If you have fallen for the myth that David Cameron is shallow, read THIS and you may revise your views. He's spent the last 24 hours in Birmingham. I have rarely read a more thoughtful piece from a politician.
Incidentally, WebCameron is becoming a normal blog as well as a videoblog. David has written three posts in the last six days. It's unrealistics to expect him to write every day but you can see that these are transparently written by him and not by a spin doctor. If he keeps it up he will build up quite an audience . . . bloody hell, he could over take me soon!
41 comments:
Who said this today:
"We're incredibly fortunate, we've got the English language, we've got a successful economy."
Tony Blair? Gordon Brown? Nope, David Cameron as posted on his own site in his interview with CitizenSteve.
I bet Labour will be saving that quote.
24 hours away from Notting Hill, eh? Sorry, I still think he's shallow.
Does anyone know who writes this for him?
"I have rarely read a more thoughtful piece from a politician."
OK, tell me why you think so, Iain. I have read the piece and it seems to be basic stuff which I could have told you.
Of course, a night in Brum with the Abdullahs is a worthwhile 24 hours for Dave, but I don't see that he's done anything more than familiarise himself with working class life.
You seem to think it is in some way revelatory - why?
Clearly you're fogetting Statecraft by Mrs Thatcher, one of the best books on politics and world affairs that I have ever read. It was highly influential in converting me to the Conservative way of thinking...
I have read or heard nothing from Cameron yet that begins to come close to the insight and widsom of even the most trivial observation or comment made by Thatcher in that book.
Webcameron rocks!
David Cameron is doing a great job. He has worked his way up the party ladder (not by being a rebel) to the position where he can now make the Tory Party more inclusive. Good on him.
Dave, the naive Etonian, never fails to amaze me as the extent of his utter ignorance. He says:
"When they hear and see this kind of language, Muslims simply think – “they mean us.” Of course it’s impossible every single time to say “terrorists who are following a perverted strain of the true religion of Islam” but if we’re going to use shorthand we have got to do better."
Perhaps little Davey might actually go and try reading the Koran and what it says about non-believers like him, and us (the Britons, those awful people who Dave wishes would just go away). He clearly is a very silly and ignorant man. Why vote for him, as we can have Gordon Brown ?
DC is doing what he should be doing as leader of the opposition.
One of your dimmer anymongs wonders who writes it for him, as if it mattered. The key issue is: he wanted it written.
DC is doing a good job of re-branding his party, and not allowing himself to be barbed into making statements about 'policy'.
But does DC surround himself with a strong and able team? Possibly a stronger area for his critics?
Iain - In the light of the last paragraph will you be reopening yesterdays caption competition?
LOL
Mrs Thatcher had hidden depths. DC has hidden shallows. The further you wade in the shallower the water gets. For God's sake acknowledge that the man is a complete and utter disaster and we need to get rid of him to the LibDems and install a proper leader like Davis instead.
60m essentially native Brits (yes, I'm including the Vikings, the Normans and the Jews, for the nitpickers) in Britain and around 2.5m "Asians" (code for Pakistanis, not Chinese or Malays) and Dave - but of course! - goes and stays with an "Asian" family. Dear God, could anything have been more predictable?
Stephen Tolkinghorne - You took the words right off my keyboard. Dave needs to educate himself on Islam instead of rabbiting away in ignorant platitudes. Dave's either dangerously ignorant or he's an appeaser. Either way, no thanks.
BTW - does Dave of the all-women shortlists know that women are not allowed to pray in mosques?
You could perhaps set up a joint blog and overtake Guido.
lord, Iain.
Aren't you a little embarrassed that this stuff is new to Cameron.
Its part Eton,part Gump
Iain,
I've looked at David's post and the future seems suddenly brighter. I hope he has the strength and character to see his ideas through.
Daily Referendum - What ideas?
Anon says "For God's sake acknowledge that the man is a complete and utter disaster and we need to get rid of him to the LibDems and install a proper leader like Davis instead."
I guess you would like the Tory Party to remain in opposition forever then?
Reminder: Cameron beat Davis by 134,446 votes to 64,398 in a postal ballot of Tory members across the UK.
Must mean something? The public don't want the Tory party of old. They want a new modern party which is what DC is giving them.
His blog was very good, very human, very real, not afraid to have an opinion.
Some of the people here won't be happy until he's gone, whatever he does, they've made up their minds.
And they pretend to be Tories, for some reason.
Sorry but it seemed classic, sub-blairite shallow nonsense. "Look at me I stay with Asian people", "Hey Islam is the religion of peace guys!"
Read Jihadwatch for a month or so and get back to me...
Cameron impresses me when he sticks to speaking about smaller state, personal responsibility and more liberty themes. The green waffle and this "multiculturalisms great with no negative effects whatsoever" claptrap turns my stomach...
If Gert Wilders was British I would vote for him in a second - search for his translated personal manifesto from a while back...
And I love the "it's just as much our fault" meme:
"....it won’t happen unless there’s something attractive to integrate into. Time after time I heard people here talking about the uncivilised behaviour and values that they see all around them"
Attractive compared to what? - some god - forsaken village in the corner of Pakistan where their fathers came from? They can always try that & see which they prefer
Anon says: "Attractive compared to what? - some god - forsaken village in the corner of Pakistan where their fathers came from? They can always try that & see which they prefer"
There is no room in the modern Conservative Party for xenophobia and racism. You'll just have to accept that times have changed.
Northern Monkey - You got it! Read Jihadwatch and Dhimmiwatch for a week, Dave.
Read Fjordman,Dave. He writes very long, very complex pieces, so they may be a bit difficult for a busy PR man to concentrate on, but at least the background would save you from making foolish, naive schoolboy statements.
I too would vote for Gert Wilders in a NY minute. Also Danish prime minister Anders Fogh!
Canvas, if you think this garbage is going to impress Tory voters, I think you are going to be amazed.
Dave of positive discrimination fame: islamic women aren't allowed to pray in mosques. How do you, the proud promoter of all-women short-lists, respond to that?
I haven't watched it nor will I
I switch off whenever he comes on television same with Blair, same media course gestures same bollocks
I Don't give a fuck if Labour beat the conservative party, there is no diference
same policies presented by the same arseholes.
A lavatory with two huge turds in it Which one do I prefer?
Neither they are both turds.
2 points
1. Nomenclature: IRA or Islamist Terrorists -
MI5 said they were tracking 2000 different conspiracies - do they relate to the same umbrella organisation - if so , what's it called (dont say al Quaeda, please)? otherwise we're talking 2000 Islamist Terrorist plots.
2. Righteous indignation at government for allowing Preachers of Hate in from everywhere (but Pakistan). But putative terrorists appear to be going to Pakistan for indoctrination and training.
Why not ban all foreign preachers from coming here? or are we all just as limp-wristed as Dave?
History is not not written by the limp-wristed - they disappear down the memory hole.
Wow, really, a whole 24 i nhours i nbirmginham, how brave, gosh, what a hero, I can barely beleive it, he's the man for me, a real shining light. How can a man who goes to Birmingham and brags about it be descibed as vain ?
... And stays with an "Asian" (codeword: Pakistani) family! Let us ask why Dave is using the codeword.
Why doesn't he say "Pakistani"?
Surely he learned at Eton that Asia is vast. Vaster than Europe? Does he think there is something shameful in the word "Pakistani"? If so, what?
Pakistanis aren't Chinese (1.5bn people), Japanese, Korean, Thai, Indonesian, Papua New Guinean, Kampuchean, Vietnamese, Malay, Sri Lankan, Filipino, Nepalese, Myanmar (ex-Burmese), Indian (1.2bn people) ... all these people are Asian with their own identifiable cultures and unique histories. Surely if Dave had stayed with families from any one of the hugely diverse cultures I've listed above, he would have named them?
Why are the Pakistanis the only ones camouflaged as "Asian", Dave?
Jes' askin' is awl.
Is it not Iain a great and wonderfull fact that almost none of your readership will thankfully ever be in a possition of power in government.
They seem most of them to have completely no understanding of what it is like to have to win the hearts and minds and most of all the votes of ordinary people.
I did not vote for Cameron because I did not know anything about the man. However the more I know of him the more impressed I get.
He is smarter then the average Conservative politician and far smarter then your average reader.
Some of these people should try to talk on the doorstep to people they have never known before. It may wize some of them up a bit.
Even life time Labour voters are sick to death of this government. But trying to get them or anyone else to vote Conservative for very often the first time ever is very hard work indeed.
No wonder MPs think they can walk on water once they get elected. The process for Tories in particular tends to sort out the men from the boys very quickly.
Boy Cameron becomes more of a man every day.
Please note verity and many others
Floating voters, (that is people politically interested enough to get off their fat ass and vote at elections, that dont have their flag glued to one party for life, just like a West Ham football fans for example )get much if not all of their political imformation from the MSM and in particular the BBC.
This organisation may be in terminal decline but it is still very very very influential in the minds of the undesided.
It simply is not possible to win elections in Britain with the BBC slagging your leader and party off as much as they possible can get away with all day and night.
Cameron is succeeding in countering this long term indemic BBCs bias simply by BEING SMART, staying cheerfull and not saying anything that the BBC would be very glad to hang him with.
Why please tell me are you ex or current Tory voters so quick to condem what is not even in power yet?
Does 'mouthing off' turn you lot on more then saving this country from this socialist nightmare of ours?
If so its no wonder Cameron pays so little attention to you. He would in fact be as mad as you lot if he did.
Hmm.. The depth of cynicism here is staggering. I thought it was a sensible post on Webcameron.
It did illustrate that Cameron rather than spending the last couple of days carping at the sidelines of Blair's great de-launch party he has just got on with doing something worthwhile instead.
It illustrated that he appreciates that if you treat a minority with disrespect you just create a breeding ground for fundamentalism.
It is good for our country that our potential future prime minister is thinking this way.
The point he made about the disaster that would have been caused had the IRA been described as 'Catholic Terrorists' was a central point.
Imagine the scale of it if all the catholics of northern ireland had been radicalised by being accused of 'collective crimes' of the IRA simply by indescriminate labelling.
Its a major point. You don't defeat terrorism by calling a much bigger group of people terrorists - you just help escalate it. The indignance that the wider group feels just makes it easier for them to beleive that they are at war with their accusers.
You defeat terrorism by isolating the real threat, by empathasing with the terrorists target group and by illustrating that you are their friend not their enemy.
DC's post illustrated to me that he understands that - great news for all of us. So cast aside your cynicism for a moment please.
Good post from DC. A successful politician needs energy and imagination and Cameron has them in bucketfuls.
He also needs support from so-called Tories. Verity, you are so relentlessly negative about DC that people switch off, as they do with Simon Heffer and Amanda Platell.
To be absolutely fair to the boy Dave, not many people would willingly spend 24 hours in Birmingham. He can therefore claim a degree of bravery. Plus, he wasn't stabbed while there so he may also claim good fortune.
If Gary Powell et al think that staying with an "Asian" (Pakistani,not Chinese or Thai) family is going to warm the hearts of the British working and aspirational classes, they are wrong.
Immigration is a huge issue. To appear to endorse it and approve of it and admire it is not going to win a single vote for the Tories and will turn floaters away. This was a stupid move.
Twizzly Dave thinks he is being clever and "inclusive" but he has got it barse-ackwards. Say there are far too many immigrants in our tiny country and the British will be queuing up to vote for you.
Dave,if you are reading this, these wonderful "extended families" that so impressed you are made up of incestuous marriages and the children from those marriages have a vastly disproportionate number of birth defects that get treated on the NHS, clogging up the works.
Some Pakistanis may be virtuous and acclimated and pick and choose which aspects of their religion to follow, but that religion itself demands that every last "infidel" (read normal person) be either converted or killed. Or, in some special instances,allowed to live, but have to pay a special annual tax on their lives, the jizyah. And will be required to be submissive to islam, meaning if you are in a queue and a muslim joins the queue, s/he goes straight to the front. Etc.
Dave doesn't know he's born, and neither do all the silly, uninformed people who praised this ad.
The Hitch - agreed. I don't care whether the Tories win or not because there is no difference. Like The Mail's Peter Hitchens, I would like to see the Tory party die, and reform as a stronger, more realistic entity with a new name. In that sense we should be grateful to Dave, because he is ringing its death knell.
I am wondering what Mr. Cameron said in response to the slurs uttered about 9/11. Did he denounce them on the spot as hateful propaganda? And, if he did, what were the responses?
Good to see that Dave is getting out more and I hope he puts what he has seen into practice and does not carry on his practice of trying to be all things to all men - as the comments here show this will not be possible.
The Moslem extremists are a real problem that needs to be addressed - but this will only happen by enaging with the vast majority of decent Moslems. There is a honest debate to be had about integration/multi-culturalism - and most sensible people probably accept that the balance needs correcting. But Cameron does really need to stamp on those in his party who are trying to use this debate as what amounts to an outright attack on British Moslems (perhaps Dave should have asked them what their reaction is to members of his party who attack multi-culturalism - or even those in the Labour Party who do the same thing for that matter).
Verity is again wrong - women are allowed to pray in nearly all mosques ( in separate areas from men - so hardly enlighted, but other religions including Christianity (in the not too distant past) have adopted the same practice, and there are Moslems who are arguing for a change in this practice) - and Asian is also used to mean other countries from the sub-contintent. Pakistani is not used much as bigots abbreviated it into a swear word in the past - and actually a lot of the people concerned would prefer to be called British - which is fair enough because that is what they now are. As for what the Koran says or doesn't say it is open to multifarious interpretations just like the Bible so in a similar fashion nutters of any or no religion can usually interpret to say what they want.
Tory Boys - The koran is open to interpretations in some passages. Others are crystal clear. And this is one of them: You were born a muslim and the entire world has to submit to islam, either willingly or at the point of a sword.
There are some mosques which allow women in to pray, but it is very much discouraged. Women are encouraged to pray at home, where they belong. The majority of mosques do not allow women in to pray.
Forty-two percent of "British" muslims want shariah law in Britain. That 42% comprises the ones who didn't think quickly enough to check the Don't Know box.
The craven use of the code word "Asian": Tory Boys writes a baffling sentence: " Pakistani is not used much as bigots abbreviated it into a swear word in the past...". "Paki" is a swear word? Are you insane? It may be meant used with derision, but it is no more a "swear word" than Brit, or Yank, or Saudi or Froggie or Kraut. It's a nickname, you politically correct thought fascist!
Tory Boys digs deeper still: "Asian is also used to mean other countries from the sub-contintent." Meaning, I suppose, India (although we tend to call natives of India Indians), Bangladeshis, Nepalese, Bhutanese and Sri Lankans.
Have the cartographers been informed that Asia has become so sadly attenuated? How do you style where the following individuals hail from? 1.2bn Chinese? And the Japanese? And the North and South Korea? Mongolia? Indonesia? The Philippines? Kampuchea? Viet Nam? Thailand? Myanmar? Singapore? Malaysia? Laos? (I did this off the top of my head and may have left some out.)
I believe, Tory Boys, since time immemorial, this vast swathe of the planet has been known as Asia.
And Tory Boys says, with regard to muslim women being forced to pray isolated from men: " but other religions including Christianity (in the not too distant past) have adopted the same practice".
They did? References, please? I have never heard of such a thing!
That was me. I typed the word verification in the wrong box. (But it worked!)
I understand perfectly well where Asia is - the sub continent must have been sub to something. All I was saying was how that terminolgy is used in the UK - and I don't have a problem with it. If Cameron had used Pakistani he would have been wrong on two grounds - fact (they are probably British) and politeness (they probably do not like being called Pakistani or even worse Pakis) and we have a long tradition here of not being rude to our hosts. So what is the opposite of politically correct - politicaly incorrect or perhaps more bluntly rude - which I suspect sums up your position pretty well.
Re you views on Islam can I suggest you read wider or heaven forbid speak to a Moslem - most Mosques allow women in to pray in segregated areas and there have been plenty of Moslems who tolerate non believers and felt comfortable with their own religion. The practice of segregated worship is still fairly common in Judaism - and was practised in the Shaker church (who also advocated celibacy) and some orthodx churches in the past - and even now you can see women only chapels in some cathedrals.
Tory Boys - You're talking out the top of your head.
Christianity - that is, the broad formal Christian church, not some weird tiny American sect - has never, never, never had segregated worship. And as to your phrase "but other religions including Christianity (in the not too distant past) have adopted the same practice", it is ignorant bullshit. Never happened.
As to: "most Mosques allow women in to pray in segregated areas" ... most mosques where?
"there have been plenty of Moslems who tolerate non believers"... believe me, my eyes are watering with gratitude, especially in my own country. BTW, what do you mean "there have been ...". You mean there aren't any now? I know several, so you are wrong about that.
Why do you capitalise 'mosques", by the way? It's not a proper noun.
Now read this carefully: I want you to tell me in which cathedrals there are 'women only' chapels. Just name one.
I think I know a great deal more about islam than you know about Christianity. Perhaps you're the one who should be informing yourself, given that you are living in the Christian West.
I'm still waiting for Tory Boys to give the name of a single cathedral or church in which women did not worship in the same congregation as men. I want one name of one cathedral, church or minster that had a separate section segregated for women to pray in.
This is mind-boggling rubbish. I have never even heard such a daft suggestion, based on utter ignorance of Christianity, in my life.
http://www.leafpile.com/TravelLog/Romania/Ceremonies/Church%20Service/Service.htm
Look here for starters - segregation was common in the Orthodox church - and is still practised in some places. It is still quite common to put men and women on different sides of the church (right and left respectively from memory)- and married women are not allowed near the altar (this is something I have seen at a christening)
The cathedral I saw with a women only chapel was in Suzdal in Russia - but I also have a vague memory of seeing something similar in France (but I cannot remember which one having been in quite a lot of French cathedrals)
You might also want to look up Mount Athos - a whole religous republic within Greece where women are not allowed - and which was granted special status within the EU.
I suppose Verity will want to tell us that the Orthodox church is a minority sect - or is of no importance etc. etc.
As for you orignial blanket statement that women are not allowed to pray in mosques - on which you have back pedalled to a majority.
I was told by a Moslem, who is certainly better informed than Verity on these matters that most mosques do allow womem to pray in separate rooms or segregated areas. The wikipedia entry on Mosques would appear to support what my friend says.
You also appear to be ignoring the segregation that takes place in Judaism (you asked for other religions in the first place)
For the record I am not a Moslem - I'm agnostic who admires church architecture and hates bigotry in any form, and I certainly would not be in favour of segregation - but I can tolerate others beliefs.
And yes I am talking out of the top of my head - that is where my brain is. As for capitals and tenses - typos only nothing sinister- difficult to review such a small box - especially when I have to look at the keyboard.
Quite frankly - its pretty clear to me that Verity is the one making broad brush statements which are largely supported by prejudice rather than facts - but happy to let any neutral readers decide. My advice is to stick to glib putdowns in the future and avoid any facts.
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