A Walk In The Snow

Today the snow thawed and the cold ,economic climate crept nervously back to the front page. From my window as I type, I watch a mini Glacier shedding trenches of packed snow from a lower roof . I am reminded of the thunderous forces that excavated our romantic Northern landscapes. Takes me back...
(Many years ago..)
“ Class what features would we find in a glacial terraine “,
“ Peni Planing Sir ! “.
” Yes , thats good any more ?” ,
“ Terminal Morraine Sir , Corries , Ice fields , truncated spurs Sir , don’t forget truncated spurs .....”
” Very good any more “.
(silence )
“Matching bathroom set Sir ?”
“ Yes very funny come on , Lateral Morraine ..come on 4b test tomorrow ..”
“ Set of kitchen knives ..?”
“That’s enough ! “
Omnes -“ CUDDLY TOY !!! “

A bitter wind of protectionism is also chilling the air . Obama is protecting US industry as I foresaw he would , and a rough and ready deal has been done with “British workers “ who will get half of the “British Jobs “ .An old fissure is opening up between the pro immigration and pro Europe left , and the British workers who suffer. Polly Toynbee is quick to blame the inequality of society for the problem and Mary Ridell bemoans the rise of “xenophobia “. Both are warm and snugly employed in cosy scribbling jobs and are free to opine in comfort.
Sniffles and colds abound , and it has struck me that our current owes are a little like a cold . You can defer it with spending boosterism and debt , some of the worst may be ameliorated but in then the stages have to be endured . Misery , depression and thin gruel are unavoidable. The very economists who are so certain debt is the answer , were equally certain there was not going to be a question. Large doses of cuts are the nasty medicine but as yet even Cameron is yet to hold his nose and down the brew .
Yet snow still has an enchantment ,and as it turns to dirty sludge ,I have looked up one of my favourite uses of a pristine fall at the end of the Dubliners , by Joyce of course . Here he uses a Cinematic effect to pan back from all the people and all their small concerns.

Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted upon the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly though the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

Gollywog-gate

As you may know Carol Thatcher has been kicked off the One show for using the word Gollywog in a private coversation. She was reported by BBC staff. Much debate has ensued about political correctness but for me there is a deeper problem of the sort of people we are becoming .
A few years ago my father was caught three times on the same road by a new and well concealed speed camera.( They were a new horror then). He duly lost his licence.One rainy evening ‘allegedly’ he chose to take the car down to a Council meeting. A Liberal Democrat Councillor called the police and Pa N was obliged to pay a large fine after having been hauled out of his house and thrown in a cell.
The Liberal Councillor in question was the sort of nasty small minded vindictive gnat I cannot abide .When not treating those actually around him vilely this Liberal ( a type you will recognise ) was as keen as most on pontificating about Africa or something .If he was terribly concerned for the legal point he could have had a quiet word , he could have quietly said look don’t do it again , but he wanted to take some sort of spiteful revenge..I like to think that no Conservative would be such a bossy little self important pain as to tattle unnecessarily because Conservatives , unlike others , conceive of behaving well as something you actually do to those around you .
Whoever snitched on Carol Thatcher is the sort of person who would snitch to the Gestapo or the Stasi and many many did . All rules offer an opportunity for petty paying back and sheer mean spiritedness and that is what stands out about this silly matter .What sort of a craven toad would go so far as to “Tell teacher” about a mis-use of language for who at the very most a private “excuse me no offence meant “ was required ? What sort of beetle man and woman are we making?

The BNP and British Jobs

The BNP , lets admit it , have some instincts Conservatives would share , Nationalism obviously , patriotism to put it a more respectable way. A dislike of excessive immigration they share with most of the country but more generally a Communitarian outlook that sees a county as a home and an inheritance , not just a car park for travellers .
We would also disagree vehemently . That they are racists , however , is a product of the imposition of multiculturalism on people who never wanted it and were not asked. I think the BNP are out growing that phase although I am sure it contains many racists . That I obviously disapprove of ,but many BNP voters have a very shallow racism .Their children are far more likely to intermarry with other races than their bourgeois judgers and far more likely than the ethnic minorities they supposedly are at war with. Their statist socialist ideas are horribly misguided but not unlike many respectable (ish) colleagues of Ken Livingstone , less authoritarian and less alarming if anything
. Behind this ill digested mich mash however is a real insight .It is that New Labour do not care about them . Ask any Labour canvasser and they will tell you it is this basic feeling that turns people to the BNP .People who neither know nor care about their nutty schemes .
Many of their voters are some time Labour voters of course ( It is the second choice of about 30% of Labour voters ) and I wonder if there is not a grave danger for Labour surrounding these wild cat strikes the EU and the history of New Labour There are few Lefties remaining , for example , who retain a suspicion of the EU. It was not always thus , many on the left fought to keep us out . Now this very EU which has been responsible for removing jobs and whose soon to be unemployed workers it offers the chance to go grape picking in Italy. These are skilled men with homes and families (Mandelson’s arrogance is beyond belief ) That Labour Party that primarily stood for the rights of the British working class was one I at least understood . I wonder how many real bread winners with skilled jobs will be unemployed by the end of the year ; a million?
How are they going to feel when they discover the taxes they have been paying have been squandered on hoards of community-interface-through-face-paint idiots and the Labour Party has nothing for them but Purnell`s ”Welfare to Work “ which means less welfare .Labour have run out of other peoples money. Cameron wanted more from it …but that’s gone now we are all borrowed out .
The Party ordinary working men dutifully funded and voted for wasted the money on exactly the public sector professional who make a living out of idleness immigration and irresponsibility . The very people who have inflicted multiculturalism , the EU and a host of meddlesome interferences . The legal right to discriminate against white men , the preferential treatment of homosexuals by adoption agencies , the outlawing , in effect of working men’s clubs and the destruction of the pub.
These are small irritations , but the sort of small thing that might loom large when you feel the Party you thought was yours has betrayed you leaving you and your family to look for work in “Europe “
If the working class votes splits to the right , it will be following a pattern that has happened elsewhere. New Labour have done all they can to humiliate the Unions, ignore manufacturing , and trample on the country .Their leaders with their slippery disloyalty and inscrutable sound bites may have gone too far. There are deep tribal bonds to the British Labour movement but it was wounded by Blair and is danger of dying .
How many people will be struck by the fact that when Brown said “ British jobs for British workers “ he was lying ,and when the BNP say it they are telling the truth. He was, and they are, and that , difficult though it may be to admit , is a fact.

Both Ends Against The Middle

That Sunny Hundal has constructed a superb site which I often frequent . He is however an infuriating individual who could pose for Europe . This little memo really gets my mountain goat. Get this … grrrr
The Conservatives can be ignored. Naturally they hate the unions but would also be split over their anti-immigration yet pro free-trade stance. So other than take lame pot-shots at the government they’ll have nothing ideologically consistent to say.

I retort…
.
Wrong . Conservatives understand and respect the old unions because , unlike you ,we both value loyalty . In any case ,so what ,this is not a child’s meeja game . “ Don`t worry about being unemployed ,Sunny Hudal has found a good anti Tory spin…” great . You have done nothing but attack this country a country which you are semi committed to in anyway . One of you “Many identities “ as you would put it . For some of us it is not fancy dress and we will place our fellow countrymen first before foreigners whether of not we disagree on the relatively footling matter of politics . The Conservative Party believes in free trade but not granting foreigners equal access to jobs home , welfare or anything else about our country because it is our country not theirs . Clear ?
On the Unions you can stick ideological consistency into your darkest fundament. Yes we disagree with the Unions holding the rest of the country to ransom . We entirely agree with their right to protect their members jobs from the vile internationalist schemes of the arrogant elite for whom they pay and on whose backs their pointless establishment lackey jobs are built .
These are people not gnats , they cannot ditch solid jobs for which they are qualified and uproot their family to go grape picking in France . Labour `s sophist chaterers have never understood that the working class is not one thing and much of it has highly skilled jobs which are as not transferable .This is what gives countries comparative advantages which makes free trade in goods and services worthwhile in the first place .
If I could be bothered I could quite simply make an ideologically consistent case but its hardly the point.

A Culture of Pants On Fire !

Labour must save its big lies for when it needs them (Sion Simon)

Brown’s lies are bobbing to the surface like inexpertly dumped corpses . The latest from the “No boom and bust" label , to repeat on him is ,“ British jobs for British workers”. This, from the man who has quintupled immigration and signed Lisbon without a referendum.Wild cat strikes are breaking out all over the UK in support of the National interest in response Mandy has re invented “Get on your bike ,” with his fabulously tactless remark

“ Go and work in Europe" . Well it worked for him ...

I daresay many have forgotten the 40 % Golden rule ,.It states that over the economic cycle , the Government will borrow only to invest and not to fund current spending This has long since been consigned ot the waste paper bin. I daresay Brown`s orcs are not permitted to mention it .
Carol Thatcher ,on Marr ,laughed at how many of Brown’s misspeakings have returned with clanking chain and head under arm .For example , his finger wagging at Major …“... a weak currency is a sign of a weak economy and a weak government. …” .True ...true and last year Pound dropped by 23% against a basket of currencies. The fall is sharper than after the 1992 devaluation after Black Wednesday or when the IMF was forced to shore up the Pound in 1976 ,it even outranks even the 1949 devaluation.
It is important to understand that these are not random banana skin prat falls. They are part of a strategy of deceit that goes to the heart of New Labour .To know why you have to go back the the1970s . At that time Mike Yarwood made a living out of Heath and Wilson impressions, and Labour had often been in power since the war. They were part of the weave of national life After Callaghan this all changed . They suffered four defeats in a row and the tactic of relative honesty was tested to destruction . Foot , Kinnock and Smith assumed their message would win honest support . It did not and Labour’s young Turks , like Brown and Blair concluded that the media was their enemy and deserved no quarter . Mandy put it with the endearing frankness he retains…” the media will be our tools , our servants we are no longer content to let them be our persecutors…”
Everything was enlisted into a media war conducted like guerillas with no rules . They felt the media was enemy territory. It requires the assumption of both stupidity and amnesia in its audience , a vestigial trust in public pronouncements works too. It was in the 97 election that the new dishonesty kicked into gear.
Tony Blair in stated ;“We are quite clear that tuition costs must be met by the state“ . Also “Our proposals do not involve raising taxes” ….. Labours `s business manifesto promised no expensive red tape, “ we understand that successful business must keep costs down “. Blair shamefully guaranteed to protect pensions which New Labour have decimated . Gordon Brown was a pivotal player in all of this taking a leading role in ,quite disgracefully, claiming that the Conservatives planned to scrap the state pension . An outright lie . In power ,constrained by the undertaking to live within Tory spending plans Labour began their distinctive tactic of announcing the same money on many occasions and using statistics to mislead.
The Tory lies of Archer Aitken and the like were told by people who misled their friends more than their enemies . Only New Labour lie for the greater good out of sense of the means justifying the and this institutional deceit is far more dangerous . The nearest Conservative equivalent is Heath on Europe who said in 1973 “ There are some people who fear that in going in to Europe we shall in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty .These fears , I need hardly day , are completely unjustified”. He had read the Werner report which correctly foretold a “ massive transfer of powers from national centres if decision “ and he knew precisely what he was really doing .
I imagine Heath thought he was lying for a greater good from a paternalist perspective .Political liars seem to have this in common , a supreme and indestructible arrogance .That , of course is another defining feature of New Labour and Brown above all.

Workers Against Internationalism

Iceland is being induced to give up its freedom, with our taxes, but the Euro-zone is falling to pieces as countries like Ireland and Spain suffer as a result of not controlling their own Economic policy.The Fabian or progressive element is delighted to see Iceland`s scalp taken and enthusiasm for removing power from the masses must be seen as part of the long tradition of despising ordinary people . In 1930, a Fabian leader, Archibald Church, introduced a bill for eugenic sterilization in an extreme example but the sinister tone is ubiquitous in Fabian thought .
Consider this revealing statement from a prominent architect of British Socialism :
Bernard Shaw: “Under Socialism, you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you liked it or not. If it were discovered that you had not the character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live, you would have to live well.”
For such a scheme it is obviously clear that removing any effective say of those to be force fed is an essential
Orwell in his socialist phase similarly views the loyalties of people as things to be used and treated with contempt for their own good . This was his vision of a Socialist utopia ( In the Lion and The Unicorn)
“It will shoot traitors, but it will give them a solemn trial beforehand and occasionally it will acquit them. It will crush any open revolt promptly and cruelly, but it will interfere very little with the spoken and written word. Political parties with different names will still exist, revolutionary sects will still be publishing their newspapers and making as little impression as ever. It will disestablish the Church, but will not persecute religion. It will retain a vague reverence for the Christian moral code, and from time to time will refer to England as ‘a Christian Country
The coincidence of 19th century elitism with that of the 20th century is a poisonous cocktail . For the sake of their self aggrandisement they have sold out British workers by exporting their jobs. With strikes in effect against free immigration breaking out all over the country I wonder are we about to see the working-class cutting its ties with them for good. I live in hope