What If The Bin Wins?

It's unlikely, but stranger things have happened. I've been thinking about the local precedent we have for it. Up the road in Hartlepool they elected a man in a monkey costume back in 2002.

The monkey was H'Angus the Monkey - the town's football mascot. The man in the costume, Stuart Drummond. After the election he took the costume off and carried out his role as elected mayor in person. He then went on to get re-elected twice. So, though it began as a joke, he didn't do too badly.

[The character of H'Angus was inspired by the monkey-hanger legend of Hartlepool. Apparently, during the Napoleonic Wars, a French ship was wrecked upon the coast. The only thing that survived was a monkey. Having never seen a Frenchman before the locals assumed it was a French spy and hung it. Or so the story goes.]

It's interesting how some of these themes come round in circles. The lack of seriousness at the time was down to the fact that a lot of people didn't want an elected mayor - deeming it needless and costly devolution. Now, of course, we have Manchester mayor Andy Burnham coming to save the country, partly as a consequence of those Labour devolution efforts. And promising more of that devolution when he's in charge.

Also, the local Hartlepool MP at the time was a certain Peter Mandelson. When Drummond won Mandelson supposedly took him to one side and complained that "he'd made the town a laughing stock." Though he then went on camera moments later and praised Drummond. Understanding only too well - perhaps more so than current politicians - that expressing his true opinion wouldn't be savvy.

So, the Clacton election..

Unlikely though it would be I think a win for the bin would actually be worse for the mainstream parties. As I think the hangover would be much worse than the night out.

The night itself would be incredible. The people supporting the bin would be giddy with excitement. The anticipation, the announcement, the look on Nigel Farage's face as the results are read out. The memes, the amusement. The TV coverage. It would certainly be a night of fervour and exuberance.

However, the next morning the people would wake up with a headache and a man in a bin costume lying next to them. With nothing much else to show for it.

Then would come the question of whether he continues to wear the bin, or whether he takes it off as the Hartlepool mayor did. If the costume remains it'll be silly. So that's a non-starter. If the costume comes off you end up with a remainiac BBC writer representing the brexity area of Clacton. Further illustrating that the bin is only a proxy for the established parties. If that wasn't clear enough already.

And the people who supported the candidate, who enjoyed the exciting night, will have to own that subsequent reality. The voters will at least have the luxury of pretending they didn't vote for him. People publicly declaring their support will have it permanently on their CV though.

Of course, you could say the monkey-suited guy did well after he took the costume off, so maybe the same could happen here. Personally, I can't imagine that being the case, as there the candidate was local. Plus, there wasn't the national divide we have today. Still, it's possible.

As For Nigel

Here it's more interesting, as I think it would only be the end for Farage if he chose to walk away. As in practical reality it wouldn't change very much. The people that like Farage would still like him, and the people that hate him would still hate him.

So he could remain as leader. Keep doing his GB News show. Take a break. Allow some time for the dust to settle. Then go back and stand for the seat at the General Election. Where he would no doubt win. Unless the man in the bin somehow managed to win over the constituents without the gimmick - to the extent that he could win an election where multiple parties were standing. Which is even less likely than him winning this one.

Farage can't even do much in parliament anyway at the moment, so again, in practical terms it wouldn't make much difference.

This is all assuming there aren't internal wrangles and panics within Reform following such a defeat.

So I think it can only go wrong for Reform long term if it's self-inflicted.

All the framing in the media at the moment says that Farage made a mistake in resigning his seat. The, "He'll look like an idiot standing against a bin" general opinion. However, the major mistake was when the mainstream parties rallied around the bin in response. Without thinking it through.

Farage made his announcement at 2 pm. An hour later we saw this tweet from David Aaronovitch:

"One other thing. If I were the other parties, I leave Farage to his by election. Call it a stunt and let him fight it out with Count Binface."

By evenfall all the major parties had taken this line. Even going so far as to call it a stunt and a "fake" election. They didn't even have the sense to wait until the next day to make the decision. To allow themselves time to consider the consequences.

Had they not done this they would've had a much better chance of punishing Farage. The decision to go for re-election was a gamble - a brave, clever gamble, but a gamble nonetheless. They could've taken it seriously. Stood genuine candidates, and pressed home the line that, "Farage was avoiding scrutiny." They could've said to the public, "We welcome this election and want you to judge him." Of the candidates standing a lead candidate could've emerged. If that person won it would be a legitimate, democratic and highly damaging victory.

Instead they have a situation where, win or lose, they've made themselves look like a genuine uniparty that's scared of the public vote.

As the feisty and much missed Ann Widdecombe noted in response, "They're frit."

Only a similar faux pas can hand them back the ground they've surrendered.

It's all happening..

In the age of the Internet war is heavy on the eyes.

I've been on Twitter too much. My eyes are sore. It's a punishment to begin typing this blog post, but type I must.

It's all happening.

Farage has stepped down, to go back to the public to get a renewed mandate. The establishment have unified behind a plastic bin.

Count Binface, the annoying joke political candidate has been fully weaponised, and everyone from journalists at the Times to Restore Britain's Uniparty accounts find it hilarious.

It's just oh, so funny. He's dressed as a bin.

I should talk about the politics, but my mind is more alarmed at the general unintelligence. I actually used the word retarded yesterday. I hate this word. There's something unnecessarily crude about it. Like calling someone thick. It's ungraceful. I don't like. It's not me. Yet, I couldn't help but reach for the word. All these people just look retarded. I don't know how better to put it.

When I see the Count Binface character - and this is the thing, he's not even new, he's been around a while - I always see it as something that perhaps I would've been amused by as a very small child. In fact, I remember as a small child being amused by Dusty Bin. My parents would watch the game show 3-2-1. As a four year old the adult game show didn't interest me much, but when the cartoon-like bin appeared on the screen my attention was grabbed.

It was like a crude ITV Mr. Potato Head. "Yes, that's Dusty Bin," my mam would gently say as I pointed at the screen.

Even back then though I wasn't that amused. It didn't have me hooked to the screen like Thomas the Tank Engine.

Anyway, that's what I think when I see the uniparty bin candidate. I think, "This is something I might have found funny as a small child." Then a conflicted impulse kicks in. "These people are like children, I shouldn't be so mean to them." After all, I'd never be mean to a child for laughing at the bin. I was once that child. Yet, at the same time, they're adults. "They're f*ffing adults," I think, "Why am I surrounded by these people?!"

When you see the entire political class doubled over in stiches, clearly thinking this is all brilliantly funny, it's disturbing. I feel like Julien Barratt's character from Nathan Barley, watching some well-paid journalist trundle down the street on a tiny scooter.

It's tiring. If there was some other country I could escape to. Some jungle hut where these people wouldn't bother me.

And yes, all this sounds arrogant. I don't care. You're all retards.

I just hope the people of Clacton aren't as easily amused.

The Twin Forms of Admiration

I've noticed something about music. As ever, it's a generalisation. Plus, it's a little anecdotal. However, it seems to be a thing. Basically I've noticed that all my friends tend to prefer music that's sung by men. These are male friends. (I don't speak to women enough to have a solid data sample.) Anyway, if I recommend my friends music it's always a much harder sell if the singer is female. This is in contrast to how I am. I have a bias towards females. All things being equal I prefer the added bonus of having a beautiful women fill my airwaves. In fact, they don't even have to be especially beautiful. When you have a data sample as small as mine any feminine figure will do.

I would say I'm surprised by this difference. However, in truth, I'm not, as I noticed the very same thing in myself a long time ago. When I was a teenager. Back then I too largely only listened to music sang by males. I picked myself up on this and questioned why. The answer was obvious: I was looking for role models. I was looking for something that I could be. That I could imitate. That I could aspire to.

It was the exact same reason why I had posters of male footballers on my bedroom wall. It wasn't just admiration, it was also aspiration. That player is good at football. I want to be good at football like that player. It was about what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be. So naturally when I started learning to play guitar as a fifteen year old it was similar. I wasn't listening to music just to passively consume it. I was looking for a path. A gang to join. Something I could copy and learn from.

So the female artist. The Madonna, or the even the Sheryl Crow or Tori Amos, wasn't useful to me. I didn't want to be a woman doing dance moves on a stage. Or any female figure at all. I wanted to be a Damon Albarn or Noel Gallagher. It wasn't just a question of the music being good or bad. It had to be good and helpful to my pursuit of success. Be it actual musical success or just general social success - i.e. having a good self-image and presenting that to other people.

Again, similar to football, where men will adopt football as part of their self-image long after any hope of making it as a professional player has gone. Just to be one of the lads, or to look manly or whatever. Sure, there may be a genuine love of the game, but it's also a social modus. See, for example, the politician tweeting about the latest England match to look relatable. We all do it to some degree, and it's largely subconscious. Most people tend not to do it as cynically as the politician does it.

Returning to my own realisation, I remember having a sense of internal conflict at the time.

"Hang on, why am I not judging Sheryl Crow in as high esteem as I judge Noel Gallagher?"

Objectively her songs are classics too, yet subjectively I won't quite admit it.

When I confronted this bias I began to understand my own personal framing. I'm male, I have a male bias. After that it really widened up my appreciation of music.

Of course, it helps if you're a bit of an effeminate male anyway, which I was. So it wasn't a huge leap, and once I realised I was free to copy off the girls as well as the boys the flood gates really opened - as far as musical influences went. Then I did begin to internalise and take to heart Sheryl Crow and Tori Amos and Fiona Apple and all the other female artists that appealed to me. The same way that I'd taken Blur and Oasis to heart.

Nevertheless, I wasn't that androgynous. I didn't go full David Bowie. I still copied the males more. I still wanted to be outwardly male and successful, I was just much more aware that I was doing it, and I didn't let that impulse skew my tastes.

[I've touched upon this theme before: Beauty, Self-Image and Gender

See also the Strawberry Jam series.]

Many Years Later

Now, many years later, I've completely given up any dreams of 'making it' as a musician. So now my enjoyment of music is purely as a consumer, and thanks to my self-awareness my bias has shifted in the opposite direction. Making it easier for the girls to get my attention.

[Music has moved to right hand side of the chart for me. See below.]

Whenever I see my male friends react to female sung music it seems obvious that they're still in the teenage mode though. Where music is wholly tied up with their self-image. This might be a little patronising on my part. Though I think I've earnt it, as there aren't too many straight males that openly walked into HMV at the age of nineteen and bought the Immaculate Collection, because they valued the genius of the music above looking like a blazing homosexual.

There's a social cost to being this honest.

The Twin Forms of Admiration

Above: the two types of admiration.

The role model, or 'man crush,' on the one side.

On the other, the people of the opposite sex that we're attracted to - our actual crush.

In very straight, normie-type people these things tend to be very clearly separated. Music, football, other pursuits are in one category. Supermodels, strippers and sweethearts are in the other. For less orthodox people these two sides can get confused though. (Or synthesised if you develop a self-awareness of it.)

So, in fairness to my friends that don't like 'girly' music, it's largely because they're very straight and normal. It's not a failing per se, though it does limit the parameters of what they allow themselves to like and enjoy.

It's just the way of the world to some extent, and I should know it's foolish to expect them to objectively judge a K-pop song.

A simpler example would be wearing a pink t-shirt. It's not a question of liking it or not liking it. In fact, a man might like the pink t-shirt if it's being worn by Winona Ryder (I've re-watched the movie Heathers recently). It's more that the very notion of wearing a pink t-shirt is off limits to the male mind, as the male self-image precludes it. What with pink being de facto the girl colour.

This all works the same way for women too, of course. Only flipped backwards. They aspire to be like other women and admire men as objects of attraction, not as something to imitate. In a general sense.

It's obvious stuff, but if you point it out to people - especially in relation to their own tastes - they'll shriek and protest that all their judgements are strictly impartial.

It's a very interesting thing to consider in relation to art and music.

USA OUT!

The USA crashed out to Belgium in the World Cup last night. It was a strange game.

Firstly, I've been supporting the USA (as my second team - the real magic happened the night before). I even had a little £20 bet on them before the tournament. After the first few games that was looking like a not-so-bad outside punt. The USA had a real sparkle. After last night it looks like the actions of a dribbling idiot. When I go back into work on Thursday there'll certainly be a few "I told you so" remarks.

Part of my rationale for the bet was, "With Trump in the White House anything can happen."

I think that's backfired on me a bit though, as politics certainly did intrude, and it seemed to have a psychological impact.

On paper having your main striker available is a net positive, but things aren't so simple off paper.

Let's Explain The Situation..

So what happened?

In the previous game striker Folarin Balogun got sent off. In footballing terms this was a dreadful decision (in my opinion). He stood on a guy's foot, but it was totally unintentional. It was just one of these accidental comings-together, and naturally it looked much worse in slow motion. At the time I made the observation that judging a player's intent from a two second slowed-down clip is like judging the intention of a driver in a car accident using a two second clip of two bumpers impacting each other. It completely removes the wider context. It also misrepresents the sheer speed at which these things are happening and how limited human reaction times are.

We've seen countless examples in recent years of players being unfairly sent off simply because the mangled bumper footage looks gruesome in slow motion.

[I've posted on a similar theme over on Substack - yes, like everybody else, I'm on Substack now.

The Handball of the British Empire

I'm posting about football more these days as I feel the technocratic rule changes are a very good illustration of how technocracy is impacting wider society in general.]

Back to the USA

Anyhow, Balogun got unfairly sent off, and that meant he would miss the next game. In fact, it could've been even worse for the USA, as they were only 1-0 up at the time and going down to ten men could've cost them the tie. So it was a very unfair decision, but they overcame it to win 2-0.

Understandably they weren't happy about their star striker missing the next game.

Then Trump got on the phone..

Here's where it gets political. The red card was overturned (technically it wasn't overturned, the suspension was just delayed for a year, but that's the gist). Officially it was an independent decision, however, in reality the general view is that the intervention from Trump played a part.

Normally this doesn't happen in world cups. Normally red cards aren't overturned after the fact. No matter how unfair they may be. As it opens a can of worms. Though, to be fair, generally in football suspensions are appealed and sometimes overturned.

Either way, it doesn't make things any more fair overall, as you then run into the question of who decides what should and shouldn't be reviewed? Where does it end?

Is every game going to be re-refereed post hoc by a committee? Is it fair that teams that show sportsmanship and don't contest decisions suffer the disadvantage?

At the end of the day you should accept that the game finishes at the final whistle and that sometimes things happen within the game that are unfair.

The Terrible Performance

So before last night's game against Belgium there was a sense that the USA team had been given a helping hand by Trump. The USA went from being besieged underdogs fighting against the odds to the team that were getting special treatment. In contrast Belgium were now the fired-up underdogs with a sense of grievance.

This seemed to translate onto the pitch. The USA players all looked like they had stage fright. There wasn't a clear purpose to anything they did. They looked like imposters. Belgium, without being brilliant, simply dominated the game.

Now, expectedly, the whole affair is being used to bash Trump and America. This is unfair in my opinion. As firstly, it's been a great tournament. America (along with Canada and Mexico) have been great hosts and every stadium has looked fantastic. Then secondly, this politicisation of football is common now, so the USA have just done what everyone else is doing. Every club and country runs to the ombudsman these days. The Belgian counter-appeals have hardly been a model of sportsmanship either.

(It's kind of funny and fitting that once again it's Brussels versus the US 😅)

Recently we had the Southampton spy-gate saga - for which I had a front row seat.

I Travelled To Wembley Hoping My Team Would Lose

We also had the Senegal AFCON controversy. Everywhere we look we see lawyers, politicians, committees and fiddling bureaucrats.

No one ever says, "It's just a game, things went against us today. Let's just get on with it." Like how men are supposed to behave. And how we'd teach children to behave.

In The End

To conclude, the result was probably the right result for the game of football. Had the USA went through there would've been an asterisk next to it, and we'd have never heard the last of it. Hopefully everyone will learn a lesson from this, but I doubt they will.

Now it's all on England. Though apparently we're now considering an appeal against the Quansah red card. Smh.

William, It Was Really Nothing

First point of interest: I saw the unthinkable mentioned yesterday.

The potential for a Conservative-Labour coalition of some description.

Now a largish account has mentioned this it means it's fully discharged into the aether. It moves from unthinkable to thinkable - as a lot of people will now have thought about it having seen this tweet. It's no longer a liminal thought, thought rarely enough to be extinguished, or left to simply skit around some lonely corner of the ocean (i.e. rarely visited places like this blog).

Manchesterism

The big thing to mention is Andy Burnham's Manchesterism. A political philosophy. (That's kind of funny isn't it, when you say it out loud. He has his own political philosophy. Like Chairman Mao, or Plato.)

Clearly this laughter is a form of snobbery on my part - that they've dared to put themselves in such a lofty bracket. However, when I get beyond that reaction, my real view is that all these philosophies are a joke. All brought into the world by people who are too big for their boots. All essentially intellectual window-dressing for, "Here's how I would manage the human football team."

So what is Manchesterism? On first appearance it just looks like globalism in a Reni hat. I should try not to be so cynical though. I always think it's good to try to look on the bright side when things don't go your own way. Nevertheless, it's hard not to see this as Labour spinning a narrative to check yet more things off their wish list. The devolution in particular is predictable. It's literally the last thing on the list I quickly knocked up before the general election. (If we exclude the added proportional representation - though I guess that's more plausible now too.)

People could look at this list and nitpick. Technically we're not back in the EU, but we've had countless efforts to 'realign', so the direction of travel on all these issues has been clear. Likewise, 'illegal to homeschool' might sound a bit hyperbolic, but they've introduced legislation that's brought in a mandatory register for children that are home-schooled (or out of school in general) - that gives local authorities the right to demand attendance of children deemed "at risk." Whatever that means - which ultimately will be whatever they want it to mean.

Refugees As Economic Units Confirmed

This last story is another amusing one. That refugees will have to pay back £10,000 of their accommodation costs once they start earning.

Firstly, it's just funny that they've made it like student loans. Like becoming a refugee in the UK is no different to going to university.

Then also it's funny because it shows that the word refugee has become utterly meaningless. A refugee is supposed to be a desperate victim fleeing certain danger. It's not very nice to put a £10,000 debt burden on such a poor soul, is it?

(I don't think they're actually putting interest on the amount owed, lol. Though that would be even funnier.)

If a party on the right did this there'd be people chaining themselves to railings over it, and they'd be using the word refugee very much in its original meaning.

Perhaps it'll act as a deterrent to some degree, I don't know. It's just crazy how the narrative makes zero sense at all. Even Labour just use the term refugee to mean migrant. Or rather, to be more accurate, it kind of means, 'illegal migrant that we're making legal.'

Oh, Manchester..

And one final little note.

With Burnham on the scene we keep getting these references to Manchester bands. In a recent video Burnham himself made a lyrical reference to the Smiths song Is It Really So Strange?

Of course, the natural riposte is, "Oh Manchester, so much to answer for.."

However, journalists and pundits will have to resist the temptation to use that one, as the song's about the Moors Murders. So potentially the response will come, "How can you use the murder of children to make a cheap political joke?!!"

Cancellation incoming.

So it'll be interesting to see if anyone is brave enough to reach for that one.

[As anyone online knows, the correct response in such a situation is to double down, refuse to apologise, and say Manchesterism is worse than the Moors Murders. That would be incredibly brave and reckless though. Maybe one for a Restore candidate.]

The Swan-Goddess and the Underwater World

I think it's probably time I went back to using my actual name and image on Twitter. I'm getting far too cynical on there, and I feel hiding behind an avatar and silly name only adds to that. This coronation of Andy Burnham has hit me hard - I can't play along with the storyline when it's this blatant. It's a coronation, not a revolution. A simple rebranding. The pictures alone tell the tale. All the right people are far too happy.

All this talk of Keir Starmer clinging on. That he would fight Burnham in a leadership contest. Yet then, once the by-election's over, he just hands over the keys. We're told there's infighting. Some real bitter feuding going on. But does it look like that?

Perhaps on some personal level Keir Starmer is devasted and reluctant to step down, but everyone else, from the Labour politicians to the media figures who normally support Starmer, are beaming. Even Rachel Reeves can be found in these Burnham selfies - though admittedly her smile looks a little more forced.

Anyhow, back to me, the real King in the North. The one thing I don't like about using my own name and image is that it makes it easier for people who know me in real life to find me online. And it's not even embarrassment or fear of getting exposed or anything like that (I make an embarrassment of myself enough anyway - I'm not really the King in the North. More Prince Awkward of Wherever I Happen To Be). It's more that I don't like overwhelming people and making them feel weird. It's like they think they know you. They have this neat, boring box for you in their social schemata. Then you pull the rug on them and suddenly there's all this weird other stuff they have to process. People don't like that. I'm probably being a bit oversensitive, but I think it's true.

I remember overhearing someone say.. In fact, that's a lie. I'm saying 'someone' like it was no one in particular. It was actually the little swan-goddess from work. It was an, "Oh, we have that in common" moment. She was saying that she didn't like seeing the undersea world; that all the fish and other creatures made her feel disturbed and uncomfortable.

I've always felt like this. When I first went to the Sea Life Centre as a child I found it very disturbing. It really freaked me out. When I think about why I think it's the overwhelming nature of it. You have a worldview. You have the world mapped out. You're content within those parameters. Then all of a sudden you're confronted with a different world. The teeming life. All these strange living things. All the eyes. All the feelings and emotions - if they have those, you're not even sure. Now you have to process this vast flood of new information. There's all this other stuff to worry about. And, of course, if you're intelligent enough to have a degree of self-awareness, the revelation instantly makes you freak out more, "If I didn't know about this what more is there in this world that I'm not aware of'?"

The swan-goddess is a bright-eyed goddess, so I sensed that similar terror of thought in her. Though that may be wishful thinking. (In my last post I was reminding myself not to appeal to the female ballot box. There are plenty of fish in the sea - perhaps they don't share my feelings and emotions after all?!)

Anyway, that's the vibe I think finding someone's alternative life can inspire. Though obviously not quite to that same degree. I don't want people finding out I'm some strange octopus-type creature. I don't like icking people out. Then again, perhaps it's all part of the metamorphosis.

When Scandals Become Narratives: Part III

I'm back. It's now my thirty cents. I know, you've barely had enough time to read Part II.

Questions as to whether the problems are cultural or innate remind me of another anecdote. (Yes, I'm really spilling the tea at the moment.)

When I was about thirty I went on a short laddish holiday. Me and the other lads I was with were on a night out there. We walked past a strip club and the bouncers and scantily clad girls on the door started beckoning us in. My friends didn't need much of an invitation, but, as you can tell from my previous posts, that sort of thing isn't really my scene. So they went in and I went off on my own for a few hours, to observe the grim nightlife of the seaside town we were visiting.

Now it would be unfair to put strippers in the exact same category as prostitutes. After all, it is just nudity. If it was some type of arty nudity and people weren't throwing money at the women I'd probably be all for it. I'm not a total puritan. Still, strip clubs - even if that's strictly all that's going on - are a bar too low for me. And it's not so much a sense that the women are being exploited. I honestly couldn't care less about some twenty-five year old stripper - and I'm not just saying this to give a sense of edgy disregard ..well, I am, a bit, but I genuinely don't care so much. It certainly doesn't concern me the way the other things we've mentioned do. In fact, it's funny, I can actually remember earlier that same day seeing a stripper leave a different strip club in the area, and cross the street to enter a chip shop, when I was getting chips, lol. It was like getting an unglamorous glimpse behind the magician's curtain. I remember the hardened look on her face. Like she'd been working on an oil rig. She certainly didn't look like a victim ..and I got the sense she'd have aggressively told me to "F@ck Off" if I'd have even dared to condescend to her by suggesting that.

So it wasn't so much pious concern for the women, more my own personal pride. Having to pay to see a pair of tits in some grubby club. Pathetically handing some woman a £20 note as you sit there like a stupid dog that's been allowed to have a dog treat. I can't do that. It's beneath me. I'm sorry if you don't like that - that it makes me better than you - but it's true, that's just the way it is. You'd literally have to put a gun to my head. The burly bouncer couldn't get me through the door at the time.

Anyway, my mates went in, I didn't, and I finally met up with them at the hotel hours later. They'd wasted a lot of money. And one of them came back convinced the particular stripper he was giving money to genuinely "liked him." Nevertheless, it was all just standard, clichéd, lads on a night out type behaviour. Nothing more than that. What was more interesting to me was the response I got at work the next week..

The Girls

When I went back to work the women I worked with asked me about the excursion. I mentioned my friends losing a fortune at the strip club, thinking it was pitiful, but funny.

The girls were very disappointed in me.

They all thought it was terrible that I didn't go in myself. One even said she'd "feel ashamed" if her husband refused to enter a strip club on a lads' night out.

Now yes, don't get me wrong, I get it. On some primal level I'm the weak (and somewhat miserable one) for not bounding towards the naked women, full of testosterone. I was thirty odd year old at this point, so I understood only too well the common reality that women prefer, "fun, dangerous bad boys," and that they don't like delicate simps (though I wouldn't have used that particular word back then). So the response wasn't completely unexpected.

It was, however, worse than I expected. I didn't realise things were quite that bad. I didn't think I'd get no respect at all for having the sense and willpower to walk past a den of iniquity. The sheer bluntness. Normally women at least feign some dislike for such things. Though, to be fair, these were very honest, forthright women, and I knew them well enough to get a straight opinion.

Anyhow, I contested their viewpoint. I basically said something along the lines of, "I don't care if I look 'gay,' I'm not going to a strip club." Like a delicate little moral puritan.

When I look back now, alas, I realise this was a big mistake. Sure, I stood my ground - I don't regret that - but I accepted the weak framing of the situation. I should've been more forthright in my own opinion.

I made the mistake of trying to appeal to the female ballot box.

I now understand, after much thought, that this modern world, that I was born into, forced me into a false dichotomy. Where there can only be two types of men.

Conscientious, but weak men

And strong, but bad (or mindless) men

So if you're an intelligent, well-raised man in this world you're taught to be tolerant, and to completely suppress your male characteristics. Being a good man means never taking the lead, and always following the consensus. Tolerance is everything. You must always ask, you must never declare. If a bully hits you, you should tell the teacher, you must never hit back. If a crime is committed, you must tell the government. They will deal with it ..and you must never look back in anger. The minute you express a single word in anger, however heinous the crime, you cease to be good and tolerant.

The net effect of all this social conditioning is that it means the bad, criminal, or simply unthinking man, gets to personify and embody the male characteristics in society. Strength, virility, passion, natural leadership - they now all belong to the "bad boy." Even the good, conscientious women can't help but instinctively notice and feel this. There are no good, strong men, so who else are they going to be attracted to?

In previous eras good men were and could be strong. The knight in shining armour. The hero slaying the dragon. Even just the simple head of the household or village, who called the shots and set the tone. Whereas today men are taught it's wrong to be a knight. With fathers - the heads of households - portrayed in every TV show and advert as idiotic, but loving dotes. Passively accepting their teenager daughter's latest trend, as the real decisions are deferred to the switched-on, multi-tasking mother.

The message is clear: a good man must never impose himself on the world.

So the mindless man can indulge his masculine energy to bound into a strip club and waste his money. But my anger and disgust that a strip club is there in the first place must be suppressed. And if I want to raise any objection or concern I must make a gentle, simpering appeal to the nearest woman or local politician. As I did back then.

(I realise I'm self-declaring myself as the 'good man' here, lol, but you know what I mean. Allow me yet more arrogance.)

It's taken three articles to get here, but I feel we've finally hit the crux.

This is why when a man suggests using force (even just state force) to deal with a violent rapist it's viewed as crime of the century. A much bigger crime than the rape itself. As it represents the end of tolerance and the complete upending of the current social order. It's a revolutionary act.

The reason so many people in positions of authority failed to protect the victims of grooming gangs was not that they were all evil or actively complicit. It was because they were weak. Their natural instincts had been dulled by a world that said goodness meant tolerance. In every instance where they should've felt anger and showed some leadership they suppressed that urge and accepted the situation. Instead they offered help, guidance and contraception. Gently, tiptoeing around, trying to be 'good'. As bad men took the lead.

Some people on the right remain within the current false framing. The Andrew Tate types will just say, "You should go to the strip club." It's biological reality. You can either be a winner or a loser. So be the apex predator. Be the T-Rex.

I think once this framing breaks though, which it seems to be doing, the dragon slayer may come back. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

When Scandals Become Narratives: Part II

That last post about "grooming gangs" needs a PART II, as there were some points worth nothing that I couldn't squeeze in.

[Original Post: When Scandals Become Narratives - Part I ]

Firstly, this idea that the wives and family members of Muslim groomers were complicit in the crimes. As per the first post, I would again compare it to western men that visit Thai prostitutes. You could well ask, "How could the wife not know he was flying to Thailand?!" and so forth. However, common sense tells you that the wife is usually a victim of the man's behaviour too. As, obviously, the man is hardly likely to just openly tell his wife what he's up to.

People also point out that some Muslim women have thrown labels like "whore" at the girls. Again, this isn't unique to Muslim women, as it's always common for women to make this complaint when a man strays. Blame is assigned to both the man and the other woman/women, and naturally there's a spectrum. With some women assigning more blame to the man and others being more forgiving of their weak, "tempted" husband.

Of course, we're not just talking about straying men here. We're talking about the grooming and sometimes outright rape of underage girls. So in the extreme cases taking the man's side would be unforgivable, even for a loyal wife. Still, there's a spectrum, and once more the Thailand example serves as a good comparison. In both cases there are young, vulnerable girls and women. Some may be of legal age, others not. The guilty men ranging from the occasional user of a prostitute to extreme abusers in the mould of, let's say, Gary Glitter.

Now I can imagine members of the online right clutching their pearls in horror as I make this seemingly prosaic comparison. Nevertheless, it's a more accurate appraisal of the situation than the emotional hysterics they're offering. Plus, trust me, in spite my plain language I find the whole thing just as sickening. In fact, I reach for the Thailand comparison as I find that equally harrowing.

I mentioned in the last post the extreme things that sometimes happen on white council estates. Perhaps a bigger eye-opener for me was when I reached adulthood and started interacting with more middle class people. Where the core problem likewise exists, though in a form more fitting to that particular cultural strata. How comfortable and blasé they often were about prostitution both shocked and depressed me.

I remember once finding out that a guy I played 5-a-side football with went to the far east with his brother once a year specifically for that purpose. The calculated, exploitative nature of the behaviour, from a seemingly normal person in my social circle, filled me with a sense of grim dread back then. What was perhaps even more disturbing to me was the cold indifference of the other men when it was mentioned. At best a shrug of, "So what?", more often the question, "What's wrong with it? They're getting paid."

And that one example isn't an isolated incident. I know friends of friends that are teachers and lawyers, that have travelled abroad to behave like this.

Consequently, I've had countless arguments. Always being greeted with that classic line that it's no different to any other paying job.

"Women don't enjoy working in McDonald's, but you're happy to pay them to serve you fries. What's the difference?" they'll ask.

My response is always the same,

"Okay, give me your mother's phone number. I'll offer her a job at McDonald's, then I'll offer her a job.. dot, dot, dot. Then tell me it's the same."

It's a little harder to keep up the false charade when it's your own mother or sister getting the employment opportunity. I always put it in deliberately crude language too - that I'm bleeping out for the sake of taste here - to drill home that effect. In contrast to how they dress the act up under 'sex work' and other such labels to obscure the raw meaning.

Either way, I always look at these people and think, "Wow, if my daughter/sister/mother was destitute you really would just happily exploit her for sex if you thought you could get away with it. You're not like me, are you? Though you appear the same on the outside."

And this is the thread that runs through all these things. From the Muslim grooming gangs to the western sex tourist. That cold snake-like mindset (I used "crocodile-like" in the last piece - either way, reptile vibes), where there's simply no thought or care for the people being offered up. Particularly if they're foreign or unrelated. No sense of honour. Just a greedy, and sometimes deeply perverse, desire to indulge.

I don't know how we deal with this mindset. Perhaps it's the way we've raised these people? Perhaps it's innate? I don't know. Maybe the answer is indeed hanging, but if it is we're going to need a lot of rope. As it's not just Muslim necks.

That's a bit of a grim note to make. I didn't mean it to get so dark. Personally I'd like to believe the answer is nurture. As much as I have disdain for the men that behave this way I certainly wouldn't hold a single trip to a Thai brothel against someone if they showed sincere remorse. We all make mistakes. We all have weaknesses. We can all be cold and thoughtless at times.

This brings me to another addendum I wanted to note (hopefully a tad lighter). In the anecdote I shared last time I forgot to mention how left wing I was back then. As a student in my early twenties I obviously had quite a different political outlook. Still, in spite of that, I instinctively felt an almost tribal sense of, "They're taking one of our women." It's an interesting thing to witness in yourself, and it gave me a bit of cognitive dissonance at the time. My worldview should've precluded such a feeling, yet still I felt it.

I don't necessarily think it's good or bad to have such 'tribal' feelings. It's just natural. It's probably best to acknowledge it though, rather than pretend it doesn't exist.

Also, another addendum on a slightly different topic (before this gets too long). That lack of acknowledgement of just how bad the north of England was in the 1980s and 90s doesn't just lead to a misunderstanding of this issue. It also warps perceptions when it comes to crime statistics in general. People will complain about the degradation they see with their own eyes, but then someone like Fraser Nelson will come along, point at a graph, and say, "Ah, but actually, violent crime has reduced."

Yet this is sort of comparing apples and oranges. We used to have things like football hooliganism, 'twoked' cars, and white council estate violence. Now we have roadman stabbings and phone theft. People are complaining, quite justifiably, about the latter, but they're told it doesn't exist (or at least, that it doesn't exist to the extent they think it does), because football hooliganism and other essentially unrelated crimes have decreased.

The online right play into this sense as they portray Britain before mass immigration as some type of white Eden. Essentially forgetting or eradicating the Britain I grew up in just thirty odd years ago. So much so that I now have to write it down in recollections like this.

Anyway, that was quite meandering, but it's my two cents. Twenty cents when taken with the original post.

[Next: When Scandals Become Narratives - Part III ]

Makerfield: The Results

The by-election is now by the by. My main takeaway is that the Restore vote share was significant enough to confirm that Restore were genuinely trying to take votes from Reform. It's hard to know what's happening on the ground when you're looking at things remotely through social media, so though it seemed that was the case it could've just been a social media mirage. It wasn't.

For a party to win three thousand votes you need to put some serious effort in.

Effectively Restore were giving Labour a safety net. It wasn't needed in the end - Burnham won quite emphatically (likewise confirming the popular appeal of Burnham). It was a safety net though, and had the margin been tighter it would've made a significant impact.

I'll list the votes for future context:

Labour: 24,927

Reform: 15,696

Restore: 3,111

Conservatives: 997

Greens: 308
Lib Dems: 163

I won't include Count Binface and whatnot.

We'll now have the long drawn out affair of the Labour succession.

When Scandals Become Narratives

Today: The Rape Gang Inquiry Report.

A grim topic. First I'll deal with the title. Including my own little anecdote. Then I'll move on to the numbers.

Formerly this issue was called the grooming gangs scandal. The label has since been upgraded to rape gangs. The logic of this is understandable. Firstly, there have been acts of outright rape and gang rape. Not to mention violence, torture and other heinous things. So it's not accurate or moral to use a word as soft as grooming in these cases. Then secondly, as under-16s can't legally consent to sex, any acts that were non-forced were technically rape too. Which, again, is a correct assessment ..technically.

However, though technically correct, the reality is, this rebranding somewhat misrepresents the overall picture. As the vast majority of what took place fell into the second category, and grooming, in plain English, is a better descriptive word for it. (Which is why it was originally used.) These girls were generally charmed, chatted-up, manipulated. They believed these men were their boyfriends or partners. In plain English we use the word rape to mean forced, non-consensual sex. And yes, though in specific extreme cases this did happen, in the round that's not what was happening in these northern towns.

I live in a northern town, and I'll give my little anecdote.

When I was about twenty I started seeing this girl that I met on a night out. She was eighteen and she lived in the town centre. This was in the early 2000s. She had a little friend who was also about eighteen, who'd sometimes be hanging around with her when we met up on our little dates. Anyway, one night I met up with her - this was maybe only the third or fourth time I'd met her. Her little friend was tagging along and we were walking through the town centre, talking. It was maybe about 8 o'clock, evening time. Maybe later.

Anyway, as we were walking along talking, all of a sudden a car pulled up alongside us with three Pakistani men sat in it. They looked a lot older at the time, but were probably late twenties, early thirties. One of them popped his head out of the window, said something, and the little friend who was with us just said, "Bye, see ya later," jumped in the car, then it drove off.

I turned to the girl I was with, shocked, and said, "What the f*ck? What's going on? Where's she going??" Or words to that effect. She replied, "Don't worry, she knows them." In that sly, coy way that women do when something's going on and they don't want to speak bluntly. From the smirky look on her face it was obvious that her friend was involved physically with one of the men. So I replied, "What do you mean, 'knows them' ? She's friends with them? One of them is her boyfriend? What do you mean?"

Again, with a similar coyness she responded, "Don't worry, she knows what she's doing?"

At the time I felt annoyed that she wouldn't give me a straight answer. I was fairly inexperienced with the opposite sex, even in my early twenties, so though she was a few years younger than me I kind of felt like she was speaking to me like I was an inexperienced child that wouldn't approve of the adult things her friend was getting up to. In fact, I stopped seeing this girl not long after, partly because of that sense that she wasn't being honest. It sounds selfish, but I can remember thinking, "If she thinks it's fine for her friend to jump into a car with a bunch of older men, what's she been up to?"

I didn't have a frame of reference for what had happened back then. I'd never heard of grooming gangs. So initially I was just shocked and disgusted. However, when I thought about it, I soon got a decent framing, "Ah, okay, these girls live in the town centre. It's where the Pakistani lads live. It's poor and rough, they're from single parent homes. The Pakistani guys are older and have cars and money."

This girl was about eighteen, but it wasn't hard to imagine it would've started younger. So naturally, when I heard the stories about grooming gangs later on it was totally believable to me. It wasn't at all hard to imagine.

And it wasn't too different to what I'd seen on the council estate where I lived. Only there it was white gangs of lads, and drug dealers and drug addicts and other ne'er-do-wells. The fifteen year old girl going off with some older lad in a car. The countless teen pregnancies. People forget what the eighties and nineties were like. It was pretty rough. There were girls in my year at school that left and ended up in prostitution. There was actually a teacher at my secondary school (a white English man for the record) who got caught visiting his ex-pupils for paid sex. He got caught because he was stupid enough to visit them in the school minibus.

Back in those days the town was so poor and there were so many young women walking the streets that men would travel in cars from all over the north to take advantage of it. Again, these were mainly white men. So this mass exploitation of white working class girls wasn't solely Muslim, far from it, though undoubtedly the cultural differences did indeed have an influence on the form it took. With the Muslim men viewing these girls much the way that western men visiting Thailand would view a Thai prostitute. It's the same exploitative, crocodile-like behaviour. Where men take what they can, because they can, with little care or thought for the girl or her wider life.

People may point to the extreme examples of Muslim abuse, and yes, they are grave and sickening. But likewise there are sickening examples of abuse on council estates. Be it child abuse, or young girls ending up in relationships with violent drug addicts or wife beaters. There's a spectrum, and the extremes aren't representative of the general. The men who visit Thai brothels are undoubtedly bad and immoral, but their behaviour is clearly not as extreme as the behaviour of someone like Gary Glitter. So it would be an inaccurate misrepresentation to paint all those men as Gary Glitter. As if that was the norm.

Anyway, The Numbers

The report states that, "at the very least, 250,000 young white girls have been subjected to repeated rape, gang rape, trafficking, torture, pregnancy, forced Islamic conversion, and lifelong trauma."

That's a pretty big and difficult to believe number. That "at the very least" almost makes it comical.

Over two years ago I posted this on Twitter, as the trend for exaggeration was apparent back then:

A lot of the people that believe and share these ridiculous numbers are also the sort of people that call Jewish people liars for stating that six million people died in the Holocaust. Alas, they fail to see the irony. They're even calling for Nuremberg style trials at the moment, so it's funny. It should serve as a good education to everyone.

The Nazis were bad. They ended democracy, they invaded countries. They killed lots of people. They put Jews in camps. They killed Jewish people. They euthanised the disabled. 

However, at the same time, the six million figure probably is an exaggeration, and some of the propaganda, especially from the soviet side, is just that, propaganda.

Likewise, it's similar here. Appalling things happened to some of these girls. Sickening crimes, that need to be exposed and punished.

However, the huge numbers being thrown around are not a reflection of reality. (I've even seen people state there were over one million victims.)

People don't share these huge numbers because they're liars (though there may be the odd trouble-making individual). It's just the human propensity to believe ever bigger numbers. Especially when such numbers support a narrative or worldview.

It's like the war in Iraq. People against the war will say, "One Million Civilians Were Killed!" Whereas people in favour of the war will naturally gravitate to the lowest estimates for civilian casualties. It's just human nature. And if you try to give an impartial estimate that's somewhere in the middle no side wants to hear it.

I do think it's important to keep trying to temper this urge though, as sooner or later things become too detached from reality. The problem with the woke worldview was that it sailed off the cliff into phantasms. Now the other side are clutching their pearls in similar hysterics every time people fail to pay sufficient lip-service to their narratives.

Like if you dare to use the word groomed instead of the word raped.

[Next Up: When Scandals Become Narratives: Part II ]

A Modern Dissolution of the Monasteries

These book-burning priests need to go.

The UK government has announced its social media ban for under-16s. (Yes, obviously this will mean adults needing online ID to prove they're over-16 - so digital dog leads via the backdoor. Not especially surprising. It's been baked into the cake since 'zero seats' handed Labour supreme power.)

I want to focus on another aspect though. Namely how this is yet another issue that proves the education system is a net negative.

You'll see headlines like this:

(Teachers very much supporting the ban)

The teachers want phones and social media out of their classrooms. Feeling it causes trouble. I would argue that the problem is school itself though.

There's lots of talk about how difficult it is for parents to keep their children offline. The problem isn't really at home though. The problems begin when the parent sends their child to school. Where there's peer pressure from other children to be online and to have a phone in the first place. Where other children use their own phones to film classmates and cause other mischief. It's like sending your child into a little urban jungle, where they're caught between the influence of unruly (sometimes even criminal) children and the influence of exasperated teachers - teachers that aren't capable of managing the situation and that, quite frankly, don't care about your child as much as you do.

Of course, children aren't just there for a few hours a week either. They're there five days a week. For pretty much the entire day when you include the bus ride.

Why anyone thinks this will benefit a child is beyond me.

It's not conducive to actual learning. How can you learn in a rabble?

I'm currently typing this blog in a quiet room, on my own. It'd be a lot harder in a room full of twenty or thirty people. Even if they were all perfectly behaved.

More importantly, just think of that negative social influence - and I'm talking real-world social influence here, not something on a screen that you can turn off if you don't like it.

Never mind the prison-like monotony of such a long, cooped up day at school, but consider that endless influence from the other kids. The rough kids; the unruly ones ..that you can't escape, as you're forced to spend your time with these people. You don't have a choice. The constant noise and chitchat. Every day and every lesson you have to sit and listen to the teachers argue with these other children. If you laugh the teacher shouts at you too. If you don't laugh you alienate yourself from the other kids.

Just as you alienate yourself if you're the only one who doesn't have a mobile phone.

This isn't a problem when you're at home. Or with your actual friends. But it is a problem when you're in the jungle, and you're stuck there, and you have to fit in and navigate the social dynamics.

The Internet Isn't Bad

The Internet is wonderful. It's the modern printing press. You can home-school your child in perfect peace with a decent Wi-Fi connection.

So why are we sending children into the rabble every day?

To places so incapable of managing, let alone teaching the children under their care that they have to beg for a government ban to give them a fighting chance.

The teachers can't cope. They say they can't cope. Yet still we persist with this system. That at best provides very poor education, and at worst has the effect of making children worse. Just as prison and the influence of other prisoners hardens criminals.

I'm in the realms of hyperbole here, but it's not untrue.

We need to get beyond this. We need a modern Dissolution of the Monasteries.

[I've covered this topic before:

What School Should Look Like

State Education: A Modern Cargo Cult

Education Austerity, 2024

Glorified Day Care ]

Makerfield Pre-World Cup Punishment

Update time.

First little note, Mummy Badenoch apparently said she'd be prepared to help Farage into power to stop a left wing government. Her exact words in response to the question were, "This country can't have another left-wing government." Which appears to suggest that this is the case. It would also suggest my fears about the Tories potentially looking elsewhere in a hung parliament are unfounded.

However, this has all since been refuted, and when you read the wider transcript it's all a bit word-salady. Giving the sense of a politician dancing round the houses. So we're basically none the wiser.

https://order-order.com/2026/06/11/badenoch-says-she-would-let-farage-into-no10-to-stop-left-wing-government/

The bigger update.

My main reason for posting is that I've just watched a "Round 2" of the Makerfield Question Time discussion. This time courtesy of Manchester Evening News and Winstanley College.

It was painful to watch, as it meant listening to the feel-good empty words of the LibDem and Green candidates. (I'm trying to get this written, plus do some other chores, before the World Cup starts in a few hours, so I didn't really want to make the effort to watch the whole thing. I felt I had to though, given it was what I asked for after the original Question Time debate.)

Firstly, on Andy Burnham. When the others were speaking he looked bored (which is understandable ..but not a good look). Whenever he got the chance to speak he then suddenly perked up, like a true professional, and transformed into trendy headteacher mode. I'm not sure I'll be able to stomach this if he does become prime minister. I might have to go and live in a cave somewhere. Starmer already governs with a headteacher vibe, but at least he's a bit more staid and old school. This would be too much for me.

The students in the audience were enjoying it though. Everything he said got a round of applause. (And that's not a pun on him being headmaster-like. They were actual students, what with it being at a college.)

As for Robert Kenyon I thought he was really good. He started out nervous, but grew into the debate. Even more so than last time. He was never going to win the audience over - naturally it was very young and left-wing. I think the more average voter watching would've been impressed though. You get the feeling he would actually do a good job representing the area.

As I noted in the other post, it's refreshing to see someone who speaks like a normal person. I really hope he wins. If anything just to see the experiment continue.

What Is Anglo-Gaullism? Really?

Not what's the philosophy of it, but what is it, actually?

What it is (in my opinion, as ever) is the latest thing for intellectuals to talk about. It has a novelty, and it gives people an excuse to discuss history and all that other interesting stuff. Europe after World War II, the differences between the French and the English, and so on.

I watched a recent debate about it on UnHerd. Before it began the audience in the room were asked to raise their hand if they already considered themselves to be an Anglo-Gaullist. In spite of the novelty most did.

Why?

I would argue it's because it essentially just repackages their pre-existing beliefs into something more trendy and intelligent-sounding.

The basic core ideas are nationalism and a strong welfare state/state-directed economy - i.e. the general middle ground of what most British voters want at the moment. It's not really that novel at all.

However, with Anglo-Gaullism there's also a third element that the general public don't share. Anti-Americanism. Which is another indicator that this is an intellectual pursuit. As it's a thing common across the entire intellectual class of Britain. From Peter Hitchens on the right, to people like Aaron Bastani on the left.

I like all these people, and I consume the podcasts and debates as much as anyone else in the audience, but I just don't share that same disdain for America. In fact, the World Cup begins tomorrow and I have £20 on the USA to win it. A long shot admittedly (a work colleague told me I might as well have thrown £20 out of the window, lol), but I couldn't resist. I'll be supporting America anyway (along with England), so with Trump in the White House I'm hoping for a bit of magic.

The intellectual class still can't quite get over the crassness of Trump however. (And the unrefined power of America in general.) For all the groundswell of changing opinion on things like borders and immigration and DEI the more civilised folks remain unable to adopt the plain label nationalist. Even Faragist-Nationalism - a British, colourblind, equal-under-the-law nationalism - is too beyond the pale of respectability. So wrapping things up in a French, distinctly un-British, costume makes the label so much more wearable.

This isn't just nationalism, this is Marks & Spencer nationalism.

So it's an elite, exquisite opinion. And it'll remain elite, as normal people would never embrace a nationalism fixed upon a foreigner. (Though you could argue it's a very clever way of enticing other members of the intellectual class into adopting some of these ideas ..perhaps Peter Hitchens understands only too well that he needs to sell acting in the British interest to those that recoil at the sheer thought.)

There's also the question of who would be invested with this extra state power. Who would be the Anglo de Gualle? Farage has a French name, but that's clearly not enough. Kemi Badenoch certainly has the arrogance of a Frenchman, but she doesn't have the actual support of the nation. (I actually like Kemi Badenoch's arrogant manner. It's, dare I say it, quite attractive. I think a lot of the Tory men that circle her with praise - the ones that aren't homosexual - feel a similar pull. It's a trap I won't be falling into. I certainly won't be calling her "mummy" like they do, but I can appreciate the magnetism. Just as I can recognise the effect Burnham has on his dopey, female-heavy audience, though I won't be buying that ticket either.)

Back to the Anglo-Gaullism for the final word. A big part of the whole argument is that state reform is needed to strengthen the hand of the executive - whoever has it. There is a case for this. Post-1997 changes do need overturning. Still, it's a bit of an exercise in chitchat and ideas. During the COVID lockdowns we saw how powerful the state could be when it wanted to. We likewise saw how little things like human rights and legal challenges mattered. So it's a lot of intellectual deckchair rearranging in reality. Likewise, part of the reason why the debate about Anglo-Gaullism irked me a little was because I view it as a sign that the intellectual class of Britain are getting lost in abstractions again. During COVID those that were against the lockdowns had a very real and apparent threat to face down. Now that's rescinded there's a creep back towards luxury beliefs.

Perhaps I need to look in the mirror though. Here I am writing my own article about this when I could be out knocking on doors or doing something else more real-worldy.

[On a minor, but related topic, I noticed today that the Facebook page for the local Reform UK branch (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East) has abandoned the party (or the party's abandoned it - I'm not sure who ejected who first). The person running the account advocated supporting Rupert Lowe instead. I don't really know what's going on, but given it's my local area perhaps I should.]

Labour: Rebrand Not Revolution

Another post where I'm tired as I've just got home from work, but I feel I need to make a few notes.

Firstly, there were a few little stories that would suggest it is indeed rebrand rather than revolution for Labour.

1) A Guido Fawkes story stating that Tory personnel have been instructed not to attack Andy Burnham too much: https://order-order.com/2026/06/05/

2) Another story stating that Andy Burnham will keep Rachel Reeves as chancellor if he becomes PM: https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/

3) A third story noting that Andy Burnham has an "open mind" on drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/06/03

They all suggest my instincts were correct.

Question Time

The other thing I wanted to make a quick note about was last night's Question Time.

It was fascinating to watch. Reform's Robert Kenyon - the plumber! - appeared, and he was completely uncoached. So much so that in parts he actually came across as idiotic - a few times the audience even laughed at him. I don't really know very much about him, so this was my first real introduction, and it was difficult to make a judgement. He obviously isn't a professional politician, and appearing on Question Time really is being thrown in at the deep end. As the show went on he began to find his feet. He even managed to nail a key soundbite when he asked the Green Party candidate if she believed immigration affected housing. Most people don't watch Question Time in full, but they will see clips, so this moment probably made the appearance a net positive.

Again, it was really interesting to watch, as we're so used to seeing politicians who can give a sales pitch. People that have that spokesperson way of speaking. This was like watching a normal bloke thrown in amongst professionals. I'm sure I'd look like an idiot if I was put in that situation ..but, of course, I'm not an idiot. If I do say so myself. So I suspect it's similar here. It's like a bad job interview where you're put on the spot and you haven't rehearsed your answers. Only national TV. So it was hard to watch at times, but also refreshing.

In contrast we also had PM-in-waiting Andy Burnham on the show. He is very personable. He's likeable. He's one of these people that can have a chat with the girls in the office. He's not socially awkward. Much more so than most politicians. Most politicians have their smooth sales pitch, but they look like salesmen, he comes across as sincere when he does it though. You could see all the dopey women in the audience hanging on his words a bit when he spoke. (I'm only calling them dopey as I'm jealous they don't fawn like that for me ..they are a bit dopey though, and easily charmed by empty words.)

On top of this his years in national and local politics means he knows the ins and outs. When questions about housing and funding for flood defences and whatnot cropped up he knew which body was responsible for which bit of spending and all the other little details that being immersed in that world means you know.

So we saw quite an interesting spectacle. I'd like to see a 'Round 2', to see if Kenyon grows into the role. I can imagine he'll get a bit more coaching after that, but at the same time you'd rather see someone find their voice naturally. It also brings to the fore some of the things that cropped up during Brexit. That contrast between articulate people with ideologies and inarticulate people with common sense.

This old observation: https://freckledmonkey.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-remain-brain-vs-leave-perceiver.html

The next dozen days of so are worth keeping an eye on for many reasons.

I'm Kyle from South Park

My recent spurt of posts have been a touch mean-spirited. Describing the "types of people," in not altogether flattering terms, that exist in the various UK political parties. I don't like being cynical and overly-critical, (though I definitely have that in my character), so I was wondering why I'm being like that at the moment.

When I thought about it I realised it was because I'm annoyed about the shenanigans!

When I think back to how I was after the last general election I was in zen mode. It wasn't the result I wanted, but I was happy to accept the result and show some good faith. "Four or five years of Labour. It's not the end of the world," I thought, "In four or five years' time we might get Reform. So let's just make the best of it."

I didn't think there would be any shenanigans, because the political class had gotten their own way. They wanted Starmer. He was their darling. In the previous years we did have shenanigans. Boris, elected with a huge mandate, ousted before he could serve his term. Then Liz Truss got a similar, but speedier removal. Of course, before that we had Theresa May and the Brexit goings-on.

Now, alas, we have another round of musical chairs. Any thought that we might go back to electing a guy, letting him govern for a full term, then appraising him after that, quickly dashed. It is annoying, and, of course, anyone with any basic degree of intelligence can see that it looks a bit dubious. Even if, like me, you're not entirely sure what's going on. People kind of know that this isn't the normal way of doing things.

So, though I don't want to be cynical, I do think I have a bit of an excuse. Although, saying that, it might now be time to dial it back down again and be a bit more forgiving.

One final observation though..

Let me make one final little observation. I can't really resist this one.

Recently I've questioned the role of Restore. The other day I saw this post on Twitter. (You can see from the little blue mark in the corner that I bookmarked it.)

Note the image. Carl is wearing a brightly-coloured, vaguely-Hawaiian style shirt. The guy in the suit has bright, clearly dyed hair. This is 'clown' apparel. Anyone who's watched the Lotus Eaters will know that Carl always wears a suit, including a tie. He understands the importance of presenting an image. Yet out with Restore he's in the leisure wear.

I should say that I'm not saying these things look bad in general. The orange shirt looks perfectly nice, and the young gentleman with the floppy hair would look the part at some avant-garde indie night. But in politics, especially on the right, this is the equivalent of wearing a bright red nose and clown shoes.

For instance, if you were up in court and your lawyer turned up wearing the shirt Carl is wearing you'd have your head in your hands.

So they're definitely not getting 17% of the vote. That's for sure.