the brilliantly leaping gazelle

They were at it again, the other day, the little scamps that sub-edit ‘The Guardian’, when they chose to headline a story on its front page thusly;

“Low birthrate is UK’s top priority, Tory MP tells rightwing conference”

How could I resist, it was almost written with me in mind? So I clicked on it, only to realise it wasn’t, as I’d hoped some senior government MP, calling for the government to do more to stop the birthrate from increasing, but the very opposite. A previously obscure Tory MP, saw an opportunity to make a name for themselves in the right circles, and equally important, cause outrage in right-on circles.

Addressing the National Conservatism shindig, and seeing a career enhancement opportunity for what it was and seizing it with both hands, Miriam Cates MP said western countries faced an existential threat from falling reproduction, arguing that a lack of family-friendly tax policy in the UK played a significant role. Because, as we all know, having a family-friendly tax policy is uppermost in ones mind when one is consumed by lust. Time and time again, the Tory’s bang on about this, hoping that the Goebbels Phenomena will eventually kick in.

Anyway, the story went on “Cates claimed that the UK’s low birthrate is the most pressing policy issue of the generation and is caused in part by “cultural Marxism” stripping young people of any hope, at the start of a populist-tinged conference in London.” Did you see what they did there? By labelling something ‘populist’, The Guardian’ is effectively engaging in dog whistle journalism, letting its readers know that this isn’t something they should agree with.

But not for the reasons ‘Guardian’ readers think, because the entire business model of ‘The Guardian’ is principally to keep on attracting readers and one way to do that is to pander to their seemingly endless capacity for hypocritical self-delusions . Chief amongst these is that they can keep on having more children, keep on consuming more, but only as long as they consume more of the right things. You know, consuming things that don’t consume increasingly scarce raw materials, aren’t manufactured in in a polluting way, by people in sweat-shops or on zero hour contracts. Those one’s, which naturally, ‘The Guardian’ will tell their readers what those things are and handily, where to but them from.

But I digress. Back to Miriam, who is sensing that her move from obscure to a future star is only a few more headlines away, said that the low birthrate was “the one overarching threat to British conservatism, and to the whole of western society”. Hang on, did someone just say that, someone who expects to be taken seriously, not only as a politician but simply as an intelligent human. Is not an increasing birthrate the threat, is not an unchecked global population a threat to all societies, not just western? I know I’m cherry picking from an already highly cherry picked account of her speech, but still.

But hey, what do I know, she’s on the same page as Extinction Rebellion. They don’t believe that an increasing population is a problem either, and besides, her strategy is working. Because in yesterdays “Guardian”, we had profile of her, “Miriam Cates: the new Tory ‘darling’ and rising star of the right”