This week's "Cohen in the Standard Watch" is brought to you by the letter "r"

There are two situations, I was always taught, when the letter r can help you avoid embarrassing yourself. First, if you're eating oysters, make sure there's an R in the month. Second, if you're using words like "safe", "wise" or "rich", try to make sure they end in an R and you're less likely to say something silly.

viz, from Nick's latest (in the context of claiming "it felt as if half the country [including, I think, David Aaronovitch - bb] was blaming Blair for the [7/7 -bb] murders. One family even refused to go to the memorial service because they believe the Iraq war led to the bombs", which Standard readers will know is basically having a go at an eleven-year-old) :

The trouble with this line of thinking is that it can swiftly slip into denial. We can forget about the strange motives that drive a cult of slaughter and self-slaughter. It's crimes aren't really our fault but the fault of our politicians. If only they were wiser, we would be safe."

Good catch on "wise", Nick but you dropped it with "safe". See:

If only our politicians were wiser, we would be safe = stupid

If only our politicians were wiser, we would be safer = sensible.

And of course, it's the second one that everyone believes. Continuing on:

I can see the appeal. With 20th century fascism and communism, as much as modern religious totalitarianism, you are dealing with psychopathic movements that are in the end beyond rational explanation

Leaving aside the fact that a rather famous chap who lived in Islington and is buried in Highgate had a good old go at "rationally explaining" communism, let's stick to Nazism, shall we? It's the perfect example of what I mean.

Why did Nazism start? Buggered if I know. Psychopathic irrationalism. On the other hand, a long time before it got going in earnest, John Maynard Keynes wrote that the Versailles Treaty in particular, and the Allied compulsion to rub the Germans' noses in it in general, were going to lead to pretty fucking serious problems in Germany. For his pains, he got called a limp-wristed sympathiser by plenty of people both stupider and more intelligent than Nick, but he was neither. This is, of course, the long term side-effects of far-left student politics. It's the hatred of the partial explanation, the lack of a big single cause that explains everything, which shows itself in the fact that Nick would rather say that there was no cause at all rather than admit that part of it was under his nose. It takes some gumption to go from saying that Stalinism was an inevitable consequence of the relations of production to saying that it can't be explained at all, but I guess that if you're on the Decent Left, gumption is what makes you popular.er.

the rest? Blah blah Routemasters, blah blah Ken Livingstone blah blah grammer schools. The grammar schools bit is particularly spiteful (in fairness, this may have just been hasty writing but it does look quite mean)

I know I keep banging on about this, but Labour MPs need to learn that their refusal to allow competition from selective state schools is letting the children of the rich continue to get all the gravy

As a comprehensive bruschettaboy myself, I say spare us the fucking whingeing, you grammar school toff. It is precisely because I'm in favour of a politics that kicks away greasy poles, not attempts to scamper up them and kick away the ladder, that I am not yet prepared to accept Nick's new political categories under which I am a "pseudo-leftist" and he is not.