Peter Hitchens, that entertaining, priggish remnant of the Daily Express (the paper that was delivered to my working class tory place of upbringing) in the days when it was a real newspaper (the Daily Mail of its day) and not the bland, weird newspaper-in-an-occupied-territory publication of today, has been ranting about how cowardly and pathetic people were because they didn't go to work during last week's blizzards. I was compelled to reply at his weblog:
'I think Hitchens' comments about snow, while in his best and most splendid style of exaggeration, show how out of touch this commentator is. It is certainly true that the official classes are risk-obsessed but are people risk-obsessed? Not so much. People who didn't go to work last week certainly weren't scared of snow, because they were all out playing in it for about four days! Some very few died taking risks in it. No, the reason why people didn't go to work is because, and this is where Peter Hitchens is totally out of touch, most employers offer rubbishy pay, no pension, job security or prospects. In a country where a morally bankrupt political and economic class reward themselves vast amounts of workers' (I so prefer that to taxpayer) earnings, where the banks are given billions for failing and then divvy the money they've stolen up for bonuses, why on *earth* would anyone who lived and worked in the real world get their knickers in a twist about getting to their place of work?Hitchens is a journalist - as am I - and this is one of the easiest trades ever. The fact that hundreds of thousands of lazy, dozy graduates are fighting, at all times, to enter it, is proof that it is a wheeze of a job. Hitchens is paid a large salary to say the same thing every week (most of it common sense. It seems provocative now, but George Gale and John Junor were saying this sort of thing all the time 25 years ago and nobody turned a hair - and it never stopped the slide towards the Blairite pigsty neither), where he ought to be touring round British workplaces, looking at wage/rent ratios, house prices, company and shareholder behaviour. Then he would realise that there's little point having a pompous protestant work ethic if you're in the kind of scam economy we're in. As he will know from his Marxist training, privilege clouds the eyes...'
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
Wednesday, 4 February 2009
So much is happening – how could I have been so lazy? Well, I haven’t been: I’ve been engaged on other creative work. But:
Over the last week or so I’ve enjoyed/laughed sardonically/smiled ironically at many things: Including: Blair ‘expressing doubts about Iraq’. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/4395367/Tony-Blair-admits-daily-doubts-about-the-war-in-Iraq.html
The Peers scrimmage, with an especial delight in Lord Truscott, a former Communist with links to the old Soviet regime, who now charges thousands an hour for alleged corrupt lobbying practices (I insert the allegedly out of journalistic habit. The Sunday Times has got him on tape offering it). Wahay, up the revolution, eh? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1133117/Revealed-The-secret-Soviet-past-sleaze-peer-Truscott.html
This, like Cameron and Trevor Hemmings http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5654196.ece is one more story in a line of stories, stretching endlessly into the past and future about the corruption and cronyism of what Peter Oborne calls the Political Class. This cannot end, because the backbone of all the parties is shot away with indifference. They have hardly any members and money is only going to come from sucking up and doing parliamentary favours for millionaire businessmen.
Depressing, eh?
Green fascism popped up with a vengeance when Jonathan Porritt (remember him? A Greenpeace drone who, many moons ago, had a something of a vogue in the Daily Telegraph. I notice he’s received a knighthood since he last came to my attention and is juiced in, as they say in Vegas, with the Government) asserted that couples who had more than two children were being irresponsible. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/4424856/Government-green-guru-Sir-Jonathon-Porritt-calls-for-two-child-limit.html
This particular nonsense makes me think this will be the seed for some dire green paper of the future about making three-child households virtually illegal through punitive taxation (special exemption for Muslims and certain other groups on account of cultural differences).
Oh Brave New World!
Dr Pippa Hayes, a Devon GP, refuses to help women who want larger families. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5627484.ece
Dr Hayes, had she lived 90 years ago, would have been the kind of socialist who applauded HG Wells and George Bernard Shaw and all the eugenicists and utopians who were so perilously close to the German aryanistas. This is what is known as liberal fascism: freedom trounced by utopians with their obdurate sense of righteousness, desire to impose uniformity of opinion and thought, and their many non-negotiable demands. In the 60s, Dr Hayes would have been busy in public libraries, denuding them of Biggles books and any non-state-mediated images of commonwealth natives.
Need I spell out the ironies of the ‘shutting down Guantanamo’ farce?
Here’s something that should concern you if you work for a living in the real world – the public sector have had a 33 per cent increase in their pension pot since last year. Another eleven billion quid. No wonder the bloke who used to sit next to me spent all his time combing the civil service gateway site. Those of us in the private sector will be working till, oh, we drop, to keep that lot comfortable from their late 50s onwards. Workers’ paradise!
It is hard to say which television channel is the worst – that is like trying ascertain which dog shit is the worst-smelling – but Channel Four is a particularly repellent mixture of toytown liberal politics, soaps and other low-grade mental pornography. It comes as no surprise to find the company has 19 senior execs and they are all on 190,000 grand plus bonuses.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article5627579.ece The disclosure, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, is embarrassing for the broadcaster, which claims it will have an annual shortfall of £150m in its finances by 2012.
If you went to the right sort of parties fifteen years ago, and found yourself seated next to one of those 19 who are paid more than the Prime Minister for serving up a diet of Justin Lee Collins and Big Brother, you would have found a great deal of righteous talk about ‘fat cats’. As Tony Benn likes to say, things move on.
And moving on swiftly; a few years ago most Guardian readers I knew would simply not accept that Iran had any ambitions to make missiles or become a player in the nuclear warhead game. In those days the law of my enemy’s enemy is my friend had come into vogue with a vengeance among the fashion specs brigade. The official line, which leaked out of the Guardian and Independent – and backed up with, IIRC, the usual BBC propaganda – was that believing Iran wanted nuclear weapons was a neocon fantasy http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/sep/27/obama.mccain.foreign.policy
But now this http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=99107
Best story of the week is the strikes over foreign workers and Peter Mandelson’s reaction to them. 1) Go and work in Europe, 2) Stop being Xenophobic.
Make no mistake, this is going to be the first of many clashes within the Labour Movement between the Labour Party ‘intellectuals’, the skinny-latte and mung bean salad set who have never done a day’s work in their lives, and the ordinary workers who get shafted by the British Government’s sell-out to EU law. The seeds of contradiction were sown long ago, but Mandy, and our Prime Minister, thought that a sea of cheap money would always ward off the deadly day. The public would be doped on credit and not bother about a damn thing (a lesson in practical governance they learned from the consequences of Mrs Thatcher’s economic reforms). Not so now. Mandelson, being totally pro-Europe and a millionaire social democrat, has nil point sympathy with the local unemployed. This is a version of the Labour Party to make old Keir Hardy spin in his box.
Today, the Times, being a propagandist organ of the Political Class, has a facetious double-page spread in its hopeless yummy mummy supplement, Times2, backing up Mandelson by detailing how British workers can go and work in places such as Uzbekistan. Salaries are not mentioned.
My God, that is a paper full of cunts. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/career_and_jobs/article5654362.ece
Lastly, rarely, something good in Times2. A piece about female war arists (it wasn’t just the excellent Dame Laura Knight): http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article5652289.ece Feminist and postmodern art theorists, please note: Thorneycroft and Hudson have never felt neglected as women artists, nor that men were promoted above them. “No, I always actually felt quite equal to the men,” Thorneycroft says. They knew they were good at what they did. They drew simply, with speed and expedience, and although probably unaware of it, these women were moving aside the indulgences of Expressionism and restoring a figurative clarity to the art of the day.
AMEN
Over the last week or so I’ve enjoyed/laughed sardonically/smiled ironically at many things: Including: Blair ‘expressing doubts about Iraq’. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/4395367/Tony-Blair-admits-daily-doubts-about-the-war-in-Iraq.html
The Peers scrimmage, with an especial delight in Lord Truscott, a former Communist with links to the old Soviet regime, who now charges thousands an hour for alleged corrupt lobbying practices (I insert the allegedly out of journalistic habit. The Sunday Times has got him on tape offering it). Wahay, up the revolution, eh? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1133117/Revealed-The-secret-Soviet-past-sleaze-peer-Truscott.html
This, like Cameron and Trevor Hemmings http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5654196.ece is one more story in a line of stories, stretching endlessly into the past and future about the corruption and cronyism of what Peter Oborne calls the Political Class. This cannot end, because the backbone of all the parties is shot away with indifference. They have hardly any members and money is only going to come from sucking up and doing parliamentary favours for millionaire businessmen.
Depressing, eh?
Green fascism popped up with a vengeance when Jonathan Porritt (remember him? A Greenpeace drone who, many moons ago, had a something of a vogue in the Daily Telegraph. I notice he’s received a knighthood since he last came to my attention and is juiced in, as they say in Vegas, with the Government) asserted that couples who had more than two children were being irresponsible. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/4424856/Government-green-guru-Sir-Jonathon-Porritt-calls-for-two-child-limit.html
This particular nonsense makes me think this will be the seed for some dire green paper of the future about making three-child households virtually illegal through punitive taxation (special exemption for Muslims and certain other groups on account of cultural differences).
Oh Brave New World!
Dr Pippa Hayes, a Devon GP, refuses to help women who want larger families. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5627484.ece
Dr Hayes, had she lived 90 years ago, would have been the kind of socialist who applauded HG Wells and George Bernard Shaw and all the eugenicists and utopians who were so perilously close to the German aryanistas. This is what is known as liberal fascism: freedom trounced by utopians with their obdurate sense of righteousness, desire to impose uniformity of opinion and thought, and their many non-negotiable demands. In the 60s, Dr Hayes would have been busy in public libraries, denuding them of Biggles books and any non-state-mediated images of commonwealth natives.
Need I spell out the ironies of the ‘shutting down Guantanamo’ farce?
Here’s something that should concern you if you work for a living in the real world – the public sector have had a 33 per cent increase in their pension pot since last year. Another eleven billion quid. No wonder the bloke who used to sit next to me spent all his time combing the civil service gateway site. Those of us in the private sector will be working till, oh, we drop, to keep that lot comfortable from their late 50s onwards. Workers’ paradise!
It is hard to say which television channel is the worst – that is like trying ascertain which dog shit is the worst-smelling – but Channel Four is a particularly repellent mixture of toytown liberal politics, soaps and other low-grade mental pornography. It comes as no surprise to find the company has 19 senior execs and they are all on 190,000 grand plus bonuses.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article5627579.ece The disclosure, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, is embarrassing for the broadcaster, which claims it will have an annual shortfall of £150m in its finances by 2012.
If you went to the right sort of parties fifteen years ago, and found yourself seated next to one of those 19 who are paid more than the Prime Minister for serving up a diet of Justin Lee Collins and Big Brother, you would have found a great deal of righteous talk about ‘fat cats’. As Tony Benn likes to say, things move on.
And moving on swiftly; a few years ago most Guardian readers I knew would simply not accept that Iran had any ambitions to make missiles or become a player in the nuclear warhead game. In those days the law of my enemy’s enemy is my friend had come into vogue with a vengeance among the fashion specs brigade. The official line, which leaked out of the Guardian and Independent – and backed up with, IIRC, the usual BBC propaganda – was that believing Iran wanted nuclear weapons was a neocon fantasy http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/sep/27/obama.mccain.foreign.policy
But now this http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=99107
Best story of the week is the strikes over foreign workers and Peter Mandelson’s reaction to them. 1) Go and work in Europe, 2) Stop being Xenophobic.
Make no mistake, this is going to be the first of many clashes within the Labour Movement between the Labour Party ‘intellectuals’, the skinny-latte and mung bean salad set who have never done a day’s work in their lives, and the ordinary workers who get shafted by the British Government’s sell-out to EU law. The seeds of contradiction were sown long ago, but Mandy, and our Prime Minister, thought that a sea of cheap money would always ward off the deadly day. The public would be doped on credit and not bother about a damn thing (a lesson in practical governance they learned from the consequences of Mrs Thatcher’s economic reforms). Not so now. Mandelson, being totally pro-Europe and a millionaire social democrat, has nil point sympathy with the local unemployed. This is a version of the Labour Party to make old Keir Hardy spin in his box.
Today, the Times, being a propagandist organ of the Political Class, has a facetious double-page spread in its hopeless yummy mummy supplement, Times2, backing up Mandelson by detailing how British workers can go and work in places such as Uzbekistan. Salaries are not mentioned.
My God, that is a paper full of cunts. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/career_and_jobs/article5654362.ece
Lastly, rarely, something good in Times2. A piece about female war arists (it wasn’t just the excellent Dame Laura Knight): http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article5652289.ece Feminist and postmodern art theorists, please note: Thorneycroft and Hudson have never felt neglected as women artists, nor that men were promoted above them. “No, I always actually felt quite equal to the men,” Thorneycroft says. They knew they were good at what they did. They drew simply, with speed and expedience, and although probably unaware of it, these women were moving aside the indulgences of Expressionism and restoring a figurative clarity to the art of the day.
AMEN
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