Britons Shall Be Slaves

A lamentable ignorance of human nature

2009-08-18T10:58:00.002Z

I did not used to mind registering to vote. Every year I got a form asking me to confirm my details and address. For practical voting purposes that seemed reasonable.

But this year for the first time, Barnet LBC, my local authority, has seen fit to headline the usual form with a veiled threat (see above). Now, I mind very much indeed.

For 20 years I have told anyone unlucky enough to be within earshot that my 'line in the sand' on Big Government, the point at which I was willing to go to prison for disobedience to nanny's petty-tyrannous diktats, was identity cards. It still is. But now I am obliged to add compulsory voting which, bearing in mind the above, is surely now realistically on the cards.

Why can't these bastards leave us alone? The answer, I suppose, is that they do not wish to face the possibility that we can get aling just fine without them.

Debtors' Prison

2009-02-04T08:22:00.002Z

I love the way Reuters locates this under the "Oddly Enough" section.

Of course debtors' prisons were, ahem, abolished over here in Blighty as a result of the work of the great reforming novelist Charles Dickens.

This is very well put

2009-01-24T08:52:00.002Z

"The function of a university (as explained by Gramsci and Marcuse) is to produce minds indoctrinated with 'progressive' thought - so indoctrinated that any ideas that are hostile to the cause will be rejected by them (without consideration), and reject them with great hatred.

"Universities are not totally successful - in that most students are just given a vague mind set of support for 'progressive' ideas and a built in hostility to 'reactionary' ideas, but only in a very loose way, enough to, say, vote for Obama - but not enough to kill for him. They become the sort of people who think the Economist is free market, laugh at the "humour" of the Communist comics on Radio 4 without actually sharing their ideology and do not see anything odd in the selection of books in British bookshops."

- Paul Marks

Question

2008-12-29T17:10:00.002Z

I think it was Max Weber who claimed that bureaucracy, as much as democracy, was the enemy of aristocracy.

I would go further and suggest that bureaucracy is the enemy of everything, albeit a perhaps necessary evil.

My question, just thrown out like, is this: can bureaucracy be its own enemy? can it destroy itself?

12th December

2008-12-12T08:22:00.000Z

Remembering a birthday.

Property is theft, right on!

2008-12-12T08:11:00.004Z

According to a BBC news reader on TV this morning, if the people of Manchester vote in favour of a congestion charge it will "free up" three billion pounds for investment in public transport.

Oh yes, all that money will be "freed up", as opposed to being held captive by all the people to whom it belongs.

And then it'll be invested, we know that, because there will be a measurable return, like interest on a bank balance. Not at all like vague assertions of generalised benefit. Nothing at all like that.

Praise God Barebones

2008-11-16T09:33:00.003Z

Will they ever leave us alone, these bossy Puritans?

They are entitled to their opinions but their insistence on endlessly pushing us around with legal cattle prods ought to be, ahem, banned.

How I hate them.

Can this be what Russell Brand meant?

2008-09-08T18:51:00.004Z

Russell Brand says:

"On behalf of the world. Some people, I think they're called racists, say America is not ready for a black president. But I know America to be a forward-thinking country because otherwise why would you have let that retard cowboy fella be president...?"

So black people are like retards? Vote Obama because you should feel sorry for him?

Apparently undaunted by hubris, he claims to speak for the rest of the world. Was anyone else not consulted before he claimed to speak for us, or did he merely miss out the Lud part of the sketch?

For my own part, at a pragmatic rather than rhetorical level, I am far more concerned with who's shunted into place as EU 'president' than with with who is elected to run the USA, which is after all the business of its own citizens, but then I lack Mr Brand's standing in America where his intervention is, I imagine, viewed not as gross discourtesy and impertinence but as a welcome and intelligent contribution to the presidential race.

In other news, Lee Jasper, a man one supposes of similarly impeccable 'progressive' credentials has called for the creation of black-only schools to beat gang culture and to raise standards.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23552199-details/Lee+Jasper%3A+black-only+schools+will+beat+gangs/article.do

What is it with these proggies? One compares black people to retards, the other says apartheid is fine because they're a bunch of thickies.

If I said that I'd be lynched.

Doubtless they both cleave to standard anti-racism rhetoric - Brand, in the quote above, seems to be disparaging racists - but their words reveal collectivist assumptions that dare not speak their name: retards are x, black people y, Americans z and so on.

Obvious generalisations save time, I don't have a problem with them (see 'Our Africans vs. their Africans', below) provided always that individuals are ultimately judged by their actions, I just don't understand how any of what Brand and Jasper have said supports the contention that all people and all cultures are equal.

Perhaps they're both individualists, after all.

Our Africans vs. Their Africans

2008-08-24T11:28:00.006Z

I am delighted to say that I have done a splendid job of avoiding news of the Olympic games. It is has been difficult, given the saturation coverage, but several weeks devoted to covering my eyes and ears whilst going "la, la, la, can't hear you" seems to have worked, and little news has seeped through. It was not until last night that I first heard mention of Hussain (sp?) Bolt. I gather he runs very quickly.

However, be my ignorance of these matters never so determined, it would take a deaf and blind lobotomy patient to be unaware of the dominance of ethnically African athletes in the 'proper' sports. (Tiddly-winks, figure-skating, basically anything involving points, simply doesn't count). Indeed this dominance is long-standing.

There was a time when even to draw attention to such a fact was to risk social ostracism of the most aggressively supercilious and patrician kind, but I sense that that time has passed. And it's only right to point out the dominance of, say, Caucasians in the swimming pool. But therein lies the difference: for every Moroccan or Ethiopian runner, that is to say an ethnic African possessing a Moroccan or Ethiopian passport, there is a young man or woman of, say, Ethiopian descent and in possession of a French or British passport; but how many Caucasians/Anglo-Saxons, call-us-what-you-will, carry Ethiopian passports? How many white Nigerian champion swimmers are there?

To ask the question is to know the answer.

Does it matter? Well since I couldn't give a flea's toss about the Olympics, no. But actually that's an evasion because the same situation holds true in the World Athletics Championships, about which I am not nearly so scathing. The point is: in all the national triumphalism, here and in other countries, when you filter out all the events the Africans can't afford to compete in, to what extent is a G8 national team's success dependent on its importation of African athletic talent?

Now a multiculturalist might say, "Hang on, there are British Africans. Britain, or any other country can take pride in the athletic achievements of its young, their ethnicity is irrelevant".

Hmm. I think my response is that that's wishful thinking. Consider the Soviet-US space race and the famous joke that success was a question of which side had imported the best German rocket scientists after the war. That's a partial truth, of course: success also depended on factors like the amount of money available for R&D, but the parallel is broadly identical.

So what are those who trumpet British Olympic success actually saying? Well, a team participating under the Union flag won a lot of gongs. But then so do Chelsea and Manchester United, and in neither case is the appendage of 'English club' anything more than a flag of convenience. And, interestingly, since these are private businesses, the correct-thinking political elite sees no difficulty with proposing curbs on the importation of foreign players; would it propose the same in respect of the publicly-funded British Olympic team?

Once again, to ask the question is to know the answer.

Perhaps a flag of convenience is exactly what national identity has become in a great era of volkerwanderung. But is that sufficient to constitute a tie that binds? That question brings us back to the multiculturalists who, in their zest for world government and the brotherhood of man irrespective of historic, blood or community ties, would certainly hope not. And if the multiculturalists are right to perceive the dissolution of ethnic national bonds, and indeed the dissolution of national bonds full stop, what then is the point of national pride in a team by definition antithetical to a national identity? The Union flag is now just a logo, which is an ironic outcome of a policy pursued, as often as not, by socialist internationalists hostile to logos.

For my part, aware as I am of the ethnic variations in Caucasian British identity even before the Empire Windrush, I am reluctant to ascribe my national identity to racial homogeneity. Which is not to say that racial homogeneity does not assist in defining certain nationalities. But I do think a shared history is important to British identity. Or was. And I regret its passing, mainly because no decision-maker has ever asked me or, the millions whom I suspect are like me, if we minded that this was what they were going to do. The truth is that those decision-makers, of all political parties, never gave a damn. They simply did what they wanted. Call me a bluff old recidivist, but I resent that.

The success of the British Olympic team, and the apparent popular pride in it is, then, the product of decision-makers who despise that very same popular voice, when it suits them.

All Must Have Prizes

2008-08-23T07:11:00.003Z

You learn something new every day. Yesterday I learned that BMX bicycling is now an Olympic sport:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121939048353863217.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

There are other activities, too, which have not yet received the recognition which is their due. Olympics-watching, for example. Think of all those Olympics-watchers out there, heroically dedicating their time to sitting in front of the TV hour after hour in the hope of punching the air triumphally when someone they've never met signals, by punching the air tiumphally, that the time is ripe so to do. Points could be awarded for the number of sores gained by the individual arse during a bout of Olympics-watching, and for pounds and ounces added through devoted motionless viewing.

In other news, and unconnected to his electoral woes, Mr Brown has promised to mug me for a 'contribution' to a popular cause:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/itn/20080822/twl-brown-s-cash-boost-for-athletes-41f21e0.html

It seems that GBP260m was splashed on 'Team GB' (Jesus wept) for 2008, and double that is planned for 2012. And so far, I see, we've won twenty squillion more medals in things the Africans cannot afford to compete in than ever before. So why stop at GBP520m? I mean if GBP260m gets us this much gloire, why not spend everything we have. Then, we will rule the worlddddddd...

That's the trouble with Mr Bean, I mean Brown. His vision is so limited. "Now we want to turn two weeks of sporting success into ten years of sporting triumph", he says. Only ten years? Why not a thousand?

Row harder, everyone, the Great Helmsman has a Plan...

To ask the question is to know the answer

2008-08-07T09:23:00.006Z

BBC1, this morning, a programme called "Breakfast".

It's a sort of magazine, helpful if you want to find out the weather and travel news, without exposing yourself (usually, anyway) to the Today Programme's obnoxious agitprop.

So I'm swilling my coffee whilst ironing a shirt, waiting for said travel/weather, and one of the presenters, Sian something-or-other is interviewing a chap from, I think, N.I.C.E.

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence. Bit of a misnomer, really. It's more a sort of central planning committee for NHS drugs expenditure. If N.I.C.E. is not and says a drug is too costly for the NHS, then the NHS doesn't use the drug.

And that has happened today, in respect of some kidney treatment drugs (see link, above).

And at one point, Sian Thingummy asks this chap: why don't you put pressure on the pharmaceutucal companies to bring down the costs of these drugs?

Now, leave aside the economic illiteracy of this question. Ignore, if you can, its incitement to extortion. Instead, can you imagine, if the story was about food prices, and La Thingummy was talking to a chap from Tesco, would she really ask him to put pressure on farmers to lower their prices?

Farmers good, big pharma bad.

This is genius

2008-08-07T08:36:00.002Z

Sheffield University lecturer Marcus Phillips took indecent photos of two young girls.

Boo! Hiss!

He has been successfully prosecuted and ordered to undertake 150 hours' unpaid work.

Hurray!

But. Well now. It seems that in his spare time Dr Phillips runs a photography business. He "creates portraits of fairies combining digital technology and the original photographs of his models.

"He was asked by the parents of the two girls, aged 10 and 12, to create a portrait of them which involved taking close-up photographs of various parts of their bodies, which were then superimposed on top of each other, to create the fairy images. The girls' parents were present at some of the photo shoots.

"However, when Phillips went to have the pictures developed at his local branch of Bonusprint, staff there became concerned about the images with showed the girls topless and alerted police, who arrested him.

"Sheffield Crown Court heard that Phillips, a tutor at Sheffield University, ran a photography business in his spare time which specialised in turning photographs of clients into 'ethereal' images of fairies....

"Because of the girls' ages, the photographs fell under the legal definition of indecent images of children.

"He was sentenced to 150 hours community service by Judge Lawler QC, who said there was 'never a sexual motive' for the photos.

"Passing sentence he added: 'You always acted perfectly properly and their parents were perfectly law-abiding, sensible people who cared for their children.

"'What is clear is that you had no base motive, no sexual motive and there was not any question of deriving sexual gratification from what you were doing.'"

A couple of thoughts.

First, for the CPS to prosecute this (or any) offence, a CPS lawyer must decide that it is in the public interest so to do. Personally, not a big fan of this 'public interest' malarky, I think it's just a helpful carte blanche to justify whatever an individual thinks is important. Be that as it may, on any view, where was the 'public interest' in prosecuting this man?

Second, if he 'always acted perfectly properly' (per Hizzoner), then where does the judge get off in giving him 150 hours' community service? I have consulted the current edition of Sexual Offences Law & Practice and there is no mention of minimum sentence requirements for such an 'offence'.

And I'll tell you what, even if there was a minimum sentence for this kind of thing you can bet it's not 150 hours' work in the community.

In short, if Dr Phillips' behaviour was proper, why was he prosecuted? And if it was proper, why was he not given a nominal sentence, a 50 quid fine, say?

Oh, and why did the parents get off scott-free? Why were they not joined on the same indictment?

Still, lucky old Dr Phillips "will not have to sign the sex offenders' register."

Letting the cat out of the bag

2008-06-18T09:46:00.003Z

"Four union activists have been branded racist for using a pamphlet with a three wise monkeys cartoon.

"The four said they published the 'hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil' illustration to lampoon union leaders who 'refused to listen' to members.

"But union bosses said the image was directed at a black committee member.

"Glenn Kelly, a member of Unison's national executive council, is one of the branch officers facing a disciplinary hearing for publishing the cartoon.

"Mr Kelly, who is secretary of Bromley Unison in south-east London, said: 'It's an appalling misuse of a serious issue of fighting racism. 'It's an attempt to silence those, like myself, who say some of the leaders have got too cosy with New Labour.' "

An appalling misuse of the issue of racism? Misuse? What there are uses for racism? I wonder what they might be, from the point of view of a trade union activist...

To those who deny the existence of God, a message from the flood-stricken plains of England: believe us, he is real

2007-07-06T09:48:00.000Z

'Cos like, think of all the damage done by like organised religion, yeah.

Islamicist appeasement quote of the day

2007-04-18T08:44:00.000Z

'Of course, there are laws that come into conflict with specifically Muslim beliefs and customs. Honor killings, forced marriages, and polygamy pose real problems. “Although France officially prohibited polygamy in 1993, current estimates suggest that anywhere from 150,000 to 400,000 residents, many from Mali and neighboring north African countries, still live in polygamous households.” On the other hand, France and other countries are redefining marriage to include same-sex and other arrangements. “If two men or two women can be married, the logical grounds for prohibiting heterosexual polygamy are eroded.” So long as laws against polygamy are not enforced, there is no need for a clash of cultures.'

Taken from The Much Exaggerated Death of Europe, by Richard John Neuhaus.

I particularly enjoyed the last line: so long as the laws against murder are not enforced, there is no need for an increase in murder statistics.

Disintermediating democracy

2007-03-19T09:12:00.000Z

Does this show that people have lost faith in democracy? asked Ed Stourton of John Simpson on this morning's Today programme.

They were talking about this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6464277.stm

So. Bearing in mind that nothing has actually happened but that this 'survey' is the top news story on the BBC website this morning http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/default.stm, we have two journalists talking to each other, exchanging their opinions on air about a flagrant piece of news-generation (the 'survey') and fretting about loss of faith in democracy????

How do they keep straight faces?

The entire purpose of this 'survey' as a news item, giving the likes of Simpson the chance to pontificate thereon (at our expense), is to disintermediate democracy: to undermine and bypass the importance of representative institutions and to superimpose on the deliberations of elected representatives the narrative of these self-appointed People's Tribunes. And then they have the temerity to worry about whether people are losing faith in democracy.

Gawd bless the toffs for worrying on our behalf.

Where are the Muslim Not In My Namers?

2007-03-18T21:54:00.000Z

"Rabbi J.L. Fishman, a member of the Jewish Agency Executive, had, according to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency report of March 28 [1944], while condemning the 'acts of terror' [by the Zionist Stern gang against British forces in then-Palestine], gone on to say that the British Administration had 'brought about such despair among those who resort to violence that they do not know what they are doing'"

Golly, so that's where Cherie Blair got it fromhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2051372.stm

However, this 1944 equivocator appears to have been in a minority - at a time when millions of his fellows had already been deliberately murdered and one's sympathy for equivocation might otherwise have been awoken:

"[Colonial Secretary Oliver] Stanley pointed out that Rabbi Fishman's remarks 'did not conform' to the statements made by other responsible Jewish leaders who had condemned the killings. In reply, Shertok [of the Jewish Agency] was emphatic, telling Stanley that these 'outrages' should be regarded 'as the acts of people who were really insane', while Professor Namier commented: 'these people were criminal lunatics'...

Granted, there's a hint of back-sliding in that use of the words "insane" and "lunatics" but, seriously and given the next paragraph in particular, is it possible to imagine the community leaders of the moderate Muslims about whom we hear so much reacting with this determination to deal with those of their religious fellows who give the majority such a bad name?

"...On April 6 Eliahu Golomb, speaking at a Press conference in Tel Aviv on behalf of the Jewish National Council of Palestine stated that if the 'mad career of the terrorists continued', despite Palestinian Jewry's efforts to stop them by moral force, then physical force would be needed: 'We would be obliged', he said, 'to punish the [Zionist terrorist] culprits because they are a vital danger to ourselves'.

"On the following day, April 7 [1944], the Haifa correspondent of the Palestine Post reported the view of the senior Police Officer in Haifa, that the death of two Jewish terrorists recently shot by the police was the result of the 'cooperation of the public, which had given valuable information to the police".

- From Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies (1981), p. 187.

There are no lazy ethnic minority soldiers

2007-03-09T15:38:00.000Z

None at all, in fact.

All ethnic minority soldiers are paragons of martial virtue.

In other news, a Tory MP, B.L. Unt, shadwo spokesman for European Cohesiveness, has been rightly sacked for drawing attention to the proportion of the EU's budget that goes up in fraud each year.

Said Party Leader Davis Cameron, "There is no place in society, much less in a modern Conservative Party, for this kind of anti-European discrimination".

An apology

2007-03-07T14:53:00.000Z

Every now and again I have that experience of, as it were, hearing for the first time a word or phrase I have in fact used hundreds of times. Often, it's a name, for instance: there is a peculiar out-of-bodiness to the realisation that "I am an 'Edward'", and "that is how my name sounds".

So this morning, for reasons of mental free association, I found myself 'hearing for the first time' the phrase 'a pain in the arse'. I have used this phrase, ooh, about eleventy-twenty times in the last year. But I had never given it a moment's reflection. It was always a reflex usage.

And I thought about it, its meaning, its sound, what would have prompted the first user of this phrase so to use it .... that sort of thing.

Sitting on the Number 13 bus, I started sniggering. If any of the people seated opposite me on that bus - and I fully appreciate you might have wondered if I was about pull down my velvet gaberdine pantaloons prior to swining from the handrails - are reading this, I apologise for my tourette's-like behaviour.

Just promise to think about the phrase, that's all.

An Englishman's castle is his, er ... no it's not

2007-03-01T16:30:00.000Z

New series of Grand Designs on Channel Four last night. I love this progamme. So matey boy buys this castle in North Yorkshire, planning to rebuild the ruins and make it livable. And, no word of a lie, guv, the first thirty minutes of a ninety minute programme were given over to his dealings with bureaucrats at English Heritage who had the legal power to prevent him doing with his property what he wanted.

And that takes no account of the remaining segments of the programme periodically dealing with same.

In other words at least one-third of this sorta-documentary about building and architecture in fact was about getting around the pen-pushers.

I realised it was like living in Italy, or Bolivia, where palms have to be crossed, letters written, pleas made, desperation revealed (so the bureaucrats can feel good about exercising their powers in the man's favour). And the whole thing takes months.

Apocryphal insights into the costs of immigration

2007-02-27T11:55:00.000Z

In an idle moment at court yesterday I found myself perusing the front cover of my notebook. This is where I write the names of all my clients in the Crown and Magistrates' courts, a sort of ready-to-hand index. Not for the first time I was drawn to the number of, ah, how to put this delicately, non-English names thereon.

Non-English names? In this era of multicultism, whatever can this mean? Surely Abu-Abbas is every bit as English as Fothergill. Whatever. The point was, there were a good many more Abu-Abbas', and Diaconus and Lukombos and Chens than there were Fothergills, Urquharts and Farquhars.

Now, some of the former now doubt hold British passports. Many do not.

So here's a straw poll, taken from the covers of my three most recent notebooks:

Current notebook: fully two-thirds of my clients have 'non-English' names.

Immediately prior notebook: just over one-third of my clients have 'non-English' names.

Third notebook: almost fifty per cent of my clients have 'non-English' names.

This is necessarily a crude yardstick of the criminal costs of immigration since some of the 'English names' are actually those of immigrants - 'Mr Johnson' being a classic Nigerian a.k.a., for example. Also, I have not counted the Irish names. So the true figure in each case is probably higher.

But on average between the three notebooks, very nearly fifty per cent of my clients have names that are obviously not of Anglo-Saxon origin.

Bear in mind also that many of these people will require free interpreters as well as free legal representation. In addition, most criminal suspects are either living on the proceeds of their criminal activity, or claiming benefits (or both). Very, very few work.

Of course it's a difficult subject. I have written about it before, here,

http://britonsshallbeslaves.blogspot.com/2006/05/oh-dear-more-tory-tripe.html

and noted that out of a prison population of between 70 and 80,000, some ten thousand are foreigners - and this figure takes no account of those custodies of, ahem, foreign extraction.

So if we assume that the true proportion of defendants of foreign extraction* being dealt with by the criminal justice system is somewhere between the 13 per cent suggested by the prison population and the almost fifty per cent suggested by my straw poll - i.e. almost one third of all defendants - then what is the appropriate reaction? Are we supposed to be cool with this figure? No big deal and awfully bad taste, old chap, to raise it?

*UPDATE: I MEAN EITHER FOREIGN PASSPORT HOLDERS, OR THOSE MORE GENERALLY OF RECENT FOREIGN EXTRACTION.

At the cutting edge

2006-12-20T14:58:00.000Z

The 'artist' known as Banksy, I was interested to hear, is an anti-capitalist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy

Golly, these radical go-ahead anti-establishment types, eh? There's simply no knowing what provocative stance they'll come up with next!

You: proles

2006-09-06T20:07:00.000Z

The more I see of these banners the mayor of London, one Livingstone K., has erected along various promenades of the metrop. the more perplexed I am.

Let us not imagine he supposes many of us notice the collectivist triumphalism, or the sheer weirdness of compelling people to underwrite this sort of nebulous feelygoody propaganda – and let’s face it: he’s probably right; how many people have not been beaten into insensitivity by this sort of thing over the years?

Indeed, let us suppose that young Livingstone goes about this business of banner-erection in the sublime knowledge that he will never be called on this behaviour.

What, then, does he imagine he achieves by this, by these banners proclaiming WE ARE LONDONERS?

Can you imagine the conversation that led up to it? Perhaps it was a committee. Maybe a PR consultancy was drafted in.

What did Ken think, though? I want people to associate their sense of belonging to collectivism? I want people to see these banners and understand we never stop working for them? I want to end disunity? (whatever the hell that is) I want to create a solidarity movement of Londoners?

Truly, I cannot conceive of a motive for the mayor’s actions which does not in fact hold Londoners in the uttermost contempt.

The not so, er, independent

2006-09-06T20:05:00.000Z

Here’s a funny thing. About a week ago The Independent ran a front page splash about how British business was arguing for more mass immigration

http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article1222597.ece

At the time it struck me as odd that the Indie should be concerning itself with the interests of business. But there you go.

Anyway, today’s Telegraph contains a story – which is not on the front page – about how the head of the CBI wants a pause for thought before any more mass immigration is allowed.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/09/06/cncbi06.xml

Naturally I was keen to see what the Indie’s take on this would be, since it is so keen on news about immigration and what also on what business wants. Strange to report, however, that this fine example of Telling It Like It Is to the lefties who already agree with it has buried the news at the bottom of a story on page blah blah about how this same CBI chief, in the same speech, was actually focusing on lack of trust in business leaders.

http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article367219.ece

Now course the Indie is entitled to its views and I would expect nothing less of this Thunderer of the Left than that it should swing its muscle behind immigration, regardless of whose interests are adduced in support. Mass immigration is an article of leftie faith.

But isn’t it time to rethink the newspaper’s title? I mean come on, can we please stop pretending this is some kind of ‘centre ground’?

Interlude

2006-08-31T20:06:00.000Z

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.