I Know What Reagan Would Have Done

British Workers Rekindle Spirit of 1926

I can think of nothing more selfish and self-indulgent than the acts of turpitude committed by council workers in striking over their future pension provision - this to say nothing of that fact that the strikes inevitably adversely impress upon the most disadvantaged in society. When will these recalcitrant limpets learn?

What right have these "key-workers" to retire at 60 and expect someone else to pay for it? Spare a thought for the private sector worker who will have to work like a Japanese prisoner of war until they are 70 to pay for that luxury. And for what? To spend 1/4th (or 1/12th if you live in Scotland) of their life slumped in a sofa with a doltish countenance on their face. I can think of nothing more self-conceited. It just so happens that the real - and growing - division in society is public vs private sector workers.

I have been pejoratively referred to as a rational misanthropist, but this act of fratricide is surely that accusation manifest in all its glory. The European Social Model must be the most self-serving institution in history, insouciant to all those who do not share their supercilious ideals. Far from supporting the weak and deserving, it has actively encouraged a client state for the proletariat; embodying the egregious present, whilst contemptuous of the past and oblivious to the realities of the future.

There is a delusional belief that the future of society is not their problem; they have earned the right to retire at 60 and someone else will have to pay for it - even if it means confining their own children to indigence. Well, if nobody is going to be around when they are eligible for their pension, who exactly is going to finance it? With birth rates plummeting, and the only uxorious males doing their bit being Muslim men, I can't imagine anyone who would want to to work in the legitimate job market. When the tax rates inevitably reach such exponential proportions - because of the decline in the national tax base and an increase in welfare obligations - there just won't be any incentive to live in Britain anymore: unless you have a gold-plated pension or have paid for a peerage. Not even the incentive of knowing that someone has to support your parents' pleasure and profligacy will stop you from emigrating. I am all for atomism, but not when it is some hideous mutation that harms everyone except yourself.

There are no extenuating circumstances for this kind of behaviour. If further strikes are scurrilously threatened, the immediate response must be to threaten to liberalise the market and allow the private sector to compete on equal terms. It would result in no more half-day public-sector working practices - the end to inefficient producer driven institutions - as well as having the added benefit of driving up productivity and lowering prices for the consumer. And if the public sector workers do not find that an amiable situation, perhaps they had better take a look across towards Continental Europe. Hopefully, they might then have a cathartic experience and consider themselves fortuitous enough that they actually have jobs - for the moment.

Finally, I wouldn't bet your pension on there being a Thatcher or Reagan to resolve this protracted impasse either; my money is on government capitulation, again.

Such Enviable Class

The Tories raison d'etre. Where Are They Then?

Taxes Hit All-Time High

"An analysis by the accountants Ernst & Young, based on the Treasury’s own figures, shows the chancellor will match the record high for the tax burden this year [37.6%)] and rise above it next year [37.8%].

That means it will be higher than in the 1970s under Denis Healey, when the top rate of income tax was 83%, and the early 1980s, when it was 60%.

Treasury figures show tax revenues will total £490 billion this year, up from £271 billion when Brown took office. The £219 billion rise is equivalent to £9,000 for every household in Britain."

Didn't we learn the lessons of the past?

I have come to believe, aside from the obvious benefits of low taxation and limited state interefence, that the Tory Party only exists because there happens to be a Labour Party. This is the Tories raison d'etre; to correct the damage that the Left continually inflicts on Britain when it is in power - or so it used to be.

The empirical evidence suggests that the Tories always have the unforgivable task of presiding over Britain when it is clinically fed-up, and almost always this period of painful convalescence is followed by a desire by the electorate to excogitate over social democracy. Oblivious to the tergiversations of the Left, the British throw themselves with alacrity back into the arms of social democracy. After an initial period of consolidation, the Left becomes unable to restrain its inherent primal instincts and begins to engage in its favourite past-time of apocrypha and larceny; continuing the atavstic impulse to redistribute and interfere. The inevitable climax of this process is that of economic and social degeneration.

As a consequence, Britain will continue to mutate into the worst aspects of EUtopia. This means embracing French public-service ethics, Belgian foreign policy, Italian birth rates, Swedish tax rates and Greek state pension liabilities. And this is to say nothing of Britain's numerous afflictions.

Until a cogitative case is made for substantial tax cuts, and an assault on the iconoclastic adherence to state involvement in society, Britain, like the European Union, will continue to experience a slow and painful suicide. Only this time there seems to to be no pathology to correct Britain's malaise; there is no discernable Thatcher on the horizon, only a consensus to manage Britain's decline amongst the political establishment.

As Withnail once enunciated presciently: we are indeed drifting into the arena of the unwell.

The Religion of Tolerance

"An Attack on Islam"

Must we continue to be tolerant of the intolerant?

Mohammed of the Month

Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar

Just because you happen to study psychology doesn't mean you can't be a half-wit

We've Come for Your Children

The British government's announcement, at the behest of Gordon Brown, that it is to financially award British yoofs [sic] for good behaviour is yet another cynical bribe. It is quite simply an attempt to increase the government's client state, indoctrinating misguided and impressionable teenagers to believe that they cannot survive without the state's guidance.

Aside from that initial thought, and after some cerebral activity which didn't involve being hit over the head with a stick, I came to the conclusion that these "reward-cards", the concoction of some half-wit, were also ethically erroneous. Mr. Brown states that he is attempting to reward individuals who behave in a civilised and conventionally correct manner; but, surely we should be encouraging the ideal that individuals should be brought up to believe that respect, tolerance and deference are ends in themselves, not a means to achieve financial reward.

As Mark Steyn states:

"Respect is a two-way street, and two-way streets are increasingly rare in British town centres. The idea that the national government can legislate respect is a large part of the reason why there isn't any. Almost every act of the social democratic state says: don't worry, you're not responsible, leave it to us, we know best. The social democratic state is, in that sense, profoundly anti-social and ultimately anti-democratic".

If that is the case, and I am inclined to agree, how does the state expect us to respect each other when it doesn't even trust us to make the right decision in our own lives? The straight forward answer is that they don't.

Apart then from being an attempt to secure more Labour votes, the "reward-card" seems part of a systematic and coherent policy. That policy is to undermine the institution of the family, and to supplant that parental authority with the coercive instincts of the state - and never mind that the taxpayer is subsidising it.

Why would Labour wish to achieve this? The reason is that real Socialists are not only committed to equality of opportunity, but also to equality of outcome. Promoting equality, like most of the hard things in life, has been won over a sustained period of time and with great difficulty - it is inherently a soporific activity. Labour though has realised that lowering standards, rather than raising them, is an easier way to achieve a semblance of equality of outcome. The inevitable result is that children, who through no fault of their own happen to attend a grammar school or reside in a loving stable family, are penalised to make up for the short-comings of less fortunate individuals. Rather than taking away these advantages, these virtues should be actively encouraged and extended to as many children as possible. Labour wishes to lower everything to the lowest common denominator: if one child can't go to a grammar school, then no child shall have the opportunity.

Having then seemingly given up on providing our children with an adequate education, the government wishes to interfere in the domain of the family, whereby they are able to properly monitor, regulate, equalise, and teach thoughts that are consummate with government orthodoxy.

For those of a Burkean persuasion human society is something rooted and organic; and to try to mould and shape it according to the plans of an ideologue, however well-meaning, is to invite unforeseen disaster. "Nothing can be more absurd and dangerous," wrote Edmund Burke in 1761, "than to tamper with the natural foundations of society, in hopes of keeping it up by artificial contrivances."

It just so happens that the Left's unremitting policies and prejudices have successively degraded these organic institutions - most notably marriage - that sustain a respectable social order. We must wake up to the fact that apart from being mere "coercive gimmicks", as the Tories suggest, these "reward-cards" have a far greater deep-seated purpose: the nationalisation of childhood.

Thoughtcrime is the Only Crime That Matters

Why black sheep are barred and Humpty can't be cracked

Police seize golliwogs from shop after racism claim

Remember to be careful what you think; moreover, be careful what others believe you might think.

The Urban Legend


Heseltine to design Tory urban revivial

If the Tories are unable to capture what should be eminently winnable seats like Cheltenham, Solihull or Winchester, then what chance have they got in Reading or Swindon? And that is to say nothing of Birmingham, Liverpool or Manchester.

The paucity of any gains at the 2005 election in Labour's northern fiefdoms is attributable to the fact that much of northern England, and in particular Scotland, resembles Georgia under Communist rule. Economic activity derives from one source: public money.

As long as voters are reliant on Labour's sycophantic activities for subsistence, culminating in an effective client state for the Labour Party, the Tories have little chance of reversing their retreat from Britain's urban heartlands.

Why on earth would you vote your employer out of office?

The Falkland Islands: Prepare for War in Peace

The Scotsman, a paper I am rarely inclined to take any notice of, last Sunday reported that "an increasingly anxious UK government is closely monitoring a build-up of Argentinian military strength". My first thoughts were that it wasn't really a surprise. The UK's armed forces have for quite some time been going through a period of "reorganisation" - a government euphemism for cuts. As a consequence there is bound to be a relative depreciation in comparison with Argentina.

Apart from the Argentinian military build-up, it would also appear that the heightened sense of the threat to the Malvinas islands - as they are known in South America and probably the EU - has been gathering for several months as President Nestor Kirchner seeks to further consolidate more power in his own hands.

It is alleged that several Argentinian aircraft have over-flown island airspace in a bid to test RAF defences and a number of Falkland vessels have been seized in waters close to Argentina. This already tense situation has been further exacerbated by the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, a Kirchner ally, who responded to criticism from Prime Minister Blair this month by telling him to "return the Malvinas to Argentina".

Apparently high-ranking officials in the Foreign Office, as well as the Ministry of Defence - which is historically ignored - have confessed to concerns that the changing political situation in Argentina and Latin America, as well as Britain's growing military commitments around the world, are conspiring to undermine the security of the Falkland Islands.

A senior Ministry of Defence source states that:

"This could be termed as sabre-rattling, but when our forces are deployed in so many locations, its potential for causing mischief is magnified. We've been watching a steady build-up of the Argentine air force over the past year. Frankly, they have no need for such a large fighting force, and there is concern in Whitehall as to what this is all about".

I would have thought it was obvious what their intentions were, a defence of their perceived national interests, which is something the present UK Government has a rather poor record on: Gibraltar et al.

The source then added:

"The Argentine air force is at least twice the size of that we fought during the Falklands War and the question has to be asked: how many more aircraft do they need"?

A rather succinct conclusion; the Argentinian's don't actually need that many aircraft to engage in irredentist activities against the British. I also doubt whether the British have the political volition, let alone the military capability, to re-capture the Islands.

I have always believed that the lesson of the original Falklands conflict should have been to remind the British nation of its maritime legacy. For a short period it did inculcate this belief, with the immediate reversal of the Conservative government's misguided 1981 Strategic Defence Review, which would have severely ameliorated Britain's maritime capability. The Falkland Islands conflict didn't only just come to the rescue of Margaret Thatcher and her administration.

Unfortunately nothing has been learnt, and the British nation is still not about to embrace her special peculiarity; the sea, and is seemingly bent on dismissing it. Britain still seems to have lost touch with its instructive past.

Ever since the end of the First World War British governments - Conservative and Labour - have held views and actions that are antithetical to the interests of Britain. The government of the day has believed that foreign relations are best managed through liberal means. It has consistently rejected the idea that a military deterrence and a constant mutual readiness for war were needed to keep prospective aggressors from challenging Britain's world-wide interests. Just because the world is no longer pink, and the Union Jack no longer flies in Hong Kong, it doesn't mean everything has changed. Britain's interests are still inherently global.

Britain still remains a significant maritime power, against the wishes of europhilles, but that fact depends on its sea power and the ability to protect its essential trade routes and communication lines. It is this that holds together Britain's vast maritime empire, and which ultimately ensures its prosperity and survival. The guarantor of that survival, the Royal Navy; however, has been allowed to diminish to a level of strength incommensurate with Britain's global interests.

The virtual atrophy that the Royal Navy has experienced since the end of the Second World War has its roots in the prevelance of welfarism in the 20th century, and the state's illegitimate infringement into daily-life. With the expansion of the British state and its usurpation of the provision of services, which were once provided by private and voluntary organisations, the three Armed Forces have had to compete against not only each other, but other seemingly more worthy causes.

It's an incorrigible fact that the current procurement of a new generation of aircraft carries, which the present Labour government is attempting to achieve with great difficulty, is not only a nuisance to the altruistic Chancellor of the Exchequer, but also to a voter on incapacity benefit. This is especially pertinent if it means a concerted effort by government to cut spurious claimants. You can't really blame them for thinking like that; they are merely products of their own special circumstances. The Chancellor believes that the state can provide the solution to all social inequalities, and the incapacity claimant, having had every independent atavistic trait hermetically destroyed, now believes state support is a right which cannot be repudiated.

It also didn't help that Europe's dependence upon American armed forces during the Cold War only further extenuated the circumstances. American forces effectively allowed Europe - including Britain - to divorce itself of its fundemental responsibilites to its citziens, and to divert resources away from defence to expensive welfare programmes. It is I suppose a moot point to add that it is these welfare programmes that have left Europe so susceptible to vigorous ideologies like Islam, and which threaten the very fabric of European society.

The salient point is that both Britain and the Royal Navy's destiny are intrinsically bound together. The Royal Navy is organic, a mere extension of the state's imperative, it cannot be artificially transformed or rebuilt. For that reason the essential foundation of sea power is a government willing to nourish the state's maritime resources in peacetime. Unfortunately we are in years of relative neglect.

The Government has a peacetime policy, but it goes against all sense of reality: not to prepare for war. At the most generous it could be termed a policy of extemporisation. British Government's must understand that peace is a relatively modern invention, and that war is not a pathology that with proper hygiene and treatment can be wholly prevented; every war-free period is actually an inter-war period.

There now then needs to be a vital awareness as to the importance of sea power in Britain's past, its role in the political, military, diplomatic and economic history of Britain, and the dissemination of that maritime knowledge into the public consciousness.

It was Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond, one of the leading intellectual exponents of the British maritime paradigm, who stated that without a conscious appreciation of what and who we are, then "Demos is at the mercy of false leaders and fallacies".

As for the Falkland Islands - they are a prisoner to fortune.