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A Scotsman with a Grievance?

By Richard Leader — 2 years ago

Nigel Farage was, somewhat predictably, booed when he was named News Presenter of the Year at the 2023 TRIC Awards in London. The manipulability of online polls in the age of loyally mischievous Twitter followings notwithstanding, the two GB News victories (its breakfast show scooped one too) arguably represent another milestone in the plucky challenger’s march to credibility and, its viewers will hope for its commercial success. 

When GB News launched in July 2021, I was living in the US and working on my second or third startup, depending on whether you only count the successful ones. I watched the go-live and for me the highlight of those initial hours of sometimes painful broadcasting (notable by the curiously low lighting) was veteran newsman Andrew Neil, whose presence lent the nascent broadcaster some grown-up editorial clout.

Personally, I like Neil, and in common with many others was optimistic when in 2020 he was lured from the stagnant BBC to become GB News’ founding chairman. As such, I was sad when, a few months later, he appeared to have flounced off – particularly as it gave the station’s detractors something to gloat about (many of whom seemed to have made up their minds before a single second of TV was broadcast, not least The Guardian’s perennial sideline sniper Owen Jones).

Yet my main regret about Neil’s departure was its manner: specifically, that he didn’t do it with dignity and discretion. Founders split all the time and there are always sensible reasons why. During the early stage of any venture there’s a vast amount of work to do, and it’s in this mad scramble that working relationships are tested. Not all will survive.

Sometimes it’s nothing to do with the individuals, but more the chemistry of a group under pressure. Yet the thing to avoid, in almost any situation, is to make a fuss upon leaving. However great the temptation may be to ‘set the record straight’, it almost always comes across as whiney.

I’ve yet to meet anyone who, years later, will say: “absolutely the right thing was to share a bunch of private stuff in public and stick the knife into my former colleagues”. Candidly, I imagine that Neil now regrets how he handled the split.

Imagine the counterfactual: Neil still left, but instead of throwing his toys out of the pram he settled on a cheerier statement along the lines of: “What a ride! Successfully launching a news station has felt like my biggest achievement to-date. Now we’ve gone live, I’m hankering for a break and will be scaling back my commitments starting immediately. I’d like to thank the team for the immense amount of valiant work to-date, particularly in the hard months leading up to launch, and I’m confident that the Board and management team will successfully steer the station to greatness going forward! I wish everyone the best of luck and will be with you, in spirit, every step of the way. I look forward to reporting on the channel’s success!”

Had he done so, perhaps he’d now be fondly (and rightly) remembered as a co-founder of a bold enterprise – rather than simply a disgruntled former employee who left on bad terms and did a media round to share his grievances, including an opportunistic appearance on his former employer’s programme, Question Time.

Water passes quickly under any bridge, and I’m surprised that Neil, with all his experience, either didn’t know this or ignored his better judgement. The momentary satisfaction one gains from a bout of bridge-burning is almost always outweighed – many times over – by the future ability to gather with former colleagues, on good terms, and share in the celebration of success while laughing about the often funny (and, in hindsight, trivial) disagreements that occurred along the way.

I suspect the wise warhorse Neil’s advice to anyone else might be similar to my own: always keep the bridge intact, however tempting the alternative may be in the short run. I’ve no idea whether he has sent any of the GB News executives a congratulatory message over the last couple of years, but for his sake I hope he has.

To quote PG Wodehouse, “It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine” – and endearingly curmudgeonly Neil appears to be no exception.

A rapprochement with his former startup would surely earn him renewed respect in the eyes of his many admirers. Perhaps he could appear as a guest on News Presenter of the Year Farage’s show? A display of convivial bonhomie on, say, Talking Pints would surely put to rest any accusations that a certain esteemed Scot is harboring a grievance.

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The Reset Clause (same time next 25 years)

By Nathan Wilson — 2 years ago

How did we get here, and where do we go? A lot of modern political questions can be summarised in those two simple questions. Our cultural and political zeitgeist has possibly become the equivalent of going out for a quick pint and realising sixteen hours later we have woken up on a flight to Mexico.

This literal cultural hangover event merely asks up to beg the question of where we go from here, now that everything has happened prior to our sleep walking and into the current awakening.

Legally, we might be more at home in Terry Gilliam’s ‘Brazil’, or One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, in being trapped within a world that both defies logic or order. A world ran by malicious people, albeit far too stupid to be truly Orwellian Big Brother figures.

As noted by Nicolás Gómez Dávila’s book Sucesivos Escolios a un Texto Implícito:

“Dying societies accumulate laws like dying men accumulate remedies.”

If such things are true, then how do we stop the accumulation? Are societies, as they get further complex and interconnected into themselves and the outside world, doomed to merely breakdown under their own weight? Do we end up investing more energy into systems with greater diminishing returns, until the project itself collapses (Joseph Tainter makes this argument in his book ‘The Collapse of Complex Societies’).

Alternatively, is collapse merely something that occurs when a nation or civilisation loses the fire it once had, and the cracks begin to show? Do we physically lose the will to continue with the same drive and passion that our predecessors had, or do we merely just burn out like Wang Huning often pondered?

Where are the get out of jail free cards, the mechanisms to stop the damage, how do we stop this strange death from approaching?

We often see images of political leaders placing their hands on religious texts, and then stating that they will protect the law of the land and uphold the constitution or whatever. This is nearly always a lie when you have people who neither understand nor respect the original foundations which the nation sprung from.

It was Edmund Burke that said society is a contract between the dead, the living and those yet to be born, and civilisation is an intergenerational struggle between the civilised adults and the little barbarians they have given birth too.

You just must domesticate them before the little barbarians become big ones. This social contract and corresponding obligations are not peer pressure from dead people, but an active handing of cultural responsibility in a civilisational relay race of life.

So, how do we remove these laws? The formation of which will only further hinder future generations. One idea is that of a constitutional reset clause being placed into the political framework of a country. A reset clause would allow for directly examining the new laws that have come into place over the course of every generation. This would allow for a new political class of individuals to look at what has occurred and decide what to do with it all.

With a typical generation being between twenty to thirty years, and twenty-five being in the middle (also fits well for being a quarter of a century), this could be a good way to start. We can take an original constitutional document like the United States Constitution. It is simple, codified, and adheres to higher values for what is expected of both citizenry and government.

Instead of feeling like original documents merely get chipped away with the passage of policy and time, such actions will help people to regularly reassess the direction we are going in. We start at a neutral original document point and let people naturally add further to the document, after twenty-five years we look at what has occurred and assess what has happened previously. The reassessment will allow people to critically examine what has happened and what laws we really need and what needs to be let go.

I sometimes fear we slowly walking into a South Africa-like situation, where we find ourselves with a constitutional document that does not benefit anyone; burdened with laws that only create issues for everyone down the line.

As a result, the problem with South Africa is that it eventually started looking like South Africa, we do not want this nor benefit from this if we continue down this path.

Until this happens one thing is certain, the slow progress of not just time but also law will eventually create a multigenerational leviathan that will ultimately have to be stopped, if left unchecked.

We could pick a date as a proverbial year zero, of which the original laws always remained, and you would then let it play out.

Although, the practicality of such ideas will never get off the ground, hypothetically we should be constantly examining the accumulation of laws and the quality of them moving forward.

In conclusion, what this might mean is that we must reform how we think and view law within our countries and the accumulation of it all. Are we slowly walking into a bureaucratic nightmare and if so, how do we escape from such problems, well and truly?

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The Wire and Singapore

By Nathan Wilson — 2 years ago

The small island nation of Singapore is like the American TV program, The Wire. I understand that is probably one of the weirdest opening sentences to an article about philosophy and global politics, but hear me out.

Co-creator of The Wire, David Simon, once stated the reason for the show’s success was its ability to mirror every conceivable political bias of the viewership. This was enabled by the many different themes and issues exhibited throughout the show. If you are against the War on Drugs, you will see evidence of its failings. If you support it, you will see evidence it should continue. If you believe that police failings are because of cultural or economic reasons, you will see those perspectives reflected too.

In short, within the entire series, you will see nearly every modern political issue at play as understood by every ‘side’ of said issue. What remains interesting is that, as noted by Simon, the show maintains an ability to “validate” and consequently reinforce the beliefs of the viewers.

As such, the city of Baltimore continues to hold a light to America-at-large and its ongoing issues, even if it aired 21 years ago, finishing just before the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Whether it’s urban decay, corruption, or the failure of the American Dream, what we see in the show are things that existed in the 1960’s and still exist today in this post-industrial broken city.

You can follow this train of thought into the world of global politics, which is not as far away from modern media as I would like to admit. Specifically, we have seen a similar situation emerge out of the success story that is Singapore.

Singapore is like a mirror to any political persuasion that one might have, from which also can “validate” one’s own personal politics. The only real difference is that The Wire (and by extension the city of Baltimore, I say this because the city itself is largely the main character for the entire show) are used negatively, while Singapore is used positively.

If you want to see a thriving multi-ethnic, multicultural, post-colonial state, then you can look to Singapore. If you want to see somewhere that champions free-market capitalism, then you can see it there. If you want to see somewhere with a right-wing government that places a strong emphasis on law and order, not to mention the death penalty, it’s right there between Johor and the Riau Islands.

It remains fascinating to me that a tiny island, one which most people could never find on a map, has sparked such a massive debate on what they ‘see’ when they think of Singapore.

A nation with a population comparable to Lebanon or Palestine, yet more than a hundred leagues above such countries. A right-wing free-market paradise with the best public housing in the world. Those who see its publicly-funded universal healthcare system, one of the most efficient in the world, argue to the contrary. A super politically conservative nation that’s current president is an ethnic minority Muslim woman, racial success story, model minority, etc, etc.

Is Singapore perfect? Of course not. Is Singapore used to reflect general political beliefs about the world? Well, yes. Are a lot of these views correct? Yes and no.

Politically, socially, economically, a lot of different political views and philosophies are validated by the existence of Singapore. Fundamentally, Singapore and Baltimore have a comparable effect on the politically-minded.

Do people get murdered and addicted to drugs in both places? Yes. Are both places being led by an ethnic minority leader? Yes. How we view subjects often depends on the viewer itself, as much as the subject matter in play.

Despite this, Singapore has become a symbol of success whilst Baltimore has become a symbol of failure. Singapore is a model whilst Baltimore is a failure, and nobody wants to see their political beliefs reflected or “invalidated” by the latter.

What is revealing is how two completely different places are so similar, while being so completely poles apart. Everyone can infer whatever they want from either place or still be generally, albeit not exactly, correct.

In conclusion, I think that David Simon is largely correct about this idea of how we as viewers of a thing can be so vastly different, yet so widely validated by its existence. Maybe, it’s more revealing for us, as viewers, to look at places or thematic issues within the greater context of The Discourse, whether political or pop culture, and realize we can all be somewhat right, while also being largely wrong.

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Britain needs a Flat Tax

By Macaulay Nichol — 2 years ago

The concept of progressive taxation, once lauded as a pillar of leftist ideology, aimed to embody progressiveness by imposing a heavier tax burden on the wealthy. It was envisioned as a means to uphold public services, with the wealthiest individuals leading the chariot, paying heinous tax rates of up to 45%.

However, this philosophy ignores a critical flaw. As the belief that only the affluent bear this burden is far from reality, as shockingly, a staggering 32.32% of the tax-paying population find themselves trapped in higher tax brackets, far beyond a mere trickle.

With a significant 53.1% of the UK’s tax revenue directly fuelled from just 32.32% of the tax-paying population – or in other words, a mere 18.1% of the UK’s total population -, it becomes clear that we have overlooked the potential to invigorate our financial system, through putting more money in the hands of the people. By doing so, we could meet the demands of the free market and stimulate economic growth, something which UK markets have so greatly been missing out on.

While decreasing the top rates of tax may seem delusional given the economic situation and current governmental regime, there remains a possibility worth exploring—a flat tax system. In a society where absolute fairness is demanded, regardless of common sense, one must question why society would reject such a concept. A flat tax is undeniably the fairest and most equal method of taxation, aligning with the very meaning of the word ‘fair’:

“fair, just, equitable, impartial, unbiased, dispassionate, objective mean free from favor toward either or any side. fair implies a proper balance of conflicting interests. a fair decision. just implies an exact following of a standard of what is right and proper.” [Definition of the word ‘fair’ [Merriam-Webster, 2023]

Therefore I ask, why not give a flat tax a chance? It treats everyone equally, regardless of socioeconomic background, offering an undeniable sense of absolute fairness. However, doubts arise when considering its feasibility, more particularly its success within the UK. While some countries, such as Russia and Ukraine, have implemented a flat tax providing positive outcomes, it is essential to acknowledge that the UK’s financial sector could potentially be destabilized by such a system. The financial sector not only sustains thousands of jobs but also serves as the lifeblood of the nation’s capital. Nonetheless, this does not mean that a flat tax is impossible for the UK.

Russia’s flat tax rate of 13%, introduced in 2001, led to an increase in tax revenue, alongside improvements in overall tax compliance and efficiency, supported by OECD. This simplification of the tax system was hailed as a significant success, considering the many complex loopholes which existed before its introduction.

Regrettably so, implementing a 13% tax rate across the UK would not be so easy, especially with the UK public’s insistence on retaining the NHS; therefore, I would propose a higher rate, potentially around 20%, tooling HM Treasury to strike a balance between taxation and state spending.

Through adopting this alternative approach, we would aim to solidify the medium in-between sustaining key public services and ensuring maximum disposable income, which after all, would be better reinvested throughout the UK’s markets, taking away a degree of power from the state. Through this, the basic tax rate would also remain the same (at 20%), effectively eliminating the higher tax bands of 40% and 45%.

The math behind this proposal makes sense, as a flat tax rate of 20% would lead to a decrease of approximately £49 billion in tax revenue compared to our current progressive system, representing a decrease of only 6.26%.

While losing out on £49 billion may seem significant, it would position the UK as one of the most attractive nations for wealthy investors, providing a clear economic incentive as compared to other competing nations. Fostering and enabling a true post-Brexit economic plan, which would provide the investment the UK so desperately needs.

To put this into perspective, HS2 is set to cost between £72-£98 billion, whilst yearly funding for the NHS costs £160 billion; this further solidifies the point that £49 billion is a figure which the government could work with, an amount which would allow the UK economy to grow out of stagnation and thus establish an empire of investment, indeed signalling to the world that we are ‘actually’ open for business.

As Friedman argued and I alike, we should focus first on economic restoration, above all else, and what better way to do so than restimulate our markets with more disposable income to spend across the nation.

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‘The Bad Ethics of the Machine’ (Magazine Excerpt)

By Dinah Kolka — 2 years ago

With the recent debates surrounding AI improvement and the somewhat imminent AI takeover, I thought it would be interesting to return to the 20th century to analyse the debates on the rise of the machine and what we can learn from it today.

The early 20th century marked a time when the technological revolution was in full swing. With radio, mechanised factory work, and the First World War marked the new era of mechanised warfare, the intellectuals of the day were trying to make sense of this new modernised society. With the speed at which the changes occurred, people’s conception of reality was lagging.

The machine has narrowed spaces between people – the car allowed people to traverse space faster, and radio and telephone brought closer and practically instantaneous access to one’s family, friends, and acquaintances. The jobs were mechanised and people, as idealised by Marx, had the potential of being the ‘mere minders of the machine’. We are now entering another era. A time when Artificial Intelligence has the potential to replace most jobs. This is what Fisher in Post-Capitalist Desire has considered an opportunity for a post-scarcity society. But is this possible? Or rather should we heed Nick Land’s warning in Machinic Desire where he advised:

“Zaibatsus flip into sentience as the market melts to automatism, politics is cryogenized and dumped into the liquid-helium meatstore, drugs migrate onto neurosoft viruses, and immunity is grated-open against jagged reefs of feral AI explosion, Kali culture, digital dance-dependency, black shamanism epidemic, and schizolupic break-outs from the bin.” (Land, Fanged Noumena, 2011)

But let’s thrust away the shatters of this neo-automation and return to 1912, the time when this has only just begun.

Gilbert Gannan, in an article for Rhythm, wrote:

“Life is far too good and far too precious a thing to be smudged with mechanical morality, and fenced about with mechanical lies, and wasted on mechanical acquaintanceships when there are splendid friendships and lovely loves in which the imagination can find warm comradeship and adventure, lose and find itself, and obtain life, which may or may not be everlasting.” (Gannan, 1912)

In a quasi-perennial argument, he claims that mechanical morality and mechanism, in general, will never replace the real deal – the real concrete friendships and those we love.

This is an excerpt from “Mayday! Mayday!”. To continue reading, visit The Mallard’s Shopify.

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British Conservatism is Ignorant of History and has Forgotten its Past (Magazine Excerpt)

By Henry George — 2 years ago

This dictatorship of the present has been enabled by around thirty years of material abundance and relative peace following the conclusion to the Cold War. As John Keegan, the military historian put it, Britain and American can afford our universalist idealism and our fantasies of a benevolent world united and ameliorated through commerce, given our good geographical fortune of being separated from continents by bodies of water. We can forget that the tides of history have pulled whole cultures under in violence and war, instead indulging in an imagined progressive history, moving ever upwards towards ever greater enlightenment and prosperity.

Our leaders, if they deserve the name, have forgotten the lessons of history, because they do not know history. They do not know the fate of nations and peoples. They are ignorant of the importance of the landscape of the world and the moral landscape of the heart, and how the interplay between the two shapes the destinies of civilisation. It is not to engage in nostalgia for a vanished age that never existed to reckon with the fact that those who governed us in the past were well aware of life’s tragic nature, of the reality of necessity and the ultimate goal of the avoidance of anarchy, its own form of tyranny. Our leaders in the 19th and up to the mid-20th centuries had been baptised in the fires of historical experience and therefore knew that the maintenance of right order, in accordance with the good, true, and beautiful, was the precondition for any liberty. Utopian, romantic ideas of universal rights, spreading democracy and natural freedom were dangerous in their unbounded idealism, leading nations and government astray in the quest for moral perfection.

History never ended, in the sense Francis Fukuyama meant it. Hegel, and his disciple Alexander Kojeve, were both wrong in discerning a direction to human History that would see the creation of the perfect liberal democratic regime and state of being in our world. History is the story of the deeds men and women do and accomplishments achieved together as clans, tribes, cities, empires, and nations. It is a story that will only end at the end of all things. Awareness of the living past reminds us that our lives are part of the weave of time, stretching back across the years, our own lives and the actions we take adding the threads that continue into the future.

This is an excerpt from “Mayday! Mayday!”. To continue reading, visit The Mallard’s Shopify.

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An Opportunity from Nothing – View from the National Conservatism Conference

By The Mallard — 2 years ago

Strolling down Marsham street, past the Itsu and Pret a Manger, a funny looking man in a top hat flanked by grey haired beret wearing old women scream at the top of their lungs whilst recording a group of depressed looking individuals clad in ill-fitting suits who walk past them and into the Emmanuel Centre. Loud renditions of ‘Ode to Joy’ blare from the portable speakers powered from a generator in a white van plastered in EU flags.

You might think, for at least a moment, that I am describing a snapshot from 2017. That these individuals are making plans for Britain’s ‘strategy moving forward as we leave the EU’, and that Mister Bray would at least have a reason to be shouting ‘bollocks to Brexit’ at the passers-by. Instead, the year is 2023, Brexit is barely being mentioned at all inside the walls of the conference room, and no one is quite sure what he – or they – are there for.

That seems to be an outstanding theme of the conference: uncertainty. No one at all seemed to be able to pin down exactly what it was that they stood for. A plethora of rambling speeches about Edmund Burke, multiple references to ‘Le contrat sociale’, continuous struggle sessions against the rotting corpse of Margret Thatcher (who seemingly still operates behind the shadows in every corner of government), and yet nothing new or interesting was being said, just vague topics which they knew everyone would sort of agree with anyway.

Worse still, a lot of the high-profile attendees (especially the MP’s who bothered to turn up) didn’t really seem to know what the event was for. A favourite moment of mine was when, at the very opening of the event, Yoram Hazony and Jacob Rees-Mogg accidentally went ‘head-to-head’ in debating the finer points of the corn laws and the benefits of wheat tariffs in their separate speeches… absolutely thrilling stuff which really tackled… THE ISSUES.

Another devastating moment was when Suella Braverman took the stage to talk about her vision for Britain. In actuality, it was a 25-minute party political broadcast about why you should just ignore the last decade of Tory government and still trust her to ‘stop the boats’. It’s always so upsetting when you listen to actual real politicians – high ranking ministers, no less – who act like opinion piece columnists. The looks on the faces of the attendees during her talk said it all: “YOU ARE A MINISTER OF STATE, YOU HAVE CONTROL OVER THE HOME OFFICE, DO SOMETHING!”

No leadership, no courage, no unified vision. This is what the supposedly ‘Real Right Wing’ looks like for Britain at the moment. No figure appeared to give any sense of direction or policy; they would much rather ‘hash out the arguments’ and ‘make their case’ instead. This is not how you win elections or drive the mechanisms of state, this is how you gain followers on twitter or get a graduate columnist job at [MAGAZINE_NAME.COM].

Despite my negativity, I actually think that this presents a wonderful opportunity for those with more dissenting ideas on what the future of ‘national conservatism’ means in Great Britain. “NatCon” doesn’t really know what it seeks to be and has no defined leadership, so why not show it the way? Instead of feeling like a ‘captured institution’, it felt like a proto-organisation which can’t quite put its finger on what it is yet. Instead of allowing it to lean on the boring and decaying figures of the present, a fascinating vacuum is opening up to swallow anyone with the boldness to make clear cut statements on what they wish to see as the future of National Conservatism. Doing *that* would be a lot easier than any sort of ‘Tory Entryism’ which the generation before us sought to complete.

At the very least, the conference was an excellent opportunity for networking. It was nice to see a format more similar to CPAC than Tory Party Conference, with many MPs, intellectuals, and journalists more than happy to sit and chat with you outside of the main hall instead of listening to the lectures. This was genuinely enjoyable and made the experience a lot more worthwhile. I sincerely hope that more events like that can take place in future. 

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A Sensible Proposal (Magazine Excerpt)

By Samuel Martin — 2 years ago

Britain is in decline. This much is true. Nobody would dare suggest otherwise – unless, of course, they wish to attest to pure ignorance or twisted glee.

Given this, we are very much in need of sweeping reform. Yet reform is not the product of drawn-out pontification. Ultimately, it is the sum of action: action moulded by proposition.

As such, dear reader, allow me to do just that. May I present to you: A Sensible Proposal.

Shrink the cabinet to its 5 or 6 most capable members, empower ministers to fire civil servants at will, and slash the civil service by at least 75% – it’s not technically Moldbuggian RAGE (Retire All Government Employees), but it’s of the same spirit.

Take the Civil Service Code and throw it on the regulatory bonfire, along with every obstructive procurement rule preventing us from becoming the AI capital of Europe.

Implement mandatory IQ tests for all new civil service hires and scrap the counter-intuitive stakeholder model of policy-making; ensuring government bureaucrats literally, not figuratively, live in The Real World.

Double the length of every sentence, especially for crimes which make civilised society impossible (murder, rape, theft, schmonking weed, etc.). Freedom, if nothing else, should mean the ability to go from A to B without being mugged, molested, or murdered.

Repeat offenders should receive at least one of the following: an extended sentence, a life sentence, chemical castration, or the death penalty. Tough on Crime, Tough on The Causes of Crime.

Abolish the Communication Act and its statutory predecessors to make speech free again. The less time the plod can spend harassing you for tweeting facts and logic, the more time they’ll dedicate to brutalising groomers of our nation’s children, vandals of our nation’s heritage, and abusers of animals.

Furthermore, abolish the Supreme Court and bring back the Law Lords – Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, eat your precious ‘modernising’ hearts out! 

Speaking of which, if we can hand out titles to cronies, half-wits, and dodgy sorts, I’m sure we can take them away – put some actual aristocrats in Parliament; of spirit in the Commons and of blood in the Lords.

Abolish the TV licence fee and replace it with nothing. That or broadcast stuff worth watching – like reruns of Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation series or Spy x Family.

This is an excerpt from “Mayday! Mayday!”. To continue reading, visit The Mallard’s Shopify.

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Just Stop Crime!

By Samuel Martin — 2 years ago

Well, they finally got one. At long last, the notoriously useless Met has mustered the willpower to put down the biscuit tin and arrest someone worthwhile.

Too bad he got a measly fine, though.

Bacari Ogarro, also known as Mizzy, is a now infamous “Content Creator” (translation: obnoxiously unemployed) courtesy of his TikToks.

Ogarro’s most well-known ‘work’ includes stealing an elderly woman’s pet dog, threatening to kill random people, harassing women at night and in public places, trespassing into people’s homes and cars, and destroying books in local libraries.

Light-hearted stuff, for sure.

In a serious country, a viral Twitter thread and an online campaign wouldn’t be necessary to get the police to do its job; the modus operandi of any police force should be to keep anti-social types like Ogarro away from civilised society.

Unfortunately, as we all know, Modern Britain is not a serious country. Theft, harrassment, and trespassing are defacto legal, hence why Ogarro was able to post himself engaging in all three without consequence until a few days ago.

Many have remarked that Ogarro’s actions, especially waltzing into someone’s private property, wouldn’t end so well in the United States.

There’s some truth to this. Although any successful attempt at protecting one’s livelihood, even in the United States, carries the non-zero risk of media-assisted backlash – blubbering processions of apologists, resentfully insisting that a serial criminal was actually a sweet baby boy, and other pathetic delusions, potentially interspersed with some Peaceful Protests.

That said, those telling Ogarro to count his blessings overlook the fact he’s self aware:

“I’m a Black male doing these things and that’s why there’s such an uproar on the internet.”

“I always know outrage is going to happen. I know exactly what I’m doing and the consequences of my actions.”

Ogarro is likely aware that someone of his profile is disproportionately involved (or, perhaps to his ethnonarcissistic mind, racistly perceived to be involved) in gang violence in London, and understands how destructive it can be for people to behave as if this is the case, especially when threatened with violence!

Consequently, he’s unafraid to creep on random women in the early hours or threaten to kill men in broad daylight in pursuit of viral content.

Of course, all of this flies in this face of creating a high-trust society.

I’d like to imagine that any civilised society would respond to snatching an elderly woman’s canine companion – possibly her only companion – especially for the sake of clout, with a swift and painful execution.

Seeing that little dog, distressed and helpless, beholden to the self-aborbed malice of a TikTok prankster, makes it impossible to oppose death squads patrolling the streets, violently exploding the head of any pet-snatcher that crosses their peripheral vision.

After all, those that are cruel to animals will almost certainly be cruel to humans.

As Schopenhauer says, compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.

It demonstrates an unrepentant lack of mercy or perspective.

Indeed, Ogarro’s more recent comments, made in an interview with Piers Morgan, show a total lack of perspective.

“This whole public uproar just makes me laugh because people are getting hurt over something that didn’t happen to them and that’s how I see it as.”

“But I wasn’t threatened with physical violence. But I didn’t have my dog stolen. But I did have breakfast this morning.”

Of course, and again, unfortunately, Modern Britain is too scared, incompetent, and unimaginative to pursue the purity of justice.

Instead, it prefers to oppress those who try to resist wanton mistreatment.

The backlash against Just Stop Oil’s recent protest is a contemporaneous example.

Already under economic strain, compounded by the unwillingness of the political class to build energy infrastructure, commuters didn’t take kindly to being met with a road blockade of eco-activists.

The commuters attempted to clear them out, but were swiftly mandhandled, and eventually arrested, by police officers – all of whom were happy to let the activists to create an obstruction, despite their insistence that they were “dealing with it”.

Given this, it’s unsurprising that MPs are using Ogarro’s rise to prominence as an excuse to hurry through the Online Safety Bill.

Putting aside the excessive and anarcho-tyrannic censorship contained within, the perverse implication is that TikTok’s “platforming” of Ogarro’s behaviour is more egregious than the behaviour itself.

“I’m cool with theft, intimidation, and trespassing, just do it in private” is as lolbert as it is psychologically revealing.

If the public doesn’t know about a problem, then the problem doesn’t exist. No wonder Hancock was so prepared to cheat on his wife!

In this case, politicians can’t be bothered (or don’t know how) to tackle crime, so they opt (or are forced) to pursue the pretence of tackling crime.

If Ogarro can point out the basic fact that our laws are superficial and weak, why can’t any of our politicians?

Condescending advertisements – “Mates Don’t Let Mates Be Perverts” – doesn’t prevent women from being harassed by sociopaths on the train, especially when bystanders know they’ll get into trouble if they intervene.

Politics is bloated with Very Important Very Nuanced Terribly Complicated Conversations; Conversations upon Conservations! Conversations we’re Having and Conversations we Should Be Having.

Ogarro? Very problematic. Very problematic, indeed. That’s why it’s important to ensure that he’s part of this conservation No Longer.
That’s right. You’re nicked, sunshine! Yeah. I BANISH YOU from The App for your overt and continuously criminal behaviour which you do literally In Real Life.

Ah, another tinkering twist of the ol’ managerial-therapeutic apparatus never fails! GOD. We are a Sensible country.

No! For the love of God, no! Enough of the limp-wristed half-measures and cowardly indirectness, enough of the mate-mate-mateing and the PR voodoo.

Clear the smoke, smash the mirrors, and unleash the cops; restore the foundational principle of governance: Just Stop Crime!

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Anti-white racism must be called out

By Joe Baron — 2 years ago

According to another self-identified ‘victim’ of racial oppression – who, despite this oppression, uses what can only be described as her privileged platform to spew racist bile at the supposed cruelty of the white population- the Royal Family are ‘pale and stale’, not to mention ‘institutionally racist’. If any white person were to write such toxic libel about, say, an African royal family, they’d be sacked on the spot. So why does Yasmin Alibhai-Brown get a free pass?

It really is dangerous and divisive stuff. In her latest vitriolic diatribe against the institution that, for all its faults, is supported by the majority of the population, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, in last week’s iNews, essentially accused its members of being too white. In doing so she was agreeing with the ‘brave’ Bridgerton star Adjoh Andoh, who said exactly that on the privileged platform of national television during the Coronation proceedings. 

So, make no mistake, we’ve got two very powerful members of the cultural elite brazenly and unapologetically aiming racist abuse at the white majority. Imagine if the boot were on the other foot.

What if a white English person – or an ‘Englander’ as Ms. Alibhai-Brown so disdainfully refers to the indigenous population – were to say that the cast of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air lacked diversity, or that black footballers were over-represented in the premier league? Or, perhaps, that ethnic minorities are now disproportionately represented on national television, particularly in TV advertisements? It’s unthinkable.

If someone were to slip up and criticise all that so-called ‘positive discrimination’ we’re unwillingly and submissively subjected to these days, we’d be pilloried and viciously harried from public life.

I fear for the future. Divisive race-baiters like Ms. Alibhai-Brown are bullying and forcing through irrevocable change whilst goading and ridiculing the white majority (81.7 per cent of the population, according to the last Census). This can only end badly.

Ms. Alibhai-Brown and Ms. Andoh aren’t the only ones.  Look at Diane Abbott MP.

In her toxic and vindictive worldview, cultivated through a prism of paranoia and feelings of perpetual victimhood, revenge against the white majority is the only remedy for the historical injustices suffered by black Britons. 

Her latest attack on whites – during which, so warped by CRT-inspired notions of racism, she couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge the indisputable fact that white people, including Jews, Irish immigrants and Travellers, can be victims of racism too – is only the latest example of her overt anti-white as well as anti-Semitic racism.

In 1996 she labelled white Finnish girls unsuitable to work as nurses in her local hospital. She claimed that, coming from Scandinavia, they would not have ‘met a black person before’. In 2010, after contentiously sending her son to a private school – having spent years railing against them – she defended her decision by implying that white mothers do not love their children as much as their Afro-Caribbean counterparts. 

In 2012, moreover, she tweeted: “White people love to play ‘divide and rule’. We should not play their game.”

It couldn’t be clearer: Diane Abbott is a racist as well as an unconscionable hypocrite. She is the very definition of a champagne socialist: Do as I say, not as I do.

Let’s hope her latest faux pas leads to her permanent expulsion from the Labour Party. I wouldn’t hold my breath, though. Racism against the white majority has become acceptable. And its most bellicose exponents are awarded with the most visible and influential pulpits to preach their poison and satisfy their lust for vengeance.

Their hate and demagoguery must be challenged.

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