Heart of Darkness

Italy is being overrun by African migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Libya. So much so that even the European Union is concerned about all that diversity and enrichment and machete-wielding skillage that it is normally so very quick to welcome and organise benefits for. I smell the whiff of people who feel their privileged commissioners’ salaries are under threat. If Africa comes to Europe how long before it is just as fucked-up as the dark continent itself? One by one, as those countries have gained independence from their civilised former rulers, their natural tendencies to corruption and violence have crept back in and if they are not wrecking and raping their national wealth there is always a bit of light genocide to pass the time.

You can call it racism as loudly as you like but, from where I’m sitting it’s not Europeans who are systematically stealing aid funds, rigging elections, beating up rivals, letting industry and agriculture fail, allowing infrastructure to fall into disrepair, dismembering white farmers, beheading non-muslims and crucifying Christians. Africa and the Middle East has between them an enormously disproportionate access to natural resources compared to its population and yet all much of its people seem able to do is waste it, break it and slaughter anybody who takes their fancy.

Still capturing, keeping and abusing slaves, discriminating with a literally monstrous disregard for human suffering the boat people are not only bringing savagery but also allowing Ebola, hepatitis, AIDS and other lethal diseases to hitchhike along with them. The people of southern Italy feel under direct threat as they receive hundreds of thousands of invaders, some of whom are by no means grateful recipients of charity. Reports are being heard that they regularly and arrogantly thieve, control criminal gangs and threaten violence. This is not some aberration, this is their nature – you can take the animal out of the jungle and all that.

Of course the human rights organisations are wading in  - What are we to do to help the migrants? It’s not their fault, the say; they are escaping oppressive regimes. Well even from here I already feel I live in a pretty oppressive regime where my well-being is of little concern to the righteous forces of liberal guilt and having a dusky form of repression added for good measure is not my idea of a happy future. Demonising the migrants, you say? Quelle horreur! No, not ALL migrants… just the demons. And the fact that the most devilish come in various shades of non-white is surely impossible to ignore unless you are pathologically unable to separate fact from fiction.

Fancy a bit more diversity?

You’re worried about whether calling a violent black man black and violent is offensive? I’ll tell you what’s offensive – having an enraged and bloodthirsty savage scream in your face as he tries to detach it from your body. So sod the rescue patrols and forget about trying to accommodate them. Farmers with a rat problem don’t put out food and bedding for the rats, do they? Call in the air strikes and sink those boats as fast as they are launched. Deterrent is no good; the European Union can only defend its borders if it has the will to take out every last verminous, disease-ridden, destructive animal in this infestation. 

Going Cheep!

Well the also-ran leaders debate was great fun but all I could think about, listening to the combined clucking and squawking of the three shrill harpies, as they stirred the cauldron and laid into hapless Ed and guffawing Nigel, was the tale of the cheap parrot:

A lady walked into a pet shop one day and began to examine the exotic birds. The sleek black mynah first caught her eye as he trilled for her attention by calling out his name repeatedly, but after a few repetitions she realised that his somewhat challenged repertoire might pale quite quickly in the home environment, so she passed on Monty, as had many before her and turned instead to the parakeets. But despite their pretty lines the only ones in the shop were of an ordinary type, with a dull green plumage and she was really looking for something different.

The surly African grey and green parrots, despite their substantial size, also failed to impress and so it was that she eventually found herself in front of a cage in which perched a magnificent, rainbow-hued macaw. Assuming the spectacular bird would be beyond her budget she sighed and turned to reappraise her options when the pet shop owner appeared. “Can I help you, madam?” he enquired, as such men are wont to do. “I hardly dare ask,” she said, “but how much is that beautiful macaw?” The proprietor took her to one side, out of earshot of the bird and said quietly, “I’m not sure that is the bird for you, but as you ask, he's going for £250.”

“But that is amazingly cheap!” she declared, “Indeed, yes,” he replied, “but unfortunately this particular specimen has quite a wide and embarrassing vocabulary.” He proceeded to explain that the bird had long been a resident of a local brothel which had recently been raided and closed down and in the course of his stay there had picked up some ripe turns of phrase. “Oh,” she said, “but we’re people of the world you know and I doubt we would be shocked. Besides, that would go down a hoot at our annual barbecue.” And without further ado and brooking no objections she purchased the parrot on the spot.

At home she removed the cover from the cage and the macaw blinked as he looked at this new surroundings. “Nice gaff!” he said, to her delight, “Fuck me, I’m loving what you’ve done to the décor!” She clapped and called out for her two teenage daughters to come and see the rude new bird. As they entered he wolf-whistled and shouted “New girls, eh? Wayhey, darlings! Gerr’em off!” The girls and their mother roared with delight and called out, between guffaws, for the father to share the fun.

Allo, darlings!

Dad put down the paper and strolled in from the kitchen. "What's all the fuss?" he asked and then he saw the parrot. He froze, startled, as the bird stopped calling and fixed him with a piercing gaze. For a moment there was silence. He stared at the bird, the bird stared back. The pause continued for a moment then the macaw ruffled his feathers, sat upright on his perch and said “Alright, Keith?”

Jerusalem!

Yesterday was another day of manifesto launches, nationwide interviews and a hundred and one demands for government action on this, that and global warming cooling climate wossname. I caught a glimpse of part of The Daily Politics and their scanty coverage of ‘the regions’ (if it’s not London, it’s just ‘the regions’) and they were all banging the same anti-austerity drum; all crying out for more and more funding. “The government must bring jobs. The government must ‘invest’. The government must bring joy and treasure. The government must make me, my kids and their kids and their kids and their kids happy forever.”

Well, here’s a better idea; an idea we can actually afford: Instead of robbing the rich to keep the poor penniless-and-pointless, just say “NO!” Ignore the begging bowls and leave them to it. If businesses will not relocate north without incentive let the regions themselves provide the incentive – government is hopeless at creating productive jobs, but abject poverty is BRILLIANT at incentivising innovation and invention and lowering expectations. So what if the pits closed or the textile trade went to where they were grateful for the nasty, grinding soulless graft? Their time is gone and if the local industrial landscape won’t support your numbers you do have choices.

There is no natural law, no nebulous human right that says you must be able to extend your crappy, rickety genepool while staying put. In any case there is something utterly depressing about generation after generation being brought screaming into the same sink estate and relying, from the outset, on state handouts because thirty or forty or a hundred years ago the economics stopped working for you. Sheffield may have been built on steel and coal, but face it, the former third world does it so much better and so much cheaper. And besides, dogged clinging to the rocks of ‘community’ may just be part of what is holding you back. In-breeding becomes inevitable if you refuse to embrace change.

If you are worried about the future prospects for your children then either do something about those prospects or don’t have children. If you don’t expect anybody else to support you, you may be pleasantly surprised by what you can achieve. And if your region can’t be revived after decades of pumping in other people’s money maybe there’s a message there too. Do the decent thing and either get on your bike or just allow your expensive-but-useless, union card carrying line to die out naturally.

'Ey up! It's all gone a bit quiet...

If you don’t want your stark natural and industrial beauty, your rolling hills your old satanic mills enough, then let them go. Because without your whining welfare-enabled feebleness, without your short NHS-dependent life spans and without your depressingly helpless pleas for outside help ‘the regions’ will deliver or depopulate, in the process becoming more attractive places to make a living, supporting the types of communities who can thrive in those environments. Be it self-sufficient eco-types or new entrepreneurs maybe we can once again build Jerusalem in that green and pleasant land. But I’m fucked if I’m paying for it.

The Bag Lady

I didn’t think I would like Natalie Bennett but who couldn’t fall for those blotchy dimples, those confused, out-of-focus, wide-in-the-headlight eyes and her engagingly tragic performance in interviews. With her Aussie twang forever blunted by her permanent head cold she stubbornly resisted Andrew Neil’s attempts to give her a lesson in rudimentary economics yesterday – much on the simple lines of Mr Micawber’s easy mantra – and instead insisted on rushing headlong into rice-and-beans homilies about the inherent goodness of people. She obviously hasn’t met many humans.

Plenty of people have commented in detail on the crazed fantasy that the Green Party Manifesto dishes up, so I’m not going to do that; no, I’m going to play the man instead. Much more fun. It’s a lovely idea that ‘the rich’ will willingly give up most of what they earn so that others can choose never to work and engage instead in ‘creative’ dabblings. But really, Natalie, you reckon that is ever going to happen outside a throwback sixties hippy hobby commune funded by the likes of Brian May and his badger army? And try asking somebody who has grafted for decades to finally reach the dizzy heights of £160,000 a year to give most of it back and what do you expect their reaction would be? (Also, apart from the odd – and I mean odd – millionaire ex-flower-child, what proportion of wealthy people with functioning brains do you reckon would be likely to be Green Party fans?)

Just because giving to others sounds nice and marks you out as a generous and kind soul it doesn’t automatically follow that everybody should be forced to do follow your example. In general philanthropists have their own agenda, or madness, driving their generosity; many of the original charities were founded by extreme puritans with obsessive beliefs in Christian dogma… sometimes accompanied by flogging and casual, ‘healing’ child abuse. And while giving may be repaid by gratitude it is often accompanied by resentment; many are those who would bite the hand that feeds them and there is little dignity in relying on charity.

Being nice is also a very poor survival tactic. Turning the other cheek; how’s that working out for you disciples of Nazareth? The meek will inherit the Earth? Maybe… when the big boys have finished kicking the shit out of it. Our national defence relies on rough men willing to do our dirty work for us. Policing relies on a sufficient deterrent to crime that most people are unwilling to risk having their collar felt. And educating unwilling youth into civilised enlightenment needs tough discipline and a refusal to bend to the whims of infants, no matter how big their eyes or chubby their cheeks. The little bastards will turn on you the moment they sense weakness.

Canvassing the constituency...

As a result of all this wilful blindness Nutty Natalie is now one of my all-time favourites on the political scene, but you have to wonder how long she will be able to keep it up. At every interview she has looked like a frightened mouse, blinking in incomprehension at challenges to her bizarre beliefs, then stutteringly repeating them. She obviously believes what she is saying, but are we absolutely sure she is a politician and not just some bag lady who dropped into a Green Party gathering thinking it was a food bank?

I vow to thee...

Ah, a politician’s promise. Labour’s new manifesto – already being systematically ‘meh’d by all and sundry contains that most sacred of pledges; by calling it a ‘vow’, they seek to conceal the fact that they will ALWAYS be the party of fiscal irresponsibility. In response George Osborne – if I heard this correctly – has said his new budgetary buggerings will contain many ‘exciting’ new proposals. I dunno ‘bout you, but the last thing I want my politicians or their policies to be is ‘exciting’. Exciting is marketing speak for the same old shit, dressed to deceive. Exciting is what you tell your kids a day out at a crowded picnic site will be. But excitement is not a feeling any normal person equates with political manifestos*.

It’s a naked plea to arouse the emotions of simpletons and PPC students and being neither I simply refuse to be thus aroused. Exiting is a more apt description of the likely effect – exiting the democratic process altogether as those dithering about whether to vote or not decide… not. After all, what is really going to change? The NHS fails to keep alive about the same number of people it does under any flavour of government. The welfare bill only ever goes upwards. Immigration is beyond our gift to control. And whatever party gets in there will never be a fair and open referendum on membership of the EU.

That only, really, leaves the economy and I want our approach to that prickly issue to be pragmatic and dull and workable. You simply cannot spend your way out of a slump and unless you are Greece there is no prospect of declaring personal bankruptcy and having creditors write off your debt. Nope, just as with personal finance you bought it, you pay for it and when the credit cards are maxed out you have no other option than what those on the left love to call ‘austerity’. Austerity? Ask your grandmother about it. (If you are a diehard Labour voter, ask your great, great grandmother)

The promised pink unicorn of peace

You can’t send what you haven’t got unless you borrow. And when you can no longer borrow it is just ludicrous – if not fraudulent – to carry on pretending that you can. You can’t promise a job that doesn’t exist. You can’t promise funding when you have no funds. So, no, I don’t want excitement, I don’t want fairy tales and like – I hope – a majority of right-thinking individuals I want to be left to sort out my own shit without having all the while to worry about what schemes the government has to get in my way. What can my country do for me? Stop telling me what it thinks I want to hear and just get on with the job. Fiscal policy? Carry on cutting.

(*Unless you are a Green Party supporter, in which case everything about their fantastic fictions, presumably drafted while under the influence of serious mind-altering substances, is bound to be a thrill. I imagine you can smell Green policies and hear their colour as you skip along the yellow brick road to lentil heaven.)