Troublesome Recidividuals

Recidivism, definition : a tendency to relapse into a previous condition or mode of behaviour; especially relapse into criminal behaviour. How refreshing then, you might think, that a more or less guaranteed recidivist recognises his weakness and has asked to remain in prison where he is getting some treatment for his addictions. There has been some debate about whether prison is the best place to facilitate his rehabilitation, or whether we can afford it, but the alternative – releasing him – is almost certain to end in his own prediction that he will return to criminal means to fuel his drug habit. But what’s a caring society to do?

Meanwhile Brian May tweets about food banks and the NASUWT Conference regales its members with tales of Dickensian squalor, as illustrated by anecdotes of unfed, raggedy children arriving in school. The cry, as always, is that we must do more, spend more to save the children the addicts, the sick, the stupid and those incapable of healing themselves. The mark of a civilised society, they tell us, is how it cares for its most vulnerable. But is colluding with that ‘vulnerable’ sector of society to increase the numbers who rely on state intervention an entirely intelligent response to the problems that same expanding sector creates?

Has it ever occurred to those who use feeble, touchy-feely aphorisms about how we treat those specimens (who would be referred to as parasites in any objective analysis) that rewarding aberrant behaviour is always going to end badly? We enforce the ‘human rights’ of clearly unfit degenerates to procreate, then - when they abandon their offspring to a life of care, delinquency, addiction, criminality and prison – throw ever more, increasingly scarce resources at the problem of containing them. We can’t create prisons, hospitals, rehab centres, probation services, hospital, schools, court and social services fast enough to cope as the uneducated and uncivilised underclasses outbreed those who have to pay for them.

And how do those who rely on the misplaced charity of a society afraid to confront cold, hard reality repay those who do pay for it all? With scorn, contempt and a sneering declaration of their entitlement to do whatever they wish. The only people who get to do as they like are the comfortably rich and the comfortably unemployable. But at least the rich pay their own way, while the ‘new poor’ have become some sort of sacred cow, to be appeased but never curbed. Give somebody something for nothing and they will value it exactly as much as it costs them.

The future Prime Minister and Chancellor greet the nation.

At some point, however, we will have to face up to the fact that curbs and sanctions will need to be deployed. Curb? What am I saying; there is another four-letter word beginning with ‘c’ that is far more apt under the circumstances. The only certainty is that unless we do something drastic soon we will eventually become too stupid a society to even contemplate it. Already several generations of teachers, social workers, lawyers, policemen, politicians and a whole plethora of various ‘rights’ campaigners have grown to depend for their living on the continuation of this impossible model. A truly caring society should wage a committed war on want and reduce to a minimum those who live appalling lives. Time for a cull. 

Poldarse

One of the great pleasures of having my car radio permanently tuned to radio 4 is the serendipitous nature of my commuting listening. During the week I get the Today Programme and PM, but at the weekend I catch the end of Weekend Woman’s Hour and hear all about how the better half of humanity are currently occupying their intellectual, multi-tasking high ground… and knitting.  Yesterday evening I heard a snippet about various reactions to the reinvented Poldark and in particular Aidan Turner’s torso. Stripping off his shirt for action he appears to have raised passions of more than just the lecherous variety.

Lecherous, of course, because the ladies love a bit of beefcake, the dirty cows, but it’s also aroused the herd – the beasts of protest - from their notoriously shallow slumbers. While Aidan says the attention he’s getting is fun, the wimmins say “Fun? You call the objectification of bodies, fun’?” Meanwhile others, in between gasping “Phwoarrr!” are jeering and saying “Hah! Men! See how YOU like it!” to which men are mainly going “What?” and “Any chance of a cuppa?”

Confusion in the ranks while the various competing women’s issues collectives start to wonder how to deal with the perceived threats. Do they leer and letch, or does that make them as ‘bad’ as men? Or do they wring their hands in anguish as humanity shows what they are convinced is its dark side - an interest in the other sex? Will this have an adverse effect on young people across the gender-divide? And how can any of this be pinned on the patriarchy? Because, naturally, the patriarchy will be in there somewhere; the radicals, as they see themselves, will be eating their own tail in a bid to outcompete in the increasingly convoluted conspiracy theory wars; where sister is set upon sister for being the wrong sort of angry.

Rather than settling for an acceptance that, in the overall scheme of things, men and women are different after all, what they seem to want, more than anything, is for young men to grow up with at least as complex a range of body image disorders as any young girl is perceived as being subject to. Poldark isn’t just showing his chest, he is causing young men to self-harm in pursuit of impossible standards. That’s how socialist equality works – the work isn’t finished until all can be equally fragile, miserable and manipulated. Until somebody tells you, comrade, you can’t understand how you are being used. You were happy as you were? That is unacceptable, brother, you must take up the struggle and feel the pain.

Easter Bunny for the laydeez

When you become a socialist, is a part of your brain removed to install the circuitry that makes you screech at the slightest hint of anything you don’t like? Must you be made to believe that the whole of the establishment is bent on your subjugation, aided by the media and the corrupt corporations? Or is reality simply – and far more likely – somewhat more mundane than that? Poldark hasn’t raped, or beaten, or enslaved anybody, ladies, he’s just taken his shirt off.

Cornered

You know those days when you can’t seem to get on with anything? When, just as you start to attend to one pressing matter, another one pops up needing more urgent pressing? Or when, no matter how trivial, an affair intervenes which is insistent in its urgency? Yes, yesterday I had one of those days. It all began just before the morning break when I suddenly realised I had an urge to pop down to the corner shop. Of course, no sooner had I announced tea break than a short line of students appeared to ask me questions which I swear I had only that second supplied the answers to.

Students suitably ridiculed, chastened and sent on their way I checked my watch and I still had time to make it to the corner shop, so I grabbed my coat, checked my wallet was in my pocket and headed down the stairs only to be waylaid by a colleague. Is it urgent? I asked, but by the time he had at length explained why it was sort of urgent but not desperately urgent and it could, on reflection, wait until the afternoon, there was no longer time for my planned excursion. I had a coffee instead and wrote on a PostIt™ note “Go to corner shop!!!” in big, bold print.

The next two hours dragged by as I kept seeing the note and I made sure to handle all the questions before calling lunch and quickly slipping out of the door. Down the stairs I bounded and across the car park I strode when suddenly I heard my name being called. Bollocks. Three colleague queries, a lengthy ‘exchange of views’ and two trips to reception later I realised I was out of time once more and that the afternoon recess was simply too short to make my journey to the corner shop. I would have to wait until the end of the day and brave the rush hour.

So the afternoon slipped by quite quickly as I duelled with a class of Ohmically-challenged trainee electricians, casting pearls before swine and wasting my best routines on a tough crowd of glowering malcontents. Admittedly, they do have an exam coming up but, I really needed to get down to the corner shop, so I ploughed grimly on, straight through the afternoon break until home time. As I packed up my things I saw the PostIt™ poking out from the corner of a pile of discarded mock exam papers. Phew, I’d nearly forgotten!

F-f-f-finallY

So, finally, off the premises. I locked my briefcase in the car and strode off to the corner shop – even though this necessitated a return journey there was little point in driving in the gridlocked, homebound, mass of frustrated commuters. A brisk ten-minute stroll and there I was at the corner shop. I checked the window display to be sure then I strode in to place my order. Mission accomplished; I bought a corner.

Ed’s Epidemic

We used to call it temping, or agency or seasonal/occasional work, or putting in the odd shift at the local restaurant/café/pub. For many who have no desire or need to be in a permanent job but find the extra income useful at times, the idea of having one or more employers for whom you could put in a few hours a few days, now and then, is a good fit for their lifestyle. Stay-at-home mums, pensioners, students, or even those who spend half the year pursuing their dreams – surfers, backpackers, ski instructors, explorers and many such non-conformists – sometimes just don’t want to be tied down to a career. In many agrarian societies it is the main mode of employment.

But now, in typical you-really-couldn’t-make-it-up fashion, Labour, the supposed party of the workers is attacking work. If the Tories were brainstorming a way to ridicule the instincts of modern Labour politicians, this would have been rejected as too silly for words. Ban zero-hours contracts, when many Labour councils use them? Or do they just call them ‘single-hour’ contracts, or casual work?  And of course they would never allow the facts to get in the way of a campaign fib, would they?

For a start, the CIPD concluded the majority on such ‘contracts’ were happy with them. In addition, Labour have been saying they would ban them for a full twenty years now without having done a thing during thirteen long years in office. And for a delicious flourish to finish, here’s Chuka Umunna singing their praises quite recently. Come on guys, get a grip; if you want to be taken seriously as an opposition you have to better than just saying ‘no’ all the time.

They are like Network Rail: Policy delayed due to the wrong kind of work on the tracks? Or is it the words they struggle with; when does ‘employ’ become ‘exploit’? Does it depend on your allegiance? I have to say I’m impressed with the loyalty of Labour voters. “We are the party of business!” Ed declares and a hundred big business bosses write an open letter to say “Like hell you are!” So he changes tack and denounces the Tories’ EU referendum pledge as “Downright dangerous for Britain” and are immediately assailed by a million voices demanding a voice in the decision.

Doncaster Council, do what?

It’s pitiful to watch and yet their poll ratings hardly shift a point. Ed says there is an epidemic of zero-hours contracts and ignores the denials and shrugs from those who know and carries right on trying to micro-engineer how others should order their lives. And his idiot followers fly the flag in the face of reason. There’s an epidemic all right – an epidemic of stupidity.

Bank Raid Rage

Now that the election campaign proper is under way the gloves are well and truly off, but both sides seem to be flailing about shadow-boxing; swinging at jinking opponents and hardly landing so much as a well-aimed but flimsy fact, with neither side persuading the crowd to cheer them on with any conviction. Meantime, over in France the enormous popularity of Marine le Pen’s Front National is hidden behind their convoluted voting system which allows the minor parties to gang up and relegate the party with the second biggest share of the votes off the table. But all these political willy-waggling gestures merely serve to bury a little-reported EU travesty of enormous import for us all.

Known as L’administration Aggrégation Fiscâle, Brussels has been quietly working on doing to everybody what they did to Cyprus not so long ago; a raid on bank accounts. But unlike the Cypriot harvesting of major chunks of individual capital the intention – indeed it is already a fact in France – is to systematically cream off a small sum per month from every single personal bank account with more than around €2000 deposited, active or not. The modus operandi of AF, as it is referred to, is to extract from the unwitting participants sums small enough to appear as rounding errors and certainly within the value of most current accounts’ paltry interest receipts.

But small though the individual sums are – in the UK it will be barely £1 per person per month on average – all those pennies add up to a considerable sum, which will bypass the UK Treasury altogether and go directly to the EU’s Central Bank. It is estimated that the sums raised from raiding UK accounts alone will amount to around £98,000,000 per annum. Given that the EU’s accounts haven’t been properly audited and signed off in near two decades, who would hold out any hope that this pernicious and underhand measure will be used in any way to further the common good?

The Cypriot Solution

The details are hard to find without a good deal of searching and all references are very carefully worded to sound innocuous, but to find out just how many pee has been extracted from you without your consent and how you can possibly opt out of the raid, you can find out here: What AF means to you. Please spread the word and let us see if we can put an end to this secret Euro-tax.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

PS :12:01 April 1st 2015: This was a partly political broadcast brought to you by the words April and Fool and the numbers some-of-the-people-all-of-the-time. It seems to have worked well enough - hope you enjoyed it.

...but how certain are you that such a move HASN'T been put in train?