Notes and Comments: No. 11

Today sees the return of these Notes & Comments postings as I slowly try to return to regular updates, postings and so on here.

Anyway, When Michael Portillo was in government I thought he was an utter arse, and - like so many - I enjoyed his electoral defeat. Nevertheless, here I find myself in quiet general agreement with him, as I have been with quite a few things he has said in recent times. Strange days, indeed.

Emotional vulnerability has become fashionable. Kathryn Ecclestone on the growing use of psychologists in schools.

These trends create a circular logic of suggestibility. Some psychologists argue that no one is immune from debilitating feelings of emotional "un-wellbeing" and that we all have "esteem issues". This cultural mantra is now so prevalent that denials of depression or low self-esteem lead to a diagnosis of repressed feelings and lack of emotional intelligence.

Sometimes, it seems it won’t be very long before the entire public realm is closed down; least we inadvertently ‘offend’ someone. I find myself increasingly drawn to the idea of removing all restrictions on freedom of speech and thought, because it seems that once a society starts out on the road to banning and outlawing such things, the easier it seems to get more and more stuff restricted. This leads to the increasing infantalization of people as they get ‘offended’ by increasingly trivial things and expect someone to save them from being troubled by it too much.

Modern Fairy Stories

A comment here:

Ah, but... the celebrity is not a 'real' person.

The celebrity life takes place inside a magical media kingdom where all the vicissitudes are exaggerated and magnified for purposes of entertainment.

Celebrity 'culture' is a modern day fairy story with all the 'moral lessons' from such stories laid out in black and white for the improvement and edification of those who follow the ins and outs and twists of these tales. The celebrities themselves are but mere players who play the roles of the princesses and princes of these modern fairy tales.

That is all.

Meet The New Boss

Normally, of course, I wouldn't want anything to do with The Daily Mail, I loathe and detest its small-minded nastiness. However, via Iain Dale, I did find this:

The erstwhile young rebels who changed the BBC in the Sixties and Seventies are now the Establishment, and their views, once so radical, have become an ossified consensus - just like the ones they replaced.

However, there is a big difference: the old Establishment was undermined by media scrutiny; the new Establishment is the media. Who can debunk it?

I think this does touch upon another of the themes I'm contemplating for this blog, which is the sort of post-war consensus that grew up in parallel to the Labour party, through the universities that the liberal-left way was the only way. The BBC is - of course - stuffed to the gills with the sort of graduates who went through this who - as the article says - seemingly cannot understand that there can be any other way of looking at the world other than their own.

What Does This Do?

While I've not been well, I've been thinking about what I want to do with this blog, which 'direction' I want it to go in when I get back to it*.

Instead, I'm going to let Howard Jacobson tell you.



*Next week, if I feel up to it.

Stuck In The Mud

This is a comment on The Tory party is the main obstacle to a Cameron win

Thatcher won because of the spectacular failure of 'old' Labour. Not only has 'New' Labour failed just as spectacularly, as Nick Cohen almost says, the entire 'left' project, that we all used to believe in so much, has collapsed too, with the solutions we thought would solve most of society's problems not only creating more problems, but actually making the original problems themselves even worse.
So, the Tories should be not only shooting at an open goal, they should be the only team left on the pitch. Therefore, why Cameron even refuses to go into the, now deserted, opponent's half is a bit of a mystery. That is until you realise that the very solutions offered by 'New' Labour are demonstrably failures of what would have been post-Thatcher Tory solutions. Such things as consultants, managerialism, PFI, unsuitable privatisation and so on, and on.
That is why Cameron's players are all stuck in the mud around the centre circle passing the ball back and forwards between them, all dimly aware that if they do shoot all they can ever score is only an own goal.