All about Boris

The Mayor Boris Johnson in Croydon, South London, Tuesday November 22, 2011. Photo by Andrew Parsons/ Parsons Media

 

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Interviewed him for a TV current affairs research job in the 1980s.

My notes say he was a shallow, egocentric upper class twit who I would not trust to go to the loo on his own.

Johnson is typical of the upper class boot boys of his era. Unprincipled, self serving and arrogant beyond belief. Bullington boys with enough money to buy their way out of the trouble they caused, wrecking restaurants, indecently assaulting women passers by and using threatening and abusive behaviour that would get us plebs locked up.

Don’t laugh at Boris,give him he hatred he and his list boy friends warrant.

 

OK – I have a problem with this comment on a number of levels – the first one being that neither Stanley nor Boris are genuinely upper class.  Boris is more aware of this than his sister, which is why he has perfected his presentation skills to the point that he remains likeable and relatively honest for a Tory.

Having experienced Rachel, who works hard at not understanding how the other half live, Boris is a deceptively responsible person when compared with Stanley, whose luck in life is matched only by a psychotic libido.  Yes, he has polished a public act called Boris, but no, I cannot agree that he is a standard Bullingdon boot boy, especially as he avoided actually doing anything with the club as he did not like forking out cash for destroying people’s businesses and getting pissed.

In fact, Boris is a scholarship boy, spurred on by sibling rivalry, and Stanley is the son of a farmer.  A farmer who lost his farm because Stanley’s dreams and opportunities lay elsewhere.  To suggest that they are merely upper class twits would be a gross underestimation of their social skills.  Actually, they are fairly ordinary Somerset farmers who are now doing something else.

I rather like this mischief.  The idea of having a trademark manner and hairstyle which renders you memorable, combined with the arch observation skills necessary to pull such social mobility off with aplomb, appeals to me enormously.

Currently, Boris sees his role as distraction.  As long as you are watching Boris, you aren’t watching boring old Phillip Hammond or Theresa May.  Who remembers a single thing Hammond did as foreign secretary?  Exactly.  He is no great shakes as a chancellor either, but they are all very rich.

Boris is guilty of flippancy and he is guilty of not taking politics terribly seriously, but this is why he presents a good antidote to the massively grim notion of Conservative rule.  He is also providing himself with sufficiently great publicity never to have to worry about selling a book.  If he decided not to bother going to work tomorrow, I have no doubt that he would not want for money.

This is not to say that Boris is always nice.  Plainly this is not so, but again who really wants to look much further than the entertaining front?  Stanley is very good at this wall of distraction too, which makes it easy for them to deceive when necessary.

To conclude, insulting someone on the basis of class is snobbery, whether you are looking up or down.  One chooses one’s persona to a great degree, exemplified by my being considerably posher than my siblings.  This sounds like I am acting, especially as I went to a horrid school and my siblings all went private.  I can tell you that it is not an act at all, I, like Boris spent two years from ten to twelve avariciously reading Wodehouse.  It is an imprint which does not leave you. (I can tell you that it is no advantage at all when you live in Glasgow and have an infamous leader from Red Clydeside as an ancestor)

Boris’s carpet is in the final stages, but I would like to present it with the first of the furniture collection, Bordello Rhetoric, as they represent both Boris and Al.  As ever, these are made as gifts, but should Boris not wish to pick up his presents, they will be put out for sale in due course.  Once I have the shoes and the furniture complete, I will commence work on Lucifer Ogilvie.

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General Election blues

In a shock move, Theresa May has decided to call a general election in 7 weeks. This after saying that a second independence referendum would cause instability. The only instability she refers to, of course is the instability of losing the collateral of a billion barrelsworth of oil that Andrew Neil blatantly denied the existence of only a few weeks ago.

Whilst I am grateful to Andrew for circulating my every tweet on facebook in addition to promoting me to his own fans by openly denying the truth that we in the village of Scotland already knew before the 2014 referendum, I am thoroughly pissed off with the hypocrisy of the English war against my country.

After conducting a small survey a few months ago, I ascertained that the Scottish electorate were not particularly clued up about economics and that even the most diehard supporter of managing our own destiny was not playing with a full deck of cards, I seriously considered leaving the SNP due to the hostile and rather hysterical response of the members to my short and comic survey on the attitudes of yes and no indy voters to the issue of brexit.  People are easily shocked, confused and inclined to crap behaviour, and since the class war is alive and well, particularly in central Scotland, there often seems no point in considering anything beyond your own nose, since inevitably someone will try to cut yours off without actually hearing anything that you had to say.

In any case, our feeling is that we have a hope of scouring the last Conservative from our fair country, leaving the rabid killers of the disabled few choices in their war against Scotland.  As someone with quite a pedigree in the long term issue of Scottishness and the crushing thereof, with feet in the communist and conservative camp due to my odd but extremely healthy gene mix, I am hopeful that we will get the issue of a more realistic attitude to the management of Scotland cleared up.  We simply do not need to be paying for more bridges in London or killing disabled and long term unemployed people to sustain Scotland.

I still do not agree with SNP policy in regard to immigration before job creation, and the word is that I am not alone, however, as a voter, they are on safe ground.  It is only backbiting, status seeking and rather sickening empty headed mortgage victims that need persuading as far as I can see, so rather than fighting with each other, I would suggest that cybernats concentrate on actually constructing arguments for Edinburgh types.

What I, and many others who remember and have actually bothered to study Labour Party history wonder, is whether Corbyn will actually remember that Labour was supposed to support PEOPLE WHO GO TO WORK in addition to bleating about diversity a la Common Purpose.  Immigration is still a huge issue, particularly for people in Wales, Yorkshire and Cornwall, some of whom have even less hope of ever working than people in the more obscure areas of Scotland.  Grants for computers and internet access would go far further towards making work available for such people online than persistent starvation, but apparently it is preferable to force people onto useless courses, run by recruitment agents that have gone into the welfare punishment business.  Making an extra tenner available for carers, which would in any case be removed from the accompanying benefits, is not a vote winner and so I am unsure as to why this was the chosen carrot this morning.

Anyway, I am unsure as to where things have gone wrong in terms of Theresa’s lack of actual mandate, since it has never bothered the Conservative Party before.  I can only assume that your vote in the General Election refers to the willingness to starve part of the population to death, blame them for pisspoor economic management, the sale of the NHS and the continuation of the totally fucking useless trickledown policy that makes the luxury goods market the only growth sector worth being in.  Show me the jobs, show me the quality industry and show me the poor that sustain their local shops by actually eating, and then we will discuss my vote.

 

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Lack of imagination in politics

Lack of imagination in politics

I see the ongoing battle between left and right is being won online by the right at present.

Fake news and misleading headlines are not new.  All this ‘new’ phenomenon should tell you is that you should have been reading more carefully in the first place.  There is always more than one way to read any article.

Many years ago, I was placed next to a young radical Muslim male at work, who dismissed anything I said as being ‘white cow’ and who was generally a bit uncouth.  He was brought up in a very wealthy area of Glasgow, at 19 had his own Mercedes, and although he was allegedly studying politics and philosophy, could not understand it when I said that reading newspapers should be regarded in much the same way as studying philosophy or history.  Nobody is telling the truth, because everyone is trapped in their own time with their own social mores.

You can argue that as a Muslim, he would be rather attached to the idea of ultimate truth.  That is until I mention that a far more devout Muslim that was also in the work group understood me perfectly.  A scholar is a scholar after all, and it belies the argument of all Muslims hating everyone that isn’t, when you consider that the scholars are often more open-minded than the victims of a domineering imam.

This is a good analogy for the current state of politics. Labour appear to be too afraid of offending the few voters they have left, do not seem to see that the party needs radical reform to Labour, rather than New Labour values and that being decisive is a basic requirement of forming any kind of opposition.  We seem to be trapped in this idea that politics consists of left versus right, when the truth is far more complex.

At bottom line, the difference between Conservative and Labour in the UK is similar, but not the same as the difference between Republican and Democrat in the USA.  The Democrats are still further to the right than the UK Conservatives, but they adhere to the principles of communitarianism as a method of benefitting capitalists.  There does not seem to be a party representing socialism in the USA, certainly not one we would have heard of.

As I have mentioned before, politics is not a straight line.  It is s circle, and you will find that far left and far right are closely bound if you look at the examples of history.  Both believe in a nation, both believe in the rights of people within that nation, the disagreement actually hinges on whether you are a team or an individual within that nation.  Taken further, it is the difference between opportunity and rights.  Socialism can, in certain circumstances be considerably less fair than conservatism.  My personal viewpoint is that opportunity always out performs the right to stay in your social place, therefore I am considered as being towards the right rather than left by my less interested protesting socialist friends.

Socialism, as we have traditionally understood it, has relied heavily on someone already owning the means of production, so we must rail against it to protect our rights.  This is all very well, but there is no reason why you cannot go and procure some means of production by yourself, and support someone less able in earning a living.  Here is where I differ from your average Conservative, who says that they already have their piece of the cake, and you aren’t getting any.  For a society to survive under either political system, it would be a whole lot healthier if Conservative thinking was a whole lot more about pride in concern for others and the dignity of work, no matter what level you happen to be at.

This is now considered very old fashioned thinking.  Who on earth reveres the cleaner?  Communists would very quickly tell you that without the cleaner, the system breaks down, so you must show some respect to your comrade no matter what task they have been assigned.  This now starts to look like a class war, when in fact it is all about resources and social values, an entirely different prospect.  Having worked for old and new aristocracy, I can tell you that old school aristos are very much appreciative of their staff, whereas new money and younger aristos prefer to employ someone they can abuse.  Again, nothing to do with class, this is to due with cultural values, and our cultural values currently stink.

So, I propose that a new party is formed, abandoning the principles of right and left for an entirely new paradigm.  How about a party that does the following? I propose we call it the Healthy Culture Party

  • teaches the basic principles of economics in primary school
  • reinstates the old arithmetic qualification that taught people how to understand the news, banking documents and how to manage money generally.
  • ensure that everybody understands that work is a means to earning a living, and no reflection on your worth as a person.  On the contrary, the school janitor may be the person who writes the next world changing treatise on education, so you had better be polite.
  • Take pride in ensuring that NOBODY STARVES TO DEATH IN YOUR COUNTRY
  • Encourage innovation, free thinking and genuinely free speech, in the place of labelling hate figures as we have been doing for the last twenty years.  Conservative culture is now at the point of point and hate at every opportunity, with Labour failing to call them to account or opposing them on anything, a very dangerous state of affairs for anybody in this country. Don’t forget, tomorrow that hate figure could be you.
  • Respect borders.  Much the same as respecting boundaries in any relationship, it is simply not your call to tell other countries what to do.  If you are respecting the right of Saudi to behead and bomb people, you have to respect the right of other countries to run themselves as they see fit and vote for. We have mobs instead of diplomacy currently.  It does not seem to help.
  • Rate opportunity above preserving the notion of class oppression.  It is far more important to have a liberal financial system that fosters the growth of new and small businesses and looks on failure as experience, than encourage the idea that born poor means that you stay poor.
  • Reinstate the laws against monopolistic behaviour and discourage over large business generally.
  • Stimulate and encourage diverse thinking and alternative ways of doing things in an effort to produce the next generation of creative thinkers rather than fostering conformity, which is only for the benefit of the very large corporations and multinationals that will dictate future political activity.  To preserve the notion of the nation state and the idea that there is a government between you and a Walmart education and health record, this is extremely important.
  • A housing benefit system that adequately reflects property values, to encourage investment and discourage false valuations on property.  This has damaged our formerly diverse economy almost as much as incentives for large American food and beverage chains.  It is no good for the economy, and no good for the many talented people who could be creating British brands.
  • Encourage the preservation of history, conservation and power that does not destroy the planet we depend on.

Of course, this set of ideas makes me an unusually liberal conservative, with communist tendencies, which is quite close to the truth, I suppose, given my background.  I would vote for that.  It would render us a lot closer to France in terms of views, which can only be of benefit given our current medium term future.

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Tory and New Labour psychology

Tory and New Labour psychology

Today I would like to take a look at Conservative and New labour psychology.  These features of life in the UK are fairly alien to any thinking Scots, so as someone with both in my family, and a great deal of extremist at both poles, I will take it upon myself to draw you a sketch of the personalities of the people we seek to persuade to get a real life and possibly also a conscience.
Conservatives

Conservative voters do not like thinking for themselves, and if they do, it invariably involves self-interest and their limited ideas about free market economics.  They have very limited experience of events outwith their control, and simply cannot imagine ever having problems that they cannot either surmount or throw money at. Problems such as these happen to other people, therefore they either do not matter, or do not exist.  Any question of being personally affected is outwith the realms of reality.

 

The reason for this, is that conservatives believe strongly in approval.  A peculiar kind of approval, from people they admire for reasons of class, good taste or money.  If someone of a different persuasion displays better taste, a disregard for money, and compassion towards others, they are to be dismissed as insane, ‘out of step’ or simply weird.  Ideally such challenges to their version of reality should suffer, so that they can display their superior values.

 

The worst conservatives are the ones that came from a working class or impoverished background.  These people will actually experience hardship at some point, and beat themselves up because any problem is obviously their fault.  If they are successful in climbing out of difficulties, then any question that anybody else is unable to do so is dismissed, and entire council estates will be used as examples of demotivation, rather than places with scope for development or investment.

 

The most dangerous conservatives of all are the under-educated liars, such as Jeffrey Archer or Iain Duncan Smith.  These people have something to hide, therefore they take on the most hated roles in the party.  The party elite then give them more and more punishing jobs to carry out, as a sort of sniggering public school system of fagging.

 

My neighbour, who formerly seemed a reasonable person, cannot stand the sight of a wind turbine, but despite living in an architectural treasure approves of fracking BECAUSE HE CANNOT SEE IT.  He believes this to be OK because the Conservatives told him so, and he expresses great hatred for any one from the SNP BECAUSE HIS POSH FRIENDS LIKE IT.  Here you can see an example of the head-in-the-sand, I-am-OK -so-you-don’t-matter, approval seeking behaviour typical of the Tory. Disabled and poor people do not exist, because he personally does not have to deal with them.  Therefore they do not matter.

 

 
New Labour

These people are fairly similar to the above, although they like to be seen to think more carefully, so they become snobbish and reserved due to their superior thinking skills.  The desperate seeking of approval is still there, but it takes a more domineering form.  As corporatist fabians, they believe strongly in copying conservative and American economic policies, because they do not particularly like numbers, so it is far easier to attempt to talk as if they understand the problems, but not do anything about them.  Therefore your objections to funding their essential schemes for, say, creating quangos which employ men in suits that do not actually do anything at all. are examples of your inferiority.  These people are even less trustworthy than conservatives, because you cannot even point out the error of their ways.  It is noteworthy that the electorate do not actually vote them in until the conservatives have actually put some money into the UK so that New Labour can then squander it on pretentious and largely useless policies that do not help anybody.

 

 

 

As you can see, a thinking person would not vote for either of these parties, nor would they seek to place themselves into a position where they delegate the responsibility for their country to self-serving, ignorant and role-playing powermongers who do not really do very much.  Conservatives like to fill their pockets, and those of their friends by contract.  New Labour do much the same thing by creating official bodies that employ their friends to sit and talk about it.  Neither actually does anybody any good.

 

On a personal note, having said all of this, I am seeing a few ‘ice-cream’ policies from the SNP that I really do not like.  I think it would be a good idea to tread very carefully with some of the softer strategies, as we should all be aware that compromises will have to be made if we are to build a strong fortress for the future.

 

 

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