It's a Cracker!

And Lo! a great star did shine in the East and the three wise men did travel to Bethlehem to pay homage to the new-born king. And all about, while shepherds watched their flocks by night the beasts of the field gathered about the manger, for there was no room at the Holiday Inn. Great gifts did the three kings bring, of gold and frankincense and myrrh, for which Mary and Joseph were grateful... at least for the gold. But they kept the other things anyway, for they were sore afraid and all that, but the choirs of angels cheered them right up, singing in exaltations... and scarves and big, Father Christmas jumpers.

And it came to pass that once in royal David’s city, where the holly and the ivy, when they were both full grown, did ring out the bells proclaiming great joy and peace for all mankind. And presents. Ah, the great spirit of Christmas; egg-nog, brandy, sloe gin... cameltoe and wine. A time of year when we get to spend a few days in the heavily subtextual company of people we don’t know particularly well... and if we’re honest, don’t even like all that much. Where would we be without family, we ask ourselves? Probably on a beach somewhere, snorting coke from the taut buttocks of a supermodel... but I digress.

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all round the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. Actually, back up a little... what’s that? A faint hint of a squeaky floorboard and the smell of soot heralds the entrance of a big, jolly-looking fellow in a red suit and carrying a large sack. He goes to each room in turn and such is the magic in the air that his sack, far from emptying, appears to get fuller with every visit. In go the presents from under the tree. In goes the family jewellery and in goes even half the contents of the overloaded refrigerator. As the sack got heavier his tread became weary and the merry gentleman decided he needed a god rest.

He took a seat in the kitchen where, on the side, a plate of mince pies and a glass of sherry were set out. Christmas, Dave mused, was such a welcoming time to go about the burglary business. If all went well he only had to come once a year and live off the proceeds the next twelve months. Maybe, he thought, just one more sherry... He woke with a start; a little girl was tugging at his sleeve and bidding him wake. “Are you Father Cwistmas?” she asked, in a lisp too cute to cwticise. Dave the burglar, his head still fuzzy from the ill-advised Christmas cheer nodded that he was. “Pwove it!” demanded the girl.

Dave was alarmed at the loudness of her voice and said “Hewwo there!” and “Ho ho ho!” but very quietly so as not to wake the house. “I brought you a dowwy,” he tried, but the girl’s lower lip stuck firmly out. “I don’t want a dolly!” Dave tried again “How about a Pwaystation?” Again the girl demurred “Maybe a Wego set?” She looked at him sternly, her little arms crossed, “A what?” Dave repeated, “A Wego set?” She said, “Did you mean Lego™?” Dave nodded. “You talk funny!” she accused. “Of course,” Dave replied, “I’m Father Christmas and I use the Christmas awphabet!” ... [pause for effect] ... “No L!” 

Merry Christmas you crayon-chewing, window-licking motherfuckers! 

Divided we Fall

Once again the mentally delicate lone wolf of peace kills and maims, but in the aftermath of the Berlin Christmas market attack it was, quote ‘too early’ yet to say what part islam played in his crazed decision. I mean, such a random un-forewarned act of violence, coming out of the blue, utterly without precedent could not possibly be associated with any warped ideology, nor be committed in the name of any religious figure, pieces be upon him. The powers that be were literally dumbfounded and without any clues as to the motivation, islamic or otherwise, of the killer they issued a warning to protect the vulnerable.

German police suggested people stay at home and not spread rumours. Rumours? How awful! In the meantime they lit up the Brandenburg Gate in tribute to the fallen of this terrible... vehicle accident. It was too early to jump to conclusions they warned and on no account should the public A) be alarmed, or B) succumb to islamophobia. How silly, of course we’re not alarmed and as far as islam is concerned, what on earth is there to be frightened of? Why, Mr Akhtar at the corner shop has never hurt a fly. Mind you, his son Ahmed Slayer-of-all-Kuffar-and-beheader-of-the Unbeliever Akhtar is a shifty one, but he’s currently on an extended holiday in Syria. Missing, believed daesh.

Anyway, in the wake of all that came the usual divisive bullshit with both sides accusing the other of making political capital out of it. Sides, I hear you ask? Surely it’s just us against them and with them being ISIS and claiming responsibility it’s cut and dried, no? No, because while Europe is certainly divided, ISIS didn’t divide it, although their actions haven’t helped because one side wants to see an end to islamic slaughter and cultural erosion while the other manages to perform whatever ideological contortions are necessary to pretend that wholesale importation of alien societies is both natural and desirable.

The story about deployment of extra police power in Bristol, ostensibly to combat ‘islamophobia’, is a fine example of the useful idiocy of those in thrall to the politically correct. When Donald Trump punted the idea of halting islamic immigration until a great deal more had been done to work out solutions, David Cameron called it "stupid, divisive and wrong" and Barack Obama said it would be "dangerous". Both of those statesmen are now looking like fools while the president-elect took steps to reassert his determination to effectively combat extremism. 

Extremism, of course, takes many forms and as well as the soldiers of islam busily blowing people up, their servants are also working diligently in their host countries to simultaneously radicalise – many mosques have been implicated in direct action – and to work on the psyche of the indigenous populations. Foremost among the latter is the dangerously radical Hope Not Hate, whose name is ironic beyond reason. They have consistently used false information  to proselytise against those who won’t accept the invasion and are currently engaged in attempting to force a retraction from Nigel Farage for his mild rebuke of newly canonised national treasure, Brendan Cox.

Them and us, 'twas ever thus, but this enemy is so much more deadly than swarthy men bearing arms. This enemy uses our own capacity for tolerance and forgiveness against us. They manage to turn the blame, every time, away from the wrongdoers and onto the wronged. And their actions are working; we are gradually becoming a less tolerant society; less likely to keep on turning the other cheek. As the scales fall from our eyes, soon we may become intolerant enough to turn on our fifth columnists and carry out a little social cleansing of our own. 

Expertise

Throughout the EU referendum campaign we were bombarded with horror stories from an ensemble cast of the great and the good who told us, the little people, that we could not possibly know what we were voting for. Christine Lagarde was one among many whose ‘expert’ testimony foretold of the utter recklessness of voting to leave. As head of the IMF her particular warning was expected to carry a hefty weight. It was still ignored. Yesterday Lagarde received a mild rebuke and a slap on the wrist for unwisely using her expertise to commit an offence which would have landed others in jail. Interestingly, part of her defence appears to have been that she did not herself take expert advice... Oh, the humanity!

“She denied any wrongdoing and claimed she had not seen all documents suggesting the payout should not be made. Six others [are] being investigated for fraud.” 

Michael Gove’s partial quote, “We’ve had enough of experts...” became the central jibe in many an attack on the legitimacy of Leave voters’ ambitions. How dare you reject the advice of experts? Who are you to gainsay the considered wisdom of such eminences? The sneers were relentless and the inference clear. And yet... few of the threatened hardships came to pass and the short-term bump in the road for Sterling and the Stock Exchange was based purely on the speculative actions of yet more experts, feathering their nests.

Maybe, in retrospect, expert wasn’t the right word; after all, one man’s sage is another man’s charlatan. And in any case, it wasn’t a reaction against just any kind of expertise, but against the type of expertise that can be bought bespoke. Perhaps the phrase ‘self-serving elite’ better encapsulates who the vote was rejecting. Use that phrase instead of ‘expert’ and suddenly a whole lot comes into sharp focus. The Kinnocks and the Mandelsons losing their tickets to the gravy train. The Cleggs and the Farrons, minor players in thrall to bigger beasts but nonetheless imagining themselves to one day aspire to an EU office. And all the big Bilderbergers the Ken Clarkes and cronies who simply crave the power and influence over those same little people.

In Bill Bryson’s excellent ‘One Summer America 1927’ he describes the taciturn nature of President Calvin Coolidge who was renowned for neither doing very much nor saying very much. He is said to have engaged in a ‘grim, determined, alert inactivity’ as he ‘presided over a booming economy and did nothing at all to get in the way of it.’ Given the constant mishandling of the tiller of the dinghy of state and the unrelenting changes inflicted on western societies, a period of Calvinomics is long overdue.

Change anything too completely and too quickly and stability is usually sacrificed. Was it the indigenous populations of the first world who demanded to be systematically invaded by primitive cultures? Or was it the experts – sorry, I mean self-interested elites – who oversaw this population replacement? The Berlin atrocity of last night was a dose of cultural enrichment too far yet still they will tell us little sheep it is nothing to do with islam, that we don’t understand, that we should work harder to better integrate.

What is so hard to understand about this, experts?

We no longer look to experts to provide solutions – we’ve already suffered too many of those. The problem of islam, the problems of the world, likely won’t be solved by global thinkers and strategic experts; they’ve done enough damage already. It might just be time for governments to back off and let the people handle this...

Tomorrow’s World

The brilliant thing about humans is that unlike all other life forms on earth we make things. And when I say make, I don’t mean fabricate, as birds build nests and beavers build dams. We don’t just use tools like the sticks chimps utilise to fish for termites, or birds to root for grubs. No, when I say we make things we create spectacular things that just didn’t exist before. In the minds of certain animal rights activists there is virtually no difference between mankind and monkeys; when you show me a monkey making a smart phone I may concede you have a point.

The current Mr Greenpeace, John Sauven, was on the Sunday Politics yesterday, making something: a right tit of himself. In the face of verifiable evidence that, on all measures, air pollution has been steadily declining for forty years he blatantly denied using invented statistics and fake claims of 40,000 premature deaths for political ends. As always with those of a leftist bent – the highly intelligent, caring, progressive sector of society – measures to solve this non-problem would impact more heavily on those they seek to protect from their own ignorance... and autonomy.

On Planet Greenpeace, the hoi polloi can’t be trusted to wisely steward the world’s resources and it is only by limiting potential, ideally by legislation, that devious capitalistic urges can be curtailed. No third runway, obviously. Then ridding the roads of cars, closing down supposedly polluting industries and soon, energy rationing. What next, compulsory vegetarianism? I have to confess a certain sympathy with one Green aim, population reduction: starting with a swift cull of those who espouse Mother Earth philosophies that would return us to agrarian lifestyles and a level of poverty unknown in generations.

Turning back the clock – a charge often erroneously levelled at those who wish to curtail big government and the global socialist project – is never the answer. The genie is out of the bottle and there is only one way; ahead. You can’t put the atom back together and pretend it never happened and you can’t forget all the advances made by people with vision that have improved our world immeasurably. Around the time I was born the global population was estimated at 3 billion. Fifteen years later it hit 4 billion and a fresh wave of third-world famines sparked the fear that we would never be able to feed so many. Forty years on and it has doubled, yet we keep on somehow feeding them.

And we do it because we are big-brained problem solvers. Our technological progress is just that, progress; forging forwards. We went to the moon, we eradicated diseases that used to claim millions, we fed the world and now, as much as at any time before, we must look to our ingenuity not to limit our possibilities but to push on. Here's just one example of our staggering ingenuity, plucked randomly from dozens, which hints at denying our doomsayers the fulfilment of their wishes; carbon 14, a thing that never existed before we made it. Imagine a world where electrical energy is no longer an issue. Portable, safe, effectively everlasting diamond battery power for everybody. From the problem of nuclear waste comes a solution for the future.

In the future there will be equal rights for vegetables

Will the prophets of doom and disaster embrace the possibilities with open arms? No, they will find something to hang their antagonistic hats on; something to bleat about. When gender battles and planet-saving and diversy-multicultilicious concerns have run their course there will always be new causes to cling onto. For just as the potential of mankind to think its way out of trouble seems infinite so does its capacity to imagine itself hard done by. In tomorrow’s world, as life gets easier and easier, the malcontents will continue to thrive.

Squeaky Clean?

Michael Sheen says he is leaving acting to become a full-time political activist and fight the good fight against – wait for it – the rise of the far right. This will, necessarily, involve rubbing shoulders with some of the country’s great malcontents. He will spend time in the company of militant vegans, foul feminazis, crazed conspiracists and especially in Port Talbot and its environs, disciples of the church of Anti-Thatcher, whose sole contribution to the debate is that it is all the fault of the woman who let their grandparents buy their council house.

It’s a curious thing, yer actual human; the most resourceful species on the planet and also the most miserable. Gloomy pessimism is so central to human nature we’d die out without it. Expecting the worst prepares you for it, so, in the event of anything less, you are ahead of the game. But you can take a predilection too far. Dreading failure is one thing; actively engineering it is quiet another and the current mood among the malcontents, stoked up by the fervent imaginations of the perpetually aggrieved, is destructive in the extreme. Whole swathes of impressionable children – and I include Sheen in this collective – are being swept up in the hysteria.

Once upon a time in Europe the Black Death claimed significant slices of the population; many never reached their teens, let alone their twenties and an old age pension, had one existed, would have had to come into effect before your thirtieth year to have had any recipients. In an age which pre-dated politics for the masses, survival was a matter of chance and how the dice fell was left to the church to explain, a task it performed spectacularly poorly. It all comes down to information and how you use it. Then as today, ignorance disguised as divine insight perpetuated the notion that somebody else was to blame; it’s the pessimists’ mantra.

In the early nineteenth century, when machines promised great efficiencies, the hand-weaving Luddites, instead of embracing this progress and using it themselves, destroyed what they saw as the instrument of their redundancy and in doing so hastened their own demise. What they fought against was inevitable and part of a progress that would continue to bring greater prosperity to all, admittedly at the expense of a few. ‘Twas ever thus; despite all the portents of doom, despite all the forecasts of abject poverty and inhuman treatment we live in times of unprecedented ease and plenty

And one of the most plentiful resources is information. The trouble is that our ability to process it dispassionately has become severely hampered. Whether it is poor critical thinking skills or a lack of general education or simply a prolonged infantile attitude which makes hard reality much trickier to grasp than fancy folk tales, the Luddites are back and this time the machines they are fighting are themselves. By the careless use of social media, the acceptance of fake news as true and a general appeal to puerile identity politics, the protesting classes have convinced themselves that the quiet ballot-box revolt of ordinary people is somehow an orchestrated uprising.

Mr Sheen... notice how the duster is in his LEFT hand!

So, Michael, people too stupid to understand have been manipulated to vote against the forces of globalisation? People ignorant of the facts have been organised into rabid lynch mobs to racially abuse immigrants? Gangs of incredibly thick peasants have been duped into ushering in the agents of their own destruction? These stupid, stupid, stupid people have somehow managed to ‘overthrow’ your desired order by exercising their right to one man, one vote? The rise of the right? It is nothing more than the rise of the right to have your views known. It strikes me that the ignorance, the mobs, the mass protests and the rabble-rousing are still pretty much the preserve of the left. Going to help make everything clean, Mr Sheen? Good luck with that.