Ground Control to Major John

All Brexiteers are racists and narrow-minded bigots, blind to the catastrophe that leaving the European Union will bring. Incapable of listening to reason they will drag the country in concrete boots to the cliff’s edge and hurl it off into the abyss. They will willingly pull up the drawbridge and have no further participation in the world, reducing The United Kingdom to an agrarian, subsistence economy in which electricity and the Internet will be legends of old and the prospect of travel beyond these shores unthinkable.

Medicines will quickly run out and starvation will blight all communities outside the M25. Those inside will survive by cannibalism and soon the rotting corpses will pile up, foul the water supply and herald the return of the black death, cholera, smallpox and perpetual plagues of boils and suppurating sores. We will all die slowly, horribly, grinding our teeth in xenophobic hatred even as we draw our last, wheezy, shallow, asthmatic breaths.

I think that was the gist of John Major’s speech; it’s hard to be precise because his carefully chosen words were so nuanced, so subtle, so... oh, what’s the word? My feeble lexicon fails me. Basically, though, we’re all too thick to understand and even if we could grasp what he says we would be unable to act on it, so wedded are we to the cause of self-harm. He says we need to offer ‘a little more charm, and a lot less cheap rhetoric’. Oh look, said the pot...

But thanks, Big John, for so condescendingly summarising the contempt in which the high and mighty of the establishment hold us. You may not have noticed – you are far too nuanced and subtle – but this is no small part a major contributory reason for voting out. The more we are berated by the likes of John Major, Tony Blair and the miserable worm, Michael Heseltine, the more our conviction that independence is the right way is strengthened.

For those of us over a certain age it is unthinkable that a British former Prime Minister could even think to castigate a desire for freedom; have they no sense of history? If it had been made clear to the public what membership would eventually come to mean we would never have joined, but no, this was kept from us even when we began to suspect it. That’s when the insults began; we were narrow-minded bigots if we thought to voice doubts about the irreparable changes that were happening.

Major's legacy...

Once, a British leader would seek to emphasise how we were of one nation, of one mind and remind us of Britain’s pivotal place in the world. Now they attempt to scupper our future prospects by pouring cold water on our instinct for self-determination and in the process they claim statesmanship, gravitas and superior morals. But nobody is listening; It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. Maybe Major thinks he will be remembered for his principled stance and believed his intervention will save us from ourselves. I have a feeling that when it is over, all he will be remembered for is shagging Edwina Currie.

Perfect

According to Genesis: ‘God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky [and] over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image [and] said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” On the seventh day he rested from all his work.’

Maybe if he hadn’t been such a workshy gadfly, god could have spent a bit more time on his least perfect creation, the one supposedly made in his image. Because, frankly, as a species we’re a bit shit. Or did man not copy down the lord’s words verbatim? Are we, or are we not made in the image of the perfect, omnipotent being? Or is this just yet another example of a boo-boo made by those who actually believe all this; yet more flawed thinking by the ‘prove god doesn’t exist’ cadre?

Maybe a better approach to persuading those who have heard the inner voice to return to Planet Earth is the argument; okay, say he does exist, but look around you. He’s made a right fuck up of all this; why would you want to even believe in him, let alone worship him? And.. what? He’s saying “Kill them all”? Why, that’s perfectly rational. Has he a reason? Oh, I see, just kill the ones who don’t believe in him? And the logic of all this is rational... how?

Most of us live with our imperfections and manage to cope with the disappointments that sentience brings. Every other species seems to manage by simply getting on with their limited scope of activity; eat, sleep, procreate and repeat. Imagine a sheep that didn’t like grass; imagine a seal that didn’t like fish. But humans are never satisfied and our quest for meaning makes us dream up stories to sate our curiosity and where that doesn’t do the trick we take things apart to see how they work... and when we still don’t know, we create more gods so we have somebody to blame.

The god of Twitter must have been facepalming like crazy as one made in lazy-god’s image had an almighty meltdown over the weekend. We all know how Twitter works. Lily Allen especially, knows how Twitter works, but once again she broke it to such an extent that it made the national news. Of course, in the modern era we don’t always have to take things apart to fix them; sometimes they just need a reset. Maybe we should turn Lily Allen off and then back on again. On second thoughts, scrap that last bit.

Bless You!

There’s a daft joke, relying on a homophone, that I trot out from time to time. It goes: “I am happily acquainted with twenty-five letters of the alphabet... I just don’t know why.” Boom-boom. I’m sure with a little re-wording it could be adapted to draw attention to the plight of another letter, because today there is a great chance that a whole generation will grow up being entirely unfamiliar with the complexities of you.

One of the vocal affectations which separates north from south in spoken English is the pronunciation of this tricky letter. In the north it is hard and uncompromising, in the south its sound is often closer to a distorted ‘A’. Try saying bus; do you say U as in cushion [ʊ], or U as cup [ʌ]? This particular north/south divide is thought to date back around three hundred years and like the short or long A in grass, path and bath is an instant identifier of geographic origins.

As a teenager at university I came into contact with people who spoke as I had only previously heard on the television and perceived the soft bigotry of the confident southerner towards the lumbering backward northerner; in telly land, northern accents although by no means rare were nonetheless treated as a comical curiosity and often signalled, shall we say, a somewhat less incisive intellect. How you sounded your vowels, it seemed, might be the key to fitting in.

For New Zealanders this isn’t a problem; I have heard it said they only have the one, but that’s not true. I’ve definitely heard at least two. Mind you their antipodean neighbours do their best to compensate by cramming three or four into the single word ‘no’. And should the dying refrain from the theme song of Melbourne’s most famous show be fed into a sonic analyser I’m confident you’ll discover at least four vowel sounds in ‘friends’. They just don’t care, do they?

But over here it’s a minefield. One day, trying to sound sophisticated I walked [spoke] right into the classic trap; a bird in the hand is worth two in the, er, bʌsh. Everybody stopped talking and turned to look at me. The sky darkened, the room temperature dropped a few degrees and I swear a frost started to creep across the window pane. I thought I was to be banished from the Junior Common Room, except it wasn’t that posh a university.

Now, of course, such words present no problem at all, the uncertainty of how to pronounce words like bʊsh and bʊk are solved by the ubiquitous cop-out of using the anodyne ‘er’ rather than making the effort to get it right. Even on the BBC, former guardians of linguistic precision, I regularly hear discussion of ‘berks’ on ‘A Good Read’ and ‘bershes’ to be trimmed on ‘Gardeners’ Question Time. (I confess, I listen to Radio 4 a lot.) I suggest you all bookmark howjsay and use it whenever you feel the need to ‘go Kiwi’ and resort to a universal, neither-here-nor-there, nondescript, beige grunt instead of making the effort.

And while I’m about it, who made the decision to drop the longer sound of ‘the’ when preceding a vowel? ‘Thee’ apple, ‘the’ boat; it’s not so hard is it? Now, off you go and have a lovely Sunday. Read a book, trim your bush and have a nice cup of tea.

The Old Flame

So, as most of us expected, the dodgy Paul Nuttall easily snatched defeat from the erstwhile jaws of victory in the Stoke by-election and once again, nobody cares what happens in that benighted former industrial region. Nuttall, like so many in politics, has a view of reality – and of himself – which is at odds with what those who have to live with political decisions see. The other explanation is, of course, that as a Scouser he'd do anything to avoid having  job.

This week journalist Ian Dunt, who makes habit of seizing upon the wrong end of the zeitgeist wrote about Brexit in his usual alarmist way. Trotting out the usual guff about how very stupid the majority of voters are he paints a vision of a doomed Britain, post immigration without ever considering the possibility that he may be wrong. Delusions of self-importance and omniscience have a habit of tripping up such seers; you never, for instance, see two economists agreeing with a prognosis yet they’ll claim to have foreseen the apocalypse... after it happens.

Then there is the curious case of Trevor Phillips, who has undergone something of a partial-sighted epiphany of late as he lambasts the race relations industry for its former zeal and cack-handedness. Having spent many years at the forefront of the burgeoning hurt industry, fuelling the fires of malcontent, now that they have roared into lusty life he adopts a haughty told you so attitude. Except, no, Trevor, we told you so. Political correctness has gone mad, he writes. No, it was sectioned long ago, and pretending you weren’t part of what made it crazy is disingenuous to an extent that may itself be a form of insanity.

But none of us are immune to a touch of self-delusion and it doesn’t take a lot to flatter us into seeing a version of ourselves at variance with the evidence. But not me; I have my feet on the ground, which, curiously, reminds me of a conversation I had yesterday. I received a phone call from a gorgeous ex-girlfriend who got in touch, out-of-the-blue, to see if I was still around and to catch up. We lost track of time, chatting about the wild, romantic days we used to enjoy together. I couldn't believe my good fortune when she - a former glamour model - asked if I'd be interested in meeting up and rekindling a bit of that old magic.

Well I was a little taken aback. “I don't know if I could keep pace with you now”, I said,

“I'm a bit older and a bit greyer and my hair is a lot thinner than when you last saw me. Plus these days, I don't really have the energy I used to have.” She just giggled and with a flirty tone said she was sure I would ‘rise to the challenge’. She always had a way of arousing my interest and with that encouragement I have to admit I was up for it.

But I like to think I have a certain robust honesty and more than a little self-doubt. So I went along with the idea, but made sure to prepare her for the encounter. “Just so long as you don't mind a waistline that's a few inches wider than the old days” I said, “not to mention my total lack of muscle tone. “ I continued, half expecting her to put the phone down on me, “Everything is sagging, my teeth are a bit yellow now... and I am developing the jowls of a bulldog. I look like that Churchill on the insurance ads!”

She just laughed that familiar, tinkly laugh and told me to stop being so silly. There was life, she suggested, in the old dog yet. She teased me a little, saying that tubby, grey haired, 'mature' men were cute. I could picture her, twirling a lock of hair around her index finger. And then, in a breathy whisper she purred down the line that you never forget how to ride a bike and she was sure I would still be a great lover. I have to say, I was ready to close the deal. “Anyway,” she giggled, "I've put on a few pounds myself!”

So I told her to sod off.

Saint's Day

The canonisation of Saint Jo Cox appears to be complete. Not content with St Andrew’s Day, St David’s Day and the splendidly screwy St Paddy’s Day a new national day has been declared by people so determined to harvest every scrap of political capital they can wring from the increasingly frayed damp rag that is Brendan Cox’s public grief. They are proposing street parties to celebrate the diversity that she so heartily welcomed. I’ve heard of rubbing the right’s nose in it but isn’t this rather shoving everybody’s schnozz full of bullshit and sticking two fingers up to all who voted the other way?

Wait a minute though; street parties? Celebration? What is there to celebrate? Her side lost and badly so, because she represented much that has gone wrong in the west in recent decades. If anything Jo Cox Day should be adopted, Guy Fawkes-style, as a symbol of all we rejected. If she were alive today she would be vocal in resistance to the notion of making St George’s Day a public holiday in England, a recognition which some have campaigned for years to bring about. Jo Cox was no saint.

In fact, before her unnecessary – although some might say timely – murder (for, let’s not pretend it wasn’t a genuine horror) she was relatively unknown outside the Labour activist circle. Their brand of vibrant, multicultural insanity was part of what we voted to reject and even the national outrage at the event did not sway the ballot no matter how hard it was milked and how much we were publicly denounced for supposedly enabling her killer. Her real significance was minor and this prolonging of the agony is last gasp opportunism for those who refuse to face reality.

Although I, like many others, was not particularly moved by the death of Diana, Princess of Wales the country practically lost its mind when she died. The national and very public outpouring of genuine grief was marked by a profound absence of stoic British dignity and a descent into a maudlin fascination with other people’s private loss. But even after that sea of floral tributes, that public display of hurt, the demand for answers and the profound if short-lived slump in support for the Queen, which Blair and cronies exploited with ill-concealed glee, there is still no formal annual remembrance, even though she had the decency to pop her clogs on a Bank Holiday.

Compare and contrast...

Call me callous, but long after the strident attempts to revive a memory most of us have already filed under ‘who cares’ there is one event which will be a real cause for continued and genuine celebration. Forget calls for Diana Day, Stephen Lawrence Day, Madeleine McCann Day and Doris Day. Instead, if you really want to stir up sentiment, if you really want to rub some people’s noses in it and if you want to annually remind people of the national insanity we narrowly avoided, if you really want an annual celebration in June, then raise a glass to Brexit Day.

Zoo Quest

Marshall McLuhan said, “Control the media. Control the message.” Control the message, judged Tony Blair, control the sheeple. Oh, how easily he and his media team must have groomed the BBC and others to carry out its bidding. And how they must have hated the rise of social media, whereby alternative messages could rise and compete with the party line. But, lest you forget and forgive the party line was and remains among the deeply indoctrinated, thus: ‘Multiculturalism can only be good’. ‘Love thy neighbour above thine own’. ‘The English as a race are not worth saving’. ‘The problem is white men’. ‘Red rosettes good, blue rosettes bad; Tories are evil’. ‘We need immigrants because we are not capable’.

Under the New Labour project the metaphorical Tannoys crackled to life at the appointed hour and the assembled throngs bathed in the sound of their glorious leader. They all cheered because the voice told them that things could only get better and as they got worse they cheered all the louder because the voice told them that only racists couldn’t see the fine new clothes. Fists pumped the air in the party salute as the voice led the party prayer to the sacred NHS and welcome mats were lovingly woven and laid out to welcome in our saviours. Immigrants good, indigenous bad. Replace our own huddled masses, distort our loyalties.

While those who have grown up through the last twenty years are poorly equipped to critically examine the world, enough sound-bites and headlines, scraps of speeches, reportage and memories exist to support a plausible population replacement programme theory. Plenty of retrospective warnings have been examined and - taken at face value - speak of a deliberate plan to punish European cultures for their historical successes. But none of them make sense unless you buy into global conspiracies such as one world government, common purpose and lizard people. And yet...

The message controllers say they stand for Peace and Love and preach against the politics of the common man, the politics of Fear and Hate. But what if what we are hearing and now seeing from Sweden is exactly what it looks like? Because it looks to me like you would be well advised to fear the massive influx of what Pat Condell calls third world muslim men, who genuinely appear to hate us.

Donald Trump was slated by the media worldwide when he made reference to Sweden’s problems and their Prime Minister bent double to play down the issues. ‘Fake News!’ they cried. But whose fake news? If Donald Trump is so stupid, as they insist, that he believes fake news, how come he is also clever enough to use fake, fake news to confound his opponents? Who knows what’s real any more? Well, I’d say the people under attack know what’s real, the indigenous citizens undergoing self-imposed nightly curfews in fear of their lives.

They look pretty wild to me.

And anyway, if islamic African culture is so much better than ours, why risk diluting it with our worthlessness by bringing them here? Surely, you saviours of multiculturalism – which, of course, really means any culture except white European – would be better to put your energies into preserving those precious diversities in their original habitat, rather than risk infecting them with the ‘diseases’ of civilisation. After all, zoos have fallen from grace of late; so disrespectful to be gawping at animals in captivity. If you genuinely care for islamic culture you should be lobbying to return those exotic species to the wild

Yesterday’s People

Diane Abbott and her ilk constantly complain that the prospect of Brexit has increased hate crime. They claim that the vote to leave the unhappy union has ‘given permission’ for people to express formerly suppressed racist, homophobic, islamophobic, sexist and otherwise bigoted views. Every faintly plausible hint of animus, however expressed, has been taken into consideration, used in court in evidence and the verdict has been the ignorance and low intelligence which they insist is the only reason for the referendum outcome. This is a drum that has been banged daily by all those who so vociferously campaigned to stay in chains.

Well the converse is also true. The actions and rhetoric of Gina Miller, Jolyon Maugham QC, Lily Allen, Gary Lineker, AC Grayling, the New Labour Khmer Rouge and now the assembly of placemen in the House of Lords have given permission for Remainers to mount perpetual challenges and use the most pejorative language to describe out-voters whose very existence they hold in contempt. Voltaire would be spinning in his grave as the likes of Alastair Campbell pop up on national television to tell us how very stupid we are, dismiss our concerns out of hand and deny us a voice.

But, if you think about it their hypocrisy their doublethink and their perpetual tantrum is hilarious. I feel as if I’m in the other room with the adults, listening to a spoiled infant loudly chucking its toys out of the cot, trashing its room because of some imagined slight. It’s like watching a dirty protest in action and knowing that this time the inmates are not going to be cleaned up after and disinfected by others. If the Darwin Awards were based on the level of socio-political cognitive dissonance and fantasy on display we’d have plenty of entrants, because they are all flailing away at thin air, committing political seppuku to no purpose; there is no enemy. 

The winners, those of us who voted to take back our country from the uncomfortable alliance of unproductive agendas, are getting on with things just as we got on with the vote. We’re back at work, earning our living, feeding our families and generally trying to be part of the solution to whatever ails us. We had our say, we exercised our democratic rights and despite the constant attacks on our integrity, our motives, our very patriotism, we haven’t turned out in counter protest. Because, until the threats of second and third and fourth referenda, bill amendments, overturning the vote, etc are realised, we know that all of it is just luke-warm air.

Helpful advice for Remoaners...

Of course, we will have an entire generation of malcontents, cutting off their noses to spite their faces, refusing to entertain the notion of personal responsibility for their fates and blaming every last bit of bad news on Brexit, even as that event fades into history. The Remainers will soon take the place of the now dying breed of Thatcher-haters, squandering their own potential in an orgy of finger pointing and blame laying. Let them. They are irrelevant. They are the past and independence is the future. They could do us all a favour and leave the gene pool.

Blame it on the Germans

I’ve often remarked that we had to rely on the German efficiency in language to come up with a one-word summary of Britishness. That word is, of course, schadenfreude, a positive delight in the misery of others. If you think ‘oh no, not me’ imagine your glee should you learn that the odious Philip Green had been declared bankrupt, stripped of his knighthood and had all his yachts sold to prop up the British Home Stores pensions. What English heart could be so dark as not to thrill, just a little, at such a judicious downfall?

When the prospect of a return to good old Imperial Units was raised last week I had a little chuckle at the thought of today’s precious little never-fail generation, barely numerate in decimalised quantities, struggling to add up in two, or three number bases simultaneously. And just think of the fun we could have once more with Johnny Foreigner: Oh yes, monsieur, there are thirteen throckles to the groat and eleven groats to the firkin. And that’ll be Eleventeen pounds, thruppence and six farthings, if you please.

Schadenfreude, that little thrill you get, even as you contemplate economic downturn, cataclysmic climate change and the prospect of going it alone, off the cliff edge, into the unknown... post-Brexit. Because, being bloody-mindedly British – and there are still millions of us left – we don’t shrink from a challenge. You can lose your entire family fortune in a thrice but as long as you can struggle back to your feet there is still all to play for. Bring it on, we say, do your worst, because Britain up against the wall is an underdog you’d do well not to turn your back on.

It’s who we always were, it defines us and despite the years of dilution of that spirit by the dismal failure of forced multiculturalism, it resides in us still. Britons were made to be the plucky winners, triumphing against all odds. Which is exactly where Tony Blair made his ruinous miscalculation last week. The unrelenting pressure to subdue that true Brit grit was relieved when against expectations last year we voted to leave the EU; when we voted to oppose the bien pensant ways of soft-boiled Britain; when we rejected Blair, Mandelson, Campbell, Cameron, Soubry, Clarke, Kinnock, Heseltine, Clegg and every single one of the pro-EU nobles in the House of Lords.

Avoirdupois? Don't mind if I do!

So come on, you fuckers, wind us up some more. Tell us how ignorant and gullible we are. Tell us again how we didn’t know what we voted for. Tell us that our world is lost in the past and show us how the beautiful people who sing your siren song are the only ones worth saving. Do it, because we’ve been spoiling for a scrap for a good many years and a few more patronising speeches from the likes of you might very well persuade us to go beyond just rolling up our sleeves and getting on with keeping the wheels turning. But remember one thing; when the revolution begins, it’s not the peasants they hang from lampposts.

Bide-a-Wee

Just when you think the clamour from beyond the political grave has died down, up pop the zombies once again. As if to demonstrate what a big mistake the British people made... when they elected him, Tony Blair turns up like the baddest of pennies with his honest-I’m-not-saying-we-must-have-a-second-referendum-but routine and effectively insists that we should hold a second referendum.

The logic is interesting: The British people are not sophisticated enough, nor well enough informed, he opines, to have made a rational decision to leave. This, of course, completely ignores over forty years of seeing the corruption of the EU and demanding a vote. But, having stated his claim that we are not competent to judge on a big-picture decision, which is pretty much black-or-white, in-or-out, he now demands that we are presented with a far more complex analysis of the ‘deal’, carefully reconsider our positions and vote again; this time to reverse the previous decision.

It is of course, nothing less than the re-booting of Operation Fear, with a bit of revulsion thrown in for good measure. The old people voted the wrong way, they must be made to see the error of their ways. He must think we are senile. But all things come to pass and imagine, if you will, not so many years in the future, in the Bide-a-Wee rest-home for deranged ex-politicians in Strasbourg the Crazy Gang are reunited, a padded cell each ,with regular play time.

EU summit, 2040

Angela Merkel is a bit of a demon in her wheelchair and loves to charge around the nursing home, taking corners on one wheel, and getting up to maximum speed on the long corridors before pulling wheelies in the canteen. Because the poor woman is one apparatchik short of a politburo, the other residents tolerate her, and some of them joined in the fun and games on Angela’s ‘race days’.One such day, Angela is speeding up one corridor when a door opens and Kooky Ken Clarke steps out with his arm outstretched.

“STOP!” he shouts in a firm voice. “Have you got a license for that thing?'

Mrs M fishes around in her handbag, pulls out a Kit Kat wrapper, and flourishes it in front of his face. Ken scrutinises the proffered paperwork, pronounces it proper and waves her on her way. Angela speeds off down the hallway. As she precariously takes the corner near the TV lounge on one wheel, Martin – wild man – Schultz pops out out in front of her. “Halt!” he yells, “You haff proof of insurance?”

Angela digs into her handbag, pulls out a drinks coaster, and holds it up for him to examine. Sergeant Schulz considers it for a moment before nodding and says “Very goot; carry on, Madam Chancellor.”

As Merkel nears the final corner before the front door and freedom, a door opens and Bonkers Blair leaps into view, his bathrobe open and sporting, despite his advancing years, a passable imitation of an erection. Angela stops, eyes up the appendage on display, sighs and cries, “Oh, goot grief, nein. Not ze breathalyser again!'

The Future is Here

Yesterday, for no particular reason, I recalled the predictions from the 1970s that by now we’d have either run out of oil, or entered a mini ice age or both. When I tweeted these observations I was reminded that ‘scientists’ had also predicted that we would have to share jobs, as there wouldn’t be enough employment to go round and thus would usher in the much-vaunted Age of Leisure. Our biggest problem, they opined, would be filling our days with meaningful fun. As it turns out we work longer hours and as standards of decorum have fallen we have, instead, entered the age of leisure WEAR... so I guess they were half right.

But actually, thinking about it, we spend so much time on our arses, staring at telescreens that by the physical standards of the 1970s we ARE in an age of leisure... just not the type we envisaged. Instead of quaffing chilled Chablis on the banks of the Thames at Henley, or yachting off the Côte d'Azur, etc, we are cramming the hoi-polloi into cattle-class, cut-price, all-in, factory-fun-filled, booze-sodden resort packages. But are we happy? Nowadays ‘we’ consider foreign holidays a virtual human right but somehow it doesn’t satisfy that hole in the soul.

We’ve come a long way since Harold Macmillan said we’d never had it so good. Back in 1957 we’d only recently come off food rationing and such as we could get our hands on was highly seasonal. Now, however, we expect all the world’s food at all seasons, in perfect condition to be always available and most of the time it is. So why is everybody complaining? Well, I did a little research – let’s call it living through six decades – and it turns out that we are, as Rod Liddle put it, selfish, whining monkeys, with our greedy fists forever stuck in the voluntary trap of the fig jar.

And it isn’t just food and foreign holibobs we’re greedy about; we seem to have produced a generation which expects rights ever more biased towards ever more nuanced peculiarities. Give a lefty an inch and he’ll throw a metric fit ... don’t you know inches are a throwback to British Imperialism? So now, if the so-called progressives say that all colours of the spectrum of worth are equal in all ways and they deserve extra help (money, laws, preferential employment rights, deference, etc) to be that way, it is considered hateful and brutish to argue.

So Sadiq Khan calling for increased vigilance against hate crime is just another example of this phenomenon. Not happy with a normal amount of objection to displacement of indigenous culture and replacement with a clearly inferior one, we must now produce ever more manufactured evidence to fit the demands. And the demand for hate crime is enormous, so every effort to improve those figures must be employed.

Fortunately, the devil makes work for idle hands to do and there are none so idle as those engaged in the boom industries of today – endless aimless protest, demanding rights, taking offence -where having too much time on your hands is an actual advantage. Who says we haven’t reached the age of leisure? As for actual productivity, making a living and funding all this big fun - bring on the robots, I say.

Nuttall Job

Paul Nuttall is a bloody fool and he has no excuse. To call people ‘scum of the earth’ – the most Merseyside of all insults (and they know a few) – for calling him out on a lie is not only stupid, it was entirely avoidable. He says he didn’t know that the claim that he had lost a ‘close personal friend’ in the Hillsborough Stadium episode appeared on his personal website; well he should have known. And if he can’t see that his Walter Mitty-like adoption of victim status is risible then he almost certainly won’t see that to even dare to use Hillsborough to virtue signal is electoral hari-kiri. Even his own tribe will hate him now.

If the prophet Nigel Farage (pbuh) represented Shire Ukip and its origins among disaffected Tories, Nuttall is the embodiment of Red Ukip; somewhat coarse, a bit of a knuckle dragger and a lookalike for Eddie Hitler, Adrian Edmondson’s character from the telly series Bottom. Not that looking like a circus reject need deter anybody from running for public office – c.f. Ed Miliband, Michael Gove, Michael Foot, Cyril Smith, Roy Hattersley, Eric Pickles... Diane Abbott – but they also need to bring a modicum of political savvy to the job. I’ve seen none from Nuttall who now risks losing in Stoke; losing to another joke candidate in the form of the odious Gareth Snell.

Meantime another idiot – Michael T Flynn – has performed the clown walk of ignominy after admitting he lied about his discussions with the Russians. Nowhere, it seems, is free of folly in the age of the idiocracy. Maybe ‘twas ever thus – plenty of historical hilarity has emerged from the archives – but with social media and the ever-present citizen journalist and amateur documentary maker out to make names for themselves it is sheer lunacy to even contemplate running unless you’ve lived in bounden chastity all your life... in which case you have little chance of being elected anyway.

My blog is called ‘When I’m King’ because I’d never in a million years put myself forward for election – I’d have to come to power by a quirk of fate and succession, or else via a very bloody coup and I’m not sure I can be arsed. In any case, there’d be no democracy, that’s for sure – have you seen the upset that’s caused this last year? Nope, if I was on the throne, fondling my orb and sceptre, you could all do just what the hell you liked. Just don’t fuck other people over; on penalty of instant judicial vaporisation. My gaff, my rules.

Paul Nuttall contemplates his political ambitions

Unfortunately, however, that happy time will have to wait. For now we are saddled with a system that requires the uninformed, uninterested masses to cast their ballot in favour of the contestant with the biggest voter appeal. Maybe it’s reality television, maybe it’s a genuine dumbing down, but we do seem to get what we deserve – few with any humility or self-awareness would put themselves up for the scrutiny that comes with the office. As J R R Tolkein observed, “the most improper job of any man [is] bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.” Now, there's a sentiment with which I think we can all agree.

Photocopying, Communism and you...

I don’t even know if Xerox make photocopiers any more, I’m sure they do, but once they were synonymous with the process: “Can you Xerox me two copies of this, please?” I can’t recall seeing a Xerox machine in decades; our Xerox is a Minolta. Anyway, I did a load of photocopying this morning and as I did I observed how much like communism it all was. Bear with me...

You see, the system is supposed to work like this: I want photocopies done, I let the office girls know (this isn’t sexism, it’s just that all our clerical staff are female – so shoot us) and they produce the copies. The trouble is though, that I may have varying needs – 6 of that piece, 20 of another, this one double-sided, this one in booklet form, this set stapled, this lot in plastic wallets, colour/no colour, enlarged, shrunk... the permutations are, if not endless, considerable. It can take me longer to explain what I want than to just do it myself.

So, I come in early to hog the communal facilities for myself. Egalitarianism yes, but on a first-come, first served-basis. We all have equal access to the two smart machines, but some manage to make their access more equal than others. (I also know the keycode for full colour copying, but don’t tell anybody about that.) Of course, the machine is out of paper, so I go in search and discover the last box in the store room, load up a pack and stash another pack in my office drawer because I know I need a load doing tomorrow and we may run out. In this I only practice what everybody else does.

You see, the company is the politburo and they make the rules and the rules are that they provide everything we need. But nobody is in express charge of ordering photocopy paper, so it only gets ordered when it runs out. The reason this doesn’t cause mass panic is because everybody notices the shortage, informs the office of the need, but has little faith in the ability to deliver on time, so hoards resources for their own use until such time as normal supplies return.

It’s the same with company logo mugs, which we get through at an alarming rate, dry-wipe markers, board rubbers, pens, staples, paper clips, etc, etc, etc. A secret little barter economy operates in parallel with the official supply routes and everybody is more or less happy. We’ve all learned that to rely on the company to always be there is to be naively in thrall to a system that relies on a level of communication and understanding that is somewhat less than perfect and like all overloaded systems, occasionally fails altogether.

Replicate! Replicate!

So, we play the dutiful employees and sing the company song. We wear the uniform and bear the logo on our chests while all the time playing our own little game of every man for himself. Occasionally we have meetings at which we all faithfully agree to do all the right things and share wat we have, but we then go back to doing everything exactly as before. Not because we don’t care about doing our jobs well, but because we do. To entirely trust other humans to whom we are not related is a folly and to believe otherwise is to entirely misjudge the competence of humanity.

What's Left?

It’s 2017 but the prowling malcontents of the fantastically diverse and disparate bundles of hypocrisy and hatred are still banging on about what happened in 2016. The feminists are teaming up with apologists for the religion of women second, the vegans are as one with the carnivore and wee Owen Jones will go to any lengths to remain as relevant as he ever was. There is no interview from which he is not prepared to stamp out at a moment’s notice over the slenderest imagined slight. These days I can’t think of Owen without picturing him being breast-fed by Polly Toynbee, after one of his little episodes.

What’s got them so wound up? Not a peep when Anjem Choudary’s goons declared death to the West. No great outcry when despots and dictators have been entertained by the British state in all its pomp. Faced with the horrific and public crimes of islamic extremism they even blamed it on climate change, rather than confront the brutal truth. Actual genocides brought about by left-wing ideologues have been excused, so what could have possibly happened for them to now unleash their fury? They don’t like Donald Trump.

Scratch that. They hate Donald Trump. They hate him in a way so vicious an ISIS jihadi would be left queasy. The left say, repeatedly, that the right will deny basic human rights, yet there is no evidence that any such thing has happened under Tory or Republican governments. Yes, in the UK governments have placed restrictions on things such as wildcat strikes and on a handful of troublemakers being able to cripple an entire industry by calling out the workers at the drop of a hat and a dozen votes. But that’s the job of government – to protect its citizens from the harm such selfish actions can cause; it’s hardly a hate crime.

And in order to better provide for those in need, access to easy welfare has been tightened and the excesses of socialism curbed where possible, with the general approval of those who pay for it all. But the confused and uneasy bedfellows of the anti-Trumpers scream and ululate whenever a vaguely right-wing politico even opens his mouth. And when Donald Trump doesn’t enact a total muslim ban, which he perhaps should do, but instead puts Obama’s watch list to use, they go apoplectic. How... DARE he? In their head he is personally barbecuing brown babies and putting their parents to the sword. He is, in their fevered imagination, committing bloody atrocities with the complicity of the ‘literal Nazis’ of the right wing press.

But look at the left hand side of the balance sheet. Whenever Labour get into power – and thankfully, that’s the only form of left we’ll ever see in the big chair this side of the revolution they keep promising – they immediately set out to spend, spend, spend and stir up the hornet’s nest of division. They set taxpayers against everybody else and force misery on every sector of society dependent on the state’s intervention. Schools, healthcare, law and order, all are bent out of shape and rendered unfit for purpose under the stewardship of the left. They can’t stand the idea that they have any culpability but it’s always the right who have to wrest the nation’s consciousness back from the embrace of socialist Soma and get them back out to work again.

Elsewhere left wing, big state administrations have brought disaster, prosecuting policies which have generated poverty and misery for millions. But that is ignored; here in the still relatively free west the left rally their assembly of misanthropes with all their bigotries into a unified hate fest directed at one brash man. They will deny him a platform. They will shout him down. They will disrupt others in order to pursue their agenda. They will encourage violence and civil unrest – all freedoms they enjoy because bigger men, stronger men, proud, patriotic men fought for their right to do so. The sheer hypocrisy of the mob would be staggering, were it not in our faces every day.

In the name of multiculturalism and in the face of its failure they embrace every form of diversity except diversity of thought. And as for the supposed hatred of the right, let people be judged by their actions, not by the fevered imaginations of a bunch of stupid, cosseted children.

Future Europe, Future You

Unless you really are an inward-looking Little Englander you must have noticed the rising panic and hysteria among the ruling classes and their acolytes over the future of the European dream. If you haven’t yet watched Katya Adler's documentary - After Brexit: The Battle for Europe – you really should. Fences are going up and animus is rising and all because the EU cannot do what it needs to do; cannot be what it needs to be, a simple free trade area.

The EU from its inception was intended to be exactly what the peoples of Europe never wanted – a supra-national, unchallengeable, top-down system of governance controlling every aspect of people’s lives. Rewording history, ‘interpreting’ the will of the demos, imposing curbs on freedoms in the guise of freedoms. When Churchill talked of a United States of Europe that is exactly what he had in mind; not the external and remote monarchy that the United States fought to be free of and the EU has become.

People like Martin Schultz pour scorn on the likes of Beppe Grillo and Italy’s Five Star movement, dismissing it all as angry words – sometimes funny, perhaps – but comprising of rhetoric alone. Odd, though, how the left have always survived and won elections by the power of words alone – powerful enough to overcome the evidence of failure that socialism always provides. But as always, for the Schulzes and Verhofstadts and Junckers, the project cannot be compromised; the solution for unease about the EU is always more EU, closer union... big government, in exact contrast to what a clear majority of ordinary working people want.

Who knows what the collapse of the EU might bring in the short term? I’m seeing street parties and spontaneous outbursts of joy. I’m seeing people recover national pride in a good way and taking back control of their daily lives. I’m seeing new/old ways of trading emerge and the prospects of new opportunities enriching individual lives. And most of all I’m seeing hope materialise for many, especially the young who have up to now been told their future has been stolen. It hasn’t, it’s right there ahead of them and now they have a real chance to shape it.

But they might want to get a move on. Lay down the pointless placards, kids and put away the tissues; dry your eyes and get out there. Grab the opportunities and don’t wait for government to do it for you. Here’s a novel idea – pay for it all yourselves, that way you are in hock to nobody. Work hard, play hard and recover a sense of balance and a sense of humour. The people who voted for Brexit wish you no harm; they are rooting for you. Don’t let them down. Go for it, but for heaven’s sake, start right now.

Fortress Europe

Because the establishment will re-form. It might take a while, but no matter how popular, how sensible, a new governing order is at first, it will one day become the establishment and it will one day cease to understand its purpose. Once a government becomes big it becomes detached. It begins to imagine a higher calling and the gravity of international politics will once again pull together the bigger beasts. The EU won’t die but for a generation or so it might stay hidden, licking its wounds. Make the most of it while you can.

Bus Wankers

The inspired insult ‘bus wankers’ was coined and immortalised by the idiotic Jay Cartwright in The Inbetweeners. Since June 24th 2016 the phrase has come up for a revival, in application to the deluded denizens of social media who insist that they were made a promise by a non-existent political party, with no power to deliver on it, in the event that this underdog campaign would win. Yes, THAT bus. Bus wankers bring it up all the time, often without waiting for an invitation.

Their argument (and why focus on one so flimsy?) makes no sense, based as it is on the perceived naivety of those who voted to leave the EU because of that one, unrealistic suggestion. If people were gullible enough to believe that the headline figure that we paid to the EU could miraculously be diverted to the NHS instead, how come they weren’t swayed by the alternative ‘promises’ made by Remain?

I say promises, mostly they were threats; but threats made by the entire establishment, media and privately powerful alike; threats of impending doom and crippling poverty. Surely, if the Leavers were so easily persuadable as to think the stand-alone Brexit Bus slogan was a pledge, the massed ranks of the No Salvation Army, all singing from the same hymn sheet must have seemed like incontrovertible truth; actual concrete fact. They would have to be incredibly stupid to vote out when, if they did, there would be nothing left in the pot for the poor old NHS anyway.

It’s funny though, how all the complaints I hear about that bus is from the remain side, who now demand that the piper be paid. They are fond of stating, in the face of good economic news, that we haven’t left yet, but apparently without even a blush expect the £350million to be handed over weekly, right away. In fact we hand over about £2.3BILLION a week to the NHS as it is. I have yet to hear from a bus wanker who voted to leave, which implies that the ones demanding the money now voted against it last year. Don’t be a bus wanker.

But it’s so hard to know who to have faith in. For instance Jeremy Corbyn came out fighting after the Article 50 vote, which he didn’t fight when given the chance. Denying rumours of his fragile grip on the leadership he declared himself the true defender of social justice and pledged to... well to spend, really, because that is all Labour has had as a policy for the last century. Rob from the rich, create a poor voter base; that’s the plan, but I’m sure he means well.

Meanwhile, the poor continue to live among us, hoping against hope that somebody, somewhere is looking out for them in this cruel world. In desperation Hannah wrote a letter to Jehovah: “Dear God, I'm a Jewish widow of 79 and all I have to live on is my tiny pension. Yesterday my purse went missing, along with the £120 I had put aside for my gas bill and food. This was all the money I had left until next pension day. I have never asked for anything before but you are my last hope. Please can you help me?”

There is a special department within the Post Office for letters addressed to Santa, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, Jimmy Savile, Esther Rantzen... and God. When Jeff the postie opened Hannah’s message he was so touched he organised a whip round and raised £100 from the other postal workers which he sent back with a note to wish her well and keep believing; better times were surely ahead. He signed it ‘J’.

A week later, Jeff recognises the handwriting on another letter addressed to the Almighty. He opens the envelope and reads out to the assembled sorting office: “Dear Jehovah, Shalom. How can I ever thank you enough for what you did for me? Because of your gift of love, I was able to heat my house. By the way, I noticed your kind gift was £20 short. I expect it was those thieving bus wankers at the Post Office.” 

Time to decide

Hooray for Laszlo Toroczkai, the mayor of Ásotthalom in Hungary, who has declared his village a muslim-free zone. Naturally, the usual suspects are howling in derision and pointing out that there are only two muslim residents there anyway, who are long-standing and integrated into the community. Well, to them I say, surely this move is the best possible way of avoiding the strife that muslims inevitably bring wherever they settle... including their own native countries. Keep them out, then you don’t have to deport them later.

Deterrence is surely a far kinder and more effective way than submitting to invasion and later having to confront ‘the muslim problem’. If Jeremy Corbyn understood this he wouldn’t have made such a tit of himself over renewing Trident. The Corbynist side of, well, everything is calling the mayor’s move an attempt to create a white supremacist enclave, whereas the mayor states, reasonably enough, that they like things as they are. So what if Nick Griffin is hovering on the sidelines? If he wants to move there, the village can vet his suitability just as they should be able to do with any other resident.

Small communities may be our only chance of fighting back; our cities are already infested. And I do mean infested. There are few countries with significant muslim populations who do not have disproportionately even more significant social problems. Chicken or egg; do the concentrations of muslims cause squalor, or are they merely attracted to it? Either way, show me one and I’ll show you the other. But what about rich muslims, you ask? Oh yes, you know the ones, the ones who don’t act like muslims...

You have to apply a certain homespun logic here and look at the development of islamic communities in the west. It starts with economic migration; nothing wrong with that. But then there is a period of quiet expansion, objections to which are shut down as xenophobic. Exceptions are made, minority status exploited and then as muslims are elected to positions of authority and exercise privilege in their favour, the braying idiots of the left applaud their enterprise and encourage it in the name of diversity. Mosques are built, white flight ensues, ghettoization follows and then we see the muscle-flexing.

Calls to prayer, mass gatherings, stopping the traffic, demonstration calling to establish a caliphate, outright defiance of the law and then unopposed open threats to the established people that sharia will prevail. The idea that ‘islamophobia’ is hostility towards muslims is a particularly insidious form of political correctness; islamophobia is what it says it is, a genuine fear of the rise of islam and what it brings. And still the so-called ‘moderate’ muslims remain silent, like concentration camp guards who are following their orders and doing their job.

The religion of peace? Still believe that?

Where we are now is at an uneasy stand-off, but it will only last for so long. Sooner or later one side or the other will have to act decisively and given that only one side has the balls, the motivation, the command from on high and the rapidly growing numbers there is a certain creeping inevitability about it all. So, condemn a village because it wants to stay the way it is? Call a man a racist because he wants to avoid racial and cultural conflict? It’s time to decide which side you are on; it really is.

Steamin' and a-Rollin'

The Trump train is thundering down the track bringing relief to small town America. The shiny new locomotive has been a long time coming and is eagerly awaited by the beleaguered townsfolk but just around the bluff the baddies are desperately strapping dynamite to the sleepers. They want to derail the train because to them it represents all that is bad about the world. It represents progress.

The oddest thing about the whole debacle is that they think that is they who are progressive; they even refer to themselves as, you guessed it, ‘progressive’. In their minds they simply cannot understand what is happening. Did they not bring great wealth... to the few? Did they not champion the rights of minorities... at the expense of the majority? Did they not educate the west... to blame itself for all the ills of the world? And have they not done enough for the poor and stupid... to keep them poor and stupid? For all this, they see no gratitude at all.

The Trump train is laden with picks and shovels, blankets and staples to tide the town over until it can build itself anew. The forgotten majority don’t understand, want or need quinoa, gender fluidity, or being forced to accept an unmanageable influx of new people of unknown provenance or purpose. They reject the idea that you can build real wealth out of thin air by promising nirvana but delivering nothing but words. And they are suspicious of sociology because it has robbed them of their identity. In a world of identity politics it is ironic that the people who built civilisation are denied their own.

Almost nobody who voted for Trump is a racist; they don’t spend their days dreaming up hatred for others. They want good, honest toil and good honest reward for their labours. And they want a stake in what they build, not a bill for the high stakes virtue signalling world built by the Obamas and Blairs. But the dynamite plotters, believing themselves the only true torch-bearers for American values, won’t even let them have that.

Over here, those who voted for Brexit are eagerly watching the USA’s own release from the bondage of progressivism as Donald Trump – hated mostly because he’s a rich white man with normal flaws and no dogged political ideology to sell – does what he said he would. But in impotent rage and blind to what they are revealing to the masses our own currently elected representatives are determined to represent only the orthodoxy of the last twenty  years and only respond to the clamour of the losing side.

John Bercow has led the Commons in what he imagines is striking a heroic blow for social justice, declaring outright hostility to one who has offered the hand of friendship. Just as with Berkeley students rioting against Milo Yiannopoulos, bussed-in left wing activists egging Farage and Nuttall in Stoke and any number of yowling, rabble-rousing ‘slebs’ urging defiance against democratic outcomes, the tactic of angry progressives everywhere is to shut down debate. Burning books, rewriting history and denying platforms to opposing views are in their blood.

Don't say it, Phil...

As a feeble excuse for Westminster’s weakness in calling to ban what they cannot counter, they cite a desire not to embarrass the Queen. The Queen has had to suffer indignity at the hands of parliament often in her 65 years on the throne. She’s had to suffer Bercow, for heaven’s sake. And for all his bluster, Donald Trump is no Mugabe; she will be fine. As they struggle to set the charge the train comes clattering around the bend; they're out of time. Hop aboard folks, wave a flag, it’s going to be a hell of a ride. 

Brain Drain

The “What happened to the £350million a week for the NHS?” demand is a pretty good example of the desperation of many in the EU Remain camp and is also an excellent illustration of the saying, ‘flogging a dead horse’. These desperate remainers – let’s call them drainers - accuse those of us who voted for Brexit and those who campaigned for Brexit of dishonesty. They insist that we cannot turn our backs on Europe; we never said we were going to. They say we are ‘leaving our friends’ when they are in grave trouble; we have no such intention. So they bring up the non-sequitur bus on every occasion as if that somehow clinches an argument they have not managed to frame.

We will respect the outcome of the referendum they said and then declared with some authority that those who voted to leave were too ignorant to understand what was at stake, which gives them carte-blanche to attempt to subvert or water down that outcome. When we say that we knew exactly what we voted for they tell us that a majority would now vote to remain. Not only do they know our minds, they appear to be telling us they know the future as well. Before we voted they foretold doom and disaster; we said bring it on, but we don’t think it will be that bad. Hell on earth, they repeated. Okay, we said, we’ll roll up our sleeves.

Following eight months of generally cheery news on all economic fronts, serially excused by drainers as the calm before the coming storm, now even the Bank of England has, reluctantly, improved its forecasts. Economic forecasting is of course based as much on polling as on foresight and is driven by perception more than prescience. But, as Brexiteers are cheered and optimistic and as business accepts the forward reality and starts to look for and find new opportunities the drainers find themselves huddled, lower lips jutting, around the lip of the Slough of Despond. It’s an ugly look.

Before we voted they called us racists and xenophobes and as if to prove what a threat we posed to civility they organised wailing, chanting, screeching mobs to tell us how hateful we were. Afterwards they took to the streets in their tens of thousands to bring disorder and chaos – maybe they were just demonstrating how they imagined we had behaved? Our general air of jubilation and relief was barely allowed expression as we were shouted down by those who knew better. You are a cancerous throwback, they screamed, as they did their level best to intimidate anybody with the temerity to defy the groupthink.

Happy now?

Over the pond the same desperate ranks of cranks are up in arms against the new reality, angry that they will no longer be pandered to as they believe is their right. And again they insist that the winners are dishonest. So let’s get back to that bus. There is no political party with power in Westminster called ‘Vote Leave’. The so-called cast-iron promise – which was always just an attractive (to some) possibility - to spend an extra £350million per week on the NHS was made by none of the parties with the potential to actually govern. Furthermore, as the drainers make clear at every economic up-tick, we haven’t even left the EU yet, a process they wish to delay as long as feasibly possible. Dishonest Brexiteers? By the standards of the drainers they are practically saints.

Beyond Brexit

Aaaand, we’re back on Brexit. Listening to bits of the ‘debate’ yesterday I heard the exact same thing we’ve been hearing for knocking on eight months now. “Boo hoo, the old people stole the future from our young people!” Really? Do fuck off. Many of the oldest people, who are so spittily despised by the Remoaners had to pick this country back up off its arse and rebuild it after the war. They voted to leave the despotic EU because they know exactly what freedom means; they took what little they had and they made do. And look at the thanks they get now, after all the heavy lifting has been done.

Quislings like Nick Clegg are either wilfully, malevolently lying or they genuinely have zero regard for the will of the slim majority who voted to leave and believe all the sort of bullshit that spews from the mouth of the idiots, like Verhofstadt who are vehemently anti-Britain, in or out. The speakers who oppose Brexit talk of a changed country, of being ‘devastated’ by the referendum result, of scarcely believing the nasty turn they think this signals, as if intruders have scaled their gated compound gates and begun raping their daughters.

And the rest of us look on, listen and wonder for how long they can keep up this incredible display of sheer ignorance. Ignorance is not being used as a pejorative here because, unless as I’ve suggested they are actually lying through their rictus grins, they must be quite literally ignorant of the lives of the people they purport to lead. Representative democracy? Representing who? Representing, it seems, those of a similar mindset to themselves regardless of the daily realities of the majority of the people who voted.

The majority, in any nation, does not have the privilege of being able to ignore, or rise above, or pay their way out of the effects of legislation imposed from above. In the words of the song ‘It’s the same the whole world over, it’s the poor wot gets the blame. It’s the rich wot gets the pleasure. Ain’t it all a fucking shame?’ And despite decades of politically correct thought-engineering to beat the peasants into believing they are unworthy to cast their ballot, that their despicable xenophobic, bigoted ways disenfranchises them, they came out to protest, quietly, on the 23^rd of June last year. The people have indeed, spoken.

But they must have misspoken because the clown car of Westminster is still careering round the ring, crashing into all in its way as the mad, big-trousered, wild-haired occupants honk and gurn and whip their audience up into a frenzy... They resemble nothing so much as those thousands of sore losers taking to the streets to show the world how marvellous they are and how low are those who dared to oppose the settled position. Well, listen up, ladies and gentlemen... and politicians.

Oh yes, Anna... you as well.

You say you fear for the future of your children? Your children have been handed the best opportunity they will ever have to rebuild a nation. This war isn’t about to start. It’s almost over and the cost has been devastating. We lost, to the EU, self-confidence, independence and the national identity which once conquered the world. It was given away without consent – the surrender was signed without a fight – but the resistance has been quietly watching, building consensus and biding our time. The older generation once gave their all to secure their children’s future. This time it’s up to a new generation to rebuild on cleared foundations.