Lettuce Pray

It's Sunday. It's traditionally a day of rest, of worship, of quiet repose and, for many years now... shopping. As usual when Sunday trading comes up for discussion nobody quite knows what to think of it. Is it good that we get an extended day's trading, which allows some to earn more and helps keep money in circulation? Or is it bad - boo, nasty Tories - a cynical exploitation of a downtrodden workforce?

When Mo Farah won the 5,000 metres Olympic gold medal  last night there were jubilant cheers from the left, pinning his success on the triumph of multiculturalism that had created this opportunity. Because, of course, there were never any black athletes in Britain's Olympic squad before. Oh, wait... Meantime those on the right accused the left of a cynical exploitation of a failed doctrine. Cognitive dissonance being ever the main tool in a politico's armoury.

In the case of Tia Whatshername from New Whatsitsplace, depending on your stance it is either a tragedy of Herculean scale befalling and affecting all mankind and highlighting the incompetence of police and social workers alike. Or it's a non-story about the inevitable consequences of inbreeding amongst a benefit-dependent underclass of chav scum, from whom we can expect no better.

See? It's all a matter of perspective and there's the problem. Most humans do not possess the critical faculties to make meaningful judgements or formulate ideas of their own. The Thatcher-hating communities will never allow that she did any good whatsoever while those who are self-sufficient through their own endeavours see nothing but evil in the thuggish, scowling mien of the likes of Mark Serwotka and Bob Crow.

What we need is something we can all agree on and that something need not be grounded in fact. Avoid the facts at all costs, I say, because facts can be tested and verified. No, what we need is blind faith, so I'm going to gets me some religion. When I say 'me' I mean 'you' and when I say 'gets' I mean you're going to get what you're given - that, after all, is how all religions work.

I haven't got time for all that write-a-book-based-on-what-may-or-may-not-have-happened-loosely-based-on-events-of-the-time-and-pretend-it-came-from-god-nonsense. But that's old hat anyway, surely nobody actually believes the bible or the koran anyway? (Note the deliberately dismissive  and disrespectful use of lower case there) They do? Well, this is going to be easier than I thought then... using the divine power of the internet I shall conjure up a miracle, get it going viral and subjugate a generation to my will; a vision should do for a start and to that end I searched for inspiration in nature:

Here goes... Verily I say unto thee my children, I saw  the face of our saviour in my cabbage patch. And the face was good. There, that should do the trick.

Yes! It does look like Boris Johnson, doesn't it? But, of course, he's omnipresent after all and he did perform a miracle by walking in the air just a week ago. Just as a true Messiah he came among his people and abased himself. Rejoice and listen to my sermon:

Consider the lettuce...

Left, right, left, left right...

Well, as often happens, the conversation on Twitter last night turned to the ever-favourite topic of Left versus Right, where the argument on the right is for sensible, sustained economic probity and that on the left is for a pillage of all profit for the furthering of the mistaken goal of equality in some form or other.

Into last night’s mix, along with the usual dogged chewing of the socialist slipper was interposed the lovely, if fantastically deluded, views of one of my favourite and loveliest of Tweeters; that once upon a time (presumably in a fairy tale wonderland) mankind was egalitarian and generous and loveliness abounded. Then the evil ogress – you know who they mean - turned everybody, overnight, into grasping, waspish, evil malcontents. 

The left see it as greedy that people wish to hang on to the fruits of their own labours and decide for themselves how to spend it. They tell themselves that the right are incapable of compassion. The left believe that only they understand human nature and only they have the answers. Or should I say answer, for they have only one. Donning Lincoln green they assiduously steal from the rich to give to the poor. Or at least that’s what they think they’re doing. 

But it’s not wealth they steal, it’s freedom and responsibility. Those with wealth often have the means and now the motive to avoid punitive taxation. The greedy without wealth quickly learn how to milk the system. And always and for ever the honest few in the middle are alternately raped or denied; the middle classes pay out the lion’s share while the truly needy get shafted and nobody is happy about it. That’s socialism in action, right there. 

But arguing with a leftie - sorry I mean a lovely flower of the field - is a hopeless task. What we have actually works pretty well on the whole. The sick and the poor are better cared for than at any time in our history. Kids are not turned over to factories and mines at fourteen and everybody lives far too long for their own good. Where we are deficient it is most often down to the misuse of resources by a bureaucracy that just doesn’t trust you, but then spawns its own corruptions. Big state = bad state and everywhere it’s been tried has endured poverty and oppression. 

The Left's Final Solution

But despite the fact that we are now wealthier – all of us - than we have ever been, some would have us turn ever further left. In marching parlance that would be “Left, right, left, left...” In a little known and oft-denied study from the 1930s a European nation turned so far left they ended up donning uniforms, marching a lot and hailing a mighty leader as a demi god. There’s no such thing as ‘the right’ it’s just a euphemism for ‘as far left as you can go’.

Bang to rights

Tired of becoming the world's gaolers it seems we may have stumbled upon an ages-old solution to our overcrowded prisons. Import crime, export punishment. But, sod the human rights mountebankery, if we're going to make a real difference we should do this right. For a fraction of the £400million-plus it supposedly costs to keep them here and rather than simply giving the money away to 'foreign' we could do so much better.

There are thousands of uninhabited islands which would be suitable and island prisons have a long and illustrious history: Devil's Island, Alcatraz... Australia... so, why not?

Now I'm not suggesting that the league table there doesn't include some quality, modern-day Lex Luther style criminal masterminds, but I'm guessing the majority are simple thugs that the world would be better off for not having to feed. I'm also pretty certain that regardless of how much money our deluded masters throw at them, their home countries just don't want them back.

So, my solution is neat, tidy, satisfying and final. Buy an island, build a fence round it, dump the scum on it... then bomb the fuck out of it. Don't tell me that doesn't make you smile... just a bit?

What have I missed?

So, world, I go away for a long weekend and what do you do? You bloody well go ahead and have news without me? How very typical and how very dare you.

Among the usual dreary, everyday stories of millionaires being variously kidnapped, tortured and killed by their relatives, of vicious dogs running riot, of pregnant celebrity bikini photographs (what is wrong with you, tabloids?) of bankers bonuses, failed policies, government u-turns and advice to variously eat or not eat chocolate, I return to a veritable cornucopia of stuff I'm bound to have an opinion on, but have precious little time to write about.

Louise Mensch steps down, without so much as an email asking my permission. Nick Clegg resigns - well he may as well do after spitting the dummy over the non-issue of thoroughly pointless and unworkable Lords reform. Somebody ditches a car on Mars (I hope they've competed a SORN declaration), there is a post-flood mosquito epidemic in Somerset and some sick fuckers appear to have doused a tramp with petrol and set him alight.

And on top of that, we win a gazillion gold medals all in a row without so much as a by-your-leave. It's as if the Britain I knew has been turned upside down and inside out and is unravelling in front of my eyes. I desperately look around for some reassuring talisman, a sign... anything to tell me that I haven't somehow journeyed to an alternative universe.

And there it is. In an uncertain and ever-changing world, it is something to cling to. The natural order may be utterly subverted, the rule book may be torn up and chaos may reign throughout the land, but at least the Daily Mail is still obsessed with Kim Kardashian's gargantuan arse.

Does tha' wan' owt fer nowt?

I've been told I rant? Really? Me? I mean… really? (Who knew?) 

Well, in my defence, there's a lot to rant about. This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, this fortress, built by nature for herself against infection and the hand of war has been sold down the river by generations of politicians acting directly against the will of the people. 

On issue after issue, regardless of the cost, the great socialist dream of a European super-state has been relentlessly pursued, with treasonous surrender excused by vague reference to the might of the European institutions, mysterious to all but those in thrall to the Emperor’s new tailors. 

Mass immigration, placatory welfare and political correctness has removed the backbone of a once proud nation and rendered half its citizens quiver-jawed mewling infants, suckling on the teat of state and incapable of independent thought or survival. Referendum? What’s the point? We give the vote to people who can’t even spell ‘X’. 

Well, I’m not going to rant about any of that today; in fact I’m going to celebrate the greatest of our island’s counties. It’s the First of August: Yorkshire Day! 

From the jagged cliffs of Flamborough to the cold, high Pennines; from the brooding, bleak moorland to the dark, satanic mills of the southern conurbation, Yorkshire has much to cherish. Castles and coves, dry stone walls, ruined abbeys and towering cathedrals. It has views to astonish and views to calm; bosky glades, tinkling streams, dark forests and the bucolic splendour of the western Dales and the eastern Wolds. 

This northern paradise has produced its fair share of the nation’s narrative; the white rose county has raised and inspired the Brontes, Bram Stoker, Laurence Sterne, Alan Bennett, J.B. Priestley, Ted Hughes and James Herriot. It has produced Captain James Cook, William Wilberforce, Thomas Lord, George Birkbeck and Henry Briggs. Dick Turpin was despatched in York and Guy Fawkes was born there. 

Yorkshire also gave the world professional Yorkshire folk like Geoffrey Boycott, Michael Parkinson, Molly Sugden, Brian Glover, Fred Truman, Charlie Williams and Alan Titchmarsh. And what tribute to God's own country would be complete without a hearty helping of Yorkshire pudding and gravy, to the rousing accompaniment of the timeless classic “On Ilkley Moor Bar t’Hat”? 

The Dalesman's View

I leave you with the wise words of the Yorkshireman’s Creed: 

 

‘Ear all, see all, say nowt.

Eat all, drink all, pay nowt. 

And if tha’evver does owt for nowt, 

Do it for thissen. 

Wise words indeed.