What a load of Balls?

Of all the Labour MPs that should be sent to the scaffold, ‘Herr E. Balls’ should be at the front of the queue. His new Children, Schools and Family Bill, which he is hoping to pass both Houses before he’s ‘hopefully’ dumped in the unemployment line, is disastrous for children from working class backgrounds. Balls’s boldest statement of intent is to abolish traditionally taught subjects such as Maths, English, History and Geography and roll them into 6 ‘themed lessons’ based around issue based topics, as opposed to the tried and tested methods of teaching rigorous fact and figures.

They will fall under these new ambiguous areas:

Understanding English, Communication and Languages; mathematically understanding, understanding the arts; Historical, geographical and social understanding; physical development, health and well-being; scientific and technological understanding.

Mr Balls is noted for saying he is not “abolishing traditional subjects but reforming the curriculum so teachers have more freedom.” I’m sorry, but this is absurd. ‘More freedom’, coming from his Government, which takes great joy and pleasure from infantile-ling the whole of society, I don’t think so. With youth unemployment at almost half that of the full dole figures; the mythical idea that all can/should go to university and the State will pick up the tab; to dumbed down multiple choice science GCSE’s - this Government needs to be brought to its knees over its abject failure of young Britons.

How on earth can any of these whimsical and wooly-headed thematic lessons allow for freedom, if you ask a teacher to teach History or Maths, they will know where they stand and have no problem understanding what's asked of them. The same goes for the pupils who when asked upon what they learned that day can easily quantify and qualify English from Geography. Riddle me this: What on earth is ‘social understanding’?

They do not need lesson on how to use Google Earth, Twitter or learn how to blog - this they learn for themselves (I learnt it well enough) As kids often are, they appear well ahead of the curve on all things technological and do not need time taken out of official school time to try and condense the meaning of Shakespeare or the reasons for the outbreak of World War II to 140 characters in a tweet.

One prime example of these well-being lessons already happening is one go my friend’s primary school aged children who has to keep a record throughout the weekend on how they were feeling from happy, sad, angry and laughter etc. What happened to real teaching not empathy lessons. Another similar story is that pupils now take ‘big writing’ as opposed to a straight English subject.

What is also strange is how a public educated school boy like Ed Balls knows about struggling comprehensives and how to turn them around? Well, the commonsensical answer would be that he feels they should mirror private primary schools, however these schools stick rigidly to traditional teaching methods and focus not one jot on emotion, just a neat balance between competition and camaraderie. I would know I personally went to one. Although, Mr. Balls thinks it relies in constant tinkering with the system.

It is therefore right that Prince Charles and his chief educational aide, Bernice McCabe, has got involved in denouncing Balls’s latest educational malaise. If the King Elect feels ‘his majesty’s Government is failing children he has a right to voice concerns despite the assertion that the monarch is above politics. This is negated as this isn’t politics, it is a generation of children’s education that Labour’s socialists policies are wrecking.

Mrs. McCabe has said: 'Sometimes there are too many shortcuts into theme-based teaching. That's not what gets children learning.” She is completely correct as are the Prince’s opinion on a ‘cultural disinheritance’ that is occurring under New Labour. It is well known that Labour spends most of it’s nefarious time dreaming up ways to undermine a sense of British History, as it is embarrassed at Britain’s former greatness. But denying a child a right to know the truth about their background is a savage act of mal-governance.

I urge Michael Gove to repeal and outrightly scrap this bill is it ever makes it into law. We need a Conservative administration to public come out against Labour’s latest educational bankruptcy. This should big a flagship element of Tory policy to reclaim the moral authority from Labour to show that it is able to look after the nation’s most vulnerable, be they young, old or in social difficulty - we owe it to great Britons that came before us.

A polemic against the Socialist’s guide to Camping

I have been meaning to write on this New Statesman article about Socialism for sometime, but the sheer extent of explaining how wrong the late G A Cohen is - has proved a tiresome task. His article was written in the NS and it invokes the warm and cosy idea of a camping trip where we are all happy campers, working for the greater good - sharing numerous things from tools and knowledge to food and individual property.

The fundamental problem with Socialism, as I have repeated on numerous occasions, is that it completely misreads human nature, so from the outset it jettisons any sense of sensibility.

Firstly, no matter how neat the analogy, Life is not comparable to a campsite and never will be. To say people came to this campsite without prejudices, desires, skills and property is utter folly.

Let’s widen this out and replace ‘people’ with ‘nations’, they each have a differing way of conducting themselves, different religions, social customs, views on the family, the list goes on. These are in fact social prejudices.

Taken a stage further with the Socialist’s drive for revolution, it has no regards for generational alteration. The grandfather’s view of the world will slightly differ from the father’s as will the son’s; however we must not forget that each socialises the latter so they will imprint on them a sense of their inherited culture - there is no escape from this, nor should their be, as Burke noted that “no generation has the right to change everything because one generation merely inherited from its ancestors, in trusteeship, ideas and institutions which it handed on to their heirs.”

It is the audacity with which Cohen applies a one-dimensional social harmony that baffles me. To say that people will regulate themselves into societal roles is misguided as he begins with the premise that there is “no hierarchy between us”.

For a start, who governs this belief system?

Surely to join this campsite you have to agree to the principles laid out, but who has made them - your forefathers, social architects, revolutionaries? If there is no hierarchy, somebody must be above to police these values, in case of discontent. Perhaps, a much stronger words should be used - who enforces these societal rules?

What happens if you begin to disagree or wish to alter the rules of this 'social harmony'? Can it be questioned or challenged, if so where can somebody go to ask these questions. All these important queries, require such things as a police force, the media, the family, the legal system and so on.

Another stumbling block is the idea of keeping the notion of social harmony intact. Surely a breed of thought-police would need to be deployed as to maintain the same ‘unifying spirit’? If people didn’t think the same, or rejected the notions of shared property what will happen?

Would they be reprimanded?

This misrepresentation of human nature is seen in Socialism’s myopic drive for equality. For example, when we branch out the simple ownership of the fish or apple tree, to say a favourite toy that may have personal value, or the love between one man and his wife, should the toy be handed out or the wife be shared because that child/man has something that other people do not?

His example: “People who hate cooking, but enjoy the washing up may do all the washing up, and so on? Who legislates for this, or rather who says this is so? This begs the question of value, something the Socialist hates.

Simply asked, is washing up equal in value to cooking? Or put another way, is someone who has a specific skill set above or below another person. Or what about the people who do not work, will they receive benefit from the campsite, even of they do not contribute to the everyday running.

He gives the game away by uttering two exclamations, the first: “I’d rather have my socialism in the warmth of the All Souls College, Oxford”. This shows the armchair philosophical naivety of Socialism that has no regards for the real world. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that All Soul’s College is an idealised space for which the academic is at home, but what about other people - what if they do not like his campsite?

The second is: “Isn’t this socialist way, with collective property and planned mutual giving, rather obviously the best way to run a camping trip, whether or not you like camping?” Yes, in a bloody campsite! But ask yourself this question, how long does the normal family go camping? 3 days, a week maximum? Doesn’t each family, their own flesh and blood, get unbelievably fed up by the end of it!

To see the world as an entity that could cope in this whimsical and idealised way, in the way we view going camping each year, is the crux of this misdiagnosed understanding of the human condition. We can survive a few days, without my favourite pillow, or the misplaced fluffy toy, but very soon, tempers starts to flare, people desire the comfort of their own space, their own time and importantly their own property.

The solution? If people were born into the camp without pre-existing ideas of ownership would it therefore mean these people wouldn’t grow up with any inclinations of personal ownership or desire to be alone and not always in the company or the community or volk?

The more I re-read the article the more it reminds me of Winston in 1984 who begins to value is own time and space. He hates joining in with the chanting and singing and wants nothing more than an individual identity. The society he lives in denies him any such luxuries of freedom of though or expression.

Again, he was brought up with no pre-conceived ideas of personal thought or space, but he still has this burning desire consuming him - human nature. The answer is that you can not keep Man’s expressive or artistic side oppressed and locked away. So for Cohen to agree with Einstein that “Socialism is humanity’s attempt to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development”, highlights his ‘faith position’ that humanity can be perfected in a scientific way, showing how far Socialism goes against the grain of Mankind rather than with slow and steady Arc of History.

I could go on and on, but what saddens me the most is that an obviously very intelligent man, in Cohen, spent his whole life shackled to an idea that made no real world sense and the only way to explain it in his dying days was in the form of a camping site. Surely he would have worked out that by then, that Socialism is merely a dystopian musing on the part of Man which has no regard for freedom or human questioning.

This is what a Feminist looks like?!

Ah Ms Harperson - what will we do with you? Her latest rants on a woman’s place in the world has caused a stir in the papers and the most notable is the work of Janice Turner in the Times supplement.




My take on Harperson’s feminism is that it is retrograde, out-dated marxism. Her drive for egalitarianism, note not actual equality, is based on the foundation that gender parity will be reached through an economic and numeric putsch. A redistribution of wealth or control of the mode and forces of production to fall inline with this worn out socialist narrative. That is why she is wrong.

True equality is something more akin to respect, not figures on a spreadsheet. A man should be able to look at a woman and think of her as an equal, not as something to be used or to be thought less of. It is thus about morality and justice.

Most of my female friends (20 somethings) are no doubt cleverer, more outgoing, more confident and have a greater drive than my male peer group, myself included. So speaking for my generation - Generation Y - girls far outperform boys.

Is there a reason why? Well, the sad thing is the push to equality has led to a severe lack of male role models for boys at school as well as at home. Most recently, the numbers of male primary schools teachers is 1 in 10 and 4 in 10 in secondary schools. Not to mention the surge in absentee fathers. In addition, coursework is favoured over exams , which is shown to suit more girls than it is boys. I do not wish these to sound like excuses, merely that they reflect a skewed gender balance more in line with female strengths.

Turner’s article notes at length the pornification of our culture, which she claims subjugates women further. She is correct.

The cause of such plight is again my bete noir - Liberalism. First allow me to say the idea of female equality is noble and just; however the pursuit of this through Liberal means has proved a disaster, it’s conclusion is the ‘24/7 pleasure-dome of modern youth culture’, as Turner puts it. Women, by seeking to be like men is not equality. The pursuit of drinking way in excess and the poisoned chalice of sexual conquest through one night promiscuity isn’t the glass ceiling women should be looking to break and enter.

Equality should be women having an equal voice to stand up and argue the virtues social decorum, civility, sobriety and fidelity. These traits should be used to make men more equal to women rather than women striving out of a contorted sense of marxist-feminist equality to be more like the stereotyped oppressive all conquering Man.

Turner is right in saying that women of the 00’s have replaced the goal of feminism with narcissism. Debates over enfranchisement have been stifled over talk of shoes, accessories, sex in the city and the latest fake tan. As a man committed to female justice, I love it when I’m on the tube and a woman is reading the Economist or a broadsheet. It makes me want to talk to them about politics, economics, science and social policy as equals.

The problem lies in Liberalism allowing women to think equality means they can do whatever the hell they want, supposedly just like men can. Take the curse of the Nuts and Zoo magazines, they are nothing compared to Hello, OK and Heat - the female counterparts.

The content in them is drivel and doesn’t enhance female freedoms, it compounds them. How is a women meant to find self-worth when she is constantly being told by another woman with an exceedingly low IQ that being skinny is the must have look, or the right fake tan will increase your self confidence. The men in the magazine are barely clothed and offer nothing more than titillation to rival the objectification from the male gaze that women have come to so deplore on Page 3.

Here, so called freedom is just a veil of subjugation - it is a masquerade, nothing more. It is not a woman’s right to act like men, when more often than not male actions are the objectionable acts that true feminism wanted to do away with in the first place. This couldn’t be better conveyed by Turner’s phrase: “Sex used to be something men did to women, today it is perceived as something women perform for men.” Is that the reversal of gender roles that feminists desired?!

Again, the philosophical view of women has clearly not changed, in essence that men use their brains and women use their bodies - logos versus eros. The example used is that lap-dancing clubs are perceived by many young women as being a legitimate source of income and no moral judgement enters the equation. Women as objects is hit home by the borderline unbelievable statistic that more than 25,000 users of Bebo use slut in their users names, or crudely spell out what sort of instantaneous sexual gratification they crave.

Furthermore, Harperson is wrongheaded by using our soundbite-saturated society, by claiming to want a Gender 20 summit to run along aside the ‘male dominated G20’. One, this is completely sexist and divisive. Two, it is the old us and them argument, it causes more struggles than it solves. Three, her utterance that men can’t be left on their own is just plain sexist; if a man said those things about a women he would be socially hung, drawn and quartered. Thus, if women want to be taken seriously then don’t listen to her, she is a relic of marxist thinking, she has nothing new to bring to the table, just like the New Labour facade.

Couple with this, centralised frogmarching of girls into traditional male jobs, isn’t going to breed equality, as it removes freedom of choice. If she doesn’t want to be a builder, don’t force her. So is the EU plan to remove all gendered language from european languages as it is perceived as sexism. This is a waste of our taxes!

As the Conservative knows too well society moves organically and shouldn’t be tampered with by either those who tinker at the centre, or who shout the loudest - as these people are not the defenders of liberty.

Therefore, I propose another word other than equality and that word is balance. Crude equality isn’t some quantitative quest for the same pay or the same hours a man must spend with his child. Realistically, if a woman decided to have children, over time she will earn less than a man, that is not oppression that is just a simple fact. But this does not stop men campaigning for greater paternal leave or fatherhood rights - something I champion to the hilt.

For example, the family chores shouldn’t be divvied up to strict codes, such as equal time changing the nappies or running a bath, but a balance of roles taking on more or less as and when required. If the man is better at disciplining his children then let him get on with the job, if the woman is better at comforting her children, let her - don’t force them to be people they are not.

Traditional values are something not to be sneered at - the nanny shouldn’t be brought in to deal with the trials and tribulations of family life, note nanny refers as much to the State as it does to the child-minder.

Finally, Turner refrains from calling this era retro-sexism, well I challenge her to call it retro-feminism as the ways and means of Ms Harriet Harperson are not the tools to be fighting a woman’s corner in the 21st Century.

Classic anti-Obama propaganda!

Lazy Royal Mail 'workers' can't even keep a strike going through lunchtime

As I stepped out from work in Storey's Gate to go on my lunch hour I was bombarded by Socialist Worker newspapers sellers pushing their dead ideology in my face and lay-about postal workers on stike - banners in toe. It was like being in the 80's!

I've just come back from my lunch an hour later only to find all these 'workers' with a pint in hand and a grin on their faces. What a waste of space...

The End of Trials without Juries

The Great Charter of Freedoms otherwise known as Magna Carter is a parchment that is yet again under attack from Nu Labour’s progressive agenda.

Today marks a break with almost 800 years of a real form of Human Rights, as Labour has managed to do away with the right to a jury in criminal trials.

This is a very dangerous precept and it is on the constitutional back of a push for 42 day detention. A jury is an unashamed tool of democracy and key for it to function - as the common people are given the duty to sit and act as counter balance to the whims of the ever increasing power of judges.

Labour, ideologically claims to be the party of the people, however it has ceded all power to the Liberal intelligentsia, who believes it has a right to trump our basic inalienable Rights and preside over all decision making. This goes far beyond a soft paternalism, but acts as an overarching State intent on quenching its thirst for power by seizing and centralising public authority.

Most commentary is on how corrupt and morally bankrupt our MPs are and how awful Gordon Brown is as a Prime Minster, however the most menacing threat to our security is Jack Straw. His philosophical tract is one deep rooted in Socialism, which will cease at nothing until all our traditional pillars of society are, firstly undermined, then shattered into oblivion like that of an ancient tribe millennia ago.

He is blind to the dangers of dismantling society out some misplaced quest to see Britain ushered into a Socialist utopia. I have always stated that the Left’s foundational principles have completely misread the Human Condition and that their contorted view of Man has and will continue to have damaging consequences, until the true forces of Conservatism rise again.

Although, what amazes me is this move to hide the criminal process from the public and place sole power to our extremely liberal judiciary. What type of criminal will receive a harsh punishment: a pedophile; a rapist; a drug dealer; or a murderer - I’m assuming not, just a slap on the wrist and more money ploughed into ‘reforming’ them.

It is more likely that Thought Crimes, which do not agree with the Liberal consensus are those that will be handed the most severe punishments. How about Christians who are having their rights taken away through ‘equality laws’; or parents who wish to smack their children; or perhaps global warming deniers (akin to holocaust deniers these day.)

Fundamentally, Labour is causing society to break down because they are not letting us, the People, the chance to participate in it. From not allowing us a vote over the EU treaty; having a general election; the right to religious freedoms; and the right to have a family free from State scrutiny. The list could go on and on.

When Maggie said there is no such thing as society, Labour secretly echoed these distorted sentiments. If placing the individual at the heart of a neo-liberal agenda had caused an atomised society in the 80’s and 90’s then Nu Labour by using the State as a political weapon in the 00’s has dismantled what was left of Society.

Let’s rise up and call for a general election so we can be judge, jury and executioner on Nu Labour and their failed socially engineered project.

Brown topples Masters of the Universe and tries to create the 5th International

The world is dubbing Gordon Brown the 'Economic Saviour', as his strategy for bail-out turned to buy-out has been copied by almost every Western power. The mass media knee-jerk reaction to this was to send out plaudits and acclaim to dour old Gord, but I couldn't help think wider problems are afoot.

I couldn't help be reminded of a specific part of Marx's assertion of historical teleos, whereby Marx sees Capitalism as a necessary evil on the road to the end of History i.e. Total communism. As the story goes, Capitalism is needed as a necessary marker, or turning point in History, just like Feudalism shifted to Capitalism, so too will Capitalism morph into Communism.

Marx believed Capitalism would destroy itself from within, which with the current Credit-Crisis fiasco burned in the minds of most, the Left have been ideologically resuscitated, after years of paralysis courtesy of Maggie's iron handbag dealing a supposed knock-out blow for Socialism.

What Marx wanted to achieve was an International Labour movement to overthrow Capitalism's monopoly on the mode of production, with the composition of the forces and means of production significantly altered. The international movements failed spectacularly on numerous occasions because world Capitalism wasn't truly global, and perhaps still isn't even global yet.

The current elixir archaic Socialists are sipping on is, that with Capitalism's financial reach widening it has entered a form of overstretch; when Capitalism turns to Globalisation the hope is Socialists will have the ripe conditions to form a successful International Labour movement doing away with nation states to forge a new international order.

So it comes as little surprise that the Old Labour Party behmouth has clunked back into action. Gordon has ditched New Labour rhetoric and plunged deep into the BIG Government playbook to scare the public into the arms of the State: a Comforter that gives with one hand and takes away with the other.

The omission that frightens anyone who is on the Right or Libertarian in outlook is this...

“We need globally accepted and supervised standards of regulation applied equally in all countries. We need stronger arrangements for cross-border supervision of global firms…We now have global financial markets, global corporations, global financial flows. But what we do not have is anything other than national and regional regulation and supervision. We need a global way of supervising our financial system.”

Brown's monstrous New World Order of global regulation through his omniscient leadership resembles the all powerful all controlling, Inner Party of Orwell, pulling all the strings while mere mortals stand around and watch the carnage, stupefied by spin and double-speak.

Marx believed it was all about Power and Brown fully agrees. What worries, is that instead of the workers of the world uniting in an international coalition as Marx envisaged, it is rather a minute number of powerful men manipulating world affairs acting as World Controllers, much like the bureaucratic EU as unelected 'super-officials.'

It appears we have Gorden Brown returning to the poisonous Socialist roots of his youth trying to forge a 5th International, while less myopic men remember the horrors of real-life Socialism, which instead of breeding the theoretical belief of egalitarianism, merely hyper-centralises Power into the hands of the few and shackles mankind into the chains of economic and social bondage witnessed in USSR and China.

Matthew Parris's attack on Christian Values

I begin my blogging life against the alarming rhetoric of Times' Matthew Parris with his clamour for Socialism to drop Christianity's help of your fellow man: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article4743772.ece.

Upon reading his harrowing argument I couldn't help feeling he was purporting the dark and dank dystoptic vision of 1984. Parris states “Marx is about Power,” this worryingly echoes Big Brother: “We are interested solely in power, only power, pure power...the power over human beings-p275.”

Furthermore, Parris talks about 'muscular govt.' in a dangerous allusion to a boot stamping on the face of humanity. Twin this with his poisonous ideas like spurning 'nursing the weak' and not 'hearkening to disability' reads like like a pamphlet on eugenics where only the powerful should survive akin to Hitler's or Stalinist rhetoric on the superiority of the Volk or Collective.

A powerful arm of the State will not help people realise their true 'power' or strength, but a vast decentralisation and a shift to the local, where people have the 'power' to make free choices, not the State offering a final solution.

His view that “Socialism should never be divorced from...oiling the cogs and driving the pistons,” clearly shows Socialism is certainly not human – it treats Man like a cog in a machine or an animal to be herded.

“Socialism should see little value in personal freedom” is a frightening statement along with his dogma of the 'Power of the Collective.' For me, this collective doesn't have to just mean the State or anti the individual. The church 'collective' can heal the sick and cure the infirm in a more societal way than Socialism, for example it was Paul who said “If a man does not work he shall not eat.”

If all Marxism cares about is the economic superstructure then Christian values do much more re-educate Marx's beloved 'Proles' by being less work-shy, sober and a non-gambling entity.

What scares me most about Parris is his utterance that the Left must find a 'Class.' But whose class will they find? As always History WILL repeat itself, not in a Marxist teleos way, as it will not be the Proles, but the Inner Party or lib/left intelligentsia that tell people what to think like Stalin, Mao or the Guardian.

Parris's final battle cry for the Left to be “Unashamedly in taking command” reads like a revolutionary jibe that declares war on the fundamentals of democracy, as if Socialism had a 'divine' right to rule.

“What ever disunites Man from God, also disunites Man from Man.” E.B.