misinterpretation

I can understand web-community policies that ban those who swear, are rude, abusive, aggressive or threatening - but Nadine Dorries' new promise to refuse to publish any comment that "tries to misinterpret the position I have laid out in a blog" is a loop-hole the size of the grand canyon.

It's all the more significant when you're dealing with someone who routinely distorts her own record (e.g. "..Being of neither the pro-abortion or pro-life lobby") or misrepresents fact. The claim that anyone might misinterpret Dorries has the quality of Escher-esque irony.

The refusal to tolerate the "harsh political aggressive tones accepted on other blogs" might also hold water if stated by someone who hasn't also proved more than willing to attack her opponents with demonstrably false claims of political corruption or breaking the law.

This is, though, unsurprising practice from someone who thinks that a fair discussion literally means a conversation behind closed doors with a controlled guest list.

everyman fail

David Cameron's uncertainty over how many houses he owns - flagged by Johann Hari in The Independent - appeared at the end of a fairly long interview feature in The Times. Here's the quote in context:

I only get one flash of that Mr Nasty streak in Mr Nice when I raise the question of the Camerons’ various properties. We had been talking about his bewilderment about the depth of dislike that some people in the Labour party have towards the Conservatives: “Where I think Conservatives tend to feel Labour are misguided and wrong, there are some people in the Labour Party who just think the Tories are awful and evil, which is ridiculous and wrong.”

In my attempt to explain why they might have these feelings – I confess to shuddering whenever I see that photograph of young David and Boris in their Bullingdon Club regalia – I mention the four houses: “The four properties thing is rubbish. Touching that you believe everything you read in the newspapers!” You patronising git, I exclaim.

“I don’t mean it like that, but…” So how many properties do you own? “I own a house in North Kensington which you’ve been to and my house in the constituency in Oxfordshire and that is, as far as I know, all I have.”

A house in Cornwall? “No, that is, Samantha used to have a timeshare in South Devon but she doesn’t any more.” And there isn’t a fourth? “I don’t think so – not that I can think of.” Please don’t say, “Not that I can think of.” “You might be… Samantha owns a field in Scunthorpe but she doesn’t own a house…”

So Cameron's confusion arises when he rejects what he sees as the media's version of the Tory party as a group of landed grandees out of touch with ordinary people. The kind of people who when asked, "how many properties do you own?" answer with seemingly genuine uncertainty in their voices.

Incidentally, that humble-sounding "field in Scunthorpe" might just have something to do with Samanatha Cameron's father's property where she grew up - Sir Reginald Sheffield's 300-acre Normanby Hall estate, which has been in the family since 1590. Anyone?

A small point: having land and money are not automatically bad things, and having land and wealth does not automatically make you a bad person. It is, though, somewhat difficult to pose convincingly as a man of the people who feels our pain when your privileged and wealthy upbringing (and life to date) has apparently left you unable to count how many houses you own.

a short quiz

Via bloggerheads, it's that all too familiar conundrum: stupidly ignorant, or lying through their teeth?

It is, of course, a trick question. The answer is "both."

another good question

So, how many properties does our man-of-the-people, David Cameron, own? And, perhaps more importantly, why doesn't he know?

if I'd known you were coming

It's one of those (rare) days where traffic is coming from numerous places to numerous posts: thanks to those who flagged/re-tweeted/reddit'd me. Turns out the perfect blend for high-traffic blogging is political scandal, religion and sex, and the joyful (if temporary) humiliation of the right-wing tabloid press. Who'd have guessed?

it couldn't happen to a nicer rag

With great pleasure, here's delightful news (via @antonvowl) that the Daily Mail has been forced to pay out for printing transparently misogynist lies:

The Daily Mail has paid £10,000 libel damages each to three women after it ran a story alleging they rated their careers and figures more highly than having children. [...]

Its story was headlined: "For most women, giving birth is the most fulfilling event in their lives. But some are so afraid of missing out on their careers and losing their figures they refuse to go through pregnancy and choose adoption instead. Practical, or just plain selfish?"

A statement issued today by Carter-Ruck said the article contained a number of "false, defamatory and deeply offensive allegations about the three women" and that the Mail had accepted the allegations were "untrue and should never have been published".

There's one particular detail of the Mail's editorial process to read alongside Paul Dacre's recent defence of his paper's ethical standards:

The Mail blamed the offending elements on an unnamed executive who controlled a rewrite of the story, the statement from Carter-Ruck said, rather than the journalists who interviewed the women.

So a senior member of staff inserted lies into the story to fit the Mail's moral posturing about working women. For details of just how mendacious the original story was, read the Mail's extensive correction, which admits to assigning false motives, inventing opinions and fabricating direct quotes.

Will that executive be disciplined or fired? Or are we just hoping - following Dacre's theory of self-regulation - that the "shame" of going.. uh.. un-named.. in front of his or her peers will be enough?

into the long, stupid grass

To counter the weekend's early pessimism, news that the Church of Scotland General Assembly voted to approve the ordination of openly gay minister Scott Rennie:

Rennie's congregation at Queen's Cross Church in Aberdeen had voted overwhelmingly to select him as their minister but the move was opposed by anti-gay traditionalists.

Last [Saturday] night at 11pm commissioners voted 326 to 267 in support of his appointment. [...] The ordination of Rennie, who lives openly with his partner, to Queen's Cross Church in Aberdeen had threatened to create a schism in the Church of Scotland.

Not so great is the following and contradictory agreement to a two-year ban on homosexual ministers:

Desperate not to allow the schism that had been forecast, the General Assembly postponed making a final decision on the issue by setting up a working group to report back in 2011, effectively kicking the issue into the long grass.

Delegates also agreed not to talk to the media on sexuality issues for the two years, a move that was later condemned as “suppressing the debate”.

Consequently, the moratorium reads like an attempt to back away from the significance of the support for Rennie - prolonging the ability of a conservative minority to claim that they can speak for and dominate the apparently more liberal majority.

In other words, Kirk leaders have passed over a prime opportunity to resolve this issue.. in the hope that hard-liners will somehow - over the next 24 months - come to love homo after all.

Does anyone else think that's wildly unlikely?

melanie phillips: support for gay equality is support for nihilism

Melanie Phillips offers some fancy footwork to cover her distaste for gay people but you really don't have to read much further than her first few paragraphs to discover the nature of her rhetoric:

The Equality Bill currently going through Parliament is the latest and potentially most oppressive attempt to impose politically acceptable attitudes and drive out any that fall foul of these criteria. Since the attitudes being imposed constitute an ideological agenda to destroy Britain’s foundational ethical principles and replace them by a nihilistic values and lifestyle free-for-all, they represent a direct onslaught on the Judeo-Christian morality underpinning British society.

The most neuralgic of these issues is gay rights.

The (by now boilerplate) defence of religious freedom sits on top of the belief that supporting the legitimacy of gay people is the equivalent of supporting an amoral, value-free society (where everything is most likely turned inside out, on its head etc. etc.)

To put it plainly, Phillips argues that the unconditional support of the legitimacy of gay people is counter to public morality. Her claim to be being more-liberal-than-thou also deserves close reading:

The true liberal position, that it is right and just to tolerate behaviour that deviates from the norm as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else, is deemed to be rank prejudice on the grounds that homosexuality is not ‘deviancy’ but normal.

The problem for Phillips here is that homosexuality is indeed "normal" in the sense that it seems to recur naturally, regardless of culture (or even species) on the planet. It's even normative in the sense that it's a recurring feature of human sexuality. However, the claim that homosexuality is normal is not the same thing as the claim that homosexuality is common. Phillips seems to play stupid by pretending that gay rights advocates mean the latter while arguing the former.

Phillips also attempts to make the claim of "true liberal" dispassionate uninvolvement while still advocating that a specific religious morality should be the basis of law: not just freedom for individuals to stand in moral judgment of gay people and their "lifestyle free-for-all" but the ability to protect and enforce those values through law.

In short, Phillips' apparent claim for tolerance must be read - given her track record opposing a variety of gay rights legislation over the years - as the kind of tolerance that involves treating gay people as less equal than everyone else i.e. not that tolerant at all.

a brief introduction to gender stereotypes

THREE QUARTERS OF ALL VIOLENT ASSAULTS COMMITTED BY MEN.. oh, wait - sorry. That's not news. This is news:

A quarter of all violent assaults in England and Wales are now carried out by women.

The shocking figures, police believe, can be put down to binge-drinking and the so-called 'ladette culture'.

Officers say young women are increasingly challenging their male counterparts when it comes to drunken yobbishness and booze-fuelled brawling.

Why is this such alarming ZOMG ZOMG news? Because traditionally, while boys are made from "snips and snails, and puppy dogs tails," girls are made from "sugar and spice and all things nice."

limited sympathy

Oh, dear. I really want to feel sorry for another human being who's had a rough weekend but the problem is that so much of Nadine Dorries' recent trouble has been self-inflicted.

Don't want to get slapped down by your party leader for making hyperbolic claims? Don't make wild hyperbolic claims on your blog. Or, more specifically, don't make those claims on your blog and then go on every television and radio station willing to hear you repeat them. Don't want to get sued for libel? Cut back on the repetition of anonymous gossip and wild accusations. Behave like an MP, not Amanda Platell.

You might notice that Dorries' attempt to model herself as the unfairly pilloried defender of democracy involves carefully ignoring many of the things that made her the recent subject of attention: the defence of MPs on the grounds that the expenses fund was a de facto tax free allowance to be "maximised" however an MP wanted; her own attempt to test the elasticity of second residence rules to breaking point; and - perhaps most significantly for the media storm at the end of last week - the habit of repeating wild conspiracy theories and baseless accusations about her opponents.

Admittedly, talking about that last issue is difficult because she's in the middle of being sued for it: though Dorries' (much improved) blog is now back, it's missing the key entry from the 22nd, flagged last week as fairly obviously defamatory. I haven't seem anything from Dorries (or her supporters) which addresses the substantive points of the Telegraph/Barclay brothers complaint, which - given the precarious status of the case - might not be entirely surprising.

More importantly, Dorries' critique of a rapacious media too eager to print baseless accusations would also be slightly more convincing if Dorries hadn't made full and happy use of that same tendency to push lies and misinformation during and after last year's abortion debate.

So, limited sympathy.

from speculation to defamation

The alleged (but not yet confimed) take-down of Nadine Dorries' blog after lawyers acting on behalf the Barclay brothers tapped her web host may indeed be worrying. I have no problem with ardent support of free speech - regardless of the speaker - if that's the issue at stake.

However, I'd also offer a small answer to Iain Dale's rhetorical questions:

Can it really now be illegal or libellous to question a newspaper's agenda and motives, or those of its owners? Is it really illegal to accuse someone of a witchhunt?

Well, under current law it may become libellous to speculate about motives if you defame, possibly by suggesting a conspiracy to commit crime - as in the hypothetical notion that someone has been masterminding a "long term undercover operation" to steal a database of MPs expense claims. There could also be a claim made that the accusation of conspiracy to manipulate the electorate is also defamatory - i.e. likely to damage reputation. The "witchhunt" comments may well be irrelevant.

Yet, as Craig Murray argues:

Nobody took seriously her argument that the sleaze revelations were an anti-democratic conspiracy by the Barclay Brothers. The Barclay Brothers will bring far more opprobrium on themselves by this action than was cast by the original accusation.

There is, admittedly, the defence of truth and fair comment for any of Dorries' comments - and I think that the burden would lie on the defendent to prove she had a reasonable basis for her claims. The uneveness of British law on that count is sadly not news: our legal system also has a substantial history of the use of spurious legal threats to silence critics.

Still, as we've yet to hear a formal statement from either Dorries, the Barclay's lawyers or The Telegraph, we're still in the realms of wanton speculation - myself very much included.

I hope you like your religious courts behind closed doors

The Church of Scotland meets tonight to discuss gay clergy - or, more specifically, the case of Reverend Scott Rennie:

The Reverend Scott Rennie was backed by a majority of the congregation and the local presbytery as the new minister at Queen's Cross Church.

But some parishioners and 12 members of the presbytery have since said they had been unaware of Mr Rennie's sexuality.

The matter was referred to the General Assembly, the church's supreme court. [...]

But more than 400 Kirk ministers and almost 5,000 Church of Scotland members are said to have signed an online petition opposing the appointment.

One of those ministers, the Reverend David Randall, said he believed that "a minister is somebody who ought to live by the Bible".

He said: "We believe that the Bible's teaching is quite clear in this matter - that marriage is the right and only context for sexual relationships.

"After all, if a minister sought to move in with a man, with a woman, to whom he was not married, that would obviously be unacceptable - how much more so when we're talking about a homosexual."

You'll note that the claim that they'd treat a straight man in the same situation with the same zeal for the letter of scripture is immediately undercut - being gay makes it far more unacceptable.

Such a stance also conveniently ignores that Rennie couldn't marry his partner within the church, even if he wanted to: the core objection here isn't to unmarried clergy, but to gay people.

As is clear from the other motions being proposed for tonight's meeting, the evangelical wing of the Church of Scotland objects to the notion of gay clergy on principal, regardless of their relationship status. And, given their track record of public statements, it's fair to say that those same conservative voices aren't too fond of gay people outside of the church either.

In other words, the legalistic wrangling is an attempt to make respectable what the evangelical wing have wanted to do for years: pin a "no homos" sign to the door of the church.

now that's what I call PR

Never knowingly under-bloviated:

The technique deployed by the Telegraph, picking off a few MPs each day, emailing at 12 giving five hours notice to reply, recording the conversation, not allowing them to speak, shouting over them when they try to explain, telling them they are going to publish anyway, at day 15, is amounting to a form of torture and may have serious consequences.

Hyperbolic bids for sympathy aside, and judging by the comments on this post at Conservative Home, it seems as though patience with Nadine Dorries is also fast running out amongst Tory activists. A small sample:

And here I was thinking Nadine Dorries was one of my favourite Tory MPs.

Nadine. Please engage brain before mouth.

To talk such drivel is to once again ignite the criticism that MPs leave in a different world and to clearly misunderstand the public anger.

In common with most of the posters above, I heard with astonishment Nadine Dorries` rather intemperate performance on the Today programme this morning. She clearly hasn`t "got it".

Nadine loves media attention far too much

Nadine Dorries is clearly competing hard with Anthony Steen for the Most Stupid Response by an MP to a Self-inflicted Crisis Award. So it's all part of a ploy by the Barclay Brothers to let the BNP take over the UK? Why doesn't she throw in the Freemasons and the Pope for good measure too?

There are also a number of people complaining how heavily she moderates critical comments, preferring to only post those offering her support. Still, nice to see that it's not just nasty leftist blogger types who'd noticed..

doh

Leave it to Nadine Dorries to entirely misunderstand the narrative of the McCarthy subcomittee hearings and turn the government into the helpless victim of independent critics.

Her new argument - and I use that word to indicate a desperate sound-shape rather than a logical sequence of supposition - appears to be that MPs should not be vilified for their extortionate expense claims because the political press had known what they were doing for years and have only just turned into a front page story.

Defence by culpable hypocrisy is certainly an interesting strategy, but not one that does anything for the reputation of the person arguing it: I might be in the gutter but you're to blame for not pointing it out sooner.

(Actually, the claim of McCarthyist persecution is entirely hilarious, given that McCarthy was fond of extended slurs and conspiracy theories which he was widely unable to substantiate. No further comment, m'lud.)

old habits dies hard

Uhm.. did Nadine Dorries just attempt to smear the deep-pocketed (and not unshy of legal action) Barclay brothers with a wild conspiracy theory? Under the thin cover of repeating sourceless rumour, Dorries writes:

The Telegraph are uncovering a few cases of fraud, but not enough, so they are more than slightly embellishing some of the stories. I write as a case in point.

Enter the Barclay brothers, the billionaire owners of The Daily Telegraph. Rumour is that they are fiercely Euro sceptic and do not feel that either of the main parties are Euro sceptic enough.

[...] Where do I get this from? Well, at heart I am just a cheeky scouser. I like to go into the rooms of the faceless and nameless in Parliament, sit on their desk and ask pertinent questions like: who are you? What do you do? I've made friends with one or two. One in particular I am very fond of. He is a mine of very astute information; and whilst in his office yesterday, we chunnered over the 'what is this all about?' question.

He reckons this is all a power game. That the British public are being worked like puppets by two very powerful men. Whipped up into a frenzy to achieve exactly what they want.

Two powerful men? Just who can she be talking about?

Personally, I'd be slightly more careful about suggesting that anyone has directed a deliberate and potentially criminal "long term undercover operation" with the desire of overturning stable government and installing incompetent hard-right patsies in positions of power.

Still, what's an exciting and hopefully-not-actionable conspiracy theory between friends?

further evidence of amazing psychic powers

On twitter yesterday:

Who'll take my bet that Michael Martin will be booted out.. into the House of Lords?

Today:

Last night senior government sources said it was 'a formality' that Glaswegian Mr Martin, nicknamed Gorbals Mick, will be given a seat in the House of Lords. [...] As a peer Mr Martin would qualify for £174 for each night he spends in London on Lords' business.

Don't you just love the smell of reform in the morning?

flying the flag of stupidity

The Mail's self-induced flap over the display of gay rights flags at a small number of police stations is dependent on a particularly nasty turn of logic:

Critics believe the gesture could do more harm than good. David Davies, Tory MP for Monmouth, said: 'Showing support for particular campaigns is a very dangerous route for the police.

The job of the police is to enforce the law even-handedly and without prejudice, and we ought to be able to take that for granted.

'If they refused to fly this flag it wouldn't mean they supported homophobia - it's just political correctness.

It's much better for them to say we just fly the Union Flag, otherwise all sorts of groups will want them to fly their flags too.'

The fear of an influx of "issue" flags of every variety is patently silly, and just because a group wants to fly a flag doesn't mean that the police would be forced into allowing it.

And - while failing to fly the rainbow flag isn't proof of homophobia - nationalist voices in the Mail have been entirely content to argue (contrary to Davies' theory of flag semiotics, and I can't believe I typed that) that failing to fly the Union Jack is the equivalent of being unpatriotic. So, which is it?

More importantly, the Mail appears to be arguing that showing support for a group of people who are still routinely the subject of abuse - both verbal and physical - is "taking sides," as if to presume there's some kind of debate over whether such treatment is justified or not. This is turn, depends on the right-wing rhetoric that argues recognising and addressing the discriminatory treatment of gay and trans people is the equivalent of "special treatment."

And so the the claim to equal rights and protection for gay people is "political" in the sense that the legitimacy of gay and trans people (and their freedom to live without the fear of violence) is something decent people can agree to disagree over.

You may want to join me in saying, "fuck that."

awkward bedfellows

The gap between Melanie Phillips and a certain section of her ardent readership is now getting rather awkward. Phillips - to her credit - has started writing things like this on a fairly regular basis:

For all its slick repackaging, the BNP remains an odiously racist party, with its leader blurting out the fact that he doesn't regard British citizens of Asian descent - indeed, any ethnic minority - as British at all.

He has a criminal conviction for a racist offence, and BNP members are regularly embroiled in ugly or even criminal displays and activities.

Her readers respond with comments like this, which are then voted up by other readers on the Mail website:

In the simplest of terms...... I just want my country back ! The BNP are saying everything I want to hear from a political party..... so, if I don't vote for them..... you tell me.... just who am I supposed to vote for ?

For all its faults- which I don't deny - the BNP is emerging as the only party which cares about Britain's national identity.

Well, Melanie Phillips says I shouldn't vote BNP? Maybe she should keep her nose out of my business! People can see through this silly "the BNP are racist thugs" nonsense. The more you people tell us not to vote for them, the more we are going to do it.

The perception of a narrow gap between Phillips' rhetoric and that of the BNP has been explored here before - it's not entirely surprising that some have made a connection between "bizarre, mainly racist conclusions" and bizarre, mainly racist political policies. That's not to suggest - in any way - that Phillips is a closet supporter of the BNP, but that a number of her readers seem surprised and offended that it isn't the case.

Also see: the problem with islamic homophobia is that it's islamic

simple answers to simple questions

Nadine Dorries - demonstrating Melanie Phillips' level of grip on reality - asks:

Will the Queen be next?

No.

the gift that keeps on giving

Pumped with the zeal of the newly righteous, The Mail seems to have turned on their former favourite, Nadine Dorries. The significant thing about the story is the appearance of a third property:

Homes in the Cotswolds, South Africa and Bedfordshire but MP Nadine Dorries doesn't live near the House of Commons

A colourful Tory MP was at the centre of a fresh expenses riddle last night after admitting that she runs four homes – none of which is near the Commons.

Nadine Dorries admitted to The Mail on Sunday that she claims for a second home in her Mid-Bedfordshire constituency, just 100 miles from her main home in the Cotswolds.

In addition, she earns rental income from a separate home in the Cotswolds and a holiday home in South Africa.

Now to Dorries' response:

Have an article on me today which is just a joke. I haven't owned a holiday home in South Africa or owned a home in the Cotswolds since marriage split. As I have said over and over, I rent two homes. They probably got that information from the register which I probably havent up-dated but they really should have just asked me, they phone often enough!

So, given that the Mail has seemingly printed a story full of untrue claims - smears, if you will - and Dorries' recently acquired hair-trigger when it comes to her reputation, will she be suing for damages? Or, at the very least, demanding a correction?

It must be so frustrating when a paper that could previously be relied upon to print anything you told it without stopping to check facts applies that same shitty standard for journalism to reporting you.

labour's new job creation scheme

Time to get a front seat for Labour's self-inflicted coup?

Any Labour MP found to have made improper expenses claims will be ­automatically deselected and barred from standing at the next general election as the party desperately tries to overcome the constitutional crisis facing parliament. [...] Gordon Brown has also given ministers a Monday night deadline to ensure their expenses claims for the past five years are lodged with the parliamentary authorities and ready for publication.

Any deselection would happen after the parliamentary commissioner for standards had ruled that an MP had been found clearly guilty of improperly claiming.

Not quite sure why plain MPs should be held to a lower standard than ministers: do we expect elected officials outside of the government to be generally less ethical?

The one thing that this plan also stops short of is a reassurance that MPs who have made fraudulent claims will be prosecuted in the style of, say, benefits cheats.

a small question for her constituents

Given Nadine Dorries' apparent admission that she spends "most holidays" overseas (in a second/third home in South Africa) and pays for a house-sitter in the constituency property during the long summer recess (out of her own pocket, tiny violin) it would be highly interesting to discover how much of the year she actually spends in the country doing her job.

the angry guide to self-incrimination

After a few days of righteous fury from Nadine Dorries that her privacy has been invaded by the Daily Telegraph and imaginary domestic terrorists... oh. This is just too delightful.

1. The Daily Telegraph discovers that Dorries has two properties: a constituency home/office (on which the rent is being paid through the MPs expenses system) and a second mystery property. They write to her to ask her some questions about this property and other expense claims.

2. Dorries reacts in inimitable style by writing a long post on her blog with CAPITALS AND ANGY MISPLELLINGS. (Update: As Justin notes this morning, it seems as though someone has had a quiet word to point out that "13 year old Youtube commenter" is not the most dignified style for an MP).

3. The Daily Telegraph reads the entry, and realises that Dorries has incriminated herself by revealing that she only stays at her "main property" a few days each week:

Nadine Dorries tells the Commons authorities that her second home is a rented house in her constituency where she has claimed more than £18,000 in rent.

But when questioned by The Daily Telegraph about her living arrangements, she posted a message on the internet in which she admits her daughter goes to school in the area, she keeps her pet dogs there and she spends many of her weekends working there. [...]

This suggests her constituency base is in fact her main or only home, which would mean she cannot pay for it using the £24,222 Additional Costs Allowance [ACA] meant to cover the cost of running a second property.

In other words, Dorries provided the information necessary (lovingly reproduced by the Telegraph with CAPS intact) to launch a claim of malpractice against her. Whoops.

As of Tim Ireland of bloggerheads just twittered, "Iain Dale claims Dorries has spiked the Telegraph's guns when she's really shot herself in the face."

time for another waah-mbulance

Shorter ex-Justice minister Shahid Malik: it is someone else's fault that I claimed over £1000 for a TV at tax-payer's expence.

The wonderful thing about the self-righteous rage of MPs protesting their innocence ("This bloodfest has got to stop...otherwise we will have no democracy left.") is that it fails to recognise the source of much of the public's anger - the sheer profligacy of spending which was allowable within the rules MPs had set for themselves.

The claim that MPs have acted according to the best advice available involves a complete abandonment of personal responsibility for their own decision to spend public money. The anger at fraudulent claims is only the very tip of a deeper dismay that our elected officials think it's entirely reasonable to be allowed to spend tens of thousands of pounds on soft furnishings, flatscreen TVs and tennis court repairs.

perfectly legal

I'm trying to read non-expense stories today in the knowledge that this is the perfect time for the government to release information it would prefer to remain out of the spotlight.

And so, at the very bottom of the Times' coverage of conviction rates for terrorist-related offences, there's this little admission:

The Home Office said that most of those arrested spent a short time in custody, with nearly half held for less than one day in pre-charge detention and 66 per cent for less than two days.

Only six people have been held for the maximum 28 days of pre-charge detention, three of whom were released without charge when the time limit was reached.

That's half of those held for 28 days released without any charge - not any lesser or unrelated criminal offences which bulk up the apparent conviction success rate - despite being held in prison for a month.

homos, nazis, church of scotland etc.

Apparently, failing to oppose gay people is like failing to oppose the Nazis:

The Church of Scotland is moving towards a schism after one of its ministers compared an increasingly determined campaign against gay clergymen to the war against the Nazis. [...]

Mr Watson posted on his blog last night a sermon he delivered on Sunday at Kirkmuirhill Church in Lanark, in which he invoked the failure of the French Army to stand up to the Nazi annexation of the Rhineland in 1938. “[Hitler] guessed correctly that the French had no stomach for a fight. If only they had, then the tragedy of a Second World War might have been avoided,” Mr Watson said.

Watson appears to be arguing that allowing gay ministers within the Church would be the equivalent of WWII, the conflict in which some half million British soldiers and civilians died.

In case you're wondering if this is an misrepresentation, here's Watson - on his blog - arguing that the fight against gay ministers is as morally necessary as opposing Hitler:

The vast majority of decent people will do almost anything to avoid situations of confrontation. So, the soup may be cold, the meat tough and the pudding inedible, but when the waiter asks us if we are enjoying our meal we’ll smile and nod. We don’t want to complain, we don’t want to make a fuss. We’ll even pay for the privilege.

This is how bullies succeed. They realize that no matter how unhappy we are with their behaviour we’re not going to stand up to them, because the last thing we want is a shouting match.

That was the gamble Hitler took when he marched German troops into the Rhineland in March 1936 in breach of a condition forced on Germany after World War 1.

That's right: Watson draws a straight line between bad service at a restaurant, the equal status of gay people within the Church of Scotland and.. Hitler's troop manoeuvres preceding WWII.

Watson's war motif seems to be the clumsy set-up for the weakest kind of rhetorical argument - the slippery slope fallacy, which lies in falsely asserting that one thing will make a series of other things so likely as to be certain:

Let me assure you, neither I nor like-minded minsters enjoy conflict. We long to be getting on with the work of the gospel in our parishes. It’s a distraction we could do without.

But have we learned nothing from history? Remember Hitler and the re-taking of the Rhineland. He got away with it. No one stopped him. So next it was Austria, then Czechoslovakia, and then Poland and only then world war.

I can’t help asking myself: if we say nothing, do nothing at this time, what next? What scriptural truth is next for shaving? The uniqueness of Christ as our only Saviour? The nature of God as Holy Trinity?

I believe those are items 2-4 on the Global Homo Conspiracy agenda, right between "allow gay people to be ministers" and "Ragnarok."

If there's anyone who should be especially pissed at this kind of hyperventilating homophobia, it's veterans (and their families) whose memories and sacrifices are being cheaply manipulated to serve a bigot's political agenda.

two for one

Nadine Dorries demonstrates that it's possible to play the victim and issue a nasty smear at the same time:

My personal details, including credit card numbers, bank account details, home address, signatures, family details and IDs have all been sold to the Daily Telegraph, and who else? Terrorists, pro-abortion extreme groups, Al Queda, BNP?

Anyone else notice the odd one out in that list?

It is slightly awkward for Dorries' attempt to characterise supporters of abortion rights as murderers and fascists that the overwhelming record of violence surrounding the issue comes from... pro-life activists who bomb abortion clinics and attempt to kill doctors who (legally) perform abortions. And who exactly are these "pro-abortion extreme groups" that Dorries seems to have invented?

Still, why let reality get in the way of an opportunity to smear your enemies?

limited sympathy

Here's a deal: I'll start feeling sorry for Nadine Dorries when she shows one single glimmer of remorse or self-awareness about the impact her own smears and accusations have had on the lives and reputations of others.

I'd suggest that it should probably happen before she begins to dress herself as the new figurehead of "political austerity."

peter hitchens: I blame margaret thatcher (for everything)

Peter Hitchens demonstrates (once more) that reason is something that happens to other people, declaring that Margaret Thatcher should be blamed for everything done by Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and John Major.

In fact, he seems to be arguing that the period of Conservative government between 1979 and 1997 concealed a carefully orchestrated plot by:

cultural revolutionaries who wanted to undermine marriage, dissolve the family, sexualise children and use State schools as an egalitarian sausage machine, turning out brainwashed Leftists by the million.

Accordingly, Thatcher is a failure for preventing all of the above from happening.

Demonstrating a renewed taste for ideological purity, Hitchens fleshes out his reasoned critique by dismissing Michael Howard - former advocate of the death penalty, original promoter of Section 28, opposed to equal gay rights, in favour of reducing the abortion limit to 22 weeks and former hardline Home Secretary - as "the fake Right-winger." David Cameron's apparently unforgivable crime is to not even deny that he's a liberal.

My favourite bit of his diatribe - dictated, I imagine, over a brandy glass of horse tranquilizer - is this:

We also used to have a number of state industries – coal and steel – which, for all their faults, made or provided things the nation needed.

They’ve gone. Now we have regiments of condom outreach workers, facilitators and homophobia monitors, all costing much more than coal miners, and far less useful.

It's a moment that condenses all of Hitchens' loathing of sex and pauperish knowledge of economic history into one paragraph. The Daily Mail might save time in the future by merely printing these sentences over and over again until a page is filled.

EDIT - For contrast (and to see the Mail covering as many ideological bases as possible) read Hitchen's column next to Peter Oborne's effort:

AS A consequence, Britain has enjoyed an unparalleled period of prosperity and influence on the world stage for three decades. For that, we have Maggie Thatcher to thank.

But Peter, what about teh HOMOPHOBE MONITORZ!!!!