The Perfect Storm

We have educated our youth into debt.
It is a disgrace.
( Martin Lewis, money-saving expert )

The 1998 Act was part of Britain’s grovelling surrender to the Provisional IRA, made under fierce American pressure.
I said at the time that this was a total and unmitigated defeat, but I have been told over and over again by pious persons that it is the price of ‘peace’.
Well, we have not got peace.
We have been utterly humiliated by a criminal gang, at the behest of our supposed allies in the ‘War on Terror’.
( Peter Hitchens, 02.03.2014 )

Twitter is like a greasy, horrible, stinky old man in a corner of a bar.
You go up and say, “Hi” to be polite, then he starts being horrible.
( Dame Helen Mirren )

Enduring The Hell Of Flying.
I can’t think why more people aren’t enraged by air travel or why there are not more mutinies.
My rage always begins to simmer at check-in when the automaton behind the desk finds the weight of her false eyelashes too great to raise her eyes.
The worst offenders by far are easyJet employees, whose only focus seems to be to charge you more for carrying anything other than a credit card in your pocket.
The attitude at airports is that those of us who have the temerity to want to travel are to be treated with suspicion, despite the fact that confiscating my Sisley skincare is unlikely to prevent the plane being shot down over Eastern Europe.
Challenge any member of staff and they react with shock and disbelief at my refusal to be herded as if I have just been discovered tunnelling out of Stalag Luft 111 with a dessert spoon.
I also take affront at notices proclaiming that they take attacks on staff very seriously.
Well, I take having to pad in bare feet on the same patch of fetid carpet as the bloke in front of me seriously, too – why not supply disposable spa slippers in this ebola-racked world?
I’ve nearly been arrested twice when flying.
The first time was on a plane to Pakistan, where I was sent to cover an earthquake.
Given the hurried nature of the assignment, I had failed to book a vegetarian meal.
When I requested one, I was asked, parrot-fashion. ‘Did you pre-book a special meal?’
Well, no.
‘Hmm. I’m afraid all I can offer you is a chilled bread roll.’
But why can’t you provide veggie meals to everyone, so that if you want to eat something that has had its throat ritually slit you’re the one who needs to fill out an extra form?
Why should ethical people do all the work?
Cue a look of shock-horror on the stewardess’s face.
What irked me even more was that there was no alcohol on board, given we were flying to a dry state.
When I asked for a glass of champagne, I nearly had a fatwa placed on my head.
( Liz Jones, 31.08.2014 )

London belongs to all of us, not just those who can afford to pay £5 for a cappuccino.
( Pauline Pearce )

A woman will not laugh out loud in public.
She will not be inviting in her attitudes, and will protect her chasteness.
( Bulent Arinc, deputy prime minister of Turkey )

I came to Shakespeare when I was too old to play the great roles, and it is an everlasting regret of mine.
( Dame Sheila Hancock )

Reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that’s being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.
( Terence McKenna )

No matter how angry you are when making a complaint, be calm and respectful to that lowly-paid employee who usually has nothing to do with what it is you’re angry about.

Britain Will Vanish Behind The Veil.
Not many years ahead, the full Islamic face-veil, the niqab, will be as common here as the headscarf (the hijab) is now.
And quite a lot of non-Muslim women will probably have adopted the hijab too, as they will find it wise to do so in the areas in which they live.
This is going to happen.
Nothing can stop it.
Islam is at home in this country and grows stronger every week.
When we replaced Christianity with ‘Equality and Diversity’ as our official belief, we abandoned the only argument we might have had against it.
( Peter Hitchens, 22.09.2013 )

Men turn into boys in Parliament – it’s like an infection.
One starts talking and then another talks over them even more loudly to get their point across, and so on.
It’s rude and childish and it needs to change.
( Betty Boothroyd )

I went to Alcoholics Anonymous in Stockholm.
I couldn’t understand a word but it still helped.
( Ozzy Osbourne )

A good time with my family was playing cards and drinking Wild Turkey and Coke.
( Nicole Scherzinger )

The Perfect Storm. Starring zero hours contracts, high prices, benefits cuts, unemployment and childcare costs.
( Oxfam )

If God had given me even half of what Cheryl Cole has, I wouldn’t be defacing the juiciest bit with a hideous rose.
( Sarah Vine )

There are some folk that manage to get into government who are a special kind of stupid.
( Florence Emily Hookins )

The truth is the truth, even if no one believes it.
A lie is a lie, even if everyone believes it.

Crime figures started dropping because they became politically important, so crime was redefined to exclude millions of offences.
The same thing, we now see, is happening with immigration figures, where thousands of arrivals were simply ignored altogether.
We didn’t log them, so they aren’t here.
The Big Society in action.
( Peter Hitchens, 13.04.2014 )

Politics is the nearest thing I know to being on active service.
The bullets are flying all the time and if you make a mistake you pay the price.
( Paddy Ashdown )

Fighting and killing an enemy in close combat is not a right nor an opportunity.
It is a gut-churning, traumatic, incredibly tough job.
( Colonel Richard Kemp )

I look at David Cameron across the Dispatch Box and I think to myself, “I’m the one with the intellectual self-confidence,” because I know what I believe.
( Ed Miliband )

We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.
( William J. Casey, Director of Central Intelligence from 1981 to 1987 )

Don’t be so quick to believe what you hear.
Lies spread a lot faster than truth.

I will be pilloried for saying so, but the rape conviction statistics will not improve unless women stop getting so drunk.
( Judge Mary Jane Mowat )

I call everyone darling, usually because I can’t remember their names.
( Richard Attenborough )

A Borderless, Multicultural, Multi-Faith Zone.
Both Michael Gove and the Home Secretary, Theresa May, have in practise supported the transformation of this country into a borderless, multicultural, multi-faith zone.
Much of what was left of Christian teaching in state schools was stripped out of them years ago by secular radicals, so that our national faith is now taught as a sort of eccentric tribal cult, practised by other people, especially old people, if it is mentioned at all.
The ‘Conservative’ party, true to its long record of cowardice and retreat, never did anything to stop this.
Now it seeks to appear concerned by blurring the border between religious fervour and terrorist crime.
How dare either, or both, of these politicians now seek to advance their political careers by posing as the foes of Islamic extremism?
If there is such a thing, their party brought it here and encouraged its growth.
( Peter Hitchens, 15.06.2014 )

If all world leaders were motivated by kindness and compassion and not money and power, both people and animals will have some hope.
( Rose Winfold )

This is the question the right has to answer.
Do you want smaller government with less handouts.
Or do you want a low minimum wage?
Because you cannot have both.
If Colonel Sanders isn’t going to pay the lady behind the counter enough to live on, then Uncle Sam has to, and I for one am getting a little tired of helping highly profitable companies pay their workers.
( Bill Maher )

People should be able to obtain these benefits as a matter of right, with no more loss of their own standards of self-respect than would be involved in collecting from an insurance company the proceeds of an endowment policy on which they have been paying premiums for years.
( Robert Menzies, 29.03.1944. on the establishment of unemployment and sickness benefits )

Republican hostility toward the poor and unfortunate has now reached such a fever pitch that the party doesn’t really stand for anything else.
And only wilfully blind observers can fail to see that reality.
( Paul Krugman )

BT Charge Old Folk For Sending Them Their Telephone Bill.
From November 2013, British Telecom started charging their customers an extra £6.00 for posting them a fully itemised bill.
You know, exactly what they are charging you for.
If you are billed monthly, you pay an extra £72.00 a year.
The people that suffer most are the millions of old folk not online.
But British Telecom don’t care, do they?
And if you have a bank account that doesn’t accept direct debits, greedy BT charge you an extra £36.00 a year.

The mafia has higher standards than the Catholic Church hierarchy because if their members were raping children, they would off them.
( Ernie Chambers )

I am anything but politically correct, but I freely confess that I am scared of the destructive, unreasoning power of the politically correct lobby.
They have prevented the proper exposure of much wrongdoing – and they still do so.
( Peter Hitchens, 31.08.2014 )

Once you realise that trickle-down economics does not work, you will see the excessive tax cuts for the rich as what they are.
A simple upward redistribution of income, rather than a way to make all of us richer, as we were told.
( Ha-Joon Chang, University of Cambridge )

Once you leave the womb, conservatives don’t care about you until you reach military age.
Then you’re just what they’re looking for.
( George Carlin )

I’m not oblivious to what is going on.
I’m just an expert at avoiding drama, nonsense, whining and bullshit.
( Robert William Hutchison, 1922-2006 )

Taxpayers Money Spent On Portraits Of Government Ministers.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has defied public uproar over large sums of public money being spent on portraits of MPs – and agreed to pose for one himself.
Commons chiefs have commissioned a £10,000 painting of the Liberal Democrat leader to be hung in the Palace of Westminster.
The decision comes just weeks after MPs were denounced for spending £250,000 on portraits of a raft of fellow parliamentarians, including a £10,000 picture of Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith.
( Brendan Carlin, 02.02.2014 )

The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.
( Thomas Jefferson, 1816 )

Religion is over, lads.
It’s f+++++g over.
Take your reformation, your Vatican, your f+++++g Mecca and f++k off.
Suicide f+++++g bombing, there’s a bright idea.
Every time there’s a bang, the world’s a wanker short.
F+++++g idiots.
( Billy Connolly )

There are men running governments who shouldn’t be allowed to play with matches.
( Will Rogers )

A weapon holds no more evil than a stone.
Evil is held in the human soul – the only place evil dwells.

Bad Language At The BBC.
The BBC have refused to accept a complaint about bad language transmitted on national radio – because the complainer’s letter used exactly the same words that they had used on air.
They told Colin Harrow that his letter’s tone and language were ‘unacceptably abusive or offensive’.
In other words, the BBC are ready to transmit words into our homes which their staff are not prepared to read.
( Peter Hitchens, 02.02.2014 )

I sometimes want to diss people like they diss me.
But my heart and my character is not built like that.

Britain feels like a glossy red apple with a core that is rotten.
( Beena Narangoda, after her cousin was stabbed to death as he delivered a pizza in Sheffield )

Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves.
For we shall never cease to be amused.

Be Clear About What Has Happened.
A Conservative MP, Aidan Burley, purchased a Nazi uniform to be worn at a stag do in France, where such behaviour is a crime.
He then lied to the party inquiry, ordered by the Prime Minister, about what happened.
And the inquiry refused to examine any evidence that might contradict his account.
None of this is acceptable.
In many ways the party’s behaviour is even worse than its MP’s.
Mr Burley is clearly unfit for public office.
Yet the party does not simply defend him – it does so despite being made fully aware of the detail and extent of his lies.
If Mr Burley had any sense of decency, he would surely resign.
But we already know what sort of man he is.
As for his party, what does it say about the Conservatives that it is so desperate to carry on being represented by such a man?
If it had any sense of propriety, it would strip him of the whip.
( Stephen Pollard, 02.02.2014 )

I have just been all round the world and have formed a very poor opinion of it.
( Sir Thomas Beecham, 1879 – 1961 )

It’s funny how when I’m loud people tell me to be quiet.
But when I’m quiet people ask what’s wrong with me.

As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression.
In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged.
And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.
( William O. Douglas, 1898-1980 )

Against Stupidity We Are Defenceless.
Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here.
Reasons fall on deaf ears.
Facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental.
In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.
For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one.
Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.
( Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906-1945 )

No one in Government, whose priority should be the welfare of the people, can even grasp the real issues.

It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
( Mark Twain, 1835-1910 )

Governments invest huge amounts of time and energy in keeping the people weak.
Their worst fear is powerful or knowledgeable or intelligent people.
When Governments go unchallenged, they become complacent and corrupt.

Globalisation is all about wealth.
It knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Without borders the world will become – is visibly becoming – a howling desert of traffic fumes, plastic and concrete, where nowhere is home and the only language is money.
( Peter Hitchens, 17.08.2014 )

Social injustice is such a familiar phenomenon, it has such a sturdy constitution, that it is readily regarded as something natural even by its victims.
( Marcel Ayme, 1902-1967 )

Wisdom doesn’t automatically come with old age.
Nothing does, except wrinkles.
It’s true, some wines improve with age.
But only if the grapes were good in the first place.
( Pauline Esther Phillips, also known as Abigail Van Buren, 1918-2013 )