Atticus Fox

Paul Embury in ‘Unherd’

https://unherd.com/2019/12/is-this-the-end-for-labour/

…they [Labour] failed to grasp that working-class voters desire something more than just economic security; they want cultural security too.

They want politicians to respect their way of life, and their sense of place and belonging; to elevate real-world concepts such as work, family and community over nebulous constructs like ‘diversity’, ‘equality’ and ‘inclusivity’. By immersing itself in the destructive creed of identity politics and championing policies such as open borders, Labour placed itself on a completely different wavelength to millions across provincial Britain without whose support it simply could not win power. In the end, Labour was losing a cultural war that it didn’t even realise it was fighting.

Sarah Ditum in ‘Unherd’

https://unherd.com/2019/12/how-left-wing-journalism-failed/

…with a few honourable exceptions, political writing on the Left gave up on the eye and ear approach in this electoral cycle, favouring instead a passionate solipsism that sought to reassure Labour voters that everything would be OK, and if it wasn’t OK then it would be someone else’s fault.

Ed West in ‘Unherd’

https://unherd.com/2019/12/even-if-the-tories-win-they-face-huge-trouble-ahead/

But one side is more justified in feeling that time is working against them, for even if the Tories do win a majority, they face serious future problems driven by demographic and social change. The sort of people who vote Tory are decreasing in number, ageing and not being replaced, while the lifestyle factors that lead people to vote for conservative parties are heavily in decline.

Douglas Murray in Unherd https://unherd.com/2019/12/how-does-labour-come-back-from-this-toxic-mess/

The other loyalists, Owen Jones and Paul Mason, have both performed as one would expect. Neither has any experience in getting a prime minister elected; neither has ever been in frontline politics; both are full-time campaigners for the far-Left anywhere who present themselves as “journalists” everywhere; both spent recent years telling the country to vote for Jeremy Corbyn to be PM.

So it has been a joy of a kind to watch both men spend the days since the General Election explaining what the Labour Party needs to do now to get back into power. Both men presumably think that the switcheroo they have been hiding behind for years (journalist, not a journalist) is going to keep working and that people will forget that having pounded the streets for Corbyn they are now merely disinterested psephologists who are available to provide help whenever asked.

Corbyn has announced he intends to lead a period of reflection by the party in order to better understand why they lost the general election. Once the lessons have been learned, he will step down and a new leader, better suited to the voters will replace him.

I can you exactly why this process of reflection will be a waste of time. I’ll give you both the short and the long versions:

The Short Version: there is a fundamental disconnect between the PLP and the electorate that isn’t going to disappear anytime soon.

The Long Version:

Anyone who sees the direction of travel of Labour knows they are just going to keep on making the same mistakes.

The reasons people didn’t vote for them are:

1) They are socialists.

2) They want to gerrymander future elections by reducing voting age to 16.

3) They support the whole social justice movement that is so divisive and overturns merit as a basis of success.

4) They are weak on law and order.

5) They advocate mass immigration (more gerrymandering and more social justice).

6) They dislike the UK: they take no pride in British history, traditions or culture.

7) Their position on Brexit. What a joke that was. No further comment required.

8) Anti-semitism: I don’t think anti-semitism itself was a significant factor. It was more what that anti-semitism meant: Labour presented themselves as the party of tolerance and diversity and inclusivity. The repeated anti-semitism issues showed Labour to be a bunch of hypocrites.

9) Dislike of Corbyn: True, Corbyn has no sense of humour but that’s true of all Lefties. Lefties take themselves very seriously. They really are the roundheads of the 21st century.

10) Labour offers no cultural security to white Britons. There is a feeling that Labour would sell out the indigenous population in the name of multiculturalism

Most of the factors above are locked in as central to how the PLP see themselves. The easiest positions to address would be Brexit and Corbyn. Corbyn is going so that takes care of that (and, hopefully, takes the anti-semitism issue with it) and Brexit will no longer be an issue by the next election. Everything else can remain the same. Job done. The PLP will convince themselves that nothing else needs to change. They will then lose the 2024 election.

Furthermore, Labour will almost certainly select a woman as next leader. In 2019 a left-wing woman will always be a passionate advocate of social justice and fairness and feelings and so will double down on those social justice issues that cause so much division in our society.

In short, there is a fundamental disconnect between the PLP and the electorate that isn’t going to disappear anytime soon.

Update 29 Jan 2020:

An Labour Party investigation has exonerated Corbyn from any blame in the election:

https://www.ft.com/content/5dc2f7b0-41f5-11ea-a047-eae9bd51ceba

It appears that Brexit was solely responsible! So they are still not prepared to consider any of the 10 points listed above. I cannot see an election win any time soon for Labour.

As of today the 2 favourites for the leadership position are Rebecca Long-Bailey and Kier Starmer with RLB probably most likely to win. She full heartedly continues to support the manifesto. As such, she will continue Corbyn’s work with similar levels of success.

I’ve noticed a lot of friends take pride in being friends with their teenage – or younger – kids.

Well, I’m here to tell you: you gotta cut that shit out!

How can you discipline your kids if they are your friends? You can’t. And the kids realise that.

I know this is seen as reactionary thinking from a bygone age but it doesn’t hurt to have your kids be a little scared by you. After all, you are still teaching them at that age. You are still resonsible for their moral welfare. You can’t teach them if there’s no clear separation between your role as a parent and their roles as children. A certain distance is required.

Asking your kids, ever so gently, if they wouldn’t mind, perhaps, picking up that wet towel from the bathroom floor is not going to cut it. They are less likely to do it if they see themselves as your equals.

From my experience, the kids who are matey with their parents start to think they are no different from adults. They have no boundaries: they start swearing in front of their parents. They start thinking that, since they are in a family of equals, they can start telling their parents what to do. In short, they lose respect for their parents. I’ve noticed this phenomenon most between daughters and their fathers: the girls start treating their dads like pieces of shit.

I can see how we got to this point. It’s a combination of:

1) less children per household and …

2) single parent families.

Taking each one of these points in turn…If you have a lot of kids, then the need for discipline is paramount. If you have less children, that need is reduced. A particular factor here is only-child households. Every one knows that only-children are spoilt bastards that aren’t very good at sharing. There are no well-adjusted, selfless only-children. That’s because their parents indulged them when they were young and became matey with them as they grew older. Think of that only-child friend of yours. You know, the one that thinks the world revolves around them, the one that has a carousel of partners because they can’t maintain a relationship. That selfish fucker! Is that what you want your children to be like?

In households with just a single parent – ie. single mother – the same situation plays out (only driven by different reasons): women are not as comfortable with discipline as fathers. The parental approach of mothers is to reason with their children. Communication is the magic beans of parenting for mothers. They think that if they explain to their children how tired they are and what a rough week they’ve had, their child / children will undergo a sudden empathy makeover. This won’t happen. Children are not adults. They are too selfish to be empathetic. Their frontal cortexes are not yet fully formed. Stop treating them like adults. Yet, they do and the same end-point is reached: they become friends with their self-centred children.

So married mothers see single mothers being friends with their kids, particularly daughters, and they decide they want the same kind of relationship. They not only want to be friends with their daughters, they want to be best friends with their daughters. They want their daughters to ask them to go shopping together. They want to become friends with their daughter’s friends. They want their daughters to tell them their secrets safe in the knowledge that they won’t be judged – or parented! I know one girl – an only-child as it happens, not that it matters what the route was, the endpoint is the same, as per above – who broke the news to her parents when she lost her virginity! What good can come of that? That’s some fucked up bullshit, right there. It’s not natural.

Furthermore, it seems to me that such children will be totally unprepared for work life. Work is about the hierarchy. There is a chain of command and when you start work you will be at the bottom. The fact that you are all adults in the workplace doesn’t mean squat. How are you going to take instructions from an adult who has no interest in being friends with you when you’ve never been in that situation before?

I’m convinced that kids being friends with their parents is partly behind the explosion of over-anxious, depressed millennials we keep hearing about these days. They are not being prepared for life.

People, particularly young people, are having less sex.

Here are some articles on the subject that reference recent US polling on this subject

From the BBC:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/f98ed501-d075-4b3a-abca-7e46bd8904cf

From The Atlantic:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex-recession/573949/

From The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/29/share-americans-not-having-sex-has-reached-record-high/

Many reasons are put forward in these articles to explain the issue: economics; porn; risk aversion and more. One article I haven’t included even included this gem:

The rise of individualism means that people have more opportunities to live the lives they want, not the ones dictated by norms or pressures

Which suggests that people have just been having sex because of peer pressure rather than being an evolutionary instinct!

I suspect that individualism is a factor in decreasing sex rates, just not in the manner that the above writer supposes.

The cult of ‘individualism’ means putting yourself first. Feminists say this philosophy enables women to be true to their real selves rather than being subservient to the needs of others. However, to me, this feels like they are not being true to themselves but are instead playing the role of ‘strong, independent woman’ that feminism now demands of them. Also, the idea of putting yourself first is not a likeable trait. What is now known as individualism used be known as selfishness. It’s not very attractive to potential sexual partners. Not so long ago, individuals conformed to the demands of their societies. These days there is a lot of pressure for societies to conform to the demands of individuals.

However, I have another theory that i feel is even more relevant: these days, men and women are too similar to be attracted to each other.

Historically, the attraction between men and women has been based on differences. Yet those differences no longer exist.

Women used to appeal to men because they were so different from men. Women were seen as exotic creatures. Not only were their bodies so very different, but their minds also. They thought differently from men and they had different interests. Men didn’t understand women and that was a large part of the attraction. Men were drawn to these mysterious creatures in the way cats are compelled by curiosity to investigate new or different things: warily but unable to resist.

I imagine that women were similarly intrigued by men: men were these powerful creatures, capable of brilliance but also frightening at times. Men were tough and aggresive but also offered protection and tenderness. Men must have seemed quite exhilarating when viewed from afar.

Also, women and men were largely segregated in society which added to the frisson when they encountered each other. Men and women didn’t work together. When boys and girls attended school together, it was during the pre-puberty years. Also, education ended around the time of puberty so there wasn’t much time for smooching behind the bike sheds. In short order after leaving school, the boys started working at the local factory and the girls learnt that being a scullery maid wasn’t as exotic as it sounded.

In most areas of life, men had their own spaces and women had their own spaces.

As such, men and women could let their imaginations direct their sexual longing. To men, women could be anything that men weren’t. And as far as women were concerned, men could be anything that women wanted them to be.

These days, the genders do not have their own spaces: they work together, they attend university together, they use the same gender neutral toilets. Women have demanded access to all males spaces, including the boy scouts. There is a lot more contact between the genders than there was 50 years ago. Increased contact reduces mystery.

In addition, to increased contact, the latest Leftist ideology tells us that there is no difference between the genders: not only can women do everything that men can do, but the new definitions for ‘men’ and ‘women’ are blurring the lines between the genders. The old definitions are banned. We are now told that gender is merely a lifestyle choice. Every child is told that they can choose their own gender based on how they ‘feel’.

Men can easily choose to be women if they feel like it. Women can choose to be men. Gender benders. We are told that the differences between men and women are just social constructs: in reality, there are no differences between men and women. All of this realignment kills sexual attraction. Where’s the attraction if boys no longer grow up with the belief that women are these mysterious creatures. Now boys are told that women are exactly the same as them, but with tits. And actually, women don’t even have to have tits any more. Not only are there no longer psychological differences between the genders, there no longer need to be physiological differences: it is possible for a woman to have a penis just like you do.

Women are told they can be just like men. So women drink more and swear more and adopt the casual sexual practises of men. Androgynous appearances are the new thing. A certain minority of Leftist women has always refused to dress to please men but there are now increasing numbers of women that ascribe to this approach. As such, more women are dressing functionally so they can be ready for SJW duties at a moment’s notice. Make up is a definite no-no. This look is not attractive to men. Feminists are mistaken if they think that their personalities are going to compensate for them looking like men.

As for men, we are told to be less like traditional (toxic) men. Men must show how in touch they are with their feelings. The Gillette advert tells us that that striking up a conversation with a women you don’t know is little different from sexual assault. Certain men have disgendered themselves to such an extent that they now call themselves feminists. Women do not feel a strong sexual attraction to these men. However, if you are a female social justice warrior operating within a Leftist bubble, you will have very little choice but to select from this category of ‘man’. I think this explains the attempts by the Left to re-brand polyamory: Leftists are now seeking out quantity over quality.

More and more things are unisex. From toilets to toiletries. Companies are embracing androgynous products as the way forward: why have separate products and marketing campaigns for men and women when you can sell the same stuff to everyone and reduce the risk of offending a transgender activist?

The differences between between the genders are being closed down. Men can choose to stay at home and look after the children. Women can play football. All well and good but blurring the distinctions between the genders has implications.

All in all, men and women are being thrust together like never before. And, as a result, they are discovering that they just don’t like each other.

Of course, the fact that loads of young people look like a dumpster truck full of lard doesn’t help the mating game either.

The only people having decent amounts of sex these days are right wing people: they are the people who are not afraid to adhere to the gender stereotypes that were accepted in our society prior to last Tuesday. Right wing boys aspire to be men and right wing girls aspire to be women.

I was an atheist from an early age. I can’t remember the exact age when I decided there was no God but it was certainly before I started secondary school. (I remember, specifically that I was atheist before secondary school because I briefly reverted from atheism when my school place was in doubt. The story is that I desperately wanted to be admitted to a particular secondary school for which I was on the waiting list. The school would only offer me a place if enough of the school’s first choice selections turned them down. I remember thinking that praying was more likely to get me into that school than atheism, so I briefly reverted from atheism in order to assist my school application. I started praying that if the school offered me a place then I would believe in Him ever after. Yes, I prayed to a God I didn’t believe in. Obviously, my atheism was still a bit soft in the middle at this point. I was delighted when my prayers were answered. However, I reneged on my side of the bargain because God didn’t exist).

So, I was an atheist from quite an early age although it took another handful of years before I had the confidence to display my atheist credentials for all to see. Initially, my convictions were stronger than I was.

However, when I did get around to telling people about my atheism, I explained that the only benefit of religion was to impart morality. Thus, I argued, as long as you have morals you don’t need to believe in God and everything that happened in the Bible. The 10 Commandments were all you needed to know, I proclaimed to the cluster of my open-mouthed school peers that had gathered around me to hear the shocking new theories I had developed.

With hindsight, I can see that this was my brush with progressive social activism.

However, roll forward 40 years or so, I see the explosion of liberalism that has mirrored the collapse of religion in Western civilisation. I realise that I was wrong as a 10 year old (fancy that!). Yes, it’s all very well to have morals. No one would argue about that. The problem is that people are making up their own morals to abide by. ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife’ has been replaced by ‘Thou shalt not do or say anything that could offend thy neighbour’.

It seems that humans need something to believe in that is bigger than themselves because, if they don’t, then they find things to believe in that, perhaps, they should be leaving well alone. Like transgenderism.

So now we have a situation where the family unit is under attack as a harbour of bourgeois values. Where white men are under attack as everything that is wrong with the world. Where women are told they don’t need men and are encouraged to look around for alternative lifestyles rather than have to undergo the slavery that is marriage to a man. Where single mothers are constantly applauded for being the rock of our society. Where our cities have month long festivals to celebrate any form of sex other than that between a man and a woman. Where activists tell us that children should be taught about all 100 genders and asked which one they choose. Where equality of outcome has replaced equality of opportunity as a serious objective of Leftists. Where social cohesion has probably never been lower as activists attempt to destroy all western culture and attack those who attempt to defend the traditions that underpin Western society.

Religion had its faults but it kept Western civilisation focused and occupied for 2000 years. Religion, with its message of hard work and personal responsibility, played a big part in the success of Western civilisation. It appears that what is replacing religion will be very destructive. The next 2000 years will certainly witness the collapse of Western civilisation.

I’m still an atheist. I just wish everyone else had remained religious!

They hate diversity of opinion. That is why they are working so hard to control all speech. They are doing this by labelling all speech they don’t like as ‘hate speech’. This is why quotas are introduced to ensure that BAMES and women are suitably represented in showbiz and writing awards.

They hate diversity of culture. Correction: they hate white culture. They are very busy removing any aspects of white culture that they feel might be offensive to people from other cultures that have emigrated to white countries. That is why you won’t see or hear the words ‘Christmas’ or ‘Easter’ used very much these days. The acceptable term is ‘Seasons Greetings’ or ‘Festivity Eggs’.

They hate diversity of races. Hence pressure for ethnic mingling. Hence pressure for open borders. They want the world to be full of light brown people where all the cultural differences that made the world so interesting gave been swept away.
The left claims to value diversity, but the end point is sameness, what it calls “equality,” though the best word for this is leveling down.

The left want to level the cultures to bring white culture down to the level of other cultures.

The left should be made to practice what it preaches: If you are serious about diversity, then recognize that whites, too, are diverse; as a group, they are hardly comprehended by the dreary descriptor “privilege.”

To a Leftist, a group of black people is more diverse than a group of people that has 1 black person.

We used to make decisions based on ‘the greater good’. The idea behind this approach is an acceptance that you are not going to be able to please all the people, all the time. As such, you make decisions that will benefit the greater majority of people. It’s an approach that parallels the cost benefit analyses that drive business decisions. If the amount of good – aka ‘benefit’ – brought about by this decision hugely outweighs the amount of harm – ie ‘cost – then the decision is a good one: the decision is for the greater good.

However, recently a schism has been rent across the common-sense continuum. More and more examples are cropping up whereby decisions are made based on the lesser good. The modus operandi of this approach are that a decision is beneficial if a small number of people derive a benefit.

An example of this approach in practise relates to the ever-growing influence of transgenderism on our society.

Toilets and changing rooms becoming unisex which makes tiny numbers of people slightly happier whilst making huge numbers of people uneasy, uncomfortable, vulnerable and slightly resentful that rules that have been fixed in our society for hundreds of years are being changed to appeal to such small numbers.

And does this change really make transgenders feel less oppressed? I would guess that the simmering resentment that the majority would have at this upheaval of custom and tradition would be more than enough to make transgenders feel oppressed all over again.

It seems like a political decision that is more about virtue-signalling.

There is a lot of inconsistency in the environmental movement. Inconsistency where the solution to an environmental issue has an even larger environmental impact. Allow me to relate an example…
I went to a local festival over the summer. I went with my wife and we met our friends there. It’s an annual event, organised by the local council in a large park. This year, upon entry, every attendee was given a small, thickly-padded plastic envelope.

The purpose of the envelope was to store cigarette butts: instead of dropping your ciggie butt on the ground after a relaxing and pleasurable smoke, Festival-Goers were expected to extinguish the ciggie and then place the butt in the envelope. If everything went according to plan, there would be no ciggie butts left on the ground after the festival.
This envelope led me to consider the ecological vandalism of the envelope versus the ecological destruction of the ciggie butts. I know that ciggie butts are made from a type of plastic – cellulose acetate – that takes many years to decompose. Also, during decomposition, toxins – from both the plastic and the residual tobacco – would leach into the ground. However, how many ciggie butts would need to collected to offset the total environmental damage – both past and future – of the indestructable envelope? Also, the park in which we were cavorting wasn’t used for farming: no grazing took place there. No wheat was grown there. So what ecological impact was there, in real terms?
At some point all of the padded envelopes will be thrown away. How do you assess whether the envelopes saved more ecological damage than they caused? How many ciggie butts would need to taken away from my local park in order to justify the production of thick plastic envelopes? Plus, the widely different lifespans of the envelopes needs to be considered: some envelopes *may* be used multiple times, whereas many will just be used on the day they are received. I would guess that lots would never be used at all.
I was certainly incredulous: the envelope appeared to be virtually indestructable. It was a thickly padded item. I assume the padding was to absorb any residual heat from a newly extinguished butt. As such, it occurred to me that, once the envelope had served out its useful life, it would take hundreds of years to decompose. There were no recycling instructions on the item. As such, it appeared that these envelopes could not be shipped off to the 3rd World, to be recycled into to some other kind of plastic tat (or, as is more likely, to be dumped in the ocean). No, the envelope would end up in landfill in the UK. And how long would be the useful life of this product? How many would be dug out of a drawer for every similar outdoor event in the future, maybe being used tens of times during the life of the recipient? Would repeated use of this kind justify the production of more indestructible plastic? Maybe, I don’t know. I guess it depends on how you measure it. Sure, plastic toxins would no longer leach into the ground in parks but, the butts would stiĺl be decomposing in landfill. Not to mention the envelope. What about the people who only used the envelope on the day of issue and then threw it in the bin once they arrived home? Would the envelope have paid for itself in this situation? No. And then there are all those people – either smokers or non-smokers – that would have immediately thrown the envelope away in contempt. Now the council has an even bigger clean-up operation.
The council had decided that the solution to the presence of indestructable plastic was to produce even more indestructable plastic. This isn’t solving the problem. This is simply passing the problem on to somewhere else. Correction: by producing yet more plastic, this was an example of exacerbating the problem before passing it on elsewhere.
Had the council performed any analysis on the benefits vs costs of the envelopes? Or had the council simply thought that the appearance of a pouch in which people could take their rubbish away with them was all they needed to do to give people a nice warm feeling that they were saving the planet? You decide.