

Hmmmm.... let's review the scorecard here. Talking about logistical short-comings on the battlefield is a slippery slope that leads to a military junta, but giving a public backrub to a bunch of Islamofascist thugs..... What could be wrong with that?

(On the plus side though, this kind of savvy public dhimmitude Islamic outreach would explain why 2005 was so peaceful on the home front.)

UPDATE:

Down in the comments, TDK reminds us that Dannett himself is horribly compromised. All of which rams home the point that Dannatt is no more or less than the natural end product of a politicised Army. Indeed, one of the defining characteristics of the Nu Labour era has been the corruption of the professions: doctors release the medical records of anyone foolish enough to speak out against the government, police officers jabber endlessly about the lowest crime rate in history (while wearing body armour and carrying cs gas) and flag officers are too busy ordering up shiny new toys to actually win the war.

Question D'Jour

Who to believe? The professional or the sleaze who took years to find out he was in the wrong party?

Like I've said before, what is it about soldiering? The troops don't insist on writing long articles about how to put on a West End musical, set dangerous felons free or whine like a little girl, so why don't liberals show them the same courtesy?

Still, it is proof that all leftist arguments ultimate devolve down to sticking their fingers in their ears and singing loudly.

Lord Snooty Goes On Patrol

How determined is the Telegraph to trash its reputation? This determined.

All of which rams home an important point about liberal multiculturalism: only certain cultures qualify. The same people who pat themselves on the back for their nuanced take on honour killings, can't string two sentences together about Americans without calling in the Stereotype Squad.

That goes double where the military is involved. At least when these people are talking about America they content themselves with sneering and borderline racism. When it comes to stuff painted green, they're not only proudly ignorant, they actually think they're so super smart that they know better than the troops themselves.

Consider the incident with a bunker. A sergeant sees an enemy position but Tristan knows better. Hmmmm.... that's a toughey: who to believe ? A veteran NCO or a snivelling little mangina who pretends to be wounded so he can sneak off on a medevac chopper? Besides - if suppressive fire was that important, they'd have taught it at Oxford, right?

Support Our Murderous Troops!

Looks like there's some forms of discrimination the left thinks are just fine.

Of course, it's all an aspect of the wider culture war. This sort of thing is the natural result of supposedly respectable public figures who come out with garbage like this:

We should accept that we cannot impose democracy at the barrel of a gun,” he said in Islamabad. “We cannot drop democracy from 10,000 feet and we should not try.

Yep, that's what our troops are doing out there: randomly bombing from two miles up. I guess all those casualties are just the result of soldiers falling off the back of the plane.

At least with the collapse of Labour, we'll soon be rid of these these kooks.

Humbug Goes Fabuuuulous!

Prepare for hysteria: a senior Army officer has just slagged off gays.

Oops no - turns out its the other way round. Phew - guess the police can cancel the alert. Still, he does have a point - everyone knows real courage is slagging off your opponents while hiding behind hate crime laws.

But let's not let the obvious humbuggery of his position blind us to the deeper humbug. True, things have gone wrong in British military culture - see the frightened 15 for further details - but just who is it who spent years claiming that this whole 'warrior' thing was just a myth conjured up by a conspiracy of straight white males so they could keep all the defence money for themselves ?

Indeed, in so far as Everett displays both complete ignorance about the military, and a determination to lecture the troops nevertheless, he might just be the perfect pin-up boy for the liberal attitude to the Armed Forces. To paraphrase Ann Coulter, it's not like Royal Marines spend a lot of time commenting on West End shows, but the favour is never returned. Instead, the post-1997 Armed Forces have been given the Year Zero treatment and re-engineered along liberal lines, with all that that implies (see here for the latest example). At the same time, real soldiers have been defamed as thugs or idiots, or worse.

Hey, this isn't a hard thing to grasp: operate the Army under the same rules as HSBC, and end up hiring a load of bankers.

Worst Attempt At Victimhood Evah ?

A soldier given a nickname ? It's practically a lynching!

Not to give aid and comfort to the enemy, but I'm thinking that claims of racial victimhood probably work better when the designated victim doesn't sound like a racist nut himself:

The Daily Express newspaper reported that Hylton, a chef with the Welsh Guards, finds the nickname offensive because he considers Paris Hilton "a white woman with a low reputation'.

Anti-Military Smears 'Common' At The BBC

Speaking personally, nothing says 'reliable' like the unsupported testimony of a pair of convicted felons.

I guess those multiple layers of fact-checking aren't so important after all ? Oops - my mistake: the BBC did check with both the MoD and the Association of Chief Police Officers - both of which rejected these claims.

So, for those of you keeping score, on the one hand we have two convicted criminals claiming 'everyone does it', and on the other flat-out denials from the relevant bodies. And this is what the BBC considers a verified story ?

But don't say they don't support the troops...


UPDATE;

OK, I've been asked in the comments why I'd believe anything from ACPO ? Answer: 99.9% of the time I wouldn't, but as well as being lefty hacks, they're also the most hoplophobic organisation in the known universe. These are people who think GUUUUUUNS frequently break out of their cabinets and roam the street killing people - I can't believe they'd pass up the chance for more hysteria. On the other hand, the BBC never actually comes out with any evidence for widespread smuggling of guns, except the testimony of the felons in question.

Sure, opportunity probably means that soldiers probably smuggle more guns than, say, the staff at McDonalds, but how common is it ? We don't know - the BBC doesn't say, all it does is put up the convicts' claims up against the rebuttal from the MoD/ACPO as though the level of smuggling was a purely subjective matter: some say 'high', some say 'low', who's to know ? For an organisation that can't seem to use the word 'Muslims' without preceding it with 'vast majority of peace-loving', this lack of context is shameful.

British Aid Workers Provide Very Late Term Abortions To Suffering, Third World Peasants

Who'd have thunk it ? Apparently, our troops in Afghanistan aren't just a bunch of hapless Elmer Fudds being chopped to pieces by the Talibunny after all.

I guess the left will have to switch back to Plan B - claiming that all the dead were guests at a really big wedding.

Liberals 4 Immigration Control

Yep, they've finally found one guy they want to keep out:

He made his application this January, but was told by the Home Office that because on the same date five years earlier he was outside the UK he didn't qualify.

At that time he was actually serving on a British base in Germany.

He should have told them he was in jail for terrorism.

Outrage D'Jour

The current state of play is that puns are verboten but nobody can say who ordered this disgrace. Apparently, you can't walk through a British airport dressed as a soldier, but you can dressed as Bin Laden. Hey, even I might start taking the 'respectable left' seriously if they devoted half the rage to this case that they'd express if some airport banned Islamic regalia.

More MSM Non-Reporting

Another brilliant dispatch from Michael Yon, this time with British troops engaged in heavy fighting in Basra. What heavy fighting ? Ah yes: stuff the MSM didn't get round to reporting.

To return to a point I made earlier, for all that the MSM likes to wax pompous about how they produce original reporting - unlike mere bloggers - a lone, self-supported, US blogger has managed to produce more, and better, coverage of the British Army in Basra than the whole of the British MSM.

It's not as if these events lack news value. Not only is there the intrinsic drama, there's the deeper questions. Where are the RAF's Apaches ? Is Iran supplying IEDs ? And what's with all those jams ? But no: the MSM were not only not covering these events, in so far as they claim to be covering Basra, but don't, their coverage has been positively misleading, suggesting that things are far more peaceful than they are.

The bottom line is this: actual reporting has become a lost art in the MSM. Doubtless, some will say that's just the public getting what the public wants, but what of our multi-billion pound national broadcaster ? Couldn't they fit a report or two in amongst the half-hourly Gitmo update.

How To Go From A Nazi Neadathal To A Courageous Whistleblower In One Easy Step

Actually, I think I've worked out what the left means by 'community hero' - they mean someone like Sir Mike Jackson. Back when he was General Sir Mike Jackson, he was a liar and an edgy weirdo, but now he's become the pin up boy for standards in public life. That's what slagging off the Great Satan will do for you.

See, this is further proof of my theory that the Ladder of Victimhood is matched by the Ladder of Hate. Two minutes ago, leftards were prepared to believe even the most ludicrous libels against British troops. Click onto this thread and feel the love! But now one of the knuckle-dragging murderers has opened up on uSS troops, the left is ready to canonise him - or at least whatever the liberal equivalent may be. Chair at an Oxbridge college ?

For that matter, consider the deeper humbuggery of the liberal reception to Jackson's remarks. The MSM has spent months telling us that Basra was the worst place in the world. Now it turns out that Baghdad is the even more worst place in the world, and those damn Yankees are idiots for not implementing the very policies which made Basra what it is today.

As EU Referendum reminds us, Jackson is hardly blameless for events in Basra. However bad US planning was initially, they learned and adapted. Meanwhile, the British Army under Jackson treated the whole 'war' thing as a dreadful distraction from the business of acquiring cool new toys. Not that the MSM noticed though - they were too busy kerb crawling for atrocity stories. It'd be interesting to hear what Mike thinks about that, but I'm guessing there are only some whistles worth blowing.

Best Quote Ever

UK military spokesman Major Mike Shearer said: "We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area."

I'm glad they got that straight. Still, I'm sure some sleazy lawyer trash will still get legal aid to pursue this case anyway.

Chickenhawk Down!

Farewell sweet chickenhawk, we hardly knew ye.

Liberals have spent years insisting that unless you’ve personally beaten six Argies to death with your water bottle, you’re not qualified to support the war on terror, but now, following Patrick Mercer’s comments, it turns out that pretty much anyone can run an infantry battalion.

With the nation’s race-hustlers turning the hysteria meter up to 11, it’s quite an achievement to produce the sleaziest contribution to the debate, but Raffles the Gentleman Thug managed it. Cameron not only fired Mercer, but also labelled him a racist – a charge too far even for some of the race hustlers. Hey, if a Tory frontbencher with a fine record of military service gets slimed by Cameron, what chance do the rest of us have with him ? Indeed, you could almost say this is Cameron’s Rose Addis.

But there’s more to it than that. Mercer’s two points were that soldiers often use insensitive language and that some black troops exploit racial paranoia to skive off. As far as the latter goes, if that doesn’t happen, then someone should call the Biology Police, because the laws of human nature are being broken. If next week the MoD announced extra pay for Jedi Knights, the force would be with half the Army by Easter.

As for the insensitive language, well…… Twenty years of PC have resulted in an obsession with social mores that make the Victorians look like Hells Angels. Yet still the running-into-machine-gun-fire industry won’t get with the program. Just a hunch, but I’m guessing this might not be unconnected with the fact that when we refer to soldiers being ‘wounded’ it doesn’t mean someone’s made a hurtful comment about them.

Liberals have spent years claiming soldiers are semi-literate sociopaths, but now they’re just horrified at the thought of the little flowers being exposed to hurtful language. Hey, Libs, you know what else is hurtful ? IEDs, but the Left is happy for our troops to travel round in ‘snatch’ Land Rovers with the survivability of a cardboard box, just as long as no one uses naughty words.

All of which is by way of saying that this debate is emphatically not about anything Mercer said, just the fact he said anything at all. Under the Left’s conception of racial equality, whites are forbidden from saying anything substantial about racial issues. Self-flagellation is allowed, but God preserve the white guy who points out, say, the racist rhetoric employed in rap music. That was Mercer’s problem: he just didn’t know his place and play his cards right.

See, this is why the Tory base is wrong about Cameron. The excuse for Cameron is that he’s not quite as awful as the alternative. I’d dispute that, but anyway, let’s assume for the moment that it’s true. Look at the price to be paid. Just as it took the election of Tony Blair to truly secure the Lady Thatcher’s legacy, so victory for Cameron would set in stone this kind of PC lunacy. In fact, to judge by this case, Cameron would go even further (and, again, if he’ll do all this to Mercer, what hope is there for, say, the average police officer) ? That’s the bottom line: can anything – anything at all – that Cameron might do, make up for institutionalising this kind of PC lunacy ?