A better kind of poor

Accusations were flying thick and free from the LimpDem conference stage this weekend as they attempted to resurrect their busted flush of a party and distance themselves from the Tories. Danny Alexander couldn’t have been more emphatically anti if he’d claimed that without the LibDems at their side the Tories would have by now mandated the compulsory eating of babies as an alternative to food banks – nice roasted, by all accounts.  And by re-branding themselves as the “Party of In” they now seek to present themselves as empowered and mighty players in the EU experiment.

I say ‘experiment’ because I’m sure Greece and Spain and Cyprus and the other raped and impoverished southern European countries, with massive unemployment and crippled economies feel closer kinship with vivisection subjects than with their richer northern neighbours. But don’t panic fellas, that inequality is being addressed and we’ll all soon be just as poor as you. And Cleggy is determined to take us on that journey come hell or high water. He claims to love all nationalities, so why does he hate the British so much?

Despite the passage of over a decade since a report suggested that over three million UK jobs ‘depend’ on the EU and despite numerous rebuttals of that claim it still seems to be Clegg’s only real rationale for remaining in the club. Oh, that and his other dodgy assertion that, should we leave, Brits abroad will be immediately dispossessed and repatriated. Both claims are, of course, utter bollocks; the main jobs that would be lost would be the commissionerships for Clegg and his troops.

The argument that British workers abroad would lose jobs and domicile rights just doesn’t hold true. The British have been emigrating economically or otherwise for centuries and none of that will stop. And as for jobs at home, even in the ‘good old days’ of manpower intensive industry people lost their jobs and moved, often en masse. From mills and pits and the land old jobs have gone and will keep on going. But Clegg wants to play on that fear of the inevitable and spin the declining pay and displacement of labour as a wholly good thing.

What IS a monstrosity is the fact that in 21^st century Britain, by whatever definition, we still have poverty. And if the LibDems believe that ever cheaper labour is not partly to blame they might want to try asking the actual poor, because every place where we have poverty we also, presumably coincidentally in Clegg World, have large and new immigrant populations. Mind you, if you listen to some commentators a bit of poverty is a small price to pay for opening our borders to so much thrilling diversity. You see, through the right coloured spectacles cultural ‘enrichment’ is just as good as the monetary kind.

If only we would open our minds and see the world through Nick’s sparkly eyes we would see the incredible benefits of membership. Soon almost none of us would have to work at all. We would live comfortable, easy lives while our Lithuanian gardener tended the lawn, our Portuguese cook prepared dinner and the Polish builders erected the nursery extension for the new baby currently incubating inside our Romanian surrogate. Of course, as we would be ‘unwaged’ we’d still be poor, but it would be a new and better kind of poor. But what do I know? 

Mass Debate!

I’m pretty sure I know what I believe in, politically. A relatively small, minimal tax state that serves the people, providing defence, law and order, diplomacy, education and emergency services, leaving the rest in the hands of efficient private enterprise best suited to supply the needs as and where they arise. I’m also certain about the kind of society I want to live in. A self-reliant, well-educated, civilised and tolerant population of people with ambition but also with a sense of proportion, unenvious of those who do well for themselves and generous towards those who need help.

I’m a realist as well and I know that none of this is actually achievable, or at least not for very long. The big state cannot be relied upon to hold power without becoming corrupt and private enterprise cannot be relied on not to generate monopolies and wield state-like power itself. Populations similarly are largely incapable of becoming civilised without restraint. The fact is everybody has a part to play whether it be mover or shaker or production line drone. And whoever holds the reigns of political power can only ever shift the balance a little bit one way (state) or the other (private) while the population’s part in the process is to be perpetually dissatisfied.

But one thing seems to be self-evident – give people a living without exacting effort from them in return and they grumble less overall. So the greater proportion of people that are effectively kept by the state, the greater the momentum towards ever more government. Which is the entire problem with Europe. People are fond of saying they are pro-Europe, but anti -European Union; it’s the same thing. There is no country called Europe, but that is the ultimate aim of the EU. And given that its officials are appointed rather than elected, the daily output of the regulation machine goes largely unreported and its aim is ever more expansion and control, the EU resembles totalitarianism far more than it does democracy.

But in the UK, like many other countries in this union of soviets, where your behaviour is controlled by ever more edicts, the greater mass of people simply believe what they are told, that in is good and out is bad. That in is prosperity and out is squalor. That in is freedom and light, while out is cold and miserable and nationalistic and therefore nasty. Look at your passport; above United Kingdom it says European Union. In the future it will only say European Union and all two-and-a-half of our main political parties have signed up to that. But they daren’t say it out loud, which is why only Nick Clegg, with nothing to lose, is picking up the gauntlet Nigel Farage threw down months ago.

I sincerely hope Farage will wipe the floor with Clegg and I fully expect him to do so. Clegg’s standing is low, the LibDems looking as if they were prepared to sacrifice principle for the sake of power, but we already know the planks on which he will fight this battle. He will repeat, over and over again, the lines his masters have given him, about jobs, trade and peace and love and he will look slightly ridiculous. Farage, for his part will have to resist the temptation to get boisterous and to point and laugh because his greatest weapon is his sheer likeability and the tone of common sense he strikes. But I fear it may all be for nought in the end. 

A year ago, in sheer frustration at the refusal of any party to even consider an in/out referendum, I joined UKIP as a show of support. I never intended to be an activist and I have never believed – as some evidently do – that a party made up mostly of defectors would be capable of returning more than maybe one or two MPs, let alone form a government, but enough was enough and my protest was duly registered. But after the way the Wythenshawe by-election was fought by the local UKIP branch – mirroring the LibDem approach of altering policy to suit the local voter - I’m not renewing. Despite the mainstream media painting UKIP as ‘far-right’ (which they never were) I’m hearing far too much left-wing, big state, benefit state rhetoric just now.

Seeing how formerly Euro-sceptic ministers are now tight-lipped about their old views and handle their about-turns with barely a twitch, I have little hope that any new party would be able to retain their founding principles for long. You never get to hear why they converted, either. It’s like a sect, the EU-Moonies, where formerly sane people now recite Agenda 21 like the prayer that saved their lives. There is something rotten at the heart of the European Projekt (the Kinnocks, for one) and it looks more and more as if there is nothing we can do to escape it. By all means vote for UKIP where they have a real chance of election, but for goodness sake, whatever you do, don’t let Labour back in to finish us off for good. 

Start 'em young...

If you had the opportunity to rid the world of poverty at a stroke, would you do it? No, you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t do it because the only quick solution requires a drastic population reduction, it’s efficacy would be short-lived – a generation or so – and the stench would be dreadful. It’s something that has happened under most forms of heavy-handed state control and it has always appalled the sensibilities of the so-called ‘free world’.

So why are western governments so desperate to embrace a new statism, regulating everything from cradle to grave, creating chaos and discontent and generally treating their populations like unruly children who can’t be trusted to do a single thing for themselves?

And yet the one thing they won’t regulate is population, because in sheer numbers they see their raison d’etre - the more people we have, the more we need state control, goes their argument. The more seething and milling the masses, the greater the power of supposedly elected leaders – the greater the numbers of votes I command, booms Ozymandias, the greater the good I can do. And the earlier in life they can control the voters the more likely are those voters to vote for the system that keeps them poor. Humans may individually do great things, but collectively they really are very, very stupid.

I was born four years after rationing ended and my parents brought me up full of misplaced optimism and hope but they never once told me the world owed me a living. Accepting what assistance the state then gave was a mark of failure and something you strove to rise above because it was clear that if you always rely on the support of others you lose the ability to stand on your own. And when the world turns to shit you are all you have left.

So, just what ARE you going to do with ‘the poor’? Like the mice in the grain store, the poor will procreate as long as there is a living to be had. It’s an immutable law of human nature that the less gainfully occupied you are the more frequently you will breed. We used to have poor houses and work houses where sloth was punished and dignity was shed as the price for reliance; most poor people did their utmost to remain out of their clutches… but they didn’t have votes back then.

All of which explains the sheer cynicism of Nick Clegg’s free school meals pledge, extracted in exchange for ‘allowing’ a Conservative tax policy to be waved through. This has nothing to do with alleviating poverty; if anything it will exacerbate it. It is all, as always, to do with acquiring power. We have given up trying to upskill our dumbed-down population and instead reverted to just buying their votes from an earlier age – their earliest memories will be of the state feeding them and weaning them off that teat will eventually become an effort of political will too far.

So, if you nowadays misguidedly raise your kids to be self-reliant, to do a good day’s work, better themselves and enter the workforce as a contributor, not a taker, you are consigning them to a life of drudgery in order to pay for those who have taken the socialist shilling. As a parent how can you countenance that? It’s tantamount to child abuse.

And when the wealth creators cash in their capital, sell their ageing plant to foreign asset strippers and leave these shores, the weak will still go to the wall; they always do. The poor will always be with us and when they are in the majority our society will have failed. And what worth your ‘power’ then, Mr Clegg?

Free school meals for all? What harm could that do?

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away

Atonement

I'm sorry. I have no idea what LibDem Lord Rennard actually did – neither do you, for that matter (and definitely not Nick Clegg) but whatever it is, given that it is said to have been ‘sexual’ and ‘inappropriate’ and as a bloke I am simply not allowed an opinion on anything like that, I’d just like to apologise on behalf of my gender and leave it there. That ought to do it. Nothing more to see here; I’m sure it will all be sorted out in the fullness of time and all that.

While I'm at it, I may as well apologise for Chris Huhne too... and Jimmy Savile, Cyril Smith, Gary Glitter and that dodgy geezer with the yellow teeth from On the Buses. I also feel the need to atone for Peter Mandelson, although not of our species he is nonetheless a slimy, scheming fucker and is thoroughly deserving of a good excusing-of. And of course, there was David Mellor. So-rry. 

In penitent mood I wonder if I shouldn't also offer reparations for other wrongs... The Ice Age, for instance, or the Global Warming that didn't really happen – or did it? Not sure really, so best be on the safe side and just say pardon me anyway, eh? While I'm about it I may as well wring my cap and bow my head in blame for the miners’ strike, the banking crisis, The Spanish Inquisition and Jedward. Oh and slavery**, mustn't forget, I may as well apologise for that... every fucker else has. Bang to rights, gov... Soz! *sad face*

Now I think about it I really ought to get down on my knees in the dirt and humbly crave your indulgence as I make penance for everything any man has ever done. So, Adam, remember him? I am sorry he was so stupid as to let himself be led on by that harpy, Eve, although I acknowledge that her entreaties, which some (not me) may say were contributory to The Fall, were in no way to blame for Adam’s weakness and folly. So there; all of biblical history - our fault. Men!

I've just had a thought... To be on the safe side I’d better trace our evolution all the way back and apologise for Conservatism too. I now suddenly realise that it is genuinely all the fault of right-of-centre politics. On behalf of our common anthropoid ancestor may I abjectly, humbly and sincerely beg your forgiveness?

How do I know the earliest human was a Tory? Well he had to be; there can be no other explanation. Because, if he’d been Labour how would the species have ever survived beyond one generation? I mean, back then, at the misty dawn of time, whose pocket were they going to pick?

-------------------------------------------------------------

(** I realise I have apologised for slavery before, on more than one occasion. But it’s best to be on the safe side – this time, let’s say it’s for Islamic or Roma slavery, so we’re covering all the bases?)

Malice in Blunderland

Everybody metaphorically lives next door to Alice. Her story is considered one of the best examples of the literary nonsense and fantasy genres. But nonsense and fantasy notwithstanding, Alice gets used as an allegory for our world all the time. Today’s scribbles mark no departure from this honourable, if slightly hokey, tradition.

We all know the story: Alice follows the White Rabbit down a hole and finds herself in a hall with many locked doors. She finds a key to a door too small for her, but through it she wants to go. So, without reading any of the warnings she downs the contents of a bottle labelled DRINK ME. Then, of course, she’s too small to reach the key which is on the table. So, with exactly the same careless abandon for her physical or mental well-being  she consumes a cake labelled EAT ME, causing her to grow enough to hit her head on the ceiling. 

In our little allegory, Alice is, of course, the electorate – not sure quite what she wants but ready to swallow any quick fix without regard for future consequences. 

In social psychology Cognitive Dissonance is a term used to describe the feeling of discomfort when simultaneously holding two or more conflicting beliefs, values or emotional reactions. Thus, “We must reduce the national debt.” and “We must borrow more money to increase the welfare budget.” OR “In the forty years we've been in the EU nobody has ever given us a straight answer as to why we should be in it at all.” and “Richard Branson says it would be terrible [for him] if we left.” 

Another area of social psychology much beloved, particularly by American administrations, is the field of Mind Control (also known as brainwashing, coercive persuasion, thought control, or thought reform) whereby a group or individual is persuaded to conform to the wishes of the manipulator(s), often to the detriment of that person or group, much as in Nineteen Eighty-Four, where Doublethink describes the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct. This is the opposite of cognitive dissonance – in the end you learn to love Big Brother. 

We should all learn to automatically distrust that which we can’t evaluate from our own direct experience. Lazy, handed down, accepted family beliefs are not a sound basis for decision-making - we should all become cognitive dissidents! 

As the prospect of a referendum on Britain’s role in the EU began to gather momentum I warned that the inertia brigade would begin campaigning, just as they did in 1974-5,to not rock the boat. Not content with the loaded dice of the CBI and Richard Branson, they have this time wheeled out the big hitters. Barack Obama's assistant European secretary, Philip Gordon, who has all the same credibility problems as ‘progressives’ everywhere is wading into the melee and declaring that the UK must stay very much on message and in the EU. 

My hackles are up already. Firstly what the very fuck has it to do with the USA, who recognise the ‘special relationship’ only when it has an advantage for them? Secondly, what the very fuck has it to do with the USA, who recognise the ‘special relationship’ only when it … you get the picture. 

Instead of going with the big guns bullshit, which means nothing to you, you should be asking yourselves whether you have ever actually experienced anything positive as a direct result of involvement in the EU. If you think, for instance that being ruled from Brussels and Strasbourg in return for the odd underfunded ‘Youth Project’ is a good thing then you can elect to support, with good conscience a course of action recommended by the nation that gave us some of history’s biggest shysters and con men (PT Barnum, Frank Abagnale, Lehman Brothers) and such honest politicians as Richard Nixon and Slick Willie Clinton. 

OR you could recall every rotten headline, every example of EU profligacy with your money and every example of the intrusion of European edicts on the lives of UK citizens and make up your own mind. Your own government don’t believe that after forty years you have a firm enough grasp of the EU to make up your mind. So David Cameron is now talking not of an imminent referendum, but of delaying any possible vote another FIVE years until 2018, in the hope that Greece and Spain and Portugal and France finally recover and you will forget that for the last five years we have had just six days to save the Euro.

Cabinet Meetings in the EUSSR

And if that wasn't crazy enough, Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, today begins a stint as a radio co-host on LBC 97.3FM in an attempt to 'connect with the views of electorate'. If it wasn't for the fact that the whole damned world has gone stark, staring bonkers, you would have to be Mad as a Hatter to believe it.

Read this before you go. Then forget EVERYTHING 

The Taxman's Lament

“It's the same the whole world over, It's the poor what gets the blame…”

Yes you, you stupid poor people. You’ve screwed everything up what with your ‘needs’ and your ‘human rights’ and your ‘fairness’ and your simple base human nature.

Council houses weren’t good enough for you, so we sold them to you for a knock-down price. But then you wanted to parade around in your chavvy BMWs, so we let you over-mortgage to the point where you managed to break the housing market. You wanted cheap package holidays so we invaded Benidorm, which you then contrived to turn into a sort of sunny open prison.

You wanted your expanding multitude of idle thick kids to do well, so we dumbed down the curriculum, inflated the grades and pretended they were all university material, yet those who do find work ended up in ‘retail’ (shops assistant) or ‘catering’ (McDonald’s). You didn’t want to do the dirty jobs so we opened up the borders and let the rest of the world in to do it instead. You wanted ‘cheap’ and your yearnings fuelled globalisation.

See what democracy did? You demanded choice – now look what you’ve gone and done with it, you stupid, stupid, poor people, you. It’s all your fault.

It’s the silly season, what with the footie coming back and the end of the summer holidays, the autumn storms approaching and the MPs returning to Westminster on Monday. Now is the time for that peculiar form of political prestidigitation, which exchanges lovely new money for old and conjures new imperial clothes from fresh air.

“It's the rich what gets the pleasure…”

There are no more poor people to tax – they’re all on benefits now - and no more palatable general taxes to raise, so the only thing left is to tax pleasure. With that in mind I commend my autumn budget to the house:

Let’s tax fun – it’s all we’ve got left and it will have the delicious trickle-down effect of spreading the warm glow of schadenfreude throughout the land. So, from now on you’ll be taxed on every smile, laugh, grin, chuckle, fumble, tickle, giggle, guffaw and gurn you engage in, be it at home, on the bus or at the dentist – a laughing gas tax, if you will.

You don't deserve me, you really don't - here I am bailing you out yet again! What’s that, Mr Clegg, how will I levy said tax? I’m the ideas man here mate, I imagine whatever mechanism you dreamed up for your wealth tax would probably work fine, you twonk.

Oh fuck it... let’s all of us just give up, hand over every penny and work for the state - it's where we're headed anyway.

                                              

“Ain't it all a fucking shame?"

Proper Propaganda

I don’t go out of my way to upset people, really I don’t. I just tell it how I see it and let them make up their own minds. I lose quite a few followers that way but I’ve always reasoned it doesn’t matter; it’s their loss. So, I leave the blog for a few days and what do I find on my return? A right bloody political palaver, that’s what.

We have a coalition ‘government’ (for want of a better word) at the moment, in case you hadn’t noticed. I ask whether you’ve noticed because it’s important. Any form of leadership needs to have at the very least a teensy, tiny bit of a clue where it wishes to venture in the mighty ship of state. Where would be the navigators of one of Her Majesty’s sleek, grey messengers of death if they were all working from different charts?

So what in the name of Clusterfucks Incorporated is going on when, fresh from his paper round, The Boy Clegg demands we steal more from the rich a proposal which then has to be roundly slapped down by George Osborne, the bloke with his actual hands on the purse strings. Who is steering this bloody thing? Does anybody know?

We will never understand the politics of common consent in this country – what we used to imagine was democracy - because we’re free to believe what we want, yet remarkably ill-equipped to tell fact from fiction. I used to think that if politicians just told the truth we’d all make intelligent decisions and vote for the party with the best policies. Think again.

Take Al Murray and his successful Pub Landlord character. This was supposed to be a beautiful bit of British fun-poking at the bigotries of the little Englander, but just as Johnny Speight learned many years before, the great bigoted British public sided largely with the Alf Garnet character. We have travelled nowhere… although Al must have done very nicely out of it. 

It has sod-all to do with policy and nothing whatsoever to do with truth.

prop·a·gan·da/ˌpräpəˈgandə/
   Noun

1. Information, esp. of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicise a particular political   cause or point of view. 
2. The dissemination of such information as a political strategy.

The Left have won the propaganda war, fought on party battle lines drawn up over half a century ago, because now those on the right – especially those IN the right – dare not even pop a pate above the parapet for fear of having it blown clean off. The current government don’t yet seem to have thoroughly grasped that whatever the solution is (and no economist knows) you have to be in office to achieve it. And the last thing you need is a divided front.

The game might yet have been winnable, but then along came Tim – I make millions out of your gullibility – Yeo, to blow the entire ship out of the water. With his dirty thumb in as many pies as the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee can bake, he is the very epitome of the mostly fictional Nasty Tory Fairy Story the left have promulgated so well.
 

So, well done Tim. One can only conclude that your future fortunes lie in a victory for the other side. You arrogant, cheating, swindling twat.

What have I missed?

So, world, I go away for a long weekend and what do you do? You bloody well go ahead and have news without me? How very typical and how very dare you.

Among the usual dreary, everyday stories of millionaires being variously kidnapped, tortured and killed by their relatives, of vicious dogs running riot, of pregnant celebrity bikini photographs (what is wrong with you, tabloids?) of bankers bonuses, failed policies, government u-turns and advice to variously eat or not eat chocolate, I return to a veritable cornucopia of stuff I'm bound to have an opinion on, but have precious little time to write about.

Louise Mensch steps down, without so much as an email asking my permission. Nick Clegg resigns - well he may as well do after spitting the dummy over the non-issue of thoroughly pointless and unworkable Lords reform. Somebody ditches a car on Mars (I hope they've competed a SORN declaration), there is a post-flood mosquito epidemic in Somerset and some sick fuckers appear to have doused a tramp with petrol and set him alight.

And on top of that, we win a gazillion gold medals all in a row without so much as a by-your-leave. It's as if the Britain I knew has been turned upside down and inside out and is unravelling in front of my eyes. I desperately look around for some reassuring talisman, a sign... anything to tell me that I haven't somehow journeyed to an alternative universe.

And there it is. In an uncertain and ever-changing world, it is something to cling to. The natural order may be utterly subverted, the rule book may be torn up and chaos may reign throughout the land, but at least the Daily Mail is still obsessed with Kim Kardashian's gargantuan arse.