Oxymoron

'Socialist Worker' ...

Surely an oxymoron if there ever was one?

Why are young people left-wing?

I am what would be considered a young person and I am a right-wing conservative (not a Tory though). Without getting into a soul searching debate of what actually defines 'wings', lets just say that I am one of the few, if my position in society at large were to be examined. My fellow peers at university are mostly ultra-liberal and even more so left-wing bordering on socialist. Political affiliation is a difficult subject mostly because the people subject to evaluation simply do not know what they are, because few know what they believe in. They have a few hunches as to what an appropriate knee-jerk response would be to some random statement, intended to produce such a reaction but that is about it. When pressed they get annoyed and want to end the discussion. I do not want to end the discussion, I want to know why most people start of their lives as left-wing liberals but later on change to something else and not necessarily conservatism or similar 'isms'.

I have a lot of friends in Sweden, and Sweden is about to have an election. Regular readers will know that I wrote a long prodding essay about Facebook here, sadly Facebook will feature again in this little attempt to come to closure. Facebook is where the action is, so too with politics. I am very saddened to see that so many of my friends, of similar age to myself, are so fantastically left-wing. They post little messages on their personal "comment" about their thoughts on the election and they join various groups who advocate socialism. Much to my dismay for they are comprehensively and collectively, wholly ignorant of the dangers of what they are advocating. I can say this not because I am a righteous plonk who thinks he knows what is best for everyone else, no, because I am a political nerd, and I would like to think that my thoughts and comments are a bit more informed than those of the average Joe.

I have been fortunate enough to have known some of these people since I could barely walk. They are truly wonderful people, but sitting where I am, they are also complete fucking nut-jobs who are indulging in the most disgusting form of cultural relativism. What is more they seem to have no recollection of history, which is made even worse since I know they have had history classes; I took the same classes. When they say socialism, they dream up some eutopia-like scenario and post a nice little red star to accompany their political creed, leaving me dumbstruck again. They know nothing of the gulags, perestroika or glasnost or of serfs and Molotov. What is 1905 and 17 to them more than some random years? Do they know that Soviet socialism (which is nice way of saying 'communism') killed in excess of 20 million people. Who is Solyetzin, what did he do, 'sounds lika soya to me'. Do they know that socialism/communism has failed everywhere it was tried? Sweden was not built upon socialism, but it just so happens to be one of the frontrunners of the modern welfare state. Welfare per se, is not socialism - I think. That might just be my deluded way of putting together a cognitive argument. Put it like this instead: I believe that if you are fortunate enough to have had the possibilities to advance to such a point that you are self-reliant, then a small small percentage of your income should be given to your fellow man so that he too, hopefully, can do the same. Our birth place is, to the best of our knowledge, random and for all I know I could have been sitting in Katmandu right now, mending carpets, not having a thought in the world for the modern welfare state. Based on that alone, it suffices to say that we should all be compassionate but not excessively so [I think]. However...

The dangers of the welfare state are 1) it often is unjust in taking lawful property from individuals through excessive taxation, 2) it substitutes the collective judgment of the government for the freedom and judgment of the individual 3) it discourages initiative and entrepreneurship by individuals, and 4) it leads to excessive government power and hence corruption. The danger of these tendencies of the welfare state were well summarized by Lionel Trilling, a respected man of the contemporary liberal left as quoted by Gertrude Himmelfarb in her book 'Poverty and Compassion' “Some paradox of our natures leads us, when once we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest, to go on to make them the object of our pity, then of our wisdom, ultimately of our coercion. It is to prevent this corruption, the most ironic and tragic that man knows, that we stand in need of the moral realism which is the product of the moral imagination”. As political economist F. A. Hayek has stated; “The guiding principle that a policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy remains as true today as it was in the nineteenth century”.

So why are young people left-wing? I think (a lot of 'I think' tonight simply because there is very little written on this subject, at least very little that is available to me) a lot of it is derived from some spurious belief that because you are young you want to break from the past, you want the new world, automatically assuming that the old world is a bad world. Since you yourself are 'new' your ideals have not been tainted by reality and pragmatism (you remember, I am sure, all the bollocks you got at school "anyone can do anything" and we all thought 'great, fantastic, I can be a rocket scientist' even though we knew deep down that there was probably only one or two kids in the room who had those kind of brains) and you express yourself in the way of a revolutionary who has the most commendable of values, not to mention altruistic of values, but has little in the way of prospects. Because you are new (simple terminology but lets not get bogged down in semantics) you reject all opposing views as being irrelevant and erroneous, because they are made on the premise of an old society. Yours is the right belief, the righteous belief, yours must be correct because others are wrong, since their ideals and morals have been debased and contaminated by the old world. Hence by proxy, and proxy alone, your altruistic and utopian idea must be morally superior to those of the elders. And since you have the moral imperative only you, and you alone, have the right to change the world.

Socialism is meretricious.

An appropriate picture of Britain

I can, with hand on heart, say that I completely and fully despise Harriet Harman and her Equalities Act.

The Virtues of Meritocracy

I do apologise for having been absent for a lot of time, regular readers will know that I am now the proud subscriber to a bar job, and I am thoroughly enjoying it at that. A lot of heavy keg lifting but nothing that I cannot handle, furthermore a sudden realisation that British people are at large very rude in the pub - something which made me rather sad since the Kiwis and the Aussies are perfectly delightful (the majority) yet the indigenous do not seem to be able to quite handle the pressure of being humble when requesting something as simple as a pint. But alas I digress, I believe what is on the agenda today is meritocracy for the reason that it is slowly seeping back into the roots of Britain again.

'Death of the Fox' is a book by George Garrett, an American poet and novelist. He was the poet laureate of Virginia from 2002 to 2006. His novels include 'The Finished Man', 'Double Vision', and the Elizabethan Trilogy, composed of 'Death of the Fox', 'The Succession', and 'Entered from the Sun'. I am currently reading Death of the Fox and rather enjoying it since it revolves around Walter Raleigh but rather annoyingly all the spelling is american so it is just about readable for any English speaking person. I shall leave the content for the reader himself to google but it centres around Raleigh's life and covers the arrival of the Tudors in England in 1485 to the execution of Raleigh in 1618.

There is a passage which I would like to rip right out of the novel for it is very striking and pertinent in these days as well, even though intended to read of the 14th century.

Great men rise above their peers like the tallest trees of the forrest. Proud, but first to catch the eye, and therefore soonest to be cut down. And down they come with a groan and brief thunder. When they are gone there is only rotten stump and empty space of sky to prove they have ever been there.

Now I ask; is this statement true? Is there such a check to limit the reach of the most ambitious of men? I would say this statement has become largely moot in today's society. We live in an age of celebrities, be they politicians who are famous for the broadside of their jaw or celebrities who are famous for being simply famous but that is just about where their personal agility ends. One must for the sake of society argue that if someone who is reasonably ambitious today would stand up and declare his intentions, people would to all intents and purposes follow that man regardless of the nonsensical ideas that are spewed out of his midst. We do not question what should be and we do not replace dangerous paradigms with our own common sense. I argue that this is down to meritocracy. What is more I take the strongest and most fervent of objections to what we have become: nightingales. We close our eyes when we sing and see nothing and hear nobody but ourselves and it is quite frankly killing the whole foundation of man as we know her and turning our brief stay in this place into a perpetual opprobrium which, no matter how you argue, is detrimental to all of us.

This narrator has had the good fortune to have grown up in more than one country - it gives one perspective and perspective is good for it lets us judge things from two sets of books. "Merit" is a bad word in most of the European continent and Britain today, the best and most suited for a position are not necessarily the most likely final occupants of that post as logic would dictate. Instead rather spurious sets of selectors are used such as sex, skin colour, background, religion and many other very strange denominations which, at least in my view, should be nowhere near the academic process that is selection. This is because of biology and more importantly evolution. I subscribe to evolution and not creationism so if you are expecting an essay on that I bid you farewell for you are not about to get one.

Natural selection is the process of survival: a process resulting in the evolution of organisms best adapted to the environment. You can extrapolate this to the rather mundane task that is everyday life of the hoi polloi, you and me and everyone else in our curious little 16 hour battle period, 365 days a year which we have come to denote as our 'lives'. Regardless of what you might think of the human species we are rather fine example of what natural selection is capable of; there are certainly a lot of deceases but seen in the light of what our species has accomplished it is nothing in comparison. What is more we are able to heal ourselves out of our own means - a mighty feat which few other species can master. Now we think of this in terms of economics and more importantly the private sector and the operators within; namely the companies. The companies that provide the daily bread for million of people around the globe, if not billions. A lot of these organisations are very powerful and are powerful, wealthy, because they work hard and more relevant to us; they select people based on their ability and not their appearance. A single bank interviews thousands of people for maybe just 10 jobs and by doing this they ensure that they will get most profitable person, the person who is willings to work the hardest to deliver most dividends for himself and the company, the sort of person who constitutes and investment in itself. They select the brilliant from the brightest.

If you invest in people you want to make sure that your investment will not go to waste, that said person will come to work for your organisation for at least a couple of years so that all that training is not lost, it is simple quid pro quo economics and is used by most business outfits to reach their combined goal of making more money for such is the marked based economy that we live in today. But, what if you break the system, what if you have a planned jobs market where not only are your employes selected for you but you are obliged, under law, to accept them no matter what whacky nut jobs you end up with. You will loose money, your profits will shrink and your status in the social hierarchy will stumble and fall. Why? Because we are not all equal, we do not have the same motivation, outlook, dreams, background, parents, environments or any other number of factors. We are different and that is what makes us different from any other species. Look at birds; they are homogenous they move the same, look the same and for all intents and purposes act the same. We are omnivorous entities who succeed because of our difference, because it fosters a sense of competition; and urge to be better after the initial failure, an urge to prove to the world that you can do better that you are not part of the dregs that inhabit the lowest pits of this world. Those who refuse to work even though they are perfectly capable, those who betray, those who let others suffer for personal gain etcetera. That list could be made endless of people who have no business in interacting with decent hard working folk but such is the situation in which we perceive; we are different for good and for bad, and if we break that pattern, if we engage in social engineering we are dabbling with powers well beyond our comprehension and understanding. And it is not a matter if something very horrible is going to happen as a result, it is a matter of when.

Strange Socialism...

Have you ever noticed that anyone from the Socialist Worker's Party or a socialist/marxist in general, is hardly ever a socialist and I do not think any of them could by any stretch of imagination be described as workers. How do I know this my dear ladies and gentlemen? I am at a university and I am literally surrounded by faux-socialists who do not have the faintest idea of what marxism means.

Just to let you know that with regards to left-wing politics and universities, nothing has changed.

Thought of the Day

The Conservatives do not deserve an overwhelming majority at this time. Politicians will have to learn what the majority want in the UK. They have got to stop the micromanagement and the central planning.

Maybe a few hung parliaments will help the process otherwise there may well be a few hung parliamentarians in the future.

Socialism in Scotland - oh dear....

Scotland depends on the state increasing. Scotland is poised to become the third most state-dependent country inthe world, with only Cuba and Iraq spending more on public services, according to economic forecasters. At least so Auslan Cramb, Scottish Correspondent, tells us.

By 2012, public spending is expected to rise to 67 per cent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). The communist regime in Cuba spends just over 80 per cent of its GDP on public services, while in Baghdad the figure is 87 per cent.

A report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research claims the Scottish figures are putting an "unfair burden" on English taxpayers and warns that the growing public sector north of the border is unsustainable.

Should Scotland decide to gain independence from the Ex-UK we might be free of socialism. That said I am all in favour of keeping the Union, in fact I am fervent supporter of the Union. But there certainly is a very different way of thinking up north which really does not correspond to English and Welsh ways. They use the Roman/Napoelonic code of law as opposed to English Common Law - any punters care to venture a guess if this has anything to do with their strange love for socialism?

I stole this from Old Holborn

Dr Vivienne Nathanson, the head of BMA science and ethics, said: "The BMA is not
anti-alcohol. As doctors our focus is to ensure that individuals drink sensibly so they do not put their health and lives in danger."

For which there is no more succinct reply that to quote from the Daily Mash:

Emma Bishop, a marketing executive from Twickenham, added: "How's about this? As an adult, I think a reasonable daily limit is me drinking as much as I fucking want.

"If it affects my work I'll get sacked. If it affects my relationships I'll be all lonely and sad.

"And as for my health, following a quick glance at my tax bill I've decided that the NHS will treat me and the government can keep its fucking opinions to itself."

With regards to this story over at Old Holdborn, highly recommended reading.

New Template soon... Update: Here it is (simple)

This old bourgeois style blog layout will, within short, be changed to something more befitting of our times and my Sandinista temperament. Stay tuned...

(I know the FSLN are socialist and I know we do not really like them but they must be given some kudos for they are a very very angry political party. Whilst not condoning any form of violence for furtherance of ends one has to respect the passion and means for which the ends are supported).

A thought: The government after the incoming Tory government could possibly win the election by simply asserting that they will not create any legislation or quangos. All they will do is to roll back the previous years including the incoming Tories' screw-ups.

I think it is a winner.

Addendum: Turns out changing the bloody template requires a whole lot of work and as a result I messed it up and all the "Recommended Reading" has disappeared. FFS.

The EU Social chapter

This is just a list for people who, like myself, were not entirely sure as to what precisely the Social Chapter of the EU amounted to. But please read below and you will find your swathes of knowledge increase like the bellies of the fat cats.

Thatchers government negotiated an opt-out from the Social Chapter of the Maastricht Treaty, since European employment directives damaged the flexibility of the UK labour market.

After their election victory in May 1997, Labour signed up to the Chapter with a transitional phase before the main laws of worker’s rights are full introduced into Britain.

One change to British law is the Working Hours Directive (first introduced by the EU in 1993). This guarantees workers the right to paid holidays; unpaid maternity and paternity leave; rest-breaks between shifts and a maximum working week of 48 hours.

But this is the juicy stuff:

• Protection of rights of workers who move within the EU
• Fair pay for employment
• Improvement of conditions of employment (including working hours)
• Social Security provision for low income groups and unemployed
• Freedom of association and right to collective bargaining
• Vocational training
• Equal treatment for men and women
• Health and safety at work
• Employment opportunities for young people, the disabled and people over the age of compulsory retirement.

And that is the social chapter they "keep banging on about". Yeah, it seems lika a good place to start rolling back EU law.

New Labour = Thatcherite Free Market Conservatism

New Labour are supposed to represent socialist ideas as epitomised by the Fabian society. They were frantically upset back in the 80's when Thatcher and her Tories went around selling all the public companies of the United Kingdom including such prominent features as the National Engineering Laboratory (we sure could need that now when we when there is hole of 20,000 engineers missing in the British industry sector). There is a common misconception that New Labour have been better and that they have not been vigorously trying to forward their own personal agendas, by that account I mean of course feeding their on psyche by getting richer and richer all the time completely disregarding the ideals of socialism. To date what have these hypocrites sold of since they came to power in 1997 (this is an ongoing article which I cannot possibly compose in one go since there are so many national industries that have been disposed of since 1997).

DERA (Defence Evaluation Research Agency)
Royal Mail
London Underground
British Energy
Council Housing
Schools
UKAEA

(The picture accompanying this article allures to what kind of people you will end up with if more and more of his daily services become more expensive by the day, suffice to say the government will need more than their largely defunct (in the sense of public appreciation of) police service to stop a hoard of him. It is not for nothing that the government is buying up large amounts of riot gear in what will most likely prove to be one of the hottest summers in memory - in both senses.)

British Jobs for British Workers - Wait a minute (the EU would not allow)

Seeing as the other major bloggers of the great stratosphere that is the internet have not or dare not (surely not, their balls are bigger than that) speak of the great tidal wave of protests taking place across the country as this is being written. I shall not refer to place and time for have you made it to this blog unassisted then you are surely education enough to redeem yourself of any knowledge you might have missed.

One wonders should we point out to the mighty strikers and strikees that under EU law they cannot discriminate against foreign workers - it is not possible UNLESS the white omnipresent white elephant is tackled tet á tet. Are we beginning to see the end of British associateship of the European Union, Thatcher had to tackle the Unions to rid the country of its malice back in the 80's for good or for bad it did jump start the economy. Perhaps it is time for the workers to regain their place in British Union history and rid the country of its malice only this time the malice is provided by Westminster in the shape of New Labour. True the Conservatives brought the EU upon the UK it is only fair that they bare the responsibility for reinstalling the British component of European Federal State.

Am I am little Englander you say, well thank you for those patronising thoughts they shall be returned in kind, on a further note however if I am to be called a little Englander them I am proud member of the other 35 or so million who also want loser relationships with the EU.