How does this help?

Dig coal out of the ground, likewise iron ore and use the two to make steel with which to build our world. Till the soil, cultivate crops and turn the produce into sustenance for the workers. Design things, erect factories, make those things and distribute them to where they are in demand. Teach young people what they need to know to be able to participate in the myriad activities that generate wealth. Also teach them how society works, and teach them their duties and responsibilities towards others.

Make, build, fix, deliver... and repeat. Busy hands, encouraged by the prospect of better lives, create riches, tangible riches that can be used to provide the less easily auditable services that are often a loss on the balance sheet. Hospitals to treat those who need it. A justice system that can be used to protect us all from the minority who can’t be persuaded to eschew their destructive urges. And a safety net of welfare and social care to look after those who simply cannot look after themselves.

Isn’t this the basis for a civilised society? Every piece of the jigsaw should contribute to the finished picture; you can’t just tip in the contents of half-finished jigsaws of a completely different image. The only way you can fit the alien pieces into the national canvas is by removing or deforming what was there before. Or by insisting that the corrupted and unpleasant mish-mash that results was what the box lid promised all along.

The picture may be continually evolving, but if it doesn’t improve it, it shouldn’t be in the box. The meddlesome imposition of ever more perverse ways of disposing of the wealth we create and of distorting the society we want to live in is destructive. The separation of rights from responsibilities by the ever more bizarre outcomes of the human rights industry is simply irresponsible. The insistence on enforcing some nebulous notion of ‘equality and diversity and inclusion’ is costly and destructive.

A society is not the same as a company and maybe profit and wealth aren’t the only metrics, but surely, like any successful enterprise, a nation should keep on asking, ‘how does this help’? How does it help that one ‘community’ is protected from criticism? How does it help that police forces seem determined to create and prosecute imaginary crimes under the label of hate? How does it help to insist that perceptions of gender identity that border on mental illness are not only normal, but should be promoted relentlessly among impressionable children?

We can't just keep on doing this.

If we are navigating choppy waters surely steadying the ship is what is required; not loading it up with ever more unstable elements. There is a highly visible and apparently growing segment of our society whose aims are unclear, but who relentlessly demonstrate, sometimes with menaces, for conflicting changes they can neither define nor safely bring about. Instead of indulging them we should be clinically examining their negative contributions to our national efforts and asking, quite firmly, how does this help? Because, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t belong.