“This absolutely tracks with the great cultural cleavage of our time. There is the elite and professional managerial class, who fixate on the problems of the world and disregard the problems of their own people.”
Opining about far off “problems”, far off in space, and preferably far off in time, is the easiest way to demonstrate you are a “good” manager, provided the problem is agreed to be such by your colleagues in the managerial class. If you try to tackle the actual problems of your constituents, the job for which you were hired, you hit intractable problems, no simple solutions that can be can be stuffed into a three para press release. Above all, those issues are *difficult* and people *disagree*. Interpret their allergy to those issues as laziness or cowardice, or as unwillingness to admit they have no clue how to “manage” their way through them, whichever. Bottom line is they are failing us, and as such, deserve to be sacked en mass.
I started to read the report and stopped. Not lack of interest, or distraction, or attention span. Rather, nausea. Poor excuse, maybe the worst excuse. Thank you for bringing the reality to this "staring at the heat index" reader. I'll go back, it's a duty that is too easy to forget. I was just in the SFO airport and on the back of each toilet stall door is an instruction of how to signal airport staff that you are being held against your will. In three languages. It's real. It must stop. No more anodyne.
Sin has been around for a very long time, not only in England but all over the world. And now all prophetic signs point toward end times when things get worse (possibly with some respites but basically worse) as we race toward the culmination of history. At some point, Jesus Christ is going to remove His church (His true followers, not everybody who casually or deceptively sports a "Christian" label) to heaven. Afterward the Tribulation will begin. Let's do our best at this time to be salt and light in our culture witnessing to the lost and staying close to Jesus Christ, the Messiah of Israel and the Savior of all who follow Him.
I'm now an atheist, but I look at the insanity of those who think Israel is NOT fighting the West's battles and the sheer evil that this week the UK House of Commons proposed and voted on as law. Sometimes I do wonder whether Armageddon isn't just around the corner.
It sure looks like it is not all that far away, and you don't want to be around when it happens. You said that you are "now" an atheist which sort of implies that you once were not. Perhaps you were hurt by some priest or minister or something and threw out the baby with the bathwater so to speak. I urge you to reconsider. You might want to read the Gospel of John in the Bible, particularly Chapters 3, 14, and 15. Lee Strobel has some good books if you have intellectual reservations about God.
I was not hurt by any Priest though I know of some who were, equally I was close friends with many great Priests. I was close to becoming a Jesuit priest, but intellectually I found increasingly I could not, and still cannot reconcile the world as it was claimed to be created by a christian God with the world as is. I have a degree and post grad qualifications in science by the way, so whilst the beauty of the world is in front of my eyes, the reasons for much of it are in my head.
I've read many books and listened to many explanations, but none satisfy so I do not believe. It does not make me an enemy of Christianity, if anything I am more for Christianity than many of it's leaders. I haven't for many years seen a Church of England Bishop in Canterbury that hasn't had me wondering if they are even Christian, and the previous Pope was in my , facetious way, the first I'd come across where the answer to the question 'Is the Pope Catholic?' was not a clear cut 'Yes'! Even though he was a Jesuit!
I have a still devout Catholic family all praying for me, and given that during my Jesuit Education the obvious injustices that we young students always asked how a Just God/Loving could allow, was addressed,
e.g. How can it be that say Just Men in Sodom and Gomorrah may be refused Heaven because they were not chosen people, or how can good people who never knew of Christ and so were NOT baptised be denied Heaven yet a sinful Christian can repent and gain salvation? Perhaps even repent on their death bed!
The concept of 'Baptism of Desire' was the answer.
I am therefore not worried about meeting any maker of mine who's existence I lost faith in, as he must surely judge me on my actions not my beliefs. If he did not, then the God I once believed in truly never existed.
You may or may not have gotten accurate information from the Jesuits or from your observations of Church of England bishops. I suggest a more biblical approach. Lee Strobel was a Yale educated legal editor for the Chicago Tribune and ardent atheist when he set out to prove that God did not exist. He ended up becoming an evangelical minister because of the evidence that he found to disprove his atheism. You might also want to check out good evangelical preachers like Gary Hamrick and Jack Hibbs. Sometimes a different perspective can be helpful.
Thank you, I may well look at them, however so far I have found little to fault in any of the information from Jesuits or Benedictines who taught me for so many years. There is often a fallacy that the Roman Church is not bible centered, this is not so. In fact the old and new testament are (or were) heavily prescribed for any potential recruit to both orders or the lay priesthood. The Jesuits also included many other spiritual books including the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyala as well as the Psalms AND regular retreats.
Yes, the Catholic Church has the Bible. It just doesn't always put it above the Magisterium, but that is another discussion. Blessings on your journey.
Having followed the Rotherham story for years, I’m conflicted about how this will pan out. The evidence was there (if I’m an indication—a lone nobody in the US could dig out sources and follow it closely) and thus it’s a matter of deliberate obtuseness. In other realms, I’ve witnessed astonishing mental contortions in those “forced” to face the obvious, with no real contrition and no authentic amends, rather face-saving blather that comforts and soothes as long as necessary. Best case scenario is the arrival of a political distraction that allows the guilty to continue in their toxic ways. Please God, I’m wrong.
Yes, I agree. It's almost inconceivable that they will allow a full investigation because it will implicate so many of their own. However, enough credible information is out there at this point -- the cat is well and truly out of the bag. That won't bring prison sentences or justice for the victims, but at least there's no more 'we had no idea' excuse.
It is increasingly evident that the framing of the national statutory inquiry in the UK is being manipulated to focus blame primarily on local government agencies - particularly local police forces and social workers. Central government institutions and civil service leadership appear to be closing ranks, with early messaging from the new Labour government and senior officials suggesting a strategy of scapegoating at the local level.
This risks obscuring the deeper, systemic failures rooted in national institutions, including central government departments and oversight bodies, which either enabled or ignored these abuses for years. The scale and depth of the corruption are difficult for the average citizen to fully grasp - and that’s precisely why the inquiry must not be permitted to become a whitewash.
To serve justice and rebuild trust, the inquiry must fearlessly expose failures at all levels - local and national - and hold accountable not just frontline professionals, but also the senior decision-makers and institutional structures that allowed this culture of complicity to flourish.
I agree that this was the case – England has historically been the source code for everything that is good about the Anglo-sphere. While hope springs eternal, I feel that we have collectively left it a bit late to save her. We live in an age of astonishing and unabashed incompetence, garnished with a ubiquitous 'whatever' attitude and a distinct inability to cope with reality... or even to believe that there is such a concept. The portents are not good.
It is worth saving and there are a lot of very decent people here. But in addition to those that would destroy us, there are also a lot of naive and wilfully ignorant people here whose entire strategy for getting through life seems to be to see no evil, hear no evil. It is changing, and it absolutely needs to, but it’s taking time for people to reluctantly wake up to their responsibilities as citizens of this country.
Yes - I was going to say that the problem is we have a lot of conformist cowards and it is by definition difficult to get a bunch of conformist cowards to be courageous enough to address the problem. This might be a little unfair (although it was displayed in spades throughout 2020 and 2021). Being slightly more generous, a lot of people are intellectually lazy and pretty vacuous - they don’t seem to know very much and nor do they want to. How we address conformist indolence is another matter entirely.
Don’t really have a dog in your fight, but, to me GB is like a distant ancestor, who I greatly admire - Questions:
1. Why is it that any deranged criminal can get in an inflatable boat, go to GB, and get more free stuff from the government than he can earn at home, and, instead of getting his hand cut off for stealing, he gets community service?
2. How did election results, over there, get so non-representative, and yet deemed worthy of 5-years in power?
3. How did so many established religions get so far away from being able to distinguish right from wrong - I believe, that’s one of the main things most people look for in a religion?
A proper answer would take some considerable time, but some key factors are:
A mainstream political 'uniparty' indifferent to the daily problems of ordinary working people, instead serving elite neoliberal interests and the great god GDP.
A professional managerial class substantially benefitting from roles that apply £££ band aid to problems from the policies causing the country's decline.
Mainstream media that exists to 'manage the truth'; promote narratives that benefit elite interests and draw attention away from the reality of daily life for ordinary working people.
Edited to add:
The grooming gang scandal illustrates how the political class and professional managerial class operate in a way to 'manage responsibility' such that none of them can be held individually accountable, another example would be the Horizon Post Office scandal.
I feel society will forget about this in a week or so due to our shrinking attention spans and the saturation of information. That's perhaps the most concerning thing. An engaged electorate should vote out every single person that supported these bills? But will they? Will it remembered next election? In Ireland Helen McEntee got thousands extra votes in the election that followed attacking our free speech with a bill she introduced. I predict the MPs who supported these bills will face zero electoral consequence either. Happy to be proven wrong.
Yeah, I actually have more hope for England that I do for Ireland. I don't have particular faith in Reform, but it's more than anything we have in Ireland. I think there is more anger on the ground in England, too. Labour is just driving voters away.
Concerning that 2/5ths of Reform MPs also voted for the assisted dying bill though. I think UK and Ireland have slightly different problems with tackling unbounded liberalism in general. The UK electorate have spoken out with Brexit and electing Tories in the past, and they were still largely ignored over issues such as immigration. In Ireland, the electorate have yet to speak out in a meaningful way nor is there a political movement anywhere near the level of Reform. I prefer the latter problem personally, and some of the worst excesses of the UK such as locking up Lucy Connolly for free speech have yet to reach Ireland.
It is on twitter and with some of the large anti-immigration protests. However, I didn't find the last Irish general election particularly encouraging. Hopefully these rumblings eventually become significant at the ballot box.
Well I'm in a very lower middle class, public servant type bubble. But I'm hearing conversations now that I would definitely not have heard a year ago.
It's a tiny bit like the early 90s. After years of silence about the church abuses, respectable people start to mutter and shake their heads a bit. Off their own bats. 'Those racist lads are loola but immigration is getting a bit high, we can't look after our own' type comments.
Might seem very mild to some but it's new among the respectable under 40s
My impression from talking to relatives in Ireland is that they are in the complacent stage that England was about ten years ago…. Their more progressive laws are much more recent and Immigration (not counting Catholic immigrants from eg Poland) has only really picked up there recently - my older generation relatives aren’t happy, their sons and daughters are embarrassed by their elders’ attitudes, and the problems aren’t fully visible yet. It’s like Scotland is more woke than England - but doesn’t have to deal with so many real issues- Scotland is much more homogenous, actually something like 96 % white (there was a big fuss about this after Hamza Yousef complained that various ranks of judges, polictians etc were excessively white - when it was entirely in keeping with the Scottish demographic.) Going on memory here so may not be perfectly accurate on the detail.
"Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer went back on his previous position and announced that there would be a 'national inquiry'." This sounds like a classic stalling tactic. Let's check back on this in a year or two. Reminds me of Sir Humphrey Appleby of Yes, Minister, explaining bureaucratic inaction: "When we say a proposal is 'under consideration' it means we've lost the file. When we say it's 'under active consideration,' it means we're looking for it."
Thanks for an optimistic conclusion. I was wondering whether England was more or less finished. Our political and managerial class is not an enemy in occupation (even if it feels like this) but a large part of the population, born and bred and taught in England and kept in place by a larger part of the population that thinks everything is fine or is preoccupied by the latest TV drama, or whatever else is of the moment. Most people can’t be bothered to vote. No one is really bothered that there is no Archbishop of Canterbury, let alone one who can speak with authority on serial moral issues. The Based Women of Britain are great, but they are the new dissidents - who can keep the hope candle burning but for now, they are a minority while power is power and won’t be ceded easily.
It seems that in order to save the UK, you can't afford to wait 5 years to vote out a government that jails its' dissenters, covers up the rapes of its most vulnerable citizens by third world savages and has now passed laws legalizing murder at both ends of the life cycle. It's unfathomable to think what a government with that agenda can do in 5 years.
“This absolutely tracks with the great cultural cleavage of our time. There is the elite and professional managerial class, who fixate on the problems of the world and disregard the problems of their own people.”
Opining about far off “problems”, far off in space, and preferably far off in time, is the easiest way to demonstrate you are a “good” manager, provided the problem is agreed to be such by your colleagues in the managerial class. If you try to tackle the actual problems of your constituents, the job for which you were hired, you hit intractable problems, no simple solutions that can be can be stuffed into a three para press release. Above all, those issues are *difficult* and people *disagree*. Interpret their allergy to those issues as laziness or cowardice, or as unwillingness to admit they have no clue how to “manage” their way through them, whichever. Bottom line is they are failing us, and as such, deserve to be sacked en mass.
They really do.
I started to read the report and stopped. Not lack of interest, or distraction, or attention span. Rather, nausea. Poor excuse, maybe the worst excuse. Thank you for bringing the reality to this "staring at the heat index" reader. I'll go back, it's a duty that is too easy to forget. I was just in the SFO airport and on the back of each toilet stall door is an instruction of how to signal airport staff that you are being held against your will. In three languages. It's real. It must stop. No more anodyne.
Sin has been around for a very long time, not only in England but all over the world. And now all prophetic signs point toward end times when things get worse (possibly with some respites but basically worse) as we race toward the culmination of history. At some point, Jesus Christ is going to remove His church (His true followers, not everybody who casually or deceptively sports a "Christian" label) to heaven. Afterward the Tribulation will begin. Let's do our best at this time to be salt and light in our culture witnessing to the lost and staying close to Jesus Christ, the Messiah of Israel and the Savior of all who follow Him.
I'm now an atheist, but I look at the insanity of those who think Israel is NOT fighting the West's battles and the sheer evil that this week the UK House of Commons proposed and voted on as law. Sometimes I do wonder whether Armageddon isn't just around the corner.
It sure looks like it is not all that far away, and you don't want to be around when it happens. You said that you are "now" an atheist which sort of implies that you once were not. Perhaps you were hurt by some priest or minister or something and threw out the baby with the bathwater so to speak. I urge you to reconsider. You might want to read the Gospel of John in the Bible, particularly Chapters 3, 14, and 15. Lee Strobel has some good books if you have intellectual reservations about God.
I was not hurt by any Priest though I know of some who were, equally I was close friends with many great Priests. I was close to becoming a Jesuit priest, but intellectually I found increasingly I could not, and still cannot reconcile the world as it was claimed to be created by a christian God with the world as is. I have a degree and post grad qualifications in science by the way, so whilst the beauty of the world is in front of my eyes, the reasons for much of it are in my head.
I've read many books and listened to many explanations, but none satisfy so I do not believe. It does not make me an enemy of Christianity, if anything I am more for Christianity than many of it's leaders. I haven't for many years seen a Church of England Bishop in Canterbury that hasn't had me wondering if they are even Christian, and the previous Pope was in my , facetious way, the first I'd come across where the answer to the question 'Is the Pope Catholic?' was not a clear cut 'Yes'! Even though he was a Jesuit!
I have a still devout Catholic family all praying for me, and given that during my Jesuit Education the obvious injustices that we young students always asked how a Just God/Loving could allow, was addressed,
e.g. How can it be that say Just Men in Sodom and Gomorrah may be refused Heaven because they were not chosen people, or how can good people who never knew of Christ and so were NOT baptised be denied Heaven yet a sinful Christian can repent and gain salvation? Perhaps even repent on their death bed!
The concept of 'Baptism of Desire' was the answer.
I am therefore not worried about meeting any maker of mine who's existence I lost faith in, as he must surely judge me on my actions not my beliefs. If he did not, then the God I once believed in truly never existed.
You may or may not have gotten accurate information from the Jesuits or from your observations of Church of England bishops. I suggest a more biblical approach. Lee Strobel was a Yale educated legal editor for the Chicago Tribune and ardent atheist when he set out to prove that God did not exist. He ended up becoming an evangelical minister because of the evidence that he found to disprove his atheism. You might also want to check out good evangelical preachers like Gary Hamrick and Jack Hibbs. Sometimes a different perspective can be helpful.
Thank you, I may well look at them, however so far I have found little to fault in any of the information from Jesuits or Benedictines who taught me for so many years. There is often a fallacy that the Roman Church is not bible centered, this is not so. In fact the old and new testament are (or were) heavily prescribed for any potential recruit to both orders or the lay priesthood. The Jesuits also included many other spiritual books including the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyala as well as the Psalms AND regular retreats.
Yes, the Catholic Church has the Bible. It just doesn't always put it above the Magisterium, but that is another discussion. Blessings on your journey.
Having followed the Rotherham story for years, I’m conflicted about how this will pan out. The evidence was there (if I’m an indication—a lone nobody in the US could dig out sources and follow it closely) and thus it’s a matter of deliberate obtuseness. In other realms, I’ve witnessed astonishing mental contortions in those “forced” to face the obvious, with no real contrition and no authentic amends, rather face-saving blather that comforts and soothes as long as necessary. Best case scenario is the arrival of a political distraction that allows the guilty to continue in their toxic ways. Please God, I’m wrong.
Yes, I agree. It's almost inconceivable that they will allow a full investigation because it will implicate so many of their own. However, enough credible information is out there at this point -- the cat is well and truly out of the bag. That won't bring prison sentences or justice for the victims, but at least there's no more 'we had no idea' excuse.
It is increasingly evident that the framing of the national statutory inquiry in the UK is being manipulated to focus blame primarily on local government agencies - particularly local police forces and social workers. Central government institutions and civil service leadership appear to be closing ranks, with early messaging from the new Labour government and senior officials suggesting a strategy of scapegoating at the local level.
This risks obscuring the deeper, systemic failures rooted in national institutions, including central government departments and oversight bodies, which either enabled or ignored these abuses for years. The scale and depth of the corruption are difficult for the average citizen to fully grasp - and that’s precisely why the inquiry must not be permitted to become a whitewash.
To serve justice and rebuild trust, the inquiry must fearlessly expose failures at all levels - local and national - and hold accountable not just frontline professionals, but also the senior decision-makers and institutional structures that allowed this culture of complicity to flourish.
I agree that this was the case – England has historically been the source code for everything that is good about the Anglo-sphere. While hope springs eternal, I feel that we have collectively left it a bit late to save her. We live in an age of astonishing and unabashed incompetence, garnished with a ubiquitous 'whatever' attitude and a distinct inability to cope with reality... or even to believe that there is such a concept. The portents are not good.
I know. The evidence is bad. I just can't conceive of the worst happening.
I don't think I can either.
The tree of liberty...
It is worth saving and there are a lot of very decent people here. But in addition to those that would destroy us, there are also a lot of naive and wilfully ignorant people here whose entire strategy for getting through life seems to be to see no evil, hear no evil. It is changing, and it absolutely needs to, but it’s taking time for people to reluctantly wake up to their responsibilities as citizens of this country.
Yes - I was going to say that the problem is we have a lot of conformist cowards and it is by definition difficult to get a bunch of conformist cowards to be courageous enough to address the problem. This might be a little unfair (although it was displayed in spades throughout 2020 and 2021). Being slightly more generous, a lot of people are intellectually lazy and pretty vacuous - they don’t seem to know very much and nor do they want to. How we address conformist indolence is another matter entirely.
Because if one sees it and hears it, there's a human duty to try and stop it, and most aren't built that way.
“She must be saved.” Totally agree. Great piece!
She can be saved by reconquest and recolonization, along with the displacement of the House of Windsor with a new royal bloodline.
Long may our illustrious Emperor thrive and prosper!
I can’t bear to visit my beloved England in its current state. It would be too heartbreaking
You should anyway! 💜
Maybe next year for the pottery exhibit at Scone Palace
Don’t really have a dog in your fight, but, to me GB is like a distant ancestor, who I greatly admire - Questions:
1. Why is it that any deranged criminal can get in an inflatable boat, go to GB, and get more free stuff from the government than he can earn at home, and, instead of getting his hand cut off for stealing, he gets community service?
2. How did election results, over there, get so non-representative, and yet deemed worthy of 5-years in power?
3. How did so many established religions get so far away from being able to distinguish right from wrong - I believe, that’s one of the main things most people look for in a religion?
A proper answer would take some considerable time, but some key factors are:
A mainstream political 'uniparty' indifferent to the daily problems of ordinary working people, instead serving elite neoliberal interests and the great god GDP.
A professional managerial class substantially benefitting from roles that apply £££ band aid to problems from the policies causing the country's decline.
Mainstream media that exists to 'manage the truth'; promote narratives that benefit elite interests and draw attention away from the reality of daily life for ordinary working people.
Edited to add:
The grooming gang scandal illustrates how the political class and professional managerial class operate in a way to 'manage responsibility' such that none of them can be held individually accountable, another example would be the Horizon Post Office scandal.
'Manage the truth' is a great phrase
I feel society will forget about this in a week or so due to our shrinking attention spans and the saturation of information. That's perhaps the most concerning thing. An engaged electorate should vote out every single person that supported these bills? But will they? Will it remembered next election? In Ireland Helen McEntee got thousands extra votes in the election that followed attacking our free speech with a bill she introduced. I predict the MPs who supported these bills will face zero electoral consequence either. Happy to be proven wrong.
Yeah, I actually have more hope for England that I do for Ireland. I don't have particular faith in Reform, but it's more than anything we have in Ireland. I think there is more anger on the ground in England, too. Labour is just driving voters away.
Concerning that 2/5ths of Reform MPs also voted for the assisted dying bill though. I think UK and Ireland have slightly different problems with tackling unbounded liberalism in general. The UK electorate have spoken out with Brexit and electing Tories in the past, and they were still largely ignored over issues such as immigration. In Ireland, the electorate have yet to speak out in a meaningful way nor is there a political movement anywhere near the level of Reform. I prefer the latter problem personally, and some of the worst excesses of the UK such as locking up Lucy Connolly for free speech have yet to reach Ireland.
The dissatisfaction is rumbling away though.
It is on twitter and with some of the large anti-immigration protests. However, I didn't find the last Irish general election particularly encouraging. Hopefully these rumblings eventually become significant at the ballot box.
Well I'm in a very lower middle class, public servant type bubble. But I'm hearing conversations now that I would definitely not have heard a year ago.
It's a tiny bit like the early 90s. After years of silence about the church abuses, respectable people start to mutter and shake their heads a bit. Off their own bats. 'Those racist lads are loola but immigration is getting a bit high, we can't look after our own' type comments.
Might seem very mild to some but it's new among the respectable under 40s
My impression from talking to relatives in Ireland is that they are in the complacent stage that England was about ten years ago…. Their more progressive laws are much more recent and Immigration (not counting Catholic immigrants from eg Poland) has only really picked up there recently - my older generation relatives aren’t happy, their sons and daughters are embarrassed by their elders’ attitudes, and the problems aren’t fully visible yet. It’s like Scotland is more woke than England - but doesn’t have to deal with so many real issues- Scotland is much more homogenous, actually something like 96 % white (there was a big fuss about this after Hamza Yousef complained that various ranks of judges, polictians etc were excessively white - when it was entirely in keeping with the Scottish demographic.) Going on memory here so may not be perfectly accurate on the detail.
It's the burn everything English but their coal mentality
Godspeed to the Patriots of England.
"Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer went back on his previous position and announced that there would be a 'national inquiry'." This sounds like a classic stalling tactic. Let's check back on this in a year or two. Reminds me of Sir Humphrey Appleby of Yes, Minister, explaining bureaucratic inaction: "When we say a proposal is 'under consideration' it means we've lost the file. When we say it's 'under active consideration,' it means we're looking for it."
Thanks for an optimistic conclusion. I was wondering whether England was more or less finished. Our political and managerial class is not an enemy in occupation (even if it feels like this) but a large part of the population, born and bred and taught in England and kept in place by a larger part of the population that thinks everything is fine or is preoccupied by the latest TV drama, or whatever else is of the moment. Most people can’t be bothered to vote. No one is really bothered that there is no Archbishop of Canterbury, let alone one who can speak with authority on serial moral issues. The Based Women of Britain are great, but they are the new dissidents - who can keep the hope candle burning but for now, they are a minority while power is power and won’t be ceded easily.
It seems that in order to save the UK, you can't afford to wait 5 years to vote out a government that jails its' dissenters, covers up the rapes of its most vulnerable citizens by third world savages and has now passed laws legalizing murder at both ends of the life cycle. It's unfathomable to think what a government with that agenda can do in 5 years.