Gillian Duffy - a missed opportunity for Gordon Brown

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, as we all know and will soon be sick of hearing now that the pensioner in question has hired the services of a PR firm, got himself in a spot of bother yesterday for calling a member of the public "a bigoted woman."

He had spoken to Gillian Duffy whilst on a "meet and greet" in Rochdale - one of those events in which our esteemed leaders deem to come down from upon high and walk among the mortals, the sort of thing so beloved of David Cameron as they allow him opportunity to prefix everything he says with "I met a man/woman/dog the other day..." instead of his trademark Blairesque "Look..." and in doing so prove that he is a Man of the People and not, after all, an Old Etonian toff for whom contact with the Great Unwashed would usually be limited to shouting "You there! Get off my land!" a moment before letting rip with both barrels of the Holland & Holland.

Mr. Brown is a facepalmer of renown, as seen here, but the example he demonstrated when played the recording of his comments yesterday was of Olympic standard.

Mrs. Duffy, who had been out buying a loaf of bread, spent a few moments discussing a range of issues with Mr. Brown before moving onto immigration. The conversation went as follows.

Duffy: "You can't say anything about the immigrants because they'll say that you're...you're..."

Brown: "Er..."

Duffy: "...but all these East Europeans what are coming in, where are they flocking from?"

Nothing more would have been heard about this, but shortly afterwards, when Mr. Brown got back into his car, he neglected to remove the television microphone that had recorded the previous conversation. His comments on the meeting were thus heard and recorded by reporters.

Brown: "That was a disaster. They should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that?"

Voice 2: "I don't know - I didn't see that."

Brown: "It was Sue's, I think. It's just ridiculous."

Voice 2: "What did she say?"

Brown: "Oh, everything - she's just a sort of bigoted woman that said she used to be Labour."

Brown, who was later filmed while appearing on a radio programme, performed a classic facepalm when the recording was later played back to him, evidently realising that he had committed what the media and public are now viewing as an almighty gaffe and, in the words of The Guardian, the torpedoing of his own election campaign. The Prime Minister later returned and spent 45 minutes in Mrs. Duffy's home apologising as the press waited avidly on her driveway hoping for some further titbits of juicy news like dogs after kitchen scraps.

All the parties - with the exception of UKIP and the BNP, who speak of little else - have been pussy-footing around the question of immigration for fear of having to admit they've failed dismally to recognise and allay the fears of a large swathe of the British population who, when their genuine concerns are blown out of all proportion and transformed into unfounded paranoia by the right-wing media and that all-powerful shaper of public opinion the bloke down the pub, are worried that British values and life are under threat. With the laudable exception of Boris Johnson (and it's not often you'll read anything in support of him on this blog), they have not addressed these fears by providing evidence that immigration is a solution to economic crisis and that multiculturalism enriches society. As a result, millions of people who would never describe themselves as racist now hold views which, despite their attempts to claim otherwise, look unpleasantly like xenophobia.

This is a particularly taxing problem for Labour who, throughout their history as Britain's mainstream Socialist party, have wrestled with an unfortunate problem - a high percentage of the working-class membership and supporters, who are vital to the party's existence and credibility, have always held these sorts of views. To the party intellectuals, this has always been a matter of great embarrassment and they have, the majority of the time, simply chosen to ignore it as an inconvenient truth and hope that by setting a better example it will go away. It hasn't - and in recent years, with the failures outlined in the previous paragraph, it has become worse; so much so that people who have previously voted for both Labour and the other main parties are now willing to vote for fascists.

What was Mrs. Duffy going to say, before Gordon cut her off yesterday? It seems to us either of two things may have happened.

The first is that she is not a bigot and was going to raise a concern shared by many of the electorate, a concern that needs to be dealt with and which, while prejudiced, is not her fault. Mr. Brown misunderstood her (let's face it, she did sound as though she was going to say something bigoted - "You can't say anything about the immigrants because they'll say that you're a..." does sound rather similar to the "I'm not a racist but..." prefix so popular among certain 'comedians'), and later apologised. Conclusion: Gordon made a mistake, admitted his error and said sorry. He also proved something very important - he doesn't like bigots. Score one for Mr. Brown.

"I'm not a racist but..." What was Mrs. Duffy going to say about immigrants?

The second is that Mrs. Duffy is a bigot and, just as is the case with UKIP, she tried to use legitimate (if mistaken) concerns about immigration to hide what she was really saying: "I don't like foreigners and they should be sent back to wherever they came from." Gordon recognised bigotry when he heard it and, while not wishing to rebuke a potential Labour voter a week before an election which he looks dead set to lose, only made his true feelings clear later when he thought he would not be heard by the press. Conclusion: Gordon is a little bit of a coward, but since he's fighting for his political life and all politics is put on a back burner in favour of electioneering this close to the big day, we can overlook this. However, we now have proof that he doesn't like bigots. Score one for Mr. Brown.

We know which of these two versions we think is the closest to the truth and you, dear reader, will have your own preferred version, but that's irrelevant in this case and so we're not going to say which is ours. What matters is that while the brains behind Labour's election campaign will have spent a coffee-fueled and sleepless night engaged in damage limitation as a response to nationwide feeling that Mr. Brown has further scuppered his party's chances, what he has actually done is reveal an admirable quality in himself - he has, inadvertently, made it obvious beyond doubt that he is not a racist and that he is both opposed to and dislikes racist beliefs.

This might just be political gold rather than dynamite. Had we have been undecided, wavering voters, Gordon might even have won our vote yesterday and if there are more Britons who share his view than are bigots it's entirely possible that the loss of Mrs. Duffy's vote will be off-set quite usefully by the votes of those who understand the value of immigration and oppose racist politics.

Sue - who, it transpires, is Mr. Brown's aide of 13 years Sue Nye - may find her name enter the English language as a convenient scapegoat for all manner of things. She was blamed on Newsnight yesterday by one participant for something entirely unrelated to what happened in Rochdale and only this morning was alleged to be the reason Mrs. Rabbi's morning coffee didn't have enough milk in it; but Mr. Brown is wrong if he now tries to make her pay - bookies are taking bets on her being sacked, with online service paddypower.com offering 3 to 1 - because she may just have done him a very big favour.

What Cameron's REALLY thinking...

Interesting...

Did the Daily Mail fake the results of its readers' poll so David Cameron won last night's Leaders' Debate? Fascinating stuff from refpls:journalism, science and politics.

General Election - can't make your mind up?

Just in case you're having a bit of a problem making up your mind as to who you're going to vote for on the 6th of May now that the Leaders' Debates have churned up our deep-rooted allegiances or, more importantly, you can't decide who to vote for in the Acid Rabbi poll (which is just there on the upper right hand side of the screen), here's a very handy little flowchart from b3ta.com to help you sort your muddled mind into a less chaotic state...

The Leaders' Debate 2 - another 90 minutes of light entertainment

Sky News hosted the second Leader's Debate last night from Bristol's Arnolfini arts centre as measures designed to ensure British elections become little more than a US-style gladiatorial contest continue. Eschewing last week's 1980s Countdown stage set look, they apparently bought up some old bits and pieces used for televised darts matches instead. The Kraftwerk-minus-one-member-(and talent) imagery was also gone - this week, the leaders stood behind what may have been designer refrigerators.

Gordon Brown's not looking too healthy these days - going head-to-head with

Cameron and Clegg seems too much for him.

Daveyboy Cameron put on a much better show than last week and was altogether sharper and more on the ball. He wasted no time in getting the knives out for Gordon Brown when he demanded that the PM withdraw leaflets accusing the Tories of wanting to cut benefits for the elderly - Mr. Brown, who looked uncomfortable, claimed that he had not authorised leaflets making any such claim. This could well prove to be one of the biggest mistakes of his life - Cameron's claims were effortlessly backed up by various Labour MPs and pundits right after the show when they produced an assortment of those very leaflets as evidence.

Poor old Gordon! We may loathe the old curmudgeon and we might think he should never have been the Prime Minister in the first place, but we don't half feel sorry for the old sod. While Cameron had done his homework and prepared himself for the previously underestimated foe that is Nick Clegg and his oratory skills, Brown didn't really do any better than last week. He looks exhausted and as though he's beginning to melt - if his temper is truly as bad as has been claimed, we hope he loses the forthcoming Election and retires from politics for the good of his own heart's health as well as that of the nation.

Cameron also made a less successful to attack the LibDem's golden boy, accusing him of being holier-then-thou over the expenses scandal. That may be the case, but the fact remains that Clegg's party came out of that mess in much better shape than the other main parties and, during the early days when recriminations and accusations were flying about the Commons in even bigger flocks than the bullshit, the LibDems gave the impression of doing something about it while Labour and the Conservatives tried to score points.

On the same topic, neither Cameron nor Brown made much of a big deal over the recent allegations that several transfers of £750 from donors into his private bank account. Clegg has since come clean, admitting that he received a total of £20,000 in this way - political suicide in the current climate were it not for the fact that he has a full set of bank statements showing the money was used for its totally legitimate purpose - paying a member of staff. So why was so little made of this? Could it be that Labour and the Tories believe that the Liberal Democrats are, in fact, holier-than-them and knew there was no point in slinging mud where none would stick? They were more than happy to make plenty of noise about it in the run-up to last night's debate, however, perhaps hoping to tarnish Clegg's reputation after he wiped the floor with them last week.

Nick, it must be said, did not do quite so well as previously, though it's our opinion than he still put in a better effort than his rivals - had Cameron have been quite as dire as last week, Clegg may well have aced it once again. There was a brief display of showmanship when he raised a genuine laugh from the crowd by pointing out that Brown's plan to repatriate illegal immigrants is impossible if you don't know who or where those immigrants are. Brown, unusually, attempted a spot of humour too when he said that Dave and Nick's tussles reminded him of his own young sons at bathtime - Clegg retaliated by claiming "It was a good line in rehearsal," which seemed relatively unimportant until The Guardian managed to get hold of copies of overhead photographs proving that the line was in fact pre-prepared and written down on the PM's crib sheet, making Brown look more wooden than ever.

The first poll to deliver results - somewhat unsurprisingly, that organised on behalf of Tory snotrag The Sun - claimed Cameron was the winner with 36% of viewers believing he had been the star of the show, but the very next disagreed and placed Clegg in pole position once again with 33%, Cameron and Brown winning 30% apiece. More results were soon winging their way onto our screens, with the general consensus being that there was no clear winner. However, we strongly disagree with this - there was, in our eyes, a very clear winner: whichever Sky News employee came up with the quite frankly stunning animations projected onto Bristol's Arnolfini building.

Make sure you tune in for next week's show, folks - DavCam is going to be determined to be clear winner in at least one of the debates that he supported right from the start and Cleggy will be wanting to go out in style. It could well prove to be the clash of the New Labour and LibDem titans. Oh - and who knows, Gordon Brown might even bother to get out of bed for a third go.

BNP to LibDems? WTF?

Not too far from Acid Rabbi Towers is a house that, during the European Elections last year, had a BNP poster displayed in its window. Mrs. Rabbi, who walks past the house daily, regularly sees the man who lives there and so we know for a fact that the man who put up the BNP poster is still living there.

Today I walked past and guess what? He has a big Liberal Democrat poster on display. Explain that if you can.

We have no BNP candidate standing here, so he wouldn't have been able to vote for them anyway - but nevertheless, if you have any belief in the BNP and their extreme right wing policies, you're unlikely to pick the central left LibDems as an alternative so what could possibly have caused such a seismic shift in one man's opinions?

If it was Nick Clegg's performance in last week's Leaders' Debate, then Mr. Clegg can be assured he achieved something in this election even if he's not the Prime Minister by May the 7th because convincing even one individual not to vote for the fascists is worthy of praise.

One thing that does still concern us is that the ex-BNP supporter also has a Status Quo poster in his window (which seems a peculiar mix). While opposing everything the BNP say and do, we respect the right of each member of the electorate in this democratic nation to support any political party they choose - but try as we might, we can see no excuse whatsoever for liking Quo.

Results in!

Yes folks, it's the moment you've been waiting for - the results of the latest Acid Rabbi poll are in, and an amazing five people took the time to vote so you can bet your own grandmother this will tell you something truly meaningful about popular opinion in Britain today!

We asked:

"Is David Cameron...

A: An honest man who will do his best for Britain?

B: A transparent ballot-whore who will say anything if he thinks there's a vote in it?

C: A sort of cross between an arse and a potato?"

Answer A received a grand total of no votes at all, leading us to believe that - unsurprisingly - no Tories read Acid Rabbi. Answer B got 80% - four votes, which suggests not everyone's taken in by the shameless liar. Answer C - our choice - scored 40%, two votes, due to the fact that we allowed people to vote twice and made the results pretty much useless as a result.

How will you vote on May the 6th?

Ah well - let's hope the vote on May the 6th isn't too different. Even another Labour term has to be better than DavCam and his gang. Anyway - now vote in our new poll: How do you intend to vote int he General Election - Conservative, Labour, LibDem, Green, UKIP, Fascist Scumbag Party (also known as the BNP) or by writing "Fuck Off" on a brick and chucking it through a House of Commons window?

Give a dog a bad name...trouble oop t'Immigration Centre

As any teacher with half a brain will tell you, all children start off as good kids and all good kids do something naughty once in a while (the infamous PVA glue in the school milk incident of 1979 being one example from my own childhood). If, following chastisement, that child is treated no differently to his or her peers, the child will continue being what he or she was previously - a normal kid. However, if adults then mark the child out as a bad kid, he or she gains a reputation and begin living up to it. Over time, the reputation gets worse and worse and - eventually - what you end up with is a juvenile delinquent who in all too many cases is destined for a life of anti-social behaviour and crime.

Immigrants enjoying their stay at Oakington, which is kind of like Butlins only guests are treated as criminals and kept locked up behind barbed wire.

Image from UK Indymedia

Recently, at the Oakington Illegal Prison...sorry, I mean Immigrant Detainment Centre near Cambridge, trouble broke out after one detainee died at the facility. While the death is not being treated as suspicious, inmates used the situation as an opportunity to protest. Around 60 detainees were involved and, according to the Home Office, "a number of ringleaders have been removed" from the Centre.

Six Immigration officers and one police officer were injured during the trouble on Thursday. Why did the inmates turn to violence? It's statistically unlikely that all 60 of them are normally violent people and many of them have probably never committed an offence in their lives apart from entering or staying in Britain illegally, either to escape their homeland where they may face persecution or simply because - like any human being - they wish to improve their lives and make something of themselves. Treat a child like a bad kid and he or she will feel they have something to live up to. Adults are not so different to children.

Home Office Oakington website here.

The Election Debate...in 15 seconds

Created by Morten Morland

The Leaders' Debate: a mere sideshow trifle

This was, without doubt, the worst Kraftwerk gig I've ever watched.

The circus was well and truly in town for one night only in Manchester last night, with three clowns bringing joy and light into the lives of the benighted serfs that inhabit the God-forsaken hole. David Cameron, Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg each performed a hilarious comedy routine with much slapstick, custard pie throwing and tipping of buckets full of brightly coloured confetti into one another's pants. The crowd went wild - or at least, they would have done, but "pre-arranged rules" and in all likelihood cattle prod-wielding security ensured they remained rooted to their seats and kept shtum. A Question Time audience would have jeered themselves hoarse.

The general consensus is that the boy Clegg, who looked about 20, did rather well for himself - he looked calm and relaxed and even cracked a semi-joke or two at the others expense. Cameron was caught by surprise on a number of occasions by presenter Alastair Stewart, who wasn't taking shit from anyone, when he was cut off mid-flow and left gawping "but...but..." like a semi-sentient goldfish. Brown, bless his little tartan socks, tried his best and forced a smile or two, but as is his downfall he came across as dour, moody and tired. Opinion polls today seem to agree Cleggy delivered - the LibDems are showing a marked upturn, while Labour and the Tories dive downwards. It'd not enough to win them the election, but if Nick can keep it up they may well be in for their best result in decades.

The leaders discussed a variety of issues, including Acid Rabbi favourites immigration (none of them taking quite as liberal a position as we would - ie; let people go where they want when they want - but it's apparent each party has some reasonably solid ideas. Sadly all ideas based on dealing with widespread public worries by limiting immigration rather than educating them so they understand immigration is more likely to solve than cause problems, but there you have it. Clegg pulled a real trick on this one by being the only participant to actually say something nice about immigrants, a fact that will do him no end of favours since the majority of British people are not racist) and MP's expenses, which took the form of the usual "we're really, really sorry" with a noticeable lisp on the 's' in sorry which is hissed out by their devious, forked tongues. This one was always going to play well for Clegg as the LibDems came out of the expenses scandal in far better shape than the other main parties. Cameron and Brown made all the usual noises but it was evident that the stage, which looked rather like it had been cobbled together from 1988-vintage Countdown sets (and thinking of it, doesn't Alastair Stewart look a little like a cadaverous Richard Whiteley?) had become a very uncomfortable place.

The economy took up a fair chunk of the show and Mrs. Rabbi, who is a woman and thus has a keen eye for details such as this, noted that the cost of Parliament for 2010 could have been reduced dramatically had the three amigos chosen to wear something out of their wardrobes or an off-the-peg BHS suit rather than each spending something probably not far off the average British family's monthly income on some admittedly fine-lookin' threads. Clegg - easily the cutest of the three, says Mrs. Rabbi - wore a smooth charcoal grey number with a LibDem yellow tie and he wore it well, looking relaxed, comfortable and even cool. Cameron, as ever, looked like a boiled potato in a regulation dark blue Tory suit with blue tie but having been born in Savile Row's finest it was a boiled potato dressed with the very finest mayonnaise. His shoes looked like they probably worth as much as a healthy pair of kidneys on the black market (and who knows? Being a Tory, they may well have been made of kidneys ripped from the lithe young body of a working class teenager). Brown went for dour-yet-dependable black. That he - a man who is not in the very best of shape - looked notably prime ministerial is token of his tailor's admirable skills. He wore the Red Tie of Socialism, which he possibly sees as a suitable replacement for flying the Red Flag that his predecessor ripped up and burnt back in 1997. Sadly, he was unable to sound prime ministerial and came across as slightly confused, sad and wishing he was elsewhere.

That got us thinking - what did the gig actually achieve, especially when so many important matters - technology, the Middle East and so on - were not mentioned? Well: Clegg persuaded a few undecideds who vote according to how good a candidate looks on the telly that they should go with him and Cameron and Brown convinced a few others that doing so might not be a bad idea. That was about it, really. But it's not even nearly enough to make a LibDem government a likely prospect - while the Daily Telegraph claims that if the General Election was held today, the LibDems would win 159 seats (Labour would win 165, the Tories 294), Clegg's inability to throw himself headlong into political scraps will ensure last night's performance is forgotten by all but a few pundits and bloggers by the 6th of May so if anything it just makes a hung parliament look more probable. Secondly, what did it cost? ITV, perhaps because they took the unusual decision not to screen any adverts for the full 90 minutes, spent little - the set probably cost about a fiver and whereas Stewart is doubtless not on minimum wage whatever they paid him will be seen as a bargain in return for 9.8 million viewers (plus however much other channels pay them for the right to show the debate) - but whatever they spent will have been covered by their own budget, which is made up of what advertisers pay them. How much, we wonder, did it cost us, the tax-payers?

It was obvious that in addition to their posh suits and shiny shoes, each leader had been subject to a whole host of image consultants, stylists and who knows what else over the last few weeks. Their voices may have faltered as they argued around tricky points, but visually all three men were stunning. Clegg, who had been jotting down notes throughout, made a great show of reciting the names of those who had asked questions (including Joel, the rabbi's son who drove Nick Griffin into a corner during his notorious Question Time appearance and wouldn't let him out again, a lad who will probably be presenting programmes of this type in a few years' time) and thanking them - perhaps it was insincere and a calculated attempt to make him look more human, but coming at the end of 90 minutes in which he had shown himself to have infinitely better manners than his rivals it was PR gold and charmed the crowd. Brown, perhaps realising suddenly that this was his last chance to show he too cares about the proles, made a last ditch effort and shook hands with a few members of the audience. Cameron stood staring ahead, as if trying to work out whether or not his performance was sufficiently poor to put his party behind Labour in the polls - it wasn't, though we're not going to pretend you didn't do a piss-poor job last night, posh boy.

Many bloggers are calling the debate a gladiatorial contest but we disagree. While entertaining, it was nothing more than an mildly amusing circus routine. Some people will have decided who to vote for last night, but let's credit the public with some intellect - most people don't vote according to how nice Clegg, Cameron or Brown's suit looks, how shiny their shoes are or how accomplished a performer on stage they are (though I have to admit, had one of them showed up in paratrooper boots, combat trousers and a Crass t-shirt they'd have earned a lifetime's party membership fees from me). Even in these days of gym-joining narcissism, botox and celebrity-worship, the majority of the electorate vote for the candidate representing the party that supports the views they share and the causes they believe in. The Liberal Democrats scored some valuable points last night, the Conservatives lost some and Labour flogged a dead horse but all three demonstrated their belief that the public are a bit thick with loyalties that can be bought for a few shiny trinkets.

Extremely dead extreme right-wingers

So, it was South African white supremacist Eugene Terreblanche last week and now Polish homophobe/antisemite Lech Kaczynski. Could it be that God has finally decided there's just too many right-wing racist scumbags in the world and we'd all be better off without them?

Eugene Terreblanche: January 31, 1941 - April 3rd, 2010. Lech Kaczynski: 18 June, 1949 - April 10, 2010. Nick Griffin: 1 March, 1951 - next week, with a bit of luck.

If not - and if it should turn out that there is no God - they do say that good things come in threes, so just maybe Nick Griffin will get run over and killed by a bus next week. Here's hoping!

Kaczynski killed

Polish president and co-founder - with his twin brother Jaroslaw Kaczynski - of the "traditionalist Catholic" right-wing Polish Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc party Lech Kaczynski, was killed this morning at 6.56 GMT when the Tupolev aircraft he was flying in crashed into trees near Smolensk in Russia. At the time of writing the crash is said to have claimed 96 lives, many of them PiS figures, though Russian reports have put the death toll at 130.

Lech Kaczynski, 18th of June 1949 - 10th of April 2010.

Image from Wikipedia, used in accordance with GNU Free Documentation licence.

Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc, as regular readers of this 'ere blog will know, is one of the groups with which the British Conservative Party in Europe has allied itself under David Cameron's leadership by becoming part of the European Conservatives and Reformists (which also includes the SS-glorifying Latvian LNNK party) - the cause of much controversy due to the Polish group's rather dubious history which has seen them accused of homophobia and antisemitism. Whilst mayor of Warsaw, Lech banned a gay rights march and then allowed a "Parade of Normality" - a fact that led former Minister for Europe Denis MacShane to accuse the Tories of having links "with gay-bashing homophobes." Jaroslaw, meanwhile, has claimed that homosexuality "will cause the downfall of civilisation" and another PiS member said that President Obama's election would spell "the end of the civilisation of the white man."

Gordon Brown, who has been busy in his native Scotland trying to talk people into voting for him, took a break from the campaign trail to express his condolences. "I think the whole world will be saddened and in sorrow as a result of the tragic death in a plane crash or President Kaczynski," he said. David Cameron said that Kaczynski "...always stood up for his beliefs..."

The whole world, except those who don't share Kaczynski and his loathesome party's revolting homophobic and racist beliefs, may well be saddened but please forgive those of us who are unable to regret the loss of such an unpleasant and dangerous man.

"Moderate" Cardinal spouts antisemitic nonsense

Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga, Catholic Archbishop of Honduras, says more about himself than the recent paedophilia scandals plaguing the Vatican and Catholic Church - the potential papal candidate, who may well stand a good chance of replacing Pope Benedict in the future, blames the Jews, and uses all-to-familiar antisemitic language to do so. He's been blaming the Jews since at least 2002.

Despite being a blatant antisemite, Cardinal Maradiaga is consider to be a moderate by many.

Image from Wikipedia, used in accordance with Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Unported licence.

Like many, the Cardinal uses the problems between Israel and Palestine as a convenient hook on which to hang his hatred. The modern Vatican, he says, due no doubt to its concern for the welfare of all people (it's not trendy to burn those who follow religions different to one's own at the stake these days, after all, and those damn bleeding-heart liberals are liable to take issue), supports the people of Gaza. This means, in his peculiar mind at least, that it must also be fundamentally anti-Israel - therefore, Jews felt the need to "get even" by stirring up popular hatred against the Catholic Church by bringing what he probably thinks are a few isolated cases of priests sexually abusing children into the public eye.

As American publication the Jewish Journal points out, this is really quite an impressive leap of the imagination even when made by a man with Cardinal Maradiaga's highly-developed paranoia and antisemitism. The scandals in the news recently have come from all around the world - Ireland, England, Germany included - such global organisation would require the existence of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy so ridiculous that even the madder sorts of antisemites no longer consider such an entity real or even possible (or not in public, at least) for fear of looking like idiots. Unless, that is, he believes we did it with the help of some other group opposed to the Vatican - perhaps the Freemasons, the Knights Templar or even the Martians. He seems sufficiently insane for it to be no great surprise should he advocate such a theory in the future.

"...in a moment in which all the attention of the mass media was focused on the Middle East, all the many injustices done against the Palestinian people, the print media and the TV in the United States became obsessed with sexual scandals that happened 40 years ago, 30 years ago. Why?" asks the crazy Cardinal. He aks, "What is the church that has received Arafat the most times and has most often confirmed the necessity of the creation of a Palestinian state? What is the church that does not accept that Jerusalem should be the indivisible capital of the State of Israel, but that it should be the capital of the three great monotheistic religions?" What tool did the Jews use, according to Maradiaga? That old, tried-and-trusted method - the media. Maradiaga points his finger particularly at the Boston Globe, a newspaper owned by the New York Times which is published by Arthur Ochs Salzberger, Jnr. "Oh, these clever Jews!" says the Jewish Journal whimsically, also saying the Salzbergers "were once a Jewish family."

Cardinal Maradiaga's accusations are so bizarre, paranoid, mad and stupid that they seem laughable at first. But, sadly, we know all too well that a man in his position can cause untold and widespread damage by spreading this sort of rubbish. Some people will believe what he says, and in a world which to a large extent already connects all Jews with what it rightly or wrongly sees as Israel's disproportionate and aggressive policies in Gaza, these are the sorts of words that can lead to physical attacks and the strengthening of old fears and prejudices that have not yet gone away. It's taken far less in the past.

Pope Benedict, who has shown evidence that he wishes to continue the good work carried out by his predecessor Pope John Paul II in building bridges and friendship between Catholics and Jews in these times when all religious faiths are threatened, needs to take action against Cardinal Maradiaga immediately. Bishop Richard Williamson, a Holocaust-denying British priest who also uses Gaza as an excuse for his hatred towards the people he calls "enemies of Christ," was temporarily excommunicated by the Vatican. Though the lifting of the excommunication caused outrage among both Jews and enlightened people of other faiths or no faith, the Pope made his feelings on those who deny the Shoah clear when he said "any denial of this terrible crime is intolerable." He also stated that he deplores any form of Holocaust denial and that all Catholics should hold the same view and expressed his "full and unquestionable solidarity" with the Jewish people.

If the Vatican truly wishes to transform itself into a modern institution and seeks to distance itself from the sort of antisemitic hatred that it was frequently associated with in the past, it needs to cut its ties with the old-fashioned paranoid Jew-hatred of Cardinal Maradiaga and his hate-filled ilk. That he has been allowed to spread vile, plainly antisemitic filth of this type for eight years is an outrage. Right now, when the Vatican is doing its best to rid itself of one stain on its reputation, it could do itself a lot of good by also removing the Cardinal from his position too - the modern Catholic Church should have no place for a man with views such as his own and if the Pope genuinely holds the views he put forward when dealing with Bishop Williamson, he needs to take action.

SA fascist Terreblanche murdered

South African white supremacist Eugene Terreblanche (who some readers may remember from the Boer Separatists episode of the BBC's Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends) has been found dead with head injuries at his farm, leading SA President Jacob Zuma to appeal for calm and ask that nobody uses the incident to incite racial violence. Police have arrested two males who are believed to have carried out the murder following a dispute over unpaid wages.

Terreblanche (the name, somewhat spookily, means "white land") was the founder and leader of the extreme right wing Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, a group that uses an emblem eerily similar to the Nazi swastika it is said to have been based uopn (seen top left), and threatened "full scale civil war" if President F. W. de Klerk handed power to Nelson Mandela. He was imprisoned in 2001 for the attempted murder of a security guard. In 1996, he physically attacked Paul Motshabiwho, leaving him with permanent physical disabilities and brain damage. Under his leadership, AWB members detonated bombs around Johannesburg at the start of the country's first democratic election, causing the loss of 21 lives.

South African racist Eugene Terreblanche, 1941-2010. Good riddance, scumbag.

Image from Wikipedia, used in accordance with Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 licence.

While anyone with any sense has to be hoping that this is not going to be cause of racial trouble throughout South Africa, you can't help but think that his death is no great loss to the world, can you?

Drugs are bad, mmmkay?

Eric Carlin is the latest expert to resign from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs which was set up and is usually ignored by the Government. He decided to quit the group after accusing Home Secretary Alan Johnson of giving press conferences stating that currently legal high mephedrone would be made a Class B controlled drug before the committee had even finished considering its recommendations - making him the seventh expert to leave since ex-chairman Professor. David Nutt was sacked for having the gall to tell the Government that their policies regarding cannabis were wrong.

In a letter to the Home Sec, he states: "I am not prepared to continue to be part of a body which, as its main activity, works to facilitate the potential criminalisation of increasing numbers of young people." He later told Radio 5 Live, "I think to most people's judgement, the relationship between the ACMD and government has broken down."

"We need to fundamentally re-frame this, and deal with it as a public health issue, not primarily as a criminal justice issue.

"What we fundamentally need to do is get to the root causes of why is it that our 14, 15-year-olds are getting off their faces?"

He's right all round - the Government have proved themselves unwilling to listen to the ACMD, which is why Prof. Nutt was sacked. What's the point in assembling a panel of experts, with the intention of having them serve in an advisory role, if you then ignore them? Do the Government only like advice that tells them what they're already doing is right?

So why are many people - of all ages, not just that most maligned of all social groups, 14 and 15 year olds - "getting off their faces?" It's not that they want to escape the harsh realities of everyday life (many regular drug-users are from privileged middle-class backgrounds and don't have any harsh realities in their lives) - that's heroin addicts who do that, and heroin addiction is a very, very different thing to recreational drug use. It's not peer-pressure either - teenagers aren't quite so susceptible to that as some parents like to imagine, which is why they're so well-known for being stubborn.

The answer is really rather simple. Recreational drugs can be a lot of fun. Smoking a few spliffs with your mates leads to utter hilarity 99% of the time. An E or two can make all the difference between a mediocre night out and several hours of shiny-eyed bliss on a dancefloor. Dropping acid and spending the day falling about in a field with a group of friends and laughing at the trees is fertile ground for lifelong friendships. If you've ever taken drugs, you'll know what I mean.

Like most people, by the time I reached 25 or so I was beginning to get a bit bored of drugs. The idea of settling down somewhere and having nice furniture/decent food/the big television cliche and a flat that didn't smell of unwashed clothes and bodies appealed to me a great deal more. So, in common with 99.9% of people who have ever taken drugs, I stopped taking them. Just like that.

People get off their faces chiefly because they want to. They enjoy it, and they've been doing it for thousands and thousands of years. They're not going to stop taking drugs any more than they're going to stop eating food they like the taste of, playing games they like, watching TV programmes that interest them. This needs to be recognised, and information supplied that states not "DRUGS ARE BAD AND IF YOU TAKE THEM WE WILL PUNISH YOU" but "Some types of drugs generally aren't all that bad, but you can still get in a bit of a mess with them if you're not careful. So, if you are going to take them, this is how to do it as safely as possible. Oh, and if you do feel you're in trouble, let us know about it and we'll help you." That way, people who take them won't be afraid to get any help they might need.

It's obviously really, isn't it?