OBummer

Reuters have confirmed that Gay Marriage is now the biggest world news story, and indeed the biggest issue facing mankind.

This has relegated topics such as European economic and social meltdown, mass state sponsored homicides in Syria, constant car bombs and other IEDs killing our misplaced troops in Iraq and Afganistan, famine in Africa etc etc into the minor placings. Quite right too. The legitimacy or otherwise of Brian and Nigel's forthcoming nuptials is where it's at right now. Bugger everything else.

Even facebook sensation Joseph Kone is being described as "rather last century" by the newserati.

Well, there you have it. Pretty much every world leader of any standing has ditched their more critical agenda items to focus on this, the real topic of the day. Obama has more or less guaranteed himself a second term by openly surporting it; David Cameron tells us he has been a fan of the idea since his schooldays. If only Sarkozy had realised this was what the voters of France wanted to hear - he'd be settling back into power right now.

Only Mitt Romney seems to stand alone - apparently he has a long record of queer bashing - but he has excused himself by claiming he thought they were only weak, helpless boys who needed to man up, rather than homosexuals. Good answer Mitt, no-one minds a smaller-boy-basher. Anyway, he too, it seems, is not prejudiced.

And thank god for that - the last thing we need is the hitherto unblemished record of White House occupants besmirched by some form of gross moral turpitude.

And there is of course the case of good old Robert Mugabe, who is on record as saying all gays should be shot, but what would he know - he's as nutty as a fruitcake. Stick to being a nasty dictator, Bob, and leave the important global stuff to the real leaders.

Angela Merkel has been curiously quiet on the subject, but as a recent survey found that 91% of Germans believe she is a man in drag, she probably has her own agenda on the subject. Or perhaps she thinks all marriages should be abandonded as some sort of austerity measure.

So where will this story go? If it follows the same path as the canabis "legitimise by inches" approach, we can expect to see tax breaks for gay marriages, a much higher profile for the Gay Olympics, and ultimately the legalisation of what that quaintly old fashioned and out of touch work of fiction The Bible amusingly refers to as Original Sin.

It's no use the doubters quoting the fall of the Roman Empire as a dangerous historical precent for the open legitimisation of homosexuality, that was 2000 years ago, they didn't even have the internet then, and as Henry Ford said, "History is bunk".

An intriguing aspect of this is that, at least openly anyway, none of these world leaders are themselves gay, although it is worth recalling that Cameron spent 5 years at Eton. And as far as this column can ascertain, none of them campaigned on a support gay marriage ticket.

The cynics, of course, would point to vote winning, to distraction from the real issues, to pandering to a vocal minority. How cynical of them.

So, we can all sleep safe tonight. No need to worry about rising prices, the collapse of the euro, whether we can pay our mortgages or not, or what the future will bring.

Our leaders have their fingers on the pulse, and we can trust in them to get it right. Goodoh.

Le Pen may be mightier

Since time immemorial, the populace have had, to a degree, immutable faith in government to achieve the right solution. Humanity is one long game of follow my leader, and as long as that leader says something that sounds good, then the people who listen will vote for them, and trust them. How else did Hitler come to power - or Stalin, for that matter. The recent showing of Marine Le Pen in the French elections is a good illustration of this. For many French people, she is talking sense. Her opponents, horrified to the core, insist on branding her a Nazi. In fact, she is politically a shadow of her father, a true extremist. Ms le Pen is merely echoing the sentiments of a growing proportion of her population, and indeed the populants of many European countries. It speaks volumes of the censored society in which we now live that anyone who dares stray somewhere near the extremes polarly occupied by so many leftists is branded a product of National Socialism and therefore to be despised by all. It is in fact an admission by the proponents of enforced multiculturalism and political correctness that theirs is neither the right way, nor one which has any real traction with human who's IQ exceeds that of a dustbin. That's not to say the right are right. Anyone whose intellectual capacity exceeds that of a cupcake will agree that is is highly unlikely that either side has a monopoly on the right answers. In fact, the growth of extremes is a product of the party system. If you are aligned with a faction, you must espouse all of the causes and beliefs which they represent. Failure to do so may result in relegation to the back benches, or worse, expulsion. Most politicians enter politics with an ideal - to serve, and serve well. That ideal is eroded as the waves of party manipulation crash remorselessly against it, and quickly morphs into a sense of self preservation. Thus the party system has become a despicable anachronism, and its resultant flaws render talented and ambitious politicians impotent. So begins another erosion - the erosion of trust that the government will prevail, that their solutions will work. And as a result, the people open their ears and listen, most often to single issue politics. Hence the rise of Le Pen, and in the UK of UKIP. Their ability to manage the day to day business of government is overlooked. Their most vocal standpoints achieve support, because in difficult times humans retreat into those issues which frighten them the most. A stable economy, where standards of living grow well is unlikely to produce support for anything other than the status quo or its mildest opponents. But this is something we neither have nor, despite the increasingly hollow protests of our leaders, expect to have in the foreseeable future. And so we retreat to the poles. What compounds this sorry state of affairs is the blind denials of those who have lead us down this path - our leaders. They just can't see that their weakness is the cause. They refuse to face facts. But of course they are only mere mortals. And we were fools to trust them in the first place.

The Thought Police are not the answer

That the appalling acts committed by Anders Breivik are utterly abhorrent is beyond doubt. As are all acts of war.

Because that is how this deranged individual sees what he has done. As an act of war, on what he describes as the oppressive blanket of multiculturalism.

Wars lead to deaths, deaths rarely of those who start wars, but of those the leaders use as their tools of war.

Breivik's atrocities are something born out of frustration, an awful, all consuming frustration which exploded like a raging torrent of molten lava, drowning all sense of reason and driving him to a barbaric and terrifying solution; a statement which could not be ignored.

Racist in any form is a vile and disgusting thing. Yet it is, always has been and will for ever be a part of this world. Attempts to marginalise it, to suppress it or even to criminalise in fact do little more than to drive it below the surface where it boils more virulently.

Those who are its greatest and most active opponents often, ironically, become its greatest proponents, because the constantly remind us all that it exists. For some, this is a state of affairs to be desired.

Humanity has never spoken with one voice. Beliefs differ, and beliefs are strong. When those beliefs are suppressed, they grow even stronger, desperately seeking an outlet as a subterranean river seeks a spring vent.

Since mankind could first walk, he has travelled, further and further afield. In stone age times, Strangers from nearby villages were seen as different, intimidating, even evil.

As man's means of mobility developed, so those strangers came from further afield. One way to distinguish them, a most easy and obvious way was by the colour of their skin. And they brought with them different gods, gods who challenged the accepted ways.

Remember that gods were invented to answer those questions that the fledgling intelligence of humanity could not. Why does the sun rise in the east? Why does the river flow to the sea? Because the gods of the sun and the river so determined it.

Gods gave security to humans, and they clung to them. The presence of strange gods, born by men with strange skins sent shivers of fear through our ancestors, shivers which will never vanish from our lives.

Xenophobia in its most elemental and innocent form is an entirely natural concept, an inevitability of humanity.

But throughout history, men of different creeds and colours have learned to live together, to tolerate each others beliefs, to accept their right to them with, of course, the possible exception of the Catholic Church in certain times.

Tolerance is the key. But tolerance must be learnt. It cannot be forced upon people. You cannot compel humanity of to embrace multiculturalism with open arms just because governments or social movements believe they should.

If there is one lesson we should have learnt from our time on this planet, we simple fools who think we know so much, is that there are few if any right answers, and if they do exist, we probably have not yet discovered them.

There are no quick fixes. None. The thought police have never endured.

Yes, in our history there have been many despicable examples of racial inequality, of religious oppression. Yes, we must be cognizant of these, and strive to eliminate them from our future.

But this will not be achieved through legislation or social engineering. It will take time, and along the way there will be hiccups. But, if it is right, then humanity may eventually achieve it.

The world would do well to take heed of Anders Breivik. He is not alone in his beliefs. Unless we learn the lessons of these events, they will occur again and again, and their scale will grow.

And more people will die, stupidly, pointlessly, needlessly. And we will continue to regress.

Don't whistle while you work

David Cameron's latest initiative to outlaw the hideous practices of wolf whistling, and the calling of women darling, is bold, innovative and strategically smart.

It will, of course, entirely disenfranchise an entire generation of builders and labourers for whom the wolf whistle is a tried and tested chat up line, but these are generally likely to be Labour voters anyway.

What it does do is bring into the fold a previously unacknowledged, by political parties anyway, group of voters, to whit hideously ugly women and lesbians. Because these, of course, are the women who object to vocal familiarity as being sexually discriminative. And this is true. It discriminates against them because it never happens to them. So their votes are a dot on the card. Factor them into the polls now DC.

The hordes of young women who on a Friday night don little more than a low hanging belt and half cut bra and parade through the streets of northern England, flitting from Bacardi Breezer to Bacardi Breezer, are enthusiastic about being wolf whistled at. Why else would they have their wares so obvuiously on display? But this rapidly growing segment of society probably do not vote anyway, mainly on the grounds that the Top Shop party does not loom large on British electoral forms, assuming of course that they could read these forms in the first place. So no loss there either.

And finally, it may just enfranchise all men, at least those with brains and the ability to extrapolate rationally. Legislative fringes are a movable feast. After wolf whistling and darlinging, doubtless wimmin's next move will be to outlaw flirting, chatting up and even looking. In the long run, this will save men from years of emotional, intellectual and financial pain.

Getting together with women will simply become too hard, so they'll just give up, and will of course realise that is something they should have done years ago. Dave, they will acknowledge, has done them a massive favour. Votes aplenty.

Many men will doubtless become actual, rather than just virtual, monks thus ensuring support for Cameron from the church, yet another huge swathe of votes to keep the conservatives in power.

Of course the human race, deprived of procreative activities, will swiftly die out, and so general elections will become somewhat redundant. But what a legacy for Cameron! That will put Blair in his place.Dave will go down as the man who finally eliminated all Britain's financial and social woes, albeit by the somewhat extreme means of eliminating all future generations.

Today in New Zealand a 16 year old youth was jailed for ten years. He is eligible for parole after 5 of them.

His offence was to brutally assault and rape a 5 year old girl at a camp site. A truly sickening crime.

In passing sentence the judge originally levied a sentence of 18 years, and then proceeded to reduce this bit by bit when taking into account a number of "mitigating factors". His repentance got him a year less. His disturbed family background sliced off another 2 years. And so on. Down to ten, parole in five, Bob married your father's sister. Had he worn a suit and tie, he'd probably have got a community service award for his trouble.

Quite naturally, white middle class New Zealand has reacted with outrage. They want something More old testament. Those from his own ethnic background have been somewhat less critical, citing his relatively blameless track record (a few minor convictions aside), his good character and loving qualities etc etc.

The more pragmatic have questioned the value of the sentence on practical grounds. When he leaves prison he will be a hardened criminal. He will be bitter. he will have cost taxpayers at least $500,000 for the duration of his clink. He will likely reoffend immediately and in due course slide into recidivism. 5 years of being reasonably well fed and watered, with a cosy heated cell, sky tv on demand etc are hardly punitive circumstances for one from his domain.

And these are actually quite compelling arguments. Will 5, or ten years for that matter achieve anything positive for anyone? probably not.

The polar, and polarising options suggested are either to simply attempt to rehabilitate him - it after all being society's fault anyway, or to lock him up and throw away the key - or even simply give him a fatal jab?

And there lies the problem. Because society must take it share of the blame - what sort of world are we living in where a sixteen year old boy spends all day drinking and taking drugs, then in a blind haze commits such an atrocity? We have created such monsters through laxity and laziness. Because he is not alone. All over the world, thousand of teens gorge themselves similarly on forbidden fruit. Granted they do not all go on and rape 5 year old girls, but thye are filling up with the same fuel. They do this because, on so many different levels, we encourage them to, and we let them.

And by the same token, it would be quite appropriate if the family of the victim demanded they be given half an hour in a quiet room somehwere with him, he being handcuffed and they being armed with baseball bats. No sane person could begrudge them the opportunity to vent their feelings on this monster.

The answer, and of course like all real answers it will be dramatically unpopular with those who seek to explain rather than to solve, is twofold.

First we must enforce our laws rigourously. There must be no more soft and hard laws. If cannabis is illegal, then illegal it must be. No more class A's, Class Bs etc. Illegal drugs are illegal, and possession, use etc, in whatever quantities must receive equal punishement. And make it rigorous. In other words enforce the law to it's letter, without exception. And if there are few hard done by individuals along the way, well, they can console themselves that they are sacrificing themselves for the good of the majority.

Second, we must acknowledge that the are some within our society who are without redemption, and should be removed permanently. There people who are plain evil. Others have no fear of consequence. And no amount of bleeding heart liberal understanding will change them. These people need to be taken out of the equation for good, and for the good of those of us who do not rape 5 year old girls.

Maybe that means putting them on a little island somewere surrounded by gunboats. Maybe it means until death incarceration, without comforts or benefits of any kind - the sort that costs no more than 10k a year. Maybe it means the death penalty. Perhaps offenders could choose which option they would like?

The great advantage of the death penalty is that it creates less opportunity for vampirical lawyers to earn millions conducting endless and pointless campaigns trying to have convictions overturned on irrelevant technicalities.

These are hard issues, which pose hard questions. That is why we have leaders - to take the hard decisions.

But we cannot carry on - we have reached, if not already passed the tipping point of societal tolerance of liberalism and its consequences. We must accept that we have mafe mistakes in trying to expunge blame and punishment, and personal responsibility from our lexicon.

We are very close to the moment of social justice, a form of anarchy in which citizens effect punishments on those who transgress, no longer trusting the authorities to mete out what they consider appropriate. Lynch mobs on the streets, and they are a tad more scary than rioters.

Sometimes, on a journey from A to B, you go astray. The smart driver will retrace their steps, work out where they went wrong, and take the right turning to get back on the correct route. The fool will keep going along the wrong one, getting further and further away from their intended destination. And that is liberalism.

It is probably fair to say that, in these interesting times in which we live, every element of society is currently feeling a profound sense of dissatisfaction.

The elderly despise youth for their laxity and erosion of standards, whilst the youth deride the more mature for their resistance to change.

The rich, smug in their castles loathe the poor for their envy and anger, whilst those without the trappings of 21st century success strive for a perceived fairness which would see a more equitable redistribution of assets.

Big business chases bonuses and profits with unquenchable fervour, whilst the environmental lobby urges that corporate social responsibility override fiscal concerns at all times.

Nothing new there - these polar opposites have an always will oppose. They are a product of humanity, a most flawed model.

But one senses that perhaps this dissatisfaction is reaching a hitherto unseen level. It is global rather than localised. And it may be approaching a tipping point. Something's got to give, because we are currently hurtling down a highway to hell with no brakes or steering wheels.

The root cause of the problem's persistence, and wherein it's solution lies, can be clearly seen in our leaders.

They are a sorry lot the world over, bickering and squabbling like a group of headless chickens fighting over the scant remaining grain. Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to garner votes and lie.

Reelection is all they care about, and in their desperate rush to please all of the people all of the time, in fact they please very few beyond themselves. Those who do show strong leadership, who follow policy throughout, are denounced as dictators, castigated as corrupt and then overthrown as the covert CIA insurgents weave their dark magic.

Lord Acton said that power corrupts,in fact, it corrodes. Morality, conviction, accountability and honour melt like ice on a warm day.

What compounds this parlous state of affairs is that the spavined idiots currently masquerading as world leaders genuinely think that at least a percentage of their respective electorate views them with something other than utter disdain.

And it is time to pierce this crust of self belief and send a very clear and very strong message that it simply won't do. It is time to take a stand.

We must follow the lesson of the great Monty Brewster, centrepiece of the classic Richard Prior movie Brewsters Millions, and vote for None of the Above!

Because none of the above can't be any worse than any of the self serving, pompous yet clueless current selection. It's not as if we would be losing any leadership or direction.

It's quite simple really - just adding a None of the Above option to all ballot papers.

Can you imagine the look on Dave's face as the returning officer for Jollytoffshire West stood and declared that the winner is None of the Above? It would rock his world to it's very foundation, and the people would have spoken. Loudly and clearly. Even he might hear.

Such are the faults with the way we live now that adaptation is unlikely to cure them. We need change on a wholesale level, fundamental change. It is not to hard to extrapolate the current levels of dissatisfaction to social unrest of a kind not seen for hundreds of years in the West. Voting None of the Above might just be a palatable alternative to that. It's certainly worth a try.

It carries none of the cowardice or disinterest of abstaining. It is a vote, albeit a negative one, but it is at least a statement - we vote for none of you - a voicing of no confidence on a massive scale. And it has the joy of uniting all of the people. It is a bloodless revolution.

It might be fun; and what have we got to lose?

The politics of Elect Me

David Cameron's extraordinary announcement this week that he intends to foist hordes of women onto the boards of private companies, based entirely on gender and with no respect to merit, is an indictment of the worst kind of modern political standards.

Back in the day, politicians had policies. They were elected on the basis of those policies and, whilst in power, did their best to enact them. This worked quite well; if those policies proved unworkable or became unpopular to a greater extent, then next time around someone else got elected. Parties were defined broadly by their political and social convictions, and you knew roughly what you were getting. A bit like the difference between buying your chosen brand, If it worked for you, you kept on buying it. If not, you shopped around and chose another.

Tony Blair changed all that. It is easy to lay the blame on him and his cronies and cohorts, but it is also probably fair. Suddenly politics was all about electability. Policy? Give them what they want, and if they don't like it, change to what they do like. Ironically, of course, this demand led policymaking is based on the free market economy model, something Labour have traditionally eschewed and even vilified. Historical policymaking was supply led, a socialist concept.

So Blair and Co invented the politics of elect me, and it worked. Of course it did: we poor hopeless fools who have such trust in the men of Westminster, we believed them. And Blair looked good. Not a trace of Scargillian shabbiness. He banished the ghosts of Foot and Wilson forever. And dash it all, it's not as if the chap is a rank lefty, after all, he went to a decent school, didn't he, we all comforted ourselves.

It is doubtful that even in his more perceptive moments, such as they are, that Blair will realise the appalling damage he wrought, first on our political environment, and second, upon our society.

But enough of Blair - he was merely the instigator.

We now have Cameron, who's ability to espouse causes in the hope of engaging a new segment of the electorate is second to none. He is the master.

He is probably the worst PM Britain has ever had. Wholly devoid of conviction, he flits from advisor to advisor like a butterfly flying from flower to flower, a piece of pollen here, a piece of pollen there, all votes count, DC.

If you suggested to Dave that he stand of the basis of policy, and live or die by it, he would, for a moment, look puzzled, before a slow grin spread across his charming Patrician face, and he would slyly dig you in the ribs, muttering sotto voce "you old dog!"

His are the politics of reaction. He is the master of sound bite, the supreme being of deflection, but at the end of the day he is a balloon, a hollow gathering of nothing.

Margaret Thatcher, or rather the disturbingly grotesque caricature of her, in the recent movie The Iron lady, opined that popularity must be forsaken by politicians, when taking the hard decisions for the long term public good. Dave, one would presume, if he has seen the film, would wake up screaming in a cold sweat should he revisit the scene in his dreams.

He has no fibre. He allows Vince Cable to walk all over him, he lost a virtually unlosable election in allowing the Libs to share the seat of power, he poodles to Merkel and Sarkozy in a way that must have Winston turning in his grave and, worst of all, he lies. Referendum on Europe anybody?

British politics has seen many great men and women, people of true conviction. It is impossible to agree with all of them, but they undeniably stood for what they believed in. David Lloyd George. Winston Churchill; Margaret Thatcher, even Anthony Wedgewood Benn, to name a few. And so we could trust them; trust them to stay upon their stated path.

But Cameron is a mockery of these icons. His is the path of reelectability, and his are the policies of whatever will get him there, as and when they are needed.

And if his people tell him that means forcing private enterprise to promote women to their boards, then that's what is going to happen. Today at least, it may be unpopular tomorrow.

Why fair just ain't

Barack Obama is about to outline his plan for a fairer America.This comment alone should tell us all we need to know. Any principles the man once had have been consigned to the bin, and his pockets filled instead with vote-catching slogans designed to woo the moronic majority to his cause in the next election.

Fairness as a concept is about creating a level playing field; it really only works if starting from scratch - it's why sports are governed by rules. At the start of the game, both teams have the same number of players, and play by the same rules. That's fair.

But where it falls down is that someone wins, and in the eyes of Obama, most western politicians and the entire populace of those who earn less than the national average, having winners is not fair.

So the fair Obama et al refer to means penalising winners to improve the lot of the losers. It's as if Man Utd thrash Wigan 7-1 but the FA say "look, United, that's not fair - we are going to penalise you three goals and redistribute them to Wigan so it is actually a 4-4 draw"

Bonkers it may be, but that is the reality of this 21st century concept of fairness. And it's one that Politicians will cling to if it gets them re-elected.

Ironically the unfairness is a creation of these same politicians, who have allowed laws and their legal interpretations to manifestly stack the odds in favour of the rich.

The more you earn, the less tax you pay is now a global game. Had the politicians created a regulatory environment which was not open to such widespread and mandatory abuse, then the hitherto unseen levels of jealousy which have manifested themselves into 21c fairness might not exist.

But having opened the rabbit hutch, it is not fair to punish the rabbit. Punishing the successful in order to appease and enfranchise the unsuccessful will simply disenfranchise the successful. They will go elsewhere, where their contributions are appreciated. And governing a country of losers will very quickly lose it's appeal; only third raters would be attracted to politics in such an environment.

Whilst many would argue that having third raters in power would be a vast improvement on the current incumbents, it still falls short of the ideal.

Fair is not a fact, it is a perception. Only if a state of perceived fairness gained absolute endorsement could it be deemed to be genuinely and all-encompassingly fair.

And that just ain't going to happen. Because life is, and will always be about winners and losers - that's humanity for you, and losers don't like being losers, you see, because it's just not fair!