Thought Of The Day

This is a thread I have created for thoughts that don’t merit an entire post. Feel free to add your own thoughts in the comment section.

Thought of the Day #62 (15/05/22): Some people will spend their entire lives feeling like a victim and playing the victim card, not realising they were the ones oppressing themselves the entire time.

Joke Of The Day #46

What happens when you mix human DNA with goat DNA?

The Establishment Is Strange

If you believe the chinless, upper-class nobheads who dominate the media industry in the UK, Boris Johnson is entirely responsible for the pissed up antics of his minions in Number 10. The same media shills then affect to be shocked when Johnson attacks Keir Starmer for failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile when he was head of the Crown Prosecution Service. I am no fan of Boris Johnson, look back at this blog if you don’t believe me, but holding these two viewpoints is an almost perfect example of Orwellian doublethink.

Ignorance And Intelligence

The donkey told the tigers, “The grass is blue.”

The tiger replied, “No, the grass is green.”

The discussion became heated, and the two decided to submit the issue to arbitration, so they approached the lion.

Joke Of The Day #45

What four words begin the path to spiritual peace?

The Greatest Painter Of All Time

I hope everyone had a good Christmas and that 2022 is a better year than 2020 or 2021.

I recently attended Van Gogh Alive in Brisbane and would suggest anyone who is interested in art visits this exhibition if they get the chance…

I thought of Carlsberging the title of this post with ‘probably’ or ‘possibly’ but decided I would have the courage of my convictions and state directly that Vincent Van Gogh was the greatest painter of all time. His only possible contenders might be Leonardo da Vinci or early Pablo Picasso. You have the perfect right to disagree of course. But you would be wrong.😉

Emperor Elagabalus And Lia Thomas

I’ve referred to this quote many times in the past but I feel it is worth repeating…

“The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem ‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’ says the Teacher. ‘Utterly meaningless. Everything is meaningless.’ What do people gain from all their labours at which they toil under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look! This is something new’? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.”

Ecclesiastes 1:1-11

The Unbearable Conceit Of The Ruling Class

I haven’t been writing much recently as my new job is taking up most of my mental bandwidth. Fortunately, the school year ended in Queensland on Friday so I’ll be able to vent my spleen here more regularly. And I have lots of spleen to vent! For some unknown reason, a lot of people at my new school think I’m some sort of raving Communist.

From the Gospel of Luke 20: 45-47 and 21: 1-4 (see here)…

“In the hearing of all the people he said to the disciples, ‘Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honour at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.’ He looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.’” [My emphases]

Joke Of The Day #44

What crime has been committed here?

Joke Of The Day #43

How many Germans does it take to change a lightbulb?

Joke Of The Day #42

Women only call me ugly until they find out how much money I earn.

The Antithesis Of Sport Update

The original post from April 2021 was about the failed ‘super’ league project – The Antithesis of Sport.

The picture I’ve used for the header must be one of the most bizarre images I’ve seen in 45+ years of following English football.

Still, everything is right in the world as I type these words. England have beaten the might of Andorra and Ipswich are up to fourteenth in the third division after crushing Shrewsbury 2-1!

Wibble.

Joke Of The Day #41

What’s worse than waking up at a party and finding a cock drawn on your face?

Reblog: Nick Cohen

I thought I would share an article by Nick Cohen in today’s (03/10/21) Observer. Cohen, along with Kenan Malik and John Harris, is one of the few sane voices left at the nest of upper class buffoons and comedy racists that is the Guardian website. I don’t always agree with Cohen but here he is spot on.

Joke Of The Day #40

A bloke goes up to a woman in a bar.

Video Of The Day #33

This is what passes for political debate in 2021. Not rising energy prices, crumbling infrastructure, a bankrupt NHS, unaffordable housing or increasing inequality. No, what the British ruling class want to discuss is whether a bloke in a dress is really a woman.

As foul-mouthed Scottish comedian Jerry Sadowitz once said, “Fuck my pubic hair.”

Quote Of The Day #95

“The Tories in England long imagined that they were enthusiastic about monarchy, the church, and the beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about ground rent.”

Joke Of The Day #39

Picture Of The Day #61

Some things are beyond satire.

If you think wearing a dress at the Met Gala – whatever the fuck that is – is ‘left-wing,’ then you deserve to be transported to Cambodia circa 1977. Apparently, tickets to this Establishment shindig cost 24,000 quid. I’d gladly pay £24,000 not to be surrounded by the sort of people who go to this type of wankfest.

Another Guest Rant

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a big fan of Ipswich Town Football Club and have been since I can remember. I attended my first game at Portman Road in 1976 and despite the long term decline in the fortunes of the club since 2002 I would never consider supporting any other team. As the great Eric Cantona once said…

“You can change your wife, your politics, your religion. But never, never can you change your favourite football team.”

This post was inspired by the hideous result on Saturday 11th September when Ipswich lost 5-2 at home to Bolton – see here.

Joke Of The Day #38

A boy was in the bath with his mother.

Picture Of The Day #60

The level of ignorance here is something to behold.

The comments on the original tweet show what people outside Jimmy Savile House and Guardian Towers tend to think of the upper class performative ‘radicals’ from Stinky Conformism.

Is it too tinfoil hat to suggest that these ecofascists are funded by the oil companies to make concerns about climate change look ridiculous?

Video Of The Day #32

This is an excerpt from a video made earlier this year before the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan following the collapse of the US-backed government in Kabul.

Joke Of The Day #37

A childish joke for your Friday…

I went went to the zoo.

Islam Is Barbarism

Sometimes you hear something so outlandish that you struggle to process it…

“An eight-year-old Hindu boy is being held in protective police custody in east Pakistan after becoming the youngest person ever to be charged with blasphemy in the country.

“The boy’s family is in hiding and many of the Hindu community in the conservative district of Rahim Yar Khan, in Punjab, have fled their homes after a Muslim crowd attacked a Hindu temple after the boy’s release on bail last week. Troops were deployed to the area to quell any further unrest.”

I got this quote from that well-known nest of racists, white supremacists and Islamophobes at Guardian Towers (see here).

*If your answer to this question is anything other than a straight ‘no’ without caveat then either traditional religion or its modern variant ‘Wokeism’ has rotted your brain.

Picture Of The Day #59

Italian: Evolution of the Left.

‘Anni’: Year.

‘Oggi’: Today.

A Guest Rant About The Olympics

Lots of swearing in this post; in the unlikely event that any Guardian-reading safe spacer has stumbled across this blog, I suggest you head over to the Savilites’ news page to read about the oppression of one-legged, non-binary dwarves in Upper Volta.*

I seem to inhabit a different universe to the media/political class. I have no interest in reality television, Wimbledon, the Olympics or any of the other garbage that obsesses our morally-superior lords and masters. And that’s ok.

Joke Of The Day #36

A visual joke…

Quote Of The Day #94

“Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he lived and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He travel abroad or leave his country forever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police. Unlike the countries of the European continent, the state did not require its citizens to perform military service. An Englishman could enlist, if he chose, in the regular army, the navy, or the territorials. He could also ignore, if he chose, the demand of national defence. Substantial householders were occasionally called for duty service. Otherwise, only those helped the state who wished to do so. The Englishman paid taxes on a modest scale: nearly £200 million in 1913-14, or rather less than 8 per cent of the nation income. The state intervened to prevent the citizen from eating adulterated food or contracting certain infectious diseases. It imposed safety rules in factories, and prevent women, and adult males in some industries, from working excessive hours. The state saw to it that children received education up to the age of 13. Since 1 January 1909, it provided a meagre pension for the needy over the age of 70. Since 1911, it helped to insure certain classes of workers against sickness and unemployment. This tendency towards more state action was increasing. Expenditure on the social services had roughly doubled since the Liberals took office in 1905. Still, broadly speaking, the state acted only to help those who could not help themselves. It left the adult citizen alone.” [My emphasis]

Arrogance And Stupidity

I have said before that my least favourite combination of character flaws is arrogance and stupidity. I have also remarked that this statement itself is arrogant and reeks of intellectual snobbery.

I was musing about a comment made by the late, great Christopher Hitchens about the Satanic Verses controversy (see The Satanic Verses – Thirty Years Later and Quote of the Day #22). He said that the literal mind is incapable of understanding the poetic and ironic mind. Like those Christian fanatics who protested against The Last Temptation of Christ when I was at university couldn’t understand that at least a third of the film was a dream, Rushdie’s critics could not understand that the events in his novel were imaginary.

I am reminded of this when I read that some bloody fool has allegedly ‘cancelled’ a classic of English literature.

Blasphemy And “Emotional Harm”

The non-crime of blasphemy has been back in the news this week after the racist MP Naz Shah demanded legal protection for her personal delusions…

Today the Government proposed a bill to protect the emotional harm connected with the damaging of statues.

If people can understand the emotional connections to statues, then they can understand the connection Muslims have with the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ #NotJustACartoon. pic.twitter.com/WIKbQNkGhG

— Naz Shah MP 💙 (@NazShahBfd) July 5, 2021

This happened in 2021. In Britain. On the floor of the House of Commons.

The Refeudalisation Of Society

Is ‘refeudalisation’ even a word? And if it isn’t, where do I claim my £5?

It is often observed that people become more conservative as they get older. The Greek philosopher Socrates is supposed to have said…

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannise their teachers.”

In recent years, I have seen the opposite happening to myself. The sheet arrogance of the ruling class and their paid jackals in the media is driving me ever further to the left. I am close to becoming a full-on Maoist at the moment.

Picture Of The Day #58

This made me laugh…

Video Of The Day #31

To celebrate the long delayed start of the European Championship, the greatest sporting song of all time…

Joke Of The Day #35

Think about it…

A Roman goes into a bar.

Quote Of The Day #93 (Warning: Offensive Language)

“Achilles glared at him and answered, ‘Fool, prate not to me about covenants. There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind, but hate each other out and out an through. Therefore there can be no understanding between you and me, nor may there be any covenants between us, till one or other shall fall’”

Brad Pitt delivering a Hollywood version in the mad but enjoyable 2004 film Troy…

Video Of The Day #30

One for the history buffs…

Picture Of The Day #57

I rarely comment on the endless Israel/Palestine imbroglio. I find the religious fascists of Hamas and the geriatric kleptocrats of the Palestinian Authority deeply unpleasant. At the same time, I have no time for the settlers who seem to think ‘god’ has given them all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates nor for the loathsome prime minister of Israel, a man who could start an argument in an empty room. My usual comment to an anti-Israel obsessive is to remark that I care as much about this issue as they care about events in Abkhazia.

However, the above tweet came up in my timeline and the sheer doublethink prompted me to write this post (link to original tweet).

Quote Of The Day #92

“Nothing matters very much and few things matter at all.”

Joke Of The Day #34

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful queen with large breasts.

Joke Of The Day #33

I haven’t been able to write much recently because I started a new job in October and it is using up all my time.

Here’s another joke…

I Don’t Want Live On This Planet Anymore

Cooking With Trans-Identified People of Colour launched two-and-a-half years ago and has become a popular, weekly drop-in at The 519 every Tuesday afternoon. It hopes to "support and foster sexual health promotion among racialized trans people."https://t.co/1LGnJQHLZC

— Toronto Star (@TorontoStar) December 26, 2019

Joke Of The Day #32

A historian and a sociologist go camping.

Quote Of The Day #91

On so-called ‘Wokeness’…

“These people aren’t really genuinely disenfranchised at all. They just view themselves as special. It’s selfishness and in that respect it’s divisive and can only lead to trouble. I can’t believe that TV stations give some of these lunatics the space. Where is this ‘moral majority’ nonsense coming from when they’re basically the ones doing all the wrong for being so bloody judgmental and vicious against anybody that doesn’t go with the current popular opinion?”

Picture Of The Day #56

What is this babble?*

The Antithesis Of Sport

Come with me on a personal footballing odyssey…

* September 1976 – 7 years old and my first game at Portman Road. Ipswich beat Arsenal 3-1 in the First Division (see here).

The Guardian Theme Song Update

In March 2018, I wrote a song to the theme of The Lego Movie called Everything is racist!

My song contained the line…

“White milk, nursery rhymes, we just named some racist things”

This was meant to be a joke. In 2021, a member of the weekend hippies of Stinky Conformism, Alison Plaumer, told Brighton Council that serving too many dairy products is racist because a lot of non-Europeans are lactose-intolerant. As lunacy goes, this is right up there with estate agents not calling the biggest bedroom the ‘master suite’ because, you know, ‘racism.’

See also Picture of the Day #47

Wibble.

Joke Of The Day #31

A joke that wouldn’t have made sense up until a couple of years ago…

An excited couple who are expecting their first child visit the doctor after the first scan.

Picture Of The Day #55

The Labour Party under their gormless, Christopher Biggins tribute act ‘leader’ Sir Keir Starmer remind me of Homer Simpson when he stood for the job of Sanitation Commissioner in the episode Trash of the Titans…

https://comb.io/jsxh7A

The Times published a poll for the Hartlepool by-election that shows Labour losing one of the seats they held in the disastrous election of December 2019…

NEW Survation phone poll – Hartlepool by-election voting Intention:

CON 49%
LAB 42%
NIP 2%
LD 1%
GRN 1 %
Reform 1% https://t.co/vAPVdwlSNT

502 sample, by phone for @CWUnews. 29 March-3 April. pic.twitter.com/HpmkeiVIEz

— Survation. (@Survation) April 5, 2021

As recently as 2010, Labour won 41 out of the 59 seats north of the border but have now been eclipsed by the Scottish Nazi Party. In the 2019 election, Labour’s so-called ‘red wall’ of seats in the north of England crumbled. Hartlepool survived that disaster but now looks like falling to the Conservatives despite them having been in power for nearly eleven years under three prime ministers.

Unfortunately, Labour is now a fundamentally unserious party dominated by people whose ideas have never outgrown the gesture politics of the students’ union.

Easter Is Cultural Appropriation (Long Read)

Don’t worry, I haven’t gone insane. I’m being sar-car-stick…

This is a companion piece to my December 2018 post The Disneyfication of Christianity which was about the ‘Christian’ festival of Christmas.

Any racist ‘anti-racist’ reading this should know that the reason I am opposed to Islam is because I am opposed to Christianity.

Joke Of The Day #30

A blasphemous joke for Good Friday.

What were Jesus’ last words before he died?

Quote Of The Day #90

“Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humour in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious.”

Islamism Is Fascism Update #2

The original post concerned the savage murder of Samuel Paty in October 2020 for the ‘crime’ of showing cartoons in a History class. See Islamism is Fascism and Update. Six months later, this madness has spread to Batley in West Yorkshire where a teacher has been suspended and gone into hiding with police protection following death threats on (where else?) social media for the same ‘crime.’

I’d like to point out that these events are happening in Western Europe in the twenty-first century.

Picture Of The Day #54 Update #2

No laughing at the back there…

See also Picture of the Day #54 and Update.

Dark Thoughts And Feminism

We all have dark thoughts, some of us more than others. Our minds, like our bodies, are the products of countless millions of years of natural selection. As poorly-evolved East African primates whose ancestors were definitely not at the top of the food chain, it was probably advantageous to think the worst in certain situations because the alternative meant getting eaten by a lion. Human bodies are susceptible to back problems and sinus infections because we walk on two legs whilst most mammals walk on four. Perhaps dark thoughts are a similar evolutionary problem. I’m probably way off with this speculation but we forget the lowly origins of our brains and bodies at our peril.

However, dark as the thoughts that sometimes occur to me may be, they are nowhere near as dark as those of Jess Phillips, Member of Parliament for Jess Phillips and owner of the fakest accent since Cilla Black.

Joke Of The Day #29

Wish me luck!

I have a meeting at the bank later that should solve all my money worries for good.

Picture Of The Day #54 Update

Original post – Picture of the Day #54

Picture Of The Day #54

Unlike sex(!), it appears that the Twittermongs believe that the pathetic spat between the Markles and the Royal Family is a binary issue – if you support the Royal Family, you must be against the Markles and vice versa. Personally, I dislike everyone involved in this tawdry spectacle. Especially Piers Morgan.

Abolish the monarchy (see here).

What Is Important?

What I think is important will be different to what you think is important. What I think is important in 2021 is probably very different to what I thought was important in 2001, 1991 or 1981.

In politics, what seem like vital questions at any time and that inspire great passions can seem nonsensical to future generations. The last few years of upheaval over Brexit may well bemuse historians in the 2060s. Great upheavals that caused huge political storms at the time are largely forgotten – the Corn Laws, Tariff Reform, the Eastern Question, Catholic Emancipation. Have you even heard of any of them? If you have, do you know the details? And if you know the details, do you really care?

I am fairly confident that neither Dr Seuss nor Meghan Markle will feature prominently in the history books of the 2060s.

Sticks And Stones

There was recently a discussion on another blog I read and sometimes contribute to about so-called ‘microaggressions’…

“a statement, action, or incident regarded as an instance of indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalized group such as a racial or ethnic minority.”

It got me thinking about Peter Davison and Rudyard Kipling.

Joke Of The Day #28

I saw a girl crying, so I asked her “Where are your parents?” and she started crying even more.

The New Misogyny

I haven’t written very much recently as I started a new job in October and it is taking most of my mental bandwidth at the moment. Plus I’m exhausted when I get home in the evening.

I have commented (many times) before that words are vitally important in understanding the world. And the meaning of words can shift, sometimes dramatically, over time. In colonial America, ‘enthuisiast’ was a deadly insult as it implied brainless adherence to religion rather than sober thoughtfulness. If you read a book written before the early 1960s, it can be mildly amusing to see the word ‘gay’ used in its original context.

Which brings me to the word ‘Woke.’

Quote Of the Day #89

“Jesus answered him, ‘If I have said anything wrong, tell me what it was. But if I have told the truth, why do you hit me?’”

Picture Of The Day #53

Here we have, in one Tweet, the narcissism of the hardcore transgender ‘activist’ and of identity politics in general. It’s all about you eh, ‘Eliana’? Or is that ‘Elias’? Who cares?

Joke Of The Day #27

A dirty joke…

Why is your girlfriend like your swimming pool?

Picture Of The Day #52

Remember kids, racism is bad.

Except…

The Limehouse Declaration Forty Years On

In January 1981, the Limehouse Declaration was made by four former Labour Cabinet ministers – Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen and Bill Rodgers. They were speaking out against the capture of Labour by the unrepresentative left and against the tendency of the UK to lurch between the right and the left as government alternated between the Conservatives and Labour.

Whilst the language and references are dated, I feel that the criticisms of British politics still ring true decades later. In particular, in economic policy, the Declaration…

“…supports an economy which gives equal support to both the public sector and the private sector – without the frequent frontier changes based on whether the far-left or far-right political party is in power at the time.“

Were I still living in the UK, I would definitely join the SDP – The Social Democratic Party – SDP. See also Brexit: Left Or Right? and This Is Not A Prediction.

I am too young to remember these events first hand (I was 11 in January 1981) but I do remember the bitter split in the SDP/Liberal Alliance after the 1987 election. I started at university in October and recall being dismissed by some Alliance supporters because I expressed continued support for David Owen. It is a fascinating counterfactual to consider what might have happened had Owen been elected SDP leader in 1981 rather than Roy Jenkins and kept away from the Liberals and their oleaginous leader David Steel. The Liberal Democrats have certainly embraced Jenkins’ patrician liberalism over Owen’s social market economy and mild Euroscepticism.

After nearly fifty years of brutal neoliberalism, introduced by the Callaghan Labour government that all the members of the ‘Gang of Four’ served in, it is worth rereading the Declaration in its entirety …

Too Many Spartans Not Enough Athenians Part Two

In this first part of this post, I made the startling(!) claim that Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler. This was on top of a post I wrote about the abuse of language in which I argued that terms like ‘Nazi’ and ‘fascist’ by some of the pseudo-left and ‘Marxist’ and ‘Communist’ on the right adds nothing to political debate in the 2020s. Rather than attempt to twist Trump’s behaviour into yet another Third Reich analogy, I suggested that he is more like Cassius Chaerea, one of the assassins of Caligula.

This was an introduction to my main point about the growing conformity of opinion in our society. We need Athenians but we have an oversupply of Spartans.

Too Many Spartans Not Enough Athenians Part One

History analogies are all the rage at the moment. So long as they are about Nazi Germany, the only period the ruling class in the West appears to recognise. But then, for much of the media/political class it appears that the serious study of History has been replaced with the vacuous non-subject Sociology (see Thought of the Day #5).

Trump is not Hitler. The disgraceful events sat the US Capitol were not Kristallnacht. There are not hordes of ‘Nazis’ and/or ‘fascists’ rampaging in the streets of the West; although I admit that I did mischievously refer to BLM and Antifa as “the stormtroopers of neoliberalism” in a previous post about the debasement of political language. Nor are there gangs of ‘Marxists’ or ‘Communists’ itching to carry out a genocide of white people and turn your children into transgender NPCs.

No, Trump is not Hitler. But he might be Cassius Chaerea.

Picture Of The Day #51

If you disagree, you are clearly suffering from equinophobia! Hippophobia? Anyway, BIGOT!

Perhaps prejudice against panto horses should be called Dobbinophobia after that horse in Rentaghost…

Persecute the unbelievers! Kill the heretics! Video of the Day #19

New Language Is Required For The 21st Century

I am a great admirer of the science fiction of Isaac Asimov. I have used his work to illustrate points about…

* ignorance and anti-intellectualism – Quote of the Day #23

* disagreement and racism – Quote of the Day #26

* wishful thinking and religion – Quote of the Day #33

* even the lockdown – I Don’t Want to Live in Airstrip One

In 1981, Asimov predicted the power of the internet companies in his short story A Perfect Fit which appeared in his 1983 collection The Winds of Change…

“…everything is computerised and no step, however small, can be taken these days without a computer.”

I have included the full story at the end of this post.

The Rise Of The Anti-Socrates

I’d like to reference two of my favourite pop culture icons in a discussion of the rise of what I like to call the ‘anti-Socrates.’

First, The Simpsons episode Little Girl in the Big Ten…

“Laziness is counter-revolutionary. Questions are decadent. Fast hands mean less whipping.” See here.

Reblog: Michael Lind

I first became aware of American academic Michael Lind after reading his book The New Class War – see Book Review #9 (Long Read). I also used his phrase “asymmetrical multiculturalism” as the basis for my post “The Same Rules Apply.”

I have made the choice not to write a post about the mad antics of Donald Trump and a small number of his more deranged followers in Washington on 6th January. I think I have made my contempt for Trump and his demagoguery clear many times on this blog. However, I will not be lectured to about democracy, conspiracy theories or political violence by people who refused for years to accept the votes for Trump and Brexit, who indulged themselves for years in conspiracy theories about both events and who basically encouraged the violence by BLM racists for months in 2020.

The media and political class are openly gaslighting the population with their hypocrisy about Trump and his dwindling band of true believers. I am not going to play their game but have reblogged this article that says so much about the decay of democracy across the West and arrogance of the ‘elites’ (pfft) whose hubris and insane lust for money and power has led us into our current predicament.

I have highlighted what I think are the key points in the article and I think I’ve changed all the American spellings. A link to the original article is provided at the end.

Nihilism And Misanthropy

There are some cracking stories in the Old Testament – if you can get past the primitive Bronze Age morality and the hatred of outsiders. The Hebrew god is as least as mad and capricious as any denizen of Olympus or Valhalla and is far more interesting than the milksop whose whining forms the basis of the Hellenised form of Judaism known as Christianity. One of my favourite stories is about Samson, a kind of Jewish Heracles/Hercules. After various improbable adventures, Samson is captured by his enemies the Philistines, blinded and thrown in jail. At a feast the Philistines bring Samson out to mock him…

^” Now the rulers of the Philistines assembled to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god and to celebrate, saying, ‘Our god has delivered Samson, our enemy, into our hands.‘

When the people saw him, they praised their god, saying,

‘Our god has delivered our enemy
    into our hands,
the one who laid waste our land
    and multiplied our slain.’

While they were in high spirits, they shouted, ‘Bring out Samson to entertain us.’ So they called Samson out of the prison, and he performed for them.

When they stood him among the pillars, Samson said to the servant who held his hand, ‘Put me where I can feel the pillars that support the temple, so that I may lean against them.’ Now the temple was crowded with men and women; all the rulers of the Philistines were there, and on the roof were about three thousand men and women watching Samson perform. Then Samson prayed to the Lord, ‘Sovereign Lord, remember me. Please, God, strengthen me just once more, and let me with one blow get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes.’ Then Samson reached toward the two central pillars on which the temple stood. Bracing himself against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other,  Samson said, ‘Let me die with the Philistines!’ Then he pushed with all his might, and down came the temple on the rulers and all the people in it. Thus he killed many more when he died than while he lived.” Judges 16: 23-30

I’ve been feeling like this for a while now.

FYI – this post contains a great many references to events in American History that may be unfamiliar to some readers but I have made the decision not to litter the post with links.

Video Of The Day #29

I’ve just applied online for a new British passport and the process reminded me of this song…

From the 1979 album Setting Sons.

Full lyrics…

Quote Of The Day #88

“Herod himself always insisted that he was congenitally a rogue. To which I would reply, “No, you are a fundamentally virtuous man wearing the mask of roguery.” This would make him angry. A month or two before Caligula’s death we had a conversation of this sort. At the end of it he said, ‘Shall I tell you about yourself?’ ‘There’s no need,’ I answered, ‘I’m the Official Fool of the Palace.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘there are fools who pretend to be wise men and wise men who pretend to be fools, but you are the first case I have yet encountered of a fool pretending to be a fool. And one day you’ll see, my friend, what sort of a virtuous Jew you are dealing with.'”

Claudius the God, Chapter 1

[My emphasis]

Joke Of The Day #26

A dirty joke for your Wednesday…

Why is Tinder like Zoopla?

Happy Christmas 2020

The glorious leaders of the UK, advised by super-technocrats, have decided that Christmas tress and booze are essential but clothes are not -see here.

I wrote this seasonal post in 2018 but I stand by it – The Disneyfication of Christianity.

Enjoy the Winter Festival of our ancient pagan ancestors in any way you choose.

Strange Bedfellows Update

Original post from June 2020: Strange Bedfellows

As I write these words, Ipswich have just lost their third home game in a row. I have also realised that all my posts about football are basically the same – Ipswich were a good team when I was young and now they are terrible, woe is me! Self-knowledge is the path to wisdom as it sort of says in the Bhagavad Gita.

It is now forty years since Ipswich won the old UEFA Cup (the smallest town ever to win that competition). The club are currently over £100,000,000 in debt and a town of 110,000 simply cannot generate enough revenue to clear such a debt (over £900 per person). Short of being bought out by a Ukrainian gangster or Arab prince, I can’t see much hope.

Anyway, here are the goals from the 1981 UEFA Cup Final (played over two legs in those days)…

Video Of The Day #28

For some unknown reason, I can relate to this song and Bruce Springsteen’s experience when writing the excellent Tunnel of Love album. A disastrous and short-lived marriage to someone too young and too ill-suited to him, followed by a period of bitterness and then finding a ginger to settle down with for decades. Such was my bitterness in the late 1990s that I told a close friend of mine to kick my head in if I ever contemplated marriage again; he reminded me of that when I got engaged to my current wife. The song itself is a celebration of both love and vulnerability; in the video Springsteen and his future wife Patti Scialfa spend most of the song staring into each other’s eyes.

Again, there is no reason for sharing this video other than that I heard it on the radio and it is one of my favourite songs.

Picture Of The Day #50

In the United Kingdom during the eighteenth century , capital punishment could result from more than 200 crimes; historians refer to these as the Bloody Code. Even stealing a sheep to feed your family could attract the death penalty, hence the saying…

“Rather be hung for a sheep as a lamb.”

In other words, if you are accused of a small offence, you may as well be guilty of a bigger crime.

Think about that next time you hear about someone being accused of ‘white supremacy’ by identity obsessives or BLM racists.

Joke Of The Day #25

This joke is dedicated to outspoken anti-gay Hungarian MEP József Szájer who was recently arrested at an all-male drug and sex party in Brussels (see here).

Christianity is the best cure for ‘The Gayness.’

Meet The New Oligarchy

I haven’t posted much recently as I have been busy at work. After nearly three decades in education I have been working at a special school this term which has proved very challenging and tiring. But very rewarding .

The Who from 1971…

Is anyone else amused by the man who wanted to die before he got old turning into a grumpy pensioner?

Joe Biden, President-Elect of the United States, has said that his government will be ‘Obama’s third administration.’ His foreign policy team is packed with people with Obama’s White House and Hillary Clinton’s State Department, fanatical advocates of the failed policy of ‘liberal interventionism’ or ‘liberal internationalism’ (see here). And must never be forgotten that Biden was an enthusiastic supporter of George W. Bush’s mad Iraqi adventure. Reminds me of Pete Townshend’s fifty year old line…

“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

Time for a discussion of Jonathan E, Theodore Roosevelt and the ‘new few’ of 2020.

Rejecting The Binary

An example of a typical Twitter thread…

User #1: I like dogs.

User #2: What about cats? Your horrible felineophobia disgusts me. Bigot! You are worse than Hitler.

Another typical example of modern media environment…

Donald Trump: I have found a cure for cancer that is 100% effective and has zero side effects.

BBC/Guardian: Donald Trump puts thousands of highly-skilled oncologists out of work. Commentators observed that many of those affected are people of colour.

Modern political discourse is the home of the binary and the triumph of emotion over fact…

I reject both.

Joke Of The Day #24

A (possibly blasphemous) joke about the 45th and 47th* President of the United States…

Donald Trump and his advisors are on a fact-finding mission to Jerusalem when the president suffers a heart attack and dies.

* See Grover Cleveland of $1000 bill fame.

Respect Ma Victimhood

From the South Park episode Chickenlover…

I used to love South Park in the late 1990s. The first twenty minutes of the film represents some of the funniest comedy ever made; I recall weeping with laughter at the old Colchester Odeon. Here’s Cartman at his foul-mouthed best…

But ‘authoritah’ is much less important than victimhood these days.

Joke Of The Day #23

A misanthropic joke for your Wednesday.

First person: What pisses you off?

Quote Of The Day #87

As our lords and masters love a (spurious) comparison with Nazi Germany, I thought I’d provide a two-for-one special in the wake of the defeat of Donald ‘Adolf’ Trump.

First, the Fuehrer himself…

“[T]hey proceeded on the sound principle that the magnitude of the lie always contains a certain factor of credulity, since the great masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously and purposefully evil, and that, therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big. Such a falsehood will never enter their heads and they will not be able to believe in the possibility of such monstrous effrontery and infamous misrepresentation in others: yes, even when enlightened on a subject, they will long doubt and waver, and continue to accept at least one of these causes as true.” From Mein Kampf Chapter 10, page 231

Now his chief propagandist…

“The cleverest trick used in propaganda against Germany during the [First World] War was to accuse Germany of what our enemies themselves were doing.” Speech at Nuremberg, 1934

Video Of The Day #27

No reason to share this video except it was on the radio driving to work and I love the song…

“And if you don’t expect too much from me
You might not be let down“

Is this what Boris Johnson says to all the people who voted for him in December 2019 expecting things to change?

Quote Of The Day #86

“No-one is hated more than he who speaks the truth.”

The Future Of Turkey Update

Original post from May 2018: The Future of Turkey.

The header picture is from the French magazine Charlie Hebdo – the caption reads “In private, Erdogan’s great fun.”

I don’t think it is hyperbole to suggest that Recep Tayyip Erdogan – Islamist president of Turkey and aspiring caliph – is the biggest threat to regional stability in the Balkans, the Middle East, North Africa and the Caucasus. Ataturk must be spinning in his mausoleum.

Joke Of The Day #22

A variation on the old chicken crossing the road joke…

Why did the feminst cross the road?

The New Calvinists

In October 2017, I wrote a post called The New Puritans about the destruction of a statue of Athena by the unwashed barbarians of ISIS. This was based on my belief that modern Islamists are exactly the same as the ignorant zealots who did so much to undermine the later Roman Empire. It is also my firm belief that the modern West is not based on so-called ‘Judeo-Christian’ values but on the rational inheritance of Classical Greece and Rome.

Developing this theme, I would argue that today’s Brahmin ‘left’ are the Calvinists of our times.

FYI – the subtitle for this post comes from John Lennon’s song Working Class Hero. And remember, the ruling class, the Establishment, really do hate and despise you.

Joke Of The Day #21

What’s the difference between a pickpocket and a peeping tom?

Islamism Is Fascism Update

Original post: Islamism Is Fascism.

In the original post, I shared some of the images that were printed on the cover of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo after the barbaric murder of schoolteacher Samuel Paty. I’m just sorry I missed this one…

The caption says “All religions in the toilet.”

Joke Of The Day #20

A man said to his wife “I have a problem at work.”

Islamism Is Fascism

The header image shows a demonstration in La Place de la Republique in Paris on Sunday 18/10/20 in support of murdered schoolteacher Samuel Paty. His ‘crime’? Showing some of the caricatures of Muhammad of Mecca printed in the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in a class discussion on freedom of speech.

Time for some buzzwords that will make any right-on upper-class pseudo-leftist reading this happy. Islam is a disgusting religion – it is sexist/misogynistic, homophobic, anti-Semitic, racist and deeply reactionary in its social mores. And just in case anyone thinks I’m being ‘racist’ or ‘Islamophobic’ (pfft) I think the same about Judaism and Christianity.

Islamism, the political offshoot of Islam, is fascism.

Thoughts From The Lockdown Update #3

Fortunately, the town where I live in Central Queensland is not subject to any special Covid19 measures. As I type these words, the county of my birth and the city where I spent more than a decade of my teaching career are both subject to so-called ‘Tier 2’ restrictions.

In the 1977 Dr Who story The Sunmakers…

…the population of Earth has been moved to Pluto after the collapse of the planet’s ecosystem. To keep the people docile and easy to dominate, the alien race that controls Pluto pumps the atmosphere full of a chemical that induces anxiety. Even Leela, the Doctor’s minimally-clothed assistant, is affected.

Have we reached a stage where the fear of Covid19 is not worse than the illness itself?

Words Fail Me

Watch this and see if you can keep a straight face…

Devon & Cornwall Police want to create an inclusive society for all.

Let’s celebrate diversity, together. #ZeroTolerance2Hate#NHCAW pic.twitter.com/RGG2Mqzzk6

— Devon & Cornwall Police (@DC_Police) October 12, 2020

There is a simple mathematical way to determine gender…

Joke Of The Day #19

My wife and I were discussing the name of our unborn daughter.