Grenfell Tower

The British government has been executing its subjects quite deliberately for the past seven years. They care only about profit, and not at all for people.

First, they came for the sick and the disabled, who couldn't stand up for themselves. People died. Then they did their very best to destroy the NHS, the police and every other element of the backbone of this country. People died.

But even before that, they refused to do any work at all on protecting people in tower blocks. Until the other day, we had been lucky. By sheer chance, this disaster did not fall on us. For the whole reign of this money-grubbing, people-hating government, they have done nothing, not one single solitary thing, to help. Their sadistic, greedy MPs voted down measures aimed at making housing "fit for human habitation". How evil do you have to be to vote like that?

They have crushed your fellow humans. They have beaten them into the dirt. They have starved your brothers and sisters. Finally, they have burned people alive. I hope that at last everyone can see that these monsters have killed too many innocent people at once for it to be ignored.

The Conservative MPs are monsters. They voted in overwhelming numbers for these deaths. Throw them out. Demand another election. Throw out these killers, and put in a government that will not seek to kill the poor and the weak. Give us a government that, even if it doesn't do everything right, at least does not actively seek our destruction for thirty pieces of silver.

President Trump

I recall the Rise of the Nazis in History lessons. There were some outnumbered rebels in Germany who fought the Nazis. I wondered whether I'd have that courage, and who else would, in such circumstances. Back then it never seemed I might some day find out.

I know a lot of shocked sad Americans today. Good luck. For the next four years (at least) you'll need it.

Bob Dylan

I am pretty bewildered that people keep getting enraged about Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. Earlier I saw that the Grauniad was angry because Bob is a straight white male. It's difficult to cohere how I feel about such an accusation being levelled against a chap of Jewish ancestry, who changed his name to be accepted, and who later became an evangelical Christian.

However, I thrive on minutiae. So while the Guardian condemns for being insufficiently unusual, the Daily Telegraph scorns him for not being a dreadful writer. The prize should have gone to Philip Roth or Doris Lessing. Apparently. Because they are both so much better than Bob.

I remember Lessing being included in my GCSE English or perhaps A-level General Studies. She wrote something about pigeons. I bought a Roth book some years ago. He wrote masterfully; he described in detail a tedious situation. It was so dull, so lacking in interest, so bereft of any spark of value that I didn't even finish the first chapter. It's either sitting unread on my shelf or I gave it away. Sorry, recipient, I should have given you some Homer.

I am being unfair. The Telegraph actually says that "A culture that gives Bob Dylan a literature prize is a culture that nominates Donald Trump for president. It is a culture uninterested in qualifications and concerned only with satisfying raw emotional need."

The Daily Telegraph has said stupider things before. Anyone who read it back in 1997, and hasn't pretended to have forgotten, will remember their lie that all or most of the foxhounds in the UK would be slain when Tony Blair's piss-weak anti-hunting bill went through. That's a long time ago, though. Surely they have supported a cause recently which has blown up in their faces!

I write this from the United Kingdom, which was the fifth largest economy in the world before the recent Brexit vote. After the vote the UK became the sixth largest economy.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/13/a-world-that-gives-bob-dylan-a-nobel-prize-is-a-world-that-nomin/

Watership Down

There was a very odd story the other day. Channel Five had decided to take a break from showing softcore porn and CSI spin-offs, and one afternoon had broadcast the film Watership Down. A great many parents were very upset about this as it contains upsetting scenes. There are fields of blood, near death experiences, tremendous barbarism. I am just now watching it again, and intend to reread it in a week or so. I can see why parents wouldn't want their children to watch such subject matter. It's upsetting. It's sometimes horrifying. It opens your eyes to how unthinkingly cruel humans are. You assuredly don't want your children to realise that. It's the sort of thing that could even turn your children into vegetarians or - horribile dictu - vegans. It happened to me, after all.

I watched it, a long time after I read it, I suspect, and both initiations said to me that humans can be pretty horrible people. This was a long time before I understood the Holocaust or what WWII was about or what nuclear weapons were. I was just a little boy, and rabbits were being killed by humans for no reason. One of the attributes of the rabbits in Watership Down is that they are depicted with human characteristics, which helps small children understand that they are not just inanimate objects, but conscious beings. Don't worry too much, parents: when we small children get older we realise that bunnies don't compose poetry, for instance.

However, we may well realise (and retain the realisation) that rabbits do feel. They feel pain and love and hate. They quite possibly (probably) don't feel them as we do, but they experience them, nonetheless. That is an awkward time for a child. For one begins to wonder if other creatures feel some of that. The pig sliced into ribbons for our breakfast? The cow chopped into chunks for our lunch? Do they feel? Then we might go and observe, and find that they do feel. Then we look about ourselves, and we see that our fellow humans know that these creatures feel, but still don't care about killing them. We look at ourselves and ask whether we feel happy about killing them just because they taste good.

Maybe for you the taste is argument enough for murder. Perhaps you don't think of it as murder. It could well be that your parents cleverly stopped you from watching this film (or something kin to it) at such an impressionable young age, so animals never got anywhere near your conception of people. Maybe your parents used sophistry or argumentum ad populum or ad vericundiam to make you eat your sausages. Many do, I think. Maybe you cared for a little and then stopped caring. Perhaps you cared, and want to spare your child the feelings you experience.

It's so much simpler, after all, to cut down any obstacle, to blast through any blockade, to eat anything that is in your way, and to teach your children to do the same. Crush the weak. Take their possessions. They are but your playthings. Just be sure to keep your children safe until they grow strong enough to seize and snatch, rob and grab, kill and burn.

This probably will be an unpopular blog. There is no way of which I am aware to point out to people that they are supporting mass murder and cruelty on a global scale that doesn't make them angry with you. To get a whole other bunch of people angry with me for one moment, the Israeli government seems to be stuffed with awful people. You can't say that without making people angry. Then, as I expect you know, some Labour MP was recently revealed to have said some horrible things years ago, and was defended by Ken Livingstone, who was himself defended by an American chap called Finkelstein, who argued that suggesting one move the denizens of Israel to America would - in America - have been treated as a hard-nosed piece of satire. That struck me as a weird thing to say, given that when one thinks of moving a whole ethnic group from A to B, with the concomitant death toll, one tends to think of the Holocaust, where a cruel bunch of people cruelly moved another group from place to place to death. There's no humour there. There's horror, which also begins with an H.

One can't really "joke" about ethnically cleansing the Jews from Israel to America without invoking and evoking the Holocaust. Well, you can (for a given value of "joke")...but you shall annoy people. Likewise, you can't point out that the Israeli government is pretty horrifyingly evil without upsetting people, nor that mankind is egregiously despicable in how it treats other species. Heck, the only two comments I had on my blog before last, discussing a lady attacked by men, were insulting rejections of her position, which didn't deal with the substance of her argument at all.

Scotland: Phew!

I am rather pleased that voters in Scotland have decided against independence. I am not triumphant about it, just quietly pleased. I really didn't want to see the Union dismembered, but if it had been the will of the folk living there, it would have been a sad but necessary thing to accept. Happily, that has not happened. Nonetheless, my sincere sympathies go to my friends who were in favour of independence. However, the division in support is so marked that it's clear voters in Scotland are distinctly unhappy about the present state of politics in the UK. Many spoke of voting for independence as though it was about escaping the clutches of unpopular London, which is probably a perspective shared by much of the country. That is to say, there is a feeling that the capital disproportionately sucks talent, people and money from the rest of the country.

Some years ago, the Labour government came up with the idea of regional assemblies for the UK, which didn't fly in part because folk weren't keen on another layer of untrustworthy politicians slicing off taxpayers' money. Given how successful the Scottish devolution campaign has been in acquiring additional powers and funds for such a small proportion of the inhabitants of the UK, however, I would wager this notion, were it resurrected, would see more support this time around.

That and other considerations are in the future. For now, I'm simply pleased voters in Scotland decided against leaving the Union. Hopefully we can try to sort things out together.

Damned Clever Idiots

We seem to have a lot of these about nowadays. There is not any inevitable delineation according to political alignment or nationality. One right-winger believes that women cannot get pregnant when they are the victims of "legitimate rape", whatever that means, and one left-winger believes that it is not rape if you rape someone when they are asleep or if you have enraged the American government. These brainless lies should not go unchallenged, lest they corrupt others. I find that sometimes the best thing to do here is to use analogies. Let us think on the latter idiot's position first. Imagine you have a book. A friend asks if they can borrow it to write an essay. Then you need it back so you can do your work. If the person who borrowed it breaks down your door and steals the book, you would not think that it was ok. If someone else defended him, saying that you had already let him borrow the book, so it was merely bad etiquette for the thief to break down your door and steal your book, you would be angry, rightly angry, and regard that argument as bad, invalid, weak, and possibly even evil.

Now let us think about the first idiot. The first baffling thing here is his terminology. What is "legitimate rape"? Is it perhaps like "legitimate theft", where you need to steal bread or you will starve? No, because nobody is going to die from not attacking someone else. So what could it mean? Perhaps it means that this idiot believes that half the population has to conform to a dress code or a manner of behaviour or walking only on certain well-lit streets or they deserve to be attacked. That's not just stupid, it is evil. Nobody deserves to be attacked for being in the wrong place or for wearing non-standard clothes. If you wear a Star Trek t-shirt and a Star Wars fan attacks you for that reason, you know he is the one with the problem, not you. Mark Mardell of the BBC said, "If someone talked about 'legitimate murder' or 'legitimate burglary' we would be left scratching our heads as to what they meant”.

Some of you will be reading this and thinking what George Galloway wants you to think. We are human, and we do get distracted and misled. Nothing of what I have said above about George Galloway's words means that Julian Assange attacked anybody. Nothing of what is above means that he has not enraged the American government: they do want to see him locked up. That is not pertinent. Two people have alleged they were attacked. That should be investigated, not ignored because he is a gadfly to America. There are people out there with no respect for others, and they are numerous, even multitudinous. They are encouraged to ignore, dominate and torture other people by these disgusting statements made by public figures. Nothing of what I have said above touches on the good or evil of abortion. I have not given my view of abortion. I have given my view of an evil statement which wrongly seeks to delineate between certain kinds of a particularly vicious assault.

When someone in the public eye makes an evil statement, one which strengthens the cruel and the vile, they should be challenged. They should retract it or they should learn that such evil as they promote and endorse must not be allowed to prosper. I may well have sounded furious to you as you read this. I am furious. No man or woman is my toy, existing solely for my enjoyment. No man or woman is anyone's property. We can change our minds from yes to no, or expect to sleep without being attacked. We are all people.

European Matters

I was in the pub last night, chatting to some friends, and kept catching glances of the news. The Prime Minister had refused to accord with some EU agreement. This made his party's more Eurosceptic wing happy, and upset both EU leaders and some prominent Britons who support the EU. I gave up on having an interest in the EU a few years ago, when I got roundly trounced in an online argument with a Dane. I had bad sources, I'm afraid. Neither The Daily Telegraph (surprise!) nor the BBC (OK, that is a surprise) had accurately reported some bit of EU legislation. So I decided, egg all over my face, that if I couldn't rely on my media to give me even a few clues to work out the truth of EU affairs, I would give up. Needless to say, the recent removal of Italy's and Greece's leaders for not being acceptable to the EU and the financial markets renewed my interest in European affairs.

Yes, we all know that Western democracy is rather more of a facade than we like to publicly admit, since it's really an elective oligarchy,* and our elected leaders have tens of thousands of constituents whose varied opinions they are unlikely to represent. Nonetheless, seeing two national leaders deposed not by their electorates but by financiers is alarming even to my calloused sensitivities. If you're worried that I am about to launch a hearty attack on bankers, the Tory Party, the EU, the PM or anyone else, I hereby relieve you of your fears. I'm going to talk through what I have managed to deduce in the last twenty hours or so.

The EU wanted to fasten together more tightly the various national finances of its constituent nations. This would allow it to more easily deal with the current financial crisis. I am somewhat sceptical of tying varying national economies together to solve a crisis that was caused in part by, er, tying dissimilar economies together. Greece is not Germany, and what works for one may well prove unsuitable for the other. Be that as it may, I am no economist, and for all I know a concerted approach now is a splendid way out of the tunnel. After all, if we all held hands and walked into the blackness, we're more likely to find our way out as a group if we grip one another's paws tightly. That said, we might all fall over in a heap and break our necks.

However, while twenty-six of the EU countries agreed in principle to the deal, the twenty-seventh, my own, opposed it. Not all of the other countries will necessarily support it. Ireland, for instance, might have a referendum. One of Prime Minister David Cameron's problems was a proposed tax on financial transactions. This would be imposed on transactions in Europe, not globally. Other places, such as Singapore and Hong Kong would be rather pleased to collect traders fleeing. Such a tax was tried before in Switzerland some time ago, and it resulted in the near total collapse of the country's trading industry. Funnily enough, a lot of the trading fled to London, which had no such tax. There is a difference between Switzerland and Europe, but it is easy to see why Cameron and his Chancellor, Osborne, would be worried about the possible impact of this. The City is rather good at keeping the country in money,** er, when banks aren't selling mortgages to people with no incomes, that is.


The other reason why Cameron will have opposed the EU idea might not be obvious to people who do not live in the UK. The British media is very Eurosceptic, as are British voters and, most significantly of all, Cameron's own Conservative Party. Indeed, in the days leading up to the vote, there was a lot of reporting in The Daily Telegraph (Britain's last surviving broadsheet newspaper and the Tory Party's unofficial newsletter, one might reasonably remark) to the effect that an internal revolt was brewing, possibly led by Iain Duncan Smith (if my memory isn't getting muddled). So if Cameron had not opposed the treaty, he would have been pilloried in the press, and probably suffered a serious loss of prestige in his own party. I would not have been surprised if it had proved politically fatal, and led to his replacement with a more Eurosceptic Tory leader sooner or later.


This last point does not seem to be appreciated abroad. I've spoken to a chap from Denmark, for instance, who has been extremely helpful in clarifying for me a lot of these details, but who believes that Cameron is being deliberately obstructive for no good reason. As far as I can see, Cameron is taking heed of national politics, and particularly those of his own party, in formulating his stances and actions in regard to the European Union. Whether one agrees or disagrees with what he has done and will do, it seems pretty damned predictable to me that sooner or later he was going to have to have a fight with the EU over something, if only to keep his own MPs in line.


My Danish friend has pointed out that Cameron may have harmed his position internationally, by isolating Britain from potential allies among the other twenty-six states, and that this might have the result of pushing through the agreement even sooner. Moreover, everyone agrees that by taking this stand Cameron has put a wedge between Britain and the EU. Another friend has remarked that it seems foolish for Cameron not to have attempted to form a rival axis within the EU to that of Paris-Berlin. I do not personally believe that is politically viable. The level of Euroscepticism in the British media and consequently the voting public is so high that such a long-term strategic idea would be pilloried as kowtowing to the EU. In decades to come, with another government, such a strategy might work. Even the last Labour government had to make itself sound tough on European matters, and so I do not believe we can expect a Conservative government*** to behave in a warmer manner, not in the aftermath of the disastrous financial mess with the Euro, and not in the aftermath of the replacement of Italy's and Greece's leaders.


In conclusion, while Cameron could have fought the EU on some other issue, it is perhaps for the best that he did so on this one. He has prevented a revolt in his party at the expense of Britain's power in Europe. A revolt in his party would have led to a reduction in Britain's power in Europe, as any leader would have had to oppose the EU. Since the more Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party now regards Cameron so favourably, he has more room to manoeuvre in European politics. Whether this will be of any benefit to him or this country remains to be seen.


I have tried to compose the above in a fairly neutral manner. I find some elements of the EU unpalatable, obviously, but I also hold a rather comically  John Donne-ish sentiment about Britain: that she is not an island. ;-) We are part of Europe; we are part of the world; we do not have the Empire; we do not have the luxury of "Glorious Isolation". All the best to you, dear reader!

* Switzerland probably deserves a special mention here, since she has those seemingly charming convocations of voters in their thousands. When one takes a closer look and realises that Switzerland's democracy took until 1971 to give women the right to vote, one does start to think about the innate conservatism of society, and how this can regard desirable emancipation.
** The financial services sector as a whole made a total tax contribution of £53.4bn in 2009/10, representing 11.2% of total government tax receipts.
*** It seems hardly worth mentioning the Liberal Democrat part of the Coalition government at this point.