The Roman Catholic Church has protected evil for too long

Both Boland [a child who had identifed Brendan Smyth as a  priest who had sexually abused him] and the other boy were required to sign a formal oath of secrecy forbidding them to tell anyone except “authorised priests” what had gone on, and Fr Brady compiled two reports which were sent further up the Church hierarchy. The parents of none of the five children identified by Boland were informed of what had happened: indeed, Smyth continued to abuse two of those very children after the 1975 inquiry, and went on to rape and bugger a number of their younger siblings and cousins as well. I apologise for the explicit language, but evil found its hiding place in euphemism for too long.
See the full story in the Daily Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ireland/9246727/The-Roman-Catholic-Church-has-protected-evil-for-too-long.html

Government: It’s the kids, you know, the kids….

Me:  What kids? I told you I don’t have any…

Government: Not your kids, there are poor people who have children and can’t afford them.

Me: This is my problem?

Government: Yes.

Me: Well if people can’t afford children, they shouldn’t have them should they?

Government: But they do.

Me: So you  take the money I’ve earned away from me so you can  feed and clothe the children of people on benefits.

Government: And educate them…

Me: Hang on, I’ve just noticed that more than 20% of this so-called education budget goes on giving poor people’s children a free midday meal.  Don’t these people already get money – my money- to feed their children included in their benefits?

Government: Yes.

Me: So why do we have to give them free lunch if the parents have already been given money to feed their children?

Government:  Well, it’s hard to make ends meet…

Me: You’re telling me that we give money to people to feed their children and they spend it on other things, so I must pay someone to cook them a meal at school because their parents won’t make them a sandwich in the morning?

Government: Yes, that’s it.  For a minute I thought you wouldn’t get it.

Me:  If people have children that they can’t afford, and we give them money to feed their children and they don’t… is the answer not to take these children into care rather than just keep throwing my money at them?

Government: Absolutely not.

Me: So poor people’s children… that’s it, is it?

Government: Well…..

Me:  Well, what?

Government: Well… we also give child benefits to the comfortably well off and the rich….

Me:  You… do…. what?

Government: I know it sounds crazy, but it’s all about the kids, you know, the kids…

Me: Why do you take my money off me and give it to rich people with children?

Government: It’s complicated…

Me: Try me…

Government:  Well, imagine that some of these rich people are mean to their wives and don’t give them money to feed their children – you know, it could happen – well, we give them some money… just in case.

Me: My money.

Government: I wish you would stop going on about it being your money… I mean if you weren’t giving your money to the children of poor people..

Me: and the middle classes and wealthy

Government: Yes, well if you weren’t giving that money to the kids, you know, the kids… what else would you do with it?

Me:  I could provide for myself in old age… as it is, because I pay 40% tax on everything I earn, then another 15% in ‘national insurance’, then pay 20% VAT on everything I buy, including on more of my food than I thought, then it costs me £100 (US$150) to fill up my car to get to work in the first place (of which 85% -yes 85% is tax), I am going to face penury as soon as I stop working.

Government: Look… it’s all about the kids, you know… the kids.

To ‘anti-capitalists’ who subscribe to the semi-literate Right to Work Campaign credo:

What is role <sic>of the Right to Work Campaign?

We are a national campaign and for the last couple of years we’ve been the people in the room arguing for a combination of strikes, direct action and occupations as a means of defending public services, the welfare state, stopping the cuts and fighting job losses. We’ve said time and time again it’s not our crisis and we won’t pay for it.

this is anathema.  Their website makes it clear that they expect the government to produce jobs for everyone – and good jobs too, not rubbish like working in the food industry.

Leaving aside the argument of whether workfare is a good thing or not,  look at the ‘anti-capitalists’ and who they appear to be.

To be an anti-capitalist you must, by definition, be against capital. These mostly young people certainly do seem to believe this.  They think that in a ‘fair’ society, no one would be allowed to earn or keep too much.  That way the state will re-distribute the money and everyone will have enough.

Once more,  leaving aside the fact that in every country that this has been tried,  people starved to death, let us boil down what this really means – and more importantly what it means when put into practise.

They believe that the Capital that people create – wealth – does not rightly belong to them.  It belongs to everyone, through the state.  That is to say, the value that a person creates with their work does not belong to them… and therefore the work that they do does not belong to them.

Behind the belief in capital is the fundamental belief that each human being has the right to their own body.  It is theirs to do what they wish with (within law). The work they do with their body (or mind) is also theirs.  If they choose they can sell it to someone who values it, or who can turn it into something worth more than they paid for it.  The belief in capital is the belief in the freedom of the individual to own their own body and the work they do with it.

Any system which has been against capital, has always been opposed to this basic autonomy that we call freedom. When the state owns your work, it also owns you.  A fairly good example of where this kind of thinking leads is in the NHS – England’s state healthcare system.  This behemoth of an institution, which is the largest employer in Europe, has recently posited two schemes which show that state-owned healthcare means that the state thinks it owns your health.  The first is  the law being changed in Wales so that you have to opt-out of being broken down for spare parts in the event of  an accident – i.e. the state will have a presumed right to your body if you die.  The second being that patients that would otherwise be allowed to die, could be kept in a coma to ensure the maximum amount of their body could be harvested.

So who is it that believes in this kind of nonsense?  Hardcore Trotskyites with scratchy beards who live in communes no doubt…

No… the people protesting against the ruthless exploitation of the working class (by expecting work from them) seem to be  quite  well turned out.  The one from captured in the photo above is not so against the tyranny of capitalism that she doesn’t turn out for a protest in a full face of make-up.

Likewise this picture from the Daily Telegraph shows another well-presented young protester, wearing clean faux-combat pants and a branded jacket from a well-known outdoor store, his face contorted into the balled-up image of fury all children make when presented with something they think ‘unfair’.  But are they being treated unfairly themselves? These protesters all look like their mother does their cooking and laundry.

In fact, as PC Gary withers found out – the Occupy the City campaign tents were mostly empty at night time – the protesters going back to their comfortable lives in the suburbs (why do you think the police removed the site at night?).  I don’t think the forces of capitalism have anything to fear from day-trippers whose commitment to bringing down the system doesn’t extend to doing without make-up or branded clothes.

His method for doing that is the same one that he tried in office: at a time when the UK is closing essential services to limit the damage caused by debt racked up under Brown’s fiscal regime, he suggests borrowing more money – to give to the third world.  This sounds very much like the ‘Aid tax’ that Brown was conspiring with the increasingly stridant Oxfam to help deliver its Marxist vision of  ’redistribution’.

The former UK prime minister wants to create a “global fund for education” to raise the £13bn per year needed to bring lessons to the poorest children.

There are 68 million children in the world missing out on primary education.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16705691

Quite apart from the fact that no-one is listening to Gordon Brown anymore, if he had really been that interested in Education, Education, Education he may have done more about it when in office.  Under Labour education flatlined leaving one in five children functionally illiterate, and in some of the worst areas in the country, such as the North East and the Isle of Wight, one in four children cannot read or write.

The shame of ruining the economy while achieving nothing has not shaken Brown’s world view one jot.  Despite being raised by a wealthy family and enjoying the best education money can buy, he remains addicted to the idea that money does not rightly belong to the people that earn it – it should belong only to people like him – who know how to spend it wisely.

A: We cannot leave people free to turn out however they turn out.  Why don’t we do the same with violence or other impulses that people have?  Moreover, only six percent of homosexuals owe their condition to biological issues.  We shouldn’t confuse homosexuality with the existential necessity of a person, with what is practiced as a vice.  The person practices it like one might practice the abuse of minors.  He does it because he is attracted by the novelty, a distinct form of sexuality.

Q: The difference between a homosexual relation and an act of abuse is clear.

A: Of course, but why is an abuser of minors sick?

Q: To begin with, the abuse is a relationship that is not consented to.

A: There might be minors who consent to it, and in fact, there are.  There are adolescents of thirteen years of age who are minors and are totally in agreement and furthermore desire it.  Even if you take care they provoke you.  This aspect of sexuality is somewhat more complex than it appears.

Full text here

How come if you are a single mother on benefits and do a bit of bar work to pay for Christmas you are a ‘scrounger’, but if you live in a hostel, receive benefits and then top that up by earning £100 a week selling Big Issue, you’re a hero and do-gooders will come up to you and give you a fiver and a large cappuccino?

The recent story in the press about the Big Issue seller claiming £25,000 in benefits while living in a £130,000 house is a timely reminder…

As a Romanian immigrant living in the UK, Big Issue seller Firuta Vasile already qualified for more than £25,500 a year in benefits.

But one state handout she wasn’t entitled to was housing benefit. Until now.

Yesterday the 27-year-old mother of four was celebrating having won the extra payout – worth at least £2,600 a year – after her local council was over-ruled by a judge.

Miss Vasile, whose marital status is unknown, said the benefits money would help her pay rent on her £130,000 three-bedroomed home, while she continues to earn around £100 a week selling copies of the homelessness magazine.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2087857/Romanian-Big-Issue-seller-given-legal-right-claim-housing-benefit.html#ixzz1jvyhuvME

 

Even the Big Issue admits that most of its sellers aren’t actually homeless, they are living in hostels or other supported accommodation while claiming benefits .  It admits that most need the money for drink or drugs, and in the run-up to Christmas advised not to give substantial sums of money to sellers (other than buying a magazine), for fear they would have enough money to kills themselves with drink/drugs.

So unless it is to make living on the streets as a drunk or junkie a viable lifestyle… what is the Big Issue for?

The Walpurgishnacht greeting, didn’t get posted this April as, while struggling to manage some trying life commitments and hold down a high-pressure job, the Opus Diaboli site was hacked and corrupted with malware.

It has taken until now to unpick the threads and put the site and this blog back together, but it seems, alas, that around two year’ worth of posts has been lost.  This was a hard blow, especially after version 2.0 of the website was lost to a hard-disk failure.

Meanwhile, the world has moved on…

The wheels having fallen off Communism in the last two decades, we are now witnessing the death of socialism, as Greece, Italy, France and other countries who have thought for decades that they could  defy gravity, are having to face up to the reality that every Dollar or Euro that is borrowed, is a Dollar or Euro that has to be earned in the future.  And paid back.

England stopped its insane romance with New Labour and we are beginning to see just how Brown’s catastrophic judgements nearly brought the country to bankruptcy alongside the likes of Greece.

The world population clock has ticked over the 7 Billion mark.

Now at Yule, Opus Diaboli is back, and the website will soon be operational again.  Many of the issues which first brought  Opus Diaboli into being five years ago seem even more prescient.

This is going to be an interesting year.

Julian Karswell

The Balance North East campaign this week launched a campaign to turn the clock back when alcohol was so expensive that wine was something that only the middle-classes aspired to enjoy.

Balance director Colin Shevills said: “Our region is drinking too much from an early age driven by alcohol which is too affordable, too available and too heavily promoted.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-15997695

Balance, which was set up under the old Labour regime, reflects that administration’s  belief that people don’t have any business making decisions for themselves, and they should be prevented from making harmful choices rather than being allowed to suffer their consequences… the example that they give of the kind of person they want to protect is Joanne Patterson, 41, from Sunderland, who was….

 diagnosed with cirrhosis and chronic liver disease two years ago. She had been drinking three bottles of wine, as well as lager, every day.

She now has to take 90 to 100 tablets a week and had spent 300 days in hospital in the past two years.

She said: “What’s to say it’s not going to happen to anyone else, because I never thought I would get this much damage from drinking.

“But I have done and it’s irreversible damage and I have to take tablets for the rest of my life. My liver could fail at any time.”

Certainly there are serious problems with children and drink in the North East and there should be some education around these issues, but you do have to wonder what kind of education could get through to someone so stupid that they don’t realise that drinking three bottles of wine a day and topping it off with lager is  going to do you serious damage?  The way you felt in the morning would be some indication…. However, Balance’s solution is to make Alcoholic drink more expensive (which was a popular theme in the old administration).  All this is likely to do is increase the number of illegal stills that are growing up and push people like Joanne on to heroin instead of alcohol.  And anyway, in other countries where alcohol is cheap,  their children are not killing themselves with lager, so why in the North East of England?

Educationally, the whole North East region  is either below national average or well below national average and truancy is also high.

The one thing which could stop the North East having such terrible problems with its young people is if it gets over the idea that the ship building and manufacturing jobs lost to the far east in the 1970s are  ever going to come back to that region.  For generations parents in the North East have been raising children in the belief that the government will supply subsidised manual and semi-skilled jobs for them.  This has not happened in nearly 30 years and it is time that these parents put aside the socialist fantasies of full employment for the unskilled and realise that in today’s job market, it’s education that matters. If parents make sure their children go to school and learn something while they are there, then maybe children will have a real incentive not to destroy their lives with alcohol.