Tim Martin's fixation with Brexit.

 

Tim Martin - CEO of J.D. Wetherspoon

Although many British people are now beginning to realise that they were sold a pup with 'Brexit', Tim Martin, the C.E.O. of J D. Wetherspoon, was utterly convinced that the country would be better off if we left the E.U. He seemed to see Brexit as kind of panacea that would cure Britain’s many economic problems.

Before the 2016 referendum, if you were a customer of J.D. Wetherspoon, you got Brexit rammed down your throat, it was even on the beer mats, and Wetherspoon customers were paying for all that. I doubt that the beer baron, who was brought up in New Zealand, writes his own copy, but his name was on it. Understandably, as a wealthy businessman, Tim Martin is more concerned with what is in the interests of his company and its shareholders, than what is in the interest of the country. He's not running a benevolent society or a charity. He's in business to make money. I stopped reading the pub magazine a long time ago, because I got tired of hearing about Brexit. 

Tim Martin says that he wants tax parity with supermarkets when it comes to alcohol pricing, but if prices continue to spiral in Weatherspoon’s as they are doing, the company is going to drive many more of its customers into the supermarkets. It would be a pity if this did happen, because Weatherspoon’s is one of the biggest sellers of hand pumped cask beers in the country and I have never had a bad pint. The cask beers and the discounts early in the week, along with the beer festivals, are what draw many customers into Weatherspoon’s. The pubs are generally warm and there are free refills of tea and coffee along with free Wi-Fi. Another attraction is that there's no music but there is TV. 

A lot of Wetherspoon customers are still far from happy that meals like mixed grills, 8-ounce sirloin steaks and gammon steaks were taken off the menu. They were told this was done to save money. Anything that you can get your teeth into, has now been removed from the menu and replaced with overpriced beef burgers. 

Meritocracy – the meta-narrative of liberalism.

 

By: Andrew Wallace

‘Man’ does not live by bread alone; it seems human nature must draw sustenance from existential motivation that rises above the merely contingent. If pre-modern societies were characterised by metaphysical belief systems and religion, our secular age invokes the virtuous in the overarching meta-narrative of liberalism and the ideas of individual self-realisation. Individualism is held up as the repository of rationalism and the cradle of goodness.

In so far as collectivity is acknowledged as a dimension of human experience in terms of language and culture, these are tacitly conceded for the paradoxical cultivation of individualism. Liberal modernity was pronounced in the shift from ‘ascribed’ to ‘achieved’ status, whereby virtue is held to reside in individual performance rather than conferred by ancestral passage. Of course it has never proved to be the case that we can unproblematically distil merit from inherited advantage, although the allure of ‘meritocracy’ is officially observed in legislation that seeks to proscribe the most egregious prejudices when it comes to employment, access to basic amenities and civil rights. Meritocracy is encoded in the formal observation of equality of opportunity.

But while leftists recognised the importance of advancing formal equality of access before the law, they also understood its limitations by way of how powerful inequalities would continue to reproduce themselves down the generations. If social advancement was now predicated on rational criteria of achievement, then a canny middle class accordingly mentored and distinguished by credentials would still wield considerable cultural capital that puts itself ahead of its working class peers. Attempts to remove or redistribute these advantages would conceivably involve communal child rearing and inheritance taxes, all of which invariably prove politically unappealing and unacceptable with the partial exception of a few fringe bohemian communities.

If Britain envisages itself as a meritocracy it must also account for its tenacious monarchism, a rather incongruous edifice of hereditary. In order to swallow this piece of cognitive dissonance we tell ourselves that walling off a not inconsiderable chunk of heritage from modernity does indeed make sense as a kind of marketable living museum imbued with the collective symbolism of nationhood. This serves as a soothing balm against the rougher edges of secular disenchantment that inevitably present with meritocratic atomism. Hence the more telegenic upcoming members of the royal cult are able to renew their appeal whilst also neatly dovetailing into the prevailing culture of celebrity.

The British ruling class have often put class interests before Britain's strategic interests.

 

The world's wealthy capitalist elite don't really recognise an allegiance to nations as such or national boundaries. What concerns them more is the opportunities for exploitation and to make money. If Labour and manufacturing costs are lower in other parts of the world and people have the right skills and education, they will export jobs overseas. There's also the issue of social-class which I think often overrides national interests.

Conservative decision makers have often let their class prejudices prevail over the strategic interests of Great Britain. During the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), Britain's official position was one of neutrality, but many conservatives made it clear that they supported General Franco. Britain had a great deal of money invested in Spain and it was believed that a Republican victory might put that investment at risk. But they must have known that if the Francoist nationalist rebels won the war, with the help of German and Italian dictatorships, it was likely to lead to a possible world war with Germany. The Spanish Civil War was really a dress rehearsal for WWII.

Sir Henry Chilton, the British Ambassador to Madrid, was anti-Republican and wanted the coup to succeed. The journalist Henry Buckley, was told by a British diplomat, "the essential thing to remember in the case of Spain is that it is a civil conflict and that it is very necessary that we stand by our class." 'Save Spain', meant defending the interests and privileges of a small Spanish elite. Franco said himself that he was prepared to kill up to half of the Spanish working-class to achieve his goal. He's said to have killed more Spaniards than all the King's of Spain combined.

General Mola, the director of the military coup, advocated terror and annihilation of the organised working class. He declared, "It is necessary to spread terror. We have to create the impression of mastery, eliminating without scruples or hesitation all those who do not think as we do." That included Freemasons, incorrigible liberals, feminists, freethinkers, trades unionists, socialists, communists and anarchists.

Mandelson steps down from House of Lords and faces police investigation.

 

Peter Mandelson

What does Peter Mandelson stand for or his creation New Labour? He's drawn to wealthy individuals like flies are drawn to shit. Maggie Thatcher said her greatest legacy to the country was Blair and New Labour.

Since leaving government Blair and Mandelson have done nothing but try to line their own pockets. They're in the pockets of big business and the wealthy. Mandelson has now left the Labour Party and says he stepping down from the House of Lords. His close relationship with the paedophile billionaire financier, Jeffrey Epstein, has been exposed in a series of emails released by the White House. He also faces a possible police investigation for public misuse of office while a government minister. It’s alleged that Mandelson received money from Epstein and disclosed confidential government information.

Labour is past its sell-by date and Starmer will lead it into the abyss. Mandelson was once a member of the Young Communist League (YCL) and Starmer was a Trotskyist. Mandelson and his father were connected to the Jewish Chronicle and his grandfather, Herbert Morrison, a Labour government minister, was an ardent Zionist.

The Green Party under Zack Polansky, is now more popular than Starmer's Labour government. They're likely to get the votes of a lot of young people if they can be bothered to vote. I like a lot what the Green Party say but I'm an agnostic when it comes to climate change and I won't be going on a plant-based diet. Polansky is also a bit too fluffy and woke for me but I will be pleased if the Green Party take Gorton & Denton.

Ayn Rand and her capitalist super heroes.

 

I've read Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged and her fictional heroic capitalists aren't real estate developers or edge fund managers. They're steel and oil barons, car manufacturers and railway tycoons.

Although Rand has acquired many devotees over the years, mainly on the right of politics, her gospel of selfishness didn't go down very well in late 1950s America. Rand was criticised for being immoral and her advocacy of unrestrained laissez-faire capitalism, wasn't popular either. The National Review described it as a "silly book", which I think is fair comment. 

The book, which some consider to be the Bible of the American Congress, is also very American. One government employee, called Cuffy Meigs, is straight out of the wild west. He carries a loaded revolver even in the office, and a rabbit's foot for good luck.  

The Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, the archpriest of neoliberal capitalism, wrote to Ayn Rand in 1958 praising the book. He basically told her that she had the courage to tell the masses what no politician was prepared to tell them. That they were inferior and that they owed their conditions in life and social improvements in life, to the efforts of "men who are better than you." Margaret Thatcher would have subscribed to this view. She believed that all of us are indebted to a small number of talented people (wealth creators), for our conditions in life. 

Yet, I think it's true to say, that the greatest of inventions, is never likely to see the light of day or leave the drawing board, if we haven't got the labour and skills to make it. As Adam Smith tells us, it's labour that creates wealth and some have argued that all wealth should go to labour. The relationship between labour and capital is a dialectical relationship. 

I don't think Ayn Rand can be considered a serious philosopher. She was once asked if she could sum up her philosophy when standing on one foot. She answered: Metaphysics, 'Objective Reality'; Epistemology, 'Reason'; Ethics, 'Self-Interest'; Politics, 'Capitalism'. 

Like Charlie Kirk, Rand railed against altruism and despised government welfare systems that support the poor. Yet, in later life, when her health failed her, she finished up on social security and Medicare. She couldn't even live up to her own philosophy. Rand is one of very few authors to have written a pro-capitalist novel and her capitalist super heroes, who like Atlas, hold up the heavens aloft on their shoulders, are like Nietzsche's supermen. Rand denied that she had ever been influenced by Nietzsche. 

Joseph Stalin and the art of tyranny.

 

Joseph Stalin

I think it was either Solzhenitsyn or the Yugoslavian communist, Ante Ciliga, in his book 'The Russian Enigma', who described the communist as "good thinkers." What was meant by this, is that many didn't really believe or want to believe, that comrade Stalin was directing and orchestrating the terror and the mass arrests, from his little corner in the Kremlin. They always wanted to believe that others were responsible for what was taking place and that the boss was unaware of it.

Stalin had members of his wife's family arrested, interrogated and imprisoned and some were executed. Many of these thought Stalin was unaware of their predicament. Molotov's wife was denounced and arrested on trumped up charges and Molotov voted in favour of his wife arrest at a Politburo meeting. She was sent to a labour camp.

Just before Zinoviev was shot, he was pleading hysterically with his guards to contact comrade Stalin because he believed that Stalin would save him. He literally begged for his life and clung to the leg of an NKVD officer. Kamenev told him to die like a man. When Stalin was told about Zinoviev's pleas to his guards, he pissed himself laughing. Uncle Joe wasn't just a peasant slayer; he liquidated a lot of communists as well.

Glossop has been dubbed one of best places to live. It's also known as the place where pensioners go to die.

 

Glossop Town Centre

I don't think Glossop, in Derbyshire, is anything to shout about. The people are rather parochial and are very wary of strangers or what they call 'townies'. 

During the COVID lockdown in 2020, I saw pubs displaying signs that said "Tier Three People Not Welcome" and in some pubs, they would ask an unfamiliar face, if they were from a tier three area. 

In the local JD Wetherspoon pub, in Glossop, they had B.F. Skinner pigeon boxes for single people who were put into isolation by a female staff member, who was a complete control freak. She reminded me of nurse Ratched in the film 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'. She definitely displayed signs of deep-rooted psychological issues. The last time that I heard of her, she was working as 'greeter' in a Ben and Jerry's ice cream parlour.

Glossop was once known for being a centre for transcendental meditation but it's also known, for having elevated radon gas levels, that are consistent with the geographical composition of the Derbyshire Peak District.

In my view, a better place to live, would be Uppermill, in what was once the West Ridings of Yorkshire. It's a quaint little place, with a nice community feel about it, and the locals are very friendly and welcoming. They love brass bands and still Celebrate Yorkshire Day.

Comrade Vasily Blokhin; Stalin's trigger finger.

 

The Soviet communist dictator Joseph Stalin, was responsible for the deaths of millions of Russian citizens and many of these, were executed by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, during Stalin's purges. Although Stalin's regime built a society on a mountain of corpses, he never personally pulled the trigger. You might say that he hadn't got the stomach for it, so he delegated this "black work" to NKVD officers like comrade Vasily Blokhin, the NKVD's official executioner.

Comrade Blokhin personally executed Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin, as well as 7,000 Polish prisoners at Katyn. He also personally executed his NKVD bosses, Yagoda and Yezhov. Blokhin was very meticulous when it came to carrying out the executions. At Katyn, a sound proof building was constructed with a sloping floor to wash away the blood of his victims and he used a German Walther pistol, to shoot the prisoners, at the base of the skull. Blokhin liked to work throughout the night, preferably, when there was a full moon. He wore a leather apron, leather gloves and a leather hat. He's considered one of the most prolific official executioners in world recorded history. Unlike many of his victims, Blokhin survived the Stalinist era but succumbed to chronic alcoholism and committed suicide.