MOST intelligent people have known for a long time that the official UK jobless figure (currently standing at 2,435,000) is big fat lie.
The fact is there are now SIX MILLION people living on benefits of one sort or another, while a good TEN million others (by my estimate) earn a living by toiling for the health service, edukashun, councils, social landlords, and the terrible, sloganising, logo-launching, spy camera-obsessed police “services”.
Then I guess you should count as “employed” have those who earn a pittance slaving away in all the ghastly shopping malls, chain stores and chain “restaurants” that so scar our country.
Plus, there are still a few million left working in old-fashioned manufacturing, agriculture and the liberal professions.
Taken as a whole, the UK’s economic and social system – a terrible mix of capitalism, unthinking consumerism and Liberal-Fascist Statism – is making almost everyone sadder than Mr Sad’s saddest collection of sadness. In his sad cupboard. On a sad day.
But it doesn’t have to be like this. People do need work, yes, but not as much of it as we persist in thinking they do.
The notion of working five-days-a-week is as untenable as it is undesirable - ecologically, politically, economically and culturally. So what’s to be done about things?
Well, in the short term, we might as well accept that we are living in an era of the Big State once again and make its power work for our collective good for once – by bringing about the one very simple, very big change we need. Namely, the following…
The Government should step in and making the FOUR-DAY-WORKING-WEEK the norm – by force of law. Of course, to do so would probably necessitate the UK withdrawing from the European Union and various international treaties but we need to do all of that anyway … and, besides, anything is possible in the strained and uncertain times just ahead of us.
The creation of the four-day-week would bring relief for the employed, many of whom are currently stressed to beyond endurance by their jobs. The measure would also create employment and training opportunities for those currently sat at home all day stuffing their faces with pizza and watching moronic daytime telly.
After a couple of years, the maximum working week, should be reduced further to three days, leading to a further reduction in stress, and more time for family, cultural and sporting life, that so many of us need. Plus there would be much more quality time philosophical musing and the writing of poetry – for those so inclined – and also more jobs for the long-term unemployed.
Taking an overall view of just where Westerns societies are at (technologically, ecomomically and ecologically) such a model of chilled out employment makes a lot of sense.
Tuesday, 18 August 2009
Thursday, 13 August 2009
My plan to save UK edukashun from disaster
NEARLY half a million young people leave school each summer in the UK without being able to speak properly or think at all seriously about anything.
As well as being staggeringly thick, so many of today's teenagers lack any internal moral compass.
Dysfunctional State schools fail to impart the difference between right and wrong, and so do feckless parents (themselves the victims of pisspoor British schooling). It’s a frightening situation.
Meanwhile, the Government lunges from one crap educational initiative to the next, while teachers remain demoralised and powerless to deal with violent pupils.
The failure in State education is deep and systemic.
So many teachers are off with stress, the situation is a national joke; so many pupils are suspended from schools every year that the authorities simply can't cope.
And the British public is becoming thicker with every succeeding generation.
Because of the situation is so dire, I propose an emergency remedy; a drastic five-point plan of action.
To put the following programme into operation would, of course, involve giving me political control of the UK, but would that be a bad thing?
After all in recent weeks, while that sad sack Gordon Brown has been on holiday, the country has been run first by an unhinged fundamentalist feminist, Harriet Harperson, and, then by an unelected Machiavalian manipulator who wears lilac loafers, Peter Mandelson.
Listen, my country needs me, and the first thing I will put right is the education system. Here's how ...
FIRST: Sack at least half of the teachers currently employed. For sure! They have, after all, proved themselves quite useless.
SECOND: Hire teachers from abroad to make up the shortfall (from the US, Australia and Canada, where teachers aren’t as utterly demoralised and beaten as they are here).
THIRD: Make it legal for schools to reintroduce the cane. Unless kids experience fear of physical chastisement they will never know respect – or wisdom (more of that later). Fear (of God) is, afterall, the beginning of all wisdom.
In order to bring back corporal punishment in schools our country will, of course, have to de-link itself from certain covenants of “international law” we have foolishly signed up to, but so be it. “International law” isn’t really law at all – it is organised liberal repression of national freedoms.
FOURTH: Introduce the new Sir Sam Brady National Curriculum, including compulsory training in…
- Reading, Writing and Arithmetic (absolutely essential, as must be obvious, even to a moron in a hurry)
- Personal Hygiene (because, yes, things have got so bad at home under millions of slobby parents)
- Cooking and Household Chores for Boys AND Girls (obviously)
- Personal Finance for Boys and Girls (because they will have to live in the real world and, at the very least have to understand how the benefits system works or how to wangle a job doing not very much with the local council when they leave school
- British and World History (with 80 per cent of the lessons focused on British history and not the false, sinister, wishy-washy re-written history so beloved of the Liberal-Left Fascists in the teaching unions
- Religious Instruction, with an 80 per cent focus on Christianity, because that’s the faith that very largely built our nation, though we must also include some teaching about the basics of all world faiths, with special emphasis on their moral teaching (because British youngsters are in dire need of moral training, which brings me to…)
FIFTH. Philosophy! I regard this as such a vitally important subject to be taught in schools that I have devoted a whole section of this posting to it. Because, as Epicurus remarked: “Philosophy is an activity which, though discourse and reasoning, procures for us a happy life.”
* The main branch of philosophy that ought to be taught is ethics, because in a world where religious faith is diminished as a backdrop to most people’s lives, we need something else (a back-up, if you like) to help us make choices about what to do and how to behave in a way that is good for us - and good for the survival and dignity of society as a whole.
* I would also teach what the philosophical masters said about politics. We owe it to ourselves to understand what politics is, and how, ultimately, it is the opposite of war and barbarism. We have a duty to be involved in it or at least informed about it.
* Pupils must learn what the greats said about love. It isn’t just about snogging, funsex and condoms. Young people need to know about the different forms of love – eros, philia, and agape.
* And we all need to be taught to think as deeply as we can, philosophically, about death, freedom, knowledge, art, humanity and wisdom.
* It is only by reading and considering in depth what greater minds than ours said about these subjects (starting with Plato and Aristotle) that we can put ourselves on the path to wisdom and happiness.
* The very word philosophy is based on the Greek word philosophia – meaning the love of, or the search for, wisdom.
* And the fact that human life can be so brutal, fragile, precious and dangerous is all the more reason to begin to steep our people in the basics of, and ignite their (hopefully lifelong) interest in, philosophy, as early as possible.
As well as being staggeringly thick, so many of today's teenagers lack any internal moral compass.
Dysfunctional State schools fail to impart the difference between right and wrong, and so do feckless parents (themselves the victims of pisspoor British schooling). It’s a frightening situation.
Meanwhile, the Government lunges from one crap educational initiative to the next, while teachers remain demoralised and powerless to deal with violent pupils.
The failure in State education is deep and systemic.
So many teachers are off with stress, the situation is a national joke; so many pupils are suspended from schools every year that the authorities simply can't cope.
And the British public is becoming thicker with every succeeding generation.
Because of the situation is so dire, I propose an emergency remedy; a drastic five-point plan of action.
To put the following programme into operation would, of course, involve giving me political control of the UK, but would that be a bad thing?
After all in recent weeks, while that sad sack Gordon Brown has been on holiday, the country has been run first by an unhinged fundamentalist feminist, Harriet Harperson, and, then by an unelected Machiavalian manipulator who wears lilac loafers, Peter Mandelson.
Listen, my country needs me, and the first thing I will put right is the education system. Here's how ...
FIRST: Sack at least half of the teachers currently employed. For sure! They have, after all, proved themselves quite useless.
SECOND: Hire teachers from abroad to make up the shortfall (from the US, Australia and Canada, where teachers aren’t as utterly demoralised and beaten as they are here).
THIRD: Make it legal for schools to reintroduce the cane. Unless kids experience fear of physical chastisement they will never know respect – or wisdom (more of that later). Fear (of God) is, afterall, the beginning of all wisdom.
In order to bring back corporal punishment in schools our country will, of course, have to de-link itself from certain covenants of “international law” we have foolishly signed up to, but so be it. “International law” isn’t really law at all – it is organised liberal repression of national freedoms.
FOURTH: Introduce the new Sir Sam Brady National Curriculum, including compulsory training in…
- Reading, Writing and Arithmetic (absolutely essential, as must be obvious, even to a moron in a hurry)
- Personal Hygiene (because, yes, things have got so bad at home under millions of slobby parents)
- Cooking and Household Chores for Boys AND Girls (obviously)
- Personal Finance for Boys and Girls (because they will have to live in the real world and, at the very least have to understand how the benefits system works or how to wangle a job doing not very much with the local council when they leave school
- British and World History (with 80 per cent of the lessons focused on British history and not the false, sinister, wishy-washy re-written history so beloved of the Liberal-Left Fascists in the teaching unions
- Religious Instruction, with an 80 per cent focus on Christianity, because that’s the faith that very largely built our nation, though we must also include some teaching about the basics of all world faiths, with special emphasis on their moral teaching (because British youngsters are in dire need of moral training, which brings me to…)
FIFTH. Philosophy! I regard this as such a vitally important subject to be taught in schools that I have devoted a whole section of this posting to it. Because, as Epicurus remarked: “Philosophy is an activity which, though discourse and reasoning, procures for us a happy life.”
* The main branch of philosophy that ought to be taught is ethics, because in a world where religious faith is diminished as a backdrop to most people’s lives, we need something else (a back-up, if you like) to help us make choices about what to do and how to behave in a way that is good for us - and good for the survival and dignity of society as a whole.
* I would also teach what the philosophical masters said about politics. We owe it to ourselves to understand what politics is, and how, ultimately, it is the opposite of war and barbarism. We have a duty to be involved in it or at least informed about it.
* Pupils must learn what the greats said about love. It isn’t just about snogging, funsex and condoms. Young people need to know about the different forms of love – eros, philia, and agape.
* And we all need to be taught to think as deeply as we can, philosophically, about death, freedom, knowledge, art, humanity and wisdom.
* It is only by reading and considering in depth what greater minds than ours said about these subjects (starting with Plato and Aristotle) that we can put ourselves on the path to wisdom and happiness.
* The very word philosophy is based on the Greek word philosophia – meaning the love of, or the search for, wisdom.
* And the fact that human life can be so brutal, fragile, precious and dangerous is all the more reason to begin to steep our people in the basics of, and ignite their (hopefully lifelong) interest in, philosophy, as early as possible.
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