At the End of the Day

Political correctness, and its mortal enemy Economic Correctness

There’s a sort of cliched but nevertheless fairly accurate piece in the Torygraph today about France being better than Britain “but we’re too scared to admit it”. I think the lack of debate about this is based on ignorance rather than fear; and also, the author is an occasional visitor to the country rather than a resident expat. Thus at times he is both too kind to – and too hard on – the French. For what it’s worth, this is the comment thread I left there:

The article somehow crept under the Midchannel Cuckoos, and therefore is worth a read. But what really intrigued me was that it attracted over 1200 comments. This is up there with Christopher Booker in terms of interest level, and I think the reason probably has little or nothing to do with France as a country: rather, I suspect its appeal to thinking Brits lies in the central theme: there is another way, and it is far superior to the one we’re on.

We’ve all been going on for ages now about political correctness. But at the other end of the insanity spectrum, there is a dominating and equally totalitarian economic correctness. This holds that society is secondary to business, and only globalist deregulation holds the promise of happiness. As with political correctness, most of its precepts have been either discredited by science or found wanting in practice. But ideology being everything for these sadly unbalanced hobgoblin priests, their job 24/7 ‘going forward’ is to invent spurious reasons why there is no wisdom in the past….all ‘we’ need is One More Heave, and all will be well.

Of course, PCs and ECs have to resort to The Rack, Room 101, prison – and mental home incarceration for NVEs – in order for their distorted reality to become the inflexible Catechism. In this sense, it would be hard to put a rice paper between Islamic Jihadists, radical Feminists and neoliberal Globalists. But then, anyone happy to be suffixed ‘ist’ is by definition indistinguishable from all the other blinkered horses in the race to Hell.

When it comes to the suffixed in our species, the clue is in the ‘fixed’ bit.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

So there I was, a horny-handed son of toil weeding the veg and herb patch this morning, when I sat on the ground and disappeared into a hole.

That’s a slight exaggeration: my bum disappeared into it. The son of toil fell into a ton of soil, ba-boom.

Closer inspection revealed that I had unwillingly discovered a tunnel created by Warren Rabbit and his chums. These days, I own an air rifle here: chiefly, it is a way to cull aggressively neoliberal magpies and jays. But occasionally, I fire an early-morning warning at the bunnies.

It’s more crowd-control than hunting: the most the little buggers ever get is a pellet up the bobtail to dissuade them from anti-social habits like lettuce-gorging and fracking. Nobody dies, but everyone knows the rules. Watership Down is all very well, but give yer illegally migrated rabbit an inch an’ ‘e’ll take a mile.

I’m well ‘ard, me.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Somewhat bored of barbecued chicken and potatoes, today I decided to have a lascivious culinary treat in the shape of a cassoulet of chicken and sausage for dinner. I’m always interested in new takes on this old favourite, and so went to a French cuisine site that included an English version of the definitive Gascogne dish. It included this wonderful cooking instruction:

‘….then add the mindless streaky bacon.’

Do you know, if there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s educationally subnormal feral streaky bacon. I mean, it comes into your kitchen with a history of drunken misbehaviour behind it….and the minute you get it out of the packet, roight, it yells “Put me in that ‘ot thing you f**kin’ sicko paedophile, an’ I’ll beat yer to a pulp – end of”.

So I ignored that part of the recipe, and added some refined Serrano ham instead. It is very important to maintain standards in such matters.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The Greco-English website Ekathimerini ran a piece today suggesting that the Syriza government led by Alexis Tsipras needs to accept a third ‘bailout’ programme. It opined:

‘Tsipras, 40, faced a united front from Group of Seven leaders at the weekend, with U.S. President Barack Obama putting concerns over the impasse onto the agenda of a summit hosted by German Chancellor Angela Merkel’

While I’m delighted and relieved to know that Alexis is only 40 years old, there are other aspects of this latest bollocks outburst that escape me.

First, the sanctimonious crap about Greece “returning to recession” is somewhat at odds with the various efforts of the ECB and Troika2 to put Greece there by (a) manipulating bondholder sentiment to the negative and (b) making all the key Syriza figures run around like headless chickens fulfilling all their ‘reform’ imperatives. I’m not surprised by any of this: I predicted it last February.Mainly,I’m just disgusted about it.

Second, the ‘fury’ of Jean-Claude Drunker about Tsipras ‘mendacity’ is hard to stomach given the old Luxembugger’s entirely political attempt to cuddle the Greek Prime Minister just a few short weeks ago.

And finally, there is as yet answer none from the Brussels sprouts about where the link between three months of negotiation on the one hand – and the latest diktat on the other – actually lies. Extensive searches have been carried out by dedicated teams of commentating observers looking for traces of this link, but so far there is nothing at all to join up the dots of ‘real progress’ in May to the regressive ultimatum of June.

The case continues. Ad nauseam. Ad astra. Ad infinitum. Donec venit, intervenit re….

Earlier at The Slog: Why Sarkozy’s Presidential ambitions would let in Americanism…and Le Pen

Filed under: and its mortal enemy Economic Correctness, At the End of the Day, Political correctness Tagged: Alexis Tsipras, Economic correctness, Greeks bored, Jean-Claude Juncker angry, mindless streaky bacon, rabbits, The French alternative