A POWERFUL ARTICLE FROM A FORMER THATCHER MINISTER

Just a few excerpts from an article by Lord Tebbit about Britain's new Tory leader

There is no doubt Mr Cameron is a remarkable political animal. From back office, through the back benches to leadership in half a decade is unusual. From proud authorship of a Conservative 2005 manifesto widely criticised for narrow dogmatism, to its condemnation and utter rejection is hardly less so. Nor could Mr Cameron's uplifting effect on the party's poll ratings be anything but amazing. Unfortunately razzle-dazzle success and exciting policy statements only whet the public appetite for more non-stop political pyrotechnics than any man can deliver. Mr Cameron is now in danger of such an outstanding public relations success dissolving into tetchy doubts about his political orientation. Is he really "New Labour Lite", a Tory wolf in Lib-Dem sheep's clothing, or for that matter a Lib-Dem sheep leading a pack of Tory wolves?...

Quite why Mr Cameron believes that voters who flocked to Mrs Thatcher's dark blue flag defected to Blair's pale pink or Kennedy's muddy yellow banners I do not understand. Nor can I see that if they did, they would now flock back to a pale blue and pink flag emblazoned "Thatcher Was Rubbish". In any case, for all the talk about Tory voters switching to Labour in 1997, the figures show that if it did happen, the numbers were tiny. What happened was that Labour voters turned out, as did Lib-Dems voting tactically to get the Tories out, and 4.5 million Tory voters stayed at home unable to stomach John Major's ERM disaster.

Nor should Tories be ashamed of Mr Cameron's concern with world poverty, but throwing money at corrupt dictators because they have ruined their economies will help neither poor Africans nor poor British. The trouble is that we have other problems here at home. With selection on ability (but not ability to pay) and vouchers ruled out, how will we improve our schools? If the Treasury alone can finance hospitals, how can they be run for patients and not for the Treasury?... How would Cameron deal with multiculturalism, which threatens social stability? Would he encourage marriage and stable families? Could he free us from our masters in Brussels? Like the voters, I wait for Mr Cameron to show as much interest in all this as the chocolate oranges in WH Smith. His answers will decide the election.

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ELSEWHERE

Constant attacks on Wal-Mart hurt the poor in yet another way: "Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the nation's largest food retailer, said Thursday it will no longer donate nearly-expired or expired food to local groups feeding the hungry. Instead, that food will be thrown away, a move several Sacramento charities consider wasteful. Olan James, a Wal-Mart spokesman, said the policy, which applies to all 1,224 Wal-Marts, 1,929 Supercenters and 558 Sam's Clubs, is an attempt to protect the corporation from liability in case someone who eats the donated food gets sick."

Deceptive Munich: "Ever since World War II, the German city of Munich has been symbolic of a single, solitary political lesson: the folly of 'appeasement.' The 1938 Munich Pact represented the futility of compromising with evil. This was always a bit unfair to poor British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who had better reasons to sign on to the pact than most people remember. But the moral of the story was a good one, going all the way back to Aesop, who told the fable of the scorpion and the frog, which ends with the frog being shocked that the scorpion would sting him even though the scorpion could do nothing else, for that was its nature. Hitler was a scorpion, and thinking or hoping otherwise wouldn't change that fact. Much of the Cold War was predicated on this lesson, as the World War II generation agreed not to let down its guard ever again. Steven Spielberg would like to rewrite the meaning of Munich. In his film about the response to the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, Spielberg seems determined to invest the word with a new meaning: We must not treat scorpions like scorpions."

Media ignore the truth again: "Guilt by association. It is a common tool used to discredit those deemed a threat to the established order. Recently, I've found myself on the receiving end of such a tactic courtesy of a piece by Jonathan Finer and Douglas Struck in the Washington Post. On the day after Christmas, the Washington Post featured an article titled "Bloggers, Money Now Weapons in Information War - U.S. Recruits Advocates to the Front, Pays Iraqi TV Stations for Coverage," of which my recent embed in Iraq was the subject of scrutiny as a military-information operation. It is a fact-challenged article that manages to cast an unfair shadow on my reporting from Iraq. The piece claims that I had retired from the military, when in fact it requires 20 years of service to retire. I served four years on active duty and two years in the National Guard. The authors report that I was credentialed by the American Enterprise Institute, when in fact this is impossible, as a think tank cannot provide media credentials - this must be done by a recognized news organization. I was credentialed by The Weekly Standard and the Canadian talk-radio show The World Tonight. And finally, contrary to the report, I was not in Iraq when the article was published. I had been home for nearly a week. Each of these items could have been easily confirmed by a simple inquiry....."

UK immigration: Sense creeping in? "A large-scale overhaul of the asylum system has begun which will lead to at least a third of all asylum seekers being placed in detention centres for the 'fast-track' processing of their claims for refugee status. The 'new asylum model,' which ministers hope will be implemented by September, also envisages far greater controls over failed asylum seekers facing removal, including the use of electronic tagging, reporting requirements and detention."

No free speech in Muslim Turkey: "After writers and intellectuals, bar owners have become the latest targets of a controversial Turkish law limiting freedom of expression, the daily Hurriyet reported on Friday. The owners of nine Istanbul bars and restaurant have drawn the wrath of the authorities for staging a protest last month over what they called frequent and arbitrary police inspections which they said harmed their business, the mass-selling daily reported. The protesters closed shop for a day, hanging banners denouncing 'arbitrary and unlawful practices and pressure by the police, conducted under the guise of inspections.' Police removed the banners and filed complaints against the bar owners, leading to their indictment under Article 301 for 'openly denigrating the police force,' Hurriyet said."

Big Brother has arrived in the UK: "John Prescott has told tax inspectors to use satellites to snoop on householders' attempts to improve their homes. Images of new conservatories and garages taken from space will be used to hike up council taxes and other property levies, official guidance obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveals. Mr Prescott's department is overseeing the creation of a database containing the details of every house in Britain to help tax inspectors to assess new charges. Even minor improvements, invisible from the road, will be caught by 'spy in the sky' technology that uses a mix of aerial and satellite images taken over time to spot changes."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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