Thursday 31 March 2016

Steely stuff

UK Steel is screwed. That is the long and the short of it. Like coal before it and shipbuilding, the heavy industry we once had is going the way of the dinosaur. “But what will the workers do?” comes the cry “The government must step in and save the industry!” Their hearts may be in the right place, but who pays for it?

Somebody trying to persuade for Remain was saying the other day that "45% of UK exports go to EU but only around 7% of their exports come to the UK". Maybe so, but that is spread across 27 other countries. It would be physically impossible to trade equally with a population 8 times our size. For instance, if we exported 50% of our production to 5 other countries and they each exported 10% of theirs to us we’d have an overall trade balance yet a massive trade surplus with each of them if we mix and match our ‘facts’ to make our argument, the way socialists do.

Socialism is complicated; take housing... (See how I am changing the subject so as to appear knowledgeable while still nevertheless changing the subject – it’s the dialectic, or something.) I want to buy a house, except I can’t afford a house. But if I demand that the state just gives me one it is only going to upset the bloke next door who has scrimped and saved to buy his. So the state will build me a house (probably a bit bigger and better than the one next door because, you know, standards) charge me a subsidised rent, then pay me that rent back in housing benefit. They’ll have to cover the council tax as well and pay my national insurance, so I get a full pension and obviously cover my general running costs because I’m boracic and I certainly can’t afford it.

The bloke next door is looking at me in a funny way now. He’s envious because he thinks I have more than he has. That’s silly; we have the same, but I don’t pay for what I’ve got as I don’t have a job. That’s not my fault because I don’t have any qualifications, which is because I could never really be arsed at school. Anyway, unlike me, he doesn’t have time to get really annoyed because he is greedy and has a second job to go to. Me, I have plenty of time, which I spend on Twitter, complaining about the government and the fact that those bastards want me to suffer austerity so they can keep the NHS going or something.

So the state taxes low earners to subsidise no earners. And it taxes companies so they need to keep their costs down, so they import cheap workers from poorer countries – who want to come here because the wages my neighbour can’t live on are still much better than theirs. Then they get to live here, pay virtually no tax – even though the government pretends that they do - while receiving tax credits and housing benefit and child benefit and so on – and send money home so that in a few years they can buy a house of their own in their own country; unlike me, here at home.

My neighbour can't afford to retire in England as he has a mortgage to repay, but he's thinking of moving to one of the poor countries made even poorer by the migration of all their workers, where he can buy a cheap house and live off his savings and his UK state pension. People like him take money out of the UK but spend frugally so don’t really do much for those poor countries they move to except to encourage more Brits to move abroad and buy cheap houses, so pushing up the prices which means the workers in those countries still have to migrate to Britain to earn enough to buy a house...  

Anyway, in the socialist utopia all this is normal.  The state should make everybody happy. The way to do this is to spend money. We haven’t got any money and you would think we can’t spend money we don’t have, but you’re not thinking, my friend. We can either earn money – oh no, evil capitalism – or we can do it the kinder way. To build our dream home we just have to borrow money we will never be able to repay but that’s fine because the state can just print more to make what we borrowed worth less, so that eventually repaying it becomes pointless anyway. Other countries have to do the same because we‘re not paying them back, so they have to borrow more and so on. In the end, everybody owes everybody else so much that I think we just write off the debts and shake hands.

Could it be overmanning?

As a socialist I’m a bit hazy on the finer details, but I trust a future Labour government to sort it out and say no to brutal ‘Tory Cuts’. Save the steel and solve the problem, I say. Then do the same with energy, housing, transport, trade, jobs, education, health, defence... On balance, though, maybe not today, maybe not next year but sooner or later UK steel is still screwed.

Wednesday 30 March 2016

Sky-High Futures

Some British teachers, it transpires, are demanding that schools stop promoting 'fundamental British values'. Odd, I thought they’d stopped doing that a good two generations ago. Their reason (the very thought that such morons could be deemed to possess reason!) being that it may encourage children to think other cultures inferior. Inferior, that is, to the culture which established global trade, invented practically everything of any use to mankind, single-handedly civilised the dark continent – for a while at least – and gifted the world a set of core values which are the very basis for civilised behaviour.

Teachers’ union leaders object to ‘How to be a British Citizen’ classes because it is seen as demeaning to other cultures and may inculcate 'cultural supremacy' here, in the land of its birth. They want to teach human rights instead and obviously some ill thought out hotch-potch of multicultural, diversity-based drivel. What they mean is islam, of course. It is the supposedly tiny minority islamic culture they seek not to diminish or offend or treat as, you know, a minority issue. Oh and while we’re on the subject of islam we Brits also abolished slavery... you should try it.

The NUTers also called to increase immigration, being particularly in favour of the muslim refugee methodology, presumably because that would help to more quickly make us the minority. That would rub our nasty right-wing noses in it and relegate ‘British Values’ to the shitty little backwater it deserves to inhabit. To which end we should also welcome the tolerant nation of virtually 100% muslim Turkey to the EU ranks, especially in view of their fantastic contribution to human rights, tolerance and good humour.

We seem to be building a new state in much the same way a ‘nontrepreneur’ starts up a business doomed to fail in order to flog his dead horse. In this brave new world allowances have to be made so that inferior competitors still get prizes – like applauding truly awful poetry set to a monotonous beat as art and pretending its crayon-wielding plagiarists are important social commentators and historical diarists – Rap-Pepys. Or insisting against the facts that equality is somehow a naturally occurring human right while at the same time demanding special recognition for Oscars of Colour.

In that enterprising spirit I have a business idea which is a perfect match for the future of civilisation. I’m going into the suicide vest industry. Money people will surely be queuing round the block to get in at the ground floor, hoping their investment will go sky high. Starting with the kids – get ‘em young, they say – next Christmas Winterval’s must-have toy could be ‘My First Suicide Outfit’. Just think about it – how many products out there are so good, you’ll never need to buy another one?

They blow up so quick...

Okay, I confess, I haven’t run the numbers through the spreadsheet yet and I know that if the initial uptake is good, future sales may not be, but I’m using an inherently flawed socialist business model here where all that matters is that you react to the immediate demand - which seems to be high - without heed to the future market. Yes I realise it may become a dying industry and sales will eventually plummet like gays from tower blocks. It may bomb, but surely I’ll get my rewards in heaven?

Tuesday 29 March 2016

Play up!

It’s like playing a game where only the other side knows the rules; as if the whole stack of Community Chest cards is being kept under the table in a game of Monopoly. But hey, when the reckoning comes I reckon I’m not too bothered by the rules because I’m winning by a mile and the game doesn’t really matter anyway; it’s not real life. There is something peculiar about the game of ‘debating’ on Twitter – Twitterbate - whereby the laws of physics, economics, and simple human decency don’t apply equally to both sides.

For there are but two sides, despite all the pretence at nuance and differentiation. These can roughly be equated to left and right, or if you are playing the game properly and fully engaging in the Cosplay, ‘Heroes for Social Justice’ versus ‘Evil Corrupt Tory Scum’. The left’s chosen monicker – blazoned across their cape - is confused because, nobody really has a firm, fixed idea of what constitutes social justice, except that it is ‘the opposite of everything the Tories believe in’.

By way of explanation I ought to rough out what general population Tories believe (as opposed to governmental Tories who are actually social democrats). They believe in self-reliance, personal pride, a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay, opportunity for all, pulling together, pulling your weight if you can and if you genuinely can’t, having your weight borne equitably by the rest. The idea is to lift everybody up; gratitude isn’t necessarily required, but it is at least expected that you show you deserve the leg up.

The left on the other hand – thinking this is somehow fairer – seem to want to pull everybody down. Or if they don’t believe this they are doing a pretty poor job of demonstrating otherwise. Like the ISIS of the west, they far prefer demolishing Palmyra than accepting its existence because it doesn’t accord with their narrative. Hell, they won’t even re-use the raw materials, crushing the work of millions of man-hours into dust to remove any reminder of former accomplishment. History is after all, like the rules of the game, theirs to command and if they want to knock over the board when they are put in check, well...

In order to win the game the left’s rules allow the complete change of subject, venue, the game itself and the repeated denial of their own losing position. A favourite high-ground gambit is to attempt to bring the opposing players into disrepute – shouting Tory scum, racist, profiteer and all that - but if that doesn’t work, other cheats are available. Starting riots, for instance, hoping to distort the game so the spectators are confused enough to believe them when they say they won after all.

It's just not cricket... is it?

So, as the caped crusaders for love and justice and compassion and their own peculiar version of ‘the truth’ (Thatcher!) set about trashing the joint so that nobody else can play; bursting the ball, pulling on their goalpost jumpers and crying foul, the right calmly picks up the winnings and moves on to fight the next battle. Politics? It’s more like a bunch of squabbling kids.

Monday 28 March 2016

Slamming the ‘lam

Like the bad penny that keeps turning up, Tony Blair has peeped over the parapet to warn us we are in denial about the threat of extreme islam. Gee, thanks Tone, I wonder I anybody has noticed in, say, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Paris, Brussels and just yesterday, Lahore? Naturally enough, LBC had a phone-in about it all and naturally enough the airwaves were filled with pleasant, accent-free, friendly ‘British muslims’ eager to share their knowledge of ‘true’ islam. So that’s lovely, isn’t it?

Too late, mate, far too late. The world is way too busy avoiding exploding muslims to worry much about what kind of muslims they might have been. I mean islam or islamist, the extra three letters do little to soothe; persisting in calling it the religion of peace is like, say, Tony Blair insisting that diversity is an unmitigated good even while ‘rubbing the right’s nose’ in it; that’s something you do with shit, isn’t it? The importation of wacky wahhabism is a diverse step far too far.

But it’s one thing warning about it; now it’s here what are you going to do? And by ‘you’ I mean all those elites in positions of power whose very positions rely far too heavily on not upsetting the people who buy our weapons and sell us oil. Never mind Blair’s belated pronouncement that islamism is incompatible with civilisation, when I start to see a severing of relationships with regimes which harbour and nurture that incompatibility I may begin to believe that action is being taken.

But of course, few of us expect such decisive action because for it to happen careers are going to have to be sacrificed and future reward foregone. Lords are going to have to fall on swords and the fat, corrupt rich must go on crash diets. Fortunes will have to fail and dynasties need to be deposed. The whole sorry elitist edifice will have to crumble and fall and some very public cleansing of consciences will be needed.

We are a rich country and some are very rich indeed. And some of the most obscene riches have come about because of deals done with desert dust devils. Well, I’m willing for Britain to become a poorer country if it means we also become significantly safer. Sucking up to salafi isn’t going to cut it. So, back to islam. Sorry fellas but now is not the time to reason why, now’s the time to denounce or die. Because islam isn’t a race and it isn’t a nationality. Choose your side – Britain or islam – only one of them belongs in your passport.

Which type of muslim are you?

And we don’t really care about what kind of wonderful version of islam you believe you continue to believe in, you can keep that to yourself. Banish the burka, ditch the dish-dash and do as the official religion of these islands has done – relegate itself to a minor hotch-potch of traditions, such as are being practised over this Easter weekend. Eat, drink, be merry and stop, just stop, blowing the fuck out of things. 

Sunday 27 March 2016

Whitewash!

One of the funniest things I’ve enjoyed chuckling at in recent years is the ‘insert perceived profession’ of colour jollity pouring forth from the poor, unappreciated ranks of the dusky also-rans. From vigorously demanding reparation – ‘white men’s tax dollars’ – for slavery which they insist colours (pun intended) their life experiences to this day, to being unhappy that there were no black Oscars, they are certainly intent on squeezing the maximum juice from the bitter, bitter lemons of their birth-right.

Because, despite the ludicrous ham-stringing of public employers and now private companies by the imposition of quotas and positive discrimination (or ‘affirmative action’ in the USA) we have barely moved on from the ‘token black’ to the risible attempts of today to make our decision-making bodies look like the Dulux colour charts of the 1980s – every shade of white except for actual white. We even had to lie about the efficacy of diversity – diversity itself now being just a way of saying “Look how many blacks I keep... I mean employ!”

And through it all we take care not to offend. How do I call thee? Let me count the ways: We refer to ‘street’ and ‘urban’ as ways of avoiding the issue, as we are still not sure about using the ‘B’ word and we are confused as to why the more accurately descriptive ‘coloured’ is unacceptable; even the lefty luvvie Dominatrix Cumberbitch got into hot water over that one. To try and persuade you from aversion we refer to post codes as being ‘vibrant’, or if it’s a really rough area, ‘challenging’. It’s a jungle out there...

So the latest ‘Persons of Hue’ outrage is over yet another area in which their talents have gone unrewarded because action has not been affirmative enough. Enter @WritersofColour and the mean-spirited lash-out at whitey in what they call their ‘Turbo Trash’ Award. Turbo is a clear euphemism for ‘white’ here as they invite their ‘diverse’ audience to vote for the writer who has caused them the greatest butt-hurt in post-tragedy reporting. That Maajid Nawaz makes the list alongside Katie Hopkins and Rod Liddle is merely their way of saying that in their opinion Maajid may as well be white - only white people are capable of discriminating by colour.

No idea who dun it, guv!
Bloody white bombers!

Because, of course, it’s all about the colour, isn’t it? The solid belief that when people state their fear of being blown up while going about their daily business it is simply due to racism. That racism informs the backlash against the free importation, without question, of millions of people from a religious ideology which has world subjugation at its heart. To defend yourself from attack – perceived or otherwise – is a hate crime against the attackers because of the colour of their skin. No, darlings, it’s not their skin colour that we have a problem with – it’s all the other stuff.

Look around you. A nice, friendly shopkeeper was just murdered by a supposed ‘fellow’ muslim for being a nice, friendly shopkeeper. Young girls are forced into marriage with old men and ‘legally’ raped. White girls are targeted and trafficked as fuck-toys for ‘persons of colour’ who just happen, exclusively, to be muslims. Gay men are murdered by gravity. Their pigmentation is the very least of our concerns.

Did it ever occur to you that white liberal society bends over so far backwards to ingratiate itself with blacks ... coloured people ... persons of colour that the only reason they don’t win more stuff is that they write or act out their grievances purely for an audience of colour. Maybe – and here’s a thought – they could just write or act better? Or write about non-black concerns? Take a leaf from black track athletes and actually out-compete your white rivals on a - literally - level playing field. (But whatever you do, Whitey, don’t you dare to refer to the natural advantages black athletes bring to many sports!)

Why am I not on the list?

I, for one, am not going to get my knickers in a twist about it all. To me the existence of all these exclusive little black clubs is like the wannabes on Britain’s (not) Got Talent all got together and started their own television channel, where the mediocre can hold ceremonies to award prizes for mundanity to the most talented of the not quite talented enough. Now, if you don’t mind I’m off to enjoy my Easter Egg – white chocolate, of course.

Saturday 26 March 2016

Military might...

Listening to Feedback on Radio 4 on the drive home from work last night I caught a few listeners’ comments about a programme, broadcast earlier in the week, about the reintroduction of the Combined Cadet Force to schools, especially in poorer areas. You would think, given the general malaise around national identity, personal discipline and focus in young lives that a proven way of instilling good old qualities of self-development and team work in a structured, voluntary, extra-curricular programme would be welcomed.

After all, many children grow into young adults with little in the way of ambition or drive and little in the way of contribution to offer society, so channelling their energies and letting them experience being part of a bigger movement ought to be a force for good, right? But no, the comments aired were wholly of the negative variety, based around the horror of children being subject to harsh military training and how that might undo decades of gently instilling a more caring ethos.

That the complainants had never experienced cadet training was evident – harsh military training? Back in the sixties and seventies almost every kid joined some such corps and got a lot out of it. Cubs, Scouts, Boys’ Brigade and various cadet forces did not turn their cohorts into bloodthirsty young savages. Quite the reverse as all these groups had a strong traditional emphasis on personal standards, local community and charity.

If anything, military-based youth training turned out polite, self-confident, resourceful individuals, only a few of whom then went on to join the actual armed forces. In the absence of National Service it was also a less forceful way of maintaining the necessary connection and understanding between the huge civilian population and the relatively small number of predominantly young people who put their lives on the line on their behalf. Once, we were proud of our uniformed volunteers; today many of the population at large view them with unconcealed disdain.

Given the times we find ourselves in, anything which provides a sense of belonging, of being part of something more important than self, of strengthening national identity, is surely to be welcomed. Why should we feel ashamed of being British? Why should we persist in the socialist experiment of dismantling all that was once good about our country and replacing it with... with what, exactly? Because here’s the point: If there is no bigger thing than you, what price nationhood? What do you believe in? What do you vote for? When you talk about British values what, exactly, do you mean? What would you fight to preserve?

You may have spent the formative years of your life online, imagining yourself to be part of the global village but you’re not. No matter what level of your favourite, obsessive, kill-everything-on-the-screen platform you attain you are still just a sad, disconnected kid in a bedroom with no real friends to share things with, no real world scars to discuss. You can share as many extreme YouTube clips as you like, but until you’ve sniffed the air and grazed your knees alongside real-life companions and dare I say it, comrades, you have no experience worthy of the name.

It will only be like this in Hackney. And a few other places...

Military Cadets isn’t military service. Yes, occasionally they may play at soldiers but mostly it’s a bunch of energetic young people learning to work together, to rely on each other and discovering their own strengths, interests and talents. What right-thinking parents could possibly deny their children that? 

Friday 25 March 2016

Currying Favour

One of the advantages of globalisation and multiculturalism and diversity and all of that malarkey is oft quoted to be the cornucopia of comestibles available on any high street at any time of the day or night. That may be so, but perils await the unwary because hidden among the exotic dishes are linguistic traps to snare the bravest gourmand and turn the gastronomically timid into nervous wrecks.

But, every now and then you have to gird your loins, hitch up your trews and venture out into that good night to do battle with the forces of world food. I perused the menus on view in a row of vaguely similar grill outlets, interspersed with betting shops, pound stores and second-hand white goods emporia. They were all much of a muchness, I felt – fried chicken, kebabs, chips, pizzas and the like, but I eventually found one which looked newer and brighter and somehow more optimistic than the rest.

But my first encounter turned out to be alarming as the heavily moustachioed man behind the counter glared at me in what I imagine counts as a greeting in Mediterranean parts and growled. “You wan’ piss or shi’?” he said. I was taken aback and blinked as my mind tried to process the request. He looked at my red face, sighed, then spread his arms to show the display and asked again “You wan’ pissa, or shi’ kebab?” In my relief I ordered the shish kebab, which I later regretted as it took its revenge on my very British bowels. Not going there again, I mentally noted.

The next time I was tempted by the exotic, I decided that Chinese would be safer all round and found myself staring at the fish tank in the Lucky House as I waited for my takeaway order, a safe chicken chow mein. I was somewhat startled, however, to be asked by the diminutive chap at the order desk, “You want cheap, sore arse?” I most certainly did not and was about to voice my resistance to such crude language when I saw he was pointing at the menu board. “It comes with chips, or rice,” he said “which one you want?” I paid and left, mentally ticking off another on my list of establishments it might be unwise to revisit.

It was some time before I decided to try again. Fish and chips, I thought, should prove less problematic. This was until I discovered that the traditional jolly English fish fryer has largely been replaced by a more swarthy fellow with a better eye for business and a fearsome way with the language. I ordered my fish supper and was immediately presented with what I took to be a threat. “You want a fucking knife?” I thought he said. He held up a knife and fork and asked the question again. “Fork an’ knife?” he demanded. I left.

The fast food industry, it appeared was no friend of mine. I decided eventually to stick to something more traditional, British and familiar. So, the following Friday night I headed down to the Taj Mahal for a good old sit-down Ruby Murray. Chicken Madras, pilau rice and a couple of poppadoms. I ordered my little feast and sat down to wait. A few minutes later the manager came to my table. “I am sorry sir,” he said “but we cannot serve you today.” I was surprised and asked the reason. He told me that after my various encounters and non-too amiable exchanges with the local eateries I was on some sort of blacklist.

Oh dear, how sad, never mind...
Should I just 'poppa dem down on de table' Sergeant Major, sir? 

It took some moments for me to process this news. It was outrageous. Me? Barred? Because of what? I wasn’t taking this lying down; I sat instead, firmly in my place and demanded my food. “I am sorry sir,” the manager said again “but the local Chamber of Trade has been involved. Everybody knows and we have decided you are barred.” This affront to my reputation was just too much and I’m afraid I was a little intemperate in my response. “You, sir, are scurrilous!” I stated. The manager looked at me and tutted. He wagged his finger and said “No sir, I think you will find it is you, who is curry-less.”

Thursday 24 March 2016

Apology for apologists

Yesterday’s atrocities, by which I mean the manner in which the Brussels mass-murder-by-muslim was variously discussed, dismissed, excused and used as a means of exerting more politics on beleaguered populations, were entirely predictable. Obviously, the religion of a thousand scattered, tiny, bloody, dead pieces could not possibly be to blame and what of the poor innocent muslims who will be tarred with this particularly black brush as a result? Well, sod them. Sod the lot of them. Not in your name? Well, do something about it.

Alistair Campbell tweeted early on that had twitter been around in the 1930s people would now be hashtagging #stopjews instead of #stopislam. Stopping the Jews from doing what, Alistair? Blowing people up? Beheading them? Setting them on fire? Throwing them off buildings? Raping them? What, in your opinion, did the pre-war Jewish community do that you believe in any way compares to what muslims are now doing every day throughout much of the world? I don’t recall seeing any Jews zealously reciting the Hebrew version of ‘allah’s snackbar’ while drawing a rusty blade across the throat of an orange-clad journalist on YouTube. But, hey, correct me if I’m wrong.

Because if you are trying to say it’s not muslims committing the atrocities, Alistair, what exactly is it you are trying to say? Of course, you weren’t alone in your idiocy; there are always plenty of apologists around to blame it all on white men. Many Twits managed to delude themselves that pictures with words – fancifully now referred to as memes, regardless of the fact that few actually know what a meme is - were the same as facts and a particularly confected example of the genre popped up to claim that of all the terrorist attacks conducted on European soil only a vanishingly small proportion were committed by allah-wallahs.

Let me quote from tweets sent to me:
Most terrorists are disaffected white Europeans.” And “They are mostly separatists and white supremacists actually. The EDL and IRA types...” These ‘facts’ said to be direct from “Europol, who record the crimes.

Hmmm, remember how propaganda works? Keep repeating a lie often enough and it ceases to matter whether or not it is true because few enough people will challenge it for that lack of opposition to be taken as proof. Of course, there are damned lies and statistics. What’s the betting that sending somebody a death threat over social media is incorporated into those statistics – there is, I’m sure, a moral equivalence table. For example: One “I’ll fucking hunt you down and kill you” on Facebook, probably scores the same as 34 actually dead in an airport bombing. Maybe suicide bombings count as negative scores because, you know, #muslimlivesmatter? And violating somebody by challenging their bullshit must be worth at least a mass beheading or two.


As you can clearly see, C proves that 2 + 2 = 5...

Come on, who are you trying to kid? The same agencies whose data you suggest tells us that islamist terror attacks are in the minority are also now telling us to brace ourselves for more deadly islamist attacks of increasing severity and audacity. It’s no longer a case of who you believe, but which of their out-of-context utterances you choose to support your absurd imaginings. The new religion of multiculturalism is murderous. Diversity has brought disaster. It’s long past time for drawing up battle lines and you can’t be on both sides. Are you with us or with islam?

Wednesday 23 March 2016

You Choose

Spoiled for choice. Hobson’s choice. Choice cuts. The choices you make... the modern world is filled with more options than any person has had presented to them ever before in history. The least educated in society nevertheless have access, instant access, to a world of information the most educated didn’t have just two decades ago. You can hook up to advice on every subject you have the ability to name. No matter what other excuses you give yourself, “I didn’t know” is the one that carries the least credence.

You may not choose to be highly intelligent, but you can choose to gain knowledge. You may not choose to be unemployed but you can choose to go looking for work. You choose to be idle, to be fat, to be ignorant. You choose to follow the herd, or not. Except for very few among us, it is up to individuals what they make of what they’ve got. The expression ‘he’s got the whole world in his hand’ has never been truer and yet there is little evidence the world is growing any smarter. But still you get to choose; you may be stupid, but you can choose to keep that to yourself.

You can even choose what to feel, in no small measure. Your instinctive reaction to events, people, ideas and all may be revulsion, but you can choose not to be just timidly revolted and instead adopt a cooler, dispassionate response. And for those who are programmed to respond to the appeasing, progressive voices of our times, even you can look out from your warm blanket of wilful ignorance and at least wonder for a moment why they still want to kill us.

For, make no mistake, choices were made in Brussels. The Belgian bombers chose to follow islam – religion is always a choice – and they chose to hate their host country and all it represents. Did they choose to protest with banners and rallies, the method used by civilised people to make their voices heard? No, they coldly and deliberately and without compassion took away the choices of those they killed. Those who remain are now presented with a choice of how to respond to a threat that quite clearly is not going away.

This is nothing to do with ‘Middle Eastern Foreign Policy’. It has everything to do with a backwards religion and a martial political movement which will stop at nothing to achieve world domination – we’ve been here before. Will our leaders choose to deal wisely with this threat, or will they continue to choose to believe it has nothing to do with islam until the lights go out all over the world? How do you want the west to respond; what choices do we have?

Charles Dickens wrote:  “You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?" "I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.” We are wearing the chains of our own making; by electing governments who have chosen, against all the clear evidence of experience, to adopt the doctrines and dogma of multiculturalism and pursue white-guilt-driven policies of ignoring the hateful choices made by their adored chosen people.

They chose. Choose back...

But we still have our own choices to make; Jean-Paul Sartre said “We are our choices”. You can break free from your conditioning, loosen your chains and refuse to turn the other cheek yet again. Do you want to live in fear, in a society at war with itself and forever afraid of offending anybody – the one we have now? Or do you want a society where the threat from a barbarous invader is in the history books where it belongs? You choose.

Monday 21 March 2016

Righting Wrongs

If you could do it. If it were possible. If the decision was entirely in your hands, surely you would stop the world, consult all the interested parties, get the big brains together and redesign our perverse welfare system from the negatively incentivised dog’s breakfast it is now and into a fit-for-purpose safety net for the truly vulnerable. Nobody – and I mean nobody – with a moral brain can believe it right that tens, that hundreds of thousands are paid to be kept out of useful participation in the society to which we all belong. Nobody can legitimately claim that a something-for-nothing benefits package is a good thing. This is the system Iain Duncan Smith spent well over a decade trying to reform.

Are we grateful? Of course not, but we ought to be. Nobody, in any government for several decades, has tried to grasp that particularly poisonous nettle; few have dared to rein back the state. Instead, many ministers have reluctantly rested their arses on that seat – in a department which changes its name more often than some change underpants – for the shortest time possible, in the vain hope they will be rewarded with a less toxic office in the next reshuffle. IDS did the opposite; after being party leader he stepped down in 2003 (rightly so – he was rubbish as leader) and set up the Centre for Social Justice. He could have chosen an easy life but instead he became an Aunt Sally for all the spitting hatred that comes with any attempt to inject reason into welfare.

Nobody can claim his vision was perfect or his aim always true, but it was undeniably in the right direction. Bomber pilots used to say you can tell when you are over the target because of the flak you take. Of course, the usual suspects were in raptures at his resignation – a knee-jerk reaction to things they don’t want to understand. But in their giddy dance of glee they never stopped to wonder how it might work out. The law of unintended consequences means it’s certain the event they observed with such delight is likely as not to turn out worse as Stephen Crabb will be beholden to the PM as long as his arse is shined by that chair and he will be utterly powerless to resist further cuts.

The screechers think they’ve won yet this temporary delight is just another distraction allowing everybody to continue to ignore the deeper problems at the heart of our rotting culture. In a few decades a system that worked for millennia has been undone; the family as the essentially fundamental unit of society is all but forgotten. In its place we have a system that rewards what were once, quite literally, the misfits. Human rights and the individual pursuit of happiness should not mean that anything goes and society must pay the bus fare. The pursuit of ‘diversity’ has replaced the pursuit of decency.

Of course families are not perfect, but in following the ideology so thoroughly we have nurtured one element of the communist dream and brought about the fractured, helpless, client state. So many now rely on state assistance to maintain a lifestyle they have come to perceive as theirs by right that dismantling that entitlement is seen as a war against the people. Those clamouring for ‘social justice’ scream ‘divide and rule!’ at the ruling class, yet their insistence on diversity has brought about the deepest divisions we have ever seen.

Rainbow Nation, yer, but...

The blurring of the distinctions between morality and human rights has been a lifelong project for some campaigners unable to see the difference themselves. Before the new religion of diversity we had morality in spades; pretty much everybody knew how to behave towards others. Now, enshrined in law we have a bewildering array of ways we can be criminalised for simply pointing out that something is wrong. IDS was doing his bit to right a small part of the cause of some of these wrongs but you wished him gone. You should always be careful what you wish for.

Friday 18 March 2016

Basket Case

Do you remember, back in the sixties, when the cost and contents of the average household’s weekly shopping basket was a regular feature on the evening news? Silly me, of course you don’t, you lithe young things, you. Actually the shopping basket as an illustration of retail prices in the UK dates back to 1947 when a typical haul contained such everyday items as loose tea, lard, wild rabbit, ox liver and mutton. Times have changed and it is interesting to see what would nowadays be deemed the ‘typical’ basket. Aside from the relative prices compared to yesteryear, the comparison reveals so much about the country's living habits and the national basket reflects the cumulative choices of its individuals.

In the nineties and into the early part of this century, there was a frisson of excitement among the unattached about ‘singles nights’ in supermarkets up and down the country, some of them actively encouraging the idea of meeting your new partner and taking her up the aisle, so to speak. Your shopping basket, goes the theory, reveals as much about you as an exhaustive CV of your romantic experiences; what better way to choose a match? And so began the awkward formalisation of a tradition long indulged in by the single males of Britain; stalking an unsuspecting female up and down the rows of symbolic fresh meat...

A ‘friend’ of mine, emboldened by a few pints after work was intemperately patrolling a branch of Morrison’s one Wayhey Wednesday - or was it  Titillating Tuesday? - when I - I mean he - spied a lone shopper with a half-full basket of produce. ‘He’ discreetly followed, for about twenty minutes, careful to remain out of sight. She continued shopping as slowly as possible, coquettishly checking from time to time that she hadn’t lost her tracker to a temptress, toting tortellini and frequently back-tracking so that he, in his confused state, drew the conclusion that she was in fact following him.

Eventually she, certain she was indeed the subject of his curiosity, made her way to the checkout and proceeded to place on the conveyor belt in as come-hither a manner as possible, a litre of low-fat milk, a whole Camembert, half a dozen eggs, cornflakes, coffee, a rather nice Pouilly-Fuissé, some chicken fillets and a small box of Belgian chocolates. My friend sidled up behind her and began to place his own shopping on the belt. As he emptied his basket he looked over her purchases and said, “I’m guessing you are single?”

Nothing says 'I fancy you', like pornographic veg...

She was a little taken aback by this direct approach, but was intrigued as to exactly how her purchases had so easily given away her status. She perused the eight items looking for clues but saw nothing she would have immediately associated exclusively with the lifestyle of a singleton. Curiosity getting the better of her, she said, “Yes, in fact I am. But how on earth did you deduce that?” My drunken friend, lips loosened by the booze, replied “Because you're fat”.

Thursday 17 March 2016

PAT Syndrome

Remember your PIN Number? You know, your ‘personal identification number number’? The redundant ‘number’ is echoed in several other popular nomenclatures such as TSB Savings Bank, ATM Machine and LCD Display. The phenomenon is popularly referred to as RAS Syndrome, which stands for Redundant Acronym Syndrome Syndrome or, more playfully , PNS syndrome ("PIN number syndrome syndrome", or "personal identification number number syndrome syndrome") What larks!

Anyway today I am embarked upon teaching PAT Testing, which some of you may be aware is Portable Appliance Testing, er... testing and a more redundant activity you would be hard pushed to find. Actually, scratch that, the public sector is brim full with entire occupations, whole careers, less useful; at least PAT Testing has at its heart a desire to save lives. And we can thank the good old Health & Safety at Work ct, 1974. The fact that we joined ‘the group which called itself’ The Common Market the year before is mere coincidence ( or is it it).

The principle is very simple – electrical equipment, with a plug on the end of it or not, has to be safe. If it gives you a tingle, shocks the life out of you, or burns down your premises, it’s a wrong ‘un. But how to spot these cuckoos in the nest, these electrical fifth columnists? Here’s the thing, it’s mostly common sense. The clues are all there if you care to look. Bare wires sticking out of things, brass terminals you can get your fingers on, damaged flexes and so forth, plus the smoke billowing from the plugtop are all reliable indicators. But hey, a new kettle might cost a tenner so best use the old one to destruction; just don’t touch it until you’ve unplugged it and you’ll be fine.

As with so many bits of legislation, health and safety suffers from the natural law of unintended consequences. What is a perfectly reasonable practice that anybody can carry out – check it out before you use the thing – has been elevated to something only a bona fide qualified professional can carry out and many companies pay for unscrupulous ticket-holders to turn up every year and stick stickers on top of stickers. Check your appliances at work – if there is a sticker on telling you when the next ‘test’ is due, then it’s already out of date. There is no longer any requirement to state this advice and those stickers themselves are some four years out of date.

See, like so many other areas, the codes of practice are made to seem so complex and updated so regularly that only a trained pro could possibly know what to do and how to do it. In reality, folks, the people sticking on those stickers are little more than label-monkeys. If those labels are still dated, by the way, and are recent, then the ‘testers’ are probably using up old stock and are unaware that the code of practice has changed. Or else the printers are still churning out the old stuff and nobody’s informed them. There’s a lot of that about. The blind, leading the uncertain, informed by the barely competent.

Dispose of old stock responsibly

The world of electrical safety is suffused with a rudimentary grasp of the principles and a general ignorance of the regulations, but those driving vans marked with the logos of supposed monitoring bodies have the air of respectability and competence. This is much like the debate over Europe and the EU. Almost none of ‘the facts’ you are being told about our membership is true just because a professional politician tells you it is. And as for that EU symbol you see all over the place? Only 12 stars? It’s well out of date; you need that testing, mate.

Wednesday 16 March 2016

Bricking it

David Cameron is to sweep away the last vestiges of the old Local Education Authorities as he plans to turn every school into an ‘academy’. Brilliant. Let’s change the name again; after all it works for tired old companies doesn’t it? Doesn’t it? When they swapped GCEs for GCSEs it was better all round because you got the extra C, see? Now if we can have the kids gaining baccalaureates or, better yet, high school diplomas (there’s a slender chance they’ll actually be able to spell that) it will look brilliant on the several hundred identical CVs they will be mailing out to indifferent employees who couldn’t give a shit.

Who wants the output of British schools these days? Yes, they’re diverse; yes they have been culturally ‘enriched’; yes they have all passed ‘History of the Holocaust’ and unwittingly converted to islam on a school trip to a mosque; yes they have a list of ‘achievements’ as long as your arm... But, seriously, have they got a clue? For too many years we have allowed academic theory to get in the way of education, churning out identikit model citizens with cultural awareness, gender sensitivity and a total blindness to arse/elbow differentials.

The left, of course, in the form of the NUT and other usual suspects are claiming that there is no evidence this will improve anything, oblivious to the reality that fifty years of progressive education has hardly proved the theorists fit to fiddle with anything, let alone kids. I choose my words carefully, for piss-poor education is tantamount to child abuse. Spare the rod, they used to say, and spoil the child.

Those employers I mentioned? All they want is work-ready youngsters with solid basic skills and the ability to learn without being coddled. Maybe – if the NUT’s conspiracy about preparation for privatisation holds true – some of those companies could end up running their own academies. Some already do, at graduate level, but imagine what might be achieved if, instead of tinkering around the edges with ephemeral, government-term headline ‘fixes’, companies could inject education with enthusiasm and vitality and – I hardly dare say this – the prospect of real jobs at the end of school?

But of course it won’t work like that because mass education belongs to the statists and the state will simply be unable to prevent itself from interfering. And they’ll start measuring and testing and re-testing and altering; experimenting with real live subjects all over again, the only constant being change. And once again the smart parents will see what is happening and use whatever influence they can bring to bear to keep their own kids from becoming just another brick in the walls of the national house that Jack built.

Another wall to tear down?

So, whatever Cameron proposes, the course of state education seems determined to steer forever towards a dodgy, dumbed-down horizon. Those with private means will turn to genuinely independent, private schools thus bringing about the NUT’s feared privatisation prophecy. Every time a government intervenes in education (anything, for that matter) it seems to only get worse; the three Rs now stand for Reading, Rights and Rioting. Have they learned nothing?

Tuesday 15 March 2016

Give Generously...

Those currently dying out may have been the best of us. They will certainly be the last of the British as we knew them. My parents and their contemporaries survived the last war as children, grew up with rationing, expected to be given nothing and were grateful for the opportunities to get ahead. Grammar schools and further education increased their aspirations and the revolutionary welfare state project promised cradle-to-grave protection. They reared their children and grandchildren through the turmoil of the sixties and seventies, to emerge into the great wealth boom and optimism of the eighties.

They were the first generation of working people to own their own homes en masse and saw their children do likewise. Their grandchildren, however, are less likely to become secure homeowners. Despite the uncertainty of the Cold War they lived through the longest period of peace for many years and paid into a system which has given them a retirement their own parents could only have dreamed of. The closer ties to our European neighbours seemed on the whole positive, except for the meddling, but that appeared to be purely political wrangling and nothing to do with everyday life. They expected to go gentle into that good night and those who already did have been spared.

But those who cling on must be mortified at the scenes that permeate the news channels, day in, day out. They see a wall to wall apocalypse in the form of hundreds of thousands of people ‘not like us’ against whom the supposed unity of the European Union appears helpless and clueless. The televised African famines of the sixties and seventies – Biafra, Ethiopia, Bangladesh... Ethiopia again – were just that; scenes on the television, far from home and not our fault. But this – also not our fault, despite how much the cringing hand-wringing set wish it to be – is spilling over into a west that is powerless to resist.

Now that my lumbago has its own lumbago I’m entering an uncertain twilight of my own which appears to parallel the demise of Europe. It’s going to be a long, drawn out affair for both of us – me and the west – as we limp along. For a while, possibly quite a long while, we’ll get by. There will be enough in the pot to keep us going, but one day the reality will be revealed and the money will run out. I can’t be the only one who doesn’t expect pensions to ever be as comparatively generous and as reliable as at the present. And I can’t be the only one expecting to work way beyond retirement age to make ends meet. I’m a realist.

I just wish Britain would realise the same and stop pretending that it’s all going to be okay, that migrant workers on minimum wage will somehow keep the coffers brimming over against all the evidence and common sense. I keep paying in with less and less confidence I’ll ever get anything back, just as the UK does with the EU. But if I had kids I would be making plans to transfer to them whatever can be kept out of the hands of an ever more profligate state, so that they could make their own way in the world.


Whatever happened in the past, the EU’s budget is out of control and beyond reform. The greatest bequest Britain can give to its children is independence. Give generously, give life, give hope and vote for Brexit.

Sunday 13 March 2016

Stereo

Stereotypes exist for a reason. They allow us easy access to a wide range of reflexive responses, eliminating the need for reasoned analysis:
  • Hear a Scottish voice and expect to be informed in tedious detail exactly what they want us, the English, to pay for.
  • A Liverpool accent alerts us to tune out and avoid listening to the imagined anti-Scouse cultural injustice they are protesting today.
  • At the first guttural syllables of a third-generation, still unintegrated Pakistani ‘community spokesman’ I brace myself for the multiple charges of islamophobia that are surely coming.
  • And when I hear the blunt, dead vowels of a South Yorkshire denizen I cringe in sheer embarrassment at the thought of being a Yorkshireman although, to be fair, only the north and west of that great county is truly god’s own.

If you think those stereotypes lazy, here’s a beauty. The laziest of all stereotypes is the positively bone-idle example of a hooded, tattooed thug, parked on the sofa, smoking skunk and scratching his all-too fertile balls in front of always-on reality TV, living a life free of worry, free of effort and free of all responsibilities. You can actually picture this right now and that's because these people do exist. The people who made them, however, will bend all the laws of the human universe to deny it. But it makes no difference because a stereotype is also a pattern, a mould, into which many of us have been poured and left to set, to conform to type.

Stereotypes act as handy ciphers to aid understanding and prepare our defences – see a crop-haired, androgynous, chunky female on the television and I don’t need to be told I am going to hear about wimmin’s rights and general lefty issues with a touch of anti-Zionist sentiment tossed in for good measure; oh and ‘men’. It alerts me to the need to find another avenue of entertainment and so avoid having to listen to tired and irrational arguments about misogyny, racism and the evils of the very free-speech, capitalist society that gives her the freedom to practice her free-preaching.

One of the truths about a stereotype is an inability in many to rise above the programming. So when I heard about Donald Trump cancelling his Chicago rally because of violent protesters I didn’t need the telly to picture the general dusky hue and temperament and political persuasions of the multi-culti rent-a-mob; it's just the same over here. It’s interesting though, when the islamists make common cause with the lefties to protest against a third party stereotype. This is a dangerous act, for without the Trumps, who will defend the left and their pets when islam  takes over and sharia reigns?


See, Trump may be a chump to many but his targets are legitimate ones. If there is to be common cause for a better future the allies here ought to be the left and right of the west versus the utter wrong of the rest. The events in Ankara yesterday should be yet another warning about the dangers of allowing in the Trojan horses of the stereotypical muslim world. We should be hearing the protest against the avowed invasive intents of islam and all who would harm us and burn down our culture, what's left of it. We should be hearing it from all sides, in both ears. In stereo.

Friday 11 March 2016

Snake in the Grass

The ongoing gore-fest that is the EU referendum circus shows no signs, yet, of hitting the brick wall that surely awaits it. The ‘in’ side is doing its level best to paint the worst of all possible outcomes should we leave and in the process resorting to the same tactics it deployed against Ukip in the general election. Like the serpent in Eden, Project Fear’s slithery messengers rely on repeating the same jaded message and insisting that dissenters are cracked, unhinged, or just plain evil. Go on, vote to sssstay, they sssay.... jussst do it.

A stab in the back here, a Question Time plant there, a ringer on a radio phone-in – chip, chip, chipping away at the credibility of lifelong outers. “What about your pensions?” they suggest, “Will you still be able to afford to travel?” they hint. “No more curry if we leave” they opine. They are trying to snake their way up to your ear’ole and sow the seeds of doubt. A leap in the dark. What if you are wrong? Better the devil you know. The devil, as it is told, often adopts serpentine form, the better to do his evil deeds.

But not everybody is afraid of snakes. There are more vivarium’s in these damp, cold islands than you may realise and a thriving community of herpetologists (which is not what it sounds like) quietly keeps a spectacular variety of Hissing Sids in climate-controlled comfort far from their native lands. Not all of these exotic Hades-worms are strictly legal and rare, venomous escapees occasionally cause upset in the neighbourhood. An epidemic of small pets disappearing is often the first clue.

Many snakes, however, are not poisonous at all and given that they spend most of their time motionless can become a bore after a while. A lot of would-be snake charmers quickly go off their captives and there is a steady and regular exchange of scaly herpeforms which goes under the radar of general commerce. eBay, particularly does a fair bit of trade and it was in answer to an offering on the auction site that a potential buyer expressed an interest.  

A young blonde woman (of course she was a blonde, you know how this works, right?) was seeking a buyer for her pet python, which had outgrown its cramped quarters. She posted a picture of the giant reptile but, of course, a snake is a snake and without a feature in the photograph for scale a three-foot baby looks much like a ten-foot baby-eater. So the potential buyer sent a direct message to the seller to ask for more information. How big is it, he asked?



Her reply was a simple, “It’s massive”. He responded, perplexed, “What do you mean, massive?” She wrote back, “enormous”. The would-be buyer persisted, "Yes but how many feet?" For a few hours there was no reply, so he tried again: “How many feet?” Eventually she replied, “None. Didn’t you see the picture? It’s a sodding snake!”

Thursday 10 March 2016

God Save The Queen!

We mean it, man! Ah, 1977 and the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. Her Majesty’s 25 years on the throne were marked by celebrations the Commonwealth over. The sun may have set on the British Empire, but still alive to remember its glory days were many who had been a part of it and been enriched by it and would swear allegiance to a remarkable woman for the rest of their days. She is now the longest serving monarch of this, the last significant monarchy on Earth. Why on earth would she want to trade that for the obscurity that awaits a forlorn and forgotten corner region of the EU?

Of course the Queen wants out of the wretched union – who wouldn’t? - it is a travesty of all that a system of government should be. The palace – after quite a long delay – has registered a complaint with the Independent Press Standards Organisation but several organs have noted that nobody leapt in to outright deny the Sun’s original claim, which they say they stand by. Even Nick Clegg’s response was a feeble “I’m sure I’d remember” but in the media it’s usually the first headline that sticks and besides - nudge nudge, wink-wink, your Maj – we get it.

The monarchy’s days are numbered. Each ‘British European’ generation seems to hold the Queen and all she stands for in less veneration than the last and the strident anti-monarchists steadily grow bolder. Relatively few people wish to see the eccentric Charles on the throne, besides where’s the point in crowning a geriatric – we’re supposed to cheer ‘Long live the king’ after all. But even if the line were to skip quickly to William, few would have the enthusiasm and deep respect for him that they show for Elizabeth.

What better way to carve your name in history forever than to hold the throne of England and its dominions? And what better swansong with which to bow out than to don the helmet and trident of martial Britannia and lead your people to a new freedom? In the disjointed lyrics to the Sex Pistols hit this verse appears, prophetically if completely coincidentally, to hit the nail on the head:

Don't be told what you want
Don't be told what you need
There's no future, no future 
No future for you...

Move over Napoleon, these waves are ours!

At the high tables, learned fools consult volumes of protocol and diplomacy. Over official entertainment they wave their cutlery and recite texts and edicts and quote precedents. Far from the madding crowd of the living, breathing millions whose vote may well be decided by such slender arguments as ‘it’s what the Queen wants’, politicians decide what the Queen ought to want. And the matter is bound to crop up on Question Time tonight. But whatever the commentators say, in this madding crowd there is a massive popular longing for the Queen to be queen to the end and say no to the EU. We mean it, ma’am. 

Wednesday 9 March 2016

Bog Off!

This looks like it’s going to be just another one of those ‘when I was a kid’ blogs, but it’s important. It’s important because along with Britishness and a love of our island home we lost so much common sense that if we were to gather it all up in one heap we could use it to fix the world. There you go, straight away; fixing, for a start. We used to fix things if they broke. Okay I admit that sometimes we just kept those things in the shed intending to fix them but the thought was there. Now we don’t even put up the pretence.

A source of income, 'when I was a kid', especially below the then legal working age of thirteen, was collecting empty glass bottles. This may come as a shock to today’s throwaway society but back then a deposit was paid on bottles of pop, said deposit recoverable on return. We’d get our penny back on a bottle and the bottles – wait for it, young ‘uns – would be sent back to the bottling plants, washed and refilled! Imagine, using a container more than once! My heart sinks every time I have to empty the bins at work because they are filled with little more than the air contained inside all those bloody plastic bottles you all discard with impunity.

We waste so much, now. Or at least we do at source. Now we pay others to recover the raw materials for us, preferably far from our sight so that our superficial view of the world won’t be sullied by an appreciation of how things actually work. Because we don’t like to dwell on those functions we deem beneath us we unthinkingly waste water, electricity, heat, food and tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of materials that have cost time and money to procure. We even waste people because we decided some time ago that it is cheaper to discard our idle and replace them with new ones, preferably with exotic provenance.

So it’s nice to hear of the EU’s latest venture into recycling with their exciting Buy-One-Get-One-Free offer. I’m a little hazy on the details but I hear it involves our Royal Navy and other scavengers scouring the Aegean coastlines and gathering up the spent refugees, whereupon it returns them to, I presume, some form of refurbishment facility where they will be transformed from undesirable flotsam to some form of useable product and then sent to the thriving slave markets of Europe. Or, indeed, Turkey.


This is an enterprise we should all get behind. I’m sure the offer can’t apply only to the discards of the Hellenic Isles. With a bit of effort we could easily get together a whole shipment and send them back to Turkey for reprocessing – why, there must be a good few container-loads in Calais alone and the mayor did say they were going to put them on a ferry. So come on, true Brits, clean up your neighbourhoods and send the rubbish back for processing.

Tuesday 8 March 2016

Out and Proud?

There can be few things more unedifying than seeing a man of principle hounded out of his job for saying what he believes. Unlike the majority of EU ‘Outers’ such as, admittedly, myself, John Longworth’s belief that Britain will be better off out is not driven merely by a visceral distrust of big state, federalist subjugation but by the very thing the Remainders have long been demanding of the Leave camp - objective analysis.

“Show me the money!” they say. Show the detailed facts and figures that prove the unprovable – that the economy won’t collapse the day after we leave. Show your working, they insist, smug in their complacent acceptance of a regime which for over forty years has remained steadfastly  unsatisfactory for even those who remember the hard years post-war. In fact it is those very people in the main, who dealt with the aftermath of World War II, who wish to return to being an independent nation. After all it is what their parents and grandparents fought for and they know it is right.

Not ‘a return to the nineteen fifties’ and not ‘a leap in the dark’ either, but a return to self-rule and the ability to hold our rulers to account. Younger people, who have never known a Britain outside the clutches of the European Union, only hear what sounds to them like old racists complaining about having to live in a diverse world. They have been brought up bombarded by soft propaganda and have been fed a diet of bullshit from birth. The whole ‘nation of immigrants’ canard is a falsehood that has been proved thus.

The population of Britain has changed more since 1948 than in the six thousand years previously, with a near homogenous genetic make-up* ever since the English Channel formed, cutting off the continent from civilisation. Not for nothing did Cecil Rhodes say that to be born English was to have won the lottery of life. We are - or were - a truly favoured race. Yet now we are in danger of dying out and which is worse, by our own hand.

They say, don’t change a winning formula. But sadly, great intelligence does not automatically go hand in hand with great wisdom and the thinkers and shapers of our modern age, liberal and guilt-ridden, have fallen wholesale for a myth; a meme which reproduces and spreads like smallpox through cloistered, privileged enclaves until it spills over and infects the general population. It seems that immunity to the socially-transmitted disease of diversity is only conferred by maturity and close observation.

They say we gain strength in diversity. So, the social divisions that are threatening to tear us apart forever is strength? Asked for evidence of this strength, as fear of strangers hardens like never before, they babble on aimlessly about ‘diverse cultural backgrounds bringing unique experiences and perceptions to the table’ and ‘diverse knowledge and skills leverage and strengthen teams' productivity’ and ’spending time with culturally diverse co-workers breaks down the subconscious barriers of ethnocentrism and xenophobia’. This sort of nebulous idiocy can be found plastered without thought on company websites the western world over and it is palpable horse shit.


Well then, they say, what about the cuisine? Curry, kebab, pizza, Chinese... fried chicken. You think because we’ve picked up a taste for the exotic that if we shored up our borders the spices would disappear? That takes a whole heap of gullible all by itself. We can have the benefit of the world outside without having to invite the whole world inside. We already did. In the new battle for Britain and in the face of forty years of evidence to the contrary, the onus is not on the optimistic leavers to prove that the future is bright, rather it is on the hapless remainders to show why staying in an abusive relationship is better.


*Professor Bryan Sykes: Blood of the Isles 

Monday 7 March 2016

Cruise Control

They are going to carry out a trial with driverless lorries on British roads. Soon. Ten-truck, computer-controlled convoys will take to the M6 in Cumbria and if the trials work out the job of ‘lorry driver’, as has happened with so many blue collar jobs, will go the way of the wheelwright and the cooper. Once were factories and fields teeming with workers who needed no skills other than the common human ability to copy and carry on. The future appears to teem with technology replacing people and throng with ever more humans without means of making a living.

Oh sure, we’ll all become programmers, controlling the robots, except that even parts of that job is already being done by the machines themselves. Remember the Three-Day Week? Under the last days of Ted Heath’s government the industrial base of Britain was compulsorily reduced to working just three days a week from the start of January and into the first week of March 1974 to conserve fuel. This was brought about by miners working-to-rule and was indicative of the fear in the country one year before the first EU referendum; back then the Common Market offered some hope of being free of the union stranglehold. No wonder Labour swept into government on the gamble of a promise of a vote to leave. And no wonder the unions were all for pulling out.

Times change, and how. But one thing that hasn’t changed was the prospect of men being displaced by machine and what would we do when it happened? Job-sharing was seriously considered, effectively doubling the jobs available and offering a life of leisure supported by a mere three working days a week, but of course, only half a wage would be due. Back then, a labourer could support a family of two or three children on a single man’s pay packet without direct assistance from the state. The power of the unions in negotiating pay deals was demonstrated when in 1974 Labour increased miners’ wages by 35% and then again – another 35% - in 1975. The source of that power was their ability to withdraw labour – no wonder management wanted/wants more machines.

There was once some dignity in manual labour – a hard day’s work for a fair day’s pay. But those days are gone. Now we have broken unions, a glut of the low-skilled, with subsistence reliant on the ‘charity’ of higher-rate taxpayers. Nobody earning less than £30k even pays in tax their own simple share of the burden; the ruinous cost of the state is what it is largely because of the economically sub-optimal. If you won’t countenance population control then you have to consider how long we can go on like this. The national debt will never be repaid in your lifetime – at what point will we just throw in the towel? At what point will those who truly fund the economy ‘go Galt’ and abandon Britain altogether?

The EU has exacerbated the population problem but at least we have the Channel (for now). The French of course, are terrified of a Brexit because then they will be left to pick up the funding gap, so they are threatening to actually load the inhabitants of the Calais ‘jungle’ onto ferries headed for Britain, who will be under no obligation to take them, but will anyway. We seem to be incapable of preventing the rush toward a future where ever increasing numbers of economically functionless people rely on a dwindling pool of net taxpayers; a socialism where everybody gets progressively poorer.

The EU Juggernaut rolls on...

It is hard to imagine that this is the intention of the EU, but it is where their policies and intransigence appear to be leading. By the time the union is abandoned as an insupportable failure, the whole of Europe will have been lost to a ruinous idealism. We must get out before it is too late, while we still have the tiniest chance of wresting back control. Driverless lorries seems an apt metaphor for the unelected leaders taking us down the road to ruin.