Right Wing Party Games

Games of misery and imagination to while away any spare moments before we rise up and destroy them all…

Fantasy Leftie Lab Rats.

Just take two elements of the theory, practice or personnel of the United Left as they experiment willy-nilly with all of Mankind and now with the whole planet - and see how they like it.

1. Place an ordinary, thirteen-year-old girl who has been plied with drink and drugs, (such as a young Whoopi Goldberg perhaps) in a bed with a middle-aged Left-wing celebrity such as Roman Polanski and discover what (if not rape) the following activities might be defined as.

2. Take a carbon-neutral form of sustainable transport, such as a long ship or a tea clipper, and invite anti-carbon dioxide campaigners such as Al Gore and IPCC director Rajendra K Pachuri and see how long it takes to get to Copenhagen from, say, Hollywood.

3. Place an ordinary gang of violent repeat criminals in the house of a liberal judge. Let them be armed and threaten the judge’s family with their weapons. Let the judge and one companion pursue the fleeing miscreants and see what sort of sentence the judge might receive.

Pass the parcel (in a Belfast pub.)

A competitive and yet consensual game.

Going round the group, person A names a Leftie with a surname beginning with a randomly-chosen letter. Player B names a Leftie whose name begins with the next letter in the alphabet after that one. If Leftie Two is held by the group to be more loathsome than Leftie One, then player B stays in and Player A leaves. But if Leftie Number Two is an improvement on Leftie Number One, then Player B leaves and Player A stays in.

Best not start with ‘T’ too often, because nobody will stay in long after ‘Toynbee’.

Every player only has one life because the Buddhists and druids are wrong, okay?

Sound: Unsound.

Back when the world was young we used to play this other game.

I’m referring of course to 1979 and the next few years when a whole new generation of conservatives, classical liberals, libertarians and all-purpose Swiss Army Right-wingers were called to the flag of Thatcherism in Britain and Reaganism in the States to support what we felt was necessary to make the world a better place.

Exactly.

And we had fun doing it – and as we did so, we made it safe for people to discuss the virtues of private property and a world after the death of Soviet Communism and a computer in every house and office and power companies competing for our business…without the world being destroyed.

We were right (mostly, but not all the time) and everyone else was wrong (mostly, but not all the time)…but we had fun. The game was Sound: Unsound.

In it, each player in turn speaks of a pair of opposing but similar concepts, names or experiences in the same rough area (such as Leeds) in order to win laughs of recognition and pride for our own pleasures and prejudices and to sneer in derision at the weedy, idiotic and sometimes brutal things that the other folk go in for instead. It is just like blogging; but an oral pleasure rather than a digital one.

To be Sound was to be into strong military defence of the West and no messing with soppy détente: it was to support free enterprise and privatization and low taxation and a small, lawful state. To be Unsound was to be Red Hot instead of True Blue in Britain (it’s the other way round these days in the States, I suppose); to be wet and soppy instead of brave and forthright; to be pacifist instead of irenic; to care without ever considering paying one’s dues personally. Soundness was about fun and profit and unashamed patriotism and slaughtering the Left’s sacred cows and making MacDonald’s burgers out of them. It wasn’t all about politics – there was a laddish feel to it, and so some of our pleasures were puerile and not always chivalrous alas; but still and all there was a good team feeling and joint strength grew from it for the activism that we undertook back in The World.

So, in no particular order, latter-day examples of our little game might be:

Habitats. Jungle; sound. Tropical rainforest; unsound.

(Because no-one ever sang a song that begins: Down in the tropical rainforest where nobody goes…)

And I hate the bloody rainforest.

History. A ’45; sound. The ’45; unsound.

Sci-Fi films. Aliens; sound. ET; unsound.

Political books; The Road to Serfdom sound. The Road to Wigan Pier; unsound.

Supernatural romance. Ghost; sound (shooting and money). Truly, Madly Deeply; (Guardian readers and 'political refugees') unsound.

Military aviation movies. The Great Escape; sound. The Great Waldo Pepper; unsound.

And you can do it the other way round for surprise value.

Rivers of Babylon; unsound. Rivers of Blood; sound.

‘Do you want to drink decaff, organic or Fair Trade?’; unsound. ‘Let’s face it, you didn’t really come back here tonight for a cup of coffee, did you?’; sound.

Well, that just about wraps it up for 2009 on TJ.AT?

I want to thank you all for reading it and not taking out a contract on me, and as for those of you who ‘follow’ my blog, I hope that you got some traffic from it as well as any laughs I might have provided along the way.

I’m especially grateful to those wise and knowledgeable bloggers who’ve put me on the right track this past year, and by whose detailed and incisive posting about those malign and stupid forces that assail us all I have begun to realise just how deep we are in it.

Many thanks also to those kind and great bloggers amongst you who linked to some of my posts: it’s wonderful to receive recommendations and help in spreading my gospel of suburban suspicion, narrow-mindedness and the rule of law in ever-greater circles around the world.

Yet still furthermore extra additional thanks to those who took part once, twice, Three Times A Lady in the Culture Wars – The Culture season (whether I spelled their names correctly or not), and to [almost all] the commentators who took time to write something about my posts, of which some were admittedly in very poor taste or otherwise unwise. I am truly sorry for the hurt caused to some visitors by one post about a particularly vile crime that seems to have attracted a great deal of attention – even if the detractors still don’t seem to recognise my complete condemnation of that very crime. Please note: abusive insistence that I remove or change a post will probably not result in anything like what such people want.

And as for those very few who were entirely abusive or who merely said that I was wrong just because they disagreed with my beliefs but who didn’t provide any counter argument at all …Well, if they look really, really closely then they’ll just about be able to notice me not giving a shit. And so on to 2010.

I hope that 2010 is a good year for you all and yours in your private, health and working lives.

And as for politics?

My friends, in 2010 we have an appointment to keep, haven’t we?

Happy New Year.

North Northwester.

Little grey cells

For reasons that’ll be made clear later in this post, I’ve not been able to produce my lengthy uber-rants lately. As Jade would say, ‘Thanks for that.’
What I hope to have for you all tomorrow is a bit of festive fun that you might enjoy for some short time during the long wait for the New Year fireworks, or in quiet moments when Wii and charades pall, or in the car on the way to hate rallies in 2010. It’s a treasure that I have enjoyed since the Dawn of Civilisation (1979), and one that I’ll be delighted to pass on for you, my friends, to enjoy and hand down through the generations as a family inheritance, like cleft palates or Napoleonic levels of self-confidence.

For today, though, it’s snippets of life in this jewel set in a silver sea that is New Labour’s Britain.

*****

Donkey’s years.

My oldest (living, mortal) friends are in dire financial straits. The Greatest Economic Leader of All Time has all but destroyed the private sector profession through which this married couple have prospered or sometimes just made ends meet, over the recent decades. With a mortgage to pay and their typically Tory selfish addiction to protein, carbohydrates, fats and vitamins still stubbornly surviving in the spiritual and anti-materialist paradise that is Albion, Mrs. Best-Friend had applied to work in the huge apparatus of the Welfare State. (As the Jewish kamikaze pilot said when asked why he did it: Hey, it’s a living.)
Mrs. Best-Friend asked me to be a character (as distinct from an employment) referee. Mrs. B-F and I have never worked together as such - unless you count charity work and spreading the Gospel According to Maggie Thatcher as work, which I don’t. It’s personal. I sent them my office phone number and my extension (guess how many sixes it has in it?) and awaited their call.
Commendably prompt, the HR person from the Department for Hurt and Awful Nuisances (Ultimo West Division) contacted me. After the questions about Mrs. Best-Friend’s employment history (you’ll recognise the appropriateness and efficiency of professional recruiters asking work-related questions of a character referee) and her honesty and integrity: about which I could justly fountain praise and adoration, she asked me how long I’d know Mrs. B-F.
I replied ‘Since 1979.’ (That year again. It’s a conspiracy, I tell you.)
‘Let me work that out,’ replied that HR-qualified, multi kilo-Sov per year salaried personnel recruiter in the arithmetically difficult year of 2009.
‘That’s thirty years,’ I explained to the Arse of Bo, politely.
‘Thanks,’ she replied, and went away happily knowing that your taxes have been spent on an education system that is the envy of the (animist headhunter pygmy) world.

Later on a thought struck me.
It happens.
Thirty years probably isn’t very long in liberal judge sentencing a violent criminal years.

*****

Little grey (monastery) cells.

Is it just me, or did the Christmas episode of Agatha Christie's Christmas Poirot this year display just the teeniest little bits of pro-western cultural propaganda?
Firstly, we saw Poirot doing his rosary: this from a character who, in his brilliant David Suchet incarnation, hasn’t shown much if any religious inclination that I can recall.
Later on, we heard a character being referred to as being involved in anti-slavery investigations for the Foreign Office and later still another character declaimed that the salve trade hadn’t been wholly abolished, except for in the West: in the East (and it was obvious here that they meant the Middle East) slavers are still commissioning the abduction of specific racial types, and I thought that it was implied they were intended for harems.
Later still, with the villains unmasked and the victims set free, Poirot recommends to the newly-enfranchised heroine/victim to find solace in faith - via the rosary - and from the hope that came last from Pandora’s Box.

The atheist weiner-whiners have spotted some significance about this over at IMDB.

Still, there was an evil nun and Tim Curry, so it wasn’t all a one-sided victory for Enlightened Christendom (and in subtext perhaps for modern Judaism too) over the rest.
But still.

*****

Plague.

It’s not fair.

Mrs. Northwester had a version of this virus just before Christmas, and though it slowed her down it didn’t prevent her shopping or preparing for Christmas or cooking. I’ve got the deluxe version, however. Whereas her sniffles and aches merely slowed her down in the final stretch of Advent, I can scarcely move myself off the sofa to change DVDs when they’re finished (something that even the best remote control can’t do - and the poor girl has to rest some time), and it’s all I can do to life the nutritious little snacks that she brings me to my trembling, pallid lips.

But I must soldier on and not complain. Just as it is my deep humility alone that prevents my genius becoming monstrous, my stoicism reminds me that the world does not revolve around Yours Truly, and I have work to do for the millions who eagerly await my New Year’s Eve Party-Time Special.

Till tomorrow, peeps. Keep it real, and keep to the right.

What's right about this?

British man said to be mentally ill executed in China


A British man convicted of drug smuggling in China has been executed, the Foreign Office has confirmed.

Akmal Shaikh, 53, a father-of-three, of London, had denied any wrongdoing and his family said he was mentally ill.

PC World burns to the ground

Devil's Kitchen proposes a race war - but all done in the best possible taste.

Ross decides to bid for the Bin Laden assassination using internet capitalism as his trusty tool.

The Ranting Penguin predicts blood on the streets or something as the backlash arrives, maybe, eight years late.

Arbeit Matt Frei

This is the BBC. 26 September 1940.


Seán Lester: German reconstruction not being addressed Germans have not been able to obtain building supplies to repair damage.



League of Nations Secretary General Seán Lester has said more must be done to repair damage done in Alsace-Lorraine by British military action one year ago.
Mr Lester said Germans were being denied "basic human rights" and urged Britain to end its "Uncceptable and counterproductive blockade".
He said British well-being depended on conditions improving in the Continent.
Rallies are being held across Germany to mark a year since the conflict, in which 14,000 Europeans were killed.

In comments printed on the League's news magazine, Mr Lester said he was "deeply concerned that neither the issues that led to this conflict nor its worrying aftermath are being addressed".
He said that while levels of violence had been low in the past year, there was still no durable ceasefire after The Norwegian Campaign and Germans were "denied basic human rights".
"The quality and quantity of humanitarian supplies entering Greater Germany is insufficient, broader economic and reconstruction activity is paralysed," said Mr Lester.
Under Britain's blockade of Europe, only basic humanitarian supplies are allowed in, meaning Germans have not been able to obtain materials to repair damaged homes, buildings and infrastructure.

The League Commission for Refugees (LCR) in Germany told the BBC that public health was suffering as a result of inadequate and unsanitary water supplies, and there had been a rise in infant mortality. LCR spokesman Cristoforo Martini said thousands of tons of sewage were being pumped into the North Sea every day, because material for rebuilding treatment plants and other facilities was so scarce.
An international humanitarian aid convoy of some 200 vehicles is hoping to mark the anniversary by delivering supplies to Germany. The convoy is currently in Sweden, awaiting permission to cross the Baltic Sea and proceed to Denmark.

The National Socialist Party, which controls Germany, is holding 22 days of rallies to mark the anniversary.
Senior leader Joseph Goebbels said Germans remained "steadfast" after the conflict
"The resistance, which defended its land with honour, was not broken," the AFP news agency quoted him as saying.

Mr Lester called on Britain to end its blockade, uphold international law and make it possible for economic activity and civilian reconstruction to take place. He also urged The National Socialist Party to respect the law and bring an end to violence, and for all Europeans to "work for unity".
He said there was "a sense of hopelessness in Germany today for 70 million Germans, half of whom are under 18" and that "a fundamentally different approach to Germany is urgently required".
"Their fate and the well-being of Britain are intimately connected."

The BBC's Diana Mitford in Berlin said the mood on the anniversary of the Poland Campaign was relatively quiet, but uneasy.
Both Britain and Germans in Europe believe 1941 is bound to bring further violence, our correspondent adds.


And I didn’t have to change very much at all.

Petit bourgeois SMS

Is it just me or has any of you also noticed that we suburban social conservatives just aren’t ‘with it’ where “SMS talk” or “text speak” is concerned?

The grubby hordes of Morlocks and the grungy Orcs in their Council houses and Housing Association flats, these silver grey tracksuited and baseball capped layabouts are fluent in this ‘state of the art’ technology. They are forever sending each other rude messages that are probably all about us (the decent and respectable backbone at the heart of Middle England), and yet we struggle even to switch the predictive text off and thus to write in clear, honest, law-abiding and poorly-punctuated lounge bar English. Usually we’re forced to text in capitals because that particular facility is frustratingly complicated for the hard working taxpayers who also happen to pay the wages of everyone in the Nokia Company, thank you so very much. Why can’t they make the users’ manuals easy to understand; if they can’t clarify the ‘menu options’ in the phone sets themselves?

But that’s the Japanese for you all over.

The Politically Correct Brigade is as bad; if not worse. In their silly sustainable organic Cuban hand-knit ponchos and their endangered tropical rainforest wooden jewellery, and living as they do in ridiculously expensive houses in the nicest parts of town in winter and in plastic yurts in Provence and Tuscany in the summertime, they seem as happy and fluent as the scroungers they owe their jobs to; no doubt texting each other with the times and dates of their gay orgies and nasty little jokes about Mrs. Thatcher and lawnmowers. I expect they are always ‘laughing out loud’ (LOL) at some perfectly sensible thing which that nice Mister Cameron has said, or ‘for your informationing’ (FYI) something unspeakable about Melanie Phillips.

It makes me so angry that every time I send some perfectly clear message, some lazy long-haired techie sends me a message back asking me what it means. I think they do it on purpose: you know, to undermine the monarchy or something.

But we can strike back! We: the vast and silent majority can add our voices to the equally loud chorus of complaint against the tyranny of cool and trendy people who are even now eating away at the moral fibre and drinking from the milk of human kindness that is at the very bread and butter of all that is wholesome and true in England. We can forge our very own ‘text speak’ to express our exasperation, disgust, and daily (Mail) astonishment at how New Labour and its greedy and corrupt friends in the banks (above the Deputy Branch Manager level at any rate,) are destroying what is right and good.

Therefore I’d like to introduce you to the first in a series of social conservative ‘text speak’ that sends a message from us, as we raise our metaphorical eyes to an equally suburban Heaven at the latest loony-Leftie outrage from Westminster, Whitehall or the BBC and ask how any of it can ever be allowed in justice and equity in this once our fair and pleasant land. Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to offer to you in the true Christmas spirit of schadenfreude our very own SMS:

Y?O.Y?O.Y?

Ho. Ho. Ho.

And we’re not talking Charlie’s Angels here.

My own angel is sleeping on for a while and so I’ll have time to post this before breakfast and all that festive and family stuff come into play.

First of all, I wish you a merry Christmas.

It’s kind of you to visit my blog and I hope that the rest of the day goes uphill for you after this! Leave a comment if you wish, and if I can’t answer today due to family commitments then perhaps we’ll meet tomorrow - all unknowing and in spirit if not in person - in line at the corner shop while queuing for the milk that we forgot to buy on Christmas Eve when we had the chance. Perhaps our eyes will meet for a moment of shared joy as the newspaper headlines glare at us, bringing their eternally uplifting Boxing Day message: More Of The Bloody Same. Perhaps also we shall find comfort in the ever-changing seasons of our beautiful planet, (and in the three inches of Global Warming through which we have trudged and slid to get there), and from the marvellous patterns of Mankind’s inventive and industrious existence as we stand amongst the cheerful new displays (pregnant as they are with hope and change even in the deep midwinter) of Cadbury’s Creme Eggs.

It’s been a funny old year even if you discount how our formerly-free nations’ leaders have sold us and our posterity into tax- and debt-slavery while nearly finishing the project of abolishing our traditional freedoms. In response to all this my ranting will, inshallah, go on at least until the General Election campaign begins. Thereafter I might go a bit quiet as I tramp the lonely streets of Castle City spreading the news of something-or-other amongst people who I hope won’t immediately become an angry mob.

But that’s enough about me. Tell me - how wonderful do you think I am?

In politics there’s nothing so befits a man as malicious spite and hatred against his oppressors. I hope - or rather I fear - that 2010 will supply us all with far too many opportunities and way too much motivation to call down the wrath of Heaven (or at least of an enraged electorate) on our tormentors’ heads. As 1500 of you each month pop over here to glimpse me doing so, I plan to carry on publishing my hate-filled hate speech material: varied as its topics, quality and its ‘good taste’ can be…

But blog ranting is business: not personal.

…Or is it?

The personal is the political.

How to get back at the jokers?

How best to wreak vengeance on the destroyers who’ve scythed their nihilistic way through our civilisation like locust/chainsaw hybrids?

Mrs. Northwester; who is worldly wise as well as a gift from Heaven, suggests that living happily ever after is the best revenge. Forgiveness is the best way to get even. This seems on the face of it to be a paradox: as oxymoronic as the phrase Television Personality or a tabloid headline; Jordan’s Secret Wish.

Vengeance can tear you up. It can weaken you and waste your energy and your time when you could be fighting in the war instead of bemoaning its horrors. I’ve been involved in one of those long, draw-out family feuds that last for years and waste the substance and shatter the peace of the very people whom you are born to care for. It’s been very tiring and has served no purpose at all and it’s hurt some of my nearest and dearest and it wasn’t worth a damn.

So I’ve stopped.

I’m now making the most of the post-war peace and hoping that I turn out to be Japan rather than Italy, or West Germany rather than East Germany. But the way to cope with it now (and what would have been the way to prevent its several brutal winters of guerilla warfare), would have been to forgive the guilty parties for their offences (if such they were) and to have moved onto a battlefield where my faction could win, and win big.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean being passive in the face of injustice or threatened harm (or why else do we get involved with politics?) but it does mean not being eaten up with hatred for enemies, and worse still for lackluster or former friends. It’s working for me, up to a point, and in this fallen world that’s pretty much all you can expect. I’ve had to make some ideological adjustments (the go-to guy for forgiveness isn’t Hermes Trismegistus or The Great Mother after all, but the birthday boy Himself).

But being less like Mister Angry about perceived hurts to me and mine has left me with more time and in better spirits to live my life and to politick. The peace has left me with more energy to spend on active politicking in the real world so I can stick it to the Marxists and Islamists and their useful fools and dhimmi apologists and thus to become more active in supporting the British part of what’s left of Western civilisation and in cheerleading for its overseas branches.

The political is the personal.

Our enemies want us demoralized.

The Marxists want us alienated from love of family and from affection to traditionally respected institutions. Each time the Combined Left gets a cheap laugh at the monarchy or a Christian minister or other, respected person or institution, they make us weaker and less able to stand up for what generations of struggling people have come to regard as good, or useful, or right. The Islamists want us to be made full of doubt about our right to exist and to lead our lives as we have come to: free in conscience and speech, in our dress and in our entertainments.

Both projects are negative. Their activists believe that they are positive visions of the future but they are wrong. All Marxism will bring is what it always does: all-too-believable large numbers in terms of body-counts and refugee figures, and unbelievably high numbers where tractor production and literacy rates are concerned. Whatever the Caliphate brings, we probably won’t understand it because the message will be in Arabic and I don’t expect anyone to be teaching foreign languages to kaffirs come that dread day.

I’m sure you are all impeccably polite: thoughtful; charitable and tolerant (hell, you visit me, which proves the tolerant part), and have no need for lessons from me in making your way through life with grace and gentility. But be of extra good cheer: your good deeds and polite words are subversive acts against our rulers. Indeed, they are revolutionary in the old sense of bringing the old times round again.

Not only are our goodnesses just a matter of just plain getting along and doing it right for the sake of it; they are artillery salvoes in the culture wars.

Every time a man opens a door for a woman and she accepts it gracefully rather than with a glare it’s a victory for both over the Radical Feminists who argue that men will always oppress women as long as free institutions survive.

Each time we let someone onto the main road in front of us instead of making them wait then we both have another small reason to be grateful for living in a polite culture that’s not at civil war with ‘reactionaries’ or ‘lesser breeds’ or ‘the bosses.’

Every charitable donation is a declaration of moral independence from our gigantic and pernicious Welfare State and a rebuke to those who argue that only government activity can secure happiness and health amongst the suffering.

Every minute spent comforting a friend instead of heading on to the next pub or to supper (as Mrs. Northwester did last night) is both living the ideal of western civilisation and at the same time a standing rebuke to those who say our country and its neighbours are places where love and decency can never truly exist until they have destroyed all that we now possess and they have built their paradises.

Whether our ability to be good to one another derives from the instincts of group solidarity inherited from thousands of generations of hunter-gatherers in Africa; or whether it is the evolved result of rational self-interest moulded into habits of courtesy and charity and learned from living amongst the free institutions of commerce, property and law; or whether it derives from something eternal and supernatural, it is a blessing and something to fight for.

And fight for it we should: sweetly in day-to-day life, I would suggest, and bitterly and with eager venom on the political battlefield when necessary.

Okay, I’ve buttonholed you at the party and blocked you off from the drinks table and more interesting company for long enough (assuming that you’ve even read this far). You’ll be wanting to get all festive and there’s a goose to prepare or a nut roast to defrost and antacids to chug (mea culpa.)

I expect to be back tomorrow - as bitter and cynical as ever - a northern brother to Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells. But inasmuch as this day is about one idea of where that goodness comes from originally, (and just this once I promise); I’ll see your Merry Christmas and raise you a God bless you, if you can dig it.

North Northwester.

Picture from here.

Christmas Appeal

You know, at this very special time of year our thoughts are drawn to those less fortunate than ourselves. Amongst these are the destitute and the hungry; the homeless and the dispossessed and the refugees. But it is not just the physical and financial worlds where poverty can cause great anguish to our fellow men. There is also the poverty of the troubled mind and the anguished soul: the depressed and the lonely; the mentally ill and the ignorant; the delusional; the paranoid and the violently, incurably and criminally insane; and those who willingly seek employment.
Most seriously damaged by the hurly-burly of the ever-greater changes and challenges that we meet in our modern existence is one group that rarely reaches the headlines, and one for whose benefit one rarely (if ever) attends a charitable concert or even a jumble sale. And yet their suffering is as deeply felt, I’m sure, and those from the more widely known victim groups, and it is on their behalf that I’m appealing to you today. I am referring, of course, to law abiding taxpayers.

Christmas is an especially cruel and painful time for these unfortunate people. It is not easy for them to join in with the rest of us and embrace all the jollity and excitement of this, the greatest commercial festival of the trading year. Law abiding taxpayers who find themselves standing in line in the Post Office, queuing to buy stamps or perhaps to send a neatly-wrapped parcel or two, rapidly begin shaking and soon turn apoplectic at the sight of Kimberley-Rhiannon blithely pocketing fistfuls of their money via child-related entitlements in the Welfare State and which she will never, ever, use to properly feed or clothe the diversely-surnamed glistening-nosed little scamps who are even now variously whining to leave, or screaming and fighting amongst themselves and running into and around the pensioners. Pensioners who wait patiently for the latest payment of the rewards for their own lifetimes of honest work - or at least for imaginatively concocted Incapacity Benefit claims.

Whereas many an ordinary Briton can happily get through his busy day discussing his sex life and organizing his social schedule on a gunmetal grey mobile phone that matches both his facial piercings and the steering wheel upon which his other hand so lightly rests, law abiding taxpayers are compelled to obey the speed limit and the offside rule on motorways and ‘A’ Roads alike. It does not usually fall to a taxpayer’s unhappy lot to share his simple love of popular music with anyone and everyone in his own neighbourhood or with all the strangers in the neighbourhoods through which his car passes thanks to the remarkable advances that this young century has already seen in music amplification technology for home and hatchback alike.

So when you see them on the streets of this country’s villages, towns and cities, as they walk; pitifully erect and tragically purposeful towards some dreary and uncool paid employment or as they wait; leather-shod and docile to actually pay for goods that they intend to consume or take home to their families, have some pity. Think a moment of these most miserable of souls: freshly washed and clean of shirt as they are: their breath innocent of the comforting perfume of super-strength cider; their blood and dreams unwarmed by either smack or crack; their skins unadorned by the smallest depiction of violence or brutish sexuality or both; nor even by the most modest of obscene slogans. Not for them are the simple pleasures that the rest of us take from the enjoyment of other people’s property or from operatically discussing a bedmate’s moral and carnal imperfections after the pubs close at 3 AM. Still less do they possess the ability or the inclination to rejoice in the wisdom and rationality of Britain’s merciful criminal courts and the gentle good sense of PACE and the Human Rights Acts.

No law abiding taxpayer can ever lead a truly normal life in today’s Britain…but you can still help. For just a few syringes’ worth of cash you can bring weak, hopeful little smiles to their freshly-shaven faces; even as they struggle through life with with comp-li-cated clothes fastenings such as buttons, shoelaces, and belt buckles.All it takes (just like every other problem in life) is money.

# Just £4.80 will buy four hours’ parking at the unattended car park nearest to some fortress-like police station where a taxpayer can make his statement about what happened on the day in question, and where he can later spend some time; forehead pressed firmly against his steering wheel, wondering how on earth it has come to this.

# A mere £6.99 this will buy him a quite acceptable bottle of supermarket festive ruby Port, which is fair enough given what the Chancellor allows him to keep at the end of the day. And let’s face it, Christmas is just once a year and it’s back to the office or shop for the poor sap early next week or on Monday the 4th January - which is three whole fun-filled days for you before the Thursday when you have to sign on again if you can be arsed. That’s only £6.99, and what could you spend £6.99 on: a bunch of plastic-wrapped convenience store carnations, perhaps, to strew across the pavement with all the others in front of the police sign asking for witnesses?

# Around £30 will buy an elderly taxpayer a sturdy, rubber-ferruled walking stick which he or she can wave weakly around if you and seven of your mates decide to have a bit of a laugh. Such an item might later be tagged. bagged, tested for your blood and his DNA and dusted for fingerprints. Much later on it might be used as Exhibit A in the taxpayer’s trial if the kindly police and the decent Crown Prosecution Service decide that he’s violated your human rights by using unreasonable force. Or The Filth might just lose track of it altogether; in which case it’ll become an ordinary eight-against-one witness case and he might just walk. But at least you know where he lives.

# The price of one week’s Housing Benefit at the generous new Local Housing Allowance rate for a typical mother and her four children by three previous partners can purchase for a taxpayer half the cost of some panel beating; replacement windscreen, wipers, windows and trim, and some basic re-spraying at a local garage after her kids have played a jolly Christmas game of Envy Hopscotch down a row of parked cars in a neighbouring posh area.

So please, as you settle down in front of the wide screen on Christmas Day; full of Stella Artois and Turkey Nuggets and being constantly supplied with fresh drink and roll-ups by your new bird, and when you look fondly on as her children open the many smart and brightly-wrapped parcels that you brought home for them only the previous night whilst the taxpayers were at the pub or in church and you wait eagerly to see what each one might contain, spare a thought for those less fortunate than yourself - not least the despairing people from whom those brightly wrapped presents originally came. Spare a thought and maybe a little cash. After all, it’s not your money anyway, is it?

Big fat decade

People like familiar things. They like patterns and regularity and congruencies and they enjoy treating things that are alike in a similar fashion. This is a common; if not universal, phenomenon within human nature through all of history. It is, therefore, almost unknown within the hereditary caste that our political class is evolving into.

Now that we are moving out of them at last, I recently heard our masters’ cultural shamans discussing what to call the block of ten years between 1999 and 2010. This discussion was on Radio One, and took the form of a series of deejayly responses to what used to be called a ‘Think piece’ in the magazine trade - except that this was on the BBC.

Playing Name That Decade is an example of that commonplace love of the familiar which has been so cruelly abandoned and vindictively assaulted by the people who were, prior to the Credit Crunch, Lisbon and Copenhagen called our our ‘rulers’, but who now might more accurately be known as our owners. Simple folk, it seems, want a name for the last decade to add to the list as they use it both within and with reference to popular culture. People think of, and talk of, the 1950s, the 60’s, the 70’s and 80’s and sometimes even with new-found nostalgia, of the 90’s. We had proper nostalgia back in my day, let me tell you.

Of course, these denominations don’t bear much scrutiny and are more often than not wildly inaccurate. Take the 1960’s. Please. In fact, pop culturally speaking, the 1960’s were really only two years long. Up to 1965, there was merely an extension of the cheerful and still largely tradition-loving 1950’s; only with better haircuts for the men and worse for the women…and shorter skirts. Yey, for shorter skirts. 1967 to 1969 were in fact the vanguard of the 1970’s as the Aquarian Age and Flower Power and rock music that had ceased to roll spread across the Western world and began to destroy it. 1965 and 1966, however: they were Swinging London and Carnaby Street and white knee boots and the British Invasion. Maybe a football match here and there. That’s the way it seems looking at it from here and now. And if the 1980’s really started in 1979 in Britain, well, that was all to the good, or mostly.

But The Noughties never really caught on.

This is partly because, I suspect, that nothing’s really ‘naughty’ any more because nothing that our jailers permit or encourage is ever really nice, either. It’s difficult to imagine the thrilling frisson one might feel when joyfully rebelling against the moral constraints of a society that doesn’t have any moral constraints. Or a society, for that matter. If there were any of the old taboos left over to break, then Noughties might have fit the bill, but as the Long 1960’s and 1980plc and The Greater Metropolitan Nineteen-Nineties killed them all off, and brought only the new taboos of political correctness with them - and there is absolutely no official recognition of the right to test, break, or downright violate those taboos. Freedom of speech just doesn’t happen in our proprietors’ minds. No Goon Show or That Was The Week That Was or Monty Python is going to spoof the racial profilers of the General Medical Council, or run a skit of a lesbian outreach worker begging to join the Illuminati or the Thule-Gesellschaft. No assimilated Muslim comedians will be allowed to leave sexual taunts on the answer phone of any member of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain and keep or later regain their lucrative jobs.

So rebellion doesn’t hack it for the glories of the past ten years. No Naughty will stick to this dying decade as Swinging did with the Sixties, and tackiness did to the Seventies, or ‘greedy’ to the 1980’s. Al Gore’s carbon billions, anyone? Jonathan Ross’s pay cut to ‘only’ £3,000,000 per year.

I have noticed an idea, however; should the history books need an appellation for the 3650 or so days in this earthly paradise from which we are only just emerging.
In fact, it’s all over the Internet as the clear winner, which probably explains why the BBC didn’t know about it as their journalists famously don’t have Internet access at all.
It perfectly symbolizes the ways in which we are legislated for and led. This is true at the macro level in terms of taxation and expenditure; of public and private indebtedness; and of carbon dealing and the Royal Mint’s printing activities. It is also rich in overtones of the intelligence, decency and humanity that are possessed by our rulers in parliaments and bureaucracies worldwide. It also echoes quite closely this nation’s reserves of money, spare military capability, and international respect, and its economy's chance in Hell. Ladies and gentlemen, may I humbly draw your attention to The Zeroes?

Neighbourhood watch

I’m terrified.
You see, it’s my neighbour. He’s - oh God, it’s so hard to discuss this - but what else can I do? He’s a good neighbour: quiet, doesn’t litter or have noisy parties or pets. He always stops to say ‘Hello’ and pass the time of day whenever we meet. He keeps himself to himself and there’s never any trouble. And you know what that means. You only learn about people like that when you see a news report with a forensic tent somewhere and grim-faced policemen in overalls carrying shovels and pick-axes into someone’s garden. Another neighbour of mine knows him at their office. Apparently he’s a model worker too: hard working, diligent, punctual and polite to his colleagues.
Are his bosses mad? Don’t they ever read the Daily Mail? Don’t they realize that sometime very soon their Employee of the Year’s photo is going to feature in a side panel of their TV screen also showing flames and smoke billowing out of a house or army barracks or music shop, with those aluminium trolleys ferrying bagged bodies into ambulances? I can’t sleep for worrying about the monster in our midst. It’s been five nights and days without rest now and I have to say the absinthe isn’t keeping me as alert as it used to; not even now I’ve upped the dose to two bottles a day. My hand tremors have ruined the quality of my recent sniper-scope infra red pictures of him moving about inside his ordinary-seeming suburban house. I can’t stand it any more. I know the authorities won’t act until it’s far too late. I shall act as a good citizen and avert this tragedy before the horror has a chance to begin. In these days of social disorder, moral decline, family breakdown, terrorism, mounting paranoia and impotence amongst other middle aged men and cheap supermarket booze, it’s the only decent thing to do. But I know my duty. I shall have to wait until this foul creature is asleep, and visit him in his lair. Britain will be a better place for my heroism. I’m sure you understand. I just wish you’d all stop whispering in my ear for one single moment.

Advent colander

Arguments full of holes from somewhere between Heaven and Hell just before Christmas.

The restaurant was perfect for a pre-Christmas dinner with the in-laws.

The food was plentiful: hot, perfectly cooked and served by cheerful waiters who asked with professional concern when we left some of it on our plates. Too much, too much. The drinks were crisp and cold and delicious. Johnny Mathis and Dean Martin, Bing Crosby and Perry Como lifted us not-too spiritually into the Advent mood. Beautifully tasteful and cheerful Christmas decorations with that thick, expensive-looking tinsel and festoons of holly and ivy swag made the place cosy and festive, and atop the lovingly-dressed tree was a golden, perfect Star of Bethlehem. On our way out our ever-delightful host and proprietor wished us all the sincerest of Merry Christmases and wished us well for the new year.

He looked a little uncomfortable in his brand new close-cropped beard and moustache combo (think of Kenneth Branagh in Wild Wild West), and I couldn’t help hoping that he thought it stylish; rather than pious.

Mrs. Northwester’s parents had told us earlier that in some parts of their town, Mine Host’s less businesslike coreligionists have the habit of driving up to ‘outsiders’ on the street and beating up individuals and couples for fun. Apparently, others like to tell white residents and shoppers that they aren’t wanted here. She didn’t mention any prosecutions or convictions, though. What a country.

Or two countries.

***

On my birthday, Mrs. Northwester and I walked along the canal path to work a little later than usual for me. Two dog-owners stood fluttering by whilst their leashed dogs; (soppy-looking house pooches: we’re not talking Rottweilers here), barked and bounced up at each other. After a while, the human beings who owned those dogs decided it might be a good idea to walk off in different directions to end the barking. We passed them as they separated, and as a third dog owner walked on unconcerned as his pet dropped one on the pavement. ‘Don’t pick it up then!’ snapped Mrs. Northwester to his disappearing back, which, unless he was deaf, contained no spine.

Early next day, I walked to work alone. Mrs. Northwester is not a morning person. A Plastic PC was having a go at a track suited dog owner whose two animals were aimlessly sniffing through the weeds and Walkers packets by the tow path. This officer of the bye-law was stoutly repeating to the outraged dog owner (full poop bag in his hand) that dogs should be kept on the leash. There had been complaints, he said, about dogs fighting the previous day. These dogs weren’t leashed – unlike the barking mad (or barking friendly) ones the previous day. The PCSO kept on repeating ‘Dogs should be on leashes,’ whilst the owner kept on repeating ‘What am I supposed to do?’ and waggling the poop bag helplessly. Apparently it’s impossible to leash dogs and clear their mess up at the same time. There are handy trees and shrubs to tether them to nearby, however. Squeezing between the participants of this Socratic dialogue, I walked on nursing post-birthday queasiness. A few hundred yards on, a fashionably dressed and coiffured woman approached; her husky-expensive dog pattering along obediently at her feet. As part of my Advent campaign to reduce the hurt in the world, I advised her that there was a PCSO further along the path insisting that dogs be put on leashes. She thanked me for intercepting an early morning confrontation with The State, and raised her eyes to a Heaven that allows the uneducated to tell middle class dog owners what to do.

That evening I went home and discovered that Wing-Mirror Vandalism Number Twelve had occurred either on my birthday or on dog-bothering day. I suppose the PCSOs were elsewhere when the cheeky-but-lovable local ‘lads’ added to their score.

I’m not quite sure what any of this says about politics and society in Third Millennium Castle City, but I suspect that Authority (lack of, and respect for: lack of) might be involved somewhere. Oh, and also that people who want to live with in-bred wolves are as diverse and as crazy as the rest of us.

But if it wasn’t for early morning dog-walkers, who would be the first to find the next in the never-ending series of grimly broadcast announcements that the body thought to be ‘Missing school girl, Michelle X…’ has been found?

***

The otherwise adorable and utterly irreproachable Mrs. Northwester has recently acquired an irritating habit.

When we’re watching a DVD at home after a long day’s work she’ll wait until I close my eyes to rest them for a minute or two and then fast-forward the film by an hour and a half’s playing time. She also complains of auditory hallucinations in which - get this - I snore during moments of such trickery.

Perhaps she’s going senile.

But what else can you expect from someone who argues that remote controls, (which are after all intended to operate at a distance from the television and DVD player), should be stored on top of the TV set; instead of being kept conveniently at hand on my sofa?

I think she might need help.

Liberalism ruins lives #2863

Captain’s log, supplemental.

Following yesterday’s half-hopeful post about the apparent redemption of ubermuppet and punishment-intolerant judge, ‘Judge’ Beverley Lunt (yes, James, that is her surname), Julia commented that the prisoner will likely re-offend. True enough. He’s a yo-yo; I should think, and will - like Arnie - be back.

And as for the lovely Bev’s ‘previous,’ which is as long as her arm, and indeed as long as the arm of The Law, we can see how her long record of aiding the criminals at the expense of the victim has probably led to further injustice - condemning the innocent to jail.

Poor Mr Hussain, jailed for 2 ½ years for beating up a burglar who’d tied him and his wife up and threatened her with a knife. As Ranting Stan points out, this judgment is part of our rulers’ collective and ubiquitous insanity. But what might Mr. Hussein have done instead of chasing after the violator (one of a gang of three) of his home and armed aggressor against him and his wife?

The Solomon-like wisdom of Judge John Reddihough puts us straight:

Jailing him, Judge John Reddihough said some members of the public would think that 56-year-old Salem 'deserved what happened to him' and that Mr Hussain 'should not have been prosecuted'.

But had he spared Mr Hussain jail, the judge said, the 'rule of law' would collapse.

He said: 'If persons were permitted to take the law into their own hands and inflict their own instant and violent punishment on an apprehended offender rather than letting the criminal justice system take its course, then the rule of law and our system of criminal justice, which are hallmarks of a civilised society, would collapse.'

Man, I swear that Judge Reddihough uses the Internet recreationally. What is there in Britain today that might have indicated to Mr. Hussain and his brother that if letting the criminal justice system take its course would lead to anything like justice for that or any terrorized family? What makes Heady Reddy think that the rule of law exists at all, or that we are still in a civilised society?

Judge Brainy explained:

'The prosecution rightly made it plain that there was no allegation against you, Munir Hussain, in respect of the force you used against Salem in defending your own home and family or of the force used by either of you in apprehending Salem’.

You simply have to follow a few simple guidelines.

You have to know what they are about to do and wait for them to get in, it seems. It’s only sporting.

You can be sure they won’t be back on the streets any time soon; and that they don’t intend to kill you, so why even consider using violence?

Okay, even violent, blood-soaked and drug-crazed strangers who break into your home after assaulting pregnant women deserve fair warning in case you pick up a knife and they die from wounds later after fighting off medical helpers.

That’s our criminal justice system. Keep on paying those taxes, chaps. You know it’s worth it.