No, I hadn’t heard of her before this afternoon, either. But so far I’ve learned that she’s an anti-polar bear advocate of teaching creationism in schools who doesn’t think climate-change is caused by human beings.
The nutjobs must be thrilled.
Policy Exchange is basically a parody of what a think-thank is supposed to be — the proof of that is its decision to have the laughable Anthony Browne in a senior position for quite a while now — but people say that it’s fairly influential on Conservative party “thinking”, so perhaps we should pay attention. So here’s a link to a page on its new report, which you can download, that recommends that Oxford (current population, c.150,000) should grow by an order of magnitude or so, with a million new homes being built around the city.
Since it’s the Conservatives on the County Council who have been opposing a very modest urban extension of Oxford on land south of Grenoble Road (a mere four thousand houses), a right-wing U-turn of quite staggering proportions may be on the cards. Alternatively, people may decide that it’s best, all things considered, to ignore pretty much everything that Policy Exchange has to say.
Over here at CiF.
Raj Patel, over here. And he calls Stephen Pollard a cretin for good measure, too.
In other Raj-related news, people in the UK can now buy his excellent book Stuffed and Starved in paperback, and the US edition has been published over there, too. Buy it and read it, if you haven’t already. (Even the Daily Mail liked it!)
This is an extraordinarily silly idea - now scrapped, sadly - but apparently there were plans to fill up a boat with philosophers and one or two others and send it round the world in order to… well, it’s not really clear. Help the UK redefine its relationship with world cultures, or something. Wow.
If you’re visiting this page after following the link from this post and in search of the Chris Lightfoot Memorial Melanie Phillips Naziometer, it’s on the sidebar about two thirds of the way down the page.
It’s currently reading “zero”, though a manual check reveals that there’s also one “Goebbels”, one “Munich”, one “Hitler” and three “Auschwitz”es.
Melanie Phillips recently sought to outwit the Naziometer, first by moving her blogpage over here, and, second, by not mentioning Nazis for a week or two, and thereby keeping us in suspense as to whether our technology was able to cope with the transition. But it is, and it’s now recording a healthy “four” thanks to this post.
The Chris Lightfoot Memorial Naziometer (see sidebar) was recording pretty low values over the Summer. It was zero for quite a while, and although things have been improving recently, I’ve only been noticing scores hovering around the three / four mark. So I’m thrilled to report that it’s hit sixteen!, which may very well be an all-time high, thanks entirely to this fine post.
Stephen Pollard isn’t just an expert on cycling (”the team element is missing”, etc.). He also has sophisticated opinions on postwar European cinema. Here he is, for example, discussing the films of Ingmar Bergman. It’s already been labelled “the dumbest thing I’ve ever read” by one of the cinéphiles over at the Criterion Forum.
I should say that I’ve not seen much Bergman: Wild Strawberries once upon a time, and lengthy snippets of The Seventh Seal. So it’s just, just possible that I might agree with Pollard were I to see the rest of the oeuvre (which I’d like to do). But given that he lumps Bergman in with James Joyce and Harrison Birtwistle — my favourite novelist and one of my favourite living composers respectively — somehow I doubt that he and I are going to end up seeing eye to eye on this one, as on so much else. [Yo, bro.]
UPDATE, UPDATE: The same brother reminds me I’ve also seen Bergman’s Magic Flute (and it’s stupid of me to forget this, as I’ve got the DVD at home), which is just fantastic. And it probably has the best Pantomime Walrus in cinema history. YouTube clips over here, though I’m not sure they’ve got the PW in there.
2d UPDATE: And here he is, the darling:
[images nicked from over here]
Stephen Pollard sensibly thinks that most online petitions are “a gimmicky waste of time”. But not when you put your online petition on the No.10 website, as anyone is able to do. Then, if Pollard agrees with it, it becomes “imperative that it is signed”, no less, “precisely because it has the imprimatur of 10 Downing Street”.
What a funny man.
(Note also that in the post below this one he demonstrates his mastery of Islamic culture by confusing a hajib with a hijab, and note also also that the case was never about the hijab anyway, but about Ms Begum’s jilbab.)
Here’s a chunk of one of today’s posts, about the BBC reporter Matt Frei.
Frei then claims that when Ann Coulter used the word ‘faggot’ in reference to John Edwards (Frei doesn’t mention Edwards, and so fails to put the remark into context) the audience “lapped it up”. Well no, they didn’t. If he’d bothered to speak to people who were there, or even watch a video, he’d have seen that after Coulter made her remark there was silence, then some embarrassed/nervous/polite laughter.
I’m not sure why adding the “context” that Coulter was talking about Edwards makes a difference here. But what I think you ought to do is watch the clip here and then decide for yourself whether Pollard offers an especially accurate account of proceedings. One bit of “context” that Pollard unaccountably fails to mention, for example, is that there’s quite a lot of applause, too.
I am, however, confident that when Our Melanie starts blogging about the what’s going on, or, rather, not going on, at Leeds University, we’ll see it rising again, with the word “dhimmi” or “dhimmitude” possibly making a reappearance in her blogpages, too.
UPDATE [7pm]: Bingo! Though only one “Nazis” and no “dhimmitude”, alas. But I think she may be warming up for a more detailed treatment of the topic later. And it looks as if we in Britain’s universities “have already given up the battle for civilisation against barbarism”, I’m afraid.
Chris Lightfoot did many valuable things in his life, but one that was particularly treasured here at the Virtual Stoa was the Melanie Phillips Naziometer. It was a bit of code that reported on the number of times the word “Nazi”, “Nazis” or “Nazism” appeared on the front page of Melanie Phillips’ blog, so we wouldn’t have to do a manual count ourselves every day. (It rarely recorded a score of zero, though it did from time to time.)
When Chris died, the Naziometer stopped working, as it was on the server that he had running at home. Unlike my grandfather’s clock, however, I’m glad to report that the Naziometer has started going again, having been revived by Chris’s friends over at Mythic Beasts. It lives over here, and it’s also now been reinstalled on this page on the blog’s sidebar as a permanent tribute, now redesignated the Chris Lightfoot Memorial Naziometer (a label which will help to distinguish it from all the other Naziometers that there might be out there).
It’s currently reporting a somewhat low score of Three, though we might note that a manual check reveals three uses of “genocide” — one of which is particularly tasteful — and two of the verb “islamise” — but only one reference to Britain “ever more eagerly stretching out its neck for the cultural knife”, which I particularly like.
The invincible ignorance of Stephen “the Tour de France is dull because the team element is missing” Pollard has long been a theme at this blog, so it’s nice to see a modicum of self-knowledge creeping into the man’s writing. [via]
More post-election analysis from Mel P, over here.
You could tell that Melanie Phillips needed a holiday: the Naziometer, which records the number of times the word appears on the front page of her blog had fallen to zero a couple of weeks ago. Batteries recharged, she’s returned to the fray, and the N-o-M is registering a reasonably healthy seven. (See the big number that appears on the sidebar for the most up-to-date readings.) I don’t think we should worry too much that all seven appearances are in quoted text from somebody else: it’s a good thing to take it easy for a bit when you get back from a trip, and I’m sure we’re heading for regular double-digit readings quite soon.
(There’s also four “Hitlers”, one “fascist”, one “fascism”, and, I’m very pleased to see, one “morally degenerate”.)
I’m a bit alarmed to find out that right-wing hack Stephen Pollard considers me friend for life on the rather shaky ground that I know who Adrian Slade is. I’ve known who Adrian Slade was for twenty-five years now, ever since 1981, when he was elected to the GLC in the part of London where I grew up. I shall have to hope that this claim of Pollard’s is about as sincere and/or accurate as most of the other claims that appear on his blog and in his other writings, as I’ve absolutely no desire to be his friend. Yuck.
The ever-absurd right-wing hack Stephen Pollard challenges his critics “to point out a single example of an example I have cited being made up, or in any material way inaccurate”, claiming that “it is an outright falsehood to argue that I have made any of my examples up or been in any way inaccurate in the reporting of them…”
Here’s a claim Pollard posted on his blog this morning:
“But what of the 300,000 Israeli refugees, driven from their homes by Hezbollah terror attacks? The BBC does not consider their plight worth reporting.”
And here’s a page from Wednesday’s BBC website:
“Having fled her home in the city of Haifa an hour after the first Hezbollah rocket hit the city, Alma Herbst says she now has an emergency bag packed and her passport to hand…”
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
There’s a very useful new page on the interwebnet here, from Chris Lightfoot, which tells you how many times the word “nazi” appears on the front page of Mel P’s blog, to save you having to count at any given moment in time [via, in comments].
In blogposts here and here, right-wing hack Stephen Pollard today criticises the Guardian for not removing comments from its new blogsite that it said it was going to remove.
Before he feels too smug, Pollard might like to look back at those occasions when he has made similar claims that he has removed material from his own site (here and here) and has himself failed to, um, remove the relevant material from the site (which is still here and here).
Oh, and if, as Pollard thinks, it’s OK to mock the rather hapless Neil Clark for failing to follow up on his promises to be critical of Oliver Kamm’s recent writing, then it’s probably also OK to mock the rather hapless Pollard for his failure to follow up on his own stated desire to return to the matter of Channel Four’s donation to Interpal.
There are relevant remarks, incidentally, about both flogging dead horses and about people who lack a certain sense of irony at the bottom of one of the posts linked to above.
On 15 January right-wing hack Stephen Pollard posted on Interpal, the charity which Mr Galloway’s appearance on Celebrity Big Brother is intended to benefit. “The real villain of the piece is not the odious Galloway, whose penchant for licking the backsides of terrorist sponsors we all know about”, he harrumphed. “It is Channel Four, which is knowingly allowing such an organisation to benefit from its airwaves.” He concluded with these words: “This is an altogether more serious matter than Galloway’s humiliation. I hope to return to it soon.”
Pollard’s hopes were gratified, and he did indeed return to the matter soon with a new post on the matter today, which reads in full:
“You might notice that a posting from yesterday on Interpal is no longer up. I removed it after a few minutes (although I understand that it remained visible for a little while afterwards). It concerned its nomination by George Galloway in the Big Brother programme.I want to make clear that the charity operates as an entirely legitimate organisation and no evidence has ever been produced to suggest otherwise.”
So, there we are. Some people might think an apology was in order, but not, apparently, Pollard. So, no apology.But it’s always fun when Pollard posts-and-retracts.
On 1 November 2004, a post modestly titled “Pollard Speaks, YouGov Quakes” was followed up by a new post which said that “for reasons which I can’t go in to, I have had to pull it” (i.e., the earlier post). This was doubly puzzling, because not only was the earlier post never in fact pulled - you can read it by following the earlier link, and don’t forget to read Mr Shakespeare’s comment while you’re at it - but also because the retraction ended by declaring “Game, set and match” to Pollard himself, which in the circumstances seemed, well, peculiar.
Pollard’s relationship to truth is complicated, as long-time Stoa readers know. He’s been known to post straightforward falsehoods: the Tour de France, one of the most complex team events of the sporting calendar, is dull “because the team element is missing”. Sometimes he just makes up figures to support his arguments. And he’s also been known to cite his own work - the same work that contains the made-up figures - without mentioning that it is his own work, thus creating the impression that there’s something more than made-up figures behind his arguments. He’s a funny chap.
Morals: don’t believe what you read in the Daily Telegraph. Don’t believe what US government officials say. A third moral would be, “Don’t believe what you read on Stephen Pollard’s blog”, but I can’t believe anyone’s really that stupid.
UPDATE [9.15pm]: Surprise, surprise — there’s falsehood even in Pollard’s retraction. Who’d have thunk it? The post he “removed… after a few minutes” and which “remained visible for a little while afterwards” is not only still available in the Google cache, which is indeed outside of Pollard’s control. It’s also available on at least one other blog that quotes the post admiringly. And, as happened in the case of “Pollard Speaks, YouGov Quakes”, it is also, incredibly, still available on Pollard’s own site, so that nothing at all seems to have been removed, except perhaps the post’s appearance on the front page of his own blog. What an absurd creature he is.
UPDATE [9.30pm]: It seems that Pollard “cannot recommend Anthony Browne’s new book, ‘The Retreat of Reason’… too highly”. Ho hum.
UPDATE [9.50pm]: Since my original post, I see that Pollard’s retraction has acquired a slightly different form of words. I wonder what’s behind that little edit? It now reads: “I want to make clear that the charity operates as an entirely legitimate organisation for the relief of suffering and no evidence has ever been produced to suggest otherwise” (emphasis added).
In a series of posts below, I tried to show that Anthony Browne committed a number of what he himself takes to be the sins of political correctness in his recent pamphlet, The Retreat of Reason, published by the “think” tank Civitas. In this post, I’m afraid to report that the PC virus has spread even further into the ranks of those who take themselves to be its most hardened opponents.
In the pamphlet, p.8, Browne castigates the politically correct, who “often believe you can justify their version of truth with a lie”. He uses the example of the Mirror’s publication of faked photos of British troops doing bad things to Iraqi prisoners, and says that “the paper’s supporters still justified them after they were proved to be fake on the grounds that they illustrated a greater truth.”
There’s a complete idiot in the United States called David Horowitz. If you don’t know who he is, you’re quite lucky. He’s one of the heroes of Anthony Browne’s wretched screed: having been a “leading (far) left commentator”, he is “one of the most high profile defectors from political to factual correctness”, and “has now become a scourge of the dishonesty of the left and political correctness” (p.81).
But what have we here?
But as hearings ended in Philadelphia Tuesday, critics of the Academic Bill of Rights were saying that they had scored key points. David Horowitz, the conservative activist who has led the push for the hearings in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, admitted that he had no evidence to back up two of the stories he has told multiple times to back up his charges that political bias is rampant in higher education…In a phone interview, Horowitz said that he had heard about the alleged incident from a legislative staffer and that there was no evidence to back up the claim. He added, however, that �everybody who is familiar with universities knows that there is a widespread practice of professors venting about foreign policy even when their classes aren�t about foreign policy� and that the lack of evidence on Penn State doesn�t mean there isn�t a problem…
The other example Horowitz was forced to back down on Tuesday is from the opposite end of the political spectrum. He has several times cited the example of a student in California who supports abortion rights and who said that he was punished with a low grade by a professor who opposed abortion. Asked about this example, Horowitz said that he had no evidence to back up the student�s claim…
Even if these examples aren�t correct, he said, they represent the reality of academic life…
Oh dear. So much for his conversion to “factual correctness”. Anthony Browne will be disappointed.
Here’s David Green, the Director of Civitas, writing in today’s Telegraph:
What should the think tanks do? As things stand, it’s not worth committing much time and energy to Mr Cameron’s policy reviews. This is not too much of a shock, because the Conservatives have not been receptive to ideas since they came close to nervous breakdown after 1997.Fortunately, most think tanks don’t measure their success by counting the number of policy ideas adopted by this or that party. Politicians rarely lead. Rather, they tend to follow public opinion, so the real challenge has always been to influence the thinking people in society, including academics, teachers, scientists, business leaders and many more.
But a year or so of open-minded reflection by the Tories would have been useful for all of us.
Well, it’s nice to see that the chap who runs Civitas thinks he’s got some kind of vocational crisis or other, just after his tank disgraced itself by publishing and publicising Anthony Browne’s ridiculous pamphlet (see below, passim), even if he thinks something else is causing it. My advice would be to introduce a quality-control mechanism to make sure obvious shit doesn’t get published under the Civitas imprint, to get a sub-editor to make sure pamphlets don’t have quite as many moments of illiteracy as Browne’s does, and to require controversial claims to be documented in their publications, with footnotes or other relevant citations of evidence, so that Civitas doesn’t publish quite so many falsehoods, and so on. That’s my advice, for what it’s worth. Beyond that, they can do what they like.
