politics – Page 6 – All Things Considered

31 Mar

Carey the patriot: Welby the fascist sympathiser

It is encouraging to read that George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury (1991-2002), has suggested that Donald Trump might be a “good Samaritan” for the dispossessed American working class – the millions scorned, neglected and betrayed by the US political elite for decades. As the result of the presidential election in the US, the vote for Leave in Britain and the growing strength of anti-elitist parties throughout Europe have shown, millions have declared their contempt for the elite of “liberal” intellectuals, apparatchiks and career bureaucrats who have dominated the political scene throughout Europe and the States since the second world war. People have lost patience with the elite’s culture of entitlement and thrown them out.

Naturally, George Carey is already being excoriated by members of the political establishment and by the left-liberal sections of the media from which they draw their support.

Members of this establishment can barely contain their rage over the fact that both here and in the US they are effectually being disestablished.

Contrast George Carey’s refreshing statement with speeches by Justin Welby in recent months. Welby urged us to vote Remain in the EU referendum, assuring us that there is nothing in Christianity in general or the Church of England’s doctrines in particular to disapprove of the EU. Thus he showed his ignorance of The Thirty-nine Articles which are central to the constitution of the Church of England and to which Welby himself was obliged to give his assent upon the occasions of his ordination and consecration. Article 37 says, “The Queen’s Majesty hath the chief power in this realm of England.”

Not under EU rules, she doesn’t: for the EU works consistently for the abolition of the nation state.

And then there is the small matter of Welby’s having sworn the Oath of Allegiance to her Majesty. In better days, he would have been put in the Tower for airing such views.

But then Welby thinks himself enlightened and progressive, as all members of the left-liberal establishment do. He is in fact a leading representative of that arrogant culture of entitlement, of career bureaucrats and operators of the management cult of ordered decline: that failed establishment which the people have belatedly rejected.

Welby has condemned both Trump and anti-EU, anti-immigration “populism” as “belonging to the fascist tradition in politics.”

And nobody laughs!

I’ll leave Trump out of this for the time being – at least for long enough for us to discern his political direction. But to condemn fascism while supporting our membership of the EU is a species of doublethink of which George Orwell would have been proud:

Consider: the ruling EU Commission is unelected, a self-appointed, self-perpetuating privileged committee of commissars; in effect a politburo. They are entirely unaccountable to the European electorates. The EU has not published audited accounts for twenty years, so we have no idea how much of our money they are spending or indeed of what they are spending it upon. There is no democratic process in the EU for the making of policy. The so-called EU parliament is a rubber stamp for the Commission. Thousands of new rules and laws are made every year and then imposed on the member states. Effectually, the EU governs by decree and diktat.

Is there a word for this? I say there is, and the word is “fascist.”

Well said, George! Is there the chance you might stage a comeback?

30 Mar

Lies, damned lies and democracy

I am getting fed up with the misuse of the word “democracy.”

Last week all the papers screamed that the atrocity in Westminster was “an attack on our democracy.” This week the same papers are screaming that Mrs May’s signing of the letter to tell the EU that we’re leaving was “the reclaiming of our democracy.”

Democracy – demos, the people and cracy, rule – implies that voters have genuine choices. But this is not so, and that’s why the word is being misused. Of course, we have all these party labels: Con, Lab, Lib and Loony, but they all implement the same policies. And these policies all add up to socialism. We are forever being told by the politicians and the media (and especially our intellectually-challenged bishops) that we live under a capitalist system, but this is very far from the truth.

Nearly 50% of Britain’s GDP goes to the public sector. In so called communist China it is only 17%. At the height of their totalitarian tyranny, the Soviets were only spending 10% more than we do today. Never mind the anti-capitalist rhetoric, examine the facts…

You are taxed on your wages. Then you pay 20% VAT on nearly everything you buy with the money on which you have already been taxed.

Scandalously we are taxed even on our meagre pensions.

Fuel taxes are at an outrageously high level. If we have a car we pay road tax. If we drink or smoke, the price of our pints and fags is artificially inflated by taxation. Governments ask people to save, so to reduce the burden of taxation. But the prudent who do save are paid little or no interest. In fact, with rates as they are, savers – especially among the older generation – are actually losing money by their thrift. If we do save, we are taxed again on the minuscule interest

If we do our bit by buying shares in British companies, we are taxed on our dividends. There are further taxes on share dealing. The state broadcasting propaganda department fiercely polices an annual tax called the TV licence. The industrial, commercial, financial and manufacturing companies which generate income for the country pay large sums in Corporation Tax and other business taxes. And, in the form of Inheritance Tax, we have to pay up again even when we’re dead. British businesses which ought to be leading our economic recovery are prevented by labyrinthine corporate and state regulation.

Is this what the bishops condemn as “capitalism”? These levels of taxation and regulation are combining to hinder economic recovery. And such taxes are required only because the government needs them to pay for its massively expanded army of civil servants, its quango mountain, its legions of useless box-tickers, its lousy education system, the failing and disgracefully corrupt NHS, and its bloated state welfarism. Then there are the bishops’ hysterical protests against “the cuts.” The truth is that this government will be borrowing and spending more when it leaves office than it did when it came in. Whatever economic and social system is currently being operated in our country, it is not by any shadow of meaning capitalist.

It is socialism through and through. And it’s what you’ll get whichever way you vote – for our prized “democracy” is a lie and a sham

29 Mar

Our racist church

Why has the Church of England turned racist?

Martyn Snow, Bishop of Leicester, has just announced that there is to be a new appointment designated “bishop for ethnic mi minorities.” Why? Because, says the Bishop of Leicester, the church is “too quintessentially English,”

Leave aside for the moment the question of how one can be “too” quintessentially anything – for “quintessence” is what it says it is: the very quick and soul of a thing. But, as the modern services demonstrate only too clearly, our church authorities are not too familiar with the English language, what will go into it and what won’t.

The whole point of the Church of England is that it was always meant to be quintessentially English. It is, after all, the national church. Read the divines who were most eminent in its creation, such as Richard Hooker and William Law: “Every man of England a member of the Church of England” and “The whole realm shall have one use.”

It is as if Martyn Snow does not even satisfy himself with his coinage “too quintessentially English,” for he blathers on a bit further and adds that the new bishop for minorities is deemed necessary because the country, and particularly the Leicester area, has experienced “cultural changes.” We must respond to these cultural changes, says Bishop Snow, “by enabling greater representation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) Christians.”

In what ways are BAME Christians not “enabled” presently? Does the Bishop of Leicester mean to suggest that a white English priest cannot or should not minister to black or Asian Christians?

On that score, would he say that a black or Asian priest cannot or should not minister to white English Christians?

The very notion of a bishop for minorities is at best patronising. Actually, it is blatantly racist. If you really wish to marginalise someone, assign him to a special group..

We know from forty years experience that the hierarchy and synod always follows secular fashions, only, like some prince consort, one dutiful step behind. The secular fad being followed here is the disastrous policy of encouraging multiculturalism which separates people into “communities” on racial grounds and creates undesirable ghettos.

When this was practised in South Africa, it was rightly condemned as Apartheid. When it is practised here, it is lauded by all the same “liberals” and “progressives” who took to the streets to protest about the segregation that was the rule in South Africa.

The notion of “communities” is fatal to the establishing of an integrated society. There is one community to which we all belong: one church, one realm, one England. This was the Elizabethan Settlement which has given us a decent set of political liberties for 400 years. This settlement has been adjusted and refined over the centuries by, for instance the accommodation of dissenters through the repeal of the Test and Corporation Act (1828) and the Catholic Emancipation Act (1829)

It should not be beyond the wit even of our contemporary senior ecclesiastics to allow similar adjustments to be made to extend membership of the one English community to those of other faiths

Dump the patronising attitude towards so called BAME Christians. And ditch the implicit racism.

The living symbol of our national integrity is the Monarch who is both head of state and supreme governor of the Church of England.

You might say the genius of this settlement is precisely in that it is quintessentially English.

23 Mar

Christian Europe RIP

All over Britain escaped horses are running through the streets and that deafening noise you can hear is the slamming of stable doors. We are told that there will be more armed police on the streets today “to reassure the public.” They were patrolling the streets yesterday, but they couldn’t prevent the slaughter.

The hills are alive with the sound of cliches. Mrs May is of course leading the way: “We will never allow evil to drive us apart.”

But, haven’t you noticed, prime minister, we have been apart for years as they choose to segregate themselves and live in ghettos?

A senior policeman described the attack as “An Islamist act of terror.” I don’t know what this means. No one can know what it means – because it doesn’t mean anything. What’s the difference between “Islamist” and “Islamic”?

Yesterday’s attack is (as usual) being described in all this morning’s papers as “a tragedy.” It is not a tragedy. A tragedy usually connotes a great person being brought down by a single fatal flaw: Caesar’s ambition, Hamlet’s indecisiveness etc.

Yesterday’s attack was an atrocity, a bloody outrage crying to God for vengeance.

Naturally, the television companies are delighted. They have some real news for once and it’s live, all captured on camera, SLAUGHTER AND MAYHEM BROUGHT TO YOUR FRONT ROOM IN HIGH DEFINITION COLOUR.

It’s better than the Cup Final – we can send for a takeaway and watch all those action replays of violent death. And, just as with all those talking heads who come on afterwards to review the match, we now have innumerable “experts” offering “analysis” – ie helping us slam all those stable doors.

A friend wrote: “Hell! When shall we reach the tipping point?”

I’ll tell you: there isn’t going to be a tipping point.

The day after 9/11 I abandoned a conference in Oxford and took a train to the City of London to be with my family and my parishioners in case devotees of the well-known religion of peace and love decided to repeat their New York successes in Britain’s capital. The headline in The Daily Telegraph screamed AMERICA AT WAR. Small comfort: I thought to myself, “Well at least this outrage will put an end to all the politically correct nonsense. Now the West will wake up!”

No, it didn’t. If 3000 deaths in New York, followed by more in Bali and Madrid, and in scores of cities since, is not enough to rouse the West to take decisive action against violent Muslim imperialism, then nothing will.

Mohammed’s hordes have waged war on the West for 1400 years. In AD 732 they suffered an outright military defeat at Tours at the hands of the Christian warrior Charles Martel. At the Battle of Lepanto and at the Siege of Malta, Europe was delivered again by Christian knights. The last time our enemies threatened serious insurrection – that is until the present insurgency – was at the Siege of Vienna in 1683 when the Christian Jan Sobieski defeated a Turkish army of some 200,000 men.

There is a saying: “When Allah is strong, God is weak.” God is not weak, but Christianity in Europe has evaporated – or rather it has been banished from public life by the forces of militant secularism.

Muslims have been telling us for the whole of those 1400 years that their aim is the conquest of Europe. They have never stopped announcing this intention. So why do we not believe them?

The Islamic cause is greatly assisted by our suicidal policy of allowing mass immigration and by the far higher birth rate in the Muslim population.

I don’t blame the Muslims for wanting to acquire Europe. It’s a much better place than the filthy, barbaric countries from which the millions of immigrants and would-be conquerors emerge.

I blame ourselves. We are not being defeated. We are giving up without a fight. Europe is dying by her own hand.

01 Feb

The dummy-suckers

It is a pleasure to discover a good restaurant and even better to come across a talented writer. I have been reading Alexander Boot’s books and blogs for ten years and I have always found him sustaining. He is scholarly, informed and frequently amusing. Consistently he writes what is recognisably the English language – which makes a nice change from most of the stuff we read in the national newspapers. Recently Alex was wondering aloud on his blog why 1.3 million British subjects have signed a petition to deny a state visit to Donald Trump. What is it about this democratically elected president which irritates so many people to such a degree that they refuse to extend the president the courtesy of hospitality?

Perhaps it is because Mr Trump is deficient in the qualities possessed by foreign rulers to whom we did grant a state visit? Alex names a few of these in case we had forgotten, among them Messrs Mobutu, Suharto, Xi Jinping and Ceaușescu – all of them tyrants, dictators and some of them mass murderers. Donald Trump has been in office less than a fortnight and so he may plead in excuse that he has not yet had the time to set up the apparatus of mass slaughter. The petitioners should give him a little breathing space, and then perhaps he will live up to the standard set by the tyrants and dictators who were welcomed here with little protest?

Alex goes on to ponder the wider issue of what it is that attracts the mob in their millions to genocidal tyrants. And not least of the virtues in Alex’s writing is that you can see the pondering even as he writes. Here is that rare thing: a man thinking things out as he goes along, as the thinker and the writer should. Our present literary and journalistic malaise is all owing to the fact that, though we have plenty of thinkers and writers, the thinkers can’t write and the writers can’t think.

Back on the subject of the petitioners, Alex thinks this sort are the natural consequence of society’s lapse back into paganism. I dare say there is something in this. Certainly, the case of Hitler is evidence on that score. I wouldn’t want to dispute Alex’s judgement here, but I would venture another explanation – one which is not inconsistent with paganism.

When she was a toddler, my sister used to suck a dummy which had been dipped in something sweet. My mother and father tried to wean her off this comfort, as it would not have appeared seemly for my sister to turn up at Mrs Lillyman’s dancing studio in posh Roundhay, Leeds for her grade two ballet examinations with what my dad called “that thing” in her mouth. But every time they tried to remove the dummy, my sister screamed the bloody place down.

The petitioners are like my infant sister.

Since 1945 they have inhabited a political culture much to their liking: a politics of high taxation and regulation, a dispensation in which there is the appearance of democracy but not its reality. For while it is possible to chuck out the government and put another one in its place, the new lot are the same as the the old crowd. Added to this pretend democracy there is the relatively new ingredient of political correctness which tells the infantilised petitioners what to think and, just like nanny, controls their behaviour. They want to be looked after by nanny and allowed to suck their dummies. Well now the dummies have been taken away and they are screaming the bloody place down. They want to be overtaxed and over-regulated. They don’t want personal responsibility. They want the state to tell them what to do. Moreover, they have become so habituated to this politics that they long since developed a culture of entitlement. They imagined they would be allowed to suck on their dummies forever. The last thing they want is to grow up.

Listen, and you can hear them screaming the bloody place down.

30 Jan

The illiberal secularists who rule us

Just before Christmas I wrote to Sajid Javid at the Department for Communities setting out my reasons for not being willing to sign an oath of allegiance to “British values” which, I argued, are not values at all but politically-correct diktats. Today I received a reply which claimed:

“The Equality Act of 2010 protects all individuals from discrimination on the grounds of age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnerships.”

No it doesn’t. It doesn’t defend me against discrimination on the grounds of my religion, which is Christianity. If I try to put my Christian principles into practice – which is what the New Testament tells me to do – then, like the Irish bakers who refused to decorate a cake with a slogan expressing support for homosexual “marriage” – I could find myself convicted of discrimination against homosexuals.

This, of course, is a crime, while discrimination against practising Christians isn’t.

The reply continues:

“People are also free to hold their personal views about marriage.”

Tell that to the convicted Irish bakers!

Perhaps in some abstracted sense, I am free to hold my personal views about marriage – but only so long as I don’t articulate these views. Effectually this denies me my freedom to be a practising Christian and in effect bans Christianity from the res publica.

There is nothing tolerant or liberal about this. The reply from the Department for Communities reveals beyond doubt that we are ruled by an intolerant, illiberal, secular metropolitan elite.

If I may express this epigrammatically, I would say: “In today’s Britain, all communities are equal – but some communities are ,more equal than others.”

09 Jan

“The Governess, Part III”

Take your seats today for the third and climactic act of this three act pantomime starring Theresa May. “The Governess” was the tile given to this show only after other suggestions had been examined and rejected: these included: “The Stunt” and “The Art of Self-advertisement.”

Acts I and II were hugely enjoyable. The first contained the memorably comic scene in which Mrs May, with the assistance of the Department of Cliches and Political Hand-me downs, is seen composing several articles for publication in national newspapers. How we roared with laughter at her subtle articulation of “Let me be entirely clear.” Then came her side-splitting, “My first priority” – for which due credit was acknowledged in the programme to the Department of Tautologies and the EU Commission on Pleonasm.

In the second act, Mrs May pretended to be a serious politician – the prime minister, no less – and was seen giving an extended television interview. Our theatrical correspondent commented favourably: “This was the most brilliantly effective political satire we’ve seen since the days of that great comic actor Harold Wilson.”

I attended the dress – and what a dress! – rehearsal for today’s final act which begins in total darkness. In mock horror a disembodied voice calls out, “Now then boys and girls, what are the most terrifying words in the English language?”

At this point there was a palpable sense of unease and apprehension. Suddenly the stage was a fountain of light and Mrs May rose from a trapdoor in a gorgeous leopard skin leotard and answered: “Hello, I’m from the government and I’m here to help!”

I swear the audience laughter continued for all of five minutes.

There were some breath-taking moments of sheer bathos as when Mrs May began to sing the smash hit number “The Shared Society.” It began with the rising chromatic line in parody seriousness: “I’m going to do something about mental illness.” But yet again the tension was relieved quite hilariously as she went on to sing, “Oh no I’m not! I’ve already done that – when I said I want to make Brexit work for the Remainers!”

The rest of the act was the enumeration of all that Mrs May is going to do to make the country better and spread happiness. I won’t spoil it for you by going into details. “”(Actually, Mrs May didn’t go in for details either).

At the end I strolled into the green room which was crammed with theatrical journalists and literary people from the upmarket weeklies. Hieronymus Bosh from The Guardian interestingly denied that what we’d witnessed was a pantomime at all: “It was really a social comment piece – put me in mind here and there of Brecht, particularly in her evocative minimalist phrasing of “The Handouts Song “ and the rousing strains of “immigration, Immigration, Immigration” and its unforgettable refrain, “You ain’t seen nuffin’ yet!”

The Times Literary Supplement’s Jean-Paul Fartre seemed angered by Bosh’s remarks and he screamed back, “Social comment piece my arse! It was pure theatre of the absurd. Didn’t you get the Sam Beckett reference when the demon king character (Boris Johnson) tells her, “You can’t go on!” and Theresa slaps her leather trousers and replies, “I must go on! I’ll go on!”

The editor of The Tablet said, “What really did it for me was at the end of her moving song about all her magnificent achievements, the Theresa May-like-character vowed to make us all love one another and to abolish Original Sin.”

I ventured to ask, Where is the great lady, by the way?”

And the whole chorus erupted, “She’s behind you!”

01 Jan

May, or May not?

Theresa May has delivered us a New Year message in which she begins 2017 in the same style as she ended 2016: in a paroxysm of indecision and malintent. She says she is to develop policies which will appeal to Leavers and Remainers alike. And after she has accomplished this, she will make supporters of Rangers and Celtic vow a vow of perpetual amity, Benjamin Netanyahu lie down with Hamas and Sunni and Shia kiss each other.

Why should anyone ever believe anything said by this woman?

When she was the longest-serving home secretary since 1945, she did nothing to prevent the infiltration of Birmingham schools by Muslim advocates of jihad and nothing to stop the rape and sexual abuse of underage girls by Muslims in a score of British towns over decades. Charged with reducing immigration to “the tens of thousands,” she stood back and supervised its doubling. When challenged about this, she said she was “powerless” because of EU rules on free movement of populations. Then, with characteristic perversity and double-mindedness, she voted Remain.

When it comes to duplicity , she makes Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson look like amateurs.

She described the near year long, catastrophic disruption to Southern Trains as “unacceptable” – and then accepted it. This trades union action is an openly declared outbreak of class war. It is costing the economy £11million each day. For hundreds of thousands of commuters, this is more than an inconvenience. Many have lost their jobs because they cannot get to work on time. Many more will do so in the next few months. Others have been obliged to move house.

Corbyn and the unions, defeated at the ballot box, have turned to anarchy. This is not in dispute: they have clearly stated time and time again that their aim is to bring down the Tory government. What Tory government? Under Cameron, but increasingly under May, their policies are indistinguishable from socialism. Business taxes have increased and the burden of regulations has got heavier. While business rates are set to rise once again.

Theresa May’s response to the chaos which surrounds us and the dangers with which the economic life and the social stability of the country are are threatened is to make another speech and avoid her responsibilities.

The only matter on which she has shown decisiveness is in her choice of a pair of fancy trousers to enhance her ability to compete in the mutton-got-up-as-lamb stakes.

While May the inept, May the Remainer, is in charge, things will only get worse.

Theresa May has always had only one interest in life: and that interest is Theresa May.

28 Dec

Arrest the Prime Minister of Japan

Speaking at Pearl Harbour, Japan’s prime minister has offered Americans his “eternal condolences” for the deaths inflicted by his country on US soldiers in the 1941 attack. I believe the emperor of Japan is regarded as a god by his people, but it’s a bit presumptuous for a mere prime minister to express “eternal” condolences: he should leave such promises to the one true God who alone can deal in the business of eternity. Condolences – eternal or not – are one thing while apologies are another. The PM stopped short of making an apology. But he did make an astonishing promise: he said his country would “never wage war again.”

The man should be arrested, charged with treasonous intent and locked up.

“Never” means “never.” I think, in this case, the Japanese for “never” is “zettai ni.” And it means “In no circumstances.”

So the PM has pledged that Japan will not go war even if his country and people are attacked. That is a contemptible promise for a statesman to make.

Of course, there are those – so called “pacifists” – who would never make war. And pacifists tend to get a very good press. The fact remains that pacifism is fundamentally immoral. I may on my own behalf refuse to fight, but to refuse to fight to protect those for whom I have responsibility is both cowardly and wicked. To refuse to defend my country when it is under attack is a betrayal of all upon which I rely for my safety and well-being.

War is a very bad thing, but there are things worse than war: for instance, surrendering to tyrannous aggression. Redemption can indeed come through war – when men are prepared to shed their blood to redeem us from the enemy. I would go further and say that when our soldiers give their lives in battle, their sacrifice is joined to the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.

It is a bit much when so called “peace activists” presume to lecture soldiers about the nature of war. Soldiers do not like war – because it is they – and not the peace activists – who are called to fight. But soldiers know that there is a worse thing than war, and that is the triumph of evil. Sometimes war is the moral, the righteous, thing to do. The soldiers are the true peace activists, because peace is what they are fighting for. This is the lasting peace which only comes after victory. And the Bible itself warns us against those who “…cry peace where there is no peace.”

I wonder where soldiers get their courage from? Surely their love of our country and their fierce attachment to their Regiment. Through the knowledge that they are fighting a good fight. Through their loyalty to their comrades-in-arms.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

15 Dec

A degree in social engineering?

The BBC newsroom today describes Bristol as a “leading” university. I should like to know within what field is Bristol a leader or, to put it another way, where is it leading us?

Bristol is to increase its intake of disadvantaged students by offering places with reduced grades. These pupils are also described as being “from schools with poor A-level results.”

Vice-chancellor Hugh Brady said this would be a “step change” in admissions. I don’t know what the vice-chancellor’s phrase “step change” indicates – except that he is rather adept in the use of jargon.

The Bristol project, to be launched by Education Secretary Justine Greening, is described as “an attempt by the university to drive social mobility and attract a wider range of students.”

More jargon. Being translated, it means that Bristol’s wheeze has nothing to do with education but is rather a political project in the dubious area of social engineering. Again I must ask for some clarity: just what is meant by “a wider range” of students? Lower exam grades show that some students are not as academically competent as those scoring more highly. If they don’t show that, then we might as well abolish all exams for then the whole business of grading would be meaningless.

Let me use a dirty word: exam results provide the authorities with criteria which allow them to discriminate between those for whom a university education would be suitable and those for whom it would not.

In fact this “leading” vice-chancellor’s levelling down project is a betrayal of the character and purpose of the university itself which is meant to provide intellectual excellence for an elite. If universities no longer exist for that purpose, then they, along with the exams, should be abolished.

Fastidious social engineers scream when you say these things, though I can’t see that they have any cause to scream. Those who oppose the policy of dumbing down and levelling are not claiming that intellectual excellence is the only sort of excellence: merely that it is the sort of excellence for which the idea of a university was formed in the first place.

Many who take readily to reading literature, history, philosophy or physics admit to being utterly useless when it comes to the exercise of practical and mechanical operations. To learn to become master of a trade is also something worthwhile – that’s why we used to provide five years’ apprentices so that, when they arrive at maturity, young people might be equipped with high skills as plumbers, electricians, carpenters or dressmakers.

We should ditch these social engineering projects and embrace the existence of different aptitudes. University standards will be damaged and ultimately destroyed by such politicking. And students who acquire their university places by this means will not be happy there.

And now for something similar… The BBC also reports that from 2017 all recruits into the police force will be required to hold a university degree. Why?

All Things Considered

Rev Dr Peter Mullen

Category Archives: politics