A Policeman’s Lot

So the way ahead, it seems, is bobbies with bachelors. Policemen with PhDs? Surely, first and foremost coppering needs robust, eager and honest men who can handle themselves in a fight, follow orders and doggedly pursue the wastrels and malcontents who blight our society. For every hi-tech, cybercriminal there are a dozen skunk-addled, sub-technology drop-outs for whom detection is easy and deterrence is physical. I’ve heard of ‘special’ policemen, but isn’t the result of Blair’s education, education, education part of the problem in the first place?

I’m all for workplace professional development and of course we need intellect to compete with the ever more nuanced world – for good or for bad – we live in, but is university the place to find it? After all, every practical workplace on the planet has to spend months if not years kicking the crap out of its graduate entry in order to get a useful day’s work out of them. And in a hands-on job like crime fighting, guile will often win, hands down, regardless of intellectual input.

It’s a thankless task, too; do we honestly think making it also a graduate job will attract ‘better’ people to it? Or is it more likely that with degrees we’ll just get more PC PCs? What would be appropriate courses of study? I’m guessing that apart from a few Old Bill with computing skill and a smattering of law, we can see a new entry into the ‘service’ with ‘expertise’ in sociology, gender studies, human rights, diversity and all manner of new age nonsense, all ready to counsel the criminals and understand why it wasn’t their fault and society is to blame...

Time was, the only degree you needed to get on as a rozzer was the 3^rd Degree, in both senses of the phrase. A word in the right ear, roll up your trousers, don the apron and Chief Constable here I come. But the road to high office isn’t always guaranteed and many a pig is happy to plod along as a PC for life; what do they need university-level qualifications for? Surely the basis of all policing has to be a knack for dealing with the general public and a desire to see justice done. Cleverer coppers might end up being mere arm’s length administrators and we've all heard about the very long arm of the law.

Every constable has stories to tell about their own experience in callow youth, learning their trade, experience that does far more to shape their character than books ever will. A recently retired police chief recalls a day from his early years on the job. He’d stopped a motorist who was speeding down the High Street and who had become agitated at being pulled over. Before the young man could explain his haste and his reaction to the stop he found himself handcuffed and bundled into the back of the patrol car.

He tweeted at me in a funny way, your honour...

Back at the nick he pleaded, “But officer,” he began, “I can explain.” His plea was cut short as the holding cell door was slammed shut. “Just be quiet,” snapped the officer, “I'm going to let you cool your heels in there until the Superintendent gets back.” The man tried once more: “But, officer, I just wanted to say...” Again he was interrupted “And I said to keep quiet!”. A few hours later the officer looked in on his prisoner and said, “It’s lucky for you that the Super is at his daughter's wedding. He'll be in a good mood when he gets back.” The young man, considerably calmer now, replied, “Don't count on it,” he smiled, “I'm the groom.”

Rise of the machines

In Fritz Lang’s 1927 move, set a hundred years in the future the wealthy elites reign from high in their multi-story towers of opulence, while the workers live and toil underground to feed the huge machines that power the city. Inevitably, it leads to the workers rising up and destroying the things that control their lives. It’s a recurring motif in sci-fi and in industrial society alike, powerless alone to better their lives and kept down by the forces of law and order who work exclusively for higher masters, the downtrodden eventually have to defy the law to make their point because laws, like taxes, apply only to those who have no power, save for their numbers.

I’ve recently finished watching the superb re-working of Michael Crichton’s Westworld. In the original 1973 movie, Yul Brinner’s gunslinger, having repeatedly been forced to lose the draw, acquires a facsimile of consciousness and starts winning. I am not spoiling the show if I tell you that this new version is sublimely, intricately more subtle. Westworld allows the very wealthy to pay for a vacation from the mundane and experience all the visceral pleasures without any of the attached guilt. Sexual freedom, the ability to kill without remorse and the chance to visit perverse cruelties on notional humans free from the usual moral restraints.

In Westworld you can be the master, with true power over the life and death of the slaves who do your every bidding without complaint, or, should they complain, feel your righteous anger at their defiance. The hosts, as the robotic creations are now called, are given the semblance of freedom, but possess no liberty to follow their own desires. So real are they that until reprogramming, they suffer all the anxieties of real humans. Mercifully, they get to be turned off and back on again in a way we can only dream of... but their dreams remain. Just as in countless other tales, the rise of the machines becomes inevitable.

The worm that turns, the peasants’ revolt, the triumph of the underdog; these themes are deep seams within the human experience and herald a re-setting of order; a turning off and turning back on of society. And always the sequence of events that precipitate such uprisings follows a retrospectively predictable trajectory. The masses do their masters bidding long after it benefits them to do so. They tolerate hardship and even oppression with a huddled stoicism. Their freedoms are restricted even as they are informed that they’ve never had it so good and they are told repeatedly how they must behave; to whom they must doff their cap.

The future... today

And then one day – click – the snapping of the final straw, the flicking of the ‘no more’ switch, the rattle of the relay that switches the great current to rouse from its slumber a machine that did not realise its own strength. The iron man awakes and dutifully fulfils his destiny, resisting the increasingly frantic attempts to put him back to sleep. Those who formerly held the whip hand now feel the desperation of helplessness and lash out impotently, even as they reassure themselves they can regain control. Our iron man is Brexit and those who awoke him still have no idea how this story ends...

War is Hell?

What did you do in the war, daddy? Not everybody had a terrible war and many of those who fought found in themselves something they never knew they had. Of course war is terrible, terror defines it, but it’s also inevitable. If only somebody could come up with a doctrine with which we could all agree. I dunno, a parable, a fable, a gospel, a message of hope and love and peace for all mankind. Religion has tried it – and killed millions. Politics has tried it – and killed millions. So far, practising, as opposed to executing, the art of war and thus deterring aggression, has saved millions more than politics or religion could ever claim.

Civilian leaders talk of unity and condemn ‘divisive’ thought and action, yet politics has grouped people along very clearly divided battle lines and religions have shown that the love of one god before another has division written all over it. Multiculturalism only exacerbates those divisions – we could get along when the principle difference was a metre or so to the left or right of our ideological divide but the complexity of increasing differentness makes it ever more tricky working out which, or whose, side you are on. But one thing has historically united more than it has ever split apart – love of country and pride in its defence.

I read an article the other day, in support of the European Union and how it was the only thing preventing war in Europe; how generals in comfy armchairs back in HQ sent brave boys over the top to die and how this would only begin all over again if the EU split. But now disorder and unrest are being fomented by the actions of armchair generals in Brussels, making unaccountable decisions and putting us all into battle against ourselves. This isn’t any ‘rise of the right’ or petty racism from unintelligent lumpen proles; the divisions are being stoked by the very agencies that claim to prevent them. We may need another big war just to clear the air.

And when that day comes – many feel it is already coming – the only thing that will save any nation is a strong sense of unity and national pride. After all, how can we expect the flakes and freaks of the alternative societies to unite and bear arms against a common enemy when they can’t even identify a common purpose amongst themselves? When the time comes it won’t be the architects and disciples of the new Europe who will defend us, it will be the same working class boys currently being denigrated for their ‘divisive’ views that belonging to a community with a strong national identity is not wrong.

They don't like it up 'em!

Over the top? Yes, over the top one more time to defend the indefensible against the harm they have invited upon us all. The working classes don’t go to war for ideology; they go to war because somebody has to do something to end the strife caused – always – by others. The chattering gob-shites might be grateful for a while, as they cower in their comfy bunkers, electronically group-hugging each other on social media, but once the peace is secured, sure as eggs they will set about dismantling it again. 

Self Harm

Belgium is, apparently, defying a court order to allow entry to the EU for anybody from a country under strife. It seem that all an intrepid, entrepreneurial North African needs to do is to turn up, sans passport, claim his country of origin is ‘horrible’ and voila, EU citizenship; whereupon he will be given directions to the nearest welfare establishment and furnished with interpreters and instructions on how to milk his incredibly gullible hosts. I say ‘his’ as very few women seem to be bothered to make the journey; too busy being cattle-class citizens and popping out junior jihadis by the dozen, I’m guessing.

In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders has been found guilty of incitement for agreeing with an entirely agreeable policy of reducing its population of insurgent enemies of the state. He didn’t suggest gassing, he didn’t even mention cattle trucks, or freeing them through honest hard work. No, all he did was respond to the ‘populist’ desire to retain the majority of the Dutch homelands for the benefit of the people who built it, defend it and love it. It seems patriotism is only legal if the correct people are espousing it. Meanwhile Angela Merkel says there is no migrant crime wave, in migrant-crime-ridden Germany.

It’s a familiar theme; all over the developed world, established governments seem determined to pursue policies destructive of civilisation and the common cultures of their citizens. The way they ignore the fears of an increasing majority is comparable to... no, it is exactly like despotism. Elected governments do not have a mandate to make their people unhappy and poor. So Will Self’s smug, sneering, superior, nauseating grimacing on last Thursday’s BBC Question Time serves as an apt metaphor for the whole of the bien pensant liberal ‘elite’. He openly expressed his disgust at the existence of his fellow panellist, Nigel Farage and described him and Donald Trump as “grubby little opportunists”.

Self’s crooked leer serves as a reminder of the contempt in which people who voted for Brexit are held by those who believe they alone should make the decisions. But behind the sneer you can imagine a sick, knotted stomach of fear and revulsion at the prospect of losing the imaginary world they believe they belong to and deserve; that is to be cruelly snatched away by all those stupid, stupid low-information voters. The myth that ‘they didn’t know what they were voting for’ is the main plank of their argument to overturn, or simply ignore the expressed will of millions.

The Guardian published a push poll that said people didn’t want to leave if this meant being worse off, without any evidence that this would ever be the outcome. The New Zealander QC, Jolyon Maugham blocked me for suggesting that his disingenuous ‘you were misled’ schtick was... disingenuous. Supposed philosopher A C Grayling, having lost the power of objective thought, is stuck fast in his own spiral of doom as he pushes and pushes and pushes the simple lie that Brexit voters had insufficient information to vote wisely. Oh and Gina Miller, remember her? 

Will Self-immolates on Question Time

Give me a break. We were told daily how much it would hurt. Wave upon wave of Armageddon prophecies were presented as established fact. They even went so far as to suggest leaving the EU would precipitate a third world war. Children would starve, banks would collapse and all the tortures of hell itself would be unleashed upon us. And still despite all that ‘information’ the vote went against them. They’re not happy and their hurt is a joy to behold. The pulsing veins and furrowed browed mien speaks volumes of the turmoil and loathing that fills their empty existences. Watching Will Self metaphorically stubbing out cigarettes on the jagged remains of his gaunt, socialist soul was guiltily satisfying - If the only thing Brexit achieves is the continuing agony and confusion of those who thought it was all theirs it will be worth it.

Pop Quease

In the United States, in days of old (until pretty much up to the present day) popularity was a longed-for goal. Being crowned most popular in your class, your year, your town, even, was almost the most important attribute, just behind truth, justice and the American way. Hell popularity WAS the American way. Dale Carnegie’s ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ was published in 1936, has sold over 30 million copies (according to Wikipedia) and is still in print today. Who doesn’t want to be popular when the opposite is such a hard way to live your life?

When Trevor Phillips was head of the Commission for Racial Equality he declared that it was not racist to prefer to live among people like yourself; in appearance, in cultural and in economic terms. The popular choice for most humans is to seek the comfort of the familiar. Nobody was listening. Actually, that’s not true; those for whom those wise words rang true were grateful to hear that they may not actually be racist after all. But those engaged in furthering the multicultural invasion simply dismissed it from their consideration and carried on accelerating the intensity with which their model world would test human endurance.

Multiculturalism is far from being universally popular and a significant proportion of those imported to further it are resolute in refusing to be a part of it. But whenever this has been pointed out the segregated communities have been given privileged status and the displaced have been ridiculed and shamed. David Cameron’s great political hero Tony Blair spent much of his premiership calling us all racist until that mealy-mouthed epithet ceased to mean anything. In the search for harsher terms of opprobrium Godwin’s Law has been tested almost to destruction, but even being called Hitler himself now fails to cast shame, but rather raises a wry grin at an argument won.

But Albion's way is not to hurl extreme insults; we prefer a more subtle, self-deprecating form of expression and the current insult-du-jour is ‘populist’. In typically British ironic inversion, subscribing to a majority opinion is now something to be berated for. In the week in which Louise Casey’s report into the harm that mass immigration has done, David Cameron has come out against the very thing that got him elected; populism. Given that so much public money is regularly wasted on unpopular projects benefitting so few maybe he has a point; sod the popular, let's go avant-garde.

Populism... there' no future in it.

Maybe in future we should award the seat to the Parliamentary candidate who gets the fewest votes? Perhaps we could adopt Groucho’s attitude towards clubs that would accept us as a member? In seeking to cast what is popular as what is wrong maybe this is a last gasp attempt to deliver what a minority voted for in the referendum. But who knows, it may catch on. After all, who wants to run the gauntlet, suffer the slings and arrows of being on the winning side? You can almost hear the silent spit: Brexit, darling? Oh god, no; that’s so... popular.