Raab

Sitting here, working from home (during my annual leave, I might add) I can hear James O’Brien in the background embarking on a ridiculous schoolboy-style rant. Is he berating his parents for carrying out their scared duty to protect him from his own idiocy? Is he frothing about some monstrous injustice levied on his favoured left-wing causes? Nope, he is going on and on and on about the resignation of Dominic Raab.

Furthermore, he is behaving exactly like the small-minded, tin-eared bully he, and many of his right-on comrades, actually are. The words I hear come from a face one could surely never tire of punching. On so many counts O’Brien is on the wrong side of opinion, the wrong side of common sense and especially in the Carl Beech affair, the wrong side of the law. And as always, being of the left, he possess the ability to overcome the cognitive dissonance of having authored at least two books to the contrary.

But O’Brien is inconsequential. What is more important is the background to the accusations of bullying as applied to Dominic Raab. As he says in his resignation letter: "In setting the threshold for bullying so low, this inquiry has set a dangerous precedent. It will encourage spurious complaints against ministers…" He is right, I believe. Not, I hasten to add, that bullying is acceptable, but in that what is perceived as bullying is something we have probably all done at some time in our lives.

Where does this threshold lie? Sarcastic comments, the raising of an eyebrow at an idiotic suggestion, an expressed expectation that employees take their duties seriously, a sharp intake of breath? Every boss has had occasion to make his or her dissatisfaction clear, to admonish a colleague, to take issue with a proposal. Everybody has been exasperated with somebody else’s lateness, their lack of effort, their incompetence. Why should it not be permissible to get it out in the open, confront the elephant and then get on with business?

I’m really sorry that everybody has not the spine to take such criticism on the chin, but this is the brutal truth of the matter. Maybe if your efforts fall short of your employers’ expectations you are in the wrong job. Maybe if this is a regular event in your life it is not the boss who needs taking aside, but yourself. If high standards are not what you spire to, then don’t be part of the running of the country. If you can’t take the heat, etc.

Sadly, this is where the rise of the ideology motivated social justice movement culminating in the pre-eminence of the HR department has brought us. A Police ‘Service’ dedicated to justice for the criminal. Minority terrorism from the likes of the trans movement, the alphabet people and the various heads of the hydra posing as environmentalism. And government driven by the desire to be liked.

Well, sod it all. I want hard-headed police force and hanging judges. I want the intolerance of indolence and the rewarding of achievement, rather than the acknowledgement of mere, half-hearted participation. I want there to be losers as well as winners and I want it to be absolutely clear which is valued the more. I want bosses to be allowed to boss, and I want an end to the culture of anything goes, something-for-nothing, reward-for-failure and indulgence of hurt feelings. In short, I want my country back.