Walk on

In the theatre of the absurd which is the disintegrating left, a protest group has been demanding of the New Statesman that they give 30 pages of favourable coverage over to the subject of Jeremy Corbyn. No, seriously... Now, thirty pages of coverage we can easily envisage, but thirty pages of GOOD coverage? Maybe if it was written in headline-sized font and dubiously included the Diane Abbott dalliance it could be eked out to a page or two, but beyond that... are they suggesting The Staggers lies about the man? He’s got three kids; maybe he likes them?

Oh but, maybe not. Labour’s latest wacky foray back to communism of its roots is to suggest funding school meals for state pupils by charging Value Added Tax on private school fees. Right, so, that means the people who pay all the tax and then further assist state education by not using the services they already paid for should pay even more so that other people’s offspring can be fed? Is the plan to get votes by helping poor students’ parents to buy more fags? Perhaps the Labour Party could get back to us when they have a policy, any policy, based not on coercion or threat or force, but on common sense?

Fortuitously, events have been overtaken by the USA’s bombing of Syria. Phew, lucky stroke there Labour! But once again the world goes mad. The whole of the Middle East has been a source of concern for all the years I can recall. Maybe we should close the doors on the whole region, contain it, then come back in fifty years and see if anybody is ready to talk sensibly about it all? But we just can’t help ourselves, can we? Like progressively lowering a table by sawing chunks out of each leg in turn, trying to level out that annoying wobble, everything we do seems to make things worse.

I find Middle East events tedious in the extreme. While millions were live-tweeting events, the ‘Arab Spring’ largely passed me by. If the whole of North Africa were rendered an unlivable nuclear wasteland for centuries I’d probably greet it with a disinterested shrug. I had similar reactions to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the death of John Lennon. I figured they had nothing to do with me, so, meh... some things just don’t move me at all.

On the other hand, human frailty fascinates me; I like watching how you mere mortals deal with the perceived threat of things you can do nothing about. Like your irrational reactions to far-away war, rich people, celebrity and the weather. As storms brew in the near east, we approach the summer thunderstorm season...

Storm's a-comin'...

One summer’s evening during a violent thunderstorm a mother was tucking her young son into bed. She was about to leave when he asked with a tremor in his voice, “Mummy, will you sleep with me tonight?” She smiled and asked “But why, dear?” The boy replied “I’m frightened about what’s happening in the world; Syria, Jeremy Corbyn and all this thunder and lightning.” His mother said, gently, “I can't dear. I have to sleep in Daddy's room.” And with that she kissed him goodnight, then slowly rose and tiptoed to the door. As she turned off the light she heard, from the darkened silence “The big sissy.”

Livingstone, I presume?

In other news, Barry Manilow comes out as gay, the Pope confesses his Catholicism and a bear was seen leaving a nearby wood clutching a copy of The Sun and a roll of toilet paper. But, seriously, Manilow? He got married three years ago. To another man. But he left it until now to come out because he didn’t want his fans to think he was batting for the other side? You’d think this level of delusion would preclude people from credible participation in society but no, they simply construct their own world and surround themselves with bit-part players to maintain the illusion.

I wonder if, in Corbynland, Labour is a credible opposition, representing the ordinary working man? Or if the Green Party imagine their rag-tag band of merry vegan flatulents will somehow save the world? Perhaps the nine LibDem MPs believe they are genuinely a force for beneficial change and not just the ditherers’ party the rest of us see, led by a boy/man-puppet with an amusing anagram for a name? And when an SNP representative looks in the mirror do they see a muscular and passionate blue-daubed warrior looking back? The secret life of Walter Mitty isn’t just an amusing fantasy, it’s practically a way of life in politics.

We all harbour delusions about ourselves: Maybe, one day I will fit into those jeans; the ones I have kept neatly folded, in a storage box... for a decade now. Half marathon? I could if I wanted. I really will finish that book, honest. But these are simply the little white fibs we use to keep our spirits up; we stopped imagining we would be fighter pilots and astronauts and secret super-heroes long ago. There is a certain charm in not growing up fully, cherishing a secret ambition... but not when you are under public scrutiny.

Take Guy Verhofstadt, who the yesterday tweeted “I am 100% sure that - one day - there will be a young leader who will try again to lead Britain back into the European family.” Ah, delusion personified! If I a 100% certain of anything it is that young people become older people and generally become wiser people with it. But they’d say there is no fool like an old fool and I dare say there will be some, currently young, people still clinging to the wreckage of the EU long after the main hull has sunk.

Adolf Livingstone?

But all this is for the future. For now the most important thing on the planet appears to be whether or not Ken Livingstone did or did not say that Hitler was, or was not, in favour of the Jews having their own state, or not, or whether the holocaust did or didn’t happen... or didn’t not, or something. I lose track, but honestly is this really a matter for serious consideration by a party which has aspirations of government? Or is it just a load of old bollocks?

Who Laughs Last?

Well this seems to be another one of those little musings I file under ‘Why we got a Conservative government, Brexit, Trump, Le Pen and Wilders’. It’s become an all too frequent foray into the inscrutable world of how London seems to be so at odds with the rest of England and why those who embrace extremes of political correctness will never really comprehend that everybody who isn’t with them is laughing at their hurt and confusion.

The Equality & Diversity industry has been quick to condemn David Moyes, who made a perfectly bland, off the cuff, everyday remark and has now had to abase himself at the feet of the high priestesses of PC. When David Cameron said “Calm down, dear” there was similar outrage but it blew over pretty quickly. With Moyes, however, they sensed blood, a weaker quarry, with little support, so in for the kill they went. His grovelling apology went down in flames too, because the use of the epithet ‘girl’ is apparently a monstrous power play, indicative of his privilege as a male with all the power in the relationship.

I actually heard this said on PM yesterday evening... or was it PMT? (I’m going to hell) Oh yes, the resurgence of the charge of casual sexism and the insistence of the harm it does to all those women who insist on absolute equality. If women are ever going to be able to beat the men at arm wrestling the playing field must be levelled. Given the piss-poor rate at which evolution is equipping females with male musculature it is up to society to emasculate the men instead.

In the multicultural world of the ideologically driven social engineers this doesn’t raise an eyebrow. Elsewhere, in the down-to-earth sensibilities of we cave dwellers, it raises a wry smile. It’s that ‘Emperor’s new clothes’ thing again; instead of actually improving opportunities for women, sensible heads are seeing lots of reasons not to employ them. When Alan Sugar made the perfectly reasonable observation that small business would want to avoid employing women of child-bearing age he was vilified. But he was dead right.

Lest you think I am an unreconstructed male chauvinist pig (a charge I make no effort to refute, by the way) I have a female boss. She is terrifying; she is also bloody good at her job and nobody here would dare to challenge her supremacy. Most of us recognise that she does a far better job than a mere man ever could. Who needs the imaginary, fabricated world of manufactured equality when you can have the real thing? You have to laugh, eh?

Not laughing now?

Oh but, here’s a thing. In the world of comedy the London creed is followed to the letter. Those brave souls who like to believe they subvert and challenge every convention and that no trope goes un-mocked, nevertheless conform to the orthodoxy. But having honed their scalpel to dismember and dissect that horrible, horrible decision by primitive troglodytes to leave the EU they are finding their blade blunted by the unyielding implacability of the non-London audience. It turns out that Brexiteers will only sit for being insulted for just so long and the unrelenting anti-Brit shtick is driving them away. Poor old Marcus Brigstocke; pray for him.

This isn’t right

The case of the seventeen-year old Iranian Kurd refugee, beaten up in Croydon over the weekend is horrific. I hope the book is thrown at the attackers and the full weight of the law applied in denying them liberty; no punishment seems enough, somehow. But (and it’s a huge but) at least there is now another incident to add to the murder of Saint Jo Cox in the  desperate need to accumulate evidence of ‘the rise of the far-right’. Diane Abbott, arguably the largest of all the buts_[sic], has shown no hesitation in labelling it thus: “Sadly, this is not an isolated incident, but part of a sustained increase in hate crimes that this Tory government is yet to offer any effective response to.”

But lest they get too excited in their frenzy to prove that everybody who voted Brexit is, literally, Hitler, they might want to consider what they mean by the term ‘far right’. I’ve always believed that they are confined to a tiny fringe group, so rabid and unfocused their aims and so unattractive to breed from that they may as well be considered an endangered species. And in comparison to left-wing groups their numbers are insignificant. It is quite usual for groups like Britain First to be outnumbered by rent-a-mob counter demonstrators.

And, as if on cue, a gathering of the massed ranks of this fearsome band of supposed fascists barely managed to number 300 and typically it was the self-styled ‘Antifa’ activists who managed to do the most to provoke violence. The Guardian naturally labelled it, right on message, as an attempt to stir up islamophobia and the attack on Croydon Kurd played right into that hand. Except there is no evidence that white supremacists – Diane Abbott’s preferred variety of assailant – were involved. Rather it appears to have been a mixed assembly of young, druggy, pissed-up morons of various ethnicities... or as many would have it, typical Croydon youth.

As for islamophobia, it is a perfectly rational response to the ceaseless onslaught of this unruly and backward belief system on civilisation. Massed prayers, in displays of strength and disregard for authority, are pretty intimidating to indigenous host populations. But this form of ‘peaceful’ demonstration of their numbers is largely carried out by what are termed ‘moderate’ muslims, leaving the direct action to the more devout. Is it irrational for us to be afraid of islam? Perhaps we should ask Russia.

It was self defence...

The St Petersburg bombs yesterday may well mark a new chapter in the perpetual war between islam and well, everybody else. No more is it just a jihad against the west; now that Mother Russia has been hit all eyes are on Putin to see how far he will go to back up his openly declared hostility to any group threatening the safety of his people at home. This isn’t a race issue, it’s a battle for ideology. For a long time the Russians were our red menace, the so-called Evil Empire. Now they may be just about to become our greatest ally.

First in line

All ready for Brexit? Prepare for the worst but hope for the best has been one of the government slogans in the lead up to you-know-what. Remain’s slogan seems to have been: ‘Hope for the worst and do your damnedest to bring it about.’ Me? I’m what you may term an optimistic pessimist; I’m with the government on this one. Overt optimism always brings with it the risk of serial disappointment, especially when young, impressionable and with sights set on the moon while firmly shackled to terra firma. Far better, I find, to be tacitly pessimistic, strike the right note then be pleasantly surprised when things actually work out.

Perhaps it’s just the British way, when you think about it; let’s face it, planning a picnic in England more than two days in advance is folly personified. As is expecting all your luggage to always arrive with you on the first day of your holiday. Learning to gracefully thank Aunt Ida for the identical pair of wrong-sized socks for the third birthday in a row is an art that comes more easily to we phlegmatic island dwellers than it does to, say, the Latin hotheads of warmer climes. See, no matter how hard we tried we could never give ourselves wholly to being European.

Really, a positive attitude – even tempered with some cautious pessimism – goes a long, long way, especially when setting out in a new direction. Dragging your screaming, obdurate offspring where they don’t want to go, for no reason other than they decided they don’t, fomenting a screaming, embarrassing public argument, is a rite of passage many young parents are familiar with. Divide-and-rule then comes into play as one half of the parenting unit wants to relent and the other to forge on. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could negotiate with the recalcitrant ones and agree a common way ahead, instead of forever sniping and bickering at each other?

It comes as something of a relief, then, to hear of today’s launch, at midday, by a hard core of Remainers. A new start, they say, a campaign to – albeit with some reserve pessimism in hand – back Brexit all the way to its conclusion. It’s not so much total capitulation; they will challenge whenever they see the government backsliding (because, of course, Labour is no opposition at all) but in general this is a welcome change from the last nine months.

Lead by none other than Anna Soubry the working group called, somewhat unimaginatively ‘Best for Britain’ includes other former antagonists such as John Major, William Hague, that old windbag Kinnock and arch spin-surgeon Alastair Campbell. Lord knows, it’s scarcely credible, but it’s about bloody time. Even Eddie Izzard has signed up!

Farage has cautiously welcomed the new group, but has made it crystal clear he doesn’t trust them and will be keeping a close watch from the pub, but Tim Farron, not surprisingly, has said he wants nothing to do with it. To that end he has, bizarrely, managed to co-opt Michael Heseltine into his bid to make the Limp Demics the leading pro-EU force in the land. Quite what impact on the debate the conjoined might of Tarzan and ‘Minor Fart’ will have is anybody’s guess.

Only, you have you wonder, just how long are these uneasy alliances likely to last? I mean, even just two days ago, all the heavies on the 48% side were frothing at the mouth and insisting they would not back down under any circumstance and that Brexit must, literally, be stopped. Maybe they were thinking of putting a fence in its way... or even an actual ‘stop’ sign; we British are suckers for following a sign.

Or maybe we should take it all at face value and actually receive them gracefully into the fold; allies at last in getting the best for all our sakes, now and in the future. We should all back Best for Britain and putting aside our enmities work together for a better Britain and a better Europe. Now, wouldn’t that be more constructive than the fool’s paradise of ever closer union?

An EU spokesman... any day of the year.

Lest you think that this is too good to be true, just wait until lunchtime and see. But, if you really can't wait, go back to the top of the page and check out the first letter of each paragraph. The signs are there and only a complete fool would neglect to read the runes.