Fair Trade?

Mrs May is off on her jollies, demonstrating her natural warmth and empathy... and dancing skills, and basically doing her damnedest to appear unfazed by the entire world view of her, which is dead woman walking. What she is doing, of course, is trying to work out where to deploy the foreign aid bribes most effectively; at which despots to bung British taxpayers’ dosh; where to waste the wonga... everybody expects the same ultimate fate as that of the company of the same name.

Shortly before my recent ‘Twexit’ I engaged in a debate about foreign aid which rested on the affirmation by another party that 'foreign aid isn't wasted money'. No? Try convincing the NHS garment-renders. Ask the young people struggling to get on properly funded apprenticeships. Consult the homeless, the local authorities and the police. Consider actually putting the proposal to maintain the overseas aid budget at current levels to those who actually pay for it.

It all depends on what you think foreign aid is: If it is charity, are the needs of British subjects second to those of the third world which outnumbers them thousands to one and among which the largess may well be spread too thin to make a difference, or else end up channelled into undesirable pockets - gold-plated Bentleys, anyone? And if it is a bribe is it desirable that we are seen to be bribing despots - gold-plated Bentleys, anyone?

And if we do have to offer bribes in order to trade, anywhere, what does that say about both parties to the arrangement? Does it indicate that the trade is not worth it on merit, or is it just a means of paying more than the going rate? To many people, the people who ultimately cough for it as well as those who receive it , foreign aid says one thing loud and clear, it says - look at us - we're rich enough to throw money away. And if this is what we give away overseas, how rich must we be at home?

Britain is not only seen as a rich and generous country, but also as one with rich pickings for the opportunists. Economic migrants cross continents in order to take advantage of us, in the knowledge that once on British soil, there are many ways to milk the system. One, seemingly honest way, is to work for a living; after all, our benefit system is particularly generous towards those who earn minimum wage because we top it up with a variety of benefits, both direct and in kind. The NHS is one example of a ‘free’ benefit in kind; it is free to all who are not net taxpayers.

Maybe we should actually take a leaf from one section of Corbyn’s hymn sheet and not seek trade with despotic regimes? Or do we genuinely believe that only by appeasing and enriching the despots can we open up a dialogue and attempt to improve diminished lives? If foreign aid is effective, don’t we deserve a dialogue of our own; shouldn’t we be trusted to know exactly how it is spent and how this ultimately benefits the UK? Let's not kid ourselves that things like fair trade coffee are anything other than making ourselves feel good by paying over the odds for average coffee?

The Age of Wonder

What do you mean, you’re not gay? How on earth do you ever expect to get a decent job? The old advice to work hard, keep your nose clean and make yourself indispensable would seem, in this new, identitarian world, to be positively antediluvian. Today it is not even about who you are, but what you are. Forget your dewy-eyed longing for a meritocracy, the mediocracy is where it’s at; a few years ago companies were being advised to hire for diversity before talent on the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy that as successful companies were often diverse, therefore their success must be because of their diversity.

This is as ridiculous a stance as Tony Blair’s let’s-send-everybody-to-university policy, founded on the notion that as graduates, in general, up to the New Labour era, earned more, thus an automatic increase in prosperity could be magicked-up simply by removing the barriers to entry. Grade inflation, already worryingly accelerated, became rampant. And what happened? The market responded by creating worthless degrees from pop-up, ersatz universities and threw a generation of eager young people on the employability scrapheap.

You would think we would learn. Teach everybody the same rigorous basics, select for specialisation, emphasise important STEM subjects, but simultaneously encourage the less academic to learn lifelong, vitally important, non-academic skills. But most importantly, build an educated, informed, realistically aspirational new workforce. Any country which relies on attracting foreign workers to do work well within the compass of its own citizens is pursuing a folly which may well be about to be realised when they make a similarly monumental fuck-up over a botched Brexit.

But back to the identity bullshit. Disney has been in bother for casting a non-disabled actor in the role of a disabled character and BBC is currently taking flak for not managing to cast an actual elephant man in the role of the Elephant man. A caller to Nick Ferrari this morning even sort of managed to suggest that only Joseph [John] Merrick himself could have given a faithful rendering of his life’s experiences. She seemed unhinged enough to be capable of being indignant that Merrick, who died in 1890 wasn’t offered the lead role in the 1980 movie. See what happens when your audience is innumerate?

And as if the idiocy of identity politics isn’t apparent enough a BBC executive is once again publicly calling, in the name of diversity, for the replacement of white men on the telly-box who present with no gender confusion, disablement or other victim status,. How long before they are demanding Daniel Day-Lewis gives back his Oscar and other awards for My Left Foot on account of him having full control of both feet?

Yeah, I think we've got all the bases covered here.

When civilisation falls, when transport and technology vanish, when the human rights industry eventually has us all eating each other and all that is left of the western world is a metaphorical giant left foot bearing the legend of Ozymandias, once king of kings, will future historians wonder what led to the ending of the reformation, the age of enlightenment, the industrial revolution, the space age, the information superhighway and all the wonders created by millions of brilliant minds... or will they just be too stupid?

Special K

My first sally into the e-book world was with a Sony e-book. A bit clunky to use but it did the trick, sort of. But after battery issues I returned it to a disgruntled retailer and didn’t bother with a replacement. I was surprised to learn that e-versions cost more, back then, than paper considerably more in some cases. But Amazon was working on it. Stephen Fry, famously, had a Kindle, but the software didn’t yet work in Europe and the UK and I had to wait a couple of years.

My first Kindle was a marvel – old fashioned, a bit 1990s in functionality and navigation - but wow, you could read it in daylight. Back then I travelled a good deal more than  have in the last few years and I began, as I imagine most do, trawling through the catalogues of cheap-as-chips, out-of-copyright classics. I eventually updated to the one with the backlight and when I accidentally broke the screen, replaced the device without hesitation.

That final version – I was never tempted by the gaudy ‘fire’ versions - now sits, uncharged on my desk. It has an accusatory posture; please use me, it seems to say. But why would I use it at my desk – I have a bigger, better, brighter and hugely more versatile screen right here in front of me. And I like to read when I go to bed, but despite the obvious convenience of an e-reader I have reverted to paper books, as I hear many have. My bedside cabinet holds a satisfying pile of books queued up ready and a visual reminder not to buy any more until I have ploughed through this year’s supply of wonderful words.

Many miles away, I have a storage unit, half-filled with books (half of all my possessions are books) I may never again have the room to display them, lovingly, on shelves, in a gloriously haphazard order which suits my internal filing system. Melvil Dewey, he of the Decimal Classification system, would have a fit. But as well as my horde I have also the memories of books gone by, many of which I have lost and replaced and many of which are probably gone forever. Storing a thousand books on a handheld device is just not the same as having a thousand books right there.

All the new ideas in politics, right here.

Now, I know you’re waiting for the politics and philosophy, so here it comes: Every now and then a bright new idea comes along – it usually calls itself the Labour Party – and it promises equality and aspiration and affluence for all. But then, when you try it out you find it doesn’t work quite as well as the hype suggests and the tried and trusted method, although more labour intensive, is ultimately far more satisfying. I will charge my Kindle when I go on holiday, but I won’t be persuaded to give up the real thing.

Division Hell

If you keep on repeating the lie, it becomes true-ish. Nobody knows – literally nobody knows – what the sentiment of the British public now is towards Brexit, but keep on telling them that it has swung to remain and eventually those who still wish to leave the EU will begin to think they are now outnumbered. In the political world, despite the government’s thus far intransigence regarding a re-run the momentum for some form of second referendum is emboldened by the apparent lack of opposition to it.

This is because, despite all who voted to leave knowing exactly what they voted for, there is no concerted, focused ‘leave’ party as, just like with left and right, one side is quietly getting on with their lives while the other is making protest the purpose of their lives. The coalition of loosely Marxist ideologies thrives on their collective faith that the solution to the world’s problems is best trusted to a star chamber of unelected overlords, busily creating legislation to whip the little people into line.

They believe, of course, that such powers will never be used against them as it so often has been in every socialist state that has ever existed. Lenin’s phrase ‘useful idiot’ has never been more apt; some of these people still see Hugo Chavez as some great People’s Hero. Diane Abbot even said that Mao had probably done more good than harm. John McDonnell thinks that violently storming Conservative Party headquarters represents ‘the best’ of the Labour movement. This is the future which remain voters don’t realise they are voting for.

The hope is, of course, that ‘soft Brexiteers’ are hearing and assimilating the lies of Project Fear and beginning to buy into it. To now say openly that you still want to leave is to invite contempt and abuse and accusations of ‘stealing my children’s future’. Such ridiculous hysterical reaction is a staple of the Remainers’ sloganeering and as a result the voices for Leave have stilled. Some of them are just hoping the clamour of insults will die away and it has to be the case that some are secretly hoping the departure can be reversed and that everything will go back to normal.

But that ship sailed long ago; HMS Status Quo has slipped over the horizon never to return. War divides countries and make no mistake this is war. Herman Van Rompuy has said Brexit will split Britain and much as the low grade bank clerk may once have been the wizened wizard behind the EU megaphone I’m afraid he may be right. This is one genie which is not going back in the bottle. But sooner or later this great divide was going to open up anyway, Brexit merely hastened its revelation.

It’s them and us, as it always was, and as it always was the division is on class lines. On one side we have the rulers and their lackeys, those who wish to be allowed to govern without the interruption and uncertainty of elections and those who imagine that being ruled is better than having freedom of choice. On the other we have the stout yeomen of Alle Englande – the peasantry, the people... demos, in whose name the question was asked and to whom the decision was entrusted. But, as we know, the demos gave the wrong answer.

What governments want.

This new peasants’ revolt is not going to be mollified by a new vote; if they ignore the last one why should they honour the next? No, we demanded to be given back the power we lost. Not only the power we lost to the EU but more particularly the power to hold our own government to account. Vince Cable has said we should demand better while the political class as a whole wants to ensure we are never again in a position to demand anything. Brexit is merely a sideshow now.

Dear Twitter,

When I first signed up to your platform in 2009 I found it odd that people mostly appeared to spend their time tweeting pictures of what they were about to eat or drink. It wasn’t for me and I abandoned it fairly quickly. Two years later I returned, under a pseudonym and found it more engaging and even challenging, as people were not afraid to say what they thought: of others, of the world in general and in particular of the political class. It became my social media outlet of choice and I regularly entered the cut and thrust of debate.

I used it as a first resort for news and became part of a community of like-minded and fair-minded people who shared what are now seen as extreme views. Views such as the belief that it is up to each individual to strive to make their own lives more fulfilling; that a liberal approach to society, tolerating difference is preferable to sowing division; that many who would describe themselves as left-leaning are often bigoted and intolerant and can’t even see how fascistic they are.

While most people in the wider world are politically apathetic, confused and, despite their voting record, largely non-aligned with any real ideology, the ‘politicians’ on social media are often heavily invested, deeply entrenched and sometimes exhibit signs of deep psychosis, being unwilling or unable to alter their impaired vision of reality. A regular pattern emerged and one with which many of us became familiar:

An interloper joins a conversation to hurl abuse, often of the ‘evil-Tory-Thatcher-monster-you-hate-poor-people-and-want-to-kill-the-sick-I-hope-you-get-cancer’ variety. Original participants ignore or engage, but usually shrug off the tirade. Interloper gets angrier and more abusive. Interloper blocks, then tells all their friends to follow suit. Hey, I have no problem being blocked; if anything it is the ideal solution for your hair-trigger offence-seeker if they never have to read a world view they reject.

And thus Twitter policed itself, only intervening when things got seriously out of hand and people’s lives were genuinely threatened with disruption. Most of us with forthright views occasionally got a slap on the wrist, which we accepted, apologised for, then took down the offending posts, promised to be nicer and were reinstated, a little chastened but free to twitter on. But things didn’t stay that way for long...

Twitter began its own crusade; no longer content to provide a forum it began to police it in ways that seemed almost sinister. The angry types soon realised that Twitter was quick to sanction, so began dog-piling into accounts they hated. I suffered several week-long bans based not always on my original words, but often just for retweeting ‘unfashionable’ opinions. I observed – as many have – that calling for violence towards certain public figures, hurling extreme abuse at individuals, harrying personal accounts, calling down mobs and generally behaving like animals was often tolerated, while those who were the subject of the attacks were removed.

Indeed, Twitter even took it upon itself to remove people simply because they didn’t somehow accord with what Twitter regarded as ‘acceptable’ free speech. I honestly can’t see what is extreme about Milo Yiannopoulos – he’s even in one of the approved ‘victim’ groups – but there he was, gone. Yet people who openly preach the ending of the white race, who support the murders and land grabs in South Africa, who praise despotic, brutal regimes and regularly preach hatred and hurl abuse remain visible and free to spread their poison.

And of course the biggest poison of all, the extreme elements of a sect which practises horrific abuse, subjugation and terror, continues to enjoy freedom of expression but woe betide those who speak against it. The religion of peas rightly comes in for a fair amount of opprobrium and why not – any ideology that wishes my kind to be wiped from the earth or enslaved in the service of a non-existent being is not all right with me or any other right-thinking person.

But hey, none of that matters any more because you have removed my account and prevented me from even logging on to find out why. For what it’s worth, I believe the imprecation “shoot the buggers” whenever the police/armed forces/border control find themselves under genuine threat in an impossible situation is not incitement to violence, rather an expression of exasperation which used to be commonplace a few decades ago and is still in currency among many ‘civilians’ out in the world which exists beyond the internet.

We were warned...

But I figure it’s your loss, Twitter, and that you are destined to become just another echo-chamber where self-identifying victims can howl and stamp their tiny feet. The control of the message always ends up being in the hands of the idiots simply because they outnumber the rest of us. The comparison has been made before, but the best known works of a certain Eric Arthur Blair are, to many people, prophetic. Your motto should be: All Tweeters are equal, but some Tweeters are more equal than others.

Balancing Act

Balance the books, the balance of probability, a balanced viewpoint... it’s all an act when you think of it. It is almost impossible, beyond spreadsheets and quantitative analysis to maintain true balance. In fact the more a body insists, like the BBC, that they are impartial the more likely it is that they are biased; they just don’t see it. And the more you try to introduce dissenting views the more biased you appear in their eyes.

Maybe James O’Brien on LBC thinks he allows ‘right-wing’ callers an opportunity to present their point of view, but oh, those callers. You can almost imagine J’Obbie instructing his producers: “Don’t make me speak to intelligent people on the right, just put through the frothers. And if you can wind them up before you send them my way, all the better.” He then proceeds to slaughter the knuckle-draggers live on air, as they splutter and gasp for air between Odd-Job’s well-practiced put-downs.

“Hello and welcome to Question Time” the avuncular David Dimbleby announces. “This week on our panel we have an Anti-Brexit campaigner and peer of the realm, a scientist who thinks Brexit will be a disaster, a doctor and leader of the group Doctors-Against-The-Deadly-Brexit-Mind-Killing-Disease, a comedian who has recently won the Comedians against Brexit award at the Edinburgh fringe and a token discredited former Tory MP for one term under Mrs Thatcher who has what some may call extreme views on immigration. Our first question is: Do you think Brexit will be an unmitigated disaster that will blight the United Kingdom for generations to come? That's to you, Lord Brexit-Bad.”

Even in the mundane, the least agenda-driven daily dealings you can’t avoid tipping the scales in your own favour. You work with colleagues who broadly share your views (it would be very difficult otherwise) you mix socially with an even more closely aligned group and you absorb the news as promulgated by platforms which serve up the ‘facts’ just the way you like them. Listening to an opposing point of view and trying to understand and emphasise nearly always ends up merely confirming that your bias has firm foundations in truth, while theirs is led by lies.

We are brought up to believe that justice is blind, but it is clearly not. British justice, it has been said, is the best that money can buy and the judiciary are wholly bought in to a certain entrenched bias against those who are seen as trouble-makers, agitators, those who dare to expose the corruption and lies at the heart of the establishment. Demand death to those who dishonour allah and your right to do so will be protected by the state, but rock the boat and speak out against that protection being used to perpetrate harm and expect the full weight of the law to come up with a balanced and impartial verdict that you need to be fed to the wolves.

No wonder the individual sometimes feels under siege. Personal responsibility is a scary prospect – you, making your own decisions and sometimes standing against the world. Step outside the cosy consensus and feel the wrath of the sheep (the censoriousness of the lambs), whereas collective, groupthink provides a warm, fluffy comfort blanket for your helpless thoughts. All collectives are, almost by definition, left-wing and practise the subjugation of the individual for the greater good of the group. So it is little wonder that wayward thinkers are inevitably labelled right-wing.

But the collective need of the world’s leftist hordes to believe in a right-wing threat is too great to allow acceptance of reality. And the reality is that if ‘the left’ and ‘the right’ stood on opposite sides of a balance scale, the left-hand pan would never get off the ground and the right, even if they all jumped in unison would make no impression at all. But that reality doesn’t constitute a big enough threat and going after individuals seems so unfair – and after all, fairness is what the flock tell themselves they are all about.

The balance of probability...

So, instead of demonising the few critical opponents of the herd mentality, for balance they have dreamed up ‘the rise of the far-right’. It is far easier to justify shutting down speech, actions and dissent by any means if you can tell yourself that you are resisting a violent and numerous enemy. Meanwhile, of course, your own ideology is letting in hundreds of thousands of truly violent enemies via the Trojan horse of ‘human rights’.

It may be that the sanity of the western world hangs in the balance, but the scales are tipped too far one way at the moment. If a tipping point back towards sanity is ever going to happen that migration away from groupthink and back to asserting the rights of the individual needs to begin soon. I have few realistic hopes that it will, but the future of the west may depend on it.

Sanctuary... a fable

When the refugees came we were unprepared. They gathered at Calais and waited, seeking out every chance to join the transports. Lorries, ferries, even private cars became part of the fleet. It was impossible to document all of them, the numbers were too great. A trickle became a steady stream and the stream was beginning to burst its banks. Many of the ‘migrats’, as they were often referred to, had no papers, having fled violence in their country of origin, but all of them were in need of sanctuary. And where else to go to than the land they had heard so much about?

Across the English Channel there was the opportunity to start a new life; for many it was a chance to be reunited with loved ones who had made the crossing in earlier years. But now attitudes were beginning to harden. At first the border had been completely open; then it had become less easy to negotiate but still remained porous. Now, however, the sheer weight of numbers made it impossible for all to pass through without delay and they huddled in the resettlement camps awaiting their turn.

Once the emphasis on the part of the French authorities had been to detain migrants and dissuade them from continuing their journey. But now their main role was to shepherd the masses and marshal them into groups for processing, the better to maintain the flow; as fast as ferries could dock they were being loaded with foot passengers bound for freedom and for a better life.

Until Brexit, Britain had been a part of the European Union and although never party to the Schengen agreement, getting to this green and promised land had proved an eminently surmountable obstacle. But since secession, access to the UK had become an even more desirable goal and the thousands had to patiently wait their turn. For some the days had turned into weeks and for many the camp had become home. In a few cases it was the only home they had ever known and the Red Cross field hospital, initially set up to treat injury and disease, had become an ersatz maternity ward.   

The next great migration

Of course, nobody wanted to give birth on the French side if they could help it; they wanted their children to be English born, free born, and they came to Calais from all over the continent to make their bid for a new life away from the war zones. Paris, Munich, Amsterdam, Rome, even Brussels itself had become impossible places to live. As the islamic call to prayer rang out day and night and the infrastructure began to fall into disrepair, the white Europeans headed for the only sanctuary left in Europe.

Suspended

So, Twitter suspended my account.

No reason given that I can find; I can only assume that they object to my aversion to being blown up, or to my registering an aversion to being blown up. Or my perfectly reasonable observation that slaughtering animals in the streets and revelling in the blood and gore is not the sort of thing that most British people wish their elected officials to be praising.
Or maybe it was because I suggested that hordes of aggressive invaders of borders, who can in no way be considered refugees ought to be repelled, with deadly force if no other method yields results.
Or could it be because I voted to leave the European Union which is considered in itself to be an evil, subversive, democracy-denying act, intended to bring starvation, disease and humiliation upon the millions of correct-thinking people who didn't believe the lies on the bus?

One thing seems pretty certain though; it is only by expressing the approved opinions that one's voice may be heard on social media platforms. I suspect it is only so long before Blogger, too, will be policed by the useful idiots of the leftocracy.

Until then, then, it seems I have just this one platform left from which to spout my vile, far-right, Nazi hatred of decency and humanity.

Does anybody remember Free Expression?

PS: Do please let everybody know I've been axed and from the look of it I can't even log on to Twitter any more, so I can't see anything at all.

Maintain the lie...

If there was a prize for least relevant global organisation it would surely be awarded on a regular basis to the ridiculous IMF without whose presence the world would function perfectly fine. What is the purpose of this out of date, out of touch, out of ideas cabal of discredited gobshites? Especially when you read some of the shit they come out with: in cahoots with Project Fear they forecast the financial equivalent of cock cancer should the UK dare to even consider leaving the EU; their corrupt head honcho fraudulently escaped a jail sentence; and now they are trying their damnedest to wreck Spain.

Spain doesn’t need a lot of help in that regard, but having agreed to assist in facilitating the invasion of the machete-wielding, robbing, stabbing, raping army of illegal African immigrants, the IMF has taken it upon itself to collude in its cultural and economic suicide by trotting out a long discredited line of innumerate bullshit. Immigration is an unalloyed economic good, it insists and Spain needs another five million vibrant multiculturals just to pay its pensions.

A fundamental rule of propaganda is to stick with the lie. Repeat it, reinforce it, recruit talking heads to promote it, campaign to spread it, but never, ever admit it is a lie. Eventually, so the theory goes, people will accept without thinking that being white is racist, privilege must be atoned for, the Jews did it and ‘we need immigrants to pay the pensions of old, economically spent, racist white people’. After all, they stole your future, right kids?

It’s not difficult to pick apart this lie. For a start, it’s a fact that pensioners are putting off retirement and working longer simply because they can. Older workers often earn more and produce more than their young replacements because of a working lifetime of acquiring valuable knowledge and experience. As a result they pay more tax and without young families to raise, no longer consume resources such as schools and child-based medical facilities. Elders are generally well-behaved and rarely take up valuable police time and contrary to the picture of ageing, decrepit bed-blockers, many more older people are living active lifestyles that would shame some people half their age.

But far from retiring older workers, countries need them to work later into life. It is no longer viable for people to routinely retire in their sixties if they are then going to take a pension for a further thirty years. Working longer can keep people out of social care, medical care and state dependence, possibly for decades; post-retirement decline is a major contributor to poor elder lifestyles. But there is one huge elephant in the room; far from immigrants being needed to pay the pensions, it is the would-be pensioners who are needed to pay for the immigrants.

Maintain the lie. Spain has 3.5 million unemployed; import more unemployable. Maintain the lie. Low-paid workers are a drain on the economy; bring in more of them. Maintain the lie. Multiculturalism doesn’t work and immigrants don’t integrate; keep stuffing the ghettoes. Maintain the lie. Mass immigration increases crime, especially fraud and violent crime; keep ‘em coming. Maintain the lie. The IMF is part of the problem; the IMF is part of the solution. What do YOU believe?

Don't be stupid, be a smarty...

As the political world rages about Boris’s islamophobia and Jeremy’s anti-Semitism, while those who would be governed by them really couldn’t generally give less of a toss, I can’t help but wobble my head at the sad state of world affairs. Once, would-be leaders had noble aims and lofty ideals to make the world a better place; great statesmen plied their trade and built reputations for honesty, diligence and forthright adherence to... well, to something at least honourable. Now? Now it’s like a bunch of kids squabbling over inconsequential fripperies.

The greater mass of the British population are natural centrists. Oh, they may vote, at least historically, for leftist parties, misunderstanding their intent, but the core vote is fundamentally conservative by nature; by human nature. The Tories haven’t been even close to being right wing in living memory, which is one of the reasons they react with such horror to the much-vaunted but little-evidenced, ‘rise of the right’. Ask a working man what his true values are and you will hear recited the basic manifesto of what used to be the Conservative and Union Party:

Work, don’t shirk; pay your taxes; look after you and yours and charity begins at home. Tolerate others, but don’t let them take the piss. Law and order, control the border and happily and uncontroversially wave the appropriate flag at the appropriate events. Be proud, be patriotic but don’t take it too seriously. Crack on, make do and have a laugh at yourself when you fuck up. Give a bloke a fair chance, defend the weak, look after the sick and never forget that there, but for the grace of... etc.

But, oh my goodness, look at what passes for political activism today. Anti-Trump activists are actually – and hysterically - inciting violence and insurrection. Anti-Brexit activists have actually – and hysterically – called for violence and insurrection. The hapless and inept Tories, crippled by their desperation to offend nobody, just sit back and take it when they are attacked and defamed as ‘literally Nazis’ and ‘the nasty party’ by the nice young people who vocally wish them dead; by violent means.

Meantime, an invading and wholly incompatible ideology is excused yet another attempt to kill and maim because Boris made a lame quip? Who even believes this shit except for those with a vested interest in perpetuating the myth of multiculturalism? Britain is not and never was ‘a nation of immigrants’. And it is perfectly possible – demonstrably so - for black and brown people to be racist as racism has literally nothing to do with whether you hold  some nebulously defined position of ‘power’ or its proxy, ‘privilege’. What a crock.

You can’t make something true just because you say it is true and those of us – on both sides of the actually quite slender political divide – who daily deal with the real and pressing matters of the world know this. But still the divisive factions – all of them, every single one, cleaving to the far left – insist on maintaining the lies. Their mantra: keep the lie simple, keep telling it, especially tell it to the children and watch as the lie becomes truth.

Nazi? Moi?

While useful idiots like Owen Jones are screeching incoherently about the ‘far right’ and fascism and how the jackbooted Stormtroopers of the neo-Nazi Tory Party are recreating 1930s Germany it might be pertinent to point out a few cold truths: Leftist propaganda techniques are exactly as Joseph Goebbels recommended. It is not the right, but the friends of the left who are trying to kill us. And if they really want to see Nazis they need only look in the mirror.

Make do and mend

I was reminded yesterday of the mission statement, whereby virtue-signalling, fad-following company evangelists dream up ludicrously trite expressions which reveal the vast and echoing hollow emptiness of their souls. For every corporate vision you can be sure that a team of gutless, witless HR/PR/VCR types will have been paid good money; money that could otherwise have gone to maintaining or improving the core business.

But surely, they will protest, we do improve the core business... by focusing on the synergies which generate diverse new solutions, incentivising innovation and pro-active intervention in ongoing processes... going forward. Yes, of course you need to have an aim but honestly aren’t you fed up to the back teeth with all this ‘passion’ that companies are selling these days? Passionate about this, passionate about that. Yeah, yeah, we get it... but why not just be honest that all you are really passionate about is profit?

Admittedly, it must be nice to be engaged in an industry where profit is merely a happy outcome of doing something you really enjoy. But don’t rub our noses in it, for goodness’ sake; many people work at jobs which slowly grind them down over many years and these sorts of jobs are not improved – in fact, often the reverse – by the heavy-handed interventions of sociologists fiddling about at the extremities. Few companies were improved by the advent of the HR department and since when did HR become more important than the engineers and producers and front-line salespeople who do the hard miles?

The same is true in politics and thus we get vacuous bigots like David Lammy; greasy pole climbers with barely a brain cell not fully employed in dreaming up offence on behalf of anybody they have decreed must be offended. Politicians were once of the people – one of Labour's great achievements - and had grounding in real, local issues. Sure, there have always been idealists and there will always be those with a greater mission than sorting out the pothole problem, but when it comes down to it, the unglamorous potholes still need sorting out.

But so many MPs now come through the Oxford PPE, Spad, special interest routes that the impression among the wider electorate is that their concerns are as nothing against the great crusades of leftist thought. No cause, it seems, is too insignificant to get angry about and no imaginary slight too small to protest. For those caught up in the maelstrom of self-righteous outrage it all seems real enough, but from the outside you just look like a bunch of children stamping your tiny feet. If you ain’t gonna fix them potholes, we’ll have to do it ourselves.

In times of plenty nobody much cares about what our idiot political class is getting up to; there is enough to go around. But in times of stress – and by all accounts (if you believe such accounts) every budget is being stretched to breaking point and there is nothing in the pot for petty point-scoring. In the war, they were told to make do and mend; this is what is happening in politics now. Our MPs are no longer representing the core business of government; instead they have become the HR arm, forever fiddling with the inconsequential.

Our politics is broken... time to start over

When you can’t rely on elected officials to do their job you have to just ignore them and do it yourself. Cut through the waffle, crack on with the job and challenge every bit of pointless rhetoric posing as noble endeavour. And when after all your efforts to fix your member have proved insufficient you have to go out and make a new one. If you want a government that does what you want it to do, you can no longer rely on the existing political class. It’s time to make a new one from scratch.

The God Squad

Voltaire is credited with saying that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. He meant, of course that belief in a supernatural, omnipotent, supra-human entity was essential to a civilised society. In those less ordered times the apparent existence of such a divine and retributive power was an important weapon in the armoury of rulers, who could invoke the ultimate destiny of your soul as a means to control the wayward masses.

Nowadays we have other sticks to do all that. We have police and social media to keep you on the straight and narrow. We have sanctions such as Twitter bans and no-platforming and – worse – withdrawal of freedom of speech. God no longer sees into your heart; twenty-four-seven surveillance does that and woe betide the transgressors for they shall forfeit their internet privileges and be cast unto oblivion lest they spreadest unapproved thought.

Nietzsche told us, long ago, that god is dead, but the bugger won’t stay buried. He keeps popping up here and there (and much to the annoyance of the feminazis, god is almost universally a ‘he’) but these days he’s a much diminished deity. Battsby’s Jehovah Law states that the more devout your belief in a god, the less to be valued is your opinion on other matters. The corollary to that is that men of god are either simple fools with toothless agendas, or else cynical charlatans with evil intent.

Take the Pope – no, really – the papacy wields great power and controls great wealth and has access to texts denied the rest of humanity. The Pope is either an incredibly well-informed leader of millions, in which case he can’t possibly believe in god, or he is a simple dupe of others who pull his strings. I imagine the scene in the movie where, having been chosen to place his arse on the chair of St Peter, the new bishop of Rome is ushered into a star chamber where the true secrets of Catholicism are revealed.

Thereafter he must make a choice to continue the charade or else give up the top job. None have yet been equal to the tricky (and possibly fatal) task of honesty, from which I conclude that exactly like former Eurosceptic politicians who undergo Damascene conversions on attaining high office – Blair and Hague to list but two of many – Popes decide to swallow the blue pill and continue in a state of blissful compliance.

That propensity alone – the willingness to abandon rational enquiry – is worthy of ridicule. To imagine that a god who created all life can somehow be arsed to decree what you must wear is surely fertile ground for mockery. Dave Allen’s entire career was built on mocking religion, especially Roman Catholicism. He wasn’t struck down because, on the whole, Christians are a cheek-turning bunch. But can you imagine the fate of a modern counterpart turning his gaze on islam?

For three days the only news has been people repeating, over and over again the words which Boris merely wrote. As the clamour for him to be punished rise in pitch and increase in frenzy, we should remind ourselves on something else often (if erroneously) attributed to Voltaire: To discover who rules over you, simply find out who (or what) you are not allowed to criticise.

Return to the Planet of the Apes!

The climatists must be absolutely wetting themselves with a mixture of glee and fear; glee that – look – the giant spaceship IS coming to kill us all and fear that – oh my god – what beast from hell have we summoned? The latest from the increasingly unhinged fringes of ‘climate science’ is the projection of earth as an uninhabitable fireball where sea levels rise and the surface boils and only mutant silicone-based life forms will survive.

It panicked one article writer into producing a doom-laden thesis that we could save the planet if only we could somehow rein in the rise of the far-right. For Guardianistas, crushing anti-leftist sentiment is the key to everything. Global warming is the fault of evil, greedy, right-wing, evil, greedy, grasping, evil, greedy capitalism. It causes wars and mass migrations, leading to stabbings among sub-Saharan Africans on the streets of Europe’s capital cities and is it any wonder that we then get islamophobia?

Into this febrile eco-system steps a lumbering beast; a throwback to prehistoric times; times when language was a blunt instrument, unhoned by years of dedication to the cause of never, ever offending anybody likely to blow up in your face... The bien pensants of political correctness have been in conniptions ever since Boris said what most people think. And whatever else happens Boris must not apologise for making a perfectly apt observation about the ridiculousness of wearing slave sacks in a supposed free country.

But we’re dealing with ‘ologies’ here and if you got an ‘ology you’re a scientist, innit? And just as the climate chimps have learned to use the tools of their trade (which is attracting research funding – after all your trade is the means by which you make your living) so have the practitioners of eternal offence. The climate protection racket follows this logic:

• The climate is changing and we think we’re to blame.
• Give us money to see if this is true
• Yes, it is true, but we’re not sure how bad it’s going to get
• Give us more money...
• Repeat

This model has been so effective that, as everybody now knows, 97% of the people who depend for a living/reputation on proving man-made global climate catastrophe believe that their research is accurate, vital and must continue. And by the way, we’re all going to die; give now! Those who seek to make a living out of being grumpy about white people have watched and learned and POCs have their own funding model. The Perpetual Offence Cycle goes thus:

• Only white people can be racist so,
• Anything white people say should be examined for racist content
• The more we examine it, the more we find
• We need more time to study this, therefore...
• We have no time for actual work, thus,
• White people must pay us to keep hating them.

Those bastards finally did it...

And so it will go on, ad nauseum, until somebody stops them , or we slip back into the stone age. Nobody in government or opposition, has given any hint that they would even consider doing anything about it until now. And even now, all Boris has done is dip a toe into the waters of public opinion to see how it affects his approval rating - he's struck gold. Should he apologise? Should he fuck.

Bring it on

Once again, the tedious battle of Brexit drags on between the ardent, whining, earnest remainers who thrust all manner of fantasy facts into the debate, versus the lumpen, sluggish Leavers who only have emotion on their side. Of course this isn’t true. The ‘facts’ that Remainers wield are disputed, disparate and almost always pure conjecture. They frequently present straw-man fallacies (do they have sessions in smoke-filled rooms where they dream up their debating points?) and challenge Leavers to refute them.

By way of example I was recently asked: “Just for clarity are you really saying that you are content for the views of 17.4m as expressed in a flawed Advisory Ref to be imposed on the majority of the population (49m) without further consideration or consultation ?” This is as close to “So, to clarify, when did you stop beating your wife?” as makes no difference. It’s much like Jeremy Corbyn – who I am absolutely sure is horrified by anti-Semitism – having to repeatedly deny that his party has a problem with anti-Semitism. To respond at all is to play ‘stop hitting yourself’.

Parroting the arguments made by the remain flag bearers will have no effect on Leavers because such apparent precision is no part of the argument. It makes no difference to us that we might be 5% worse off, or have a 2.4% greater chance of suffering cataracts, or earthquakes because these things are unknowable. And it is precisely because we don’t know what the answer is that we can’t or won’t respond to their ridiculous ‘are you happy that *insert spookily precise disaster figure* will happen?’ demands.

But we do know what the answer isn’t. The answer isn’t to just ignore the evidence that our elected representatives don’t represent us. Our understanding of representative democracy is not that we elect somebody on a manifesto and then cheerfully accept their tearing up that very manifesto once in office because we have somehow now abrogated all involvement and must let our non-representatives represent only themselves.

And this de-coupling of power from the people is exacerbated when supposed sovereign nations then give over their decision making to even further removed Eurocrats. But they are elected, they are accountable, say the dullards of Remain; we do have democracy, see? But, of course, we don’t. The burghers of Brussels may be appointed or elected by people who have been appointed or elected but that is as far removed from a recognisable democracy as you having a say over who your parents are.

Yes, the complex issues of economics, immigration, defence, foreign policy, trade, etc, etc ARE beyond the intellectual grasp of the vast majority of voters. But these things are also beyond the ken of most politicians, who are even less likely to challenge those who really organise these affairs – civil services, special advisors, lobby groups, the media and global business interests who seek to control whole continents through manipulation of their government placemen. To break the spell, to cut through the glimmer you need the simplicity of thought of those who have nothing to gain from blind compliance and no reason to accept nebulous projections at face value.

Who's next for sanity?

So when we have it remainsplained that we are too simple to understand the complex issues, of course we agree with you. Because you are no better informed than we are; you are simply more invested in an opposite point of view which you think your force-fed facts somehow justify. Well, we want to free you from your serfdom; we want to help you see that you don’t need the arguments of others to justify your lives and we want to help you cope with the tiny adjustments you might need to make. Why did we vote for Brexit? We did it for you.

Oh, Tommy, Tommy!

The shadow of the fictional far-right falls across the land once again, cast by the diminutive figure of one man who has come to represent many things to many people. To Owen-Squealer-Jones he is a fraudster and fear figure, a leader of brown-shirted thugs, who has radicalised every thicko in the land to commit hate crimes against a beleaguered people afraid for their lives, who, allowed their cultural freedom, would happily dispatch Master Jones from the tallest tower in the capital.

To others he is a figure of singular significance, here to deliver us from the fate decreed by the forces of the evil leftist global dominators and their muslim attack dogs; leading the grass roots fight back against the oppression of the state. He is a V-for-Vendetta revolutionary, inspiring a heroic resistance to the overbearing state’s desire to neatly package its human livestock into easily defined categories that can be filed, and controlled.

Conspiracy theorists see the hidden hand of others – the Rothschilds, the Illuminati, Klansmen, Murdoch, *add favourite evil empire here* – secretly manipulating his appearances, his words and his media treatment for their own ends. As always, however, conspiracy theory is a mass of such muddle, contradiction and batshit-crazy, lizard-overlordity that it rarely survives scrutiny. But is that just what they want you to think?

Too much, you think? Well batty leftist Guardian witch, Carole Cadwalladr recently tweeted: “Robinson is the intolerable face of the new fascism. He’s funded by foreign interests to incite violence & racial hatred in UK. This is a threat to our national interest & national security. & it’s Bannon. The same Bannon who played major covert role in Brexit.” If that isn’t a master class in two-plus-two equals five then I don’t know what is. But hey, anything which gets the likes of Catweazle all balled up in fist-clenching, teeth-gritting fury is okay by me!

Isn’t the simple truth the most likely? Local footie hooligan gets angry at muslim disrespect for returning troops, sees how his home town has changed and recruits other hooligans to the cause. Realises thuggery is not the way, publicly leaves the group he founded and denounces violent direct action . Educates himself, grows up, sees the threat to himself and his family and finds himself targeted by the authorities for speaking out. Makes a decision to carry on and finds that millions support his cause, while millions revile him.

The State leans heavily on him and clumsily tries to silence him; puts him in the way of harm, harasses him frequently; he emerges stronger. It is the classic Robin Hood tale; the little man against the might of the law; the unsavoury truths they cannot silence. Now TR has become an international symbol of the fight against the less than savoury practices of the increasingly authoritarian British Establishment. TR is Brexit – Cadwalladr says so – and more so every day comes to be a symbol of the ordinary people versus the changes they haven’t been able to arrest.

It could be you

But what Tommy Robinson is, most of all, is a barometer of who you are. What you think of him speaks volumes. Swallow him whole and you might just be a gullible camp follower, quick to fists and slow of wit. Despise him and call him a Nazi and you are clearly part of the problem which created him in the first place. Others, without a firmly held agenda are surely capable of recognising that he has a point, however bluntly he makes it, and what ought to worry everybody greatly, is that what has happened to him could happen to anybody.

Merder

Well, it’s official. British gravity, so-called, is under threat. Since it was our very own Isaac Newton who invented the stuff, just after he saved the country from the Spanish Armada at the Battle of Britain, you would think that this uniquely British commodity would be free from Brexit woes, but no. It turns out that under EC Directive 1066 citizens of the UK have only been held down to terra firma by licence since Tony Blair’s government effectively outsourced our boots-firmly-on-the-ground resource to the EU.

The planned Scottish space centre will also be under threat as vacuums, including the vacuum of space, are strictly controlled by EU directives. We would only have access to outer space via the inner space of the Earth’s atmosphere, continued supplies of which are also threatened by a no-deal Brexit if PF, the department in charge of putting the fear of god up us, is to be believed. The level of anti-Brexit hysteria out there is such that it would be just a small step to imagining that even oxygen may need to be stockpiled and rationed unless some ill-defined ‘deal’ is put in place.

But fear not, sanity is at hand. Forget the outlandish prognostications of doom and disaster, for there is a concern far more parochial and immediate at hand. It turns out that sandwiches and snacks are under threat and people are deeply concerned about a  potential avocado drought. What, we can’t even rustle up a sandwich now? Apparently all sandwiches – in a country which actually has a town called SANDWICH for fuck’s sake – must be made by cheap foreign workers, so that lazy British workers can afford them, with all ingredients sourced abroad. Worse than that is the realisation that our world is so screwed that we’ve allowed a British Sandwich Association to exist; can we do nothing now without a committee? 

The BSA is of course only the latest in a long line of inconsequential and unknown assemblies of nonentities who have been pressed into the Remain cause. It feels like this whole association was concocted purely to add to PF’s litany of impossible things you never knew existed which you only just realised you couldn’t do without. What next? It would hardly raise an eyebrow to learn that even the weather has only been on loan from Spain – I expect they’ll want Gibraltar back in exchange and reckon that after a prolonged period of downpours we’ll be so depressed we will agree to anything.

Well let me tell you, Johnny Foreigner, the British can handle depression. Hell, we were bred to disappointment. We are phlegmatic because that is the only way you can survive been reviled by all and winning nothing. You think we are in a froth over maybe not getting Brexit? Have you learned nothing? We never expected to be allowed to leave; that we’ve strung it out this far is a major triumph. But don’t think that we have lost our good solid British pessimism and if we end up remaining it’s only what we expected in the first place. We only did it for a bet. Here, hold my beer.

This is no more than we expected...

But we’re also bloody minded and if we’d realised how seriously you lot were going to take it we’d have played you harder from the beginning. If we’d known just how nasty you were going to get we’d have been nicer about it all, just to piss you off. When our backs are really against the wall Brits have a long history of fighting back. You think Brexit is a shit storm? Bring it on – our shit is smellier than your shit. Merde, the French call it; well ours is merder.