Martin Meenagh blog

Catholic America Even the Catholics are Calvinists', one exasperated cardinal was overheard saying of the United States once. American Catholicism was a large part of my doctorate, and has been on my mind a lot lately, partly because of its remarkable success as a political ideology. For instance, from being an all-white, protestant, blue blood board of guardians for most of its history, the Supreme Court has recently developed a catholic majority. This has proved to be right of centre but by no means automatically concerned with the expansion of conservative shibboleths into the constitution. The Chief Justice is a catholic scholar; Justices Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito are also, and Justices Ginsburg and Breyer are Jewish. To anyone who knows the history of the court, the emergence into the court of two of the western world's intellectual religions--I'd count Presbyterianism as a third--is interesting. Secular critics in universities don't really seem to know how...

The wolves begin to circle the bloggers A few weeks ago, I woke up to the threats that are gradually escalating against bloggers. A European Community directive here, an abortive Italian law there, you might have thought--what was this to you? The freedom and lack of regulation of blogland was surely safe, and the only reason for surveillance would be to combat the networks of very dark things that exploit the web as a forest behind each tree of which they might hide. Except that, almost every day now, I hear or read a new story about how the web must be censored. In Brazil, a bill to regulate, license and control blogging and the internet in general, passed earlier this month . In Europe, the usual voices are questioning our freedom whilst living at our expense. Things are usually expressed in the usual terms of the western controlled classes-- the grounds that 'accountability' has to be built in, that people have to have a straightforward recourse for complaints, or that the...

The Lord Privy Seal is now in charge of the toilets For very many years, it has been true that the Lord Privy Seal was neither a Lord, a Privy or a Seal. The officeholder is in fact fifth in line of the great offices (and Prime Minister is not one of them, except as a Treasury Commissioner) behind the Lord President. Anyhow, I went for a shufti around the internet after reading elsewhere this morning the standard previous line. Actually, if there is a complaint about toilets in the House of Commons that must be raised on the floor of the House (though it will be directed to the Serjeant at Arms) it can only really be made during commons business to the leader of the Commons. The Leader of the Commons is at the minute the Lord Privy Seal, Harriet Harman. She is therefore in charge of the toilets, and therefore the Lord Privy Seal does now deal with toilets. This is how constitutional change happens in England. Here's a link to Harriet going on about smoking in the toilets to make my...

A Modest Proposal in the Tradition of Swift. During one of Ireland's famines, Jonathan Swift suggested to the British that they allow the irish to eat their children to deal with overpopulation. The modest proposal was shocking, but concentrated minds. In the same spirit, I would like to make my own modest proposal. In the twenty first century of the years of Our Lord, as in most times, the state is the repository of the money and war powers. This should be reflected in monetary policy. All government-issued money used for the purposes of aid and trade, internationally or domestically, should be in the form of loans, denominated in pounds backed by uranium or weapons rather than gold or government assurances. This new 'uranium standard' would allow for repayment of aid, once states dealt with problems themselves, in their killing capacity. Thousands of guns, or a smaller amount of unrefined uranium, or smaller still amounts of refined uranium or plutonium would be accepted ...

Lunatic Financial Management ; How much does the UK give away? Britain's national debt is rising at an accelerated rate. The budget is in deficit. The balance of payments is teetering, and the balance of trade is the worst in history. This blog has been going on, with others, about the 'world economic storm' that has predictably emerged for around two years ago. That message to my regular reader may well be getting a little repetitive. So I thought that I would do something a little different this fine summer morning and identify what sums Britain is spending on foreigners or international institutions, from the point of view of someone who thinks most of it wasted. Let's start with the foreign, commonwealth, and 'overseas aid' industry. It is an industry because it has its own executives, rich 'charities' and lobby groups, and appears to spend a great deal of my money, and that of other taxpayers, and of the bond markets we borrow from. In 2003-4, we ga...

It's the Silly Season! Summer is here and the way you know it is that Britain is enjoying one of its regulation ten days of sunshine and the Daily Mail has discovered a five year old monster story that some off his face scientist has promoted. Yaaaaay! Have a margarita and read about the abominable snowman, who apparently lives in a jungle (I think, being a connoisseur of silly, they mean orang-pedek or some Sasquatch variant) here . UPDATE : I was a thousand miles or two off in my prediction; the supposed originator was the mande barung , though frankly Ian Redmond, the scientist involved (who is clearly not off his face in the photograph) looks a bit like a candidate himself. And yes, I can talk. UPDATE TWO : Now they are all at it. The Daily Telegraph has started running a 'bigfoot' story. I mean, it's not like there is real news for the mainstream media to be bothered about is it?

Where did the enlightenment come from? There is a great tendency in historical studies to play the lawyer's 'but for' game. This entertainment, often seen in the common law tort courts outside of the USA, which doesn't really understand it, involves identifying all the factual and natural causes of an event. These efforts in causation are then accumulated and discarded apart from the one 'legal cause' but for which something would not have happened. If one is the respondent and not the plaintiff, the name of the game is to stop the multiple causation argument being dumped. Here is a link to a fabled and great legal site for A-level students well known to teachers of law, if you want to explore the issue. The causation game, which is very often tied to very real and high stakes, is as old as sin and goes on everywhere, of course. One of the places where it presents itself is in historical discussion. A very great deal of modern history, rightly, proceeds by isol...

Illegal Immigration and a wholly pointless charming video In the nineteen seventies in England, after school, television programmes aimed at children used to play for around one and three quarter hours. In weekdays, that was the ration for the young. Children in those days were expected not to be sitting around staring at the screen for much longer than that. They were meant to be out playing, hiding up trees from the corrupt wing of the metropolitan police anti-terrorist special branch or digging up the back garden looking for the Yorkshire ripper's latest victim or somesuch healthy activity, before coming in for sausages made out of rizlas, smash and chemical beans. Then they would practice Latin or woodwork, depending on their eleven plus exam, obviously. Or both if they went to a comprehensive. I found this charming video extract of one of the regular characters who would appear for five minutes, just before the news, on youtube. It is all about an illegal immigrant bear, who c...

A personal Piece: Martin Kelly's blog I was very moved by the statement from Martin Kelly on the simpler direction of his blog. I admire Martin's mind at a distance, having never met him. It is certainly not the case that we agree necessarily on anything, and nor should it be. I think his faith may be more admirable than mine, because of all my private flaws. This was a day when the ludicrous Honeyball popped up again to encourage some of the worst elements on the sociopathic left. Someone has told her to seem upset because the Pope won't visit her illegitimate and costly talking-shop. Comments on the article to which I have linked reveals the bitter, limited and vicious desert at the heart of the anti-human materialism that moves many on the left as on the right, and the moral cowardice of the same. I am well aware of the tendency for a personal blog to become about that which, and those whom, we form the worst opinion of, so I am trying tonight to resolve never to expan...

Glasgow East : an utterly insincere tribute. Well done to the likes of Mary Honeyball MEP , Diane Abbot MP, Wendy Alexander , and Harriet Harman for their work in helping elect a Scottish Nationalist Member of Parliament in Glasgow East. Though these politicians were just the public face of the metropolitan, anti-catholic and illiterate coalition of bourgeois interest that is the Labour Party, their work should not be forgotten. I am sure that Mrs Honeyball , who has recently lifted her head from her study of Catholic disloyalty and noticed that Belgium is falling down around her, should now take her skills and opinions and help Harriet Harman audition for the role of Kim Campbell . Well, I say, 'lifted her head'. I mean, 'released her grip on her office flunkies hands'. Those poor pale labourers in the salt mines of her office have no doubt been forced to wield the crayon over pictures of people in the newspapers and colour them papal red, or occasionally orange, when...

Idiot English Right-Wing Opinion Generator I have in the past week or so put up the autorantic virtual moonbat , which generates insane left-wing opinions at the drop of a hat. If you go to this , very funny Speak you're bRanes site, you can find a right-wing equivalent which seems to be drawn from various message boards. God help us.

A really good idea from the Oil Drum Here's a modest proposal from the oil drum. It suggests that, since it is highly likely that oil will remain over $100 a barrel for ever, barring major new production, and since smart betting is on it going very steeply upwards in a few years' time, it makes sense to open the arctic and antarctic for drilling now. Modern technology is relatively clean and the earth can take it. Any new investment will also take a few years to come on stream. However, since the US is broke, the suggestion goes on to propose that the drilling takes place under the aegis of some form of energy authority which reinvests profits into finding workable, sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels. This is all the more sensible since a free-for all in the arctic such as is shaping up to take place will cause wars. I also can't see the US just giving in and implementing the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to legitimate Canadian or Russian use of the vast arcti...

Obama in Berlin He was as noble, and hopeful as I have always said he is--and I was for him when it wasn't fashionable. I've been talking to good friends from across the United States this week though, and I can't help but note their advice and the way things under the shiny surface are much more difficult for Obama than people seem to realise. What are people going to do when they go into the ballot booth? The polls are wrong. Obama polls worse with late deciders and with older people who vote. His numbers will be less than they are because of that. Yet those with only a cell phone--most of the young, extending well into the twentysomethings-- can't be polled, so his numbers may be up. John McCain is a tough candidate, he has been back from the dead multiple times, physically and metaphorically , and if he makes it to November he should not be written off. Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany and the smartest politician in Europe, gets this, which is presumably why s...

The End of the First Part of the Storm? Doubt is a civilised thing, and sometimes facts change. I think that we are at, or near peak oil, but may be very wrong. I think that we are in the middle of an historic shift of trade and the economy back to a multipolar world. I think that the futures and derivatives markets have slipped well over the edge of the mountain and are falling downhill, shutting off global investment, punishing those who 'invested'. I think that huge government debts and deficits in Europe and America are unsustainable. I think that, in any event, an oil price of over $100 has changed the game of global power. I think that the world is dangerously poised on top of highly unstable zones of warfare which are accompanied by demographic pressures that may explode. Yet our capacity to fix things, as a species, defined by reason and adaptability, is limited only by the level of interference of governments and the strength and intelligence of regulators, the former ...

Main Core Main Core; the Bush post-9/11 surveillance programmme, which is beginning to be uncovered here . Watergate, echelon , Main Core . Only one of these, the one owned and operated by the US military , a generally decent body of men and women, was used responsibly and in a limited way. Get used to hearing the names.

Elmo and the Congressmen Right, I am on holiday, it is well past noon and I have a glass of chianti now. Can the world get much weirder? I have too much time on my hands and, after an earlier post on Lynda Carter, I went wandering around the world of the muppets. I always liked fozzie. He was a washed up, desperate old orange bear with a purple nose. I'm sure I've seen him round a criminal set at Gray's Inn doing the Magistrates and coroners courts. However, I have lately been compared affectionately by various lovely women to Elmo. Arched eyebrows over their deep eyes have turned my head. Elmo is a child-minded red furred monster who keeps getting embraced by said women. Some of them even sleep with Elmo dolls. Right, said I, I'm having a look at that. It turns out that Elmo has testified before the US congress--I am not joking, here is the link. The company that George Galloway keeps. Can you imagine what would have happened if Senator Norm Coleman had got his witne...

An insane sleazy Video for my own amusement I went to the Andrew Sullivan site yesterday, and found a really good video involving some young woman called Feist and the muppets. It was more entertaining than watching the John McCain campaign lately. Anyway, this gave me the frankly sleazy idea of finding the video of the beautiful Lynda Carter singing 'shazam' with the muppets from years ago and posting it as a pretend diversion or reference, rather than the whole point of the blog. I couldn't, mostly because I stumbled across this. It is some sort of uber-kitsch depiction of gross negligence. In it, some actor who is presented as 'having never thrown knives before' by John Forsythe (in his washed-up, pre-dynasty phase) gets to stand in front of a salivating audience and chuck knives at Ms Carter, who is wearing a costume that just shows how physically beautiful she was and is. At one point the knife is thrown over the shoulder from behind. God almighty--did network...

Crimes as Bargains and Law as Crime The world is almost never a place of simple good and evil. I was very struck this morning, by my morning trawl around the net, of this rule in two ways. Firstly, San Francisco, or at least its computer system, seem to be being held to a sort of ransom . A disgruntled and, as far as I can tell, indicted, employee has, from his prison cell, shut city employees out of many computers . It is alleged that he also has access to files held exclusively on computer, which he is therefore able to delete. These actions may eliminate the evidence in the prosecution against him. American prosecutors are very often bulldogs. Sometimes they are paid or promoted according to a ludicrous target of 'successful or pursued prosecutions', which, in that republic, means that they cannot afford to compromise, give in, or come to a deal that might save society unless they are very secure in their tenure or really don't care about their own economic advancement...

A Prayer to St Martin de Porres To the side is the image of the mulatto saint of the broom--of menial work-- and of social and racial justice, after whom I was named. He is also the patron saint of the poor, of Biloxi, of public education, of television, of black and biracial people, and of innkeepers and hairdressers. But for the fact that he was around over four hundred years ago, he would be a daytime cable channel in himself. The picture and the humility it represents stands in contrast to the general intolerance of most of the 'progressive left', of whom I have almost had enough. Is it possible to reconcile a broadly libertarian idea of freedom with social justice and with the idea of a tolerant public space? Or even of any manners, or any capacity to reason rather than rationalise? Or of pragmatism and utility in public administration? Is it in fact possible, in the modern west, to be allowed to function without paying lip service to stupid and dangerous ideas of unreason...

A Year Without Statutes The descent pattern is apparent, the crisis is locked; but it's a nice summer morning and I had a very relaxing jacuzzi in the Fulham Broadway David Lloyds after my workout yesterday, so I'm not going to go on about gloomy stuff right now. Instead, I wanted to make two small suggestions to my fellow subjects, and any other reader at the asylum ; read about Palmerston, and think about a country that passed no laws for a year. I always admired Lord Palmerston , or at least I did so before it was fashionable to drop his name. The rakish, Regency product who ended up the grand 'Old Pam' of the mid-nineteenth century was, after all, one of the more interesting men ever to be Prime Minister. I first discovered the history of him in a second-hand bookstall at a Rockingham Castle fete when I was twelve. As I remember it, though memories of childhood always do this, the day was as bright as this one seems set to be. Jasper Ridley's biography smelled...

Southall Black Sisters Have Been Saved! This is a very good story. Ealing Council have backed down, and the very good Southall Black Sisters organisation has been saved. Well done to the SBS. The SBS are an organisation, for readers who are unsure, who help vulnerable Asian and minority women who are suffering domestic violence. Very often, such women have no capacity or opportunity to take advantage of government-provided resources, and in some cases are effectively prisoners in their own homes because of their community customs or language difficulties. SBS for decades have been saving the lives of such women, sometimes literally. Were I to be left in a room with the sisters, we would probably agree on very little or nothing, politically--but I am in awe of the work they do, and wish them many more years of it. I think that one step for them will be to free themselves of dependence on local government funding. If you are inclined to help, here is their website.

The Croydon Police Attack I do not trust the mainstream media as far as I could throw them these days. Last week, they were full of stories of what was an apparently awful attack on two community support officers after they allegedly told a young woman to pick up litter. There seems to have been a racial quality to the confrontation which was not reported. The case is ongoing and under investigation. However, courtesy of Laban Tall , I have noted the different suggestions of what really happened. Here is a link to the full story in the local newspaper, the Croydon Guardian . I think, for all of you interested in how criminal cases are reported and spun, it will be an interesting one to follow when it eventually makes its way to the courts.

Twelve Practical Suggestions for UK Governance which will not happen. 1. Adopt expenditure-based statutory targets for government spending accompanied by a statutory commitment to balance the budget by 2012. Consider a 'flat tax' single tax regime based on one rate, with no exemptions, on sales, income and savings seriously. 2. Abolish the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, the Department of Culture, the Scottish Office, the Welsh Office, the Northern Ireland Office, the British Council, the Communities Office, the Regional Development Agencies and government funding for regional council organisations. 3. Cut the numbers of members of Parliament to 450, and make individual members of the European Parliament accountable to voters. Abolish half the number of elected councillors, and return spending and local investment to councils with a statutory protection for specific services. Limit the number of ministers to 100 at any one time. Abandon all schemes to ...

Eight Reasons Why the UK is going over an economic cliff Here's why, and I need ten paragraphs to do it. Firstly, this country manufactures very little any more. It has very low savings. It is highly taxed and regulated, to the point where small business owners would be lucky to take away eight or nine per cent of their money after company tax, local tax, and all the other charges. Secondly, the UK has gross inequality built into its social model and papered over by ludicrous levels of personal borrowing (and yes, I do have credit cards). It's debt, whilst way below the EU average, is climbing very significantly and now looks set to climb further. Thirdly, the UK has built-in deficits in the balance of trade and is highly dependent on global capital flows to keep the balance of payments steady. It is slipping towards energy-dependence on foreign fuel sources without having invested in its nuclear or coal potential, and sources of long-term funding for new business are practical...

Government Spending I've just been on Wat Tyler's very interesting 'burning our money' website, which takes a very tough line on government spending and it has made me think. Mostly, I have been thinking about whether there is a serious choice between Keynesianism or letting a depression happen. The last time that a Depression took hold, in the early 1930s, the American New Deal, which institutionalised Keynesianism in the United States, set the standard for most of the rest of the twentieth century. There were good, and not always rational reasons for this. As with Hjalmar Schacht's mefo-bill reflation for Hitler, at the same time, the New Deal was seen as saving large numbers of citizens not just from economic humiliation but starvation. Serious scholars of the New deal have also pointed out how many quasi-revolutionary groups were around in the USA in the Depression too. These ranged across the populism of the likes of Eugene Talmadge, the organised quasi-fascis...