THACKLEY TRUMPIT JULY 2014 MUSINGS FROM THE PADDED CELL - THE IDLE LORD

The Idle Lord. 

Musings From The Padded Cell

Britishness 

The media are awash with chat about the notion of “Britishness” in the wake of the Trojan Horse story coming out of Birmingham. As ever, politicians are jumping on the bandwagon likes fleas on an old dog; it is, after all, election time soon.
Rationale debate is still difficult to achieve as this is a ridiculously emotive subject, despite it rising to the top of the agenda largely due to UKIP’s recent successes at the polls.
Cameron, as ever, is flapping around like a one-winged parrot, seeking tough sound-bites whilst selling us off to the Chinese. Miliband, leader of the party that opened the flood gates, is almost invisible; small mercies to be grateful for I guess.
Whilst there are sound economic arguments for controlled immigration, these are inevitably based on the reality – like it or not – that we can be choosy at least as far as non EU migrants. Britain is a nation people aspire to come to.
However, the thing that hacks off Ordinary Joe more than anything else is the fact that the politicians who preach the benefits of mass immigration rarely live in the areas that have to deal with the impact.
One hack wrote at the weekend of the “metropolitan elite” – he meant New Labour – whose policies opened the doors.
Bradford – metropolitan but far from elite – contends with it’s primary schools dealing with almost 150 different languages. This has been a massive failure of the indigenous population. Making kids learn the Magna Carta will not solve this one bit.
There remains a fundamental flaw in the way we treat minorities. Bending over backwards might seem the “fair” thing to do but it misses the point that there are those within these communities that will exploit this weakness as Birmingham demonstrates.
Wherever you live you must surely respect the law of that land. To live here, often on the social benefits a progressive society can still afford to provide, and yet to rail against it’s very existence and cultures is both offensive and ignorant.
Fortunately, most common sense can still be found in the good old British pub – one of the founding pillars of Britishness – and I find it hard to argue with the sentiments I heard expressed at the weekend.
“If they don’t like it then they should *** off.” said my unnamed source, clearly fearful of a kidnap attempt and beer deprivation.
Britishness should be about upholding the values and traditions that we have fought for over centuries. You cannot cow-tow to a raft of migrant cultures simply to appease the politically correct brigade.
And before the human rights brigade pipe up there is nowhere better on Earth than Britain to enjoy human rights; that is why most people still want to come here.

Top man 

I defy anybody not to have seen the story of Bernard  Jordan, 89, and his “great escape” from his care home – fulfilling a wish to attend the D-Day commemorations in Normandy last week – and to have watched without a lump in their throat.
Wonderful stuff from another era and all carried off with grace, charm and a cheeky wink of an old boy’s eye.
Boys own stuff because boys will always be boys.

More From “I Told You So” Corner

According to last weekend’s Sunday Times, Ofsted have finally woken up to the fact that there is almost no competitive sport in state schools and that this is not a good thing. Well done chaps, what took you so long?
Regular readers – I do have a few – will know I have been banging on about this for well over a decade and more. Most recently I wrote a chapter (3) in “Fifty Not Out” on this issue.
However, even more damaging and socially divisive is the fact that these inequalities forged at primary schools are further widened all the way to elite sport.
Take the distribution of funding from UK Sport, essentially dictated by the pursuance of Olympic medals:
http://www.idlelord.com/playing-up-hill/
Bad enough that we fund only sports where medals are deemed possible but look at what we end up with* in terms of the proportion of GB medal winners who were privately educated. Sydney 2000 – 23.6%, Athens 2004 – 27.8%,
Beijing 2008 – 35.7%, London 2012 – 46%
*Sunday Times 15/6/14
England’s cricket team for the first test contained only one player – Moeen Ali – educated in the state system. This is a national scandal and in no small part has played a significant part in the rapid and apparently unstoppable rise in obesity levels nationally.
It is a failure of generations of young people deprived of opportunities to enjoy sport and live a fit and healthy lifestyle. Politicians of all parties should be ashamed of this utter disgrace.

More Musings

At last one of the half-wits that have been disturbing the local area on their souped up skateboards has been prosecuted. 
Sadly the judge backed away from a custodial sentence – bad enough – but it was the comments in mitigation from his solicitor that hacked me off most.
Trying to excuse the lad’s actions because he had had a tough upbringing was pathetic. Why not simply state that there is no defence for endangering peoples lives, taking up expensive police resources and for destroying the peace that most people crave.
The solicitor will doubtless be an educated bloke and will probably live nowhere near the affected areas. What a waste of a good education if you cannot distinguish      between right and wrong.
We cannot keep excusing cretins like this nor simply tag them and hope for the best. It’s like slugs, there is no point in moving them on as they will only keep coming back. Stand on them…hard. 

And More Musings from The Idle Lord

Normally I dread a dental appointment for obvious reasons but ever since falling off a six-foot fence at Christmas, the shame of confessing to nice man Andrei how I scraped my front tooth, has been weighing heavily.

We went through the usual preliminaries.

“Do you smoke?”

“No”

“Do you drink?”

“A bit” said sheepishly.

“Over 30 units a week”

“Depends if Big Al needs keeping company” I offered hopeful he would change the subject “course I do!”

I explained that the reason I, as a normally responsible 51 year old, had fallen off a fence was most likely because that particular night I had probably had my weekly allowance in one go. And that Joe Lawrence had encouraged me to garden hop on the way home.

These days the dental practice is part of a large group and you only have to look around reception to realise that there is now a corporate sell here with all manner of products on offer.

So Andrei must now sell as well as offer torture, whereas nice old Mr Spencer simply gave you that routine “…sound, sound, sound….oooh….kerr-ching…pension time!”

Fortunately, Andrei is as bad as I am at  selling.

“Have you got an electric toothbrush?” he asked.

I showed him my mobile phone and suggested he already knew the answer. Not put off just yet he pointed out how much better these were – on special offer in reception by coincidence – keeping me in the dreaded chair far too long.

I don’t go to the dentist to do anything other than try to get out as quickly as possible. Flogging me a mini-vibrator is not enhancing my customer experience one bit.

“If you stopped drinking for one week you could save enough for one” he offered as one final stab from the sales manual. Time to go seek a pint I thought, see you next year.