Going Galt

It’s been depressing to see the predictable response of the political left-wing to the budget, particularly the grotesque lie that Iain Duncan-Smith is a monster whose whole purpose in life is to sow misery and poverty and that he gets off on seeing disabled people disadvantaged still further. The trouble is the left-wing milk and honey polemic is such an easier sell, especially to those of little education, than is the conservative promise of reward later for toil now. ‘Twas ever thus.

It’s not only the feckless and idle who get caught in the wide drift net of ill-thought-through state largesse. Yellow lights flashing, the DWP purse seiner scoops up all in its path and lands the lot, gasping, on deck. Once caught up in the mesh, deliberately or not, few survive when thrown back in the murky waters of wider society detached from their tax credits. Why the persistence with this repeatedly failed vision of a universal welfare state? And all across the EU the model is echoed in the way that the industrious northern states pay for the indolent south.

You can’t blame those individuals who accept the state’s shilling and the Tories no more do that than do Labour; who wouldn’t accept a bit of free cash if you couldn’t see the strings attached? But at least the Conservatives see it as a necessary evil, paying to keep the peace, whereas those who cleave to wholesale welfare provision as to a faith view the recipient class as some form of exotic species to be preserved from extinction, by the application of ever increasing amounts of dole. Hang on though, isn’t ‘extinct’ exactly what we all ultimately want the poor to be?

While those at the very top are untouchable, the ever-increasing cost of maintaining the short-term vision of the welfare state – current income taxes pay current commitments to the economically inactive with nothing left over for investment, personal or national – is borne by those who freed of that burden could probably provide for themselves. Instead we continue to punish those same middle classes, impoverishing them now so they must rely on the state later. The continuum has to be broken; nanny’s apron strings are stretched to breaking point and as Liam Byrne’s famous message said - no money.

Look at poor, benighted Greece and the lesson, learned also in Cyprus, that even if you do save for your old age the state can dip into your accounts. What other option is there, then, for those who can to stash their cash and make a dash, leaving the nanny state fanatics and their dependent classes to fend for themselves? When people can be totally amazed at getting hot weather in the summer and equally surprised by a cold snap in the winter and believe that both are somehow ‘record’ events it is no surprise that the regular failures of socialism are written off as aberrations when they are actually the norm.

No man is an island? 

In Ayn Rand’s weighty classic those who open their eyes realise they are being driven by the politics of failure and the cult of mediocrity and resolve to leave that world behind. When here in Britain the Durham Miners’ Gala can parade Margaret Thatcher in effigy in a coffin in their own version of the two-minute hate – the four decade hate – those not in thrall to the ideology of vitriol and envy are already packing up what they can carry and heading off to find their own Galt’s Gulch. One day, there really will be no money left.

Love your work, vote loony!

They say if you do a job you love you’ll never work a day in your life. To be fair, a good proportion of those who hate their jobs do pretty much the same thing. Of course, how much you love or hate your job is in part determined by salary and a recent survey widely promulgated by the malcontents in the Labour party tells us that 51% of teachers, nurses and others in the public sector are dissatisfied with their pay and conditions. Naturally we all weep for the poor, abused public sector workers, but wait! It turns out that of the rest of us 52% are similarly dissatisfied. In a prime example of statistics being used to blind, far from being cruelly used, public sector workers are marginally happier than the rest of us. Take THAT Karl Marx!

But while our home-grown revolutionaries are slow to act, across Europe something is definitely happening among the sluggish proletariat. Greece lurched left and elected a statist party to demand of the massively statist EU that they have more gruel on their plates. Spain is on course to do the same as tens of thousands march in support of Podemos and their own anti-austerity agenda. Podemos is already the 2nd largest party in Spain, having more than 300,000 members and is still not a year old. With a population of a mere 48 million to have almost as many members as the UK’s Tories and Labour combined is remarkable. Ukip can only dream but it does seem that their own lurch to the left may yet have mileage if people in the UK develop the balls of the Spanish.

Equality is the rallying cry and despite my instincts to let the market find its level it is hard to disagree with their contempt for the ‘more equal than others’ political leaders who earn relatively huge salaries by grafters’ standards for ignoring, even holding in contempt, those who put them in office. The EU manages to rub salt further into the wounds by paying its officials even more handsomely and removing them from the tiresome burden of seeking popular electoral support. But maybe the jig is up and the price of our insulated, isolated politicians is simply too much. Maybe it is time for new leaders, leaders with no vested interests to placate and ready to lead not for the money, but for a belief and commitment in more fundamental democratic principles.

Lest you think I’ve gone soft in the head and taken a dose of socialist salts have no fear, I think this is but a passing phase. Once the bread and circuses are restored the restive beast will lie down once more, but if ever there was a time for tactical voting this may be that time. Small state advocates have been successfully tarred with the bigot brush after years of state-led political correctness, but it seems that the instrument to break the über-state may ironically be the new insurgent statist parties untainted by stark reality and carrying little baggage. Bring it on, I say.

Podemos - Spanish for "Fuck you, Merkel!"

Of course, once in power and once the EU’s stranglehold is loosened or even broken, those same parties will steadily fuck over their respective economies – already the new Greek government seems determined to cut its nose off to spite its face by banning all-inclusive holidays (They bring in money but keep the riff-raff away from the good stuff, see?) But maybe a few years of chaos outwith the EU may bring the voters back to their senses and we can see a return to good old national sovereignties under sensible centre-right administrations. We may never be satisfied with our jobs but instead of being forever moribund at least we could all look back with some pride on the time our collective worm turned. Viva la revolución!

Greeks bearing left...

So Red Ed’s ever helpful colleagues have decided in the wake of the not very surprising Greek election outcome to lurch further left and lead a popular people’s revolution. Really? Maybe they have forgotten that Greece is not the same as the UK. For instance, our economy is not utterly borked. Furthermore it is our economy and that of Germany and France that is, as always, paying for the mistakes of ‘junior’ partners in the EU debacle. Anti-austerity Party? It’s laughable because it is largely the misguided pursuit of socialist dreams that unbalanced the UK and made it necessary to engage in the minimal levels of so-called austerity we have lived with for the last few years.

Nobody is starving, nobody is neglected – at least no more than they were under Labour, under any government, in the last fifty years. There has been class-war-based strife in every decade of my life and no matter who was in power, the other side – the last election losers – have claimed they are ‘destroying’ the country. This is the sequence as I have experienced it: Labour get in, borrow and spend, bribe the electorate, promise them the earth, then run out of money, at which point the Tories return to Westminster, tell some unpopular truths and grab hold of the reins again. Meanwhile Labour activists bleat and moan and agitate about austerity until, just as we are getting back on track they have managed to convince enough people that the medicine is nasty. Repeat ad infinitum.

The Greek election outcome is not exciting because it heralds any new (golden?) dawn for Greece. There will be no resurgence of the proletariat; there is little but trouble ahead for the beleaguered country. But what IS exciting is how the next few months will play out as Syriza discover that the schoolboy politics of revolution do not impress the adults of the EU who dole out all the pocket money. Where will Greece end up when they forego their next bailout? When they renege on their debts will the EU expel them? And if not, will they come to an accommodation? Either way it will cost us all and Labour will be cheering on the little man who won’t pay his way – try refusing to pay tax and see how they react then.

None of that cold reality matters one jot to Labour who love to shout about Tory ‘ideology’ while all the while supporting dogma so dog-eared even the communists abandoned it years ago, along with the millions of people they butchered in the name of progress. Countries like Greece joined the EU so that they could benefit from sharing the prosperity of sensible mature economies, not so that those economies could reject their restraint in favour of a socialist free-for-all. Birthplace of democracy? Graveyard of civilisation, the way it’s going.

Well, if Russell's backing them...

So for me it’s grab the popcorn, pull up a pew and sit back to watch how some proper mental, not-joined-up thinking can grind a country into the dirt far faster than any level-headed government. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts, they say – this may just be the gift that keeps on giving.

An Expert Opinion

I am no expert. But feel free to quote me as the antithesis of expertise

The climate change experts told us we'd have progressively dryer summers in the UK. Water Board experts (not the Guantanamo type) suggested a hosepipe ban - in one of the wettest developed countries on earth - just before we received a whole summer's worth of rain in two weeks. (And a British summer can be alarmingly wet anyway)

Educationalists can't agree on the best way of educating kids, although the average ill-educated parent can still reason that all the tinkering is counter productive and potentially damaging. Criminologists are routinely off the mark in their reading of criminals and criminality, crime and punishment - subjects at which you'd think - hint in the name - they should excel.

Judges often lack judgement. Philosophers often fail and fall for sophistry and electrical engineers gave us the energy saving light-bulb... which saves energy by the duh-er expedient of not producing any light until several days after you wanted it.

Security 'experts' came up with this Big Brotheresque nugget of surveillance wisdom:

"Under provisions in the draft communications data bill, published by the Home Office, Royal Mail and private postal services could be required to store "anything written on the outside" of letters, postcards and parcels for up to 12 months so they can be accessed by police, MI5 and other enforcement agencies."

Really? You didn't consider what the effect of publishing this would be? Stand by for an onslaught of anti-government sentiment expressed on envelopes; expect to see S.W.A.L.K. replaced with such gems as MILF (M.I.Filth) or the rather more prosaic "Snoop on this, fuck face!" I think I'll address all my mail from now on to "Big Brother, c/o Keep the fuck out of my business. Ya Big Bastardshire, UKSSR.

So, in the face of all this expertise it should come as no surprise to learn that the Greek election outcome is being hailed as victory and ignominy, as both triumph and disaster by the political and economic experts responsible for the whole Euro-shambles. While helpless onlookers treat those two impostors with the disdain Kipling knew they deserve, our political classes still claim expertise in matters fiscal and sovereign.

Meantime the ordinary citizen looks on with rage at the havoc wreaked by inept policy, advised by experts, accepted by idiots and forced, roughshod, over common sense. In the real world, the repeating of mistakes is seen as foolhardy. In the world of the expert, it's the only way ahead.

How's that never-ending, conveyor-belt Greek bailout policy working for you now, Eurotwats?

Marathon Man

That the sacred Olympic flame sputtered and died before it could light the torch last week might be seen as a prophetic sooth for Greece itself.

Stock markets tumble yet again as Hellene stumbles in her marathon, brought to her knees by greed and corruption and the utterly fraudulent behaviour of the Eurocrats. Unable to form a government - wrong answer from the first vote - the bewildered electorate are going to be asked to vote again. In the cradle of democracy, democracy is being asked to fix something it isn't able to do.

As other people's money pours in to the bottomless pit that is Euro-wide false accounting, the politicians appeal on platforms built from the answer they seek , rather than the answer they need. Wrong answer? We'll keep asking until we get the number we already thought of. But the people don't have the answer. If they did and if the elected ones allowed, we'd all be celebrating blue skies and a return to sanity.

Instead, the politicos are wedded to a future they appear to have no control over and little faith in, yet they universally feel incapable of acting in the interests of their countrymen. The European monster lumbers on and on, making its own mythology and  lurching into ever deeper crisis while the voice of the populace goes unheard.

While the world predicts the utter collapse of European democracy, the inquisitor Angela Merkel and her cabal will persist in asking Greece - and then others -  the same question,over and over again, until the exhausted demos gives them the answer they want to hear. "Is it safe?"