Easy Living

Watching the not-so-slow death of Labour by a thousand cuts_[typo] is a spectacle in turns amusing, horrifying, incredible and at times as predictable as a socialist calling everybody they disagree with ‘Tory scum’. Will they let Corbyn hang on over Christmas? Certainly the consensus seems to be that he’ll be gone after next May’s local elections, by which time Labour will be little more than a gibbering basket case, hoping to fail its Atos work capability assessment and stay on the sick forever. But it wasn’t always this way.

Once, Labour was the thrusting, purposeful party of the working classes. Hardy men who built ships, mined coal or withstood the blast of furnaces, pouring steel to improve the world beyond measure. A mixture of work ethic and pride in nationhood, such men would look disdainfully down at the soft-bellied career politicians who now seek to continue the legacy long after the workers’ battles have been won. Of course, contrary to the party mantras of oppression and penury, many of the old guard have risen far above their origins and now inhabit the leafier suburbs in their retirement.

One such working lad made good was out in the garden a few weeks ago and he noticed one of his neighbours – a typical Tory, made rich on the labour of others – lounging in his hammock in the dappled shade of a late summer’s day. He was sipping a cool beer and listening to the radio as he perused a catalogue of accessories for his BMW, but all the while his wife was working. One minute she was pruning bushes, then doing the weeding, then sweeping the patio before hanging out the washing

A short while later she began struggling with a rusty manual lawnmower to maintain the sward in pristine condition and the hammock-bound ingrate just carried on listening and drinking, not even asking whether his wife wanted a break, or some assistance. The horny-handed son of toil was incensed by this callous disregard for a worker’s plight and although he wished to respect another’s need for privacy, felt he nevertheless had to intervene. When the neighbour’s wife had gone back indoors he wandered over to the fence and stepped up on a bench to berate the idle one.

"Here, look at the state of you!" he began, “There you sit, lazing about, relaxing and getting drunk in the middle of the day while your poor wife has been grafting all day!” The lounging neighbour put down his catalogue and looked over with an air of amused indulgence at the angry man shouting at him. “It’s a disgrace, I tell you. A marriage should be a partnership, equal shares in everything, but here you sit, with your beer and your music, like a fat cat boss, while she does all the work. You should be bloody well hung!"

Tory boy gazed back, steadily before hitching himself up on his elbow, taking another sip and replying, "I am, old boy, I am... That's why she's mowing the lawn.”

Crazy!

Another day, another nail in the coffin lid of ‘The New Politics’ promised by Jeremy Corbyn and his merry band of misled men. Surely somebody must have known about John McDonnell’s planned waving of Mao Zedong’s Little Red Booky Wook over the despatch box? One story is that it was a committee decision to approve the act but surely one of the first rules of political opposition is - Don't let your own cunning stunt become the story. “But it was just a joke!” exclaimed the party worthies, cringing as they did so. The ruination of the Labour Party continues apace.

But, here’s the real joke; so committed are the faithful to the untried ideals of JC the new messiah that they fall straight into every single trap the Tories set for them. It must be like catching passenger pigeons in the Old Wild West... or dynamiting fish in a very small barrel. I keep expecting the stage hypnotist to count to three, snap his fingers and bring them, blinking, back into the real world to find the audience pointing and laughing. But no, the more we laugh, the more the big red bear dances.

For a party trying to regain credibility after the Edstone fiasco you would think that Labour would be doing their utmost to appear, if not electable, at least sane. During the short-lived Miliband era they opposed every austerity measure, insisting that the economy could be rescued while still borrowing more than could ever be paid back. The voters showed them what they thought of that. Under the last Labour government the creeping shackles of cultural thought control made criminals out of people for expressing opinions; the meekly offended trying to get their inheritance early, perhaps?

In a reversal of democratic principles, minorities progressively attained greater rights than the majority. Who knows what the voters thought of that? And of course it was Labour who ushered in the miserable failures of mass immigration and multiculturalism; and we know exactly what most voters really think of that. Yet still the bubble insulates politicians from the consequences of their thoughts and deeds. At least Ed’s people kept up the pretence that they thought they were in with a chance, but under Corbyn even his own cabinet cringe every time he opens his mouth and quickly brief to disown him.

But which is which?

At the height of China’s Cultural Revolution the notorious Gang of Four were responsible for some of the most notorious acts of the revolutionary party. It eventually led to their downfall but they are still remembered to this day. Will Corbyn’s political revolutionaries be likewise recalled in decades to come? As their Greatest Tits catalogue continues to build it is inevitable their bizarre performances will be fondly discussed in the future. We have a tradition of looking after the underdog so, bringing laughter to millions, Corbyn’s Crazy Gang will forever hold a special place in the nation’s heart.

Everything to do with islam

Everybody is, finally, talking out in the open about how to defeat ISIS, ISIL, IS or Daesh, or whatever name you want use to dignify the barbaric rabble; much like the EEC, EU, Common Market chameleon, there is a name to suit every prejudice. But the one thing they are still not saying is what ordinary people warned about decades ago and see every day written across the headlines and carved out of their back streets. This is not some new horror for the twenty-first century, it is the same crusade and war on the west that seems to be islam’s entire reason for existence.

We won’t defeat islam – since 1095 we have been trying – all we can do is beat it down with a big stick and keep it pruned relentlessly. The idea that Jeremy Corbyn has of negotiating with them is ludicrous; the only thing we have that they want is our lives; for them nothing else matters other than establishing brutal, primitive islamic martial subjugation throughout the world. It’s their way, or the highway to hell, so Corbyn’s only negotiating stance would be abject surrender from the outset and a wish for a mercifully swift end. Keep believing you can achieve that, Jezzer, meanwhile the grown-ups are talking.

Other voices are pointing out how little the radicals from Europe that have plotted and carried out their murderous acts have to do with the religion of peace. They lived decadent western lifestyles then one day decided to up and wage war and simply hijack islam for the purpose of headlines. This isn’t real islam, they say, but how would we know, given that every act of brutality is precede with rabid cries of allahu akbar? Anjem Choudary, who is also known for having lived a wild (for which, read ‘normal’) youth is eloquently insistent that allah’s is the only law and that the world will one day belong to his followers.

You see, it is exactly what it looks like. If anything it is the slender majority of hitherto peaceful muslims who are living a lie. Coming over here, trying to make their religion look like ‘our’ religion, living a skewed version of the religion of submission... How dare they try and integrate? If anything it's the westernised muslims and their decadent lives who are 'nothing to do with islam', but they were useful breeding cells. Now their children’s children are merely reclaiming the certainty that tomorrow belongs to them. No wonder comparisons are frequently made with Nazism – the fanaticism, the brutality, the absolute conviction that all others are inferior.

As somebody else tweeted, “If Paris proved one thing it was that open EU borders are an open invitation to murderous Islamic barbarians.” And last night it was Brussels under siege. Where will they be tomorrow? Make no mistake this is the same millennium-old war we can never win unless the world is rid of islam itself – and nobody has the stomach or stamina for that. The best we can do is stamp out the flames and wait, vigilant, for when it starts all over again in a few generations. In the meantime, putting any muslim in any position of responsibility anywhere in the western world is tantamount to heaving the big wooden horse right into the city square. Call me what you like, but either we cull them or they annihilate us.

Massive Cuts

A commentator has said that if the British police had to mount an operation such as that deployed against the Mali hotel jihadists they would have been cut to shreds, for lack of numbers, up-to-date arms and training. There is set to be a shortage of teachers because, given the sort of publicity they receive and the ridiculous amount of responsibility with no backing from authority when the savages they try to control turn against them, recruiting targets are not being met. The NHS cannot attract, train and retain sufficient British-born staff, so chooses to use foreign nurses of sometimes uncertain provenance. And the junior doctors have voted 98% in favour of strike action.

It all comes back to the same thing; priorities. In the estimation of most observers all the above can be fixed with money, what a shame it’s rationed. It has to be though; money-rationing is how economies work. There is only so much to go around – no matter what the left hand side of humanity believes – so all who want state cash have to compete for it. And the way that competition is staged is for each recipient of the tax dollar to demonstrate how utterly dependent we all are on their services by withdrawing those services.

I wish there were more strikes, sometimes. Every time public servants go on strike the rest of us have to decide how we deal with it and unsurprisingly, those who deal with it the most easily are those who actually pay for it. Given the paucity of provision those who can will adapt to circumstances and find alternatives. In other words, reliance on the state for all or part of your needs exposes you to the risks posed by what they used to call ‘industrial action’, but given that most of industry is paying its own way these days the term is, like many benefit bunnies, largely redundant.

Money, like common sense, is not in limitless supply; when there is not enough money some have to go without. But have you ever noticed that among those in work, who choose to have only the lifestyle they can afford to support, both money and common sense, while maybe not in abundance, are nevertheless in sufficiency? The more people need the state, the more strike action hurts them, especially so when administrators choose to apply the cuts not to indulgent, back-office functions or self-publicity but to frontline staff.

This principle applies just as much to government itself as to the services it purports to provide. Ministers with departments in charge of large budgets for nebulous affairs. Vanity projects and inefficient procurement. Layers of unaccountable management and consultancy far above and long detached from the day-to-day business of just getting on with business. The long litany of abandoned causes shows, in its trail of wreckage that national administrations are just as guilty of profligacy as those they point the finger at. And bestriding all of this like an expensive behemoth is the massive waste of money that is the totally undemocratic, beyond-the-law bureaucracy of the European Union.

Looking for massive cuts? Look no further...

Once an agency is so big it no longer needs to beg for money but demand it, you have to wake up and realise its sense of entitlement knows no bounds. The gigantic millstone round the necks of the productive economies of Europe is so wedded to its ‘principles’ that even the defence of European citizens is secondary to sticking firmly to a discredited ideal. The insufferable arrogance of the EU as regularly revealed by Jean Claude Juncker is the single most compelling reason to leave. If you’re looking to make savings, if you’re looking for massive ‘cuts’, look no further than Brussels.

Engineered for Health

The ‘Junior’ Doctors have agreed to go on strike over something or other. I‘m Past caring, if I’m honest, I’m planning a spectacular, no-coming-back-from-that heart attack on my sixtieth birthday... or maybe my seventieth, if my knees hold out that long. Given my current track record I reckon I’ll last till then without needing anything more than paracetamol and ibuprofen and after that, fuck it, time to go. But don’t worry, I’ll keep the place nice and tidy and make sure I collapse into a wheelie-bin bag so nobody needs go to any trouble.

There’s a lot to be learned, to be a doctor, but they’re not geniuses; it’s far less stressful, more lucrative and probably more exciting to make your living as a scientist, or a financier, or an engineer. Which reminds me of an engineer friend of mine who tried to register with a GP a few years ago, following a house move. Nightmare, it was; couldn’t register without an appointment, couldn’t get an appointment without being both ill... and registered. Realising that the balance of supply and demand was out of whack he studied a few medical text books then mischievously set up his own surgery in direct competition.

He took out an ad in the local paper which stated that he would charge £50 for a cure, but prepared to put his money where his mouth was, offered to pay back £100 if the cure didn’t work. Naturally the local GP was incensed – all those years at medical school for this upstart quack to come along and trivialise the noble art of the physician. He visited my mate and declared that he had lost his sense of taste. The engineer ostentatiously reached up and took a jar marked ‘Cure All’ and administered three drops onto the doctor’s tongue.

The doc spat out the ‘medicine’ and said "This is not medicine, it's petrol!" to which the engineer replied “Congratulations, you have your taste back. That will be £50, please.” The doctor paid up and hastily left the surgery, vowing to enact revenge and get his money back. A few days later he returned to the surgery claiming he had suffered a loss of memory. The engineer took down the Cure All and began to fill an eye-dropper, at which the doctor shouted “That’s not medicine, it’s petrol!” The engineer looked steadily back and declared “Excellent. You seem to have regained your memory. Fifty pounds, please.”

The doctor left in a fury of embarrassment. How could a mere engineer, a spit and spanner monkey, put one over on him, with his lifetime of medical training? But after a few days he decided to try one more time to recover the £100 he had lost. This time he donned a disguise and shambled into the surgery, bumping into doors and declaring his eyesight had become exceedingly poor. The engineer held his hands open and said, “I’m sorry, I have no medicine for that. Please accept this £100 note.”

The doctor punched the air in triumph and turned to leave, but then he looked more closely at the note. “But wait, this isn’t a £100 note it’s just a fifty!” The engineer smiled and said “But that’s amazing news; your eyesight has returned. That will be Fifty pounds, please.”