Tuesday 26 July 2011

SLOW TRAIN COMING.

It is a rather scrawny sacred cow, the one  that says we we don't do deals with terrorists,  for  acts of terrorism against British forces and citizens have resulted in the deals which led to the  creation of the state of Israel, to the getting out of jail free of hundreds of Ulster terrorists,  the abolition of the provincial police force and the eventual reunification of Ireland.  The Stern Gang and the Irgun didn't fuck about, happily hanging British soldiers and attacking US warships but the hardmen batallions  of Gerry Adams and Marty Kneecaps were more equivocal  on their targeting strategy, maybe because they were funded mainly by East Coast US citizens; if they had really wanted to win their war swiftly they need only have wandered into one of those May Balls in the quadrangles of Oxbridge and Cambridge and slaughtered a few dozen of the children of the rich and powerful, a Bullingdon Club membership, perhaps, and they'd have been dancing down Belfast's Royal Avenue, waving the Tricolour faster than you could say SinnFein Rules, OK? They had a go, of course, with the attack on Mountbatten's boat but he wasn't quite a civilian, was he, and though he was of the elite,  he didn't have a father in the cabinet or an uncle who was a permanent seckatry of this or that mandarinate. Had Kneecaps & Co blitzed Kings College or Balliol perhaps the struggle, as they called it, would have been foreshortened.  It may well be the case, of course, that even in this dirtiest of wars there was a gentlemen's agreement between the senior participants, not to kill each other's families; so whilst it was terror, Jim, it was not as we now know it

And imagine the reaction if, after bombing the buses and trains in the seven/seven attack, whoever perpetrated it  also placed a few guys in white coats at the hospitals receiving the injured, and imagine these guys, in the confusion, entering the triage stations and the operating theatres and   detonating some of those  suicide waistcoats among the injured and the medical staff.  And then imagine, a week later, some more suicide bombers joining the mourners at the funeral, or just on the streets, as the hearses went by and blowing up themselves and a coffin or two, a funeral limo full of grieving relatives, maybe;  that would be proper terror, fuck me, wouldn't it just, an attack on civilians, an attack on the hospitals in which they were being treated and then an attack on the funerals. Way to go, Ahmed.

It seems that the first proper, rational terrorist of the modern age, though, is not a Marxist Irish Republican, not a muslem Jihadist, but a Norwegian, a white man, a Christian and a Freeemason. I know that McVeigh, of the Omaha bombing  was a WASP and everything but his was the archetypal one-bang attack,.Anders Breivik's one-man blitzkrieg was altogether more comprehensive - firstly, an attack on govament buildings, then a systematic, broad daylight  culling of the young elite and finally a calm as you like surrender to the cops;  no cathartic execution by marksmen, no Allah-bound suicide, just a Here we are, chaps, whaddaya gonna do, now? It was an Insider's Mayhem he wrought, no language problems, no visa or passport issues, no borders across which to ship his explosives.  And surrendering alive, native and to the manor born he keeps his preoccupation front and centre for the foreseeable future. Unless they mysteriously kill him.

It  was a brilliant achievement, as these things go - Norway, bizarrely, in news ratings terms,  outguns Somalia, Washington, Afghanistan, Libya, Murdoch  and even druggy chanteuse Amy and her ghastly father; all this the work of just one man   and who knows where it will lead?  I don't know about anyone else but I have swiftly grown irritated by the mannered, patient, reasonable know-it-allism of the SardineHeads, giving reasonable, worthy   interviews, in their wretched,  quizzical English. Such a pain in the arse are they that you can see why matey would get pissed at them as, in his mind's eye, he saw Saladin and a scimitar-waving host sailing up the fiords and sacking Oslo,  and everybody smirking about the place, in their neat suits, being fucking reasonable and tolerant.

In the corridors of sleaze the worry must be that  these events set a new temper  for the countless millions, all across the white world, quietly, permanently  enraged by what Mad Melanie Phillips calls  the Londonistan phenomenon.  Indeed, Sarkozy the dwarf pimp, has already responded to this constituency by launching one of those sneaky, Frog pogroms, against the Romany, to start with, but as Madamoiselle le Pen gains in stature, who knows which group he will attack next?

 I share  Andy's rage at the gobby, ineffective, cowardycustard middle class because that, for my sins,  is my own natural milieu but now and again I have drank and dined and ranted in different homes, places where people were never consulted about the multiculturalisation of their country, a drastic overhaul and reworking of their way of life which they never chose but had thrust upon them, by career moralists, by inverted racists and by  politically opportunistic shits like Jack Torture and  Roy Hatterjee.  The Race Relations Act was never going to resonate with Colin and his sons, Lee and Wayne and Scott,  they didn't give a fuck for all that shit;  they weren't deranged bigots or fascists, they just were very uncomfortable at being over-run and over-run by people who they  perceived as being wily, ill-mannered and over-indulged; Mosques and halal butchershops all over the inner ring road. Maybe they would have  worked towards assimilation, Colin and his family, if the newcomers had adapted, just a little bit, but they didn't, hardly at all. And it was no good me saying to Colin, Listen mate, you have to give these things a coupla generations to settle down, not when all he had, really, was his little bit of white working class culture or, as the clever  people  impudently  called it, his racism.

I remember, twenty years ago, driving through Washwood Heath in inner-city Birmingham and thinking, Christ, this is a different country, how has this happened?  It didn't matter much to me because I didn't live there or anywhere near there, but if I had I would've been aghast, estranged and frightened, living in an alien ghetto, garish, smelly and lawless, in my own city.

I know nothing about Andy, only what nincompoops like Jon Sopel say, on tne telly, and that's worthless, sensationalist, sentimental bollocks - did you think you were gonna die, did you text your familiy to say goodbye, d you think je should get more than the maximum sentence, more Sun than BBC, Sopel.  But I do know about Colin, an ordinary bloke,   unschooled, unread but like many of his generation and class, a bit of a Zen Master when it came  to his trade, no use for letters but  he could hone a chisel to laser sharpness, replicate a complex, ancient architrave moulding with his battery of moulding planes, his beady eye and his steady hand, Colin could insert a square foot of mahogany into a damaged tabletop and you'd never see the join - worth a hundred Darcus Howes, a hundred Trevor Phillipses and a thousand Boris Johnsons, an English tradesman, in  short, for forty years, now, further and further down the food chain, his neighbourhoods, his jobs, his schools, his assumptions, his country and his parliament demolished before his eyes;  the likes of Beardy Git, Robin Cook, telling him that the English National Dish is Chicken Tikka Masala;  the likes of CallHimDave cast-iron promising him a referendum and then reneging on his word, like a proper Etonian cunt.

And I know that in Colin's house and in millions of others, people will be saying about the Norwegian, Well, fair play to him, somebody has to stand up for whatever it is, else what's the point?

It is not for me to condone or condemn wotsisname -  I am with the anti-death penalty campaigners - you can't judge a person  on the basis of the worst act  he or she ever committed, such would see us all fucked, by God and man, alike, but I have lived through his genesis and his fertilisation, seen him, like a slow train, coming up around the bend, and said very little, frightened, like the Norwegians,  of giving offence to multiculturalism's lurking, vengeful, antagonistic watchmen.  

It is not possible or desireable to - what is it - repatriate, millions of non-indigenous people, nor is it right to attempt to treat any of us as second-class citizens; it must be possible, however, to engineer  some basic, inclusive standards of citizenship to which all must adhere;  the eternal cruelty inherent in all of the Abrahamic religions presents  a tougher problem, be it demonstrated by the Bible-Thumping Hangmen of the MidWest,  the  Zionist babykillers  banging their bearded heads on  Jerusalem's WailingWall   or the HeadChopping Ayatollahs of Saudi Arabia;  maybe we should hang a good mixed handful of the hateful bastards, or at the very least come down on them like a ton of bricks, bang 'em up for ninety-nine years, the very first time one of them calls for Jihad or Crusade  or the infinite expansion of the Holy Land.

Power doesn't  care to admit it but there will be many like Oslo's Bold Marauder, many of them armed, many of them with police or military training, none of them giving a flying fuck about the Newsnight/Question Time  phony sensibility. We do do deals with Terror, better that we do it now, whilst he slumbers, biding his time,  than see a platoon of tooled-up Aryans, marching across Bradford or Birmingham or London. Or Oxford,  Cambridge and le Sorbonne.

32 comments:

mongoose said...

I think that there is an arrangement, Mr Ishmael. There is another fine-looking, lovely film called "Kingdom of Heaven". As it happens, about the crusades and Saladin. Saladin says at one point "A king does not kill a king". The unsaid that they let their little people kill the other guy's little people, and then do a deal, but more than that that a king must have honour and a longer view.

Likewise, a way back a hundred years the Boys sought out and slaughtered the cream of HMG's intelligence service that had been posted to Dublin. Killed them all - well, almost. And thereafter had visited upon them the most horrible holocaust one could have imagined, namely a contrived civil war in which brother killed brother and sundered the island for the aforementioned century. If you are going too play rough, gentlemen, try this on for size. We'll just feck off for a year or three and let youse kill yourselves for us.

It is commonly said that even in our recent Troubles, all of the main Boys were known to HMG. I am sure that it is true. They are after all known to thee and me. I am sure that if the Brits had wanted to liquidate the top echelon one morning that it could have been accomplished. It is just that these are the people one must negotiate with after the conflict - Saladin, Richard I, Develera, Collins, Kneecaps, Paisley, Mandela, Kenyata, Gaddafi (oops!), Begin, Washington, Napoleon, Saddam (oops!)... It goes on. The striking at the head of the serpent is always an act of last resort or of the loose cannon, the loser, the politically naive, the weirdo with the pretend military uniform. Horrible conceited, worthless sod. 21 years max for any offence in Norway. May his crime outlive his name.

call me ishmael said...

It almost certainly will, mr m, for there's not much happening there, nothing ever does.

It's a fantastic film, that, I've never seen it all the way through, just fragments, whilst up all night, leaning on the window sill, the battle scenes, with the siege engines are fabulous and all that homo-erotic chivalry is as ripe as Danish blue.

That is surely the way of it, as you describe, blows holes in the no deals posturing which we are fed.

There's a treat for you, of sorts, if you're still up, further on up the road, from the WhiteHouse Infotainment Department.

a young Anglo-Irish catholic said...

Aye, and fuck me the fucking *noise* from the Brit SardineHeads about Gibraltar. Every which way it was turned upside down and inside out.

Fuckme, WorldInFuckingAction. PaulFuckingFoot banging their heads on the paving stones of North London on behalf of the poor fucking innocent IRA bombers, blown away before the could mow down the squaddies.

Nobody gave a fuck for them. Fuck me lads, aren't we at war with the English, but not that kind of war, no jezuz, fuckme, not that sort of war, where the English can shoot first.

There seems to be an acceptable amount of terrorism, because If had been in charge it would have been fucking Harriers at dawn over the nationalist areas after harrods, pick the bones out of that Paddy.

But no, Fucking LIvingstone, the drunk wife-beating arsehole invites them round for tea mid-campaign, welcome to Livingdon, independent state. Maggie never did a better thing than to throw the whole Marxist republic into the Thames, the bastards stoking up the riots, leveraging the fabulously badly-educated blacks to do the white revolutionary's work for them.

Aye fuckme, a bloody good hiding said Bernie, he died in agony funnily enough, set the black cause back a decade, the fat fucking moron.

But no, we fuck about while the bedwetters re-arrange Manchester and Warrington.

And as for the whole multi-culti bilge....look, nobody notices brown middle class immigration., Can't object 'cos it does nothing to scare the horses, let alone re-arranage bits of the country.

But fuck me, here in inner city London, you would not believe the figures. 2 million people classed by the GP's surgery as middle class have left London in 10 years their NHS number re-appearing in fucking honkey-cum-cotswold. Replaced 150 percent over by the poor and down trodden and feckless and rip-off merchants. Seen it myself over 18 years.

But no matter, son of immigrant myself, both sides, father shoveling shit for a living. But now am like english gent, honest, not invent, Duke of Fucking Argyll came to the wedding.

But no chance for the poor and rural from around the globe. Live in own world, carry on like you've never left Kashmir, we don't need no education, innit?

50 percent of muslim is signing on says the Mailers on CiF. Poor, dumb, not allowed to mix, must marry first cousin from mud house, no problems, innit, Nice Mr Torture got rid of primary purpose rule, no questions asked at immigration good job really, new missus can't speak a word, anyway young white girl will do business for a few quick and quick go in the BMW, no honest, got it motobility for my dad.

25 percent of newborns to 'foreign' born mother. Fuck me, country actually nice latte hue by 2050, might not be bad thing if all mixed in, naturalised, do as Romans do, innit?

Fat fucking chance.

Went to party in Soho. Nice Iraqi middle class, hello, how are you handshake, girls big on use of eyes, probably practise behind veil. Anyway, that's it no more mixing, oil and fucking water.

Oil and water, like central london from above.

Thing is, I know that Left wing intellectuals actually hated the 1920s and 1930s suburbs. I mean hated. But why do they still hate ordinary middle England? Why continue to smash away at the whiteness of the country.

No plan, no reason, just that all immigration is good. All. No matter. Maybe it is, Just not of poor, uneducated, rural, god-botherers with absolutely no intention of merging into the host country.

A separate nation. Alternative banking, local finance, no regulated insurance, pre-ticked postal voting via the community leaders.

I dunno. just a dispatch from the front line.

call me ishmael said...

And every one of those words rang true and glowed like burning coals....

Dick the Prick said...

Alan Clarke wrote in his diary re the Brighton bomb, 'if only the dumb Miks had popped a guy over the road with a sub machine gun, it would have been curtains for the whole cabinet'. And now dispatch reaches us that Gadaffi has won, a deal on the table, 'cheers lads for bombing the fuck out of Tripoli but you've achieved approximately fuck all - fancy fucking off?'

I guess there should be some common grounding, killing kids is a bit rum whereas executing politicians for fun is rather brave. Columbine spawned copycats, to see tributes to Bjorn again may be the new eurovision. Brave new world etc etc.

Mike said...

Easy to dismiss this bloke as a nutcase, but when you are dis-enfranchised, and your country is being traduced, what can you do? I can see more of this happening.

Of course the consequences will be more state surveillance.

mongoose said...

Norway is as white, Nordic as it gets. 84% Christian, 2% Muslim, 1.7% freakin' Humanist! Almost as many Humanists as Muslims. True, the sources of recent significant immigration have been Iraq and Afghanistan - among others - but ask yourself why that is?

The guy is a mad twat who should be locked away for the safety of the population. Mad fucking loon with a pretend mission, a pretend life, several pretend uniforms, a pretend hold on his senses, and now a pretend future. Up to the Big House and throw away the key. Just another gone postal nutter.

OTOH I took the lad to Lords yesterday - fantastic day's cricket btw - and the place was awash with Indian supporters. All of them were mightily better behaved than the white trash who now infest cricket grounds. (Yes, there was a long queue but I saw no Indians jumping it. Lots of Tommy scum did though. Well dressed, middle class, moneyed but cheap swine cunts who should be gassed. Too important to fucking well take their turn.) At least, even if they did speak their native languages amongst themselves, and whole families turned up because kids were let in free, at least they knew how to behave in a cricket ground. One goes for a pee at the end of the over, one waits when coming back until the end of the next. If someoine is three times as old as you, you egt out of their way not barge through them like Panzer tanks. If someone is coming up crowded steps you wait at the top and not just charge down at them like a fucking rabble. OK, they hoot and yell in a rather un-English way but what's wrong with that? A bit of bastard energy and passion for the game. If there is litle attempt to assimilate, we must ask ourselves if it is because they do not want to be like us. Feral, snarling, thief-electing, insult-laden, idle, benefits-addicted, Barmy fuckingskymadeupnewsandfilth Army trash is what we are. Fuck assimilation into our civilisation; how about we assimilate into theirs?

The big D said...

Mr Mongoose, mixing the better parts of each culture would be a result that we, probably, could live with. Given human nature and self interest, I doubt it will happen.

too bad to be true said...

16:38

True, the sources of recent significant immigration have been Iraq and Afghanistan - among others - but ask yourself why that is?

exactly - what, mr ishmael, was colin saying when tony blair exported multi-culturalism to the citizenry of iraq and afghanistan via the succinct suppository of a depleted democratic missile? was he bewildered by the brass of it and blurting out, "whoah mr blair, those there afghan and iraqi women and children weren't actually in the lifeboat which torpedoed the american dream of creaming the middle-east of all its non-denominational resources"? or was he lapping up the islamaphobic steam coming hot off the propaganda-pissing press? because, one thing's for sure, mr ishmael, you sarcastic jester, there's gonna be no white working-class households supporting this nonny-norwegian paedo-pulper - because he's sublimely whipped the afghan-rug right from beneath the white-racist anti-cultural whingeology by committing the ultimate no-no in their name - milky-bar-kid-massacring - and you know it, mr ishmael...and for that self-destructive reason alone, it stinks of a solitary psycho being set-up by someone third-party who had something to gain...and the other thing upon which everyone will no-doubt agree, is that, on-top of no-cunt caring for half-a-million somalians and amy winehouse not caring for herself, the conceited caucasian-centred coverage of this careless calculated killing makes this week's televisual offering probably the single most obscene media-event since russell brand claimed, with a straight-face, to be entering a life-long lustless pact with marital monogamy. absolutely sickening.

all the government's faultline said...

02:04

the guilty white conscience has tied and gagged the wagging of traditional monotonic tongues and undermined the solid sea-wall of cultural community heritage.

call me ishmael said...

I think, mr too bad to be true, that you underestimate Ruin's corrosive effect. AS the white working class has seen itself betrayed it has grown equally cynical about all aspects of Power's behaviour/s. I think, also, that it is unfair to dub that section of society as unfeeling. There are of course many who rally to Colonel von Fawkes's bloody banner, believing in the merit of killing Arab children to prevent them growing up as terrorist, Oh, there's plenty of them but I don't think they are the same people as Colin; bouncing their grandchildren on their knees, he and his wife would no more relish or condone Blair's massacre of the Innocents than would you.

It is of course, Norway, a media spectacle which is difficult to sufficiently condemn. Until the next one comes along Jon Sopel has set a new low water mark for hackery.

As for sarcastic jester, whilst I love it when you taklk dirty to me, I think you confuse me with my young friend, stanislav, the plumber; here in Ishmaelia, we hold courtesy and propriety dearly, venturing only a little irony where stanislav would unleash a torrent of bilious invective.

yardarm said...

A post touching on many issues. Coming from a family like Colin`s your remarks and Mr yaic`s rang true.

pc pardon said...

12:09

my apologies to the mythical colin for denigrating both him and his sub-class, mr ishmael, i would hate to think that i had in any way made the goodly feller, or his fine family, uncomfortable - as no doubt the bouncing blair and his badly dove-tailed bombs did - for, in truth, it would disturb me to no less an extent than severe calf-cramp during the sweet sound-of-slumber to be stood accused of denying any congregant of the common manhood the opportunity to exert architectural influence in respect of religious edifices which he might perchance be compelled, by-and-by, to observe from an exterior location. indeed, on the topic of altruistic andy-the-ethical-equalizer, i concede that, like your-laudable-liberal-self, mr ishmael, i should neither condone nor condemn, on the basis of one bad-hair-day, someone who probably made much cocoa for the elderly generation whilst tucking them tenderly into their flowery continental quilts - and, moreover, i can but admire the only police force in the whole wicked world which would not have been tempted even to subconsciously contemplate taking the latterday lutheran saint into the woods and martyring him in the style of christian soldier sebastian. please therefore forgive my tirade, mr ishmael, which, plainly, was provocative of almost unadulterated puking.

call me ishmael said...

Colin isn't mythical, mr pcp, he is exactly as I report him, a decent working man, who would dismiss your tortuous and facetious attempts at linguistic superiority as the rantings of a cunt and hit you a smack in the gob - and he's only driven into a sub-class by the emergence of the self-regarding, imaginary, consumerist middle class, making informed choices, about dishwashers and stuff, as glibly and pointlessly as they make choices about which school junior should attend, to maximise what they call his life chances.

As for condoning or condemning one whose actions are reported by a hysterical media, who may or may not be barking mad, who may be the stooge of another and who hasn't yet been tried, well, you condemn if you want, it'll make as much difference as if I do, that is to say fuck all.

Please, finally, consider yourself forgiven for what you call your tirade, bless.

pc fuckoff said...

02:52

touchy touchy, mr ishmael - obviously pc thousand pardons was classifying colin in the good white working subdivision as opposed to the bad one. no need to trade any rough-stuff.

12:09

however, à propos of the 'sarcastic jester' quip too bad to be true is rightly reprimanded by mr ishmael - who is, of course, more properly defined as an obtuse orificial oracle.

00:56

nevertheless, pc pardons was right to commend the norwegian police on their decision to delay their rescue operation in order to allow both for the sacrifice of further lambs and, more importantly, to permit their ardour for assassinational arrest to cool sufficiently to be in a collected position to perform the function of their duites to the letter, if not the spirit of the law.

pc correction fluids (house detective) said...

13:26

nevertheless, pc pardons was right to commend the humanitarian norwegian police on their decision to strategically delay their rescue operation in order to allow both for the sacrifice of further left-winged lambs and, more importantly, to permit their ardour for assassinational arrest to cool sufficiently such that they would be in an emotionally-collected position to perform the proprietous function of their duties to the letter, if not precisely the spirit of the law.

mongoose said...

It is instructive to consider that the likes of Colin used to be able to earn a decent living and to live an affordable and decent life by shaping sticks of wood. I still have the first sticks of wood I ever shaped - a footstool made at school. Fucking horrible looking thing with the eternal fault of the mongoose line - never removing the pencil marks before slapping on the polish. One day, one day. I had Colin's modern equivalent here the other day when the broadband and phone went down. Twat after twat visited the house and told me the same (wrong) thing. Eventually Bradley turned up, listened to my thoughts, advised me that I was almost right but not quite, he went outside and fixed the job. He then came back gave me an ad hoc card with his mobile number on and said that if I had trouble in the future, just to ring him direct because "everyone in the office is an arsehole". Once again, we find a Colin, a man who cares about doing a decent job - for no extra reward, though a tenner may find it's way to him if he does indeed come through. This is what we have all but lost.

I can count such people on my fingers - a chimney sweep, a chippy, a brickie, a car mechanic (and his son), a gardener, and now a freakin' broadband field engineer. After that we are down to the defeated. And now fucking Digby Jones thinks we should chuck kids out of school at fourteen. If they have yet to learn their letters and numbers then just chuck the fuckers out. One more for the gallows.

criminal intelligence agency (human resources) said...

22:53

mg, your condescending homily to the craftsmanlike classes is inexplicably disturbing, but i suspect that you may well find that colin is not only a broadband field-engineer, but also an expert computer-programmer, and hacker, with a strong-suit in cyber-cryptology (whatever those foreign-arts may be), and that 'his type' always were thus over-qualified - at least, that's my experience of telephone engineers. could be that good old colin caused the problem in the first place and was therefore in a prime position to fix things...with the digital-dice loaded in his favour, no doubt.

in my opinion, it's up to the parents to ensure that their offspring 'learn their letters and numbers', and it's not within the government's moral province either to detain inside or release a child from the correctional colony of politically penal instruction. in any case, most children have a natural bent to learn either 'letters' or 'numbers' off their own bat - even in the woolly-backed world of the welfare state.

live-mains-tester said...

the blogger spam-infiltrator is a cia-backed blue-pencil-op.

mongoose said...

Mr cia(hr), condescension to the craftsmanlike classes? A reasonable judgement, from the generous end of the telescope, from but one comment posted but read back a few pages and you will find what I think of craft and honour and work and trial alike.

I am sure that Bradley the broadband engineer has skills and wonders that I have not glimpsed. The homily, if homily it is, is to a lost world of personal effort and responsibility. As you say, my kids are my problem and my burden and opportunity. Do you know, I think I may have risen to the task. Thus far. No moral credit accrues to them, or to me for that matter. Darwin's lottery blesses us all.

That children who "fail" in education have been "failed" by their parents is not a particularly useful idea though. Or else why do we have schools? Of course, we teach our kids numbers and letters but lots of parents have not the time, the energy, or the insight so to do. Slaving as they do on their knees to clean the shit-houses of mammon, how can they find the verve to attend to junior's homework when they drag themselves home at dusk? Maybe, even, they have no numbers or letters themselves. Now there is a thought! That's why we have schools. Be grateful that you are among the blessed but do not take it for granted for everyone else.

What we say is merely that the ability to shape a stick of wood accurately and kindly is the same as the ability to hoik out a duff amplifier from a node box in the street. All we need is the will to do a fucking decent job. It is all craftsmanship of a sort - even pontificating on a blog in the wee small hours.

mongoose said...

Evensong for y'all...

lord henry suctioner - hereditary house-cleaner with privileged carpet-hoovering privileges pontificates to the backyard bog-brush brethren said...

01:43

ask not why we have schools, ask why we have compulsory state education. if a parent takes no interest in, or responsibility for, his child's education, the child is unlikely to prosper under any form of education system - until such time as the child (or adult) takes responsibility for his own advancement, and plans his own escape from mammon's clasping cubicles. surely, one good whiff of the cramped crapped-out cubicles of (corrupted) capitalism is enough of a spur for anyone to both educate themselves and help their children to do likewise - by example, if in no other manner. why should it be anyone's business to assume responsibility for the education of other people's children - unless, of course, out of a genuinely altruistic sense of community spirit imperceptibly blended with an aesthetic-engineerial desire to bring the local area up, and the neighbourhood mugging-rate down? perhaps you might care to set up such an initiative yourself, mr mongoose? perhaps you already have?

gob description said...

10:12

with privileged carpet-hoovering duties, no doubt.

00:13

i suspect that you may well find that colin is not only a broadband field-engineer, but also an expert computer-programmer, and hacker, with a strong-suit in cyber-cryptology (whatever those foreign-arts may be), and that 'his type' always were thus over-qualified - at least, that's my experience of telephone engineers. could be that good old colin caused the problem in the first place and was therefore in a prime position to fix things...with the digital-dice loaded in his favour, no doubt.


there again, it could have been a lucky guess based upon the barest of rudimentary understanding.

call me ishmael said...

You need to post underneath a consistent by-line; it's an impertinence, else, readers being forced to wade through your nocturnal whimsy before sighing Ah, it's him again, or her, what's he up to now? Repeated quirky and impenetrable anonymising may lead to posts being put on the naughty cyberstep.

god save the (improvised) screen-name said...

do us a favour

blotted blog-paper said...

12:51

i thought this blog was the 'naughty cyberstep', sorry - if i am mistaken and it is not in fact the fabled naughty cyber-corner, please give me appropriate directions and i will proceed straight there to save time and avoid undue friction.

sir trevor trillips said...

this comment-thread demeans the traditional ethnic art of pointy-stick-shaving and all proud anglo-saxons who practice it - this form of depolorable discrimination against career-dipsticks must be discouraged at all costs, or otherwise the mob may next turn its prejudicial ire upon the precious race of picky politically-correct pillocks who are promoted from the ranks of riff-raff to point the pointy-sticks professionally (like me, for example).

call me ishmael said...

The state of education, its purpose and execution present a bit of a conundrum, nearly every word in your brief assessment being heavily loaded with value judgements, judgements generally informed by the very education in question - prosper, for instance, i think you mean flourish, prospering into prosperity is now the stated aim of so many who hitherto attended university for the craic, among many, prosperity is the only meter of personal success. Taking responsibility for one's own education cannot happen in a vaccuum, cannot happen outwith the education one has already received, however unenthusiastically; I have done bits of teaching, WEA stuff and it, too, was for the craic, the enjoyment of doing it, it is only by testing one's views against others' that they may be validated, refined or dismissed; I have also known proper teachers intimately, as an adult, and could not help but wonder why they did it, altruism being a long way down the list of possible explanations, some wish fulfillment, some early crush in another teacher determining their own career, some desire to exercise power over weaker persons, I went to the best grammar school in the country and there was much of that among my masters; in some cases it is just a rational assessment of likely workloads, holidays and career outcomes. Who knows? Mr ptb has a salutary tale to tell of the times-a-changing in education.

Regardless of all of that, the most influential people in my whole sorry - aside from my friends in Ishamelia - life have been teachers, at primary and secondary level. I am old, now, and of a race that could read before attending school, maybe it was my precocity which elicited such interest and encouragement among some of my teachers, maybe - and this is my preferred judgement - they just went into it to lighten a bit of darkness, to draw back the veil.

As to setting up initiatives I guess that mr mongoose is, in person, too modest and self-effacing to ply such trifles among the madding crowd - but yet manages to be an initiative, all on his own, without hardly trying.

dust-bag full said...

21:03

likely words, or phrases of contention:

'prosper'

'advancement'

'education'

'corrupted capitalism' (yes, sorry, i should have dropped the brackets)



cannot the first three describe any form of emotional or moral growth based on experience?

fair enough, i grant that, if corrupted (as in our own politically-infected economic system), capitalism (the business of free trade and barter) is no longer capitalism - but, given that i clumsily mean the phrase to signify something negative, to wish to grow strong and self-sufficient (ie positively and independently), rather than be beaten and bound by such bad teachers as greed, fear, and general immorality, is surely a good thing, is it not? for a child to see its parents 'slaving on their knees to mammon' is indicative of being set a negative example, yet as an element of life-experience cannot be described as comprising a vacuum, if contrasted with another, separate, positive experience, such as the realization by the same child that its parents are working hard and honestly as toilet-cleaners in order to feed themselves and their family. so what you are implying, mr ishmael, is that education must consist of a positive experience - and what i am implying is that the fundamental ethos of education does not consist in learning 'letters and numbers', but in being able to choose to learn 'letters and numbers' if such a choice were life-enhancing.

unfortunately, although we basically agree on this subject, mr ishmael, perversely insists on inferring that i regard education as a balance sheet, that i consider capitalism an original sin, and that i regard toilet-cleaning as a certificate of non-education and emotional illiteracy, when in fact this is not the case at all, and it is simply that he wishes to superimpose a negative interpretation upon my use of language, in the same way as mr mongoose infers a negative value from bog-cleaning - traits which i'm afraid are a very much a product of a class-and-control-obsessed compulsory state education system.

by-the-way, i disagree: the joy of teaching is not in 'testing one's views against others' that they may be validated, refined or dismissed' - this function can only be performed by testing one's views against the reality of experience; the joy of teaching is in testing one's own knowledge of the subject in hand by successfully communicating it to others.

call me ishmael said...

When talking of a child's development we consider whether or not there is a failure to flourish, not a failure to prosper, prosper being unavoidably linked to , synonymous with economic wellbeing or success, as greed is termed.

As for teaching, it depends on what you are teaching and to whom - if it's practical stuff, woodwork, for instance, or driving, then you need to be right; if you are in a classroom or lecture theatre then you may of course extemporise and theatre can be a major part of the communication, if teaching contramundalist stuff, the influence of Freemasonry in the Criminal Justice System, for instance, then you need both the knowledge and the presentational skills as well as the ability to react to the scepticism of students -testing one's views against others'.

A more sustained reading, by the way, of posts past would refute the notion that we are dismissive of the toilet cleaner, indifferent to the short and simple annals of the poor.

rio - greco-roman-wrestler said...
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case sensitive said...
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