Where are all the heroes?

In 1940, Lt. Com. Gerard Broadmead Roppe, sacrificed his ship and his own life in the commission of his sworn duty to fight the German menace. Such was his bravery that this action led to him being awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross, the commendation being recommended by the German Captain against who he fought. Outgunned, out manned and outmanoeuvred, Roppe nevertheless fought on when he could have cut and run and saved himself.

In times of crisis, history pivots about the actions of a very few, determined, principled and sometimes reckless individuals who put duty before self, duty before reputation and duty before their own inclinations, in order to do the right thing. Would that we had more such people but, as Winston Churchill observed, a few can make all the difference. So where are they today? Because, make no mistake, we are in a time of crisis. No, not Brexit, but bigger even than that; our entire system of governance is in a mess it cannot solve.

It has always been the case – and frequently observed – that lickspittles, sycophants and all forms of grovelling yes-men have been elevated beyond their worth simply for giving up all principles to suck up to their masters. Such men – for it is mostly men, after all – have been rightly despised, but wear their shame lightly. Some even flaunt their undeserved privilege when they would be better advised to retire altogether from public life. Peter Mandelson springs readily to mind.

And then there is Adonis. LORD Andrew Adonis; a once-elected local councillor who has made no known useful contribution to any part of the national endeavour still pokes his beak in where it is neither wanted nor heeded. The inventory of names that should go down in ignominy is long and growing. In a just world people such as Heseltine, McDonnell, Clarke, Soubry, Grieve, Hammond, Swinson, Bercow and on and on would disappear into eternal oblivion the second they leave office, but you just know they are going to keep on making appearances long after their duplicitous public days have ended. (In Adonis's case he now wants the world to celebrate his finally recognising what we have all known for ages. Yeah, yeah... whatever.) 

For the calibre of such people is quite, quite low. When you sell yourself once you signal to the world that you are for sale; and when you sell yourself low almost any cause can afford you. These are the worms. Snakes, vermin, the rats who leave the sinking ship. Without honour, without sincerity and without trust, such crawling, disgusting creatures are despised even by those they temporarily serve. History is littered with the treachery of the mediocre.

To become a ‘servant of the people’, to become a member of the Mother of Parliaments should require courage, self-sacrifice and an honesty so steadfast that it would shame even the boy who called out the naked emperor. Our leaders should be unimpeachable good guys, yet utterly ruthless when it comes down to taking decisive action. Sadly, we humans are practically defined by our fallibility and those who heroically try to scale the greasy pole are often shot down. It’s those who slime their way up that succeed; what should be a meritocracy is often just a pool of also-rans.

Promoted out of trouble, ennobled to still their mouths, rewarded for lending their vote for favour, these uncharismatic grey men dominate politics. For every towering figurehead there is an army of unremarkable nobodies made somebody. And the EU exemplifies this system, run as it is by unknowns. The only reason we have even heard of people like Junker, Tusk, Ursula von der Leyon et al is because the Brexit process has exposed these night crawlers to the light. Their time will soon pass.

You see only what they want you to see...

But behind even them there is the might of the civil service; the truly anonymous and unaccountable, who really pull the strings. Even the best of ministers has only a temporary and fragile grasp of the brief as he or she tries not to screw up, their main mission being just to survive and make it to the next level of the game. In the world of conspiracy theories we are often invited to ‘follow the money’, but if we really want to know who is ruling our lives we may be better advised to follow the failure.

They'll be back...

I have spent two days this week watching a demonstration of my general population thesis that most people do exactly as little as they need to do in order not to get sacked. Or in this particular case in order not to fail the practical assessment of what can amusingly be called their competence in testing electrical installations. It can’t only be electricians who are barely capable in what they do; I have seen the same principle demonstrated in many other disciplines and it is now the prism through which I examine most of my encounters with the human species.

Just enough, just in time is a principle – and one which they say is threatened by Brexit – which became dominant in supply chains in the eighties. It has some merit; why keep stock, sometimes for years, which may become obsolete before it is used, or ties up capital which can best be invested elsewhere? But the capacity of the human brain to store information and master skills appears to be beyond our ability to even measure, let alone limit, so why would we voluntarily give up the opportunity to be better? There is no valour in ‘just enough knowledge’ and the wilful lack of curiosity, of acquiring and storing knowledge in abundance is a crime against human capability.

We have all encountered useless solicitors, dodgy tradesmen, indifferent carers, uneducated educators and impotent officials and we have all railed against them – it’s sometimes as if that is the sole purpose of social media - but how often have you turned the spotlight on yourself? The “I’m not the problem here” syndrome is an insidious one and one with which most sufferers don’t even realise they are afflicted. It almost seems that the only areas in which people excel are the ones which make the least positive contribution to their lives.

For instance: worrying about the use of pronouns, avoiding upsetting idiots who self-identify as something other than 99% of the population; dreaming up ways of being offended; detecting casual racism and identifying almost entirely fictitious ‘hate crime’. We ban words, no-platform decent people with important things to say, dismiss the contribution of the people who invented civilisation while simultaneously insisting we respect the views of those who wish to bring it down. And worst of all is the blind acceptance of the assertions of others with neither the evidence to examine nor the intellect to understand it.

It’s the economy, stupid. It’s climate change, you idiot. Don’t be racist, don’t be homophobic, think of the cheeldren and how dare you assume my gender! We come under a daily barrage of admonishments and even the most woke are not immune. Nothing we can do or say is ever really deemed good enough and all the while our cognitive abilities, our critical thinking skills atrophy from lack of use. We marvel when one public figure is completely exonerated after using terms which would bring excoriation down on another; there are moral value judgements being made outside of our ability to understand and learn from.

If only there was a way of teaching everybody the rules and then having everybody obey those rules? If only there was some form of perfect, infallible being – not a god, but a corporeal entity – that would not make the mistakes that mere humans do. If only we were ruled, ordered and policed in an even-handed, non-biased manner which would reach the ame conclusions every time, based on the same evidence. If only we could bypass the waste and clutter and human disorderliness and prejudice.

Parliament isn't tough enough

Much intellectual capital has been spent over the last half a century regarding the por decision-making skills of humans and the development of artificial intelligences which perform far better. Today our Parliament, comprised of feeble, fallible humans will attempt to break the Brexit logjam. But will they apply cold, hard logic to the problem in order to come up with the best solution? Nope. Every last one of them, convinced they are on the side of right, will base their words and actions on too little information, too little brain power and blind, irrational partisan faith. This task is too difficult for humans. Time to bring on the robots!

Train Times

Contrasting accounts have been doing the rounds today regarding the removal of Extinction Rebellion protesters from the top of a commuter train in Canning Town. Cue the outrage from the perpetually offended who saw unacceptable levels of mob violence and feel vindicated in any attempts to frustrate their gruntish, little lives and educate their narrow little minds. Cheers from, well, the vast majority of ordinary people who are simply not part of the problem.

Of course you would expect me, of all people, to come down on the side of ‘anybody but the protesters’; that is generally a good bet to place. But what happenied here is indicative, I think, that maybe the will of the people has not yet been broken down and we are not the simpering weaklings, desperate to kow-tow to a culture of inclusion at all costs. Sod the personal safety of the protesters; they were standing on top of a train, for goodness’ sake.

But this was no ugly, frothing crowd; this was no middle-eastern style lynch mob. In fact the first instinct of many bystanders was to protect the fallen protesters from any physical harm. Given the disruption – not just to the passengers on that platform, but to those backed up in tunnels around the network as a result – swift and proportionate direct action was exactly the right response. And it felt good to see them do something, rather than wait ages for others to step in.

Had the police been involved it is likely that in an effort to behave in a politically sensitive way the whole network would have been evacuated, the train climbers engaged in dialogue and talked down several hours later – no doubt after having had special vegan snacks brought in - to be delicately handcuffed, had their rights read and thenceforth to be released to repeat their offences elsewhere. The police are not sufficiently numerous, nor do they have sufficient freedom of action for this kind of work. The protesters know that police resources mean a small number of people can spoil things for many.,

What we maybe need to see much more of is the man in the street taking direct action against those attempting to disrupt their lives. And this little demonstration showed that, unlike many other parts of the world, some of our near neighbours included, such action need not be either violent or uncontrolled. In fact, all we need is to be allowed to be British about it; that doesn’t merely mean tutting, sighing and saying ‘mustn’t grumble’ but getting up and actually doing something about it.

We're not going to take it any more...

We are not a people for whom protest comes naturally and organised demonstrations smack far too much of mass, leftist manipulation of ignorance. What is far more authentically British, I think, is the understanding that should your communistic agitations get tiresome, should you set out to cause trouble, somebody might just roll up their sleeves and sort you out. Climate Justice, you demand? I say common sense and justice for the common man.

Apocalypse Not Now

Anna cautiously drew back the curtains and tried to peer outside, but the anti-bomb film on the inside of the glass was opaque and when she peeled a corner away the adhesive left a sticky smear which, if anything, was even more impenetrable. She shivered, stuck the film back down, reclosed the curtains and turned away. The room was in darkness but she knew there was no point in trying to turn the light on; the electricity would have been out for days now and anyway, a spark might be enough to set off a gas explosion, although she couldn’t - at least she thought she couldn't - smell any leaking gas.

They had been warned of all this, of course, at the same time as they had explained about the other post-event disasters. Food would run out in hours, fuel stations, pumped dry in advance of the expected civil disorder and looting, would stand forlorn and the high street shops were obviously all boarded up. The collapse of the banking system would have precipitated mass rioting and unless you had taken out expensive security contracts nowhere was safe. Behind walls and barriers, in compounds protected by armed guards, the elites would survive, for as long as they could pay off the guards. But how would they fare when money itself became meaningless?

No transport, no travel, no school, no medicine. The hospitals would have been overwhelmed in the first forty-eight hours after the extinction event and when the sickness came it would swiftly take those gathered, immobile, in such high concentrations. And of course the camps themselves. ‘Concentration’ was perhaps hyperbolic, but what would be the fate of those rounded up and interned in the repatriation camps? Would they have been processed and removed to a place of safety, or would they have been left to rot? It was all too horrible to contemplate.

And as Anna contemplated their demise, what of hers? She had tinned food for a few days and regretted not having stockpiled more, but what was done was done. Soon she would have to venture outside and forage for her survival, as the pre-event training videos had warned. Without her smartphone – the network would be down and in any case her battery had died some time ago – how would she manage to contact other survivors? She was going to have to find out sooner or later.

Suddenly a harsh noise interrupted her reverie and she was startled... confused. The phone. The landline phone, which she rarely used these days was demanding that she answer. Could it be that some resourceful and determined freedom fighters had managed to get the network up and working? Or was it a trap? The phone rang again… and again. Wound up like a spring, Anna slowly advanced towards the ringing, whose sound now had a touch of urgency about it. Again and again it rang and she hesitated, her hand trembling as she reached for the receiver and paused.

Gathering her strength she grabbed the receiver and held it to her ear. “Hello?” she ventured. “Who is this?” Then she listened as the voice at the other end solicitously inquired about her health. “I’m fine. I feel fine… for now,” replied Anna. She listened for a while, occasionally affirming that she had understood. “Yes,” she said, and “aha, I see…” and “Are you sure? I didn’t realise… I thought…” and eventually, “Okay, I’ll be there as soon as I can.” She put the phone down. Work. How odd.

What, no monsters?

Anna flicked the switch and the light came on. No gas explosion. The same experiment was repeated in the bathroom, where she took a hot shower. After three days of darkness and cold it was good to wash the itch out of her skin. A few minutes later she was dressed and stood by the front door, listening for the sounds of violence outside. There were none. As the bright sunlight flooded in from outside Anna blinked. The distant hum of traffic from the main road at the end of her quiet, neat cul-de-sac serenaded her ears; the melody said nothing was wrong. As she backed her car into the road and began her journey the soothing tones of the Today programme on Radio 4 told her that all was as it should be. So much for the horrors of a no-deal Brexit.

A Question of Identity

The ‘new’ Conservative government have let it be known they intend to introduce voter ID. Predictably the left – every last man-jack of them – is in uproar. This disenfranchises the poor, the minorities, the (altogether now) most vulnerable in society, they scream in unison, before going on to list the ways that this is (literally) Nazism in action. Jew haff ze papers, jah? Why, we may as well sew yellow stars on their sackcloth garments, brand them unclean, or make them ring a leper’s bell. (Although Labour may do well to avoid the yellow star association, what with them facing bankruptcy over their unfortunate antisemitism habit.)

All political parties tend to have an appeal for a particular sector of society. Tories for the actual workers, Greens for the old-fart hippies and callow youth, SNP for the rabid nationalistic English-haters, LibDems for the don’t-knows, etc. But the Labour Party has a manufactured client voter base in a way that no other party does and the thing that unites them all is victimhood. The party relies heavily on the under-educated, the outsiders, the ‘other’; in fact anybody whose sense of grievance can be stoked and whose support can be mobilised in the name of ‘social justice.

For most normal people, people who fend for themselves and their family, social justice means an overall fairness. It means we toil away and make our living however we can and we all contribute to the common good. It means that we expect a fair go and that those who deviate from acceptable behaviour will be corrected and if necessary punished. True social justice means that everybody knows the rules and trusts that they will be applied proportionately and evenly. It also means that those who, through no fault of their own, are disadvantaged in anyway can expect some accommodation for their plight.

What it doesn’t mean is equality of outcome. It doesn’t mean that some groups should be granted, by diktat, advantages above others. It doesn’t mean the creation of victim groups and the pursuit of a narrative of misery. One of the biggest adversaries of the Labour dream is success. Under Tony Blair’s time at the top, Peter Mandelson actually encouraged the pursuit of wealth. The phrase ‘filthy rich’ was used and not in a pejorative sense. And people understood, for a time, that wealth was nothing to be ashamed of. Corbyn has turned that around and resurrected failure as a life choice.

People achieve wealth by relative few routes: for most it comes through work, luck or charity. But if you are wedded to a version of the world in which the state provides everything, then a fourth popular avenue is corruption. Riven through every socialist administration is the heavy taint of hypocritical exploitation of resources nobly intended to ease the suffering of the poor. To grab a handful for yourself, all you have to do is show you are suffering, ideally by identifying with one or more of the left’s favoured causes. And all it costs you is your vote.

Vote Labour and you vote for the perpetuation of mediocrity. Vote Labour and you get to plead poverty and prejudice and forever identify as an underdog. But an underdog who doesn’t have to prove eligibility to vote. Underdogs who can operate vote farms in certain communities to unfairly return ‘representatives’ who will work hard to maintain your status as apparent Untermenschen.

The government propose, as part of their move to properly legitimise voting, the introduction of free photo ID for those who don’t already have it, but that isn’t good enough for Labour. They are now concocting a victim narrative that suggests their client base is so disadvantaged that they may not even realise they need to be registered in order to vote; how could you expect such people to also take steps to prove they are who they say they are? The fact is, Labour just don’t want people to be politically engaged unless they are already signed up to the red card mob.

You can be whoever you want to be...

So, the downtrodden masses who, despite needing ID to collect a parcel from the Post Office, to drive, to travel or to claim benefits from the state are somehow incapable of proving who they are? Pull the other one. And the ridiculous notion that those who have made the effort to register to vote are insufficiently motivated to pop down to the council offices to pick up a free voter ID card? If they can't be bothered to vote, if they don't know they might need ID, if they are so politically disengaged that the need for a card will put them off altogether, if the only reason they will vote is to get free stuff, is their vote worth defending at all? 

All bets are off

Punters at the racecourse tear up their betting slips, quite possibly curse loudly and almost certainly regret their losing choices. But no matter how close the photo finish, they don’t then go to the bookies and demand to be paid out anyway. Because when they lose, as undignified as losing may be, they accept their losses and move on. Maybe they decide to stop gambling altogether. Maybe they dig into their pockets and have another go. Whatever, they lost; they accept that simple fact.

In the hustle and bustle of our busy lives millions lose something every day. Sometimes it’s the little things, like their bus pass, car keys, or that top secret defence file; sometimes it’s bigger stuff such as their battle against anxiety, obesity… cancer. But ultimately, for most of us, losing is just another facet of life itself and very few of use lose our shit the way the massed ranks of the remain mobs go about business.

Mass movements don’t spring from nowhere, there needs to be a catalyst. The current trend to bow before Saint Greta of No-Nobel arose because she inspired thousands of credulous children to believe in her imperfect understanding of climatological trends. All very innocent if a bit worrying. But Extinction Rebellion is made of sterner stuff and deliberately conflate unconnected issues to weave a narrative of societal breakdown with which to attack the very thing which allows them the lives they have; capitalism. For make no mistake, this is their true aim.

Individual people can and do concoct crackpot theories, theories which are readily dismissed by most audiences. But repeat an untruth often enough and it starts to have an impact. If ‘everybody’ is saying it, maybe there is some truth in it? Partial truths, conjecture, a dash of charisma and a heavy helping of doomsday prophecy and all of a sudden we turn into Chicken Licken. The man on the telly said there will be mass starvation… so it must be true; it was on the telly. In colour!

The massed ranks of remain didn't just spontaneously rise up to oppose Brexit. We are expected to accept that the hordes who regularly shuffle, dance and screech their way around London’s streets of a weekend have independently converged on the capital to show how their loss was the wrong loss; how their vote was somehow more important than our vote. But it’s just not true; they were 'radicalised' by a concerted effort from the establishment, the media and academia. The people who hold the strings; the people who control communication the people who write the news.

I’m not claiming any greater prescience for those of us who voted leave. I even accept the premise that the more ‘educated’ tended to vote to remain; why wouldn’t they, as many of them derive a living from the exactly the kind of non-jobs that arise from acceptance of ‘progressive’ policies and exactly the kind of overtly managed society we were at least partly voting against.

The numbers for leave were and probably still are greater than the numbers for remain. But the EU acolytes have control of the narrative and that narrative has been relentless. If you come out for Brexit you are derided as primitive, thuggish, xenophobic, racist and bordering on being, if not actually swastika-bearing, Nazis. If you voted to leave the EU, you are informed, it is you who is responsible for ‘the rise of the far right’, that fictitious bogeyman conjured up by the same men on the telly. You are sowing hatred and division.

But it’s just not true. We simpletons who voted to leave were doing nothing more than expressing a preference, as we were asked to do. Had the losing side accepted the result which, against the relentlessly negative tide of apocalyptic predictions, was remarkably emphatic (imagine if Project Fear had not dominated the airwaves?) we would not now be where we are. We would be pushing ahead, getting on with our lives and most divisions would already be resolved.

A book for Hammond and Grieve

But Dominic Grieve and Philip Hammond, among many others will not let it go. They have lost, but they still cling onto those losing betting slips, hoping against all previous experience, that this time the bookies will pay out. If they end up getting another delay, in prolonging the agony, in winding people up to boiling point with unjustified hope, in fomenting ever more extreme division in our already fractured society, then come the day we finally get to leave the EU we will know exactly who to blame for the far greater loss to us all, the loss of trust.

Going Extinct

The Extinction Rebellion mass hysteria has certainly worked on some. People have been obstructed from going about their innocent, non-planet threatening business, children have been frightened out of their wits, police have been shown to be toothless and politicians have lost no time in jumping on the bandwagon. Even those of us who are mocking from the sidelines have been drawn into the ‘debate’ by their antics; everybody is now talking about it.

And one of the things they are talking about is the coming age of the electric car. I tweeted several weeks ago that I have never actually seen an electric vehicle charging point in the flesh and was greeted with incredulity. But it’s not so hard to explain. I live in a small village and I work 40 miles away. I can’t charge at home (no off-road parking), I can’t charge at work and I have to go out of my way to find a garage. I rarely travel outside of that pattern and I never fill up at motorway services. I repeat, I have never seen an EVCP in real life.

This doesn’t make me a bad person. But, judging by the callers to Nick Ferrari’s LBC programme this morning, maybe it does. In the wake of James Dyson’s decision to abandon his own electric car project, a segment of the show was given over to the shining disciples of the new dawn. I don’t think there was a single dissenter and even those for whom, like me, a supercharged milk float is impractical, expressed regret that they could not take advantage of this energy revolution.

Electric is clean, electric is free (for some), electric is a miracle and electric will save the planet. How dare Dyson bow to economic considerations rather than join the gold rush? But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Just like wind energy, the advantages are loud-hailered to the world, but the downsides, the hidden costs and the aggressive subsidies are given rather more subdued coverage. Subsidies? Yes, if you currently use a plug-in electric vehicle everybody else is subsidising your travel; somebody always has to foot the bill.

But Dyson is right, it should be considered in the round. For all the Tesla supercars out there, which are really just virtue-signalling status symbols, the all-electric transport system is still a long way off. For the vast majority of drivers – those who live in terraced houses, in council flats, in those odd, low-rise fifties developments where you have to park dozens of yards from your front door – plug-in charging is an impossible dream. And where is all this extra electricity coming from, especially when electricity generation is one of the activities at which the environmentalists’ fingers most vigorously wag?

But don’t worry, procrastinate, because some members of Extinction Rebellion claim that 90% of the human population will have died out in just two generations. That’s probably how much time it would have taken to properly develop the infrastructure for us to go all-electric. On this basis Dyson’s decision would appear to be economically sage. What’s the point of spending all that investment if the market isn’t going to be there when it comes to fruition? Thank you, XR for defeating your own argument.

On democracy

If we accept Winston Churchill’s best argument against democracy as having a five minute conversation with the average voter – and to be fair we must – what else is there? Given that he is also credited as saying democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those others that have been tried, is there an alternative? Outside of small, homogenous communities, families and, small cooperatives, full-on democracy only works – like the law – by the consent of the governed. And that consent and consensus seems to be wearing thin of late.

Can mass democracy ever really function well if we accept that most of us are incompetent to cast an informed ballot? And by most, I really do mean the overwhelming majority of voters who hold opinions formed by others if they hold any opinions at all. This vast majority understands little and cares even less, generally, about the economy, education, defence, energy and pretty much everything else that we task governments with arranging. Most of us are too indolent to research the best mobile phone deal, or bank account, or diet, even, preferring instead to be led by the more thoughtful among us. It's lazy, plain and simple, but it is all too human.

Which is, of course how we ended up with our system of ‘representative democracy’, of which the EU is an extreme example. In the UK most people vote for a party with little scrutiny, little recognition even, of the individuals they elect to represent them. But at least many of us do know who our local MP is. How many would recognise their MEP if they bumped into them in Brussels? As with anything, a definition can be stretched. So far less than 100% of those eligible to vote narrowly return somebody, unknown to most, standing on a platform few understand, yet they still call that democracy?

Far from rule by majority consent we often end up with individuals who only really represent the views of a more motivated minority. Isn’t this almost the opposite of democracy and hasn’t this become abundantly clear over Brexit? It is little wonder that the fine minds of Parliament were so unprepared to be defied and are now so reluctant to yield. Is it time, then, to officially announce the death of democracy, whose name has been commandeered to simply mean ‘whatever my important friends and I want’?

So, what is left? I'd respect a party which would say directly to the voters. "We are not here to fix YOUR problems. Everything you want from the state must be paid for by somebody. And nobody is compelled to care about your family but yourself”. Of course, we would want to foster an environment where people do look out for each other but not one where an army of others need to graft to keep you in the circumstance to which you feel entitled. Not one where noisy rabbles are allowed to fix the political direction. Not one where tiny minorities get to roar like lions, demanding to be fed.

Ten gets tough...

Which is why the latest ‘leak’ from Number 10 is such a welcome blast of fresh air. Parliament is doing its best to shut down the Johnson government, but it seems that, finally, our leadership is stepping up and doing what people really want. Brexit was never about the economy, or immigration, or any of the causes pressed into service to denounce it. It was about national self-determination. THIS is what we voted for. Democracy is dead – long live democracy!

The New Black

The world of style is always on the lookout for the next big thing, the next must-have accessory and now, at last, we can reveal the new autumn collection. Forget your pashmina, your Ugg boots, your iPhone and follow the government’s lead. This season’s flauntable, never-leave-home-without-it, everybody-else-has-one, indispensable accoutrement is a veritable offering to the gods of high fashion and it costs you nothing. Get your mental illness today – the government will even chip in to help!

So versatile, your very own mental disorder can be unique to you, or it can be shared with a multitude. Truly a condition to cherish and one size really does fit all. All you have to do to qualify is to say you do! It is so easy. For instance, right now, the climate dread campaigners of Extinction Rebellion are doing their bit to instil fear in young people everywhere. In fact, so effective are they that many mature people, who should have developed a natural immunity, have also been infected with it.

Planetary hysteria comes with a package of related issues such as hatred of your parents, hatred of capitalism and a hatred of anything other than yourself who you deem to be responsible; because the great thing about being a flake is that it is never your fault! At last, a crime with no perpetrator; everybody is a victim and anybody daring to challenge your distress is a troll, a hater and – yeah, if you like – a fascist.

Of course, one day you will want to grow up and this should not be treated as a crime. There may not be help groups or charities set up to achieve this but usually it happens organically. You wake up one day and realise that it really isn’t up to anybody else to give your life meaning. All that balled-up anger, the existential angst, the bitter fury against a system designed specifically to make you suffer, just fades away once you face up to reality. But hey, let the youngsters have their fun; let them wallow a while in their utter righteousness. After all, what harm can it do?

Well, here’s the serious bit. A recent report says that there has been an epidemic of children who opted for gender reassignment wishing to reverse that decision. This is no cheerful vindication for those of us who scoffed from the sidelines, because this must be truly distressing to those it affects. But why has it come about? It has taken centuries, millennia, to establish human society and in just a few decades it appears to be crumbling. Throughout the developed – woke – world a few radicals have created chaos by a sustained and quite deliberate attack on the settled order.

We should be vigorously resisting the changes that cause our society to fracture. Instead of allowing oppressive, angry minorities to set the agenda we ought to stick to our guns. Rather than react to every demand for funding, for recognition, for ‘a voice’ we should be considering what is normal and treating what is abnormal in an appropriate manner. Real mental illness should be treated; abuse of tolerance should be deterred. And all attempts to create mass hysteria should be resisted.

  

Western governance - the lunatics really are in charge.

But what are western governments doing? The same thing they are doing with everything; giving in to every insignificant demand and in the process increasing that demand. Rather than effectively promoting mental illness they should be restoring society to some recognisable order. Instead of kow-towing to every cry for funding, for recognition, for special treatment they should be setting the agenda and making it stick. Put the security, welfare, health and order of society as a whole first and all the rest may well sort itself out. Trying to fix every little aberration is utter madness.

Come on!

Take it or leave it is the Prime Minister’s latest and allegedly last offer to Brussels and the remain side are apoplectic. How DARE he try and achieve what Theresa May’s mob spent three years frustrating? How DARE he be popular and furthermore how DARE he shrug off every assault on his character, his competence and his leadership and emerge after each attack stronger in the polls? It’s a curious thing, isn’t it, the British tendency to side with the underdog and how typical is it that those who would seek to deny democracy appear to understand this so poorly.

Eton and Oxford educated, Boris Johnson follows a long line of the privileged who have traditionally risen to the top job; raised to rule and resented for it. But tolerated, for, no matter how much your heart tugs you towards socialism a la Jeremy Corbyn, in your head you simply have to recognise that the collective has never achieved the advances gained under benign autocracy. Socialism tears itself apart every time as it tries to hammer manifestly round pegs into stubbornly square holes. All men are not created equal and to pretend otherwise takes energy which could be more usefully expended in more pragmatic pursuits.

We still have a monarch, albeit in neutered form, but nevertheless loved in a way that a president never would be. Despite decades of bitching from a vocal pro-republican minority the British are, on the whole, perfectly happy to be subjects of the crown and subject to the rule of common law. Truly British people get this in a way that converts to the European dream may never comprehend. Why would we wish to give up centuries of more or less happy servility for an illusory participation in a far less forgiving system where you will be punished for having a different opinion even as others, who are genuinely different, even aberrant, are fêted for their ‘vibrancy’?

We know our place, here in the UK and generally we are content to be slightly grumpy. ‘Mustn’t grumble’ doesn’t mean we can’t grumble and be obstinately pessimistic and less than effervescent in our discourse with others. Hell, we like to grumble and bitch and moan,  but then we generally crack on and keep paying our taxes. And we are more cheerful than we might appear; we just don’t like to make a song and dance about it. And perhaps this is part of the problem with the bright young things of the remain camp? In their eagerness to not be British they have gone out of their way to adopt suspiciously non-British attitudes to life and politics. (Maybe this is why they are so bloody angry all the time?)

Ignore it. It will go away...

And wasn’t Brexit all about Britishness after all? So, Boris saying like it or lump it to Brussels is exactly what we want to hear. It reminds us of our upbringing when we were taught that we can’t have everything, but if we work hard enough we can have many things, which is entirely at odds with the socialistic promise of jam for everybody and eternal happiness under the auspices of the EU’s supreme rule. We Brits love a challenge – although we may outwardly say otherwise – and there’s nothing we like more than a damn good ultimatum. So, come on, Brussels, have a go. If you think you’re hard enough…