No Right

As a former critic of the European Court of Human Rights, I have to say I am impressed by the recent expansion of their remit. In granting themselves godlike powers to overrule national sovereignty they have opened up shop as the go-to destination for travellers on the grievance highway. No slight, no inconvenience, however trivial must in future be endured because they are there to fight your cause and bring much wonga raining down on your violated person.

I’d like to be taller, so I reckon the ECHR should sue my long-dead grandparents for not providing me with taller parents and the means to feed me a protein-rich diet in my developing years. Also, as it has rained almost every day since September (in my memory) my enjoyment of the golf course has been interrupted. This is climate change at its most extreme and I must be compensated for the poverty of my existence.

After all, if it is good for the elderly Swiss ladies who have just given the impetus to the ECHR’s overruling of the democratic principle, it’s good enough for me. Concerned that hotter summers meant a challenge to their lifestyle in wealthy, orderly, tidy, safe Switzerland, these ladies successfully elicited a judgement from the kangaroo court of clowns, that this was an infringement of their right to private and family life.

That’s right, the very same carriage of the ever-expanding human rights gravy train has been applied to climate change in the same way as having a pet cat allows them to block the deportation of violent sexual criminals. Only last week the deportation of a convicted Afghan flasher in London, a repeat offender, was blocked because such a crime would bring greater punishment in Afghanistan. Really? I would have thought that a regular tormentor of women would be right at home in a shithole that weaves wife-abuse into the very fabric of its meagre culture.

The court has decreed that governments have a legal duty, enshrined in international law, to not only protect their citizens from the effects of climate change, but to halt that same global phenomenon. Switzerland, they decided, had not done enough to reduce carbon emissions. Switzerland, that industrial titan of several billion inhabitants, all spewing toxic filth into the air day and night… the filthy, dirty bastards!

Over here in the UK a Brit is now in on the act and suing the Government for breaching his human rights because coastal erosion claimed his home. Kevin Jordan has been quoted as saying, “I am now what you call a climate refugee. I lost my home with no compensation. I am now in local authority accommodation. My lovely sea views are reduced to a ground floor flat looking at cars going past.” Well, boo-fucking-hoo. Have you ever heard of insurance, Kevin?

But in any case, so bloody what? Can we now sue the British government because climate change is causing millions of economically unviable, potentially dangerous sub-Saharan Africans to invade our shores? The ECHR has become an expensive joke, propped up by the abject fear of governments to challenge its rulings. The duty of lawyers is to apply the law, not to modify it, pervert it and use it in any way they see fit. Does the electorate have a human right to sue itself if it brings in a useless Labour government later this year? Not enough parking near the doors at Tesco? Surely, I have a human right to park as close to the store as I desire?

Leaving the suffocating embrace of the ECHR, and the clutches of all such over-arching international human rights legislature should be an absolute priority for any sovereign nation. It is yet another post-Brexit failure of our government to use our departure from the autocracy of the EU as a spur to develop genuine independence. Citizens of sense should be rising up against the asininity of the law and saying, proud and loud: “You have no right!”

Mediocre, at best

 Haven’t you just had enough of mediocrity? Strive hard, practice, and keep on going when all is against you. “If you want to be the best, if you want to beat the rest” Roy Castle sang on Record Breakers as he tap-danced and played a multitude of musical instruments to enter the hallowed pages of the Guiness Book. Athletes, actors, musicians, authors… all must have the winning formula of talent backed up by knock-down-surmounting resilience and stick-at-it-ness to succeed.

Architects, engineers, carpenters, bricklayers, and as many other occupations as you can mention have to go through training and assessment, gaining qualifications and experience. And still, in order to do well, they have to care deeply enough to maintain their standards, compete for work and stay ahead of the herd. Hell, even the mugs auditioning for reality shows or hosting Tik-Tok channels have to bring something to the table which holds value for the clientele.

But not so much for politicians. Where have the big beasts gone? Where are the supposed representatives of the electorate to be found? Why is there not one single ‘name’ in British politics who can be admired, rather than just endured? Sunak is just a tight-trousered lightweight, Hunt is lacklustre and uninspiring. Starmer is a man full of adenoidal rhetoric but absent a single policy, likewise his partner in Crime, Gromit, I mean Wallace… I mean Reeves. Rayner? Don’t make me vomit. And William Wragge? The snidey little poove suddenly embodies all the feebleness of the current Tories.

Michael-fucking-Gove has become a dribbling imbecile, embarked on a mission to inflict misery on the very people Thatcher would have lauded. And David-sodding Cameron has this very week been licking the anus of the orange gorilla over the pond. Everywhere, politics is infested with gutless cowards, aimless imbeciles and parachuted-in ‘safe’ candidates who understand nothing, do nothing and stand for nothing. What are they good for?

Eat up your greens, sit up straight, practise until you can, then practise some more until you’re good at it. The message from every decent parent to their offspring is as it always was; work hard, stay decent, grow, work, save… and plan to amount to something. What must the ageing parents of our current crop of trough-swilling political fucktards think of their legacy? Meanwhile other parents see a bleak future for their progeny: home ownership a distant dream, secure employment a virtual impossibility. As for retirement, death may soon be the only reliable way to ending your working life.

Well, I have had about enough of all this. I’ve had my ups and downs, but I have always got back up, dusted myself down and fought on and upwards. But what’s the point now; what is there left to work for the next generations? What is the purpose of this country now we can no longer feed ourselves, fight for ourselves or even reasonably order ourselves without fear of censure, or worse, from those who rule from on high?

What example has been set by modern governance? Incompetent by design, they pretend to stand on manifestos they have no intention of honouring, they cheat and lie and then elevate themselves to the upper house with a slap on the back and a pension for life. They disgrace themselves then utter scripted non-apologies and carry on, barely feeling that bump in the road, all the time in thrall to loftier interpretations of their purpose.

For many decades people have said of their politicians, “They are only in it for themselves,” and few MPs have even attempted to deny this or demonstrate otherwise. Hiding behind the diktats of higher powers – the EU for two whole generations – they claim that nothing can be done, and they ignore the entreaties of the jobless, the homeless, the sick. Even if you are in work and have a roof over your head your security is perilous, yet still some get ever richer on the proceeds of causing all of this to happen.

Nobody is looking out for you any more, as they once were. Nobody with the nominal power to change anything has any intention of doing so. All that matters, it seems, is to appear to fall in line with ‘International Law’ and supranational consensus. But it is neither the consensus nor the will of the people to do follow those lines. I honestly think that a seismic shift in the national ambition is needed and that it cannot possibly come, any longer, from above. It is either every man for himself – anarchy – or bloody revolution and a new republic. Anything to rid us of the sheer awfulness of the mundane.

Eggy Omelette

 ‘Aid worker’ is a loaded title. Saint or activist? Morally pure philanthropist, wanting only to alleviate suffering, or cause-supporting terrorist sympathiser with an agenda, who knows? But the fact that a non-combatant group has been caught in the crossfire should surprise nobody, and the outrage that has been generated – not least by our own dodgy Foreign Secretary ‘Lord’ Cameron – has to be seen for the posturing, attention-seeking, performative nonsense it is.

Should we call for inquiries for every single civilian injured or killed in war? And how many non-coms are supporting, if not harbouring the darker forces within their midst? The world has seen the behaviour of hamas, yet many excuse it as a necessary evil in order to survive. Hamas frequently kills its own, by sheer incompetence, or by design when launching missiles from schools, hospitals and mosques and inviting counter attacks. Human shields? Cannon fodder, more like.

Israel is bent over backwards by the impossible demand of wets like Biden and Cameron and other ‘leaders’ who demand warfare without consequence, ostensibly to further the cause of peace. But hamas has openly declared their intention to keep on attacking until every Jew is dead or gone. It is true, more than ever, to say that if the arabs laid down their weapons there would be peace in the Middle East, but if the Jews did the same there would be no more Jews.

And let me be clear, it is not Israel which is pursuing genocide but the Gazans and their elected leaders, and all their idiot marchers in the west. Polluting the capital city of England – England, for fuck’s sake – every week with their rabid calls for wholesale removal of the Jewish state. But they are peaceful demonstrators for an end to war, they declare. Yes, and the aid workers are in Gaza for no other reason than to ease suffering. My arse.

In making an omelette, eggs must be broken, but there are more ingredients in an omelette than just the eggs. The Middle East is a grotesque omelette of all the leftover gunk in the fridge. It is a hideous mess of conflicting ideology, contradictory history, malevolent pseudo-religious dogma and pure hatred. It is a war that needs to be over, but only two paths to victory are available and both paths end up with a one-state solution.

Everybody has taken a side in this conflict, some from many years of conviction politics – Jeremy Corby springs to mind – think that the Palestinians can do no wrong and are sinned against, rather than sinners. I genuinely don’t give a fig either way about the fate of either side, but I tend to come down more favourably for the Zionist cause; there hasn’t been much Jewish terrorism around the world, after all.

So, while the west impotently demands ‘reasons’ for the unfortunate incident over the Easter holiday it may be worth a moment to reflect on the fact that these aid workers volunteered to be there, in a war zone, knowing that civilian casualties are an inevitability in war. When it comes to the omelette analogy, these eggs threw themselves in the pan.