petermullen – Page 11 – All Things Considered

14 May

Theresa May: the Red Tory

Behold, I show you two mysteries: the one mystery the greater and the other mystery the less.

The lesser mystery is of why the Daily Telegraph is so enamoured of Theresa May. This mystery is only partly explained by the fact that the Telegraph has sacked so many of its intelligent writers – including, by the looks of the layout, the grammar and the spelling mistakes – all the sub-editors. The so called “star writers” remaining there, with a couple of notable exceptions, are would-be dolly birds in their forties and fifties whose subjects are their emotions, the menopause, their self-esteem and their cellulite.

The greater mystery concerns the Daily Mail’s utter infatuation with Mrs May whom they regard as a reincarnation of Margaret Thatcher.

But May is no Maggie.

Mrs Thatcher won over the working class voters by allowing them to buy their council houses. Mrs May says she wants to build 300,000 council houses for rent. Why? To steal support from Corbyn’s Trots. One might say, “It’s the oikonomy, stupid!”

Thus she intends to create a great many more sink estates. Of course, to do this was not her declared purpose but, as the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe pointed out in her book Intention, if you’re pretty certain that your actions will involve particular undesirable consequences and you persist in your actions anyway, then logically speaking you have intended those consequences.

Why does the Daily Mail persistently mistake the socialist Theresa May for a Conservative? Mrs Thatcher’s Conservative party was the party which the Mail knew and loved. But, according to May, this was “the nasty party.”

May will do nothing to reduce the burden of taxation or the other burden of business regulations. She will deliver a Brexit – if at all – soft as a lightly-boiled egg. After May’s Brexit, she will claim job done, we’re out. But the underlying practical reality will reveal that nothing has changed.

She voted Remain, remember.

She was a disaster at the home office, from her passports fiasco to her failure to prevent the rape and sexual abuse of thousands of girls in a score of our towns and cities by Muslim men; from her refusal to intervene in the infiltration of Birmingham schools by militant Islam, to her failure to honour her commission to “reduce immigration to the tens of thousands.” And, when she was confronted on this matter, she said she was powerless to act because she was bound by the EU’s Shengen rules on free movement of populations.

Then she voted Remain anyway! This explains both the shallowness of her mind and the depth of her duplicity.

Mrs Thatcher once said she intended that the Labour government which preceded her would go down in history as “the last Labour government.” In her inflamed lust for the capture of Labour votes, May is moving the Conservative party relentlessly to the left.

And the last state will be worse than the first – for all of us.

10 May

Waste and void, waste and void, and darkness at the heart of our schools

The Labour party and the Lib Dems are competing with each other to discover which party can spend the most taxpayers’ money on the most useless project.

Spending on state education is higher today than it has ever been, while nearly half of the pupils leave school after eleven years of full time compulsory schooling unable to read, write or count efficiently.

I can at least count sufficiently accurately to know that this does not represent value for money.

Now Labour have announced they will spend an additional £4.8billion. and the Lib Dems £7billion more. This is a scandalous misappropriation of public money.

Labour say this increase will be paid for by increasing corporation tax from the current 19% to 26% by 2021, But even at its present level, corporation tax is far too high and a blight on industry and commerce everywhere. Corbyn and his gang ought to be made to understand that exorbitant business taxes aren’t just a wonderful example of socialists’ politics of envy and their obsession with bashing the bosses: companies employ workers – a few of whom might even be foolish enough to vote Labour – and every corporation tax rise means more workers will get the sack.

A further increase in teachers’ salaries is included in Labour’s calculations. I would say teachers are generously paid already compared with most other workers. A head teacher (outside London) can earn as much as £108K – more, given extra allowances for special responsibilities. Senior teachers receive up to £59K and heads of department £38K. The average pay for a classroom teacher is £33K and even unqualified teachers receive £26K. There is a pension scheme more generous than most others can dream about. All this while a teacher spends 195 days each year in school when most workers turn up to the job on 241 days annually.

State schools are not only educationally incompetent and intellectually abysmal: they are also chaotic, violent and dangerous.

A recent survey by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) showed that four out of ten teachers had been physically assaulted by children over the previous year. More than three quarters said they had been pushed or shoved, around half were kicked or had had an object such as a piece of furniture thrown at them, and more than a third had been punched. Just under half said pupil behaviour gets worse year on year; and the figures back them up. According to the Department for Education 18,970 pupils at primary and secondary schools were temporarily excluded in 2013-2014 because of physical attacks on teachers and other adults – obstruction, jostling, biting, kicking, hair-pulling – compared with 17,190 the previous year. There is some dispute about the number of assaults in more recent years, but all available surveys reveal that these have increased still further. Three-quarters of trainee and newly-qualified teachers are considering leaving the profession, according to a 2015 ATL survey. Of those, 25% said challenging pupil behaviour was the reason. Meanwhile, a 2014 joint survey by the ATL and ITV News found that more than a quarter of teachers had faced aggression from a student’s parents or carers in the past year.

Does anyone think this moronic, violent shambles should be handed even more of our money?

09 May

Worse than the U-boats

Theresa May is turning out to be a Red Tory who takes her economic policies from Ed Miliband. When Labour pledged a cap on energy prices at the 2015 general election, this policy was rightly rubbished by the Tories – because such manipulations of the market always end up in higher prices in the long run. Anyone but a blockhead, or a Red Tory, would be able to see this at once. Competition among the energy producers would diminish. For the energy firms would get together and agree to charge similar prices – to create a “cost cluster” just below the level of the cap.

The best way to reduce the cost of power for householders and for industry is to resource energy supplies from cheaper and more readily available fuels.

But the Conservative government refuses to do this – having made the absurd promise to reduce Britain’s carbon footprint to zero by 2050. Incidentally, we are the only country to make this pledge.

Our present energy policy is an act of criminal insanity.

What economic sense is there in offering massive subsidies – at the taxpayers’ expense – to wind and solar power, especially when these sources are unreliable? The Red Toryism of Mrs May is hardly achieved by giving huge handouts to rich landowners to erect thousands of inefficient windmills.

Odd that fanatical environmentalists should so conspire to ruin the landscape.

A few years ago, new advances in technology enabled our mines to produce increasing supplies of “clean” and cheap coal. Now we have closed down the coal mines and the huge power station at Drax is importing, at colossal cost, massive amounts of biomass from the other side of the Atlantic – incidentally destroying whole areas of woodland

Such an absurd policy amounts to both economic profligacy and environmental vandalism at the same time.

In the USA there has been achieved, through the spectacularly successful fracking industry, a revolution in energy production and supply which in little more than a decade has changed America from being an oil-importing nation – dependent on the greed and chicanery of the Gulf States – to become a net exporter of energy. This bloodless revolution has resulted not only in gigantic economic benefits but in shifting the strategic geo-political balance to favour the western nations. For the first time we are freed from Saudi Arabia’s economic blackmail.

To favour western nations? Well, at least to favour those western countries which go in for fracking: Poland and Hungary come to mind.

Mrs May says she is the champion of those “just about managing.” Given sensible energy policies the country would enjoy economic boom years and a considerable reduction in the cost of living – especially for those described by the new Red Tories as “vulnerable.”

With fuel prices constantly on the rise – the only possible result of our insane energy policies – those currently just about managing will be able to manage no longer.

Meanwhile, Britain is sitting on vast resources of shale gas and yet production has barely begun.

By these follies and by gross neglect, Mrs May’s government is imposing the sort of hardship on our people that would have been the envy of the German U-boat commanders.

04 May

The game’s up for the Fourth Reich

Here is part of a SKY News report:

“Senior EU figures are expected to react later to Theresa May’s combative speech in which she accused some in Brussels of ‘not wanting Britain to prosper.’ Launching the Conservative Party’s general election campaign after the dissolution of Parliament, she suggested leaks and threats had been ‘deliberately timed to affect the result of the general election’.”

Allow me to translate this journalese for you ,please, into something that resembles the way we speak in the street:

“The unelected EU Commissioners and others in their gang of apparatchiks and bureaucrats are in a state of panic and emotional shock because it has dawned at last on their sluggish collectivist minds that Britain is determined to leave their corrupt and disastrously inefficient and destructive political project. They will use every dirty trick they can think of, every lie they can invent and every false statistic they can manufacture to prevent our exit from the EU. Deceit and deception are the only ways of working known to them. Like the devil himself, these vile, self-promoting Eurocrats have constructed an empire of lies. So we should not be surprised when we notice their meddling in our elections with the intention of perverting the results – as they pervert everything else they touch.”

But why are the leaders of the EU in such a flap about Brexit?

Because Britain is a massive contributor to the EU budget and our leaving might be enough by itself to bring about the collapse of their whole rotten project.

Because when other European nations see the success of Britain’s Brexit policy, they will be emboldened to leave too. Already there is strong support for Leave in a number of EU member states.

Because the people of Europe have come to see that the EU is not the benign keeper of the peace and bountiful distributor of funds which it pretends to be. By obliging all member states to adopt the Deutschmark – that is the Euro by any other name – EU economic policy is run by the Germans and for the Germans, with the deliberate result that the non-industrial nations of southern Europe are impoverished to keep the Germans in the prosperity to which they have been accustomed ever since the USA pumped billions into their country’s restoration after the collapse of the Third Reich.

As the direct result of EU economic policy, the people of Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal have been made poor. Youth unemployment in these countries varies between 25% and 50%, a disaster producing a lost generation

Britain’s determination to make a success of Brexit is stirring these impoverished peoples and teaching them that they do not need to continue for ever as vassal provinces of Frau Merkel’s Fourth Reich .

That was a good speech yesterday, prime minister. Now don’t go all wobbly on us!

03 May

The very devout LGBT community

Frau Merkel has met Vladimir Putin for talks.

Now that must have been a momentous occasion against the background of global insecurity, wars, rumours of wars, tensions and terrorism on three continents. What would have been Angela Merkel’s most pressing concerns? Surely the civil war in Syria which has been going on for six years. She would have asked Mr Putin to use his influence over Turkey’s dictator Erdogan and urge him not to flood Europe with millions of imperialistic Muslim migrants. She would have voiced the apprehension of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the face of an energised Russian military presence on their borders.

And Vlad, a man with a keen sense of history and given to plain speaking, he would have stated his concerns about Prussian militarism. I can almost hear him framing his sentences: “Three times during the last 150 years, you Germans have waged war on Europe with the aim of domination: in 1870 under Bismarck, 1914 by the Kaiser and again in 1939 by Hitler. The Russian people are apprehensive about the foreign policy intentions of your Fourth Reich.”

I suppose, if their talks had been purposeful and sincere, the two leaders might even have felt their way towards a common understanding.

In the context of the current international instability, all the topics I have mentioned must surely have been on the table? Instead, the headline report on this summit meeting informed us, “Mrs Merkel asked Mr Putin to use his authority to clamp down on the homophobia currently oppressing the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered community in Chechnya.”

No doubt this is a good cause but, compared, say, with the genocide of Christians throughout the Middle East and in many parts of Africa, it is hardly the most severe threat to international peace and harmony. It’s as if in 1938 Joachim von Ribbentrop had begged Comrade Molotov to ease the parking restrictions on the over eighties nudist basketball team in Minsk.

But I suppose I ought to understand that the former things have passed away and that, in our diverse, non-sexist, non-racist, post-modern, post-truth, fake news world, our priorities have altered beyond recognition. Rather than occupy themselves with the possibility of nuclear war or Muslim terrorism and Islam-inspired wars in a score of countries, leaders of the world’s great powers meet to discuss the prospects for sexual deviants in an outlying province.

It is the language in which Frau Merkel’s plea was made which puzzles me most. In this modern world of ours, we seem to have developed a very strange vocabulary. Frau Merkel did not refer to the allegedly persecuted Chechnyans as sexual deviants, but as “The LGBT community.”

I didn’t know these people had formed themselves into a community. What sort of organisation is this? Is it like a monastic community with plainchant, Bible readings, a rule of life and the keeping of the ecclesiastical hours? Is the LGBT community in Chechnya devout? Do they start each day with the office of Prime followed by Matins? I feel sure they will want to include Sext.

I shall just have to get used to the fact that we no longer employ the conventional categories or even speak the language I learned as a child. As Wittgenstein said, “Change the language and you change the world.”

And how, Ludwig! And how!

O brave new world that hath such people in it.

29 Apr

Suffer the little godchildren

We can always count on the Church of England to come up with an exciting new wheeze to stave off the final throes of bankruptcy. So they have got Rev’d Canon Dr Sandra Millar, head of projects and development for the Archbishop’s Council, to produce an exciting new order of service to help facilitate this exciting new wheeze to put bums on seats and tenners in the collecting plate. This takes the form of an order of service for a freshly invented and exciting occasion in the liturgical calendar called Godparents’ Sunday

The new and exciting order of service aims to bring God’s people together and empower them to reflect and rejoice through many exciting activities.

I hope those who turn up will be enabled to cope with all the excitement.

Dr Millar is eminently qualified for her role as contemporary liturgist for, before she was ordained in 2000, she had a career in marketing with the Co-op and Boots.

Her exciting new service stands squarely in the imaginative tradition of modern rites and it reminds us of the luminously creative project of a few years ago called Love Life, Live Lent in which congregations were invited to stick little bits of yellow paper on larger bits of blue paper and perform a loving line dance for the Lord.

If the Lord enjoyed that, I’m sure he will enjoy the form for Godparents’ Sunday too.

If you promise not to laugh too loudly or for too long, I’ll tell you about it. But first, let me discipline my tongue and my pen and adjure the temptation to wax satirical. Here it is straight then, in all its infantilised glory, from the Church of England website 

“You will need large sheets of paper eg lining paper on a roll or a large sheet with the heading ‘Memory Wall.’

“Felt pens for directly writing on paper/fabric OR post-it notes and pins.


“A large sheet of paper, flip chart or projector with ten words written on Eat, Talk, Listen, Read, Watch something; Drink; Look around; Stop for a rest; Play Games, Meet people.


“Ten smaller cards and Blutak so that words can be covered up and easily revealed..


“Four large cards each with one of these phrases: Being There; Part of the family; Good choices; Sharing faith

“Yellow and white ribbons and two ‘prayer trees’ eg places where ribbons can be tied [optional]


“Heart shaped chocolates or godparent/godchild badges [available from www.churchprinthub.org] to give away [optional]”

What immediately strikes us about Dr Millar’s modern masterpiece is that it is deeply rooted in philosophical theology. That phrase we are asked to write on one of our four large cards, “Being there” is of course a translation for Godparents of Martin Heidegger’s phrase Dasein and represents the inauthentic condition of humankind “thrown” into the world and obliged to discover the courage “to be towards death.” ***

(Best not make too much of that if their are any godchildren present).

As you can see, Godparents’ Sunday belongs to the scholarly tradition of Playschool and Blue Peter. And I needn’t have worried about the temptation to satire, as this latest offering renders satire impossible.

I confess I’m a bit worried about the chocolates, given that we’re informed daily we’re suffering an obesity epidemic. But I needn’t have worried about this either, for Dr Millar suggests that congregations follow up their chocolate-scoffing festivities with a “Fun and Sports Day.”

Completely in character and true to form, the Church of England gets this bit wrong. They say this exciting “Fun and Sports Day” should be held on Bank Holiday Monday 2nd May

But Bank Holiday Monday falls on 1st May.

Suffer the little godchildren…

*** Sein und Zeit by M.Heidegger, in association with Noddy and Big Ears say “Let’s Play Church!” by Enid Blyton and Justin Welby

26 Apr

Two Spectators but differing perspectives

Every week, a friend in Alice Springs sends me The Spectator Australia which is really the London version with perhaps ten pages at the start given over to Australian matters. Consistently, these pages are conspicuously better than the rest of the magazine. Let me give an example from the edition for the Easter weekend. After a shocking account of violent assaults by Muslims on Christians in Sydney. Aussie Spec’s editorial continued as follows:

“One of the obvious causes of what is called ‘Christophobia’ is the poisonous, amoral, cowardly effect of left wing political correctness and the simpering attitude of many ‘progressive’ Christian clergy towards Islam. Rather than seeing what has historically been a violent and uncompromising religion as possibly posing an existential threat to their own beliefs, many clergy now choose to embrace Islam in the name of ‘multifaith dialogue’. The effectiveness of this suicidal approach can be seen in France where more than 2000 mosques have been built in the last ten years while 60 churches have been closed – many becoming mosques. Where are the Christians defending their ancient faith? Carry on doing nothing and get ready to bury Jesus Christ once and for all.”

Why do we never get such plain speaking out of the truth in our London edition?

Those early pages in the Australian version unfailingly present a conservative opinion on all political, social and economic affairs.

They make the rest of the magazine – ie the London material – look like what in fact it has become: a collection of evasions and euphemisms and indeed of the very political correctness which the Australian editor deplores.

As a regrettable consequence, we no longer have a mainstream conservative weekly magazine in Britain

(Rev’d Dr Peter Mullen 3 Naomi Close Eastbourne BN20 7UU 01323-655832)

26 Apr

The things clever people say!

It’s surprising how often those with the greatest reputations for intelligence say the stupidest things.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) for instance, following his 18th century predecessor David Hume, said that the fact the sun has risen every morning in the past gives us “no reason” to believe that it will rise again tomorrow.

But surely if an event has always happened before, we might think we have every reason to expect it to happen again?

Let us find another example from our ordinary experience, not so far-fetched, and see if we can use it to alleviate some of Bertie’s bizarre scepticism. Suppose every Thursday evening for the last ten years just after seven o’clock, I have seen Cedric Buggins leave his house and go into The Rose & Crown on the corner. Further suppose that today is Thursday and I have just seen Mr Buggins leave his house, dressed in his usual jacket and slacks, and head off in the direction of the pub.

According to Bertie’s way of thinking, I would have to say that I have no reason to suppose Mr Buggins is going to the pub. And that, I would say, is downright perverse!

What else do I think Mr Buggins is going to do if not go to the pub (as we say) “as usual”? He must be going somewhere. Am I suddenly, on this Thursday of all Thursdays, to think, “Ah I see Buggins is on his way to the Methodist chapel”?

I think that Russell (and Hume) is here using the word reason inappropriately: he is using it rather as we would use the word proof in logic or mathematics. But conjecture about what’s going on in the empirical world – the sunrise or Buggins’ going to the pub – is not the same sort of thing as reasoning in mathematics and logic.

We might say that Russell is guilty of making a category mistake in applying the mode of reasoning which appertains to the a priori realms of maths and logic to the empirical world of our daily experience.

Formally, we might wish to add that here Russell is committing the fallacy of ignoratio elenchi by high redefinition of the words no reason. He is applying the sort of reasoning we use in deduction to the happenstance world in which the appropriate mode of reasoning is induction. Deductive logic deals in certainties. Induction is to do with probabilities. Of course I can’t prove that Buggins is going to the pub again tonight or that the sun will rise tomorrow in the same way that I go about proving 7 + 5 = 12. But that doesn’t mean in these cases I have no reason to believe as I do

What else should I believe in this case? There is a plainer way of stating this: it means Russell is missing the bloody point!

While I’m on about Bertie, there’s something else he said that worries me. He complained, “All my life in my study of mathematics, I have been disappointed that I cannot prove its axioms.”

Examples of axioms are, for instance, that the internal angles of any triangle add up to 180 degrees and that parallel lines never meet.

Of course neither I nor Russell can prove the axioms, because proof is something which is applied to propositions. And the axioms are not propositions but definitions. When I say that the internal angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees, I offering a definition of what I mean by the word triangle. If any plain figure has angles which do not add up to 180 degrees, then it is not a triangle. And if ever we notice two lines converge, we must say these are not parallel lines – because parallel lines are defined as lines which never meet

Bertie, thou art the cleverest man in Cambridge. Knowest thou not these things?

25 Apr

Same old Frogland

In an uncertain world, it’s reassuring to fortify oneself with a few truisms such as All Cows Eat Grass, All Men Are Mortal and All Entries For The Eurovision Song Contest Are Bound To Be Trash. Let me add another: All French Politicians Are Lefties.

From time to time a new face appears on the French political scene who is announced as right wing. Who can forget Nicolas Sarkozy? Well, I’m trying to. He was said to be a conservative and to have “broken the mould” of socialist leaders in France.

The broken mould was quickly restored to its former perfection as Sarkozy revealed himself to be a collectivist like all his confreres.

Step forward the next alleged mould-breaker, the so-called “centrist” Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frederic Macron, born on St Thomas’ Day 1977. He is to become France’s new president in a couple of weeks, for no better reason than that the French Establishment – a very powerful force, unlike the French Resistance – can’t stand Marine Le Pen who is always described, at least when people are speaking politely, as of the “far right.” No, she’s another socialist – perhaps even a national socialist – and her economic policies are to the left of Hollande’s.

At least Macron has had an education to fit him for his new job. he has a master’s degree in public affairs and he went on from that to study at the Ecole Nationale D’Administration, France’s top college for apparatchiks and career bureaucrats – a bit like PPE, but for people imagined to have some intelligence. From there he slipped silkily into the post of Inspector General of Finances. After a short break at Rothschild’s to allow him to make his millions, as all successful socialists and egalitarians do, Macron was appointed Deputy Secretary General to Francois Hollande, the leftist of the French lefties who buggered what was left of the French economy after Sarkozy had departed the scene.

Asked about his political and economic beliefs, Macron replied he is in favour of “collective solidarity.” In other words, do as the trades unions demand, or they’ll set fire to all the motor cars.

He is also an enthusiastic Europhile and a committed federalist who wants to “strengthen the EU and provide a common budget.”

He shares Frau Merkel’s open door immigration policy. No wonder Angela is in raptures at the prospect of Emmanuel’s appointment!

He is an avid global warmer and wants to see “ecological transition” which, being interpreted, means more windmills.

At least young Manny Macron displays the French tradition of toujours l’amour. He fell in love with his schoolteacher, Brigitte Trogneux when he was fifteen – she is twenty-four years his senior – and now they are wed with three children from Brigitte’s first marriage.

What are we to make of all this? Just that in Frogland Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose

15 Apr

Our wonderful social repair

Who holds the trophy for the most misleading statements in an article of about 1000 words? I don’t know, but Fraser Nelson, writing in the Daily Telegraph on Good Friday, must be pretty close. The gist of his piece is that, while church attendance has declined dramatically, the country is enjoying a moral renaissance.

Mr Nelson claims, “Britain is midway through a phase of social repair.” Leave aside for a moment the question of how he knows we are “midway” through this wonderful revival – Are we nearly there yet? – and whether the alleged social repair will be completed, what evidence does Mr Nelson produce to justify his obvious cheerfulness?

First, “Some time around the turn of the century, social problems stopped growing.” But is the current epidemic of mental illness among children not a significant social problem? Is endemic bullying, so pervasive among people of all ages, that children as young as four are telephoning their distress to the NSPCC not a social problem? Then there is the other social problem of ubiquitous online abuse about which I listened to yet another broadcast documentary not ten minutes after I had finished reading Mr Nelson’s article. Has he never heard of the widespread addiction to prescription drugs? We’re not drinking as much as we used to, he says, but our towns and cities still resemble deserted battlefields in the early hours of weekend mornings. Are the prisons not stuffed to bursting and more violent and drug-ridden than ever? And we have seen a 40% rise in incidents of knife-crime over the last eight years.

None of this looks like “social repair” to me.

Secondly, Mr Nelson says, “Teenage pregnancy stands at the lowest rate since records began in 1969.” Really? But there are 200,000 abortions in Britain every year and 50,000 of these are performed on teenagers – higher than the numbers in any other member state of the EU. Is this annual cull, this relentless massacre of the innocents, not a social problem?

Thirdly, “”While Britain now has a secular culture, it’s still one marinated in Christianity, the values survive.” What values are these? Does he mean we are all still marinated in the well-known Christian values of Equality, Diversity, Inclusivity and Political Correctness and the New Testament virtue of homosexual marriage?

Fourthly and hilariously, Mr Nelson says, “Churches are abandoned and converted into pubs.” No they’re not. They are being converted into mosques. And the pubs are closing faster than the churches.

“Midway through a phase of social repair”?

God deliver us from the state we’ll be in when this phase has been completed.

All Things Considered

Rev Dr Peter Mullen

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