Brexit Butterflies

A giant butterfly flaps its colourful wings deep in the Amazon jungle and three weeks later it rains over the Amazon distribution depot in Doncaster. To be fair, it was always likely to rain in Doncaster and nobody can trace the origins of the storm back to the butterfly anyway, but it’s a handy little bit of pseudo-scientific fancy to explain cause and effect and unintended consequences. The ripples spread and just as a rumour can ruin a career who knows, a little local vorticity might just beget an Atlantic depression to rival Hurricane Matthew.

In overnight trading in Far Eastern markets on Thursday the pound took a dip and recovered almost immediately. What devilry was this? What hand wrought this alchemy? Could it be a concourse of market-manipulating software confounding human trading? Or maybe it was a panic reaction to the perception of the so-called ‘hard Brexit’ espoused by Mrs May et al? Was it down to the French president’s Dirty Harry routine, threatening the UK with hardball? Or was it none of these things?

Economic experts, in attempting to explain the hiccup yesterday made idiots of themselves by lining up to offer one explanation after another in an authoritative manner, did nothing so much as demonstrate how, while theoretical economics is a perfectly valid study, economic forecasting is simple mountebankery. If, as many continue to believe, there is some wild conspiracy of the elite to yoke the little man to the wheel, surely they could have all huddled together in a smoky room to thrash out the narrative before taking to the news stations and chat rooms. The value of shares in Bacofoil depends in part on the demand for the raw materials for tinfoil hats.

Is it more likely in fact that nobody knows what Brexit will bring, but that the naysayers are so determined an ill wind must blow they will greet every blip, every halting step as proof-positive that the apocalypse is nigh? Only if the UK fails utterly will they be satisfied, which is pretty much the definition of cutting off one’s nose to spite the face. It is quite bizarre that these arbiters of all that is ‘correct’ would want to line up on the side of pessimism and narrow-minded bigotry while claiming the mantle of open-minded free thinkers.

The truth seems to be that Remainers would happily sacrifice all they hold dear, rather than admit that Britain can survive, even thrive, outwith the bounds of a sclerotic, controlling and ruthless bureaucracy. The value of the currency, shares, commodities, property and all that an advanced nation produces should be based on tangible things, not on the whims of markets spooked by prophecy, superstition and plain meddling in things that the meddlers often just don’t fully understand.

Lepidoptera Brexitus - poisonous

If an economist flaps in London the shock waves will be felt around the planet. He may even believe that those effects can be forecast and controlled. But when loose-lipped forecasts of disaster, rather than real trade conditions result in people losing their jobs, towns losing their industries and panics across the markets plunging whole countries into recession it ceases to be a game. Economic doom-mongers peddle a dangerous poison. Maybe it’s time these exotic lepidopterans had their wings clipped.

Punch Drunk

Another day, another stupendous carnival in the eternal situation comedy of politics. Forget the soaps, ditch the detective shows, this is the acme of aching sides. Parliament is a three-ring circus right now and Theresa May in fishnet stockings, corset and killer heels is wielding her whip as the all-powerful ringleader. The music swells and the familiar tune crackles out from the speakers. As Entrance of the Gladiators plays through the tinny tannoy the Shadow Cabinet clown car lurches into the arena, steam issuing from the bonnet, different sized eccentric wheels wobbling and comes to a rest with a comedy backfire as all the doors fall off.

Jeremy Corbyn invites Buffo Thornberry to sniff an enormous posy on his lapel and the audience hoots with laughter as she falls for the squirty flower routine. He honks the bulbous car horn and mimes belly laughter as Coco Abbott, in her enormous hoop-waisted trousers – oh, wait, no hoop (much like Labour, no hope) runs at the disabled children in the front row, trips and showers them with a bucket of glitter. The children, scared by the hideous clown make-up begin to cry. Everybody else roars as the pratfalls continue, Oh, what a show.

Meanwhile, under a remote and less orderly part of the Big Top the Ukip sideshow is setting out a makeshift boxing ring and a succession of combatants don enormous comedy gloves and attempt to best the champion. Under a giant papier-mâché head, the Nigel Farage figure sees off all-comers as one by one they take their dive and hit the deck. Politics; the roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd - they call it the greatest show on earth. Nobody can fail to be amused by the exaggerated and outrageous antics of the raggle-taggle gypsies and their travelling freak show.

Westminster has always been something of a carnival and when you peek behind the curtain fisticuffs are far from unusual. Eric Joyce has had form in recent years and everybody remembers the famous Prescott jab. One old internecine rivalry continued over several months and frequently came to blows; the adversaries were well-known names and as they are still alive I am not at liberty to name them if only for the purpose of avoiding a charge of libel.

Anyway, it degenerated to the state where one began to launch surprise attacks. One day in the late seventies the younger, fitter rival charged across the lobby floor, launched himself into the air and with a flurry of blows, laid out his old enemy. As he brushed himself down he gestured towards the unconscious figure on the ground and said “When he comes round, tell him that was a Bruce Lee roundhouse kick and karate chop. Enter the Dragon. 1973”

Some days later, the pair having avoided each other since the incident the opportunity arose for another round. This time, as they were leaving the Commons chamber and in full view of the attendant parliamentarians, the younger man began a bizarre shuffling movement with his feet. As the older man looked down to see the little legs a-blur he succumbed to a swift one-two and crumpled to the floor. As the first aid team were being called the younger man took out a comb, rearranged his parting and instructed. “When he comes round, tell him, Muhammad Ali, Rumble in the Jungle. 1974. Uppercut and cross. ”

Roll up, roll up! See the Labour Cabinet Show!

It was some weeks before the older man could take his revenge, then one day, before a cabinet meeting they found themselves alone in the briefing room. They glowered at each other and then, before the younger man could compose himself, the older fellow lunged at him just as colleagues were entering the room. With a single blow he felled the fitter representative. The attendees were aghast, but the man gathered himself calmly, buttoned his jacket and as he left the room said, “When he comes round tell him, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. 1968... Starting handle”

Reap the Whirlwind

If you wanted examples of how far the left have gone to turn into a pantomime version of themselves, yesterday was a joy to behold. Following a rousing conference closure in which Theresa May channelled Thatcher at her most potent the ‘progressive’ world took to social media to rend their garments and put on a display of abject socialist moronry the like of which hasn’t been seen since... well, since last week at the Labour fringe.

Tim Farron, as if to prove his inability to grasp anything at all, let alone the levers of power tweeted a propos of nothing, “I am a proud Northerner, Brit, European and citizen of the world. How dare Theresa May tell people like me we have no identity.” To which the good tweeters responded with hoots and jeers and suggestions he take up residence elsewhere in this world of which he holds citizenship. The word irrelevant cropped up more than once.

Owen Jones’ reaction to Amber Rudd’s proposal to make companies disclose the profile of their work force, as many European countries do, was to declare that there was a “special place in hell” for her and other politicians who “incite bigotry for political gain”. Again and again the response of the left was a bleating insistence that Hitler had risen again and was stoking up the furnaces and commissioning the gas chambers anew... and that such people ought to be violently disposed of.

An appropriately named – if slightly misspelled - Joe Moran coined his own rousing slogan with “Our Full English Brexit is now served with two rashers of bigotry, grilled ingratitude, scrambled economics and a bottomless mug of delusion.” Oh, the irony. In fact, the more I read that oft-retweeted ode, the more I am reminded of doublethink and the plight of these hostages to their own fragile belief systems.

I went to bed to the strains of listeners phoning Ian Collins on LBC to regale him with stories of jack-booted Stormtroopers marching down their streets and lynching anybody without a British passport, stamping on babies’ heads and punching and bayoneting the sick and elderly... in their fevered dreams. It is almost as if they actually wish for all this stuff to happen. The words ‘fascist’ and ‘Nazi’ tumbled from the lips of a succession of dribbling loons, as they called in from their cosy parlours in quiet, safe, tidy, suburban streets.

The left-wing world has driven itself quietly mad. Hypocrisy is endemic as it simultaneously demands free speech yet stamps down on any utterance it deems hateful. And given that it hates itself so much, many of the targets are the very people it should defend. In particular, there is one thing the left appears to hate more than anything – success. Indeed the Labour Party has utterly rejected every element of the Blairite years the only period, they might like to ponder, that they held power since almost forty years ago.

And as the left’s hysteria rises, as the social justice warriors and NHS liberators (I’m never sure what they think they are saving the NHS from) sing battle hymns from the picket lines, imagining that the honks from disrupted commuters is universal approval; as they tell themselves, even as they stand in the cold, that the world is on their side and that their imaginary war against the will of the majority is righteous, how are they thanked for swallowing the fairy tale and crying wolf?

No, really, it's the way I tell 'em. No YOU shut up!

Some people will never be happy until they are forced from their beds at dawn and loaded onto cattle trucks, to be driven at gunpoint to the Job Centres. In their imaginations their lives will be spent in bleak gulags under sentences of hard labour, or as the rest of the world calls it, work, which is the engine of all that hated success. Meanwhile, in Florida, thousands are being evacuated before their homes are flattened by Hurricane Matthew. I suppose that will be Theresa May’s doing, too.

Reap the Whirlwind

If you wanted examples of how far the left have gone to turn into a pantomime version of themselves, yesterday was a joy to behold. Following a rousing conference closure in which Theresa May channelled Thatcher at her most potent the ‘progressive’ world took to social media to rend their garments and put on a display of abject socialist moronry the like of which hasn’t been seen since... well, since last week at the Labour fringe.

Tim Farron, as if to prove his inability to grasp anything at all, let alone the levers of power tweeted a propos of nothing, “I am a proud Northerner, Brit, European and citizen of the world. How dare Theresa May tell people like me we have no identity.” To which the good tweeters responded with hoots and jeers and suggestions he take up residence elsewhere in this world of which he holds citizenship. The word irrelevant cropped up more than once.

Owen Jones’ reaction to Amber Rudd’s proposal to make companies disclose the profile of their work force, as many European countries do, was to declare that there was a “special place in hell” for her and other politicians who “incite bigotry for political gain”. Again and again the response of the left was a bleating insistence that Hitler had risen again and was stoking up the furnaces and commissioning the gas chambers anew... and that such people ought to be violently disposed of.

An appropriately named – if slightly misspelled - Joe Moran coined his own rousing slogan with “Our Full English Brexit is now served with two rashers of bigotry, grilled ingratitude, scrambled economics and a bottomless mug of delusion.” Oh, the irony. In fact, the more I read that oft-retweeted ode, the more I am reminded of doublethink and the plight of these hostages to their own fragile belief systems.

I went to bed to the strains of listeners phoning Ian Collins on LBC to regale him with stories of jack-booted Stormtroopers marching down their streets and lynching anybody without a British passport, stamping on babies’ heads and punching and bayoneting the sick and elderly... in their fevered dreams. It is almost as if they actually wish for all this stuff to happen. The words ‘fascist’ and ‘Nazi’ tumbled from the lips of a succession of dribbling loons, as they called in from their cosy parlours in quiet, safe, tidy, suburban streets.

The left-wing world has driven itself quietly mad. Hypocrisy is endemic as it simultaneously demands free speech yet stamps down on any utterance it deems hateful. And given that it hates itself so much, many of the targets are the very people it should defend. In particular, there is one thing the left appears to hate more than anything – success. Indeed the Labour Party has utterly rejected every element of the Blairite years the only period, they might like to ponder, that they held power since almost forty years ago.

And as the left’s hysteria rises, as the social justice warriors and NHS liberators (I’m never sure what they think they are saving the NHS from) sing battle hymns from the picket lines, imagining that the honks from disrupted commuters is universal approval; as they tell themselves, even as they stand in the cold, that the world is on their side and that their imaginary war against the will of the majority is righteous, how are they thanked for swallowing the fairy tale and crying wolf?

No, really, it's the way I tell 'em. No YOU shut up!

Some people will never be happy until they are forced from their beds at dawn and loaded onto cattle trucks, to be driven at gunpoint to the Job Centres. In their imaginations their lives will be spent in bleak gulags under sentences of hard labour, or as the rest of the world calls it, work, which is the engine of all that hated success. Meanwhile, in Florida, thousands are being evacuated before their homes are flattened by Hurricane Matthew. I suppose that will be Theresa May’s doing, too.

Child Labour

There is a saying which goes, “If you can’t beat them, what’s the point in having kids?” It’s funny because at times every parent has found themselves in a position where for a bleak moment it appeared the only option. You can’t give in to them when they get whiny and snotty – that’s how you end up with people like Tim Farron or Natalie Bennett – but sometimes the boundaries of parental wisdom are stretched to breaking point to come up with any other recourse than to run away and hide until the little fuckers – and you - have calmed down.

But beating is nothing to what you already did. The cruellest thing you can do to your children is to have them in the first place. They have no choice in the matter, you didn’t ask their permission and you have absolutely no idea if you will turn out to be the good parent you imagined before the sleepless nights and two decades of worry until they finally pack their red-spotted handkerchiefs and leave home... only to return a few months later, jobless, potless and bored to tears by the cruel grown-up world you thrust them into. As far as they are concerned you have condemned them to survive on the planet you wrecked, you selfish, selfish bastards.

But it needn’t be this way. You could put them up for adoption, or have them taken into the care system, or – and here’s a novel thought – you could undergo restorative justice for the crime you committed and put in the time to get them off on the right track. Don’t indulge their childish instincts for social justice and espousing any cause, it seems, that involves freely spending resources to which they have yet to contribute. If only there was a way to encourage them to pay for their own indulgences...

When I was a kid we couldn’t wait for the half-terms and the summer holidays. Weeding crops on our hands and knees, hoeing for the bigger kids, strawberry picking, stacking straw bales, potato picking and my personal favourite throughout the horse-racing year, paper-picking after meetings at Thirsk Racecourse. Dirty work, hard graft, cold and wet, sunburned at times, but – and here’s the thing - it’s true that where’s there’s muck there’s brass. And there is nothing quite the same as spending (or saving) your own money, the money you have earned, hour by back-breaking hour.

So what was so risible about Andrea Leadsom’s comments regarding fruit picking? The work ethic, the notions of effort before reward, living within your means, paying your own way and expecting nothing for nothing. These things don’t spontaneously arrive in young brains, they have to be firmly inserted. There is no need for college course, or apprenticeships or extensive awareness and sensitivity training before stepping into wellies and getting your hands dirty. You have to be cruel to be kind and cruelty begins at home; after all, you started it.

They may hate it. Good; incentive to work harder at school. They may love it, Good; forget the Diversity Studies and get on a farm management training programme. Degrees in esoteric nonsense devalue all of academia and every company can point to the battalion of degree-qualified morons who haven’t yet grasped the basic notions of timekeeping, shaving, showing willing and accepting that on company time you are supposed to be doing company work.

Traditional Irish farm workers... in the paddy fields.

But, but, you say, my little darlings are better than that. There’s your problem. For every Internet billionaire there are billions more who haven’t two pennies to rub together. For every Alan Sugar there are millions who will never break even at the end of the month. Entrepreneurship is all well and good but none of those who made it did so without understanding the value of simple hard work. Suffer, the children? They’ll thank you for it in the end.