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About admin

I am a writer, blogger, political activist and infant reformer.

Good government starts directly with you!

It is often said that we get the government we deserve. We castigate government and politicians for all sorts of reasons, lack of integrity, lying, bullying, sexual impropriety, but perhaps the behaviour of government simply reflects the behaviour of society at large.

Here are some interesting quotes:

The Bible, Proverbs 16 v 32: ‘He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he that rules his own spirit than he that takes a city.’

‘Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the word of God, or by the strong arm of man, either by the Bible, or by the bayonet.’ Robert C Winthrop, Addresses and Speeches on various occasions, 1852.

“When a people shall have become incapable of governing themselves, and fit for a master, it is of little consequence from what quarter he comes.” George Washington.

“If we will not be governed by God, we must be governed by tyrants.” William Penn.

The implication here is that some form of self government is the best for society, springing from great self control or individuals being answerable to some higher power. If people cannot control themselves the government will step in to protect us from one another’s harmful behaviour. The greater the number of potentially uncivilised behaviours, the greater the number of restrictions on our lives. And often, we all suffer.

The papers are full of stories every week that reflect peoples’ inability to control their own behaviour. In many cases everybody suffers to minimise the dangers from a tiny number of potential offenders. More laws are called for, or more restrictions are put on peoples’ freedom to protect society from potential criminals.

Because of the dangers of paedophiles and child molesters all teachers and those working with children have had to be CRB checked regardless of whether or not those people have any criminal record. In the news recently was a report that in Magaluf on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca the authorities have decided to crack down on pub crawls because of the level of disorder from English youngsters. This is after an incident when a teenage girl was seen performing sex acts on more than 20 men in public. No surprises there that a crackdown came. Also recently there were calls for more laws to protect people from abuse and bullying in cyberspace. The list could go on and on of calls for more laws to restrict bad behaviour.

Writing in the Guardian recently (July 12th 2014) Hari Kunzru touches on this and actually relates it back to faith implicated in my earlier quotes when he says: ‘In general ‘faith’ makes people much easier to govern – after all they’re already being governed by God, who has panoptical security cameras and already knows what’s in everyone’s browser history. No wonder politicians line up to praise it. If only everyone possessed this salutary quality!’

Some politicians indeed understand these things, even in their own lives they are aware of guiding principles ruling their behaviour. Gordon Brown, son of the manse, when becoming Prime Minister spoke of his moral compass. John Major used his ‘back to basics’ campaign in an effort to return to ‘certain values.’ Here are his words in a speech he made on the 8th October 1993.

‘The old values – neighbourliness, decency, courtesy – they’re still alive, they’re still the best of Britain. They haven’t changed, and yet somehow people feel embarrassed by them. Madam President, we shouldn’t be. It is time to return to those old core values, time to get back to basics, to self-discipline and respect for the law, to consideration for others, to accepting a responsibility for yourself and your family and not shuffling off on other people and the state.’

This all backfired somewhat after a series of scandals hit the Conservative party, and Mr Major himself was later found to have been having an extra marital affair which must have left much of the population agog with astonishment.

However we have touched on an important principle for good government in any nation at any time in any place. Good government is directly related to the discipline and self control of its people. It guarantees that you have a much more healthy balance between those who are governed and the governors themselves, who should after all be the servants of the governed. Nobody would dispute that any country needs good government. Whether we actually have good government is another matter. But if we want good government in any nation it first starts with you as an individual, yes each one of us in our own lives.

Good government starts with you. If you can control yourself you don’t need an outside authority to control you. The more an internal ‘law’ keeps you in order, the less an outside law needs to keep you in order. You are no threat to those around you because you know how to control yourself in day to day discourse.

The less self discipline and self control a population has, the more a government has to step in with coercive measures. New Labour were known for making a huge number of laws. To what extent they were trying to control peoples’ bad behaviour and to what extent they were just passing too many laws to impose an ideology upon the nation is an interesting question.

Here is a quote by Philip Johnson in the Telegraph in March 2010. He writes that in his ten years as Prime Minister Tony Blair presided over more than 3000 new laws, more than 1000 of which carried jail terms. Their incessant law making was disturbing to say the least. I’d say that was sign of a corrupt government. Or maybe they thought the people of this nation couldn’t control themselves as well as they used to. Maybe it’s in their DNA and that’s why a socialist government should never ideally be allowed to govern this nation. It’s been said in general that socialists use the law to make people ‘good,’ conservatives use the law to punish bad people. The socialist interpretation is a misunderstanding of the nature and limits of government. The inner compass cannot be imposed by law. That has to come from other sources, the settled mores of an established culture, family and the teaching of right from wrong which comes from institutions such as school and church, but primarily should come from family. When a government takes these responsibilities, you know a culture is on its death bed.

Mr Robert C Winthrop’s quote above says you either rule people through the Bible or the Sword. My, that would get all the cappuccino sucking liberals choking on their coffee. Highly controversial nowadays as so many people have jettisoned Christianity. But what do you put in the place of Christianity as a restraining influence on peoples’ bad behaviour? Take your pick! You either have a people who know how to behave through the internal restraints of conscience or you have men and women who cannot control their natural appetites who need an increasingly ruthless external authority to keep them in order.

Self control springs from character and integrity, two qualities that are in short supply today. The measure of any man or woman is their character and integrity. That is the way you measure success in life or otherwise. Not by what they do or how much they earn, but by their character and how they deal with those around them. The west is performance orientated, people are valued or measured according to the power of their personality, their looks, their earning power of status in society. Yet these things should play second fiddle to character. But we tend to look on the outward appearance or talents rather than what’s inside. How many of us are excited by a person with self control rather than a person with charisma, good looks and high intelligence? Who would you rather spend a night in a pub with, a man about town with a hint of danger in their eye or a man who has been faithful to his wife for 30 years but seriously lacks charisma. People are overawed or overwhelmed by attractive natural ability and underwhelmed by steady faithful unexciting character.

What do we mean by a person of character and integrity? We could produce a long list of attributes, but one of those attributes is definitely self control, and that means dominion over your temper, your tongue and your appetites. A man or woman who can control their own temper is to be esteemed. That means you rule the spirit that is within you, it does not rule you. You are not easily roused to intemperate behaviour.

They know how to control their tongue, a rare thing again for most of us! Life and death is in the power of the tongue, we speak life with encouragement, praise and a ‘looking on the bright side’ attitude or we can speak death by continually running people down, moaning, complaining and gossiping. That’s a difficult one!

They can control their appetites. Whether it is longing for food, alcohol, sexual impropriety, money or a whole host of other things, allowing a particular appetite to control you can bring untold misery to others.

Self government is manifestly not everyone doing what is right in their own eyes. In such a society what is right to you may not be right to me, and I will still do what I want. There has to be a common set of mores, a standard of right and wrong that people more or less agree with. If you do not have that the nation begins to fall apart for what is the glue that holds it together anymore? So it’s not enough to control yourself. You also have to have general agreement in society as to the proper way to behave.

But we now live in a society where increasingly people do what is right in their own eyes regardless of traditional morality. The church has a diminished role in being the nation’s moral compass. In addition the drive towards a multicultural society magnifies the importance of all cultures and worldviews. We now have communities in the UK whose mind-set and ways of thinking are totally incompatible with the mind-set of the traditional Brit. This makes governing the nation much more difficult, especially when the authorities have encouraged immigrants to import their own culture without buying into what it means to be British.

So there you have it. The more internal constraints individuals have on their behaviour the less external constraints they will need. The more internal motivation to practice good behaviour, the less need there is for governmental authority to force people to conform to ‘expectations.’ A nation is the sum of its parts, and what is more valuable than a nation’s human resources? The strength of a nation is in the character of its people. That makes a nation great. Self control and self discipline are essential prerequisites of such a culture.

There are immeasurable benefits to a society whose people know how to govern themselves properly. For starters there is the effect on the nation’s finances. The UK has a vast fiscal deficit. I wonder how much it would be reduced if the courts, policing, security and prison services had less to do because the system was not under such strain from people who don’t know how to behave? More could be said on this but that would be the scope of another article.

George Washington said that the American constitution was only ever made for a spiritual and moral people. If that begins to break down, we move towards totalitarianism. Frighteningly the signs are that under Obama Barak particularly, the US is losing its freedom. I remember speaking to a Headmaster who said he thought the French were more ungovernable than the English, what with their farm protests and so on. Secularists and atheists may not like it, but a significant proportion of the older generation in this country went to Sunday School where they received a Bible education which taught them clearly what was right and wrong. Did that give them the internal compass which helped make the English a relatively law abiding nation certainly in the past? Even now, are we living on the moral and spiritual capital that has been built up in previous generations?

Whatever you say, I believe unless politicians have a fundamental understanding of the importance of self government for a nation’s health and welfare, and are prepared to debate how we can rediscover such a quality, we will continue to slide down the darkening trajectory we have set ourselves.

Just a thought!

 

 

 

‘The hand that rocks the cradle…’

Well it seems that I agree with at least one British mum. She gave Ed Miliband on the radio a real pasting over his proposed policy of providing childcare for women who want to work, and not giving proper support to stay at home mums. The word used is that she ‘monstered’ him, and this is what needs to happen again and again with the current crop of UK leaders. Of course some newspaper wags might argue that Ed has already been ‘monstered’ by a bacon sandwich, but this stay at home mum takes it to a much more profound level. He needs such a pasting from an ordinary person giving him both barrels. Until the leaders of the UK see the paramount importance of the next generation, its emotional, spiritual and moral health, and how much that is rooted in a loving home of mum and dad giving full attention to their offspring and being gently encouraged to be able to do so by the government, we will continue to career down the wrong path. Children are the greatest asset a country can ever have, and their priority always comes before government tax take. But that would upset the short term self interest of the political class. What matter the long term stability of the country? Of course there are other issues here, like where low wages are paid to husbands or partners, the enormous pressures on families, the emphasis of modern society on materialism and the need for all the extras, etc, etc. Tomes could be written about all these issues. But the health of human relationships and particularly the safety and security of the next generation always comes before money, GDP, economic growth and international productivity league tables. And you can more guarantee the health of those relationships if you can make it as easy as possible for the mum who wishes to stay with her children in those early years to do so. Perhaps the greatest inheritance I have is not financial legacy but the values instilled in me through my background. These things are priceless. The UK must get back to pushing individual responsibility firmly and clearly back into the hands of its populace so that it’s ‘crystal’ that the government owes absolutely no one a living at the expense of the taxpayer, and that includes help with childcare!

Here’s the article:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2713833/Stay-home-mum-mauls-Ed-live-radio-Accused-putting-no-value-women-like-choose-not-work.html

The Gay Marriage Cake Caper

So we have the spectacle recently of a baker in Northern Ireland being threatened with the wrath of the Equalities Commission for daring to refuse to bake a cake supporting gay marriage for a client. This case must be as famous as King Alfred and the burnt cakes. It’s pretty obvious to anyone with an ounce of discernment that a Christian baker will not go along with gay marriage as the Good Book clearly condemns homosexual behaviour as sin, so it’s no surprise that our baker is making a stand, and all power to him, because he is simply being true to his beliefs. I am sure a lot of gay people are magnanimous enough to realise that their behaviour is not sanctioned by the Bible but they would not be spiteful enough to pick on an easy target such as Christians are seen as today. There is a general background of course to all this. The number of bizarre and far-fetched cases that seem to end up on the front pages just because of the golden triumvirate of ‘equality, anti discrimination and human rights’ has multiplied in recent years, especially since the reign of New Labour.

This is all so predictable due to David Cameron’s pushing through of ‘same sex marriage,’ a highly contentious and divisive policy. He has now uncovered a can of worms which will prove very ugly and nasty indeed. The craziness of all this is that he has created a problem and potential legal action where there was no problem before. And so the inexorable crushing of freedom goes on in western society, and the presence of an Eton/Oxford educated incumbent of number 10 has guaranteed this.

With the advent of this policy the political class have disqualified themselves from governing this nation, and all the more reason why they all need to be given a good kicking at the next elections, including the big one next year. Leon Trotsky and Josef Stalin themselves would be proud of David Cameron, not because they  would have been particularly in love with homosexuality, but because pushing same sex marriage represents a battering ram to destroy Judeo Christian civilisation which they hated with a vengeance.

On the celebration of the first same sex ‘marriages’ recently a picture of two blokes kissing on the front of a Bristol newspaper to mark the city’s first same sex marriage led to a significant fall in sales, prompting an inquiry on the part of the editor as to why people had refused to buy the paper that day. Even in 2014 the universe he inhabits is a different world from the universe inhabited by many ordinary people. Hardly a surprise to me that it didn’t go down too well with some of the good people of Bristol. Plenty of people disagree with homosexual behaviour but have been bullied into silence by the politically correct high priests of the new counterfeit religion of equality and rights, who think they can just jettison the Judeo Christian moral framework sunk into these isles over centuries. However, they won’t be forced into buying newspapers whose front cover they find offensive and they’ll tell you what they think away from any whiff of liberal fascism.

This is possibly the issue that will do for the Conservative party i.e. finish them off as a major political force in the UK, and they will deserve it for this one act of cultural vandalism. But perhaps that is what is meant to happen. To bring in same sex marriage in my opinion is nothing less than deeply unwise and will bring trouble to our nation. Anyone who disagreed with this outrageous piece of legislation is accused of bashing gays in their quest for so called equality. You could not have got any worse than Nick Clegg calling those who disagreed with same sex marriage ‘bigots.’ But where were the street protests for gay marriage, where were the people chaining themselves to railings for the cause, where was the massive public campaign pushing for such a change? Absolutely nowhere, all the evidence being that this was pushed down from the top by an arrogant and ‘out of touch with their heritage’ elite. What on earth possessed David Cameron to pick up on this issue and to make it the lodestone of his modernising agenda I will never know, but one thing is sure, he has badly miscalculated and has encouraged an exodus from the Conservative party that may prove fatal. When a government tries to legislate in areas which govern fundamental relationships between people it has to be loath to get involved. No true statesman would dream of touching marriage by trying to redefine it to appease a tiny proportion of the population.

The most disturbing aspect of this whole affair has been the unholy haste in which the government pushed this measure through which also had no electoral mandate. How much pressure was there from impending legislation in the EU on this issue? There is almost something sinister about the conduct of the government. It is evident that this whole business has been internationally coordinated at a very high (or low?) level depending on which way you look at it. Same sex marriage has been brought in already in a small number of countries including Canada and South Africa, and also some states in the US. At the very same time that the measure has been pushed in the UK it has been campaigned for, and defeated, in Australia, pushed through against massive opposition in France under Monsieur Hollande, and has been enthusiastically embraced by Obama across the pond. It has even been an issue in Puerto Rico, a Roman Catholic country. The question you have to ask is, what do these people want or are trying to achieve by such a policy?

The affair demonstrates the clash we now have between the concept of ‘equality’ and a traditional understanding of what is right and wrong. Every culture needs a clear understanding of some sort of moral framework that the majority adhere to. Things are definitely moving against the traditionalists at present, as LGBT rights seem to trump religious rights or traditional norms almost every time.

Introducing same sex marriage is offensive to many people who are married who will wonder what on earth has taken possession of their Prime Minister that he can decide to redefine the meaning of the word ‘marriage.’ There are limits to the concepts of equality and anti discrimination. Marriage is just not permitted for certain groups of people e.g. if two people are too young to get married, if you are close relations like a nephew and aunt, a niece and uncle, or if you fancy some sort of communal marriage. We do not say that those people are discriminated against. Likewise marriage is just not for two men or two women. Any such relationship you have to call something different.

We have a responsibility to pass on what was been bequeathed to us by previous generations, a common culture that means something, that is almost unconscious to our senses but that we understand naturally. It is a given. Our heritage is a Judeo Christian one whether we like it or not, and at the heart of that culture is the union of a man and a woman to nurture the next generation. You tamper with this at your peril. If you change the meaning of a word such as marriage you will introduce a spirit of confusion into the nation which not least will harm our children and grandchildren. Marriage will be not only between a man and a woman, but also potentially between a man and a man, or a woman and a woman. The way will also open for virtually any relationship that expresses ‘love and commitment’ to push for marriage rights. It is disingenuous to oppose this argument because already polygamists have been pushing for marriage rights in Canada, and polyamorists doing likewise in Australia. Then there is the position of children. All the evidence supports the view that children brought up by a mother and a father have the best outcomes. Yet how many combinations of marriage partner will be able to bring up children as traditional barriers crumble? Is it wise to legitimise any and every form of relationship in the eyes of the law so as not to offend anyone?

You are also adding layers of legislation to our society that will further diminish our freedom as a people. The government has had to go back hundreds of years to amend legislation to make allowances for his unwise step. Whatever is said by the government, pressure will be on to protect the concept of same sex marriage by trying to shut down free expression of opinion on the subject and to prevent various organisations from ‘discriminating’ against same sex marriage in their ethos and employment law. It is sad but true that pandering to the LGBT agenda by successive governments has increasingly proscribed speech and behaviour in the UK. Brendan O Neill picked this up recently in the Telegraph.

Finally, in the eyes of many people, both religious and non-religious, we are dealing with a moral issue, and no matter how you dress up same sex marriage as an ‘equality’ issue, homosexual behaviour is morally unacceptable for those people. And when I say behaviour I think this strikes at the heart of the whole way in which people think of this issue today. In my opinion we have confused identity with behaviour. The whole concept of identity politics has a lot to answer for. Human beings are people first and foremost, that is their identity, male and female. Whether they are homosexuals, heterosexuals, or whatever is a secondary issue. These things are expressed as behaviour but are they really core identity? The jury is still out on homosexuality. At the very limit it may be a mixture of nature and nurture, but what percentage of each? What you are in effect doing in the eyes of many is state sanctioning immorality, enshrining behaviour at the heart of our national life that has been seen as immoral and fringe sexual behaviour over the history of western culture. Again is this really what we want for society? There is a right and a wrong meaning of the word equality. The right meaning is that we are all equal in value, no one is worth more than any other despite all our differences, and everyone is worthy to be treated with the same respect and dignity as any other person. However, that does not mean equality of behaviour. Some behaviour is still moral, and other behaviour is immoral. State sanctioned immorality is no less immorality.

In this regard the church in the UK has to look at itself on this issue. If anybody in society has a responsibility to give a clear sound on moral issues it is the church. You cannot just have a moral free for all, somebody has to give a lead for the majority of people for the majority of the time. Sadly the Church of England is agonising over this issue when the Bible is crystal clear. In the end this does no one any favours. In a free society people should be able to do what they want behind closed doors provided it is of a concensual nature, but don’t push such sexual individualism to the heart of our society in the form of same sex marriage.

In evaluating this issue, it may be offensive to many, but there is a bullying and intimidating spirit behind the militant gay rights agenda which will do great harm to the country if continually appeased. The aim of that agenda is to ‘normalise’ gay behaviour so that it is fully imposed on society, if necessary through the full force of the law. You have to understand the spirit that is driving militant gay rights, it is totalitarian in its mandate. Some people would like to criminalise criticism of homosexual behaviour. This is the direction in which we are going, and the bringing in of same sex marriage will only accelerate this process.

If we want a relatively peaceful and united nation we have to rub along together somehow. That means physical and verbal abuse of homosexuals is totally unacceptable. But it also means that people who disagree with homosexual lifestyles or same sex marriage must be completely free to express that disagreement. Because surely freedom of speech has been cherished in Great Britain but is now under enormous threat. You have no freedom if people are only free to express one point of view. You cannot make ‘offence’ the measuring rod for what is acceptable and unacceptable speech, otherwise you have lost the battle for freedom.

If Great Britain wants to recover its tarnished reputation as a nation of liberty the awful imbalance that has developed in this area has to change to make proper room in the public space for more than one point of view. At present we are sending out a confusing and oppressive sound to the rest of the world by harassing a Christian baker over a cake! Perhaps things will find a more healthy balance, as this article suggests:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2702229/Public-backs-bakery-gay-cake-row-says-poll-Six-ten-believe-proposed-court-action-owners-refusal-bake-cake-wrong.html?printingPage=true: .

The British have their weaknesses but can suss out a bully instantly. There will be plenty of sympathy for those who wish to protect rights of conscience.

Female bishops?

The Anglican Church has just voted in favour of women bishops and lots of people will be very happy about that including many with no links to the church who will see this as a positive move which brings the church up to date with the rest of society. Your average punter who reads the Guardian, The Times or Independent will consider this a really ‘right on’ move, the church is getting down with it in 2014. I beg to differ. The trouble is that a lot of these people may not have much idea of what the Bible teaches about these matters, or of ecclesiastical history.

It is never the church’s role to go along with the rest of society, the matter in question here being the authority of the Holy Scriptures, which have governed church teaching for the last two thousand years versus the current ‘God’ of equality, to which every other idea must bow . Of course the modern mind thinks why on earth should women not be allowed to be bishops, surely they are equally capable of such a leadership role? They must have equality. They have a ‘right’ to equality. Surely every self respecting MP and enlightened member of the General Synod could hardly think otherwise. David Cameron himself, sage that he is, said that the church needed to ‘get with the programme’ and ‘be a modern church in touch with society as it is today.’ After the last vote on this by the Synod there was consternation in the ruling elite. How can the church act like this in these days of equality? There was even talk of forcing the church to bow to Lord Equality. Even Frank Field, a Labour MP I have more time for, suggested that coercion should be used. Tradition and even right and wrong, do you not know, must always submit to equality. And so the State strengthens the death grip of political correctness on the Church of England, just as it is doing with the rest of society. For the State’s counterfeit morality must hold sway over every nook and cranny of the nation, even that part of the State which is supposed to bow its knee ultimately only to God. But perhaps that is its ultimate Achilles heel. It is wedded to the State.

But leadership in the church is not a question of equality when it comes to men or women, it is a question of role. It is difficult to interpret the Scriptures in any other way than the implicit default position that church leadership is male. The main characters in leadership positions throughout the Scriptures were almost invariably male, Abraham, Moses, the prophets, the twelve disciples, St Paul and so on. Even God is referred to as male, and the high priests of equality would love to rewrite that bit of the Bible, so that He can be seen as equally female as well. The Scriptures also teach that the man is the head of the home, although this would cause many feminists to foam at the mouth, and not just feminists! We are not talking about headship in terms of some authoritarian Victorian father, a misleading stereotype, but of headship based on servant leadership. The husband is there to cherish and honour his wife as well as taking leadership initiative.

 No true Christian questions the truth that all people are absolutely equal in value or worth regardless of sex, ethnic origin, disability, religion and yes regardless of all nine strands of equality legislation, to which ‘obesity’ may be added the way things are going!. Yet equality of value does not mean equality of role or behaviour. The fact that leadership is predominantly male in the Bible and church history in no way presupposes that women are inferior in any way. It is just that women have different functions, and the function of leading the church as a whole is not for a woman. This does not mean that she has innumerable opportunities to minster and serve in the church in various capacities.

There are exceptions to this preponderance of male leadership in the Bible, such as Deborah the judge in the Old Testament who was hardly a girlie girl! History also has its share of amazing female warriors, think Boadicea, Joan of Arc and some even may invoke the name of Mrs Thatcher. They were no less leaders because they were female, it’s just that they tended to be exceptional.

From a strategic point of view I am not sure this is a good decision. It will increasingly feminise an already female dominated church. If you have been around churches for a while you will know that there is a majority of women in congregations. The difficulty of attracting men into the church is a big issue, and promoting female bishops will not encourage an influx of men. We now live in a society where the question is already being asked anyway as to whether men in the west are capable any more of defending western culture because of the emasculation of so called masculine values in recent years. The church and Christianity are historically part of the core of western civilisation, certainly in the UK, and you need warriors to lead both the church and nation today given the threats to our civilisation. Saints of old like John Wesley, George Whitfield, George Fox and William Booth of the Salvation Army were tough warriors for the Gospel, not cosseted wimps. They were not averse to offending all and sundry by pronouncing what they believed was the truth. So male leadership and some of the traditional qualities it brings with it are even more vital and important. There is of course another religion that is challenging the historical supremacy of the Christian religion in the west and many other countries across the globe. And as we all know Islam is a male dominated religion. Will a church which is now opening the way to be led by women be able to provide robust competition for the souls of men?

When all’s said and done, there is yet another issue. Would the Almighty raise up women to be bishops if the men are not willing to fulfil the role the Scriptures indicate they should take? It has been said that at the Fall when Adam and Eve sinned man abdicated his responsibility and woman usurped his authority. Ursurpation would be a strong word in our modern context, but if men do not take a clear lead as bishops standing for traditional Christian teaching, then women might do a better job of this. Food for thought! The problem with the Anglican Church is that it has decided to move with society rather than stand firm on Biblical teaching. The role of the church generally is to stand like a rock sometimes ‘in the middle of a wicked and perverse generation’ as the Scriptures say. The world may not like it, but many will grudgingly respect its refusal to go along with every fad and fashion of current culture which is a truly moveable feast. That needs rugged warriors who will not flinch an inch. Those sort of men would recognise the bullying spirit behind ‘equality’ for what it is, and tell it to get lost regardless of the consequences.

Just my humble opinion!

Bite sized chunk! Tax Freedom Day 2014

This great day falls on the 28th May this year. If you are not familiar with this day it represents the day when British taxpayers stop working for the government and start working just for themselves. Here’s the link if you want to trawl a little further:

http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/2020tc/2014/05/happy-tax-freedom-day.html

So every penny of income you earn up to the 28th May in effect goes to the UK government. For nearly five full months of the year that hard earned dosh from the sweat of your brow all goes to funding Her Majesty’s Treasury. At least you keep over half of your gross income, or seven-twelfths to be specific to spend at your own discretion. More tax means less freedom to spend your money as you wish, or less freedom full stop some might say. Some might argue it’s a good thing on average as the spending of some individuals reflects a distinct lack of discretion as to their long term good, the results of whose expenditure may constitute a long term burden on the State. One thinks of lifestyle choices and consequent health problems. Others might argue that the government is far too lax about spending other peoples’ money, we all know how people treat resources that are not specifically owned or earned by themselves.

It may be worth you having a look at the Taxpayers Alliance website just to see how your taxes are being spent, and how profligate government is with your money.  This is why it is in all our interests to get taxation down. Do we actually stop and think why the government takes so much money from us in tax and then gives it back in benefits such as tax credits? Apart from funding basic pensions and unemployment benefit, do we need a massive rethink?  Why not leave it in peoples’ pockets in the first place and let them spend more of their own money as they wish, rather than the government being the ‘big wise daddy’ who knows better than ourselves how our money should be spent.

One interesting little aside is the amount spent by British taxpayers to the EU. The Daily Telegraph reported in December 2013 that the British contribution to the European budget will climb from £30B to £40B in the next five years. Meanwhile the Full Fact website examining Nigel Farage’s claims about our EU contribution comes to the conclusion that in 2013 after rebates and other receipts have been taken into account, the UK’s net contribution to the EU was £8.6B. Given a UK population estimate of 63, 485, 015 for 2014, this is an annual contribution per capita of about £135, allowing for statistical error. I think I could spend £135 of my own money better than the EU could.

Political Earthquake?

For so long it’s as if an evil magician has cast a spell over these islands, producing a thick fog of deception and lies, and even sending much of the UK to sleep. This spell has affected peoples’ thinking, building strongholds in their minds and suppressing their spirit, but now it’s as if we are just getting a glimpse of sunlight. That glimpse of course has been provided by the success of UKIP in last week’s elections. UKIP of course are hardly the answer to all our problems, but they are shaking the political heavyweights who for too long have dragged the UK in the wrong direction.

A recent election poster from UKIP emblazoned on the side of a building on my route to work is truly prophetic for the UK, and heralds a very exciting time for political junkies, because I believe things are going to change big time. A poster to warm the cockles of your heart and make you feel real good. It trumpeted how UKIP will give Britain its voice back, showing how UKIP will unmuzzle the British people who have been oppressed by the EU project.

It will be messy, there will be all sorts of flak and gunfire from both sides, and you can bet your bottom dollar that the establishment will try every trick in the book to destroy this relatively new baby, but they will not succeed because something has been unleashed in the nation. They will use mockery, sneering, twisting of words, dissimulation and there may even be physical attack from certain unruly elements of society. I believe it will take time, but will be unstoppable.

Some commentators are claiming that it is all just another flash in the pan and that it will be business as usual next year. However, Melanie Phillips writing in the Times today understands what is going on, as she so often does. This is not just a political protest by people who will come back into the fold, this is part of a revolution in British politics. The establishment have only themselves to blame, because by forging ahead with their agenda, they have created a massive vacuum of leadership in the UK which eventually had to be filled. Thankfully it is being filled at least partly by UKIP. Things could be a lot worse!

I said before that UKIP is a sign of something new in the nation. They are in the vanguard of a major shift I believe in UK politics, which can only be healthy for our democracy. For too long the ruling parties have carved out a monopoly for themselves which perhaps they have taken for granted. No longer. Some people say that Tories will come back into the fold at the next election, that disgrunted Labour supporters will return to their roots because their family were always Labour people. But the signs are that the Rubicon has been crossed.

The media have been picking up on all the faults with UKIP in the past few weeks and yet none of the accusations have stuck. This is something that the powers that be need to understand, people are now beyond being muzzled because of fear of bullying or intimidation over words like ‘racist.’ The political establishment need to be challenged to the core and the ideology that they have foisted upon the nation centring on equality, anti-discrimination and human rights needs to be bulldozed. As I have said before this ideology is an imposition upon the soul of the British people. It is a counterfeit ideology to the Judeo Christian heritage that has helped sustain this nation for so long. It is well on the way to replacing that heritage.

The forces at work to destroy this nation I believe are terrified of legitimate opposition to their plans. They are working through the EU and substantially through a co-opted Westminster to achieve their ends and are substantially along the route to fulfil their aims. Every building block is falling into place. All our liberties, freedom of speech, movement, religion, etc will soon disappear at the hands of perhaps the most diabolical spirit of control and intimidation Great Britain has ever faced. Now is the time to rise up and face it down head on. Men and woman that rise up at this time with courage and fearlessness will have the anointing to deal with that spirit and the people of these islands will get right behind them.

Did anyone really believe that opposition would not arise against the agenda of the political elite across the UK and the EU? We may be a bit slow, but the UK has a special responsibility to stand against institutionalised foolishness given our history. The so called cradle of liberty for much of the world being finally being crushed by the enemies of Great Britain, a suffocating spirit of conformity squeezing the eccentricity, brilliant technicolour of non-conformity, bloodymindedness and ‘sod off’ mentality that has helped to make this nation great in the past.

It is interesting that the same tired old words aimed at some UKIP activists were used as a method of attack, words such as ‘racist,’ ‘homophobe’ and ‘islamophobe,’ but it is becoming like water off a duck’s back. These are the very words that parts of the progressive establishment have used to bully the British people, and now their stranglehold is being loosened. Again this is very healthy because those words are being used to completely destroy freedom of speech in Great Britain.  It will be a battle, but now legitimate opposition is arising.

What UKIP need is to be beefed up a little. You only need 600 odd men and women of the highest integrity to stand for election to Parliament, who are articulate on the media and speak common sense by the bucket load to really put the wind up the whole three party system. That will sweep like a breath of fresh air through the whole system. In a sense, there is nothing wrong with our system. It is the people that predominate in it that need to be changed.

Nigel Farage has hinted that his purpose is to pull the UK out of the EU and then retire from politics. That result alone qualifies him to be named a ‘Great Briton.’ However, it is essential that UKIP coalesce into a genuine long term conservative movement that will be the only thing that will stand up for traditional Britain.

Time is very short, we are almost at midnight because there are dark forces at work that think they have slain the British Lion. I believe things are now falling into place that will shackle this nation for a very long time. But the nation has been here before when only a last minute rescue would suffice. Think of the Battle of Britain during the last war, when the ‘Few’ wrought a mighty deliverance for the nation. This time, the enemies of Great Britain are within as well as without, making things very tricky. However, it may be that the ‘Few’ again, rising up in UKIP and from unexpected places, will bring another deliverance for our nation.

‘We must make a more robust defence of our Judeo-Christian heritage’

Our Christian heritage has been in the news quite a lot recently, with David Cameron defending the role of Christianity in our national life. It appears that he is trying to win back some of those voters who have left him for UKIP over the furore of ‘gay marriage.’ It is probably too late now, because the Conservatives have crossed the line too many times into non-conservative policies and people are waking up to a one party system with three faces in the UK, and have had enough.

‘Fear of causing offence drives the “Notting Hill claptrap about diversity”. “We need a much more muscular defence of our Judaeo-Christian heritage. Yes, we’re open to different cultures but we have to defend our values. That’s the message I want to hear from the Archbishop of Canterbury and from our politicians. Anything less is appeasement of the worst kind.”

So said Nigel Farage recently in an interview in November 2013, and he’s got something. If you deny our Judeo-Christian heritage then you deny an important element of who we are as a nation. It’s almost like trying to remove someone’s DNA. If you do so, they will die. It’s given many people have no obvious religious faith, many claim to be atheist or agnostic, many sneer at religion or its followers, but the indigenous British have been shaped substantially by Christianity. Even in our recent past, although there are many that will again sneer at it, the Christian roots of the UK came to the fore. In the dark days of the Second World War there were several national days of prayer called by the King and government. At the end of the War Winston Churchill led his MPs into St Margaret’s Church in Westminster to thank God for giving the allies victory in the Second World War. You never hear much about these incidents in accounts of our ‘finest hour’ as a nation. But emphasising such will have latte sipping liberals spitting into their coffee.

This again will chime with UKIP supporters and lays the lie that UKIP is just a single issue party. UKIP want out of the EU and much less immigration, but there is significantly more to their arsenal. They realise the importance of the Christian faith to our heritage and identity, and are not afraid of saying so. Plenty of people will warm to this message rather than the cold and clinical codes of equality and antidiscrimination legislation bought into by the main parties.

Whatever you say, there is strong evidence that a society’s or country’s religion has an awful lot to do with its position in the world. It is no accident that Great Britain was the world’s most influential nation for a very long time, followed by the USA since the early twentieth century, and that Christianity was their main religion. This does not whitewash all their actions by any means whatsoever, but in recent history these two nations were in the vanguard of standing against Hitler and Nazism, and stood for freedom and democracy.  Then there are the shades of Christianity which seems to differentiate even further.  For example it has been said that Catholic countries are generally behind the curve on economic statistics compared with Protestant nations. Out of the top ten nations in the world HDI index, which measures human development in terms of life expectancy, education and income, eight are traditional Christian Protestant or strongly Protestant nations. Here is the link:

Communist China did a recent survey which again proves rather inconvenient for the liberal left. They looked into the reasons why China has always been trying to catch up with the most socially, economically and militarily advanced countries on earth, what we generally understand as ‘the West.’ They looked at various factors as to why more advanced nations are more advanced, and found that the factor that made the difference was Christianity. You can see related information in this report from the BBC

https://data.undp.org/dataset/Table-1-Human-Development-Index-and-its-components/wxub-qc5k

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-10942954 , and also in this article:

http://biblicaltimes.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/chinese-intellectuals-conclude-christianity-the-reason-for-success-of-the-west/.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it Mr Dawkins!

A good dose of Christianity makes a society, kinder, more compassionate and tolerant than it would otherwise be, and has some immense practical benefits for everyone whether believers or not. They may not like it, but militant secularists, atheists and God haters are busy sawing off the branch that holds them up, for fused into the root of our liberty as a nation (now fast disappearing) is a healthy dose of Christianity. They are hollowing out a vacuum that will be filled by a wicked and dark force that they will not be able to control, unless there is a major push back against it now.

My Thoughts on ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech by Enoch Powell

‘The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to do so, it encounters obstacles which are deeply rooted in human nature.’

The above quote is a line from Enoch Powell’s famous Rivers of Blood speech. Not the sort of line that you hear from your average politician these days. I’d say that it really has the quality of thinking of a statesman, not just a politician. I’d also say that it’s a line that’s pretty difficult to disagree with if you have any sort of concern for the future of your nation. Enoch Powell had a better grasp of the profound issues of our time than most, perhaps as somebody said he was the best Prime Minister Britain never had. He had more insight in his little finger than a lot of current politicians in a month of Sundays.

I have just read Enoch Powell’s infamous speech and am struck by how relevant it is to today. I wonder how many people have actually read the speech rather than relying on other peoples’ interpretation of the speech. It is commonly known that left wing thinking has dominated the political debate since that speech, but what Powell said had much support amongst the so called working classes. You only have to note the letters he has received as well from constituents.  I have just made such an effort to read it and it’s well worth it. There’s a copy for you to read on the website. I have to ask the question how much of it is really racist? A profound concern about huge numbers coming into the country and the effect on the culture is hardly racism. I would say that Enoch Powell displayed extraordinary prescience and perception, the message is nothing less than prophetic. The first five paragraphs demonstrate his ability to see the big picture with the quality of a statesman. The speech indicates to me that this man, who also had an incredible intellect, stood head and shoulders above his peers in his foresight and sheer grasp of the big picture. As an article written by Simon Heffer recently said, Enoch Powell was right on the big issues. I myself remember reading his biography years ago. He was right on the EU for sure, encapsulating the problem in one single sentence which cuts through all the obfuscation and dissimulation that surrounds this issue. His simple conclusion was to the effect ‘Do you want to be ruled by an external authority?’ This says it all in a nutshell. Grand panjandrums in the House of Lords hinting that the British cannot be trusted at present with such a complicated question of whether we should stay in the EU or not would no doubt have suffered his scorn.

Despite his enormous intellect, he also understood that man was not the measure of all things. Of Northern Ireland and its intractable problems he once said to Northern Irish MP Geoffrey Donaldson that only God was the answer. A giant intellect can actually believe in God. Well whatever next?

Reading about his life you realise that this was a man who had a profound love for his country although he might have been somewhat patrician and old fashioned in his bearing. If he was still alive today I imagine he would weep for his country if he saw what had happened to it and how misguided politicians and leaders had busily built up what many would consider is indeed a funeral pyre for this remarkable nation. Many people knew that what he said was absolutely right, but the political elite and opinion formers built a giant shibboleth that shut down the debate for far too long. Now that shibboleth has to be destroyed, rooted up from the ground. Free movement of labour within the EU and New Labour’s shameless immigration policy, key drivers of the current immigration debate,  are now being seen for what they are.

He was well aware of the demographics, saying that the immigrant population would amount to five to seven million by 2000. The actual census in 2001 showed a figure of 4, 896,600, not too far off the lower estimate of Enoch Powell. The actual figure for 2011 was 7.7million, or 13% of the population. This compares with a figure of 2,118,600 in 1951, when immigrants made up 4.2% of the population (all official census figures).

He did suggest a solution to the problem, one which would now be unthinkable to many people in 2014, and that was repatriation fuelled by assistance.

This is how he saw it in 1968: ‘The answers to the simple and rational question are equally simple and rational: by stopping, or virtually stopping, further inflow, and by promoting the maximum outflow. Both answers are part of the official policy of the Conservative Party.’

Such are the numbers and strength of immigrant populations that this is just unrealistic. However, the State has every right to expel from the country anyone who foments sedition, preaches hatred or tries to undermine the rule of law. Certainly there should b e a debate on whether it is now time for a moratorium on immigration and to concentrate on removing from the UK all who should not be here.  Somehow I think that would be pretty popular.

There are so many elements in this speech that touch a nerve. His constituent telling him that he would like to emigrate and that the country will not be worth living in for his children. The remarkable thing is that this speech could have been written yesterday, it has such clear echoes with comments made in newspapers, on blogs, in the pub and on the street this very hour, about people being strangers in their own country, having to wait in line for their hospital appointments, struggling to get their children into overcrowded schools, etc.

The speech also shows that Enoch Powell had got it over the whole antidiscrimination agenda, that every natural born Englishman and citizen who has immigrated has the full rights to citizenship in this country, therefore there is no need for ‘anti-discrimination’ legislation as all are equal before the law. Wow, we need a good dose of what it means to be a true Englishman now. Anti discrimination, equality and human right legislation has now built a state enforceable code to replace the natural ways and mores of a mature culture that Enoch Powell would have been able to predict all along:

‘There could be no grosser misconception of the realities than is entertained by those who vociferously demand legislation as they call it “against discrimination.’

The accusation that Powell was a racist is unconvincing. There is nothing in the speech that suggests that he thought that immigrants were in any way inferior to British people. His attitude towards the 1959 Hola camp massacre in Kenya during the closing days of the British Empire which the British government tried to cover up was not one of a racist as he reminded us of the high standards that should apply to colonial governance.

Hola camp was a detention camp where a massacre took place in 1959 during the Mau Mau uprising against British colonial rule in Kenya. A plan was forged to force some of the uncooperative workers to work and as a result of this action 11 detainees were clubbed to death. 77 surviving detainees ended up with serious permanent injuries.

The Guardian said in an article on the 5th October 2012 that ‘Enoch Powell suggested it would be a betrayal of everything England believed its colonial mission was about if the authorities tried to evade responsibility for the massacre of Mau Mau suspects at the Hola detention camp.’

Here is an excerpt from Powell’s celebrated speech in Parliament at the time:

‘Finally it is argued that this is Africa, that things are different there. Of course they are. The question is whether the difference between things there and here is such that the taking of responsibility there and here should be upon different principles. We claim that it is our object—and this is something which unites both sides of the House—to leave representative institutions behind us wherever we give up our rule. I cannot imagine that it is a way to plant representative institutions to be seen to shirk the acceptance and the assignment of responsibility, which is the very essence of responsible Government.

Nor can we ourselves pick and choose where and in what parts of the world we shall use this or that kind of standard. We cannot say, “We will have African standards in Africa, Asian standards in Asia and perhaps British standards here at home.” We have not that choice to make. We must be consistent with ourselves everywhere. All Government, all influence of man upon man, rests upon opinion. What we can do in Africa, where we still govern and where we no longer govern, depends upon the opinion which is entertained of the way in which this country acts and the way in which Englishmen act. We cannot, we dare not, in Africa of all places, fall below our own highest standards in the acceptance of responsibility.’

Pray tell me where there is any racist attitude in this speech?

The ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech has a prophetic edge from a person who could see more clearly than anyone the future of the nation. Prophets upset people because they confront people with reality even if that reality only comes to fruition in the future. They didn’t take too kindly to prophets in the Old Testament who would point out to Kings and rulers the error of their ways and impending judgment on the nation. If you offended the ruling elite by telling the truth you ended up being hounded, thrown in a pit, imprisoned or killed. In our more ‘genteel’ society the punishment is not quite so severe, but even in 1968 it spelt the end of Powell’s favour in high places. Now increasingly it means social ostracism, verbal and sometimes physical abuse, possible court cases and the day is not too far away when it will mean prison, especially if we stay in the EU. Meanwhile, the Titanic continues to speed towards the iceberg.

Then we have the ‘thin edge of the wedge’ argument. Here is another excerpt from the speech:

‘The Sikh communities’ campaign to maintain customs inappropriate in Britain is much to be regretted. Working in Britain, particularly in the public services, they should be prepared to accept the terms and conditions of their employment. To claim special communal rights (or should one say rites?) leads to a dangerous fragmentation within society. This communalism is a canker; whether practised by one colour or another it is to be strongly condemned.’

All credit to John Stonehouse for having had the insight to perceive that, and the courage to say it.’

This excerpt  encapsulates all that has gone wrong in the UK in recent decades, the fruit of a multicultural ideology which refuses to discriminate and differentiate between different cultures, which is terrified of offending , and has not the clear moral foundations to stand clearly for something. It is utter poison that has been injected into the UK bloodstream. It reminds me of the famous story of Sir John Charles Napier, the British army’s commander in chief in India in the days of the British Empire, who would have immediately been sent on a diversity course if alive today because of the grave sin of offending another culture. When faced with the barbaric practice of suttee whereby the widows of Indian men were burnt on their husband’s  funeral pyre, he uttered the following words

“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”

I’d venture to say this man had a governing spirit about him, and knew exactly what he stood for. Great Britain right now is crying out for this type of unequivocal cultural confidence. Trouble is, the so called opinion formers and elite in this country do not seem to stand for very much apart from the overarching doctrine of ‘equality,’ and this doctrine has wormed its way into the highest levels of government, the courts and even the church.

Tom Winsor, the chief inspector of Constabulary, this week said that there are certain communities in the UK where the police never go because they are never called, the communities supposedly deal with their own troubles. These are people that he refers to as ‘born under different skies.’ No prizes for guessing that they don’t hail from deepest Somerset or the Lincolnshire Wolds. Peter Hitchens has picked this up in today’s Daily Mail, noting it as a very significant admission and indictment of the way our society is going.

I’m pretty sure that Enoch Powell would be devastated if he were alive today but would have been able to predict that this would happen from his experiences in India after the war of witnessing the break-up of India and intercommunal relations. And so the continuing establishment of parallel societies continues its remorseless pace.

As a footnote it is interesting to note that he distinguishes between those who come here for study or education and those who come here for settlement. The former are not immigrants and should not be classed as so. Students should not be classed as migrants or lumped in with general immigration policy.

Decide for yourself whether you think he was a racist.

Ed Milliband shows his socialist credentials

Ed Milliband shows his socialist credentials

One of the latest wheezes from Ed Milliband is free childcare for all in the long term, to extend childcare in pre-school years for UK parents so they can go out to work and have their children looked after while they can increase their family incomes. In effect they are taking away responsibility for the children away from the parents and putting it in the hands of the taxpayer and the State. So you and I pay for someone else’s children to be looked after while they can work longer hours and earn more money.

No one is deriding the fact that a lot of people are finding life hard at the moment because of economic constraints, and the government does have a responsibility to ensure provision is made for the poor, the disadvantaged and struggling families, etc. Many would argue for instance that incentivising marriage through the tax system is not a bad idea, as marriage is the most stable relationship for bringing up children, so it is in the interests of the State to support it for the common good. Extremes are often problematic, and the idea that the State has no responsibility for the welfare of its citizens, that absolutely everything should be left to the individual, is such an extreme.

What is the key issue here? Women returning to work is not the priority and making financial savings is not the priority. The priority is the emotional health and wellbeing long term of the most important asset we have, our children. Maternal employees paying more taxes at work to the Exchequer is not the priority, it is the health and welfare of family life. You get family right, everything else falls into place, including the economy.

Here’s a quote from Lucy Powell, the shadow childcare minister, ‘Enabling women to go back to work who want to go back to work, in the same jobs they were doing before – so that they don’t pay that pay and status penalty for the rest of their careers – will increase revenues to the exchequer significantly, such that over time it pays for itself.”

Again this is an attempt to change reality. No-one is denigrating women working and wanting to improve their career but if you decide to have a family you cannot have it both ways, the ‘pay and status penalty’ is reality when people are running a business, and talented men and women committed to their careers are bound to have more opportunities and undivided ambition than those who decide to withdraw from the workforce to have a family. There is as an economist would say, an opportunity cost. If you decide to have a family, arguably the most important job in the world, the next best alternative foregone is a possibly uninterrupted rise up the career ladder and consequent higher earnings.  You reap what you sow. Arguably, the decision to have a family is a more significant and valuable decision to society as a whole because you are raising the next generation.

The IPPR did a recent interim report where they estimated that getting 280,000 mothers back into the workforce would generate an extra £1.5B in tax revenue and make savings in benefit payments. But what about the existing unemployed who need to return to work? There were 1.27m people claiming unemployment benefit in October 2013 (claimant count) surely they are priority, especially the young people desperate for work.

But on this matter, let’s remind ourselves again, the government has no money. All the money it has is taken off you the taxpayer in order to fund its endeavours, and I suggest the less money it takes, and the more money you have in your pocket to decide how to spend, the better. It may be debateable the point at which a government ceases to incentivise a particular course of action it wishes its citizens to take, and starts to bribe voters with voters’ money, but childcare costs funded by the taxpayer to my mind is suspiciously hovering around the second category. When voters realise that they will substantially benefit from the largesse of the Treasury by voting for a particular party regardless of life choices, i.e. they will benefit from receiving other peoples’ money for which they themselves have not strived, then you are well on the way to total corruption of the democratic system. Some will say we are already there and have been for a good while.

It all comes back to individual responsibility, you are entirely responsible for your own life and must not look to the government to look after you in any way before using your own resources and ingenuity. I will come back to this again and again because it must become the default position of the UK population, as it has been in the past and can be again. If you decide to have children, you and you alone are responsible for them, not the taxpayer. History tells us that often parents go through a ‘poverty cycle’ when bringing up a family, but that’s just the way it is, it’s reality again which has a habit of cropping up at the most inconvenient of times when we want to enjoy personal peace and affluence. The benefits of sacrifice and responsibility are well worth it for I suggest the majority of parents when you can present responsible socially adjusted young adults to the grown up world after a sound foundation in life. Surely the benefits of a child being with its parents, and particularly with its mother, for the first five years, without her feeling pressured to work, are immeasurable. When you put money and the economy before everything else you are putting the cart before the horse. When you get family right, and strong healthy emotional bonding between parents and children, then you get everything else right. The government should be putting human relationships, health and well being first, not the economy.

So we have established the government has no money. Therefore not funding childcare means we all have more money in our pocket to begin with, including parents with children. They may not have a lot more money, but that reflects the fact that they have decided to have children and therefore presumably know they will have to make a sacrifice. Individual responsibility = big people = big society. Perhaps some families having a little more money in their pockets will enable them to make the decision not to have both parents pressured to go out to work.  A tax system that faces us with our responsibilities will focus us much more sharply on the decisions we all as individuals have to make. Having children is a huge sacrifice and I’m not sure it should be shared to the extent of Ed’s universal childcare.

So Ed Milliband is giving us more of the socialism that gets us into financial straits every time. We end up with a bloated State and another predicable deficit. Roll on the revolution!

Camille Paglia breaks the mould

It’s always a pleasure when someone from the other side of the political spectrum agrees with something that you have believed all along. One thing worth mentioning in the debate is that we have to be humble enough sometimes to realise that people on the ‘other side’ as it were might just have a point in some areas. Political discourse is enhanced with a good dose of seasoning of salt sometimes, as insults, abuse and downright intimidation sometimes seem to dominate the narrative these days. It’s easy to allow that log just to be embedded in our own eyes for a long time and not see the good sense other people might have. We are all a complex jumble of different beliefs, experiences and motivations, and you can learn something from virtually anybody. My own conviction is that politics should involve doing what’s right regardless of whether you are considered to be on the ‘right’ or the ‘left.’

Some people take a ‘journey’ from one side of the political spectrum to the other, believing that they have received greater enlightenment in doing so. I have certainly read of those who have moved left to right, not so sure how many have moved the other way.

Famous luminaries who have made the journey from the left to the right include Melanie Phillips, who although seen as shrill by some has her finger on the pulse of the main issues of the day in a way that few others have. Not bad for someone who started their journey on the left as a Guardianista. Perhaps those who have made such a journey are the most effective spokespersons for their resulting worldview. Winston Churchill famously said that if you are not a liberal when you are 20 you have no heart, if you are not a conservative by the time you are 40 you have no head!’

Now we have a famous feminist, lesbian author and social critic, Camille Paglia, supporting some of the beliefs of the conservatives. I picked up two articles in the Wall Street Journal and the Daily Mail.

Camille Paglia probably has more perception than a lot of conservatives, although she is certainly not about to give up her feminist principles and has evidently chosen an unconventional lifestyle. But she has nowse in spades in certain areas that are vital to the West’s survival.

One issue of great prescience is that it is one thing enjoying western freedoms and liberties, it is entirely another defending those freedoms and liberties to the death. Lots of us are Premier League exponents of enjoying the liberties we have inherited, doing virtually what we want, but we are not so good at understanding the roots of those freedoms in the first place. There never has been a time in history when men and women don’t have to fight for their freedom. The danger is that we have enjoyed such a long period of freedom and prosperity in the West that we have become too soft and unable to defend our culture or what is left of it if necessary. Sometimes you have to lay off the mantle of a peaceful unassuming citizen and take on the cloak of a warrior, and this especially applies to men.

Camille understands that men need a tough fighting spirit to draw upon in times of peril to literally defend their civilisation and culture. Men need a warrior mentality to deal with existential threats. To acknowledge this you have to recognise and accept the fundamental differences between men and women.

Camille has this to say about the West right now, ‘What you’re seeing is how a civilisation commits suicide.’ She gets really passionate about the efforts of modern society to undermine the basic biological differences between men and women. She is very concerned that many of the leaders in society, the elite, don’t have any background in military service so don’t think in military ways, having no clear conception of good and evil, that there are evil people out there and that you cannot be nice to everyone.

She says of that elite, “These people don’t think in military ways, so there’s this illusion out there that people are basically nice, people are basically kind, if we’re just nice and benevolent to everyone they’ll be nice too. They literally don’t have any sense of evil or criminality.”

She sure has a point there. A lot of the problems the US faces are similar issues in the UK. Many British for instance are trained to be nice to a fault, not to offend anyone unnecessarily, and that is a problem we are going to have to get over pretty quickly if we are to survive as a nation.

She argues that the softening of American society begins in the kindergarten “Primary-school education is a crock, basically. It’s oppressive to anyone with physical energy, especially guys,” She goes on to say, “They’re making a toxic environment for boys. Primary education does everything in its power to turn boys into neuters.” Here she laments the shortening of ‘recess’ in American schools, or ‘break time’ as it is called in the UK, when boys can go and let off steam.

She sees the issues with her own son who she is raising with her ex partner, a female, hardly a traditional family. ‘She sees the tacit elevation of “female values”—such as sensitivity, socialization and cooperation—as the main aim of teachers, rather than fostering creative energy and teaching hard geographical and historical facts.’

We can see this pattern in the UK where primary schools are dominated by female teachers and the home situation is far from ideal in many households, with no father figure because women are bringing up boys on their own in single parent households or where the father has abandoned the family. The epidemic of fatherlessness in the UK is nothing less than a national disaster. No one is condemning anyone, we are where we are.

She goes on to say, ‘And the process goes on as education progresses “This PC gender politics thing—the way gender is being taught in the universities—in a very anti-male way, it’s all about neutralization of maleness.” The result: Upper-middle-class men who are “intimidated” and “can’t say anything. . . . They understand the agenda.” In other words: They avoid goring certain sacred cows by “never telling the truth to women” about sex, and by keeping “raunchy” thoughts and sexual fantasies to themselves and their laptops.’

‘Politically correct, inadequate education, along with the decline of America’s brawny industrial base, leaves many men with “no models of manhood,” she says. “Masculinity is just becoming something that is imitated from the movies. There’s nothing left. There’s no room for anything manly right now.” She does have a point!

The UK’s ‘brawny industrial base’ has been dying a death for a long time. Years ago Britain was full of coal miners, factory workers, farm labourers, skilled craftsmen, those that used their physical strength and skills to make a living. And those old trades were male dominated. Now the UK has become an economy with seven or  eight out of ten workers in the service sector where often more feminine skills are needed for success.

I have to say that I have noticed completely apart from this article over recent years that a lot of American men that I hear on the radio or in the media, especially on the radio, do not sound very masculine, in fact worryingly feminine, or even effeminate. Perhaps we should be thankful that both The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry who will play prominent roles in our nation in the future have both had military experience which should go against the grain of Camille’s fears.

She is a bit more impressed with the energy and enthusiasm of the guys she hears on sports radio, ‘If we had to go to war,’ the callers are the men that would save the nation.’ Again for the UK maybe there’s hope for us to be found on the football terraces every Saturday afternoon.

A key part of the remedy, she believes, is a “revalorization” of traditional male trades—the ones that allow women’s studies professors to drive to work (roads), take the elevator to their office (construction), read in the library (electricity), and go to gender-neutral restrooms (plumbing). Gender neutral restrooms are of course open to dispute! Surely such restrooms are blurring the gender differences she is pointing out.

She is just arguing for the place of good old apprenticeships in skilled trades for young men, who will never take to the academic world but are itching to get out to work on something worthwhile.

As she says, ‘Michelle Obama‘s going on: ‘Everybody must have college.’ Why? Why? What is the reason why everyone has to go to college? Especially when college is so utterly meaningless right now, it has no core curriculum” and “people end up saddled with huge debts,”

By denying the role of nature in women’s lives, she argues, leading feminists created a “denatured, antiseptic” movement that “protected their bourgeois lifestyle” and falsely promised that women could “have it all.”

Camille is nothing but brutally realistic about the nature of life and the role of men and women, she could probably give David Cameron and Nick Clegg some pretty sound advice.

‘But men, and especially women, need to be honest about the role biology plays and clear-eyed about the choices they are making.’ Quite. ‘Our culture doesn’t allow women to know how to be womanly,’ she said. She is rather scathing about elite middle class women, ‘clones’ condemned to ‘Pilates for the next 30 years.’

She goes on to say, “I want every 14-year-old girl . . . to be told: You better start thinking what do you want in life. If you just want a career and no children you don’t have much to worry about. If, however, you are thinking you’d like to have children some day you should start thinking about when do you want to have them. Early or late? To have them early means you are going to make a career sacrifice, but you’re going to have more energy and less risks. Both the pros and the cons should be presented.”

The feminist movement can win converts, she says, but it needs to become a big tent, one “open to stay-at-home moms” and “not just the career woman.”

The feminists have been criticized for not being robust enough by far when it comes to the way women are treated in certain parts of the world, such as in India where the issue of gang rape has topped the agenda and in Islamic societies, where they are basically second class citizens. Ms Paglia has something to say about this as well.

‘More important, Ms. Paglia says, if the women’s movement wants to be taken seriously again, it should tackle serious matters, like rape in India and honor killings in the Muslim world, that are “more of an outrage than some woman going on a date on the Brown University campus.”’

To add fuel to the fire, she’s supportive of Duck Dynasty Star, Phil Robertson and his right to hold ‘homophobic views.’ Well, this old firebrand of the left keeps surprising us. Again here’s what she said:

‘In a democratic country, people have the right to be homophobic as well as they have the right to support homosexuality – as I one hundred percent do.’

‘If people are basing their views against gays on the Bible, again, they have a right of religious freedom there.’ In my humble opinion you either have freedom of speech or you don’t. Once you legally start proscribing peoples’ speech on the grounds of offence you are on the road to hell.

You have to say this is pretty refreshing stuff. It shows how in reality it’s impossible to stereotype people in the rigid way we love to do, and is a lesson to those politicians who are obsessed with identity politics, trying to neatly pigeon hole everyone into a particular ‘victim group.’ Camille represents a hotch-potch of views taken by both the traditional left and right.

If you take Camille’s logic to its conclusion, if nothing changes it’s a scary world ahead, men emasculated of their manhood and incapable of defending their culture, and women not being presented with an honest debate about choices of career and family. In the end whatever happens, if families don’t have those babies, there is no future anyway.

 

Sources

Wall St journal:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303997604579240022857012920

Daily Mail:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2530741/Theres-no-room-MANLY-Controversial-feminist-writer-Camille-Paglia-speaks-against-loss-masculine-virtues-negative-impact-society.html