Crocodile Tears

When I was a kid there was a nasty piece of work who, having left school the previous year, used to wait at the school gates at the end of the day and beat up anybody his younger brother nominated. The younger brother played the victim and earned a certain cachet but gained no friends. The solution came in numbers, as the nominees soon realised who their friends were and where their best interests lay. The Shad brothers moved on; Omi got sent to Borstal and nobody cared what happened to the weedy one, but it was an interesting observation in the exercise of power and alliance.

A threat is only meaningful if there is a very real chance of it being carried out. Parents learn the hard way that you have to come good on your sanctions or the power slips from your grasp into theirs. A lone bully with loose fists is an immediate danger but without allies – who are usually only joining in from fear for themselves – he will soon be outnumbered by the sheer weight of ordinary people who won’t stand for it. Occasionally you get a Cray, but more often you get pale imitations. It seems there just aren’t enough psychopaths to go around.

Politics has its fair share of psychos, but in the end they all fall. So people like French President Hollande trying to strong-arm the UK into a Brexit so light it’s like they signed up for punishment detail will only get so far. And besides, if you want to be the bully, be careful who you pick on to prove your mettle. Fifth columnists may have infiltrated our society but when push comes to shove we Brits have never taken kindly to Johnny Foreigner meddling in our affairs.

Weedy, friendless, LimpDem 'leader' Tim Farron seems to believe that we didn’t vote to leave the EU at all and demands a parliamentary vote on our position regarding the single market. This is like getting your big brothers to lie in wait at the school gate to mug those you don’t like. He thinks that a rigged vote will effectively reverse the outcome of the referendum and defy the wishes of the seventeen and a half million ‘ignorant racists’ who voted to leave. Well, guess what, Tim, those numbers aren’t afraid of you and your kind.

Think sad thoughts, Tim!

The remain lobby’s shrieks of pain and woe have yet to die down and still they are demanding to know the unknowable “But what does Brexit look like?” while stamping their little feet and balling up their tiny fists. Some of them are still so fraught they can produce tears at will, like an actress summoning up sad memories to provoke the appearance of emotion. But those crocodile tears are convincing nobody. What does Brexit look like? Well stop blubbing and let’s find out, shall we?

Getting on with the job?

Luke Johnson is one of a relatively small number of people who seem to have grasped what an opportunity Brexit presents for this country. Freed from the constraints imposed by the expensive European human engineering project it might be possible for British entrepreneurs to rediscover their inventive roots and show – if any morsel still remains – the spirit which once made this small, damp island the industrial hub of an empire. Luke cites Singapore as an inspiration; a country barely fifty years old yet with the highest GDP per capita of any nation on Earth.

Work, not welfare, is the key, because nothing in life except life itself comes for free. In the soft, over-developed west that free gift so often carries a curse, foisting existence on unsuspecting new citizens but then abandoning them to the fates decreed by the architects of the political system that has ‘yet to be properly tried’. Socialism itself is a prime example of the laws of unintended consequence – while the notion of a welfare safety net for all sounds good, the very foundation of human nature is a cool, calculating slab of opportunism that will milk the state dry.

End the ‘something for nothing’ culture, said David Cameron, just as others have said before him, only to learn the hard way that once given it is bloody difficult to claw back that largesse. Impossible, if you want to be re-elected, or leave a ‘legacy’. The welfare state, like any industry, would be nothing without its loyal customers and nothing buys loyalty like cold, hard cash and soothing words. Who dares call out our unsustainable bread and circuses charade for what it is? The greater the demand, the richer those who cater to it and under the ‘caring’ umbrella the west has allowed a system of unearned, unaffordable entitlement to creep and grow.

We don’t want a universal, no-questions-asked welfare system; not when it creates and perpetuates the very poverty it seeks to alieve. We don’t want a ‘comprehensive’ equality-driven education system; not when it denies bright but poor kids the chance to shine. We don’t want institutionalised kindness and compassion; not when it is so readily exploited by those who are bred into dependence. And we certainly neither want nor need faux diversity, shoe-horned into the cultural landscape; not when in reality, regardless of origins or leanings, black or pink, brown or yellow, there is anything but diversity of thought; not when the naïve advocates of the diverse palette are the Midwich cuckoos of cultural Marxism.

We need a country where the weak and needy are largely absent; bred out. Where single issue minority politics can’t enable legislation to hamper the majority. Where tolerance is freely given to those who work with us, but a stern face is presented to those who wish us harm. A place where everybody takes responsibility for their own journey through life and knows that while help is available should you occasionally falter, you’re on your own if you continually go off-piste. Fat, lazy, stupid, addicted, accidentally pregnant, self-or-selfie-obsessed? That’s your shit; you shovel it.

Time to flush?

Britain needs to get its act together and make bolder decisions. Are we going to continue to pursue the EU model of a low wage, mass consumption economy, founded on ever greater numbers of lower and lower grade drones, forever passing the cost downwards to future generations? Or will we grasp the nettle and instead allow the economy, along with the population, to shrink back to a size which accommodates and rewards the brave and the busy but dissuades the third world from beating a path to our door? Isn’t it time to flush the dregs and clear the system; has anybody got the balls for the job?

Getting on with the job?

Luke Johnson is one of a relatively small number of people who seem to have grasped what an opportunity Brexit presents for this country. Freed from the constraints imposed by the expensive European human engineering project it might be possible for British entrepreneurs to rediscover their inventive roots and show – if any morsel still remains – the spirit which once made this small, damp island the industrial hub of an empire. Luke cites Singapore as an inspiration; a country barely fifty years old yet with the highest GDP per capita of any nation on Earth.

Work, not welfare, is the key, because nothing in life except life itself comes for free. In the soft, over-developed west that free gift so often carries a curse, foisting existence on unsuspecting new citizens but then abandoning them to the fates decreed by the architects of the political system that has ‘yet to be properly tried’. Socialism itself is a prime example of the laws of unintended consequence – while the notion of a welfare safety net for all sounds good, the very foundation of human nature is a cool, calculating slab of opportunism that will milk the state dry.

End the ‘something for nothing’ culture, said David Cameron, just as others have said before him, only to learn the hard way that once given it is bloody difficult to claw back that largesse. Impossible, if you want to be re-elected, or leave a ‘legacy’. The welfare state, like any industry, would be nothing without its loyal customers and nothing buys loyalty like cold, hard cash and soothing words. Who dares call out our unsustainable bread and circuses charade for what it is? The greater the demand, the richer those who cater to it and under the ‘caring’ umbrella the west has allowed a system of unearned, unaffordable entitlement to creep and grow.

We don’t want a universal, no-questions-asked welfare system; not when it creates and perpetuates the very poverty it seeks to alieve. We don’t want a ‘comprehensive’ equality-driven education system; not when it denies bright but poor kids the chance to shine. We don’t want institutionalised kindness and compassion; not when it is so readily exploited by those who are bred into dependence. And we certainly neither want nor need faux diversity, shoe-horned into the cultural landscape; not when in reality, regardless of origins or leanings, black or pink, brown or yellow, there is anything but diversity of thought; not when the naïve advocates of the diverse palette are the Midwich cuckoos of cultural Marxism.

We need a country where the weak and needy are largely absent; bred out. Where single issue minority politics can’t enable legislation to hamper the majority. Where tolerance is freely given to those who work with us, but a stern face is presented to those who wish us harm. A place where everybody takes responsibility for their own journey through life and knows that while help is available should you occasionally falter, you’re on your own if you continually go off-piste. Fat, lazy, stupid, addicted, accidentally pregnant, self-or-selfie-obsessed? That’s your shit; you shovel it.

Time to flush?

Britain needs to get its act together and make bolder decisions. Are we going to continue to pursue the EU model of a low wage, mass consumption economy, founded on ever greater numbers of lower and lower grade drones, forever passing the cost downwards to future generations? Or will we grasp the nettle and instead allow the economy, along with the population, to shrink back to a size which accommodates and rewards the brave and the busy but dissuades the third world from beating a path to our door? Isn’t it time to flush the dregs and clear the system; has anybody got the balls for the job?