The Enemy Within

What’s in a word? Common, commonality, communion, communal, communist... Common Purpose. Outwardly CP looks a little like a secular version of the church’s Alpha Course which seeks to softly indoctrinate those vulnerable to Christianity into a deeper belief. Take a bunch of people predisposed to believe and feed that predisposition. Good for the church, I guess, which needs all the faith it can marshal. But at least the Alphas don’t – as far as we know – seek to control society. Common Purpose very much does.

‘Leading Across Boundaries’ sounds an all very laudable and suitably harmless, new-age, happy-clappy evangelical mission. They say they seek to banish prejudice, break down barriers and allow people with shared values to work together. What’s not to like? After all isn’t this just the same as a commercial company’s ethos of branding and identification? But who has never found the gurning, excitable, badge bedecked indoctrinees waiting at table at TGI Fridays more than a little unnerving?

CP aims to create ‘Future Leaders of Society’ and those it calls its graduates are instructed on how to pull the levers of power in order to ‘lead outside authority’. Leading outside authority effectively means circumventing the obstacles which prevent we mere mortals from having our concerns heard. Of course, if you have a secret-handshake direct line to those who handle those levers, yours are the only voices heard. This is exactly what they are after.

The burglar and serial swindler of pensioners, Henry Vincent, was a low-life from the ironically named ‘traveller' community. His death is not something those he sought to defraud would wish to mourn, so the shrine erected in his memory in the area he tried to rob is an affront to common decency. Not so, say the police – widely reputed to be ‘riddled’ with Common Purpose graduates – it is a dignified remembrance of a loved one deceased. Once again the authorities, it seems, are taking sides.

Whether Common Purpose is as effective as it has been billed is open to debate but it is undeniable that the levers of power rarely seem to work the machinery to the benefit of the wider public, rather concentrating on the rights of those whose purpose is decidedly uncommon, at variance to the purpose of a harmonious world. How often are complainants warned that their objections are mere bigotry, injurious to the common good?

Hardly the Illuminati, Common Purpose does not seek to hide; it operates in plain sight, safe in the knowledge that until people are directly affected they will do little to oppose them. But the sense of being ruled by a shadowy elite persists and this, of course, is one of their bushiest beards. They are a registered charity. Yes, they do select and train future leaders, but for the good of us all; what could be sinister about that, they will say? Of course they are everywhere, they seek to reach out across divides; what could be less sinister?

As a serial eschewer of conspiracy theories, Common Purpose is a good one. They are the good guys, surely? If you imagine they are otherwise maybe that’s just your fevered mind working overtime. Take a chill pill, calm down; nobody wants to hurt you. But is this bluff, double-bluff, or what? What is plain, however, is that there is a new orthodoxy abroad and those who act counter to the politically correct doctrine are readily pilloried and marginalised by authority. How much easier is that for them to do, if they do, indeed, have something in common?

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.)