From Patriotic Alternative.
Edward Saunders
Although I don’t watch sport as much as I used to, there were three hilarious instances this summer that made me think for a moment that fate may be on our side. Firstly, Wimbledon decided to ban Russian players from its competition, only for an ethnic Russian with Kazakh citizenship to win the female championships. Secondly, there was the international condemnation and ban of Novak Djokovic for refusing to get vaccinated, only for him to then win the Wimbledon men’s championships. And thirdly, England’s female football team was criticised for not being diverse enough, only for them to go on and win Euro 2022 at Wembley against Germany.
Nothing better than some good old fashioned irony to hit back at the left with, which probably flew over their heads a bit like a tennis ball. The fact that senior players – indeed in some cases the best that ever competed – are being banned from their own sports is ludicrous. Instead of focusing on Covid, and policing this narrative after 2-and-a-half years, can we please move on? Perhaps it may be possible for the left, or indeed the Conservative government, to think about something else soon and start prioritising things that matter?
Anybody thinking about building reservoirs or de-salinisation plants to ease the droughts in the summer, which are partly caused by an increasing population living on a limited water table? No. Any effort to get civil servants to stop working from home so the passport and driver’s license applications backlog can be sorted? No. Anybody going to force doctors to reinstitute face-to-face appointments, as there are literally thousands of excess deaths occurring? No. Is it possible for politicians to change legislation to enable the deportation of migrants crossing the English Channel? Also no.
In decline
This may sound controversial to those in denial, perhaps, but our civilisation is in a state of decline. Indeed, judging by China’s insane zero Covid measures, perhaps the entire world is heading backwards rather than forwards. This all reminds me of a hilarious paragraph in Tom Bower’s history of Tony Blair’s premiership, where in 1997 a Health Minister is discussing new policies with a civil servant. The minister says he wants to abolish Health Trusts, the civil servant replies that would cause many problems, and so the minister just says ‘okay, we won’t then’ and immediately abandons the policy. Despite having been an MP for 5 years, the minister didn’t know the basics of his own brief.
Such books as Broken Vows, the title of the aforementioned work, do reveal how our elite really behave and think, and it does show the reality that we are ruled by an idiocracy. Perhaps it is a cope to think we are ruled by evil geniuses hell bent on world domination, who sit on their thrones in Davos completely undefeated. Would it be more sad to admit that we’re actually ruled by complete idiots? For example, one of the key takeaways from the book is the shocking lack of joined up thinking from politicians, the military and the civil service. By the time Blair was coming to the end of his term, they were all reinstating Tory policies from 1996 in order to improve standards, because his own systems had been so disastrous – especially in education.
It is not an open secret that learning standards in the West have been declining for quite sometime; with history, the classics, foreign languages, tech and other subjects being cast aside and replaced with the social sciences. At one point during the New Labour years, and I got this shocking fact from the book, pupils only needed 16% to pass an exam paper in certain subjects. Meanwhile in the present day private schools have become a stronghold of woke culture – and their indoctrinated pupils will be ruling over us in 30 years time. When you consider that MPs in the 19th century spoke English, French and usually Latin or Greek, it begs the question how many politicians today could manage that.
As the good weather months come to an end, the public’s focus will no doubt start to shift away from current problems like drought and onto the Qatar World Cup and Christmas. Enjoyable of course, and a welcome distraction for many from the crippling cost of living. However at the same time, it would be nice to live in a country where things actually work, and where the country as a whole started to rally in an effort to actually get useful things done. Solutions will not be found among the current breed of politicians, and hopefully the public will learn to embrace the strategies of those who don’t fit the current paradigm. In other words, us.