That is the single most disturbing image I have ever encountered.

My eyes! My eyes!

Oh. My. God. Indeed!!!!

It's the rest of that article that I find really difficult to read. I'm all for literotica but when the protagonists are Toynbee and Brown, who share the dubious distinction of being on my "First Heads On A Spike On London Bridge List", I simply can't, nay won't, picture them bumping uglies. Metaphorically or not, it hurts.

Passages like that make me yearn for internet speech to be fiercely regulated on the grounds of taste and decency :oD

Oh that Nick M is on holiday in the lake District...

He should here at such an hour!

Gaah! That image is going to give me nightmares!
Just think of the pillow talk.
Bogus Govt statistics,Child poverty success rates (paper rounds are to be made mandatory till age 18)
but at the vital moment she'll probably blow it by yelling out Tony oh Tony!
Beat me on the bottom with a rolled up Hansard!

I keep thinking of that great line by Shirley Jones in Elmer Gantry-

"...the first thing I know he rammed the fear of God into me so fast I never heard my old man's footsteps!"

While we're on the subject of socialist depravity, here's Gabriel's wild-living hedonists reclassifying cannabis to class B, those wild free anti-conservatives of New Labour.

Note the deployment of another new term in their reckless support of the orgiastic lifestyle- we now have cannabis "binge smoking".

The article makes no sense.

Government spending (specifically on the things mentioned in the article) increased vastly both under Mr Blair and under Mr Brown (who was in control of financial questions under Mr Blair anyway) as did taxation.

So Polly T. should be very pleased - not "in despair or whatever".

There seems to be a lack of "fact checking" in a lot of writing - "as long as it sounds good it does not matter if it is nonsense" seems to be the rule.

For example, only today I noticed in "Newsweek" magazine a claim that the governement headed by Mr Brown had cut taxes (the reverse of the truth) and in the "Financial Times" a "major report" was warmly cited that purported to show that a big problem with South Africa was that not enough land had been taken from white farmers.

No doubt some of the morons who write this stuff get paid very well.

Dear God Sir, I haven't had a third large gin and tonic yet. Can you please reserve such horrors for a post 9pm audience?

My stomach churned twice when I was at Mr. E's place, tis a gruesome thought.

I was looking for the right place to wish a happy 60 to Israel. Thanks for having different lines of Priests and Kings, leading to the idea of the separation of Temple and Palace. Western Civilisation wouldn't have been as good without them!
Whilst this isn't the best place, the idea of free speech follows from that principle of separation, and so the uncensored Internet, and thus this actual sordid Comment, are derivatives of the whole idea. Umm, thanks, I think.

Actually the biblical ideal is the most pure example of theocracy there is, with the deity as the sovereign. Separation of church and state has not existed in England since 1534, except for a brief interlude under Mary I and, given this, the contention that it is the basis of Free Speech is a little bizarre to say the least.

**

Ian B: I never alleged that New Labour per se. were hedonists, rather that the ethos of the general establishment, of which they form but one component, is hedonistic. What unites them all on drugs, by the way, is the belief that people who ruin their lives by using them are victims, a view fundamentally unsuitable to a society of responsible and free individuals.

Anyway, as society becomes ever more chaotic, violent and uncivilized - in exact lockstep with the decline in freedom* - we'll see a lot more of this useless flailing about with the statute book in a vain attempt to deal with the mess created by (primarily) progressive education and the welfare state. [Though it has to be said that, considering their wild shifts in policy on this issue, NuLab appear to have ceased merely sowing confusion and chaos as a side-effect of their reform proposals and are now actually doing it on purpose. Either that, or they are plain vanilla nuts.]

And, of course, I oppose drug prohibition.

*In case you get all het up and think I am doing some clever German style playing around with the meaning of freedom I mean only this. The best guarantor of an ordered society is a small, sovereign government enforcing a set of rules designed to create conditions of peace in which individuals and corporate groups can pursue their own ends without undue fear of violence, either from their fellow subjects or the state. This set of rules should be as small, change as little, as is consistent with the continued enforcement of peace so that individuals can have a reasonable assumption that either in doing sensible new things or in doing more or less the same thing they did yesterday they won't find themselves to be criminals. This is also the condition we (or at least I, you might add on some codswallop about rights) call civil freedom.

Anyway, as society becomes ever more chaotic, violent and uncivilized - in exact lockstep with the decline in freedom* - we'll see a lot more of this useless flailing about with the statute book in a vain attempt to deal with the mess created by (primarily) progressive education and the welfare state.

I quite agree. I doubt you'd find much dissent about that. By the way, the other day you claimed - without citing any references - that I was influenced by the writings of the egalitarian education advocate, John Dewey. I remain mystified why you should think that, apart from possibly misinterpreting my oft-expressed support for resisting raising the school leaving age and actually reducing it, as well as my support for home schooling. But then I guess it depends what one means by the word "progressive".

The best guarantor of an ordered society is a small, sovereign government enforcing a set of rules designed to create conditions of peace in which individuals and corporate groups can pursue their own ends without undue fear of violence, either from their fellow subjects or the state.

I agree with every word of that.

“There is a compelling case to act now rather than risk the future health of young people.

We must have no uncertainty about the future of our young people. Therefore, if there appears to be a risk they will ruin their lives, we must step in an ruin them for them, quickly and decisively.

I was, if memory serves making an immature joke playing on the word 'influence'. I dont believe you to be a partisan of Dewey's educational theory and I agree with you about home-ed and school leaving age.

Polly Toynbee in a peephole bra and crotchless panties.

No erections for a month.

Thank you very much.

From I think it was Nick's link about the New Labour hedonists:

Mrs Smith said she hoped reclassifying cannabis as a Class B drug would send out a message to police forces to treat possession of cannabis more seriously.

I suppose they could try taking burglary, robbery, assault, or mob action seriously. What a radical idea.

BTW, in that link, it becomes obvious that Jacqui Smith is teh hawt! Not like Polly, which is where erections go to die.