Politics used to mean “Of the people for the people”.
Politics now means “Of the MPs and for the MPs”. And, of course, for the supporting 24/7 Westminster bubble journalism industry.
No Deal was the default position voted for by MPs in 2016! By a huge majority.
MPs then voted a further three times to make Brexit happen on March 29th 2019.
What changed? A Prime Minister brow beaten by Brussels bureaucrats because she didn’t understand what to do. Boris Johnson does.
After last night’s vote our trust in our MPs and their system is now completely destroyed.
Our trust in them, of course, had been waning since the end of the Thatcher era , hastened by the Blair years and finally lost by David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Theresa May.
This duck palace, paid for by we the people, is the image that defined the downfall of our trust in our MPs. Ten years on from the MPs’ expenses scandal which exposed just what politicians had been claiming,
The duck palace opposite sums up their view of us.
My view of them can best be represented by a sigh of disbelief.
I am sure most of us now feel as if weare on a different planet to the one resided in by most of our MPs?
They, since the 2016 referendum, thought it was all about them and the party political system of representative democracy.
But the 2016 referendum had the completely unintended consequence of energising we the British voters to take part again.
Our myopic, insulated MPs just could not believe the result! (Ed: and neither did Boris & his mate Gove 😉 )
They still don’t understand what happened.
There is a lot a talk about trust this morning but “they” are talking about trust in Westminster and in the party political system.
They are not talking about our trust in them, they don’t care about that, yet.
History will call them charlatans, disconnected, self interested bottom feeders and the slayers of the people’s democracy.
Shame on them.
Boris Johnson ain’t perfect but he is, by far, the best we have until a real grown up appears. It might even be him, I cannot see anyone else to support.
Time will tell and I can’t wait to be 5 years older and look back on this preposterous era.
I have written to you before about faith schools and their very existence which cause many obvious divisions in society.
Parliament still actively encourages this rapidly developing calamity by funding and encouraging ever more faith schools – butwhy?
Society has changed fundamentally in the last 60 years and I want my representative in parliament to come out in support of radical change. A secular education system is not only logical but now vital to ensure peace on our streets in the future.
Jerusalem? Berlin before 1987? Nope, Belfast today! Separating the Papists from the Provos.
If you don’t want to support the situation where children of ‘provos’ and ‘Catolics’ are told to avoid each other and where children of Muslim parents are told to shun the children of the kuffar (that’s you and me) then please take note of the following.
According to a major new study, 52% of people in Britain say they have ‘no religion’. The figure, which comes from the highly-respected British Social Attitudes survey, has risen from 48% since 2015 and 31% since 1983. The survey reveals that the British population is becoming increasingly irreligious and religiously diverse. These dramatic changes in Britain’s religion and belief landscape demand a policy response.
I am urging you to ensure that Britain’s constitutional settlement and public policies catch up with the opinions of its population. One of the most striking findings of the BSA survey is that just 1% of 18-24 year olds identify as Anglican.
This means church schools are unlikely to be an attractive, or even acceptable, option to tomorrow’s parents. This calls into question the appropriateness and sustainability of organised religion’s role in running our publicly funded schools.
Christianity is one major influence among many that has shaped our country. But the UK is now one of the most religiously diverse, and also non-religious, nations in the world.
Our political structures do not recognise this huge change. They need to evolve to make Britain a secular democracy where religion and the state are separate.
Pope Francis greeting Mugabe in Rome 7 years ago. Such a good Christian message don’t you think? What on earth is the Vatican all about?
To set out its vision for a secular Britain, the National Secular Society has published a comprehensive report, ‘Rethinking religion and belief in public life: a manifesto for change’: https://tinyurl.com/natsecsoc
This outlines constructive and specific proposals to reform the role of religion in public life.
I hope you can consider adopting these sensible and forward-thinking proposals.
The National Secular Society works towards a society in which all citizens, regardless of religious belief or lack of it, can live together fairly and cohesively. In its manifesto it considers how the state should respond to these fundamental demographic changes, particularly in our institutions and policy responses.
It sets out proposals for reforms in education, public services, institutions and public ceremonies needed to ensure fairness for all regardless of their religion or belief. It also evaluates the state of the law on human rights and freedom of expression where it concerns religion.
Please take the time to look at this report, consider its arguments, and work towards implementing these proposals for a fairer and safer society for the 21st century.
Yours sincerely
Derek Ruskin (derek@ruskinweb.co.uk)
PS: What do you get if you cross an atheist with a Jehova’s witness?
A – Someone who knocks on your door for no apparent reason.
It is not about you MPs – it is about the 17.4 million of us!
The sight of those silly school girls & boys skipping down the road away from their political parties was just sickening.
The new excited but deluded Remainer party who have nowhere to go after 29th March . Brussels perhaps?
Who do those adolescent MPs, who have never created anything of worth, think they are? It is simply not about them or their failed political parties.
It is about us, the 17.4 million of “We the People” remember them / us / we?
Qualification for MPs?
Most of our MPs are obviously ignorant of business, economics, democracy and history, yet they are given all the air time, on the damned BBC, to spread their unfounded opinions. But it was nice to see them firmly criticised, by the audience, on last week’s Any Questions, ;-).
Most of our MPs are completely unrepresentative of the people’s referendum result of 2016 and are trying their deluded best to reverse that referendum result.
They are so upset that OUR decision to leave bypassed them; that is what this is all about. For the future we need MPs who have done real jobs before they are allowed to stand as an MP. (Ed: what a good idea!)
You haven’t read Maastricht yet? Gosh, here’s your chance 😉
Please read the first 9 of the 260 pages of the Maastricht Treaty – it will take you 3 minutes, after which you will understand what I have been banging on about for the last 7 years! Fine but meaningless words – the reality falls at every post.
Our Remainer government has wasted two years on purpose
Our Executive (our so-called government) have been talking about the wrong thing and to the wrong people, for over two years.
Anyone who has actually started and run a business for more, than ten years, would have told the EU politely but firmly where to go!
A withdrawal agreement (who owes what to who, security collaboration, joint funded projects etc.) should have taken our civil servants a maximum of six months to sort out, had they been so instructed.
Then our civil servants could have started working on our import / export arrangements and would have finished those a year ago, had they been so instructed.
Our businesses would then have had the clarity they desperately needed a year ago. They would have had the time to prepare properly.
But faced with our career party politicians, who have never had to smell business reality, the EU just stuck to their desperate guns, firing blanks.
No real shots were fired and yet our pathetic negotiators capitulated!
What utter crap! I can feel Churchill and Atlee (and yes, even Margaret Thatcher) rolling over in their graves.
This last year should have been about putting people and mechanisms in place to cope with the EU’s intransigence.
Perhaps a hearing aid might improve matters?
Instead, our loopy PM, Theresa May, rolled over and agreed to spend two years talking about an agreement that the EU told us we had to sign, or else. (Ed: Or else what, we wonder?). That agreement was never needed and means NOTHING!
The EU is bust
We do not want to be part of a federal Europe run by Germany, again. They tried twice last century using force and are trying again using political and economic bribery.
The simple fact is that the EU is bust. The level of debt in Greece, Italy, Germany, France Portugal and Spain is simply eye-watering.
The debt was created by the EU creating Euro cash and calling it loans, rather than the bailouts*1 as they most assuredly were. They did it several times, twice to Spain and three times to Ireland.
Those loansbailouts will never be repaid, a simple fact that will inevitably finish the EU project once and for all.
The EU Central bank (ECB) actually charges its customers to put their money in; unbelievable! They started negative interest rates in 2014 and they are still doing it now(currently -0.4%)!
The EU is a failed project that is fighting for its life using smoke and mirrors and your money.
We must leave on the 29th to save our own economy first, or else I will invade Brussels!
Acknowledgements: Peter Brookes for his ever spot-on cartoon commentary on British poli-bollocks.
*1 – Bailouts are specifically ruled out in the Maastricht Treaty, “but never mind – lets call them loans 😉 and nobody will notice“.
“‘No bail-out’ clause Article 125 of the Lisbon treaty makes it illegal for one member to assume the debts of another. It has led to fears that Germany’s constitutional court could strike down EU bail-outs.” My source is the Financial Times
The words anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic suffer from obfuscation (lies), misdirection and at its very heart, an absence of a rational definition.
The current row about Anti-Semitism, and what most people think it means, is flawed and dishonest. It is made far worse by sensationalist journalism. Truth and a rational debate is almost impossible to find and to quote almost all the media, “We are all very upset and angry about all those nasty people who are anti-Semitic, particularly those in the Labour party.”
It’s a trick says Shulamit Aloni – former Israeli cabinet minister (Click on picture to go to source)
The current issue of anti-Semitism is confused and is being manipulated by some very clever people. In the main, those people are career politicians & journalists. The Israeli government misuse it too, see below and in photo opposite.
The BBC is failing to inform us, as it should do, because whilst journalists are talking about anti-Semitism, none preface their statements with an explanation of what they understand it to be. What is very clear, the BBC says, is that anti-Semitism is very bad! But nobody is actually dealing with it honestly.
What follows is the result of my listening to Jewish voices, Israeli voices, Zionist voices, Corbynite voices, Momentum voices, Palestinian voices, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Wikipedia and my own “still small voice”.
We all think it means, but without actually saying it, “anti Jew”; as opposed to anti-Judaism or anti-Israel or anti-Israeli government.
However, even anti-Jew is completely inaccurate, as we shall see later, even though the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA ) re-defined the word “anti-Semitic” in 2016. The IHRA felt it necessary to explain that “… criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic.”
Shulamit Aloni (pictured above) was an Israeli cabinet minister and a minority Jewish voice pointing out the misuse of the word by the Israeli government. She makes it quite clear that the word was used by the Israeli government to deflect criticism from itself. Please click on her picture to see more detail of her statement.
The UK government was one of the first governments to adopt the fallacious IHRA definition. History and truth is corrupted yet again. The IHRA definition is deeply flawed in that it conflates any criticism of Israel to be be anti-Semitic.
The simple fact is that the word anti-Semitic did not exist before the late 19th century and was then *2 as now, used by journalists and politicians as a euphemism for “Anti Jew”.
However, the very use of the word outside the study of ancient languages is deeply flawed and intentionally misleading.
Why? Because many Arab Muslims, certainly those living in the prison camp called Palestine, and many other peoples originating from the Middle East, are also Semites, and yet they are not seen as the targets of the word anti-Semitism.
Semitic refers to a language group, which includes, in small part, Hebrew amongst five or six others, but does not infer race or religion. (See *1 below)
Furthermore, the International snowflake generation of political worthies agreed with the IHRA definition of the word in 2016 so that nobody had to say “Anti-Jew”.
The term is a political smoke screen and apparently targets the Jewish religion rather than the Israeli government. Who, by the way, are currently guilty of the flagrant disregard of at least 45 UN resolutions instructing them to stop their land grabs in Palestine.
All 45 of those resolutions continue to be ignored or side stepped by the USA using its veto. The UK is a bit quiet on the issue too.
Israel’s latest murder of 60 or so Palestinian stone throwers has been almost ignored in the UK, the EU & the USA.
Shame on us, shame on them and the so-called impartial, informative BBC!
What then has Jeremy Corbyn actually done to deserve his almost total vilification in the press? Well, he has stood up for Palestine consistently over the past 30 years and has criticised Israel for their inhumane and illegal land grabs in contravention to those United Nations resolutions.
So then, calling him anti-Semitic is just stupid because most Palestinians are Semites too!
But, it is what Corbyn has not done which does deserve criticism. He has not removed or criticised the minority of loony members of Momentum who really are quite nasty, ill informed Twitter trolls. The evidence is out there if you wish to find more detail.
By his inaction, Corbyn reveals himself as a weak leader, a self serving party politician, greedy for votes however gained. (Ed: Gosh? I never heard that before.) My opinion of Corbyn has changed dramatically from when he first appeared on the scene.
What can we learn from this deliberately confusing issue?
That an unhealthy fear of criticising religion is curtailing freedom of speech and our ability to think rationally.
That religion is, yet again, being used by powerful corporate interest groups to protect politicians who, of current necessity, are financed by them.
*1 I quote the Encyclopaedia Britannica:- “Semite, person speaking one of a group of related languages, presumably derived from a common language, Semitic (see Semitic languages). The term came to include most Arab speaking peoples, Akkadians, Canaanites, some Ethiopians, and Aramaean tribes including Hebrews.
*2 Encyclopaedia Britannica again: “Anti-Semitism, hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious or racial group. The term anti-Semitism was coined in 1879 by the German agitator Wilhelm Marr to designate the anti-Jewish campaigns under way in central Europe at that time. Although the term now has wide currency, it is a misnomer, since it implies a discrimination against all Semites. Arabs and other peoples are also Semites, and yet they are not the targets of anti-Semitism as it is usually understood. The term is especially inappropriate as a label for the anti-Jewish prejudices, statements, or actions of Arabs or other Semites. Nazi anti-Semitism, which culminated in the Holocaust, had a racist dimension in that it targeted Jews because of their supposed biological characteristics—even those who had themselves converted to other religions or whose parents were converts. This variety of anti-Jewish racism dates only to the emergence of so-called “scientific racism” in the 19th century and is different in nature from earlier anti-Jewish prejudices.”
Click hereto read more on this from the same Encyclopaedia Britannica article.
Such an important issue this, as is evidenced on front pages everywhere last week and Questiontime on BBC 1 last Thursday.
Opinions ranged from Rory Stewart(*1) saying “Kill them, there is no alternative” to the leftist intellectuals saying “understand them, hug them but then imprison them” to the Questiontime audience saying “don’t let them back in, they have lost any rights, they might have had as British citizens”, by going out there to fight for ISIS etc.
The earth is flat and I’m in charge! Source NY Times
What I think what Rory Stewart might have been trying to say, follows on from an insight by Jonathan Swift (author of Gulliver’s Travels)
“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of what he was never reasoned into“.
This wisdom applies equally to all those ‘of faith’ but more particularly, these jihadis really do believe that Allah has told them to kill anyone who is not a true Muslim. You have to be the Sunni variety of Muslim to avoid death which explains why so many of Muslims of the Shia variety, are being killed by ISIS; the Sunnis think they are worse than Jews or Christians. As I said earlier, atheists don’t get a look in because they just cannot conceive that anyone should think for themselves!
If you want to know why we have this relatively recent emergence of Sunni Islamism (ISIS and Al Qaeda etc.), just read a brief biography of the Egyptian poet, writer & political theorist who started it all in the 1980s, Sayyid Qutb.
If a person accepts a primary falsehood as truth, then seemingly rational and possibly violent actions may well follow.
So then, having quietly accepted from childhood, that the Qur’an is the unalterable word of god, it is the Muslim’s duty to fight for a universal caliphate under sharia law, however long it takes. (*2)
Our home grown jihadis are therefore following, quite logically (to them at least), the endlessly repeated calls for jihad in the Qur’an. *7
Some of these returning jihadis may well have been disillusioned by the reality and cruelty of ISIS, but most will be still motivated to return and kill the Kuffar, that’s you if you didn’t already know.
Atheists, like me, are the worst ;-( of course. We don’t even get a mention in the Qur’an whereas the Christians and Jews get quite a pasting!
Most so-called ‘moderate Muslims’ don’t want to establish a caliphate, they just want to educate their kids and put food on the table and live in peace. Most of those Muslim families now living in the West came here originally to escape the misery of corrupt, socially primitive Islamic states such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and many more.
Our own monarchy invented a new religion some 500 years ago, with the help of Martin Luther. This was because of a need to extend male succession to the throne and the need to divorce a few wives because they could not provide male heirs. The priests of which religion, appointed by Henry VIII still sit at the centre of our, gentle but imperfect ‘representative democracy’ and cannot be removed.
Our current queen is head of that religion and still retains the title of Defender of (the) Faith assumed by Henry.
Our god is better than yours – because I say so! Oh dear me, this sort of makes my case?
Our next monarch, god forbid (ahem), wants to become Defender of All Faiths, completely ignoring the advances in human philosophical thought developed into maturity during the European Enlightenment because he thinks its all a bit old fashioned (my source is an article in the Spectator) and comes from a speech he made a few years ago in St. James palace.
Words fail one!
Here is what we need to do, but won’t, and why we will not
I do appreciate that short term measures are needed and must be taken, but I am content to pass that responsibility to our government and the rule of law.
But nowhere, last week, did I read or hear of any proposed long term solution to the misguided and corrupt ideology of ISIS.
Here then, is my much repeated long term solution and the only one that I think will or can ever work.
Sadly it cannot be implemented or accepted by those currently in power, particularly here.
Why not?
Unbelievably, Great Britain is one of the last two remaining theocracies (*3) in the world; the other one being Iran!
The rest of the world are republics *4, monarchies, usually without an established religion *5, tyrannies *6 or failed states.
The real underlying problem to all of this, is that faith is an irrational state of mind, absorbed from childhood, and, like all forms of brain washing, is very difficult to remove.
My solution therefore cannot currently be accepted because we would have to challenge and defeat the idea that Anglican Christianity is a valid part of the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain.
We would have to:-
remove the monarchy, in order to
disestablish the Anglican Church of England, so that we could then
remove the teaching of religion as if it were a truth, from all schools, so that we can then
challenge the idea that faith is a desirable human attribute, so that we can
merge existing faith schools into a mainstream secular education system (as in France) , so that we can then
remove the existing and future divisions in society caused by faith schools, so that we can then
allow our children’s minds to be formed by access to philosophy, by asking questions and not to be given dogmatic answers, so that they may
grow into adults who no longer are socially divided by having to believe in something barkingly irrational in order to belong.
I do not propose the abolition of religion, just yet, because so many people draw comfort from their faith.
BUT I do insist that ONLY by removing it from public life and the education of our children do we any chance of a harmonious society and a peaceful future.
*1 Rory Stewart is Minister of State at the Department for International Development (Now Prisons Minister) and Minister of State for Africa at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. He has extensive knowledge of the middle and far east. Wrote a book on his notorious 32 day walk around Afghanistan in 2002. Eton and Oxford and ever so posh.
*2 I have read the Qur’an twice in different versions over the last few years and from my western eyes and ears it has a belligerent tone, a monotonous repetitive style and is even more scary than the Old Testament. If you want a real Halloween scare story just read Deuteronomy & Numbers, yikes!
*3 Theocracy:- A form a government where priests from a country’s established religion form part of the legislative process of government by right!
*4 Republics:- First formed by the ancient Romans two thousand years ago following on from the Greeks who developed the first forms of democracy although not quite as we know it today. The Greeks, even then, realised that monarchies were a bit old fashioned, inefficient, led to corruption and had seen their day!
*5 Monarchies:- The United Kingdom of Great Britain, Belgium, Bahrain, Brunei, Japan etc. In all about 43 remain.
*6 Tyrannies:- North Korea, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Scotland (OK, just joking, I have a thing about Nicola Sturgeon, and no, not in that way), Zimbabwe and quite a few more.
*7 Jihad originally refers to an inner struggle that all Muslims must endure in order to submit to the word of Allah in the Qur’an, but has latterly become associated with an external violent fight for the universal Caliphate that Allah requires.
…for someone to bring philosophical and visionary leadership to post Brexit Britain. Don’t get me wrong, I am a Britain first, and Englishman second but staunch European third.
As the EU’s 2nd biggest contributor ejects, the future for Britain looks brighter …
Remember the European Enlightenment? Few seem to, yet this was the flowering pinnacle of human philosophical rational thought, started by Confucius, Buddha and Socrates ending with Nietzsche telling us that ‘God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives; who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?’ . In other words, We human’s historic need for god to exist is no longer reasonable, rational or supportable now that we can all read and write and supposedly think for ourselves.
But I digress …
No, it is the irrationality of the EU I rail against and for so many good reasons. The EEC was all about stopping Germany murdering the rest of Europe for the third time in 100 years. The EU construct forgot that and went off on a weird direction (the Maastricht Treaty) of irrational economics (the creation of the Euro) and the creation of a bonkers bureaucracy that beggars belief.
The shallowness of Gove and Boris quitting the scene exemplifies this leadership void which needs to be filled by some adults. It is clear that Gove and Johnson were doing politics for themselves rather than thinking about Britain out of the EU. Pathetic self-indulgent twerps, they never actually thought they might win! They were shocked when they did and then ran for cover as fast as they could.
Perhaps, if BoJo ever grows up he might become the leader that Britain so badly needs but I see no others in sight. Yet, there are many MPs, economists and thinkers who do have the vision required; lets hope these quiet people, who shun power, can garner the support they need to overthrow the old clapped out political regime we currently endure. The Labour party and the Liberal democrats have destroyed themselves and so party politics, as I have said repeatedly here, is dead in the water.
In the meantime we have Theresa May in charge, but again we need to wait while she finishes her walking trip. One is quietly hopeful she may be the “one” but who knows?
The remain camp, many of whom are younger than 45, failed to be aware of the appalling depths to which the “European project” has fallen and seems to have no understanding of what huge inefficient, corrupt, inept bureaucracy the EU is. If any of you Remainers have yet to watch Brexit the movie, please do so. It sums up in one hour what many have been saying for years.
My best example of the young Remainers ignorance and delusion was exemplified by a young, seemingly intelligent woman in a pre-referendum day BBC Question-time audience who complained that neither side of the argument were putting their ideas across very well. But, her main complaint was that she was not being told what to think well enough. Only one member of the panel was brave enough to point out that perhaps she should have educated herself a bit more rather than waiting to be spoon fed. This attitude is sadly typical of the naivety of today’s under 45s who have had little time to think because their strokeable devices need so much attention, that time for personal rumination and research is lost.
“You guys are taking a huge risk” (says the pilot of the EU plane on fire and about to crash, to the sensible British parachuters)
As I said in my last article, many in the Westminster village bubble are still in denial, and here I include most BBC journalists and commentators. The financial markets have knocked sterling for six because of their short-termist, childish greed and globalist narcissism; but, ooh look! The stock market has largely recovered – gosh, who’d have thought! 😉
That the UK has never been a fully an integrated part of the EU seems to be lost on the major market ‘players’ as they allow their fears and ignorance to fuel massive sell-down of stocks regardless of the real positive relevance to UK and/or EU economies.
We have an amazing opportunity to grasp all that is good about small businesses, now incidentally, largely being led by a welcome increase in the number of female entrepreneurs.
We don’t need trade agreements; we need free trade areas, not the restrictive practice contracts that modern trade agreements actually are. Trade agreements are negative and stand against free market economics. Instead they bar businesses from markets where the bigger globalised corporations have bribed supported the leaders of developing countries.
The best exponent of this nauseating human development used to be us, then the USA but is now China.
TTIP thankfully seems to be dying a well deserved death, thanks to the Brexit vote – hurrah!
A few words of light relief and escape from the nauseating, banal utterances from both sides of the public EU debate.
This piece was written sometime ago by an American contributor to this blog, and for some reason I have not published it before. It is well worth a read.
Thank you perspective.
Belief in some kind of “higher power,” or not, has a relationship to one’s preference in governance.
The Left has the most straightforward belief in a higher power: they ARE the higher power. The Right, who generally believe in some power higher than they, splinter as to what exactly it is.
Belief is a such a stupid concept, but somehow it has become a virtue to many – why in god’s name is that? 😉
The Left considers reality as evidence that there is no higher power – surely a Supreme Being would not have created an inequitable world. We, and the universe, are lucky accidents that occurred by chance. All outcomes would be random, not fair, if it were not for the intervention of Leftist intelligentsia. Lacking a higher power, Man needs the Left to right the wrongs visited upon the unlucky victims of chance.
The Left embraces totalitarian government, where their elites have God-like, absolute, power to enforce what is right on behalf of the benighted masses who look to a non-existent God for salvation. My will be done (for I am just, you ignorant fool).
The Right views reality as evidence that there is a higher power; surely Man who runs his own affairs so poorly could not have created a universe which Man dimly understands. Intelligence beyond their comprehension rules Man and universe, not chance. They pray for God’s guidance to use the limited abilities they have been gifted to conform the world more closely to their limited understanding of the Master’s plan. Man is a servant, an employee, who, although he does possess full knowledge of the corporate entity, can nevertheless receive sustenance in return for performing tasks within his capabilities. There are reasons for inequity among men, just as there reasons why a more productive employee is paid more than a less capable employee. This does not mean that the lesser paid employee is valueless. If his work was of no value, he would not be on the payroll at all.
The Right prefers freedom, because God might have made his will clearer to the other guy – they need to listen to him, just in case or for perspective. Whether he is right or wrong the other guy is still a child of God, and to disrespect one’s fellow is to disrespect one’s creator. Every life is of value, or God would not have enabled it. Thy will be done (God bless you, fellow seeker).
Of course, there are members of the Left who profess belief in God. Theirs is a supportive God, not a higher power. He is a kindly uncle, generous in hopes of receiving love, but not a father who must be obeyed. He is a resource, not a master. A cosmic concierge who finds the difficult-to-obtain on behalf of his clientèle. Whether or not He is supreme is irrelevant because His only desire is to serve believers. They believe in Him because He believes what they believe. It would not be believable that God would not want what the Left wants. He has lent His support to the Left to rule by proxy.
Their counterparts on the Right also profess belief in God, but what they actually believe in is a religion. Their adherence to the religion’s political posture (governance of relationships between people and nature) has bestowed God’s power on the Right to rule by proxy.
Neither group believes in an all-powerful God, because they both believe He needs their help to get rid of gays or the HIV virus or Jews or poverty or whatever. He just can’t get it right without their intervention. It is unacceptable to either pole of zealotry that gays, HIV, Jews and poverty are all part of God’s plan. God can’t do it alone.
Let’s get real. The difference between the Left and the Right is not at all determined by whether God exists. Rather, the belief (or lack thereof) in a higher power is a consequence of other predispositions which have the additional consequence of determining a person’s political predilection. The beliefs are correlated, not causal. The underlying traits for both opinion sets have to do with humility versus arrogance, and acceptance versus denial.
People who are essentially humble can both accept the existence of an intelligence greater than their own exercising control over their lives, and accept that others’ freedom to express contrary opinions can benefit their understanding. “It is what it is” (with or without my judgement).
People who are arrogant believe their failures are caused by bad luck, or being treated unfairly, but are never due to their own inadequacy, as judged by their peers or God. The arrogant, confronted with abundant evidence of their fallibility, are in denial, and feel threatened by both existence of a supreme arbiter and the expression of contrary opinions. Intelligent and rational, both are threats to the arrogant.
The humble are eager to be shown where they are mistaken, so as not to repeat the mistake. The arrogant are intolerant of being shown their mistake, because they are never mistaken.
The “old saws” on this point are abundant. Some of my favourites are:
There is always a mug at the table. If you don’t know who it is, you are the mug.
God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason.
Just because you have silenced a man does not mean you have converted him.
Pride is a man who goes forth on horseback and comes back on foot.
It is laughable that the Left prides itself on its intelligence (but not because they’re wrong). Conservatives are portrayed as stupid. Intelligence is the capacity to learn. Knowledge is the sum total of what has been learned. I have not seen much of a correlation between the two.
High intelligence is conducive to arrogance. Arrogance is not conducive to learning.
The humble generally seem to know more than the arrogant. They work harder at learning because they have to. The intelligent can fake it. It took Einstein some time before he could wipe himself.
It takes extreme arrogance for any one individual to feel that he has come up
Buddhism is not a religion, it is a method for learning how to think for yourself
with a correct answer which has been missed throughout the course of human history. It does not take much humility to realize that the best answers are the ones that people keep coming back to after being challenged by generations.
What separates the philosophies is the humility to accept responsibility for one’s lack of success rather than faulting the successful person. It is the humility to accept that if the “right” thing to do has never worked it will not work this time around because that idea is probably wrong. It is the humility to accept that if helping another person makes one feel peaceful, and forcing someone else to help the person in need makes one feel resentful, that service is preferable to control. It is the humility to accept that if I can’t get a job for myself, even from the government, I am a poor choice to lead a government that will supply jobs for everyone.
The Left, at its core, is composed of arrogant disbelievers. Their arrogance permits them to seek control of their fellows by force, including violence to people and property, because their narcissism permits is no possibility they are wrong. Even though every Leftist government has failed to deliver the basic necessities of life to most of its populace they have the arrogance to believe that this time, under the new guy, who is very smart, they will get it to work.
The Right is humble enough to insist the Left must have a voice.
America is still the richest country in the world. And soon, Americans will be celebrating their holiday of Thanksgiving. The purpose of the holiday is to pay homage to the aboriginal “Indian” wogs who saved colonists from the then richest country in the world from starvation. The plight of the Brits was that they were on the beach sandwiched in between cornfields and the virgin Western Atlantic, not yet commercially fished. Couldn’t find a bite to eat to save their lives. Thank God for Chief Squanto.
This Thanksgiving, President Obama, arguably the most intelligent American President (not a high hill to climb), certainly the most Leftist, atheist and author of the biggest entitlement program in human history, will feast on the goose-that-laid-the-golden-egg.
In the light of the human misery being played out on Europe’s borders, I summarise some recent news coverage and offer a long term solution.
Can’t say that!
Hundreds of thousands of foreign Muslims are trying to migrate to northern Europe from Syria and Iraq, to name but two countries.
A few hundred British Muslims have left for Syria to help set up an Islamic Caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq.
I wonder if those travelling to Syria have wondered why so many of their Muslim brothers and sisters are trying to escape from Islam’s shiny new Caliphate?
I wonder why the following, rich and Muslim, countries have not taken in a single refugee or asylum seeker; Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)?
I heard a few Muslim school children being interviewed, on BBC Radio 4’s Today program last week, at Kirkleas college in Huddersfield. The government is so concerned about this college that it has been designated a priority area for Safeguarding & Prevent (weird poli-speak meaning anti-brainwashing plus a scheme to encourage locals to identify potential jihadi teenagers).
A special team has been installed, in the college, to help fight so-called radicalistion. Polly Harrow, the head of the Safeguarding and Prevent team, failed to criticise those students who had anti-gay views, and actually said ‘Its your right to hold those views in private, but to voice them in public might be breaking the law!’
So, so gentle and so, so missing the opportunity to correct or offer an alternative view.
She might have added that to oppose the smallest IS law means death! She further hinted that the children’s parents were keeping quiet and were of no help at all.
Equality & diversity is being promoted rather than a criticism of primitive views as part of government policy to fight radicalisation.
Respect for homo phobia was OK it seems as long as you don’t shout about it!
The ignorance and primitive views held by these children was truly horrifying, here are a few quotes:
‘I don’t blame dem, they are looking for a better laaf, a luxury laaf out dare (meaning Syria)’
‘Its da new new trend” (for boys to wanna go out dare)’
‘Yeah, I’d go, its my raght innit?’
I wonder where that last young man thought he got his rights from? Forget your raghts in IS fairyland. Try to leave IS and you are beheaded or worse.
Cocooned and isolated and often educated separately from British mainstream views, these kids had no idea of the reason their grandparents came here in the first place.
The Today interview Radio 4, 18th September 07:32 – 07:42, is available on iPlayer if you can stomach it!
The rest of this article is all about a long term and lasting solution. Shorter term actions that need to be taken by world politicians are probably best advised by organisations like the Quilliam Foundation who have an in depth understanding of the Middle East.
Even such eminent think tanks seem unable to challenge the fundamental elephant in the room, faith.
Long term, we can onlydefeat Islamic state (IS) with the philosophy of the European Enlightenment, wherein reason replaced faith.
The philosophy of those ancient Greek philosophers, Socrates and Plato (Confucius and the Buddha were on the right track too), modified and developed by many free thinking European minds in the 17th /18th centuries, is a message of reason, debate and intelligent questioning of everything. It was mankind’s coming of age, a recognition that each one of us is responsible for ourselves and each other.
Or rather, it should have been. Vested interests, the monarchy, politicians, and faith pedlars, all of whom have a lot of power to lose, used all the power they had to keep primitive belief systems in mainstream thought.
My plan, if ever implemented, would however take around 50 years, i.e. two to three generations to work. But, it would work.
This of course cannot happen with a political system built on policies that work on a three year party political cycle, so welcome to the almost inevitable Islamic state of Great Britain of 2045.
However, this plan will work, must be set in motion and is the only plan that could work.
Here is the why (the how is a bit more difficult to arrange).
Long term decisions need to be made, but, actions to be started now:-
1) Recognise that faith is an irrational state of mind, formed when young minds are most malleable and open to subversion. A young mind, infected with faith, accepts fairy tales as truths which are almost impossible to remove in later life. Faith induces a childish mental state of dependency wherein individuals no longer think for themselves and crave a higher authority to look after them. Faith is dangerous because it is irrational. Differing faiths cannot ever agree because each person, infected with their own faith virus strain, feels strongly that theirs is the only true one! Furthermore, that feeling of righteousness leads to violence where young minds are rendered unable to question their particular version of theocratic nonsense.
2) Therefore, we must cease teaching faith as a worthwhile state of mind to children. Children must be protected from faith.
3) Recognise that publicly funded faith schools are socially divisive and must be slowly converted to secular schools, over a few years. Philosophy would be taught from the age of 4 rather than RE.
4) Privately funded religious schools are declared socially divisive and are closed down, or reformed if possible, as part of the plan.
These are vital for the creation of a nation of young minds who have been trained to ask questions rather that accept dogma.
This faith virus explains why so many, apparently well western educated doctors and engineers have been turned into jihadi fighters.
It should logically follow, that the Church of England is disestablished from government. Once that has happened, there really is no further justification for a constitutional monarchy, other than for the requirements of the tourism industry. Yes, I know this is hard to accept, but the logical consequence of promoting reason over faith is a generation of children who have been taught to think for themselves. The removal of all religion to the private sphere is the best government can do to stem the crisis.
Short term actions:-
1) ISIS returnees, what to do? Either, send them back as they return, or, tear up their passports and put them into holding cells. If they really want to live here, then they are tagged and forced to attend philosophy classes.
However, there is no time to re-educate most of them, the damage has been done by our own education system!
3) The armed forces of the USA, France, Britain and Russia (the main culprits in creating the middle East crisis after WW1!) crush Syria’s Assad and replace him with a secular government. Yes we will have to bribe Russia and China behind the scenes but since they are both as bust as the West is, they will hopefully see sense.
Don’t want to do that?
Think its all impossible?
Unnecessarily alarmist?
Well that’s not going to happen is it?
No, well, I suppose you are right.
Sadly, I agree with you, and since the European Enlightenment is dismissed as ‘old fashioned’ by Prince Charles our soon to be Defender of all faiths, we are stuffed.
Welcome to Londonistahn, new capital of the Islamic Caliphate of Ingerland 2045 innit.
Acknowledgement: The Dry bones blog for the cartoon
PS: I use the term IS as opposed to ISIS, ISIL etc. because that is what they call themselves.
Our Dave wants to defeat the poison of radical Islam, jolly good eh? Well, no, he still defends state funded faith schools. His use of the word poison, copies Blair, his hero, who has used the word poison in the same context many times since 2010. Yet, despite agreeing on the word, neither Blair nor Cameraman have the slightest clue about the nature of so-called radical Islam.
Cameraman’s Birmingham speech on the 21st July was welcome, but several years too late. He announced some short-term measures, but he dared not face, what needs to be done to address the problem.
He missed the reason that so many British educated, intelligent, Muslim young men and women have become radicalised.
I argue that the word radicalised misses the point entirely, and has led Dave, and many others, down the wrong path in search of a solution. He has not yet understood why so many young Muslims are ready to fight in Syria for Islamic State. He has not yet understood how their mind-set was so warped away from that of their parents, most of whom are as clueless as is our Dave.
He said, in his speech, “They start with intolerant views towards democracy, freedom of expression and sexual equality. If this is not challenged they often gravitate to even more extreme views.”
Radical preacher Anjem Choudary has claimed that all Muslim MPs and voters are ‘apostates’. This evil deluded monster walks the streets of Britain subsidised by our welfare system.
But, he did not, or dare not, explain that the source of that very intolerance is the Qur’an itself. The Qur’an is aided and abetted by Hadith(s) (supplementary instructions issued long after the original manual). Democracy is an alien concept to Islam. Muslims must instead submit to the will of Allah, as directed by the Qur’an and follow Sharia, Islamic law. Sharia only applies to Muslims, so it should follow that it can only be implemented in an Islamic state.
Indeed, it is arguable that Sharia is not actually Islamic in the first place. The word is mentioned in the Qur’an, three times, but in a completely different context. Sharia, or Islamic law, is based on older Jewish law and was written some 200 years later than the Qur’an itself. Anyway, I could be paddling up an intellectual creek here because so many Islamic scholars disagree with each other on this point, and who am I to offer help? 😉
(Ed: Ooh stop, it hurts!)
Britain however, is subject to the Rule of Law. One legal system to which all citizens, of whatever religion (or none), are accountable. Aristotle said this more than two thousand years ago, “The rule of law is better than that of any individual.”
Our politicians have pandered to Muslim sensitivities. They have mistakenly allowed Sharia courts to rule on “family matters” for example. This thin end of the wedge stupidity, has all but destroyed the last 1,000 years of western philosophical and legal development. Cultural differences have been allowed to fester into the divisions we see today. For example, the political corruption exposed in Tower Hamlets last month and postal voting corruption in Birmingham, Bradford etc.
ISIS (AKA ISIL or Da’ish) are just implementing the bits of the Qur’an that moderate Muslims had started to ignore. Just read a little of the Qur’an and you will soon see what I mean.
So then, you may ask, just how do we stop young minds becoming so warped?
All religions rely on child minds being in awe of something that is apparently bigger and more powerful than them. Better still if this power is invisible, how can you challenge that eh? Once this awe is instilled in a child’s mind, it becomes very difficult to remove in later life. This innate awe is enthusiastically used by those who radicalise disaffected young minds and by all religions, eager for new followers.
Dickens was quite correct then, but times have changed, even he could not see the rise of Mohammedanism (as it was then called)
Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland have found it almost impossible to accept that their Popes have silently covered up the sexual deviance of their priesthood for centuries. Only now when the evidence is overwhelming, have many Catholics found the strength to see the inherent evils in Roman Catholicism. Many still cannot accept the truth, and remain in awe of the Vatican’s clever use of art, music and pomp to hide its innate delusions. Charles Dickens clearly saw what Catholicism was, even if he was somewhat open to criticism in his own personal life.
Faith schools are therefore the source of the problem. The very idea of faith being taught as a valid and laudable path for young human minds to follow is warped. This thinking was exposed, by European Enlightenment philosophers, in the 17th & 18th centuries. They called for reason to replace faith. Notable amongst those thinkers was John Locke who advocated that religion must occupy the private sphere of life in order for the many different faiths to co-exist peacefully.
There are many contributing factors to radicalisation of course;
US / UK foreign policy in Iraq;
the Qur’an, seen by Muslims as the unalterable word of god;
Muslims must live under Sharia, Islamic law
Saudi funding for Madrassas in the UK;
misguided support for primitive cultural practices by politicians hungry for votes, in the name multiculturalism;
government’s fear of violent reprisals from minority communities;
Those are the starting points for the radicalisation process of those already affected by the awe of the faith virus. The rest follows on quite logically from that!
Yes, our democracy is flawed, but all other methods of political control are considerably worse (echoing the words of Winston Churchill). Humans will probably get there eventually, but not while religious groups all compete for separate privileges in the public sphere. One law, applicable to all please!
Free bus passes for Faith schools? Primitive halal and kosher practices being allowed to bypass the law because of religious exemption? Time off to pray? Bah, Poo & Piffle says I.
Come on Dave, get moving!
Meanwhile, more and more faith schools are created each year (200 more planned currently) to preach their message of otherness, difference and division thereby sowing the seeds of societal destruction that today’s young disaffected Muslims’ parents came here to escape. The irony is that the Birmingham schools at the centre of the Trojan horse scandal were not faith schools, but the exposure of their failings raised major questions marks about how faith schools operate. What is alarming is that if the Birmingham schools had been designated faith schools, then many of the practices condemned, such as limiting the curriculum to exclude lessons about sex education and reinforcing a cultural identity to the exclusion of others, would have been permitted!
I would have this next paragraph used in schools to promote discussion:
There is a reason that some 93% of the planet’s top scientist reject the notion of a personal god. The real mystery is why the other 7% don’t. After all, science is based on evidence and there is no evidence that god exists. None. What we may feel in our hearts is not evidence and neither is the bible since the argument is circular. (The bible is true because it says it is. The Qur’an is true because that is what Qur’an says.)
Simply asking faith schools nicely to be more inclusive will not work. A secular (free from religious dogma) education, for all children, is the only way to heal the divisions caused by faith schools.
Whilst even that will take several generations to work, I submit that there is no other way for human societies to develop in peace.
Vote hungry, party politicians are going to remove religion from schools? Let us hope so!
Theresa May today underlined why so few of us will be voting for one of the main parties on May 17th. She played the usual game of not answering any question put to her, avoiding any semblance of honesty and straight speaking that we, the people, so desire. The same criticism applies to Millibean and Clegg too, so I am not being partisan!
The original Right to Buy policy, brought in by that dreadful 1980s Thatcher government, is to be renewed by a Tory government. If, that is, enough voters are persuaded to give them the 326 seats required for an overall majority. It was hailed as enabling council house tenants to buy their homes at way under market price. Many were then immediately sold on and profits realised on the backs of public funded but Tory policy.
I Want to buy one of those please – its my RIGHT!
The Right to buy policy was morally wrong and flawed in the 1980s, and it still is.
Here’s why:-
There is no such thing as a right to buy a house, or anything else for that matter. You can either afford to buy something or not!
The policy message iteself is based on the manipulation of simple greed. Rights are earned and cannot be given by some political party!
The Right to buy policy fueled house price inflation like nowhere else on this planet.
It created the fake debt led economic boom that savers and the poor started paying for in 2008. Our grand children will still be paying for it in 2060!
Council housing was brought in by an enlightened Labour government under Clement Atlee, just after the end of World War II. It was to be ‘a privilege’ for those who moved to the new, small and human sized, estates and was designed for “hard working families”. Most of those new Council estates had schools and appropriate infrastructure planned in, so all was good. I know, I was raised in one, a good one, in Letchworth garden city.
The idea, then, was that you had to meet certain criteria to live in a new council house. Only ‘hard working families’ with one or two working members could apply.
Back in the 1950s, there was little private debt to accompany the massive public debt. Credit cards and hire purchase agreements were yet to be invented by the Tories and the banksters. People saved for what they wanted to buy, but Oh no, that is not the Tory bankster way!
So what did this policy achieved for Britain?
a distastrous shortage of affordable, decent housing and no political will to replace that which was sold off cheap for party political ends.
the huge loss of Council housing, paid for out of public funds, was financed by the invention of mortgage debt.
a new private debt mountain to rival the size of the public debt mountain, both standing at about £1.6 trillion currently.
artificially low interest rates, for years to come, designed to stop the banking sector from collapsing and actually paying for the disaster they caused.
a private housing rental sector where rents are artificially too high because of the lack of Council housing caused by the Right to buy policy.
Our debt fueled banking crisis, caused mainly by mortgage debt was created by unregulated, greedy bankers here and in the USA. Bankers lent non-existent cash to people who could not really afford to borrow. A banker led credit boom that fueled the fake economic growth so loved by Thatcher, Blair and Brown.
History is to be repeated.
When will Conservative politicians stop presenting debt fueled consumerism as OK?
Where is a Labour party we can trust?
Where is a Liberal democrat leader who has any credibility?
Where are the lessons to be learned from history?
Nowhere – that’s where. Bah, POO and piffle!
PS: Government debt was £780 billion in 2010 (it doubled under New Labour – well done smarmy Tony, Ballsache Ed and Gordon Broon and Ed Millbean)
PPS: Government debt is £1,600 billion in 2015 (it doubled under the coalition – well done Georgey Boy, Call me Dave & Cleggipoos!)
