Party Time

I dunno, you wait fifty years for a new political party then dozens of them all turn up at once! There seems to be an appetite for change, and everybody seems to know what tasty dish will sate that hunger. A little bit of racism here, some misogyny over there, a dash of identity politics, easy on the rich jus of social justice, and a sprightly garnish of Little England to set it off. At least, that’s what the media seems to think.

The big issues of the national consciousness, the truly difficult, life-essential missions – gender, climate panic, diversity, ending slavery, pulling down statues, defending the indefensible – that’s already sewn up by the big three parties… - [checks] … big two parties. So the new, smaller parties are relegated to engaging the public on the silly little policies such as immigration, wealth distribution and poverty, work and welfare and pensions, housing, homelessness, national defence, policing and all of that trivial nonsense.

Goodness me, what woolly headed nonsense they spout. Imagine actually prosecuting criminals instead of getting in a fizz over hurty words! And what are these ‘borders’ of which the neo-Nazis speak? Don’t they know we’re in the age of Aquarius? And don’t get us started on rights. No, these insignificant parties who claim to speak for the disenfranchised, they are just trotting out the same old tropes that the old Conservatives used to believe in.

Modern polling techniques have been refined so that we can now accurately record the fact that the majority of people we choose to question will tell us what we want to hear. I don’t know who the stormtroopers of Ukip, For Britain, Britain First, Reclaim, Traditional Unionist Voice, the Christian People’s Alliance, the Wessex Regionalists and the Church of the Militant Elvis Party think they are representing, but I’m pretty sure their people never get asked.

Such is the rarefied air that the political pundits breathe that they never have to inhale the toxic fumes of desperation, the miasma of hopelessness, that emanate from the methane plant of humanity which is beneath their dignity. Ordinary people – the dopes with a vote they don’t deserve – are only good for entertainment, after all. Look how fat, look how ugly; they are no better than animals, are they?

Maybe they have a point, but if you are going to keep 90% of your population in ignorant servitude it might be a good idea, now and then, to check in on their welfare. After all, the police force are recruited from their ranks, as are the military. Many of them can use tools and, despite what the political classes seem to think, many are perfectly capable of forming opinions and holding grudges. Plus, they exist in far greater number than do you.

Splitters!

The chances of all the smaller parties coming together, agreeing on matters and becoming an effective alternative to the Tories and Labour is, I’m afraid, pie in the sky. And even if they did, their electoral chances are vanishingly small. Maybe the real way ahead is for everybody to re-join, or join for the first time, the main party which they think they can live with and then change them from within. Yes, yes, I know we think it’s been tried, but has it? Something to think about, maybe… 

Think

Let’s try a little thought experiment. Imagine, just for one second, that the Labour Party has good in its heart. Let us, for a while, entertain the notion that people like John McDonnell honestly hold their views. Let’s put aside their visceral malice towards their political rivals and just take them at their word. They are the nice party, the caring party; they have the monopoly on kindness. So, how would a Labour government change anything at all in a meaningful way, which would bring about all the things they claim to stand for?

Alan Sugar was ennobled by the Labour Party, but he left them over Ed Miliband’s hopeless leadership and is once more attacking their hard left, anti-Zionist stance; they don’t much like Alan over at Momentum Central. To be fair he had no business being in the party in the first place, but like many from working class roots he naturally admired their former championing of the working man. But – and here’s the nub of it – despite the high talk Labour hates social mobility. Get on in life and you’ll become a class traitor in their eyes.

This is particularly exemplified by their determination to eradicate grammar schools. How dare schools stretch pupils and give them ideas above their station? And how dare they promote the idea that some can and will achieve more than others? When Tony Blair said “Our top priority was, is and always will be education, education, education...” I am willing to believe he was sincere. But the trouble with education is that young people learn to reason. Maybe the mantra would more correctly be rendered as ‘indoctrination, indoctrination, indoctrination’.

Even this can be excused if you accept that the world would be a happier place if we all just tolerated each other and rubbed along, but in their admirable zeal to ‘rescue’ the ‘most vulnerable in society’ they simply do not see the reality. Despite socialism’s best efforts people do eventually begin to think for themselves and it’s all a matter of perspective; when you are young and broke it seems entirely reasonable that others should ‘do more’ (pay) to improve your lot. When you are old and rich, like Lord Sugar, it is easy to be charitable and donate directly. It’s just everybody else wherein the problem lies.

The real fear for Labour is that once people start to make larger than average tax contributions they have the annoying tendency to want to know how their money is being spent. And once you begin to question the profligacy of flawed policies throwing money at lost causes, it is inevitable that your sympathies become somewhat dissipated. Labour simply cannot be the tide that lifts all boats because at their core they are all about robbing the rich. And the rich often used to be the poor.

Forget the current round of anti-Semitism, that is just another symptom of the Labour disease. Ideology harbours contradictions and equality is the most malign ideology there is; outwardly harmless, it slowly drives its host mad. Because in order to bring about equality you have to practise inequality and penalise those you used to praise. And just like a whipped dog that one day turns on its persecutor, when the policies that once controlled you now arouse your anger, your perspective shifts. That thought experiment? Think again.

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.

Withdraw Labour?

Ed Miliband is back from his sojourn in Ibiza and  must be grateful at least that the expression is not “Your nose must have been burning” because the airwaves have been a-buzz with mention of his name… and it’s a hell of a nose. Everybody has been talking about Ed in his absence and most of it is not very nice to hear. It turns out he was wrong about everything and the shadow cabinet of ‘the nice party’ have fallen over themselves to say so. Well we, the hoi polloi, knew all along but wasn't the party one-million-per-cent behind Ed all the way? Yes, it turns out they were right behind him and pushing him towards the cliff.

On Monday Yvette Cooper attacked Ed on his approach to business. Chuka Umunna did it last week before stepping down from the contest on still-unexplained grounds. Even union-man Andy Burnham expressed disappointment and a recognition that any government needs to keep business onside. And the reason all the knives are out? It seems, at least right now, that the leadership contest will be won by the contestant whose blade plunges the deepest into Miliband’s back. If I were Ed I think I’d just stay away from England forever.

But I thought they all wanted Dan Jarvis to stand? Dan who? Dan the war hero who nobody outside Labour had ever heard of before last week and is now the darling in waiting; the man to lead Labour from the shadows. Except he doesn't actually want the job. Not yet at least; he’s backing Andy Burnham instead. When I first heard about Dan Jarvis I was perplexed. Former Parachute Regiment officer AND Labour man? Surely it’s been a good fifty years since that juxtaposition of allegiances was normal? In Thatcher’s day the armed forces and the police were Conservative to a man. But wait, let’s hear what he has to say.

Oh, I get it now. He’s backing Andy Burn'em because he thinks Captain Scarlett has the greatest appeal to the public and therefore he has the right credentials to lead the party. Meanwhile Red Len McCluskey, true to bully-boy form, is threatening Labour that its financial backing could be put at risk if they fail to represent “the voice of organised labour”. Hmm, I wondwer if there's any particular reason that Unite is backing Burnham? So, Emperor’s new clothes then? Nothing new from labour at all; it’s not about policy it’s about whatever will get them elected; it’s about appearance. Well, they appear to have a bit of as problem then, don’t they?

Still? Hasn't anybody read the instructions?

You see, original Labour became Old Labour the moment Blair, Mandelson and Campbell unveiled the ‘bit-like-the-Tories’ New Labour. Then, under Ed, they were sort-of Unite Labour a bit like Old Labour again… almost. But now that Yvette Cooper has been talking about adopting Tory policies towards business and immigration and the deficit, the term Blue Labour is looking likely. But maybe it’s time to finally admit that after whatever branding and re-alignment and new-directional tweaking they decide is necessary to make the party palatable, the only electable name remaining is Not Labour.

Simple!

There is no other story to go with for today's blog than the lefty laff-fest that has been #nondomnishambles. What goes around comes around to bite you on the arse; thus found out Ed Balls when he was backed into a corner and had to explain how he now supported a policy move he opposed only back in January. The proposal was, of course, that of ending the non-domicile tax status of up to 120,000 people which between them pay the equivalent, by some estimates, of 10 million low paid workers. As a class-envy soundbite it has traction – soak the rich. But as sound economics the experts are agreed that they can’t agree.

What started out as a bold new policy announcement turned quickly into a shambolic reversal of a previous position, which became, under scrutiny, a plan instead to ‘look into’ changing a situation which Labour in power appeared to welcome, if the doubling of the numbers of non-doms in their time is anything to go by. The measure will either bring huge tax windfalls or it may cost the country money, but either way it will have no effect whatsoever on approximately 99.8% of the population over which Labour wish to exercise ‘leadership’. Are you following?

But all that detail hardly matters because few of us really understand any of the big economic arguments to any great degree of complexity, yet the left forever see conspiracy where none exists, or where it simply doesn’t matter. The very rich will be very rich until we try to rob them blind… at which point they will still be very rich, but just not over here. Keep. It. Simple… Stupid. Instead of imagining convoluted plots to grind poor people into the dirt – to what end, you ought to ask? – all you have to do is accept mankind’s venal, opportunistic, materialistic urges and all becomes crystal clear; people want to keep what they’ve got and really don’t want to give it away without a struggle.

If the non-doms are here it is because we have made it an attractive position for them to be so. Of course if Labour and the Greens and the SNP and Uncle Tom Marx and all get their way, the problems they see embodied in the existence of the rich will disappear along with their money as soon as those parties manage to relegate us from the league of properly civilised countries. But they can’t think like that; just as in Junior Chess, you have to think a few moves ahead to be in with a chance.

But no, unable to follow a coherent train of thought to its eventual terminus and explain the failure of their policies in power, they have to imagine non-existent bogeymen waiting in the shadows to de-rail their carriages. They do the same when talking about people with whom they disagree - making it complicated and assigning all sorts of calculated malevolence to those with differing opinions. And to their followers this ridiculous rhetoric rings true because how else could they be poor and uneducated and unhealthy unless the nasty, grasping, plotting forces of evil were ranged in solidarity against them?

What then, do we sentient free-acting agents think in turn of the lefties and their complicated interpretations of our devious and twisted, world-dominating motives? Well, for one thing, we don’t suppose to know their minds as they believe they know ours, in much the way we don’t really need to know what the cat is thinking. They are there, they’re a bit annoying at times, but when it comes down to it you can only judge them by their actions. They’re just not all that bright, are they? 

This is a plan?

Well I don’t know about you but the general election year has got away to a cracking start. It’s hard to tell policy from parody as Labour seem intent on whipping up hysteria from every formerly forgotten corner of the realm, on enlisting the help of anybody gullible enough to cast their ballot in favour of state ownership of their very souls. Not content with their usual ‘cruel Tory’ stories - you know the stuff; half eaten babies discarded in bus shelters to be sexually abused by grandees and Lords under the protection of Her Majesty herself – they seem intent on self-destruction by comedy construct.

Pink battle buses, presumably to appeal to the under-tens, a refusal to properly condemn the abusers of the under-tens if there’s a vote in it, Ed Miliband’s potentially slanderous statements in the House of Commons, Tristram Hunt’s nun-bashing, Ed Balls forgetting Bill Somebody’s name, Diane Abbott's mayoral ambitions, rent-control, fuel price freezing... the list goes on. And on… And on. The ‘an owl for everybody’ spoof doesn’t seem so far-fetched now, does it?

It is clear to those with an independent, un-addled brain that all of Labour’s pretend policies are made up on the hoof; knee-jerk gimmicks to try and be all things to all people. The trouble with that approach - as Kinnock discovered to his electoral cost - is though you can fool some of the people all of the time, those people are already voting Labour and as fast as they breed, there still aren’t quite enough of them to be sure of tipping the balance. Kinnock of course had to swallow his pride, give up on British socialism and go off to and become a multi-millionaire… as a passenger on the juggernaut of much less accountable European socialism.

What ought to be abundantly clear is that truth has no place in politics – especially as so many voters demand it – what matters is how you package up the lies you control. While David Cameron can disguise his offerings with an expensive and flashy gift-wrap and a nice shiny bow, Nigel Farage will offer you a no-frills what-you-see-is-what you get package, in a plain brown wrapper. Even Nick Clegg can still at least pop his cheap plonk in a Tesco’s single bottle gift bag and Natalie Bennett, eschewing the damage that unnecessary packaging does to the environment, unapologetically brings no gift to the party. Ed Miliband, meanwhile, is still in the corner, a sticky ball of uncoordinated glitter, bells and saggy bows, gibbering slightly and high on Sellotape™ fumes.

Labour's not-very-magic Battle Bus

With the SNP about to eliminate Labour in Scotland just as the Scots did for the Tories (Scottish independence is surely in all our best interests?) and the Greens and Ukip taking great bites out of Labour’s former shoo-ins I have a sneaking suspicion that Ed, like Gordon before him, would actually prefer to lose. Why, given Labours’ abysmal record with money, would they risk taking over the reins of an economy not yet out of the slump? No, let the Tories fix it up, get us into the black and then there’ll be more to spend – pink buses for everybody! My money is on Ed leading Labour to another five years of whinging and moaning and belittling success from the sidelines; after all, it’s where they seem happiest. 

F. A. B.

Well who would have thought that International Rescue had their very own conference – and popular too, given the trending of the #fab15 hashtag. F.A.B. Virgil! Of course I jest; the Fabians are about as far removed from harmless entertainment – hilarious though their adherents are – as Pol Pot and Idi Amin in their heyday. The guiding principle of the Fabians has always been this: What is the point of intellectual superiority over the lower orders if you don’t use it to decide how they should live their lives?

In their early years they even advocated enforced sterilisation or humane execution of those deemed unfit for the new world order of compliant humanoids. (So they're not ALL bad...) Today, although the distinctly fascist rhetoric has been toned down, they still behave true to their emblem; a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Yesterday on the Sunday Politics, Harriet Harman gamely pressed on against the opinion of pretty much all the world’s informed commentators and denied Britain’s economic recovery. The important thing was that Labour has decided that poor people don’t ‘feel’ better off and they will damned well keep telling them that until they actually start to feel it.

Coincidently, following on from the ‘don’t talk about de darkies’ instruction, Labour’s latest order to its door-steppers – robustly denied of course – is don't talk about the economy. In rebuttal a party spokesman said, "It's utter nonsense to suggest, on the day that Ed Miliband has delivered a 30 minute speech on the economy, that Labour is not talking about the economy.” Funny how Ed himself ‘forgot’ to mention the economy at the party conference… Surely nobody who has the intellectual competence to earn a wage could possibly trust Labour with the country’s finances.

Labour appears to believe they are stronger on health and housing yet under the last Labour government neither of these policy areas showed any improvement whatsoever; if anything both sectors declined. But in politics perception is everything so it is little surprise that there appears to have been a plot to sabotage Hinchingbrooke, a privately run NHS hospital. All was going well, apparently, until the Politburo policy unit decided it could be spun as a Tory failure. This is disingenuity in the extreme when you discover that Hinchingbrooke was handed over to private tender in 2008. By Labour.

The true aims of Fabians have always been, much like islam, domination; subjugation of the working classes under the guise of fighting for their welfare. Such is their intent to hold onto power that those who pulled Tony Blair’s strings must have been cock-a-hoop over Johns Smith’s premature death, allowing the party to occupy the soft-Conservative position under the neologism of New Labour. In contrast the Tories – despite the Eton dynasty rhetoric – look like mere amateurs in the power grab stakes.

The Brains of the operation

Judging by the level of rapture tweeted by the party faithful from #fab15 I wonder if the Labour Party itself realises it is just a tool in the hands of the big money Fabians who still rule the roost? The conference was ended with a speech by Owen Jones, the boy wonder of the Oxford educated ‘working class’. With such useful fools so readily to hand it makes you wonder why they need sheep’s clothing at all. 

Costa Packet

“Cost of living.” Say it out loud. What does it actually mean? Given the ease and lack of any kind of competence required to create life the cost and in many parts of the world the value of life itself is infinitesimally small. Being one of 7 billion is hardly laudable unless you’re maybe a virus, or a brain cell where the teeming multitude works together to produce results. As an answer to the meaning of life simple duplication is bleak and the ability to do it is a piss poor performance indicator; almost anybody is capable and in economic terms that puts a very low value indeed on the cost of life.

But no, you say, that’s not it at all, it’s the cost of LIVING that is in crisis. Well, that isn’t expensive either – as proved by those who subsist their entire lives on what they can beg for in the streets of Mumbai or working the fields in Laos. The financial cost of maintaining life is meagre indeed and apart from the often man-caused conditions which result in mass starvation in the far-off lands that only exist for us on our television screens, humans manage to stay alive with remarkable tenacity.

And in our hearts we know that. A generation or so ago, our affluent circumstances were regularly held up to scrutiny; “You’ve never had it so good.” And “There are starving children in Africa who would be grateful for what you’ve left on your plate.” But for many years now we seem to have taken our good fortune for granted and while we have created a grievance industry and, bizarrely, food banks take the place of personal responsibility for some, it is estimated that some fifty percent of bought-and-paid-for food is thrown away.

That sense of entitlement – that whatever our choices we are somehow deserving of equality of living standards – is the last remaining weapon in Labour’s electoral arsenal. Ed Balls’ latest attempt fuel envy and fan the flames of econogeddon is spectacularly poorly timed and he knows this, but it’s all they’ve got. The so-called ‘cost of living crisis’ is nothing of the kind and they know it, but somehow a ‘standard of living squeeze’ sounds less emotive and more like simple greed. Despite all you hear from the partisan press, far from struggling for life itself the distended bellies you see on our streets are the result of the very opposite of starvation.

“Do you feel better off since the coalition came to power?” the Eds ask. Well I don’t; not by a mile. I worked out recently that I’m around £80k worse off than if the 2008 slump hadn’t happened, but that isn’t the coalition’s fault. And if Labour refuse to accept any responsibility for the damage that was already done by 2010, I hardly see that puts them in any position to gripe about the current government getting a grip and cutting back. For all Labour’s tough-on-benefits talk their plan is to revert to the same old borrow-and-spend pattern. Yes, the coalition may have borrowed more in four years than Labour did in 10, but imagine how much more Labour would have had to borrow as a result of its own mismanagement. It really is like taking dad’s car, trashing it, handing back the keys and then blaming the subsequent repair cost on mum.

Given that inflation is down, employment is up, wages are rising and the UK is leading the rest of Europe in economic growth, talk of a cost of living ‘crisis’ is just a cynical attempt to play the politics of envy. And while those who are unemployable can afford the smart phones, fags, weed and Playstations that responsible, low-paid workers have to choose to do without then our benefit system is continuing to be abused. This is what Labour’s legacy is; not the creation of an admirable welfare state, but its perpetuation beyond any sense of proportion. Yesterday, in further evidence that Labour have lost the plot, Guido Fawkes reports that they have appointed a Shadow Cost of Living Minister.

The perfect metaphor for Labour policy - on anything.

What next, Labour? Shadow Secretary of State for Flogging a Dead Horse? Spokesperson for The Bleeding Obvious? Crisis Creation Minister? In four years none of the gimmicks from the policy unit has even suggested that you hold the electorate in anything other than utter contempt. Come back to us when you’ve regained your sense of shame.

Man of Harlech

Iain Jones wiped the sweat from his brow as he crested the overgrown slag heap. Never properly landscaped, the unnatural mounds had been reclaimed by nature and were all that was left to mark an ancient industry. His fathers and their fathers before him worked this rugged landscape and in their turn had fallen prey to King Coal. Black lung, pneumoconiosis, had taken many before their time or crippled them in their short retirements. But it was how men of steel made their living and it was in their blood.

Jones himself had never worked the pit; just before he left school to take up his apprenticeship and his job for life they’d stolen his birthright from him. Bloody Tories, bloody Margaret Thatcher and bloody English rulers. Not for him the life of honest toil and the glorious shared struggle against the pit owners. Not for him the narrow horizons of the valley and a short life of graft and crippling pain. Like many others he had been forced against every fibre of his solid Welsh heritage to take a cushy job with the local authority where he worked to European Working Time Directive hours for a pittance. And then the bastards had the gall to tax him at the millionaires’ rate for it. His father had never dreamed of becoming a higher rate taxpayer and Jones wore the shame like a badge.

From the top of the manmade hill he looked down on his self-build home. Once there had stood rows of miners’ cottages, huddled in the shadow of the pit head; now long gone. Forced to accept Tory blood money the terraces had been flattened, the land cleared and sold off for building plots. He’d grown up in a cramped two-up, two-down but now he endured a spacious, four-bedroomed Scandia-Hus detached house, furnished by his stay-at-home wife from the catalogues of Maple, Waring and Gillow, with a kitchen by Smallbone of Devizes. His working-class soul was tormented by the luxury but damn it, he’d worked hard for what he’d got. Bloody Thatcher.

Jones trudged on to the old Miners Club for the meeting. During all the years of strife the government had never broken their spirit and their solidarity was as strong as ever. As he approached the hall, the last rays of the dying sun disappeared behind the hills; the distant glow of Port Talbot’s industrial lights took over and a chill, katabatic breeze began to flow down into the valley. He shivered once as he strode across the car park; a few BMWs were parked in a straggly row, but the new Jaguar and the two-year old Range Rover told him his old comrades were already there. A wave of warm air greeting him as he stepped inside; Taffy and Dai stood at the bar, pints in hand as they engaged in the same conversation they had been having for thirty years.

“This bloody Tory government is ruining this country, see” held forth Dai, “letting the bastard bankers get away with thieving from us working class boyos.” Jones took a large swig of his drink as behind them a gavel was struck and the meeting was convened. Speaker after speaker took to the stage and the familiar litany of grievances was aired. What gave the Tories the right to dictate to the working man? How dare those who had been schooled at Eton assume superiority over men who worked with their hands? What gave them the right to rule, they who had never done a proper day’s work in their lives? Every angry statement evoked shouts of agreement from the audience. How dare they?

“Yesterday” said the final speaker “on the BBC’s The Big Questions, they were discussing making reparations for the oppression of slavery! Well, we here in the valleys have always been slaves to the ruling classes!” A cheer from the crowd. And I tell you what, lads” he continued “we don’t even get to have our own king. All we have is the Prince of bloody Wales, look you!” A roar rang round the hall and Dai yelled out over the melee:

“Prince of Wales, ‘e calls himself? ‘E don’t even live y’ere. ‘E never even visits! Spends all ‘is time with them Cornish toffs down south. And ‘e’s never ‘ad to work for a living; ‘e got the job just because of his bleddy parents. Well, I didn’t ask for ‘im and I, for one, don’t bleddy well want ‘im!” The crowd’s response was deafening and it took some minutes to subside as, to a man, they noisily agreed with Dai’s vocal rebellion against the yoke of the privileged. It took the repeated banging of the gavel to bring the meeting to order. Finally, silence resumed and the speaker summed up.

Man of the people

“Comrades, we will no longer suffer this ruling elite. The Bullingdon boys can go to hell and the only man who can represent these honest sons of toil is a true man of Wales; a man hewn from the living Rhonda coal, somebody who has broken his back at the seam and knows the sorrow of poverty and the plight of the working man!” The assembled throng held aloft their Labour membership cards, to a man. “So, it is agreed, the next Member of Parliament for Aberavon will be Stephen Kinnock!”

Class Act

Does my memory fail me, or was it only a few months ago that Ed Miliband said Labour was going to bring back socialism to Britain? Cue much cheering from the trade union stalwarts and a raft of accusations of puppeteering behind the scenes from the, er, the opposition, for want of a better descriptor. Ah, the soap box days, the up-close smell of the great unwashed among whom Ed walked to heal the sick and bring comfort to the dying. How quickly we forget; Ed’s latest big, new, policy-free election campaign gambit is to appeal to the middle class.

Does he know who the middle class are? Traditionally they would have been among the staunchest of the anti-Labour vote. They were the small business owners and white collar workers, the people who paid the bulk of the tax. But thanks to social engineering John Prescott’s 1997 announcement – greeted with derision then – has come to pass. Yes, “we’re all middle class now”. Social boundaries have blurred to the point where a person’s profession no longer reflects their income, status and, crucially, their voting preferences. Nobody knows who the middle classes are any more.

Luckily Labour have managed to ease the solution to the ‘what class am I’ conundrum by wiping the working class off the political map altogether. Not by the promised route of raising their aspirations and their opportunities and elevating them to the hallowed middle class plateau but by progressively lowering the prospects for everybody else. What we used to call working class are either mouldering in idle obscurity, appearing on Benefits Street or else they simply aren’t even British any more.

So which is it? Appeal to the middle class – whoever they are – or bring back socialism? Luckily the answer isn’t far away; yesterday on the Daily Politics, former Labour MP Chris Mullin actually stated that it was important to "bind the middle classes into the welfare system" That’s right, once everybody is on some form of benefit they all belong to the state and socialism - at least of a sort - is reality. What’s next Ed, going for the bankers vote? Whoops, too late, they already moved abroad and moved all their money with them.

You know, the old class system wasn’t so bad - at least you had a place to be kept firmly in and you knew who to look up to…or down upon. Now nobody has a bloody clue to what ‘class’ they belong. Equality is just a crock of political bullshit, meaning that once everyone is equally subjugated we can label them as we wish; the classless society, where everybody is pegged at attainably mediocrity.

They both work for me now. I win

This illusory egalitarian disease is no respecter of boundaries either and manifests itself across party affiliations. The Conservatives used to have the middle class but if Labour are claiming that ground then sod it, enlarge the already discredited honours system, give out gongs for, say, services to hairdressing and pasty making and cat grooming and maybe once having had a job. Arise Sir Jedward, arise Lords One Direction, ‘ey up Lord Scargill: arise, arise and get thee to a mongery. Best get extending the second chamber, we’re going to need it. We’re all Upper Class now. 

Lights out?

My blog is late today because I have been practising how it will be under an open and avowedly socialist Labour government. Tony Blair largely left the workings of business alone while he concentrated on eradicating Britishness. Under cover of the apparent wealth of the country he declared we were all racists and used our shame to snip away at the stiches holding our social fabric together. While people thought it could only get better, the malign forces of common purpose slowly eroded our resolve, so now we have little fight left and soon we will be outnumbered.

But now it’s Old Labour’s turn again. As I listened, aghast, at Miliband’s rabble-rousing medley of maudlin sentiment and undisguised, vitriolic hatred of (boo!) the nasty Tories, I could feel myself getting poorer by the minute. The news media like to portray a ‘lurch’ to the right; yesterday I saw a sickly limp to the left. While Red Ed’s words said “land of hope and glory” I could only picture the seventies; Land of no hope; and gory. The dead unburied, rubbish blocking the streets, the lights going out night after night and strike after strike after strike. Surely Britain can do better than this?

No wonder Len McCluskey was so pleased with himself; he worked his puppet like a master and had him strut the stage like an evil little pixie. Rubbing his hands with glee, Len was looking forward to a winter or two of discontent to fatten his little lambs in Unite. And when the lights go out this time it will be far worse than back then. Every waking moment of your life is now dependent on technology in a way it simply wasn’t in the seventies.

In that blighted age – blighted by Labour - people generally lived within walking distance of work. They had land telephone lines and corded telephones that could still function without a base station. Nobody ordered their life around a smart phone and only giant corporations had computers.  Open fires could be lit to heat your home and families could actually sit together, in the main, without too much strife, huddled together for warmth. There was little on the telly so that loss could be endured and there was no such thing as the Internet to be deprived of. Instead, people could and did read and could do so by candlelight if needed.Children didn’t need an iPad to do their homework.

Without electricity today you are fucked. NOTHING will work. No transport, no communication, no heating (your electronically controlled gas boiler will be dead too). No music, no YouTube, no Facebook, no Twitter, no games. Just imagine going around your home and workplace and quite literally, switching every single thing off. Commerce gone in an instant. No lights, no tills, no security cameras. No security cameras? How soon before the looting classes get wise to that?

And that is just one prospect. The share prices of Centrica and SSE dropped by 3% this morning and spokesmen have already outlined what this might mean. If investors pull out and prices are capped, businesses may fail or move; what value the price freeze if there’s nobody left to supply? Fewer businesses means less competition and ultimately monopoly and we all know what that does to prices. Coupled with yet more green taxes, Ed’s promise of a price freeze is virtually guaranteed to drive prices steeply up in anticipation of the possibility. In other words Ed’s undeliverable promise will drive fuel prices up right now.

Many others have commented today on the new Old Labour, most of the prognoses are gloomy, but to the unthinking greed of socialist minds it all sounds so horribly good. Doubleplusgood. Not one of Labour’s new offerings stands to scrutiny and some of them are borderline stupid. Votes for sixteen year olds, why not? Why not? Because they are fucking sixteen! And with the election two years away this means that Labour will be intent on grooming today’s fourteen year olds. Will social workers soon be saying “Can you show me on the doll where he ‘canvassed’ you?”

Coming soon...

Anyway, there is one shonky policy that won’t be needed. Ed wants to build hundreds of thousands of new houses whether the land owners want to or not. But the shortage of housing will actually solve itself. If Labour get into power in 2015 anybody who is able will simply emigrate. I intend to. And Britain will become a Socialist Labour bastion with the population it always wanted. State slavery, corruption, dependence and utterly multicultural (which is no culture at all). Can’t Britain do better than this?

How to have brilliant kids

I have had a most excellent idea. Are you fed up with your kids lounging about, getting under your feet during the holidays, when they should be outside in the fresh air?  Do they tug on everybody’s nerves during school time, running you ragged and abusing the neighbours? Do you despair, knowing that they won’t get their grades, you’ll be constantly dragged down to see their heads of year and ultimately you just dread that thirteen-year old Speshal-Bru  is going to be pregnant before she sees her GCSEs?

Do you blame ‘society’ and the bad influences they come under for the way things turned out? Have they metamorphosed into your worst nightmare despite all that you have done to give them everything they demand and bring them up well? Or are you able to admit that you just weren't really up to it as a parent and you need a break from it all?

Well how about if your kids weren't the listless layabouts you have now but instead were bright-eyed and eager to please? How proud would you be if every day they brought home examples of yet another small achievement; some art, high marks in the homework they actually did by themselves, or complimentary letters from the headmaster? Would you be thrilled if they had a sense of purpose and knew what they wanted in life but didn't expect any of it to be handed to them on a plate and were determined to go on to high-flying careers?

Well there IS a way you can have all that – because, let’s face it, you deserve it, innit? Across Eastern Europe there are millions of children who wake at dawn and carry out household chores before walking five miles to school where they sit in attentive rows because they understand that education is a way to a better life. Raised in nuclear, two-parent families they understand the value of strong family ties and the timeless logic of the work ethic and would not dream of treating their parents as servants. So here’s what you can do.

Let’s say you have brought three lazy, fat, good-for-nothing wasters into the world through ‘no fault of your own’ and you've had enough of them. Well don’t waste another ounce of investment on them because they’ll never amount to anything. Instead, adopt three ambitious, polite and industrious Latvian kids and raise them as your own. You’ll be able to feel that swell of pride as they cross life’s finishing lines and achieve all those wonderful things your own don’t deserve to. There you go, simple.

British skools for Brutish kidz

What’s that? What happens to yours? Oh you still have to keep them under your roof; nobody else wants them after all. Yes, yes, feed and shelter them, buy them smart phones and trainers and all that guff and no, you don’t get to have a bigger council house. You see, what you now have is a working model of British-style Socialism scaled down to domestic level so you can understand it. Overcrowding, the displacement of your own by more worthy incomers and the knowledge that when the new kids grow up and strike out for independence you’ll still be left with a bunch of idle layabouts to feed.

If only Chris Bryant had explained all that properly yesterday, he might be carrying a wee bit more credibility today. Still, good luck in the job hunt Chris.

More Sugar?

I’m sometimes accused of being a tad partisan, labelling every left-winger as simple, naïve or just downright gullible, likening them to children or simpletons. But if Sunny Hundal’s portrayal of the right as pantomime villains resonates with left-wingers then it tells me I’m on the right track. Both sides have their baying mobs of course, but the mobs to the left have hatred in their hearts. They hate what they see as right-wingers because right-wingers are pure evil. Talk about black and white – oh, you can’t; that discussion is closed down for good.

On the tenth anniversary of the mysterious ‘suicide’ of Dr David Kelly on caring Labour’s watch and the unprecedented 70 year secrecy order on the evidence that can have been imposed for no other reason than to ensure any guilty parties are long deceased, the naivety of the left appears to be in little doubt. They have a simple yearning to be liked, to be seen as the nice guys and they will fight and cover up and even kill to preserve that sunny self-image. Or they’ll tell their mum.

Because the facts of the matter are straightforward; humans are of a kind. Yes it’s true, they all want pretty much the same things and only the route by which that is achieved appears to be in dispute. In the brutal dog-eat-dog world of everything-that-has-ever-happened, humans will stop at little to achieve their ends. No matter the political allegiance espoused, humans are kind when it suits them, possessive when they need to be and hostile when it is all that is left. Tory voters are no more evil than their lefty counterparts; they are just a lot more likely to survive when the economy finally tanks.

Because the nice agenda contains a fatal flaw; myopia. Just as the failures of the federalisation of Europe are to be solved - according to the European Parliament - by more European Union, so the failures of socialism - according to socialists - can be cured by, yes, more socialism. If the error of treating a victim of poisoning with more poison is immediately obvious to you, you must be a heartless, vicious, right-wing bastard. And the coalition is far from right wing, which is why it is doomed to continue many of the disastrous policies of the left.

With the European Union expansion the socialist wet dream project has painted itself into a corner – the solution to a failed pan-European immigration strategy is (you guessed it) ever more freedom of movement. Which is why we are going to see more and more horror stories about gangs of Roma child pickpockets and shanty towns and trafficking and drugs as we head towards 2014 – the press will do what the government dare not. The Roma are no more generically evil than other humans, they are simply pursuing a survival strategy by any means available and western Europe is ripe for plucking. Too bloody nice, you see. Or too bloody weak.

If anything, what we really need is a strong, centre-right administration, intent on reversing the decades of weak, socialist capitulation brought about by a sense of righteous niceness and an inability to say no. Labour can never offer such a thing and they have absolutely zero credible policies, which is why their entire electoral strategy appears to be the recruitment of the Sunny Hundals of the world to resurrect the palpably untrue ‘Nasty Tory’ brand and rely on the natural, childlike instinct of the left – to spit out the nasty medicine and take sugar instead.

Labour – Political Diabetes.

Labouring on...

Well, I’ve been working almost all of the weekend so I’ve missed a great deal of news but even here, in the throne room, Twitter gives me the occasional bitter glimpse of the world outside. I say glimpse, perhaps gimp would be more appropriate, because the Labour gimps [non-partisan comment – they ARE gimps] have been whipping themselves up into a right old froth ever since the Philpott trial.

Like rabbits, they are; myxomatosic, pink-eyed bunnies, pinned in the glaring headlights of the belated realisation that – whouda thunk it – ordinary working people have an opinion on benefits as well. And their idea of the Welfare State ISN’T the system we’ve got. Yes, even people who haven’t been born into privileged lifestyles and gone on to Oxbridge to study Socio-economo-make-trouble-ology or Fuckitupistics or taken a Masters in Machiavellian Misanthropy, going on to work in Daddy’s constituency office as an expenses fiddle can see that a system which allows some perfectly able, yet economically worthless people to not only survive, but to thrive without work is a nonsense.

Labour’s response, having methodically used every trick in the book to absolutely not, I repeat not, use Philpott for cheap shoddy political point-scoring is to cobble together for the first time in three years a little bit of policy. I don’t know what Demos has been doing, cooped up in its little old thinky-tanky there, but this load of old cobblers is hardly the work of the greatest minds the opposition can muster is it? I mean, even a thicky like me can see it’s just a hollow, opportunistic and belated leap onto a  bandwagon that’s been gathering pace for a couple of decades.

Labour are planning to somehow link welfare pay-outs to personal historical contributions. How can that EVER work? The biggest payers-in are absolutely the least likely to ever need to take anything out - in so many ways Socialism literally robs the rich to pay the poor. And the obverse, of course, is that those most in need of welfare are the least likely to ever make significant contributions. And what about young people in precarious employment?

“Aha!” say Labour, “but we have a plan!” Is it a cunning plan, I ask?

“At the heart of Labour's plan is the reinstatement of full employment as a government objective.”

And where, pray would these jobs come from?

“…they would be offered a real job with appropriate training funded by the taxing of bankers' bonuses and restructuring pension tax relief for the wealthiest.”

Oh, I see, so you still fail to grasp the nature and inter-relatedness of earnings, taxation, the economy at large and the sheer folly of employing ever more people directly by the state, then? Oh and guaranteeing jobs in return for welfare? Isn’t that, did I miss something… weren’t you virulently opposed to workfare?

Labour's entire budget solution

In another brave attempt to absolutely not distort statistics to make a cheap, shoddy political capital Ed Balls added, "The whole country will today see whose side this Conservative-led government is really on and who is paying the price for their total economic failure." claiming that as a result of the changes working families will be up to £4,000 worse off, while millionaires receive average tax cuts of £100,000.

Listen Ballsy old fella, any “millionaire” receiving tax reductions anywhere near that figure is clearly not taking full advantage of the many perfectly legal tax avoidance vehicles that you and Brown were quite happy to allow. Once again, Labour’s answers are scribbled on the back of a fag packet and once again they rely entirely on the fruits of the magic money tree.


PS: As the late, truly great, sainted Margaret Thatcher remarked, "The problem with Socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money." Goodbye Mrs T, the world will never see your like again.

A bit of balance...

Okay, one or maybe two of you noticed I'm sometimes a little hard on the Lefties. I think I've always acknowledged that they don't necessarily mean harm, to themselves or others, but harm arises from their misunderstanding of what sort of an animal your actual 'yooman bean' is. Give a man a benefit and he’ll take it as a right; give a man a welfare state and he’ll soon be a slave to it. 

So, I thought I should maybe restore the balance and have a go at the right for once. Before I begin I should explain that the right wing, if indeed there actually is one, is a tiny minority in Britain, which is why it is so hard finding one to point at. To most ‘the right wing’ is represented – courtesy of the old National Front - by a tattooed skinhead restraining a slavering attack dog. To my knowledge the only place you find anybody that far right is in Labour’s heartland sink estates. 

There’s no point in having a pop at them – they are caricatures of a certain type of über-scum (if that isn’t a contradiction in terms) for which contempt is too kindly a disposition. They represent nobody with a brain cell and would be happily expunged from existence without disturbing the conscience of anybody with one.

So, who are this Right, that The Left are so readily enraged about? I think they mean people who vote Conservative, in fact I don’t believe any other group of people exist who fit the bill. We have no extreme parties of any significance in the UK, so let’s have a pop at the Nazis Conservatives instead. Here goes.

Boo, nasty! The Tories want to tax you less, spend less of your money on NHS consultants, get better value for money from infrastructure spending and get everybody back to work. They want the country to prosper and live within its means so that everybody can earn an economically viable living wage, the bastards! Nope, that just doesn’t cut it. I’ll try again. 

The vicious right-wing thugs of the Nasty Party want to tear your babies from you and grind them up to make porridge to feed the slaves of the factory owners who will work you until you are dead then take all their money and give it to rich bankers who will destroy the economy and starve your mother out of her care home. Then, when you are all dead they will… they will… Nope. That’s just silly. Now I sound like the worst kind of rabid Marxist Union dinosaur. 

Maybe capitalism is the monster under the bed? But capitalism isn’t really an ideology, it’s just the normal way humans interact. In fact it’s the only way that any system can successfully grow an economy. Unless that economy is going to rely entirely on turnips and tractors and newspeak. Oh. 

Back then, to Conservatism; it’s the way the majority of decent people think, it's just not the way they vote. The definitions or the divisions between right and left (or right and just wrong) are continually shifting and a Conservative of today would be seen as a wet by Maggie and an outright pinko socialist by Harold MacMillan. Today’s Tories have as much distance between them and fat cat industrialists as Labour have between them and tax payers. 

On Friday, Ed Miliband said he was putting Labour where it had always been – on the side of the working man. But I think you'll find it is Conservative social views that have always been modelled on those of the actual working man while the Labour Party, having once been a potent and relevant force for good has been responsible for stifling real aspiration ever since the seventies. 

The smoke and mirrors of New Labour were used to disguise a deep distrust of ordinary British people (bigots, said Gordon Brown) selling us all into a dumbed-down, depressed, compliant European satellite and calling us racist, homophobic, xenophobic Little Englanders if we dared to speak out. If you try to find the right wing, you inevitably end up on the left.

So it was not without a little ironic chuckle to learn that John O’Farrell, Labour’s candidate in the Eastleigh by-election once wished Mrs Thatcher dead and hoped for a British defeat in the Falklands. Despite protestations of youthful indiscretion there, laid bare, is the real nasty party.

The Ascent of None

On Sunday morning Nicky Campbell (isn’t he a bit old to still be called Nicky?) hosted the BBC talk show The Big Questions, this week’s question being “Is it time for all religions to accept evolution as fact?” I love this show because it manages to gather together in one place a plethora of beliefs as wide and outlandish as you’ll find in any multicultural inner city school… except these are adults!

Shakespeare’s seven ages of man kicks off with the mewling and puking infant, followed by the whining schoolboy and then the sighing lover, but he misses out the bit where you open your eyes and make your own mind up. Except, does he? Because too many people drag into adulthood unquestioned beliefs that rely entirely on blind faith. 

The assembled audience and participants were drawn from the whole range of religious beliefs in the UK, by which of course I mean mostly Islam – it is the BBC after all – and every single one of them was utterly unprepared to accept what any of the few scientists had to say about the hot topic of evolution, even those scientists who also professed a religious leaning. 

Science doesn't have all the answers – in particular it can’t answer “Why?” but religion has exactly no answers. Not a single one. I have no particular axe to grind, but religion has all the provable credibility of astrology, phrenology, homeopathy and ‘crystals’. It may provide comfort in times of despair and it may provide a soothing hub for the cohesion of many communities, but where science requires evidence, religious belief requires only blind, unquestioning faith. 

In that respect, religion and left wing politics have much in common. Brooking no argument, the articles of that faith say that left is God and right is Satan. That being caring and happy and clappy for rainbow-coloured ‘fairness’ will heal the sick and feed the poor; that, somehow, there will always be enough money to pay for all that compassion, so lacking in the legions of hell – or The Tory Party as they call it. 

And yet, despite many otherwise intelligent people being drawn to it, the policies of the left rely entirely on sufficient numbers on the right remaining to earn the money and be repeatedly plundered in the name of fairness. The doctrine says that the harder you labour the more Labour must take from you; that the less likely you are to need ‘social’ services the more you should pay to provide them. Socialism can only really work where everybody believes and if everybody believes what use will we have for evolution?

As always, I try and find a suitable picture to illustrate my theme. I can only ascribe the happy coincidence of the appearance of this tweet by Ricky Gervais on my timeline this morning to divine providence!

The European Union debate is another which revolves around constantly reciting the dogma that to leave would be a disaster but, just as with all faiths, no objective rationale is ever raised, no bottom line audited. The truth is, nobody knows. Another truth is that staying in means we will forever be enslaved to the high altar of a socialist federal dream, with no opportunity to explore our ages of man beyond the dreamy, blinded lover.

Maybe science will one day find its God Particle; the thing that, once and for all, proves the existence of a higher being. Until then I'll continue to question, continue to disbelieve and wear my scepticism on my sleeve.

(And if you're still not convinced of the Messianic monstrosity that is the EU, take a long look at this document on the 1975 Referendum Stitch-up , which pretty much sums up how I've always perceived it to be.)

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.

Feeling the benefit.

I saw a lot of bleating again today, from various quarters about 'nasty vicious Tory cuts'. Would those same people have complained of nasty vicious Labour cuts had Ed financially-illiterate Balls been making them, as he undoubtedly would have had to? I somehow doubt it, as the socialist hate rhetoric only applies to approved targets based on labels promulgated via some pretty smug propaganda. Where, for instance, is the deserved righteous lefty hatred that should be levelled at twice disgraced Peter (Lord, note) Mandelson who last year  bought an eight million pound house? Power to the people indeed.

You won't hear it because Labour have perfected the Orwellian art of 'doublethink' the ability to hold two contrary views at the same time. Thus, all Tories are bad because they make money and have cronies in the House of Lords, but when one of Labour's own attains high office and literally lords it over the rest of us, that is somehow acceptable. Or taxpayers must be squeezed till the pips squeak but taxpayers with children are better than the rest of us and must be given some money back.

This is dangerous territory, but I'd argue that those with children should pay more tax... or at least get no state assistance in raising them. Or, if that is unpalatable - which it will be - that I should get both Child Benefit and Working Families' Tax Credit. But, but, but... you'll splutter, we need that money to help raise children for your benefit. Well, if that were true, how come all the low end jobs, the ones that actually shore up a large part of the economy, are mostly taken by the tide of immigrant workers?

Your kids that gain no useful qualifications won't be wiping my arse when I'm eighty and your kids that get good grades will bugger off and work abroad, given half a chance, if the UK continues on its arse-ride to EU federal oblivion. At the very least, if they are successful, they will employ accountants to minimise their tax burden. So I'm not paying tax to maintain a healthy population top-up at all; I'm paying - the bit of it that you get back in benefits - for no useful purpose whatsoever. One way or another your kids are an investment on which the country is never likely to reap dividends. On top of that I pay for schools, roads, local services, healthcare and the like, all of which I use far less of than you breeders

Allowing unchecked immigration let the previous government suppress wages and opportunities for your young Britons while at the same time buying your silence and capitulation by showering on you the fruits of their magic money tree... until the bubble burst. It's effectively outsourced our breeding and rearing department. Now you want the state - that is, me - to keep paying you a stipend for something I already pay for anyway. That's like outsourcing your HR department, but not sacking your current in-house staff.

So, parents, it appears you are politically redundant so you can do your bit to help the country by giving up the bribe that no longer serves a purpose. Take one for the team and give it back, or let me have it as well. It's only fair.

Like shooting fish in a barrel

Ed Balls, Labour's nasty, deluded pitbull mentalist economy wrecker, has forked over a load of dosh to find out why nobody likes him. What did he get for his money? The Mail's own poll found that he was seen as 'uninspiring, untrustworthy and unlikeable'.

But, surely he must have had an inking? The PM recently called him a "muttering idiot", which is manifestly unfair to idiots everywhere. Does Balls never read the papers? He's never out of them, even when the news isn't even about him. Yesterday Nigel Farndale referred to him in the Daily Telegraph as " like a drunken, red-faced uncle at a wedding " Maybe, Ed, there's just a hint there? (That article on Ed Miliband is worth reading just for the stuff about Balls!)

In any case Ed, why spend money on polling, when opinions about you are freely available? On Twitter, for instance. I conducted my own survey of Twitter and in a matter of minutes I found these enlightening and erudite comments on the portly, leering, gurning, fuckwit poverty-monger.

• @glasterlaw1 "He is an utter disgrace"
• @untablets "I would never have Ed Balls as my wicket keeper!"
• @makk71 "What a dill."
• @melissacrabb "I used to know a horse called Ed Balls. He was a knob as well."
• @adelesbells "Your[sic] Useless Ed!"
• @thestacemeister "Ed Balls is the Gordon Ramsay of politics. Not in a good way." (It is not entirely certain how one could be likened to Gordon Ramsey in a good way)

How did the man who wouldn't understand the economy even if he could spell it, come to believe that commissioning a survey to find out why he is unpopular might somehow reveal insight which was hitherto unavailable? What does the man who was instrumental in financially and morally crippling this country hope to gain from his outlay, especially if it turns out to be funded not from his own pocket but by the party - the socialist way? And what on earth did he expect the public reaction to be to this prime example of vainglorious fuckwittery?

Own goal, Ed... you complete tosser!

A survey on what people think about Ed Balls? Where do we start?

How about this? LINK

Vickification

To those jeering on the sidelines the flip-flop policies of the coalition government are seen as blind incompetence or else a sign that our 'elected' leaders are engaged in a kamikaze plot to deliberately try and sink the economy. Well, which is it? Whatever the government proposes will be branded wrong, even when the government reverses its proposals. That's because the opposition has only one purpose - to oppose. It's the only thing Labour can possibly do because they have absolutely no policies of their own.

Saying "We wouldn't do that!" or "This government is wrong!" or simply spouting "Tory cuts!" is so far from being an alternative policy that you wonder if they actually understand the English language at all. But then you realise, of course they understand the language - or at least 'language', minus the definite article. It's the Socialist agenda to meddle in the politics of language because Socialism cannot engage rationally with any form of practical or productive behaviour.

Socialism caused THIS, the Pollardisation of Britain. And isn't it apt that Vicky Pollard has become a symbol of most of what is wrong with this country, given the meaning of the verb 'to pollard'?

I pollard, you pollard, he/she pollards... we're all totally fucking pollarded

The linked article - well worth a read - ends by quoting shadow Treasury minister Rachel Reeves: "...the Conservative-led Government urgently needs a plan for jobs and growth." 

Yes, love, it does. Pity your lot never realised that while you were wielding the chainsaw.