John Brignell, a professor of engineering, has entertained and informed us for some time with his cogent and extremely grumpy website NumberWatch. Here he is on the subject of Neue Arbeit's shameful performance in the local elections …
The UK Labour Party is reeling under the four hundred blows inflicted by the local elections. They cannot understand why they are so unpopular.
The Englishman has saved us the trouble of finding the links to stories in just one edition of the Telegraph. In each case petty officials, members of Gordon's army of wage parasites who are dragging down the economy, have burdened ordinary citizens guilty of no more than inadvertence, with a criminal record. As we remarked about a similar bunch of cases last month, all this has to be taken in the context of an increasingly violent and out-of-control society. Like the smoking ban it is the irrelevance that is so striking.
A number of regular correspondents have taken note of the appointment of "Our Boris" as Mayor of London. While it is no doubt a relief to be rid of Red Ken, it seems a waste of talent to put such a man in such a job. Nevertheless, since he has made his priority the elimination of the casual acceptance of the petty crime that fosters the more serious manifestations, the overall outcome might be beneficial.
In our village there is now a section of yellow line on the main road. It seems to have no purpose other than to provide a form of taxation income for the district council thirty miles away, but it has other effects. Against their will, locals are forced to go to out of town supermarkets that have free parking. The shops are gradually disappearing (the hardware shop went last month) and the bank has just gone part time. Businesses that were sources of employment are also vanishing, yet there is a stealth development plan to double the amount of housing, but not of facilities. Almost anyone you speak to has experienced some form of extortion or coercion by officialdom, but try to get a policeman in the event of a genuine crime.
We find ourselves obliged to live under a system of surveillance more rigorous than at any time or place since the fall of the Stasi, with more CCTV cameras per head of the population than anywhere else in the world. The local elections are largely an irrelevance, as elected representatives have little say (or even knowledge) of what is going on. EU officials talk to Whitehall officials who talk to local officials.
Meanwhile, more and more inoffensive citizens find themselves listed as registered criminals, while the real criminals go about their nefarious business with comparative impunity. It is no joke finding yourself with a criminal record, as the headmaster who forgot to renew his fishing licence discovered. A feature of recent ubiquitous advertising has been the "we know where you live" threats about the BBC tax. The authorities boast of a database with 28 million addresses. Your bending author was once wont resolutely to defend the licence fee, but no more. In the old days it gave relatively cheap access to eminently trustworthy news, quality drama uninterrupted by advertisements, first class comedy and much edifying content. Now it is a continuum of banal prole circuses (unrelieved even by the occasional football match) punctuated by bouts of lefty-greeny propaganda posing as news, i.e. it is the central pillar of the new establishment. It is naked extortion, like Mafia insurance, pay up or you're on the list - we know where you live. They cannot even bully with subtlety, but in an authoritarian society why bother? Three billion pounds of income per annum, greater than the GDP of, say, Nicaragua, yet they claim they cannot manage. Why? Officials! Like its host country, of which it is a microcosm, the BBC is sinking under the weight of overweening administration.
If the wealth creating part of any enterprise shrinks continuously, while the wealth dissipating part grows relentlessly, there can be only one eventual outcome. It is not, as the ghastly cliché says, rocket science. Meanwhile, the powers that be withdraw into a fantasy world of imagined crimes attracting draconian fines to fund their excesses, while the rank undergrowth of society flourishes. The habitually law abiding portion of the population finds itself increasingly criminalised, while the habitual criminals go about their business untrammelled.
It's a mad world, my masters.
Very well said, that man. When (well, if) Boris cocks it up, we'll start the BGP (British Grumpy Party) and sweep Professor Brignell into the Mayor's office at City Hall.
This is the sort of thing he's talking about …
Father of four gets criminal record for overfilling his wheeliebin
Elderly disabled woman fined for having her blue parking badge the wrong way up
Headmaster could lose his job because his fishing licence was out of date
5ft 81-year-old pensioner is branded "dangerous"
Archbishop's aide faces £1,000 fine because her Oyster card was 20p short of credit
Massive database will track every phone call you make and every email you send
Also you might find it interesting to read Professor Brignell on the link between Global Warming and religion.
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
Copyright © 2008 The GOS
This site created and maintained by PlainSite