I would have no side in a fight between a racist and a paedophile. Down to the present day, all of my enemies have been at least one of those, and at least half of them have been both. But I do not believe that Laurence Fox is a racist, nor that the people who have successfully sued him are paedophiles. They are just objectionable in other ways.
If Fox is a politician, then I must be a statesman. I have lost far more elections than he has, and I have very occasionally even won a few, which is more than can be said for him. Not that there was, or presumably still is, any limit to his ambition in that area. Although he deleted the tweet, he called for the abolition of the monarchy as long ago as 31st October 2021, because of the then Prince of Wales's environmentalism. Whoever could Fox have wanted as the elected Head of State? Reclaim, indeed. Similarly, Richard Tice has told the BBC three times that Nigel Farage ought to be President when Donald Trump was again. Reform UK, indeed.
Elsewhere in the libertarian undergrowth, Liz Truss is opposing the Government's anti-smoking measures. Such measures really have worked in the past, at least against the tobacco that has been their target, and which has gone from ubiquity 30 years ago, to the point where you would stop for a second if you saw anyone smoking it in the street. If that can work, then why not the same against cannabis? And if plain packaging would make no difference, then why are the tobacco companies so desperate to prevent it? But that age thing is just daft, and it smells like a Trojan Horse for identity cards.
I want to be on the committee that decided which flavours of vape were acceptable. So long as I did not have to vape, or at least not in such a way as to take nicotine. Although I have done so a couple of times. When in Rome. But I talked my way out of drinking hooch. That word reminds the Pulp and Pulp Fiction generation that we have been here before. This is alcopops all over again. Yet not even John "Back to Basics" Major and Michael Howard, or their authoritarian New Labour successors, proposed state licensing of flavours.
But trust Truss? What does the great libertarian have to say about the Public Order Act, the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act, the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act, the Nationality and Borders Act, the Elections Act, the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act, the National Security Act, the Online Safety Act, and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, with both the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, and the Criminal Justice Bill, in the pipeline? What is she doing for Julian Assange? And if you need to, then look up Ayanda Capital.
Yet what are we offered instead? Wes Streeting does not know the difference between a ward and a bay, and he has no idea what state hospitals are in, if he imagines that whole new "wards", by which he means bays, could be magicked up for the transgender. There should be bays for people with penises, and bays for people without, strictly segregated for the safety of the latter, not because all men are rapists, but because all rapists are men.
No, it is not too late. When I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.
To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.
Good post even for you, Mr. L., but how did you get out of drinking hooch?
ReplyDeleteThank you. I could honestly say that it would have made me very ill indeed as a gastric spastic, which was what set off the arthritis; apparently, that is quite common. I was old enough, and well enough liked and respected, to be able to excuse myself. Indeed, I was once introduced as having the best manners in the prison.
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