Anyway, I am still here – I am now mulling over the email sent to me by a former Libyan defence minister who needs to shuttle $55 out of Swaziland. Oh, and a happy New Year to you all.

After all of that cretinous guff about former leader Hosni Mubarak being shunted aside to make way for a bright and democratic future, the Egyptian people have delivered what can best be described as a glorious slap in the face for all of those Western meddlers who jumped into this mess with grandiose statments about the so-called “Arab Spring” – which is turning out to be more for a coil spring trap – and the dawning of a new age in the region. Bunch of comedians, the lot of them.

The Muslim Brotherhood lead the way, with the rather nut-jobby Al-Nour Party in second place – and no sign of the pro-Western democrats that were supposedly leading the revolution in Cairo’s streets. How odd.

Little really needs to be said about the Salafist Al-Nour Party, save for the fact that they fit the stereotype of the bellicose bearded anti-Western misogynists we all love so much. In addition to introducing extreme Sharia Law and cladding women in those hideous Dalek costumes, they also harbour some bizarre desire to destroy Egypt’s long and rich historical tradition.

What a truly charming bunch of people.

But sometimes you stumble across a story that is just so ridiculous that you have to read it twice just to make sure you haven’t slipped into some crazy parallel universe – like this rather bizarre story of a gang of four intoxicated Somali women walking free from court with suspended sentences after attacking a woman because they were “not used to being drunk” on account of their Muslim religion.

That’s right. Four buck-toothed interlopers beat up a white British girl in the street in what sounds like an obvious racial attack, and get away with it because they are Muslim. “It wa da alcohol dat did it sir, innit”. Or something equally incomprehensible. Had things been the other way around, we wouldn’t be hearing the end of it from the left-wing press, such as their crazy one-directional obsession with racism and the curious affliction described as “Islamophobia”.

Then we have this:

As well as the suspended sentence, Hibo Maxamed, who needs dialysis three times a week for a kidney complaint

So, not only is this creature causing mayhem on the street, she’s also a drain on resources as well: It’s like having a stranger crap all over your floor, and then having to pay someone else to clean up the mess.

OK, scratch the last one.

My post today has been inspired by the most recent furore surrounding Top Gear presenter and occasional journalist Jeremy Clarkson, and the almost pre-programmed response that will almost certainly do the BBC no end of good. Negative publicity is the tactic of choice these days, and someone at the BBC must be rubbing their hands in delight. The pressing issue is clearly who should be invited next onto the otherwise unwatchable The One Show.

Jimmy Carr? Ricky Gervais? David Starkey?

So, here are the facts: Clarkson is invited onto the show, suggests that striking public sector workers should be shot, and all hell breaks loose when some union representative throws a hissy fit and the apparatchiks at the BBC force themselves into offering a ridiculous fart-in-a-bag apology. When everyone could and would have been better served – Clarkson aside – by just shutting the fuck up.

Clarkson was clearly joking – after all, why would anybody want to waste good bullets on public sector workers when there are plenty of chavs and malingering ne’er do-wells out there? – but as always it takes some overpaid left-wing twerp like UNISON General Secretary Dave Prentis to kick up a stink and waft the aroma around when it would have been a far better idea just to gently lower the lid and let the matter rest.

Dave Prentis: When I am thinking, my brain expands like this...

Here’s just a bit of what Prentis had to say:

“Public sector workers and their families are utterly shocked by Jeremy Clarkson’s revolting comments. We know that many other licence fee-payers share our concerns about his outrageous views.

“The One Show is broadcast at a time when children are watching – they could have been scared and upset by his aggressive statements. An apology is not enough – we are calling on the BBC to sack Jeremy Clarkson immediately. Such disgusting statements have no place on our TV screens.”

Hmm. I’d imagine the vast majority of these people probably watch Top Gear, or simply don’t give a shit about what Clarkson may have to say; in fact, the only people likely to have complained are Labour Party functionaries and the overpaid public sector managers and union rabble rousers themselves – the sort of hypocritical socialist slime who will end up getting a bumper pension at the state’s expense while the rest of us have to pay into private funds.

People like Dave Prentis.

What a hypocrite, eh? One day this unctuous windbag talks about “fat cat” bankers, and the next he is shovelling away funds so that he can avoid paying his due. I am guessing that Prentis was just the sort of individual Clarkson was thinking of when he made his prime-time television suggestion, as opposed to some poorly-paid school cleaner or one of those guys in flourescent jackets I occasionally see on the streets of Hayes pretending to be doing a job picking up loose items of litter.

As for children being somehow “scared” by what could at worst be described as an oafish utterance on a television programme that is watched by the terminally brain-dead, it’s actually pretty laughable. Most young children are not likely to be interested in watching this early-evening tripe: they are far more likely to be playing on their XBox or PS3 – where they are probably shooting something or slicing up some mythical beast with a broadsword.

To even suggest that children might have been terrified by a few words when they probably have to put up with far more objectionable things in the school playground is perhaps even more “offensive” than anything Clarkson might have said: in making such a statement Prentis is clearly insulting the intelligence of every child in the country – or perhaps even making a subtle reference to the teachers who should have been in the classroom rather than waving a banner in the morning before heading off to Westfield or Bluewater to pick up a few early bargains while the rest of us were still at work.

One has to wonder what this non-story may lead to next. I can picture some ridiculous enquiry that will cost even more public money: a gathering of lawyers, advisors and pen-pushers that will allow yet more dunderhead apparatchiks to justify their miserable existence.

As for the BBC executives, well… They’ll make their silly apology and then sit back as good old Jezza continues to haul in the viewers.

No more outrageously silly uniforms. No more stories of farting-fests in Bedouin tents. No more prostitute recruitment campaigns. I’ll be completely honest: I’m going to miss the rubber-faced old blighter.

I have said it many times before, but Libya’s troubles have not ended with the violent death of the Clown Prince of Carthage; they have only just begun. Western leaders have been more than happy to bleat on about the country’s hope of a democratic future, but by allowing themselves to be caught up in the chaotic euphoria they are missing the most obvious question: what hope is there for democracy in a country where the beaten foe is dragged out into the street and summarily executed by a baying mob screaming Allahu Akbar?

A less than glorious end: Colonel Gaddafi

I feel that I have been robbed: I wanted to see a trial, a final dénouement where the world could have seen the Colonel in all his comedic splendour for the last time, dressed to the nines in a fashionably ill-fitting silk suit covered in diamond-encrusted shapes of the African continent. Instead we got to see some scratchy video footage of his battered and bruised corpse being dragged through the streets by people no less brutal than his once-feared henchmen. The only difference is that Muammar provided his own very unique brand of style and panache.

Joking aside, there is then the matter of the secrets Gaddafi will be taking with him to his unmarked grave. To what extent were Western governments involved in his regime? Who was really responsible for the Lockerbie bombing? Who really killed PC Yvonne Fletcher? Just how far did the oily Tony Blair go in his attempts to bring the Colonel back into the light? These are questions that will now never be answered.

As for Libya itself, I seriously doubt that we’ll be seeing a stable government – democratic or otherwise – anytime soon. Now that Gaddafi is dead, the thin line of thread that kept the disparate tribes and religious factions together has now been broken. Rebel groups that were previously united in their hatred of the Gaddafi regime will now have their own agendas to meet, their own supporters to please, and their own fish to fry. When one throws the greedy Western companies that are no doubt queueing up for their own little bite of the country’s oil supply into the mix, we have a recipe for corruption and political chaos, and a threat of widespread violence and terror that goes beyond anything Gaddafi and his minions could have achieved.

Libyan society has always been tribal – and it was Gaddafi’s intimate knowledge of its fundamental brutishness that allowed him to hold onto the reins of power for so long. The Colonel’s death and a few Twitter feeds from a couple of floppy-haired student activists in Benghazi are not going to transform the Libyan people into a nation of enlightened and forward-thinking democrats, and it is going to take more than a couple of mealy-mouthed statements from suited gentlemen in comfortable rooms in London, Paris and Washington to change this.

Oh Libya, oh Libya.

Daily Mail Nazi Story of the Week

So we have yet another sensational book with a raft of so-called exclusive findings, join-the-dots innuendo and general pseudo-historical Scheiß – one can only wonder just who commissions these clowns to write this rubbish. In this case the clowns are British authors Gerrard Williams and Simon Dunstan, and the waste of ink is called Grey Wolf: The Escape Of Adolf.

I am assuming that there is a large and obvious cover photograph of the moustachioed one, save some us start thinking that the book is all about another “Adolf” who managed to make his way to Argentina. Well of course there was, a certain Herr Eichmann aka “Ricardo Klement”. It’s nice to see that the authors are on first-name terms with AH; not even his closest advisors and henchmen called him that.

Hmm. I am not going to waste any time dissecting the claims, but thought I’d just quote this little gem:

There is no forensic evidence for his [Hitler's], or Eva Braun’s deaths, and the stories from the eyewitnesses to their continued survival in Argentina are compelling.

OK, no forensic evidence, but “compelling” eye-witnesses. Righty-o. Give me a few thousand dollars to play with and access to a few old people suffering from Alzheimers, and I can probably create half a dozen “compelling eye-witnesses” too. I’ll have you know that Josef Stalin was really a orang-utan called Nigel, and I have met plenty of old fellows living in a mental hospital a few kilometres south of Dnipropetrovsk who can confirm the same.

I have posted the following as “Martin Bormann, 10 miles outside of Asuncion, Paraguay”, and can only hope it passes through the moderation filter:

I can assure you that this story is bunk – as he died only a few years ago and lived down the road from me in the forests outside of Asuncion. Before my Führer died he set up a vegetarian food company that specialised in pasta products – it was known as “Onkel Adi’s”, and sold well among the German expat community in Latin America. The company is still running today, and is controlled by Siegfried Ottweiler, the son of Adolf and Eva’s daughter Brünnhilde. Siggi will be pleased to know that his old Opa has made the pages of the Daily Mail again!

Having read that again, I have to wonder just how many people might actually believe me…

Daily Mail Nazi Story of the Week

I thought I’d get back on track – though one can hardly call it a Story of the Week feature anymore – with this one, not so much for the story itself but for the utterly ridiculous captions appended to the photographs by some braindead primate at Daily Mail towers. For that, read the work experience student who is being paid peanuts to serve up hot drinks and edit the DM’s plethora of pointless online non-news articles.

Sex and the stormtroopers: How French women fell for the Nazi invaders during the Second World War

Well, I suppose the lurid-sounding title says it all; I have to wonder how long they took to think up that one.

But let me not waste time by digressing.

I am not going to bother commenting on the story itself: yet another work about a subject that has been completely whipped to death in the usual systematically hysterical fashion. No, my gripe is with the captions to the three main photographs:

Photo #1

This photograph is captioned Dangerous liaisons: A French woman poses with a Nazi officer at the Eiffel Tower during the period of German occupation in the Second World War.

OK, I’m sure that the structure in the Hintergrund is actually the Eiffel Tower and we’ll choose to run with the idea that the woman is French, but there’s no proof whatsoever that the man is a Nazi (we can only see the back of him, so cannot determine whether he is the owner of an NSDAP membership pin) and he is certainly not an officer but an NCO, something any casual military uniform expert can tell by observing the silver tresse on the base of his collar. The cut of the uniform also suggests that he is an NCO – officers’ uniforms were usually tailored to fit, and had far cleaner lines.

So, probably not a Nazi, and certainly not an officer… Next…

Photo #2

This one is captioned: Festival atmosphere: The previously unpublished photographs show French woman cavorting with members of Hitler’s SS in bars and cabarets.

While this happy little crowd are having a few glasses of vin blanc, they are hardly “cavorting” – but let’s not split too many hairs here and get to the point. The caption suggests that these soldiers are “Hitler’s SS” – hmm, funny – I have never seen SS men wearing what looks to be Luftwaffe collar patches before, unless this lot are a special branch of flying SS men. Nah, they just look like a bunch of ordinary Luftwaffe NCOs, who were usually pretty successful with the local Mademoiselles on account of promising to take them up to heaven and back in their flying machines… Woof! Woof!

Sadly, it’s probably not even that glamorous – as NCOs these guys probably spent most of their time wading around in grease and engine parts while their more illustrious officer colleagues were going tete-a-tete with Dougie Bader and company over the Channel.

You can tell I am starting to enjoy this now, and it’s a shame that there is only one more photograph to look at:

Photo #3

This interesting image carries the legend Murky past: The French struggle come to terms with the fact many women had intimate relationships with Nazi officers during the Second World War – though once again a cursory glance at the uniforms of these two soldiers clearly tells us that they are ordinary Army personnel and clearly not officers, Nazi or otherwise.

With this one I even have my doubts as to whether the woman is even French: she looks German to me, and is probably a nursing auxiliary or even one of the many secretaries that were given a foreign posting.

To think that people get paid for writing this rot…

The European Union is a different issue entirely – it has nothing to do with traditional European ideas, and everything to do with tying us all up in knots with a myriad of rules, regulations and supranational law.

The European Court of Human Rights – which should in that instance should be renamed the European Court of Subhuman Rights – has surpassed itself this week, in forcing the Home Office to back down on the proposed deportation of a Nigerian rapist. That’s right – the ECSR has put its foot down and said that Britain has no right in sending this criminal – who isn’t even a European citizen – back to where he was spawned. OK, I’d send him back in a box, but that’s beside the point.

The court declared:

“The applicant’s deportation from the United Kingdom would be disproportionate to the legitimate aim of the ‘prevention of disorder and crime’ and would therefore not be necessary in a democratic society.”

Not be necessary? You’ve just got to love the wording.

“…you or I might think it is a bit off, murdering your sister, daughter or niece for failing to marry her first cousin and running off with someone she loves instead; or to have your daughter circumcised so that she is unable to experience any filthy sexual pleasure in her marital relations. But what we must learn to understand is that different cultures have different traditions. We should understand honour killings and female circumcision as part of the melting pot of colourful cultural customs which have helped make modern Britain so vibrant and diverse.”

OK, the above paragraph refers more to Muslims than those smelly sorts that shit in public places, but I couldn’t have put it any better myself.

Today is the funeral of Mark Duggan, the man whose death at the hands of armed police kick-started the recent looting and rioting in a number of British towns and cities. While it is completely understandable for Duggan’s friends and family to say what they like at his funeral and choose to see him how they remember him, to print what amounts to an apologia for this criminal in a national newspaper simply beggars belief.

Tottenham is a place where people do not tolerate injustice. It’s always been that way, our community is close knit.

Close knit enough for people to trash their own streets, eh?