Still waiting...

The problem with growing up is it never happens quickly enough to help. You only get to understand what it really means when you get there and then, when you attain great age and the gift of wisdom settles softly on your shoulders, you find can’t even give it away – nobody wants to know, grandad. By this time you have also consigned much of your own callowness to the soft focus mists of unreliable memory. Yes, you cringe at occasional sharp recollections of your own naive follies, but you also imagine that the gilded youth of your day was somehow better, nobler in intent than now.

The youth of today, eh? It simply cannot be the case that young people are more stupid, less well educated, less disciplined, less well prepared to tackle the world than they were in generations that came before. It can’t be, because this is the complaint of every generation towards those who come after. Followed to its logical conclusion – and this feeling pervades writing from the earliest times – the human race ought to have regressed to grubbing around for roots and berries to survive. It’s something of a surprise we haven’t re-grown tails.

 When I was a child the Internet just didn’t exist, so there is an obvious skill today’s kids possess which was beyond my ken. Ah but, we old codgers insist, they can’t spell though can they? Maybe not, but they can converse in an instant with others all around the world in a language we only think we understand. And just as language evolves – and English appears to be pleasingly malleable – so do sensibilities. So what that many young people appear to reject the nuclear family model we earnestly believe is the ‘proper’ way to build a society? Maybe their globalised, multicultural ideal could work... if it weren’t for us dinosaurs.

So what, am I arguing we should bow down and make way for the new revolution to sweep our world away? Not one bit of it; we should fight it tooth and nail, just as they are fighting for change. Because the counter-intuitive conclusion is that the real equilibrium is the quest for change; constant change. And it is a special kind of change in which everything ultimately stays the same. Is it any wonder that so many movements carry the prefix ‘neo’? The French, I seem to recall, have a phrase for it, if only I could remember it. Ah, memory.

Memory is an interesting human trait, or at least the way we use and abuse it is. Our memories are horribly fallible and also horrifyingly manipulable. We can ‘remember’ events in which we never participated. We can even remember things which never happened. And parts of our memories of things that never happened are also some of the building blocks of our individual character. In other words, even who we imagine we are is partly a work of fiction – and a fiction often written in the words of others.

Know thyself, the Greeks said – and this was quite a while back – ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’. And yet, here we are, still struggling with the concept. Left-right politics, young-old conflicts, black-white contradictions... are there really clear cut boundaries between right and wrong? If there were, the slippery, unsavoury profession of law would not be necessary. And movements would not spring up to create and exploit division. Instead they would seek to work together.

It simply cannot be that everything about capitalism disadvantages the poor. Similarly everything about communism can’t always end in genocide. Hell, even the LibDems might have the odd nugget of a good idea, here and there. But we are all blinded to some degree or another by the simplicities of our own solutions. And we are all similarly resistant to compromise, no matter how much we believe otherwise. Given that the unknowable future will be what we all make it, shouldn’t we make it together?

The wisdom of youth and the energy of age

That aspiration is eminently sensible; of course we should work as a team. It requires the simplest of logic that if we have a common goal we can best achieve it by all pulling in the same direction. In fact, so logical a solution is it that exactly this answer has been suggested many times throughout the ages, by many people... often young people. But what do they know?

The Nazis are coming!

It’s begun. But don’t panic – you haven’t missed anything. Watch as, day by day, every incident which can’t be pinned on migrants or muslims will be dubbed the work of neo-Nazi groups. Far right extremism is now in open season and any weapon to hand may be used to attack it, real or imagined. Not that I condone extremism of any kind, of course – far from it - but just watch the media feeding frenzy, now that their new target has been officially designated. Went to a fancy dress party as Hitler in the 1970s? Nazi. Quoted Goebbels? Nazi. Read the Daily Mail? Literally Hitler.

Notice that I am not defending Nazism in any way here, but the mere fact that I am not excoriating it, merely observing how others react, is tantamount in the fevered machinations of the politically attuned brain, to tacit approval. You are either a hooded, masked, Molotov cocktail lobbing, free speech trampling, book burning ANTI-Nazi, or you are the actual thing. The other day somebody told me that because I was antipathetic towards the brown-shirt antics of the antifa rent-a-mob, I must therefore be a fascist myself. Why, even  Jacob Rees-Mogg is being dubbed a Nazi sympathiser now.

Why? An old adage says that if you are taking flak it is because you are over the target. Brexit day draws nigh, the desperation is palpable and operation discredit is in full swing. The many contradictory thought strands of distressed Remainers have coalesced and distilled down to this one thing: forget the vague and dithery ‘old people didn’t know what they were voting for’ trope and the ‘believing lies on a bus’ malarkey. If you voted for Leave you must be the worst kind of Nazi because look at the hell you have unleashed.

The sainted souls of Far Right Watch, unblemished in thought and deed and doctrine, are actively searching all stories of violence and finding ways to brand them as actions of the right. Aiding and abetting them are the carefully implanted notions that only white people can be racists and that all Nazis are white. Self-defence by a white man can easily be spun as neo-Nazi violence if the other party can be shown to have the merest tint of BAME ancestry. And only the very bravest, noblest of white people dare speak up against their own.

The irony is not lost on me, however, that by decrying all of islam for their failure to reform the worst violent excesses of their religion the door has been opened to blame all white people for Nazism. The difference, however, is that it is largely white activists, employing the propaganda tactics of the Nazis to label other people as dangerous fanatics. Indeed, Anna Soubry is currently riding that deranged wave in Westminster. 

Brexiteers are, literally Hitler...

Where does it end? I don’t know, but we can all see early how it begins. Be temperate in your language, measured in your reactions, but don’t back down. They are looking to goad you into giving them ‘evidence’ that you are part of the problem they are creating. Don’t let them. And particularly don’t allow yourself to be silenced for fear of being labelled. And just in case their fictions gain real traction and begin to win moral ground, you may wish to consider keeping those jackboots polished and ready for when you have to escape South America.

Poverty Trap

According to one of my recent Twitter inquisitors – you know, those who imagine you want to debate them and demand you justify your every pronouncement with statistics and facts and who then shotgun your timeline with their own ‘facts’ which turn out to be made-up quotes and memes and the opinions of polemicists for their team; them fellas – there are up to eight million working poor in Britain today. Well, so what? In late Victorian Britain the census returned a population of around 30 million, around a quarter of which were in actual, subsistence-level poverty.

By subsistence-level we are talking about being scarcely able to eat enough to survive. The life expectancy for the poor in cities was around 35 and slightly better at around 40 for rural areas. Given that the population is well over twice what it was then and people expect to live twice as long I’d say only having the same absolute number of poor is pretty good in itself. But the numbers tell a misleading story. Our current ‘working poor’ are generally not living six to a room. Most will have heating and they will almost certainly possess refrigerators, televisions and mobile phones; a poverty the Victorians could not, in their wildest imaginings, ever imagine aspiring to.

The first poverty trap is imagining you are poor. Pick up thy smart-phone and Google up some images of genuine poverty, third-world poverty, not might-have-to-give-Starbucks-a-miss poverty. Not, not-going-on-a-foreign-holiday-this-year poverty. And certainly not can’t-afford-the-latest-iPhone poverty. The second poverty trap is imagining that other people owe you a living; this is the ridiculous infantilism that western social policies have created. And whatever other delusions you may harbour about what you are worth and what you deserve, please rid yourself of the notion that a socialist system will change your circumstances.

Probably the biggest poverty trap is being gullibly ensnared by the promises of Labour-like parties when they are out of power. Throughout my life I have heard Labour banging on about ending poverty, spreading the idea that there is some sort of collusion among ‘billionaire’ employers to keep them downtrodden. Did it ever occur to you that many employers – probably most employers – would love to double your wages; what could be better than a loyal, happy, unstressed workforce? But when Labour-like governments open the borders to cheap labour, what do you imagine this excess supply does to pay rates?

You want ‘freedom’? Well, free yourselves. Seriously, look at the example of some of these incomers taking your jobs – work harder, longer, faster, smarter. Work two jobs, three. Start a side-line business; unless you try it you will never know what you are capable of. There are people out there who genuinely need support, who would love to be able to go to work; work gives your life purpose. Living off the labours of others is not worthy of anybody who can push a broom, lift a shovel, pack shelves, harvest crops.

The disabled do deserve our support, but being a bit slow at school is not a disability, having poor eyesight is not disabled, having a shitty attitude is no excuse for indolence. Oh it’s Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, is it? It’s ME, is it? Come back to me for assistance for your disability when you’ve written a novel only by moving your eyes. Like many truly disabled people Christopher Nolan made more of his life than the many millions who sit on their arses and wait for it to come to them. 

Downtrodden masses? Your choice...

Move your focus away from the rich; you don’t have nothing because they have everything; that’s what socialists like to tell you. It is a comforting lie. The real poverty trap is being poor and convincing yourself that you can do nothing to escape from that state. Like an institutionalised prisoner remaining in his cell while the door is wide open maybe you fear independence, but, despite a certain distasteful historical context, work will set you free. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for others; *the only sure fire way to help the poor is not to be poor.

(*Attributed to Ayn Rand, although I haven’t found a definitive source.)

A matter of quiet urgency

As a youngster I used to hear, quite regularly, “It’s free country”. Usually, this was in response to somebody taking offence at somebody having a bit of fun. Quite often it was employed to excuse behaviour which may have been questionable. But, within easy memory of the world war against Germany’s oppression and waiting uneasily for nuclear death in the cold war, the idea of Britain – Great Britain – not being a free country would have been unthinkable. “I may not agree with what you say, etc...”

But today, that important principle is regarded as lightly as a motorway speed limit; it’s not a rule, it’s a suggestion. There are curious forces at large in the land; and while the new puritans are shutting down Formula One grid girls and darts walk-on girls, others have their prohibition sights set on bigger trophies. As well as the free speech stance, Voltaire gave us many other insights and maxims, one of which concerns being aware of whom you are not allowed to criticise.

Thus Morrisons and other supermarkets commit halalicide by quietly introducing more products which conform to islamic ideals; meeting the demands of a small part of their customer base without consulting the majority. Thus Manchester Art Gallery removes Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs in order to provoke a discussion about what can and can’t be seen. And QC Max Hill, insisting that the term ‘islamist terrorism’ must not be used in case we mistakenly describe acts of terror carried out by muslims, in the name of allah, while shouting allah hu-akbar and administering uniquely islamic-styled terrors as somehow connected to islam.

All this might even earn a shred of respect were the principles of shutting down debate applied across the spectrum. But no; while ‘the patriarchy’ (that’s you and me, fellas) is denied a voice, Harriet Harman’s ‘sisters’ are given a megaphone. While ‘old people’, who have actually built the world, are ridiculed and told their values are evil, student activists, who have yet to contribute a philosophical bean, are trying to ban speakers, ban words, tear down statues and hide in special safe spaces where they must hear no alternative opinion.

And then, of course, there is the sentencing of DarrenOsborne and the undignified glee with which the media have seized upon this ‘proof’ that a sinister rise of the far right is happening under our noses. Put aside the fact that between Thomas Mair (Jo Cox’s killer) and Darren Osborne, 35 people were killed and a further 349 injured in planned terror attacks in the name of islam. No, the real threat – phew – is nothing to do with islam and guess who is responsible? Yep, bloody white supremacists and their fascist chums. Who would have thought, eh?

Well actually, nobody would have thought that , except for those who have a vested interest in promoting the idea of a ’far-right’ threat to peace. The intensity with which these factions deflect attention from those whose crimes they implicitly defend would be sinister if it weren’t simply stupid. Darren Osborne deserves his minimum 43 years, who could argue otherwise? But who thinks for one second that had the ‘islamist terrorists’ – for, make no mistake, that is their own driving ideology – been captured, rather than killed they would have been given comparable sentences?

There are non so blind...

As long as the majority opinions of white European peoples is sidelined in favour of accommodating the depravities and excesses of islamic terrorism; as long as they shut down the criticism of uncontrolled mass immigration and refusal to integrate; as long as governments refuse to address these concerns they are stoking up anger and disenfranchisement. Far from tackling the imagined ‘rise of the right’ they are causing it.

Allegorical

Here we are at the junction. The way ahead is blocked; it has been blocked for some time. Actually it’s not really blocked so much as rejected. We had a vote and decided we didn’t want to go to bloody Wolverhampton anyway; whose original idea was that? Seriously, when we started to plan our little away-day nobody thought that the road would lead us to one of the most deprived backwaters of the country. Plus, we spent a fortune thinking we were hiring a luxury air conditioned super-coach but here we are in this rattly, draughty minibus, the cab filling up with fumes as we idle at the crossroads.

Staying put isn’t an option – the lights will soon change, there are cars queueing behind and if we don’t make a decision the situation could get ugly. Not to mention we could all die of carbon monoxide poisoning. So come on, which way? Half the bus wants to go left, down an apparently pleasant road but one which peters out, becomes a gravel track and ends up with us bogged down in a muddy field, eating each other to survive. The other half of them are hankering for the wide open dual carriageway which leads almost anywhere.

The options are many, but it means more decisions and some people are so fed up with the whole thing that they’d almost rather carry straight on to bloody Wolverhampton and death by more-of-the-same. “At least we know what Wolverhampton has to offer.” they plead, but you can see they’re not entirely convinced. They know that the open road is an unexplored vastness with all sorts of possibilities but reject it in favour of dull, dull conformity. “We don’t know what we’d be voting for.” they argue; an argument that falls on deaf ears because seven to six we want to go left or right. Maybe we should toss a coin?

No, wait, we already did that... ages ago; so long ago it’s as if everybody forgot.  The coin said turn right, so why are we now arguing that toss? Surely, rather than repeating the whole tossing business we should just get on with implementing the decision? Now what’s happening? Oh, right the cross lights are changing, passing traffic is stopping and all the cars stacked up behind us are waiting to see what we do. Into gear, clutch out, slowly creep forwa... bugger, stalled. As the horns begin to blare we struggle to re-start and, too late, the lights are back on red.

Get on with it

Trump is president, whatever you feel about him. He is determined to push ahead. Theresa May is the only Prime Minister we have; whether that will last for much longer is up in the air. The elections are over, the referendum coin was tossed long ago. The presidential seat is occupied. But we can all be winners if, instead of arguing destructively over why we shouldn’t have chosen what we chose, we accept the way the coin fell and just get on with it. Sometimes, proceeding with a hasty plan is better than no plan at all; and it is always better to work together instead of stabbing each other in the back.