Shush now...

Jeez it’s hard work not having the time to blog, but sometimes you have to make the effort and take a stand. There is a war being waged under the hashtag #takebackTwitter as a variety of the usual suspects tries to impose its will on the majority. Under the guise of taking action against abuse they are, it seems, engaged in deliberately attracting such abuse then breaking Twitter rules by inviting their followers to mass-block and report spam to get accounts suspended.

There are laws against making threats. But there are also laws against entrapment. And laws against wasting police time. There should also be laws against whipping up fantasy realities to further causes that are ultimately about restricting the few social freedoms we have left. Thus to be concerned about the policy of unchecked immigration to deliberately erode our national character is deemed racist. To be concerned that we employ cheap foreign labour while leaving our own population uneducated is xenophobic. And now, to say anything that offends any individual, even by accident is to attract some label they have yet to dream up and to become a criminal offence.

What the Feminazis don’t seem to realise is that after a generation of men being cowed into believing they are second-class citizens, designed to rape and objectify women, for which every man must atone forever, the sexes were rubbing along pretty well together. Because, after New Labour poured accelerant on the flames of that particular fire it had all become a bit of a joke and even a majority of women thought the feminist cause had gone too far.

But hey, I’m not writing bout feminism or any other ‘ism’ here, I’m writing about this ridiculous notion that the louder you shout the ‘righter’ you are. The huge majority of Twitter users are not there to campaign for or against anything at all. Heard the phrase ‘social media’? But there are plenty of users backing causes and expressing ideas which might not be to everybody’s taste. And then there is a minority of childish, possibly deranged people out there who seek out opportunities to go too far.

Have you thought, ladies, that you might actually be guilty of provoking the mentally unstable to expose themselves and risk unnecessary harm? Or that you are inadvertently putting fear in the hearts of users who no longer see Twitter as harmless communication but a cesspit of threats, lurking and waiting to pounce on the slightest transgression. Because, without a thought for other people the relentless pursuit of various agendas, all of which originate from a leftist stance you believe is inherently a thing for good, you are bringing about Orwell’s prophecy, sure as eggs is eggs:

“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”

So, carry on with your shrill protesting by all means. Rage against this, rail against that, march all you wish. I don’t care. It’s not my war and I’m not your enemy – I never have been - but I sure as shit am looking forward to your proposed Internet boycott on the 4^th August. I hope it's successful - then maybe the peaceful majority might get a moment’s respite from your constant oppression.


4th August UPDATE:
Well, today is the day and it appears that, for iPhone users at least, a new 'Report Tweet' option has been added which appears worldwide. Now, all you have to do if you are offended is to click on that and an armed squad will immediately storm the home of the perpetrator of your outrage, stamp on the baby's head, repeatedly rape any females present and incarcerate the hateful troll in a regime that includes a daily buggering by a battery of burly Beefeaters. Nothing less would suffice to satisfy the frothing and baying for blood that daily emanates - but not today, hopefully - from the serried ranks of left-wing apologists for humanity.

Just think how much blood and treasure we could have saved if we simply hadn't bothered with the two World Wars? 

We're all going on our...

All good things must come to an end. Thus, until September, Parliament is in recess. Yes the pack of bawling schoolchildren we are expected to look up to as our leaders are going on their holidays, some no doubt, at the expense of whichever interests they are consulting, lobbying, courting, embezzling, distorting, spinning, lying or cheating for. Imagine the gossip at Toynbee Villas over the summer. Imagine how the special Socialist Champagne will flow!

No doubt the Camerons will hole up on somebody’s common or garden, all-in-this-together, private island in the Caribbean, George Osborne having to make do with some castle or other, while dear old Nick Clegg will be trying for a Redcoat summer job at Butlins, where he’ll be able to court the attentions of Red Len and company in his bid to seek a coalition with labour for when he loses his current position. Hi-de-Hi, Nick!

 I too will be taking my leave, for a while. To all the Twitter burglars* out there, my compact and bijou abode will be fending for itself for a couple of weeks – knock yourselves out - while my little brother and I rip apart and reassemble the bungalow our ancient and creaky parents are about to move into. Oh yes, it’s definitely renovation weather, he said with an ironic wink and a sweaty nod and blogging will be the last thing on my mind after a day at the coal face.

For those literally unable to get through the week without me, how about you trawl through the blog for some old favourites then share them with the world? That would be a nice change from seeing my endless repeated scheduled tweets popping up every half hour. Plus, depending on activity, it will give me the opportunity to pick my favourite reader – much the same as parents are forced to do with their kids.

So, I’m off. I may pop up with the odd jocular, infinitely retweetable gem, I may not. I might even squeeze in the odd wee blogette now and then, but until normal service is once again resumed I shall bid you a fond adieu and wish you a happy couple of weeks of rant-free summer until we meet again.

If anybody asks, tell 'em I'm here!

(*Burglars please note: I have installed cameras everywhere, so make sure you smile. Oh and watch out for the bear pit, the man traps and the Rambo style spiky killer-bamboo booby-trap...)

More Sugar?

I’m sometimes accused of being a tad partisan, labelling every left-winger as simple, naïve or just downright gullible, likening them to children or simpletons. But if Sunny Hundal’s portrayal of the right as pantomime villains resonates with left-wingers then it tells me I’m on the right track. Both sides have their baying mobs of course, but the mobs to the left have hatred in their hearts. They hate what they see as right-wingers because right-wingers are pure evil. Talk about black and white – oh, you can’t; that discussion is closed down for good.

On the tenth anniversary of the mysterious ‘suicide’ of Dr David Kelly on caring Labour’s watch and the unprecedented 70 year secrecy order on the evidence that can have been imposed for no other reason than to ensure any guilty parties are long deceased, the naivety of the left appears to be in little doubt. They have a simple yearning to be liked, to be seen as the nice guys and they will fight and cover up and even kill to preserve that sunny self-image. Or they’ll tell their mum.

Because the facts of the matter are straightforward; humans are of a kind. Yes it’s true, they all want pretty much the same things and only the route by which that is achieved appears to be in dispute. In the brutal dog-eat-dog world of everything-that-has-ever-happened, humans will stop at little to achieve their ends. No matter the political allegiance espoused, humans are kind when it suits them, possessive when they need to be and hostile when it is all that is left. Tory voters are no more evil than their lefty counterparts; they are just a lot more likely to survive when the economy finally tanks.

Because the nice agenda contains a fatal flaw; myopia. Just as the failures of the federalisation of Europe are to be solved - according to the European Parliament - by more European Union, so the failures of socialism - according to socialists - can be cured by, yes, more socialism. If the error of treating a victim of poisoning with more poison is immediately obvious to you, you must be a heartless, vicious, right-wing bastard. And the coalition is far from right wing, which is why it is doomed to continue many of the disastrous policies of the left.

With the European Union expansion the socialist wet dream project has painted itself into a corner – the solution to a failed pan-European immigration strategy is (you guessed it) ever more freedom of movement. Which is why we are going to see more and more horror stories about gangs of Roma child pickpockets and shanty towns and trafficking and drugs as we head towards 2014 – the press will do what the government dare not. The Roma are no more generically evil than other humans, they are simply pursuing a survival strategy by any means available and western Europe is ripe for plucking. Too bloody nice, you see. Or too bloody weak.

If anything, what we really need is a strong, centre-right administration, intent on reversing the decades of weak, socialist capitulation brought about by a sense of righteous niceness and an inability to say no. Labour can never offer such a thing and they have absolutely zero credible policies, which is why their entire electoral strategy appears to be the recruitment of the Sunny Hundals of the world to resurrect the palpably untrue ‘Nasty Tory’ brand and rely on the natural, childlike instinct of the left – to spit out the nasty medicine and take sugar instead.

Labour – Political Diabetes.

Who’s in charge here?

It seems like a simple case of ownership. Do we own the government, or does government own us? Judging by the daily demands of the popular press the matter would appear to be settled; under the banners of social justice, equality and human rights the government must intervene to do something about, variously:

The noise, the neighbours, the neighbours’ annoying kids, annoying kids in general, attitudes and behaviour in society, the ASBO culture… and my annoying kids. Sticking with the subject of kids – cos, right, dey is da fyootcher, innit? -  the government must act to increase my fertility, so I can exercise my human right to breed without restraint, but simultaneously restrict the breeding rights of other people who are just not responsible enough to know when enough is enough. Fair enough?

We, the people demand, that the government take action to maximise our life chances, by improving education, welfare, health provision, transport and body morphology reassignment counselling. We further demand equality for all. If that means restricting the potential of those with greater ability, then so be it; if fairness is the key then it is only fair that nobody should succeed in such a way as to embarrass or shame the rest of us or belittle our mediocre achievements. There can be no higher national ambition than equality of self-esteem.

We cannot be expected to understand science. This is why the government must maintain fleets of advisors to tell us what to eat, how to exercise, how to stay clean and when and what to recycle. They must not deliver to us raw facts, based on which we are incapable of making a judgement – no they must do the judging for us. Low carbon, fossil-fuel-free, organic, synergistic, sustainable, biodegradable, poly-cotton, drip-dry, ecologically ethical lifestyles are words and phrases with no meaning for us because they all sound like hard work. You must make those decisions for us… because we are in charge.

We want wall-to-wall, end-to-end, piped-in, hyped-up joy; not this incomprehensible, responsibility bullshit. And none of your guilt trip shenanigans, neither – don’t go making us feel bad for needing to resort to drink and drugs and fat and sugar and pretty things we can’t afford in order to stave off the ennui and sheer futility of existence. Do our thinking for us because we can’t be bothered. After all, we are the masters here and the government is our servant, remember?

I think that’s a summary of where we are today, or at least it’s where the Labour Party’s most reliable full-life tariff voters reside – the “everything must be done for me” brigade. Of course, in order for something to be done and seen to be done, records must be kept. That’s why there is such a thing as a Sex Offenders Register; keep tabs on the buggers. No matter the severity of the transgression, if it’s indelibly recorded the system can be seen and proved to be working. And as the SOR has been so successful in absolutely removing for all time any reoccurrence of sexual offending, by logical extension we can introduce offence registers in other areas too.

For your security and protection the following permanent, publicly accessible records must be maintained: The Race Offenders Register, the Bigot Register, the Climate Change Deniers Register, the NHS Detractors Register… Speeders Register, Disabled Parking Violators Register, Eight Items or Fewer Transgressors and the Looked-at-me-in-a-Funny-Way List. Every transgression against the laws put in place for your safety and convenience must be filed and available under the Freedom of Information Act. No deed unpunished, no mistake unpaid for.

The system will set you free!

As the servant of the people the government must do all that for you; it is what they are there for. They will absolutely guarantee your health, wealth, security and happiness and all they ask in return is your freedom.

Big is Butt Ugly

The theme of last night’s Newsnight seemed to be that whatever government is in power the NHS operates primarily for the benefit of its staff and not that of its patients. We’ve seen this before; the rail and coal and steel industries all suffered the fate of state monopolies with self-interest coming before efficiency and ever higher subsidy required to cover up the reality that economies of scale are simply lost when there is no real accountability.

As more and more scandal is reported and more and more evidence comes to light about a profession blighted by targets and box-ticking and the relentless imposition of qualifications in place of simple human compassion, the current government is lambasted for attempting the necessary reforms while the Labour Party seems to be more concerned than anything else with covering it all up and saving their own skins.

NHS; the emphasis should be on the H and not on the N – focusing on the so-called big picture and the sanctity of the state behemoth (one of the largest employers in the world) the detail has been neglected. And the detail is all about the patient care; the small print is written in human misery. Ah but, we are all stakeholders in nationalised industries surely and that must be a good thing, right? Except that is a just another meaningless sound bite, the product of governments unable to tackle reform on political grounds and trying to justify throwing ever more money – our money – into the pit. We must ‘save’ the NHS; the envy of the world, the jewel in the crown of the welfare state. Anything to put off the day when sleeves have to be rolled up and the rot eradicated.

It’s a mere aphoristic kindness to say that the NHS is a ‘victim of its own success’. That’s like saying Piers Morgan is a victim of his own likeability. The bigger any system gets, the more complex its operations, the more removed from individual responsibility becomes every single person in that system. Remove individual responsibility and soon it’s just another trough to shove your snout in. And you can’t blame people for taking advantage, because humans are just another opportunistic species and the snout mentality is never far away.

Corruption doesn’t just have to mean drug companies colluding with the medical profession and skimming off billions. It doesn’t just have to mean management reforms inevitably generating yet more management. It can simply mean taking ‘sick’ days because you can, or going on pointless courses because you can… not caring because you still get paid whether you care or not. This is the British disease, the sick man of Europe resurrected from the shallow grave that Maggie was prevented from digging deep enough.

This is the inevitable conclusion of Statism. It doesn’t matter what works or what doesn’t, it doesn’t matter who dies and who lives, it doesn’t matter who pays for it, or how we pay for it because when we own everything we can control the flow of information too. And we’ve proved it again and again – Hitler, Stalin, Mao; all cut from the same cloth – repeat the lie often enough and people will believe that Big Brother loves them and they will come to love and rely on him. If only we had a state broadcaster in our pocket, too. Oh…

Harsh medicine time for the NHS

So, now we know the NHS is fucked and has been for a long time, how long before realisation dawns that bigger is not necessarily better? Collectivism always erodes individualism, which is fine when everybody is working away in the salt mines, but you can’t have both or rather you can’t have an unlimited amount of both. You might want to consider this when you are deciding what you think about the European Union.

Let's Do It

Cole Porter knew a thing or two. In 1928 he wrote: Birds do it, bees do it… even educated fleas do it. In Spain, the best upper sets do it.  Lithuanians and Letts do it. The Dutch in old Amsterdam do it, not to mention the Finns. Chinks do it, Japs do it, up in Lapland little Laps do it. Some Argentines, without means, do it. People say in Boston even beans do it. Electric eels do it. In shallow shoals English soles do it. Goldfish in the privacy of bowls do it… Let's do it, let’s…

The topic of eugenics popped up over the weekend, as it is wont to do on a hot summer’s day when the unmellow strains of unrestrained families echo cacophonously across sink estates the land over. The scene was thus – I had just fixed the NHS by the simple expedient of applying no-nonsense triage to the system and had set out to do likewise for the Welfare State. Oh that title; the ‘W’ word sounds oh-so caring but add capital-letter ‘State’ and you just know you have a clusterfuck in the making. The most significant thing wrong with the welfare state is the sheer number of people reliant upon it. That’s what has to change.

Now, good people practice a form of eugenics all the time, often for economic reasons. Limiting your family to a size you can care for and to which you can give the best start in life is responsible, kind and ultimately fair. Even before starting a family, there is a selection process for the breeding pair; successful people generally mate with attractive people to produce more of the same – but not too many more; that would be irresponsible. But lower down the social scale you have the unplanned reproduction without responsibility of brutes like Keith Macdonald, a one-man welfare drain who has featured in this blog before.

Come on now, be serious, what opportunities do any of those kids have other than to repeat the aberrant behaviour of their parents? When farmers grow too much of a crop, the surplus rots in the ground. Therefore, farmers are careful to husband their resources. But not so long ago we had the phenomenon of the EU ‘wine lakes’ and ‘butter mountains’ and surplus grain crops being dumped at sea. Even today various economic policies promote waste. Pay people to produce any commodity and you will eventually create a glut. Back to the topic in hand and a show of your hands, please –who wants the Keith Macdonalds of the world indiscriminately sowing their seed? Thought not.

It was a hot day yesterday. People were too busy being hot to bother about me and my soap box but one of my occasional irritants decided to take me to task. What did I tweet that was so offensive? “Welfare. Give it to me. I'll sort it out. No, you're not allowed to have kids. Job done.” His response was, “So you’re proposing eugenics”. I thought about it. He was right. So now I’m a Nazi. And there’s the real problem; end of rational argument all round.

Nobody can be so blind that they cannot see the folly of assisting the uncontrolled explosion of a part of the population which – while not necessarily attaching blame to them directly – we simply do not want. More mouths to feed, more ADHD to contain, more domestic violence, more crime, more courts, more prison places… and then, ever more unwanted, abused, life-restricted kids, some of whose contribution to Planet Earth could best be described as just so much more human protein.

Feckless families like this must be stopped!

So, is the only thing preventing us from having this discussion a word for something that responsible people already do? Are we are afraid that using that word will turn us into monsters? Seriously, we're scared of a word? But what else are we going to do? Unless this nettle is grasped the only thing that will restrict population will be access to resources - nature's way. And that usually means war. So, if birds can do it and bees can do it… Let’s do it - let's at least talk about it.

Warning. May contain nuts.

Some Tweeters should come with a health warning: “Hair Trigger. Do not disturb” Then again many Tweeters arrive in this virtual playground pre-disturbed and ready to fly off the handle at the least provocation. I enjoy a good argument as well as the next, but in order to argue you sort of have to be able to get a word in edgeways. I fully admit to having stoked the coals in the first place, but I didn’t need to fan the flames as what somebody described as a “misandrous harpie “ got to sticking me the big one. As I write this, the formerly frequent contributor has not tweeted a single thing since. Maybe venting all her spleen on me was cathartic, in which case I reckon I should be able to charge a fee; I’m a doctor now.

So, it all kicked off when I investigate a re-tweeted comment and found the following string of tweets, seemingly prompted by no particular event, just a hatred of all things Tory:

“One of the most incredible things about the Tories is their Malevolent Arrogance and their comfort with lies and distortions of the truth”

“One of the most incredible things about Britain is the imposed class structure and the way that many people 'believe' and buy into it”

“One of the most incredible things about people in Uniforms is the way that they believe in the over-inflated plastic authority vested in it”

“The Tory edict is based upon Fascist ideology - how much more demonisation of those with the least must you see to understand this.”

To which I, being a heartless brute of the right, responded:

@Nutter You silly, gullible fool... How the socialists must chortle when they see how you fell for that line.”

That was the previous evening. When I returned the next day, there was a reply:

@Battsby I say, let them chortle - if your uniform is anything to go by I can glean the sanctimonious political nincompoop behind it...

This was, of course, a reference to my current Twitter avi, which just happens to be an old photograph of me, but as a rule a Twitter avi is generally fairly poor grounds for drawing conclusions. As a sanctimonious political nincompoop, I felt compelled to deliver what I naïvely assumed would be a Parthian shot before getting a cup of tea to start the day:

@Nutter  Haha! Enjoy the bleak emptiness of a life of 'equality' under your ideologues.

@Battsby I will Battersby, and you enjoy a bland and meaningless existence behind a military uniform believing the contents of your pants

I’m assuming she ran out of characters at that point – the Twitter equivalent of drawing breath, because she immediately followed up with:

@Battsby (you cock-hair)

Well, I’m one nasty muthafucka because instead of leaving well alone I responded with this unnecessary and ultimately unworthy jibe:

@Nutter Oh, you're one angry lefty aren't you? Daddy didn't love you enough, was it?

It went quiet for a while from her end, so I thought it was all done and dusted, but on reflection she was obviously writing her response. In the meantime a few of my followers were monitoring the exchange, re-tweeting bits and adding some comments of their own. Well, talk about lighting the blue touch paper… to comprehend what happened next you need to know one thing about Twitter - the one thing that nearly everybody knows – and it’s this. You are limited to 140 characters per tweet. So what I render below as a dense stream of consciousness was delivered, rapid-fire, onto my timeline in a series of 23 separate tweets. Are you ready?

“first, I noticed that you brought a lot of 'friends' with you to 'make your point', which has 'no point' save the insults you began - this is the kind of action I credit to mindless jerks who have no point save their own inflated sense of righteousness - otherwise known a s'bullying' - s'funny really because it was Orwell who stated that 'the word fascist doesn't really mean anything - to British people, the word 'bully' is used with more weight and the same meaning' but herein, fascist will suffice - secondly, i can sense through your sense of self-entitlement that you are indeed right-wing and militarist, most likely the kind - the kind of chaps who enjoy dishing out a good kicking on behalf of an ideology that you have absolutely no understanding of - save the uniform, the pay and the sense of entitlement you are bestowed from other, bigger, wealthier bullies who will insist that - British Imperialism has always been and will always be the only way forward. On this basis i would say that all of you to a man - are most likely excellent Misogynists and will probably have enjoyed a gang rape or two on your way around the globe, almost - certainly stopping to agonise about the whole thing in some London Dungeon as you take it up the ass whilst in rubber bondage - probably because I spend a lot of time insulting the Right - big mistake Battsby, but you single-minded one celled chaps can only - see things in black and white terms, its probably your military training, but its also miost likely a sign of in-breeding somewhere - back in the family trree, the kind of thinking that leads you to conclude, all to readily, that there is only either black or white - opinions in the world, Fourthly, and probably most importantly, you have demonstrated a complete lack of understanding - when it comes to 'Fascism', old fascism when it was originally incepted by the Italians, and modern fascism, which is Corporate and - like all and any political ideology, has changed and adapted to 'suit' the needs and changes of the 21st century-Corporate fascism - is a relatively new phenomena which most people do not understand, however, its alliance with militarism, perjorative treatment - of minorities, bullying, use of private venture to further state ambitions and its love of uniform still ring true to the core - ideals of original Fascism, so I don't think you're in any position to lecture me about something that you don't understand yet - obviously buy into and hold dear because you appear to have become 'inflamed' by my use of. But please, don't mind me, do carry on - with your fascistic views, bullying, trolling and use of your friends voices to try to stifle mine - I am happy to watch a vapid - collection of uniformed pricks prove my point by demonstrating themselves to be nothing more than a gang of idiotic ill informed - misogynistic bullies x” [sic]

Don’t you just hate it when people won’t come straight out and just say what they mean? 

Pissing against the wind

The notion of accepting ‘The Facts’ about wind power from the wind power industry is about as sensible as accepting from the only bloke that was there that those rough-hewn tablets of stone were indeed commandments passed down from Doug. As he hastily hid his chisels, I imagine Moses also buried what was left of his integrity. Here was his big chance of passing into history. We must assume the Chris Huhnes, Tim Yeos and all the others who will profit from government profligacy with our money have similarly convinced themselves it isn’t just a dream. Otherwise they'd just be liars.

And so the wind power swindle rumbles on as plans for the world's biggest offshore wind farm have been approved. Triton Knoll, a £3.6bn project will cause 288 giant wind turbines to be erected off the coast near Skegness. ‘The Facts’ from the consortium responsible -  Line Our Pockets With Gold Incorporated – are that this will generate 1.2 gigawatts of electricity, and supply power to the best part of a million homes.

The government talks about attracting investment into Britain. Well, of course they will attract investment when they guarantee profits. Fuck me, we’d all be up for a gamble on a certainty (what could possibly go wrong?) but the profits promised to these gigantic organisations will not only come from the individual pockets of every British fuel user, they will almost exclusively all go abroad. And most outrageous of all is that the collaborators will maintain the lie even as they shovel up the spondulix in full view of the public; akin to robbing a bank while the police cordon holds back the crowd of depositors.

It’s always wrong to hold an opinion without considering the evidence, so I have applied the same rigorous analysis as the green evangelists to the following summary of the flip side of the ‘renewable’ energy confidence trick. You will find me dispassionate and honest and open and history will show that I have just as much proof of these ‘facts’ as the gold diggers have for theirs.

Wind power – The Alternative Facts:

Firstly, Wind Farm. This phrase is a misnomer; they are no more farming wind as a meadow is cultivating rain and therein lies the chief drawback, which somehow seems to have been overlooked – what if there is no wind? Frequently, for days at a time, the wind will simply not blow. Not a problem, when there is no wind the government will pay anyway while the turbines stand idle. You’ll never know – you’ll be kept, quite literally, in the dark. The other issue with the wind is you can have too much of a good thing; if it is too windy, to avoid damage the blades will be locked. So, as far as the main ‘crop’ is concerned, wind farms will not produce unless there is just the right amount of wind. Phew, luckily for them that here in the UK we have the most stable and predictable weather conditions in the world. Oh, wait…

There’s really no need to go much further – governments have conspired to replace our reliable, controllable, sustainable and proven electricity generation infrastructure with eye-wateringly inefficient, unreliable and hugely expensive white elephants for entirely ideological reasons, for which we will pay in all manner of ways long into the foreseeable future. By the time they come to their senses – or are burned at the stake for their excesses – it will be too late to stem the tide.

Oh, and talking of the tide, the North Sea is hardly a benign environment. The life of these white behemoths will be less than half that predicted. The capital costs will never be recovered, it will just be ‘accounted away’ and forgotten and the disposal costs, which will be enormous are never factored into the equation in the first place - somebody else's problem. As they rust and fall into the sea, how long will it be before the exact same hippy pressure groups are wailing and gnashing their teeth and demanding action over the damage to the marine environment?

There’s little point in getting worked up about it; the deed is done. But what we could all do is practice getting by without any electricity at all for days on end, ready for a time quite soon when we will finally see a return to the traditional lifestyles so beloved of and invoked by all administrations. As you all huddle around the family candle for warmth you will be able to watch the ruddy glow of your children’s cheeks while you tell them wild fairy stories of the days when the lights came on at the flick of a switch.

Fundraiser

The on-going row over Labour funding by the unions and their constant and quite correct haranguing of the Conservatives and their big-ticket donors isn’t going to die any day soon. It’s an established principle that the paymaster calls the tune and no amount of naysaying will ever change that. Both parties may as well incorporate contributors’ logos in their literature and feature a ten-second sponsor’s ident at each end of their party political broadcasts. Maybe they could all wear a sort of uniform, so we know? At least then all our MPs would look like touring sports teams instead of the bags-of-shite way some of their mothers dress them. (No open-top bus rides, mind.)

Add to this the announcement of MP pay rises (whether they jolly well want it or not!) and the earning of second incomes and it’s no wonder nobody trusts the political class any longer. There has to be a fair way and neither side has any workable solution – that is, no solution that finds favour with their opposite numbers. It’s almost as if – and I know I’m going out on a limb here – it’s almost as if they are not working for us at all but simply behaving like NHS senior administrators and seeing how quickly they can divvy up the big, luxury pie amongst themselves and their mates.

The thorny question of paying for our representation in Parliament isn’t a new issue at all; it has always been recognised that men of independent means don’t necessarily have dispassionate principles and bought men are ever mindful of their owners’ demands. Well, in a parliamentary democracy are we not the owners? Isn’t it about time we fitted the muzzles, tightened the leash and brought them to heel? I have a number of suggestions that could revolutionise the way our politicians are bought and paid for.

Some say pay MPs from the collective public purse. I say pay from the individual purses of the public. Instead of scrawling your X on the ballot paper, I propose a far more direct form of selection. A fiver a vote and MPs selected every year. This is how it works: in a scheme adapted from Lapland, all MPs and their rivals gyrate at poles in the polling hall (see what I did there?) and voters deposit a fiver in the g-strings of their favourite. The one with the most money at the end of the day wins and that’s their annual salary, right there. The losers have to donate their takings to pay for the NHS.

The Piñata Poll. Every year on College Green, Andrew Neil presides over the annual party funding event, whereby a gigantic paper donkey (or donkeys - I’m not ruling out spreading the joy) stuffed with £50 notes is beaten with sticks by blindfolded members of the lower chamber, egged on by their ennobled elders. Each Party collects as much as it can and the one with the largest haul forms the next year’s government. What they have in their pockets is the year’s budget and the losing parties are responsible for coughing up the costs of Parliament

Now, I realise that each method proposed is likely to result in hung parliaments or frequently changing leaders but I see that as more of a positive. While MPs are diverted by scheming to get the lion’s share of the next funding exercise, grubbing around like the pigs in shit they all repeatedly demonstrate themselves to be, the Civil Service can get on with the job of running the country, largely free from party interference. The resulting period of stability might just be what the country needs.

Monster Raving Loonies at Annual Spending Review

How do we fund the costs of the Civil Service? Well, who can forget the glorious sporting highlight of 1987? Let me remind you – June 1987 was the date of It’s A Royal Knockout. Let’s resurrect that format and then the whole country can laugh along as the Health, Education, Defence, Foreign and Home affairs teams slug it out to share the loot. It will be just like the good old days, except perhaps for Stuart Hall.

The Falkirk Dilemma

In these straitened times, choices have to be made. Over the last winter the opposition made much play of the supposed fact that some families had to decide whether to heat or eat their children*(*This may not be true). They went on to make political capital from the fear that lifestyles had to be altered and choices made; capital they then went on to squander by continuing to behave as they always did, as revealed in the recent Falkirk ‘crisis’. Maybe we should all be changing our behaviour in any case; the last twenty years of believing we could have everything has made us all fat and lazy.

You can go all out for thrift – an approach championed by the Frugal Queen who has set a challenge to live as cheaply, in monetary terms, as practicable, eventually to live a debt-free, sustainable lifestyle. Or you could just decide to live within your means and make simple choices following a cost-benefit analysis, or whatever the young and trendy consultants are calling it these days. In other words, how much bang are you getting for your buck? (And how is Buck these days?)

For instance, I no longer lease a private Learjet to travel to Birmingham. A bit of research showed that after paying the £2000 per hour, plus the airport fees, parking, standby charges and all the rest, it still takes two hours door-to-door. It turns out I can do that journey in my car, for about £20 in fuel – who knew? And even better, I don’t have to book it in advance, lodge flight plans, or put up with airport delays. It’s amazing what you can learn… if you can be arsed.

So, this CBA, how does it work? Easy really, all you do is compare the relative costs and benefits of competing choices. Take for instance, booze or books: A paperback costs about the same as a half-decent new-world wine, so which should you choose? Let’s examine the relevant facts:

That book will entertain you for perhaps a dozen hours over several days, if not weeks, you’ll be transported to another world, or possibly learn something life-enhancing and at the end of the ride you’ll still have the book. Opting for a bottle of wine, however, you will be lucky to spin it out for two hours, after which you’ll yearn for more. You may give in to that urge and pick up some fattening fast food to accompany it, as a result of which you’ll wake up late, feeling like shit having put on weight and taken another step toward hopeless addiction and the possibility of developing chronic, life-shortening medical conditions. See how CBA reveals the solution to your dilemma? Now the choice is a no-brainer; Shiraz or a nice Pinotage?

Another example - Telly or Training? One of the evils of our twenty-four-seven, media flooded lives is the danger of stagnating, slumped in front of a screen, watching mindless pap as muscles atrophy and joints seize up. Bed sores are a distinct possibility, along with blurred vision and tinnitus and in extremis becoming biologically fused with the settee. Of course, the benefits of regular exercise are well documented. It helps maintain a healthy body, prolonging active life and a feeling of well-being and even smug superiority over lesser mortals. A vigorous workout can leave you feeling lifted; the rush from those endorphins flooding your brain is said to be better than sex. A healthy, happier, longer-living you. On the other hand, gym membership costs a fortune and you’re already paying the telly licence fee anyway so, no contest, Kyle it is.

Red Len or Supermen?

See? It’s so easy anybody can do it. And this could also be the way forward for the party funding debate. The choices are simple: Continue with systems that mean disproportionate influence is gained by larger donors, individually or en masse, thus attracting the criticisms of bias, corruption, fraud and the creation of puppet leaders and a disenfranchised general electorate. Or, radically overhaul the system so that voters’ preferences are properly responded to and democracy is restored? I’m not holding my breath.

Marvellous Armley

If you want to know what the nineteen seventies looked like, come to Armley. Doing a favour for a neighbour yesterday I was whisked back to that heady decade when said elderly, jowly neighbour appeared at the door without a shirt. “Come in lad” he beckoned… “so long as you’re not a Paki” he may as well have added. Bernard Manning was almost certainly beaming up on him from his cosy little place down below..

Yes, I live in Little England – and not the nice, leafy suburb bit. My neighbourhood, while not being quite at sink estate level (though there are plenty in walking distance) is a microcosm of Tony Blair’s multicultural dream - dream for him, nightmare for the rest of us. My friendly, bare-bellied neighbour explained to me the current state of play. According to Manning’s protégé it is this:

We have the Sikhs and Hindus who run the local businesses. The Polish have taken over the shops in Town Street, from which flows an unlimited supply of pickled cabbage and cheap vodka. They do the jobs the almost extinct British working class used to do. Then there are the muslims who we pay to outbreed us as quickly as possible and finally the white underclass who take it as their right to live off the state for their entire lives and criticise others for doing exactly the same.

Manning Junior has lived in the area most of his life and he helpfully named the various families who had never seen a day’s work in their entire time on the planet, unlike his direct neighbour who although being on the Old King Cole for decades, woke them up the other day at 0530, getting up to go to work (cash-in-hand, needless to say). I also got to hear about the mosque at the top of the road which, allegedly, never had planning permission and the corner shop two doors down which suddenly appeared some years ago, again with no planning permission.

At night, hordes of small children run around the streets screaming at the top of their voices and there are regular gatherings of twenty or more older youths who block the road with car hi-fis on full, or engage in interminable pursuits around and around the block on un-silenced quad bikes. Bernard is convinced it’s all part of a deliberate ploy to speed up the process of white flight and simultaneously lower property values. It’s hard after a while not to see his point.

People ask me why I live here. Like many of us, probably most of us, I appear to have ended up here as the result of a chain of events none could predict. But when I first moved in just seven years ago there was a spirited attempt to revive Armley’s fortunes and the self-appointed Lady Mayoress of Armley was fully engaged in that task. Sadly the Armley Tourist Board’s last tweet was over three years ago (@LadyMofArmley) and I see no recent activity on the blog. I guess even the diehards have died away now.

Armley Gaol - The Good Old Days

So, what hope for the future of the little Leeds suburb that could once boast Alan Bennet, Barbara Taylor Bradford and Chumbawamba among its alumni? This former mill town and bastion of Britishness must surely have life in it yet? I asked my elderly neighbour as he sweated and pontificated. “Honestly?” he replied, “I think we’re fucked.” 

What did the Daily Mail ever do to you?

A Twitter exchange I watched recently, had the two parties almost fall out because one of them cited a Daily Mail article and was ridiculed, not because the article was inaccurate or misleading, but simply because it was in the Daily Mail, so it was therefore somehow morally wrong to have quoted it. The DM, along with the Express and others is frequently panned for flying the flag of Little England, a pejorative oft-aimed at those with what used to be the standard British view of the world.

But what is wrong with the Daily Mail? I often start my trawl of the news with Radio 4’s Today programme and the online version of the Mail because, of all the online newspapers, I find it the most easily accessible. I generally also check the version of some major stories in the Daily Telegraph and The Guardian, to hopefully get a balanced view. Then somehow I manage to cobble together a few hundred plundered words and pass them off as my own.

Of course I understand why the ‘enlightened’ left hate the Mail so. It’s because of this sort of article by Selena Gray; nothing gets a socialist quite so worked up as somebody daring to step outside the multiculti, diversitastic, right-on narrative. (Read the piece, it's very good) How dare anybody point out the flaws in the plan? 

Put simply, it’s this. Those who go to work and pay taxes and receive nothing from the state have to make decisions about rationing their spending. Holiday or car? New kitchen or new bathroom? Two kids or three? The children of such parents grow up to understand the simple mathematics of western life: education + ambition = decent job. The lesson is learned even more emphatically if early years were a struggle, with parents determined their kids will have a better start.

Contrast that with the ill-educated offspring of the entitled classes. For generations it has been easier for politicians, hell-bent on personal prestige, to simply park the problem on the welfare state. The problem is well understood but nobody dares to tackle it. When the family industry is playing the system what incentive is there for restraint? When the result of over-breeding is that you get a house only the wealthy could afford what do you learn?

The part of the population that contributes the least also takes the most: An army of social workers acts as wet nurse to try and curb the worst excesses of poor parenting. The burgeoning industry dedicated to creating excuses invents special needs diagnoses which lead to employing more and more classroom assistants.  Several battalions of police spend their whole time containing the results. Brigades of legal and probation and prison service professionals earn their keep holding down the lid. And a hugely disproportionate amount of NHS spending is quite literally wasted on bringing them into the world and keeping them alive despite their own self-destructive behaviour.

We have a growing class of people from which no good comes. None whatsoever. For every Selena Gray who defies the odds there are a thousand more breeding machines who carry on regardless because there is simply no incentive for them not to. And we simply cannot afford for this to continue. When I suggest – as I often do – a cull, I am regarded as a pariah, but in essence that is what is needed; fewer of them. By whatever means can be stomached.

The grateful recipients of State largesse.

So I say carry on Daily Mail. Keep telling the stories the political classes do not want to hear. Keep stoking the fires of outrage because when we run out of money altogether, I know exactly which will be the first sector of society to get violent

Goodies and Baddies

In amongst all these world changing coup, counter-coup, insurgency, revolution, resignation shenanigans it’s hard to tell right from wrong, left from right, up from down. The world is a complicated place and it’s high time we straightened it all out. We should make it easier for any one of us to tell the goodies from the baddies, just like in the golden days of Hollywood. The goodies could wear white and the baddies could wear black… decorated with a handy and stylish skull and daggers motif. Or wear a badge. Or have a facial tattoo,or even hide their baddie faces.

Good old Auntie Beeb has been doing this on our behalf for years. I’m surprised it’s taken this long for somebody else to notice, but then if we’re too thick to work it out for ourselves I suppose we need to be drawn pictures. Nigel Farage drew attention to the practice in this interesting piece for the Daily Telegraph (Why do they never ask me… and what are their rates?) about the recently revealed bias of the BBC extending his observations to drama where, “ those who oppose mass migration are bigots, stupid, physically ugly, those on the other side are sensitive, beautiful, intelligent.”

We all go about bearing coded identification already, actually. The way we dress, the way we behave and in particular the way we pass on those traits to our dependents and so forth. Notwithstanding the odd out-of-character outburst, first impressions are a bloody good way of deciding ‘U’or ‘non-U’ and these days you need to be more aware than ever of your audience before revealing your allegiances. The bird in the burka? Probably not going to be ultra-receptive to a tirade against immigration, even if she was born here. The kid with the can of Stella at ten in the morning? Unlikely, I’d have thought, to respond well to a Tebbitarian, get-on-your-bike, pep talk.

Of course, part of the problem is we don’t carry around mirrors with which to ‘check our privileges’ before we engage in what was “only words, your honour” and we are often blind to the shortcomings of our own tribe. While sympathy might be easy enough to rustle up, or at least fake, empathy is a poorly developed part of the human psyche, especially in approximately fifty per cent of the world’s population. Just as we think all the Chinese look alike, so they also believe we are indistinguishable from one another. And it’s the same for non-physical expressions of where we belong too - cultural norms, innit?

No wonder the country’s in a mess. To the hot-house-raised gilded elite in Westminster who only ever see an outsider as a potential vote we all look the same to them. They don’t see what we see when we are swamped in ‘diversity’ and they seem genuinely mystified that we can’t just rub along as they pretend to do. There is a name for inbuilt human preference for those who look, dress, act and think like oneself but to keep it simple, a much shorter version is generally used. They call it racism.

Those who prefer the company of the left recognise and applaud the heroic workers’ struggle against oppression and believe in fairness and equality. Those who align with the right see only oppression in leftist big government, resulting in unfairness and squalor. What’s needed is a middle way, one that sees liberty and democracy in equal measure; we could call them, I dunno, lib-dems? (*irony klaxon*) But wait, even democracy fails if the demos is insufficiently informed and educated to be able to operate it. Pull the wrong levers and you get Egypt, where a democratically elected government has had to be overthrown by military action. This is harder than it looks...

Boo? Yay? I dunno... It's behiiiind you!

The problem for Egypt & Syria and all those emerging from the dark ages is now abundantly clear; if even THEY can’t tell the goodies from the baddies how can we decide which side to help? This is clearly a job for the wardrobe and makeup department because right now they all look like baddies to me.

Things that make me go, Meh.

We live in a world of constant turmoil. Was it really always thus, or has it – as it appears – become much more tumultuous over the last few decades? Whether it is simply heightened perception, intensified reporting or the growth of opinion-led social media the plain fact is one can only cope with or care about so much. In order for me to get properly wound up about some subjects my brain automatically refuses to become engaged by a number of topics in which I have little or no interest. These include, in no particular order:

Babies, medicine in general and social issues a.k.a. gossip. I don’t care about deaths in the NHS, the plight of parents or LGBTBDSM matters or whatever bunch of letters they’re using now – I always have to look it up and that is an administrative overhead too far as far as I am concerned. Oh, Leveson; I really find it hard to give a fig about whatever the hell the Leveson Inquiry was all about. While it was going on, the Twittersphere was alight… I’m still none the wiser. I also find it hard to get worked up about foreign wars, both the ones we’re not involved in and the ones we shouldn’t be involved in. Norman Tebbit has it right over Egypt and Syria, for instance – we have no dog in that fight.

But I was mildly rebuked last night for not caring. Perhaps I misspoke; it’s not so much I don’t care about foreign wars, more that I don’t understand. Who, for instance is fighting who and to what purpose? Who are the goodies and who are the baddies and if we choose sides, as we always do, will they turn out to have been the baddies after all, as they always are? One thing is for sure – every time there is a war in the Middle East (always and forever) islam wins and The West gets more islamic terrorism, compounded by accusations of racism every time we try and respond.

Today, the USA celebrates Independence Day and freedom and liberty and all that, yet, just as here in Britain they are under invasion from malignant forces that would subjugate those freedoms. The difference is that, at least in moderation, you are still allowed to be patriotic in America. If UK citizens stood to attention, placed a hand on their breast and said “God Bless Britain” it is likely we would be stoned. At the very least Diane Abbott would call us xenophobic and stir up some good old lefty antipathy and excuse any forthcoming jihad as justice.

Our independence has been steadily given away and over the pond there is a feeling that the same thing is happening. Thankfully, attitudes are hardening and the British public are starting to be heard. During the New Labour years any complaints about obvious, forced immigration destroying the cohesion of settled neighbourhoods was simply denied or denounced as bigotry. In the early part of the coalition’s first term, Miliband and co have tentatively recognised they may have got it wrong. Today the Home Office tells us that WE were right all along and we have been betrayed by a political experiment which if it can’t be excused as naivety can only be seen as treasonous.

The New Labour terrorist gang should be rounded up and put on trial. Oh wait, the trial has been happening all over Britain and the verdict is already in; guilty. Now all we have to do is bring back hanging (which Blair managed to abolish for treason, incidentally in 1998)

Egypt. I don't get it. 

Is it a struggle or is it a party?

See, THAT’s the sort of thing that grips my shit – the destruction of the British way of life, the slide into obscurity and mediocrity of a once dominant nation and all at the hands of its mewling, snivelling apologies for leaders. I DO care that nobody quite knows what is deemed acceptable any more, that people can be jailed for name-calling, for misreading the mood. I care about the loss of freedoms we once took for granted. But I still don’t give a toss about babies.

Have a heart!

Victor Frankenstein would be cock-a-hoop. No longer would he have to rely on the hand-me-down trophies of ghouls picking over newly-filled graves, he could simply nip into Cardiff and pick up spare parts from the morgue. As the presumed consent to automatically  harvest reusable organs unless a deliberate opt-out has been registered takes effect, the Welsh Organ Swap Shop could become thriving new sector of the economy. Soon, would-be Frankensteins might be able to pick up pre-enjoyed organs at any car boot sale.

Of course, such casual spare-part surgery has been going on for years. For instance Donatella Versace and Micky Rourke clearly share the same face – you never see them together, do you? Without the use of Ed Miliband’s features, Aardman Animations may never have been able to bring Gromit to life and as Ann Widdecombe observed, there was always a touch of the night about Michael Howard.

Naturally there is plenty of objection to the Welsh Assembly’s decision, but it makes complete sense. A donor card may not be found on a body, a person’s family may not know their wishes and a simple opt-out database which can be accessed by any surgical team will save valuable time waiting for express consent to be granted. For my part I've never had any objection. I carry a donor card and they can have the lot. Well, any bits that are useable.

So, that rules out my liver and kidneys from over work. My presbyopic eyes are no use to anybody and my heart is almost certainly worn out. I’m pretty sure my arteries are all clogged up and my creaky old knee joints would be an unwelcome addition to anybody wanting to glide silently around – who wants to click when they walk upstairs? I've always said I’d be happy to go for medical experiments, but to be honest I’d be just as content on the compost heap.

I must be a monster because I struggle to understood the irrational veneration of the corporeal in death. I genuinely don’t get why bodies have to be recovered so that people can ‘move on’, really I don’t. I worked out as a child that our bodies are just big bags of chemicals and even our thoughts are simply chemical reactions - a truth displayed by distortion on a regular basis by booze, periods and brainwashing. Not that I’m without wonder and emotion, I just think that we are far too sentimental about the dead when the living could benefit from a more pragmatic approach. When you’re gone, you’re gone.

LLantysilio-go-go-swap-shop, look you

Having said that, I see an opportunity for profit this side of the veil and to that end I am willing to auction off my enormous brain to the highest bidder. I mean, come on here it is, in miraculous working order, hardly used and regularly serviced. You’d be mad not to want that massive organ pulsating in your body! 

How do I loathe thee, ramadan, let me count the ways

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Carry on, don't lose your head!

Last night, out doing my weekly shop, I witnessed two things that filled me with pessimism for our future. The first was seeing a milling crowd in the bread aisle, almost all of them women in various versions of what I will politely call ‘headscarves’. Curious, I hovered closer and was alarmed when they turned into a passable imitation of a flock of seagulls scrapping over a bag of chips. A rack of reduced-price baked goods was being brought out and their descent into a mob was alarming. I don’t seek to draw hasty cultural comparisons – fuck it, of course I do; we used to queue in this country. There, I’m a nasty racist for daring to notice what to me was aberrant behaviour offensive to MY cultural norms.

The second was waiting to check out, having foolishly chosen a ‘personed’ till. The girl at the gate was a bit flustered because it was taking a while to query a pricing error and she had started to gabble away, as many of us do when nervous. She was wearing muslim dress but spoke in the broadest of broad, post-industrial Leeds accents. Somebody (yes, it was me) made a throwaway comment to lighten the mood, “I blame the EU” I said, followed up with a grin to show I was joking. I wish I hadn’t…

Without pausing for breath she informed us all that she didn’t know what the EU was, but thought it was something to do with Europe, “or summat”, that she didn’t ever watch the news and she had no idea about politics “or owt lahk tha’ or nowt” but that she would be voting Labour in the next election. A pause, then the clarification that she didn’t know the difference but knew, without doubt, that the Tories were nasty. I bit my lip.

Syria is about to get a new form of mob rule called sharia and many will end up brutally dead. Mass uprisings in Egypt against the islamists will also create further bloodshed. The cycle of violence will continue for centuries to come as more secular administrations are overthrown by religious fanatics who then slide into secular ways, to be themselves overthrown by ever more irrational fundamentalists. The problem IS the religion, a religion with principles unchanged since its proponents scratched a living herding goats. Without oil the world might have been spared the horrors we see now.

So, imagine how delighted Britain was this morning to hear the news that Channel 4 is falling into line with the appeasement regime followed by our own governments of late and deciding to further the advance of this Stone Age fuckwittery into our daily lives by broadcasting the call to subjugation during the month of ramadan. I know I am not alone in seeing a steadily increasing diet of islamic appeasement and ‘normalisation’, which creeping assault will just seem normal to kids growing up today. That's the long game; the overthrow of the UK by the dark ambitions of islam is being assisted by the very authorities who supposedly declared war on terror.

Coming soon, to a school near you

Well, it isn’t working. I for one am terrified. Every day there are calls to resist islamophobia, but why? I, along with many of my countrymen, am actually afraid of islam and its open agenda to take over the world. The prehistoric noises from Syria are quite unsettling. But why not just LET them establish a muslim state, fence them in and leave them to it. And while we’re at it, ‘invite’ our home grown fundamentalists to relocate where the weather better suits their clothes.

PS: You may have noticed I have stopped capitalising islamic words, as I do not recognise them as proper nouns. My ineffectual little protest.


RESPONSE FROM CHANNEL 4

This is clearly a standard form letter, no doubt received by many today. I only wish I had copied and pasted my original complaint so you could see how anodyne is their 'assurance'.

Dear Mr xxxxxx,

Thank you for your email regarding the decision to broadcast 4RAMADAN: Call To Prayer. 

We are sorry to read of your concerns regarding this season of programmes. It is part of Channel 4?s remit to appeal to the tastes and interests of a culturally diverse society and to provide a platform for alternative views and perspectives.

As part of that remit, we have an obligation to provide a percentage of programming around religious themes, the Ramadan season is just one  small part of that,  as are our daily episodes of 4thought.tv;  which transmits on Channel 4 daily.  This being a series, which highlights the personal opinions on moral and religious questions,  from a wide range of viewers, some from a religious standpoint and some from those with a non-religious background.

It is part of Channel 4?s remit to appeal to the tastes and interests of a culturally diverse society and to provide a platform for alternative views and perspectives. Every year, 2.8 million Muslims in Britain take part in Ramadan. It is a hugely significant religious event for this British religious community as for one whole month from dawn to dusk, they forgo food, water, smoking and swearing ? in an attempt to focus on what?s important, think about those who have less than them and better appreciate what they have. This season will explore these experiences and provide insight into how they combine this religious observance with modern life in Britain. 

Nevertheless, please be assured that your complaint has been logged and noted for the information of those responsible for our programming.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact us. We appreciate all feedback from our viewers; complimentary or otherwise.

Regards,

Veronica Way
Channel 4 Viewer Enquiries