Private property’s death sentence

The Christian owners of a guesthouse who restrict double rooms to married couples have been ordered to pay £3,600 in damages to a homosexual couple, but leave to appeal has been granted.

The Christian owners of a guesthouse who restrict double rooms to married couples have been ordered to pay £3,600 in damages to a homosexual couple, but leave to appeal has been granted.

Earlier today His Hon. Judge Andrew Rutherford declared it was unlawful for Peter and Hazelmary Bull to operate their policy and deny a double room to civil partners Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy.

The judge ruled that under the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations, introduced under the previous Government, civil partnerships must be treated in the same way as marriage.

It’s official, the management has no right to refuse would-be customers according to their own wishes and thus to freely enjoy their own property because the cultural Marxists will at all times impose their ideology on ever-greater areas of life.

This is why the culture wars matter more than anything else.

To law and order conservatives: you’re not going to be protected by people who don’t  accept that individuals are guilty – rather that they rebel against an unjust society.

To national security conservatives: you’re not going to be protected by people who don’t believe in countries.

To Atlanticist conservatives: you’re not going to protect the Anglosphere with people who don’t believe in the Special relationship – or international defence at all

To fiscal conservatives, you’re not going to protect our economy with people who don’t believe in reducing government expenditure.

Meanwhile, one of Britain’s leading social conservatives put his finger on our leaderless and disorganized plight:

There's no movement, let alone party, in this country consistently campaigning for rational, real, lasting cuts in public spending based on a major revision of social welfare policy, and there's not likely to be.

What next?

Because I’m worthless

The quality of mercy is not strained.

These days, thanks to whack-job liberals so dozy they make dormice seem like multiple Asbo-violators on Taurine-rich energy drinks, mercy is getting on for claiming its on zillionth victim of an isolated act rooted in a unique personal experience.

Surprisingly illustrated, by the BBC…

Boy detained over bleach attack in Leeds restaurant

A teenager who poured bleach over a woman at a restaurant in Leeds has been detained for 12 months.
Jordan Horsley, 16, was found guilty at an earlier hearing of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm with intent.
Leeds Crown Court heard how Annette Warden, 46, asked the boy and his friends to be quiet during a film at the Vue cinema on Kirkstall Road.
Later, as Mrs Warden and her family ate in a nearby restaurant, the boy came in and poured bleach on her head.

So far, so yawn. It’s also 1970s; all so Moral Panic: you know, that pathology that the Combined Left ascribe to conservatives who’ve been saying for decades that if you deliberately remove some of the props and safeguards that have been built up over centuries to protect civilisation, eventually you will get...less civilization. Or none.
And it gets beyond Moral Panic when some ‘Right-wing pundit’ chooses to point out which came first: the donkey or the hearse. Or the plastic surgeon I’m afraid, in this case.

I’ve been told to be brief, so I’ll cut to the chase.

It was revealed in court that Horsley had a previous conviction for hitting someone over the head with half a brick and had also been cautioned for assault on a separate occasion.
The boy, whose mother died when he was young, had suffered a violent relationship with his father and was living by himself at the time of the attack.
Judge Peter Collier QC, said social services had been involved with the family but said matters had not been resolved "satisfactorily".
"You have not been well-served in your life by your father and there must be some concerns as to the intervention that was attempted as you were growing up, which never resolved the issues which you still have," he said.

According to this judge, then, Horsley was, and remains a victim.

In a sense, our bewigged intellectual titan is correct: the lack of a family (and that means relatives of the abusive father or late mother) around him to protect him or take him away, and without any real community around him to notice and report on any brutalizing violence, of any teachers prepared to go the distance (or few such teachers, we may find that reports were ignored or filed if this is ever investigated so ‘lessons can be learned’); let alone previous judges who might have tempered ‘mercy’ with sanity, and any idea of right and wrong and moral agency on the part of the last-resort social services do seem likely to have compelled this boy to grow up as a merciless and spiteful savage which thinks a pint of Domestos is a fitting reply to some fuddy-duddy who doesn’t see the fun side of texting throughout some dreary old Quidditch scene.
Whatever.

Any part of civilized life might have prevented Horsley from degenerating into a Morlock, but you can bet that at every level the liberals have been busy causing this problem and making it worse every blood-stained step of the way, and especially undermining the very notion of authority, and especially in relation to children who fall under its power.

Spare the rod and spoil the child doesn’t mean if you don’t beat them senseless then they’ll turn into chocolate-addicted demanding, sailor-suited Little Lord Fauntleroys, but rather that their very lives will be ruined, along with a great deal of collateral damage. If you don’t enforce the boundaries as well as explain them to children, you won’t get children; but Junior Huns instead. Horsley’s ruined, and his own learned evil is only the proximate cause.

Given the register of the judge’s language, I‘m not convinced that he is off the hook liberal-stupididealism-wise…

…and there must be some concerns as to the intervention that was attempted as you were growing up, which never resolved the issues which you still have.

The SpokesPlod concerned comes over as a bit, well, cumulo-nimbus, too: perhaps the victim of a Confundus Charm, or is maybe acting out a favourite scene from Heartbeat.

…a West Yorkshire Police spokesman said: "Jordan Horsley's actions were utterly vindictive and understandably left people shocked and sickened.
"The victim had made a perfectly reasonable request for him and the group he was with to be quiet during the film. She could never have expected that he would react in such a nasty and violent way….

Perhaps he’s weakened from malnutrition, by dint of being on a fast. Or a Vegan.

No, really: from your actual Vega.

Poor Mrs Warden might have been lucky enough not to live where abuse and violence from tearaways is expected, but what sort of ‘Police officer’ would imagine otherwise.?
I’ve missed something, I know it. What is it?

Hat tip to Shlomo over at House of Dumb.

And the wiener is...

Finian's Rainbow is a musical with a book by E.Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy, lyrics by Harburg, and music by Burton Lane. The Irish-tinged score also includes gospel and R&B influences.

Finian moves to the Deep South from Ireland with his daughter Sharon, to bury a stolen pot of gold near Fort Knox, in the mistaken belief that it will grow. A leprechaun follows them, desperate to recover his treasure before the loss of it turns him permanently human. Complications arise when a bigoted and corrupt U.S. Senator gets involved, and when wishes are made inadvertently over the hidden crock. All ends happily.

Oh, no, it’s Finnigans Rainbow.

POLICE chiefs in Lancashire are celebrating after the force was today named the country's top performer.

Calm down at the back. Were talking about public sector benchmarking and value addition here: nothing dirty.

The force, which is led by the Chief Constable, Steve Finnigan, is ranked joint first with Leicestershire…

Sparkling company, that.

Puts the Red Rose County’s top rozzer alongside this lambently beautiful fellow: Superintendent Steve Harrod, head of criminal justice at Leicestershire Police, acknowledged that the criminal justice system was set up to avoid sending juveniles to prison.

He said police officers were only allowed to issue warnings to young troublemakers unless their behaviour was judged to be serious.

"I'm not sure if people know but low-level anti-social behaviour is mainly the responsibility of the council”.

He, to be fair, was only explaining why Leicestershire Police are a bit worried that if juveniles (such as the gang that brutalized Fiona Pilkington so often and so long that she committed suicide and killed her disabled daughter in despair at the absence of police action) go to prison or something, they’ll likely turn to crime once they get out again.

You can’t fault the logic in that: punish them for their years-long campaign of abuse, threats, persecution of a family and violence against their property and they’ll instantly become criminals at the drop of a gavel. Public sector moral philosophy imitating art.

‘"He's a villain, sir."
"A villain..."
"And a jail-bird, sir."
"I know he's a jail-bird, Savage, he's down in the cells now!’

…out of 43 forces assessed by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabularies (HMIC) for service provided to local communities.

However, Lancashire's Assistant Chief Constable, Chris Weigh, said that there was no time to be complacent.

You know, that’s just what I think. Complacency’s the last thing you want in a county constabulary: right after treason, torture, rampant corruption, cannibalism and just not doing the job properly - or indeed at all.

And she… (Sic. I looked him up. He’s a slap-head in the finest traditions of the Northwest’s northbound hairlines) the(n) added that there was still work to be done to improve their performance in some key areas.

He said: The Pledge is about the delivery of good services and I am obviously delighted with the HMIC grading. And I think that this accurately reflects the hard work we have carried out in Lancashire.

This is the pledge.

It describes how the police intend to do the job of being police by employing such state-of-the art techniques as police work. And also spin, plus some meetings with local groups and setting higher standards of attendance to the practically bionic ‘within 60 minutes’ for the vulnerable and upset and interestingly, at incidents ‘that we have agreed with your community will be a neighbourhood priority and attendance is required.’

I’d love to know who constitutes ‘your community’ and what their neighbourhood priorities might be, but still. But still, if someone’s breaking into your house, by that measure, the gallant Bobbies of the County Palatinate are pledged to arrive at the scene before your body’s gone cold, and well before your property reaches eBay.

Outstanding.

(Non-geek readers will notice that the Pledge is available in pdf format, in common with many, many public sector authorities who think that pdf is cute, and not the unmanageable and difficult to read POS that it in fact is. There is a little known clause in the Single European Treaty that stipulates that the use of pdfs must never, ever be explained to those who are expected to read them by anyone who knows how to use them. Compared to the Common Agricultural Policy, however, this is as logical as A is A, or 2+2=4.)

We are only nine months into implementing the Pledge and whilst we are delivering in most areas, we will not be complacent or stand still.

We aim to continue to improve the basics.

And, in the words of the late, lamented Heath Ledger’s masterful characterization of The Joker: Here we go.

That includes answering phones, attending crime scenes, responding to emergencies and working with neighbourhoods to agree priorities about crime and policing in local areas.

To be fair, I don’t expect they’re intending or even implying the breakneck speed of that 60 minute response time when it comes to answering phones and working with neighbourhoods to agree priorities – that kind of essential back-up service takes time.

Our reputation for delivering neighbourhood policing is second-to-none.

And worth twice as much as that, I’d guess.

I've seen Lancashire Constabulary’s shiny-vehicled roadshows heading into the war zone council estates nearby. One estate contains a house owned and operated by Police and Community Support Officers, but who (according to no-doubt malicious local rumours) never leave that house during the day on the estate at all until it’s home time. They prefer to plod about the nicer terraces and semis of the city’s owner-occupied neighbourhoods. These are the communities with whom the brave officers of Lancashire Police liaise; I’m sure, prior to meeting with said communities.

I’ve almost always had PCSOs out to me when my car’s been vandalized rather than the police.

And much of the Pledge is delivered through this approach. However, the Pledge isn't just about neighbourhod policing.

This is about all departments and areas of policing working to deliver a top quality service that meets the needs of communities in a truly citizen focused way.

That’s reassuring: I’m glad to guess that we’ve moved to from treating, say, the invading Romans and occupying Normans better than the people who were actually born here, though I’m fairly sure that if my new Polish neighbours are burgled while they’re out at work they’ll get the same victim support leaflet that I was given on the seven occasions when I reported the migration of my wing mirrors. I’m not greedy, I gave up calling them in after incident number seven. Wouldn’t want to distract the fuzz from their relentless pursuit of prizes…

I am very proud of the result.

Well, I’ve certainly stopped reporting minor assaults on property, so I’m proud that with my newfound determination not to add three more car trashings to the statistics I have done my best.

But I am also very clear that the work doesn’t stop here."

Areas of activity specifically highlighted as good practice in the HMIC assessment report included: a drop-in centre for Eastern European members of the community;

You mean you hand over the Tough shit, you’ve been burgled. What do you expect us to do about it? leaflet with a cup of tea and polite chatter about accordions, beetroot soup and stuff? I for one am glad that our new neighbours are being treated with the same respect that I got, mostly, after the hoody horde passed by and disappeared untraceably to their ASBO-postcode council houses.

…the creation of one-stop shops to provide enhanced customer service;…

What was that old-fashioned word they taught us in school again? Petard? Paleolithic? Police station?

Whatever.

…community volunteers to enhance neighbourhood policing;

And what’s the betting that these volunteers will last right up to the very nanosecond when some volunteer is accused of ‘brutality’ by some freelance furniture mover or herbal remedy salesman, and the real police decide that he ‘took the law into his own hands’ instead of waiting for Scotty to beam down two red shirts with phasers on stun within 60 minutes of seeing them break some door down or passing goody bags to some neighbour’s teenage kid?

…publicising neighbourhood teams and their priorities; keeping victims of crime up to date of progress; and introducing Citizen Focus Bureaux to deal with dissatisfaction.

…and introducing on drums, it’s Citizen Focus Bureaux! Give ‘em a big hand folks, they’ve come all the way from the West coast to be here tonight.

Friends, I know that there are coppers of all ranks out there still doing the job: still getting bricked and bottled and shot at and abused by people unworthy to shine their boots (if Magnum combat boots can shine, that is). I know that there are a number who also feel oddly free with the hitting at demonstrations - a few that shake my faith in the guardians of law and order. But there’s the rub – it’s the guardians of something or other, rather than the telegraphs of law and order, that make me despair.

Perhaps this is a Twenty-First Century revival of Bobbies-on-the-beat with an inescapable added gloss of bureaucratic groupthink.

But what’s the betting that in fact Lancashire and Leicestershire have won an in-house award by meeting standards set by our dopey central government and was assessed and handed over by people in the same invertebrate chatstream, and not the ones on the sharp, dirty end of the permissive society?

So is Castle City and its north-western sister towns safer for The Pledge and the award that it brings? Perhaps.

Bet your life?

Only the Shadow knows.

But hey, it doesn’t take much to win an in-house award here, now does it? Not when it only takes 14 days in your new job to change the world and the whole way it does business, by helping out prospects for world peace.

I’m beginning to wonder if I might be in line for an award myself someday soon.

When I found myself much to my surprise in this social conservative lark a year or so ago I assumed I’d be in for a long apprenticeship. You know the kind of thing: I’d spend a few months feeling unaccountably tense upon noticing skateboarders and then move tentatively on to pricing up net curtains from Wilkinson’s, and perhaps draught a strongly-worded but never published letter to the local free sheet about the late-night noise from Castle City’s many nightclubs. Maybe in a few years I’d have worked my way up to frosty altercations on Saturday afternoons in Market Street with Green Party recruiters or Amnesty canvassers or leading a boycott of cruelty-free goods from the city’s Sainsbury’s, and all the while quietly dreaming of pipes and snuffboxes and bidding modestly for the collected non-Narnian fiction of CS Lewis.

Eventually, I imagined, after putting in several hard, dedicated, grumpy decades of showing not only how the world was going to the dogs but also identifying the particular breed of dogs and the hereditary diseases that each strain is prone to, I might finally be recognised by my peers for my efforts and presented with the traditional dreadful post-war Kenneth Moore/Freedom Association curly side-swept haircut and bow tie. And maybe, just maybe, just before my retirement a Lifetime Resentment Award would be mine; complete with its iconic shabby Demob tweed jacket with double oak leaf clusters and shiny suede elbow patches.

But now it’s looking much more hopeful if mobs like the showers above are getting peer-reviewed plaudits at the public expense. Reach for the Sky is no longer the limit. At this rate, if I can get my fellow sociocons to see my sterling work for the miracle of contemporary pessimism that it is, I could be looking at international glory for my charitable work championing the beleaguered panda baiting tribes of Red China as they try to cling on to their traditional nose-clamps and paw-traps, or perhaps I'd be in line for some kind of major cash prize for outstaring Britain’s most deeply-masked and abusively-married hooded women. I can’t expect much kudos from publicly dismantling the ’Tory’ Party’s leading homosexual victimologist piece by piece because it’s already been done.

However, nobody’s so far taken the obvious golden opportunity of punishing on You Tube those pinko French dolphins that refused to mine the Rainbow Warrior.

Now, where did I put that trebuchet?

A job well done

Perfect.

Sometimes in politics an argument for this or that is made so clearly and persuasively that all those who can agree with it either do so immediately or it or will want to go along with it and test it against their reason and experience as a working hypothesis.

Sometimes such an argument is so concisely made and appears to be so practical that it might as well be copied word for word into a manifesto for those who would wish to follow the idea and make it real.

Some arguments just talk to the soul as if a poet had made them and can be simply enjoyed for the clean, guiltless pleasure of agreeing: ’Yes, that’s true. That’s the way it is.’

The great Doctor Theodore Dalrymple writes such a piece in the New English Review this month. It’s entitled Crime and Punishment, and contains his familiar blend of fine prose, cautious and non-doctrinaire reasoning, and references to where supporting and contrary evidence might be sought but without the obsession with statistics or cherry picking particular cases that lesser writers such as me might cite. And it all ends with a conclusion that comes easily and freely from the argument made.

I doubt I’ll see a conservative case for prison as social self-defence made so well and so briefly in a month of Sundays.

What do you think?

Stink bombing the gay orgy

Stink bombing the gay orgy

Protesters from Smash Gay Orgy sneaked into the Gay London University orgy, releasing stinkbombs and distributing letters to the audience. Sarah Levack reports

The London University Bondage Orgy took place on Tuesday 10 March. We disguised ourselves in high heels and studded corsets to infiltrate the event, an orgy of perversion and delusion in an apparently “post Christian” Britain. Could we pass as the sort of people who would pay to go and watch young male students parading in front of whooping crowds of drunks, to be judged on how they filled out a bondage suit, posing pouch and gimp mask? Although we were prepared to step outside our comfort zone, we were shocked by the atmosphere inside the club. Passivity was in the air, and we were ignored over and spurned as we negotiated the crowds.

We left fake intelligence tests, stink bombs and set off personal alarms as the orgy got underway. The foul smell emanating from all around was our way to demonstrate the reality of the casual and pervasive immorality that we experience in our daily lives, and which we saw manifested so vividly in the gay orgy. It stinks. And we wanted the people there to feel it.

Just before the climax we invaded the stage, and threw out the open letters that we had written to the audience members and to the exhibitionists on stage, explaining why we were there.

The action was not about non-gay men versus (dominant) gay men. Playing men against each other is one of the tricks of the permissive society, a divide-and-rule strategy which is remarkably effective. It is a way to attack men for whatever choices they make.

We disrupted the orgy because we need the people complicit in it to know that it is not okay and that, despite the dominant socio-cultural dynamics of contemporary post Christian society, producing and encouraging smut and hyper-sexuality, there is real resistance to it.

And we paid our own homage to the earlier generation of men whose civil wars kicked off their struggle for our parliamentary and confessional rights. We hoped to show that what they fought against has not gone away.

Although the media response has, typically, played it this way, the action was not about (passive) non-gay men versus (dominant) gay men. Playing men against each other is one of the tricks of collectivist society, a divide-and-rule strategy which is remarkably effective. Just like the polarizing dichotomies of hairdresser/bondage gladiator or bondage gladiator/First Secretary of State, it is a way to attack men for whatever choices they make.

We resist this; our gripe was with the orgy and the wider problem of which it is such a vivid symbol. Our issue, furthermore, was with the brazenness of a commercial company deciding to see this as just another gap in the market, seeking to profit directly from men’s social anxieties and the iniquities in our culture.

The organisers of the orgy, 121 Entertainment, think they can get away with claiming that the orgy is ‘empowering’, while profiting from the social anxieties which keep men interested in gaining this kind of gratification.

Neither is this a question of Christians hating gay men; the use of this stereotype is another way faith is undermined. The group which took action at the orgy included atheists, who like us saw the connections between the orgy and other forms of wrongdoing and immorality. A culture which positions men as objects to be gawped at and dominant men as leering figures of power is damaging to Christian men, gay men and everyone in between.

The action was not random, but thought through and properly discussed in our church. We were shocked by how much energy we needed to persuade others in morality movements that the action was virtuous: we were told it was out-dated and that vilification of gay men was not a priority. There was resistance to our clear belief that sexual issues, and the way we treat each other on a personal basis, are intricately connected with immorality in all its forms.

Gay orgies, along with the constant attention on men’s arms and chests in the media, show that men are still judged primarily on their physical strength. This is an important power dynamic; subtle and hard to quantify and counter. Public decency legislation is not going to change it, nor is individual career success for some straight men.

Okay, okay, you get the point. The original - if that’s not too strong a word for something so trite, repetitive and derivative - is here.

The Left contains many an interfering swine whose belief system justifies damage to private property and the disruption of private events so this will come as no surprise to either of my regular readers. But if an evangelical Christian group - or (almost) any other group for that matter – tried to, for example, protect impressionable teenage lads from taking part in something they might not really want to get into did something even remotely like this then the Guardian and the BBC would have the cattle trucks heading east in their minds’ eyes, or their graphics, or in their dearest dreams (with us aboard them) before the Six O’clock News pips had stilled.

Almost any group.

The difference I think between the social Right and the cultural Left is the difference between authoritarianism and totalitarianism.

And like anything else viewable on the internet, Christian views of homosexuality come in a wide and varied range. Hoo boy. Everywhere to orthodox and familiar concern based on careful study of holy texts through to the foaming-at-the-mouth, methinks they do protest too much moonbattery of Reverend Phelps.

Both social conservatives on the one hand and, for example, ‘gay rights’ supporters or feminists on the other believe that certain forms of expression and amusement can inspire or incite anger and probably more importantly background contempt for the self-trivializing. And therefore each side thinks that there is a greater likelihood that cruel, mean, or violent actions will be taken against each self-humiliating group.

Personally, I don't think that the bath-house culture as immortalized in Frankie's Relax video did any favours to our law-abiding (and law-protected, thankfully) gay compatriots and the few that I've met since university have mostly eschewed the whole 'scene' - let alone its furthest shores - in favour of domesticity and, well, home furnishings. And borrowing my Elvis albums and not returning them, as it happens. Bring ‘em back, dammit!

This is how both the morally conservative and the liberationist Left can oppose strip-clubs or brothels being allowed to trade. The Left, generally, won’t admit that traditional moralists are sincerely concerned with the welfare of strippers and prostitutes themselves – we’re just a part of the misogynist patriarchal moral code that the authors of the F-Word article are struggling against (though not the actual misogynist patriarchal moral code that might reach into their cosseted lives and actually effect them personally).

I just don’t think there are that many queer-bashers around to be more than an occasional threat (though there surely are some.)

It would be wrong for us to break into a private gay bondage party and bust it up with chemical weapons. It may still be legal for the police to do so – the Offences Against The Person Acts still prohibit mutual sexual conduct amongst three or more people I think, whereas we social conservatives believe that sex is only okay amongst two or fewer persons, right? But we aren’t the police. And the police are busy. Or they should be.

It’s also wrong to throw solid objects at democratically elected politicians going about their lawful business, and just as wrong to invade and disrupt a beauty contest because it’s perfectly lawful to take part in one.

This little gem of feminist proto-terrorism was one thing that got me thinking of the cultural Right and our culture war priorities.

The other was the characteristically bigoted meanderings of my feinian colleague who sits in the perineal position between my boss and me explaining to a fellow bureaucrat before the Euros that the Tory Party intended to join a European Parliamentary group that included Polish politicians who wanted to ban homosexuality as well as abortion.

Well, up to a point, dough-head.

Daft as it may sound coming from someone who a couple of Saturday nights ago was seriously (if boozily) contemplating joining a Morris-dance group (until the word accordion shot through my mind like a sobering and cleansing guardian angel), I think that most of us social conservatives have an agenda distant from enforcing sexual conduct on adults in private (or in the seclusion of hired assembly rooms).

Except for brothels.

Oh arse.

Apparently most of us would think raiding and closing down bawdy houses would be okay; unlike the Lefty feminists, who see the threat from the attitudes that swimwear reinforces in us patriarchal oppressors. Maybe all women should take the veil? I’ve never heard of substantial Left-feminist demonstrations against the veil, though. Please correct me if I’m wrong. I’d love to hear it if they did.

No.

This kind of stuff is another Leftie straw man. ‘Look at that crazy Phelps,’ they say – he’s a social conservative – that’s what they want to do if they get into power.

It’s like the class war or racism - a stick to beat us with and to help shout down the urgent, life-and-death stuff that the liberal elite want us to leave alone because it’s their core business.

I think we can easily set aside the intrusive rude stuff that the overwhelming majority of people think to be wrong – public displays as in this is article, or protection of sexual offenders to cause obvious danger to innocents as here.

We can say in cases of obvious harm or danger – that’s where we stop.

If social conservatism is to reach out and touch peoples’ lives and make them better, then we need to do what the American conservatives have done so successfully, which is to bring it all together and start with the main and most important issues and especially civil rights that everyone except the political class can agree on, put them on a list, and start building coalitions by starting from the top.

And, brothers and sisters, do we have a list!

1. Not being killed by enemies domestic and foreign.

2. Not being injured and maimed by enemies domestic and foreign.

3. Not being robbed of the rewards of our work either informally or officially.

4. Not being robbed of much of our lifetime and what we would wish to do during it either informally or officially.

5. Introduce the word children into any point of each the above.

6. Repeat as necessary.

7. It’s always going to be necessary.

I’d also suggest that we start building coalitions on the easy one; the unanswerable one, and us conservatives’ all-time greatest hit and the deepest reason for which conservatives exist and that can allow us all (usually) to get on together – being against illegal violence.

That includes trashing beauty contests and kicking ‘queers’ and beating wives and robbing old ladies and blowing up Tube trains and brawling outside nightclubs.

When we’ve got the above sorted out (which given fallen Mankind will be round about never), then we might just start to worry about the well-dressed chaps with the smartest soft furnishings in town, and get my Elvis records back.

But only then.