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...)

Edtelligent Design

I listened in amusement/amazement - take your pick - as Radio 4’s Today programme aired an interview with Ed Miliband this morning. Wow! What a vague and vacuous clown he is! He droned on and on in his ‘Edenoidal’ imitation of Tony Blair’s ‘man of the people’ act, glottal stopping and H-dropping like he was a right geezer, innit? But ultimately it was a car crash and he was crucified; nailed to the altar of Labour’s Blank Sheet manifesto. 

He has nothing to say and few ways to say it. Yesterday in Prime Minister’s Questions he berated the PM for the conservatives constant dithering over Europe. Today in the interview, when asked for Labour’s stance, he couldn’t/wouldn’t/didn’t answer the question but pretended, to himself as much as anybody, that he had. 

So what IS Labour planning to do? About anything? How will they convince anybody but the incurably gullible that they are not the same old tax-and-spend, fiscally bankrupt party of old? “Aha!” you say “they’ve published a pamphlet!” And indeed they have. I’ve read it, so you don’t have to and herewith I present my summary and translation. (I may have rearranged some of the words.) 

“Labour needs to broker new and durable alliances across civil society, developing its digital communications and initiating and sustaining campaigns that build up its capacity for electoral success” And “The traditional phrases were solidarity and fraternity but neither work well for the changes in our country” 

We need to do some back room deals, put some shit on YouTube, pretend we’ve changed but ultimately say the same old thing with longer words. 

“We need to listen deeply, not just to the things we want to hear but to what we find difficult to hear. And we need to respond to people’s concerns by creating public debates that engage with the issues. In the process we will define One Nation Labour and the political life of the country.” 

We still don’t have any actual policy – all we've got is a working title. 

“If we are to be effective we will need two vital ingredients: people’s energy and their enterprise. Out of these will grow new initiatives, a sense of hope and a belief that Labour can make real change for the better in people’s lives.” 

We haven’t got a clue what to do. Please will you tell us? 

So, just what is One Nation Labour, Ed? 

“First, it is a politics that is both radical and conservative. Second, it is the practice of a democratic politics of the common good. Third, the politics of the common good is governed by reciprocity. Fourth, it is a politics of being together” 

You don’t really know then? A bit like the Big Society? 

“The One Nation Conservative tradition has been a powerful national force. It gave many people meaning, value and a sense of belonging by respecting their place in the hierarchical order of property and status… The politics of the common good negotiates the distribution of power in society and the economy with the aim of making sure that no one interest or group dominates over others” 

We even nicked our working title off the Tories! 

It all comes down to what you want to believe. Evolution is forever challenged by a hotchpotch of other beliefs – a simple, elegant, demonstrable process versus a whole series of complex, contrived and contradictory theses requiring mental contortionism or blind faith to sustain. It’s pretty much the same thing in politics: 

Capitalism is the simple, elegant, if sometimes brutal, way in which the human animal interacts. You have something I want? I need to give you something that you want. Capitalism sorts out the hierarchy pretty much on merit grounds without sentiment and with little fuss. Socialism, on the other hand is the Biblical strand of political theory. It needs enormously complex instruments to redistribute wealth to some bizarre ideal based on a faith that true human nature rarely recognises and frequently circumvents. The power is not in the hands of those who can, but in the hands of those who can talk. 

Remember: Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t teach, manage . Those who can’t manage, become politicians. Those who can’t handle politics, become Marxist theorists. 

Labour attempts to redesign humanity in its own image

All Capitalism needs to make it work is people and natural resources. Socialism needs a complicated web of non-producers, theorists and schemers, pulling strings and constantly meddling with detail dictated by an omnipotent intelligent designer – you really sure you’re up to that, Ed?

Things that go bump in the night.

HMVs troubles were hardly startling news. From its heyday when The Gramophone Company took on the name His Master’s Voice from the painting of Nipper, the first canine music critic, the music business has changed and HMV, like all the others, has had to adapt to survive. From cylinders to discs, to LPs and 45s, compact discs, the explosion of digital indie studios and now the Internet, free downloads and all the other pressures on a traditional business model.

It’s one thing to continually develop your product range – not everybody is content with fish and chips so most chippies also sell inedible burgers (with or without horse meat) and life-threatening kebabs as well, or lose out to competitors who do. But the day they make downloadable chips is the day that every fast food outlet will have to invest in something slicker than stuffing annoying leaflets through letterboxes. It’s digital, maaan! 

But HMV’s passing is not a tragedy, it’s a simple fact of High Street life. Big names don’t necessarily last forever. Woolworths, Allders, Comet… the list goes on and will continue to go on. And more importantly it has virtually nothing to do with whatever government is in power. It’s not as if they relied on defence contracts or provided social services. It’s not personal, it’s just business. 

Twitter, of course was lit up by the steady outpourings of grief and mourning for lost gift vouchers and unwanted presents. But as always Twitter is hardly the place to go for in-depth market analysis. It’s more a place where people go to complain that real life isn’t like it ought to be. It’s the Guvmint’s fault. It’s the fault of another company who played a better game. Maybe Twitterverse malcontents would prefer the world to be like this: 

Have an idea that you’d like to run your own business but, because of a lack of imagination, choose to ‘invent’ something that already exists and has a thriving, but near-saturated market. Your entrepreneurial spin? Set up shop in a deprived area where rents are cheap but nobody can afford to buy the stock. Appeal to some local EU-financed small business ‘initiative’ for funding, citing that evil capitalist forces are refusing to lend for idealistic reasons. Be awarded an annual, renewable investment grant but instead of using it for development – too tedious - simply live off it instead. 

Become a tireless campaigner for more investment for local business and saying “Boo” to the corporate bullies. Close your shop and take a job at the People’s Collective as a People’s Champion, fighting the corner of failing business everywhere and lobby for yet more EU funding for shattered dreams. Tell yourself every day that the purpose of business is not to make a profit but to provide services for real people, local people “your people”. 

‘Work’ your way to the top of the wriggling maggot pile of corrupt officialdom, all the while using your credentials as a former successful business owner, until you retire to the sunlit uplands of Euro Mountain, utterly convinced for the rest of your days that you were a force for good and laughing, as the last Sony Centre closes down. 

(PS: That’s Socialism my friend. You may already be doing it without even knowing.)

STOP PRESS: Blockbusters, the video rental store, has gone into receivership today. Same problem really; if you can get streaming video over the internet where's the market for disc and tape?

What the frack?

We all do our bit for the environment, don’t we? Well, sod the environment; good citizens all, we should moderate our reliance on imported fuel use, if not for the planet then for the simple common sense of it. Has nobody been listening these past few years? Are you not aware that the country is broke? According to the Express, one in three will be too poor to buy sufficient heating for winter within the next two years.

While I don’t buy their scaremongering figures for one moment, I certainly agree something needs to be done. And it won’t be the Green Deal, which will turn out to be yet another well-intentioned government scheme that ends up benefitting large businesses with access to capital before being consigned to history when the money runs out, like all the others. 

It’s just tinkering at the margins in pursuit of political ambitions instead of getting a grip on the real issues. And for the few who genuinely benefit it always costs the tax payer dear while keeping them potless.(That will make it all the easier for the rampaging Muslim marauders to finally gain the majority hand – George Galloway’s is a patient, long-term treachery, be warned.) 

As a nation what we need is to make or save money and whatever god you don’t believe in, Nigel Lawson reckons shale gas and oil is a gift from him. To become self-sufficient in, nay a net exporter of fuel, would be all that we need to be back in the game. And if that is good news then reports that the Blackpool shale deposits in the Bowland Basin could be fifty percent larger than first thought has to be even greater news. 

We could kick out the unwelcome ‘economic migrants’, get our own industries working and our idle off their arses and off welfare. We could fuck off the German wind farms and say so-long to pointless solar PV and get Britain back on its feet again. And as for the fears of the Green-Meanies, do they not realise that an earthquake in the area would cause millions of pounds-worth of improvements to Blackpool?

Even Environment Minister, Owen Patterson, says the same. “invest in shale gas, which doesn't require public subsidy, unlike wind farms.” The coalition must, as a matter of utmost urgency, pursue what could be the saving of our once independent nation from the threats that currently threaten to overwhelm it. Social politics, white flight, brain drain, the deficit and the disastrous involvement with the EU. But it may already be too late. Those greedy burghers at the Stasi are already seeing power slip from their grasp and are demanding a slice of the action. 

What am I saying, a slice? No, like all the other European gangsters flooding the country, they intend to take control altogether. Well I say we tell em’ to frack off.

And so does Boris Johnson.

Opposing Farces

The job of opposition isn't easy... What am I saying - it's a piece of piss! You just run interference and endless criticism. Your job is to discredit the current government, whose job in turn is to prove you wrong and stay in office long enough to actually do anything useful; being slung out after one term is pretty much the worst thing that can happen to any administration because it looks like you were ineffective.

Of course, the usual sequence is one or two terms of relative contentment, followed by a final term where cockiness, sloppiness and a general wearing out of your welcome lets different policies appear appealing to new voters. This leads to electoral defeat and a term or so of jeering from the sidelines while the other lot blame it all on you, reverse your policies and set the whole thing on the opposite swing. Left-right, left-right... but now the choice is only between between left and further left. No wonder UKIP smells like a breath of fresh air.

The government is giving it a go, but with so little money left in the pot it's going to be an uphill struggle all the way. The news that IDS's scheme to get 'neets' into work for more than 6 months hasn't met its targets has naturally been met with derisory sneers by the party that spent all the money in the first place. It's almost as if Gordon Brown's role in the last Labour government was to screw up the economy as far as it could possibly be screwed. As if, because Labour weren't to rule the country any more they'd be fucked if they'd give anybody else a fighting chance. That's politics.

And it's where all socialist cycles bring us. It starts from noble beginnings; the working man, heavily exploited by ruthless mill/pit/foundry/shipyard owners from a bygone age of good old Christian brutality of man towards man, downs his tools, links arms and stands side by side with his fellow. They call each other 'comrade', for this is a war and the enemy are clearly defined. The have-nots versus the haves.

By the 1970s the Trades Unions, Labour's paymasters,  were calling the shots and crippling the country through ruinous restrictive working practices. Enforcing employment by double-manning, working to rule and threatening strike action at the drop of a flat cap. Destroying those very industries while imagining they were defending them. Those who weren't there have no idea how much they owe to the sainted Mrs Thatcher. (And repeatedly reciting, "Fatcha ruined vis cuntry" is a cast-iron indicator that you haven't a clue.)

But it's a war, remember? It's always a war and in war there are casualties and Labour can bear much of the blame. In ennobling the manual worker they were instrumental in building whole towns out of single industries and closing their minds to what might happen when the resources ran out. When those industries became bloated and inefficient and uneconomic, instead of looking to diversify, to educate, to broaden, they simply threw money at the problem and shored up a client state.

When the last Conservative administration fell out of favour the bright young Socialist things had a new messiah in the form of Tony Blair, who reaped the benefit of anti-Thatcherite rhetoric spewed from hateful mouths. With no big industries left, but with a booming economy, built on the back of taxing an entrepreneurialism that wasn't possible in the seventies, Labour set about building a new client base, opening the borders while driving their core supporters out of work and onto benefits.

Labour didn't build this; they tore it down.

If they can't hack coal, they can at least stay at home and do drugs and drink and watch Jeremy Kyle and jeer at their own. Always the same story - throw public money at dodging the issue, rather than attempting to solve it. So now it's a bit rich that Two-Eds-is-worse-than-one is heaping opprobrium on the current administration for throwing money at actual job creation, instead of Labour's traditional job-stifling practice.

It must be a more noble aim, but it hasn't gone well; getting the unemployable into work was never going to be easy, but Iain Duncan Smith has a far more comprehensive understanding of the problem than ever displayed by the Reds and let's hope he has the backbone and the time to see his reforms through.

Secret Santa

Well the big story of the weekend was, of course, the UKIP babies, or should that be not the UKIP babies? Joyce Thacker - head of Rotherham's Children's Services - defended her decision to remove three 'ethnic' children from the foster care of evil racists who, in common with half the British population believe Britain would be better off out of the EU and that the separation of immigrants into monocultural ghettoes is a bad thing.

That would be same Joyce Thacker mentioned in page 81 of the document explaining the pilot ‘Local Links’ programme, run by Common Purpose in West Yorkshire, then? Indeed yes, prompting me to launch an ad-hoc search over the weekend to find out more about just what the flying fuck Common Purpose actually is.

Linked with extreme left wing views, or Communism to give it its officially recognised title, CP appears on the same frothing loony interweb conspiracy pages as the Fabians, Demos, The Bilderbergers, Skull & Bones and David Icke. look them up, but please do so with your tinfoil hat on.

Many recognise such organisations in the same way they see the Moonies, the Branch Davidians, the Manson Family and Scientology. But wait, surely not cuddly Tom Cruise and twinkle-toed John Travota? They wouldn't harm us?  No way! But maybe, just maybe, yes-way... What if all these conspirators are working together? What if, double bluff, they represent themselves as mad but not bad? Essentially harmless.

The aim of Common Purpose seems to be to spread instability, to ignore and override democracy, to take power away from the people and to spread the poisonous tentacles of unchallenged Socialism throughout the land; throughout the world. But surely, that could never work, could it? People are way too savvy to be taken in - that's what 'they' tell us, just before taking us in. Socialism sounds nice and fluffy and caring and egalitarian but it has never worked and in any country where it has been tried the population has had to resort to revolution to break free of its boundless generosity.

Surely in essentially Conservative Britain Common Purpose would be more aptly named Cross Purposes and have no effect on a healthily cynical nation. And yet... In the 1980s I hired an ex-police sergeant who told me, to no great surprise that the police voted "Tory to a man"; his words. But now, it seems, the majority vote in the police force is for Labour, most of whose leadership has connections with some of the wack-job Marxist organisations mentioned above. Is this the result of concerted efforts to shift their perceptions and allegiances?

Certainly many of the opponents of CP talk about their 're-alignment' sessions and courses. Owen Jones loves to talk about the demonisation of what he fondly likes to refer to as the working class, but what about the demonisation of everybody who aspires to create wealth? What about the systematic use of 'diversity' and 'awareness' and 'inclusion' terminology over the last twenty years, making it an offense to utter anything that somebody else dislikes? Where once British fair play held sway we now have play fair by edict.

So, maybe David Icke's lizard theory doesn't seem so far fetched now? My initial 'investigation' has thrown up all sorts of connections, tentacles, dodgy dealings and the like and while I'm still loathe to believe that humans are capable of being that clever I know they are entirely capable of being that devious. And where does it all stop? As more and more decisions are made that defy the overt will of the people. As the costs of government rise and rise and rise with no discernible purpose. As political correctness makes criminals of us all before we even open our mouths, you have to wonder if there isn't something sinister going on.

We are ready for them!

But it's okay because we are protected by friendly aliens in the sky with special plasma lasers which will shield us from harm. Yet there is one looming threat to which nobody seems alert. Christmas is just around the corner; an event so insidiously inserted into the nation's psyche that few are able to resist its persistent urges to spend money we haven't got, on products we don't want for people we don't really like all that much. If you think the EU is a plot then wait for this bombshell...

Santa is an anagram of Satan! (Dons tinfoil hat.)

A little bit more...

Well, enough requests for more - I say 'requests', when what I mean is nobody objected too vigorously - and I'm persuaded to post up another sneak preview. The working title 'Kingsway' has been in existence for at least two decades and attached to many projects. I only just noticed yesterday how it chimes with the title of the blog. It can only be destiny. Anyway, you don't need to have read yesterday's offering for this snippet to make sense.. or not. I only hope you enjoy it.

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Night

The air is thick and damp, heavy with menace and lit by a sodium gloom which casts deep shadows into crevices inhabited by the population of the night. Night brings out the dark people, those for whom daylight is too big a risk.

At night the facial recognition cameras, the technology of law and order function less well. Deep contrasts and faces half-concealed by hoods work to foil the computers and throw up ambiguity and confusion. And ambiguity is a thief of time, time left behind, not enough in the race to identify the bearer of a face.

In the high contrast, near-monochrome world it is not only lack of light that aids and abets wrongdoing. Sounds clatter from surface to surface, unabsorbed by clothed masses going about their businesses. Sounds from afar come near and soft treads in the nearby shadows echo from far-off walls.

The night hides terrors and all those who fear are off the streets before the evening’s entertainment begins. As the last buses and trams and trains clatter away from city centres the cloak of night embraces all and eerie mists arise, steaming from stranded pavements. Cobbles gleam yellow in the damp embrace of the early hours.

Too early for work, too late for play, the night’s foreplay begins with a shuffle here, a footfall there. Fragmented sounds and movement betray little of intent. That’s the way we like it. At night we are all anonymous and unreadable.

A shift in the shadows, an outbreak of footsteps and the smash of a window is followed by silence. The night floods around that silence, holding its breath. No response… then a sudden cacophony of smashing and grabbing, running and hiding. The deed done.

The police headquarters are surrounded by night; officers huddled inside strain their eyes at gloomy monitors. Too few in number to patrol effectively, they are dependent on the technology; the same technology that will let them down with the CPS. Too vague an image, too few fingerprint points, inconclusive DNA... the criminal walks free, as certain of the justice of his release as the police are of his guilt.

Policemen can smell criminality, they can smell criminals. The police rarely get the wrong man and even if it is the wrong perpetrator for this particular crime, society would benefit from his being removed for a time. A long time.

Deny everything, refuse to make a statement, don’t grass. The criminal mantra is easy to follow - it takes no effort, just as they have made no effort to live a decent life. And society is so tolerant, so determined to be good, so concerned to not make mistakes, that society makes mistakes in justice every single day.

Violent criminals convicted multiple times get no more than words. Fines are unpaid and that crime in turn is punished by more fines that will also never be paid. Community work orders are ignored, curfews unobserved, tags removed with impunity. And against this impossible backdrop the police struggle to contain criminality within too-lax bounds, forever criticised by those they are supposed to protect, forever thwarted by a criminal justice system that is exactly what it sounds like; justice for the criminal.

Collar number 2451 treads softly through the night, his radio silenced, his breathing stilled to a shallow, steady flow. Ahead of him, arm raised, brick in hand, Derek, a known felon approaches a chemist’s window, intent on the narcotic haul he imagines he will both find and understand inside. There are no drugs, nothing at least which will net him any real profit to fund his own habit, but he’s doing it anyway; it’s just another habit. Along with sleeping until noon, spending the day in night clothes, eating brown, fried food and smoking continuously.

He could no more not go on the rob than he could turn off the TV in daytime; the always-on accompaniment to his life, a goggle-box displaying events and images he will incorporate into his own memory as if they were real. In court he relies on the scripted pleas that he is a prisoner of his own wrongdoing, that he wants to follow his dream; that he is, at heart a decent, law-abiding, misunderstood member of an oppressed society. That he is one of society’s oppressors would surprise him, so far has he swallowed the social-workers’ delusions about the basic decency of humanity.

2451 knows different. He knows that the feral scum before him is a kind of vermin. He is representative of an underclass fuelled by a sense of righteous entitlement. A parasite that needs to be isolated from its host and crushed.

Human nature is survivalist. In large measure humans survive in numbers and in bigger numbers they thrive still more. But the natural borders of a society have long been exceeded and the 150-some-strong settlements of the Iron Age have blossomed into thousands, millions, within which rigid rules need to be enforced. Only, as humans have grown fat and lazy in their easy existences they have become complacent as well. Unwilling to face facts, unable any more to stomach the actions necessary to curb the excesses that threaten harmony.

Early police forces, known to the whole parish, herded errant people back along the straight and narrow, the laws defined by those who followed them. Stray from the path, get a warning, do it again, get a punishment. But now the police are so far removed from the societies they strive to control - indeed they MUST be for fear of reprisals - that they can only be seen as an outside force. Those whose taxes pay for them demand ever-more effective control; those who are supposedly controlled seek any way to escape their punishments.

And because the law-makers are just as corrupted by their insular upbringing and disproportionate rewards, they suffer none of the hardships of those wronged-against. They cannot see what those on the streets see, that human beings are NOT equal, they are NOT all equally deserving and they are NOT going to stop behaving badly because of a few harsh words.

Words have never done anything to control wrongdoers beyond the school gates. A timely intervention by a stern teacher may have prevented a basically good kid from going off the rails, but for those who are parented by television, a repeated affirmation of their rights has dulled any memory of words.

Only punishment is effective and 2451 has the means and the opportunity at his disposal. As Derek brings back his arm to heft the brick, 2451 catches it and catches him off balance. As Derek stumbles he has a brief moment to see the face of his assailant. “Awright, mate?” he offers, expecting to be released with a caution, ready to offer a plea of innocence. But he sees something in the eyes of this familiar face. Something entirely unfamiliar.

It is the last thing he does see, as the Taser renders him insensible. Moments later 2451 tidies up the scene and makes his exit, the supine form of Derek concealed in the shadows, his dark soul draining into the road, making yellow-lit islands of cobbles in a black sea of blood.

Neat and tidy, a crime prevented, a criminal neutralised; a case that will not be investigated beyond the inevitable family outcry. The press conference at which the bereaved family will mourn their lovely boy, their shining star and their gift to the world with so much potential they did not see any need to bring him up decently. The right political noises will be made, the acceptable number of doors knocked upon until the next case steps into the light and allows this one to be quietly buried.

One at a time, thinks 2451, one at a time. It’s the best he can do, but he knows he is not alone. Out there are many individuals doing the same thing - taking out the trash. Police, private citizens, other criminals. Bit by bit the undesirable elements of the world are being eliminated. A good job, well done.

He makes it to the police station in time to start his shift. In an hour or so he will alert a foot patrol to something not quite right, seen on CCTV, could you investigate?

 The foot patrol will call an ambulance, the body will be removed to a hospital morgue and a host of people will be gainfully employed at no risk to themselves. No crime will be detected and solved, no lawyers will get paid. 2451 is cutting out the poisonous legal middle man and putting society back on the rails. For which he will receive no thanks, earn no accolades. Just the satisfaction of knowing he has done his bit.

The night mists reclaim the scene and the world carries on. One scumbag down.

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So, what do you think? Want to read more? Fed up already? There's a comment box down there, look... go on. You know you want to. :o)

Kingsway (working title)

In a break from the usual bile and in the interests of a little light relief, I thought I'd post up an extract from the novel I'm supposed to be working on. You don't have to like it, but if you do a comment would be lovely, ta! Here goes nothing!

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Chapter 4

Pete had always been a bit of a rascal. Well, ‘rascal’ was too kind; he was a frigging nightmare. He used to steal from the kids at school, then from his parents and then, when he’d been kicked out of both of those institutions, he’d steal from casual acquaintances and passers by in the form of begging, bag-theft and burglary to feed an escalating drug habit.

Still in his thirties, Pete nevertheless looked more like a middle-aged roadie, his attire that of a twenty year-old, his face approaching fifty. Most days Pete was clean though, in both senses of the word. He rarely used these days and if he did it was usually only a smoke or the odd pill. Injecting was firmly in his past and he often went days at a time without even touching a drop of drink. Today wasn't one of those days though and he strode to the bar in the Kingsway Arms.

“All right Miles” he greeted the barman, “pint of Stella, please?”

“You sure?” said Miles; Pete usually came in for a lime and soda in the afternoon.

“Yeah” confirmed Pete, “It’s me birthday!”

“Dare I ask?” Miles expected a number but not this one.

“Fifty-five” said Pete, with a grin, then “Yeah, yeah, I know… don’t look a day over forty-five. I’ll settle for forty-five.”

“So, congratulations and what else is new?”

“I’m moving out of the squat.”

“Yeah?” Miles was curious as to how this had come about.

“Yeah, I got me act together and the social’s sorted me out some dosh. I’ve got me own flat.”

“Fucking hell!”

“Yeah, I know! Me wiv me own gaff!”

This wasn't really helping. Here he was, Miles, with a half-decent income,  for a doss-around type, and he had to make do with sleeping on his sister’s couch while druggie dropout Pete was helping himself to the state’s largesse.

“When I say ‘flat’, I really means bedsit, is what I mean,” interrupted Pete. 

Miles felt better, then immediately felt mean. Why couldn't he just feel happy for Pete without automatically feeling resentful of his good fortune? Might have to work on that one, he thought. Maybe he could blog about it?

“Still though,” said Miles, “your own crib, man!” he grinned as he poured the beer.

Miles and Pete had become quite good friends considering their only normal contact was over this bar, but he was always interested in Pete’s theories. Pete had a theory about almost everything.

“So, c’mon then Pete. Tell us. I can see you’re dying to.” 

Three pints down and Pete was getting agitated. He could summon up a thesis at the drop of a hat but this time he appeared to have given it some real thought.

“You know them police cameras everywhere?”

“Course. The cameras that are there for our safety and well-being!” Miles repeated the words of a local Councillor defending the peppering of every public space with surveillance equipment.

“Yep. Them’s the ones, " said Pete and then lowered his voice in the best traditions of Hollywood movie trailers, "They, my son, are only the tip of the iceberg.” He tapped his nose and indicated that another pint would go a long way to ease the telling of the tale.

Pete went off into a reverie about the visible cameras being more or less decoys, with the real technology being disguised into everyday objects. It had some merit. “See, while you’re worried about being caught by the camera up a pole, you’re secretly being recorded, being worried, by the camera at eye level, hidden in a screw head or a road sign. They've got retinal scanners and facial recognition built in and they can triangulate your position to a few millimetres.”

Miles stopped him. “Whoa whoa there boy, why would they need to pinpoint your position?”

Pete grinned, “To coordinate the sniper systems.”

“Oh, fuck off Pete!” grinned Miles, “that was last month’s theory”

“No mate,” Pete was deadly serious, “Last month I told you about the police snipers with shoot-to-kill commands. This is more sinister.”

“I thought the police snipers were pretty sinister.”

“No. This is worse.” Pete was on a roll now. “See, what happens is this. You get in trouble enough times for petty stuff the CPS won’t touch, but you’re still a blight on society, right?”

“Right,” agreed Miles.

“So, your personal details are fed into the computers and all that has to happen then is you get identified, automatically, like, by these new cameras and if you’re in range of a fixed unmanned sniper station and there’s nobody likely to get caught in the cross fire…”

Pete did a mime, which involved the raising and aiming of an imaginary rifle. “Click.”

“Click? Just like that?”

“Click. Just like that.”

“You’re fucking mental, Pete” opined Miles.

But did he have a point? There were certainly more unsolved shootings these days. Always petty criminals and always those who had gone unpunished by the authorities. Everybody assumed it was some form of vigilantism and that this was their past sins being visited upon them by the victims. It was easy enough to get hold of a gun as well. Since the scummy council estates had been, to all intents and purposes, converted into open prisons it was certain that much home-grown crime was concentrated within those walls and it was equally certain that the police were not remotely concerned with what went on inside, so long as it stayed inside.

Mile shook his head and laughed as he towelled a glass dry and shiny. He’d almost fallen for one of Pete’s demented ravings. What a joke. His phone rang and he took the opportunity to make his escape from Pete's nightmare world, still laughing.

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There you go then. Is Pete right? Why would Miles blog about it and what might the consequences of that be?  Police ignoring crime and shooting to kill? Wanna read more? Let me know: comments below...

To be fair...

Let me state first of all (and for the umpteenth time) that humans are simply not made equal. Bloody hell, if you can't feel superior to somebody else, what's the point of it all? We come in large or small, short or tall, attractive or pug-ugly and in all manner of shapes and colours. We have adapted to live in savannas, jungles, up trees, in caves and even in space. We have histories involving conquest, discovery, opulence, poverty, great endeavour, enormous industry or just sitting about on our arses.

Art, science, architecture, literature, agriculture... manufacturing, organising, debating... building dynasties, waging wars, forging alliances. Getting it wrong, then starting over and getting it right; these are the things that produce mature, rounded, wide-horizoned civilisations and they all take time. Lots of time.

Look what instant wealth did to the Arab nations. See how African despots plunder and pillage and murder their own people. Witness what a violent disaster Islam's access to the modern world is. Why do you think everybody is shitting themselves over Iran and Syria and nuclear weapons? Holy lands? Who knows what further ungodly hells those nations that cleave to superstition have yet to wreak?

But even then, within a single supposedly advanced culture, equality is impossible and attempts to impose it have brought nothing but misery and death to millions via the disastrous failed social experiments of the Soviet Union, China, Laos, North Korea. Cuba... and Tooting. There are no fast fixes, no instant righting of wrongs.

Which is of course why ruling power in one of the most civilised countries on earth is not in the hands of first generation neophtyes, but vested mainly in a small number of privileged families who breed to lead, balanced by the background chatter of an envious proletariat. It's how it is and in the main it works very well indeed; the appearance of a democracy but with a firm-ish continuous hand on the tiller.

All of which makes yesterdays student protest amusing in the extreme. Bleating about making the rich pay so that they in turn can become rich (they imagine) through a superior education. Bunking off from their studies to stand around in the rain and growl trite slogans at the very police they will expect to protect them when the nasty uneducated people ransack their grubby bedsits while they're out at play.

Offered the option, who do you want running the country?

Yeah! Fuck off, rich boy!

If history teaches us anything, gradual change is always better and more permanent than violent swings. Put a toddler in charge of the ship and who knows where we'll end up. And when it comes down to it, few people want to lead in any case; it's far too much like hard work. So, let the children have their day, let them feel like they made a difference and then let them see the ferocious struggle to become more than equal that they will invest in their own children.

There are only so many silver spoons to go around and soon enough they'll be stabbing each other in the back trying to get their hands on one. Sounds fair to me.

Bora Bora

So I wake to yet another glorious day. As the sunlight gently teases its way through the blinds, the radio turns itself on and the world floods into my bedroom.

Greece, it appears, has finally found a solution, electing a coalition government that somehow appeases the masses and stays broadly on track with the reforms needed to avoid total bankruptcy. Good for them.

Closer to home – or globally, if you just open your eyes, man - Occupy have joined forces with the Greens and against the odds created a credible alternative to hard commerce. More and more disillusioned voters join hands and join their ranks in an outbreak of peace and humanity.

In further news, it turns out that the IMF computer has inadvertently been stockpiling funds after a stray decimal point was mislaid in 1971. Far from being hugely indebted, the world economy is actually in surplus. It will take a couple of years to redistribute everything, of course, but early estimates suggest the UK deficit will be eliminated by 2015.

More easy oil has been found in the North Sea. In a previously discounted field, a test drill has located a significant reservoir sufficient, it is estimated, to make Great Britain a net exporter of crude within eighteen months.

As I doze I realise how lucky I am to live in a world finally at peace with itself and striving for perfection… and then my alarm clock shocks me rudely awake.

As you were. Waking fully I realise it was all wishful thinking – as it always was. I feel sorry for you deluded fools, but I’m alright, Jack; here on Bora Bora it's all good!