Bog Off!

This looks like it’s going to be just another one of those ‘when I was a kid’ blogs, but it’s important. It’s important because along with Britishness and a love of our island home we lost so much common sense that if we were to gather it all up in one heap we could use it to fix the world. There you go, straight away; fixing, for a start. We used to fix things if they broke. Okay I admit that sometimes we just kept those things in the shed intending to fix them but the thought was there. Now we don’t even put up the pretence.

A source of income, 'when I was a kid', especially below the then legal working age of thirteen, was collecting empty glass bottles. This may come as a shock to today’s throwaway society but back then a deposit was paid on bottles of pop, said deposit recoverable on return. We’d get our penny back on a bottle and the bottles – wait for it, young ‘uns – would be sent back to the bottling plants, washed and refilled! Imagine, using a container more than once! My heart sinks every time I have to empty the bins at work because they are filled with little more than the air contained inside all those bloody plastic bottles you all discard with impunity.

We waste so much, now. Or at least we do at source. Now we pay others to recover the raw materials for us, preferably far from our sight so that our superficial view of the world won’t be sullied by an appreciation of how things actually work. Because we don’t like to dwell on those functions we deem beneath us we unthinkingly waste water, electricity, heat, food and tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of materials that have cost time and money to procure. We even waste people because we decided some time ago that it is cheaper to discard our idle and replace them with new ones, preferably with exotic provenance.

So it’s nice to hear of the EU’s latest venture into recycling with their exciting Buy-One-Get-One-Free offer. I’m a little hazy on the details but I hear it involves our Royal Navy and other scavengers scouring the Aegean coastlines and gathering up the spent refugees, whereupon it returns them to, I presume, some form of refurbishment facility where they will be transformed from undesirable flotsam to some form of useable product and then sent to the thriving slave markets of Europe. Or, indeed, Turkey.

This is an enterprise we should all get behind. I’m sure the offer can’t apply only to the discards of the Hellenic Isles. With a bit of effort we could easily get together a whole shipment and send them back to Turkey for reprocessing – why, there must be a good few container-loads in Calais alone and the mayor did say they were going to put them on a ferry. So come on, true Brits, clean up your neighbourhoods and send the rubbish back for processing.

The Numbers Game

These numbers are not mine – hell, I’ve not even checked them for accuracy, but why should what’s acceptable to the left not be equally acceptable to the right of the discussion? And the talking point here is all about equality and fairness to our fellow man. The important thing is not whether the facts are correct but whether they feel correct. I believe this is the way statistics are routinely authenticated these days; that and trial by Twitter. Anyways, for what it’s worth, here - of unknown provenance - is why Britain is already doing all it is morally obliged to do to help.

Given the scale of what has been called the ‘refugee crisis’ despite the fact that a majority of those arriving on European shores are neither refugees nor in crisis, having paid good money for entry to the lands of rich pickings, our rulers - Herr Merkel and Frau Juncker - have decreed that all European countries take in their "fair share" of the migrant millions headed in our direction.  All very charitable, given that none of these, mainly muslim, migrants are going to be distributed near the country retreats of our so generous elites.

But how do you decide what a "fair share" is? Merkel and Juncker want to use each country's GDP as a measure of ability to accommodate, which will ensure Britain is required to take a huge proportion, similar to Germany’s already near one-million this year alone. But, given that we regularly hear that our infrastructure is at breaking point, why not use population density as the metric? At 413 people per square kilometre Europe's most densely populated country is England. Surely it makes sense that until other countries achieve parity we start filling them up first?

In order to bring other European nations up to Britain’s cheek-by-jowl intensity of competition for space, Germany would have to absorb another 67 million migrants. Similarly France could squeeze in another 160 million and Spain has room for slightly more at 161 million. Even Scotland, by this measure could take an extra million, which would allow the SNP to do their bit without constantly insisting that we do it on their behalf. A quick estimate suggests that just thirteen European countries could between them accommodate approaching 700 million migrants before reaching the same population density as England. Why, they could house half the world’s estimated muslim population.

No need for this. A couple of taxis should do it.

Using these calculations, it appears England is already doing more than its fair share, but given that the 700 million figure is only approximate and rounded up and not wanting to appear unhelpful, it seems only fair that we round up our figures as well. Taking everything into account it appears that yes, England should take in at least a few of the migrants. I estimate we can handle another dozen, just so long as none of them are called mohammed.

It's a gas

Free market or planned economy? No constraints at all on trade or the microscopic examination of every detail by government agencies to determine what is and isn’t ‘for the greater good’? These are the two extreme economic models that have been fought over for generations and the answer is always neither. Go for the free market, grab-what-you-can format and a few people get national-budget-rich at the expense of all those who have nothing to offer the market. In the wild, so to speak, the over-populated low producers would eventually die out and stabilise their numbers at some wage equilibrium. On the other hand, control everything we say and do and we may as well be in prison.

So, somewhere in the middle it is generally accepted, is where we end up and for all the political warfare engaged in by left and right alike the outcome is generally a pendulum shift to either side of some supposed centre ground. VW/Audi is showing what happens when the highly visible hand of government intervenes. Some favoured climate-ideology, emissions control and fuel prices combined to create the diesel monster, based on only one minor consideration. Diesel cars produce a bit less CO₂ than petrol, so all the manufacturer had to do was fiddle the monitoring of other pollutants to produce a marketing advantage. Lower road tax, better ‘gas mileage’ and hey-presto, a scandal created by government's good intentions.

Whatever talents those attracted to seek political office possess, being capable of discerning truth from fiction is rarely one of them. If genuine experts in a field can’t agree they split into camps and then it becomes a simple matter of funding. For many years the tobacco giants, in the full knowledge of the harm done by smoking their product, pursued highly effective lobbying tactics and staved off (bought off) control of their hugely profitable industry. Today it is the spuriously titled ‘climate scientists’ who have the funding to manipulate decision-making in favour of their own, often also highly profitable, visions.

Forget the high ideals of the save-the-planet brigade, it is money that makes the world go round, or at the very least determines which way it turns. And those who control the purse strings know this very well. Forget also the notion of moral balance-sheet decision making, very few policies are decided by what is genuinely, altruistically best, rather what will deliver the best voting outcome. Political parties are in the business of gaining and holding onto power and while individuals may hold strong principled views, if they don’t fit the party narrative they will be whipped into submission or side-lined out of influence

And thus to Europe. For those on the front line, watching hordes of often aggressive aliens invade their lives, syphoning off their resources, taking precedence over their own disadvantaged, the dangers of open borders are clear. But the little people have no influence outside of election time and even then they can be manipulated by cries of racism and appeals to common decency. The palpably erroneous ‘migrants good, indigenous lazy’ storyline is still being peddled by those who gain from it. But don’t think that the opinions of ordinary people play no part; Philip Hammond has said the migrant crisis is playing into the UK’s imagined renegotiation of EU rules.

Preparing to welcome Europe's saviours...

Indeed it does. It generates sufficient anger on the ground for the majority to support those who will make great play of taking a stand. Watch as the argument develops before the referendum and this government does what all ‘democratic’ governments have to do and tell us the story of why they are the ‘least worst’ option. Because that’s all we will ever get. Cheap travel comes with higher pollution, saving the Earth is an easy sell, no matter how spurious the ‘science’ that supports it. The next government will perpetuate the myth that no matter how different or how dangerous our new citizens are, only ever more immigrants will save our economy. Vote for humanity, vote for decency, vote Volkswagen.

Meat

Well, I was going to write about the changing of the referendum question from yes/no to remain/leave. Seriously, the question is now planned to be “remain or leave” the EU? Have they considered how this may bias the outcome towards those in favour of ‘leaving it as it is’? And ‘remain’? Maybe that’s a harbinger of times post-EU when, once the UK has led the way, few others will remain? What about those who will ‘remain’ in the leave-it-be camp? Not really thought through is it; who’s surprised?

But no, something much less important has come up, so I’ll bang on about that for a bit. A body has been photographed, washed up on a beach. You all know the one, which is a bit odd, really, because before him thousands of other children, unnamed children, have been killed, maimed, executed, murdered, butchered, mutilated, tortured, raped, bombed, mined, burned alive and you didn’t really take all that much notice. Why did it take this one single image to get you all going?

And when I say ‘going’, boy, is that an understatement. The world has gone mad over this beautifully framed Athena poster death. For some of you it will be the defining image of your lives; personally I prefer the blonde scratching her bum on the tennis court but hey, each to his own. While nobody should be gleeful at the sight of dead flesh I have to say I am disappointed by the degree to which many have chosen to take this personally. This is what I mean when I say ‘mad’. You didn’t know him, he will feel no more pain and there will be many more to follow him; why this one? Why didn’t you identify with the 1400+ serially raped girls in Rotherham who may suffer as a result for the rest of their lives?

Humans are irrational beings – not me, obviously, I’m a dead-hearted monster; that’s the nature of pragmatism – but there is something worryingly wrong with this crowd hysteria, evoked by a single photograph splashed across the entire world’s press. Every political Svengali would be wanking himself into oblivion if he’d thought of it but this is a thing of accident. Much as in art, there are many who can spread the acrylics across the canvas but few who can push the buttons and this is the Mona Lisa of mind control. Watch me do it in the last paragraph with a single word... 

Politicians, however, are made of sterner stuff and if they can’t generate the mass outcry themselves they certainly know how to exploit it. The parade of crocodile tears has been shameful. A good day to bury bad news indeed – and yes, I did think about typing ‘bury’ and then typed it anyway; see how cruel I am? Which brings me to Twitter: People whose primary interest is second-rate football and have never given the refugee crisis a moment’s thought are all of a sudden beatified and become one with the heavenly father. So saintly are they now that, in response to my stating that I am unmoved, they wish on me a horrible and painful death.

Feel the love...

Some people really do believe they have the monopoly on caring, don’t they? And so exclusively caring are they that anybody who doesn’t see what they see must suffer for their shortness of vision. There is no compassion like their personal compassion and the only way to express it is right there on a handy internet sleeve. If you’ve formed an opinion based on that dead kid, then it’s not really your opinion at all; you have been manipulated. But it’s worked; David Cameron has caved – like he was always going to; like he will on the EU ‘renegotiation’; like he has every single time public support has threatened to wane. And he didn’t seem to hesitate in using meat on a beach to justify it.