See what you’ve done?

The permissive society exploded into the world’s consciousness in the swinging sixties. Anything goes. Make love, not war. Charles Manson. Okay, scratch that last, but nevertheless the great ills of the modern world have their roots in the way the world changed after the middle of the twentieth century. The wars to end all the wars - I, II, Korea, Vietnam, Cold – ended, and we entered the world of mass communication, the rise and rise of the consumer generations, nebulous but unrealisable notions of equality and something called social justice.

There came about a refusal to judge people for their actions; people were products of their circumstance only the class-cursed establishment would think punishment was just. Post-modernism challenged objective reality, morality became relative and even the very nature of truth was brought into question. If stabbing and raping and stealing and vandalism are a part of your cultural inclinations, who are we to say what’s right or wrong? After all, everything bad in the world is because of western imperialism. Please, formerly oppressed people, come here, enlighten us, have our stuff.

The counter-cultural revolutionaries said stick it to ‘the man’. The educators threw away generations of proven methods and adopted ideologies instead. And who says the shiny-faced, happy, well-fed nuclear family is the right model for humanity; why shouldn’t a child have two daddies, three... if the daddies want it that way? Then, possibly the greatest shackle of all, along came the human rights movement; a movement so wedded to the principles it invents on an almost daily basis that it will brook no dissent in its quest for ‘fairness’ and consider no absurdity invalid.

And where did we end up? Divided. Not into many generally tolerant little tribes, but into two massive blocs loosely described as left and the rest. If you are not of the left you are far-right, by their definition and your only purpose is to be the Eloi, to provide sustenance on which the Morlocks gorge. The majority of ordinary people go about their business, frustrated by but shrugging off the weird excesses of the latest cause célèbre. Meanwhile soviet-style show trials are held on television and across social media.

But the accused isn’t judged by a judge, instead by a self-selected international jury of partisans schooled in the mantras of ‘progressive’ dogma. Now we judge the judge himself – and of course we should – but the court of leftist opinion holds Judge Kavanaugh to be guilty until proved innocent. Better yet that he should be allowed no protestation of innocence because the new orthodoxy of victimhood decrees that the accuser (provided they are the right type of victim) must always be believed, feted even, and held above the normal standards of evidence.

Glorious socialism!

All of this hasn’t just happened; it is not a phenomenon conjured up from nothing. This now regular debacle of ludicrous moral grandstanding is the almost inevitable outcome of postmodern thought. The cultural Marxism which pervaded universities in the 1970s has trickled down into schools and the wolves in sheep’s clothing have occupied positions of power in western governments. The feedback loop created means that the tyranny of many minorities now holds sway over those who can legitimately be called normal.

But it has gone too far. The leftists have been tolerated, like over-indulged children. It’s time to put the toys away and they really don’t like it. Brexit, Trump, AfD, Sebastian Kurz, the Five Star movement are not the extremists the left insist on portraying them as, but the ordinary working people pushing back against the follies of youthful fancy given too much credence. It is not too much to call them spoilt, because this is what they are and this is what they have done. 

Power to the people!*

Based on our glorious leader’s stirring speechifying, freedom fighters at my works have struck the first blow for liberty by going on a work-to-rule, They will be collecting their cards at lunchtime. Victory! It matters not what the confected dispute was about, the simple fact is that the business owner is an autocrat; his gaff, his rules. So, as a result of his annoyance he has introduced a new system. Admittedly it’s a bloody great bludgeon to crack a thin-skinned peanut of a non-problem. But while it hasn’t bothered those of us who toe the line, it has, somehow, bothered some of those who maybe don’t.

It’s much like socialism in that regard. Most people go to work, do what is required, take their pay and do with it what they want. Others seem to find time to devote more and more of their energies to being dissatisfied and given that misery loves company they expend even more effort trying to recruit others to the cause. Thus are shop stewards born and should Labour gain power under the current regime – Derek-bloody-Hatton has been allowed back in – we can look forward to wildcat strikes, sympathy walk-outs and flying pickets (everybody’s favourite was that one with the mutton chops).

Younger readers (who am I kidding? You’re all over fifty, admit it) won’t know about this, because it has been redacted from the official party history of the Glorious People’s Republik of Hackney and Liverpool, but back in the 1970s, workers in private firms sometimes came out on strike in sympathy with nationalised company workers determined to harm the country’s prospects. Unlike the governments of the time, such businesses didn’t cave to the threat, but simply locked the gates; the turkeys had voted with their feet for their very own early Christmases.

Power to the people is all well and good, but with power comes responsibility and it is very fucking irresponsible to try and damage your own place of work. Actually, in our case, I have a sneaking suspicion that it may have been a deliberately obtuse ploy to provoke a reaction. And thanks to this glorious national practice-strike, the first blows have been struck against corporate – actually one-man, private – capitalism and the first of the wounded are on their way to the dole queue. Round one winner, the boss.

Of course under the Dear Leader such actions must be made illegal; how dare private companies decide for themselves how to go about their business? Instead the outrage will pave the way for the state to decide what business you are in, how many people you employ and what you pay them  and hey bingo – full communism! Hoorah! But there is one wee snagette I can see. How will this work when the workers are given their promised shares in the means of production? How will they go on strike against themselves?

They're putting the banned back together...

A small matter, I am sure, for the beauty of socialist theory is that you make it up as you go along. Something doesn’t work? Well, it clearly wasn’t real socialism, was it? No, comrades, under real socialism what you need to do is... Keep stoking the fires of envy, keep telling people they’ve never had it so bad, prescribe the way forward to Nirvana and when people get lost tell them they just didn’t do it properly. Genius!

Note:
1. Power to the People = Power to the same old people, obviously

Bully For You

My, wasn’t Papa Jeremy angry yesterday? It is all the fault of those evil Tories but, mark my words, The Dear Leader has all the answers. And he knows how to deliver them, properly punctuated by table thumping, pointing and clearly enunciating how Labour will reverse the cruel austerity of the last hundred years of Tory rule. Yes, comrades, the facts are with us.

During Tory austerity over a billion people have died, the world has heated up so far that giant lizards stalk the land and plague and pestilence are only kept at bay by the last few remaining front-line nurses of the NHS, who are bravely resisting all the filthy capitalist money being thrown at them by the Thatchers in greater quantities than ever before, diluting its polluting influence by siphoning it off to management.

What we need, my dear fellow revolutionaries, is to use the enemy’s tactics against the enemy itself. Stamping on babies’ heads, literally taking food from the mouths of the homeless and labelling people from other lands as foreigners is hideous Toryism, but we must not shrink from the fray. Our people – the most disadvantaged in society – must be protected from the horrors of capitalism and until everybody is equal we will not rest.

See that fat cat employer on 85,000 ugly capitalist pounds a year? That bastard who had the gall to re-mortgage his home to start a business and employ people on LESS THAN HE EARNS? We will tax him until he begs for mercy. See that ugly, towering tall person, the one with the temerity to look down on shorter people? We will cut him down to size. See that disgusting, obese, indolent, slobbering... oh, wait, that’s one of ours; as you were.

Those inventors? They didn’t invent that; we did. That captain of industry? He didn’t turn around that ailing business; we did. Rooney? Those goals were scored by us, the proletariat, society. The Thatchers say there is no such thing as society – or at least we keep telling you that they say that – but we know that society is ALL we have. And we must each give our all to society so that we can work together to defeat the monstrous influence of capitalism which has flooded the world with wealth and brought ruin to all who acquire it.

Turn away from the gold, brothers and sisters, eschew the trappings of success and instead revel in our enlightening equality. Under the glorious new socialist project led by the People’s Revolutionary Action Task-force for Society (P.R.A.T.S) – a whole bunch of them – we will educate and mould all individuals until they blend indistinguishably from one another into one unified, obedient mass.

Glorious Socialism!

We are not afraid of the challenge ahead – we will use all means necessary to bring about harmonious conformity. There will be no dissent, no upraised voices; enemies of the state will be dealt with swiftly and finally. This time, socialism will work... if it is the last thing you do. What’s that? Well, of course the leader is different; he genuinely is more equal than the rest of us. Now, shut up and sing The Red Flag.

A very naughty boy

The latest kinder, gentler politics kerfuffle is footage of a feckless young character called Sion Rickard, a classic example of what you get when you abandon discipline and rigour in education, suggesting that Toryism can be educated out. Don’t you just love it when the young and unemployable explain to those of us who pay for everything, who build everything, who take care of everything, how society ought to work? Sion has, of course deleted his social media presence, which announced him variously to be vacuous, flimsy, inconsequential and arty, so the vicious Tory thugs couldn’t point and laugh.

Oops, too late. If you’re going to pop up on Jeremy Christ’s stage and thump the tub for applause by trotting out the tired old dogma of the Nasty Tory narrative you ought, really, to have the bottle for the fight. He said – on education, for which he is a clearly an authoritative spokesman: “If we give them a proper Education ...we will probably have no Tories”. Cue thunderous applause from the drooling stooges; what a shame that the evidence shows pretty much that well-educated, gainfully employed people eventually graduate toward the Conservative view of life.

But hey, when you are building a movement (what the hell does that even mean?) you must never let the truth get in the way of a piss-poor aphorism. As Dawn Butler said the other day “Better to break the law than break the poor”; shame she missed the bit about how New-New-Labourism will actually make the poor. Forget the statistics, forget the polls and look at the simple reality; socialism can only ever work if everybody buys into it and that runs counter to human nature. Rickard’s naïve dream relies on the cult-like grooming of young minds to reject the family and adopt the tribe; the rag-tag rabble of ‘disadvantaged’ minorities who deem themselves entitled to a share of the producers’ output.

Jeremy Christ himself said in his sermon: “The super-rich are on borrowed time.” No, Jeremy, their time is bought, paid for and secured away from grasping states in offshore vaults on private islands. You will never be able to touch the super-rich; that’s how they got that way. Those you will go after are the lower-hanging fruit, the fruit you can squeeze, as Denis Healey gleefully announced, until the pips squeak. This was the Chancellor who presided over the economy and the political climate which brought about the ‘winter of discontent’. How did that go for you, Den? 

I work longer hours than all of my immediate colleagues, for which I get paid considerably more (don’t tell them!) I avoid tax by ploughing every penny I can spare into my pension. I expect to have work until at least 70 before being able to retire with any degree of comfort. Under a Corbynite government my thrift would be deemed ‘fat cattery’ and taxed so that others may retire earlier. You may be able to persuade young parents that their children’s interests lie in embracing punitive taxation on those who have accumulated some wealth, but try taking that wealth from their grandparents.

Jesus Corbyn, Jeremy Christ...

The conclusions from the Labour 2018 Conference? That old socialists never die and that they never learn. That the politics of envy is alive and well and stoking the flames of class hatred anew. That the false prophets of equality, diversity and multiculturalism put doctrine before cold, hard truths and bellow for the nebulous rewards of ‘social justice’ from their pulpits while having no regard to actual justice. And that there is no fool like an old fool. I think the second coming of the Messiah may need to be postponed.

Clueless

To be fair to Jeremy Corbyn – and Labour as a whole – they have some lovely ideas. No, really, they do; the kind of ideas that must have crossed everybody’s mind at some point. For instance: everybody should have a job commensurate with their abilities, which pays sufficient for them to raise a family. They should live in a decent and affordable home, adequate for their needs and be able to eat good food in sufficiency without undergoing hardship to do so. And after their working lives they should be able to afford a long, healthy, happy retirement before going off to the farm.

People should enjoy quality education and encourage succeeding generations to embrace the advantages it bestows, while not denigrating good, honest toil for the less academic. A bin-man should have the same opportunity to live a satisfying life as a brain surgeon and assistance and encouragement should always be available for those who wish to explore avenues new. You should be free to pursue your lifestyle preferences just as you should respect the choices of others.

It almost goes without saying that a decent society should provide healthcare, clean air, good transport and reliable infrastructure to deliver power and communication links, water and sanitation to all. Nobody should be sleeping on the streets, nobody should be constantly afraid of violence and everybody should be able to go about their daily lives without being intimidated in any way. Those who transgress should be swiftly and humanely dealt with and everybody should have access to good legal representation.

See; who could disagree? But surely every party has the same wish list? Is there really a significant proportion of the electorate who would vote for parties which promise the opposite? The fact is that the only way in which one British political party is distinguishable from any other is ‘the plan’. And as always Labour’s plan for all these wonderful-sounding aspirations is to simply legislate for it and tax the rich. In other words, you’d better be happy, or else prepare to receive the full force of the law.

Jeremy models his outfit for 

the Glorious Leader's address

I hear nothing new from the Labour Conference (and I expect no better from the Tories next week) instead I hear only echoes of a failed past. Nationalise, soak the rich, grab the land and if Dawn Butler’s absurd utterings are to be taken at face value, bring back Militant Tendency. Labour – once a party united in its determination to represent the working class - has become bi-polar; Dr Jeremy and Mr Hyde, two personalities struggling to control the same body-politic. If you want the proof, ask any Labour MP what the party stance is on Brexit.