Chevron appears to have joined the peak oil community.

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The Sydney Morning Herald is to be congratulated for carrying a heartening story of academic freedom and truth-speaking.  In a letter to the Parramatta Sun Associate Professor Andrew Fraser (reg req) had said what we all know to be true :-

“... an expanding black population is a sure-fire recipe for increases in crime, violence and a wide range of other social problems ... The fact is that ordinary Australians are being pushed down the path to national suicide by their own political, religious and economic elites.”

It appears that he then followed this up with an e-mail to a Woollahra councillor, raising some blindingly obvious concerns about the consequences of large-scale Chinese immigration:-

“Look at the annual HSC results - the consequence of which is that Oz is creating a new heavily Asian managerial-professional, ruling class that will feel no hesitation … in promoting the narrow interests of their co-ethnics at the expense of white Australians.”

Finally to the Herald he declared that it was only the “educated middle class” who opposed his views. “I think most ordinary people would find what I’m saying more or less self-evident,” he said.

Prof Fraser emigrated to Australia from Canada.  One must suppose, therefore, that his is a voice of experience.  It looks like he will keep his job in the Department of Public Law at Macquarie University.  But good luck to him anyway.  He’s a brave man.

Today that pixie-faced, shallow actor - a man of moderate intellect and faultless political instinct - will make a speech setting out his and his government’s position, one week and two days on from the London attacks.  It will concentrate, I think, in three areas: security, community action and “big politics”.

The police response thusfar has been quite amazing.  Scotland Yard and MI5 have barged through the investigation at a pace I, for one, have never witnessed in a major investigation.  Equally impressive, the world’s press has been apprised of every new lead, every breakthrough with remarkable and commendable speed.  That, I suppose, has more to do with the nature of a case in which the prime suspects are not going to face trial.  But it has allowed the public focus to shift very early on in the course of events to the wider issues of Islamic fundamentalism and multiculturalism.  That positively encourages a holistic, political approach to be taken.  It is pretty clear that Blair’s will be characteristically opportunistic and two-fold:-

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The Times reports today on the sad if perhaps not entirely unpredictable demise of one Linda MacDonald, the English wife of an African “healer”.  She, silly girl, brought this primitive savage from Burkina Faso to her semi-detached home in Buckfastleigh, South Devon.  He, an “elder of the Dagara tribe” no less, must have felt personally and culturally degraded by every miraculous thing that he witnessed in sunny Devon.  In any event, he “became disorientated” and battered her to death, even though his flight home to Burkina Faso was about to be booked.

I don’t generally copy & paste articles as they stand.  But, as the judge at Exeter Crown Court said while sentencing the gentleman concerned, “The circumstances of this case are so extraordinary ...”  Not least, I would add, because the happy couple didn’t speak a word of one another’s language.  Amazing what a primitive African penis can do for a girl - one of the few erections in Africa that convinces anybody, I should think.  But the dippiness of the whole venture is perhaps best encapsulated by Miss MacDonald’s stunning attempt to challenge the global pharmaceutical industry in gentle, quiet Buckfastleigh by setting up her wonderful new husband as a traditional healer.  Does that sound like a runner commercially to you?  Thought not - the African record on disease being what it is and all.

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In the 1970s an advertisement appeared in an English magazine announcing “Pretty Nigerian girl needs new home.” An English woman in the small country town of Midhurst took in the baby girl.

So far the story reads like a liberal romance. But then come the revelations.

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This morning the Telegraph reports the response of Iqbal Sacranie, Secretary General of the The Muslim Council of Britain, to the news that three - and possible all four - of the terrorists who bombed London were born in this country.  The three were of Pakistani origin (like Sacranie, in fact.  He, though, was born in Zomba, Malawi but, of course, is neither Pakistani nor Malawan but British, just like me!).  Sacranie said:-

We have received terrible news from the police with anguish, shock and horror.  We believe our youth are said to have been involved in last week’s horrific bombings against innocent people.  While the police investigation continues, we reiterate our absolute commitment and resolve to helping the police bring to justice all involved in this crime of mass murder. 

Nothing in Islam can ever justify the evil actions of the bombers. We are determined to work together with all concerned to prevent such an atrocity ever happening again. We now look to our shared values and common humanity to face the traumas and the challenge ahead.

Now, it so happens that Mr Sacranie has just been challenged by Nick Griffin - who was born on a farm in Suffolk - to explain how, exactly, all these “shared values and common humanity” fit in with the Koran.

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I don’t often travel to London these days.  I can’t feel the same for the place as I did in my childhood.  But it happened that last Thursday I was required to catch the 8.20 from Lewes to Victoria.  The previous evening a Portugeuse client had flown in to London to meet with me next day at 10.00am in a Bayswater hotel.  These guys pay the piper.  So a trip to town could not be avoided.

Actually, it was a pleasant enough journey - quiet carriage, no twenty stone slab of lard sitting next to me.  The rush hour was mostly past.  The train didn’t fill until it reached multicultural East Croydon.  It got in to Victoria shortly before 9.30am.

The next two hours of my life were spent going nowhere very fast and being dragged to the inevitable conclusion that my Portugeuse client would have to lunch alone.  I learned from the station tannoy that the Underground was closed due to “incidents”.  Other travellers, no less frustrated than I, had come into possession of the knowledge that somewhere a bus had been bombed.  Then the tannoy confirmed it.  Bus services were also suspended.  Outside the station, London’s amazingly ubiquitous black cabs had become as rare as hens’ teeth.  My mobile phone did not function.  I assumed that weight of call traffic was the cause (only later did I learn that the system was switched off for fear of remote detonation of terrorist bombs).

It was time to get out of town.

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I’ve just arrived home from London Victoria, having got no further into town.  I was only grateful to be able to escape the paralysis that has overtaken the city in the wake of the six reported Underground bombings and the bus bombing at Russell Square.  Of course, one’s heart goes out to those who stood unknowingly and defenceless in the terrorists’ path during this morning’s rush hour.

The picture will clarify through today, and it is too early now to comment on particulars.  I guess there was an inevitability about it.  London could not remain invulnerable, if it ever was to any meaningful degree.  The sundry travellers I have spoken to today were all remarkably sanguine as the story began to emerge and was passed from person to person.  It was a good, British response to hatred and myopia.