The Colour of Racism

It’s been a busy old week at Battsby Towers and while I’ve accumulated lots of notes about topics to cover, I’ve also been flat out writing technical stuff for work. Still, we’re here now so what do you want to chat about? I’m hearing we’ve become more racist since the referendum; ‘UN Expert’ E Tendayi Achiume says so. Who, you may ask? Her role is – and you’ll love this: ‘Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance’. So the real headline should be more like: ‘truffle hound finds truffles’. 

It’s a curious concept, racism. What does it really mean? The first definition the interwebs offered up was: ‘prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior’. Seems fair enough; mind you, I’d feel quite antagonistic if somebody here for just a few days quizzed me about whether or not I felt less, about the same, or more racist since somebody started quizzing me about my racism. This is all bollocks of course, isn’t it?

I can certainly see how some who identify as victims of racism feel they have the licence to announce that it’s got worse since everybody started banging on about it. Reported cases have increased dramatically of late, but of course they will when the system demands we self-identify as racists and dob ourselves in; when the definition of hate crime allows anybody who imagines they have been snubbed to turn their perception into a crime statistic.

But have we really become ‘more racist’, or do we just exhibit the same amount of preference and disdain we always did? You see, for most British people it isn’t about race, it’s about culture. The shameful examples of white trash, covered in menacing tattoos and yobbishly marching about like they own the council estate are despised. The ennobled parliamentarians, who parade their privilege and sneer at the common herd who voted for Brexit disgust us. And we fear the moped muggers and knife-wielding thugs of the stabby capital of Europe.

And by ‘race’ does this expert really mean ‘colour’? Because, you know, being repeatedly told not only that all white people are racist, but that only white people can be racist will tend to piss us off a bit. If we discriminate in favour of what we now clumsily have to call ‘the BAME community’ we are tarred with employing ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’. If you go looking for racism it is pretty well certain you will find it because, whatever we do, the jury of your peers already returned the verdict of guilty. (And yes, I did use ‘tarred’ deliberately – may as well be hung for a sheep and all that.)

The law of unintended consequence is always lurking in the shadows ready to do its dirty work. Are you a small business which can’t afford to pay two people to do one job? Then don’t employ women of child-bearing age. Worried about the gender pay gap? Suggest men work less. Do you need more qualified people? Dumb down education. Are you afraid of being called racist? Avoid mixing with, employing, or having any form of association with anybody who doesn’t look like you. How much racial segregation will we need, Ms Achiume, before you will be able to declare we have eradicated our hateful, racist ways? I won’t hold my breath.

Nuts in May

Wow. Who would be a politician, these days? Never anybody’s favourite ‘profession’ outright loathing of the political classes now exceeds that for used car salesmen, estate agents and even Satan himself. There may be a few stalwarts clinging to a belief that their MP is in politics through a desire to make things better – and almost all of them really are, or were, at heart – but the majority opinion is that all MPs are in some form of conspiracy to ride the gravy train to Fat Cat Central.

So, onto this UKIP ‘racism’ business: I support one single aim of UKIP – exit from the EU federal project and that’s it. Over the years I have watched developments with great interest. At every point in the European ‘journey’ the people who have benefitted were those best placed to grasp opportunities and run with them; the entrepreneurs, the employers, the lobbyists and policy advisors - all of whom would have prospered, honestly or otherwise, under almost any regime; they are people who need no help. Those who have lost out are the workers, the employed and dependent on others to create work for them. Or as I like to call them, the majority.

Nobody in full time work should need state assistance, but wage suppression, fuelled by an oversupply of labour has made it normal for working families to be propped up by benefits. This is crazy, but any dissent has been met with blatant lies about the economics of uncontrolled, low-skilled immigration and accusations of racism. It may be racist to purposefully treat ‘others’ as second-class citizens but it is absolutely not racist to harbour a belief that foreign migrants are preferred employees when you are told you can’t even get a job interview unless you speak Polish, or that local jobs are only advertised abroad.

Framing any discussion about immigration as racist and dismissing as bigots those who have genuine fears is cynical in the extreme but the media, good little poodles all, have thoroughly bought into it. Perfect, except the voters that have been abandoned by all parties are not the sensitive, soft, liberal elites of ‘that London’ (which is as foreign to them as any far off land) but the displaced, frustrated and unheard inhabitants of Britain’s former working heartlands. Now that Labour is as detached from them as the Tories, is it any wonder they gravitate towards a party which appears to speak their language and echo their concerns?

One definition of madness is said to be repeatedly carrying out an action which always delivers a negative outcome, such as banging your head against a wall. Unfortunately, some people seem unable to stop themselves. The comprehensive, cross-party, mainstream media attack on UKIP in the last week has concentrated entirely on the charge of racism, but even where this is substantiated it is not having the desired effect. In desperation they seek not to alter their approach but to blame it on darker forces – the wall isn’t crumbling but they can’t bring themselves to believe they are using the wrong tool for the job.

It’s the only explanation I can think of for the extraordinary accusation by Nick Cohen that the media has gone soft on UKIP. I urge you to read it because what Nick thinks has happened is patently absurd unless you inhabit his rarefied world. Nigel Farage is the brick wall against which the opponents of UKIP are smashing their skulls to bits. He is the wrong target, as polling seems to demonstrate, with every attack on him being perceived as an attack on ordinary working people and driving still more of them away from the two main parties.

It’s also no good saying a vote for UKIP is a vote for Labour. In fact, pursuing the racist line is far more likely to draw in more former Labour supporters - parochial working folk are naturally xenophobic - but what I find amusing is this persistence with a losing strategy. This is the most exciting election build up I’ve seen in a long while. Of course ultimately it is but a two-horse race but while neither Labour nor Conservatives have much to offer those most disadvantaged by The European Question, is it any wonder that Farage’s Army – no matter how flimsy you judge what they offer – is a tempting alternative for the disgruntled?

Hitting the wrong target.

The political classes and the metropolitan commentators SAY they get this but they demonstrate by their repeated failed smear tactics that they just don’t. One thing is for sure – whoever gets in there will be both winners and losers; Labour isn’t good for all Labour voters, the Conservatives are not universally good for Tory voters but few people vote based on what is good for them. Right now, traditional politics is in the ring and I for one hope UKIP gives it a bloody nose in May. 

Mandy & Me

Day four and he still hasn’t risen from the grave; they don’t make Messiah’s like they used to. As the Mandela Grievy Train ambles down the track, flanked by acolytes spouting fawning eulogies, left and right each claiming him as their own, you would be forgiven for thinking that the world economy, climate change and the sum total of global human happiness itself depended entirely on finding the right words to praise him; Hosannas in the highest. And every single commentator appears to have had a deep, personal and beatific relationship with Saint Madiba. My, the old boy must have put it about a bit.

Obnoxio the Clown put it all rather well in his blog on Friday. Me? I’m not much moved. Actually that’s an overstatement; I am as underwhelmed by all of this as I was for Marc Bolan, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, Dozy Diana, Michael Jackson and all the other false idols worshipped by people who, frankly,  just haven’t thought it through. Because no matter what you think, no matter what flimsy fictional connection you believe you had, not one of them is coming back with the solution to mankind’s selfish, self-made problems. You have to do it for yourselves.

Tony Parsons wrote in The Sun about how Mandela made racism unacceptable. Palpable bollocks, of course because among some sectors of our supposed ‘community’ racism has gone from strength to strength, the likes of Diane Abbott and Lee Jasper proclaiming that black people cannot be racist while simultaneously spouting poison about the vile whites. In South Africa itself the race-inspired killings of white farmers continues unabated. So you’ll forgive me, Tony, if I don’t share your misty-eyed yearnings.

In Blighty, the criminalisation of the perfectly normal recognition of difference has made racism an industry – so I suppose you could say, in a way, that Mandela has done something for the British economy, although to be perfectly honest we did it to ourselves. We used to be a model of civilisation. Migrants came here to BECOME British - it was a worthy ambition. Now they aren’t allowed to integrate. No, they must form into ghettoes and occasionally foment sporadic violence on our streets. And not just here but all over Europe, although the UK establishment prefers to preserve the idea that racism is a uniquely British evil.

So, what did Mandela do for me? Well I have reappraised my life and decided I should no longer hide my real feelings. I should reach out to the wider world and embrace my deep inner humanity. I’m going to become a massive racist - you know, proper like; go professional. After all, having given up on productive activities it is one of the few growth industries left in the UK and lest you think I have taken leave of my senses, don’t worry, there is method to my madness.

You see, my ‘condition’ will be treated with disbelief and in this world of the so-called expert – the most gullible in the land being psychiatrists, diversity champions and race relations lawyers  – I will be diagnosed as having a treatable mental aberration.  They will conclude that my grief over Mandy (That’s what I called him, we had a special bond) has unhinged me and as racism no longer exists I must therefore be delusional. After a few months of treatment and re-education in the new secure psychiatric facility in Somerset I will be released and tell my story to the press in a public show of humility

Christmas - we celebrate the birth of Mandela

Then I can write a book – the Long Walk to Frome, or something - and so complete will be my redemption that I will become an advisor on race affairs. In fact, to finalise my transformation and show my deep empathy I will have my skin died a deep ebony... get the lips blown up… nose job – the lot. Then, when I’ve made my fortune I can retire to be with ‘my people’ on a Caribbean island where, in a show of solidarity I will only employ poor black folk on minimum wage to do my bidding. I’ll be heralded as a fucking Saint! 

White Riot!

It’s surprising how quickly the moderate view can be drowned out by those with a more radical agenda. Radical, of course is code for progressive, which is code for something that may have been radical in the mid-nineteenth century, since when it has been directly and indirectly responsible for millions of deaths, internments, and painful 're-education'. Communism, Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, Maoism… Socialism; call it what you will, the notion (ONE Notion, note.) of forcing the sheep to tend the herd is at best a misunderstanding of human nature, at worst a murderous ideology for ill-defined purpose.

That’s not to say that people cannot live and prosper in harmony and some form of stratified equality where they have small numbers such as the old supposed sub-150 member tribal population, but where almost any large-scale version of socialism has been tried it has failed, largely due to bringing about economic ruin, resulting in misery for almost everybody.

One of the original Communist Party Manifesto aims was to bring about proletariat control via the breakdown of the bourgeois society, whose principle expression found itself in the nuclear family. Promote difference, attack familial norms, debase traditional marriage and criminalise dissent. Most of all drown out the free speech of the many with the strident and authoritarian shrieking of the ‘enlightened’ few.

In the news this week is the well-established phenomenon of ‘white flight’, a reality I have witnessed at first hand and which is brought about by entirely natural fears and aspirations. When even the sainted Trevor Phillips warns about it you know that concerns must be taken seriously. And there’s your first problem. As Lee Jasper and Diane Abbott both assert, only white people can be racist, so any discussion raised from the ranks of the dispossessed must be nullified by cries of ‘racism’. Attempts to be reasonable about what racism actually is are once again stamped upon.

On Sunday I saw this tweet from Laurie Penny:

To which I replied:

Laurie, to her credit, declined to comment. I hope that’s because she actually believes in free speech. But various other righteous leftie types were more vociferous and waded in to have a go. Teeth slightly bared, their guttural ejaculations mostly impugned my intelligence, effectively holding the Abbott/Jasper line and saying in effect – almost certainly without knowing his stance - that Trevor Phillips was wrong. I do like a bit of black-on-black attack, or is that racist?

Those who will brook no debate are either blind or stupid. Labour deliberately encouraged mass immigration at a level it knew would exacerbate the problem, A belated  craven apology from Ed Miliband is far too little, far too late. While Hitler herded his hated populations into ghettoes, our governments have allowed certain communities, invited here, to build their own ghettoes and effectively eject the indigenous population. There are places in the UK where the formation of walled, guarded citadels, self-governing caliphates in all but name, seems almost inevitable. So much for multiculturalism – few people were ever as tolerant as the good old Brits who are now a dying race.

Still, at least there's a new game for the inner-city school playground: 

Playtime at St Cuthbert's... But Where's Whitey?

Roaming Charges may apply

UKIP voters are racist clowns. That’s neat and tidy and easy to understand, isn’t it? By the same strain of logic Conservative voters are cruel, fox-hunting, Eton old boys and every Labour voter was born in a mineshaft and suckled by whippets. Aren’t lazy stereotypes useful? No, seriously, aren’t they? We use them all the time: tight Scotsmen, thuggy northerners, smelly Frenchmen, stupid Oirishmen, sex-mad Dutch, Law-mad Swiss, cold, efficient Germans... and thieving gypsy bastards. We use stereotypes in jokes because - get this - they're funny, so long as you don't take them seriously.

In the non-serious, topsy-turvy world of British politics, enslaving ever more of the population to feed and be fed by the state machine is compassionate Labourism, while letting people make their own decisions and keep more of their own earnings is nasty Conservatism. Nobody knows quite where the LibDems stand – seriously; I don’t know, do you? But sod all that, let’s put aside the enormous fundamental dichotomy of state versus individual and problems such as how to fix the economy and let’s instead draw the battle lines around racism.

Except controlling borders isn’t racism at all, is it? Yet that’s what the anti-‘Kippers want you to think. Nobody has ever seriously suggested curtailing the importation of skills. If we need doctors and scientists and engineers because two generations of dire basic education means we have insufficient capability from UK-born stock, then immigration may be the best short-term answer. It may even be an acceptable longer term policy. But unrestricted movement for all? What could possibly go wrong?

Racism is the deliberate marginalisation of people who are not exactly like yourself, preaching hatred of them and in the extreme, taking action against them. What racism isn’t, is preferring to associate with people of your own background, whether that be colour, nationality, language, customs or religion. I wouldn’t be comfortable entering a mosque in exactly the same way I wouldn’t be comfortable joining an evangelical choir. You may be happy doing both of those things and bully for you, but it’s just not my thing. That doesn’t make me a racist. As much as some on the left want it to become a thought crime, preferring the company of kin is just normal.

Mixing is also normal. Britain has always absorbed people from all over the world, many of whom have become as British as anybody else. Similarly we have spread ourselves over the globe, making a living and organically fitting in. Or not; if you don’t fit you eventually move on. Intermingling is not only normal it’s enriching and interesting and exciting. What isn’t normal, however, is Labour’s version of multiculturalism; forcing an indigenous population to not only accept immigration in overwhelming numbers, to not only actively promote segregation of new communities from old, but to render any dissent, any discussion, as racist.

 If it was normal we wouldn’t have to spend a fortune promoting it, legislating for it and educating children that it is. Forcing it down our throat, or as Labour liked to phrase it, rubbing our noses in it, was a policy doomed to backfire. There are some genuine, nasty racists out there, of that there is no doubt, but to label a white-haired old pensioner in the same way because she is bewildered at how all the counter staff and shelf stackers have foreign accents while the local school-leavers are drinking cider in the park is a feat of wilful malevolence only indoctrinated socialists could achieve.

There are costs to rapid mass immigration; we have paid them and will continue to pay. It may take a generation or more to recover our equilibrium. Ed Miliband is reluctantly accepting that now and hoping that a grovelling apology for what they did will make you all forget. But don’t you dare forget and don’t you dare vote for the fools that brought it about. Britain now is far more racist than I can ever remember and certainly more racist than before we needed all that ideological re-education. You might want to take note that we’re also poorer, more divided and less optimistic than at any time since the early nineteen-eighties.

Given that UKIP’s principle aim is to take back the controls that will allow us to rebuild a stable Britain, the racist taunt just looks to me like a lazy, unprincipled way to avoid a serious debate on the way ahead. On this issue at least, it looks to me Like Tony Blair is still in charge.

Ken Clarke - Can I do my Paki joke now?

You're Nobody Till Somebody Owns You

You’re nobody till somebody loves you, sang Dean Martin in 1965. In politics, you’re nobody until you’re somebody’s useful idiot. And in politics, such is the success of the Useful Idiot programme that everybody is a UI in somebody else’s eyes… it’s just not such a catchy song title. (Although, you never know: “I’m a UI in your eyes”? I might just work on that…)

To anybody on the left, the idiots are lined up on the right, although it’s worth pointing out that the term, supposedly coined by Lenin, was always meant to refer to socialist dupes who believed any propaganda they were fed. The concept is sound enough; say bad things often enough and people will believe you. And although you can tell people good things about your side they are far more ready to believe bad things about the other side. 

Thus the anti-anti-immigration lobby has cranked up the rhetoric, branding everybody who expresses concern for the state of the nation as some sort of rabid racist and brandishing figures showing immigration is overwhelmingly ‘a good thing’. Yet surely, even the dimmest wattage lamps can penetrate the fog of anti-anti-anti-(I lose count)-anti-racist prejudice and see that actual overwhelming immigration can only cause chaos; there are only so many places in the EU lifeboat that Britain is becoming. 

Just look at the numbers. Single Joe Pole comes here next month and takes on the number 50 bus, earning the princely sum of £19,839 a year. After deductions of *£3570.32, he has £16308.28 left to live off. (incidentally £286.72 p.a. better off than last year, but of course, the coalition’s tax cuts for workers 'good news' pales against Ed Miliband's tax cuts for millionaires 'bad news'.) That’s £313 per week. Well done Joe, but we’d need 4.6 of you working full time to cover the costs of a family claiming the same amount in benefits and that doesn't take into account that only (only!) 23% of your deductions go on welfare spending. So put simply, 4.6 of you is not enough – we’d need four times that; let’s call it a round 20 after paying for the bureaucracy to tax you in the first place. 

From my crude maths then, it takes 20 working immigrants to cover the costs of a single non-working British household. We have to create 20 jobs when one, with the right tax regime should be enough. And we need 20 beds and provision for another 20 users of our roads, health services, law enforcement, etc. Forget partisan politics, it just makes no sense at all that we import unskilled and semi-skilled labour in their droves from outside just to allow some of those already here to sit idle. Yes,of course they will spend their money in the economy, but the economy had to make room for them in the first place - that argument is a non-sequitur. THAT is a Ponzi scheme.

It makes even less sense to let people come here and sign up as Big Issue Sellers and thus register as self-employed. The Big Issue was set up as a way of helping the homeless back into work. Not as a tool for allowing uncontrolled importation of even MORE homeless. And none of this even begins to scratch at the problem of bringing whole families over here, who now need houses, schools, a lot more healthcare, etc, and soon learn that they are foolishly earning less than they could by becoming unemployed. 

How deeply ingrained is useful idiocy when even in the face of such stark, obvious economic reality, there is still a clarion call of “Racist!” every time the [big] issue is raised. 

Every movement needs it cheerleaders. And behind every Useful Idiot cheerleader there is a vested interest. Where are the REAL facts behind the things we are forced to pay for? What is the truth about: 

• Climate change and green energy taxes? 
• Infrastructure spending and HS2? 
• The EU and the perpetual welfare state? 
• Forever propping up the failed Euro currency? 
• Giving up our independent national defence? 

Who's fooling who?

Maybe there is no truth any more, maybe there is no use for the nation state, maybe we do have a duty to others before we even begin to help ourselves. But back to the useful idiot racist-anti-racist-hate-hate forum – if my neighbours are increasingly unlike me, why is it racist for me to want to know why?

I'd love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to comment below.

(*Link to a useful tax calculator)

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:

Thought So...

In the latest atrocity committed by the rambling Socialist experiment that is twenty-first century Britain a woman has been jailed for speaking out about her concerns. For the supposed hate crime of having fears relating to the uneasily and unevenly shifting demography of this country she has been sentenced to twenty-one weeks loss of her freedom and most likely her ability to earn a future living unaided by the state. Good move, Judgey.

At the same time, violent young thugs up and down the country are being given feeble tickings-off by magistrates, receiving fines which will never be paid and being offered counselling and anger management courses – at huge cost to you and me – which are almost universally ineffective. Those same thugs will go on to perpetrate ever more violent acts on individuals and society with impunity: statutory rape as they create more under-aged mothers, drug-peddling, casual theft and routine threatening behaviour, often spilling over into actual assault.

So, jail for Jacqueline Woodhouse for drunkenly saying out loud what is now considered a crime to even think about, but counselling and care for real violent offenders. The race-hate-filled Lee Jasper must be cock-a-hoop as the state spends more and more of your money pursuing new, easy targets – white people who dare to be afraid or ignorant – rather than tackling the true crimes all around us.

Woodhouse was undoubtedly drunk and disorderly and she definitely used threatening language, but did she actually hurt anybody? Her language was indefensibly offensive, but were any of her words translated into action? And since when did causing offence become an actual offence? As with the case of ‘Olly Cromwell’ in Bexley she has been punished for nothing – absolutely nothing – more than speaking her mind. Sticks and stones…

In vino veritas, they say, except often that simply isn’t true – we say things under the influence of drink that we definitely don’t mean and in any reasonable society her drunkenness, whilst a misdemeanour in itself, would be taken as partial mitigation for her words.

Even if her intoxicated tirade represented what she actually thinks, Is it a crime to prefer the company of your shared heritage peers? Really? It’s an actual offence to feel like a minority in your country of birth? It’s illegal to feel physically intimidated by persons of significantly different appearance to your own? Animals survive by recognising shapes and postures as friendly or otherwise – is it now a crime to allow evolutionary instinct to shape your views? Apparently so.

Diplomats learn foreign customs and gestures so as to fit in and to understand the ways of the countries they visit. When Woodhouse’s lawyer asked for a lesser sentence, combined with a “diversity awareness and prejudice training course” her plea fell on ears deaf to the very notion. If judges think we can re-train the uneducable chav scum of our society, why should not the same accommodation be offered an otherwise useful member of the same society?

And as for threatening behaviour, have any judges actually been to a town centre on a weekend evening and seen at close quarters what their liberalism has wrought on Britain’s moral fabric? Have they ever watched a soap opera where virtually every plotline revolves around some moral failure or other? Threatening violence? Why not just lock us all up for thinking violence?

Orwellian thought crime - Labour's legacy - will take a generation to eradicate even if we start today. But that’s not going to happen, is it? Because tomorrow’s judiciary and educators, police and politicians have already been brainwashed into believing the Socialist diktat.

We used to say you can’t be locked up for telling the truth. Well that seems to no longer be so. At least some of what Jacqueline Woodhouse said was true. We’re fucked. 

Will the last intelligent Briton please put the cat out and unplug the telly?