Cricklewood, home to the late Alan Coren, to London's ex-Mayor (euge!) Ken Livingstone, and sometime home of Dennis Nilsen, serial killer, is a mysterious place. It once housed a Stylophone factory, and was the spiritual, if not the actual home of the seventies comedy trio The Goodies. I visit Cricklewood fairly regularly - you can eat out well and cheaply.

What's new in Cricklewood? Islamic Lfe Coaching, that's what:

Come for 2 days of intensive Islamic LifeCoaching for just £30! (inc. Refreshments)
• Need a boost of confidence to go for what want in life?
• Need help in finding your true hidden gift?
• Wanna be happy and stop worrying about the trivial things in life?
• Wanna know more…?

Then book yourself on this workshop and find out what YOU are created for!!!

No, thanks. I don't "wanna". I don't know "what want in life" but I know "what don't want".

"Live the life u were created for," says the website of Life 4 U. Islam respects women, you see:

A sincere Muslim woman must strive to achieve the purpose for which Allah created her for [sic]. Islam declares that women are "twin halves" of men as stated in the Qur'an:

"And their Lord has accepted of them, and answered them: 'Never will I suffer to be lost the work of any of you, be he male or female: you are members, one of another." (Qur'an 3:195)

Shouldn't that be "the purpose 4 which Allah created her 4"?

I find the expression "twin halves" confusing. A whole consists of two halves. And a twin is a whole, identical to another whole. You don't get half a twin, you get a whole twin, and another one, and both start out as half of something - one thing - that isn't a twin.

In any case, if women are the "twin halves" of men, how come men can have four wives? The sums don't add up.

It remains to be seen what Boris Johnson will make of his new job. But I think he should be warmly congratulated on the tremendous achievement of unseating Ken Livingstone, something few would have thought possible when he first threw his hat in the ring. Last night, Matthew d'Ancona, editor of The Spectator, gave him some well-earned praise:

It is a pleasure and a privilege to congratulate Boris on his victory - as his successor at the Spectator, his friend and (above all) a Londoner. Be in no doubt: this is a sensational achievement. Ken Livingstone has dominated London politics for a quarter century and presided over a coalition of formidable strength. In 2000, he ran rings around the New Labour machine at its mightiest. To dislodge him is a historic act of giant-killing and a remarkable moment in the capital's political history.

Labour will insist that this is a London story with no national consequence. The opposite, of course, is the case: for the first time since the general election of 1992, the Tory Party has won a major contest. The victorious candidate has captured the imagination of the whole country. His election dramatises and personifies the Conservative revival more vividly than any policy announcement or mini-manifesto could ever do. Tomorrow morning the whole country will be talking about the Boris Effect and wondering what comes next.

So: well done, my friend. You deserved this victory for which you fought and fought and fought against a veteran opponent. The torch has indeed been passed. All the best from your friends at the Spec: enjoy tonight, and then - to work!

Boris was believed to be the "joke candidate", the outsider and the clown. Londoners might have liked him for this, but they would not have elected him. Mayor of London is a serious role, and Boris must focus his considerable talents, not least on the dangers of Islam. In the past, Boris has spread himself a little too thinly. Now there are signs that he has put away childish things and that this job could be the making of him. Interviewed last night by a BBC reporter - the BBC probably supported Livingstone - he refused to provide them with a gaffe, or "Boris blooper" for their pleasure. He demands to be taken seriously, while reserving the right to make jokes once his serious message has got across.

Incidentally, his father Stanley, to whom he bears an uncanny resemblance, said that he knew Boris was serious and determined, first  because he gave up drinking for the three-month duration of the campaign, and secondly because he resisted the temptation to make jokes that were crying out to be made. I fully understand this. I would need to want something very badly indeed to go without a drink for three months, but I know that I could do this if I had to. But passing up a joke opportunity is something I could not do, not for all the tea in China. Boris is a better man than I am.

Well done, Boris. Now get your teeth into Islam - you can do it if you want.

I may be wrong, but I think it unlikely that Boris Johnson, Oxford Classics graduate and (euge!)  Mayor of London, will promise to "deliver". He isn't a postman, for God's sake. Dot Wordsworth shares my dislike of modern-day "deliveries" and of the "solutions" they contain:

'Twenty-five years ago,’ writes Mr Peter Gasson from Aylesbury, ‘policies were implemented; services were provided; changes were made or brought about; promises were fulfilled. Now they are uniformly delivered. I suppose the word has become so popular because it sounds emphatic.’ I know just what you mean, Mr Gasson, and so must we all, which suggests that politicians and managers who use the word deliver should think again. To give the cliché its full deficit of originality it is coupled with solutions: business solutions, catering solutions, heating solutions, bovine health solutions. All will be delivered, at a price.

By delivered they do not mean brought to your door in a cardboard box, like organic vegetables. They mean ‘done’. They will do what you pay them to. Very kind of them. Until recently, the most frequent use of the word deliver was in the phrase ‘deliver us from evil’. The word had come into English in the 14th century from French délivrer. The sense ‘liberate, set free’ had been conveyed by the Latin liberare (as in the Lord’s Prayer too). But in late Latin this meaning had been taken over by the emphatic deliberare, which in classical Latin had meant ‘to weigh well’. So I suppose there would have been a late Latin Dot Wordsworth (Punctilla Verbivalor?) complaining of the misuse of liberare.

We mothers are delivered of our offspring, and Henry II wanted to be delivered from (not ‘of’) the turbulent Becket. In Henry’s case, the words seem to have been put into his mouth by Robert Dodsley in a history book published in 1740, although the 12th-century chroniclers have him saying something similar. Anyway he would have spoken to the French-named knights in Anglo-Norman.

I had also been wondering whether highwaymen ever really said ‘stand and deliver’. The earliest use of the phrase found by the editors of the OED is in Alexander Smith’s History of the lives of the most noted highwaymen (1714). Smith’s series of lives of criminals proved very successful. It is disappointing, then, to find that nothing is known of the author, or even whether he was one man. As for the annoying modern sense of deliver, it comes from America, as many annoyances are sometimes unjustly suspected of doing. Fred Astaire in Steps in Time (1959) wrote: ‘I have a horror of not delivering — making good, so to speak; and I can’t stand the thought of letting everybody down.’ Perhaps this virtue is now so widely claimed because is it no longer widespread.

It's the May Day bank holiday this weekend and, as is our wont, we are off to Rochester shortly for the Sweeps Festival. You can see what we are up to here.

While I am away I am setting a poser. That's a question, not a pratt who hangs around in nightclubs trying to look cool. He's a poseur.

What is this?

Post your answers in the comments section please, if anyone is actually interested, and if you are interested I'll tell on Monday when I return.

Meanwhile I wish Boris all the best in his new post.

Caroline is her usual must-read self in the Jerusalem Post, beginning with:

Another ordinary week has come and gone in southern Israel. Bombarded by rockets from Hamastan in Gaza, residents of Sderot, Ashkelon and nearby towns watched as their national leaders conducted negotiations by proxy with Hamas to release hundreds of terrorists in Israeli jails and consolidate Hamas's weapons supply lines by suspending Israeli counter-terror operations during a "cease-fire." Between trips to the local bomb shelter, they watched Israeli trucks deliver fuel and supplies to Hamas in Gaza in the morning and they watched Hamas store the fuel and supplies in depots near the border in the afternoon. In the evening they watched news reports echoing Hamas's claims that Israel is depriving Gazan hospitals of fuel and Gazan civilians of basic foodstuffs.

The most depressing part is the discussion of Secretary Rice's recent speech to the American Jewish Committee.  In that setting at least, Condi apparently abandoned her standard nonsense about how most Palestinians simply want to live in peace, side-by-side with Israel.  It's downhill from there, though:

Not everyone is pleased to see Boris win. Muslims 4 Ken have been strangely silent.  The Muslim Public Affairs Committee, on the other hand, has plenty to say. Muslims, it seems, are the problem:

Boris Johnson called Islam “the problem” and has now been elected Mayor of London. Islam is not the problem. Boris Johnson is not the problem. Our Muslim leaders ARE the problem.

With nearly 1 million Muslim Londoners our leaders should have mobilised the Muslim vote to stop the rise to power of a Zionist Islamophobe. But they stood back and watched as Ken Livingstone, the most pro-Palestinian and pro-Muslim elected politician we’ve ever had, was hounded from power.

"Hounded from power"? This was a free and fair election. The people have spoken.

The Zionists and Islamophobes who hated him for sticking up for Muslims were not passive like our Muslim leaders.  

Under-funded volunteers can’t save the Ummah alone

MPACUK is under-funded and we rely on volunteers giving up their weekends and evenings to defend the Ummah. Yet our London branch distributed 60,000 leaflets, got hundreds of posters up in Muslim shops and used new technology to spread the message online, in the media and even in text alerts.

MPACUK wrote to every mosque in London about the election explaining what they could do to educate and mobilise voters. A few outstanding mosques explained the importance of voting in their Khutbahs and held talks and workshops about the elections. A few organized voter registration drives. Most mosques still did nothing.

Every mosque can reach thousands in their community. And many Muslim organizations MPACUK contacted also refused to take part in the campaign. Among the most prominent we put in calls to British Muslim Forum and local ISB branches – but they weren’t interested in doing the work.

Our Muslim leaders should have stopped this Zionist Islamophobe, but they refused to lift a finger.

Our Leaders have done nothing to stem the tide of hate.

The fact that so many of our fellow citizens have voted for a candidate who has openly spread hate against Islam should ring alarm bells! Our mosques could reach out to our non-Muslim neighbours and dispel the Islamophobic myths spread in the media and by the BNP. There are over 2000 mosques in the UK – if every mosque held regular Open Days it would go a long way toward stopping the rising tide of Islamophobia. Ignorance leads to fear – but surely it’s not too hard to just invite people in for a cup of tea and a chat with ordinary Muslims?

The Missing Islamic Obligation: Accountability

Abu Bakr, upon acceptance of the Khilafaat, gave a speech in which he called upon the Muslim community:

“So if I do the right thing, then help me and if I do wrong, then put me straight. Truthfulness is a sacred trust and lying is a betrayal.”

Will you hold your mosque committee accountable for failing to lift a finger to stop a racist Islamophobe becoming Mayor of London? Will you demand they now hold a voter registration drive? Will you demand they educate our community about the importance of empowering ourselves through voting and politics? Or will you allow them to leave it to the thugs outside the mosque who are hood-winking our youth to think it’s haram to vote?

How can we recite Qur'an everyday and yet not lift a finger to stop the rise to power of a man who said that Islamophobia is the natural reaction to our beloved Qur'an?

"And the Messenger will say (on the Day of Judgement), "O my Lord, indeed my people have taken this Qur'an as a thing abandoned"
(Surah 25: 30)

We must now redouble our efforts to empower the Muslim community!

Three words that I would ban: "diversity", "empower" and "community". That said, I suspect that, for a Muslim, "empowerment" means something other than fulfilling one's potential, as it does for the psychobabblers.

If you haven't attended a Muslim sermon before, here is a good one to start with. No hysterical ranting about "death to the Jews and Crusaders," no talk about decapitation, but a lot of discussion about...well, it wouldn't be lady-like for me to say. See the MEMRI clip here,

This one is pretty typical. The Muslims will conquer Rome, Western Europe, then the two Americas and "even" Eastern Europe, etc, etc., not just by force, but by conversion as well.

It's important to watch this stuff from time to time, just to keep reminding yourself of what, sometimes, you begin to forget or may not quite believe can possibly be. Friday Sermons  -- the khutbas -- are a vivid reminder of what Islam inculcates.