I'd like to teach the world to sing...

The syrupy tones of The New Seekers fades into the distance as, holding hand in hand, they bring love and peace to the world via the medium of Coca-Cola. Actually, the song and the advertisement pre-date the 1971 hit single, but that isn't important; as always, what's important is the message.

Harmony, they sang, why can't we all get along? If we all did things the same way, if our weights and measures were harmonised, a component made in one country would easily integrate with a machine made elsewhere. If Frankfurter's bolt could slide easily into Nancy's nut we'd all get along, side by side, top to tail, hand in hand, gland in gland.

And if industry, they argued, why not our infrastructure; strategic, political and economic? Hey, here's a plan, let's all use the same money! Of course. It's so much easier to quantify a trade deficit without all that messy currency converting to distort the figures. Oh, and, talking of money, harmonisation doesn't come cheap, you know. Cough up. (Cough up? At the cost of our membership I'm coughing up a lung here!)

Regional variation? You must be kidding! Local produce? Give over! Cornish Pasties, Melton Mowbray pies, Yorkshire pudding; they'll all have to go. In the future we'll have standardised, normalised, harmonised, homogenised Euro-fodder. Victory Pie will become Glorious Project Pie. Coronation Chicken will become Rompuy's Delight (contains traces of chicken) and Upside Down Cake will be, well, it will be just the approved standard cake.

If we could get people to be "shorter in height we could fit twice as many in the same building site; you'll see it's all right." (For any youngsters who click on that link; don't worry, music was LIKE that in the olden days.) Hey, we could even harmonise our terrorists. In the future they will all come with an eye patch and a hook-hand, so we can spot them in a crowd - although this didn't seem to work in the UK when trialled over the last two decades.

Standardised, homogenised Euro-pattern terrorist

David Cameron has said a referendum on Europe is not a priority. It seems we're on our own then. So, join with me. If we all hold hands and huff and puff hard enough we can blow down the house of cards, we can blow the dark, Satanic Euro-windfarms back to Deutschland and we can turn back the tides... or suffer hernias in the process. Were else does the wind go when you strain too hard? Oh yes, Europe - Blow it out your arse!

Acute angina? Thank you very much!

Apologies to regular readers for the paucity of posts thus far this week; there's nothing like a day in the Acute Medical Unit to focus the mind on the important issues of the day. Thank goodness I had the presence of mind to take my Kindle along as I was rushed into an assessment which took the best part of a day, on and off.

Actually, rushed is a tad specious, as it took four days of discomfort and a bit of nagging from somebody-who-knows-better before I deigned to allow the NHS to confirm my diagnosis. In fairness they were all very thorough, patient[sic] and courteous, batting aside my concerns that I was wasting their time and my entreaties that I was only there because I was nagged. The diagnosis? Indigestion... we think.

So, there's nothing to see here, move along the corridor smartly and try to avoid staring at the mad-haired Scots lady trying to manoeuvre a fag past her nasal oxygen cannula whilst reciting... well, it could be anything really, it's in Scottish. Avert your eyes, also, from the grossly be-tattooed, multiply pierced, heavily pregnant teenager and her attendant posse of identically clothed 'individuals' - they're the future, they've got rights, you know. (There should be an exam, really there should.)

With all due respect for the long-suffering staff, the last place you want to be if you're ill is in a hospital. But I'm not, so it's all good. And I did get to put in a spot of reading. Whatever you think of UKIP and in particular, Nigel Farage, you can't deny he has to be one of the most colourful and charismatic politicians out there, right now. In the AMU I was reading Flying Free, his engaging memoir in which he sets out his stall for a retrenchment, at the very least, of our role in Europe.

I've blogged about Europe before; about how I was just one year too young to make my feelings known in 1975; about how I never trusted the shifty Ted Heath and about how I have yet to hear a single fact-supported argument for the travesty of democracy that is the European Union. Nigel's book pointed me at a number of avenues for further research and I append a few links below.

But I don't need to 'do the math' as they say. I don't need to study dry old economic theories and European war histories. I don't need to peruse a balance sheet of pros and cons.I don't need to do any of those things to know that Europe is pure poison. Free movement of people across borders? I used to have that anyway; it was called a British Passport. In fact, even as a post-war, post-empire nation, Britain had far more respect and possibilities than we will ever have again if the spectre of costly, corrosive, creeping Euro-Everything is not halted.

And just as against the Nazis - whose European ambitions were so close to those of the EU Commissioners - the English Channel is a natural border between the European mainland and the last free country this side of the Atlantic. All you need to know about the three main parties is that not one of them has made any serious noise about withdrawing from Europe. What they have all been complicit in is handing over ever more power  while flatly denying it.

Now I'm not saying that UKIP is the answer to all our ills, but surely a party willing to draw the line has to be a better bet than all the governments willing to hand over £19.2bn per year, or if you prefer, £53m per day, to the unelected, unimpeachable, bureaucratic nightmare of Brussels.

Yeah. Fuck you, Britain!

If you have a spare hour, have a read/watch of some of these:

http://www.ukipmeps.org/uploads/file/ReferendumStichUp.pdf

http://www.ukip.org/content/latest-news/2777-nigels-birmingham-speech

http://campaignfortruth.com/CTE/realfaceinfo.htm

http://www.forvik.com/index.php/documents/the-eu

See you at the referendum!

An iPhone a day

An apple a day keeps the doctor away, they say, don't they? But right now Apple's blatant built-in-obsolescence marketing model is getting social media all a-froth with indignant mentalists, simultaneously complaining about, yet defending to the death, their whiter than white fetish. Bi-polar syndrome being the lunacy of choice for the discerning Internetter, an Apple announcement a day does much to keep the head-doctors way into 45% tax territory.

One shiny-new iPhone, sir? That's seven-hundred quid and a subscription to The Priory. Or, save yourself the cost of a new bit of kit and simply update your old phone to iOS 6. The price? Free. The cost? Loss of your marbles after an entire weekend spent failing to recover all the stuff you think you can't live without.

In reality it's all bollocks though, isn't it? Apple or Android, almost nobody does more than a tiny fraction of what may be possible. If you use your iThing for music or media you have to recharge it every five minutes and if you try to use it for 'work' you will simply become deranged as your whole intellectual ability tries to tunnel-vision its way onto that tiny screen. Narrow focus; narrow vision; narrow productivity... narrow life possibilities.

Don't even attempt to convince me otherwise. 99% of all smartphone owners use them exclusively for email, messaging, Twitter and the occasional Google search. Apps, you say; it's all about the Apps. Pardon my French, but is it fuck. Apps are what we used to call... now, what was the word?... Oh yes - toys. For every useful app there are a thousand useless, buggy betas, alternatively crashing and freezing their way into the very core of your mental well-being. (I predict a whole new skein of entitlement-based, application-induced insanities to make merry work for the nut-docs.)

Even the pub - once the balance-restoring (or removing; there is that) social haven of happy babble - is now a sterile, strife-inducing continuation of the desperate need to stay in touch with everybody, everywhere, all of the time. The sight of a table of four friends all sitting, eyes-down and thumbs a-blur, is a depressing indictment of the way in which social technology is eroding, not enhancing your all-too-brief experience in this vale of tears we call Earth.

So, wake up and smell the Java, Joe! Get up off your collective backsides and get out into the real world while it and you are still in one piece. Forego the Facebook, get off the Google and avoid the apps! Now, excuse me while I check my Twitter timeline...

Europe, in or out?

A very easy decision to make? Or a logistical nightmare?

Politicians afraid of making decisions will lead you to believe the latter. So much of this or that is dependent on European stuff an' t'ing. If we pull out we risk exclusion and worse. Our trade will be affected, our world standing will be eroded... will we sink forever or just thrash about in the shallow end? How will we feed ourselves, defend ourselves, feel good about ourselves?

The plain and simple answer is right there in the midst of that thrashing about, shilly-shallying and dilly-dallying like a procrastinator's wet dream. The time is not right, they say. It's what they've always said. If you put off until the day after tomorrow what you should have done the day before yesterday, pretty soon it's the middle of next week and before long a month of Mondays has passed you by like the flicking corners of a school exercise book stick-man cartoon and you're starting all over again on page one.

Sometimes (often) it is far better to make a decision and live with the consequences than to agonise about whether to make the decision at all. Occasionally procrastination is fortuitous - wait long enough and the problem goes away. But Europe isn't going anywhere and for better or for worse it has declared its hand. The Nazis Eurocrats want nothing less than a fully fledged Federal Superstate.

~~> And we don't. <~~ 

Right there. There's your answer.

We don't want what Rompuy wants, what Barroso wants, what Merkel wants.We don't want to be involved with it and we don't want it imposed on us. The only real option is out, right out and stay out. Daniel Hannan has been pushing and prodding at this for yonks; it's about time somebody listened.

Britain on its own would have no hiding place, nobody else to blame, nobody to pick up the tab, nobody else to bail out. We could stand on our own two feet, as we have for centuries. Britain on its own could finally start to make a real difference for its people, unshackled by the Über-Socialism of an aspirationally challenged European Juggernaut. (Did you ever notice how much German you need to describe Europe?)

If only we had what the balls for it.

All Prime Ministers want to leave a legacy but few of them have a real choice in what that legacy is. David Cameron has a real opportunity here to do the right thing for Britain and be remembered, possibly even revered, as a deliverer. Churchill saved us from the Nazis, Cameron could save us from their natural successors. Gotta be worth a punt, eh, Shiny Dave?

Or shall we put off the procrastination for another day?

Crime and Punishment

Medieval Islamo-Fascists rising up and murdering innocent people because they can’t take a joke. The premeditated murder of two women police officers in Manchester by a known, armed thug. And Nick Clegg’s clumsily timed apology. These are all symptoms of a worldwide failure to address tough problems. 

Predictably, in the aftermath there are debates about routinely arming the British Police, bringing back death as a punishment and, possibly the strongest felt of all, sacking Nick Clegg. 

It is often said that the mark of a civilised society is tolerance and forgiveness. Jesus is regularly quoted as recommending turning the other cheek, as if the fictional words of a hallucinating Arab cannot be bettered two thousand years on. (But what would Jesus do about Nick Clegg?) 

A better mark of a civilised society is one where order prevails, opportunity abounds and living standards are high. And a line is drawn in the sand beyond which aberrant behaviour is no longer tolerated or excused. Turn the other cheek to a rabid Islamist and he’ll take that as a mark of victory. 

Similarly the gun crime culture seen in most of our major cities is a sign that our society’s checks and balances are not enough. That shoring up the breaches is insufficient protection against the barbarians outside. Britain and its interests are under violent siege, because the Jihadis and the gangstas will not be stopped by words. Mere words, as is evident, just make them worse; 'cos you is dissing dem, innit? 

The death penalty does NOT make us as bad as them. The death penalty is NOT state-sanctioned murder. It is a reasoned, last resort to a problem that words and jail sentences will not prevent. The deliberate, planned taking of innocent lives in the interests of crime or religion is the work of primitive hind-brain driven savages. The strategic, judicial use of execution is an advanced civilisation’s way of lancing the boil.

Dead man walking

Talking of which leads us neatly on to the pimple that is Nick Clegg. Hollow words make up the bulk of Lib Dem rhetoric. Powerless out of office; useless in office. It makes no difference what happens to Clegg. Nobody will notice. Nick Who?

Real Men

Real men don't push pens across paper, or scribble with mice on screens. (Yes I've had the tools out today.)

“How hard can it be?” was the popular cry from DIY have-a-go heroes of yesteryear when, armed only with a few rusty old tools, most men could make a passable job of putting up a shelf, relieving a sticky front door or adding a [admittedly potentially lethal] socket in the kitchen . All to be quietly put right when their better halves discreetly called in a professional once hubby was out at work. But at least they had a go and believed they could do it. 

Nowadays more often than not, said hubby isn’t out at work anymore so there can be no excuse (although he’s unlikely to be an actual hubby). Yet despite having available an arsenal of cheap and effective power tools it is less and less likely that those little household jobs will be carried out, er… in house. 

According to ‘research’ we are less inclined these days to pick up the screwdriver and even resort to getting a man in to tackle flat-pack furniture. Oh the shame. Gone, it seems, are the days when men could change a wheel, top up the oil and fit a fan belt. We mourn for the shed full of sharp tools handed down from father to son – for a start you’d have to work out who the father was in many cases. 

Boy Scouts used to routinely carry sheath knives and could be expected to do their best to whittle a woggle at the drop of a beret, but the fear of youth knife crime has put paid to that. In fact the fear of violence has even spread to a bid to ban glass from some pubs. What is bloody wrong with us? 

Could it be that the breakdown of a normal, family-based society and absolute paranoia about safety and fairness and self-esteem at all costs is at the root of all this? With predominantly female teachers in their early years (for fear of the paedophile tag that attaches to males involved with young children) it seems boys are destined to grow into their majority with neither a feel for nor a love of proper, manly tools. 

Coupled with our enormous brains, tools set us far apart from other animals; it’s what makes us supreme. But some would have us throw much of that away. A lack of hands-on manual education leaves many young men inept and unable to comprehend how things work. And knowing how things work is the ultimate province of boys and men – ask James May. 

Boys – academically inclined or otherwise – should learn the feel of a plane on wood, the beauty of turning a tree into a chair. They should be getting down and dirty and learning how machines work – and skinning their knuckles in the process. They should be looking forward to the smell of the metalwork shop and earning a few scars instead of ‘designing’ shit on a computer; yet another classroom simulation when the real thing is what they crave. 

Yes, yes, equality, blah, blah – the chicks can have a go too - but I’m guessing there will still be few female mechanics, plumbers, builders and so on. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for anybody being able to do anything, but don’t take the piss, eh, girls?) 

But, thankfully, help is at hand. If the Greens get their way nobody will be able to afford proper tradesmen any more – they’ll be too busy trying to pay their super-taxed fuel bills – so, sooner or later the lads will have to have a go at fettling on their own. 

If we can get manual skills back into education we’ll have a route for the non-academic, who have been sold false qualifications for years. We’ll also be able to make inroads into educating our own skilled workers, instead of importing them from Eastern Europe. And let’s call a spade a spade. It’s plumbers and carpenters and roofers and decorators we need on the ground, not inflated titles like ‘engineer’ or ‘designer’ or ‘project manager’. 

Let’s make manual work, work. Let's put the Y back into DIY.

Old Labour Hubbard

Next door to the woman who lives in a shoe, where she earns more than a doctor just for having so many children she doesn’t know what to do... Round the corner from Little Jack Horner, the union official with the plum job… Just along the glade from the hill where Jack and Jill famously earned Jack’s disability living allowance, lives old Mother Hubbard. Seeking to feed her poor little doggie, Mother Hubbard proceeded to the cupboard where the Labour Party kept all their policy ideas and what did she find? Sweet FA according to Dan Hodges.

In the past Labour has wooed voters by telling them nice things such as mountains are mounds of muffins, clouds are composed of candy floss and rain is made from Mountain Dew. And if we all think nice thoughts and wish very hard we can go on a journey and become stars on X-Fuctor. And nobody ever needs to be called scum. Even when they are the vilest scum imaginable. Because the Labour Party want to be seen as a very nice party; jelly and ice cream and balloons and everything. Everybody say, “Aaaah”. 

But now the chickens are firmly on the roost and all is not well in Miliband’s Marxist wonderland.

Multiculturalism has mangled our traditional sense of fair play and tolerance and created ghettoes and strife and fear and hate. The Diversity Coordinators have spent so long redefining their role, their aims, their purpose in life, their mission statements and their remuneration packages that they now need Diversity Coordinator Coordinators to redefine their role, their aims, etc. 

Education, education, education has been misheard as statistics, statistics, statistics for so long that the current crop of wunderkind are more like “wonder-they-can-spell-their-own-name-kind”. It’s not the teachers’ fault; after all most of them are products of the same failing system. But they are complicit in churning out a dumbed-down electorate which, despite my hearty derision of the Left, I can’t believe was the intention of any sane government.

But look, the party’s over and this time there are no goodie-bags to take home. All the money went on the trifle. And before you trudge home in the dark, it’s time to tell you the truth at last. Because being too nice to you all for too many years was slowly killing you with kindness. 

Life can be roses, but not without effort. Educational attainment can be the route to riches, but not for everybody. School can even be fun, but not all the time. Some make it all the way to the top; most by talent and hard work, some by good fortune, but the top is a very small place and to get there you have to scramble over the heap made up of the rest of us. There it is, the honest truth and reality of life as the planet’s top predator. 

So Michael Gove is surely to be lauded for telling the truth and getting to grips with a crippling national problem. Yes, the teaching profession is going to whinge like buggery but it’s time for them to admit that their fifty years of ‘progressive’ education is largely responsible for our appalling performance measured against the rest of the world. (It’s notable that the best in the world largely use ‘old fashioned’ educational methods.) 

And while we’re telling the truth, George Osborn should also be praised for daring to tell us the money cupboard is bare. So back to the Labour Party. Opposition is usually easy – all you do is gainsay every government proposal and promise milk and honey if you get back into power, but even the serial fantasists of Socialism seem to have admitted the game is up. The lack of any form of coherent opposition policy is a sign, maybe, that reality has finally dawned on Keir Hardie's clan.

Ed explains his economic policy to the nation

But, cheer up folks, there is good news ahead. There must be, otherwise all the newspapers wouldn't already be back to banging on about Kate’s particularly perky party poppers, so all’s well with the world again. Yay!

Keeping up appearances

Joan collins is HOW old?
Larry Hagman
The Queen

Looking after yourself
Standards
Nothing wrong with a bit of bluster, etc

Mock the Weak

Lots of propaganda skirmishes joined over the last few days, but who do you believe? They say you can’t hypnotise somebody who doesn’t want to go under and it is much the same with persuasion; entrenched views are harder to shift than shit on a blanket. 

Some cultures need to be mocked out of existence - far left, far right, faddish and marginal movements and any religion intolerant enough to create people like Azhar Ahmed. But should this have ever got to court? Far better, surely, to let him say his stuff, point out his gullibility and ignorance, then point and laugh from your loftier vantage point… the British way. George Galloway was on LBC talking about freedom of speech and the limiting of such rights. But, George, where do you set those limits? 

A survey on attitudes to welfare reveals that those in work are feeling the strain of paying for those out of work, but at the same time there is an upwelling of feeling against the Atos witch-hunts, with plenty of stories of deplorable treatment at their assessment centres. Who do you believe? It wouldn't be the first time that special interest groups had rallied their supporters to flood the newspapers and radio phone-ins with sob stories. In life as in warfare we appear to have arrived at a point where no casualties are acceptable and to say otherwise is denounced as cruel. 

Talking of war, I was alerted recently to an apparently pernicious EU plot to brainwash tender young minds into becoming Euro-sheep. 

And so it goes. We are bombarded daily with a cacophony of propaganda from all the party machines with varying degrees of atrocity being forecast as the result of dissent. This is (sadly) a good thing because few people will be dissuaded from their chosen course and the UK will remain a mishmash of diverse opinion. It’s also (sadly) disastrous, because few people will be dissuaded from their chosen course, etc. 

How I long for the fictional good old days of the nineteen-sixties when, as amply demonstrated in psychological cold-war claptrap such as The Avengers (Diana Rigg could persuade me of anything!) whole audiences could be hypnotised and programmed by watching spinning discs and a tone sent over the phone could scramble an assassin before you could say 'Manchurian'. 

Whatever she said...

So, what ‘truth’ would you go for? Time to grow up, Britain and accept the cold reality that there is no free ride in life, that there is no magic sky pixie and that we each must triumph by our own endeavours. After all, even Ed Miliband appears to have embraced the notion that this doesn’t necessarily make you evil. 

Or do you want to carry on believing there is a limitless pot to satisfy every need, that every life has equal possibilities, that every soul is sacred and that we will all live happily ever after in a fluffy, happy wonderland?

Fact or fairy story; you choose.

Skools for Fools

Now that my Marxist mentor has educated in me in the ways of high finance and I truly understand the path of righteousness, it seems I am ready for Part 2 of my transformation to true believer. Whilst I used to accept the notion of the existence of Marx, I thought it was a bit like Tolkienism and I never expected to meet an actual, card-carrying Hobbit. (Or do I mean tokenism; another popular leftist outcome?)

The Second Book of Ridicule sets out to right society’s wrongs and once again I find that all I once held dear is woefully at variance with the yellow brick road to peace and love and happiness for all. (Remember, all this is from a real life encounter with a true sage of the enlightened Left.) 

On education, I am now informed, equality is all. Apparently it is utterly elitist and morally wrong to divert resources to allowing some to become good at anything and mixed ability classes are the only moral option. As Snowball might have said 80 IQ points good, 100 IQ points bad… but some IQ points are worth more than others. 

Under the red reality no effort or expense will be spared until every child has reached an equal level of achievement. If that means an ever increasing spend on educational technology, classroom assistants and a constant re-writing of the syllabus and grading system then so be it. Only when every child scores an ‘A’ in the new Level Ordinaire Academic Fundamental Educational Result certificate can we say we have won. We need to turn out as many A-grade LOAFERs as possible. 

My grizzled old wise owl has taught me that such principles may be employed just as equably to solve all of our problems and salve all of our consciences. Regardless of what history, observation, calculation or common sense may tell you, Marxism tells you it is never wrong to rough out a philosophy on the back of a fag packet and then stick to it relentlessly. 

If I may be so bold as to extend the doctrine: 

In sport, all must win trophies. Take football, for instance: one day there will be only one football team in the land. (And it won’t be Liverpool.) All employment law will be made by the workers and all tribunals will find in favour of those horny-handed sons of toil. Criminal compensation will become exactly what it sounds like; after all it’s a brave man who would burgle his fellow and it can’t be easy getting by on a felon’s wage.

Cabinet colleagues prepare for PMQs

Finally, the sacred NHS will be run for the patients by the patients. This will apply just the same in the mental health sector; it seems the lunatics really ARE the right people to be running the asylum.

(I may need now to drink myself into helpless, bed-wetting oblivion in order to help me recover a healthy equilibrium. An enormous swing to the right may be what's needed. Watch this space as I go through the recovery programme.)

Tell them about the money, honey...

You must forgive me for my bloggy tardiness this week. I have been detained in ways the details of which you need not know. Suffice to say, I am now at large and at liberty to divulge that which I have gleaned.

Ensconced in close company with an earnest Left I have learned at first hand the serious error of my judgement. I must now atone for my former sin of believing in market forces and base human nature. So quick, make haste and gather close, for I have a tale to tell which may not wait in the telling. Two things have I learned: 

In my hand I grasp the fertile beans of the Socialists’ Magic Money Tree. Sown wisely they will reap prosperity for all and I bestow to you the formula, as vouchsafed to me by that elder. I know you will use it to benefit all mankind. 

State employees are paid out of taxation. From this tax-funded wage, they in turn pay tax, which creates employment for those who collect the revenue. So, the principle is clear; public employment actually creates more employment. By logical extension then, employing more public employees will eventually create full employment and end the need for a welfare state, which was all the fault of the capitalists in the first place, according to gospel. 

When I queried where the money came from to pay these wages I was informed, as if to a backward child, that it came, of course, from the original tax take. “From the private sector?” I offered, to be met with skyward-rolled eyes. “No, silly,” he said, “we get it from the first batch of public employees.” I objected that as they are paid more than they are taxed this couldn’t work, but “Aaaaah” he said, tapping his nose, if we tax them at 25% then after four weeks we’ve got it all back and after five weeks we’re in profit!” 

So, there you have it, the key to all the world’s economic problems. Close the factories, board up the mines and let the fields go to grass, for all can be solved by employing everybody as tax collectors, inspectors, ministers, councillors, coordinators, evangelists, champions and various other jobsworths in Marxist heaven.

Lest you think this is levelling up the playing field by progressively digging down to bedrock and then keeping going, let me reassure you that the wise one would brook no argument against his thesis. The money tree is real. 

Ho ho! That's magic!

But wait! I said I learned of two things. The second is almost as far-reaching as the first. You may need to sit down to hear this particular gem, but to this old fool – and there’s no fool like an old-skool fool – the BBC is nothing more or less than the propaganda arm of the establishment. That’s right, folks. According to the Left, the BBC is institutionally right-wing. 

You couldn’t make it up.

PS: For anybody who subscribes to any form of left-of-centre ideology, I should explain this this blog may best be described as satirical reportage. You know, because you have no sense of humour and all that...

Braveheart

It's a brave man who burgles. So said Judge Peter Bowers in contempt of his own court as he failed to jail a recidivist burglar the other day. It would be a brave one who tried to burgle Batsby Towers all right. It was certainly a brave decision by Judge Bowers who apparently believes prison doesn’t work. Maybe he should have the opportunity to judge for himself – a stretch inside might be just the job to protect the rest of us from our own judiciary. 

But maybe he had a point? Maybe we should look to more positive ways of dealing with crime? After a glorious year in which Britain has rediscovered its appetite and ability for sport, we should be taking a leaf out of the athletes’ book. I give you Sporting Justice, in which both sides – the sinned and the sinners – get a fighting chance for a satisfactory outcome. The sport I have in mind is shooting. 

It has long been open season on the victims of crime, with angst-ridden, guilt-mongering Lord Longfords blaming anybody but the criminal. Now it’s time to declare a Glorious Twelfth on criminals. Don’t jail them; let them loose on grouse moors along with the judges who would merely have them tagged. 

If it sounds a tad barbaric it's nothing compared to the level of barbarism perpetrated on householders robbed blind and sometimes assaulted in their own homes. Victims are often traumatised by these ‘brave’ marauding souls and go on to suffer fear, depression and withdrawal for many years. So there’s nothing barbaric in my book about the perpetrators being given a sporting chance of avoiding a swift execution of sentence. 

On your marks... Load, aim, fire!

Sporting chance? Of course - they can run, can’t they? And a moving target can be pretty tricky; I reckon a handful every year will escape entirely… but they won’t be quick to burgle again. 

The Talking Eds have been blathering on about “predistribution” of wealth, a concept they’ve had all summer to come up with. (We’ve had it for donkeys years by the way lads. It’s called capitalism and it is achieved by having a small state.) But they’ve given me an idea. In justice how about, instead of getting criminals to make restitution to their victims, we engage in “prerestitution”? 

It’s very straightforward. The police already know who the burglars are, so why not cut the judges out of the process altogether and let the coppers mount dawn raids and shoot them right where they shit? It would be a fucking brave burglar indeed who attempted his antics in the face of that.

I'm Hank Marvin

Hank Marvin = Starvin' in ersatz Cockney Rhyming Slang. According to Save the Children that's the fate awaiting millions of children in Britain this winter as their families choose between "Eat or heat". With respect (which obviously means I have no respect) bollocks.

How easy the lumpen masses find it to push the buttons of earnest Socialists. The Labour party truly is the party of the underclass, dancing to the beat picked out by their stamping feet and snapping fingers. Boy! Bring me benefits and cower as you lay them before me! 

So, this hunger nonsense... The complaint is raised time and again that these families cannot afford the basics and like bleating sheep the whining Lefty malcontents take up their issue without question. There is an entire class of denizen that thinks all food is brown and we regularly hear how 'poor people' can't afford healthy diets. 

While it will cost you about £10 for a four-person bucket of greasy crap from KFC, for less than the cost of a packet of cancer sticks you could rustle up all manner of healthy, filling food from fresh ingredients; stews, stir-fries and the good old classics like spag-bol. Buy in bulk, avoid anything processed and you’ll feed a family of four for less than a tenner a day, never mind per meal. It’s so easy even men could do it. 

Nobody ‘needs’, crisps, bottled drinks, enormous bags of sweets or indeed anything which comes in brightly-labelled ‘designer’ packaging. ‘Snacking’ was invented by the food industry to persuade you to eat more than you need; to graze your way into dependence and obesity. 

Oi, Miliband, where's my fucking crisps?

So, actually, I welcome the opening of food banks. In fact I’d go one better. As you can’t be trusted with money – your Labour-voting ways are evidence enough of that – I’d open up portion-controlled, welfare dining facilities where you will be fed what’s good for you and nothing else. Your freeview-only TVs will be powered by treadmills (on-demand energy is for tax payers only) and you will have to heave your fat arses off your sofas to walk into town to eat. 

Anybody found in possession of snack food will be shot on sight and the installation of weighbridge checkpoints will allow us to monitor any transgressions. Don’t like it? Well boo-hoo-hoo, it’s not as if you’re actually starving, is it?

You Little Beauty

I had half a mind to write about the cabinet reshuffle but decided against on two counts. One; that I’m not really all that interested. Two; neither are you. Finally, everybody else has talked about nothing else for the last twenty-four hours on every form of media known to UKind. (Yes, I know that’s three reasons, but there’s British education in a nutshell.) Instead I’m going to talk about perverts. Are you sitting comfortably? Let’s see if I can’t change all that for you.

On the car radio yesterday I heard Jeremy Vine discussing the phenomenon of US-style, child beauty pageants coming to a fucked-up chav town near you any day soon. Surely nobody, this side of sanity could imagine for one minute that dressing up your three-year-old as a twenty-buck-a-trick hooker and sticking her on a stage will end in anything but disaster? Did we learn nothing from Bonny Langford?

Not surprisingly it was the girls’ pimps – their mothers – who were the ringleaders of this sinister flesh-trafficking industry. Also it will come as no surprise to hear that the greatest detractors were those voicing concerns of predatory male interest. Paedophiles get such a bad press, don’t they?

Who decides who’s a pervert? What’s the cut-off point? A fifteen-year-old girl can easily look twenty, so is ‘not legal’ the same as unnatural? Given that a thirteen-year-old is perfectly (and demonstrably) capable of becoming pregnant, it would seem natural, in the literal sense that they are ready for procreation. How low can you go before stretching a point becomes altogether unnatural? Is it a relative thing? (And when I say ‘relative’ the evidence usually points to a tradition of keeping it in the family.)

At what point on the scale of admiration does a leg man become a foot fetishist? Beyond which boundary does binding become bondage? How safe is your safe word? Where does one man’s auto-asphyxiation lead to a two-man, two-hand stranglehold? And it’s not just the men; according to E. L. James there’s fifty shades of fetish going down out there, as it were.

Until 1967, male homosexual acts were illegal in England and Wales and it took until 1980 for such enlightenment to reach Caledonia. Even heterosexual titillation was still seen as sordid and it took a new century and the Internet to reveal the full gamut of sexual predilection (or depravity, depending on your tastes) open to humanity. You can not only do it today, you are encouraged to flaunt it - dress-down-Friday becomes cross-dress everyday. 

Not everybody suits a Tutu - ask Tony Blair!

The world is agog, nay, Google-eyed at the sheer number of deviations in delight and nothing appears to be out of bounds… except the kiddy thing.

But there’s good news for pageant organisers. Not everybody is against the bump and grind baby parade circuit. The police heartily welcome the circus coming to town and they encourage the widespread advertising of show times – it takes their mind off the grim prospect of a Prescott police commissioner and it’s so much easier to catch the paedos when you know where they all are.

Mind how you go now.

Feeling Lucky?

According to our supposedly Christian creed it is more blessed to give than to receive, at least that’s what we were always told in the run-up to every Christmas ‘when I were a lad’. So, it’s not very Christian for all the various whingers out there to complain about giving back things which they should never have had in the first place.

It’s back to work this week for the government. With the traditional cabinet reshuffle under way and a horde of malcontents beating down the door to parliament, MPs will return to a barrage of feeble moaning from benefit recipients adjudged to not be in need, kids and teachers bemoaning their more representative exam results and minorities – why do we have so many bloody minorities? - demanding back their unequal rights in the name of equality.

In a telling sound bite from last week, following Atos’s “fit for work” assessments, I heard the demand, “Are we to believe there are deserving disabled and undeserving disabled?” Well frankly, yes. Just as there have always been deserving welfare recipients and undeserving, wilfully idle, it is well established that there are many thousands ‘on the sick’ who are perfectly capable of working for a living; the painful weeding out process is a necessary medicine.

Britain’s forty-year dalliance with Socialism – apart from an all-too-brief optimistic interlude in the eighties - has been marked by an erosion of our national character to be shored up with an absurd sense of individual self-worth, self-awareness and an X-Factor-infantilised population who believe they can all be stars. The cold reality is and always will be that people are what they make of themselves. Sometimes that’s easy, usually it’s hard, but it’s slightly absurd of the disability rights campaigners (with whom we all, no doubt have some sympathies) to use those who have done just that – the paralympians – to lobby for many who won’t.

Governance isn’t about fairy tale endings for all, it’s about doing what we can with what we’ve got and we just can’t afford to deal equally with every marginal ‘social’ issue when we are drowning in debt. Of course that means that all the special needs lobbies will clamour all the more for the scarce resources left, but as that bites harder on those who provide, is it any wonder that support is waning?

Ask yourself, would you really rather we were nice than alive? If Cameron is going to rescue his beleaguered administration, now is the time to tighten the screws all the more. Strong leadership and sod the consequences - bugger the inconsequential and get on with the job while you still have a chance Mr C. Oh and George Osborne? Don’t worry about being booed last night – that’s just the sound of commie-pinko weakness being squeezed from the British body corporate. You keep cutting old son – cut until they have no option but to get back to work.

But a ray of light in all the darkness. Government Minister Alan Duncan, said his constituents Andy and Tracey Ferrie should not be prosecuted for allegedly shooting burglars who targeted their property in Melton Mowbray. Hooray for common sense. In fact this could go further.

Feel lucky, punk?

In the United Dingdom it will be the duty of the police not only to catch burglars but to restrain them while the property owners take pot-shots at them with a twelve-bore.