Land

Sometimes.

When I feel dispirited, and there are setbacks, and things are not going well.

I will look at the land.

And I think:  this land is worth fighting for.

This is what the forces opposed to us will never understand.

This attachment to the land.

Marriage is a sacrament

I think many people on the left are misrepresenting Tory misgivings over "gay marriage".

I am not married, and cannot see any circumstances under which I would get married, but I am still concerned about marriage as an institution.

Marriage is the foundation of family life.

And the sanctity of family life is the foundation of Conservative philosophy.

Therefore anything which damages the institution of marriage represents a threat to the Conservative ideal of society.

And therefore the eagerness with which the left wants to "reform" and "widen" and "make more fair" an institution they do not really care about.

It's just another way of wrecking society and making its institutions unworkable so that they can be replaced by socialist alternatives.

In the eyes of the left marriage is just a bourgeois convention - destroy it and the middle class hold on society will crumble.

In the eyes of the right (and many others) marriage is a sacrament - it cannot ultimately be destroyed (due to its intrinsic nature) but if we allow it to be temporarily eclipsed a great deal of damage will be done to the Christian society that most Conservatives subscribe to.

Whether one is individually "gay" or "straight" or "bi" is irrelevant to the wider issues involved in this argument.

Lies get you further?

I do not regard Janan Ganesh as a Conservative. I have no idea whether he is an actual Conservative party member or not. But to me he just seems like a libertarian liberal who has wandered into the right-wing camp because there is nowhere else for pro-business people to go.


That is why I do not take his comments seriously.

In particular this article:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5dde96d6-c138-11e2-b93b-00144feab7de.html#axzz2TvCgCY00

My comments are in blue.

“The prime minister’s estrangement from his party… really set in with his failure to win in 2010”.
David Cameron actually told us (“us” – not sure if that includes Mr Ganesh) when he first became leader that it would take two election attempts to get a Conservative victory, so in that respect his strategy is still on course.

“This original sin…”
I don’t wish to be pedantic, but original sin does not mean an error that cannot subsequently be put right, but represents the condition we are all born into and which can only be redeemed by accepting Jesus Christ as our saviour – perhaps Janan Ganesh is getting his metaphors wrong here.

“Mr Cameron has never openly addressed the question of why he fell short in 2010…”
It was the expenses scandal.

“This was compounded by his foolish participation in televised debates that he flunked”
And in which the Liberal Democrat leader lied and lied and lied in performances that would have shamed Dr Goebbels.

“The party’s strategic core (Mr Cameron and George Osborne, then shadow chancellor, plus the now departed advisers Steve Hilton and Andy Coulson) were having crisis meetings as early as January”
Er, almost all meetings at the highest level of politics have to be crisis meetings – if it’s not a crisis then the politicians are complacent.

“Mr Cameron erred by not touting the issue of immigration”
Perhaps we can recall 2005 and the “racist racist racist” defamation the left threw at the Conservative party – Mr Cameron deftly avoided walking into that trap in 2010 although the signs are that the left were waiting for him to do so.

“The real reason for the Tories’ failure had more to do with the economic insecurity that nagged at voters when shown blueprints for austerity”

Possibly, but I am not sure the majority of voters looked very closely at these blueprints.

“The Conservatives did not fail because they were seen as high-minded metropolitans, but because they were too redolent of the same old Tories”.
I completely disagree with this – Mr Janesh you do not know what you are talking about.

“They had changed too little, not too much”
Changing Conservatism is a contradiction in terms – the Tories (like all parties) need to be true to their core beliefs.

“The modernisers have never understood that the truth only gets you so far”
And lies get you further? – that might work for the Lib Dems and Blair’s New Labour but sooner or later liars are found out and damned by the electorate.

Power gained through lies is not worth having Mr Ganesh.

The inward flow

Writing in today's Guardian Aditya Chakrabortty tells us:

"In 1923 the richest 1% of Britons took almost a quarter – 23.3% – of all income received. After the second world war came a long period of greater fairness so that by 1979 that proportion had dropped to only 6%. Then came Thatcher and Blair and soaraway inequality. By 2006, the year before the crash, we weren't quite at a Gatsby-esque divide, but we were heading that way: the top 1% of Britons were taking 15% of all income received in the country. This cash is then turned into houses, shares and other assets so that now the top 1% hold over 50% of all Britain's marketable wealth."

To read this you would think that "Thatcher and Blair" had deliberately conspired to do down the working classes and bolster the wealth of "the rich".

Let us leave on one side the complete lack of any motive provided by Aditya Chakrabortty (why would Thatcher and Blair want to do this?).

There is another reading to this history, and one that Aditya Chakrabortty will not find congenial.

Since the beginning of industrialisation in the 18th century the old relationship between the classes (a sort of remnant of agriculture-based bastard feudalism) was replaced by contracts in which the working class sold their services to the property and factory owners for the highest price they could get.  The following two hundred years saw the working class consolidate their position, marginal increment by marginal increment, and with many setbacks along the way.  This culminated in what we might call the great patriotic war of 1939-1945 in which the whole of British society (all classes) came together in a titanic struggle that was intended, in the words of Vera Lynn, to result in a "lovely day tomorrow" in which the inter-class respect of the war years would continue.

And in the 1950s, when working men and women were relatively scarce and could command good wages and benefits, there was a golden age for the working class (for all classes really, but the middle and upper classes had enjoyed golden ages previously - what was totally new was the working class golden age). 

What happened to this golden age?

The inward flow of cheap labour, already running high by Aditya Chakrabortty's arbitrary date of 1969 and becoming a veritable flood in the decades afterwards (and an uncontrolled deluge after 2005), completely undermined all the gains of the last two hundred and fifty years.

The result has been the British working class reduced to a new level of serfdom.

Stop the inward flow of labour and wages must rise and wealth will therefore be more fairly distributed as the higher wages are paid for by the globalised capital owners out of the stonking profits they are currently making.

Only the Conservative party is committed to reducing the inward flow of foreign labour.

The left is ideologically committed to "immigration" as they see it as a source of new votes.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/20/great-gatsby-unequal-britain-coalition

The Prime Minister

It is flattering to get an e-mail from the Prime Minister.

Word analysis reveals the subliminal message:  our party must stay together.
Which I think we can all agree on.

Who exactly decides

There is a huge amount of obfuscation about how the civil service works and the informal networks they operate.

I do not wish to be called a loon (swivel-eyed or otherwise), but there are enough unsettling anecdotes to indicate that the Cabinet Office operates like a government within the government.

Which is possibly why all governments (except for the period 1979 to 1990) drift away from their party programmes and start doing things their supporters do not understand.

Who exactly decides which civil servants work in the Cabinet Office? (they are all high-flyers).

And in this context Jon Trickett's statistic is of concern:  http://twitter.yfrog.com/mo79ewjj?sa=0

Chorus

The chorus:

"Our hearts go boom boom, boom boom boom..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OGyHRKMPOE

Back

Working this weekend, and after a long and tiring drive back from the Midlands I arrived home to find Big Smokie has come back.

Where does he go I wonder?

I know he has things to do, places to visit, small furry creatures to hunt.

And I know he is just a stray who lives in our lean-to shed.

But I do worry about him.

Cold day, with a little rain.

This is the river.

Cool air, green fields, flat land.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage in Edinburgh yesterday

The aggression shown to UKIP leader Nigel Farage in Edinburgh yesterday should concern everyone who subscribes to civilised democratic discourse.

Of course Scottish Tories have long known there is an extremely unpleasant, abusive and expectorating minority who will scream down and intimidate anyone they identify as a Conservative.  And generally Tories in Scotland have learned to live with this.  They are Tories, so no-one cares whether they are intimidated or not.

But isn't this what happened in Ireland?

In the 1918 general election a majority of the Irish electorate (53.1%) voted for parties that wanted to remain in the United Kingdom.  That's a lot of unionists (small "u").  A decade later, after the orgiastic explosion of republican violence in the Irish civil war, there were almost no people in southern Ireland who were willing to assert they were unionists - they had all been burned out, forced to flee, or intimidated into silence.

Is Scotland going to go the same way?

Yes, Mr Farage and his UKIP can veer towards the clowny-fruitcakey side of politics.

But we owe them our support in this matter.

"For some reason the British media has never talked about the excesses of Scottish nationalism and how deeply unpleasant they can be" Mr Farage said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-22566183

Lord Harries of Pentregarth claiming Biblical endorsement for the European Union

It was unusual to hear Lord Harries of Pentregarth claiming Biblical endorsement for the European Union in Thought For The Day on BBC Radio 4 this morning.

Presumably he is unaware of what the scriptures have to say about the arrogance and pride that led to the construction of the Tower of Babel and how polyglot constructions of this kind have been specifically prohibited as being antithetical to how humanity should develop.

Writer and journalist Agnes Poirier appears to be intrigued by Lord Harries and his quasi-religious argument in favour of the EU.  Does she not know her own history and how Joan of Arc (a canonised saint in the Roman Catholic church) claimed to be divinely ordered to restore the French kingdom rather than see it absorbed into a western European union?  Or perhaps she thinks Joan of Arc was just a mad witch.

Unlike the former bishop Lord Harries I have not had any training in divinity.

I cannot tell you whether the EU is divinely endorsed or not.

But I do know that the scriptures advise us "by their works ye shall know them".  If you are unsure whether an organisation is good or evil look at what they do.  Unfortunately the behaviour of the European Union and its servants does not bear scrutiny - corrupt, dishonest, undemocratic, bullying, wasteful, avaricious.

Lack of black people at the BAFTA awards

Puzzled by actor and comedian Lenny Henry's diatribe in the Daily Telegraph about the lack of black people at the BAFTA awards:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10057059/Baftas-were-a-disgrace-for-not-celebrating-black-talent-says-Lenny-Henry.html

According to the 2011 Census the black population of the United Kingdom is 2%.

That means only two people in every hundred are black.

As there are only thirty or so BAFTA awards inevitably there are going to be years when no black people are going to feature.

Statistically it could not be otherwise.

Unless Lenny Henry wants positive discrimination, which would mean awards going to actors who can't really act and comedians who are not really funny.

The triumph (as he puts it) of Tory Euroscepticism

Interesting article by Steve Richards about the triumph (as he puts it) of Tory Euroscepticism:  http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/old-tory-scepticism-has-won-yet-europe-still-ravages-the-party-8617937.html

However he overlooks that fact that Conservatives (many of them, but not of course all) urged expansion of the EU as a covert way of destroying through imperial over-reach the hated organisation.

And the strategy may yet prove fatal to the power bloc (the killer blow would be admission of Turkey, but even without the anatolian option the old Franco-German axis has gone - hopefully for good).

It is not enough for the United Kingdom to be free of the Euro-hydra as we would still be menaced by the formation of a continental super-state.

British policy over the next twenty to thirty years must be (in part) to leave Europe, divide Europe and keep the balance of power in Europe (not necessarily in that order).

Irish ethnicity

Marc Scully (Social Psychologist & Research Associate on the Impact of Diasporas on the Making of Britain project at the University of Leicester) referring to the 2011 Census tells us:  "There's a substantial figure of 65,498 people who self-report as having Irish ethnicity but English identity. There's something to mull over".

Why should that be worth mulling over?

The historical record clearly demonstrates that many Irish people become more English than the English.

What the examples demonstrate is the redundant nature of "Irish ethnicity" (which surely cannot exist in any scientific sense) and the artificiality of the political divide between southern Ireland and the rest of the British Isles.

Assessment of the United Kingdom economy

Unexpectedly positive assessment of the United Kingdom economy by the Governor of the Bank of England:  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/recovery-in-sight-at-last-bank-of-england-governor-sir-mervyn-king-offers-good-news-on-stronger-uk-economy-with-gdp-forecast-8617253.html

The young urban male demographic needs less social engineering

Diane Abbott MP is to make a speech on "masculinity" tomorrow:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/may/14/male-identity-crisis-machismo-abbott

Presumably she is basing her speech on knowledge of men in her Hackney North & Stoke Newington constituency.

There are three areas she needs to cover:

The way in which poor social housing has made ordinary family life impossible and trapped many individuals in cramped modernist-brutalist apartments on concrete canyon estates where they feel the stress of a lifestyle so alienating that their response is often depression and / or aggression (in the same way that caged animals become neurotic).

The development of the teaching profession into a velvet ghetto so that teenage boys now associate education with being controlled by women authority figures - some will adapt well to this, most will rebel (and we should remember that it is natural for young people to rebel against authority and seek to define themselves as different from the prevailing authority culture).

The insidious influence of hip hop culture with its narrative of recreational violence, homophobia, and contempt for women.  Professor David Starkey famously (or infamously, depending on your point of view) told Emily Maitlis on Newsnight "the whites have gone black".  By this he meant that the attitudes of hip hop culture (attitudes often copied from American prototypes) have become too influential among young people in urban areas.

Above:  various lefties discussing the Diane Abbott speech in advance on Twitter.  I am afraid the left is once again demonstrating its irrelevance.  A "Feminism for Men" event is hardly likely to be attended by the individuals identified by Diane Abbott as exhibiting "machismo and heartlessness". 

The young urban male demographic needs less social engineering, not more.

The Tory party is "yet again tearing itself apart over Europe"

What are we to make of all the commentators, mostly left-wing, rushing forward to tell us that David Cameron is the new John Major and that the Tory party is "yet again tearing itself apart over Europe"?

Melissa Kite in the Guardian:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/14/rebellion-cameron-maastricht-revolt-europe

Richard Morris in the New Statesman:  http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/politics/2012/07/tory-rebellion-leaves-cameron-new-john-major

Kevin Maguire in the Daily Mirror:  http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ed-milibands-euro-heroics-might-1885712

I thought at first these were self-deluded people, misreading the situation because they oh-so-desperately want the John Major years to come back (they were happy days for Labour).

And then it occurred to me that this was just politicking - no serious comparison was being made with John Major it was simply the usual yakety-yak of columnists who need something to say to fill the yawning column chasm each week.

But there seems to be no let-up in the number of leftie journalists wanting to make the David Cameron / John Major connection.

Which leads me to conclude that these people don't really know what they are talking about.  They appear to know nothing about the John Major years.  They appear to know less than nothing about the current Tory party and its members.

John Major and his Cabinet were loathed and despised by their own party not because of their stance on Europe but because of what they did to Margaret Thatcher ("treachery with a smile on its face").  Rebellion over Europe was a symptom of that hatred (and hatred is not too strong a word) not a cause.  By the time the 1997 election arrived many party members were content to see the Conservative party defeated not because they wanted a Blair government but because they wanted revenge on the Thatchercides.

This is clearly not the case now.  David Cameron is a Eurosceptic as are the vast majority of the parliamentary party, paid party employees and voluntary party activists.  There is no "civil war" over Europe, only a disagreement over the pace, timing and degree of Eurosceptic policy - how far and how fast we move towards the exit.

Indeed, it is notable that the only pro-Europeans being wheeled out are from the 1990s - where are the current government ministers (or even backbenchers) who are fervently making the case in favour of the EU as it is?

There are no pro-EU apologists speaking out.  Not because they are afraid to speak out (as Isobel Hardman seems to suggest).  But because they don't exist in any significant numbers.