Flee! Run for your lives!

This post was just gonna be a quick media-watch post with a snippet from Matthew Norman:

Kelvin MacKenzie has a pop at the remade Reggie Perrin starring Martin Clunes. I thought the first episode was hilarious, but that seems the minority view, and Kelvin took grave umbrage. "Some between-jobs idiot at the BBC decided it could be updated," he harrumphs. "Having seen the first show, the answer is clear – no it couldn't." Well, he has a point. It can be pitiful when people try to reinvent a memorable triumph of old. Kelvin's paper, meanwhile, featured Gordon Brown's face in a 60 watt bulb beside the headline "Will The Last Young Family To Leave Britain For Australia Or New Zealand Please Turn Out The Lights".

Presumably the quote came from Kelvin's column of the same title, with the same light bulb picture.
A read through of Kelvin's piece this morning shows that either Matthew Norman is mistaken and was obviously thinking of a different Kelvin Mackenzie or the bit about trying to re-invent old triumphs was removed. As The Sun doesn't let Google cache its pages we shall never know...

Anyway, I read Kelvin's piece and, after much scrubbing of the eyeballs, thought it needed a few things pointing out.

All the time he [Brown] took credit for the global boom, never once criticising the bankers, the private equity guys or the hedgies.

He loved them because they paid huge taxes and he was able to conduct his Scottish social experiment of giving money away to the useless and the layabouts, making sure that the great unwashed would vote Labour for ever.

Ah, of course, anyone without a job or is unable to work are naturally layabouts and useless and I also seem to remember the Sun being huge fans of New Labour before Gordon rose to the Premiership.

With our vaults deserted thanks to his profligacy, the economic tsunami hits us and then it becomes a global phenomenon.

His solution is to borrow even more, knowing, of course, he is going to be thrown out in a massive humiliation next June. But then it will be Cameron’s problem.

Perhaps that’s considered, in his twisted little obscene world, to be clever politics. But perhaps I could remind you, Mr Brown, that it’s OUR money and OUR future you’re playing with, not yours.

'OUR money and OUR future'. Man of the people is citizen Mackenzie. But he seems to forget that his paper and editor also plays with people lives.

Well, it’s time to do something about it. Normally I would advocate going up to No 10 and punching him firmly on the nose...

Because violence really does work, normally, but these are exceptional times.

...but if you have a family and are under 40 years of age could I urge you to take another course — desert our country as swiftly as you can and head for Australia or New Zealand and a new life.

Yes, you read it right, The Sun advocating immigration! It's ok though, because this is different. This is Brits going abroad, so it's emigration and everyone loves us Brits. Except those evil Muslims that want to destroy western civilisation, of course.

I thought that the Sun was supposed to be patriotic? First sign of trouble from a party that the Sun helped install and keep there for over twelve years and its ex-editor columnist is advising us all to swamp another country.

After all, we won’t have paid the debts run up by the socialist swindlers until 2032, so the only thing you will be missing is rubbing shoulders with the thick and the skint.

If everyone buggers off, won't it take longer for the debt to be paid off?

Such a move will upset your parents, but what with email, mobile phones and the low cost of flying you’ll probably hear and see more of each other than you do at the moment.

I doubt it very much. If you don't see or hear much of your family when you're in the same country, why would you when you're the other side of the planet?
Yes, there is email and to begin with, you may send photos and stuff back to family but that will taper off as you get used to the place. There are mobile phones, but what that has to do with anything, I have no idea. Has Kelvin seen the prices for calling Europe, where we are all supposed to be equal, never mind Australia?
And the flights, yes they are cheaper, but £500 is still a lot of money for some people and with 12 hours of flying and then the jet lag, it's not quite feasible to pop over for the weekend.

And now we see who Kelvin is really talking to...

Personally I will miss you because you think like me. You don’t want state handouts, you simply want to do your work, come home and be with your family without the state constantly looking over your shoulder or stealing 50 per cent of your money

People earning over £150,000, not the more common (as in more of them) reader who earns much less.

When Trevor Kavanagh warned us about the flight of the rich, I wasn't expecting the same paper to be urging them to leave.

Defending the rich

Trevor Kavanagh has a piece in the Sun, published on Monday just gone (27/04) full of woe for Alistair Darlings budget.

It was a silly budget because now not only is everyone going to lose their jobs but all the wealth creators are going to flee:

The Budget is less than a week old and already Britain’s wealth creators are deserting the sinking ship.

The Sunday Times’ latest Rich List shows our star earners have lost hundreds of millions. Why would they stay in a hostile tax environment?

And what about those who simply aspire to be in that Rich List some day? It’s not just so-called fat cats who are leaving.

Queues are forming for visas to Australia, Canada and the USA.

Wow. I'm not much into finance myself, but that sounds like a seriously rubbish budget.
The examples that Trevor chooses to use to highlight the plight of the poor little rich boys are, erm, dubious at best: Michael Caine, actor and all round national treasure; Tony Blair, ex-Prime Minister now peace envoy to the middle east on behalf of The Quartet,palm greaser special advisor for Morgan Stanley and after dinner/public speaker; Richard Branson, industrialist and the only real wealth creator out of the three.

First off, Michael Caine:

“We’ve got three and a half million layabouts on benefits and I’m 76 and getting up at 6am to go to work to keep them,” says the star of Billion Dollar Brain.

Sir Michael will move to America rather than pay more than half his earnings in tax to bail out these scroungers.

“I will not pay the Government more than I get. No way, ever,” he says.

Does anyone care about an actor packing up his £45million fortune and leaving in a huff?

Micheal is indeed 76 and probably does get up at 6 am to go to work, but he isn't going to work to keep anybody. Trevor points out Michael has a £45 million fortune so if he is still working way past the age when ordinary people are wanting to, if not able to, retire he is doing it out of love for his profession. An actor doesn't really create employment, like a businessman might.
Michael owns and co-owns a few restaurants in Britain, about 5 I think, and a couple of other countries. So not exactly a big employer there either.

Tony Blair, is an ex PM and is not really what you could call a wealth creator either, beyond his office staff. He makes his money from advising Morgan Stanley and giving speeches. He is now an employee, not an employer.

Richard Branson is a slightly different kettle of fish. Branson is a true entrepreneur, starting with nothing and working his way to where he is now but selling and trading and starting companies and building a group of companies. The only good example here.

It's not too good overall so far, 1 good example out of 3. That score gets worse when you consider:

Sir Richard Branson has a complicated series of offshore trusts and companies that own his business empire. Branson, whose wealth is calculated at £3,065m, pays relatively little tax as his wealth is tied up in these companies.

It means that when he retires, he could move abroad — to the island he owns in the Caribbean — and liquidate his assets virtually tax-free.

and I would bet that Michael and Tony have very compentent accountants to help minimise their tax burden.

The Sun is asking the reader to i) feel sorry for rich people that can and do avoid paying their full share of tax and ii) fear for the future of the country by screaming about the flight of wealth creators by using examples of extremely wealthy people that either do not create wealth or avoid paying their taxes.
If these three do leave, their businesses won't. Michaels restaurants are profitable and Virgin isn't just going to up sticks and go and Tony will look a right arse if he turns his back on Britain.
So if these guys do go they will still employ people here who have no choice but to stay andpay their taxes.

Hmmm. I wonder what how much Trevor earns...?

Trevor Kavanagh on Muslims and confusion over crime.

Almost a week on from the protests in Luton by around 15 Islamists, those out to milk it for all its worth still haven't let go. Today Trevor Kavanagh in the Sun, having previously treated us to Islamophobia in response to accusations of Islamophobia instead introduces us to his amazing knowledge of both the terrorist threat and the Muslim community:

IF you thought public fury over the latest ‘IRA’ atrocities was impressive, wait for the uproar over the next 7/7.

For the jihadists haven’t gone away, either.

They are just furious that a few flint-eyed extremists from the Real IRA and Continuity IRA have beaten them to it.

How does Kavanagh know this? Simple: he doesn't. The jihadists haven't gone away, it's true, and undoubtedly the threat from them is worse than it is from Republican dissidents, but it's also worth bearing in mind that there now hasn't been a major attack foiled since the liquid bomb raids, over two and a half years ago, not counting the dismal failure of the Tiger Tiger and Glasgow airport patio gas canister attacks.

Last week’s Belfast demos involved peace-loving citizens from both sides of the community.

The question is, will we see peace-loving Muslims, preferably some in hijabs, filling the streets of Bradford after the next Islamist outrage?

Most British Muslims are as appalled by violence as the people of Northern Ireland.

Some bravely condemned the Luton fanatics who spat bile at our soldiers as they marched home last week.

But would they turn out in their thousands to denounce another massacre like the London Tube murders?

Unlikely. Yet, if they fail to join other British citizens in publicly expressing disgust, they risk being seen as silent sympathisers.

Kavanagh here doesn't see the flaw in his own argument. He is suggesting that Muslims would be the only ones that wouldn't turn up to denounce a second 7/7 attack, yet there was no response after 7/7 akin to that which we saw last week in Northern Ireland, also unlike the response in Spain to the Madrid attacks there. And why preferably some in hijabs? Because Kavanagh assumes that women wearing them must be more extreme, or more devout? This mirrors Kavanagh's previous comments regarding hijabs, which he described as "provocative", when they are nothing of the sort. Niqabs maybe, hijabs from this secularist's view unpleasant and unnecessary but not "provocative". Kavanagh's remarks that if they fail to live up to what he demands of them they "risk" being seen as "silent sympathisers" could not be more clear: he views them as outsiders unless they distinguish themselves by denouncing something that was not done in their name but by those who claim to share their religion. He wouldn't subject any other group in this country to this sort of treatment; what makes it's acceptable to do it to Muslims?

Not satisfied with this, he then, like the Sun has repeatedly, questions the allegations made by Binyam Mohamed regarding his rendition and torture:

But lying is the default position for Islamists. Which is why we should question Guantanamo inmate Binyam Mohamed’s claim he was tortured by America and hung out to dry by the British.

On balance, I prefer the word of our security services.

The Ethiopian asylum seeker is another ex-druggie convert, deluded by fantasies of Islamic purity in hellholes such as Chechnya and Afghanistan.

Yet we are giving him sanctuary, at huge cost and potential risk.

He is not British. He should be sent home, along with ALL foreign terror advocates who trade off the freedoms they are so determined to destroy.

Except he doesn't claim that it was only Americans that tortured him. His main mistreatment occurred in Morocco, where he was rendered by the Americans (undisputed, as we have the flight logs which showed a trip on the correct date on a plane associated with the rendition programme) and where, as the Intelligence and Security Committee has already said, MI5/6 provided his interrogators with questions which were used while he was tortured. How much evidence does Kavanagh actually want? Does he want to see Mohamed's penis, which was sliced with a razor and still bears the scars? That he has lived here since he was a teenager has no real links to any country other than here is irrelevant to Kavanagh; he should just be thrown out because of his own ideological bias.

Much of the rest is the same old spouting that the Sun has cranked out for years, all without anything approaching proof or anything approaching insight, bringing up the old already disproved idea that it's foreign imams that are brainwashing the youth when in fact the radicalisation process is far more complicated and more to do with groups of like-minded individuals and the internet than simply listening to the sermons of the Qatadas and Hamzas. The new tactic is to quote at length those who have turned their back on radical Islam, even when they themselves are discredited. Shiraz Maher, who produced a report which had the most ridiculous and rigid recommendations for the government when tackling extremism for the think-tank Policy Exchange, discredited over Islam after Newsnight exposed that it had fabricated parts of a previous report is given space, while Ed Husain, more reliable but also unwieldy in what he thinks should be done, unlike his more amenable colleague Majjid Nawaz, also of the Quilliam Foundation, is also given room to voice concern over how Luton didn't turn out to denounce 15 people who weren't even all from the town, despite pictures from mosques on Friday which featured many worshippers condemning the protests.

All of this covers up the fact that the very thing Kavanagh seems to want is in fact just as likely to alienate as it is to unite. Demanding that Muslims as a block denounce something that doesn't in any way represent them is the exact sort of thing that is guaranteed to cause resentment towards a society which is already fearful and sceptical, and in some cases even prejudiced against them. The Sun's entire coverage of terrorism and the war on terror has been conducted in an "us and them" style, completely wedded to the Bush administration's policies on it, and scornful of the alternatives. That this has been counter-productive could not be more plain, yet the paper continues to defend it, ridiculing those tortured and demanding that terror laws be ever further tightened.

Elsewhere, the Sun's leader is typically confused (url will change as usual):

CRIME statistics alone cannot reveal the truth about Broken Britain.

They can be twisted any way the Government likes.

The Tories point to Justice Ministry figures showing convictions for teenage violence and theft doubling since Labour took office.

True, says the Government — but only because we’re bringing more yobs to book.

In fact crime is DOWN by a massive 39 per cent.

Does someone really need to explain to the Sun that just because crime is down that doesn't mean that convictions must also be down? It seems like it. As with Kavanagh, the Sun has already decided what's actually happened: Britain is broken and the government twists the statistics. True, it doesn't help when the government is caught doing just that, such as over the knife crime statistics released late last year, but the Sun itself fell for that and then claimed that no one had believed them anyway. The Sun then launches its own survey:

Crazy, isn’t it? So we must all decide for ourselves.

Today, we report four teenage murders in three days.

Do you think crime levels are lower than in 1997?

Do you feel there are enough police to keep order? That sentences are sufficient deterrent?

Do you think Labour really has been “tough on crime”? Do you feel safer than when they came to power?

We’ll bet the answer, every time, is No.

And the Sun is determined that the answer remains no, as its hysteria over "Broken Britain" and demands for ever more police and prison places continue unabated.

Yes, but no, but...

Independent:

'Sun' editor Rebekah Wade said at Monday's Hugh Cudlipp lecture she's sick of defending Kelvin MacKenzie, her predecessor. But does she also have to apologise for Trevor Kavanagh, her paper's associate editor? In his column that day he decried the BBC for failing to broadcast the Gaza appeal, calling the uproar "as loud as it is justified". The only other broadcaster not to show the appeal was, er, Sky, News Corp stable-mate of 'The Sun'. Luckily, the paper was back on message the next day when Fergus Shanahan pronounced the Beeb was right after all. Phew!

Your names not down. You're not coming in

The Sun. Highly inflential in past general elections.
Is it losing its influence, though? Or are the Tories beginning to think they are, to paraphrase some famous bloke, bigger than god?

Recess Monkey - Tory conference roundup:

The hall was so overcrowded for the Osborne speech that many of the great and good were turned away, not least Rebekah Wade - which won’t help when seeking Murdoch’s backing in an election.

Pandora of the Independent:

On Saturday afternoon, the Parliamentary Golf Society held its annual 10-a-side match against Huntercombe golf club in Henley-On-Thames.

The side, which was made up of the likes of Tim Yeo and The Sun's political editor George Pascoe-Watson, was this year captained by one of Cameron's senior advisors, Andrew Mackay, pictured.

Mackay, however, made a schoolboy error of captaincy by inviting 11 players, meaning they were one man too many. To remedy the situation, he made a bold decision by ruthlessly giving The Sun's political guru Trevor Kavanagh – and arguably Fleet Street's most influential commentator – the axe.

"Poor old Trevor was very honoured to have got the call-up this year, only to be told by Mackay on arrival that the parliamentarians were a man over, and he'd been getting the boot," I'm told.