Steyn, On the 80’s Retread Goings On in London

It’s all very Carnaby Street.

Instead, the Polish and Balkan baristas were hurriedly dragging in all the sidewalk tables and chairs before the Socialist Workers’ Party chaps showed up in search of projectiles. Nobody in the Socialist Workers’ Party actually works, which is one reason why it’s Mitteleuropeans frothing your coffee rather than any of the natives.

So right after watching the real proletariat trying to save their hides in the face of the puerile children’s crusade, we get to go from the Mittel-Europäern to the Middle-Minded:

Still, on balance I prefer the class-war thugs trashing the joint, who at least have the courage of their convictions. The “nice” people bussed in from the shires struck me as some of the most stupid people I’ve ever met anywhere on the planet. One elderly lady from Yorkshire told me she was there because her grandson’s university fees were likely to go up.

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She stared at me blankly. “Well, I don’t want to argue,” she said politely. “I just think it’s a disgrace.”

It’s all a matter of “being nice” this desire to take and take for ones’ illusions and comforts. After all, if one is truly nostalgic for a Britain of the 70’s and 80’s, you might as well note a feature of that nation that has gone unchanged the whole while:

I was in a cranky mood because I hadn’t had my coffee. “You can protest all you like,” I said. “But this country’s broke, so all you’re doing is postponing its reacquaintanceship with reality, and ensuring that your grandson and his contemporaries are going to be stuck with the tab because you guys spent their future.” I pointed out that in her part of the world – northern England – as in Wales and Northern Ireland, the state accounts for three-quarters of the economy. And it’s still not enough for the likes of her and her pals.

And all of that is BEFORE every other single issue faction tries to salve their perspectiveless guilt by proposing the same dedication to THEIR issues. Either way, it’s a class firm in their belief that only a huge, paternalistic, government with obscenely high levels of power can solve problems, and that the solution to each problem starts by sucking more capitol out of society.

Not only can Ian and Nigella not add, but they don’t want to know the ugliness of knowing what those numbers do to them of the rest of society.