The other side of the immigration debate is the emigration story.
TV shows like A Place in the Sun trail around after generally very modest UK families who are looking to escape Brown's Beneficent Britain to create a better life for themselves. Astonishingly few have any command of the language at all, but yet they press on with bizarre disregard for the challenges that this provides.
The housing is cheaper, the food is cheaper, the way of life is less fraught, the weather is better; and even the drunks are generally far better natured than their violent and surly UK counterparts. And the PM of Spain is unlikely to ever be a dour Scot.
It seems that the UK government is happy to watch indigenous families totalling some 350k people with a bit of pioneering spirit and chutzpah disappear and create vacancies being filled by 600k immigrants.
Consider the historic voting tendencies of those with "pioneering spirit and chutzpah" versus traditional immigrant allegiances (complete with dodgy postal votes) for the Labour Party. Lady Shirley Porter got into deep brown stuff when messing around with a few thousand votes in Westminster, the Labour Party is gerrymandering with influence on a national scale and few seem bothered.
Bizarre.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Monday, July 16, 2007
Gordon's Honeymoon
Recent opinion polls putting Brown comfortably ahead of Cameron may have more to with relief that Tony finally did the decent thing, than belief in Brown and his 2nd division substitute lineup. Relief is generally not a wholly objective emotion. In this case, it masks yet another fundamental misjudgement - just as happened when far too many supposedly intelligent commentators attributed a modestly talented and adequately deluded actor like Blair with the characteristics of statesmanship.
That Gordon Brown should have the effrontery to pretend that his paw marks are not actually all over 10 years of New Labour misrule is the sort of amazing insolence that might just be a big enough lie to go so far off the credulity scale that he gets away with it, as long as he is permitted to avoid answering direct questions.
However, the Majority Party welcomes any opportunity for the democratic process to be exercised, but what we have in the UK is not democracy as long as the outcome of English politics at Westminster is determined by Scottish voters and their Scottish PM and Scottish Chancellor.
That Gordon Brown should have the effrontery to pretend that his paw marks are not actually all over 10 years of New Labour misrule is the sort of amazing insolence that might just be a big enough lie to go so far off the credulity scale that he gets away with it, as long as he is permitted to avoid answering direct questions.
However, the Majority Party welcomes any opportunity for the democratic process to be exercised, but what we have in the UK is not democracy as long as the outcome of English politics at Westminster is determined by Scottish voters and their Scottish PM and Scottish Chancellor.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Rainman stops play
Our recent allusion to "skiers" being struck by the new government was wildly over optimistic. They may never even connect bat with ball. John Humphries' interview with Gordon Brown on Radio 4 today was more a case of the groundsman having being pressed into urgent service after the only batting talent had been compulsorily retired hurt.
Humphries bowled him comprehensively with just about every delivery as Gordon ducked into bouncers, flailed hopelessly outside the off stump and generally began to prove what we had all suspected about his fundamental lack of fitness for purpose. He simply does not answer any question he is given, but carries on taking guard somewhere around square leg.
There's nothing rare in a politician not answering a direct question, even when bowled underarm; but there is something quite painfully maladroit and uncoordinated where Gordon is concerned.
Humphries maintained a perfect line and length when repeatedly asking about the effect 600k unscheduled immigrants were having on stressed UK housing requirements on some 4 successive occasions. Brown played down the wrong line and missed each time, and only the most starry-eyed ardent Labour sympathiser could have failed to hear the regular clatter of the stumps being flattened.
Interviewing Our Beloved New Leader is not so much a case for Hawkeye as ensuring that Gordon's endless requirement for new stumps comes from ecologically managed sustainable forests.
Gordon's command of statistics is legendary. He has bored for England (and Scotland) on many budget occasions with his reams of tedium: to adapt that famous quotation, Gordon knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Would it be too extreme to suggest there may even be a glimpse of the Aspergers variant of autism going on here? As far as John Humphries was concerned, it was clearly a matter of "Rainman stops play".
Humphries bowled him comprehensively with just about every delivery as Gordon ducked into bouncers, flailed hopelessly outside the off stump and generally began to prove what we had all suspected about his fundamental lack of fitness for purpose. He simply does not answer any question he is given, but carries on taking guard somewhere around square leg.
There's nothing rare in a politician not answering a direct question, even when bowled underarm; but there is something quite painfully maladroit and uncoordinated where Gordon is concerned.
Humphries maintained a perfect line and length when repeatedly asking about the effect 600k unscheduled immigrants were having on stressed UK housing requirements on some 4 successive occasions. Brown played down the wrong line and missed each time, and only the most starry-eyed ardent Labour sympathiser could have failed to hear the regular clatter of the stumps being flattened.
Interviewing Our Beloved New Leader is not so much a case for Hawkeye as ensuring that Gordon's endless requirement for new stumps comes from ecologically managed sustainable forests.
Gordon's command of statistics is legendary. He has bored for England (and Scotland) on many budget occasions with his reams of tedium: to adapt that famous quotation, Gordon knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Would it be too extreme to suggest there may even be a glimpse of the Aspergers variant of autism going on here? As far as John Humphries was concerned, it was clearly a matter of "Rainman stops play".
Monday, July 09, 2007
Restating the obvious
Claiming ownership of the obvious as core policy is a fine political traditional going down through the ages, but why does the fact that children brought up in a stable 2-parent family generally create less havoc and lead more successful lives than children of broken/single parent homes, need to be quite so regularly "rediscovered"..?
Ian Duncan Smith's latest contribution to the reinvention of Tory policy has made the latest of these rediscoveries, but stops short on the precarious and mine-strewn path of analysis - so permit TMP to take a stab. What's a foot or two amongst friends? We'll just get some of those nifty springs fitted instead, and then no one will be able to catch us again. But if we can identify some reasons for the astonishing denial of the obvious over the past couple of decades, we might get nearer a long term solution.
[In the style of a Tom Baker narration:]
So much of chattering-class media and education has been progressively controlled by confirmed bachelors and strident spinsters for the past 20 years since homosexuality became compulsory in Little Britain, that the subversive assertion that two parent families are an irrelevant bourgeois anachronism has almost been accepted as a given. It isn't; it never was and, crucially, never will be: so would the pink mafia kindly please get over it, and move on.
The fact that many "single" people are disproportionately successful with respect to limited talent owes a fair bit to the fundamentally selfish nature of their persuasion, leading to the reality that helping to bring up kids in stable family relationships can be a huge and expensive distraction for those who choose to be boringly conventional in their view of society. Some (many?) employers also practise a form of subtle discrimination since they are aware that "married with children" workers inevitably have priorities outside the company.
If being determinedly single means riding around in a pristine Porsche Boxter instead of a Vauxhall Zafira littered with chocolate biscuit crumbs and home to an escaped hamster, then it's little wonder that metrosexuals like David Walliams keep their options so ambiguously open.
Once upon a time, the argument in favour of pretending that single parents and broken homes were not an impediment might have been attributed to a need to consider the feelings of kids of broken homes so they they are not immediately provided an excuse for underachievement. However, the facts are inescapable, and denial has done no party to this fundamental social deceit, any discernible favours. Now is the time to enlist kids to put pressure on their parents to act responsibly once again.
The modern tendency to have kids late is also a mistake. Apart from the physiological issues, by the age of 30 most parents, after a pampered upbringing by their own guilt-ridden parents and 10 years of dinky time (dual-income, no kids yet) , have grown comfortable on assorted selfish indulgences, and simply do not understand the sacrifices that traditional parenthood entails.
Maybe the most selfish indulgence of all is looking forward to having grown up kids off your hands in your early fifties. Spend that inheritance while you still can; and not on stair lifts.
So perhaps the theft of pension funds was actually a subtle way of reminding the population that since Gordon and his nanny state has blown the savings on surveillance cameras, ex-PM's perks, immigrant housing and diversity assertion training, he and it won't be around to look after you in your old age, and a caring family might be your only option. It's too bad that Gordon's kids will be nagging for university top-up funding just as he's hitting 65...
Ian Duncan Smith's latest contribution to the reinvention of Tory policy has made the latest of these rediscoveries, but stops short on the precarious and mine-strewn path of analysis - so permit TMP to take a stab. What's a foot or two amongst friends? We'll just get some of those nifty springs fitted instead, and then no one will be able to catch us again. But if we can identify some reasons for the astonishing denial of the obvious over the past couple of decades, we might get nearer a long term solution.
[In the style of a Tom Baker narration:]
So much of chattering-class media and education has been progressively controlled by confirmed bachelors and strident spinsters for the past 20 years since homosexuality became compulsory in Little Britain, that the subversive assertion that two parent families are an irrelevant bourgeois anachronism has almost been accepted as a given. It isn't; it never was and, crucially, never will be: so would the pink mafia kindly please get over it, and move on.
The fact that many "single" people are disproportionately successful with respect to limited talent owes a fair bit to the fundamentally selfish nature of their persuasion, leading to the reality that helping to bring up kids in stable family relationships can be a huge and expensive distraction for those who choose to be boringly conventional in their view of society. Some (many?) employers also practise a form of subtle discrimination since they are aware that "married with children" workers inevitably have priorities outside the company.
If being determinedly single means riding around in a pristine Porsche Boxter instead of a Vauxhall Zafira littered with chocolate biscuit crumbs and home to an escaped hamster, then it's little wonder that metrosexuals like David Walliams keep their options so ambiguously open.
Once upon a time, the argument in favour of pretending that single parents and broken homes were not an impediment might have been attributed to a need to consider the feelings of kids of broken homes so they they are not immediately provided an excuse for underachievement. However, the facts are inescapable, and denial has done no party to this fundamental social deceit, any discernible favours. Now is the time to enlist kids to put pressure on their parents to act responsibly once again.
The modern tendency to have kids late is also a mistake. Apart from the physiological issues, by the age of 30 most parents, after a pampered upbringing by their own guilt-ridden parents and 10 years of dinky time (dual-income, no kids yet) , have grown comfortable on assorted selfish indulgences, and simply do not understand the sacrifices that traditional parenthood entails.
Maybe the most selfish indulgence of all is looking forward to having grown up kids off your hands in your early fifties. Spend that inheritance while you still can; and not on stair lifts.
So perhaps the theft of pension funds was actually a subtle way of reminding the population that since Gordon and his nanny state has blown the savings on surveillance cameras, ex-PM's perks, immigrant housing and diversity assertion training, he and it won't be around to look after you in your old age, and a caring family might be your only option. It's too bad that Gordon's kids will be nagging for university top-up funding just as he's hitting 65...
Friday, July 06, 2007
New New Labour, same old old story
Well, it's been quite a baptism for the "new government", but clearly Gordon is not going to be up to it in the long run. He and his woefully talent-free team are almost certain to hit a few skiers within the first few months - possibly the collapse of the credit economy that he did so much to encourage, or yet more uneasy revelations about immigration and political gerrymandering. And the cash for gongs affair is still far from out of the way.
The only question is if David Cameron is going to drop the catch. Too bad the country remains so polarised where William Hague, the safest pair of debating hands on the opposition benches, and the best political talent left standing, is concerned.
The awful truth is that the public would probably vote for Chantelle Houghton in an effort to relieve the boredom that seems inevitable.
But watch this space. Whilst Tony was a subtle Scot, Gordon is the full blown wode-wearing, sporran swinging, claymore swishing thoroughly Caledonian thing. Remember readers, he occupies No 10 as the result of the thoroughly gerrymandered Scottish vote - not the English vote. Moreover, the Scots have their own regime, embarrassingly headed up by the next best political talent to Hague in the UK, the redoubtable Alex Salmond. It could well suit Alex to see Gordon trip up and land sporran-first in the thistle patch.
As interest rates continue to climb and our faux economy falters, the very Scottish and very dour Alistair Darling will be ruffling English feathers aplenty. Things are warming up.
The only question is if David Cameron is going to drop the catch. Too bad the country remains so polarised where William Hague, the safest pair of debating hands on the opposition benches, and the best political talent left standing, is concerned.
The awful truth is that the public would probably vote for Chantelle Houghton in an effort to relieve the boredom that seems inevitable.
But watch this space. Whilst Tony was a subtle Scot, Gordon is the full blown wode-wearing, sporran swinging, claymore swishing thoroughly Caledonian thing. Remember readers, he occupies No 10 as the result of the thoroughly gerrymandered Scottish vote - not the English vote. Moreover, the Scots have their own regime, embarrassingly headed up by the next best political talent to Hague in the UK, the redoubtable Alex Salmond. It could well suit Alex to see Gordon trip up and land sporran-first in the thistle patch.
As interest rates continue to climb and our faux economy falters, the very Scottish and very dour Alistair Darling will be ruffling English feathers aplenty. Things are warming up.
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