Some 30 odd years ago I met a lady who was a granddaughter of the Lion of Judah – the Emperor Haile Selassie.
She clearly inherited some of his courage, for she had survived 8 years being imprisoned and tortured by the Mengistu regime, a bunch of criminal Marxists who then ran that sad country.
(I sometimes wonder how Marx would feel if he could see the villainy and misery inflicted in his name – just as I do of Jesus Christ and Mohammed).
Anyhow this lady was living with a Dane, and was applying to stay in Denmark and become a citizen. One thing she had to do was learn Danish, which seemed reasonable to me, and is the only comment I going to make, if obliquely, on the subject of immigration here.
I was reminded of this requirement when reading that ETS, the consortium of American con-artists who caused the recent SATs marking cock-up, have been rewarded with a contract for English language tests for immigrants.
In the topsy-turvy world of “New” – strikingly like “Old” Labour – no qualification beats sheer incompetence. I can almost hear the dialogue now.
“Hello, I’m the Minister for Education, Ed Balls. I understand that besides being ace bullshitters you’re fucking useless. Can you prove it? You can? Good show. I’m a fucking useless bullshitter too. We sound like perfect partners.
“How about sorting out who should be allowed to stay here under our latest set of insane regulations? Since you’re not English you should be perfect. We tried to get some Nigerians, but they’re too busy screwing their own people and sending our letters promising millions to idiots (Gordon’s replied to three this week) and Mugabe’s printing banknotes night and day. Too tired, poor chap.”
An editorial in The Oldie which covered this subject, also points out that:
“Similar questions arise over the senior executives of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, the ill-assorted body of academics and big businessmen who awarded the controversial marking contract to ETS in the first place.
The chairman of the QCA is Sir Anthony Greener, once in charge of the cigarette manufacturers Dunhill and a man knighted for his services to the drinks industry. They do not seem especially relevant for deciding what should be taught in our schools.
The QCA’s chief executive is a man called Ken Boston, who is paid £328,000 a year after recently receiving a 15 per cent pay rise. Mr Boston is an Australian who, in addition to his generous salary, has the run of a nice flat in Chelsea and is allowed six business-class flights – costing between £3,000 and £7,000 – back to Australia every year.
It may be that there is no one in this country who could do the job as well as Boston. But we could save quite a lot of money in expenses if we hired a British citizen to take over.”
Ed Balls-up was the mastermind behind Gordon Brown’s management of the economy, which I see some fools among the “opinion-forming classes” still think was good.
Yes, I heard ‘David Moribund’ the other week describing him as the most successful post-war chancellor and banging on about the ‘economic miracle’!
He was happy to take the credit for 10 years of growth financed by rocketing levels of personal debt while he did nothing to rein in the banks from their irresponsible lending, but now according to ‘Moribund’ it’s not wee Gordie’s fault that we’re heading in to recession, it’s down to external factors beyond his control! Hmmmm
Drayton, could you lay off on Ken Boston, please?
Just grin and bear it, look upon it as a consequence of your colonial misdeeds.
We don’t want him back, we couldn’t afford him!
Goodonya
John
Brown – Successful?
He inherited an economy that had just come out of a recession.
He still needed to borrow to meet his spending plans.
If wasting public money is deemed a success, then yes the man is a genius.
I’ve read that Billie Holiday’s recording of Gloomy Sunday was banned by the BBC because it might encourage listeners to suicide. Apparently, even the composer, Rezso Seres, threw himself from a window. Can anyone help me find 20-30 copies I can send to the nail bitter and each of his cronies?
The UK government wasted at least a billion pounds, the US wasted several billions, maybe hundreds of billions on wars outside the respective countries.
Whatever their reasoning and justification, I feel that money could have been put to better use on the countries’ own economies.
Instead, they only helped to put the countries in recession or near recession.
And the price of oil still went up.
That’s monye management for you.
Ian, any chance Billie Holiday’s recording of Gloomy Sunday could be played in the white house and number 10 continuously?
This country’s problems go back much further than Gordon Brown’s tenure.
The late John Thaw had a great line in Kavanagh QC which summed up our ability to score “own goals”. It went something like this, I can’t remember the exact words;
“The country sits on a bed of coal, is surrounding by sea teeming with fish and what do we do? We close the mines and decommission the trawlers”
Sorry about the typo, should have been surrounded not surrounding.
I yield to no-one in my contempt for pretty much all the administrations that have misgoverned this country in the last 60 years.
However, whoever wrote John Thaw’s lines ignored the fact that most of the mines were highly unprofitable and the fishing industry was destroyed by our friends in the European Uneconomic Union.
THE great criminal act was nothing to with coal. It was to piss away our oil revenues. Today Norway, which was in the same position as us, has one of the world’s biggest investment funds, provided for by oil revenue, which is paying for future pensions. We have nothing except prudent Gordon’s pile of debt and phoney statistics.
Aussie pals, by the way, might ask what is going to be produced by your mineral boom. Your pols are as bad as ours – but you have more per head.
Ouch!!!
John
Hi Drayton, Not to be a cog in the wheel, but I noticed a mistake in the beginning of this post. The bit where you were talking about the granddaughter of the Lion of Judah, you said this:
“One thing she had to do was learn danish, which seemed reasonable to me, and is the only comment I going to make, if obliquely on the subject of immigration here,”
Not sure if you noticed but where it says “and is the only comment I going to make” you missed out the word “am”
Just thought I would point it out for you, as I know how you hate mistakes in grammer.
Although, I did enjoy reading this post. Keep it up!!!