The beginning of the end of political correctness?

Yesterday we had good news on the free speech front. Then, via Edward Michael George, came good news about a counter-revolution against political correctness. Newly elected Mayor of Doncaster, UK, Peter Davies, has begun some seriously un-PC cutting:

...First he cut his own salary from £73,000 to £30,000

... the "diversity" portfolio has been abolished from the council’s cabinet.... no more funding will be given to the town’s "Gay Pride" event... Black History Month, International Women’s Day and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History Month are similarly destined to become history.

... 'Going on about diversity causes racial tension, it doesn't improve it,' he says... I want every citizen of Doncaster to be equal.'

... He has written to the Electoral Commission asking them to scrap two-thirds of Doncaster's 63 council seats in order to save the town £800,000 a year. 'If Pittsburgh can manage with nine councillors, why do we need 63?' he asks.

... Deeply sceptical of 'green claptrap', he must be the only mayor in Britain who wants more traffic in his town. He says it will boost business ... on climate change: 'I'm not green and I'm not conned by global warming.'

... wants to cut all 'non-jobs' in his 13,500 workforce - such as platinum-pensioned 'community cohesion officers' - and aims to shrivel future pay deals for council executives.

Much as he likes his chief executive, Paul Hart, he says his £175,000 salary is 'a joke' and that any successor can expect half.

... he is in the process of 'de-twinning' Doncaster from its five twin towns around the world. Twinning, he says, is all about free holidays for councillors and their staff.

Says Telegraph columnist Gerald Warner: "If it is good enough for Doncaster, it is good enough for Britain. Our effete, corrupt, politically correct politicians must be compelled to follow suit. "

And if it’s good enough for Britain, it’s good enough for Canada!

More power to Peter Davies - may a lot more like him and his voters rise up everywhere!

As EMG's post title says it: Viva la contrarevoluciòn!

Green on the outside, red on the inside

James Delingpole wrote an article on his much greater concern for the real threat of power cuts over hypothetical ‘climate change’. It drew lots of good comments including this particularly astute one from Amanda [Sep 1st, 2009 at 4:15 pm]:

I don’t think I could cut my carbon footprint — goofy phrase, really, and is already a substitute for thinking among the ecos — by 10% without ceasing to live like a human being. I don’t live that high or that well.

Delingpole is absolutely right. Willingly throwing away our standard of living will be just Part 19 in the saga of how the West was lost; the earth will continue to turn as we fall on our own swords. For politicians or anarchists or celebrities (nice company) to suggest that we go down that road is not just absurd, it’s obscene.

One further point: the public has been bamboozled into thinking that the debate is all about being kind to animals and plants and having good air to breathe. It isn’t. At the core of polemics about climate change is the ferocious drive to beat down capitalism, and, I think you’ll find, what we fondly call democracy, in favour of statism and top-down social control (i.e. Leftists know best; the rest must shut up and do as they say). In short, climate campaigners are, as the saying is, like watermelons: green on the outside, red on the inside. We need to confront this fact before we do anything.

[via EMG who has a great Gortoon, "The science settles"]

“Feelings” - Theme song of the left

Many, if not most, leftists in the pursuit of power no doubt fall for their own emotive tripe. But whether they do or not it’s safe to say that they rely heavily on emotional themes in their appeals for public support.

Barack Obama wants his Supreme Court Justices to be empathetic, to be sensitive to peoples’ "stories" (especially their own), in deciding cases.

Leftist utopian egalitarianism is promoted with the rhetoric of "social justice", victimhood and grievance.

And most recently Mayor David Miller and his supporters have taken to calling for voting rights for Toronto’s immigrant non-citizens. Edward Michael George is on to them (Miller et al), in spades:)

Listen to the fucking language coming out of these idiots' mouths:....

... while I have no doubt that all of this is just so much cynical political maneuvering, I know too that somewhere in the back of these twits' minds there's this semi-formed notion that Toronto's "non-citizens" consist of a bunch of undernourished but impishly delightful pickpockets and chimney-sweeps clutching empty porridge bowls and singing in chorus "It's clear / we're / going to get along!" if only we'd listen....

... why is Janet Davis talking about going "to the heart of ensuring social inclusion" rather than just "ensuring social inclusion"? And why is David Miller stressing the fact that his mother was "single" in addition to being an "immigrant"? ...

Because they know that no matter how much question-begging puke about feelings they fling at us, we'll lap it up like dogs.

Indeed. And on the same subject today Rudyard Griffiths agrees that Miller is an idiot:

Toronto Mayor David Miller revived one of his favourite hobbyhorses, voting rights for non-citizens, and promptly provoked yet another conflict with his city's voters. ... Voting rights for non-citizens isn't simply a dumb idea -- it is downright pernicious.

But before hyperventilating about a crisis of democratic under-representation among immigrants, the Mayor should take a deep breath and remember ...

... Canada already has some of the least demanding citizenship laws of any advanced country.

... By removing municipal voting from the paltry bundle of rights that accrue to full citizens, Mayor Miller, and his progressive allies, risk exacerbating the very social divisions that their reforms are designed to heal.

... Worse still, a surging permanent resident population that could not vote in federal or provincial elections would introduce an ugly racial divide into our politics...

And on a closing note (with apologies to Morris Albert):

Feelings, for all my life I'll feel it.

... Feelings, wo-o-o feelings,

Feelings ...

(repeat)