Have you seen the little piggies?

“Now, class, remember...” The learning facilitator turns to indicate two display boards at the nominal front of the young people’s learning collective. The various sub-committees of pupils, of mixed age, ability and gender identity, disengaged from their collaborations to gaze at the images. Bordered by a brave, caring, red glow, the party display showed moving images of happy, diverse communities engaged in thrilling cooperative ventures, assisting the halt and lame, collecting for charity and building a better world to the stirring music approved by the school board. They all bore the same fixed smiles that now played on the shining faces of the Junior Learners as they watched, wide-eyed and alert.

“And now...” The warm glow faded as the facilitator switched on the second display. A harsh, cold, deathly light illuminated static, monochrome scenes of an ancient and unlovely world. A world where miserable, old white people trudged through mud, pushing carts laden with broken human bodies. A world of torture and pain, of poverty and cruel injustice. A world of child labour, lives of drudge and early demise from back-breaking work and lack of medicines. The watching learners began to sob and hug each other, feeling the pain of their forebears in that lost world, filling with overwhelming empathy for the wronged and the dead.

St Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, supposedly said “Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man.” Whether he did or not, the principle is sound enough. What children experience in their early years can become a cross they bear forever. Catholic guilt, islamic submission... white self-loathing. A more enlightened view is that children should not be exposed to simplistic indoctrination and especially not by those charged with their education. Which brings us to that Labour party political broadcast.

Nobody is suggesting that primary school teachers bring their red, red politics into the classroom but then, how could they not? Few of us are capable of completely concealing our political allegiances – only career politicians can manage to do that – but teachers are in a unique position to influence future generations. This ridiculous broadcast suggests that Labour sees nothing wrong in doing exactly that. They also want the voting age to be lowered to sixteen or seventeen; can you see the connection, children?

Meanwhile, the real leader of the Labour Party, Len McCluskey, has been celebrating his re-election to master of the party purse strings by partying at a popular venue where champagne at £50 a bottle flowed pretty freely. George Orwell believed in democratic socialism and was profoundly concerned about social justice, but he was not uncritical of left-wing movements and his two best-known works challenged the very direction of travel of the current-day Labour Party. Animal Farm concludes: “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” Some things never change.

Kung who?

“Be like still water, Grasshopper. Use your enemy’s strength against him.” Master Po’s advice to the young Kwai Chang Caine is a central principle of various martial arts and one that has been heeded and employed by many people and groups over the years. For some time now alien cultures have been using the west’s liberal society to invade it by making appeals to a generosity of spirit often lacking in their countries of origin. From where most of us are watching it looks like nothing so much as taking the piss.

Wage violent jihad from within using the enemy’s generous welfare system. Avoid deportation by pleading a right to family life. And now, in a move which should have British lawyers hang their heads in eternal shame, use state legal aid to assist the prosecution of soldiers who have to bankrupt themselves to pay for their own defence. These irresponsible legal actions assume that the complainants were all innocents, going about their lawful and peaceful business and not the active bomb-makers and participants in armed insurrection most of them actually were.

The developed world is in deep trouble right now and it is a trouble largely of its own making. As wealth has been accumulated and public facilities built up our societies have become more soft-liberal and self-harming by assuming the mantle of charity central for all the world’s poorest. When the displaced indigenous peoples complain they are berated for being racists, believing the charge they have backed down and allowed their governments to hasten the rot by promulgating the myth that immigration is, of itself, good.

In the face of the bold revolt of Brexit it has been claimed that there is an upsurge in our despicable racism. The same accusation will be used to facilitate the importation of yet more who have designs on milking our system while not contributing to it. The police are unable to counter violent demonstrations of force when they involve ‘people of colour’ for that would be racist. How soon before we see French-style running battles in the streets? When it comes to job creation the state-sponsored hate crime industry is booming. This is not a society in control.

There are none so blind as those who will not see and this Game of Thrones thing that the press and the establishment think they run? Do they imagine that soundbites and accolades and obfuscations and evasions will ward off the threats by attacking or covering over the symptoms instead of tackling the cause? HS2, Boris Johnson, the ‘genius tactician’ George Osborne and his ‘northern powerhouse’, the third runway... Diane Abbott. Are these characters and projects confected in the hope that they will distract our attention from the real issues which face us? Because it’s not working.

Where there's a fire there's a fiddling politician...

Why do politicians refuse to acknowledge what plebs like me can see a mile away? Or are they like hipsters in their little hipster bubble, imagining they are cool and trendy and that the mocking laughter they hear is actually a form of praise? I heard Labour MP Angela Rayner on LBC talking about the evils of ‘Tory austerity’ and ‘taking the fight’ to the Tories and ‘preserving the fabric of British society’ which, she claimed, the Tories were destroying. She sounded like she believed every earnest word. If the Labour party ever had a strength it was in convincing large numbers of sheeple of this narrative. Master Po would have been proud of Kwai Chang Corbyn.

Hard Boiled

Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘new politics’ has hardly stood the test of time. A long-time rebel, he ascended to the leadership in the full knowledge that his views were not that of the majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party and said he welcomed opinions divergent from his own. Since then he has lost his temper on a number of occasions, fomented anger and disorder when he wanted to unify and now he has sacked Michael Dugher whose chief sin was disagreeing with his leader while still supporting him. Also gone is Pat McFadden (who?) again for disagreeing with the glorious leader.

Usually re-shuffles are over and done in as brief a time as possible, having been largely leaked to the press beforehand, but in this – the team-picking equivalent of watching paint dry – he has revealed himself to be a dithering diamond of the first water. The biggest dither was ‘what to do with Benn?’ And then there is the apparent problem with Corbyn and women. Abbott must surely be bad for party unity with her car crash media career and Emily Thornberry in defence? Her contempt for the white working class, who form the backbone of the armed forces, was amply demonstrated during the ‘white van man’ episode at the last election.

To be fair, Corbyn has a motley crew to choose from, his party briefing against him, threatening resignations if he makes the wrong moves and openly doing exactly what he used to do. But the main problem for JC must surely be the public perception of his ability to actually lead his party. What if he had to make a snap decision? To go to war, say, or to come out in support of this regime or that? He has form backing known antagonists of the west. We know he wouldn’t initiate the nuclear option but what about almost anything else?

I imagine Corbyn as the protagonist in a long-running 1970s advert for eggs: In a dowdy seaside guest house the proprietor asks, snappily, “How d’yer want yer eggs, fried or boiled?” Jeremy then lapses into a daydream about all the wondrous ways eggs could be prepared. In my version he stares at the eggs on the kitchen counter for several minutes before saying “Without that monstrous symbol of empire stamped on it!” The little lion was of course the Egg Marketing Board’s symbol to back UK producers and promote egg sales. The board was dismantled – I imagine much to JC’s satisfaction in 1971.

Yes, I can imagine Corbyn daydreaming about eggs, empire and all the ways in which he could replace freedom with enforced equality under state socialism, but could he actually run the country in the first place? Does he even believe in a British national identity? Much of what counts as civilisation around the world today owes a debt to that empire of yesterday that he so despises and a large proportion of traditional Labour voters come from a tradition that despises the ‘progressive’ arm of the left wing. If JC can’t even command the loyalty of the PLP what chance has he of carrying the country with him?

It's my egg, mate. If you want it, come and get it.

If the Labour Party want to genuinely offer an alternative government in 2020 (the very thought!) or at least position them as a credible opposition in the meantime, something has to give. Traditionally loyal to their leaders, at least in terms of not sacking them, no matter how poor they are, a leadership challenge may not be their preferred choice of direction. So, unless they want to sink beyond hope, Labour's little lions are going to have to go to work on this egg.

Har-har Wars

There is a new Star Wars movie out, apparently. The Farce Awakens. Original boxed Star Wars figures – toys made never to be played with but stored, cossetted and later coveted by middle-aged men who came out of cinemas in 1977 not emulating the oh-so-cool Han Solo but considering whether to invest their pocket money on a ridiculous Wookie or the motorised vacuum cleaner R2D2. They are laughing now or rather, if there is any justice, they are gazing up at their still-boxed treasure, wondering what happened to their misspent youth. Things get old. George Lucas is old, Star War is old.

The Labour Party is getting older by the minute, too and the cracks are well past starting to show. Electing the sort of progressive ‘firebrand’ that Jeremy Corbyn seems to represent has exemplified this more than anything. You may not have noticed, Labour, but the man is not exactly the galvanising media whore that last got you elected, back in 1997. The Thatcher-lite New Labour era was the closest Labour ever got since the post-war years to actual popularity, as opposed to the grim class struggle which typified Jezz’s firebrand days. He may be ‘only’ 66 but his politics are as old as communism itself.

Now, I’m going to say something controversial here, but bear with me. Given the rocky road that awaits all politicians these days – life in the goldfish bow of public scrutiny, suspicion and contempt and possibly ending in ignominy as you are pilloried for behaving the way all we imperfect people behave – the price of power must rarely be worth the ephemeral rewards. Why then, do they do it? I have to believe that, like the George Lucas franchise, people keep telling them that what we really need right now is another tedious re-telling of the same old story. But with Labour the farce really is with you.

Far from the new politics he promised, Obi-wan Jenobi has created an enormous rift between the various factions of the fanciful rebel alliance he purports to lead. And just as nobody can reveal the plot of the Lucas movie, few seem to be able to say very much about settled policy for Labour. But what we do have is a growing cast list of heroes and villains and the latest comic relief is provided by the charming Labour MP Jess Phillips. Not content with telling Diane Abbot to fuck off she is now doing her bit for party unity by promising the glorious leader “I won’t knife you in the back, I’ll knife you in the front.” Helpful that isn’t.

Two more hopes... Bob and No.

Well, I won’t be watching Star Wars. I am, after all, no longer twelve. But I am utterly intrigued by the intriguingly dynastic and perennial saga of wrinkly old sages, robotic minions, heinous villains and fairy queens of Labour’s long-running pantomime. Jeremy Corbyn’s travails have only just begun and before he can really begin to take the reins and crack the whip he has to tackle the dissenters; more referee than leader. This winter, the only show in town is The Umpire Strikes Back

Crazy!

Another day, another nail in the coffin lid of ‘The New Politics’ promised by Jeremy Corbyn and his merry band of misled men. Surely somebody must have known about John McDonnell’s planned waving of Mao Zedong’s Little Red Booky Wook over the despatch box? One story is that it was a committee decision to approve the act but surely one of the first rules of political opposition is - Don't let your own cunning stunt become the story. “But it was just a joke!” exclaimed the party worthies, cringing as they did so. The ruination of the Labour Party continues apace.

But, here’s the real joke; so committed are the faithful to the untried ideals of JC the new messiah that they fall straight into every single trap the Tories set for them. It must be like catching passenger pigeons in the Old Wild West... or dynamiting fish in a very small barrel. I keep expecting the stage hypnotist to count to three, snap his fingers and bring them, blinking, back into the real world to find the audience pointing and laughing. But no, the more we laugh, the more the big red bear dances.

For a party trying to regain credibility after the Edstone fiasco you would think that Labour would be doing their utmost to appear, if not electable, at least sane. During the short-lived Miliband era they opposed every austerity measure, insisting that the economy could be rescued while still borrowing more than could ever be paid back. The voters showed them what they thought of that. Under the last Labour government the creeping shackles of cultural thought control made criminals out of people for expressing opinions; the meekly offended trying to get their inheritance early, perhaps?

In a reversal of democratic principles, minorities progressively attained greater rights than the majority. Who knows what the voters thought of that? And of course it was Labour who ushered in the miserable failures of mass immigration and multiculturalism; and we know exactly what most voters really think of that. Yet still the bubble insulates politicians from the consequences of their thoughts and deeds. At least Ed’s people kept up the pretence that they thought they were in with a chance, but under Corbyn even his own cabinet cringe every time he opens his mouth and quickly brief to disown him.

But which is which?

At the height of China’s Cultural Revolution the notorious Gang of Four were responsible for some of the most notorious acts of the revolutionary party. It eventually led to their downfall but they are still remembered to this day. Will Corbyn’s political revolutionaries be likewise recalled in decades to come? As their Greatest Tits catalogue continues to build it is inevitable their bizarre performances will be fondly discussed in the future. We have a tradition of looking after the underdog so, bringing laughter to millions, Corbyn’s Crazy Gang will forever hold a special place in the nation’s heart.

Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em

Frank Spencer and I have something in common – compared to the Labour Party we are the very epitome of competence, meticulous planning and iron discipline. Captain Corbyn, like a day-skipper attempting a global circumnavigation on the basis of ‘how hard can it be?’ is managing to steer his rusting hulk of a party ever closer to the jagged rocks of electoral oblivion and just like watching Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em it is in equal parts hilarious and embarrassing. As his own party briefs against him, cabinet hopefuls are forced to do the solidarity waltz on a slippery dance floor.

Diane Abbott got to do her “no, no, no” response in her Maggie Thatcher voice on Radio Four’s PM when she told Eddie Mair how unfairly Jeremy Corbyn had been treated. Caroline Flint tag-teamed her to deliver a marginally more credible defence and both managed to clumsily sidestep the issue of Ken Livingsone’s appointment as co-chair of Labour’s defence review  without asking Angela (Anne?) Eagle if she minded. Ken insulted sensitive Kevan Jones after what he over-sensitively took to be a challenge to his own competence and the social meeja decided at some point that Ken’s ‘see a psychiatrist’ jibe was equally despicable as racism.

When even the feeble Simon 'Titty' Danczuk can openly brief against you, there has to come a point when you know you’re in trouble: "He's not got any authority and it's becoming an issue for him." Danczuk said and then a whole series of other discontented Labour figures popped up to grumble about the economy, Trident, shoot-to-kill and Corbyn’s former associations with disreputable figures. Captioning a photograph of the Labour leader with Hilary Benn, one newspaper even ventured to suggest this was a picture of both the current and the next party boss. What else is going to unravel before Jeremy is brought, head-in-a-sack to the star chamber?

Then the House of Lords, in a show of utter contempt for its elected colleagues demonstrated its own slide into irrelevance by voting – against all logic – to support the giving of votes to 16-year olds. The raising of the school leaving age to eighteen and the ridiculous extent to which young people are fawned over bodes ill for wise judgement. When the majority left school at fifteen the voting age was twenty-one. Six years of working for a living before getting the franchise. I see nothing whatsoever to suggest that giving a vote to part-formed humans who have not yet finished basic schooling is a sound idea.

Government is EASY!

Tony Blair often used the soundbite ‘joined-up government’ even while consultative cock-ups were being hastily spun as triumphs. Compared to the state of play in government at the moment, his administration looks like a high watermark of coordinated policy. But to look at the current confused and disorganised state of politics in general the possibility of connecting the dots looks ever more remote. It’s as if we already have children making all the rules.

What do you mean, you’ve heard it before?

I like to believe I’d quite like Captain Cardigan; he really ought to take up a pipe. I can imagine listening to him regaling the young folk who gather at his hem with stirring tales of helping geriatric old class warriors to cross the road, or rescuing socialist kittens from cruel Tory trees. Regally dispensing Werther’s Originals and occasionally ruffling a tow-haired mop-head he would sit there chuckling, recalling the good old days when six bob would buy you an evening’s entertainment and a bag of chips and everybody spent their days being kind to each other. Ah yes, the glorious forties; we were all so much happier under rationing.

We had to stand together to weather the storm. Jerry, with his pacemaker reminding us that with hope in our heart we would never walk alone; we could hold our heads up high and never be afraid of the dark. At the end of the storm we would find a golden sky and the sweet silver song of the lark. But we had to be strong against the wicked Tory establishment who would try to disguise their evil deeds. You must realise, he told us, when a lovely flame dies laughing friends deride and smoke gets in your eyes. You have to fight, he said, for your right to party.

Jeremy Corbyn’s Leader’s speech at the labour conference had an air of optimistic familiarity about it. Hadn’t we heard some of it before? Bits of it, at least? Some claimed that it was a re-hash of words written for Kinnock, others believed Ed Miliband had rejected it, but this was just sour grapes. Jeremy has a new, original, caring vision for the world. He’d like to build the world a home and furnish it with love. This was something new, something to fight for! He roused the passions with his plea: Don't give up 'cos you have friends. Don't give up, you're not beaten yet. Don't give up; I know you can make it good!

And what of this brave new egalitarian world, what would we be able to do? Why, grow apple trees and honey bees and snow white turtle doves, came the reply. You see, Jeremy ‘JayCee’ Corbyn wants so much more than an end to poverty; he wants happiness and joy unconfined. He’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. He’d like to hold it in his arms and keep it company. And you know what, he’s right! I'd like to see the world for once, all standing hand in hand and hear them echo through the hills - peace throughout the land. (That's the song I hear.)

"He's going to teach the world to what?"

By the time he had reached the end and managed to get in a few home ’spun’ jibes at the Tories’ mission to  punish the poor and grind the bones of their babies into an unsavoury gruel the crowd in the hall were ecstatic. Using all his own completely original words he thanked Mom, Pop and apple pie from sea to shining sea and led the hall in a rousing rebel yell of God Bless America before bathing in the rapturous applause. I thought of the sermon on the mount and his initials, J.C. He’s going to get crucified!

Hey, teacher! Leave them kids alone!

As technology gets smarter, humans get dumber; at least they seem to. Education used to be about preparing young people to go out into the world capable of surviving, ideally without a step-by step instruction manual. Last weekend, admittedly showing off, I got out my 1970s slide rule (mandatory for A-Level Maths) and out-performed my class in a number of calculations which, while rudimentary to a child of the sixties, were as rocket science to generations who have learned to rely on machines. I was denounced as a wizard and sentenced to be burned at the stake.

The thing is, my generation is as capable of using the machines as are the youngsters of today, when useful outcomes are required; we just don’t trust them because experience has taught us that you don’t always have a calculator when you need to compute. Likewise, through normal interaction with others we learned friendship and compromise and when to stand our ground and who to respect. We just didn’t have social media to tell us what to think, we just had to do that for ourselves. For the same reason, although I have a smartphone (and very handy it can be) it’s usually the last port of call when I’m searching for a solution, not the first.

Of course younger people are going to be slicker and some are going to make real money on the back of technologically enabled connections we greybeards will simply not comprehend but guess what, those kids are the ones who would succeed anyway. They could get rich, hit it big, bestride the world in any time period you cared to drop them into. Leonardo today might out-Apple Apple. Michelangelo might out-Pixar Disney. But edu-tech as engagement for disenfranchised pupils who can barely string a sentence together or look another human in the eye is the equivalent of sweeping the dirt under the carpet. And even the OECD are now saying so.

The lazy adherence to the educationalists’ experiments in the dumbed-down, conveyor-belt, certificate production line that much education has become focuses on ‘achievement’ as a euphemism, rather than actual, you know, achievement. The learning of principles comes secondary to following a recipe for success and the sound of boxes being ticked overwhelms and drowns out those lightbulb moments when real learning takes place. This has genuine consequences, not least the several generations now with progressively poorer critical thought processes.

One of the reasons Labour fell from grace in the seventies was the direct experience of its disastrous outcomes on people who cared about this country and its place in the world. Now, however, with all that as ancient history, the glorious stories of revolutions that were never won are being dusted off, rewritten and presented as fact to new voters who will happily accept without cynicism, the lies that sound the nicest. Anti-competition, anti-adversarial combat, anti-non-conformity, anti-racist, anti-fascist, anti-anti-anti... if you, with a good career are for it, they are against it.

But I need Bluetooth!

I can’t wait to see how Jeremy Corbyn’s new model army of bright young drones will fare when their costly demands meet the empty coffers of state. Or when we hoary old geezers with free minds and a healthy disdain for technology fail to fall in line with the barrage of new conformity laws they would usher in. (Pretty soon I’m expecting even being born white to be deemed racist; it’s certainly headed that way.) But worry not, there is a solution and a rather neat and apposite one at that. Once the energy fails and the power cuts become the norm and the great silence falls on the land,  the batteries powering their iPhones will run out and then none of them will know what to think at all.

Which project?

Anthony Charles Lynton Crosby Stills Nash Young and Blair. Whatever else he wanted for his legacy the gurning glove puppet mouthpiece of Mandelson’s New Labour will most be remembered for the asset-stripping of what was left of the Labour Party. He started off by abandoning  Clause Four, continued through the systematic rejection of all the values that originally made Labour a party of the ordinary working man, turned the comedy ‘champagne socialist’ into the mainstay of his club of cronies and finally killed Keir Hardie’s dream with his three increasingly desperate attempts to persuade the voters to reject Jeremy Corbyn.

So far at odds with Labour’s core principles were New Labour that David Cameron once referred to himself as ‘heir to Blair’. Yikes. It takes an especially thick kind of skin to handle that kind of abuse but dear old ‘Tone’ rose to the challenge with aplomb. He was disliked by Conservatives who clearly saw through his blatant attempt to turn Labour into Tory-lite but were powerless to prevent it. He was reviled by ordinary rank-and-file Labour members for doing the same thing. And hated by the unions for not taking their shilling he became the most successful and most popular Prime Minister that nobody, apart from his trendy new media and luvvie friends, admitted to ever liking.

The devil eyes of the Tory election campaign; the evil upside down mouth of his cackling spouse; the bitter venom of his communist father-in-law and the barely veiled sneers of his partner in crime Gordon Brown... above all else the thing that people appeared to hate the most about Blair was how malleable he was as he chameleonically changed his stance to fit the views of his audience – oh, except for the famous savaging he got from the Women’s Institute; as mothers they were uniquely equipped to see through his psychopathic manipulations and view the nasty, greedy little boy beneath.

My god... what have I done?

But finally he has come good. Even going so far as to admit that he understands his interventions may well lead to an increase in Corbyn-mania - bizarrely it is many of the same luvvie set who are now supporting JC in his ascendency – Blair’s last act for Labour may be to hammer in the nails on its coffin lid. Some have suggested this is a deliberate act to complete the sabotage he started but I suspect he is trying to atone for the damage he caused. Either way, intentional or not, we may have him to thank for keeping Labour’s hands off the levers of power for a generation. It would not surprise me if, when Blair accepts a chair in the upper chamber, he is ennobled as a Tory Peer. 

Stand on your liver!

When Moses Miliband came down from the mountain with his stone tablet of principles from who knows what acid-fuelled, socialist unthink tank we all gasped in astonishment before falling about with laughter. Ed himself always appeared to be delivering the message of others more Marxist than he, as he robotically intoned the edicts with a voice that was a gift to impressionists everywhere. He is probably as relieved as his party to be away from the spotlight, but he must be wondering why Jeremy Corbyn is getting away with doing much the same thing.

Iain Dale called JC’s launch of ‘Standing to Deliver’ (and don't you know he's been waiting decades to use that) as the shortest suicide note in history. Corbyn’s plan for a fairer and more successful Britain is a curious concoction of values and policy with the usual lack of detail. Like all left wing economic fantasy he doesn’t ever really get to explain how he will coerce those who don’t share his ideals to willingly share their resources. But hey, who’s to knock the New Ten Commandments? 

“Growth not austerity” he declares, with a national investment bank and ‘fair taxes’ for all, which is Labour speak for squeezing ‘the rich’ (that’s anybody not on tax credits) until the pips squeak. He promises “a lower welfare bill through investment and growth” yet with no meat on the bone of this policy, which actually implies far greater state spending, it will inevitably be funded by higher taxation on the good old ‘squeezed middle’ whose only crime is to not be reliant on handouts. But hey, won’t we all benefit from Jezzer’s “Action on climate change”? Given that, so far, the climate change industry has only ever created greater fuel costs and lower fuel security, I somehow doubt it.

Then there are the pure magic money policies. Intent on following the ruinous examples of left wing governments before him JC plans to magically renationalise the railways and the energy sector, control private rents and build enough council houses for everybody by 2025. Somehow he is going to do all that by “no more illegal wars” and not replacing Trident but, oddly, by redeploying the skills of those in Britain’s highly profitable  arms industry in the community. Meals on wheels delivered by drones, perhaps? Or will he sail a nuclear sub up the ship canal to provide a northern powerhouse for Manchester?

Of course, Corbyn is fully committed to saving, nay improving, the NHS with full state funding and a miraculously seamless integration with social care. It makes you wonder why no politician before him has ever even mentioned the health service. Furthermore, his fully-integrated, fully-costed, I-don’t-know-why-nobody-thought-of-it-before package of promises includes the abolition of zero-hours contracts, the stamping out of workplace injustice and – wait for it - equality for all! Add to that, lifelong ‘free’ education, jobs for everybody and somehow “an end to the scapegoating of migrants” in a one-nation Britain and it is surely time to bring out the bunting.

Bloody hell it's Billy Bragg!

So there we go; Full-Corbyn will bring us a totally novel and innovative, “new kind of politics” and “a fairer, kinder Britain based on innovation, decent jobs and decent public services.” These are exactly the sort of ideas that every other party clearly opposes and so radical are they you would think Jeremy ought to have them engraved in stone. Meanwhile, that noise you hear in the background? It’s the combined hubbub of grinding teeth and middle-class rats scurrying from the sinking ship.

Time Warp – It’s just a step to the left...

Normally, before I blog, I do a few seconds of research. But every now and then I go deep and really get into the detail of the matter in hand. Today I am relying on source material of such magnificent pedigree it would inform and add to your experience if you were to spend a moment studying the inspiration for yourself... if you can get beyond the spelling, grammar and general lack of coherence. Here’s the link:

My response: 

My friends, colleagues, fellow workers… Yet again we are dealing with our eternal struggle; our struggle for justice for the true working man. This never-ending battle has taken some wounding turns but still we stand proud, together and together we stand, er, proud. We have the chance of taking another turn, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death us do part... No, that doesn’t sound right at all. Where was I?

Ah, yes, yet again we are dealing with the old enemy, poverty. Poverty of ambition, poverty of aspiration and poverty of class; a piss-poor class, hell-bent on greed, wanting more and more of what we have worked for at any cost to the economy. We are the slaves, to be exploited to give them their unearned living. I know what some of you are about to say; slavery was abolished a long time ago but no, you couldn’t be more wrong. This isn’t slavery of the masses; it is slavery of the few. We are the 1% and we are there to be milked until the 99% get all that they desire.

We are still fighting this class war and it is we who are still losing. Since Saint Maggie was burned in effigy to save us all we have been persecuted by an ideology so perverse it masquerades as freedom even as it chokes the aspiration from the throats of our children. It holds that poor education, high taxes, inefficiency, the abolition of choice and the unfettered flow of welfare is the most efficient way of achieving the greatest social political and economic good.

And this is all hidden in a flurry of nonsensical labels as these warriors for social injustice spout crypto-revolutionary, anarcho-cynicist , neo-Kinnock dynasticism... in guttural northern flat-cap accents masquerading as Socratic dialectic discourse; and claim proletarian credentials just as smoothly as if they were not subsumed into the clinical-bedlamist plot and a desperate need to grasp power and take over the keys to the asylum. Among their insane plans they oppose self-determination and free speech and plan to introduce draconian controls on all human behaviour under the guise of ‘diversity and equality’ and that most discredited of all ideologies, political ‘fairness’

Not content with destroying the grammar system, the means by which many of their class escaped self-imposed drudgery, they went on to close the mines from within and cheered as the bully-boys in the unions shut the factory gates one by one. Filled with a blind hatred of upward mobility and under the delusion that this is somehow caring and compassionate, they seek to drive the most vulnerable in society - those who pay all the tax – into penury. They would make them the scapegoats for daring to lift themselves out of austerity while never laying a finger on the super-rich who they regard as some sort of evil, untouchable mythical beast.

And as if to ‘prove’ all this they write poorly phrased polemic, blaming the sensible, hard-working middle classes, whose wealth diminishes day by day as the price of a decent bottle of wine or a portion of truffles rises out of their reach. “Soak the rich!” they cry, “Squeeze them until the pips squeak!” they urge and then carry on soaking and squeezing, secure in the knowledge that we are too busy working to provide them with a living to be able to engage seriously in politics, while they possess, and hoard for themselves, the greatest resource available to man. Time. The devil, they say, makes work for idle hands.

Wait a minute... are you taking the piss?

Comrades Colleagues, we must come together to fight this evil. If we are not a movement to create a better society for everyone, then what the hell are we for? Do we just wave a white flag and let those moochers do what they want? The grass roots members, the working people of this country, should fight to end this poverty they would thrust upon us; this austerity they brought about. We should reclaim that hallowed ground and restore the beautiful British way of life our fierce forefathers and their fine free fellows fought for. How can we stop them seizing power? We have the chance and we have the ultimate weapon. We can return Labour to their leftist past and leave them there. Friends, I urge you to vote Corbyn and keep Labour out of power for a lifetime.

Corbyn, Cor Blimey!

Labour. The idea of a Labour Party in government is as far from funny as the notion that suicide bombers are not inspired by islam. But the Labour Party in opposition and in disarray is a joy to behold and its flag-wavers are the collective comedy gift that just keeps on wrapping itself up and jumping into the Christmas stocking. For instance, Jeremy Corbyn scraped a chance to stand for the leadership by gaining the last of the necessary thirty-five nominations two minutes before the ballot closed. Corbyn is, of course, one of the last bastions of the Labour left wing and beloved of the Boy Wonder Owen Jones and his risibly riotous People’s Assembly. 

Guessing the outcome of the labour leadership contest is a bit like a lottery with the unions hopping mad they’ve lost their almighty block vote; they are now desperately trying to get people to sign up individually, as per the new rules, but unlike the heady days of wildcat strikes and one-out, all-out, nobody appears to give a fig. Yesterday morning I heard on the Today programme that of 500,000 eligible union members only 2,500 had bothered to sign up, even at the bargain basement rate of £3 a pop. Tory supporters are now signing up to vote for Corbyn… because it will be hilarious.

The natural instincts of true British people has never been to bemoan their lot and aside from a brief and necessary period of revolt Labour’s mission is history. Nobody has much faith in state-run institutions any more but the fraying remnants of Labour’s Marxist past are still fully wedded to the concept. So, here’s an idea: How about – instead of nationalisation and all that expense and disruption – we set up cooperative-owned banks, power companies, etc and let them compete with private companies entirely on merit. Aside from legislation and some small start-up costs the public purse funds nothing, so committed ‘own the means of production’ adherents will have to buy their place in the organisation by selling up all they own and pooling their resources, thus demonstrating true commitment to the collective ideal and not participating on the sidelines as mere fat-cat shareholders.

It will be like a national game show as slick, moneyed professional profit-makers compete with egalitarian, diversity-heavy ‘enterprises of the people’ for market share and lolz. And if the people’s partnerships fail, just as with nationalised industry, all participants fail with them. Except the national finances won’t take the hit and the good old British sense of schadenfreude will have a field day watching the public demise of those who considered themselves just a little bit more equal than the rest of us. It’s a win-win because if they succeed then bully for them and we may learn something, but if they fail maybe they will learn something and insist on proper education for the next generation.

Can we fuck it up?

The Guardian has been whinging that there is some form of posh apartheid in operation and that only ‘posh’ people get better jobs, when in reality, in a Corbynised Britain they might finally realise that it isn’t posh people who get the best jobs it’s just not Labour people who get the best jobs. There has to be a reason for that