Rock On!

“And where do we go from here?” As David Essex sang in his breakthrough hit ‘Rock On’ all those years ago, when life was so much simpler. And even though Heath was, in that very year, illegally consigning our national sovereignty to the dustbin of history, the actual EU was but a twinkle in a despot’s eye. The lies that took us in, the lies that sustained our continued deeper entanglement and the thoroughly outrageous fear-mongering which accompanied the Remain campaign in 2016 were mere harbingers of the apoplectic threats and approbation being bandied around today.

We have come a long way from 1973. Back then, while there was (and always will be) poverty and hardship, much of the population at least recognised the fruits of success, of empire, of being quite literally world-class in every field. But still more were growing up to experience a lower tier of nationhood. Coming second, third even, against nations with a stronger sense of self, supreme among which was the United States, it seemed logical to some that a European economic counterbalance was necessary.

The next forty years – except for a brief respite in Mrs Thatcher’s decade of hope - were spent in attacking the bastions of privilege, disparaging the notion of free enterprise and carefully rewriting the record to show the British not as a proud, successful, happy breed, but a mongrel nation, utterly dependent on others for its every triumph. This trend was accelerated over the last twenty years, as Tony Blair’s fanatical embrace of all things EU set in train the full surrender all autonomy to the Brussels cartel.

Today, you can’t turn on the television, flip the pages of a magazine, or even pass an advertising hording without being bombarded by a bizarre and unreal depiction of Britain as this weird ultra-cultural, post-national experiment; an amalgamation of  all proclivities as equal participants with every possible departure from the mathematical mode now recognised, illiterately, as ‘normal’. Two daddies, three mummies, every-inch-tattooed-and-pierced circus freaks, paedophiles, degenerates and all possible ethnic and gender self-descriptions accepted as absolutely equal in value to the societal model which drove our evolution for millennia. This can’t be entirely right.

Acceptance and tolerance are good; they are wholly to be encouraged. But normalisation of the abnormal opens gates which may better remain locked... or at least heavily guarded. And nobody knows how this rapid overturning of all that was understood, by things which are not understood, will end up. In a country with a strong sense of self, there would be curbs on dangerous freedoms, constraints on those who went too far. But we have been turned into a non-nation and berated for daring to hold to former standards. When anything goes, you’d better watch where it’s going.

So into this febrile, shape-shifting landscape enters Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party and what an entrance it has been. One poll puts them almost level with the Tories and totting up support for both the BP and Ukip it easily bests both the Tories and Labour. What welcome is received by this new attempt to honour what seventeen million people voted for? Why, to be branded universally as racists by those who peddle race as their entry card into every debate, assume difference as their credentials to speak for the many. David Lammy, in particular, uncannily echoes Joseph Goebbels, in repeatedly demanding that those views should never be heard.

We're going to need a bigger boat...

You see, to Lammy and his camp followers, their own very clear Nazism is good Nazism, the righteous end justifying the means, while ordinary people are held as too stupid to tell the difference. Ordinary people, despondent at the loss of their democracy, fall prey to the bad Nazism of national pride, shared identity and tolerance of others, not seeing (in their ignorance) that to be a 'good' Nazi you must root out tolerance wherever it is found. It is madness and no end is yet in sight. Where do we go from here?

Reaping what you sow

David Lammy is in the ‘news’ again, although show me a day when this gratuitous attention seeker isn’t. He was banging his ‘Review of Racial Bias and BAME representation in the Criminal Justice System’ drum again, but when is he not? Talk about the effect of confirmation bias. Had the report not included the prejudiced term ‘bias’ it might carry some credibility, but this is a classic example of the cart leading the horse. Like so many such important sounding studies it begins with a premise then sets out to prove it; black kids are more likely to end up in prison, but there aren’t enough black judges.

Naturally society is to blame, or rather, the built-in, instinctive, unthinking, institutional racism of our hideously white society. And because he swallows the revisionist theory of racism - only those with power can be racist - black people have no power, ergo only white people can be racist. Notwithstanding the power he and numerous other ‘persons of colour’ have, by dint of office, he wishes to tip the balance to empower more BAME people and thus, what, let them be racist in their turn? This hardly seems the philosophy of a great mind. This has all the intellectual rigour of Tony Blair’s fallacial ‘let’s send every kid to university’ argument.

If the law is to apply equally, then diversity is the very last thing you want to impose; conformity is the key. Imposing quotas in all areas of the criminal justice system is, like all such measures, doomed only to failure, charges of positive discrimination, both in employment and in sentencing and furthering the divides which exist in our admittedly unequal society. But inequality is an abiding trait of most animal societies and certainly of humanity; perhaps Mr Lammy could point to some successful experiments where the imposition of equality has been successful? Mao’s Cultural Revolution perhaps, or something beginning with Lenin and ending with Stalin?

Or, he may wish to avail himself of the ‘criminal justice’ experience of a number of African countries which have reverted to post-colonial home rule. There is no reason whatsoever why a BAME aspirant should not be capable of rising through the justice system, but by merit. Indeed their applications – all applications, by the best in their field - should be welcomed and encouraged. And I truly hope that their skin colour would play no part in their success. But already the bias is in their favour. The Bar Council would bend over backwards to promote more women and ethnic minorities to silk but they can only work with what they get.

Constance Briscoe. A fine example

Perhaps, instead of trying to convert British society to better accommodate people of other origins and cultural norms, effort may better be expended on integrating other ethnicities into the British way of doing things. You know; fair play, tolerance and impartiality, not preferential treatment, playing the victim and whipping out the race card at every turn. Exploiting difference is what we evil white people do, isn’t it, David old boy? You haven’t really thought it through, have you? 

Tic-Toc...

Last year Nick Clegg, in the process of being soundly thrashed by Nigel Farage in the television debate he called for, hit out at Farage’s claim that 70% of UK laws came from the EU. In fact for days afterwards this was his only parry and some even wanted desperately to believe him. So the news that two-thirds of UK laws do indeed come via the EU is not only further refutation of Clegg’s credibility and proof of his duplicity, it should come as a stark warning for voters everywhere to wake the fuck up.

The European Union is out for one thing and it is the thing we all suspect many politicians are out for – themselves. But having managed to divert a colossal amount of sovereign wealth into the leaky culverts of bureaucracy where it disappears without trace there is little else for the god-like powers to do but amuse themselves at our expense. One of the ways in which the EU likes to entertain itself in these long, wet winter days is to enact legislation banning things that people rely on. It disrupts industry, delivers poorer outcomes for consumers and impoverishes us all further… and is therefore exactly in tune with what all the evidence points to is the primary purpose of the projekt.

Words, organisations, beliefs, indigenous cultures, self-determination, freedom – of course they love to curtail them, but that is the humdrum day-job. To liven things up they like now and then to prohibit the use of material things; especially those that actually work. Either already banned or in the process of being banned or curtailed are: Cars that drive fast, weed-killers that kill weeds, pesticides that ‘cide’ pests, hair-driers that dry, kettles that boil… and vacuum cleaners that don’t suck because they suck have been replaced with vacuum cleaners that suck because they don’t suck. And now, having banished the good old cheap general lighting service lamp known by generations as a light bulb, they are coming for the rest of your beloved incandescent lamps. Got downlights? Then get ready to fork out for LEDs; at ten-to-twenty quid a pop the future isn’t looking so bright

Back on the subject of social engineering and behaviour modification, Labour MP David Lammy’s astonishing logic suggests that if you steal from, say, Fortnum & Mason you’ve been less dishonest than trousering a Mars bar from the corner shop. Of course, he is bound to have been ‘quoted out of context’ but where does this road lead? Given that the state is the biggest racket of the lot, presumably avoiding tax or defrauding the DWP should be seen as a noble act which should be rewarded. Honours for evasion? Legalised bank robbery? And do rich people deserve to be murdered more than poor people?

Replacement light bulb - EU standard

It’s ludicrous, unnecessary, intrusive and utterly arrogant; the high-handed, rough-shod ride over the plebs. And you know what the EU, Labour and many besides have in common? The belief that people who live their ignoble lives outside the rarefied air of Westminster, the BBC and the right-on, 'progressive' think tanks have no aspirations, no education and must be treated as naughty peasants. But think on, Mr Politician, we peasants can still wield a mean pitchfork.