Month: January 2025

Call me a latent Luddite, but I wonder what will happen when automation makes millions of blue-collar workers redundant.

I realise that similar concerns were voiced when the first machines were installed to turn manufacturies into factories. The concerns led to action, and back in the early 20^th century some French labourers gave rise to the word ‘sabotage’ by throwing their wooden shoes (sabots) into the works.

And what do you know, they needn’t have worried. After the first growth pains, industrial productivity increased no end, new factories, even new industries, popped up like mushrooms after an August rain, and blue-collar workers became relatively prosperous rather than absolutely impoverished.

Those who used to make candles began to produce electric bulbs, wheelwrights and carters learned how to make cars, and chaps who were wizards at building windmills switched to constructing power stations (they may now have to switch back, but that’s a separate conversation).

Yet Bertie Russell stated, correctly, that something that happened in the past is no guarantee that it’ll happen in the future. The thought is generally sound, although the illustration he offered was slightly bizarre: the sun, he said, may still not rise tomorrow even if it rose yesterday.

But yes, similar fears have been voiced and allayed in the past. However, the automation revolution may not be as benign as its industrial precursor, which actually wasn’t excessively benign.

If hundreds of workers toiling at a conveyor belt can be replaced with a couple of computer geeks adept at pushing the right buttons, we are talking about eliminating, rather than rechannelling, blue-collar employment. And, contrary to liberal wishful thinking, not everyone can become a computer geek.

There exist millions of people not endowed with the mental faculties required to perform in an economy defined by information technology, robotic automation and artificial intelligence. We may all be created equal in the eyes of God and the US Declaration of Independence, but we aren’t all created equally intelligent.

One difference between now and then is the speed at which change occurs. Thanks to tremendous technological advances, what used to take years now takes months, weeks or even days. So even assuming, counterintuitively, that millions of blue-collar workers can retrain to be systems analysts, they may not have enough time at their disposal.

Computers can now fly planes, navigate ships, drive trains and even cars, with some gadgets easily performing tasks that used to keep thousands employed. Where will those thousands go, now that their skills are no longer needed?

Globalisation is another factor that exacerbates this problem. Manufacturing industries, those that tend to employ muscle, move to places where muscle is cheap, outsourcing production to Third World countries.

After all, we can’t survive by just selling software packages to one another. Someone has to make things we use every day, and the natural tendency is for manufacturers to look for those who can make those things cheaply.

That puts more pressure on blue-collar employment – even assuming workers could learn how to make widgets by operating robots, they’ll still come up empty if those widgets are now made in China or Brazil. Moreover, shifting manufacturing to Third World countries creates a strategic risk.

Some of those countries may like our money but not necessarily us. They can become, or side with, our enemies at the drop of a bomb. At least that would solve the problem of blue-collar workers – they could all go into battle, thereby keeping their numbers down to a sensible level.

Such doomsday scenarios apart, there is no denying that accelerated automation will produce crowds of people passing over from employment to the tender mercies of the state. The innately tyrannical modern state wouldn’t mind: the more people depend on it for their livelihood, the more powerful will the state become. And rapacious appetite for ever-growing power is a feature of all modern states without exception.

Here the interests of the state overlap with the urges of our exceedingly work-shy masses. We depend on millions of migrants doing menial jobs because British people don’t want to do them. They’d rather draw the King’s shilling by malingering and claiming disability.

Thus, burgeoning automation may well become an instrument of state tyranny, general social malaise, corrupted morality and reduced national security. And now come the first words I think British babies, destined to become pragmatic adults, learn in their cribs: so what are we going to do about it?

I’m not going to equivocate about this. My reply is resolute and unequivocal: I haven’t a clue.

If the history of technology teaches one lesson, it’s that, if things can be done, they will be done – regardless of the attendant concerns. We’ll continue to automate and computerise every step we take in life, even if it means producing a net loss in the areas I’ve outlined.

Other than that, I really have no answers. But I do have lots of questions, and I count on those better-versed in the relevant disciplines to enlighten me. Let’s just say that so far such questions haven’t been answered, and they aren’t even often asked.

That’s a pity because problems of catastrophic proportions may well be looming. We may be automating our way to disaster – and I did tell you I’m a closet Luddite.

What else can they possibly be if they show that foreign nationals are 3.5 times more likely to be arrested for sex crimes than Britons born and bred?

Obviously, no progressive person can think that disparity is there because foreigners commit more crimes. And in any case, all such persons know that our police are institutionally racist.

When they arrest a foreigner, especially one from a racial minority, the poor chap is probably innocent. That’s why arrested and guilty are two different things, and, when it comes to minorities, never the twain shall meet.

This attitude is so dominant that neither the Home Office nor the police can do their job properly. How is it possible, for example, to establish proper admission and deportation policies without Parliament knowing the breakdown of all criminal offenders by nationality, visa and asylum status?

Yet both major parties have steadfastly refused to collect and release such statistics, and I did tell you there’s no fundamental differences between the Tories and Labour. In fact, the last time such a proposal was thrown out was in the run-up to the general election, when Rishi Sunak, nominally a Tory, rejected a backbench amendment to his Sentencing Bill.

God forbid he’d undermine his woke credentials just as the nation was about to go to the polls. It has to be said that Sunak’s wokery didn’t make a Labour landslide less imminent and possibly made it more so. Even worse, neither he nor the Tory Party is likely to learn their lesson. Going woke is like riding a tiger: you can’t really stop.

The league table of sex crimes I espied in The Telegraph is the first of its kind. It shows the leadership position of not just foreigners in general but – and you know how much it pains me to say this – Muslims in particular. In fact, of the top 10 sexually criminal nations only the Congo is partially Muslim. The other nine are solidly Islamic.

Albanians lead the league by a wide margin, with also-ran Afghanis trailing far behind, closely followed by Iraqis, Algerians and Somalis. Even assuming that some of those arrested Muslims are pristinely innocent, a certain statistical bias is still hard to ignore. It requires something HMG is unlikely to provide: an explanation.

One such would be that Muslims are naturally more virile than native-born Britons, so much so that they find it hard to contain their rampant libido. After all, when it comes to arrests for all crimes, foreigners outscore indigenous Britons only by two to one, not 3.5 to one as they do with sex offences. Thus, their sex criminality is much greater than their criminality in general.

However, the same groups lead the way in overall crimes as well. For example, in 2021, twenty per cent of all Albanian migrants were arrested for various crimes, which is pretty good going. By comparison, the corresponding figure for British suspects is a meagre 1.2 per cent.

Nevertheless, I tend to reject out of hand any biological, racial or ethnic explanations of social trends. This isn’t to say I don’t think they have a role to play, but if they do, it’s only a walk-on. The star of the show is culture, understood in the broadest possible sense.

To put this assumption to a test, one should try to find out whether Islamic culture predisposes men to take shortcuts to women’s affections. In the West, sex crimes transgress against the prevalent understanding of a woman as an autonomous human equal (in my marriage actually superior) to a man. “Neither male nor female,” wrote St Paul, and he wasn’t talking about transsexuality.

Even the most cursory familiarity with the Koran, the foundation of Islamic culture, shows that the status of a woman there is somewhat different. For example, that holy book explains that most dwellers of hell are women, who are a source of seduction and evil.

Women should be beaten if their husbands feel such punishment is merited, and men disciplining their wives in that manner aren’t accountable to God. A woman isn’t allowed to seek divorce except in extreme cases. A man, however, can divorce his wife simply by three utterances to that effect. In case of divorce, a wife’s share of the assets is half of a man’s.

Did I say “a woman”? Actually, men are allowed to have up to four wives, which encourages seeking variety as the spice of amorous life. And here we begin to touch on the cultural aspects of Islam that are relevant to my subject today.

Islam’s approach to sex in and outside marriage is rather different from ours. For example, if a man wants sex, his woman isn’t allowed to say no. If she does, she’ll be cursed by angels. “Not tonight, I’ve got a headache,” just isn’t part of Islamic folklore.

Men are allowed to take child brides, following the example of their religion’s founder. They are also allowed to rape captives and slaves without risking God’s (or man’s) punishment. A bride’s silence is always interpreted as her consent to marriage, which you must agree is a long way away from our current idea of consent. And so on, ad infinitum.

None of this predetermines criminal behaviour of Muslim men towards women. In fact, I know quite a few Muslims and I can vouch for their innocence of any such offences. However, a man weaned on such a spiritual diet must be statistically more likely to treat a woman as merely an object, whose human value is circumscribed by her sexuality.

And statistics is what we are talking about here, relative not absolute values, large groups not individuals. Hence, league tables of crime shouldn’t determine each individual case of a man seeking immigrant status in Britain. But it would be foolhardy to disregard such data altogether or, even worse, refuse to collect them.

P.S. Case in point: When German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, visited Syria the other day, her image is deliberately blurred in the official photograph released by the new, victorious government. She is undeniably a woman, which just won’t do.

I’m happy for the Americans. Their country must have so few problems that the president-elect and his right hand can redirect their boundless energy to helping Britain out of her morass.

This isn’t to say no morass exists, nor that Trump and Musk aren’t making good points. In fact, I agree with most of them. However, both gentlemen routinely overstep the fine line separating valid criticism from meddling in the affairs of a sovereign country.

At the moment, their two-prong attack focuses on Britain’s energy policy and Keir Starmer’s record as Director of Crown Prosecutions, both truly appalling. The two critics seem to be dividing the workload: Trump is at the moment talking about energy and Musk about Sir Keir.

The president-elect responded to the news that Apache, a US oil company, would cease production in the UK because of the “financial impact of the energy profits levy”. Indeed, when Boris Johnson was PM, he and his chancellor Rishi Sunak raised the windfall tax on oil companies from 35 to 38 per cent.

This goes to show yet again, if any further proof is necessary, that there is no substantial divide between our two main parties: both are woke and Left-wing, if perhaps to different extents. Both are committed to the economic suicide going by the name of net zero.

Now, Trump may be all sorts of things, but woke he isn’t. That’s why I’d happily sign my own name under his message to Britain: “The UK is ­making a very big mistake. Open up the North Sea. Get rid of the windmills!”

However, Trump and I are different in more ways than I can count, but the one relevant here is that I am a British subject, and he is a foreign politician. Trump is entitled to his opinion, and in this case I happen to agree with it, but he isn’t entitled to talk to Britain the way he undoubtedly talks to his flunkeys.

There is an element of blackmail here as well, because Trump knows that Britain desperately needs a trade deal with the US. At the very least, Starmer craves an exemption from the blanket import tariffs Trump is planning to impose because, if he goes through with that idea, it will cost Britain billions.

Now, that idea is wrong, almost as much so as Britain’s shutting down North Sea drilling. But Trump has the power of his convictions, right and wrong ones alike, and he is unlikely to back down. This gives him leverage over Britain, but it still gives him no right to talk to us in the peremptory tone of a blackmailer.

There are more important things than money, national pride being one of them. Starmer would be within his rights to tell Trump – in the idiom the latter favours – to shove his deal and his directives where the sun don’t shine.

Musk also has a point when attacking Starmer’s record as DCP. Starmer, Musk said, “was complicit in the rape of Britain when he was head of Crown Prosecution for six years. Starmer must go and he must face charges for his complicity in the worst mass crimes in British history.”

I agree with this point, but not with Musk’s right to make it publicly. He is no longer just a private citizen with a huge capital and an ego to match. From 20 January onwards he’ll also have a key role to play in the US administration, and it’s outrageous that he sees fit to demand criminal prosecution of the prime minister of a foreign country and America’s staunchest ally.

Indirectly, Musk also took a swipe at Nigel Farage, who is the ally within an ally. In his pilgrimage zeal, Farage has turned Mar-a-Lago into an equivalent of the Ferney of 18^th century progressives, the Santiago di Compostela of Christians and the Mecca of Muslims.

However, for all his sycophancy to Trump and Musk (who is waving a $100 million bait before Nigel’s nose), Farage is a British patriot. There is a line he won’t cross, and his rebuke of Musk is exemplary.

In his own political evolution, Musk has been swinging from left to right depending on which way the economic wind was blowing. At the moment, he has swung as far right as it’s possible to go without having to don a brown shirt. All marginal parties and individuals in other countries are his friends and beneficiaries, and unfortunately it’s not just the benign Reform Party that he patronises.

Musk also supports Germany’s AfD, which is desperately trying to downplay its neo-Nazi roots in search of political respectability. And Musk’s British pet is Tommy Robinson, the darling of the MAGA crowd currently serving an 18-month term for contempt of court, the latest of his numerous criminal convictions.

In spite of his touching concern for British legality, Musk demanded that Robinson, a former member of the British National Party and the founder of its successor, the English Defence League, be released from prison.

If Musk counted on Farage’s support, he miscalculated. The ungrateful would-be recipient of Musk’s largesse said: “Anyone who looks at my history will know that I did more to defeat the BNP than anybody in British politics. I have always forbade them to be members of Ukip, the Brexit Party and Reform. That includes a certain Mr Robinson. He is a serial criminal … he seems to want to launch a holy war. I don’t. Elon Musk makes his own mind up. He is the high priest of free speech. He is entitled to those views.”

His ignorance of the Past Participle form of the verb ‘to forbid’ emphasises Mr Farage’s credentials as Trump’s friend. However, other than that, he is absolutely right.

Farage also put his finger, perhaps inadvertently, on another point worth making. Musk, a recent convert to the right end of politics and hence exhibiting a neophyte’s zeal, along with, more important, Trump, seems to be putting together an international anti-woke crusade.

There are some indications that such seeds may fall on fertile soil, what with voters in various countries showing signs of exasperation with tyrannical woke politics and indoctrination. The US herself, Argentina, Italy, several Eastern European countries, Germany, to some extent France are all leaning that way.

However, voters are fickle, and they tend to display as much spinal elasticity as Mr Musk himself. Let’s not forget that the same US electorate that commendably voted for Trump this time around had twice elected Obama and came close to electing Harris.

No anti-woke, anti-Left campaign will succeed unless it’s conducted with tact and discernment. Tact is demonstrably lacking in the pronouncements made by both Trump and Musk, and I doubt it’ll ever creep into their statements later – neither man has the right psychological makeup for it.

But discernment is even more important. Looking from across the ocean, MAGA chaps may not spot the difference between serious politicians like Farage and fascisoid scum like Robinson – or between, say, German conservative parties and the AfD.

If they lump them all together into the same campaign, that’s how the masses will perceive them. That will compromise the whole movement and arm subversive Lefties with enough ammunition to fight a successful rear-guard action.

The best way for Trump, Musk et al. to shake other countries out of their Left-wing torpor isn’t to be rude and bossy to them, but to turn America into a glittering success story by implementing conservative policies across the board. That will provide an example others may find difficult not to follow.

Conversely, an attempt to bully HMG into submission is guaranteed to cause a negative reaction among Britons, including many of those who detest the Starmer gang. My advice in the title above stands: mind your own business, chaps. And turn your own business into a triumph.

It’s a general rule supported by much empirical evidence. When it comes to schooling, conservatives educate, socialists indoctrinate.

Since socialists are in charge of education in Britain and just about everywhere else in the West, our schools keep churning out ignoramuses who have the hysterical power of their hairbrained convictions.

At least Tory governments try to reverse this tendency, but their attempts are invariably smashed against the stonewall of teachers, unions, pressure groups and school administrators. Most of these were educated at various hatcheries of wokery, to which they pledged lifelong allegiance. They use their strength in numbers and vocal chords to defeat any encroachments on woke probity.

I’m happy to report that this divisive confrontation is now over. Perfect harmony exists between Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson and the groups I’ve mentioned. They are prepared to launch their combined assault on what’s left of British education.

To that end, Miss Phillipson has set out to change the national curriculum. She wants to “breathe new life into our outdated curriculum to make it more diverse”. It should reflect “the diversity of our society” and indoctri… sorry, I mean teach, youngsters to “appreciate the diversity of Britain.”

Some subjects, currently “mono-cultural”, are set to be “decolonised” in order to “embed anti-racist and decolonised approaches in the curriculum”. Let’s hear it for the “inclusive curricula that reflect diverse authors, cultures and perspectives.”

As the founder and chairman of the Charles Martel Society for Multiculturalism, I wholeheartedly support this approach to education. Indeed, if our schools can only teach youngsters one thing, it should definitely be how to appreciate and admire the diversity of our society. In fact, that indeed does seem to be the only thing Miss Phillipson would like to teach in her new curriculum.

However, it pains me to say that she has her work cut out for her. For example, it’s not immediately apparent how things like physics or mathematics can be twisted… sorry, I mean improved, in light of the new programme. I have every faith in our educators, and I know they’ll try to do their level best, but the task seems borderline impossible.

Hence the main thrust of new education will be directed against… sorry, I mean at, the humanities, mainly literature and history. The guiding spirit of the drive for diversity is Prof Becky Francis, who in the past criticised the Blair government for “an obsession with academic achievement”.

I couldn’t agree more. Even the Blair-type obsession of this nature runs against the grain of British education. Academic achievement, fancy that. It’s much more important, explain our educators, to steer clear of “traditional” English literature, especially in “majority white” classrooms.

Thanks to the emigration policies of successive governments, such classrooms are becoming exceedingly rare, but – fair enough – a few here and there are still extant. It stands to reason, of course, that those classrooms shouldn’t be allowed to be mired in white complacency. So the first target for re-education has been well spotted.

The Association of School and College Leaders laments that “in particular, ethnicity and sexual orientation are under-represented in the national curriculum”. I share their frustration, but no immediate corrective steps suggest themselves readily.

If American literature has produced quite a few books highlighting ethnicity and, mainly in the 20^th century, sexual orientation, classical British literature is tragically remiss in that area. I suppose hints at fashionable sexuality can be discerned in Oscar Wilde’s works, and perhaps one or two ‘confirmed bachelors’ pop up in other places as well, but none of it is explicit. It’s as if those writers were ashamed when they ought to have been proud.

The situation with ethnicity is even more dire. Classical English writers from Chaucer onwards were unapologetically white people who, as good writers will, described the life they knew. Which is to say the life of white people. Other races hardly ever figure.

Such lackadaisical omissions can be corrected on stage easily enough, by having, say, Hamlet played by a black transsexual woman missing a limb or two. But rewriting the play to make the Prince of Denmark speak in the idiom once popularised by Ali G seems like a tall order.

The five main exam boards of Britain explained that: “The literary canon should better reflect the range of cultures and experiences of all young people.” Splendid idea, that. The trouble is that such a literary canon has so far failed to materialise.

Perhaps members of our educational establishment should put their day jobs on hold and actually produce a canon to satisfy their exacting requirements. As new books and poems are being written, the old literary canon, all those Shakespeares, Keatses and Dickenses, could be squeezed out one by one, until the Great Literary Replacement has been achieved.

However, one has to doubt that such a Herculean feat can be accomplished within the lifespan of this government, even should it have more than one term in office. Still, no harm in trying, a stitch in time and all that.

At least with literature one can see a clear path to improvement in line with the reinforced commitment to “in particular, ethnicity and sexual orientation”. History, on the other hand, can’t by definition “better reflect the range of cultures and experiences of all young people”.

You see, by its very nature, history deals with the past, whereas “all young people” live and acquire their experiences in the present. The present is infinitely more diverse, multicultural, transsexual and generally better than any period in the past, that much goes without saying. Alas, and I don’t know how to put this not to offend anybody, the past stubbornly remains firmly lodged in, well, the past.

I agree that our DEI educators are entitled not only to their own opinions but also to their own facts, but I’m just concerned that, if they rewrite history completely, they’ll undermine their own credibility. They do have plenty of it, credibility, but if it’s undermined, they’ll have less. That saddens me.

To their credit, they don’t give up easily. For example, some history teachers (and a popular TV show) insist that Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the wife of George III and hence a queen of England, was black.

No written or pictorial evidence for this supposition has so far been unearthed, but who’s to say it won’t be in the future? This is a line of thought perfected by Darwinists: yes, they say, the missing link hasn’t yet been found. But it may be found in the future, which means it will be found, which means we can safely assume it has been found.

In a similar vein, King Edward II is always believed to be homo- or bi-sexual, though not yet trans-. James I definitely had a commendable sexual orientation, as any reader of his letters to the Duke of Buckingham will confirm.

That fact should definitely be given a much greater prominence in history lessons, but one should tread carefully. Since James was Scottish, a teacher may run the risk of offending that devolved nation, thereby sinking into xenophobia, Little Englishness and potentially racism.

Altogether, these are rather slim pickings left for our DEI-fied educators. Since they can’t rewrite history as easily as literature, the only path open to them is to nail Britain’s past to the wall of opprobrium by portraying it as racist, homo- and trans-phobic, misogynist, colonialist – and nothing else.

Giant strides are already being made in that direction, but there is still room for improvement. And with Bridget Phillipson in charge, such improvements won’t be long in coming. I trust her implicitly.

Pope Francis wouldn’t make the short list of my favourite pontiffs, and he’d even struggle to get on the long one. Yet his homily at New Year’s Day Mass serves a powerful reminder of what it means to be a Christian in general and Catholic in particular.

One hopes it would also remind those holding different faiths or none of what it means to be a decent person. But, when it comes to killing by state, otherwise known as euthanasia or ‘assisted dying’, that hope is slim.

Priests are free to hold all sorts of political and cultural views, including, as most these days do, those I find objectionable. But any priest who supports that abomination should be summarily unfrocked, and I’d even go so far as to say that even lay Christians ought to be excommunicated if they see nothing wrong with euthanasia or, for that matter, abortion.

Some views are simply incompatible with Christianity, certainly its apostolic denominations. One can get away with having no respect for, say, private property or real music, but not for human life, which is only God’s to give or take away.

Congratulations to His Holiness for refusing to obfuscate that straightforward message with a smokescreen of qualifications and equivocations. He spoke forcefully about the urgent need to protect “the precious gift of life, life in the womb, the lives of children, the lives of the suffering, the poor, the elderly, the lonely and the dying.”  

Unfortunately, he also called for “the elimination of the death penalty in all nations”, but hey, we can’t all be perfect. A valid argument can be made that the death penalty for murder upholds the sacred value of human life, rather than denying it. In any case, this is a separate conversation.

To his credit, the Pope has never been bashful about letting his views on abortion be widely known. At various times, he has referred to it as “murder”, akin to “hiring a hitman to solve a problem”, while describing pro-abortion laws as “homicidal”.

However, that ship has sailed, at least in Britain. As far as I know, even the mildest anti-abortion legislation isn’t even being mooted. But ‘assisted dying’ is a current issue: even though the relevant bill passed its second reading recently, it still isn’t a law.

It passed narrowly, which gives some hope for the future. In fact, 147 Labour MPs opposed it, along with most Tories and two out of five Reform MPs, including Nigel Farage. That three other Reformers supported the bill emphasises the difference between right-wing populism and conservatism, but again this dichotomy is for another day.

One of the most vociferous campaigners for the bill was TV presenter Dame Esther Rantzen, who is suffering from Stage 4 lung cancer. As a survivor of Stage 4 cancer myself, I sympathise with her plight, but not with her view on the state killing her — and eventually millions of others — by way of relief.

Her suffering touched a chord in what passes for Keir Starmer’s heart. Back in October, he said that he had “made a promise to Esther Rantzen before the election that we would provide time for a debate and a vote on assisted dying”.

That was one campaign promise Starmer has kept, which is more than one can say for a whole raft of other promises he has broken with blithe cynicism. Not only did he push that diabolical bill through two readings in Parliament, but he himself voted for it with so much enthusiasm that it was easy to get the impression he’d happily stick a needle into Dame Esther’s arm himself.

She should thank God he didn’t, and neither did anyone else. Had the bill become a law there and then, Dame Esther would probably no longer be with us. As it is, I for one was happy to read her announcement that “the new wonder drug I’m on” may hold back the spread of her cancer “for months, even years”. 

If AstraZeneca’s Osimertinib can add so much time to Dame Esther’s life, it will make a powerful statement in favour of modern pharmacology – and a rational one against killing by state.

One of the requirements for doctors to kill a patient with impunity is that he is to have no more than six months left to live. This requirement is based on certain premises, all of them dubious.

First, doctors can seldom pinpoint the end of a life with any accuracy. I’ve known several people given months left to live who then went on to stick around for several more years. Doctors can make a mistake and so can medical science.

Second, this denies the possibility of a miracle, delivered either by God or, as in Dame Esther’s case, a pharmaceutical company or – most likely – both. Practical and theological arguments thus merge into one, delivering the kind of blow to the ‘assisted dying’ bill from which it would never recover in any decent country.

That the bill will likely become a law in Britain before long diminishes her claim to being a decent country. An essential qualification for this accolade is unwavering belief in the sanctity of human life – something demanded by God, Pope Francis, simple decency and even common sense.