British population has grown by eight million in the last twenty years

In the 20 years before Labour came to office in 1997, despite Margaret Thatcher's government's British Nationality Act 1981 which sought to prevent all but family members of British subjects (secondary immigrants) from settling in the UK, the British population rose by 2 million. 

According to official figures from ONS (the Office for National Statistics) just out, in the 20 years since 1997 it has grown by 8 million. That increase comes from immigration and high birth-rates among immigrants. 

Philip Johnston in the Daily Telegraph says that

The greatest failure of modern British governance was to encourage mass immigration to the UK and fail to prepare for the impact it would have. It is at the root of much that afflicts the nation today, from the agony of Brexit to the near-terminal pressure on the NHS and the housing crisis with all its attendant consequences. As figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) confirmed this week, the last 20 years have seen the population rise faster than at any time in history.

Big Bad Wolf

I never took the American feminist Naomi Wolf seriously for a moment. Not simply because she was an American feminist (Camille Paglia is the only one I like) but because even by feminist standards she was so very silly (though very beautiful in her twenties). 

Her latest book said many Englishmen and boys were hanged for sodomy in Victorian England. She was wrong and was politely but irrefutably corrected in a live radio programme.  One has to feel for her for that. 

I had no idea how appalling she was until I read this lovely little piece by the wonderful Douglas Murray. 

In her first book, The Beauty Myth, that came out in 1991 she

"infamously claimed that 150,000 women were dying from anorexia-related

Gender-Specific Brain Cells Have Just Been Discovered Inside The Brains of Mice

'The theologians say that the soul has no sex, but I wonder. I very much wonder.' (Coleridge)

This news item dated 18 October was brought to my attention by the Anglo-Swedish writer Pelle Neroth Taylor.

Male and female mouse brains could have significant differences that reach right down to the cellular level, according to a new discovery.

Based on a reading of their genetic activity, neurons in a part of the mouse nervous system responsible for aggression and mating behaviours appear to be chemically structured in subtle but distinctly different ways between the two sexes.

These findings haven't been tested in other mammal species as yet, so we can't read too much into them. But it's a fascinating study that warrants further investigation in the brains of other animals.

Daily explosions in Sweden

It was only last year that the BBC Radio Four broadcast a programme which asked why right-wing people were obsessed by peaceful prosperous Sweden and failed to find an answer. Now even the BBC reports the violence that has become a daily feature in Swedish life. 

Indigenous Swedes are not the reason for this crime wave.

I wrote about it here.


These explosions of which Andrew Neil speaks have not resulted in injuries, thankfully, but it is a long way from the Stockholm we imagined until recently.

Persephone is the queen of the underworld who punishes cursed souls

Feminist bookshop and publisher Persephone Books does not want the custom and attendant free publicity from Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson's adviser.

Why can't we all just get on? 

Discrimination, the defining issue of our times

When I was at university, before the last ice age, the fight against unfairness and discrimination was considered extremely important, but this is much more the case now. 

In the absence of any other moral imperative, now that Christianity is receding fast from the public space and the Cold War has been won, opposing discrimination has to fill the need that every society has for an overarching sense of purpose and the need everyone has for redemption and salvation. 

Every day in the papers are hundreds of stories on this theme.

Britain, or England as she used inaccurately to be called, has a conservative government, albeit a tottering one, and conservatives used to want society to evolve organically, by

Boris is much more interested in winning an election than Brexit, though the two are closely linked

It is pretty obvious that at last a Withdrawal Agreement Bill would be able to get through Parliament fairly quickly, had Boris not ‘paused’ it. Ken Clarke said so and so do most people. That is or should be a triumph for Boris Johnson, even though the House of Commons voted, reasonably enough, not to scrutinise it in less than the time they gave the Circuses and Wild Animals Bill recently, which means the Prime Minister cannot meet his pledge to take the UK out of the EU ‘by 31 October do or die’. But the EU will agree a short extension.

Instead of banking the win Boris has pulled yet another surprise in this astonishing soap opera and is trying to call an election, something he does not have the power to do under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (FTPA).

It has been clear to me all along that what Boris is most interested in is not Brexit but winning an election, but an election will be  a huge risk for him and for the country - since the alternative to the Tories is a Trotskyite government. 

But I think much of the reason why Boris is calling an election is to dominate the news cycle and shift attention from the fact that he did not keep his promise to take the UK out of the EU by Hallowe'en do or die.

Fraser Nelson in the Telegraph points out that “C2DE” voters, blue-collar workers, prefer Boris to Jeremy Corbyn by 48 per cent to 18 per cent.

John O' Sullivan's tweet worries me

.@twlldun

I dunno, I feel like since Brexit came back after the mid season break, it’s lost it’s way somewhat. Too much about procedure. Where’s the human element that was in the earlier story arcs? The triumph and the tragedy, the laughter and the tears?


.@twlldun

I’m not saying it’s jumped the shark - the season started off well, which few people expected after the previous script team was shown the door. But now it’s just parliamentary votes every episode.

“Culture is religion externalised"

This is profoundly true. Alice Smith tweeted it. She is apparently a descendent of Adam Smith.

Alice Smith@TheAliceSmith

If you think that culture can be separated from religion, you need to investigate the meaning of the word ‘culture’.
“Culture is religion externalised.”

The internet says someone called Joe Boot said it first. I wish I had coined it.

I have said repeatedly that economics is based on culture and culture is based on religion. Religion and culture are not, as Marx taught, produced by economics.

Religion cannot, however, be the only factor, or Protestant Jamaica would be as prosperous and law-abiding as C of E agnostic Hampshire or ex-Lutheran Jutland.

Someone replied to Miss Smith:

DrStrangeLove@Tauschhandel

atheist's god is the state even though they refuse to admit it...

The Fallen Idols

"On our first visit, a volunteer (pictured below) said the carved image “represents the revelation of the feminine mother with mother nature, which gives us nourishment.” 

Asked if it is the Pachamama, she said: “Yes, the mother, who cares for life, who gives nourishment to life, so it’s a very strong form of symbolism.” (Article on Lifesitenews.com)

Today, October 22nd, was the feast of St. Theodoret of Antioch, who was accused of having destroyed statues of the gods and was martyred under Julian the Apostate after the most atrocious torments were heaped upon him. He bore them all with great courage.

This week at Rome, during the controversial Synod discussing the future of Catholicism in the Amazon, wooden carvings of nude pregnant women that have been on display in a church were seized by a protester and cast into the Tiber in Rome.

The statues were given to the Pope by an Amazonian lady at the Synod’s opening tree-planting ceremony. She said they depicted "Our Lady of the Amazon".

However, Fr Giacomo Costa, a communications official for the synod, later said that the nude wooden figure of the pregnant woman is not the Virgin Mary, but a female figure representing life.

The statues or icons or idols, or whatever they are, now sleep with the fishes.

Brexit thoughts Tuesday morning - today is really the crunch day - we think

Allison Pearson@allisonpearson

So the LibDems will support a second referendum. But, as @joswinson said on live TV, she would not accept the result of a 2nd referendum if it was Leave again.
Roll up, ladies and gentlemen, to have your vote disregarded a second time!
Who could resist?

5,315

6:28 PM - Oct 21, 2019

For the DUP, the separate treatment of Northern Ireland is unacceptable. Yet when Theresa May went to the extreme length of keeping the whole of the UK in a closer arrangement with the EU to save them from this outcome, they were emphatically against that as well. They are also against leaving without a deal. Did it not occur to them when they campaigned for Brexit that it would be very likely to entail one of the three outcomes they are now against?

William Hague, yesterday in the Telegraph

Novelist Eilis O'Hanlon writing in the (Unionist) Belfast Telegraph

"So-called “Super Saturday” was a damp squib in the end, though at least Remainer MPs finally stopped pretending their only aim was to avoid no deal. They’re out to keep Britain in the EU, whether voters like it or not."

"In truth, it makes no more sense to say Boris betrayed the DUP than it does to say that

Boris is Churchillian - and a Cavalier - but not a racist

Thank God Jeremy Hunt is not Prime Minister. Or Matt Hancock, Sajid Javid, Andrea Leadsome, Rory Stewart or any of the others, most of all George Osborne. 

Tim Stanley was right when he gushed that Boris was wonderful on Saturday and might be right when he compared him to Churchill. All depends though on how things turn out.

Had Churchill died in 1939 he would be remembered as a fascinating failure who was responsible for the débâcle of the Dardanelles campaign (which is not true) and for encouraging Jinnah to argue for carving Pakistan out of India, as a way of defeating the movement for Indian independence.

Had Hitler not attacked any more countries after he annexed Czechia, Churchill would have been remembered as a warmonger. 

But if Boris resembles Churchill, he does so more in his Liberal than his Tory phase. 

But then Churchill was always an Edwardian Liberal Imperialist really, if he was ever anything.

Boris is so liberal he is almost an interesting, intelligent, eloquent and likeable version of Hillary, if such a thing is imaginable. 

But it isn't.

Boris, like Churchill, likes wars – he wanted to intervene in Syria to achieve regime change - public spending and social reform.

And Boris is a Tory in the sense that Churchill was: in the sense of having a cavalier sensibility.

Bagehot describes this perfectly.

...The essence of Toryism is enjoyment. Talk of the ways of spreading a wholesome conservatism throughout this country! Give painful lectures, distribute weary tracts (and perhaps this is as well,—you may be able to give an argumentative answer to a few objections, you may diffuse a distinct notion of the dignified dullness of politics); but as far as communicating and establishing your creed are concerned, try a little pleasure. The way to keep up old customs is to enjoy old customs; the way to be satisfied with the present state of things is to enjoy that state of things. Over the “Cavalier” mind this world passes with a thrill of delight; there is an exaltation in a daily event, zest in the “regular thing,” joy at an old feast.

Communism

Leninism was always terrorism and very comparable with other forms of nihilism, such as Islamist terrorism.

Sunset over the Telephone Palace

A war between cities and provinces is breaking out

I gave up reading Roger Boyes many years ago. His banal analyses of Middle Eastern politics sounded like they were dictated by MI6 or the State Department. However I chanced across an article of his about the Polish government, about which I want to know much more. It is presiding over an unemployment rate of 3%, child benefit of £100 a month, a minimum wage of £800 a month and 5% economic growth last year. It is also Catholic, gives mothers incentives to have children and steers Poland away from the wilder shores of LGBT theory. It tried to restrict abortion.

Anne Applebaum hates the Polish government, which in itself inclines me like it. It is poles (no pun intended) apart from her globalist, liberal, pro-immigration world-view, which she shares with the FT and the Economist. So am I. 

Daniel Hannan: 'This is it: victory. Like Cincinnatus returning to his plough, we can leave the field with honour'

Ignore the misleading headline. This article is Daniel Hannan giving Boris's withdrawal agreement his warm support. 

This is important because he was one of the two or three best known Brexiteers before the referendum campaign started (the late Christopher Booker was another). He argued for a Swiss or Norwegian deal, not  hard Brexit all all. 

Nevertheless, he said that even staying in was better than Theresa May's WA and he was probably right. Her deal meant staying in a customs union with the EU, Boris's should mean a free trade agreement but the ability to make FTAs with other countries. Let's see see what deal Mr Trump can offer.

Brexit: where we are as Great Britain wakes up this morning

Blast that silly, giggling, woolly-minded intelligent fool, Sir Oliver Letwin, for stopping Boris's momentum and forcing him to break his pledge not to ask for a further delay to Brexit. 

Blast Boris for not preventing the Benn Act becoming law by advising Her Majesty to delay Royal Assent or by arranging a filibuster in the House of Lords. 

But it still looks like he has (just) a majority to pass his withdrawal agreement through Parliament in all its stages. Parliament may have to sit on Saturday again.


But it is nip and tuck.

A government source told the Telegraph:

“It’s on a knife-edge. Everything plays into this week. It is not just about Europe, it’s whether an election will happen this year. The idea is get the Bill through, and push for an election immediately.”
“Unless they get everything sorted this week, it probably won’t happen until the New Year.”

Boris hopes to win parliamentary backing for his deal today, though the Speaker may well prevent him putting back the same motion that the House discussed on Saturday. Tomorrow the Second Reading of the Bill will be debated and no amendments can be taken.

DUP could unite with Labour to try to force through an an amendment to the Bill which would compel the Government to pursue a customs union with Brussels. This would prevent barriers between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. But Boris is thought to be very close to securing a majority with the support of around eight Labour MPs, a handful of independents and almost all the former Tories from whom he withdrew the whip.

The Dâmbovița in the late afternoon sun today

The monstrous regiment of women in the Church of England

It only seems recently that the Church of England appointed its first bishopess and now they arrive not in single spies but in battalions. 

The Archbishop of Canterbury has been appointing as many women to suffragan posts as possible - four in one all women bunch this summer. The Church of England, instead of being didactic, will become therapeutic.

I am not an Anglican but what the Church of England does influences the whole of English society and, if there still is one, culture.

This article in the Spectator about the woman whom John Bercow insisted on making the first female chaplain of the House of Commons (the Rector of St Margaret's had before then always fulfilled this function), who has just been made Bishopess of Dover, makes dispiriting reading. 

'Hudson-Wilkin told an audience in Liverpool that she now refuses to take the children from her parish into St Paul’s Cathedral for confirmation because while ‘the congregation is diverse’, the clergy, she says, is something ‘completely different’. She went into her local Specsavers and harangued the management for having no photographs of black people modelling the specs,