A short history of blame

Hmm.

It’s getting hard to work out whom to blame for what these days.

Based on the Ten Commandments, Christian teachings about the value of the individual and our Anglo-Saxon and Viking notions of personal value (weregild and all that jazz), and though it was  occasionally marred or broken by notions of collective responsibility (see our brutal Norman ancestors’ massacres of everyone even suspected of being able to rebel again in Yorkshire and the earlier massacre of Norse settlers throughout England), throughout much off our history individuals tended to be held responsible for their perceived crimes. Naughty kings and other rulers were held to high standards of not messing with the powers that be and even the commonality by frequent rebellions – except again, when the institution of kingship was held to be too valuable to blame the king himself – in which case his government of over-mighty subjects was held to account.   

But otherwise, if you did the crime you did the time – in the stocks if not in prison. And it worked throughout society -kinda - through private perceptions of individual guilt and responsibility. You could punish people, deter people, take them off the streets or out of the picture altogether – and when you did that they often didn't re-offend. Simples.

Habits of law like this eventually wiped out the very popular barbarian Germanic culture of blood feud – a horribly brutal and expensive vice.

But where would the human race be today without the dear old Enlightenment?

First, there came that old progressive masochism catechism that, for example, the huge and ancient institution of  slavery was somehow caused even by some of the Abolitionists themselves and thus “we are all guilty” allowed ‘us’ all to be – ahem - tarred with the same shivery-exciting brush of lovely guilt, while at the same time feeling superior to the benighted souls who haven’t yet admitted their guilt fulsomely enough.

Today, ‘we,’ the witting and/or ignorant tolerators of all of Progressivism’s menu of evils are expected to kneel before our liberal betters and abase ourselves and give up whatever unsustainable luxury it is the progs want solely for themselves.   

This attitude has metastasised away from merely hurting our fellow creatures and recently led us into a surreal steam-punk alternative history in which the early Lords of the Air took upon themselves the typical Enlightenment task of promising to ration Progress at the then-height of its achievement; intercontinental aviation.

So you get this Zen-master scatology right out of Jules Verne Goes All Verdigris:

“While rejecting suggestions that flying is wrong and should be stopped, Cameron nevertheless argued that the rapid predicted future growth of aircraft emissions must be cut if Britain and the rest of the world are to meet national and international targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

 He naturally followed this pronouncement by attending all future international jamborees by tea-clipper, horse-and-buggy and a stout pair of brogues. Because collective responsibility is so back in fashion.

It gets better. Not only have we been stiffing our fellow Englishmen for centuries by running the Industrial Revolution scam on them at home via the domestic exploitation of labour and then exporting the whole shell game to the Empire and Colonies (all bow, scrape, rend hair shirts, etc), but right now at this end of the hockey stick we’re sticking it to Mother Nature herself: That’ll be $147,000,000,000 please, dear sir, madam, or civilisation.

Which perhaps explains the cats cradle Gordian Knot of progressive guilt-mongering that blames everyone on Earth who happens to be wearing trousers with a fly for causing Man-made Global Warming, which in turn induced man-made regional flooding, but which for some reason can’t be cured by man-made local dredging.

Thanks for clearing that one up, Dumb Jon.

So, to recap.

Breaking with centuries-old Judeo-Christian (and barbarian Germanic) teachings about personal responsibility, Progress slipped the blame for awfulness onto those who didn’t abolish active human evil quickly enough, and then neatly segued into an ethical world where merely by having nice things (say by possessing any technology more advanced than that used by the Clovis Culture) we jointly and severally become the Destroyer of Worlds. Except if it’s manufactured by Apple, ‘natch, which is so cool and little more unsustainable than the nests constructed by weaver ants. So.

It must be pretty easy again to go right back to blaming someone for actually going out and deliberately hurting someone, right?...

Not so much.

Luke Batty is believed to have been struck across the head before being knifed by his father Greg, who was shot by police after threatening paramedics with a knife.

Now this is clearly one of those random human tragedies that even my ever-more reactionary soul can’t somehow blame on Islam or the Progressive infection. The killer seems to have been insane and inherently irresponsible and so where can we lay the guilt for this awful crime, if not the natural human instinct to blame the perpetrator?

Why, it’s down to impersonal forces that fall on otherwise innocent human beings like rain – and no even man-made rain. At least nobody’s blamed common people enjoying the petrol engine or aviation fuel to date as far as I know.

Luke's mother Rosie Batty, who is originally from England, was at the cricket ground when her son was killed. Note the passive voice. There will be more. She told reporters in Australia that Luke, who was a keen footballer as well as a cricket player, had begged for a few more minutes with his father who he rarely saw at the end of the training session. Well, we already know that the late Greg wasn’t Father of the Year…"What triggered this was a case of his dad having mental health issues," Ms Batty told Channel Nine. "He was in a homelessness situation for many years,…which clearly implies that he did not get kicked out of any and all accommodation made available to him because he behaved irresponsibly, or something. A homelessness situation is just, well, external to our control somehow like gravity or being a Sagittarian or something, yeah?….his life was failing,… so it’s not that he failed to do whatever simple things a responsible person might do to avoid being homeless. Australia’s a socially conservative place in general but I don’t think they actually chuck you out to freeze/swelter/be bitten by spiders without trying to house you… everything was becoming worse in his life,…like snowflakes falling onto his karma and stuff… and Luke was the only bright light in his life.

Which he then snuffed out.

"No one loved Luke more than his father…Which was why he had to die, apparently.  No one loved Luke more than me… so it’s a dead heat at the tape, okay? - we both loved him."… And that’s why they did such a great job? ‘Love’ is passive too – something you feel, but don’t have to act on in any responsible way by, as a randomly chosen example, keeping him away from the deranged homeless Greg.  

Later, in an interview outside her home, she told the Herald Sun she was in "shock, disbelief",.. Whereas she did believe with all her heart, like Tinkerbell, that letting the deranged homeless father meet the ‘bright light in his life’ was a good idea and something that love bids you do… but was being supported by family and friends, and her family were on their way over to Australia from England. Land of personal irresponsibility and people with issues, like measles.

She said: "What I want to share with you is: I'm the victim of family violence,… as yo can tell by remembering my unexpectedly murdered son… and if anything come out of this, I want it to be a lesson to everybody. Goes like: ‘Let’s all keep the deranged homeless guys away from their children, or indeed anyone’s children?

"Luke was at cricket practice and I believed he was safe."

"I don't think anyone really understood or understands what someone is able to do. Nobody ever heard of deranged, homeless people hurting anyone, or nutso parents extinguishing their kids. I mean, it just doesn’t happen. And so, as a sane person, or as a caring parent, you trust the very person who killed him,..Despite his life ‘failing’ and having ‘homeless issues,’ of course… loved him, and they did love him, they loved him more than anyone else." Though this might not be quite what she had in mind.

She told how she had initially believed Luke had been accidentally injured in a "bowling accident" by his father, and it was only later she was told by police and paramedics that he had been deliberately injured.

She went on to say it was a "tragic situation that no one could see was going to happen." It’s a mystery.

So there you have it ladies and gentlemen: even infanticide by the insane is an impersonal, unprecedented, unpredictable thing. Though it might come to be public policy here in dear old Blighty if the Progressives have their way. We can only hope.

Indeed, infanticide may not actually be ‘a thing’ as the kids say these days at all. It might just be nothing. Nothing at all: it just happens because of a lawless, totally unpredictable, capricious Universe.

As a footnote I’d like to point out that I for one am glad that I’m not in any kind of authority in Australia.

Picture from here.

Eh-oh!

   Everything’s always lovely here in Tellytubbyland.

   Everyone’s always happy and nice to each other and no-one is ever Mean or Grumpy, unless we’ve made some silly mistake – Oh-oh! - that the Wise And Kindly Voices (who tell us what to do and when to go to bed or when a Story’s going to happen) can Make All Better by showing us all how silly we’ve been. In fact, no matter what goes wrong it never really lasts and there isn’t anything that can’t be Made All Better by a Big Hug or a Story.

   It never, ever rains or makes any nasty weather in Tellytubbyland – unless rain or nasty weather can give the Wise And Kindly Voices (who tell us what to do and when to go to bed) a reason for telling us a Story about rain or nasty weather and when they do that it’s always a lovely story and we’re all so very happy and grateful to listen to the Wise And Kindly Voices who tell us what to do and when to go to bed and when a Story’s going to happen. And the giant windmills really, really work.

   There’s always tubby toast and tubby custard from the machines to eat that never, ever run out because there’s always more from wherever tubby toast and tubby custard come from (unless we’ve made some silly mistake – Oh-oh! – that the Wise And Kindly Voices who tell us what to do and when to go to bed or when a Story’s going to happen can Make All Better by showing us all how silly we’ve been), and then usually it’s time for another Story so we never, ever have to go and find any tubby toast and tubby custard for ourselves, so we can go and play with our magical toys that come from Magicland and that never break or go wrong and that we never have to fetch for ourselves.

   And when the sun always shines and the bunny rabbits hop around, the Wise And Kindly Voices (who tell us what to do and when to go to bed) show us a Story about all the little children of the world who are nice and lovely and who are (almost) exactly like us and who only need a Big Hug and tubby toast and tubby custard and magical toys that come from Magicland and that never break or go wrong just like us - which is why everything always ends up All Better.

  And if we are ever extra silly and make a mess – Oh-oh! - then the Noo-Noo comes along to clean up the mess and it looks a little bit cross but we don’t mind and we never have to be upset or scared because we’ve made a mess because the Noo-Noo is never really Grumpy and Mean to us. It just cleans up our mess and we can play with our magical toys that come from Magicland and that never break or go wrong and that we never have to fetch for ourselves.

   In fact, there really isn’t anyone in the whole wide world who’s Grumpy and Mean, because being really and truly Grumpy and Mean is IM-POSSIBLE – except for the Grumpy and Mean people who pretend that there are in fact Grumpy and Mean people, but they’re just silly.

  So if we never, ever listen to the Grumpy and Mean people who say that there are in fact Grumpy and Mean people somewhere, everything will be All Better and we can go on listening to lovely stories and eating tubby toast and tubby custard from the machines to eat that never, ever run out and go and play with our magical toys that come from Magicland and that never break or go wrong and that we never have to fetch for ourselves and we’re all so happy and grateful to listen to the Wise And Kindly Voices who tell us what to do and when to go to bed and when a Story’s going to happen.

   And if we believe it really, really hard, then nothing bad will ever, ever happen and it will always all be lovely and all the little children will always be loved and safe and happy here in Tellytubbyland because there are in fact no Grumpy and Mean people in the whole wide world at all.

In fact, we think that the last Grumpy and Mean person (who does not exist) has just gone away and no-one will ever, ever tell us that it isn’t going to be All Better ever again.

Big Hug.

By-Bye.

Greedy, Speedy, Needy, Needly, and Breedy.

Free will-y.

It’s the little things in life that mean so much.

I’m going to try to keep mine small today, like the Ebola virus, plutonium molecules, and the viewing figures for the Muslim Comedy Channel.

It appears that our betters are having periodic fits of remorse, for a variety of reasons.

Here’s the MP for Dewsbury, Shahid Malik, in apologetic mood on Yahoo.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Friday suspended junior justice minister Shahid Malik while his claims for tens of thousands of pounds are investigated, as the embarrassing row escalated.

The Telegraph said Malik had claimed nearly 67,000 pounds on his London home over three years, while paying less than 100 pounds a week on a house in his constituency he designated his main residence.

The claims on the London flat included 2,600 pounds for a home cinema system, although parliamentary authorities only agreed to pay half, and 730 pounds for a "massage chair".

Malik told the Telegraph he spent most of his time at his constituency home and it was right that it be registered as his main property, allowing him to claim expenses on his more expensive house in the capital.

He protested his innocence in a series of media interviews hours before it was revealed he was stepping down.

"I have absolutely nothing to apologise for," he said in his constituency of Dewsbury in Yorkshire, northern England, which has a large Asian community.

"I'm not in it for the money. I'm here to make a difference. I love this country. I love this constituency. I want to make a difference and that's the only reason I'm in politics."

Makes you humble: his contrition, doesn’t it? I’m choked here; all welling up.

Funnily enough, there are mixed feelings in his constituency which is not a million miles from Northwester Towers: my palatial two-up-two-down mansion set amongst rolling Northern hills like a jewel between the highest-elevation council estate in Castle City and the topmost Housing Association.

He won his local party's backing late Friday, but voters were divided over his suspension.

Diane Hughes, 52, shopping in the town centre, said: "It's the best news I've had all year and it's only May. It really didn't surprise me to tell the truth. Most of my friends just don't like him at all."

Outside a mosque, one young man said: "I think he's a good MP and he's done a good job. I will vote for him in the national elections."

Here’s his constituency website with full apology as of 10.50, 16 May 2009.

I can thoroughly recommend the FAQ page, which is a comedy classic.

Do you actually live in Dewsbury? Of course. Even before I was elected as an MP I had already moved into a house in the town and very quickly felt very much at home. I'm aware that some MP's don't live in their own constituencies, at the end of the day that's their decision, but I'd find it very difficult living anywhere else.

Woody Allen, eat your heart out.

Okay, so he’s not spectacularly sorry, but can I spot a little glimmer of guilt there, or is it the back-pain for which he claimed the cost of a massage chair?

So let’s try someone else.

Ah, how about a peer of the realm?

A Labour peer jailed for dangerous driving has warned of the perils of using a hand-held mobile phone while at the wheel. Lord Ahmed of Rotherham was jailed for 12 weeks after sending and receiving text messages minutes before he was involved in a fatal motorway crash.

I do rather like that impersonal ‘… he was involved in a fatal motorway crash.’ You’ve got to feel sorry for the poor chap. There he was pootling along at 100 miles per hour and suddenly a fatal motorway crash manifested itself unto him, like a message from God.

Supporting an AA/Populus poll into mobile phone use among motorists, Lord Ahmed said he had "learnt the hard way" about the problem.

Lord Ahmed, who was freed by the Court of Appeal after serving only 16 days of his prison sentence, said: "More and more people are using their mobile phones throughout their daily activities.

"But, when you're driving it's time to switch off. I learnt this the hard way. Please do it now before it is too late."

‘I learnt this the hard way.’
Ye-es, my lord. I’m sorry for his loss and his grief.
Martin Gombar, however, didn’t learn anything as he was killed instantly when he - how to phrase it? - ‘Was hit’ by a car which was driven by a member of our legislature doing a mere 30 miles per hour over the legal maximum speed. And he was probably drunk, according to the Guardian, and a foreigner, so, hmph.

Still, sorrow is sorrow, and it’s an apology of sorts and we’re a forgiving lot in this country (look how many times we’ve re-elected the Labour Party).

They’re all at it. Worldwide.

Mel Gibson was put on three years' probation and ordered to attend 12 months of AA meetings after he pleaded no contest yesterday to a drink-driving charge.

The Oscar-winning star was forced to issue a grovelling apology for screaming anti-Semitic abuse at police after he was arrested doing 87mph in a 45mph zone in Malibu, California, last month.

He blamed the outburst on his long-running battle with alcoholism. The devout Roman Catholic allegedly yelled at the sheriff's deputy who stopped him: "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." He is then said to have challenged officer James Mee, saying: "Are you a Jew?"

CSI star loses job because of drug addiction

Gary Dourdan, star of the mega-hit CBS show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation has lost his job on the show due to an ongoing battle with drug addiction. Producers of the show cut the actor loose after his April arrest for felony possession of heroin, ecstasy and cocaine.

The arrest marked the bottoming-out point of a great actor who has struggled with drug addiction for years.

Amy Winehouse's husband Blake Fielder-Civil is seeking a divorce on the grounds of her adultery, according to his solicitor.

Henri Brandman, who is representing Mr Fielder-Civil, released a brief statement saying: "I can confirm that I have been instructed to commence divorce proceedings on the grounds of Amy's adultery."

The couple, who married in Miami in May 2007, have faced difficulties over Winehouse's alleged battle with drug addiction and Fielder-Civil's jail sentence for assault and perverting the course of justice.

They’re all in the wars, aren’t they; the victims of circumstances beyond their control. One battle against alcoholism and two against drugs.

And from their tones we may also infer that Shahid Malik might suffer the permanent loss of ministerial office due to his continuing battle against deliberately claiming massive amounts of public money that should have come out of his own pocket. We might also be forgiven for thinking that Lord Ahmed regrets recent road traffic accident casualties which occurred during his lifelong battle against believing that membership of the House of Lords alchemically adds 42% onto the national speed limit and also absolves a Noble Lord from paying excessive attention to the view through the windscreen of his car.

It’s official and it goes right to the top.

We have no free will. Our actions are not the deliberately-followed purposes of sentient and self-controlled beings, but rather the random and blameless movement of leaves in the wind.

It’s official and it goes right to the bottom.

The underclass can ‘fall pregnant ’ again and again at our cost and at the cost of the Queen’s peace and the near-destruction of what the progressives have left of our education system, as if they, like their social workers, seem still to believe in the stork or the gooseberry bush.

And they can break the law without actually committing a crime, and thus we have crimeless victims.

There’s little or no moral agency here.

Which is why we need big, powerful, intimately-interfering government ; to wipe our backsides, and wash and dress and feed us and tell us what to do and to tax us to the eyebrows to finance it when circumstances impersonally oblige us to be greedy, speedy, needy, needly, and breedy, and…Titch, maybe?

Call me old-fashioned, but it’s all down to the Left, in all its manifestations, that have taken it upon themselves to absolve us all from personal shame, guilt and responsibility for our lives and with it they have acquired the power of life and death.

Which they use ruthlessly from just before the cradle to just before the grave.

On a happier note it seems that the past month’s careless relaxation of my exercise routine and my abandonment of the calorie-controlled diet and consequent weight-gain turn out not to be due to my sloppiness and laxity at all.

No. Not titch.

‘In an official statement today, North Northwester’s lard spokesman explained that the addition of an extra stone to the waist and buttocks of the revered national treasure and paranoid Right-winger, McCarthyite nostalgic, Grassy Knoll Veteran’s Association member and race-hate blogger was due to him suffering the effects of a lifelong battle against deliberately reaching into the freezer and putting an extra pizza into the oven.

The spokesman thanked the public for their sympathy for him during this difficult time regarding the spontaneous growth of enough love-handles for a coxless pair (which is better than the opposite by far) and asked them to further respect his pain as he goes into rehabilitation to overcome the frightening effects of his 48-year battle against sandwiches with mayonnaise.