The Enemy Within

“War is peace ignorance is strength and freedom is slavery.” Thus grave the prophet Orwell. Since the publishing of 1984 of course we know those words to be only a small part of the fictions spun by those who need to distort the truth to control reality. ‘The cheque is in the post’, ‘This will not affect the pound in your pocket’ and ‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman’ have become as familiar as ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’ It has been said that the bigger the lie the easier it is to sell and few lies come easier than the one that says all who are concerned by immigration are racists.

This was the basis on which the appalling anti-white racist and serial liar Diane Abbott attempted to stir up the hatred of the ironically self-styled ‘anti-fascists’ to violence against protesters at Dover yesterday. Of course the anti-immigration crowd has its fair share of racists, nobody would deny that, but organisations such as EDL, Britain First and their ilk have generally tried to air their grievances without resorting to violence, only being let down by the inability of some of their number to behave like human beings.

Anti Fascism, however, contains a challenge in its very name and rarely fails to provoke extreme behaviour. In no way am I excusing the thugs of the anti-immigrant organisations, but those who feel they have right on their side are far from being innocent bystanders in these proceedings, various anti-anti-organisations being on high alert to respond, flying picket style, at the first hint of citizens exercising their rights to peaceful demonstration. Unite, the union, has a track record, among others, of organising rent-a-mobs to descend on such gatherings where inflammatory rabble rousing is employed to generate righteous hatred. I don’t see how this is any different from the hatred they believe they are shouting down.

Of course the anti-immigration voice has a point. It is one thing opening the doors to skilled European workers when there are shortages which need correcting. And most people see it as a human duty to give refuge to people genuinely fleeing from horrific situations. But the wave of islamic migrants of unknown provenance is neither of these things. Even the sainted Trevor Phillips says muslims are not like us and will never properly integrate: The hope that they will bring any positive contribution to the civilised world is comprehensively debunked, time and again, by the warlike scenes exploding all over Europe in our media daily.

Members of the religion of peace showing 

they pose no threat to our way of life...

But for those of a certain inclination the truth holds no appeal. Uber-Feminists find themselves unable to condemn rape because of the contradictions in their philosophy, opting instead to defend ‘diversity’. Anti-fascists find it impossible not to imitate and often exceed the bigotry and violence they believe they oppose. And abstract political movements everywhere tend to organise cynical opposition to the simple concerns of those who feel helpless in the face of change which directly challenges their way of life. It’s hard not to conclude that the real enemy lies within.

Goody Goody

Welcome to another edition of The World Has Gone Utterly Mad. We often bemoan the rarity of a certain valuable human quality. No, not mercy, we have bags of that stuff; we have mercy coming out of our ears; its quality is not strained at all in comparison with the quality, or quantity of common sense. It is often said that such sense is as common as rocking horse shit. Given that a recent study found that 7% of graduates could not read a fuel gauge properly and 3.4% of them struggled to understand medicine labels it’s hardly surprising. In fact I imagine a good percentage of them don’t really understand the concept of percentages.

Education, education, oh I give up; what’s the point? In a statement neatly capturing the bleeding obvious, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said an undergraduate degree was too expensive and unsuitable for people with poor literacy and numeracy. No shit, Sherlock? Hmm, I wonder who the government could have asked who could have told them that their logic in herding all the sheep into the degree pens was fundamentally flawed. Oh, that’s right, everybody who had nothing to gain by telling the truth.

You don’t ask the wolf to come to dinner, so why would you trust ‘educationalists’ to offer ‘solutions’ for non-problems which would hugely benefit their industry? It’s like asking the opinion of a door-knocking Pikey about whether your drive needs Tarmacking or your roof needs fixing. We are short of builders not because our young are too busy building business empires but because when they deign to get out of bed at all their soft, white, graduate hands are ‘too good’ for simple honest hard graft.

We can’t employ our own young because they are not up to it – at least that is the excuse often trotted out – so we import others to do it instead. All those years in education but what do they have to show for it? Possessing poor social skills, under-developed working skills and, as this report shows, as thick as mince, we have coddled the minds of a whole generation with the connivance of politicians and effectively rendered them unemployable. So what a brilliant idea it is to consider consigning paper rounds and holiday jobs to history as well; cut off the development of that work ethic at every turn.

Equal education = equally unprepared for the world.

This latest interference from Brussels comes as people of my generation stare aghast at the inanities pouring from the open mouths of the establishment gargoyles around David Cameron’s supposed renegotiation of our relationship with the EU. Social engineering might be a good thing if it produced, you know, engineers, but all it ever seems to do is weaken resolve, blur boundaries, create yet more dependency, criminalise more of us for plain speaking and cost ever more opportunities for generating real wealth. Sure, your precious offspring might become human rights lawyers, or gender identity councillors, or race relations advisors... but who is going to pay for all that do goody good bullshit?

Rugger Buggers...

It’s the end of January and the Six Nations is almost upon us. After the debacle that was England’s performance in the Rugby World Cup last year, we will be hoping for a return to form... just so long as new captain Dylan Hartley can refrain from trying to kill anybody. Unlike its poor relation, footie, rugby inspires lifelong allegiances and a camaraderie between rival supporters that most sports would kill to be known for. As we hunker down and wait for France v. Italy to kick off next Saturday I am reminded of two old lifelong friends and staunch fans.

Mike and Joe, in their nineties had been besties ever since they both made the school first fifteen and have been fervent supporters of their local team. When it was diagnosed that Joe was in his last few weeks of life, Mike was determined to visit him every day. And he was true to his promise; every morning Mike would sit and chat as his dear old buddy wasted away before his eyes, his breath shallow, his eyes grey-lidded and sunken, but still with a fierce glimmer as he clung on..

One day Mike said "Joe, we met through rugby and have both loved the great game all our lives. We played rugby on Saturdays together for so many years and we went on some epic tours.” Joe looked up from his bed and smiled, weakly. Mike went on: “The thing is, Joe, if there’s a heaven they must play rugby there, right?” Joe made the thumbs up and grinned. “So, I have a favour to ask. When you get to heaven, somehow you must let me know if there's rugby there."

Joe looked up at Mike from his death bed, cleared his throat and whispered hoarsely "Mike, you've been my best friend all my life. If it's at all possible, if there’s any way, of course I'll let you know." And with those last words, Joe passed from this world. Mike said a quiet farewell to his old friend, called the nurse then with a heavy heart he slowly made his way home. It was going to be an emptier world from now on.

That night, shortly after midnight, Mike was startled awake by thunderclap and a blinding flash of white light which faded into black as quickly as it had manifest. He sat up in bed – moving more suddenly than he had in years - and then from the darkness he heard a voice calling his name: "Mike! Mike!"
"Who is it?" he demanded of the dark, "Who the hell is it?"
"Mike, it's me, Joe."
"It can’t be. Joe just died."
"I'm telling you, it's me, Joe."
"Joe! Where are you?"
"In heaven," said Joe’s disembodied voice. "I have some good news and some bad news."

In the dark, Mike thought about this for a moment before saying "Tell me the good news first," says Mike.
"The good news," replied Joe, "is that there IS rugby in heaven.”

“I knew it!” said Mike.

“Even better yet,” said Joe, “all of our old friends are here, too. we're all young again, it's always spring time and it never rains or snows. And, best of all, we can play rugby all we want, and we never get tired!"

"That's fantastic," said Mike. "It's beyond my wildest dreams! Thank you, old friend for letting me know.” He paused for a moment to ponder the news then remembered: “So, Joe, it sounds wonderful, but it can’t be all roses; what’s the bad news?”
Joe’s voice came again from the dark: "You're in the team for this Saturday."

All Bunched Up

Emboldened by the accidental election of an unreconstructed cold war social justice warrior to keep the leader’s seat warm until somebody suited to the twenty-first century can be found, Labour’s left have been doing their level best to bring Her Majesty’s Opposition thoroughly into disrepute. Jeremy Corbyn is a one-man parody of communism; quite why he needs ‘Ronnell’ McDonnell to drive home the point is not fully understood. Anyway, they got what they voted for and now it’s all the Tories can do to keep from laughing their socks off at every PMQs. Yesterday was a case in point.

Things have come to a pretty pass when the best the left can do is howl in protest at the use of a perfectly reasonable collective noun. A bunch of tourists, a bunch of schoolkids, a bunch of journalists, a bunch of MPs, even; all are fine. But refer to a bunch of migrants – even if they are very much bunched together – and you get howled down by a bellend of back-benchers. It can only be a matter of time before the representatives of Fyffes descend on parliament en-masse and demand protected status for the term and its application to bananas. Bunchgate, they called it, inevitably.

The war on words gets ever more desperate and its warriors get ever more pathetic as they search for meaning where none exists; or else they fall into traps set by those who know how to push their buttons. By most measures the traditional average Labour supporter is a knee-jerk man, quick to anger and unrepentant. But New Labour changed much of that as slick Willy’s sidekick Tony ‘Blur’ adopted the spin and finessing traditionally associated with oily PR types and began weaving an enchantment of ignorance over the land. His work, it appears, is done.

Unite Against Fascism – ironically the unthinking stormtrooper thugs, the Schutzstaffel  of the offence whore brigade – even organised an impromptu ‘emergency protest’ outside Downing Street. Presumably they intended to protest at the correct use of English because it oppresses those not born to the mother tongue? It would be no less fabricated than their other crusades against perfectly normal, well-adjusted people expressing their views. What a bunch of morons; or is it a clutch of cunts? It’s hard to know what’s acceptable any more.

While it is obviously hilarious, seeing the faux fury whipped up by the impotent, right-on morons of the politically correct, professional offence-takers, it is a sad indictment of our infantile opposition that, in the absence of anything resembling coherent policy, they stoop so low that the targets on their oh-so-hurt butts are almost irresistible. When their trigger threshold is set so sensitively it’s hard to know what will be next. Ban youth ‘clubs’ because it might encourage child abuse? None of this semantic bullshit offers any hope for solutions; typical leftism, to tinker with the terminology while ignoring the threat.

Corbyn names his new bunch of front-benchers...

In a sane world this latest cartoon version of Labour would be laughed out of court but it appears there are still plenty of infantile perpetual-student activists willing to explore the zanier regions of identity politics and other such distractions, presumably because they have yet to earn their living by working in identifiably worthwhile professions. I don’t need to imagine an Orwellian dystopia of totalitarian misrule; I can see it crystallised in every attempt by the Corbynites to do anything but engage in grown-up politics. What a bunch of losers.

Growing Pains

Are you a proud parent? Were you there for all their rites of passage, supporting, lending a hand, lending an ear, lending a shoulder to cry on and occasionally daring to dish out advice? Do you want the best for your kids? Did you encourage their dreams? Did you tell them they could do whatever they put their mind to and that if they work hard they will succeed in realising their ambitions? You did good then... well done you.

If you’ve done your job right you have bright, eager, young, energetic offspring straining at the leash to embark on whatever comes next. College, university, apprenticeship, or straight into the workplace – secure in the knowledge that the world is now their oyster. You look forward to sharing all their future successes; seeing them try and stumble, get up and have another go and eventually hurdling all their obstacles and having the best life they possibly could.

But imagine if you now had to tell your child that the fun is already over; the career she chooses when she leaves school is all there is. That’s it; the way it is now will be how it remains until retirement. Steady, yes, but not exciting. Progress, yes, but only according to a pre-set plan. And if the industry they choose should go into decline they can look forward to little more than a life on redundancy pay followed by state benefits. Would anybody now go into coal, steel or Betamax development?

The choice she makes today will have to hold good for a lifetime. Where’s the incentive to try harder? Where is the excitement at changing careers, pursuing a vocation, trying something new? Getting stuck in a rut from which you can’t escape is the province of the old and worn out, the hopeless and uninspired. The same old groundhog day until it’s all over; it’s the fate we all hope to escape. Welcome to Britain’s prospects in the Europe Union.

We already know exactly what it is like being in the EU. Since 1973 not a year has gone by without us bemoaning our lot, sitting here in our rut. Butter mountains, wine lakes, distorted markets, French farmers, straight bananas, metric martyrs, etc, etc, etc... The same old shit, day after day after day with no prospect of fulfilling the persistent call for a wholesale realignment of our relationship with it. Sitting on the ‘top table’ of the EU brings us no influence of any significance; it just means that along with a small number of ‘rich’ countries we get to pay to subsidise the rest. It’s like paying to be a member of an exclusive golf club that is then forced to let the unemployed play free of charge while we’re at work.

Time to cut those apron strings!

Staying in the EU is driving down the road to nowhere, but life on the outside, that is the high road to adventure, untold possibilities, sky-high prospects and no artificial imposition of restrictions designed to dampen competition and aspiration. No gravy train for the yes-men, but everything up for grabs, for all who have the will. The case for leaving is the optimistic voice, while the case for remaining hinges on scaring you into believing that all the EU gives us will be lost. Stay in, though, and you perpetuate the political dynasties of greedy pigs like the Kinnocks, grunting at the trough we continually top up. Britons travelled and worked across Europe and the rest of the globe long before the EU was even conceived; that won’t change. So what, we may have to show a passport? At least it will be a British one. 

Come the referendum vote hope, vote for optimism... vote LEAVE.

The truth is in here...

As ever, Twitter has been alight with left and right arguing the toss over immigration. Depending on your perspective it is variously: a human right, an unmitigated disaster, essential for our survival, pivotal to our overthrow and all stations in between. Whatever the merits, or demerits of net immigration exceeding 300,000 per annum into the UK it surely cannot be denied that it is a strain on every aspect of our nationhood: housing, health education, transport and welfare are negatively impacted beyond our ability to deal with it rationally. And our identity as a nation is threatened as a result. It has been and will continue to be at the heart of our politics, when it really ought to be a near non-issue.

Despite the Blair government’s desire to ‘rub the right’s nose in diversity’ I don’t have enough faith in human cooperation to believe it is part of some sort of global conspiracy. I realise, however, that my often repeating that “I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but...” makes me sound like I do believe... or worse, makes me a ‘conspiracy denier’, denier being the pejorative word of choice to silence common sense.

So what is going on in the civilised world? What about the Frankfurt school, Agenda 21, Common Purpose, Cultural Marxism and New World Government? What about Davos and the Bilderberg Group and the well-known inner circle of bankers who, ‘as everybody knows’, work with the Zionists to keep everybody poor? All these theories about shadowy movements, cliques and cabals have traction with malleable minds, especially those of the young and the disadvantaged and the mentally feeble, as the driving force behind every bad thing in the world.

But think about it for a moment. Oxfam’s annual wealth report is intended to feed the anger at apparent inequality when a simple examination of everybody you, personally, know should tell you that we are far from equal. The very diversity that so many worship as a new faith is directly contrary to the fanciful ideal of equality. It is not in the interests of anybody to keep those they control poor; poor people have a nasty historical habit of actually conspiring to bring down their governments. Where rulers have amassed great wealth at the expense of their citizens it has usually been through simple, crude greed and they have often met with sticky ends.

In sorting the truth from the chaff, I usually look to the mighty razor of Occam to solve the ‘mystery’ and I think the explanation is at once both simpler and more complex than the idea of an elite setting out to control the world. Oh, for sure, I have no doubt that such things have been discussed, but such plots soon unravel. For the current crop of theories to bear examination, literally thousands of world leaders, parliamentarians, influencers, advisors and financiers would have to be ‘in on it’. And I just don’t believe that people greedy enough to want it are capable of the levels of agreement and secrecy that would be required, especially given the huge timescales involved. This whole inequality ‘conspiracy’ goes back generations.

No, our willingness to see connivance everywhere is down to the fundamental flaw of democracy. In the absence of the mythical ‘benign dictator’ representative democracy is the least-worst system yet devised. Its most democratic aspect is the fact that it cannot please the majority who vote for it; to a greater or lesser degree almost all people are tasked by the societies it creates. Those least disadvantaged don’t see what the fuss is all about and the rest insist that this group pays a penalty for that lesser disadvantage by way of tax, thus increasing their level of discontent. It’s the closest thing to equality we are ever likely to get – equality of disenchantment.

We all want fairness, I believe that, but we don’t want to be responsible for it, so we elect governments to impose fairness on our behalf and hand to them the instruments of control. What do we expect? And as each successive generation wants ever more nuanced fairness we get ever more fractured thinking and legislation intended to make us be nicer turns us all into potential thought criminals. Locking down imagined ‘hate speech’ is quickly portrayed as police-statery. Those with wealth try to hang on to it, avoiding tax via the very loopholes designed to encourage wealth creation for the good of all. We end up with the inevitable ‘them and us’ scenario as the demands on welfare grow and those who fund it try to avoid doing so.

It’s not a conspiracy inflicted on the many by the few, but a series of uncoordinated strictures imposed by the disjointed, but well-meaning will of the majority on themselves. Mass self-harm, if you will. Yes, some groups practise deception and exclusion, as any ‘club’ will do, but not in concert with any planet-wide communion of evil. This, of course, is a disappointing conclusion and the more dramatic spectre of global domination by dark forces – as inhabits every branch of superstition and folklore and religion and cultish creed – is a far more attractive story to tell around the camp fire. You want a lightbulb moment? The illuminati are in your head*.

(*Or is that just what they want you to think?)

Welcome to The Jungle

Jeremy Corbyn, in his efforts to show how much he despises Britain, has waded through the mud in Calais in a blatant photogenic festival of poverty. Poor them, he says, it’s not their fault and we must let more in. But what about France? Why are they not processed as refugees there? How have they been allowed to get as far as Calais anyway? And now that they are rioting, on what basis do we select the least violent to offer sanctuary. Of course Corbyn is simply riding on the Davos bandwagon, along with every other misguided ‘plight of the poor’ activist. I blame Oxfam.

Every year now, immediately prior to the meeting in Davos, Oxfam – that barometer of our conscience – publish an alarmist report to try and make you hate rich people. As if envy wasn’t enough, Oxfam feel that publishing meaningless comparisons will enrage the feeble-minded enough to... what? Rise up and overthrow the system that keeps even those on the dole here among the richest people in the world? The Romans knew a thing or two about bread and circuses and Oxfam are falling way short of their revolutionary aspirations by preaching mostly to the converted. 

This year, they say, a mere 62 billionaires own as much wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population. Good for them, I say, but let’s not fly off in a rage over the towering inequality of it all. Until I pay off my mortgage I’m worth less than a peasant in China who owns a hut and a goat. Because, make no mistake, wealth is no intelligent measure of privilege or even opportunity. Yes, yes, yes, it seems so unfair that some have so much and some have so little but I don’t think even the hard left actually despise success, per se; they just haven’t thought it all through; relative wealth, like relative poverty, is meaningless.

In pure monetary terms the total wealth of two billion poorest people on the planet are worth less than 50p. That’s their combined wealth. And it is because Oxfam’s metric determines wealth as ‘net worth’ which is the simple difference between assets and liabilities. So, like me, everybody with a mortgage which is more than they have in other realisable assets is in that world’s poorest group. Charles Dickens couldn’t have put it more clearly when he had Mr Micawber recite his recipe for prudent financial management: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

In the excellent Radio 4 show More or Less, it was calculated that if the wealth of those 62 billionaires was redistributed across the globe we would all be the princely sum of about £170 richer... which would still leave me and possibly you in negative wealth territory. The programme didn’t state the figure for the UK, but 25% of population of Germany have negative wealth; I imagine it is considerably higher in Britain. A Calais jungle migrant who owns a smartphone therefore, is richer than me, probably richer than you and certainly richer than many millions of people in Britain, by the same technique Oxfam uses to stoke your guilt..

But it’s worse than that. If the Calais migrants do get here they will be exploited by their own, or by organised gangs who will force them into debt they may never be able to repay. The western dream is an illusion. As for the demon inequality – the very perceived unfairness that the Corbynites seek to tackle – the irony is that it is being tackled; by capitalism. Poorer countries in Africa and elsewhere are developing at a faster rate than the declining and increasingly unstable west and global inequality is actually falling. Some of that is being driven by the assistance of those very billionaires who are turning their fortunes over to charity. But don’t let the facts get in the way of your oh-so-worthy crusades.

Going Dogging?

Britain has never been a part of Europe. Not really. Oh you can point to the land bridge that existed long before anything resembling civilisation emerged in the region. We have developed separately from the continent that we are only geographically part of for over 8000 years and were most likely concerned with mere survival for much of that time. Relationships with and forays into France were less to do with common heritage than contemporary gain. And even the regular infiltration by trade, bringing with it foreign languages and some customs still does not make us a part of Europe.

Even those of our population – the vast majority - who have never put to sea in trade or conquest nevertheless understand our history and our former dominance to be that of a maritime nation, not a land-locked region of uncertain borders, shifting with every geopolitical fancy that blows along. Island nation, that’s us and the Chunnel is a mere ephemeral undersea connection which could be closed forever at the touch of a pen... or a few explosive charges.

Our childhoods – at least, for those of a certain age – were filled with tales of the strange proclivities of our near, yet so, so far away neighbours. The French never washed, the Germans had square heads, the Italians... well, the least said of the Italians, the better. As for Belgium, apart from Poirrot and Tin-Tin, both as fictional as the notion that we were somehow European, we had little knowledge of the place; how miserably ironic that we should now be ruled from a parliament on its soil?

Now that the EU is struggling for an identity, struggling to find reason and resource to stay together even as its people are finally giving vent to their fears and doubts, it is more than a little ironic that its borders, the erasure of which is one of its central planks, are its weak point. Britain has never been a part of Europe because it has real, not a political perimeter, which in theory at least should be our bulwark against whatever an invader dares to throw at us. Dave Cameron’s latest gambit is to use the word ‘security’ as often as possible. Being an island, security should be the least of our worries, but membership of the EU surrenders that security to a dispassionate administration which cares not for our concerns.

Dogging for Britain

‘But the EU isn’t Europe’ many of the soft-outers still repeat, ‘Love Europe, hate the EU’ they say as if that absolves them from a charge of entirely natural xenophobia. Yet the EU is precisely that; a new country called Europe is what it wants to be, with an army and an anthem and half a billion worker drones. We parted that geographical union 6-8,000 years ago, why didn't we leave it at that? But if you want the clincher, the final closing statement to the argument over whether we leave or remain in the crumbling, failing state of the proto-nation called Europe? When we were joined at the hip, that hip was called ‘Doggerland’. I rest my case.

La vache! L'escargots du jour sont dans les grandes pantalons de ma singe!

Kate Hoey, for whom I have a great deal of time, has launched Labour’s Leave campaign in direct opposition to her party’s general desire to stay in the wretched club. Ironic, really as it was a Labour government that took power in 1974 on a promise to reverse what many regard as Ted Heath’s treachery in signing us up and thereafter held Britain’s first ever referendum. Sadly, the ‘out’ lobby was poorly organised and even more poorly funded and corrupt outfits like the CBI and various vested interests had no intention of hopping off the gravy train after just one stop. Project fear is rumbling away to this day and even though the ‘outers’ have had 40 years to mount their case, the fear factor is never far away.

Fear of what, though? As humans, fear is very much built into our survival mechanisms; it’s the default reaction for most of us to change and many people live their lives in unadventurous mediocrity, never daring to experience anything they haven’t been gently introduced to. Flying, heights, spiders... meeting strangers; all events which could potentially prove hazardous, the last one even fatal if you are somebody like Alexander Litvinenko... or you’re meeting Attila the Hun. So it was with some degree of trepidation that a young couple prepared to entertain in Paris for the very first time. He had a job in a French bank while she was studying to become an interpreter and was very keen that their French guests should feel suitably catered for.

For some reason she was suddenly fixated by snails, of all things; what could be more French than snails? So she asked her husband, who she had been somewhat tetchy with all during the preparation, to go out and find some. He was glad to be out of the apartment but a tad miffed at being sent on this errand like some naughty schoolboy. Anyway, off he went to find the ingredients for Escargots à la Bourguignonne. On the street it proved rather less straightforward then he had expected, the staff in the corner Carrefour express being the standard jejune Eurofare perpetual teenagers and disinterested in his quest. He began exploring the local épiceries and boucheries with no joy until a kindly soul directed him to the poissonnerie at the end of a long boulevard. Thirsty work, this snail-hunting.

Eventually, clasping a bag of live snails he emerged victorious, just as the sun was setting over the Seine. In the distance the majestic silhouette of La Tour Eiffel dominated the landscape, black against the deep red of the sky. He checked his watch and decided a small aperitif would be an entirely appropriate and timely reward for his endeavours and so he sought out a local café, took a seat with a view and cradled a pastis while the last of the sun’s gold dipped beneath the skyline. The thing about a sneaky Ricard anisette though, is it is hard to drink just the one; and so it was that a couple of hours passed before he realised the time. He reached for his phone but realised he’d left it at home. Merde!

Gathering up his bag of snails, by now some of them were warmed up and trying to climb out of the carrier, he staggered back to the apartment. The lifts were out, again, and he had to take the three flights of stairs before he found himself finally in front of the door. He fumbled for his keys, juggling to switch the snail bag to his other hand and being half-pissed, guilty for being late and not a little bit preoccupied with multi-tasking he managed to simultaneously clatter the key in the lock and drop the bag. Oh, bollocks... on his knees, trying to gather up the snails he suddenly became aware of the apartment door opening and his furious wife glaring at him, arms folded in contempt.

Beyond her in the dining room he could see the dinner guests already seated at the table. Think, think, think... he looked up at her, grinned, said hi, waved to the guests, then he bent down closer to the snails which were all in motion and said in, an exaggerated stage whisper, “Come on fellas, nearly there!”

Door to door

It can be a tricky business, moving house. Sure you’ve had several viewings and you’re convinced your conveyancing solicitor is genuinely acting in your best interests, despite him passing on all the actual work – searches and all that bollocks – to the office junior. You’ve visited at various times of the day, as a sort of house-stalker, to see what the traffic is like, whether that street is a car park for the local school run and if vagrants or worse – young people - hang out on the corner. And obviously you’ve Google-Earthed it to death. But you never know if you’ll get on with the neighbours until you’ve actually moved in.

Lovely though they are, it turns out that the people next door run an impromptu women-only mosque and three times a week there is a mob of chattering bin-liners camped outside your back door, having a fag between prayers. And the house opposite turns out to be some sort of Albanian brothel-cum-people-trafficking hub. If only there was a reliable way of telling you about the inhabitants behind those closed doors without the tedious business of, you know, actually having to meet them and talk to them.

Well wonder no more because G4S subcontractor Jomast, which lets out homes to asylum seekers in Middlesbrough has the answer! They have helpfully bought a job lot of red paint and applied it to all their front doors, thus conveniently signalling the location of a large proportion of the region’s most unwanted residents. Red for refugee, see? Of course, the refugees themselves aren’t too keen on the idea, saying it sets them up as targets, but I imagine the local branch of what’s left of the National Front are delighted to be spared the need to hunt them down. Simple, cost-effective and devastatingly direct – why not roll out the scheme to the whole housing market?

Militant feminist could have fuchsia-coloured doors to match their cheeks when they are in their regular apoplectic rage that men still exist in the twenty-first century. Lefties in general could adopt a gentle shade of rose pink to show their allegiance to soft communism and righties could proudly display a solid Thatcherite blue front door atop an immaculately polished step. Ukippers would have, obviously, a Union Flag motif and could indicate their level of fruitcakery by whether or not it is the right way round. Green for the Greens, Lilac for the Libdems, Salmon for the SNP and Indigo for the independents.

The good news is that there are plenty of colours to go around: Amber for Anglicans, Cornflower for Catholics, Plum for Presbyterians, Amethyst for Atheists, etc. You could even go international with Fern for the French, Bronze for the Belgians, Ivory for the Italians and a lovely shade of Grey for the Germans... to match their classic uniforms; Mrs Merkel would be pleased I’m sure. Criminal tendencies could be signalled as well: Coral for Convicts, Puce for Paedophiles, Russet for Rapists and Violet for plain old Villains. What’s not to like? This could really catch on.

Who lives in a house like this..?

Rather than wear your heart on your sleeve you would be able to broadcast your allegiances by painting your preferences on your portal. The saturation of the colour could demonstrate the depth of your dedication and subtle borders and sigils could indicate the complexity of your world view. A deep Crimson, for instance, could brighten up the doors of Jeremy Corbyn’s inner circle, while a pale Straw colour might indicate those who can no longer vote Labour so hold their nose and go for the LibDems. Me? White. Simple, classic, elegant and passively, traditionally racist; that’ll do nicely.

This is for my support group...

The next chapter in the story of all-must-have-prizes features Hollywoodland, Spike Lee and a frankly pitiful strop at the paucity of Oscar nominations and the total lack of awards for ‘actors of colour’. Part of the problem is we have no idea what to even call performers with a darker complexion any more, still less whether or not we would be thought patronising to praise them or give them awards. Can’t they just be, you know, actors, without the former-slave chips on their shoulders? Anyway, don’t our dusky cousins have plenty of their own whites-not-welcome events, awards and self-pity groups?

The apparent slight is compounded of course by the fact that one of the sisters is in charge. You may have thought that if it was such a big deal Academy President, Cheryl Bone Idle might have fought their corner, although she did put out a statement:

"While we celebrate their extraordinary achievements, I am both heartbroken and frustrated about the lack of inclusion. This is a difficult but important conversation, and it’s time for big changes.”

‘Inclusion’ of course and always only applies to BME luvvies. You whites, you get all the best roles. God, for instance (Oh wait, Morgan Freeman.) Time for big changes, you say? Maybe a big change could be to stop making pictures with a blacks-only theme and white-racially-exclusive storylines? Just a thought. Cheryl continued...

"The Academy is taking dramatic steps to alter the makeup of our membership. In the coming days and weeks we will conduct a review of our membership recruitment in order to bring about much-needed diversity in our 2016 class and beyond ... we have implemented changes to diversify our membership in the last four years. But the change is not coming as fast as we would like. We need to do more, and better and more quickly."

Why? Why diversity – which, by the way never includes whites in any field? Diverse always means visibly different. Hey, maybe people don’t necessarily want to watch visibly different, preferring to favour ‘familiar’, ‘comfortable’ and even just, you know ‘great actors’ and plots which don’t have a convoluted social message to convey? Just, you know, a thought...

“We recognize the very real concerns of our community, and I so appreciate all of you who have reached out to me in our effort to move forward together."

Why can’t ‘moving forward’ mean ‘suck it up and get better at it’? Now, of course, Hollywood is rending its collective garments and weeping and gnashing its teeth and wondering how to bend over backward to reward mediocrity without it being too obvious. A special black Oscar section, along the lines of Best Supporting Actor (or, as we all know it, ‘also-ran’) maybe? Why do supposedly proud black heritage actors want the sympathy and pity of inferior, pasty, white folk anyway?

A famous black actor speaks out

When Halle Berry got her statuette and made that awful speech I can’t be the only person who suddenly looked at her differently and thought, “She’s black? I hadn’t really noticed.”

Any black person who henceforth receives an Oscar will be regarded as having got it through affirmative action and the imposition of quotas. The Oscars were already as questionable, merit-wise, as the New Year Honours List but now... The default position for all those second-raters who convince themselves that they are discriminated against is to take away the ball. So, thanks Spike, Jada Pinkett-Smith et al, for demanding a consolation prize and turning the Oscars into America’s Got Talent.

Who's in charge here?

A rum old do, yesterday. First we have Call-me-Dave announcing some thinly thought-through and badly launched policy to do with English language lessons for certain muslim wives, the shadowy outcasts from British society, who remain in Pakistan even as their corporeal selves inhabit back-to-back terraces in Bradford. Then we have the unedifying sight of Parliament, hoist by their own petard and backed into a corner whereby they must debate the wholly un-British notion of banning a prominent person for having an opinion.

I say debate but it was more of a virtue-signalling whine-fest by a bunch of the sort of illiberal morons the left would allow to make decisions affecting everybody. Because, of course, the left know best how we should all behave. When I say ‘the left’ I also include a good many Tory MPs because the Tories have truly lost their way as well, desperate to fall into the centre-left vacuum created by Corbyn’s dragging Labour back to the heady days of Ban the Bomb and the hippy-dippy Greenham Common peace camps. What can any of them be thinking? (Can any of them be thinking?)

Firstly Trump. What caused the mother of all Parliaments, in what was formerly proud to be a free country, to waste time discussing the banning from these shores of a United States presidential candidate who directly echoed the views of millions of American and British people? If the leaders of countries must – as the EU clones all do – sing out from a monotone song-sheet a pack of lies few of them can genuinely believe, then we have no leadership at all. Thankfully, despite the whining of the perpetually offended the inevitable conclusion of the ‘debate’ was the only one that made any sense. Had they actually decided to ban Trump we may as well have shut up shop there and then.

But there’s the flaw in ‘direct democracy’. As a twitter dialogue clarified, socially conservative people – the natural order of the traditional British - tend to be independently minded and don't need to rally to social causes of low merit. This is in contrast to the visceral reaction of the social media rent-a-mob who went at it like knives. Half a million people signed that petition to debate banning Trump, so what? Over a million people petitioned the BBC to reinstate Jeremy Clarkson. Neither represents the strong views of the majority of people, they are simply barometers of reaction to events and depend heavily both on entrenched views and how they were spun.

Maybe we should ban petitions and polls altogether on the basis that they are likely to engage ‘the wrong type’ of voter? Radio 4 is currently airing a series looking at the failures of the pre-election pollsters who put Labour ahead and failed to predict the election outcome. It turns out that the polling organisations have belatedly realised that knocking on doors in the daytime was more likely to garner the views of Labour voters. (Nobody on the programme I heard dared to explain why, but we all know the reasons.)

Similarly while nobody with a sense of proportion who values freedom of speech would want to ban somebody like Trump, on comedy value alone, the opponents of freedom readily engage in the sort of rent-a-mob frenzy that fuels movements like Tell Mama and Unite Against Fascism, both of which, along with many others, agitate for aggression against ‘the silent majority’.

New petition - Teach Trump English?

Of course, it’s not only the majority who have no voice. Part of Cameron’s thinking depends on the notion that if those closeted muslim wives were to speak-a-de-English more good they would be able to engage in the community and help to counter the threat of radicalisation. (If only they could talk, eh?) Like the pollsters this flies in the face of reality and only serves to bolster the opinions of those who believe our leaders are spineless when it comes to the real threats to our way of life. Trump has no plans to behead, burn, rape or eradicate our traditional culture, whereas islam has expressed every one of those desires and has taken steps to carry them out. Who is the real threat here? It seems to me that it is those ‘leaders’ who refuse to lead but are happy to be led.

The New Fact-Free Politics

I’ve never unequivocally supported unregulated ‘free market capitalism’. That can only end one way, probably with corporate militias as envisioned in the worst of the 1970s and 80s apocalyptic vision movies such as Rollerball. But full socialism offers no better; a life of dreary mediocrity for all but party officials. Len McClusky was on Radio 4 yesterday, talking about how Corbyn offers hope to end ‘the austerity which is crippling this country’. Really? Not giving away any more free stuff than we can afford is crippling? When, under socialism, your productivity declines and there is simply not enough to go around, who do you decide to save?

The left in Britain has never had a coherent alternative to the actually very successful soft socialism the Conservative Party reside over. The continuing sitcom that is Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour continued over the weekend with both Emily Thornberry and Jezzer himself appearing all over the media to ‘explain’ Labour’s defence review. The message seemed to be, “It’s a review – we don’t know what the outcome will be” but one thing (almost) decided, by Emily & Jezz, if not by the party was no to nukes. What about the submarines, asked the meeja? We could have the bombers without Trident... or Trident without being equipped with nuclear warheads. Well, I suppose we already have aircraft carriers without aircraft, so why not?

What next? Guns without bullets? Troops without guns? A flag without a nationality? Continuing the anti-austerity, save the planet, do no harm agenda we could re-open the mines but not burn coal, build more nuclear power stations but never run them. Saving yet more money, how about having a comprehensive national transport policy but build no roads, or railways? Why not hospitals without doctors, schools without teachers? (Actually, that’s quite a good idea – keep that in.) When you are in opposition you can be creative; it’s easy to have policy without purpose if you’re never going to be in a position to enable it. Labour; a political party but with no intention of ever again being elected – the unilateral disarmament of the workers’ party.

The Labour Party prefers wife-beating to nukes.

So, capitalism gives us stuff but only lets you have it if you earn it. There is no such thing as ‘equality’ in capitalism; it’s winner takes all. On the other hand, Corbynism produces nothing but shares it out equitably. There has to be another way, a third way if you will. Whoops, wasn’t that Tony Blair’s big thing? But seriously the supposed third way is what we’ve practiced in Britain for a very long time. ‘From each’ and ‘to each’... up to a point. And austerity is simply the latest name given to the necessary balancing of the books. Corbyn is against that balance, but it’s okay – if we can have Trident without the nukes, I’m sure he can rustle up an economic policy without the money.

Euro-File

The fake ‘deal’ is doing the rounds in pre-PR as various apparatchiks signal they may be prepared to accept David Cameron’s sub-optimal, unilateral ‘demands’ on Britain’s place in Europe. They are sounding out the reaction to them pretending to yield to Call-me-Dave’s irresistible negotiating skills; expect a blanket, if low-level coverage of the biggest non-event since Barry Manilow came out. This is merely the preamble to the final flourish when in February, Dave the Conjurer performs his trick and appears to pull a rabbit from the Euro-hat. A mangy, under-nourished, moulting rabbit with myxomatosis... and missing a lucky foot.

Meanwhile the plunge in the value of Chinese stocks market affecting western share values, together with a strong pound affecting exports plays right into the Europhiles’ wet-dream scenario  – ‘look how vulnerable we are’ goes the narrative ‘to jump ship now would be disastrous’. Don’t believe a thing, nothing has changed. And nothing will change; the EU is hell-bent on completing its mission even if it has to sacrifice all of its European values and traditions, if not actual human populations to do it. It will be an interesting race to see which comes first – Federal Europe, or Euro Caliphate – and I wouldn’t fancy calling the odds.

Don’t believe for a second, however, that voting to remain in the EU means maintaining any kind of status quo. The grip that Brussels has on us right now is already unacceptable; ever closer union means tighter bondage and anathema to lovers of freedom. If we do vote to remain we will assent to the acceleration of that process and we will be assimilated into the mire, directly subject to the hive-mind of the Eurocrats. Kicking and screaming will be irrelevant; we will relinquish home rule in a way that will simply not give us an option to leave again. Only bloody revolution would in future allow us to disengage from the matrix.

Representative democracy in the EU is a sham as all our barely-elected ‘representatives’ (do YOU know who your MEP is?) vote like sheep, like automatons, for whatever the unelected heads of the EU institutions put before them. They are unthinking rubber stamping machines for law after edict after regulation which further restricts the freedoms of individuals. The people the elected bods should be representing, we, are of course, beyond the pale. The lumpen proletariat of whom Marx was so fond; these are not your Islington intelligentsia but the horrible, clamouring needy, greedy masses, the sort of people any person seeking office would cross the road to avoid outside of election time. The great unwashed are the sort of people who need instructing in how to behave.

Those waving banners saying ‘immigrants welcome’ are nothing to worry about – the brainwashing has run deep in them; they will be no trouble. It’s the rest of us, the sensible majority who need fixing. Already the behaviour of ordinary citizens has moved away from allowing discretion and self-control and toward a system of statutes which decree what is acceptable; every ‘ism’ now has a criminal charge all ready to be deployed. You can say what you like about poor, white, straight folk, but woe betide those same who dare express fear or dislike. Policing by consent is steadily moving towards policing by force.

The sheep would have to vote against the dogs for Brexit to happen. But what if we did get a majority for common sense and self-determination? How long afterwards would EU lawyers decide the majority wasn’t large enough? Or the turnout insufficient? From past referendum performances it is entirely uncertain a Leave vote would be honoured and it is likely, with EU propaganda already arriving on people’s doorsteps, that the result would be overturned. Or the ballot re-cast. Ever closer union is what awaits us when we vote to remain. Unfettered, unchallenged. It would not surprise me in the least if the future involved the chipping and tracking of all individuals with summary trial and execution of sanctions without appeal becoming the norm.

The only way is out...

Organised opposition may not even be possible in future. Every minute aspect of your lives will be a matter of record – all public places surveilled from all angles, face recognition advanced to near 100% accuracy, voice recognition, iris scanning, automatic fingerprint scanning, number plate recognition. You won’t be able to take a shit without the NHS being instantly informed of your over-consumption of pies, by the internet of things working as spies in your home – spies that you have paid to take up residence. If you think that government rarely works for the people already, the EU future is not optimistic.  Don’t bother watching Big Brother. Big Brother is already watching you.

Splendour in the Grass (make love, not war)

And now Indonesia. The unstoppable rise of the religion of a thousand tiny pieces continues unabated while populations rail against their ineffectual leaders. Armed forces depleted, the young indoctrinated against their parents values, the media appearing to conspire by down-playing certain events and the police not daring to reveal the ethnicity of their meagre haul of suspects, it’s little wonder that many are gloomily – or gleefully – predicting a Third World War. Once again Germany is the host in a deadly international tournament, with events taking place at various high-profile venues near you, although you may wish to avoid the ringside seats.

But hey, it will soon be spring and everything looks more optimistic as the days draw out and the buds start to open. Everywhere is fecund and young people everywhere take their lithe bodies away to meadows and bosky glades, dripping with heavenly promise. France, of course, is known for le romance, l’amour and ooh-la-la and just a stone’s throw from the foetid morass of ‘The Jungle’ the French countryside is as tempting an arena for a dalliance as any. Just such a place was the backdrop to one of Pierre’s favourite wartime anecdotes

Now an elderly French gentleman, Pierre still chuckles as he recalls the day’s events, back when he was a young boy. Walking along a country lane, the smell of blossom in his nostrils and new, green grass tickling his ankles, the buzz of crickets and the trills of many skylarks were suddenly intruded upon by the sounds of heavy breathing and low moans. He stopped and listened; he had heard such sounds from his parent’s room in the night and curiosity getting the better of him, he hit the ground and crawled slowly through the bottom of the hedgerow. On the other side a young couple were making love in farmer Gaston’s wild flower meadow.

Pierre watched, transfixed, as the pair abandoned their modesty and most of their clothes, gasping and panting and getting down to business. He watched as the dance played out and the young man rolled on top. Suddenly, the woman went still and stiff. Sacre bleu! Thought Pierre, She is dead! He panicked, crawled back through the bushes and ran all the way to the village where he hammered on the door of the local police station. Fat Jacques, the gendarme eventually answered the door, brushing baguette crumbs from his tunic and smelling of garlic and saucisson sec. He ruffled Pierre’s hair and asked what was wrong.

As Pierre told his tale the policeman laughed and said “Oh, mon petit Pierre, one day you weel know all about ze young love ...ze spring time, ze air, ze flowers. c'est magnifique!” But Pierre was not to be deterred. He carried on to the end of his tale “But ze woman... Monsieur, she is dead!” Jacques stopped laughing. “Mon dieu!” he cried “Get ze docteur!” and pulling on his tunic he gave instructions for Pierre and the doctor to meet them at Gaston’s meadow. Then he sped off down the lane to see for himself.

Looking cautiously over the field gate he could see, in the middle distance, a man’s buttocks moving rhythmically in the lurid sunlight. The woman beneath him was still as a corpse. Moving stealthily and breathing shallow despite the fire in his lungs – a small town copper gets little exercise – Gendarme Jacques slowly crept up until he was on the opposite side of the hedge, close to Pierre’s original vantage point. "Mais... Sacre bleu!! Eet is true. Ze woman, she is dead!" his thoughts screamed to be given voice. Suddenly he became aware of footsteps behind him as Pierre and the doctor arrived, both badly out of breath.

Truncheon raised, Jacque burst through the gate, grabbed the naked young man and pulled him off his immobile partner. The doctor rushed over to examine her. The young man was desperately trying to get into his trousers as Jacques struggled to find his handcuffs. Young Pierre watched then shouted to Jacques and pointed into the field. “Look!” The woman was on her feet, clutching her dress to hide her body, as the doctor packed up his medical bag and strode towards the group by the gate. “Well?” asked Jacques.

Doggy fashion?

The doctor laughed "Come come Jacques, surely you are not so old to remember ze young love, ze spring time ze air ze flowers?” Jacques was not amused. “I saw what I saw. Zere was ze couple, just as young Pierre said, naked in ze field and ‘aving sex. But ze young woman, she was motionless. She was dead!” Young Pierre was trembling, looking at the woman as if he was witnessing an apparition. The doctor clapped an arm on the shoulders of Jacque and Pierre and ushered them from the field as the young couple gathered up what was left of their dignity. “Ah, mes amis, do not worry.” Said the doctor, “Ze woman, as you see she is not dead. She is just English."

Multicultural Mayhem

As sure as night follows day, we return to a subject which makes a depressingly regular appearance across all media. The following is a quote from this Breitbart article: "The contradictions in the public doctrine of multiculturalism are now recognised and openly discussed, from Trevor Philips through to David Cameron and (yes) Angela Merkel. It is no longer beyond the pale to believe that it has caused more problems than it has solved.” The true contradiction in that statement is that multiculturalism has never actually solved anything; employing a stock phrase such as ‘caused more problems than it has solved’ suggests that there was a time when multiculturalisation was a necessary undertaking.

Of course, Tony Blair’s government chose to impose it as a solution to a problem of their own warped imagination, which was the ‘problem’ of British identity. Too many people in Britain were British, with British ideas about fair play and while they were ready to do the decent thing they also had too great a sense of proportion; what New Labour wanted for EU Region 625B/32, formerly known as the United Kingdom, was simply going too far. So they chose to import confusion, sow discontent, muddle the social order, interfere with indigenous rights and generally show the population who was boss.

Social and Green policies, a nonsense ‘equalities’ programme, the creation of a whole new arena of ‘hate crime’ and distorting the labour market with a bewildering array of state bribes to stay at home and breed indiscriminately - nobody asked for any of this, or at least not to the extent they were ushered in. Such things are decided at a level beyond the influence of you and me; under the new socialism the will of the majority became at all times (except maybe elections) second to the will of any minority with the voice to yell out their grievance, or with deluded cheerleaders who would do it on their behalf.

We don’t live in a true democracy, thank goodness. The will of the people can be a capricious thing and a doubtful means of mass decision-making, so we supposedly have a representative democracy whereby elected officials (they are not supposed to be our rulers, merely our agents) administer the affairs of state for the benefit of all. But this can only works if those elected are truly representative and held to account for their actions, not allowed free reign to alter society beyond recognition or reason. Do have a read of this essay ‘Unmaking England’ which tackles the myth of the ‘mongrel nation’ trope used by New Labour and its willing dupes to prolong the suffering.

It also covers Robin Cook’s chicken tikka masala con trick, “the British are not a race” echoed later by Jack Straw with “the English as a race are not worth saving” and the constant drip-drip-drip attack on Little Englishness and the promotion, always, of diversity as superior to uniformity and order.

Perhaps the biggest lie is the pensions scam – “we need immigrants to pay for your pension” – recently, disastrously spouted by Angela Merkel as an excuse to multiculture Germany into civil war. The reality, given that the majority of immigrants are unskilled, working for minimum wage or lower, is that it is British pensioners who will have to work longer to shoulder the burden of tax credits and other benefits for the new wave of imported underclass.

The wave of violence sweeping Europe as a direct result of unchecked immigration was inevitable. It couldn’t have been unforeseen because ordinary people have been telling their governments for years. But ideas have a nasty habit of sticking, even in the face of contrary evidence. Soon the term will be discredited altogether but for now they will continue to call it multiculturalism because it sounds less alarming than selling your daughters into sex slavery...

Doctor, doctor!

The doctors have been on strike. How dare they, people ask? How very dare they? But in the greater scheme of things, doctors don’t become doctors to earn vast wealth, they do it because they are ridiculously fond of the human race, or intensively curious about their insides – something like that. Yes, there is potential for some doctors to become filthy rich in the private sector after expensive training at the expense of the public purse, but I don’t believe this is the motivation of all but a very venal few. There are plenty of other routes to riches for those with the mental wherewithal to withstand medical training.

So, if you have even a shred of faith in the human race, you’d have to conclude that they have a legitimate reason to engage in withdrawing their labour. I don’t pretend to know much about medicine, but I do know that if you offer a human something for ‘free’ there’s a fair chance they’ll perk up: welfare, entertainment... healthcare. The National Health Service creaks at its seams because too many people expect too much without taking any responsibility. It’s always up to the government to pour in more money, isn’t it? And as the government hasn’t any money of its own it has to take it from those of us too busy to go to the doctor.

So it strikes me we can kill two birds with one stone here, three in fact... hell, we can crack shitloads. They say work sets you free and it really could. Fuck the EU, sod the environment (it will take care of itself) and pay no heed to the howls of the progressives. Leave the Deutsche Eurocratic Projekt, seal off the borders and let’s go self-sufficient for a while. Stop bowing to the deity of globalisation and start to consider not what citizens of the world need from their home country, but what we all need from each other, right here in the UK.

Open up the mines, re-fire the furnaces, get people back on the land and back in industry and flip a big fat bird at all the new-age, iMoney, eCommerce, everyone’s-an-entrepreneur, every kid's-a-coder nonsense. Start making stuff again, kickstart construction; get people grafting for a living. We'd regain a measure of independence and solve many of the problems of full employment and energy security and we would have to address our own skills gap... and we’d once again have something to occupy the laggards rather than just paying them off, writing them off, as we do now.

There should be no dole when there’s a harvest to be gathered in or black gold to be hauled to the surface. Work hard at school or work hard with your hands; instil a work ethic and make it shameful to claim special treatment for all but those who genuinely need it. Ah but, the mark of a civilised country is how it treats its needy and its minorities, they’ll say. Okay, so let’s reduce their numbers by rolling back on what is considered a ‘need’ as opposed to a lifestyle choice.

This won't hurt a bit...

Oh, it might not be pretty and we’d have to forego strawberries in December and three thousand varieties of breakfast cereal. Our treatment of indolence and sloth would necessarily be forthright and everybody would have to pull their weight, but speaking of weight, obesity may once again become a thing of rare luxury. Fitter, leaner, more active people would become the norm and the threat of striking doctors would recede with every pound of fat shed. What’s not to like? A self-reliant, healthier population and a return to community coherence...

But first, as Shakespeare famously said, we would have to kill all the lawyers. It’s never going back to the way it was, is it? 

Can we be heroes?

I was twenty years old when Keith Moon accidentally overdosed and shuffled off his mortal coil. I was a drummer in a rock and roll band (weren’t we all?) and no matter what anybody thought of Moon’s actual drumming ability compared to, say, John Bonham or Carl Palmer, or James Blades for that matter, he was the drummer we all wanted to be. Because he was pure fucking mental. That was the last time I remember mourning a person I never knew; after the impromptu wake in a North Yorkshire pub which no longer exists we all thought the world would never be the same again. But it was; of course it was.

I am probably the right age for David Bowie to have left a formative stamp on my soul although if he did I have never really noticed it. But listening to the snippets of his tracks played out during Radio 4 PM’s tribute last night I realised that he’d always been there in the background and his body of work is astonishingly diverse.  So I don’t feel any sense of loss; I still have all that music whenever I want it. Besides he did what he wanted to do and he had a life most of us couldn’t even begin to dream of. We all die; what’s to be sad about?

Public outpourings of grief reached their apotheosis in 1997 and the pathetic Dianafication of Britain. Please don’t do that. Nobody else cares about how much you loved Bowie, or how much some other celebrities loved Bowie. We especially don’t need poorly briefed politicians eulogising Iggy Starman and the man who fell from Mars. Julia Hartley-Brewer got stick on Twitter for this advice, but she was right:

Bowie was okay, he was a dude, a thin white dude, even. Okay, he may have been a genius. But who knows what you could be? If you want your arms-length grief to mean anything, celebrate what his achievements might inspire you to do; otherwise there really is no point to life at all. But if you must mourn, then do it just for one day...

I leave you with a poem we should all perhaps commit to memory.

The Indispensable Man

(by Saxon White Kessinger)

Sometime when you're feeling important;

Sometime when your ego 's in bloom;

Sometime when you take it for granted,

You're the best qualified in the room:

Sometime when you feel that your going,

Would leave an unfillable hole,

Just follow these simple instructions,

And see how they humble your soul.  

Take a bucket and fill it with water,

Put your hand in it up to the wrist,

Pull it out and the hole that's remaining,

Is a measure of how much you'll be missed.

You can splash all you wish when you enter,

You may stir up the water galore,

But stop, and you'll find that in no time,

It looks quite the same as before.  

The moral of this quaint example,

Is to do just the best that you can,

Be proud of yourself but remember,

There's no indispensable man.

Poison

I have long suspected that the trope ‘a glass of red wine a night is good for you’ was a product of the vintners’ public relations operation, but it didn’t exactly come as a total surprise to learn that the gubmint's Chief Medical Officer now says there is no safe level of imbibition of a deadly, if socially acceptable, poison. Cue the outrage. What, you have to say, you lied to us all those years? And as you say it you must adopt a posture of indignant incredulity, as if you are entitled by some natural law – human right, if you will – never to be misled.

Millions of mostly muslim immigrants are dangerous, or they aren’t, depending on what agenda you wish to pursue. And the moon is made of cheese, the earth is flat and your chances of winning that roll-over lottery were less than your chances of dating a supermodel, apparently. Actually, all most men need to date a supermodel is to win the lottery, or at the very least their chances of doing so are increased immeasurably. The non-sequitur as argument is rife and probably always has been; a popular Owen Jones question used to be “So, the immigrants take your jobs, or they live on benefits... which is it?” He used to trot this conundrum out as regularly as clockwork, as if it killed the debate and won the day.

Of course the answer is both, either or neither, but any answer is an unhappy one if you are the homeless ex-squaddie watching refugees being housed while your potential wages are too low to afford rent and you can’t access benefits from the system you’ve paid into without an actual address. Is it the immigrants’ fault? Almost certainly not. Does the system appear to be skewed in their favour and against yours? Absolutely. Is this a fair appraisal? It depends. It depends whose over-zealous hands hold the facts and how they choose to air them.

The entire leftist cultural attack on the greater majority of the population relies heavily on impressing a sense of guilt on their otherwise uneventful and fairly blameless existence. You get up in the morning, go out to work, feed your family and bring up your kids to follow in your footsteps and then one day it turns out you are an over-privileged, xenophobic little Englander with hatred in your soul for anybody not like you. You are a far right, racist, sexist, islamophobe because seeing muslims behead non- muslims prompts you to question whether we should be more careful who we allow into the UK.

“All refugees are not terrorists” does not mean that some refugees are not terrorists. And even one terrorist can terrorise, can kill, a lot of innocent people. The nonsense argument that more Americans die at the hands of white, gun-toting Americans is utterly irrelevant to the discussion of the sagacity of importing sworn adversaries with a divine mission to slaughter the infidel. The world over, you are statistically more likely to suffer harm at the hands of people you know than otherwise and often for good – or at least comprehensible - reasons. Why would you deliberately compound your chances of coming to harm by adding a barbarous ideology to the risk cocktail?

Yes, there is hatred and fear and yes there is even an element of ‘hate speech’ but the cultural Marxists have time on their hands, a misguided missile of an agenda and a far larger PR machine to mobilise pop-up protest and suppress dissent by labelling normal as Nazi. Nobody with an ounce of normality could look on Europe’s self-inflicted migrant invasion and not feel trepidation and a sense of anger and helplessness, but calling that reaction xenophobic is to wantonly miss the point for unhelpful political purposes.

Poison... but whose is it?

But there is an answer. Next time you hear a lazy attack on your natural concerns, sticking an unfriendly label on your sensible objections, or shouting you down with spurious statistics, let them have their say. Let them rant and rave and foam and froth and hold their protest placards up aloft. Let them state their case whereby they turn the aggressors into saints and the victims into criminals. And when they’ve exhausted their repertoire of well-rehearsed but ultimately meaningless string of unconnected slogans, calmly look them in the eye and ask, “Or is that just bollocks?”

Pleading the Fifth

Yesterday a lone muslim with a machete sang out 'god is great' in Arabic and the French Police shot him dead. Okay, he had to threaten them first, then continue to advance after he had been issued a warning, but it’s a step in the right direction. It turned out that he had also worn a fake suicide vest; best guess, he was intent on suicide by cop, but hey, any way we can cull them... Chanting allahu akbar (literal translation “Oi, oi, saveloy!”) in a Parisian street might in future carry the death penalty even if weapons aren’t involved.

Elsewhere the mood music is less cheerful with the twice in a week suspension of trading in Chinese stocks sending ripples through the fantastic money markets of the world. Fantastic because these are disconnected, made-up numbers in the ether and it stretches the bounds of credulity to even begin to imagine counting it all. Maybe one day – not now, but one day long after I’m gone – there could come a time when the pooling of Monopoly money in ephemeral, on-paper fortunes is consigned to history and world trade reverts to one-on-one barter via the internet. But for now the chances of us singing from the one song-sheet seem as remote as ever.

And who could write such music, that all the world’s voices could combine in unison? The days of the great composers came, sadly, long before the world-wide-web. But then, would such universal reach dilute or distract those great talents? Giants such as Beethoven created such enduring scores that modern classical music seems one-dimensional in comparison. From whence came their inspiration? From the divine, yes, but that no longer holds humanity in the same way it once did. Beethoven suffered from great enervation after each of his major works, as if a part of his soul had been stripped away and the muse deserted him.

Following his Fourth Symphony, premiered in 1807 he spent several weeks deep in introspection, but being a mercurial soul he would also embark on great bouts of ranting and Heinrich, his faithful manservant, often took the brunt of it. His great Fifth Symphony, begun in 1804 but still incomplete, existed in fragments strewn about his study and his frustrations tormented him. He had the main movements; if only he could now work out how to begin the piece. Heinrich had been a faithful retainer but as 1807 dragged itself into 1808 his master’s moods eventually became too much and early in the new year he tendered his resignation.

Ludwig was horrified: "Heinrich! Whatever will I do without you? You have been my rock while I have floundered in stormy seas. You have been a faithful friend, a most efficient and versatile factotum and more, so much more. Why, I owe my finest works to your inspiration!” Heinrich was not to be deterred. He replied "My master is surely jesting. What, a genius like him who has already written four of the most divine symphonies ever to grace the ear? The great Ludwig Van Beethoven inspired by a tuneless clod like me?” Beethoven looked distraught as Heinrich continued, “That is the funniest thing I ever heard! Ha-ha-ha-haaa! Ha-ha-ha-haaa!"