Bruges Group Blog

The organisation for which I worked in those far off, halcyon days of the early 1960s, received many letters from the general public, which included those from the small, but energetic and lunatic, section of society. These were usually written in green ink, the pages being put to full use by writing up and down the margins, the spelling being frequently incorrect, the grammar questionable, and the opinions contained therein inevitably mad. They were placed in what was referred to as the ‘loony’ file, skimming through which provided an occasional diversion on a slow Friday afternoon. Meanwhile, as I worked in central London, lunchtime walks would regularly lead to encounters with unbalanced types standing on street corners prophesying the immediate end of the world, or some such. Basically these people were pretty harmless, as they were so clearly deranged as to be not worth anyone’s attention.

One of the major drawbacks of the Internet is the way in which it has given this section of society free rein to inflict their imbecilic, usually vile, and almost always ignorant, opinions on the rest of us. They sit in their bedrooms, typing away behind the protection of anonymity, attacking everyone they like, causing untold misery to their targets, and debasing debate on the most serious of subjects.

Recently we have seen reports of disgusting postings aimed at Captain Sir Tom Moore, the Duke of Edinburgh, even the Queen, while the abuse heaped on those who dare to support Brexit or Donald Trump, or to oppose the rise of the cancel culture, is unbelievable, or would have been before Facebook, Twitter and the rest opened the door to these morons. Sometimes the results of the unfettered ability of such lowlifes to abuse can be tragic. One case of which I am aware is the manner in which the priest (a good and pious man) of our local church was so abused concerning unproven accusations of misconduct that he eventually committed suicide, having been left to swing in the wind by church authorities who lacked the courage to stand by the precept of innocent until proven guilty. Even after his death the contemptible people who has hounded him continued to post foul accusations, to the distress of his mother.

The dangerous phenomenon of the cancel culture, with the subsequent distortion of the education system, as we see brainless students refusing to listen to anyone except those with whom they agree, is a product of the way in which the opinions of these armchair warriors have been granted a credibility which they do not deserve.

However this tide of abuse could easily driven back with two simple actions, namely the removal of the right to anonymity, and a determined effort by the media, and the general public to laugh at the stupidity on show, and to treat it as something to be ignored, not repeated. The press and TV constantly reports on so called ‘Twitter’ storms, but what exactly are these in reality. The actual number of those involved is small compared to the population, who either does not feel constrained to take part, or, more usually, never access social media anyway. Just because a vociferous group of idiots get together to shout about something is no reason to pay any more attention to them than one would to the street crazies of the past.

A requirement that anyone posting on the social media platforms must be clearly identified, with their real name, and location shown on the screen, while insisting that the technical details relating to them, and held by the platforms, are freely accessible to law enforcement, so that libel action may easily be taken against them, would soon bring most of them to heel.

The media should cease to take the lazy option of printing details of the latest ‘trending’ subject on social media, and return to their proper task of researching, and reporting genuine news, insisting that opinion not be reported as fact, and interviewing those involved, not merely quoting from some pathetic posting by pathetic idiots.

Over the years I have had hundreds of letters published in the press, and have exchanged what might be described as lively opinions with those such as unilateralists and Remainers. However I have always gone by the principle of ‘sticks and stones’, while the newspapers themselves ensure that libellous statements are not permitted, given that they have publishing responsibilities.

It is scandalous that the big Internet companies such as Facebook are allowed to escape from such publishing responsibilities on the basis that they are only in effect noticeboards, and not publishers. To change this would soon prevent many of the excesses we see now.

Above all the vast majority of computer users should restrict themselves to using social media for benign reasons, and not take part in prolonged exchanges with those who lack either the brains or knowledge to discuss anything important. There are many of us who have never used Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. and the world would be a better place if everyone followed our example.

Over the years I have frequently run quizzes for organisations of which I am a member, and am as frequently appalled by the lack of knowledge so many people seem to possess relating to scientific matters. As my career has been in IT I am not a scientist, but I think I have a reasonable grounding in what I would regard as basic facts about the world. However the responses I have received indicate that a majority of people have no idea about the age of our planet, its distance from our star, what its likely future is, or the extent to which we as a species have, or indeed can, affect its nature.

Nevertheless, despite this widespread ignorance of the facts, a large number of activists, backed by a gullible media, and a political class afraid to contradict fashionable opinions, are convincing our societies to take steps which risk undermining our economies, and reducing our quality of life in order to counter what, contrary to claims made by vociferous pressure groups, are uncertain theories about our climate. Those who are so certain in their belief that anthropological global warming is a reality, proved by scientists, should look at what the consensus of the scientific community was only a few decades, when the warnings were all of rapid cooling, and a new ice age.

There are fashions in scientific opinion, and these are exacerbated by the desire to obtain research grants, not to rock the boat, and to enjoy fifteen minutes of fame. I could give numerous examples, but two illustrate the point. In 1971 the journal Science published a paper by two eminent scientists which said "An increase by only a factor of four in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5 degrees Kelvin, sufficient to trigger an ice age". In 1973 the Science Digest carried the following warning "At this point the world's climatologists are agreed on only two things. That we do not have tens of thousands of years to prepare for the next ice age, and that how carefully we monitor our atmospheric pollution will have direct bearing on the arrival and nature of this weather crisis. The sooner Man confronts these facts, the safer he'll be". The one thing which is undeniable about our climate is that we live in an interglacial, which could end at any moment.

One of the most repeated assertions come under the general heading of ‘saving the planet’, This is risible, given that the Earth needs no saving, as it has existed for approximately four billion years, and barring a massively unlikely event such a close encounter with a wandering dark star, will continue to exist for another four billion, until the Sun finally leaves the main sequence. That its climate varies, sometimes massively is not disputed, as it was once a spinning tropical ball, was a frozen snowball for millions of years, and, being a dynamic body, has experienced many climatic events, such as Ice Ages. These latter are generally thought to be caused by variations in the Earth’s axis tilt, in the planet’s orbit, and in the output of the Sun. Other large swings in climate can be due to vast volcanic eruptions, or even the relative positions of land and sea masses, with consequent effects on oceanic currents, and wind patterns.

Despite these realities we are asked to believe that the activities of a small biped, over a couple of centuries, are threatening the existence of life on Earth. The constant claims about the malign effects of carbon dioxide ignore the fact that the most prolific greenhouse gas is water vapour, and how do the green fanatics expect to do anything about that - turn off the Sun?

The reality is that there are several plausible scenarios. Conceivably there is not actually a sustained change in climate, but merely a variation, such as have occurred in historic times, for instance the Medieval Climatic Anomaly, followed by the Little Ice Age. Maybe there is a more long term change, but it could have nothing to do with homo sapiens, but be the result of subtle variations in the Sun’s output, while perhaps there is indeed an effect resulting from our activities. If the latter is true then we need to do what we as a species has always done, adapt, but not to react in a way with a cure which is worse than the disease.

None of the above means that it is not a good idea to take measures to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, as these are finite on a human timescale, whereas energy from the Sun, tides and wind are only vulnerable on a geological timeframe. However this can be done over a sensible period, taking advantage of technological advances, without throwing the baby out with bathwater, as we can make huge changes over the coming decades which will put our industrial civilisation on a more permanent basis.

It is regrettable that governments, including our own, have shown themselves willing to take the alarmist statements of the green lobby at face value, when the latter would only be satisfied if we were all back in the caves, rubbing sticks together for warmth, as they falsely regard humanity of being guilty of a disregard for the environment for purely selfish reasons. Many, although not all, are in fact beholden to the usual self hating ideologies of the left.

The proposal that we should abandon petrol driven cars, and domestic gas ovens, for electric models within an absurdly short period is not merely impossible to achieve, but fundamentally insane, as, given the Greens outright opposition to nuclear energy generated by fission, where will the necessary electricity to come from but from the use of fossil fuels? In the future we may hope that fusion power, and the ability to capture massive additional energy from the Sun by use of orbiting power stations, will provide what we need, but these technologies are not yet ready.

Rather than treat little Scandinavian girls as some sort of mediaeval child saint, we need to adopt the attitude exemplified by the Queen of reacting rationally to problems, and, to use a wartime slogan, “Keep Calm”.

As is well known, in the police state of Nazi Germany, the regime used the SS and Gestapo to control the population, but these bodies were backed up by the Blockleiters, who were in charge of listening to gossip, keeping an eye on neighbours, and informing on anything suspicious in a block of flats, or a group of houses.

In the German Democratic Republic the Stasi network of Informal Collaborators covered all sections of the population, providing crucial support to the country's elaborate surveillance system, and made possible the monitoring of groups to which a secret policeman could never have gained more direct access, notably in artistic and church circles, so that the state was informed in particular detail about individuals defined as "enemy-negative persons”.

Parsons, a character in Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, professes to love Big Brother, but he is heard by his daughter to say in his sleep "Down with Big Brother." She turns him in to the Thought Police, and Winston Smith encounters him in the Ministry of Love before he is executed.

Of course such nightmares could never take place in our liberal society, where free speech is regarded as a given, and private conversations, or idle gossip, could never be used against individuals could they? Unfortunately it is becoming increasingly likely.

It is reported that the Law Commission has abandoned proposals to extend hate crime legislation into private homes, laws which could have meant that dinner table conversations could have led to hosts or guests being investigated by police, and possibly sent to prison. We are now told that the commissioners are looking at alternative ways to achieve something similar. If this review is not thrown out, lock, stock and barrel, supposed hate crimes will anyway to be extended to cover gender and age.

These proposals may have been abandoned, but it is a disgrace that they should even have been considered for one moment. Do not forget that these presumed offences can arise just because a person says they have been offended, ignoring the fact they such offence was never intended, or that the words used would not qualify as offensive to anyone except the paranoid.

That this kind of review should be taking place would be a disgrace at any time, but it is almost unbelievable that it should be happening under a Conservative government. Can anyone doubt that, should any of the parties of the left achieve power in the future, such ideas would not resurface?

Everywhere we look the lunacy emanating from the ‘woke’ is disfiguring our country. Teenage pupils at Seaford Head School in East Sussex have forced the removal the names of Winston Churchill, and the author J K Rowling, from their houses, because the latter’s statements about the ‘trans’ community were unacceptable to these snowflakes, while the British hero is accused of having ‘unfairly imprisoned and tortured many, a flat out lie. Clearly the school does not teach history.

The Brighton and Sussex University Hospital NHS Trust is telling its staff to stop using terms such as ‘mother, ‘breast’ or ‘woman’ so that, where one might have said that “the child’s mother is breastfeeding her baby with breastmilk” it would be necessary to say ‘the maternal, or paternal, person is chest feeding the baby with chest milk”. Newspeak lives! That this insanity is greeted with incredulity by any reasonable person means nothing to those being allowed to ride roughshod over the views of ordinary people in the name of a deranged ideology. They must be stopped if this country is to be prevented from falling into a purgatory where rational behaviour, and belief, has been abolished.

In 1953 the novel “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury was published, concerning a future society where books are outlawed, and burnt, in order to suppress dissenting ideas, and the actual book burning by the Nazis is a matter of historical record. We have not yet reached that point, but can anyone doubt that the imbeciles who have been attacking statues will not soon turn their attention to books. One can foresee the works of Churchill being banned in libraries run by left wing councils, or even their publication being prevented on the grounds they they will encourage patriotism, or pride in our country’s history and achievements.

We in the UK are mad to have allowed the politically correct fascists to get as far as they have, and it is time that the overwhelmingly majority of decent citizens turned on these so called activists. They will never be satisfied until every person obeys their diktats without question, and the simplest of pillow talk between married couples becomes subject to examination by the state, with sanctions applied to those who dare to stray from the line dictated by this real life Thought Police.

Although the break with the EU is not yet as complete as many of us would wish we have nevertheless escaped at last from the grip of Brussels, and have ended the situation whereby our democratic rights were being destroyed, as the rulers of that vile organisation transferred move and more authority into the hands of unelected bureaucrats. However the future of our democracy is still at risk, and not just because the behaviour of those who stormed the Washington Capitol was reprehensible, as was the apparent prompting given by President Trump.

That event was the result both of the unbridled opportunities extremists have been afforded by the existence of social media, and an underlying malaise which is compromising the survival of Western democracies. In the past few years we have seen multiple examples of egregious assaults upon democratic decisions, which have been largely due to actions taken by those now hypocritically expressing outrage about the storming of the Capitol.

When Trump won in 2016, the Democrats tried to delegitimise his victory in the electoral college because Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, despite the fact that this had been the agreed method of electing a President since the Republic was formed, while these same people also made totally unsubstantiated claims about foreign interference affecting the result. This latter accusation was also made when the nationalists failed to convince the Scottish people to vote for independence in 2014, and was again employed when the Europhiles turned out to be in a minority in the UK in the June 2016 referendum.

Of course that vote resulted in the worst example of the refusal to accept a democratic decision yet seen, when the political establishment, and its supporters in the media, such as the BBC, declined to accept that they had been fairly defeated. For years we endured flagrant attempts to overturn the will of the people, with a Commons Speaker who blatantly assisted the Europhiles, and a campaign to hold a second referendum before the result of the first had been implemented. The insults directed at Leavers were disgusting, and made clear that the pro EU case was largely founded on prejudice, much of it class based. The 2019 general election demonstrated that the British people were serious in their desire to leave the EU, but once again they were subjected to a barrage of false claims, rather than an acceptance by the Europhiles that they were in a minority.

Those of us who know the works of Orwell, particularly his masterpiece 1984, must sometimes feel that he possessed a time machine, for so many of the horrors portrayed in that novel are now recognisable around us. He seems, as Paul says in Corinthians, to “have seen through a glass, darkly”. What is the concept of a ‘cancel culture’ other than the modern version of making someone an ‘unperson’, while the advocates of so called ‘woke’, are creating a version of Newspeak, where the use of words is being deliberately limited to prevent us from expressing our opinions.

As we do not yet have a Ministry of Love to enforce the diktats of these sinister enemies of freedom it is nauseating to see the number of organisations who choose to ‘take a knee’ before them, issuing apologies for which no apology is warranted, and persecuting those who dare to stand up to these fascists. It should also be remembered that the violence in Washington followed on from that seen during the demonstrations by the anti Semitic Black Lives Matter movement, which seeks to impose the views of a minority without any democratic process taking place. Of course it is wrong, indeed insane, to treat people differently because of the colour of their skin, but the genuine grievances which minorities have cannot be solved by supporting those who hate Jews, capitalism, and even the concept of the family. These thugs should be confronted, not appeased.

If any reasonable person, voicing rational opinions, is told that ‘you can’t say that’, then the answer should, and must be ‘I can and I will’, while the craven behaviour of so many businesses, who tremble at the thought that they might be offending those whose capacity for taking offence is infinite, should cease to conciliate, and instead defy these vociferous simpletons.

The attacks upon democracy have been fuelled by the manner in which social media has been used to promulgate nonsensical assertions, and the ability of irrational mobs on these platforms to silence all but the most determined, who face abuse emanating from those who think that any who shout the loudest should prevail. There is a good case for banning these aberrant modern day soapboxes altogether, as they are now sewers which the worst ignoramuses are using to destroy rational debate.

As far as the wider question of democracy is concerned, if losers refuse to accept the result of democratic votes it cannot survive, as every election or referendum will see attempts to use illegitimate means to reverse the decisions taken.

Students of human nature need look no further than Shakespeare to find warnings of the perils of judging that the motives of others are benign. In Julius Caesar Octavius rightly points out that "And some that smile have in their hearts, I fear, Millions of mischiefs”, while Hamlet tells us that one may "smile, and smile, and be a villain”. The villains themselves admit as such when Iago says “I am not what I am”, and Richard III confesses that “And thus I clothe my naked villainy”.

The tendency to think well, rather than ill, of people is not doubt laudable, but all too often it is merely naive, and can lead to disaster. For individuals a trust in smooth talking snake oil salesmen on the Internet has led to thousands of decent people being tricked into losing often substantial funds, but it is when the problem is inflated to relations between nations that the real danger threatens.

In the 1930s quite sensible figures, including Leo Amery, a man of Jewish descent, were sufficiently naive to be at first taken in by Adolf Hitler, and of course the appeasers, such as Neville Chamberlain, believed that it was possible to reach an accommodation with Nazi Germany. That they could have believed this when the facts that the Nazis were dressing up as pantomime villains, crushing democracy, and persecuting the Jewish people is amazing. Had they taken Mein Kampf seriously they would surely have never trusted Germany for a moment. We were indeed fortunate that, by the skin of our teeth, we were eventually on the winning side, thanks to the Channel, the size of the Royal Navy, the bravery of the RAF, and insane decisions to attack the USSR and America, taken by a man who was a psychopathic megalomaniac.

Of course this ability to ignore what is staring you in the face was not, and is not, restricted to politicians. In the inter war years many apparently sane individuals were vociferous in their support for the League of Nations, but equally convinced that expenditure on our Armed Forces should be cut. One wonders how they could believe that mere moral exhortations could hold back the dictators. The signers of the Peace Pledge Union were, like most pacifists, unable to accept that sometimes one must use force, or at least threaten it, to survive. This sort of gullibility was on display in the years following the war when many marched for CND, in the belief that the way to deal with a totalitarian power, armed with nuclear weapons, was to throw ours away. Perhaps they thought that being well meaning was sufficient, but we all know with what the road to hell is paved.

Unfortunately this refusal to recognize that there is evil in the world persists, for, in the days following the fall of the Soviet Union, many bankers, financiers and investors eagerly took money from tainted sources in Russia, and in so doing spread corruption, and malign influences throughout the Western world. The recent excellent book Putin’s People, makes clear that current day Russia is not that of the Tsar and nobles of Imperial times, nor the Soviet era of Stalin and the Politburo, but that of the political equivalent of Michael Corleone and his capos, as Putin and his KGB cronies reign supreme. Many in the West took money from pure greed, but others claimed that it would ensure that Russia would become a respectable part of the world financial system. Well we have seen how misguided was that belief.

Now we have been repeating the same mistake with China. The latter has managed to combine the economic strength of capitalism with the continuation of the power structure of Communism, and we have allowed them to inveigle their way into our infrastructure, without warning infect the whole world with a virus, and begin to undermine democracy everywhere. They have treated the agreement over Hong Kong with contempt, menaced Taiwan, and made invalid claims on the whole Asian area, attempting to browbeat India, even trying to cow Australia. We have foolishly permitted the lure of cheap products to allow much of our industry to gravitate to China. Again the arguments are trotted out that if we engage with them they will gradually become more like us. This is either a conscious lie, or such a misreading of the nature of their regime that it amounts to an insane delusion.

It is time that Western democracies woke up to the fact that we are living in the light from the campfire, but just beyond its circle the monsters are getting closer. Under the Kim family North Korea is the nearest to the world of 1984 that we have yet seen, its people being powerless to overthrow the dictator. Theocratic Iran and the Islamist fanatics will never give up their desire to destroy Israel, and her allies, for, while we are told that their population is becoming younger, and more desirous to live as a Western style nation, still the Ayatollahs rule. The secret policemen who have taken over Russia have imperial ambitions, while a totalitarian China is growing in power and influence every day.

This is not to advocate active belligerence directed against our enemies, but we should recognize them as such, ensure that we possess Armed Forces capable of deterring them, cease to allow them unrestricted entry into our economies, and recognize the fact that, contrary to the beliefs of many well meaning ignoramuses, not everyone is like us. We in the Western world have had our dark periods, and are by no means perfect, but compared to so many of the regimes afflicting mankind, in the phrase popularised by Disraeli, we are on the side of the angels.