Pushing your Buttons

Coke or Pepsi? They taste the same to me and they are both just gassy, sugar-filled teeth-rotters, but millions swear by one or the other. Wine experts in blind taste tests can’t tell the difference between red wine and white wine dyed red, yet supposed connoisseurs hang on their every pronouncement. And the vast majority of ‘energy drinks’ contain nothing more exciting than lots and lots of sugar... and are consumed mostly by fat kids and gullible fat adults who presumably need the supposed energy boost to enhance their sofa surfing experience. It’s not what you sell, it’s how you sell it... which is part of the problem.

You no longer go on a day trip, visit a museum, or just potter about at home; you are under pressure these days to undergo an ‘experience’. Even when you are experiencing almost nothing; marketing indolence as achievement you are invited to ‘hang out’, or ‘chill’, ‘de-stress’ or reward yourself for your industry by indulging in ‘me time’, thus making a virtue out of what would once have been openly derided as sheer laziness. What happened to filling the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run?

Every wasted hour is an hour you will never see again; every wasted day, another day closer to death. I’m not saying you should make yourself sick with worry that you haven’t achieved some goal today, but don’t kid yourself that lolling about on the sofa is taking you one step nearer to your nirvana. Tell it like it is. And there’s your problem; whether it is a fizzy drink, a toilet roll, or a political party you are in competition with other providers; and considering that one arse-wipe is much like another it is little wonder that choosing a party to back is fraught with confusion.

Party politics, I believe, is undergoing its ‘Ratner Moment’ with the two main parties no longer sure what they are selling, but everybody admitting that, at best, it’s cheap crap. Both have resorted to attack ads, unable any more to sell the positives. But branding ordinary people as bigots, racists and too stupid to know what’s good for them is never a good look; especially when they do that to each other anyway. So what do we have left?

Identity politics is so risible as to appeal pretty much only to eternally blinkered and narrow-minded; that ramshackle, rag-tag army of LGBTQI-plus-plussers and their hangers on. Allied with the ultra-feminists, the islam appeasers, the Jew-haters, various-shades-of-lives-matter and the look-we’re-so-not-Nazis-we-even-called-ourselves-anti-fascists agitators, the sheer contradiction of their multiple stances makes for an ugly coalition that should ensure the Labour Party remains in the wilderness for a generation or more.

It’s not even certain that Labour could unseat Theresa May any more and in any case the Conservatives are quite capable of doing that all by themselves. Schism is in the air and as for branding, the Tories have long since lost the seal of approval as far as running the economy is concerned (and for quite a long time that’s all they’ve had). Nobody watching with any interest can seriously believe that the current crop of politicians has the first clue about running, well, anything, really.

The new consensus?

So, your serious choice right now is ‘none of the above’. I’m guessing that come the next election nobody is going to see a majority from a derisory turnout. But when big brands disappear the gap in the market is soon filled and in the true spirit of enterprise, expect to see a plethora of new offerings to dilute and dissipate those votes. Single issue parties, ultra-minority collectives, freak-show candidates and voters so fed up to the back teeth that they’ll vote for anybody but the same old brands. Regardless of Brexit, politics is broken and this time there is no happy status quo to protect. Coke or Pepsi? It might just be Irn Bru. Or Tizer... or Umbongo.

Alarums!

Everybody loves a good conspiracy theory; Dan Brown and other such sensationalist authors have made fortunes from peddling tales of outlandish plots, secret societies, centuries-old mysteries and good old myths and legends. It’s stirring stuff, especially the dénouement when in that last race to The End we discover that we have been deceived from the beginning and the kind old professor/grandmother/ protector-of-the-faith is really the guiding hand of the whole illicit enterprise... and in the final act the Nazi gold is once again lost, paving the way for a sequel and revealing that even now we know we were fooled, we’re always ready to fall for another bout of deceit.

On the BBC news this morning, sinister dealings are revealed, that targeted social media campaigns are disseminating hated and fomenting division and ‘damaging democracy’. Naturally, such underhand perversions of the natural order are at the behest of the Russians and the Leave cartel. Did you know, by the way, of the dark masters of the Brexit Syndicate?  Oh yes; I couldn’t read to the end for laughing but I wouldn’t be surprised if the fingerprints of giant space lizards are all over those shenanigans. Turns out – allegedly – that all this disorganised, uncoordinated bumbling is really part of the plot, disguising the slick operation beneath. I say, give them all Equity cards!

But back to the hate news; is it for real, or is it that – the way I see it – that humans are just like that and they rarely play nice when not face to face? Isn’t the simpler explanation just that once wedded to an idea or even better, an ideology, you seek out that which confirms your bias? We all do it. I see the left as being the side most likely to engage in threats and violence. The left assume that only those of the right would be so dastardly. Strikes me it’s not ‘internet hate’ we should be educating kids about but that humans are a pretty shitty species. But I guess the truth can be hard to swallow.

The problem with deep conspiracy is another aspect of human nature; we can’t keep secrets. We are atrocious at it. If we really wanted to give our kids an advantage in life we would teach them how to be good liars. Then they could enter politics and happily de-couple their cognitive dissonance as they simultaneously cut the ribbon on the new school even as they pressed the button for the demolition of another. They could cut funding for the NHS while cheerily announcing an increase. And they could repeatedly tell the public the lie that Ted Heath made it perfectly clear that joining the Common Market meant loss of sovereignty.

If there is one conspiracy worthy of the name it is the grand conspiracy to cut off the head of the nation state and in particular this nation state. Many warned of this, but the official line was to deny it, to obfuscate, to change the subject and to point to trade. But look, we’ll be rich! But we’re not rich are we? Are you? Only relatively recently has it been clear we no longer steer our own course, but it has been represented as an agreed end state when it was never anything of the kind.

Leave overspent during the referendum? Oh, fuck off – Remain’s champions have lied to the public for decades and continue to lie. Most people must be able to see that David Cameron offered a referendum only because he had been backed into an electoral corner and only because he was convinced he could win it. It was supposed to have been won by Remain and a 52/48 result would have absolutely sealed the deal; there would have been no marches, no targeted ‘hate’ campaigns. We would – as a state – have meekly donned our shackles, continued boarding the EU galley and grabbed an oar.

If you want more, here are a few links to feed your curiosity:

Brits too stupid for the EU

A case for Treason?

Sovereignty and the European communities

Apocalypse Not Now

Parliament goes off on its holibobs and Project Fear has a spring in its step, I see. When will all the wailing end? You’d like to hope that when the sun rises, as surely it will, on Saturday, 30th March, 2019 the Remainers will rub their eyes, blink and decide to take those first few bold steps into the future, but I fear it won’t be so. Dominic Grieve has been warning of famine and fever; that food and medicine will run out within weeks and pestilence will stalk the land. Death will surely follow... Others, such as John Major have preached that we should confess our sins that we be forgiven and allowed to re-enter the Kingdom of Euro-Heaven via a ‘second’ referendum. The prodigal will be received back into the fold and fêted as a returning hero.

It’s all sounding terribly biblical – Old Testament, naturally - and they are warning of nothing less than the coming of the Four Horsemen and the end of days. Abi Wilkinson (yes, her) now exiled to Washington DC, has literally tweeted that very sentiment, although I couldn’t tell and really couldn’t be bothered to find out whether she meant Brexit or Trump. But have no doubt, evocation of those pale riders still has the power to chill malleable minds and you can be sure Theresa May will be busily picking away at the first of the Seven Seals during the Parliamentary recess.

But, being good old, stalwart, bloody-minded Tommy Atkinses we will pick up our rifles, recover our phlegmatism and soldier on. The Remainers are whipping themselves up into a frenzy, sensing blood and victory, but we’ve been here before and when the vainglorious projects of our ‘betters’ become shitstorms of iniquity and finger-pointing failure, somebody has to steer a course to calmer waters. Because we Leavers know that our shared world will need rebuilding and we may need to offer kindnesses to the Remainers whose longed for Armageddon will not have occurred. The-Day-After-Brexit will be just like any other day for all but a tiny few.

But they will be furious and cognitively dispossessed when they discover no great calamity has befallen them. They will be distressed that no mayday call need be issued. They will be bereft yet strangely numb that their beloved EU survives, albeit weakened and that it makes not one jot of real difference to them. And in order to realign the evidence with their beliefs they will become – for a while at least (and possibly forever in the case of the Soubry-Graylings) – even more manic in their insistence that the world did, in fact, end and that we are merely waiting in purgatory for the final descent into hell.

10p on the price a loaf of bread will bring them out in ecstatic hives of misery and every single new pothole will be proof – proof! – that we cannot survive Brexit beyond Tuesday. The Queen will pass on the crown, due to Brexit and the lengthening of days as we progress towards the increasingly annual event we call ‘summer’ will be greeted with alarums and the rending of garments. I would not be entirely surprised if some of the more invested resorted to human sacrifice to reverse the horror of... of what, though?

I expect Brexit Day will not even be a bump in the road for most. Millions will awake and not even realise as they carry on in their jobs, their kids continue to go to school and the rain still comes sleeting in. The long history of this bejewelled fortress isle will record Brexit not as the cataclysmic, seismic extinction event the Remainers portend, but simply as the time that Britain went mad and then, just like George III, went un-mad again.

The racist flag of Olde Englande...

The headline shrieked out from The Daily Telegraph, the other day: ‘Labour's shadow sports minister suggests St George's flag is associated with 'far-Right ideology'. Oh dear, how sad, never mind. Citizeness Khan becomes yet another foot soldier in the Battle against Britain. This is such a tired old saw and paired with the tedious business of calling everybody racist whenever they express an opinion which doesn’t please the politburo is becoming just as impotent.

Not that the play hasn’t been clever: Start out by saying that flying the St George flag offends muslims, due to its association with the crusades, etc. Suggest that it is an emblem of imperialism and drum into school pupils how monstrous those enlightened times really were. Extend the thesis to affirming that those who do fly the flag are expressing, albeit unconsciously, racist sympathies. Link to a bit of video football violence – largely unrelated to race, but it fits the ‘rise of the right’ agenda – and let time do its work.

Now, blow the Pavlovian whistle. Express concern that the flag has become tainted and watch as the hands start wringing and the dog pack of disgusting white working class experiences shame and guilt and quietly takes down its banners. That’s the theory, at least, and it worked a treat among the middle classes who, being better educated, are far more easily indoctrinated. But the workers – those stupid, ignorant bastards – are harder to condition, because where is their treat for obeying?

Nobody is patting them on the back and cooing ‘good boy!’ to them. The smugger classes do this for themselves, but when it comes to the masses it’s the stick all the way. Damned if they comply, excoriated if they don’t. But has nobody yet learned that when you’ve taken everything else from people, all they have left is the intangible? And in this case it is pride; it is their identity. Even when they were given a vote on their future it was on the understanding that they would come to heel and roll over for the EU.

And now you have people like Diane Abbott demonstrating the same sort of contempt for public opinion as she ineptly tried to attack the government for washing their hands of the jihadi ‘Beatles’. The establishment would never dare put capital punishment to a referendum, would they? Tony Blair famously had the ultimate sanction removed for treason; could it really be mere coincidence that shortly thereafter he put in train the conditions that would put him firmly in the treacherous frame? You decide.

Its bite is far worse than its bark.

One thing seems certain; our elected officials are afraid of losing control and flags have been used to rally armies as long as we have had recorded history. But the flag is only a piece of cloth; it is what it represents that you can’t take down. The Standard of St George is not only a flag, it is also a march. And a stirring one at that. The blood is up, the English are angry. And plenty have learned to their cost that you really, really, don’t want to make the English angry.  

Which is more...

It’s official; the world has gone mad. If the news that Dorset police are planning on sending out ‘thank you for not speeding’ letters doesn’t fill you with foreboding – we know where you were; we know where you live; we’ve been watching you - then consider the lunacy which has been visited upon those poor, oppressed students of Manchester University. Not content with seeing everybody with opposing views as, literally, Hitler, they are now determined to once again seek offence from beyond the veil. This time their target is that icon of Englishness, Rudyard Kipling. 

So what that they think he disdained the brown man? (Though what of Gunga Din?) He was a man of his times and is a valuable ice core, revealing many of the views of those far-off days. We live in less enlightened times and I wonder how history will judge the youth of today. No charges of light brigades for them, no play up and play the game. Instead they are the generation which opened the door to the Trojan horse of multiculturalism and buried their own cultural identity forever. Will a future Sir Edward Gibbon record their part in our downfall?

But hey, if they are going to so willingly deface our heritage, I may as well get in first.

IF NOT

IF you can lose your rag when all about you 

Are wearing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can blame yourself when brown men loathe you,

And make allowance for their loathing too;

If you can wait and simply keep on waiting,

Or being lied about, just accept those lies,

Or being hated, join in with all the hating,

You don't look good, and neither seem too wise:

Forget your dream - their dreams are now your master;

Try not to think – just fold and take the blame;

If you can bring both Crisis and Disaster

And accept those two sage prophets in your name;

If you can bear to hear the lies you've spoken

Enhanced by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the truths your father gave you, broken,

And stoop to blunting all his worn-down rules: 

If you can make one heap of all your scratch-cards 

Bought with welfare aid, who gives a toss?

And pile up all your values in the scrapyard

And plan to make islam your future boss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To sell your soul when honour has all gone,

And be so hollow there is nothing in you

Except the book which tells you it’s haram!'

If you can shun your kin but cling to virtue,

And sell your friends and lose the common touch,

If neither sense nor proven facts can reach you,

If reason seeks you out, but cannot touch;

If you can fill your worthless every minute

on your knees and show the world your bum,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be imam, my son!

What's not to like?

Big Beasts

Once, giants stalked the earth. Huge creatures with few objectives other than survival lumbered around, outcompeting the rest by simply being better. Better at finding food, better at fighting for that food and better at passing on those genes for success. The formula worked. Then the climate changed and big became less beautiful; it was the runty animals which survived the great extinction and began to rule the roost, because the bigger you are the harder you fall.

Maybe this is what is wrong with society today. In the clamour for equality, for all to be accorded the same score in life’s ninety minutes, the notion of supremacy seems to have gone missing. People don’t want to be led by egalitarians, though; they want to follow a big figure, a leader with the courage of their convictions and the stubbornness to see through to a plan of action. Take Brexit... no, really.

Instead of having the balls to weather the storms when they dither and obfuscate and frustrate progress along the decided road; instead of fulfilling the promise that was made to the voters that they would implement what the referendum decided, we get... this; this utter shambles of indecision in an attempt to avoid losing votes. This has sod-all to do with what is best for the country, for the world; it has everything to do with the trend since the great extinction of 1997 of clinging onto power not through strength, but through appeasement.

The big beasts would have cut through the mewling of the marginals and forged ahead, crashing through the undergrowth and yes, trampling on a few who got in the way, but ultimately getting the job done. Cameron threw away his opportunity to seize that initiative by quitting the second he’d worked out it might make him unpopular. May’s government, such as it is, seeks to introduce measures to prevent criticism of politicians on social media; that same social media formerly lauded as an opportunity for a new, participative, more direct democracy.

On the day that many are celebrating 100 years since Mandela’s birth why are we forever looking back? A minute’s silence here, a vigil there, a prayer for the long gone. Where are today’s political titans? Where is our Churchill, our Thatcher? And don’t even begin to think of Boris in the same league; he has bottled it on far too many occasions to have any credibility in the vanguard; he’s just another poll-gazer.

The real reason dinosaurs became extinct

Brexit may be a big deal, but really it is a more of a symptom of a far greater sickness. The west has lost its way. It has lost its will to lead. And it has decided to turn on itself in a pathetic display of first-world guilt. Instead of forging ahead, continuing mankind’s thrust towards true greatness it has decided to doubt; to allow itself to be overrun by more single-minded cultures and to pay for the ‘privilege’ of witnessing its very own extinction event. But wouldn’t it be great if now, in the modern Meghalayan Age dinosaurs once more ruled the land?

Leave it!

In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Sir Bedevere performs a display of logic comparable to Justine Greening’s second referendum rationale. The contortion she must have gone through to conclude that, despite refusing to recognise the EU referendum – didn’t know what they were voting for, low information, low intelligence, racists and xenophobes, etc – the solution to the impasse is, yes, another referendum.  Why, she must be a witch if she weighs the same as a duck!

What beggars belief still further is how she has been described as a 'senior Tory'? As an MP since 2005, with inclusion in ministerial roles for, as far as I can discern, merely tokenistic reasons, she hardly qualifies as senior. But who believes now that ANYTHING proposed by No.10 isn't staged? “Hey, Justine, do us a favour, love...” And voila, out of the woodwork steps just the next in a weary line of forgotten representatives to sell us on the idea of having-another-look. Even Major is back on the box when he should have stayed in the box.

But what’s the point? Carole Malone tweeted: ”So if there WAS a 2nd referendum and the country voted Leave again - what miracle solution would the Gov come up with then that they can’t come up with now? Government Remainers only want another one because they think it would go their way.” And this is the long and the short of it. Greening’s proposal offered up a three-option trap in the cynical hope that it would split the leave loyalties and deliver a de-facto Remain vote.

The establishment – by which I mean the government itself, the opposition, the judiciary and anybody who is anybody in the Common Purpose mash-up that assumes it has the divine right to rule over us – is offering us a Hobson’s choice: Here’s a stick. I am going to beat you with it. If you wish you may vote for a different stick. Then, when we beat you with whichever choice you made, just remember you voted for it. And if you didn't vote you deserve every last stroke.

They are relentless: Oh but, now we know ‘the deal’ we should vote on it. Now we know that Leave breached electoral rules the result is void anyway. Besides, we know just what staying in means – they have even come up with a set of ONS predictions for ‘hard’ Brexit, ‘soft’ Brexit, Chequers Brexit (Andrex-soft) and Remain. Nobody should be surprised to note that Remain carries no penalty. Pull the other one!

Were we to reverse the referendum (and I very much doubt that fewer would now wish to leave, having seen the utter contempt of the EU towards the very question) we would definitely not proceed regally, unruffled, along the smooth road to riches forecast by the same rabble that have willingly assisted Project Fear from the start. There would be no veto, we would almost certainly be compelled, eventually, to adopt the Euro. We would lose our independent armed forces (such as they are today) and we would become Eurasia’s Airstrip One; a purely vassal state.

No you don't, Mrs May.

There is only one Brexit and it really is the one the majority voted for. The only Brexit that can possibly secure autonomy, self-rule (and when were we EVER asked if we wanted to give that up?) and break us free of the tentacles of the bloc is a Brexit so hard you could bounce tennis balls of it. A Brexit of such granite-like solidity that nothing short of dynamite could blast us back into Brussels’ embrace. You might call it hard Brexit. But to those of us who voted for it, it is just what it said on the ballot. Read our lips; we voted to leave.

Setting you free

I feel ashamed. Yesterday I mocked a young person’s dream when I quote-tweeted his offering that in the future, the robots will do the work while everybody gets to live a life of leisure. His was in response to a declamation by a trans comedian that work was not a moral duty, but that everybody deserved “basic human rights to food, water, shelter, and health care (among other things) whether or not you work.” One wise response came from a healthcare worker explaining that in order for ‘her’ to enjoy those human rights others would indeed have a moral duty to work. Touché.

Where do these people come from? Sure, there are artists and performers and great thinkers without whom our lives may be less rich and therefore deserve, perhaps, an indulgence to free them from the bounds of common toil. But then again, there have been many examples of cultural greatness who have sprung from the working masses and plenty of high profile artists and writers earn a handsome living from the commercialisation of their talents.

No, on balance I think it’s fine as it is. If you didn’t work, what would you do? Most people haven’t the imagination or the ability to apply themselves to acquire new skills at a level which is its own reward. Those who do so despite their other life commitments, of which work is generally the most important, are to be admired. Imagine though, if the field were flooded with people desperate to find validation for their existence. A world of no-work would be like ‘reality’ television in real life. The horror.

The devil, they say, finds work for idle hands to do. If you want a concrete example of that just look at politics; an artificial Westworld where nothing is necessarily real and people play out scripted lives over and over again, presumably in the hope that this time it will work out better. Can you imagine if many more people were persuaded that politics was a worthwhile way of spending your days?

But what about the robots? Fritz Lang’s Metropolis was released in 1927 and we still don’t have that return to serfdom, so beloved of the left’s ideologues; the supposed enslavement of the masses to the whim of the cruel and wealthy elites. Seriously, look around you. You have the best living standards, the greatest freedoms and the biggest opportunities of any population that has ever lived on this island. It is precisely because of those freedoms that you have the ability to complain about it all the time.

With few exceptions, those who make the most of the opportunities will be those who do so through work. Don’t look for reasons not to graft; graft harder. Don’t bleat on about human rights and how – somehow – others must procure them for you; grab them for yourself. Be better, work harder, get good. Keep learning, keep improving and then employ those same efforts in your non-working lives. You want the freedom to do as you wish? You gotta work, bitch.

Woke

The one constant about the eternally right-on is how very right they are. Listening to LBC as I woke up yesterday you would think the anti-Trump protesters knew everything. And they occupy the moral high ground as effortlessly as a balloon filled with a natural element which is lighter-than-air, but increasingly rare. But I bet they don’t know that 75% of the world’s helium is produced in the USA; the future of the protest blimp may be uncertain.

Just as well, then, that other certainties still exist. As I listened I learned; my world view was enriched by the absolute fact that the marchers represented the true beliefs of literally everybody in the UK. I always said that whatever else he might be, Trump was going to be the funniest US President ever. Well, I was wrong about that, too because – and I thank the protesters for cluing me up to this – Trump is pure evil and wants to control and eventually destroy the planet.

Phew, thank god I have become ‘woke’ in the nick of time. See, I could never bring myself to actually like the guy. I always knew he was a ludicrous, bombastic bully with a penchant for enjoying the fruits of his wealth (how dare he?) and unafraid to exploit others for his own gain. But I never realised how minor a view that was. Yes, he won a presidential election, but literally nobody voted for him. And he does put America first (how dare he?) which literally nobody in America wants.

Thanks to the lovely rainbow coalition of the eternally offended, however, I have learned much about why none of this really bothered me until yesterday. The LBC respondents educated me. Turns out, as a natural capitalist, I had been indoctrinated to believe that we should profit from our own endeavours, dutifully pay our taxes and use the welfare and health system that the Conservative Party have so-far protected from voracious socialism to help as many of the less privileged lead as worthwhile a life as practically possible.

But no; now, with my eyes open I realise that I was a hate-filled, misogynistic, racist homophobe who does not care one jot for those who suffer. And in not protesting Trump I must therefore be complicit in everything he does. Apparently, I want to see the homeless even more abject, the sick in body bags and the disabled put into work camps – I think that’s the gist of their thesis.

Worship your master!

Well, I thank them for their insight. Until now I just thought I was a bloke who went out to work, paid his taxes, spent what was left how I wished and generally got on with my own business. My interest in current affairs, I now realise, was not my own, but a carefully implanted, lizard brain impulse to despise the disadvantaged and assist in their marginalisation. Now I know that the only path to true enlightenment is to turn away from all that wishy-washy, centre-right stuff and embrace the one true emotion that can unite us all in hope... Hate.

A portrait of Dorian Jones

When baby-faced Blur frontman, Damon All-Bran, burst onto the Britpop scene, he was cute as a button, an impossibly huggable little imp who the girls both swooned over and longed to mother. Likewise Leonardo Capodimonte elicited an urge for protective smothering in women the world over when he gurned his way through Gilbert Grape. They love the babies, the ladies; as radical as they get, they can’t deny their nature forever.

Owen Jones doesn’t quite hit the spot though, does he? Sure, when everybody thought he was fifteen, publicising his Chavs essay and touring the TV stations to flog it, they gave him a mildly maternal free pass for his simplistic polemic and assumed he would grow out of it. But if anybody is a man-baby today, it is Owen the Unready. Somehow he has become the perfect figurehead for the protest movement; an icon for an unpalatable alternative and an increasingly deluded ranter.

Protest is a tool of the left and a pretty blunt one at that. For some people, protesting is as natural a thing to do as it is for others to go out to work. It’s likely that they see picking up a placard and marching as a legitimate use of the endless hours of free time they have on their hands as, say, volunteering at a soup kitchen, or saving a whale. While others trim their privet or mow the lawn, the eternally outraged think that their regular demonstration of angst is somehow keeping nature at bay; as if, like the hedge, it will run wild if untamed.

But here’s the thing. Protests rarely change anything. Yes they may serve to highlight concerns, they may even generate questions in the House of Commons, raised by MPs rightfully doing their job. And yes, without any means of registering discontent we would be helpless victims of despotic regimes, but if you’re going to protest, get mad about things that actually matter. And recognise that you can protest all you like but somebody still has to empty the bins; if you down tools all the time to complain why, you’re back in 1970s Labour Britain, and nobody wants that, do they?

Oh but wait, that’s exactly the thing the protesting classes seem to have in common. A yearning for a world where they imagine their every whim will be satisfied by the Magic Granddad, Jeremy Christ and his disciples who will deliver real socialism (which has never been tried, by the way) unto the oppressed masses. The marching minions despise those who work and pay to keep their world safe for, well, for protesting. The taxpayer looks up from his toils, watches the retards and their crayoned signs, shrugs and gets back to work. The hate really does flow in only one direction

Which is why Donald Trump might just be the perfect weapon. Blunt, indefatigable, mercurial, explosive, on-target and ultimately disposable. The notional right should embrace the wrecking ball he drives right through his detractors. He doesn’t actually care what they think and he brushes off the spitting hatred of the ineffectual as easily as he changes his policies. Trump epitomises the times as well as any: “Hey Owen, what are you rebelling against?” Owen: “Whadda you got?”

The picture in Owen's attic

When Donald Trump moves on, the Owens of this world will find somebody else to be offended by, because they have no answers. Like the Labour movement itself the problem they were founded to fix has been solved but they cling on, as a vestigial fury with no outlet consumes their soul. But, ultimately, they serve no purpose except, perhaps, as a bad example to others. Jones has been tweeting that history is a savage judge. Indeed it is; I await history’s record of Owen’s contribution, but I fear I may be waiting for a blank page.

Desperate Measures

What a time to be alive! What a time to be in politics. Welcome to the circus. Since the referendum the establishment has by covert and often overt means, sought to reverse the result. But all along they coated it with the gloss of ‘doing the right thing’. Nobody, they argued, voted to become poorer; and “now we know more about what Brexit really means, we should have the opportunity to reconsider”, etc...

The basis of UK parliamentary democracy has always been the principle – however illusory – that if we are unhappy with the government we can replace it. Much like the old communist saw “We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us” we pretend to vote for change and they tell us, in the face of zero evidence, that they are providing it. Unfortunately, this time round we were no longer pretending; we really did vote for change. But were we too late?

Has the British government been so long in thrall to the Brussels project that they have taken on its features? Once again, George Orwell seems to have been uncannily prescient “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” Because the way in which recent governments seem to have pointedly ignored the concerns of the people who put them in charge looks like nothing so much as tyranny.

The mood in the country has darkened. This riding roughshod over the expressed desire to leave the bloc – which result was returned despite the appalling alignment of the entire establishment against the people – looks like nothing so much as the very thing we voted to reject. Febrile is how the media reported the atmosphere in the Tory Party. Furious is how it feels out here. You can feel it; you can almost touch it... and you can certainly taste the bitter gastronomy of betrayal.

But why? Why put it to a vote then ignore it? Well, of course there’s been no planning for a no-deal Brexit because, just as Cameron and Co couldn’t countenance losing, May and her merry mayhem makers have no vision for a Britain outside the EU. In fact they are behaving exactly like the EU, assuming they can simply ignore the people who have been asking for a way out for many years.

But remember, nothing is immutable. Treaties can be torn up. Contracts can be cancelled. The vote to leave the EU was a vote to tear up the travesty of the last 45 years and become the independent nation we managed to be for centuries. Ripping up the common rule book? Hell yes. And after this weekend’s lesson in autocracy Teflon Tess has shown that she is a true politician, as perceived by the electorate; motivated purely by power.

This may or may not be the truth but as the CPS has demonstrated lately, perception trumps intent. Of course, her biggest weapon is Jeremy Corbyn. If you don’t like it, you’ll hand the keys to Magic Grandad and his motley crew, she threatens. But that threat is hollow. People know that JC has long been an opponent of the EU and sometimes extreme times call for extreme measures. If her calculation is that no former Tory could possibly vote for Corbyn she might want to remember that Cameron thought Remain was in the bag.