There must be something about people called ‘Hodges’….are they entirely trustworthy?  Should they be banned from the UK until we know what is going on?

There’s Margaret and then there’s Dan….not to mention dodgy Hodges in Dad’s Army.  Some of our finest and upstanding citizens are named Hodges.

What are Dan’s latest thoughts on the world?

Dan Hodges: Donald Trump is an outright fascist

Ban him. Ban him now.

Blimey, that’s a bit strong….wonder why he thinks that?

It is hard to see what possible public good would be served by welcoming to the UK a man who has effectively called for a race war.

Oh Dan, you know Islam is not a race.  So disappointing that you peddle that old lie.

But surely Dan elaborates and explains his thinking (I think he thought…though little sign of it)…argh yes..here we go…

Think of what Trump has actually said. In his view members of the Muslim community are now so dangerous to non-Muslim members of the community that their presence can literally no longer be tolerated. Every man, every woman, every child who is a Muslim is so inherently dangerous they cannot be permitted to walk among us.

This is not a Hollywood script or a caricature dreamt up by the liberal Left. It is an actual policy position put forward by the man who is currently the presumptive Republican party nominee for president of the United States.

Oh yeah, tricky huh?  Trump thinks every Muslim is a walking time bomb…doesn’t he?  Well no actually…what he thinks is that some, many perhaps, who would seek to enter the US would do so with malign intent and would do so by smuggling themselves in amongst those with perfectly peaceable intentions.  Trump’s point was that perhaps Muslim immigration should be temporarily halted in order to allow the US to formulate some sort of policy to deal with this…he did not say every Muslim, man, woman and child, had a suicide belt strapped to their bodies.

Our boy Dan then asks what of Muslims already amongst us…does Trump wish to incarcerate them inside some sort of Guantanamo?

And what are the implications of that policy position – not its implementation, but its mere articulation – for those Muslims who can’t be shut out? Those Muslims who already walk among us?

A tricky problem no doubt…but then perhaps Trump could ask, hmmm, let me think, he could ask advice from one Dan Hodges who thinks Muslims are a problem and need to be dealt with…including those ‘fairweather supporters of  Islamic fundamentalist terrorism’….

There is a clear link between Islam and terrorism. It’s up to all of us to break it

 

Over a quarter of British Muslims have sympathy for the Charlie Hebdo terrorists. That is far too many

Just because you wouldn’t personally go out and murder people, it doesn’t make you moderate. We cannot turn a blind eye to the fair-weather supporters of terrorism

Too many of Britain’s Muslims are failing to integrate. We need to find out why

I don’t know why we have a specific problem of Muslim integration. I’m not sure anyone does. But I suspect one of the reasons is no one has really taken the time or effort to formally try and find out. And now we have to take time.

Yes, time to find out what the problem is…..erm…isn’t that what Trump said?…..Dan and Trump…soul brothers….Ban them both!!!!

I thnk Hodges perfectly illustrates the mindset of  many in the BBC et al..he knows there is a problem but is unwilling to confront it in reality…he’ll make all the right noises when a bomb goes off but when someone, like Trump, starts to suggest actually putting measures into practise to deal with the problem the real Dan Hodges comes out….and of course such double talk is not limited to Hodges…it is endemic across the media and in politics where the unwillingness to confront the problem is rife….the usual formula is to waffle about Islamism and Islam being different…and not forgetting that old canard about the ‘religion of peace’…even Tariq Ramadan admits that the Koran preaches war.

The Today programme reported on Cameron’s wheeze to create a £20m fund to help more Muslim women in the UK learn English which will make them better able to resist the lure of radicalisation. You could tell they were not happy and made sure that those Muslim advocacy groups committed to keeping themselves SEPARATE from UK culture had their say. However the BBC always chooses to ignore the elephant in the mosque – namely that Islam is demonstrably incompatible with the modern pluralist values Cameron says he wants to help muslim women embrace. If he REALLY wanted to help muslim women he would ban the burqa, imprison those who practise FGM and shut down the mosques teaching hatred.

Always fun to remember that prediction from the climate alarmists.

Delingpole also has his fun….

Remember: That Snow You See Out Of Your Window Is A Thing Of The Past

However that old climate PR spinner, Bob Ward, is getting tetchy….

.@JunkScience @tan123 Hey clowns, I live in London and there is no sign of snow here. Your blanket is a little patchy.

Trouble is the ‘clowns’ were right….

Thin but it was there….Ward’s clown feet firmly in his mouth as usual.

As we’ve looked at before the BBC claimed….

Weather records: December was ‘wettest month for UK’

and trumpeted that loudly even though the Met. Office stated that…

For the UK as a whole its currently the second wettest on record.

Just been looking at the rainfall totals for December for England and Wales.

You know what…not a record, not a record by a long, long chalk.

In December we had 145.1 mm of rain, the year’s total for 2015 was a meagre 969mm.

1779 we had 144.4mm and in 1803 we had 145.8mm in December, and in May 1778 we had 151.8mm….look through the whole record and you’ll find vast numbers of months across the year that had more rain than this December.

In 1768 we had a total of 1247.3mm of rain for the year….that’s quite a bit more than 969mm I’d propose.

Anyone starting to think that 2015 and December were not ‘records’ at all?  Maybe we had a lot of rain in one precise location but if you’re going to claim that that is somehow representative of the climate as a whole I’d suggest you’re talking out of your hat.

2015 ranks at number 167 out of 250 in a ranking of the wettest years...number 250 being the wettest…and which year is the wettest year on record?

1872, followed by 1768.

Scotland had the wettest December on record in 2015 but the wettest year is still 1938, 2015 coming in at 80 out of 85…..85 being the wettest….and if you look at the wettest months on record, ie January to December, only 2009 and 2015 make it into the records…the rest come mainly from the 1980’s and 90’s, with some being from 1935 onward…bearing in mind that the Scottish records only start in 1931 not 1766 as the English and Welsh ones do.  In total Scotland had about the same rain in 2015 as it had in 1998…another El Nino year….still vastly less than in 1938.

This is curious from Harrabin…

 

• roger harrabin ‏@RHarrabin Jan 12

  Wet December 2015 may be trumped by wet Octobr 1903 when @metoffice rain record is digitised. http://blog.metoffice.gov.uk/2016/01/08/reporting-the-weather-across-the-uk/ … @ECIU_UK @CarbonBrief

So after all that trumpeting by the BBC that December was the wettest month on record for the UK…now not so much….and as Scotland’s data only starts in 1931 that can’t really be included.  Clearly he hasn’t had time to look at Met. Office records which show, as mentioned above, that a vast number of months across the centuries have been wetter than this December in England and Wales….so October 1903 is neither here nor there….and the records, digitised or not, already show that England and Wales in October 1903 had a massive 218.1mm of rain…why does Harrabin not know this already?…it might have given him a clue as to the real state of the weather UK wide.

Are the December rains the ‘new normal’ asks Harrabin….I would suggest they are the ‘old normal’….

 

• roger harrabin ‏@RHarrabin Jan 5

  Is December weather the new normal? Is there a new normal? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35228779 … @ECIU_UK @CarbonBrief @eciu @Revkin @aDissentient

Harrabon retweets this…..why when the records clearly show the rain was anything but unusual?….

•  
• roger harrabin Retweeted

  ClimateCentral ‏@ClimateCentral 11 Dec 2015

  Extreme UK rains (like those seen in Storm #Desmond) are more likely with global warming http://buff.ly/21UHAk1
  

Wonder if anyone saw BBC “The Big Questions’ this morning? It was certainly explosive with left wing feminist rent-a-mouth harpy Kate Smurfwaite talking over everyone. However the BEST bit was when fellow leftist “Professor” Connie St Louis accused Milo Yiannopoulos of calling for the “assassination” of someone on his Twitter account. See Milo’s excellent response below. This is going to cost her.

OK folks, I’ve been away for a few days but am now back so let’s START the week early! Here you go detail the bias here!

Time flies I’m afraid and we’ve been caught out again with the open thread..so here’s another one to tide you over till we get back on track…..

The BBC has a bit of a quandary…..reporting the success of non-private school pupils in getting into Oxbridge or hiding that because the pupils come from a Free School and from a poor area of London thus undermining two of the BBC’s cherished mantras about the hated Free Schools and poverty…..both apparently anathemas to success in education.

A few days ago I heard Peter Allen claim that the school system was failing and fragmenting and Free Schools were part of the problem….not a massive rise in pupil numbers due to immigration then?

Wonder what he makes of this…….

‘East End Eton’ pupils beats top public schools to Oxbridge

A free school in one of the poorest parts of Britain, nicknamed the “Eton of the East End”, is to send eight pupils to Oxbridge this year, putting them ahead of some of the most famous public schools in the country.

The London Academy of Excellence, a free school which has been running for three years, is celebrating after eight pupils received conditional offers to study at Oxford and Cambridge.

According to the Sunday Times, the figure puts the school above some of the country’s leading public schools, with one pupil from Gordonstoun, five from Sherborne and four from Haileybury destined for Oxbridge.

It’s hard to tell what he might make of it because so far the BBC has failed to mention this remarkable success that they normally would be trumpeting from the roof tops…especially as the successful pupils are predominantly of a non-white hue….at least 7 of the eight going to Oxbridge are non-white…here’s three of them…

Toby Young in the Telegraph doubts the Left will be celebrating….he could be right…

There’s a great story in the Sunday Times this morning (££) about the London Academy of Excellence, a free school in Newham. In spite of only being open for 18 months, the specialist Sixth Form college has managed to secure offers from Oxford and Cambridge for six of its pupils. That’s more Oxbridge offers than every other school in Newham managed last year.

No doubt Left-wing critics of free schools will come up with the usual excuses as to why this school has done so well. But for those of us who believe in the policy, it’s a huge triumph.

‘…for those of us who believe in the policy‘…that counts the BBC out then.  Be interesting to see the BBC take on this when they get around to reporting it……what’s the betting it’s a long list of every complaint against Free Schools they can muster alomgside a grudging acknowledgement of the success?

When we had the floods recently the BBC made a big play about the supposed North-South divide in funding channelling a Labour Party narrative but not telling us that the person making the claim was in fact a Labour council leader. [Similarly the BBC doesn’t tell us that the PCC’s who complain about cuts to police funding are also Labour party politicians.]

The BBC seems to like the sound of that North-South divide…could it possibly be because the government is trying to establish the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ and regenerate Northern fortunes and the BBC has decided to undermine that with claims of Northern neglect by a Tory government?

Last week we had a day of being told on the news bulletins that again there was this North-South divide, this time in education…..the rich Southern pupils being more successful than their poorer, neglected Northern cousins.

Now the BBC knew this was rubbish and not what the report they based their claims upon said, but anyone forced to rely on the BBC’s news service would have had that false narrative rammed down their throats all day….it was only later in the evening when the report’s author came on did we hear the truth…and he himself had to correct the BBC presenter’s take on his report.

So is there a North-South divide?  No, and the BBC, as said, knew this, as illustrate by the graphic they supplied on their website……

The real problem  places (should you place any faith or trust in such reports at all) are in the Midlands as well as many places in the South. [Update…the bit that looks like Northern Ireland is in fact Greater London blown up…thanks to Embolden for correcting that for me.]

The BBC clearly had a political agenda as their claims were totally false and even the report’s author had to correct them.

The BBC has been blitzing us recently with tales of woe…A&E is swamped by ever increasing numbers, housing is massively in short demand and schools can’t provide anywhere near enough places for the numbers of pupils.

Why has this situation arisen?  The BBC doesn’t know but of course is happy to speculate that it is due to the government not spending enough money…due to austerity measures [and of course the BBC doesn’t spell out why austerity is need and who is to blame for such measures being necessary…ie Labour and Labour policies].

Here is one such report that tells us that ‘London places crisis to hit secondary schools’

The BBC tells us…

Pupils in London face a growing funding gap, with the school-age population forecast to rise by 12% over five years, argues a report.

“Do the Maths 2015” says the government is not providing enough cash for new school places needed in the capital.

London Councils, which represents the 32 London boroughs, plus the City of London, fears crunch time is rapidly approaching for the capital’s education budgets.

There has been “unprecedented growth in demand” for school places in London, says the report.

The number of school-age children (aged five to 19) increased by 112,000 in London in the five years to 2015.

So an ‘unprecedented growth in demand’.…and why might that be?  The BBC doesn’t tell us where that unprecedented demand is coming from.

Could it possibly be that mass, uncontrolled immigration has swamped the British school system and made it unsustainable with parents unable to get the school of their choice and convenience?

Well in all likelihood that’s the answer as in the last 3 years alone we have had nearly one million migrants flood into the UK…they have to be housed somewhere, they have to be treated by the NHS and they have to send their kids to schools.

But the BBC doesn’t like to raise that problem, no mention at all of immigration in its report…The BBC’s mantra is that the problem is the government not spending enough not  too many migrants.  The migrants are economically beneficial to the UK…aren’t they?….

The government said it had doubled funding for school places to £5bn during the last parliament, creating half a million new school places since May 2010, with a further £7bn committed to create more places over the next six years.

Curiously the photos they provide to accompany the report have the pupils all pictured from the rear and a class of nearly all white pupils…is the BBC trying to hide the fact that London schools are predominantly non-white now?  Why aren’t they celebrating the diversity?

This is the type of photo the BBC normally prefer to use:

or this….when the pupils are ‘trouble’…