Author: Alexander Boot

There’s something fatuous and dishonest about arguing for or against Brexit simply on the basis of economics.

The EU is a political, not, as its champions claim, an economic construct. Economic tools are used there only as auxiliary means of either bribery or blackmail.

Hence logically any argument about Brexit should proceed from constitutional and sovereignty premises first, second and tenth.

There can be no valid argument in favour of reversing two millennia of constitutional history for whatever economic gain – even assuming the impossibility of EU membership offering any economic benefits to one of the world’s largest economies.

One doesn’t recall too many Englishmen back in 1940 weighing the economic advantages of being incorporated into Germany and thereby saving the ruinous cost of fighting a war.

The benefits of such submission could have been argued plausibly, and Hitler doubtless would have agreed to much tougher terms than those Cameron allegedly asks from the EU today. Nevertheless, those Spitfires were still providing an expression of incipient euroscepticism.

Britain has nothing to learn about politics from the EU’s main drivers Germany and France, what with their, generously speaking, patchy past. Therefore we must leave that wicked political contrivance just because it’s indeed wicked, political and a contrivance.

This argument is too simple for our fatuous and dishonest elites to understand. Its simple and unvarnished truth is such that it precludes any troubled intellectual waters for them to fish in.

That’s why they insist on putting forth economic arguments, correctly trusting that the British public is ignorant enough to accept bogus calculations as real. After all, the elite’s 60 years’ investment into nurturing such ignorance must pay off.

Somehow The Times has positioned itself at the vanguard of this relentless assault on integrity. There’s hardly a hack there who hasn’t delivered himself of ponderous analysis pro and con Brexit, with the con argument rigged to carry the day. However, Oliver Kamm’s excretions on this subject stand out even against this backdrop.

Mr Kamm’s stock in trade is linguistic permissiveness touching on promiscuity: he attacks anyone daring to suggest that some English usage just may be incorrect. Whatever people say is right because they say it seems to be the underlying premise, which Mr Kamm defends with the agility of a dancer in an alcoholic coma.

But today he turns his clumsy attentions to the usual nonsense about the EU being our sole hope for economic survival. Mr Kamm starts with a couple of unassailable truisms: Britain’s manufacturing is in recession, mainly because of its sluggish productivity growth; our trade balance suffers as a result; as do wage increases in real terms.

These points are worth making, but specifically in the Brexit context they mean nothing – unless an argument can be made that, as a result of the continued vandalising of our constitution, our productivity will increase.

Even Mr Kamm laudably refrains from making such obviously meretricious claims. Instead he says that “The EU is our principal trading partner, accounting for 44.6 per cent of our exports…”

It appears that, arithmetically speaking, our exports outside the EU account for 55.4 per cent of the total, which number seems higher than 44.6. Moreover, Mr Kamm chooses not to notice that, while our exports to the EU are declining, those to the rest of the world are growing.

Hence The Guardian (a paper that can hardly be accused of euroscepticism) comments that the first four months of 2015 “showed that much of the growth in exports came from sales to countries beyond… the European Union. That will reassure businesses… for trade in the eurozone continues to suffer from shaky business and consumer confidence.”

Allow me to translate from The Guardian to human: the eurozone is an economic basket case, and we’re much better off doing business with more reliable partners. What does Mr Kamm have to say about this?

Nothing really, other than that “We don’t have just free trade with our European partners; we have access to a single market of 500 million consumers.” He seems to imply that leaving the EU would put paid to this access, which is patently cloud cuckoo land.

Britain managed to have access to world, and European, markets throughout her history – this without having to transfer her sovereignty to the tender care of the most corrupt setup in Europe, this side of Putin’s Russia.

Mr Kamm warns that by leaving the EU we’ll suffer the same tragic fate that has befallen Norway and Switzerland, which have stayed outside the EU but still have to comply with its regulations without having much of a say in its policies.

I’d be tempted to add that somehow those two countries happen to be Europe’s two most successful economies, but obviously facts won’t make a dent in Mr Kamm’s innermost convictions.

Really, his usual clamour for the advisability of the split infinitive and other grammatical solecisms seems almost sound by comparison.

 

 

Britain has values, declared Dave in his uncompromising New Year message. And these are the values that are well and truly… well, non-negotiable.

Unfortunately, the text released to the public has been edited so tightly that both the subtleties of meaning and the thunder of delivery have been lost.

However, as he always does, Dave did send me the unexpurgated text beforehand. “Alex, me old China,” he said (Dave likes to remind people that he’s just a common bloke when he’s at home, and he’s only ever really at home when in public), “have a read. This is what I really want to say, not the b******s they’re going to publish tomorrow. Djahmean?”

Of course Dave insisted on complete discretion on my part, which I solemnly vowed. “My word’s my bond, Dave,” I said. “I’ll never divulge this original version of your speech.” So here’s the unexpurgated text:

“British values are strong, and they are getting stronger by the minute. Property values especially, and those in my favourite neighbourhoods of Notting Hill and Islington are outstripping the overall mean growth by a wide margin.”

“But it’s not all about property values, although without this narrative our economy would be well and truly… well, less prosperous. We have other values as well: freedom, tolerance, responsibility, loyalty, to name just a few. And these matter to us at least as much as the price of a semi-detached, four-bedroom, two-bath house in Notting Hill.

“These are the values threatened by a seething hatred of the West, one that turns so many people against their own country.

“They don’t seem to understand the concept of tolerance and loyalty. But they won’t defeat us. For we – well, false modesty aside, I – have come up with a sure-fire way of countering their poisonous narrative of grievance and resentment.

“In essence, without boring you with too many details, we’ll give them nothing to grieve or resent. The narrative of tolerance means being ready to amend our ways, accommodating those good, peaceful people of the Muslim persuasion who find our ways so objectionable that they are prepared to blow themselves up on public transport.

“We are not going to appease the extremists. We are going to take their ideology apart piece by piece. For, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, the best way to overcome an ideology is to yield to it.

“Islam, as we all know, is a religion of peace, and desire for peace is one of those British values that are well and truly… well, indispensable.

“We’ll ask, ‘You resent every reminder that Britain used to be a Christian nation?’ Worry not, we are ready to become more Muslim than Christian to make you abandon your evil ideology.

“You’re upset that the English common law still holds sway in those tiny parts of our jurisprudence that don’t come down to us from Brussels? Not a problem: you can live by Sharia in your own communities, with the English common law well and truly… well, invalidated.”

“You lament the relatively small size of your communities? Point taken: we’ll admit millions of your coreligionists from other countries just to keep you company and make you happy.

“For, as any teacher will tell you, it’s easier to instruct people who are next to you than those hundreds of miles away.

“How else can we inculcate people around the world with British values, and I don’t just mean property values, everyone seems to grasp those with no outside help, if not by bringing those potential pupils to Britain, where those values are well and truly… well, flourishing.

“This is the narrative we wish to narrate forcefully and narratively. Because we have great confidence in – indeed we revel in – our way of life.

“Our way of life constitutes, narratively speaking, the greatest narrative of British values. And there’s no British value that my government can’t – or won’t – well and truly… well, uphold.”

Having read Dave’s speech, I immediately rang him on the dog, to use his parlance.

“Dave,” I said, “Churchill’s blood, sweat and tears speech has nothing on your uncompromising oratory. He only rallied the nation to fight a war. You’re rallying it to avoid one – and the best way of doing so is to surrender in advance.”

“Ta, mate,” said Dave. “You really understand me – and my narrative.”   

 

 

 

 

 

 

The friend I’m talking about is the columnist Edward Lukas. I can only profess my friendship for Mr Lukas vicariously, for I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting him.

And the demise I mention has nothing to do with his dying, an event I hope won’t happen for many years. No, it’s just that after his article The EU’s Empire Is a Mess but We Must Stick by It I’m not sure I feel very friendly towards Mr Lukas.

My previous warm feelings were based on his articles about Putin’s Russia, for the columnist Lukas is one of the few pundits who see that kleptofascist state for the global menace it is.

Possessing such clarity of vision despite the fog of ignorant effluvia enveloping Putin in our press takes an analytical, dispassionate mind impervious to intellectual fashion and ideological befuddlement. One would naturally hope that such admirable qualities would be transferred on to other areas that catch Mr Lukas’s interest, affecting his comments on other menaces threatening us all.

Such as the EU, a contrivance not yet as violent as Putin’s Russia but rivalling it for corruption, mendacity and most refreshing amorality. Alas, as Mr Lukas’s article shows, when writing on this subject he leaves his intellectual assets behind, relying instead on meaningless, factually incorrect waffle, of the kind we gratefully receive from Dave, George and their jolly friends.

Why must we ‘stick by’ the EU? After all, such adherence involves denying two millennia of English, subsequently British, political history in the course of which England demonstrated to an envious world her most glorious achievement: the knowledge of how to run a country in a just, balanced, relatively nonviolent, civilised way.

At the heart of this glorious achievement, recognised as such by friend and foe alike, lies Britain’s unique sovereignty based on the monarch, Parliament and, in the phrase of my good friend Gerard Batten, the monarch in Parliament.

This sovereignty by definition has to be compromised, nay abandoned, when it has to be pooled in one giant concoction with the sovereignties of other countries whose political track record is, to be kind about it, less admirable.

Make no mistake about it: this is a tremendous, cataclysmic sacrifice to make, and it can only be made for overwhelmingly persuasive reasons. Alas, so far I haven’t heard a single one that doesn’t fall short of overwhelmingly persuasive, instead touching upon false, disingenuous and daft. And my former friend Edward Lukas hasn’t changed this lamentable situation at all.

He praises the EU for possessing “the most long-standing bulwark of the empire… the competition directorate, a formidable bureaucratic weapon… charged with maintaining the integrity of the single market. Without it, monopolies and goverment subsidies would disadvantage consumers.”

This is basic economic illiteracy that shouldn’t see the light of day lest both the author and the paper be grossly embarrassed. To start with, ‘competition directorate’ is an obvious oxymoron (we can just about accommodate, say, a ‘watchdog’), especially when qualified by the adjective ‘bureaucratic’.

Mr Lukas’s concern for the interests of consumers is truly touching, and his belief that government subsidies would be inimical to such interests is laudable. But surely he must know that the whole EU economy is one giant subsidy, a transfer of funds from competitive economies to moribund ones by way of bribing them into docility? What does he think, say, the Common Agricultural Policy is, if not a competition-stifling subsidy? What does he think happened in Greece a few months ago?

Surely a man of some intelligence must realise that the EU is a political, not economic entity, and claiming the opposite means just repeating EU propaganda? Apparently not.

Then Mr Lukas displayes his evidently sole area of expertise by correctly describing Russia’s gas export business as “abusive and discriminatory”. However, he then undoes his good work by crediting the EU with destroying it, “to the huge benefit of those once in its grip.”

What degraded (far from ‘destroyed’) this business, Mr Lukas, isn’t the EU that has been playing lickspittle to the KGB junta for decades, but the global collapse in hydrocarbon prices, augmented by the US-led advances in hydraulic fracturing. As a result, it became feasible for European countries to seek alternative sources of oil and gas, those not run by organised crime. The EU with its protectionist practices isn’t so much a facilitator of this process as a huge hindrance to it.

What else? Oh yes: “It is now possible to see how the common currency can work.” Exactly what made Mr Lucas’s eagle eye so acutely penetrating? The current and recent performance in the Eurozone, in which the euro acts as an unmistakeable millstone pulling struggling economies to the bottom? The plight of France being murdered by German competition because she can’t control and devalue her currency? Really.

And so on, in the same vein. Practically the only mild problem Mr Lukas has with the EU is its democratic deficit, something that has the potential of driving European electorates into the proffered embrace of the National Fronts of this world.

I’d say this is the least of the EU’s problems, for a political entity doesn’t necessarily have to be democratic to be just. The real problem is that the EU is a wicked ideological contrivance rivalling Putin’s junta and the Muslim threat for destructive potential.

One can only pray and hope, against much evidence, that the British people will find the strength to extricate themselves out of this mess in 2016.

A Happy New Year to all, including Mr Lukas who, one hopes, will henceforth stick to writing about things he understands.

 

In her Christmas address, Her Majesty said nothing much, but she said it well. Staying away from any specifics, she struck a note of Christian hope:

“It is true that the world has had to confront moments of darkness this year, but the Gospel of John contains a verse of great hope, often read at Christmas carol services: ‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it’.”

This isn’t a policy recommendation. It’s a reiteration of the Queen’s faith, and long may she reign over us, for her heir has already said he’d like to be known as ‘Defender of Faith’, rather than the monarch’s statutory title ‘Defender of the Faith’.

The Prince’s broadmindedness is consonant with the Zeitgeist, that particularly toxic spirit in which no religion is bad, even though some practitioners of some religions, such as Islam, may be unsavoury.

However, any attempt to tie their practices to their faith must be nipped in the bud. Islam is supposed to be like Christianity, a religion of peace. That the Koran contains 146 verses inciting violence, whereas the New Testament contains none, can be glossed over with enviable sleight of hand.

When this ignorant folly stays in the realm of mindless chatter, it’s palatable. Unfortunately, however, it seems to be guiding the West’s policy, steering it into troubled waters.

The Pope inadvertently demonstrated this in his own Christmas message, where he didn’t limit himself to an abstract statement of love being the essence of Christianity.

His Holiness went a step further by recommending that Israelis and Palestinians negotiate a bit more and work out a two-state settlement to allow them “to live together in harmony”.

Alas, specific recommendations elicit specific questions. Such as, “Haven’t there been enough negotiations over the last 65 years?” Or, “Don’t you think that the Muslims’ visceral hatred of Israel in particular and Jews in general (some of those 146 violent verses deal with this specifically) just may be a permanent obstacle to settlement?” Or, “Considering the situation, for Israel to accept the creation of a terrorist Islamic state on her border would be tantamount to suicide, wouldn’t it?”

I’d suggest that the Pope should either follow the Queen’s lead and outline general Christian principles without going into specifics or, like Urban II in 1095, call for action based on a realistic assessment of the nature of Islam:

“I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ’s heralds… to carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends… Moreover, Christ commands it.”

Instead the Pontiff steered a middle course, proving yet again that sometimes nothing is the best thing to say. Our own prelates, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, should also have heeded the Queen’s example.

The Rt Hon Welby compared ISIS to Herod in that both set out to wipe out Christianity at source, adding diplomatically that ISIS hates not only Christians and Jews but also “Muslims who think differently”.

I’d be tempted to suggest that “Muslims who think differently” are questionable Muslims in that they ignore those 146 Koran verses, not to mention the examples set by their religion’s founders.

In essence the good Archbishop enunciated the oft-repeated mantra of Islam being a religion of peace lamentably hijacked by a few extremists (Messrs Bush, Blair, Obama and Cameron, ring your office).

And his Catholic counterpart, the Primate of England and Wales, delivered a message of downright pacifism: “In a life shaped by faith in God, there is absolutely no room at all for gratuitous violence. Is there any space for violence in the Christmas crib? No!”

True enough, there was no violence in the crib. But eventually the baby in it grew up and uttered these words: “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.”

Open-ended pacifism isn’t just bad policy – it’s bad Christianity. History’s greatest Christians, while accepting that war is evil, still believed that there exist evils that can be even worse. If such evils can only be stopped by violence, then in that instance violence is no longer gratuitous and is to be condoned.

That’s why such seminal figures as St Augustine of Hippo (whose The City of God first expressed the concept of just war in Christian terms) and St Thomas Aquinas, have always blessed righteous war for as long as it stayed righteous – and damned unjust war for as long as it stayed unjust.

Urban II clearly regarded armed opposition to Islam as just war, while Cardinal Nichols denies the very existence of this notion – not even if war is to be waged in defence of the world’s oldest Christian communities.

So is the Queen a better Christian than the prelates? It’s either that or she has better advisors. Then again, her 63 years on the tottering British throne have taught Her Majesty the sage art of saying little.  

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

It’s this ugly locution that says more about modernity than anything else.

Our mandated – and mendacious – loathing of offending anybody has taken Christ out of Christmas and Christmas out of the seasonal best wishes. While Christians are welcome to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the lie goes, everyone else would be mortally offended at any reference to Jesus.

What bunkum. I number among my friends Jews, both observing and secular, agnostics, atheists and even the odd Buddhist – and not a single one has ever been offended by my wishing him a Merry Christmas.

They know that one doesn’t have to be a Christian to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ because it was also the birthdate of Christendom, otherwise known as our civilisation.

Objecting to the word Christmas is therefore a symptom of the anaemic anomie of modernity, that terrible disease for which only Christianity could be an effective antidote. Only Christianity could re-inject red plasma into the exsanguinated pallor of the West, but the West would rather die than accept the life-saving medicine.

This isn’t to say that some people aren’t genuinely offended by the sound of the words ‘Merry Christmas’. But they aren’t typically those who espouse some other religion or none.

They are those who pray at the altar of our crypto-totalitarian, life-stifling modernity – those who realise that for their evil, brainless superstition to live, what’s left of Christianity has to die.

The worst among them are those who still feel they can suck the remaining life juices out of Christianity and transfer them into their own cult, thereby giving it some historical credibility.

For example earlier this year Russia’s KGB patriarch Kirill (codename ‘Agent Mikhailov’) consecrated a temple to his KGB colleagues who had lost their lives in the line of duty. As part of their duties, they murdered 60 million people, and normally a Christian prelate would be blessing the victims, not their murderers.

To top it all, the temple will be erected in the Moscow suburb of Butovo, the place where mass executions and burials took place. Tens of thousands lie in the ground on which the temple celebrating their murderers will be erected. So far 20,761 victims have been identified by name, almost 1,000 clergymen among them.

If in Russia the church serves the interests of blood-sucking ghouls, here too our peerless leaders feel they have to co-opt Christianity into their employ.

Hence David Cameron – he who made the destruction of traditional marriage the main thrust of his domestic policy – delivered a nauseating message of pseudo-Christian piety, somehow portraying the pounding of Syria as an act of Christian mercy.

More than a million lives, many of them Christian lives, have already been lost in the Middle East specifically because of the US-inspired policy supported from the start by Blair and faithfully continued by Cameron. Justifying this criminal folly in Christian terms doesn’t quite come up to the standards of ghoulish cynicism displayed by the Russian KGB church, but it’s typologically close.

We are witnessing the death throes of a great civilisation. But, as Christ taught, even as there is death in life, there is life in death.

Our civilisation is being turned to cinders, but we all pray – nay, we know – that one day it will rise again, Phoenix-like, to a new glory, defeating its foes in the name of Christ. At that time, ‘Merry Christmas’ will reacquire its deep meaning, and every 25 December the words will drown the ugly hissing of the surviving modern cult.

A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! God bless you all.

 

It’s this ugly locution that says more about modernity than anything else.

Our mandated – and mendacious – loathing of offending anybody has taken Christ out of Christmas and Christmas out of the seasonal best wishes. While Christians are welcome to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the lie goes, everyone else would be mortally offended at any reference to Jesus.

What bunkum. I number among my friends Jews, both observing and secular, agnostics, atheists and even the odd Buddhist – and not a single one has ever been offended by my wishing him a Merry Christmas.

They know that one doesn’t have to be a Christian to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ because it was also the birthdate of Christendom, otherwise known as our civilisation.

Objecting to the word Christmas is therefore a symptom of the anaemic anomie of modernity, that terrible disease for which only Christianity could be an effective antidote. Only Christianity could re-inject red plasma into the exsanguinated pallor of the West, but the West would rather die than accept the life-saving medicine.

This isn’t to say that some people aren’t genuinely offended by the sound of the words ‘Merry Christmas’. But they aren’t typically those who espouse some other religion or none.

They are those who pray at the altar of our crypto-totalitarian, life-stifling modernity – those who realise that for their evil, brainless superstition to live, what’s left of Christianity has to die.

The worst among them are those who still feel they can suck the remaining life juices out of Christianity and transfer them into their own cult, thereby giving it some historical credibility.

For example earlier this year Russia’s KGB patriarch Kirill (codename ‘Agent Mikhailov’) consecrated a temple to his KGB colleagues who had lost their lives in the line of duty. As part of their duties, they murdered 60 million people, and normally a Christian prelate would be blessing the victims, not their murderers.

To top it all, the temple will be erected in the Moscow suburb of Butovo, the place where mass executions and burials took place. Tens of thousands lie in the ground on which the temple celebrating their murderers will be erected. So far 20,761 victims have been identified by name, almost 1,000 clergymen among them.

If in Russia the church serves the interests of blood-sucking ghouls, here too our peerless leaders feel they have to co-opt Christianity into their employ.

Hence David Cameron – he who made the destruction of traditional marriage the main thrust of his domestic policy – delivered a nauseating message of pseudo-Christian piety, somehow portraying the pounding of Syria as an act of Christian mercy.

More than a million lives, many of them Christian lives, have already been lost in the Middle East specifically because of the US-inspired policy supported from the start by Blair and faithfully continued by Cameron. Justifying this criminal folly in Christian terms doesn’t quite come up to the standards of ghoulish cynicism displayed by the Russian KGB church, but it’s typologically close.

We are witnessing the death throes of a great civilisation. But, as Christ taught, even as there is death in life, there is life in death.

Our civilisation is being turned to cinders, but we all pray – nay, we know – that one day it will rise again, Phoenix-like, to a new glory, defeating its foes in the name of Christ. At that time, ‘Merry Christmas’ will reacquire its deep meaning, and every 25 December the words will drown the ugly hissing of the surviving modern cult.

A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! God bless you all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the past, whenever a word was unutterable it was usually for a discernible reason. For instance, some Jews spell G*d this way because of a biblical commandment they take literally and I’m not sure correctly (‘God’ isn’t the name of God not to be taken in vain).

Each society has always had its own taboos, certain words that just can’t be used in public, especially in mixed company. These aren’t chiselled in stone – some words that used to be regarded as perfectly neutral may become offensive, and vice versa.

For example, various race-related words effortlessly flow from one category to the other. Thus, at the time the word ‘negro’ was a stylistically neutral descriptive term the word ‘black’ was deemed pejorative.

Then a flip-flop occurred, and ‘black’ became an acceptable term for a while, until it was replaced by ‘African American’ in the States and ‘Afro-Caribbean’ here. Meanwhile not only the word ‘negro’ was stigmatised, but even its remote homophones began to give people fits.

Hence in 1999, David Howard, an aide to the mayor of Washington, D.C., lost his job for having described a budget as ‘niggardly’. Rather than being incensed, he offered an abject apology, saying he had learned from the incident.

What he learned is that “An African American has to think about colour all the time.” I hope that’s not the case, but even if so this isn’t the reason to penalise the use of an old English word merely because it vaguely sounds like a racial insult.

To be fair, it’s not just racial terms that may offend. For example, the widespread four-letter obscenity was regarded as unfit for use in public media until Kenneth Tynan broke the taboo in a 1965 TV show.

Now one can hardly turn the TV on without hearing the word and its numerous cognates bandied about. It’s now used as a common intensifier, and only the colloquial term for female genitalia still hasn’t made an appearance on a chat show – but don’t hold your breath.

While the F-word is now common currency, the M-word (I mean ‘man’, not the longer American word starting with ‘mother’) has become not only undesirable but actionable, as Radio 2 talk-show host Jeremy Vine found out the other day.

Talking to a doctor about fashionable Victorian ailments, Mr Vine joked on air about suffering from ‘man flu’. This was a humorous reference to a popular term based on the correct observation that men tend to exaggerate the severity of even mild symptoms.

Mr Vine was thereby demonstrating one of the finest assets of the English: the ability to laugh at themselves (a talent, incidentally, not widely shared by our EU partners, such as the French and the Germans).

It takes a superhumanly acute vision to discern any offence in that remark, especially since Mr Vine was only mocking himself, and he wasn’t going to take umbrage. But one should never underestimate the heightened sensitivity of our public, trained to express self-righteous outrage at, well, anything.

Sure enough, someone took offence and filed a plaintive report under the BBC’s Equality and Diversity Code, of which Mr Vine was supposedly in breach.

The BBC promptly investigated the complaint and, amazingly, found no transgression in Mr Vine’s remark because “Jeremy was clearly making fun of himself”.

That misses the point by a mile. For this exoneration implicitly acknowledges that the word ‘man’ is generally offensive, though not yet in this particular context. In other words, the avalanche is gathering momentum and before long the word will be regarded as criminal in any context whatsoever.

In anticipation of this development, I suggest that our neo-totalitarians follow the lead of their typological predecessors in the Soviet Union, who perfected the art of criminalising language.

Thus, when Lavrentiy Beria was executed in 1953, every subscriber to the Soviet Encyclopaedia was sent a circular ordering that the article on Beria be cut out and replaced with the enclosed article on the Bering Strait.

Just about everyone (including my grandfather) complied, for the consequences of disobedience would have been catastrophic. Our government can’t yet issue a plausible threat along those lines, but it could build up to it.

It could start by issuing a guidance, similar to the one issued in 2013, clarifying the meaning of the words ‘husband’ and ‘wife’, which until then hadn’t required a clarification. Either word, we were told, could now describe a person of either sex, which effectively made both words meaningless.

The new guidance could go a bit further by stipulating that the word ‘man’ is henceforth null and void, to be replaced in every dictionary by something that really rolls off the tongue, say ‘a person choosing the male gender for self-identification’.

A small fine for non-compliance would get the ball rolling nicely, and in a year or two a mandatory prison sentence could be introduced. Sorry, I mean persondatory.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On 20 December, five days before the birthday of Christ, Russia celebrated another birthday, that of her security services.

Chekist Day (from ‘CheKa’, Chrezvychainaia Komissiya, the founding name of the organisation later known as the KGB) is commemorated in the Russian calendar as a national holiday, a cause for celebration.

It couldn’t be otherwise, for 87 per cent of Russia’s top government officials are proud veterans of the KGB/FSB/SVR. I’m sure they were all moved to tears when Col. Putin congratulated them publicly on the glorious occasion. I’m sure they are proud of their alma mater’s achievements.

There are indeed achievements to be proud of. This most awful terrorist setup in history, established by Lenin’s decree 98 years ago, is directly responsible for the death of 60 million Soviet citizens, those shot, tortured, starved to death, turned into ‘camp dust’, in Stalin’s phrase.

This is what Prof. Rummel, the author of Lethal Politics, calls ‘democide’, indiscriminate slaughter by category – as opposed to ‘genocide’, the slaughter of specific ethnic or religious groups.

Actually the KGB (as it’s still usually called generically) has form in both, as many citizens in the former Soviet Union could testify. Ukrainians, Chechens, Balkars, Daghestani, Letts, Lithuanians, Estonians, Crimean Tartars were all massacred not for what they did but for what they were.

I doubt their descendants raised a celebratory toast to the anniversary of their murderers, torturers and rapists. But Vlad and the KGB junta he fronts did – and no one in the West batted an eyelid.

It’s Russia’s business, isn’t it? Tastes differ, some people’s holidays are other people’s days to forget. Live and let live: for example, we celebrate Trafalgar Day and the French don’t. All par for the course.

Well, not quite. How would you feel if the Germans declared 20 April a national holiday because that was the day the Gestapo was founded in 1933? How would you feel if German tobacconists were selling cigarettes branded Auschwitz?

Surely you’d be tempted to reach some rather gloomy conclusions about the nature of the modern German state, which clearly saw an uninterrupted continuity from Hitler to Merkel. Can you imagine the reaction in our press? I can’t.

And yet no one deems it worth a comment that Moscow tobacconists sell cigarettes called Belomorkanal, the White Sea Canal, a giant NKVD construction project during which hundreds of thousands of political prisoners died of starvation, neglect, torture and bullets. The pack features an outline map of the area, without mentioning it’s one contiguous mass grave.

Similarly, Putin’s heartiest congratulations to the veterans of history’s most murderous organisation attracted no attention whatsoever. No comments were made, no inferences were drawn, no conclusions were reached.

When did we become such a sorry lot? When did we smash to smithereens our framework of moral reference? If that structure were still intact, this fact alone, that the Russian government officially celebrates Chekist Day, would tell us all we needed to know about Putin’s Russia – even if we knew nothing else.

As it is, assorted ‘useful idiots’, ably represented by Peter Hitchens, Christopher Booker and, when he’s in that sort of mood, Nigel Farage, praise Putin’s strong leadership qualities.

Their panegyrics are neatly harmonised in the background with the howling winds blowing thistle through the mass, nameless graves of millions, with the wailing and weeping of those who miraculously survived.

Happy Genocide Day, Vlad. It’s your day, and no one can take it away from you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I never tire of admiring Holland’s trailblazing efforts in bringing ancient laws and practices up to date.

For example, she was the first European country to legalise homomarriage, thus expanding the concept of matrimony and, moreover, laying the groundwork for further expansion into such promising areas as polygamy, polyandry and interspecies marriage. If that’s not progress, I don’t know what is.

Consumption of soft drugs is legal too, with the Dutch adding a whole new meaning to the concept of coffee shop. Walk into one of those in Amsterdam and you can have all the hash cookies you can eat – bizarrely provided you’re a Dutch citizen. The logic behind this discrimination against foreigners must be based on sheer greed: the Dutch want to keep all the best fruits of progress for themselves.

Holland also is the first country to have legalised killing old people who don’t seem to enjoy life any longer. Of course gauging the requisite degree of unhappiness isn’t something a wrinkly can be trusted to do for himself. Such a responsible decision can only be made by an impartial source, namely a doctor or perhaps a magistrate.

As a result of this progressive legislation, old people in Holland are increasingly scared of going to hospital because they think the doctors may kill them. This reticence reduces the workload of the Dutch health service and, indirectly, the tax burden on the populace. Benefits all around, anywhere you look.

Since all EU members are umbilically linked to one another, progress achieved in one country invariably catches on. Hence one can hardly open one of our ‘quality’ broadsheets without reading lamentations about the unbearable pressure the aging population exerts on the NHS.

While a wholesale cull of crumblies isn’t mentioned as a viable solution in so many words, the underlying longing is clearly discernible. And speaking of underlying longings, Holland has introduced another progressive law that has made me consider retraining as a driving instructor.

Transport Minister Melanie Schultz van Haegen and Justice Minister Ard van der Steur have just welcomed the new law making it legal for driving instructors to offer lessons in exchange for sex.

“It’s not about offering sexual activities for remuneration, but offering a driving lesson,” explained the ministers, which is God’s own truth, though not the whole truth.

For any commercial transaction is bilateral. In this case, one side, the instructor, offers a service for which he requests payment in kind. The other side, the learner, accepts the request and offers a service in return. Still, while the logic behind it all isn’t of sterling quality, the spirit of the new law can’t possibly be faulted.

One only hopes that Dutch legislators can see the plethora of exciting commercial possibilities opening up. For why limit this kind of barter arrangement just to driving?

A nubile young girl (or, let’s be truly progressive, boy) could offer services of various ballistic complexity in exchange for groceries, rent, clothes, cab fare, medical services, restaurant bills – you name it. I’m sure that purveyors of all of those can easily accommodate one or two such enterprising young ladies into their daily grind.

As a side benefit, the government could borrow less by reducing the supply of cash in circulation. Fellatio would trump finance as a means of exchange, and the euro would have a better chance of surviving, which is the dearest wish of all progressive people.

Alas, some spoilsports wish to stick an umbrella in the wheel spokes of progress. Even in Holland, a country so progressive that it should be twinned with Sodom and Gomorra, such sticks-in-the-mud exist.

It’s to the whole nation’s credit that their objections have nothing to do with such anachronisms as morality. No, in the good Calvinist tradition some frugal Dutchmen take exception to the tax implications of this exciting development.

Prostitution is legal in Holland, as it must be in all progressive lands. Ladies of easy virtue are licensed and registered with the tax authorities. The temptation is strong to equate girls using sex to pay for driving lessons with prostitutes and hence demand that they register and pay tax.

One can’t deny that this demand has merit, but I’m sure it won’t derail the march of progress. For one thing, most 18-year-old girls (the minimum age for selecting this method of payment) are in such a low income bracket that they wouldn’t pay any tax anyway.

Then of course there exist endless possibilities for evasion. There’s nothing to prevent the instructor from offering his services free of charge, or claiming that he is. And the learner can easily say that, rather than using her body or parts thereof in lieu of payment, she suddenly felt a surge of uncontrollable affection for the chap in the car with dual controls.

Naysayers will be defeated one way or the other. And if any Dutch government officials are reading this, I want them to know that I have 45 years’ driving experience, a clean licence and the urge to march in step with progress.

 

  

 

Dave hasn’t so much declared his hand as confirmed it: he’ll campaign for staying no matter what.

If the Commission demands that the Queen abdicate, Dave will campaign for staying. If the demand is that Britain transfer her whole nuclear deterrent to the EU, he’ll campaign for staying. If we’re told to accept at least five million Muslims next year… well, you get the picture.

Without impugning Dave’s character more than I’ve already been doing for years, let’s look at the arguments put forth in support of staying – and pretend they’re offered in good faith.

Let’s start with the economy. Britain has managed to stay out of the euro for the time being, but not out of the on-going drive towards closer union. In fact, Dave’s role model Tony still thinks we should join the single currency – which ipso facto is a strong argument not to.

The theoretical case against merging vastly diverse economies into a single entity is overwhelming: a country like Germany or Holland can’t easily accommodate Romania and Greece into its own economic model.

But forget theory for a second. What about the practical results of closer integration? Can’t everyone see that EU economies are a basket case? That, for no reason other than staying out of the euro, Britain is pulling further ahead of even Germany and France, never mind the low-rent part of Europe?

Theory and practice come together to blow the economic argument out of the water. As to the trade argument, it doesn’t even get as far as the water.

We need, the argument goes, to dissolve our sovereignty in some collective contrivance in order to be able to trade with Europe. Really? Since when?

Since the time Britain practically invented the modern version of free trade centuries ago? Since she ran the greatest trading empire the world has ever known? Who invented the bizarre idea that a nation has to divest itself of its sovereignty to be able to trade with others?

On the contrary, as anyone who has ever conducted multi-partite negotiations will tell you, the fewer parties to the deal, the better it is. Wouldn’t it be better for us to have one trade deal with Holland and another with Poland? Rather than getting agreement from 27 member states?

A related argument is that, should Britain leave the EU, it would be so enraged that it would impose punitive tariffs on us.

That may be. No one can accuse the concocters of the frankly idiotic single currency of putting economics before politics, and reason before ideology.

However, punitive tariffs beget punitive counter-tariffs. Hence, for example, if the EU introduced sanctions on us, our countersanctions could conceivably add £10,000 to the price of every German car.

As a result, at least half the sales currently enjoyed by Audis and BMWs will go to Nissan and Toyota. In a country that lives or dies by exports, what do think would be the electoral prospects of the Chancellor responsible for devastating the country’s principal industry?

Considering that the EU enjoys a huge trade surplus with Britain, I’d say that sanctions would be highly unlikely. And if they did happen, we’d be in an ideal position first to retaliate and then to take up the slack by increasing our trade outside the EU, which already accounts for 60 per cent of our exports.

Another argument that’s embarrassing for serious people not only to make but even to listen to is security. It’s only thanks to the EU, say its advocates, that there have been no wars in Europe since 1945.

Of course, when the French or the Germans say this, they don’t mean no wars in Europe. They mean no wars between France and Germany, and the rest of Europe might as well not exist.

But it does exist, and since 1945 blood has been gushing with various intensity in Poland and East Germany, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the Ukraine and Georgia, Bosnia and Croatia, Serbia and Kosovo. And in each case the response of the EU, or whatever it called itself then, varied from feeble to nonexistent to treacherous.

In any case, but for NATO and the US nuclear umbrella, the EU would now be called the EUSSR, and it would be a vassalage of a still powerful Soviet Union.

Looking at the EU now, does it look very secure to you? How long before AKs in the hands of murderous fanatics are replaced with nuclear, chemical or biological devices? How long before the EU becomes a caliphate in all but name?

The Schengen Agreement and the euro are both EU flagships. They are also arguably the greatest disasters Europe has ever experienced at peacetime – and it’s ongoing. The effect is that of a snowball getting bigger and bigger as it rolls to – and then over – the edge of the abyss.

The arguments in favour of staying in the EU range from spurious to unsound to mendacious. Still, throw a few billion of EU funny money behind them and they may well carry the day at referendum time.

For we are no longer blessed with a population capable of gathering facts, analysing them and drawing logical conclusions. So Dave’s smug mug may stay with us for years to come.