Poison

I have long suspected that the trope ‘a glass of red wine a night is good for you’ was a product of the vintners’ public relations operation, but it didn’t exactly come as a total surprise to learn that the gubmint's Chief Medical Officer now says there is no safe level of imbibition of a deadly, if socially acceptable, poison. Cue the outrage. What, you have to say, you lied to us all those years? And as you say it you must adopt a posture of indignant incredulity, as if you are entitled by some natural law – human right, if you will – never to be misled.

Millions of mostly muslim immigrants are dangerous, or they aren’t, depending on what agenda you wish to pursue. And the moon is made of cheese, the earth is flat and your chances of winning that roll-over lottery were less than your chances of dating a supermodel, apparently. Actually, all most men need to date a supermodel is to win the lottery, or at the very least their chances of doing so are increased immeasurably. The non-sequitur as argument is rife and probably always has been; a popular Owen Jones question used to be “So, the immigrants take your jobs, or they live on benefits... which is it?” He used to trot this conundrum out as regularly as clockwork, as if it killed the debate and won the day.

Of course the answer is both, either or neither, but any answer is an unhappy one if you are the homeless ex-squaddie watching refugees being housed while your potential wages are too low to afford rent and you can’t access benefits from the system you’ve paid into without an actual address. Is it the immigrants’ fault? Almost certainly not. Does the system appear to be skewed in their favour and against yours? Absolutely. Is this a fair appraisal? It depends. It depends whose over-zealous hands hold the facts and how they choose to air them.

The entire leftist cultural attack on the greater majority of the population relies heavily on impressing a sense of guilt on their otherwise uneventful and fairly blameless existence. You get up in the morning, go out to work, feed your family and bring up your kids to follow in your footsteps and then one day it turns out you are an over-privileged, xenophobic little Englander with hatred in your soul for anybody not like you. You are a far right, racist, sexist, islamophobe because seeing muslims behead non- muslims prompts you to question whether we should be more careful who we allow into the UK.

“All refugees are not terrorists” does not mean that some refugees are not terrorists. And even one terrorist can terrorise, can kill, a lot of innocent people. The nonsense argument that more Americans die at the hands of white, gun-toting Americans is utterly irrelevant to the discussion of the sagacity of importing sworn adversaries with a divine mission to slaughter the infidel. The world over, you are statistically more likely to suffer harm at the hands of people you know than otherwise and often for good – or at least comprehensible - reasons. Why would you deliberately compound your chances of coming to harm by adding a barbarous ideology to the risk cocktail?

Yes, there is hatred and fear and yes there is even an element of ‘hate speech’ but the cultural Marxists have time on their hands, a misguided missile of an agenda and a far larger PR machine to mobilise pop-up protest and suppress dissent by labelling normal as Nazi. Nobody with an ounce of normality could look on Europe’s self-inflicted migrant invasion and not feel trepidation and a sense of anger and helplessness, but calling that reaction xenophobic is to wantonly miss the point for unhelpful political purposes.

Poison... but whose is it?

But there is an answer. Next time you hear a lazy attack on your natural concerns, sticking an unfriendly label on your sensible objections, or shouting you down with spurious statistics, let them have their say. Let them rant and rave and foam and froth and hold their protest placards up aloft. Let them state their case whereby they turn the aggressors into saints and the victims into criminals. And when they’ve exhausted their repertoire of well-rehearsed but ultimately meaningless string of unconnected slogans, calmly look them in the eye and ask, “Or is that just bollocks?”

Evidence, Watson? What evidence?

The European Commission says there is no evidence migrant workers take jobs from locals. No evidence? If that is the case then everywhere that migrant workers serve coffee, sweep streets, pick crops and clean offices there must be virtually no young people without work. Or is that just the wrong sort of evidence?

Or, if the numbers of British unskilled workers on the dole isn't evidence that migrant workers take jobs, particularly unskilled jobs, from locals, what exactly is it evidence of? Because no matter how you lie and spin, it's pretty tangible evidence of something, isn't it? There they are, not doing the sort of jobs anybody can do, yet the Eurocrats see no problem with that because it's better than it is in some other places.

Tony Blair was ushered into power after two decades of growth and rising prosperity for all who would look themselves in the mirror and decide to do better. Everything and I mean EVERYTHING was cheaper than it had ever been in real terms. Ordinary people owned homes, took foreign holidays as a matter of course and owned goods of hitherto unimagined luxury and sophistication An entire generation who had never seen a Labour government wanted even more; they wanted a slice of the new Cool Britannia. (Anybody remember Harold Wilson cosying up to The Beatles?)

A mere thirteen years later, after a disastrous stewardship of the economy, a reluctantly nominated coalition was elected to right the wrongs. But of course, they can't. We have no say in the matter and if the EU Politburo says we must redistribute the workers so that everybody can own slaves from former Eastern Bloc, then so be it. The EU needs to allow poorer and poorer countries entry to our labour markets because somebody has to pay to keep the young people of richer countries idle, while those with money flee to fairer tax regimes.

The last statement of that article is telling: "Only 1.1 per cent of working age Britons - 330,000 workers - are currently employed in other EU countries." In other words, free movement of Labour only works in one direction. No evidence that unrestricted migration lowers wages, keeps people trapped in welfare, lowers standards, causes strife and actively increases xenophobia? If the EU says it, we must see it. 

You know the bastards are winning when they can look you in the face and tell you the sky isn't blue, the earth is above you, you are happy and joyful, comrades, and despite the evidence of your very eyes you've never had it so good.

Race you!

All people are equal. Let’s start with that. Some are kind and generous and go out of their way to help others. Others knuckle down and do dirty jobs to make a meagre living, looking out for their family and not complaining when life throws shit at them. Some rise up to win control and lead and inspire and become incredibly popular. Some aspire to the same ends but are despised for their honest efforts. And yet others cynically exploit the trusting nature of the Ordinary Joe to relieve them of the fruits of their labours. 

But we’re all equal and it’s wrong to differentiate based on first impressions. You are just as likely to become Prime Minister having grown up on a council estate as you are to rot in jail having started life with the silver spoon of aristocracy clamped between your gums. The skunk-smoking, face-tattooed teen with the attack dog could just as easily be a social worker. The man with a heavy accent offering to Tarmac your drive is quite possibly a charitable soul. (Never forgetting, of course, that charity begins at home.) 

But we are all equal and you must never judge a book by the cover. Mind you, if monkeys applied the same standards to their relationships with leopards there would be a lot fewer monkeys on the planet. 

Yes, you guessed. Over the weekend on That Twitter I engaged in earnest banter with somebody unlike myself. I actually conversed with a non-racist. There aren’t many of them about. In any case, the very term ‘racist’ is fraught with definitional difficulty. If we’re all the same race – the Human Race – is a racist somebody from outside that taxonomy; a non-human? Some might say so. 

But whatever your real beliefs about equality, our origins do dictate our physical appearance, our acceptance into the society of others and yes, in many enough ways to be an actual stereotype, our actual behaviour. You see, you CAN judge a book by its cover. We can and we do and we’re more often right than wrong. The doorstep conman is making a judgement about your gullibility based on your white, middle-class origins just as you are assessing from his swarthy, Eastern European mores how likely you are to be ripped off. But we're all equal, right? 

For anybody who thinks I’m a monster for my views on the parochial opportunism of human nature, see how much reactive rage and threat of action there’s been over the potential Cyprus banking raid compared to the passive grumbling and impotent acceptance when, say, a wedding party is bombed in the name of religion. We give you more sympathy when we can empathise; are you like us or not like us? Is this racism, or merely realism? 

We all judge. It’s human nature. When I judge somebody as likely to be an unreliable addition to our island culture, you in turn judge me because I’m white and I work and I quite literally call a spade a spade. But what makes your judgement of me more righteous than my judgement of them? And where do you turn when my judgement turns out to be accurate, while yours is borne of an odd, modern, turn-on-your-own sort of prejudice, fuelled by unsubstantiated notions of equality? 

And if you won’t take it from the likes of me please spend a few minutes on Banti’s far more considered and balanced essay: