It has been a terrible week politically. I have nothing to add on the subject of the press "regulation" omnishambles. My views have been well-represented around the blogosphere and even - for once - in the mainstream media. I have already offered my views on the EU/Cyprus bank deposits grab.
Our lords and masters have revenged themselves on the few independent journalists who don't always fully promote the statist consensus. Oligarch-financed celebs have exploited the idolatory of the moronic masses to destroy another key freedom for their own selfish ends. Innocents have had their bank accounts frozen in Cyprus while the national and supranational political classes debate precisely how much to steal from them. There's some novelty in all this, but the trend is no surprise.
What is surprising for me is the total public indifference. Cypriots still seem to have some fight in them and I wish them well, but the British public frankly deserves servitude because it does not value freedom. I am now bitterly convinced that nothing but the crushing misery of totalitarianism will wake them. Provided that their freedoms continue to be removed slowly, slice by salami slice, they will probably claim even then that the state is their friend.
Schadenfreude is not my bag, but I would find it hard not to smile at the thought of them in some future gulag, were I not likely to be sharing their cell. They are a sad shaming remnant of a once great nation.
When I started this blog from Russia, I was angry with British politicians and felt sorry for the British people, thinking them ill-served. Now that I live amongst them again, my views have reversed. The British masses are a shiftless, ignorant, nastily-envious bunch who believe above all in the arboricultural nature of money, the desirability of the free lunch and the infallibility of the state. I now feel sorry for those few politicians who would like to do right, but are restrained by their electorate's vile inclinations.
I will need to review the future of this blog in the light of the new regulatory regime when it has been finalised. It has been interesting and I thank you for your contributions, but it may now be time to accept that our regular commenter Mark, indefatigable state toady and political submissive, has won the argument. Eight years of hoping against hope as our freedoms are worn away has been a huge effort. This is a democracy, after all. If most of our fellow-citizens get a frisson from the firm smack of strong government, they had better get on their bondage gear and have at it.
Perhaps the French have always been right about le vice anglais?
