Homage to Catalonia

The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain, they say. There was little sign of precipitation in Barcelona yesterday as the sun shone down brightly on the brave Catalan freedom fighters, or merciless wreckers of the constitution as many would have it. Once again we see the diametric opposition of the happy optimists and the miserable pessimists. In Spain it is the left who are broadly supportive of Catalan independence, whereas everywhere else it is the left who are the killjoys.

For this is what it is, this desire to stamp out the joyous human yearning for liberation. Entrepreneurs, go-getters, call them what you will. Pioneers, brave new worlders, people who long for change, for something new, for something over which they feel they have control. In other words, Brexit in a nutshell. Right on cue, the EU has declared that it does not recognise Catalonia’s claim. Of course it doesn't. 

The first instinct of big government is the urge to oppress, to subjugate to stamp on the sunny, upturned faces for freedom and bring them to heel. No wonder socialist states seem to have such an admiration for islam, they have so much in common; joyless inhibitors of spontaneity and mirth. So while Leanne Woods has called upon the Welsh assembly to recognise a free Catalonia, and many in the SNP say the same, the official, po-faced UK position is to side with the bloc. If we had an independent  English parliament you can bet your life it would come out for the little guy.

Nationalism has been portrayed as Nazism; it’s not. It is only natural to want to belong, but that doesn’t mean the bigger the herd the better. The bigger the herd the more likely it is that parts of it will want to wander off to find their own pastures. Even the United States is what it says - a union of states, but with each one proudly retaining its own identity. And the US has a long tradition of distrusting federal agency over self-determinism, backing the loner against the might of government, cheering on the maverick.

The direction of travel for society may have been heading for the dead-end of ever larger central control for some time but maybe that tide is turning. The next evolution of human organisation might not be the one world government beloved of the scaredy cats but a new devolution into manageable, human sized, identity-based units. I know, let’s call them nations; there’s a novel concept.

Angela isn't happy

Of course, if you are dull and serf-like you may prefer to amble along with the herd and live your life limited by others. Nothing wrong with that; the majority might even be better off that way, but how dull a prospect is that? Fortune favours the brave and as Shakespeare said, there is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. In 1587 Sir Francis Drake set sail for the bay of Cádiz to singe the beard of the king of Spain. Today, the king of Spain may be well be Angela Merkel, but her beard is long overdue for a singe.

Pejorative? No thanks, I'm with the Prudential.

Chocolate stabber, shirt lifter, fudge packer – who hasn’t used a homophobic epithet or two? And if you say you haven’t you must be a bit of a poof. I say a ‘bit’ of a poof because your actual full-on, shove-your-cock-up-another-man’s-arse, out-and-proud gayers are not shy with the self-effacing pejorative. And quite inventive with the invective. Queer dear? Who isn’t, these days? In a world where whatever you last feverishly dreamed you might imagine you wish to be, so be it. You could even come out as a gender ambivalent toast rack and nobody would be allowed to so much as bat an eyelid.

So, the sanctimonious trashing of Jared O'Mara by both left and right is a bit rich. Let he who is without sin and all that... Okay, some of it was maybe a bit strong and all of it now spectacularly misjudged, especially coming hot on the heels of Clive Lewis and on-your-knees-bitch-gate. But the sad thing is that while elements of the Labour Party are feverishly doing the work of the Tory spin doctors, it is a disappointment that those Tory spinners haven’t chosen to just ignore it all and let the opposition bring itself efficiently into disrepute.

The British used to have a reputation for being good sports and preferred a fair fight; this is far from even-handed. Yes the man seems to have been a bit of a low-life by current standards, serially insulting pretty much every possible identity grouping, but at least he hasn’t singled out one minority to bully. So it’s a tad embarrassing to see the side which really should hold the moral high ground – the real party of the workers – jumping aboard the trash train. In a shit-slinging competition nobody ends up smelling of roses.

Anyway, you don’t want to get the Labour whip withdrawn, for heaven’s sake. Let him dangle there, stinking up the place and bringing the party's moral standing under scrutiny again and again. After all, if you’re offended you’ve almost certainly chosen to be, unless you have really never, ever used mocking, hurtful words aimed at individuals or at specific groups of individuals. I know I have and I reserve my right to continue doing so. Judge me, why don’t you? Oh, wait, you already did.

So what? Our political class have long been exposed. Far from being solemn upholders of the law and defenders of the nation they have become hostages to fickle fortune and bend, like delicate straws, in the slightest of breezes. To court popularity the Tories rip off Labour slogans and policies; in desperation to gain the throne Labour appeals to the lowest common denominators. Standards in public life went out of the window a good few decades ago, so here’s the open goal to aim for:

Brexit, Trump, Sebastian Kurz, Le Pen, Geert Wilders, Ukip... These aren’t any more ‘far-right’ than Tony Benn was Joseph Stalin. Their ‘rise’ is a reaction to the indifference of mainstream politicians to the real lives of their constituents. The surge in what is derisively referred to as populism (it used to called 'democracy') is exactly because of the grandstanding condemnation of idiots who would better be ignored. The electorate really doesn’t care how virtuous you are; it cares about what you can actually do for all of us; not just for discrete groups of us. 

Rule Number One: No pooftahs!

Nobody apart from the members of these discrete groups cares one jot about the ever more finely chopped and diced UK population. Ghettoes, physical or merely suggested, do none of us any good, but for too many years that’s the way our supposed multiculturalism has driven us. When a party appears that can truly put identity politics to one side and stick to a simple narrative of single nationhood, driven by the common good, that party will deserve its victory. Until then I guess it’s back to politics as usual... you big bunch of pooftahs.

The future will be with you shortly

Among all the many imponderables there is one, highly noticeable effect of the Brexit vote and that is the clear division between those who voted to leave and those who voted to remain. On the one side is a band of bright, positive individuals, eager to greet the future and straining at the bit to get on with the job. On the other side is a Borg-like hive of naysaying malcontents, parroting their leaders and claiming to know what lies ahead. And their collective vision is a nightmare.

But there is good news for all. The future is simultaneously unknowable, exciting, filled with opportunity and ‘what you make it’. We learn from past mistakes – arguably this is the main reason the slim majority voted to leave – and try and avoid them. Humans are decision makers, using knowledge and experience to make every fuck up a new and different fuck up. Sometimes, despite ourselves, we might actually get it right. Leavers are not rushing to hurl themselves blindly off a cliff edge; they are looking for new ways to fly.

Into every life a little rain must fall. In the past we have experienced world wars, the sudden decline of massive industries, natural disasters and plain bad luck. People have bet the farm and lost. They have entered into disastrous marriages and ended up broken, yet they mend in time. Some people will lose out after we leave; those people should be planning to minimise their losses. Some people will gain and they should be planning to maximise their gains.

But for most people, the world will simply keep on turning. You will still be able to do the things you do now. Your pay packet will never quite be enough to pay for all you crave. Interest rates will rise and fall, pension plans will ebb and flow and just when you are back in the black your car/house/kidneys may fail. Some people will deal with calamity by calmly picking themselves up and getting back on their feet. Others will go to pieces. At the moment I think we are getting a clear idea about which group is which.

If I was an employer, looking to add to my workforce – and one day statistics may bear this out – how you voted might be of great interest to me. Remainers seem to be relentless pessimists, very happy to point to every negative thing as being directly caused by their Brexit bête noire; how might this indicate how they will cope should my business one day be in trouble? On the other hand, Brexiteers seem to be happy souls, full of drive and keen to make a success of it, whatever happens. Just a thought.

So, when you next see a Remainer blasting all Leavers as poorly educated, small-minded, xenophobic, regressive troglodytes, you may want to bear the following in mind. Such Remainers are ignorant wreckers, oblivious to any ‘facts’ which detract from their doomsday narrative and eager to cling to any evidence, no matter how flimsy, or how contrived, that everything will end badly. The derided Leavers, in contrast, are ready for the challenge, up for the fight and will do their very best to make a success out of it. As we face ‘the end of the world as we know it’ whose company would you prefer to keep?

Starving

Tom Watson is reported to be on hunger strike to express solidarity with prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. But maybe he's secretly hoping to just to shed a few pounds before Christmas, or get back to his beach body weight? I wonder if he recognises that doing something from which he may directly benefit is hardly a sacrifice. I wonder also if he has fully thought it through. It’s one thing for somebody under extreme stress to be capable of denying themselves sustenance, but for somebody living a comfortable life and obviously fond of pudding this might prove an impossible challenge.

What if nobody notices? Or worse, what if he openly flaunts this fast but gorges himself nightly like a muslim in ramadan? If the weight doesn’t fall off him in an appallingly unhealthy manner questions will be asked in the house. On the other hand it may start a trend; who wouldn’t like to see John Prescott or Eric Pickles stepping away from the pies? Of course, Tom Watson may be made of sterner stuff and he isn’t the only parliamentarian to have tried this.

The British Isles' most famous hunger-striker and one who carried right through to the end was Roibeárd Gearóid Ó Seachnasaigh, better known as Bobby Sands, who led the 1981 protest in the infamous Maze prison. The strike was in protest against the removal of Special Category Status for IRA political prisoners, treating them merely as criminals. During this period he was elected to the British Parliament as an Anti H-Block candidate. His subsequent death in prison was a clarion call to the faithful and caused a spike in both recruitment to the cause and renewed terrorist activity. Be careful what you wish for, Tom.

Actually, 1981 wasn’t the first time for Bobby Sands. While he was in prison in Long Kesh in the early 1970s he tried to do something similar. During his three years under lock and key he announced his decision to go on hunger strike, alone this first time, to protest against his treatment. But this attempt only lasted a few days before he broke the fast. As everybody expects Tom Watson to buckle early, perhaps this is the model he intends to follow, rather than the ten-in-the-Maze example.

Tom - no more pies - Watson, on hunger strike yesterday

Records have now been released from that period, including the testimony of the guard who persuaded Sands to give up on his mission. It seems they had become close – as far as prisoner and jailer can become – and many conversations were had while he was refusing to eat. He was recently interviewed for a Panorama programme about the period and directly asked about how he had managed to get Sands to give up. “Well in the end it was quite easy,” Said the prison guard, “actually, it was a piece of cake.”

Community, innit?

Nick Ferrari was at his berating best yesterday, when doing battle with the phone-in public commenting on his suggestion that stop and search should be reinstituted. His reasoning? That the surge in London knife crime coincided exactly with the scaling back of stop and search. He stayed behind the line that most of us would have hovered over – that the ethnic make-up of London has a significant influence over these statistics. This view, common among the type of dreadful racists who no longer call parts of London home, is of course verboten these days.

Various callers chipped in, many taking him to task for expressing his thesis and blaming it instead on gang mentality and/or the reduction in police resources, oblivious to the blindingly simple observation that the gangs in question invariably shared certain characteristics. Easily targeted and very recognisable characteristics; the kind of characteristics that make stop and search pretty straightforward. Almost all of the callers that were against his proposition referred to their ‘community’.

As a white British person – one for whom a sense of community has long since been a troublesome thing to espouse – that word means only one thing; it means people who are ‘not like us’. Community used to imply cooperating, rubbing along and contributing. But the word today evokes antagonistic, segregated colonies of largely non-indigenous people, largely living on benefits and absorbing a disproportionate chunk of what are euphemistically referred to as ‘resources’. Money, is what that means; follow the welfare cheques and there is where you’ll find your communities.

Amid all this is the fantastic (literally) rise in the reporting of hate crimes. Well what would you expect when even the police themselves, normally timid about prosecuting property crime, are actively encouraging such reporting. Breitbart reports that they are visiting mosques to better increase such reporting. Oh, Breitbart you may cry, that’s even worse than the Daily Mail, but there is no smoke without fire.

So, even as we are as good as told that middle class victims are not worthy of assistance, with hate against minorities taking priority, the police ‘service’ is going out of its way to antagonise the people who pay the taxes which pay their wages in favour of people who invariably don’t. For what other conclusion can be drawn from the idiocy of rainbow-flagged new police cars, gay pride police events and yesterday the embarrassing ‘paint your nails against slavery’ idiocy.  

Twitter reacted in robust form, ridiculing Avon & Somerset Police in particular, whose officers were to be seen sporting garish colours with glee and an apparent lack of self-awareness. As community outreach it was ill-considered and aimless – what the hell had one to do with the other? It wasn’t a great stretch that they classified some responses as hate crimes in themselves.

You're nicked; that colour, with your complexion?

With such visible pursuit of those who post hurty words on social media - the word normal has become the most hateful word you can use – together with the regular insistence that they cannot afford to challenge more physical crime and the regular jolly japes that usually backfire on them, it is little wonder that crime is on the up. Given that it appears you are more likely to go to jail for word crimes than for burglary, or stabbing, or rape or assault, your regular crims must think all their birthdays have come at once. May I suggest that a return to proactive physical policing would be welcome and there must be some dinosaurs in the force who are longing for a good old dust up with the bad guys. Once they’ve removed their make up, obviously.