A predictable response to a preventable tragedy

The Connecticut massacre, where 26 people, 20 of them children, were murdered by a deranged gunman, produced all sorts of responses. Predictably, most of them were wrong – and in the case of Obama downright worrying.

The president wept openly on television, talked about everybody’s broken heart, shed tears for ‘beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old… [who] had their entire lives ahead of them — birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own…’ Obama then promised that he and Michelle would hug their own children especially tight that evening and tell them how much they love them.

Modern people, Americans in particular, can’t distinguish sentiment from sentimentality and dignified restraint from effusive vulgarity, so Obama knew he was on a winner there. Americans expect their politicians to respond to tragedies with cloyingly lachrymose displays.

Obama was upset – any normal person would be under the circumstances. But if I still lived in America, I’d be deeply worried about the country’s commander-in-chief reacting to adversity in the style of a melodramatic soap opera for the culturally challenged. How would he react to a real national emergency, say to a nuclear device going off in Manhattan?

Not that the sincerity of Obama’s feelings is beyond question. Today’s politicians have cauterised the part of their brain that produces human emotions. Conversely, the part responsible for politicking is hypertrophied. Obama or any other Western leader would put his children up for adoption in Somalia if that would guarantee better opinion polls.

So by parading his well-rehearsed grief Obama was probably scoring political points. One such point relates to gun control, an issue close to every leftie heart. The ‘beautiful little kids’ are thus being used as pawns on a power-play chessboard. No doubt such cynicism is objectionable, but it’s still preferable to a nation’s leader going to pieces for real.

Blaming guns for gun crime is a typical fallacy, but it’s more than that. In America guns are a watershed separating socialists (liberals, in the American misnomer) from conservatives. As they do in everything else, the lefties rely on sheer demagoguery and fiddling of facts to make their point.

No doubt in this instance they’ll blame the horrific slaughter on Connecticut’s permissive gun laws, rather than on the appalling failure of everyone involved to spot Lanza’s mental illness. True enough, what with easy availability of pistols and rifles, Connecticut annually has 22.46 gun assaults per 100,000 population.

Neighbouring Massachusetts, on the other hand, has some of the tightest gun controls in the world, with anyone found in possession of a pistol receiving a mandatory one-year sentence. One would expect the statistics of gun assaults there to be much lower than in Connecticut. In fact, at 30.8 per 100,000, they’re a third higher.

The National Rifle Association is right in saying that guns don’t kill people. It’s people who do that. In this instance the focus should be on the murderer, not on the availability of weapons.

By all accounts Adam Lanza was a strange lad. An honour pupil at school, he was widely regarded as extremely intelligent. Yet Lanza was an obvious sociopath, avoiding all social contact with his classmates, never having any friends and discouraging all attempts by both children and adults to strike a conversation.

Asocial loners are by no means rare in America, and in fact much of the country’s folklore glorifies the taciturn hero who says little but does much. Yet not uttering a word throughout one’s school years and even refusing to be photographed for the school yearbook is unusual even in New England.

Apparently Lanza was deeply affected by his parents’ divorce three years ago, but his mother, a school teacher, looked after him well. Yet both she and everyone else who knew Lanza described him as borderline certifiable.

Why then did he never receive any professional attention? My guess it’s because so many other Americans do.

In the USA, especially on both coasts, it’s considered infra dig not to spend large sums on shrinks, be that counsellors, analysts or psychiatrists. Everyone is encouraged to seek professional help because no one is encouraged to think of himself as normal.

In the land that invented psychobabble and where Freud is still taken seriously, Americans don’t have lousy moods – they’re depressed. They aren’t sad – they’re dejected. They aren’t obsessively neat – they’re anally retentive.

Americans are never inferior, but they all suffer from inferiority complexes. And as to oedipal complexes, these are talked about so much that one gets the impression every other youngster is desperate to screw his Mum, kill his Dad and gouge his own eyes out. Such urges are supposed to create an unbridgeable generation gap.

I used to mock this sort of thing by introducing myself to young Americans by saying, ‘Hi, I’m Alex Boot and I hate my parents. Don’t you?’ After some initial consternation at such lack of inhibitions, the typical answer was, ‘Gee man, funny you should say that. So happens I do…’

A single tree would catch everyone’s attention in a desert, but no one would notice it in a thicket. Similarly, in a country where everyone is supposed to be psychologically abnormal and proud of it, real illness, such as the one Adam Lanza so clearly suffered from, is likely to be overlooked.

Lanza may have been odd, but he was never violent; he was far from being normal, but hey, isn’t everyone? In a culture where everyone is supposed to be suffering from some personality disorder, a real, murderous psychopath may well go undetected until it’s too late.

Changing this or any other cultural perversion is possible, but it’s hard. Much easier is to cry crocodile tears (Bogorad’s syndrome in psychobabble) and mouth bien pensant platitudes about gun control. When President Obama or his fellow socialist Mayor Bloomberg talk about ‘immediate and meaningful action’, this is the kind of action they mean.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wlodzimierz Umaniec deserves a doctorate and the Turner Prize, not prison

Mr Umaniec has been sentenced to two years in prison for defacing (or, depending on your point of view, improving) a Mark Rothco mural at the Tate.

Ostensibly, justice has been done. Umaniec did paint his own signature on Rothco’s masterpiece Black on Maroon and he did write ‘a potential piece of yellowism’ under the signature.

But if we were to delve deeper than that, we’d realise that Umaniec has done an inestimable service to his recently adopted country. He has managed to encapsulate the essence of modernism in both his word and deed. In the process, he has proved beyond a shadow of doubt that Eastern European immigrants do make Britain a better place to live.

Umaniec, an unemployed 26-year-old Pole presumably living off our tax receipts, has started an art movement called ‘yellowism’, and I bet the word isn’t part of your everyday vocabulary. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, and from now on you won’t have any excuse.

For ‘yellowism’ is so much more than just an art trend. In fact, it’s also so much less than an art trend, for Umaniec’s embellishment of Rothco’s mural is as yet yellowism’s only tangible contribution to art.

This matters much less than you might think. For, in common with most modern art, yellowism isn’t about using brushes or chisels to create beauty. It’s about using words to create theories, preferably those that dovetail with voguish philosophies.

Rothco himself, and I hope you’ve stood up at the sound of the great man’s name, liked to emphasise the influence of Nietzsche on his work. He ought to know, but philistines like me fail to find an immediate link – other than perhaps Rothco’s attempt to prove by his life’s work that God is indeed dead.

I wouldn’t like to venture a guess on Umaniec’s direct philosophical influences, simply because any modernist thinker is a candidate for the honour. It could be, for example, Jacques Derrida with his deconstructionism, for which ‘destructionism’ would be a more precise, and concise, term – just take the ‘con’ out.

‘In a classical philosophical opposition we are not dealing with the peaceful coexistence of a vis-à-vis, but rather with a violent hierarchy… To deconstruct the opposition, first of all, is to overturn the hierarchy at a given moment,’ stated Derrida with his usual lucidity (are you again standing up in awe?).

To put it more intelligibly, in consonance with its moniker Derrida’s philosophy is about violent destruction. Its influence on an act of defacing a work of art, such as it is, is unmistakeable.

But to repeat, modernist art isn’t so much about practice as theory, and it’s there that Umaniec deserves accolades, not a custodial sentence. For the theory behind yellowism, and I do apologise to its founders if I missed something, is that vandalism is the essence of art, and possibly the other way around too. Every piece of art, modernist art that is, effectively ‘overturns the hierarchy at a given moment’, in Derrida’s phrase. As such, it represents an act of vandalism. Similarly, any act of vandalism has an element of art to it.

Extending this irrefutable line of thought, we must accept that Giotto vandalised Byzantine iconography, della Francesca vandalised Giotto, Leonardo vandalised della Francesca and Velazquez vandalised them all. By the same token, Caliph Umar, who in 641 destroyed the Alexandria Library, was an accomplished artist.

Moving closer to our time, Rothco’s abstract expressionism represented a clear act of vandalism, so Umaniec merely vandalised a vandal, thereby pushing this artistic concept up to new heights. Rather than causing £200,000 worth of damage, as the prosecution claimed, he thus increased the artistic value of Rothco’s mural, even if he lowered its commercial price.

Isn’t modernity lovely? Don’t know about you, but I’m swelling with pride for the wonderful times we live in, when everyone has an open mind and the doors are open to, well, anything.

A holdout from the less progressive, less open time might be confused. So fine, he’d say, all those artists of yesteryear were vandals. But surely that’s not all they were? They didn’t just deconstruct, they also created something, specifically art.

This goes to show how hopelessly fuddy-duddy these fossils are. They simply don’t understand what art is. Their reactionary minds still cling to the obsolete notion that art means something specific and tautly definable. It doesn’t. To our modern, open minds art is anything and everything.

Acting as evangelist to Umaniec’s Christ, fellow yellowist Ben Smith set us straight:  ‘Everything is equal. Everything is art. Everything is a potential piece of yellowism.’

Art, in other words, is anything the artist says it is. Take a turd, put it in the middle of a floor, call it Defiance, possibly Conservatism or else Brown on Brown, collect the Turner Prize, indulge in some public foreplay with Nicholas Serota at the award ceremony, say ‘I’d like to thank…’ – this is art because Umaniec and Serota say so.

We must thank Wlodzimierz Umaniec for bringing such crystal clarity to issues that until now have been deemed complex. I do hope his sentence will be overturned on appeal – and that our politicians will hold him up as yet another shining example of how much new arrivals improve Britain.  

 

 

 

It’s not just Labour’s fault

That, however, doesn’t mean they are free of blame, far from it. The results of the 2011 census show that in 10 years Blairites allowed a staggering four million immigrants to settle in Britain.

As a result, only 45 percent of Londoners identify themselves as white British, and 25 percent of British families have no member who speaks English as first language.

Having said that, many native Brits speak English in a way that makes one wish they didn’t, and indeed wonder if it’s really English they speak, but that’s beside the point. Or is it?

The whole situation is mad, but many commentators correctly assume that there is method to that madness. In today’s thoughtful article in The Mail Stephen Glover places the blame firmly at Labour’s door. He correctly identifies the party’s immigration policy as an attempt to create an electoral base for future victories.

Even if we didn’t know that most new arrivals tend to vote Labour, this would be an easy guess to make. After all, one way or another immigrants depend on state handouts, at least initially. Human nature is such that they’d be more likely to vote for a party that promises – and has been known to provide – more assistance.

Being a diplomatic man, Mr Glover feigns incredulity that a political party could so cynically put its own interests before the nation’s. But deep down he knows as well as we all do that not just Labour but also the Tories are more than capable of such cynicism.

You don’t seriously think that, if Dave could import a few million potential Tory voters, he would refuse to do so out of principle? Of course you don’t. Neither does Mr Glover.

Yet what frightens me isn’t just the statistics, but what lies behind the statistics. For this insane, suicidal, uncontrolled immigration is symptomatic of something much more worrying than merely Labour buying their votes with our money.

The clash under way isn’t between parties but between civilisations, and ours is losing. We are witnessing not just a systematic shift to the political left but a massive transition of Britain, and the West in general, to post-Christian paganism.

I’m using Christian to describe not just the religion as such but the whole civilisation the religion has produced. Christendom has had its ups and downs, but on balance there’s little doubt that it’s by far the most successful civilisation in history.

Its politics, laws, economics, general – if variable – tolerance, all rooted in Christianity, provided for unprecedented liberty and prosperity, accompanied by unmatched achievements in arts, sciences and indeed every area of spiritual and intellectual endeavour.

Yet once the umbilical cord tying the civilisation to its religious underpinnings was severed, the civilisation was cast adrift. It became vulnerable to the kind of human folly that had been more or less kept in check for centuries.

Like cancerous cells that attack the weaker areas in the human body, assorted knaves jumped on the Western body politic, getting their teeth and claws into the flesh of Christendom.

This process has an accelerator built-in: the longer it lasts, the faster it goes. The oncological analogy works here as well: as the body weakens, its resistance wanes, and those rogue cells find it easier to do their murderous work.

Our political class is now made up of such cancerous cells. For the first time in the history of these Isles it works not for the nation but against it. Fully aware of its own incompatibility with traditional civilisation, the political class craves to destroy it, for otherwise it itself will be destroyed.

Wittingly or unwittingly, they perceive traditional civilisation as a crumbling fortress that can be brought down by judiciously applied battering rams. Mass immigration of cultural aliens is one such battering ram, but not the only one.

For a robust, dominant culture is capable of absorbing into itself huge numbers of outsiders who are then forced by the very ethos of the country to come inside the culture. Just look at foreign invaders who succeeded in conquering England.

The Normans had already abandoned their Scandinavian heritage, and it was as Frenchmen that they followed the Conqueror in 1066. Yet within a couple of generations they became English not just linguistically, but also culturally. The same can be said for the Dutch administrative class taking over England in 1688. Arguably this too represented a conquest, yet the new arrivals became English in an historic instant.

The only way for immigrants to weaken the traditional culture, rather than adapt to it, would be for the groundwork to be laid in advance. Hence, for example, the consistent, cross-party effort to create an ignorant populace that not only would be unable to defend our traditional culture but would in fact have no idea of what it is.

The debacle started with Shirley Williams, but it wasn’t party-specific. For example, when she was Education Secretary, the sainted Margaret Thatcher closed down more grammar schools than any Labour leader ever did. Thus Poles or Pakistanis unable to speak proper English join many similarly handicapped Brits as two facets of exactly the same phenomenon.

Educated native subjects of Her Majesty feel it only right that new arrivals should be given a test on British politics, history and culture. Few ask themselves how many of their compatriots would be able to pass such a test. Not many, would be my guess, for creating an ignorant, pagan populace is a sine qua non for the victory of modernity.

Nor is the catastrophe limited to education. Every brick in the foundations of Britain, including her very sovereignty, is being knocked out. It’s to this, for instance, that we owe the pathetic state of our economy, made so by the government’s policies that are described by many good people as irresponsible. And so they would be if the government pursued the traditional economic goal of prosperity spread as widely as possible. As it is, the goals are entirely different, and they are destructive, not constructive.

None of this is to suggest that members of our political class get together and plan an onslaught on what they perceive as potential dangers. They don’t because they don’t have to.

As they are all children of post-Christian modernity, their innate moral imperatives do not include bono publico. They function on a totally different plane from that on which our traditional civilisation used to live, and the two planes vindicate Euclid and defy Lobachevsky by never intersecting.

So yes, of course Stephen Glover is right when suggesting that Blair’s Labour deliberately imported millions of potential supporters. One just wishes that were all there is to it. 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bravo, Gerard Dépardieu

If there’s one immutable law of economics, it’s that rich people don’t take socialist extortion lying down. They take it running away.

France’s best-known actor is the latest among those Frenchmen who’ve struck a blow for sound economics by moving to Belgium and ‘giving France the finger’, in the colourful phrase of Benoît Hamon, the Consumption Minister.

Now a country that offers that job description, along with Minister for Equality, Minister for Women, Minister for Culture or Minister for Sport, thereby forfeits any claim to the loyalty of her citizens. In case you may think I’m being Francophobic, our own (mostly Conservative!) government has all those positions. The only exception is Minister for Consumption, and that probably only because of the tubercular connotations.

When Hollande became President, he famously declared, ‘I don’t like the rich.’ Now he’s finding the feeling is mutual.

People who earn a lot of money will not put up with having a great chunk of it taxed at 75 percent. Nor will they welcome Hollande’s huge increases in both inheritance and capital-gains taxes.

It’s a sign of their desperation that they choose to drive a few miles and settle in Belgium, which has to be described as hardship duty. Still, Belgium may be the butt of non-PC jokes both in France and in Holland, and it may possess the ugliest capital in Western Europe, but it has lower taxes on both income and capital gains – and no wealth tax at all.

Performing artists find Belgium particularly attractive, for they pay a mere 18-percent income tax there. Dépardieu will thus pay €180,000 on the second million euros he’ll earn next year, as opposed to €750,000. The difference of €570,000 makes his decision a no-brainer – and this without even taking into account another few hundred thousand he’ll save on his first million.

Socialists everywhere always froth at the mouth whenever their prey slips between their fingers. For example, Dave and his stooges are trying their best to criminalise tax avoidance, as opposed to tax evasion which is already against the law. Since no law against tax shelters has so far been passed, Dave and George have turned this into a moral crusade.

Now these spivocrats evoking morality is a real turn-up for the bookkeepers. It’s a bit like Sir John Major advocating marital fidelity or Gordon Brown supporting balanced budgets. But socialists, whatever they call themselves in public, have their own take on morality: whatever is good for them is moral, and vice versa.

That’s why it isn’t surprising that the French variety, and it is among the most revolting, had to outfroth even Mr Hamon.

Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault explained the situation to the best of his ability, which is alas not saying much. The rich, he orated, wish to escape the socialists’ clutches ‘because they want to get even richer.’

Heaven forbid. People wanting to improve their condition? Whatever next? Before you know it, some Frenchmen will begin to want jobs rather than welfare, and then the socialists will really be in trouble. What people ought to be striving for is poverty spread equally across all classes, except the political class of course.

It doesn’t occur to this lot that people like Dépardieu, who keeps much of the French cinema industry in jobs; his new neighbours the Mulliezes, who employ 270,000 in their Auchan supermarkets; or Bernard Arnault, France’s richest man who has applied for Belgian citizenship, help the very economy the socialists are so busily destroying. The same can be said for the hundreds of thousands of other enterprising Frenchmen who are fleeing France as if it were in the grips of the Black Death.

The net fiscal effect of Hollande’s policies will therefore be negative. But this simple logic is beyond the grasp of French lefties or, for that matter, ours. Vince Cable, for example, advocates the 50-percent tax bracket because it ‘sends an important message.’ True enough, it does. And the message is ‘Run!’

France has sunk even deeper into the socialist morass than we have. Witness the fact that patron (boss or company owner) is one of the worst insults in the French language. And witness the shrill screams coming from the French political class at the moment, whose fervour pitch hits notes so far unreachable even by our Milibandits.

Thus Libération called Dépardieu a ‘drunken, obese petit-bourgeois reactionary’, which was rude, irrelevant and at least half-wrong.

Incidentally, our own Telegraph shouldn’t be referring to that French rag as a ‘left-leaning daily’. The Times, or in France Le Figaro and Le Monde, are left-leaning, gentlemen. Libération is Trotskyist, which is not a pejorative term but a factual description based on the paper’s editorial policy, party allegiance of its staff and the way it’s financed.

Socialist MP Yann Galut called for the actor to be stripped of his nationality, and if there’s no law to do that then the law must be changed. This is surprisingly moderate for that lot. Why not kidnap Dépardieu the way the French counterintelligence used to kidnap OAS insurgents? He has only settled a couple of miles across the border, and, unlike those OAS people, he’s probably not watching his back.

The operation would be as easy as pie. Grab the actor, stuff him into a car boot, bring him to Paris and put him on trial. May I suggest treason as the charge? It’s already being bandied about in the press, so the groundwork has been done.

And if no law exists to that effect, pass it straight away and make it retroactive. Why stand on formality? The founders of the French republic never did.

These are our partners in the EU, ladies and gentlemen. One can understand Dave’s affection for it: birds of a feather, and all that. 

 

Dave says we risk becoming like Norway (if only)

Speaking on the dismal future awaiting Britain outside the EU, Dave issued a blood-curdling threat: we could suffer the fate of Norway.

‘You can be like Norway, and you can have full access to the single market, but you have absolutely no say over the rules of that market.’

Crikey. I for one am quaking in my boots. No, what frightens me isn’t the awful prospect of emulating Norway. It’s being governed by a manifestly incompetent nincompoop.

Understandably, Dave didn’t have time to check the facts before issuing his stark warning – he’s too busy trying to push homomarriage through Parliament and down our throats. Good to see that our leaders have got their priorities right.

Yet had Dave found a couple of minutes to study available data, he would have realised that being like Norway shouldn’t scare us unduly.

As I write, Norway boasts the highest Quality of Life Index in the world.

Her median household income is 25 percent higher than Britain’s and in Europe it’s second only to Luxembourg’s.

And her composite Human Development Index (covering standard of living, quality of life, education, medical care etc) stands at Number 1 in the world, with the UK at Number 28.

All in all, one can say that Norway has done reasonably well outside of the EU – this without being able to have a ‘say over the rules of the market’. This second part of Dave’s threat shows that he’s not only a lazy researcher but also a lazy thinker.

We ‘have absolutely no say over the rules’ of the US market either, which doesn’t prevent us from importing more from America than from anywhere else. Our exports to non-EU countries exceed those to the EU – and vastly exceed those to the eurozone. Moreover, our non-EU exports are growing as steadily as those to the EU are declining.

One may get the impression that having a say in the laws of other lands isn’t necessarily a precondition for doing business with them. Nor will leaving the EU result in what Dave calls ‘government by fax’. We’ll be governed by our own sovereign parliament, just the way we were for centuries.

European countries will simply be like any foreign states or, if they so choose, one foreign, sovereign state. As such, they’ll indeed be passing laws over which we’ll have no say. On the other hand, those laws will have no jurisdiction over us. It’s like any relationship between independent political entities in history. They respect one another’s laws without having to abide by them.

If Dave knows what he says isn’t true, he’s a knave. If he doesn’t know it, he’s a fool. Just look at this pearl: ‘I don’t want Britain to leave the EU. I think that we benefit crucially from the single market…’

That may be, but nobody’s talking of leaving the single market, or the European Economic Area as it’s now known. We’re talking about leaving the political setup known as the European Union, which is one treaty away from being a single state. Is our PM aware of the difference?

Referring to the benefits of a single market is particularly quaint in the context of all those Norwegian threats. Norway, after all, ‘benefits crucially from the single market’  without belonging to the EU and, as we’ve seen, it isn’t hurting as a result.

Nor have the Norwegians realised the error of their ways. Only a narrow majority of them blocked an EU entry in 1994, but since then the majority has grown to overwhelming proportions. Norwegians have learned from their experience. Too bad Dave hasn’t.

When accused of dragging his feet on the EU policy, Dave ill-advisedly flashed his humorous side refined at the Bullingdon: ‘This is a tantric approach to policy-making. It will be even better when it does eventually come…’

Good to see that our PM is sufficiently multi-culti to be familiar with Indian amorous techniques. Samantha is lucky, which is unfortunately more than one can say for our country. Allow me to translate for the uninitiated: ‘tantric approach’ means that under Dave’s guidance Britain is being screwed – slowly but surely.

Obscene flippancy may work well at a drinking-club piss-up with Boris and Georgie, but in state affairs it’s a poor substitute for moral and intellectual integrity. You know, of the kind Dave so demonstrably lacks.

 

 

Sir John serves a reminder: political folly didn’t start with Tony and Dave

The closest targets are the easiest to hit, which is why jaundiced fogies like me mostly save their slings and arrows for currently active politicians.

But Sir John Major has inadvertently elucidated the historical continuity of woolly political thinking and self-destructive political action.

Sir John, whose towering intellect and steely character are only matched by his taste in women, hails Dave for his ‘courageous’ support of homomarriage. ‘Every couple should have the opportunity and the right to formalise their relationship,’ says Sir John.

Surely not every couple? What if, as a purely hypothetical example, a married man has a protracted bit on the side with a female colleague? One could argue they are a couple, and they may even be a happy couple, yet their relationship can’t be formalised this side of a Muslim harem or a Mormon church, as it used to be.

This isn’t in any way to question Sir John’s expertise on relationships. Actually, what interests me more is his take on courage. After all, when once asked to name a role model among his predecessors, he unerringly chose Neville Chamberlain, that notorious paragon of political courage, especially in foreign relations.

Emulating his paper-waving idol, it was Mr Major, as he then was, who in 1992 so bravely put his signature on the Maastricht Treaty, inaugurating 20 years of courage and intellectual honesty in our politics.

You may think I’m being facetious, but actually I do believe it takes a lot of nerve to mouth arrant nonsense with a straight face. No issue highlights this brand of courage as vividly as the EU, and we must thank Sir John for setting up this litmus test two decades ago.

One current example: Boris Johnson crossing his heart and swearing to die in support of his assertion that Dave will soon be offering ‘broadly an in/out referendum on the new terms.’ Since Johnson isn’t a stupid man, it must have taken a lot of courage for him to utter this obviously meaningless drivel.

What does ‘broadly’ mean? Or ‘the new terms’? Why such qualifiers? An in/out referendum can only be straightforward, with the people asked the simplest of questions: Do you wish to get out of the EU or not? An honest question requiring an honest yes or no answer, and Bob Schuman’s your uncle.

‘Broadly’ and ‘on the new terms’ only come in when the government wishes to con the people, not ask what they think. Exactly how the con job might work was hinted at by the former minister Dr Liam Fox, widely regarded as a ‘eurosceptic’.

Dr Fox insists that his party must offer a ‘settled position that is clear, concise and consistent’. Now what exactly might that position be?

‘If the choice is between a looser, more economic relationship and leaving, then I would choose to stay,’ explains Dr Fox. ‘I, for one, hope to see “back to a common market” as the Conservative slogan on Europe at the next general election.’

The Common Market was a ruse, Dr Fox, and every ‘eurosceptic’ ought to be aware of this. It was conceived and put into effect by the likes of Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet as a step on the ladder leading up to a single European state.

The previous step was called The European Coal and Steel Community, and its founders made no bones about its true purpose. Thus, for example, Schuman:

‘This proposal represents the first concrete step towards a European federation, imperative for the preservation of peace.’

One may argue that pooling the production of essential commodities was a good idea, and the subsequent creation of a free trading zone even a better one (this, assuming that the Common Market was indeed such a zone, rather than essentially a protectionist bloc). But such an argument is irrelevant in view of what these steps really were: tricking Europeans into accepting a gradual back-door entry of a single Leviathan dominated by Germany, with France as her stooge.

Is this what Dr Fox wishes to go back to? If so, he lacks the most basic knowledge of the process about which he’s allegedly sceptical. And his grasp of economics is hardly more secure.

There is no need to ‘stay’ in the EU to have ‘a looser, more economic relationship’. That’s not what the EU is for, as its own founders explained to us all those years ago. Dare one say it, a nation can trade with other nations without belonging to even a quasi-state union with them. Britain did reasonably well in that department before the EU and would do just as well should she leave it.

That continental Europe would stop doing business with us should we leave is a lie, and not a particularly clever one. Our politicians like to put on all-knowing faces and declare that the EU accounts for 40 percent of our trade. Full stop. They don’t feel they have to complete the thought by saying that, should we leave the EU, that trade would discontinue. Supposedly this goes without saying.

Hats off to them: it does take much bold-faced courage to utter or even imply such idiocy. The UK is the second biggest export market for the EU. Do our courageous politicians really think that the present economic situation would encourage the Germans to stop selling their BMWs to us, or the French their clarets?

Really, John Major ought to re-enter active politics – we’re lost without his courageous presence. And Dr Fox may yet find himself back on the Tory front bench if he isn’t careful.

At last, a perfect candidate appears on the political scene

This is the official launch of the Helena Torry for Prime Minister campaign.

Admittedly, Miss Torry has only just entered politics by standing in the Aberdeen council elections. This means she faces a steep uphill climb to Downing Street.

She’ll have to secure her seat on the council. Then she’ll have to be selected as a parliamentary candidate for a major party, preferably the one consonant with her surname. Assuming that Miss Torry ends up in Whitehall, she’ll then have to win a leadership contest, and then the national elections.

Yet she’s clearly on a fast track, something she eminently deserves. I for one am certain that Miss Torry will succeed – partly due to the campaign I’m launching, but mostly thanks to her unique credentials. Judge for yourself:

Miss Torry (I hope she won’t mind if I henceforth refer to her by her Christian name) has never advocated, and is guaranteed never to advocate, a single stupid and destructive policy.

Unlike Cameron, Johnson and Gove, to say nothing of Labour and LibDem pols, Helena will never seek cheap popularity with the Islington set by coming out in favour of homomarriage.

Unlike Blair and Brown, Helena won’t run the country into the ground.

Unlike Cameron and Osborne, Helena will never settle for cosmetic economic measures designed to score political points and guaranteed to do nothing to prevent a disaster.

Unlike Cable, his party, all of Labour and some of the Conservatives, Helena doesn’t believe that taxing the rich extortionately, and the rest of us exorbitantly, will help the economy.

Unlike Ken Clark, most of Labour and all LibDems, Helena will never sell British independence for a mess of EU pottage.

Unlike Cameron, some of his own parliamentary party and the entirety of the other two, Helena will never try to force the C of E to accept women bishops, thereby losing all claim to being an apostolic church.

Unlike the Commons Home Affairs Committee, Helena won’t pave the way to the legalisation of drugs – and she’s guaranteed never to listen to Russell Brand’s advice on this, or any other, matter.

Unlike Clegg, Helena won’t abuse her position in national politics by openly campaigning for a job in Brussels.

Unlike MPs from all parties, Helena will never fiddle her expenses, nor commit any other fiscal impropriety.

The list can go on and on, but any sensible person would already have been persuaded that Helena Torry possesses a unique combination of sagacity, moral strength, firmness of character, self-effacement, taciturnity and commitment never to use political office for personal gain.

If this person is not only sensible but also observant, he’ll notice that the list of Helena’s sterling credentials is slightly on the negative side. It’s heavy on things she will eschew but light on those she will actually do.

One has to admit that this is something of a drawback. Yet if we extend the Hippocratic oath from physicians to politicians, then surely the first requirement is that they should do no harm. And it is this criterion that all our politicians fail to meet.

There’s a lot to be said for a government that does nothing, as we can confidently expect that if it did do something it would only be to the detriment of the country. As an example, look at Belgium which in the very recent past had no government at all for almost a year. And yet the country never missed a beat, functioning as well, or as badly, as before or since.

Yes, Helena would make a fantastic MP and the best PM we could possibly hope for. Yet one fears that her career will be cut short by one minor flaw: Helena Torry isn’t human.

You may argue that neither are most of our politicians, and, figuratively speaking, you’d be right. But Helena isn’t human in the most literal sense. She is a mannequin, a 5-foot dummy registered in Aberdeen elections by the pensioner Renee Slater.

Miss Slater has now been charged under the Representation of the People Act, and her trial is set for April. Helena Torry has been taken into police custody, where she will remain indefinitely. And we, the British public, will be deprived of a perfect candidate for high office.

We don’t have to take it lying down. For people have a voice in a democracy, and they can and must be heard. So I hope you’ll join me in my support for reinstating Helena Torry in British politics.

We really can’t do any better. And anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear will know we can do a lot worse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why shouldn’t Dave and Nick get married in church?

I’ve sussed it out: both Dave and Nick support homomarriage because they want to divorce their spouses and marry each other.

It’s their secret romance that had to be behind their original political marriage – hard to think of any other reason, considering the hitherto irreconcilable differences between their parties. But two hearts, two souls, two bodies genuinely drawn to each other can’t be put asunder by inconsequential politics.

Naturally, Dave and Nicky will have to look for a reasonably liberal congregation, for more orthodox churches tend to frown on divorces and remarriages. That, however, shouldn’t present a problem, at least not within the C of E as it is these days.

As to the other obstacle, them both being biological males, this uncool barrier has already been removed de facto and is about to be removed de jure. Dave will see to it. Yet he did say magnanimously that ‘if there’s any church or any synagogue or any mosque that doesn’t want to have a gay marriage, it will not be forced to hold it.’

I’d pay good money to watch Dave trying to force an imam to marry two men, but mercifully he won’t have to. All Dave needs is just one with-it vicar ready to move with the times by joining this strictly biological man Dave and this strictly biological man Nicky in holy matrimony.

I for one would wish them many years of marital bliss only rarely marred by the kind of petty squabbles for which more traditional couples are so widely known. Why, I can see it before my eyes even as we speak.

Here are the happy couple at home, discussing their plans for the weekend. Dave is wearing a snazzy smoking jacket over his FC Chelsea home strip, while Nicky is clad in a stylish M&S house dress slit at the thigh. They sit on their Queen Anne sofa, arms around each other’s shoulders, watching a rerun of Eastenders on their 52-inch TV.

‘Oh by the way, sweetie pie’ says Dave. ‘We’re going to Tony’s tonight. He’s holding a teensy-weensy party – just him, Cherie, us and 400 of his closest friends.’

‘Now you tell me,’ pouts Nicky. ‘When was that decided?’

‘Tone rang this morning when you were drying your hair, honey-bunny. Sorry I forgot to mention it, sugar buns.’

‘But you always do this to me, you nasty person,’ says Nicky and takes his/her arm off Dave’s shoulders. ‘I’m a person too, you know. I’m not just a skivvy at his nibs’s beck and call.’

‘Please forgive me, love,’ pleads Dave. ‘I know I promised we’d make all decisions together but I thought just this once… I know you like Tone, don’t you, darling? Once or twice, before we got married, I even saw you flirt with him. Labour of love, you called it, you naughty thing.’

‘Jealous, are we? You never give me any space. I deserve some emotional autonomy, I’m not just your chattel you know.’

‘I know that, sweetie pie. But… if you have no other plans…’

‘It so happens I have,’ says Nicky petulantly, his/her face reflecting newly found self-respect. ‘I was going shopping with Angie this afternoon. Then we’ll stop for one of those yummy cream teas at Brown’s and chat about that job she says I can have if I’m a good girl.’

‘Which job, honey bunch?’ Dave sits up abruptly and lowers the volume on the remote. ‘Your job is at home, with me. I thought we’d agreed on that.’

‘Yes, well, I thought, you know, with the economy being what it is, I could bring in some extra money. Angie’s company has plenty of vacancies, it’s the only one hiring at the moment.’

‘No wife of mine will have to take a fulltime job, and that’s that,’ says Dave firmly, but then softens the impact by patting Nicky’s shapely thigh.

‘Who’s talking about fulltime?’ smiles Nicky, pressing Dave’s hand against his/her thigh. ‘Don’t you know about Angie and José Manuel? The way they run their shop? All I’ll have to do for a couple of hours every other week will be walk around looking pretty and welcoming new customers.’

‘Yes, you could be good at that sort of thing, babes,’ says Dave. ‘And they’re going to pay you for that?’

‘Yes they are, and I’ll thank you for not being condescending. Actually, my pay will be better than yours, so there!’

‘Oh well, in that case… Still, I don’t see what the problem is, baby doll. Have your tea with Angie, then I’ll pick you up in town and we’ll go over to Tone’s. Haven’t seen him for at least a fortnight.’

‘That long, is it? The way you two carry on, one would think you’ve married him, not me…’

‘You’re not going jealous on me? Tone and I are strictly business, we have a few irons in the fire…’

‘Oh gosh, that reminds me,’ says Nicky slapping her forehead. ‘I need to iron your shirt for tonight…’

A true idyll if you’ve ever seen one. Wouldn’t it be cruel to deny Dave and Nicky such tranquil happiness? No wonder, Dave is ‘a massive supporter of marriage’ who doesn’t ‘want gay people to be excluded from a great institution.’

So fine, he and Nicky have a personal stake in this matter. But who are we to decide that a marriage between these two gorgeous people should be denied a church blessing? We’re nobodies.

What price multiculturalism?

The proportion of Muslims in youth jails now stands at 21 percent, up from 13 percent two years ago. That’s more than five times the proportion of Muslims in the population, which raises all sorts of awkward questions, including the one in the title.

But the first question is why? Why are young Muslims in Britain criminalised to such an extent? Is there something in Islam that encourages bestial behaviour?

In fact, a fourth of Muslim offenders claim that by committing crimes they follow their faith. Not being an unequivocal admirer of Islam, I still have to say they are slandering their religion. There’s nothing there that promotes everyday criminality.

For example, Turkey’s crime rate is lower by orders of magnitude than that in the USA. Even Pakistan has a lower crime rate than most Western nations, this despite the 10 years of ‘war on terror’ and the resulting black market in guns, the biggest in the world.

Why then are young Muslims five times more likely than their white neighbours to commit crimes in Britain? For the same reason that thugs would be more likely to paint-spray an obscene graffito on someone else’s front door than on their own.

Or perhaps a better analogy would be to look at the behaviour of most youngsters at home and abroad. Observing them, one has to notice that they feel even less constrained on their foreign travels than in their own neighbourhoods. The moment they land on foreign soil, all bets are off and school’s out.

It’s as if the already thin veneer of civilisation has been rubbed off them. British stag parties seem to have no compunction against trashing a bar in, say, Prague (where many bars display ‘No British’ signs), something they’d think twice about doing to their local.

This is difficult to condone but easy to understand. Not just young louts but even a perfectly respectable middle-aged gentleman takes much better care of his home than of his hotel room. The problem with youth criminality in Britain stems from just that: they simply don’t regard Britain as their home. In a similar vein, Muslim rapist gangs target white girls but hardly ever Muslim ones – white girls are alien to them, and normal civilities just don’t apply.

Why then do Muslims, even those who are British born and bred, feel like strangers in their own land? One could write a whole book on this subject, but in a short piece it’s sufficient to observe that the drive for multiculturalism has predictably produced results exactly opposite to those intended.

Rather than making all cultures and religions equally welcome, promoting thereby good will among all, multiculturalism has effectively destroyed a single, dominant culture for which others could reach tropistically. Such a culture is a sine qua non of a truly integrated society, for without it the social fabric will remain a tissue-thin patchwork, soon to be torn to tatters.

If a denizen of Bradford were to feel English first, British second, Yorkshireman third and Muslim a distant forth, he’d be less likely to treat his home town with all the loving care of a conquering vandal. Surely this is self-evident?

It is. In fact, multiculturalism can take its place in a line-up of other self-evidently criminal failures, such as the EU, the welfare state, Western countries promoting an Islamist Arab Spring. But such a line-up can only be put together on the basis of empirical evidence and common sense. Yet these are routinely overridden by ideology.

Ideology lives not in the mind, nor even in the emotions, but in some murky, swampy wasteland lying underneath those. That’s why it’s useless to argue against it: you can unload a dump lorry full of incontrovertible data showing that, say, the EU spells disaster for its members. But that would be like trying to convince a dog that chasing cats around the block is counterproductive. Fido does it not because he thinks it’s a good idea, but because of what he is.

An ideology can never be defeated by argument. It can only be defeated by the truth, supported if need be by superior force and the resolve to apply it. Given the will, it would take less than a generation to get rid of this multi-culti rubbish.

The message communicated to every resident of these Isles should be unequivocal: Britain is a Western, which means Christian, country. Her whole history, morality, laws, social and political organisation have been shaped by Christianity.

This doesn’t mean that all, or even most, Brits are expected to be practising Christians – only that they must all function within the traditional discipline of our civilisation. All prepared to do so would be welcome regardless of their religion or absence thereof and in line with a fair, reasonable immigration policy. However, those unwilling or unable to abide by the rules of civilised behaviour as defined and refined in British history will not be allowed to impose their alien standards on our society.

This is roughly how the system works in Switzerland, which has one of the highest immigration rates on the continent. Foreigners come looking for jobs, for no welfare is on offer. If they misbehave in the slightest, they are thrown out instantly, no questions asked. Those who stay, and certainly their children, become law-abiding Swiss. The country has one of the lowest crime rates in the world, and one of the highest levels of prosperity. And – are you ready for this? – it’s doing so well even without belonging to the EU.

What do the Swiss have that we haven’t? The power of their convictions, which alone can create the necessary will to protect society from evil. We, on the other hand, have hardly any convictions left, and precious little power. All we have is loudmouthed pressure groups screaming their divisive slogans at an inert, dispirited, acquiescent populace. So let’s hear it for a multi-culti Britain. It’s the one we deserve.

 

 

Eamonn Holmes isn’t the problem, he’s a symptom

When British papers are out of my reach, I prefer Sky News to the BBC – partly because the Beeb makes Al Jazeera sound objective (even on the subject of the Middle East) and partly because of Eamonn Holmes.

These days one is neither enlightened nor even informed by TV, but occasionally one can expect to be entertained, an expectation Holmes seldom frustrates. A jolly, rotund chappy with a pleasant Irish burr and a nice sense of humour, he exudes homespun common sense. Even better, he never pretends to have much more than that, which sets him apart from his robotic colleagues with all-knowing smiles permanently pasted on.

Admittedly, some of his female colleagues look much better than Eamonn, but most of them have problems reading the teleprompter. Eamonn, on the other hand, has excellent reading skills. Moreover, he often delivers off-the-cuff remarks that teeter just on the edge of political correctness. One can tell that over a pint or two Eamonn can be oodles of fun.

This preface has been necessary because I’m now going to criticise Mr Holmes, and I wish to pre-empt any suspicion that there’s personal animosity behind the criticism. So, all disclaimers firmly in place, here it comes.

Yesterday Holmes was exchanging good-natured, mildly amusing remarks with a man and a woman who were reviewing the papers. One story dealt with the Chancellor’s intention of cutting quite a few public-sector jobs. George had claimed, not unreasonably, that this would relieve pressure on the Exchequer, put some pow into the economy and create many jobs in the private sector.

‘I don’t understand,’ commented Eamonn, for once dead serious. ‘They’re going to cut some jobs to create others. What’s the benefit of that?’

The commentator was stunned, and so was I. As I said, old Eamonn has never pretended to possess a far-reaching, academically honed intellect. But he has bags of common sense, and surely that rare faculty should have been sufficient for him to answer his own question, or indeed not to have asked it in the first place.

Now in case he really doesn’t understand – and feigning such economic illiteracy just may be an ideological stance, either his own or his network’s – the answer is so elementary that one is almost embarrassed to have to provide it.

Most of the 6,000,000 public jobs are unnecessary, starting with about 900,000 of them created by Tony’s government as the groundwork for future Labour victories. Even before Labour began to pay for their votes with our money, the public sector had been bloated to bursting point. The bubble has since burst, even though not everybody realises it.

Those paid out of our taxes or by the printing press make up about 20 percent of all those in employment, who in turn add up to just under half the population. To put it so that Eamonn can understand, half of us work to support the other half, with HMG acting as a middleman with megalomania. But in fact one in five of the working half are themselves paid by the Exchequer, handsomely, and that makes the situation far worse.

The Chancellor is widely, and rightly, castigated for failing to meet his targets on public borrowing and debt reduction. Yet there is one compelling reason why neither he nor any of his successors will ever be able to hit such targets.

The reason is people like Eamonn Holmes who don’t understand, or pretend not to understand, the difference between jobs in the public sector and the private one. The difference is clear-cut: the former deplete the economy, the latter keep it going.

Thus cutting public jobs to create private ones is absolutely essential, and it’s not the zero-sum game Eamonn thinks it is. Getting rid, as a minimum, of the spongers whose jobs hadn’t existed before Dave’s role model Tony went on a rampage would be a good start. But it shouldn’t end there.

Just look at one department, that of the Navy. The Royal Navy has dwindled away to almost nothing, with only about 34,000 sailors currently serving to fly the British flag at sea. That means that Britain no longer has the wherewithal to launch, say, another South Atlantic operation, never mind to fight a major war.

Yet the Department of the Navy boasts almost as many employees as there are sailors, about 30,000. In the nineteenth century, when Britannia ruled the waves, exactly the same job was done by 3,000 and they didn’t even have computers to help them along.

Would it be out of order to suggest that the staff of this department could easily be cut by 90 percent without in any way reducing its effectiveness? Could we then extrapolate to the other departments and suggest that they too could easily be lightened up by at least half?

Putting all those sacked onto the Jobseekers’ Allowance would be considerably cheaper than paying their salaries, pensions and expenses, even assuming – and that’s an unrealistic assumption – that they’ll stop cheating on those. The arithmetic is quite simple there, easy even for Eamonn to grasp.

So what is it that he doesn’t understand? Once again, we’re talking about a clever man there, one with an IQ probably way above average. The problem is that the good British public, of which Eamonn Holmes is a mouthpiece, has been trained, or rather corrupted, not to understand such elementary maths.

Public jobs to them are as good as any other. They are no longer capable of seeing the bloated public sector for what it really is, a millstone around the economy’s neck. If this situation doesn’t change quickly, and I’m not holding my breath, we’ll all drown.

There, Eamonn, do you understand now?