Fluent Radical

Sad that it had to happen this way, but he’s made the right decision. Strictly is a good show precisely because it’s not just a popularity contest, the celebrities have to work hard and show some skill to do well. It’s difficult! I don’t want to watch a show where the standard of the contestant has no relevance to who wins, like X-Factor. If he had carried on much further than this I would have been switching off.

To the viewers who were voting him in each week: you were spoiling a good show. Cut it out. You shouldn’t need to be told that the ONLY valid criterion for judging a dancer is hotness.

I know Gavin doesn’t agree with me.

I started blogging in early 2005, with a big burst of enthusiasm. I left it at the end of 2006 with some regrets.

Looking around I’m a little sad at how few of my old blogroll friends made it from then to now. Non-trivial Solutions has left and his blog is missing. The Daily Ablution has given it up and his content is no longer available. Eu-serf has gone. Tory Convert has left and deleted her blog. James Hellyer’s Belief in Britain seems to be no more. Once More - the party group blog we started after the 2005 elections - is now occupied by squatters.

I understand that blogging is not necessarily something people want to do their entire lives, but I’m sad that the content is missing. It’s now as though they never blogged at all.

I believe that this blog will be online for many years to come, even though I won’t always be posting on it. I think it’s ok to post for a couple of years, drop it, and then come back to it. You’ll never be a network kingpin like Dale or Montgomerie, but your thoughts are still there to be reviewed later.

In fact I’ve had a real kick out of reading my old posts here. It’s great to see how fired up I was. I’m a little bit sad that I lost that.

So, to my future self: I hope you’re still blogging. And if you’re not, I hope you enjoyed reading this. And to friends who made it this far - Gavin Ayling, Little Man in a Toque, The England Project, Not Proud of Britain: it’s good to catch up with you again!

Something I’ve been thinking about a bit in the last few days is the following question:

Are there political circumstances, less than dictatorship or communism etc, that would make you leave the UK for another country, say the USA?

For instance, for all conservatives reading, suppose that Britain became very obviously a region in a European state.  Suppose that we approached Swedish levels of taxation. Suppose the counties lost virtually all power to regional assemblies. Suppose Parliament lost all power to Brussels. All weights and measures everywhere must be solely metric including distance and beer. Suppose our military was unable to act independently of Continental political support. Suppose the United States no longer considered us a partner militarily or diplomatically. Suppose the common law was rationalised into a Roman system to permit greater integration. Suppose that Britain was a republic, with proportional representation and state funded political parties. Suppose there were European taxes, a harmonised exam system at 16 and 18, and a common European university degree qualification. Suppose the European Social Model and Polly Toynbee triumphed completely.

Would you stick around? Or would you prefer to live in a country that respected your political beliefs, and was created from the traditions that had been destroyed in Britain?

For myself, I really don’t know. I love my country, but like Rand, maybe I demand reasons to love it as well.

*Sigh*

The reason posting has been so light on optimates for the past week is that me and a few fellow bloggers have launched a new blog.

The Cameron Leadership is the new place for news about David Cameron and Cameron’s leadership. Why not head over there now?

Political support from an unlikely source:

However, here for the Black Friday are the Manolo’s political beliefs, summed up in the following short statements.

1) Everyone has the right to be super fantastic. The Manolo he is the proud and strong believer in the personal freedoms, in the ability of the autonomous individual to dress in manner he or she desires (even if the manner chosen it is awful).

2) Manolo loves the Capitalism! Nothing is more worthy of the ridicule than the fashion sense of the dictators, politburos, autocrats, and tyrants. For the example, the most horrible, deadening, life-sucking piece of the fashion ever invented, it is the Mao suit, for it reduces the individual to the mere cog in the ideological machine. Happily we live in the system in which the marketplace it is free to deliver to the peoples the beautiful clothes, enabling each individual to dress in the manner he or she chooses.

…

I don’t know why I read this guy. I have no love for shoes but his third person thing just tickles me. He’s a he right?

You’ve got to get yourself one of these:
.

More here.

Might Laban have found a politician he could actually like?

Following some suburban disturbances - and two deaths - in Paris:

M Sarkozy, said that seventeen companies of riot police and seven mobile police brigades would be permanently stationed in difficult neighbourhoods, while plainclothes officers would be sent in to identify “gang leaders, drug traffickers and big shots”.

M Sarkozy’s comments stunned left-wing politicians, who called for an orthodox government response, with public money for education, housing and job creation schemes.

Even M Sarkozy’s Cabinet colleague, Azouz Begag, the Minister for Promotion of Equal Opportunities, criticised him for describing violent youths as “scum”.

M Begag said: “You should not tell these youths you’re going to get stuck into them and send in the police. You should try to appease them.” (The Times)

How unimaginable would it be for a government politician in this country to say “we should appease them”? Is that a joke or something?

After consulting with my half-French colleague it’s clear that the translation is accurate but that ‘promoting appeasement’ isn’t the same sort of don’t-go-there political dangerzone that it would be in this country. I suppose it’s just our generally right-wing nature coupled with Chamberlain that just hits this form of words in particular.

After all, we can’t claim appeasement isn’t popular in this country. But even these guys would never call it that.

Welcome Once More readers! A pleasure to be included in the Conservative Bloggers Roundup.

If you came and read about Daniel Hannan and open primaries you may be interested in a discussion of the importance of primaries to democracy - not just the party - and why we don’t need to worry about voter saboteurs.

And if you’re a blogging supporter of David Cameron, which I sort of am, you might like to download a logo to show it.

If this isn’t the whole point of David Cameron, I don’t know what is:

A very intelligent, but politically non-commital, lady told me yesterday that when Blair is gone, she’ll vote for Cameron because he’s nice.

(from GavPolitics)