Interlude

Whilst on the subject of political language, its uses and abuses, I was driving north along the M1 today, to Luton. Now Luton is so hideous it makes Slough look like Venice. But anyway, as anyone currently familiar with that part of the M1 will know, there are roadworks crawling all over it.

The interesting thing is that they begin and end with a huge hello/goodbye sign written almost entirely in English of the 1997 Blair vintage. Remember when it was all the rage to point out the Dear Leader’s (as he then was) tendency to dispense with prepositions and pronouns, as in: “Strengthening communities, building cohesion, destroying marginalisation” (I just made all that up, but it sounds pretty lifelike)?

So these signs on the M1 say things like “Improving roads, reducing casualties, making you a better person”. I exaggerate slightly, but the gentle reader will take the point.

And it struck me that alongside Tony Blackburn and Neighbours, A. Blair and his then putter-of-words-in-the-mouth, Alastair Campbell, are the greatest single influences on the way English is today spoken in these islands.

Of course I do not include the underclass in this, their patois being an ignorant mix of Ali G and Jay Z (sic?), but for everyone else south of the border? Reflect: Blackburn, derided in the seventies for his Tony the Tiger twang (“Hulloooo, mmmmate!”), is now standard estuary English as practiced by BBC presenters; Neighbours, which ca. 1987 exported that dreadful Australian hippy habit of making a statement sound like a question (“And as I was driving along?”), well this is so ubiquitous I can hardly listen – quite literally, I can hardly bear to listen – to people who speak like this. But as instances of influence on the language, these are surely incontrovertible.

But Blair and Campbell? All that telescoping and bullet-pointing. They presaged a new linguistic dawn, they really did.

For the avoidance of doubt, I do not mean this in a good way.

ANTI-GAY FIREMEN

ANTI-GAY FIREMEN

That is, unhappy firemen.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/5301334.stm

After they have been through the re-education camp, oops sorry, I mean diversity training, they may continue being unhappy, but they will not be anti-gay in any other sense.

The story of the Glaswegian firemen refusing to distribute leaflets at a gay march raises many points. For a start, the position of the firemens’ union, at present tactfully silent, but surely facing the possibility that its own brand of economic egalitarianism is put to the test against the gay lobby’s social egalitarianism.

Indeed, I was struck in reading this story, by its similarity to Mo Mowlem’s sending out a special branch officer to buy her tampons when she was Northern Ireland Secretary. Classy bird that she was, she dispatched the unfortunate man whose job it was to protect her life with the words, “It’s all part of my mission to civilise the Ulster male”.

And then there’s the ludicrous statement of the spokesman for Strathclyde Fire and Rescue, “Firefighters cannot, and will not, pick and choose to whom they offer fire safety advice”, as if the firemens’ refusal to distribute leaflets at a political rally (would they be disciplined for failing to turn up at the Tory conference?) is analogous to a refusing fire fighting advice to someone who happens to be gay.

The Roman Catholic archbishop of Glasgow also made an interesting point about the conflict between conscience and ideology when he said, “That the officers concerned are being forced to undergo diversity training is alarming. The duty to obey one’s conscience is a higher duty than that of obeying orders”. Ouch!

But finally, the whole episode struck a chord with me because I am presently re-reading 1984. The Strathclyde Fire and Rescue spokesman said, “The nine now accept that they should have performed their duties. Their refusal was a fundamental breach of their core responsibilities”.

“…why do you imagine that we bring people to this place? [O’Brien asked Winston Smith]

“…No! Not merely to extract your confession, nor to punish you [But] to cure you! To make you sane! … We are not interested in those stupid crimes that you have committed. The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about. We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them.

“…You are a flaw in the pattern, Winston … We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission … We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us … We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him”

And to think, Orwell expected they would need electrocution and a phobia of rats to convert heretics! He didn’t anticipate the touchy-feely tyrant. Which reminds me: the authorities at Leeds University have been very quiet these last few months about Frank Ellis, the lecturer who was in such desperate need of race re-education. Dagnabbit, I mean race diversity training; I must check up…

Creepy public messaging

I've previously had occasion to remark on the creepy collectivistic propaganda on London Underground, particularly under the guise of Transport for London which is the relevant governing agency.

We've had a barrage of posters proclaiming how Transport for London, which is an adjunct of the mayoralty and assembly of London, is 'ours', a statement which even were it true would raise the question: why the hundreds of billboards informing us of the fact? did any of us authorise this expenditure of our taxes?

More recently we've had posters across London and on the Underground which show an array of vehicles: buses, black cabs, bicycles, tube trains - all of which, including it seems the bicycles and black cabs belonging to private individuals - can, in TfL's eyes, be regarded as somehow part of it.

Travellers on the Underground will also be familiar with those announcements which tell you, according to God only knows what criteria, that there is disruption to the Jubilee Line and Hammersmith & City and Distrit & Circle lines, but a good service elsewhere. The intention of this totalitarian tannoy bleating is of course not to inform or enlighten but to humiliate: it is within their power to make us listen to obvious lies.

But then this morning, standing on the southbound Northern Line platform at Leicester Square I had the strangest experience yet. Every minute or so, a recorded message flooded the platform, 'There is a good service on the Northern Line'. That was it. Clockwork regular and a propos nothing at all. It brooked no contradiction and apparently was not updated in light of the fact that I waited six minutes for a train at the height of the rush hour.

Anyway after about the third repetition of this odd bleating out of nowhere, I looked quizically around me, foolishly expectant of a platform of fellow passengers, their brows furrowed in anger, their eyes rolling with disbelief at what they were hearing. But there was nothing. Everyone seemed immune to the catechism.

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - for ever."

And the bloke sporting the boot is kitted out in London Underground fluorescent vest and truculent pidgin English.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention the posters proclaiming "WE ARE LONDONERS" (nominally these posters are the responsibility of TfL, but I suspect the influence of the Borg. And more fool you if you think that's just Star Trek fiction).

UPDATE UPDATE: Oh, and I ought to have explained: the letters ONE in LONDONERS, well these letters are highlighted in a different colour. The posters thus read both WE ARE ONE, and WE ARE LONDONERS. Turns out they are not the responsibility of TfL, but the Mayor instead. And they have started to multiply - they're lining trees along the Victoria Embankment and Park Lane. It's like the preparations for a Nuremburg rally.

Doing its masters' bidding.

'Business leaders seek unlimited immigration from new EU states', is today's headline in The Independent. I had no idea the Indie was such a capitalist running dog.

Note to self: remember to tiresomely point out the Indie's sudden conversion to the interests of business next time (i.e. probably tomorrow) it decides to stick the boot in to the profit motive.

A bad day for British insults

There's Prescott, and he's been reported as saying that Dubya's crap. Actually, let me put that another way: The Independent - and I realise this 'newspaper' long ago gave up any pretence at being other than a flaky agit-prop rag - but the Indie reports in its front page headline that such is the case: Dubya's crap, says Prezza; closer inspection of the report in question ...

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article1219716.ece

(am I the only person with a blog who hasn't mastered links?)

...reveals that in fact "Mr Prescott had definitely used the word "crap" about the Bush administration." So not Dubya in person? Then why the headline? I understand the point about a presidential system, of course, but there are limits to the one-man-to-blame-for-everything school of thought. Can one therefore call into question the bona fides of the Indie as a reporter of record, or is its purse-lipped puritanism so refined as automatically to rebut such suggestions?

Who cares. That is not the reason for my scribbling here today. No. I am concerned about the current state of the well-turned British insult. Piers Morgan recently gave out a fine example when he referred thus to Dolly Draper's marriage to Kate Garraway: 'if I had known the bar was being set so low, I would have had a go myself'.

Superb! Rude, off-hand, callous. All that's best in Britain today. And then we get the oaf Prescott bleating on about how Dubya's crap and 'just a cowboy with his stetson on'. Playground stuff, Yah boo.

I am embarrassed for Britain. We can do better than this if we put our hearts into it. Also, perhaps if there's a grant or some benefits going begging, I could turn me own occipit to it. But until that publicly-funded, er, research comes my way, I fear we are losing ground to those Arab diplomats who refer to each other at regional conferences as 'dogs' and 'weasels'.

Unite, my countrymen: we are nothing if we are not utterly obnoxious and able wholeheartedly to despise Johnny Foreigner. Let us put our backs into it.

New Nuremburg laws, by another name?

That's the question this post will seek to address in respect of the post immediately below it about the disenfranchisement of Muslims.

To be more specific, how would disenfranchisement not be akin to the Nuremburg laws?

Well, for a start, it would be determined by a your belief-system and we're already in the habit of policing those: as a man who recently took silk at the Bar told me, "In my interview, they asked me what understanding I had about the importance of diversity in the workplace". In other words, his beliefs determined his fitness to advance professionally. This is not uncommon, as academics with links to Israel or civil servant members of the BNP have found out to their cost.

In other areas, you can be actively punished for holding the wrong views, like the pensioner who was arrested and prosecuted for, if memory serves, demonstrating against the Euro, or thugs who are deemed to have committed a worse offence if their violent behaviour is motivated by racism (apparently those beaten up by non-racists are entitled to see less punishment meted out by the courts to their assailants).

None of which is to say that policing thought is acceptable. Personally I find it odious. But before the suggestion of disenfranchisement is jumped on from a great height by those who are happy latterday Torquemadas in everything else, let us appreciate that disenfranchising someone because of their beliefs already happens and is widely approved of.

So that is the first key difference: the point about disenfranchising someone for their beliefs is to make it too costly to continue holding those beliefs, it is to put that belief system back in its box. Moreover, you can choose your beliefs, you can't choose your race; so where Nuremburg marginalised and punished German jews, it did so on their basis of something over which they had no control.

Second, whatever Goebbels' caricatures of the cunning, rapacious Jew who was bleeding Germany dry in the early 30s, even he - so far as I know - was not able to adduce evidence of Jewish mass murder plots, successful and otherwise, against the German populace. And Goebbels and his fellow travellers had to fabricate evidence of the worldwise zionist conspiracy for global control.

By contrast, savvy British muslim icons like Ansam (sic?) Choudhury, a lawyer, talk glibly and freely about the black flag of Islam flying above Downing street in a new caliphate, while opinion polls consistenly suggest majority British muslim support for sharia in this country, and for jihad. These are the views of British muslims in their own words, without a propaganda minister to filter them or warp them.

In other words, there are many - and who knows how many - British muslims who are in their own words a direct and explicit threat to the English rule of law and our established constitution.

Third, while unpalatable as an option, disenfranchisement may be, as I wrote below, the least worst option: the majority population having abased itself before immigrants for so long now it is hardly surprising that we have welcomed to our national bosom not so much a viper as mewling, spoilt brat and, as with all immature beings who have never been taught discipline and self-control, the longer is it left, the tougher the measures needed to instil these characteristics.

To that extent, disenfrachisement might actually do the muslim population some good - no, seriously, hear me out - by forestalling the pogroms that otherwise must be likely in the not too distant future.

Indeed, if The Independent is to be believed, we are already witnessing a constant kristallnacht of anti-muslim reprisals, so the wind needs to be taken out of the sails of those who wish to beat up on our mohamedan breathren while showing them that something practical is being done to limit the impact of those same mohamedan fifth columnists: where my disenfranchisement proposal touches upon the holding of public office, I have in mind people like 'Britain's senior muslim police officer' who publicly fretted that the anti-terror laws discriminate against muslims. Well I should bloody well hope they do. The problem is not that that should be the case, but that a man charged with enforcing such law has a vested interest in not upholding it.

Finally, Catholic disenfranchisement was of course ultimately repealed (albeit with a fight), after it had put the truculent minority back in their box, after it had successfully assimilated them. That took about 200 years. But, unlike Nuremburg, it was never a prelude to deliberate and systematic genocide.

Discuss.

The disenfranchisement of muslims?

In this morning's Chicago Sun Times, Mark Steyn writes:

"The pan-Islamists do act. When they hold hands and sing "We Are The World," they mean it. And we're being very complacent if we think they only take over the husks of "failed states" like Afghanistan, Somalia and Lebanon. The Islamists are very good at using the principal features of the modern multicultural democracy -- legalisms, victimology -- to their own advantage. The United Kingdom is, relatively speaking, a non-failed state, but at a certain level Her Majesty's government shares the same problem as their opposite numbers in Beirut: They don't quite dare to move against the pan-Islamists and they have no idea what possible strategy would enable them to do so.

"So instead they tackle the symptoms. Excellent investigative work by MI-5 and Scotland Yard foiled this plot, and may foil the next one, and the one after that, and the 10 after that, and the 100 after those. And in the meantime, a thousand incremental inconveniences fall upon the citizen. If you had told an Englishman on Sept. 10, 2001, that within five years all hand luggage would be banned on flights from Britain, he'd have thought you were a kook. If you'd told an Englishwoman that all liquids would be banned except milk for newborn babies that could only be taken on board if the adult accompanying the child drinks from the bottle in front of a security guard, she'd have scoffed and said no one would ever put up with such a ludicrous imposition. But now it's here. What other changes will the Islamists have wrought in another five years?

"Absent a determination to throttle the ideology, we're about to witness the unraveling of the world. "

Driving back from Heathrow on Saturday morning, where I had just had to pick up a relative who had flown in from the States, I reflected on similar lines: it seemed we were just months away from being required to strip at airports prior to donning airline-distributed plastic jumpsuits in which nothing could be concealed, our clothes to be packaged in the aircraft hold; yet, the jihadis would find a way around that, just as with packets of medicine and bottles of 'water' they seem to have found a way around the prohibition on nail clippers and corkscrews.

No, these, our reactions are no more than that. They play the other side by its own rules. Which brings me back to Steyn's point: "[we] don't quite dare to move against the pan-Islamists and [we] have no idea what possible strategy would enable them to do so. ... Absent a determination to throttle the ideology, we're about to witness the unraveling of the world. "

Just so. Which brings me to my point: has the time come to consider the disenfranchisement of British Muslims?

Yes, I did just write that.

The last time this was tried was with Catholics after the establishment of the Church of England. Like the British Muslims, Guy Fawkes and others considered themselves as 'British' (or perhaps more specifically, English), and their fellow subjects to be misguided. Like the British Muslims, a significant number were willing to consider mass murder to overturn the established political settlement and replace it with their preferred variant. And like the British Muslims, many Catholics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (they were of course proscribed until after this, but by then disenfranchisment had mostly done its work) could not otherwise have been rendered safe for the rest of the population - nor indeed could their own safety have been much better secured - without disenfranchisement. This could mean the loss of the power to vote, possibly to hold property or public office, and so on. It was, and may yet be, the least worst option.

Undoubtedly this is a drastic response but it seems to me to be a rationale one - at least where the majority population and, just as important, its political elite, possess the will to survive.

Above, I wrote that our present reactions to jihadism play the other side at its own rules. But given the faineant characteristics of much of the majority British population and its political elite, our reactiveness and its default lack of success point not merely to cluelessness but to the fact that so few of us are willing to identify any that might be termed 'the other side'.

If anyone has a better idea how to tackle 'Britons' who wish to murder their fellows in the name of Islam and a worldwide Caliphate, I'm listening....

Oh, no, wait, I forgot: ask the majority lefties for a 'solution' and it's invariably 'more education', 'cuz how could you ever have too much of that? And how could its utility ever be disproved where the obvious rebuttal is 'spend more on education'?

So I retract that. I am not listening to anyone with a bottomless faith in education. Otherwise, suggest away...


UPDATE: I have just run a Google search on the phrase 'disenfrancishement of muslims' and it's come back with a load of subjectivist moody about 'the sense of disenfranchisement felt by British muslims', etc. etc.

No, no, no: that's not what I mean at all. I mean: what about actually, really disenfranchising them? And hell, if they already feel that way, what have we got to lose?