Hollywood Blues

Ah the Golden Age of Moving Pictures! In lights, the names of the greats shone from every cinema marquee: Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn... Donald Duck. How we laughed! How we thrilled! How we left our little lives behind for the so-short span of a movie reel and dreamed of life on Rodeo Drive. But little are we aware of the tortured lives behind the faces of the screen gods and goddesses. Some fared better than others, but many succumbed to the temptations of fame.

Thus it was with Tinsel Town’s most famous couple. The King and Queen of Hollywood; Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Rumours had been surfacing for years about Mickey’s occasional peccadilloes and the philandering ways of many of the original Rodent Pack, long before Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra cleaned it up, changed the name and made it relatively respectful. Mickey, in his wild days was a force of nature, hanging out in the teeming sewers and gutters of Dreamland and it took all the ingenuity of Disney Studios to keep the world’s press sweet.

But in the end there was nothing they could do to keep the news of Mr & Mrs Mouse’s impending divorce from the front page and as surely as encore follows curtain call, the case entered the public consciousness for a few intense weeks in 1954. Presses were held for the latest bulletins from the Los Angeles County Court and finally, sixty years ago to the day, the final arguments were heard.

Judges back then were little different from judges of today – old, slow, hard of hearing and lacking in common worldly experience – and after a long lunch at the Brown Derby, courtesy of Walt Disney himself, Justice McDuckula was in no mood for frivolity. He approached his summing up with a furrowed brow and an air of deep incredulity as he gazed out upon the public gallery, an audience whose noisy bombast he had had to quell on more than one occasion.

He fixed the assembled throng with a gimlet eye and waited for silence before launching into his summing up. “We are assembled here,” he quacked, his voice like an angry hive of high-register bees, “to consider the petition of one Mr M. Mouse of Malibu Beach.” The judge continued: “Having heard the evidence and pleas from both sides I am minded to say that a more frivolous suit it has rarely been my misfortune to hear.”

“Your honour!” interjected Mickey’s council

“Objection overruled!” growled the judge and settle back into his theme. “As I was saying, I have heard the case and weighed up the circumstances and I cannot find it in my conscience to grant a divorce on the skimpy basis of mere cosmetic appearance. Beauty is more than just skin deep.”

“But, your Honour…”

“Silence in court!” barked McDuckula “You will hear my verdict. I will not – and I repeat – will NOT, grant a divorce on the grounds of the plaintiff’s objection to the fact that his spouse of many years has buck teeth!”

A murmur began and rippled through the assembly. A few titters sprang up and died before the beady gaze of the judge… and then Mickey Mouse himself indicated that he wished to speak. The judge indicated with a weary gesture that he may. Mickey got to his feet, waited for silence then addressed himself to the bench.

“Your honour,” he said, “I bring this action, not on the grounds of Minnie’s dental work, which, by the way, is impeccable for a rodent, but because...” and here he paused a second, taking a deep breath before continuing. “I'm telling you she’s fucking Goofy!”

What are words worth?

“Lessons have been learned” Where, once, honourable men found wanting would have fallen on their swords, now the catch-all ‘lessons’ serves as a deflection, certain that the attention will soon go away and those culpable, whatever injustice has been perpetrated, will be free to carry on just as before… with higher salaries. In the past few years we’ve learned lessons about immigration, about policing, about ‘institutional racism’ about climate, er ‘thingy’ (nobody knows) and all sorts of fluffery, none of which lessons appear to have been put into practice.

Authorities “deeply regret” without actually making reparation and recognise “failures of leadership” while steadfastly keeping said leadership in post. Rotherham council’s chief executive even acknowledged that child protection services “…fell some way short of today's standards…” I have no doubt they will soon announce an intention to engage in “reviewing our procedures”  This isn’t even Newspeak, it is non-speak; a fear to ever tell the truth, admit blame or lift a damned finger to put things right. It is lying codified; packaged for retail and sold on masquerading as action.

“Unfortunately, on this occasion, you have not been successful” is the trite phrase which greets an inadequate today and the utterly useless “did not achieve” has to do the difficult job that only the word FAIL can properly do. Some people need to be told they are no good at a thing; that they should stop wasting their time and that of others in struggling to master a skill for which they have no aptitude. But no, in the all-must-have-prizes culture, failure is all too often dressed up as partial success and abject failure is pretty much always somebody else’s fault. "Society is to blame."

We no longer have bosses and workers, calling them ‘associates’ instead and the average chain pub now has more ‘assistant managers’ than it has pint glasses. Barrista? Behave; coffee, white, two sugars please… and stop with all the fucking about. The sculpted foam on top of your over-priced indulgence is emblematic of form before function and this Emperor’s New Clothes trick perfectly mirrors the way those who seek office rarely do so for the reasons they say. What you see is not what you get and it is rarely worth the price.

So, you can shove your “misplaced racial sensitivity” and shelve your “mistakes have been made” where the sun don’t shine. Until you stop calling this gruesome invasion ‘multiculturalism’ and convening obfuscating focus groups run by party apparatchiks to prevent yourselves hearing what people have actually been telling you for years in plain English, nobody in Britain will have any faith in anything you have to say. Actions speak louder than words? Prove it.

Whose Equality is Best?

Raaaacists! Fear of a word appears to have prevented police and social services and anybody with a duty of care to minors from reporting, warning or even noticing child-rape and trafficking on an industrial scale in Rotherham. The total population of Rotherham (known) is around 260,000. About 35% are under fifteen – that’s 91,000 and in that part of the world a good 50% of school attendees are of the Asian community. Which leaves around 45,000 white kids. If two-thirds of them are under ten, that leaves about 15,000 of both sexes between the ages of ten and fifteen. So, 7,500 white girls, 1400 of whom have been preyed upon by sexual savages.

Okay the numbers are a tad (and deliberately – I can use those tactics too) skewed for effect but come on, 18% of Rotherham’s non-‘ethnic’ girls systematically abused for a decade or more? If this isn’t a primitive and hateful racism you’ll have to go a long way to convince every parent in the area who has been branded a bigot for raising concerns about the deliberate swamping of their region with ‘diversity’. As Allison Pearson said, “Let’s have no more of this coy “Asian males” crap. Muslim men of Pakistani origin…” are responsible for this. And their community is responsible for allowing it.

Even taking islam out of the equation – and it is about time somebody did just that – this is exactly the sort of thing that was feared by many, decades ago, when it became clear that allowing in one single worker soon opened the floodgates to a multi-generational wave of dependents who came here, failed to integrate and slowly set about seeding their third-world culture on our fertile national petri dish. Nurtured by leftists and feted by Labour, here (they thought) was the answer to people growing up and voting Conservative. All that lovely, progressive diversity.

But you can never have both diversity and equality; it doesn’t work. Even on simple linguistic grounds it makes no sense – one is practically an antonym of the other - if things are different they can’t be the same. Now you may not believe that some people are better than others but that’s nonsense because you definitely know that some are worth so much less. Pick a measure: Wealth, productivity, gregariousness, reason, intellect, muscle, looks, longevity… no matter what your metric we don’t all balance on the fulcrum.

Rotherham’s known problems were ignored or suppressed for the sake, so they said, of ‘social cohesion’; it was deemed racist to protect one culture against the incursion of another. Exactly how much fuck-witted doublethink had to be deployed in deciding which culture was to be neglected? Or was the indigenous Brit so obviously worth much less than the precious new diversity?

Come to Britain - it's a free country!

But here’s the thing; what of the honest immigrant who came to Britain to find a better life? What happened to their dreams of a new beginning away from the grinding poverty and oppressive religious medievalism of their overcrowded homelands? With the shallowness of thought typical of left-wing moralists can they even begin to admit that in pitting one culture against another they have comprehensively fucked it up for both? 

Re-Volution

“Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ‘em. And little fleas have lesser fleas and so, ad infinitum.” So goes The Siphonaptera and continues: “And the great fleas, themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on; While these again have greater still... and greater still, and so on.” The popular children’s version of the verse is based on the wit and wisdom of the satirist Jonathan Swift whose barbed words skewered and continue to prick the pomposity of those who assume positions of great power.

Pretty much wherever you are in the spectrum of humanity you will have fleas to feed upon your blood and the more insignificant the flea, the greater their number and the more voracious their appetite. It’s a cycle repeated since the dawn of time, since dinosaurs stalked the land, and Richard Attenborough was a young man. As John Hammond, in Jurassic Park he recreated ancient life on earth from the blood of the terrible lizards preserved in the stomachs of mosquitoes – themselves really just another kind of flea –suspended forever in amber.

Evolution is often imagined to only produce improvement, but it’s not quite so simple as that. Heritable traits also include parasitic instincts as well as evolutionary dead ends. We may ourselves be nearing the bottom of a hereditary cul-de-sac right now; certainly the sum total of current human development seems to be directed anywhere but towards progress. The nasty biting buggers in the Middle East are bad enough, but we ignore the nibblers among our own numbers at our peril.

There is a growing belief that human evolution can occur over much shorter timescales than previously supposed; possibly within a few generations when it concerns the development of the brain. And evolutionary psychologists suggest a plausible genetic basis for morality. Given that the ultimate success of all genetic mutations depends on their survival and reproduction rates, rather than on any universal sense of right or wrong, it’s a short logical hop to conclude that a moral compass which concludes that ‘work is for mugs’ is on track to conquer the world. If the British welfare system is anything to go by it’s a valid theory.

Fortunately – and fortunately is how I see it – as the underclasses out-breed the working masses they will soon get to a critical volume whereupon all the productivity in the world will be incapable of feeding them and as quickly as they rose up they will become extinct, leaving only the dwindling few with a work ethic to repopulate the planet. In millennia to come the strange Age of the Human Parasites, when Doleysaurs stalked the land, will be mere history and only the scattered, fossilised remains of KFC Bargain Buckets will attest to their former ubiquity.

Look... it's like a tiny Chav, in aspic!

But what goes around, comes around as they say and as Swift’s original words attest: “The vermin only teaze and pinch, their foes superior by an inch. So, naturalists observe, a flea has smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite 'em… And so proceed ad infinitum.” In a future world we may never see the like of dear Dickie Attenborough again but pray that there is also no future John Hammond to recreate the dominant human life form of the twenty-first century from an amber-preserved bed bug.

Lancing the Boyle

Frankie Boyle thinks the BBC should sack Jeremy Clarkson, describing him as a cultural tumour. Tumour is, of course, one of Boyle’s favourite words because it arouses quite deep feelings of disgust and revulsion, as do his mentions of celebrities’ sick children and jokes about cancer victims and aids sufferers. It doesn’t bother me at all, but given that a huge amount of his work is intended to cause offence, which is then (usually quite rightly) brushed off as an attack on his freedom of speech, his anti-Clarkson stance is curious.

Maybe it’s envy? After all, JC makes £Gazillions for himself and the BBC and is imitated all around the world while Frankie Boyle is popular in… parts of Scotland. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a Boyle rant as much as the next primitive, misogynist, misanthrope cave beast but it’s an odd request that people a bit like him, but way less offensive, should be cast out. Maybe it’s all just out of context but hey, that’s never been a problem when publicity is what you’re after. I wonder if he has a tour to plug?

But isn’t it staggering, how far we’ve, er, staggered in a couple of generations from a strait-laced world in which everybody knew the form, to this weird, dysfunctional shambles of a society where nobody seems to know how to behave towards anybody else any more? Back in the black-and-white days, without any hint of ‘citizenship’ training, we British knew how to address our elders, our betters, our equals, our family, our peers and even our queers without suffering any more than a clip around the ear for taking the occasional liberty.

Now, however, the offendotrons lurk around every corner. Children berate their parents for displaying what they have been taught to recognise as everyday racism. Grandparents, particularly, come in for some withering looks from the holier-than-thou Midwich cuckoos sent to denounce them. Precocious kids were ever in need of a twatting, but now their naïve observations are likely to be given every credence by the constabulary; this can only ever make things worse. It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

Comedians do, of course, make their living by voicing the hitherto unvoiced thoughts of their followers, by exaggerating life and by reducing, to the absurd, the serious aims of those which whom they disagree. Thus, to a ‘further left than Chomsky’ Frankie Boyle, the Tories and all who have sympathy with them are baby-eating monsters, while Hamas are victims of Israeli oppression. This is the eternal problem with the left – their brains appear to have evolved to forever see things in only black and white.

I suppose you just have to choose your allegiances in life. For my part, the choice between an evening with the socially cancerous Jeremy Clarkson and Jim Davidson as opposed to, say, thirty seconds in the company of the mono-rationally viral Frankie Boyle and Marcus Brigstocke is a pretty easy decision. I’d go with the Technicolor brains every time.

Jumping Jihadis

So, ninety percent of the electorate don’t bother to turn out to vote for a new Inter-Planetary Press and Police Complaints Commissionaire, Maître-Doorman, or whatever the fuck they were being asked to select. Has it occurred to politicians that nobody really gives a fig any more? Maybe the muslims are on the right track after all; democracy is dead as a door nail and trying to use it to legitimise an election which can now be won by the pitching up of Mam, Dad, Uncle Kev and Aunty Dor’ at the polling booth of a Thursday evening is as valid as pretending Popes can perform miracles.

It’s all very well organising things in accordance with the will of the majority, but let’s be frank, the majority couldn’t give a fuck what happens just so long as they can get off their tits of a weekend and have their battle scars patched up by the NHS free, gratis and for nothing, thank you very much. In fact, given the proven ability of committees to fuck things up far more effectively than any one, sane decision-maker, effectively making the entire country a committee of millions it’s a wonder anything ever gets done at all…

Or looked at another, rational, way, it’s no wonder at all that we’re in the depths of shit we’re currently wading through. The Middle East badly need a few ruthless dictators back in power to quell the squabbling medievals; somehow the world was a more peaceful place when people were left alone to persecute each other in their own places of origin, rather than be allowed to swan about inflicting confusion and bloodshed in the name of cultural enrichment.

Clearly, humans do not play well with other children and must be separated for their own good. The new Terror ASBOs are not going to do that. They want an islamic state, then let them have one and make them stay there, because the only way of controlling the jihadists is by the methods they use to control others. And given that in a supposedly civilised country we don’t do that sort of thing, surely our only answer is to export our national HR problem by outsourcing it to where they can.

The good news is that it turns out islam isn’t a one-size fits all deal. Despite their insistence that the one true allah is merciful, there must be several such allahs, for each one favours a different type of warped superstition and appears to decree death to the rest: Sunni-Delights, Shia LaBeoufs, Wahhabi Waffles, Sufi Succotash the various allahs preside over a marvellously divided bunch of misfits. So, this gives me an idea.

Round ‘em up, divide them into their sectarian groups, load them into troop planes and fly them all back to not quite where they belong. Give them a choice of parachute or not, but either way, drop them over a different group’s territory. Do the same with all the hysterical lefty supporters of Hamas – they can choose which type of lovely islam they want to live with. Repeat until the only muslims who remain in Britain are the hitherto silent and largely mythical ‘moderate’ ones and all of the lefties have shut the fuck up. I can see no downsides apart from the loss of a few thousand parachutes.

Fitter for Purpose?

Language is so important, don’t you think? And in so many ways. So, with the GCSE results announced yesterday there has been some full and forceful language directed toward the powers that be regarding, appropriately enough, the English results. It seems that some sniffy headmistresses are a tad vexed at slipping a couple of percentage points backwards in their pass rates… thus proving that numeracy is just as big a problem as ever. But that doesn’t count…

Anyway, given that human evolution doesn’t measurably occur over successive academic years, it is all, um… academic. One thing is for sure though, while grades have been getting generally higher, the ability to use the language effectively has been inexorably slipping towards slack-jawed, cud-chewing ineptitude. If one more acne-poxed, under-achiever calls me ‘mate’ he’d better stand by for a string of invective so long and polysyllabic he could spend the rest of his days with a thesaurus and still never get close to understanding just how pissed off that makes me.

Still it’s wrong, as they say, to mock the afflicted, which brings me to today’s subject. Dyslexia. Never imagined in my youth yet now afflicting – if you believe the scramble to appoint classroom assistants as lackeys for lazy little bastards – close to 100% of all school pupils. Something smells fishy… and that reminds me of a recent incident at work.

As some of you will know, I teach electricians to do the clever stuff you’d expect electricians to be capable of doing. Next week, for instance it’s fault finding and reporting, for which it is understandable that a reasonable grasp of the English language and its deployment in writing is a prerequisite. Not so, it transpires in the plumbing trade; it is a widely held belief in the electrical game that ‘if you can piss, you can plumb’, a harsh but often demonstrably fair assessment if the general standard of British household plumbing is take into consideration.

But surely the gas fitter – a plumber with a licence not to kill – should be a different breed; You’d hope so, wouldn’t you? In an act of public-spirited investigative enquiry I decided to see for myself, so I approached Gerry, the gas trainer and put to him the question of whether or not the average fitter needed a clear and unambiguous command of the Queen’s English and whether dyslexia would be a definite bar to enrolment. He laughed out loud and bade me follow him towards a fitting bay where we eavesdropped on the conversation between two perplexed would-be 'gasseurs'.

It's a gas!

Gerry put a finger up to his pursed lips and indicated that we should listen from outside the booth. In the background a faint hiss could be heard as the two trainees began their appraisal of the situation. “Can you smell gas?” asked the first to his colleague. The other looked at him a moment, screwed up his countenance and replied, “Are you taking the piss? Mate, I can’t even smell me own name!” 

Unsocial Engineering

So, on the drive home last night I heard a discussion on Radio 4’s PM programme about Sky imposing quotas on its utilisation of black and minority ethnic writers, producers, talent, etc. Twenty percent is its target and this move is roundly applauded, naturally, by the likes of Lenny Henry and Idris Elba. This sits right alongside the BBC’s own very public plans to ‘improve’ diversity across the board and only recently Simon Fanshawe was insisting that diversity should trump competence at every turn. Do you see what’s wrong yet?

Whether it is David Cameron insisting that it is mainstream Britain who should welcome and ‘integrate with’ (translation: bow down before) islam, or Jack Straw affirming that ‘the English’ are not worth saving, or Ed Miliband desperate to pack his shadow benches with worthy women, it is all symptomatic of the ‘progressive’ agenda. Progressive means absolutely rejecting what has worked in the past in favour of anything new and lovely-sounding, regardless of how unproven it is. But just because your adorable, dirt-cheap, Lithuanian nanny accessory is an absolute godsend, dahlink, it doesn’t automatically follow that every English household needs immediate access to the Eastern European labour pool.

The solution to untrained British youth is not to displace them by exploiting the work-ready poor of former Soviet countries, no matter how eager they are to come here. And diversity, just like immigration and all-women shortlists is not, of itself, an unremittingly good thing. That these things were not obvious to politicians should come as no surprise; after all, politicians were sufficiently taken in by these overly simplistic, fantasy-based scenarios to brand as racists, sexists, misogynists, islamophobes and general, all-round bigots all those who dared to challenge the new orthodoxy.

Yet those of us who have to live with the consequences know that indiscriminately setting targets is not the same thing as hitting them; and often achieves the square root of fuck-all. A sales target that has no earthly prospect of being met is just poor management. Two decades of GCSE targets led to laughable grade inflation and dumbing-down. Lowering the bar will only ever bring the illusion of equality, while widening the gap between those who can and those who have just been told they can. And every instance of forcing change by setting quotas is like a regional sales manager inventing sales figures to boost his standing; sooner or later the business folds and everybody loses out.

Human nature is not a constant and is certainly not uniformly good. For every naïve believer in the eternal inner beauty of everybody (if we could only just, like, love each other, maan) there are a million examples of venality, cruelty, corruption and downright barbarism that are immediately obvious and real to all of us outside the progressive ‘bubble’. Because they choose not to see it, it doesn’t mean it’s not happening. The western ‘business model’ is failing and taking us all down with it.

Sky announce cast for all-new Anne Frank drama

Yet, despite all the revolts against such ‘progress’, despite all the failed attempts to shape human nature in an ideological jelly mould, still the uncivil engineers foist unrealistic, unattainable uniformity on a fluid human medium which just won’t set the way you want it. There will be differences and injustice and inequality forever and the longer we try and ‘correct’ it the more we will deter genuine progress. Apply this reality to the absurdity of holding meaningful negotiations with savages who genuinely wish us dead and you will realise why, in the end, we can only ever delay and never fully prevent all-out war in the Middle East. No matter how highly we value the entirely fictitious ‘peace dividend, cutting defence spending is yet another disastrous application of the flawed idea that targets and quotas are always good.

First World Problems

In a continuing theme, I know nothing. Seriously, not a thing. For a start, I don’t know how people can remain employed in jobs they clearly can’t do. Oh, you want examples? Well, let’s see: Every religious leader on the planet, despite centuries, nay millennia, of playing on the patience of their sheep flocks has failed to ever produce a single shred of evidence to suggest their own office is based on verifiable fact and not mere superstition. Their followers are even worse – if you can call being a follower a job – they seem to willingly believe all that shit… and then kill people to prove it. So, that’s religion for you; got that pegged.

Then there’s politics; no politician, it seems, has ever managed to successfully bring about even a small fraction of all the promises he/she made. Worse still, in opposition they hypocritically oppose every single one of their own policies now being enacted by the incumbent administration and they routinely slag off every government minister for displaying all the same weaknesses, predilections and weird foibles they themselves displayed in office. This appears to apply to every politician everywhere, all the time and currently David Cameron doesn't know what our foreign policy is towards... er... anywhere. (He isn't even all that convincing about Scotland, never mind the Middle East.)

Owen Jones and Laurie Penny are wrong, of course, about every single thing they say, every single thing they think and every single thing they do and yet they still attract willing acolytes, some of whom really ought to know, in their heart of hearts, they are being taken in by nursery-level, playground polemic. And I must be doing something very wrong indeed because, try as I might, my own lack of knowledge has thus far failed to secure me a comfortable living, being paid for displaying my own ignorance in open, in full public view and in defiance of all the facts.

Climatologists know nothing about the weather, economists know nothing about commerce, stockbrokers rarely get rich without illegal insider knowledge and in Hollywood, according to William Goldman “Nobody knows anything.” And only this week Formula One has boldly announced a new racing driver who doesn’t even have a sodding driving licence. How do any of these people hold their heads up high? Bollocks to the notion of self-esteem, a bit of self-awareness might not go amiss.

And then there are the even bigger issues; the human problems that all of a sudden western governments dare not acknowledge. When the First World doesn’t even know how, or when, to control its own borders how can we possibly be safe from all the ‘infestations’ that are carried by humans; disease, hunger, ignorance… Ebola? We’re fucked. Feeding the multitudes? We’re fucked. islam? We’re definitely fucked… before or after beheading it makes no difference, islam is a clear threat to everything civilised.

Turd World Problems!

There just isn’t a problem out there that simply can’t be solved. Human ingenuity can fix pretty much anything it sets its mind to. We can put a computer in every pocket with the power to bring about real change, improve real lives. But the biggest problem of all is, do we have the will to solve those that really matter? I don’t think we do. I may be stupid, I may know nothing but I reckon the ‘Third World’ war has already started.

Celebrity 'Mares

The latest age-old celebrity to be swept into the many tentacles of Operation Yewtree is one who has had us all guessing for decades. Cliff Richard may have had a roving eye but I bet he now wishes he’d taken Sue Barker as a beard and retired to breed cats. It seems nobody famous and over sixty is safe from accusations of ‘impropriety’. What have the police done, sent out search parties for anybody who was ever in the Top of the Pops audience and hypnotised them into confecting false memories, or what? I’m still getting over Rolf, for heaven’s sake.

But the news did take me back to that more innocent-seeming age and lifting the veil of time from the recesses of my memory I can well recall that everybody, but EVERYBODY was obsessed back then with causal sex. If they weren’t doing it, they were talking and writing about doing it. If they were neither talking nor writing about it, then they just weren’t getting any. Or was that just me? Anyway, the red-top newspapers were filled to the brim with gleeful stories of what used to be referred to as ‘romps’or ‘shenanigans’ or plain old ‘rumpy-pumpy’ and - far from being shameful - bagging a popular entertainer was a thing of pride for many a groupie.

Oh yes, for there was a ready supply of energetic and beautiful, bright young things eager to get up close and very personal with those fabulous figures of fantasy from ‘off the telly’. And radio, of course; let us not forget the veritable procession of star performers on the unseen airwaves of Swinging London back in the sixties. All of which nostalgia serves to remind me of the story of one such Radio One DJ, who was well known for more than his fair share of such tawdry ‘antics’.

The famous DJ, whose face adorned many a teen magazine cover was driving along a sleepy, winding, pre-dual-carriageway era A-Road, back in the days when motoring was an adventure in itself and hitchhiking was not only acceptable, but the only mode of motorised transport for many beyond taking a bus. Ahead, in a layby he spotted what we would, back then, have called a dolly bird, her thumb cocked and her long, bare legs striking a come-hither pose as she sat atop her suitcase. He quite naturally pulled over and the girl hopped in. She recognised him immediately.

“Ooh!” she squealed, “You’re whatshisname off the radio, aren’t you?” and as they pulled out of the layby onto the open road the flirting began in earnest. “My mum and my sister love you, you know!” she giggled “We always listen to you on your breakfast show. They’ll both be dead jealous!” For several miles he listened intently as the girl, who he had decided was close enough to sixteen for no jury of the sixties to convict, coquettishly played with her pigtails, ran her fingertips along his gearstick and twiddled with the knobs of the dashboard radio. Aroused, he turned off the main road into a shady lane and parked up amid the trees.

He turned towards her and indicating the very obvious erection in his trousers said, “Go on then, you know you want to.” She blushed, “Oh, I couldn’t!” she said. “Go on, he said, it’s just you and me…” She was clearly both excited and nervous “But I’ve never done it before!” she laughed and shook her head. “No need to be nervous,” he coached, “just close your eyes and go for it!” and with that he unzipped his flies and took out his ‘swollen member’. Her eyes widened. “Really?” she asked, “Here? Now?” He nodded, suddenly finding the words sticking in his throat as his pulse raced and his face flushed.

It was so innocent back then...

She leaned towards him and carefully took hold of his manhood in both of her tiny hands. "No need to be so gentle," he instructed and then gasped as she gripped harder. His breathing quickened still further and his heart pounded in his chest. He could scarcely believe it as she closed her eyes, bent her head over his rock-hard penis, opened her mouth wide, took a deep breath and said “Hello mum, hello Sis, you’ll never guess what I’m doing… I’m on the radio!”

Liars, Damned Liars and Statisticians

Chris Huhne is a liar. It’s a matter of record, as it is for many an MP, but even a jail sentence hasn’t much hampered Mr Huhne’s ability to profit personally from his continuing political career. And if there was any such thing as religious justice (Hint: There isn’t) Tony Blair would eventually become (literally) a damned liar despite the riches he denies he has accumulated from spreading his tactical and strategic untruths, half-truths… and downright statistics. But all the lies of politicians through the ages are pale in comparison with those of their enablers, the statisticians.

In the news right now:  Employment is up but productivity is down, but more people are in work, yet pay hasn’t risen in line with inflation, but that’s okay because both unemployment and employment are at record levels in the right directions… but people are – I forget, is it worse off, or better off? And how would we know? The answer is, we don’t; we can’t. But that doesn’t stop the headline makers from stuffing column inches with numbers explained by incomprehensible vox-astutis soundbites.

Take me. Today I’m better off than I was last year, but in 2012 I was better off still, yet the ‘most-bestest-off’ I ever managed to be was in 1982. Then I joined the ranks of homeowners and profited… nowhere near as well as the media would have you believe I should have. Ten years later I was earning plenty more in real terms than when I was at my very-bestest-off, but my house had nowhere near kept up with the reported mahoosive rises in, it seemed, every other part of the country. So was I better off, or worse off? It’s hard to tell; tricky stuff this money.

One thing is for sure though, comparing your income with that of others is a poor indicator of, well, poverty. One man’s penury is another man’s self-reliance and a fortune for most of us might be squandered in a blur of immoderate hedonism by others. Nobody is ‘the norm’ so comparisons against that norm are pointless… and statisticians know this. It’s why they never get found out. A statistician can sell the same numbers to multiple buyers for fat fees and never be asked to justify those numbers because, knowing that the rest of us understand even less about mathematics than they do, the ‘facts’ that statistical surveys reveal can be bent to any shape you desire.

And it’s not just money. Thus a new car factory in Sunderland can spell variously: prosperity and much-needed jobs for the region, back-hand deals in smoky rooms, denial of employment in another European country (which these days is racism and therefore hateful and to be labelled fascism) more GDP, less GDP, a skills shortage, a skills surplus, an immigration problem, white flight, earthquakes, tornadoes, or god’s holy wrath, all depending on who is spinning the news and why.

The unofficial Law of Unintended Consequences and the application of Chaos Theory tells us that if a butterfly flaps its wings in the Stock Exchange, somebody wins the lottery in Panama and a Chinese fella gets laid off from a counterfeiting factory three miles outside Guangzhou. To a statistician this is solid gold – cut liberally with bullshit it can be sold for big bucks to dodgy dealers who will then further adulterate it and push it on street corners to the recreational stats-junky market with the cry: "Daily Mirror! Daily Mail!" They say that 20% of school-leavers in Britain today are functionally illiterate. They’re the lucky ones.

Make a wish...

We have ten seconds to save the world! Nah, only kidding. It’s probably already too late, but given the increasingly high pitch of all the outraged screaming going about lately nothing less dramatic would have been likely to convince you to read on. The western world has been obsessed with identifying evil of late. Meanwhile the medieval world has been content to merely practise it. But is it actually 'evil' or just plain and simple caveman barbarism? Given that the concept of evil is a religious superstition, maybe it is exactly the right word after all.

One thing is for certain, the particular primitive, twisted form of islam which is sweeping across the Middle East has no place in it for discussion or normal, sane reason. If I can see this and you can see this, how come our house-trained, domesticated, lap-dog western governments refuse to see it? But – phew – just in time, along comes another thing to divert attention away from any effective response to an out-of-control aberration which threatens to engulf the whole civilised wold unless it is militarily stopped in its tracks.

Robin Williams’ suicide could have been an occasion for a moment’s dignified contemplative silence followed by a celebration of a towering and complex talent. But no, that just wouldn’t do, would it? Alan Brazil decided it was diabolical – there’s that evil devil thing again – while Laurie Penny saw (and seized with gusto) yet another excuse to make it all about her… and then to go on Twitter and whip up a spate of self-trolling of such narcissistic proportions that even Russell Brand would shrink from its crass, infantile and oh-so-transparent plea for attention...

So, everybody gets aboard the fruit-and-nut charabanc and embarks on a poor-me tour of identifying with every other flaw in the funny man’s fragile façade. ‘Twas ever thus, though; very clever, very public, very erratic people are practically under contract to check out in ignoble circumstances. Why would you want to identify with that? Why, in order to avoid confronting the truth, of course. And the truth is that Williams’ death, sad though it is, has no real lessons for any of us, no profound revelations, no enlightenment. Light a candle, take a moment and then get a grip.

Face to the east; not in prayer but in opposition. Either muslims must change the nature of islam or the savage actions of those who speak in its name will forever condemn the followers of mohammed to be branded as savages, unfit to share the modern world. Anti-Israeli sentiment because of Gaza is also no reason to go easy on islam; I see no concerted, invasive outbreeding of indigenous populations by Jews, nor by any other racial or religious groups. I see no other ideology which openly declares such thirst for blood and dominance.

Three wishes, did I say? I lied...

So, mourn for Robin, if you wish. But don’t use it as an excuse to turn inward; it’s not about you. Instead, wake up and look around you. Look at the way your country has changed for the worse before your very eyes and how you have been progressively denied an opinion about it. Look upon the ugliness of islam and its appeasement and be ashamed we let it happen. It is not evil, but it is a hideous human travesty. We may not have only ten seconds to save THE world, but it’s quite possible we have under ten years to save OUR world.

The secret diary of Owen Jones aged 29¾

The press have been most unkind to me in the last 24 hours. Ever since I outlined – for free – my revolutionary plan for a brilliant new telephone system. A system owned by the people, run by the people, for the benefit of the people and – and this is the really, really brilliant bit – all paid for by the government, which means it will cost the people nothing at all. I sometimes wonder if it is worth my while even trying to tell people about the visions I have, because all they ever do is laugh and correct my sums.

Well, I’ll show them. When I get the royalties for my superb new book, ‘The Vile,Nasty Bullies and How They are Very, Very Naughty’ - me being a brilliant writer and all - I will be able to laugh on the other side of their faces. And it will be the last laugh as well because he who laughs last took the longest to get the punchline of the mixed metaphor... in Spain. So there. Anyway, they can say what they like; if they don’t go for my phone idea, I have plenty of other revolutionary, New-Marxist winners such as:

Nationalise the railways, for a start. And the supermarkets while we’re about it. The sea could do with nationalising as well, then the fish stocks would return because under a caring socialist government the cruel sea would be an altogether nicer place to live. And don’t think my ideas stop there, because they jolly well don’t. I have lots and lots of new ways of looking at how things are run. We could nationalise all the jobs too. And in case you think the only idea I have is to nationalise everything, think again. I would also – and this is completely different from nationalisation, I’ll have you know – take all the banks into public ownership.

Once the people… who were so cruelly wronged by the evil bankers and their plot for world domination in collusion with the baby-eating Tory government (which utterly wrecked the whole world economy in 2008, just so they could get elected by the Zionist-Illuminati-Papal-Anglican-Ku-Klux-Klan - ZipaKlan - conspiracy two years later)… once the people are in charge of all the money you will see just what can be done to productivity in post-colonial, multi-friendly, multicultural, Soviet Europe. You mark my words – but not in the way my teachers mark my homework; all that red pen shows they are just jealous of my genius.

It isn’t easy being a modern man of vision, a New Messiah, what with Twitter and everything. But my ambitions don’t stop with making the United Kingdom into a socialist paradise on earth, for which I will be the recipient of much garment-rending gratitude and adoration. Oh no, I plan to follow Saint Tony the Martyr into the Middle East and do a bit of envoying in his eminent wake. After all, how hard can it be?

Holy Broken Britain, Batman!

With my brilliance (did I mention my new book?) I will start with solving the Gaza conflict. Honestly, all those career politicians beating about the bush and taking sides. I have applied my enormous brain to the problems and I have come up with a solution; a brilliant solution - a final solution, if you will. What Gaza needs is a good old bit of nationalising. Under nationalisation it is not possible to make war; everybody will be far too busy trying to make a living. 

In a headless state...

Everybody seems to be telling everybody else to fuck off just lately. The staffs of western embassies are leaving Libya as the cavemen close in, the Arabs and Israelis are sharp-elbowing each other like crazy as they jostle for space and the Mexicans are positively rippling into the southern USA in an enormous unintentionally ironic ‘wave’ of illegal immigration. Even formerly uncontacted tribes in Peru are being forced into contact with and moved on by invaders and risk possible extinction as a result. Lucky them, I say, given that one of the prime movers of invasion – islam – is intent on the severest form of primitive mono-culturalism imaginable. I think on the whole I’d rather die from contracting influenza than by contracting bloody headlessness.

The planet is on the move and little of this movement is driven by a love of multicultural enrichment. They say we all came from Africa; well nothing changes, they’re are still coming, only this time they are bringing some very nasty viral passengers with them by all accounts. The formerly civilised western world is once again a very dangerous place to be; if it’s not flesh-eating viruses it’s wealth-eating politics with the socialists of Europe intent on eradicating all traces of national identity. And the wandering Jews are once again being pushed out of mainland Europe.

I have no idea what it is like to be stateless; but I get a nasty feeling that this may not be the case for much longer. I am an Englishman but watching the decline of my country from within I have been tempted for many years to denounce any form of allegiance to a nation which has become voluntarily powerless to defend any aspect of itself. British justice, fair play and even the stiff upper lip have been eroded to the point of parody by meekly laying down their pithy put-downs in the path of the unstoppable forces of stupid. Hundreds of years of peaceful coexistence on our cosy island all lost for a naïve idealism about eternally unachievable and indefinable ‘equality’.

The English always were the best of peoples – just ask Flanders and Swann – but soon we will be no more; we’ll be ‘European’. We already fly that flag and not our own on our car number plates and there is an intention to soon remove the royal crest from our passports. Our borders are not under our own control and our social and judicial policies are decided elsewhere. Meanwhile parts of our larger towns have become unrecognisable, un-cared for and unloved; those with the means to do so head for the outer fringes of the island we used to call our home.

Going, going... gone Galt

Everybody, it seems, is fighting just for a place to sit in peace - it’s planet-wide musical chairs. Sometimes in musical chairs you have to cheat a little bit. We should step out of the game a while, bide our time and see how it all pans out. My guess is that once ebola has done its job and hollowed out Africa – which has never really been properly civilised - there’ll be a whole rich, largely unexploited continent to be rediscovered, repopulated and made to work... properly this time and with zero added islam. When we do, finally, 'go Galt', I baggsy Kenya. 

A Change of Pace

Norman worked at the chemical plant for all his life, from the age of fifteen until he retired, earlier this year upon unexpectedly reaching the grand old milestone of sixty-five. Fifty years of breathing in noxious fumes, half a century of wading through deadly, impossibly-named solvents and still he clung on, determined to see his dotage through in peace and tranquillity, unlike the dozens who had fallen beside him over the years.

He had seen many an accident in his time, even after the intrusive attentions of the Health and Safety Executive; people succumbing to respiratory difficulties, a number of alarming, unexplained rashes which developed into hitherto unrecorded episodes of dermic trauma and a higher than normal incidence of premature hair loss and liver spots. At the plant they still spoke in hushed whispers about the time that Dave – nobody remembered his last name – drowned in the acid bath and all that was recovered was a single white wellie.

But Norman had outlived them all, so it was with some concern that a few months into his salad days he found himself seeking medical attention. The doctor was perplexed and more than a little cautious as he surveyed the gruesome spectacle of Norman’s bright orange wedding tackle. He’d never seen the like and after a cautious examination from behind the prophylactics of face mask, apron and latex gloves he was close to admitting defeat. Nervously backing away from Norman’s incandescent knackers he began his research.

The medical textbooks threw up little in the way of clues, so he turned his attention to Twitter. Nothing. Wider Google enquiries brought a plethora of hideous sights into his surgery and after an exhaustive search of the worst the web has to offer he found himself occasionally blanching as yet another specimen of diseased and disfigured humanity flashed up on the screen. But still he found nothing to adequately compare with Norman’s bright orange bollocks, which glowed accusingly from between a pair of ancient, knobbly knees.

Finally he admitted defeat and said as much to his dismayed patient. For a while they sat in silence as Norman put his pants back on and the doctor, in an inspired guess, wondered aloud if there could be other causes than the years of contamination. What if there were lifestyle contributions, after all, Norman had recently undergone a complete change of pace? The first avenue was to ask Norman whether it might be a surfeit of vitamin B; did he, the doctor asked, eat an inordinately large amount of carrots, for instance?

Norman was less than impressed by this line of questioning but confirmed that his regular diet had never strayed far from the staples of fish, chips, meat and two veg, crisps, Mars bars and cans of Coke and he had no intention of experimenting otherwise. Neither had he, he ventured, made any material alterations in his lifestyle; he still frequented the working men’s club most nights, although he confessed to rarely having the staying power to stagger home at closing time.

“Aha!” said the doc, “so you HAVE changed your routine!” Norman looked at the doctor’s newly animated face and said, “I don’t want to get your hopes up, Doc… all I generally do when I get home is watch porn and eat Cheesy Wotsits.”

Not dead, just resting...

This is not an ex blog. It hasn't run up the curtain and joined the choir-invisible. It has neither expired, gasped its last nor shuffled off its mortal coil. It is just tired and shagged out after a good long squawk. Oh, and I'm really, really, really, really busy just now.

Flowers, messages of support and commiseration can all fuck off, but genuine pledges of cold, hard cash will be greedily accepted.

Laters, taters...

Kids' Stuff

So it’s late and the kids have been sent to bed but on these hot and airless summer nights getting to sleep is hard. On the top bunk Carl, the bigger brother, all of seven years old is whispering loudly to Martin. From downstairs, their mother’s bat-like ears have alerted her to the boys’ chatter “Don’t make me come up there!” she yells and the boys quieten down. But not for long.

“Pssst!” hisses Carl and Martin has no other option but to respond to his leader. Martin does everything Carl tells him, follows him anywhere. They start to whisper again and this time their chatter goes unheard as downstairs it is well past wine o’clock and the adults are winding down in the soothing arms of of Bacchus. Carl regales Martin with tales of the mysterious grown-up world of school. This is Martin’s last summer before school-proper and he is in thrall to Carl’s stories of playground derring-do.

Soon the talk turns to practical matters; the making of catapults, the curing of conkers and the best way to stir up a cow pat with a stick. Boy stuff. Martin, eager for a taste of the future, urges Carl to tell him more. Eventually Carl says, “Have you ever heard of swearing?” and responds to Martin’s bewilderment by explaining how, in that mysterious outside world the English language takes on an exciting, exotic flavour by the simple deployment of a few forbidden words. Starting with ‘bum’ and ‘shit’ and ‘crap’ and ‘bollocks’ Carl leads Martin down the path to profanity and indoctrinates him in the ancient ritual pre-martial art of Sweary Kid, also known as Ju-bitch-ju.

They agree that, from tomorrow, they will together embark on this wondrous lexicographical adventure and on that pact settle down to dream of the linguistic road less trodden. Before they know it they are being roused from slumber by their slightly hung-over mother and hurried out of their jim-jams and into day clothes. As they descend the stairs Martin nudges Carl, who giggles, recalling their plan. Carl, being the eldest, has to lead the way.

“What would you like for breakfast?” asks Mum, to which Carl, barely stifling a chuckle, draws himself up to his full four-foot three and loudly declares, “I think I’ll go for some cornflakes, motherfucker!” His grin is rapidly and literally wiped from his face by the thunderstruck face and unerringly accurate backhand of his unamused mother. As Carl puckers up and his lower lip starts to tremble she turns to the shocked figure of wee Carl. “And how about you?” she demands.

Martin thinks quickly and seeing the tears beginning to spring from Carl’s hot eyes, replies, “Well, it’s certainly not going to be fucking cornflakes!” 

Right yet wrong

Arabs and Jews are lobbing ordinance at each other and frankly I’m bored with it all. I’ve been bored with this subject all my sentient life and I feel pretty safe in predicting it will continue to arouse nothing but ennui well into my dotage. So sod the lot of them; today I’m writing about dear old Richard Dawkins. I like old Dickie-D; he’s how I imagine I would be if I possessed a half-decent intellect… and I’m not quite clever enough to work out if that is an insult or not.

Anyway, he’s been getting it in the neck again for saying something which, on the face of it, is entirely reasonable but reasonable or not he has managed to upset those who seek to prevent free speech whenever it doesn’t suit them. The professor said that some rapes are worse than other rapes. He’s right; he really is. There is a world of difference between a regretted, tipsy, post-date penetration and a full-on, I-might-actually-die-here knifepoint assault, just as there is a world of difference between a verbal battering and a fist fight.

I’m not belittling rape; I wouldn’t dare. Besides I know this is a subject about which men are deemed incapable of holding a valid opinion, let alone debating, so I almost never get involved but the Dawkins slag-fest pissed me off a bit because of the double standards involved. Some women REALLY hate men poking their noses in where they are not wanted, yet feel they have some divinely-granted permission to wade straight into arguments that don’t concern them either. No wonder most men tend to avoid conversation with women altogether; it’s such unstable ground.

We get shrieked at for agreeing, shrieked at for disagreeing and shrieked at whenever we try to remain peacefully neutral… when we get called weak for allowing ourselves to be shrieked at. And while women may hold rigid, unassailable ‘correct’ and accurate opinions about ‘men’, men simply know nothing at all about woman and should keep their silence. It’s a paradigm which takes time to learn and many a man goes through the whole of life perplexed at always being wrong.

Should a woman ask a man, “A penny for your thoughts?” he should merely reply “Nothing; I was thinking of nothing at all.” If it isn’t the truth it is at least the safest version of the truth; they already think we are profoundly stupid anyway. All of this explains sheds, pubs, gardening clubs and why men die before their partners… Richard Dawkins was right; he just forgot that being a man and being right over an exclusively female issue is a hanging offence. Now, let's get back to safer ground and sort out about war, religion and the Middle East...