The Quarterly Review

Coventry – saga of an English city

My latest topographical article, on the city of Coventry

http://www.alternativeright.com/main/the-magazine/coventry%E2%80%94pictures-from-the-past-and-present/

Derek Turner, 29 July 2011

Norway – the terrible limitations of words

What can be said about these terrible attacks that has not already been said and will not be said again a hundred thousand times for years and years to come? Evil – vile – vicious – despicable – unforgivable – horrifying  – hateful – shocking…whole dictionaries and thesauruses worth of deserved obloquy and odium.

Moments like this reveal the terrible limitations of words, and the Berserker darkness that lurks in all kinds of unexpected places.

No political or religious viewpoint could ever, ever justify such atrocious acts.

Derek Turner, 22 July 2011

More PC persecution

Buried deep in the First Report of the Independent Review of Teachers’ Standards, presented to The Secretary of State for Education on 14th July, are some seemingly innocuous recommendations under the heading of “Personal and Professional Conduct”.

They are “showing tolerance of and respect for the rights of others”, and “not undermining fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect, and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs”.

Free speech is a notable absentee in this list. And as Rod Liddle pointed out in the Sunday Times on 17th July (“A strict teacher is not an extremist”) after receiving this report Michael Gove gave head teachers new powers to sack members of staff with “extremist” beliefs. “This {Liddle correctly inferred}…means supporters of the BNP…”

Whatever you may think of the BNP, it is a legitimate political party and is treated as such by members of the police involved in counter terrorism, as I was told from the horse’s mouth at a recent launch of Matthew J. Goodwin’s New British Fascism: Rise of the British National Party.

Here an analogy may be helpful. If we invite terrorists (as in Northern Ireland) to eschew terror and they comply we don’t still call them terrorists. As Goodwin demonstrates, when Nick Griffin assumed the leadership of the BNP he instigated a modernisation strategy and to this end has renounced violent and confrontational methods of agitation along with the party’s admittedly anti-democratic heritage.

When will the members of our benighted political class finally learn that draconian and partisan policies intended to drive the ultra-right out of public life are incompatible with a free society?

Leslie Jones, 18 July 2011

Ancient light in the city that never sleeps

Even in New York, solar alignments make the millennia fall away

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14150550

Derek Turner, 13 July 2011

Eddukation cutz

The teaching unions like to pontificate about budget cuts, racism, sexism and Fair Trade but are often oddly quiescent on less glamorous things that might actually help their members and schoolchidren, like class discipline or  stories like this

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14130854

No doubt the NUT’s ghastly and grossly overpaid Christine Blower will be shocked into action…

Derek Turner, 13 July 2011

Boors and bears

This kind of boorish and stupid stunt gives “rightwingers” a bad name. It is understandable that one would want to annoy Greens, but this goes much too far. Too many self-described conservatives appear actually to dislike or fear nature.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/03/bear-banquet-italy-dolomites

Derek Turner, 3 July 2011

Hakluyt – English epic

My latest article now on line at Manner of Man Magazine. It’s about the fantastic and now too little read Elizabethan classic Hakluyt’s Voyages. This article also appeared in the Spring 2011 issue of the QR – http://mannerofman.com/ Derek Turner, 1 July 2011

Hari kari

In yesterday’s Independent, prize winning journalist Johann Hari admitted that he had inserted earlier texts into ‘interviews’ without indicating their origin (“My journalism is at the centre of a storm. This is what I have learned”, Wednesday 29 June). He defended this blatant violation of the rules by arguing that it improved the clarity of the product. In other words, the end (communication) justifies the means (a type of plagiarism).

The editor of the Independent Simon Kelner provided an equally feeble defence of his beleaguered colleague’s irregular activities, to wit, that hitherto none of the interviewees had complained!

Guardian columnist Deborah Orr on Newsnight suggested that the problem was that Hari had hit the heights of his profession too quickly and had been forced to learn on the job. But veteran Daily Mail journalist Ann Leslie, on the same programme, was characteristically scathing about these half-hearted attempts to exculpate Hari, who predictably only owned up when caught out.

One person who may currently be feeling a generous measure of schadenfreude is Richard Littlejohn, whom Hari famously carved up on Sky News over the issue of welfare payments to asylum seekers. Sometimes being sanctimonious is bad karma.

We were reminded of the New York Times journalist Jayson Blair, allegedly a beneficiary of affirmative action. He used to send plagiarised copy from ostensibly exotic locations which invariably turned out to be his own home. He subsequently blamed his transgressions on institutional racism. Then there was the (fictitious) character in The Wire called Scott (“more with less”) Templeton, an unscrupulous and ambitious reporter on the Baltimore Sun. He too falsified stories but won a Pulitzer Prize for his reportage on the homeless.

Leslie Jones, 30 June 2011

The Columbine Pilgrim – Andy Nowicki’s new novel

Here’s my review of Andy Nowicki’s excellent new novel, which is in the July issue of the New English Review

http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/91749/sec_id/91749

Derek Turner 30 June 2011

The Human Rights Act – the gift that keeps on giving

Good old Tony Blair, who incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law with the 1998 Human Rights Act – although he modestly declined to take any of the credit in his tragi-comic memoirs. If it hadn”t been for his far-sighted approach, we would be denied the companionship of serious criminals like the ones mentioned in this article in today’s Independent.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/undesirables-cannot-be-deported-2303879.html

I love the sub-editor’s inverted commas around “Undesirables” in the headline, as if there were some question about it.

Perhaps these much-misunderstood gentlemen should visit Mr Blair (ideally late at night) to express their thanks in person. Derek Turner, 27 June 2011