The Right Dishonourable

Podcast Ep. 110: May Moots Fatberg As New Home Secretary

April 30, 2018The Podcast Leave a Comment

Amber Rudd’s exit from the Home Office, the fining of Count Dankula for training his dog to salute like a Nazi, an apparent end to the cold Korean War, and lumps of crap blocking London’s sewers are the four topics this week.

Joining us is a delicious strawberry-flavoured protein shake, which will block our bogs this afternoon.

Update: Sajid Javid has been appointed as home secretary, replacing Rudd.

Image based on Fatberg, February 2018 by Seeing Sanitation

Podcast Ep. 109: Remainers Jealous Over Windrush Deportation

April 25, 2018The Podcast Leave a Comment

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The response to the Windrush scandal that saw foreign-born Britons denied access to public services, our slim understanding of Commonwealth happenings, and ‘Sir’ Nick Clegg’s podcast are the three topics this week.

Joining us is Brexit, the rotting yet adhesive core of our friendship.

Image based on HMT Empire Windrush, circa 1945-54 by Royal Navy official photographer

Even Cameron The Toff Gets Democratic Consent, Unlike Some Remoaners

April 20, 2018Jimmy Nicholls Leave a Comment

‘A fragile state is one that has been racked by conflict, affected by corruption, one that is not really capable of delivering the basic services like health and education that its people needs. It’s often got a very divided society.’

But enough about Britain, to misquote former prime minister David Cameron in an interview with CNN earlier this week.

Presumably from his expensive shed, Cameron has been chairing a report into how the West fixes dysfunctional countries, advocating a gradualist, conservative approach that takes proper account of local conditions. It seems jolly sensible.

Being complex, boring and a tad vague, it has been overlooked by hacks in favour of Cameron’s admission he believes holding a referendum was justified. Cameron remains a remainer, but previously said the outlook for Britain leaving the bloc was not as doom-laden as previously thought – ‘a mistake, not a disaster.’

Unlike some undemocratic remoaners, he also acknowledges the basic principal of political consent.

‘I don’t regret holding a referendum; I think it was the right thing to do,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you can belong to these organisations and see their powers grow, and treaty after treaty, and power after power going from Westminster to Brussels, and never asking the people whether they are happy being governed that way.

‘There was also, I believe, a quite fundamental problem that Britain had, and Britain was seeing, with the development of the single currency, the beginning of decisions being made about us without us, and we needed to fix our position. I wanted to fix it inside the European Union; the British public chose that we would fix it from outside the European Union.’

Correct, although I suspect the conventional read that Cameron was hoping to avoid a referendum by again forming a coalition with the Liberal Democrats after the 2015 general election is true.

Frontbench British politicians have studiously avoided the lack of political accountability in Europe ever since we joined the European Economic Community – save for the 1975 referendum that approved that membership.

Even so, it is awkward for remoaners that even Cameron says that people should not be governed without consent.

The Origins Of The People’s Front Of Judea Vs The Judean People’s Front

April 11, 2018Jimmy Nicholls Leave a Comment

While reading a crap Guardian piece on the importance of authority, I came across The Tyranny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman, a feminist writer.

The essay, stitched together from several publishings, eloquently defends formal structures for making decisions, noting that in their absence friendship groups, personal ties and organic interactions dominate – excluding outsiders, the otherwise busy and the shy.

One passage reminded me of what Sigmund Freud called ‘the narcissism of small differences’. This is the idea that similar groups tend to bicker more bitterly with one another than rivals they have little in common with, perhaps most famously portrayed in Life of Brian.

Small differences can flare into international conflict, but they can also divide inert, tiny political groups, perhaps especially those doing little beyond chatting. As Freeman writes:

‘For those groups which cannot find a local project to which to devote themselves, the mere act of staying together becomes the reason for their staying together. When a group has no specific task (and consciousness raising is a task), the people in it turn their energies to controlling others in the group.

‘This is not done so much out of a malicious desire to manipulate others (though sometimes it is) as out of a lack of anything better to do with their talents. Able people with time on their hands and a need to justify their coming together put their efforts into personal control, and spend their time criticizing the personalities of the other members in the group. Infighting and personal power games rule the day.

‘When a group is involved in a task, people learn to get along with others as they are and to subsume personal dislikes for the sake of the larger goal. There are limits placed on the compulsion to remold every person in our image of what they should be.’

Should informal groupings and infighting lead to a vicious split, you get the People’s Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Front. Or most rock bands after the talent and the cocaine run out.