I remember Barry Humphries’ delightful invention, ‘Dame Edna Everage’, and her standard start to answer contentious questions, whether concerning her late husband, Norm, her son, Kenny, or any other sensitive matter pertaining to her past and ‘real life’.
‘I have pondered this, deeply, and I’d like to say…..’ before narrating a humorous and entertaining few lines, at the end of which the shroud of mystery remained delightfully intact and prepared for many more seasons of conjecture.
It was very clever and left us all waiting for the definitive stories on Norm and Kenny. Norm’s serious prostate condition and Kenny’s talent as a hairdresser who never got married were gradually revealed over many years.
Witty, planned, and structured comedy which was sustained skillfully to get the best long term comic result. Barry Humphries was a genius.
We have a similar, albeit less amusing set of circumstances which face us today and we’re being led by somebody who is bent upon avoiding the fundamental questions and won’t offer any valid answers.
This isn’t ‘witty, planned, structured comedy’. It’s a serious and planned strategy to undermine the confidence of the British electorate on a number of levels.
Sir Turnalot, not a genius, wants to ‘ponder’, and he wants us all to ‘ponder’. He wants us to ‘ponder’ Amazon selling knives to under 18-year-olds, as if knives may only be bought online by murderous lunatics who can’t be bothered to walk down the road to the nearest supermarket.
As Sir Turnalot’s re-tread Home Secretary, Yvette Balls, has told us, ‘It’s Amazon’s fault for delivering the knife to Axel Rudakubana.’ A breathtakingly cretinous observation from somebody who really shouldn’t be allowed out without a nanny, much less be put in charge of the Home Office.
He wants us to ‘ponder’ the proposition that any, and all, protests arising from the murder of three very young girls in Southport last July were entirely a function of an organised ‘far-right’ in this country, assisted and promoted by an organisation called the English Defence League, EDL, and a bloke known as Tommy Robinson.
The fact that the EDL ceased to exist some 10 years ago doesn’t matter. Tommy Robinson wasn’t in the UK and there’s no evidence whatsoever that he had anything to do with the protests.
Channel 4 has, unsurprisingly, ‘discovered’ a putative British Nazi Party which appears to consist a few tattooed fat blokes who meet, in secret, in a pub. Sounds like a case for ‘Prevent’? You may bet on this. The idiots in question are on borrowed time and will be soon doing hard time in choky for saying nasty things to each other, in a pub.
Let’s ‘ponder’ a while and consider what we’re looking at here and how we’ve arrived at this abysmal state of affairs.
At the risk of repeating myself, again, and yet again, may I remind fellow commenters of Gordon Brown’s attempt to build a modern-day ‘client vote’ which would guarantee the perpetual election of Labour governments?
By diverting a colossal proportion of tax revenues, and borrowing, into funding increased numbers of employees in the state public sector, third sector, and trades union dominated sectors, Gordon Brown planned his succession from Blair ACL, soon after1997, if not earlier.
Let us never forget that he came within an ace of succeeding in 2010.
The lessons from this narrow failure have been learned, by Labour, over the 14 years since Brown was edged out of his planned victory.
Let me be very clear. Sir ‘Turnalot’ Starmer may look like a weak, vacillating, and inconsequential sort of leader, and, in most respects, this is a good description.
It must, however, be understood that he is planning to make changes to our electoral rules through legislation, which will determine the outcome of the next General Election in his party’s favour.
Put simply:
1. He will continue to expand and favour the Public Sector, thus guaranteeing a minimum of 7.0 million votes.
2. He will seek to extend the franchise to non-citizens resident in the UK - another couple of million votes, at least.
3. He will legislate for the UK General Elections a replica of the SNP Scottish Government’s legislation to extend the franchise to 16-year-olds, thus adding another couple of million votes.
If you follow this rationale, you may see how the next General Election in 2029 is likely to go. This government has, already, decided that it’s not going to lose in 2029, 2034, 2039, or ever again.
The arguments/debates, and petty issues which currently separate the bulk of the Conservative Party membership, and its supporters, and that of the Reform Party membership, and supporters, appear to me to be utterly trivial and self-defeating when presented with this thesis, of which I’m utterly convinced.
It’s getting close to a time for building, and achieving, one solid electoral massive national vote which opposes the Labour Party’s plans for hegemony in perpetuity, because this is what is being presented to us, if only we could all see this.
I’m a cynical optimist. I have beliefs and experience, which lead me to expect the best in our fellow citizens. I also know that most citizens couldn’t give a ‘Pinch of piping-hot pelican shit’, to quote an old chum from Australia, about the government until its actions hit their bank accounts. Situation normal.
I do, quite sincerely, believe that we’re running out of time and that the legitimate opposition parties on the right to this Labour government must consolidate, somehow, before early in 2026 if they’re going to be able to mount a purposed, viable, and sustainable national campaign in 2028 before the General Election in 2029.
The writing isn’t just on the wall. It’s all over the place, and it’s in bright, fluorescent colours.
Those who can’t see this are choosing to not do so. Those who do see this and fail to act are either conniving at their own demise, or simply securing their own public-funded, taxpayer-supported, future.
The contention that Britain is a class-based society still resonates with some validity. I learned how this was classified in socio-economic groups as part of my degree about 200 years ago. Bs, C1s and C2s were the targets for mass marketing/advertising budgets.
During one seminar conducted by my dear old friend David Lesser, we were asked where we would each put ourselves in the conventional class strata, from upper class, upper middle class, lower middle class, to working class. The survey, of only 18 students was done on the premise that the responses were anonymous and submitted confidentially in sealed envelopes.
I was astonished to discover how many ‘upper middle class’ students were on my course, and how many students whose parents were working class had already shrugged off the burdens of their birthrights.
To be fair, we had two upper-middle class chaps on the course, neither of whom would have ever needed to buy their own furniture, as the saying goes. The rest were a mix of types, most of whom were first generation at university but from farming families not short of a few dollars, along with a girl from Hong Kong whose father never travelled in Economy, and Business Class hadn’t yet been invented.
I eschewed the limited descriptions and, apparently uniquely, wrote ‘middle-middle class’, which felt about right. I’d weighed up my parents, and grandparents, and the little knowledge I had of their antecedents.
I’ll close this meander through contemporary politics, socio-economics, and the many confusions which assail our prospects and sensibilities by proposing my latest thesis:
There are now, principally, only two big classes in British society, apart from the aristocratic and oligarchic, and they are: Those who work in the Public Sector with guaranteed job security and unfunded, taxpayer-paid index linked pensions, and; The rest of us.
Ponder this!
My apologies to those who may have read a part of this piece in a comment I threw in some time ago. Our Editor asked me if I might build on this to fill more space. Alas, I couldn’t resist the temptation.