{"id":8611,"date":"2023-03-31T21:49:13","date_gmt":"2023-03-31T20:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=8611"},"modified":"2023-07-10T07:50:21","modified_gmt":"2023-07-10T06:50:21","slug":"politics-serfs-up-toryism-the-death-of-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=8611","title":{"rendered":"POLiTiCS: Serf\u2019s Up – Toryism & The Death of Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Why won\u2019t this dead horse actually<\/em> die?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I hate Toryism, Conservatism*, Capitalism, and their rabid pooches, aka the right-wing media. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[* Small \u2018c\u2019 conservatism is fine. I\u2019m all for preserving what is good. Ironically large \u2018C\u2019 Conservatism, far from conserving what is good, takes a wrecking ball to it.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is my firm and unshakeable belief, based on the evidence of just over fifty years on this planet, that the Tories have presided over (masterminded is just plain wrong, in such instances) a sustained campaign, not just of thievery – the \u2018plunder of the commons\u2019 that has always been the m.o. of any rapine ruling elite – but vulgarisation<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is what passes for culture in Toryland.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Toryism not only takes from the many to enrich the few, it also seeks to destroy the very soul of any cultures not wholly compliant with or supportive of their base greediness. Modern mainstream TV and the commercial Muzak Industry are typical exemplars. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the many other ways in which all of this is apparent are: the growing ubiquity of gambling, the wall to wall encroachment of advertising,* the disintegration – dismemberment is a more accurate term – of public institutions (be they councils, schools, the BBC or NHS), and the shifting of care off government shoulders on to those of the charity sector. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[* Sadly adturds.co.uk<\/a> has stopped. That was always a good place to have a laugh about how ghastly contemporary ad culture has become.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Scary. Ironically, I am myself a Lloyds customer.*<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

[* Orwellian times, indeed, when a soul-less parasitic money making machine spends millions (whose money are they spending on this, I wonder?) lying to its victims, er, sorry, customers, to persuade them they are our friends. Appalling!]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Descartes \u2018I think, therefore I am\u2019 has been replaced by \u2018I shop, therefore I am\u2019. Even healthcare has its own dedicated lottery. And of course more and more people are ever more reliant on charity, because our government clearly doesn\u2019t give a f*ck. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most government policies are nakedly self-interested. That\u2019s the whole raison d\u2019etre<\/em> for Brexit; escape EU control, deregulate, and pillage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And if it\u2019s not brazen greediness, it\u2019s pandering to their Daily Mail reading zombie supporters. Examples of this range from their attitude towards immigration and refugees, to protests, the homeless, and the recent introduction of \u2018antisocial behaviour\u2019 legislation to stop the recreational use of laughing gas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Good God, Steve Bell is terrific.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Regarding Tory pandering to the gammonry, it\u2019s blatantly clear they don\u2019t care one jot about expert opinion – from the laughing gas ban to their \u2018plans\u2019 re energy and the environment – or the fact that their moronically myopic policies are far more likely to damage more lives than they\u2019ll benefit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not just that no cost to the plebs is too great<\/em>. It\u2019s that naked self-serving egotism, elitism and greed are so central, so fundamental, to the Tory outlook (I nearly said mindset), that no cost to the masses will ever be enough.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With record numbers of millionaires alongside record levels of food bank usage, and declining life expectancy amongst the poorer, the sheer existence of billionaires, whose wealth is beyond obscene, shows us that \u2018western man\u2019, so to speak – at least in the ruling elites of the UK (and US) we\u2019ve been subjected to since the \u201880s – is a morally bankrupt species. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it\u2019s a horrifically all pervasive and highly corrosive form of chemical cultural warfare that has long been being waged, not just via the murderous eugenics by neglect of things like \u2018austerity\u2019, but in allowing mainstream media to be nothing more than another opportunity for rapine commerce, dumbing everything down such that nowadays celebrities frequently take obvious pride in being pigsh*t ignorant. Even a modicum of intelligence is something to sneered at and derided.*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[* \u2018This is the first period in my life where ignorance is something to be proud of\u2019 said Mary Beard, in relation to Trump vs Hilary Clinton. For the hoi polloi this translates to celebrities on game shows revelling in their own vacuity.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the biggest ironies in amongst all of this is that it\u2019s Capitalism with a rod of iron for the lower orders, but Socialism for the best off. That\u2019s what Tories and their \u2018neo-liberal\u2019 allies have done time and again: nationalise loss, and privatise profit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bail out the fat cats with public money, and let Tory MPs charge \u00a310K a day for their privateering, whilst denying the sick and elderly due care, because \u2018we can\u2019t afford\u2019 \u00a37K per annum for those oldies, who worked all their lives propping up the \u2018trickle down\u2019 empire of their betters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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These entitled right wing parasites have been rubbing their hands with glee at Covid: more chances to steal from the public. And even better still, they can sit back and enjoy the \u2018culling of elderly dependents.\u2019 Hitler called such folk – the human cattle elites so happily consign to poverty, suffering and death – \u2018useless eaters\u2019. Our current day capitalo-fascists are cut from the same cloth as Nazis. That\u2019s not<\/em> hyperbole. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nye Bevan, founder of the NHS was absolutely right when he said that Tories are \u2018lower than vermin.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FOOTNOTE(s)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A Guardian headline I saw recently seems apt for recording here: \u2018In the post-Brexit wreckage, just one Tory strategy remains: the theatre of cruelty.\u2019 The article (which I didn\u2019t read in full, btw) appears to take issue with the current Tory efforts to deflect the public\u2019s attention from their catastrophic misrule by kicking the helpless in the teeth. Nothing new there. Yet the Gammonry will fall for it. Again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On a different yet related line\u2026 Quora seems like a cesspool of mainly right-wing dumb-shittery. But I did see one post, click-baitingly titled along the lines \u2018Is the Left responsible for the decline of the UK\u2019*, which was actually quite good. In it, someone going under the name Sage, says, quite rightly:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The British class system and anti intellectualism<\/em> (my italics) are major reasons for Britain’s decline in the 20th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take the example of Frank Whittle. He published a paper in 1929 outlining the design of the jet engine. No one took him or his idea seriously because he had not been to a public school (curiously this means a private, fee-paying school in the U.K.) and had been a mere RAF apprentice. Even when he produced a working prototype many years later, no one listened. (“Not our kind of chap\u2026a bit of a one-off boffin”).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, when it was clear that the Germans had two flying jet planes about to enter service, the Ministry for Aircraft Production got the message and invested in Whittle’s idea. However they basically swindled Whittle out of his invention. The British post war aircraft industry could have been world beater but the Americans weren’t hampered in the same way. They didn’t mind Whittle one bit, and saw only his genius.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Must read this!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I have a book I have yet to read, pictured above, about the intellectual lives of the British working classes. Must get around to reading that. Oh, and then there\u2019s also The Plunder of The Commons<\/em> to be read as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

* What a preposterous idea! In a virtual one-party Tory state for the best part of 75 years, in which for Labour to get in they had to become \u2018Tory-lite\u2019 (under Blair) (before going beyond<\/em> Tory, under \u2018Broon\u2019), such ideas are beyond risible. Out of reach even of satire. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Akin to the infamous oxymoronic (or rather just plain moronic) \u2018left wing economic establishment\u2019, such \u2018ideas\u2019 display so stunning a degree of obduracy to facts and intelligence one would have to conclude the Tories relentless dumbing-down had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. So much so that in a moment of mental or philosophical acid reflux they themselves are swallowing their own bile, and believing in it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bell, brilliant as evert.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The most corrosive form of Tory Rot really set in and bit deep with Thatcher. An appalling excuse for a human being, whose two key achievements, in the words of Reuters were that \u2018she crushed the unions and privatised large swathes of industry.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A farce far worse than any black comedy.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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If only this had been true!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Thatcher\u2019s legacy, again, acc. to Reuters: \u2018The woman who became known simply as \u201cMaggie\u201d transferred big chunks of the economy from state hands into private ownership.\u2019 That\u2019s Plunder of The Commons, right there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Brilliant! Smell the sulphurous stench of Modern Toryism. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Spot on, as ever.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hate Toryism, Conservatism*, Capitalism, and their rabid pooches, aka the right-wing media. [* Small \u2018c\u2019 conservatism is fine. I\u2019m all for preserving what is good. Ironically large \u2018C\u2019 Conservatism, far from conserving what is good, takes a wrecking ball to it.] It is my firm and unshakeable belief, based on the evidence of just … <\/p>\n

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