In da hood

The latest employment statistics are being bandied about; lowest unemployment for 42 years, apparently. But of course, the Labour Party doesn’t like it – it’s the wrong kind of full employment, they say and then cite falling living standards, portray more state funding for everything than at any time in the past as ‘cuts’ and generally whip up the fervour of discontent. How the memories fade, eh? Anybody remember the last time a left-wing Labour government was in power?

Compared to the late seventies, the 21^st century is a cornucopia of riches beyond avarice. Walk down any supermarket aisle; the biggest problem today must be which of twenty identical products at food prices cheaper than at any time in history do you want to complain about. And the internet! My god, for some of us a hoop and a stick was once the height of technology and we had just two television channels, which broadcast for about six hours a night tops.

Today’s kids have instant and largely free access to all the world’s wonders and still they are not satisfied, using it to organise demonstrations about their meagre and cruelly shrivelled potentials; children pay for nothing today, not even music, which used to cost us a week’s paper round money for one lousy single. The closest we had to streaming was ‘dial-a-disc’. But none of this is good enough and the spirit of revolt still beats in revolutionary breasts stirred by the great tenets of the age: “Equality! Diversity! More free stuff!” They cry, as they don the mantle of victimhood.

Over the last day or so I have been gently joshing with a no doubt charming, caring, intelligent young lady who – possibly because she has yet to accrue the self-critical hindsight which comes with age – cannot grasp that there are very good reasons why some people would prefer to work with people more like themselves. Many immigrants to foreign lands tend to  congregate and work together and certain parts of the muslim community are almost exclusively monocultural, but when it comes to whitey we must diversify or be crucified.

Confident in the certainties of the doctrines of multiculturalism – a system that has failed throughout Europe – she has been insisting that even small firms must have diversity at the forefront of their thinking to the point that employing somebody you feel you can get on with is practically racism and that you should instead hire the one with the shiniest CV, the blacker the better, even if he despises you and your white privilege. I am, of course, reading between the lines.

But she was having none of it and instead of quietly accepting that to prefer the company of your own is not bigotry, merely preference, she then moved on to the sexism segment of the leftist war manual: ‘ways to defeat the patriarchy’. Honestly, shop stewards were bad enough when they were merely jumped-up little Napoleons, but who would willingly employ one with a race and gender agenda to cleave to? No wonder we have the wrong kind of employment – our poor productivity figures are certainly impacted by the cost of policing work policies which seem to do nothing so much as churn out yet more unemployable victims.

Beyond Belief

Last night, on the drive home, I listened to the BBC’s faith-based programme Beyond Belief. In true religious fashion they undertook an exploration of ‘which made-up belief is best’, as they generally do. Yesterday it was psychotherapy versus religion. Both begin with  presumption of the fundamental fallibility of humankind – that is a starting point with which it hard to disagree – but both then proceeded to pretend they have the answers. Religion seeks to make sense of the universe and psychotherapy makes the universe all about you. Show me anybody who has been truly cured by either. Both are in the membership-for-life business, which is ironic as the healed immediately stop taking part in either treatment.

The one thing we all have in common is that we never asked to be born. Tall, handsome, athletic and intelligent, or the opposite of all those things, we are what we are and it is nobody’s job but ours to make the most of it. The majority – although I believe that majority is more slender by the year – get that and go on to live the best life they can manage, but there is a slowly expanding minority seeking reasons why it is up to others to subsidise and enhance their meagre potential. Of course, a decent society looks after those who can’t look after themselves; it’s those who won’t, or don’t that need ‘picturising’.

It can’t be a right to have a living provided for entirely by the efforts of others, yet still have a vote to decide how our society is ordered, unless your inability to contribute is actually beyond your control. And it can’t be right that while the majority pick themselves up after hardship and as the song has it, dust themselves down and start all over again, those who never take responsibility just look for another excuse. Obese, sad, drunk, lazy... none of these conditions are incurable and although you may need some support, the solution for all of them is within our own hands.

No, you don’t ‘have an addictive personality’. The food and booze and fags and dope didn’t accidentally trip up and fall into your open orifices. But how full is western media with this message today: “it’s not your fault, it’s beyond your control... society is to blame”? Far too many people expect not just a free ride but to be given a bunk back up whenever they have fallen off the wagon. Pissed, broke, fat or just plain stupid, the cure for most ills is abstention, as prescribed by society of old, much as the cure for therapy is self-awareness and a bit of common sense.

A doctor advises...

Oliver Letwin was not only right about the Bridgwater Farm riots, he was right about the prospects for underclass as well. One of the biggest causes of poor people is, of course, poor people and the same applies to the rich. As it happens the rich tend to reproduce less frequently and so the balance tips ever in their favour. As if to drive home that point, today is Fat Cat Tuesday, the day of the year on which the CEOs of FTSE 100 companies have generally earned as much this year as you will do by the end of next December. Envy will get you nowhere unless you turn that envy into ambition. And if you haven’t got it for yourself, think about those kids you have, or are going to have, who never asked to be born. 

ROFL…

So, Rolf Harris is put away and up rise the strident, angry voices demanding a harsher penalty. Stripped of all honours, likely to be the target of nonce-fuckers inside, reputation gone forever, no friends anywhere, 84 years old and very likely to die inside, but if he ever does get out he will die a miserable recluse. I’d say that’s a pretty tough and short future and an ignoble end to a lifetime of near-universal adoration. But if you think that’s not enough, what might it be saying about you? (I don’t have an opinion on that – I don’t know you – but you may wish to reflect.) Or did you want Rolf to pay the penalty that Savile neatly sidestepped?

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m not excusing him in any way at all; it’s you lot I’m concerned about. Because at times like this people begin to believe stuff such as the existence on earth of pure evil and the pundits rail against ‘dark forces’ and variously malevolent ‘Satanic’ agents at work to somehow pervert the otherwise pure motives of angelic humans. We use words like inhuman and beast and deviant in order to assure ourselves that we could never be capable of such heinous acts. There but for the grace of another imaginary deity…

But, you say, think of the victims! They have been given a life sentence from which they can never recover. While meaning in no way to diminish the hurt that some people have undoubtedly endured, others have recovered from truly horrific events; torture, witnessing genocide, being bombed, shot at, gang-raped, beaten or trafficked for sex-slavery; not everybody who goes to war suffers PTSD. Again, I’m not saying suffering isn’t very real and debilitating, but the pendulum swings…

Just as labelling a child dyslexic without real evidence, because it suits the equality agenda, surely allowing without query a victim mentality to flourish, can’t be always healthy. Again, before you start, I am not saying what some of you have already convinced yourselves I’m saying. I’m not a monster; I just can’t blame my present on my past. That isn’t to say I don’t have regrets, or wonder how things might have turned out differently had I been, say, a Rockefeller, but where we are is where we are. We can’t change the past but we absolutely can try to change our future.

Rolf is being punished, he really is. For a small number of people that in itself is a small balm, but why do the unaffected spectators get such a buzz from the misery of others? It’s not your fight; your fight is against your own limitations. You can choose to get swept up in the mob of pitchfork-toting peasants at the gates or you can choose to get on and make yourselves better people. It’s a bit like religion; if you need to cling onto a faith, if you need to believe a higher power controls your destiny, if that’s what you rely on for your moral guidance, maybe it’s because there isn’t enough of ‘you’ to save your own soul?