Sharp

Just because some people demand proof...

So there!

What a waste of time!

First off it was Twitter - thanks very much Richard - now it's LBC 97.3 FM - cheers, Clare!

I used to have some semblance of a life; get up, go to work, come home, draft a blog, eat, watch telly and go to bed. But all that's gone now. Now, I have to feed the Twitter monster, a task which was once straightforward and fun and got multi-tasked along with the blog writing.

But now I am assailed by a monster which cannot be slain. Well, there's always the OFF button I suppose, but that's the coward's way out.

This afternoon I listened, mouth agape, as James Whale baited and goaded and pleaded and - damn it all! - asked politely for a Liberal Democrat - any Liberal Democrat - to call in and defend the proposal by Simon Hughes that parts of London be rendered off-limits to foreign property buyers.

Between 4pm and 5pm James continually invited supporters of the policy, beginning the hour-long search with the question, "What is the point of the Lib Dems?" and was met with a wall of silence. Not one. Not one, single, solitary, Liberal Democrat supporter disturbed the airways.

Oh I dearly hope Nick Clegg or one of his [hearing] aids was tuned in. The sooner this rag bag party of political illiterates gives up the ghost and pisses off back to their flipped second homes, the better. Leave the field of battle to those who have the ammunition to wage the war.

It was all so different when Ming the merciless was in charge. Wasn't it?

Anyway, I can't be wasting all this time writing searing political commentary now James has moved on to the issue of the end of squatters's rights! Yay, let's grind the filthy hippies into the dirt. Now, shush... I'm listening to the radio - available on FM, DAB or on the Internet: Click here.

Disabled Badgers

And they’re off. To great acclaim and well-deserved applause the Paralympic Games are already bringing honour and glory to British athletes. And controversy; always the controversy. 

The 1924 Paris ‘Silent Games’ evolved into the Deaflympics. Rehabilitative sports therapy spawned the Stoke Mandeville Games, with entrants in disabled and adaptive sports. And for those with intellectual needs the Special Olympics were created. Many of these movements have come together to form the modern Paralympic Games 

As all the promotion has blazed, these are people who have overcome what most of us would regard as horrific handicaps to compete at international level with astonishing degrees of skill, strength, speed and determination. Which is where the controversy comes in; the games celebrate ability, not disability, yet they – as always – plunge us straight into a maelstrom of political correctness and wrong-thinking. 

It's another of those subjects on which - as a white, middle-aged, middle-class, able-bodied, working, educated, non-benefit-claiming taxpayer - I'm not allowed an opinion. Which is the only reason I can think of for all the opprobrium heaped on first Edwina Currie and then Frankie Boyle. The Thought Police are out in force. 

Political capital is being made, with all sides laying special claim to the caring crown. And then there’s the language! Disabled, handicapped, crippled, challenged, differently-abled, person-with-disabilities… even to the extent of referring to the rest of us as ‘non-disabled’. I wonder if, when talking about birds we should refer to humans as un-flighted, or differently-winged? 

The competitors, however they regard or refer to themselves, are of course in the minority. And such is our fear of appearing hurtful to minorities that we go out of our way to not only hamper our own language, but to suffer offence on their behalf, whether or not it is warranted. Free speech? Not bloody likely! 

So, just for a while, can’t we shut the fuck up with the partisan bickering and not give a damn about what somebody we’ve already made up our minds about says (or doesn’t say) about a subject on which, almost all of the time, we have absolutely no opinion? Just get out your flags and wave!

The Taxman's Lament

“It's the same the whole world over, It's the poor what gets the blame…”

Yes you, you stupid poor people. You’ve screwed everything up what with your ‘needs’ and your ‘human rights’ and your ‘fairness’ and your simple base human nature.

Council houses weren’t good enough for you, so we sold them to you for a knock-down price. But then you wanted to parade around in your chavvy BMWs, so we let you over-mortgage to the point where you managed to break the housing market. You wanted cheap package holidays so we invaded Benidorm, which you then contrived to turn into a sort of sunny open prison.

You wanted your expanding multitude of idle thick kids to do well, so we dumbed down the curriculum, inflated the grades and pretended they were all university material, yet those who do find work ended up in ‘retail’ (shops assistant) or ‘catering’ (McDonald’s). You didn’t want to do the dirty jobs so we opened up the borders and let the rest of the world in to do it instead. You wanted ‘cheap’ and your yearnings fuelled globalisation.

See what democracy did? You demanded choice – now look what you’ve gone and done with it, you stupid, stupid, poor people, you. It’s all your fault.

It’s the silly season, what with the footie coming back and the end of the summer holidays, the autumn storms approaching and the MPs returning to Westminster on Monday. Now is the time for that peculiar form of political prestidigitation, which exchanges lovely new money for old and conjures new imperial clothes from fresh air.

“It's the rich what gets the pleasure…”

There are no more poor people to tax – they’re all on benefits now - and no more palatable general taxes to raise, so the only thing left is to tax pleasure. With that in mind I commend my autumn budget to the house:

Let’s tax fun – it’s all we’ve got left and it will have the delicious trickle-down effect of spreading the warm glow of schadenfreude throughout the land. So, from now on you’ll be taxed on every smile, laugh, grin, chuckle, fumble, tickle, giggle, guffaw and gurn you engage in, be it at home, on the bus or at the dentist – a laughing gas tax, if you will.

You don't deserve me, you really don't - here I am bailing you out yet again! What’s that, Mr Clegg, how will I levy said tax? I’m the ideas man here mate, I imagine whatever mechanism you dreamed up for your wealth tax would probably work fine, you twonk.

Oh fuck it... let’s all of us just give up, hand over every penny and work for the state - it's where we're headed anyway.

                                              

“Ain't it all a fucking shame?"

Proper Propaganda

I don’t go out of my way to upset people, really I don’t. I just tell it how I see it and let them make up their own minds. I lose quite a few followers that way but I’ve always reasoned it doesn’t matter; it’s their loss. So, I leave the blog for a few days and what do I find on my return? A right bloody political palaver, that’s what.

We have a coalition ‘government’ (for want of a better word) at the moment, in case you hadn’t noticed. I ask whether you’ve noticed because it’s important. Any form of leadership needs to have at the very least a teensy, tiny bit of a clue where it wishes to venture in the mighty ship of state. Where would be the navigators of one of Her Majesty’s sleek, grey messengers of death if they were all working from different charts?

So what in the name of Clusterfucks Incorporated is going on when, fresh from his paper round, The Boy Clegg demands we steal more from the rich a proposal which then has to be roundly slapped down by George Osborne, the bloke with his actual hands on the purse strings. Who is steering this bloody thing? Does anybody know?

We will never understand the politics of common consent in this country – what we used to imagine was democracy - because we’re free to believe what we want, yet remarkably ill-equipped to tell fact from fiction. I used to think that if politicians just told the truth we’d all make intelligent decisions and vote for the party with the best policies. Think again.

Take Al Murray and his successful Pub Landlord character. This was supposed to be a beautiful bit of British fun-poking at the bigotries of the little Englander, but just as Johnny Speight learned many years before, the great bigoted British public sided largely with the Alf Garnet character. We have travelled nowhere… although Al must have done very nicely out of it. 

It has sod-all to do with policy and nothing whatsoever to do with truth.

prop·a·gan·da/ˌpräpəˈgandə/
   Noun

1. Information, esp. of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicise a particular political   cause or point of view. 
2. The dissemination of such information as a political strategy.

The Left have won the propaganda war, fought on party battle lines drawn up over half a century ago, because now those on the right – especially those IN the right – dare not even pop a pate above the parapet for fear of having it blown clean off. The current government don’t yet seem to have thoroughly grasped that whatever the solution is (and no economist knows) you have to be in office to achieve it. And the last thing you need is a divided front.

The game might yet have been winnable, but then along came Tim – I make millions out of your gullibility – Yeo, to blow the entire ship out of the water. With his dirty thumb in as many pies as the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee can bake, he is the very epitome of the mostly fictional Nasty Tory Fairy Story the left have promulgated so well.
 

So, well done Tim. One can only conclude that your future fortunes lie in a victory for the other side. You arrogant, cheating, swindling twat.

Bank Holiday Boozing

I don't think there is really such a thing as evil. Really, I don't.

There is certainly stupidity, cupidity, neglect, idleness and ignorance. Mankind's endless ability to fuck things up is seemingly matched only by our ability to not recognise when we're headed directly for Fucksville... in a hand cart.

Adolf Hitler wasn't evil. I don't even think he was particularly insane. His actions were the result of a cascade of events that he thought were rational and nobody at the time felt particularly inclined to nip in the bud. Similarly the bankers, who are currently being blamed for everything, including quite possibly, Hitler, weren't evil, they were just doing what we all let them do, most likely because 'we' didn't understand what 'they' were up to.

Cats aren't cruel, dolphins aren't kind and weeds have no idea they are weeds. I think this goes a long way to explain humanity. Occam's razor essentially tells us to seek the simplest solution. And amidst the charges of evil, inhumanity, global plots, conspiracy theories and every other possible explanation for the fuckwittery perpetrated by man on man, the simplest and most consistent conclusion is that we're a bit thick.

And that's about it, really. That's so much less stressful than trying to find blame and solutions. So, enjoy your bank holiday and try not to think too hard about it all. Get out in the garden and get yourselves on the outside of a nice Shiraz. Cheers!

Whine for the weekend

I struggle to understand how the global economy can possibly be in crisis after forcing myself to watch this load of Marxist claptrap that I stumbled across after following a link to the Biased BBC blog site. (Do watch it, it's unintentionally hilarious.) Of course, the solution is simple and the idiot-savant Matt Whale makes his point by drawing on a litany of Socialist rhetoric fit for a Scargill or a Serwotka.

It's all very easy, he imagines. Rob the rich and enrich the poor, guarantee training and jobs, give everybody a council house, heal the sick, engage in war no more and save the world from the evils of capitalism. Right on! (He does, of course, mean, "Left on!") All that was missing from the clip was a rousing finale, marching to a Billy Bragg polemic on the burning barricades.

Yeah, Matt, smash the rich, kill the rich, invade their houses and burn their possessions, then defile their land, demolish their factories. Bring them to their knees in the dirt and execute the lot of them. In front of their families, if need be. Then take their money and build the new Jerusalem in the name of the workers.

What's that, Matt? You can't find the piles of cash in the mansions you ransacked? You thought they all had vaults bulging with stolen treasure and pallets of banknotes? You didn't realise it was all tied up in the assets you so detest and have now destroyed and no longer exist to secure your borrowing?

It never occurred to you that those you would wage war on might have been smart enough to move their operations elsewhere? After all, they were smart enough to make their fortunes in the first place. And smart enough to be able to create industry and employment and make this country one of the wealthiest in the world, from which everybody has benefited. (Matt, for a start, appears to enjoy a pie or three.)

So, what, Matt? You think that your lot of miserable, envious malcontents spouting bile and rabble-rousing mantras are going to rise up and create a whole new, equitable world straight out of your little red book? You think that your adolescent view of humanity will bring peace and light and prosperity? How many actual jobs have your Socialist 'workers' pals ever held down?

I worked hard to dream up a devastating put down, a searing indictment, exposing the crude and simplistic notions you espouse. I thought about how best to highlight the weakness of your argument and shine a light on the true motives of the movement you believe in so absolutely, with so little hard evidence. I pondered how best to explain to you the error of your ways and bring you out of the darkness of your ignorance.

But then I realised it would be pointless wasting all that effort on a mindless Marxist, so you'll have to make do with this little gem I crafted in my word workshop. Ready? Here you go then... You daft little cunt.

Oilseed Rape

Before anybody gets the wrong end of my stick – you know what crappy readers we breed in the UK – let me state that rape is wrong. So put away your instinctive repulsion and hatred and read on. Louise Mensch is quite right. But so (dons armour) is George Galloway. They’re both right. A bit.

Where do babies come from? I think you get them free if you grow up on certain estates – they have helpful local facilitators who will readily get you pregnant if you can’t manage it on your own. The deposit is a few bottles of counterfeit booze, a few happy pills and a bit of peer pressure and the balance is taken care of by the state. 

If you watch any wildlife programme you will see the familiar routines. The males circle the grazing herd, often in small marauding packs, waiting their chance to pick off the weaker members. Sex is often peremptory and frequently violent, but is shrugged off as part of the circle of life. Consent is a given unless firmly and physically revoked. It's the same on the wildlife programmes.

We like to think, as civilised humans, that we dance to a more choreographed and sensitive etiquette but, at heart, we are little different and some of you owe your existence to an act that in some interpretations might be described as rape. Retrospective withdrawal of consent, otherwise known as sobering up, has had devastating consequences for all involved, especially the men.

Louise Mensch refers to ‘had it coming’ rape, as if there was no such thing. She should spend more time watching the city streets on Friday night, or David Attenborough documentaries – same thing. To expect that drunken, loutish youths, high on various substances and flouting every other behavioural convention will restrain themselves once encouraged is a triumph of hopeful thinking over human nature. In young, ill-educated male culture, rape is part of the language; they even listen to rape music. 

Before you think I’m somehow sticking up for George Galloway (as a man I do realise I’m not allowed any actual opinion on this subject) I should point out that my contempt for the odious little worm has no bounds. Yet in his annoying and repulsive loathsome manner he was stating the nature of reality, as opposed to the way we wish it were.  So what's it to be, Galloway or Mensch; G or M? Or maybe both => GM.

Be careful what you wish for...

Because help is at hand. Professor Julian Savulescu thinks we can genetically engineer for a brighter, more intelligent and less violent future. If he is right then the foul spectre of rape will disappear from our vocabulary, along with the dwindling population; then Louise Mensch and George Galloway can hold forth about eugenics instead.

Cleansing Wipes

As a student of - among other things - urban planning in the nineteen seventies, much talk was of urban blight, sink estates, white flight and the like. (Nope, none of this is new) There comes a point where it is impossible to attract voluntary inward investment and those with resources sell up and move on. Those who are left care little for their environment and like a dirty protest, happily shit on their own doorsteps.

Eventually, as buildings fall into decline and crime, public health and safety issues arise, the local authorities move in, bulldoze the place and sell off the land for redevelopment into offices and trendy wine bars. The phoenix rises from the ashes, forty years of neglect are wiped clean. And nobody lives there any more.

The selling off of high value property in Chelsea to fund social housing elsewhere, as Grant Shapps is proposing, sounds to me like the opposite of urban blight. If I had the means to buy a house in an exclusive borough it would not best please me to find an extended family of Somalian refugees living next door. And as a normal tax payer I am offended by the notion that those who contribute nothing may get to live in a house I could only ever dream of.

The Labour vision for Chelsea

Those on the left have attacked the proposal as social cleansing. But let's call a spade a spade, eh? This would be so much more far-reaching than mere cleansing. This would be Chelsea wiping its arse.

Hysterical Bias

I was alerted yesterday to this apparently pernicious EU p lot to brainwash tender young minds into becoming Euro-sheep.

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/parliament/2012/08/tory-philipdaviesmp-gets-assurances-from-michael-gove-that-eu-must-not-brainwash-britains-schoolchil.html

Also: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3170/british-education-political-correctness#.UCyrP2BwhLF.twitter

Well, I was brought up on Sixties psychological cold-war claptrap such as The Avengers (Phwoaar! diana Rigg!) and the notion that a tone sent over the phone could be used to kill and an assassin could be scrambled before you could even say 'Manchurian'.

What to believe?

But anyway, in the United Dingdom I will infiltrate the minds of our youth and fill them with disgusting thoughts of triumphng by teir own endeavours and only rewarding exempary behaviour and performance.

I wil tell them hideous non-truths such as that only pretty people will get to be models and only clever people will earn degrees. That'll shit 'm right up fo' sho'>

Famous for... Wait, gimme a second...

Scanning the online newspapers - the ones that most people read as opposed to the proper ones people pretend to read - for inspiration to care about something enough to write about it, in a very short space of time I learned the following:

• X-Factor reject Cher Lloyd had piss thrown at her during the V Festival in Chelmsford.
• One Direction (I still have no idea what they are) were mobbed at the same festival.
• Apparently there's yet another 'Celebrity' Big Brother on at the moment.
• Courtney Stodden is still only seventeen, or is that her IQ? Who knows?
• People I've never heard of are flaunting bare flesh on beaches.
• A picture of a cat has been downloaded more times in a second than all of Leonardo's works in a lifetime
• Kim Kardashian's arse is opening a restaurant or something.

It strikes me our politicians are on a winner. Given the amount of shit and derision people will wade through for the most minuscule scrap of fame is it any wonder they don't generally regard the economic health of the nation, or its sovereignty as subjects worthy of discussion? People in pubs don't really talk about politics in any meaningful way - all they care about is whether they are in receipt of a living, waged or unwaged.

Julian Assange, quantitative easing, the Eurozone, HS2, etc. These issues matter not a jot to most of the population. Even the mention of bankers and bonuses only elicits a low growl of confused anger and not the howl of rage the revolutionaries want to invoke. And it's all because nobody knows anything any more. In fact nobody even wants to know anything any more.

Why strive to become good at anything when the world will contrive to make that accomplishment obsolete? Why become skilled when the skill can be acquired by others who will perform it for a lower wage? And even in the pursuit of fame it's more important that you have a gut-wrenching back-story than any shred of talent.

When middle-aged S&M porn instantly outsells the world's most renowned authors; when the reporting of a selfless act of sacrifice is read by a tenth of those who click on pictures of anthropomorphic kittens (Aaww look! He's writing a book with his little paws! So cyooooot!) when hard graft yields nothing in comparison with lucky chance, what do we expect?

So in place of any thoughtful words today, in my incessant bid for talent-free blogging celebrity, I bring you a taste of the future from an Old Miaowster.

Miaow-na Lisa

Budget Regard - Going Cheep

How about this for a radical idea: Instead of government deciding what it wants to do, producing a ridiculously under-estimated budget, going ahead without proper consultation, going ten times over that budget and then increasing our taxes accordingly to pay for it all, how about WE decide how much tax we're going to pay and the government has no choice but to spend within its means. How about that, eh?

In my dreams, I know...

When William Pitt introduced income tax to pay for the Napoleonic wars it was levied at tuppence in the pound (Old pounds. So it started at 1/120 - for the modern scholar, that's less than 1%) ) rising to 10% for those with an income over £200 a year (about £17k at today's rates, but with none of today's modern fripperies to pay for). It was abolished in 1802, only to resurface once more between 1803 and 1816.

Sir Robert Peel brought it back for good in 1842, since when it has been up and down like the proverbial yo-yo and a constant source of tension between government and the governed. As government ambition has soared and spending risen through the ceiling, successive administrations have found ever more inventive ways of taxing you to the hilt. If you die without leaving any realisable assets - that's most of us - you have, effectively been taxed at 100% of your life's income.

So here's my plan. Reduce income tax to a 20% flat rate and cut the fuck out of public spending (for real this time, not pretending to, like they are at the moment). Then, if they want any more, ministers have to personally come to the door of each and every tax payer and explain nicely what they want it for.

Then, they have to stand still for a full minute while you laugh in their face.

Comments are always very welcome.

Power to the People! (a short story)

As always, it started with a simple enough idea. Hal and Mel were not natural entrepreneurs, far from it. Indeed they’d spent the better part of their post-university years effectively living on handouts. Handouts from the state in the form of various benefit payments-du-jour. Handouts from the public for sitting on street corners, often with a small dog, a sign and an arsenal of three-chord tricks. Handouts from absent homeowners in whose dwellings they squatted, always fully intending to maintain them but somehow letting them fall into what the cynical might call disrepair.

It wasn’t for want of trying; Hal, after all, had a degree in Ecology, Biodiversity and Conservation but following a three-year, gap-year had signally failed to find employment that suited his rigorous ethics. He had once decided to set up a landscape gardening business, but without a driving licence, or start-up capital to purchase a van, or any inclination to offer his services to the vile capitalist scum who might be able to afford them, the business plan foundered within the time it took to finish the pint that had inspired the notion.

Mel, on the other hand had once worked ‘for the man’. To supplement his meagre student grant – meagre because his parents were accountants and grants were means-tested – he had held down several part-time jobs during his time at university. Initially studying Economics he had decided after two years, probably quite correctly, that the world would be a better place without more economists and transferred to read Political Philosophy.

There is, of course, only one political philosophy that anybody actually studies, so after two more years and many drunken nights he had emerged, blinking into the new dawn of a greedy world, a fully paid-up and unashamed Marxist. Back in the early eighties it was an important credential for any Union job in the fight against the imagined tyranny of the Thatcher government. Of course, in order to take up a union job he would actually need to join a union and thus risk the round-the-clock surveillance of MI5. He hadn’t read 1984 for nothing, so turned instead to fight the good fight from the underground, which was, coincidentally, where he met Hal, competing for a prime busking spot.

Rivalry had blossomed into grudging respect and eventual friendship and by the end of the decade of greed, during which their peers had embarked on careers, bought houses and raised happy families, Hal and Mel were finding their feet as regular participants of the fringe protestation industry. Since those early beginnings they had banned bombs, freed basset hounds, marched on Downing Street and fought side by side at the Third Battle of Newbury to the unexpectedly unvoiced gratitude of the thousands who daily endured the misery of the A34’s inadequate transit of the town.

In fact it could be said that the Newbury bypass was Hal and Mel’s road to Damascus, for it was here that Healthy Manna was formed. Feeding the five thousand or more protesters under the constant gaze of the world’s media was no mean task and the opportunistic invasion of greasy capitalist catering vans was anathema to the ethically intense and mostly vegetarian denizens of the tent city.

Rapidly running out of Quorn™ sausages for the makeshift barbecue it was Mel who suggested he was willing to scout for more and headed to an outlying branch of Iceland with the proceeds of a whip-round. On his return with the entire shop supply (five packs) and much more change than he’d expected he found the barbecue abandoned and the protesters engaged in a pitched battle with the police. HM’s first profit nestled snugly in Mel’s pocket.

From there it was a small logical leap to attend the protests ‘going equipped’, with farmers’ market-bought stock selling at captive audience retail prices. Healthy Manna became a fixture at any respectable placard-waving events; Hal and Mel’s guerrilla credentials ensured a healthy turnover and raised fists of solidarity greeted them at every venue.

Inevitably the economic imperatives brought forth competition, but now Mel was in his element. For the first time in his life he actually understood this shit! Incorporation, expansion and diversification; suddenly it all made perfect sense. The brand acquired a killer, new-age logo and within a few short years a fleet of state-of-the-art catering trucks brought wholesome hippy provender to festivals, sporting events and marches alike.

To keep costs down and thus feed their happy-hippy followers within the tight budgets of their state-gifted incomes they sourced ever cheaper ingredients from increasingly dubious sources while tacitly maintaining their ethical credentials and ‘right-on’ unwritten mission statement. They were the people’s caterers, but before long, a decision had to be made.

Prosper or perish? No contest. The corporate world welcomed the launch of HM Plc in the heady days of the new millennium and soon they became a global brand with outlets on every city street corner. Anti-corporate sympathisers the world over willingly donned Healthy Manna tee shirts and HM made millions on the sale of merchandise alone.

Hal & Mel were applauded for not having sold out themselves – even though their accountants had skilfully managed to dispose of their shares and any liability in the company, converting their former holdings into multi-million-pound offshore tax-exempt funds – and they still attended as many radical interventions as time allowed. In fact their main reason for selling up was to achieve a better, more wholesome, work-protest balance. Two weeks in Antigua, a week on the picket lines. Fight the good fight.

And so it was that Hal and Mel, painted urban warriors and protest gods in monster 4x4s, arrived in October 2011 to Occupy St Paul’s Square. As their personal staff erected the tents they wandered off to the nearby H&M Plc Solidarity Café. With grande choca-mocha-capa-lattes in hand, they paused for a moment under the clenched fist logo and raised their cups in a toast. “Cheers comrade!” said Hal, “Now let’s go and smash the capitalist running dogs!”

Sticks and Ouch!

Imagine my utter surprise to get home after a long day at whatever it is I do, only to slip into my big, single slipper, don my slanket and open the Internet to discover (Shock! Horror! Inquiry!) that cyberweblogspace is brimming over with mentals. Who knew? And it's all so inconsequential. On the one hand there are people being attacked and personally insulted, who do nothing more to enrage their assailants than to ignore them. On the other hand there are the eejits with entrenched, evidence-free views, incapable of considering an alternative vista, yabbering inanities at each other.

And they all seem to get quite excited, but it's still just words, right? Furthermore it's a war of the words which can easily be avoided by blocking, deleting, ignoring or just plain refusing to read them. So I can only conclude that those who get themselves dragged into slanging matches must be so deranged that they can't see the idiocy of their actions. 

Or maybe they just like a good scrap? Now I enjoy a natter with a nutter as much as the next bloke, but once it turns personal I’m usually out of there. In the words of every single scene of Eastenders I've ever had the sorry misfortune to witness, “Leeeeave it! It ain't worf it!” But, with fifty shades of prey out there, the inter-sadists just can’t help themselves.

The trouble is, it’s getting harder to be inventively offensive and even the e-bully’s favourite cuss word now has to be rendered in capital letters at least three times before anybody even recognises it as an insult. Cnuts. We desperately need some new words to add zest to cyber-pestering, so I've had a go at inventing some; please feel free to add, steal, amend or re-use any or all of the following to express your absolute disgust at the very existence of anybody who dares to disagree with you. 

Clitch, Fwat, crunt, bantist, fucktone, felchtard, clungebunt, dampclap, bastern, twonge, fluclampit, craptickler, arsebint, wankwright, tossperson, climmerfladgett, belltwert, fringlersrump, flickerfunt, flimey, arseringling, ringclumper, flatupant, fuckcuntle, framstamper... and an improvement on yer basic twat ~> twaart. 

After that lot I now feel the need to offend somebody just for the sake of it. Now where can I find somebody who can't answer back, the attacking of whom does me no credit whatsoever? Oh here we go; thank you Daily Mail for this story about how parents are doing their best to get their kids on the bullying roster at the earliest opportunity. 

The Geldofs have form in this area, so this might be more difficult than for the average Rooney. Wish me luck; here goes:

Should have been called 'Nastala' - ugly little muntfunkle

I shall now sit back and await my justly deserved and hate-filed fate. Comments down there... if you dare, you bunch of snurdling, scriming, fringle-fucking crumpsticks!

Ding dong the witch is... Oh.

The Iron Lady lives on to infuriate small-minded people another day. Yesterday a bogus Twitter account @OfficialSkyNews reported that she had died and this false news triggered outpourings of glee and the popping of champagne corks in the households of all kinds of Socialist and in the supposed caring communities who have long harboured a death wish on her behalf.

So much for the moral high ground allegedly occupied by the left. To them Mrs Thatcher embodied the whole ideology of (boo!) Nasty Tory and yet the hypocrisy of their premature dancing on her grave is entirely lost in their irony-free world. Theirs is a world where serious attempts to slim down the wasteful behemoths of state-run services are derided in favour of the ideological approach of over-feeding; killing with self-congratulatory kindness and turning a blind eye to the bloated results.

Watching the BBC2 documentary 'In their own words'  about the 2011 riots, which the Thatcher-haters would dearly love to pin on her, some twenty years after leaving office, it was clear that the looters were acting out sheer greed and self-interest, a human trait that crosses all social divides and affiliations. To continue to blame everything bad in the world on one person when it is largely due to a fundamental flaw in all of us is a pivotal plank of their political philosophy. 

But so strong is the hatred in the hearts of the raving reds that they are utterly blind to the notion that the alternative might have been so much worse. And to imagine for one second that a single thing will change when an old and much-loved lady dies is nothing but a form of collective denial of the facts of human existence. So, put away the fizz and blow out the candles, Lefties. Take down the bunting, get back to work and take a moment to think about what you've done.

You might want to start your journey back to the light here. [<~link]

Wrong to work?

Hmm, I happened upon an interesting discussion yesterday in which a lawyer was arguing with a benefit recipient about the relative merits of their respective endeavours. The lawyer pontificated about the apparent lifestyle choice of the supposed scrounger and its validity, resting on the principle ‘wrong to work’.

The benefit recipient, quite rightly asked what (if anything) positive came from the lawyer's work. The lawyer lost the argument (soundly, it appeared to me) when the only response mustered was 'achieving equality for clients'. This was countered with the accusation that, as an intangible benefit, equality didn’t count as value.

Then, naturally, the labels started flying, starting with something like commie, which resulted in the lazy and obvious retaliation of fascist, swiftly followed by Tory, red, chav, scum, toff and all the usual suspects and before you could say ‘giro’ the whole argument was a busted flush.

If the validity of somebody's existence lies in the sum of 'worth' they provide to the world, it could very easily be argued that lawyers, as a ‘species’, contribute very much to the deficit. In fact the best paid lawyers are generally retained by those whose own actions are highly questionable – that’s antimoral leverage in action. It is no accident that many US politicians and presidents have practised law, a trend becoming ever more popular over here.

So, stalemate? I don't believe in rewarding idleness - how could any rational thinker? But I actually quite like the idea of 'wrong to work' in a sense - it is often said that if you find a job you love you never have to work again. And if more people were happy there would be less need for bloody lawyers in the first place!

I understand and support the idea of a financial safety net – instant evictions and suchlike would only create yet more work for lawyers, after all – but any such system will always be open to exploitation by the unscrupulous. We’ve seen it happen time and time again.

But, rich or poor, fit or lame, the concept of earning a living still applies. If you earn your place by graft or talent or by the largesse of those around you it shouldn’t matter until you are perceived as taking the piss. This applies as much to tax-avoiders being ostentatious as it does to those fraudulently ‘on the sick’. Nobody should get a free ride (although you should be allowed to coast in the slipstream from time to time).

Self-sufficiency is a laudable aim and moral self-sufficiency is a grand idea, except for the huge lack of self-awareness that man displays, but unless you want to cut yourself off completely it can rarely work. Bartering a few eggs or an occasional sack of spuds is hardly likely to fund a Sky subscription. For that you need money.

And there’s your problem, right there. Even if you reset everything and money became merely an intermediary currency, it would take no time at all for human avarice to re-establish, then accelerate, the wealth gap. In a grown-up world, I guess you just have to accept that and choose which course of living makes you least unhappy.

Is it so wrong to work? (Comments below)

The Slippery Slope

You know the old joke: Q. What's a Freudian slip? A. It's when you say one thing but you mean your mother.

Yesterday I witnessed (from my secret Internet hidey-hole – I’m not a weirdo; I’ve been tested.) two grown men discussing psychology like it was a science. Yes, I know, an actual science! At best, psychology is an amalgam of folkloric wisdom and some best-guesswork to explain, for example, why the outsider beat the favourite, or why being bullied makes you sad. At worst it offers a mountebank’s solution to man's desire to overcome the weaknesses of mankind; grifters, after all, use psychological traits to exploit their marks. Some in the psyche game do the same with public funding.

What we used to call nerves we now label performance anxiety. What was once shyness has blossomed and polyfurcated into a whole industry pivoting about self-esteem. I've never met a psychologist who wasn’t a little odd; not because of any obvious defect in their basic intelligence, but if ever there was a sub-set of humanity needing validation... And then there’s the language of the game: Id, ego, super-ego, angst, gestalt, gruppentherapeutische; much psychology is hokum, masquerading as truth, engaged in by the needy and validated by the use of complex phrases. In German.

The best practitioners of useful psychology are the observant; it's why your cat has the measure of you and why you love your dog even though he appears to be an abject fool; both know how to push your buttons. In other words, despite the wholesale destruction of entire forests to record man's fascination with the inner workings of the mind, the average psychologist is no better judge of character than your nan. Criminal psychology is exactly that - a criminal waste of resources pursuing a conclusion that could be arrived at by a Women's Guild knitting circle with a fraction of the fuss.

Lest you think I’m dismissing mental aberration and illness out of hand, I’m not; there are some real nutters out there (not me though – I've been tested). But it’s a very convenient peg to hang any and all of your anxieties and failures on and there is an army of practitioners - some genuinely helpful, some manipulative charlatans, some misguided amateurs – ready to part you from your (or the taxpayers’) money.

The talking cure in particular is a stroke of genius. Everybody – I mean everybody has at some time felt the need to unload to a stranger - it's what barmaids are for. But offloading to a 'professional' on a regular basis is a drastic measure. After his Southern Oceans ordeal Tony Bullimore famously turned down offers of therapy on the basis that it was a load of old bollocks and he had actual, real friends and family to talk to.

That is not to say that the study of psychology is not valid, or that psychotherapy does not help people, but it’s not so long since the study of phrenology was taken seriously and while the dedicated psychologist presumably looks down his nose at homeopathy, crystal healing and horoscopes – palpable nonsense, all – they might just bear in mind that they are held in much the same regard by a significant proportion of the population (blokes, mostly… chicks will fall for anything!). J

So next time you feel the urge to get help, why not catch yourself on and head off to the park I mean pub (I’m not strange! I’ve been tested!).

Lettuce Pray

It's Sunday. It's traditionally a day of rest, of worship, of quiet repose and, for many years now... shopping. As usual when Sunday trading comes up for discussion nobody quite knows what to think of it. Is it good that we get an extended day's trading, which allows some to earn more and helps keep money in circulation? Or is it bad - boo, nasty Tories - a cynical exploitation of a downtrodden workforce?

When Mo Farah won the 5,000 metres Olympic gold medal  last night there were jubilant cheers from the left, pinning his success on the triumph of multiculturalism that had created this opportunity. Because, of course, there were never any black athletes in Britain's Olympic squad before. Oh, wait... Meantime those on the right accused the left of a cynical exploitation of a failed doctrine. Cognitive dissonance being ever the main tool in a politico's armoury.

In the case of Tia Whatshername from New Whatsitsplace, depending on your stance it is either a tragedy of Herculean scale befalling and affecting all mankind and highlighting the incompetence of police and social workers alike. Or it's a non-story about the inevitable consequences of inbreeding amongst a benefit-dependent underclass of chav scum, from whom we can expect no better.

See? It's all a matter of perspective and there's the problem. Most humans do not possess the critical faculties to make meaningful judgements or formulate ideas of their own. The Thatcher-hating communities will never allow that she did any good whatsoever while those who are self-sufficient through their own endeavours see nothing but evil in the thuggish, scowling mien of the likes of Mark Serwotka and Bob Crow.

What we need is something we can all agree on and that something need not be grounded in fact. Avoid the facts at all costs, I say, because facts can be tested and verified. No, what we need is blind faith, so I'm going to gets me some religion. When I say 'me' I mean 'you' and when I say 'gets' I mean you're going to get what you're given - that, after all, is how all religions work.

I haven't got time for all that write-a-book-based-on-what-may-or-may-not-have-happened-loosely-based-on-events-of-the-time-and-pretend-it-came-from-god-nonsense. But that's old hat anyway, surely nobody actually believes the bible or the koran anyway? (Note the deliberately dismissive  and disrespectful use of lower case there) They do? Well, this is going to be easier than I thought then... using the divine power of the internet I shall conjure up a miracle, get it going viral and subjugate a generation to my will; a vision should do for a start and to that end I searched for inspiration in nature:

Here goes... Verily I say unto thee my children, I saw  the face of our saviour in my cabbage patch. And the face was good. There, that should do the trick.

Yes! It does look like Boris Johnson, doesn't it? But, of course, he's omnipresent after all and he did perform a miracle by walking in the air just a week ago. Just as a true Messiah he came among his people and abased himself. Rejoice and listen to my sermon:

Consider the lettuce...

Left, right, left, left right...

Well, as often happens, the conversation on Twitter last night turned to the ever-favourite topic of Left versus Right, where the argument on the right is for sensible, sustained economic probity and that on the left is for a pillage of all profit for the furthering of the mistaken goal of equality in some form or other.

Into last night’s mix, along with the usual dogged chewing of the socialist slipper was interposed the lovely, if fantastically deluded, views of one of my favourite and loveliest of Tweeters; that once upon a time (presumably in a fairy tale wonderland) mankind was egalitarian and generous and loveliness abounded. Then the evil ogress – you know who they mean - turned everybody, overnight, into grasping, waspish, evil malcontents. 

The left see it as greedy that people wish to hang on to the fruits of their own labours and decide for themselves how to spend it. They tell themselves that the right are incapable of compassion. The left believe that only they understand human nature and only they have the answers. Or should I say answer, for they have only one. Donning Lincoln green they assiduously steal from the rich to give to the poor. Or at least that’s what they think they’re doing. 

But it’s not wealth they steal, it’s freedom and responsibility. Those with wealth often have the means and now the motive to avoid punitive taxation. The greedy without wealth quickly learn how to milk the system. And always and for ever the honest few in the middle are alternately raped or denied; the middle classes pay out the lion’s share while the truly needy get shafted and nobody is happy about it. That’s socialism in action, right there. 

But arguing with a leftie - sorry I mean a lovely flower of the field - is a hopeless task. What we have actually works pretty well on the whole. The sick and the poor are better cared for than at any time in our history. Kids are not turned over to factories and mines at fourteen and everybody lives far too long for their own good. Where we are deficient it is most often down to the misuse of resources by a bureaucracy that just doesn’t trust you, but then spawns its own corruptions. Big state = bad state and everywhere it’s been tried has endured poverty and oppression. 

The Left's Final Solution

But despite the fact that we are now wealthier – all of us - than we have ever been, some would have us turn ever further left. In marching parlance that would be “Left, right, left, left...” In a little known and oft-denied study from the 1930s a European nation turned so far left they ended up donning uniforms, marching a lot and hailing a mighty leader as a demi god. There’s no such thing as ‘the right’ it’s just a euphemism for ‘as far left as you can go’.

Bang to rights

Tired of becoming the world's gaolers it seems we may have stumbled upon an ages-old solution to our overcrowded prisons. Import crime, export punishment. But, sod the human rights mountebankery, if we're going to make a real difference we should do this right. For a fraction of the £400million-plus it supposedly costs to keep them here and rather than simply giving the money away to 'foreign' we could do so much better.

There are thousands of uninhabited islands which would be suitable and island prisons have a long and illustrious history: Devil's Island, Alcatraz... Australia... so, why not?

Now I'm not suggesting that the league table there doesn't include some quality, modern-day Lex Luther style criminal masterminds, but I'm guessing the majority are simple thugs that the world would be better off for not having to feed. I'm also pretty certain that regardless of how much money our deluded masters throw at them, their home countries just don't want them back.

So, my solution is neat, tidy, satisfying and final. Buy an island, build a fence round it, dump the scum on it... then bomb the fuck out of it. Don't tell me that doesn't make you smile... just a bit?

What have I missed?

So, world, I go away for a long weekend and what do you do? You bloody well go ahead and have news without me? How very typical and how very dare you.

Among the usual dreary, everyday stories of millionaires being variously kidnapped, tortured and killed by their relatives, of vicious dogs running riot, of pregnant celebrity bikini photographs (what is wrong with you, tabloids?) of bankers bonuses, failed policies, government u-turns and advice to variously eat or not eat chocolate, I return to a veritable cornucopia of stuff I'm bound to have an opinion on, but have precious little time to write about.

Louise Mensch steps down, without so much as an email asking my permission. Nick Clegg resigns - well he may as well do after spitting the dummy over the non-issue of thoroughly pointless and unworkable Lords reform. Somebody ditches a car on Mars (I hope they've competed a SORN declaration), there is a post-flood mosquito epidemic in Somerset and some sick fuckers appear to have doused a tramp with petrol and set him alight.

And on top of that, we win a gazillion gold medals all in a row without so much as a by-your-leave. It's as if the Britain I knew has been turned upside down and inside out and is unravelling in front of my eyes. I desperately look around for some reassuring talisman, a sign... anything to tell me that I haven't somehow journeyed to an alternative universe.

And there it is. In an uncertain and ever-changing world, it is something to cling to. The natural order may be utterly subverted, the rule book may be torn up and chaos may reign throughout the land, but at least the Daily Mail is still obsessed with Kim Kardashian's gargantuan arse.

Does tha' wan' owt fer nowt?

I've been told I rant? Really? Me? I mean… really? (Who knew?) 

Well, in my defence, there's a lot to rant about. This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, this fortress, built by nature for herself against infection and the hand of war has been sold down the river by generations of politicians acting directly against the will of the people. 

On issue after issue, regardless of the cost, the great socialist dream of a European super-state has been relentlessly pursued, with treasonous surrender excused by vague reference to the might of the European institutions, mysterious to all but those in thrall to the Emperor’s new tailors. 

Mass immigration, placatory welfare and political correctness has removed the backbone of a once proud nation and rendered half its citizens quiver-jawed mewling infants, suckling on the teat of state and incapable of independent thought or survival. Referendum? What’s the point? We give the vote to people who can’t even spell ‘X’. 

Well, I’m not going to rant about any of that today; in fact I’m going to celebrate the greatest of our island’s counties. It’s the First of August: Yorkshire Day! 

From the jagged cliffs of Flamborough to the cold, high Pennines; from the brooding, bleak moorland to the dark, satanic mills of the southern conurbation, Yorkshire has much to cherish. Castles and coves, dry stone walls, ruined abbeys and towering cathedrals. It has views to astonish and views to calm; bosky glades, tinkling streams, dark forests and the bucolic splendour of the western Dales and the eastern Wolds. 

This northern paradise has produced its fair share of the nation’s narrative; the white rose county has raised and inspired the Brontes, Bram Stoker, Laurence Sterne, Alan Bennett, J.B. Priestley, Ted Hughes and James Herriot. It has produced Captain James Cook, William Wilberforce, Thomas Lord, George Birkbeck and Henry Briggs. Dick Turpin was despatched in York and Guy Fawkes was born there. 

Yorkshire also gave the world professional Yorkshire folk like Geoffrey Boycott, Michael Parkinson, Molly Sugden, Brian Glover, Fred Truman, Charlie Williams and Alan Titchmarsh. And what tribute to God's own country would be complete without a hearty helping of Yorkshire pudding and gravy, to the rousing accompaniment of the timeless classic “On Ilkley Moor Bar t’Hat”? 

The Dalesman's View

I leave you with the wise words of the Yorkshireman’s Creed: 

 

‘Ear all, see all, say nowt.

Eat all, drink all, pay nowt. 

And if tha’evver does owt for nowt, 

Do it for thissen. 

Wise words indeed.