If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
-Wilfred Owen.
Look at the trouble it’s causing. The gay “community” ( I always put ” community” in scare quotes nowadays ) want to call their partnerships marriages, and of course some people are all for it, and some are against it, but what they are all calling for without exception is for the all powerful state to change it’s mind about what a marriage is.
Well I’m sorry, but that’s bollocks.
A marriage is a contract between consenting adults. It is a promise to share lives and wealth until death, said in front of witnesses and associated paperwork signed and witnessed. The state has no business in dictating the terms of such a contract, dictating where it may be agreed to or dictating who may sign it. Full stop. (A libertarian may here interject that the State may have some role in enforcing contracts but I’m an anarchist, so they can bugger off).
This whole debate amounts to one side saying “please sir, please sir, those people want to say they’re married but I don’t WANT them to” and the other side saying “Oh, but SIR, you simply MUST agree that we can call it marriage too or it’s just so UNFAIR!” Grow the fuck up. You love each other so why do you care what sir thinks? Or the other crowd? Get the state OUT of marriage altogether and the whole debate simply fades away. Sign a contract, find somewhere to hire out to celebrate it (and somewhere else for a proper party afterwards ) and have done with it.
And don’t get me started on religious freedom. What about Muslims and Mormons and anyone else who fancies a bit of polygamy? I hear a lot about one man and one woman, two men or two women but what if you fancy two wives or three husbands? Or a wife, two bisexuals and a tranny? If they all agree then why shouldn’t they be able to enter into contract? And call it marriage or whatever else they want?
And “advertising standards” can kiss my arse as well. It’s a contradiction in terms anyway. Next time you see “x% of y women agreed” do the maths, see if it comes out to a real number of women. That’s just more corporatism, right there.
Sorry, but no.
A very highly-paid football player got called a bad word.
That’s not a public order offence… is it? People shout all the time at football matches. Surely, if shouting a bad word at a football player is a racially aggravated public order offence, then shouting anything else at all is a vanilla public order offence?
Round them up!
I am separately consulting on how best to tackle the escalation of executive pay which, in many cases, has lost any connection with the value of shares, let alone average employee pay.
It is hard to explain why shareholders can vote to cut top pay but the managers can ignore the vote.
And surely pay should be transparent; not hidden from shareholders, and the public. – Vince Cable’s Speech To the Lib-Dem Conference
Governments attacking things that don’t concern them is not news, the private business here of the pay of empoyees of companies (yes, CEOs are employees too) being one such example.
More private business that is of no concern to anybody are the events surrounding Dale Farm. I’ve been keeping half an eye on the news surrounding this battle -and battle it is- and I’m watching C4′s Dispatches programme as I write this. Predictably, the programme is focusing on the ‘Human Rights’ of Travellers, showing doe-eyed children crying over their lost swings, and the plight of the Travelling Community (perhaps one of the only justifiable uses of the suffix -community) in general.
What I haven’t seen is the defence of Dale Farm based on that most basic human right- property rights. Dale Farm is private property, the section threatened with eviction belonging to one of the families that live there, and it is filled with the private property of all the families therein. Their caravans, bought with the sweat of their brows, their buildings, built by their own effort with materials purchased with their earned money will be, if Basildon Council gets its way, moved or destroyed. What Basildon Council intend to do is (to put it in a nutshell) to trespass on private land and destroy private property- actions which would be, if undertaken by you or I (quite rightly) crimes, and very serious ones at that.
And the justification for this is that it’s the Gypsies who don’t have to abide by the same rules as the rest of us!
In actuality, it is the planning laws themselves that are the travesty. What people choose to do with their private land is no concern of the State! If you are really siding with Basildon Council because you are not allowed to build whatever you like on your land, maybe you should start asking why that is, before pointing a finger at those who dare to defy the beast.
Never let a crisis go to waste, after all. Let’s face it, tighter internet regulation is something every government wants and an excuse like the Capital in flames doesn’t come along every day.
We could also point out (and many have) that the Police are very good at getting tough on drunks and students, but chicken out when it comes to actual criminals- they do it every day so when the criminal element is out en masse it is hardly surprising… however, rumours abound on the -shall we say- less reputable websites that the Met were ordered to hold back.
More on the civil disorder from me later, when I’ve organised my thoughts.
Ok, so now to deal with the train of thought that led to my last post.
I used to be a Stalinist. Have I mentioned that before? I believe so. Not in the way that we on the non-left usually mean -some poor deluded fool who doesn’t really appreciate the ramifications of what they think- but a proper, considered, Stalin-was-right-all-along-and-here’s-why Stalinist.
I arrived there from the best intentions, as most socialists probably do, wanting the best for people. A wouldn’t-it-be-lovely school of socialism, if you like… the magical end-stage of communism (that has mysteriously never ever been achieved would be lovely… but people naturally stop it from working… so therefore they should be forced along the way! After all, once the magical land is achieved all resistance will disappear, and those that fight are holding up the rest of humanity!! Surely a few years out of the way mining salt is nothing compared to a crime of that magnitude! Looking around me, I could see that many, many people made poor decisions… there are lots and lots of stupid people who can’t run their own lives, and so naturally I was of the opinion that wise people should run the lives of stupid ones, for the sake of the happiness of everyone.
In short, I fell into an intellectual trap. Socialism of the wouldn’t-it-be-lovely variety is the preserve of idealistic youth, and such I was. As cynicism sets in, aided not only by historical examples like the Soviet experiment but by the constant parade of the feckless on television and in daily life it is easy to have such a poor view of the common man that one can start to believe all kinds of crazy, extreme things. Eventually of course, just as travelling far enough west will land you in the east, I came far around and back to the idea that people are best left alone, and piling government upon government is never going to lead to paradise.
The key here though, is that I was led up the garden path because of a faulty view of people. The nation is truly full of reckless and irresponsible people but this does not mean that people are naturally reckless and irresponsible. We’d never have gotten past the hitting tigers with sticks stage otherwise! An excess of government has created a situation where people are not merely shielded from the worst consequences of their lack of responsibility but in many cases are actually rewarded for it. People, while not naturally selfish, greedy and workshy have nevertheless been trained to be so. Whether it’s the third-generation baby-benefits mother, or the well-to-do young man who walks straight past the homeless guy or the old lady getting mugged because “the government” (not him!!) “should do something about it” society has been destroyed, and grasping, greedy, fearful individuals have been set in its place. The effects of this are there for all to see but unless you venture away from what you are taught at school and what you read in the papers you could easily believe that far from being the cause, more welfare, more police and above all more State are the cure. Every time a child born of welfare parents (little more than overgrown children themselves) dies from neglect we are told that we need more welfare, more social workers and more State. Whenever the so-called feral youth torment an old dear to the point of suicide the faces on the news demand that things be done, and we get community wardens and ASBOs.
Strangely, though, how ever many new behaviour-improving measures are brought in, the situation never seems to improve. Whether this was deliberate from the start or whether -like my own journey- the Welfare State was started with the best of intentions until cynicism set in I will leave up to the reader to decide, but it must be apparent that a vicious (or virtuous, depending where one stands) is now in place where every further outrage born of the society socialism has made leads to more socialism.
We are, by now familiar with the erratic implementation of the thousands of new laws in this once-great nation of ours, so I submit this for your attention.
You may remember Leg-Iron’s picture of the exposed, windy bus stop with the no smoking sign? Well, the picture below is the area within Chatham Bus Station where smoking is permitted.
Looks quite enclosed doesn’t it? Selective enforcement being, of course, the trademark of repressive authoritarian regimes since time immemorial.It’s not all rosy in Medway though. Although I’ve been reading stories about the street harassment of the smoker community 
up and down the country I hadn’t experienced any myself, or heard of any locally. Too many smokers, too many of them chavs, thugs, winos or moody-looking foreigners for such things to happen around these parts. Nevermore.
For now, via Dick Puddlecote I see that mugging has been legalised in the Medway Towns- so long as your victim is a smoker, that is.
Now, I’m not saying that Medway was a nice place to live even before this outrage, we’ve got all the aforementioned chavs, winos, thugs and moody-looking foreigners (plus some who, Power Ranger style combine the attributes of all four) plus plenty of Plastic Plod of many varieties, CCTV (fixed and mobile), crime, junkies, beggars- all the components in fact, of modern life. Plus everything, even new stuff, looks grimy and run-down. Until now though, the war on the smoking and drinking communities have been relatively minor, so long as you don’t drop your butt or guzzle your Stella in the High Streets you’re pretty much ok to do what you like.
I never thought I’d see the day when we were host to a pilot scheme of state-sanctioned violence against undesirables. Naive I suppose. There’s plenty here: Like shooting fish in a barrel.
Having read this account of a conversation with a “senior member of the Conservative Party” by Sean Gabb of the Libertarian Alliance I’m now reconsidering some of what I had suspected was going on behind the scenes.
I have been coming to the conclusion for a while now (in fact I implied back at the time of the European Elections) that the BNP were getting a ‘push’ from unseen agents towards electoral success. I believed (and still suspect) that this push was coming from within the Labour Party and elements of the media, especially the BBC. Certainly, the BNP have more in common with Old Labour policies than they have differences, the racist elements of their policy are being downplayed to the level the dog-whistle and the anti-immigration stance has become more anti-cheap foreign labour than anti-darkie. In short, the BNP have been re-packaged to appeal to Labour’s traditional core vote.
A vote that Brown’s Labour seem determined to lose. This is assumed quite widely to be a mistake on Labour’s part, a product of chasing the middle class vote in the marginals and campaign by focus group. While this is possible it would take huge levels of both arrogance and stupidity on the Labour leadership’s part to simply take their core votes for granted- fine if there were no alternative for a working class still remembering how their grandfather’s were thrown to the dogs during the Thatcher years and thus with an almost genetic reluctance to vote Conservative, but there is an alternative and one that is gaining support. Arrogance I can believe in but getting yourself to the top of a major political party is not something one would expect an intellectually challenged person to be able to achieve.
Certainly, events such as the debacle in Rochdale last week suddenly look very different when looked at from a point of view that assumes an orchestrated attempt to push voters into the embrace of Mr. Griffin.
Means and opportunity we have, the only thing I cannot fathom is motive. Or rather, I can make several wild guesses (but will refrain for now) but that is all I have: speculation.
Sean Gabb’s post puts a different spin on the matter though, as it puts elements within the Conservative party in the frame. One reading of his conversation simply posits the BNP as a useful catspaw for a hidden Conservative agenda, being considered to accomplish aims that the Conservative Party could not -for whatever reason- accomplish themselves. Another, more paranoid reading could suggest that there are elements within the Conservative Party who are also interested in pushing the BNP to the fore, again for reasons I could only speculate on. Both readings would sit well with ‘XYZ’s reasons for the Conservatives moving closer both to the centre and the Politically Correct Green/Righteous. If, however, the paranoid/tin-foil cap reading is correct (and various tin-foily-type musings have been proved correct in the end, don’t forget. Just because something is espoused by loonies doesn’t mean it isn’t true) then elements within both the governing party and the opposition are working together to manipulate the public into voting for an extremist party. This isn’t that great a leap from the blogposts I read on an almost daily basis referring to the ‘Tory and Labour wings of the Social Democratic Party’ and so on. If we can accept that, well…
Or, the Labour Party are arrogant and stupid and the Conservatives are taking a risky, risky gamble with their electoral future.
Leg-Iron was musing recently about the attempts to ban the electrofag, and I think he surmised (although I might have read it somewhere else, to be honest) that a big-pharma-version might be around the corner. Perhaps it’s this?
Duke’s new technology employs a unique method to deliver nicotine to the lungs. In their presentation, the researchers show the new lung delivery technology results in rapid absorption of nicotine that provides immediate relief of withdrawal symptoms and also re-creates some of the familiar sensations that are pleasurable to smokers.
(Sciencedaily)
This evening I watched Channel 4′s documentary My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, and as well as learning quite a few things I didn’t know about Gypsy culture, I was also not-terribly-surprised at the discrimination they face, having lived in the real world and met real people. They are one of the few groups, like smokers and fat people, that it is still alright to have a negative opinion about.
I’ve nothing against gypsies. I’ve met a few, not many I’ll admit. Some were nasty bastards, most were ok. Just like any other cross-section of the population. I’ve no problem with them living they way they choose, and as for most people’s complaint- “they don’t pay any bloody taxes…” Well. I’m sure you can guess where I stand on that argument.
In any case, in one scene, the family were called by the reception venue on the day of the wedding to cancel, having found out at the last minute who their clients were. The family were naturally furious, and much wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued.
“If they’d cancelled because we were black, or gay or something, it would be in all the papers.” Quite right, it would. The interesting thing -as always- however, lay in what they didn’tsay. They did not at any point say that there should be a law against discriminating against them. They gritted their teeth, complained, and got on with saving their wedding. They don’t seem to understand the rules of Victimhood Poker.
Compare this with Simon Green, the disabled man with a huge chip on his shoulder featured in the BBC’sPanorama the other day. Hardly a moment went by when he wasn’t either drawing attention to ‘hate crime’ laws that I didn’t know existed (In one memorable scene he is secretly filming inside a back-street pub where he is getting some stick from the locals.
“He doesn’t seem to like me, and that’s fine. He’s entitled to his opinion. But he called me a cripple and that’s not fine. In fact it’s illegal.” Is it!) or calling for further laws to protect his delicate sensibilities from people saying things he doesn’t like, or to make things that are already crimes (like assault or criminal damage) some sort of Super Crimes if they are committed against disabled people. It is tragic that he is in a wheelchair, and the other cases he showed (like the disabled lady who had the windows of her special disabled car smashed by local yobs) are tragic too, but smashing windows is already a crime and just because the police can’t be bothered to deal with it is no reason to be calling for specific offenses of damaging the property of the disabled. Surely the answer is the reform of the police so they investigate all crimes, not pleading for our own particular special cases?
It didn’t even seem to occur to the Gypsies that they might plead to the government to protect them from the nasty people who don’t like them, and force people to let out their property to people they’d rather not let it out to. Perhaps it’s their edge-of-society position, or their ancient anarchic culture, or perhaps it’s simply because they are not pets like Simon Green. Instead of whining for the State to come and rescue them they would rather get on and sort it out for themselves. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.
