Remember the nazi teenage blondes?

David Farrar posted the pic of these cute young teen racists a while back.

Julian Pistorius has found a series of articles about them, apparently they form a racist folk band called Prussian Blue . Unfortunately there is another band called Prussian Blue, a British folk band which is NOT neo-nazi.

There is an anti-Prussian Blue blog, but unfortunately it is unlikely that these girls will get any serious exposure to thinking more carefully about the world until they leave home. Remember, most of what they get from the non-racist world is hatred and anger, which wont inspire them to think twice about racism.

The racist Prussian Blue allegedly plan a tour to Australia - um, great timing?

Internet regulation for national content?

This man wants the EU to regulate the Internet.

I don’t mean child porn or bomb recipes, I mean regulating it for “cultural content” you know the same sort of rules that Labour and the Greens long argued about for TV, to ensure minimum levels of national content? It seems that with the arrival of hundreds of TV channels, the European Commission finds it harder to justify special rules for broadcast TV -so now it wants rules for all audiovisual media to be consistent.

Under the aegis of harmonisation, and consistency across media, the EC, instead of simply calling for the abolition of such rules, wants to extend them - because, after all, bureaucrats produce nothing.

Martin Selmayr, a European Commission bureaurat said that rules on broadcast TV may apply to the Internet, "This might involve requirements in terms of the catalogue they offer," says the quote from Macworld. A further report says that it may cover material that may “incite racial hatred” or seriously impare the “physical, mental and moral development of minors”. An excuse for more censorship – after all, what is the moral development of minors? What is a minor in the EU, when the age for sexual consent varies between 13 and 17? European bureaurats aren't keen on free speech (although Europeans aren't keen on much censorship, as any visit to an Amsterdam sex shop will demonstrate!).

One thing is for sure, that in cultural terms, the Internet has it all – and the users choose what they want to see. You can read about objectivism, literature, rugby, felching or the rambling of Chairman Mao.

The only place for the law online is to cover actual crimes, such as when intellectual property is stolen, when computers are used to initial force through hacking, and when recordings of victims suffering crimes are produced and distributed (images of child pornography).

It is worth noting that the same bureaurat also advocated taking control of the internet from ICANN to a new UN type intergovernmental bureaucracy – a less efficient more political one. It isn't broke, so don't fix it - if the Internet had been left to bureaucrats it would never have grown and developed, they would have been far too concerned with trying to make sure it didn't do all sorts of things they want to control.

EU agricultural subsidies for the wealthy

The Times from London now has some figures showing the absurdities of agricultural protectionism in Europe. The EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is an abomination and French farmers receive more than British and German farmers combined from this obscenity.

Bono and Bob Geldof would have done better campaigning to abolish the CAP in order to assist the poor of the developing and developed world, than to bleat on about aid.

The Times reports:

131,000 French farmers receive €20,000 or more a year from the EU. 3,200 get more than €100,000 per annum, the biggest beneficiary was a rice farmer who got €866,290 in 2003. How can European taxpayers justify that?

French farmers received €7.38 billion in subsidies in 2003.

The average French farmer receives €16,693 per annum in subsidies – this is more than five times what the average person in the world receives in income.

Prince Albert of Monaco receives around €300,000 a year in subsidies for his farms. The Queen and Prince Charles also get subsidies for their farms.

Rémy Pointereau, a French senator, received €121,000 last year, and Luc Guyau, an ally of President Chirac, received €50,000 in subsidies.

Cees Veerman, the Dutch Agriculture Minister, received €168,000 for farms in France and €22,000 for farms in the Netherlands.

In Denmark, four Cabinet ministers received money from EU farming subsidies in 2004, as did the husband of Mariann Fischer Boel, the EU Farm Commissioner.

70,000 French farmers receive no subsidies from the CAP.

One word for all of them - parasites!

This exposes the utter bullshit of the arguments of poor French farmers that will get kicked off their farms unable to fend for themselves, since 70,000 fend for themselves now (admittedly in a protected market). It also exposes the level of political disinterest there is in some European quarters to end this outrageous waste of money.

3 steps for the EU:

1. Abolish agricultural subsidies;

2. Abolish restrictions on agricultural imports;

3. Abolish tariffs on agricultural imports.

Blair's days start to be numbered?

I’ve already stated before on this blog why I, on balance, like Tony Blair. This was only enhanced by the release of his education white paper, which essentially called for the administration and running of state schools to be transferred to self-governing trusts. These trusts would allow the schools to be responsible for their spending, the curriculum, their property and what staff are paid.

This would be a major step forward in shifting education away from bureaucratic state control and being autonomous – maybe even private (though even New Labour could never countenance such heresy). New Conservative Party leader David Cameron has stated that he will support all of these measures to give more autonomy to schools, and so he should.

However now the left of the British Labour Party has smelt blood. The teachers’ unions oppose these moves, because it will mean they wont be able to lobby for a collective approach to pay and the last thing they want is for schools to be accountable to parents and local communities. After all they are teachers, it isn’t their fault when children fail at school, or if parents think they are poor performers – for some reason teachers’ unions believe they must be immune to the performance pay and accountability measures others have in their professions. Around 100 Labour MPs are reportedly not happy about the proposals – which could put them in jeopardy, unless the Tories back them. However if that happens, then Blair will feel like a lame duck, needing the Opposition to pass his legislation. This plays into the hands of those who want him to resign and pass the banner over the Gordon Brown sooner rather than later.

The reform agenda of the Blair government appears to be waning. The Daily Telegraph (leftwing wits call it the Torygraph) claims Blair is a lameduck PM, which is going a bit far - but it looks like the Labour Party left is starting to come out from under the rocks as it sees a time to get Gordon Brown into number 10. At that point it would have four or so years of stalling reform, moving policy to the left, with the intention of getting a mandate for it at the next UK election which is unlikely to be before 2009 (there was one earlier this year after all!).

It may well be that as Blair loses his ability to implement reforms of education and welfare, that the Conservative Party, revitalised with a young and vibrant leader in David Cameron is in the ascendancy.

Qantas orders 65 Boeing 787s

Qantas has announced it has ordered 65 Boeing 787s for itself and its el cheapo Jetstar subsidiary (which is going to fly low cost international services long haul) with options on another 50. These will replace the 767s which have long provided some of the services to and from New Zealand.

Besides fuel economy etc etc, the most notable thing about 787s is that there will be larger windows and higher humidity levels, so you wont be so dehydrated on long flights. The plane will be largely made of composites, so higher humidity levels will not corrode the fuselage. I'll be happy with larger windows and more humidity, it is not pleasant spending 12 hours in the air and waking up feeling dessicated by the artificial atmosphere.

Air NZ has already ordered 4 787s as the second customer for the plane to replace its 767s on medium distance flights to Pacific destinations, Australia and Asia.

Related to this, Qantas is not buying any aircraft to operate London-Sydney non-stop, partly because neither Airbus nor Boeing could make a plane guaranteed to fly that long non-stop fully-laden, and also because the demand was unlikely to be sufficient (it would have commanded a premium fare).