Maya the cat, bent bananas and other true "lies"
While you were worrying about trivia like the impending collapse of Western Civilization you probably missed the big story of the week: a spat between two British government ministers over a cat named Maya.
Maya belonged to a shoplifting illegal immigrant from Bolivia called Ranzo Avila. In 2008, Avila successfully fought a deportation order on the grounds that separation from Maya might cause him "mental stress".
The cat wasn't the only reason:
The man, now 36, had argued his right to a family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights because he had been with his boyfriend for four years.
But it was an undeniably a factor. The judge had admitted as much in his ruling:
Judge James Devittie said their joint ownership of a pet named Maya reinforced the quality of their family life and suggested that separating them could cause the man emotional trauma.
Yet when Britain's Home Secretary Theresa May brought up the cat story at the Conservative party conference by way of ridiculing the absurdities of the European Human Rights legislation creating such mayhem in the British justice system, she was attacked by her Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke for getting her facts wrong.
“I will have a small bet with her that no one has ever been refused deportation on the grounds of ownership of a cat.
Clarke then got someone from his department to weigh in by confirming:
"The cat had nothing to do with the decision."
This - see evidence above - was simply untrue. So what is a British minister of the crown doing engaging in such transparent falsehoods? Or - let's give Clarke the benefit of the doubt and assume he wasn't deliberately lying - why did he at least not check his facts before laying into a senior colleague from his own political party, the Conservatives?
To understand why you need to appreciate that Kenneth Clarke is about as a much a conservative as Arlen Specter is. In other words, not very. And nowhere is this more evident than in his ongoing infatuation with the European Socialist Superstate.
When a Europhile like Ken Clarke hears his beloved pet ravening monster being attacked, his instinctive response is not to reach for the sword of truth, but for the sword of wishful thinking. So for Clarke it would go almost without saying that Theresa May's story about the cat was wrong, not because it was necessarily untrue, but because it masked the much deeper truth that the EU is a perfect and noble institution which brings only peace and bounty and joy to all those fortunate enough to be its members.
Lenin was a great believer in the noble lie. And so are Europhile politicians and technocrats - which is why the EU has survived so long without breaking up. As its founder Jean Monnet well understood, an institution as anti-democratic, corrupt, expensive and incompetent as the EU could acquire the powers it has today by lying to the sovereign peoples it has subsumed.
Another great example of this was the "bent bananas" myth, which turned out not to be a myth at all as Dan Hannan once explained:
"Bent bananas" became a kind of Europhile recognition code. In the mouths (figuratively) of Euro-enthusiasts "bent bananas" were a short-hand for "every untrue allegation ever levelled by sceptics". Geoffrey Martin, who was for a long time the European Commission's senior representative in the UK, used to publish newsletters in which he rebutted these supposed fantasies, these false creations proceeding from the heat-oppressed brains of bigoted journalists. His collective name for the phenomenon was "bent banana syndrome".
Yet it now turns out that, by the EU's own admission, there were rules specifying the maximum permitted curvature of bananas. Now, Commission Regulation Number 2257/94, which lays down that bananas must be "free from abnormal curvature of the fingers", is to be scrapped.
How confusing it must all be for British Europhiles, trying to keep up with the party line. Having spent the past two decades denying the existence of these regulations, they are now congratulating the EU for having abolished them. The Young European Federalists, whose website yesterday was still pouring scorn on this absurd "Euro-myth" will doubtless be telling us that its repeal only goes to show how responsive Brussels is to public opinion.
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Comments :
Mar '11
Re: Maya the cat, bent bananas and other true "lies"
I have been wondering what the spat was about - nice summary.
It's maybe worth mentioning that both politicians are famous for their footwear - Mr Clarke for his Hush Puppies, and Mrs May for her leopard-skin high heels. I had assumed the dispute was about those, but apparently not.
Dec '10
Re: Maya the cat, bent bananas and other true "lies"
Thank you for the update, James. Today I watched this, which is obviously too long and packed with too much detail for consumption, by most, but I do recommend this for those that have 15 minutes.
Jun '10
Re: Maya the cat, bent bananas and other true "lies"
Thanks for the great link CJ.
Dec '10
Re: Maya the cat, bent bananas and other true "lies"
Leaving aside, first, how The Right Honourable Kenneth Clarke knew the correct name of the cat in dispute in order to give proper instructions to “someone from his department to weigh in”; and, second, how that someone who weighed in could trace the name of the cat to a court case and then assert that the cat therein identified as being a part of the official record had nothing to do with the decision (do all court cases in our mother country include a record of the name of cat(s) that have nothing to do with the decision?)—my question is: Why did he say “the” cat had nothing to do with the decision instead of “a” cat, given the understanding that his referring to “the” cat implies that it most certainly did have a role in the decision whereas, had he referred to “a” cat, his statement would be persuasive enough for anyone with only a passing knowledge of the case to conclude that none had?
“If the government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is big enough to take away everything you have."
Jan '11
Re: Maya the cat, bent bananas and other true "lies"
Thank you Mr Delingpole. Let me place a virtual rose on the virtual coffin for a defunct country, that once was something else
Apr '11
Re: Maya the cat, bent bananas and other true "lies"
Further to my comment to your later post, allow me to note that Specter is, was, and always will be massively more conservative that Ken Clarke. I'm not a big fan of Specter, but he has a mixed record that Clarke can only dream of.
As a separate note, it's worth remembering that Clarke's incentives are clear. I was listening to him being lionized throughout the day by the Beeb, which predictably took the claim as being made by two unimpeachable sources. It's victories like this that Clarke's stature grows fat on.