…for RED TAPE!
Who knew?
I’m no psychologist but it is a well-known fact/urban myth
that if someone has a fetish or addiction they are ashamed of it can deepen and
corrupt. In that fuggy confusion of the mind, these folk can become spitefully destructive
against that part of themselves that yearns in what is to them, an unacceptable
direction. We know of cases of men, for example, who have been grossly
homophobic only to come out as gay later in life. Priti Patel, daughter and
granddaughter of immigrants – is jolly about her anti-immigrant credentials, gleefully
boasting of closing borders that might otherwise let in the new wave of
immigrants to help staff our over-stretched NHS, help our failing tech
infrastructure or clean/mend our filthy broken streets – in other words do what
immigrants have done throughout the ages. One hopes she struggles to sleep at
night but I doubt it.
Gavin Williamson, current secretary of state for Education
is state school educated (which puts him in a minority of tory cabinet
members). Nevertheless, his undermining of the state education system and
careless approach to those poorer families losing out most, is beyond
catastrophic. I admit, with Gav, it remains speculation whether he is indulging
in twisted self-hatred or whether he is just so spectacularly
thick (the general consensus is that he is the thickest of a very thick bunch) he
is really unable to do any better…
Kwasi Kwarteng – old Etonian Minister for Business blah blah
blah, whose parents are Ghanaian – infamously
wrote one of those twonk public
school-boy ‘history’ books on the British Empire and how spiffing it all was. No,
I’ve not read this one. I couldn’t stomach it and brain space is precious but I
was drip fed the pertinent flavour by a reliable friend. Like other privileged
brain-washed-by-the higher-end-private-sector schools, his view of the British
Empire seems to be not one of a greedy, murderous, country-decimating rampage of racist aggression
and slaughter but a jolly bit of good old elite boys’ adventure. I’m not sure those who lived through - or died
through - the British abuses of slavery, gold and ivory trading would agree – but
hey – maybe they super loved it and had just been waiting patiently for a bunch
of psychotic spoiled brats to come along and annihilate their cultures, land
and people. Despite all sensible information to the contrary - maybe my own ancestors enjoyed being slaves...
For other relevant reading try an old post on this blog - 35.
Eton Mess - pudding or state of the nation or 187. British boarding schools breed posh sociopaths (it originally said
psychopaths but we’ve all learnt so much of the nuance of dysfunctional
behaviour since then…)
And that brings me to Boris Johnson. I’m not saying that at
any time during his hideous career, I was stupid enough to believe what he said/wrote
but I’d no reason to doubt wanting to rid British
industry of the strangulation of RED TAPE. It’s something spouted by most other Tories for most of the entire time
we were a member of the EU. It’s been a stick (or whip – or nylon stocking) to
beat Brussels with for 4 decades.
As I’ve written on this blog many times before, leaving the
EU was always about wholesale deregulation – the kind Margaret Thatcher could
only have dreamed of and which Kwarteng seems to be salivating over now.
Last weekend’s news and current affairs programmes were a sad conveyor belt of small business leaders talking about increased bureaucracy, massive amounts of choking red tape, entirely predictable problems with road haulage and vast amounts of complicated, new paperwork. The best that anyone could come up with in terms of positivity was that it might ‘smooth itself out’ and be a bit better in 5 years’ time. Realists such as Michel Barnier point out that creating unnecessary friction was the whole essence of Brexit and friction is here to stay. Friction or no friction, many of the companies were talking about not surviving the next few months.
Then there was the sparkling advice to
those businesses that maybe they should set up headquarters in – I kid you not
– France. Is anyone else flattened by the irony?
The Tory party is really getting their cake and eating it – as Boris Johnson himself said would happen – just not in the way he boasted just last month. No surprise there.
Deregulation and the smashing of painfully won workers’ rights has begun – headed up by the aforementioned KK. Again – no surprise. Not to me. BUT
there is economic and business strangulation by massively increased red tape. Surprisingly, our current right-wing, low grade, dumb as shit, head bangers don’t seem as repulsed by the disastrous, depressing spectacle as previous protestations
would have suggested…