Cliff Edge

So, the latest to take a tumble off the PR cliff edge that is the widening "Jim'll Really Fix You" sex abuse case is the publicist Max Clifford; now more famous than many of his former clients. An arch proponent of the 'kiss-and-tell' news story - and how apt is that description now? - Clifford first sprang into the national consciousness with the lurid but untrue, "Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster" headline. (Freddie Starr, oh dear...)

Since then he has launched, re-launched or buried careers and been involved in spinning or concealing the activities of such well-loved and reputable public figures as Pamella Bordes, Mohammed Al-Fayed, David Mellor, Derek Hatton, Rebecca Loos, Jade Goody, Doctor Gillian McKeith (or, as Ben Goldacre said, "to give her full title, Gillian McKeith") and John Prescott's secretary, Tracey Temple.

Through a combination of publicity stunts, cover-ups, smoke, mirrors, distractions and outright lies he has made a highly lucrative living as the person you would least like to share a secret with. So it makes you wonder where this latest outing in front of the press cameras is leading.

Given his calling and his track record, if I was the police I wouldn't believe a word of it.

Praise Be!

Well the Autumn Statement, as expected, brought news of yet more financial doom and gloom. The weather has taken a sharp turn for the wintry, pushing up petrol bills and making the roads even more treacherous than a Marxist Europhile. And the charging of Stuart Hall for sex offences is a knockout blow for Ho-ho-ho, prompting @davidtristram to deliver the brilliant "It's a Cockout" punchline on Twitter.

What else have we here? Pressure on the UK's AAA credit rating, the loss of the great jazz genius Dave Brubeck, albeit for a magnificent innings of 91, and yet more leaked plans for EU supremacy over national budgets... because the Eurozone is doing so well for all its internees, isn't it? Insane Green levies are going to put further pressure on winter heating bills, we are going to give away yet more billions to countries which don't need it, who squander it on government instead of aid and our deficit is yet to be reined in, without which our debt can only continue to grow.

All of which means it is even more likely that the turkeys will vote for a short-lived Christmas-future by electing back into power the very cause of our indebtedness in two year's time. Ed Balls may have looked a twat yesterday in Parliament, but the good old left-wing press will back his disastrous stances all the way to meltdown and enslavement by the state for all who remain. (Two years to pack your bags, workers.)

It's not all bad news though. A Russian oligarch's Polish builders have bulldozed to the ground a chateau in France, which is internationally hilarious, those cheeky Aussies raised a grin by posing as The Queen and Prince Phil on the telephone all the way from 'dairn-anda' and the grin has been wiped off the face of smug tech giants Apple to the tune of $35bn. We love a bit of schadenfreude, innit?

But I save the best news until last. A bid by a hideous, medieval, ignorant hate machine posing as a pseudo-religious authoritarian sect has had its plans for an enormous Jihadi training centre in the heart of Londonistan turned down by the planning authorities. It's only a matter of time of, course, before appeals based on their ethnic sensitivities mounted by human-wrongs lawyers sensing a fast buck will overturn the ruling and facilitate one more step along the way to an entirely Islamic Britain.

America shows the way...

But - silver lining time - at least the rabid Mussies might just have the balls to tell Europe to go and fuck itself up a camels' backside... after they've robbed it blind, of course.

Going Dutch

The famously tolerant Dutch are discussing the creation of scum villages. Just as I proposed the walling up of illegal travellers' settlements (if they don't want to travel they can bloody well forcibly stay on site forever) they are suggesting the removal and incarceration of nuisance neighbours in makeshift 'punishment housing camps'.

Before you leap to the conclusion that this is the fiendish scheme of some far-right lunatic, it is Amsterdam's Labour mayor who has complained that the long-term harassment of law abiding council tenants needs to be aggressively curtailed. He is quoted as saying, "This is the world turned upside down," and "Repeat offenders should be forcibly removed from their neighbourhood and sent to a village for scum... Put all the trash together."

For too long our system of law and social justice has appeared to serve the criminal rather than the victim. Far from Owen Jones' imagined 'demonisation' of working people, this is a very real problem and the chav scum at the heart of every sink estate need to be taken on, or taken out. Instead we provide them with incentive after incentive to piss all over everybody's chips and they laugh in the face of authority while picking its pockets.

The problem is going to get worse too, because very soon we will face an unquantified and apparently unstoppable invasion by Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants intent on sucking the public purse drier than ten-year old Bombay duck hung out on the south side of a pyramid. They are coming and they'll need to be housed... if we build the chav camps at least we'll have 'ethnically appropriate' accommodation all ready for them.

And snipers, of course. The cornerstone of my proposals for tackling the population and social problems, we could deploy watchtowers and snipers, for what else is a foreign invasion than war by another name? And if there's one thing we're good at in Britain it's war. We've taken them all on in the past and emerged victorious but this European sham has made us drop our guard and many British towns are already under siege from hordes of foreign marauders.

But we're missing  trick here, surely? Why wait until they land and then deal with the bothersome business of food and shelter? Why not pluck them from the high seas and pack them all into prison hulks offshore? Or even better, deploy Lord Palmerston's Follies once again in the service of defending our borders.

Fortress Britain

Or sod it. Why not open the borders completely and let them all in while we fuck off and take over somebody else's land? I hear Gaza's very nice this time of year...

Dying Breed

I'm not having a baby, royal or otherwise and I'm not famous for anything else, nor do I want to be on the telly embarrassing myself as a talentless wannabe or a Jeremy Kyle freak show exhibit. I'm not black, yellow, ginger or pikey. I've never been diagnosed with ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, colour-blindness, laziness or any other 'special' need. I've never required extra tuition, classroom assistance or help with my homework, neither have I ever been taken to a safari park on public funds.

I've worked all my life, paid my taxes, never seen a tax credit or a 'benefit' and I don't need legislation to make me behave decently towards others. If my car fails to start, I set off for work early enough that I can walk or catch a bus. If I'm ever late it is always my own fault (I'm never late) and I always meet deadlines.

If I am carrying a spare tyre it is because I eat too much and only I can reverse that. I don't incapacitate myself with illegal substances and I make my own decisions about whether or not to drink coffee at Starbucks or eat at any restaurant. (What is it with paying a small fortune for coffee anyway?) I can also cook, clean, make and mend all by myself, not because I can't afford to pay somebody else to do it, although I can't, but because being dependent really doesn't suit me.

I get no winter fuel payments, mobility allowances or child benefit, I don't need to be reminded to vote and I have yet to be taken in by a Ponzi scheme or other such scam. (I recognise that I have also missed some good investment opportunities by exercising the same caution.) My house isn't in negative equity because I bought what I could afford and my current credit card balance is £136, a charge I incurred just seven days ago. If I lose my current employment it will either be my fault or else nobody's fault and it will be entirely my responsibility to find another way of making a living.

I read several newspapers to get a balanced view and I rarely take any reportage at face value. I regard any stories involving statistics with suspicion and I am knowledgeable enough to realise that few journalists ever fully understand some of the technical issues they write about. I know that the job of a newspaper is to sell copy, so the hard facts are usually secondary to intriguing headlines and I occasionally bother to dig deeper, which is why I know that the truth behind much political news is so much blander than the partisan press versions.

When I was a lad that's how I was taught to be. When I was a lad, I believe that was what most of us aspired to. When I was a lad it was understood that we could all aspire to be whatever we wanted to be, but that raw ability, hard work and perseverance would be needed to actually rise above the herd and we valued little that which was handed out on a plate.When I was a lad we cared for those who couldn't but thought despicable those who merely couldn't be bothered.

Now, however, I appear to be in the minority. As a white, working male I am the antithesis of the new world order. I'm a dying breed, facing extinction. I should be the purpose of a preservation charity, fighting for my survival... or at least be able to apply for a grant.

Work not fair?

So, an interesting evening's fun on The Twitter last night as I was gently gummed by a pair of caring lefty-types eager to berate me for being a Fascist monster intent on eating babies. It's a fair point that I'm not a fan of mewling, puking  rug rats, but I've never eaten a whole one.

It all started out as one of my playmates complained about having been to Tesco and encountering what she saw as the jaw-dropping hypocrisy of their support for food banks. Maybe they should have considered this before participating in the heinous practice of Workfare, went her wail, to which I responded that the two were entirely unrelated.

I was called several unpleasant names and my entire reason and right to existence were questioned but, to be fair I did respond in hysterically ranty terms by suggesting she had a naive grasp of the situation as may befit, say, a socialist. This grossly unfair slur on my part was taken in poor humour as another joined the fray and I became a eugenecist and an unfit human, yada, yada, yada...

But here's the thing. Far from being slave labour, workfare involves companies in all sorts of financial risks from the deployment of untrained staff. Resentful, surly youths are unappealing in a visible, front-of-house role, while teenage lads trundling trains of trolleys into parked cars are hardly a great advert for your enterprise. The unreliability of those with no work ethic can cause logistical headaches and the lack of gratitude for the opportunities afforded can be astonishing.

In my business - electrics - the taking on of an apprentice is fraught with uncertainty. Many youngsters these days have no idea how to behave with customers and see the imposition of work into their formerly fully-catered lives as some form of punishment for having been born. Taking on an unskilled worker is a risky business expense with any prospective returns occurring only a long way in the future; I have met many small business owners who have forgone the practice after seeing what a thankless task it can be.

Not so many generations ago the apprentice's father paid the master for the privilege of learning a trade, not least because an apprentice slows you down while simultaneously foisting his cack-handedness on your innocent customers, who may not thank you for it. Now, not only is a business expected to pay a wage, but you also somehow believe them to have an ethical role in society.

What do we want? Not too much work!

So, listen; the only ethical concern a business has is to its owners. If you don't like the way Tesco plays then don't shop there, but at least recognise that in taking on your idle, worthless spawn without charging you for the training, they are actually doing us all a favour. Now, excuse me, I have to go to work to pay taxes so that you can sit on your sofa and be outraged at my horrific right-wing stances.