In my bitter and twisted way I often resent people being given good jobs when they have no clear talent for these jobs. Before going back to Bolton (I still have not set out) for my pointless course (pointless because I have not been “allocated 120 documented teaching hours” and therefore can not pass) I went over to a local supermarket to get a something to eat.
I started to read the Daily Telegraph, the leading Conservative newspaper in Britain and came upon an article by Mr Boris Johnson (Conservative party MP and journalist). The article was about the recent announcement of the closure of a car factory in Coventry in the English West Midlands. Fear not, argued Mr Johnson, for although this particular factory is closing, industry in general in the United Kingdom is doing well and unemployment is only 4% of the workforce.
The problem is that unemployment was 5% of the workforce in January (and I bet it has gone up since then). and industrial output has been falling for over a year. I actually agree with the thrust of Mr Johnson’s article (that we should not copy French regulations – although quite a lot of regulations have already come in over the years), but the careless attitude to facts irritates me.
Christopher Booker (of the Sunday Telegraph – the sister paper to the Daily Telegraph) regularly attacks journalists (including Mr Johnson) for getting the facts wrong (on the EU and other matters). But these journalists (and people in other walks of life) just carry on writing and speaking as if facts do not matter. How is it that people can get high paying and important jobs and just not bother about what they are doing? For example, Mr Johnson will have at least one paid ‘researcher’ – so it is not as if it would be a great effort for him to get the facts right (he just does not care – just as many other important people just do not care).
I know I have said it before, but it offends me that (for example) David Cameron (who has a degree in Politics Philosophy and Economics from Oxford University) talks as if he did not understand what the words “social justice” meant (i.e. the belief that income and wealth should be “distributed” by government in accordance with a pattern held to be just). Does he really believe in ‘social justice’? In which case he should not be a member of the Conservative party – let alone the leader of it. Does he not know what the words mean? But he is not Ian Duncan Smith (an ex leader of the Conservative party and ex-army man who also uses these words, but can not be blamed for not knowing what they mean) he has (as I said above) a degree in PPE from Oxford – how did he get the degree if he knows nothing about basic political philosophy? Or is he trying to trick people by using words he thinks they will like whilst not caring about the formal meaning of these words? In which case he is dishonest.
“Mr Cameron is not dishonest, he is a nice man and Mr Johnson is a lovely man”.
No Mr Cameron is not a ‘nice man’ – nice people do not call “most” (the exact word was “mostly”) of the members of another party “closet racists” without a very good reason. He was not referring to the genuinely racist neo-fascist British National Party (BNP), who pose no threat at all to the Tories, but rather the anti-European Union United Kingdom Independence Party, who do indeed take votes from the Tories. He also refused to apologize – and then got the party Chairman (arch plotter Francis Maude) to come out with even more smears.
And of course this is the same Mr Cameron of the PR work for Mr Green of Carlton television. When Mr Green was busy using shareholders money to try and prop “On Digital” Mr Cameron not only denied it was happening he said “if you print that I will have you sacked” to several financial journalists.
Mr Johnson is not a “lovely man” either – he cheats on his wife and then makes a little joke of it (in the hopes that he can get out of trouble). He also made great play of how anti-EU he was (when he stood for Parliament) – and then voted for the arch EU fanatic ‘Ken’ Clarke to be leader of the Conservative party (Mr Johnson then, I believe, supported Mr Cameron in the last leadership election).
These men have no honour and no ability, other than the ability to somehow get to the top.
“It is just because you are bitter and twisted Paul” – well that is true, but I still do not see why Britain has to have so many people in high positions who do not care about truth. It is as if the entire ruling elite (almost regardless of party) want to be the “heir to Blair” as Mr Cameron is supposed to have claimed to be.
It is hard not to wonder if the much-vaunted ‘feminisation of politics’ doesn’t play into this, somehow.
Cameron and Johnson are reckoned to have a certain eye-appeal which appears to be of greater value than intellectual rigour or honesty.
And yet, exactly as Paul Marks suggests, neither is the sort of man you would go into the jungle with. Not unless you had an stab-proof vest , that’s for sure.
And perhaps that is the clear talent, the absence of which which Mr Marks laments?
Both are rotters to the core. But they look good to the intellectually deracinated numbskulls who can be prodded into the stalls to vote, come election time.
These are (whatever Johnathan Pearce would have us believe) possibly not the best of times.
Social Justice
Wasn’t the News of the World the leading Conservative rag, or has Tony had another meeting with Murdoch?
Modern politics is ultimately about lying, mob oratory, populism and backstabbing your fellow human beings.
Its hardly surprising the scum rise to the top, is it?
And where do facts come into it? Having seen countless interviews with politicians I can safely say that even when the truth will help their cause, a politician will generally avoid saying anything whatsoever of substance, and rely on pure oratory at all times.
Didn’t Boris Johnson not only betray his wife with Petronella Wyatt, but allow Petronella’s column detailing it all under assumed names to run in the Speccie? As a bit of a larf? For the Westminster Village crowd? How his wife and mother of his children must have had a bit of a giggle at the innuendos all of Notthinghill was doubled over about!
And then didn’t Petronella, who so desperately wants a husband – anyone’s – get preggers and agree to have their baby hosed out because really, this was the last thing that Boris needed in his political career?
This isn’t a man you wouldn’t go into the jungle with, G Cooper? This is a man I wouldn’t walk ahead of through the doors of a brightly lit 24-hour convenience store with armed security guards in place.
I couldn’t bring myself to read the full article. Boris is an interesting, amusing individual that I thought may develop into a significant Tory politician.
His editorship of the Spectator was generally positive but he appears to have some fundamental flaws.
Damn shame.
Completely off-topic, but out of sheer curiousity, which course are you doing at Bolton? I assume you’re at the ‘University of’?
I’ve been there for several months now and have found it to be quite… ‘unassuming’. I mean, not the sort of place you’d find a Samizdat hiding!
Well let’s address the Degree .
If you are doing three subjects at degree level, even at Oxbridge, then your couse is watered down.
This basically means that Dave knows a little of everything but a lot of nothing.
Boris is Boris. I used to think it was a Woodhouseian act with him. Then I saw his father on tv. Same tics and mannerisms. Same flicks of the hair and loll of the tongue. Same canny vagueness that the upper classes affect so well in our humble peasant presence.
But hey! sloppy is sloppy. Facts should be checked and perspective used.
It’s late, but this all could turn out well.
The boys like Boris and Dave are still on the shandies of opposition.
Let’s raise a glass to the Hague (or even of). He led the delegation to Washington a while back and was well recieved.
They dont know Dave from a suet pudding.
Watching the current Concervative direction is like watching a piranna turning vegetarian.
No I dont believe a word of it.
But the frightening thought is- does he?
James – “off topic” isn’t allowed on Samizdata.
People who want to flee hither and thither sending personal vibes around the blososphere are advised to organise their own blogs – as I understand it.
Plus, little people who flag up “Off Topic” always have such drab contributions.
It is my view that most people rise in this world either through sheer class or pure arse. Those of us who lack these talents, (and I cheerfully admit to having no worth whatsover) would do better to cultivate them, or move along, rather then allow envy to corrode us.
And I, for one, welcome polite diversions off the beaten track in comments threads.
Come on! In the context of Boris’ article the difference between 4 percent and 5 percent is trivial. The point is only that the system in Uk produces a better employment results by far compared to that of France.
Failure to quote to the last decimal place is no excuse whatsoever for Verity and others to work themselves up into their usual vituperative frenzies.
RAB,
Well let’s address the Degree .
If you are doing three subjects at degree level, even at Oxbridge, then your couse is watered down.
That’s not how PPE works, any more than the Cambridge degree in Natural Sciences (also a BA) implies shallow knowledge of everything from cosmology to fungus. Cambridge ‘Natural Scientists’ when last I looked had more Nobel Prizes than France and Germany combined, so taking a vague-sounding
degree is not necessarily harmful.
Under the rubric ‘PPE’ people do specialise – though they have considerable flexibility in how that works – and Oxford produces both econometricians and theologians with notionally the same degree, but an entirely different course of study behind them.
I have met Boris many times, and he has never struck me as a particularly formidable operator, more of a sort of pantomime act and I don’t take him seriously. He was useless as editor of the Spectator, hiring BBC castoffs like Andrew Gilligan and the dreadful Rod Liddle, both of whom are careless of detail. As for Cameron, Paul’s points about him are spot on.
It is hard not to wonder if the much-vaunted ‘feminisation of politics’ doesn’t play into this, somehow.
I am not so sure about that, GCooper. I personally would reckon that many women regard Boris’ antics with scorn. My other half cannot stand Cameron either.
Oh and GCooper, I do not believe these are the “best of times”, as you should know from reading this blog for several years, so I am not sure what you are on about.
I’m always curious when politicos enthuse about our employment record. True, the international measure of unemployment is relatively good but this excludes 2.7m on incapacity benefit, as well as others on income support. Economic inactivity in the UK is really rather high and there is little easily comparable data from other countries. The office of national statistics has a very good website which often, in my opinion, undermines government propaganda. I’m surprised more journos don’t appear to use it.
The difference between 4% and 5% is an awful lot of unemployed people. It’s out by one fifth. If you employed someone to build an extension on your house would you be happy with measurements with a 20% tolerance? Similarly getting things like unemployment figures right is a politician or journalists job. Or should be.
There are a few things I know a fair bit about. One is military aviation. Newspapers more often than not are incredibly sloppy when producing their big graphics to illustrate a military op, or even when captioning photographs. I’ve even seen a photo in the Sun captioned “three C-17 transports” which clearly wasn’t three of any aircraft in particular – the three planes on the tarmac were all very different types!
What worries me is that their are lots of things I don’t know too much about and I wonder what sloppy nonsense the press slip under my radar. In a very real sense I’m more comfortable with the demented ravings of Monbiot (& his superfriends) than flung together and often wildly inaccurate “facts”. I call them Gilligans.
Wrong “their” there, sorry.
I ought to be flayed with a bull’s pizzle for that one.
Johnathan Pearce writes:
“Oh and GCooper, I do not believe these are the “best of times”, as you should know from reading this blog for several years, so I am not sure what you are on about.”
It was a reference to your very recent post headlined: ‘A brilliant outburst of optimism’ in the first line of which appeared the following: “…. lays into what he sees as the misanthropy of so many of today’s glum authors.”
Not too obscure, surely?
How on earth did Boris Johnson manage to get into a position such as editor of The Spectator? Anyone know?
You can only get away with putting on an air of incompetence if you have already proved yourself and everyone knows you are only putting on airs.
Otherwise you are just an oaf all round.
John Rippengal
Good point, but in the UK our political masters have learned to massage the unemployment figures so badly that I’m surprised we even have any, as compared to the rest of Europe which does occasionally display some honesty regarding such statistics.
From re-labelling short-term unemployed as ‘active job-seekers’ (i.e. not actually unemployed but, in civilservantese, ‘in between jobs’) they cut some million or so people off the list. They then took people who have been claiming for 12 months or more and reclassed them as invalids, thus being able to move them onto disability benefit. This just leaves the people in between to be qualified as actually unemployed – possibly some 1 million or so claimants. Additionally one might add those who do not claim any direct benefit but live on an income tax rebate for the previous 12 months of work – potentially another 300,000 or so individuals. A feature on Newsnight recently suggested that our real unemployment figure is closer to 4 million – higher than it has been for a very long time – but since it is impossible to separate the genuinely disabled claimants from the ’employmentally challenged’ I fail to see how they can have arrived at that figure.
My brother works in an inner-city FE college. From what he says, it is clear that most of these places are a “cheap” alternative to the dole. This goes for the students and staff. So you can add a couple of million more to the number.
My brother works in an inner-city FE college. From what he says, it is clear that most of these places are a “cheap” alternative to the dole. This goes for the students and staff. So you can add a couple of million more to the number.
Let’s not forget over one million on the government (local and national) payroll since ’97 – few if any of these are actually providing services the public wants. They are there for two reasons only; to disguise the true level of unemployment created by government incompetance; and to increase the payroll vote, who may be expected to vote Labour on the principal that turkeys tend not to vote for Christmas.
Well James I am near the end of a “Post Compulsory P.G.C.E. course” at the University of Bolton.
If any free market type in the North West wants to meet up before I return to Kettering let me know – paulvmarks@hotmail.com
I fully understand that being a pro freedom in “Greater Manchester” is to be in a lonely position. Although I seem to remember that Dr Stephen Davis was in Manchester somewhere, but I have not tracked him down – brain, why does not my brain work anymore?
The gentleman who pointed out that 5% of the workforce is 20% (a fifth) higher than 4% is correct. Also unemployment is going up not down – it was 5.1% in Febuary.
T.V.R. (the sports car company) has just announced that it is getting rid of half of its staff. The decline of industry continues. According to the back pages of the Economist only two advanced nations have declining industrial output – France (by a bit), and Britain (by rather more).
Of course a government minister did say (about the Rover workers last year) that they should get jobs stacking shelves in supermarkets (although I notice that the lady did not apply for one of these jobs herself) – but it is odd to find a Conservative party politician pretending that British industry in doing well.
Is not the opposition supposed to point out problems, rather than try and help cover them up?
Mr Johnson was on the front page of the Spectator today – supposedly he is now an expert on China. I did not read the article.
In today’s Daily Telegraph there was interesting attack on the modern conception of “individual rights” (i.e. “rights” as welfare state entitlements), but it was not written by a Conservative M.P. – it was written by Frank Field (a Labour party M.P.).
I have a different view of politics than Mr Field – but it stuck me that he had written a far more interesting article than Mr Johnson or Mr Cameron were capable of doing.
Lastly I do not know whether the U.K.I.P. are a threat to the Conservative party or not. I do not even remember writing that they were a threat.
However, given my troubled state of mind I may well have written that and then forgotten.
I seem to have reached a worse state than my father was in just before he died – and he was more than twice my age.
MarkE,
But surely without all those outreachers, diversity convenors, inclusion co-ordinators, street wardens, classroom assistants and anti-social behaviour practioners Western Civilisation as we know it would cease to operate. You must see that. These are jobs which are vital in the way that nurses, doctors, teachers, soldiers and the police simply aren’t…
Charles Pooter,
Well, obviously. I looked into an IT course at a FE college a few years back. It turned out that, due to the low grade of the qualification at the end not having a very high status in the industry a rather large number of the “graduates” ended up finding jobs teaching the same course! Unemployment looks bad, training looks good. The details of what people are being trained to do is irrelevant. And don’t even get me started on what has happened to UK universities…
PaulMarks writes:
“Lastly I do not know whether the U.K.I.P. are a threat to the Conservative party or not. I do not even remember writing that they were a threat.”
There was some comment from someone here some months ago (I hope you’ll forgive my pintpoint precision) to the effect that UKIP votes had gone a long way to harming the Conservative Party’s chances at the last election. Apparently, this became clear if you analysed votes in marginal seats.
To which, all I can say is, good!
As for manufacturing industry, I have relatives in what little remains of it and, to a person, they are despairing. so on that, too, you are quite correct.
As for Cameron and Johnson, they are a pair of fools (though I’d be hard pressed to suggest which is the greater).
As far as ‘opposition’ goes, it would appear that the Conservatives have no idea what the word means. The spectacle of the cash for honours scandal, the collapse of the NHS, terminal decline in educational standards, Chirac’s recent trouncing of Bliar in EU bargaining and the total mismanagement of the economy, all going virtually without comment from the opposition front benches, while “Dave” drifts around Norway looking at glacial shifts quite beyond his understanding, would be heart-rending, were it not so funny.
Paul,
The Boy-King (Cameron) is all over the BNP…..
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/PA_NEWA9245311145302343A00?source=PA%20Feed
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conservatives/story/0,,1756109,00.html
This indicates that internal polling by Tory HQ is awful… to say the least.
The sad irony is that the Torys are completely unable to offer an alternative to the other parties and hence no longterm vision for its supporters.
The BNP has picked up on this too….
http://www.bnp.org.uk/news_detail.php?newsId=870
And how popular is the BNP’s site on the web ?…..
http://www.bnp.org.uk/news_detail.php?newsId=873
….OUCH !!
A couple of years back I commented at this site to the effect that ‘in years to come most here will vote BNP’.
Seems that time is getting much closer.
Oh dear I despair of any logical argument here.
Of course 5 percent represents a lot of unemployed compared to 4 percent. (not 20 percent more it’s 25 percent.) But for Chrissake that still has absolutely no bearing on Boris Johnson’s statement – in effect – that UK unemployment was about half that of France.
To accuse him of inaccurate reporting in this context is total bollocks.
As to the point that UK statistics are highly suspect,
excluding as they do the so called incapacitated, I am well aware of this and have no doubt the French stats are similarly doctored in one way or another. In any case who is arguing here that the French ultra regulated system is better than the admittedly deeply flawed system in Britain.
I hold no special brief for Boris but if anyone wants to shoot him down he had better do a lot better than this.
Did you have a lost weeend Paul??
No I did not have a lost weekend. One of the odd things about me is that I did not have such things even when I was young.
I may well be in a bad state, but neither drink or drugs have anything to do with it.
As for Mr Johnson’s article – unemployment is much higher than he said it was and it is going up.
Also industry is not doing well in Britian – it is in decline (more so than in France).
Why is a Opposition M.P. trying to cover up the decline of this country?
Is it the solidarity of the political elite (regardless of party)?
As for the polls – quite so.
Francis Maude (and the rest) have been making great play of the “Cameron effect”, whereas today’s “YouGov” poll in the Daily Telegraph has the Conservative party no higher than it was than at the last general election.
And Mr Cameron’s personal standing (i.e. the people who want him as Prime Minister) is lower than Mr Howard’s was – the leader of the Conservative party at the last general election.
With a very unpopular government and a very unpopular Prime Minister the Conservative party should be at least 10 points ahead in the polls.
It is clear that the Cameron tactic (i.e. ditch all principles and say anything that might be popular) has failed.
Nick M – You forgot NHS dignity enforcers.
Tim Sturm raises an interesting question: How did Boris Johnson get the job as editor of the Spectator (and columnist on The Telegraph, come to that), given that his only previous qualification seems to have been going on Have I Got News for You and acting posh and silly? The Spectator is now such a mess I don’t even bother to visit it any more – and I used to love it.
I wonder why the English (not the Scots; don’t know enough about the Welsh) like posh so much. David Cameron is such a walking disaster, such a shallow, self-satisfied moron, but they seem to have elected him for his accent – certainly not for any of his deeply vapid utterings.
Britain is being intentionally picked apart with a view to annihilating it completely, in front of our eyes and David Cameron is busy installing a wind turbine on his roof in London and is then off with the fairies on a Norwegian glacier. Davis would have made some real inroads in getting the Tories back on track by now. I don’t get it. Why did they think someone from an ancient and well-placed family who had gone to Eton and worked in the media would be better placed to turn the Tory party round than a fellow who has actually lived among the rest of us, was raised (and raised very well indeed) by a single mother and has come up by learning how to fight his corner? What a tragedy.
Paul Marks, I wish you werent so unhappy. What can we do?
Clive Davis, over at his blog, makes the point that the Tories might have less to fear from the BNP had it chosen a more down-to-earth character like David Davis instead of a smoothie old Etonian establishment boy like Cameron. He has a point, even if one finds some of the social chippiness of Cameron haters a bit annoying.
GCooper, you are still making no sense to me (unless you are being deliberately snide). Why should my support for an eloquent attack on doomongering be assumed to think that we live in the “best of times”? I happen to think that we are living in a time of great worry, but also of great progress elsewhere.
Johnathan – I think it is incorrect to pin the epithet “social chippiness” on the widespread dislike of Cameron. Cameron is disliked in his own right, not because he’s an OE. OEs in general are absolutely charming, but I have a feeling I would not be charmed by Dave because he is vapid, self-regarding and just too, too nakedly ambitious. In other words, apart from the accent, I think he is a lowlife – but one who would not be able to operate among real low-lifes without the help of his accent, because he’s not clever.
I mean, does the British electorate, in poll after poll, cite the environment and “global warming” as their major worry, or do they cite the diminution of democracy, the economy, high crime and toy sentences, the creeping power of the state/the EU over people’s lives, mass immigration, schools ‘n’ ospitalz as things that are directly impacting on their lives negatively. And Dave chooses to grandstand over the great fake issue of the day “global warming”.
I don’t think the widespread dislike of Dave has anything to do with social chippiness. If he were black and acted in an identical manner, I would not put voter dissatisfaction with him down to him being black. But to mind-boggling arrogance and stupidity. My intense dislike of Dave is personal and nothing to do with his station.
Oh sure, people who hate regulatory statists like Labour who push identity politics at the expense of individual rights are going to vote for the BNP, who are racist regulatory statists who push identity politics at the expense of individual rights.
Left-wing BNP
Sir – It is of some comfort that the Labour Party at least, even if not yet the Tories, has woken up to the threat posed by the BNP, because it has ceased to understand or listen to its own supporters when they express their concerns about multiculturalism, the levels of immigration and lack of integration that are affecting our great cities.
However, it remains of concern that even The Daily Telegraph (Comment, April 18) persists in so misunderstanding the BNP as to describe it as “an extreme Right-wing party”. I have carefully re-read the BNP manifesto of 2005 and am unable to find evidence of Right-wing tendencies.
On the other hand, there is plenty of anti-capitalism, opposition to free trade, commitments to “use all non-destructive means to reduce income inequality”, to institute worker ownership, to favour workers’ co-operatives, to return parts of the railways to state ownership, to nationalise the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and to withdraw from Nato. That sounds pretty Left-wing to me.
Certainly the BNP poses as a patriotic party opposed to multiculturalism, and it has racist overtones, but there is no lack of patriotic Left-wing regimes; opposition to multiculturalism is now mainstream and racialism was not unknown even in the Soviet Union.
So what is “extreme Right-wing” about the BNP?
Lord Tebbit, London SW1
Andrew Ian Dodge,
Thanks for that posting. I checked out the BNP website a few months back. Leaving aside their racism for the moment, I was suprised at quite how raving most of their policies were – I’d hitherto always thought of them as being essentially a single issue party. Oh no, they’ve got a whole portfolio of nutty schemes. They are at least as left-wing as Respect. I think NT nailed it.
Verity,
Spot on about “lovely Dave”. He reminds me of the Harry Enfield character “Tim-nice-but-dim” except with less charm and more cunning. David Davies would have been so much better a choice. Dave’s environmental posturing certainly is odd. Are they desperate to win Lib-Dem votes? If so, is that a tacit acknowledgement that the biggest Tory issue isn’t beating Labour, but finishing third behind Ming’s band of idiots?
Paul,
You seem very down. If you are currently suffering misfortune, I hope things improve soon.
As a New World outsider it seems to me that until people in the UK get over their forelock tugging when faced with registered toffs like the useless twits Boris and David whose greatest accomplishment was to get into the right house at Eton political life in the country will continue to disintegrate. It used to be quipped here about Rhodes scholars that they had their future behind them. The same could be said about old Etonians. The UK needs a heavy dose of meritocracy and a last post for the godawful class system.
Millie Woods – Although a lot of what you say is outdated, and although Boris Johnson does have a certain Bertie Woosteresque twitty charm until it begins to curl one’s toes, on reflection, some of what you say is correct. The English go a lot on accents. I really don’t know why.
But it’s ridiculous that the socialists are led by a public schoolboy with a posh accent and now so are the Tories. (If “lead” and “David Cameron” can be spoken in the same sentence without invoking a snigger.)
They don’t tug forelocks any more, but they do seem to like posh leaders – possibly because they know these people have been educated privately and therefore have minds that are better trained than their own, and know more about more things than they do. It may be that it comes down to a poignant respect for education.
Just saw C4 News. Has Wavey Davey moved to an igloo or something? It would appear he went to watch ice melt. I suppose that’s what is does in Norway in the spring. I’m gonna have to start spoiling ballots again…
Verity, sorry to disillusion you but I was in the Uk in early autumn staying in the area of Highgrove where the prince of twits hangs out part time. Before the Sunday church service at a miniscule parish church a royal underling came in and dusted off the pew where the royal bum was to be ensconced.
Now I ask you how demeaning can it be for a man to do such a thing for so worthless a person as Charles. I was the only one in the house party who seemed appalled at such a demonstration of forelocki clutching. And don’t bring up the security question. Any jihadi in the area would have stood out like a fistful of sore thumbs.
Millie Woods – No. That wasn’t forelock tugging. I think perhaps you don’t understand the term. It’s difficult to define, but that wasn’t it.
Verity is correct. That wasn’t so much forelock-tugging as arse-licking. A subtle distinction in our incredibly complicated caste-system.
I wonder if that guy has a title in the royal household? “The Sweeper of the Royal Pew in Ordinary” might suffice.
That is egalitarian codswallop. I’m sure someone flicks a seat clean at a public event before George and Laura Bush sit down as well. You wouldn’t want a VIP standing up and walking about with a ball of cat hair stuck on their bottom. I’m sure servants of very rich people flick dining room chairs over before their employer enters the dining room all over the world. Very wealthy and important people all over the world get that treatment. It’s nothing to do with being royal or British. It’s not forelock tugging. It’s not different from taking the company director a cup of coffee and taking a minute to wipe the saucer free of any drips before walking into the office with it.
And Nick M, how can it be arse-licking if the person never knows you have flicked their chair clean? That is just ridiculous.
Forelock tugging is actual forelock tugging or semi-saluting and saying “Gawd bless you, gov!”
But fanks for your comments, Nick M, sir! Yo’r a gentleman and a scholar and no mistake.
For want of a nail…..
Supposing under Cameron the British people refused to take the Conservative party, with many Johnson type “characters”, seriously, so that it was unable to gain any meaningful voting percentage, shrank further, became permanently the same size as the Liberal Democrats? Suppose for the foreseeable future there was no viable alternative to Labour as Government, which as a consequence, won several more elections? What would Britain be like in, say, 2019? Brown would have had his day, and be long gone. It is impossible to imagine Brown’s legacy, although some trends seem to be visible.
Brown is known to be a believer in a strong central state, with a huge state payroll. He is ambivalent on the US-UK relationship, preferring a Democratic US, rather than a Republican one, although the American people might prefer otherwise. There would be a weakening or severing of the transatlantic ties. The UK would be forced into Europe, accepting the Euro, the Constitution (introduced by back-door means, as seems to be an objective now), and, inevitably, the ending of the Monarchy, which would become an obstacle to UK-European integration. The European military force would be vastly enlarged. European internet and satellite positioning would be further developed. Ties with China and Arab nations would become closer. The US would feel isolated and threatened. The world would become a very dangerous place for our grandchildren.
In all of this Britain with its small percentage of the European population would play a proportionately small part, although all the time being claimed by Labour as being a major player. Britain’s having only a small part in Europe, and having no part as an independent entity in the world at large, would result in the growth of the English language being proportionally slowed, halted, perhaps reversed.
Would the British Parliament even be allowed to exist by the European Superstate?
After all of those centuries of slow, painful, struggle upwards towards democracy, Britain, as a province of Superstate Europe, would be given over to an unelected non-democratic government, a huge reversal of the political clock. Could all of that history end, in such a short time??
….a civilisation was lost
And all of this because of the shambles which now calls itself the Conservative party.
I am replete – you are a brilliant writer and thinker.
And the only place your clever and articulate voice will be heard is on blogs, because the MSM is complicit. There’s an extraordinary, submissive death wish – dhimmitude – in Britain and Europe. Dhimmitude is like Dracula and seems to be a compulsion of the West – or at least Mittel Europe. The kiss of Dracula, while wearing your best nightie, your best civilisation … and you willingly submit to the fanged kiss of death.
Fangs but no fangs. Not me, babes.
You mean the meritocracy that allows people like Tony Blair to rise up to the top? I don’t really recall any OE who had the apparent desire to destroy the United Kingdom (closest I can get to is maybe Oswald Moseley, but he attended Winchester), so please do excuse me if I stand in favour of the class system of this country. While I might not especially hold much love for poor old Boris Johnson (at least, not as much as Petronella Wyatt apparently does), I’d back him and David Cameron – however shallow and inconsequential he might be – over Blair’s monstrous regiment any day.
Inadvertently I’ve set the cat among the pigeons. Mea culpa Verity and Nick M. if my use of forelock tugging/clutching does not square with yours. For me it is synonymous with obsequiousness. Furthermore I am not anti-royalist or anti ceremonial routines. Goodness knows I’ve walked in enough academic processions with things draped on my bod and head which would never pass muster at Ascot.
However, I do have a big problem with an individual who’s pushing sixty and has never done anything substantive in his whole life being treated with such deference.
As for the British class system my anecdotal experience tells me that it excludes a lot of very worthy individuals to the detriment of the whole country. Case in point – when I worked for a big London brokerage in the analysis department writing up glowing reports of this and that stock the boss, a Winchester old boy, nephew of a former high ranking cabinet minister, lost his assistant. He duly advertised for a replacement and a host of very well qualified young men came trooping through the office for interviews. None of them were satisfactory for him and he finally settled on a chinless wonder he dredged up from the public school appointments bureau.
When I asked him why he had rejected all the others, he assumed his best Nigel Hawthornesque posture and told me that if we, I, the new worlder was included, had to spend our days working with someone it had to be a person of “our class”. I pointed out to him that he knew nothing about my class and he had accepted me without question to which he protested that because I was a graduate of a prestigious North American university and presumably had knuckles at the right distance from the floor he knew I was an OK person. In other words he gave me the benefit of the doubt which he would not give to his own countrymen. That’s my point.
Incidentally, I used to get the pigeon-holing treatment in France when because of my accent the natives knew I was not one of them and constantly subjected me to the de quelle origine etes-vous m’selle question. In other words, a natural response was just not on. They had to know my provenance before adjusting their level of contempt.
That so much time and energy is wasted on
the social placement game in Europe is very amusing but also very counterproductive.
Incidentally, a visiting in-law from the UK was astonished to see the Bush seaside cottage at Kennebunk, Maine. It’s just smack on the coast road, not in the least large or palatial and not at all pretentious and I doubt that it is staffed with chair dusting flunkies for the simple reason that there wouldn’t be room for them to kip except for a rocking chair on the verandah.
Inadvertently I’ve set the cat among the pigeons. Mea culpa Verity and Nick M. if my use of forelock tugging/clutching does not square with yours. For me it is synonymous with obsequiousness. Furthermore I am not anti-royalist or anti ceremonial routines. Goodness knows I’ve walked in enough academic processions with things draped on my bod and head which would never pass muster at Ascot.
However, I do have a big problem with an individual who’s pushing sixty and has never done anything substantive in his whole life being treated with such deference.
As for the British class system my anecdotal experience tells me that it excludes a lot of very worthy individuals to the detriment of the whole country. Case in point – when I worked for a big London brokerage in the analysis department writing up glowing reports of this and that stock the boss, a Winchester old boy, nephew of a former high ranking cabinet minister, lost his assistant. He duly advertised for a replacement and a host of very well qualified young men came trooping through the office for interviews. None of them were satisfactory for him and he finally settled on a chinless wonder he dredged up from the public school appointments bureau.
When I asked him why he had rejected all the others, he assumed his best Nigel Hawthornesque posture and told me that if we, I, the new worlder was included, had to spend our days working with someone it had to be a person of “our class”. I pointed out to him that he knew nothing about my class and he had accepted me without question to which he protested that because I was a graduate of a prestigious North American university and presumably had knuckles at the right distance from the floor he knew I was an OK person. In other words he gave me the benefit of the doubt which he would not give to his own countrymen. That’s my point.
Incidentally, I used to get the pigeon-holing treatment in France when because of my accent the natives knew I was not one of them and constantly subjected me to the de quelle origine etes-vous m’selle question. In other words, a natural response was just not on. They had to know my provenance before adjusting their level of contempt.
That so much time and energy is wasted on
the social placement game in Europe is very amusing but also very counterproductive.
Incidentally, a visiting in-law from the UK was astonished to see the Bush seaside cottage at Kennebunk, Maine. It’s just smack on the coast road, not in the least large or palatial and not at all pretentious and I doubt that it is staffed with chair dusting flunkies for the simple reason that there wouldn’t be room for them to kip except for a rocking chair on the verandah.
Millie Woods – I hate to defend the Defender of The Faith as I know that if I met him, I would just loathe him, but you write, “However, I do have a big problem with an individual who’s pushing sixty and has never done anything substantive in his whole life being treated with such deference.”
Well, he has put his life to good use, actually. Apart from all his official duties, he founded The Prince’s Trust around 25 years ago to fund young people with good business ideas, but who didn’t have formal qualifications and had been turned down by the banks. There are something like 70,000 businesses up and running, headed by people who had an idea but no access to help or capital, both of which The Prince’s Trust provides.
On the website it notes that around 57% of the new businesses financed by the Trust are still trading at the end of the third year, always a benchmark. The top 50 of the small businesses they’ve financed have a combined turnover of £148m a year. Many of them are owned by ethnic minorities.
It was Charles’s idea and his determination that drove it through. He attends meetings with aspirants, he studies the figures provided by the accountants, he is actively involved in fundraising from business and all the other dreary background scut work that goes with something like this.
There are people running successful Indian takeaways, beauty salons, funeral services and just about everything else that is the backbone of a country, thanks to his industry and interest.
I don’t like Charles’s personality, but he has given himself an important task and he has stuck with it and he has made life better for thousands of young people who didn’t have a chance.
He gets deference because one day he will be our head of state and this is the way we want it.
It doesn’t surprise me that the Bush family would have a salt box in Kennenbunkport. George Bush and his manager build the fences at Mr Bush’s ranch. Ronald Reagan used to chop his own wood. Much to be admired.
Verity,
Good point about The Prince’s Trust. I keep nagging my girlfriend to apply… They were very useful to my brother.
But… One good dead does not a monarch make. The Prince of Wails has blotted his copy-book with far too many ill-informed rants on agriculture, architecture, the environment and even nano-tech…
Bush and Reagan are not unique. Churchill used to enjoy brick-laying. I don’t just think these things are to be admired. I think it absolutely vital that occasionally these Masters of the Universe should do down to earth things. Blair looks like he’d turn a funny colour and scream if he was ever more than 1km from a skinny latte.
While hacking into the wood, who d’ya think Ronnie was thinking of? Not Walter Mondale I’ll bet. I don’t think the leader of the free world would have wood that splintered easily and was rotten on the inside.
Nick M – I hate being put in the position of being an apologist for the PoW, but he envisaged this project himself and he has stuck with it for around 25 years. That’s probably thousands of hours of grinding meetings and discussions and persuading rich and successful business people to help out one way or another and attending fund-raisings because his presence ups the ante. I think he also sits on the committee to interview some of the candidates, and studies their proposals. As he is deeply involved with young people who can’t get their hands on £5,000 to start a little business, no one can say he is disconnected from real life. And his desire to help people elevate themselves is real otherwise he couldn’t never have stuck it out for 25 years, week in, week out.
So I think we have to hand him clarity of purpose and a certain steadfastness.
As to his outspokenness – well, until recently, we had freedom of speech in Britain, and that freedom was for all. When he is head of state, he will have to keep his personal opinions to himself, so what the hell. His opinions on nano-tech may be ill-informed, but on agriculture, he runs a very successful agricultural business in the Duchy of Cornwall, you know. And a lot of his fellow citizens share his views on architecture.
I think he’s a rather irritating person and I’ve read that he has a hair-trigger temper and I’ve never read anything that would persuade me to think I might like him, but it seems to me there is a lot of ill-founded spite directed at him, especially by the lefty media and the communist/ZanuLab party.
BTW, Nick M, tell us about your brother and the Prince’s Trust.
Verity,
Obviously, HRH can say what he wants. I also have the right to beleive that a lot of what he says is nonsense, if not positively dangerous. More than that, if I’m honest, he just annoys me.
My brother set up a little business importing Japanese contemporary art. He thought he’d be OK. He had a lot of contacts in the Japanese art scene (having lived there for a number of years) and it would be all fairly straightforward. He applied for Prince’s Trust essentially because he could. They sent him on a couple of courses at Durham University. They were very good. They certainly contrasted spectacularly with the crap I’ve heard of at assorted FE colleges just aimed at getting folk off the official dole figures. Anyway, he also got legal and accountancy advice which reduced his tax payments dramatically. He also made a load of friends all of whom are in similar boats and was pointed in the direction of a number of grants both municipal and charitable. Probably the great “hidden” benefit, especially for someone setting up a rather esoteric sounding business like his, was that because he was on Prince’s Trust lots of people took him much more seriously.
Am I alone, or is Samizdata taking posts very slowly at the moment?
Nick M – I agree that the PoW is annoying but it sounds as though the help your brother got was very worthy and useful, and this whole structure only came about because the PoW was worried that young people weren’t getting a chance to be entrepreneurs for lack of a tiny amount of money. It sounds as though the entire infrastructure that was in place to help people like your brother was very effective.
I would not mind Boris Johnson and David Cameron being given good jobs on the grounds of their family and connections – as long as they did not pretend it was on merit (which they do).
However, leadership of the Conservative party is not a suitable job for Mr Cameron. I do not know whether Mr Davis would have won the next election or not – but at least the Conservative party would have (to a small extent anyway) actually stood for something. Mr Cameron makes a virute of being a zero point.
As for Mr Blair: Harldy an example of “meritocracy” – Fetters, Oxford, and then a place found in a profitable Chambers (headed by his later Lord Chancellor Lord Irvine and including his wife the “human rights” lawyer). Of course Mr Blair’s flatmate was the present Lord Chancellor.
Mr Blair’s knowledge of the law can be measured by his surprise at the existance of the 1925 corrupt sale of honours Act. And his devotion to the principles of law can be measured by his latest scheme that people who are SUSPECTED of certain things should be punished in various ways.
Both Verity and Charles Pooter have asked what is the matter with me.
Well partly middle age (I am 40), but mostly not having anything useful to do (productive employment).
I hope I am not yet senile. But there is no place for me.
It is irritating.
For many years I messed about as a Security Guard (it is messing about, not real work – the tiedness comes from the hours, not from constructive work), but I have no interest in going back to that (even if I could get one of the new licences).
I started as a guard to work my way through University (several universities), but since my D.Phil was not accepted (for some reason I am not allowed to say “failed”) back in 1996, what had been useless activity for a purpose (to pay the bills whilst I was doing something constructive) became uselss activity without a purpose.
There were the years of legal dispute (eventually judged against me by Lord Irvine) so I could kid myself I was working with a purpose.
Of course I have had other jobs (such as a couple of years as a part time tacher at St Peter’s in Northampton), but guarding used to pay the bills (the point is – why pay the bills, if there is no other purpose?).
This “teacher training” course was never going to fly (I should have known that when Bolton accepted me – why, after years of trying, did a teacher training establishment accept me with my terrible reference from the University of York? – answer, because the U. of B. is no good), but I pretended to myself that I might get something out of it.
Then I came to Bolton – I will not take up more Samizdata space with University of Bolton stuff.
Those interested may consult my “livejournal” (a place designed for people like myself to whine) – I go under my own name.
paul_marks is the way it is written.
Still there are still some interesting things to see (I have been told that I am not required at Turton school today, mock examinations are being held, so I intend to walk to Turton tower when I finish this comment). And I still have savings.
Many people (the vast majority of the human population, I am told) are worse off than me.
At least, with the Capita designed application forms, going back into the Civil Service (I was once a Home Office man – and, I confess, that if I had known what would happen to me I would never have left) is not an option – so I am protected from that temptation.
I think (to use the old line), “if I had my life over again”, I would have studied to be a University librarian (town libraries are being destroyed, but University ones still exist). No one cares about the political opinions of a librarian.
So there we have it, it is not a complex story. I am just a man without a family or productive employment.
I wish you good luck Paul.
As regards much of the above debate, it is a truism to say that there are two sides to evertything.
Re Prince Charles, I support the monarchy so must tolerate him despite his annoying habits.
I find Boris quite amusing but that is about it. I did not like his editorship of the Speccie which like others here I have stopped buying. As a natural conservative with a small “c” Cameron is not to my taste and I uncontroversially beieve the Tory Party will regret electing him leader.
As for Etonians, I have found them a mixed bunch both at Oxford and in the City. Some were great others not so.
I feel some resonance with the comments about snobbery in Britain. I have to admit the worst snobbery I have come across in my life was at Oxford. That was some time ago and it may have changed.
Gosh, Paul, I’m worried about you! I think we should have a brainstorming session. Does anyone have any ideas for Paul? I will try to think of some to put forward.
Verity,
You are no longer allowed to call it “brainstorming”. It is a called a “thought shower” in true NuLab style.
I think Paul’s last two pieces have been very thoughtful and right on the ball. Blair is not a free marketer and Johnson is very wrong about the car factory closure. Manufacturing employment (stable in most G7 countries) is falling fast in the UK- the workers at Ryton have less chance of re-employment than would workers in a similar situation in France. I know many highly-qualified people thrown out of work in industry in the last four years – and they’re not managing to get jobs in the services sector instead – nobody wants them. The apparently better unemployment situation in the UK is only so because of rises in public sector employent, retail (now going into reverse) and in businesses supplying the public sector.
I wish Paul well in his search for work, but he is 40 and I have to say that it will be very difficult. This is why so many people are trying self employment, even if they don’t make much from it. A large part of the rise in self-employment in recent years has come from the unemployed trying it for want of anything else, especially as they often don’t get any state benefits (even after years of paying taxes), so they’re not losing anything. The government, of course, cites this as an example of how dynamic the economy is.
HJHJ – That is utterly chilling. I was going to suggest for Paul, who is obviously articulate and intelligent, how about taking a course to teach English as a second language? Once you get a TOEFL qualification, you could go and live in another European country and give private English lessons. Then you wouldn’t have to be confronted with Tony Blair’s venal face and dead eyes on TV every night.
You’ve been an activist in the Conservative Party. You’ve done volunteer work. You must have made a lot of contacts. I know this is all very obvious and you’ve already thought of it. Tony Bliar’s in his fities and so is his fat, terrifying wife, yet they’re rolling in gravy. They can’t lap it up fast enough.
I once thought that I had made a lot of contracts in my life (I did not quite think in those words – but close to it), but then came the D.Phil conflict and I found that I had made no contacts at all.
As for Prince Charles – even when I do not agree with him, I still like to hear what he has to say.
I once thought that I had made a lot of contracts in my life (I did not quite think in those words – but close to it), but then came the D.Phil conflict and I found that I had made no contacts at all.
As for Prince Charles – even when I do not agree with him, I still like to hear what he has to say.
Contacts not contracts of course.
Just as it once present Lord Chancellor, not then Lord Chancellor.
Paul Marks,
I reckon we’re not in such totally different situations. I didn’t quite “fail” my PhD either… I live in Manchester. Get in touch, if you want, when you’re next up in Bolton.
Seeing as the Samizdata server is playing silly buggers (Perry, save us!), here’s my email:
nick@xmuse.co.uk
Nick McHugh
Nick M – That was very kind of you.
I hope something works out.
Nick M – That was very kind of you.
I hope something works out.