Law men

Another day, another worthless gesture. “No income tax, no VAT” Dave? Will you be adding “No money back, no guarantee”? One thing is for sure – in the dying days of the election campaign all parties will be promising “Black or white, rich or broke, we'll cut prices at a stroke…” All I can say in response is “God bless Hooky Street”. But let me get this straight: A politician’s word is no longer of any value so the Conservatives have offered to enact a ‘tax-lock’ law to prevent them from doing what the other side say they’ll do should they get into office?

Leaving aside the confusing idea that this in itself is still only a politicians’ promise, does this now mean that labour will also ‘pledge’ to legally restrain themselves from obeying their driving instincts? A law to stop politicians passing laws, in fact? Because, let’s face it, the sheer burden of prohibitive legislation is a massive part of the problem in power. You get elected, you swap offices with your opposite number and the next thing you know you’re knocking one out for the common good; a law, that is.

As everybody knows, making something illegal absolutely stops it happening, doesn’t it? If that was the case I’m surprised and not a little disappointed that nobody has yet written decrees to prohibit global warming, racism, everyday sexism, homophobia, trans-something-or-othero-phobia and every other horrible thing that humans do to each other. But wait, while laws proscribing such behaviour have done nothing but exacerbate the problems, the laws against talking about it in a naughty way have been fantastically effective; punishable to the full extent of the Lord Justices' powers. So rapists still rape, sexists still sex but, boy are we afraid to discuss either in uncertain company.

If words on expensively procured paper could stop anything we could eliminate smoking, debt, poverty, obesity, cancer and unhappiness with the mere stroke of a pen. But they can’t. If politicians are so convinced of the inviolability of man-made legislation why not use that belief to curb the excesses and stupidities of elected officials? It could become an offence for MPs to consort with ‘slebs’ for instance. Or to air their marital grievances in public (I’m looking at YOU, Huhne and Pryce.) Or better yet, to prevent the Parliamentary knee-jerk response of spontaneous law-making.

Oi, politicians, No!

In one week’s time we will have elected the next coalition of legislators. Given that their instincts have regularly and predictably led us to financial ruin, loss of autonomy, societal breakdown and all-round disappointment, the best thing they can do is nothing at all. They should all be falling over themselves to cross their hearts and hope to die if they don’t make it illegal for a new government to change a damned thing until they have been in office for at least, say, five years…

In the Prime

In 1955 Cyril Northcote Parkinson observed that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. Actually, he observed this some years before, but being a busy man it took him a while and he only actually finally (and ironically) wrote it down as the publisher’s deadline approached. Just as well he did because otherwise the world would have been deprived of Parkinson’s Law. Without these eponymous laws to guide us, negotiating this mortal veil would be a far more perilous journey. Thanks to such visionaries as Boyle, Hooke and Ohm and solid thinkers such as Parkinson, Murphy* and Sod we understand our world so much more clearly than did our forefathers.

Everybody knows from experience the inevitability of Parkinson’s, whereby your kids never start their homework until the day before it needs to be handed in and how when you start to catch up on your Sky-Plus listing suddenly you find you’ve been sitting on your arse all day. But old Parkie goes further than this simple principle and also notes such pithy realities as: “The time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved” and ‘Orgmanship’ which is "The tendency of all administrative departments to increase the number of subordinate staff, 'irrespective of the amount of work (if any) to be done." 

These statements practically amount to mission statements for all government departments, the NHS and any organisation given any public funding for any purpose whatsoever. Panels of ‘climate experts’, economic think tanks and the administration of the BBC all spring to mind as exemplars. But even in the lowliest collection of human work units there is still room to see the machinations of these universal laws in action. One such law is the Peter Principle, in which the selection of a candidate for a position is based on the candidate's performance in their current role, rather than whether they possess any abilities relevant to the intended role. Thus, employees only stop being promoted once they can no longer perform effectively, and hence "managers rise to the level of their incompetence."

We all know at least one such co-worker, floundering around, doing more harm than good and often unaware of the chaos they leave in their wake. I sometimes think that a quiet cull might be in order but generally it is kinder to just let them do their thing, keep them out of harm’s way and give them an office in a quiet corner of the premises where they can do as little harm and generate as little expense as possible. Of course, this doesn’t always work; sometimes we have to promote them all the way out of trouble, elevating them to a position where they become entirely irrelevant. I’m calling this the Prime Minister Principle.

(* Murphy’s Law states, of course, “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong” but blog authors may be more familiar with its editorial counterpart:

Muphry's law – "If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written.")

The Election that never was...

Scouring the media, as I do, to find something to bang on about I have to say I’m finding the election build up a tad disappointing. This is supposed to be the most important election in the lives of almost everybody paying tax in Britain; a feast of Last Supper significance and yet the fare is dull and lifeless. Despite both Cameron and Miliband suddenly having caffeine injections responding, no doubt, to some advisors responding, probably, to some focus groups responding, I expect, to some polls, which seem to be more to do with influencing than sampling, there is no real buzz. We were warned of this impending election fatigue when the campaigns started back in 2010, but thought we’d stay the course.

But, be honest, the long-term economic plan versus the million-council houses pledge; the safe hands versus the magic money business; the right wing lies versus the left wing lies; it’s just the same old shit served up gently steaming. What we want is a broiling cauldron, bubbling over with spice and substance. What we’ve got is pease pudding cold… nine days old. As neither of the two main rivals has any room for manoeuvre it is now all down to the dirty old tricks of scare tactics and smear... and forever responding to what paid hirelings tell them the voters want to hear.

What happened to leading? What happened to showing us the way forward, to giving us a real hope for change? But no, it's still: The Tories will eat your young and Labour will plunge them further into debt; either way, according to respective received wisdoms the next generation is screwed. The core vote is solid and unwavering and short of the human masks slipping and our lizard overlords accidentally revealing their green scales live on the telly, nothing will change that.

So instead we are relying on the smaller parties to turn the tide and bring in the vote from the formerly voluntarily disenfranchised. Let us just take a moment to think about that… Oh my gawd, I need to lie down. It’s going to be a complete clusterfuck whatever combination rocks into Number Ten, isn’t it? They say that if you don’t vote you get the government you deserve; this time it seems that whoever you vote for you will not get the government you want. Opt for Labour and you will end up being dictated to by the communists of the Scots Nats. Go Tory and there is a chance of an unholy ConLibDupKip smorgasbord of Gordian knottiness. Either way the EU wins.

Now THAT's what I call politics!

What I do foresee is a rash of leadership challenges in the immediate aftermath of this imminent failure of representative democracy. Campaign chiefs’ heads will roll and the stalking horses will stampede, trampling all in their wake. Boris will set up his circus stall, Chuka will make his slithery move and Natalie Bennett will disappear forever - gone back to the wild. Probably the only party leader to hold her head up high will be wee Eck’s wee Eck, by heck. Maybe it’s because I already voted by post, but it feels like this doomed election is already over for me; it’s all done bar the fighting… seconds away.

Free for all!

Is it Wimbledon already? The big two’s election campaigns seem to have degenerated into a straightforward, back and forth, yes we will – no you won’t – ‘tisn’t – ‘tis – shan’t – so will, tit-for-tat about who will do what for whom and how both sides will somehow avoid paying for it all. Party promises not worth a pauper’s piss with the equally unbelievable Tory giveaways versus Labour’s iron fiscal fist. Only a week and a bit to go before we can start arguing over who actually won, but it strikes me that the only winners will be the ‘experts’ who make their living failing to forecast anything of any value.

That’s the problem, see… money. One of the great drivers of inequality (I’m taking Ed’s corner here, just to see how comfy it is) is the ease with which rich people (spits) can hover above the chaos endured by the rest of us. The rich can simply purchase better outcomes in every way; money buys you better education, health, housing, justice and, yes, government. So, let’s just get rid of all the money. Rich people, your money is no good here, for everything will be free when Ed’s dream becomes reality.

No more rent control, energy price freezes, or having to continually raise the minimum wage to keep pace with prices. Radical, brainstorming, blue-sky lateral thinking can only get you so far – what you need is a synergistic, new-energy, virtual iParadigm shift. In the Red Kingdom everything will be yours for the asking. Everything. Free house, free cinema tickets, free car, free PS4, free healthcare, free education, free, free, free. Say it out loud – don’t you feel freer already? The government – your government – will take care of everything and you need fret no more.

Food, you say? Worry not for we will set up community refectories in every ward where all the food will be delivered and stored – let’s call it a food ‘bank’ – and then lovingly prepared and served up at pre-set times. No need for cooking and so need for any more celebrity chefs or poncey cookery shows with overpaid presenters; two birds, one stone. Who says socialism isn’t thought through? The only kitchens you will ever need will be soup kitchens

Want a new car? Take your pick – the fuel is free too, so don’t be shy. And think of the work you’ll be providing for the car manufacturers. With this simple example you can see that if everything is free the demand will soar and simple economics dictates that soon we will have full employment. In fact we will pretty soon have more jobs than workers and then even Ukip will agree we need to let in more immigrants. And we will have no need to pay them, because everything will be free for them as well. And as an added bonus if we don't have any money we will have no need for banks. Who says we don't have a plan for the banks?

We'll even give you free money - because it wil be worthless!

Of course, we are not naïve enough to believe that there isn’t a price, even if it is not measured in monetary terms. Labour’s newly turned leaf now includes economic probity and we understand the need to honour two sides of any bargain. So this is the pact we make with the people of Britain. You get everything for free, forever and all we ask in return is that you give up your vote. Let’s face it; you weren’t planning on using it wisely now, were you?

(PS: For any actual socialists reading this - it's a joke.)

Save the Pale!

We go to great lengths to preserve wildlife habitats. Interfering with nature, we are told, is an abomination which must be avoided; we have no right to interfere with the way animals live their lives. I’ve always thought it a little odd that while we build tunnels for migrating toads and withhold planning consent to save some rare flower that nobody has ever heard of we have no such reservations when it comes to experimenting with our own species. I have long held the view that if you really want to understand humanity you need look no further than Sir David Attenborough’s life work.

In the main, animals only want to avoid conflict, to eat to survive, survive to breed and in breeding to pass on to their young the best chance of completing the full life cycle in their turn. Darwin’s genius insight into the driving principles of evolution manages to explain all urges, all instincts, all physical and mental attributes as the fundamental survival of traits which facilitate the replication of genes that inform the entire make-up of the successful entities. The theory of evolution by ‘survival of the fittest’ is simple, observably true and elegant, requiring none of the hypocritical complexity of ‘intelligent design’.

And so it must be seen that the ubiquitous and entirely normal concerns about mass immigration and enforced societal change are not the aberrations that the race industry would make them out to be. They are part of the same set of instincts which have allowed our survival and evolution. Just as in the simplicity of evolutionary theory, the simplicity of innate antipathy toward species difference is far more likely to be true than an acceptance of ‘multiculturalism’ that requires an entire new lexicon to be written and a set of punitive rules to be enforced.

But no. It is nearly fifty years since Enoch Powell’s erudite observations and clear warnings were shouted down as racism and in all that time we have achieved very little; certainly done nothing to address the very real issues. Reviled by the left and causing embarrassment to a Conservatism trying to be all things to all people, rather than uphold simple truths, Powell has been consigned to an altered history where he was the only nasty bigot saying such things. The simple truth? We were disturbing our own native habitat and the most affected people had no voice.

Our governments have, instead of listening, continued to pursue policies of division and tension and instead of tackling the problem have made talking about the problem a crime against society. Recently, Labour and the Tories have pretended to listen, but only because there are votes in listening. Then they reveal themselves when they utter such garbage as Miliband saying he will make ‘islamophobia’ a crime and Cameron suddenly floating the idea of a black Prime Minister. People can only be led for so long by foolish commanders and the lemming cliff of multiculturalism is a leap too far.

Meanwhile, Europe wants to prolong the death throes of decent, civilised society by insisting we import more machete wielding cultural enrichment from all over North Africa. Where the holy grail for many naturalists is to find sufficient difference to claim and name a new species to protect, our social engineers steadfastly overlook the glaringly obvious in order to claim humans are of one clan-mankind. But I’m with the animalists. We have stood silently by and watched, even connived in, the steady destruction of our own expensively constructed ecosystems. Isn’t it about time we stood up and began to preserve our own unique species?

The Stepford Milibands

Something strange has happened to the Labour Party. No, I mean something even stranger than that. Ed Miliband and Douglas Alexander yesterday both spoke with the same voice and I do mean with the same voice; not one of human origin, but with the identical measured monotone and mock estuarine accent that Blair had downloaded into RAM from Labour spin central. Dropping their aitches and glottal stopping for all they were worth and constantly saying “Ah’ll do” and “Ah said…” the pair of them sounded utterly soulless. We all have verbal and vocal tics, but few of us go out of our way to sound like clones of a discredited political laboratory creation – at least once we have grown out of the teenage faux ‘strine accent phase.

So it is my considered hypothesis that whatever shred of humanity remained in the corpus of the Labour shadow cabinet it has been extracted and replaced with some form of alien replicant serum; because that stuff exists you know! Before you leap on the naysaying bandwagon I have to declare my theory is at least as credible as anything Labour have presented as a policy since they were kicked into touch by the British public last time round. While the Tories have such obviously flawed but hugely entertaining joke humanoid-imitating robots as Boris Johnson and Eric Pickles and Ukip, of course, has the mighty Farage, the Labour line-up looks like the clients in the Star Wars bar.

Stiff, wooden, inarticulate, humourless, condescending and devoid of any warmth, Rachel ‘Morticia’ Reeves is clearly in the final stages of Milibandification. She looks like Ed, sounds like Ed, has Ed’s adenoidal timbre and like many of her opposition colleagues displays the self-awareness of a particularly nondescript pebble. And forget the oily, buffed-up Uncle Tom Umunna, the closest thing Labour comes to colour is Ed Balls and even his remaining ruddiness is steadily being drained from those chubby cheeks as he Milibandises from within. Soon you will not be able to tell one from another which, if you think about it, is exactly what Len McCluskey has wanted all along.

Mourning the decline of identikit, Labour-voting, production line workers, paying into union coffers every Thursday, Len has had to resort to some lateral thinking. Instead of a bunch of indistinguishable drones in the mills and factories he has instead sought to appeal to a workforce that is no longer interested in the nuances of politics. Who needs difference, he has reasoned, when the technology exists to manufacture a matching set of politicians without an individual thought or personality to their name?

And he’s onto a winner. Forget about voting for the individual best able to represent your interests at Westminster. That would involve you taking an active part in democracy – weighing up your options considering the pros and cons – something Labour voters became incapable of doing long before the New-Labour/Tory-Lite experiment. No all you have to do now is listen to the hypnotic whine of lefty aphorisms and place your ‘X’ in the box secure in the knowledge that if you vote for any single one of them, you will get the whole damned lot.

Image Conscious

Another day, another vaguely religious controversy. This time to do with a Sikh film, Nanak Shah Fakir that, despite being approved by the British Sikh Council is being picketed by those who adhere to a maxim never to portray the guru. Smacking somewhat of the Charlie Hebdo affair, those who don’t want to see a portrayal of a religious icon will go to extreme lengths if necessary to prevent others from seeing a portrayal of a religious icon. All’s fair in the divine cosmos.

Of course religions have rules, lots of rules and many of them are to do with viewing images of their holy figures – even the old testament has warnings about graven images and no doubt, to some, the figures of nailed-up Christs that adorn the gilded Catholic world promise a special kind of hell for all who gaze upon them. Or maybe those crucifixes are to remind the priests what happens to old men who bugger pre-pubescent boys?

In the perverse world that those gods supposedly created it is entirely likely that this prohibition itself lies behind the multitude – good old biblical term there – of holy apparitions that litter history. People obsessed with not seeing their prophet, guru or god then can’t help but see their dangerous features in dreams, in trances, in out-of-body experiences and in all manner of everyday objects. The figure of Jesus in the bum of a dog, the figure of allah in the bomb of a jihadi. Burning bushes, effigies, weeping statues, moving pictures and the rest; it’s all pretty mental, really.

In the Buddhist faith, however, depictions of the jolly fat lad appear ubiquitous and although Buddha isn’t a god, as such, I have no doubt he does appear, at times of great joy, to those who wish for it the hardest. So it was a matter of some disappointment to a young Buddhist at a multi-faith retreat to find himself relegated to second place in the ‘see your saviour’ stakes.

It was breakfast and the faithful were lining up at the toast machine, waiting patiently as their slices rolled along the automated grill conveyer, emerging golden brown at the business end. Seeing his slice emerge and rolled towards the drop the young enlightened one picked up a plate, grabbed a pat of butter and turned back to the toaster, only to see a disciple of Christ spreading the self-same slice with a blob of a popular alternative bread spread. But before he had a chance to complain, the god-botherer turned to the queue and held up his slice of generously larded breakfast comestible.

Take my wife... no, really!

“Behold!” he spake, “the face of our Lord Jesus Christ appears in the melted margarine!” Uncharacteristically angry that this miracle had been denied him, the saffron-robed one exclaimed, exasperated, “I can’t believe it’s not Buddha!”

The Cruel World Order

Well, the Spectator debate last night was fun and it showed the stark difference in the approach of those ‘on the right’ who reasoned with level heads and unsensational facts that the rich already pay more than their fair share of tax, and the rag-taggle of lefty activists arguing passionately that the world was a horrid place and they would stamp their feet and hold their breath until the unicorns arrived with the magic money. For me the defining moment was when the brilliant descriptive term 'wealth jihadists' was immediately decried as 'hate speech' by those so quick to condemn anybody not in line with their perverse agenda of state-controlled 'fairness'.  

But the comedy high point of the week so far has to be Arthur – admit it, you thought he was dead – Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party manifesto launch: Launch? Lunch, more like, as in ‘out to’.  Their website is a hark back to the glory days of the nineteenth century pamphleteers and their Key Policies page is a joy to behold. To save you from splitting your own sides reading it for yourself, I have fisked it for your delectation and delight and invite you into their wonderful world, along the yellow brick road, down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass…

It starts with the marvellously optimistic message contained in the provocatively titled: “Clause IV of the Socialist Labour Constitution”:“To abolish Capitalism and replace it with a Socialist system democratically controlled by and accountable to the people as a whole. A full return of all the wealth generated by the industries and services of our nation on the basis of common/social ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange of each industry and service.” And so it continues. They will (their words):

·         immediately close the tax loopholes

·         take the banks into public ownership

·         build or refurbish 1 million homes every year for 5 years.

·         restore full employment

·         end nuclear power generation

·         abolish all private health care & social services, and

·         all doctors, dentists and nurses must work exclusively for the NHS.

·         pull out of all wars and military engagements overseas.

·         abolish all private education,

·         renationalise all rail, bus, tram, waterway and air transport

I wouldn’t have been surprised to see them pledging to resurrect Maggie just so they could burn her for real and not merely in effigy. To be fair they do advocate complete withdrawal from the EU, so on balance they may not appear to be so bad after all. But wait, what’s this? A NINETY PERCENT TAX on all income over £300,000? Well, wasn’t that just what the Spectator debate was all about? The left’s cause and argument hinges on their definition of fairness and social justice, hence everybody making a buck is somehow part of the cruel patriarchy of the right.

Some flying pigs are more equal than others.

But Scargill and his senile cronies were around when the last Labour government to enact such punitive taxes presided over the exodus of the great and good and the most austere period in Britain’s history since the Second World War. If Labour’s constant assault on ‘the rich’ has ever shown us anything it is that if you squeeze the honest rich more you will be left with only the dishonest rich. Tax the law-abiding wealth creators and only the civil criminals and corrupt public officials will thrive. Now that really would be a cruel society.

WWLD? (What would Lulu do?)

The Jockanese are on the march again, woading up, dressing in man-skirts and screaming “Frrrrreeedom!” from the boggy, boggy braes… the noo. But freedom from what, exactly? They seem happy to remain wedded to an unequal distribution of state funding that the Welsh would kill for. They seem to be very keen indeed to drive policy from the back seat of Labour’s underpowered clown car and they are inordinately fond of calling resources procured largely by investment from England’s Exchequer ‘Scotland’s oil and gas’. So what is it, Jimmy, whit de ye wan’?

Because, convinced as I am that Britain’s best interests lie outside the deadly cold embrace of the European Union, it would be hypocritical of me to suggest you stay within a club you so clearly despise. Scottish Nationalism can be whatever colour it wishes; you can be as red as Mao’s little book or as blue as the sainted Maggie. You can even turn yellow and sit on the Lib Dem fence if you wish. But make up your bloody minds, will you? 55% was it? 55% voted against independence? And yet about 120% of you now seem intent to vote for the party of separation. Down here in your personal piggy bank we’re all getting a mite pissed off with it all.

We’re happy for you to stay, or happy for you to leave. But not bloody happy for you to stay and then act like churlish children, holding the country to ransom and threatening disruption. And not happy for you to ‘leave’ yet still keep bringing your washing home and cleaning out the fridge every weekend. You have to choose and stick with your choice. Of course Nicola Sturgeon is going to agitate for another referendum and of course it’s going to fail again out of fear of the unknown – oh how I wished for you to vote ‘yes’ last time. But just like every UK government’s tenatious dalliance with the EU this thing isn’t going to go away any time soon.

The one thing that can be said for the rise of Wee Jimmy Sturgeon is that it will have focused the minds of many of the oppressed majority to maybe try to head things off at the pass. For years the English have been the beaten and bruised underdog of the dis-United Kingdom, yet we’ve had to fund the architects of our own impoverishment for many decades. It’s high time somebody asked us whether or not we are happy to remain ball-and-chained to two socialist regions in Wales and Scotland and further shackled to the unholy collection of disparate economies in Europe. It’s time for the English to vote for England and with St George’s Day tomorrow, now is the time for our own rally.

The United Kingdom of St George

Yes, you say, it’s all well and good touting a gut feeling that we’d be better off on our own, but what of the detail? Where is the analysis of our trading position, our influence, our standing in a post UK, post EU world? Well, don’t ask me, ask ‘them’. Where is it? Not one single so-called ‘expert’ has the first inkling of a glimmer of a clue what would happen after a successful OUT referendum, so I reckon our chances are pretty good. What is for certain is that 60-million (a very conservative estimate of the population of England alone) are not going to starve, or stop producing, buying and selling stuff. So what have we got to lose? It’s time to ditch the ballast that has been slowing us down for years and crack on with rebuilding our mixed up, muddled up, shook up world… ‘cept for Lulu?

The Speech Poleeth dithmitheth uth...

The worshippers at the shrine of Saint Indignatio know no bounds in pursuit of offence, choosing – nay, being compelled – to elevate any opinion they don’t like to the level of a personal, vindictive and material threat to their own existence. To the devout a holocaust denier is not some deluded, hate-filled loner, refuse to be convinced by the vast archives of recorded evidence, but is somehow become a violent criminal, to be dealt with exactly as if they had entered one’s home and held a knife to one’s throat. To not have and vocally express sympathy for the Hillsborough victims is a hate crime so extreme that in return they must suffer very real physical threats.

Even daring to disavow the lukewarm throwaway aphorisms ‘children are the future’ and ‘everybody is equal’ and ‘the Tories will sell ‘our’ NHS’ can bring a level of opprobrium upon you so extreme that you may never seek gainful employment under our own name again. Indeed there are some who would set up and compel the errant to sign some form of ‘Hate Offenders Register’ for any verbal or written expression which contravenes some self-appointed, holier-than-thou, guardians of free speech ‘as long as it agrees with our opinions’. The peddlars of such sanctions seem to belong exclusively to the club of left-leaning talking heads whose very living appears to derive from confecting such offence.

Thus it is that Katie Hopkins is once again taking flak from the mischief makers who are so sensitive as to be unable to bear the pain of mere words even from the safety of their desks, even defended by their nuclear word warrior keyboards. The Society of Black Lawyers (There is, of course why no Society of White Lawyers) has deemed one person expressing opinions, however disagreeable, as incitement to racial hatred. It is, of course, nothing of the sort; agree with her or not, Ms Hopkins incites nothing but a cry to common sense. The world is a harsh place and if you can’t make it work for you, it isn’t for others to make it so. Tough, as they say, shit.

The Speech Police strike again...

Meanwhile, on the Twitter, another crêpe crusader has donned its mask and utility belt and in the guise of a mighty ‘troll-hunter’ has been steadily stalking anybody agreeing with the views of La Hopkins and helpfully linking in the Met Police to the incoherent howls of rage in their replies. What has to go so badly wrong with your own life that you feel the need to set up new accounts purely to spread the poison you say you so greatly despise? Those throwing such stones may just want to check what the walls of their houses are made of… and the Society of Black Lawyers might want to look in the mirror before they make complete twats of themselves… again. (They may want to smile if they are looking in dim light - now how racists is THAT?) (PS: No you fuck off!) 

Dumbocracy

Nobody knows what will happen in the General Election. Nobody. Nobody knows how whatever ruling coalition emerges will govern. Nobody. Nobody has any clear, over-arching vision of how an economy and a society needs to be run in an age when the servant-master hierarchy has disappeared and in its place is a faux-egalitarian mish-mash of ‘rights’ with an ill-defined sense of responsibility. Indeed, individual responsibility has vanished in some sectors altogether and corporate loyalty has been replaced with a nebulous sense of entitlement and individualism. Oddly and contradictorily it is in those on the left, who persistently preach about the power of solidarity, where some of the lowest notions of true common cause reside.

Boris Johnson is right to talk of a new Battle for Britain but entirely confused if he genuinely believes our progressively watered-down version of Conservatism has the answers. Because people have been told for so long that the world is theirs by right they have come to believe it. There is no stigma in the things which would once have been frowned upon – able-bodied worklessness, single teen parenthood, gambling, drinking and cavorting to excess with the expectation that somebody else would always pick up the tab. Neither a borrower nor a lender be? When Labour’s Liam Byrne signalled that there was no money left, the coalition should have begun to really turn the screws, not just fiddled about, ring-fencing this and freezing that.

Of course the profligate administrations of town and county and health and education, faced with necessary budget cuts did what? Did they preserve so-called frontline services for those in most need? Did they maintain the flow of traineeships and steady recruitment at the bottom, while exploring true efficiency savings from their bloated budgets? No, their overpaid non-job leaders went into a union-like huddle and decided that such authorities were run for the benefit of the staff before the users and instead opted for short-termism. Keep the top jobs and non-jobs, come what may and cut provision to make a point to government. “See what you did to the poor and sick” said the £200,000 a year image consultants and performance indicator manipulators, while doing exactly what they blamed the bankers for.

In defence of immigration, the oft-touted statistic that 40% of NHS staff are from overseas should not be praised; it is a damning indictment of the way in which much of the country and its population has been mismanaged. Poor educational outcomes, coupled with unrealistically rising aspirations, lowered moral principles and a perverse belief that recruiting an ever lower paid workforce will somehow result in a limitless flow of funds for public services has left us with a generation poorly equipped to cope with the main fact of working life – that we don’t always get what we want. Except now they don’t even have the option of starting from the bottom.

And why do we have all this? Because we let the children decide; it is the job of a parent to decide how their kids turn out… and it is the job of leaders to lead, not to follow. A fifty-year succession of populist governments has given the people what the focus groups said they wanted, instead of taking the tough decisions and saying no. And the election campaign is too short a time to even begin to educate an electorate to search for the truth and vote with their heads.

The ship of state sails on...

So, come May 7^th we will trot off to the polling booths and we may as well vote blindfold because whatever we call them we’ll get the same indecisive, spineless, vote-whores we always do and if anybody tries to enact real reform they will be ushered out of office before the approval ratings dip a percentage point.. Somebody said that democracy is the least-worst system for governance. But when you realise how democracy usually ends up – government elected by the average; dumbocracy – nobody responsible would ever countenance it. But what’s the alternative?

The Circle of Life?

The view from the left – as exemplified by the cosy huddle at the end of the also-rans debate last Thursday night – is that 'the rich' can stand to be squeezed as much as is necessary to pretend that the failed experiment of perpetual welfare can be extended forever. Parasites don’t kill their hosts quickly, they just use them until they need them no more, then hatch from their pupal state and fly off from the desiccated and dying husk to lay their eggs on another unsuspecting source of protein for their ravening offspring. But of course all this presupposes that the host will remain in one place long enough to facilitate the lifestyle of the blood-sucking little grubs.

It is a simple matter to divide the national wealth by the number of inhabitants and declare jam for all, but that calculus totally ignores the way in which that wealth is created. As Dominic Sandbrook writes: Those on the left have been ramping up the anti-austerity rhetoric as if all we need to do is “blame the bankers, soak the rich, promise billions for all and pay homage at the shrine of the NHS” The trouble is this form of left-wing, fiscally innumerate bollockry is attractive  only to those who have no ambition to create value, employ people or take responsibility into their own hands. While those brought up to expect Mother State to provide believe that we all deserve better, those who do the providing don’t take kindly to being labelled as the bad guys.

A little fable:

A vicious, uncaring ‘far-right’ scummer takes £200 out of his current account to go shopping. He pays for everything in cash, watching his pocketed liquid assets dwindle as he makes his purchases and mindful of his intent to go for a drink with friends later makes sure he has enough left to cover the evening and his busfare. This is their occasional treat and they spend a happy few hours catching up with each other’s news.

On the same day a lovely, caring, socialist credit to society cashes in her Jobseeker’s Allowance and manages – with the aid of her several maxed-out cards – to buy several new outfits for summer, a PlayStation 4 for her nine-year old and still has enough cash at the end of the day to go out on the lash with friends. At three in the morning, after a raucous night of it they are skint and have to do have to a runner from the taxi driver who takes them home but that’s okay as he ought to have insurance to cover it.

The next day they have a well-deserved lie-in to recover as the boring old Nazi brownshirt goes to his dreary job in order to help cover the cost of the glorious workers’ revolutionary welfare state machinery. 

The End

Vote Labour, SNP, Plaid Cymru, TUSC, Green Party...

This – and many variants - is how magic money works and we are wading through a trillion and a half of it as a nation. But our worker has a wry smile on his face as he trudges to his workplace because he has been grafting for years and saving his money and he intends to step off the UK productivity map as soon as he can. Workers retire, or leave, or become ill, or just stop working. The response of socialism? We need more drones, from anywhere we can find them and we need to tax them harder because to the parasites the host is a mere resource and not an equal. Well listen up lefties, the host is not only dying but becoming extinct.

Heart of Darkness

Italy is being overrun by African migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Libya. So much so that even the European Union is concerned about all that diversity and enrichment and machete-wielding skillage that it is normally so very quick to welcome and organise benefits for. I smell the whiff of people who feel their privileged commissioners’ salaries are under threat. If Africa comes to Europe how long before it is just as fucked-up as the dark continent itself? One by one, as those countries have gained independence from their civilised former rulers, their natural tendencies to corruption and violence have crept back in and if they are not wrecking and raping their national wealth there is always a bit of light genocide to pass the time.

You can call it racism as loudly as you like but, from where I’m sitting it’s not Europeans who are systematically stealing aid funds, rigging elections, beating up rivals, letting industry and agriculture fail, allowing infrastructure to fall into disrepair, dismembering white farmers, beheading non-muslims and crucifying Christians. Africa and the Middle East has between them an enormously disproportionate access to natural resources compared to its population and yet all much of its people seem able to do is waste it, break it and slaughter anybody who takes their fancy.

Still capturing, keeping and abusing slaves, discriminating with a literally monstrous disregard for human suffering the boat people are not only bringing savagery but also allowing Ebola, hepatitis, AIDS and other lethal diseases to hitchhike along with them. The people of southern Italy feel under direct threat as they receive hundreds of thousands of invaders, some of whom are by no means grateful recipients of charity. Reports are being heard that they regularly and arrogantly thieve, control criminal gangs and threaten violence. This is not some aberration, this is their nature – you can take the animal out of the jungle and all that.

Of course the human rights organisations are wading in  - What are we to do to help the migrants? It’s not their fault, the say; they are escaping oppressive regimes. Well even from here I already feel I live in a pretty oppressive regime where my well-being is of little concern to the righteous forces of liberal guilt and having a dusky form of repression added for good measure is not my idea of a happy future. Demonising the migrants, you say? Quelle horreur! No, not ALL migrants… just the demons. And the fact that the most devilish come in various shades of non-white is surely impossible to ignore unless you are pathologically unable to separate fact from fiction.

Fancy a bit more diversity?

You’re worried about whether calling a violent black man black and violent is offensive? I’ll tell you what’s offensive – having an enraged and bloodthirsty savage scream in your face as he tries to detach it from your body. So sod the rescue patrols and forget about trying to accommodate them. Farmers with a rat problem don’t put out food and bedding for the rats, do they? Call in the air strikes and sink those boats as fast as they are launched. Deterrent is no good; the European Union can only defend its borders if it has the will to take out every last verminous, disease-ridden, destructive animal in this infestation. 

Going Cheep!

Well the also-ran leaders debate was great fun but all I could think about, listening to the combined clucking and squawking of the three shrill harpies, as they stirred the cauldron and laid into hapless Ed and guffawing Nigel, was the tale of the cheap parrot:

A lady walked into a pet shop one day and began to examine the exotic birds. The sleek black mynah first caught her eye as he trilled for her attention by calling out his name repeatedly, but after a few repetitions she realised that his somewhat challenged repertoire might pale quite quickly in the home environment, so she passed on Monty, as had many before her and turned instead to the parakeets. But despite their pretty lines the only ones in the shop were of an ordinary type, with a dull green plumage and she was really looking for something different.

The surly African grey and green parrots, despite their substantial size, also failed to impress and so it was that she eventually found herself in front of a cage in which perched a magnificent, rainbow-hued macaw. Assuming the spectacular bird would be beyond her budget she sighed and turned to reappraise her options when the pet shop owner appeared. “Can I help you, madam?” he enquired, as such men are wont to do. “I hardly dare ask,” she said, “but how much is that beautiful macaw?” The proprietor took her to one side, out of earshot of the bird and said quietly, “I’m not sure that is the bird for you, but as you ask, he's going for £250.”

“But that is amazingly cheap!” she declared, “Indeed, yes,” he replied, “but unfortunately this particular specimen has quite a wide and embarrassing vocabulary.” He proceeded to explain that the bird had long been a resident of a local brothel which had recently been raided and closed down and in the course of his stay there had picked up some ripe turns of phrase. “Oh,” she said, “but we’re people of the world you know and I doubt we would be shocked. Besides, that would go down a hoot at our annual barbecue.” And without further ado and brooking no objections she purchased the parrot on the spot.

At home she removed the cover from the cage and the macaw blinked as he looked at this new surroundings. “Nice gaff!” he said, to her delight, “Fuck me, I’m loving what you’ve done to the décor!” She clapped and called out for her two teenage daughters to come and see the rude new bird. As they entered he wolf-whistled and shouted “New girls, eh? Wayhey, darlings! Gerr’em off!” The girls and their mother roared with delight and called out, between guffaws, for the father to share the fun.

Allo, darlings!

Dad put down the paper and strolled in from the kitchen. "What's all the fuss?" he asked and then he saw the parrot. He froze, startled, as the bird stopped calling and fixed him with a piercing gaze. For a moment there was silence. He stared at the bird, the bird stared back. The pause continued for a moment then the macaw ruffled his feathers, sat upright on his perch and said “Alright, Keith?”

Jerusalem!

Yesterday was another day of manifesto launches, nationwide interviews and a hundred and one demands for government action on this, that and global warming cooling climate wossname. I caught a glimpse of part of The Daily Politics and their scanty coverage of ‘the regions’ (if it’s not London, it’s just ‘the regions’) and they were all banging the same anti-austerity drum; all crying out for more and more funding. “The government must bring jobs. The government must ‘invest’. The government must bring joy and treasure. The government must make me, my kids and their kids and their kids and their kids happy forever.”

Well, here’s a better idea; an idea we can actually afford: Instead of robbing the rich to keep the poor penniless-and-pointless, just say “NO!” Ignore the begging bowls and leave them to it. If businesses will not relocate north without incentive let the regions themselves provide the incentive – government is hopeless at creating productive jobs, but abject poverty is BRILLIANT at incentivising innovation and invention and lowering expectations. So what if the pits closed or the textile trade went to where they were grateful for the nasty, grinding soulless graft? Their time is gone and if the local industrial landscape won’t support your numbers you do have choices.

There is no natural law, no nebulous human right that says you must be able to extend your crappy, rickety genepool while staying put. In any case there is something utterly depressing about generation after generation being brought screaming into the same sink estate and relying, from the outset, on state handouts because thirty or forty or a hundred years ago the economics stopped working for you. Sheffield may have been built on steel and coal, but face it, the former third world does it so much better and so much cheaper. And besides, dogged clinging to the rocks of ‘community’ may just be part of what is holding you back. In-breeding becomes inevitable if you refuse to embrace change.

If you are worried about the future prospects for your children then either do something about those prospects or don’t have children. If you don’t expect anybody else to support you, you may be pleasantly surprised by what you can achieve. And if your region can’t be revived after decades of pumping in other people’s money maybe there’s a message there too. Do the decent thing and either get on your bike or just allow your expensive-but-useless, union card carrying line to die out naturally.

'Ey up! It's all gone a bit quiet...

If you don’t want your stark natural and industrial beauty, your rolling hills your old satanic mills enough, then let them go. Because without your whining welfare-enabled feebleness, without your short NHS-dependent life spans and without your depressingly helpless pleas for outside help ‘the regions’ will deliver or depopulate, in the process becoming more attractive places to make a living, supporting the types of communities who can thrive in those environments. Be it self-sufficient eco-types or new entrepreneurs maybe we can once again build Jerusalem in that green and pleasant land. But I’m fucked if I’m paying for it.

The Bag Lady

I didn’t think I would like Natalie Bennett but who couldn’t fall for those blotchy dimples, those confused, out-of-focus, wide-in-the-headlight eyes and her engagingly tragic performance in interviews. With her Aussie twang forever blunted by her permanent head cold she stubbornly resisted Andrew Neil’s attempts to give her a lesson in rudimentary economics yesterday – much on the simple lines of Mr Micawber’s easy mantra – and instead insisted on rushing headlong into rice-and-beans homilies about the inherent goodness of people. She obviously hasn’t met many humans.

Plenty of people have commented in detail on the crazed fantasy that the Green Party Manifesto dishes up, so I’m not going to do that; no, I’m going to play the man instead. Much more fun. It’s a lovely idea that ‘the rich’ will willingly give up most of what they earn so that others can choose never to work and engage instead in ‘creative’ dabblings. But really, Natalie, you reckon that is ever going to happen outside a throwback sixties hippy hobby commune funded by the likes of Brian May and his badger army? And try asking somebody who has grafted for decades to finally reach the dizzy heights of £160,000 a year to give most of it back and what do you expect their reaction would be? (Also, apart from the odd – and I mean odd – millionaire ex-flower-child, what proportion of wealthy people with functioning brains do you reckon would be likely to be Green Party fans?)

Just because giving to others sounds nice and marks you out as a generous and kind soul it doesn’t automatically follow that everybody should be forced to do follow your example. In general philanthropists have their own agenda, or madness, driving their generosity; many of the original charities were founded by extreme puritans with obsessive beliefs in Christian dogma… sometimes accompanied by flogging and casual, ‘healing’ child abuse. And while giving may be repaid by gratitude it is often accompanied by resentment; many are those who would bite the hand that feeds them and there is little dignity in relying on charity.

Being nice is also a very poor survival tactic. Turning the other cheek; how’s that working out for you disciples of Nazareth? The meek will inherit the Earth? Maybe… when the big boys have finished kicking the shit out of it. Our national defence relies on rough men willing to do our dirty work for us. Policing relies on a sufficient deterrent to crime that most people are unwilling to risk having their collar felt. And educating unwilling youth into civilised enlightenment needs tough discipline and a refusal to bend to the whims of infants, no matter how big their eyes or chubby their cheeks. The little bastards will turn on you the moment they sense weakness.

Canvassing the constituency...

As a result of all this wilful blindness Nutty Natalie is now one of my all-time favourites on the political scene, but you have to wonder how long she will be able to keep it up. At every interview she has looked like a frightened mouse, blinking in incomprehension at challenges to her bizarre beliefs, then stutteringly repeating them. She obviously believes what she is saying, but are we absolutely sure she is a politician and not just some bag lady who dropped into a Green Party gathering thinking it was a food bank?

I vow to thee...

Ah, a politician’s promise. Labour’s new manifesto – already being systematically ‘meh’d by all and sundry contains that most sacred of pledges; by calling it a ‘vow’, they seek to conceal the fact that they will ALWAYS be the party of fiscal irresponsibility. In response George Osborne – if I heard this correctly – has said his new budgetary buggerings will contain many ‘exciting’ new proposals. I dunno ‘bout you, but the last thing I want my politicians or their policies to be is ‘exciting’. Exciting is marketing speak for the same old shit, dressed to deceive. Exciting is what you tell your kids a day out at a crowded picnic site will be. But excitement is not a feeling any normal person equates with political manifestos*.

It’s a naked plea to arouse the emotions of simpletons and PPC students and being neither I simply refuse to be thus aroused. Exiting is a more apt description of the likely effect – exiting the democratic process altogether as those dithering about whether to vote or not decide… not. After all, what is really going to change? The NHS fails to keep alive about the same number of people it does under any flavour of government. The welfare bill only ever goes upwards. Immigration is beyond our gift to control. And whatever party gets in there will never be a fair and open referendum on membership of the EU.

That only, really, leaves the economy and I want our approach to that prickly issue to be pragmatic and dull and workable. You simply cannot spend your way out of a slump and unless you are Greece there is no prospect of declaring personal bankruptcy and having creditors write off your debt. Nope, just as with personal finance you bought it, you pay for it and when the credit cards are maxed out you have no other option than what those on the left love to call ‘austerity’. Austerity? Ask your grandmother about it. (If you are a diehard Labour voter, ask your great, great grandmother)

The promised pink unicorn of peace

You can’t send what you haven’t got unless you borrow. And when you can no longer borrow it is just ludicrous – if not fraudulent – to carry on pretending that you can. You can’t promise a job that doesn’t exist. You can’t promise funding when you have no funds. So, no, I don’t want excitement, I don’t want fairy tales and like – I hope – a majority of right-thinking individuals I want to be left to sort out my own shit without having all the while to worry about what schemes the government has to get in my way. What can my country do for me? Stop telling me what it thinks I want to hear and just get on with the job. Fiscal policy? Carry on cutting.

(*Unless you are a Green Party supporter, in which case everything about their fantastic fictions, presumably drafted while under the influence of serious mind-altering substances, is bound to be a thrill. I imagine you can smell Green policies and hear their colour as you skip along the yellow brick road to lentil heaven.)

He’s not the Messiah!

At Easter the imaginary son of a non-existent god rose from his grave and carried on, much as before. Pushing his largely unheeded fables down our throats and, backed by a dwindling number of mostly deluded disciples, he imagined the world needed his soothing touch. After two thousand years of Christianity the world looks a lot less stable than it did when the Romans were ruling with an iron fist, but still some persist in believing peace will one day come.   

The modern-day followers of Christ are still being crucified in the Middle East and their message of ‘do unto others’ is ignored as savages demonstrate what truly happens to the meek. And elsewhere, Christianity is in decline as one particular hard-line doctrine enforces its will on half the world’s population while the other half has advanced and realised that blind adherence to a faith will never be a part of the solution. But some keep on repeating the same old mantras.

The dogged insistence that there IS an answer to the world’s ills if we could only get along in harmony is countered by the everyday proof of people not only succeeding but thriving without it. But still Labour the religion pushes on with its message, spreading its gospel across the land via a rag-taggle band of preachers imploring voters to convert to communal ways. But beware, in the Christian myth, as in many others, there are devils. These tortured demons, so the stories go, seek to lure the unwary from the path of light and righteousness; they are also a convenient excuse for when a devout acolyte snaps and goes 'off-message' with an Uzi in a shopping centre.

And so it has come to pass that another miracle has been revealed and risen before us we see one who had died and gone away. The question you have to ask yourself is: is he an angel from god on high or an emissary of Satan himself? And is the spectacle of his messianic resurrection to be looked on in awe and wonder, or is it a warning to all mankind to prepare for the apocalypse? Nah, it’s Tony-fucking-Blair.

Like a bad penny he’s turned up again, supposedly to bolster Ed Miliband’s election campaign. Not content with stirring up the Middle East he has returned to his unfinished project; the annihilation of the last remaining Britons. In Tony’s mind, only consigning the vestiges of Britishness to the history books and subsuming this island nation wholesale into Europe will do – although he may wish to check out the dogged persistence of Israel before he relaxes, thinking the job done.

Cherie backs him all the way...

But like Christ himself, Blair seems to believe he can live forever; he’s said he will carry on doing his good work until he’s ninety-one. You’d have thought that the Millennium Dome would be enough for one man, wouldn’t you, but no, he’s still after that lost legacy, isn’t he? Remember those eyes? He’s not the Messiah – he’s a very naughty boy.

Get Stuffed!

All around the land the great and the good – well, the party leaders, at any rate – are crying “Road Trip!” and competing to annoy the greatest number of citizens by trying to prove they are human themselves. Of course, it is entirely normal for blokes in suits to don hard hats and pretend to hold a manual tool whose purpose they can’t fathom. Or to go around kissing random babies, spreading who-knows-what infection. Or to stand on soap boxes like demented street preachers and talk about how Britain can do better. Yeah, yeah, right… better leave roadshows to the professionals, I say.

These unwise outings reminded me of the time the Antiques Roadshow came to the big house in the village. The grounds of Cholmondeley Manor were packed with curious onlookers, much as they come to gawp at Ed Miliband and his amazing array of gurning faces, there to see the reactions to dismal valuations. And they weren’t disappointed.

A long-lost Gaugin, insured for millions, turned out to be a worthless scrawl by a poor, nineteen-sixties imitator. A towering confection of gilded filigree, housing a squawking, over-sized and malevolent-looking mechanical canary, a figure of curiosity and cacophony, was chuckled over and valued at “Fifty quid, tops”. And a collection of seaside postcards thought to be by the celebrated Edwardian illustrator, Donald McGill were identified as none of the kind, crudely drawn and rather more offensive than saucy. The day dragged on with valuable treasures being rather thin on the ground.

The roving camera crew trawled the queues and strolling observers to pick up the odd vox pop and occasionally a longer interview. Hoping to serendipitously happen upon TV gold. As the afternoon wore on they came across the lady of the house, accompanied by a servant pushing a trolley on which sat two formidable creatures. In an affront to the art of the taxidermist a pair of what were once pedigree hounds sat, stiffly, to attention. When asked about them, Lady Chalfont-St-Farquhar barked, “Pair of the best dashed springers I ever had! Mad as hatstands, of course, but we loved ‘em more than the children; ghastly little things – glad I had ‘em packed orf to boarding school, what!”

Thanks for dinner... I'm stuffed

The interviewer sensed he was on to a winner and pressed on with various questions which were answered with the classic, stiff-upper lip barrage of staccato return fire, as if delivering commands to the servants. Pretending to admire the moth-eaten remains and oblivious to the owner’s pride he ventured to enquire about their possible value: “And what do you think they would have fetched had they still been alive?” Lady Vivian stared at him as if he had farted at dinner. “You insensitive prick!” she bellowed. “What would they have fetched? What do you think? Sticks!”

Simple!

There is no other story to go with for today's blog than the lefty laff-fest that has been #nondomnishambles. What goes around comes around to bite you on the arse; thus found out Ed Balls when he was backed into a corner and had to explain how he now supported a policy move he opposed only back in January. The proposal was, of course, that of ending the non-domicile tax status of up to 120,000 people which between them pay the equivalent, by some estimates, of 10 million low paid workers. As a class-envy soundbite it has traction – soak the rich. But as sound economics the experts are agreed that they can’t agree.

What started out as a bold new policy announcement turned quickly into a shambolic reversal of a previous position, which became, under scrutiny, a plan instead to ‘look into’ changing a situation which Labour in power appeared to welcome, if the doubling of the numbers of non-doms in their time is anything to go by. The measure will either bring huge tax windfalls or it may cost the country money, but either way it will have no effect whatsoever on approximately 99.8% of the population over which Labour wish to exercise ‘leadership’. Are you following?

But all that detail hardly matters because few of us really understand any of the big economic arguments to any great degree of complexity, yet the left forever see conspiracy where none exists, or where it simply doesn’t matter. The very rich will be very rich until we try to rob them blind… at which point they will still be very rich, but just not over here. Keep. It. Simple… Stupid. Instead of imagining convoluted plots to grind poor people into the dirt – to what end, you ought to ask? – all you have to do is accept mankind’s venal, opportunistic, materialistic urges and all becomes crystal clear; people want to keep what they’ve got and really don’t want to give it away without a struggle.

If the non-doms are here it is because we have made it an attractive position for them to be so. Of course if Labour and the Greens and the SNP and Uncle Tom Marx and all get their way, the problems they see embodied in the existence of the rich will disappear along with their money as soon as those parties manage to relegate us from the league of properly civilised countries. But they can’t think like that; just as in Junior Chess, you have to think a few moves ahead to be in with a chance.

But no, unable to follow a coherent train of thought to its eventual terminus and explain the failure of their policies in power, they have to imagine non-existent bogeymen waiting in the shadows to de-rail their carriages. They do the same when talking about people with whom they disagree - making it complicated and assigning all sorts of calculated malevolence to those with differing opinions. And to their followers this ridiculous rhetoric rings true because how else could they be poor and uneducated and unhealthy unless the nasty, grasping, plotting forces of evil were ranged in solidarity against them?

What then, do we sentient free-acting agents think in turn of the lefties and their complicated interpretations of our devious and twisted, world-dominating motives? Well, for one thing, we don’t suppose to know their minds as they believe they know ours, in much the way we don’t really need to know what the cat is thinking. They are there, they’re a bit annoying at times, but when it comes down to it you can only judge them by their actions. They’re just not all that bright, are they? 

Blairey Superstitious...

That Tony Blair has come out for Ed Miliband shows how desperate Labour are for votes at any cost in the coming election because, surely, it is all or nothing for them now. After all the distance Ed has tried to put between himself and the Tory-Lite facsimile of New Labour the party faithful clearly have no faith in the old way that Ed represents. Big gamble, because Blair is as hated by almost as many Labour supporters as he is by the centre-right, whose garb he adopted as a Fabian wolf in the sheep’s clothing of woolly-soft faux conservatism before allowing his chancellor to do his worst.

His worst? To plunge us further into the welfare mire from which the coalition has tried to extract us, one sticky welly at a time. Because Labour is nothing if it isn’t spending other people’s money and then demanding more. A great deal that is wrong with our country can be summed up with a few of JFK’s famous words: “Ask not what your country can do for you…” If people did more for themselves then there would be fewer Marys in the world.

Mary is a hobby alcoholic; it’s an occupation of sorts. To ring the changes she also dabbles in other mood-altering substances when the opportunity arises but times are hard and there is only so much cash to go around. To this end she is grateful for her several children, who give her unchallenged access to the benefit bounty of free money for kids, rent and Council Tax. These, of course, are well-known gateway benefits, leading users to seek ever more exotic handout-highs.

 The children, as is natural when you have no aspiration, rarely attend school regularly and they are in and out of the courts and state care as often as Mary is in and out of rehab and treatment programmes. Between them they cost the country many hundreds of thousands of pounds in failed education initiatives, court costs and frequent unnecessary visits by the emergency services, called in by concerned neighbours because of the violent stand-up rows, which replace normal functional communication.

It’s likely the kids will never work and will inherit many of Mary’s troubles, going on to reproduce for recreation and soaking up ever more healthcare and social services resources. The brood will spread and in a few generations will fill a small sink estate and its attendant state-provided army of people whose miserable job it is to contain their worst excesses and limit the damage they can do to others. Multiply the problems by the number of Marys and it is clear that public spending could be vastly reduced were they simply not there.

It's our country now...

Draconian measures would be needed to expunge the blight though, and any party attempting it is automatically damned as monstrous, but it is clear to most that it can’t continue. If the country isn’t allowed to do for Mary, then Mary must do the right thing and exercise restraint. Fat chance. The rot started long ago but it accelerated wildly under the ‘caring’ and ever watchful evil eyes of Blair’s administration. New Labour solved nothing, they just took your money and concealed the crap under the carpet. The money is still all gone – where do you think Labour will look for more?