Geert Wilders Again...

Further mischief afoot concerning everyone's favourite coiffured collar-and-cuff coordinated Dutch MP, Geert Wilders who the Home Office are ludicrously attempting to keep out of the country.

I shudder to imagine the implications of a wholesale enactment of Lord Ahmed's fatuous idea that:

"It would be unwise to have him in the UK because this man's presence would cause hatred..."

Given my own generous store of loathings, petty dislikes, random annoyances - and in this respect, I flatter myself no better stocked than any of my fellow countrymen or women - we can begin by defenestrating the chubby lord himself, post haste.

Out of curiousity, why should the idea of Geert Wilders be more offensive, or hate provoking, in London than in Leiden? The crassness and casual authoritarianism of Lord Ahmed's remark aside - not to mention the snivelling horror of disagreement that rests inside its belly like a bloated, quivering tapeworm - that the Home Office have seen fit and imagine it appropriate to act in this way is profoundly concerning.

Not, certainly, that I'd want to go berrypicking with the bleached prat. There can be no question of holding his clammy Dutch fin, either. But screw this for a lark. We must return - always, sickly, furiously - to the basic fact that a man's life is being threatened simply for expressing ideas. How squalid, how slouching in the face of this abhorrance some commentators and figures in public life permit themselves to be. Limpid self-abnegators, shruggers. Benders to all horrors. I stress: I don't approve of Geert. Indeed, there is distinctly little distance - strollingly close proximity - between the contention that Dutch culture and Islam are incompatible (conceived of primarily in terms of the text of the Qu'ran) - and the idea that Muslims are rendered culturally incapable of being "truly" Dutch by their Islamic faith.

Head of Legal's analysis, as ever, is worth a read. For anyone interested in some legalistic analysis underpinning public debate who hasn't found Carl Gardner's blog before, it is often well worth a look.