Getting Cocky

This morning on the drive in to work, I caught a radio report about men in the UK seeking penile enlargement in ever increasing numbers. To avoid the cost of professional surgery, some were injecting their ‘lad’ with oils, Vaseline and other substances presumably sold under the counter for that express purpose. Fortunately the NHS is, as ever, on hand to rescue people from self-inflicted injury and self-directed stupidity.

As I get older I rarely claim any more to have the first clue what is going on in society. News, politics, science, etc, I get, but I have never been completely at ease with the sheer banality of ambition of the narcissists who strut and preen among us. The women who want to look exactly like Barbie, the doll. The incomprehensible need of many to adopt the Instagram pout and adorn their portrait with puppy noses and ears. The obsession of – while otherwise aiming for normal body proportions – white women trying to achieve the over-inflated, genetically specific, steatopygia arse. What is wrong with you all?

The cosmetic/beauty/fitness/glamour industries and all their offshoots occupy far too much of the national consciousness. So-called ‘reality’ TV and the public flaunting of your vanity, ignorance, lack of shame and sheer vacuity ought to be a target for ridicule. Instead it just encourages the morons to gag for more. Worse, nonentities end up becoming idols for people whose former life dreams rarely strayed far from their next fix of fried chicken and contraband cigarettes.

But all that pales in comparison with the phenomenon of blokes injecting oil into their old man. Why? Seriously, by the time you get the chance to deploy your wee man-missile, the battle has been won. Unless you have an acorn instead of a mighty oak it is unlikely she will even notice unless, you know, she has lots of very clear memories against which to compare your, er performance. But isn’t performance what it’s all about? Titchy Tom Cruise plays the giant Jack Reacher, for heaven’s sake; doesn’t that tell you anything?

We are not all blessed with looks, health, height and brains, but we make up for it with working with what we’ve got. Work faster, smarter, longer, harder or with more sheer persistence. Set goals and when you fall at the first hurdle, pick yourself up and start over; the only real architect of your success is you and when you sit at that drawing board you have to consider how to use what you have.

All the props – lift heels, hairpieces, tattoos, muscles – say far more negative things about you than you may imagine. What really matters is not how you change how you think you appear but how you deal with the hand you’ve been dealt. There is a level of vanity which is normal and makes us human. But vanity has got out of hand and self-awareness has been banished, along with personal responsibility; lost in the me-me-me culture which pervades.

So, if you’re looking in the mirror at your dick and wondering whether the object of your desire would admire a thicker one, just remember the object of your desire is almost certainly yourself. If you think that by having surgical alteration of a part of you that isn’t used as often as you’d like would improve the situation, consider how much action you’ll be having when the corrective skin graft is healing. Think once, think twice and don’t make a bigger prick of yourself than you already are.

Jobsworth

I almost feel sorry for Theresa May. Not so sorry that I don’t want her removed from office; to be honest she was a lacklustre and almost invisible Home Secretary and her slouch-shouldered, cringeworthy carriage does little to endear her to audiences. But she has done her job in a world which does not favour the bold any more and in managing to still occupy Number Ten after all the toxic briefings, leaks and open insurrection of party members she has demonstrated that she knows how to play the game of politics. Such a shame it is a game in which non-combatants take most of the casualties.

I have pondered the conundrum of the non-job economy which has proliferated over the last few decades. I can’t say I blame it on the EU, or on Tony Blair or any particular individual, but what I see depresses me. Some of the best paid jobs around bring approximately zero value to the world. Reciting the mantras of equality and diversity and trotting out the tired old memes that gender is a social construct, etc, requires no productive effort whatsoever. Yes, you expend a degree of mental energy in dreaming up new slogans, new arguments to cancel out the past and new ways to be offended, but what is the point of you?

The cogs in this right-on world somehow manage to mill money, to recycle wealth among themselves, but where did this wealth come from? The people who bake your bread and build your houses; the people who toil in manufacturing to make the things that clothe your world in luxury and convenience; the actual workers, who so many of you claim to represent are barely aware of your presence and if they do notice you, see you only as a detached talking head of no relevance to their own lives.

Millions of people are slaving away on minimal wages so that thousands can give themselves titles such as ‘head of customer experience’ in the NHS. They got sick, they saw the doctor, they got better. Customer experience? They are fucking ecstatic. And have you noticed how much more ‘diversity’ has been foisted upon us since they started coordinating it; what is it about the non-job universe that cannot see the damage they do? The rancid disease of identity politics infects young minds, poisons discourse and generally weakens the nation. Perhaps that’s the point.

And now, even the worlds’ top brains have signed a letter saying that science ‘might’ suffer if the UK leaves the EU. Et tu, scientists? Seriously, you people who live for the possibilities, search for the truth, uncover the meaning of the universe... you honestly think you can’t survive a change to your funding model? The mechanisms might differ but surely your enormous brains must be capable of explorative optimism and not the reductive misery of capitulation to non-job groupthink.

So yes, although I value Theresa May’s contribution to wellness in the world somewhere below where I would rate a half-decent doughnut, I appreciate it can’t be easy working out who you need to appease and then pretending to appease them. The bureaucracy of political correctness can often obscure your vision and blur the line between action and talking about action. But the talking is done now, so pleaser, Theresa, appease ‘em no more.

Despicable

It’s all over the news again and we may only now be realising the true scale of the problem, but the pattern has been clear for years. A group of men, some of them many decades older than their victims, and all of them from an identifiable significant minority have been demonstrating their powers and abusing their protected status to bring misery into the lives of many of the most vulnerable people in society. Their agenda and their methods are repeated up and down the country with impunity, as if they were laughing at us.

Using alternating threats and admonishments, occasionally tempered with declarations of sincere love and the bestowing of gifts to get their prey hooked, they have progressively groomed thousands and damaged the lives of thousands more. Many young people have grown up in their shadow and live chaotic lives into adulthood, unable to free themselves of their dependency on their despicable groomers.

This has been going on for many decades and has been facilitated by an establishment which did not want to know. Even now that the sheer enormity of the abuse is out in the open, the powers that be still refuse to admit their part in the whole scandalous affair. Turning a blind eye, refusing to act as so many people have implored them to do. We know they are not representative of the silent, peaceful, law-abiding majority but they continue to carry out their cultish atrocities in plain sight of the authorities, with impunity.

Within their own enclaves their evil is not only tolerated but, we must conclude, applauded as a blow against the British with whom they refuse to mix. Behind closed doors they debate and discuss ways to further infiltrate their ideology, replacing our culture with theirs. And they have kept their counsel until now, when we see them for what they are. But they may have come into the open too soon and now we know and we will never again trust our government and its agencies to keep us safe.

The new Europeans...

The world is watching what we do next and we need to demonstrate that we are no longer prepared to put up with it. The British will not be bullied into extinction but instead we must fight back. The first small blows have been struck, but we need to keep on going. If we can harden our resolve and stick to our principles and refuse to be made to feel ashamed by accusations of racism an end is in sight to this nightmare – we are leaving the EU and the whole Remainer class is just going to have to suck it up.

Mood Music

Once again a British Prime Minister has been to Brussels. Once again a British Prime Minister has been sent away with nothing, without even supper on this occasion. This ludicrously choreographed farce of Brexit-In-Name-Only is served up on a regular basis like a dire seventies sit-com, sans plot, sans imagination, sans entertainment, sans laughs. The PM barges on stage, her knickers fall down, the audience groans; we’ve seen it all before.

But wait, what light through yonder window breaks? Is it a new dawn or just the same old dreary daybreak? Suddenly, although the answer is still “Non!” as it always has been, we are told that there is a new body language, a new hope that maybe, just maybe, if we make yet more concessions... Body language? The only posture the slope-shouldered Theresa May now seems capable of is abject prostration at the feet of her masters. The UK electorate, you mean? No, it is clear who is in charge here and it is not we great British unwashed

We are told that the talks are ‘delicately poised’. Bollocks they are; the ‘deal’ was arranged months if not years ago.  All the rest has been obfuscation and delay and the Irish border question – as utterly irrelevant as it is – has somehow become the headline act. Nobody is here to see the bloody Irish border; we bought tickets for ringside seats at the battleground and instead have ended up in a bizare and unintelligible fringe event. This is nothing other than a stitch up.

There never was going to be an acceptable deal. We actually voted to leave behind all such arrangements and the EU has no intention of offering anything of any value, something it told David Cameron three years ago. We already voted on that no-deal, why are we being led down the garden path only to arrive at exactly the same point?

The EU – and by its naïve complicity, our own government – has done its best to make the whole Brexit process a thing of misery and fear and not the optimistic new wave of entrepreneurial energy it should have been. Our whole political class has behaved like despots desperately trying to cling onto the powers supposedly bestowed upon them by us and in the process utterly disregarding their proper allegiance and misunderstanding their place as servants, not masters.

When the whole sorry saga finally grinds to a halt and the bitter end is reached – and my god is it going to bitter – there is going to come a reckoning. In the meantime, how much longer is it going to take and how much more humiliation is Mrs May prepared to face before finally admitting what millions of us knew from the outset? The only response to the intransigence and mockery we have had to grin and bear is to leave the table and say “On yer way, Barnier”.

Just a matter of time

If we ignore it, perhaps it will go away? This might at first glance appear to be official government policy on islam in Britain, but you don’t have to look very far to see this is not true at all. Not only is the government – and the opposition – not looking away from the very clear muslim problem, it is actively conniving with the muslim brotherhood and its various subsidiaries to overthrow what is left of British identity.

There really is no such thing as a British muslim, as there are British Jews, British Christians, British Sikhs and British Hindus, because islam tolerates no other form of society once it has the power to impose its own totalitarianism on a conquered people. It is what it has done throughout its history and as far as the UK is concerned we are pretty much at tipping point. It may already be too late for our supposed leaders to turn around this oil tanker as it heads for the reef called sharia.

And it is happening across the civilised world; the barbarians are not only at the gates but streaming through, those portals held wide open by the forces of idiocy in authority driven by what I can only assume is a misplaced hope that the traitors will be beheaded last. There was no place for islam in the west until the west made one; past conflicts ensured that. But now, with the willing complicity of governments across Europe the mullahs look down upon beleaguered natives and see that the time is ripe. The EU has done their work for them:

First, create a supranational government and berate all who opposed it as narrow-minded xenophobes. Recruit the morons of the left who see all forms of pride – except of course the holy gay pride – as practically Nazism. Normalise the perverse, abandon the traditional and then open up your borders, usher in the invader with all his distasteful practices and barely veiled hatred of western culture, invite them to set up breeding colonies, protect them as if endangered species and to hammer home the point make judicious examples of all who object.

Import non-English speaking imams to set up jihadi groups and propagate hatred and then use native law to protect their headquarters from any attempt to discover what happens within. Object on cultural grounds to any attempt at restraint and assimilation. Subjugate the police to fawn at their feet and likewise bring in the infidel children to prostrate themselves at allah’s door. Build giant mosques and keep on breeding, keep on building and keep on taking, taking, taking the kuffar’s gold.

Replace native traditions with islamic ones. Make the celebration of Christmas an insult to islam and insist on parity for your minority traditions. Insist on ‘cultural sensitivity’, take over the food chain and make the vassals pay to have everything they eat certified halal. Cry racism and islamophobia at every turn... and keep on breeding.

This week Anjem Choudary is back on the streets, recruiting. The cost of monitoring him is hideous, yet  for fear of being called barbaric ourselves not a hair on his head was touched in jail, unlike others who have gone to prison at the behest of the government’s muslim masters. The police are already lost, the armed forces are rapidly being brought into the same line. Soon the only recourse for the citizen under siege will be direct action, for which they will be vigorously pursued and prosecuted. 

Storm coming

Statistics this week show an increase in the newly fashionable 'hate crime'. It matters not that much of this is perceived injustice and confected nonsense. In particular there seems to be some alarm and surprise that there is a supposed doubling of anti-islamic incidents. Nobody is surprised but the government. But nothing will be achieved by continuing to do nothing, other than facilitate what appears now to be inevitable. Religious war is coming. And we are not ready for it.

Every day is protest day

Gina Miller is calling for yet another march against democracy. As if it is not enough that every single week since the referendum there has been some form of whiny protest that the big boys voted for Brexit and ran away. Writing in the Independent she says “I can't imagine that Brexit – a dogma that is so obviously against the national interest – would ever have been allowed to get as far as it has by the gutsy, morally robust wartime generation. Why can't we pull together again?” We did, love, we did; and the vote didn’t go your way.

She’s not alone, though. Every such commentator – Alastair Campbell, Anna Soubry, Jolyon Maugham, AC Grayling, et al – adopts the position that they are entirely reasonable and that the 17.4 million haters who voted for such national self-harm are childish, gullible, naïve and propagandised by clever and manipulative intellects to vote against their own interests. Oh but wait, if the leave legions are so damned clever how come they didn’t win the argument in the first place and how come they didn’t spot all the Russian interference and the stomping Nazi jackboots ahead of their big humiliation?

They, the anti-Brexit bullies, are the antagonists here. They have insulted, derided, belittled and berated Leave voters with every sneer they can summon at every conceivable opportunity The punditry is pungent with pejorative as night after night the newsrooms, the chat shows, the political platforms are packed with a parade of the great and the good, all of whom imagine that their groupthink is unassailably right and the illiterate rabble of populist malcontents must be put back in their place. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

We used to say ‘the students are revolting’ because such perpetual protest used to be seen as very much the province of the young, the foolish, the self-absorbed and it was an unedifying sight. But that was back in the days when the grown-ups knew that eventually the children would grow up, take on responsibilities of their own and discover that if you want something you have to go out and earn it; demanding somebody else do it for you only cuts it until the aprons strings go twang.

But with the advent of kidults this notion that the world owes you seems never to have left some, especially those who are employed in the many non-productive industries that have replaced the traditional sources of our former wealth. The only people who ‘profit’ from the human rights industry, diversity proliferation and ‘vibrant’ multiculturalism are the parasites who self-define and aggrandise their roles. My bet? The overall national happiness and equality quotients would increase if we could rid ourselves of the freeloaders who promote antipathy in order to pretend to themselves they are fighting against it.

Some things you have to figure out for yourself

Maybe if they had real problems in their lives they would get on with solving them. Maybe if they spent less time worrying about what other people thought of them they could spend more time improving what other people thought of them. Maybe if they took responsibility for their personal welfare, the welfare of their local communities would also improve? And maybe, if they really cared about any of this, if they really cared about the future of the UK, they would have vote for Brexit.

I am Womxn hear me Roxr

There has been some hilarity this week over the Wellcome Collection’s backing down over the use of the alternative, unpronounceable and numeratively unclear spelling of a formerly inoffensive collective noun. “‘Womxn’ is apparently a relatively common term on US university campuses, as it ‘allows space for individuals who identify as genderfluid, genderqueer, gender non-conforming, or non-binary,’ according to the Daily Dot website. The ‘x’, we are told, ‘opens up the free-human-woman concept to include trans women’, since, of course, ‘woman’ excludes such people.”

Lucky people, eh? Lucky? Well, if the most important thing to you is whether you are politically correct enough, inclusive enough, diverse enough, accepting enough and you have the time to thoroughly steep yourself in gender studies and other confected fripperies, you probably have it pretty good. I guess when all your material needs are met you just need to complete the tick-list of fulfilled spiritual wants and you’re good to go. Please go.

Then there is the BBC’s intention to challenge ‘heteronormative’ culture at the corporation. Whaaaat? You want us to wear badges now?  You need special shorthand so that you can identify fellow sufferers, sympathisers, friendly non-combatants and what, the enemy? Should all the straights perhaps wear yellow stars, would that make it any easier? I have no problem with people expressing their desires, their differences, their hopes and even their crusades, and badges are as good a way as any other, but the problem with minorities these days is they will not rest until theirs is the majority view.

If a minority who perceives it has been persecuted can so arrange things that the majority are punished for their ordinariness how the hell does society ever manage to come up with a set of rules that are fundamentally fair to all? This whole business of identity politics is a symptom of the madness of atomised thinking, fractured societies and the breakdown of traditional structures in the quest for inclusivity, diversity and equality – all of which are singularly incompatible with each other.

You patently cannot have diversity AND equality and the wearing of badges strikes me as more exclusive than otherwise – or should we wear multiple badges. How about we wear no badge and perhaps judge people – for judge we must – on whether they’re a dick or not, rather than whether they have a dick or not? Why does everybody have to come out and declare an allegiance or worse, be forced into adopting an apparent allegiance they simply don’t feel? Can’t people who work at the BBC or go to university just be allowed to be who they are without having to constantly bear colours?

Karen White - because 'she' says so.

I blame Freud, with his crackpot mummy/daddy issues and somehow legitimising the hocus-pocus of cold reading as settled science. And once again it began with the chattering classes – the devil makes work for idle hands and all that. We used to have unwritten codes of behaviour in Britain which meant difference was largely tolerated. Now we have actual written criminal offences which demand they be obeyed. Can anybody spot the differxnce?

Eight days a week

I have been thinking about John McDonnel’s proposed four-day week. Obviously, I’d have got this piece out yesterday except it was one of my down days. I’m guessing the same excuse would become commonplace with clients demanding service – how dare they? The possibilities are endless: The production line, dispatch, delivery drivers, warehousemen, wholesalers, retailers - take your pick – were on their extra day off... consecutively. Complaint, madam? I’ll put you through; oh, wait, they’re not in today..

And what about that time off; how would you use it? No, I’m not talking to you, you outward bound, gad about town, charity volunteering, hobbyist sportspeople and all round good eggs that you are. It’s ‘them’ I’m addressing, the ones Johnny Mac is aiming his vote harvester at. Those who spend half the weekend pissed and the other half recovering, those for whom a hangover is an active, budgeted portion of their leisure. Downtime costs, whether you are active or indolent and particularly if you list ‘chilling’ among your hobbies.

Chilling is just look-how-cool-I-am slang for idling, slacking, doing nothing; if you were doing something of merit you would be too busy doing it to spend time tweeting pictures of your slippers, hangover face, over-priced coffee or trashed living room. When did sloth become so fashionably relatable? When did thrift and enterprise become so denigrated?

How about teachers, John? Would they also work a four-day week? Given a reported 20% adult functional illiteracy rate how would this help? Going for 40% maybe? What if some of those who do find work might not be able to read and understand their terms and conditions; how does that stack up for human rights, John? Mind you, if a four-day school week meant that educators (we don’t call them teachers any more, do we?) would have to cut out the do-goody-good diversity bullshit we might actually get somewhere. Perhaps they could ditch mindfulness, so maybe there are some real positives?

Now I’m not saying that total collapse on the couch isn’t a perfectly valid use of your non-working time but have you ever studied the habits of successful people? They don’t really have downtime. If they are not at formal work they are doing all those little things that keep a roof over their heads: fixing, cleaning, building... possibly even literally putting that roof back over their heads. But there is still the question of remuneration. Companies making use of automation will simply keep their savings on wages as profit for shareholders. Maybe we could all become shareholders, John?

The robots are coming!

Of course, there you go, you want that as well. But who is going to pay for it? Quick recap then, for those still paying attention: Four-day week, lower incomes, reduced output, lower GDP, less tax, more welfare demand, downward spiral of supply chasing reduced demand, credit mountain, personal bankruptcy; migration to citizen’s basic income to cover up the failings, descent into Venezuela territory, capital flight, total collapse of the economy. Maybe, John, politicians could do a four-day week... but I doubt many of them would welcome the overtime.

Live from Englande

We go now, live to the forest, where our time travelling reporter is about to interview a stout yeoman of old England...

Greeting, stout yeoman of Olde Englande!

Less of the olde, if you don’t mind. It might have taken us a few score years to assimilate and Anglify ye French invaders, but they speak Englishe nowe and after much work we have vanquished the Moor and established a vision of Englishe identity which will endure for a thousand years. We just have one last push, to quell those rebellious Scots and then all is, as they sayeth around here, bang on.

So, tell me pray, for what does an Englishman long?

 Only that which a reasonable man might expect. A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. A chance to own my own land and till my own furrow; an acre for my family. Would that I were granted health and happiness and a long life and to see my children enjoy what I have worked for and for them to toil likewise and to pass it on again in perpetuity to their own children. I wish for a legacy, for my time on earth to have value.

Seems pretty reasonable to me. But what of the lame, the sick, the demented?

Such weakness as accrues from sloth would attract my ire – the obese, the idle the drunk, the meddlesome witch, the troubling rabble rouser – and should be discouraged at first but if needs must be banished. But for those ails as may be no fault of thine own I beseech we can provide succour and balm, for it is a characteristic of we Englishe to bestow charity where it is needed.

Might you one day make alliance with a foreign power?

I pray there may be no neede but, of course, should great evil befall the land then if some friendly ally offers treaty in arms to fend off the devils, we should cooperate as pleases and benefits the peoples of both, for as long as is needed to triumph over that which threatens. Thus to the crusades we went in defence of the true way of Albion and her daughters.

And what of a foreign king, should he offer protection for fealty?

Nay, for we have but recently taken in the Norman and made him of our own. The invader has become native, tamed, trained and made civil as befits our Brittanic wayes. All may come here under sufferance that they give up their strange practices and adopt our own in their stead, for to become Englishe is truly to become as a king in thine own castle. We have no use for foreign masters.

Come at me, bruv!

Yet the court seer portends that one day a great nation of Europe shall arise which shall extend the hand of friendship and the shield of protection towards all ye of different faiths, nationalities, creeds, and allegiances. An empire which shall sweep away that which selfish nationhood has built and held for its own. Would you not seek end to war and famine and strife in return for a simple oath of unswerving loyalty to the union and all its agencies?

That can fucke right off.

Brexit means?

What the hell is going on with Brexit? Could it be true that Theresa May, a lacklustre Home Secretary and a personality-devoid drone, was the only option for leader after Mr PR, David Cameron stood down? Boris may have been no serious person’s choice for PM but he could raise more enthusiasm and support with a shrug and an incomprehensible and irrelevant Latin quip than May could muster with a Corbynite budget giveaway.

Brexit means Brexit, she said, but nobody really believed her. Yet we let her get on with  the assumption that she would be a moderately competent caretaker Prime Minister to oversee the tedium of disentangling us from the web of many lies weaved into the Brussels tapestry. Week by week we heard the EU negotiator say “Non!” in echoes of de Gaulle and week after week David Davis was sent back to the UK to try again. But we all knew his mission was fruitless; Cameron himself proved the lie that the EU could be reformed from within, what were the chances it could be reasoned with from outside?

And then Chequers – leaving but not actually leaving. Accepting much of the constraints we had voted to reject, but abandoning any show-trial say in shaping those constraints. Chequers has been widely derided as BrINO – Brexit In Name Only – but it is worse than that, it is not leaving at all. Not even in name. If you leave the golf club but still have to pay the fees, abide by the rules and take whatever tee times are left after the ‘real’ members have taken theirs then you have not left at all. The people of the UK did not wait forty years to vote to sort-of leave, a bit; no, we all knew that we wanted out altogether.

A ‘free trade deal’? Seriously, nobody has even managed to explain what that means. We can, surely, trade freely with whomever we wish. Should tariffs be applied the so be it, people will still exercise freedom of choice and accept or reject the terms of trade as best fits their needs and their pockets. Idiots will still pay over the odds for status items and the rest of us will cut our cloth to suit. Fewer brands of pasta sauce on the shelves? Great; make your own. Passport checks on the continent? You believe they will set up internal borders to pull over and check ever UK registered vehicle? The planes won’t fly? Roaming charges? Oh, pur-lease!

Brexit will have no long-term negative effects on the ability of the UK to prosper. Yes, there will be short term bumps in the road, there will be realignments, there will even – shock, horror – be ‘friction’ until agreements come along to grease the wheels. But don’t worry, none of this is going to happen. It is clear by now that our ‘betters’ have decided we are not leaving the EU at all. The sinister machinations of the Evil Empire are working towards their end game and it has all gone horribly to plan.

We have a Prime Minister that the country would never have chosen. And one who weakened even her own precarious position by fluffing an unnecessary general election. One who managed to procrastinate to give time for Gina Miller and her puppeteers to get their act together. Even her posture shouts failure; she has the demeanour and gravitas of a whipped puppy. And now, with the Chequers coup – rejected by all, yet still nominally in play – she is playing the part she was put in place to play.

Can you imagine a more apt metaphor for the ideological behemoth of the EU than an impotent figurehead with no majority, commanding not even the support or respect of her own party, yet nevertheless appearing to hold the reins? The circus of conference, with the whipped minions applauding her indecision, further added to the sense of doomed inevitability. Yes she is a caretaker PM, but a caretaker for the EU not for the UK, simply working out her allotted sentence, shuffling the paperwork to deny Brexit. If we want to leave, something has to happen; and it has to happen soon.

Art for Art's Sake?

Art; what is it good for? Well, in this case the advancement of the end of civilisation as we have known it for millennia. But, hey, everything has its day, right? American ‘artist’ Tom Sachs presents his art installation (and that word alone alerts you to the sheer fuckwittery of the enterprise) the Swiss Passport Office. Here, for a mere twenty Euros – no pounds allowed – you can procure an elaborately fake Swiss Passport. What’s not to like? Well, the hypocrisy of the thing, for a start. Sachs believes there should be no borders but somehow argues that possession of the entry ticket to what he believes to be the most elite nationality in the world is a step in granting that status to all.

Wait, what? Back up a little. Switzerland, he says, is a nation defined by borders, within which its citizens enjoy a privileged and protected existence, which he thinks should be accessible to all. But his primary thesis is that despite acknowledging that it is those very borders which defend their exclusivity, the world can achieve a superior equality for all without them. Sachs is a champion for a borderless world, an enemy of the nation state (except Switzerland, it seems) and a great advocate for projects such as the EU. He may require strong medication to keep the cognitive dissonance at bay

It is a part of the human condition to want to belong. Without this sense of belonging we are hollow voices, bleating into the void. But once we get together as cohesive and recognisable communities we can achieve remarkable things. The whole of civilisation is built on the concept of belonging and the nation state is its apotheoses. With nationality comes a whole host of benefits which accrue to those who have participated, to those who have contributed. Under the western nation state model, in particular, we have built health, welfare, education law and order and security into the very fabric of our society. This is undeniably better than other models.

So why should YOU get to share in what WE have created? Why should a rich country open its borders to one and all? We are not one human tribe, equal in our suffering and equal in our entitlements. Even the concept of human rights is a purely theoretical construct. But the products of our labours – our homes, our roads, our hospitals, our internet – these are not theoretical, nebulous ideals, these are real things in finite quantities. Without state you have no identity, without identity how do you prove you are entitled to any share of what that identity provides?

In Tom Sach’s borderless world – and we are seeing this internally as the state loses its confidence to maintain order – we would be atomised into identities based not on shared endeavour, but on shared perceived injustices; grievance tribes, vying with each other to plunder the resources of those who more readily identify as patriots and non-victims. The irony of the open-borders campaigners is that those they allow in would have even less regard for their weaknesses as those of us who currently pay to indulge them.

LGBT Pride 1923

Nationhood is our strength and imposed diversity erodes that strength. Without nations, cleaving tightly to territory, defending national ways of life, the world would be an infinitesimally atomised place with tribal groups in constant states of tension against other groups having only marginal differences. The current LGBT movement might well become separated into never-cooperating L, G, B & T entities. The miracle of the nation state is that under a shared national identity  with common greater interests we can tolerate  so much diversity because we share at least this one, huge allegiance. The only thing that the massed ‘difference’ movements have achieved is misery, division and grievance. The nation state is far from dead, it is the last refuge of civilisation

We've got this

There is a curious calculus behind the obsession with immigration. It seems to go: we need to collect more taxes so that we can spend more on people who are getting older and not paying taxes. Therefore, we need even more people to pay taxes, etc, which by an illogical leap shape-shifts into the argument that immigration is ‘a good thing’ conveniently omitting the clear downsides of uncontrolled, un-scrutinised mass immigration from the third world. Then, in attempts to excuse the signal failure of successive governments to look after the very real interests, hopes and aspirations of their indigenous people, population rise is somehow sold as a necessity. It’s not.

Intelligent, educated, useful, productive people make sensible choices in the main. They limit their progeny so as to be able to better provide for them and as they are productive people they have interesting jobs, long progressive careers and can gain fulfilment via a whole range of pursuits. Busy, happy, bustling people find their place in society and muck in; they are the village that raises the kind of child we need to nurture. It might be a schmaltzy, ‘mom and pop’, apple pie kind of vision and you might think the world outgrew the American Dream since the 1950s, but what did we replace that shining visions with?

The bovine lumpen masses have little spark, lead dull, unproductive lives and lacking the intellect – whether by nature or nurture (and there is plenty of evidence for both) – for finer pursuits, turn instead to their animal urges and procreation to create a sense of ease they can only otherwise achieve by drunkenness or football or ‘reality’ TV. Our entire politico-economic model seems to punish thrift and endeavour, while rewarding indolence and greed. And the answer to the ever-burgeoning welfare bill? Bring in hundreds of thousands of destructive, disruptive and costly extra mouths to feed. This is simply unsustainable... and unbelievably stupid.

We should be shrinking the population, ridding ourselves of those who are part of the problem and inculcating in all our citizens the urge to do better. Try harder, exercise restraint, improve yourself, earn more, have just enough kids to replace yourselves and educate them to within an inch of a Nobel prize to do better than you. They should be building and controlling the machines which for a century or more have been widely surmised will eventually do all the drudge work. But the path we are on means we will increasingly look to outsiders to make the machines and write their code.

Sod the end to austerity; sensible austerity should be a default setting for any administration, not building our civilisation on reckless consumption. Cut out the fat, the non-jobs, the psycho-sexual-identity bullshit, the meaningless conveyor belt of useless degrees which only churn out malcontents and moochers. We could do with a bit less diversity, a somewhat less ’vibrant’ (stabby) inner city and it’s time to end the obsession with indulging every individual their own peculiar proclivities.

Destination Britain 2100

Forget the mediocre pathway outlined by Theresa Maybot and let’s look instead for a bold new vision and a leader who isn’t afraid to say, fuck you. Fuck you, Andrew Adonis et al, we’re rescinding your unearned peerages. Fuck you, ‘Human Resources’, you are a big part of the problem. Fuck you, trans-activist aggressors, forcing your freakish, cock-ridden, be-titted bodies on frightened children. And fuck you, Corbynistas, you communist twats. Give us hope, give us jobs, give us education, give us stability and fuck the rest. Who will stand up for Britain? Sit down, Boris, we’ve got this.

The Fourth Estate

The other day I watched The Post, the 2017 biopic of the Washington Post’s revelations about backroom dealings behind the Vietnam War. Without intending to spoil – it is all in the public domain now anyway – the fundamental message is that press freedom is an essential pillar of democracy. The press is, or should be, unafraid to challenge government and in that respect it should act in the interests of the general population who rely on free and fair information. If government truly is for and of and by the people, then the people need to be reliably informed. They’re not.

That period was characterised as the age of propaganda, the cold war and the guarded use of knowledge as a weapon of war. But since glasnost and freedom of information the new age of mass communication has morphed into the age of disinformation. Today, governments are at war with their people as possibly never before and the press is often complicit. Even the language used to frame the ‘news’ shames even the best of the press at times. Listen to any mainstream news broadcast and you will hear, liberally enunciated, the terms far-right, hard right, extreme right, neo-fascist, etc.

Leftist listeners, however, only hear their darlings referred to as hard left, Marxist, Corbynite and so on.  With so-called ‘citizen journalists’ indulging their own biases,  putting out highly selective video clips, using old photographs to supposedly illustrate current events and constructing elaborate but untrue memes, either in malice or ignorance, the picture gets ever more indistinct. Fake news? The hard part is discerning the non-fake news.

As soon as you subscribe to one view or another it is difficult to critically view anything that crosses your sight lines. If you disagree with it, it must be confection, if it rings your bell it must be gospel. Out-of-context soundbites, ‘adjusted’ statistics, opinion posted as fact, fact posted as supposition and provenance going out of the window are commonplace. Newsreaders are now commentators and none of them are truly impartial. Even the magnificently even-handed Andrew Neil is seen as a far-right propagandist by the left, while the entirety of the Sky News team are branded communist stooges by the right.

The Fourth estate is now cynically viewed as the Fifth Column by many people. And when you don’t trust your news sources, don’t trust your politicians and have no clear means of obtaining an objective view of the battle is it any wonder that we all retreat to the safety of our own little band of brothers. From the middle of the mob you can only see what that mob wants you to see... and you can’t even see that that is all you can see. Watch the movie and ask yourself, would the Pentagon Papers ever see the light of day in 2018, or would they simply be dismissed as fake news?