Budget Buggery!

Much talk over the last few days about the prospect of the Chancellor as an out-of-season Santa, giving away the goodies in exchange for votes. And it will work. Whoever is favoured in todays’ budget, however meagrely, will think just a little more kindly of the current administration. Of course there will also be the detractors and Ed Balls will magic up his own version of prizes for all in response, claiming that somehow Labour, who are largely and repeatedly responsible for the hideous debt burden the nation carries, have a solution to provide prosperity and equality for all. And it’s all bollocks; all of it.

We are simply bust. The fact that our national debt has doubled in the last five years is not ameliorated by the knowledge that it would almost certainly have tripled under Labour. Debt/deficit, the difference is simple enough, yet the ‘great’ British public, who are less numerate than they are literate are either too stupid to get it, or too stupefied by sheer terror to contemplate it. Because it’s like this: Imagine you buy a house for £200,000 on a 90% mortgage that costs you every penny you have left after eating and shortly thereafter you lose your job but manage to blag a mortgage top up of £20k to tide you over. But you can’t get a job that pays what you used to earn… and the value of your house falls to £150,000.

You don’t want to sell it and even if you could you’d still owe £50,000 but after a few months you realise you have no choice, bite the bullet, take the shitty job, rent a studio hovel and accept you’ll never own a home again and undertake to repay your outstanding debt at £3,000 a year for 30 years and hope the interest rates stay low. You can’t save, you have no pension plan and short of winning the lottery all that lies between you and the gutter is sucking up to your crappy boss and praying he doesn’t go bust himself. In short, for many people, it’s all a bit grim and likely to stay that way for some time. You just have to suck it up and carry on.

How do you prefer being cut?

No gimmicks, said George Osborne, so why the gimmick of Inheritance Tax reform which affects nobody without significant assets? Why persist with a Minimum Wage strategy that has ended up being a wage ceiling, rather than a floor? Why not, instead of just talking about ‘austerity’, actually start to implement it? And why not, above all, instead of trying to do a Tommy Cooper and pull a comedy rabbit from a battered old top hat, just tell the truth; we’re still broke and the odd little morsel of under-nourishment is going to do little to change that. It’s about time the government did what a hell of a lot of people are already doing and have done before. Why can’t we all just ‘be British’ about it?

Gay Fury

Wow, Elton John has a go at Dolce and Gabbana and the whole lefty world agrees with his spitty, spiteful little response. Now, Elton  (formerly Reginald Dwight – amazing how some people come to look like their pets and others just grow into their names, isn’t it?) has form in the drama queen stakes and true to his nasty ‘previous’ he’s decided to set out to damage their business. Imagine if some Hollywood covert-gay from the nineteen seventies came out and said Elton John had got the ‘brown dirt cowboy’ idea from a shared sordid episode in a trailer park and he had no right to sully that precious memory? Why the very idea!

Of course, wee Owen Jones, the self-appointed guardian of the nation’s morals has waded in to support EJ without a thought for the free speech rights of those with whom he disagrees. In his column he says: “Dolce and Gabbana’s response demonstrates that they have retreated to the last refuge of a bigot.” And “They have used their public platform to make gross generalisations.” and then goes on to cheer the fact that Reg “has exercised his own right to freedom of expression in response.” Huh? My free speech is bigger than your free speech? Again? The naked hypocrisy of the left writ large.

Of course, none of this is important, it really isn’t, because in excuse OJ goes on to dispense a little right-on psychology by further disparaging the famous gay fashionistas by declaring “The fact that Dolce and Gabbana are gay is neither here nor there: there is no shortage of examples of members of oppressed groups who have internalised the prejudice and discrimination directed against them.” Oh, give it a rest Owen; they can’t help themselves? The faux intellectualism of this haughty diagnosis is almost a parody of what it is to be cultural Marxist, sixth-form, fifth-columnist (… or in this case Guardian columnist).

We have been browbeaten into accepting that shoving your cock up another man’s arse and then paying a surrogate mother to bear and give up her child is perfectly normal behaviour and any dissent from that view cannot ever be tolerated. But here’s the truth; nobody yet knows how the third-party offspring of a world-famous and immensely rich celebrity camp couple are going to turn out but  - no matter what some Melbourne University study optimistically suggests - I’m looking in the crystal ball and seeing therapy… lots of therapy.

The war on the nuclear family, on conventional societal structures, has been raging for some time and while I’m largely ambivalent about which of the now several (and increasing in number) sexes inserts which body part into which orifice and whether or not they can marry or adopt, become bishops, other sexes, or screwed-up self-harmers, I entirely reserve my right to look on some combinations as, well, just not normal. And by normal I don’t mean ‘heavily propagandised until nobody dare speak against’ I mean ‘what most people do and what most people think, but dare not say’.

"I never liked D & G fashions anyway"

So, pardon me for my Neanderthal views, but I’m not having a pair of jumped up poofs like Elton John or Owen Jones telling me which other poofs I can agree with or otherwise. Until this episode my only knowledge of D&G had been to be scantily aware of their existence. Now, I am almost inclined to go out and buy a maternity frock.

The EU Okey-cokey

We live in a world where, if you want to avoid telesales callers you have to sign up to the Telephone Preference Service to opt out of participation in that modern-day torture of having to proactively say no to pests who are, in effect, violating your privacy. If your job demands that you work long hours, or you voluntarily put in overtime you have to formally opt out of the European Working Time Directive. The same principle, however, does not appear to apply to Iceland’s wish to withdraw its application for EU membership.

There are rules about withdrawing, it seems; it’s not good enough to just step out of the queue as you would in, say, the Post Office. The EU Commission says that the Icelandic government's letters are not enough to remove Iceland from the list of EU candidate countries and it will need to send the Council of the European Union a new letter formally withdrawing it. But this is the best bit: “if such a letter would reach the Council it would then request the opinion of the Commission. Based on that opinion the Council would take its decision whether Iceland would or would not be removed from the candidate countries list.”

Am I reading this right? This makes it harder for a country not to join the EU than it is to get taken off the Reader’s Digest mailing list. The presumption in both cases must be that you didn’t mean it, really. Even insurance companies have to give you a cooling off period in which to change your mind. There has been talk of making organ donation a presumed consent transaction whereby you have to say a definite no in advance if you don't want your body parts harvested. How much longer before the commission’s default supposition is that all countries in what are deemed to be the EU’s boundaries are automatically candidates for membership and must formally retract that status, with tanks if necessary?

David Cameron has ‘promised’ to hold a referendum if he gets back into power. But given the likely coalition that will be needed to keep him in Number Ten, will he even be permitted to pass the enabling legislation? And the EU has considerable form on denying democracy - ask France, ask Holland, ask Ireland. Actually, closer to home, just look at what they did to Britain’s ‘watertight’ opt-out on the charter on fundamental rights, rendered meaningless by the European courts of justice.

I'm too small, throw me back!

The EU strategy is plain; denial. “We didn’t get your email. I’m sorry, this is a terrible line. Maybe it got lost in the post? We are experiencing heavy volumes of traffic just now, please call back later…” And so it goes. You can call for a vote as much as you like, but once you’re through the EU door, you’re staying and there’s an end to it. You may as well hang your coat back up and put on your slippers and cardie; you're going nowhere, you're on the list. If nothing else this sorry tale ought to make you think long and hard before signing up to LinkedIn

Shifting Sands

Multiculturalism gets a bad rap, especially when there is a preponderance of one culture over another. In Britain it is amazing we don’t pronounce it ‘mullah-culturalism’, given the self-inflicted death sentence we seem to have pronounced on the indigenous white culture in favour of all things islam. But it is important to impart a sense of who we are and from where we came if we are to keep our own identities alive. Thus, wherever you are, you will occasionally overhear the passing on of ancestral lore and the wisdom to survive life’s great mission intact.

Over there a young Scots dad is explaining to his son the rules of haggis and the playing of the Tam O’Shanter, skills essential to navigate the complexities of life over our northern border. In France, un père fier describes le coq sportive and how to get to La Marseillaise without falling foul of the complex rules of Huguenot. A German dad would never forgive himself if his son grew up without understanding how Vorsprung durch Technik works, or how to get the trains to run on time. Each unique culture carries with it the essential ingredients and secret recipe to perpetuate the line.

And so a young Arab asks his father “Father, what do we call this unusual shawl that we are wearing?” to which his father replies “My son, it is called a keffiyeh and it is an important part of our desert heritage. When the sun beats down it provides us with shade for our head and in sandstorms we can use it to protect ourselves from the fierce abrasions of the desert sand.” The son nods and thinks for a while. Eventually he asks, “Father, why do we wear this baggy clothing which flaps in the wind?”

“Son, this is most important. It is called a djellabah and it protects our bodies from the sun also. In colder climes, as in the high Atlas mountains of Morocco and Algeria, it can be wrapped doubly around the body and the hood can prevent heat loss through the head” He laughs, remembering a scene from his childhood, “and your grandfather used to use the hood like a pocket to carry home a loaf of bread from the market!” His son joins him in a chuckle but still he has questions. “What is it with these ugly shoes, father?”

“Ah, my boy, these are babouches and they keep us from burning our feet on the hot Sahara sand. Plus, as they are open at the heel they let our feet stay cool as well and if they fill up with sand we can easily take them off to remove the grit.” The boy looks pensive and the father adds,” You see ابني,, this is our heritage. Learn it well and pass it on to your sons in turn and our race will endure to the end of time; sons of the majestic desert sand.

Who's got the bucket and spade?

There is a moment of quiet as the young man takes it all in and the father looks on proudly at the cogitative expression on his face. “You have more questions, my son?” The boy looks down at his clothes, his scarf and his sandals and says, “Yes, father. Why the fuck are we living in Luton?”

Good Gear

The king is dead, they say, long live the king. Jeremy Clarkson may be waiting for it all to blow over, but I expect he is being courted by every broadcaster other than the BBC out there as the petition to have him reinstated tops the half-million mark (at the time of writing - current status here.). Unfortunately in our fearful, rule-bound, comfortably numb world, the Beeb will maybe find it impossible to retract their suspension and a very rich dinosaur like Clarkson – as would I in his position – might just jack it all in and let others fight for the crown. Top Gear simply couldn't be the same without him and maybe he and James May should just buy an old airfield and cock about running track days for people who would default on their mortgages for a few hours of being insulted by a master.

Nothing lasts for ever and while I will miss Top Gear I won’t miss it for long. In the seventies I thought I’d really missed The Prisoner until I saw it re-run a couple of years ago and realised how much a product of its time it was. Music changes, fashions change and in the end we all change as well… until the day we stop. You know you've finally grown up when you no longer try to be like everybody else and realise it is a mark of callow youth to express your individuality by behaving exactly as others do. Beyond the point of enlightenment you experience an all-too-brief period of grudging respect as you cling to your chronological rocks, your beliefs forged in hardship and joy and your resolute certainties. And you watch as the boat full of young idiots steams off on its own exploration of youthful folly.

But as it sails on out of sight over the horizon you have to wonder if maybe they have a point after all; if maybe they WILL find the life solutions that evaded the scrutiny of you, your generation and every generation before you. Back on the rock you stop the clock and surround yourself with the comforting trappings of your own age. Your precious books, your proper music collection whose latest additions you can trace back to a single decade and your hard-won philosophy, cast in stone in your fully-formed consciousness, solidifying, even as do your arteries, into an immovable set of principles. You stop growing up and begin to grow old.

It is surely everybody’s perverse wish that they could go back and re-live their formative years equipped with the knowledge that takes all their days to acquire. What torture would that be? We don’t really notice or fully appreciate the times we live in until they become the times we used to live in. Why do middle-aged men enjoy the antics of JC and his crew? Because, against the odds they manage to live out the fantasies the rest of us abandoned in childhood but still exist in us as echoes of our golden ages. So, it’s not so much a question of whether Clarkson goes as a question of whether it is time for us to let him. The world doesn't really belong to the young, with their daft ideas about equality and an end to war, but they are the only ones who still believe they can change it.