SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL, SPEAK NO EVIL

One can now add to that proverb, WRITE NO EVIL, if the ‘we’re all one society, appeasing, down-on-my-knees-begging-you-please, Islamic loving, inclusivity obsessed, multiculturally aware, touchy-feely, rightwing-hating, individual freedom go-to-hell, I care more than you care and the State knows best’ Guardian newspaper gets its way.

In this Saturday’s edition (21st August 2010) under the headline ‘Rightwing Blogs lead ‘War on Islam’ the Guardian gave vent to an hysterical rant against rightwing opinion and female blogger Pamela Geller in particular. Written by Chris McGreal, peace and blessing be upon him, it was a ludicrous attack on activist Geller that ultimately says more about the soft mainstream Islam-loving chattering classes and their fear of the new right than it did about Pamela Geller.

For the left the rise of grassroots activist movements like the Tea Party Radicals, the English Defense League, new political parties or the relentless rise of the right on the Net via the Blogosphere and related websites has usurped the left’s old street protesting stomping ground. Once the Left basked in the knowledge that ordinary people were by and large on their side, Trade Unions could muster thousands of followers, students were generally of the left, radical politics, activism and mass movements were of the left, and the right, where was the Right?

The right, in fact, was either perceived as Conservative, straight, male, Christian and white or shaven-headed, cranially-challenged, bigoted, straight, male and white. Worse, both were seen as being partnered by dull, plump, child-bearing dullards who were either Thatcher clones or broken bones and, who were, bar the odd exception, utterly asexual or sexless.

The left may have had followers of both sexes, but their dedication and pursuit of the monosexual being meant that each partner was often bearded, sandal wearing and obsessed with their diet, and as such were accompanied, in the main, by a bizarre array of multi-sexual, transsexual, cross-dressing, muesli-munching, hormonally-challenged, dungareed wearing, saddos whose idea of a good time was reminiscing about how much they’d collected for the striking miners in the eighties and planning their party of parties to celebrate the imminent death of Margaret Thatcher. Yet lurking on the edges of these leftwing clans were some of the world’s beautiful people, radical chick, could also be radical chic. From black-clad, capitalist-killing members of the Baader-Meinhof gang to free-lovin’ little rich girls, the left had them all.

But not any more. The Right got a growing army of discontented, sassy women and, at its head, Sarah Palin, a Republican hockey-mum and moose-hunting, heaving-bosomed, far right goddess who gave every red-neck American their biggest hard-on in years. Palin came along at a time when the US right was in free fall and the United States was still reeling from the aftermath of September 11th, Hurricane Katrina, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, foreclosures and the Credit Crunch and the election of the first black President of the United States. These events, momentous and challenging, happened at a time when the incumbent Republican President Bush was floundering and failing to take a lead. The American people wanted change and got it big time in the election of President Obama, a man whose radical, left leaning agenda, would soon galvanize the grassroots right in ways not seen in the US for years, if at all. It is this grassroots movement in the US, and from the US to the rest of the world, that is so alarming the left and its mouthpieces like the Guardian.

The left’s goon squads are now on the attack and when they attack they attack big time, first, as with Sarah Palin, they will attack their target in the media, they will ridicule and besmirch your family (as long as you’re white), your religion (as long as its Christian) and your character and if that doesn’t work the left runs to their legal friends to find ways of shutting you up, shutting you down, and banning you or all three.

For the UK left and the soft left establishment our Democracy is not enshrined in law or laid down in a Bill of Rights, it is fluid, changeable, and bendable. Not so much a constitution as a flexible solution to a problem should it arise, and as the new left creates laws, like for instance the law of religious hatred, so the left’s legions of litigators utilize them to silence and cajole its enemies. The UK’s array of new gagging orders are both vile and one of the single biggest attacks on free speech the UK has ever seen.

It's no coincidence that the abolition of an antiquated law like Blasphemy, which only applied to Anglican Christians and was hardly ever used, should, in fact, have heralded in a vastly more effective and draconian law that made it a crime to incite or promote religious hatred, a catch-all phrase that can mean anything and effectively protects Islam and other religions from criticism. Likewise protest movements like the English Defense League can be banned from marching if the local, often politically motivated, police think the EDL’s presence might upset the local residents.

Expect to see the ‘threat of disorder’ wheeled out again and again now when EDL and similar bodies attempt to march. Beyond that, the Commission for Racial Equality is heaping one legal challenge after another on the British National Party in its stated aim of bankrupting the party and destroying it for good, thus effectively denying a voice to a million voters. Would such a tactic, say used by the Conservatives against the Communist Party or the Socialist Workers Party, have been any more acceptable? The EDL and the BNP may well be unpleasant and be represented by some pretty ghastly individuals but their growth is indicative that something in society is wrong and shutting them down is not going to make the root causes that created them go away.

Now the left is moving on Bloggers, blogger and campaigner Pamela Geller is, according to the Guardian and Civil rights groups, guilty of "hate speech" for her repeated warnings of "Islamic domination" of the US. Further she has, according to the McCarthyist left leaning political monitoring group, The Southern Poverty Law Centre, mixed political exploitation with ‘hate-mongering‘. As a result Geller has, according to the Law Centre’s spokesman Marc Potok, ‘crossed the line from legitimate debate’, as it is in his words, wrong to ‘talk about conspiracies on the part of Muslims to dominate the United States’.

The whole article was implying that Pamela Geller and her ilk must be silenced, that their attacks on Islam and Muslims amounted to hate-speech and as such were committing a verbal ‘crime’ punishable by law. This is the left’s answer to everything now. If it offends ban it, gag it, silence it. The left has created a chaotic world of mass immigration, moved peoples from country to country without any thought as to the consequences, it has promoted lifestyles which are often at odds with people’s beliefs and done so regardless of the indigenous population. Now when grassroots movements against these decisions grow amongst the people the Left actively seeks to destroy those movements and deny the people a voice.

The Left and the mainstream Establishment will silence the people at its peril because every time a moderate is silenced, is mocked, or his ideas pilloried, then the more extreme will become his efforts to be heard and the more extreme his need to make the state and the establishment listen.

MUZZLING, TAMING AND RESHAPING THE RIGHT

It is interesting that, as the US’s grass roots Tea Party movement begins to exert real influence over the Republican Party and its choice of candidates for November’s Senate elections, so the mainstream right wing media is turning on them, both in the US and in the UK. The reason? The Tea Party and similar fringe or unofficial right wing movements often espouse ideas and thoughts that go against the grain and the soft media-friendly right doesn’t like it. Hence a succession of doom and gloom articles in everything from the Telegraph to the cover of the Economist all attacking the Tea Party, its supporters and its ideologies.

According to the Economist Leader's column, the American right should emulate David Cameron’s ghastly, touchy-feely, hug-a-hoodie, love your enemy approach if they want to reconnect with mainstream America and help the Republicans win the 2012 election, conveniently ignoring the fact that ‘Dave’ lost the UK’s election and was forced to cosy up to the Liberal Democrats in order to form a government. The Economist thinks that the Tea Party is too angry and too white, a terrible crime in the eyes of the multiculturally obsessed, and too far away from the centrist mainstream right ideology so favoured by the Economist. Good.

Good because the radical right is now hamstrung and gagged at every opportunity by a mainstream obsessed with keeping politics in the middle ground and if it’s beginning to get to the point where it can begin to ruffle a few harmonious middle ground feathers then so much to the good. Politics needs extremes and it needs anger otherwise it vegetates and eventually produces inertia in the electorate and leaders like Gordon Brown and David Cameron. Extremes get watered down, they get changed and altered but politics needs new ideas and they need anger to drive them and the people have every right to be angry.

Our leaders and governments have created and encouraged a spend now, pay later environment for years both at national levels and personal levels. They did this for a mixture of reasons, some altruistic, some nationalistic and some egotistic but the net result is the same, the West is in debt and struggling with welfare systems it cannot afford and populations, swollen by unchecked immigration, that it cannot support. Yet few political parties will give vent to the anger and the fear that people so clearly feel.

This is rage with a small ‘r’, the reasonable revolution. So far we have had a soft recession with a soft landing and mild discomfort. For most people it's business as usual, we might be told its tough ‘out there’ but in here the birds are still singing (unless an Eastern European migrant has eaten them) and the sun is still shining and those clouds on the horizon are still a long way away. But others are hurting and for them the Tea Party is giving them a voice but still the government and the media won’t listen because what people are saying goes against current norms.

It was interesting that, aside from attacking the Tea Party and its followers, The Economist's other key target was the “hysterical blogosphere”,  whose writers ravings are apparently threatening the mainstream moderate Republican party and damaging its chances of winning the 2012 elections. Of course, what the Economist was really saying was 'stop the Tea Party movement now or we risk seeing a Sarah Palin / Mike Huckabee double act running for the White House', something that is an anathema to many.

Now every thing is pastel grey, a big bland in the centre with the right pushed to the loony sidelines, its followers dismissed as extremists who, according to the Economist are intolerant, gun-toting, immigrant-bashing and worse according to the Telegraph they harbour members who have “aligned themselves with an array of wild positions”. These “wild” positions often cover tax, immigration, crime and punishment and abortion, the great totems of the left and soft right and our new multicultural diverse society and as such are not only untouchable but now unmentionable.

Our Western multicultural democracies have contracted and reduced the political spectrum to a mid range of political ideas that drift slightly to the right and slightly to the left but effectively encourage Big government, maintain the key socialist totems of welfare and the multicultural society. That dissent will not be tolerated has become more and more evident as the new establishment, that unholy kabal between the mainstream political classes, the media and many in the public sector, exerts pressure to crush or rubbish any dissenters that dares to threaten the current status quo.

Regardless of what one thinks of the Tea Party, its agenda or those politicians like Sarah Palin or Sharron Angle, who are so aligned and associated with it, the Tea Party is a grass roots movement that has risen quickly to encompass hundreds of thousands of followers in less than two years. This movement, like other right wing dissent in Europe and the online blogosphere, is constantly dismissed as irrelevant and as the wailings of lunatics, yet it is growing in strength and anger and cannot be ignored any longer. The fact that British publications feel the need to weigh in and dangle the spectacle of David Cameron in front of Americans as something to aspire to only shows just how out of touch the mainstream right has become.

By the way, mine's white with no sugar.

Thank you.

AS YOU SOW, SO SHALL YOU REAP

Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap, says the bible, in which case, the people of the UK may well be about to reap the whirlwind for having created a political, economic and social climate that now has all the ingredients for disaster on a biblical scale. 

We have three ‘leaders’ and three political parties that have totally failed to either address or acknowledge the true and dire state of this countries finances or the fragile social environment against which our national debt has been borrowed and whose foundations it props up. Equally, we have a population that has become so inured by credit, cocooned by public services and enfeebled by political correctness and human rights legislation that in a ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ kind of way they have become Generation Eloi. A placid and docile race content to shop, watch TV, and trade banalities on Twitter and Facebook while their comfort zone is fueled by ever rising property values, easy money and a sense that life just gets better and better. It doesn’t, sometimes it gets nasty. 

This is one of those times and usually this country throws up a few strong leaders to rally the people, to speak the unspeakable and rouse us from our nice comfort zones. Instead we have thrown up a collection of political pigmies, men of such shallowness that their superficial values and trite displays of political ‘passion’ only highlight their complete lack of any beliefs worthy of the name. These worthless little men, the product, born not of deep political conviction and struggle, but of focus groups and public relation experts are our creations and our nemesis. They are what we deserve.

Clegg, Cameron and Brown and the political parties that they represent are finished. They are bereft of new ideas and incapable of leadership. Instead they, like smart and slick salesmen, smile and recite their latest formulated political ideas. Prepacked and preordained. Uniform, and for the most part interchangeable, this is one idea fits all politics. If it works for the Conservatives, then it’ll work for the Liberal Democrats and New Labour. They are like the Ford Ka, the only difference being the colour. Blue for the Conservatives, Red for Labour and Orange for the Lib Dems, with a big yellow streak down the middle. Perhaps, now that all the parties are up for a bit of Lib Dem action and are selling out any remaining credibility for the chance to bed Clegg, they should all have a yellow streak down their backs.

Our country is broke and teetering on the brink of a financial and social catastrophe yet during the three weeks of electioneering our would-be prime ministers barely mentioned it instead they fell over themselves to boast about what they would not cut.  Brown, no doubt with a tear in his eye, announced that he was ‘shocked and angry’ that Cameron and Clegg were in a ‘coalition of cuts against children’ and that cuts in child tax credits were an anathema to him. As were cuts to the Health Service, Education, the Police, or it seems anything else that might hurt the vulnerable. In our new Eloi paradise it seems money is no object. If we’re short we can just borrow it from those nice people in the City or, better still, we can print it. 

Watching and listening to these three wise men was like watching a troupe of fanatics that have been fired up by a preacher and told to spread the word. Suddenly Brown and Co. had seen the light, “No Cuts”, “Protect the Vulnerable” they cried. “What’s My Line?” had morphed into “What’s My Slogan?” and it was going to be cutback light, no pain, maybe an ache, no cuts now but a scratch or two next year or the year after that. Like the parent whose child had a nightmare, they were not only going to leave the hall light on but would sit next to the bed and watch over us. See, there’s nothing to worry about... The trouble is, there’s actually lots to worry about, not the least of which is the three buffoons that would lead us and the three parties they represent, for the longer they delay making cuts the sooner that their ability to act may be taken out of their hands. Very soon the financial markets and world events may, like in Greece, begin to exert pressure on our economy that will affect interest rates, the exchange rates and the Government's ability to borrow and maintain its current financial commitments.

Yet the mantra of ‘no cuts’ rules and the people like it. ‘Protect (the vulnerable) and Survive’ is the way to win this war. The only trouble is that you don’t win wars by being nice or by protecting the vulnerable, in fact, often the vulnerable are the first to go, after all they contribute nothing and often take more than their fair share. The Health Service is full of useless managers and inept staff that should be sacked to make way for people who can actually do the job. Unfortunately, politicians and sentimental journalists have so milked the whole ‘angels in uniform’ nonsense that the Health Service has become a sacred cow that consumes money faster that its asylum seeker, economic migrant patients can spend it. Likewise our bloated public sector is ludicrously over staffed with no-hoper under achievers who are being paid vast salaries for doing nothing more than being alive, while others are so obviously cranially challenged that the kindest thing to do would be to kill them. 

The vulnerable, along with hundreds of thousands of individuals whose contribution to the UK is on a par with their IQ’s, is actually what a large percentage of our national debt is paying for and would be easy to cut if we had a government prepared to forgo the ‘nice’ in order to deal with the ‘nasty’ for once. However given that our three main political parties are now about to engage in some sort of ghastly love-in and the only political parties waiting in the wings are UKIP, whose leader flew his plane into a field on election day, the BNP, which collapsed into farcical disarray during the last few days of the campaign by getting sued by Unilever and having its website pulled and the Greens, who at least managed to get someone elected, it’s unlikely that anything will be done and that the vulnerable, the public sector and sacred cows are all safe for now.

The truth is that we are reaping what we have sown and that right now there is no alternative to the Clegg, Cameron and Brown Kabal in whatever form it finally takes and that is the truly scary aspect of this non-election. For, in order to protect the vulnerable and the public sector, these men will most likely damn us all. Amen.

THE BLAND LEADING THE BLAND

It says something about the state of the UK when over ten million of its adult population choose to spend an hour of their time watching three virtually identikit politicians regurgitate three almost interchangeable responses to a series of preset questions and go wild with excitement. The media claimed the next day that the American-style format ‘leaders debate’ had ‘electrified’ voters and galvanised a previously lacklustre campaign and made the previously unelectable Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg the viewers’ favourite, a bit like the X-Factor, though with Peter Mandelson taking Simon Cowell’s role, Brown playing Subo and Clegg and David Cameron doubling up as Jedward. So far there’s all to play for, though, whoever wins, the loser will be the UK and its people.

Since the ousting of Margaret Thatcher as leader of the Conservative party in 1990, British politics began the process of morphing from nasty to nice and from nice to bland and from bland to banal. Firstly, the inability of the Labour Party to mount a credible campaign against the Conservatives kept them out of office for over eighteen years, necessitating the creation of New Labour and the election of a media-savvy leader in the form of Tony Blair. Secondly, Blair transformed Labour’s fortunes to such an extent that the Conservatives in turn became unelectable and ensured that New Labour has had thirteen years in office, a feat almost unimaginable a decade ago.

Blair’s triumph was that he was able to tap into the psyche of New Britain in a way that no one else, except perhaps Simon Cowell, could and, in doing so, stymied the opposition to such an extent that it was effectively dead. So dead, in fact, that the Conservatives have, rather than reinvent themselves as a credible alternative to New Labour, sought to become New Labour, Right. The Liberal Democrats in turn, have slowly moved from a party of ban the bomb, lentil-eating greenies to a slightly fadish and more socialist version of their previous selves and become, in effect, New Labour, Left. Blair, ironically, had admired Thatcher and her strength in sticking to her beliefs, something Blair, to his credit, did over Iraq but, to their shame, our opposition have no sense of. To them, belief is what they think voters want or what their focus groups tell them we want or, worse, is a watered down, or beefed-up version of an existing Blair or New Labour policy. If it worked for Blair then it will work for us. Radical ideas, like radical politics, are out. British politics is now lite and trite. 

Now Blair’s Dauphin, Gordon Brown, the anointed one and his chosen successor is seeking to carve out his own niche and to wear the crown of elected office, something that has so far eluded him in his sham role as unelected Prime Minister and saviour of the world. Likewise, Clegg and Cameron are seeking the voters’ approval so that they too might savour elected office and yet they offer nothing. No new ideas, no new initiatives, no nothing. We have weak men, appealing to a weak electorate with neither able or willing to accept or utter the truth that our country is teetering on the abyss; financially, socially and morally.

Now, our would-be leaders feed and nurture belief that the worst is behind us that by some clever trickery and word manipulation, printing money became quantitative easing for instance, that they have all but conquered the recession. That we can avoid any hurt by cost cutting ‘savings’, by making our public services more efficient. This is against a national debt that is increasing by half a billion a day, which currently stands at £776bn and which, according to the governments own figures, is due to reach £1,406bn by 2014/15. Further, if government spending continues at current levels then as a percentage of GDP it will rise from 70pc now to 500pc of GDP by 2040 with the interest alone equaling 27pc of GDP. These figures are from the Bank of International Settlements the body for the world’s central banks and are contained within a report called The Future of Public Debt: prospects and implications. What they mean is that the UK is bankrupt and borrowing like a man possessed, with the report showing that, aside from Japan, which has higher savings, UK public spending is the highest in the world, totally out of control and heading for disaster.

Yet, our three main political parties are now virtually interchangeable, sub-Blair clones, scared of offending, scared of losing and scared of being different. Not for these men the hard choices and true cost cutting that hurts, that will bring protest and pain yet ultimately might go some way to averting disaster. No, what we have instead is inaction and inertia, the politics of fudging and prevarication, of sound bites and friendly chats on TV sofas, all driven by the politics of needing to be liked. Gone is the genuine passion of the convicted politician whose ideal’s drive him and in has come the need me, like me, fay politicians of today, the X-Factoresque Tweedle Dee’s and Tweedle Dum’s who will dance to almost any tune provided enough of us can hum it. Men and women whose message is vote for me because I’m nice and leave the nasty stuff to someone else.

Leaving the nasty to someone else is fine of course, provided that whatever bogey man is lurking in the wings stays away. We all like the nice and calm but, by and large, we don’t elect politicians to be nice and, more to the point, it’s usually the nasties that we ultimately remember and respect. Churchill’s demands to rearm and resist Nazi Germany weren’t exactly popular at the time as most of the electorate dismissed his dire warnings as warmongering. Thatcher was almost universally loathed when she tackled the Trade Unions and government overspending. In the US, Reagan was shot and mocked for his stand against communist Russian but all three politicians had stood up for what they believed to be right and more importantly had done what they knew had to be done at a time what doing so made them reviled by many.

Are Brown, Clegg or Cameron prepared to be reviled for tackling this countries spiraling debt? No, though they may well be reviled later for being nice and delaying the pain. But right now, they want to be liked so much that they’re not even admitting the extent of the problem. They’re lying, in fact; lying because they’re still spending and promising to do what we can’t afford; lying by printing money; lying by hoping that inflation will magically reduce the debt and, most of all, they’re lying because they all refuse to address our debt honestly and by doing so they cheapen and discredit our democracy, devaluing it to the point that one day soon someone might just kill it off and put it out of its misery ...