I provide below some Marxist expressions, which have crept into our vocabularies and frame our expectations, our public debate and our policies.

Giving Back:  This expression is frequently used to describe the charity work of successful businessmen or women, usually entrepreneurs. The expression “giving back” satisfies the Marxist dream of redistributing wealth from “haves” to “have-nots.”

When Bill Gates retired from Microsoft in 2006 he said:

"I believe with great wealth comes great responsibility – the responsibility to give back to society and make sure those resources are given back in the best possible way, to those in need," he said. Gates added, "It’s not a retirement, it’s a reordering of my priorities."

Discussing a new business venture, Virgin Atlantic CEO Richard Branson said:

”It is important that the company is more than just a company, so that it gives back to the community as well.”

What exactly are Branson and Gates giving back?  Do successful companies steal from the community?   Are CEOs the modern equivalent of the robber barons of the past? “Giving back” implies that business is somehow greedy and immoral.

By investing their time and talents, risking their capital, hiring employees, buying and selling, Gates and Branson created prosperity, opportunity and happiness for thousands of people around the world. They gave to their community when they went into business.

The Common Good:  This phrase is especially popular with the environmental global warming movement.  It elevates a hypothetical group of people at the expense of actual individuals and it stands for anybody EXCEPT you and me. It is the equivalent of the Classic Marxist phrase “the masses.”

Here’s a good example – a book title by Herman Daly: 

For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment and a Sustainable Future.   There is even a chapter called: “From Individualism to Person-In-Community.”  (yeegads…)

Beware of anybody touting programs for “the common good.”   It means that they want to take your property, your freedom, or your money and that you will see no benefit from the program.

For the children:  This expression refers to the exact same group of nonexistent people as “the common good” except these nonexistent people are hypothetically young and hypothetically live in the future.

Speech frames our perceptions; it determines our expectations and actions.  Political debate frames policy and policy becomes laws. 

And so it is to our detriment that we accept these types of phrases in our speech patterns without critical recognition of their underlying philosophies.
 

I love Manchester.  Excluding London (naturally) it is the best city centre in the country for shopping and entertainment.  Getting there for me is relatively easy.  If I leave at the right time I can be at the Shudehill multi-storey car park in Manchester in around 45 minutes.  With my small car I can easily get there and back on £5 of petrol.

Let’s turn to the alternatives.  If I follow this government’s drive to force us back on to sub-standard public transport I am faced with the train and the bus.  OK, let’s begin with the train.  Here is a typical timetable on the only rail line that runs between here and Manchester.  As you can see it actually takes around 15 minutes longer than the car journey and costs over £3 more for the inconvenience.  Trains in this part of the country are usually two-car charabancs on rails that stop at hundreds of intermittent station en route anywhere.

That’s the ‘joy’ of train travel for you.  Let’s now turn to the buses.  There are no direct bus services between Halifax and Manchester.  There isn’t even the 562 service to Oldham any longer (it was axed over a year ago despite running since before World War 2).  Thus, if I want to go to Manchester by bus I have to journey by bus to Huddersfield and take the 184 - a journey that could well see me into the male menopause by the time of its arrival.

This is what makes me gnash my teeth when I read about idiotic proposals such as road charging (that’s what the citizens of Manchester get for voting Labour).  In other countries the penalisation of the populace is usually offset by alternatives that are either cheaper, more convenient, or both.  But of course this ‘green’ proselytisation and its accompanying citizen rip-offs is not about a commitment to the environment.  It’s just another way to make the lives of folk more expensive and less convenient.  That’s why it will be bye-bye Manchester for me if they bring road charging in.  It will be bye-bye everywhere that chooses to punish those for the pleasure of owning and using a private vehicle as they see fit.

I touched on this subject only the other day.  Even so I’m coming back to it.  Last night I did that rarest of things in my household – sat down to watch Questiontime from Basingstoke.  The most interesting question for me was the issue of British people being given – rightly in my opinion – priority over foreigners and migrant workers for social housing.  If you went around most towns in Britain and asked ordinary folk what they thought, the response would be overwhelming: Yes, British people should be given priority.

Yet not one of the politicians on the panel were prepared to back that point, made originally by Labour MP Margaret Hodge.  Alan Johnson just kept vomiting up the old cobblers about how we need immigration and doesn’t everybody love them being here (NO, I DON’T LIKE THEM BEING HERE.  NEITHER DO MILLIONS OF OTHERS.  GOT THE MESSAGE!!!!!?).  Dr Michael Heseltine (PhD in backstabbing Prime Ministers) looked positively frightened to death about broaching anything that might upset immigrant sensibilities.  Well, we know how some Conservatives treat those who tell the truth about immigration.  That’s why Powell ended up as an MP for South Down.  Only the journalist for the Daily Mail had the temerity to tell the truth (the Establishment hate you to be honest in this country).  Her comments went down like a lead balloon with an audience stuffed to the rafters – as ever – with Guardianistas.

On the contrary have a look at the programme’s message board (scroll down).  If you take into account the censorious nature of Auntie, the reSponse is overwhelmingly one of looking after our own people first.  And why not?  Why should someone who has worked, paid taxes and contributed to this country not get priority over, say, a group of Romanians with 14 kids and a mahogany begging bowl?  What the hell have the latter ever put in here?  Oh yes they come here because they are informed it’s the land of milk and honey.  So it is – for Johnny Foreigner.  Our own folk seem to get an ever diminishing slice of the social and societal cake.  The message is simple:

PUT BRITISH PEOPLE FIRST.  LET THE COMEOVERS TAKE THEIR PLACE AT THE BACK OF THE QUEUE.  JUST FOR A CHANGE!!!

1768 – English navigator Captain James Cook sets off on his first voyage, to explore the Antipodes.

1895 – At the end of a sensational trial, Irish writer Oscar Wilde is convicted of gross indecency in his relations with the son of the Marquess of Queensberry. He was sentenced to two years hard labour.

1914 – In Britain, the House of Commons passes the Irish Home Rule Bill.

1951 – British diplomats Burgess and Maclean are reported missing. It is later discovered that both were Soviet spies and had defected to Moscow.

1973 – In Greece, the military government abolishes the monarchy and proclaims Greece a republic.

1994 – South Africa is allowed to re-join the Commonwealth after an absence of 33 years.

Now here is a little known gem from one of my all-time favourite singer-songwriters, Mr Nick Lowe. It’s a rollocking tune and a silly lyric that gets us dancing into the weekend….. and as with all of Nick’s work, it has lacings of humour…give it a listen, it will improve your life!

I know I haven’t commented on the Irish Election to date and I hope our Irish readers will not take that as a mark of disrespect. Inevitably I can’t discuss everything but I didn’t want the occasion to pass without a few comments.

First, I am amazed that it will take "several days" to count the results! Surely in such a small country this is a very prolonged period?

Second, it looks like Fianna Fail will once more be the biggest party and so will form a coalition and govern for a third term. I wonder is there any substantive difference between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael policy-wise? Is economic prosperity the trump card? 

Third, since Fianna Fail insist that it will not countenance power-sharing with IRA/Sinn Fein, why have they insisted that unionists in Northern Ireland must do so? Is it OK to destabilise "the North" but not "the South"?

Finally, has anyone an insight into how the Republic’s LARGE Eastern European immigrant population has voted? Did it support Bertie and the boys since they have ever so obligingly allowed them in?

Have a read here and find out how a 15 year girl from Portland, Maine managed to outsmart the climate modellers of the United Nations!

In essence, she applied common sense and science, stuck to the basic data, and has thrown a spanner in the works of the IPCC models! (You know the ones I mean, the sort that can "predict" the weather in 50 years whilst meterologists struggle to predict it three days ahead)  

The IPCC predicts…"As a result of reduced precipitation and increased evaporation, water security problems are projected to intensify by 2030 in southern and eastern Australia and, in New Zealand, in Northland and some eastern regions."

Young Ms Byrnes explains…" just looking at my ENSO 3.4 chart when I was responding to Eduardo’s email. It looks like the ENSO has been positive for 95% of the last 6 years. Since Austrailia experiences warm and dry conditions during positive ENSO, six years of drought would not surprise me. But it is headed negative very quickly now, so you might want to dust off your umbrella.

The Australian Press comments…"THE El Nino weather system has run its course and the weather bureau says the worst drought in a century could be coming to an end, as heavy rain soaked parched southeastern Australia. Inland NSW and north-east Victoria enjoyed heavy rainfall today, with reports from 20-30mm falling in some areas and as high as 53mm in country Victoria, Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) senior forecaster Phil King said.

Say it ain’t so! As the article concludes…

"Well, if the drought in Australia and New Zealand is indeed ending – and, certainly, early-season rains and snowstorms do not yet prove this – one must question the models being used by the IPCC to forecast climate change in the future. After all, if a long-range forecast issued April 7 ends up being wrong five weeks later, why on earth would we trust these folks from the U.N. to be able to accurately predict what’s going to happen next year, or fifty to a hundred years from now?

Maybe more important, should we actually enact policy changes that could negatively impact the economy on the recommendations of a group that can’t accurately predict events beyond just a month and a half?

Of course, the other likely more pivotal side of this revelation is whether the scientists involved are just incompetent, or willfully malfeasant. As Kristen wrote in her e-mail message to me, “They were probably trying to scare the people of Australia into signing Kyoto.”

Well, if this is the case, then aren’t all involved participating in a shameful scam?  Think about it. If this is indeed about getting developed nations to agree to the Kyoto Protocol, isn’t the U.N. best served by predicting calamitous climate events regardless of their merit in order to scare the public into complacent support?  If there is evidence to suggest that this is indeed the case – for example, proof of errant predictions by the IPCC – shouldn’t the veracity and integrity of the information emanating from this organization be much more thoroughly scrutinized?"

One of the more enduring myths propagated by the Left, and the likes of the Environmentalist doom-mongers, is that “Big Business” props up us demons on the right. I was accused of being a shill for big business by one of the “Enemies of the Earth” brigade recently. So, have a look at this list of some of the largest US corporations showing exactly where they spent their grant money – you will see that they overwhelmingly favour left/liberal causes. I also think that George Soros and Bill Gates have been known to throw the odd dollar their way. The truth is rather different as to how liberals like to imagine. It is THEY who take the big business dollar, and then have the brass neck to claim otherwise.  

Hat-tip to my eagle-eyed ATW reader for the story!

What a vile programme “Big Brother” is. In Britain the broadcasters Channel 4 have been ordered to make three on-air apologies over the supposed racist (and ratings boosting) behaviour of some contestants in the last “Celebrity (sic) BB” and now in Australia there is controversy over the producers’ decision not to tell a participant that her father has died. Apparently, according to her boyfriend, “her dad didn’t want her to be upset or to feel like she had to leave the house to come to his funeral.”

It’s hard to quantify the perversion of values that ranks appearing in a tacky, voyeuristic TV show above the death of anyone, least of all one’s father. The programme, which originally masqueraded as some kind of social experiment is more like a modern-day trip to Bedlam to laugh at the lunatics, and indulges the worst, sadistic, prurient impulses of its audience, most of whom don’t even know where they got the title of the programme from. Any chance that the makers will reform themselves? It seems not.