Tag: great britain

UK/France Chunnel site of organized illegal immigrant… activity? Plot? Campaign?

I wonder how close a British finger was to the Chunnel’s Big Red Button.

France deployed 120 riot police to Calais on Wednesday to bolster security after thousands of migrants tried to enter Britain through the Channel Tunnel in recent days, with the resulting chaos leading to at least one death.

Seriously. I find it difficult to believe that the English* haven’t wired that tunnel with emergency detonators. Or have a bunker-buster handy. Something. It was a minor miracle that they dug the Chunnel in the first place. Continue reading UK/France Chunnel site of organized illegal immigrant… activity? Plot? Campaign?

Tweet of the Day, The British Exit Poll WAS Pretty On The Money, Huh? edition.

Remarkably so, all things considered.

If you made plans based on that exit poll, you would end up feeling vindicated by events.

British Parliamentary elections tonight.

The British general election surprisingly – and a bit unfortunately – doesn’t seem like that big a deal during this particular administration, although I suspect that will change with the next one.  At least, I hope so: England’s been one of our staunchest allies for almost a century.  It’d be a shame if that went away simply because one of our Presidents happened to adopt a poisonous resentment of the British because then maybe Daddy would love him then.

Oh, sorry: did I type that out? My bad. How embarrassing. Continue reading British Parliamentary elections tonight.

UKIP hoping to get first seat with resignation/defection of MP Douglas Carswell..

Come, I will conceal nothing from you: I don’t follow British politics all that much.  But this sounds pretty significant:

Tory Douglas Carswell has defected to UKIP and quit as MP for Clacton, saying he will contest the subsequent by-election for Nigel Farage’s party.

If he wins the support of voters he will be the first elected UK Independence Party MP in the Commons.

More here and here. Typically, when British MPs switch parties they apparently do it without having by-elections, which apparently drives British voters nuts. As it should. Douglas Carswell is either very confident that he can win, or he’s acting on principle. Or, I suppose, both.

Brits now hoping that the head of the LDS isn’t the missionary type OH WAIT.

The more I look at this, the more I think that the British might be risking having a headache on their hands.

…Well, you know what I mean.

The president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been ordered to appear before a British court to defend the Mormon faith against charges that it used false teachings to defraud church members.

The court order is the result of complaints filed by Tom Phillips, a disaffected Mormon living in Portugal, on behalf of two men he says were induced to pay an annual tithing to the Church based on “untrue or misleading” claims. These claims include seven central LDS tenets, such as the belief that the Book of Mormon was translated from ancient gold plates by Joseph Smith and “is the most correct book on earth and is an ancient historical record.”

Continue reading Brits now hoping that the head of the LDS isn’t the missionary type OH WAIT.

Looks like UKIP is having a good election cycle…

…over in the UK. Gaining 76 seats so far in British council elections, and I’m not going to even remotely pretend that I know more than the Wikipedia article on the subject.  I do know that local government in England is as complex as all get-out; that the Conservatives got their butts kicked last night; that Labour clawed back some ground yesterday, while the Liberal Democrats did not; and that this will all have an effect on the next set of British Parliamentary elections.  I also know that, if you want to play in a national legislature, you absolutely have to start winning elections on the local and state/provincial level, first: that’s where you draw from to get your national candidates.  So UKIP is definitely now on the board.

I think.

#rsrh QotD, Election Day Can’t Come Quickly Enough edition.

Walter Russell Mead, on our British cousins:

One of the central dynamics that made Britain great for so long still seems to be working.  Financial and economic crises recur in healthy capitalist economies.  When these crises come, some countries that have only reluctantly embraced a capitalist system (and usually done so poorly and half heartedly), see the crisis as proof that capitalism is a flop, and lurch toward “alternative models” that generally lead to stagnation and the capture of the state by rent-seeking elites spouting empty populist slogans.  Think Argentina.  Think Greece.

Think the Obama administration… sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt.

Britain is one of the countries that historically responds to crises of capitalism by doubling down: seeking reforms that make capitalism work more effectively rather than trying to hobble and block it.

Hmm.  Maybe I did mean to interrupt.

Via Instapundit.

#rsrh Time to re-check the explosive charges in the Chunnel.

Great Britain is looking over with some alarm at the rest of Europe again.  They probably won’t have to, you know, set those charges off any time soon – but, you know.  Be prepared, and all that.

…What?  Yeah, suuuuuuuuure they don’t have any explosive charges there.  After all, they are one big, happy fleet.

“Our fathers, the Britons.”

What?  Oh, I certainly hope that the use of that phrase infuriates the cultural relativists: it’s largely because of them that we’re seeing rioting in Great Britain right now (well, that and the straight-up bigotry of low expectations racism that’s a good deal more prevalent among the Left than the Left perhaps would care to admit, or even acknowledge).  Frankly, I am all about cultural imperialism.  More accurately, I am all about my culture’s cultural imperialism.  It’s nothing personal: we’re just better than everybody else.

But I digress.

Anyway, it’s said that good fences make good neighbors; turns out that good neighbors make one heck of a good fence, too.  Particularly when they’ve just embraced the hot new fad of American-style baseball.  Or just come from their place of work so quickly that they completely forgot to put down their kebab doner knives.  Or whatever creative excuse that the Brits are coming up with to be standing around in groups with a wide variety of hand weapons. Continue reading “Our fathers, the Britons.”

Obama takes Argentina’s side in Falklands dispute.

Ahem. “It’s all because of the oil.”

Ed Morrissey and Fausta are both not getting why the President is taking the side of Argentina (thus sharing a podium with that noted beacon of freedom, tolerance, and capitalism known as Venezuela) in its perennial attempts to get the United Kingdom to give up the Falkland Islands. It’s not just that we’re signed on to the OAS declaration demanding that the British negotiate on the question of giving up territory that doesn’t want to be given up; we’re even endorsing Argentina’s blustering insistence on calling the islands by the prior name.  All in all, this is a fairly significant change: the question is, why?

The answer is in two parts, both of them easy to grasp: first, President Obama doesn’t particularly like the British.  It’s largely a racial thing, alas: the President’s grandfather had personal issues with the British colonial government, and the President has never really forgiven them for it*.  Second, and probably more importantly (for Obama, at least**): Argentina will probably offer the President a better deal for the Falklands’ resources.  And before you say “What, sheep?” …nope.  Oil.  It’s confirmed now that there’s oil there.

See?  Easy to understand: President Obama hates one side, and the other side will be happy to kiss up to to the President in exchange for the opportunity to get a hold of several billion dollars’ worth of oil revenue.  If you have the kind of mind that the President does, it’s practically a no-brainer… which I suppose could also describe my reaction to this, if not in the way that the term is usually used… Continue reading Obama takes Argentina’s side in Falklands dispute.