ninme

He’s a little off topic. It’s a bit of a rant. Obviously he’s spent a week back in England. It’s set him off.

The Times - Alas, poor Britain. The best name for it is Absurdistan, by Gerard Baker

(First he’s got some rather hilarious digs in at a TV historian, Andrew Marr, that I think Mr Red might appreciate given his thoughts relayed to me in an earlier conversation on the subject of Simon Schama, but I’ll skip that, but it’s there if you’re interested.)

In its funny little way the news this week that the Advertising Standards Authority had banned reruns of the 1950s egg advertisements that featured Tony Hancock was more compelling evidence on the state of modern Britain than even Marr’s obiter dicta.

“Go to Work on an Egg” was unacceptable, we were told, because it encouraged an unhealthy lifestyle. I had no idea that we had a government body that still operated on Stalinist principles but there it is. How long will it be before it is not just the free speech of advertising that is curtailed but the evil practice it promotes, and we ban egg consumption along with smoking? Goodbye England. Welcome to Absurdistan.

At root of this nonsense is, of course, the sheer scale of government. The reason you can’t be allowed to eat an egg is that, because of the lack of real choice in healthcare provision, you’re no longer responsible for the financial consequences of your own actions. If you get heart disease from too much cholesterol, the State, collectively known as the NHS, will have to treat you; and that costs the State more and more money so the State will have to stop you from doing it in the first place.

This is the self-perpetuating logic behind the unstoppable momentum of the expanding State. The bigger it grows, the more it intrudes into our lives, and the more it intrudes into our lives, the more dependent we become on it. Education is the same. Our great universities are struggling to compete in a global market because they are hamstrung by the State. They are dependent on central government for their funding; but that funding is insufficient to meet the needs of global competition. But because they need government money for what they do, they cannot break free.

Yesterday I watched an Inspector Morse, The Daughters of Cain. It was all set to the backdrop of an Oxford college running an appeal to raise money, and how disgusting and lowering it all is. In a scene at the beginning, there’s one of these High Table dinners with all these rich people gathered to listen to the guy in charge of the appeal talk about how it’s the best college in the world (”though he acknowledges the existence of a certain institution in East Anglia”), although they’re losing brains to Harvard and “Stann-forrd” because they have “so much money”. This was made in ‘96. Poor Morse.

That in the end, was what was behind another sorry spectacle of Britain’s decline this week – the Fulton inquiry into the capture of the Royal Marines and sailors in March by Iranians. It was of course, to outward appearances, magnificently Gilbertian – the first Sea Lord doing the honorable thing and shuffling off the blame on to anyone but himself. But its message was very modern.

Mistakes were made but no one made them.

You know who didn’t make mistakes? The Australians!

It’s also this loss of any sense of personal responsibility and accountability that has created the conditions that have allowed Britain steadily to surrender meekly to the encroaching ambitions of European elites for the past 30 years. …

The worst thing is, nobody in Britain really seems to care. We’ll demand a referendum, of course, but will be rudely told it’s none of our business; how dare we seek to shape the decisions of our rulers? And as the dutiful serfs we are, we will, in the end, simply apologise and humbly submit.

Poor Gerry.

A friend of mine, another American student I met while I was an American student in London, he went back to visit some friends there last year sometime, and I think it was the first time he’d been back since we were both there in 2001, and he said it was really depressing. Both of us were always just rapturous about the place while reminiscing, but he said it had lost all its magic. He just couldn’t help notice how dirty everything was, the “multicultural” thing was getting on his nerves, and it was just so crowded. And this is a guy who likes London. Not someone like Jeremy Clarkson who can’t stand the place and loves (though truthfully) ragging on it all the time. I think I’d probably still love it, but having been reading the British press all these six years in the interim, I think I knew what he meant.