Category: Blog

People misjudge Jeremy. They see him as a dangerous madman combining Trotskyist views with support for Hamaz and Hezbollah.

Lefties fear, while Tories hope, that Jeremy will destroy the Labour Party if he ever gets to lead it. More farsighted people fear he’ll destroy Britain if he ever becomes prime minister.

They all fail to see Jeremy’s noble inner core, which only my X-ray moral vision can discern.

Jeremy, you see, is the last knight-errant driven by a chivalrous urge to protect our ladies, fair or otherwise. He’s a Don Quixote charging every sexist windmill to defend the honour of Dulcinea del Toboso, as collectively personified by British womenfolk.

It’s only with Cervantes’s help that his generous proposal to segregate our railways can be understood. Every train, suggests our gallant knight, must have women-only carriages, which is the only way to protect our Dulcineas from the sexual harassment they otherwise suffer.

Think of all those ladies in distress suffering a lifelong trauma when yet another ruffian ogles their mummeries and smirks “You don’t get many of those to a pound” or, if his au courant with the PC metric system, “…to a kilo”.

Imagine the anguish of a long-legged girl, mortally wounded by the question “Do they go all the way up to the neck?” Typologically such abuse is only different from rape in some insignificant details.

However, physical abuse is also prevalent, with many a womanly British bottom getting pinched or patted without permission. (A note to my American readers: when in England, don’t ever refer to that part of the anatomy as ‘fanny’. Here the word describes something relatively unlikely to be patted or pinched on public transport.)

Of course another solution would be to cover the jutting womanly attractions with a shapeless black garment that would also cover their faces. Jeremy’s ISIS friends would applaud the idea, but such a radical measure might whip up Islamophobia, which is rapidly replacing sexism as the eighth deadly sin.

Jeremy isn’t only out to protect women. That would be discriminatory and, unlike segregation, discrimination is yet another cardinal sin, Number 10 by the latest count.

My friend Jeremy would have none of that: “My intention,” he says, “would be to make public transport safe for everyone from the train platform to the bus stop…”

Everyone! All ye of little faith, wipe those supercilious Tory smiles off your faces. Not just women, but anyone belonging to any group likely to be abused on any public transport.

In due course we’ll have ‘blacks only’ carriages (or rather ‘Persons of Afro-Caribbean descent only’ ones), ‘cripples only’ carriages (or rather ‘physically or otherwise challenged persons only’ ones) and so forth.

Muslims and Asians, fat, short, ginger-haired and homosexual people – every minority group will have its own carriage, except the Jews. They won’t be allowed on trains at all for fear of upsetting Jeremy’s Hamaz and Hezbollah friends.

Of course buses, being smaller than trains, would be harder to segregate, but I’m sure Jeremy will think of a way.

For example he may propose that alternating is the only way of segregating. Each bus will be assigned exclusively to a potentially harassed group, identified on the front, where the destination is normally displayed. I can just hear people grumbling “You wait around for a woman-only for ages, and then three come together at once”.

If you want to find out about another brilliant idea Jeremy conceived, concentrate and think: what’s the greatest problem haunting Britain, the way the spectre of communism used to haunt Europe?

We’ve already identified some candidates, such as sexism, misogyny, racism in general and Islamophobia in particular, homophobia (not to be confused with haemophilia), discrimination in general and against Muslims in particular – but not against Jews, who, as Jeremy will tell you, deserve all they get.

What comes next? Income inequality, that’s what. Some people make more money than some others, but there comes Jeremy, riding in on his trusted Rocinante, charging yet another windmill with his lance.

We already have a minimum national wage, says Jeremy, which is good. Of course that means that some employers, who can’t afford to pay it, simply won’t hire, thereby increasing unemployment. But Jeremy doesn’t see that as a problem: unlimited social spending will provide more than the minimum wage for those left out.

But now he’s also proposing a maximum national wage, designed to punish greedy fat cats and, ideally, drive them out of Jeremy’s country. Of course they’ll take not only millions of pounds but also millions of jobs with them, but that’s where the unlimited social spending will kick in. Sorted.

Don’t know about you, but I’m warming up to Jeremy. His time has come because he’s a man for our time.     

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

For reasons that would take a book to explain, many Westerners have always been drawn to various types of Russian fascism.

The international Bolshevik variety attracted the left end of the political spectrum, those Lenin accurately called ‘useful idiots’. Yet not all of Lenin’s Western supporters were fools. Some were knaves.

G.B. Shaw was both, which he proved by summing up the prevailing Fabian sentiments in a 1931 Moscow speech:

“It is a real comfort to me, an old man, to be able to step into my grave with the knowledge that the civilisation of the world will be saved… It is here in Russia that I have actually been convinced that the new Communist system is capable of leading mankind out of its present crisis, and saving it from complete anarchy and ruin.”

Having failed to save civilisation, Russia has switched to national fascism, otherwise known as Putinism. That too is never short of Western fans, and the Internet is bursting with girlish gasps unbecomingly issued by men:

“Putin is popular with his people… 86% approval… looks after his own people… a real Christian…” well, you can look up those panegyrics yourself, along with the offerings by some impeccably conservative columnists.

Most of these people aren’t knaves, and some aren’t even fools. Yet they tropistically reach out for Putin’s brand of fascism, desperately hoping to find there the kind of virtues they don’t see in their own governments.

One can understand their frustration. What’s difficult to comprehend is the ease with which they abandon their principles and override their reason.

Surely, for example, they must realise that the much-vaunted 86% approval rating is meaningless, for two reasons.

First, in a country where the government controls the media, approval ratings testify not to the government’s support but to the efficacy of its propaganda. Thus Romania’s dictator Nicolae Ceausescu polled 97% – two days before he was shot out of hand to the accompaniment of wild public jubilation.

The second reason is less obvious, at least to non-Russians. The country’s population has retained the genetic memory of 60 million people murdered for opposing the regime or – in Lenin’s brilliant addition to jurisprudential thought – “capable of opposing” it.

This second category could conceivably include everybody, and everybody lived in terror. Now imagine their descendants receiving a phone call from a stranger who asks a pointed question: “Do you support Putin or not?”

Putin, as everyone knows, is a career officer in the KGB, the same organisation that massacred most of the 60 million. It’s now running the country and, though it’s less murderous at the moment, genetic memory plays up and most people say ‘yes’ just in case.

That’s not to deny that some genuinely support Putin. But then Russia is entitled to have her fair share of idiots too, along with people particularly susceptible to brainwashing – and believe me, Putin’s propaganda puts to shame anything I remember from my youth under Brezhnev.

There goes that bogus statistic, to be replaced by real ones. Such as the rapidly accelerating death rate, with a 5.2% rise in the first six months of this year compared with the same period in 2014.

The increase is mostly driven by those aged 35 to 40. About 70% of those deaths are caused by alcohol (and 40% of babies dying before age one are crushed to death by their drunken mothers), and happy people seldom drink themselves to death.

Nor do they usually kill themselves. Yet suicide is another important factor, with some parts of Siberia showing three times the rate defined as critical by the WHO.

Putin’s care for his people obviously doesn’t include cancer patients, most of whom are denied opiate analgesics and, unable to tolerate the agony, kill themselves en masse. Those free of malignancies go the same route out of sheer hopelessness.

I mentioned the other day that 23 million Russians live below the poverty line of about £100 a month.  Now it has been reported that the region of Kostroma (a city of almost 300,000 not far from Moscow) subsists on a average income of £187 a month – not nearly enough to eat regularly.

All this explains why Russian men’s life expectancy is a year lower than in Rwanda, although I don’t know how many Rwandans support their president Paul Kagame.

However, as Putin’s hacks boast, the Russians lead the world by a wide margin in spirituality. Hard to see what options those poor people have, although it’s noticeable that those who manage to get to the West instantly become as materialistic as everyone else.

Facts will never rid people of their superstitions, of which this irrational adoration of Putin is one. However, I can confidently predict that, when Putin is overthrown, no one in Russia, including the notorious 86%, will bat an eyelid – as no one did when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Heroic dissidents used to risk their lives unfurling anti-Soviet posters in Moscow squares – yet no one protested in 1991, when doing so was safe. Neither will they protest when Putin goes, and his Western fans will have to seek another figurehead as an object of their fascistic cravings.

Junk is the nickname by which Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, is known to his friends, of whom I’m proud to be one. Junk has many fine qualities, prominent among which is his enviable ability to drink any Russian under the table.

Possibly because he shows off this talent too often, he sometimes speaks out of turn, saying things at a wrong time and producing a sound effect akin to that of two pieces of glass being scraped together.

For example, even if I were a huge fan of the Schengen Agreement (passport-free travel throughout 26 European countries), I wouldn’t choose this particular moment for singing its praises.

The Agreement is largely, though far from solely, responsible for the horrendous migrant crisis Europe is facing.

Swarms of Middle Easterners, some suffering from persecution, some only claiming to be, and some all too ready to persecute others, land somewhere on Europe’s Mediterranean coast.

If they claim refugee status, they’re only entitled to stay in the first safe country they reach – if it’s Italy, they’re in luck. If it’s Greece, less so. If it’s Bosnia, my heart bleeds for them.

However, whatever it is, there are always greener pastures elsewhere, specifically in England’s green and pleasant land, which must abandon any aspiration to build Jerusalem not to upset our Muslim friends.

Seeking such pastures would be difficult in the absence of valid visas prominently stamped on their passports. However, Schengen makes such migration a doddle – not only their visas but indeed their passports aren’t going to be checked all the way to Calais or other Channel ports.

I shan’t bore you with descriptions of the resulting chaos, threatening to destroy not only the European order so dear to Junk’s heart, but indeed any order tout court. Suffice it to say that what Europe is in the midst of is nothing short of a crisis, with a catastrophe a distinct possibility.

Then again there’s the minor issue of security, arising because some of our uninvited guests have the requisite training, experience and – more important – inclination to use offensive weapons indiscriminately. This was highlighted the other day on the Amsterdam-Paris high-speed train, where only heroic action by some passengers prevented yet another Muslim perpetrating yet another mass murder.

Much as we all admire free travel, I’d suggest that our present concrete situation shouldn’t encourage abstract pro-Schengen statements. Then again, as Junk has demonstrated on numerous occasions, he drinks more than I do.

He was clearly in his cups when he wrote this paragraph in Le Figaro yesterday: “What worries me is to hear politicians from Left to Right nourishing a populism that brings only anger and not solutions. Hate speech and rash statements that threaten one of our very greatest achievements – the Schengen area and the absence of internal borders: that is not Europe.”

If Schengen is one of our very greatest achievements, I wonder what one of our very greatest fiascos would look like. 

Also, I’d be tempted to analyse the unlikely unity of opinion at both ends of the political spectrum. I mean, those chaps disagree on just about everything else – so isn’t it possible that, if they’re all in agreement, it’s on merit?

Isn’t it also possible that taking an almost universal consensus into account reflects genuine concern rather than populism? And that the resulting anger is fully justified?

Still, as the founder, president and so far the only member of The Charles Martel Society for Multiculturalism, I agree with my friend Junk on one point. Anger alone doesn’t cut it – it’s positive solutions that we must seek.

So next time Junk and I go out for a few pints (of his favourite Martel Cordon Bleu), I’ll outline my proposals, with no anger or populism anywhere in sight:

1) The Schengen Agreement must be suspended until future notice, effective immediately.

2) All European countries will reclaim sovereignty over their own borders, introduce tight controls and admit or turn away anyone they choose.

3) We should select a Greek island we like least and use it as a vetting camp for refugees, generously compensating the Greek government for the inconvenience – and making acceptance of this arrangement a precondition for any further bailouts.

4) Should any immigrant be found in any country for which he has no visa, he must be summarily deported back to the camp.

5) The upkeep of the refugees must by financed by the oil-rich Middle Eastern countries that surely would welcome this opportunity to show Koran-prescribed generosity to their co-religionists.

6) The EU, so ably led by my friend Junk, must acknowledge that Britain is under no obligation to accept any foreigner who doesn’t land on her shores directly, bearing an appropriate visa, preferably not counterfeit.

I’ll have many other proposals as well, but I doubt Junk will stay lucid long enough to get his befuddled head around them. So I’ll stop here and ask myself how likely Junk will be to nod his enthusiastic support.

 

 

 

On 23 August, 1939, Joachim von Ribbentrop and his Soviet counterpart Vyacheslav Molotov signed an agreement known as the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact.

The two predators divided Europe between them, pushing the button for history’s bloodiest war. A week later the Nazis attacked Poland. In another 17 days the Soviets followed suit. A year later Nazi bombs began to rain on Britain, many of them made in the USSR.

All this is so well-known that it’s hardly worth another comment. What’s truly significant is that the Pact caught the West by surprise, proving yet again that civilised nations have no real understanding of fascism (Col. Putin, ring your office).

In fact, the Pact was the culmination of a long process that started even before the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 and Nazi takeover in 1933. The Allies overlooked that development and ignored those who knew better.

One of them was the NKVD defector Walter Krivitsky. He told the Allies as early as in 1938 that a marriage between Hitler and Stalin was imminent. This invaluable intelligence was mocked and discarded, with Krivitsky eventually suicided by the Soviets in Washington. 

The cooperation between German and Russian extremists started in 1917, when the German General Staff used bacteriological warfare by transporting what Churchill accurately described as the ‘bacillus’ of Lenin’s gang into Russia.

The contagion worked – Lenin usurped power and promptly took Russia out of the war. Germany’s defeat in 1918 turned both countries into pariahs and they fell into each other’s embrace by signing the 1922 Rapallo Treaty.

Several years later the Soviets helped Germany cheat on the terms of the Versailles Treaty. They set up several training facilities for German officers in Russia, the most prominent of them being the Kama tank school at Kazan.

There Soviet and German tank commanders worked out the tactics of pincer manoeuvres at depth. In the summer of 1939 the Soviets were the first to use the trick to defeat Japan’s 6^th Army in the battle of Khalkin Gol.

The Germans also put the tuition to good use, first in the West and then, on 22 June, 1941, against Russia herself. Such Kama graduates as Model, Thoma and – most illustriously – Guderian enveloped and destroyed whole Soviet army groups, with 4.5 million Soviet soldiers finding themselves in Nazi captivity by the end of 1941.

Many books have been written about the differences and similarities between the Bolsheviks and the Nazis. Yet most of them overlook the most important feature of fascism, clearly visible in both regimes.

This is understandable, for the authors tend to analyse the political ends pursued by fascists and the means of achieving such ends. Yet the essence of fascism isn’t political. It’s ontological.

Neither the Nazis nor the Soviets wanted to create a new political system or a new world order. They wanted to create the new man.

Both were teleological materialists with an occult dimension who accepted unequivocally the false notion of evolutionary progress. Both believed that state action could accelerate the evolution, directing it towards creating an Olympus of demigods.

Within that paragraph you can glean a definition of fascism that’s both broader and more precise than one based on politics. Both the Nazis and the Soviets realised this, which is why they stated that their explicit desiderata, German nationalism and Soviet dictatorship of the proletariat were not the destinations but the vehicles. Once the destinations were reached, the vehicles would be tossed away.

One way of accelerating what they perceived as natural evolution was to destroy large groups of people seen as slowing the process down. By far the most critical group was one that held the Judaeo-Christian view of man, a view that rejected social Darwinism.

Thus both regimes set out to wipe out Jews and Christians with equal gusto, if in a different order. The Nazis started with Jews, leaving the Christians for later; the Soviets reversed the sequence. Neither atrocity was an aim in itself; they were evolutionary tools.

Hence Hitler: “Creation is not finished. Man is clearly approaching a new phase of transformation… The entire creative force will be concentrated in the new breed… It will be infinitely greater than today’s man… Those who understand national-socialism as only a political movement do not know much…”

That was the end. Here’s the means: “I had to use the idea of a nation for temporary convenience, but I already knew that it could have only a transient significance… The day will come when not much will be left of the notion of nationalism, even in Germany. The Earth will witness the appearance of a global brotherhood of teachers and masters.”

In the same vein, Marx’s fascist ideas, later developed by his followers Lenin and Stalin, interpreted class war as a means of creating a classless society, where the very notion of class would be meaningless.

The Soviets and the Nazis, while realising their superficial political differences, were also aware of their deeper spiritual kinship.

That’s why Ribbentrop wasn’t dissembling when saying that he felt in the Kremlin as if he was among his Parteigenossen. And neither was Stalin insincere when proposing a loving toast to Hitler after the Pact was signed.

Western intelligence services never accepted the possibility of an alliance between Stalin and Hitler, an incompetence they have since shown consistently when assessing regimes different from their own.

More worryingly, Western thinkers failed to grasp the true nature of fascism and the two satanic regimes it begat. That’s why none of them predicted the likelihood of a Nazi-Soviet rapprochement, which bespoke a deficit of not only education but also of intellect.

And that’s why yesterday’s anniversary barely rated a comment in our press. Such insouciance shows that no lessons have been learned – and no measures will be taken to prevent calamities in the future.

Lest I might be accused of Islamophobia and summarily imprisoned (shot?), I don’t reject out of hand everything of Muslim provenance.

For example, I like the Moorish splendour of southern Spain, Avicenna, Persian rugs, Averroës, Lebanese food and Hafiz. I’m also greatly inspired by Caliph Omar’s terse explanation of why the Library of Alexandria should be burned.

“If these books say the same as the Koran,” he’s alleged to have said, “they are redundant. And if they say something different, they are dangerous.”

The story may well be apocryphal, but that doesn’t matter. For I’ve found the aphorism useful as a way of explaining my attitude to opinion pieces in our press and the people who write them.

Take Peter Hitchens for example, and, to paraphrase the American comedian Henny Youngman, please take him.

Whenever Peter delivers himself of views on Russia, his Trotskyist past shines through his conservative present. Putin, according to Hitchens, is the strong leader he wishes we had.

However, his idol is part of a package. If we accept him as an ideal leader, we must also accept having nothing but government-controlled media, an economy dominated by organised crime, millions of people half-starving, murder as a routine way of dealing with political opponents, government officials keeping ill-gotten billions in foreign banks, frequent acts of aggression towards neighbours, fixed elections – the lot.

Hence I put my Omar’s hat on and describe Hitchens’s effluvia on this subject as dangerously idiotic or idiotically dangerous, if you’d rather. Out comes a box of matches (only figuratively speaking, as I hope you understand before calling the police).

Yet on most other subjects Hitchens makes perfect sense, which is to say he agrees with me. That is yet another cause for a figurative auto-da-fé cum bonfire: everything he says I’ve probably said many times before.

For example, in his today’s blog Hitchens vouchsafes the information that, according to the former minister Andrew Lansing, Cameron’s negotiations with the EU are nothing but a planned fix, “right down to a fake table-thumping row with the French to make the Prime Minister look like John Bull.”

‘I told you so’ are among the most despised words in the English language but, at the risk of causing your contempt, here’s what I wrote on this subject on 25 June, following Her Majesty’s speech:

“The Queen, God bless her, doesn’t speak her own mind in public. She speaks the PM’s mind, in this instance Dave’s.

“That’s why one can’t really blame her for joining the campaign portrayed by the government as an epic struggle between David (Cameron) and Goliath (the EU).

“Against overwhelming odds, David claims to be swinging his slingshot loaded with the stone of reforms. The composition of the stone remains unknown, but then it’s only a tool.

“Any tool is designed to do a certain job, and Dave’s courageous efforts are no exception. The job is to get the Yes vote in the upcoming referendum, thus shutting up all those Little Englanders attached to our centuries-old sovereignty.

“The EU fanatics play along by playing hard to get, only to make Dave’s eventual ‘victory’ so much more effective. Thus a youthful French minister explained to Dave the other day that there’s no such thing as ‘à la carte Europe’.

“The culinary idiom comes naturally to the French, and they tend to use it with precision. True enough, no compromise is possible to the founding aspiration of the EU: a single European state.

“However, tactical concessions aimed at pacifying some restless natives are possible, indeed inevitable. When the time comes, Dave will bang his head together with the federasts, and they’ll figure out the sufficient minimum of concessions needed to swing the referendum the right way.

“Whatever it is, one can be certain that the concessions will be both meaningful and irreversible. However, to paraphrase Dr Johnson, the meaningful ones won’t be irreversible, and the irreversible ones won’t be meaningful.”

I almost feel sorry for Peter Hitchens. He just can’t win with me: everything he says is either wrong or redundant.

Still, he’s lucky that the laws of the land and my own pacific disposition combine to make the Omar solution impossible. If Peter ever burns, it’ll be from shame for having talked such utter nonsense on Russia.

 

 

There’s something aggressively irritating about this phrase, isn’t there? Or is it just me?

Any demand issued by any country, even one without Germany’s track record, presupposes the possibility of enforcing compliance. That in turn implies a position of superiority, legal or otherwise.

Such a hierarchical relationship can’t possibly exist outside some kind of imperial setup, with the metropolis lording it over the colonies.

Hence, when newspaper headlines start with the words “Germany demands…”, and the countries on the receiving end belong to the EU, the inference has to be that Germany is the metropolis and the other 27 members are her dominions.

That may be the case de facto, but not yet de jure. Thus, for propriety’s sake, and also not to provoke a hostile reaction, German officials would be well-advised to refrain from butch demands and replace them with polite or, as need be, grovelling requests or pleas.

How much nicer it would be to see a headline saying “Germany begs Britain to take more migrants if at all possible”, rather than “Germany demands Britain urgently takes more migrants”, as it appeared in today’s Mail.

The more polite version would incidentally also be more grammatical, though it’s churlish to expect modern hacks even to know the word ‘subjunctive’, never mind use it properly.

Anyway, should Germany come pleading rather than demanding, one would be inclined to sympathise, if not necessarily comply. However, when Germany’s interior minister Thomas de Maiziere reminds Britain that “all EU countries must become more aware of their responsibilities”, one feels contrary. The word ‘must’ tends to have this effect.

That the Germans are getting hot under the collar is understandable. They are about to be inundated with 800,000 asylum applications, mostly from Muslims. If most of them are approved, as experience suggests they will be, the country’s social services, already bursting at the seams, may well implode.

Most approved applications will be followed by requests for family reunification. Add to this thousands of those who’ll get in without bothering about legal niceties, and Germany is looking at a massive growth to its already sizeable Muslim population of 4.3 million.

Faced with such a prospect, de Maiziere understandably ignores the fact that Britain isn’t one of the 26 parties to the Schengen agreement (one removing border checks and passport controls) and can therefore decline to accept any more migrants.

Yet treaties mean nothing when Germany demands. Britain MUST realise that the EU is the politically correct version of the German Reich – and act in a suitably servile manner. “Jawohl, Herr Minister!” would do nicely, not “we already have enough Muslims, thank you very much”.

As a useful illustration of how well the Schengen agreement works, a Moroccan immigrant yesterday embarked on a high-speed train going from Amsterdam to Paris. This being a Schengen area, his passport wasn’t checked.

More important, neither was his luggage that contained such essential travel items as an AK assault rifle, an automatic pistol, a knife and enough ammunition to murder all 554 passengers on board.

Just as the Muslim began firing he was heroically subdued by three US off-duty servicemen and a British expat. Another massacre prevented, many more to come – some conceivably with deadlier weapons than a Russian-made rifle.

There’s no point debating the advisability of having no border controls across a vast continent at peacetime, although one could think of a few valid arguments against.

The critical thing to understand, Herr de Maiziere, is that, watch my lips: WE. ARE. NOT. AT. PEACETIME. Verstehen Sie?

Criminally idiotic action by America and Britain has injected murderous energy into the Islamic world. This fanned up the hostility to the West that Islam has felt – and practised – ever since its birth 1,400 years ago.

Just like the 100 Years’ War didn’t involve 100 years of non-stop fighting, the war waged by Islam on the West has been intermittent, and outbursts of violence have alternated with periods of relative calm.

Largely by our own fault, Islam is currently going through a period of peak passion, spilling out all across the globe, especially in the Middle East and Europe. Since no one has yet repealed the law of self-preservation, we have the right to defend ourselves.

This involves applying wartime rules to all possible sources of danger, of which the burgeoning Muslim population of Europe is emphatically one. Once such a shift has been accepted as necessary, specific measures can be worked out by those with more expertise in this field than I possess.

Suffice it to say that the overall objective has to be not increasing but reducing the current, suicidally large presence of Muslims in Europe. That might involve, for starters, banning all Muslim immigration, curtailing the Muslims’ freedom of travel, suspending the peacetime limitations on surveillance – as I say, let the experts decide.

However, it would be naïve to expect anything like that ever to happen barring a nuclear explosion in a European city centre – perhaps not even then. Not as long as Germany demands and our own spivs obey.

 

All of you, my readers, doubtless espouse and practise Judaeo-Christian morality, which condones only marital sex in the missionary position. Perhaps a special dispensation can be obtained for one or two more adventurous postures, but that’s it.

Hence, since all deviations are unequivocally off limits, it’s a safe assumption that none of you has ever tried or indeed desired rapture with a species other than Homo sapiens of the opposite sex.

However, the very fact that you are my readers proves beyond any doubt that you are blessed with fecund imagination. Thus it would be no hardship for you to picture another species with which you’d prefer to have sex if you had to.

If your imagination doesn’t stretch that far, as mine doesn’t, then you ought to know that, according to The Sexual Pathology medical journal I once read in a professional capacity, the most abused species in the UK are, in descending order, dogs, seagulls [sic!], cats, sheep and pigs.

These are very different creatures, but they all have one feature in common. Should they reject a man’s advances, they are unlikely to communicate their displeasure in a murderous way.

That means British seekers of perverse pleasure are not only unsporting and unfair, but also out-and-out wimps. Projecting this last characteristic onto their martial potential in case our armed forces require their services, one has to fear for the battle worthiness of the British army.

Now, if you still doubt which side will be the likely winner of the next world war, you should follow the relevant story in today’s papers, complete with an amateur video.

For the amorously enterprising Russians, in addition to targeting the usual defenceless species, also seek non-consensual gratification with animals who can say ‘no’ in an extremely emphatic way – namely bears.

The video shows one such animal barely (no pun intended) escaping rape by virile Russians in Siberia, who ran the bear over with their SUV. As the poor animal lay trapped under their wheels, the Russians instantly improvised the subsequent steps.

They would first have their jollies with the bear and then knife it to death. The articles don’t specify the animal’s sex, but I cordially hope it was female – I’d hate to find out that my former countrymen are perverts.

Unfortunately for them, the potential victim managed to get itself (herself?) free before that ambitious plan could be realised. It (she?) then proceeded to destroy the tyres of the attackers’ vehicle with its (her?) claws and teeth.

Had the pleasure-seekers not had by some miracle another vehicle handy, the (she-?) bear would have done similar damage to their bodies. As it was, they fled, adding a new twist to Shakespeare’s stage direction from Act III of The Winter’s Tale (“Exit, pursued by a bear”).

In due course they were arrested and charged with cruelty to animals, with a few months in prison a distinct possibility. There they may expand their romantic horizons even further, this time on the receiving end.

I suppose a moral, or even moralising, conclusion is in order, but I can’t really think of one. Other than repeating the old up-country adage “Nowt as queer as folk” – especially if the folk happen to be Russian.

 

      

 

 

 

  

 

 

Just as Mayisyahu, the Jewish-American reggae singer was due to appear at a Spanish festival, the organisers asked him to state his “positions on Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”.

When he refused, his invitation was withdrawn, an action that resulted from a hysterical campaign by the anti-Israeli organisation Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).

Apparently Mayisyahu had said things about Israel that suggested that his values differed from those of the festival, listed as “peace, equality, human rights and social justice”.

Leaving aside the matter of how such commendable values tally with the implicit advocacy of firing rockets at Israeli villages, one must welcome this long-overdue initiative.

It’s just and proper that, before reggae lovers are allowed to bask in the mellifluous sounds of their choice, the performer must be vetted for his political views.

If these are in any way objectionable to anybody, especially professional anti-Semites and those whose politics are coloured various hues of red, the performer must be banned.

However, as a lifelong champion of equality, I have to scream foul.

What about people who are offended by performers spouting moronic drivel on every subject under the sun? What about those who dislike performers expressing Nazi sympathies? And why limit this valuable initiative to reggae? Why not extend it to classical music as well, including the recordings of artists long since dead?

Hence here’s my modest proposal, starting with another question. What do pianists Walter Gieseking and Alfred Cortot, singer Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, conductors Herbert von Karajan, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Richard Strauss and Willem Mengelberg have in common?

Yes, they were all sublime musicians, but that has nothing to do with our cosmically significant initiative, does it? The right answer is that they all collaborated with the Nazis to one extent or another.

Karajan actually went the whole hog by joining the Nazi party twice, first in his native Austria and then in Germany. Moreover, whenever der Führer graced Karajan’s performances with his august presence, the conductor arranged the audience in the shape of the swastika, thereby proving his unwavering loyalty.

Now, are you ready for this? Recordings of all these musicians, including the Nazi twice over Karajan, are widely available on CDs – this though not many music lovers approve of Nazism. There’s only one solution to this injustice: the CDs must be removed from shops, libraries, private collections and summarily burned. Fair’s fair, right?

And let’s not stop there. Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Richter, Oistrakh and all other Soviet musicians were tainted by association with the regime that murdered six times as many people as the Nazis managed to do.

What a nice bonfire their CDs would make! And let’s not forget boycotting concerts by all living Russian performers, some of whom, such as Pletnev, Spivakov, Matsuyev and Bashmet, are enthusiastic supporters of Putin’s version of fascism.

Actually there’s no need to name names. Once we’ve established the principle of political vetting, the specifics will suggest themselves.

I doubt there’s a musician anywhere in the world who doesn’t represent a political regime or philosophy many would find offensive. The conclusion is as sweeping as it’s natural: in compliance with the sacred principle of equality emblazoned on the banners of reggae fans, we must ban all music, live or recorded, altogether.

Of course another possible solution would be to ignore the musicians’ politics and instead listen misty-eyed to their artistic offerings (although the desire to listen to reggae must be investigated from the anthropological and psychiatric angles).

But that possibility is clearly not on. Neither is boycotting all musicians who are even tangentially associated with politics someone out there doesn’t like.

No one is going to boycott Karajan’s or Cortot’s records. No one will boycott Putin’s performing poodles. No one will boycott musicians from countries where Christians are murdered. It’s only those who prefer our Israeli friends to our Islamic enemies who merit such treatment – especially if they themselves are Jewish.

And it’s not just musicians. Our scientists bravely bar their Israeli colleagues from scientific conferences, or else, like Stephen Hawking, refuse to attend congresses held in Israel.

All in the name of “peace, equality, human rights and social justice” of course. What did you think?

Sir Patrick Stewart is a fine Shakespearean actor, but he can’t be immune to the typical foibles of his profession.

One such is a rather light burden of intellect (having grown up in an actor’s family always surrounded by his colleagues, I feel qualified to generalise).

This stands to reason: a man who slips into various personalities as easily as Sir Patrick does is unlikely to have much of a personality of his own, though I’m aware of a few exceptions here and there.

In the 80s Sir Patrick abandoned his career at The Royal Shakespeare Company and went to America to act in Star Trek. Not a silly move by itself, provided it was made for the right reasons: fame and money.

But, being an actor, Sir Patrick claims his real motive was to get away from Britain’s vile class system. He expected to find unadulterated classlessness in America, an expectation in which he was thoroughly and predictably frustrated.

Before his departure, the actor would have done well to read Paul Fussell’s excellent 1983 book Class, in which the author shows that America is more class-ridden than Britain.

Having lived in America for 15 years and now in the UK for almost 30, I can vouch for that.

The class system in any commonwealth of recent standing can’t possibly be based on centuries of selective breeding and careful nurturing. It can only be founded on money, the distinguishing feature being its overall amount and the length of time money has been in the family.

That being a contrived and therefore brittle structure, Old Money families in America guard it with greater vigilance than even the outer reaches of the royal family in Britain, never mind lesser aristocracy. This creates a class that Fussell calls ‘top out of sight’, which doesn’t exist in Britain this side of the inner core of the royals.

Hence the popular ditty: “Here’s good old Massachusetts, the land of the bean and the cod, where the Lowells talk only to Whitneys, and the Whitneys talk only to God.” Well, English aristocrats readily talk to mortals as well. 

When I lived in the States, there was no path I could have taken into the mansions of American Old Money (not that I wanted to). Within a few months in London, however, I found myself rubbing shoulders with people whose titles go back to centuries before Americans stopped sporting war paint (not that I deliberately sought such company either).

Americans, especially those on the East Coast, can tell a person’s class from yards away, relying on such telltale signs as his clothes, posture, car and so forth. Fussell shows that even musical instruments are class giveaways (the higher the tone, the higher the class: the flute sits several rungs above the tuba).

And if any doubts still persist, they disappear the moment the stranger opens his mouth and says either ‘how do you do’ or ‘how are ya’. The class distinction between, say, ‘evening wear’, ‘dinner jacket’, ‘black tie’, ‘tuxedo’ and ‘tux’ is an unfordable watershed.

Contrary to socialist mythology, the British class system has always been permeable, of which Sir Patrick, born to a working class family, is living proof. In fact, only about two per cent of all English peerages go back further than 100 years, suggesting a high social mobility, both upwards and downwards.

An actor (or an intellectually challenged politician like John Major) can be forgiven for dreaming about a classless society. People who think more deeply know that classlessness is neither achievable nor desirable.

Whenever people have tried to achieve it, they’ve only ever succeeded in massacring or banishing the traditional upper classes and then replacing them with new ones, infinitely less suited for the role.

God clearly creates people unequal in every respect that matters: intelligence, character, talent, enterprise – you name it. And it’s to be expected that, when such qualities are put into effect, society will become stratified.

Even the church, while asserting the equality of all before God, never suggests that people ought to be equal in any other respect. According to one of Jesus’s parables the kingdom of God is a place where “many are called but few are chosen”.

It’s not only birds of a feather but also roughly similar people who flock together. Naturally, once a cohesive group is formed, it tries to protect its integrity. Class barriers fall in place, and they are only ever raised with reluctance.

But raised they are, for any group needs an influx of fresh blood to keep itself viable. Even European royalty occasionally admits commoners into the fold, with variable results.

Our class-tortured Sir Patrick found that starring in a hit TV series made him a Hollywood proletarian. The upper classes were formed of the big-screen stars, who tended to look down on TV upstarts. Even such a cloistered society arranged itself hierarchically.

Thus Sir Stewart’s fondest but rather silly dreams were frustrated. I hope he has learned his lesson: classlessness exists only in a mass grave. And mass graves always proliferate whenever those who aren’t only thick but also wicked try to make such dreams come true.

Sledging in sport means unsettling one’s opponent to gain an unfair advantage. Referring to his race, intelligence or the sexual record of his mother/wife/girlfriend has been known to work a treat.

If you think that’s not cricket, you ought to know that the term was first used during the Adelaide Oval in the mid-sixties, when one player suggested that an opponent’s wife was having sex with his team mate.

Thenceforth, whenever the wronged party came to bat, the other team greeted him with a rousing chorus of When a Man Loves a Woman. I don’t know what that did to his performance but, judging by the fact that since then sledging has become commonplace, it must have worked.

Cricket had its Gentlemen vs. Players matches, starting in 1806, but the distinction referred to the sportsmen’s social class, not their conduct. In those days, and for a century and a half thereafter, they were all expected to behave like gentlemen.

The 1960s Walpurgisnacht destroyed gentlemanly behaviour, along with any notion of propriety. This coincided with a huge influx of money into many professional sports, including tennis.

The combination of the ‘liberating’ effect of the time and the chance to become a millionaire in one’s teens gave tennis a mighty push, and decency began to go off the rails. By the mid-70s it had crashed.

In times olden, tennis players, even Australian ones, were gentlemen par excellence. The great Aussies Laver, Rosewall, Newcombe, Emerson et al may have consumed copious amounts of beer off court, but their behaviour on court was impeccable. They showed dignified respect for the game, umpires, opponents – and themselves.

Then came the brats, the Nastases, Connorses and McEnroes of this world, and suddenly, in line with Dostoyevsky’s dark prophesies, everything was permitted. Out went fair play, in came every dirty trick possible.

Playing against a morbidly superstitious opponent, Nastase once brought a black cat to the court and let it out of his tennis bag as the opponent was about to serve. Connors would make foul gestures towards his opponent, use delaying tactics, scream obscenities at the umpires, other players and paying public. And McEnroe… well, he was McEnroe.

Boris Becker remembers playing McEnroe for the first time and being treated to a steady litany of “motherf***er-c***sucker” at every changeover. Sledging had left its native shores and original game to catapult into tennis. And because tennis had become a massive money-spinner, officials were reluctant to do anything about it.

Since then sledging has become a constant factor in the sport, of which 20-year-old Aussie Nick Kyrgios has kindly reminded us.

This chap, adorned with tattoos and gold chains, stands out even against the background of widespread rotten behaviour. He mutters obscenities while the ball is in play, swears at everyone within earshot and tanks matches when he feels wronged or doesn’t feel like playing.

Then last week he used a changeover to proffer useful information to his opponent Stan Wawrinka: “Kokkinakis [another young Aussie player] banged your girlfriend. Sorry to tell you that, mate.”

The girlfriend in question was the Croatian teenager Donna Vekic, Kokkinakis’s mixed doubles partner for two years. Wawrinka has had an affair with her since leaving his wife earlier this year, a split that affected him badly.

His game suffered and he only began to recover a couple of months ago. Nonetheless he was clearly vulnerable to being unsettled by such a remark, which Kyrgios knew and exploited with the savagery of the young barbarian he is.

An outcry ensued. Kyrgios apologised and was fined £6,400, pocket change to him. The ATP also gave him a ‘notice of investigation’, suggesting he could be suspended for any number of matches or months.

I can’t recall any other player being banned for on-court misconduct – positive drug tests are the usual reason. But then neither do I recall such an outburst of public hypocrisy.

The chorus was led by Martina Navratilova, who champions traditional mores so much that she formally went down on one knee to propose to her girlfriend in a restaurant, with paparazzi in close attendance.

“There needs to be more than a fine,” she pronounced. “There is no place for such behaviour.”

Since when? Certainly not since I started watching tennis in the mid-70s. And certainly not since Navratilova in her playing days waged a full-scale war against Steffi Graf, off the court and on.

The problem isn’t just with Kyrgios, an ignoble savage though he is. Nor is it with merely tennis or sport in general. What’s going on there is merely a symptom of a disease afflicting us all. It’s called modernity, and there’s no cure for it.

So by all means run Kyrgios out of the game – I don’t think it’ll be any the poorer for it. But please spare us the emetic holier-than-thou hypocrisy, which is in even worse taste than Kyrgios’s jibe.