Author Archives: Tim Newman

The consecration of the Grenfell Tower

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When future historians look back on the collapse of Britain, they may devote an entire section to the Grenfell Tower. It started as a human disaster born of poor cladding, bad regulations, unaccountable management, and an obsession with green initiatives but quickly became a quasi-religious symbol erected atop a hill on which the ruling classes are prepared to die.

Most of the country thought it was a crying shame then moved on, but many believed it symbolised the utter corruption of British politicians who encouraged mass immigration, hosed foreigners with welfare payments, and ignored wholesale fraud. These feelings were reinforced when professional hustlers, many of whom appeared to be foreign, took up the disaster as a stick with which to beat the government, demanding yet more concessions. On top of that, the charred remains became the focus of possibly the most brazen acts of fraud in British history. For instance:

So as many saw the Grenfell Tower as a symbol of the government’s worst policies, the ruling classes realised their most cherished beliefs – mass immigration, generous welfare payments, and multiculturalism – were under attack. Their reaction was as predictable as the fraud: they attempted to shut down all dissent. The trouble is, while it’s possible to place people in protected classes and criminalise any criticism of their behaviour, it is rather more difficult to do so in the case of an incident like a fire. I can think of many cases of a person being off-limits for mockery and derision; I can think of several objects which must not be disrespected in various parts of the world; I can also think of several government policies and actions which may not be discussed, let alone criticised. But I cannot think of a single instance anywhere in the world when something like a domestic fire was elevated to the status of a holy relic, placed beyond criticism on pain of criminal prosecution. Yet this is what the British ruling classes have done:

In short, the day before thousands of Brits burn an effigy of a Catholic man in celebration of his trying to blow up the Houses of Parliament, someone made a cardboard replica of the Grenfell Tower complete with people hanging out of windows and chucked it on a fire. They then made a video which was passed around on social media. It’s in rather poor taste I admit, but hardly something to concern the police in a country populated by adults. And were this to have been something else, say an effigy of Jacob-Rees Mogg or a bus full of Brexiteers, they’d not have batted an eyelid. But the Grenfell Tower has become a holy relic, and blasphemy is a matter of national importance:

Theresa May tweeted: “To disrespect those who lost their lives at Grenfell Tower, as well as their families and loved ones, is utterly unacceptable.”

Unacceptable to whom? The sensibilities of the ruling classes, who know their entire catalogue of cherished beliefs is represented by that cardboard model?

Housing Secretary James Brokenshire said the group’s actions were “beneath contempt”.

Was there anyone who held them in esteem?

Commander Stuart Cundy, from the Met’s Grenfell Tower investigation team, said any offences committed would be “fully investigated”.

“I am frankly appalled by the callous nature of the video posted online. To mock that disaster in such a crude way is vile,” he said.

I suspect Commander Stuart Cundy cares as much about the Grenfell Tower victims as his comrades in Rotherham did about the underage girls who were systematically gang-raped with their full knowledge. All he’s doing here is signalling to his masters he’s on-message, and smoothing the waters for when he’s confronted by the mob at the next public meeting. Whatever the case, his personal opinions are irrelevant: if he wants to talk about his feelings, he is free to sign up to Instagram and befriend some teenagers.

Now I’ve written before about how Britain has adopted the Soviet approach of “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime”, and sure enough:

Five men have been arrested on suspicion of a public order offence in connection with a model of Grenfell Tower being burned on a bonfire.

…

The Metropolitan Police said the men – two aged 49 and the others aged 19, 46 and 55 – handed themselves in at a south London station on Monday night.

A public order offence?

The men have been arrested under section 4a of the Public Order Act 1986, which covers intentional “harassment, alarm or distress” caused via the use of “threatening, abusive or insulting” words or signs.

If this legislation can be used to prosecute those who circulate a video mocking an incident which happened over a year ago, it can be used to shut down speech of any kind. The only reason it’s being brought to bear now, as opposed to when everyone else is insulted, mocked, and derided in appallingly bad taste, is because the Grenfell Tower is a holy relic in the religion of the ruling class. And right on cue, here’s a high priest who’s come to preach to us about sin, blasphemy, and holy punishment:

Moyra Samuels, part of the Justice For Grenfell campaign group, told the BBC the video was “a disgusting attack on vulnerable people”.

She added: “We have no doubt that there are actually decent, generous people across Britain and this actual act doesn’t represent ordinary British people.

“But there is a worrying rise of racism in this country at the moment. And that is concerning, because it’s now starting to impact on us directly, which means that we actually need to be thinking what we do about this, and how we respond to this as a whole.”

Were we asked to sign up to this new religion, or were we simply born into it like with Islam? ‘Cos I’d rather not have to listen to this imbecile lecture me on racism every time someone does something her priestly caste doesn’t like.

Under the Public Order Act, racially or religiously aggravated offences carry a prison sentence of up to two years, a fine or both.

Religiously aggravated, eh? See what I mean?

I think future historians will find this interesting not only because it signifies abject desperation on the part of the ruling classes, but also their departure from reality. I get the impression a lot of people are rather incensed that the entire country is supposed to be in perpetual mourning because, apparently, something was upsetting for Londoners. But just as nobody outside Liverpool cares much about Hillsborough, few outside Aberdeen or who aren’t in the oil industry are still traumatised by Piper Alpha, and hardly anyone remembers the Bradford stadium fire, Grenfell Tower isn’t something which non-Londoners care about that much. They certainly don’t expect the incident to occupy the national government to the point they’re reinstating blasphemy laws. Was this video even made in London? Had the fire happened in a tower block in Newcastle, you can be sure the police wouldn’t be running around arresting people over videos and the Prime Minister blubbering on Twitter.

As they lose their grip on power, the ruling classes cannot see beyond the capital, and attempt to appease only the noisiest mob outside the palace gates. They’re not alone in this, either in historical or contemporary terms, but it won’t end well. The trouble with those who start new religions is they often end up burned at the stake, usually when they’ve overestimated their numbers and begun to annoy everyone else.

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Google’s self-inflicted wounds

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A reader sends me this story:

A Google executive has left the company with no severance after he was accused of sexually harassing a young female job applicant by inviting her to Burning Man and asking her to take of her shirt for a massage.

Google parent Alphabet confirmed on Wednesday that Rich DeVaul had left the company as tensions heightened over how they handle such matters of sexual harassment allegations.

…

He was accused of telling a young female hardware engineer during her job interview that he and his wife were ‘polyamorous’.

DeVaul invited the woman to visit the Burning Man festival with him the week after her interview. The woman said she took her mother along because she thought it was an opportunity to speak about the role.

She claims DeVaul asked her to take off her shirt for a back rub when they were at the festival. She refused initially but agreed to a neck rub after DeVaul kept insisting.

Polyamory? Burning Man? Strange, because he doesn’t look the ty…oh, wait:

Of the group of people who inspired my book, which loyal readers will know is in part about a polyamorous community for whom Burning Man was an annual pilgrimage, the men were overwhelmingly working in IT. During my research, the ever-reliable Daniel Ream pointed out that while not every bloke working in IT is a deviant, the sort of people who are into polyamory will gravitate towards IT. The degenerate in the photo above is a walking polyamorous Burning Man stereotype. While I don’t wish to engage in victim-blaming, I find myself asking what sort of woman would go to Burning Man with this guy having been propositioned in an interview, and bring her mother along?

The woman said she took her mother along because she thought it was an opportunity to speak about the role.

Do IT people usually involve their mothers when invited to speak about a professional role? And that her mother was willing to go to Burning Man at all, let alone in those circumstances, says rather a lot about the family.

And this brings me onto my wider point. Regular readers of my blog will hardly be surprised that an ultra-woke polyamorous man with green hair turns out to be a rampant sex-pest. If he hasn’t spent the past decade identifying as a male feminist, I’d be amazed. Yet these are the sort of people Google actively recruits and promotes, based on their adherence to the ever-evolving SJW scripture, while firing anyone who commits heresy. The world’s largest tech company has made a point of hiring people with severe mental issues who parrot the correct political mantra, and has absolutely no idea what to do about the inevitable result. Here, via Tim Almond, is the BBC:

Staff at Google offices around the world have staged an unprecedented series of walkouts in protest at the company’s treatment of women.

The employees are demanding several key changes in how sexual misconduct allegations are dealt with at the firm, including a call to end forced arbitration – a move which would make it possible for victims to sue.

Google chief executive Sundar Pichai has told staff he supports their right to take the action.

“I understand the anger and disappointment that many of you feel,” he said in an all-staff email. “I feel it as well, and I am fully committed to making progress on an issue that has persisted for far too long in our society… and, yes, here at Google, too.”

Like some medieval religious cult, the self-flagellating priests think the problem is they’ve not flagellated themselves enough. By hand-wringing, pandering to extremists, and recruiting the mentally unstable they’ve fostered an environment where major HR issues are inevitable. But because they’re so far up their own backsides, they can no longer identify the problem, let alone solve it. That’s why they have to pretend this problem of green-haired polyamorous managers taking interviewees and their mothers to Burning Man exists everywhere.

Staff involved in Thursday’s walkout left notes on their desks telling colleagues: “I’m not at my desk because I’m walking out with other Googlers and contractors to protest sexual harassment, misconduct, lack of transparency, and a workplace culture that’s not working for everyone.”

These are not the actions of functioning adults. And besides, the managers are drawn from the ranks of people who are exactly like those walking out. Even if Google fired every manager tomorrow, they’ll be replaced by dysfunctional millennials who will act in exactly the same way. These people were recruited as perfect fits for the corporate culture they are now protesting.

They have also made formal demands to Google’s management. They are:

A commitment to end pay and opportunity inequality

A commitment to end things which by any objective measure don’t exist. Things haven’t got off to a good start, have they?

A publicly disclosed sexual harassment transparency report

This will read like the product of an algorithm taking stock phrases from The Huffington Post while mixing in a few generic “corporate values” available from any good PR agency.

A clear, uniform, globally inclusive process for reporting sexual misconduct safely and anonymously

This almost certainly exists: the trouble is, Google recruits psychopaths and promotes them as managers, who are then given control over said process.

The elevation of the chief diversity officer to answer directly to the CEO, and make recommendations directly to the board of directors

So diversity will become separated from HR? How’s that going to work? And what’s diversity got to do with sexual harassment?

The appointment of an employee representative to the board

Didn’t these used to be called unions? It’s going to be interesting to see what a unionised workforce thinks of Silicon Valley’s hiring practices.

An end to forced arbitration in cases of harassment and discrimination for all current and future employees

With forced arbitration being:

Forced arbitration, a common contract clause for Silicon Valley workers, demands any disputes are dealt with internally rather than through other methods such as the courts.

I’d have thought this amounted to a denial of one’s statutory rights, but given it’s California I suppose anything is possible. What is amusing is we had the YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki publicly denouncing James Damore for wrongthink and Google CFO Ruth Porat weeping over the election of Donald Trump, all the while presiding over employment contracts which would look familiar to a 19th century Kentuckian mine worker.

Rather than ratcheting up the self-flagellation to levels not seen outside extremist cults, Google needs to get a grip by firing the bulk of its senior management and replacing them with sensible people who put in place policies which make the firm more like a serious corporation than a playground, thus changing the culture to one in which sane adults flourish while the mentally ill and perpetually aggrieved don’t get through the main gate. Their complete drip of a CEO can start this process by resigning on the spot.

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A paucity of talent

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From the BBC:

This year, we felt it was time to direct the spotlight away from Hollywood and celebrate the best cinema from around the world. We asked critics to vote for their favourite movies made primarily in a language other than English. The result is BBC Culture’s 100 greatest foreign-language films.

The problem with asking people what they think is they might give troubling answers, as the BBC has discovered:

If there’s anything disappointing about the final list, it’s the paucity of films directed or co-directed by women. There are just four out of 100. But we made sure to contact as many female critics as male ones; of those who responded, 94 (45 per cent) were women.

The obvious conclusion is women don’t make particularly good films, something even women critics agree with. However, the BBC devotes an entire, separate article telling us this isn’t so. So what is? Why, sexism, of course!

This troubling result puts the current conversation about the dearth of women film-makers in a wider context: by being barred from the exercise of their craft in cinema, women run the risk of being excluded from its history.

So women were barred from being directors, eh? Then how come four films directed by women made it onto the list?

“It’s a matter of volume,” says producer Deborah Calla, Chair of the Diversity Committee of the Producers Guild of America, the West Coast Chair of Women’s Impact Network, and advisor to the Geena Davis Institute. “There are fewer films directed by women, and so there are fewer films directed by women winning awards or being picked by festivals. Women directors end up having a smaller footprint.”

I wouldn’t have thought it matters if only ten women were directing films if their output was good enough. Welshmen are not underrepresented in marathon running because not enough of them train.

Scarcity leads to invisibility, and invisibility leads to more scarcity – and thus the history of cinema comes to be written and taught with little or no women in it.

I’ve written about this before and asked why, if sexism prevents women prevailing in the arts, they have been so staggeringly successful in publishing. Are we to believe studios were hotbeds of patriarchal oppression while publishing houses were staffed by woke feminists?

As cinema progressed from novelty to business, however, women were pushed off sets and out of studios.

So despite their talents, women were kicked out of studios because of business interests? Is this a roundabout way of saying their output didn’t sell? After all, our aforementioned booksellers didn’t seem to mind Agatha Christie, did they?

“We are on the cusp of great change, not just in Hollywood and the West, but worldwide,” adds Kelly. “We are half the world and we need to tell at least half the stories because up until now we have been hugely outnumbered. The exclusion is systemic, and the change will not be easy, but it is happening. I look forward to a time when it isn’t an issue and a director doesn’t need the prefix ‘woman’ in front of that title.”

I have a feeling Kelly is going to remain disappointed, unless she’ll be satisfied with watching mediocre female directors being applauded by SJWs as they receive participation trophies for films nobody will watch. For I suspect what’s happening is being a director requires a certain technical ability, obsession with details, risk taking, and stubborn perseverance which are more commonly found in men than women. Simply put, most women aren’t interested in becoming directors and, when they are, they don’t do a particularly good job of it. There are some exceptions – Kathryn Bigelow and Sophia Coppola have made some good films, although it would be hard to deny they’ve benefited from close proximity to male masters of the same craft – but in general women don’t make very good films, and can’t compete with men in the way their sisters who write books can. The BBC may just as well have compiled a list of the 100 best rock drummers and complained only a handful of women were on that.

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More on women attacking men

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This video was doing the rounds on Twitter the other day:


Here’s the story:

A 5ft 1in woman choked a nightclub bouncer into unconsciousness after mistakenly thinking he slapped her on the bottom.

Police have released video footage of Kierah Lagrave, 22, from Plattsburgh, New York, coming at the man from behind in a local nightclub.

She then puts her arms around his neck before they both fall to the floor.

The bouncer did not resist because he assumed it was one of his friends playing a prank, police said.

He was unconscious for a few moments.

There’s a lot wrong with this. Mainly, what kind of a bouncer would just stand there while someone choked them from behind? I can’t imagine any of the Manchester Doorsafe thugs circa 1996 doing that (I’m sure Thud can verify). Also, could she really choke him out like that? Her technique would have to be spot on, which isn’t inconceivable but it is unlikely. So it might be that the whole thing was a prank.

But assuming the story’s vaguely true, this is another example of modern women attacking grown men which I’ve written about before. Looking at the video, the bouncer could have literally killed that woman with two blows. Whoever is responsible for teaching women how to behave, they should really emphasise that physically attacking grown men, especially large young ones, is a very bad idea. If this keeps up, one of them’s going to mistake a violent criminal thug for a middle class white boy and end up dead.

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Banged Up Abroad

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A friend, who earns too much to be seeking a coveted research assistant spot at this organ, sends me this story:

A 52-year-old American man is facing up to 20 years in a Russian penal colony after placing an online order for a cleaning product that contains a chemical banned by Moscow.

Gaylen Grandstaff, a former fireman from Topeka, Kansas, was arrested in July last year by customs agents who raided the Moscow flat where he lives with his Russian wife, Anna. He has had bail applications rejected, most recently this week, and has been held in brutal detention facilities. His trial for drug smuggling began in August and is expected to last until next summer.

The rest is behind the paywall, so let’s go here instead:

In the evening of July 19, 2017, Grandstaff and his wife Anna were at home in the north of Moscow, when a courier from the EMS service brought them a parcel from an online store. In June, a man ordered peptides there for cell regeneration and a metal cleaner.

Instead of the order in the box, the couple found two bottles of mineral water “Senezhskaya” and the magazine “Customs”. Later it turned out that the courier was not real – they were a disguised customs officer who participated in the “controlled delivery” operation.

A few minutes later eight people came to the Grandstaff: customs officers, several witnesses, an interpreter and a lawyer. After midnight, the investigator appeared with a decision to initiate criminal proceedings.

Grandstaff was accused of smuggling narcotic drugs on a large scale (part 3 of Article 229.1 of the Criminal Code). In the cleaning agent purchased through the Internet, gamma-butyrolactone was added to the list of drugs banned on the territory of Russia. It can be used as a psychotropic substance.

My initial reaction is that this chap has upset someone important, who has found a way to clobber him. It could also be the Russians want an American in jail to use as a bargaining chip with Trump, but this individual doesn’t really fit that profile and the story is hardly making the rounds in the US, or indeed anywhere (BBC Russia covered the story here but they didn’t run it in English.) Or maybe it’s exactly as reported?

It may also be tempting to use this story to highlight the callousness of the Russian judicial system, but frankly if there is one country whose authorities positively delight in jailing people for decades because of minor infractions of bizarre laws which run into thousands of pages governing what you can take where and how, it’s the United States. Probably the most comforting thing Mr Grandstaff has right now is the fact he’s dealing with Russian prosecutors and not the US Department of Justice. Some comfort.

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Open Thread

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I’m busy for the next few days – exams, seminars, and company visits – so I’ll not post anything today, and maybe not Friday or Saturday either. So it’s another open thread I’m afraid.

The good news is I’m working on another podcast and am sorting the hosting out; the first one can be found here for those of you who had trouble before:

I’m also on iTunes, Apple having deemed I’m not a Nazi, at least for now.

In the meantime, talk nicely amongst yourselves.

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Stories of Workplace Bullying

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Via Daniel Ream, an article sharing horror stories of workplace bullying. Here’s the first:

My manager/direct supervisor would constantly comment on my food choices (fruit has too much sugar), my body (my arms were too toned), and my clothing choices (the shoes I wore looked like nurses shoes). She’d constantly tell me I dressed like a granny, and ridicule me for anything and everything. She once told me I was “too big” for a work shirt and gave me one once she felt I had lost enough weight.

The second:

I was repeatedly laughed at and called the “B” word by some of my co-workers. When I brought it to the attention of two of my supervisors, they did nothing. They didn’t even acknowledge the email that I sent them. … Nothing was said to my co-workers who were sitting around gossiping and allowing the bullying.

The third:

I was placed with this woman on the night shift. The next time I saw her, she yelled across the hospital ‘howdy, F**KER.’ I assume she thought this was amusing because it sounds similar to my last name. It didn’t just stop there. For months and months, she only referred to me as f*cker.

The fourth:

I was bullied, belittled and verbally abused by my co-workers. I had a co-worker come up to me on numerous occasions and speak to me in an aggressive and bullying way about how she WANTS things done HER way. She said to me “you need to do it like I told you” then she proceeds to walk away and says “God damn how f***ing hard is it for her to do as she is told?”

The fifth:

When I was younger, I went to work in the traditionally male-dominated fire department as a paramedic. I was the only woman in one department, and in another was one of 16 women in a 550 person department. I had men who were kind and helpful; however, I also had men who did their best to make my life difficult. … The worst part of the experience were some of the wives of my co-workers. An example: When I answered the station phone (remember no cell phones back then), one wife called me the station whore.

The sixth:

I worked in a place with an old boys club mentality for years, and I was a director who set policies for my department. Instead of having my back, the CEO, who was my boss, yelled at me in front of another employee saying “why can’t you just be nicer?” because that employee had gone to him complaining that they didn’t like the policy I had put in place. I also had a peer who, when I was pregnant, would go around and pretend to snap rubber gloves at his wrist and tell me he was ready to deliver the baby.

The seventh:

Working in Silicon Valley, I didn’t expect that being gay would raise an issue with anyone. After three years with the company (and being out), I brought my other half to the company holiday party. On the following Monday, peers from another department stood outside my office and cracked some really disgusting gay and AIDS jokes, yukking it up all the while.

The eighth:

At the time I was in a biracial relationship. I had talked about my partner and how great they were and everyone was happy for me, until they saw his picture. That’s when the “jokes” started.

The ninth:

I had a co-worker who was promoted to a supervisory position. She then spent the next six months chasing off anyone who had more knowledge and experience than she did. The way she did that was by accusing employees of things that they didn’t do, putting notes into the personnel files, calling them names, and humiliating as many people as she could. On my last day, she had an employee in her office behind a closed door, and everyone could hear her screaming at the top of her lungs.

The tenth:

I had been working at my company for almost 5 years when my boss was replaced by a woman who was at least 20 years younger than both of us. She would humiliate/berate me in front of staff, text me 24/7 and keep texting if I didn’t respond immediately, pound her fists on the desk, blame me for everything, throw the “F” bomb around casually, and much more. She was a nightmare.

The eleventh:

My supervisor above me would harass myself and the team I worked with almost every day. She would call me out, treat me as if I were a child, test our intelligence, etc… We would work our butts off to be at the top and she would treat us as if we were employees who didn’t know what we were doing, acted as if we were lazy (we weren’t), and everything under the micromanager book. It was awful; I gained 40 lbs and my hair started falling out.

The fourteenth:

I had just been promoted to Deputy Editor after being with the magazine for 10 years. At the same time, my Editor-in-Chief retired and was replaced with a much younger woman who had less experience than me, but had more television and online experience. Once we started working together she began bullying me by taking away some perks that I had acquired over time, syncing my calendar to hers, taking over my meetings, belittling me in the meetings, asking me to do things that were clearly part of her job, and then changing the deadlines so I could never accurately finish on time with all my other duties.

Has anyone spotted the pattern yet?

Nos. 7 and 8 appear to concern homophobia and racism, and No. 6 old fashioned misogyny. Nos. 12, 13, and possibly 11 concern men. The rest are stories of women making other (presumably) women’s lives miserable. Even in No. 5 where she was the butt of firemen’s jokes, the worst abuse came from their wives. We don’t have a gender for those involved in No. 2, but given they were sitting around gossiping we can perhaps take a guess. Note also the difference in the nature of the bullying, how personal women make it.

The answer, of course, is to lecture men on the patriarchy and adopt policies aimed at putting more women in positions of power. That’ll sort it.

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Progressive panic over Brazil

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Drowned out by the anti-Trump hysteria in the wake of the synagogue massacre was yet more handwringing over another election which has gone against the establishment both local and global, this time in Brazil. Here’s how the BBC reported things:

Far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro has won a sweeping victory in Brazil’s presidential election.

The former army captain won 55.2% of the vote against 44.8% for Fernando Haddad of the left-wing Workers’ Party.

So what is it that makes Bolsonaro “far right”?

Mr Bolsonaro’s pledge to fight crime and corruption following a string of scandals have won him mass support.

Is this a bad thing?

However critics are worried by his praise of Brazil’s former dictatorship, and by his comments on race, women and homosexuality.

Ah, now we get to the heart of the matter. Anyone whose views on race, women, and homosexuality differ from those found in the social studies departments of American academia is automatically “far right”. It’s interesting that race, women, and homosexuality weren’t even major political issues for the couple of decades before 2013, when Obama had won a second term and it was safe to ramp up the identity politics. Certainly they weren’t campaign issues, and with the exception of scrapping Section 28, weren’t even on the British political landscape in any election I can remember. Now all of a sudden these are supposedly key issues on which every politician across the globe is judged. The western ruling classes are prone to hubris and arrogance, and one way this manifests itself is in the belief that the entire world shares their opinions on social issues (see here for another example).

So what’s Mr Bolsonaro supposed to have said? For that we need another BBC article:

Mr Bolsonaro has portrayed himself as the defender of a Brazil of decades past, suggesting that the country should return to the hardline tactics of the 1964-1985 military dictatorship.

Suggesting? Do we have any context here? Of course not, it’s the BBC.

He has praised this era, in which thousands of people were imprisoned and tortured, as a “glorious period”.

Note the implication that Bolsonaro praised the era because of the imprisonment and torture; the BBC does this because it is in the business of peddling fake news rather than informing people. Some people may refer to Victorian Britain as a golden age in the country’s history, but they are not praising workhouses and the Boer War concentration camps. If you look at the timeline of most countries you’ll find rapid development and expanding influence were accompanied by unsavoury practices of some sort.

“I am in favour of torture – you know that,” he said during a television appearance in 1999. “And the people are in favour of it, too.”

Wait, he said this 19 years ago? Has he said anything on the subject since? Did any Brazilian journalists ask him to clarify this statement? We can safely assume that if the BBC is quoting a statement made in 1999 he hasn’t repeated it, so what’s his position now? We don’t know because the BBC isn’t telling us.

He has pledged to reduce crime and increase security by relaxing the country’s gun laws.

“Every honest citizen, man or woman, if they want to have a weapon in their homes – depending on certain criteria – should be able to have one,” he said of his plans on Rede TV on 11 October.

More controversially, he said last year that “a policeman who doesn’t kill isn’t a policeman”.

So is this what makes him far right? What about his economic and social policies (other than a pledge to reduce crime)? Or don’t they matter? Apparently not. What really matters is:

His statements on issues ranging from abortion to race, and from migration to homosexuality, have proved provocative and garnered much attention.

Meaning, he is out of whack with progressives in the west.

“I’d prefer [to see] a son of mine to die in an accident than [to be] a homosexual,” he told Playboy in a 2011 interview.

So what? Does this mean he’s going to round up gays and shoot them? Is not wanting your son to be gay an automatic disqualification to be president everywhere in the world now?

In 2016, he provoked outrage by remarking that a fellow lawmaker was not worth raping because he thought she was “very ugly” and not his “type”.

This is rather rude, but hardly disqualifying or even newsworthy outside of Brazil.

He has also described having a female child as a “weakness”, and said that he would not employ women equally because “[they] get more labour rights than men”.

Is this true? Do they get more labour rights than men? If they didn’t, I’m sure the BBC would tell us. Of course, the real issue is this:

For his supporters, Mr Bolsonaro is a politician who they say will bring much needed change to the country – a swing to the right after four elections won by the left.

For the past four years, Brazil has been consumed by a criminal investigation – known as Operation Car Wash – that has uncovered massive corruption.

The left have been in charge for years, leading to soaring crime rates and corruption on a scale impressive even by Latin American standards. The public, like their counterparts in Europe and the US, have got utterly fed up with ruling elites treating them with contempt so have finally voted for someone on the right. Cue hysterics from western progressives and media clowns about the return of fascism. Now I don’t know much about Brazilian politics and I can’t read Portuguese, so maybe this Bolsonaro chap really is Hitler and he’s about to start throwing women, gays, and minorities into concentration camps built on Copacabana Beach. But I doubt it, and we can be quite sure the BBC and their ilk know nothing about him either.

Note also the difference in reaction from western progresssives when a right wing government gets elected after years of socialist decay, and when a nasty, authoritarian left winger comes to power in Latin America. Left wing politicians and commentators cheered heartily when Hugo Chavez took over in Venezuela, and ignored the brutal suppression of the population which, carried on by his successor, has left them literally starving while the economy collapsed. And still they continue to ignore, make excuses, and justify what’s being done under the banner of socialism. But yeah, we’re supposed to worry about the rise of fascism in Brazil based on some comments made by the new president when the Nokia 8210 came out. Sorry, but I wish him the best of luck.

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He giveth, but cannot taketh

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Thin-skinned cricket cheat David Warner is back in the news again:

Former Australia vice-captain David Warner walked off the field in protest while batting in a grade cricket match, in what Cricket Australia has described as a “sledging incident”.

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The batsman was playing for club side Randwick-Petersham and decided to leave the field when he was unbeaten on 35.

Opponents Western Suburbs allowed him to return and he went on to score 157.

What’s interesting is who the spat was with:

Cricket Australia says it understands the player involved was Jason Hughes, brother of former Australia Test player Phillip Hughes, but has not given any details of the sledging, other that it turned “personal” and “nasty”.

In the immediate aftermath of Hughes’ death, Warner was seen as one of his closest friends and, along with Michael Clarke, architect of what became Australia’s Diana moment. It would be interesting to see whether this latest incident is just some on-field stuff or whether there’s a bit more to it.

Now last time Warner was on the back foot he hid behind his wife, and here she is again taking up the cudgels on his behalf:

Candice Warner would not reveal the nature of the remarks allegedly made by Jason Hughes, the brother of the late Phillip Hughes, but said they had crossed the line from sledging to abuse.

Ah yes, the infamous line, which only Australian players are qualified to see.

Warner is known in the international arena as one of the biggest sledgers in the game but Candice Warner defended her husband’s reaction.

“Everyone has their own opinion but I think there’s a difference between sledging and abuse,” she said.

Yes, the difference being when high-profile Australians do it it’s sledging, for everyone else it’s abuse.

“I’m not going to go into what was said yesterday but yesterday went too far.”

But it’s all part of the game, innit? He should learn to tuffen up, hey?

“It was hurtful, it was very hurtful.

Bless. I hope Jonathan Trott was at the ground.

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