the brilliantly leaping gazelle

Good news! In the less than three months after taking power, Plonker is really making headway in delivering on his election pledge to change Britain. And whilst he may lack many qualities, ambition certainly isn’t one of them.

He wants to ban death.

Specifically, the ones caused by smoking. Commenting on reports that the government is seriously considering a ban on smoking in some outside spaces, he said “My starting point on this is to remind everybody that over 80,000 people lose their lives every year because of smoking. That is a preventable death, it’s a huge burden on the NHS and, of course, it is a burden on the taxpayer.’

Mmm. 80,000? Thats a wonderfully round number isn’t it?  Are all those deaths caused directly by smoking – cancer, lung disease or spontaneous human combustion – or were there other, more primary causative factors? Are we to believe that all of those 80,000 led lives comprised solely of healthy diets, plenty of sleep and exercise, had no stress or anxiety issues and basically lived the life of the idle super rich?

 And let’s not forget, we’ve been here before. Remember how in the dark days of Covid, the BBC would publish the daily death tolls from Covid on its website? But in much smaller print it would then confuse matters by adding that they were deaths that had occurred within 28 days of a COVID vaccination, essentially taking two possibly unconnected events – having the jab and then dying within 28 days of that – and using that as somehow evidence of a causative link. So it didn’t matter if you were hit by a bus, some masonry fell on your head or you were gorged by a bull, if it was 28 days after having had a Covid vaccine, it was Covid that did for you.

You may think that I’m making light of this, but perhaps Covid is more involved in smoking deaths than it might appear. ‘Almost 2.5 million Britons have not been screened, tested or treated for cancer because the Covid-19 pandemic has led to “enormous disruption” of NHS care for the disease, experts have warned.’, reported The Guardian citing figures from Cancer Research UK.

The article goes on to quote various studies, reports and estimates which all suggest that the then governments exhortation to the public about protecting the NHS may have had disastrous unintended  consequences. That a delay in getting diagnosed might have had resulted in treatment being started too late to be effective.  

Obviously deaths from cancer can be minimised, but the idea that death is preventable is a dangerous nonsense because, as Jim Morrison said, ‘No-one gets out of here alive.’ We are all going to die. It is the only absolute in life. Knowing this, we have a duty to ourselves to enjoy our brief period of life as much as we can without harming others. And if that involves smoking, great. 

Treat adults like adults. People know the risks from smoking. And if they still decide to do it, fine. Life is risk and it can’t be legislated out of existence. I don’t smoke. But if the government succeed in restricting smoking to an such an extent that it becomes a de- facto ban, then eventually they’ll ban something I do.

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In all the discussion surrounding te the recent rioting, politicians and the media have been quick to blame ‘far right racist thugs’ for the violence. As I made clear in my last post, the the term ‘far right’ is a term that is basically a nonsense, and if you thought that that idea was preposterous, this one proposes that the notion that to label all the rioters racist is in itself racist. 

First thing I need to do is to define what racism is. I’ll let the Oxford English Dictionary do that. ‘Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.’  

I suggest that the white working class are a clear definition of of a minority racial group because they exist so far removed from the white middle and upper classes so as to be a distinct ethnic group in their own right. The speed with which the rioters were tagged as being racist by those in positions to do s not only underlines this, but also acts to distract attention from other, more pertinent factors. 

To label the rioters as ‘racist’ is to believe in the false assumption that all white people are similarly advantaged and share the same imagined ‘white privilege’. In this fantasy world, no social, economic or political differences exist between classes of white people, and that’s its only the colour of ones skin and not the contents of one’s parents bank accounts, the school one attended or one’s parents connections connections that determine life chances. The only white people who bang on about ‘white privilege’ are the ones who’ve done very well out of it.  

The media, always so keen to accuse someone of engaging in ‘dog whistle politics’, fail to realise that by rushing to judge the rioters as ‘racist’ they are themselves engaging in ‘dog whistle politics’. By doing so, they reassure the public that the rioters have no other motivating factor than simple racism and that they certainly don’t have any deep seated grievances that deserve to be discussed. Of course some of the rioters may hold some racist views, but to suggest that racism was the sole motivating factor that governed their actions is crudely simplistic and simplistically crude.

To argue that racism can only be directed by white people towards non-whites is in itself racist, because its a belief predicated upon nothing more than skin colour. This absurdity is only matched by the belief that there exist no religious or cultural tensions between different ethnic groups. The outbreak of violence in Leicester in 2022, between British Muslims and British Hindus bears this out. 

Indeed, I’d go further and suggest that the white working class man provides a necessary function in todays Britain; he can be safely be ignored or vilified as and when politicians and the media find it useful. Hence the incredibly reductive narrative that the rioters were racist and thus any concerns that they might have can dismissed. 

I don’t know if any of their concerns were valid. But in a culture that is worrying obsessed with denouncing ‘white privilege’ will anyone be bothered to find out?

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Plonker is reportedly an Arsenal fan, which means that he can’t like football that much, but in advocating a smoking ban he’s going for the quick win rather than playing the long game.

There exist in in health the same differences that there do in life, depending on how rich or poor you are.

Earlier this year, a study by the Institute of Health Equity at University College London, using Office for National Statistics figures, found that between 2011 and 2019, over one million people died people died earlier than they would have done if they lived in areas where the richest 10% of the population reside.

According to the Health Foundation a woman born in Wokingham can expect to live 15 more years in good health than a woman born in Blackpool. A man born in Richmond upon Thames can expect to live 17 more years in good health than a man born in Belfast.

This shouldn’t come as a shock. Analysis of health funding by the British Medical Association found that more is spent by the NHS per person in London than anywhere in England. (Health being a devolved matter).

There’s loads more depressing information available online about regional health disparity, the links between longevity and poverty, none of which should surprise anyone.

But yeah, ban smoking. That’s easy. But fixing the entrenched social causes of ill health, properly resourcing the NHS and thinking how those two might be linked, that’s hard. That requires the grown-ups to start acting like gown-ups as opposed to just pretending to be.

And if smoking were banned tomorrow, where would the almost £9 billions it generates in tax revenue come from? This government repeatedly tells us that the public finances are in a parlous state, so why do they want to make them even more so?  Less tax revenue because of doing one thing means having to other things to create that lost revenue. 

But don’t think about that and certainly don’t think about Nazi Germany. Not renowned for its public health measures, Nazi Germany led the first anti-smoking campaign in modern history and was the most powerful anti-smoking movement in the world during the 1930s and early 1940s.

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Better minds than mine might provide a much more satisfying explanation as to why there has been this sudden outbreak of rioting in parts of England and Northern Ireland, and to also to explain why it has become so widespread so fast. I don’t have one of those minds, on account of how mine is brain damaged. 

Perhaps thats why I focus not on the violent lawlessness itself, but more on the way that its reported. Perhaps that’s why I keep thinking of Humpty Dumpty whenever I come across the term ‘far right and what he said to Alice,

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

The term ‘far right’ is one of those political epithets that is so ubiquitous that the need for any explanation of what exactly is meant by it is never actually specified. It means different things to different people, but crucially the term ‘far right’ has been specifically manufactured for this very purpose. For people to imagine they are thinking about the same thing, when often they are not.

Because to believe that ‘far right’ actually means anything, one first has to believe in a nonsense and then to believe that that nonsense isn’t a nonsense at all. Very quickly, the nonsense soon piles up.

To begin with, one first has to subscribe to the notion that there exists a perfect set of political opinions and that these opinions reside in the middle of the entire spectrum of political thought. Because for some views to be considered to be ‘far right’ to exist, it necessarily follows that there has to be something for the ‘far right’ to be further from. So already there are two nonsenses, 

These two foundational nonsenses both share the same third nonsense, namely no matter how much societies attitudes to certain issues may change over time – think homosexuality and environmental issues – the spectrum will always be the same spectrum. It is the middle precisely because of its ability to adapt, to absorb and to venerate opinions that were not previously included in it. And as the middle expands, so to does the spectrum, meaning that the ‘far right’ becomes even further from the middle

This presents us with yet another nonsense. Who was it exactly decided that there is a political spectrum in the first place? I don’t believe that there is, I think its a fundamentally flawed concept for the reasons set out above, but because of the reasons set out above, the spectrum has to exist for some people. 

So who are they and who gave them the authority to construct one? This then presents another problem; who gave them them the authority and who was it that gave them the authority to give authority and on the nonsense goes.

Then we need to consider those political opinions that make up the political spectrum. Were all political opinions considered or were some political opinions deemed for whatever reason not worth considering? This brings us back to the people who decided on constructing the spectrum in the first place and calls into question their impartiality. 

I’m only joking, there is no impartiality in politics. We are all as much defined by what we do believe in as by what we don’t, and because of this, the term ‘far right’ is functionally meaningless in defining any political opinion.  Would Stalins notion of ‘far right’ be the same as Hitlers?

But as we’ve seen over recent days, the term ‘far right’ is used as a handy way by politicians and the media to effectively negate whatever grievances – perceived or otherwise – the rioters might have. Clearly some of them are just relishing the chance for violence because some people enjoy violence in and of itself and some others might believe in a wide range of opinions so far removed from any semblance of objective reality that we should condemn those who create those beliefs in the first place.

But the vast majority would, I contend share concerns that not only can they cannot properly articulate – and for which they shouldn’t be blamed, after all, it isn’t their job.  But unforgivably, by the people whose job it is to take their concerns seriously, address them and possibly take remedial action. Doing this only achieves only two things, both of which ultimately creates the violent disorder of recent days. 

Firstly, as I hope I’ve made clear, whilst the term ‘far right’ not only doesn’t exist, it paradoxically also makes it much easier to demonise people holding ‘far right’ views. When some opinions and points of view are considered so beyond the realm of reasonable political discourse, this then creates a space for opportunistic agitators to exploit for not entirely noble aims.

But saying someone or their views are ‘far right’ says more about you than them. It says that you’re Humpty Dumpty.

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And then I also think about George Orwell, who correctly predicted the future years before it happened, especially the way in which language can be malleable. How instead of a word having a fixed and universally understood meaning, once set free from notions of linguistic integrity, can mean anything.

Orwell referenced the cynical nature of this when describing the cyclical nature of linguistic laziness. In his essay ‘Politics and the English Language’, he observed out that language shapes our thought as much as thought shapes our language.

“ (Language ) becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

I know that language needs to evolve and that as new words are created to describe the new, so too words used to describe obsolete things will themselves become obsolete. But when words that used to have fixed meaning are now employed to describe a non-specific and highly subjective corruption of its previously understood meaning, thats when language ceases in its primary function. Words then become functionally meaningless and rather than to aid clear expression of thought, do the very opposite.

And few words have fallen prey to this abuse more than ironically enough, fascist. A fascist, as I’d always understood the word to mean, was someone who believed in fascism. Fascism, according to wikipedia is ‘ an authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.’

But now we live in an age where fascist no longer means  any of that, no longer does it immediately call to mind the worst example of human barbarity ever. Precisely because we don’t live in a fascist state, one in which extreme violence is sanctioned by it, and the threat of it used as a means of social control, precisely because it hasn’t happened here, we can can abuse the word. Now it can mean someone who simply disagrees with someone or is guilty of nothing more than hurting their feelings. It is now a word, which like so many others, are losing their functional meaning and being replaced by an individualistic meaning instead.  

We now live in a world where everything is transactional, so is it that much of a shock when words are? I believe that it is, and because I believe that language is by quite a wide margin the single greatest achievement of humanity, one that we are now constantly undermining if we allow such linguistic folly to become even more prevalent than it already is.

This story, that appeared in ‘The Daily Mail’ earlier this week, typifies both of the phenomena I’ve been describing in todays post.’ Nans against Nazis: Defiant Scouse pensioner, 71, takes to the frontline in Liverpool to protect mosque from ‘far-right protesters’ amid another night of rioting in Britain’

Where to even start with this? ‘Far right’ means only that whoever uses that term as an idiot and ‘Nazi’ is yet another word that has lost all functional meaning – describing something specific – but now can mean anything. If there were Nazis rampaging across England, a pensioner armed only with a cardboard sign wouldn’t  protect anything. 

‘Frontline’ implies there’s a war. There so isn’t. There is as much a war as there is a ‘far right’.

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Hurrah! The real cause of the riots has finally been revealed to us. Ignore the fact that the most of the communities where the riots are happening took place in some of the most deprived in Britain. Forget about the increased burden sudden population growth has on already underfunded and overstretched public services in those communities. Dismiss the idea that some grievances are deemed more worthy than others of being addressed, and that this feeling of being abandoned by the political class and being demonised by the media might exacerbate the tensions further. 

No, the real cause is social media. Plonker said so, so it must be true. “Violent disorder clearly whipped up online: that is also a crime. It’s happening on your premises, and the law must be upheld everywhere.”

Sadiq Khan’t, agrees with him “I think very swiftly the government has realised there needs to be amendments to the Online Safety Act. I think it’s not fit for purpose.” And another chancer, albeit one with no chance getting the thing he wants said that ““Useful idiots” on social media were exploited by Britain’s enemies to stoke rioting around the country.’

Isn’t this all missing the point? And haven’t we been here before? That some people can’t have genuine grievances, grievances that have been borne out by their own experience. Or that for years they’ve been made to feel that their grievances have lesser value than others? 

This is typical of the mindset that negates any proper analysis of what might be motivating the rioters but instead prefer to use a narrative chicanery that worked so well once before. They were lied to. They were duped. Its all the fault of the various kinds of mis-information and fake news one gets on social media. They didn’t realise.  

So we had this on the BBC a few days ago,

‘Ofcom has published an open letter to the (social media) platforms saying they should not wait until it gets enhanced powers under the Online Safety Act before taking action.

Policing minister Dame Diana Johnson agree, saying tech firms “have an obligation now” to “deal with” material that incites violence.

Speaking on Today, on BBC Radio Four, Dame Diana left open the possibility of revisiting the Online Safety Act, which is due to come into force early next year.

“Of course the events of the last few days have meant that we need to look very carefully at what more we can do.”

Its all a bit too Joseph Goebbels and “The Big Lie’ for me, to tell a big enough lie often enough so eventually it becomes the truth. Yes, it’s all social medias fault.

All we need now is a big red bus.

Well I’m glad that one’s been cleared up. I’d always been labouring under the misapprehension that men shouldn’t hit women. But if you do hit a woman, make sure you do it in a boxing ring at the Paris Olympics. Then its OK. You might even get a medal for it.

The specific details surrounding this incident are best discussed elsewhere. But for me, this highlights a growing trend, not just in sport, but in society, specifically societies in parts of the global north. Ones that are so enlightened that the rights of women can so easily be discarded. Ones who are governed by a political elite so in thrall to idea of being seen as progressive that their blind adherence to a bastardised notion of inclusivity results in assault.

When is this madness going to end? When will the rights of women be taken as seriously as the rights of men? How inclusive can any activity be if by doing so it excludes people who place their own safety at a higher premium rather than suborning it to a dangerously nebulous concept?

Despite having been thrown out of the boxing world championships in Delhi last year amid questions over their biological sex, the International Olympic Committee IOC) have given them a free pass to go up against female opponents in the most dangerous sport, and on the grandest stage of all.

Whilst that is bad enough, it is the trickle down effect that this insanity will engender further down the line that really concerns me. Far removed from elite sporting competitions, sporting at a local level will be impacted. Thats where the real harm its; it isn’t to one Italian boxer with a broken nose and shattered dreams. It’s to athletes at the grassroots, at schools and colleges, because various different sporting organisations have different classifications as to who can be classed as a man and who can be classed as woman. Some have even reverted back to their old classification. But sadly some will interpret the IOC’s decision as legitimising the idea that biological sex is a traceable commodity and not an inalienable fact.

The only benefit that one can possibly take from all of this is that it simplifies for many what can be a confusing issue. All of the disputed science and all of the difficult to understand claims and counter-claims that that arise from all of the background noise has hopefully become irrelevant. Most people accept it as a given that a man shouldn’t hit a woman. Most people accept that there do exist differences between men and women.

Most people understand unfairness when they see it.

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But the IOC reminds me of Eddie Izzard when they parrot the the notion that just because someone has a passport that declares them as woman, they are one. Izzard did a routine where he explained that Britain only got an Empire thanks to the cunning use of flags. ‘I claim India on behalf of Queen Victoria.’ ‘ You can’t do that, there are 500 million of us, we live here! ‘But do you have a flag?’

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In a recent post I suggested that an exculpatory narrative has become so embedded in our society that for some it is a default setting with which to interpret the world. The notion that the colour of ones skin is largely, if not exclusively, the determining factor as to whether or not one has an adverse experience in any given situation. 

I’m not denying that racism exists and can be expressed in many ways. I’m not a fool. But that this belief is not ‘just’ confined to some among certain groups that might have direct experience of racism and is arguably much more socially problematic as a result. I refer of course to our public bodies and institutions, media and other dissemblers of information that imagine 21st Century Britain to be a racist hellscape. 

This thinking inexorably creates in those who believe Britain is but a jackboot away from a nightmarish apartheid regime, a suspicion that there is always a hidden explanation behind the ‘official’ version of any event negatively impacting a non-white person, especially if that event involves violence. That the ‘official’ version exists only to deflect blame, to protect the guilty, obfuscate reality and to act, quite literally, as a white-wash. 

That the ‘truth’ is now nothing more than an increasingly contested fabrication to be disputed over by various interest groups. That whoever can shout  the loudest and for longest will have a greater influence in controlling the direction of such a contest.

The last few days have afforded me a particularly blatant example of how all of the previously mentioned factors – how the perpetuated narrative of a Britain being a racist hellscape feeds a distrust of the ‘official’ – can be weaponised by those who are only too keen to see Britain as a racist hellscape. 

I refer of course to the incident at Manchester Airport after video emerged that appeared to show an armed police officer stamping on a suspects head. Despite this video clip being less than thirty seconds long and therefore only showed what we were meant to see, nonetheless the ‘racist hellscape’ industry was soon working overtime.

The less credulous might have remembered the last time another short video clip purported to show another example of heavy handed policing. Remember the ‘openly jewish’ brouhaha of a few months ago? 

According to ‘The Guardian’, ‘Footage released by the Campaign Against Antisemitism last Friday (19th April) showed its chief executive, Gideon Falter, being told by a police officer that his “openly Jewish” appearance risked antagonising pro-Palestinian marchers. This precipitated claims Falter was prevented from going about his business simply because he was a Jewish man in the vicinity of a pro-Palestinian demonstration.’

The reaction was predictably calm and sober. ‘Fury as Met Police officer is filmed accusing Londoner of being ‘openly Jewish, was ‘The Daily Express’s’ take on it. ‘PM refuses to back Met chief over ‘appalling’ treatment of Jewish man’ was what ‘The Daily Telegraph’ added. . To add more confusion to an already confused situation, ‘The Independent’ reported that the’ Met Police apologise for earlier apology about ‘openly Jewish’ comment”

And so it was with tedious inevitability that a video clip which had been drastically shortened so that it to showed just what what it had been intended to show – that the police were anti-semitic – turned out be nothing of the case. A longer 13 minute of the same exchange appeared on ‘Sky News’ showing the officer patiently explaining that his concern was that he had seen Falter acting in a way that led him to believe quite reasonably that he was trying to provoke a confrontation with marchers.

But by then the shorter clip had done its job, had proved once again that the police were just fascists with a warrant card and that they couldn’t be trusted. And the same thing happened again with the Manchester Airport incident. A short video appearing to show one thing was subsequently contradicted by a longer video showing the incident in completely new light. 

The fact that both of the shorter video’s were so quickly seized upon and widely proclaimed to believed to be evidence of a police ‘ist’ by the press and social media is evidence of a society that can all too easily be manipulated. Of a society in which people are increasingly willing to interpret that society through the reductive prisms of identity, difference and otherness. But a society that is seemingly predisposed to disbelieving authority cannot be too surprised to learn that ’Police officers quitting in record numbers’ as ‘The Daily Telegraph’ reported three days ago.  

I’m no fool. Racism exists. Just as do unintended consequences.