Nurse!

So, I wake up on a Monday morning and I really don't want to go to work. The same thing happens on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. And sometimes on Saturday and Sunday as well. I think that makes me normal. What sets me apart from the hoi polloi, however, is that as hungover as I may be, as crotchety as I sometimes feel or, as much in agony as I am this week (nursing a new and interesting, probably age-related, knee injury) I still go into work.

I'm self-employed, so illness isn't an option. If I don't go in I don't get paid and that isn't something that causes me much distress because I grew up without any sense of entitlement for the simple act of existence. I look to nobody to steer my ship and expect nobody to man the boats if I hit the rocks. Although, I admit, it would be great if the NHS, for which I have paid all my life would look kindly on my need for pain relief when it all gets too much.

Nurse! Pass me my keyboard I have work to do!

But that isn't going to happen is it? In the never-ending quest for votes, socialists on all sides (for there are few enough other types of politician these days) woo the electorate by spending ever more of their money on stuff to placate the necessitous. And what better way to grow your electorate than to create more need and hence more needy? The country can easily afford to staff and stock hospitals with the right people and placebos to treat pain, disease, old age, trauma and good old bleeding. But where's the fun in that?

No, what we need are ever more impressive infirmities, maladies and melodrama. We need to celebrate the complexes, exaggerate the ailments and fill our waiting lists with the sicknesses, signs and symptoms of advanced disorders befitting our increasingly pallid, infantilised and ineffectual population. Tell somebody they are unwell and lo' they will take to their state-funded bed and wait to be cured.

"But our hospitals are overcrowded!" they wail, as low self-esteem competes for attention against eat-too-much-itis.

"Then we shall build more!" sayeth the 'profit' "Build it and they will come!"

"But you spent all our money!" they object.

"Why, we shall spend thy children's money then. And thy children's children's..."

"And there will be enough nurses?" they ask.

"Nurses? Fuck off! What use are nurses against the modern malaise?" spake the profit. "We need consultants and accountants and managers and alchemists and hoodoo and voodoo that you do so well..." And thus was born the private finance initiative.

How's that working out for you South London Healthcare NHS Trust?

I really don't care whose fault it is. I couldn't give a damn what colour tie they wear to the House of Commons. Somebody - and it might as well be me - needs to stand up and say it out loud. There's nothing wrong with you. Now fuck off out of my hospital and get back to work you malingering poltroon!

There, that's fixed the NHS. No need to thank me.

Ain't you got homes to go to?

Damned if you do and damned if you don't. Hot on the heels of his condemnation of Jimmy Carr's tax affairs (somehow commentable-upon where Philip Green's were not) Shiny Dave floats a raft of ideas for welfare reform. And predictably enough the shrill notes of righteous ('lefteous'?) indignation echo across Twitter like banshee wails for the dead. Not content with the ever-rising social tariff the flag-wavers for totalitarian statism will rest at nothing until the entire country is yoked to the despotic wheel of welfare.

David Cameron has a tricky budget to balance. He wants people to pay more tax, but he also needs people to claim fewer benefits. Only a fool could believe the two are not linked in a desperate spiral of positive feedback. In the boom years the high tax take was spent bribing ever more families to become reproductive rather than simply productive. Labour's time in office has seen the rise and rise of procreation as an industry and a not unprofitable one at that. Under the socialist creed, sacrifice and endeavour have been punished by ever-increasing tolls, while the cult of idle individualism has been feted and rewarded.

It simply cannot last forever. If Jimmy Carr has paid 1% tax on £3m, he has at least paid £30,000 into the system while almost certainly taking very little out - I am pretty sure he doesn't rely on subsidised housing, public transport or hospital services. In the same period an idle household has been granted the same amount in welfare payments, plus they will have liberally helped themselves to schooling, medical care and anything else going without any thought other than that it is their due.

Choosing welfare dependency over work is as much an abuse of the system as tax avoidance - in fact it's worse. The tax avoider is intelligently - if slightly immorally - using the wealth he has earned to buy himself the expertise to avoid the penalties levied on those who do well. It is outrageous to demand that those who take virtually nothing from the system pay an even higher percentage of their income, so that those without the wit or wisdom to earn their daily bread can continue in their infantile state of dependency.

So we should welcome the fact that we have a Prime Minister at least willing to acknowledge the formerly unsayable - that some people simply do not deserve the free ride they've had for the last thirty years (the Conservative Party has been just as guilty of appeasement of the masses as Labour) and that it has to end. But it's all just empty words because the part of the population that contributes the least is growing the fastest and the part that provides all the funding is shrinking.

Those who can are getting the hell out, one way or another and as always it's the backbone of our society - ordinary working people - who are taking the strain. How many more straws can this particular strained backbone take?

Carrm Down

I've been out of town and out of touch, but even I know that David Cameron has considered himself hard enough to come and have a go at Jimmy Carr's tax arrangements. Is this a wise move, I ask myself considering the long history of successful entertainers and tax avoidance? Surely everybody remembers the case of Ken Dodd and his famous Diddy Men - Diddy Pay and Diddy Fuck.

But maybe it is a good tactical  move after all, because it poses something of a problem for the left. It shines a feeble sort of light on the hypocrisy of show business, which is almost entirely populated by folk who declare themselves the epitome of caring socialism and the enemy of what they think of as conservatism. Show business attracts the young and hopeful, who often earn little throughout their lives and live in an extended, often ill-educated, mutually supportive peer group as they struggle to make ends meet by dressing up to make the grown-ups laugh and clap.

The grown-ups, of course, are happy to pay to keep performers in their juvenile and starry-eyed state, in the hope that they'll continue to entertain them for next to nothing. Sounds a lot like Socialism to me, where a ruling elite keeps the poor barefoot and helpless, while pulling their strings and offering crumbs of encouragement in place of real wages.

But all the sweet bonhomie does little to disguise the fact that in the fiercely competitive world of entertainment the big breaks are few, far between, fought-over and favour the hardest-working and most persistent. (What's that? A capitalist work ethic?) Your time in the spotlight - if it ever comes - may be short-lived and could be the only chance you get to build a nest egg. The question shouldn't be, "How dare you?" but more why wouldn't you avoid paying tax?

Many years of "progressive" politics have led us to be forced to hand over ever more of our earnings to support experimental policies of social engineering, touchy-feely (failed) multiculturalism and an infantilisation of the entire population - we're all in show business now. Which of us wouldn't - given the opportunity - pay an expert to allow us to legally avoid that high price and put something aside for those rainy days ahead?

Breaking free of the bounds of mediocrity, it is rarely long before achievers in all walks of life seek to separate themselves from the masses. Give a lefty a bit of money and pretty soon he or she buys a secluded house with security to keep the little people outside. Let people improve themselves and see how long they continue to espouse their former quaint notions of equality.

Jimmy Carr is only doing what most of us would do if we could. If there is fault here it is that the tax burden is too high, to pay for things that we don't need and ultimately don't really believe in. The irony is that the showbiz masses are natural Labour supporters - somebody has to pay the welfare bill for when they're 'resting' - but quickly reassess their priorities once they've made it. It's called human nature.

Who's laughing now?

Wet What?

So, I arrive at the Travelodge - the motel of choice for the discerning guest lecturer on a budget - to find I'm booked into a room subtly different from every other Travelodge room I've ever stayed in. At first I can't quite put my finger on it, but then, using the 'facilities' I notice how spacious everything is... and that there isn't a bath... and the shower area has a seat in it. Wait a minute... shower 'area'?

It's a disabled wet room, clearly designed for a wheelchair user. But why no shelves or towel rails? Why no place for soap? Why no shower curtain? I eye the set-up with a certain degree of disdain and suspicion.

In the bedroom everything is at a convenient height - if you're in a wheelchair. Being able-bodied and reasonably tall, everything is at a slightly inconvenient height. I crick my back while hanging my clothes on the low, low rail and decide to have a lie down. Instead of the usual double bed there are two exceptionally narrow twin beds. I'm not at all sure how this stacks up against any disabled needs checklist but, predictably enough, I roll over while having a nap, fall out of my bed and bash my shoulder against the twin.

Time for a shower. Its a wet room for heaven's sake...which means that EVERYTHING gets wet. (The clue is in the name, I guess.) The floor, the walls, the sink (in which sits my toilet bag - no shelves, remember) the towels and of course the toilet - all soaking wet. The toilet paper is now not so much tissue as papier maché. Merde.

I once saw an under-stair wet room conversion which involved a shower head placed directly above the toilet bowl, the owner of which could not see that this was functional under no objective criteria whatsoever. This room is not so far different from that - yes, there's plenty of space, lots of floor area, but every square inch of that floor is now covered in wet. The shower seat is directly beneath the nozzle and yes, of course I bash my shin on it as I juggle with the shower gel in the shelf-free zone.

Damn you, Changing Rooms! A pox on your house DIY S.O.S! Wet rooms? In houses? What were you thinking? What is wrong with you people?

Curse you, Nick Knowles!

Leaving the wet room to attempt to air-dry, I trap my hand as the over-width door swings wide and meets the opposite wall. For a moment I am in 127 Hours movie hell, as I realise I may need to amputate a finger or two if I am ever to be able to leave this room. Is this where I die?

Finally freed, I dress, have coffee - the makings are conveniently placed at knee height and I scald my eyebrows leaning over to free the fiddly kettle from its tricky base - and prepare for my day at the chalk face. I just have to clean my teeth and get the hell out..

Like a car smash, everything goes into slow-motion. Stepping into the bathroom the soapy, wet floor gives me no traction at all and my feet slide in opposite directions. I can feel a hernia erupting as the angle between my legs exceeds its last-known limit, doing the splits as I crash towards the hard porcelain basin. I wake into water-boarding nightmare as the dripping shower bathes my bleeding forehead and jerks me back into consciousness.

Through my blurred vision I can see a red cord - the emergency pull - and with my last ounce of strength I summon help, thanking the lord for my good fortune in finding myself in a disabled suite.

Cunctatious Claptrap

Once upon a time, I had a job where desks had to be cleared at the end of the week. No drawers, no hiding places; all in-trays to be emptied and processed, no question. It didn't take long for one bright spark (not me - dull as a dishwasher[sic] me) to come up with a cunning plan. Like all the best plans it was devilishly simple. You scooped the detritus from your desk into a large envelope, addressed it to yourself and sent it to the post room, where the drones, who never thought to question the destination, duly franked and despatched it.

The mail being what it is, said envelope often didn't return to sender until the following Wednesday, by which time it was inevitably too late to respond to some items. Disgraceful, I hear you say... outrageous. Ah, but stick with me. Anything that genuinely needed doing would usually trigger a follow-up call, the response to which would be an innocent declaration that you'd not received the original request. It was an eye-opener to discover just how many formerly "utmost urgent" requirements could nevertheless stand a fair bit of delay.

But here's the best bit of all. The vast majority of un-actioned items generated no response whatsoever. Nada. Zilch. Sweet F-A. In other words, an awful lot of what passed for 'business' was simply somebody else's way of wasting my time. Filling quotas, ticking boxes, yada-yada-yada. For me the sound of that particular penny dropping was deafening.

When I later learned that certain management gurus even preached about the principle of managing by delay - do the urgent, important stuff now; the stuff that must be done, else the world ends, and leave the rest. If it's important for 'them', let 'them' do the prodding. If they don't, it clearly wasn't that important. Subsequently I have met a great number of people whose grasp of the strategic importance of their job to the company is feeble to say the least.

Am I implying that a significant proportion of workers care not about what they do? That in their absence the organisation notices not one jot? Am I implying that despite the billions pumped into the Euro experiment, virtually nobody can really justify their tax-free salary or properly explain their job? Am I implying that some of the European leaders are fully aware of this and that management by procrastination is their game plan? Stifle debate, stall and obfuscate and hope that in the end it will all come good? Damn right I am.

One way or another people have to eat. In the case of Greece and Spain, followed by Italy and France it probably matters not whether they remain an integral part of the Euro confidence trick; they'll get fed. If it takes uprisings and civil wars, the very thought of which should signal abject failure of the one feeble justification for the whole project, the Eurozone apparatchiks will shrug, do nothing and call it a re-balancing or some such meaningless aphorism. They'll all still get paid, out of our money, for performing their important function of remaining motionless on their shiftless arses..

The European Union is a huge white elephant. Like the United Nations it has rarely achieved anything of worth. Its history has been one of endless rounds of discussions and its edicts have either been prohibitory (the disastrous CAP) or damagingly liberal (human rights, open borders). The EU is the political equivalent of one of those 'premium' bank accounts that takes your money in return for doing fuck-all while looking and sounding important. The Emperor has new clothes, or so they say.

A bunch of cunctators doing fuck-all

Which brings us, neatly, back to the title. We are not lead by dictators, instead we have replaced them with a bunch of Cunctators. And it really doesn't matter how you pronounce or mispronounce that word it still contains all the right letters to express just exactly what a bunch they are.

An Expert Opinion

I am no expert. But feel free to quote me as the antithesis of expertise

The climate change experts told us we'd have progressively dryer summers in the UK. Water Board experts (not the Guantanamo type) suggested a hosepipe ban - in one of the wettest developed countries on earth - just before we received a whole summer's worth of rain in two weeks. (And a British summer can be alarmingly wet anyway)

Educationalists can't agree on the best way of educating kids, although the average ill-educated parent can still reason that all the tinkering is counter productive and potentially damaging. Criminologists are routinely off the mark in their reading of criminals and criminality, crime and punishment - subjects at which you'd think - hint in the name - they should excel.

Judges often lack judgement. Philosophers often fail and fall for sophistry and electrical engineers gave us the energy saving light-bulb... which saves energy by the duh-er expedient of not producing any light until several days after you wanted it.

Security 'experts' came up with this Big Brotheresque nugget of surveillance wisdom:

"Under provisions in the draft communications data bill, published by the Home Office, Royal Mail and private postal services could be required to store "anything written on the outside" of letters, postcards and parcels for up to 12 months so they can be accessed by police, MI5 and other enforcement agencies."

Really? You didn't consider what the effect of publishing this would be? Stand by for an onslaught of anti-government sentiment expressed on envelopes; expect to see S.W.A.L.K. replaced with such gems as MILF (M.I.Filth) or the rather more prosaic "Snoop on this, fuck face!" I think I'll address all my mail from now on to "Big Brother, c/o Keep the fuck out of my business. Ya Big Bastardshire, UKSSR.

So, in the face of all this expertise it should come as no surprise to learn that the Greek election outcome is being hailed as victory and ignominy, as both triumph and disaster by the political and economic experts responsible for the whole Euro-shambles. While helpless onlookers treat those two impostors with the disdain Kipling knew they deserve, our political classes still claim expertise in matters fiscal and sovereign.

Meantime the ordinary citizen looks on with rage at the havoc wreaked by inept policy, advised by experts, accepted by idiots and forced, roughshod, over common sense. In the real world, the repeating of mistakes is seen as foolhardy. In the world of the expert, it's the only way ahead.

How's that never-ending, conveyor-belt Greek bailout policy working for you now, Eurotwats?

Poor Old Me

Child poverty. In Britain? Oh, give me a break.

Today in the (ahem) "Independent" Owen sanctimonious Jones once again attacks the Tories for something caused primarily by the thickitude and greedy-graspiousness of humanity and the unintended (or possibly entirely intended) consequences of Labour's largesse while in power.

The Communist wunderkind says, "With 3.6 million children growing up in poverty, the Tories have stumbled on an ingenious solution: they will redefine what child poverty is" as if that's a bad thing. It's not and poverty is long overdue for a common sense redefinition.

Labour have always mistaken relative poverty for absolute poverty and the bleeding pink, gutless, sociology brigade have added layers of unachievable aspiration to the mix to make poverty mean anybody having less than they think they deserve. Of course, the underclass - for make no mistake, there is one - are not capable of that level of thought, so quislings like Jones are more than happy to provide them with the 'right' answers to such enquiries.

In the imaginary world inside the redder than bright-red paperboy's head, all Conservative politicians are millionaires, a sum they earn by squeezing the juice out of the dried husks of the downtrodden poor, no doubt wearing tail coats and quaffing vintage champagne, while singing the Bullingdon club song to a time beaten out on the hollowed-out skulls of starved children.

In truth, relative poverty is an absurd measure. Which 'average' income is taken as the yardstick? Is a two-child family below the average wage still poor? Compared to a ten-child family they would appear rich. Oh, except the ten-child family would almost certainly be sustained healthily by the taxes paid out by poor, working households. Free education, free healthcare, a welfare state - by any objective measure there is no such thing as 'child  poverty' in the UK. 

Desperate child poverty in the United Kingdom

Yes, children go without books, without guidance, without love and attention, even without food on occasion, but that's not due to poverty; that is neglect, which is a different thing altogether. Maybe the slavering socialist malcontents should consider why one of their most enduring legacies is the withering away of social mobility and social conscience on their watch?

Euronomics

The financial savvy of the EU in a nutshell. (Includes free solution to debt crisis.)

Lend us a fiver, mate?

Lend? You haven't paid me back the fiver I lent you last month.

Okay, lend me a tenner, then I can pay you back right now. (A ten-pound note is paid over and handed straight back.) There, now we're even.

Er, no. You still owe me last month's fiver. And, for that matter, several other fivers going back some years. You probably owe me several hundred quid in all. (Consults small pocket book) Yes. Three hundred and fifty quid, altogether.

That's outrageous! I haven't got that sort of money.

Neither have I. Not any more, anyway.

So, can you lend me that fiver?

No. This is where I draw the line.

Well, you can shove your £350 then.

Hardly. You've got it.

Yeah,? Yeah? Well that's the last time I ever help you out, you penny-pinching bastard. In fact, forget it mate, I'm not your friend any more, so you can sing for it as far as I'm concerned.

(Strikes through debt in pocket book) So, I'm out of pocket and I no longer have you as a friend? £350 sounds like a fair price to me. Deal.

"Ex the EU, Britain would have a current account surplus"  [<~~Link]

Wired!

In my day job I try and play a positive role in maintaining the competence of workers in a pretty straightforward field. Electrical installation work isn’t exactly rocket-surgery[sic] and since the first days of the Wiring Regulations (1882 - 130 years) testing has been a necessary component of the job, yet most practicing sparkies have only a rudimentary grasp of the principles.

Last night I was assessing a supposedly experienced tester. Once the test rig had been safely isolated I left him for ten minutes to get on with it and returned to find nuts and bolts, springs and things, popping and fizzing round the exam room while he wrestled with deadly killer croc-clips and test leads.  It was like a kitten with a ball of wool… and a stick of Semtex. Given that an absolute minimum of dismantling should have been involved, this was like Armageddon; Electricalypse.

Once the fires broke out, I decided to terminate the assessment, enough is enough. His blackened eyebrows still sparked and sizzled slightly and a wisp of smoke rose from his new Afro hairstyle... “How did I do?” he asked, hopefully.

Cut the red wire... NO! The blue!

When you hire an electrician you’d like to think they know what they’re doing, wouldn’t you? Most of them have an impressive sounding list of qualifications but the simplicity of Ohm’s Law is lost as they struggle with the deep and complex relationship between Volts and Amps and Ohms. Yet, it’s easy enough to remember:

Villa = Is x Rubbish

The truth about electricity

If few of these trained professionals can really tell their amp from their elbow, how can they be expected to tell a talented politician from a mere chancer? Or distinguish between a plan for economic doom versus commercial boom? These are the people who choose, once in a blue moon, who gets to make the important decisions as to just exactly how much more money we're going to piss down the European drain. Or to what extent we will continue to emasculate our armed forces. Or how much more of the third world's population we plan to crowd into our precious little island home.

One-man-one-vote democracy doesn't seem such a good idea now, does it?

Reet Elite

Much has been spat out of the internet about the 1%, the supposed ruling elite who control virtually all of the world’s wealth and are engaged in a heinous plot to subjugate the working man forever. Speaking from a position at the arse end of the remaining 99% I say good luck to them. I wish it were true. It’s not. In fact, it’s bollocks.

If the top earners, industrialists and entrepreneurs could even be bothered to address the situation they would long ago have worked out that their position could be made perpetually tenable by ensuring the 99% didn’t get pissed off enough to turn to armed revolt. They would set up businesses in deprived areas, fund schools and hospitals and enable social mobility through education to ensure fresh new blood arrived, eventually, at the top. Facilitate aspiration – that would be the clever move.

But they don’t do that. Because - just as you and I would – having made/inherited/lucked-into their pile they are rightly enjoying it. And the system that allows this state of affairs to continue is not capitalism, it’s socialism. Capitalism is the system that distributes according to ability. Socialism tries to ‘correct’ what it fairly sees as injustice by levying punitive tariffs against those who create and thus attain for themselves, wealth. In other words, biting the hand that feeds.

But socialism goes even further, seeing any form of meritocracy as elitism, a structure it has decided, without any sensible debate, is always, but always, wrong. If education is (and it undoubtedly is) the way up, how do you forgive the way in which education has been handled since ever more left-leaning governments (whatever they've actually called themselves) have been in charge?

Grammar schools, which gave a leg up for the working man's son? Elitist, therefore wrong. Technical colleges, where the artisan-inclined apprentice learned his trade? Even worse, condemning working men to, er… work. Cut them down forthwith. Polytechnics, where the less academic could nonetheless gain a footing in administration and business skills, communication, practical engineering and management? Poor men’s universities! Smacks of hierarchy – get rid.

And so on. In a bid to even up life’s chances the leftist agenda drives education standards forever down. Or are the employers (the nasty, elitist wealth creators, remember?) all wrong? Why does Michael Gove attract so much vilification from the left when he proposes a re-boot back to when the education machine was actually working? And why do the proponents of educational technology insist that the catastrophic introduction of ever more expensive distractions in an effort to ‘engage’ the kids is NOT complicit in the downward trend in school-leavers’ ability?

(See the original at Stripgenerator)

 I’d like to think that the Socialists are merely misguided, but maybe I’ve misjudged them and Socialism is, after all, a big plot to subjugate the masses?

Like shooting fish in a barrel

Ed Balls, Labour's nasty, deluded pitbull mentalist economy wrecker, has forked over a load of dosh to find out why nobody likes him. What did he get for his money? The Mail's own poll found that he was seen as 'uninspiring, untrustworthy and unlikeable'.

But, surely he must have had an inking? The PM recently called him a "muttering idiot", which is manifestly unfair to idiots everywhere. Does Balls never read the papers? He's never out of them, even when the news isn't even about him. Yesterday Nigel Farndale referred to him in the Daily Telegraph as " like a drunken, red-faced uncle at a wedding " Maybe, Ed, there's just a hint there? (That article on Ed Miliband is worth reading just for the stuff about Balls!)

In any case Ed, why spend money on polling, when opinions about you are freely available? On Twitter, for instance. I conducted my own survey of Twitter and in a matter of minutes I found these enlightening and erudite comments on the portly, leering, gurning, fuckwit poverty-monger.

• @glasterlaw1 "He is an utter disgrace"
• @untablets "I would never have Ed Balls as my wicket keeper!"
• @makk71 "What a dill."
• @melissacrabb "I used to know a horse called Ed Balls. He was a knob as well."
• @adelesbells "Your[sic] Useless Ed!"
• @thestacemeister "Ed Balls is the Gordon Ramsay of politics. Not in a good way." (It is not entirely certain how one could be likened to Gordon Ramsey in a good way)

How did the man who wouldn't understand the economy even if he could spell it, come to believe that commissioning a survey to find out why he is unpopular might somehow reveal insight which was hitherto unavailable? What does the man who was instrumental in financially and morally crippling this country hope to gain from his outlay, especially if it turns out to be funded not from his own pocket but by the party - the socialist way? And what on earth did he expect the public reaction to be to this prime example of vainglorious fuckwittery?

Own goal, Ed... you complete tosser!

A survey on what people think about Ed Balls? Where do we start?

How about this? LINK

The enemy within

Shhh, they're all around. Hiding, listening, waiting until your back is turned.

You put your back into your work, build something from nothing, nurture your enterprise, then these dirty, idle scroungers set about you and tear the shirt from your back. What is it about these shifty freeloaders that they can't understand the concept of work and reward? Why do they always expect to get a free ride in life?

It's not enough that they are born into families who have never done a day's work in their lives. It's not enough that they have a living handed to them on a plate. Oh no, scraps and handouts aren't good enough for them any more. Now they want what we've got. And without jobs to go to they can afford to hang around all day, just waiting for you to drop your guard.

Well, it's all gone too far. Why should we have to put up with wasters and thieves and feral scum like that any more? If I had my way I'd shoot the lot of them. In front of their families.

But, "Oh no, you can't do that!" bleat the bleeding-heart save-the-earthers, "Every life is sacred. Every life has worth." Worth? Worth? I'm telling you, nobody would miss them. But they say they can be re-trained to serve a purpose. They could be couriers, for instance. Couriers for fuck's sake, I wouldn't trust them with anything of mine... which gets us back to the problem at hand.

I'm not allowed to shoot them, we can't deport them because they were born here, apparently it's not right to introduce any form of enforced birth control and we can't even herd them up and put them in prison. No, this something-for-nothing culture is embedded too deep and apparently, they have 'rights'.

So I've had to go to my option of last resort and put my brassicas under poly tunnels.

That'll fox the little pigeony bastards! 

Nursery Crimes

Many nursery rhymes are said to be partly political in origin. With this in mind I bring you important new updates:

Georgie Porgie, put VAT on a Pie…

Herman Van Rompuy sat on a wall;
Rumpy-Pumpy had a great fall.
All the King's horses and all the King's men,

Couldn't put Herman together again, because Federal Europe allows no royalty and somebody has to consider the human rights of the horses.

Three blind mice, three blind mice,
See how they run!
They can clearly get by without disability living allowance.

Baa, baa, black sheep, Oh... [<~~ link]

Jack and Jill went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of water;
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill lived happily ever after on the punitive award for damages.

Frere Jacques, got your knackers,
Merkel too, Herman who?
Have a referendum, have a referendum?

A vote for you, a vote for you...

(Now, do it again and this time give the right answer!)

Repeat this one out loud in your best French accent until you get it!

(Answers in a comment)

Un petit, d’un petit

Ça t’en â valle

Un petit d’un petit

A d’agrètte falle

(Geddit?)

Have a lovely weekend!

Slaves to Labour?

Had a good Jubilee? Feeling British again? Nice, isn’t it? Oh, but I bet the hissing, spitting lefties were boiling over in unvented, frustrated angst and helpless in their incompetent rage. The country’s entire stock of radical left-wing mentalists couldn’t have made so much as a dent in the patriotic pride displayed by people of every political persuasion who turned out to cheer the Queen.

Oh, for sure a few huddled republican malcontents may have had a bit of a demo, but their reception was entirely lukewarm and had they dared to press their claim the flag-waving multitude would just have laughed at their pathetic whining. How often, really, do we get the chance to come together as one nation?

An article appeared in The Guardian asking, amazed, “Why on Earth would a working-classperson ever vote for a conservative candidate?”

But it’s much simpler than all that. The left always assumes people are too stupid to hold any views they are not given to them and imposes contrived rules and red tape to keep their opinions on-message. On race, religion, immigration and the economy they rely entirely on voter ignorance to hold onto power. I wrote [tongue firmly in cheek] about voter intelligence back in February.

Under years of Labour rule the natural, honest urges of the majority have been supressed by the state insistence that mere words can cause real harm, while allowing such traitorous offences to common cause as Islamic criminals burning the flag and demanding the slaughter of our troops. To raise concern has been deemed racist and the full force of the law has been applied to anybody daring to tell the obvious truth.

While violent criminals are released by timid judges to offend again, the rise and rise of antisocial crime is engaged by more diversity training and poetry competitions for an increasingly pissed-off police force. As welfare costs rise and fewer workers pay less into the tax coffers, socialist millionaires would have us believe the answer is yet more state spending, funded by debt. Lies given currency by yet more lies. Doublespeak is real and dangerous

Socialism is founded on a fundamental lie that people are equal – except, of course that some are more equal than others, eh, Mr Prescott? So, it’s only natural that Labour’s response to a national outpouring of true affection and patriotism is the concocted slave-labour stewards story.  

Of course in the great Labour rewrite of our national story this is the Tolpuddle Martyrs all over again, it heralds the start of a new Peasants Revolt, the rise up of the lumpen proletariat against the great ruling elite. Or is the simple truth that the ordinary working people of Britain love the Queen, are fine with being ruled and just want to be allowed to get on and make a living without the incessant interference of bloody sanctimonious politicians of every ilk?

Selling your own people into state slavery is abhorrent. Selling them into slavery to a foreign power such as the EU is treasonous. Until recently the penalty for treason was death. The Queen is our head of state, so the solution is obvious. Why not dissolve parliament, repeal the Crime and Disorder Act of 1998 and off with their heads your Majesty?

What's Left?

Life's hard, then you die. Or, in untypically more optimistic mood, life's what you make of it... then you die. When all is truly said and done we end up the same way. Gone, no longer here, deceased, ex... meeting your maker, if that thought makes the inevitable any happier for you.

Given that, as an atheist, I can imagine no credible version of any of the afterlife myths of the dozens of one-true-religions, I conclude that it matters not how we are judged in fictitious heaven, but how we conduct ourselves in real life, right now.

To lead a good life should surely be everybody’s goal? Well, maybe not, as the newspapers daily regale us with tales of murder, rape, robbery, fraud, deceit, venality, corruption, despotism, vanity, desertion, mutilation, kidnap and chaos, to list but a few of the ever-inventive misdemeanours our big brains can dream up.

Less newsworthy are the many greater numbers of acts of kindness. Caring for others, doing favours, donating time, effort and maybe money to charity or simply paying attention to those who need it.

On a personal level I think we all know what’s right and what’s wrong and we’ve all done both. But on a national level something’s gone hideously wrong. The entire language of ‘goodness’ has been captured and mutilated by decades of manipulation; it seems you cannot be good if you don’t capitulate to the impossible dream of socialism.

As a result, reason has deserted left-thinkers entirely, to be replaced by dogmatic mantras and a complete inability to argue at anything above ad-hominem level. And yes, an arrogance that leads to intractable thinking, generating Twitter traffic like this:

ABC ‏@ABC

@XXX @YYY @ZZZ Arrogance? At being outraged at the cuts enforced on the UK? That's called common decency

YYY ‏@YYY

@XXX So..because I don't agree with socialism then I'm not intelligent??..that's what you're saying..right???

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ABC then argues that the current coalition government has caused it all. But who actually spent all the money, sold off the gold and to what end? To buy votes? To shackle the masses to the state? To, effectively enslave the population and then change the language to make that enslavement sound like heaven on earth?

The Twitter discussion above involved a mistaken conflation of Socialism and Social Conscience and therein lies part of the problem - by diktat it is inconceivable that a 'Tory' can be anything other than 'Nasty', or that a socialist can be anything other than caring.

It is nasty now, to believe that standing on your own two feet, free from state intervention in your every waking moment is preferable to being a mere cog. But that's not the way 'they' think. Brainwashed into believing that the state should deal with everything they cling to any scrap of reportage to piss on your parade, whoever you are. So today we get this workfare story: and as a result some miserable, soulless corner of Lefty-Twitter lights up with glee:

DEF ‏@DEF

suppose its quite apt really that slave labour should be used to celebrate the queens reign, given how its been historically #jubilee

Quite apart from the conveniently forgotten fact that workfare predates the current administration and that whenever you have funding you will have opportunists exploiting it, how anybody could believe that the Queen, who has metaphorically stood in the rain for days on end out of a sheer sense of duty  and love for her people, is culpable is not only ridiculous, it's outrageous and insulting.

We are where we are now largely because of years of Socialist near-tyranny bringing the country to a state of infantile dependency and leaving us unable to pay our way. Labour would keep on borrowing and spending, leaving the tap open long after the tank is dry. Under Labour the Jubilee would be under-funded by the state and everybody would have the same pitifully small flag to wave.

Instead, the country has shown its true colours, got up off its arse and organised a party the like of which we may never see again. The Left hate it. How dare people break out into spontaneous acts of kindness and sharing, and - yes - true solidarity! I'd rather be a nasty Tory and give you a hand up than be a caring socialist and give you a hand out. And as for royalty, one of my proudest possessions is my commissioning certificate bearing the Queen's signature.

Long to reign over us!

God save the Queen! 

Rule Britannia

If every monarchy throughout the planet were to be dissolved tomorrow, little girls everywhere would still be demanding tiaras in twenty years time. Our language, our folklore and our very British history resounds to the echoes of royal succession from time immemorial. If there were no longer any such thing as kings and queens, we would spontaneously reinvent them or their like somewhere down the line. Even the staunchest of republics - the US-of-A - still uses the language of blue blood as they elect temporary sovereigns to mark all manner of coming-of-age events. Prom King & Queen, Homecoming Queen, beauty queens...

Raising somebody up above their peers is as human as procreation. Even the remotest and most primitive of tribes have elders invested with power and pomp beyond their mere mortal means and ceremony has been at the very heart of all human organisations for as long as the species has existed. The history of kings and queens is the very history of civilisation.

So why the republican morons believe they somehow have a better ideal is frankly beyond me. They must have a lot more faith in the electoral process than anybody witnessing the recent  twin travesties of the campaigns of George Galloway and Ken Livingstone. Or the humiliating Gordian knot that is the current coalition. As for elected heads of state - Robert Mugabe, anybody?

Today of all days, the republican witch, Polly Toynbee appeared on the  Andrew Marr Show to spout her hate-filled, anti-Royal rhetoric. The fact that such an odious champagne socialist is ever allowed the platform to air her hypocritical views is a travesty. And an insult to a woman who is revered the world over and has faultlessly and selflessly served her country for her entire life. I'd like to see any political revolutionary who can truly say that.

Gloriana in Excelsis

So today I shall wave my flag and raise a glass to our glorious Queen Elizabeth II and count myself lucky to have lived through her reign. A bit more monarchy, a bit less anarchy and the snarling, envious, raggedy band of hippy republican twats can fuck themselves right off. In centuries to come your little princesses will still be able to go to the ball.

Vickification

To those jeering on the sidelines the flip-flop policies of the coalition government are seen as blind incompetence or else a sign that our 'elected' leaders are engaged in a kamikaze plot to deliberately try and sink the economy. Well, which is it? Whatever the government proposes will be branded wrong, even when the government reverses its proposals. That's because the opposition has only one purpose - to oppose. It's the only thing Labour can possibly do because they have absolutely no policies of their own.

Saying "We wouldn't do that!" or "This government is wrong!" or simply spouting "Tory cuts!" is so far from being an alternative policy that you wonder if they actually understand the English language at all. But then you realise, of course they understand the language - or at least 'language', minus the definite article. It's the Socialist agenda to meddle in the politics of language because Socialism cannot engage rationally with any form of practical or productive behaviour.

Socialism caused THIS, the Pollardisation of Britain. And isn't it apt that Vicky Pollard has become a symbol of most of what is wrong with this country, given the meaning of the verb 'to pollard'?

I pollard, you pollard, he/she pollards... we're all totally fucking pollarded

The linked article - well worth a read - ends by quoting shadow Treasury minister Rachel Reeves: "...the Conservative-led Government urgently needs a plan for jobs and growth." 

Yes, love, it does. Pity your lot never realised that while you were wielding the chainsaw.