Has Turkey been well and truly basted?

I have been to Turkey on holiday several times over the past 25 years, the first being on honeymoon to a very undeveloped Bodrum, before the townspeople realised there was money to be made from the all-night drinking, Union Jack pants-wearing, tattooed, face-rivited and ridiculous haircutted brigade - and that's only the British women.

In fairness, each holiday we took was delightful, the only down side whatsoever being the fact that when you walked past a restaurant, some member of staff wanted to drag you in kicking and screaming to eat what they perceive as being required, wholesome 'good burger and 'sips (chips) and big beer' as the standard fare for the average British holidaymaker. Not for us I'm afraid.

Yes, we have only ourselves to blame on that score.

However, wherever we went, the adulation by the Turkish people for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the former Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey, defied description. By all accounts a moderniser, hero, visionary and man of the people who dragged his country kicking and screaming into the 20th century. In the meantime there have been several coups to maintain this status quo of modernity, compared with say Iran which has successfully managed to transport itself back to the 16th century, while making those who saw the Shah as a corrupt money-grabber and suppressors of human rights and values, the Ayatollas, far more wealthy and corrupt in comparison than any way the Shah and his family ever were, and with oppression far outstripping anything the Shah even ever privately dreamt about.

Which is what makes it all the more strange regarding the carry-on by the current Islamist president Recep Tayip Erdogen. All the hard work of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the wonderful life his people enjoyed for decades seems to be slowly eroding away. The recent failed coup, resulting in the unbelievably swift arrest of 6,000 people over the course of a mere two days, are nothing if quasi-fascist in tendency. Plainly Erdogen had his hit-list of opponents ready and waiting for any excuse to remove them from circulation. So much so, it may, at the risk of suggesting a conspiracy theory, they he might have engineered the coup himself, just to be rid of his opponents.

But this appears to have totally gone over the heads of the common people. That 6,000 people could be rounded up and transported away over a mere 48 hours.

Yes, OK, Mr Erdogen has improved the health services dramatically, something the common people see (potentially their only real contact with the state) on a daily basis, but this has been offset by, for example, creeping religion that no one really wants in the form of the removal of Darwin from the syllabus in universities, a creeping campaign against alcohol consumption, the building of increasing numbers of faceless mosques complete with call-to-prayers booming out in a language (classical Arabic) that very few - if any - Turkish people actually understand.

Dark days ahead indeed with this man as President.

Is proscription the approaching answer to radicalised Islam?

It is very sad when a major world religion is really on the point of having to be proscribed. Virtually all atrocities in the World since 9/11 have been committed by the lunatic fringe of Islam that has done nothing but bring the entire religion into ill-repute.

It is a great shame, because all of my Muslim friends, without exception, are very much like myself - they have simply been born into their religion and just pay lip service to either their parents or families to keep the peace (so to speak, i.e. stave off parents, siblings or clerics who would soil their underclothes if they knew they didn't exactly keep to Ramadan, they enjoyed a Guinness during the week, or a night out with a young lady/man not of the faith). It is such a shame.

However, unlike say the IRA running their rackets and wanting a united Ireland, Islamic extremism is driven by weirdbeard 'clerics' who want a Sharia world and simply do not tolerate anyone of any other creed who doesn't believe in, or want to convert to their warped 14th Century beliefs, blame culture and pseudo superiority complexes.

It is not helped by the warmongering multi-millionaire mad mullahs in Iran (ironic that is is actually France's fault for letting Ayatoilet Konmerchat go back in 1979 - the looneybeards seem to have forgotten that - so much for France helping Iran to establish extremism, what a pay-back they have received).

It IS coming to the stage where it has to be called what it is to perhaps embarrass the moderate norms, those who are in a leadership position, to do something about it. And the media, so often themselves the targets of these antisocial and unacceptable "Fatwahs" have to take some responsibility themselves in order to preserve their own freedoms.

I never remember Gerry Adams ever calling for the death of the editor of the Times for posting a satirical cartoon about Sinn Fein or the IRA. And that's with the IRA being founded on fact, unlike religions, where there is no proof and only fairy tales driving their beliefs (and that goes for all religions [the cult Scientology aside, founded on the need for L Ron Hubbard who actually admitted he started it because he wanted to be rich - tell that to Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, Beck, peaches Geldof and Edgar Winter] by the way, all 4,950 or so of them inhabiting the world today).

It's a hard labour for Labour

Oh for goodness sake, I wish Labour people would get a grip now, pack it in already going on at Mr Blair and concentrate now on getting rid of their inconsequential leader and his Momentum fascists and provide some proper opposition to the Tories.

Are you all so blind that you can't see what a waste of space Mr Corbyn and his £3 supporters are? You can't possibly be that silly. Or can you? Get someone in who can actually lead the party out of its morass and salvage at least some of your credibility.

Face up to it, you now need to stop fooling yourselves and being so dishonest to the British public. Mr Corbyn is a total and utter disaster. If he had anything about him, he'd admit it himself and stand down, thus at least salvaging some of his own self-respect. Posting bloody silly happy-clappy videos on his Facebook page, like all is fine and dandy.

It's not fine and dandy. Even a child can see that. Not by the remotest figment of the imagination. What is up with you?

He's actually now a liability to fine politicians and statespeople such as Hilary Benn, Margaret Hodge, Sadiq Kahn, Keith Vaz, Alan Johnson, Chuka Umunna and Dan Jarvis, to name but a few.

And please, don't go on about how he was democratically elected by the membership. It was, what seemed to a group of people at the time, a good way to refresh the party and its thinking in the wake of the General Election drubbing, but it went so spectacularly wrong that many of the MP's who supported him for leader are now more than thoroughly embarrassed. They didn't envisage he would be such a destructive force/farce.

From day one, the process was hyjacked by the Momentum fascists, their supporters, other miscellaneous Socialist miscreants and most sadly of all, by those £3 instant members (including members of the Conservatives and UKIP) who joined for no other reason than to have Mr Corbyn elected and thus prevent the future electability of the Labour Party as Government.

Of the 216 Labour MP's who turned out to vote in the secret ballot on 'no confidence', 172 voted that they had no confidence in Mr Corbyn’s leadership. Just 40 MPs voted to back Mr Corbyn, along with 13 abstentions and 4 spoiled ballots.

That's 75% voting no confidence and 81½% of total elected Labour MPs (the equivalent of an A in a state exam!) who do not support Mr Corbyn. How much more of a mandate is needed for you all to admit you are wrong and for the man to go. If the equivalent was happening in the Tory party, with 75% of Conservative MP's telling the PM to go, be honest, you'd all be at the front of the queue, braying like donkeys.

I, and I am sure many others, want there to be a credible and honest opposition to the current government, not a group of totally disillusioned Labour MP's led by someone with a mandate from a rag-tag bunch of £3'ers whose only interest is their own perverse far-left agenda.

And the 100,000 new members signed up to Labour since the Neverendum are like the people who buy the £79.95 restaurant discount 2 for1 Tastecard for £29.95 and then never use it again.

And don't get me started on Mr Ignorance (Len McCluckCluck).