The Communists Next Door

Listening to Any Questions on Radio 4 on the drive home from work last night it was fascinating to hear the inner workings of an alien species. Broadcast from Glasgow, it didn’t take very long to realise that the Scots aren’t like the rest of us. Or if they are they may have succumbed to a wasting disease that we should all worry about. The SNP appear to be pink to the core, espousing many of the contradictions of communism itself; collective misery and hardship and wishing death on the hated Tories, while, simultaneously expressing a deep seated desire to save the world, when they can’t even save themselves.

Part of the problem with pretending that you are so nice, while spitting hatred at those who pay for you to maintain your delusion, is that sooner or later you have to come face to face with reality. The reality that not everybody is equal, or that some people are not worth saving. That those you despise genuinely don’t care what you think of them. And that lofty ambitions of egalitarianism will remain unreachable without the enlistment of capitalism’s ability to do the things that communism can only dream of. And why get so agitated and angry when you find that not everybody shares your impossible quest?

And then you come up against people like me. I don’t care. I really don’t. I don’t care about refugees, asylum seekers, sick children, the unemployed, minority rights... In short, I don’t care about you and your bizarre obsession with taking and living the hypocritical oath. Oh, all this weird shit interests me, but in a fascinated ‘Ripley’s Believe it or Not’ way. It interests me that you can be all for equal treatment for all but also want to kill Tories. It interests me that you will believe without question and without proof a narrative that says the Westminster Government has a deliberate policy of exterminating the disabled and unemployed, yet refuse to condemn a murderous ideology which actually tortures and kills people live on screen.

Not caring doesn’t make me a typical Tory because there isn’t a Tory in the land who would espouse the complete disdain and disregard I hold for the human species and all its self-inflicted suffering. For instance, I don’t believe in every woman’s right to procreate; some people should never be allowed to replicate. I broadly support preventative abortion and if necessary post-natal culling. Up to 40 years post-natal ideally. You may call me a monster but you should be aware that I genuinely do not care what you think of me. If you are the kind of person who is offended by strangers not agreeing with you then why are you even still reading this?

Manufactured rage, dog-whistle reaction to barely grasped events, the confusion about which murderous bunch of foreigners you are supposed to support today, your fanatical devotion to the NHS even as it eats through money that might better get your children properly educated to not rely on others for their health and well-being... and maintaining the constant state of readiness to react angrily to every story of cleverer people passing on their advantage to their children must take its toll. I expect the cognitive dissonance roars like tinnitus and disturbs your very balance.

No? Me neither... Jockanese translator required

But, you see, the world needs people like me. It needs people like me to go out to work and pay my taxes and do my level best not to spend those taxes ten-fold. It needs people like me to hold up as hate figures, even though we do nothing to make the plight of your oh-so-many special cases any worse. And it needs people like me to be good little Aunt Sallies for you to rail against and wave your feeble little fists at. But at least I recognise that nobody cares what I think and nobody is going to spend any wasted time trying to rearrange the world to suit me... which is almost the exact opposite of the whining entitlement monkeys of socialism.

The Circle of Life?

The view from the left – as exemplified by the cosy huddle at the end of the also-rans debate last Thursday night – is that 'the rich' can stand to be squeezed as much as is necessary to pretend that the failed experiment of perpetual welfare can be extended forever. Parasites don’t kill their hosts quickly, they just use them until they need them no more, then hatch from their pupal state and fly off from the desiccated and dying husk to lay their eggs on another unsuspecting source of protein for their ravening offspring. But of course all this presupposes that the host will remain in one place long enough to facilitate the lifestyle of the blood-sucking little grubs.

It is a simple matter to divide the national wealth by the number of inhabitants and declare jam for all, but that calculus totally ignores the way in which that wealth is created. As Dominic Sandbrook writes: Those on the left have been ramping up the anti-austerity rhetoric as if all we need to do is “blame the bankers, soak the rich, promise billions for all and pay homage at the shrine of the NHS” The trouble is this form of left-wing, fiscally innumerate bollockry is attractive  only to those who have no ambition to create value, employ people or take responsibility into their own hands. While those brought up to expect Mother State to provide believe that we all deserve better, those who do the providing don’t take kindly to being labelled as the bad guys.

A little fable:

A vicious, uncaring ‘far-right’ scummer takes £200 out of his current account to go shopping. He pays for everything in cash, watching his pocketed liquid assets dwindle as he makes his purchases and mindful of his intent to go for a drink with friends later makes sure he has enough left to cover the evening and his busfare. This is their occasional treat and they spend a happy few hours catching up with each other’s news.

On the same day a lovely, caring, socialist credit to society cashes in her Jobseeker’s Allowance and manages – with the aid of her several maxed-out cards – to buy several new outfits for summer, a PlayStation 4 for her nine-year old and still has enough cash at the end of the day to go out on the lash with friends. At three in the morning, after a raucous night of it they are skint and have to do have to a runner from the taxi driver who takes them home but that’s okay as he ought to have insurance to cover it.

The next day they have a well-deserved lie-in to recover as the boring old Nazi brownshirt goes to his dreary job in order to help cover the cost of the glorious workers’ revolutionary welfare state machinery. 

The End

Vote Labour, SNP, Plaid Cymru, TUSC, Green Party...

This – and many variants - is how magic money works and we are wading through a trillion and a half of it as a nation. But our worker has a wry smile on his face as he trudges to his workplace because he has been grafting for years and saving his money and he intends to step off the UK productivity map as soon as he can. Workers retire, or leave, or become ill, or just stop working. The response of socialism? We need more drones, from anywhere we can find them and we need to tax them harder because to the parasites the host is a mere resource and not an equal. Well listen up lefties, the host is not only dying but becoming extinct.

Cutting Crew

So, on the drive to work what did I hear but yet another claim by Labour that the Conservatives are planning a ‘massive’ assault on public spending. Good, because ‘public spending’ has become a euphemism for brushing under the carpet the troubles caused at and by the arse end of society. Unemployable, uneducated serial breeders with entitlement fever; unsuitable, irresponsible parents bringing unwanted brats into a world of gang culture, drug abuse and moral turpitude; multiple generations with little aspiration beyond surviving to procreate in their turn. Raised by television and internet porn and outside the normal reach of good example and the influence of the work ethic it’s a form of cruelty to suggest they have rights beyond any enjoyed by other species of zoo animal.

For without making any contribution to society other than to be examples of how not to live your life, what else are they? Seriously, if they can’t learn and can’t work and can barely communicate; if they can only take and take and take and rely on the state for absolutely everything what can we possibly gain by effectively encouraging them to carry on? If public spending means bribing the illiterate with the promise of comfort and indolence without any demand for recompense then cutting it and cutting it again should be applauded to the rafters.

Public spending means police to control errant ways and contain their spread, it means healthcare to pander to their every tiny self-inflicted injury or imagined special mental impairment. It means an army of social workers and ‘care’ workers to mop up the detritus of their chaotic ways and another army of ‘classroom assistants’ to make believe they are achieving mediocrity when they are just being held back from rioting or stabbing their more able classmates. It means a network of prisons and probation officers, courts and a criminal justice system to maintain a separation between the sink estate denizens and decent society. And it means outreach workers to try and salvage a tiny few of the unfortunates trapped in the system, so it looks like there is genuine hope when there is none.

Room for plenty more!

When they say the Conservatives want to take public spending back to 1930s levels that is an ambition we should all get behind. Of course, we need an overall reduction in the unproductive classes or else that target will never be achieved and in the late 1930s, good old Europe provided us with a pretty effective means of keeping the numbers down; what a shame our armed forces are being run down so that there will be nobody to oppose Jean-Claude Juncker’s barmy army. But there’s hope for population control yet; "We need an EU Army to show that we are serious about upholding the values ​​of the European Union," says Juncker. Who harbours any belief that an EU ‘defence’ force would be deployed against anybody but its own people?

Band Aid? It’s First Aid we need.

Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll be gone the entire weekend. Joking aside, as tired as the old aphorism about giving people the tools to look after themselves is, it is nonetheless a verifiable and logical truism. Man cannot live by charity alone and it is not a kindness to insist that they do. For all the [questionably] higher motives of the resurrected Band Aid troupe the recipients of their largesse would be far better off in the long run if they were given the means rather than just the money. Feed the world? Let the buggers feed themselves.

This principle was, until recently, almost the definition of Britishness; keep yourselves to yourselves, look after your own, but come together when necessary to build the barn, reap the harvest… or repel the invader. But tradition and traditional structures mean nothing to the ‘progressive’ left; in their attempts to advance the bizarre ideology of enforced equality nothing has been sacred, nothing has been immune to destruction. Break down the family unit, debase the principle of self-determination, make everything subject to state regulation and make the state the sole arbiter of decency and fairness.

On what grounds can Labour and the left continue to try and claim the moral high ground when so much of what they have done is so clearly contrary to what most ordinary people would regard as sensible and morally just? Here are just a few ways in which the extraordinary hypocrisy of the left manifests itself:

• Lay charges of bigotry, racism and xenophobia at people they have an unnecessary and irrational hatred of.
• Use hate speech to control what they have decided is hate speech, namely individual expression.
• Engineer a low-wage, private sector economy then dare to vilify and punish those whose taxes pay to prop it all up via the ludicrous tax credit system.
• Elevate non-jobs to a status beyond the reach of reason and impeachment, paying public servants wages that would attract bricks through windows if they were bankers.
• Deny companies the right to employ those best able to do a job in support of an equalities agenda which forces quotas and inefficiency and actually results in lower employment.
• Claim to work for the ordinary citizens while pursuing policies which directly harm those same citizens’ life chances.

The left flag-wave for an ideology that has only ever caused harm, given enough rope. Socialism always ends in queues and rationing but the socialist cure for socialism is always more socialism and their excuse is always that it wasn’t true socialism anyway. What works in theory in fanciful heads doesn’t work when mere humans try to follow it. So they have to make more things illegal, constrain trade, tax more, borrow more and as the hurt rises, invest more in the message. Tell people how well they are doing – despite the evidence of their own eyes - and how horrible it would be if the nasty parties of self-determination and aspiration got in.

What we need is a government of men and women prepared to actually roll up their sleeves, take the flak and get on with what has to be done. Not a bunch of Oxford PPE graduates squabbling in the common room over points of political theory. Otherwise in the brave new world of EUcialism there will be no fishing by anybody unless they have undergone a course in Fish Empathy and Diversity, adhere to strict rules enforcing the equality of fishkind and most of all, harm no fish. In other words, just as with Band Aid, expend time and energy talking about the problem but ultimately achieve nothing. Teach a man to fish then prevent him from going fishing? Gutted.

Team Ed… a One-man Band

In the confused world of the left all doctors are good and all business owners are bad. All state-employed teachers are selfless saints and all private tutors are instruments of class warfare. Those who live their whole, drink-addled lives in relative comfort entirely on benefits are put-upon, ‘vulnerable’ members of society, but fuck the homeowner who has to choose between upgrading his ageing car and taking his kids caravanning in Clacton. And those who donate to charity are angels from heaven above unless they are wealthy individuals, in which case they are cynically buying favour.

And it’s a life membership, too. You can be brought low from a high birth and earn your crust by picking scabs off lepers and you will never be a friend of the left, yet you can rise from the gobby gutter to be a two-Jagged lord of the realm but remain one of their own. Of course, should you attempt to pull yourself up by your boot straps and fail you will have only yourself to blame as you are admonished and shunned for daring to get above your station. Know your place, minion.

All those on the left are caring and fearless fighters for social justice, while all those on the right are hideous maladjusted monsters upon whom slow deaths by cancer are wished. There is no apparent contradiction in the collective mind of the followers of statist ideology that they can claim they strive for equality ‘for all’ yet would mete out disproportionately hideous punishment to those they deem unworthy of that same equality. All immigration is good. Only white people can hate. Diversity is always a boon; diversity is enrichment and the cultural traditions of the indigenous are not worth preserving. To the left, all cultures are equal… except ours. Free speech? Not yours, you monster; say anything they dislike and await censure.

Read a Labour/left polemic and you’ll read a tract full of bile and spite and conspiracy and fighting talk about bringing the bosses to their knees, the scabs to traitors’ gate and the rulers to a bloody end. Clearly there is only so much equality and compassion to go around. In contrast what they call ‘far right’ thinkers tend to deal not in illusory visions of sunlit uplands but in the reality of what can be achieved when individuals seek their own elevation. The most destructive of all left-leaning fictions is the fiction of equality and fairness because in their eyes the two are the same thing. The harder you graft the fairer it is to take what you produce and give it those whose only role is to receive.

Miliband talks about One Nation, about being part of a team, about working together. But teams are not about equality either; ask anybody picking sides for a kickabout… and those they leave until last. Ask any Premiership manager how they feel about equality. Teams need leaders and Miliband is not a leader. Teams are composed of those who have the ability to do their bit and accept commensurate reward, some of which is the reward of belonging. In a Labour-run Britain, the goal-scorers will be unwelcome and the only successful strategy of Team UK will be every man for himself.

Les Encroyables

Radio Four is a minor miracle of the civilised world and one of the few benefits to a weary homeward commute is getting to listen to Eddie Mair presenting the news cornucopia that is PM. As well as hearing about the whole world turning to shit and who has taken what bribe from Putin, how many ‘Jarabs’ have pegged it in the Gaza bonanza and the miserable fact that public spending is on the rise again – oh yes it is – we also get some lighter-hearted pieces of reportage to brighten up the gloom, now that those nights are starting to draw in.

Today it was hearing about how the French socialist dream is at least as unaffordable as our own ill-fated attempts to ignore the simple economic facts of life. When you’re starving, bread and water will do. When a car costs too much to run, get on your bike, son. And if you have no money to spend on theatre tickets, you just have to make your own entertainment. But not, by all accounts, in France. While a butcher, a baker or a candlestick maker has to work all year round to scratch a precarious living from the meagre soil of overstuffed competitive markets, French people working in the performing arts have their very own special welfare system.

In return for a minimum of 507 hours of work in a ten-month period (That’s less than 64, 8-hour days, or 13 weeks; a quarter of a year of ‘normal’ employment) arts workers – from clowns to choreographers, to camera operators – can enjoy a higher level of welfare benefits to tide them over the hard times while they are ‘resting’. Apparently, it saves them from the indignity of waiting at tables or sweeping the roads when they are not acting the goat in homage to Dionysus. (Or, should that be ‘Le’ Dionysus?)

But, of course, there’s a flaw in the logic, isn’t there? The world over, arts and theatrical entertainment flourish wherever there is an appetite for them and the lack of funding never seems to deter those who would make a spectacle of themselves. In fact the French form of favouritism is known as the ‘intermittents du spectacle’ system, reflecting the fact that they often do sweet FA for three-quarters of the year. Hilariously – some of them are clowns, after all – they are protesting their ‘rights’ by disrupting the performances of others who are, presumably, currently ‘between rests’.

Not dead' just resting - 'protresting'

You need a particular form of deep-rooted entitlement culture to create a system like this. This isn’t directs arts funding, as practised by much of the western world to preserve those forms which suffer from a low level of patronage; this is idleness funding. It’s a bit like Child Benefit; some people will have kids regardless of the fact they can’t afford to keep them so what’s the point of incentivising them for doing what comes naturally? Now don’t get me wrong; I’m all for the arts and I’d love for there to be more funding, but there's only so much money to around. We're all equal, but it seems that in the land of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité some people have more égalité than others. What a liberté!

Halalapocalypse Now

Much hullabaloo in the news again about the introduction by stealth of halal-butchered meat in most of Britain’s supermarkets, restaurants and take-away joints (although it is doubtful whether your standard kebab ever experienced life as a recognisable animal). Of course kosher and halal, to all but adherents of those religious certitudes, are the exact same thing; the detail and distinctions don’t matter one jot. It is just jolly well not the way things are done in Good Old Blighty. Except, it turns out, it is and has been for some time.

Whereas the devout, however misguided, are compelled to only consume meat slaughtered in the way their god insists (although for the life of me I cannot think of a single rational reason why – and for that matter, how would they know otherwise?) the rest of us simply want to assuage our flesh-devouring guilt by being assured that the meat didn’t suffer on the way to the plate. Having said that, on the whole we’d prefer to maintain the fiction that meat grows right there on supermarket shelves rather than confront the whole issue of our own animal appetites.

Faced with doing something the Captain Mainwarings of Westminster suffer a dithery unease about being found guilty of that most concocted of modern sins – islamophobia. The greater mass of the population meanwhile harbours misgivings about eating something that not only may have suffered unduly, but has also had the voodoo of the halal blessing muttered over it during its ordeal; incantations from the same religion which has inspired atrocities the world over and is currently the motivation for the kidnap and enslavement of 200 schoolgirls in Nigeria.

Rather than cause a fuss, the establishment has done, once again, what it always does with islam and has quietly acquiesced, banking on simple ignorance to maintain the silence of the non-muslim population. Easier to say and do nothing than stand up to the quarrelsome minority expressing yet another grievance about our infidel ways. The British equivalent of calling for beheadings and stonings is to meekly insist that ‘something must be done’ to protect us from this thing! I suppose it momentarily distracts us from tackling the much more sensitive issue of organised grooming gangs.

Yet I feel unease about this clamour for central government action. The information is now out there and the solution, if we can be bothered to pursue it, is to revert to self-reliance. You won’t do it, but you could start using local butchers again, thus putting pressure on supermarkets to fight harder for your custom. To offset higher prices you could (but you won’t) choose to eat less meat, after all doctors keep telling us we should. Hell, you could even consider becoming a vegetarian – a swede-ophile – anybody fancy a mango?

It's just halalarious!

But no, damn it, we demand even more food labelling. Demand; that word is music to the ears of politicians. It gives them permission to compel. Make crime illegal! Stop calling me names! Demand that somebody else look out for your welfare and you are stepping into the shackles you say you want to slip. Labour has already made clear its agenda to control what you eat- the halal row plays straight into those ambitions. It’s almost inevitable that hastily drafted laws end up being abused and end up doing the opposite of what was intended. Soon it will become illegal to discriminate against halal - before long we’ll be adding meatist to the never-shortening list of hate crimes.

Compulsion; it’s the wet dream of socialists with their enterprise-strangling minimum wages, quotas, shortlists and prohibitions, all introduced with their smug air of intellectual self-confidence. But stop a minute and ask yourselves, is that what you really want? When what you want from government is to be told how to behave and what to think you end up with the kind of leaders who believe they can pass off a Harry Enfield sketch as a serious Party Election Broadcast.

Agenda of a Dope

He writes a good polemic, I’ll give him that. Yesterday, Owen jones wrote this piece under the rallying cry of an "Agenda of Hope". You can read it all if you like, but here are my abridged study notes with commentary. Like all the lefties Owen has comprehensive and infallible answers to the intensely complex problems that generations of politicians and economic ‘experts’ have failed to solve; largely because real solutions involve unpalatable actions. *cough*eugenics*cough* But, hey-ho, let’s look at what the Boy Wonder has to say. He starts off with an emotive little story, loaded with triggers to get the Tory-hating classes’ juices flowing.

“The alarm goes off. It’s dark outside, and Mary wakes to get ready for work at the checkout of a local supermarket. Like most of Britain’s poor, she has a job that leaves her and her children trapped below the poverty line.”

Of course, ‘poverty’ in Britain does not mean what poverty means in the rest of the world. It’s an inflated definition of want posing as need, invented for gesture politics and designed for the very thing Owen perpetually condemns the right for doing – dividing the population. But then, as a socialist OJ is no stranger to hypocrisy.

“She finds herself competing with colleagues for overtime, just to earn a few more pounds to spend on her kids. Even though her employer makes hundreds of millions of pounds of profit a year, it is the taxpayer who has to step in and subsidise those poverty wages to give Mary a chance to pay the bills and feed her children.”

Oh, do give it a rest, Owen. Now you’re painting a dog-eat-dog world where the poor squabble over the scraps and the fat cat toffs sit at high table and throw half eaten swan’s legs to the floor for their dogs. Or is that a scene from Animal Farm? Also, why is a company’s profit always a bad thing? So a 5% margin for a multinational is obscene, whereas a 100% margin for a fag smuggler is simple social justice, the little man driven to crime to buck the system?

“Mary had a rough night’s sleep because it’s nearly time to pay the rent.”

Yep, greedy grasping landlords again, ripping off the poor. Owen loves to busk on the theme of predatory slumlords, terrorising the weak and fearful. Shame that his rhetoric is spoiled by the huge number of landlords who were enticed into buy-to-let mortgages, with rents barely meeting the costs, every void month an outright loss and capital values plunged into negative equity territory. But no, in Owen’s world landlords are overwhelmingly evil and overwhelmingly rich pantomime villains.

“And so Mary leaves for a gruelling shift at the supermarket, working hard to earn her poverty.”

Aw, gruelling? She's on a checkout, not down a tin mine. This, of course from a man whose idea of gruelling is taking on yet another commission to write Dickensian sketches from his garret, portraying rickety children and gin-soaked washer-women on the fringes of society – such extreme hardship as Owen experienced first-hand during his penurious time at Oxford University.

“Mary isn’t a real person, but there are millions of people in this country who share aspects of their lives with someone like her. We all have to pay, literally, as poverty-paying bosses and rip-off landlords milk our welfare state.”

You can bet your sweet bippy Mary isn’t a real person Owen. If she was and you met her she’d soon see through your ridiculous posturing. Practically every single one of your ‘vulnerable’ poor, if elevated to higher wages, would slam the door in the face of the tax collector in any way they could. To suggest otherwise – that high earners are natural greedy, while low earners are naturally honest is divisive posturing of the most obvious kind.

“The Government and much of the media have answers for people like Mary. “Instead of being angry at your situation,” Mary is told, “be angry at unemployed people, immigrants, public sector workers, or disabled claimants instead.” It is an Agenda of Fear [that] makes sure that the real solutions to the problems faced by someone like Mary – and the nation as a whole – are never even discussed.”

But yes they are discussed, me laddo, and they are discussed endlessly by many people far more informed and engaged than you or I. Iain Duncan Smith has spent ten years thinking of little else and has been roundly applauded (from all sides) for his work yet, driven by your class war agenda, you label him as just another 'cruel Tory'. Furthermore, your caricaturing the coalition as Machiavellian puppet masters, engaged in a plot to subjugate the proletariat is exactly the same lazy tactics you have just decried in the above paragraph. Irony much?

But Owen has not only melodramatised the problem he’s got the imaginary solutions as well. Let’s just pray that his nine-point manifesto, his “Agenda for hope” isn’t based solely on magic beans. Honestly, why we ever let him go to market on his own is beyond me. Anyway, here we go:

1) A statutory living wage, with immediate effect, for large businesses and the public sector, and phased  in for small and medium  businesses over a five-year Parliament.

Oh, how disappointing, the magic beans are deployed in his very first item! Obviously, as a history graduate he is an authority on wage fixing. And how soon before the minimum wage is eaten up by inflation? And what IS a living wage? £20k? £40K? Better yet, £100k, then item 3 can kick in all the sooner. Business? Oh, that fled long ago to healthier economic climes.

           

2) Resolve the housing crisis by regulating private rents [and] reduce taxpayers’ subsidies to landlords.

Ah, more magic beanery. There’s a theme here – increase wages, lower rents, magic up some dosh to build council houses. But wait, you already lost the businesses and hence the real tax revenue with point 1.

3) A 50 per cent tax on all earnings above £100,000

Genius! So, the sooner the minimum wage rises to £100k, the better. Bring on the Weimar rates of inflation please, so we can reach this Nirvanic ideal in a matter of months.  

4) An all-out campaign to recoup the £25bn worth of tax avoided by the wealthiest each year.

No need, pal. They’ll have all fucked off already (see above)

5) Publicly run, accountable local banks.

Sounds good. But will it work? Given that there will be little in the way of private enterprise left, the big money jobs will only exist in state-owned institutions. Give it five years and the state banks will be rife with corruption with devious practices imported from the very worst of both banking and the public sector.

6) An industrial strategy to create the “green jobs” and renewable energy industries of the future.

Again, magic money… If the green machine can’t compete without subsidy you are effectively doing to the regions what the ruinous propping up of the coal industry eventually did to those same areas. Sooner or later, you WILL run out of other people’s money and put your precious working class back on the scrap heap.

7) Publicly owned rail and energy [and NHS] democratically run by consumers and workers.

Hail the glorious Bolshevik revolution! And have another turnip, comrade! Haven’t we been here before? Unlike Owen I was actually alive during the period when ‘means of production in the hands of the workers’ had us tagged as ‘The sick man of Europe’. No thanks.

8) A new charter of workers’ rights fit for the 21st century.

In other words, extend state control not only to wages and rents but to how businesses are actually managed. Sorry, did I say businesses? Silly me, there won’t be any, will there?

9) A universal childcare system that would pay for itself... 

Oh, behave! A system that pays for itself? And did you read that sentence through before you hit ‘Save’? You really believe that, don’t you? And for that handful of beans you sold the whole fucking cow? You stupid, stupid boy.

But let’s look on the bright side. All we need now is for Labour to adopt your Dope’s Agenda, extending the dead hand of state to stifle every individual initiative and control every natural urge and we will have the perfect communist state. A telescreen in every room and Victory Gin for all! Huzzah! What’s that you say, children? They’d never do it? We’d never fall for it? Look out – he’s be-hind you!

Rantalogue

Fanatical Feminists, Yobbish Youngsters, Irate islamists, Grotesque Greens, Antagonistic Ant-racists and Garish Gays? It sounds like a new series of Horrible Histories but it’s all so much more in the ‘clear and present danger’ arena than that. Forget the Fabians and Labour and their perpetual motion money machine madness. Any fule kno that’s just yet another diversionary populist device to draw the fire while they try once again to make two plus two equal five. “Go on Ed, just one more try; maybe this time..?” Smoke and mirrors, because Labour can only affect the economy in one way. But let’s look at some of the ‘successes’ socialism has brought us:

In the last couple of weeks the Feminazis have been trying to turn Chris Rennard’s wandering hands and Nigel Farage’s simple truths into a holocaust-scale attempt to dismiss their cause as ‘a bit shouty’. Whipping themselves into a frenzy of hatred for all mankind - and any womankind who dares to see their point - they counter charges of some women maybe not being suited to some high pressure jobs by blowing their tops and unleashing the sort of screechy, high-pitched indignant shouting that Louise Cooper demonstrated on the Daily Politics. Luckily only dogs and a few children actually hear frequencies that high, so old duffers like me could only witness what looked like a mimed version of Edvard Munch’s most famous painting… with added, jabby pointing.

Then Labour, once again, cynically revealed a proposal to give sixteen-year olds the vote based on the utterly non-sequiturial logic that they can legally marry and join the army. As both those actions require parental permission, presumably they would have to get a voting consent form signed by both parents. That in itself would pose a bit of a problem as every single one of those sixteen-year olds will have been born under New Labour, when the presence of a father of known whereabouts was not only frowned upon but, given another term, may very well have become illegal.

Meanwhile, in another astonishing LibDem own goal, A Liberal Democrat activist nutjob called Muhammad Shafiq took it upon himself to organise a personal jihad against Maajid Nawaz for the outrageous crime of not being offended by something pretty inoffensive. The Jesus and Mo cartoons are a mildly amusing, poorly drawn, but sincere and deliberately provocative attempt to persuade islam to get over itself and as such are to be applauded. Trouble is those distant ripples of applause sound a lot like automatic gunfire to the rabid mullahs of Middle Earth, so be prepared for another outbreak of pointless propheteering some time soon.

The Grotesque Greens? Not content with Climate Change’s Inherent Uncertainties and a sensible wait and see approach, successive governments have been bamboozled by bullshit promulgated by an increasingly self-affirming lobby into handing over billions of our precious pounds to pepper the landscape with frequently useless wind turbines. Such a shame the investment all went overseas but, hey, a self-sufficient industry like wind has got to be a good investment, right? Right? I’m sure the German giant Prokon’s collapse into insolvency will be a mere blip. Felled by a freak of nature they'll claim, perhaps?  

Then there’s the looming battleground of the next election. The economy, you say? Nah, the Tories are riding high while the Red Eds are offering fantasy appeasements to scare off business. No, it’s the elephantiasis in the room; immigration. Boo, racist, you cry! And if you want an illustration as to exactly why children should not be given the vote, Channel Four – for what ghastly PC reason I can only imagine - asked them for their opinion on it. They trotted out well-indoctrinated fluffy lines like “We shouldn't say you're not allowed in, but then send all our old-age pensioners to Spain.” and other such meaningless guff. But what do you expect from the children of Blair? THEY think it’s the government, not them, that’s ill-informed. Bless. Now get on with your sociology homework.

Now, I love a good gayer, me. But marry one? Do me a flavour, John! One of the best recent examples of manufactured approval was the rushing through, out of the blue, of last year’s same sex marriage bill. Despite what the majority opinion may have been at the right-on Islington, same sex mother and toddler groups, the overall national appetite for gay marriage was a big fat, meh, yet it was pursued as relentlessly and urgently as if the Kaiser’s big gay zeppelins were already overstepping our aerial borders.

So, what’s it all about? I’ll tell you, it’s the tyranny of the minority, it’s the very antithesis of democracy. These days it seems there is no cause so insignificant it cannot be swiftly raised to national consciousness and then on to COBRA-level emergency. If this carries on, what with equal weighting being given to every cause, no matter how trivial, soon there will BE no minorities. And THEN who will we get to feel superior to?

Lazy stereotype stock photo (posed by models)

Ah yes, I know; the one group left who can only ever have status removed and worth devalued. White men – the bastards! While I was looking for a conclusion to this rant, I was supplied the perfect 140-characters-or-fewer summing up on Twitter: “An inconvenient fact of history for some is that the foundations of modern civilization were laid by dead, white, & yes, mostly males.” When you need us we’ll be in our sheds, quietly getting on making stuff.

(r)Evolution?

In a jungle in Borneo a bird of paradise struts and puffs himself out to twice his actual bulk and dances to attract a mate. He grows an extra-long tail feather, develops bright throat flashes and crests and generally preens and pouts until he gets himself laid. He doesn’t know why, he just knows he has to do it; the unthinking drive to procreate. Richard Dawkins, in The Selfish Gene posits that it is not the bird, the tiger, the human that is the purpose of life but the simple duplication of the gene itself, which has no other behaviour than replication and occasional mutation.

Evolution by natural selection of more favourable mutations is an elegant process and discounting the hogwash of the Intelligent Designers it is a demonstrable truth. Until somebody actually proves the existence of a higher being the sanest notion is that there isn’t one. Such a shame that billions of people feel such a need to believe in something ‘better’ that they set about killing each other in its name. But hey, fuck ‘em; they’re wrong.

From single-celled slime to air-breathing fish, to shrews to apes and on to man, here we stand, erect and proud and yet still obsessed, above all else, with procreation. That’s your genes working you there; working you like Geppetto worked Pinocchio before he got his wish. Working you like Shari Lewis worked Lamb Chop. Like Len McCluskey works Ed Miliband… You get the picture.

Is there such a thing as Intelligent Evolution? Who knows, but among all the species on earth one of them keeps trying to better Darwin. While the natural order is that the weak go to the wall, some strains of mankind like to tidy that process up a bit and eradicate whole tribes of undesirables, usually in the name of religion, which is kind of ironic if you think about it.

But why can’t we all live together in peace and harmony, you ask? Simple really, because somebody, somewhere is developing an extra-long tail feather, that’s why. You try and impose equality and pretty soon you realise that no matter how hard one strives to be mediocre some are genuinely more equal than others. The dangerous ones are those who believe their extra-equal qualities must be used to the benefit of mankind and instead of simply getting on and getting individually wealthy, decide to tinker with the whole of society.

Thus making something that people want and selling it at a profit makes you a scheming capitalist devil. The pursuit of individual excellence makes you a selfish non-contributor, doing what comes naturally and putting your own family first makes you a pariah. And employing simpler people on a lower wage than you take for yourself is the very epitome of the profit-seeking evil that lurks in your dark heart.

No, the evolved socialist will have no truck with that. For the furtherance of humanity all must be controlled by the few who know best. So to hell with the nuclear family and to hell with property ownership. Damn you patriotism and nationalism and begone you nasty, grasping individual. Together we will build a better way. Together we are strong. Together we go forward into the bright new future; comrades all. Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?

So, we dilute the indigenous population to drown out the natural protest. We create entire new industries in diversity, multiculturalism, social services and ‘wellbeing’. We police it all with a legion of hysterical watchmen covering racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ageism, invalidism and general bigotry and we make having an aversion to anything and expressing an opinion of it into a hate crime and prosecute accordingly. To bring peace and stability, say the socialists, we must create division and fear; it’s for their own good. It’s Intelligent Evolution.

But still there’s the yearning to have that edge; to find a mate. And the genes show their hands. Union bosses earning a packet yet living in subsidised social housing. Various ‘Czars’ paid handsomely by the state to do very little, if anything about things that can’t be solved by diktat. Armies of lawyers making a living from the engulfing tidal wave of new ways to become – or not become – a convicted criminal. Wasteful councils building shiny new offices, retiring their executives early, then buying them back as ‘consultants’. The list of niche opportunities for the ‘more-equal’ goes on and on.

It’s a funny old thing, evolution. Some species thrive and some don’t survive. Some develop ever stronger while others dwindle and become extinct. The only thing that drives it all is hanging around long enough to reproduce. The more you do that the bigger you win and some of the longest surviving species on earth are the parasites – they make a living entirely off the efforts of others, adapting as necessary to continue the feast.

Socialism, in a nutshell

Thus New Labour – the Tory-lite concoction of Blair and chums after a brief flare of colour retreats to the margins and the über parasite reverts back to Old Labour, the most successful survivor of western politics. It’s not who is better who wins, it’s just who wins. But evolution can surely do better than this?

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.

Doctor!

The doctor looked up from his notes. He tried to avoid house calls but in this case there was little alternative. Michael - all thirty-five stones of him - lay sprawled out on an oversized sofa.

"It's not your fault. It appears you have a syndrome."

"I do?" asked the patient, "What's it called?"

The doctor looked at his notes again, searching for a clue. He cleared his throat and attempted to sound authoritative and reasonable. He hated to lie, but it was his job.

"It's called" [checking] "Michaelmotor syndrome." The patient pondered the phrase, trying it for size, as the doctor continued, "You can't get motivated but it's really not your fault. Something must be done." Notes were scribbled hastily on the file before he forgot his diagnosis. "You may also be suffering from depression, brought on by can't-be-arsed-itis."

"But what can you do, doctor?" asked the patient  I've been sitting on this sofa with my sponge on a stick for years."

The doctor looked sad as he tapped a message into his smart phone and pressed 'Send'. Silence descended as doctor and patient waited for what seemed a long time but was probably less than half a minute. A stranger entered the room in handcuffs and reluctantly stood at the doctor's side. The doctor gave him a look of sympathy as he dipped a hand in his pocket and removed the man's wallet.

"Here," he said to Michael, "have some of this man's money." He extracted and handed over a large roll of notes. "This should keep you going until we find a cure."

Michael looked pleased but slightly confused as he pocketed the money.

It's not my fault. I have a syndrome.

"Why this particular man?" asked Michael

"He doesn't need his money." said the doctor.

"Why not?"

"Because he has nothing wrong with him. Yet."

Taxing your brains out

You learn a lot of things on social media. On Monday Iain Dale tweeted, “Am I really alone in being an unashamed believer in lower, simpler, flatter taxes? Are there others out there?” and obligingly provided a link to his always thoughtful blog: Why the right needs to spread the gospel of low taxes.

Well, Iain, you’re most certainly not alone. What constantly escapes the grasping begging bowl mentality of the left is that under a flat rate the vast majority of the tax burden would still be borne by the higher earners. Add in the fact that personal allowances significantly reduce the tax paid at the lower end of the earnings scale and that higher earners rely less on the services provided by the state and the rich contribute far more than what I would consider a fair share. No wonder then that legal tax avoidance schemes are eagerly adopted. 

My response to Iain’s question was, “Everybody should pay the same, fixed rate of tax. 20% and no more and the country should live within its means.” (I’d go farther and say that we should aim eventually for an even lower rate of no more than 10% to starve governments out of their over-arching socialist ambitions and make them the servants, not the masters of the electorate.) 

This elicited a third party interjection: “So someone with taxable income of £10k pays £2k has 8k left. £1m pays £200k has 800k left.” Correct. (He must have had private education.) But then he added, “Even Thatcher saw that's wrong.” Did she? Did the sainted Mrs T really believe it was right that somebody who paid one hundred times the tax of another, should be taxed even more simply because they would end up with more than a lower earner? 

In other words, if you manage to earn a higher income by, say, working harder for longer, perhaps to feed your family or provide a better life for them or to save for retirement or fund decent education, or to pay for your elderly parents' care, or to maintain the crumbling pile you now wished you’d never shackled yourself to, you should be penalised by being robbed more robustly than somebody who was happy enough to slouch along in a part-time burger-flipping, clock-watching existence, with ambitions extending no further than happy hour, fags and the promise of casual sex? 

Would it be fair that, in return for your diligence at school, your considered career choice, your graft to attain professional qualifications and deferred gratification while you worked all hours climbing the greasy pole should be rewarded by finding, on the adjacent pole, others had reached the same giddy heights by doing none of these things? Because that’s what he seemed to be implying. (The pejorative "Thatcher" was always a clue.) That some inherit wealth is a happy accident of their birth - somehow those who succeed by their own efforts are not unduly exercised by this.

I responded that his was the politics of envy, to be told in return “...and your response is the politics of greed.” I countered, “It isn't politics. It's fairness. Those who can should not be robbed by those who can't.”. His last sally, “You can call it envy or theft if you want I still say redistribution (backed up by force) from wealthy to poor morally justified.” nailed his colours squarely to the mast. Enforced extraction of the fruits of your labours – the more you earn the higher you are taxed – as a moral issue. 

And there, in simple terms is Socialist economics. By extending that logic you get to the ludicrous 98% effective marginal rate for some under Harold Wilson’s government. We may as well do away with earnings altogether and just make everybody work for the state until they drop, while doling out equally to all – earner or not, striver or shirker, success or failure - the same thin gruel and hovel-poor housing. I believe that's exactly what Marx intended: "From each ... to each..." blah,blah, blah...

If that sounds like hyperbole then consider this: Just how do you decide when you've done enough redistributing? When does an Alan Sugar reach an acceptable wealth equilibrium and at what point of penance has he earned his place? Does it depend on his allegiance? Should we tax more highly those people who don’t give it up willingly? 20% for Labour voters 50% for Conservatives? Or 10% for social workers, 80% for bankers? Wilson’s taxes were largely responsible for the brain drain, whereby the more able simply quit our shores for regimes happy to pay for their expertise; or rather not to penalise their success. 

While we ship in more low-skilled, low-paid, low-tax payers and then pay for the idleness of the displaced former workers by higher taxes on some nebulous ‘the rich’ (which now begins at £35,000 p.a.) it’s happening all over again. In fact, judging by the lack of rioting, we may already have taxed out of domicile those sufficiently sentient to have worked it out. 

I summed it up with one last, exasperated tweet: “Socialism, as taught to me today. Don't bother working harder; we'll tax you so you're only left with the same as everybody else.” I think we’re already there. 

Edtelligent Design

I listened in amusement/amazement - take your pick - as Radio 4’s Today programme aired an interview with Ed Miliband this morning. Wow! What a vague and vacuous clown he is! He droned on and on in his ‘Edenoidal’ imitation of Tony Blair’s ‘man of the people’ act, glottal stopping and H-dropping like he was a right geezer, innit? But ultimately it was a car crash and he was crucified; nailed to the altar of Labour’s Blank Sheet manifesto. 

He has nothing to say and few ways to say it. Yesterday in Prime Minister’s Questions he berated the PM for the conservatives constant dithering over Europe. Today in the interview, when asked for Labour’s stance, he couldn’t/wouldn’t/didn’t answer the question but pretended, to himself as much as anybody, that he had. 

So what IS Labour planning to do? About anything? How will they convince anybody but the incurably gullible that they are not the same old tax-and-spend, fiscally bankrupt party of old? “Aha!” you say “they’ve published a pamphlet!” And indeed they have. I’ve read it, so you don’t have to and herewith I present my summary and translation. (I may have rearranged some of the words.) 

“Labour needs to broker new and durable alliances across civil society, developing its digital communications and initiating and sustaining campaigns that build up its capacity for electoral success” And “The traditional phrases were solidarity and fraternity but neither work well for the changes in our country” 

We need to do some back room deals, put some shit on YouTube, pretend we’ve changed but ultimately say the same old thing with longer words. 

“We need to listen deeply, not just to the things we want to hear but to what we find difficult to hear. And we need to respond to people’s concerns by creating public debates that engage with the issues. In the process we will define One Nation Labour and the political life of the country.” 

We still don’t have any actual policy – all we've got is a working title. 

“If we are to be effective we will need two vital ingredients: people’s energy and their enterprise. Out of these will grow new initiatives, a sense of hope and a belief that Labour can make real change for the better in people’s lives.” 

We haven’t got a clue what to do. Please will you tell us? 

So, just what is One Nation Labour, Ed? 

“First, it is a politics that is both radical and conservative. Second, it is the practice of a democratic politics of the common good. Third, the politics of the common good is governed by reciprocity. Fourth, it is a politics of being together” 

You don’t really know then? A bit like the Big Society? 

“The One Nation Conservative tradition has been a powerful national force. It gave many people meaning, value and a sense of belonging by respecting their place in the hierarchical order of property and status… The politics of the common good negotiates the distribution of power in society and the economy with the aim of making sure that no one interest or group dominates over others” 

We even nicked our working title off the Tories! 

It all comes down to what you want to believe. Evolution is forever challenged by a hotchpotch of other beliefs – a simple, elegant, demonstrable process versus a whole series of complex, contrived and contradictory theses requiring mental contortionism or blind faith to sustain. It’s pretty much the same thing in politics: 

Capitalism is the simple, elegant, if sometimes brutal, way in which the human animal interacts. You have something I want? I need to give you something that you want. Capitalism sorts out the hierarchy pretty much on merit grounds without sentiment and with little fuss. Socialism, on the other hand is the Biblical strand of political theory. It needs enormously complex instruments to redistribute wealth to some bizarre ideal based on a faith that true human nature rarely recognises and frequently circumvents. The power is not in the hands of those who can, but in the hands of those who can talk. 

Remember: Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t teach, manage . Those who can’t manage, become politicians. Those who can’t handle politics, become Marxist theorists. 

Labour attempts to redesign humanity in its own image

All Capitalism needs to make it work is people and natural resources. Socialism needs a complicated web of non-producers, theorists and schemers, pulling strings and constantly meddling with detail dictated by an omnipotent intelligent designer – you really sure you’re up to that, Ed?

Things that go bump in the night.

HMVs troubles were hardly startling news. From its heyday when The Gramophone Company took on the name His Master’s Voice from the painting of Nipper, the first canine music critic, the music business has changed and HMV, like all the others, has had to adapt to survive. From cylinders to discs, to LPs and 45s, compact discs, the explosion of digital indie studios and now the Internet, free downloads and all the other pressures on a traditional business model.

It’s one thing to continually develop your product range – not everybody is content with fish and chips so most chippies also sell inedible burgers (with or without horse meat) and life-threatening kebabs as well, or lose out to competitors who do. But the day they make downloadable chips is the day that every fast food outlet will have to invest in something slicker than stuffing annoying leaflets through letterboxes. It’s digital, maaan! 

But HMV’s passing is not a tragedy, it’s a simple fact of High Street life. Big names don’t necessarily last forever. Woolworths, Allders, Comet… the list goes on and will continue to go on. And more importantly it has virtually nothing to do with whatever government is in power. It’s not as if they relied on defence contracts or provided social services. It’s not personal, it’s just business. 

Twitter, of course was lit up by the steady outpourings of grief and mourning for lost gift vouchers and unwanted presents. But as always Twitter is hardly the place to go for in-depth market analysis. It’s more a place where people go to complain that real life isn’t like it ought to be. It’s the Guvmint’s fault. It’s the fault of another company who played a better game. Maybe Twitterverse malcontents would prefer the world to be like this: 

Have an idea that you’d like to run your own business but, because of a lack of imagination, choose to ‘invent’ something that already exists and has a thriving, but near-saturated market. Your entrepreneurial spin? Set up shop in a deprived area where rents are cheap but nobody can afford to buy the stock. Appeal to some local EU-financed small business ‘initiative’ for funding, citing that evil capitalist forces are refusing to lend for idealistic reasons. Be awarded an annual, renewable investment grant but instead of using it for development – too tedious - simply live off it instead. 

Become a tireless campaigner for more investment for local business and saying “Boo” to the corporate bullies. Close your shop and take a job at the People’s Collective as a People’s Champion, fighting the corner of failing business everywhere and lobby for yet more EU funding for shattered dreams. Tell yourself every day that the purpose of business is not to make a profit but to provide services for real people, local people “your people”. 

‘Work’ your way to the top of the wriggling maggot pile of corrupt officialdom, all the while using your credentials as a former successful business owner, until you retire to the sunlit uplands of Euro Mountain, utterly convinced for the rest of your days that you were a force for good and laughing, as the last Sony Centre closes down. 

(PS: That’s Socialism my friend. You may already be doing it without even knowing.)

STOP PRESS: Blockbusters, the video rental store, has gone into receivership today. Same problem really; if you can get streaming video over the internet where's the market for disc and tape?

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.)

Who works for who - a mother's tale...

Right, I'm going to come clean. I live entirely off the state[1]. It's not my fault; I was born into it and I know no other way of life. I'm more to be pitied than scorned. In fact I should be applauded for my selfless sacrifice to the greater good. And I'm just about fed up with all you bloody baby-eating Capitalists looking down at me and my kind. Why? I'll sodding tell you why.

You, who are lucky enough to have jobs, go out to work and enjoy the benefits of companionship, variety and the reward of not only earning a living which makes you feel good in yourself, but also getting to decide how you spend it. Oh how I envy you the right to choose to work overtime if you need some extra cash, because all I can do is to pop out another sprog, or sell some skunk, or deal in counterfeit fags and booze... or flog knocked off gear on eBay, or boot sales, etc... I once resorted to working cash in hand for an afternoon; imagine how wretched that made me feel? Oh, my flesh crawls at the memory, 

But in a way we’re in the same boat, you and me; all in this crisis together. You work for uncaring bosses and I am enslaved forever to the cruel yoke of the state, who begrudge me food and shelter... and Sky and Council Tax and Child Benefit and JSA and DLA and free prescriptions and stuff. We should join forces and get them rich bastards who decide how much they pay you, because if we can force them to pay you more, then you can pay more in taxes and I can have more kids. Obviously, it’s better that I have the kids because then they won’t be tempted to go out to work like your lot do feeding the profits of the vicious, nasty, fat cats at the top. 

I was offered a job once, but they wanted me in at, like nine o’clock in the morning – every morning, for goodness’ sake. I mean, that’s inhuman! It was even worse for my mate, Paul! And then, after that horror, you hear about those tax cuts for the super-rich. Bastards! Not content with only giving away most of all they earn they want to keep even MORE of their wages for themselves. Selfish, selfish bastards; it’s just not fair. How will we all cope unless they pay our fair share? 

I'll give you an example of how difficult it is for us right now. My neighbour recently got a 56” plasma on the insurance payout, after he arranged for me to nick his old 48” off him while he was out at the boozer. But because you nasty bastards didn't give me a sense of propriety or a set of decent values I now find I'm consumed with envy for his new set. But when I nick that one, I bet the fucker just claims for an even bigger one. You can see the trap I'm in. It’s a vicious cycle of deprivation and need [2]. 

You of course, are not compelled to give in to such cravings, the way I've been programmed, so you'll only get the telly you can afford to buy and you'll learn to be happy with it. You don’t realise just how lucky you are, you unthinking capitalist lackey, you. 

And don’t think you can pull a fast one and quit working. Oh no, there's only so much to go around and the benefits ain't for the likes of you, with your dirty capitalist work ethic. Why, we’re doing you a favour LETTING you work and in return we let you keep some of your wages. Those nasty Tories want us to be more like you; you know, standing on our own two feet, contributing to society and all that. Well fuck ‘em. Why would I do that when I already decide what I let you keep? In effect, you work for me! [3] 

Back to work, bitches!

So, don’t just sit there, I'm feeling all broody and ready to squeeze out another mouth to feed. Look lively; there’s work to be done.

Notes:

1. Fuck off! It's a literary cipher. I'm a rabid, frothing capitalist loon... just like all normal people.

2. I'm still joking; don't hate me

3. I know! They actually bloody think like this!

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.