You can't even feel sorry for saps like these. You've got some self-righteous pinhead who actually believes you can exist without money, and he sets off with two other dopes to walk 9000 miles from Britain to India without having to pay for anything along his way.

So the freeloader manages to get about 250 miles into the trek before abandoning the walk once he realizes the French in Calais aren't down with the cause.

Poor thing.

Ardent and idealistic, he calls himself a "community pilgrim".

But when Mark Boyle set out on a mission to show he could survive on peace and love instead cash, he was a pilgrim who didn't make much progress ... thanks to the tightwad French.

The aim of the firebrand anti-captialist was to walk 9,000 miles from Britain to India totally penniless, relying on the generosity of human beings in pursuit of his dream of a money-free global economy.

"Most of the problems in the world such as greed, fear and insecurity, manifest themselves in money," he declared.

"So I'm going out and instead putting my trust in the universe."

Just stop and soak that in for a bit. Some socialist schmuck thinks we can live without money.

Now he's stunned to find out he's a laughingstock.

However, just 250 miles later, when he got to Calais and asked the French if they shared his Utopian vision, the answer was a resounding 'Non'.

Instead, they accused him of being a "freeloading backpacker" and refused to help him and his two companions.

Eventually - cold, tired, bedraggled and hungry - they decided to call off the pilgrimage, less than a month into the planned two-and-a-half year trek.

To add insult to injury, the three were forced to use the hard currency they hate so that they could get back to the UK.

Naturally, this tool has a blog. I wonder how he managed to purchase his computer?

Writing on his blog, 28-year-old Mr Boyle, a member of the Freeconomy movement - which encourages barter instead of money - said of their French experience: "Not only did no one speak the language, they also see us as just a bunch of freeloading backpackers, which is the complete opposite of what the pilgrimage is really about."

That really scared us, and given that we now were pretty much out of food, hadn't slept in days and were really cold, we had to reassess the situation.

"We spoke to a few people who were willing to talk and they said that France would not go for this unless we could speak fluent French, which none of us could.

"The advice was to make a beeline for Belgium, as folk said they would be more likely to want to speak English.'

But the nearest big Belgian town was Bruges, 105 miles away.

"All we had was three tins of soup, a bag of trail mix and a chocolate bar to sustain us. As it was unlikely that we would get a chance to help or be helped by French people in the journey getting there, the task looked daunting to say the least.

"Deflated, we sat down and thought about what on Earth we were going to do - head off on the three-day hike to Bruges with practically no food and hope the situation there got better, or to call it all off."

How about wearing a sign saying you'll lecture people for food?

Mr Boyle, the former boss of an organic food company, left his job in July to concentrate on the Freeconomy movement and he and his companions set off on the India trip from Bristol on January 30.

Now they're three jobless nitwits who are going to have a tough time getting by.

Without money.

Read the comments after the story. You'll have tears in your eyes.

Times Online also has an item on this moron. A reader comment:

Where do people like Mr Boyle get these mind-bogglingly moronic ideas?

Money is at its root a simple-to-understand and universally acceptable enabler of interchange among people; indeed, money liberates people all over the world to be able to live creatively, invent, and accomplish, instead of wasting the better part of their lives haggling, bartering, and laboriously carting around heavy goods on their backs.

This soft-head wants to project his own personal anxieties about "insecurity" and "fear" on all the rest of us, and in so doing, foist upon us a world in which any remaining smidgen of efficiency in both local and international trade is obliterated. Somebody please re-train this poor fellow and move him past the Pleistocene Age.

Also at JWF. 

If you're interested in the topic of black and white in America and love good writing, go read this gem at The New England Republican.  Here's a small taste, then go read the whole thing, agree or disagree, it will be well worth your time. Hotspur is a wicked good writer.

"Like the earthiness attributed to truckers, the wildness attributed to Scotsmen, the eye-sparkle, melancholy and quick ironies attributed to the Irish…all the crap and flummery that Americans grope for as description and justification for differences ends up in stereotype and excuses.  This is one of the first and most poisonous effects of multiculturalism; it “celebrates” distinctions because they exist, and has no moral mechanism to evaluate  destructive and retrograde behavior.   For this reason, we Americans are unable to even discuss  the cultural divide and achievement gaps between white and black America. 

All of us, black and white, have known for thirty years that something racial has gone seriously wrong in this country.  Conservatives have, for years, been inviting a discussion of it, but the identity politics of the Democratic Party have bowdlerized the subject from its own liturgies, and condemned the heretics outside the party for questioning its racial orthodoxy.  Curiously enough, the vapid and opportunistic Barack Obama has changed all this, and not by design. "

Here's an interesting one for you - and I thank Frank O'Dwyer for bringing it up as an issue today.

Turkey is preparing to publish a document that represents a revolutionary reinterpretation of Islam - and a controversial and radical modernisation of the "religion". The country's powerful Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a team of theologians at Ankara University to carry out a fundamental revision of the Hadith, the second most sacred text in Islam after the Koran. Is this a sign of progress - of a new Islam. Or is it secularist Turkey trying its best to stop the relentless advance of "traditional" murderous Islam? I found this quite an interesting analysis on the issue and my instinct is to wish the Turks well.... what do you all think about it?

Larry Craig has a few good openings available this summer.

(Reason # 271 why the Republicans are in the hole.)

One of my favourite US writers is a guy called George Will and I was impressed by this tribute he paid to the late William F Buckley.....

"Those who think Jack Nicholsons' neon smile is the last word in smiles never saw William F. Buckley's. It could light up an auditorium; it did light up half a century of elegant advocacy that made him an engaging public intellectual and the 20th century's most consequential journalist.

Before there could be Ronald Reagan's presidency, there had to be Barry Goldwater's candidacy. It made conservatism confident and placed the Republican Party in the hands of its adherents.  Before there could be Goldwater's insurgency, there had to be National Review Magazine. From the creative clutter of its Manhattan offices flowed the ideological electricity that powered the transformation of American conservatism from a mere sensibility into a fighting faith and a blueprint for governance.

Before there was National Review, there was Buckley, spoiling for a philosophic fight, to be followed, of course, by a flute of champagne with his adversaries. He was 29 when, in 1955, he launched National Review with the vow that it "stands athwart history, yelling Stop." Actually, it helped Bill take history by the lapels, shake it to get its attention and then propel it in a new direction. Bill died Wednesday in his home, in his study..."

I was so pleased to see that Mahons had paid tribute to WFB the other day - I think that gentlemen such as Buckley are a dying breed, if you'll pardon the pun, and we are all diminished by their passing. Pat, Bill's beloved wife of 56 years, died last April. During the memorial service for her at a friend read lines from "Vitae Summa Brevis" by a poet she admired, Ernest Dowson:

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:

Out of a misty dream

Our path emerges for a while, then closes

I wonder if you would agree with Ilana Mercer when she argues that from an economic point of view, China is becoming more free and America less free....

"While Ben Bernanke continues to cut interest rates to spur easy credit and artificial economic growth– and to make his political masters look good – China raised interest rates six times last year. The late free market economist Milton Friedman, whose books are wildly popular in the Republic of China, would have probably sided with the actions of the People's Bank. If Chairman Ben were a friend of the American people, rather than pal (and chief counterfeiter) to politicians, he'd raise interest rates and tighten credit too. China may be experiencing economic jitters, but it is still "running giant surpluses" and, as a crop of new books confirms, is "on the brink of becoming the world's leading trading nation." The Chinese are ditching Mao for Milton, as Americans trust Oprah to pick their literature and leaders. Indeed China is changing. It is "out of the red" in more ways than one. The U.S. is changing too: It's in the red and getting redder."

The survey found Obama leading 48.2 percent to 41.7 percent over Clinton statewide. The poll, conducted Tuesday through Thursday for the Houston Chronicle, Reuters and C-SPAN by Zogby International, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

Click to read more ...

Yes, I know that my colleague Mike Cunningham has already weighed in on this, to your general disapproval I note, but I'm coming at it from my own angle. I refer to the campaign to force all retailers to stop giving away carrier bags. What really got me was Gordon Brown's declaration that he will FORCE the retailers to stop giving  away plastic bags - if they do not do so voluntarily. They've got a year before he acts, he warns. Now then, how brave is our Gordon? When it comes to fighting a real war against Islamists, the craven coward  bans the very word "Islamic" - but when it's British shop-keepers and their bags for shoppers, why he's Mr Macho. Wonder what Brown would do if Muslim shop-owners declared that Shar'ia law required them to use plastic bags? Bet he would instantly start making concessions to them. I have no love for plastic bags but I have even less for grasping opportunistic politicians who love to take away choice and bully the private sector.

I haven't posted much in a few days - several reasons for this. I have been travelling on my commercial interests and have not been at my desk so much during the day. But I also got very despondent during the week on the entire blogging front and I wanted to express my sincere thanks to those who picked up on this. I'm feeling much better now, I suppose we're all allowed the blues from time to time! One of the things that occasionally gets to me is when threads deteriorate because arguments turn nasty, or when some troll (Not OUR Troll, of course!) posts such obscene comment and I don't see it - and then people berate me for not moderating such abuse, even implying I accept/endorse it.

Now then, I'm an immoderate moderator! But I have now turned ON the comment moderation for ATW, and I will decide what gets published and what doesn't. Because I am libertarian in my own contrary way, the only people that will have an issue with this are those who want to post abuse. I have no intention of prohibiting about 99.9% of comments but there is a tiny minority that need sorted and I'll do it. I will try to ensure the speed of debate does not slow, and I will turn it on and off to suit me.

I know the vast majority of ATW readers are very kind towards me and so I hope you will stick with the new regime. I don't think it will be a big change but it does mean that I have more control and since this is my site, I figure I should have this. I love writing here and elsewhere but I have felt under so much pressure over the past few days that I literally froze creatively (by my standards) but the thaw has now set in (Global warming anyone?) and you can take it that I'm back..... ;-)  

Three Cheers from this side of the Atlantic Ocean for young Prince Harry who has been secretly serving in Afghanistan for the last ten weeks.  I would hope that one does not have to agree with the war in Afghanistan to admire the participation of a member of the British Royal Family in the actual conflict.  As an alleged Plastic Paddy I generally feel that royalty can go the way of the butter churn and Model T Ford, but you've got to admire the true grit of a young man who isn't hiding in a life of privilege.   Jimmy McCain, John McCain's youngest son served in Iraq with the United States Marines, but even he doesn't present the enemy with the propoganda target that a member of the Royal Family does.  Well done Harry.

On a side note, I saw a photograph of him with some British Army Gurka regiment troops.  History is quite a long road.        

Almost £1 in every £5 handed over by council taxpayers is used to support the pensions of town hall workers. The country's 1.6 million local government employees have 'gold-plated' final salary pensions, while many in the private sector face retiring on a pittance. Experts criticised the devastating findings, which they said prove a "pensions aristocracy" is developing. Council workers can retire as young as 55 – while everyone else faces working until their 68th birthday. Isn't life grand when you work for the State?

I see that records of how long crews took to answer emergency calls were falsified in 123 cases last year, the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service has admitted. The two members of staff who doctored records were suspended during an inquiry. Both have returned to work. The service said pressure to meet targets and provide the fastest possible response times was given as motivation for falsifying records. What an utterly pathetic response and how symptomatic of the malaise that exists in the public sector. I am sure that the public fully understands the pressures that exist for ambulance crews, and I have a lot of time for the Ambulance Service, with my late father-in-law having work in it all of his life. But lying is lying and the individuals concerned have let down the public and the Ambulance service should face into this. I wonder does anyone ever get sacked in the Public sector? 

Liberalism=Fascism?   A not so “fringe” idea in the USA.

Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg  is #1 on the New York Times'  best seller list (March 9) in the nonfiction category!

Food for thought:  Christianity is to atheism as individualism is to collectivism. 

I found this in the print version of the Wall Street Journal this morning :

I believe that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world.  I further believe that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level.

William F. Buckley “God and Man at Yale,” 1951

And just for a laugh:

The attempted assassination of Sukarno last week had all the earmarks of a CIA operation. Everyone in the room was killed except Sukarno.                                        Editorial, National Review, 1957 

So Marks & Sparks have caved in to the Eco-lobby, and are planning to charge 5p for each plastic bag used by their customers, and, wait for it, donate the proceeds to an environmental charity called Groundwork. This same Groundwork has a motto stating 'Building sustainable communities in areas of need through joint environmental action' which just about says all about Groundwork.

 I noticed that the Northern Irish M&S have been charging for bags for some time, but always thought that this was 'Irish-speak' for the cash paid to the IRA to be allowed to continue in business in Northern Ireland.

The thing that troubles me is that the humble plastic shopping bag has been metaphorically seized by the chattering classes, politicians and weirdy-wobblies in the eco-environment as the opposite of the 'Holy Grail' in terms of environmental acceptability, but one question remains, at least to me. Have any of these clowns ever struggled to get a family's shopping into the house or flat from the car in a typical British downpour? Shock, Horror! I use a car to do my shopping! Is there no end to the ridicule which is poured upon the likes of me? It's not only plastic I throw away, I also splurge and throw PETROL away as well!

But there again, I will continue to use plastic bags until the Jackboot Squad comes for me, and bundle me away to the confines of a Community Centre staffed exclusively by well-meaning busy-bodies who really mean WELL!

As an antidote to the relentless march of all things liberal, left-wing-slanted news and commentary from just about all the MSM media and T.V., I'd like to post a photograph which is the essence of all things good!

So I very proudly present one of the first pictures of my Grandson Marco Michael, born some ten weeks early, with a fighting weight of 3lbs. 4 ounces (none of this metricated rubbish for my Grandson) lying in a sun-lamp-lit incubator to help him get over a dose of jaundice. He is doing fine so far, even breathing on his own from the start, and in the words of the senior nurse in the Premature Unit, "The noisy one in the corner!" His mother is also well, and my son is due in surgery tomorrow morning to get the smile removed from his face!