Nigel Farage: The worst kind of Brit abroad

This piece of mine appears in today's First Post.

Neil Clark: Brussels will be glad to see the back of Nigel Farage if he can beat Bercow in the general election

The British have sent many loud-mouthed yobs to Europe over the years - rampaging football hooligans, drunken stag party revellers - but Nigel Farage, leader of the UKIP MEPs, takes the crown after his performance yesterday.

Already known in Brussels for his brash and abrasive style, Farage launched a scathing personal attack on the new President of the EU Council, Herman van Rompuy, in the European Parliament, one which left MEPs reeling in shock at its sheer nastiness.

"Who are you? I'd never heard of you, nobody in Europe had ever heard of you," Farage proclaimed. He said van Rompuy had the "charisma of a damp rag" and compared him to a "low-grade bank clerk". For good measure he also insulted the EU President's homeland, saying Belgium was "pretty much a non-country".

Farage's attack on the modest and mild-mannered van Rompuy and his equally inoffensive country will only confirm what many in Europe think about the British: that we are a country of arrogant, bullying xenophobes.

Farage, a former commodity broker, represents the worst kind of Brit abroad, a blazered, braying, over-confident public schoolboy, convinced of his own - and his country's - superiority over others.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Good news in the war on terror

….but don’t expect Nick Cohen, Melanie Phillips or Mike Blogger to write about it.

Tehran has said that it had captured the leader of a sectarian terror group with alleged links to Western intelligence services - that says it has killed dozens of Iranian civilians and officials over the past few years.

Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar told a news conference that Abdolmalek Rigi, chief of the Jundallah Sunni islamist group, had been arrested outside the country as he was "preparing for a new act of sabotage."

After his capture, Mr Rigi was brought to Iran.

Iran's intelligence minister Heidar Moslehi claimed that US officials had provided Mr Rigi with an Afghan passport and that he had had contacts with the CIA and Mossad - and had met a Nato military official in Afghanistan in April 2008.
Mr Moslehi said that Iran "reserved the right to sue the US and UK" on the basis that they co-ordinated Mr Rigi's terror attacks in Iran.

Jundallah has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks in Iran.

According to Iranian state media, the group has "carried out mass murder, armed robbery, kidnapping, acts of sabotage and bombings" targeting "civilians and government officials, as well as all ranks of Iran's military."

In the group's latest attack on October 18 last year, more than 40 people - including tribal elders and 15 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards - were killed in a Jundallah attack in Pishin.

In July 2008 respected US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh alleged that US congressional leaders had secretly agreed to former president George W Bush's $400m (£260m) funding request for a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, aimed at destabilising its leadership by "working with opposition groups and passing money."

From: The Morning Star.

Is the Press out of control?

You can watch me debating this issue with Peter Hitchens, Sir Ian Blair, Professor Julian Petley et al on BBC1's The Big Questions, here.
The other debates on the programme, on religion and the police, are pretty lively and worth watching too.

Letter of the Week: Gordon Clack

From the Daily Telegraph.

SIR – If, as is more than likely, Hamas retaliates to the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, will any action by them be described as “terrorism”?
Gordon Clack
Ducklington, Oxfordshire.

Hat tip for brilliant Garland cartoon: Organised Rage.

Lionel Jeffries R.I.P.: 'He seemed to represent a different era'

VIDEO JULIOVERNE2

Well, we lost Ian Carmichael a couple of weeks back, and now, sadly we've lost Lionel Jeffries.

Above you can watch some clips from Don Sharp's wonderfully wacky and very funny 1967 film ‘Jules Verne’s Rocket to the Moon’ in which Jeffries appeared as the Victorian inventor Sir Charles Dillworthy, alongside Terry-Thomas(playing another dastardly cad) and Dennis Price (as the Duke of Barset).

Jeffries was not only an excellent comic actor, but also an accomplised film director, and, by all accounts, an extremely nice person.

“He was wonderful to work with, really a joy", says Jenny Agutter, (who starred in the Jeffries-directed The Railway Children), in today's Sunday Express.
"He created such a family atmosphere on set of The Railway Children and was very funny. People adored him. He was a larger than life character, a sort of Edwardian, and he is vividly in my mind.”
“He treated myself, Sally Thomsett and Gary Warren entirely as children in the most charming way..He would give us pocket money if a shot went well and wait up for Sally and I if we had been out late. He was very caring – just lovely... Lionel will be enormously missed. I suppose what one is mourning is the passing of a particular time. He seemed to represent a different era.”

Just like Ian Carmichael.

Douglas Bader: A Flawed Hero

It's exactly 100 years ago this week since the birth of the great WW2 fighter ace Douglas Bader. Here's my Daily Express piece on a very courageous- but flawed- British hero.

HE was the most famous fighter pilot Britain has known. a man who overcame the loss of both legs to command a Fighter Squadron during the Battle of Britain. Shot down and captured by the Germans, his numerous escape attempts led him to being imprisoned in Colditz Castle.

Douglas Bader, born 100 years ago this week, was a man of extraordinary courage and determination. Yet there was a darker side to this great British war hero. He could be arrogant, selfish and breathtakingly rude. He treated underlings appallingly and was thoroughly disliked by many of his comrades. He was prone to boasting and showing off.

The traditional view is that it was Bader’s accident at the age of 21 that made him into such a tenacious, aggressive and at times difficult man. But as a new book by SP Mackenzie reveals it was Bader’s harsh and unhappy childhood that forged his uncompromising character and instilled in him the iron will with which he was to overcome the enormous challenges he faced in his early life.

Born into a middle-class family on February 21 1910, the young Bader was neglected. when his parents returned to India to work they left baby Douglas behind, farming him out to relatives on the Isle of Man for the first two years of his life. According to a cousin, his mother, who had become ill with measles during childbirth and required a major operation, “hated” her new son and always took the side of his elder brother Derick in any dispute.

Bader’s father, a civil engineer, was “a remote gruff figure” who fought regularly with his wife. shorn of parental affection and subject to intense sibling rivalry Douglas cut a sad and lonely figure.

“The only times he cried,” writes previous biographer Paul Brickhill, “were when his parents and Derick went visiting in the car and left him behind, which they often did.”

After his father died from injuries he had received in the First world war his mother married a Yorkshire clergyman. But the mild-mannered Reverend ernest Hobbs failed to become the sort of father-figure the young Douglas lacked.

Meanwhile sibling rivalries intensified. During one summer holiday Derick shot Bader in the shoulder at close range with an air-gun. Unable to assert himself against his older brother, Bader started to pick fights with other children – a sign of the aggressive nature he would put to good effect when targeting enemy air- craft in the second world war.

At St Edward’s, his public school in Oxford, he failed to shine in the class- room but excelled at almost all sports. Yet here too trouble was never far away. He once was beaten up by an older boy, the future film star Laurence Olivier, after he had bowled him out during a cricket match.

“By the time he was in his final year at school the central elements of his nature were already manifesting themselves: the urge to compete and win, the desire to lead, the need to prove himself, the blustery self-confidence that marked a certain loneliness,” writes Mackenzie.

Bader admitted he had “no idea” about what to do after leaving school but a visit to a former pupil who was now a cadet at the RaF College at Cranwell whetted his appetite for a career in the air. He felt instantly at home in the rough and tumble world of the RAF and showed a natural talent for flying.

Sir Nicholas Winterton: First Class Wally

I’ve long argued that the great divide in British politics is not between Labour or Conservative but between the arrogant and pompous political elite and the rest of us.

Here’s another example of the snobbish attitudes of those who lord it over us.

Tory grandee Sir Nicholas Winterton today claimed that MPs should continue to travel first-class on trains because passengers in standard carriages are 'a totally different type of people'.

In an astonishing outburst, Sir Nicholas said that people travelling on cheaper standard tickets had 'a different outlook on life' and were unlikely to be working or studying during their journey.

The MP's extraordinary comments came after he told Total Politics magazine
said he was ' infuriated' that politicians had to travel with ordinary members of the public.

Sir Nicholas spoke of his outrage that he has to 'stand when there are no seats'.

Sir Nicholas told BBC Radio 5 Live's Stephen Nolan show today: 'If I was in standard class, I would not do work because people would be looking over my shoulder all the time, there would be noise, there would be distraction and, I am sorry, if I am doing work I want to concentrate on that. Why do businesspeople travel first class?'

Asked whether he thought standard-class passengers behaved differently from those with first class tickets, Sir Nicholas replied: 'Yes, I do. They are a totally different type of people.

'There are lots of children, there is noise, there is activity...
'They have a different outlook on life. I very much doubt whether they are undertaking serious work and study, reading reports and amending reports which MPs do when they are travelling.'

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm very pleased that I do have a 'different outlook on life' from the appalling Sir Nicholas.

Sir Nicholas Winterton: First class wally.