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Why would people refuse to be vaccinated against Covid? And can they be forced?

If you watch this video, you’ll get an answer to the second question: https://www.facebook.com/100000641866571/posts/4056214877743201/?sfnsn=scwspwa (As a side benefit, you can appreciate the living conditions in provincial Russia, but that isn’t what concerns me here.)

The clip shows AK-toting Russian special forces pinning resisters down and slamming needles into their upper arms. One of the anti-vaxxers is a police lieutenant-colonel (equivalent to our Chief Inspector), so obviously drunk on the job that he can’t even enunciate his protests intelligibly.

Transposing this scenario to a more civilised setting, our government is unlikely to vaccinate protesters at gunpoint. A hefty fine is probably as far as we can go.

Yet it’s logical that no one should be allowed to shirk his civic duty. After all, vaccination is designed to produce herd immunity. Hence, the more of the human livestock refuse or neglect to be vaccinated, the less effective the programme. The logical conclusion is that we owe compliance not just to ourselves but to society at large.

The first question is more interesting. Why would anyone refuse?

The incidence of side effects is trivial and, when they do occur, they are mild. Three people have been reported to die as a result of vaccination, but related to the tens of millions safely vaccinated people, the risk is negligible. It’s more dangerous to cross the street, even in a quiet part of town.

Medical opinion, supported by a large body of clinical research, is unequivocal on the subject of efficacy. This may vary in its degree, which normally falls in the range of 85 to 99 per cent. But in any case it’s worth having, especially if one considers the Covid mortality rate. It’s not very pleasant mortality either: patients slowly suffocate.

Even those who survive suffer serious damage to their lungs and often brain. One would think that even a measly 85 per cent reduction in the chances of such outcomes is desirable. Potential gains outweigh potential losses so heavily that Pascal’s Wager ought to guide anyone’s decision.

This would be reasonable if logic were brought to bear on the decision. But it isn’t. For every argument in favour of vaccination is based on expert opinion, and these days it carries little weight.

This isn’t because doctors and medical scientists know less than their counterparts did 100 years ago. Quite the opposite: our contemporary medics are infinitely better qualified and equipped to face up to life’s pitfalls.

It’s just that more and more people refuse to accept authority of any kind, and rejecting expert opinion is a glaring example of such obtuseness. The chickens first espied by Plato and Aristotle are coming home to roost.

The two sage Greeks lived at a time of inchoate and highly limited democracy. Only 30,000 or so fully enfranchised Athenians (out of the population of about a quarter of a million at its peak) could vote, with 5,000-6,000 constituting a quorum.

Yet the philosophers anticipated the downside of democracy with nothing short of clairvoyance. If people are equal in one, political, respect, warned Plato and Aristotle, they’ll eventually assume they are equal in every respect – including matters of intellect, aesthetics and specialised knowledge.

In practical terms, this means not only that everyone feels entitled to voice his opinion on any matter in Creation (including Creation itself), but also that everyone is sure that his opinion is as good as anyone else’s – regardless of the relative levels of expertise.

Thus a 20-year-old student discussing a scientific hypothesis with his Nobel-winning professor is perfectly capable of saying: “Well, your guess is as good as mine.” A youngster who has never heard of Magna Carta or the Bill of Rights will lecture a political scientist on the relative benefits of proportional representation and first-past-the-post. And, more to the point, medically illiterate people will insist that they are right and doctors with 30 years’ experience of studying and practising medicine are wrong.

This isn’t to say that doctors are always right. Anyone, whatever his expertise, may make a mistake. However, a doctor’s chances of making one are exponentially lower than a layman’s – even one who has taken the trouble to Google his condition for 10 minutes.

To be fair, doctors contribute to fostering this presumption of equality. These days, they are instructed to give the patient a free choice of anything, from surgery to therapy.

Now, at the risk of sounding immodest, my knowledge of medicine is probably better than average. However, whenever doctors follow their protocols and ask me to choose which procedure I’d prefer, I always tell them I’m not qualified to make such choices. Once I’m satisfied that the doctor is competent (and ideally Anglophone), I trust him to decide what’s best for me.

But then I’m not an egalitarian. I readily accept the existence of social, professional and any other hierarchies in which my place is nowhere near the top. In some, I don’t belong at all.

However, such a worldview is strictly anachronistic. Steering today’s discourse are ignorant and arrogant upstarts whose guess is as good as anyone else’s. In America, this species dominates the human fauna, but it’s in the ascendant everywhere, even among the traditionally more diffident Britons.

I’m not suggesting that political democracy is the root of all evil. What’s important isn’t method of governance, but the kind of society it brings forth. Every method, including democracy, has pluses and minuses, and success hinges on accentuating the former and downplaying the latter.

The desirability of imposing limitations on political democracy is an interesting but separate subject. What’s essential is that the mentality created by political democracy be contained within that sphere and not allowed to spill over into every walk of life.

That’s why the wider the democracy, the more vital its need for a highly educated population. Any mass deficit in learning prevents people from exercising their sovereignty responsibly and effectively. And extending imperious incompetence to areas of specialised expertise is deadly.

When it comes to vaccination, such cocksure, proud ignorance may prove deadly literally, not just figuratively. Still, I wouldn’t threaten ant-vaxxers with guns.

What are the most popular sports in Britain? Football? Rugby? Cricket?

One of these for sure. But the list of aspiring candidates would be incomplete without another deserving entry: mocking the French Academy (l’Académie Française).

The Academy was founded by Cardinal Richelieu “to labour with all the care and diligence possible, to give exact rules to our language, to render it capable of treating the arts and sciences”.

In other words, its function was, and to this day remains, to police the French language and its use. I’ll let the French decide how successful this mission has been. My guess is that most of them would judge it largely a failure, citing in support all the rapidly proliferating affronts, such as a profusion of Anglicisms.

However, they don’t know, and neither does anyone else, how much worse things could be without the Academy. That’s like saying that, for all the medical advances, a patient still died. Yes, but without such advances he could have died much earlier.

One way or the other, there’s something about the idea of policing language that goes against the grain of the anti-dirigiste British spirit. Britons don’t want some toffs and eggheads to sit in judgement and pronounce verdicts on how they should speak.

A language, they often say, is a living organism and must develop naturally. And English has done pretty well in that department, thank you very much. That’s why it has ousted French as the world’s lingua franca.

While the general thrust of such arguments rings true, one could legitimately quibble over some details. First, not all living organisms can survive if left to their own devices.

For example, my living organism takes 12 tablets every day and hasn’t been without such boosts to nature since I was 10. Allowed to develop unaided, this living organism would have died decades ago, thereby sparing you this constant stream of vituperation.

Also, the imperialist nature of the English language may contribute to its undoing. The French, who are often quite petty about their language pushed down to a secondary status, ought to look at the history of every lingua franca, such as Latin, and thank their lucky étoiles.

For, like all living organisms, a language can best survive in its native habitat. When it’s used universally, it’s reduced to a patois that sucks all living juices out of it. What remains is the bare bones of primitive communications, mostly involved in buying and selling. Eventually, this affects the language even as it’s used at home, and the more global the communications, the more noticeable this tendency.

Then, the function of police in a civilised country isn’t to regulate every aspect of behaviour but only to stop its worst manifestations. Again, I don’t know how French would have fared without the Academy’s enforcement of linguistic laws, but for one reason or another the French mangle their grammar less than the British do. This though French grammar is much more complex.

A regulatory body can’t dictate how people should speak, but it certainly can dictate how language is taught at school, and possibly also the contents of style manuals used in various media. The general rule in this field, as in most others, is that freedom is wonderful, but it shouldn’t be allowed to turn into anarchy.

With all these provisos, I agree that language shouldn’t be legislated. A language must be allowed to develop freely without being constrained by any artificial tethers.

Except that English, French and all other Western European languages are indeed being legislated – and by groups considerably less erudite and more toxic than l’Académie Française. These are roaming gangs of illiterate woke demagogues out to castrate all languages in the name of equality, mostly of the ‘gender’ sort.

As a staunch champion of the same laws for all, I insist that we must decide: if English is to be immune to outside pressures, it should be immune to all of them. However, if some people are allowed to impose regulatory constraints, then surely another group ought to be able to resist them. Sanity must have a chance to fight back.

Again, France leads the way, although acting at the point are political, rather than linguistic, legislators. A group of MPs have started a campaign against ‘gender-inclusive’ nouns, correctly warning that at risk here is the whole language, not just the odd masculine word.

Gender-neutral words, argue the MPs, “create a gap between the spoken and written language. It is therefore the whole of French linguistic heritage which risks disappearing… Do the rules of grammar no longer exist?”

Hear, hear. One only wishes that this effort be spearheaded by l’Académie, whose founding remit is precisely to protect French from perverse changes. But at least the effort is under way.

Rather than mocking the French in general, and l’Académie in particular, we should create a similar English body to act not as a language dictator, but as a bulwark against the savage ideological attacks jeopardising the continuing health of what, at the risk of infuriating my French friends, I consider the world’s greatest language.

Who would be qualified to serve on such a panel? I’d suggest writers, journalists and academics who possess impeccable credentials as English stylists, and whose shoulders bear no ‘progressive’ chips. Here I proceed from logic, not my own political convictions.

Such a body would be performing a conservative function, with conservation as its brief. And the dictionary defines that word as “planned management of a natural resource to prevent exploitation, destruction or neglect”. And, tautologically speaking, conservation is best left to conservatives.

Conservation, as for that matter political conservatism, opposes only harmful change, not change tout court. And what can harm a language more than the ugly contortions into which English is being forced by the modern equivalents of the sans-culottes pretending to be philosophes? Up the Academy, I say.

The British Bolshevik Cabal (BBC) is in the make-believe business, but what it makes is increasingly hard to believe.

Contrary to a belief widespread in conservative circles, I don’t think the BBC is consciously out to destroy our civilisation. However, I’m not sure how different its policies would be if it indeed pursued such an objective.

After our faux Tories won their landslide, persistent rumours made the rounds, speculating that the BBC was up for a rehaul, complete with a whole raft of reforms designed to wean it off its left-wing ideology. However, as Eastern European and Soviet communists found out, a rigid left-leaning structure can’t be reformed. It can only be demolished.

Since demolishing the BBC doesn’t seem to be on the agenda, it’s continuing to chart a course to a bright woke future. That this future is going to shine even brighter than our already dazzling woke present is evident from the reforms put in train at the Beeb.

Sorry, did I say it’s unreformable? My fault. What I meant was that structures like the BBC would resist any reforms aimed at making them less subversive. When it comes to the other kind, no such problems exist.

Lefties are masters of semantic larceny, wherein words are used in a meaning antonymous to their dictionary definition. One such word is ‘diversity’, which in woke cant means ‘uniformity’.

To support this observation, the BBC has issued a new diversity directive designed to make its staff uniformly brainwashed – the better they can then brainwash the public. Thus, effective immediately, 95 per cent are to complete ‘unconscious bias’ training, an initiative I find perplexing.

If the bias is unconscious, it’s so deep-seated that those hacks must be unaware of it. So first that bias must be extricated from the lower depths of their subconscious and brought up to the surface. “For nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest” seems to be the motto of this programme, although its authors can’t possibly know the provenance of this saying.

I wonder what the training will involve. Hypnosis? Electric shocks? Waterboarding? Perhaps Pavlov’s experiments on dogs, humanised to include word association, could serve as the model.

Electrodes could be attached to the sensitive parts of the employees’ anatomy, as they watch images flashing on the screen. If, for example, one such image is of Nelson Mandela, and the employee blurts out “banana”, he’ll receive a painful shock to his privates or, if he says “necklacing”, two shocks.

That way the bias will first become conscious and then, when the conditional reflex kicks in, expunged – or rather expertly concealed. Job done? Don’t be silly. We haven’t even started.

But before we go on, why just 95 per cent? Does this mean that five per cent of our cherished national institution will be allowed to remain racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynist, Tory-voting global-warming deniers? A speedy reply is imperative: the public has the right to know.

The next part of the directive is even more permissive: a mere 80 per cent of Beebers will be required to declare their social class. I don’t know about them, but I’m confused.

One would think that all those people are broadly middle class, if such categories are defined in strictly economic terms. If defined in any other way, then those both below and above middle class should be instantly identifiable by their accents, clothes, manners and so on. And if they don’t bear such stigmata, then all class distinctions have been erased. In any case, a declaration of class seems redundant.

Or do they mean one’s class at birth? If so, that would be consistent with socialism. Its founders divided all people into ossified classes, correctly assuming that, under socialism, no upward mobility would be possible. Everybody would be a proletarian – completely, equally and irreversibly.

The BBC’s ideological ancestors in Soviet Russia solved the problem of class with an elegant simplicity that always marks greatness. They summarily shot anyone who a) came from an aristocratic or gentry family, b) had a university degree, c) didn’t have calluses on his hands, d) enunciated long words in refined accents, e) didn’t like the Bolsheviks.

Alas, this must remain a nostalgic memory for time has moved on. Very few Beebers have a noble pedigree, most have been to university (who hasn’t these days?), only the tennis or golf players among them can ever develop calluses, practically none speak in refined accents, although almost all misuse long words, and they all adore woke modernity.

Hence the BBC has its work cut out, and I’ll be curious to see how it’ll solve those problems. But, as Lenin said, there are no fortresses Bolsheviks can’t storm. Onwards and forwards, comrades.

Another new requirement is that 50 per cent of LGBT employees must come out of the closet. That’s another surprise. Does it mean that half of them are currently concealing their predilections even though such ‘lifestyles’ can only turbocharge a career?

Also, one would think that, for the T part of the acronym, any outing would be superfluous. If I were to undergo certain procedures to stop being Alexander and become Alexandra, you’d notice the metamorphosis without my explicit declaration to that effect.

Then of course there are a raft of measures aimed at making the BBC staff reflect the demographic makeup of the whole population. In addition to ensuring an even male and female split, the Corporation will launch a “staff census… that will for the first time capture non-binary or non-conforming identities”.

Anne Foster, BBC’s head of diversity and inclusion, said: “I am passionate about working to create a BBC that reflects the diversity of the UK and is somewhere people feel proud to work. Every aspect of our plans are shaped by extensive consultation with staff to ensure we can lay a strong foundation for a modern, transsexual BBC…” Oops, sorry, my lapsus manus. She actually said ‘transformed’, not ‘transsexual. Still, it’s good to see that Anne leads the way in mastering diversely universal grammar. 

The directive also calls for commitment to “identify and champion 100 diverse role models”. I’m secure in the knowledge that neither I nor any of my friends will be among those 100.

Come the revolution, we’ll probably be liquidated. For the time being we just know better than to apply for jobs at the British Bolshevik Corporation.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a Conservative government? What, we already have one? Could have fooled me.

This Tory government is a dead ringer for the Labour administration of Tony Blair, although admittedly it’s less catastrophic than Jeremy Corbyn’s administration would have been.

Johnson, Sunak et al. enforce every plank of the woke agenda, with Dominic Raab’s refusal to take the knee the only conservative gesture any of them has made. As for conservative policies, they are following the trail left by flying pigs.

This emphatically includes HMG’s treatment of the economy, currently playing a dirge on the doldrums. Yet the Chancellor refuses to change his tune on taxing and spending.

So-called Tory governments have form on that: over the past 10 years they have hit the economy with 1,000 tax rises. That would be pretty good going even for unapologetic socialists.

At least this time HMG has an excuse for profligate spending: Covid. Still, with the national debt going over the two-trillion mark, and the deficits soaring at 300 billion a year, even socialists must see that such fiscal promiscuity is unsustainable.

The current situation is likely to change in the next few months, both for the better and for the worse. The better part is that Covid seems to be on the wane. The worse part is that inflation is going up and interest rates are bound to follow suit.

The only mitigation for going crazy with the printing press and IOUs is that the interest rates have for many years been lower than at any time since Charles II was king. If they rise sharply, which is likely, such policies will cross the line separating imprudent from suicidal.

So how is HMG preparing for new challenges? How is it planning to pull the economy out of the mire? Remember that in addition to Covid, there’s also the issue of redirecting the economy away from the EU and towards an independent trade policy.

In response, the Chancellor is about to unveil a set of new policies – each the exact opposite of sanity, each likely, nay guaranteed, to send the economy into an irreversible tailspin.

I’m not going to blaze any new trails in economic thought. Thankfully, none is required. Modern economies have been functioning around the world for so long that we know for sure what works and what doesn’t.

Examples of remarkably successful reversals in economic fortunes are helpfully provided by post-war Germany and, later, the ‘Asian tigers’: South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong. All of them started from a nadir and quickly reached the zenith. An example of languishing at the nadir for decades is closer to home: post-war Britain.

The successes were scored by governments who realised that a state can only affect an economy positively by not affecting it negatively. They drastically reduced social spending, taxes and their own slice of the economic pie. That unleashed the people’s initiative, enterprise and creativity, of which, as it turned out, there was a vast, if hitherto dormant, supply.

Even chaps unencumbered with Nobel Prizes for economics have to conclude that any policies that have such a liberating effect are always at a premium, but especially when the economy is in dire straits. Conversely, measures that have the opposite effect are guaranteed to run the economy aground.

In that light, let’s look at some of Mr Sunak’s proposed policies.

He is planning to launch a tax raid on online business, including a ‘green’ tax on deliveries. In addition to kowtowing to the climate hoax, that means consumers will be buying less, which, in a consumer economy, is bound to have a knock-on effect on the producers. Result? A slow-down at a time when the economy is already at a crawl.

Mr Sunak also plans to hit the self-employed with new taxes, essentially putting them in the same category as wage slaves. However, self-employment involves taking entrepreneurial risks, while full-time employment is considerably safer.

The incentive to take such risks will diminish, and so will the number of small businesses that are the principal drivers of the economy. Result? A shrinking tax base, most likely delivering lower tax revenues. Also, a more static economy – in a situation begging for dynamism.

The Chancellor is also going to play fast and loose with income tax bands, pushing between one and two million people into a higher one. This is what some economists call ‘bracket creep’, and others ‘stealth taxes’. Whatever you call it, it discourages hard work and ambition. Result? As above.

Mr Sunak also wishes to increase the corporate tax rate from its current rate of 19 per cent to  25 per cent. This at a time when most corporations are already half-dead due to Covid.

Hitting them with new taxes is tantamount to delivering a coup de grâce. Result? Massive job losses, bankruptcies, higher prices (corporations tend to pass tax increases on to customers) and – possibly most deadly – turning foreign companies away from Britain when attracting them is crucial.

Also planned is another ‘stealth tax’, on wealthy pensioners. Seemingly, this will affect only about 10,000 people who’ll have to pay an extra £22,000 by 2024. But they don’t call such taxes ‘stealth’ for nothing. This one will also hurt millions of young achievers who’ll get into the higher band by the time they retire.

Rather than investing in their future, people will be thus encouraged to mimic HMG’s thirst for spending and borrowing. This is an example of how a government can damage the economy by encouraging ruinous economic practices and discouraging sound ones.

HMG must have played truant when the lesson of 2008 was taught. Result? A rich potential for crises and a negligible one for higher tax revenues.

There are two ways of filling budget holes: reduced spending or increased taxation. The former is well-nigh impossible for a spivocratic government that fears oblivion if it can’t bribe voters with handouts. In this, all governments are similar, regardless of their party affiliation.

But at least Tory governments used to know that high tax rates don’t mean high tax revenues, quite the opposite – and that, while lower taxes invigorate the economy, higher ones may well kill it. That’s why I’m so sad that we don’t seem to have a Tory government at the helm.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, as Walker’s Crisps found out.

In addition to churning out tonnes of the snack whose popularity I can’t for the life of me understand, the company is committed to woke rectitude. This is reflected in the palette of the extras appearing in Walker’s commercials:

“The casting for all of our advertising reflects the diversity of the nation and our consumers. We are strongly committed to playing our part in pursuing racial and social justice,” declared Walker’s.

The company’s top spokesman, Gary Lineker, football player turned highest-paid BBC presenter, is unfashionably white. But not to worry. Walker’s finds ways to make up for that imperfection.

Thus its latest commercial shows, in addition to Gary, 12 other actors, all of them black to varying degrees. If we take Walker’s at its word, this is a fair representation of Britain’s demographics.

While one can argue with its arithmetic (blacks make up only about three per cent of our population), its woke credentials have been thereby bolstered – or so it would seem. Who could have thought that such casting would incur an accusation of racism?

No, I don’t mean the woke reverse racism, boosting to grotesque proportion the share of minorities featured in advertisements. No one would dare protest against that, on pain of being branded racist, ageist, homophobe, transphobe, a global warming denier and an EU hater.

I mean the common-or-garden racism, of the kind communicated through burning crosses, lynchings and garments made of bed sheets – this even in Britain, where such methods of self-expression have never made much headway.

You see, Walker’s has formed a tie-in with KFC, probably based on the similarity in the target markets for both products. Hence, while their latest commercial stars the whitey Gary flogging the crisps in the foreground, the other actors are shown enjoying their buckets of fried chicken.

Where’s the racism in that, I hear you ask. This question shows how grossly insensitive you are to the nuances of wokery. I bet you also suffer from a whole raft of unconscious biases, only curable by a public recantation and a subsequent indoctrination course.

What makes the commercial ‘controversial’ even according to a modelling agency specialising in diversity is the negative connotations associated with the blacks’ dietary habits in America. They love fried chicken, and have done since the days of slavery.

The connection is rather tenuous because fried chicken is a staple in the Southern states of America. Anyone who has ever lived there, black, white, brown, yellow or polka dot, likes the stuff, to which I can testify personally.

I recall going to my local KFC for lunch at least once a week, partly for the food and partly for the girls who worked there. The interest wasn’t carnal but anthropological.

The young ladies were programmed to respond only to a specific set of verbal stimuli. Since at the time (mid-70s) I was new to the culture, I’d utterly baffle them by saying things like “I’d like two thighs and a leg, please, but not crispy”. An instant gap in communications would occur, only to be filled with a prescribed order: “D, all dark, original.”

The girl would jot my order down, after which her inner button would get pushed and she’d ask: “And what would you like to drink, sir?” Trying to save her trouble, I’d sometimes attempt to preempt that question by specifying “D, all dark original, nothing to drink”. “And what would you like to drink, sir?” she’d always ask, making me ponder the dehumanising effects of mass production.

Anyway, the point of this nostalgic digression is that I worked at NASA at the time, the only major employer in Clear Lake City, Tx, where those exchanges took place. Most of the people who worked there – and hence most of the KFC customers – were white. That unfortunate nativity in no way diminished their delight in the delicacy on offer.

Southern cuisine is a hodgepodge of culinary influences, Mexican, Creole, Cajun, Anglo, Spanish, German – and of course black. Fried chicken does have some weak association with black cuisine, but why is it racist?

Would a Scotsman be offended if shown eating haggis, a Jew depicted with matzo balls, a Frenchman with frogs or an Indian with Vindaloo? They’d just smile and move on. I bet British blacks don’t give two flying chickens about being portrayed with KFC products either.

No one is really offended, except the woke, predominantly white middle-class ‘opinion-formers’, who aren’t offended either, but have to feign indignation for ideological reasons, as a call to action.

In this case, action wasn’t late in arriving. The social media rained accusations of racism on Walker’s and even poor (figuratively speaking) Gary Lineker, who has never seen a woke cause he couldn’t love.

Even the diversity-oriented FOMO model agency that supplied the talent is appalled at this racial stereotyping, which is rich coming from a company built on racial stereotypes.  

The ad is likely to be pulled, whereas I’m going to register my disgust at this woke bacchanal by frying some free-range chicken thighs tonight. This though I’s white.

‘Confirmation bias’ is a term psychologists use to describe a human trait we all share to some extent: seeking out data that confirm what we already know or believe.

Think of it as a filter in the brain through which all information passes. As a result of such straining, we accept that everything that confirms our current knowledge is proof, while everything that doesn’t is an exception.

However, most of us draw the line somewhere. When statistical data contradict too blatantly elementary common sense and the empirical evidence we’ve accumulated over a lifetime, we’re likely to reject them even if they seem to confirm our cherished belief.

At least that’s what sane people do, a category to which, on the evidence of his article It’s Clear Our Sexuality Isn’t Set in Stone, Matthew Parris doesn’t belong. Actually, Mr Parris’s own homosexuality seems to be perfectly lapidary, but, according to him, many more people than we realise are fluid in their proclivities, tending towards the same sex.

Some 10 years ago I found myself on the receiving end of homosexuals’ slings and arrows. Among many things they found infuriating was my statement that only just over one per cent of Britons are homosexuals. This was based on the largest survey I had seen, one conducted on 20,000 subjects.

Yet homosexual activists, who have a vested interest in exaggerating such numbers, insist that the real figure is 10 per cent. This is preached by the bible of Gay Pride, Peter Tatchell’s newspaper PinkNews.

My assailants didn’t cite any contradicting polls, but I’m sure they exist. I don’t know if they are as extensive and credible as the one I used, but this doesn’t really matter. Confirmation bias kicks in on both sides.

The figure of about one percent tallied with my observation and experience, whereas Mr Tatchell et al. were more comfortable with 10 per cent. The tenfold difference is huge, but not inexplicable. After all, if we decide which set of data to accept on the basis of our own experience, it’s to be expected that Mr Tatchell’s would differ from mine.

Mr Parris’s, however, must be startlingly different even from Mr Tatchell’s. In his article he quotes “figures [against which] we cannot argue”. What he means is that these figures support his confirmation bias so strongly, that he “cannot argue” with them.

However, since the unarguable figures he quotes aren’t just out in left field but out of the stadium, its car park and the immediate vicinity, I’ll argue against them – as will any sensible person of any of the 74 currently recognised sexes.

My hand is strengthened by a long experience of using market research. When my proposed ad campaigns were subjected to focus groups, I knew how easily the respondents could be manipulated.

They often tend to give answers that make them sound good or else those they feel the researcher would rather hear. Thus the list of questions, the way the researcher is briefed to pose them, the selection of respondents could all skew results in a desired way.

Hence I know to take surveys with a grain of salt and, ideally, a shot of tequila as well. Mr Parris’s experience must be different, which is why his credulity is almost touching.

Allow me to quote at length:

“… Respondents from each generation [of the four involved] were asked to say which of the following four groups they’d put themselves in: “‘Only attracted to the opposite sex’; ‘Mostly attracted to the opposite sex’; ‘Equally attracted to both sexes’; and ‘Mostly/only attracted to the same sex’.

“Brace yourself for the British result. Just over half (54 per cent) of the youngest generation said they were only attracted to the opposite sex. The older the respondents got, the less gay they declared themselves to be. The figure for Millennials was 60 per cent exclusively heterosexual; Generation X 76 per cent; and Baby Boomers 84 per cent.”

“Mostly, that’s good news,” says Mr Parris. The good news, according to him, is that almost half of young people aren’t exclusively straight. However, by any reasonable social, moral, aesthetic and demographic standards these findings would spell a catastrophe – if they were true to life.

But they can’t possibly be. The old statistical legerdemain has to be at play here, though not necessarily in any fraudulent way. It’s just that the younger people are, the more they’ve been subjected to unremitting woke propaganda of homosexuality, starting at kindergarten level.

They’ve been brainwashed to regard anyone who finds anything wrong with any ‘lifestyle’ to be almost as evil as a racist. And evil isn’t an image of themselves that most people are willing to project. Having homosexual tendencies is to them progressive, inclusive and, well, cool. Being staunchly heterosexual is, on the other hand, decidedly uncool.

“The US figures show younger Americans are even less likely (52 per cent) to say they only fancy the opposite sex,” rejoices Mr Parris. So everything is fine with the world.

Astonishingly, he knows that the results are unreliable: “These polls show that peer-group pressure can be an unconscious moulder of sexuality.” It can also be a conscious moulder of survey responses. But either way, Mr Parris is happy:

“We shall have many more gay and bisexual people in the century ahead. That’s fine. And perhaps many more trans people too… By social pressure, classroom pressure, media pressure and, yes, through mere fashion, we are moulding soft clay, not discovering some great shard of internal granite children are born with. The younger the person, the softer the clay.”

It used to be the Jesuits who said: “Give us a boy, and we’ll give you a man.” Now it’s the homosexuals. But, while my feelings about the situation are different from Mr Parris’s, I admire his honesty.

He openly and joyously agrees that ‘progressive’ activists are consciously, systematically and with a clear sense of purpose pushing youngsters towards homo- and transsexuality – and that without such pressures the results wouldn’t be as encouraging as the poll he cites. QED.

Sounds jarring, doesn’t it? Not to say unpleasantly racist?

Of course it does. Someone who utters such a sentence has to look, sound and act like Tommy Robinson or, on the other side of the Atlantic, a Clansman.

Since I’m neither of those things, I never feel pride in my race, body shape, the colour of my eyes (green) and hair (these days mostly white and pink) or my shoe size. I’ve done nothing to acquire such characteristics and hence can’t take pride in any of them.

They aren’t achievements. They just are. Now, I may be proud about some of the books and articles I’ve written, some of the things I’ve understood or even, at a weak moment and to a much lesser extent, my reasonably successful advertising career.

These are all achievements, if not universally seen as such. Hence they are legitimate objects of pride, in the sense of self-respect, not hubris. Are you with me so far?

Well, in that case, what do you think of the footballer Marcus Rashford who currently stars in a TV commercial saying: “I’m a black man and I live every day proud that I am.”

Now, Marcus has a lot to be proud about: he became an England and Manchester United star when still a teenager, and his club values his services to the tune of over £10 million a year plus all sorts of extras. Even though I may think it ridiculous that our society prizes such a trivial skill so highly, it still constitutes a remarkable achievement.

Such things don’t happen by themselves even to gifted people. It takes hard work, single-minded dedication and sacrifice to turn talent into achievement, so Marcus does have a lot to be proud about. But his race?

Admittedly, he produced the ad in response to racist abuse he regularly receives on social – anti-social? – media. Countless morons, each probably looking, sounding and acting like Tommy Robinson, vent their richly deserved feeling of inferiority by insulting a successful, glamorous young man for being what they can never be.

The best response to such diatribes is, well, none – ignore the scum. Better still, Marcus could get off the social media altogether. God knows he doesn’t lack for company.

Yet not everyone can display such Olympian detachment. I myself have been known not to practise what I preach and respond to insults in kind (I’m quite good at that, but I’m not proud of it). So I could understand it if Marcus were to go on the kind of counterattack that’s his footballing speciality.

But instead he chose to respond to racism with racism of his own. Except that none dare call it that. We’ve all been house-trained to regard black bigotry as a justifiable expression of a genuine grievance. The word ‘racism’ doesn’t cross anyone’s lips.

Looking at the recent events in America, we readily describe as racist a thuggish group like Proud Boys (that dread word again), but not a thuggish group like Antifa. The sauce for the white goose isn’t sauce for the black gander.

These days everybody has to be proud of something, but boundaries do exist. Thus women are encouraged to be proud of being women, but a man proud of being a man is a misogynist and also, by inferential extension, probably a racist, homophobe, transphobe, a global warming denier and a Tory voter.

A word of avuncular advice to Marcus: don’t turn your race into a political statement and don’t be proud of being black. In return, I promise never to be proud of being white. That way neither us will be called a racist.

This little piece is dedicated to the cherished memory of Anthony Crosland, Labour Secretary of State for Education, 1964-1970.

Early in his tenure, in 1965, he made a solemn promise: “If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to destroy every fucking grammar school in England. And Wales, and Northern Ireland.”

To use Mr Crosland’s chosen socialist idiom, this spelled the dawn of a new era, that of comprehensive schools. As we speak, they make up 90 per cent of all schools in Britain, which means Mr Crosland fulfilled 90 per cent of his promise – a remarkable success rate for a politician.

Until then, Britain’s state education had been the envy of the world. Since then, it has become its laughing stock.

About 25 per cent of all children used to go to grammar schools, where they were educated very well. Some of the most erudite people I’ve ever met are grammar school alumni.

The second tier of schools were called secondary modern, and they mostly prepared pupils for the rough-and-tumble of quotidian life, equipping them with the essential knowledge and skills. The separation between the tiers was determined on the basis of 11+ examinations.

However, some children are late bloomers. In recognition of this observable fact, the system remained fluid, and the ablest secondary modern pupils were often promoted to grammar schools. Again, I know several quite brilliant people who made that shift to great effect.

Britain was then one of the best-educated countries in the world. However, good education that system might have been, but it was bad ideology. Mr Crosland and his fellow socialists hated it because it didn’t “hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”, to quote from the founding document of the first modern, which is to say incipiently egalitarian, state.

Since the socialists ran the show even more then than they do now, they merged grammar and secondary modern schools together in the name of “comprehensive education”. The designation is half-right: it’s indeed comprehensive.

Over half a century later, Britain has succeeded in breeding two generations of Mowglis, deracinated creatures as thoroughly divorced from civilisation as Kipling’s lad raised by a pack of wolves.

The other day some kind soul shot a video of random youngsters, late teenage to early twenties by the looks of them, being asked the kind of questions that shouldn’t unduly trouble any school leaver. The youngsters represented the demographic and ethnic cross-section of our population. None of them looked mentally retarded.

To let you judge how successful Anthony Crosland’s mission has been, here’s a sample of the questions and answers.

“How many countries in the UK?” “One. The UK.”

“When did World War II end?” “1974.”

“Name the continents.” “London.” “I don’t know what a continent is.” “Spain?”

“What is the official language of the USA?” “American, innit?” “There isn’t one.”

“What’s the capital of America?” “New York.” “I don’t really know. Detroit?”

“Who bombed Pearl Harbour?” “Is it America?” “Where?” “Osama Bin Laden.” “Russia.”

“Who did the Americans beat in the Revolutionary War?” “Russia.” “Was it like East America against West America?” “Germany?” “France.” “Japan.” “Vietnam.” “It was Americans, innit?”

“Spell ‘unnecessary’.” “Bro, I can’t even spell it, man. You spell it.”

“What’s three cubed?” “Seven.”

If we define success as achieving the desired objective, then we shouldn’t describe comprehensive education as a failure. The socialists have produced exactly the result for which their levelling loins ached: a malleable, brainwashable herd ready to be putty in their hands.

But you know the scary thing? All those youngsters were of voting age. The country’s future – yours and mine – is in their hands. If you’re curious to find out what this future will be, move from Kipling to Huxley and Orwell.  

The world is being threatened by a blight, and the only salvation lies in isolating its source. No, I’m not talking about Covid. Everyone is aware of that threat, even though not everyone draws the same conclusions.

The deadly menace in question is Putin’s Russia, and the real possibility that she might plunge the world into a nuclear holocaust. This isn’t scaremongering but a sober attempt to analyse the situation.

To wit: last week Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov, an old KGB hand, threatened that Russia was ready to cut ties with the EU, and the West in general, should serious sanctions be imposed. However, Western commentators failed to pay due attention to the threat, especially its last sentence. This is what Lavrov said (the emphasis is mine):

“We do not want to be isolated from global life, but we must be prepared for this. If you want peace, then prepare for war.”

When the Russian government was asked to clarify the last sentence, Putin’s spokesman Peskov explained that Lavrov didn’t mean that the way it sounded. He simply meant Russia should hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

That’s not giving Lavrov the credit he deserves: he uses words precisely and advisedly. His message is indeed a not-so-veiled threat of war.

When Russia dismissed contemptuously the EU’s threat of sanctions over the poisoning and then imprisonment of Navalny, she was sending a coded message that today’s Alan Turings failed to decipher.

They interpreted it as Russia’s movement towards self-isolation. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Putin’s Russia, just like Lenin’s and Stalin’s, doesn’t want to isolate herself from the world. She seeks to remake it in her own image.

To that end, Russia systematically undermines the post-war world order based on international law, respect for human rights and a lattice of treaties. This system is far from perfect, and it leaves much room for abuse. But at least it establishes a framework within which countries may be brought to account without resorting to military force.

As the unwarranted invasion of Iraq in 2003 showed, some Western countries may practise a rather selective approach to international law. Yet that’s widely seen as an aberration, a regrettable deviation from the norm. This implies that a norm exists.

But not for Putin’s kleptofascists. They strive to plant a bomb under the West, and they rate their chances of success quite high. Hence their new-found respect, not to say admiration, for Hitler and Mussolini I wrote about the other day.

Like those gentlemen, Putin wants to create a new world order, one cleansed of any commitment to legality, non-violence and human rights. His rhetoric resembles Hitler’s almost verbatim.

Hitler ranted about the humiliation of Versailles and how the plutocratic, decadent, soulless West stamped Germany into the dirt. Putin’s equivalent is a stock phrase he has been uttering for at least the past 15 years: Russia must get up from her knees.

The cause of said genuflection is identified as the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, “the worst geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century”, as Putin describes it. Worse, in other words, than the two world wars and the Bolshevik revolution that proceeded to murder 60 million people.

And the agent of Russia’s kneeling shame? Why, the plutocratic, decadent, soulless West of course. After all, historically all Western aspirations can be reduced to one: bringing Russia to her knees and keeping her there.

The logical reaction to such beastliness is counterattacking the West with the objective of blowing up its world order. To that end Russia is assuming the role of a schoolyard bully who abuses bespectacled teachers’ pets, brushing aside their protests with “Oh yeah? So what are you gonna do about it?”

What are you, Mr West, going to do about Russia turning into a global Mafia state? Laundering trillions through your own institutions? Corrupting your politicians and indeed political systems? Annexing, against every international law, the Crimea, along with large chunks of Georgia and the Ukraine? Conducting a brutal campaign in Syria? Poisoning and otherwise dispatching people, including Western citizens, on your territory? Using nuclear and chemical weapons to do so? Ignoring your international laws? Imprisoning anyone Russia wishes despite loud protests all over the world?

Nothing? Well then, that proves that the rickety world order so dear to you is tottering. One slight push and it’ll collapse altogether.

The nature of the push isn’t hard to predict. When Putin and his gang decide that the West is sufficiently enfeebled and demoralised, Russia will test the waters by attacking a Nato member, most probably one of the Baltics.

It’s possible that a one-off use of tactical nuclear weapons will act as a question posed to the West: Are you ready to risk an all-out nuclear conflict? You are not? Splendid. So this is how it’s going to be from now on. We say jump, you ask how high.

Such is the implicit message of Lavrov’s threat. And it’s important to understand that the Russians aren’t bluffing. Threats of nuclear war, which they issue with monotonous regularity (“We can turn America into radioactive ash” and some such), aren’t PR bluster. They are statements of geopolitical and military doctrine.

For, unlike Nato, the Russians abandoned the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) even before an obscure KGB colonel emerged as the Supreme Leader. Since the late stages of the Soviet Union, Russian strategists have believed that a nuclear war was possible to fight and win.

As a child growing up in a violent neighbourhood known as Russia, I learned that the only response a bully understands is a punch on the nose or, better still, a blow with half a brick. You can’t talk a bully into changing his ways. You can only force him to conduct a cost-benefit analysis and conclude that he’d be better off leaving you alone.

Extrapolating that childhood experience to the situation in hand, the West must send a message of strength. Yes, we may be plutocratic and decadent, but don’t test our resolve. We still have enough left to face up to geopolitical bullies.

The West in general and Nato in particular must issue an unequivocal statement of unity. As its essential part, they should put Russia in quarantine, a present-day cordon sanitaire, refusing to deal with her on any level until Putin’s kleptofascist junta has begun to behave in a civilised way.

Putin isn’t a gambler – he won’t embark on a military adventure unless sure of victory. It’s the crutch of that certainty that the West must kick away.

Worryingly, no hint of such a response is discernible. When the Russians curtly told the EU where it could stick its notions of human rights, the reply came in the shape of sanctions against four (!) Russian officials who hardly ever leave their country anyway.

Such meekness can only embolden the bully, encouraging him to escalate his assaults. When that time comes, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

“Being offensive is an offence,” says the slogan inscribed on the banners of Merseyside Police. The statement sounds so tautological that it isn’t immediately clear why it had to be made. Of course being offensive is an offence, what else is new?

But that’s not what they mean. The offence they have in mind is a criminal one – a crime, in other words.

Fine. The law is the law, and those Liverpudlian cops follow the guidelines laid down by the Crown Prosecution Service.

However, even though we must obey all laws, we should still be free to regard some of them as unjust. To avoid such an accusation, a law must as a minimum clearly define the boundaries of a proscribed crime.

Thus murder is an arbitrary taking of a human life, theft is stealing someone else’s property, rape is having sex without permission, perjury is lying under oath and so on. But what does “being offensive” mean?

Surely this crime can’t be defined objectively; an element of subjectivity has to creep in: one man’s offence is another man’s compliment. True, says the CPS. So, to eliminate all doubt, it helpfully defines an offence as anything anyone takes as such.

That’s where the word ‘injustice’ has to cross anyone’s mind. For this law leaves Her Majesty’s subjects powerless and rightless, while empowering law enforcement to a degree hitherto deemed an exclusive property of totalitarian tyrannies.

Potentially this law can criminalise every one of the 53 million adult Britons. After all, all of us may say things that could conceivably offend someone, especially at a time when even complimenting a female colleague on her appearance may be seen as a misogynistic attack on womankind.

Still, dura lex, sed lex, as the Romans used to say: the law is strict, but it is the law. But surely the fundamental principle of British jurisprudence is that any law, strict or otherwise, is the same for all.

Hence, my friends and I also have a right to feel offended, thereby finding ourselves on the receiving end of a crime. Well, this is a right I wish to exercise now, speaking for myself and most of my friends. Here, in no particular order, are the offences some or all of which I suffer every day:

Tattoos and facial metal; pop music of any kind, especially rap; pop music of any kind, especially rap, being performed in concert halls and at the Proms; conceptual art, especially Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin; Lang Lang, Yuja Wang and other such non-musicians; most of modern architecture; being frisked at airports, especially by men; actors playing women, actresses playing men and blacks playing whites in the theatre.

Strident atheism; insistence that all religions are equally good or equally bad; belief that Darwinism is anything more than a theory; strident feminism, championing of LGBT rights, environmentalism – in fact, strident anything; Greta Thunberg; anyone who takes her or ‘climate change’ seriously; materialism; the expression ‘our planet’; men born as women impregnated by women born as men; abortion; modern philosophers, especially if French; Richard Dawkins; most of current literature and all of current poetry.

Left-wing politics, philosophies, aesthetics – in fact, left-wing anything; unchecked democracy; tyranny of any kind; my life being affected by a state predominantly staffed with self-serving morons.

Belief that, if people are equal before the law, they are equal in every respect; the word ‘diversity’ as it’s currently used; feminism; contempt for spiritual and intellectual authority; belief that every opinion is equally valid, indeed egalitarianism of any kind.

Woke people and their beliefs; suppression of free speech, especially as enunciated by decent people; systematic undermining of Britain’s constitution and the English Common Law; Tony Blair and every member of his cabinet, especially Peter Mandelson; Jeremy Corbyn, every member of his shadow cabinet and every supporter he has ever had; John Major, David Cameron, Theresa May and other non-Tory Tory wets; the EU and everything its stands for.

Putin’s Russia and especially her Western ‘useful idiots’; jingoism or any other form of militant nationalism; London having become a giant laundromat for Mafia money, especially Russian; Britain’s strategic industries falling under foreign control, especially Chinese, Russian, Arab and EU.

I could extend this list tenfold, but this should suffice to get the point across. Which is that my friends and I are grossly offended countless times every day of our lives. And yet there’s nothing we can do about that.

The state first expands the boundaries of “being offensive” no end to enforce its woke despotism and increase its power, but then narrows them to constriction when it’s conservatives who are offended.

Personally, I’d rather be called a fatso (rude but accurate) than hear yet another diatribe against everything I hold dear or be unable to escape the degenerate din of pop excretions everywhere I go. And yet I may have some recourse against the former but none at all against the latter.

The CPS and other such setups don’t understand that debauching the law this way will render all laws inoperable. Laws don’t work when they are only feared, but not respected. And to be respected, they have to be respectable – which they increasingly aren’t.