The free speech thing
I genuinely feel that I have to think carefully now before I speak on a whole range of issues, many of which may well appear in this list. The ability to talk about them, express a view on them or just despair at them by throwing your hands in the air and walking away in what someone would probably describe as a macro micro- aggression, is a keystone of what I’ve always considered a British way of life.What someone may say or write may not be true, accurate or supported by any evidence but that should not prevent them from saying it. Some people believe the world is flat, that there are aliens amongst us or that God made the World in seven days, or maybe six and had a rest on the seventh, I’m never too sure about that. I don’t happen to go along with any of these and suspect that the vast majority of the population would look upon anyone proclaiming at least a couple of these statements as being a little odd if not deluded. But that doesn’t mean the person can’t say those things. Nor for that matter, should there be any restraint upon someone saying the opposite or arguing with them.
Another person may be offended by words but, other than in rare instances of something like prolonged abuse by having someone shouting at you or playing some speech through loudspeakers a few feet from your window. It should not be illegal to offend someone. There are perfectly adequate laws already which cater for the abusive person or noisy neighbour where there is some clear and present danger to the other person’s health or right to some peace.
So many of the best jokes make fun of religion, colour, body shape, sex, native country, lack of intelligence and maybe a hundred other characteristics of being human to the extent that there are precious few that I can think of which have not been the subject of some joke I;’ve heard at some time in my life. None of these have made me conclude that the Irish are all stupid, Scots all mean, Welsh all doing something they shouldn’t with sheep or that all taxi drivers are Pakistani and all amusing waiters Italian. I am pretty sure that not all blondes are dumb nor do all black men have enormous willies. Not all gay men stand with one arm upon their waist and speak like women, nor do all lesbian women have shorn heads and a butch attitude. There may well be Jewish men who haven’t been circumcised and people who think that genital mutilation of girls in places like Zimbabwe is a good thing to do. There are people with big lips and wide nostrils and black curly hair who have no relatives in Africa and people with very white skin with freckles, blue eyes and orange hair who have no connection whatsoever with Scotland. There may even be one or two Australians who don’t have a Barbie and not all Barbies have a Ken.
So if someone tells me a good joke about any of these people or characteristics I will laugh if it’s a good one and think nothing worse of anyone who might comprise any of the elements. If the joke is just crude or almost deliberately racist or designed to put down someone with a disability then I may well respond not with a laugh but make the point that I didn’t think it was funny or suggest the teller is being a bit extreme. I might even thump him if I do take offence or feel he’s poking fun at a friend but I don’t believe he should be banned by the state from saying what he thinks.
Indeed, as things stand, had I taken a swing at the fellow then there’s every chance that I would be the one with a criminal record (for the ancient law about causing actual bodily harm) although he would find himself being recorded for a ‘hate incident’.
Here’s the definition in the UK today:
A hate incident is any incident which the victim, or anyone else, thinks is based on someone's prejudice towards them because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or because they are transgender. Evidence of the hate element is not a requirement.
So you can see that anyone, all of us, can be in trouble. All it takes is some other person to think that we are prejudiced. Note that evidence of the hate element is not required. Just that someone thinks I have a prejudice against a certain characteristic of race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or because they are transgender. Strangely, I don’t see ‘gender’ itself referred to so I may still be OK offending a man or a woman but they could still get me if they thought I was offending them because of their beliefs or disability, for example. And I needn’t know anyway. I’m still in trouble.
I think it is even worse in Scotland now where a hate crime, rather than an incident, can be committed by being ‘abusive’.
While the English hate crime rules specify that conduct must be “threatening and intended to stir up hatred”, Scotland's definition is broader, proscribing conduct that is “threatening or abusive and intended to stir up hatred”
The net result of all this is very depressing and frustrating. I wonder how on Earth it has all happened, and so quickly? Just a few years ago I would not have dreamt that my country would be a place where I would need to be so careful about speaking out on some of these issues or making jokes, of being misinterpreted as someone who wants to cause offence or trouble when all I intend is to amuse a like-minded friend or maybe debate a contentious issue.
I will state for the record this: I have no personal dislike of anyone on the grounds of what they look like, whether they’re straight or gay, both or neither or any other characteristic of their human self. I may have an issue with religion, though. If someone’s religion is such that they believe in a God or gods who affirm that I should not exist because I am a Christian or who would be obliged to end my life on this planet if I were to criticise their leader or supreme being then, yes, I will not be particularly at ease in that person’s company. That would be someone who appears to be protected by new legislation in this land. And yet I feel that I am in no way protected should I ever say something that does incur the wrath of some god or brings some jihad into being against me. From what I have read the whole Christian community would seem to be vulnerable to attack from some people of a particular religious fervour and yet there seems to be little we can do or say about it.
We just have to sit back and stay quiet.
There is no free speech and such speech that there is is policed in a way that is patently obviously biased. Demonstrations against Israel are seemingly permitted and people can fly Palestinian flags from government buildings. The NHS and Police can paint Pride rainbows everywhere and spend huge amounts of our money on events celebrating diversity but as soon as anyone wants to object they’re objects to be shot down in flames but mercifully merely arrested on most occasions.
I would not survive five minutes at most rallies I see reported on News programmes or events happening in towns around to celebrate ‘diversity’ whatever that really means. I’d only have to say that I'm not a great fan of all this transgender stuff, or that I would rather my money were spent by the NHS on people to answer telephones than on new paint jobs on cars and vans and I’d be in trouble as someone could regard me as being prejudiced. (See above).
So I sit back and stay quiet. Then I write this article.
The Pride thing
As I mentioned above I am not bothered about people’s sexual orientation but I don’t think it is something that should be ‘celebrated’ or promoted in events or by government-funded departments and organisations. Can you imagine anyone arranging a Heterosexual Celebration? That would seem most weird. That’s because the vast majority of people in this country are not any of the letters in the latest LBGQ… alphabet. You would think that a ‘normal’ Mr and Mrs were the minority these days. Yet describing them as ‘normal’ infers that any other combination is ‘abnormal’ when the truth is that they’re simply ‘not normal’. There is a difference but it will no doubt get lost in Court. Abnormal implies it is wrong whereas ‘not normal’ simply means it is not usual, not the norm, not the average.I think that Pride events originated from the expression ‘Proud to be gay’ that started to appear in the 60s. That seems quite reasonable and to which I have no objection. What has evolved though is almost some kind of commercialisation of the whole thing and the takeover of that lovely rainbow motif so that now it has less to do with what happens when the sun shines in a shower than what two men do in a shower. And that’s a great pity as the former is delightful in anyone’s book of things to wonder at and offends no-one whilst the latter is of somewhat limited appeal and seems decidedly grubby to many.
By all means let the gay and lesbian people have their events but I don’t think they should be promoted at schools or involve children. Books do not need to be revised to feature Janet and Gillian or John and Jack or every new TV series commissioned have to have some gay or lesbian main characters as if they are underrepresented on our screens when it is clear that they’re massively over-represented in fact.
The Gender thing
Very fortunately, there has been a recent ruling by the English Courts that there are just two genders - male and female. You are either a man or a woman and that is a biological fact. Why on Earth it was necessary to have this decided in a Court of Law is beyond me and just shows how weak the nation’s government has become when middle managers and minority supporters have managed to take over the scene so effectively that, for a while, we were in danger of allowing anyone to declare that they were one or the other at any particular time, regardless of what chromosomes they possessed.Unfortunately, the law in Scotland appears still to allow such nonsense. Surely the UK needs to have one overriding rule on this?
Needless to say, there have been several organisations who have sought to ignore this ruling on the basis that they believe they can work to reverse it and have a ‘gender spectrum’ again. There are plenty of people still determined to continue to educate their workforce on the incorrect assumption that a man can be a woman or variations along that theme and that to offend them will be in breach of some clause in the dreadful Equality legislation which was drafted so badly that Stonewall et al have made millions from courses and placements within organisations ever since.
As far as I am aware we have all managed to get along fine with just being men and women. We have had separate toilets and changing rooms in public spaces that preserve what I regard as the right of the majority of either sex to have privacy from being gazed at or closely observed by the opposite sex. There have been ‘unisex’ toilets and rooms and no doubt there will continue to be developments but as the laws were heading it was a gift to some blokes who could pretend to be women and show off their dangly bits to girls and ladies whenever they so pleased without anyone stopping them. Indeed, it has been the ladies who have complained about such things happening who have been the ones most badly affected. Companies, universities and institutions have simply sacked the women on the grounds that they were being prejudiced against the bloke!
This has been the most extraordinarily ridiculous nonsense and, whilst there are signs that it is getting back to some semblance of normality, what the vast majority of the British public believe to be right, there are still battles to be won and many, many HR Managers and influential staff to be got rid of.
The Immigration thing
In April 1968, Enoch Powell MP foreshadowed what he believed would be a violent and tragic future for Britain if current immigration policies continued. He argued that the influx of immigrants was leading to a situation with "American proportions" in terms of racial conflict. Powell's speech was a direct response to the Race Relations Act of 1968, which he strongly opposed.I cannot support his objection to the Race Relations Act 1968, which all seems entirely reasonable. Basically saying everyone should be treated equally, with it being illegal for someone to refuse to give accommodation or a service to another purely because of their race. No-one can argue with that. What he was really trying to bring to our attention was not so much how we should deal with those already here but the dangers for society in continuing to permit so many more immigrants to set up home in Britain.
Now we can see far more clearly the results of our comparatively open doors to those seeking to make a home here. There are now towns or areas within cities where the population has a vast majority from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka or African states. In school classrooms there may be only a single white face, certainly many where English is just a second language at home. These figures have happened due to decisions in the past and no-one can do much about them now. Indeed, as the immigrant parents have several more children on average than those with a long line of descent here, those areas where the division is just, 50-50 are predicted to be 80% immigrant race to 20% all-British race within the next decade.
Whilst we might conceivably have coped with those numbers and seen communities develop in cities like Leicester, towns like Bradford, areas like Southall and Harlesden, now the numbers coming in to this country are growing at such a rate that it will not be long before more than half the population of Britain comprises immigrants. These are people with no special ties to Britain, no belief in our traditions, no particular interest in our history or what we call our way of life. They are not intrinsically bad people but many are very different and have a different attitude to life. For some, it may be quite reasonable to fight for something they desire or to use weapons to defend themselves. For others, initial frustration at how they may be regarded or treated upon arrival can cause resentment and, almost from the start, they see themselves as a separate group who have to look after their own interests and preserve their own ways against what they must see as quite a lot of negativity towards their being allowed to be here.
Often not being able to find a normal job can force people into working in the Black Economy or joining drug organisations and other criminal organisations making the most of their newfound cheap labour.
However nice and decent many of the people arriving on our shores may be, there are also a lot who are neither, who are happy to take the many benefits we provide but show no respect to our traditions or ways of life.
Those from other religions seek to continue to worship their gods in the way they are always done. So mosques and temples and other special sites are created or old buildings transformed for their purpose. When that religion, though, is one that has at its heart a hatred of the religion of the nation they are living in, there is going to be conflict. So far this has just bubbled along under the surface and those who have not liked the new neighbours have simply moved away. There is likely to come a time, though, when towns and parts of cities will become almost entirely populated by immigrants and their growing families and they will elect representatives locally and nationally to make and amend the laws of this country.
Local rules and regulations may not adversely affect those living outside the areas concerned and more and more ‘natural, British people will move to villages and towns in areas which remain less populated by the immigrants.
It is when the number of immigrant MPs and judges start to grow that the country itself will really change and we will find that we have lost control of our nation. I have no idea what this might entail but I am also of the view that I will not be the only one thinking about this and that, before the numbers do grow much larger, someone will try to do something about that. And that’s where the trouble starts.
The vast majority of both the immigrants and natural population want to live in peace, preserve things pretty much as they are. A few more mosques here and there, a few more Asian food stores, another street of Turkish barbers maybe and Syrian restaurants are pretty much certain to come but it is when we see people starting to behave in bad ways that we will start to object. More violence on the streets, more mistreatment of young girls, more powerful drug and criminal organisations buoyed by the extra staff available, more changes in the libraries and public offices to represent better the new majorities, less respect for our historical monuments or wartime sacrifices which mean nothing, at best, or actually offend, at worst, the new people living nearby. Slowly that vast majority is an insufficiently influential majority, either in homes or offices or in government, to have any impact and the minority starts to win, just like the middle managers won the woke battle without our noticing anything until it was too late.
Britain will simply have no choice but to change and become a multi-racial society with its past largely forgotten and unnoticed. Our old-fashioned manners and polite customs will gradually disappear and become the stuff of myth and legend - what the old folk used to do.
Different rules may well apply in different parts. Whilst I think a passport will still remain valid across the United Kingdom, one does wonder to what extent a large number of those objecting to the way things are changing might seek to protect some areas? Will Scotland get its independence and close its immigration doors. Not that they were ever particularly open anyway. Will Wales seek to stay rather more traditionally Welsh and make life difficult for the non-Welsh as they could do if they put their minds and language to the task? How about those comparatively safe from immigration in Northern Ireland? One might think they’d think about joining up with Eire after all but the EU country has its own problems already with a lot of immigrants landing there hoping to get across the border into the UK by that route. No, better to raise the barricades and stop the boats from Liverpool.
For a good many years, I am sure that life in many towns and certainly villages will continue very much as it always has been and inhabitants will seldom see an immigrant or think a great deal about what is happening in some cities or areas I have mentioned as likely growth areas for immigrant homes. Those living there may see some news from time to time of strife or race relation problems, maybe even between immigrant communities as you can see far more hatred between some black and brown people than is evident in black and white clashes. Then we have the yellow and the cream and shades of pale brown, all of whom are vastly increasing in numbers and have their own newly grown areas to defend. Some seem to manage this better than others. Many do manage to fit in with us natives and become welcome neighbours and we enjoy the difference, just as the HR managers encourage us to do in their diversity and equity training. It’s the ones who don’t that worry me. And there’s going to be a lot of them, and they are not going on any training course or likely to pay much attention even if they do.
The Empire thing
For some reason huge chunks of British history have almost overnight become something we don’t talk about. We certainly are encouraged not to mention the British Empire or to celebrate any success we may have had in developing another country. It’s a bit like Basil Fawlty’s ‘Don’t mention the war!’ (Incidentally you can’t view that episode of the wonderfully funny Fawlty Towers on BBC TV anymore - it has been banned. Happily any search will find a copy you can play or download! So much for that effort to shutter free speech.)If I were to believe all that I hear now from museums and library announcements or read on information sheets from the National Trust, this country has the most dreadful history. Apparently most of our famous and erstwhile respected industrial leaders were slave traders and every owner of a country pile is descended from someone who bought and sold people or had them working on plantations for next to nothing and generally we behaved terribly in every country we invaded and mercilessly plundered.
We are asked to pay massive amounts of money to despotic nations in Africa or a group of islands in the middle of nowhere for whatever we are supposed to have done in some previous centuries.
If anything, the truth seems to be that we were very much responsible for ending slavery and that prior to it finally being accepted that it’s a bad thing virtually every country was doing it in some form or another. I have a feeling that there are many small nations in Africa that still are - or where some self-imposed dictator can tell everyone around what to do or they’re in trouble, which isn’t much different. Actually, there would have been many slave owners who were a damn sight more caring about the people they owned than many leaders of such nations are today.
It seems only Britain, though, that has to grovel and apologise and write out 150 lines on how we should have behaved better in the old days and here’s a billion or two in reparations.
Now it’s not immigrants doing all this stuff I have to say. It’s white people and lots of educated people at universities and in government departments. Quite where they got an education so divorced from reality or with such obviously biased reading material I cannot imagine. However, we only have ourselves to blame for this, just as the woke stuff has come from a group of 30-40 year olds who all seem to have come from the same class at some University or College and now populate the vast majority of HR roles and key decision-making roles in that respect across industry and the public services as well as finding their way into the civil service who now seem to be the people actually running the country.
We might be able to reverse all this nonsense but it will require a government that is prepared to make massive cuts in the Civil Service and force business and institutions to revisit their policies on training especially regarding British history and matters of equality.
The war thing
One thing that might deter some of the people thinking of catching the next boat to Dover might be if they were obliged to serve in the Forces for a few years as a minimum. We are dreadfully under-resourced in all matters military and I can easily understand how this has come about. It genuinely never occurs to us that Britain will ever be invaded. No-one is going to come and try and take over this country. We won the war, the last two, in fact. I genuinely don’t know when we were last invaded or defeated here but it was probably by the French and we’re chummy with them now. No-one else is near enough to be bothered. OK, Eire wants a bit of the United Kingdom up there in the north of the island on the left but they’re no threat to me or any of us over here and not a big threat, to be honest, even to people in Northern Ireland.I have to admit that I have never been a big fan of National Service. Indeed, at St Albans School in 1966 my friend Ian Gold and I persuaded the Headmaster to allow us to set up a Community Support section instead of what had previously been a requirement that we enrol in one of the school’s Army, Navy or Air Force cadet training groups. That would have necessitated us wearing uniform, going on parade and being shouted at by a Sergeant Major and no doubt told off for not having shiny enough boots or buttons. Not only were there marching parades every week but we would have had to go on mock battles and learn how to look after and fire guns and various bits of equipment the forces had access to via the adult sections.
In those days the Masters at School were often men who had genuine ranks from active service in World War II and their enthusiasm for putting young teenagers through the sort of training they’d had to undergo was evident.
Most boys just went along with it and many actually seemed to enjoy it, the physical opportunities to get fitter appealed to some and the chance to shout at other pupils appealed to others in a less pleasant way. One or two did show some genuine leadership skills and prowess in matters military and may well have gone on to excel in their chosen field but for most of us and, most definitely in my case, I could see no point whatsoever in all that.
Now, whilst I would really not wish a military spell of National service on any of my children, I do see that we are terribly unprepared and I don’t mean war in which we’re invaded but in providing deterrence to others who are threatening either us or friendly nations. The case of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a classic example of our failure.
Russia could plainly see, evidenced by how we had reacted to every move they’d made before, especially in Crimea, as well as from the knowledge that their spies have been ridiculously easily able to obtain, that Britain was unable to make any real threats nor able to carry much weight in influencing other countries who were similarly grossly underfunded in terms of military equipment and trained personnel. So all we could do was shout ‘Foul!’ and talk a lot about how terrible it all was but it wasn’t even possible to send Ukraine much by way of weapons for a long time. That is despite our commitment, when Ukraine agreed to return the nuclear weapons they had held on behalf of the USSR to be relocated in the Russian Federation, that we and NATO generally would ensure their security. We have very sadly broken our promise there and, whilst we have been the main nation to try and support Ukraine over the last three and a half years, we have really not done a great deal. That’s not because we don’t want to but it’s because we haven’t got the resources to make much difference.
Ignoring the fact that there would probably be some international problem with our actually going to help fight there, we simply haven’t got the troops to do so. I am not even sure we have enough to operate as a sort of defence across the border in Poland or wherever. Most other countries in Western Europe are the same and those in Eastern Europe are a bit too small and have their own borders to worry about.
So now I can see, rather late in the day admittedly, that there is a case for having a much bigger set of Army, Navy and Air Force capabilities, modern, functioning equipment and a massive intelligence force that knows exactly who is doing what and where. War is not just won by chucking missiles at each other but by defeating the enemy from within. That we ought to be pretty good at but so far we’ve just been playing around and shouting over the fence and sending some money. Welcome though our support has been, and it has helped persuade other nations to keep supporting Ukraine, so much more needs to be done and done now. Russia can most definitely be persuaded that it either goes big and risks genuine retaliation from those nations with enough resources like America and maybe some others or settles out of court with a piece of two of land but will still have a massive reparations bill and obligations to meet over decades to come.
I can still see Putin hitting the nuclear button, destroying a small town perhaps, if he feels that there is no hope of him getting further otherwise. The question is whether we, NATO, or whoever would even respond then other than to wail and wring our hands in despair. It’s a risk I reckon he could take as it would effectively give him much of Ukraine which would have no choice but to call it a day for now. They’d keep Ukraine and independence but would lose a huge amount of land and there would still be no peace, just a sad acceptance that no-one is strong enough or brave enough to put Putin down. Over time it will all flare up again and, I suspect, it will be when some of us have woken up and realised that it only takes a minor incursion into a NATO country and we’re obliged to respond. By then we might have built up some forces a bit and started to believe in our abilities to be the force we once were in the world.
Now that force is, of course, unlikely to include any immigrants as it stands but maybe if we can say that a condition of living in this country is that you’ll have to fight for it then some might stop off in Sweden or Turkey instead.
