Yes, Minister?

There has to be a British answer to all this unrest. It won’t come from the serried ranks of BLM, Antifa, the activists of LBGTQI++Whatever, the islamic lobby and all the other pseudo-political malcontents and popinjays who daily flout the mores by which Judeo-Christian societies live. The revisionists, the revolutionaries, the ego-driven left-wing commentators such as Owen Jones, Ash Sarkar, and the dreadful Alibhai-Brown creature. There are many more, too numerous to list – would anybody care to name a right winger who gets such regular airtime?

This hotchpotch of victim-based demands on the majority population dominate the media and academic discourse and those who peddle it despise the very people from whom they demand reparation. Reparation not for any tangible thing in most cases, but for historical slights or ultra-minority concerns which in a more rational society would be dealt with out of the public eye. It is distinctly not the British way to make a fuss and some of the claims are simply embarrassing.

The trans thing_{[pun intended]} represents almost nobody in the wider population yet Nadia Whittome the child MP for Nottingham East, has demanded that trans people are represented in Parliament. Rounded to whole figures and including both houses of Parliament that comes to exactly zero representatives. But going by the heightened attention it gets in the press you would imagine that perhaps one in ten of the population were gender conflicted. In reality the true numbers are so small that they effectively don’t exist at all, although recent education has done its best to promote transgenderism as a lifestyle choice for children.

Think about that. The harm done to impressionable young minds is incalculable and may be difficult to reverse, but that is just seen as necessary collateral damage in the identity wars. It is simply not acceptable. In other misleading statistics we are told that a fifth of the population – a fifth – are disabled. I expect a multiple amputee would have grounds for disgruntlement to be regarded in the same category as somebody with an exaggerated aversion to spiders, or a hangnail.

Our universities, civils service, education establishment are stuffed to the gills with diversity and equality and HR and other bureaucratic functionaries, which do nothing to further the aims of the organisations. When the bureaucrats take over, nothing is ever achieved except the need for more bureaucracy; it is exactly the same when the idiots take over. We used to think we could recognise stupidity with barely a pause for thought, but as we become less British, that essential skill set is diluted so far it may as well be a homeopathic remedy; the ability to laugh at each other ceases to exist, except as a dim memory.

The British are supposed to be phlegmatic, matter of fact, somewhat fatalistic and until something gets right in our face are likely to just find a way to avoid confrontation. But push too hard and something has to give. Our sense of humour has already been sacrificed; our last bulwark against the taking up of arms has been neutered. I really do sense that the time has come for real, root and branch change. With the departure of Sir Humphrey, let us hope that change starts now.

Genius Lives Matter

It must be Opposites Day, in which case I can present a contender for Genius Idea Of The Day to the utter, utter superbrain that is Melz Owusu. She is a crusader and a fearless champion of black values, or as we generally refer to such leading lights, a right pain in the arse who any rational establishment would be glad to see the back of. Melz wants to create a ‘decolonised curriculum’, a meaningless phrase into which much thought has gone. Erasing history would be a clearer statement of intent.

But she has run into the entirely predictable difficulty of perfectly decent people not wishing to be berated for their whiteness and steadfastly refusing to change everything about society to fit the feelings of a few malcontents with ideas way above their merits. In her own words, “I was like, hmm, this idea of transforming the university from the inside and having a decolonised curriculum isn’t going to happen with the way the structures of the university are.” Whatever that actually means. Because, of course, when black academics make statements it doesn’t matter if they make no sense.

So having failed to eradicate whiteness from multicultural campuses she has hit on the genius idea of apartheid. Black universities for black students. Perfect when you think about it because just as people like Owusu claim to feel unsafe in spaces shared with white people it is an absolute no-brainer that white people feel a good deal less safe in spaces shared with black people. So far her crowdfunding has raised £60,000, so she can afford one mediocre ‘perfessor’ for a year and perhaps a desk. Well done.

But wait, there’s more, she expects – of course she does – white people to pay for it by somehow extracting funding from existing universities. As ever with some communities of ‘the oppressed’ they want to break free from their chains and flee their bounds only to come back begging for their bus fare. But there is some merit in what she is trying to achieve; not for the benefit and betterment of the black community but for everybody else.  

Imagine if you will, an environment where speech is actually free. A place you can say what you think and argue the toss without the risk of inadvertently losing your education your future livelihood and even your personal safety by accidentally using words which were perfectly acceptable yesterday but last night were banned by some shadowy committee. Imagine a place where white lives actually do matter and that isn’t a controversial thing to say. Whiteyversity sounds like a place where business can be done.

Meanwhile in Blackiversity, they can wallow in their imaginary racism and dream up ever more perverse ways in which they are discriminated against. They can hate white people all they like and never be challenged and then when they come to leave the institution with an embedded sense of both entitlement and victimhood they will discover that they have actually created the world they thought they had fled from. No employer outside of the township campus they have just left will have any use for them; they will be forever dependent on handouts from the hated white state.

Just another campus party...

So, all in all, I see very few downsides. Not all black people are race baiting imbeciles; I suspect very few of them fall into this category, so here is the ideal place to corral them, far away from the public view. Removed from the normal world their writings will be unread, their utterances unbroadcast and anywhere outside their own little bubble of loathing they will be completely unknown. The more I look at this, the more I like it. Hell, let’s build the place ourselves!

University Challenge

I’m seriously considering taking an Open University MSc in engineering, specialising in electrical. If I go for it, it will take eight years, minimum, add nothing to my earning potential and, should I stay the course, I would be graduating some time after my 70^th birthday. This is fine and I still intend to be working to at least that age because I’m in the knowledge business and I strive to improve year on year; no idling down to retirement for me. Preparatory to making that decision I am working through some of the many free courses the OU offers while I’m in my last fortnight of lockdown.

I was struck by a massive disparity in the length of time I have been taking to complete certain courses compared to the recommended times. For instance, I have just completed a 40-hour unit in about four hours. Naturally, being a bit of a bighead, I was tempted to scoff and speculate about the quality of undergrads that so much content seemed to be targeted at such low levels of cognition and former education.

But then I stopped and, as I have been trying to educate myself to do for some years now, began to think of reasons, rather than just naysay education generally. See, it can’t be true that kids of today are less intelligent than kids of my vintage, given that brainpower has a massive evolutionary element to it and a baby whisked here from, say, 1000 A.D could almost certainly be raised and completely assimilated into today’s society without any measurable difference from the current native population.

Attitudes, learning, physical prowess, socialisation and general behaviour are mostly, we now know, the products of nurture. The appearance of heredity is given by the unfortunate cycle that condemns kids raised in dysfunctional households to go on to head up more dysfunctional households. Instead of tackling the appalling black hole of aspiration successive societies (government, community leaders, pressure groups and individuals) have ‘progressively’ relaxed the social pressures that our more puritan forebears applied.

It is no longer considered humane to suggest that people should better themselves, that they should pull themselves up by their bootstraps; what Victorian nonsense is this? But it isn’t Victorian, it is – or rather, it was – one of the guiding principles of the working class. Parents did not want for their kids what they had endured themselves, but they didn’t expect anything to be handed to them. Work hard, get ahead.

Back to the university business. My generation of working-class kids was really the first to have a genuine chance to attend university in any number; certainly we were the first to see it as a real possibility, rather than a rare entitlement. And although we went up far better tutored in the basics, the real point of university – and one which, I freely admit, was lost on me – was to broaden one’s horizons. The degree, while a stepping-stone to better careers, was in some cases almost secondary, certainly in the burgeoning ‘new’ disciplines.

Most students weren’t and aren’t activists. Most are getting on, using what they have to the best of their abilities – which includes attention span, competing demands and all the rest – to try and better themselves. (Or is that a pejorative phrase nowadays?) But I believe there is a significant and growing proportion of students, at establishments which actively facilitate it, whose entire raison d’être is to challenge the structure of society itself. They attend pre-radicalised and use universities and many tutors as a base for inevitably left-wing activist causes.

This is a gross misuse of education facilities and resources and dilutes the objectivity and purpose of higher education. When I last attended a university full time (1999-2000 MSc) this was already apparent, but I fear it has slipped further. Maybe it is time to stop pretending that every school-leaver is university material? Maybe it is time to recognise that the various degrees whose title ends in ‘studies’ (Black Studies, Women’s Studies and so on) are vanity courses with little positive to add to the national experience?

Time, once again, to have that conversation; what is the purpose of higher education and to what extent should it be publicly funded? How about this: state assistance and grants for universities which specialise in science, engineering, medicine and other essential and necessarily elite disciplines. Funded polytechnics for business studies, technical diplomas and the like. Specialist art and music colleges with funding for the genuinely talented. Tech colleges for all the skills, again funded.

Given that very few student loans are repaid at all, we fund higher education anyway, but why should we fund those whose sole purpose is to cause trouble, to demand special treatment, to set black against white, gay against straight, gender against… everything else? How about zero funding for Universities of ‘Studies’? Let them fund themselves and let’s have that funding right out in the open. If you want to wage war on the state, then do it on your own dime.

What is it good for?

Nobody wants white people to talk about racism unless they say exactly what they are told to say. There can be no debate when one side is informed that everything it thinks is invalid and only words from the script written for it would even get a hearing. You must not, especially, try to demonstrate your non-racist credentials. Even the many white protesters professing solidarity with the BLM movement still cannot insist they are not racists. Hell, you could be a white kid adopted by a black family and have spent your life on protests for equality and still your opinions would count for nothing.

For this is where we are. It is no longer enough to enact legislation to protect everybody from discrimination, we must now disavow any protections which give white people agency. The test of freedom of speech used to be that, short of exhortations to violence and suchlike, you could say pretty much whatever you wished, and others had the absolute right to tell you what they thought of it. Now, you may not even speak out in defence of ‘all’ people having rights because only black lives, thoughts, speech, actions matter.

That police are even considering investigating the light aircraft flying a banner proclaiming the self-evident is indicative of the mess we are in. And it is all our own fault. Even CNN has bought into the madness, citing its own survey commissioned, it appears, to demonstrate just how irrelevant the views of white people are when it comes to discussing race. Their conclusion is that white people have no idea how racist the United Kingdom is. Except it isn’t. This survey is just another example of collecting data to prove a pre-formed thesis. It is bad science personified.

But even if it was valid it does nothing to help. If anything, it plays straight into a popular misrepresentation of Enoch Powell’s most famous speech and places the whip firmly in the hands of the aggrieved. All the survey (of only 1500 people, by the way) does is tell us something that we already knew; that black people’s perception of our mostly white (in parts) country is different from white people’s. We’ve been told that for decades now and whenever ‘we’ have tried to understand we’ve been told we simply can’t.

Fine. Good. We tried; god knows we’ve tried over the years, but every inch given results in another yard being demanded; every appeasement offered has triggered an insistence that it isn’t enough. The last few weeks have been a relentless attack on white people. It has been overt, it has been hostile and all attempts at reaching an accommodation have been rebutted. Our philosophy is invalid, our compassion is rejected, our empathy is denied. We have nowhere else to go, if indeed we want to go anywhere at all.

Maybe this is as far as it can go. We asked you what you wanted but you told us we couldn’t understand. It appears that nothing less than handing over power and influence in every area of this country’s affairs to black activists with hate in their hearts will do. Well, it won’t do. This country is conservative by nature. We evolve incrementally or we get nowhere. What BLM and its agitators are calling for is the actual destruction of something that has taken at least a thousand years to build. There is a word for this. It’s war.

Your life matters more

An interesting time was had on ‘The twitter’ the other day as people responded to the resumption of the Premier League behind closed doors and under the banner of Black Lives Matter. All dutifully got down on one knee, not all of them sincere you can guarantee, but woe betide a top-flight footballer daring to defy the woke new Premiership now that Marcus Rashford and Raheem Sterling have assumed command. Predictably there was a lot of metaphorical tearing up of season tickets and no doubt some burning of merchandise.

Let me say right from the off that ‘racism is a bad thing’. There, done it. To understand what racism is you don’t have to be black; that’s just a construct which allows the malcontents of the race industry to claim special circumstances for causing trouble. However, no matter how much they bleat about the slavery from which they have never suffered and we have never profited, they are wrong.

The modus operandi of the left have always been to disrupt, to obfuscate, to obscure meaning, to extrapolate from scant evidence and to dominate the narrative. Victimhood is a powerful place to start because what decent person would attack a victim? And we are, in the main, thoroughly decent, so, we listened as they spun a tale of racism which we didn’t recognise. We failed to recognise it not because we hadn’t lived their abused lives, but because it was false.

Useable definitions of racism seem to originate from the 1930s and variously and temporally are:

·       “racialism; the theory that distinctive human characteristics and abilities are determined by race.”

·       “racism; belief in the superiority of a particular race”

·       The UN: “The term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.”

·       “racism; prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group”

All of this was tackled long ago and few intelligent people consciously discriminate against people for factors beyond their control. But just in case you were guilty of any aversions, micro-aggressions or even fear, the Crown Prosecution Service defines a hate crime as an offence “which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on a person's disability or perceived disability; race or perceived race; or religion or perceived religion; or sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation or transgender identity or perceived transgender identity."

It has been decided that there is no genetic basis for humans to belong to anything other than a single race, so you would think there would be an end to it. But of course, within that single species are ethnicities, so there is still plenty of fertile ground in which to sow offence. When I say fertile I am of course thinking of manure, especially of the male bovine kind. An avalanche of the stuff is hurtling our way with no sign of it slowing down.

This is where it ends... every time

But just as real avalanches eventually come to a shuddering, grinding, destructive halt this metaphorical cascade of ordure will eventually obey gravity, settle in the lower levels and stink up the place. The currently deprived inner-city areas will cease to be ‘diverse’ and will become cesspools of third world crime, disease and poverty. Just like the places many wanted to escape from. I don’t think the answer is to try and address their concerns at all. I think the answer is to find your own people and look after your own concerns. The overt racism of the Black Lives Matter movement has scored a massive own goal.

Pretty Polly

The go-to argument-settler these days seems to be the interminable poll, with which invalid conclusions we are regularly bombarded. Whatever the problem it can be resolved with a poll; polls are the new focus groups; if a poll said so it must be true. The incomplete and unsubstantiated polling about attitudes to immigration and other ethnic issues were raised on the BBC’s flagship, Today programme on Monday with great jubilation that positive attitudes have steadily increased. This was the finding,

“Asked if they were optimistic that the UK will be more tolerant and diverse in 10 years’ time, 66% of people say yes, up from 50% in 2009. And 84% strongly disagree that someone has to be white to be truly British - up from 55% 10 years ago.”

But as with all polls you must be careful. Who was asked? How many were polled? What, exactly, were they asked? Who was doing the asking and what result did they expect? Or, more probably, what did they set out to ‘prove’? And in the case of this particular poll, did they ask the same cohort this time as they did 10 years ago? If, for instance, this was a cross-section of Londoners it would be alarming if exactly these changes had not been seen, given that over that period London has become a minority white-British city.

Had you polled exclusively white respondents it would also be surprising if the same figures didn’t see an increase over this period. After all, for the last couple of decades white people have been relentlessly pounded with negative messages about their own ethnicity. But try asking white people who feel they have been driven out of their traditional stamping grounds by the intolerance and cultural iniquities of ‘the new Londoners’ and you might see the opposite result. Formerly tolerant people driven to antipathy. You can call them racist all you like but this isn’t helpful.

But what is the real purpose of polls? It isn’t to get a real perspective of how people feel – that is what elections and national referenda are for – but rather to push a pre-conceived notion of how people feel. And it is all about the ‘feelz’ because, as we have seen, emotion trumps reality every time, and what better way to affirm that your instincts are the correct ones than to find that a lot of people agree with you? Or at least some people… maybe a thousand or so who read the same newspaper as you do.

Polls are often used to push an argument rather than resolve it and the argument du jour is that of ‘white privilege’. Yes, we do know what you mean by white privilege; we understand that even the least privileged whites in our society do not have to struggle with the additional burden of being black. But where is that burden? There has never been a better time to be black, and in the UK it is arguable there has never been a better place to be black.

Does this look like white supremacy to you?

Right here, right now, the white man’s burden is to step aside in favour of any other ethnicity than our own and take a knee to show obeisance to black supremacy. Only black lives matter, whitey, hadn’t you heard? I know I am in a sample of one, but my impression is that all of this pandering to demands for reparation, for unequal justice, for preferential treatment can only backfire ultimately. But maybe I am not alone. Maybe in the white diaspora can be found other dissenting voices; maybe we should have a poll about it?

Winston's Story

Winston Smith slid another scrap of hastily erased history into the memory hole and lit a Victory cigarette. The acrid smoke burned his eyes as the dry tobacco sputtered and burned too quickly. He realised his daily ration was running out, but the clerks in the Ministry of Truth had been promised extra because of the unusually heavy workload, so he was practically chain smoking. Winston had worked the whole weekend through, busily correcting and updating accounts of recent events and any past events now seen in a new, more accurate, light.

The war with Eurasia still raged, or was it Eastasia now? Even though he had only just re-drafted a broadsheet headline he couldn’t quite remember, but it didn’t matter; Oceania had always been at war with whoever they were at war with now. The history books faithfully recorded this, no matter how many times they had to be revised. History, even though its study was banned for the purposes of keeping law and order, had become somewhat of an obsession for Smith.

On one of his rare expeditions with Julia into the prole zone he had discovered, in the back of Mr Charrington’s dusty shop, a weighty tome in four volumes written by a man called Churchill. Winston. It was called A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Smith liked to believe he had been named after the great English champion, but his parents, in the brief time he had known them, had never vouchsafed any such intelligence. He was also a little uncertain as to what or where England was, or had been.

When the Thought Police barged the door down and took Julia and Winston away to the Ministry of Love, he was still clutching the first volume in his bony hands. Their arrest was brutal and swift and as he was bundled down the stairs from the mean little flat above the shop, Winston thought he caught a glance of Mr Charrington himself, in conversation with an officer. After that his memory faded.

“Look in the mirror, Winston” said O’Brien in his calming, measured tones. “What do you see?” A pale, gaunt figure stared back. Winston knew he was poorly nourished, but the haunted face looking at him had the appearance of a man dying of starvation. “How long have I been here?” he asked. O’Brien tapped the mirror. “What do you see, Winston?” Winston didn’t quite understand the question and hesitated. A stammer rendered his query unintelligible.

“Describe yourself to me,” said O’Brien. Winston began “A… a pale, middle-aged white man…” The pain was indescribable. Winston’s body convulsed as the current coursed through his frame. “Again!” demanded O’Brien. “A hungry white…” Winston’s involuntary muscular contractions strained at his bindings and his rictus grin loomed in the mirror. O’Brien turned off the current. He held up a book.

It was much smaller and with many fewer pages than Winston remembered, but it must be ‘the book’ because there was the title, as before: A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, with a monochrome photograph of Winston Churchill adorning the cover. “Look at him, Winston. Is he not black, like you?” Winston hesitated; O’Brien continued: “Am I not black, Winston? Is Chan over there not black? Or Rodriquez?” Winston realised what was required and quickly corrected himself. “In the mirror I see me, a black man, in good health after the party has cared for me.”

O’Brien was not fooled. “Oh, Winston,” he said, “it doesn’t matter what you say. It doesn’t matter, for instance, how enthusiastically you shout the party slogans. It doesn’t matter how vociferous you are during the two-minute white hate. If you don’t believe it, you are just lying to yourself. And to us, which is worse.” Winston braced for the shock. Instead, O’Brien said, with a sad tone, “Do you know what is in Room 101, Winston?”

The day was cold but bright and Winston, flanked by two officers of the Thought Police left the Ministry of Truth. It felt good to breathe clean fresh air again, even though it made him cough violently. In his handkerchief, speckles of blood mixed with the sputum, but this was nothing new. He retrieved a Victory cigarette from a crumpled packet in his thin overcoat, begged a light from one of the officers and inhaled deeply. The coughing started up again, but this time it was almost soothing. The condemned man, he knew, was due one last pleasure.

They walked past his old workplace, where the statue to that long dead writer had recently been removed. Continuing down Reggae Street and past Pickaninny and eventually on into Blackhall, Winston observed how the hateful false history of his youth had been replaced by the truth, as old plinths now supported new, vibrant celebrations of the lively monoculture of Oceania. Eventually, they came to Parliament Square and Winston dutifully took a knee before the statue of Winston Churchill. He looked at the statue and its ebony features seemed to look back at him. Tears filled his eyes as he knew, he finally knew, he loved Black Brother.

Are We Losing the War?

I don’t do anger and hate. With me it is more akin to disappointment and avoid. But if there was ever any justification for what happened yesterday (which, in the scheme of things, really wasn’t very much at all) anger and hate, whipped up by the very people charged with keeping order, would be easy explanations. Of course, there are angry idiots on all sides and I instinctively abhor the kind of mindless white thug attitude that prevails in some, but boy were they provoked. These are not people I have ever or would ever associate with, and I have little sympathy, but I can’t hate them.

Everybody knew that last weekend would kick off. And yes, it was a minority who were violent, but that’s all it takes. But the protest was actively supported by the Mayor of London and police were instructed to bow before the black supremacists. How did that work out? The entirely predictable vandalism and injury which ensued was met with mostly mealy-mouthed platitudes threaded through with excuses for the ‘systemic’ racism the protesters had suffered. (I note, by the way, that systemic has replaced institutional, possibly because it is easier to spell; it is certainly no more valid.)

Yes, there were some notable exceptions. Priti Patel, as one would hope, was vociferous in her condemnation… and was then attacked by the opposition with a ridiculous gaslighting missive accusing her of gaslighting. I can’t recall what the Prime Minister said about last week, largely because I am struggling to remember what he has said about anything recently. But yesterday’s condemnation of the counter protest was boilerplate stuff, instantly forgettable. His empty words actually sounded more like Jeremy Corbyn.

But look how this weekend went. Unlike the previous week full of cap-wringing acquiescence, the whole week was spent in promulgating the entirely false ‘far right’ narrative. The right has long been fair game for the worst kind of racially charged rhetoric and the gathering anywhere of white British males is promoted by the media and establishment as Nazi-lite. It was relentless, with the inevitable result that everybody was expecting this mythical ‘extreme far right’, as Khan called them, to kick off.

And of course a few dozen idiots obliged. Raised pointing hands as they sang ‘In-ger-land!’ were portrayed as Nazi salutes, and there’s your wished-for fascist rally. Insults aimed at the BLM mob beyond the cordon were portrayed as direct threats against the police. And this morning it as announced that ‘over 100’ arrests were made. That must be pretty much every single man that raised a voice or a fist. The result is that now they can claim that their prediction came true.

I make no apology for using the word, but the BLM violence will now be whitewashed over as the real threat to society is suddenly society itself. The white working class majority – most of whom now genuinely fear for their future – has been framed as far right and it has been made very clear they are no longer welcome in London. In recent years we have learned a lot about this ‘framing’ of a debate – Brexit was a great example of how, when one side sets the agenda, the whole discussion becomes invalid.

Unfinished business

The left, embodied by Labour and Momentum NEEDS racism to exist and it absolutely does not want even one ‘coconut’ stepping out of line. They think they own the slave vote, just as they once owned the slaves themselves. But there will be no debate as long as one side refuses to let the others have an opinion of their own. Our language has been cleansed, our streets are being hosed down and the white is being washed out of the capital. There is no dialogue route out of this, so where do we go from here?

Etch-a-Sketch

Few, if any of the clamorous children baying for the symbolic execution of statuary deemed offensive to modern woke sensibilities would have any knowledge of the classic children’s toy. Since its inception in 1960 Etch-a-Sketch has provided countless hours of equal joy and frustration for generations of kids, long before the iPad was ever conceived. Primitive, clumsy, pedestrian, clunky, agricultural almost, it was nevertheless a boon to parents who could leave their charges alone for hours as, tongues out in concentration, they would twiddle their knobs to produce masterpieces of ephemera.

Fleeting because all that was required to destroy forever the work of many creative hours was to turn it upside down and shake. All gone as if it had never existed. Even a dismantled jigsaw still has the ability to be recreated but with the Etch-a-Sketch all that is left is a memory, and memories fade. Move on, nothing to see here. And eventually the device is related to the attic. children grow up and even the memory of the machine itself fades to nothing.

Following the removal of the statues of Colston and Milligan we hear that another icon, this time of far greater renown is to be erased from history. Lieutenant General, Lord Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell is a symbol of Britishness akin only to Kipling and Churchill and like those stalwarts had views on Nazism, fascism, communism, empire and many other things. His grave in Kenya is a national monument. Of what is he accused? I would suggest of being that symbol.

Black Lives Matter and its anarchist, communist, fascist agitators hate that a white man could have influence of any kind. And given that BP isn’t around to be forced to his knees, his image must be obliterated. Chaos is the only cause here and no symbol of whiteness must be allowed to stand. Because the truth is there is no underlying logic here, there is only hatred. Go back far enough, dig deep enough and you will find unsavoury episodes in every life. Where does it all end?

Allowing the BLM movement to pursue their anti-white vendetta to its end, will the madness only stop when everything created by white people has been destroyed? But that wouldn’t be the end, would it? In some theses, next it will be the white races themselves and when they have gone the genocides will continue, hue by hue, until only one statutorily defined shade of blackness has been agreed. In some form or other these identity issues will never go away.

Be prepared

But even if they tore down everything created by white people today, it would only herald a new age of white inventiveness, white enterprise and yes, white achievement. We would rebuild and reclaim what was once had and certain people who took no part in the rebuilding would wait their sullen turn until they could once again turn all of white history upside down and give it a good shake.

What do you want from me?

 It’s hard being reasonable. I have no idea what I would do to prevent the spread of Covid-19, to quell the rioters, to deal with the EU’s increasing threats over Brexit, to quiet the voices of dissent and to bring the nation together. In fact, as an Englishman first, I’m not even all that sure I want the nation brought together at all; the vociferousness of the Scots Nats anti-English sentiment disinclines me to engage with them. But here’s the easy thing; I am, thankfully, not tasked with doing any of that.

In a fully functioning society under the rule of entirely reasonable and non-politicised laws with good productivity and plenty of resources freely given, being the Prime Minister would be a doddle. It would be one long round of observing parades, visiting joyful, happy children being given the very best of care, education and safeguarding. It would be giving speeches to the police federation, the BMA, the teachers union, the industrial unions and the House of Commons and being received with standing ovations.

Of course, the constant glad handing, the opening of new hospitals, schools, world beating infrastructure and so on would get a bit tiring and no doubt one would develop a handshake callous and the asymmetrical grip strength of a tennis player or an obsessive masturbator. Constantly being the focus of adulation would tax the generosity of spirit of even the most gregarious, but it would be far more bearable than constantly being in the firing line.

I’m pretty sure that even the greatest leader has always had to delegate. And it might just be me but I would rather that those who scrutinise the fine detail of any issue, be it defence, health, education, law & order, commerce, foreign relations or whatever, are people charged with that and that alone. I could never trust a Prime Minister who claimed expertise in every area over which he has ultimate control; that would be ridiculous.

My point? Well, that although Boris Johnson is the focus of so much hatred from some parts of the country, I am prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt because as far as I can see he isn’t playing the autocrat. He is taking advice – and some of it must be disparate – and acting in what I have to believe he thinks is the best interests of the country. And of course whatever he does he will be condemned from some quarters.

For what it’s worth – and it is worth little, I know – I think Boris Johnson comes over as a clumsy oaf, a blunt blade and a vainglorious headline seeker. But I’ve never met him and can’t attest to the charisma he undoubtedly possesses. And right now he does seem to be rather absent from the arena when people are crying out for strong leadership, but I am a bit sick of people telling me what I must think.

Just because you see the heavy hand of conspiracy and corruption hiding in every corner of every event, it doesn’t mean I have to agree with you. Yes there are forces afoot with malicious intent, but mostly they are opportunists rather than grand strategists. There may be generals and lieutenants directing tactics on the ground and there may be idealistic funders facilitating the frenzy. But sowing the seeds of chaos looks to me more like frustration and the ever-present primate glee over causing mischief. But where is the grand plan?

Real life versus fantasy? Who really knows?

Boris Johnson is far from flawless but why does everybody think they could do better? If I had to take sides – and until the next general election it makes no difference anyway -  I’d rather stand by Boris and his gang of faintly right of centre cronies than allow Mr Personality Starmer and his mad dervishes of the left to get anywhere near the controls… although the clock is now ticking for Boris.

I Had a Dream

Wee Owen Jones and his merry band of revolutionary Marxists must be covering themselves in each other’s jizz, circle jerking to the beat of jungle drums. This is all their dreams come true; the noble savage, who they command, roused to anger and set against the enemy; the world which gave them everything they have. Powerless against their own nature, the mob enters a trance-like state where anything they can legitimise as a target becomes the focus for their destructive urges.

When a plague of locusts descends on the crops and in one concerted attack devours everything in sight, what do we call it? When an army of ants, organised into strict roles for which they have evolved, builds vast and intricate underground structures, what do we call it? Do we have a word to explain why starlings swoop and dive in their spectacular and intricate murmurations? We do have a word, as it happens; instinct. On the right cues, sometimes unfathomable to outsiders, crowds behave instinctively, driven by a madness which looks like a plan.

Generally, there is no commander in chief, no master, no single architect and the way people behave in normal life is more down to social economics than organisation. That is, people make their own decisions to buy to save, to participate, to vote… and by those many small actions a consensus is formed. But every now and then a perfect storm of circumstance arises which has the appearance of organised insurrection. The left – for this is straight out of their playbook – has seen and exploited the opportunities of the moment.

Over several decades, fear of offending has become an actual criminal matter. Meddlesome malcontents have busied themselves in identifying ever more subtle ways to be offended and angry and this has filtered through our increasingly restricted speech. Even simple descriptors such as black, brown and white have become insidiously charged with ill intent and a millennia of linguistic evolution in an almost entirely white population has resulted in a lexicon which recent incomers find, often after very detailed scrutiny indeed, offensive.

In order to disrupt the present, they have decided it is necessary to eradicate the past. You may want to reflect on other regimes which have done this. Mao’s cultural revolution, ISIS’s sacking of Palmyra… and every invading, subjugating army in history, many more of which were of what we call ‘minority ethnic’ origin than of whites. Anger over historic injustice is an impossible anger to maintain except by an enormous application of hypocrisy.

And where do you stop? Libraries are full of the works of people who had views which today some find objectionable; should we burn them down? The whole world of work is predicated on some people working hard for other people, often for insufficient reward; is this redolent of slavery; should work be abolished? And what of sport, where athletes openly display their physical superiority? The entire equalities thesis is moribund.

Tear down all the statues you like; the toppling of a statue does nothing other than satisfy a post-facto bloodlust. But why stop there? What of the schools, hospitals, universities, railway stations, public squares and other edifices endowed by people who may once have profited from a trade that was started by the ancestors of the very people who are now so aggrieved? Why not destroy every last piece of modern civilisation just in case there is any possibility that somebody, somewhere, however long ago, suffered some injustice?

There is no sense in your rage, no reason in your riotous assembly. Did you want to so disrespect the legacy of Martin Luther King Jnr that you would simply disregard his words? In that speech from 1963, which few of you have read, he implored: “In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.” You have been led on by people who are using your confected anger for their own destructive purposes. By people who want the overthrow of the very law and order that gives you your rights.

The only part of King's speech which any of you are likely to recall – although I sincerely doubt that the majority of you even know who he was – is this: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color_[sic] of their skin but by the content of their character.” Well the content of your malicious and destructive character has been noted. And it will not quickly be forgotten.

No Matter

It doesn’t matter. Not one bit. Black lives matter no more than any other life and no lives matter very much at all in the greater scheme of things. Everybody knew it was going to kick off last night, once the more peaceful (if misguided) protesters had packed up and gone home. Any sympathy you may have harboured for this largely confected affair should have evaporated days ago with the defiling of national monuments and blatant ignoring of safeguarding laws.

If this orchestrated violence, stirred up by domestic terrorists like Dawn Butler, flag-wavers for anarchists and Marxists like Antifa and the whole BLM movement hasn’t shifted your position then your position was set in stone long ago. Hatred of the police was a proxy; a thin veil for the hatred of white people, which was never far beneath the surface. Interestingly, in a not so curious parallel with emotions in the left versus right debate, white people, with very few exceptions, don’t hate black people.

Rather, we fear them, because we are hard-wired for fight or flight and even Hollywood, arguably the flakiest place on the planet, invariably uses black actors whenever they want to portray sheer, menacing power. And somebody has to say this: George Floyd was one scary-looking motherfucker. He also looked pretty dumb; a dangerous combination. Tell me you wouldn’t have shit yourself had you encountered this massive, drugged up, bovine, ugly giant in a confrontational situation.

You can pretend to yourself all you like that it isn’t so but it is; we white folk are scared of black people in the same way we are scared of muslims. We might put on a brave face, but the sight of chanting blacks or praying browns is alien to our core values and our first impulse is caution. We are already terrified of offending certain groups by the use of those deadliest of weapons, words, but we have also to fear what they might do to us, as unlikely as the real risk may be. Yet if you cross the road in the interest of self preservation you’re a racist.

We’re all racist now, of course. From a position just a couple of decades ago, where colour mattered hardly at all as long as you got on and behaved yourself and fitted in. An old friend of mine likes to joke that when his family moved into their all-white street 30 years ago, they were the novel black people, but now that all the other houses in the street are occupied by muslim families (possibly all connected to the same family) he describes himself and his wife (from Guyana and Jamaica respectively) as the only white people left.

Anthony Joshua, that famous and gifted orator, addressed protesters yesterday and told them to only buy from black-owned businesses from now on. I would be interested to learn where he thinks they are going to get all their clothes, cars, furniture and tech from in the future. What next, separate seating in cinemas and theatres? Where on the bus does he think black people should sit, or should there be separate buses?

We just want to open up a dialogue...

None of this makes any sense. In one of the least racist countries on the planet, what is it all about? And I do know how this sounds but what do these people want; what do they hope to achieve? Because as far as I can see, this civil unrest, this flouting of the social distancing rules is only going to serve to increase the social distance between black and white. And I believe they already tried that in South Africa. Black lives matter? I really don’t give a fuck.

Get off your knees

Is it all national treasure Maureen Lipman’s fault? As the eternally optimistic Beattie in the BT adverts (Beattie/BT, geddit?) she consoled her grandson’s dismal exam performance with the eminently quotable “You get an ology, you’re a scientist”. The ology in question? Sociology. And the rest, they say, is history, or as we now call it, revisionism, as the documented events of yesteryear are pressed into service to tell us all how to be ashamed of our whiteness and industry.

I went up to university in the mid-70s where I discovered something I hadn’t expected. My own degree was a cobbled-together ‘combined honours’ affair, something I later learned was a product of the push to get more people into higher education regardless of merit, but at least my studies (Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering) got me into gainful employment. My discovery was that a disappointingly large number of students were reading the dark arts of ‘social science’.

'Science' such as Sociology, Behavioural Studies, Women’s Studies and the whole plethora of vanity subjects which were engaged in dissecting and dismantling the social order that had evolved over centuries. Many of these subjects awarded their degrees for attendance, there being little in the way of any formal assessment, and thus the acolytes attained graduate status for what was more akin to a three-year holiday than a rigorous examination of the human condition. Of course, while the engineers and scientists were kept busy with coursework and studying for exams, who was busy in student politics?

Just as the Iron Law of Bureaucracy dictates that the pen pushers will drain the productivity from any enterprise, it is those who make the least contribution to the societal health of the nation who will get to decide society's policies. My time at university was long before the days of the Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) degree, which casts professional politicians from the clay of callow youth, but this is just another facet of the same phenomenon, conferring power, often far too much power, without responsibility.

Today there isn’t a large company which hasn’t got some over-arching HR department focused not on the company’s performance and reputation, but on how it gains gold stars for its hiring policy. No local authority, it seems, suffers from a lack of well-remunerated sociological meddlers, even while it is crying out for funding for frontline staff. And of course, Parliament itself is stuffed with those who have spent their entire careers spouting platitudes promising peace and love and milk and honey, yet offering no practical solutions whatsoever.

Whatever the solution to the now alarmingly in-your-face social disorder – John McDonnell’s Marxist wet dream – it absolutely does not lie with the chattering classes engaging in yet more chattering. The time for talk is not as they suggest, now; that bird flew the nest long ago. The usual, perpetual protesters are hitching their bandwagon firmly to the race train and discovering no effective repulse to their aggression. What else will they do but continue to press their advantage? The options as I see it are appeasement and further decline, or resistance and martial law. Which side will you be on in the coming civil war?

Which New Normal Do You Want?

After lockdown we really are going to have to face an issue which has been boiling over for years but is never fully addressed for fear of charges of racism. As America burns and sympathy protests are sparked in London, as France is suffering another wave of race-motivated violence from ‘the new Parisiennes’ we can’t just keep on tolerating it. However much you cling on to the hippy-era notion of the melting pot, or the more recent and more plausible salad bowl analogy, race will always spark anger and violence.

I can’t see how it can be any other way. After years of pursuing, with laudable intent I hasten to add, an equalities agenda and trying to become colour-blind (as we almost were before recent mass immigration stirred the pot) we are in worse shape than ever before. When non-whites really were a disadvantaged minority I think we were far more indifferent to cultural differences. But after decades of pushing a moral equivalence agenda the chasm is as wide as ever.

White natives do not see the supposed privilege they possess, especially when they have been elbowed out of the areas where they grew up, especially when they see apparently preferential treatment given to new arrivals while native Brits are sent to the back of the queue. They are hurt when the festivals and celebrations of alien cultures are widely applauded and encouraged by not just air-headed celebrities but by their supposed representatives in Parliament. They are offended when flying their own national flag is seen as just one step away from committing a hate crime.

Being described as white scum by Piers Morgan is not a healthy contribution to the debate, either. Then early this morning, Tommy Corbyn, scion of Magic Grandpa and failed drug baron tweeted “It's a fucking disgrace that this government is choosing not to release the report on Corona and BAME deaths because of the #BlackLivesMatter movement.” punctuating his message with clenched-fist power salutes of various hues. How would it help soothe his rage if the report concludes that those ethnicities are more susceptible to Covid-19 because of their genetic makeup, or – as is more likely – cultural practices?

Why is black culture described as ‘vibrant’ and monocultural islamic communities described with the oxymoronic ‘diverse’? Black lives matter more than white lives when their gatherings are generally monitored by police but white gatherings – unless for one of the new-age totems such as climate change – are more often than not derided as ‘far right’ or ‘white supremacist’. But now we are seeing an unholy alliance between the worst elements of all the clans, black and white as protests quickly become disorderly.

For weeks commentators have been flogging to death the phrase ‘the new normal’ referring to social distancing and the viral threat. But maybe what we are seeing on the streets, as it seems to happen more frequently and on ever flimsier pretexts, is a more accurate model? In which case what are we going to do about it? Are we going to be allowed to discuss this openly and honestly and with whatever language we believe describes our sentiments, however offended some will be? Because if we don’t this new normal is looking pretty uninviting.

If we don’t discuss it openly, if we don’t properly and evenly police our rules, the whole of the UK will do what the muslims here have already done. Welcome to segregation, the Britain of the future. Black towns, brown towns, white towns, and freak towns. While extremists of all skin colours might welcome that development it is not something that the civilised – of all skin colours – should allow to happen. But we can’t even have the debate if the language is restricted, as it is at the moment.

Until we can joke we haven't fixed this

People glibly say, in company they can trust, ‘Enoch was right’ but unless we grab this shitty stick decisively he will have been, because more and more people believe they are living through the end of white western civilisation. If we are all equal then let’s practise that maxim. If we are not then let us launch that investigation and work out how to deal with it. Until we can celebrate diversity without that being an implicitly anti-white endeavour we are lost.