I’ve been meaning to write this post for some time, mainly to explain my disappointment at a number of “supposedly enlightened citizens” lack of ability to understand why “all lives matter” is so important whilst they bang their drum for Black Lives Matter/save the planet/free the whale or whatever the latest “bandwagon” to jump on is. This was mainly prompted by my disbelief at the stupidity of an “all houses matter” meme that’s been going round social media etc. The lack of understanding shown by some in this area simply defies belief etc. Of course, the downside for me in writing it is I will no doubt be branded fascist or far right or whatever and I’m not sure I can be bothered with the grief you know? But hey ho here we are.
Ok so you’ve all seen the “Black Lives Matter” protestors (I suppose it made a change from EU remoaners protests or Extinction Rebellion p*ssing everyone off in Central London). Here we go:
Well the retort of much of the populace was “All Lives Matter” and lo and behold the Black Lives Matter protestors came up with “All Houses Matter” as a meme to explain why Black Lives Matter was so important, sigh:
So I am going to explain this clearly as to why in fact all lives DO matter, well the vast majority of them at least. Let’s assume the fire brigade turns up to put out that fire and the house on fire represents racism and hey presto they put it out. Well, that’s fine and dandy IF it’s the only house on fire but it isn’t is it? The reality is if each house is a different discrimination/prejudice then the fire brigade would turn up and most of the street would be on fire not just one house. One house might well be racism, but one is sexism, one is homophobia, one is ageism, one is uglyism (seriously I don’t know the word for prejudice based on aesthetics) and so and so on.
Loads of people are discriminated against, constantly, day in and day out and I don’t see anyone campaigning for them, do you? And if anyone is campaigning for them, there’s not very many of them. Now I don’t want to make this about me but I am going to give some of my own experiences as an example. Until 2009 I was the Managing Director of a somewhat successful group of companies loosely trading under one parent company and selling products online, not Amazon level for sure but still not so bad. Due to circumstances beyond my control (a chain reaction started by the demise of Woolworths and a company it owned called Entertainment UK) the companies had to be liquidated/put into administration. It hit me hard but I didn’t anticipate the resistance and sheer obnoxiousness of what was to follow.
I figured that as a former project manager/consultant for two leading UK consultancy firms and a Managing Director for a .com I would at least be able to find a job. But no, I met a constant stream of problems and disappointments which basically came down to discrimination and prejudice primarily based on age. See, thing is I am “old” for my industry, think I’m “seeing things”? For obvious reasons (I don’t want to end up in court) I can’t go into details but I’ve seen and heard plenty of evidence that my age was clearly the issue. The final “evidence” was then I started putting my date of birth on my CV deliberately, the calls from recruiters stopped almost instantly, well “imagine my surprise”, it works brilliantly as a “time waster filter”.
Anyway, I digress. The point I am getting at is the vast majority of us are discriminated against in one form or another, be it colour, sex, gender, age, appearance, disability or whatever. So turn up to that street and virtually every damn house is on fire. Ergo, it’s a dumb stupid meme, biased to Black Lives Matter’s “cause”.
So what’s the solution? Stop sectioning off discrimination, stop making it about racism or sexism (let’s face it those are the two we hear the most about, closely followed by homophobia). If you want to give a damn about people then give a damn about people in general, whatever their colour or sex etc. Tackle discrimination in general and not just one part of it, because (whether it be right or wrong is irrelevant) if all you do is tackle racism then all you’re going to get is “but what about ….”
Care about people, care about each other, aspire to equality of opportunity. Stop being a “concerned citizen” sheep and jumping on the latest “cause” to protest about. Strive for equality of opportunity and a better life for every person who is discriminated against. In other words, let’s put out all those damn fires, not just the racism one.
Steve
PS I am aware equality of opportunity isn’t necessarily ideal BUT it’s a damn sight better than what we generally have now.
I was going to have a long winded rant about the EU and how much I think it stinks but frankly ex Marines Commando Matt Taylor has said it all before and is pretty much on the mark. Ergo, I’ve recreated the article below and hope he doesn’t mind me “lifting” it wholesale, I am crediting him here after all !!
There’s some offensive language in here but frankly I think it’s needed when referring to the EU and our current state of British Politics, I myself have probably sworn more since June 23rd 2016 than in the rest of my many years on this planet put together. So if offensive language offends you either “suck it up” or read some sort of milquetoast sort of mainly liberal orientated opinion such as right here or even here.
So without further ado, I give you Matt Taylor’s views on remainers and the EU and his answer to “Why are Remainers so convinced that staying in the European Union is what is best for the UK?”:
“Because they think that the world revolves around money, because the burden of dealing with endless growth and inexhaustible labour hasn’t been shared, and because the rich don’t live in the real world.
I wanted to lay off politics and write comedy for a while, but after seeing working class people get slurred for weeks, I feel I have to dip a toe back in.
And honestly, this shit is fucking funny.
You have a bunch of middle and upper class lefties telling 18 million working class people that they should trust the very people that have been fucking ignoring them for twenty five years!
They also seem to be making the argument that a people that spawned one of the largest empires in human history, couldn’t run a piss up in a brewery without the assistance of fucking Belgium!
They also say that workers rights, women’s rights, and equality and social justice are under threat, like the concepts were invented by the EU.
Sorry lads, but we all went to Secondary School, such shameless attempts to rewrite history both amuse and annoy me.
Go tell that shit to John Locke and the fucking Levellers.
Go tell the likes of Fawcett, Newton, Bacon, Hume and Pankhurst they have the Germans to thank for freedom of expression.
Tell them that the continent that spawned more dictators in the last hundred years than Britain did in a thousand, has the European Commission to thank for democracy.
Tell them that with a straight face while I piss myself laughing.
“And then Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, Napoleon, Salazar, Petain, Tito and Vidkun Quisling all held hands and pissed on John Locke’s grave…… finally the tyrant was gone!”
Best of all, none of the Remain voters actually like the EU anyway!
Even the most ardent remain voter starts every argument with “Oh well, of course the EU needs reform…”
So what, is a lack of money and confidence the only good reason for staying in a ridiculous overbearing institution that nobody likes?
And I’ll also say this to start, the economic argument is a long way down the list for many working class people.
There is a great story here around 41:00 minutes in told by the brilliant Niall Ferguson (a staunch Remainer) regarding the matter. He explains how the owner of the largest chain of off-licenses in Wales was introduced to him, told him that Lithuanian and Polish beer is their best seller, and then proceeded to tell him why he was not a Remainer when Ferguson naively assumed he would be.
Why?
Because the working classes accepted a possible economic hit and made the decision anyway. They didn’t care, they said “This may cost us, but do it anyway. We are a proud people and we don’t want to be a federal state in the United States of Europe.”
That should have been the end of the matter.
There are dozens of arguments against the EU that I prefer that don’t revolve around cash, and I can point at the lack of accountability for openers.
The inability of ordinary citizens to indulge in the simple pleasure of going to the town hall and shouting at the twat that lauds it over you.
Nobody gets to shout at Jean Claude Juncker do they?
“Judges ruling on their own pay rise in one of the most obscene displays of judicial misconduct in human history? Endless hilarity Mr Verhofstadt!”
What about the top-down nature of the European Commission, the draconian censorship laws, the continuing taxation without proper representation, the ridiculous overbearing laws that reek of old-school communism from the Eastern Bloc.
I could go on all day, but as every Remainer answer seems to concentrate purely on coin, I shall address that issue thoroughly now.
If you live in a house you don’t own, work for someone else, have ever needed to use state-funded services, or even just worried about paying a bill… ask yourself this one question.
Do you benefit from an endless supply of cheap labor?
Look at the “top answer” in here, what is he, a Ph.D from Cambridge? (he’s referring to someone who answered in the original thread on Quora).
Yeah cheers mate.
Oxbridge types with expensive degrees, MPs, the heads of giant conglomerates, BBC writers and Guardian journalists, I’m sure they all had a mega hard time competing with Romanian laborers and Polish bricklayers when the EU collapsed 28 borders and 5 million people moved to the UK.
“Hey we had to compete with the working classes of Eastern Europe to get on a train once, its basically the same as living in a sink estate in Hull!”
Yes, I bet John Snow suffered through an ordeal trying to get a council house.
The well off probably struggled to find a place at a shite state school for their kids.
And I bet they have an absolute nightmare seeing a doctor or a dentist.
While my dad was sitting in a packed waiting room with 30 foreigners waiting 4 hours for an appointment, I’m sure he was thinking “I pity the middle-class Guardian readers that use BUPA!”
The wealthy have a hard time too. That’s why they all say “Pah, just educate yourself and be a better job candidate you loser.”
I don’t think we have to cede the economic argument by the way, there are several groups of wealthy educated types that do make a good case for leaving the EU, but they are much more rare.
Not because it’s a tough argument, but because integrity is rare.
The elites are purely motivated by self interest. Look at the middle-classes in the likes of London and Manchester. They want to keep house prices nice and high, so they can rent them out for extortionate rates while they go backpacking in Asia for a “year out” with Tarquin.
They want to keep importing third-world labour so they can pay Polish blokes under the table at their businesses, keep rents high, and keep feathering their nests.
The rich, the middle and upper-classes, the MPs and the like, they all want to stay in the EU because they know which side their bread is buttered.
Most amusingly of all, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of billionaires, millionaires, oligarchs, Brussels elites, bankers, big corporations and hedge fund managers are all pro EU (obviously) they point at the tiny fraction of wealthy Leave supporters like Dyson and Jacob Rees Mogg and say “Look! The rich want to leave Europe!”
“Quick get a picture, its one of those rare-as-rocking-horse-shit elites that supports leaving the EU!”
I didn’t actually vote for Brexit, but the last few years have swayed me because frankly, they insult my intelligence. How stupid do they think we are?
They insult our intelligence, their betters.
And we are their betters.
Do you think someone is a bastion of morality because they can get themselves elected to high office or build a global company?
It is the exact opposite.
“To summarize the summary of a summary, I wouldn’t believe an MP’s radio!”
The people, the producers, the working classes, are both the backbone and the moral compass of Britain.
We care about hearth and home, about family and friendship and community.
The elites care only for coin.
And when a rare wealthy man of integrity stands up and points out that rent would be lower and wages would be higher if we had a sensible, managed process for immigration, they fall back to “racism and xenophobia”
We, the backbone of Britain are being slandered by the elites because of their own shortsightedness and greed. We aren’t prejudiced, we simply know a broken system when we see it.
The EU has fucked Europe. The outsourcing of labour in pursuit of endless growth with no thought for tomorrow has totally fucked both Europe and the world.
Just to build their own wealth, they fuck the working poor. Brussels has strip-mined labour from economically struggling parts of the world, taking all of their young go-getters and thus, keeping poor nations in the doldrums perennially.
This is why they are pissed off in both Britain and France.
The French are even more Eurosceptic than the British are, why do you think they let us vote on the matter? Entirely because Cameron and our lot were all absolutely convinced we would vote to Remain!
Do you think Paris has been on fire for 6 months because France is a nation of pyromaniacs?
“I am so ‘appy they won’t let us vote for Frexit, I ave been setting Fiat Punto’s on fire every weekend for six months!”
The jig is up folks. Working peasants are much more sensible than the elites think they are. This is why so many of them think that the sun needs to set on the “Empire of the Good” that the European Commission is so desperate to build.
“Not scary at all.. I would trust this creepy MP with my life old chap!”
The elites in the likes of Britain, Germany, and France will do everything they can to stop Brexit, Frexit, and any other mechanism that the working people of Europe may use to return power to the democratically elected leaders of Europe.
We must continue to fight them, and our friends in Europe (the citizenry, not the Commission) will thank us for it come the end.
We will ensure the people of Europe remain free.
I’ll leave you with a nice quote from Mr Verhofstadt, who did a better job of talking me into leaving the EU in 30 seconds here than anything Farage has ever said!”
Steve with much thanks to Matt Taylor, a man who I don’t know from Adam but hell he says what I wanted to say.
So here we are, the 22nd of July 2019, the day before we know who our new Prime Minister is to be here in Great Britain. It is pretty clear that this will be Boris Johnson (if it’s Jeremy Hunt then there will have been some major league “stitch up” occurred). Let’s face it, bookmakers are usually “right” about such things and as of 10.00 GMT 22/07/2019 the odds on Boris winning are 1.01 and on Jeremy Hunt 65 (if you’re not familiar with “decimal odds” basically the lower the number, eg closer to “1” the more likely to “win”), the gap between 1.01 and 65 is “pretty damn big”. However, if you stick a tenner on Jeremy Hunt and he wins you’d make a lot of profit and yes I put money on Boris, long before the odds went down to 1.01 as they are now.
Alas United Kingdom is a divided nation as far as the populace is concerned now, with the populace and our politicians arguing (still) over “Brexit”. Without trying to make too many generalisations (but it holds roughly “true”) on the remain side we have remainers, people who voted remain (fair play to them to be fair, we had a vote and whilst many are displeased with the result they accept it, they understand the concept of “vox populi” and respect the majority vote of 2016’s referendum). Then we have leavers (who arguably have “right” on their side as no matter how you slice and dice it 52% > 48% and a majority ruling for “leave”). Then we come to the “discontented”, the so called “remoaners” who are doing everything they can to BACK the status quo and force the United Kingdom to remain in the European Union (hereafter referred to as the EU).
Of course the most vocal remoaners of all are mostly Members Of Parliament, which of course where most of the attempts to block our EU departure happen, which is understandable and has come about due to the efforts of Gina Miller who took the United Kingdom Government court to ensure a “meaningful vote” was held on our EU departure terms. Gina Miller did this because she knew it would obfuscate the process and keep us tied to the EU in the process, presumably in the hope the government would just “give up” concluding it was easier to just remain an EU member? Ironically though Gina Miller did leave a favour because the “deal” our Prime Minister came back from Brussels (the so called Withdrawal Agreement Bill) was truly atrocious, more of a surrender to the EU and not much of a so called “deal” to be seen. Our MPs rightly rejected it three times in Parliament, so they’re not totally incompetent.
We’ve gone beyond what MPs want now though. No matter how you present the numbers the aforementioned 52% in favour of leave is still greater than 48% to remain. The arguing has to stop, the so called remoaners are tearing the United Kingdom apart with the constant battles to halt our withdrawal from the EU, especially the remoaners in the Houses Of Parliament, people like David Gauke, Keir Starmer and Philip Hammond to name but a few. I understand and respect Parliamentary sovereignty, HOWEVER, we had a referendum and the majority said “leave”, there was no mention of a “deal”, no mention of single markets, customs unions or anything else. We were asked “leave or remain” and the majority said “leave”. After 3 years of obfuscation, delaying tactics, sheer “bloody mindedness” and remoaner based manipulation it’s time to “bite the bullet” and leave.
Boris Johnson needs to address exactly that spirit, quickly and affirmatively. Clearly it’s no longer the 1930s or 1940s but what we need is more “Churchill spirit” and a lot less “Chamberlain meh but spirit” now. Leaving with “no deal” isn’t going to be easy, but it’s clear the EU is unlikely to offer us a real “deal” as oppose to Theresa May’s surrender and the leave date being 31st of October 2019 is far too close for anything to actually change anyway (I mean come on, it’s taken Conservatives a month just to decide who’s going to be the next Prime Minister, so set up a trade agreement in 3 months? Good luck with that idea). It’s time for a “Churchill moment”, let’s just hope Boris can deliver one. Boris himself knows this, hence this Daily Telegraph article. I know my support accounts for “diddley squat” in the greater scheme of things but I’m behind him and wish for his success.
“And then Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, Napoleon, Salazar, Petain, Tito and Vidkun Quisling all held hands and pissed on John Locke’s grave…… finally the tyrant was gone!”
