Afghan Adventure

 Surprise surprise, the closest thing to actual evil on the planet, the conglomeration of fanatical islamists who collectively referred to themselves as Taliban, al-Qaeda, ISIS, et al, are converging on Kabul. Who could have possibly predicted the consequence of the US pulling out, and Britain following closely on their heels?

The UK long ago lost the ability and political stomach to defend its own shores – see the dinghy denizens – so what on earth possessed the then government to send troops out to be slaughtered in the Kush? The region is decades away from safe self-governance, a fact which has been abundantly evident to people who live and work there, and to all but the experts who watch from afar.

Experts again. Actually it is no such thing, I am sure there are genuine experts tearing their hair out at what they are seeing. It is gesture politics, vanity politics, politics as popularity contest and a politics which suits Boris Johnson down to the ground. A lot of arm waving, a lot of hot air, bingo-bongo, by jingo and in the end… nothing. Pomposity and posturing; Parliament is little more than a chimps’ tea party now; a show to dazzle the little people.

While despotic regimes slaughter their dissenters and run roughshod over international treaties, baring their teeth at anybody who dares to intervene, western Governments are powerless to do a single thing unless others let them. The UK administration will do whatever it takes to kow-tow to the US, The EU, the oil companies, big pharma… Let’s just get it out in the open – declare yourselves impotent and then we can declare you all redundant and do the jobs ourselves.

Vigilantism is what happens in the absence of strength. Hatred flourishes when order is abandoned. Hope vanishes with the loss of integrity. And all three of these essential regularities are conspicuous by their lack. An 80-seat majority should allow any government with the will to do so, to restore order and integrity and stand strong against transgressors. Instead we have governance which appears to care far more about how they appear to outside agencies, than what the people of this country think.

The Labour Party has been engaged in a 20-year struggle – often amusing - to alienate their core voters; now the conservatives are doing the same. So think now about defending yourselves because the government, the courts, the police and the armed forces can’t or won’t do what we think we pay them to do. This is not a criticism of those on the front line; everybody knows it is a failure of direction, of leadership, of honest guardianship.

Sooner or later – sooner by all appearances – the islamist cells in Afghan caves are going to take advantage of our chaos and inaction and dinghies will begin to arrive containing armed jihadis. They will eagerly arrive on our pebbly beaches and start mowing down innocent civilians, and fearing nobody, they will keep on shooting until they are taken down. How many will die before our government dares to act?

We Need to Talk about Kevin... Again

The Victorians had it right; children should be seen but not heard. In fact they should only even be seen when they are doing something amusing or amazing. If they’re not falling over, bumping into things, or recalling Pi to a thousand decimal places, silently, children are a bloody liability. Parents should nurture them, teachers should fill them with curiosity and various mentors should inspire and encourage them. But for Pete’s sake, shut them the fuck up.

While watching something last night, on a streaming channel which doesn’t allow you to fast-forward through commercials, I had the misfortune to endure the excruciating Amazon climate change pledge excrescence. One after another, whiny brats from around the world admonished me for threatening their future, blamed me for ignoring what was so clear to their all-prescient sensibilities and charged me with fixing it all. For them, presumably.

Well, that can sod off; I am not going to be blackmailed by a bunch of snotty sprogs. My generation grew up in a world where recycling was normal. We didn’t throw things away when they broke; we fixed them, or salvaged what we could for parts. Food was rarely, if ever, thrown away, and we didn’t expect it to come in bomb-proof plastic enclosures with no alternative use, and – I’m talking to you, Amazon – we would have been embarrassed about sending somebody a toothbrush in a box big enough to house a small yak. 

We didn’t roam the streets clutching yet another coffee-to-go, or a single-use plastic bottle on every mission into the deepest, darkest high street. Fizzy drinks were a treat, not a necessity. We didn’t expect our every demand to be met, and deferred gratification was the norm. Before credit cards we knew we had to save up for something we wanted. And when the time came to part with that money we often realised the original desire had waned, and we had a better use for the cash.

Parsimony was normal, choices had to be made and compromises reached. Yes, air travel and yes, personal transport; for many these were the rewards of middle and older age when, after a lifetime of toil we had finally made our nests comfortable. And just as we had endured relative hardship in earlier years, we have the necessary stoicism to set aside our luxuries with few complaints. We are products of our age, as are the next generation. But just look how the next lot is turning out.

Remember that children know nothing but what they have been told. Children didn’t make that maudlin Amazon tripe. They didn’t write the words; they didn’t research their thesis. They just regurgitated what others dictated to them. Who are these others? They are the influencers; a shadowy and ever-present horde of mostly millennials who have decided that their parents and their grandparents are to blame. For everything. In other words, just older children who have depended on real adults all their life, but imagine in their immaturity that they are the grown-ups now.

These complainants are not the solution – in fact it appears they are taking no responsibility at all, insisting that the people they blame must do all the heavy lifting; they are like the BLM crowd, with no sense that they are participants, but insist on being the recipients of reparation. Be the change? They have no intention of being the change; they think that berating others is the same thing as actually doing something. Like think-tank politicians, they believe slogans are the same as action.

Do it, if only for the slebs...

It’s as if the lessons of the last few years have never sunk in. Instead of asking why people voted for Brexit and Trump they just label them as stupid. Instead of asking how the various groups can collaborate to tackle the issues of the day, they act, childishly, as if the fault is always that of the others. The up-and-coming generation have no knowledge of their own, but they just don’t realise it. Children are the future? My arse. But in a sense they may have a point. Adults did this, so adults need to fix this. No, not the climate, the bloody kids.

Code Red?

A week ago, I read an article in the magazine for the American Association for the Advancement of Science which suggested that the warnings of future high temperatures are implausible, based on flawed modelling. In advance of the release of yesterday’s deliberately emotive and alarming ‘CodeRed’ report, the writer is, basically, trashing the science. A bit, at least.

But here’s the thing; who do we trust? The world of scientists who make a living from predicting gloom, or the more moderate voices advising caution? Do we listen, even, to the outright sceptics, who have their own science which tells them what they want to hear? While I am perfectly capable of listening to an argument and, indeed, of being swayed by it, I simply do not have the depth of knowledge to decide whether it is true or not.

Almost whoever you are, you require a leap of faith in forming your opinion because we are talking about the future and literally nobody knows the future. No matter how hard you try to persuade me of ‘the facts’, ‘the science’ or the credentials of those whose homework you are copying, you still don’t know. They don’t know. Your opinion, as much as you believe it to be founded on absolute truths is just that, your opinion. As is mine. We may both be wrong.

When it comes to climate change, I’m not going to even attempt to either dispute, or support, the veracity of the warnings. What I am far more concerned about is what is really likely to happen as a result. Announce a possibility of toilet roll shortages and people will flock to the supermarkets to create a toilet roll shortage. Announce a climate emergency and watch as humanity does its absolute best to make damned sure it comes about.

Not being able to buy your favourite pesto because of ‘bloody Brexit’ is one thing. Being denied the use of your actual country because of an overwhelming deluge of climate refugees is, I might suggest, a calamity on a slightly more serious level. Tell the teeming masses of the medieval continents that they will suffer drought, floods and starvation because of the industrial actions of the West and you can pretty much see what comes next. (See also, slavery…)

Forget your electric cars and your hydrogen boilers; no amount of technology is going to crack this nut. In order to make their point the IPCC report has gone full apocalypse and all but admitted that nothing can really be done, even if all the world’s governments sign up and then actually keep their promises (and this is far from likely). So what? Not reaching unreachable targets isn’t a big stretch for the imagination. But introducing measures which restrict people’s access to resources is like inviting them to raid the stores before the shelves are empty.

“If we don’t act now, it could become irreversible” is an invitation for all to conclude that it is just too late. They may as well have yelled “Last orders!” in a crowded English pub. Meanwhile, those who are really affected by climate change (clue; it is not the developed west) will seek to abandon their desiccated land and head for greener pastures, just as those who tend the pastures are crippling themselves with debt.

The big deal is not whether or not we can arrest or even reverse climate change – a great many in the know think we can’t, or that it will be too little, too late – the big deal is how we cope with what’s to come. Were it just Little Britain we could probably manage fine, but just watch as the trickle of climate refugees becomes a flood and it floods our way. Sod your electric cars, go and buy weapons; in a few years it will be every man for himself

War on White

The announcement of the continuance and expansion of the Stormzy Scholarship – a bursary scheme for black applicants to Cambridge University has, predictably, aroused questions over whether such a scheme for exclusively white applicants would be even legal. When Prof. Bryan Thwaites offered a scholarship in 2019, to give white boys from deprived backgrounds a chance to gain a better education in elite schools, he was turned away. The excuse was that his offer was not inclusive; well neither is this.

Mr Michael Ebenezer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Junior might believe he is solving a problem. But, in reality, he is exacerbating one that a certain sector of society has been fuelling for decades now. The proliferation of schemes exclusively for the benefit of ‘ethnic minority’ applicants has been clearly visible for some years. So-called diversity hires are not about equality, nor inclusion, nor proportionate representation. Just as the hard left successfully infiltrated the institutions, this new and disturbing variation will implant anti-ethnic-British thinking throughout the organs of state.

Ever since Britain practically bankrupted itself to abolish slavery, certain parts of our ‘intellectual’ ruling class have wrung their hands in angst, the sense of white guilt pervading all and eventually permeating throughout society. Now we have a broadly appeasing national sentiment where, for many years now, white people in authority have gone out of their way to ensure ever more opportunities for non-whites to fully participate in British society. The whip hand, to use Enoch Powell’s term, has been stayed and open palms presented in supplication instead.

Year on year, generation on generation, Britain has become possibly the least racist nation on Earth. We have been open and welcoming and in the determination to further the life chances of black and brown skinned people have neglected our own. Progressive education has left the white boy behind, a conscious decision by those who think they know so much and understand so well. Ours has been a mission of sharing. But just look how it has been received.

I’m not sure we expected thanks, or any particular expression of gratitude, but the response to – and I’m not afraid to say this - our generosity has been far from that. The old expression “give them an inch and they’ll take a yard” could not be more apposite. Not good enough, they insist, as they form into their own societies and exclude whites. The multicultural experiment has ended up where many said it would; monocultural ghettoes and the exclusion and disadvantaging of the indigenous.

Many will argue that this is merely a redressing of the balance, but that is simply incorrect; those who are now disadvantaged played no part in historic oppression. The Trojan horse has been brought inside the walls and now its occupants are set on sacking Troy. I look with dismay at the glee on non-Conservative faces as they look forward to our first black or brown Prime Minister, and celebrate every instance of the blackwashing of our history and institutions.

"Looks like Enoch was right"

Of course, I am a hideous racist for saying this. But I know I am not in a tiny reprehensible minority; many people fear for what comes next. Future generations of white children are almost certainly going to learn what racism really is. And if, as the black activists and scholars insist today, only those in power can exercise racism, tomorrow is looking very bleak indeed for anybody with any skin colour which identifies them as ethnically British.

Thankless

If a lorry driver fails to show up for work a consignment doesn’t get delivered, shops fall short of stock, people are disappointed, inconvenienced and possibly, put in peril; what if the load was medical supplies? A small army of logistics personnel seeks to make sure this never happens, or to mitigate the damage if it can’t be averted. In contrast, should a professor of race grievances take a whole year of sabbatical, not one person on the planet will suffer. The sum total of human existence will not be affected in the slightest

Likewise, economic forecasters, who only exist to give astrology a veneer of credibility. Then there is the emerging field of gender studies – if every person in the country who genuinely suffers from gender dysphoria were to be publicly funded to research it, there would probably be fewer than there are now engaged in actively promoting it.  And what of those committees engaged in renaming streets, demounting statues and placing tributes to unknown people of colour whose actual significance pales in comparison with the fabricated legends written about them? All utterly pointless.

Please feel free to add worthless occupations of your own, because, across the western world – those parts of the world not struggling with the basics of survival - there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people who are handsomely rewarded for 'work' which adds nothing useful to society. If we lost them all tomorrow, nobody would notice. Nobody, of course, except the benefits office.

Contrast the value of these non-jobs, every single one no doubt requiring a degree (degree requirements may be waived for applicant with the correct ethnic credentials) with the really vital jobs without which our society could not survive. Those thankless jobs the highly educated may look down upon but could not get by without. These are the jobs that society should value and reward.

Who stacks the shelves? Those faceless, busy beavers who pack and pick stock and keep supermarkets and ‘fulfilment centres’ operating. I can just see the dismay on the faces of the commentariat when they can’t find their favourite brand of organic pesto foot balm where they expect to find it. And, checking out, cashless and automated is fine until you need the human with the cardkey to validate your purchases.

And who makes the products those shelves are filled with? Machines are still a long way away from being able to do everything. Until that day – which will be beyond most of your lifetimes – those clothes, that food, those gadgets have required the input of human labour, paid far less than the children who writes articles for the Guardian about the nobility of toil and the struggle of the masses, yet have never picked up a tool in their lives.

Then there are all the trades. Those grubby little people in vans whose sole purpose in life is to keep your world up and running. They build your houses, they fix your central heating, they install, for you, gadgetry they could never afford for themselves. So what, your paper on free expression in the age of Trump can wait forever; nobody will miss it. But how long will you survive without your dishwasher?

And have you ever noticed that those who ‘suffer with mental health’ as the phrase now seems to put it, are rarely those who actually work for a living, in the conventional sense. Mental health issues are far more prevalent among those who have the luxury and the time for such indulgences. So it seems clear to me that there is a way of making the world a better place.

Think less, think better.

It is not by writing about it, by pontificating on the cerebral, by espousing ignoble causes, or by going on perpetual marches in support of one grievance or another, but by putting aside the chatter and getting on with it. Education, education, education, Tony Blair famously spouted, but look where it has led. The same advice is true now as it was a hundred years ago; if you want your kids to have a secure future, turn them on to honest work, and tell them to be good at it.

Who Collects The Bodies?

So, the loonies are right and just before Christmas the hands on the levers of power tinker with the 5G signal and across the world (5G coverage allowing, so not much of the world, then) we, the vaccinated begin to drop dead in droves. What happens then? I mean, let’s say everybody with the jabs within a half mile radius of a 5G mast just tumbles, poleaxed in the street; who collects the bodies?

The answer, just staying with the premise a while longer, is nobody. Mostly, I expect because by then those who currently seem to know anything will have convinced themselves that the vaccine itself is transmissible by contact. And given that the vaxxed outnumber the anti-vaxxed considerably, what an impossible task it would be. The streets will be blocked by corpses and the Tesco and Amazon deliveries will be halted (it is likely all their drivers have been jabbed anyway). Everybody will starve.

Then the scavengers will come, the deadly disease will pass into the crows (family corvidae) and mutate to form a new threat to civilisation and Greta’s dreams will all come true. The majority of those spared will be young, dumb and full of dogma and dreams and incapable of running a society. All those isms competing for attention, all that tech collapsing for want of electricity, economies crumbling before your eyes. How does any of that benefit ‘the elite’ in any way?

Putting aside the veracity of the pandemic for now, how does removing at one go the repository of the majority of human experience and knowledge, help? At the vaccination stations were there special batches of placebo to be administered to chosen volunteers? Did your local GP surgery scrutinise your CVs for evidence of your usefulness in the new world order? Surely such a well-planned, long-planned worldwide control event would not have left to chance who lived and who didn’t? That would be madness.

Ah, but, no, say the placard wavers. See, the vaccine makes you infertile and population reduction is achieved that way. So, not the 5G then? No, the 5G conspiracy theory was just a bunch of lunatics with their own agenda. Which was? Well, they're just mad. And how are they different from any other group with fixed ideas and an agenda? That’s not important right now; infertility, that’s the thing. The majority of the vaccinated are well beyond peak fecundity. Well, all we know is we’re not having any of it.

And that appears to be where we are. A world-wide plot by shadowy ‘elites’ to crash their own parties and reduce their mansions to hovels? Without thriving economies the next generation of the powerful will not be the woolly-headed, liberal, social media billionaires, it will be warlords. It will be those who can seize power the old-fashioned way. In acquiring great material means you have to climb to the top of a pyramid of wealth. In acquiring simple power over others, you just have to hack your way to the top of a pyramid of bodies.

The elites don’t benefit from any of this, and neither do governments. Nobody in current positions of power and influence will benefit in any way from a dissatisfied population of the unemployed and disenfranchised. So, if it isn’t the currently powerful who are manipulating the world, who is it? Follow the money, says the freedom crowd. I have. It leads nowhere.