Shush now...

Jeez it’s hard work not having the time to blog, but sometimes you have to make the effort and take a stand. There is a war being waged under the hashtag #takebackTwitter as a variety of the usual suspects tries to impose its will on the majority. Under the guise of taking action against abuse they are, it seems, engaged in deliberately attracting such abuse then breaking Twitter rules by inviting their followers to mass-block and report spam to get accounts suspended.

There are laws against making threats. But there are also laws against entrapment. And laws against wasting police time. There should also be laws against whipping up fantasy realities to further causes that are ultimately about restricting the few social freedoms we have left. Thus to be concerned about the policy of unchecked immigration to deliberately erode our national character is deemed racist. To be concerned that we employ cheap foreign labour while leaving our own population uneducated is xenophobic. And now, to say anything that offends any individual, even by accident is to attract some label they have yet to dream up and to become a criminal offence.

What the Feminazis don’t seem to realise is that after a generation of men being cowed into believing they are second-class citizens, designed to rape and objectify women, for which every man must atone forever, the sexes were rubbing along pretty well together. Because, after New Labour poured accelerant on the flames of that particular fire it had all become a bit of a joke and even a majority of women thought the feminist cause had gone too far.

But hey, I’m not writing bout feminism or any other ‘ism’ here, I’m writing about this ridiculous notion that the louder you shout the ‘righter’ you are. The huge majority of Twitter users are not there to campaign for or against anything at all. Heard the phrase ‘social media’? But there are plenty of users backing causes and expressing ideas which might not be to everybody’s taste. And then there is a minority of childish, possibly deranged people out there who seek out opportunities to go too far.

Have you thought, ladies, that you might actually be guilty of provoking the mentally unstable to expose themselves and risk unnecessary harm? Or that you are inadvertently putting fear in the hearts of users who no longer see Twitter as harmless communication but a cesspit of threats, lurking and waiting to pounce on the slightest transgression. Because, without a thought for other people the relentless pursuit of various agendas, all of which originate from a leftist stance you believe is inherently a thing for good, you are bringing about Orwell’s prophecy, sure as eggs is eggs:

“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”

So, carry on with your shrill protesting by all means. Rage against this, rail against that, march all you wish. I don’t care. It’s not my war and I’m not your enemy – I never have been - but I sure as shit am looking forward to your proposed Internet boycott on the 4^th August. I hope it's successful - then maybe the peaceful majority might get a moment’s respite from your constant oppression.


4th August UPDATE:
Well, today is the day and it appears that, for iPhone users at least, a new 'Report Tweet' option has been added which appears worldwide. Now, all you have to do if you are offended is to click on that and an armed squad will immediately storm the home of the perpetrator of your outrage, stamp on the baby's head, repeatedly rape any females present and incarcerate the hateful troll in a regime that includes a daily buggering by a battery of burly Beefeaters. Nothing less would suffice to satisfy the frothing and baying for blood that daily emanates - but not today, hopefully - from the serried ranks of left-wing apologists for humanity.

Just think how much blood and treasure we could have saved if we simply hadn't bothered with the two World Wars? 

We're all going on our...

All good things must come to an end. Thus, until September, Parliament is in recess. Yes the pack of bawling schoolchildren we are expected to look up to as our leaders are going on their holidays, some no doubt, at the expense of whichever interests they are consulting, lobbying, courting, embezzling, distorting, spinning, lying or cheating for. Imagine the gossip at Toynbee Villas over the summer. Imagine how the special Socialist Champagne will flow!

No doubt the Camerons will hole up on somebody’s common or garden, all-in-this-together, private island in the Caribbean, George Osborne having to make do with some castle or other, while dear old Nick Clegg will be trying for a Redcoat summer job at Butlins, where he’ll be able to court the attentions of Red Len and company in his bid to seek a coalition with labour for when he loses his current position. Hi-de-Hi, Nick!

 I too will be taking my leave, for a while. To all the Twitter burglars* out there, my compact and bijou abode will be fending for itself for a couple of weeks – knock yourselves out - while my little brother and I rip apart and reassemble the bungalow our ancient and creaky parents are about to move into. Oh yes, it’s definitely renovation weather, he said with an ironic wink and a sweaty nod and blogging will be the last thing on my mind after a day at the coal face.

For those literally unable to get through the week without me, how about you trawl through the blog for some old favourites then share them with the world? That would be a nice change from seeing my endless repeated scheduled tweets popping up every half hour. Plus, depending on activity, it will give me the opportunity to pick my favourite reader – much the same as parents are forced to do with their kids.

So, I’m off. I may pop up with the odd jocular, infinitely retweetable gem, I may not. I might even squeeze in the odd wee blogette now and then, but until normal service is once again resumed I shall bid you a fond adieu and wish you a happy couple of weeks of rant-free summer until we meet again.

If anybody asks, tell 'em I'm here!

(*Burglars please note: I have installed cameras everywhere, so make sure you smile. Oh and watch out for the bear pit, the man traps and the Rambo style spiky killer-bamboo booby-trap...)

More Sugar?

I’m sometimes accused of being a tad partisan, labelling every left-winger as simple, naïve or just downright gullible, likening them to children or simpletons. But if Sunny Hundal’s portrayal of the right as pantomime villains resonates with left-wingers then it tells me I’m on the right track. Both sides have their baying mobs of course, but the mobs to the left have hatred in their hearts. They hate what they see as right-wingers because right-wingers are pure evil. Talk about black and white – oh, you can’t; that discussion is closed down for good.

On the tenth anniversary of the mysterious ‘suicide’ of Dr David Kelly on caring Labour’s watch and the unprecedented 70 year secrecy order on the evidence that can have been imposed for no other reason than to ensure any guilty parties are long deceased, the naivety of the left appears to be in little doubt. They have a simple yearning to be liked, to be seen as the nice guys and they will fight and cover up and even kill to preserve that sunny self-image. Or they’ll tell their mum.

Because the facts of the matter are straightforward; humans are of a kind. Yes it’s true, they all want pretty much the same things and only the route by which that is achieved appears to be in dispute. In the brutal dog-eat-dog world of everything-that-has-ever-happened, humans will stop at little to achieve their ends. No matter the political allegiance espoused, humans are kind when it suits them, possessive when they need to be and hostile when it is all that is left. Tory voters are no more evil than their lefty counterparts; they are just a lot more likely to survive when the economy finally tanks.

Because the nice agenda contains a fatal flaw; myopia. Just as the failures of the federalisation of Europe are to be solved - according to the European Parliament - by more European Union, so the failures of socialism - according to socialists - can be cured by, yes, more socialism. If the error of treating a victim of poisoning with more poison is immediately obvious to you, you must be a heartless, vicious, right-wing bastard. And the coalition is far from right wing, which is why it is doomed to continue many of the disastrous policies of the left.

With the European Union expansion the socialist wet dream project has painted itself into a corner – the solution to a failed pan-European immigration strategy is (you guessed it) ever more freedom of movement. Which is why we are going to see more and more horror stories about gangs of Roma child pickpockets and shanty towns and trafficking and drugs as we head towards 2014 – the press will do what the government dare not. The Roma are no more generically evil than other humans, they are simply pursuing a survival strategy by any means available and western Europe is ripe for plucking. Too bloody nice, you see. Or too bloody weak.

If anything, what we really need is a strong, centre-right administration, intent on reversing the decades of weak, socialist capitulation brought about by a sense of righteous niceness and an inability to say no. Labour can never offer such a thing and they have absolutely zero credible policies, which is why their entire electoral strategy appears to be the recruitment of the Sunny Hundals of the world to resurrect the palpably untrue ‘Nasty Tory’ brand and rely on the natural, childlike instinct of the left – to spit out the nasty medicine and take sugar instead.

Labour – Political Diabetes.

Who’s in charge here?

It seems like a simple case of ownership. Do we own the government, or does government own us? Judging by the daily demands of the popular press the matter would appear to be settled; under the banners of social justice, equality and human rights the government must intervene to do something about, variously:

The noise, the neighbours, the neighbours’ annoying kids, annoying kids in general, attitudes and behaviour in society, the ASBO culture… and my annoying kids. Sticking with the subject of kids – cos, right, dey is da fyootcher, innit? -  the government must act to increase my fertility, so I can exercise my human right to breed without restraint, but simultaneously restrict the breeding rights of other people who are just not responsible enough to know when enough is enough. Fair enough?

We, the people demand, that the government take action to maximise our life chances, by improving education, welfare, health provision, transport and body morphology reassignment counselling. We further demand equality for all. If that means restricting the potential of those with greater ability, then so be it; if fairness is the key then it is only fair that nobody should succeed in such a way as to embarrass or shame the rest of us or belittle our mediocre achievements. There can be no higher national ambition than equality of self-esteem.

We cannot be expected to understand science. This is why the government must maintain fleets of advisors to tell us what to eat, how to exercise, how to stay clean and when and what to recycle. They must not deliver to us raw facts, based on which we are incapable of making a judgement – no they must do the judging for us. Low carbon, fossil-fuel-free, organic, synergistic, sustainable, biodegradable, poly-cotton, drip-dry, ecologically ethical lifestyles are words and phrases with no meaning for us because they all sound like hard work. You must make those decisions for us… because we are in charge.

We want wall-to-wall, end-to-end, piped-in, hyped-up joy; not this incomprehensible, responsibility bullshit. And none of your guilt trip shenanigans, neither – don’t go making us feel bad for needing to resort to drink and drugs and fat and sugar and pretty things we can’t afford in order to stave off the ennui and sheer futility of existence. Do our thinking for us because we can’t be bothered. After all, we are the masters here and the government is our servant, remember?

I think that’s a summary of where we are today, or at least it’s where the Labour Party’s most reliable full-life tariff voters reside – the “everything must be done for me” brigade. Of course, in order for something to be done and seen to be done, records must be kept. That’s why there is such a thing as a Sex Offenders Register; keep tabs on the buggers. No matter the severity of the transgression, if it’s indelibly recorded the system can be seen and proved to be working. And as the SOR has been so successful in absolutely removing for all time any reoccurrence of sexual offending, by logical extension we can introduce offence registers in other areas too.

For your security and protection the following permanent, publicly accessible records must be maintained: The Race Offenders Register, the Bigot Register, the Climate Change Deniers Register, the NHS Detractors Register… Speeders Register, Disabled Parking Violators Register, Eight Items or Fewer Transgressors and the Looked-at-me-in-a-Funny-Way List. Every transgression against the laws put in place for your safety and convenience must be filed and available under the Freedom of Information Act. No deed unpunished, no mistake unpaid for.

The system will set you free!

As the servant of the people the government must do all that for you; it is what they are there for. They will absolutely guarantee your health, wealth, security and happiness and all they ask in return is your freedom.

Big is Butt Ugly

The theme of last night’s Newsnight seemed to be that whatever government is in power the NHS operates primarily for the benefit of its staff and not that of its patients. We’ve seen this before; the rail and coal and steel industries all suffered the fate of state monopolies with self-interest coming before efficiency and ever higher subsidy required to cover up the reality that economies of scale are simply lost when there is no real accountability.

As more and more scandal is reported and more and more evidence comes to light about a profession blighted by targets and box-ticking and the relentless imposition of qualifications in place of simple human compassion, the current government is lambasted for attempting the necessary reforms while the Labour Party seems to be more concerned than anything else with covering it all up and saving their own skins.

NHS; the emphasis should be on the H and not on the N – focusing on the so-called big picture and the sanctity of the state behemoth (one of the largest employers in the world) the detail has been neglected. And the detail is all about the patient care; the small print is written in human misery. Ah but, we are all stakeholders in nationalised industries surely and that must be a good thing, right? Except that is a just another meaningless sound bite, the product of governments unable to tackle reform on political grounds and trying to justify throwing ever more money – our money – into the pit. We must ‘save’ the NHS; the envy of the world, the jewel in the crown of the welfare state. Anything to put off the day when sleeves have to be rolled up and the rot eradicated.

It’s a mere aphoristic kindness to say that the NHS is a ‘victim of its own success’. That’s like saying Piers Morgan is a victim of his own likeability. The bigger any system gets, the more complex its operations, the more removed from individual responsibility becomes every single person in that system. Remove individual responsibility and soon it’s just another trough to shove your snout in. And you can’t blame people for taking advantage, because humans are just another opportunistic species and the snout mentality is never far away.

Corruption doesn’t just have to mean drug companies colluding with the medical profession and skimming off billions. It doesn’t just have to mean management reforms inevitably generating yet more management. It can simply mean taking ‘sick’ days because you can, or going on pointless courses because you can… not caring because you still get paid whether you care or not. This is the British disease, the sick man of Europe resurrected from the shallow grave that Maggie was prevented from digging deep enough.

This is the inevitable conclusion of Statism. It doesn’t matter what works or what doesn’t, it doesn’t matter who dies and who lives, it doesn’t matter who pays for it, or how we pay for it because when we own everything we can control the flow of information too. And we’ve proved it again and again – Hitler, Stalin, Mao; all cut from the same cloth – repeat the lie often enough and people will believe that Big Brother loves them and they will come to love and rely on him. If only we had a state broadcaster in our pocket, too. Oh…

Harsh medicine time for the NHS

So, now we know the NHS is fucked and has been for a long time, how long before realisation dawns that bigger is not necessarily better? Collectivism always erodes individualism, which is fine when everybody is working away in the salt mines, but you can’t have both or rather you can’t have an unlimited amount of both. You might want to consider this when you are deciding what you think about the European Union.