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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.’

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.

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.

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)…

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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…

Happenstance Not Conspiracy Part Two

In the first part of this post – Happenstance Not Conspiracy Part One – I set out my belief that the causes of many historical events are not very profound. I suggested that things as mundane as personal insults, the weather or a wrong turn by a driver have been behind some major events. I also suggested that some people, in their understandable desire to know what ‘really’ happened, can be prone to conspiracy theories.

Happenstance Not Conspiracy Part One

History is both multicausal and complex. And sometimes those causes can be quite small and, perhaps, insignificant.

I recently wrote a long post about the fourth century Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate (the original posts: Part One and Part Two) in which I speculated about whether we could have been spared the worst excesses of Roman Christianity had Julian not died in an ill-fated invasion of Persia. I even suggested (wishful thinking?) that without an belligerently Christian Rome, the world could have been saved from the youngest and most aggressive of the Abrahamic delusions.

Counterfactual history can be fun but is ultimately pointless. Unfortunately, some people want everything to be ‘explained’ and can be easy prey for conspiracy theories about both the past and the present.

Racialism, Racism And Cultural Appropriation

From Martin Luther King’s famous speech delivered at the Lincoln Memorial on 28/08/1963…

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood... I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Full text of speech can be read here.

What is striking about King’s message is the contrast with today’s identitarian ‘left’ (pfft) who see America (and the West in general) as a white supremacist nation irredeemably tainted by the Original Sin of slavery. However, King calls Abraham Lincoln “a great American” and demands that the US live up to “the magnificent words of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.” He does not condemn America and call for its abolition but wants the country to live up to these great ideals.

Today’s identitarians might have delivered the speech somewhat differently…

The Decay Of The Labour Party Update

Original post from January 2020: The Decay of the Labour Party

From the original post…

“The main reason for the decay of the Labour Party is its abandonment of left-wing economics…  The party has effectively abandoned the working-class it was founded to represent in favour of a much more middle-class support… The trouble is that these newer Labour supporters feel guilty about how well they have done out of our current hypercapitalist system. To make themselves feel better, these newer Labour supporters have replaced concerns about concrete economic matters with nebulous phobias and isms which they have elevated to holy writ. It is far easier to rant about transgender toilets and Palestine that to tackle the deep-seated economic inequalities that continue to afflict the UK.”

Julian The Apostate And ‘Woke’ Religion Part Two

The header picture shows a statue of the Greek goddess Aphrodite vandalised by Christian barbarians. Sound familiar?

Original post: Julian the Apostate and ‘Woke’ Religion Part One

In the first part of this post I made the argument that it is possible to compare our current situation with the later Roman Empire under Constantine the Great and Julian the Apostate. I argued that ‘Wokeism’ (for want of a better word) is comparable to the vicious Abrahamic religion(s) of Judaism, Christianity and Islam an that a small minority of, at most, 10% of the population of the Roman Empire was able to impose its bigoted religion on the rest of society.

‘Wokeism’ is not left-wing and it is certainly not Marxist. It is my firm belief that ‘Wokeism’ is a religious cult.

Julian The Apostate And ‘Woke’ Religion Part One

In my previous post Quote of the Day #85 I made a passing reference to the fourth century Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate (I used a picture of one of his coins as the header for this post). I was making the point that I do not accept that the ‘Woke’ ideology currently infecting our society is left-wing nor is it Marxist. I think that the best way to understand ‘Wokeism’ (for want of a better word) is as a religious cult.

The more I have thought about it, the more I think I was on to something. Come and join me on a journey into the later Roman Empire and how it may help us understand our current situation.

None Of The Above

In the film Brewster’s Millions Richard Pryor is set the task of spending $30million in 30 days so that he can inherit a fortune of $300million. In order to waste as much money as possible, he decides to run for mayor of New York. Pryor doesn’t want the job so stands on a slogan of ‘none of the above.’

I bet the good people of the United States wish ‘none of the above’ was an option in this November’s presidential election.

The ‘Woke’ Commandments Update

Original post – The ‘Woke’ Commandments

In the original post, I suggested that one of the key commandments for being ‘Woke’ was…

“Don’t forget to project an air of smug superiority.”

Doesn’t that sound like all the pompous, too-much-time-on-their-hands Twitter obsessives who have been on social media constantly since March?

However, I have realised that in this bizarre year I have missed one of the most obvious characteristics for the ‘Woke’ – the ratchet effect.

Time To End The House Of Lords

During the English Civil War – also known as the English Revolution or the War of the Three Kingdoms – the House of Lords was abolished as “useless and dangerous to the people of England.” The radical Levellers – see Quote of the Day #83 – demanded that the House of Commons should be “the supreme authority of the people” to be defended against “all pretenses of negative voices, either King or Lords.”

Fast forward nearly four centuries from the execution of Charles I and the (temporary) abolition of bishops and lords and Boris Johnson is being criticised for filled this absurd chamber with yet more placemen.

My Hatred Is Better Than Yours

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”

So wrote 17th century mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal – Quote of the Day #34 and Update.

Amongst the main annoying characteristics of religious people is their belief that they know. Not only that they know but that they know everything – the thoughts of the ‘creator’ of the universe, the meaning of life, what happens when you dies, etc, etc, ad nauseum. Whilst religious belief in the West has declined – at least so far as Christianity is concerned – the religious impulse is alive and well in politics.

$30,000,000 Is A Lot Of Money

Unless you are Jeff Bezos – $178,000,000,000 – or Bill Gates – $113,800,000,000 – $30,000,000 is a serious amount of money. As I write these words, US$30,000,000 is equal to just over £23,000,000, the currency most readers will be familiar with.

Come and join me on a trip through some numbers.

FYI – the subheading is a homage to a scene in Quentin Tarantino’s ultra-violent first film Reservoir Dogs. After the robbery goes wrong, one character asks if anyone was killed, to which the second character says “just cops.” The first character replies, “no real people then.”

This Is What I Believe Update

Original post – This Is What I Believe

In the original post, I suggested that ordinary working people of whatever colour have more in common with each other than with any wealthy people. The current obsession with race fulfils the same role as religion for much of recorded history. Seneca, tutor and chief minister to the Roman Emperor Nero, summed this up best…

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.” [My emphasis]

Accusations of racism are useful to our rulers in that they divide working-class people to the benefit of the former. And I have previously stated my firm belief that it is fair to describe the current pseudo-left obsession with ‘racism’ and ‘phobias’ of all kinds as a religion – ‘Woke’: Religion or Fascism?

Hands In The Till?

One thing that I vividly remember from my eighteenth birthday is the pay rise I received. I was working on a potato harvester at the time and my hourly rate went up from £1.90/hour to £2.10/hour. A 20p/hour pay rise doesn’t sound like much but it was 1987. I earned an extra £1.60 a day and £8.00 a week. This was just before I went to university and beer was 50p a pint in the union bar.

The recent Covid19 shenanigans have highlighted just how little some people are being paid. Minimum wage for people over the age of 25 is £8.72/hour. Other people appear to be earning vast salaries for doing next to nothing – the daily attendance allowance at the House of Lords is £323 a day, which would take a minimum wage worker more than 37 hours to make. Other people seem to have a great deal of money without having a job at all.

Step forward Mr Tony Blair.

Is Britain Racist?

Watching the news for the past month or so, you might be forgiven for thinking the modern UK is a horrific place, akin to the Third Reich and one Daily Mail editorial away from a mass pogrom of anyone who can’t trace their ancestry back to Hengist and Horsa.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Am I denying that racism exists? Of course not. Am I denying that some people in the UK are racists? Of course not. However, I reject nebulous arguments about ‘systemic’ or ‘institutional’ racism. Further, when decrying the UK, America or any other Western country as fundamentally racist I would simply ask, to what are you comparing these countries?

The New Racism And The Old

In my youth there was an ugly political party in the UK called the National Front. They were essentially a neo-Nazi outfit – in the days when ‘Nazi’ actually meant ‘far right’ rather than being a generic insult for anyone with mildly right-wing or even centrist views. The NF were often depicted by the media as a bunch of racist thugs, a depiction that in many ways was fully deserved.

At the heart of the NF’s ideology was a rejection of immigrants from the Caribbean and South Asia and their British-born descendants. The NF suggested no-one who was black or brown could be a true Briton; a British person was, by their definition, white. Even in the troubled 1970s these were fringe views and the National Front peaked at just over 3% of the vote in the two general elections of 1974.

Fast forward to 2020 and it is the identitarian ‘left’ that is telling black and brown people that they will never be fully British.

Strange Bedfellows

As this post has something to do with football, I’ve used as the header photo a picture of the Ipswich team that won the UEFA Cup in 1981. Those were the days.

I previously used a photo from the 1978 FA Cup Final as the header for my post I Demand a People’s Season which was a sarcastic pop at the neoliberals who were demanding a Second Referendum because they didn’t get their way in the first.

Please stay with me, there is a point to this.

Trevor Phillips For Prime Minister Update #2

I am a great admirer of Trevor Phillips, a writer, broadcaster and former politician. This is the third piece I have written about him and I genuinely believe he would be a good choice for the leadership of the United Kingdom. He is certainly a better choice than the current buffoon in Downing Street or the Christopher Biggins tribute act that Labour want to put in his place.

Original post from February 2017: Trevor Phillips for Prime Minister

First update from March 2020: Trevor Phillips for Prime Minister Update

‘Woke’: Religion Or Fascism?

Rik Mayall was a comic genius. But his portrayal of Rick in The Young Ones, who thought everything was ‘fascist,’ was meant to be a joke at the expense of the fake radical (usually privately educated) familiar to anyone who has attended a British university in the past 50+ years, not a guide for how to behave.

Disturbing (and disturbed), barely readable German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that…

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.”

The upper-class ‘Woke’ imbeciles who have colonised left-wing parties all over the West have become the fascists and racists they affect to despise.

Class Privilege Is The Real Problem

Our morally superior lords and masters are extraordinarily fond of tendentious comparisons to Nazi Germany. They are as promiscuous with accusations of Nazism as a New England religious hysteric with claims of witchcraft. I think it’s safe to say that most of these accusations are entirely unwarranted.

In the name of historical accuracy – something most of our betters struggle with – I’d like to point out that working-class people were the least likely to vote for the Nazis; Hitler sent his most gifted propagandist – Joseph Goebbels – to be party leader in ‘Red’ Berlin because working-class voters were so resistant to the Nazi message. Even after Hitler became Chancellor, most working-class voters stayed loyal to the KPD (Communists) and SPD (Social Democrats)

Class and wealth are the real sources of privilege in our society.

Thoughts From The Lockdown Update #2

Original post: Thoughts From The Lockdown

First update: Thoughts From The Lockdown Update

The lockdown is just about over in Queensland. We are allowed to travel all over the state (interstate travel is banned until at least the end of June) and most businesses are open. Cinemas open on Friday 5th and pubs and restaurants will be opening on 12th June.

As the world returns to normal – whatever that is – I’d like to ask, was the lockdown actually worth it?

The ‘Woke’ Commandments

One of the more irritating (first world) problems of our times is the relentless abuse of language in pursuit of ideological purity. The word ‘racism,’ for example, as been bent out of shape and now means just what the user wants it to mean; 90%+ of accusations of racism can safely be ignored. Likewise, any neologism ending in ‘phobia,’ ‘ism’ or ‘ist’ is probably spurious.

Thoughts From The Lockdown Update

The original of this post – Thoughts From The Lockdown – was shared on 2nd May 2020. In that post I expressed my contempt for the catastrophising of the media and the desperate neediness and narcissism of so many ‘celebrities.’ I also made the less-than-breathtaking observation that the super-rich have done very nicely out of the current crisis.

At the time of writing, there have been 7,060 cases of Covid19 in Australia and 99 deaths; in the UK, the figures are 246,406 and 34,796. Worldwide there have been 320,180 deaths linked to the virus.

Worrying, yes. But do they justify the current response(s) from various world governments?

Know Your Place, Peasant!

One of the points I have made repeatedly on this blog is about the lack of historical knowledge in modern Western society. For much of the media and political class (deliberate use of the singular), the past has been reduced to the Crusades, the Atlantic slave trade and Nazi Germany. Since 2016 – Brexit and Trump – we have been subjected to endless tendentious arguments about how Brexit Britain is the Fourth Reich and Trump supporters are itching to fire up the ovens.

I find this level of ignorance extraordinarily irritating. But are you surprised when the History Channel is full of shows about aliens, conspiracy theories and the Second World War?

Which brings me nicely on to the Brezhnev Doctrine.

I Don’t Want To Live In Airstrip One

I haven’t written much recently as everything on the news is about Coronavirus. I used to watch the 10 ‘o’ clock news on Sky UK (starts at 7am in Queensland during the northern Summer) before I went to work but have stopped doing so as they only cover one story.

Here in Queensland we have been in this limbo state of semi-lockdown for six weeks. Fortunately there are encouraging signs that the lockdown is ending. Businesses are reopening and some children are returning to school on Monday (11/05/20) and hopefully the rest will be back on 25/05/20.

I’ve taken the title for this piece from George Orwell’s brilliant dystopian novel 1984 but I’d like to draw your attention to another of my favourite writers, Isaac Asimov.

“The Same Rules Apply”

I wrote this post about six weeks ago and never got around to publishing it. It was in those glorious days when I could go out, go to work and see people other than my wife and son…

“The same rules apply” is the favourite expression of Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson, the anti-hero of Irvine Walsh’s darkly comic novel Filth (it’s also been made into a film although the book is much better). Surely to apply the same rules to everyone is the essence of a liberal society.

You’d think so but it depends on your definition of ‘liberal.’

All Washing Machines Are Racist! Update

I wrote the original of this post in October 2017 – All Washing Machines Are Racist! – to highlight my contempt for the type of minted pseudo-leftist who feels guilty about how well off they are under the brutal neoliberalism that has dominated the West for the past forty years. I even had a go at writing a song for the upper class idiots at Guardian Towers – Everything Is Racist.

One of the unexpectedly positive side-effects of this Covid19 nonsense has been the decline in the amount of attention the media gives to identitarian morons and men who think they are women. Seems that when society is faced with a real crisis, pretend ones go by the wayside. But I reckoned without the awesome ability of oppressed multimillionaire Afua Hirsch to link anything to her personal mania – here is the link to the story I used as the header for this post.

Reblog: Jonathan Sumption

Augustus Caesar, first emperor of Rome, was a great man. He emerged as the ultimate victor in the series of civil wars that disfigured the Roman Republic for the last 70 years of its existence. He created a monarchical system that lasted for more than 200 years and gave Rome a remarkable long period of peace until the accession of the repugnant Septimius Severus in the last decade of the second century AD.

Even with supreme power in the Roman Empire, Augustus could not escape the tyranny of death. Determined to secure his new system, Augustus wished to designate an approved successor. Unfortunately he was predeceased by virtually all his choices. His nephew and son-in-law Marcellus died of plague aged 19; his best friend and second son-in-law Marcus Agrippa died relatively young (aged 51) as well; the two sons of his daughter Julia and Agrippa who Augustus adopted as his own sons also died before him. Augustus was left with his stepson Tiberius, who he personally disliked, who proved to be an able if rather austere emperor.

The point I am making is that societies in the past had to deal with death all the time. Our own society is so afraid of death that it is prepared to destroy itself to escape the remote possibility of death from Covid19.

Kakistocracy Rules (Badly)

‘Democracy’ comes from the Greek words ‘demos’ (people) and ‘kratia’ (power) – the power of ordinary people as opposed to the power of the ‘aristos,’ the so-called ‘best’ in society. Whilst democracy has many faults, it is certainly better than rule by an arrogant elite who think they are superior to us plebeians.

Unfortunately, democracy in the West has been replaced with plutocracy and technocracy. Plutocracy – rule by the rich – has grown out of a belief that the best way to help ordinary people is to give even more money to those whose wallets are already bursting at the seams. And as for technocracy – rule by ‘experts’ – all I can say is that these ‘experts’ are really, really bad at their jobs. The various international organisations on whose ‘expertise’ the modern world is allegedly based appear to be adding the coronavirus to their litany of failures over Yugoslavia, the financial crisis of 2008 and the ongoing refugee problems sparked by the Syrian civil war.

Combine plutocracy and inept technocracy and what we really have is kakistocracy – rule by the worst, the least qualified and the most unscrupulous.

Trevor Phillips For Prime Minister Update

I wrote the original of this article back in February 2017, less than a month after I started this blog – Trevor Philips For Prime Minister. Thanks to identity entrepreneurs like racist ‘academic’ Kehinde Andrews, it appears that Trevor Phillips has joined Priti Patel, Rishi Sunak, Suella Braverman and the entire Jewish community outside the protective blanket of identity politics…

Trevor 'formerly of the Black community' Phillips should have lost all support from Black folk long ago. I wrote this piece for @OBU_BlackUnity a while back when #TrevorPhillips was indulging in what Malcolm would have called 'modern day Uncle Tom coonery'https://t.co/HPSdZ6Zazr

— Kehinde Andrews (@kehinde_andrews) March 9, 2020

It seems Trevor Phillips has fallen foul of the modern day sin of ‘Islamophobia,’ a “word created by fascists and used by cowards to manipulate morons” (a quote usually, but wrongly, attributed to the late, great Christopher Hitchens).

They Walk Among Us

I was doing the shopping yesterday and got some strange looks when I came round the corner of one aisle and started laughing when I saw that the toilet paper aisle was empty. How exactly is buying loads of toilet paper going to help against Covid19 ? Are these people going to wrap it round their heads like a mummy?

Two questions…

1/ Do the media actually want Covid19 to turn into the new Black Death?

2/ Are there more morons these days or are they just more visible?

Book Review #9 (Long Read)

This is a long one. I have highlighted what I think are the key points.

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”

One does not have to be a Marxist to have sympathy with the view that conflict between rich and poor has been a vital element in the history of humanity. I would suggest that in history and in politics, economics is of far more importance than race, sex, sexuality or the name of your imaginary friend. Our rulers are obsessed with money and it is wealth that gives them their privilege in society. I am not advocating Communism in any political sense as Communist remedies tend to be worse than the ills they purport to cure. Still less am I supporting the cod-Marxism of know-nothing like Ash Sarkar and Owen Jones or the retro 1970s socialism of Jeremy Corbyn.

It is with these thoughts in mind that I recommend Michael Lind’s new book The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Metropolitan Elite.

Safe European Home

Safe European Home is the opening track on The Clash’s second album Give ‘Em Enough Rope…

 

The song can be seen as an attack on the boorish behaviour of tourists in Third World countries or a commentary on the experiences the band had during a writing trip to Jamaica. The lyrics include…

“I went to the place where every white face, Is an invitation to robbery. And sitting here in my safe European home, Don’t want to go back there again.”

There is an apocryphal Chinese curse that says…

“May you live in interesting times.”

The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel wrote…

“World History is not the ground of happiness. The periods of happiness are empty pages in her.”

May I suggest that in the “safe” West in 2020, we do not live in “interesting times” and that most of the current events we are experiencing will leave “empty pages” in future History books.

Don’t Go On Twitter!

Don’t go on Twitter! You will get in trouble, even if what you have to say is more than 400 years old.

The latest Twitter blow-up involves newsreader Alastair Stewart who got himself into an online argument wiht a person called Martin Shapland, who has an interesting Twitter history (look him up @MShapland or you can do a search for screenshots of his tweets).

The Decay Of The Labour Party

The UK Labour Party has been out of power for nearly ten years and has lost four general elections in a row.

In 2010, Gordon Brown gained 258 seats (40% of the total) with 29% of the vote.

In 2015, Ed Miliband gained 232 seats (35.7%) with 30.4% of the vote.

In 2017, bucking the trend, Jeremy Corbyn gained 262 seats (40.3%) on 40% of the vote. However, in 2019, Corbyn led Labour to its worst performance in a general election since 1935, winning just 202 seats (31%) on 32.2% of the votes. And this was despite the Conservatives having been in power for more than nine years under three different prime ministers.

Since 1966, Tony Blair is the only Labour leader to win a significant majority (Harold Wilson won a tiny majority of three in the second election of 1974). It is against this background that one must look at the current Labour leadership contest.

More Identity Poison Update

The original of this post can be read here.

The media continue to obsess over two desperately uninteresting and multitalentless individuals simply because one of them is the grandson of the UK’s head of state. Let me again state that I simply do not care if Windsor and Markle run off to Los Angeles and abandon their Royal ‘work.’ If idiots want to spend their own money on ‘celebrity’ garbage it is none of my business. However, if these two no-marks think they are worth £600,000’s worth of security, let them pay for it out of their own vast and unearned wealth.

Far more interesting has been the reaction by the more hysterical identity cultists to Laurence Fox’s appearance on Question Time.

More Identity Poison

I have an aversion to being told what to do, say or think that borders on the pathological. I am well-aware that this is a deeply unattractive character flaw.

This aversion is particularly severe when I am being told what to do, say or think by people I consider stupid or unqualified. I am very well-aware that this statement is both arrogant and reeks of intellectual snobbery.

But the red mist really descends when I am being lectured to by stupid and unqualified people who live lives of such unimaginable privilege that they almost constitute a separate species rather than a separate class.

Luxury Beliefs And Class Hatred Part Two

This is a long one so I have split it into two parts – the first part can be viewed here.

Luxury Beliefs And Class Hatred Part One

This is a long one, so I will post it in two parts.

Alexander II, Tsar of Russia between 1855 and 1881, was a great man. He extricated Russia from the ludicrous Crimean War, freed the Russian peasantry from serfdom and introduced elected local government and trial by jury. Despite all this, the Great Emancipator was murdered by radicals from the People’s Will (Narodnaya Volya) who only achieved the replacement of a reforming emperor with his brutal and autocratic son.

Alexander II is a textbook example of the failure of the monarchical principle since despite all his achievements, his father, his son and his grandson (Nicholas I, Alexander III and Nicholas II were all unequal to the task of ruling Russia in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. But that is not the reason I have shared this biographical sketch. Alexander’s murderers remind me of a certain type of pseudo-radical and narcissistic purist who is so prevalent in our own times.

This Is Not A Prediction

The other day at work someone asked me how the British election would turn out. I answered, facetiously, that it would be a draw. Perhaps that is the best prediction if the media are right about the country being hopelessly divided rather than Brexit being a civil war in the ruling class.

I shall make no predictions about this election as I made such a poor job of predicting the last one. I wrote a post called I Know Nothing About Politics accepting that I had got it badly wrong about the EU Referendum, the 2016 US Presidential Election and the 2017 French Presidential Election as well as the 2017 General Election. Interestingly though, I did predict that Boris Johnson would be Prime Minster before the next election and that the DUP-Conservative alliance would soon collapse.

*There is no reason to post the link to this song. I just like it.

Oliver Letwin – Man Of The People

I thought I’d join the trend for using words to mean the exact opposite of their dictionary definition. After all, we live in times when drug-addled simpletons like Lily Allen lecture us about politics and mega-privileged, carbon-spewing princes rebuke the plebs about flying.

Step forward, man of the people and leader of the ‘rebel alliance’, ‘Sir’ Oliver Letwin.

NB – nothing in this post should be read as an endorsement of Brexit.

Oikophobia – A Strange Afflcition

The great writer and journalist George Orwell, once commented that England…

“…is perhaps the only great country where intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution…”

Oikophobia comes from the Greek word ‘oikos’ meaning ‘home’ or ‘family.’ I am not using it here in the medical sense but in a way that has become all too familiar in the past twenty years – accusing one’s political opponents of being ‘phobic’ against a favoured identity group. Oikophobia in this sense means dislike or distrust of one’s own people or country, as opposed to ‘xenophobia’ which is hatred or dislike of foreigners.

The Depravity Of The Ruling Class Update

“Depravity (noun):

1/ a corrupt act or practice;

2/ the quality or state of being corrupt, evil or perverted: the quality or sate of being depraved.”

A strong word but one I felt apt for the ruling class in the UK, and indeed much of the West, in my previous post The Depravity of the Ruling Class. The reaction to the vote to leave the European Union is a symptom of the fact that our lords and masters dislike, even hate, ordinary working people and treat their concerns with disdain, even contempt.

Despite being criticised both here and elsewhere, I still maintain my view that Brexit is nothing but a ruling class civil war about money. Since at least 1976, the UK has been in the grip of neoliberal economics and a form of globalisation designed to enrich the few and pauperise the many.

Class hatred is alive and well in 2019. I’d like to demonstrate what I mean by addressing recent news about so-called reparations, public schools and climate chance.

The Depravity Of The Ruling Class

St Paul, founder of Christianity…

“The love of money is the root of all evil.”

Muhammad of Mecca, founder of Islam…

“Greed proves to be a curse because once a person has it, it stays with him forever. it becomes difficult to resist so it keeps growing with time.”

Karl Marx, father of modern Communism…

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”

Arnold Rimmer, Second Technician aboard the mining ship Red Dwarf…

“They overthrew me… so I could never threaten their insane lust for power.”

If you look back my posts since I started this blog in January 2017 you will see I have repeatedly made two points…

1/ I neither support nor oppose Brexit. However, whilst I support the idea of a European Union I am not persuaded that the European Union is anything but a tool of the super rich, the banks and big business.

2/ The ruling class in the United Kingdom, or the Establishment if you prefer, only care about money. It is this, not democracy, parliamentary sovereignty or any of the other excuses that have trotted out over the past three-and-a-half years, that is at the root of the current crisis in British politics.

The Naked Self-Interest Of The Ruling Class

Brexit is irrelevant. The Second Referendum is irrelevant. The European Union is irrelevant. Jeremy Corbyn, the Establishment stooge who allegedly leads the Labour Party, is irrelevant. The only positive to come out of this whole ridiculous charade (the ruling class was and is never going to allow the UK to leave the EU) is to expose the sheer contempt the plutocracy has for the rest of us.

I am not pro-Brexit. Nor am I particularly pro-EU. It is possible to support the idea of a European Union whilst being opposed to the European Union. I have advocated a kind of associate membership of the EU that would be to the benefit of the UK and to those countries who wish to press ahead with ever closer union. The fact that the British voted 2:1 in favour of membership of the European Economic Community in 1975 but rejected membership of the European Union in 2016 suggests this could be a popular compromise.

Jeremy Corbyn: Establishment Stooge

Jeremy Corbyn is a stooge for the interests of the ruling class. His claim to want  to remain in the neoliberal European Union despite decades of Bennite opposition to its policies of featherbedding the rich and eternal austerity for everyone else proves it. His call for a Second Referendum is for the advantage of the already wealthy and their banker chums not the poor he claims to care so much about.

Nothing I have written on this blog or am about to write is pro-Brexit nor is it anti-Brexit. Brexit is an irrelevance. The real problems are caused by decades of neoliberal, ‘gush up’ economics designed to enrich the few and pauperise the many.

The ruling class only care about money and most of them think leaving the EU will cost them money. A minority of the ruling class think they can make more money outside the EU, that’s the only reason Johnson, Rees-Mogg et al support it. Jeremy Corbyn is now one of the bought-and-paid-for mouthpieces of the faction of the Establishment that wants to stay in the EU.

If truth be told, Corbyn is probably the senior politician most opposed to the EU in the whole of Britain.

The Second Referendum

Second (or Third if you count 1975) referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union
Vote only once by putting an X in the box next to your choice
Should the United Kingdom continue to be ruled by a bunch of arrogant, chinless, public school wankers who only care about money and do what they want regardless of the voters’ opinions?
Yes (gosh, aren’t you clever? Have a gold star, you good little drone)
No (by marking this box, I acknowledge that I am a thicko who doesn’t understand the question and that my vote doesn’t count)

 

How I despise the British Establishment and their running dogs in the media.

Remain Is Racism!

I had an epiphany today. I will admit it is not as profound as the one I had when I finally understood the real roots of Islamist rage – At Last! The Truth! – but stay with me.

One of the most common accusations against those who voted to leave the European Union is one of racism or, at the very least, xenophobia. But this blog can reveal that it is Remain that is actually the racist side in this interminable conflict.

A Plague On Both Your Houses

As I write these words, it is 1,167 days since the referendum that resulted in a decision to leave the European Union. In the name of all the gods that have never existed, surely that is enough time to have sorted out the issues involved in exiting an organisation that has only existed in its current form for 26 years?

Like the endless Israeli/Palestinian conflict there appears to be no end in sight to this dismal row. Even if the UK does exit the EU on 31st October that will not be the end of the matter for the hardcore of Remainers who have been driven insane by their defeat in a free and democratic vote.

The Arrogance Of The Rich

In Ancient Greece, the words ‘aristos’ and ‘kratia’ (best and power) gave us the idea of aristocracy – rule by the best people in society. This was opposed to rule by the the ‘demos’ (people) in a democracy.

In Ancient Rome, the split was between the ‘optimates’ (the best) and the the ‘populares’ (the people) for control of the Republic.

In Shi’a Islam, which split from mainstream Sunni Islam after the death of Muhammad of Mecca, leadership is reserved for descendants of their prophet’s grandson Ali (Shi’a means ‘party of Ali’).

The English Civil War – or the War of the Three Kingdoms more accurately – was partly caused by Charles I’s insistence that he alone was chosen by God to rule and didn’t need to consult with parliament about how the country was run.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, there was strong resistance to the Reform Acts of 1832, 1867, 1884 and 1918 which gave all men and (eventually) most women the right to vote.

Throughout human history, there has been resistance from the rich to sharing their power with the common herd. Are our times any different?

Privilege Comes From Wealth

Back in the mid-nineteenth century, Karl Marx wrote…

“The history of all hitherto exisiting society is the the history of class struggles.”

Let me just state that I am not a Marxist in my politics. However, I have studied History at both undergraduate and postgraduate level and have some regard for individual Marxist historians and sympathy for certain types of Marxist methodology. I definitely think that many elements of Western society in 2019 conform to Marx’s theories.

I Agree With Boris Johnson*

There is an episode of The Simpsons called The Father, the Son and the Holy Guest Star** where Bart and Homer decide to join the Catholic Church encouraged by a priest, Father Sean, played by Liam Neeson. This called a rift in the family and with Reverend Lovejoy of the one true faith – “The Western Branch of American Reform Presbylutheranism.” The family are eventually reconciled and Ned Flanders says his church and the Catholics should unite against their real enemies – “monogamous gays and stem cells.” Sounds a lot like the mad alliance between the ‘woke’ left and the Islamist hard right. Or the various factions of the Establishment united by their hatred of Brexit.

When giving a speech after being elected Conservative leader on Tuesday 23rd, Boris Johnson said he was going to deliver Brexit, unite the country and defeat Jeremy Corbyn. I have my doubts about the first and the third remains (snigger) to be seen but I can wholeheartedly agree with the second point. Probably for very different reasons.

The Emperor Has No Clothes

Anyone who has read this blog knows the contempt I feel for organised religion – particularly in its monotheistic, Abrahamic form(s). It is my belief that monotheism is an inherently bigoted ideology as it suggests that there is one true path to one true god. Opponents are not simply wrong, they are evil.

The precipitous decline in religious belief in the West is an entirely positive development. However, this decline has not seen the disappearance of the religious impulse. A small, but very vocal, number of people appear to have transferred their religious devotion to politics. The same intolerance, the same bigotry, the same belief in fictitious notions and the same refusal to admit to being wrong about anything.

Transgenderism has become a religion for some people.

The Anti-Imperialism Of Idiots

One of the points I have raised repeatedly since I started this blog in January 2017 is my dislike of the current binary thinking in politics. In my very first post I wrote…

“There are three main reasons for starting a blog at this time. The first is my concern about the general coarsening of debate in the second decade of the twenty-first century. Too many people are too convinced that they know all the answers. Too many issues are black-and-white, good-versus-evil. If you don’t agree with me you are not just wrong or mistaken, you are evil and you deserve to be punished for your errors. Opponents are ‘phobes’ and suffer from ‘isms’ or, if you prefer, they are ‘snowflakes’ or ‘traitors.’ This blog will be firmly in the grey. Like Manuel, I know nothing. Or was that Socrates?”

Nothing in the last two-and-a-half years has persuaded me that I am wrong. If anything, this tendency is getting worse.

It seems some of the pseudo-left are subscribing to the ‘two camps’ philosophy of the Zhdanov Doctrine.

The Bigotry Of The ‘Anti-Racists’

I would urge readers to watch the Panorama documentary Is Labour Anti-Semitic?

I’ve come to a similar conclusion about Jeremy Corbyn as I did about Sepp Blatter and FIFA. I originally thought Blatter was merely useless at his job but changed my mind and came to believe that he was personally corrupt. Similarly with Corbyn. I thought he was an overpromoted nonentity surrounded by anti-Semites. However, I have change my mind and I now, reluctantly, think that he is personally anti-Semitic.

Before I continue, I would like to point out that as far as the Israel/Palestine quagmire goes I simply don’t care. I hold no brief for the Israeli government, certainly not under its current leader. Still less do I support the genocidal religious fascists of Hamas nor the geriatric kleptocrats of the Palestinian Authority. I am as interested in this issue as the average Toytown ‘anti-Zionist’ is interested in Transnistria, Abkhazia or the Sahrawi Republic.

What this row demonstrates is that the fanaticism, bigotry and good/evil binary of monotheistic religion has transferred itself into politics, particularly amongst those who I like to call the pseudo-left.

The Arrogance Of The Ruling Class Update

Seems I’m not the only person who dislikes the arrogant and aloof Markle person.

In yesterday’s (07/07/2019) Sunday Times, Camilla Long wrote a splendidly sarcastic piece – For keeping mum about Archie’s godparents, I rechristen the people’s prince HRH Killjoy.

She makes the same basic point I made in my original post – The Arrogance of the Ruling Class – that the dysfunctional Mountbatten-Windsor clan are allowed to live in obscene luxury at taxpayers’ expense because they fulfil the role of nonpolitical head of state. The Markle person has broken this compact.

The Arrogance Of The Ruling Class

Many years ago, when I still bought printed newspapers, I had a letter published in the international version of the Telegraph that criticised their coverage of the wedding of Kate Middleton and William Mountbatten-Windsor. The following week, several letters were published to criticise me for my “mean-spirited” attitude.

This post will make that letter look like a eulogy to the British monarchy.

Losing The Plot

“You say we are homophobic. We say you are Islamophobic.”

These words were allegedly said on one of the protesters at Anderton Park primary school in Birmingham.

On 9th June 2019, the Sunday Times published an article by the writer Julie Bindel entitled Julie Bindel: the man in a skirt called me a Nazi – then attacked.

The obsession with identity politics is becoming ever more violent and it is extremely dangerous to social cohesion.

A Time To Compromise

From the Book of Ecclesiastics, Chapter 3, Verses 1-8…

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die;

A time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal;

A time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

A time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to seek, and a time to lose;

A time to tear, and a time to sew;

A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate;

A time for war, and a time for peace.”

It is nearly three years since the referendum on membership of the European Union. No one is going to get all of what they want. It is long past time to compromise.

Why Does This Keep Happening?

Here in Australia there was a federal election last weekend. All the polls predicted a win for the Australian Labor Party (not a typo; they use the American spelling) over the incumbent Liberal-National government. In the event, the government won an unexpected victory and actually increased its tally of seats in the House of Representatives.

This was something of a shock as more than fifty separate polls over the past three years had predicted a Labor victory. Two Liberal-National prime ministers (Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull) lost their jobs because of poor polls. However, it has emerged that the pollsters were badly wrong. I would like to offer three exclamation which I call…

1/ the Nikita Khrushchev reason,

2/ the Homer Simpson reason and

3/ the Bad Santa reason.

Humpty Dumpty And Islamophobia Part Two

Continued from Part One

Humpty Dumpty And Islamophobia Part One

From ‘Alice Through The Looking Glass’ by Lewis Carroll…

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means what I choose it to mean – nether more nor less.

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”

The Orwellian term ‘Islamophobia’ has made yet another unwelcome return to the headlines with the adoption of an all-encompassing definition of this dangerous word by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims…

“Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.”

I wrote a detailed condemnation of this ridiculous term back in 2017 called Challenging The Fascist Word ‘Islamophobia’ but I feel it is necessary to restate my opposition to this dangerous, open-ended tool of bigoted theocrats.

They Know!

They know! At some level. I’m convinced of it. Religious people – whether followers of the more traditional religions like Judaism or Christianity or newer versions like identity politics, transgenderism or Islamophilia – know at some level that their beliefs are simply wrong. It’s why they get so angry when challenged.

Censorship, Phobias And Unpersons

Back in 2017, I wrote a post called At Last! The Truth! which I subtitled “The real reason behind Islamist terrorism.” Despite all the evidence to the contrary, extensive quotes from the Koran and Hadiths, I suggested that Islamists were not inspired by Muhammad of Mecca but by Terry Nation’s Daleks because…

1/ the Daleks are always angry;

2/ they hate anyone who isn’t one of them;

3/ their solution to every problem is to exterminate it.

I even made the dark point that the Daleks became suicide bombers in the Tom Baker serial Destiny of the Daleks.

Of course I was being facetious but it seems that the rage of the Islamists has spread far and wide.

The Venn Diagram Of Hypocrisy

I’ve been thinking about Venn diagrams recently. Yes, I really am that sad. For those of you who don’t remember high school mathematics, a Venn diagram is like the one in the header picture and helps you to compare two or more sets of numbers or descriptions of the same event. The reason I’ve been thinking about these diagrams is because I’ve been helping my son with some homework where he had to compare a couple of descriptions. However, it got me thinking about the very loud, very opinionated and very small and unrepresentative group of people who have been allowed to dominate social and political discussions at the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century.

Yuval Noah Harari – The Liberal Buffet

‘Liberal’ is an interesting word. Here in Australia, the Liberal Party is the main centre-right political party whereas in Canada the Liberal Party is the main centre-left party. In the UK, the Liberal Democrats occupy the uneasy centre of politics. During the nineteenth century, the classical liberalism of William Gladstone and John Stuart Mill advocated balanced budgets and limited government. In today’s United States, the word ‘liberal’ appears to be code for ‘far left’ and people who loudly proclaim their liberalism have more in common with Jeremy Corbyn than with Gladstone and Mill.

I am a great admirer of the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari and I would recommend his books Sapiens, Homo Deus and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century to anyone interested in history. He has written a fascinating article for the Financial Times called Welcome To The Liberal Buffet that examines some of the implications of what it means to be a liberal in 2019.

Brunei, Hypocrisy And The Elephant In The Room

The self-appointed guardians of all that is good and moral have been getting themselves into a right old state about the ‘new’ laws introduced by the Sultan of Brunei this week. In case you have been living under a rock, on April 3rd 2019 Brunei implemented a set of laws based on Islamic Sharia that prescribe brutal punishments for various crimes and non-crimes. These are known as ‘hudud,’ Arabic for ‘borders, boundaries or limits.’ The laws that have attracted most attention are those that criminalise gay sex and adultery, both of which now attract death penalty, by stoning if you can credit it, for consensual acts between adults that take place in private. Yes, you read that correctly. At the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century a country has introduced the death penalty for private and consensual sex between adults because they contradict the mad ravings attributed to a semi-historical desert bandit from the Dark Ages. It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious.