Le jour où nous aurons en France, non plus 5 millions mais 25 millions de musulmans, ce sont eux qui commanderont.  Et les Français raseront les murs, descendront des trottoirs en baissant les yeux

Jean-Marie Le Pen, explaining to anyone who will listen that, “The day when we have not five million but twenty-five million Muslims in France, it will be they who rule.  And the French will stick against the wall, jump in the gutter and lower their eyes.

Of course, it brought him another conviction and fine from the (anti-) French establishment.  He’s been collecting them since the 1960’s.  His stubborness and verbal extravagance have cost him in excess of $200,000.  I think it’s safe to say he doesn’t much care about that.  For the desperate and the irredeemable any publicity is good publicity.  In that bullish, foolhardy-brave way he has, Le Pen is perfectly irredeemable.  And, if you happen to be one of those, of course, extreme far right French nationalists, he is undeniably inspiring.

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We are eight weeks away from an (as yet unannounced) General Election in Britain, and the political parties’ mad clamour for headlines has begun.  Savage criticism from one side follows scornful demolition by the other.  Policy launch follows publicity stunt.  Either way, it seems certain that we are to have more of everything.  Britain’s far-seeing and benevolent politicians are deciding how they can make our lives wonderful.  In fact, very, very wonderful.  How could you ever think it will be otherwise?

Politicians love to talk about hospitals, schools, nursery places, police on the beat … all the many ways in which they can spend your money better than you can.  These things are, apparently, what the electorate most wants to hear about.  They are managerial politics, the politics of consensus, of ideological neutrality.  They are, therefore, safe and comfortable for all concerned.  They are what the political establishment most wants to talk about.

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It can’t be often that the Prime Minister’s wife, otherwise known as Miss Cherie Booth QC, takes a hand in defending our culture.  But she did just that today before the civil division of the Court of Appeal.  She won the right for 16-year old Shabina Begum to wear the Jilbab - traditional head-to-toe Muslim dress - to school.

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I’ve just come across an extraordinary research paper. It examines, in a remarkably open and honest way, the reasons why some Sydneysiders are leaving the established western suburbs and moving to “master planned communities” on the urban fringe.

What it finds is that the residents of these new communities are fleeing precisely those suburbs in which there is both a large amount of public housing and a rapid influx of immigrants. The residents are trying to recreate a traditional Anglo-Australian community in which they feel their identity, values and way of life are secure for themselves and their children.

In other words, the paper takes an academic (and surprisingly unbiased) look at the process of white flight.

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Three decades ago Martin Hutchinson sat down to write a ‘coffee table’ book about the significant figures in Conservative history.  Not a remarkable ambition in itself, perhaps.  To many on the right of the Party the Heathite Corporatism of the early 1970’s looked like the end of the ideological road.  For all its allegedly free enterprise vision of ‘Selsdon Man’, Heath’s Tories had proved wholly unable to think outside the post-war economic consensus.  While direct taxes were cut to a certain extent, both major parties remained committed to a public sector vastly larger than anyone would seriously advocate now.

The eleven-year, partial and, therefore, temporary revival of the right under Margaret Thatcher still lay in the future.  It was the moment to think historically of Conservatism - and the moment no doubt, amid the sound and fury of Saltley and the three day week, to conclude that its like might not be seen on our national stage again.

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I am against interventions in other nation’s political affairs, just as I am against them meddling in ours.  I am opposed to exporting communitarian political systems, just as I am opposed to importing them into the U.S. If every political party supports rebuilding the world with communitarian wars and laws, and if every non-governmental organization supports it, and if the TV and papers tell us it’s all good (and no one else is complaining), then, what’s my problem?

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These thoughts are a brief response to Matt’s post “Animal Rights, Humanism, and Universal Altruism”.  The latter was quite beautiful to read for anyone who has loved a dog – or any “higher” (ie, social?) animal.  Dogs in my case, twice … plus I was brother to my daughter’s tragically deceased lop-eared rabbit.  Not a close family relationship I can claim to have anticipated, but life is full of surprises.

But to take the issue forward …

Right now at Westminster and in the English countryside we are witnessing the submission of those ties of humankind (to which the left is usually so anxious to accede) to an apparent compassion for an indefatigable and, from a human perspective, non-social competitor for food resources: the fox.

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While mooching around the net for images of lovely Cumbernauld, the Scottish town that is so ill-favoured the population want it all knocked down, I came across this touching portrayal:-

Having only a weak grasp of reality and a brief attention span I quickly lost interest in the freezing north.  I was charmed instead by these wry and gentle images of the real, perennially failing but perennially plucky, urban England shot by the same opportunistic, amateur camaraman.

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